Page 36 of Dragon Strike (Age of Fire 4)

They hardly resembled bats anymore. The Copper wasn’t sure he understood what had happened, but everyone from Rayg to the Anklenes had their theories. The first generation of young bats raised on dragonblood grew uncommonly large and strong, flowers of batdom, long-lived and healthy. The second and third generations showed some odd . . . changes. Mutations, in Rayg’s strange word. Wail and Gnash, sister and brother, the first of the fourth-generation bats, fed almost exclusively on dragonblood as they grew into massive, thick-snouted, big-toothed, ridge-browed brutes with scaly skin and almost dragonlike claws. One of the Anklenes went so far as to call them gargoyles, a race that was thought to have died out over a thousand years earlier, along with their creator, Anklamere the Sorcerer. They hardly hung upside down save to sleep deeply, preferring to perch in the manner of griffaran when awake.

Wail was rather brighter than Gnash, so he turned his snout to her.

“You know the way to Anaea, right? You came along with me when CuPinnatax was installed as Upholder.”

“The west road, the lake, the bridge, yes—yess,” Wail said. She ran her red tongue across her fangs. “A hungry journey.”

“And you can help yourselves in a moment. In Anaea watch the kern. Examine the fields, especially the crop just coming up now. You know kern, right?”

“Tall green stalks, yes—yess,” Wail replied.

Gnash nodded. “Birds and mice and bugs among the stalks, good crunching.”

“Crunch away,” the Copper said. “But observe the crops. See if anything is being done to the kern, especially as it ripens. Look and see if anything is being put on it, either before or after it is harvested. I’ll send more of your kind to act as messengers. Or Wail, send Gnash if it’s important enough. He’s a fast flier.”

“Yes, yess,” Gnash said. “Fly the faster, I.”

“Now you may take some blood.”

He wouldn’t call either of them particularly intelligent, but they were wily enough and followed clear instructions.

Sadly, the bats had lost much of their numbing saliva that had made feeding earlier generations almost pleasant thanks to the light-headedness, but the wounds they made still healed clean and quick. The Copper winced as they opened his skin. But it was worth it to have eyes and ears loyal to him, though the rest of the dragons in the Lavadome thought of bats as vermin and found his “gargoyles” positively creepy.

Even those who secretly burned out their nests admitted the oversized bats had helped free the Lavadome of the hag-riders.

The bats burped and belched as they suckled, then rested briefly before taking off. The Copper poked his head out of his gallery and watched them disappear in the direction of the western tunnel, then headed up to the garden.

He felt exhausted and he’d hardly moved a dragonlength.

A little extra pallor wouldn’t be noticed. He’d been ill, after all.

After a long, slow climb—the best pace he could manage—he found Nilrasha holding informal court around the feeding pit. The pit, scene of innumerable feats, was a low bow-shaped trench-walkway with stairs going down to the kitchens where bearer-thralls could bring up platters. At formal feasts a continuous snake of joints and ragouts and racks and quarters, punctuated by the occasional squab on a skewer, passed under the dragons of the Imperial Line. Now only two thralls with platters of cold cut meat and toasted munchrooms passed, probably because Nilrasha felt it was impolite to have company without offering at least a gesture.

At the center of the walkway was a sandy pit, usually reserved for hatchlings of the Imperial Line. There’d been some fine tussles and games among the hatchlings, always the best part of any dinner, to the Copper’s mind. Now the pit held only a single green corpse, resting on its side.

All the assembled dragons quieted at his approach and regarded the dead hatchling silently.

The Copper took a breath. He didn’t care for any of her company.

There was LaDibar, one of the senior Anklenes, at the honored position to her left where the freshest dishes arose. In his youth the gold had been proclaimed a genius, a prodigy, a dragon of rare mind and discernment. The Copper didn’t dispute any of it, but for having such a rare mind he never did much of anything useful with it.

A handsome young couple of almost perfectly matched Skotl dragons sat across from Nilrasha. He was red and she, of course, was green, but their snouts were much alike. SiHazathant and Regalia were high in the Imperial Line; the mystical said they were SiDrakkon and Tighlia reincarnated. No one disputed that they were related to SiDrakkon through a cousin; their father had died bravely in battle against the hag-riders when first they arrived. Their hatching was still talked of, for they came from a strange double-egg, sharing a single egg-sack, though both had been rather small in consequence. When SiHazathant was losing to his brother in the hatchling contest, Regalia fought at his side and together they triumphed.

They’d been inseparable ever since. Regalia served with her brother in the Drakwatch by a special dispensation during SiDrakkon’s rule—it was either that or SiHazathant would have had to go into the Firemaidens. It hadn’t been as awkward as some predicted. She’d proved herself equal to the drakes, and she had a dragonelle’s ability to hold her temper. They were both unusually grave for dragons of their age, as though in private mourning of some unspoken grief.

The third dragonelle was an unmated female Wyrr named Essea. She didn’t have any particular talent or skill that the Copper could discern; if anything, she was a silly gossip, but she was of the Imperial Line and a friend and confidante of Nilrasha. The rest of the Imperial Line looked rather down on his mate because of her humble birth—Nilrasha had come out of the hovels at milkdrinker’s hill—and slighted her whenever possible. The Copper was grateful to Essea for her unstinting kindnesses. She’d helped Nilrasha acquire a modicum of courtly manners and speech.

In a sense he and his mate were both outsiders to a line that they ostensibly led. He’d been adopted high into the Imperial Line by Tyr FeHazathant after rescuing a batch of griffaran eggs; she’d mated him after the overthrow of the hag-riders and the Dragonblade and taken the title of Queen. They were more popular in any other hill than they were in their own home caves.

Thus the emptiness of the gardens as Nilrasha mourned.

“It is good to see you well, my Tyr,” Regalia said, and all but Nilrasha gave a prrum of agreement.

The Copper looked at the dead little hatchling at the center of the sandpit. A Skotl, but small, even for a hatchling. Her jawline, the lift of her protective griff—

“This was Tilfia,” Nilrasha said, speaking low, as she did when unhappy. The Copper felt a little stab behind his breastbone. For all the bluff and strength that he admired, she sometimes sounded like the tired, defeated drakka who’d dragged herself out of that Bant waterway after the lost battle with the Ghioz. “I didn’t know her name.”

“The hatchling who complained about her brother sitting on her,” the Copper said.

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