The messenger was running on about another victory over the demen. Paskinix, the Deman-King, had requested an “accommodation in recognition of the change in circumstance.”
The Copper clacked his teeth good-humoredly. NoSohoth had probably coached the courier on his wordplay. Irascible old Paskinix, tough as a dug-in scale-tick, would have used blunter phrases. A canny warrior and formidable opponent, even in defeat he made a plea for peace sound like a demand.
“The old northeast passage lies open,” the courier continued. “The Star Tunnel echoed with the sound of your Aerial Host as they flew and broke the enemy. Now the Firemaids explore regions long-lost to dragonkind.”
At a mutter and a nod from NoSohoth, the messenger repeated his words, roaring out the news. The fierce noise elicited growls and stamps of approval that seemed to require a nod of acknowledgment from their Tyr.
Just so, the Copper thought. When he heard word of the size of the Star Tunnel, he asked HeBellereth if he thought the Aerial Host could be brought into action. Dragons could ferry elite human thralls about easily, or men could fight from dragonback.
“Captives?” the Copper asked.
“Ten claw-score or more and two of their generals. One general is wounded and seems likely to die.”
“Have them brought to the Lavadome. Paskinix will have to come to Imperial Rock if he wants them back.”
“HeBellereth sent them along behind me in those cockleshell boats of theirs, under beak and claw of the griffaran. They should be arriving at the river ring even now.”
“Thank you for such a complete account,” the Copper said, and the courier swelled.
“So large and dangerous a group of captives should be supervised,” NoFhyriticus, a scaleless gray Anklene who served as the court physician, said. “Demen have surrendered before, just to get spies or assassins inside the Lavadome.” The Copper liked having him around because he rarely spoke, but when he did it was something sensible.
“Perhaps my nephew SuLam—” CoTathanagar began.
“I’ll go meet them myself,” the Copper said, stretching. Maybe exercise would settle his stomach. It had been a hearty feast last night, three bullocks to commemorate Tyr FeHazathant’s ending of the civil wars and peace in the Lavadome. Perhaps the kern was an irresistible force meeting an immovable mass of roast hides. His mate, Nilrasha, Queen of Imperial Rock, called his selection of fried hides crass when he should be claiming the tyrloin.
“Offal fit for kitchen thralls and cave-mouth beggars,” she’d said, even after he told her that the taste brought back memories of his days in the Drakwatch caves. In some ways Nilrasha struck him as a regrettable queen, but she always spoke her mind. Few other dragons on the Imperial Rock could make that claim. The Copper thought Tyr FeHazathant’s Queen Tighlia, dead but no more forgotten than her besung mate, a model, at least in her public behavior. Nilrasha relished the glitter of her position more than its duties.
Though the thralls loved her. They called her Queen Ora, after an old nickname the blighters had given her during the fighting in Bant. It meant “lucky.” She liked to award thirty days’ rest from duties or relocation to the sunny Upholds to thralls who showed good judgment or skill or even a pleasing song, and she left punishment of lawbreakers to her mate.
He was skeptical at first, but her system did get more work out of the thralls, if they had a chance at reward, though there were others who maintained you’d get twice the sweat with a simple threat of being turned into a feast. Problem was, she also bestowed her blessings on thralls belonging to others, which caused grumbling in court.
But at the end of the wing, he admired her. She was the one dragon in all the Lavadome who never brought him a complaint.
Being Tyr reminded him of the snake-cave where he’d met his bats, three claw-score years ago and three. Every time you broke the back of one, another slithered silently up behind you and struck.
He knew he was a young Tyr, a compromise from different factions because he’d arrived at the Lavadome a hero of the griffaran and a stranger to each line and faction. His role in the rising against the dragon-riders four years ago settled him into Lavadome legend. The dragon-lords of the Lavadome’s cave-stitched hills thought he’d be pliable with bits of egg practically still sticking to his scale. His bad eye and withered forelimb brought pity, contempt—some even called him cripple or used his old Drakwatch nickname “Batty”—in private.
But the old Tyr FeHazathant believed in him enough to issue his blessing before he died. Or so he’d been told.
That was the worst part of being Tyr. Not being able to trust the words others spoke.
Which is why he set off to see the demen prisoners himself.
He set out with a few of the court and his griffaran guard. They made an impressive procession, with their Tyr at the head of the file. One of the advantages of copper scales was their versatility. They looked blood-colored in the low light of tallow dips, and in the brighter light of the vast underground of the Lavadome, lit by rivers of liquid rock flowing down the mysterious walls of its horizon-wide crystalline bubble, they positively burned like embers. When polished to a fine smoothness by soft wire brush and scouring-rag by his body-thralls, of course.
“Are you leaving Imperial Rock, my love?” Nilrasha, his mate, asked, alighting. If anything, she was sleeker and more beautiful than when she’d first sprouted wings, every scale trimmed and polished, scale around her eyes subtly painted and etched. She’d been drawn down from the gardens atop the Rock by the circling griffaran.
“Just to the river ring. I haven’t been out enough lately. I need exercise. My digestion . . .”
“I’m feeling it too,” she said. “We are in sympathy. I was just thinking a swim would clear it. But must half the court follow us?”
“There are prisoners to see. A curiosity.”
If he’d been feeling well that rising the trip would have been a pleasant walk, especially with his beautiful mate drawing attention away from his limp with her playful chatter and shifts of wing and tail.
The Lavadome burned gloriously today as the northern lines of glowing liquid earth ran down the transparent crystal, a vast bubble that had created the Lavadome in old years beyond count. At the top it peeked from the volcano’s caldera so that frosted sunlight was admitted. More marvelous still was the way it dispersed and conducted the heat of the lines of lava so the entire dome simply became pleasantly warm. Normally the south had the better view, but the flow sometimes rerouted itself.
But instead of enjoying mate and view, he dragged a sour stomach as he had to pass the jagged barbs of Skotl hill, so naturally dragons great and small crept out of their holes, drawn by the bright wing-feathers of the griffaran bodyguard advertising his trip as they traced endless double-loops above him.