Page 101 of Dragon Fate (Age of Fire 6)

“We talked it over,” AuRon said. “They’ll be more careful in their raids on the princedoms now, worried about dragons fighting for the Sunstruck Sea. There’s great discontent in the Lavadome. Some may decide to ally with us.”

DharSii cleared his throat. “If no one objects, I’ll come along. I know you two have never gotten along with your brother, AuRon, but I respect him. In his time as Tyr, he made enemies, not all of them fairly, but he did well in a nearly impossible job and left dragons in a better position than he found them. Skotl, Wyrr, and Ankelene found they could get along better than anyone might have believed once they no longer had to worry about which clan was carrying the title ‘Tyr.’ I’ve no idea what his vision for the Empire was, or if he even had one, but what’s happened since he was overthrown has been dreadful. Shameful to hold one of a mated pair as hostage to the behavior of another. I’ll oppose it with him, or I’ll avenge his death and bring comfort to his mate.”

“Nobly spoken, DharSii,” AuRon said. “Do the same for mine, won’t you?”

“Certainly.”

“Can we be in less of a hurry to die and more of a hurry to fly?” Wistala asked, removing her dragonhelm. “I’m not getting anything through this.”

“Let me try,” Scabia said. “I used these a great deal in my youth with my mate. Hmmm. You know, Wistala, we may share but little distant blood, but I think our years together here have made us as close as though we were hatched here.”

She settled it on her head and closed her eyes. After a long moment, her pinkish gaze returned to the assembly.

“Nothing. He may be dead, he may have lost it, or had it taken. He may have some injury or defect that prevents its working—how is his mindspeech?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Wistala said. “We never used it much.”

AuRon said he’d never tried.

“Do we know he made it to the old tower of the Circle of Man?” Scabia asked.

“I believe he did,” Wistala said. “I saw a tower set against the sea and clouds. Dragons, some kind of a sea-cave, or maybe it was just the ocean striking rocks at night.”

“Then go to him. I have an—intuition—that the fate of our world will be decided to the east, in Hypat.”

Wistala could tell AuRon was out of sorts. She flew close to him and let DharSii take the lead of the trio.

“You look unhappy, brother.”

He stared grimly ahead, straight down his nose, where the point of his egg-tooth could still be marked between his nostrils. He’d kept it, believing it brought him luck, but the cartilage of his aging snout had thickened and swallowed much of it. “I’ve an odd feeling. Intuition, perhaps. Foreboding. I’ve a strange feeling that I’m on my last journey—my last corporeal journey, that is. I’m not sure what mystical paths I might tread.”

“You?” She was surprised to hear this kind of statement from him; AuRon hid his emotions as his skin hid him against a cavern wall. He’d always been such a prosaic dragon. Even DharSii was more poetic.

“I’m a very frightened dragon deep down, Tala. Hiding it is survival instinct. It doesn’t serve to tell others what you are thinking under the best of circumstances. Before, every flight I’ve taken has had purpose. On this one, I do not see how it gets me to where I wish to be.”

“Where is that?” Wistala asked.

“With Natasatch by my side, in some quiet, roadless land with decent hunting.”

“Our parents fulfilled that dream. It did not do them any good.”

He changed course slightly to catch a shift in wind direction. “That’s no reason not to try for ourselves. An ideal is no less estimable just because some fail in practice. Honesty is an ideal worth pursuing, but no one is completely honest. You, Wistala, you’re one of the most honest dragons I know and I admire you for it, but you can’t say you’ve been honest at all times with everyone.”

She thought it in bad taste for AuRon to bring up her hatchlings like this, but she had to agree.

The weather warmed and dampened as they crossed the Red Mountains. Thicker forests grew on the western slopes of the Red Mountains, even the snowline held clusters of pines, clinging to each other like roped-together explorers.

Forests within forests could be found on foot. A second layer of thick, thorny shrubs with broad leaves captured what light filtered through the treetops. A third forest of lichens and fungi lived below that, more brilliantly green than either tree leaves and needles or thorny midgrowth. Fungi had turned much of the tree bark and inevitable deadfalls into a green carpet.

AuRon knew this ground—he’d hunted across it with some wolves in his youth. He found a quiet glade where they could rest and take water. Unfortunately it was poor hunting ground, unless you liked stripping bark for insects and digging up mice and shaking polecats out of fallen logs, but they could rest without fear of being disturbed by anything but jays complaining about dragon-scent from the branches.

They reached Juutfod in one long flight from the mountains. Three dragons arriving together as darkness fell struck up an alarm.

AuRon seemed to be on some sort of guardedly hostile terms with the dragons of the tower. On the one sii, he’d brought down the Wizard of the Isle of Ice, who’d bred and trained some of these dragons together and raised them to glory, but over on the stronger saa side even the most nostalgic old dragon, remembering when they’d been feared across the Inland Ocean, had to admit that every flight the wizard’s dragons took was at the orders of their men, and the dragonelles had been most abominably treated, like laying hens in coops.

There were a few oaths tossed back and forth as the dragons of the tower came out on the craggy green peninsula to see what the newcomers wanted as the gannets and puffins watched and chattered.

“If it isn’t NooShoahk the assassin,” one of the tower dragons called, using one of the worst epithets in the dragon tongue.>AuRon was a tough companion to fly alongside.

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