Above, the deman parted, messily.

Other griffaran of the bodyguard swooped down, batting at the demen with their wings, knocking them back into the mud and among the boats.

It occurred to him that from behind, his withered leg left a rather attractive target just under the shoulder joint. A clear path to his heart for just such a blade.

He’d have to see that what was left of the weapon was given to Rayg for study. Rayg, a scientific-minded thrall of rare gifts, and dwarf-trained besides, might find it interesting, especially since it had somehow survived a prisoner search.

Cosseted in the Imperial Rock, he’d forgotten lessons learned as a hatchling and drake. Poor old NeStirrath would have had a few choice words about that. Anger, mostly at himself, brought him round to face his enemies, and he felt the foua in his firebladder pulse, wanting out in the rush of nervous energy.

He spat, and an oily film splattered into the mud. Old injury in a fight with egg-raiding demen had left his firebladder missing some element or other that caused his foua to ignite. He could spit up a tiny flaming gob easily enough, but regular dragonflame was as beyond him as aerial acrobatics were.

This one had come within a few steps of breaking a crystal point into his chest-heart. Fate, it seemed, didn’t want him fighting demen.

Embarrassment at his misfire calmed his anger better than any soothsaying.

“Not quite defeated yet, I see,” he said to the demen in their darktongue. “I’m sure Paskinix will strike a fine bargain to get you back.” He turned his head—held high and out of leaping reach—back toward his assembly.

“Odd, though,” he said, keeping to the darktongue, “that Paskinix should not be taken along with his chieftains. I would hope that if the Firemaids were giving their lives in defense of the final refuge in the Lavadome I would be with them at the last.”

“If I might offer—” Sreeksrack began.

“No, you may not,” the Copper said, preventing him from naming a sum that might impress even NoSohoth. “These aren’t some scale-seeking thieves sneaking down the Wind Tunnel. They’re the toughest warriors the Empire has ever been matched against.”

He felt woozy and thick-tongued. Better get the words out while he still could.

“I speak now as Tyr. The demen are to be conveyed to Imperial Rock and placed next to it in the west hollow. Just shift the horseflesh elsewhere. I want them to march, not drag chains, mind you, with the youngest hatchlings lining the way so that they may see examples of bravery and valor, paying their respects as dragons of the Empire should. Whether they become thralls or not—well, let’s see what Paskinix says about getting them back. Now, you must excuse me.”

He dashed off toward a riverbank rockpile quickly enough that the bodyguard circling above had to swoop to catch up. There he brought up the remains of his breakfast before collapsing.

“Tell Rayg—poisoned,” he managed, as the alarmed griffaran fluttered above, before blackness swallowed him.

Chapter 4

The Copper woke, looked around at the rich tapestries and mats covering the cavern walls. Gold and silver thread multiplied the lamplight. The soothing aroma of oliban made itself at home in his nostrils. He welcomed its aromatic visit.

In the shadows of the ceiling, two pairs of red eyes glinted and blinked.

“Nilrasha?” he rasped, feeling for her mind.

“She’s holding court in the gardens,” a human voice said. “Would you like some water?”

The Copper blinked the mist out of his eyes and saw Rayg Sablecloak. Despite his hominid birth, Rayg had as fine a mind as any of the Anklenes. Six years ago Rayg had married his body-servant, a lively but almost silent girl named Rhea. The Sablecloak family lived in the sunlight near the Southexit, and the Copper gave him leave to be with them whenever Rayg could be spared from his projects—a rare occurrence.

The Copper kept meaning to free him entirely, but it seemed there was always one more task that only Rayg could accomplish.

Rayg desired seeing his family settled out of the Lavadome in wealth and comfort. Now that his children were old enough to be helpful, one of them usually attended him in his workshop beneath the griffaran nesting areas, which employed a few skilled blighters and a strange dwarf who kept his beard and skull shaved. When the Copper had inquired, Rayg explained that the dwarf had suffered some irredeemable disgrace and labored so that he might still send a decent income home in the form of dragonscale.

“How did I get back here?”

“You were in a delirium. You don’t remember, then?”

The Copper searched his memory. He remembered viewing the demen, then bringing his breakfast up. Then there was some dream about a trek across Bant with lions watching him the whole way, and swimming, swimming in water that alternated hot and cold.

He heard dragon-voices out beyond the beading that separated his sleeping-chamber from the rest of his chambers—the hygiene annex with its trickle and paired pools and his private gallery looking out on the Lavadome and the little trophy alley that led up to the formal court hall. They were cramped quarters, probably not even filling the egg shelf in the cave he’d been born into, but it was easier to relax with comforting stone close around and tight corners where enemies could not mass and might be surprised.

“How long have I been with fever?”

“Three lightings,” Rayg said, referring to the glow of refracted sunlight or moonlight through the apex of the Lavadome. Probably about a day and a night in the Upper World. While dragons in the Upper World adapted to a sun-based schedule easily enough, in the Lavadome they alternated long-sleep, long-active, short-sleep, short-active, mixing according to humor and necessity. The Anklenes kept to a system based on the changing of the griffaran guard every twelve dwarf-hours.

“Send NoSohoth in,” the Copper said, lifting his head. He felt tired, but remarkably clearheaded. “I believe I hear him in the trophy-hall.”

NoSohoth, on entering, sprinkled another sii of quartz-like oliban on the brazier and tested the aroma with his nose. With a satisfied snort he bowed his way into the sleeping chamber.

“My Tyr—”

“Is awake,” the Copper said, forestalling expressions of joy at his recovery. He sensed a tension in NoSohoth, even with the relaxing aroma so thick in the air you could almost see it. “What’s the matter? Is Nilrasha ill?”

“No, my Tyr. But many are.”

“A plague?”

“Food poisoning,” Rayg said. “It’s this year’s new kern.”

Kern was the most beneficial when it was freshest, so most dragon larders and storehouses sent the older stuff off to be cattle-feed or thrall-gruel when a new batch came in. Mothers of hatchlings mixed it up with blood, or rolled organmeats in ground kern and flamed the mash so that their progeny might grow long and strong.

“Bad kern?” Careless of that CuPinnatax. He’d appointed him Upholder of Anaea because he seemed an intelligent—though idle—dragon. CuPinnatax’s grandsire FeLissarath had been the Upholder there for many years under the old Tyr. The Copper had served there before events in the Lavadome changed the entire course of his life.

“Not to smell or taste or sight, my Tyr,” NoSohoth said, but then he’d put CuPinnatax forward for the Upholdership.

“I put it under a dwarf-lens,” Rayg said. For a human who could speak Drakine credibly, he cared little for courtly niceties. “There’s some kind of blight on it, a brownish spore-like organism. It doesn’t appear to make the kern itself less wholesome, or interfere with it in any way I could detect, but once introduced into the digestion, it thrives and putrates. Cattle and sheep and pigs it affects hardly at all; they grow gassy and distended, but that seems to pass in a day. It sickens and slays chickens, and with dragons it appears to be taking the young and infirm.”

“Take?” the Copper said. “How many?”

NoSohoth seemed unaccountably impressed with a new tapestry in the sleeping chamber. The Copper saw him deftly add more oliban to the brazier with his far saa.

“It is bad, Tyr,” Rayg said. Even a dragon could read his expression.

The Copper’s brain felt divided, flying in two directions. One part of him rushed backwards, trying to remember absolutely everything FeLissarath had taught him about kern. It was a crop dependent only on ample sunshine and rain as it ripened. Anaea, with its rich soil and high-altitude climate, was ideal in both, though once in a while a bad year or too much rain left the kern either undersized or rotting. FeLissarath had never mentioned any kind of blight that sickened dragons.

“Prepare yourself, my Tyr,” NoSohoth said. “Most of the hatchlings are seriously sick. Some sii-score have already died—that we know of. Smaller drakes and drakka are also dying, but in lesser numbers. Of the aged dragons, it appears to depend on their appetite. Unhappily, the healthiest and heartiest eaters are falling victim.”

“Where is my mate?”

“She just returned from visiting hills that have lost hatchlings. She goes out again directly.”

Nilrasha might have her faults and enjoy the privileges of being Queen more than its duties, but she could be relied on in a crisis. Still, the sooner he appeared the better.