“Something in those wizard lights,” NooMoahk said. “They preserve the paper. They don’t stop the ink from fading. I have scrolls that are illegible now, but they keep the damp out and the dust off.”
“I’d like to know more about how they do these things, my lord. Are there books on magics here?”
NooMoahk pulled back his lips in disgust. “Don’t dabble in magic, Auron. There’s always a price. Spellcasting takes its toll from the wizard, the subject, and the world at large. That desert north of these mountains, the earth died there because of wizardry. When you crossed it, did you see a place where there were pits and holes of different sizes in the earth?”
Auron remembered the refuge of the waste elves. “Yes. That had something to do with a wizard?”
“Yes, his name was Anklamere. Those craters are from a fire-hail he called down on his enemies. Anklamere’s tower stood farther east. He withered a land greater than some nations with his magics. Tidairuss had once counted him an ally, but they grew estranged, and in the end, Anklamere allied himself with that murdering Bloodyhooves fellow. The woman whose head I singed was an assistant of his.”
“What ever happened to him?”
“Tindairuss slew him like the mad dog he was in the end. I didn’t see it myself; I was occupied with Anklamere’s gargoyles at the time. But he had once been a great man and a good friend. Tindairuss seemed years older afterwards. He died soon after, in battle. Life hasn’t been the same since we parted. I can’t see an army on the march without thinking of him, and it pains me like a spear. We were good friends. It was a friendship such as two dragons cannot have, for we worked as a team. With dragons, there can only be mating, if female, or challenge, if male. There was none of that with him.”
NooMoahk faded into sleep, and Auron unrolled a map, trying to associate some of the names and places the old dragon had mentioned. NooMoahk often spoke of great events, which as far as he knew weren’t even legends by this time. Other empires had grown and faded in the interim; the deeds of NooMoahk’s prime were forgotten.
None of which helped him learn the weakness of dragons.
He learned Elvish. It was a subtle tongue more of rhyme than reason, with the most expansive alphabet of the tongues—to get the sound of the words right. He recited their songs and poetry, but found little of magic, history, or the ordering of the natural world. The dwarves and men were better sources for such matters.
His studies slowed as the seasons passed, for he was more and more occupied with feeding NooMoahk. The black hardly left the cavern except on summer days, when he would drowse away the hours at the mouth of the cave with his bare patches of skin absorbing the sun. Otherwise he slept. When he was awake, though he no longer treated Auron as a challenger, he sometimes took him as his own kin. Auron received a wealth of mind-pictures of NooMoahk’s youth, when the blighters still ruled the heart of the continent. He saw men, dwarves, and elves unite to overthrow the blighters’ power, with dragons in the middle. Some ruled blighter kingdoms as feudal lords, others helped the allies, more remained neutral, and a few profited like vultures from the dead strewn across battlefields without count.
Seasons turned to years, and Auron grew. Soon he was carrying back two sheep, or three goats, or the biggest of deer in his mouth. His tail began to regrow. Long blisterlike swellings grew across his back, and NooMoahk, when awake in his lucid moments, sniffed at them approvingly.
“Your wings are starting to rise. One day they’ll pop. The skin on your back will be almost clear, and it’ll itch like you’ve got fire-bugs. I should think you’ll be a fine flier, Auron. You’re not weighed down with scale.”
“That’s what Mother said.”
“She was right. It’ll be time for you to mate, once you can fly. There’s no young dragonelles in these mountains, as far as I know. You may have to do some flying before you can sing your song. By the way, I don’t think I’ve heard your lifesong.”
Auron snorted. “I’ve had other things to think about than composing hymns to myself.”
“You’ll wish you had worked on it when some flash of green catches your eye,” NooMoahk said. “Though you may have to do a lot of flying to find one. When I first fledged, I had my choice, but those were different times. I haven’t seen a female in . . . well . . . long enough so I can’t remember when exactly.”
Auron gave voice to an old worry. “Even if I do find one—I don’t impress. Nothing to shine.”
“A good song will cover for your lack of scales, and more. Take some hints from those elven poems. You’ll want a song to impress. After your mating flight, she’ll expect you to help find a prime spot for your clutch. There’s no pride in this world like what you’ll feel when you hear your first eggs tapping.”
Auron thought back to his bitter entry into the world.
“Funny thing about hatchlings. First being they see, well, it’s mother as far as they’re concerned. I heard an old story once about a clutch on a mountainside. The parents were killed one way or another, and the hatchlings took to this old turkey-vulture that came to eat the dead male. The turkey-vulture ended up raising three dragons until they were old enough to climb down from the heights.”
“Really, my lord?” Auron said.
“There were a couple of other occurrences, but I can’t think of them now. That elf Hazeleyes might have some notes in her papers. There’s a leather folio with some of her scribblings on the shelves somewhere. She was very interested in the subject.”
“Hazeleye?” Auron didn’t want to press the matter. NooMoahk’s mind worked best when left to wander at its own pace. Auron had learned that too many questions could confuse him out of his recollective mood.
“Yes, a scarred-up she-elf. My last visitor before you.”
Auron felt a thrill flutter up his spine between his still-cased wings.
“Maybe some of the stories are in her notes. Could I see them?”
“You’ll get a chance to practice your Elvish. She made herself a little table here somewhere. Her notes might still be around. I made her write down some of her sea-chants for me.”
The table had been upended in one of NooMoahk’s addled rampages through his library. Auron righted it, and found papers and scrolls folded in a leather blotter. Hazeleye had evidently run short of writing material and used other scrolls for her note-taking, writing between lines and in margins. She used ink, charcoal, and even blood in a hand that varied from spidery to minuscule. Auron concentrated and tried to follow her thoughts crammed in between the more flowing script of the author.
NOOMOAHK KNOWS . . . TONGUES . . . ELVISH IN
THREE DIALECTS, THE TRADE SPEECH OF DWARVES, BLIGHTER . . . APPARENTLY EVEN THE MOST SCATTER-
BRAINED SPARROW HAS . . . MEN DEVELOPED PARL, FAST BECOMING A TONGUE COMMON BETWEEN THE TOOL
MAKING RACES. THIS INTEREST OF THE DRAGON IS UN-
COMMON, BUT HARDLY RARE. LITERATE DRAGONS COME DOWN TO US IN LEGENDS OUT OF THE EAST . . .
It was heavy going.
It took months and innumerable trips back and forth to the crystal at the altar-dais where the light was better, but he fought his way through her notes, first organizing them and then reading them as NooMoahk dozed. It was obvious that she was putting together a book on dragons, everything from their birth, maturation, mating, and aging. Much of it made little sense to Auron; she spent a good deal of time disproving beliefs of the hominids that had sprung up around dragons. At times he couldn’t determine what she was trying to disprove, though some she outlined. He thumped his tail in amusement when she spent pages describing the fire bladder. Hominids thought dragons were like the earth, with a mysterious center of fire that they brought forth like a volcano erupting in limitless quantities. Even with her conversations with NooMoahk, she got a few things wrong. Her descriptions of mind-pictures made it seem like a mental conversation between dragons, rather than the sharing of pure experience from one dragon’s memory to another.
She filled any number of pages with stories of dragons out of the egg attaching themselves to their mother and the few cases, some of which she considered apocryphal, of hatchlings “fixing” to other species because their mothers were not present when they hatched. She supposed with time dragons could be domesticated like any other species the hominids chose to husband. Auron ground his teeth and felt his fire bladder pulse at that thought: Imagine dragons raised like chickens. Of course, the fault in her theory, to Auron, was the acquisition of the first generation of eggs. He wouldn’t care to be the elf, dwarf, or man who tried to wrest a clutch away from a mated pair.
He surreptitiously studied sorcery, but found the endless formulae, recitations, hand movements, and minutiae of magic dreary. He preferred the tales told by the scrolls of civilizations, where he learned that combing a list of their rulers’ edicts revealed more than histories, though they made for interesting reading, as well: stories of brooding tyrants and fiery revolutionaries, statesmen who plotted behind the scenes and women who intervened behind the bed-curtains.