Above all, he must keep the roc-riders busy elsewhere.

He flapped hard in the direction of the face on the mountainside as angry lightning began to flash.

AuRon noticed a strange glow from the top of the face, at the crown of the head. At first he thought it was some reflection of a fire in a chimney, but no fire he’d ever seen burned white.

He suspected he knew the source of the star-like light.

AuRon decided that the easiest way to enter would be through the mouth. The scaffolding blocked the way like wooden bars.

He picked up speed, folded his wings so they angled back as if he were diving into water after tuna. He went through the wood as though it were riverbank reeds.

The scaffolding made a satisfying crashing sound as it fell.

He marked fleeing forms of humans in various states of nightdress.

A pair of guards charged in, spears at the ready. AuRon roared at them, and they charged out with the same enthusiasm as they had entered with.

“What is this insult?” a commanding voice called.

AuRon saw the Red Queen standing in a stairway. She wore a mask that looked as though it was made of carefully pressed paper.

“You owe me a ransom of gold,” AuRon said. “I am here to collect.”

“You did a poor job of delivering my message. We keep our bargains. We will give you a quantity of silver, and we may part in peace.”

“Give me what I have earned, or die.”

“That is an easy choice. Kill me. It will save us a chest full of coin, that we may then find a better use for.”

“I do not desire your gold,” AuRon said. “You may satisfy my demand by paying me in flesh.”

“Naf and his men have failed, you know. All your clever planning simply put him and those men of his in our hands with less trouble than it would have taken to hunt him out of those mountains.”

AuRon bristled.

“What did you want in the citadel, I wonder?” the Red Queen said, walking out into the center of the nexus of stairs.

“If you give up Hieba and her child, I will forget your betrayal,” AuRon said, listening to cries and arguments of the servants.

“Is this some exotic appetite of dragons? We have heard rumors of such compulsions.”

“Let us go in peace.”

“So you can return them to that—traitor? Young Desthenae is being raised to lead her people under the title of governor. She promises to be beautiful enough to keep poets and songwriters inspired for generations to come. We would not like to let such grooming go to waste.”

“Then pay me the ransom promised or die.”

AuRon loosed his flame and the Red Queen vanished in a brief scream. Was she insane?

A burst of bluish light darted from the conflagration. It danced before his eyes like a lost firefly. Then it whirled up the stairs.

AuRon followed it, up and around turns, through the palace. Servants stared, not at the jumping light but at AuRon pounding up behind. Even as he panted from the chase, AuRon suspected that, like some hues of cave moss glow, the light could not be seen by human eyes.

They burst through the double doors at the back of the mountain’s head. The light raced up the ridge of the mountain to the tiny temple high on the mountainside.

He took off, circled the giant sculpture and looked down into the city. Perhaps he imagined it, or it was some trick of rain and wind, but it seemed that wings glided over the citadel.

He raced to the temple, burning its image into his eyes as the light faded.

Upon alighting, he listened, but only the mountain wind entered his ears.

He descended through graceful elvish sculpture built on stout dwarvish foundations, went down a wide, curving stair, and then squeezed through a crude blighter passage.

And so he came to the chamber.

The roots of the world itself held up its ceiling, or so it seemed.

AuRon had the strange feeling the mountain had grown up around this place. The rocks felt old, as if even they were tired and worn down by the ages.

A tree stood at the center, though it was an odd sort of tree, like two sets of roots joined at the trunk. One set of roots gripped the ceiling, the other the ground.

In places the roots bulged like diseased skin. Some of the perturbations were small, red, apple-like, others were as swollen as a bloated pig.

One of the swollen nodes moved, pulsing as though it were taking breaths. AuRon bent his head close. Its skin was stretched tight, reminding him of his own back before his wings broke through.

A face looked back at him.

The face of the Red Queen.

He recoiled in shock.

He had his flame. Would it be enough? He scored the trunk of the tree, and the pulpy wood gave way in sheets more in the manner of flesh than bark.

A hand punched out of the egg-node. Red webbing hung about it like a long veil.

The flame came out of fright. He spread it, concentrating on the tree. The bark hissed rather than burned as the flame lashed across it, like dragonflame vomited upon seawater.

He paid special attention to the nodes. They steamed, swelled, and exploded.

The air boiled with smoke, but he had to complete the destruction. He lashed out right and left, breaking and smashing the nodes. Not fast enough. He rolled, burning himself, smearing freshly grown blood all over himself.

Out out out! Out of air, out of hide, out of time.

He fled up the stairs, dragging flame behind, and out into the clean mountain air.

Horror awaited him in the citadel. Naf’s men hung from the walls, already being pecked by crows, with bloated vultures waiting beneath, evidently experienced enough in the ways of the Ghioz citadel to know that the bodies would fall eventually.

There was fighting outside the sloping tower at the center of the citadel. Those within the tower exchanged arrows with rocks fired by war-machines outside.

A green dragon, long and light-framed, circled above the tower, and above the green dragon two roc-riders circled higher.

Had he been thinking rationally, given time to plan, he would have glided high above the roc-riders, then dove on them from straight up. He could strike at one and drop flame on the other without much loss of speed, and fall on the dragon jarring the tower with strikes of her tail.

But like a fool, all he could think of was Naf, and possibly his men, on the inside of that tower as its walls were battered and opened by the war-machines.

He dropped fire on them. The rocs dove, talons out, rending and tearing out chunks of wing. He crashed to the ground, rolling and scattering soldiers and their horses and oxen.

He dragon-dashed for the ruins of the door. Arrows struck him along the sides but did not slow him. He snapped off feathers as he squeezed through the door.

It was a vast, square room with four fat columns running from floor to ceiling, stairs running up each side and what seemed to be old horse stalls filled with crates and chests and bundles.

Naf’s men, dressed in a mixture of their own armory and Ghioz breastplates and chain, were lighting flaming arrows to fire at the war-machines as other bowmen covered them.

At the center of the four columns was an old throne. A simple thing, wooden with brass feet and arm caps, almost unadorned.

Naf lay sprawled upon it, an arrow in his shoulder and stomach. Hieba held him in her arms. She’d aged greatly since he’d last seen her. Two long ropes of gray contrasted with the black in her hair.

“Well, AuRon,” Hieba said, “you’ve made it in time for the last act of our heroic tragedy.”

“Your daughter?” AuRon asked.

“The Queen sent her off to the southern provinces,” Hieba said.

Naf chuckled, a stream of saliva and blood trickling out of his mouth. “I am glad, though I wish Desthenae could see my final repose. Would you believe, today I sit on the ancient throne of Dairuss? The first kings of Ghioz dragged it all the way here and forgot about it in this old tower. Do me a courtesy. Once I’ve breathed my last, burn me in it.”

Chapter 25

Wistala, heading south with the muster of the north to the aid of Thallia and Hypat, was met on the road by Dsossa and a twin column of riders escorting what looked like a group of thanes and their families.

The thanes went far off the road to avoid Wistala, but Dsossa trotted ahead.

“Hypatia’s surrendered,” Dsossa said.

“When?” Wistala asked.

Dsossa shook her head. “Does it matter? What can be done? The Ironriders swept through the Iwensi like a storm, over a dozen passes and down the Iron Road. The Ghioz had barges laden with grain for their horses—trade that was supposed to be coming to Hypatia.”

“Fount Brass has mustered a herd of mounted thugs and war-carts. There are even four dozen Knights of the Directory with trained warhorses and remounts—not that they would stand a chance against the thousands of bowmen of the Ironriders. Shryesta sent spearmen and horsemen. Had they only made it to the city in time!”

“With such a force, perhaps something could be attempted.”

“The Directory have surrendered.”

“We haven’t.”

“We’re Hypatian.”

“So we obey the Directory. If they have surrendered, we have as well.”

These Hypatians and their legal niceties!