“Honored friend,” the Tyr said to NeStirrath. “Let’s say we were at Three Tunnels again, with the blighters hip-deep all around and battle horns blowing. Which of the three would you want with us? Good of the Empire, mind.”

“Little Rugaard, there. Kept his teeth dug in, even when he went unconscious. He’s no duelist; he fights as though his neck were on the line.”

“Does that help, SiDrakkon?” the Tyr asked.

“Why do you even drag me along if you’re just going to have your way anyway?” SiDrakkon said.

“The decision is yours.”

“I’ll have Nivom. A mixed message can lose a battle.”

Nivom straightened, and his pink eyes shone. The Copper felt his joy and gave a little prrum for him.

“As I said, the choice is yours,” Tyr said. “I’m sure you’ve made a good one.”

He turned to the bruised drakes. “Don’t worry, you others; there’ll be for you glory enough in your turn. It’s always the ones that you’d never expect who become legends.”

Chapter 13

The Copper remained longer in NeStirrath’s part of the Drakwatch caves than most. Krthonius joined an Upper World sissa who patrolled the plateau on the rocky slopes covering the Lavadome. Aubalagrave served on the river beneath the wings of the griffaran, as part of a new aquatic sissa protecting their nests from raiders.

Drakes came and went. They usually had only one or two others, and never more than six. Each time a review was held, SiDrakkon or one of the wingless Drakwatch leaders walked up and down in front of the drakes, and each time a drake left. Once, after a bloody battle with a company of elvish mercenaries that resulted in the destruction of a sissa before help from the griffaran could arrive, they took every drake out of the training caves—except for the Copper.

He practiced leadership of his drakes under NeStirrath’s tutelage. He learned to praise in public and reprimand any first offense in private. He rewarded group efforts with group plea-sures: After particularly successful brawling raids on the ore bins of the Firemaidens, he’d let his drakes have a “sun day” on the water ring. Of course, the same went for punishments. When his drakes woke to find their own ore supply emptied in a stealthy Firemaiden raid in return, a taunting note reminding them that a drakka named Nilrasha had left a noisome present in the washing pool, he gave the Drakwatch thralls a rest day and set his drakes to work cleaning out the thrall pens, washing and airing bedding. His bats got their fill of bedbugs.

After the drake who’d fallen asleep on watch fished out the turd with his lips, of course.

The bats thrived, and grew to know Imperial Rock better than the Copper did, for they flew around the upper levels, hunting insects, or flitted out into the Lavadome in search of tied livestock.

The adult bats aged quickly, in the manner of rodents. Mamedi dropped eventually. Thernadad grew old, almost blind and deaf, but his appetite, and that of his brother’s, never flagged.

The trio of young bats—the Copper called them Big Ear, Spike Hair, and Wide Nose for their most prominent features—grew into truly colossal bats, bigger than Thernadad and his brother put together. The Copper suspected they sneaked dragonblood when they could.

NeStirrath had him apply his energy to the drakes as a sort of assistant, saving the old dragon’s saa wear on the longer hikes and expeditions.

The Copper made the best of his time, plaguing NeStirrath with questions about the Lavadome, draconic history, even how he came to lose his wings.

“It was in the civil wars, of course. Dragon family against dragon family, a terrible business. It was an aerial duel. A Skotl-clan dragon named AgMemdius tore into my back. Most dragons would be satisfied with just crippling a wing, but he wanted me to fall to my death. The Tyr himself pulled me out of my fall, and we splashed into a lake together. In the end we reconciled only when the blighters rose.”

“How did the Tyr come to lead the dragons here?”

“Strange you should ask that. Rethothanna is creating something she calls a history—it’s like a lifesong, only you sing it about someone else—and she’s on me like a leech. Seems a waste. If you’re so wretched you don’t have any deeds to sing of, better to die trying for a few lines of your own than reciting someone else’s laudi. Anklenes,” he finished with a growl.

“What does she want from you?”

“The lines of my lifesong about the war between the Skotl and the Wyrr and the Anklenes. I hardly know her, and here I’m supposed to spew out my lifesong as though she were my poor Esthea? Just seems wrong.”

NeStirrath always darkened at the mention of his mate. The Copper didn’t know the circumstances, only that she was dead.

“Tell them to me, your honor. I’ll go over there and deliver it for you, and bring back any questions. I’ve been curious about their hill; I’d be glad of the errand.”

“Dragons set too much on appearances. Why not? You’re practically a son to me. We’d have been proud to hatch you. You’re a quality drake. I feel much better now, having one I can trust. Among dragons trust is more seldom shared than even gold.”

The Copper gulped. Usually NeStirrath was finding fault with the sharpness of his saa, or telling him to always poke his head over a ridge’s crestline and examine the other side closely before crossing, lest game be scared away or enemies forewarned, or barking at him to take brief naps when in the field and save real sleep for safe, well-guarded caves.

“I’m not much for wordplay—that’s an Anklene pastime—but here are the parts:

When CuTar’s sons in battle met

One perch but we nine who sought

Two-score dragons fell to earth.

In Rednight’s reckoning fought

Three lines at war for power’s pride

Black murder just a tool

AgMemdius struck, my hatchlings died

A bloody cave I found

An anguished roar, a wish for death

I sought my bloodstained foe

And over Kog’s hill, trading breath

We perished, each aflame…

It went on for quite some time, about how the dragons fought to rule the great cave. Meanwhile an alliance of dwarves, demen, and blighter thralls took advantage and struck, attempting to recapture the Lavadome. But a dragon named FeHazathant rallied them, made peace between the lines, and organized the dragons according to their abilities.

Old RaHurath, unable to fly without first dropping from a height, called on his old friends the griffaran, who helped turn the tide when the dwarves attacked Imperial Rock. FeHazathant himself, hiding a grievous spear wound, flew from point to point, rallying dragons and convincing them to abandon their caves and treasures for a last stand atop Black Rock. A beautiful dragonelle named Tighlia went bravely into the blighter camp, ostensibly to negotiate, but instead sowed discord between the blighter army and their allies, so they quit the battle with cries of “betrayal” when they suffered a reverse. EmLar, a slender, scaled gray born an Anklene thrall and a grandsire of Nivom, was put in charge of the drakes. He had them bury themselves in the gravel of the lower passages. The drakes trapped the demen’s storming column, collapsing a wall that trapped half the demen forces inside the rock, and took turns volleying flame at any others who tried to get in to reinforce them.

“They died in these chambers. That’s where we got many of these skulls.”

The Copper repeated back the song. NeStirrath corrected him, and he repeated it back again almost perfectly. The first few lines still intrigued him.

“You wanted to be Tyr?” he asked.

“I was young. I wouldn’t take it now if it came with a river of gold. Dragons are always quarreling, and no matter how wisely the Tyr settles matters, both parties grumble and blame his judgment.”

The Copper had never been in the strange, smooth hill of the Anklenes before. He and the Drakwatch had seen it from every angle on the ground, and once he’d looked down on it from the Imperial Resort on a botanical tour of the gardens, but he’d never walked past the twin statues of robed hominids, one holding a lamp and the other a quill and scroll, and up to its entrance.

He paused there and let Harf catch up.

Flat spaces yawned at the base of the statues. According to NeStirrath, there’d once been statues of dragons crouched beneath the figures on their pillars, but the dragons found the arrangement vaguely offensive—hominids towering above dragons? The statues were moved to more illustrious accommodations on the Imperial Resort. Now they looked down on the Anklene hill.

The base of the Anklene hill—if hill was the right word, for it was too regular to be a natural formation of the cavern and seemed too big for anyone to have constructed it—was exactly square. It sloped away from its base, at first very slowly, but then the angle increased until the four sides met at the peak. Viewed from the entrance, the peak seemed very high and far-off.

The hill was coated with pink-white stone, lined and divided like good plump meat. The Copper passed under the statues on their columns and approached the entrance, a portal that mimicked the peak shape of the entrance. He saw—and smelled—lights burning within.