A human hurried toward the entrance, adjusting his thrall-wrap. He had the potbelly of a thrall who wasn’t worked hard enough, or who perhaps filched food. The Copper gave NeStirrath and Rethothanna’s names, and the thrall led him inside.
The passages were low and wide within, carved out of a more natural-looking brown stone, reinforced in spots with steel or scale-chipped wood. They’d been smoothed and coated with a paste the color of a hatchling’s belly to make the most of the lights. A similar sort of surface covered the floor, only tiny rounded pebbles had been thrown into the mix. Two dragons could just slip past each other, if they adjusted their stance and didn’t lock wings. The place also had that disgusting wet-bat smell of humans.
The thrall led him on a zigzagging course like a snake’s trail. It seemed there was only one main tunnel in here, winding upward in a series of turns, opening out on galleries and larger rooms that extended to the hillside. Greenish light filled the rooms that didn’t have lamps in use, and the copper recognized baskets dripping with cave moss hanging from the ceilings. There were thralls, naked from the waist up, who did nothing but carry yokes and buckets of filthy-smelling water. They’d hook a ladder to some eyebolts in the ceiling and climb up, endlessly watering the thriving moss.
The thrall fell to his knees at a wide gallery. A female stood within, her heavy haunches to him. She examined a series of pieces of matched paper hanging on a line, with writing scrawled on them.
“Very well. Put the new page nine in,” the dragon told another thrall. This one was elvish, a female with hair like dead cave moss.
The prostrate thrall glubbed something out into the set pebbles of the hallway pavement, raising dust.
“Who? I don’t know a Rugaard-nester.” She turned, showing eyes that struck him as bulging and a little oversize, though her nostrils had an elegant upward curve that reminded him a little of Mother.
“Rugaard. Sent by NeStirrath,” the Copper said. “I have some lines from his lifesong—”
“You’re too late,” she said, settling down with forelimbs crossed. “That old fool. This is just like him, making difficulty just when I’d given up. My history’s complete. It’s to be presented tonight; the Tyr himself wants to hear it at the Imperial banquet.”
“We could present the Tyr with a revised edition later,” the elvish thrall said, in remarkably good Drakine. “You’ll recite tonight personally, won’t you? He’d like a few lines about NeStirrath; they are old friends.”
The dragonelle ignored her. She swung her neck sideways, another unsettling gesture, for it reminded him of a snake, and looked at Harf and shut her nostrils. She returned her wide-eyed stare to the Copper. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Rugaard.”
“I’m Rethothanna. Wait, you’re the one who was adopted into the line three years ago?”
“Yes.” The Copper wasn’t sure if she deserved some sort of honorific or not. He started to recite the poem while it was still fresh in his head.
She interrupted him after six lines. “Look at your scale. What’s that servant of yours been doing with his time, the one-handed hominid pastime? The banquet’s in three hours!”
“I’m…I don’t know about a banquet.”
Rethothanna’s overlarge eyes widened, and the Copper wondered if they’d pop out. “You’re of the line. It’s an Imperial banquet. You must be at your place.”
“Er…”
“Don’t pollute your locution! Say something worthwhile or be silent.”
The Copper settled on silence, so fixed was he on the vast whites of her eyes as she looked him over.
“But not looking like that. Yam, go get every scale polisher and claw shaper in the hill. Open your mouth, drake. Well! Those teeth aren’t bad. There’s many a drake who’d be proud of a set like that. A little oil and they’ll gleam admirably; maybe they’ll divert attention from that eye. Eyegrit, are those bat bites? Where do you live?” He heard Harf take a few steps back. The shifting head turned on him. “Yes, you, thrall, you’d better cower. I’ve half a mind to eat you. Who taught you to use scouring salt on a dragon’s scale?”
“All scale clean! All them clean!” Harf said, covering his head with his forelimbs.
“Yam, have you died and rooted?”
The elf hurried off into the passage.
“Now, let’s have what passes for poetry from NeStirrath again. While they’re getting you cleaned up I’ll see if I can’t make something of his word butchery. His stanzas might be ranked enemies, the way he scatters them….”
Rethothanna kept Yam busy filling gaps in her scale with similarly colored green scales, which required much working with wire, attaching them to their neighbors so they’d stay in place.
The Copper had a thrall at each quarter, and one rather young, small, deft-handed female human working his face and teeth. First she trimmed the edged of his face scale with shears, then a file; then she went to work with a brush and something that smelled a little like paint. She poured dust though a straw into the crevices in his scale, then dusted his face with a glittery mixture that smelled of metals.
“Don’t skimp on the oliban and bay leaf,” Rethothanna said as a thrall painted the trailing corners of her nostrils, making them look even longer and more elegant. Red powder around her eyes set the deep green of her face off admirably, and gave her eyes life and fire.
The girl nodded and bent for a long, heavy wooden box topped by a broad handle. She came up with a pair of silver bottles with golden tops, and applied fragrant oils to his crest.
“Dragon-ward behind his griff. If he rattles them, I want the dragons to know it.”
The girl nodded and dabbed something into the folds of the skin behind his griff. It smelled like hot iron and blood to the Copper.
“His teeth now,” Rethothanna said.
The girl smeared a clear oil on his teeth. The Copper didn’t like the taste and pulled back his lips a little to keep it from getting in his mouth.
“Exactly,” Rethothanna said. He’d never heard her use such a satisfied tone before. “Your mother taught you well, girl.”
The girl tipped her head down a little.
“Bring a mirror-plate. Our young drake finally looks worthy of the Imperial line.”
Two thralls held up a polished sheet of bronze. He looked into it. The odd sense of depth to the reflection gave him a moment of dizziness, soon overcome as he adjusted to the idea of his reflection. It was like seeing your image in the water, but tinted with the colors of a coal fire.
His scale had a depth and polish and glitter. She’d shaped the displaced scale at the gouged side of his face so as to minimize the scarring, and added a pewter-colored powder to the crevices in his crest that emphasized the strong, smooth ridges.
So it was a proud young drake who followed Rethothanna over to the Black Rock and up to the Tyr’s Gardens.
The Copper had never seen such a gathering, or imagined there could be anything so splendid. It must have been dark outside, for the peak of the dome was a plate of midnight. This, however, made the fiery streams of lava running along the exterior of the dome all the brighter and more colorful.
Female dragons with fringes painted and smooth ribbons wound about their necks in fascinating knotwork, males with vivid red or blue lines painted on their wings—Rethothanna said it was a form of display of laudi, recognized by the Tyr himself and worn for all to see—drakes and drakka playing and singing and mirroring.
At the middle of the Gardens an open oval free of plants served as the center of the party. A little lower than much of the terraced garden, it was paved with shields and helmets and breastplates, trophies taken in battle and presented to the Tyr. At the center of the open area was a long masonry trench shaped like a drawn bow. At the notch of the bow lay the Tyr and his mate, on a low rise of wood and cushioning that gave them a commanding view. Where bow would give way to string, stairways led down to the kitchens. The most splendid of the dragons reclined at the bow. The string was reserved for the younger drakes and drakka.
For a moment the Copper’s eyes were tricked, and he thought platters of food slid by magic from dragon to dragon. He spotted thralls bearing vast platters on their heads. They rose heavy-laden from the stairs and circulated, always in the same direction to avoid collisions in the narrow trench. The roast chunks of meat went around the circuit, and emptied as the dragons reached down with jaws and plucked the tidbits. Sometimes instead of platters they bore a long pole in a sort of harness-and-cup, and from cross-braces at the top of the pole dangled whole roasted joints from hooks. These seldom even made it to the drakes and drakka.
At the very center of the dining plaza was a sandy pit. According to Rethothanna, new hatchlings of the Imperial line would be exhibited there so all could see them, but there were none at the moment.
“Any guests the Tyr wishes to particularly honor get seated to his left, so they have first choice of the dishes,” Rethothanna explained.
Rethothanna didn’t mix—she wasn’t of the Imperial line—but instead waited to be called by NoSohoth, in his usual role of organizer. His gleaming silver shone especially bright tonight.