Sower of Embers, Reaper of Flame.

  The Might And Splendor Of The Depthless Ocean.

  The Unquenchable Flame At The Heart Of The Mountain.

  As He Moves, So Do The Trees Quake.

  Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End.

  The Winds Weep To See His Grace.

  The Sun Need Not Rise In His Presence.

  These were the adult dragons present at the beginning of the conclave. And then there was us, with what Mother had called “a fine whelp name.” Draka. How the hell could we expect to be taken seriously when every single one of the dragons there had a name declaring them a force of nature, and we were named by a small child mispronouncing a word she’d never heard before?

  I mean, to hell with them. I liked my name and how I chose it. But I doubted my sentimentality for the kindness of a human child would mean much to someone calling herself ‘Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End’, and I couldn’t blame her. There was a slight difference in dignity — even I had to recognize that.

  The meeting was held in what must once have been Malyon’s equivalent of the Forum. Its true size was hard to guess with the centuries of forest growth covering it, including one of the city’s four giants which towered at what might have been one corner, but the dragons had burned off a space hundreds of feet on a side, with fires still raging around its edges. They’d flattened most of the charred husks of the ancient trees that had once stood there, and I saw no evidence of buildings except for one heap of stone in the very center. I suspected it was the same one at which Night had been draining a crystal of power in the mural. It looked like it had exploded outward during the ruin of the city.

  Even with so much open space, seven adult dragons had a way of making the place feel crowded. Mother was the largest of them, but the smallest stood at least half again as tall at the shoulder as I was. It was a bit like going to the free weights section of my gym back in good old ‘Straya, except ten times worse — at least none of the giant guys there had been a meter taller than me.

  It wasn’t just their sheer size, either. It was like their very presence made the ambient magic stronger, to the point where there was a weak golden haze in the air, like in the food court below the palace. And much like the trolls I’d observed, the dragons took up all available space. They’d come in one by one — except for the mated pair, who came together — and as soon as they landed they’d staked their claims among the ashes, just as they’d hashed out temporary territories among the ruins. Once there they constantly bickered, snapping and growling or shooting little gouts of flame or other substances at each other when they felt like a neighbor encroached on their domain, in a constant back-and-forth of claiming and ceding territory, with each trying to take as much as they could. It took another bone-rattling roar from Mother to force them to settle down. Seeing six enormous, magical, terrifying apex predators stop their bickering and listen at her command gave me a new appreciation of just how powerful she was, even if they did it with varying levels of deference or defiance.

  “Kindred,” Mother rumbled out. “I speak in the tongue of the City of Rains for the benefit of my daughter, who does not yet command our own speech. I know that you all understand it, even if you will not deign to speak it. You will not be required to. Know that I do not bid you welcome. You come in arrogance, as invaders and interlopers, seeking to take what belongs to my child. Others may follow you. It does not matter. Not one peak or valley, not a thicket or glade, will change hands without my daughter’s permission. The purpose of this Conclave is to attempt to settle this without bloodshed, not to divide this island.”

  The next hour or so was given up to introductions and what I interpreted as opening statements, each dragon speaking in turn and beginning with Mother, who switched to a form of Draconic they were all familiar with. I only understood a word here and there, but I got the abridged version from Mother after each finished speaking.

  “I have made clear to them the facts of the situation,” Mother told me after she’d finished. “As the only living child of He Who Darkens The Night, and never having left the island for any length of time, his territory in its entirety, and everything in it, falls to you by right of inheritance. The old pact is void; since the territory was already owned, those who were party to its negotiation had no right to declare the island inviolable terra nullius. They will now speak in turn.

  “The Might And Splendor Of The Depthless Ocean. You know of him already. He has declared himself pleased with his current territory to the south and with no intention of contesting the island. He is here only because he wishes to know if any unattached females intend to settle.”

  In other words he was a playboy among dragons, much as I’d suspected.

  “The Unquenchable Flame At The Heart Of The Mountain is the silver female, and the emerald male is As He Moves, So Do The Trees Quake. They are young and not yet grown into their power, but brash and aggressive — the female more so than the male. They have declared their intention to contest a territory on this island where they would raise their first brood together, though they would settle for a portion rather than the whole.”

  That pair, I suspected, would be trouble. They were young, as Mother had stated, and were the two smallest dragons there other than myself, with the emerald male being a little smaller than his mate. They made up for it in spirit; neither showed any less confidence in themselves than any other dragon there, and they’d staked out oversized claims, both among the ashes and the ruins. Together they’d been enough to annoy even Mother.

  “Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End. Of all the dragons present, we must be most careful of her; rubies are ever given to violence, even when their victory is far from certain. She also desires a territory, one with humans that she may dominate. I suspect she and Splendor have some past entanglement; she has acted somewhat friendly to none but him here.”

  Gods and Mercies, this one scared me. She was absolutely gorgeous to look at, sleek yet powerful, with two sets of large, almost white horns and scales of a ruby red that shimmered and glittered much like the gemstone itself. But she was also terribly aggressive to her neighbors, almost as large as Mother, and the only one besides Mother with a permanent glow of magic about her. Not as bright as Mother’s, but impossible to miss if you had the eyes to see. Besides, I’d seen her breathe a red mist that, when it enveloped a still standing tree trunk, left nothing but crumbled ashes behind. I didn't know what it had done to cause that, and something deep inside me screamed that I did not want to.

  I might also have been influenced by how generally unsettled I was by her, but I was pretty sure that if ever there was a voice that could be described as ‘elaborately malevolent’, it was hers. I think anyone would have seemed tolerable, or even pleasant, next to her, never mind the male in the patch of wasteland beside her.

  “The Winds Weep To See His Grace. You see the dull, mottled grey of his scales? Tragically common among the younger generations. Still, he appears to have a sharp mind, and presents himself well. He desires a mountainous region to call his own. Though he has not stated it, his preference leads me to believe that he is of the type to dig for veins of silver and gold himself, rather than rely on nature or humans to do it for him. He might be tolerable, if you choose to give away any part of your territory for the sake of peace.”

  Instinct’s comment on this one was, “He seems pleasant enough.” I had no idea what she based that on, but when he’d spoken, he did so in a much more thoughtful way than the others had. And if some mountains was truly all he wanted, well… neither Instinct nor I wanted to give away a square inch of Mallin, but if we absolutely had to we might be able to offer him the southern parts of the central range and get off cheap.

  “Finally, The Sun Need Not Rise In His Presence. I find the copper gleam of his scales pleasing. If I were a few centuries younger… ah, well. He and The Winds Weep To See His Grace appear to have an alliance of some sort, though through blood or shared trials or simply friendship I could not say. He claims to be here to see that tradition is upheld, though I suspect he is here first and foremost to support his ally.”

  “An alliance of some sort,” she said. Somewhere in the back of my mind I heard Andrea, or possibly Conscience imitating her, whisper, “And they were roommates.” Now, that girl couldn’t see two guys exchange a manly hug without assuming a hell of a lot more than was likely going on — it probably came with her friendship circles being so queer that I might have been her token straight friend. But those two dragons were pretty much sharing the two little patches of burned forest that they’d claimed, each moving around both freely, and when the conclave got properly started they’d settled down next to each other, right on their border. They were closer than the silver female and her mate half the time. It didn’t take Andrea’s fevered imagination to see something there.

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  Basically, Mother was right. I’d probably have to think of them as a package deal, even if The Sun Need Not Rise In His Presence said that he didn’t intend to stay.

  And that was everyone who was there on the first day. There was a bit of back and forth between them, still in Draconic, but Mother told us that nothing that was said was of any value and that they would wait until noon the following day to start the discussion properly, in case any others showed up. The whole thing took hours, but we were done a little after noon.

  That wasn’t quite the end of it, though. As everyone was leaving, Behold Her approached Mother and us. She came much closer than necessary for two dragons to be able to speak, and her mere presence was oppressive. It was like she breathed out malice, saturating the air around her with rancor and disdain. She, far more than Mother, showed why dragons had such a terrifying reputation among humans; I couldn’t imagine her being anything but a tyrant.

  She and Mother had a short, sharp exchange in Draconic, before Behold Her turned her eyes on me. So close I could see that they were a shimmering snow white with no iris, only a black slit of a pupil. After regarding me for a moment she said, in what sounded like an old dialect of Sareyan, “The daughter of He Who Darkens The Night, you are. Obvious by your scales, it is. No other such have I seen.”

  “I am,” Instinct replied proudly.

  “Knew him, I did, in my youth. Desired the island, I did, but older and stronger than I was he. Slew three dragons to claim it once he died, did I, before the truce and the pact were forged. Denied my right was I.” She narrowed her eyes at us, and Mercies help me, it was all we could do not to mess ourselves. “Relinquish my claim easily if the pact is broken, I will not. Know this. No violence will I offer while the conclave is. Once the conclave is not, if no concord is, take what I desire I will!”

  She then turned back to Mother, growling and hissing and getting the same in return, before languidly turning her back on us and walking away a few steps before taking to the air. Beyond any doubt she was daring Mother to do anything; to give her an excuse.

  “Perhaps I should have burned her skull from her neck when her back was turned, and damn the consequences,” Mother said furiously.

  “What did she say, when she so rudely spoke Draconic despite knowing that I did not understand?” Instinct asked.

  Mother looked after the departing ruby female. She took a long time to answer, as though she wasn’t sure that she should. Finally she must have decided that we deserved honesty, because I couldn’t imagine that what Behold Her had said could have been worse than what Mother related to us. “She swore,” Mother said, “that if it comes to conflict, she will suffer and die before letting the island slip from her claws again. And that if she cannot have it, then she will ensure that you do not, either. She is deeply insulted that you have claimed this island after she was denied by the will of a conclave of dozens and the establishment of the pact. Daughter, that one has sworn to kill you.”

  Instinct had no answer for that. No bravado. She looked at the small, red dot that was now circling one of the giant trees for just a second before she whined and pressed herself closer to Mother. And God, who could blame her? I’d never heard anything more terrifying.

  “So. How’d it go, boss?” Ardek asked when we returned to the Shrine.

  Mother had taken to the sky immediately to better keep an eye on the other dragons, but I, again, would rather not risk her having a conniption of she felt her bond with me fade. I left Instinct in charge and she, with her customary tact, told Ardek the truth.

  “There is a dragon out there, almost as old and powerful as Mother, who wishes to kill me.”

  “Ah,” Ardek said, his cheerful expression becoming distinctly forced. “Didn’t go so great, then.”

  “Mother shall be forced to kill her, I think, and then I do not know what the others will do. But otherwise it went quite well. You should all be safe for the duration of the conclave, at least.”

  One effect of having eight dragons in the city was that nothing moved that didn't have to. The risk of monster attack had never been lower. And at a little prompting from myself and Conscience, Instinct had asked Mother what the other dragons thought about our humans. The answer was simple: they didn't think about them at all. The Winds Weep To See His Grace, who’d been the one to perch on the palace, had mentioned smelling some humans. Mother had clarified that any humans in Malyon belonged to me, and that was that. Any attack on them would be an attack on me, which would be an attack on Mother and thus invite terrible retribution. And no one, not even Behold Her And Know That All Things Must End wanted to risk that.

  Thus my humans were, ironically, possibly the safest they’d been since arriving at the ruined city. Safe enough for us to leave them unattended as we went back to the underground social space we’d found.

  I’d done what I could for my adopted siblings, but with time to kill I felt a need to do more. The least I hoped for was that we might find some clue to just what the hell had happened. I wasn’t sure what I’d do with that knowledge, but I had this idea that knowing why things were happening would make them easier to accept. It was also — and I recognized that this was most likely an extremely optimistic thing to hope for — the first step in trying to reverse whatever Mak had accidentally set off. If I could do that, not only would it make things safer for my humans, but it might stop our sudden dragon problem from getting worse.

  The flash when Mak triggered whatever it was had been bright enough for other dragons to sense from hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. We didn’t know how far, really, only that all the males had come from beyond the range at which Mother could sense them. Even days later it was, according to Mother, strong enough to home in on. It had alerted at least six nearby dragons that there was something interesting happening on the island. What was to say that it wouldn’t draw in more?

  I couldn’t see adding more dragons making a bad situation better.

  Beyond that vain hope, doing some investigating was an excellent distraction. With the humans mostly sitting around, and without Herald or Mak to talk to, there wasn’t much to do in the rotunda but think about the malicious dragon with the all-devouring breath who wanted to kill us. While I could sort of deal with it, in a “this isn’t my first death threat” kind of way, and Conscience’s opinion was, “We probably deserve it,” Instinct was silently terrified. She’d never admit it, but when Mother took off her anxiety had spiked in a way that I hadn’t felt for a long time. And as insufferable as Instinct could be at times, I hated to feel her afraid. She may not be a friend; for all that we were as close as any two beings could be, even sharing a body couldn’t force us to truly like each other. But she was as close an acquaintance as anyone could be, and I had grown to at least respect her, especially over the past few weeks. And for all that she was a big bloody murder-lizard who spoke in my voice and sometimes broke out words that I barely even knew that I knew, she was a child. I never quite lost sight of that — though she made it damn hard not to sometimes.

  So I wanted to distract her more than anything. Unless I wanted to try and force Instinct to have some kind of awkward conversation with the humans, the only real option to spend time and occupy our minds was to read the translations of Sekteretesh’s letters. If we were going to do that, I’d rather have my sisters there to calm me in case something in them made me blow up. We really were not in a situation where me getting irrational and stupid was likely to work out well. Besides, getting Instinct to sit still for that seemed unlikely — she had extremely little patience for reading. But she was rather curious about the magical explosion that Mak had set off.

  It all lined up rather nicely. No difficult decision to make. I just followed the path of least resistance, suggested innocently to Instinct that it might be interesting to see what was going on underground, and she was off.

  So down into the tunnels we went. We exited the rotunda, looking to the sky to make sure that Mother saw us and could stay close by in case the other dragons weren’t feeling as honorable as we hoped. We went without the humans, obviously. I had no idea how strong the magic would be in the air down there; Mother had said that it had been dimming ever since the initial flash, and I’d been able to see vague shapes as we left for the surface that day, so I hoped that I’d be able to see, at least. But with even the normal ambient magic in the north being strong enough to cause a huge increase in the number of Rifts and associated monsters, it couldn’t possibly be healthy for humans to spend any time in the underground chamber until whatever had happened ran its course. Being near a source of radiation felt like an obvious and appropriate comparison; if it was weak enough, and the exposure wasn’t too long, it might very well be survivable. You might not even see any immediate effects. But it certainly wouldn’t be good for you.

  The stairwell where we’d descended lay undisturbed among the ruins we’d cleared. “Not even an animal has come this way,” Instinct declared as she sniffed around the ground surrounding it, and I agreed. There were no scents at all beyond sunbaked stone, loam, and the surrounding forest.

  They must be smarter than us, I joked, and the flash of annoyance I felt from her at even an implied insult to her intelligence was almost a relief. She was very bad at feeling two things at once, so if she was mad at me, she wasn’t thinking of her fear of Behold Her. Mission already somewhat successful, I told myself!

  In a fit of either surprising caution or paranoia, Instinct squeezed down the stairwell, where we were only visible from directly above, before Shifting. She only made it as far as the collapsed hallway before stopping suddenly. “There is a breeze!” she commented, more intrigued than startled.

  I could feel what she meant. I thought of it more like a faint pressure, but a soft wind wasn't a bad comparison either. Honestly, it was probably more apt than my own; when I really focused, I could almost feel it slipping around and through our form.

  It's much weaker than it was, though, I pointed out. It might be all right.

  That was all the encouragement she needed. She pushed forward, easily slipping into and out of the trench into the guardroom on the other side. The ‘wind’ was slightly stronger there, but not enough to cause a problem, and while there was a noticeable glow to the air, it was only that. Gone was the blinding light of a few days ago, replaced by a thin haze that only barely hid the other side of the chamber.

  That changed when Instinct eagerly rushed forward, and we reached the central stairs. If the chamber was a wind and a haze, the stairwell was a furnace.

  Maybe we should— was all I got out before Instinct, heedless of any danger, launched us down the wide, spiraling steps.

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