“He did not kill me when he had the chance,” Wistala said. “I will not kill him.”

Paskinix turned wide eyes at her.

“I’m hungry,” the one on him said.

“No,” Wistala said. “Please, let him live.”

“Good work, Takea,” the painted stranger said. “That’s the way to hold down a prisoner.”

In fairness, he hadn’t resisted, Wistala thought, but the drakka seemed pleased. Her undersized fringe rose.

“Thank you, from nose-tip to tail,” Wistala said. “My name is Wistala Irelianova.”

“And I am Ayafeeia, ranking Firemaid,” the painted rescuer said.

“Thank you, Ayafeeia.”

“She’s of the Imperial Line, matekin to the Tyr himself, or have you forgotten?” the drakka atop Paskinix added.

“I never knew to begin with,” Wistala said. “Must I bow?”

The youngster half dropped her griff. “It would—”

“Not be necessary. In fact, I will bow to you, as you’re a visitor, and I’m grateful for your help in capturing this villain.” She looked at the youngster. “Takea, since he’s your prisoner, take charge of him.”

The young dragonelle narrowed her eyes in thought. “Deman, put that bucket on your head and take hold of my tail. If the bucket comes off or you let go of my tail, I’ll gut you.”

Paskinix’s spines rippled but fell again.

“I wish you’d let him go,” Wistala said. “He spared me once.”

“He didn’t spare you any food, by the look of your ribs.”

“His warriors starved too,” Wistala said, not quite believing she was defending her tormentor.

“Have you ever seen quicksilver poured out on glass?” Ayafeeia said as the youngster led her captive off, the bucket rattling against his neck plates. “I did as a youngster in the Anklene hill. This one’s just as quiet and twice as slippery.” A dragonelle followed the pair at a nod from Ayafeeia.

“Don’t worry about him; whatever he gets it’s less than he deserves, the old egg-thief. Let’s get you out of those chains, stranger, cleaned up, and see about that wing. Would you care for some toasted deman leg? There’s a lot of it about this morning. Stringy, but that’s war.”

They walked what felt like a terribly long distance, though the more rational part of Wistala’s brain knew it to be but a short journey. It just felt doubly far because they climbed two steep rises and her wing pained her with every step, despite the soft hominid-made hemp-lines the drakka had fixed to it to support it. That horrible bat creature or one like it flapped back and forth, scouting ahead and checking behind.

“It’s that exhausted I am,” it complained.

“You’ll get your sup,” Ayafeeia said. “Just get us back to the Star Tunnel.”

Wistala shuddered. It was one thing for a beast like that to creep up on you and bite, quite another to offer your own neck. Ayafeeia was made of stern scale inside as well as out.

She did seem a dragonelle to be admired. The four female dragons she led, and perhaps twelve drakka—they moved about so much and smelled so similar, thanks, she guessed, to identical diets, that she wasn’t sure she wasn’t counting the same ones twice—deferred to her orders instantly. Odd to see dragons, evidently not related in any way, acting as obediently as hatchlings under the watchful eye of their mother. Perhaps more so—hatchlings liked to test their mother’s limits and act up as soon as that great watchful eye closed.

Could the discipline be this Tyr’s doing, or was it just that they loved Ayafeeia as some sort of surrogate mother?

They drove Paskinix mercilessly. He couldn’t walk long without his support, and when he flagged they spat a torf of flame onto his back. He bore the pain with grunts and gasps, but no cries, and reeked of burned flesh.

Wistala wished she’d had more experience with dragons. The only ones she knew at all were those of the Sadda-Vale, and—

DharSii again. Put him out of your mind.

Oh, if only she’d made more of an effort to find out about those Ghioz dragons. Perhaps if she’d gone to them, talked, the whole fight could have been avoided.

Of course there was the disturbing possibility that these “Firemaids” were allied with the Ghioz through their Tyr. What if she had dropped off the spit only to land in the fire?

They came to a chute requiring a short climb and Ayafeeia, listening to Wistala’s breathing and pulse, called a rest.

“But we’re practically under the Star Tunnel,” a dragonelle demurred. It was the first resistance to Ayafeeia that Wistala had seen.

Ayafeeia listened to Wistala’s breathing. “The stranger needs a rest before we climb. Besides, I smell water, and it seems to me there was a trickle here.”

“It’s that thirsty am I, too!” the bat creature croaked.

One of the energetic young drakka found the trickle and Ayafeeia let Wistala drink first. Wistala noted that all around the trickle there were cracks and holes where the water drained off—above, in the walls, below. Cave moss, an odd pinkish kind, gave it an eerie glow. Wistala felt doubly bad, considering what she was contemplating.

Ayafeeia kept Paskinix away from the cracks, and had water brought to him, using the bucket he wore.

They started up the chute. Wistala positioned herself so she climbed just behind the straining Takea, who was dragging Paskinix up like a fisherman with a catch on the line.

“Remember what I said about being your ambassador,” she murmured to Paskinix in his own tongue.

“I do,” the deman-king whispered back. “Ye shall always have my gratitude and friendship, and that of my people, if ye get me out from under yon little witch’s burns and claws.”

“Slipping!” Wistala screamed, giving Takea’s tail a good bash with her head. Paskinix leaped on her neck and wrapped those long, thin legs about her, and they dropped together. They bounced off the dragonelle behind them.

Wistala was careful to let her tail absorb most of the impact of the short drop. But there was no need to let everyone know that.

“Wing! Auuuuu!” she shrieked, loudly enough to deafen a dragon.

Paskinix scrabbled off in the direction of the trickle’s faint glow.

Two of the drakka slipped down to aid her, but she rolled and thrashed about so they looked at her rather than seeking Paskinix. By the time a dragonelle climbed down, he was gone.

“After him!” Takea cried.

“He’s slipped,” Ayafeeia said. “He’s worse than an eel.”

Takea glared at Wistala. “You helped him. You let him go.”

“None of that until we’re back in the Star Tunnel,” Ayafeeia said.

Wistala, with many a moan of pain that needed little acting of the kind she’d seen displayed in Ragwrist’s circus, made the climb once more.

At the end of the climb she had to pant long and hard before she could take in the wonder surrounding her.

She could see why it was called the Star Tunnel. It was a vast, vaguely triangular passage, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. Little serrations of light, like long stars, dotted its peak.

Lower down, the stone was smoothed, cut in a fashion that reminded Wistala of a tree chipped and shaved by an ax, only in segments the size of a dinner platter. She wondered what sort of tool had the power to do that to stone. And what sort of arm had driven the tool.

“That’s the surface, a good hundred dragonlengths above,” Ayafeeia said. She stuck close to Wistala on the climb and offered kind words the whole way.

“Maybe it is for the best that Paskinix got away,” she said. “If we’d torn him to the bits he deserves, it would just make what’s left of the demen resentful. As it is, they’re beaten and they know it. The last thing they need is a martyred king to put a spark back into them. They’re an awful hominid, the worst in a way. Either groveling at your feet or clawing at your throat.”

“So what is intended for me?” Wistala asked.

“It’s my duty to take you to the Tyr. We lost two drakka fighting our way to you—we thought you were a captured Firemaid, and we’ve lost a few down these dark holes—and the Tyr will want a report.”

“His mate will hear how the stranger helped Paskinix escape,” Takea said.

“I can find a watch-perch for you,” Ayafeeia said, rounding her head on the youngster. “You can use that voice calling out to let us know you still breathe.”

Wistala learned she liked the smell of other dragons around her. It was comforting, almost like being against Mother’s belly again. She wanted to stretch, really stretch out in some dry cave and have a sleep.

“Don’t worry about the Tyr. He’s a good sort,” Ayafeeia said. “Not much to look at—I shouldn’t say it but I will. A little stupid-looking, with that bad eye of his, but sound instincts when he speaks that make you forget how he looks. Oh, and be sure to bow to his mate and compliment her. She’s the watchdog of his reign.”