Dragon Strike
AuRon son of AuRel, the scaleless dragon who lived upon the Isle of Ice, watched his sons blink in the brassy sun of the dazzling northern spring.
In the winter, AuRon had learned, the island saw constant snow, coming in waves from low iron clouds. Summers were alternately foggy and rainy, save for a brief, enchanted dry spell after midsummer. But the turning seasons, spring and fall, slow getting started but always lingering thanks to the warm ocean currents, made up for the rest.
As though in apology, spring had brought wildflowers to the thin patches of soil clinging between granite spurs where the wind died. Their yellow and blue and white heads looked up, as bright as sun, sea, and sky. Incredibly, insects already danced and buzzed between the blooms, keeping low, out of the wind, where the sky heated black earth and turned melt into mire.
AuRon looked at his sons, pride making the armored fans covering his neck hearts twitch. In a few months they would breathe their first fire and become drakes. Ausurath, a little heavier than his brother, had big back haunches on his red-scaled body and was a fine jumper, forever pouncing on his brother. Aumoahk had an odd, overlarge slit of a right nostril that showed dark against his golden scale, a reminder of a bloody brawl with his brother.
On their first trip into the Upper World he taught them about wind and shadow and the course of the sun. The second time his mate, Natasatch, accompanied them with the two sisters. Both glittered as green as their mother -- of their five eggs AuRon and Natasatch had four hatchlings; one, sadly, never emitted so much as a flutter of a heartbeat and became unwholesome. Natasatch solemnly burned it as the others began to tap.
The excitement of the trips aboveground cut down on the fighting between the males. Traditionally males fought to the death upon emerging from the eggs, driven by mad instinct, but the two adults together managed to keep throats and limbs intact.
Once they could be made to understand that the survival of all might depend on an extra set of ears and nostrils, they settled into almost playful enmity. Underground the two males wrestled and bit and yeeked little battle roars at each other, stealing each other's fish and mutton through diversions worthy of their army-smashing great-grandsire, scattering their sisters to corners of the cave, then collapsing into sleep with tiny teeth locked on each other's limbs. More than once the family gathered for a meal with the smell of the bleeding brothers in the air; then it was time for wound licking and lectures.
Exhausting business.
Aboveground, in the overwhelming space of the Upper World, AuRon was relieved to see that they shrank against each other, tail to tail and staring from heads frozen in fear.
The awe soon faded. The male hatchlings, with the energy and curiosity of their age, lost their fear of the open sky and distant horizions. But for AuRon the trouble had only begun. Their sire had to do a good deal of wrangling to keep them close as he tried to teach them of game trails, grazing, water, and spoor. But their attention was difficult to hold with big snowfoot hares bounding away at their approach, all bouncing hindquarters and flapping ears.
Gently grabbing one scrambling set of shoulder blades with his teeth-covered lips, then prodding the other back in line with his stiff, regrown tail, AuRon envied his mate. The females kept tight to their mother's belly and listened attentively. When they acted, they cooperated. His sons dragon-dashed after every bee and showed all the sense of a field mouse.
On the third trip, AuRon decided it was time for them to learn a real lesson.
This time he went up first to check Zan the tradesdwarf's work before loosing the hatchlings on the world. The Chartered Company line-trader, a grizzled old northerner who might be mistaken for a hairy stump, was on his way north for a season's trapping and skinning. He had chuckled when AuRon described what he wanted to fashion, and he'd done a typically thorough dwarf's job in exchange for a bag full of dragonscales sloughed off Natasatch over the winter.
Wistala's introduction to the Lavadome left her thrilled yet mazed, speechless despite words of admiration at its beauties fighting to get out.
After the tall cavern of the river ring, griffaran were wheeling in and out of shafts of light from cracks in the surface as cold waters carried their secrets beneath. They swam across, hearts pounding in the cold, the pain half exquisite. She climbed out of the water feeling more alive than she ever had before in her life.
Ayafeeia, three dragonelles, and three drakka accompanied her from the other end of the Star Tunnel and through a maze of twists, turns, and ancient chambers.
She thought she'd seen beauty enough to remember in the bright colors of the far-off griffaran.
Then they passed through another tunnel on the other side of the ring and entered the Lavadome.
After, she sensed that the others had been watching her to see her reaction.
The space seemed an impossibility, like a sea rolling above clouds rather than below, or a mountain hanging from the sky instead of growing from the earth. It was a separate world deep underground, vast beyond imagining and lit by the earth's hot blood. At first she thought it an optical illusion, a strange effect like some of the murals she'd seen in the Hypatian libraries, or a garden-pool she'd seen near a seaside palace that visually met the ocean with many dragonlengths of sand and coral between the palace and the Inland Ocean.
Brighter than all the lava, a glowing orb topped the Lavadome, bathing a tall, squared-off rock Ayafeeia identified as the Imperial Rock, the residence of the Tyr and his family.
They ate a meal, food fetched by the youngest of the Firemaidens, immature females who, according to Ayafeeia, sometimes passed into the Firemaids.
Then they walked, walked until the light faded from the top of the dome, and they still hadn't crossed to the other side of the Lavadome. Ayafeeia brought her to a depression in the ground with several caves in its walls and floor.
"Odd that a sink should be called a 'hill,' but this place is called Halfhollow Hill."
The soil here was looser than elsewhere in the Lavadome. Wistala slid as she descended and had to brace herself with her tail.
"This is sacred ground to the Firemaids, Wistala. Here the First Score set tails-a-ring and promised to act for the defense of others' hatchlings."
"Why, could the mothers not defend their own?"
"Oh, it was a terrible time, during the war. Wyrr against Anklene against Skotl. Groups of dragons were seeking out egg-caves and smashing eggs, killing hatchlings, trying to break the will of the opposing clan or swap murder for murder.
"The First Score were all unmated females, from all three clans. The civil war was at its height. They swore to forsake their clans, guard any eggs or hatchlings brought into their protection, to remain neutral in the war.
"Mated pairs of dragons came from all corners of the Lavadome bearing an egg or two in their mouths. Many eggs were abandoned to the egg-smashers. Some were lost on the way.
"When Skotl came looking for Wyrr eggs they fought them as one, together. When Wyrr came looking for Skotl hatchlings they fought them as one, together. Only three of the First Score knew the key to their arrangement, and of them each knew only a part, so that pain could not reveal all."
In her imagination, Wistala could see the dragons running for the caves with eggs in their mouths. Dragons fighting dragons above -- that she hardly needed imagination to picture. Her own memories supplied the details.
"Ever since, the Firemaids have lived to protect eggs not their own. We guard far-off holes and the hills of our siblings. We prowl unlit tunnels and stand guard in the burning sun at the Uphold entrances."
From her earliest dreams in the egg Wistala had thought herself a protector of her kind. Here stood a sister in spirit if not in body.
AuRon saw Natasatch and the hatchlings -- he really must stop calling them hatchlings, for they were drakes and drakka now -- and edged over toward them. They'd been in and out of the dragon-parade at the old circus pavilions all morning, meeting the Lavadome representatives of the Grand Alliance.
"This is how it should be," Aumoahk said, sighing in satisfaction at the display with a slight whistle through his slit nostril.
"Father. Tremendous news!" Ausurath said, his sii spread gravely as he bowed to his father, saa jumping all about and tail thumping as though they belonged to a different drake. "The Tyr had promised me a place in the Drakwatch. It's the surest path to the Aerial Host. NoSohoth himself told me so!"
"The Firemaidens do all the real work," Varatheela said. "Nilrasha says that if you want a lot of noise and dirt, summon the Drakwatch. If you want a victory, call in the Firemaids."
AuRon read excitement in all their faces. Their father, dull and gray and full of little but correction and reproach, how could he compare against such shining glory? Had he lost his hatchlings to the Copper? Of all that stood or slithered or flew through the two worlds, him?
You have doubts, Natasatch thought to him. Even on a day such as this.
It's my temper. The pageantry's nice enough, I suppose. It's this Grand Alliance business. Everyone is fresh off fighting for their lives and sharing out spoils. It'll look different after the first famine when the hominids start grumbling about how much dragons eat.
The Copper and the Hypatian high officials bowed to each other, speaking words long arranged. He'd heard most of it from Wistala, grand-sounding bargaining that put a lengthy dwarf-contract to shame.
"I know there's more behind, husband."
"Yes. Well, there's a lot of talk about the glories of Silverhigh in the Lavadome. I don't think brother RuGaard, as he styles himself, has new poems composed and read at his dinners to offer lessons about its folly."
The Copper and various representatives of the Hypatian races added tinder to the eternal flame. The dwarves threw in some sort of chemical that sparkled bright blue, the elves added wood, and men bits of oily charcoal. As for the dragons, Wistala and the Copper spat.
They'd asked him to add his own fire, representing the Isle of Ice, but he'd declined and his siblings hadn't pressed him. Besides, there was hardly space at the top of the Ziggurat for two dragons, let alone three.
I wonder if the lessons of Silverhigh must be relearned, or can they be learned from Natasatch thought to him.
The lives of many a hominid and dragon alike will be shaped by the answer.
You can't think your sister is part of it. She thinks all her elves and humans and so on are quite her equals. AuRon. So cautious. Except once -- on the day you won me.
And almost lost you just as quickly. It rather reinforced the lesson.
So what shall we do? Go back to the island and scrape out a living? After the hatchlings have seen all this, can they be content with play-hunting sheep? I'd have them know more of the world.
AuRon sniffed the air. Scents from across half a world rose from the crowd. Not just smoked meats and fresh-baked breads, but the decorative scents, floral or woodsy, metals, sweats, dried herbs being smoked or stewed, the dust of the poured stone the Hypatians used in so much of their construction, dogs, cats, horses, and other beasts, and above all, dragon.