All the Firemaids apparently thought well of their Tyr, and while there was some doubt as to his parentage, as he’d been orphaned young, each line seemed assured that he was, deep down, of theirs. The Anklenes argued his distinctive eye-ridge and classical crest as proof of their line’s intelligence, the Skotl bragged that such hardihood in the face of battle injuries could only result from Skotl parentage, and the Wyrr praised the friendship he seemed to inspire in not only dragons but bats and thralls and such as well.
“It’s more that what went before him was so bad, he seems thrice as great as he really is,” Ayafeeia said when they chanced to be alone after one dinner when the Tyr’s latest order that Paskinix should be told that a substantial chunk of his army was waiting for him to come and claim it in the Lavadome came down via a Drakwatch messenger. “He gets what he wants. He’s just cleverer about it than most.”
The irony of her situation appealed to her. She wished nothing more than that Rainfall was still alive so she could get back to his estate and tell him. She’d exhausted herself flying from the frozen north down the spine of the world to the south, searched the borders of Hypatia, across the endless plains, and even into the East seeking first other dragons, then AuRon.
All those horizons under her wings, exhausting days and sore nights. Wasted. Well, not wasted. A broader knowledge of the world could hardly be called a wasteful activity. But what she really needed was one slippery step and a fall into the Lower World to bring her into more contact with her own kind than she’d ever imagined.
The one filcher in her hoard was that drakka Takea.
“The Tyr must know about you helping Paskinix escape,” she said. At every opportunity.
“And he shall,” Ayafeeia said. “But from me, not you. All I know for certain is that an exhausted, starved, injured dragon fell during a difficult climb.”
Wistala’s exhaustion was cured by rest, her starvation was remedied by two-a-day meals—one could tell day from night in the Star Tunnel by taking a trip to one of the openings—and her injuries were set by blighter-thralls, who put a brace on the break and used a charcoal forge to seal it closed.
“It feels awful at first, like something’s clutching at your wing. Quite unnerving,” Ayafeeia said. “The itch feels like it will drive you mad if you don’t keep yourself occupied.”
Wistala took her up on it and tried to keep her mind occupied. “Who built the Star Tunnel?” she asked during one of the restorative meals. “Dwarves?”
“It doesn’t look like dwarf-work,” one of the Anklenes in the Firemaids said. “It’s too dry for demen and as for blighters—why? They’re comfortable underground, but they prefer the surface. The triangular shape, while structurally sound, wastes a good deal of space for anything but dragon-sized creatures.”
“But we’ve no legends of dragons making it,” Ayafeeia put in.
“The proportions are right for trolls. They’re rather triangular. And they’re so odd, it’s easy to believe they’re out of the Lower World.”
“Trolls!” Ayafeeia said. “Where are there trolls? I thought they’d vanished.”
“There are still some in the north, regrettably.”
“Trolls! They are supposed to be strong,” a Firemaid said.
“Fast, which is worse. And they can climb like giant monkeys.”
“Best just to fly away and burn them.”
“Well, they squeeze into cracks like spiders. They don’t know fear. But if you burn them good at the tailvent—their lungs are to the rear—you’ll drop them.”
“How do you know all that?” Takea asked.
“I helped kill one, and just survived another. He jumped on me while I was flying through some mountains.”
Takea shut her nostrils, and a few others whispered among themselves. The Anklene stared at her closely.
“You have a great deal of experience in the Upper World,” Ayafeeia said.
“I’ve traveled it my whole life. I know Hypatia better than most areas, but I’ve been up to the icy wastes, I’ve seen the Sadda-Vale, the eastern kingdoms, and some of the Inland Ocean.”
“No one could survive so many journeys,” the Anklene said. “How were you not hunted?”
“By not giving them a reason to hunt me. I don’t raid pasturage or pens, and if I must go hungry for a week to do so, I go hungry. One can always get by on badgers and skunks and so on. They’re disgusting but easy to smell out.”
The Star Tunnel went on for days. At one point it seemed to end in a sheer rock face, with a new tunnel, smaller and rougher, bored so that it joined up with the old, and a second break in it soon after, this one requiring a brief climb.“Some change in the Lower World itself since the tunnel was made,” the Anklene Firemaid asserted. “You can see the demen dug connecting shafts.”
“This was where the hardest fighting took place. Every hill lost a dragonelle or a drakka here,” Ayafeeia said, showing hidden pits full of broken spear points and holes that had fired javelins or whirling blades. “One day we’ll build a shrine at the Bloody Cut.”
There was a shrine, of sorts, in the form of a stack of demen heads. Wistala lost her count as she realized it was in the thousands.
The demen had done construction of things other than walls and traps throughout the Star Tunnel. There were small ponds where they stocked fish and shell-creatures, pens where they had kept livestock beneath platforms that brought fodder down from the holes, even smoking rooms for the preservation of foodstuffs.
“This one was filled with men. All withered, as though they’d been long dead. The demen like their smoked meat very dry,” a Firemaid told her.
“We drove the demen away from their underground rivers. Many of these improvements are recent, to try and feed themselves. What’s left must be mightily hungry by now.”
“I think they eat each other,” Takea said. “Drakka exploring fissures have found some dead demen. Always small and weak-looking, always with flesh and guts and brains removed.”
“A shame,” another Firemaid said. “Demen liver sewed up in their own skin and boiled with the brain is an old Wyrr favorite.”
The others smacked snouts and licked lips in agreement. Wistala didn’t care for the idea of dragons behaving like battlefield crows and tunnel rats. But after her enforced short rations, her mouth watered nevertheless, and she was forced to gather the saliva back in with her tongue just like the others.
While all but a watch slept, nose to flank or curled belly to back, Ayafeeia sought her out.
“Come. I want to see how that wing is progressing,” she said quietly.
Wistala followed her to a wider section of the Star Tunnel, where bits of dead leaf and other fallen dirt from above had accumulated, making a soft bed for cave moss and mushrooms.
Ayafeeia plucked up a pair of mushrooms and ate them. “Dwarf food, I know, but they clean the bowel. Let’s extend that wing, if you can.”
Wistala found that she could, at the cost of some pain. Ayafeeia had her raise the wing, lower it, sweep it about.
“You’ll fly again. Even if it doesn’t heal entirely, we can have a lighter brace made for you,” Ayafeeia said. “Our own Tyr uses a contraption that keeps the proper tension at the joint. But be sure you extend your wings now whenever you get the chance, several times a day. A little—a very little—strain on the wing will encourage it to heal more firmly.”
“I feared—”
“Well, don’t. I know it’s instinct, one-winged birds make easy prey, and you’re keeping it tucked tight, hiding the injury.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s more. I’ve wanted to have a talk with you.”
“Yes?”
“Now that you’ve regained some of your strength, I was wondering what you planned for the future.”
“To continue searching for my brother. I don’t know where he’s gone, but if I return to the librarians in Hypatia perhaps they will have some news. I’ve asked my friends there to collect any news of dragons they hear.”
“Ah,” she said.
“You are disappointed?”
“I’m an honest dragonelle, Wistala. It’s why I never rose far or won favor in the Imperial Line. Politics is not in me. I had hoped you’d use your skills and knowledge here, for the Lavadome and the Empire. For your kind. We’re the last hope of dragons. One as well traveled as you must know that.”
“Go on. I’ll try and hear your words fairly.”
“I’m no expert on the Upper World, Wistala, but it seems to me that dragons are just about done there. We’ve had several groups of back-to-surfacers leave, to live natural as dragons ought and all that rot, but we never hear from them or their hatchlings again.
“The one set of dragons we did meet were—well, the only word I can think of is thralls. They were thralls to men, dragon-riders who briefly arrived and made us part of their dominion. It’s a story with much wickedness and a bloody finish, if you’d like to hear it.”