Page 212 of Dragon Outcast (Age of Fire 3)

“Oh. I heard about this bat messenger service of yours. Let’s talk again when this is over. I’ve an idea that we could expand it.”

“They don’t do it for love of us, sir, but the taste of our blood.”

“Well, there are a few fat dragons here that could do with a little bleeding. Get back to your mate, Upholder, and keep me informed. Try to find out more about this enemy.”

Chapter 26

He rested for a few hours in a spare nook Imfamnia offered him. With the numbers of the Imperial line dropping, and the increased space closing off much of the top level of the Imperial Resort, there were rooms and cushions to spare.

She even offered him a bowlful of gold. “For family only,” she said, as though the gold could tell the difference. “Have as much as you like; my mate eats only silver these days.”

He ate but a few coins, not wanting to have to fly with a chest’s worth of heavy metals in his belly.

After checking with SiDrakkon one last time, to see if any additional orders or circumstances arose—“I’ll try to send as many as thirty dragons,” Tyr SiDrakkon promised—he departed with AuBalagrave and the other two dragons.

They were good fliers, lean and wide-winged, and he held them back the whole way. He wondered how many dragons would really be sent. Using NiVom’s old formula, perhaps six or seven might make it all the way to the Uphold.

They approached the plateau at night. The Copper, his hearts pounding, crossed the mountain line and looked first to the Upholder’s palace temple.

It looked intact.

“Have two dragons fly high. Just in case,” he called to AuBalagrave using mind-speech. “You follow.”

The words must not have come through clearly, because AuBalagrave took another dragon and gained altitude. Well, mind-speech wasn’t a perfect form of communication among dragons who hadn’t been long together.

If anything, the plateau was darker than usual at night. The hearth fires sometimes glowing out of windows didn’t give the city its usual ghostly glow. But there would be time to survey the damage in daylight.

The palace temple had been scorched about the roof, and one of the stone globes had been knocked off the roofing. Another was missing entirely, and judging from the cracks in the long set of stairs it had been sent bouncing down to the fields and woods beneath.

“Halaflora! Nilrasha!” he called as he landed, ready to tear into any dragon but his mate or guardian Firemaid.

Fourfang waved from behind a stone.

“All sleep be—”

“We’re in the lower chambers, as you asked, my love,” Halaflora called, surprisingly loudly for her small frame.

He looked at his escort. “Tell AuBalagrave that I’d like one dragon to stay aloft, keeping watch. The others may rest, and I’ll send food if there’s any to be had. Don’t go down into the valley to scavenge; the humans there are frightened enough.”

The Copper descended to the mouth of the Lower World. Two members of the Drakwatch stood guard at the tunnel, now partly blocked with piled stone and timbers. Nilrasha slept atop the blockage, but she winked at him with an eye and fluttered a griff.

“Asu-ra, that kern king, was up here,” Halaflora said. “He cried. He wanted to know why the dragons had loosed such fury on them.”

“You told him it wasn’t our doing, I hope.”

“I said there are good and evil dragons, just like there are good and evil weather gods. I think he understood.”

“That’s a better reply than I could have produced, with half the valley floor aflame.”

“They were after gold. They didn’t even steal any women or children, which I thought warriors always did.”

“What happened here?”

“They knocked down some statues and set fire to a few curtains. I believe they wanted to show their contempt for us more than to try to kill us. They never so much as ventured inside, though the upper level is entirely open, as you know.”

“Don’t forget the mess on the steps,” Nilrasha croaked.

“What happened on the steps?”

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