“Good,” SiMevolant said. “I want to introduce some wise counsel who will guarantee our dignity and security for generations to come. Mmmmmm? I present our new ally, recently sent here from the Alliance of the Golden Circle.”

A tall hominid in black scale armor stepped from behind the curtains and strode forward so he stood next to SiMevolant. He had gray hair flecked here and there with black, and a slightly darker beard hanging from a scarred face.

The Copper recognized the armor, the weapons, the face.

The Dragonblade stood before the audience.

Chapter 27

Tighlia turned again, knocking over two members of the Drakwatch.

“How dare you! How dare you!” Every scale stood straight up on her skin, her wings half-opened as they shook with fury; her griff rattled, and slime poured out each side of her mouth.

“On the shelf where my mate stood,” she continued, hardly able to get the words out. “You bring a human arrayed for war? A spear and a drawn sword, atop the Black Rock? No man may dare stand on such hallowed stone!” “Not any human, Tighlia,” the Copper said. “He kills dragons for a living.”

The Dragonblade tipped his spear forward just a little. Some of the audience squeezed out of the audience room; others shoved their way forward.

“I expected to be challenged,” the Dragonblade said. “That it comes from an aged female surprises me.”

“She’s under the impression she’s still a personage of consequence,” SiMevolant said.

“Are you going to come down, man, or will I have to soil my mate’s memory by spilling your blood where he used to stand?”

“I’ve no wish to kill. I made my peace with dragons years ago. But a wise man convinced me your kind can be saved, if properly led and channeled. I don’t want to begin my governorship here with blood.”

“Governorship!” Tighlia roared, shaking the timbers all the way to the roof, and jumped.

She jumped well for a dragon her size, and against an ordinary man, even a warrior, she would have turned him into pulp and black blood against the obsidian stone of the Rock.

The Dragonblade set his spear and she impaled herself upon it. He rolled out from under her, on his feet with sword out as easily as a falling cat righted itself. The sword flashed up once, and liquid fire spilled across the Tyr’s shelf, a second time down and the Copper saw the gruesome white of the bones of her spine.

Tighlia collapsed, all of her going limp at once—save for her tail and twitching saa, which jerked and shuddered as though trying to fight on.

SiMevolant looked down at her. “What’s that, Granddam?…Well, first, I don’t believe in curses; second…Oh, dear, you’re gone. I must learn to make my points more quickly.”

“I wish she had stayed at home and enjoyed her wine,” Imfamnia said.

Liquid fire ran off the Tyr’s shelf. To the Copper, the events on the Tyr’s shelf seemed a horizon distant, yet etched in vivid detail. His head whirled.

“Sand. At once—now,” Imfamnia called, lifting a curtain out of the way with her tail to keep it from catching fire.

“Are there any more challenges?” the Dragonblade asked. A drake tried to step forward, but NeStirrath pressed his heavy sii on the youth’s tail.

The Dragonblade retrieved a decorative, jewel-encrusted goblet from the Tyr’s display of trophies and knelt beside Tighlia. He filled his cup with the blood leaking out of her neck and drank, smacking his lips afterward.

“Our future is in alliances, not war,” SiMevolant said to the shocked assembly. “United with these men, no power in the two worlds may threaten us. Let all who doubt this truth remember the fate of Tighlia. Now begins a golden era, begun by a golden dragon. Light the beacons, NoSohoth.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the Dragonblade. “The union forever!”

Ibidio slipped up next to the Copper. “I must speak to you,” she whispered, then switched to mind-speech. If you still live tomorrow, go to the hill of the Anklenes. Once inside, ask for the senior doorwarden. Tell him this: “Immortal Memory.”

The Copper was still too shocked to do anything but nod. The swirl of memories, of fears, of regrets, of pain brought by the Dragonblade’s slaying of Tighlia, had left him clouded.

“Immortal Memory,” he thought back to her. If I still live?

In the lore of the Lavadome, the hours were afterward known as the Night of the Desperate Deaths.

To those who knew only vaguely of events within the Imperial Resort, the first sign of them was when two beacons were lit atop the Rock, burning a bright blue as though by magic—the Copper knew very well it was dwarvish chemicals, but what sort of mix the humans who lit the beacons used, he never could remember, despite all the pleadings and urgings of the Anklenes.

And with that, hag-ridden dragons flew into the Lavadome in two long lines.

Perhaps a score of dragons, knowing the war gossip that had been spreading ever since the Copper’s arrival with the news of Anaea, realized what the invasion portended and took to the air to meet it.

No dragon who fought that night lived.

Black Rock was emptied of all dragons save for the Imperial line, who remained in the Imperial Resort in a nebulous role between leaders and hostages. The allies occupied the best caves and the best galleries, save for the top level and the Gardens, where SiMevolant, his widowed-and-mated Imfamnia, and the governor-general remained.

And the ubiquitous NoSohoth.

Atop the rock, as the hag-ridden dragons performed military evolutions, showing their skill, the most dispirited banquet in Lavadome history was held. The food—exquisite and tender. The wine—unparalleled by anything that had come before, thanks to exotic captured vintages brought in by the Andam, the Men of the Golden Circle.

It was a brave young drake who took the first bite. The rest of the company watched anxiously for signs of poisoning as they nibbled on bits of greenstuff, onions, and ores.

The Copper, never a fan of banquets and unable to enjoy the flesh of so many limbs and sides that looked like Rhea, sat in the garden and tried to think.

One thing the display of force and flying skill did offer him: a chance to count their numbers. Three-score dragons and riders, and another half-score of dragons on lines attached to the others, bearing baggage or supplies.

A few wings over forty, using the ten-count numbering system of the dwarves Rayg had been teaching him.

He did his best to overhear some of the conversation between SiMevolant and the Dragonblade. Evidently some kind of long-planned war had begun. They flew from a fastness in the north, and had just seized a sort of floating city on the Inland Ocean. Holding the Lavadome would give them a third hold for rest and organization in the south.

The Dragonblade filled SiMevolant’s ears with praise about his foresight as a dragon and the heights his leadership would allow the Drakines to reach.

The Copper almost wanted to warn SiMevolant of the fine words that marched in front of betrayals, but when one gathered such snakes to one’s bosom, one had to learn about being bitten.

He slunk off into the greenery and became violently sick.

The next day he did as Ibidio requested and went to the Anklene hill. He asked for the head doorwarden and gave him the signal phrase. The warden took him down a short ramp and stuck an odd metal spike into a crevice under a cast of a blighter’s face, and the wall clicked.

He showed the Copper where to push, and soon he found himself in an underground chamber designed for dragon-sized creatures, with low ledges around the walls, fine sand on the floors, and a water cistern fed by a drip in the roof. There was also a tiled sanitary room with a gutter.

Rethothanna was already there, waiting with Ibidio.

“I don’t understand,” the Copper said. “Is this a conspiracy? If we packed this room with dragons atop one another, there wouldn’t be enough to fight the hag-riddens.”

“Well said, RuGaard,” Ibidio said. “That’s just what they are.”

Rethothanna drew a claw across the sand, making a furrow. “This group was started…Perhaps you should tell him, Ibidio.”

“After the death of my mate,” Ibidio said sternly, “I suspected an assassination. He came back from the wars injured, yes, but he was a strong dragon who always recovered quickly, from even greater injuries than those I saw that last time. Then his wounds suddenly quit healing, became infected, and he died. Even the Anklenes said they’d seen nothing like it.”

“No more than seven dragons ever belonged to this group,” Rethothanna said. “One from each hill, and Ibidio from the Imperial Resort. We had Skotl, Wyrr, and Anklene members. All with one thing in common: love of my mate.”

“And now you have an outcast of no particular line,” the Copper said. “Even my name was once another’s.”

Others trickled in, at what seemed like long intervals. Finally NeStirrath arrived.

“Why, RuGaard too! You never seemed the conspirator type,” NeStirrath said.

“We have two new members tonight,” Ibidio said, with seven other dragons sitting around the edges of the room. “And we mourn the loss of UlBannesh in the fighting yesterday. A brave dragon. He will be missed.”