She snorted and stood up, tossing back her hair scornfully. It was red, flecked with gold. Erect, Liessa Wyrmbidder was entirely a magnificent sight. She was also almost naked, except for a couple of mere scraps of the lightest chain mail and riding boots of iridescent dragonhide. In one boot was thrust a riding crop, unusual in that it was as long as a spear and tipped with tiny steel barbs.
“My power will be quite sufficient,” she said coldly.
The indistinct figure appeared to nod, or at least to wobble. “As you keep assuring me,” he said. Liessa snorted, and strode out of the hall.
Her father did not bother to watch her go. One reason for this was, of course, that since he had been dead for three months his eyes were in any case not in the best of condition. The other was that as a wizard—even a dead wizard of the fifteenth grade, his optic nerves had long since become attuned to seeing into levels and dimensions far removed from common reality, and were therefore somewhat inefficient at observing the merely mundane. (During his life they had appeared to others to be eight-faceted and eerily insectile). Besides, since he was now suspended in the narrow space between the living world and the dark shadow-world of Death he could survey the whole of Causality itself. That was why, apart from a mild hope that this time his wretched daughter would get herself killed, he did not devote his considerable powers to learning more about the three travelers galloping desperately out of his realm.
Several hundred yards away, Liessa was in a strange humor as she strode down the worn steps that led into the hollow heart of the Wyrmberg, followed by half a dozen Riders. Would this be the opportunity? Perhaps here was the key to break the deadlock, the key to the throne of the Wyrmberg. It was rightfully hers, of course; but tradition said that only a man could rule the Wyrmberg. That irked Liessa, and when she was angry the Power flowed stronger and the dragons were especially big and ugly.
If she had a man, things would be different. Someone who, for preference, was a big strapping lad but short on brains. Someone who would do what he was told…
The biggest of the three now fleeing the dragonlands might do. And if it turned out that he wouldn’t, then dragons were always hungry and needed to be fed regularly. She could see to it that they got ugly.
Uglier than usual, anyway.
The stairway passed through a stone arch and ended in a narrow ledge near the roof of the great cavern where the Wyrms roosted.
Sunbeams from the myriad entrances around the walls crisscrossed the dusty gloom like amber rods in which a million golden insects had been preserved. Below, they revealed nothing but a thin haze. Above…
The walking rings started so close to Liessa’s head that she could reach up and touch one. They stretched away in their thousands across the upturned acres of the cavern roof. It had taken a score of masons a score of years to hammer the pitons for all those, hanging from their work as they progressed. Yet they were as nothing compared to the eighty-eight major rings that clustered near the apex of the dome. A further fifty had been lost in the old days, as they were swung into place by teams of sweating slaves (and there had been slaves aplenty, in the first days of the Power) and the great rings had gone crashing into the depths, dragging their unfortunate manipulators with them.
But eighty-eight had been installed, huge as rainbows, rusty as blood. From them…
The dragons sense Liessa’s presence. Air swishes around the cavern as eighty-eight pairs of wings unfold like a complicated puzzle. Great heads with green, multifaceted eyes peer down at her.
The beasts are still faintly transparent. While the men around her take their hookboots from the rack, Liessa bends her mind to the task of full visualization; above her in the musty air the dragons become fully visible, bronze scales dully reflecting the sunbeam shafts. Her mind throbs, but now that the Power is flowing fully she can, with barely a waver of concentration, think of other things.
Now she too buckles on the hookboots and turns a graceful cartwheel to bring their hooks, with a faint clang, against a couple of the walking rings in the ceiling.
Only now it is the floor. The world has changed. Now she is standing on the edge of a deep bowl or crater, floored with the little rings across which the dragonriders are already strolling with a pendulum gait. In the center of the bowl their huge mounts wait among the herd. Far above are the distant rocks of the cavern floor, discolored by centuries of dragon droppings.
Moving with the easy gliding movement that is second nature Liessa sets off toward her own dragon, Laolith, who turns his great horsey head toward her. His jowls are greasy with pork fat.
It was very enjoyable, he says in her mind.
“I thought I said there were to be no unaccompanied flights?” she snaps.
I was hungry, Liessa.
“Curb your hunger. Soon there will be horses to eat.”
The reins stick in our teeth. Are there any warriors? We like warriors.
Liessa swings down the mounting ladder and lands with her legs locked around Laolith’s leathery neck.