He blinked and shook himself dry, glancing over his shoulder to see Kharendaen approaching. There was no sign of the metal warrior, which was probably lying on its back at the bottom of the river. It seemed to be making no effort to free itself. The Masters were apparently resigned to leave it where it was for now, perhaps finding it impossible to direct their warrior precisely from such a distance. Kharendaen landed in the field a moment later and hurried over to inspect his singed armor.
"I would not have missed that for anything," she remarked as she folded away her wings, then moved closer to his side. "Are you well?"
"I seem to be," he assured her. "It doesn't hurt anymore."
"I will tend to your damage when I can," she said. "Marthaen reports that he will be ready to command the full
power of the Radiance any minute now."
"Not a moment too soon," Thelvyn commented. "Tell him, if possible, to close all the worldgates in the Highlands that he can locate."
Kharendaen nodded. "I will tell him at once."
She turned and spread her wings, lunging twice across the field before leaping into flight to return quickly to the city. Thelvyn turned back to the east, watching the dragons as they continued to chase the Masters back toward the northeast. Many of them were now many miles away, darting back and forth after the persistent gemstone dragons each time they tried to turn back. But Jherdar had wisely kept a large part of his forces near the city, at least a hundred, where they were available to help the Dragonking if he was forced to fight the metal warrior. Thelvyn stepped out to the bank of the river, lifted his long neck, and took a deep breath, as if he were about to release a tremendous blast of flame.
"Jherdar!" he called as loudly as he could, which turned out to be a great deal louder than he had expected. He had never had cause to use his full voice as a dragon.
The nearest dragons turned sharply at the sound of his voice and stared. Thelvyn suspected that he had been heard halfway to Braastar. Then one of the large red dragons turned and began to fly swiftly toward him, crossing the distance quickly. Jherdar circled tightly over the river and landed in the field, folding away his wings before he bowed to the Dragonking.
"Marthaen will engage the full power of the Radiance any moment now," Thelvyn explained quickly. "Things are going to turn bad for the Masters very soon now, and they are going to have to flee. We're going to try to close their gates here in the Highlands. I need you to have a force of dragons ready to follow them when they retreat. Hunt down as many of them as you can, but don't kill all of them."
"Why not?" Jherdar asked. "If we allow some of them to escape, why bother to close the gates?"
"I'm very interested in discovering where they go," Thelvyn said. "I suspect they have a large base somewhere in the western wilderness where no one dwells, and the Masters might flee in that direction. Find it for me if you can, but try not to let them know you're following them. With any luck, the next move will be to our advantage."
"It will be done," Jherdar promised. He was agreeable now that he understood the reason for such plans. "Am I to follow the Masters myself when they flee?"
"Yes. I'll be ready to assume command of our main forces when you leave."
Jherdar bowed again before he left, returning quickly to the dragons scattered in the sky east of the river. He called the nearest dragons to join him, landing in the fields east of the river so that he could divide them into companies and give them their orders. Thelvyn watched them from a distance. He had decided that he should stay close to the metal warrior in case it tried to pull itself from the river before the Radiance could be used to overcome the will of the Masters. So far, he had yet to see any sign of movement from the place where it had disappeared into the dark water.
A moment later Thelvyn was caught by surprise when the dragon sorcerers engaged the full power of the Radiance. He had never experienced such a wash of latent magic, moving rapidly outward from its source like a sudden blast of wind. If dragons had hair, his would have been standing on end. Across the river, Jherdar immediately launched the dragons into the sky and led them quickly to the north, rising steeply with long, powerful strokes of their wings. They turned as a group to fly swiftly toward the north, rushing to attack the invaders during the first minutes of confusion after the will of the Masters was broken.
Thelvyn waited as long as he dared, knowing that he needed to be with the rest of dragons in Jherdar's absence. Suddenly he saw Kharendaen flying swiftly from the city to join him. She didn't bother to land but circled him tightly, and he understood that he was to join her in flight. A few moments later, they were flying side by side only a few miles behind the ranks of the fighting dragons.
"Marthaen promises that the dragon sorcerers can maintain the Radiance at this intensity for as long as you need them to," she reported. "If fact, they will have to use nearly this much power for the foreseeable future to keep the Highlands secure.
But he says we will have to determine how much the influence of the Masters has been broken."
"As long as the Flaem are protected from their control and that metal beast remains in the river, we'll be fine," Thelvyn said. "If we can count on that much, we can chase the gemstone dragons right out of the Highlands."
Thelvyn was still concerned that the Masters might have some deadly defenses or traps at their strongholds in Braastar or near the old worldgate. This was the main reason he had been reluctant to face them on their own ground from the start. He couldn't count on the power of the Radiance to counteract any such traps. He was determined to be the first to enter their strongholds, so that he might be able to detect and disable any nasty surprises left by the Masters before his dragons got into trouble.
Jherdar had planned his counterattack well. Leading his force of dragons swiftly northward, he sent a quarter of his dragons to deal with the invading army while the rest continued on toward Braastar. With the collapse of the power that commanded their will, the many strange races of slave warriors were turning on their former Masters, forcing the gemstone dragons to retreat from their own armies. Those that had remained on the ground rose into the air just in time to flee desperately before the fury of the army of dragons. Some were trapped as they tried to climb into the sky, forced down under the weight of an overwhelming number of attackers and slain on the ground. Still other gemstone dragons found themselves overtaken in flight by the swifter gold and red dragons, finally giving up their hopeless flight to turn on the pursuing dragons for a last desperate fight.
Once the gemstone dragons had fled, many of the former slaves of their invading army were now either too interested in fighting each other or escaping into the wilderness to care about the attacking dragons. Still others welcomed the Dragonking and his warriors as their rescuers. The dragons Jherdar had left behind to deal with the invaders were mostly concerned with breaking up fights between different factions of the invading army, hunting down those who had fled into the forest.
The main body of the army of the dragons flew as swiftly as they could toward Braastar, only to find that the Masters had already been forced to abandon the city and the enslaved Flaem had turned against them. Leaving behind a small force to help secure the city, Jherdar led his remaining fighting dragons into the east, toward the stronghold near the worldgate, where he expected the Masters to stand and fight. Thelvyn had been thinking the same thing, which was why he hurried to arrive ahead of the dragons and probe the defenses of the invaders. But his concern proved to be needless.
When he came to the wild lands east of Braastar, he was surprised to find a seared, smoking area of blasted ground where the old worldgate had been. The stronghold of the Masters was shattered and burning. Marthaen had directed the full power of the Radiance against the worldgates, blocking the retreat of the Masters. Apparently the power used to destroy the gates had been far greater than anyone had expected, and the destruction of the gates had been devastatingly violent. The Masters themselves, more than a score in all, were ci
rcling warily, but they turned to flee to the west when Thelvyn and Kharendaen approached.
The gemstone dragons were not as swift as the true dragons, and many were overtaken and slain as they tried desperately to flee. Only a couple of dozen that had accompanied their army had escaped to join the score or so that had survived the annihilation of the stronghold. These were all that remained of at least two hundred gemstone dragons that had invaded the Highlands. Cut off by the destruction of the nearest gates, the Masters turned and fled swiftly to the northwest, just as Thelvyn had expected. Jherdar followed, leading a couple hundred of his own dragons in pursuit.
Once again Thelvyn had waited until he seemed to have a clear advantage, and once again the Masters had been forced to flee after a brief battle. But Thelvyn's problems were far from over. While the Masters had left behind an army in their haste, this time their army was not being forced to fight to its inevitable destruction. Suddenly he had to deal with a main army north of Braejr and a secondary force at Braastar, well over sixty thousand beings of numerous races, some not even remotely human, who were now eager to join the fight against their former masters. The only problem was that, like the Flaem, they did not dare leave the Highlands and the protection of the Radiance.
For now, at least, the Flaem were happy to have a well-sup-plied army on hand to help protect their homelands, and Solveig was already arranging for them to be given land to settle in the eastern and far northern portions of the realm. Of course, Thelvyn hadn't forgotten the natural Flaemish suspicion of foreigners, which he had endured often himself. He suspected they would be less willing to have people from various off-world races sharing their land once the threat of war was past. His only comfort was knowing that the problem would be left for someone else to resolve, probably Solveig White-Gold.
There was considerable celebration in Braejr that evening when Thelvyn and Kharendaen returned to the city with news that the Masters had either been destroyed or had fled into the wilderness. He could appreciate the relief of the Flaem, who had been living in fear not only of conquest but also of enslavement. Those who had already been evacuated to the south would be returning the next day, and the people who had fled Braastar were eager to go home again. Thelvyn regretted how much the city of Braastar had suffered in the invasion, for there had been much damage by fire and the Masters had looted the city.
Of course, few people even knew about the existence of the Radiance. The general assumption was that the powers employed by the dragon sorcerers had been their own. It seemed best that the Radiance should remain a secret, so that people of other lands would not someday be tempted to try to invade the Highlands to capture it for themselves. The only way to protect that secret was to continue to allow most people to believe that the dragon sorcerers alone, under the guidance of the Dragonking, had been responsible for vanquishing the will of the Masters. Alessa Vyledaar was somewhat annoyed at having to allow the dragons to take the full credit, but she had to admit that it was better than revealing the secrets of the Radiance.
Now that the invasion of the Highlands seemed to be settled, Thelvyn was already thinking ahead to the next problem. Every time that he had fought and defeated the Masters, they had responded quickly and in even greater strength than before. This time was no different. He knew that they would strike again, and soon. His problem now was anticipating their next move, and he needed more information before he could guess what it might be. Fortunately Jherdar returned early that night, having pursued the surviving gemstone dragons as far as he could. Thelvyn quickly called together his chief advisors to meet with him in the lair at Solveig's house.
"I was not able to learn all the answers you would have liked," Jherdar began, pausing as he devoured a roasted haunch of elk that had been brought for him. "We followed the Masters who fled into the wilderness of the northwest until we were perhaps a couple hours west of Wendar. I had my fastest golds and young red dragons after them, so the gemstone dragons had to push themselves hard to stay ahead. But then we began to see other gemstone dragons coming toward us, more than we could hope to fight."
"More of them?" Thelvyn asked. He was trying to maintain his dignity while Kharendaen rubbed oil into the scorched armor on his lower back and rump, having already washed him thoroughly in the court outside the lair a short time earlier.
"At least another hundred, probably more," the red dragon said. "I followed as long as I dared, trying to discover where they were coming from, but I never saw anything."
"At least we know they must have a base somewhere in that direction," Sir George observed. "It might have been only a few miles ahead."
"I've learned all that I hoped to at this time," Thelvyn said. "There is a vast area west of Wendar and the Highlands where few seldom go, not even many dragons, and all the kingdoms of dragons in that region have long since been summoned to war in the east. I was fairly certain the Masters had a stronghold there somewhere."
"What good does it do them?" Solveig asked. "You don't fortify a stronghold if you never expect the enemy to come."
"The Masters have some very serious problems to solve before their plans of conquest can proceed," Thelvyn said, although he seemed mostly to be thinking aloud. "They didn't expect the dragons to fight them. They didn't expect me to be a serious problem. They didn't expect the Flaem to fight them, and they thought the Radiance could be easily taken, and now both are lost. Now they have to deal with me and with the dragons, and they have to stop losing battles. Obviously there aren't enough gemstone dragons to take on the dragons directly, or they would have done that by now."
"How do you think they expect to fight us effectively?" Marthaen asked. "The only thing that seemed to work for them was that metal monster."
Thelvyn stared at the ground for a long moment while he considered that carefully. "They have two options. If they can, they might try constant, random attacks everywhere at once and divide our strength. Or they can assemble everything they have to throw at us, even if they must empty the resources of their own world, and force us into a battle we cannot win. I suspect that the second plan is the more likely one. I have to know, and I must have that answer now."
Sir George frowned. "You mean to find that stronghold of theirs, don't you?"
Marthaen lifted his ears in alarm. "You must not take such a risk. I can find dragon scouts willing to take that chance. They could plant elvish scouts as close to their hidden stronghold as possible, as we have done here in the Highlands."
"You are forgetting that I am still the Dragonlord," Thelvyn said. "As a dragon, I have the speed to avoid their metal warriors. As the Dragonlord, I can hold my own against any number of the Masters."
No one was happy with such a plan, but there was no dissuading Thelvyn. His best hope of an effective reconnaissance of the secret stronghold of the Mastfers was to go alone, getting in and back out again as quickly as he could. He agreed to allow Kharendaen and several of his bodyguards to accompany him partway. Once he had made his plans, he dismissed his companions for a well-earned night of rest. He thanked them all for their efforts as they filed out the door of the lair into the yard.
"You need rest more than anyone right now," Solveig told him. "We're still trying to find you a virgin or two, if you still want them. Do they taste better?"
"I have no idea," Thelvyn said, frowning fiercely. "I haven't had a virgin recently."
Kharendaen put on a very innocent expression. "I have."
"Oh, enough," Thelvyn declared. "Is this any way to show respect for the Dragonking?"
"Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the ancient prophecies of the dragons," Marthaen remarked. "Thus it was said: 'Verily shall you know the true Dragonking, for he shall be the butt of many jokes.' "
After a good laugh, the others all left. Marthaen was about to depart as well when Thelvyn asked him to wait a moment. "I haven't forgotten that you are still the First Speaker of the parliament, or that you are the lord of your own kingdom of dragons. And I certainly
haven't forgotten how capable you proved yourself to be as a leader last year. Perhaps it has seemed that I have usurped your authority, but I do not claim power for its own sake."
"You are the Dragonking, chosen by the Great One to lead us," Marthaen assured him. "You have done things to lead and protect the dragons that I could never do. Do not forget that you have called upon me to support you from the first, or that you turned to me to find a way to drive the Masters from the Highlands when you could not. I am content with my role."
"Perhaps I am concerned that you should remain content," Thelvyn admitted. "As much as you have done, this war is far from over. If you or Jherdar should come to begrudge me your support, we are doomed."
"You must never fear that my support will waver," the older dragon said. "I believe the trust and support you have from all the dragons is absolute. They have seen that the Masters are an enemy that will destroy them if they are not entirely committed to this fight. As for Jherdar, he is happy as long as he has enemies to slay. I think that you have taught even the red dragons the value of being patient and wise."
"The dragons have always been wise," Thelvyn remarked. "Their problem has always been that they forget their wisdom when it matters most. I have never understood that."
"Perhaps you have never been angry or frightened enough," Marthaen said. "A frightened or angry dragon knows only what it feels, and the most basic instincts seems like wisdom. That is why I feel you should not try to fight all the battles and take all the risks yourself in your need to protect your people. Do not forget that, above all else, you are our only hope to defeat the Masters. Do not risk unnecessarily the weapon that the Great One has prepared for us for our defense."
Thelvyn took that advice very much to heart. He had to admit to himself that his inclination was always to do anything he could to protect the dragons and take the greatest risks himself. He still believed that the greatest risks were his to take, simply because he possessed the greatest ability to defend himself. If nothing else, he could always retreat into the armor of the Dragonlord, which left him invulnerable to nearly any attack.
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