Page 106 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

“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?”

“Nothing so mundane. We simply can’t be bothered to die. Too much undone in this world. Your wizard and men like him, they drop off and leave their work hardly begun.”

“He was hardly my wizard. I regretted his life, not his death.”

She spun the mask around to the frowning face. “Be careful, AuRon son of AuRel. Make an enemy of us and you make an enemy forever.”

“Was he some titleor of yours, Great Queen?”

“No. The circle of men is folly. We are not so stupid as to not recognize the value of elves, dwarves—even blighters. We are happy to stamp out such nonsense. When some of his riders sought refuge here after his fall we took them in, but as soon as they started proselytizing that Man’s First Destiny nonsense, we had their heads struck off. Little loss.

“We find our greatest challenge is in finding worthy intelligences to be our titleors. Oh, plenty want the title, but few the labor that goes with it. Then there are those who are diligent but require constant instruction or who are too hidebound by the teachings of their temples to do what is necessary to be effective.”

“How do you measure ‘effective’?”

“There is only one sure measure, dragon. Coin and goods of value. I learned long ago that men will try to substitute almost anything for coin: fair words, professions of love, promises of loyalty, sad stories, flattery, tears—yes, they will offer up all that, rivers of it, raging torrents, and all of it gathered together weighs as much as mist on a cattle-scale. It is the one who brings a chest of coin who has the ability to rise.”

“You must have much coin.”

“I’m not a dragon who piles it in a hoard. Let me give you some advice, AuRon. Put your gold to work. It is like seed. Pour it into the right ground and it will sprout tenfold. No, I do not have the great treasure-chambers that some believe reside under this mountain. What comes in goes out again, in the form of small presents to those who apply. A man comes to me and says he wishes to establish himself as a horse-breeder, I give him coin to buy his broodmares and land. True, there are those I never see again. But there are others who return in a few years with what I gave them raised tenfold. I offer a title. Then I see them again when they would have their son set up as a captain of one of my cavalry squadrons, or a daughter who could be most advantageously married with a larger dowry. Over his lifetime of labor, I see my gold grown a hundred times or more.”

“I’m afraid dragons aren’t much for such diligent labor, Great Queen.”

“But they can talk to other dragons. We do have some dragons you might help us with,” she mused. “We believe your face would be unknown to them.”

“Who would that be?”

“Do you know the Lower World well? I wish for an emissary to the Lavadome.”

“Lavadome? I’ve heard the word. A dwarven interpretation of a blighter myth, I thought.”

“Oh, it’s real enough. We don’t know much of the Lower World, as you call it, but then we don’t determine it would profit Ghioz to go to the effort to control it. In our calculation, there’s little enough reward down there. Tunnels filled with nothing but dark.”

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