Page 227 of Dragon Avenger (Age of Fire 2)

“Wistala am I, dragonelle of whatever winds may bear me. Are there many dragons in the coldwinds?”

“I drive away!” UthBeeyan said, which Wistala found easy to believe, as she was downwind of him. He let out sort of a croaking roar. “You hear my song, we mate now.”

“We shall do no such thing,” Wistala said.

He jumped at her and she backed up, putting her tail point in between his nose and her, ready to crack him across the soft spot between his eyes, but he settled onto her kill and took a mouthful. “You huntress worthy of spring wind. I take dragonshare. Find another.”

Gladly, Wistala thought.

The weather turned cold, bitterly so, almost overnight, freezing the swampy areas and turning the soil on the hill hummocks hard. Snow blew some nights, but could only cling where the wind couldn’t reach it, and Wistala returned to the rocky coastline. During the day everything turned a hard, uniform gray: water, shoreline, clouds, the sun at best a whitish circle behind mists.

She happened across a big boat, of all things, hugging the coast as it crept along south, a dwarf at the tiller and four men pulling the oars. All wore hides so thick, they looked like bears, save for the dwarf, who might be mistaken for one of the sausagelike barkers on the rocks, for his booted feet barely protruded from beneath his coat, looking like flippers.

More hides, entire bundles of them, were lined up in the center and bottom of the boat, along with strings of fox tails and what looked like wolf skins.

Swooping low, she saw the dwarf turn the boat for shore and lift a device that looked like an immense crossbow, wider of bow than she was high. She dropped into the water some distance away, upwind so her words might carry and any bolts fired would have to fight a stiff breeze. The cold, after its first shock, wasn’t so bad.

“May I ask you a question?” she called across the water in Parl.

The dwarf startled, and the rowers bent over their oars and bowed and chanted and rattled strings of shells.

The dwarf lifted a speaking trumpet. “Question away, though I warn you, I’ve no coin.”

“Do you know these lands, good dwarf?” she called.

“Know them? I love them, and will tell you why: Fools don’t survive up here.”

“I seek my kind. Are there dragons to be found?”

“None you wish to find,” the dwarf said. “Wait! There are some decent dragons, though it is a long journey.”

“Where?”

“East, over the Icespine and then across the plains a full two hundred vesk of journey. The Sadda-Vale. I’ve not been there in years, but once a goodly white dragon named Scabia ruled there with her kin and accepted some trade.”

“What is the Icespine?”

“You may know them in the south as the Red Mountains. Cross them and from your heights you may just see the peaks beyond. The Sadda-Vale is pleasant, though rainy, but beware the trolls roaming outside it. They were thick there when last I visited.”

“Thank you, good dwarf.”

“Any news from the south?”

“Wars with barbarians, in Hypat’s northern thanedoms,” Wistala said.

“Ah. One’s been building for a while. Luckily the Ya-yuit don’t go in for such nonsense. Good day, dragon!” The dwarf thickened, and Wistala realized he had bowed. She dipped her head and swam for shore.

She went east with a serious storm, which forced her down to seek shelter in trees. It raged for two days, leaving her hungry and the land thick with snow. She followed a game trail down into a valley and found nothing to eat, save a dead bear frozen solid under a tree, which even her foua could achieve little against without burning the meat to uselessness. She picked at the bits of icy flesh, but it left her with sore teeth.

She flew east in the clear icy day, and came to a river. The local men—was there anywhere men did not go?—had chipped a hole in the ice and were smoking fish in a shack built next to the hole. They ran for a little cluster of huts standing in the shelter of a hill at the bank as she passed over, and so great was her hunger that she raided the smokehouse and gorged—even eating the poor iron fishhooks stored there. She broke the film of ice on the fishing hole and drank, then slept right on the ice, wrapped around the small fire keeping the smoke going, feeling as stuffed and pampered as though she were back in Rainfall’s steam-filled health room.

She awoke to chanting and the smell of burning fat.

Downwind on the iced-over river the locals were burning a small fire, with a pot hung over it, and a tent pole stood next to it. When she raised her head, three contraptions went whizzing across the ice, pulled by dogs.

Wistala blinked the crusts of ice and snow out of her eyes and followed the smell, cold muscles only slowly warming to their work. There was no sign of a trap; indeed, if one could imagine a less likely place for a trap than a frozen river one had to put one’s mind to it—but she still felt something was wrong. She probed the ice carefully before taking each step.

Back at the houses, the villagers were lined up along the river’s edge, and she heard faint chanting.

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