Page 38 of Dragon Rule (Age of Fire 5)

Naf needed a rest out of the saddle and they broke their journey at a village. After a moment of terror and slammed shutters as AuRon passed over, once he landed and Naf called out for his people to come help their weary old king dismount, they forgot their fear and children seemed to be peering at him out of every doorway and windowsill. Naf bought some bread for himself and two fat hams for his mount, and they stretched out for some of the afternoon before mounting again.

“To think, to be able to travel from one end of my kingdom to the other in a day,” Naf said. “Dairuss is not big by any means, but even riding hard with fresh horses at every station it takes a messenger more than a day to go from north to south.”

AuRon was used to the saddle by now—though he resolved none but Naf could ride him—and they took off again.

“And the south. Our source of sustenance and of trouble. We love the Ghioz for their plentiful food, barges full of grain and feed they send from their southlands, but it has always come at a price of arrogance, or domination. They outnumber us and frequently outwit us; more than one Dairussan has borrowed from their ample coffers to find that it must be paid back through Ghioz tax collectors and market law. They think of us as upright blighters in need of direction and management.”

“You should be honored to be thought of as blighter by such as they. I would rather freeze in that pass with you than pass a holiday with the Ghioz, from what I’ve seen of them. Always trying to get others to do their dirty work.”

“They’re slavers, one way or another. Now they’ve got that great white dragon and his mate as their dragon lords, when others aren’t coming and going to keep an eye on those two. I’m—ho, what’s this, AuRon? Name a specter and he appears.”

Naf pointed to what AuRon’s sharp eyes had already picked out—a green dragon flying up from the south.

“I don’t recognize her,” AuRon said.

“Is there danger?”

AuRon judged the green, trying to close distance. She didn’t move through the air with the slow, steady beats of an experienced flier, he suspected she spent most of her time on the ground.

“I should think not. She flies like a dragon born for swimming.”

“She’s coming straight for us.”

“Let your fears go like a loose scale. I can outfly anything with scale,” AuRon said, getting height advantage, just in case. “Though I don’t want to take you too high. Your nose will bleed or you’ll freeze.”

The lumbering dragonelle waggled in the air as she approached, showing her belly. AuRon guessed she wanted to talk, the gesture struck him as funny or playful, though he didn’t know what the signals might mean to these dragons of the Lavadome.

He circled her, she circled him.

“I believe that’s one of the Ghioz Protectors,” Naf said. “She visited our dragon.”

AuRon came up alongside her. “Happy to meet a new dragon,” she called. “Might we alight and talk? My name is Imfamnia, my mate is the Protector of Ghioz.”

And so it was that AuRon met the former Queen of the Lavadome, Imfamnia, called the Jade Queen, and now an exile.

They alighted on a rocky hilltop, sending hares fleeing for their lives.

“I am AuRon. I’m carrying my friend, King Naf of the Dairuss.”

The dragon-dame tipped her head to the King. “Very pleased,” she said, in stilted Pari.

She had too much paint on her by half for AuRon. A health-tonic-selling dwarfs trade wagon looked subdued compared to the purples and reds and golds about her eyes, griff, nostrils, and ear-buds.

“NiVom is feeling unwell this morning, otherwise he would have been up in this delightful air,” she panted, sucking in a good deal of it.

“The white?” AuRon asked. “I met him in the war against the Red Queen. Where he changed sides.”

“To the nation of his birth, who’d cast him out before your brother took power. He never wanted to make war on them, and reverted to where his true loyalty lay at the first opportunity.”

Naf hopped off the saddle chair and stretched his back.

“It’s getting late, AuRon,” Naf said. “We’ll want to find a place to overnight.”

Imfamnia cocked her head, puzzled. “Perhaps I misunderstood, but did that man just order you to rest for the night?”

“He hasn’t flown before, and I’ve no wish to tax him.”

“Curious. Well, pleased to meet you, AuRon. I hope we shall be good friends. I know we will. There’s a terrible shortage of new anecdotes at our feasts these days, in Ghioz we’re cut off from most of Lavadome society. I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m not exactly welcome there.”

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