“AuRon, can’t you see what I’m trying to build here? Your help would be invaluable. I’m trying to make a world where dragons have faith in humans, and humans in dragons. A Hypatian family out riding the Great North Road no longer gallops to the trees at the sight of a dragon overhead. Dogs aren’t sent into caves to sniff out dragons anymore. What happened to Mother and Father will never happen again, if I have anything to say about it.”

AuRon thought he heard that quiet flapping again, somewhere among the wooden spars. Were they being spied upon? “You forgot to add, thanks to our brother: He’s the one who put this Grand Alliance on the map, so to speak.”

“And I admire him for it,” Wistala said.

“I find it hard to forget—the cave.”

Wistala looked up. Maybe she’d heard that small flapping noise too. “I’m not excusing that hatchling. Every time I look into his face, I see my anger in that lazy, scarred eye of his. He did a great wrong to us.”

She tried to read AuRon and failed. Her scaleless brother had a way of drawing in on himself, disappearing against the background as his skin changed color. Most dragons were easy to read: rage, hunger, lust, triumph, they huffed and stamped whatever they felt. AuRon and DharSii were the only two she’d ever known who could hide their emotions completely. Even the courtly dragons of the Lavadome gave a little away. She continued: “He’s done right by his dragons now. Our family was just five dragons—six if you count him, which no one on our egg shelf ever did. But to the dragons he leads, a hundred times that number and more… he’s brought them out of hiding and back into the sun, in safety.”

“My dragons were safe on our island, too,” AuRon said, feeling a bit like a petulant hatchling immediately after, yammering that his appetite was just as big.

“I’m sorry, Wistala,” he continued. “This doesn’t really matter, at least to anyone but us. Naf and Hieba—King Naf and Queen Hieba, that is, are my friends. Are they really in danger?”

“The last to defy the Grand Alliance was the old colony at Swayport. Now the new old colony, much impoverished. I once pretended to predict the future but I can’t anymore, brother. But if they continue to resist, it may involve the Aerial Host again, if the Hypatians come up with a pretext to settle old scores. I understand a number of Hypatians who didn’t much care for the Grand Alliance fled. Dairuss is a place of refugees. During the Dragon Wars many elves and men fled from their troubles on the Hypatian coast to their lands across the mountains. Some old Ghioz aristocrats are still important men there, there are even Ironriders who surrendered to them rather than face the wrath of the Hypatians and the dragons of the Grand Alliance. It wouldn’t be difficult for our brother and the Hypatians to justify a war.”

“And how am I to prevent that?”

“By getting Naf to rejoin the Grand Alliance. I spoke to him personally about the issue. He swears he’ll have no dragon on his lands as Protector—no dragon except you.”

AuRon returned to his family deep in thought. Their offspring, exhausted by the excitement of the day, slept in the style of hatchlings, near the belly of their mother.

Only AuSurath was missing. He was probably off somewhere, watching his rider numb his wounded hand in ice.

They made a pretty picture.

AuRon could not help but feel some pride at the achievements of his hatchlings. This awful empire of his brother’s inspired them in a way he found disturbing. He’d done his best to educate them, to warn them of the example of Silverhigh…

He couldn’t blame them for not wanting to stay among the fogs and reefs of his island. Conversations with wolves couldn’t match the splendor of these elegant dragons.

“That was another time, Father,” AuMoahk said, earlier that evening. His son’s rebuke still echoed in his thoughts. “Besides, we don’t make enemies of hominids, we make friends.”

“I’m sure that was how it was in the early days of Silver-high, too.”

Perhaps fate had just decided to repeat itself. AuRon had read enough histories in NooMoahk’s library to know that sometimes events repeated themselves even when all the parties concerned knew full well the details of past tragedies.

Natasach opened an eye.

“Did you enjoy your walk?” she thought to him.

“I met Wistala. It seems she has a problem she believes I can help her solve. It involves my friend, King Naf in Dairuss. She asks me to fly there and engage in a little diplomacy on her behalf.”

He decided not to tell her about the possibility of a Protectorship.

Natasatch’s scale lifted in excitement. “So what did you say?”

“I said nothing. I wanted to get your opinion first. You see, it would probably mean several years away from our island, and I know how much you enjoy the winters there.”

“Oh AuRon, don’t tease. What will you do, my love?”

“Do my best to resolve the issue, I suppose. I can’t leave Naf at the mercy of these unscrupulous, greedy dragons. Will you accompany me there?”

“Silly. Nothing would please me better. I’m happy to see more of the world, especially with you.”

Chapter 4

Dairuss and the City of the Golden Dome had grown since last AuRon had seen it. It rivaled even Hypat in size, though probably not in population; there were still many fields where sheep grazed within the city proper.

AuRon took the precaution of first visiting the guardpost in the high pass of the Red Mountains, once Naf’s station, and sending word by Dairuss messenger that AuRon the Gray had returned with mate and offspring to visit and consult with King Naf.

The men of the guard watched from their tower slits. Mysterious clanks and clatters echoed from within—were they pushing furniture to barricade the door, setting out fire buckets, or preparing war machines to fire harpoons?

He assuaged his anxiety by telling Istach stories of how he and Naf met, back when he was just a lowly sword-for-hire guarding dwarven gold. How he raised Hieba up from a little girl stolen from a ravaged trade caravan to Queen, and how Naf’s people had been the first to fight back against the Ghioz empire.

So when word returned, flashed by a great mirror atop the Golden Dome, that AuRon was to land in the Dome’s gardens, AuRon half sighed in relief.

They alighted in a meadow filled with white-painted decorative stones. From the air, or the top of the dome, they made patters that AuRon recognized as human astrological signs.

“Hello, AuRon. I’m glad to meet your family at last,” Naf said from behind.

AuRon had been watching the elaborate, fountain-flanked steps leading up to the onion-shaped, gold-painted dome. Instead, he’d come out of a ordinary stone dwelling, not much more than a cottage, really.

“You aren’t in the old palace residence?” AuRon asked.

“Ach, no. Everything is such a walk in that place. I like my pipe, my water, and my hearth all within reach of a good solid chair, and these days a long hike to bed is not my favorite way to end a day.”

“AuRon! You haven’t changed a bit,” Hieba said. She was still beautiful, only careworn.

AuRon introduced Natasatch and Istach.

Naf’s forehead bore a fringe of white—a sign of aging in a human. What had been gray before was now white, making the remaining darker hair toward the back look all deeper in color, as though it were steadying itself for the final desperate battle from the white encroachment at the temples and forelock. Hieba’s eyes had lost much of their sparkle. They’d seemed to have fallen back into dark sockets, but were steady and alert and the teeth she showed in her mouth were still in order, even if they’d gone a bit yellowish brown.

“It’s from all the bitterbean I’ve been drinking,” she said, when AuRon asked about it, since he couldn’t discuss the condition of her scale and had no idea what human standards applied to the night-black hair bound in elaborate cording of three colors. “The taste is so familiar, I must have had it as a child, before you found me.”

“Some of the Ghioz trade routes are still intact,” Naf said. “They’re not bad fellows, once you yank the whips out of their hands and don’t curse their dead Queen—to their faces, anyway.”

Naf wore the coats of state of his people. The Dairuss kings of old, evidently, did not go for flashy apparel, perhaps befitting a simple people who grazed a dozen different animals depending on ground—Dairuss was everything from high-mountain passes to rolling, well-watered hills near the great river. While it had never been a rich land in gold or gems, they’d fallen from the heights they’d once, briefly, known when they’d overthrown the evil wizard Anklemere who’d ruled an empire vaster than even the Hypatians had known in their glory.

“And Nissa,” AuRon asked, dredging up the name from his memory.

“Nissa means ‘morning dove’ in my language. Our nickname for her. Now she only answers to the Ghioz court name the Red Queen gave her, Desthenae.”

“Married at eleven, to one of the Princes of the Sunstruck Sea,” Hieba said. “Not our doing, some Ghioz title in charge of her sold her maidenhood and absconded when the Queen’s rule collapsed. We’re just grateful this Prince made her a wife, instead of a concubine, as the men in those parts are wont to do.”