Page 163 of Dragon Champion (Age of Fire 1)

“They’re not so bad once you get to know them,” she said.

“Whatever you do, don’t get up or touch one. It means you’d be his wife.”

“What?” Hieba said, shrinking back from a warrior springing shoulder-high on powerful legs and smiting invisible enemies.

“Those are suitors, not performers. Humans and blighters can mate, you know, but the offspring is sterile, like a mule.”

“What if I get up and touch you?”

“Tribal custom is rich and full of precedence, but I don’t think it covers that. Dragons figure into their traditions as icons of luck, or dread.”

She edged closer on her sitting-mat to AuRon, and smelled his basin of wine.

“Pfhew, what is that, AuRon?”

“Wine. Mixed with blood, or so it tastes. It’s part of the celebration. This is a ceremony about victory in battle.”

She dipped her hand in it and tasted the mixture from her palm. Unrush and the other blighters gasped and muttered to each other at the gesture.

“What did I do?”

“It’s not so much what you did. It’s what it meant. Only mated couples eat from the same dish.”

AuRon turned to Unrush. “This human is as a daughter to me; she shares my repast. Please show her the same respect you do to me.”

Unrush waved a hand, and the blighters quieted.

The celebration started in earnest. Children ran across the village center, waving red-feathered streamers attached to the end of sticks. The fireblades followed, going through the blighter military evolutions: storm front, whirl and fade, flank sweep, and crescent hunt. They beat their spears on their shields, stamped, and shouted in time to their drums. When the display was over, their wives joined them, and the muscular warriors picked up the females and bore them overhead, some using just one arm to the howls of delight from those too old or two young for such feats. Hieba enjoyed it immensely, rattling her beads and striking her copper bracelets together.

All at once, there was a disturbance at the gate. AuRon raised his head above the crowd and saw a cluster of blighters bearing torches. The ends burned with a bluish flame. The intruding blighters approached. One rode some kind of camel with hair trailing just above the ground. The rider waved the ones at the gate away, and they shrank from him like scolded children.

Unrush stood up and shouted something, and the revelers fell back before the stranger’s approach.>“Leave the chain alone,” AuRon said. “It’s a dwarsaw, not a halter.”

“I remembered it from long ago. It didn’t look dangerous.”

“Just take my neck.”

He dragon-dashed forward—wings flapping—and rose into the air.

“Heeeeeeee!” Hieba shrieked, in delight this time. AuRon felt her arms go around his neck, but didn’t dare look back; while taking off, he needed to stick his neck out stiffly forward.

He was above the old rooftop gardens of the city, rising for the inverted towers. He dipped one wing a trifle and banked out of the mountain-rending cavern and into the late afternoon sun. Only when he caught an updraft and shot to the cloudline did he risk looking back at Hieba.

She still had her legs tight about his neck; the blood vessels there throbbed under her grip. Her mouth was open, and her shoulder-length hair fluttered in the wind like a black banner. Her skin was flushed from bosom to face, and her white teeth shone against her coppery skin.

“Good?” AuRon asked.

“This is . . . this is . . . this is . . . rapturous!” she shouted.

“Enjoy.”

“Enjoy? Why do you ever land? If I were you, I’d find the tallest mountains in the world and never leave the clouds.”

“You’ve never lived through a storm in the heights. It gets cold. Dragons like it cool and dark, not ice-coated with the wind howling.”

“Fly! AuRon, let’s fly forever!”

“You see more world this way. But we’re just off to a village we could have walked to in two days when you were little. We’ll be there before the sun touches the horizon.”

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