“Since when is there an edict against truth?”
“There’s private truth and public truth, girl.”
The humans lapsed into welcome silence, allowing AuRon to watch the climbers. When they grew close enough to wave, Hieba jumped down the path like a running deer.
“To be that young again,” Evfan mused to himself.
AuRon saw Hieba run into Naf’s arms. He felt a spasm in his fire bladder; gladness at Hieba’s joy folded under a crest of jealousy. Naf would take Hieba away again, leaving him lonelier than before.
Naf still wore the silver circled about his long hair. He had filled out since AuRon had last seen him as a desert-lean bandit: his neck was thick with muscle and the lines around his mouth and eyes deep with age and cares. AuRon could no more judge human beauty than he could talk to the stars, but Naf’s face still looked as though it was put together from two different halves. The cloaked figure squatted and rested while the lovers embraced, and the third, the man in the hunting cloak, scratched a red beard and looked out on the vista of city, river and plain.
The four continued up the mountain, Naf and Hieba holding hands as they picked along the trail. They covered the short distance left easily, except for the cloaked figure, who paused at the edge of the outlook. AuRon could hear wheezy breathing from beneath the cowl.
AuRon sniffed, but smelled only thick man-scent and traces of charcoal on the cloak.
“You know . . . me gray . . . we once . . . did trust . . . one another,” she said, lowering her hood to reveal a scarred face and hair like hoarfrost in the sunshine. It was Hazeleye, her hair bristling with pine needles. “It is him,” she continued, gaining her breath back. “It’s tiny now, but he still has his egg horn. I’ve never known a dragon to keep it, save this beast.”
Naf approached, and grabbed him by the loose skin at his jaw joint. The man stared down AuRon’s snout. He saw brushstrokes of gray at his temples. “Old beast. Somehow I knew we weren’t through yet.”
“Old? Not a phrase I’d choose for myself. I am yet young, not even three score years of age; I’ve still a hundred winters before I’m counted in my prime.”
“There is still one here you do not know,” Naf said. “This is Hischhein, counselor to the queen, of the ruling house of Ghioz.”
“Welcome to our land, young dragon,” Hischhein said. For a courtier, he spoke the tongue of the Dairuss with a thick accent. “This is a long-hoped-for day.”
The elf looked at the whitecapped mountains. “And a cool one, even in summer. I wouldn’t care to pass a winter at this post.”
“Shall we talk inside?” Hieba asked.
“No,” Hazeleye said. “What I’ve come to tell is best done under clean sunlight.”
The Silver Guard brought out chairs of wood and fur, and the visitors sat.
“We have dark news, too,” Hieba said. “There is war coming from the east, out of the Bissonian Heights and beyond. The blighters are building boats for a descent of the Falnges.”
“They will come in the tens of thousands,” AuRon said. “Not just from the river, but in chariots as of old.”
“The queen’s diplomacy has not bought us the time we had hoped, then,” Hischhein said, rubbing his brows together in thought. “They may mean to catch us unawares.”
“If you’ve brought me here to fight—,” AuRon said.
“All in good time, AuRon,” Naf said. “We know there is only so much one dragon can do. We have a great favor to ask, more dangerous than battle, but more hopeful, as well.”“Let him hear all in its proper order,” Hazeleye said. “He has little reason to love elf, dwarf, or man, if I know much of the lives of dragons these days.”
“The dwarves were good enough to him, from what I saw,” Naf said.
“You weren’t at the raid on his nest cave,” Hazeleye said. “I was. AuRon, war has come out of the north; its source is the very island and the very man you were destined for when we were on the ship. It is not a war of territory, of conquest, of loot, of pride, of women, of any of the reasons that take sword from sheath and fill the sky with arrows. It is a war of death. Barbarians come from the misty north only to kill and supplant. There are no slaves taken, no prisoners exchanged, no children spared unless they are human. It is a race war, pitting man against elf and dwarf. Blighters fight as allies of the men, for now at least, but I’ve read tomes of the Wizard of the Isle of Ice. He means to clean the earth of them, as well.”
“This is the Wyrmmaster?” AuRon asked. “The wizard within the circle of man?”
“Where did you hear this?” Hazeleye asked.
“From blighters preparing for war.”
“He doesn’t seek power for himself, but for his kind. Even men who oppose him are counted his enemy and murdered. He wishes to usher in an age of men, to fulfill what he calls Man’s First Destiny. I’ve heard weary hours of it, and have no wish to belabor you.”
“Hominids killing each other off, even in race war, is nothing new. I know your history.”
Hischhein shook his head. “This is not a kingdom or two. This is war on a scale never before seen. From the rolling ocean to the west to the myriad isles of the east, he means to clear the land for the sons and daughters of men. Elves, dwarves, blighters, and yes, I believe even dragons are to be swept away.”
“I thought he used dragons.”
“He does,” Hazeleye said. “As slaves. As warhorses. The dragons he has have no more free will than . . . than . . .”
Than an exploding pig? AuRon thought to himself.
“. . . than a hawk trained to bring down a duck.” Hazeleye finished, then added in Elvish. “And I’m the cause of it all.”
AuRon met her gaze, trying to read further in her eye.
“What’s that?” Hischhein asked.
“A curse,” Hazeleye said.
“He’s ordered them to do more than hunt, AuRon,” Naf said. “They wreck cities, devour and scatter herds, pull down bridges, sink boats—”
“I’ve seen it firsthand, Naf,” Hazeleye said. “AuRon, I gave up hunting dragons after that last trip. The ship docked and offloaded the other two hatchlings. Some of the Iceislers gave me a tough time for losing you. If they had known I’d loosed you, there’s no telling what they would have done. Even the lowliest dockhand muttered about ‘elvish indolence’ loudly enough for me to hear. One of the beastmasters raised his hand to me, if you can believe it. I gave him the toe of my boot where he won’t soon forget it, and I bit another’s earlobe off.” She clicked her teeth together for emphasis.
“I set to training hunting dogs and falcons. I’d had enough roaming, so I settled in Krakenoor, city of the bluewater elves and of my youth, and it’s approaches are thick with elves who’ve rooted for their Last Age to be near it. Krakenoor’s older than any land of men. ’Twas a beautiful old place; there was the Wetside built so it floated out on the Inland Ocean, and the Dryside.”
“I’ve read of it,” AuRon said.
“You missed your chance to see it, unless torn pilings and fallen walls are of architectural interest. Krakenoor is no more. Alas! for its old boardwalks and water gardens. Perhaps we’d lived in peace too long, with friends to the north and primitives to the south. The dragons came at dawn, two dozen if there was one, flying in from the sea low enough for their wingtips to raise white splashes where they brushed the sea. They tore through the fishing fleet as it was heading out, capsizing the larger boats and knocking the bottoms out of the cockleshells. I had a view. I was out with my osprey on the cliffs above the Dryside, south of the old watchtower. There were dragons larger than you, AuRon, with pairs of men atop neck and haunch, in sort of basket-saddles to either side. Others were your length or smaller, following the great ones, some with riders and some without.
“They divided. A pair of big ones and most of the little ones bore in to the sea-fortress on the Wetside harbor mouth. It has withstood tempests, surf, and war, but never such a storm as this. The timbers were thick with paint, and the firebuckets weren’t enough for dragon-foua. Orange fire, reflecting the rising sun, broke out in a dozen places, but especially near the longbridge connecting the Wetside to the Dryside. Elves who didn’t wish to burn to death leaped into the bay, but were met by wingless drakes.”
Hazeleye shuddered, then went on. “Dryside put up a fight. The elves in the citadel made it to the towers and walls. My own eyes caught Lord Fairwind in the courtyard with his seven-foot bow of yew. I’ve seen him draw it at festivals, the bow cosseted in his right foot as he pulls the string with both hands to his eye while balancing on the other leg. He can drive a lead-cored arrow deep enough into an oak so the feathers are all that can be seen of the shaft. He put one of his steel-tipped arrows into the neck of a great dragon, bringing it and its riders down in the old wood-chapel. As he ran from the fire of others, I saw another dragon fly in and seize him from behind. It dashed him against the Citadel’s walls.