“I am convinced that when enough of this energy builds up, there is some manner of transformation. A species grows in intelligence, or a society advances—as when the Hypatians got rid of the kings and began choosing who would make the decisions affecting the nation. Perhaps some great burst of magic formed the dragons.

“In any case, a wave of that energy rolled across Hypatia, and it awakened us. Nothing like this has happened since the first dragons appeared before the rise of Anklemere.”

“The demen are about to pass through wooded country,” an elf said. He touched a tree branch, ran his hand down it, and straightened, tightened, and formed it into a rather gnarled spear. “They may think a wooded road much like tunnel-fighting, but we’ll teach them better.”

“Don’t despair, Wistala. What’s an end and what’s a beginning depends a great deal on the observer. You said you think this is the end of dragonkind. I believe we stand on the threshold of a new beginning. Something has returned the shadow energy to the world. Now, where are we most needed?”

Chapter 17

AuRon landed atop the cool stone of the Protector’s mountainside refuge in Dairuss, not caring who saw him and reported it to whom. It was the dog days of summer in Dairuss, and the afternoon sun had one more hour of beating the land like a hammer before it disappeared behind the mountains. Even at this altitude it was hot and still. Thirst closed and roughened his throat, and his head hurt. Under different circumstances, he’d have found a mountainside pool, drunk his fill, and napped in the sun until the heat loosened muscles sore from flying. But he’d not come to enjoy basking in the sun like a lizard.

The City of the Golden Dome and whatever troubles it had with the world would have to sort themselves out. He had but one goal: getting Natasatch and taking her somewhere safe. A secret hole in the Sadda-Vale, perhaps.

“Natasatch!” he called through the balcony. Nothing answered but the rustling of the plain cotton curtains. He noted, rather dully, that they were still the heavier winter ones.

He sniffed around the sleeping chamber. He smelled his mate. Also, cleaning-vinegar, oranges, and oliban, dried hunks of tree sap that, when burned, smelled profoundly soothing. Someone had burned a good deal of it in the dining pit fire. Had she thrown a party? To celebrate what?

In any case, the thralls were keeping busy maintaining what he still, oddly, considered “their” temporary home.

His hearts beat hard. It was too still. Especially for the middle of the day. The refuge held its breath, waiting for him to discover whatever gruesome display of death awaited within.

The eating-pit room was awash in fabrics. Colors hung on the wall, bolts of cloth were laid out and marked with chalk, and a net on the ceiling held tools and buckets and sea-fishing instruments.

Halfway across it he heard a step. Natasatch! He looked twice to make sure it was she, and alone.

“I’m—I’m so sorry, AuRon.”

“I understand, and you have to forgive me as well. The dazzle of the Empire, jealousy for my brother—”

She tucked her face back, into her wing. “No, that’s not what I meant. I’m sorry you came back. For this.”

A net came crashing down on him. The weights and hooks made his natural thrashing only entangle him further. He heard the clattering rush of demen entering the eating room. They clamped his nose and pinched his nostrils until he relaxed enough to allow them to put chains on his legs.

“So, so, sorry, my love. I think we shall die together. Soon. It’s all gone wrong.”

“Don’t be, my dear,” Imfamnia said. She strode into the room briskly, carelessly catching scale on the fabrics that had hidden the crouching demen. “To think, I once took a mild interest in you. Your skin may change color, lizard, but your behavior is entirely predictable.”

She considered AuRon. “Hmmm. It will take at least two trolls to move him.”

“Where are you taking him?” Natasatch asked her.

“You’ll find out the same moment he does. Now, come along, please, dear, or I’ll slit your graceful little throat open one side to the other.”

Chapter 18

DharSii found Gettel and the tower surrounded by corpse fires.

There’s a distinctive smell to a pyre of recently living flesh. It was appetizing, at least to a dragon. He passed low over the fires—not much could be distinguished from the burning remains, but the hooked swords and twin-point spears favored by the demen were lying all around the tower.

For a dreadful moment he thought he’d arrived too late, but then he saw a dragon-neck poke out of the top of the tower and survey him.

Gettel wanted the news from the south, first. She already knew what had happened in Juutfod. When DharSii relayed the news of the Copper’s abduction, she looked genuinely grieved.

“I’ll miss him even more than the groundeds,” she said with a sigh.

“He was carried into Hypat. He may still be there, for all we know.”

“To think, he was on his way to rescue his mate. Now he needs rescuing, too.”

“I’m not so sure,” DharSii said. “I thought he made it awfully easy for his enemies to know exactly where he was. It might have been a tactic to bring dragons over to his side—you saw how easily he did that with the Aerial Host.”

“The demen didn’t know about the groundeds,” Gettel said. Or the dwarfs. That was a nasty surprise for them. Turns out dwarfs hate demen more than they do blighters, humans, dragons, or elves. I think they expected a few spiritless, crippled dragons. Couple of blasts of fire and then off with their heads. Somebody told them a half-truth or a bad tale. They knew, I think, that six or seven dragons were out, some of them moving south, so they took their chance. Expecting to murder tired, landing dragons, I suppose.”

There were barbarians eager to go to Hypat on what they called a “mighteous sack,” if he understood the tongue correctly, but there were several problems that seemed impossible to surmount, at least in any length of time that would make a difference.

First, the barbarians fought on foot. They had very few horses and pastureland in their crags and mountains was rare and reserved for more productive sheep and cattle. The lumber-cutters had a few, their warlords and merchants who could afford them rode, but the ordinary yeoman who picked up spear, sword, and axe when battle came marched and fought on foot. So to assemble even half of them at the northernmost stretches of the Old North Road would take days, and they would show up ravenous and thirsty.

Which was another difficulty. Barbarians on a raid ate as they went, barging into chicken coops, pigpens, vegetable patches, and granaries for their food. If they did that on the trip south to Hypat, he wondered if it was in the power of the local thanes to prevent violence—if the local thanes could be prevailed on to supply a horde of barbarians in the first place, especially with so much in doubt.

What he needed was some bit of magic to transport them south, like flying carpets from the old Hypatian tales of the sorcerers of Silverhigh.

Shipping was out of the question. The demen raid had wrecked everything bigger than a rowboat. Standing and running rigging had been cut, masts and spars chopped down, there were holes knocked in some of the hulls. There were some lighters left, and the small fishing boats that happened to be out among the lobster pots when the demen attacked, but not enough to float a force large enough to make a difference. Though there were probably glory-hunters who would go, just for the chance to die fighting in an important battle. A death in battle gave you some sort of special key to a hall of heroes in the afterlife, in their reckoning.

The fastest way was to fly them down, of course, but that presented greater difficulties than sailing them. A fully grown, healthy dragon could carry perhaps six men in flight, fewer if they were large, fewer still if they had heavy weapons, shields, and armor. Every barbarian went into battle with a huge shield and at least two weapons in case his favorite failed, so DharSii calculated it would be a strain to carry even four. On an all-day flight, two.

He could just see the dragons of the tower flying to Wistala’s aid with twenty or thirty warriors and arriving too tired to fight.

“Why don’t we swim ’em down?” Thunderwing asked.

“What’s that?”

“One time I was fishing, and I got bit by one of those big black-and-white beasties. They eat seals and so on. Ever seen one?”

“No,” DharSii said. “But I’ve never spent much time around oceans.”

“Well, doesn’t matter. Point is, they weigh a fair bit. This one must have been sick or blind—it thought I was food and started a terrible scrape. It tried to drag me down and drown me—that’s a terrifying experience. You’d do best to avoid it, Stripes, but I dug into its side good and got some vitals out and that was the end of that. Soon as I had some air in my lungs, I grabbed it by the tail and hauled it to shore. Lost a bit to some sharks, the louts, but there was still more meat than I could eat.”

DharSii reckoned himself a clever dragon, but he seemed to be missing the point. It had happened before, too. Sometimes he was so lost in mathematics and parabola that he missed the greater whole.