Dragon Rule (33 page)

SAA: The rear legs of a dragon. The three rear true-toes are able to grip, but the fighting spur is little more than decoration.

 

SII: The front legs of a dragon. The claws are shorter and the fighting spur on the rear leg is closer to the other digits and is opposable. The digits are more elegantly formed for manipulation.

 

TORF: A small gob from the firebladder, used to provide a few moments of illumination.

 

VESK: A Hypatian mark of distance based on the amount of distance light infantry can cover in an hour: about three-and-a-half miles.

AETHLEETHIA—Daughter of Scabia

 

AUSURATH—AuRon and Natasatch’s red offspring

 

AYAFEEIA—Leader of the Firemaids, daughter of Ibidio

 

BAMELPHISTRAN—Assistant to the Aerial Host, later leader

 

CUREMOM—Ankelene with idea for selling dragon parts

 

FEHAZATHANT—Former Tyr, now dead

 

IBIDIO—Elderly female dragon, mate to AgGriffopse, Tyr FeHazathant’s only male offspring

 

ISTACH—Striped daughter of AuRon and Natasatch

 

HALAFLORA—Tyr RuGaard’s first mate, now dead

 

NASTIRATH—A dragon of the Sadda-Vale. A very silly dragon indeed.

 

NATASATCH—AuRon’s mate

 

VARATHEELA—AuRon’s daughter

 

NOFAROUK—A dragon of the Tyr’s court

 

NOFHYRITICUS—Gray Protector of Hypatia

 

OUISTRELA—Cantankerous old female on the Isle of Ice

 

REGALIA—Green twin

 

SCABIA—Ruler of the Sadda-Vale

 

SIDRAKKON—Former Tyr, successor to Tyr FeHazathant, now dead

 

SIHAZATHANT—Red twin

 

SIMEVOLANT—Former Tyr, successor to Tyr SiDrakkon, now dead

 

SOROLATAN—Former Protector of Dairuss

 

YEFKOA—A swift-flying Firemaid

E. E. Knight
graduated from Northern Illinois University with a double major in history and political science, then made his way through a number of jobs that had nothing to do with history or political science. He resides in Chicago. For more information on the author and his worlds, E. E. Knight invites you to visit his Web site at
vampjac.com
.

W
istala, newly mated dragon-dame, might have been living an idle, romantic dream, save that she was eyesore from searching mountainside crevices and frostbitten about the nostrils.

She was out hunting trolls with her secret mate DharSii in the chill air among the peaks of the Sadda-Vale. They’d been up before the sun.

There were things she’d rather be doing with her mate, of course. Swimming in the steaming pools at the north end of the Sadda-Vale, for a start, rather than fighting winds that threatened to freeze her blood. The remote fastness of the Sadda-Vale, resting like a twisted skeleton on the vast plains east of the Red Mountains, had a pleasant microclimate in the snake-track vale between two short mountain chains, a gift of the mild volcanic activity in the area—along with an occasional earthquake.

Ancient ruins filled with highly stylized artwork, much of it featuring dragons, their prey, and cowering hominids, still waited to be explored. Their were secrets to be discovered in abandoned old tunnels and sub-chambers, icons to be discerned in high corners, ancient relics of dragon history.

DharSii, a powerful yet thoughtful dragon whose scale color reminded her of the tigers she’d seen in jungles to the south, had some interesting theories about the old structures of the Sadda-Vale and she wanted to hear them again, this time while looking at the art and iconography that had inspired such ideas. Wistala had developed her taste for pedantry while doing what her fellow librarians called “outwork.” She’d seen hints here and there of an ancient golden age of dragons and DharSii shared her interest in that time.

When conversation became too dull among their fellow dragons of the Sadda-Vale, they liked to escape mentally to other times and places. Those were her favorite hours, as they broke down the last few bones of dinner and swallowed after-feast ores laboriously cracked out of the slate-fields. Sometimes the conversations went on until the next morning and they revived themselves by taking a swim in the steamy waters of the pools beneath Vesshall.

Instead, this particular morning they flew parallel to the western spine of mountains sheltering the vale. The mountains, like old, worn-down teeth, were full of crags, holes, and pockets. The peaks and ridges caught the wind and sang mournful tunes to unheeding clouds and fog. Above them, bitter winds blew hard and cold enough to freeze ones eyes open in the winter. On the other side of the clouds, she knew, the stars at night were brilliantly clear with spectacular fireworks of shimmering, flame-colored lights dancing on the horizon like maddened rainbows—if you could brave the chill. But in their shelter, the heated waters of the Sadda-Vale created pools of warmth and the omnipresent clouds and fogs.

DhaSii dipped lower, seeing something on the slope.

Just a shadow. He led her higher again, so their hunt might be concealed by the clouds.

Her brother AuRon should be with them. He was a skilled stalker. His scaleless skin, though vulnerable in battle and badly scarred because of it, shifted from color to color according to where he stood even to the point of imitating shadows and striations in the rock face. But as soon as winter had broken above the Sadda-Vale and flight over the plains of the Ironriders became possible without fighting blizzards, he’d gone aloft to travel south to visit his mate. Natasatch, mother of his hatchlings now serving a new Tyr of the Dragon Empire, acted as “protector” for one of the Empire’s provinces. Which really meant humans fed, housed, and offered coin to AuRon’s mate.

AuRon, who’d incautiously drunk too much of Scabia’s brandy-wine, once slurred something about “political necessities” separating him from his mate.

Her brother AuRon had to be cautious on these visits and use every camouflage of wit and skin. An exile and in danger of death ever moment he was with his mate, AuRon’s ability to become invisible at will, and many friends in the Protectorate of Dairuss, where he knew the king and queen from old, allowed him brief visits.

But Wistala feared that every time she saw him depart, it would be the last.

She returned her wandering mind to the hunt.

The air this morning had a hopeful, alive smell. Fresh winds blew from the south, bringing the smell of the coming spring.

She noticed a herd of goats, tight together rather than grazing, the dominant males alert and watchful, all looking in the same direction and sniffing the breeze. Had they clustered at the sight of DharSii and Wistala? It seemed unlikely, goats rarely searched the clouds unless a shadow passed over them and there were thick, steely clouds today. Hardly a day went by without mists and drizzle as warm, wet, rising air met the cooler streams above.

Good for the grasses the herbivores loved, but the patches of fog and wandering walls of drizzle also gave concealment for prowling trolls. You had to get lucky to see one in the open, they could squeeze themselves into crevices that seemed hardly thicker than a tail-tip at the sound of a dragon’s leathery wings.

No, the goats were alarmed by something else. Had they caught the scent of a troll?

Her other brother, the copper-colored RuGaard, formerly Tyr of the Dragon Empire and Worlds Upper and Lower, wouldn’t be of much use on a hunt. Thin and listless, hardly eating, drinking, or caring for his scale, he lived a lightless existence at Scabia’s hall, hearing without really listening to her old tales of the great dragon civilization of Silverhigh from ages ago. The only time he showed any sort of animation these days was when AuRon brought news of his own mate, Nilrasha, a virtual prisoner in a tower of rock thanks to the stumps she had instead of wings and a guard of watchful
griffaran
.

Or when Scabia told some old tale of desperate vengeance. Then he grew attentive and his
griff
twitched as he stared at Scabia through lidded eyes.

RuGaard frightened her at such times. She could almost feel the violence in his thoughts.

Thank the spirits she had the comforting presence of DharSii beside her at such times. Caught between the quiet, reserved AuRon, creepy in his ability to disappear into the scenery and his own thoughts, and RuGaard’s gloomy brooding, she needed a companion to provide mental, and a bit of exhilarating physical, escape.

There were flowers in green meadows the colder altitudes just above the ground that could support trees. Spring had come at last.

Spring. Her hatchlings would be above ground this spring.

Wait, not her hatchlings. They counted Aethleethia as their mother, even if they could barely comprehend a mind-picture from the lazy ninny.

The offering of her hatchlings had been Scabia’s price for giving the exiles from the Dragon Empire refuge at Vesshall in the Sadda-Vale. Her daughter Aethleethia was unable to have eggs of her own and both were eager for hatchlings in their hall. Almost as soon as she laid them—the other dragons thought their father was Aethleethia’s mate NaStirath, a foolish dragon of proud lineage, had mated with Wistala to produce the eggs—she’d lost her clutch.

She, DharSii, and NaStirath had conspired to hide the truth that DharSii was the true sire. Though one of the males did bear stripes as dark as DharSii’s, the suspicious Scabia had been placated when Wistala pointed out that her brother AuRon was also a striped dragon.

No matter who they counted as mother, the three males and two females would be ravenous, and if they were to have anything besides the bony fish or carapace-creatures and snails of the lake to eat, she and DharSii would have to find and kill the trolls that had been raiding sheep, goats, and caribou from the mountain slopes and patches of forest in the valleys.

DharSii and Wistala had discovered the remains of troll-eaten game on one of their flights to get some privacy from the other dragons of the Sadda-Vale. A troll could easily eat as much as a dragon, and according to DharSii if the food supply was truly superlative, it would reproduce.

Scabia’s blighter servants had been frantically breeding cattle, sheep, and goats and releasing them into pasture ever since the Wistala and her exiled companions arrived. There was ample game for a whole family of trolls, though the solitary trolls didn’t form anything that might be recognized as family.

So now they were on the hunt for what might be called the most dangerous vermin in the world.

Wistala liked a hunt. She liked it doubly well with a dragon she loved and admired. She’d long since learned she could admire something without loving it, or love someone without admiring them, the combination of the two went to her head like wine. DharSii—“Quick-Claw” in the dragon-vernacular—when on the hunt spoke and acted quickly and efficiently, with none of the stupid roaring and stomping a typical male dragon, NaStirath, say, indulged in upon spotting the prey.

“Troll tracks,” DharSii said, waggling his wings.

She followed him down to a felled tree on a steep slope. She had to dig her claws into the earth deep to keep from sliding.

A long, muddy skid-mark stood on the lower side of the fallen tree, the mosses and mushrooms devouring it were smashed and smeared where the troll had placed a foot, and it had slipped on the soggy mud beneath, sliding a short way on the slope. They could see broken branches on another tree a short distance downslope where it had arrested it’s slide.