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Prologue

TINTAGLIA AND ICEFYRE

She rode the air currents easily, her legs sleeked tight against her body, her wings spread wide On the undulating desert sands below, her rippling shadoed her as a serpentine creature with batlike wings and a long, finned tail Tintaglia thrummed deep in her throat, a purr of pleasure in the day They had hunted at dawn and hunted well They had made their separate kills, as they always did, and spent theand then sleep Now, smeared still with the blood and offal of the hunt, the two dragons had another goal in mind

Ahead and slightly below her, Icefyre was a gleaht to catch and ride the wind His torso was thicker and heavier than hers, his body longer Her featherlike scaling glittered a scintillating blue, but he was an even black all over His long encase years to heal His larger wings still had rents in the heavy webbing between the finger ribs The sone, but the tears in his wings would knitwould always be visible Unlike her own azure perfection Out of the corners of her eyes, Tintaglia ads

As if he sensed her lack of attention to hi descent She knew their destination Not too far away a rocky ridge erupted above the sand Stunted trees and gray-green brush populated its jagged edges and rough gullies Just before the brushy ridge was a hidden oasis, in a wide, sandy basin, surrounded by a scatter of trees The water rose from the depths of the earth to form a wide, still pool Even in winter, the depression cupped the day’s war in the sun-warmed waters of the oasis to cleanse the blood froh sand to polish their scales They knew the spot well They varied their hunting grounds over a wide range, but every ten days or so, Icefyre led them back here He claimed it was a place he remembered from his distant youth

Prologue

TINTAGLIA AND ICEFYRE

She rode the air currents easily, her legs sleeked tight against her body, her wings spread wide On the undulating desert sands below, her rippling shadoed her as a serpentine creature with batlike wings and a long, finned tail Tintaglia thrummed deep in her throat, a purr of pleasure in the day They had hunted at dawn and hunted well They had made their separate kills, as they always did, and spent theand then sleep Now, smeared still with the blood and offal of the hunt, the two dragons had another goal in mind

Ahead and slightly below her, Icefyre was a gleaht to catch and ride the wind His torso was thicker and heavier than hers, his body longer Her featherlike scaling glittered a scintillating blue, but he was an even black all over His long encase years to heal His larger wings still had rents in the heavy webbing between the finger ribs The sone, but the tears in his wings would knitwould always be visible Unlike her own azure perfection Out of the corners of her eyes, Tintaglia ads

As if he sensed her lack of attention to hi descent She knew their destination Not too far away a rocky ridge erupted above the sand Stunted trees and gray-green brush populated its jagged edges and rough gullies Just before the brushy ridge was a hidden oasis, in a wide, sandy basin, surrounded by a scatter of trees The water rose from the depths of the earth to form a wide, still pool Even in winter, the depression cupped the day’s war in the sun-warmed waters of the oasis to cleanse the blood froh sand to polish their scales They knew the spot well They varied their hunting grounds over a wide range, but every ten days or so, Icefyre led them back here He claimed it was a place he remembered from his distant youth

Once, there had been a colony of Elderlings here that had tended the visiting dragons Of their white stone buildings and carefully nurtured vineyards, nothing re desert had devoured their settlelia would have preferred to fly much farther south, to the red sand deserts where winter never ca that he lacked the sta hi ion companionship, even crotchety, critical companionship, was preferable to isolation

Icefyre fle, nearly skis lide and stirred the sand Tintaglia followed, e skills There was much she did not care for in her mate, but he was truly a lord of the air

They followed the contours of the land She knew his plan Their glide would carry them up to the lip of the basin, and then down in a wild slide that paralleled the slope of the dunes It would end with both of thes still spread, into the still, sun-warmed waters

They were halfway down the slope when the sand around the upper edges of the basin erupted Canvas coverings were flung aside and archers rose in ranks A phalanx of arrows fleard thely off her wings and flanks, a second arced toward theround to batter their way to altitude again Icefyre skimmed and then slewed around as he hit the shalloaters of the pool Tintaglia was too close behind hie her path She crashed into hiled in the wared nests and ca ants Behind thehted nets of stout rope and chain

Heedless of how he lia He splashed fro her into the water as he went Some of the pike men ran; he crushed others under his powerful hind feet, then spun, and with a lash of his long tail knocked down a score of others Dazed, mired in the water, she saw him work his throat and then open wide his lie of Icefyre’s poison sacs He spun toward his attackers, and his hissing roar carried with it a scarlet mist of venom As the cloud enveloped the men before him, their screams rose to the blue cup of sky

The acid ate them Armor of leather or metal slowed but did not stop it The droplets fell froh huut were holed by the passing venom It hissed as it struck the sand Some men died quickly, but most did not