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“What can you tell me of my sister? How did she come to this place? When did you last see her?”
“That’s some tale, dragon,” the innkeeper said.
“She went off years ago, before the Dragon-rider Wars,” Lada said.
“For all we know she’s returned,” Hazeleye said. “Perhaps to those librarians in Thallia.”
“Not without calling back here,” the innkeeper said.
“Her old cave is unoccupied, save for a few kestrels and such,” Lada said. “Perhaps she left some sign or instructions there we wouldn’t deciper, or even recognize.”
“She went in search of her brother. I know that,” the innkeeper said.
“I am her brother,” AuRon said. “I’m AuRon. Auron, as was. Known briefly as NooShoahk on the Isle of Ice.”
“So it is true then,” the innkeeper said.
“Strange fates have befallen all your family,” Hazeleye said.
AuRon wondered about the use of the word “all.” She’d been partly responsible for the destruction of much of his mother and sister, in an ancient pact between mercenary egg-hunters and wicked dwarves.
But she’d freed him from bondage and a probable death on the Isle of Ice.
Wrimere Wyrmmaster, the Wizard of the Isle of Ice, once told him that elves wove truth and lie into invisible strings through which they manipulated the other races. AuRon didn’t believe him—elves spread out across the world spending all their time manipulating others would have difficulty knowing who lied about what to whom. But Hazeleye’s motives for anything, from freeing him to asking him to find the Isle of Ice and kill the wizard, were her own.
“Why are you waiting for Wistala?” AuRon asked.
“You may not believe this, but it was to pass news of you. It’s come to my ears what happened on the Isle of Ice, that you’ve mated and so on.”
“How did you hear that?”
“Shadowcatch. He’s become quite the sea dragon these past two years.”
AuRon wasn’t sure he wanted events on the Isle of Ice generally known. He switched over to Drakine.
“You wanted to give her news of me?”
“Yes,” Hazeleye said. “At one time or another I’ve thought each of you dead. I’m happy to be proven wrong. I’d like to know more about both of you. I’m at work on my last book, and I doubt I shall write the last word before this form dies.”
“So you’re still interested in dragons.”
“Few can claim to know more about them than I.”
AuRon decided to ask what was on his mind. “What happened to your legs?”
“I’ve lost most of the use of them. I can stand, just. I need assistance to walk.”
“I am sorry for that,” AuRon said. “An accident?”
“No.” She drew deep on her pipe. “I was tortured. Those fools in Ghioz thought you could break an elf’s spirit by breaking her body. That Queen of theirs. You’d think one of her kind would know better.”
The Copper remembered his friends there. “Naf allowed such a thing?”
“It was Naf’s fault I was brought before the Queen. I was living quietly in the mountains and she had need of an expert on dragons. I was fooled once. Never again.”
“Naf—Naf didn’t . . .”
“Of course not. He helped me escape. He’s an outlaw now. If he still lives.”
