As it happened, the north gate was open, and the guards on duty rather pointedly ignored them as they approached. They rode through the gate and a short way down the road before they stopped, pausing in the open field several hundred yards beyond the city wall.
"Where will you go from here?" Solveig asked.
"North, following the dragons," Thelvyn explained.
"Meaning that your plans are always subject to the will of the Immortals," she observed.
"I've always ended up exactly where I was supposed to be, often in spite of my best efforts to do otherwise."
"You're starting to sound like a real cleric," she told him. "You trust completely in your patron, I suppose."
"Not at all," he said. "Whatever qualities I possess, devotion has never been one of them. I've just learned to do what's expected of me because I know I'll have to eventually anyway. I'm stuck with the job and all the enemies that go with it."
"You sound as if you've given up."
"Not in the least. I've simply weighed what I want against the price, and I'm willing to continue."
"Now that I'm starting to think of you as a dragon, I'm beginning to see I've never really understood you," Solveig said, then turned to Sir George. "I know this is a waste of breath, but try to keep Thelvyn out of trouble."
Solveig returned home alone, while the others followed the main road northward. They were well beyond Braejr by sunrise, but they found travel slower than they had expected after that, since they chose to avoid the villages and farms as well as any travelers they met along the road. The only way to manage that was to leave the road altogether at times and travel within the woods, often leading their horses for miles around the edges of fields.
There were a great many travelers on the road, with so much to be done to bring the Highlands back to normal now that the dragons were gone. Soldiers who had come to the defense of Braejr were now returning to their garrisons throughout the realm. Families who had evacuated their farms were returning, and traders were moving slowly back into the north.
Thelvyn hardly noticed, riding in a deep silence that Sir George mistook for brooding. The old knight did what he could to lighten the mood, singing tavern songs and telling terrible or outrageous jokes. But his concern was wasted; Thelvyn wasn't really upset by anything that had happened. Instead, his mind was exploring his life, recalling everything that he had ever found out about himself. He regretted that he had never fulfilled his long-cherished dream to return to his own people, filled with a sense of belonging and the delight of discovery.
Because their first day had begun at such an early hour, they stopped well before nightfall in a hidden clearing in the woods across the Aalban River from Braastar, although the city was so far east of the river that it couldn't be seen. Thelvyn had been riding Cadence, the same horse he had ridden when he went to the frontier with the Highlands army. The powerful war-horse was holding up well, and Sellianda's elvish horse seemed tireless. But the long hours on the road had left their packhorse much in need of a good rest.
"Do you want to start the fire or tend the horses?" Sir George asked.
1 "I'll have you know that I'm the Dragonlord and the King of the Flaemish Realm," Thelvyn replied, although he was already stripping the weary pack horse of its gear.
The next day of riding brought them into the frontier. These northern lands were wilder and less inhabited, and the travelers were able to make better time because the local farms and villages were more widely spaced and there were few other travelers on the road. They crossed the bridge over the Aalban River at the town of Traagen at dusk that night.
They were now entering the deep pine forests of the frontier, land where Thelvyn had been born. He would have liked to stay that night at a comfortable inn, especially since there were pockets of storms wandering across the valley, and he was sure his companions felt the same way. But they knew there was nowhere in the Highlands they could stay without being recognized. Even though it was late, they rode on through the darkness until they had passed well beyond the fields around the town and reentered the forest.
Once they were well north of Traagen, they were able to find a secluded place to camp in the forest a short distance from the side of the road. Sir George started a campfire immediately, and he had begun preparing their dinner before Thelvyn and Sellianda had finished with the horses. Dusk was fading by that time, and the first stars appeared through the breaks in the trees overhead as the sky turned dark. A storm flashed with lightning as it moved through the rugged foothills many miles to the west; Thelvyn had forgotten about the summer storms hereabouts, but overhead the sky was mostly clear, and he thought they had no
need to be concerned that night.
"Do we keep going north?" Sir George inquired.
"Our path leads north and west, as far as the roads will take us," Sellianda explained. "We will be going over the mountains into Wendar, to a place called Shadowmere."
"Are you going to stay with us all the way?" Thelvyn asked. "Now that we're out in the wilderness, I expect Kharendaen to join us any time now."
Sellianda frowned. "Will you take a walk with me?"
She took him by the hand and led him away into the forest. As dark as it was, they could both see well enough to make their way through the trees. Thelvyn knew this was a difficult time for Sellianda. Soon Kharendaen would join them, and then the female elf cleric would return to her home at the elvish sanctuary of Silvermist, in the distant forests of Alfheim. After a hundred yards or so, they came to another opening amidst the trees.
"Sellianda, I don't want you to think I'm in a hurry to be rid of you," he assured her. "I was only wondering if it was wise to delay the inevitable. Your duty does not permit you to remain with me much longer, and I doubt you want to remain in the company of a dragon."
"Kharendaen is also a dragon," Sellianda reminded him.
"Is that what's wrong? Are you jealous of her, just because we're both dragons?"
"I think you are very fond of her, and you have missed her very much."
"Yes, I have missed her," he admitted. "More than I would have ever expected. But until you mentioned it, I never once thought it was anything more than a close companionship of two friends who have shared a great many experiences together. It never occurred to me to look upon her as anything more. If Sir George is correct, that a dragon will always recognize another one, then I realize now that she must have always known what I was. But I can't guess what she might have thought."
"She loves you very much, and that has made her afraid to return," Sellianda told him. "She cannot guess how you will react to a dragon who loves you."
Thelvyn considered that briefly. "I think I would consider myself very fortunate. But what about you?"
"I am no longer concerned for myself," she said. "You see, I am Kharendaen."
For a moment, Thelvyn hardly understood what she meant. She stepped away from him to the center of the clearing, then turned to face him. A sudden flare of brilliant white light enveloped her form, so that all he could see was her figure outlined in black against the brilliant white of the radiance. She made a sudden movement like the spring of a cat, and as she did, the dark form within the core of light shifted, flowing and expanding to become that of a young dragon, lean and graceful. The glare of light faded, and suddenly Kharendaen stood before him, her wings half-furled. She brought her head forward and rubbed her nose gently against his chest in the old familiar gesture that he had missed so much. He rubbed her muzzle.
"Among dragons, that is a gesture of affection between lovers," she explained. "It may have been presumptuous of me, but until now you did not know its meaning, and it has helped me to wait until we could become even closer."
"It's so good to be with you again," he told her gently. "I only wonder if we can dare to assume that we'll always be together now."
"I cannot say," Kharendaen replied. "But if we must wait until there is no uncertainty, then we will never be together.
Let us enjoy whatever time we have. Now we must return before Sir George begins to feel our absence is unseemly. I do not wish to endure his comments."
Thelvyn knew she was right. Kharendaen changed form once again, but this time her appearance was not in the form of the elf Sellianda but one more like his own. She was nearly as tall as he, with thick, black hair'and large, dark eyes. Somehow she reminded him of Kharendaen.
"You must understand that there is no Sellianda; there is only Kharendaen," she told him as they walked back to the camp. "Sellianda was not a separate person so much as a convenience, a guise to keep the elves of Alfheim from being concerned that there were dragons in the service of the Great One living among them. I was hesitant to allow you to become too close to me as Sellianda because I have always known that we are both dragons."
"But I thought Sellianda was a cleric of Terra," Thelvyn said. "Then again, I recall you telling me long ago that Terra and the Great One were closely allied at one time, and that they remain close even yet. I also recall someone once telling me there are elvish clerics of the Great One."
"That is so," she replied. "Silvermist, where we first met, is in fact a sanctuary of the Great One, not of Terra. I have always served the Great One."
Sir George had dinner ready by the time they returned. The old knight noticed that Kharendaen had changed her form, but as a dragonkin, he had always known her true identity whatever form she assumed.
"Well, I like what you've done with your appearance," he remarked. "The only problem is, now you look like Thelvyn's sister."
*****
Kharendaen wasn't as much help in finding their way through the mountains as they had hoped. She knew this land well from her childhood, but her familiarity was limited to flight. A dragon flying over the mountains would be looking for great ridges and towering cliffs to deflect and direct the winds she would ride. She knew very little about trails and passes that might lead them to the other side of the mountains, and she wasn't certain there were many trails to be found anyway. The Flaem had always stayed south of the mountains, and the elves of Wendar had always remained to the north. Very few people ever ventured among the mountains themselves.
The best the young cleric could do was to assume her dragon form and fly ahead, scouting out the best path. But she soon became increasingly reluctant to leave her companions. Dragons were watching their every move, as many as six or eight of them, maintaining a discreet distance in the heights as they passed among the valleys and high meadows. Thelvyn had wondered whether or not the dragons considered that his dispute with them settled, but unless they actually attacked him, there wasn't much he could do about it. Certainly they were well aware he was still the Dragonlord.
"They'll leave us alone once we reach Shadowmere, won't they?" Thelvyn asked when they stopped that night. In the distance, they could see the fires of the dragons' camps burning in the darkness.
Kharendaen looked worried. "If you are thinking that they would not dare violate the Great One's sanctuary, then you should know that they have done it once before. When the rogue dragons first learned of the prophecy of the return of the Dragonlord, they descended upon Shadowmere in force to slay you before you were even born. The sanctuary has remained abandoned to this day."
"Marthaen told me about that," he said pensively.
"The Great One had already warned your mother," Kharendaen continued. "She escaped into the mountains, and they followed her as she fled south all the way to the village where you were born. When she was wounded, the Great One intervened as much as he could by deceiving the rogue dragons with a false image so that they left her to search farther south."
"I always wondered why they never came back," Sir George remarked.
"I am not certain that they intend us any harm," Kharendaen said. "But I can understand why they are curious. They are waiting to find out what the future holds for them."
Indeed, the dragons seemed to have no interest in interfering with their journey, but they were careful to keep the Dragonlord in sight at all times. Kharendaen informed them that she expected that they would be coming down from the mountains into Wendar by the end of the next day, although she could not be absolutely certain of that without flying on ahead to check the distance. Later that morning, they topped a high pass and could see the lines of ridges and hills of the Wendarian Range falling away before them, eventually fading into the green tide of the deep forests of Wendar.
Kharendaen indicated a place almost directly ahead of
them, where a great pocket of forest lay encircled in the lower arms of the mountains. This was the Foxwoods, she explained, the location of the sanctuary of Shadowmere. A second large area of forest lay entrapped by the mountains just to the east of that, barely visible from where they stood, while a long spur of the Wendarian Range stretched to the west of the Foxwoods. It was still many miles distant, and they had some rough terrain to cross before they got there.
Standing atop the high pass, where they could see for great distances along the range of mountains, they were able to see dragons in every direction, gliding alone or in small groups all along the line of the Wendarian Range. There were probably no more than two dozen in all, and yet that many dragons in one relatively small segment of the wilderness was unheard of. Thelvyn was beginning to wonder if they were going to try to prevent him from reaching Shadowmere, as if that would somehow defeat the prophecy. Kharendaen couldn't deny that possibility.
Storms began to gather in the mountains by early afternoon, slowing their travel in the wind and rain before finally forcing them to make an early camp for the night. They were coming down from the mountains rather quickly by that time, and the edge of the Foxwoods was not many miles ahead. The next day the dragons seemed determined to make their journey difficult, or at least disconcerting. Mostly young reds, the dragons repeatedly flew low over their heads to make the horses shy, or else circled tightly overhead.
Kharendaen was becoming frustrated with the situation by the middle of the afternoon, and she had been contemplating for some time whether she should return to her true form and chase away the young rogues. The dragons knew who she was and respected her, but more and more dragons were watching and following from a distance as their journey continued.
After a time, Thelvyn hardly even noticed the dragons anymore. He was becoming filled with a sense of urgency. He was concerned about the intentions of the dragons but he did not fear them, nor did he feel driven by them to seek
the safety of Shadowmere. Although this had never happened to him before, he knew that he had been called. The Great One had summoned him here to the Foxwoods, and somehow he knew he had to be there by nightfall. By late afternoon, they passed into the deep forests of the Fox-woods, although they still had a journey of a couple of hours ahead of them before they reached Shadowmere.
There was something familiar and comforting about this hidden place deep in the cool shadows of the immense trees. Kharendaen had led him here without explanation, and he had never questioned her choice. He had never considered himself much of a cleric, but for once he had to trust the guidance of the Immortals. There was nothing more he could do for himself.
Kharendaen had assumed her Eldar form when they entered the forest, and it was she who led the way. The afternoon was fading quietly into evening, and the shadows were lengthening in the depths of the forest when they came at last around the open end of the ring of hills and rode into the sanctuary of Shadowmere. Thelvyn paused a moment to look about, since this was the first time that he had ever seen a place built by dragons. The sanctuary was a rustic structure, built of great, solid timbers of dark wood, its heavy doors barred and its windows tightly shuttered. Great drifts of leaves mounded against the structure's sides. The immense proportions of the sanctuary left Thelvyn feeling small and insignificant.
Only the stables and other parts of the building apparently reserved for the elvish clerics of the Great One were of a size more familiar to him. They led thei
r horses to the stables at the east end of the sprawling stone structure, tending to the beasts quickly before they moved to the main hall of the sanctuary.
Kharendaen performed a spell to bring the magic lamps to life the moment she stepped inside the hall, although the dim glow did little to brighten the depths of the massive chamber. Sir George hurried to light a fire in the huge hearth along one outside wall. They kept their packs beside them as they settled before the fire to wait.
They had ridden mosdy in silence that day, but now they
all shared the same sense of anticipation. Thelvyn sat alone at the edge of the ring of light from the fire while Sir George prepared their dinner.
"Do you know what's going to happen?" he heard the old knight ask quietly.
"I'm not certain," Kharendaen had to admit. "I spoke with the Great One here before I left for Braejr, and I'm very afraid."
"For him?"
"For us," she explained. "The Great One is regaining his former powers. He told me that the time of the Dragonlord is coming to an end, and that I would soon be serving the new Dragonking."
"That should make the dragons happy," Sir George commented wryly.
"Unfortunately, the dragons do not know about any of this," she said. "All they know is that they no longer fear the Dragonlord. They have foreseen what is likely to happen here at Shadowmere, and they mean to be at hand when the Dragonlord becomes vulnerable."
Thelvyn sat in silence, seeming not to listen. He wasn't particularly concerned for his own safety. There was hardly any need for the dragons to fight him now; he had always served as well as he could, and if he was asked to do so, then he would surrender the enchanted armor and cease to be the Dragonlord. But he felt certain that the time of his service was not yet at an end, that his role as champion of the dragons was only just beginning. He thought he knew why he was here. There was one thing he had to have before he could continue his service.
The time of the summons came several hours later, near the middle of the night. Thelvyn had been leaning back against his pack while Kharendaen slept in his arms, but she awoke suddenly and rose to her feet. She stepped out into the middle of the room, returning to her true dragon form before hurrying to settle herself into the saddle that she had left during her previous visit here. Thelvyn had summoned the armor of the Dragonlord, then removed the helmet and teleported it into safekeeping. He didn't expect he would need the armor for protection; it served more as a
D& D - Mystara 02 Dragonking of Mystara Page 40
