Dragon Fate: Book Six of The Age of Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

the hatchlings as playthings and decor. He’d burned the body for fear that the blighter thralls—servants, as they were known in the Sadda-Vale, of vast appetite—would dig it up and eat it, stringy flesh and all.
    He reclined on the floor in the wettest corner of the Great Rotunda, a vast round room, the heart of Vesshall Palace, filled with elegantly-shaped dragon perches protruding from the walls like exploring claws. A circular portal to the sky admitted light, fresh air, and, of course, water.
    A drainage channel ran to a discreet grate in the wall and he idly cleaned it with the tip of his tail. The blighters who lived in the Sadda-Vale and acted as servants to the dragons in exchange for protection of their flocks and families swept dirt and refuse from the meals into the channel, where it was carried away to an underground pig wallow. Faint swinish sounds echoed up from the chute behind the grate.
    In this, his chosen spot, the drips drowned out the chatter of hatchlings and the inanities being exchanged between Scabia the White, the ancient dragon-dame who’d given them refuge in the Sadda-Vale, and her daughter Aethleethia. Aethleethia was a well-bred female, perhaps a little on the slight side, especially when compared with his muscular sister, but something of a drip. Perhaps, having been badgered and nudged by the domineering Scabia her entire life, she never had a chance to develop much of a personality.
    The other dragon of the Sadda-Vale, Aethleethia’s mate, NaStirath, would have been much admired back in the Lavadome, where the Copper had grown up and eventually ruled. NaStirath had golden scale and a sense of humor that was alternately biting and clownish. Even the tiniest court needed a jester, the Copper supposed.
    He could climb up onto one of the comfortable, dragon-contoured perches and get out of the wet, but that seemed such a bother. Besides, anytime he reclined on one of them, he started thinking how comfortable the design and how a few such perches scattered around Imperial Rock would add to everyone’s enjoyment of the gardens and view, and then he remembered that the gardens, and the view, now belonged to another Tyr.
    The hatchlings started chasing around the center of the Grand Court, pouncing and rolling, and he decided to go deeper before one of them scurried behind his flank for protection and they started teasing him about his scale again or asking him when the wheels on his wing would be repaired so they could watch the artificial joint in action.
    He ambled down to the blighter alley, still poking at the troublesome tooth with his tongue.
    Everyone in the Sadda-Vale recognized his step. He had a hopping, three-legged gait, thanks to an old injury in his hatching-duel that left him with the right sii crippled. The saa just behind it was somewhat overmuscled to compensate, adding to his corkscrew balance. His mate, Nilrasha, had used healing arts she’d learned in her youth as a Firemaid to massage and stretch it back to some sort of utility, but without her constant attention it had lapsed into near-uselessness again, and he kept it close to his breast.
    Once he’d directed armies of three races. Now he had to content himself with the duties of a few dozen lazy blighters.
    The other dragons didn’t bother with blighter alley, but the Copper had taken it up as a project to occupy his mind when he and his siblings arrived a few years back. Once, he suspected, it had been a winery or apothecary or some other sort of workspace that required a good deal of sorting and cubbyholing.
    The blighters had taken up the long, tall-spot in the deep tunnel and put wooden walls, platforms, and ceilings into the honeycomblike walls. It suited blighters to live on top of and across from each other. They were always shouting across the tunnel to their neighbors opposite or swinging up and down the ladders to visit.
    Even so deep in the earth, blighter alley was warm and comfortable. Three pipes the