Page 128 of Dragon Rule (Age of Fire 5)

“Is there anything in there?” DharSii asked.

“No,” Wistala said, her wings and tail sagging. “It’s empty. Wait, there’s a little bit of—I don’t know, moss like dried seaweed in the bottom.”

She removed her head from the hole, with something like a brown string clamped in her nostril, and spat out the stone and the remainder out on the egg-shelf.

“That might be—”

“Elf hair,” Wistala said. Though the leaves were long-shriveled, there was no mistaking elf hair. “I don’t remember elves attacking. There were some outside the cave.”

AuRon had been caught by elves soon after they saw Father return. He’d said—

“Wait! Hazeleye!” Wistala said. “She was an expert on dragons, spent many years in NooMoahk’s cave. I met her. She was very old and frail. I expect she’s dead now. Perhaps it’s her hair. I always wondered why someone who apparently loved dragons would go along with murder and enslavement.”

DharSii drooped. “Another wasted trip,” he muttered. “How many just this year?”

“The question is, was the hair an accident, or a token that she’d searched here?” Wistala continued. “Elves often leave a strand of hair as a signal to others. Rainfall used to mark his honeycombs he’d checked, or garden beds he’d planted, or the oldest sack of horse grain with his hair once it began to come back.”

She picked the stone up and put it back. That was how Mother and Father had left it; that’s how the egg cave would remain. Except for a little bit of stained stone, that star was the only evidence that her family had ever lived in this cave.

It was a good cave. Water and light and air and well out of seasonal changes of temperature. It could be improved, of course.

“What does the Star of Silverhigh signify?” she asked DharSii, to get his mind off another dead end.

“One point for each of the gifts of the Four Spirits,” DharSii said. “And a fifth point for the mysterious gift. Our ability to change what we touch.”

“How do you mean?”

DharSii wandered around the cave, inspecting. She supposed he was just being thorough. “No member of another race comes away from an encounter with a dragon unchanged. Some hate us forever, others want nothing more than to be around us, observe us, be protected by us, even if it means a lifetime of shoveling up waste and hauling it to the nearest dung heap.

“Of course, I’m sure you’ve noted the effect of dragon-blood and heard of the strange powers of our dead bones and teeth and so on.”

“Yes. When I was in the east I almost ended up as part of someone’s medicine supply. Aren’t most of those legends, though?” Wistala said.

“Not all. The Tyr himself has been feeding bats dragon-blood for decades. His original strain of rather overlarge, greedy cave-bats has grown into an entirely different species of quasi-bat. NiVom in Ghioz, who’s been breeding with more care toward developing certain traits, has created gargoyles almost as large as old Anklemere used to keep.”

“I should pay a visit to Ghioz and see what he’s up to,” Wistala said to herself.

DharSii continued: “We must use that gift wisely, our power to change what we touch. The problem is, destruction is too easy. It has a terrible beauty. A burning tower falls and in one glorious moment, we forget all the effort and care it took to lay the stones for a tower that will even stand up straight.”

“Where did we get that gift, I wonder?” Wistala asked.

“Some old songs say the sun gave it to us, so pleased was she with our ability to tame the blighters. Others say the moon snuck it in to ruin us, for once a creature has tasted dragon-blood and enjoyed the benefits, the desire grows in them for more. Around Hypatia much of that lore has been forgotten, but it still exists in the east. That’s why there are practically no dragons there, though they figure so strongly into their culture.”

He finished his circuit in silence. Wistala waited, lost in memories. “Did anyone else return to the cave?” he finally asked.

“My brother,” Wistala said. “I met him here. I gave him that droopy eye, too. Father, too. We tried to warn him but we were too small. He couldn’t hear us. He left again, fighting.”

“If it was a treasure of your parents, he might have carried it away,” DharSii said.

“You don’t know our father,” Wistala said. “He was in a rage. I don’t think he had the presence of mind to look at anything except the bodies of Mother and my sister.”

“Still, there’s a small chance.”

“Very well,” Wistala said. “I’ll take you to where he died.”

She left the cave with small regret and tumultuous feelings. It would be a good place for eggs, if she could ever banish her memories. Once they reached the surface, she guided DharSii north.

The promontory with the old blighter altar was very much as Wistala remembered it, except the obelisk stones with their cryptic old runes no longer loomed quite so high. She re-experienced the ache brought on by the long, long climb down to the rushing white water turning its near-loop around the outcropping in her trips to get water for Father—she even smelled the rank rot of the old driftwood tossed up by floods with dwarfs-beard growing on it.

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