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Closer now, Wistala could see a “garden” of thick thorn trees—she thought of it as a garden because it was, precisely edged both inside and out and regularly shaped, a great crescent with the points running up the outer edges of the divided mountain spur, thinning somewhat as they climbed the thin-soiled heights. The thorn trees were thick and intertwined, so it wouldn’t be a matter of just cutting down trees, for they all supported and wound around each other; sever trunk from root and the rest would hang. She guessed a team of dwarves with axes could hack through it in a day or two—under a tasking leader—and it would be a remarkable thief who could negotiate that wall without becoming hopelessly lost or torn to pieces and waste much time backtracking out of blind alleys.
The thorn wall guarded a vast courtyard, almost as big as all of Mossbell’s cultivated grounds, between the two mountain arms. Instead of wild cabbages and berry bushes, this plaza was paved with broken and irregular bits of masonry. Even the odd statue fragment of a hominid arm or face showed here and there, placed to fit between an old fountain rim or some unknown chunk of temple wall.
Two pairs of blighters walked here and there and swept up some long thin leaves fallen from the thorn trees. Judging from the size of the courtyard, when they finished they’d have to start all over again where they’d began.
She forgot the blighters as soon as she saw the arch.
The stone of the mountain had been formed and carved into a great gallery leading into the darkness between the spurs of the mountain, going up an interlacing like a woven basket of round reeds, meeting like snakes hooking at the neck. The stone had been carved so it evoked bones, or tree roots, or dragon tails, anything but dull and lifeless rock. It was supported both from the courtyard and the mountain ridge by pillars, all shaped to match the whole and etched with scale patterns. At the outer rim of the stony lattice there were holes big enough for a dragon to climb through, but the spacing grew tighter and tighter as it approached what looked to be a cave mouth, though the most regular and finished Wistala had ever seen.
It was wide enough for a dragon to fly into it and pick a comfortable, well-lit landing spot before the cave. DharSii glided in, widening and then slowly folding his wings as he alighted. Wistala tried to imitate him and made a clumsier landing, not expecting the smoothness of the courtyard paving. It wasn’t a sprawl, but it could have been one if her tail didn’t catch on a fortunately placed crack.
“Welcome to Vesshall,” DharSii said, letting his griff give an elegant little flutter. “I will take you to the dragons within, but I shan’t stay.”
“Do you have enemies here?” she asked.
“You ask a lot of questions. Scabia will be delighted with you. Make your queries sound like praise, and you’ll share endless hours of chatter.”
A cave entrance, wide enough for two dragons to pass abreast, stood just above a ledge about the height of one human seated on another’s shoulders. A ring of stones, chiseled and filled in with a black material like glass forming unfamiliar glyphs like thorns crossed and arranged, decorated the entrance.
“I don’t know that script,” Wistala said.
“It’s the old iconography,” DharSii said, rearing up to climb into the tunnel mouth. His tail gave a little twitch; perhaps he was pleased at her ignorance. “It reads ‘Welcome is the dragon who alights in peace.’ ” They passed down a short passage, arched above to match the stone lattice outside, filled in with six-sided colored chips in all the colors of dragonhood, making patterns interlaced and winding above and beneath in such intricacy that Wistala wished she had an afternoon just to let her eyes travel the path.
But DharSii did not stop, but moved on into another cavern.
This one was vast and round, by far the biggest interior Wistala had ever been in. The far walls were so distant their old footfalls bounced back at them from the walls to join the fresh noises they made, waiting to take their turn to visit the other side of the cavern and return.
The convex ceiling curved high enough for Wistala to flap her wings and fly if she wished, and went up like an inverted bowl to a circular gap that admitted the outdoor light and aired the room. It wasn’t big enough to fly out, she’d have to fold her wings to pass through it. A shallow pool of water stood under the skylight, and the floor under the light was much edged with bands of green copper, one of which the edge of splash of dim sunlight rode even now.
Around the walls of the cavern—or chamber, rather, for while there was mountain muscle to be seen there was no rock that was not shaped by artistry—long blocks of basalt stuck out of the wall, narrowing and rising to a softened point like an inverted dragon claw. At the far end, two scaly forms reclined.
Wistala saw more blighters at work beneath the smaller, scrubbing the tiled floor.
DharSii struck off straight across the floor toward the pair and Wistala followed, hearts hammering. The place smelled of dragons, rainwater, and fresh air; she relished every breath, took it in through her nostrils and clamped them so the homey smell might never escape.
There were still dragons in the world, not skulking and hiding but living in grandeur and peace!
At their approach the blighters carried off their implements, flattened and squeezed themselves through a thin gap at the base of the wall like escaping mice before a prowling tom.
They caught her eye only because of the motion. The two dragons on the jutting lofts of rock had her attention.
Both were dragonelles, one rather undersize, her green scales pale and almost translucent, well formed of limb though in a delicate way that suggested little in the way of gorge or exertion.
The other was a white dragonelle, formidably huge and perhaps a bit more massive than DharSii. Wistala had the odd sensation of knowing her without having ever been introduced, probably some vague echo of a mind-picture from Mother. But there was, yes, a half-familiar shape to her short, proudly curved snout, the challenging arc of her eye ridge . . . Her scales had thinned a bit around her jawline and above her eyes, the flesh sagged in a little where her saa met her spine; she was a dragonelle of long years but still formidable.
“I bring a visitor, Damesister.” It took Wistala a moment to work out the relationship; she’d only heard the word once before from her Father in one of his battle-stories . . . a man or a dwarf would have said aunt. “I humbly present Wistala, a dragonelle out of the south, who seeks ha-hem succor and solace.”
I never said that, Wistala thought.
The striped dragon turned to her. “Wistala, this is Scabia, Archelle of the Sadda-Vale, and her daughter Aethleethia, my ha-hem beautiful uzhin.”
Both dragonelles fluttered their griffs at Wistala with that same bird-wing delicacy. Wistala thought she should fit in and tried to imitate it, but her griff rattled off her scale, and the dragonelles glanced at each other.
The white dragon extended her nose just a little and sniffed the air in Wistala’s direction, her pink eyes as cold as the glaciers Wistala had passed over.
“Will you not make her welcome?” DharSii said, and Wistala liked him a little better.
“Who were your sire and dame?” Scabia asked.
