Page 137 of Dragon Fate (Age of Fire 6)

“Few really understand elves. We are like seeds that lie dormant waiting for the right conditions. We wait for the right need.”

“We are the family Rainfall now. Mist, Sprinkle, Downpour, Thundershower, Drops, and Cloudburst. I am Drizzle, sister and daughter. It’s been too many years since we have spoken.”

They looked like him, certainly, the way a group of pine trees look alike. All the same family with minor variations from specimen to specimen.

Elves continued to emerge, until the handfuls turned to dozens, and the dozens into a hundred. She knew this stand of trees to be an elf burial-ground—every elf interred here returned as a new family. She’d never heard of anything like this, beyond hatchling tales that elves “sprang from trees” when born into the world.

It made her feel young. She’d witnessed an event that was half spring sprouting and half reincarnation, according to the mystics of the Great East. How amazing to live in a world where such things were possible.

“Drizzle, you know—everything Rainfall knew?”

Drizzle nodded. “As we’re much the same being, I do. Perhaps with a sense of remoteness yet authority, like words of a song learned by heart off the page but never heard live.”

The elves were milling about, touching each other on the fingertips with flutters like leaves of trees meeting. They spoke in whispery trills and creaks, the language of trees bending in the wind.

“Why now?”

“Because you asked to speak to me. We’ve been waking up for some time and wondering when the time would be right. Is Hypatia still friendly to elvenkind, I hope? Once, they learned much from us.”

“You told me a story once, about how dragons were each given a gift by the elements.”

“There is another player in that game. There’s no exact term for it, but you can think of it as a shadow world of aether. A mirror element. ‘Aether’ is another word for ‘magic,’ and our world is desperately short of it.”

“Why?”

“I wish I knew. Perhaps if I knew why the aether was draining, we could discover a way to refill it. It is my belief that aether is a product of beauty, serenity, and grace. I’ve felt it in the presence of the graceful arches of my old bridge. Music might create it, or a high temple filled with worshippers before an altar. A brilliant thought sends waves through it.

“I am convinced that when enough of this energy builds up, there is some manner of transformation. A species grows in intelligence, or a society advances—as when the Hypatians got rid of the kings and began choosing who would make the decisions affecting the nation. Perhaps some great burst of magic formed the dragons.

“In any case, a wave of that energy rolled across Hypatia, and it awakened us. Nothing like this has happened since the first dragons appeared before the rise of Anklemere.”

“The demen are about to pass through wooded country,” an elf said. He touched a tree branch, ran his hand down it, and straightened, tightened, and formed it into a rather gnarled spear. “They may think a wooded road much like tunnel-fighting, but we’ll teach them better.”

“Don’t despair, Wistala. What’s an end and what’s a beginning depends a great deal on the observer. You said you think this is the end of dragonkind. I believe we stand on the threshold of a new beginning. Something has returned the shadow energy to the world. Now, where are we most needed?”

Chapter 17

AuRon landed atop the cool stone of the Protector’s mountainside refuge in Dairuss, not caring who saw him and reported it to whom. It was the dog days of summer in Dairuss, and the afternoon sun had one more hour of beating the land like a hammer before it disappeared behind the mountains. Even at this altitude it was hot and still. Thirst closed and roughened his throat, and his head hurt. Under different circumstances, he’d have found a mountainside pool, drunk his fill, and napped in the sun until the heat loosened muscles sore from flying. But he’d not come to enjoy basking in the sun like a lizard.

The City of the Golden Dome and whatever troubles it had with the world would have to sort themselves out. He had but one goal: getting Natasatch and taking her somewhere safe. A secret hole in the Sadda-Vale, perhaps.

“Natasatch!” he called through the balcony. Nothing answered but the rustling of the plain cotton curtains. He noted, rather dully, that they were still the heavier winter ones.

He sniffed around the sleeping chamber. He smelled his mate. Also, cleaning-vinegar, oranges, and oliban, dried hunks of tree sap that, when burned, smelled profoundly soothing. Someone had burned a good deal of it in the dining pit fire. Had she thrown a party? To celebrate what?

In any case, the thralls were keeping busy maintaining what he still, oddly, considered “their” temporary home.

His hearts beat hard. It was too still. Especially for the middle of the day. The refuge held its breath, waiting for him to discover whatever gruesome display of death awaited within.

The eating-pit room was awash in fabrics. Colors hung on the wall, bolts of cloth were laid out and marked with chalk, and a net on the ceiling held tools and buckets and sea-fishing instruments.

Halfway across it he heard a step. Natasatch! He looked twice to make sure it was she, and alone.

“I’m—I’m so sorry, AuRon.”

“I understand, and you have to forgive me as well. The dazzle of the Empire, jealousy for my brother—”

She tucked her face back, into her wing. “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry you came back. For this.”

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