He wondered about this Lavadome and the dragons there. It must be a wonderful place, with plenty to eat, for dragons to be gathered there. He didn’t know much about dragon society, but he knew that Father had to fly far and wide so he wouldn’t over-hunt an area—or so that snatched livestock were only a nuisance, and not a regular threat. Would they look kindly on the arrival of a distant relative, hurt by weary dragonlengths of travel?

And they wouldn’t know his secrets.

He let off a burp, and the centipede finally ceased its attempts to escape his stomach.

The Lavadome sounded a long way off, and he couldn’t fly like a bat.

But he could follow one….

The Copper lunged forward without really knowing why. A heavy force struck the ground behind and all he could think was, Curse that Gray Rat!—having instinctively avoided another of his brother’s pounces. But he felt the weight of the thing in the air behind, in the tremor that ran through the solid rock when it hit.

He turned.

A huge, pale gray mass writhed over and around itself behind. A head that could probably suck him down as easily as he’d swallowed the centipede lifted itself from the mass, pointing its nose this way and that until it fixed on him.

“You picked the wrong cave, hatchling,” it whispered at him.

The Copper didn’t know of the old rivalry between snakes and dragons, the contempt in which the serpents held the winged and legged. Young dragons hunted the same game the great snakes did, so perhaps the old enmity was akin to that of lions and cheetahs in other parts of the world, competitors who struck each other’s young. He certainly never heard the tale of the deaths of AuZath and Nubiel, dragons of Ydar. They were murdered by a serpent who injected his poison into apples, which were eaten by grazing horses, which died and were naturally devoured in turn by the dragons.

The Copper just knew he was afraid.

“You must be King Gan,” he managed to say, though the words sounded a little croaky. Some instinct flared within; he hated the legless, writhing form. But fear froze him. They can hate as hard as they like, as long as they fear….

He’d never seen such black eyes. The way they fixed on him, so exactly aligned, it was as if the entire earth were a little off-kilter, as measured by the level of those eyes.

“I am. And all within sight, sound, hearing, and heat is mine. You are mine.”

The snake flowed toward him. The Copper couldn’t break off; all he could do was watch the eyes approach, twin balls rushing toward him, perfectly level….

Something boxed him about the eyes and crest. “Don’t be looking him in the eyes!” Thernadad screeched, darting up and out of the way of the snake.

The snake lunged at him, suddenly transformed into pure energy. Its body seemed to vaporize into a white blur rushing toward him.

He ducked, hugging his belly to safe rock.

King Gan, forced by the bat’s intervention to strike a switchback before he was ready, struck the Copper at the head instead of the base of the neck. His fangs, out and forward, folded against the Copper’s young crest above his eyes.

The Copper felt hot liquid run down either side of his head as the snake became a snake again, and coiled back.

Fear flowed up from his belly, tightened against his breastbone. He seized up, stuck out his own neck, and vomited, fire bladder emptying toward the snake.

A spray of yellowish liquid, vaguely sulfurous, struck King Gan across the nose.

The great snake went mad. He whipped his head back and forth, writhed, coiled, uncoiled, knotted, until the Copper couldn’t tell head from tail but could only run lest he be crushed as the snake rolled and whipped.

A dragonlength away he paused to glance over his shoulder. King Gan flowed toward his swamp as fast as coils would carry him, where he plunged headfirst into the shallow water of the moss-thick mire.

“Right in the pits y’be hitting him. Never saw the like—a’taking the venom out of ol’ King Gan that way.”

“The pits?”

“Everything here in the dark has a way of a’hunting that don’t rely on light,” Thernadad said. “Bats be having our ears, that lousy legpincher feels vibrations, and the snakes feel the heat of us poor warm-blood rodents. M’hearing dragons sniff for that what doesn’t smell as bad as they do, but y’be free to correct me, cousin.”

“Cousin?”

“Your life. Saved three times now. That be making us family, the way bats see it. Speaking of which, m’be working up a powerful thirst saving your life. How about a nip out of the old tail, real quiet, before a whole skytrail of the hungry beggars show up?”

Later, feeling a bit drained, and not just because of the blood Thernadad lapped out of his tail, the Copper rested. He perched high—hopefully out of King Gan’s reach—and watched the mire. He heard an occasional bubbling hiss and a splash, as King Gan soaked the heat pits on his nose.

Some piece of him was the tiniest bit grateful to Auron for all the sudden pounces out of the darkness. Without the torments of his brother, he’d never have avoided the snake’s first strike.

He began to cry.

Chapter 8

The Copper slept but couldn’t rest. He ate but didn’t enjoy. He eliminated but felt no relief. More often than not he perched near the river tunnel, losing himself in its steady echo.

Auron and Wistala would come hunting for him. Wistala had already probed the home cave, looking for him, and both knew he used the pool. They’d never felt the pain of iron rods, or soft, promising whispers and kind touches that left one’s head in a muddle.

King Gan still lurked in the moss-ringed cavern pools, according to the bats, and his snakes were more aggressive than ever—at least as far as the bats were concerned. One got some cousin of Thernadad’s.

Which was just as well. The Copper had lost count of the number of bats gathered in the cave, each with a sad story, each begging for just a lap or two from a nipped-open vein. He’d be about to say no, and then Thernadad or Mamedi would dig at an earhole or push stray chin whiskers back into place and remind him of his escapes from death.

He dipped his stiff, dwarf-broken tail in the river, watched the cut it made in the current, the arrowhead pointing in the direction of the flow…

“Water Spirit, you brought me here for a reason. Give me your wisdom.”

If he still lived, it meant the spirits weren’t willing to take him back just yet. Scarred, lamed, and probably never able to fly thanks to the wound from the big man, he would be denied a normal dragon’s existence. What female would take a mating flight that could last no longer than a leap from a rock top?

According to Thernadad’s brother, Enjor, there were dragons somewhere upriver of him. That arrowhead in the current pointed toward them.

Did he even want to find more dragons?

He remembered Auron’s stalking and pouncing, Father’s indifference, Mother’s shunning. Anger bubbled in his fire bladder.

Sometimes their deaths didn’t seem such a crime.

He saw a six-legged scuttling thing crawling along just under the surface of the water, making the smallest of waves in the current. He plunged his snout in, grabbed it, flipped it out, and cracked its shell with a quick stomp of his saa before it could right itself. He tongued out the whitish, rather tasteless meat within and crunched down the legs and limbs. A little grit helped the digestion and was a pleasant change from the dirty, hairy taste of rat. If only he had Jizara to join him in the hunt. One could swim and toss the crabs out of the river; then the other could smash them before they could retreat back to the water.

Jizara’s death was a crime. A betrayal piled on a betrayal.

He could almost hear her singing beside the river.

He hurried away, back to the holes in the cavern ceiling where the bats liked to roost.

He listened for a particular pair of squeaky voices.

“Oh, shove off! Y’nose be dripping all over.”

“Faaaa!”

“Thernadad, you up there?”

The bats quieted. Thernadad climbed out of his hole and worked the back of his head with his gripping claw. “Sir be wanting something?”

“I need to speak to your brother.”

Thernadad clawed his way across the cavern roof, poking his head into holes, climbing over sleeping bats, throwing an occasional elbow and getting swatted in return.

“What be going on. Party?”

“Oooh! Watch it, cousin.”

“Enjor! Rouse yourself, y’fat tick. Sir wants to speak to you.”

The brothers’ mother popped out of her hole, moving with a younger bat’s energy despite her aging frame. “Is a feed on?”

“What do you want, m’lord?” Enjor said.

“How do I get back to my people? The dragons of this Lavadome?”

“Eh? Y’be knowing that best, m’lord.”

It took him several tries to get across that he couldn’t get back to his own kind without help—help from the bats. Their little mammalian brains took a while to get around the idea that they could travel together. While bats understood sharing living space, the idea of traveling together didn’t come easily.