Under the Eye of God by David Gerrold Page A

Khallanin’s most trusted advisors by the skillful application of scurrilous information about Khallanin’s other most trusted advisors. The resulting perceptions created not only an increased sense of paranoia in the noble Prefect, but a perfect opportunity for an ambitious underling as well.
    d’Vashti waited patiently beside his political mentor. He recognized that the crowd had long since grown restless and frustrated, almost to the point of anger. He didn’t care. It suited his purposes—his mentor’s purposes—to have them feeling angry and resentful. They would blame the Lady, not the Prefect. Later, he could make quiet unofficial personal amends to each and every one of them—not on the Lady’s behalf, not even on the Prefect’s, but on his own. He’d make sure they got the message. Slowly, he would build support.
    He glanced across the room and noticed the Dragon Lord, the supreme father of the entire race of Dragons. The Lord of All Moktar and Lesser Breeds had long since grown much too large for any but the most ceremonial of occasions; only the largest of rooms could hold him comfortably. He stood more than five meters tall. His tail alone had more length than a Vampire. Even those nobles who considered it an honor to stand near the Dragon Lord still gave him plenty of room. The Lord stood in the center of his own wide clearing in the crowd, his great head split in a ghastly grin, revealing yellow teeth as long as a young man. His armor glistened with an ebony sheen. He loomed huge over his end of the room; the thick towers of his scaly hind legs and the great curving claws at the base of them attracted nervous glances from those closest by. The Lord himself gave no notice of the attention he drew. He seemed lost in some ancient reptilian dream. His great eyes had closed against the glittering boredom; the monster looked as if he’d gone to sleep.
    d’Vashti knew better. He had no illusions about the Dragon Lord and the power he controlled. The Dragons remained the dominant military authority in the Regency; partly because their inability to surrender—you could kill a Dragon, you couldn’t defeat him—made them essentially unbeatable; and partly because the commanding physical presence of even a single Dragon inspired feelings of stark terror in most species, especially the mammalian ones. A troop of Dragons simply marching through a village made for an excellent textbook study in naked panic.
    Even the highest of the Phaestor gave their Moktar allies an apprehensive respect. d’Vashti had seen the Lord of All Moktar and Lesser Breeds in action more than a few times and the memory still gave him uneasy nights. Even an ordinary Dragon controlled an appalling strength and viciousness. The master of all of them commanded the incredible physical authority necessary to control his entire species. He had once killed a Captain and his entire family of sons for committing the terrible insubordination of massing more than he did. The act had represented a naked challenge and the Dragon Lord had quickly demonstrated his wrath. Since that time, no Captain, ambitious or otherwise, had even dared to fertilize that many eggs at one time.
    Most observers assumed that if the Dragon Lord could continue to manage the actions of his Captains this ruthlessly, the inevitable day of political challenge would not occur for at least another century or three—but when it did happen, Dragon blood would flow like wine. The last time the Dragon Lord had faced a serious challenge, fully one-third of the major Dragon families—those who had supported the loser—had forfeited their lives. The loyal survivors had thereafter enjoyed many years of free breeding.
    The thought of all that coiled and brooding Dragon energy troubled d’Vashti. Someday the Dragons might grow even more ambitious. The Moktar Dragons could easily crush the much weaker Vampires; both