Page 123 of Dragon Fate (Age of Fire 6)

“Just sleep?” Rayg said. “Suppose one or two die?”

“That’s an acceptable risk.”

“For how long?”

“Just a few moments would be enough. You see, some of the Host have joined him. I believe we could talk sense into them, in time. Also, I want RuGaard taken alive. I’ve no intention to make a martyr of him or his mate. I’d like everyone to see how wretched he is before he gets tossed into the darkest hole in the Lower World.”

“Why do you hate him so? He’s not a bad sort. Very decent to me, in my youth. Though he never did get around to granting me my freedom.”

“I was an exile, too. Had he remained faithful to our friendship and Tyr Fehazathant, I should have become Tyr after Tighlia died. She arranged for my exile. I should have known he wanted the title for himself.”

“He never gave me that impression,” Rayg said. “I had the feeling he would rather have been anything but Tyr. No ambition, you see, except perhaps for a quiet life in the country somewhere. I imagine that if you offered him his mate and that, you’d never hear from him again.”

“No, I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Rayg,” NiVom said. “Once you get a whiff of the real power of the Lavadome, it’s impossible to think about much else.”

He let the toe-tapping Rayg get back to his crystal studies and left Imperial Rock, feeling vaguely dissatisfied. The coppery sorcerer was after something. NiVom had more than half a mind to order the execution of Nilrasha. The only reason they’d kept her alive this long was as a hostage to his good behavior. He’d violated that trust—never mind the little skirmish at the Isle of Ice, his orders on the matter had been greatly exceeded. He’d been punished enough for it by having to deal with Ouistrela as one of his Protectors, of an island that had contributed exactly three boatloads of salted cod the whole time it had been a part of the Empire . . .

No question, this was a setback. With a break in the action, the princedoms would have their chance to get organized. Perhaps he should have pressed them for a settlement while he had the advantage. But negotiating with the princedoms was like building a statue out of sand, as soon as you had one side formed up and began to work on the other, it all slid into the same heap you started with.

The key, of course, was completion of his plan for the Lower World. He hoped he’d live to see it: an underground system of tunnels, waterways, mines, and exits that would allow dragons to appear in any of his major provinces by surprise. He was fortunate in finding the old Anklemere works linking so many natural passages—the wizard had expanded something the dwarfs had begun in the Red Mountains in ages past, making use of the two mighty underground rivers, one flowing north and the other south, at heights and intensities that varied with hemispheric seasons. Back then it was the center of the hominid resistance against Silverhigh and a way for rebels to get about without being observed from the air.

Once it was complete, food and coin tribute would go beneath the earth immediately in the province where it was collected and be put on dwarf-rails, not transported across a quarter of the known world, subject to weather, theft, bandit raids, and misdirection. Whole armies of dragons or demen could move in secrecy. Only dwarfs could hope to stop them, and there wasn’t a dwarf army left in the world worth mentioning. Thralls of all ages were working themselves to death by the dozens each day to complete new tunnels and expand old ones under the practiced lashes of the demen.

NiVom spent a few pleasant moments imagining the paired worlds, Upper and Lower, locked in an eternal, dragon-directed embrace. His name would live forever, loom larger in draconic imagination than the greatness of Silverhigh, even if his body couldn’t.

He rather hoped the name of his mate would be forgotten.

As a young dragonelle of the Imperial Family in the Lavadome, Imfamnia’d been one of the silliest young dragonelles it was ever his unpleasant duty to meet. Attractive enough and healthy, certainly, but there were plenty of healthy dragonelles to catch his eye among the hills and rock of the Lavadome, and many of them were pleasingly formed as well.

No, it wasn’t until he was wandering, hiding from the Lavadome, in exile near the site of his aerial raid triumph in Bant that he met her again. She’d been hunting in an almost comic fashion, setting brush fires and then devouring whatever rushed out to escape the flames, not knowing that the nutrition lost from the fats in the firebladder would never be replaced by the lean little rodents and small birds she was snapping up.

What was attractive in the teeming Lavadome became a vision, a creation of the Four Spirits to grant him succor in the wilderness. He fell hopelessly in love with her. Her own deprivations had erased much of the callowness of her youth and taught her the value of a silent tongue. He pursued her with every elaborate courtesy he remembered from the Lavadome: presents, poetry and songs in her honor, gifts of fowl and fish, and blighter wirework that passed for jewelry in Bant.

She was very fond of jewelry. He always associated it with the change in her.

It was after he’d given her a crystalline bauble, the same one AuRon had worn into the Lavadome, bringing the Red Queen’s peace offer, that she’d grown more assertive. He’d tried the jewel himself first, of course, to make sure there wasn’t any danger. All it did was sharpen up the senses and clarify the thoughts. Both of which Imfamnia needed—desperately.

He found her lounging in her modest bath. It was nothing compared to the epic pools of steaming water that SiMevolant had been so fond of. This was more of a dipping pool in a tile room, where thralls could easily work you over with bristle brushes and polishing cloths, depending what the scale needed, lubricated by warm water.

He dismissed the thralls. They always did gossip.

“I suppose you’ve heard RuGaard is in Hypatia,” NiVom said.

“I’ve heard little but,” Imfamnia said. “What will we do about it?”

“I’m tempted to wait until he’s at the base of Nilrasha’s refuge and then drop her on him. She’s heavy enough to kill whoever she falls upon.”

“You always were direct,” Imfamnia said.

She touched her snout to his. She’d scented herself with something intoxicating, probably some distillation of hominid female musk. “I’m famished,” he said. “I’ve been flying too much lately. I think we both need to spend a few secluded days figuring out what to do about him. Dine in, two servants only, hours of undisturbed sleep—”

She brushed him gently across the neck with her wingtips.

“And a deep pool for mating purposes,” he continued. “Seeing you wet and glistening gives me an appetite for you. Too bad SiMevolant’s old baths are defunct.”

“So what do we do about RuGaard?” Imfamnia asked, redirecting his thoughts.

“I’ve ordered the whole Aerial Host to Hypatia. Between them and the Hypatians, they’ll make short work of him.”

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