BOOK ONE
Adapt
GRANT A FAVOR TO ONE GENERATION OF HOMINIDS, AND YOU’LL FIND
THEIR SONS TWICE AS DEMANDING—AND THRICE AS FORGETFUL.
—AuRel the Bronze
Chapter 1
AuRon son of AuRel, the scaleless dragon who lived upon the Isle of Ice, watched his sons blink in the brassy sun of the dazzling northern spring.
In the winter, AuRon had learned, the island saw constant snow, coming in waves from low iron clouds. Summers were alternately foggy and rainy, save for a brief, enchanted dry spell after midsummer. But the turning seasons, spring and fall, slow getting started but always lingering thanks to the warm ocean currents, made up for the rest.
As though in apology, spring had brought wildflowers to the thin patches of soil clinging between granite spurs where the wind died. Their yellow and blue and white heads looked up, as bright as sun, sea, and sky. Incredibly, insects already danced and buzzed between the blooms, keeping low, out of the wind, where the sky heated black earth and turned melt into mire.
AuRon looked at his sons, pride making the armored fans covering his neck hearts twitch. In a few months they would breathe their first fire and become drakes. Ausurath, a little heavier than his brother, had big back haunches on his red-scaled body and was a fine jumper, forever pouncing on his brother. Aumoahk had an odd, overlarge slit of a right nostril that showed dark against his golden scale, a reminder of a bloody brawl with his brother.
On their first trip into the Upper World he taught them about wind and shadow and the course of the sun. The second time his mate, Natasatch, accompanied them with the two sisters. Both glittered as green as their mother—of their five eggs AuRon and Natasatch had four hatchlings; one, sadly, never emitted so much as a flutter of a heartbeat and became unwholesome. Natasatch solemnly burned it as the others began to tap.
The excitement of the trips aboveground cut down on the fighting between the males. Traditionally males fought to the death upon emerging from the eggs, driven by mad instinct, but the two adults together managed to keep throats and limbs intact.
Once they could be made to understand that the survival of all might depend on an extra set of ears and nostrils, they settled into almost playful enmity. Underground the two males wrestled and bit and yeeked little battle roars at each other, stealing each other’s fish and mutton through diversions worthy of their army-smashing great-grandsire, scattering their sisters to corners of the cave, then collapsing into sleep with tiny teeth locked on each other’s limbs. More than once the family gathered for a meal with the smell of the bleeding brothers in the air; then it was time for wound licking and lectures.
Exhausting business.
Aboveground, in the overwhelming space of the Upper World, AuRon was relieved to see that they shrank against each other, tail to tail and staring from heads frozen in fear.
The awe soon faded. The male hatchlings, with the energy and curiosity of their age, lost their fear of the open sky and distant horizions. But for AuRon the trouble had only begun. Their sire had to do a good deal of wrangling to keep them close as he tried to teach them of game trails, grazing, water, and spoor. But their attention was difficult to hold with big snowfoot hares bounding away at their approach, all bouncing hindquarters and flapping ears.
Gently grabbing one scrambling set of shoulder blades with his teeth-covered lips, then prodding the other back in line with his stiff, regrown tail, AuRon envied his mate. The females kept tight to their mother’s belly and listened attentively. When they acted, they cooperated. His sons dragon-dashed after every bee and showed all the sense of a field mouse.
On the third trip, AuRon decided it was time for them to learn a real lesson.
This time he went up first to check Zan the tradesdwarf’s work before loosing the hatchlings on the world. The Chartered Company line-trader, a grizzled old northerner who might be mistaken for a hairy stump, was on his way north for a season’s trapping and skinning. He had chuckled when AuRon described what he wanted to fashion, and he’d done a typically thorough dwarf’s job in exchange for a bag full of dragonscales sloughed off Natasatch over the winter.
“Rafer be hunting beasts with mother and sisters,” Ausurath complained.
“Watch your brother’s approach. See, he’s keeping downwind from the camp.” AuRon had to stifle a prrum as he watched.
Aumoahk tested the air around the “camp.” His slit nostril seemed to wink at AuRon as he breathed.
AuRon watched his son sniff and listen before exposing himself and then zigzagging up to the camp. Aumoahk’s scale would gleam better if he’d eat the bits of scrap brought by the tradesdwarf with the same enthusiasm that he swallowed the few coins of AuRon’s bare hoard, but he was cannier than his more enthusiastic brother.
Aumoahk found the three dummies lying in their circle around the stones of a nonexistent campfire, oars serving as spears resting over “shoulders” of burned man-furniture and rotting fishnet. Aumoahk became overexcited and squeaked out his little roar and charged the nearest.
A thunderous barking broke out from the rocks above the “camp.”