Dreams Made Flesh

tremble of footfalls on the earth, the change in the air.
    *Sso. My daughter wass able to passs on her gift after all.*
    The voice that flowed through her felt like Dragon, but wasn't quite Dragon.
    The Presence approached her web. Her offspring plucked the strands of their own webs, trying to ensnare the Presence's mind. But the Presence didn't respond, didn't give any sign that it had felt the tugs and whispers in those webs.
    *Blood singss to blood,* the Presence said, leaning over the spider's tangled web. *Remember me.*
    A drop of blood fell on a knot of tangled threads, a glistening bead of power.
    The spider waited until the Presence went away before hurrying over to devour the offering.
    Power flowed through her, a power even stronger and richer than Dragon's had been.
    Draca.
    Dragon's Mother. Dragon's Queen.
    Remember me.
    For hours that day, the spider stroked the strands of her tangled web, remembering Dragon, remembering the feel of Draca. Not shaped like Dragon, but still a dragon.
    This dream web had done what it was meant to do. Draca would not sorrow for Dragon anymore because she had seen that, in the most important way, Dragon was still in the world. Small now, and golden, but still in the world.
    The spider carefully cut the anchoring threads and just as carefully rolled the web into a cocoon. She traveled down Dragon's neck and shoulder until she reached the hole in the chest.
    Perhaps it was the way of Dragon's kind, or perhaps it was some last bit of magic that had changed Dragon's flesh into porous rock covered with hard stone scales. Inside Dragon were several chambers where she could spin the first stage of a web, then listen, quiet and protected, while the strongest heart-dreams drifted over her, guiding her as she created her web.
    The time would come when she and her offspring would make the long journey to the caves where the golden spiders would protect the webs of dreams that would become flesh. But not yet.
    She squeezed through the opening that led to a small chamber and pulled the cocoon in with her.
    Dragon's body was hollow stone now, but the heart hadn't rotted like the rest of the organs. It had changed to smooth stone. Whenever the spider came to this chamber and brushed a leg over that stone, the chamber filled with warmth, and she felt Dragon's joy that the Weaver's gift had not been lost.
    The day would come when she no longer felt that warmth, and the stone would be no more than a stone. When that day came, she would leave. But even then, whatever bit of heart-memory might remain wouldn't be alone.
    Before leaving the chamber, she spun out some silk and attached the cocoon of Draca's dream to Dragon's stone heart.
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    The Prince of Ebon Rih
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    ONE
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    Lucivar Yaslana stood at the far end of the flagstone courtyard of his new home, enjoying the early morning sunlight that had begun warming the stones beneath his feet. The mountain air felt chilly against his bare skin, and the freshly made coffee he sipped from a plain white mug tasted rough enough to make him wince. Didn't matter. The coffee might not have the smooth potency that Mrs. Beale produced for his father's table, but it wasn't any worse than what he made when he went hunting and spent a night out on the land. Couldn't be any worse, since he'd made it the same way.
    He looked over his shoulder at the open door that led into the warren of rooms that made up the eyrie. Some of the rooms had been carved out of the living mountain; others had been built from the extracted stone. The result would have been a nightmare for any race that needed predictable lines and angles in a structure, but for anyone born of the Eyrien race, it was perfect.
    And this particular eyrie was now his.
    Smiling, he closed his gold eyes and tipped his head back to feel the sun on his face. Slowly opening his dark, membranous wings, he savored the feel of sunlight and chilly air playing over his wings and light-brown skin.
    In all of his seventeen hundred years, he'd never had a home until three years ago when he'd been reunited with his father…the man who, through the machinations of Dorothea, Hayll's High Priestess, had had his two younger sons taken from him. The man who had never forgotten or forgiven the betrayals that had left scars on