Dragon Rule - E. E. Knight [23]
He had paid Ouistrela a visit to bid her goodbye and heard the story about how she’d seen off the “trained dog of a dragonelle” with noise and teeth, the one resource of the Isle of Ice’s old Ouistrela made free with. He’d brought her some of his pitifully small hoard in return for keeping an eye on the cave and not causing his wolves too much grief.
“Some price for my services. If you’re gone longer than a year, I’ll go looking for the rest,” she said.
The trio traveled with the wind; with winter coming it was blowing hard out of the north, their flight alternately serious and playful. Istach had the energy of a newly fledged dragon and enjoyed swooping around her parents and experimenting with surfing the air currents created by their hard-beating wings in their wake. AuRon, unhindered by scale, could outfly any dragon he’d ever met without sucking wind much deeper than he did on the ground, and continually asked his mate and daughter if they wanted to float and rest. Natasatch responded, as a proud dragon-dame should, by flapping harder and forcing him to catch up.
Istach simply took over the lead position, so her parents might suffer a little less drag by riding in her wake.
From the air, AuRon always thought Hypat, capital city of the Hypatian Empire, looked like a white vase dropped on a coral-strewn shore and shattered. From a beautiful core bits of it were scattered in all directions; even the toothlike sails in the great sand-choked estuary of the Falnges River might be mistaken for broken pieces of a greater structure.
Whoever had first laid out the city had thought the design through, with a star of broad avenues running out toward the old city walls and riverfront. The heart of the city held several magnificent buildings and pillars.
In human fashion, something well begun was finished badly. The wide avenues were choked with barrows and carts and wooden shacks and some of the graceful buildings had fallen into disrepair—though AuRon noticed sets of scaffolding and canvas marking where restorations had begun. The city’s lovely gardens, run wild and crawling with livestock on his last visit, were still in disorder, but the worst of the overgrowth had been cleared and there were no longer pools of distressingly fouled water. Outside the old walls a jumble had built up, beautiful homes and buildings looking out on the sea, and a rats’ nest of tightly packed dwellings growing around the docks and wharfs like barnacles.
Hypat was thriving again, if in a messy and disordered fashion.
A fast-flying dragonelle rose to greet them. Istach swooped down to interpose herself between the stranger and her parents.
“Welcome, AuRon of the Isle of Ice, on behalf of the Tyr of Worlds Upper and Lower and Keeper of the Grand Alliance. Welcome, AuRon’s family.”
The lack of reflective scale did make him recognizable, even from a distance. He’d been quietly called a “plucked griffaran” by some wit in the throne room of his brother’s rocky home in the Lavadome according to his hatchlings. He bore the moniker without challenge. He’d learned long ago that words couldn’t pierce your skin.
Natasatch panted out a response and asked about a place to stop and take refreshment. The dragonelle offered to guide them in.
AuRon only half-paid attention as they descended toward the outskirts of Hypat, capital city of the Hypatian realm.
Tyr of Worlds. His brother did enjoy his titles.
“I’m bid to tell you your sister Wistala, soon to be formally named Queen-Constort, invites you to reside with her at the circus campground,” the dragonelle said. “I will guide you to a safe landing,” the dragonelle continued. Natasatch beat her wings vigorously and lazily performed a few acrobatics, showing she was a match for any young thing who’d only been in the air a year.
It was easy to determine where his brother was residing. Bright-colored creatures, half feather and half skin, sunned and preened over a sort of open clamshell