The dragon was vast. Unfurled, its wings obscured the sky, blotting out the sun and casting a shadow on the castle below. In the village built below the fortress, children came scrambling into the street, dancing in the dragon’s shadow.

“The Dragonking is here!” they cried, staring up at the black shadow above.

The dragon circled twice and then came in for a landing on the eastern field, the one that had been left fallow this season, and the villagers rushed to watch as he set down an elaborately decorated box roughly the size of a house before dropping to the ground next to it.

“His servants travel in there,” the alewife said wisely. “Royalty can’t go nowhere without servants, y’see, and the horse ain’t been born that can keep up with a dragon, has it? So he had the box built and carries it in his claws.”

The gathered villagers were prepared to believe her - the alewife had travelled to Esamore in her youth and was widely regarded as an authority on the world beyond their village - but one or two opined that a box like that would be mighty uncomfortable. The alewife’s grin turned smug as a door opened in the side of the box and the servants emerged. Several of them looked fairly ill, and even the ten members of the King’s Guard looked more green than grim.

The last to emerge was a young human woman of extraordinary beauty, her dark hair unbound to her waist, her red dress utterly unsuited to weather that was just beginning to turn to winter.

“The king’s mistress,” the miller grunted, with the air of a man who thought another had done fairly well for himself. “Lady Leonore, they said her name was.”

The other men nodded as they studied her and came, one and all, to the conclusion that if ever there had been a woman worthy of being mistress to a dragon king, Lady Leonore was that woman.

The women, on the other hand, cast a suspicious eye to her flimsy dress and haughty chin, and watched in disdain as she snapped orders at the servants who were assembling, of all things, a litter. One or two cast a look of disbelief at the castle, less than half a mile from the field, and wondered aloud whether the woman was truly so frail that she could not manage even that distance.

The Lady Leonore lost their interest almost immediately as the dragon, who had until then been watching the unloading with a great deal of patience, snorted. The villagers watched in awe as he flared those enormous shimmering wings and...folded. In a way the human mind could not quite comprehend, the dragon folded in upon itself and became a man who strode toward the litter-building servants and gestured firmly.

“He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?” the alewife said with a sly smile. There was near-unanimous agreement from the village women, all of whom suddenly became the recipients of suspicious stares from the menfolk. The men turned their eyes to the king who, all things considered, was just a man.

Admittedly a man who could turn into a dragon, and one that was rather taller than any of them, and broader of shoulder and leaner of hip than any of them could claim, but still, just a man like any other. He wasn’t even wearing a crown, although a servant had come running with a robe to cover his more discouraging assets.

Apparently having settled the matter of the litter to his satisfaction, the king turned away from his servants to face the villagers. He smiled broadly and strode closer to the gathered villagers, who bowed or curtsied as the spirit moved them.

The king paused for a moment, and then his smile turned positively blinding as he strode up to the village alewife, passing by the startled mayor and assorted dignitaries without a glance.

“Mother Moira!” he exclaimed, grabbing the plump old woman and bringing her in for a kiss on the cheek. “Tell me you still brew, Mother, and I shall be your slave forever.”

Mother Moira - which was not the name the villagers knew her by, and who had had a rather more adventurous time in the capital than she had told anyone about - beamed up at the dragon king and patted his cheek affectionately.

“You’re a good man, remembering an old woman like me, Your Grace,” she said.

“Mother, show me a man who could forget your ale, and I’ll show you a man who’s dead,” King Camael proclaimed. He turned to the mayor, who looked as though the entire situation had somehow gotten off-script, and he had no idea how to return it to plan. “This woman is a treasure, my good man, an absolute treasure. My entire city went into mourning when she left.”

“Camael,” Lady Leonor said, sidling under his arm and gazing up at him with wide dark eyes, her red mouth arranged into an attractive pout. “Can we go up to the castle now?”

She glanced at the villagers with a little shudder, entirely missing the way Mother Moira rolled her eyes.

“Of course, my dear,” the king said, releasing Mother and clapping the mayor on the shoulder. “Come along, Goodman, and tell me what’s doing. And Mother, if you could...”

Mother Moira gave a laugh as vast as a mountain and curtsied.

“I remember what you like, Your Grace,” she said, and waved him on.

Camael started up to the castle, the Mayor Goblom on one side of him and Leonor tucked under his arm. His guards ranged before and behind him, and his servants - not as many as his father would have insisted upon but more than his mother had ever needed - formed a line behind them. Before them there was the castle, behind which loomed the sharp peak of Mount Gan. A thousand years ago, his grandfather had told him, dragons swooped and swirled in the air above that peak, playing with the smoke that always rose from the mouth of the volcano. There was nothing now - no smoke, no dragons. Just the silence of the skies.

“Well, Mayor?” he asked. “Is all well?”

“Oh aye, Your Grace,” Goblom said, wiping sweat from his face. “All’s well here. A few illnesses here and there, and two lads ran away to work the digs, but that’s not so unusual, is it?”

“They ran away to work the digs, Master Goblom?” Camael asked. “Is that normal?”

“Aye well, their families were not best pleased with the idea. As you know, my liege, the Lord Dendarion does not allow the diggers to leave the city, and the families were short for the spring planting. But the lure of treasure is strong, and so...”

“Ah,” Camael said, looking up at the castle again. It was a sturdy enough structure, built on his father’s orders on one of the entrances to lost Gan’thalanor. Getting past the gates had taken fifty years, but House Dendarion had had access to the city itself for nearly a century now. Enough time to have found something to show his king, in any case. Camael did not intend to be fobbed off with excuses this time. He would see the city, or he would know the reason why. And then perhaps the girl in his dreams would cease her infernal nagging - although the nagging was to be preferred over the weeping. “And have you heard from the lads since?”

“Not as such, no,” Goblom said. “The steward came down a few days after they disappeared with a few coins for their work. A few strong backs for the planting would have been more useful, but it is what it is.”

“Very well, then,” Camael said. “If you give your names to my captain he will enquire after the boys. If they have messages for their families, he will carry them himself.”

Aran, his best friend and captain of his personal guard, grinned. Aran, as it happened, was the only person who knew of Camael’s true purpose in visiting Mount Gan - as the only person who spoke the language of dead Gan’thalanor that Camael could trust, his assistance in translating the dream-woman’s ranting had been invaluable. His amusement, on the other hand, Camael could have done without.

“Of course,” Aran said easily. “Provide me with the names, Goodman, and I’ll find the boys if they’re to be found.”

Camael strode ahead as the gates opened and a troop of men came clattering out over the drawbridge, Dendarian in the lead. The man looked much the same as he had sixty years ago, when his father had passed the mantle on to him. In fact, he looked exactly the same. If Dendarion hadn’t been the image of his father, Camael might have been tempted to believe that Lady Dendarion had dallied with a passing dragonborn.

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Dendarion’s horse came to a stop and the man himself dismounted, bowing low.

“Your Grace,” he said, “you honor us with your presence.”

Camael nodded.

“We will most likely be staying several days, Dendarion,” he said. “I trust there are chambers ready for us?”

“But of course, my liege,” Dendarion said with another bow. “Your rooms will be prepared by the time you arrive at the castle.”

“In the city,” Camael said, and had the petty pleasure of watching Dendarion choke.

“Ah- Your Grace, the city is-”

“You’ve had access to the city for sixty years, my friend, had your father had forty before that. Surely you cannot intend to tell me that not a single building - not a single room - has yet been restored to a suitable condition?”

“I - no, my liege, of course not. If you will allow me but a few moments, I am sure something can be contrived.”

“Of course,” Camael said, waving a magnanimous hand. “Take all the time you need.”

Dendarion gave another bow - this one stiff and displeased -, mounted his horse and galloped back to the castle, no doubt intending to light a fire under his servants. His guard, now dismounted, made their bows to Camael and offered their horses for him to ride. He declined, but set Leonor up on one of them in order to forstall any complaints about her poor feet. He then gratefully left the lot of them to follow behind leading their horses while he strolled ahead with Aran, who had sent the mayor home.

“You should have left her behind,” Aran murmured, glancing over his shoulder at Leonor, who was no doubt attempting to pretend that the mere mortals surrounding her did not exist. She did not approve of Camael’s approach to rulership - which was that since the idea of a dragon king was strange and unnatural, he might as well do as he liked. It wasn’t as though he could be deposed or assasinated, dragons being famously hard to kill, and it wasn’t as though the nobility could disapprove of him any more than they already did, so what was the point of toeing the line? He ignored her disapproval, for the most part.

“Aye and telling her would have been such fun, wouldn’t it?” Camael replied. There were ways for a woman, even a mistress to a king, to make a man’s life thoroughly unpleasant, and Camael did not care to court them. Nevertheless, bringing her along on this expedition was the extent to which he would pander to her temper.

“I’d ask what possessed you to take her as your mistress,”Aran said with a twitch to his mouth that spoke to amusement, “but I have a fair idea.”

“Only mostly right, brother,” Camael replied. “In fact, her assets were only part of the reason. She has dragon blood from several ancestors - possibly enough to give me an heir.”

“And make her queen? Merciful Maker, Camael, are you mad?”

“Not queen,” Camael replied firmly. “Never queen. But if she gives me an heir I will make her my consort. You know it needs to be done, Aran.”

Aran looked as though he desperately wanted to argue but, fortunately, they reached the castle gates and he was forced to hold his tongue. If he had any true objections - rather than ones based on his dislike of Leonor and her prissy ways - he would bring them to Camael later.

Dendarion was waiting with a group of servants who rushed into action the moment Camael entered the bailey, offering scented water for his hands and feet and waving a platter of delicacies under his nose. Camael took advantage of the water for his hands and waved the platter-bearer in Aran’s direction, then turned to Dendarion.

“Well, Dendarion? Will you escort us into the city?”

Dendarion bowed low again.

“Of course, my lord,” he said, and turned toward the Great Hall which, if Camael remembered the original plans for the castle aright, backed right up onto what used to be the Western Gate of Gan’thalanor.

He did remember correctly after all - once they had passed the heavy wooden doors and entered the Hall, Camael was confronted with the massive stone gates that took up most of one entire wall. They were carved in elaborate figures, carved dragons dancing in a stone sky, but for all that they were formidable. These gates, they said, would not open for anyone.

And they had not. The seals on the gate had held. What Dendarion the elder had eventually done, was dig a tunnel beside the gate and into the city. It had taken decades, because the stone of the mountain had been imbued with a thousand thousand years of magic, but since the gates promised to stay shut until the stars fell from the sky, it had most definitely been the expedient option.

“This way, my liege,” Dendarion said, leading the way to the heavily barred door that protected the tunnel into the city.

The tunnel, small and crude as it was, served its purpose. Only twelve paces in, it emerged into the great road-tunnel the gate protected.

Camael stopped in the middle of the road and stared. He had dreamed of the city often enough, but he’d never seen it with his waking eyes. It was...extraordinary.

The road was straight and smooth as glass, and wide enough that twenty men could walk abreast. It alone was a marvel, but the buildings...Camael had thought that the city in the heart of the volcano would have buildings of some dark, grim stone, but he had been wrong. Instead, the buildings he could see were constructed of white stone, so brilliantly, purely white that it seemed to glow in the darkness, where it wasn’t covered with a thousand years’ worth of jungle.

“Maker’s Mercy,” Aran breathed. “That’s...”

“Beautiful,” Camael said.

And it was. Nothing like he had imagined it - nothing like Esamore, with its perfectly laid-out streets and rigid laws. This city had been chaos incarnate, built on the draconic scale but clearly inhabited by humans too - or dragons in human form, at the very least. Nothing could explain the way the city was designed. Camael raced along the road, knowing what he would see when he reached the end. The drop-off was sudden and deep, the road coming to a flat stop and beyond, the heart of the city - the hollow core where dragons would have passed by, stopping at the open-ended roads and corridors. Once, before the sealing of the Dragon Gate, that part of the city would have been open to the skies above. Now it was dark, and in the distance Camael could see the buildings on the opposite side gleaming faintly in the blackness, their lambent glow playing tricks on the eye. Closer by he could see the human paths, steps carved into the rock going between the different levels of the city.

And all of it flowed with magic.

Camael had never quite understood why his ancestors had decided to build a city in the heart of a volcano. It was bad enough, he’d thought, living mostly underground, but to live mostly under ground that might explode seemed...irresponsible at best.

He understood now.

Oh yes, with magic pulsing and swirling around him, in the air he breathed and the ground under his feet and the rock above him, he understood why the city existed. And why, once removed from it, the dragonborn became pale imitations of what they had once been.

He looked at Aran.

“Do you feel that?” he asked in a low voice.

Aran nodded.

“If I stayed here long enough, soaked up enough of this...”

He didn’t need to continue. If they stayed in Gan’thalanor long enough, Aran might soak up enough elemental magic to make the Great Change. Once. Maybe twice. But the best healers in the world would not keep him alive through a third change.

Camael gripped Aran’s shoulder.

“Brother...”

“Never fear, Camael,” Aran said, placing his own hand over the one on his shoulder and looking at his king with a wry smile. “I know my limits.”

Camael leaned in so that his mouth was to Aran’s ear, his hand firm on his brother’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to lose you, Aran,” he muttered. “You’re the only living being I trust, and I am attempting to get an heir on a woman I wouldn’t trust at my front let alone my back. I couldn’t-”

“I know, brother,” Aran said, and knocked his head against Camael’s in the kind of rough gesture of affection they’d perfected as boys, when their father had encouraged a ‘rivalry’ between his two son - one dragonborn, one half-elf; one the heir to the throne and the other...not. “I know.”

“Right,” Camael said, and turned back to where Dendarion was watching their reactions to the city with a twist to his mouth that could very nearly be disdain - but then again, he’d had it mostly to himself, workers excepted, for sixty years. He could be expected to be a bit vain about it. “Where have you found for us to sleep, Dendarion?”

The human lord came forward and stepped up beside Camael at the edge of the Western Road, looking out over the city.

“We’ve recovered part of the palace complex,” he said, pointing upward. There, some distance above and in the centre of the open core, was a floating island. Camael had heard of such things, in the Far West where magic flowed like water, but he’d never actually seen anthing on this scale. The island must have been half a mile on every side, connected to the rest of the city by gossamer bridges.

“How-”

“It’s riding a ley line,” Aran said, grinning. “The bridges are tethers, keeping it from shooting up into the air, aren’t they?”

“They’re not the only things keeping it from shooting into the air, obviously,” Dendarion said rather stiffly. “But essentially, yes. The island is held aloft by a ley vortex coming up from below.”

“Excellent,” Camael said. “No chance it’s going to stop working while I’m asleep, then?”

“No, Your Grace,” Dendarion replied.

“Then let’s go,” Aran said. “Perhaps you could point us in the direction of the shortest route, Lord Dendarion? His Grace has travelled far today, and is weary.”

“Of course,” Dendarion said. “Unfortunately I cannot make the trek with you - my heart, you understand.” He snapped his fingers and a cloaked and hooded servant scurried forward.

“He’ll show you-”

“Or I could change,” Camael said. “Flying does seem to be what the city was designed for, does it not?”

Dendarion frowned.

“Your Grace, I-”

Camael ignored him and turned to the drop-off, prepared to begin the Great Change, to slough off his human skin and become the dragon who lived inside him.

He reached for the inner reservoirs where his magic lived - not the elemental magic that surrounded them in the city, but the primal magic of the dragon queens, the living breathing dragon magic that was his birthright and his legacy.

Nothing happened.

He tried again, reaching for his dragon-self with a frantic haste, and again there was nothing. He could sense his dragon-self, could sense its anger and fear as it realised that he could not free it.

He turned to Dendarion, who was standing a prudent distance away.

“Dendarion, what have you done?”