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Ayafeeia kept Paskinix away from the cracks, and had water brought to him, using the bucket he wore.
They started up the chute. Wistala positioned herself so she climbed just behind the straining Takea, who was dragging Paskinix up like a fisherman with a catch on the line.
“Remember what I said about being your ambassador,” she murmured to Paskinix in his own tongue.
“I do,” the deman-king whispered back. “Ye shall always have my gratitude and friendship, and that of my people, if ye get me out from under yon little witch’s burns and claws.”
“Slipping!” Wistala screamed, giving Takea’s tail a good bash with her head. Paskinix leaped on her neck and wrapped those long, thin legs about her, and they dropped together. They bounced off the dragonelle behind them.
Wistala was careful to let her tail absorb most of the impact of the short drop. But there was no need to let everyone know that.
“Wing! Auuuuu!” she shrieked, loudly enough to deafen a dragon.
Paskinix scrabbled off in the direction of the trickle’s faint glow.
Two of the drakka slipped down to aid her, but she rolled and thrashed about so they looked at her rather than seeking Paskinix. By the time a dragonelle climbed down, he was gone.
“After him!” Takea cried.
“He’s slipped,” Ayafeeia said. “He’s worse than an eel.”
Takea glared at Wistala. “You helped him. You let him go.”
“None of that until we’re back in the Star Tunnel,” Ayafeeia said.
Wistala, with many a moan of pain that needed little acting of the kind she’d seen displayed in Ragwrist’s circus, made the climb once more.
At the end of the climb she had to pant long and hard before she could take in the wonder surrounding her.
She could see why it was called the Star Tunnel. It was a vast, vaguely triangular passage, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Little serrations of light, like long stars, dotted its peak.
Lower down, the stone was smoothed, cut in a fashion that reminded Wistala of a tree chipped and shaved by an ax, only in segments the size of a dinner platter. She wondered what sort of tool had the power to do that to stone. And what sort of arm had driven the tool.
“That’s the surface, a good hundred dragonlengths above,” Ayafeeia said. She stuck close to Wistala on the climb and offered kind words the whole way.
“Maybe it is for the best that Paskinix got away,” she said. “If we’d torn him to the bits he deserves, it would just make what’s left of the demen resentful. As it is, they’re beaten and they know it. The last thing they need is a martyred king to put a spark back into them. They’re an awful hominid, the worst in a way. Either groveling at your feet or clawing at your throat.”
“So what is intended for me?” Wistala asked.
“It’s my duty to take you to the Tyr. We lost two drakka fighting our way to you—we thought you were a captured Firemaid, and we’ve lost a few down these dark holes—and the Tyr will want a report.”
“His mate will hear how the stranger helped Paskinix escape,” Takea said.
“I can find a watch-perch for you,” Ayafeeia said, rounding her head on the youngster. “You can use that voice calling out to let us know you still breathe.”
Wistala learned she liked the smell of other dragons around her. It was comforting, almost like being against Mother’s belly again. She wanted to stretch, really stretch out in some dry cave and have a sleep.
“Don’t worry about the Tyr. He’s a good sort,” Ayafeeia said. “Not much to look at—I shouldn’t say it but I will. A little stupid-looking, with that bad eye of his, but sound instincts when he speaks that make you forget how he looks. Oh, and be sure to bow to his mate and compliment her. She’s the watchdog of his reign.”
Another of the dragonelles cocked her head at Ayafeeia. Ayafeeia snapped her griff, not so much a warning for a coming fight as an expression of confidence in speaking as she chose. “Now, let’s get back to our thralls and see about properly bracing that wing. I’ve set three claw-score broken wings and I know: you’ll get air under you again. It looks much worse than it really is. I’d take a break over a cut ligament anytime.”
Chapter 8
AuRon knew the way to the northern territories of Ghioz, as he’d crossed it once before. He’d last seen his former human ward, Hieba, and her mate, the laughing warrior Naf, there some three years ago, plus a season.
He made a brief visit to the dwarves of the Chartered Company. They fed him in one of their high halls, its opulence much reduced and obviously rebuilt after damage in dragon-attack during the wizard’s wars. The dwarves told stale stories and grumbled much about a Ghioz “embargo”—whatever that was—and gave him one piece of interesting news: they had acquired a messenger-dragon. Scarfang was a former fighter for the Wizard of the Isle of Ice who’d come to the dwarves’ doorstep to visit where a dragon-friend of his had fallen in the battle. Finding the residents willing to let enmity be carried off down the river, the dragon inquired if the dwarves had knowledge of his comrade’s fate. The dwarves had no good news—they’d finished the wounded dragon—but since all seemed amenable despite the effusion of blood on both sides, the dwarves hired him as a flying courier.
AuRon had never met Scarfang, but he congratulated the dwarves on their new line of business. Which just gave them an excuse to talk about the collapse of their trade routes east. The Ghioz had formed some kind of alliance with the Ironriders and only Ghioz caravans now traded between the rich kingdoms of the Great East and Hypatia and the Dry South.
