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Somewhere below, he heard his brother, worrying rats from among the offal at the base of the cave wall. He reversed himself like a whip cracking, and dashed back to the carcass.
“Wind and sand, how quick you are! But rest now, Auron. When you’re grown, you’ll have a clutch of your own to fight for.”
“Not sleepy!” he insisted, glaring at his sisters and spoiling for action. They retreated to the shelter of Mother’s left hind, meeping.
Auron belched, and the fetid smell pacified him. But the horse still needed guarding. Mother’s warm belly beckoned, yet he curled himself around what was left of the head and forequarters. If Mother was right, the next horse might be some days off, and he could not bear the thought of the copper making off with such a prize.
Days passed. Once the remains of the horse joined the pile at the shelf base, and not a bite of slug was left to be had, Auron felt bold enough to explore the cave. Should his brother gain the egg shelf, he felt confident enough to teach him a real lesson, though his desire to kill him had ebbed.
While the cave looked like a vast expanse from the egg shelf, it was anything but. There were great pillars of stone that met others hanging above like the teeth in his mouth, only less precisely arranged. There were cracks and fissures too small for his parents but a satisfactory size for an inquisitive hatchling, and places where the ceiling came low enough for him to torment the bats who clung here and there.
Away from the smells of the egg shelf, he snuffled amongst the pools and refuse of the cave floor. Music in the form of trickling water sounded all around; each fall had its own syncopation, from deep plops of heavy drops to the more rapid cadence of little streams splashing from ceiling to cave floor.
Stalagmites were almost as easy to climb as Mother. He tried one in the higher part of the cave, wrapping himself around it in imitation of his father. Finding a comfortable rest, he froze. Rolling only an eyeball, he looked down at his body, almost indistinguishable from the cool stone he clung to. Faint darker bands could just be distinguished amid the gray. Was he developing a different color? Mother said dragons came in many colors, though dragonelles were usually green. His sisters asked endless questions about colors and played with sparkling stones and bits of metal Father gave them. They arranged them in intricate patterns, rhyming as they counted the colors:>But Gluttony makes fat dragons, who can’t fly at their need.
A hot Lust for glory, gems, gold, or mates
Leads reckless young drakes to the blackest of fates.
So take heed of this wisdom, precious hatchling of mine,
And the long years of dragonhood are sure to be thine.
Chapter 2
There weren’t any grays on my side of the family,” Father grumbled.
Larger even than Mother, Father rested on a massive stalagmite, wrapped about it like a constricting snake. His fiery eyes, under the armored ridges that led back to his crest in its six-horned glory, glowered down on the brood. Father’s bronze scales reflected the muted aqua light of the cave moss.
To little Auron, Father had a harsh, intimidating odor, very different from Mother’s comforting one. He tucked his head into his gray flank, a little afraid at Father’s tone, but resisted the instinct to close his eyes.
“You know very well my father was a gray, AuRel. When I sang my lineage at our mating, it didn’t bother you.”
Father pulled back, raised his mighty neck high, and snorted. For a moment it looked to Auron as if he might bite Mother.
But he brought his head down and flicked his forked tongue, drawing it across her face. “I was watching your wings, my love. They hypnotized me. I had never seen such a span on a maiden before. I hardly listened.”
His parents touched noses at the memories evoked, and Auron heard a low thrumming.
“We have every right to prumm to each other—three on the shelf. Not bad for our first clutch,” Mother said. She pulled Auron’s two sisters closer to her with her tail. The hatchlings peeped and yawned at the touch, but didn’t wake.
“But still, of all the infernal drafts,” Father continued. “A red, a copper, and a gray. What happens? The red is killed, the copper is maimed, and the gray has the nest!”
“The red fought well, my lord. Just too eager, impetuous. He left the copper without finishing it.”
“Just like his grandfather, darkness keep his bones. A besung dragon, he. I still don’t see how a gray got the better of him or the copper.”
“He used his egg horn, my lord.”
“He did what?”
“Gutted him from the yolk sac up. I hardly believed my eyes.”
Father looked down at Auron, a new interest in his eyes. “Clever little blighter.”
“Eggs and legs! Don’t call the pride of our clutch a blighter, AuRel! Like it or not, he is your champion. It’s for you to see that he lives to loose his first fire.”
“I wonder . . . ,” Father mused. “A gray. Thin skinned: the first elf with a bow that—”
