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  Graxen tossed away the bell he’d stolen from her belt, the leather hood once more covering the clapper. From the time he’d started his dive to the time he’d shackled Arifiel, no more than ten seconds had passed.

  Something fell past him, barely glimpsed from the corner of his eye. At first, he had difficulty identifying it as it tumbled. Then a silver disk flashed as it caught the sun. It was a valkyrie’s empty breast plate. He looked over his shoulder to find Teardrop barely ten yards behind him. She’d shed her armor, even her helmet, leaving her groomed for speed. Her breast muscles moved like mighty machinery beneath her scales. Graxen’s heart beat joyously. He always enjoyed a good race.

  Graxen turned away from his pursuer and dove once more, aiming for the river. He pulled from his dive to skim along the surface. The spray from the whitewater moistened his face in welcome relief. If not for the letter in his teeth, he would have risked a quick drink. He banked toward the forest, the jagged tree trunks looming before him like a maze. Beating his wings for a further burst of speed he plunged into the woods. Flying above the treetops was one thing. Flying amid the branches of an unfamiliar forest was a feat most dragons would regard as suicide. His eyes tracked every limb and shadow as momentum carried him forward. He beat his wings to stay aloft in the gaps between the trees. The tips of his wings knocked away twigs and vines. A whirlwind of dry leaves followed in his wake.

  Ahead, he spotted a bright patch on the forest floor—a clearing three times his body length. With a sharp, hard burst of energy he zoomed heavenward, flitting back above the trees. Only now did he allow himself to glance over his shoulder. He was certain the valkyrie had been stubborn enough to follow, even though her longer wings would have made the feat impossible. He hoped she hadn’t injured herself too badly when she snared in the branches.

  To his astonishment, she was still in flight, now many yards behind, about to reach the clearing. He watched, slack-jawed, as she found the open space and rose back over the treetops, her gaze still fixed upon him.

  Very well. If he couldn’t outfly her, he’d have to cheat.

  He banked in a sharp arc as he reached up with his hind-claws to the leather satchel. With a violent grunt, he yanked the bag so hard its strap snapped, freeing it. He darted back toward Teardrop with all the speed he could manage. His eyes locked on hers. Their paths would intersect in seconds. She showed no fear as the space between them closed.

  At the last possible instant, Teardrop lowered her head to dodge, passing beneath his body. Graxen snapped the bag in his hind-talons, opening the satchel wide. With a satisfying shudder, the leather ripped from his claws as the makeshift hood slipped over her head.

  He bent his whole body in the air, heading once more for the dam. He glanced back to find Teardrop whipping her head, trying to free the hood, obviously disoriented. Instinctively, she was climbing slowly, as any temporarily blinded dragon would do. Graxen was relieved she showed no sign of injury. The high-speed hooding had carried the risk of snapping her neck.

  Leaving his last opponent far behind, Graxen raced toward the dam, rising quickly over its massive stone wall. He found himself over the deep silver-blue waters of the mountain lake. The Nest, an impressive fortress of stone and steel, jutted from the waters like a racial memory. He knew this place in his blood. He’d been born within its walls. The air smelled like dreams as he breathed in great heaves through his nostrils.

  There were dark shapes dashing all over the sky now. A dozen valkyries had spotted him. None were closer than half a mile. Unless there was another among them as swift as Teardrop, none could intercept him before he reached his goal. He darted upward as he reached the outer wall of the fortress, rising above the iron spikes that edged it. The Nest would be a bad place to fall. Every surface was covered with sharp metal shafts pointed skyward to discourage any males who might wish to land. Ahead, the central bell tower began to clang out an alarm. He heard a command shouted somewhere below: “Get clear! The gates are closing!” A rumble came from deep beneath the island as ancient gears slipped into service.

  He aimed for the tallest spire of the fortress and a balcony that jutted from it. As he rose above the lip of the balcony, he saw the open door to the chamber beyond. A metal grate was sliding down to seal the room, like the jagged teeth of some great beast. He hoped that the marble floor beyond was as smooth as it looked. He flattened his body, slipping beneath the teeth. He slammed against the marble, sliding forward. He snaked his tail into the room as the grate clanged shut. He spun and pivoted as he slid, spreading his wings to lift himself back to his hind-talons, his sharp claws splayed out, desperate to halt his forward slide. He skidded to rest inches from the opposite wall.

  He opened his jaw and let the scroll drop. He caught it with his fore-talon as he spun around. The scroll was damp with spittle. He held his wings in a gesture of surrender as countless valkyries rushed into the room, spears pointed toward him.

  “Greetings,” he said, in as calm a voice as he could muster. “I have a message from the king.”

  The valkyries drew into a half circle around him as he pressed his back against the cold stone wall.

  “Your kind is forbidden here!” one growled.

  “We should gut you where you stand!” snapped another.

  “We should,” said a firm voice at the back of the room. “But not yet.”

  Graxen looked over the wall of valkyries to see an aged sky-dragon, the weight of her body supported by a gnarled cane. Her body was stooped but her eyes were bright. Her face was lined with an aura of dignity that made her instantly recognizable. The matriarch!

  “He’s made it this far with his precious message,” she said, her voice raspy with age, yet still firm with authority. “We shall allow him his say.”

  “Thank you, Matriarch,” Graxen said. He cast his gaze over the guards. “I’ve been ordered speak to you privately. Would you dismiss your attendants?”

  “Do you think we’ll fall for this trickery?” a valkyrie snarled, jabbing her spear to within a whisker of Graxen’s ribs.

  “Lower your spears!” the matriarch commanded, drawing closer, studying Graxen with a cool gaze. “We’ve nothing to fear from this pathetic specimen. He’s no more than an overly large carrier pigeon.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as an ambassador for the new regime.”

  “Ah yes, the new regime. Rumors travel more swiftly than you, Graxen. I’ve already heard of Albekizan’s death. Shandrazel is king.”

  “For now, yes,” said Graxen.

  “A strange choice of words,” said the matriarch.

  “An appropriate choice for strange times.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  “I shall,” he said, looking back over the guards. “If we may have privacy.”

  The matriarch waited a long moment, her golden eyes fixed on his face. He saw himself reflected in her gaze, a gray dragon against gray stone. He tried to see any emotion in her eyes, any hint of… Of what? What did he wish to see? Remorse? Tenderness? Hatred? Love? He’d not set eyes on the matriarch since infancy. He’d imagined this meeting almost every day, practiced what he would say in his mind, but now that it was happening, he felt utterly unrehearsed and awkward.

  The matriarch sighed. “You shall have your private audience. Valkyries, leave us.”

  Graxen relaxed, lowering his wings. Until this moment, he hadn’t known if he’d live through this meeting. The valkyries were notoriously unmerciful toward interlopers. He hadn’t known if he would be treated any differently. There was every possibility he could have been treated worse, given his family history.

  “I was worried you would hate me,” Graxen said to the matriarch as the last valkyrie left the room. The guard closed the door with a final glance back, her eyes full of murder.

  “I hate you with all my blood,” the matriarch said, shaking her head sorrowfully. “You’re my greatest mistake, Graxen. I curse the decision not to snap your neck as an infant. It gives
me nothing but pain to see you again.”

  Graxen nodded, no longer feeling awkward. These were also words he’d heard many times in his imagination. He was a freak of nature, a mockery of the careful breeding and birth lines the sky-dragons had labored for centuries to maintain. Of course the matriarch, whose sole duty was to protect the integrity of those lines, would despise him.

  “I… I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Of what use is your sorrow?” spat the matriarch. She shook her head, and sighed. “Your sorrow cannot mend my grief. I gave birth to four daughters, and two fine sons. Their offspring should number in the dozens by now. Yet fate snatched them all in their youth, one by one, through disease and accident and treachery. All dead… all save the accursed seventh born.”

  Graxen lowered his head, unable to find the words that might ease her pain. Part of him felt pity for the aged dragon, part of him shared her grief. Yet, underneath it all, he bristled at the injustice of her scorn. It wasn’t his fault that he’d been spared the misfortunes of his siblings. How was he to blame for having been her only surviving child?

  CHAPTER TWO:

  FRAYED THREADS

  GRAXEN FOLLOWED THE matriarch down a winding staircase, leaving the tower far behind as she led him to the heart of her domain, the fabled Thread Room. The enormous round chamber, nearly a hundred yards in diameter, was like an interior forest filled with thick granite columns supporting the fortress above. Elaborate, colorful tapestries covered the walls of the room, depicting in glorious detail scenes from the Ballad of Belpantheron. Bright crimson sun-dragons savaged golden-winged angels in their bloody jaws at the climax of a battle that raged for decades.

  The valkyries were masterful engineers; while the chamber sat beneath the surface of the lake, the room showed no traces of leaking or flooding. Mirrored shafts were set in the ceiling twenty-five feet overhead, funneling sunlight into the room. Despite the radiance, the room was still beset with a cave-like chill and dankness. The cloying incense that rose in wispy tendrils from silver sconces lining the room couldn’t quite hide the underlying scent of mildew.

  The matriarch walked through the chamber without looking back at Graxen. The only sound in the room was the tap of her cane as she hobbled across the tiled floor. She had not spoken, or even glanced at Graxen, since they’d left the tower. Graxen wanted to speak but feared disturbing the sacred air of this place. The tapestries of the Thread Room were priceless. Underlying the visible representation of battle, the threads themselves were woven in an elaborate code. For the matriarch and others initiated in their lore, each thread of these tapestries told a story. Thicker lines represented the lives of individual sky-dragons, every one born in the Nest through the centuries. Thinner threads ran parallel, representing desired genetic traits. The web of lines intersected in elaborate patterns as every mating, every birth, every death of a sky-dragon were recorded in minute detail.

  Centuries earlier, it had been decided that the genetic destiny of the sky-dragon race was too important to be left to mere chance. Males and females were not allowed to mingle or mix according to whim or desire. Each mating represented a careful decision made by the matriarch and her predecessors. Many pairings were planned generations in advance. Others would arise after a sky-dragon demonstrated a novel trait—superior intelligence, for example, or a well documented resistance to disease—and it was the matriarch’s duty to capture these desirable mutations through careful interweaving with a receptive bloodline.

  On the far side of the room a black section of the wall stood devoid of tapestries. The matriarch moved toward this area, a single smooth slab of slate, twelve feet high and four times that length, covered with lines of colored chalk and countless scribbled notes. The matriarch paused, studying the board, as if she had forgotten Graxen’s presence and resumed her normal duties of steering the fate of the species. She leaned her cane against the board as she lifted a thick finger of chalk in her fore-talon.

  As often happened in older dragons, the colors of the matriarch’s scales had faded, tinting white the frill of long scales that ran down her neck and along her spine. The once jewel-like sheen of her scales had dulled, as if muted beneath a lifetime of dust.

  Graxen cringed as the matriarch brought the chalk to the slate and drew a long, screeching line from top to bottom. To the left, hundreds of scribbled notes in a rainbow of colors were surrounded by circles, with lines and arrows connecting them. He didn’t recognize any of the names save one. In a large yellow oval, surrounded by pink question marks, in thick, capital letters was the name VENDEVOREX. There were no lines connecting his circle to any other.

  To the right of the line she had drawn, the board was fresh and black. She wrote in neat, balanced letters despite her trembling talon: “World order, post Albekizan.”

  Without facing Graxen, the matriarch asked, “Is it true the so called wizard is dead?”

  “Yes,” said Graxen. “His funeral pyre is to be lit tonight.”

  The matriarch drew a bold white X across Vendevorex’s name. “The ‘master of the invisible’ has been a burr under my scales for fifteen years,” she grumbled. “He was bloodless, a beast without history. I never learned where he came from. I’m happy to know he’s gone. Ash in an urn is the only appropriate fate for an… aberration.”

  The way she said "aberration" gave the word mass, making it a solid thing that struck Graxen in the chest.

  She did not give him time to dwell upon the blow. “Shandrazel now wears the crown. He fancies himself a scholar. Metron will control him with ease.”

  “Shandrazel is a free thinker,” said Graxen. “He won’t be anyone’s puppet. He definitely won’t be a pawn of Metron.”

  “Metron was able to control Albekizan,” said the matriarch. “The high biologian will be more than a match for his son.”

  “Your informants have failed you,” said Graxen. “Metron is no longer high biologian.”

  “What?” She jerked her head around to fix her eyes on Graxen for the first time. She quickly turned her gaze away, looking distraught over this news. “Is he dead?”

  “Banished,” said Graxen. “Metron allied himself with Blasphet. Androkom is the new high biologian.”

  “No!” The matriarch looked as if the news caused her physical pain. She walked along the tapestries, her fingers tracing from thread to thread. “Androkom is a dreadful choice. His bloodline is one of genius, yes, but also carries a risk of madness. Look here!” She pointed her gnarled talon at a dark red scale on the cheek of a sun-dragon. “Shangon, his second seed removed—”

  “Second seed removed?”

  “What the less educated might call a grandfather,” she grumbled, sounding angry at the interruption. “Shangon was a brilliant scholar. At the age of thirty he earned the right to breed. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, the experience shattered him. He went insane and tried to return to the Nest. The valkyries were forced to end him. Until five generations have passed, members of Androkom’s bloodline must be kept from positions of authority. To make him high biologian is an absurd risk!”

  “It’s a risk Shandrazel is willing to take,” said Graxen. “He appreciates Androkom’s boldness of thought, his willingness to value reason over tradition.”

  The matriarch traced a black threads from the second seed removed to another red scale that represented Androkom. No black lines radiated out from it. Androkom was relatively young, not yet eligible for breeding. The matriarch hooked a needle-sharp talon into the tapestry and tore at the threads that formed the scale, fraying them.

  “No further,” she said, her voice cold. “I cannot undo his past, but I have just undone his future.”

  Graxen shuddered as he understood the harshness of her judgment. “Androkom may become the greatest high biologian known to history,” he protested. “You would end his bloodline now, in a moment of anger? How can you know what the future holds?”

  The matriarch’s eyes narrowed. “I do not know the future,�
� she said, coolly. “I create it.”

  “But—”

  “Save your breath, Graxen. You cannot understand the burden I bear, the responsibility of ensuring the strength of our race for eons to come. You haven’t the capacity to judge me.”

  “Why not?” asked Graxen. “Presumably, as your child, I was designed to inherit your intelligence.”

  He studied the tapestry that bore Androkom’s bloodlines. Was the thread of his own life marked somewhere upon this canvas? “What’s more, I presume my father must have possessed many desirable traits to have been chosen as your mate.”

  “You are so transparent, Graxen,” the matriarch said. “You will not learn your father’s name from me.”

  “Why?” Graxen asked. “Other sky-dragons know their heritage. Why has the identity of my father been kept secret from me?”

  “His bloodline ended with the production of an unfavorable aberration. His identity is no longer of any importance. You are his only offspring. When you pass from this world, the danger he represented will be at an end.”

  “I could have passed from this world at my birth,” said Graxen. “Other aberrations have been drowned in the lake. Why was I allowed to live?”

  The matriarch lifted her fore-talon in a dismissive gesture. “What a pointless question. You are alive now; you have a purpose in life, however menial, of messenger to the king. So far, you have shown an appalling lack of competence in carrying out your duties. What was Shandrazel’s message?”

  “I bring an invitation. Shandrazel is convening a summit in three days. He wishes to invite leaders from throughout the kingdom to discuss the end of the era of kings, and to help design a new era of equality and justice for all races.”

  The matriarch released a barking noise that Graxen at first took as a cough, but then realized was a laugh. “Equality? There is no equality in this world and never will be. The earth has produced four intelligent species, it is true, but it is self-evidently absurd to think they are equal.”