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Nilrasha held on with her tail as she negotiated a difficult overhang. “Better than flying in many ways—the constant strain of unusual angles brings a muscular warmth and a healthy fatigue that much faster.”
They circled the pillarlike mountain of stone in the long climb down. Not even a goat would call it a path, but it was a series of sii-holds.
“Do visitors come up in that same basket that brought the fish?” Wistala asked, watching a wary blight cling tightly to the knot-and-handle as the basket descended.
“If they’re invited, yes.”
“What if they’re not invited.”
“They find their own way up. And a much faster way down. So far, my luck has held. As you are about to see, sister.”
Nilrasha took her to a sort of dimple in an outcropping from the mountain, out of the wind and big enough for a mother dragon to use as an egg shelf.
“I used to use this to rest during my climbs,” Nilrasha said. “You’re breathing hard. Perhaps we can catch our wind among some more of my trophies.”
The shelf didn’t hold eggs, or captured banners and broken swords and helmets. The shallow rocky well held bones, some with bits of desiccated flesh still on. Skulls of at least two kinds of hominids, broken blades, pieces of rope and chain and broken dragonscale, even bits of demen back-carapace lay in a jumble. It smelled of rats, though how rats could live halfway up a mountainside Wistala had to wonder.
They smelled of sun-bleached death, a crisp dry odor like shed snakeskins. Wistala saw that the pieces had been arranged as though they were at a human dinner party, with shields and sagging packs serving as furniture. The display showed a grim sort of humor, skulls sat on shield-platters staring back at their own bodies and weapons were substituted for missing limbs. “Who are they? Were they, I mean.”
“They were assassins,” Nilrasha said. “There have been several attempts on the Tyr’s life. But many more on my own. Certain members of the Imperial Line think that if I were out of the way, RuGaard will mate again. What some dragons will do to become Queen. Also, there’s old Ibidio’s faction, who think I outright murdered poor Halaflora. I’ve saved a souvenir or two of each assassin.”
Wistala thought the collection a macabre one. Some of the Firemaids kept a trophy of a broken sword or shield or an old helm to commemorate a battle, but pieces of the enemies bodies?
At least there were no dragon heads. None that Queen Nilrasha wanted to put into the tableau, anyway.
“You spoke of exercise. Climbing down here and looking at these remnants are my exercise. The mental exercise is as important as the physical. I’m reminded that we have enemies who will stop at nothing. You would do well to keep that in mind as well, sister.”
As if reading her thoughts, the Queen continued: “I could have put dragon bones in this collection as well. We had a mad young renegade try to knock my mate out of the sky during the war with the demen. While I admit it’s a strange collection, I’ve no desire to outrage my fellow dragons. Just assassins on their way up. I like to think I’m doing a service. Perhaps some took the warning to heart, and turned back rather than climbing all the way to their deaths.”
She stared Wistala straight in the eyes. “You’ll need to keep your wits about you, Wistala, if you go into the Lavadome with a plot in your heart. Don’t do that. Be like water, or the wind. Just follow the path of least resistance to the bottom of it.”
“If I do learn anything, what do I do?”
The Queen righted a wind-toppled corpse with her tail and tamped it firmly into place. Wistala heard old bones break. “That depends on the names of the dragons involved. It may be too widespread to uncover. Too powerful to resist. Your only chance for survival may depend on you joining. Not as play, you understand—to really join it. I’ll try and understand. Save my mate if you can.”
“Yes, my Queen.”
“Now, on to more immediate concerns. There’s one other worry on my mind. An unnecessary war is about to start. Dairuss, once a province of Ghioz, has kicked out its Protector, a self-important dragon named SoRolatan. He spends all his time chasing dragonelles a third his age or eating. Fat lout. You’d think the jade-chasing would keep him trim. A few of the sly young wings lead him on, as he’s quite wealthy, though if you ask me, they’re better off without him. But the Dairussan king sent him home. He’s a fellow named Naf, older, one of our principal allies in the fight against Ghioz. He claims he won’t have any dragon back. There’s no provision for members of the Grand Alliance to leave, so you’ll need to smooth things over somehow before it comes to fire. Now, let’s finish this climb and hunt. I hear you’re quite the famous hunter, sister.”
A conspiracy to discover and a civil war to prevent. Here she thought being Queen meant licking new hatchlings and presiding over feasts.
Chapter 3
The sun hadn’t visited the Isle of Ice in scores of days, it seemed.
Of course winter always came early this far north. Once it became truly cold, the inhabitants could look forward to long stretches of clear daylight, for the sun only set for a few hours over the winter solstice.
AuRon the Gray had settled on this island to be cut off from the world and its mad hatreds. Man against dragon, dragon against dwarf, elf against man and dragon… it was a long and bloody list of enmities. Just in his brief lifetime of a few decades he’d seen new ones form, hot and fast, and others burn down into charred lumps like dry wood. But even so, as much as he enjoyed the quiet of this remote, hard-to-reach island, come the winter storms the feeling of being cut off intensified, for you could hardly see your own tail when the snow was blowing.
“My love,” Natasatch said to AuRon. She was his mate and mother to his four now-fledged offspring and sometimes she chided and nudged him as though he still had bits of egg clinging to his skin. “You must attend the ceremony.”
AuRon didn’t like the pomp and pageantry of his Copper brother’s cursed Dragon Empire. He’d seen it born in bloodshed, even if he grudgingly granted its success in allowing dragons to live openly above ground in safety. Trumpets and banners and dragon roars, with those blowing and roaring the loudest the ones farthest from the fighting.
“It wouldn’t hurt for you to mix a bit more with the Lavadome dragons. Even your brother sent us a bullock with his compliments. A fine fat beast it was and that messenger had to carry it all the way out of the south. This old enmity deserves to be laid to rest. The Tyr’s put it behind him.”
Had he? AuRon wondered. Or was it some elaborate treachery?
Of course, if his brother really wanted to do away with him, he had the power. He could put forty or more fighting dragons in the air over the Isle of Ice if he wanted. He might escape two, five even, but forty?
