C'tis

From Yarnspinners2

Refresh Page (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tis&action=purge)

Turn0 - Turn3 - Turn6 - Turn9 - Turn12 - Turn15 - Turn18 - Turn21 - Turn24 - Turn27 - Turn30 - Turn33 - Turn36 - Turn39 - Turn42 - Turn45 - Turn48 - Turn51 - Turn54 - Turn57 - Turn60

Characters

Hatchlings

Ash'embe • Laph • Ruli • Hema

Elders

Great Grandfather Lugal • Mother Gehyra • Kemosh

Revenants

Larch • Kurgarru • Nanugal

Legends

Aetonyx • Cole • Crotalus

Turn0

"Let me tell you a story about Aetonyx, the trickster. He was old before any of you were hatched. When Great-Great-Grandfather was still picking shell off his damp hatchling skin, Aetonyx was a shrinking bottle of bone-dust used by distant grandchildren to ward off the biters and the warmlings and the scale-leavers. But once even Aetonyx himself was young; and one day he decided to ..."

"Ruli!"

There were a thousand shards of glass staring at him. Laph was right: if you looked at it too closely, it was way too creepy to eat. It was okay if you just looked at the sharp dark bristles, but the eyes... something about them looked too much like scales. And Ruli was no biter.

"Ruli! Last warning!"

There was some kind of commotion, he could tell, dimmly; but he was wholly engaged in watching the thousand shards of glass dart here and there. Laph said that this was how the scale-leavers had started to fall away, by watching too much. Ruli thought that Laph was just making things up, as usual. But what did you expact? She was the 'prentice, after all.

"RULI!"

The small lizard jumped, his toungue darting by reflex, swallowing whole the hapless fly before he could realize that he hadn't meant to eat it, only to look... but Mother Gehyra was there, and she was dragging him unceremoniously back to the circle by his tail. There was the usual lecture: lack of respect for his elders, for the past, for the circle. Plenty of chances to eat things after the spinner was finished. Ruli tried to pay attention. He always tried.

"... alagon was the fiercest of all dragons, and if Aetonyx had known better he would not have tried to enter his lair. But he had heard about the Sun Rock: how the mighty dragon was so greedy that he did not wish to leave his treasure even to sun himself, and had instead stolen a piece of the sun and placed it under a perfectly white rock. Even in the darkest winter the rock would stay warm, and when Aetonyx was young winters were far harsher, though summers more pleasant, than today. It was rumored that the dragon had also eaten a piece of the sun, which was why he could breathe flame; and Aetonyx was curious what it would taste like..."

It wasn't that Ruli didn't care about the old stories. He knew them all by heart, better than Laph even. But it was hard to concentrate on them on a fine spring day like this, the warmest he had known yet. Especially when there were giant flames coming from the distant village huts.

"Mother Gehyra, Mother Gehyra!" he shouted. Annoyed beady eyes turned on him, followed his glance, then softened. "Likes to make an entrance, does he?" she muttered. She was talking to herself: the whole brood was scampering away as fast as they could.

And for once Ruli was ahead of everyone else, the first one to reach the rocky fortress, to see him alight on the High Rock, the first to say, "Whadja bring me, whadja bring me?" He was joined by dozens of other small lizard voices. The dragon laughed. It was like this every time he returned from a run: their elders held back, as usual, cautiously peering out from their crooks and crannies, but the young ones pressed forward, fearless. Perhaps this brood was the right one. Perhaps it was finally just about time.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn0&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn0

Turn3

KEE-RACK

"Are you sure we should be in here?" The dank air hung closely around the two little lizards as they struggled to see, to find movement their eyes could latch onto. So far the darkness was winning.

"You scared, little egg-brother?" came the taunting reply. Laph's cohort had hatched a mere four days before his, and she wasn't about to let him forget it. Ruli ignored her, and focused on trying to find what they'd come for. It was his idea, after all.

KR-R-R-R-R...

There, by the shaft of warm air. A few photons, much battered after their long passage through tiny crevasses and barely perceptible cracks in the rock, were bouncing again, this time off of something vaguely off-white, on the far side of the cavern. And it was definitely moving.

"Found 'em!" said Laph, as Ruli opened his mouth to announce his discovery. She had sharper eyes than him, too. They skittered over to the weary dancing photons, eyes locked now on subtle movements they hadn't noticed before.

... ck

When the tiny lizard finally broke through, the final bit of eggshell popped off with an anticlimactic whisper. The hatchling took a hesitant step forward, stopped, then looked around wide-eyed, taking in the nest; already, cracks were forming on two other eggs, and three more were not far behind. His eyes moved next to the two slightly larger lizards hovering over him, one of them staring at him with great fascination... and the other busily scooping his discarded egg shell into a bag. The hatchling began to cry.

"Oh, now look what you've done, Ruli," said Laph, hastily scouring the floor for something.

"They have to be fresh," Ruli protested. "Great-grandfather says otherwise they don't have enough life force left for his incantations to work, and ..." And she wasn't listening to him, again.

But at least the hatchling was no longer crying. He was making happy gurgling sounds as he shook something that looked suspiciously like a falchion, but rattled. "I always knew the elite nurseries were well taken care of," said Laph, "but wow. Remember Crotalus?"

The legendary sacred serpent, from when Mother Gehyra was a hatchling, the one who drove the scale-leavers from the land, and spoke persuasively with a certain dragon about relocating his lair... He remembered the stories. "I think that rattle was his," said Laph.

"Oh," said Ruli. What lucky hatchlings. I bet Cole will take them on raids with him long before Laph or I get to go. He turned to leave. "Laph?" She had disappeared. "C'mon, stop playing games." He looked all around, but she had vanished. "If Cole finds us here..."

"He'll eat you for dinner, is that it?" There was a deep chuckle. Ruli jumped, then looked up, and saw Laph high above him, dangling by her tail. "Now why would I want to eat such enterprising and scrawny youngsters as yourselves, when the world is brimming with fat, lazy warm-blooded prey?"

The giant head bent slowly down, placing Laph gently on the ground. Her eyes shone with excitement; Ruli wondered idly why he was the only one whose first response, on meeting the huge carnivorous lizard up close, was a little healthy fear.

"But do stop bothering the hatchlings," said Cole. "They're no good to me terrified." He turned to the remaining five eggs, intently watching one whose cracks were beginning to grow.

Ruli grabbed his bag of eggshell, nudged Laph out of her reverie, and they skittered quickly toward the exit tunnel. "Did you see me?" said Laph, a little breathlessly. "I must've been nearly a thousand centimeters in the air!" They were almost out of the birthing cavern when they heard Cole's voice again.

"Do be patient, Ruli," he said. "There will be plenty of battles left for you when you are ready for them." The last thing Ruli and Laph heard as they scampered out of the cavern was the sound of a rattle shaking, and a very deep voice saying, "Coochie-coochie-coo."

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn3&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn3

Turn6

"Let me tell why there are no more giants.

"When Aetonyx was an old lizard, the climate on our world turned particularly cold for a spell, and the giants came down from their mountains. In normal times, the Jotuns stuck to the high passes, eating the occasional adventurer or burying a trade caravan in an avalanche, as a warning to other races to stay out of their lands (and also as a food source during their eternal winter). The giants were content merely to pick of stragglers who wandered into their lands; they would no sooner willingly enter the warm, muggy swamps of C'tis than lizardfolk would ascend the cold, dry heights. The two races co-existed thus for aeons.

"But then the world grew colder. Some say Rimtur, Lord of Frost, blew on the world with all his might in a vain attempt to seduce the Lady Silane, she who dwells in the icy chill between the stars. Others say that the polar ice caps spread past the critical latitude and triggered a positive reinforcement feedback loop, which, along with increased reabsorption of carbon dioxide, caused runaway world-wide glaciation. Whatever the reason, the giants began to come down the mountains, and soon plagued the lowlands.

"Now Aetonyx had been away for many years, as I'm sure you know, traveling to other worlds, where many of his most famous adventures were had. But he felt himself growing slower, his tongue struggling to catch the young flies, his legs almost too sluggish to scamper away from mischief in time. So he returned to his birth-nest to lie in the warm summer sun of his youth, to teach the hatchlings clever tricks, to tell stories of all the worlds he had seen and the gods he had fooled, and finally to mingle his bone-dust with that of his egg-mothers.

"But when he got to the Home Rock, it was bitterly cold, though it should have been early summer. He met few lizards on the outskirts of the realm, and all were cold-shocked into a dull stupor. At last he made his way to the underground caverns, where the people of C'tis had withdrawn to huddle for warmth, and there he learned of the giants' cruel rampage. They were tearing down cities, digging up egg-nests, eating both crop and farmer before either made it to market, and killing all who challenged them directly. The giants were massive, many hundreds of centimeters high, and all the great heroes of the land had already fallen trying to conquer them.

"There was a leader of the giants, one Graak Bouldertosser, who had been particularly instrumental in urging on his people in the destruction of both lizard and warmling lands. It was rumored that he had stopped up all the volcanoes in the world, and caused the clouds to blot out the sun, so that all heat would gradually be leached from the earth, and all creatures who need warmth to live, especially lizards, would die out. Already the lizards were suffering too much to leave their deep underground caverns. Only the Vanjarls, who themselves preferred cold climates, had survived against Graak for very long. They had sought him out in battle six times in as many months, and yet always they were forced to pull back, numb and bloodied, while Graak and his troops appeared unwearied.

"Whatever you may say about Aetonyx and his long absence, he could not now ignore the desperate plight of C'tis, and so he traveled to the camp of the Vanjarls, to perhaps win by cunning what force alone could not achieve. But the commanders of the Vanjarl troops did not think much of the elderly, slightly limping lizard. 'Go back to your hiding hole,' they said to him. 'You've as much chance of harming Graak sound asleep in some dark little cave as you do here.' And they went back to planning one final desperate assault.

"The next day in battle, Graak's left boot troubled him all day, but when he unlaced it that evening he could find no trace of any rock or bone that might have fallen in. The following day, blisters began to appear, and for all he shook his boot out nothing came of it. By the fourth day, he was limping heavily; by the seventh, he could barely walk. On the eleventh day, he led his troops in a sneak attack against the Vanjarl camps, to wipe them out once and for all. But as he was leading the charge he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his left leg, as if something small in his shoe had just bit him with razor sharp teeth; and it was the final straw. His leg gave in to the constant pain, and collapsed beneath him, and he fell to the ground.

"Stunned, his dim-witted giant followers stared dumbly as the Vanjarls lobbed off the head of their invincible leader, and then rode them down, one by one. By evening there were no giants left alive, and word spread that it was not safe for any large-folk off of the mountains. Gradually even the mountain giants faded away, until they were heard from no more.

"After the battle, Aetonyx crawled out of the boot of the dead Jotun, and limped back home. He had passed the last fortnight warmer than he had ever been since returning to this world; he had had time to refine the stories he would tell the hatchlings; and he had saved his people from imminent death and ruin. If only there were some way to get this taste out of my mouth, he mused..."

Laph paused. She looked nervous, Ruli could tell, though why was anyone's guess. By the way Mother Gehyra and the other elders were conferring, she had far surpassed the other apprentices in her telling, and would easily be chosen as the acolyte, though to look at the worried expression on Laph's face you'd think she was about to be exiled.

"Many races rely on their strength in battle for victory," Laph continued at last. "And without the Vanjarls' swift horses and sharp blades, it would have been harder – but perhaps not impossible – to rout the giants so decisively that day. But we lizards know that it is far better to rely on our wits and our tenacity than on mere size or speed or strength in numbers; and sometimes it is sufficient to make yourself such a nuisance that your enemy is brought low because he can no longer stand your annoying presence."

A great cheer went up from the assembled lizards as Laph finished the tale. Ruli knew she was supposed to tell a second yarn -- something about Aetonyx freeing the volcanoes, she'd been rehearsing it for ages -- but it seemed unlikely she would get, or need, the chance.

"It was a dreadful time," came a deep rumbling next to him. Even after his own recent apprenticeship with Great-Grandfather had made him cross paths with the dragon several times a week, Ruli still started every time that giant red face stared down into his. Something about those beady black eyes... "Dagda loved it, of course, my poor silly brother, but for the rest of us it was no fun at all." Ruli would have sworn it looked like the dragon was shuddering from the cold, and wondered idly how old Cole really was. Or pretends to be.

"Well, I sup-suppose Laph doesn't have to worry about being a mere hierodule anymore, sir," he stammered nervously. I'm not like Laph, he thought. Grown-ups don't make me nervous. So why does Cole terrify me so much?

There was a deep chuckle. "Our Elaphe will make quite a name for herself," said Cole. "As will you." He nodded toward a line of half-grown lizards assembled off to the side, nervously clutching falchions that looked far sharper than they were probably used to. "I am taking these fine youngsters off on a bit of camping trip, and would like you to come with us," boomed the dragon. "Lugal tells me you're quite talented, and I know you are resourceful, young egg-thief." He chuckled. "We must leave soon if we are to make good time, you small ones all walk so slowly..."

"What, now?" said Ruli. "But... there's the feast... and the serpent dance... and Laph..." New acolytes were chosen only rarely, and whenever someone did pass the grueling tests – of which this was merely the final part – there were many days of celebrations. And this time Laph was going to be the center of attention. Ruli didn't want to miss a single one of the many mortified looks he imagined she'd be shooting him over the next few days.

As if on cue, Laph ran up to them, her strange new white robes flapping in the wind. "Ruli, Ruli, did you see me? Mother Gehyra says I have to sit at the grand banquet rock with all the high priests tonight, can you imagine? Oh hi, Cole," she exhaled quickly. She looked over toward the temple, where a large number of white robed lizards were gathering. "Oops, gotta run, later, Ruli," she said. "Keep him out of trouble, will ya, Cole?" And then she disappeared again.

"I believe Elaphe will be kept quite busy," said the dragon, as he nudged Ruli toward the soldiers-in-training. "Besides, we need an experienced elder lizard like you to keep the youth in line," said Cole. Ruli knew full well that he was still just a hatchling himself, in the eyes of every other adult in the clan. So why did Cole keep pushing him forward? Aetonyx only knew.

"C'mon, straighten up, he's looking right at us," Ash'embe whispered to his cohort. The young lizards stopped staring at the ground and the clouds and came to a rough approximation of attention. Real weapons were so heavy, compared to the wood and bone weapons they had had in the nursery, and most of the hatchlings would far rather have been sunning themselves or chasing flies than being the – what did Cole call it? Oh, yes – the honor guard. But Cole had said they had to be ready, they had to be as strong and brave as biters, so Ash'embe wouldn't let anyone complain about the weight. Cole had put him in charge. And Cole had told him he was very proud of how he was keeping the troops in line, which made Ash'embe feel warm and happy. Cole was the best grown-up lizard in the whole world, and now he was taking Ash'embe and the troops – his troops – on "training exercises".

The only problem was the winter-egg, Ruli. Winter hatchlings are usually a little odd, not to mention weaker than proper spring cohorts like Ash'embe's. But this one was just weird – always spent his time staring at things, like the time Ash'embe had been running in the woods with his cohort and caught him watching fish hatch in the river. And Ruli had still been there hours later, when Ash'embe had returned from his exercises. And now it looked like Cole was going to bring him with. Ash'embe felt crushed. He was supposed to be the oldest one, the one in charge. It wasn't fair.

Plus for some reason every time Ash'embe looked at Ruli a little sliver of terror worked its way down his spine. He couldn't think of why he should be afraid of the winter-egg – a little disdain seemed the most he should merit. But Ash'embe always had this vivid sensation, when he saw Ruli, of having his home and his world ripped from his back, the cold air rushing in around him to swallow him up. All that studying, he thought. Must've turned him all funny. Somehow he realized that wasn't it.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn6&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn6

Turn9

The late summer sun beat down as the lizards crossed the parched plains. Ruli couldn't imagine finer weather for a hike. Many kinds of lizards lived in the kingdom of C'tis – Ash'embe and the others were children of the damp swamps, and clearly unhappy with the dryness of the air – but Ruli was a desert lizard. And the plains were almost desert, this time of year.

Especially with the recent drought. Nothing green, and almost nothing brown, could be seen on the horizon, the only relief being here and there an interesting rock formation. They were walking on an ancient lava bed, Cole said one night at camp. "A very long time ago," the dragon had told them, "the Rim Mount used to glow for miles with molten rock." Ruli thought his use of such archaic units something of an affectation.

"Was... was... was the mountain killed by the frost giants?" asked one of the troops, a timid little fellow whose name Ruli really ought to remember. Clearly he at least had been listening to Laph's yarn.

"No", said Cole. "It was dead long before then. Even mountains grow old and die," he said, almost wistfully. "But we may find something interesting if we pick through its bones."

A few of the little swamp guards swiveled their heads around to look, nervously, at Ruli. Cole had been teasing him like this ever since the incident with the mouse, which for some reason he thought was highly amusing. Everyone else thought it was one more reason to be wary of the weird winter egg.

---

They had paused by a dry riverbed to rest. Ruli wandered off to explore. Smaller than most lizards in his cohort, he'd been pleased to discover he could easily keep up with and outlast these specially trained, elite lizards (except for Ash'embe, who was always running ahead, trying futilely to keep up with Cole). Of course, I'm not carrying a full suit of armor and a falchion like everyone else on this "camping trip", thought Ruli.

He wandered up the river bed, to a place where dead bushes lined the shore. How long has this river been gone? he wondered. A season? A year? A hundred years? Plants decayed quickly when they died, he knew, but it was hard to shake the feeling that these skeletal bushes had been there for aeons. He looked at the shriveled bark on the stubby trunks, the thin brittle tendrils that must have once held leaves, and fed and sheltered small creatures like... mice. There, in a mat of dried grass and twigs, a small nest. He counted three, no, four little mouse skeletons curled up in the nest, huddled desperately against the cold. They had failed; now they were only bones.

It was enough.

Ruli thought back to something Great Grandfather had said, during his brief apprenticeship. Lugal-zagesi was an ancient shriveled lizard who had journeyed to C'tis from somewhere very far away. There were other lizard nests on this world, of course, small enclaves surrounded by warmlings, but Great Grandfather had come from much further away. Lizards lived on thousands of different worlds, scattered across the galaxy, and it was not uncommon for some few to travel far from their home nest, the way Aetonyx had. But Great Grandfather never spoke of his travels, and the young lizards could only guess how he'd gotten all his scars. Rumor had it he had lost his tail four times...

"I really only know about living things," Great-Grandfather had said. "Some people say, when a thing dies, it's gone. But I've seen enough death... as long as there's something left – leaves, a tooth, bones – it's not really dead." When Ruli had asked him to elaborate, he had claimed ignorance, declared his joints were bothering him, and given Ruli a dozen musty books to look through. Most of them were in indecipherable scripts.

But one book... Ruli dredged up the memory. Yes, that was it, arrange them like so, mumble this... He closed his eyes, searching, reached out...

It was the most bizarre thing Ash'embe had seen in his entire life. They were all ready to march, until Cole had suggested that someone really ought to fetch Ruli, and then he'd looked right at Ash'embe. If Ruli were so bloody clever, he'd know not to disappear when we're about to leave, he'd thought to himself. But he wouldn't dream of refusing a request from Cole. Just last night, the dragon had confided in them that there was an outpost of men up ahead, stealing something that was rightfully his, and that they should... how had he put it? "We must be prepared for any eventuality." Ash'embe wished he could get his voice to sound like that.

So then he'd asked around, and little Zu, who Ash'embe privately thought shouldn't be there, too weak, always asking questions – just like another annoying lizard, come to think of it – had piped up that he'd watched the winter-egg go up the dry river bed. As usual, this made no sense: if there'd been water in it, of course, Ash'embe would gladly have gone to the water's edge, anything to be damp again. But who cares about a dry river? Nothing there but a bunch of rocks.

And then he'd seen the mouse. It was dancing, its skull bobbling on its bony limbs, its tail bones swaying despite the complete lack of breeze. A tiny little voice in Ash'embe's head admired the artistry, the way the joints fit together, the way Ruli was keeping it under control. The loud voice in Ash'embe's throat said, "What the scale-leaver's-feather do you think you're doing?"

The winter-egg startled, broke concentration, and the mouse fell to the ground, just a bunch of bones again. "We're leaving," said Ash'embe, as icily as he could manage in the thirty-degree heat, and strode off while the winter-egg sputtered something behind him. We're late, and Cole's going to be upset, thought Ash'embe, because Ruli was playing with a dead mouse. No wonder the guy gave him the creeps.

---

They reached the foothills an hour before dark. Cole had refrained from darting ahead, though it pained him to be so close and not swoop in; but it wouldn't do to let them know he was coming. He forced himself to trudge at the slow speed of the small lizards. They mean well, he thought. But what I wouldn't give to have Dagda or Alagon along... At least young Arruli was shaping up nicely. Cole was pleased that he had figured out how to work with skeletons without the aid of a mentor. He would have to arrange for some better lessons, to see what the hatchling was capable of. After they dispensed with the current interlopers, of course.

He could almost smell it, from here. The sound of hammers and carts and other man-noise came to him, and he signaled to Ash'embe to move his troops into position. The miners were completely surprised by the attack, though they fought back bravely, with their picks and shovels and a few swords. Cole noted with some sadness that the little questioning lizard, Zu, had gotten disoriented in battle, run straight toward the men, and been stabbed through. Ruli, who had looked a little shocked at the sudden onset of violence, was the only group healer, and rushed up to Zu's body. Then Cole flew out from where he'd been hiding, drew his wings out to their full length, and breathed fire onto the closest group of warmlings. They made pleasant crackling noises as they burnt up. He breathed on another group, and smiled thinly at the growing terror in their eyes. That's what you get for disturbing dragon hordes. The Rim Mountain stash of volcano-gold had always been one of his favorites.

The battle was over quickly; the warmling miners were no match for swamp guards, even if they were only children, nor the enraged fire of a dragon with a cause. Cole noticed with some interest that what finally got the men to turn and run was not so much that they were being cut down by Ash'embe's forces, but that the corpse of the small lizard Zu, the only lizard to fall, had gotten up, and was marching toward their lines with a purposeful stride he'd never had in life. Ruli's eyes blazed as he watched the dead lizard march down his murderers.

That went well, thought Cole. There was a cave in the next mountain range over, where an elderly dragon had lived long ago, fondly carving his gem garden until the chasm walls gleamed with a thousand glittering roses. The old dragon had long since disappeared, and nobody else had dared move in so close to Cole's dominion. Perhaps it would be time to pay the mountains a visit. Cole was very fond of roses.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn9&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn9

Turn12

"There are many ways to lose an egg," said Mother Gehyra.

It was a cool, windy day on the High Rock, and it had raining sporadically for the last three days. The lizard lands were in the depths of winter. Laph wasn't about to let that delay her training, though, and if today that meant standing outside in less than 290 degree weather, then so be it. The clan needed a new spinner.

"Their shells can be too thin or too thick. They can boil or freeze or fall and shatter. Predators eat them. Predators eat the nest-sitters, so there is no one left to protect the hatchlings. There may not be enough food once a brood is hatched to feed all the young. Sometimes it's a wonder that enough lizards make it from egg to laying to keep the whole process going, one more generation of lizards at a time."

The last spinner died shortly after Laph and Ruli hatched. He was an old lizard with a gravely, somniferous voice that Laph had found mesmerizing, though Ruli always seemed to drift off into daydreams. The old spinner had never liked any of his acolytes, which was why there was no spinner now: their tales were always too long, too short, too rambling, too moralistic, or worst of all, too boring. Sometimes he accused them of being all of the above at the same time.

"If I asked any one of those hatchlings tomorrow, they could tell me a yarn with better pacing and narrative tension than you could in a thousand years," he had yelled at his last acolyte when Laph was very small. She hadn't quite understood what he meant, and worried that he was going to put them on the spot, one by one, and make them tell a story just to prove his point. She spent all night frantically wracking her brain for a good one, and had to run the next morning not to be late, mumbling the opening lines to herself as she scurried. But there were coughing sounds coming from his quarters, and the hierodules shooed them all away. She never saw him alive again.

"There are many ways for a lizard to be lost," intoned Mother Gehyra. She was not a spinner, but she could have been, so she led the acolyte through the rituals.

"Too many to list, really, especially if we do not want to add death by droning." Laph could just discern a faint smile. It was hard to imagine that lurking within stern, dour Mother Gehyra was a sense of humor. But once Gehyra had been young, too. "Our time is short, especially when compared to some of the warmling races, and we have perforce learned to live with death always at our tails."

Laph glanced at the other elders on the council, waiting to stand in judgement over her. There was Lipit, fidgeting nervously, barely a season older than Laph but head of the Empoisoner's Guild after the untimely demise of Nanugal. Playing with strong poisons must be way up on that list, she thought. Great-Grandfather Lugal sat as far away from the circle as he could without being impolite, and stared off into space, lost in dark memories. Or possibly napping. It was hard to tell.

Far in the back, next to some shriveled old lizard Laph didn't recognize, Mother Lalek stood with a few hatchlings, so that they could perhaps tell their great-great-grand-hatchlings they had been there when a spinner was chosen. No pressure, Laph, no pressure...

"There are many ways to lose the dead," said Mother Gehyra.

She was wrapping up; it was almost Laph's turn. "We know more than any other living race how to mange death, but someone must clean the bones, grind the dust, speak the incantations. And there are always eggs to guard, hatchlings to train, predators to be kept at bay."

Cole's little army had marched through the capital a few weeks ago, and Laph had had to revise her mental image of Ash'embe as newly hatched and grasping a falchion-rattle bigger than he was. There was a certain hardness to his eyes, as he nimbly dashed around his troops, issuing orders, nipping stragglers into formation. Some of the lizards were missing eyes, or tails; some were just missing. But then again, the egg-raids and other warmling banditry on outlying settlements had fallen sharply. Some of the young die so the rest have a chance to live. Now the army was gone again.

Ruli had not been with them. When Laph asked, trying to keep her tail from flicking nervously at the thought that something had happened, Ash'embe just rolled his eyes skyward and strode off, muttering inaudibly. "Do not mind the brave Ash'embe," said Cole. "Arruli is finding other means of defense than claw and talon." And that was the best she could get out of him before he, too, left for parts unknown.

"So tell me, Elaphe Acolyte," said Mother Gehyra. "What use is a spinner of yarns? With all the forces stacked against our very survival, why should we listen to you tell us tales of things that may have never been, and are not, and never will be again?"

It was a good question. Laph had lost her composure, and for a moment she stared in panic across the assembled crowd of lizards, toyed with shouting "I don't know", and running down to the open desert to go bury herself under a rock for the rest of her sad, sorry little life. She took a deep breath. She just needed to remember the opening line, it was brilliant, she'd worked on it all month...

Something caught her eye, at the back of the crowd. Three of Mother Lalek's hatchlings, oblivious to the lull in the grown-up talk, were playing an elaborate game. One of them was clearly pretending to be human, exaggerating the ponderous, clumsy way warmlings walk, and advanced menacingly on the others. The larger of the other two darted heroically toward the "warmling", nipping playfully at his feet. But the one in the back – she was playing with a few sticks, and at first Laph thought she wasn't following the same game. But no: suddenly she realized what the sticks looked like. It was a skeleton, with a piece of rope serving as a tail...

Laph laughed. "How can we survive without these yarns?" she said. It startled her that she'd spoken aloud. This was not how her speech went. She was going to start with a long and rather elegant section on the construction of a narrative framework being important to the essence of self and society. But dozens of beady eyes stared at her, curious at the unexpected departure from tradition. Nothing for it but to carry on now.

"Look, last week, I spun a somewhat embellished story to those little hatchlings, over there" – she pointed to the still oblivious little lizards – "about the great Arruli and the Mouse of Bones, and now that little one will grow up and remember a very useful little trick that has long been forgotten. We have forgotten an awful lot, that we really ought to have remembered," she continued, way off script, not really caring.

"After all, the first of our kind on this world came from the stars! Long ago, one of a thousand thousand nests on a thousand worlds, eggs scattered throughout the universe so no single danger could threaten them all. But our little nest had a spate of serious troubles in the distant past, betrayal by warmlings who used us for their own nefarious purposes, and we fell further than we should have, and we have forgotten so much..."

For a moment, she looked at the puzzled faces of the assembled grandees and elder-lizards, and tried to picture any of them back in Aetonyx's day, when a lizard could hail a passing ship and depart for worlds unknown. It was hard. Only Great-Grandfather Lugal, for some reason, seemed likely to have been able to cope. But he's not from around here, originally, is he?

"The reason we have not forgotten more," she continued, feeling bolder, "is because of me. And Mother Gehyra, and old spinner Larch, and all the way back to the young lizards who sat on this very rock and basked in the stories of Aetonyx himself. Because if no one tells the tale of all the great and wonderful and boneheaded and awful things that we do... then what's the point in doing them?"

She scurried off the speaking rock, returned to her place. Well, so much for that, she thought. Mother Gehyra had had a long and productive life as a hierodule. Perhaps it wouldn't be that bad.

There was the distant sound of bony hands clapping. One pair, actually, attached to the shriveled lizard in the back, who now that she peered closer looked an awful lot like Larch. Suspiciously like the old spinner, in fact. The bony lizard said nothing, only nodded and smiled. A revenant, she thought. I didn't know we still knew how. And then the other lizards applauded. The old spinner approved of the acolyte.

C'tis had a new yarnspinner.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn12&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn12

Turn15

The sun slowly bled to death in the lake.

Ash'embe had never seen so much water. Rivers he knew, though rivers in lizard lands were seasonal things, dry all but a few weeks a year, then torrents of raging flood waters that no civilized lizard would go near.

This water was very placid. Perhaps it had been lulled into complacency by the knowledge that it would never run out, never dry into nothingness. Ash'embe eyed it suspiciously, watching the last sliver of sun cling desperately to life before being subsumed in the blue. It was time to go. Darkness fell quickly in the mountains, and he had to hurry back to the fireside before he stiffened from coldshock.

A loud squawk came from the cliffside, not three hundred centimeters away from him. It was too dark to see what kind of bird it might be, but that didn't matter. He knew it was a white gull. It was always the same damned white gull.

Too many damned scale-leavers here, he thought. Between that and the huge expanse of water, it was no wonder his troops were jumpy and on edge. He rummaged on the ground for a large, smooth rock, picked it up carefully, and turned to face the gull. It eyed him curiously, no hint of fear in its eyes. He hefted the rock, calculating trajectories and impact parameters; at this distance there was no way he could miss.

The bird calmly sidestepped the rock, straightened itself up again, stared at Ash'embe as if nothing had happened. It squawked again.

Damn bird, said Ash'embe, scampering back to camp before he froze to death. He always missed.

"Hey, Ash'embe," came a voice, and he winced. Not again. "I've been reviewing your plans for the morning, and I was wondering if I could make a few slight suggestions..."

He glanced longingly at the sheltered cliffside, where a score of lizards nestled together, dreaming warm dreams of fame and glory. Then he sighed, and turned to face the voice, steeling himself for another sleepless night.

- - -

Ruli slinked into town at midnight on a new moon. For good measure, he made sure it was cloudy, too. It didn't help.

"RUUUUULIIIIII!" He felt his tail being ignobly grabbed by somebody's teeth, who for good measure also cuffed him in playful hatchling style. Somebody acting entirely unbefitting of the solemn dignity of the purple robes she...

"Hi Laph," he said, trying not to sound sheepish. He also tried to break free.

"Oh, no no no, little egg brother," she said. "'Hi Laph?' Is that the best you can do? You've been gone for three seasons. You could have sent a messenger... or, you know, come back yourself five times over." She was smiling at him, clearly overjoyed to see him alive and whole-tailed. Just as clearly she was not going to let him escape until she'd pried every last detail from him.

"You missed all the Trials, the Enyarnment itself... for Aetonyx's sake, last time I saw you you were slipping out of my Egg ceremony," she went on. Her face was implacable.

"So spill."

He gave placating a shot anyhow, just for kicks. "Oh, you know how battles go, so hard to get away or spare a runner," he tried. No luck. "Have you heard about this cool trick I figured out, took me such a long time to get it working, see, you take some bones and..."

"Ruli," she said. "I told that story to the kiddies yesterday. I've been telling it for months. That was ages ago."

"Plus," she continued, before he could speak again, "the rest of the army's been back for ages, gotten reinforcements, gone out to fight more campaigns, and should be back again any day now. So WHERE have you BEEN?"

He sighed. It was all quite hopeless. Better tell her now and get some rest tonight... Somehow, that seemed implausible.

"Well, I stayed behind to scout out the land. Cole said there were some fascinating sites that he remembered from his youth, and I found this place where the rocks howled in pain from an ancient battle..." she was shooting him a look he knew all too well "... and you want me to get to the point now, before you're forced to rap me on the skull with your ceremonial staff, don't you?"

She nodded, a slight smile escaping briefly before being swallowed by a very determined expression.

"Ah, well, you see, the howling rocks weren't all I found. There was also a huge pile of bones, warmling or lizard, it was hard to say which, and there were all still armed, of course, so I thought I could try..."

Laph sighed, as if she had been expecting this. "How many were there, Ruli?"

"Um... thirty-seven?" He had counted them all as he laid them out in neat formations, before he set to work. Afterwards, he couldn't get an accurate count, owing to the fleeing. "But some of them weren't very stable, I'm sure I saw at least three of them fall apart before..."

"Thirty-seven," repeated Laph. "Armed with what?"

"Er, mostly broad swords," said Ruli. "But some of them just had sharp pointy claws..."

"Broad swords," repeated Laph. It sounded almost like she was making a mental checklist. Things to Bear in Mind Lest We Be Ignominiously Crushed for Want of Proper Preparation, she probably thought of it as. She seemed to be taking it rather calmly, given how close the army of deadls had been...

"You knew." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah, Cole flew that way on his morning exercises," said Laph, but grinning this time. Ruli was so funny when he looked all guilty and furtive. "For an egg-mate of mine, you sure suck at spinning good lies, Ruli," she laughed. "You really think we wouldn't find out and would think it was just some random bad luck that a horde of dead things was menacing out outer provinces, oh Arruli Bone-master? Or should I say, Bone-semi-masterer?"

He still looked a little mortified. "Oh, c'mon, relax, we're not going to banish you," she said. "C'mon up to the royal caverns, we have a special cavern all prepared for you, as befits a lizard of your stature." She turned and strode off toward the High Rock, the majestic flow of her robes offset slightly by the undignified snickering sounds she kept making.

Ruli had no choice but to follow.

- - -

When Ash'embe returned, flush from victory against rather well-armed peasants (who had naively thought that meant they could deprive C'tis of some fine farmland), he advocated leaving immediately before "the damned winter egg only made it worse." It was all Laph could do to make him settle down and come up with a plan first.

"They're not peasants with pitchforks who'll run screaming at the sight of a walking, talking lizard carrying a sharp pointy stick," she said. "They're battle veterans. Oh, and did I mention they're dead? You won't be able to scare them with your little walking skeletons trick, either," she said, cutting off an attempt by Ruli to speak.

He spoke anyways. "There's a counterspell I've been working on, it'll make their bones fall apart..."

"Got it working yet?"

Ruli was silent. He'd never seen Laph like this before. She had always been bold: once, she had talked Cole into letting her ride on his back, and made out like flying came perfectly naturally to her, although Ruli knew she had gotten very sick from all the swooping. But this aura of command and authority – that was new.

"No," he admitted.

"Then you'll just have to stay with Great-Grandfather Lugal and work on it," she said. She turned to Ash'embe. "We have a squadron of new hatchlings from the guild of empoisonners, strong tails on all of them, excellent aim I'm told."

"Won't do much good against undead," the young commander said.

"Well, there's always the new recruits," said Laph. "With them we should have more than enough."

"What you really need is some way to keep them from fleeing," said Ash'embe. He spoke more easily now that the conversation had moved to familiar territory. "A lizard is just as strong hand to hand as any skeleton, if he can only be persuaded to stand his ground..." It was a mystery to Ash'embe why anyone would choose to run from a glorious death in battle, but he had learned to accept the limitations of the lesser lizards in his command.

Then he said the words he would regret forever.

He would even regret them after the longdead warriors had crumbled and fallen, while not a one of his own lizards had turned tail and fled. He would regret them in spite of the admittedly motivational yarn that was spun about the Curse of the Longdead Ghouls, who were fated to die again at the hands of green recruits, which the young swamp lizards eminently were.

He said the words anyways, even though before he spoke them he somehow knew that they would be followed by days upon days of many, many more words, words beginning with "Now have we thought this through fully?" or "Let's be sure we're not missing anything here." He said the words, he sometimes thought later, to test his resolve never to bite a fellow lizard, only warmlings. Ash'embe was no biter. But he would wish he were sometime real soon now.

What he said was, "Laph, you should come with us."

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn15&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn15

Turn18

How Aetonyx Lost His Tail

One day in high summer Aetonyx was traveling in the lands of T'ien Ch'i. Even in those days it was an ancient kingdom, known as the land of summer and winter, for it had but two seasons: the deepest cold would break suddenly into warm sunshine, with no temperate periods in between.

Summer lay particularly golden that year. Everywhere the fields burst with fruits, grains, thick melons; fat piglets roamed the countryside, eating whatever they desired, and well-fed farmers only half-heartedly shooed them away from the crops. Winter was far in the future, and already the store-rooms were filled with enough rice to to survive three such cold seasons.

It was perfect weather for a small lizard to scavenge.

The air hung hot and thick. There was no breeze. Some said the East Wind had gone to visit his elderly parents by the sea, and no one knew when to expect his return. Aetonyx happened upon a large melon patch far from the farm house, and had been snoozing in the sun there for several days. The air was thick with flies, and the small lizard gorged himself until he could barely walk. There was little need to: flies kept landing on his tongue until he could eat no more. As for the farmer, a peasant by the name of Zhuang, he and his family had followed the East Wind's lead and journeyed to the seaside some days ago.

The sun sank, lazily, like everything else in the garden in no especial hurry. Now and then a chicken would cluck or a pig would squeal, but not from any particular want or need. The ground was warm and dry, kindly inviting nap; few animals dared refuse.

The ground was also shaking. Aetonyx didn't notice until the third or fourth long, slow rumble, and it took a few more before he raised a lazy eye to see what might be the fuss. Perhaps even the earthquakes here are lethargic? he mused.

The rumblings died. Aetonyx rewarded himself for his alertness with a snack of five house flies, and a house fly for dessert. He also had a few gnats, and some of the still-juicy melon rind he had cracked open days earlier to attract all the tasty bugs. Then he resumed his nap.

The rumbling began again, lasting longer this time. It sounded almost like a giant, thundering down a path... but there are no Jotuns left, thought Aetonyx. He had seen to that. He stretched lazily, ate a few more flies though he was quite stuffed, because they were so close and tantalizing. Now he really couldn't move. He nodded off.

RUMBLE

This time the reverberations were right on top of him. Aetonyx startled out of his nap to the sound of loud scritching, which he really ought to have recognized. His thoughts were slow and languid, though, and focused rather intently on helping his stomach work through the puzzle of how to properly digest huge mounds of plump flies.

Thus he was caught quite by surprise when he craned his neck upwards. His view was completely filled with the giant visage of a Celestial Servant, making his rounds of the garden. Brutha the Celestial was plodding slowly toward the lizard's (borrowed) melon patch, stopping to feast on melons every few feet. He made very slow progress. Aetonyx would have no trouble slipping into the rocks and hiding until he had gone.

But the little lizard had grown so plump from lying unchecked in the melon field, eating everything he could reach, that he was unable to scurry, or even really to move much at all.

Thus when Brutha lowered his giant rake and began tearing at the ground where Aetonyx was desperately waddling for freedom, his tail was caught firm by one of the tines. He was stuck. Luckily Aetonyx retained enough presence of mind to gnaw the rest of his tail off and crawl to safety, battered and in pain and reeling from the loss of balance.

It took a long time for his tail to grow back, and it never did twitch as quickly as the old one had.

Early fall, on the High Rock of C'tis

Great-Grandfather Lugal was singing.

Humming might be a better word for it, or perhaps rasping rhythmically. It was impossible to make out exactly what he was singing, though, no matter how much you strained to hear. Hema suspected he had long forgotten most of the words.

"Well I saw the thing, da di da di di di," warbled Lugal, then coughed for a bit. When he picked the tune up again, it was clear from the melody that several lines had been omitted. "Something something looks good to me..."

Hema had been studying with Lugal for six months now. She had never seen Great-Grandfather in such a good mood; good moods of any kind were scarce with him, but Lugal had been crooning all day. It annoyed the rest of the council of elders, who were trying to conduct their meeting with a little decorum.

"... can't possibly have another serpent dance so close to an apoapse, it would not be proper," said the head of the Guild of Empoisoners, a little louder than strictly necessary, in a vain attempt to drown out the humming. It would be unthinkable for Lipit to rebuke Lugal, the eldest lizard present, for making too much noise, but unsubtle hinting was allowed. Lipit was a stickler for protocol, Hema knew. Her first meeting with him had turned into a dry-as-bone-dust lecture on the proper way to handle laburnum.

"But we cannot just ignore the rumors," said the second-most-senior lizard present. It was widely believed that Kemosh resented Lugal bitterly for having lived so long, depriving him of his rightful last say in all matters. "They say the women warriors treat them like beasts, that they..." he choked on the word "ride upon them as if they were cattle."

"You cannot order the stars to suit your so-called 'needs'," began Lipit in retort. Robes shuffled; everyone prepared for a long harangue. Hema thought wistfully about the stack of musty old books and piles of bones back at Lugal's hut, and sighed. She stared at the ground.

The High Rock was far more interesting to contemplate than the heated voices debating nothing. Just barely large enough for one dragon, the High Rock could accommodate a score of stuffy old lizards in full regalia, with room to spare. It was so flat that an egg placed in the middle wouldn't roll even a centimeter in any direction, and the rock itself was full of fascinating whorls and colors. Cole called it a "nice" rock, to much eye-rolling among certain members of the council, though Hema couldn't say why. Perhaps he also thought the patterns were nice to stare at during the numbing tedium of a full council meeting.

"What we need," said Lugal suddenly, oblivious to Lipit's pain at being cut off midsentence, "are more clever people. Back in the war, there were never enough scholars. But I knew a fellow... what was he called? Real sharp fellow, could throw rocks with his mind, frost take me, what was his name?" He frowned for a moment, then shrugged. He had given out his nugget of wisdom. Let the young ones figure out the tricky details. He hummed a few more bars.

The other lizards looked around uneasily. This was not the first of Lugal's oblique references to great battles past, nor the most cryptic. But it was close.

"Er, um, yes, thank you, Lugal," said Kemosh. "We have been training many of the young ones who show great promise. You yourself have been working with young Hema here," and suddenly all eyes turned to her, trying to determine, she imagined, if she had been worthy of such an investment.

All eyes but Lugal's. He was barely paying any attention to the strange goings-on of these young folk. In fact, it was just about lunch time, and his mind turned to the cage of succulent young rabbits behind his hut, they really were just about plump enough... But now the young people had turned back to a rather complicated scheme of Lipit's to rid themselves of one or the other of their troublesome neighbors, he couldn't really say which one.

"Look, why don't I take care of it?" said Lugal reasonably. "I'll pop by after lunch, talk them around to our point of view. Let you young ones put your clever heads together thinking up other schemes, eh?" He elbowed Hema jocularly, and didn't notice the grimace of pain when sharp bony elbow met thin scales.

Lugal attempted a jaunty whistle, and set off toward home. He was in a wonderful mood. First the conversation with Cole, then rabbits for lunch. He couldn't see how his day could get any better, but perhaps single-handedly conquering the last recalcitrant neighboring province would do the trick. His mind turned to important questions: sage, perhaps? No, a little thyme... that would do the trick.

Hema turned to Kemosh. "But... isn't that where Kurgarru...?" she asked.

Kemosh sighed. "Yes, last month, bit of a miscalculation on the part of the Guild, wouldn't you say Lipit?" The head empoisonner careful did not meet his pointed gaze.

Hema persisted. "But aren't there dozens of warmling riders? What if something happens to Great-Grandfather?"

"It would be most upsetting," said Kemosh, not upset in the slightest. "But we would, as you must know better than I, find a way to carry on. Now on the subject of the outrage that is being perpetrated on our very borders..."

Time flew by, like a penguin frozen in the ice.

---

"Eat me!"

"And me!"

"And me!" "And me!" "Yes! You must give us all a good eating!"

Cole had escaped from the unruly mob three times, only to be tracked down. They were clearly Marignonese – gaunt ribs, the same odd mark on all of their arms, and wild staring eyes that indicated incurable madness. But not an official delegation; too many whip marks and chains for that. Official delegations were quite stuffy and proper, with a faint taste of dogmatism that Cole found highly distasteful. They were polite but aloof; they left him alone as soon as they had concluded their business.

Unofficial delegations (whether from Marignon's lands or otherwise) typically consisted of wild mobs with pitchforks, and were less polite and a bit more persistent. But this group did not carry pitchforks, and had that brand of fanaticism only found in the fiery lands to the south.

"Oh great serpent Cole," began one of the flagellants, flagelling himself as he spoke. "We have travelled these many months to look upon your great crimsoness, to bathe in the cleansing fire of your mighty breath..."

"Scarlet," said Cole.

The leader looked puzzled.

"I'm really more of a scarlet," said Cole. "Or cardinal, I suppose."

The flagellants looked at each for a moment, completely lost, then began flagelling themselves madly. "Oh, forgive, forgive, oh great Cole, our wretchedness..."

"If you would be so kind," he said, sighing a little, "as to tell me why you have been following me. I am rather busy at the moment."

"Oh divine cold-veined one," said the leader. "Oh hot-and-cold one, the true cleansing flame, who shall purge the heretics from this land..." The great dragon head lowered itself until two large beady eyes were staring directly at the leader, who smoothly transition to the Abbreviated Ceremony of Greeting the Sacred One:

"Mighty Cole, we have suffered the ignorance of our own people, who do not accept your coming as the prophesied one, and we have walked through fire and rock and bramble, and a bit more rock, and then a bit of snow... well, a long way, to present ourselves before you, with one humble request."

There was silence.

"Yes...?

"Will you eat us?"

Cole pondered the question for a moment. Then he spoke. "First," he said. "You must help me deal with a small force of crossbowman and other sundry armed troops. Then I will eat whoever acquits himself nobly in battle."

There was great cheering, and plenty of joyous self-scourging. To be accorded such an honor, such an honor, by the great one himself... the flagellants wept with joy as they ran to their deaths.

Cole knew they didn't have a chance against the hail of arrows. Normally he would have been appalled at the waste of so much meat, but by the looks of them they were all quite tough and stringy. The strong young crossbowmen, though, distracted by the sight of madmen attacking? Now they would be worthy of a good slow roast...

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn18&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn18

Turn21

It was dusk when Ruli walked into camp on the banks of the river Liven, and he was trying to decide if the bright star on the horizon was moving or not, so he didn't notice anything until the morning.

The sun blazed pleasantly. Red and gold leaves crunched underfoot, and the younger recruits could be heard splashing happily in the swampy banks. The woods thudded gently as the archers practiced, and off in a corner, a man in dirty white robes knelt in prayer before a makeshift shrine. Deep booming snores echoed from a distant field, where a huge red dragon lay dozing off a dozen steer, kindly donated to the war effort by the local farming community.

Wait a minute...

By the time Ruli reached the huge mound of snoring dragon, it was awake and crumpling up a piece of parchment. The dragon threw the rejected page into the air and idly breathed flame on it, then drew forth a crisp new sheet from the bag by his side. The field was littered with charred chunks of parchment.

"Cole, why is there a warmling praying in our camp?" asked Ruli.

There was a long pause. "To prepare himself should he fall in battle tomorrow, I expect," said Cole eventually, quite absentmindedly. He jostled his inkwell with his giant talons, and a deep black stain appeared on the parchment. Cole frowned, crumpled the ruined page, and unenthusiastically set it ablaze. He pulled out a fresh sheet. His stack of reserves was running thin.

"But... why is the warmling's icon red and scaly?" asked Ruli. There were many warmlings in the empire of C'tis these days. They tended to react to the prolonged presence of talking lizards by running away gibbering in terror. So superstitious.

"They prefer to be called humans, you know," said Cole. He had gotten further this time: fully three sentences of legible, if wobbly, script before his huge claws caught on the paper, tearing it in two, as well as gouging the massive tree trunk he was using as a desk. Cole breathed in frustration, blackening both parchment and tree. He turned the log over, and began again.

Ruli was starting to suspect that Cole, normally so perspicacious, was deliberately missing the point. "But... warmlings, er, humans never go anywhere near lizard camps..."

"Henric is here to mind the archers," said Cole. His parchment was already marred by three small ink blots. He sighed a little, and a stray gust of flame caught the edge of the parchment. "Oh, this is quite hopeless," he muttered.

"Archers? There are warm... human archers here, too?"

"Hmm?" said Cole, not listening in the slightest. "Does 'eviscerate' have one r or two?"

Ruli gave up, and wandered back to camp.

None of the young swamp guards seemed bothered by the warmlings in their midst. "Ric's not so bad," said a shiny-scaled commander named Zagi. "He's got some great stories, from when he was a hatchling, before he converted, of course."

"Converted?" said Ruli.

"Oh, yeah, he used to live a long way from here, place called Alm or Elm, something like that," said Zagi. "You six, stand over there," he said, gesturing the warmling archers toward a small copse on the edge of the field. Scout reports placed the enemy troops less than an hour away, and Zagi was fine-tuning their formations.

"Did you know," continued Zagi, as he and Ruli walked the lines, "that Ric says there's another dragon in Ilm, and he's just like Cole?"

"Really?" Ruli found that strangely troubling. Long ago, there were lots of dragons, and Laph could tell you a dozen stories about each one. Cole sometimes talked about his own lamentably deceased brother Daghda. But that was all comfortably in the mythic past; if there was another dragon now, and not living with lizard-kin...

"Ric says the Olm dragon might even be more powerful than our Cole, though I find that hard to believe," said Zagi. He positioned two veterans, one nursing a slight limp, around Ruli. Cole had convinced him that Ruli was both extremely valuable and completely defenseless, and he was never without bodyguards these days. Sometimes he missed Ash'embe's aggressive disregard for his personal safety.

"So why's Henric here?" said Ruli.

"He says Griffin's not nearly as nice as Cole," said Zagi. "Gruff, antisocial, never says much." There was a rustling sound from the woods, and a few scale-leavers burst out, chirping desperately that something large was coming. "'Course, he would say that, being one of Cole's priests, now wouldn't he?"

All at once the woods erupted with loud battle cries. A handful of riders burst out from the trees, and made their way toward Zagi's carefully constructed lines. The warmlings were all human females, and their mounts...

"Do you see this?" Ruli asked Zagi, disbelievingly.

"Oh, yes, I see this... this... abomination," said Zagi, eye slits thinning. He snapped his tongue in fury. But he did not give the signal to attack. He was waiting for Ruli.

Ruli stared for a moment at the big lizard steeds, harnessed, saddled, whipped into submission. Then he conjured up images: of enslaved lizards ridden to early deaths, killed when they lost their strength or their mistress died; of a land ruled by warmlings who craved only lizard eggs for novelty omelets, and lizard-hide for exotic bags and boots; of a time when the temperature would fall and never rise again.

It was a giant black cloud of reptilian doom and despair, and it was all the more effective because the lizard-mounts could not fail to recognize some elements of truth.

Zagi shivered, and Ruli noticed that several of the front line troops looked pale. Bit too close to our side, let's see about sending it... there.

The giant lizards sniffed the cloud of terror and fled, and the archers picked off their riders one by one.

Zagi's troops made quick work of the remaining warriors, while Cole flew to the rear of the enemy's disintegrating lines to chat with the leaders. Ruli was trying to coax one of the terrified lizard mounts out of a tangle of underbrush, to see what kind of lizard it was, when the dragon appeared suddenly by his side.

"Cute little guys, aren't they?" he said. He magically produced a bag of sugarworms and started tossing them to the large lizard, who gulped them up eagerly, and stopped struggling against the brambles long enough for Ruli to free its legs.

"Did you know about them, Cole?" Ruli asked. There would be an outrage back home, once this atrocity was known. And so close to the High Rock...

"Oh, yes," said the dragon, with a world weary sigh. "But it was too dangerous to let you small lizards know about them, until you were ready."

Cole quickly cut off Ruli's indignant sputtering. "Your moral outrage is admirable, young Arruli, but you cannot expect to free all of the unfortunate enslaved cold-blooded creatures using it alone," said Cole. "Still, you have made a brave start today."

The dragon walked away from the trees, back toward the open plains. An odd smile appeared on his face, though far above the staring eyes of every lizard on the battlefield. He made ready for flight.

"Wait," said Ruli, running toward him. "Wait. What do you mean, 'start'? Do you mean there are more of these sick warmlings out there?"

"If only these silly amazons were the worst of it," said Cole, failing at sotto voce. He turned suddenly back toward Ruli, as if realizing his mistake. "I shouldn't have said that. I trust you will keep this in confidence?"

Ignoring the horrified looks from every single lizard within earshot, and the questions that began to bubble out of Ruli's mouth, Cole pumped his massive scarlet wings. He began to hum.

As the dragon took to flight, Ruli heard him laugh cryptically to himself. "Such a silly song, Lugal. No horns, and my vision remains stubbornly binocular." He flew off in the direction of the capital. The thunderous hum trailed off slowly.

"Flying purple people eater indeed."

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn21&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn21

Turn24

C'tis is at war.

Lugal is tearing up his apartment while Hema waits. The elders commissioned her to retrieve the war plans the ancient lizard has spent decades devising, and they want them by midday. It is now edging on dusk.

"Ah-hah!" Lugal finally breaks into the old crate he's been working on, and triumphantly hands her a battered looking page. In blocky hatchling script is written, "On allying with Pythium to crush Marignon." The page is filled with province names and arrows supposedly signifying troop deployment, but the author clearly did not quite comprehend the point of the drawing. Words like "cataphract" are badly misspelled.

"Lugal," says Hema patiently, for what must be the dozenth time. "This one won't do at all. You've got the warring parties backwards."

Lugal mutters and continues rummaging. Hema waits. The sun gives up in despair and sinks away to blissful sleep. Eventually, Lugal emerges with a second scroll, somewhat older than the first, the hand even more uncertain. It says, "How to defeat a trecherous alliance between Pithium and Marynown". The line drawings border on abstract art.

"For the last time," says Hema, "we're fighting Pythium, but Marignon is our ally." She shuffles through the papers anyhow. "Look, they're not even useful as a source of intelligence. There's no mention of the forts that line our border, and what's this? 'The kuh-nig-its have been known to ride coconuts.'" She throws the papers down to the floor, where they have a lot of company.

"Young whippersnappers, never any help," mutters Lugal. "If Kemosh had written these up better, wouldn't need to be wreaking my house, oughta remember them, wasn't that long ago..." His grumblings become inaudible as he attacks a large closet Hema has never seen opened before.

It takes her a moment to realize that Lugal is complaining, not about her, but about Arkemosh, the second-oldest lizard in the clan. And if he was a hatchling when they drew these up...

Lugal has handed her a dozen useless tomes, some referring to nations she's never heard of (though making overtures of peace to an "Abyssian archdevil", whatever that might be, doesn't sound like such a bad idea), when he smiles again.

"Here, I remember this one, elders gave it me all hush-hush," he says, hopefully proffering a book. "Pretty picture of a Van, right there, and they're in this war, right?"

"Lugal, it says 'How to sneak attack Vanheim while leaving enough troops in the southern swamps to deal with Man'," says Hema, a little horrified. "Both of whom are our allies, and anyhow what swamps? We don't even have a border..." Come to think of it, the map looks nothing like any map she's seen before, but Lugal yanks it from her hand before she can examine it closer.

Hema is getting frustrated. She wants to catch Ruli before he leaves, ask him what he thinks of her use of poisonous sleep vines in conjunction with skeletons, but for all she knows the army is already gone. Why is Lugal wasting her time? It's almost as if he's never even read the scrolls...

Oh.

Some pieces fall into place, and suddenly the haphazard nature of her apprenticeship makes a lot more sense. All those useless books he gives her to read...

"Great-grandfather," she begins, more respectfully now. "Why don't you just tell me what sorts of plans you've devised to crush Pythium." His eyes light up with approval.

She draws out a fresh piece of parchment, to take notes.

"BOO."

There was a scream, the sound of a heavily-armored guard tripping and falling into something liquid, then more screams as the drowning man realized, with his last conscious thought, that the liquid was hot.

Cole chuckled. It was a good siege.

Boots clanked in the tower corridors: more guards come to take the fallen man's place. They fired some arrows at the dragon, for form mostly; all bounced harmlessly off his shiny red scales. Cole flew to another part of the beleaguered fortress. There were only so many men inside, and Pythium showed no signs of diverting its armies from the north, where they were in such desperate need. A week, at most two; they could not last any longer.

On the far side of the wall, a young Pythite captain of the guard supervised the boiling of another vat of boiling oil. Cole sized up the alert look in his eyes, the expensive scaled boots on his feet, the necklace of tiny finger bones. Not the sort of man to be startled easily, no.

It would have to be the direct route with this one. Cole smiled at the thought, and drew a deep breath into the fiery bellows within, preparing.

"Will you listen to me?" shouted Laph, as she finally caught Ash'embe and grabbed him firmly by the tail. The lizard commander hissed angrily as he turned around to face her, but restrained himself.

"No, you will listen to me," said Ash'embe coolly. "We are at war, against a foe who has perpetrated dreadful crimes against lizard kind, enslaving..."

"Enslaving an army of ghosts, for all we've seen of them," said Laph. "We have no proof that the hatcheries..."

"... enslaving lizard cataphracts to work as common steeds," continued Ash'embe, as if she had not said a word, "and perverting the holy dance of poisonous serpents into a weapon of war. This cannot be allowed to stand."

They were drawing a small audience, though neither lizard noticed. With most of the soldiers in awe of Ash'embe, and Laph's stories already the stuff of legend, their frequent arguments were a staple of campside entertainment

"We know that, in the distant past, Cole says they used to do these things," said Laph, carefully enunciating each word. "Hundreds of years ago, Ash'embe. Not a lizard in a dozen generations has seen any such thing."

"And the women-soldiers near C'tis?" retorted Ash'embe. "What about their lizard slaves, were those also a myth? Cole says that they are like the shed skin of a snake compared to what Pythium has."

"What you mean is, Cole thinks that the wealth of the amazons is a pittance to what we could gain if we took down all or part of Pythium, and you know it," said Laph. "It's just a pretext."

"Are you suggesting that Cole lied to us?" There was an intake of breath from the crowd.

"You don't just rush into war on plausible suspicions and and a little moral outrage," said Laph. "Have I told you the story of how Aetonyx lost his true love?" This was directed at the crowd. So she had been aware of their presence after all.

"That was Taricha, the rainbow-scaled hierodule renowned for her sharp wit. Aetonyx returned from his travels one summer to find her missing. The last anyone had seen of her she was wandering in an open field near Pythium lands. In those days, of course, Pythium was known to kidnap lizards..." Ash'embe shot her a triumphant look "... so Aetonyx's first thought was that she had been captured. He enlisted Yarix to fly him to the enemy capital as fast as he could, and using his craft and guile was able to slip through the heavily guarded gates just before nightfall.

"As he walked around the capital, he could not believe what he saw. All of the fashionable noblemen wore lizard hide boots, and some of the ladies had scaly belts or sashes. But one woman in particular caught his eye: she was wearing a brilliant vest, and the scales glistened like rainbows in the fading sun. There could be no mistaking the pattern.

"Aetonyx followed the woman to her home, which was in the imperial household. But no matter: he hid until she was all alone that night, then held a sharp poisoned dagger to her throat. 'Tell me why you butchered my love,' said the lizard, almost sobbing, 'and I will stab you through, otherwise the poison shall fester and you will die in agony, like my poor Taricha.'

"In her fright, the noblewoman only heard the name Taricha, and she began to shout the name hysterically. Aetonyx was startled at the sudden display of remorse, until the curtains parted on the far side of the room, and an elegantly dressed lizard walked in. 'What do you mean by this, Aetonyx, you son of a scale-leaver? Unhand the lady Livia at once.' Aetonyx, of course, was overjoyed that she was alive, and asked how this could be.

"'I came to Pythium on my own initiative, to see if I could improve relations,' she said bitterly. Guards were pouring into the chamber now, surrounding Aetonyx, who dropped his knife. 'This woman befriended me,' she continued. Livia was staring wild-eyed at the lizards, babbling terrified nonsense. Taricha's eyes bored into Aetonyx. 'I had even convinced her and the court that lizards are not violent animals,' she said. She laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

"'But what about your scales?' said Aetonyx.

"'I gave her some of my shedding as a gift,' said Taricha. 'And for this you would have killed her.'" She turned around without another glance, and signaled the guards to lead Aetonyx down to the dungeons. He never spoke with her again."

All eyes were on Laph when she finished speaking. "So just be sure you know why you're holding a poison dagger to someone's throat before you do it," said Laph, glaring at Ash'embe. She knew the war was happening without her permission; Ruli had already sent word that the seige of Mark was going well. They had strong allies, to deflect the full might of the great empire. Probably, they would emerge from this war stronger than ever before.

The thought made Laph feel a little dirty.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn24&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn24

Turn27

Deep in the rock, there is a crypt. The paths to it are tortured and misleading, and few each generation are inducted in their secrets. It is said that no invader could find them without a traitor's help; but no invader has threatened C'tis in the oldest lizards' dimmest recollections of the stories of their grandsires. It holds the remains of the past, and perhaps the future as well.

Hema wonders if dropping the bones of Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandmother Simith (so the tag reads) is sacrilege. She decides that if the council had wanted the bones retrieved perfectly intact, they might have hid them someplace a little more easy to reach. "Or else assigned some hatchlings to help me carry them," she mutters. But the hatchlings are all training for war, and the other sauromancers are too busy with mysteriously vague tasks to assist Hema with the heavy lifting.

"You are so much more knowledgeable in the ways of the dead than I," one of them had the nerve to tell her, as he begged off. Bodimmud, that was his name, and he was even younger than she was. But Bodimmud was marching off to war in a few days, and there was so much to pack, so many incantations to review... Hema treacherously hoped something heavy fell on him in battle, as karmic recompense.

Finally, she reaches the opening to a large, well-lit cavern. She places the box containing Simith next to Great-to-the-somethingth Grandfather Uvatha, and dozens more, some whose names are still familiar to the city, others who died so long ago they are nearly dust. So long as the skull remains, she recalls from the scroll that lies open on a table, worn from heavy use. Not all of the wise can return as revenants, but so long as the skull remains, their wisdom is not lost.

Larch is putting the finished touches on Kurgarru when Hema walks into the lab. "Guild's been keeping you busy with their backlog, I see," says Hema. But then, it's easier to bring back the newly dead, and the Guild is a good source of bright young minds. Too good, sometimes.

Larch nods, looks up, stares inquiringly. He makes as if to speak, then reaches for a tablet. "DID YU FIND HER??" he scrawls. It is ironic; most revenants can speak, after a fashion, but the former masterful spinner of yarns lost his vocal cords to the illness that also claimed his life. And he never bothered to learn to write; let others take down his masterful words.

Larch is learning now. Mother Lalek even says the hatchlings are over their initial terror of his shriveled, bony form in her classes. Mostly.

"Yeah, right where you said she'd be," says Hema. "But, um, her bones were too cracked... when I found her, I mean..." and dropping them while trying to wedge the box out of its hiding hole hadn't helped matters, but Hema wasn't bringing that up. Simith had been pretty far gone when she found her.

Larch nods again. She can tell he is disappointed; he clearly remembers the wise elder from his youth fondly, and is sad that she will not be joining him as a revenant. But all is not lost. Larch points to Kurgarru, who is starting to twitch randomly; in a few days, perhaps he will be able to lower his arm-stump from where it lies locked above his head, vainly trying to ward off a cavalry captain's looming lance.

Larch points again, nods toward the other room. His meaning is clear. He has found someone for his old mentor to teach. Or her skull, at any rate.

Now that that's been decided, Larch turns to his next task. Leaning heavily on his skull staff, he shuffles over to the workbench containing former Guildmaster Nanugal, who lived, and died, for his experimental strong poisons. There is little that can harm a revenant, but Larch is taking no chances with this one. He reaches for his thickest dragon-hide gloves, the ones Cole will never know exist, if he can help it.

Hema descends back into the crypt for another long journey. C'tis needs its dead now, their knowledge, their secrets. Every bone helps, in the war with Pythium.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn27&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn27

Turn30

Afterwards, she would tell the story in this way.

"Two fortresses of Pythium fell to our armies before the first great battle of the War of Abatement of Yonder Empire. That was what some of the waggish intellectuals were calling it, for they would stress the absolute necessity of a preemptive strike against our northern neighbors: too many lands controlled, too much wealth accumulated, too many secrets uncovered, and far, far too many legions amassed. To the young lizards fresh from their eggshells, who fought and died in it, it was simply the War of AYE; for who could refuse the call to aid C'tis against such a deadly foe?

"The war was going well for lizard-kind, despite losses. The border farmlands suffered repeated incursions by small bands of Pythite troops, some of whom besieged the coastal fort of Cimri before ravaging an ancient Van university to the west. Worst of all, flocks of perfidious scale-leavers descended on lands far from the front, sometimes overwhelming local defenses and drawing resources away from where they were needed dearly.

"For though I say this was the first great battle of the War of AYE, it was by no means the first fight. Mighty Cole would not be at Boddern Weald, as he had been at all the other sieges, for he had flown from the front on an urgent errand. But though it was rumored that several of Pythium's mightiest mages had slipped across the border from the garrison at Barra, still the lizards were led by seven and three and one and one: seven masters of sauromancy, three guardians of courage for flagging spirits, one elder lizard back from the dead, and a warmling mercenary. And only one of the three had misgivings on the eve of storming the tower's keep.

"It was not me. Pythium was beset on two fronts, then three, then four, yet they still fielded large armies and effectively harassed the hinterlands; and I realized that the council had been wise to worry about the inevitable time when the full might of the empire would have been brought against our modest nation. No, the voice of caution came, of all things, from the brave and glorious Ash'embe.

"He believed, you know. If Cole said the war was to free the hydras and cataphracts trapped in Pythium's breeding enclosures, then he would not rest until he had personally ripped the bars from the last reptile's cage. Every swaggering enemy commander was a killer of hatchlings and a trampler of eggs, every soldier guilty of crimes against lizardity. But something about this land sapped the life and soul from Ash'embe, and he began to despair.

"'There have been no heroes in this war,' he said one day, uncharacteristically reflective. 'Even hatchlings know the tales of the bravery of the great priests of Ulm, and the famous battles with Ermor. But the forts that change hands here, the swamp guards dead in mountain passes or on ploughed fields: who says anything about them?'

"I was about to protest about my own role in crafty tales of their might deeds, even to recite a few of my newer stories for him, but Ash'embe went on, eyes in the distance. 'And what if we do die with glory?' he said very softly. 'I would like nothing more than to fall in service of Cole and C'tis. But what if we die with glory and renown, and still the purple flood breaks against the High Rock itself, and we perish to the last egg? If there is to be no one left to tell the tale, yarnspinner, does it matter how fine a tale it was?' And he stared directly at me for a while, then shuffled off to polish his falchion.

"The next day, he got his tragic wish, and without his worst fears of dying in vain. It was a great glorious battle, many mages, many strong troops, and a heroic death for our brave Ash'embe: cut down by a wind of blades while charging the enemy. One of our sauromancers, Bodimmud, was lost to crushing creatures of element earth itself; our revenant elder vanished into dust; and the mercenaries were slaughtered or fled. Yet we prevailed: five stood at the end and rallied the shaken living and the newly dead to a clear victory, and we slept within the tower walls that night, mourning our friends but with the small comfort that they had not fallen in vain.

"When I awoke, it was in a damp clearing in the woods, the tower ramparts far in the distance, a purple flag flying in the wind. Only a young teller and a few ragged city guards were with me, and none knew how we came to be here, so far from our victorious place of rest only hours earlier. I learned, much later, that the theurgs were just as confused to find themselves suddenly ensconced in the tower they had given up as lost.

"And now of the seven and three and one and one, only I and the young teller were left. I thought perhaps if it were some cruel trick of fate to deceive us into believing we had won, only to cast us out in the blink of an eye, that perhaps Ash'embe might have survived after all, in trade for the three surviving sauromancers who had vanished with the dawn, and our tower.

"Ash'embe was not alive. I still had his bones. The world did not sing of his sacrifice. And the armies of Pythium gathered strength in their fortress, and contemplated the march south. It was not a long walk."

If pressed for a moral to the story, she would sometimes relent and add a few more words.

"A dragon is better than an oracle in a close fight," Laph would say. "But whomever we serve, we must all place our eggs in fate's basket. And fate has a way of breaking things."

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn30&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn30

Turn33

Smoke filled the air. To the south, Ruli could dimly make out the trail of devastation left by Pythium's massive army on the fair Summerlands, breadbasket of the kingdom of C'tis and home to some highly profitable open-air markets in the warmer months. Somehow Ruli didn't think they were going to open in time for the upcoming season.

Some of the fires looked a little less wild, and were probably being kept in marginal control by the Pythites for the purposes of warming and feeding their invading legions. But black smoke rose everywhere from fires set out of pure malice, and had for weeks. The trail led further south, and helped underscore why the throngs of refugees from the burning farmlands had fled north, to the border fortress of the Mark, rather than home...

Ruli gulped his tongue back quickly and tried not to dwell on that unpleasant line of reasoning. But it was no good looking north, toward Pythium's massive line of forts and homeland defense forces crouched within their capitol's black gates, waiting only for a pretext to spill forth. West brought the sight of the Silbermark, besieged these past few months, where Ruli's friend Nudim was trapped with a tiny skeleton (-and-vines) defense force, his chameleogram reports getting a little more panicky each week, the last few, alarmingly enough, even spattered with blood.

East should have brought a more peaceful vision, the spires rising from gentle Pangaea's distant cities, unthreateningly going about their normal business of.... well, actually, Ruli didn't have a clue what normal business was in the secretive land of dryads and centaurs, since they were not known to write much for the benefit of outsiders. But at least it didn't involve amassing hordes of invaders in lizard-skin boots.

But along the line of sight from Ruli's tower in the Mark to Pangaea's lands he could also see many fires rising from the wooded outskirts. A large red dragon was out there, patrolling, they said, although they kept such a healthy distance it was hard to see how they could have known exactly what the dragon was up to. Ruli didn't blame them in the least for staying away.

It was quite an angry dragon.

Did all great dragon have moments like these?

When no matter how many knights you roasted, or villages you fire-strafed, or castle keeps you plundered, your fledgling horde, each piece gathered with such loving care, began to dwindle at an alarming rate? Delicate rubies plucked with infinitesimal care from a magically enfevered brow were being hastily dispatched to a fiery doom. Hardy emeralds, whether distilled from the laughter of trees on a clear summer's night, or forged in the rare subduction of continental crust under oceanic, providing common beryl with the rare chance to exchange some of its base aluminum for more exotic chromium or vanadium, were being traded at an alarming pace for mere beasts to nip at Pythium's heals. "And the roses..." Cole murmured – the beautiful yellow-orange roses he had found and lovingly tended, traded for a few coins now long since spent on lizard food and falchions...

Another ancient copse went up in flames, and Cole breathed in slowly, trying to harness his rage. He dimly noted the diminished presence of trees in his immediate vicinity compared to when he had first arrived, which was just as well. Cole felt a rising need to engulf the whole world in flames these days, for bleeding him of his shiny, shiny horde, and it didn't do to leave too much spare kindling around.

He had taken Ash'embe's death hard, of course. The small lizard had had such promise, only to be killed in a strange and useless battle. Indeed, his white-hot rage on learning the news had quite impaired his judgement, and his memories of the period were confused. There was that strange moment when it seemed as if Pythium was to become allied with Cole and the other members of the secret alliance forged primarily to bring the serpent-masters down, and there were whole weeks he could remember happening twice or even three times. But at the end of the day the only change was that the other allied parties seemed to make a separate peace with Pythium, leaving Cole – and C'tis – alone with his burning rage for retribution.

It is a dangerous thing for a dragon to let rage consume them, for it can drive them mad; and it seemed now to the great lizard that that could be the only explanation for his ill-advised, disastrous third attempt to storm the fortress of Boddern Weald, knowing full well a huge Pythite horde was stationed next door with no other foes to distract it. So many little lizards had died, and then the enemy army marched south toward his treasure vaults, while he flew back north to vent his rage by exploding pine cones...

... the sound of a pine tree exploding into ash barely penetrated the dragon's bitter thoughts...

... and now, quite frankly, Cole was a bit put out.

This new feeling was not a quick rage, swift to flare, swift to burn out, though perhaps still with deadly effect. No, this was fury. Deep within his fiery belly, Cole knew that this flame would not be extinguished without consuming every last stone of the tower of every last castle in Pythium, and obliterating that bloody oracle once and for all. He would personally see to that. Pine trees and forests had not seen the infernos Cole could produce if he got mad enough, oh no. Nothing had.

Ruli was busy scribbling away at all of the dragon's months of neglected correspondence – no, Cole would not be attending the going-away gala, but he sent his best wishes to dear old Aunt (or was it Uncle? Ruli cursed the dragons tangle of relations) Astairr and wished her/him the best against all those troublesome wyrms – thanks to his dear friend Vethru for his fine suggestions to the book club's reading list – annual dues to the Rock Garden Fanciers' Association – a few hasty paintings of dispossessed spirits clearly in the employ of Pythium, to counter the evil empire's vicious spreading of the truth to the lizards' erstwhile fanatical allies – and so he was slow to notice the growing din outside.

When he did finally look up, it was to the thunderous din of applause and rhythmically stamped weapons, and an army shouting its readiness for war. Ruli was not at all surprised to see Laph at the dais at the head of the army, and dashed out to see what she had done this time.

Cole was there too, he noted with surprise, glancing nervously at the wooden stalls and the streets packed with flammable-looking refugees. But the red dragon appeared to have gotten over his rage, or else...

The huge red mound of scales abruptly took to the air, and was followed by most of the assembled sauromancers and commanders, who looked a bit ungainly in their oddly flapping boots. They flew south in a purposeful fashion, and Ruli sighed with relief. Finally, he thought.

But the army stayed put. Soon, only faint dots could be see on the southern sky, and still the army didn't budge. Ruli looked around, confused, until his eyes caught Laph's giant grin. He was momentarily distracted by something about the way she looked – was she doing something different with her scales, perhaps? – and blinked twice when she finished saying something to him.

"Er, um, sorry?" he stammered, conscious of a hundred eyes staring at him. It was oddly quiet except for the sounds of an occasional tongue flipping at a buzzing fly.

"I said, little-egg-brother," said Laph, enunciating carefully, "that they're all yours, so don't get yourself killed." She said it a little louder than was strictly required, given how close they were standing to each other, and she still had that damned grin on her face.

"Er, um, what?" said the newly minted General Arruli, articulate commander of legions. "You're not, uh, coming with, er, us?"

"Nope, got other things to do," said Laph. "You'll see." She smiled a showman's grin, all teasing and mysterious and coy, but Ruli also noticed something dark in the way her eyes darted, and it stopped him from questioning her until she had strode off the stage and melted into the city, and then it was too late. The hundred eyes were still staring.

"Er, well, hi," he said to his troops. What was he going to do with his own personal army? He looked helplessly at the few junior commanders, who beamed eagerly back at him. The troops shuffled, restless. He didn't see any other options.

"Let's go kill some Pythites?"

There was a roar of approval.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn33&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn33

Turn36

Laph woke to a tinkling sound, like a thousand tiny bells caught in a stiff breeze, or perhaps hailstones pelting a cavern roof far overhead. But through her tiny window-slit she could the moon a clear sky, and there was only a whisper of a wind as she slipped out of her warm nest to look around.

The moon was half-full (or, as Ruli liked to say, half-empty, she thought with a smile). She could make out many constellations: Draco, the Hydra, the great Egg Nebula – and was that the Curiously Equilateral Triangle? Stargazing was so much more satisfying in the Mark than in the crowded capitol, especially since Ruli had convinced everyone to switch from tallow fat lamps to these clever new lanterns of his own devising, although they did have an unfortunate tendency to explode in the rain.

"Where are you, egg brother?" Laph sighed. She would of course hear if anything happened to him, at what was the fourth siege of Boddern Weald. It had just been so long since they had even been in the same city for more than a few days, and she was so busy these days, what with her new responsibilities...

She heard it again. This time the noise reminded her of a Great Hatching, when dozens or hundreds of tiny lizards all emerged at the same time and crawled over a million shards of broken egg. Laph slipped on her dark blue robes, still stiff and unfamiliar, and wandered out of her quarters.

The castle was quiet at this early hour. Lizards have never liked sitting watch in the cold of night, and since word had come of Cibragol's abdication and the virtual collapse of Pythium much of the tension had leaked out of what was still, technically, a border garrison. Most of the brave defenders of C'tis were elsewhere anyhow, besieging forts left in chaos by the purple people's retreat, or with Ruli and Cole at what would (Laph hoped) be the last great battle of the war. The few remaining city guard were doubtless patrolling somewhere more warm, most likely the heat-lamp district, and Laph did not begrudge them this. It was only her sleep that had been disturbed; and it had not been very restful. Nothing for it then but to figure out the source of that eery, distant sound.

She walked past the teaching halls, where in a few short hours she was scheduled to lecture some of the brightest young hatchlings. She pondered, for a moment, which story would better encapsulate her theme of The Perils of Foreign Entanglements and Empire Building. Perhaps "Aetonyx and the Pangaean Pact"? But no, that was a bit obvious. But would they understand the nuanced subtlety of "Aetonyx and the Noodle Incident"?

She almost walked past the twisting staircase leading deep into the bowels of the castle, before she noticed a faint glimmer of light emanating from below. That was odd. She turned back and stepped gingerly down. Nothing of interest was kept down there, because lizards found it hard to navigate the steep stairwells favored by human architects. It was mostly used for long-term storage or as a dumping ground: for human foodstuffs too unpleasant to eat except in a siege, or stacks of rusty armor awaiting re-smelting if anyone ever had the chance... oh, and Cole's auxiliary backup horde, of course.

Suddenly Laph wished she'd brought a weapon. She couldn't imagine who would be daft enough to raid a dragon horde – it was said dragons could smell each and every piece of their horde a thousand kilometers away, and they were not terribly forgiving of those found carrying liberated horde-gold. But anyone foolish enough to rifle through Cole's treasure was unlikely to be too respectful of the shiny blue robes marking her as his prophet. She rifled through some boxes of mouldering human supplies, and settled on an oddly-cylindrical but hefty club, before moving closer to the light.

It didn't sound like a robbery, though. The sound she had been following was definitely coming from this direction, and had now acquired a deep rumbling hum as counterpoint to what now sounded like a small avalanche of pebbles on a tin roof. For some reason Laph identified the hum as very satisfied, though that made little sense.

But there was a light shining from the door to Cole's treasure room. Someone had hung one of Ruli's sodium lamps by the massive doors, which were now ajar. Laph could now hear the clinking of coins quite clearly, and hefted her club above her head. She inched forward.

A loud voice boomed out.

"Oh, some people say it's folly
but I'd rather have the lolly,
With money you can make a splaaash..."

There was a loud crashing sound, and Laph looked just in time to see a large crimson tail disappear under a colossal mound of gold. The song continued for a while, in the form of a deep reverberating hum.

Cole's head popped up suddenly right in front of her. "Care to join me, Elaphe?" he asked, eyes afire with a kind of joy Laph had not seen in a long time. The dragon laughed as he executed a perfect backflip, and spotting the slightly dazed look in the small lizard's eyes at the sight, he said, as if reciting a creed, "I love the feel of it and the smell of it, and I love to dive around in it like a porpoise and burrow through it like a gopher and toss it up and let it hit me on the head." He gathered a large handful of coins, to illustrate the last points, and sent them flying.

Laph stared at the blissful red scaly face, basking in a rain of gold, and couldn't help but laugh. He made such a silly image, sovereign leader of one of the most powerful nations of Inland, dancing like a hatchling in a pile of red-gold leaves.

I guess that's why I went through with it, she thought to herself, as Cole, seeing his offer of a midnight swim was not instantly accepted, shrugged merrily and began chanting the popular dwarven ditty "Aurum Or" while doing a credible breast stroke.

It's not like he wants the people to worship him, she mused, though of course they did. Even humans living within C'tis lands had spontaneously erected temples in the dragon's honor. But much as Cole enjoyed the attention, it was quite clear that, deep down, he was just in it for the gold. And that purity of intent, for a dragon, made all the difference.

It was why, for all that she argued with Cole about his foreign policy, she didn't regret her choice to become in essence his second-in-command. And it wasn't just so she could try to rein in his more foolish ideas, or even that she'd noticed a small but significant improvement in the power of her stories and the way her audience was smitten by her every word. There was just no hint of malice in the dragon, in stark contrast even to their nominal allies.

She thought with a chill about the conniving self-styled prophet of Man, and naive young Selena, who not only had failed to notice how her growing power was corrupting her, but also was making the fatal error of believing the yarns other spun of her own divinity. Marignon's Inquisition and tangled web of political factions had always terrified her, but if the rumors were to be believed about the darkness of the angel Aftial, the troubled theocracy to the south was in for evil times – and, by extension, so was everyone else around them.

And as for Vethru? Laph just shuddered.

No, if she had to choose her god, even a made up one, she would have to go with the one who believed in letting his subjects more or less do what they wanted, so long as they kept the royal treasuries well-stocked with gold for him to play with, and did not disturb his afternoon naps in the sun.

And I guess I did choose. She understood Ash'embe a little better now, his fierce loyalty to the giant dragon, because for good or for ill she was tied to Cole, and to C'tis, and only death would sever that bond now. She could feel somehow that this land, and the treasure vault in particular, were powerful havens for lizardkind, and that filled her with a sense of peace and well-being. It also made her remember how weak Ash'embe had seemed during his travels, just before he had fallen, and her thoughts strayed to the catacombs back home. I hope Larch and Hema made sure he came out all right.

The mound of gold shook as Cole reluctantly pulled himself out of it. He shook his scales vigoursly, sending doubloons flying, and smiled a little wistfully at Laph. "That castle won't just siege itself, I'm afraid," he sighed. "But the gold gets so lonely if left alone too long..." He bowed slightly to his new prophet and flew easily above the troublesome steps, turing to cast a final looking of parental care back toward his gold.

"Please take care of them for me," he said.

Laph blinked a few times as quiet filled the castle again. It was still pitch black, hours before dawn. She trudged up the stairs back to her chambers, pondering her lecture and the thousand other things she must attend to the next day, all the preparations there were yet to make. At last, with the surreal scene of the evening almost faded from memory, she settled herself gently into her warm nest, careful not to disturb the eggs. She fell asleep quickly, and did not notice that as she did so she was softly humming the refrain to "Aurum Or."

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn36&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn36

Turn39

The streets of C'tis

It is high summer when the young chameleon runs in from the front, so exhausted she can no longer blend completely with her surroundings, so she flickers in and out as she runs down the crowded main street, never slowing as she speeds toward the High Rock. And somehow everyone already knows what she is hurrying to say.

Lugal is haggling in the marketplace with an herb seller when the murmurs begin to reach him, and he is so taken with the thought of a victory parade that he forgets to finish threatening the poor herbivorous merchant, and thus quite inadvertently pays him a fair price for his goods. When he was been barely older than a hatchling, what parades they used to have! Every time ol' Shiny Army and his boys with the long sticks won some bedraggled swampland the village elders decreed a festival. Lugal even remembers the parade to celebrate the conquest of his own homeland, although he is beginning to doubt that the purple elephants were real.

But those were warmling parades, with warmling food and music and bizarre customs, and Lugal has always wondered what a triumphant lizard nation would put on. Certainly there would be a lot less flailing and composing odes to vile dairy products. No, it would likely feature some insipid little play by the hatchlings re-enacting some big battle, and then some moralistic tale from that blabbermouthed young woman whose name he never bothers to recall, but it would also have a real banquet spread. And perhaps they'd bring out the large heatlamps, late at night, after the kiddies were tucked safe in their nests...

As Lugal walks back to his hut he is lost in dreams of glazed crickets and melon balls and nubile young hierodules.

A marketplace in the Summerlands

Two human women are raising the canopy over their newly repaired stall. It is early evening, and the canopy is the last thing they need before they can reopen. That means they be able to make the official re-opening of the market tomorrow morning, which is months overdue, and they note with equal parts sympathy and greed that many of their neighbors and competitors will not be ready. It was only through the generous tax relief and aid policies of the lizards that they were able to rebuild themselves, and they had been luckier than many.

The women nod to the young lizard watchman as he makes his rounds. He is a good friend after the long months of occupation and then reconstruction, and anyhow he and his troops do a brisk business with the women in knit goods even in the middle of the summer. There had been some murmuring against their lizard overlords as recently as a year ago, but no more; after the repeated harassment and terrifying occupation by the purple bastards, as they are universally called here, the women and all of the rest of their compatriots have had it with human rulers. The lizards have always been good for business.

The young lizard watchman notices the women struggling with the canopy and offers to lend them a claw, so the old woman has him hold the canopy steady on one side while the young women shimmies up the post to tie the knots. The old woman checks carefully for leaks in the canopy and tables that might inadvertently be left in the scorching sun, and finally nods her satisfaction.

"Heard the news?" says the lizard as he turns to leave, in passable human dialect. After nearly two years in the Summerlands, his accent doesn't sound half bad.

"We sure have," says the old woman, and she presses a long, fuzzy piece of knitwear into his claws. Even in summer a lizard's tail gets quite cold at night when he's making the rounds, and the lizard smiles in gratitude as he continues on to the next stall, which belongs to the local vintner. It has been a good night for him.

The women began setting up tables in earnest now, unpacking a few crates that had miraculously survived the looting and the burning, and arranging the items neatly. They also have some new items almost finished, and they must hurry if they are to get them all painted in time. They expect the good news on the eve of the market's long-anticipated opening will loosen people's (and lizards') coin purses, and it would never do to run out in the middle of the day. The young woman pries open the lid on a large bucket of red paint and picks up the first carved figurine of a sleeping dragon. It will prove to be their best seller tomorrow.

The watchtower of Boddern Weald

An old man in red robes is walking the dusty corridors of the castle, searching for loot. He is looking for anything that might have been hid hastily by the few highborn Pythites who escaped before the fourth siege, and regrets the complete slaughter of the enemy commanders during the storming of the castle means that there is nobody left who knows what might be hidden.

No one pays the old man any mind; these days there are many humans in the employ of C'tis, fighting side by side with the sauromancers in battle after battle with Pythium's mighty army of mages, and no lizard soldier looks twice at the sight of another human in funny robes. If they were to stop and think they might recall that there are no powerful fire mages among their ranks, but nobody has time to stop and think with all the repairs to make and the final foraying parties to send out. Besides, there is a familiar air to this fire mage.

Cole does not mind the lack of attention in the least. He finds the human form tiring to maintain, and does not want to waste valuable treasure-hunting time chatting with confused lizard guards. He would far rather not leave his shiny crimson scales behind, but regrettably, human manipulative digits and small puny size do come in handy when searching for treasure hidden by humans.

He does not actually expect to find anything. The war was long and hard for his purple foe, and secretly he suspects every scrap of treasure has long been carted off to the captiol, where – Cole sighs bitterly – it is now apparently being pawed over by more undeserving humans, Mannish-men, who will only see what they can spend it on, and never love each individual gold piece or gem for who they really are. The dragon observes a moment of silence for the horde that might of been, and moves on to the dungeons. There is still an outside chance he might yet find something.

The hatchery in the Mark

"... and so Aetonyx ate the fish, and the lizards lived happily ever after."

Laph pauses before starting her next story. All the hatchlings are staring at her with rapt attention, except for the littlest ones, who still can't focus their eyes properly. There is a happy mood to the room, and even the dourest old hierodule is smiling, happy that their charges are getting some personal time with the great yarnspinner herself, perhaps? Laph smiles faintly, because she knows better. Everyone is happy these days because of the news that is sweeping the kingdom. Pythium itself has fallen; there is only a token force left defending their last fortress, which C'tis is besieging, and they are rumored to be on the verge of surrender, probably won't last the summer.

She glances briefly toward the most central part of the hatchery, where the eggs are kept. Eggs and small hatchlings are just too vulnerable for any lizard mother to protect on her own, and so most lizards, especially those who live in outlying regions, come to the hatchery to lay their eggs. Like some well-to-do town lizards, Laph chose to lay her eggs in her own nest; but now that they are within days of hatching she has brought them here, where they will be safe and among eggmates. They are the oldest eggs in the hatchery, but far from the only, and Laph suspects there will be many Great Hatchings throughout the kingdom within the next few months.

Time to enjoy the peace, she thinks, to rebuild and replenish our numbers. She tries, and mostly succeeds, in extinguishing the tiny voice in her head, who sounds a lot like Ash'embe, come to think of it, which adds, before the next war inevitably comes.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn39&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn39

Turn42

"Coochie-coochie coo..."

Laph rushed into the nursery, eyes flickering instinctively to the small clutch of eggs near the center. The cracks were much larger than they had been yesterday, no doubt about it, even than this morning. But the eggs remained resolutely egg-shaped and unbroken. So why the urgent summons...?

"Hey, little fellow, ouch, what sharp teeth you have already," came the voice of a lizard in a black cowl in the corner, next to Esa's clutch. Four little swamp lizards had hatched yesterday, and today all the hierodules were in the high security wing of the hatchery presiding over several clutches of carnivore eggs. No wonder they were too busy to shoo away mysterious strangres.

Laph watched as the mysterious stranger (a distant relative of Esa's, she supposed, several of Esa's eggmates and more distant relations had gone into sauromancy) pulled a small tree branch, wrapped in ivy, out of his robes. He gave it to the littlest lizard, the last one to hatch; Esa had been almost convinced he was another lost one before he had finally poked his head out hours after his siblings had emerged and been cleaned and fussed over and put to nest.

The little lizard was in fact still covered in bits of eggshell, and the stranger was very kindly plucking the pieces off gently, one by one, while the hatchling enthusiastically gnawed on the tree branch. Out of the corner of her eye Laph just noticed that every single piece of eggshell was carefully disappearing into a small green bag...

"Ruli, you sly skink!" said Laph, and the stranger in black turned around sheepishly as Laph pounced on him with such ferocity that he lost his grip on his toy, much to Esa's youngest's delight. He did not, however, let the contents of the green bag spill.

"Well, hi, Laph," said Ruli. "They said you were still sleeping, and since tonight's going to be busy, I figured you should get your rest, and I'd just get to know some of the little guys here..."

"... and replenish your magical stores, don't think I don't remember how you got started on this business," said Laph. "Though I do say you've gotten better at it." Her eyes sparkled with the unexpected arrival of her egg-brother, and just in time, for once in his life.

"I find that not having dragons around considerably improves my ability to concentrate," said Ruli. "So," he added, nodding toward the central clutch of three that Laph's eyes kept darting back to. "How long do we have?"

"A couple of hours, I'd guess," said Laph, not that I'd really know, since I've never done this before, but she took a few deep breaths. No sense panicking now, it was far too late for that.

"C'mon, I know a place, let's get something to eat and you can tell me what's kept you so busy for the last, oh, I dunno, year."

There wouldn't be enough time for that, of course. There never was enough time anymore. And with that thought, Laph realized she was ready to become a parent, after all.

---

Three plates of sugarworms, some candied flies, and several pots of steamed herbs later, Ruli had barely caught her up through the war, and was finally beginning on his recent activities.

"So Hema's off on some strange mission... you know Hema, right? she was one of Lugal's students after I left, but maybe that was after you were gone, too... anyhow, after her brilliant success in communicating with the banelords in the AYE war, she's been dispatched in search of more powerful undead allies. 'course, I can't I understand everything she says about what she's doing, I get perhaps three-quarters of it on a good day, but she's really bright, and I'm sure she'll conjure up something good.

"And it's not just undead. Lugal and I are working on a secret project, it's actually why I'm here," and Ruli jangled the green bag now full of potent life magic. He laughed. "Project Big Snake is very expensive."

"Lugal named it, I presume," said Laph with a smile.

"He wanted to call it Project Snake initially," said Ruli. "I said, why don't we call it something more distinctive, like Project Cobra or Operation Adder, but he refused. Said we weren't summoning adders or cobras, and when I said he was missing the point of a secret code name he starting humming and tapping his feet the way he always does when he's made up his mind. So, er, Big Snake is nearing completion. Lugal even claims he can do this ritual on his own without my help, though I'm skeptical, but it's his hatchling, so what can you do?"

Ruli paused to drink some herb water, and Laph signaled for another tray of cookies. It was nice for once not to have to do all the talking, she thought.

"Oh, and I don't know how much you've heard about the amazons," he continued. Laph looked up sharply at the mention of the foul lizard-slavers whose abomination of nature had roused the nation into war. "Well, we got rid of the old leaders, of course, but some of the younger women have been brought up to use their magical abilities toward the right goals; some of them are quite charming young women now that they've been trained not to," he choked out the word, "ride on lizards."

Ruli took a long drink from his flagon, perhaps wishing it were something a little stronger, before continuing, while Laph nibbled on her cricket cakes.

"Well, anyhow, a few of them have been in contact with another mysterious race of women who can actually turn into snakes. And they've also been doing some interesting and amazing things with vines lately, nothing over the top..."

"You don't want that," murmured Laph.

"There's apparently a long tradition of making humans out of vines, but among some of the more powerful amazons there's talk of reviving some ancient powerful beings made of wood and ivy."

"Kinda like the toy you were playing with," said Laph. "Oh."

Ruli blushed like a chameleon walking on hot coals. "The, er, first attempt was less than successful, although I am assured that there are plenty more ivied royalty where that one came from, and the others will not let rumors of, er, unpleasantness prevent them from taking form. And besides, the little lizards really like to chew on the bits..."

Ruli looked suddenly quite worried. "Ooops. I hope that won't cause any problems for mixed armies."

Laph laughed. "Don't worry, I hear there are a lot of humans in the empire these days. Here, I have a story for you that you may not have heard yet. Just a few days ago a human in fancy robes strode into town and announced himself as the emissary of the Crystal Academy, which has apparently been located in the heart of C'tis for centuries without any lizard having ever noticed its presence. But apparently they decided now was the right time to reveal themselves, and welcome, how did they put it? 'Our new reptilian overlords.'" She laughed. "Now Cole's busy holed up with them talking rocks and making all kinds of grandiose plans for the future. And there are a lot of other humans around, so perhaps your ivy beings won't need to be surrounded by armies of hungry lizards."

"Wait, what armies?" she said suddenly. "And why so much talk of powerful combatants?"

Ruli smiled. "Finally noticed that? I must say, Laph, you've lost your edge, getting slow, oh Elder Egg-sister." He jerked away before her playful swat, then sobered up. "Yeah, armies. Man is poised to invade Pagaea within the month, had you heard?"

"What? Why?" Laph was shocked. Sure, there were a lot of troops on the borders, but everyone had them. And Pangaea? "What in Aetonyx's name have the Pans done to provoke this?"

"According to the draft of their declaration of war, which somehow made its way to Cole's correspondance last week, they are guilty of wearing green tunics and being peaceful nature lovers," said Ruli. "No, really, that's what it said."

"That's their excuse?" sputtered Laph. "For war?" It was like invading a lake because it was so blue and calm. It made no sense. Except...

"Selena's not going to rest until we're all conquered, is she?" said Laph. "She's had a taste for victory and will pick us off one by one, and that's why we're still preparing for war."

"Oddly enough, no," said Ruli. "Well, I can't really say she won't attack us someday. But right now, our gravest worry is to the south. Word is, Marignon's ruler has gone even madder than usual, and that's saying something for the Inquisition."

"Marignon? Our staunchest ally?" Laph felt dizzy.

"Yeah, their god's looking eviler by the minute, and even without that they've always been exquisitely talented at inventing reasons to justify any action they want to take. And their warped views of life and death have always created a little friction between our lands. We're engaged in negotiations with them to salvage the peace, but Cole is not optimistic, and neither am I. A lot of troops are subtly shifting into defensive positions."

"Wow," said Laph. She suddenly didn't envy Ruli's chance to read the dragon's dimplomatic exchanges at all. Sure, the gossip was great; but what good was it to know such terrible things in advance and be able to do so little about them?

"And what about our last ally?" said Laph, giving the final word a sardonic twist.

"Oh, Vethru's up to no good, we're sure of that, but so far his efforts have been mainly directed toward his own people. There are some dark rumors floating around that he has a secret colony of lizards that he tortures into insanity so they can predict the future for him," and Laph shuddered, "but these rumors have an alarming tendancy to be spread by men wearing a curious sun tattoo on their arms, so they are a little, shall we say, unreliable."

"Besides," said Ruli, "it's not like Vanheim has the world's largest army." He stopped talking, took a few bites of his cakes, and set them down again, staring out into the busy midday street.

Laph swirled the leaves in here cup as a cold dark pit rose in her stomach. "Why is it always so grim for us, Ruli?"

"Oh, it's not so bad as all that," said Ruli. "Well, maybe it is, but there's good news, like the fall of Ermor, so that maybe people will stop circulating that vicious lie about lizards corrupting men and being the downfall of us all. And besides, pretty soon you'll have to call me Uncle Ruli..."

Laph stood up suddenly, nearly knocking over the table. She had heard about this, of course, but it was uncanny how she just knew.

"I can feel it," she said.

"They're hatching."

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn42&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn42

Turn45

Lugal was trying something new, and it wasn't working at all.

It had taken him all week, but he had finally gotten the pen set up. The fence was sunk a hundred centimeters into the ground around the entire circumference, to discourage digging, and was meticulously interwoven with thorns, to dissuade any rabbits who might take "free range" too much to heart and attempt an escape. In the center was a marvelous new hutch, an inviting creation of wood and stone and earth than any rabbit would be proud to call home.

A little too proud. It had been nearly half an hour since Lugal had yelled at the last apprentice sauromancers, who had actually done all of the backbreaking work, to disappear, and since then not a single twitching nose had emerged. There were no floppy ears to be seen, no hoppy feet, nothing. Lugal was beginning to feel like the whole business of well exercised food animals being happy food animals, and thus tastier food animals, was all rubbish, and at any rate quite untestable, when Hema walked up with a pile of curious orange spears and began throwing them around the pen.

It was not the oddest thing Lugal had seen young lizards do lately, certainly no odder than the customs of some of the tribes in the swamps where he had been a hatchling. Why, there had been this one village where everyone would always walk around with an onion tied to their belt... Lugal was lost in reminiscences and almost did not see the first curious rabbit, a small brown fellow, sniff the air, peer around cautiously, then take his first few hops toward freedom and the orange spears.

It was a little harder to miss the thumping sound of the half-dozen rabbits who quickly followed, however, and soon the pen was filled with happy little rabbits, stretching their legs for the first time, and nibbling on the food of the gods.

"Erm," coughed Lugal, "what are those strange little whazzits?"

"You mean carrots, Lugal?" said Hema. She had watched his project with great amusement all week, although always she was careful to be quite busy with important Affairs of State whenever Lugal looked like he might want her to dig a fence post.

"Powerful magical artifacts, are they?" said Lugal. "They look mighty useful, what are they, potent earth-fire magicks?"

"No, Lugal, they're vegetables," said Hema, stifling a laugh. "They grow in the ground. Lizards eat them too, you know," she said.

The carnivore gave her a very distasteful look, but whatever bizarre utterance he was about to make was cut off by the sudden sound of rabbits trampling the ground, desperately trying to escape... back into their hutch. Hema looked around, deeply puzzled, until she spied a fat man in a shabby brown cloak, coming up the woodland path.

"Ah, I see the ambassador from Marignon has arrived."

"Hail, heretic!"

"You scared my rabbits!" Lugal bared his teeth, but Hema tugged at his robes firmly, so he didn't move.

"Uh... yes... I am Brother Gebuin, emissary of the One True Church of Marignon. Take me to your leader."

"Do you know how long it takes to get the adrenaline out of their system?" continued Lugal, now quite irate. "Now who am I going to eat for lunch?"

"Um, Lugal," hissed Hema, somewhat insistently. "This man is from Marignon, not the deli."

Brother Gebuin tried again, "I bring an offer of peace. This terrible war must end!"

There was silence. In the distance, a few rabbits could be heard crying.

Finally, Hema piped up.

"Er, war?"

"You do speak human, don't you?" Brother Gebuin did a short interpretive dance depicting a man being skewered by a pike. "War. Bad."

Lugal and Hema exchanged a glance. "It's just that... well... our nations have always been at peace. Well, except for that incident with the temple," said Hema.

"Not to mention the unwarranted terrifying of my rabbits," said Lugal, his beady eyes boring down on the plump friar. Come to think of it, he looked a bit rabbit-like...

Brother Gebuin shifted his heavy beech-wood staff to stand more authoritatively between him and sharp pointy lizard teeth. "Okay, but one day we'll be at war, and then we'll need to have peace negotiations." He was beginning to feel a bit unsure of himself. Perhaps Gawain had meant to send him to the Vans instead? Gebuin wished he'd paid more attention, but the knight's shield had been very distracting.

Hema began to realize she was in a bit over her head. She quietly edged away as Lugal began a loud tirade on matters leporine, and then began to skitter, and then run, to fetch Cole.

As Cole approached, he saw that Brother Gebuin and Lugal had settled down to a nice game of checkers with broken egg shells and rabbit bones for the pieces. The bones seemed to be winning, but just barely.

"Ah, my good fellow, how is our friendly neighbor to the south/north?" said Cole.

"I bring a message from Father Muszinger and the Church. The first part was an offer of peace, but it turns out that's not strictly necessary... yet... but the second part of my message is probably still valid. If we attack all the vaguely greenish-bannered races in Inland, could you be persuaded to remain on the sidelines?"

"And which nations would those be, young man?" said the dragon politely.

Hema felt a little ill at ease. Didn't C'tis have a vaguely greenish...

"Ah. A wise question oh great dragon," said Gebuin, hoping to avoid becoming kindling. "I have a list here somewhere... yes... Man, Pangaea (if they're still alive), and C... Kiss... no, er wait, See-tiss. That's an odd name."

"I do believe my little kingdom is pronounced C'tis," said Cole, eyes narrowed oh so slightly.

"Yes! C'tis. That's right. We just call you the lizards back home and... um..." Gebuin trailed off again. Hastily shoving the document back into his pouch, he straightened a little, "I'm sure that's a clerical error. I'll have the responsible Cleric burnt when I get home."

"You do that," said Cole.

There was a pause.

"Is there anything else the good father would like you to tell me? Approximate army strength with which you will be invading my undefended border, timing, anything like that?" said Cole.

"No, that wasn't included in my briefing," said Gebuin. "Do you have an answer to our fair and just offer that I may take back?"

Cole took a deep breath, pondered for a moment. Then he breathed flame onto the nearest tree, instantly incinerating it. A burning branch fell into the rabbit pen, killing the curious little brown rabbit, who had stuck his nose out again.

The dragon flew off toward the capitol, and Hema thought he seemed to be flying a little faster than usual.

"So, er, yes, was that?" said Father Gebuin. Receiving no response from the lizards he drew a glowing purple gem from his pouch. "Can I buy some roast rabbit for lunch?"

Lugal's eyes lit up. "I don't see why not, yes, yes, rabbit for lunch, very good." He plucked the unfortunate but tasty smelling roast rabbit from the pen and motioned to Hema. "My herb-pouch, please." His eyes lit up as he removed some fresh dill, picked just that morning, and cheerfully offered some to the Father, who was spreading his cloak on the grass. "Fine day for a picnic lunch, yes," said Lugal.

Lugal did not ask Hema to join them, but that was okay. She felt quite sick to her stomach, and the smell of roast rabbit had absolutely nothing to do with it. She suddenly understood the rabbits' urge to flee, and walked quickly back to the city.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn45&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn45

Turn48

The attack, when it came, was both more and less than expected. For a sizable minority of lizards, who had not expected Marignon to attack at all, merely bluster, it was far worse than they had hoped, believing to the last that there was still some goodness and decency left in their friends and allies... well, allies, at least, to the north/south.

To others, particularly those who rallied around a certain aged shaman and his newly relevant plans on "How to defeat a trecherous alliance between Pithium and Marynown" (edited hastily by his clever young assistant Hema), the initial attack was, well, disappointing.

"You call this a war? Bah! Back in my day, when someone invaded your kingdom, they cared enough to make sure you knew it! Hatchlings these days..." rambled Lugal one day in council.

"Er, yes, great-grandfather, it's true that Marignon's first volley has not been as bad as we feared," jumped in Hema. She was a newly-appointed junior member of the council (advisory capacity only), and had quickly realized that she had been selected less for her academic brilliance, than for her (oh so occasional) ability to bring Lugal in line, and sometimes get him to shut up for a bit.

This was not one of those times.

"And another thing!" railed Lugal. These youngsters were too cocky, thought fighting a war with Pythium and not dying meant hey knew the first thing about war. He kept catching them in flagrant disrespect of his esteemed status as eldest of the clan, and he was not going to stand for that, no sir, not when the defense of C'tis rested on his bony shoulders.

"Their spies..." he paused for dramatic effect, "... are everywhere. Poised in the shadows in their deep purple robes, ready to stab you through with their coral knives, or blast your brains into smithereens, unless you have..."

"Brown robes," interrupted Hema.

There was an awkward silence.

"Marignon is known to send spies and assassins into neighboring lands, even in peace time, but they don't, ah, wear purple robes, so, you know, you can't, er, recognize them that way," she finished lamely. It had seemed like an important point to make, but for the life of her she couldn't figure out why. She couldn't imagine who would be foolish enough to select a gaudy color like purple for their assassins to wear, though.

"And we're doing the same thing," said Asalluhe, the new head of the guild of empoisonners, to scattered applause. He was young and popular and had quite a following. "Only our assassins blend into whatever scenery they're in, and then <thunk>," he said, and pantomimed a dagger thrust to the heart, complete with gasping sounds as the poison took effect. There was more scattered applause, and some cheering. Only last week word had reached the capitol of successful infiltration of one of Marignon's dens of scholars.

"And some of the really smart assassins," continued Asalluhe, insinuating that he of course belonged to this school of thought, "use poisoned bows to stay safely away from their targets. It's practically no risk at all," he finished, smiling.

Hema wondered idly how long it would take him to end up on her workbench, next to Lipit and all the others, and pondered whether she was a bad lizard for not being upset in the slightest at the thought.

"... constant vigilance!" said Lugal, seizing the gap in the conversation with a single-minded determination to finish his harangue that Hema couldn't help admiring.

"Mark my words, there will be attacks from within soon, oh yes, very soon," he went on. "Birds and beasts and even our own human populations, souls warped so they turn on us, ought've wiped em all out, really..."

"We've heard your opinions on the human question before, Lugal," said Kemosh, sighing. He knew he had to let the old lizard finish or there'd be hell to pay, but he was not about to let him rehash his stupid internment camp idea again.

"Yes, well, ahem, constant vigilance," said Lugal. Hema could almost hear him rummaging through his mental notes, trying to find the missing page. "And we should watch the seas – that's where they'll come for us in the end, rising up to engulf us all in madness and despair..."

There was silence, as the assembled councilors waited for Lugal to continue, or wondered why Marignon would go through their lone province adjacent to the sea when they could invade hundreds of kilometers of border directly, or (most likely) had fallen asleep. But after a few moments, the elder lizard shuffled out of the center of the High Rock and sat next to Hema, where he stared off into space, remembering something dark and damp and long ago...

Finally, Hema stood up to fill the silence. "What he means, of course, is that we must be prepared to expect the unexpected." She glanced nervously at Lugal, perhaps testing to see if he was really done talking so they might move on, but his eyes were far way in the caves of time.

Kemosh seized his chance. "Which is precisely what we are doing, my dear girl, of course," he said. "We have assembled a counter attack to the force of knights ravaging our northlands, which will be led by our, ah, esteemed colleague Lugal's own 'Big Snake'," he said hurriedly, spitting out the last words with some distaste. He eyed the elder lizard, worried he would jump in again, but Lugal was now humming under his breath and rocking back and forth a little, and paying the younger lizards no attention at all. Kemosh sighed with relief.

"Yes, I am pleased to announce that we have contacted one of the great and holy feathered serpents themselves, who is here at the High Rock today to say a few words about his plans for the defense of our people. If I may introduce Eshmun..."

There was a murmur in the crowd as the snake slithered up the stairs. "A Coatl!" "In this day? I thought they were all extinct." And he turned to the assembled lizards and began to speak, in a slightly halting, lisping accent, about his plans for salvation.

Hema got a funny feeling listening to him talk. It was like someone was trying to pull her tail, and she didn't like it at all. Sure, she had helped plan the clever communion that would empower the snake to strike Marignon hard. It was a very clever plan that Lugal had come up with and she wondered where he had ever picked it up.

But clever wasn't necessarily a match for a bunch of dumb knights in shiny armor with long pointy sticks. If someone would only ban the lance, then that might even things up a bit, she thought with a smile. But nobody else had a better idea, and the council was sure to vote to authorize Eshmun's forces to leave immediately. The only thing Hema could think of was to make sure someone responsible and experienced went with the snake and his growing coterie of young shamans, who had been trained specially by Lugal for this task, a thought that sometimes frankly terrified Hema.

Perhaps the great Arruli would be able to stop things from spiraling out of control, she thought. She would have to ask.

Laph was in her study when the chameleogram arrived. Shem and Tari were asleep, mercifully, curled up peacefully in their nest, but little Fela, the smallest and most insatiably curious of the hatching, was crawling all over Laph's books and scrolls. Laph was smiling to herself and thinking how much the little one reminded her of Ruli, and at first she didn't notice the sound of the door quietly opening.

And suddenly, there was a chameleon in the room, simulating a credible impression of a military uniform, handing her a letter, which could only be from the front, and by the way the lizard crisply deposited it in her hand, bowed slightly, and disappeared, it could only say one thing.

Laph choked back a sob, and reflexively picked up a surprised Fela, who had been clamoring for attention all morning and was startled to find herself the recipient of a sudden and prolonged hug.

A few hours later, when Laph had composed herself, she went the the part of the castle where the note said the box had been taken. There were many boxes there, too many, but at the moment she only cared about one. She stopped by the chameleogram headquarters herself, to drop off some urgent letters to the most skilled sauromancers in the land.

Laph wasn't about to let her egg brother be brought back as a revenant, not if she could help it. She had some words to say to him, and she expected him to be able to defend himself and tell her what exactly he could possibly have been thinking, getting his fool self killed.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn48&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn48

Turn51

"The last story is called Aetonyx gets burnt at the stake."

Laph paused for dramatic effect, but it was hardly necessary. All the hatchlings, even Shem and Tari, who had heard her practicing the story, stared at her wide-eyed, and a few of the littlest ones began to cry, until Mother Zisura came and comforted them. Only Fela looked unconcerned, but that may have had more to do with her paying rather more attention to the bizarre and unnatural way light seemed to fall on the floor next to her mother. Such interesting shadows...

"Don't you have better things to do than make the hatchlings cry?"

"Quiet, Ruli," said Laph. She cleared her throat.

"Now, this story happened long ago, in the days just after Ermor had finally fallen away from life and light, and there was much hatred in the newly formed theocracy to our south. The Marignonese blamed all lizards for the stupidity of a few thoughtless sauromancers, who had foolishly traded away the secrets of their great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers, and then gone and gotten themselves killed..."

"Now that sounded almost bitter, egg-sister. It hurts me, right here," and he pointed to the ethereal hole in his side that was credibly lance-shaped. "And here..." and he held up his trampled tail. "And..."

"Shush!" said Laph loudly, which caused everyone to stare. Corporeal undead were one thing, but most lizards couldn't see ghosts, especially not these hatchlings, children of mostly average city-lizards, destined to become merchants or city guards, to whom the supernatural was better left to their rare and gifted cousins.

"You know how you can get me to be quiet," said Ruli, but Laph had finally noticed that Fela was staring right at them. It shouldn't have surprised her, of course, her littlest hatchling had always seemed the sort, just like her (lamentably-deceased) uncle. But she felt a knot in her stomach anyhow, which puzzled her. Shouldn't she feel happy that Fela could See?

Laph herself had been a little surprised that she could see Ruli in this form, because she had never seen a single ghost before now. I guess haunting someone's every step would be no fun at all if they couldn't perceive you were there, she sighed. Brothers.

"Now Aetonyx had cause to journey to Marignon," she continued at last. "He went during the month of Carrofactum, because he hoped that the spirit of peace and goodwill of the holy month would allow him to conduct his business in safety.

"But alas, Aetonyx was betrayed. He was staying, as he had before, in the house of a prominent trader from Vanheim, named Vanlade. They had shared several interesting and amusing stories in years gone by, which I will not share with you today, but this was to be their last story together, save one. For one evening, not long after Aetonyx had arrived, there was a knock on the door.

"Vanlade and Aetonyx had discussed escape plans before, in case of just such an eventuality, and worked out a system of signals by which Vanlade would tell him it was time to flee, for the Inquisition was not unexpected. But Aetonyx was caught quite unawares when, with nary a sign from Vanlade, his bedroom door was roughly pushed aside and black-robed inquisitors filled the room, seizing him and binding him so tightly he had no time to think of escape.

"'But why?' he asked his former friend, as the monks began chanting from the Scroll of Remanding the Heretic into Custody, For Eventual Painful Burning Thereof, stanzas 15-23.

"'I am sorry,' said Vanlade, not looking him in the eye. 'My life here is too comfortable, too profitable to Vanheim. I cannot risk what I have worked for to help you, so the fathers and I have come to... an arrangement.' And he turned away as the friars argued over the proper number of Cleansing Whips to be used, and whether there should be shackles or manacles or both.

"On the day of Aetonyx's burning, he was led through streets packed with huge, jeering crowds, for word had spread that here was the leader of the perfidious death-lizards, who had tutored Ami herself in the arts of darkness, although in truth Aetonyx had never had much skill for sauromancy. But all lizards looked alike in Marignon, and they would all burn just as satisfactorily.

"Because of his reputation for craftiness, Aetonyx had been kept bound and guarded at all times by men made impervious to his wily tongue owing to the sensible provision of having had their ears cut off, and he was never given a single opportunity to escape. So after walking through a barrage of hurled fruit and insults and the occasional duck, Aetonyx was tied firmly to a wooden stake in the middle of an enormous pile of wood.

"Will he escape? Gosh, Laph, I'm worried, what will happen?" Laph ignored him. Death had made Ruli so snarky.

"The Archbishops of Amirdon and Elkland, whose faction was in power then, read long and rambling homilies on the Evils of Being Lizardish, until finally Aetonyx yelled out that, if they would just set him on fire already, that was okay with him. So they did. The fire raged all night and into the next morning, and the pillar of smoke could be seen as far away as C'tis."

There was stunned silence when it became clear that Laph had finished speaking, and several hatchlings had tears in their eyes.

"That was harsh. I thought all your stories had to have happy endings," said Ruli, snickering a little.

"Clearly you weren't paying as close attention to me as you should have been," said Laph softly.

"Well, it's awfully hard to, seeing as how my own egg-sister doesn't care enough to do me a tiny little favor..."

Laph waved him quiet with her hand. She scanned the dozen or so hatchlings, wide-eyed and terrified, though Fela, she noted, was glaring at her with a very skeptical expression on her face. Good.

"I don't believe that's what really happened," said Fela.

"No?" said her mother, then laughed. "I suppose not. When the people of Marignon finally put the fire out and dragged Aetonyx's body out of the rubble, no one knew enough lizard physiology to determine if he was dead or not, and since his skin was cracked and charred and he didn't move they assumed he was, and threw him onto the trash heap at the edge of town. By and by, Aetonyx was able to pull himself up and through a series of improbable events made his way back to... Yes, Shem?"

"But... but... the fire..."

Laph smiled. She should have had children long ago, they were wonderful for feeding her lines. "Oh, yes, the fire, of course. Well, Aetonyx had always trusted Vanlade to come to his aid, but at the same time he was not so stupid as to fail to take precautions on his own, so that he would still have a few tricks to play even if his friend deserted him. So every time there was a knock at the door, Aetonyx had made sure that he had secured upon his body a burning pearl, which he had gotten from the Cave of a Thousand Grieving Phoenixes which I told you about last week. That way, he would be mostly protected from fire, and only his skin would get burnt. And every hatchling knows how easy it is to change your skin..."

"Oh, burning pearl, very nice, why didn't I think of that?" said Ruli, rolling his eye-sockets. "Didn't seem to do me any good..."

"That's because they were troglodytes, you fool, fire resistance was totally pointless," she snapped. The yarn was over, and the little lizards looked satisfied, which was good, although Tari appeared to have fallen asleep, and where had Fela gotten to?

"C'mon, Laph, next time won't be so bad, and besides, I'll still be immortal, so what could possibly go wrong?"

"No, Ruli, for the last time, you were a terrible wraith lord," said Laph firmly, staring him down. "And you're making a pretty lousy ghost, too," she said, and nodded toward Fela, who was experimenting with passing her tail through her ethereal uncle. It went all cool and shimmery...

"Uncle Ruli, I know you're there, tell Mom she told the story wrong," said Fela.

"And how was that?" said Ruli, carefully enunciating, so his voice sounded as crisp and clear as it possibly could while still resembling leaves floating in the autumn wind.

"Because she was just making things up 'cause of the war and the meanies in Vanheim who won't help us, and that never really happened," said Fela indignantly. "And, and, she shouldn't lie."

"Sage words, from a winter-egg," said Ruli, winking. "Pity Mom doesn't like telling the truth and, oh, I don't know, keeping promises she made."

Laph sighed. "Fela, I promise you that every word I said was true," she said.

"But did they really happen?" said Fela doggedly. The ethereal presence seemed to convulse with what might have been laughter.

"Go play with the others and we'll talk this over later," sighed Laph. "And Ruli, I promise, I'll find you a better form soon." Just as soon as she could come up with something... safe.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn51&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn51

Turn54

The army paused to wait for dawn. Pots clanged with the hasty evening meals, and lizards shouted to each other to erect the tents and sharpen their falchions one last time. The whetstone ground well into the night. Off in the distance, tall white spires rose from a battered looking castle; some of the damage was clearly years old, while the rest had a more recent origin. There were few lizards to mark the sunset, however, since most were curled up against the cold, dreaming of vengeance, and perhaps of an end of all this fighting.

Pythium was to fall again in the morn.

Laph squinted at the last stack of papers, with barely a centimeter left in her candle. She had hastily drafted her speech for tomorrow, to be given from one of the spires in the distance, and she hadn't even bothered to write a contingency speech in case things went differently. Was she getting lazy in her old age, she wondered? Or was it that foregone a conclusion that it just didn't matter anymore?

She smiled when she picked up the next letter. It was in a bright red envelope, with some bizarrely mystical line drawings on it, and was addressed: "To the yarnspinner. Super-duper-secrett. DONT OPPEN THIS!"

Inside, Fela wrote:

"Dear Mom, Uncle Ruli said I should always inkripped things I send you, and he gave me this super cool secrett paper to write on, in case this is stolened by the enemy. (PUT IT DOWN, YOU DUMB MARINON SPY!) Tari says they're too stupid to be able to read it, but I said Tari was dumb for thinking that. Anyhow, I have been very dillijint and have watched Man's border every day for the last week, and there are no strange cloud creatures or anything, and it really looks quite peaceful, so they're probably not going to attack us sneakily like you were worried. Also, Shem stole my baby scales, and won't give them back, make him stop. Love, Fela."

The next letter was very curt. "CONFIRMED. Engagements between Vanheim, Marignon continue; Vethru seems committed to our fight after all. T'ien Ch'i mobilizing to south, moving on former dead lands. Campaigns progressing well." It was signed by the new Head of the Guild of Empoisonners, who was leading the southern campaign. Laph didn't bother trying to remember his name; there was little point.

Cole wrote a very long and erudite letter, and Laph reflected that his long convalescence was doing wonders for his handwriting. She puzzled for a while over his last paragraph.

"... and I almost pity the few remaining archbishops in charge these days of a crumbling empire, abandoned by their divine ruler. I have some VERY IMPORTANT plans on that matter, but mustn't reveal my secrets before the time is ripe. Let me just say I plan on fighting fire with fire, as it were.... such a pity I cannot join them myself for a good knight roast."

Laph blew out her candle and went to sleep.

Aceline came from a long line of lizard-handlers, and even after the practice had been all but abandoned on order of the new lizard overlords, someone had (wisely) stopped and thought that, perhaps, a trained handler was actually a good thing when it came to bog beasts.

Aceline had two main qualifications for the job. The first was that she was a combat veteran, from the AYE war. The second was that she could count, which was a particularly useful skill in making sure none of the bog beasts wandered into the main camp and accidentally poisoned everyone to death.

".. three of them, come on lads, that's easy!" came the voice of the distant knight, rallying his band in a charge that was aimed more or less directly toward Aceline. She caught a glimpse of a bright shiny shield, and was momentarily disoriented.

"... five, sir..." she heard dimly, but things were moving fast now, and she had signaled the bog beasts to engage in battle formation seventeen. To the lay observer, all bog beast battle formations looked suspiciously like the giant reptiles just sitting there until their attackers fell over gasping from the poison, but that was why a specialist such as Aceline was necessary.

Besides, this time she was attempting a new flanking maneuver, and as the knights rushed past her hiding spot at the edge of the woods she motioned the largest of the bog beasts, who had been hiding with her, toward the unprotected flanks of the knights.

There were, as a matter of fact, six bog beasts. She noted idly where the innumerate knight commander fell, so that she could return for his shield, in a week or two, after the fumes had dissipated.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn54&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn54

Turn57

As the army rolled out of Pythium, the leaves of autumn were falling fast. Laph was one of the last lizards to leave the former capital, detained with harried last minute correspondences and other minutiae that fell to her as the senior non-military lizard. It was late evening when she mustered the final few troops, barely more than an honor guard, for the march north. Her mind was filled with a thousand details of things she should have done or might still be able to persuade other people to do for her, and so it was mere happenstance that her eyes caught upon the fountain.

She had walked through this courtyard, between the scholars' quarters in the center of town and the temporary camps of C'tis high command, many times in the weeks following the defeat of the Marignonese squatters, and had never thought much of it. But now that she stopped and looked around, she realized that it had once been quite a grand courtyard. Come to think of it, perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that all the grand boulevards in Pythium converged here; and she paused for a moment, imagining the massed hordes of soldiers crowding the streets, harangued into their final deadly war. The courtyard had been deserted as long as Laph had been in the city. But with the original Pythite residents long since supplanted and suppressed by first Mannish and then Marignonese conquerors... perhaps that wasn't surprising.

It certainly didn't look like much now. The former heart of the empire was now weed-grown, and here and there cobbles had been pried from the streets, probably to rebuild houses destroyed by war after war. Half a dozen stray dogs and iguanas slept in the fading sun. And the fountain in the center, heavily chipped, long since dried of water, though remarkably devoid of pigeons or other nasty scale-leavers so common in these lands, shouldn't have really caught her eye, except for the way it seemed to wink at her as she walked past.

And not a friendly wink, she thought absently, before whipping her head around to get another look. The fountain remained resolutely stony, worn, with no trace of any carvings that could be considered the face of any creature, or even eyes; it was, therefore, completely incapable of winking. But she stared at it nonetheless for a good long while, until one of her bodyguard finally prodded her forward, to the last conflict with Marignon and the inevitable destruction of their forces on this front.

It was just a broken fountain, after all, and Laph had a long march to the Saran Forest. She shivered a little, and blamed the nightfall, and the impending winter.

---

Time weighed heavily on Lugal's shoulders.

Or at least, it really should have. Hema knew he was far and away the oldest lizard in C'tis. He had lived through more wars than he could count, even considering that she suspected he couldn't count past five. To hear him tell it, he had lived through the end of the world more than seven times, and Hema wondered, as so many had before her, just what was the plural of "apocalypse".

He certainly looked scarred and ancient enough for Hema to believe that at least some of his stories of survival against impossible odds were real, even if she doubted that he had single-handedly defeated a million squids in the Caves of Time, as he had claimed just that morning before the council at the High Rock. Last week, he had gone on at some length about how he was the sole survivor of the Silver Forest Massacre, in spite of being set on fire by the great dragon Astairr himself, whom he had then cursed with the total annihilation of his realms. And so forth.

These days, most able bodied lizards were out at the front fighting, or holed up in their towers frantically devising clever ways to liberate Marignon from the tyrannous theocracy of the Inquisition. The council of elder lizards was the domain of the very old, and consisted, on most days, of half-mute revenants. Lugal loved the amount of floor space they gave him to propound his ideas, and how nobody ever interrupted him any more, and Hema had learned more about his past than she had ever wanted to know. He should be well on his way to senile obsolescence by now, barely able to muster up a good harangue.

But he remained remarkably untouched by the ravages of time.

Hema herself had woken up one morning to discover a mysterious wound – and not fresh, but long-ago scarred over, the memory of some distant battle she had been in, except that she had never seen combat in her life. Her most challenging day-to-day experience was surviving the job of Liaison to Crazy-Elder-Lizard, which had, admittedly, brought her close to death on more than one occasion. (The incident with the herd of rampaging dead elephants still stalked her nightmares.) But she had, remarkably perhaps, completely escaped permanent harm. Until now.

It wasn't just her. The streets of C'tis, though mostly deserted, saw more and more newly-made cripples, and reports flew in from all around the world, not just in lizard lands, that the young were aging and suffering maladies far sooner than they should, and the old dying prematurely. She had tried to see a healer, when she had first noticed her own malady; but he merely shook his head. "I fear that wound will never fully heal," he sighed. And he stared sadly at her through his remaining good eye, the other lost to forces unknown.

Laph had sent a cryptic letter trying to make sense of it, that Hema puzzled over. "... and at Saran Polgrave was killed in battle, run down by undead horsemen, but the few Marignonese we could question seemed overjoyed at his death, and cackled about him becoming 'more powerful than you could possibly imagine', before taking their own lives in an attempt to join him. Rumors are that he has been 'born again' in Marignon of all places, but it is hard to determine reality from religious hallucination with these people..."

So perhaps this was one final attempt by Marignon to hurry on the end of the world, and somehow they had sped the hands of time itself for everyone, as they had also hastily precipitated their own demise. Or perhaps Hema had really been in battle, in the AYE wars maybe, and had simply... forgotten her war wound.

It all seemed as likely as Lugal, walking jauntily down her path with a brace of coneys over his shoulders, come to borrow her spices or harangue her into working on his latest doomsday weapon, who could say? Perhaps even time recognized that this was not a lizard to be trifled with, and quietly left him alone.

---

Cole paused in his garden. His agapanthus had grown to such enormous height that even in dragon form he could stop and admire them without stooping too low; which was good, because his back ached these days. Cole's wounds, he cheerfully admitted, were entirely legitimate, the penalty for roasting one too many knight, and gladly paid.

He turned to his roses. He had had great hopes for this breed, a brilliant shade of orange, but the plant seemed on the verge of death. Perhaps a little more fertilizer, he reflected. He would have to remember not to eat all of the cows for lunch, though it was hard. The C'tis mountain cow had such a delicate flavor.

In the fort, where the dragon sometimes resorted to human form, there was a stack of letters from everywhere in his dominion. It seemed the small lizards were marching on Marignon itself, while Man and Vanheim and even T'ien Ch'i (such a cute little civilization, such quaint notions they had about dragons) were marching on all of Marignon's lesser fortresses. Epic battles were being fought, full of derring-do and stunning heroics.

Cole moved on to the gold roses. He had been too negligent of late, and little pyrite weeds were slowly encroaching on his magnificent creations, the finest of all the flowers of his garden. The dragon hummed happily as he puttered. Wars came and went; and after the last knights had disappeared from the land, Cole had frankly lost interest. But roses, now...

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn57&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn57

Turn60

Let me tell you a story about Aetonyx, the trickster. He was old before any of you were hatched, but once when he was young he decided to walk around the world. He first traveled north, and came across a high desert plain, where the sun beat down every day and scorched the earth dry. Under such pleasant conditions, he smiled and snapped his tail to the passing melodies of the wind, and so engrossed in his journey was he that he almost tread upon a giant snake asleep in the sand.

Now there are only two types of snake in this part of the world, the harmless rock snake and the deadly stone viper, whose venom could kill even a lizard, who have some natural immunity to poisons, within seconds. Unfortunately, both snakes appear vary similar, and the only way to tell the difference between the two is to flip the snake over on its belly and count whether the faint star-shaped patterns have 5 points or 7. The rock snake will glare indignantly at such maltreatment, but the stone viper will strike before it is possible to finish counting the points on the stars, and thus as a practical course of action there is no way to distinguish between the two.

So being a wise lizard, Aetonyx was about to scurry away from the sleeping snake, when he noticed that the back half of the snake was curiously flatter than the front half. On closer inspection, he noted also the talon marks of a bird of prey, or perhaps several, and the claw marks of small animals, and even the abrasion of the winds, and he thought perhaps the snake was not sleeping, but dead. So he crawled a little closer, out of curiosity; and after he had satisfied himself on the matter he turned away.

There was a feeble hissing sound, and he whipped around to see the head of the snake raised now, eyes staring intently at him. "Come to finisssssssh me off, treacheroussss legged one?" hissed the snake. "Like all the other legged ones, murdererssss all, and I just a harmless rock snake asleep in the sun when they attacked." The snake coughed a little. It didn't appear to have much life left in it, and Aetonyx felt pity for it. 

"No, my friend, I am just passing by on my way around the world," he said. "I will leave you to sleep in peace." And the snake stared at him for a moment, then lowered its head, and closed its eyes, trying to soak in a few more healing rays of light, though really dusk was not far off. Aetonyx picked up a giant rock with one leg, and with a swift movement crushed the snake's head in. Then, out of curiosity, he rolled the dead snake over on its belly, and counted the number of points on the stars.

"As I expected," he murmured, and walked on.

Laph could tell he was there by the way Fela, in the front row, suddenly looked amused, but tried hard to hide it. A couple of other lizards in the audience were also trying hard to stifle laughter. She couldn't help but be a little impressed. Usually she heard a little crackling sound, or smelt something like burnt leaves.

"You're getting better at apparating," she said conversationally, turning to face her errant ethereal egg-brother, who was, at the moment, doing a very credible impression of a duck.

Ruli looked transparently chagrined. "How'd you know I was there?" he said. "You weren't even supposed to know I was in the same city." 

"Ruli, I'm the yarnspinner," she said. "It's my business to know." She feigned turning back around, then quickly whipped her head around just as Ruli was trying to roar like a mute lion, and solemnly shook her head at him. He sighed defeat, and there were titters from the crowd. "Now if you'll excuse me, I was about to tell them about the Conversation with a Gull."

When Aetonyx was walking around the world, he stopped beside a vast inland sea. In those days, the sea was much bigger than nowadays, and the warmlings who lived nearby often plied its waters in their long wooden boats. Aetonyx hoped to catch a ride to the opposite shore, so he settled on a warm, dry rock near the docks, and waited.

By and by, a giant white gull landed on a post next to him. He stared out at the sea, with a fixed concentration so unlike any scale-leaver Aetonyx had ever seen before, that after a while he began trying to catch its attention. He contorted his tail into amusing animal shapes. He juggled a few clam shells stranded by the low tide. Eventually, he got bored, and just started throwing small rocks at the gull's legs, not trying to hurt him, only to stir him up a little, for it was closing in on evening time and no boats had been seen at port all day. But the gull merely stepped nimbly over each incoming rock, absentmindedly, as if he scarcely noticed they were there.

Finally, Aetonyx gave in, and spoke. "What are you watching for, gull?" 

The bird was silent for a long while, so long that the lizard began to wonder if it had heard him. Then it turned and stared straight into Aetonyx's eyes, and intoned solemnly, "'All I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying.' But the tide is going out, and will never return." It turned back to watching the sea.

"Silly gull," said Aetonyx. "The tide always comes back."

But after three days, the shoreline was farther away than ever from the rock Aetonyx where was sitting, and he decided to get as far as he could from the land that even the sea had forsaken.

Cole may not have participated in the storming of Marignon, but there was no force in the universe capable of stopping him from swooping majestically into the conquered enemy capitol a few days after it fell. There were standards to maintain, and a dragon couldn't very well let other people sack a major city for him.

Well, not sack, as such; more civilized heads (alas) had prevailed, and contrary to how things were done in Cole's youth, the city of his conquered foes was not burnt into charred rubble, nor were the tastiest members of the families of the vanquished opposition led to the dragon's tent at dinner time. Truth be told, the city was in sorry enough state that it looked as if a conclave of dragons had descended upon it long ago, and there was very little worth looting.

The dragon had just finished inspected the incredibly pitiful royal coffers -- "Barely enough for a sponge bath, let alone a proper swim," -- when he noticed an arch angel striding purposefully toward him. In the final days of the Marignonese war, many angels had appeared in the lizard camps, which was a little perplexing, because winged creatures do not feature highly in lizard mythology. 

The leading theory, from a young spinner of tall tales who would go very far in the burgeoning field of completely making things up, was that they had become so disillusioned with their own narrative framework that they had sought another, more rational one to work within while they battled to restore eschatological structure to their own. Cole hadn't been listening too closely, since he had noticed the sudden glint of sunlight off the roof of a nearby church, which had turned out, on closer inspection, to be a very low-grade tin.

"Greetings, oh exalted Cole, leader of the flaming sword of justice, tool of the Almighty for purging the heretics..." the arch angel began. He was worse than a mob of flagellants, because it was a lot harder to just eat an arch angel when he got annoyingly florid. Plus all those feathers give terrible indigestion. But Kiksanu quickly got to the point. 

"I humbly request your permission to banish this minion of evil into the darkness from whence he came," said the angel primly. 

Cole gazed down at a small, shrunken dark figure. If you didn't look closely, you might assume it was just another of the many anonymous undead wandering the streets of Marignon these days. But there was just the smallest hint of fire in his dull eyes, now bereft of reason...

"I'm afraid that would be a grave mistake," said Cole. 

"But... but... he is unmitigated evil," sputtered the arch angel. And then Cole understood. Somewhere, long ago, a deal had been struck for what must have seemed like an impossibly distant eventuality. Not even arch angels are incorruptible.

"I don't believe we should let our friend off so easily after all the trouble he has caused," said the dragon. "That wouldn't be the wight thing to do, now would it, Polgrave?"

This might be fun. It had been a long time since Cole had succeeded in capturing a small person; they just died too easily. There were so many useful things he could get it to do....

"How are you with roses?"

In the course of his walkabout Aetonyx came to a heavily forested land. The trees were tall and old, and the sky was buried in green, yet sunlight danced through the tree canopy so that underneath it was airy and light. When Aetonyx first entered the woods, he marveled at the the variety of living creatures: squirrels and rabbits and foxes and deer, here and there a bear or a wolf, and always in the trees came the song of a thousand different birds. At that distance, he mused, scale-leavers weren't so unpleasant. 

At length he came upon a village of men. It had been several weeks since Aetonyx had passed through a settled area, and he was looking forward to spending a night with other people, even if they were only warmlings. But when he reached the town in the late afternoon, it was deserted, though all the houses were neatly kept and the gardens well tended. All he saw while walking through town were a few hawks and a solitary badger, glaring at him from a rather tidy front porch. 

Aetonyx quickly moved on.

But the next village he came to, some two days later, was just the same, only this time there was a family of rabbits and a flock of crows, and the village after that contained only wildcats, sound asleep in the midday sun.

By the seventh village, Aetonyx was becoming a little concerned. There was a full moon in the sky, and the woods had taken on a menacing feel, and he wondered what sorts of strange and unnatural animals would be in this abandoned village.

But when he got to the edge of town, he was surprised to see dozens of men and women, dancing merrily around a campfire, for it was a fine summer evening. The women smiled when the saw him, and their laughter was like the wind in the trees above. The men greeted him noisily, like a pack of dogs on the arrival of a long-lost member, and he was handed food and drink until he could take no more.

The next morning, Aetonyx awoke with a bit of a headache in a deserted clearing on the edge of town. Except for the embers smoldering on the fire pit, he was hard pressed to find any sign that he had not imagined the evening before. Here and there a stray dog slept in the cool morning breeze, though he had not noticed any animals the night before...

It was then that Aetonyx determined to have as little as possible to do with the lands of man.

"Aha!" said Lugal.

Hema winced. The first time he had said "Aha!" the hut had burst into flames not five minutes later. The second time had resulted in a nasty plague of frogs, who had promptly scattered into every corner of the city and kept everyone awake with their incessant croaking. The third time... she was still picking bits of bloody rabbit fur out of her scales.

Lugal looked expectant. "Aha!" he said again, doggedly. Hema sighed, and hoped that this time it wouldn't be rabbits again.

"What have you found, Great-Grandfather?" 

"Only the solution to all our problems, ahem," said Lugal. He looked pleased with himself, even more so than usual.

Hema looked at the old book he was holding. She knew he couldn't read it, but this book had pictures, and on the opened page there was a drawing of a tree so tall it looked like it could shade the whole world from harm. "But Lugal," she said, reading the text. "This is far too complicated for either you or I to try."

He waved her off. "I'll have my snake look into it." He was inordinately proud of that snake, but Hema had to concede that the seige of Marignon had gone well, and ol' Feathers had done his bit. Perhaps he can get attacked by killer rabbits, she thought, with a bit of unwarranted meanness. The last few months had been terrible and long, made doubly so by the heavy burden of corrupted time.

"I don't know if even the big snake is up to this one," she said carefully. "Now, if you'll just listen to this spell I've found, I think there's a way the snake can help, using the strands of arcane power themselves to negate the..."

"Fine, fine, I'll have the snake try your thing," said Lugal. The young person had the disconcerting habit of often being right about these sorts of things. He looked glum for a moment, then brightened. "Aha!"

"What now?" sighed Hema.

"I'll have the tree-king do it. Takes one to know one, eh?" He started cackling, which turned into a coughing fit. Then his eyes lit up on the hutch of quivering mammals in the back yard.

"Who's up for lunch?"

At last, Aetonyx had only the southern plains to cross before he was home. But this was the most difficult step of the journey. A race of fanatical humans had recently taken up residence here, and word was strangers were burnt at the stake faster than they could say their names. The lucky ones, that is.

But Aetonyx could only forage for so long on the barren plains, so one day he was forced to enter a small fortified towns to resupply. He wore a heavy cloak, like one of their wandering monks, so that hopefully he could pass undetected, since all he really wanted was some food and water and perhaps a warm bed for the night. It was the beginning of what looked to be a bitter cold winter.

But he could not find anywhere to stay. Though nobody saw through his flimsy disguise, neither were they inclined to risk the wrath of the Inquisition for the sake of a wanderer, who would probably just freeze to death on the open plains after he left, if he knew what was best for him. Door after door shut, or refused to open, and townspeople glared menacingly at his attempts to settle into their gardens or stables, so although Aetonyx was able to slyly swipe some foodstuffs from the street merchants distractedly closing for the night, he was thwarted in his attempt to find somewhere to stay.

He found himself on the edge of town at dusk, with the temperature plummeting, and only one building left to try. He must have been a little cold-shocked already, or else he would never have entered the building, but as it is he failed to spot the shabby tin steeple and stained glass windows, noting only the partially open door, and the fire within. He slipped inside.

In the cold, it took a while for him to notice the small drab man talking at the front of the room. Aetonyx settled as close to the fire as he could to warm himself, without being drawn into the light of the room and risk discovery. The words washed over him distantly, like waves breaking on the dying sea shore, or the wind high in the tree canopy. "... deathless roar of the pounding surf... still, small voice in the wilderness... as each man dies, so death waits within... like a refiner's fire... providence in the fall of a sparrow... even death is a seed."

The old man sat down, and the people began joyously ringing bells and singing some cheery tune about smiting the unbelievers with the sword of divine love. It was clearly a high holiday, and the room was crowded, which meant no one noticed the small shivering lizard in the corner.

But Aetonyx (perhaps alone in the room) was thinking about the the words of the local yarnspinner. He had the story all wrong, of course, that much was clear; and these people had clearly gone quite crazy with their notions of what it really meant. But he could tell a story. And one day, perhaps, he thought with a smile, after they had been confined with their madness long enough, perhaps some of their hatchlings, or their hatchlings' hatchlings, would realize that they could spin the yarn quite another way, and be happy, and live.

The thought cheered him as he drifted off into sleep.

Edit this yarn (http://yarnspinners.improbable.org/index.php?title=C%27tisTurn60&action=edit) • See all yarns for Turn60