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“Yes, his story is altogether remarkable,” Imfamnia said. “It’s like an elf made it up for a song. To rise from lower than dust and become Tyr.”
“If he has truly reformed,” NiVom said.
“What’s that?” AuRon asked.
Imfamnia tossed her snout to make light of the issue. “Oh, you can never be certain with rumors. Of course no one can say for sure, except perhaps his mate—but his first mate, my sister, a sickly little thing, she died under conditions that were… unique.
“My sister never ate but tiny little bird pecks,” Imfamnia continued, tearing off a great haunch and swallowing it as though showing a contrast. AuRon watched it pass down, like an accelerated quick trip by groundhog through a snake. “She had no appetite her whole life. But then she dies, all alone at dinner, supposedly choked to death on a mouthful of meat. Something’s not right about that.
“And then he mates an old comrade from the Firemaids—after she’s taken her oath, mind—while the poor thing’s still moist in her grave.”
Perhaps he hadn’t reformed so much after all, AuRon thought.
AuRon wondered at NiVom’s quiet, tired manner. He looked bloodless, like a dragon back from a winter thin on meals and heavy on fighting, but bore no scars. Perhaps the feasting at Ghioz wasn’t as good as his mate claimed.
Their hosts gave them a comfortable old storage cave in the mountain. The heavy doors made AuRon think it had once held valuables; it still smelled faintly of gold and there were some silver utensils that Imfamnia told them to swallow if they chose.
“So much good metal to eat in the Grand Alliance,” Natasatch said. “I don’t miss the ore from the island one bit. It would just sit in your gold gizzard, taking forever to digest.”
“You think we’ve made a change for the better?” AuRon asked.
“Time will tell. I think the offspring have.”
“I’m going for a walk,” AuRon said. “Enjoy the silver.”
He followed his nose and ears, watched the noisy construction of the dragon-face. His brother had faults, but he didn’t believe one to be vanity. He wondered if the image was meant to flatter his brother and disperse suspicions about Imfamnia’s and NiVom’s loyalty.
Frantic hammering and calls in the Ghioz dialect still echoed from behind the canvas on the brass dragon snout and lanterns cast shadowplay of swinging limbs and distorted bodies bent over work-surfaced. NiVom and Imfamnia had their labor gangs working through the night, it seemed. He saw one group of workers, obviously off-duty, huddled in the shelter of the scaffolding like pigs in a sty. Speaking of which, the underbrush was thick with dumped buckets of hominid waste and discarded food. He heard rats and other vermin.
There were other camps here and there, with cooking fires and bakeries going even at this late hour. So many workers! They had enough men here to form a small city of them—he wondered how NiVom and Imfamnia were able to afford such a monument to vanity.
His hosts should take more care with their charges; there’d be disease if they weren’t careful. He observed red welts on the backs and arms of some of the workers as they lay on their stomachs, the injuries dabbed with some kind of chalky paste.
Whip-rash.
Poor dumb brutes, treated like horses and mules who couldn’t be reasoned into performing their duties. Men could reason, after a fashion, though the ability varied from individual to individual. Too much intelligence made them mad, like Wrimere. Naf, perhaps not as bright as Wrimere, was a far more sensible reasoner. Maybe men needed the relief of frequent laughter to purge their brains the way indigestibles purged the bowels. Naf, always ready to bray in that mulish fashion of his or cackle like a sitting bird, had his mind right.
Some of the workers twitched in their sleep as he passed, startled awake and avoided his eye, as though guilty for being at rest. He smelled quick fear in their sweat.
He wanted out of the tumult and reek. It was a fine night, Ghioz apparently had milder winters than the Bissonian Scarpes he’d lived in to the east. Perhaps he could find a spot on the ridge behind the works to watch the stars and think.
He found his way up to the ridge, making use of a dusty road that must lead to a source of lumber or a quarry or smelter or some other camp supporting the alterations to the mountainside, for it was recently and heavily rutted.
As he stepped out upon it he saw a shadow shift on an overhanging tree ahead. The tree, a lopsided hardwood, had been trimmed back to keep the road clear, but a few branches at the top still overhung the road. Near the top, a mass that he took to be an eagle’s nest reached out a limb and moved through the canopy to a thicker mass of branches.
AuRon couldn’t identify the creature, with a reach like a vulture’s wing and smaller back legs, a paunchy body, and a neckless head like an overturned bucket. As it moved it looked at him, two red eyes glowed briefly from the foliage. Then it jumped, breaking through twigs with a crackling sound, and flapped off on leathery wings.
Cautiously, he climbed the tree it had rested on and extended his head to its perch. Claw marks. He tested the air with his tongue, a sharp smell like the worst mammalian urine, that of a cat, perhaps, lingered in the air about its perch.
He suppressed a shudder. Whatever it was, it was the eeriest-looking creature he’d ever seen. He’d have to ask Naf; he’d spent more time in this part of the world.
But the road ran up toward clean sky. Wanting clean air and quiet to think, he followed it.
AuRon smelled blighter on the wind, and investigated, following the scents. He left the road and wandered downhill, crossed a stream and lost the scent, and only picked up on a new ridgeline where the wind had free play. Now he could hear the sound of hammer on metal.
He sensed a dragon above. Imfamnia passed overhead, and loosed a friendly call. She executed a queer landing, dropping her wings, rolling over, and crashing into the branches. Startled birds and mammals fled the collapsing canopy.
She rolled over to land on her feet as she dropped beside them.
