Page 104 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

The blighters led him down toward the scaffold-shrouded hillside. There was an arched door at the end of the path, up a short rocky zigzag of stairs through a sort of wild garden, but it was too small for a dragon to squeeze through, though AuRon thought he might just make it if supplied with a little more butter to grease the passage.

Instead the blighters led him off down a gravel road and he smelled horses. A small field beneath the ear and cheekbone on the great face held bright green grass and a few horses, either the ones who’d pulled the Queen’s chariot or cousins of theirs.

The blighters led him inside a sort of stone barn. He found the Red Queen in the stables, examining one of her horses’ feet with a dwarf wider than he was tall, clad in a heavy leather apron and belt sagging under the weight of tools. The dwarf’s sideburns were thick with glowing moss, brighter than any species AuRon had yet seen, and the rest of it showed no evidence of gold dust or other decor. The dwarf must have cared only about proper illumination for his work.

The Red Queen wore a sort of thick red canvas cloak that reminded AuRon of those little cups at the end of handles that hominids used to snuff candles. She simply wore a light scarf about her face this time. AuRon found himself frozen in his tracks by a pair of startling blue eyes, heavily blackened about the rims with stenciling, which only drew attention to their size and clarity.

She said something quietly to the dwarf, who nodded.

The Red Queen looked at him and the corners of her eyes crinkled. He guessed she smiled. “It never hurts to pay attention to details.”

“At your service, Great Queen,” AuRon said, remembering DharSii’s phrasing.

She took him farther into the mountain. The passages were wide, high, and airy—AuRon recognized dwarf workmanship when he saw it, though there was none of the impressive decor of the Chartered Company.

“Details, AuRon, details. Of course there are always more than can be seen to. The trouble is, we can’t be easily in six places at once.”

She led him to a sort of domed chamber at the bottom of a divided staircase with a wall-fountain bubbling between the balustrades and more stairs descending back into the mountain from the chamber. Light came in, soft and diffuse, from twin slits in narrowing shafts, which AuRon suspected were nostrils. “Won’t you excuse me for a moment? You may wish to admire the fountain, or refresh yourself at it.”

AuRon contented himself with looking at the stonecraft. The back of the fountain was a mosaic of precisely measured square shapes, tipped sideways to be diamonds. They were arranged in an intricate design, rather thicker at the bottom and narrowing at the top. All he could think was that it was some highly stylized depiction of a mountain.

“Can you believe the blighters made that? It’s a relic of Old Uldam. Yes, even the blighters once claimed this mountain as their own. But they didn’t keep it long enough to make many exterior alterations, or we might have fangs to remove from the mountain-face.”

She’d changed her wardrobe into a simple long dress, as spare as her previous outfit had been elaborate. Three silver brooches, elongated triangles, held it about her. He’d been right. Her figure was spare, but it just drew attention to her head. A translucent mask of swirling crystal cut to resemble—oh, he couldn’t say—smoothed ice hid her face now. A light silk wrap of black with a hint of glittering gold covered her hair and neck.

She carried a lighter version of her previous mask. This one was ivory colored and had the appearance of stiffened, intricately sewn lace, with the same smile on one side and frown on the other.

“Red outdoors, black indoors, as simple as that.”

AuRon regretted losing the magic of those brilliant eyes and wondered why the game to hide her features? Of course, if no one ever had a good look at you, they wouldn’t know if you were aging or not, sick or not, or if perhaps you’d been replaced by another. He’d been told in his visit to the East that some monarchs had three or four identical wagon-chambers, to make assassination more difficult or so that none of their underlings might know whether their actual ruler or some underling was on his way.

“You believe in simplicity, Great Queen?”

“Life for us is complex. The calculations we commit before making a move sometimes take days or weeks, so we must keep the rest of our life as spare as possible. But we still must make an appearance.

“We are glad you could see that fountain, AuRon. We often pause by it and remind ourselves of the rises and falls of nations before Ghioz. Civilization building is long, weary work. I’ve raised a city of polished marble where once there were mud-and-straw huts.”

“Are you a sorcerer who can turn air into stone?”

“Not that kind of sorcerer. Anklamere’s way was a cheat. But we do know the secret of creation. The creation of anything is an act of will and mind.”

She led him down the stairs and to another gallery in the mountain-face, much better lit than the one above. Her footfalls on the stairs were so light he wondered if he imagined them. This one he guessed was the statue’s mouth. He couldn’t see much, because of scaffolding and canvas in the way, but without the working equipment he guessed it would be a commanding view.

“Those trees down there, obviously they exist in the physical world. But isn’t our concept of those trees flexible? The architecture of the imagination, as that dwarf put it. It’s called the Queen’s Wood, so the trees are ours. We can imagine the trees as sheltering game birds, or being cut down and made into scaffolding for another statue. There is enormous power in audacity. Your little ‘Isle of Ice’—as we believe it’s called on the Hypatian maps. We could just as easily name it Aurontos and appoint you our governor. The world entire belongs to us in our imagination. Life is slowly filling in the details.”

AuRon wondered if she’d already sold the island to a would-be titleor.

“There are those who would dispute my claim,” AuRon said. “And yours, Great Queen.”

Apparently, it never hurt to imitate DharSii’s manner. She tipped her head to him in acknowledgment of the compliment.

“Oh, we can outwait them. We can afford to be patient. If no other solution presents itself, we simply wait a generation or two. How soon they forget.”

“Dragons live a long time,” AuRon said.

“Not even those trees will outlast us, dragon. The Red Queen is eternal.”

“You pass the title down to your daughter along with your beliefs?”

---