Free Dragon Rigger by Jeffrey A. Carver Page B

cruelly.
    Come. Help. Quickly. The thought was dying in his heart. The shouts of his comrades were distant now. He was alone here, with a drahl who commanded his life and death. Should he end it now and try to take the enemy with him? That might be the better way.
    But if he waited, there was always the chance that he would find an opening. Always the chance to learn something useful. Always the chance to escape.
    It was a faint hope, but it was all the hope he had. That last spark of hope died when he saw a new cluster of drahls rise from the shadows and climb to join them in westward flight. In flight toward the home of the Enemy.

Chapter 7: Tracks in the Underrealm
    Back in his cavern, Windrush found sleep eluding him. The lumenis vision had left him far too restless. He peered about the stone-and-spell confines of his cavern, noting that the sweepers had been busy in his absence, gathering up his fallen scales. The tiny creatures had left the ledges around the cavern adorned with their jewellike sculptures, his fallen scales twisted together into silvery shapes that balanced and pointed in odd ways, glinting in the gloom. Windrush had never attached any meaning to those decorations, and yet, in some way he could never quite fathom, they seemed tantalizingly suggestive of some deeper intent. Tomorrow they would be gone, carried into the dim crevices of the cavern to line the sweepers' nests.
    Sighing, he sharpened his nails, raking them on the stone floor. It felt too cold in the cavern, too dark. A few patches of luminescent moss provided the only light. He peered into the hearth where a draxis bush stood and focused his thoughts there, until he had coaxed from the bush a burst of flames tinted with amber and ruby. The flames pleased him; they were the colors of distant suns.
    It was only after he had stared at it for a time that the dragon understood his desire for the flame. A memory flashed through his mind: three small figures pacing before just such a fire, in this very spot. The rigger Jael, with her friends Ar and Ed, had visited this cavern one eventful night, far too long ago.
    Jael. Human, rigger, friend. It was his father who had first befriended her. Highwing had recognized in a frightened young rigger the possible fulfillment of the Words—barely remembered by most male dragons, but held at the very heart's center of the song and history of the draconae. " From beyond life will come one . . . without friend will come one . . . and surely the realm shall tremble. " Jael, an outsider, had accepted Highwing's friendship; and soon thereafter, the silent corruption of Tar-skel had erupted into an open reign of terror. In punishment for trusting an outsider, Highwing was sentenced to exile and death in the static realm.
    It was on the morning following the night in this cavern—the night when Jael had questioned a reluctant Windrush until he thought he would go mad, questioned him until he changed his mind and agreed to challenge the darkness—that they had flown together to the Black Peak to save Highwing. It stirred his blood to remember it—the trumpeting dragon cries, the fire and smoke, the flash of sorcery that hurled Highwing out of the realm with Jael in fast pursuit. And then . . . the anguish of waiting, fighting off Tar-skel's followers, until the riggers reappeared with the dying dragon. In the end, Windrush bore his great father on his own back, giving Highwing the precious moments he needed to die in triumph, with peace and dignity. . . .
    The hearth fire danced before Windrush, throwing shadows about the cavern, shadows that jumped up to tower over him. Windrush gazed into the flames, mesmerized. He wished that the fire could help him unravel the knots of the day, or somehow transport him back to more fathomable times. He recalled the strange little parrot rigger, Ed, who had accompanied Jael—and he wished he could laugh at the memory. But laughter would not come to him, not from