He thought to them, formed images in his mind as he watched over the eggs. His own parents in the cave, Wistala tasting rainfall, a wolf howling at the moon, a dwarf frying sausages, a berry-smeared girl, a great, gaunt black dragon, a mountaintop signal-flame on their Isle of Ice.

A month later came the first stirrings within.

“Did you hear a tap?” AuRon asked, woken from sleep. Sometimes they spoke; sometimes they used their minds. It made no difference.

“I’ve been listening to them all night, my love,” Natasatch said. She rarely fell fully asleep, and never when AuRon was out hunting. “It’s a regular Blighter Summer Gathering, there’s so much noise.”

“When will they come out?”

“Oh, it won’t be for hours yet. Be calm.”

“I am calm. I just can’t bear waiting. Five is what my parents had. Three males and two females.”

“We should be so blessed.”

“If we are, I’ll need your help,” AuRon said.

“You know you have it. What is in your mind?”

“I want to keep the males apart. Until we can make them learn not to kill each other.”

“But dragons have always been that way, AuRon.”

“Does that mean they always must be that way? The Wyrmmaster was wrong on many things, but he wasn’t wrong to keep all the males alive. Fewer dragonelles would wander the earth mateless if more males survived the first hour of their hatching.”

“What would you teach them differently?”

“It’d teach the stronger to protect the weaker. I’d teach the weaker to outsmart the stronger. And I’d have the dragonelles teach cooperation to both.”

“Can dragons change the inheritance their nature gave them?”

“They must. If they are to survive—if we are to survive, they must.”

“My lord, my love, my AuRon . . . the things you expect of dragons.”

One of the eggs wiggled as the hatchling within changed position. The mates turned to their clutch. Natasatch put her head close to the eggs and began to sing:

Listen my hatchling, for now you shall hear

Of the only seven slayers a dragon must fear . . .

AuRon flicked out his tongue across their restless egg. He tasted the shell of their first clutch. Cool and dry compared with the dampness within the cavern, its strangeness set him aquiver.