BOOK ONE

Will

“THERE’S NO WORSE ENEMY IN THE

EARTH THAN A FALLEN DRAGON.”

—Dwarfish proverb

Chapter 1

Wistala, feeling like a newly mated dragon-dame, might have been living an idle, romantic dream, save that she was eyesore from searching mountainside crevices and frostbitten about the nostrils.

She rode chill mountain air, hunting trolls with her secret mate, DharSii, among the peaks of the Sadda-Vale. They’d been up before the sun, hoping to catch the walking boulder of muscle and appetite on its return from pasture country.

There were things she’d rather be doing with her mate, of course. Swimming in the steaming pools at the north end of the Sadda-Vale, for a start, rather than fighting winds that threatened to freeze her blood. The remote fastness of the Sadda-Vale, resting like a twisted skeleton on the vast plains east of the Red Mountains, had a pleasant microclimate in the snake-track vale between two short mountain chains, a gift of the mild volcanic activity in the area—along with an occasional earthquake.

Ancient ruins filled with highly stylized artwork, much of it featuring dragons, their prey, and cowering hominids, still waited to be uncovered and explored. There were secrets to be discovered in abandoned old tunnels and subchambers, icons to be discerned in high corners, relics of lost dragon history.

DharSii, a powerful yet thoughtful dragon whose scale color reminded her of the tigers she’d seen in jungles to the south, had some interesting theories about the old structures of the Sadda-Vale, and she wanted to hear them again, this time while looking at the art and iconography that had inspired such ideas. Wistala had developed her taste for pedantry while doing what her fellow librarians called “outwork,” living with a tribe of blighters half a world to the south. She’d seen hints here and there of an ancient golden age of dragons, and DharSii shared her interest in that epoch.

When conversation became too dull among their fellow dragons of the Sadda-Vale, they liked to escape mentally to other times and places. Those were her favorite hours, as they broke down the last few bones of dinner and swallowed after-feast ores laboriously cracked out of the slate-fields. Sometimes the conversations went on until the dawn arrived like a surprise guest. They’d revive themselves by taking a swim in the steamy waters of the pools beneath Vesshall and then snooze on the sunny mountainside rocks above the lake mist.

But life with DharSii in the Sadda-Vale carried responsibilities. Left unchecked, the trolls would devour the flocks and herds and coops and pens that sustained the dragons and their blighter servants. So this particular morning they flew parallel to the western spine of mountains sheltering the vale, hungry and chilled and alert. The mountains, like old, worn-down teeth, were full of crags, holes, and pockets, and trolls could fold themselves into cracks that would hardly allow a dragon’s snout. The peaks and ridges caught the wind and sang mournful tunes to unheeding clouds and fog. Above them, bitter winds blew hard and cold enough to freeze one’s eyes open in the winter. On the other side of the clouds, she knew, the stars at night were brilliantly clear, with spectacular fireworks of shimmering, flame-colored lights dancing on the horizon like maddened rainbows—if you could brave the chill. But in their shelter, the heated waters of the Sadda-Vale created pools of warmth and the omnipresent clouds and fogs.

DharSii dipped lower, seeing something on the slope.

Just a shadow. He led her higher again, so their hunt might be concealed by the clouds.

Her brother AuRon should be with them. He was a skilled stalker. His scaleless skin, though vulnerable in battle and badly scarred because of it, shifted from color to color according to where he stood, even to the point of imitating shadows and striations in the rock face. But as soon as winter had broken above the Sadda-Vale and flight over the plains of the Ironriders became possible without fighting blizzards, he’d gone aloft to travel south, risking his life in order to visit his mate. Natasatch, mother of AuRon’s hatchlings now serving a new Tyr of the Dragon Empire, acted as “protector” for one of the Empire’s provinces. Which really meant humans fed, housed, and offered coin to AuRon’s mate.

AuRon, once when he had incautiously drunk too much of Scabia’s brandy-wine, had slurred something about “political necessities” separating him from his mate.

Wistala’s scaleless brother had to be careful on these visits and use every camouflage of wit and skin. As an exile, he was in danger of death every moment he was with his mate. To manage his brief visits, he made good use of his ability to become invisible at will and also of his many friends in the Protectorate of Dairuss, where he knew the king and queen from old.

But every time Wistala saw him leave, she feared that it would be a permanent parting.

She returned her wandering mind to the hunt.

The air this morning had a hopeful, alive smell. Fresh winds blew from the south, bringing the scents of the coming spring.

She noticed a herd of goats, tight together rather than grazing, the dominant males alert and watchful, all looking in the same direction and sniffing the breeze. Had they clustered at the sight of her and DharSii? It seemed unlikely—goats rarely searched the clouds unless a shadow passed over them, and there were thick, steely clouds today. Hardly a day went by that did not bring mists and drizzle, as warm, wet, rising air met the cooler streams above.

Good for the grasses the herbivores loved, but the patches of fog and wandering walls of drizzle also gave concealment for prowling trolls. You had to get lucky to see one in the open; at the sound of a dragon’s leathery wings, they could squeeze themselves into crevices that seemed hardly thicker than a tail tip.

No, the goats were alarmed by something else. Had they caught the scent of a troll? And, if so, would the pair of them be enough to kill it? They really should have brought another dragon so that there’d be a firebladder full of burning fats and sulfur in reserve.

Her other brother, the copper-colored RuGaard, formerly Tyr of the Dragon Empire and Worlds Upper and Lower, wouldn’t be of much use on a hunt. Thin and listless, hardly eating, drinking, or caring for his scales, he lived a lightless existence at Scabia’s hall, hearing without really listening to her old tales of the great dragon civilization of Silverhigh from ages ago. The only time he showed any sort of animation these days was when AuRon brought news of his own mate, Nilrasha, a virtual prisoner in a tower of rock, thanks to the stumps she had instead of wings and a guard of watchful griffaran. She lived on as a hostage to the former Tyr’s good behavior.

Or when Scabia told some old tale of desperate vengeance. Scabia loved fiery tales where three generations of men were born and dead before a dragon took his blood-toll upon a hominid nation. Then he grew attentive and his griff twitched as he stared at Scabia through lidded eyes.

RuGaard frightened her at such times. She could feel the violence in his thoughts like the muffled pounding of distant hooves.

Thank the spirits she had the comforting presence of DharSii beside her. Caught between the quiet, reserved AuRon, creepy in his ability to disappear into the scenery and his own thoughts, and RuGaard’s gloomy brooding, she needed a companion to provide mental, and a bit of exhilarating physical, escape.

There were flowers just above the ground in green meadows at the colder altitudes below the tree line. Spring had come at last.

Spring. Her hatchlings would be aboveground this spring and breathing their first fire.

Wait—not her hatchlings. They counted Aethleethia as their mother, even if they could barely comprehend a mind-picture from the lazy ninny.

The offering of her hatchlings had been Scabia’s price for giving the exiles from the Dragon Empire refuge at Vesshall in the Sadda-Vale. Scabia’s daughter, Aethleethia, was unable to have eggs of her own, and both were eager for hatchlings in their hall. The other dragons thought the father of the hatchlings was Aethleethia’s mate, NaStirath, a foolish but handsomely formed dragon of proud lineage.

She, DharSii, and NaStirath had conspired to hide the truth that DharSii was the true sire. Though one of the males did bear stripes as dark as DharSii’s, the suspicious Scabia had been placated when Wistala pointed out that her brother AuRon was also a striped dragon.

No matter who they counted as mother, the three males and two females would be ravenous, and if they were to have anything besides the bony fish or carapace-creatures and snails of the lake to eat, she and DharSii would have to find and kill the trolls that had been raiding sheep, goats, and caribou from the mountain slopes and patches of forest in the valleys.

DharSii and Wistala had discovered the remains of troll-eaten game on one of their flights to get some privacy from the other dragons of the Sadda-Vale. A troll could easily eat as much as a dragon and according to DharSii, if the food supply was truly superlative, it would breed.

Scabia’s blighter servants had been frantically breeding cattle, sheep, and goats and releasing them into pasture ever since Wistala and her exiled companions arrived. There was ample game for a whole family of trolls, though the solitary trolls didn’t form anything that might be recognized as family.

So now they were on the hunt for the most dangerous vermin in the world.