Dragon Strike (Age of Fire #4)

AuRon regretted losing the magic of those brilliant eyes and wondered why the game to hide her features? Of course, if no one ever had a good look at you, they wouldn’t know if you were aging or not, sick or not, or if perhaps you’d been replaced by another. He’d been told in his visit to the East that some monarchs had three or four identical wagon-chambers, to make assassination more difficult or so that none of their underlings might know whether their actual ruler or some underling was on his way.

“You believe in simplicity, Great Queen?”

“Life for us is complex. The calculations we commit before making a move sometimes take days or weeks, so we must keep the rest of our life as spare as possible. But we still must make an appearance.

“We are glad you could see that fountain, AuRon. We often pause by it and remind ourselves of the rises and falls of nations before Ghioz. Civilization building is long, weary work. I’ve raised a city of polished marble where once there were mud-and-straw huts.”

“Are you a sorcerer who can turn air into stone?”

“Not that kind of sorcerer. Anklamere’s way was a cheat. But we do know the secret of creation. The creation of anything is an act of will and mind.”

She led him down the stairs and to another gallery in the mountain-face, much better lit than the one above. Her footfalls on the stairs were so light he wondered if he imagined them. This one he guessed was the statue’s mouth. He couldn’t see much, because of scaffolding and canvas in the way, but without the working equipment he guessed it would be a commanding view.

“Those trees down there, obviously they exist in the physical world. But isn’t our concept of those trees flexible? The architecture of the imagination, as that dwarf put it. It’s called the Queen’s Wood, so the trees are ours. We can imagine the trees as sheltering game birds, or being cut down and made into scaffolding for another statue. There is enormous power in audacity. Your little ‘Isle of Ice’—as we believe it’s called on the Hypatian maps. We could just as easily name it Aurontos and appoint you our governor. The world entire belongs to us in our imagination. Life is slowly filling in the details.”

AuRon wondered if she’d already sold the island to a would-be titleor.

“There are those who would dispute my claim,” AuRon said. “And yours, Great Queen.”

Apparently, it never hurt to imitate DharSii’s manner. She tipped her head to him in acknowledgment of the compliment.

“Oh, we can outwait them. We can afford to be patient. If no other solution presents itself, we simply wait a generation or two. How soon they forget.”

“Dragons live a long time,” AuRon said.

“Not even those trees will outlast us, dragon. The Red Queen is eternal.”

“You pass the title down to your daughter along with your beliefs?”

“Nothing so mundane. We simply can’t be bothered to die. Too much undone in this world. Your wizard and men like him, they drop off and leave their work hardly begun.”

“He was hardly my wizard. I regretted his life, not his death.”

She spun the mask around to the frowning face. “Be careful, AuRon son of AuRel. Make an enemy of us and you make an enemy forever.”

“Was he some titleor of yours, Great Queen?”

“No. The circle of men is folly. We are not so stupid as to not recognize the value of elves, dwarves—even blighters. We are happy to stamp out such nonsense. When some of his riders sought refuge here after his fall we took them in, but as soon as they started proselytizing that Man’s First Destiny nonsense, we had their heads struck off. Little loss.

“We find our greatest challenge is in finding worthy intelligences to be our titleors. Oh, plenty want the title, but few the labor that goes with it. Then there are those who are diligent but require constant instruction or who are too hidebound by the teachings of their temples to do what is necessary to be effective.”

“How do you measure ‘effective’?”

“There is only one sure measure, dragon. Coin and goods of value. I learned long ago that men will try to substitute almost anything for coin: fair words, professions of love, promises of loyalty, sad stories, flattery, tears—yes, they will offer up all that, rivers of it, raging torrents, and all of it gathered together weighs as much as mist on a cattle-scale. It is the one who brings a chest of coin who has the ability to rise.”

“You must have much coin.”

“I’m not a dragon who piles it in a hoard. Let me give you some advice, AuRon. Put your gold to work. It is like seed. Pour it into the right ground and it will sprout tenfold. No, I do not have the great treasure-chambers that some believe reside under this mountain. What comes in goes out again, in the form of small presents to those who apply. A man comes to me and says he wishes to establish himself as a horse-breeder, I give him coin to buy his broodmares and land. True, there are those I never see again. But there are others who return in a few years with what I gave them raised tenfold. I offer a title. Then I see them again when they would have their son set up as a captain of one of my cavalry squadrons, or a daughter who could be most advantageously married with a larger dowry. Over his lifetime of labor, I see my gold grown a hundred times or more.”

“I’m afraid dragons aren’t much for such diligent labor, Great Queen.”

“But they can talk to other dragons. We do have some dragons you might help us with,” she mused. “We believe your face would be unknown to them.”

“Who would that be?”

“Do you know the Lower World well? I wish for an emissary to the Lavadome.”

“Lavadome? I’ve heard the word. A dwarven interpretation of a blighter myth, I thought.”

“Oh, it’s real enough. We don’t know much of the Lower World, as you call it, but then we don’t determine it would profit Ghioz to go to the effort to control it. In our calculation, there’s little enough reward down there. Tunnels filled with nothing but dark.”

“Is there coin in bearing your messages?”

“Yes. We wish to show you some of our chief titleors. If you could be obliged to accompany us to conference.

“You picked a fortunate time to arrive. Some of my northerly allies have come south to spend the season with me and miss the worst of the ice and snow, and Ghioz is soon celebrating the sun’s death and rebirth, a most worthy of occasions, we think.”

He followed her into some rougher tunnels. He smelled animal coops, cooking, spices, and ranker odors.

She led him down a passage that sloped rather precipitously, but the floor-stones were set in such a way that claws, or feet, had sound purchase. Out through a wide arcing set of doors, AuRon realized they’d come straight through the mountain and now stood beneath the great face with all the scaffolding. He had to duck his head to pass under some of it.

The trees and stones here had been arranged, and assisted by waxed canvas, in such a way that he could hardly tell whether he was inside or out. The pocket of mountain and the vast chunks of what had once been the dwarf’s beard gave the appearance of walls, the great boles pillars, and the interlaced trees above a roof. Yet there were pools and streams, flower beds and fern-patches, and even sweet-smelling fruit trees scattered about the vast arena. Someone had cut the fallen rocks to provide rude seats and stairs to have access.

He suspected the area could have held many hundreds or a thousand, but at the moment there were some score, in little groups of threes and fives.

“Thank you for holding your business until a new day. We appreciate your patience,” the Red Queen announced in Parl.

AuRon surveyed the faces. Mostly human, though he saw a few elves, their tresses resembling dried seaweed, fall leaves, and in one case a cascade of pumpkin seeds. Dwarves, also with faces veiled and beards alight with glowing moss reflecting gold dust and gemstones—very rich dwarves, it seemed. Five blighters squatted together on a single stone, devouring a basket of apples as they waited.

The largest contingent seemed to be men with dark hair and thin mustaches and beards carefully trimmed and shaped and beaded. AuRon recognized their garb. They were Ironriders of various tribes. He remembered them as being described as very dangerous to those unfortunate enough to live within raiding distance during those rare intervals when they weren’t warring with each other over pasturage and nomadic pathways.

One of the dwarves, particularly rotund, leaned on a thick, gnarled stick. Something about the pose tugged at old memories. What was the name of that thieving dwarf who’d tried to blame him? Sekyw.

Interesting that he’d found his way into the Red Queen’s court.

“Stay near the entrance for the moment, AuRon. There are ceremonies and pleasantries we must endure. Such rituals have their purpose, but they weary after a twelvescore or two.”

AuRon watched her mount a low platform and stand. Each of those at the conference lined up to greet and speak to her. Part of their tradition involved dipping hands in a cistern of water and drying them on a white cloth before meeting at the hands. With little to do but observe, he noticed that some she gripped by both hands, some only one, sometimes they crossed arms so right hand met right hand and left hand met left.