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“ALL TALES END IN TRAGEDY. FOLLOW THE HERO LONG ENOUGH,
YOU’LL STEP ACROSS HIS CORPSE.”
—Ballad of the Dragon Kings (Elvish origin)
Chapter 16
The news from AuSurath left the celebration in front of the Green Dragon Inn stunned.
Wistala had been enjoying the homecoming to Mossbell and the hills and fields where she’d spent her hatchling years. The old rooflines were as familiar and comforting to her as her mother’s fringe. She’d grown up at the local estate under an elf named Rainfall. He was now dead and growing in a patch of forest overlooking his beloved river valley and the four-span bridge he’d so long kept in repair.
Elves didn’t die so much as transform after death. She’d read some philosophy that even dragons returned to the earth eventually, where their bodies provided nutrients for plants. The elves just removed a few steps from that chain of life and transformed directly.
She was beginning to see why RuGaard insisted on walking all the way to Nilrasha’s refuge. The whole way, entire populations were turning out to see the dragons pass. To these northerners, dragons were something they saw only overhead, at a distance, or a reason for painful levies of cattle and grain. Few had seen dragons in their grandeur up close. Every little village they passed through turned into a parade, continued for a long while until the hardiest boy and girl following turned back for home.
Yes, strange and remarkable as a fox running the top rail of a fence. Strange and remarkable until you knew about the stolen chickens and the pursuing hounds. There could be no quiet little murders with a whole thane’s population leaning on their shovels and berry-baskets, watching a dozen dragons file down the road.
The Green Dragon put out food for them and quickly slaughtered some pigs to be eaten in Wistala’s memory of the day they’d all fought off a barbarian raid together.
“It appears the Empire had a parasite growing inside it,” DharSii said. “I’m afraid that unlike a tapeworm, this one can grow large enough to kill the host and then continue on its own.”
“But who or what is it?” AuRon asked.
“NiVom and Imfamnia are behind it all,” RuGaard said. “I’m certain of that.”
“Who’s left?” Wistala asked. “Seems to me many of the aboveground dragons are dead. The fighting ones, that is. I hope the Protectors are safe, for my brothers’ sakes. I don’t see what NiVom and Imfamnia will gain by killing so many of their own kind.”
“They’re mad. It must be,” AuSurath said.
“I can believe one dragon going mad,” AuRon said to his son. “Two? Madnesses that feed off each other?”
“Some curse of the Red Queen. They never should have taken over her palace,” the Copper said.
“It may be the Lavadome itself,” DharSii said. “It’s an engine of great energy. I’ve never been able to determine what it’s gathering all that energy for. All the Tyrs grew a little—funny—toward the end. Perhaps the Lavadome was trying to take over their minds.”
“Are you saying a vast mineral formation is intelligent?” AuRon asked. His griff rattled.
“Remember our hatching, AuRon?” the Copper asked.
“Less and less every year,” AuRon said. “What about you?”
“The same. Remember the fight with our brother, the red?”
“He almost had me. Then you jumped on him and I put my egg-horn into his belly. It was over in a griff-tchk. I’m suggesting we repeat that. I’ll keep the Empire busy on the surface. You go at them from under.”
“Maybe this time we’ll both end up on top of the egg shelf,” the Copper said.
“You can have it. All I want is my mate.”
“I could say the same thing, brother.”
“Do you know a safe way into the Lower World?”
“My mate’s hall, for a start.”
“Tell her to abandon her post at once. I believe this is a war of eradication. Whatever power is directing those trolls, it wants to kill every rat in the barn but leave the hayloft intact.”
“All the more reason for me to hurry,” AuRon said, eyes wide and alarmed.
