Page 48 of Dragon Rule (Age of Fire 5)

“How many dragons will he need?” the Copper asked.

“Just himself and his mate, and their daughter while she remains with them. Istach is her name. She flew here with the news that AuRon the Gray is the new Protector of Dairuss.”

“The other went into the Firemaidens, did she not?”

“Varatheela. Yes, she’s taken her second oath,” Wistala said.

The Copper wasn’t sure he liked Dairuss watched over only by dragons of his brother’s family. It was an important province. It guarded the Iwensi Gap in the Red Mountains, the route by which Hypatia had been invaded any number of times, most recently by the Ironriders under the Red Queen. There was a dwarf trading settlement at the falls, hanging there in the river’s neck like a stuck bone.

He’ll have to see about getting a wall built. The Hypatians had started such a project several times in the past, with little to show for it but some scarring in the mountainsides where quarries were dug and a road running the purported path of the fortifications selected by Hypatian engineers. The gap was cold and windy, even in summer, and if there wasn’t dust blowing off the plains there was cold rain or sleet piling up off the Inland Ocean. Anything but dwarfs and sheep quickly sickened and died in the cold and wet.

Well, there were dwarfs in the pass already. They might be persuaded to build the wall. Dwarfs couldn’t be threatened or bullied into doing something, but they might be bought. He suspected the dwarfs of the Diadem, who never put on their boots without calculating profit and loss, would command a hefty price to see it through.

Why this sudden interest in the wall? He’d known about it for years. Did he seek to put a barrier between himself and his brother? If he hadn’t once fought over an egg shelf with the fellow, he’d think him another inoffensive, unsealed gray. But grays could be tricky, with their ability to blend in and creep up on you without a sound.

Back to business. The young dragonelle behind Wistala stepped forward.

“Just as I told you,” Wistala said in her ear.

“Tyr, I ask leave to make a report,” the newcomer said, a little wide-eyed at being atop Imperial Rock, the heart of the Lavadome.

By Susiron, fixed forever in the sky! Jizara, how can this be? Winged and beautiful as I knew you always would be.

The Copper couldn’t find words.

“Tyr?” almost-Jizara repeated.

“My Tyr, you mean,” NoSohoth prompted.

“I don’t know that he’s my Tyr,” almost-Jizara said.

“Why—” HeBellerath started. “You young—”

“Oh, bother the court protocol,” the Copper said. “She’s not a dragon of the Lavadome, and Tyr is ample honor for me.”

No, it wasn’t Jizara. She has stripes; Jizara’s scale was as uniform in color, save for a slight lightening along the belly, as any dragonelle. The young dragonelle just looked like her. Jizara as she might have been.

But still.

“What is your name again?”

“Istach, daughter of Natasatch.”

“I don’t suppose you can sing, Istach?”

The assembly murmured at that. Wasn’t there a report to be heard? Had the Tyr taken leave of his senses?

Bother all that, the Copper thought. I want to hear her sing.

“Sing?” Istach said. “Just to pass the time when I’m preening scale.”

“Let’s hear you.”

Her eyes widened, and the Copper wondered if she thought him a bit mad.

“Go on, you can never go far wrong doing as the Tyr requests,” NoSohoth said.

“On our island we have some blighters. They sing a song when they’re digging—I’m not even sure what the words mean, they speak to us in a bad mix of Drakine and Pari. But it’s good for breaking open marrow bones, or piling cod for a roast.”

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