“ ‘Since you have fallen back to squabbling, and none can prove his case, I shall withhold the reward,’ the Sun said, showing her disgust.

“Each Great Spirit retreated to his place in the Upper and Lower Worlds, and thought black thoughts. Being of similar greedy mind, each had the same idea: ‘If I can prove I am the greatest, I will get the reward. But how to prove I am the master of the others? I know: I shall create something that can kill even dragons!’

“Earth, deep in the ground, made the delving dwarves. He gave them the ability to fashion arms and armor that could pierce dragon-scale, and the fearless solidity of mountains.

“Water, in her slow wisdom, made the elves that live amongst the green growing things she nourishes. They age like trees and move like windblown leaves. They are patient hunters, keen eyed and eared.

“Air, far above, made men. Man the wanderer, man the hunter, man the flexible. Man does not stand like a mountain in the face of difficulty, or wait like trees for the season to change, but figures a way over, under, or around it.

“Fire was lazy and capricious; Fire did no work. Instead he took aside a few of the others and turned them to his own purposes, and taught them magic. These mages would kill or control all the dragons, then kill or control all the other races in time, and one day put Fire in the sky to replace even the Sun. Even worse, Fire taught these mages some of the secrets of Making, so he would have someone else to do his bidding.

“But like the Spirits that created them, these people fell to squabbling. The Spirits’ peoples spent their time in feuds. Men fought men when there were no elves to slay. Sadly, each race did manage to kill its share of dragons, for we were too arrogant in those early ages, before we learned to fear.

“Without the dragons ordering things, the blighters also came back and made trouble for the other races. Since then, the world’s history has been little more than a litany of wars among the Spirits’ creations.

“So now we dragons must hide, or assassins will come to slay our families. The dragons who knew better times are almost gone. The dwarves find our caves, the elves trap us by wood and water, and always more and more men come with their flocks, their forts, their roads, and their cities.

“I know more of fighting than I do of wisdom, little gray. But I will offer you this: Learn something of the ways of all the races, but especially learn of men. Your grandsire, my father, destroyed an army of them, but a new army came filled with survivors of the old. When he came to smash and burn their war machines, they surrounded him, and that was the end of a very mighty red. They adapted—a word I learned from your mother—to him and his manner of fighting. If we dragons are to last, we must adapt to this new age, or the work of the Four Great Spirits in creating us will come to naught. Dragon kind will continue to dwindle, until one day there are no more eggs.”

Father stared off in the direction of the egg shelf, his nostrils taking in great drafts of cavern air, as though searching its approaches for the sight or smell of enemies.

“What’s dwindle, father?” Auron asked.

“Nothing for you to worry about today.”

They finished the remains of the man. Auron smelled his blood on the man’s knife again, and made to kick it down the hoard-shaft, but Father made him carry the weapon back to the shelf to share his lesson with his sisters.

Chapter 4

Change came with new air. The season above had finally cavern.turned, and faint traces of spring life filtered down to the cavern.

It could not come too soon for Auron. Even dead bats were becoming scarce.

With the renewed air came water, first dripping, then trickling, then cascading in torrents from the melt above to some unknown reservoir below. Auron did not mind the wet; it rolled off his hide as easily as it ran down stone. He drank from the accumulated pools, smelling and tasting the world above through the liquid conductor.

At the touch of the water, the dead lichen gave way, leaving little patches of growth. The bats started their nightly ventures, returning to the cave to leave a shower of fresh, ammonia-smelling fertilizer for the moss.

The life returning to the cave affected even Mother. She still had a listless, pinched look to her, but sniffed the air coming down from above with some of her old energy.

“Soon we’ll be in the Upper World, little gems. Meat and heat, no more dead bats for you.”

“Father will have an easier time hunting?” Wistala, his smaller sister, asked.

“Yes, but we won’t see much of him. He will be flying far and wide, to make sure other dragons do not encroach upon us. Besides, the appetites of a family of dragons soon exhaust an area. Overhunt a forest one year, and you will starve the next.”

“What is the Upper World like? Dangerous?” Auron asked.

“Big and beautiful. There’s life everywhere, all singing different songs to the four Great Spirits. You could fly your whole life and see only a part of it. Now you just have the music of the melt on its way through our cave. In the Upper World you will hear rain fall from the sky, wind in the trees and on the grasslands, the crash of the ocean probing the land for weakness. Lightning will light up a place she wants her lover Thunder to visit. And far above, the Sun and Moon travel in silence, listening to the music.

“There is danger there, yes, but remember, you, too, are dangerous. In all the world there is nothing more dangerous than a wary dragon. What is a dragon’s most deadly weapon?”

“His fire!” Auron ejaculated.

“Strength?” Jizara asked.

“The senses,” Wistala said after a moment’s thought.

“All right, in a way, but not right enough,” Mother said. “It is the dragon’s cunning, which guides all the other weapons. To know when to fight and when to run, to fool the strong into thinking you are stronger than they, to fool the weak into thinking you are weaker and encourage them to rashness. Let your prey think you are harmless, give those hunting you the impression you are going one place, and then be where they do not expect you.”

All very well, Auron thought. I will be running all the time, to save my scaleless skin. My sisters will have less to fear in the Upper World than I.

“You think your skin is a weakness, Auron?” Mother asked.

Auron looked up at Mother. She sniffed at him, her head cocked affectionately. He could not lie; she read his mind as easily as his expression.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Jizara, climb that stalagmite, would you?”

Jizara, obedient as always, moved to the wide base of a large stone prominence.

“Now listen, Auron.”

Jizara began to climb, and Auron heard her scales rasp against the stone.

“Climb the wall, Auron. Keep your claws sheathed, use the strength in your sii.”

The wall was a harder proposition than the stalagmite, but using his neck as well as his tail, he managed to reach the cavern roof. He hung upside down, hugging the stone.

Mother raised her head to stare levelly into his eyes. “Auron, you did not make a sound doing that, apart from your breathing. Was that a weakness or a strength?”

“What good is it?”

“There will be times when you will not want to be heard. If I were an elf venturing into this cave, all sharp eyes and ears, I would not hear you climb up there to hide, nor would I see you in the shadows. You reflect no light—your coloring lets you blend perfectly. By the time the elf got close enough to see you, it would be too late.”

Auron felt flush with achievement. Even Father could not lurk in this manner. “I understand, Mother.”

“But will any dragonelles want a mating flight with Auron, Mother?” Wistala asked. “He hardly looks a dragon. More like a lizard.”

“Keep a civil tongue, Tala,” Mother scolded. “My mother was a dragonelle who had her choice, yet she chose my gray father. There is more to a dragon than the shine of his scales.”

“My mate will be a mighty red, Mother. Red like a ruby!”

“I want a bronze, who shines like Father,” Jizara said, still atop the stalagmite. “Though less horns and scars.”

Mother chuckled. “His horns seem ugly to you now, girls, but someday you will have a belly full of waiting eggs. You’ll think differently!”

“Who cares for dragonelles?” Auron said, scooting sideways to find a crevice to better camouflage his shape. “I’ll never mate!”

Mother rubbed the top of her head along his back. “My little clutchwinner, life still has much to teach you.”

“You’ll teach me more, though, won’t you, Mother?”

“Of course. But in another year or two, it will be time for more eggs. And then Father will bar you from this cave.”

“We won’t see each other?”

“Other things will occupy your mind. But I’ll always be with you. I’m part of your song.”

Auron stalked the floor of the cavern. He explored his brother’s stale scent near the fishing pool. He smelled Copper’s marks all around a deep crack in the wall of the cave, where a trickle had found a new outlet. Where his brother came once, he would come again, so Auron found a perch and froze against it to await his return.