“When he started assisting his father in Tyr duties, I took over the Aerial Host. My name back then—oh, it doesn’t matter. I’m DharSii. I like it better anyway.”

He watched a new stream of molten rock start down the side of the Lavadome, bright and almost yellow in its heat. “My command of the Aerial Host is better remembered now than I thought it at the time. While living it, it seemed as though I was making one dreadful error after another. Each victory seemed to cost me dragons, yet when we’d return to the Lavadome we flew around the Imperial Resort to roars of praise. Seems a hundred years ago. Perhaps it was.”

“You don’t look so old.”

“It’s the waters of the Sadda-Vale. I think that’s why the summer palace was up there; they’re filled with minerals dragons need, I believe.”

“I could use a few mouthfuls I think. All this back and forthing and keeping everyone placated—it would tax old Rainfall’s patience.”

“You must tell me more of him, sometime.”

“Finish your story.”

“It’s not a happy ending, I’m afraid. AgGriffopse and I became, I suppose you would say, rivals. The Tyr liked us both a great deal, I believe. His blood called to AgGriffopse, but I’d like to think that part of him considered me as a possible future Tyr. You always want to look back at yourself in the best possible light, but I find myself unable to do that. I believe I was ambitious, perhaps too ambitious.

“The Tyr had a daughter, as well. Enesea. She was silly and headstrong, decent looking enough but a little on the weak side—never flew for exercise, in that she resembles our friend Imfamnia. Not surprising, Enesea being her aunt.

“If ever a dragon courted, so I courted Enesea. I gave her merits she didn’t deserve, though I will admit she always made me laugh. In the right way, through wit, not in the wrong way, through foolishness. She enjoyed mentioning other young dragons as rivals, but I believe in the end she would have had me. Not from affection or real respect based on knowing each other’s strengths. No, it was status. My position in the Aerial Host made some of her friends sigh and hoot and ripple-wing when I was about, and she enjoyed their jealousy to the fullest.

“I was working myself up to sing my lifesong to her—an old-fashioned proposal is best, don’t you agree?”

Wistala did agree, most sincerely, but perhaps Dharsii was blind to just how much she was like-minded.

“But the moment never seemed to come,” he said. “One night, after a particularly wine-filled feast, we went for a flight around the river-ring. We were jostling and knock-winging. I was nipping at her tail and she was batting me about the face with her wingtip, young dragon play, when suddenly she threw herself into the cavern ceiling on some sharp rocks. I tried to assist her and she began to roar and call as if I’d been murdering her, and the next thing I knew there were some griffaran flying about and a pair of the Aerial Host on exercises were flying to my aid—

“She flew back to the Imperial Rock as quickly as her wings could carry her, bleeding all the way.

“Well, to make a very long and very angry story short, she accused me of attacking her. To this day I don’t know what was in her mind. Did she have a fit of some kind and hurt herself? And when I tried to support her she thought it was a mating embrace—or did she, from the very first, mean to hurt herself and go flying to the Tyr with a story that I’d attacked her.

“I do know this: She closeted herself with the Tyr’s mate, Tighlia, and wouldn’t see me. Looking back on it now, it seemed clever Tighlia meant to put at least one of us out of the line of succession—if she was very lucky, both, as things turned out—

“AgGriffopse went absolutely mad. That’s the only word for it. He challenged me to a death duel. No quarter given until one or the other of us would lie dead. Even if we were each too wounded to finish the other off, the one least able to have his limbs hold him up would be finished by the Ankelene duel-physician.

“So we met in the old dueling pit in the black of night, as was the tradition for a death duel.”

“Your wrath shouldn’t win…” Wistala said, quoting the first song her mother had sung to her hatchlings.

“Exactly,” DharSii said. “I’m surprised you know it. That’s an old song of—well, I believe it dates back to before Silver-high. A very old song indeed.”

“There’s some truth in it. That’s probably why it’s lingered on all these years.”

“It could be phrased more felicitously. I suspect we’ve lost a few words over the years and substituted worse ones. I didn’t know anyone remembered it outside the Sadda-Vale.”

“My mother did.”

“Ahh. Well, yes, AgGriffopse’s wrath won. But he also lost, in a way. He stood there, bellowing and stamping out his rage over the insult to his sister—an insult I knew I was innocent of, at least as innocent as a young dragon could be with my intentions of making her my mate. AgGriffopse was a fine dragon, but he did let himself run on a bit. He was yelling to the roof about how he’d tear out my liver and feed it to the fish in the river ring when I took my chance. I lashed out with a sii and caught him across the throat.

“The wound wasn’t fatal. I know some accused me of poisoning my claws with a venomer’s spit, but I’d never resort to such tactics. Besides, if I had, he’d have died within minutes, and it’s my understanding that he was recovering and died from an infection or some such—that is, if Tighlia didn’t do him in. But don’t listen to rumors. The duel was fairly started, he just decided to waste his breath snarling at me rather than fighting.

“He lost blood and consciousness with it, thought his neck hearts were still bleeding. As it was a death duel, one of us had to die, and I decided that it would be better him than me.”

“But I’d heard he lingered—you didn’t finish him?” Wistala asked.

“I didn’t have the heart. He had been my friend. Even when we were rivals for the Tyr’s admiration, we were still friends. I can’t believe that whichever one of us FeHazathant chose to succeed him would have become a bitter enemy of the other. I’d like to think either of us would have rejoiced. But who’s to say—dragons don’t care to lose. At least dragons worth the content of their gold-gizzard.”

“So, what, it was suspended until he recovered and you’d fight again? That seems—”

“No, nothing like that. One of us had to die. I just decided it would be me.”

“You mean?”

“Yes, I died, after a fashion. It was all perfectly in keeping with Lavadome tradition. I renounced my name, all my laudi, and my position. I went into exile from the Lavadome. The dragon who’d led the Aerial Host was no more, his name was never spoken—I became DharSii, quick-claw, a criminal’s nickname. AgGriffopse had won the duel, and avenged the insult to his sister.”

“What happened to Enesea?”

“Again, that depends on which rumor you believe. I was long gone from the Lavadome by the time it happened, but some say she went mad and threw herself into the Wind Tunnel after AgGriffopse’s death. Others say she was wined into a stupor and told to fly up it. Still others say her body was simply dumped into it after her death. Whatever the cause, she was found at the bottom with a broken neck.”

“The poor Tyr. First his son, then his daughter.”

“I think he was blind to the evil close to him. Though I hear Tighlia gave a good account of herself at the end. She was the only dragon who resisted the Dragonblade and his puppet Tyr, at the end.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I returned to the Sadda-Vale. I angered Scabia by refusing to recognize any name but DharSii, and found NaStirath mated to Aethleethia. They were kind enough to me, but I still felt like an exile among them. But they keened that they needed coin—it’s the one mineral the Sadda-Vale lacks. We resort to chipping ores out of the slate there, but they don’t care for the work or the taste. I’ve hired myself out for wars to bring them coin. But never enough, they gobble it down and then it’s back to slate chipping.”

“You were doing that when we met.”

“You think I’d forgotten? You were the first new face there in ages. I’ve roved the world. But somehow I always find myself returning there, even if the company is a little distasteful. It’s one of the few places that still belongs to dragons—not that the trolls don’t give us some bother about it, but then a dragon needs a challenge now and then. But I like the sense that it’s ours. Don’t we deserve a few patches of land, too?”

Ours, we—DharSii, don’t you know that those words catch me in the throat, too? He was an intelligent dragon, spoke carefully when he did speak. He must be using them intentionally.

“You make me want to fly away with you there, now.”

“But you have duties to attend to,” DharSii said. “Watch your tail in this place, Wistala. And your throat. And your flanks, when you can spare the time.”