AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I like honesty,” Wistala said. “They would have killed us quietly, if they could. Now they’ll have to be noisy about it. Questions might be asked. Why we, after the massacre at the Ghioz feast, suddenly oppose NiVom. Odd, though. We’re both now set against something we love. You with your mate, me with poor old Hypatia.”
“Poor old Hypatia is corrupt, thanks to the dragons,” AuRon said.
“We can’t fight them here.”
“Obviously. We’re only two.”
“Then back to the Sadda-Vale? It’s advantageous ground. Those fogs would work to our advantage.”
“Even if we could get Scabia and the rest in the air, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“Our brother is up to something. While I slept, I wore my dragonhelm. He’s in a deep plot—I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a little like being sure the sun is moving. When is our brother not up to something?”
“I have a sense that’s he’s in difficulty and there are dragons involved. A tall tower on a jagged peninsula overlooking water.”
“Dragons and a tall tower, eh? He’s in Juutfod.”
“Do you know it?”
“A little. It’s the last remnant of our family’s old enemy, the Circle of Man and the wizard who needed hatchlings so bad he hired the Dragonblade and the Wheel of Fire to hunt for them.”
“I thought that story was long since ended. You took care of the wizard, I avenged our family name upon the dwarfs, and our brother killed the Dragonblade.”
“The story continues as long as we live,” AuRon said.
Wistala stretched her wings. “I can manage more flying now, I think. Let’s continue the tale.”
Chapter 10
Scabia the White had more than the usual Sadda-Vale burdens on her mind. The Outside World, which she’d done her best to avoid and ignore, had intruded on her precious hall.
She welcomed her troubles in a way. In the long years of just her daughter and her insipid but well-formed mate eating a long march of similar meals, over conversation as unvarying as the drips through the hole in the great rotunda of Vesshall, they might as well have been three statues frozen in time and space with a group of blighters polishing them and keeping vermin from moving into cracks and crevices.>AuRon snorted. His skin had been penetrated several times in that fight. But legends tend to treat facts as seeds—what eventually grows is what counts.
“We could make them think some dragons are fighting on your side.”
“It might slow them down. Give the princedoms time to organize.”
“They’ll need that. It takes forever to get them to agree on anything, from what I’m told by my brother-in-law.”
They bade farewell that night, lest they eat the poor widow out of house and home by noon the next day. AuRon promised to give Hieba news and Nissa promised to use what remained of her funds to visit Dairuss, if the Dragon Empire ever ceased its rampage.
They hurried south along the coast and soon found signs of war. Wrecked and burned ships could be seen in the surf or pulled up on the shore. They also found a dead, half-eaten whale rolling in the surf, with unmistakable arrow-shaped dragon-bites taken out of its fatty skin.
“The Aerial Host seeks to refill their firebladders with whale-fat,” AuRon said, as they bobbed in the warm salt water beside the body.
AuRon and Wistala marked a pair of ridden dragons wheeling high together and AuRon and Wistala landed.
“My guess is that’s a patrol over their camp.”
“Do you suppose they’re there? Sleeping?”
“It’s midday, but anything’s possible,” AuRon said.
“Keep hidden. I’ll go in fast and draw off the guards. If there aren’t any other dragons, I’ll attack. If there are, I’ll fly north as fast as I can. Stay down if I’m pursued and meet me later at Nissa’s palace.”
They took water and walked forward toward the camp, resting their wings for the coming exertion and keeping hidden under tall palms. The dragons on guard continued to wheel above.
