Usually males fought for a female once she had indicated she was willing. And when the strongest male defeated his rivals and rose to join her in flight, he usually had to face the final challenge of dominating the female. Dragon queens did not mate with weaklings. Nor would a drake accept as a mate a docile female. Why mingle one’s bloodline with that of a bovine female, whose offspring might lack the true fire of a dragon? So to be straddled and humped by a dim-witted and deformed creature was an insult beyond bearing. She had rounded on him, snapping and slapping at him ineffectually with her dwarfed wings. At first, it had more inflamed than deterred him. He had continued to come at her, muddy necked and with his small eyes blazing with febrile lust. He had tried to clutch her to him, but a desperate swipe of her tail had knocked him off his feet and into the ever-present mud. Misshapen as he was, he could not easily right himself, and she had stormed away from him, down to the river, to wash his muddy paw prints from her back and haunches. She wished the acid waters of the river could have washed the humiliation from her as well.

She settled herself for sleep, but it did not come to her. Instead, memories flickered in her mind, filling her with sadness—memories of flight, of mating, of the distant beaches where her ancestors had laid their eggs and then basked on the hot sand. Terrible longings replaced her sadness. “Kelsingra,” she said softly to herself, and to her surprise, memories of the place flooded her. To describe it as a city by the river could not begin to do it justice. It had been a place constructed as much with the mind and heart as with stone and beam. The entire city had been laid out to reflect that both Elderling and dragon lived amicably there. The streets had been wide, the doors to the public buildings ample, and the art on those walls and around the fountains had celebrated the companionship enjoyed by both dragons and Elderlings.

And there was something else, she recalled slowly. There was a well there, a well deeper than the river that bordered the city. A bucket dropped into its depths sank past ordinary water to a deeper river of a most extraordinary substance. Even a tiny amount of it was dangerously intoxicating for an Elderling and possibly fatal for a human. But dragons could drink from it. She closed her eyes and let the old memories of other dragons rise to the forefront of her mind. An Elderling woman, gowned in green and gold, turned the crank on the windlass of a well and brought up a bucket full of gleaming silver drink. It was emptied into a polished trough, and another brought up, and another, until the vessel of polished stone brimmed with silver. In her dreams Sintara drank of it, the silver running through her veins, filling her heart with song and her mind with poetry. She allowed herself to float on the exhilarating memories, leaving the reality of her present life behind.

In this other remembered life, she was a queen dragon who preened herself, her silver-dripping muzzle spreading the fine sheen over her feathery scales. The green-and-gold robed woman rejoiced in letting her drink her fill of the silvery stuff. Together they left the well and strolled through the bright sunlit streets of the city. They passed lavish squares where fountains leaped and played, and brightly robed denizens of the city greeted her with bows and curtsies. The market was in full voice, filled with the songs of minstrels and the dickering of merchants and customers. Scents of cooking meat and sacks of spices, rare perfumes, and pungent herbs filled her nostrils. When she and her companion reached the river’s edge, they bid each other the fond farewells that old friends share. And then the queen dragon spread and limbered her gleaming scarlet wings. She crouched low on her powerful hindquarters and then sprang effortlessly into the air. Three, four, five beats of her wings and the wind off the river captured her and flung her aloft. She caught the current of warm summer air and soared on it.

The crimson queen blinked transparent lids over her whirling gold eyes. The wind slapped her, but the blow changed to a caress as she banked into it and rode it ever higher. Warm summer sunlight kissed her back, and the wide world spread out below her. It was a golden land, a wide river valley that gave, on both sides, to rolling hills dotted with oak groves and then to steeper cliffs and finally craggy mountains. On the flat lands along the river, cultivated fields of grain alternated with pastures where kine and sheep grazed. A fine road of smooth black stone bordered one side of the river, with tributary paths and byways wandering out to the more rural districts. Beyond the settlements of humanity, in the foothills and the narrow valleys that threaded back into the mountains, game was plentiful.

On the updrafts over the hills, other dragons soared, their glistening hides winking like jewels in the summer sunlight. One, a pale-green dragon with gold mottling on his haunches and shoulders, trumpeted to her. A thrill ran through her as she recognized her most recent mate. She answered his greeting and saw him bank to meet her. As soon as he had committed to his turn, she mocked him with a shrill call and beat her own wings powerfully to gain altitude. He gave a deep cry of challenge to her in response and came after her.