With what little he knew of Imfamnia, anything was possible. His brother said she was a silly, simple dragon. He had his doubts after hearing her speak to Wistala. But then, being a clever conversationalist to extract a little gossip and executing a murder for profit were hatchlings and venerables away from each other. But then, she may have just sold the bodies for a few extra gems to embed in her fringe. That would explain much. If so, and he could get the evidence of it, he could bring down NiVom and his Jade Queen both.

Whenever he wondered how deeply Natasatch was involved in Imfamnia’s plots, he pushed the thoughts from his mind.

Another thought rose, unbidden. If NiVom and Imfamnia fell, Natasatch might fall with them. Clearly she was thought to be in Imfamnia’s close coterie and the behavior of the other dragons at the feast proved it. She’d been protected during the bloodbath by her closeness to Imfamnia. Outraged families and clans hungry for vengeance might not be willing to listen to the finer points of knowledge and action in determining guilt.

No, if he did learn anything, he would have to put Natasatch quietly in hiding before acting.

The woods on the east bank of the river proved empty of everything save game and a few blighter hunting camps. He stopped at each and asked if they’d seen any dragons, living or dead, and after they got over their startle at being addressed in their own tongue they told him that the only dragons they knew of were the pair in the ruin, their Mountain King and the Recluse.

Istach wouldn’t be called Mountain King by even the most ignorant blighter, so his daughter must be the Recluse.

Istach had always been an odd dragonelle. Natasatch had once believed that she was a nest-clinger, a dragon who would stick close to home and never venture into the wide world. His mate had been partly right—she’d planted herself in Old Uldam.

After a careful examination of the southern slopes of the Bissonian Scarpes, the blighter-filled mountains that were once the heart of their empire at its height, he entered the great cave of Old Uldam. He sought out his daughter in his old refuge, NooMoahk’s cave.

He found her in the library. It was smaller than he remembered it, though whether this was due to his being used to the grandeur of Scabia’s delvings in the Sadda-Vale, his having grown, or the library being emptied he couldn’t decide.

Istach seemed all at once pleased, relieved, and concerned to see him, making her look like a dragonelle with ants digging under her scales.

“I’m not the Protector anymore, Father,” she said, fidgeting. “NiVom and his mate didn’t think I was managing. So they sent out FuPozat—the blighters call him Fusspot. He’s a copper-colored dragon with an off-balance horn on his crest. Fusspot made a mess of things by dividing each herd in two, half for the Empire, the other half for the tribe, and pretty soon the blighters’ herds started suffering from mysterious maladies, with a good half of them dropping dead. Actually they were hiding them in the jungle, where they couldn’t be easily observed from the air. I did my best to smooth things over, and the region’s productive again, but only just. There’s been some raiding. Fusspot’s in a state of constant panic that more blighters will turn outlaw and Old Uldam will revolt and give NiVom an excuse to reduce it to ashes.”

AuRon thought this curious. His brother claimed NiVom was one of the most intelligent dragons he’d ever met. Of course, intelligence and sense weren’t always allies. “NiVom would rather have no cattle than a few?”

“I was never a satisfactory Protector,” she said. “I let the blighters be. Tyr NiVom wishes tribute—cattle, metals, grains, thralls.... We can offer some cattle and sheep. These mountains have copper and silver, though it would take dwarfs for Old Uldam to be truly rich in them. As for grains, the blighters are not great farmers. They ‘sow wild’ so their herds may graze and they can gather in a pinch. Thralls? Blighters will happily headhunt, but all the tribes of these mountains are only too happy to ally under the dragon banner. The men of the princedoms to the south are on the other side of a trackless jungle, and the nomads to the north in the lands of the Ironriders have a desert lying between, the waste of Anklemere. Only to the west do they have neighbors, and that’s the Empire. So no thralls from Old Uldam, except for a few criminals and troublemakers the chieftains wish to be rid of. Fusspot’s happy to oblige.”

“Do you get along with him?”

“No, not at all. He seems to think that just because we’re male and female, out here in the middle of what he calls nowhere, we should mate. I don’t mean hatchlings and all that, just mating for the voluptuousness of it. ‘Informal mating,’ he calls it. Even if I had never heard one word out of his mouth, I wouldn’t find him particularly attractive, but now that I know what little there is of his mind, I keep as far away as I can. Not that he doesn’t come sniffing about down here every few weeks despite me snapping at his snout.”

“Why would they send such a dragon out here as Protector?”

“Maybe NiVom owes him a favor. Still, he’s a terrible dragon for a Protector of a border province. He’s prickly and he overreacts to everything. He burned a trade caravan in the desert, thinking it was an invading force, and he has his blighters kill the white-jacket men of the Sunstruck Sea when they catch them in the southern jungle, even if they’re just taking wood and bamboo.”

NiVom seemed determined to start a war with the princedoms. Maybe this prickly FuPozat would put the flame of his personality to the tinder of chafing between the blighters and the men of the princedoms.

Istach had vast wooden racks where she salted, herbed, and dried various fruits, vegetables, and meats. She also had a wall full of brining barrels. Evidently she didn’t like leaving the library, and was unwilling to depend on the blighters for her food. They reclined to a meal of her smoked pork-skins and dragon-flame-braised beef tongue, accompanied by dried apple slices.

“The fate of dragons and the fate of the Empire are tangled. Hard to say whether this is a death grip or an embrace.”

“I know which way my brother would argue.”

“We could just flee, you know.”

“Become wild dragons? I’m told that’s been happening more lately. Dragons just disappear, usually mated pairs ready for their eggs. That’s when the instinct is strongest.

“I’ve been following a barge—several barges. Loaded with the corpses of dragons. I believe they were headed here.”

“I don’t know anything about that, Father. But then, I rarely hear anything down here. Even the blighters don’t bother to visit the cave much, with their idol gone.”

“Where did it go?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is that these stones, their flicker faded as the days passed.”

AuRon looked into the stones. He’d examined them, at leisure, when he lived in the cave. Sometimes he’d seen flashes of himself looking at the stone—not as a mirror would show but from another angle.

He thought he saw swirling colors now. Imagination?

He stared deeper. A figure moved in the stone—two-legged, a hominid, not draconic. It played in the stone like a shadow caught on the surface of a rippling pool. The figure faded and he saw a swirl of orange and red light, like slow-moving flame.

The Lavadome.

Were these crystals still drawing some kind of power from the old statue they’d so long accompanied? He wished he’d listened more to Wistala and DharSii. They were both interested in the crystal the Red Queen had given him when he served as her messenger to the Lavadome. They questioned him closely and he answered honestly, and afterward asked them what they were looking for.

The Lavadome, the eyepiece, the statue—they’re all connected, DharSii had said. If we could assemble all the pieces, I wouldn’t wonder that we’d experience a revelation.

Interesting, but he had to return to the matter at hand.

The dragon bodies weren’t just dumped in the river. The question nagged—why would they transport them so far? There was nothing between here and the Empire save a good deal of rough terrain. Perhaps on the journey they stripped off the flesh, tanned the hides, and boiled the bones. He’d heard that hominid sorcerers and priests considered dragon bones powerful, as either ingredients or icons. Perhaps he was on a fool’s errand after all.

No, it wasn’t like sailors to do anything but move cargo. Their vessels were chronically short of hands, and disassembling a dragon would be an enormous task. Would anyone even trust them with the work? He’d been on ships and barges before. They must have simply delivered their cargo to some station or other. There were logging camps, a defunct mine....

They could hide dragon bodies in a mine, he supposed. Salt might even preserve the bodies, retaining the value of the flesh, though he knew of no salt mine. When he’d lived here the blighters had just wrung salt from a clay pit where the mountainside met the jungle.

“There is a mine about somewhere,” AuRon said. “I remember Wistala mentioning it.”

“Yes, I think it was an old prospecting camp of the Ghioz, though the blighters maintained they were just working the mine so near the blighter mountains in the hope of provoking a war. It’s this side of the river, not far off it.”