Page 253 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“I caught up to them in the end, so that I might turn over hatchlings to my buyer, if not eggs. Though that Dragonblade got overzealous in the fight and in attempting to pinion a hatchling killed it. I poked a hole in the female who’d lied to me, spilling her fire bladder and rendering her harmless and gasping, and smashed in her lying mouth with my gauntlet for defying me, turning her teeth into bloody ruin. She died cursing me through a broken jaw. Does this talk sicken you, Tala?”

Wistala, wondering how King Fangbreaker’s body would dance as flame consumed it, took a deep breath. “There are good dragons and bad dragons, just as there are good and bad dwarves, Dread King.”

“But so I was titled and given a place at the council table, for we managed to hunt one hatchling down and the Drakossozh killed another with his dogs.”

“Bad luck, for the Dragonblade to kill two while trying for capture.”

“You’re a dragon yourself. You must know that it is not the easiest of tasks. But I feel for you, at the unfortunate loss of others of your kind. Would that more dragons grew up to live useful lives!”

Would that more dwarves did the same, Wistala thought.

“How can I ease your mind about Lobok?” Wistala said. “I can go to my tower and try to force a vision. Perhaps if you gave me some personal tokens—”

“No. I wouldn’t care to force a wrong reading from you. But hear! You could act as a courier between my throne room and Lobok’s camp. You can bring a message in a few hours over a distance that a rider would take a day to cover.”

“Nothing that would make me happier,” Wistala said. “Than to be able to set your mind at ease.”

So she’d gone to Lobok’s camp twice carrying messages from the mountain king, carrying reassurance that all was going according to plan—and made a side trip or two to the vicinity of the Green Dragon Inn to speak to Forstrel among his honeycombs.

“I wonder why he asks for word?” Lord Lobok asked. His hands kept coming together and then running up his arms and back down again as he paced and thought, as though the right was worried that the left had eloped with an elbow.

“I do not know all the messages King Fangbreaker, high may he remain, receives. I only do my duty,” Wistala said. “You have ample dwarves for a march through enemy territory.”

“Enemy?” Lobok asked. “Lord Hammar is a good friend, we’ve had much commerce with him. The dwarves just come to guard our prize on the way back.”

“I’ve heard he’s been calling himself King Hammar,” Wistala said, and flew off back to Fangbreaker with Lobok’s reply.

So as she hung in the darkness over Galahall, seeing the lights go on within and the carpets laid on the doorstep, she turned and made a careful approach to the nearby stream where the dwarves were camped at the base of the ridge she’d crossed so many years ago in the company of Stog.

She asked for a meeting with Lord Lobok, busy dressing for the court dinner celebrating another successful transaction, for the boy Rayg waited at Galahall to be sold to the dwarves. She was admitted with the expediency one would expect of a courier from King Fangbreaker, and found him buttoning a formal robe over a chain shirt. He wore a mask of red silk stretched under and over a decorative wooden frame, like a child’s kite.

“Lord Lobok, are you going yourself?” she asked, putting her head in his tent so as not to crowd him and the servant-dwarf helping his lord dress.

“Of course. It’s a welcoming dinner, and as leader and emissary I’m expected. You don’t—”

“The night feels wrong to me,” Wistala said. “Are your soldiers arrayed well?”

“We’re on the thane’s land,” Lord Lobok said, fingers fluttering against his chain shirt. “There’s nothing to fear here.”

“As long as the thane is true. I’ve had horrible dreams, but they must be wrong. They must be.”

Lobok left off dressing, turned his silk-masked face to her. “Why do you say your impressions must be wrong? You are King Fangbreaker’s, honors upon his name and so forth, famous Oracle.”

“Who could mistake such omens? The feather landed on your doorstep. The Fates have chosen you.”

Lobok and his servant exchanged a glance. “Of course.”

“Yes. I am overwrought, seeing those barbarian encampments around the thane’s hall. I’m imagining things.” She began to shake. “But beware, O lord; if anyone speaks of a blood relationship between Hammar and the child you are receiving tonight, blood will be shed. A dagger at your back.”>“I’d rather Hypatia come to the mountain,” King Fangbreaker said. “But if we can find this boy, we’ll decide then. An odd sort of vision, Tala.” He scratched at his beard. “Hmfp! If it brings happiness to my people, I am satisfied. Let every one of our trading houses know to make inquiries about this boy. Say he is being ransomed through us, that none may learn his value before we acquire him. When it comes time to bring him here, I imagine I must let Lobok handle it, as the duty seems to have fallen on his doorstep along with the feather—though he is the nervous type.”

“I will take no more of your time, Lord,” Wistala said.

“And keep that out of my court,” Fangbreaker said, fixing his eye about Yellowteeth, who lurked behind Wistala.

Oddly enough, the blighter smiled back at the king as he gave a nodding bow. Wistala might even have called the expression defiant.

Chapter 26

Wistala flapped in the night sky above Galahall, a cold fall wind from the northwest helping keep her aloft as she turned circles, falling in a glide and then rising with a few hard wing-beats, wondering what transpired within.

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