Page 101 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

The Tyr glared at his mate’s brother. “Fair enough,” he said in a steady voice. “Best to speak softly, with a fearsome host behind the words. You pick the dragons. As to the Drakwatch, I want Nivom leading the three siisa. He’s impressed me. I understand he’s quite driven the demen away from the caves bordering the far shores.”>A scream and a clatter. The Copper’s attention went to the far end of the bow, near where the thralls entered and exited the kitchen.

“Drop him, Simevolant,” the Tyr said across the sandpit.

The golden drake ceased dragging a thrall up out of the trench. “But his platter was empty and I’m hungry.”

“An empty platter’s not his fault. A thrall’s a thrall, but you can’t eat them for no reason at all. Let him go, now.”

Simevolant released the man. The thrall was so frightened he scuttled for the exit without picking up his platter. The other food bearers continued circling. He noticed they quickened their step at Simevolant’s end, sometimes bumping into one another.

“That’s done it, worm,” Tighlia said, looking pointedly at Simevolant. “Their tiny brains can’t hold more than one thought, and now they’re more concerned with being eaten than keeping step.”

“Let’s have some drumming,” the Tyr said. “Where are those clever blighters with the kettledrums?”

NoSohoth extended a black-tipped wing toward a grove, and a trio of blighters came forward, two bearing pairs of vast, leather-topped drums and a third with a hollow polished log. They went to work on their instruments, filling the gardens with rhythmic pounding. The Copper liked the sound so much he couldn’t help swaying and stamping his feet.

“Mind the step, now, fellows; no one’s been eaten,” the Tyr said to the thralls passing under his nose. “That’s more like it. Steady on and I’ll order a barrel of sweet ferments up for you after the meal.”

SiDrakkon, sitting to his sister’s right, hardly ate at all, and worked at the edge of an embedded shield with his claws, prying up the rim.

“SiDrakkon looks unhappy,” the Copper said to Rethothanna.

“He’s always in a temper. Pay him no mind. Stuck between the ambitions of his sister and the directions of her mate. He’s the Tyr’s eyes and voice in the Lavadome, and he’s not an energetic dragon. Doesn’t like parties, either. Speaking of which, how is your first Imperial banquet?”

The Copper looked around. “It’s the most splendid thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It occurs to me that I’ll have to hear your lifesong at some point. You’re the first outsider to seek the Lavadome in…oh, a generation’s time. Of course, we don’t advertise our presence. Even with such allies as we have on the surface, we have to keep our home secret.”

The Copper would have liked to hear more from her, for he was curious about the Upper World and its dangers, but the drummers had exhausted themselves, and NoSohoth waved her over.

“My turn. May the Air Spirit carry my voice well,” she said. She stepped forward, and all eyes turned in their direction as NoSohoth announced: “Cry hear and hear, for we’ll have poetry now. A new work on the late feuds of the founders of the Lavadome by Imperial memoriam. Hear Rethothanna.”

Simevolant scanned the crowd, found the Copper. “I say, cousin, what are you doing there, lurking in the blade-bushes? Come and find your place at the banquet.”

The Copper stepped forward, and Simevolant made room for him, nudging a drakka aside.

“Hear me, Spirits; hear me, Ages; hear me, dragons great and small, for I tell a tale of the founding of a new Silverhigh….”

Simevolant ignored her preamble and snatched a plump sausage linked into the shape of a curly-tailed dog off a platter. “Now, how are things in the lower levels? I so seldom get down your way. Is the strength of the Drakwatch still keeping the Imperial Resort from falling?”

The drakka around Simevolant fluttered their eyelids and griff at his joke.

“Little has changed since your last visit,” the Copper said. He’d rather listen to Rethothanna than chatter and joke.

“I’ve traveled with the Drakwatch. Muddy, tiring business. Wars and body pieces. Have you made it out of the training caverns yet?”

“No,” the Copper said.

“You won’t lack for learning. But nothing teaches like experience. Even up here, you’d be amazed at what a young drake can experience.” He tapped the drakka next to him on the nose.

The Copper tried to close an ear to his yammering, but Simevolant kept asking questions. How many thralls were being brought across the river, the size of the herds driven underground from the surface provinces, improvements to dwelling space in the Skotl Hill…

The Copper caught only bits of Rethothanna’s performance. It dealt with the Tyr’s vision for a new Silverhigh here in this deep fastness, and told how he rose to preeminence after a series of duels and feuds between Skotl, Anklene, and Wyrr lines that divided the dragons of the Lavadome, uniting them through a rigid hierarchy where even the lowest dragons at least commanded numerous thralls. Thus, “Each dragon a lord, each dragonelle a queen.”

The Copper wondered what it was like to be one of even the lesser lords around the banquet, so important that your deeds were sung by others. They must be proud dragons indeed. And what dragonelle would not be pleased to be a queen?

But there were queens and there were Queens. Rethothanna dropped in a few lines of praise for Tighlia’s beauty, “a flower of the Skotl line, plucked and placed as high as any Wyrr for all to admire.”

Simevolant brought up a fragrant quantity of gas at that, loudly enough that Rethothanna had to pause until he was finished.

---