“Leave the chain alone,” AuRon said. “It’s a dwarsaw, not a halter.”
“I remembered it from long ago. It didn’t look dangerous.”
“Just take my neck.”
He dragon-dashed forward—wings flapping—and rose into the air.
“Heeeeeeee!” Hieba shrieked, in delight this time. AuRon felt her arms go around his neck, but didn’t dare look back; while taking off, he needed to stick his neck out stiffly forward.
He was above the old rooftop gardens of the city, rising for the inverted towers. He dipped one wing a trifle and banked out of the mountain-rending cavern and into the late afternoon sun. Only when he caught an updraft and shot to the cloudline did he risk looking back at Hieba.
She still had her legs tight about his neck; the blood vessels there throbbed under her grip. Her mouth was open, and her shoulder-length hair fluttered in the wind like a black banner. Her skin was flushed from bosom to face, and her white teeth shone against her coppery skin.
“Good?” AuRon asked.
“This is . . . this is . . . this is . . . rapturous!” she shouted.
“Enjoy.”
“Enjoy? Why do you ever land? If I were you, I’d find the tallest mountains in the world and never leave the clouds.”
“You’ve never lived through a storm in the heights. It gets cold. Dragons like it cool and dark, not ice-coated with the wind howling.”
“Fly! AuRon, let’s fly forever!”
“You see more world this way. But we’re just off to a village we could have walked to in two days when you were little. We’ll be there before the sun touches the horizon.”
“Blighters. I don’t want to think about them. I just want to touch more clouds,” she giggled, sticking her arms out in imitation of AuRon’s wings.
“I’ll go down a little. I think you need thicker air.”
AuRon crabbed down until they were able to see individual branches on the trees and rocks below. Flying was more of an effort at this altitude, with the unpredictable winds, but he thrilled Hieba by plunging suddenly off precipices and sweeping low over meadows. A few blighter herders waved their crooks as he passed.
They circled Unrush’s throne-village. Its walls were stone now, and there were monuments to the fallen at the Battle of the Misted Dawn years ago. More skulls decorated the path to the dragon-throne, and Unrush had a stone-walled house with a slate roof, with three subhouses for his wives branching off the main structure, and a private walled garden. His lava-rock throne, its rock prised by AuRon from the edge of the southern ocean, stood under a canopy of fig trees. The thin-limbed boughs had been chosen as the fruit of his paramountcy.
AuRon landed to the pounding of drum and gong. Blighters had meat and vegetable roasting over charcoal pits, and the populace had decorated all the dwellings with red flowers. Blighter-females in garlands of red and white, skirts tied about their waists, made obeisance as AuRon folded his wings.
Unrush came out of his house, wearing finery taken from the bodies of his victims, cleaned, and cut to blighter taste and style—layer after layer, as if to say that he could afford to wear nine sets of clothing at a time. He bore a bronze basin, slopping over with wine.
“Drink, O Sky Lord, drink, wash, and our welcome take!”
AuRon lapped, just enough to wet his tongue.
“Unrush, it’s an odd fate that you brought as a captive the person I most wanted to see. She’s lost her pack and saddle. Could your wives find her something to wear to the feast? I’d like you to show her the hospitality of the Umazheh.”
“Yes, O Sky Lord, I will,” Unrush said. He pointed at Hieba and called to one of his wives, or perhaps a sister. AuRon still had trouble with the complicated blighter family trees, where a chieftain’s brothers and sisters held more responsibility than his wives. Hieba looked uncertain, but the royal blighter and some girl-children pulled and pointed until she went into one of the smaller wife-annexes.
“The spits groan under their weight, AuRon,” Unrush said. “We must eat soon. But news comes with Balazeh. From the deserts, and north. It is for us to discuss on this auspicious day.”
“What news?”
“War. War such as the world has not seen in a redwood’s age. Umazheh of waste, Umazheh of swamp, Umazheh of the high steppe—the last of the charioteers—gather.”
“For what? Who gathers them?”
“Holy ones. A magus out of the north. They speak strong words. They foretell of the death throes of accursed Hypat.”
“Hypat is far from here. It would take a season, and you would not even be at the river gap.”
“Distance not count, enemies not count, time not count. Only the new era counts.”
This last sounded a little singsong to AuRon’s ear, and Unrush said it without his usual inflection.
“When did you hear this?”
“Balazeh arrived the news,” Unrush said, pointing to a tall, longer-legged blighter with purple tattoos covering his neck and shoulders like a cloak. “A prophet came to him, and crowns and new thrones were promised. Six days since passed. We will meet on the eastern river at winter solstice. Will you war-call?”
“I will have to think about this. It is not like our last battle, when men came to drive you out of these mountains. Balazeh and his holy man call you to destroy the homes of others.”
“Once all this was ours. It will be again.”
“Once there were trees on these slopes. What would you do if trees grew again here?”
“Cut them.”
Hieba returned, cutting off further discourse. She wore clothes mostly made of bright beads and copper bands, a pleasant accent to her dark hair and eyes. She stood at AuRon’s side.
“AuRon, they have wonderful things in there. I never thought of blighters as artistic, but they are fine craftsfolk.”
Unrush’s people gathered in a circle, singing, first one side of the village and then the other when their voices tired. Hieba, Unrush, Unrush’s family, the fireblades, and any number of local dignitaries flanked AuRon, as he was the honored guest. Blighter females circled endlessly, all traveling in the same direction to avoid confusion as they distributed platters of food and bowls of wine. Laden blighters hauled sputtering joints from the charcoal pits and placed them on a woven mat set before AuRon.
Hieba attracted attention, as well. The blighter females came forward to admire her soft hair and delicate—at least in comparison with a blighter’s—hands. A group of males clustered in the center of the ring of food bearers. Every now and then, one would charge forward, and leap and stamp, waving his weapon in the air and howling until Hieba clapped.
“They’re not so bad once you get to know them,” she said.
“Whatever you do, don’t get up or touch one. It means you’d be his wife.”
“What?” Hieba said, shrinking back from a warrior springing shoulder-high on powerful legs and smiting invisible enemies.
“Those are suitors, not performers. Humans and blighters can mate, you know, but the offspring is sterile, like a mule.”
“What if I get up and touch you?”
“Tribal custom is rich and full of precedence, but I don’t think it covers that. Dragons figure into their traditions as icons of luck, or dread.”
She edged closer on her sitting-mat to AuRon, and smelled his basin of wine.
“Pfhew, what is that, AuRon?”
“Wine. Mixed with blood, or so it tastes. It’s part of the celebration. This is a ceremony about victory in battle.”
She dipped her hand in it and tasted the mixture from her palm. Unrush and the other blighters gasped and muttered to each other at the gesture.
“What did I do?”
“It’s not so much what you did. It’s what it meant. Only mated couples eat from the same dish.”
AuRon turned to Unrush. “This human is as a daughter to me; she shares my repast. Please show her the same respect you do to me.”
Unrush waved a hand, and the blighters quieted.
The celebration started in earnest. Children ran across the village center, waving red-feathered streamers attached to the end of sticks. The fireblades followed, going through the blighter military evolutions: storm front, whirl and fade, flank sweep, and crescent hunt. They beat their spears on their shields, stamped, and shouted in time to their drums. When the display was over, their wives joined them, and the muscular warriors picked up the females and bore them overhead, some using just one arm to the howls of delight from those too old or two young for such feats. Hieba enjoyed it immensely, rattling her beads and striking her copper bracelets together.
All at once, there was a disturbance at the gate. AuRon raised his head above the crowd and saw a cluster of blighters bearing torches. The ends burned with a bluish flame. The intruding blighters approached. One rode some kind of camel with hair trailing just above the ground. The rider waved the ones at the gate away, and they shrank from him like scolded children.
Unrush stood up and shouted something, and the revelers fell back before the stranger’s approach.
