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the fabled Thread Room. The enormous round chamber, nearly a hundred yards in diameter, was like an interior forest filled with thick granite columns supporting the fortress above. Elaborate, colorful tapestries covered the walls of the room, depicting in glorious detail scenes from the Ballad of Belpantheron. Bright crimson sun-dragons savaged golden-winged angels in their bloody jaws at the climax of a battle that raged for decades.
    The valkyries were masterful engineers; while the chamber sat beneath the surface of the lake, the room showed no traces of leaking or flooding. Mirrored shafts were set in the ceiling twenty-five feet overhead, funneling sunlight into the room. Despite the radiance, the room was still beset with a cave-like chill and dankness. The cloying incense that rose in wispy tendrils from silver sconces lining the room couldn’t quite hide the underlying scent of mildew.
    The matriarch walked through the chamber without looking back at Graxen. The only sound in the room was the tap of her cane as she hobbled across the tiled floor. She had not spoken, or even glanced at Graxen, since they’d left the tower. Graxen wanted to speak but feared disturbing the sacred air of this place. The tapestries of the Thread Room were priceless. Underlying the visible representation of battle, the threads themselves were woven in an elaborate code. For the matriarch and others initiated in their lore, each thread of these tapestries told a story. Thicker lines represented the lives of individual sky-dragons, every one born in the Nest through the centuries. Thinner threads ran parallel, representing desired genetic traits. The web of lines intersected in elaborate patterns as every mating, every birth, every death of a sky-dragon were recorded in minute detail.
    Centuries earlier, it had been decided that the genetic destiny of the sky-dragon race was too important to be left to mere chance. Males and females were not allowed to mingle or mix according to whim or desire. Each mating represented a careful decision made by the matriarch and her predecessors. Many pairings were planned generations in advance. Others would arise after a sky-dragon demonstrated a novel trait—superior intelligence, for example, or a well documented resistance to disease—and it was the matriarch’s duty to capture these desirable mutations through careful interweaving with a receptive bloodline.
    On the far side of the room a black section of the wall stood devoid of tapestries. The matriarch moved toward this area, a single smooth slab of slate, twelve feet high and four times that length, covered with lines of colored chalk and countless scribbled notes. The matriarch paused, studying the board, as if she had forgotten Graxen’s presence and resumed her normal duties of steering the fate of the species. She leaned her cane against the board as she lifted a thick finger of chalk in her fore-talon.
    As often happened in older dragons, the colors of the matriarch’s scales had faded, tinting white the frill of long scales that ran down her neck and along her spine. The once jewel-like sheen of her scales had dulled, as if muted beneath a lifetime of dust.
    Graxen cringed as the matriarch brought the chalk to the slate and drew a long, screeching line from top to bottom. To the left, hundreds of scribbled notes in a rainbow of colors were surrounded by circles, with lines and arrows connecting them. He didn’t recognize any of the names save one. In a large yellow oval, surrounded by pink question marks, in thick, capital letters was the name VENDEVOREX. There were no lines connecting his circle to any other.
    To the right of the line she had drawn, the board was fresh and black. She wrote in neat, balanced letters despite her trembling talon: “World order, post Albekizan.”
    Without facing Graxen, the matriarch asked, “Is it true the so called wizard is dead?”
    “Yes,” said Graxen. “His funeral pyre is to be lit