Fool's Fate

Get clear of him. Clamber away, take flight. Do not seek to battle this one on the ground!

Sounds came from Tintaglia. It was not language, but meaning rode with the sounds and I perceived it as speech. I do not think that all humans there grasped that she spoke. Certainly Icefyre knew that she spoke to him, and he bugled back to her, but I did not grasp his meaning fully. Perhaps my earlier exposures to Tintaglia had increased my comprehension of her. Whatever the reason, I saw the ragged dragon clamber to the edge of the pit, away from the lashing tangle of true dragon and stone dragon below him. I knew Tintaglia could not hold Rawbread long. She was a female, and I suspected it was a disparity of gender that made her so much smaller than Icefyre.

The stone dragon was massive and blocky, thick where Tintaglia was slender and flexible, heavy where she was light. In comparison to Rawbread, she was an attacking falcon pitted against a bull. She was quickness itself, yet she could not seem to damage him. Her teeth had sunk into his neck, but I saw no flow of blood. The scoring of her powerful clawed hindquarters down his flanks left only white scratches, as if a boy had scraped one stone down another. He did not appear to take hurt from them. He shook himself heavily, trying to dislodge her, but she gripped him fast, futilely battling him with weapons that did him no harm. Her claws were a woman's fingernails pitted against a warrior's leather armor. I wondered, did he have blood to shed? Or was he all stone animated by will?

And what could kill such a stone dragon? If his hide was impervious to a powerful creature like Tintaglia, what could stop him?

Wave after wave of Skilled hate emanated from Rawbread. I sensed his confusion and frustration as he tried to adapt to his unwieldy but powerful body. Quickened he might be, yet he was still somehow incomplete. His legs churned beneath him in the broken ice without propelling him from the pit. He unfolded one wing awkwardly but could not seem to flap it or even to tuck it back to his body. It remained outflung and useless. He whipped his heavy head ponderously from side to side in a futile effort to loosen the determined female.

Tintaglia's silver eyes rolled to watch Icefyre's progress. It was pitiably slow. He heaved himself out of the pit. When he rocked back onto his hind legs, the ravages of his long encasement in the ice were made even plainer. I could see his keeled breastbone through the sag of his scaly hide. He reminded me of a bird's carcass, all eaten away by ants. He lifted his ragged wings wide. When he shook them experimentally, a waft of stinking sickly animal washed past me. He limbered his long neck and lashed his tail several times, like a man settling himself into clothes he had long outgrown. He seemed to take his time to do all this, as if the struggle in the pit did not concern him at all. He nosed over his wings, almost like a bird preening. Then he extended his wings and rattled them like a beggar crow settling his feathers back into place. He flapped them once, slowly, and again, and then the third time he drove them down with a force that sent snow whisking away from him and wind whistling through the rents in them. Suddenly he leaned into his wings, his muscled hind legs driving him forward and up. He lifted from the ice heavily like an awkward seabird, but once his claws left the ground, it was as if he were released from its bonds. He rose steadily.

I caught a glimpse of Risk, circling high above us, and wondered how she must feel to see such an immense being rising toward her. Tintaglia, apparently deciding that Icefyre was now safely away from the awkward stone dragon, abruptly released her grip on Rawbread. She leaped, light as a lizard, into the air. Her silvery blue wings spread gracefully wide and in two beats of them she began to climb toward the sky.

Belatedly, Rawbread seemed to realize the attack on him had ceased. He threw back his head, roaring his hatred at us, then craned his neck to turn a mud-colored eye toward the sky. His neck was shorter and thicker than that of the true dragons. A rolling, viscous rumble came from his throat.

The Pale Woman's Skilling to him carried the force of fury. I was not the target of her thought and I felt but the brush of its passage yet had no problem discerning the message. Her power of Skill seemed less than it had been, as if the freeing of the dragon had exhausted her. She forced her thoughts through a quagmire of pain.

Kill the dragons, one of them, or both of them, but kill at least one! Never mind the humans. They cannot harm you. Later, you can devour them at your will. But for now, take your revenge on the Six Duchies. Kill their dragons, Rawbread!

And in that instant, he turned his heavy head and snapped at Tintaglia's tail, closing his rocky jaws on its lashing tip. It jerked her from the grace of flight into a wild fall. She cried out and I saw Icefyre tip his wings and felt his gaze sweep over the struggle on the ground. He tilted and then dived sharply. The stone dragon had finally mastered how to spread his wings and he sought at first to brake Tintaglia's flight, but in that awkward effort, some vague idea of how to use them seemed to come to him. Never relinquishing his hold on Tintaglia's tail, he beat his wings savagely, making abortive lunges into the air. The struggling queen dragon was jerked about like a kite on a string. She screamed, shrill as a sword being drawn, and suddenly coiled back to attack her attacker. It was a mistake. For all her size, she was a butterfly battering herself against a lizard. The wind of her wildly fluttering wings sprayed icy snow into my face and drove me down, but did not impress Rawbread at all. He buffeted her with his heavy wings, slamming blows that sounded heavy slaps like a slaughterhouse hammer against her flesh.