Page 186 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

“Still—”

“There’s more where it came from. I robbed for these, I can rob for more. AuRon, if you delay much longer I’ll ram the whole thing down your throat, and your noisy digestion can make of it whatever fireworks it will.”

“Thank you, my friend.”

“Well?” Naf said, selecting a leather pouch.

“I will take four coins, one for each of my hatchlings, tokens of many wasted horizons, and four more for my mate. No more, or you will have another fight in these woods.”

It turned out he left the camp more weighted down than he could hope for. Word passed through the rebels that their dragon needed coin, and even the youngest wood-carrier and water-scoop searched their boot-pocket for a Queen’s silver. They filled four saddlebags heavy with coin and arranged them front and back of his wings with hitches of running knot.

Naf encircled his neck with his strong arms, and many in the camp passed their hands over his flanks, though their greasy touch made his tail twitch and he kept an eye rolling across them looking for drawn blade.

They sang a song in his honor as he left, the camp dividing it into three parts: the women and immature boys singing high, Naf and some of the deeper voices low, and the rest rather out of tune in the middle.

If he were to be honest, his digestion made far sweeter music.

But he kept circling back to get his bearings and watch the woods as he gained altitude, thinking of Hieba as a little girl, crying out her loneliness against his flank.

He wondered if he hadn’t left something behind. Like a piece of his conscience.

Chapter 18

The day after the assembly, Takea was teaching Wistala a singsong about the different hills in the Lavadome.

Gryathus hill of Wyrr and wall

By river ring and deman hall

The next around, as river winds

The grazing fields of NuGrakat’s lines

A member of the Drakwatch, a young drake, ignored the calls and jokes from the drakka as he delivered a message.

“I am here to escort the new dragonelle to Imperial Rock. The Queen requests her presence.”

Wistala was happy to abandon her lesson in topography. It seemed there wasn’t a dragonlength of space in the Lavadome that wasn’t claimed by one line or another.

She followed the drake to the Imperial Rock. Takea trailed along, using the excuse that she could point out landmarks, but she spent much of it trying to provoke a fight with the Drakwatch messenger. Wistala had learned enough about the Firemaids to know that a victory in a wrestling match with a member of the Drakwatch was a sure way to get praised by the maidmother.

The drake ignored her taunts and tail-tags, chattering the whole way of a new muster of the older members of the Drakwatch to guard tunnel exits. “Firemaid work,” he complained.

He led her to the “Imperial Gardens.” They lost Takea near the exit for the Aerial Host’s dining halls. Wistala marveled at the growth here, high under the diffused light from the dome-tip above. Strange purple and blue-green blossoms and artfully shaped ferns grew in the muted light of the sun circle above.

They found Queen Nilrasha at a series of splashes, half waterfall, half fountain. A statue of a hatchling spat a thin stream of water, artfully arranged so it bounced off a pair of carved mushroom-caps. Statues of lithe human and elvish girls, posed elegantly, filled jugs that Wistala’s sense told her fed back into the fountain.

“Wistala, I would speak to you,” Nilrasha said.

She looked down at the floor of the Lavadome. Wistala followed her gaze. Hills and pens and goats—was it milkdrinker’s hill? Hominid servants—or rather thralls, as they styled slaves in the Lavadome.

“The Tyr and I ask you for the benefit of your experience. The Lavadome shall send a group of Firemaids to offer assistance to the Hypatians and build an alliance. Do you believe they will accept?”

“Hypatia is . . .” Wistala searched for the right words. “Hypatia is not like the Lavadome. It is not a matter of someone making a decision. There’s no all-powerful Tyr to win over and settle matters.”

Nilrasha gave a humorous prrum and resettled her wings. “When you understand the Lavadome better, you will not say such a thing.”

Wistala, having figured out the flow of the water, watched the lava run down the other side of the crystal. Beautiful colors.

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