Dragon Champion (Age of Fire #0)

Dragon Champion (Age of Fire #0) Page 2

But Gluttony makes fat dragons, who can’t fly at their need.

A hot Lust for glory, gems, gold, or mates

Leads reckless young drakes to the blackest of fates.

So take heed of this wisdom, precious hatchling of mine,

And the long years of dragonhood are sure to be thine.

Chapter 2

There weren’t any grays on my side of the family,” Father grumbled.

Larger even than Mother, Father rested on a massive stalagmite, wrapped about it like a constricting snake. His fiery eyes, under the armored ridges that led back to his crest in its six-horned glory, glowered down on the brood. Father’s bronze scales reflected the muted aqua light of the cave moss.

To little Auron, Father had a harsh, intimidating odor, very different from Mother’s comforting one. He tucked his head into his gray flank, a little afraid at Father’s tone, but resisted the instinct to close his eyes.

“You know very well my father was a gray, AuRel. When I sang my lineage at our mating, it didn’t bother you.”

Father pulled back, raised his mighty neck high, and snorted. For a moment it looked to Auron as if he might bite Mother.

But he brought his head down and flicked his forked tongue, drawing it across her face. “I was watching your wings, my love. They hypnotized me. I had never seen such a span on a maiden before. I hardly listened.”

His parents touched noses at the memories evoked, and Auron heard a low thrumming.

“We have every right to prumm to each other—three on the shelf. Not bad for our first clutch,” Mother said. She pulled Auron’s two sisters closer to her with her tail. The hatchlings peeped and yawned at the touch, but didn’t wake.

“But still, of all the infernal drafts,” Father continued. “A red, a copper, and a gray. What happens? The red is killed, the copper is maimed, and the gray has the nest!”

“The red fought well, my lord. Just too eager, impetuous. He left the copper without finishing it.”

“Just like his grandfather, darkness keep his bones. A besung dragon, he. I still don’t see how a gray got the better of him or the copper.”

“He used his egg horn, my lord.”

“He did what?”

“Gutted him from the yolk sac up. I hardly believed my eyes.”

Father looked down at Auron, a new interest in his eyes. “Clever little blighter.”

“Eggs and legs! Don’t call the pride of our clutch a blighter, AuRel! Like it or not, he is your champion. It’s for you to see that he lives to loose his first fire.”

“I wonder . . . ,” Father mused. “A gray. Thin skinned: the first elf with a bow that—”

“He’ll be quick. Silent,” his mother countered.

“Perhaps.”

“All the less hunger to fill. Remember your youth, the chances you took.”

Auron got a mind-picture from his father. Stolen sheep, screaming warriors, the pounding of hunting horses. He felt old scars, crusted over with misshapen scales. He shivered.

“See!” Mother exclaimed. “He takes to your mind already. He learns from you. Teach him.”

“In good time. Perhaps the copper will reclaim the shelf?”

“Not likely. Auron has weight on him already, and is alert and quick.”

Father looked down at the copper, who had retreated to a crevice in the cave wall away from the egg shelf. “It might be kinder to just—”

“No. He shall have his chance. I hear him hunting slugs and rats. Appetite will soon drive him outside. You have fathered two males, my lord. Think of it! Four survivors of five eggs. The words will sound fine in your lifesong.”

Armored fans expanded from Father’s crest at the thought, covering sensitive earholes and the pulse points behind the angle in his jaw where the twin neck hearts worked, then returned to their sheaths. Auron felt his own griff descend a little, but they seemed thin and flimsy by comparison.

“Perhaps you are right. A worthy line for the battle roar,” Father said, as though he’d thought of the idea himself. “Though you may have to help me with it. Wordplay is not my strength.”

“I remember every word of your mating song, harsh though it was to my ears. But I took to the sky with you nonetheless.”

“If my song was lacking, what reason had you?”

Mother’s skin darkened again, and Auron saw a mind-picture of Father shining in the glare of the Upper World, only four horns on his head but still mighty, beating his wings so as to bend the trees as he sang.

“Your great horned head, my lord,” Mother said as her skin turned the richest green. “Ten thousand scales that reflected the yellow sun, your bellows that shivered the very clouds. Your presence captivated me. I lost my head . . . and my hearts. The first came back to me . . . afterwards. But you shall always hold the second.”

Auron’s nose itched abominably. He felt the urge to rub his egg horn against the cave wall, but fought the instinct. After seeing his sisters lose theirs by scraping them off against Mother’s scales, he decided he did not want to part with his. His egg horn still smelled faintly of his brother’s blood, reminding him of the service it had done. There was still the copper to think of, and he worried that he might need its point again in another fight.

Climbing Mother took his mind off the discomfort. He swarmed up her neck and stood atop her head, bleating out his satisfaction with his feat to his sisters below.

Her tail was even more of a challenge, for she swung it up and down, back and forth, until he felt giddy with the motion as he hugged its whirling end. On a low sweep of her tail, he gathered himself and leaped. He sailed over his sisters in a splay-legged fall, and upon landing instinctively absorbed the impact with his tail.

“ ’Gain, Mama!” he squeaked, scaling her haunch. His hooked claws made climbing her armored skin easy.

“Not just now,” she countered. “Eat a little.”

He remembered his appetite and returned to the half-eaten horse, placed on the shelf this morning by Father. It was much better than the egg-size slugs Father had gathered the two previous days. Mother seemed content to eat slugs, though, even with horse-flesh available.

“Wish we could ’ave ’orse every day, Mama,” he said. His sisters had not left him much for seconds. They were useless baggage. All they did was eat and sleep and chatter at each other. If he tried to get them to do something interesting, like wrestle, they would skedaddle for Mother’s belly, squealing. He almost wished the copper would try to take some horse.

“Father has to hunt the Upper World if we are to have horse, Auron. He can’t afford to be gone too long.”

“Why?”

“It’s a risk, dear. You and your sisters are precious beyond my words’ ability to tell. He doesn’t dare leave us.”

“Why?”

“Someone might try to come and take you.”

“Who would come?”

“Your father will tell you, when the time is right.”

Auron—with a belly full of horse entering his bloodstream—bristled. “I’ll fight ’em, Mama!” He shot to the edge of the shelf and looked down, in search of foemen come to harm Mother and his hapless sisters. His griff descended along either side of his head and rattled against his crest at the thought.

Somewhere below, he heard his brother, worrying rats from among the offal at the base of the cave wall. He reversed himself like a whip cracking, and dashed back to the carcass.

“Wind and sand, how quick you are! But rest now, Auron. When you’re grown, you’ll have a clutch of your own to fight for.”

“Not sleepy!” he insisted, glaring at his sisters and spoiling for action. They retreated to the shelter of Mother’s left hind, meeping.

Auron belched, and the fetid smell pacified him. But the horse still needed guarding. Mother’s warm belly beckoned, yet he curled himself around what was left of the head and forequarters. If Mother was right, the next horse might be some days off, and he could not bear the thought of the copper making off with such a prize.

Days passed. Once the remains of the horse joined the pile at the shelf base, and not a bite of slug was left to be had, Auron felt bold enough to explore the cave. Should his brother gain the egg shelf, he felt confident enough to teach him a real lesson, though his desire to kill him had ebbed.

While the cave looked like a vast expanse from the egg shelf, it was anything but. There were great pillars of stone that met others hanging above like the teeth in his mouth, only less precisely arranged. There were cracks and fissures too small for his parents but a satisfactory size for an inquisitive hatchling, and places where the ceiling came low enough for him to torment the bats who clung here and there.

Away from the smells of the egg shelf, he snuffled amongst the pools and refuse of the cave floor. Music in the form of trickling water sounded all around; each fall had its own syncopation, from deep plops of heavy drops to the more rapid cadence of little streams splashing from ceiling to cave floor.

Stalagmites were almost as easy to climb as Mother. He tried one in the higher part of the cave, wrapping himself around it in imitation of his father. Finding a comfortable rest, he froze. Rolling only an eyeball, he looked down at his body, almost indistinguishable from the cool stone he clung to. Faint darker bands could just be distinguished amid the gray. Was he developing a different color? Mother said dragons came in many colors, though dragonelles were usually green. His sisters asked endless questions about colors and played with sparkling stones and bits of metal Father gave them. They arranged them in intricate patterns, rhyming as they counted the colors: