To feel wind rushing once more under her wings made the drakka more overjoyed than she had been in months. It lifted her, body and soul, until she swirled like a leaf in a gale. Only Aurha controlled how she dived and pivoted on the air. The feeling of muscles and sinew too long dormant rippling through her body like waves surged to her head and made her dizzy. She laughed and roared in pleasure at the sensation of wind whistling over her scales. Altitude was nothing to her now as she revelled and soared in her newly acquired freedom.



But still she didn't go far. The nesting cave was always kept in sight on that maiden voyage, and Aurha's mind kept flitting back to her hatchlings, still so young and vulnerable, as they played protected by their father's watchful eye. Cognitive thought told the drakka that Hanorh would die to defend his young, she had seen him almost do the same for her, but instinct still worried at her brain – the deep rooted belief that baby dragons would never be truly safe with anything but their mother.



Even so, she had to hunt. Hanorh had almost definitely exhausted the prey in the immediate area around the nesting cave, and the old dragon adage, overhunt the deer, starvation you must fear, rang through her mind with the voice of her own mother. She banked on her left wing and swerved west in the direction of better hunting grounds.



Hanorh watched his mate leave with the special mixture of love and awe he always felt when he saw her flying. The grace with which her wings beat and the easiness with which she could alter direction fascinated him still, as it had on the very first day he had seen her with the sun bouncing off her copper scales like rain off the sparkling surface of a pond. He would never forget how he had pursued her for three days and nights before earning her name.



'What are you thinking, Father?' asked Iissell, watching his facial expression intently. It was the closest a dragon could come to smiling, and it made Hanorh's eyes crinkle at the corners. The silver turned to his copper daughter. She was more slender than the others, more reptilian, from the graceful slants of her dark eyes to the length of her narrow tail and the delicate bones of her wings. She had the look of Hanorh's mother, and he was proud of that.



'Nothing, little one,' he replied. 'Just reliving fond memories.' He watched his mate turn away and head west, feeling the slight pang of worry he always felt when she disappeared from his sight. The fact that Aurha could tear the wing off a dragon twice her size didn't enter into the equation.



'What memories?' Iissell pressed. She was the one who asked most questions, learning about the world through a constant bombardment of them.



'About your mother,' Hanorh said gently.



'Seshkra says you told her you would break the ancient pact if anything happened to mother,' the little copper informed him smartly.



'Did she now? Well, it's true. I would. I would break it if men did anything to any of you,' he said distantly. Iissell was confused. She didn't know what the ancient pact was, and she told he father so. He dragon-smiled again and led her inside. 'Maybe it is time to tell you about Rheshrah then,' he mused.



'What's Rheshrah?'



'I haven't told you yet. We'll wait for the stars to come out, then I'll tell you all,' Hanorh promised, taking a stance in the entrance of the cave. Anything that wanted to hurt his family would have to get through him first.



Iissell waited all day, wrapped around a stalactite and trying not to fidget. Her siblings tried once or twice to provoke her into squabbling, but she retorted in a very grown-up sounding voice that she was waiting for the sun to set so that Father could tell them about the ancient pact. She soon found herself the centre of attention as they all gathered around her, hanging off her every word as she told what she knew with great embellishment.



Hanorh was lightly dozing when his young brood stalked up and jumped on him. Seshkra quickly scurried up his scales and took her favourite spot on top of his crest. She was getting heavier.



'Will you tell us now, Father?' Iissell asked hopefully, settling down between his forelimbs. She was tiny in comparison to his bulk, though she was fast approaching the size of a large wolf.



'Do you all wish to know the story of Rheshrah?' he asked. The assembly chirped wildly and he laughed. 'If I must then.'



So he started by drawing their attentions to the glittering night sky. The hatchlings had often looked at the myriad stars before, and even played games trying to find patterns in them, but it was all in ignorance. Hanorh focused them on the north and a clear serpentine pattern hanging there.



'First fix your eyes on that pattern, and know it off by heart. It will lead you when you are lost, and give you hope in despair,' he began. 'That constellation is Rheshrah, the Dragons' Heaven. All of our ancestors exist there, though they may be gone from the earth.' The hatchlings were captivated. Hanorh's eyes took on a faraway look as he lost himself in memories of his own hatchling days and being told this story by his parents.



'It wasn't always there though. At the dawn of man, when the dragon was already ancient and had seen man evolve from the trees, the wisest of our race pitied them, and saw the potential locked up inside their species. He gathered together all the dragons and made them vow to protect this fledgling race. We gave them fire and they worshipped us like gods, involving us in their stories as great protectors of earth and sky.



'At the moment of Rheshrah's death, his body simply vanished, and the night gleamed with those stars, newly formed. This was how the Dragons' Heaven came into being. At first, all was well, and dragons and men alike would look to those stars for guidance.' Hanorh's voice grew darker then, his face shadowed by a contemplating frown.



'But then man became arrogant. He discovered how to make fire for himself, and with it, weapons and tools to use against us. Some, like the Celts, remembered how we had watched over them through the ages, but most grew tired of the protection and rebelled. They hunted first with bronze and then with steel.



'But the promise still held, and as some dragons fought back in vengeance against their attackers, the spirit of Rheshrah appeared to them at Avalon. "I commanded you to watch over man, always!" he roared at them. "Why do you satiate yourselves on their blood?"' Hanorh dropped his voice to a deep growl in imitation of the Dragon Lord's powerful tone.



'One dragon, named Krahye, Bloodied Wings, who was braver than the others and who had suffered terribly at the hand of men, replied "You told us that when man was like all other animals, and lived with the world." His voice was stung with hate and loss, for barely a moon before his mate and hatchlings had been slaughtered. "Now they run amok, against all of Nature. If we do not stand against them, they will destroy us!" There was a great uproar at this, for there wasn't a drake or drakka present who hadn't suffered in some way.



"Humans are still young, and there are those who still remember the old ways," Rheshrah replied. "They will learn." But Rheshrah agreed with his descendants that so long as humans roamed freely and without guidance, disaster would reign over the world.' Here the silver paused in his narrative, his expression one of eternal sadness. He looked about him at the hatchlings. Each one of them had found a little nook along his warm body, and had snuggled down to listen to the story. Rhehala, Handreth and Threha had fallen asleep with the lulling tones of his voice. Only Iissell and Seshkra were still paying rapt attention. The little copper shuddered at imagining the horrible deeds of men, and her older sister bristled with anger.



'Father,' asked Iissell suddenly. 'What does it mean when you said humans go against all of Nature?'



'Dragons are tied to the Earth, Iissell,' Hanorh replied. 'If we perish, then so does the world.'



'How?'



'It will lose its wonder,' he said solemnly. There was silence for a moment as each of the dragons considered this in their own way.



'Tell us what happened then,' Iissell pleaded after a while.



Hanorh gathered his trail of thought before continuing. 'Rheshrah made Krahye his speaker, and he held an audience with Merlin, and Arthur. Merlin was a sorcerer of the old ways, born of the Celts and a friend to dragons. Arthur was a youth with a foot in both worlds, as the humans say, born of a Celt and the Christian king of the time, Uther. Together they made a promise to reunite man and dragon: and thus the Old Code was born. Arthur became High King, and kept the peace with his band of knights, each of which had to recite the Code. This is what they said, more or less: "His blade defends the helpless, His might upholds the weak, His wrath undoes the wicked, His word speaks only truth."



'But within this treaty came a warning: all dragons were bound to the code enough so that if they ever betrayed it by slaughtering the innocent for another's misdeeds, they could not enter the kingdom of Rheshrah. And so every dragon must earn his place among the heavens, or our spirit disappears as if we never existed, and those we loved in the past will never see us again.'



Silence. Hanorh looked down to see Iissell sleeping soundly, curled up in his forelimbs to make better use of the warmth. The tale was far from finished, for there were many ways a dragon could prove himself worthy, and besides, all young fledglings must be shown Avalon, the place where the decree was first passed and its ancient, binding magic still smelled thick on the air. No human had seen it in hundreds of years. He took one last stare at the heavens, feeling supremely happy with all of his young so close, and laid his head next to that of his copper daughter, watching her gentle breathing as he himself drifted into sleep. Always though he kept one eye open towards the entrance.