“They build a temple to him in the middle of the steppe?”
“The work of the son who ended up being assassinated. It was at the site of his father’s greatest triumph. Can’t imagine why anyone ever felt the need to fight a battle there. It looks just like any other part of the steppe. It was a well before. The only one for a distance, so perhaps there was a reason for the battle after all. That’s why we shall stop there. Our casks grow empty.”
The caravan stopped for two days of rest at the well, forming itself into the triangular fortress Auron knew so well, though tighter, and with a ditch dug all around. He walked up the hill with Djer as a line of dwarves with wheelbarrows hauled casks to the top of the hill, corded muscles glistening in the sunshine.
The temple was made of metal. It showed only dirt, no sign of rust or tarnish. Djer ran a hand along the smooth side, leaving the black face underneath as shiny as if it were wet. The four sides of the square inclined slightly to a flat roof thirty hands above. A column of metal pointed from it like a lance aimed at the sky.
“What ore is that?” Auron asked. His Dwarvish was accomplished without effort, though it didn’t ring quite right in the ear because of the way his head was constructed.
“If I knew, I’d own the Chartered Company,” Djer said. “Wizardly artisans must have made it, and the skill is lost, like so many other gifts, in these bitter days.”
Auron placed his claws on it; a metallic ping sounded as he touched the surface. “It’s a bare surface. I thought men wrote on everything.”
“Just above the door,” Djer said, pointing.
Auron looked at the apocryphal letters. “I must learn to read one of these days.”
“Many who can wouldn’t know what to make of that. The characters are unknown to me.”
“You know it’s time for me go.”
“Yes,” Djer said, his stubbly face turning serious. “I keep hoping you’ll change your mind.”
“I want to find my own kind. NooMoahk, first of all.”
“Steel yourself. It is a hard journey across the desert.”
“I know. I’ll ask you for a set of saddlebags, with plenty of water skins.”
“Done,” Djer said, rapping Auron’s crest with his knuckles. “But I cannot let a friend such as you go without something.”
“You’ve given me my tail-point. That is enough.”
“Not hardly,” he said, searching his pockets with eyes rolling skyward. He fished out a ring. “I’ve put the seal of the Diadem on this,” he said, showing it to Auron. “It’s my Partner-seal, and more besides. Have you seen what I’ve chosen as my insignia under the diadem?”
Auron looked at the etching on the golden surface. “Is that supposed to be me?”
“A dragon. Well, I thought it looked like you, anyway. I’m no artist.”
“Dragons have wings. I don’t . . . not yet.”
“Winged or no, you’re the reason I’m a vested dwarf.”
“I’m honored,” Auron said, his skin flushing reddish with pleasure.
“You can honor me by keeping it. Should you be in great need someday, showing it to one of the Chartered Company will get you whatever assistance we can offer. Traditionally a Partner gives his emissary ring only to a chief-of-staff on an important journey. You’re welcome to this for the rest of your life—may it be blessed with many healthy years.”
“I would wear it with pride, but it won’t fit my finger.”
“Then wear it on a horn, once you grow a proper one. Or a chain around your neck, for that matter,” he said, pulling a long, thin strand of steel from his other pocket. “I hope I’ve made it big enough for a fully grown dragon. I could wear this for a belt.”
“Thank you.”
“The chain is special, Auron. A piece of my people’s magic. It’s a dwarsaw. Pull any part of it tight, and it will cut even an iron collar if scraped back and forth across it, should anyone succeed in putting you in chains again. Keep it as a memento of the first favor I did you.”
Auron tried pulling the links tight, and tiny serrated crystal blades like teeth appeared from their shell-like housings.
“You honor me with it.”
“By my shining beard, Auron, this’ll be a tale no one will believe in a century. A dwarf and a dragon, brought together by chance and bonded by friendship.”
Auron reared up, took the dwarf’s hand in his sii and shook it, dwarf-fashion. He flicked out his tongue, smelling Djer and his pipe tobacco into his memory. “That’s the best thing about friendship. It is a gift that cannot be lost. Only thrown away.”
Chapter 15
Hungry, thirsty, and cold, Auron asked himself for the eighteenth time, in as many days, what drove him from friendship and comfort into a waste. When he had first thought of finding NooMoahk, it had been a vague wish, an effort to find a new foundation for his life, and to discover the truth behind Hazeleye’s story about discovering a weakness in dragons.
But he hadn’t counted on the power of the wasteland. It was vaster than the dwarf maps indicated.
The dwarves prepared him for the desert as best as they could. Dry meat, especially sausages, and bladders of water filled the two saddlebags adapted for drakeback. Auron found when he emptied the water he could eat the skin, the tough leather gave his stomach something to work on through the cold nights. For this was no desert out of legend, a hot expanse of rock and sand—at least at this time of year—but a cold, dry waste of rattling pebbles and windblown rolling weeds bouncing off larger rocks.
Auron saw his tail and midsection thin perceptibly over the journey, as even one set of leather saddlebags disappeared into his hungry gullet, and he feared his fire bladder was reabsorbing the liquid fat contained within. He did his best to trot along as the wolves did, hardening his heart and muscles to the unnatural gait. He went steadily south, every night the object of the Bowing Dragon’s homage sunk a bit further toward the horizon. Sometimes, if he was lucky, at twilight or dawn he could catch hopping little rodents who sought bugs beneath the stones. Their hairy little bodies made him even more thirsty. He caught several, and in stands of brush found termite nests that he opened by using the dwarsaw to open their fortresslike towers, so he could shift them and dig out the nests underneath.
The blue smudge on the horizon that appeared on the twentieth day without water gave him hope. It must be the Bissonian Scarps of the old dwarf maps as rendered from the tongue of the people of Tindariuss, and somewhere within the dragon’s home. Auron could no longer jog along, but he could walk. He stalked the mountains as if they were prey, planting alternate feet front-and-rear with dried-out muscles and joints that creaked as he walked.
Something floated above, on wide wings with feathers that spread like fingers. Auron walked on, ignoring it, and it came lower in a half-hour’s worth of lazy circles. Its shadow passed over him, and a cold tail-tip of dread ran up his spine.
“You should have been picked over a week ago, if you came out of the north, dying one,” it called down to him, in bird speech. “Why did you choose my desert to kill yourself, hatchling?”
As though inaccurate old maps were my fault.
“I’m no hatchling, I’ve breathed my first fire, feather-wings,” Auron croaked.
“You should rest more. You’ll pant your life out in cramp and pain otherwise. I’ve seen a dozen kinds of desert death, and can foretell yours easily. You still didn’t answer my question.”
“Thank you for the advice.” Auron rather hoped the vulture would come within leaping distance. He waited for it to wheel around again before continuing the conversation. “I seek a relative, a black dragon named NooMoahk. If you aid me, you’ll find me grateful.”
“I’ll find you stretched out beneath the sun, with your last breath long since blown east. I’d like to know what favor you can do me.”
Auron had to wait again for another circle; he didn’t feel up to shouting. “NooMoahk doesn’t eat sand. There must be hunting to be had in those hills. I’ll keep the four-leggeds off my kills until you get your chance to pick the bones.”
“Dragons are notorious bone-eaters, so I wonder. Let me turn the question on its back and try poking at the belly. What can I, the genteelest of hunters, do to aid you?”
“Genteelest?”
“I don’t do my prey the discourtesy of killing it, but politely wait for it to die. What flesh-eater can say more?”
Some flesh-eaters are too ill-bred to wait and dine on the lips and tailvents, Auron thought. “Take me to the nearest water.”
“There are springs in the mountains, though you must first pass up and over the dry hills. It’s high summer and dry.”
“Nothing in the desert?”
“There is a waste-elf oasis, but they’ll have you turning on a spit.”
“What are waste-elves?”
“Outcasts, mostly. There are more than usual at their oasis. They’ve just struck some caravan that lost many of its guards in a far-off land—we vultures are great observers of all that goes on beneath our eyes—and they’re despoiling the wine and women taken. There would be good eating, if they would ever finish the job and move on.”
