Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire (38 page)

Read Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire Online

Authors: E.E. Knight

BOOK: Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire
3.06Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“That’s a swarm of
griffaran
,” Wistala said. “Black as the pit. I prefer the old sort.”
“Don’t judge yet,” DharSii said. Wistala waited for him to elaborate, but he gave orders for the fast dragons to gain altitude and the slower ones to make for the Lavadome.
 
 
All at once the fight was upon them. The trolls and
griffaran
grew from distant dots to sets of claws and wings swooping through the air in an instant, it seemed. A
griffaran
raked a dragon—one of the Hypat contingent—across the flank and a red mist appeared and fell, spreading into nothingness. The crippled dragon plunged.
Another went down, one of the dragon tower contingent who’d flown south for the glory of battle. His flame gouted up in frustration. A troll smashed another dragon across the back with a massive fist and it folded horribly backward under the blow. Wistala plunged toward the troll, determined to destroy it. She loosed her fire but too soon, as the troll closed a wing and fell off fast to its left, avoiding the flame’s path. She managed to catch part of its wing with her tail nevertheless.
There were other black smears of dying dragon-flame in the sky. They’d done no damage to the enemy that she could see. Even the Aerial Host dragons hadn’t caused blood to rain down. Was this the death-flight of dragonkind?
Finally a troll fell, but it took a dragon with it. They went down together, both trailing wing skin and bone in a fluttering mass as they fell.
“We’re done for,” a dragon called.
“Hunting them is one thing, but this!”
Wistala watched one of the
griffaran
turn in pursuit of a dragon. The graceful female dragon turned tight, her wings, body, neck, and tail working together, and even her spinal fringe doing its duty to stabilize her in the air. The
griffaran
tried to match it, and like a runner losing his balance, the air went out from under it and it fluttered and fell in a confused manner for a moment before righting itself.
They’re body-heavy and underwinged,
Wistala thought.
NiVom and Imfamnia had made a mistake, tinkering with the
griffaran
. Nature is capable of perfection and adding dragon-blood means a subtraction somewhere else. They took a supremely deadly flier and made it tough and frightful, resistant to arrow and fire, but it had lost the lethal speed and maneuverability that made it such a threat to dragons. Flying against the
griffaran
was a contest between an osprey and a buzzard.
“Sloppy fliers. Like bumblebees! Don’t engage, hit light and dodge the counterstrike.”
“Pair off,” DharSii bellowed. “Pass word: Pair off! Just nip them at the wingtips!”
For the more experienced former warriors of the Aerial Host, the tactical advice wasn’t necessary. They’d already sniffed out these mutated
griffaran
’s weakness and were improvising methods for taking advantage of it.
One of the Lights—AuRon’s daughter Varatheela, by the look of it—flapped hard, her wingmate trying to keep up. She went straight at one of the glistening, reptilian
griffaran
. It raised its claws to meet her snout, but at the last moment she turned on her belly—a very dangerous move—and grabbed a
sii-
ful of feathers out of the edge of its wing as she passed.
Ungainly before, the dreadful
griffaran
plummeted like a duck with an arrow through its wing.
“Those edges are everything with a bird-wing,” DharSii said. He executed a dive and two
griffaran
swooped to follow. Extending legs, wings, tail, and even
griff
to their maximum, he slowed his pace in the air and they passed overhead, claws out and grasping at air. Both were marking DharSii’s course rather than each other and collided. A loose feather flew up and the two
griffaran
, senseless or dead, fell limp from the sky.
“I watched your brother making that move once,” DharSii said, watching with satisfaction as the
griffaran
struck the mountainside. “He slows himself more easily than I.”
NiVom must not have had much time to evaluate his new
griffaran
against live dragons. Of course, keeping secrets meant no one could tell you when you’ve gone wrong.
The trolls were another matter.
Don’t think of it as a battle. Think of it as a big hunt
.
“Same thing as our hunts, only in the air,” Wistala said. “One of us draws its attention, the other one strikes!”
“I’m first,” DharSii said.
He plunged into the path of a troll and spat whatever remnants of his firebladder he could—more to get the troll’s attention than in expectation of setting it alight. He made a convincing show attack, lashing out with quick flips of his wingtips and tail in a series of blows aimed at its stalked sense-organ cluster.
The troll rolled—an unexpected move—and its arms windmilled, striking DharSii hard in the side. DharSii sagged under the blow and a wing went folded, the sign of a bad injury to the back muscles or ribs.
Wistala, silently asking the sun and spirits to have it be a clever ruse, folded her wings and dove. She didn’t open them again, even when she struck the troll a hard body blow. She ripped with
sii
and
saa
, tearing the roots of the troll’s butterfly-like wings to shreds, felt it pounding her back, but she kept her wings closed tight as they fell like bloodily mating dragons.
The troll panicked and released her and she turned as she fell away, dodged a
griffaran
, and opened her wings again. DharSii fell in a tight series of spirals on his good wing, heading for the unforgiving mountainside beneath the Lavadome’s crest.
Chapter 20
 
W
ith Rayg and Imfamnia leading the way up, they climbed Imperial Rock.
“You’re welcome to the throne room, if you want to eat and rest for a bit. Regalia certainly has no use for it anymore. It’s cleaner than most quarters. Some of the lower levels are still a bit—damp,” Rayg said.
A troll led each of them. It held a thick piece of chain wrapped around their necks. One hard pull from the trolls just under the jaw and their vertebrae would snap.
“Each of you will do anything to keep the other alive,” Rayg said. “You won’t risk fighting us, because the trolls will throttle you. If you try to escape, I’ll get one. Which means I’ll get both of you.”
“Weakness indeed,” Imfamnia said.
“Yes, it’s better to partner with someone you despise,” AuRon said. “Perhaps you two will set the new social standard.”
Imfamnia laughed. “I’m remembering why she used to admire you.”
“What are you going to do with us?” AuRon asked.
“In memory of your kindly brother,” Rayg said, “we’ll keep you alive, but imprisoned. I need a few couples for breeding stock, after all. Someone has to produce my perfected dragons.”
Can we find the strength to die together, AuRon?
Natasatch asked.
I won’t be chained in the dark again
.
I won’t have my offspring declawed and desensitized
.
 
 
They led them up onto the gardens atop Imperial Rock and toward Rayg’s lab.
“I’m just going to do one minor operation,” Rayg said. “I’ll sever the muscles around your firebladder. Better safe than spontaneously combusted.”
“You gave us a scare, there, dragon,” the wizard continued “We weren’t really ready to move for a few years yet. I would have liked some more time to gather the rest of the sun-shard, but I have enough to control the Lavadome and see through the various veils of space and time.”
“Time? You can tell the future?”
“I’ll keep a few dragons alive, for distilling youth draughts. They won’t keep me going forever, of course, but a thousand-year lifespan should be enough for me to design an even more perfect vessel.”
I’d rather be back in the hands of the Wyrmaster,
Natasatch thought.
Or the Dragonblade. He was an honest enemy,
AuRon thought back
Rayg opened the door to his tower. The trolls pulled them in. AuRon saw rows of sharp, gleaming instruments on the wall. “And I’ll work on my ideal strain. The perfect amalgamation of dragon and hominid. The demen are close to the shape I have in mind. I think if I form a dragon-man and cross the two—”
“You and your breeding!” Imfamnia said. Or rather not Imfamnia but the Red Queen, speaking through Imfamnia’s body, AuRon had to remind himself. “Men are good enough for me—they learn for themselves and increase naturally.”
“They can be a little recalcitrant,” Rayg said. “Not quite as stiff-necked as dwarfs, or as dangerous as dragons.”
A gargolyle and a
griffaran
, both a little bloody about the wings and claws, waddled over and whispered, alternately, in Rayg’s ear.
“Well, we’ll have to do something else a little early,” Rayg said, reaching for a long crystal staff. He tapped it three times and it lit up, a brilliant, room-filling white light that seemed to clean AuRon’s skin of the troll-stink and blood from the dueling pit. The light was answered from a mini-sun above. The huge piece of the sun-shard that AuRon had once encountered in NooMoahk’s library that was resting at the top of his observation dome, warmed them like a flame.
“I do so hate uninvited guests,” Rayg said. “Best relocate the house.”
 
DharSii had made a hard landing on the mountainside. Far above, they could just see the rim of the crystal at the apex of the Lavadome.
“In one piece?” she asked.
“My head hurts too much to count,” he said. “Check for me, won’t you? ”
She nuzzled him,
griff
to
griff
.
“Who won?” he asked, looking up.
“I think both sides retreated,” Wistala said. “We might want to think about getting off this mountain. They might come after stragglers.”
The earth heaved beneath their feet. “What’s this?” Wistala cried.
The mountain bulged, for just a moment. Then, a thunder that shook the ground beneath their feet broke out. Cracks and fissures raced down the side of the mountain. Brown clouds shot into the sky. The air shimmered with released heat.
The Lavadome rose into the air, shedding boulders and mountainside the way a rising cormorant sheds water. Pieces of mountain slid off the faceted surface and fell in ruin into the crater below.
It was not a perfect circle, as she had thought when inside the upper half. The shape, if anything, reminded her of a jellyfish with an inverted forest of streamers beneath. The projections at the bottom followed no plan; some were longer, some shorter, thicker in some parts and thinner in others, with the irregularity of tree roots, save that all grew straight down and narrowed like fangs.
Yes, perhaps that was the way to describe it. A skull, vast beyond comprehension, hanging in the air, missing the lower mandible, so downward-growing teeth formed its base.
Wistala felt stupefied by the sight. She feared that if she tried to talk, nothing but gibberish would erupt.
“AuRon is in there!” she said.
“Go, Wistala,” DharSii said. “Go to him, if you must. But I fear Rayg has won. He’s learned how to use the sun-shard to channel the power of the Lavadome. Or perhaps not. It’s still here.”
“Where would it go?”
“Another time and place. I believe Anklemere came here from it. It might have been a vessel for traveling across time and space, the way humans cross the ocean in a ship, or it might have been a prison. I don’t believe Anklemere existed as you and I do—he was part of the Lavadome and the sun-shard.”
 
 
The interior of the Lavadome was suddenly, brilliantly lit. The rational side of AuRon’s brain knew what must have happened in all the trembling, lurching, falling dust and sudden wash of light outside the tower, but his gut refused to believe that anything as vast as the Lavadome could just lift itself up out of the crater it rested in.

Other books

Afternoon Raag by Amit Chaudhuri
Desire the Night by Amanda Ashley
Nitro Mountain by Lee Clay Johnson
The Lamplighter by Anthony O'Neill
Illusionarium by Heather Dixon
Christmas at Rose Hill Farm by Suzanne Woods Fisher
Running Dry by Wenner, Jody