Dragon Rule - E. E. Knight [50]
“We’re used to eating rough and drinking glacier runoff,” Natasatch explained.
“Oh, I do love you outdoorsy kinds of dragons,” Imfamnia said, touching Natasatch’s tail with her own. “Such stories! Tell us of the north. You must get a great deal of fresh air and sunshine; I can tell by your eyes and scale that you’ve never had to substitute kern for being above ground.”
“They used to give us different kinds of oils in the cave, with herbs suspended in them . . .” Natasatch gave a brief version of her captivity on the egg shelf.
“But where did you come from, originally?” Imfamnia asked her. “You look so familiar!”
“I’m not really sure—I was taken captive very young. I think I remember being underground, but it might have been images from my parents’ minds.”
Imfamnia went on describing Natasatch’s perfections of limb and scale “quite youthful-looking; you’d never know you’d mated, let alone sat atop four eggs.”
“It was five, we lost one,” Natasatch said.
“Five! Oh, if good old Tyr FeHazathant could have seen that. He’d have stuffed you and your hatchlings with cattle.”
“We managed,” AuRon said. “There’s good fishing in the north. The waters around my island are thick with cod.”
“Riches indeed,” Imfamnia said.
“I understand RuGaard is keeping up the tradition of giving gifts to those lucky enough to sit atop eggs,” NiVom said.
Imfamnia cocked her head. “Your brother is an odd sort of fellow. He’s no FeHazathant, and not nearly as impressive-looking as SiDrakkon or SiMevolant were as Tyr. He’s so clunky and offbeat, it’s rather disarming. He’s more than he appears.”
“You were the champion in the hatching struggle?”
“Yes,” AuRon said, which was more or less the truth. He had some help from the Copper and the egg-horn.”
“You still have your egg-horn, I notice,” Imfamnia said, as though reading his thoughts. “Is that a family tradition, or ...”
“It did me great service in getting out of my egg, so I left it in. The skin’s almost overgrown it.”
“Yes, at first I thought it was a stuck arrowhead,” NiVom said.
“There are the wildest rumors going around the Lavadome about your brother,” Imfamnia said. “We’ve been away for years, so perhaps we heard incorrectly, but there is a rumor that he betrayed and murdered his own family.”
“None of us treated him much like family,” AuRon said. “Except perhaps for one, but she died as a hatchling.”
“Poor little blighter, he must have had it hard,” Imfamnia said.
“Whatever’s in the past, he’s a decent enough dragon now,” AuRon said. “Going by what little I’ve seen of him.”
“Yes, his story is altogether remarkable,” Imfamnia said. “It’s like an elf made it up for a song. To rise from lower than dust and become Tyr.”
“If he has truly reformed,” NiVom said.
“What’s that?” AuRon asked.
Imfamnia tossed her snout to make light of the issue. “Oh, you can never be certain with rumors. Of course no one can say for sure, except perhaps his mate—but his first mate, my sister, a sickly little thing, she died under conditions that were. . . unique.
“My sister never ate but tiny little bird pecks,” Imfamnia continued, tearing off a great haunch and swallowing it as though showing a contrast. AuRon watched it pass down, like an accelerated quick trip by groundhog through a snake. “She had no appetite her whole life. But then she dies, all alone at dinner, supposedly choked to death on a mouthful of meat. Something’s not right about that.
“And then he mates an old comrade from the Firemaids—after she’s taken her oath, mind—while the poor thing’s still moist in her grave.”
Perhaps he hadn’t reformed so much after all, AuRon thought.
AuRon wondered at NiVom’s quiet, tired manner. He looked bloodless, like a dragon back from a winter thin on meals and heavy on fighting, but bore no scars. Perhaps the feasting at Ghioz wasn’t as good as his mate claimed.
Their hosts gave them a comfortable old storage cave in the mountain. The heavy doors made AuRon think it had once held valuables; it still smelled faintly of gold and there were some silver utensils that Imfamnia told them