Master of Dragons (8 page)

Malfiesto was old
and crotchety and bad-tempered, and Lysira usually found him intensely
annoying. Now her heart warmed toward him. She cast the elder male a glance of
gratitude that brought beautiful memories of youth to the old dragon’s mind,
momentarily causing him to forget what he’d been talking about. He recalled
soon enough, however.

“He is late again,”
Malfiesto continued. “I say we issue a formal reprimand—”

“I am not sure
where Draconas is,” said Anora, and this was true enough. “I did not inform him
of the meeting. I do not want him here.”

The assembled
dragons went silent, their colors quivering. Lysira felt her own colors go
bounding off the walls of the cavern, and she had to seize them and keep fast
hold of them, not to betray her feelings of fear and disappointment to the
others.

“He hasn’t got
himself killed, has he?” asked Litard, a male dragon, in casual tones.

“No,” Anora
answered. “I do not believe he is dead.”

Lysira’s relief
was heartfelt, if short-lived.

“I believe that he
has gone rogue. Silence!” Anora blared, her colors red and blazing. “Silence,
all of you, and listen to me. We don’t have much time and there is a great deal
that needs to be decided. Not since the Dragon Wars have we faced such a
crisis. Our lives and, what is more important, the lives of our young”—here she
looked again at Lysira, with that inexplicable sadness—”are in the most dire
peril.”

She had their
attention, now. Their complete attention. Litard, for once, ceased grooming his
flashy green scales and exclaimed loudly in astonishment. Mantas, his colors
murky as always, was silent, unmoving, waiting for events to unfold. Jinat, who
always seemed to bear some unknown sorrow, nodded gloomily as though he’d
foreseen this all along. Arat grinned. He disliked humans and he disliked
Draconas. Malfiesto’s eyes narrowed.

Draconas came from
the noble house ruled by Malfiesto, though you could not have told it, given
that the elder dragon was never pleased by anything Draconas did. Lysira saw
that Malfiesto was more concerned by this news than he let on. He didn’t roar
or rage, as she might have expected. He had gone extremely still and quiet.

The seven other
rulers of the noble houses were females. Dyx-tra the Silver was near the age of
Anora and Maristara. Dyxtra had known both dragons in their youth and,
according to her, had not been shocked by Maristara’s actions in seizing and
enslaving a nation of humans. Dyxtra had never seen the need for a walker and
always refused to take part in the spell-casting that created the supreme
illusion. She snorted, as though this was only to be expected.

Reyal was a
middle-aged dragon who, far different from most dragons, thought very highly of
her powers of creativity and conversation, and was always inflicting her dreams
on others. She did not like humans either, having once caught a human intruder
in her cave once when her children were still in the egg, as the saying went.
The human had never come near the baby dragons, but Reyal had been outraged and
to this day would go on and on about it, if encouraged.

Alisha was also
middle-aged, but far different from Reyal, being serious, grave, introspective.
Alisha never spoke during a session, never demanded the Speaker’s Rod, never
asked a question. She listened intently and took in everything, giving no
indication of her thoughts.

Nionan liked
humans. She had wanted to be a walker in her youth, but had not been chosen,
and it was rumored, though no one knew for certain, that she used her illusions
to lure humans to her cave for the pleasure of observing them. She was, like
Malfiesto, regarding Anora with grim suspicion.

The last of the
rulers, Shrireth, looked half asleep. But then, she always looked that way. She
was said to have a violent temper, though Lysira found that hard to credit.

“All of you know
that the rogue dragon, Maristara, seized the human kingdom of Seth many hundred
years ago,” Anora was saying. “She has been ruling the humans secretly in the
guise of a human, and she and her male consort, a lesser dragon known as Grald,
experimented with the breeding of humans, mingling their blood with the blood
of dragons. You all know that they produced humans who have dragon-magic in
their blood. You know, for Draconas informed you at the last meeting, that he
had discovered a city known as Dragonkeep, where Grald and Maristara were
holding these humans, a city kept hidden from both humans and dragons by
supreme illusions.

“And you know,
for, again, Draconas told you, that Grald and Maristara have a spy in
Parliament who is feeding them information. Thus they were prepared to repulse
the dragons when they attacked Seth to try to free the humans. Thus Grald knew
our secret plans for the human female, Melisande. The information the spy gave
him provided Grald with the opportunity to breed with this human, a union that
produced a son.”

The dragons did
not stir. Not a tail twitched. Not a wing rustled. The rocks in the cavern were
not so still as the assembled members of Parliament.

“I am going to
reveal the identity of the betrayer,” Anora began.

“Draconas!” The
name hissed in the minds of the assembled dragons.

Anora shook her
head.

“You,” said
Malfiesto, and he spoke aloud, something dragons rarely do.

Lysira didn’t
believe him, any more than she had believed the others about Draconas. The idea
was ludicrous, and she almost laughed until she saw Anora’s eyes, saw the
shadow of conscious guilt, pierced by glinting defiance.

“You are right,”
Anora replied. “I betrayed our plans to Maristara and Grald.
I—reluctantly—sanctioned the killing of Brayard and his son, Braun. You condemn
me now, I know that. But hear my reasons and then you will thank me.”

“Never!” Lysira
let go her rage in an explosion of anger and grief. Braun had been her brother,
Brayard her father. “You admit to murder—”

“Silence, young
one,” ordered Anora sternly. “Be silent and listen.”

Lysira wasn’t
going to be silent. She was going to bellow her rage until the walls of the
cavern split asunder. She was going to fly at Anora and attack her with claw
and tooth and thunderous magic. She was . . .

“Calm,” came
colors, blue and soothing as the cold waters of a plunge into a lake. “Keep
calm and do as the Minister says. Listen.”

“Draconas!” Lysira
trembled inside, trembled with the force of her emotions, grief and fury vying
with pleasure and confusion at reading his thoughts. “But she killed Braun—”

“Hush!” Draconas
warned. “Give no sign that I am with you. Let my mind merge with yours. Keep
your colors gray. I need to hear what Anora tells the Parliament, and she must
not know I am listening.”

Lysira obeyed, her
mind in such turmoil that, while not exactly gray, her colors were so muddied
that even she could not tell quite what she was thinking.

“I know this is a
shock for you, Lysira,” Anora was saying. “And I was truly, truly grieved that
I had to do what I did. Please, listen to what I have to say in my defense.”

Lysira gave an
abrupt nod of her head. The other dragons would think she was barely able to
control herself for her fury, and that was almost true, for anger bubbled
inside her. But the ugly acid was mixed with a sweet warmth, knowing Draconas
was so close to her and that he trusted her and was depending on her. Lysira
dug her claws into the rock floor of the cave and waited to hear Anora.

“For thousands upon
thousands of years,” the Minister began, “we have watched humans evolve, grow,
and develop. We have not interfered with their progress. Indeed, we passed
strict laws to prevent such interference. To help enforce those laws and to
keep a watchful eye upon this fragile species, we asked one of our own to
sacrifice himself, to take on human form and live and walk among them. We
watched over the humans, protected them, nurtured them—all without their
knowledge.

“Occasionally
there would be interaction between us—a young hot-blood would forget himself
and carry off a few cattle or set fire to a barn—but such incidents were few
and, I must admit, tended to benefit us more than harm us. For centuries,
humans have feared us, held us in awe. Humans have long told stories of how
their heroes attacked and even killed dragons, but those tales are just
that—tales, myths, legends. No human was capable of slaying one of us.”

Anora’s colors
grew dark and grieving. “But that is about to change.”

“What are you
saying?” Malfiesto demanded, scoffing. “That humans now have the power to kill
dragons? Preposterous!”

“Once it was
preposterous,” said Anora gravely. “Not anymore. When a human first picked up a
stick, we envisioned the spear. When a human flung a rock, we foresaw the
catapult. When a human dug iron out of the ground, we saw the sword in his
hand. Such puny weapons could never be a threat to us and so we did not concern
ourselves with them. We slept in our caves and wove our dreams of tranquillity
and peace. But these dreams have been shattered by the cannon’s blast.”

“Bah!” Malfiesto
scoffed. “That puffed-up piece of ironmongery. Humans do more damage to
themselves than to any of us.”

“That is true now,”
Anora agreed. “And maybe it will be true a hundred years from now But,
inevitably, such weapons will be a threat. As we saw the spear from the stick,
so I foresee a terrible human weapon that will have the capability of blowing
apart a mountain, of slaughtering us while we sleep, of destroying the nests of
our young, no matter how well they are hidden.”

Images of fiery
death flared in Anora’s mind, images of caves that required hundreds of years
of patient carving blown apart in an instant. Images of labyrinthine passages
sliding down crumbling mountainsides. Images of eggs smashed and the young
dragons crushed beneath tons of rock.

“For the first
time in our long history,” said Anora, “I see the possibility of our
extinction. And it will be at the hands of humans.”

“Is this true,
Draconas?” Lysira cried in silent dismay. “Do humans have such power?”

His colors were
dark for long moments and fear gripped Lysira’s heart, for she knew the answer
before she saw it in his mind.

“They do not have
such power now. But soon.”

THE DRAGONS WERE
EITHER SHOCKED AND OUTRAGED AT ANORA’S words or shocked and disbelieving. Their
thoughts flew about the cavern, spattering the walls and each other with the
colors of fire and blood, almost as if one of the explosive devices had landed
in their midst. Anora did not try to call for order. No one would have seen her
colors in the storm of emotion roaring about the cavern.

“But what can we
do to stop the humans?” Lysira asked Draconas.

“Humans are not
ours to stop,” he returned.

Lysira bristled at
his tone. “I don’t know how you can be so flippant—”

“Careful,”
Draconas warned. “She’s watching you.”

The tumult was
dying down. Lysira saw Anora’s gaze fixed upon the young female. Small tendrils
of thought coiled toward her. Lysira made her own mind a flutter of confusion;
not difficult, with so many conflicting emotions flapping about like birds
tangled in a net. Lysira had the impression that Anora was asking for her
forgiveness and her understanding. Lysira could not grant that, not yet. She
hunkered down and avoided the elder dragon’s thoughts.

Anora brought the
meeting back to order.

“I made plans—”
she began.

“Without
consulting us!” Malfiesto thundered.

“I couldn’t,”
Anora returned, blazing up. “Because of Draconas.”

“The Walker? It
seems to me he would be central to any plans you made regarding humans.”

“The walkers were
sent to live among humans in order to provide us with information about them,
their habits, their way of life, and so forth. Walkers proved quite useful in
this regard. I have noticed, however, that the longer they live among humans,
the more human the walkers become. They begin to empathize with the humans.
They lose their detachment, become emotionally involved. Usually we are able to
catch walkers before they do harm to us. We remove the walker from his or her
position and assign another. It is what I should have done with Draconas.”

Anora sighed
deeply. “But he was the best walker we’ve ever created. He maintained his
detachment, or so I thought. I wonder now if he was lying all this time—lying
to me. Lying to himself.” She waved it away with a claw. “That is all past.
What’s done is done, as the humans say.”

“So you foresee
that humans are going to cannonade us into extinction,” Malfiesto said
caustically. “Forgive me if I fail to understand how breeding humans with dragons
and thereby giving them even more power is supposed to save us.”

“I will explain.
It all began with Brayard.”

As she spoke,
Anora deliberately kept her gaze away from Lysira, who steeled herself to
listen and be silent.

“Through Grald’s
bungling, Brayard learned about the smuggling of male babies out of Seth. He
suspected the existence of a city such as Dragonkeep, although I do not think
he ever found it. He told me what he knew and insisted that I bring up the
matter before the Parliament. If I would not, he said that he would. That could
not be allowed to happen. The revelation that we had been breeding humans to
use dragon-magic would have caused an uproar among all dragonkind.”

The dragons
muttered, their colors black and tinged with fire.

“Hear me out!”
Anora demanded, and she waited until they settled down. “He would have brought
our plans to ruin. For the sake of the many, he had to be sacrificed. And so he
was. No one was ever supposed to find out. Grald killed Brayard and made the
murder look like an accident—as if the dragon had lost way his way in a storm
and crashed into a mountain.