“But without gaining security in the Upper World, there will be no existence in the Lower. Does anyone doubt this?”

If they did, they didn’t say so.

“So will we have peace or war with the Ghioz?” He looked down at the young Firemaiden at the front.

“You, you—”

“Takea,” Nilrasha supplied.

“Takea. What do you think the choice should be? Will you speak for the Firemaids?”

The drakka paled, and her tail twitched nervously as she found her voice. “I say they’ve not given us a choice.”

This one bears watching, the Copper thought.

“My thoughts exactly,” the Copper said. “What is our choice? Life at the pleasure of the Red Queen?”

“Settle it quickly, then. One strong blow,” HeBellereth said. “Unite the Aerial Host, the Drakwatch, the Firemaids and fly to Ghioz and lay waste to their capital.”

“No,” the Copper said. “The Queen tried to provoke us into exactly that move, I believe. They’ve made war against us at the edges of our empire, sapping our strength. I suggest we return their favor. We will attack them on the horsedowns and the savannahs. We will close mountain passes and rivers.”

The Copper sensed their growing excitement. NoSohoth moved to put more oliban on the braziers, but the Copper stilled him with a glance. Now was the time to channel their anger.

“Dragons of the Lavadome. When I became your Tyr I swore an oath to all of you. That we would live to see an awakening of dragonkind. There’s only one direction for dragons to go, and that is up. For years there’s been talk that one day, when we were strong enough, we’d return to the surface united and resolved to overcome any difficulty. I believe that time is now. Let us inaugurate a new age for dragons.”

He raised himself as high as he could, and spread his wings slightly so that all could see him.

“Will you follow me back to the surface?”

The Lavadome roared their assent.

“In the memory of our martyred hatchlings, let us strike.”

They liked the sound of that.

“In the memory of our fallen fighters, let us strike.”

They liked that even better. HeBellereth roared. Even little Takea hopped up and down, dodging waving necks and tails, growling.

“In the memory of our ancestors’ glory and in the hope of our hatchlings’ future—let us return! United we resolve. United we overcome. United we strike!”

They roared so as to shake the Lavadome. Even NoSohoth and the thralls joined the chorus.

BOOK THREE

Overcome

OH, BATTLE’S THE EASIEST THING IN THE WORLD. SMASH ’EM UP. THEN

SMASH ’EM SOME MORE, THEN STOMP WHAT’S LEFT. IT’S THE BEFORES

AND AFTERS WHAT CAUSE ALL THE TROUBLE.

—AuRye, grandsire to AuRon

ate,

As many suitors as stripes, but never to ma

Chapter 17

“In some months it blows out. In other months it blows in,” Ayafeeia said. “The Anklenes told me why once, but I’ve forgotten. All that matters is that you’ll have an easier time of it with the wind passing out.”

AuRon noticed that she looked at a high rock as she spoke. He searched, saw nothing, then glanced over at her.

“My sister was mated here,” she said. “To your brother.”

“I’d rather think him your Tyr than my brother. Nilrasha is lovely, though this seems an odd place. Is it because of the privacy?”

“Oh, no, it’s not a tradition. Mated dragons usually fly to the surface in the south, to the tips at World’s End.”

“Then why here?”

She told him, briefly. A crippled dragon and a sickly mate, jokes the whole way there and back.

“I was closer to Halaflora than—we don’t speak of my other sister. She saw a quality in RuGaard. Have you ever heard the expression ‘deephearted’?”

“No.”

“It’s one of the virtues we try to instill in the Firemaids. It means a dragon who thinks about others more than himself. I see it in our Tyr. I see the same in you.”

“I’d be curious to know how you came to that conclusion.”

“For whom?”

“Me. I’m curious.”

“I saw how you looked to your sister at the assembly.”

He should be saying good-bye, but he should probably rest a few more moments before attempting an ascent. “Is concern for a sibling so strange here?”

“One sometimes wonders. But not just her—that young dragonelle next to her, and the others. No fear, no anger, just interest. I never thought you were deciding which part of the hide was the most vulnerable.”

“It may have been that smoke in the air. It leaves one relaxed and fog-headed.”

“That’s oliban. Very valuable. Don’t be surprised that NoSohoth uses so much of it. It’s a rare commodity. His family controls the trade.”

“Fascinating. But I must be off.”

“Are you with us, then?”

“I delivered the Red Queen’s message. She owes me a reward. I’m off to collect it.”

“Don’t eat any gold of hers. She’d poison it.”

AuRon took a breath. “I’m after blood now, not coin.”

With that he launched himself into howling confusion.

He felt like a leaf caught in an updraft. The wind slid him this way and that, threatening to send him crashing into the side of the tunnel.

Perhaps if he’d been a scaled dragon it would have been an easier flight, since the wind roaring up the shaft would not have pushed him so easily. But then again, his weight allowed him to ride the current, follow it as it swirled through gours and sword-edged scars.

He took painful bashes to each wingtip as the current sent him careening toward the blue patch of night sky above.

Out of desperation, he misaligned his wings, sending him into a spin. Though dizzying, it kept him to the center of the shaft.

And if he crashed into a rock, he’d be spared the moment of horror before the impact.

As the patch of lonely sky breaking the dark grew, the shaft widened, and he found himself having to flap his wings hard to keep rising.

An ascent at this angle is almost impossible for a scaled dragon for longer than a brief moment or two of furious wingwork, even with such a tailwind. AuRon found his body swelling with each deep breath, his throat one long wound forcing the rush of air in and out.

Out, with night sky all around, with the loom of a shorn-topped volcano above, dusted with snow and pocked with ice. AuRon, curious, circled up and over the crater.

Despite the smokes rising from tears in the side of the mountain, he had a good view down into the mouth of the crater. A lake lay there, with a thin bulge at the center that seemed to be a mound of ice, but he suspected it was in fact the crest of the strange crystal dome.

Off to the west a second volcano steamed, connected to the mountain by way of a rocky saddle.

It took him a moment to obtain his bearings and evaluate the air currents, for the stars were strange this far south. Once he knew north from south, he turned his neck for Ghioz.

An hour of flight passed and he idled in an updraft as the dry ground north of the Lavadome’s mountain bled heat into the night sky. He spotted a watering hole shining below and started a slow circle down to see if it was safe to drink.

Motion caught his eye to the north. Two roc-riders, flying hard and a goodly distance apart, straight for the mountain of the Lavadome.

Something about the distance between the two bothered him. All the roc-riders he’d seen flying until now had kept close. These flew to observe as much sky and desert as possible, and still stay in visual communication with each other.

He alighted, trusting to shadow and coloration to conceal him from the fliers’ eyes—hominid and avian.

A pebble-backed desert lizard with two rows of horns running along his back hissed a warning that he was poison to eat. AuRon glared at him—he’d not come hunting lizards.

Then he had a thought.

“See those birds above?” he asked.

“Too big for prey,” the lizard said. “I hunt jumpmice.”

“Do you see such birds often?”

“Wrong color for griffaran,” the lizard said, rolling one eye skyward while the other kept watch on the dragon. “No, not see such birds before. Hawk and carrion-wing dayhunters.”

AuRon wondered what two such hunters of the Red Queen, flying hard for the Lavadome, could be seeking in the night.

Had the Red Queen somehow learned of the hour and place of his departure?

Hardly moving, even to breathe, he let them pass overhead.

When they were thin black lines against the sky again he caught the lizard’s attention.

“Thank you for the information. Is the water nearby wholesome?”

“Best drink in the world,” the lizard said.

“I thank you again. Good luck with the jumpmice.” AuRon raised a saa high and stomped, hard. Tiny rodents bounded away in panic. The lizard scrambled after them with an excited hiss.

AuRon resolved to fly low and slow for the rest of the night, and hide out of the sun.