“You will pop like a tick if you keep that up,” she said.
The bat glanced up. “Ohh, yer ladyship. If only you knew what a service—” His ears twitched around wildly, then pointed straight ahead, following his nose up. “Mmmph? Oook, yer ladyship. I hears awful wings—beware! Beware!”
Three ugly collections of feather and beak fell out of the shadows above, wings spreading as taloned claws slashed down. Had Larb not seen them, too, she would have thought her mind truly had gone—these fliers were nightmares described and manifested into living flesh. Thick-skinned and covered in a mix of feathers and sharp quills with a massive black beak hanging down almost to their pockmarked chests, they were more like a mix of creatures than any avian she’d ever seen.
Larb shot off into the darkness with a high-pitched squeak.
Being nipped was the luckiest thing to happen to her since the Exiles arrived. The pain had set her on edge, just enough so that her griff descended at Larb’s shout.
Talons raked off her griff. She felt agony across her back as one of the creatures ripped its way down her spine, leaving a trail of torn-loose scale and blood. It clamped just below her ribs and began to dig.
She smothered it with her wing and flipped onto her back, rolling and crushing. The creature gave one desperate heave as its hollow bones snapped.
The third, wheeling above while the other two drew her attention, saw its chance. It dropped like a missile and hit her in midthroat. She felt a sense of strong pressure but no pain, and when it rose again, dripping blood and scale from its claws, she realized her throat was ripped open.
But she was a tough old dragon-dame. Even her neck had thickened and grown fatty with her years, and though he’d opened her windpipe enough so that she could hear air rasping and feel blood running down her throat, he hadn’t managed to get to any of the great blood vessels, else her neck-hearts would already be seizing up.
Not knowing the extent of the damage to her neck, she didn’t dare use her firebladder. While it probably wouldn’t ignite in her throat, as the agent for turning fuoa into fire was generated by a gland in her jaw, she might choke on the viscous liquid.
Odd that she could assess her own chances of mortality so closely with her throat ripped open.
The one that had raked its claws on her griff going after her neck-hearts swooped again, trying for her eyes this time. She continued her roll and whipped her neck around. The rainlike patter of blood from her throat echoed in the tunnel, but she managed to head-butt the gruesome bird hard enough to knock it into the tunnel wall. It struck just above the beak and dropped lifelessly.
The one who’d opened her throat grabbed at the back of her neck and reached down with its plow-sized beak, ready to finish the job of severing her midneck. Everything in the tunnel was going bright and fuzzy.
Now she was down, her limbs numb and useless. The creature had to climb along her neck and shift its grip.
A hail of rocks struck it, breaking and bloodying the creature, throwing it off her. Then DharSii was at her side, panting and shielding her with outspread wings.
She vaguely heard her name shouted again and again. Why would DharSii be waking her instead of the blighters? She refused to wake, and passed into unconsciousness.
When she did wake, she was still lying in the entrance passage. Her throat was held shut by the gripping claws of that bat—er, Larb. DharSii was at work with his snout and sii while Aethleethia and NaStirath looked on, fearful and anxious.
“Her eyes are shifting around,” NaStirath said. “Is that good?”
“Yes, very,” DharSii said. “It’s when they go still and dry and staring that you have to worry.”
Scabia gradually put together the idea that DharSii was sewing her together with a sharp, curved bone needle and the sort of twine they used on cooking fowl in the kitchens.
She tried to speak, but he held her still, and she fell back into unconsciousness from the effort.
When she woke again, only DharSii was nestled beside her. She’d been tucked against one wall of the passage where she’d been attacked so it was less likely that she’d roll. Odd, she’d dreamed that she had drifted on silent wings all through her home, looking for something.
On the other side of the passage was what was left of those nightmare birds. The young dragons were poking through them.
“You picked—a good time—to return,” she managed.
DharSii scooped a sii-full of snow out of a tin tub. “Melt this in your mouth and let it go down slowly.”
The snow and cold water as it melted was soothing on her throat. It gave her a brief flash of energy before she relaxed and went limp again. She gave a gentle nod.
“Don’t move your head too much,” DharSii advised. “How do you feel?”
“Ghastly. What vomit of the Four Spirits were those things, DharSii?”
“My guess would be griffaran. The proportion is about right; they’re just overlarge and this skin of theirs . . .”
Larb fluttered over from the bodies, where he’d been nibbling at an eyeball. “Hisshonor’s right, yer ladyship, that’s exactly what they are. Griffaran of the Rock, that’s what.”
“Nonsense,” Scabia said. “They look nothing like steadfast old Miki, colorful until his dying day.”
“Griffaran of the Rock?” DharSii asked. “The griffaran guard the Tyr, and they certainly don’t consider Imperial Rock home.”
“That’s all changed—sorry to counter-dict your lordship,” Larb said. “That wizard, Rayg, he’s been giving griffaran dragon-blood and breeding those that react best to it. Trying to make a better Tyr’s bodyguard, he is.”
Scabia took as deep a breath as she dared, holding her throat carefully still. “You returned just in time, DharSii. I’m grateful to you again. How did you knock the last one off my neck?”
“I had a mouthful of ore. I just gathered it and exhaled as hard as I could.”
“More snow, please,” she said, tiring.
“You have a lot of blood to make up. I’ll have the blighters bring you some stew. The boiled potatoes are as soft as a cloud and far more filling.”
With a massive act of will, she rose to her feet and made it back to her perch in the great hall, waving the hatchlings away. They were piping their concern, but she was too tired to speak. Or even climb into her perch. She reared up, but her head began to swim before she could place sii on her rest. She slumped into the fading light in the center of the vast chamber. “Try again tomorrow,” she said in a dozy voice. She was unconscious before anyone came up with a reply.
When she awoke, Larb and a couple of blighters were beside her, listening to her breathing.
DharSii hid a yawn and dropped off his temporary perch. She blinked, looked around, and asked where the rest of the dragons were. Aethleethia had taken the youths out to explore the lake, and according to DharSii, NaStirath was actually flying guard duty above.
“Sure he wasn’t just fishing, now?” Scabia said, thinking DharSii must be mistaken.
“I told him that if the Lavadome could get three of those bastardized griffaran up here, they could probably get thirty. That shocked him into silence.”
“I’m relieved something can shock him,” Scabia said.
“If they come,” Scabia said, “get everyone into the water-reservoir, the slow well beneath the kitchens. I’ve never told anyone this, but there is a tunnel down there. It comes out in the stones under the old wharf on the lake. You have to hold your breath, but it’s not a long swim.”
She remembered her manners. She needed to thank Larb. “It was a fortunate day for me when you arrived, Larb. To think, I’ve always thought of bats as vermin. Larb, why ever did you make such a long journey in a dragonelle’s ear? You might easily have died at that altitude, in the cold.”
“Oh, an ear’s a warm little place, long as the wind’s not shooting down it, yer ladyship. Truth is, I was looking for the old Tyr. We bats, we’re getting exterminated right out of a home. I came to ask Tyr RuGaard to come back and set matters to right. We understand an occasional housecleaning, and sometimes a dragon rolls over in his sleep and crushes a bat or two. Most normal thing in the world. But they’re hunting us down and burning us out. We! We saved ’em from the Dragonblade, not so many generations back, and this is the thanks we get.”
“I’m glad you came. You’ll always have a home here, and as long as blood runs through my veins.”
“Oh, yer ladyship, yer too kind to me-umps and my family.”
“No family! I’ll not have my daughter’s hatchlings slipping around on guano. Hear me, Larb, as soon as cousins and friends appear, my cooks will be asking their grandmothers for bat recipes.”
NaStirath returned with Aethleethia and the hatchlings, along with a party of blighters pushing barrows.
“I thought we should dry and salt some fish,” NaStirath said. “In case we get trapped in here by more of those—what were they called, Larb?”
“Ugly bas—”
“Their real name, Larb,” Scabia said.