Page 24 of Dragon Champion (Age of Fire 1)

“I’d like to see those squatty dwarves climb down that,” Auron said, making a mental picture of the overhang below the precipice he had almost gone over. Wistala nodded. The thought of a few dwarves plummeting down the rocks warmed them.

Auron spread his aching limbs on the shelf. His body trembled with exhaustion. Wistala lay down beside him, hugging her scaleless belly to him.

He finally gave voice to his great hurt. “Is Mother—?”

“Don’t speak of her, or I’ll cry and cry, and I’m feeling bad enough as it is. Why did the assassins have to come to our cave?”

“The world grows harder for dragons every day,” Auron said, quoting something he overread Father thinking to Mother.

“I don’t think we’re strong enough yet, Auron,” Wistala said in her smallest voice. “Not to be out here alone.”

“We’re not alone. We have each other. We have Father.”

“Father? Scale and tail, what does he know about watching over hatchlings?”

Auron’s eyelids narrowed. Father was great beyond his sister’s singsong little imagination.

Auron stifled the impulse to lower the battle fans from his crest. “You shouldn’t—Oh, I don’t want to quarrel.”

“We must tell him about the dwarves,” Wistala said. “He’ll get angry and roast ’em. But where is he?”

“I can’t say. I think the gap he used was to the west; he would always go out early, so the sun would be shining on the land outside the cave but not in it.”

“Then we’ve climbed down in the wrong direction. We’ve come a little north, haven’t we?”

Auron’s sense of direction was sharper than his sister’s. “No, we’ve gone almost straight east. The stars will show us. We’ll see them all in this cold air. We’re finally going to see stars, Wistala.”

“I’d rather never see stars and sleep tonight between Jizara and M—”

“I know.” Auron said, gently clasping her snout shut with lip-covered teeth.

The stars were cold and remote, and the moon hung in the sky like the shining edge on a dwarf-ax. Auron had no heart for them, after using them as Father had taught him to find north. All he had to do was follow the nose of the Bowing Dragon. He paid homage to Susiron, the center star, the one thing in all of the Creation that never changed.

Once you’ve fixed on your star, you’ll know where you are for the rest of your life, he remembered Father saying in one of his oracular moods. But had he been talking of Susiron? There was still so much Father hadn’t taught him. Like what to say to a scared hatchling to comfort her, when his own gut was a cold shell of fear.

Or how to find and kill dwarves!

Something hot started in his chest, just where his long muscles could squeeze it.

They woke with sinews knotted: limbs, necks, and tails equally wound up. A light dusting of snow had come just before dawn.

“Brother!”

Auron startled. “What?”

Wistala touched the tip of her nose to his in relief. “You’re all white. I thought you had bled to death. I’ve never seen you anything but gray, or green when you sit on Mother.”

“I didn’t know I was doing it.”

Wistala looked back up at the shelf they had descended from yesterday. “Did Mother put a dream in your head?” Wistala asked.

“No.”

“Then she’s dead.”

“We don’t know that. Maybe she needs us nearby to tell us dreams.” Auron still felt tired, doubly so with this cold ache slowing his movements. Without Mother feeding him stories as he slept, he passed the night lightly, waking at creaks from the crooked pines.

“Look, Auron,” Wistala whispered. “In the rocks. Hungry?”

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