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The canyon plunged into the earth, first in a series of breaks and then at last into darkness. He flew more cautiously here, wondering how such a land could ever support dragons, with the nearest edibles a long day’s dry flight away, and not much even at that.
His eyes adjusted to the dark and he flew at a pace he could almost match on the ground, wary, wondering what kind of reception he might meet.
And so he came to the bridge.
Of course he wondered what dragons would need with a bridge. The sides of the canyon were striped with holds that even a young hatchling might use as a hominid used a ladder.
It was a superior piece of craft as he understood such things, looking almost as fine as a dwarf-built in his estimation. It passed from rock-column to rock-column, joining two bits of tunnel, fixed here to cavern roof, there to a column, and in another place held up by arcs of metal and twisted cable.
“Land, stranger,” a dragonelle’s voice called from the center of the span. AuRon marked sort of a mini-cave in the cavern ceiling. She would have an easy time pouring her flame on him if she chose.
A drakka emerged from the east end of the bridge and opened her sii in an odd gesture. AuRon guessed it meant they wanted him to land there.
So he did. Two drakka and a dragonelle stared at him from a wide, well-dug tunnel.
“Do not even you know him, Angalia?” one of the drakka asked the dragonelle.
She blinked. “There is grit in my eyes, I cannot be sure. Oh, I am ill. This bridge and these dry holes will be the death of me.”
“For a moment, by the skin, I thought he was one of those awful monster-bats, but he’s dragon-sized,” the one in the cavern roof-hole called. “Who is he? Is there a gray in the Aerial Host?”
“I’ve not seen one, but I’ve been long away from the Lavadome,” the one AuRon thought to be Angalia said. “It seems I’m always indispensable in some unhealthy clime.”
The drakka eyed each other. The look they exchanged reminded him of Jizara and Wistala sharing a private joke at his expense. His hearts ached at the memory.
AuRon spoke his long-rehearsed speech, not really knowing the manners of the dragons here, so he fell back on old phraseology that he’d at times heard from NooMoahk. “My name is AuRon son of AuRel. I come from Ghioz, bearing a message in friendship from the Queen. If you could arrange for me to reach your Lavadome so that I may deliver her words, I will hereafter call you friend.”
The dragonelles blinked at him, frozen, reminding him of nothing so much as startled monkeys he’d seen when he’d been a wingless hunter stalking the jungle south of Uldam.
“Some friend,” one of the drakka muttered. “A travel-thinned gray with a stumpy tail who talks like a drunk Wyrr. The Red Queen can keep him.”
Chapter 14
Wistala’s introduction to the Lavadome left her thrilled yet mazed, speechless despite words of admiration at its beauties fighting to get out.
After the tall cavern of the river ring, griffaran were wheeling in and out of shafts of light from cracks in the surface as cold waters carried their secrets beneath. They swam across, hearts pounding in the cold, the pain half exquisite. She climbed out of the water feeling more alive than she ever had before in her life.
Ayafeeia, three dragonelles, and three drakka accompanied her from the other end of the Star Tunnel and through a maze of twists, turns, and ancient chambers.
She thought she’d seen beauty enough to remember in the bright colors of the far-off griffaran.
Then they passed through another tunnel on the other side of the ring and entered the Lavadome.
After, she sensed that the others had been watching her to see her reaction.
The space seemed an impossibility, like a sea rolling above clouds rather than below, or a mountain hanging from the sky instead of growing from the earth. It was a separate world deep underground, vast beyond imagining and lit by the earth’s hot blood. At first she thought it an optical illusion, a strange effect like some of the murals she’d seen in the Hypatian libraries, or a garden-pool she’d seen near a seaside palace that visually met the ocean with many dragonlengths of sand and coral between the palace and the Inland Ocean.
Brighter than all the lava, a glowing orb topped the Lavadome, bathing a tall, squared-off rock Ayafeeia identified as the Imperial Rock, the residence of the Tyr and his family.
They ate a meal, food fetched by the youngest of the Firemaidens, immature females who, according to Ayafeeia, sometimes passed into the Firemaids.
Then they walked, walked until the light faded from the top of the dome, and they still hadn’t crossed to the other side of the Lavadome. Ayafeeia brought her to a depression in the ground with several caves in its walls and floor.
“Odd that a sink should be called a ‘hill,’ but this place is called Halfhollow Hill.”
The soil here was looser than elsewhere in the Lavadome. Wistala slid as she descended and had to brace herself with her tail.
“This is sacred ground to the Firemaids, Wistala. Here the First Score set tails-a-ring and promised to act for the defense of others’ hatchlings.”
