Page 157 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“I haven’t thought of mating.”

“Few drakes do, and then they lose their heads to the first flash of green that crosses their path after they crack their wings.”

“About that. I…I was injured as a hatchling. I may never be able to fly.”

He showed her the scar, a little more visible now that his growing wings were rising beneath his skin.

“So you’re a little bitten and bled. I get sick of drakes so full of themselves they do nothing but swell and preen.”

“Then never having a mating flight doesn’t bother you?”

“Well—oh, Spirits take it. I figured out life isn’t a song years ago, Rugaard. No, it wouldn’t matter. We wouldn’t be the first dragons forced to mate under stone rather than above the clouds. But what do you think of me?”

“You’re just the sort of drakka I think any drake would want.”

“Any drake?”

“Yes. Especially a rather beat-up one.”

She touched her neck to his. He felt an electric thrill run up his spine, and something stirred under his skin along his back. “Then I really am a lucky drakka, Rugaard.”

The trading drake interrupted the conversation with an opinion, detailed and long-winded, about the advantage of selling him the oxen at the end of the trip, and the Copper tapped the side of the wicker chest housing the bats with a sii-claw where the drake couldn’t see.

Nilrasha fluttered an eyelid at him flirtatiously.

Chapter 20

The Copper spent his last years of drakehood in diligent service to FeLissarath and his mate. They were both courtly, well-mannered dragons when humans were about, and quite in-formal when they weren’t. The pair had been unable to have a clutch of their own, so they looked on the kern kings of the high Anaean plateau almost as their own progeny.>“This is a happy chance,” the Copper said.

“No chance to it at all. I bribed NoSohoth with every silver piece in the Tyr’s victory bequest.”

The Copper wondered at that. Why would she throw away the beginnings of a hoard? From what he had learned, Anaea was a quiet Uphold with little fighting chance at combat honors. “You know the Anaean Trail?”

“I served my time at its mouth.”

“Good enough for me. Let’s be off. I want to be at the river by dark.”

Several good trails led westward. The western quarters of the Lavadome were rougher, with growth only in patches of soil trapped between the rocks. Rather scraggly-looking goats roamed here under blighter herdsmen. Fourfang went forward with a switch to clear the way of both the animals and the lesser blighters.

They rested at the riverbank and waited their turn at a flatboat, and the Copper worked up the nerve to ask a question of Nilrasha:

“Why so eager to get to Anaea?”

“I get bored with duty in the dome. All anyone talks about are the banquets atop the Imperial Resort, and it’s like having a feast described when you’re starving. That or who’s on top of which hill, six little Tyrs under one big one. They say the trail to Anaea is the most magnificent of all the lower roads.”

“They say? I thought you knew the route.”

“Oh, of course. There’s the Long Fall, then the Lake of Echoes, and then Tooth Cavern—”

“All of which are listed on several maps. I’ve looked at them too.”

“Don’t send me away! I have been on the trail. I was second in the endurance march in the tests to pass into the Firemaidens.” She swallowed. “I just haven’t been the whole length. But it’s easier after the Tooth Cavern; there are no major underroads off the trail. I’ve been that far.”

The Copper chuckled. “Oh, I wouldn’t send you away, not for half of the Tyr’s gold.” In fairness, though, no one was making the offer.

“Why’s that?” she asked, glancing at him from lowered eyes.

“You’re lucky. NeStirrath always said he’d choose the lucky drake over the toughest or the most skilled. I imagine the rule applies to drakka as well.”

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