Page 174 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

“Oh, no, it’s not a tradition. Mated dragons usually fly to the surface in the south, to the tips at World’s End.”

“Then why here?”

She told him, briefly. A crippled dragon and a sickly mate, jokes the whole way there and back.

“I was closer to Halaflora than—we don’t speak of my other sister. She saw a quality in RuGaard. Have you ever heard the expression ‘deephearted’?”

“No.”

“It’s one of the virtues we try to instill in the Firemaids. It means a dragon who thinks about others more than himself. I see it in our Tyr. I see the same in you.”

“I’d be curious to know how you came to that conclusion.”

“For whom?”

“Me. I’m curious.”

“I saw how you looked to your sister at the assembly.”

He should be saying good-bye, but he should probably rest a few more moments before attempting an ascent. “Is concern for a sibling so strange here?”

“One sometimes wonders. But not just her—that young dragonelle next to her, and the others. No fear, no anger, just interest. I never thought you were deciding which part of the hide was the most vulnerable.”

“It may have been that smoke in the air. It leaves one relaxed and fog-headed.”

“That’s oliban. Very valuable. Don’t be surprised that NoSohoth uses so much of it. It’s a rare commodity. His family controls the trade.”

“Fascinating. But I must be off.”

“Are you with us, then?”

“I delivered the Red Queen’s message. She owes me a reward. I’m off to collect it.”

“Don’t eat any gold of hers. She’d poison it.”

AuRon took a breath. “I’m after blood now, not coin.”

With that he launched himself into howling confusion.

He felt like a leaf caught in an updraft. The wind slid him this way and that, threatening to send him crashing into the side of the tunnel.

Perhaps if he’d been a scaled dragon it would have been an easier flight, since the wind roaring up the shaft would not have pushed him so easily. But then again, his weight allowed him to ride the current, follow it as it swirled through gours and sword-edged scars.

He took painful bashes to each wingtip as the current sent him careening toward the blue patch of night sky above.

Out of desperation, he misaligned his wings, sending him into a spin. Though dizzying, it kept him to the center of the shaft.

And if he crashed into a rock, he’d be spared the moment of horror before the impact.

As the patch of lonely sky breaking the dark grew, the shaft widened, and he found himself having to flap his wings hard to keep rising.

An ascent at this angle is almost impossible for a scaled dragon for longer than a brief moment or two of furious wingwork, even with such a tailwind. AuRon found his body swelling with each deep breath, his throat one long wound forcing the rush of air in and out.

Out, with night sky all around, with the loom of a shorn-topped volcano above, dusted with snow and pocked with ice. AuRon, curious, circled up and over the crater.

Despite the smokes rising from tears in the side of the mountain, he had a good view down into the mouth of the crater. A lake lay there, with a thin bulge at the center that seemed to be a mound of ice, but he suspected it was in fact the crest of the strange crystal dome.

Off to the west a second volcano steamed, connected to the mountain by way of a rocky saddle.

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