The guards tried to ply him with one of those hollow tubes, opening it so a sweet-tart smell, like molasses and juniper, wafted into the tunnel. He put his mouth to it and worked the other end, and Wistala heard a sucking sound. Then he threw down the tube.

“ ’Twas my plan to lead my people to greatness,” he said in his strange Drakine, his back still to her. “It all went wrong in the war with the dwarves. I thought myself mighty clever, sneaking down the river. We’d raided up the Ghioz palace itself and came away with riches. Why not do the same to the dwarves? They and their cursed battle boats.”

“The Wheel of Fire?” she asked.

“Ye know them?”

“I’ve fought them too.”

Wistala told her tale, briefly, of how she had brought down King Fangbreaker and of the gruesome battles she’d seen, showed the long-healed scars in her wing-leather. Paskinix made excited wheezing sounds as she told of the slaughter of the dwarf-column sent into barbarian lands.

He folded his hand under a bit of carapace and worked a crack in the cave wall, widening it and sending bits of stones flying as he twisted his armored limb-shell this way and that. “I should have taken that offer yon old Tyr gave me. Not that new whelp with his damn trained monkeys riding dragonback, I mean the old Tyr. His Cussedness. An alliance.”

“You didn’t?”

“Nay. I thought I’d just gamble, try and master the wizard’s crystal, what with NooMoahk’s yon cave empty and echoing. Thought it’d show me a path to victory, ye see. But someone’d put heart in the blighters and they fought like mad. We were long licking our wounds from that beating. I even thought for a while that some blighter genius had been born and unlocked the crystal’s secrets. But they never followed us down. Next thing I knew the Star Tunnel was full of mad dragons under that green demon. Oh, she’s taken the better bits of the Tyr and his mate.”

It was like trying to piece together an entire song from a line or two at the end. In any case, he seemed in no mood to hit her again.

“May I offer something?”

“Words of comfort from a dragon? Nay.”

She took a careful breath. “You could release me. I’d serve as an ambassador to this Tyr. Perhaps he’d renew the offer that other fellow made.”

“Oh, aye. One of the Tyr’s own Firemaids. Ye’d keep my interests close to heart, I’m sure.”

“You’re clever, but you don’t know everything, Paskinix. I know nothing of this Tyr or his dragons. I fell into the Lower World thanks to a quick slip and a long fall.”

His spines stiffened, then relaxed again.

“A good try, Firemaid. Well done. Ye almost had me with that lying tongue.”

With that he rose and shuffled off.

Wistala felt herself growing thinner on slight rations and lack of exercise. Secretly, she rejoiced at it. Much longer and she would be able to slip out of her bonds.

To pass the time she improved herself in the demen tongue so she could chafe her guards for more water or a chance to clear out the filth coating one end of her alcove. They gave her some bits of dried mat-leaf and she scrubbed and sponged vigorously. The harder she worked the thinner she would get.

But the demen knew their business. There was only so much one could do to swell a joint when they stuck a finger in to test the bonds. They tightened her shackles.

That night she wept, truly wept, for herself. A very undragonlike response to difficulty. Mother would tell her to hide her tears and think of a way to improvise a solution.

She fell into an exhausted sleep, but felt better and more clearheaded for the crying jag. Now that the frustration was out she could think again.

Later, she had the most extraordinary dreams. DharSii figured in them, and her blood ran hot and quick at the events. Except his griff kept poking her just beneath her right neck heart.

Waking, she came eye-to-face with a snaggletoothed horror. It was like a bat, but vastly overgrown and with a faintly scaly snout.

It licked bloody lips with a long tongue.

Impossibly, the nightmare spoke. “I’ll let ’em know,” it whispered in good Drakine. “Thanks for the sup, gentledragon. I was perishing for a taste. Good thing you reek of blood ’n dung; never would have found you otherways.”

The horror of this thing!—wretched claw-winged thing!—clinging to her neck overcame her. She let out a startled gasp and it sailed off into the tunnel dark, silent as a passing cloud.

“Now what?” one of the demen asked.

“I—I had a bad dream,” she said, more than half wondering if it was true. No, she smelled her own blood.

“Quit worrying at the bands,” the deman said. “I’m sick of wasting good whiz and ferment washing out your wounds. Serves you right if you get a hot throb and croak off.”

She passed through two feeding cycles of next to no rations. The demen fought when one tried to cut off some of her tail to eat.

The wound in her neck healed so quickly and so clean she wondered if she’d dreamed the whole conversation with the bat-creature. Perhaps it was a craze brought on by thirst. She’d never been so thirsty in her life—thoughts of water tormented every waking moment.

By obeying every order in an instant and affecting a servile wheedle, “learned my lesson and learned it well, sirs,” she received an extra bucket of water. She’d just drained the second bucket when an ominous clatter broke out. First one, then another, then another rod echoed, a quick, steady tap.

“It’s dragons come!” one guard said to another.

“Get the skewer,” the one in charge said.

Wistala’s hearts raced. She resolved, if she saw the other end of this, to die before anyone chained her like some wretched dog again.

They ran toward her with that great twist-headed spear.

She didn’t let them plant it. In agonizing pain, she swatted the point down with her wing as they approached. Her injured wing gave way afresh, the pain of the old injury back and redoubled.

But the force of the blow knocked it out of their hands. She managed to roll over part of it, a sloppy move more than half accidental.

The demen dragged and dragged, trying to extract it.

“Get the cursed machine!” one yelped. “Spark her off it, for dark’s sake.”

More delay. She felt blows of signal rods but didn’t care. Delay! Delay! Delay!

One of them took to rapping and she felt the zap of the magical lightning before she heard it. She jumped.

They dragged their spear free.

She heard a faint whoosh of flame being loosed and thought she saw shadows dance far off down the tunnel.

The blade poked into her side, just above her mainheart.

“Hold! My fellow shes are coming,” Wistala said in their tongue, wishing she knew the deman word for surrender. “A fresh-killed dragon, and I expect I’ll spurt a bit as you ram that thing home. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a couple of demen reeking of dragonblood. I wonder what they’ll do?”

Their big frog eyes widened still further. “Oh, bury it,” the biggest of the guards said. “We kill a prisoner and they’ll hunt us to the bottom hole.”

“Aye—Firemaids avenge their own,” his friend agreed.

This time Wistala was happy to be taken as a Firemaid and she made no effort to dissuade them.

“No, kill her,” one of the demen at the contraption said. “One less dragon, and we can hide and then come back and eat up for once on her body.”

“Liver as big as a boat,” one said, saliva dripping.

She saw Paskinix himself leaping up the tunnel, rapping the wall each time he landed.

“Rally, rally, all rally,” he called. “Don’t kill the prisoner. We need her to negotiate. But for your mother teat’s sake, rally!”

“Rally? With what?” a guard asked.

“Our bluff’s been called,” the one at the lightning-fork agreed. “Escape!”

Paskinix began to stagger, exhausted. Fire behind silhouetted his spines.

“Save the machine!” the one at the sparking two-tipped spear called.

“Save your lives, you breedslime,” the big guard said. “Find a hole tight and dark!”

They rushed off, pushing and pulling their wheeled contraption, dragging the great spear.

“Cowards,” Paskinix called.

Wistala knocked him off his feet with a painful sweep of her wing.

He folded himself into a squat, facing the wall as before.

“Always figured I’d be finished in my sleep from one of my sons, not some stinking dragon.”

Wistala saw green scale reflecting firelight. Two wingless drakka raced forward and began sniffing around at trails, and a third leaped on Paskinix, who made no move to resist. His spines hardly twitched as she settled her saa-claws against his gut.

A fledged female, not much older than Wistala but with a much smaller fringe, surveyed the scene. She saw other heads behind and heard faint, frantic taps here and there in the distance.

“Flame and fame, you’re in wretched shape,” the dragonelle said in oddly accented Drakine. The grotesque bat rode her head, hanging about her griff like some kind of leathery, hairy collar. Wistala noticed her wings were striped with purple, yellow, and white. “Half starved and broke-winged. Best have a meal right away, so you’ve the strength to get out of these damp holes.”