“Maybe someday, when I’m a bit stronger of hearts, but I’ll take your word for it. Where is this discourse leading?”

“I believe our kind is vanishing from the world.”

Wistala couldn’t argue with that. She’d seen few enough dragons in her life. These Firemaids were more than all she’d ever met put together.

“Perhaps. Your opinion of the surface is true enough. There aren’t many dragons about.”

“Dragonkind needs you. Your aid would be invaluable, if the Lavadome is to survive.”

“What is the Lavadome to me?”

“Your original home, I expect.”

“Whaaat?”

“It must have occurred to you that our dragonspeech is very similar.”

“Perhaps, but I’ve not spoken with many dragons.”

“I’ve talked with some of the dragons who formerly were under the thrall of riders. They’re a slow and stupid bunch, and their speech is most odd. Half the time I must ask them to repeat what they say. I have no trouble understanding you. In fact, you’re easier on my ears than some of the Anklenes, and I’ve been among them my whole life. I can’t help but think we’re related.”

“How can that be?”

“How much do you know of your parents, your grandsires?”

“Very little. AuRon knows more, as he talked with Father about his song now and then, and Mother supplied a few details. I know my mother’s mother was named Irelia.”

“An Anklene name if I ever heard one. Was your mother clever?”

“Yes. I would call her clever. Father was always praising her ability with tongues.”

“I suspect, Wistala, that you’re from a line of one of those renegades. Some hated living much of their lives underground. Others objected to keeping thralls—they even compared it to Anklamere’s enslavement of dragons, if you would believe such sophistry—and they left. There were those happy to see them go—more food for the rest of us and the voracious griffaran. But what I’m getting at, Wistala, is that you’ve come home. What are you going to do about it?”

Wistala felt as disoriented as after her crash down the well. “I—I need time to think. I’ve lived among hominids, so I’m used to new ideas, but this requires getting used to a new . . . a new me.”

Ayafeeia crossed necks with her, and they stood so, feeling each other’s blood pulse.

“Take your time,” Ayafeeia said quietly.

Once past that break in the tunnel the Firemaids relaxed considerably. The party met with a magnificent blue with red stripes on his wings whom Ayafeeia called one of the “Aerial Host.”

He bore a rider, but it was easy to see who was in charge. While Ayafeeia spoke to the dragon, the man fetched water and food for the dragon. The rider had no reins, but he did have a thick strap tethering him to the saddle. Ayafeeia later told her it was so he could turn around in the saddle to shoot his crossbow behind in flight. The riders did communicate with their dragons, through either words or leg taps, to let them know what they were doing, so a sudden turn or dive didn’t “spill” their burden.

Wistala noted that the rider wore a sort of armor under his fur-trimmed cloak of blue dragonscale, the same shade as his dragon.

He flew off down the passage, evidently with a message. Imagine, flying underground! This Star Tunnel was a wonder of the world.

“What sort of men ride with the Aerial Host?” Wistala asked.

“Free thralls,” Ayafeeia said. “There’s talk of establishing an Uphold just for the Aerial Host so the men can raise their families among proper gardens in the sun. Though if I were the Tyr I might fear such a move.”

“Why is that?” Wistala asked.

“I suspect the Uphold would prosper, and a rival might rise.”

It seemed all the dragons in this empire lived in fear of another civil war. The previous one had lasted for generations, off and on, and ended only with the establishment of the First Tyr, FeHazathant. There were two short-lived ones after him, a brief domination by dragon-riders, and now Tyr RuGaard, who had inaugurated what he called the “Age of Fire.”

“Our Tyr would not have us hiding in the dark. He promises a return to the surface,” one of the drakka said. “When we are strong enough.”

Wistala wondered. The world was an awfully big place, and it sounded as though even this empire had few dragons.

They marched on through the Star Tunnel, drakka out scouting ahead and behind. They came to another break, but this time the floor had fallen away, spanned by a single bridge.

“It’s heavy enough to bear a dragon,” Ayafeeia said, trotting across with wings out for balance.

The others followed in line.

“Maidmother, demen!” shouted one of the drakka who stood on watch, sniffing down into the chasm.

“Quick, across, on wing,” Ayafeeia called. “Drakka who haven’t crossed yet, ride! Wistala, hurry.”

Hearts pounding, there was nothing to do but cross. She fixed her eyes on Ayafeeia and dragon-dashed across. She felt a thump on her left saa and slipped for one awful second. An iron hook rose, dragged across her fringe, but luckily didn’t catch and fell off into darkness.

Wistala wondered what she would have fallen into if that hook had pulled her down.

But she finished crossing.

She hurried to the others, grouping so as to fill the Star Tunnel wall-to-wall.

“You’re hurt,” Ayafeeia said.

Wistala saw a gash in her saa, and wondered what had made it. It looked like an ax blade that left a ragged end to the wound. She was bleeding, badly. Blood coated her saa and was already pooling, though she’d just planted her foot.

“Tuck it tight, tight as you can. That will slow the flow,” Ayafeeia advised.

The last of the drakka dashed back from the edge of the chasm. “Many hundreds, Maidmother! Coming up each side.”

“We should run,” a dragonelle said. “This is not good ground, too wide.”

“Wistala can’t run.”

“Too bad for her,” Takea said.

“How do we live, Firemaids?” Ayafeeia asked loudly.

“Together!” they responded.

“How do we fight?”

“Together!”

“Then how should we die?”

“Together!”

Now they could hear breathing from the darkness around the break in the tunnel. A shadowy mass of movement, like some mass of seaweed thrown up by a nighttime surf, resolved into individual shapes.

They came, limping, pairs of demen supporting each other, a larger deman dragging a smaller evidently unable to walk.

They all shared one attribute: bright, dry eyes. Wistala would never forget them, bobbing in their reflected light, hundreds of pairs of fireflies, each in its own dance.

“Drakka! Skirmish line, single length!” Ayafeeia called.

A dragonelle on the other side of the column tossed demen this way and that, stomping and swinging her tail. She saw one knocked off into darkness by a tail swipe. A wet splat sounded out of the shadow.

The drakka dashed ahead and fell into line with admirable speed, as though the only thing that mattered in their young lives was getting noses into line, the space of a fully extended tail between them.

She could hear the steps of the demen horde now, a sound walking through spur-deep leaves to faint claw-taps.

“Drakka! Loose flame!” Ayafeeia bellowed.

Orange gouts of flame struck the foremost.

“Drakka! Protect the rear. Firemaids, scale wall, three across!”

As the drakka dragon-dashed to the rear, the remaining six dragonelles dropped into a strange back-to-front set of interlocking pairs. The three biggest dragonelles plopped their backsides down, hugging ground, tails pointed toward the enemy. They swung their tails back and forth, not in unison, but at random. The backward-facing dragons watched flanks and rear, the forward-facing dragonelles held their breath as the demen surged through their burning, fallen comrades. The flames showed the approaching forms admirably.

The other three dragonelles filled the spaces, sii just behind the backwards-facing saa.

Wistala stuck close to Ayafeeia, who kept one eye on the approaching demen and the other on the dragonelle who’d reduced the flanking attack into smears of blood and twitching bodies. She breathed fire into a hole.

The demen charge broke against those swinging tails. Demen were crushed between two meeting tailswipes, or batted against the Star Tunnel’s walls, or knocked head over heels before being crushed like an insect under a branch. Those few who dodged through the maze of movement, brandishing frightful-looking barbed swords and spears, met lashing saa-strikes that separated torso from legs or sent entire bodies flying, leaving only the spinning head to bounce off the tunnel floor like a dropped melon.

The mass piled up, just out of reach of the waving tails.

“Firemaids, loose flame!” Ayafeeia bellowed.

The tails flattened against the mass of haunches as the three dragonelles emptied their firebladders. Wistala smelled the hot, oily smell of dragonflame and the flames burst among the demen as though howling, dancing, blue-orange-yellow beasts rampaged in their ranks.