Dragon Rule - E. E. Knight [106]
Instead, this particular morning they flew parallel to the western spine of mountains sheltering the vale. The mountains, like old, worn-down teeth, were full of crags, holes, and pockets. 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 ones 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.
DhaSii 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 to visit his mate. Natasatch, mother of his 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, who’d incautiously drunk too much of Scabia’s brandy-wine, once slurred something about “political necessities” separating him from his mate.
Her brother AuRon had to be cautious on these visits and use every camouflage of wit and skin. An exile and in danger of death ever moment he was with his mate, AuRon’s ability to become invisible at will, and many friends in the Protectorate of Dairuss, where he knew the king and queen from old, allowed him brief visits.
But Wistala feared that every time she saw him depart, it would be the last.
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 smell 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 DharSii and Wistala? 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 without 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, they could squeeze themselves into crevices that seemed hardly thicker than a tail-tip at the sound of a dragon’s leathery wings.
No, the goats were alarmed by something else. Had they caught the scent of a troll?
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 scale, 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