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It did a dragon good to get the blood up now and again. No wonder that Wistala was fertile. Perhaps she’d coddled Aethleethia too much over the years. Well, that was fish heads down the kitchen chute.
In any case, if that silly messenger was a sample of the leadership style of this new empire, there’s no wonder that it’s already falling apart. Perhaps more Exiles would show up. Perhaps even brooding females. There were caves all over the eastern slopes facing the lake—you had to watch out for trolls, but they could be hunted out of the mountains.
She wondered how she’d manage to pass the word south that there was room for a few more in the Vesshall. Of course, they had to be the right sort. If this NiVom and Imfamnia were clever, they might send a few trusty infiltrators. She would have to question closely and watch closer still.
It had been so long since anyone challenged her for dominance of the Sadda-Vale that she hardly knew how to take it—whether to be insulted that all her efforts here could just be cast aside because of a political feud or complimented that they thought her a potential rival rather than a half-forgotten curiosity.
True, the Sadda-Vale would never support the number of dragons that the Empire to the south could. There were only so many fish even in so long and deep a lake, sheep reproduced only so fast, and it wouldn’t do to starve the blighters on millet and dried dragon-waste ground into chicken-feed. Worse, the only metals were the poor ores that DharSii blasted out of the scraggy rocks. The Sadda-Vale was meant to be a pleasant resort for a few months in summer, really, not a breeding ground for dragons.
Scabia, in her younger days, had made a habit of going for either a flight or a swim every morning before eating. The combination of hunger and exercise clarified her thoughts. As she aged, the flights and swims became now-and-again endeavors, though sometimes she had bursts of energy and restarted the habit for a season. Lately, if she was feeling particularly well, she’d rouse herself enough to float around in one of the warmer corners of the spring-fed lake.
This morning, some weeks after Wistala had departed and with DharSii off cracking rock and gathering ore for the week, she roused herself early—even before the hatchlings were clamoring for food—and eased herself down to the lake. Her joints didn’t care for the sudden activity so soon after waking and she heard a scale or two clatter to the stone floor as she left her sleeping perch. The sun rose early in the northern summer and the sky was already a brilliant daylight blue.
She plunged into the warm swirls and drank steam through her nostrils as she paddled about. She even snapped at a fish who was hungrily exploring the lake-bottom mud she’d churned up.
Exercise done, she shivered as she climbed back to the decorated entrance with its old dwarfish designs.
Once she was back in the shadows of the entrance hall, Larb appeared, fluttering just above her head.
“You’ve been exercising, am I right, yer ladyship? You’re looking fit and trim, that’s a fact. Me, I think I’m coming down with something.” He let loose a trio of tiny but significant coughs. “A dab of dragon-blood is just what I need to get my head hanging the right way down.”
“You are a ghastly-looking little thing, Larb. Were you accidentally boiled in your youth or does all your kind look that way?”
“It’s jes’ me benighted upbringing, too long underground with no fresh insects or cattle. Oh, the hunger I knew then! The hunger I know now!”
Disgusting. Presumptuous. Yet there was something disarming about a creature that she might swallow whole and send fluttering down her gullet asking to draw blood for a meal.
“What sort of diseases are you carrying in that snaggle-toothed mouth of yours, I wonder?” she asked. Everyone knew bats transmitted deadly illnesses, though opinions on just how they did it—curses, spellcraft, a poison that worked on the balance of spiritual elements in a dragon, some sort of infinitesimal parasite that leaped from bat to dragon—varied depending on the expert consulted.
“Diseases. Oh, no no no, yer ladyship. Look, do I fly in circles. Am I off balance? Do I pant, or stare? It’s only sleeping in the cold that does me any harm.”
“Oh, I suppose so. Take it from the base of my ear. Don’t bother licking first to numb it—I find that more unpleasant than the nip.”
Scabia tried not to twitch at the nip. Self-control is everything. Control your self, control your world.
Still, she twitched.
Larb suckled and lapped, then loosed a burp so minuscule she found it cute. Her twisted and bent old fringe rippled. A prrum forced its way up her throat in response. What was happening to her of late? She was turning into a simpering dragonelle. Cute! Her mind must be going. That was it. Perhaps she’d go noisily mad. That would be a lot more fun for all concerned than waiting for the gray curtain of senility to fall. She wondered if she’d just fly off into the north, raving.
“You will pop like a tick if you keep that up,” she said.
The bat glanced up. “Ohh, yer ladyship. If only you knew what a service—” His ears twitched around wildly, then pointed straight ahead, following his nose up. “Mmmph? Oook, yer ladyship. I hears awful wings—beware! Beware!”
Three ugly collections of feather and beak fell out of the shadows above, wings spreading as taloned claws slashed down. Had Larb not seen them, too, she would have thought her mind truly had gone—these fliers were nightmares described and manifested into living flesh. Thick-skinned and covered in a mix of feathers and sharp quills with a massive black beak hanging down almost to their pockmarked chests, they were more like a mix of creatures than any avian she’d ever seen.
Larb shot off into the darkness with a high-pitched squeak.
Being nipped was the luckiest thing to happen to her since the Exiles arrived. The pain had set her on edge, just enough so that her griff descended at Larb’s shout.
Talons raked off her griff. She felt agony across her back as one of the creatures ripped its way down her spine, leaving a trail of torn-loose scale and blood. It clamped just below her ribs and began to dig.
She smothered it with her wing and flipped onto her back, rolling and crushing. The creature gave one desperate heave as its hollow bones snapped.
The third, wheeling above while the other two drew her attention, saw its chance. It dropped like a missile and hit her in midthroat. She felt a sense of strong pressure but no pain, and when it rose again, dripping blood and scale from its claws, she realized her throat was ripped open.
But she was a tough old dragon-dame. Even her neck had thickened and grown fatty with her years, and though he’d opened her windpipe enough so that she could hear air rasping and feel blood running down her throat, he hadn’t managed to get to any of the great blood vessels, else her neck-hearts would already be seizing up.
Not knowing the extent of the damage to her neck, she didn’t dare use her firebladder. While it probably wouldn’t ignite in her throat, as the agent for turning fuoa into fire was generated by a gland in her jaw, she might choke on the viscous liquid.
