Thauglor arched his back and gave a great catlike yawn. Then he spread his wings and, without addressing the youth again, leapt into the sky. The black’s old muscles and pinions strained as he scalloped the air beneath his wings in great, heavy beats, seeking the chill heights with a speed no smaller-winged youngling could hope to match. One more warning to the youth, Thauglor thought.

Thauglor circled back over the clearing to find the youngling still crouched in the same spot, a little more eager, perhaps, but unwilling to rush forward until he was sure that Thauglor was finished. And gone. Most definitely gone.

Thauglor suppressed a grin and rolled slightly in a half-mocking salute as he passed over the clearing again, gaining altitude with every stroke. Yes, a grand tour of his domain was in order, on the excuse that recent encounters had made it necessary to ensure that younglings of his line were being properly trained, but in truth just as much to remind Casarial and the others who the true master of the forest was. Obviously she had not taught that one-Kreston?-well enough.

Beneath the great dragon, his forest kingdom stretched out in a great green patchwork. The bulk of the land was closely spaced trees, broken every few miles by a tree-fall clearing, bare patch, or a bald tor. The lighter phandar and silverbarks dominated marshy spots, while the shadowtops and duskwoods rose like spires on the drier hills, and they in turn gave way as the land climbed to the cinnamon hues of gnarled felsul and coppery laspar that ringed the timberline, where the soaring rock began.

Thauglor’s land was bounded by mountains on three sides and a narrow inlet of the Inner Sea on the fourth. To the west rose the youngest of the mountain ranges, still sharp-toothed and newly crafted, its peaks sharp and forbidding.