The Dragons lh-6

by Douglas Niles

  “Aye, my friend,” Silvanos agreed, his golden eyes keen as they studied Aurican. “What does that mean to you?”

  “Simply that spell magic resides in the realms of the gods… that if we want to fight the power of sorcery, we shall have to seek powers of our own-powers that come from the gods.”

  “But not from the Abyss…” The golden-haired elf spoke with certainty.

  “No… no, of course not.” Auri’s manner was breezy.

  Silvanos held up a hand. “There are others, perhaps, who can help. Do not be alarmed by their appearance, for they travel under our protection.”

  Three elves, a trio of lithe but apparently elderly males, advanced into the clearing. Except for the colors of their robes, which were red, black, and white, respectively, the three might have been mirror images of each other. Each had long hair of iron gray, and they regarded the quartet with dark eyes that flashed with curiosity and something else.

  The black-robed elf hung back, his gaze glaring with almost physical brightness, while the two in white and red took hesitant steps forward, bowing, regarding the transformed dragons with inscrutable expressions.

  “I present Fayal Padran and Parys Dayl,” murmured Silvanos, indicating the elves in red and white, respectively. The dark-garbed figure in the back stared silently. “And Kayn Wytsnall as well.”

  “Welcome to our humble fire,” Dar offered.

  “These are elves who would be mages. They have studied the ways of the gods.” Silvanos stood and gestured the trio forward to the fire.

  “We have already lived longer than most of our kind,” cautioned red-robed Fayal Padran, raising a hand that was tipped with unusually long, slender fingers.

  “How have you done this?” asked Aurican in honest curiosity.

  “More pointedly, why are you here?” Darlantan interjected, fearing that his cousin might be about to embark on a long and pointless conversation.

  It was Kayn Wytsnall, the elf in black, who replied.

  “We are here because we have devoted our lives to the quest for magic-to bring the power of sorcery and spellcasting back to Krynn. Now it would seem that there is magic to be gained, and we have an idea where to look.”

  “And where is that?” pressed Aurican excitedly. He felt a strong affinity for these elves who would be wizards, Dar could tell.

  “We have assembled the wisest men and elves to help us answer that question.” Parys Dayl took over the explanation. His manner was easy, and the white robe swirled like smoke from his arms as he gestured expansively. “For years, priests have meditated, sages researched…”

  “And you have learned the answer?” Auri probed gently.

  “We have learned that we shall have to seek from the gods themselves. But here we are limited, for we cannot look to the Platinum Father, nor the Queen of Darkness. They are the mighty gods who have chosen to withhold magic from the world, and they would be hostile to our pleas.”

  “Where, then?” demanded Darlantan.

  The white robe replied, directing his dark and intense gaze exclusively at Aurican. “We believe the gods who might be more sympathetic to our… request can be reached, but to do so will require a long flight-a journey into realms beyond our world. That is why Silvanos suggested we speak to you.”

  “Yes… perhaps I could carry you. This is a quest I have always longed to undertake.”

  “It was our hope that you would feel this way,” Parys Dayl said.

  When his cousin turned to regard him, Darlantan had the distinct feeling he was looking into the face of the massive golden serpent, though Auri was still in the form of the elven sage. He knew, too, that Aurican had made up his mind with certain finality.

  “We may be gone for a long time. Until we return, the cause of our vengeance will fall to you. Are you prepared?”

  For a long time, Darlantan was silent. He wondered, hoped, thought about the future and the past. The silver dragon was ready to carry the war against the serpents of the Dark Queen, and he knew that he could exact revenge.

  He was less certain about Aurican’s quest. For all of his life, the gold dragon had spoken of gaining magic, of returning the power of sorcery to the peoples of Krynn. Yet now, when he considered the task, it seemed like an impossible deed. Still, there was the presence of magic in the evil dragons, and suddenly Darlantan could only hope that Aurican and the three brother mages were right: With the help of gods, spell magic could be brought to Krynn.

  “Aye, my cousin.”

  Darlantan felt a quickening of hope as Aurican once again shimmered and grew, uncoiling across the top of the little knoll. The golden neck lowered, and the three mages climbed aboard, resting securely in the hollow between the gold dragon’s shoulders. With a powerful, graceful leap, Aurican took to the air, and Silvanos, the wild elf, and the silver dragon watched until the fliers had vanished into the gathering dusk.

  Chapter 11

  Silver Death

  3488–3480 PC

  The ogre’s face was lined with sweat, and be wiped a burly paw across his forehead, casting a spray of salty drops into the dense bushes beside the winding pathway. Behind him, a file of similar brutes, panting and dust-covered warriors clearly weary from a long march, plodded listlessly along the trail. Frustration and fatigue pervaded the air, rising like a stench from the mute, shuffling ogres.

  This was the spearhead of a vast army, but for many weeks, the weary brutes had been embarked on a fruitless campaign against an invisible woodland foe. They had found one elven camp, long abandoned, but had encountered none of the sylvan warriors who were their quarry. Now, bored and apathetic, the brutish troops plodded listlessly through the summer heat.

  A braying cry rang through the woods, like the sudden call of some trumpet-billed bird. Then the sound was repeated, and again, with a force that made clear this was no winged creature of the forest. The ogre halted, growling suspiciously as his eyes peered into the shadows. Movement slashed across his vision, too quick for the brute to recognize, but then he looked down and grunted in surprise.

  A short arrow jutted from his chest. Another of the shafts struck him in the belly, and two more in the neck. With a gurgling, choking cry, the lead ogre fell face first onto the path.

  Other ogres charged past the corpse of their comrade, bronze swords upraised. Three of the monsters advanced abreast, growling and snapping at the dense foliage, until a hailstorm of arrows greeted them. Death showered silently from the woods, slaying the trio, more arrows striking the brutes that were farther back in the file.

  Then the wild elves were everywhere, attacking in answer to the sound of the ram’s horn. Axes chopped and spears jabbed as the painted braves swarmed from the woods on both sides of the trail, striking ogres in their sagging gullets or muscled backs, slashing necks and hamstrings with quick, deadly blows. Shouts and cries from ogre and elf mingled with the clatter of blows, the deadly din of battle.

  In seconds, the veteran ogre company dissolved into chaos. Those brutes still alive and unwounded turned toward the rear, stampeding down the path in a bellowing mass of terror. The wild elves killed those who fled too slowly, but showed little eagerness to press the pursuit. Soon the ogres who led the rout-those who had been at the rear of the marching column-slowed their pace to a shambling trot. The immediate threat was past, they sensed.

  Until they came around a bend and found a massive, silver serpent coiled in their path. The lumbering ogres came to an abrupt halt, but before they could reverse their course, a blast of frost swirled from the gaping jaws. Icy air wilted the trees and slew the monstrous troops in a gusty wave of frigid death.

  When the last of the ogres had been slain, the silver form shifted as Darlantan assumed the white-bearded body of the sage. Wild elves emerged from the brush and gathered around, looking at the frozen corpses littering the forest floor.

  “It was a good trap,” Kagonos announced approvingly as the wild elves gathered around the dragon in the depths of the fore
st clearing. “My braves counted more than a hundred slain, versus none of our own warriors.”

  “That is indeed good news,” Darlantan said, momentarily wearied by the weight of wartime memories.

  For many winters since the departure of Aurican, the elves had remained in the deepest woods, harassing the ogres who dared to penetrate into those forest homes, hiding from the chromatic dragons beneath the overwhelming canopy of trees. A long period of wet seasons prevented the drying that would have allowed the ogres to burn entire forests away, and the elves continued to take their toll among the enemy invaders. Kagonos himself led many sudden strikes, his painted Elderwild warriors appeared from the woods like apparitions, slaying ogres, pillaging treasure and supplies, then vanishing into the forest pathways.

  Sometimes Darlantan joined in these strikes in the guise of a lean elven warrior. He fought using his hands or elven weapons, killing ogres with the stab of a spear or the twist of his powerful fingers. Often he employed a great, jagged-edged longsword that he had claimed from a slain enemy. There was no counting the number of brutish ogres who had been fatally gashed by that implacable blade.

  During these years, Darlantan camped with Kagonos and his braves, stalking under the trees, using his sensitive nostrils and hearing to aid the wild elves in their seeking of prey and enemies. Of course, the keen senses of the elves were nearly as fine as his own, and Darlantan had grown used to young Elderwild braves calling his attention to a nearby doe or alerting him to the surreptitious movement of an enemy column.

  Still, the elves accepted this strange warrior, followed him as he killed on his relentless quest for vengeance. Darlantan devised intricate ambushes, attacks that inflicted great damage on the foe while protecting the braves of the tribe. Leading these assaults with reckless abandon, the silver dragon in elven guise would strike hard, kill many ogres, then vanish before the brutish warriors could organize a counterattack.

  At other times, Darlantan assumed his natural form and took his war to the dragons of the Dark Queen. He prepared ambushes of his own, and since Aurican’s departure he had killed serpents of blue and black, of green and white. He became a mighty dragonslayer, vengeful and swift, attacking with power, speed, and implacable determination to surprise and confound the enemy serpents. He remained always alert, ready to foil even a teleporting dragon from making a surprise attack, and word of his deadly presence spread rapidly through the ranks of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.

  Always he hoped to strike at red Crematia, but that wily and hateful serpent consistently avoided the silver dragon’s traps. Instead, she left for Darlantan many signs of her destruction, cities and villages and towns of elvenkind laid to waste. She delighted in the slaughter of whole herds of livestock. After selecting a few morsels for her own feast, she inevitably incinerated the rest of the hapless beasts with an expulsion of her hellish breath.

  Still, in return, Darlantan laid waste to many an ogre’s lair, becoming a scourge of the clans, viewed with every bit as much abhorrence by his enemies as the elves regarded Crematia and her villainous kin-dragons. He blasted marching columns of the brutes with his frosty breath, collapsed the caves and dens of their lairs with his brute strength.

  Too, he aided the army of Silvanos-now under the command of the fierce and vengeful Quithas Griffontamer and the diminutive but resolute Balif-when it took to the field against the ogres. Though the elves fought under divided command, their tactics were effective. Quithas led his flying archers, mounted on fleet griffons, through a series of fast raids, while Balif led the troops on the ground, appearing when they were least expected, fighting solidly when the ogres expected them to run, and vanishing when the ogre chieftain Blacktusk, scion of Ironfist, drew up his legions for an offensive.

  After the successful ambush, the elves once again scattered to the deep forest, and Darlantan took flight over the Plain of Vingaard. On the third day after the battle, he came upon a skirmish raging around a small, isolated farmstead. Hundreds of ogres had the place surrounded, while a small band of defenders had raised wooden barricades and sealed themselves into a compound of stone-walled courtyards and wooden barns.

  The silver dragon flew low, blasting the attacking ogres with repeated explosions of lethal frost. The warriors within the makeshift fortress counterattacked, driving the rest of the brutes away as the silver serpent settled onto the muddy, trampled field.

  One of the defenders approached the silver dragon without visible fear. The warrior was not, as Dar had first suspected, an elf. Instead, this leader had a thick beard and was wearing a costume of crudely tanned furs. The silver dragon knew that this was a human.

  “I am called Tarn Iceblade,” said the warrior. “We thank you for killing the ogres.” He bowed quickly, then regarded Darlantan with sparkling, ice-blue eyes.

  The silver dragon nodded in return, noting that the man was missing several fingers from his left hand. “And I am Darlantan. The ogres are my enemies as well. It pleases me to kill them when I can. But how did they catch you here on the open plain?”

  “These are my people. We sought to defend this place, but it seemed as though we were going to be overwhelmed.”

  “You fight well. But the ogres were many, and they fight well also.”

  “We try to kill the bastards when we can-that’s all. But thanks for your help. We owe you our lives.”

  “We share an enemy. But why are you here, on this plain?”

  “We’re going to try to grow a crop. Only thus can the next winter be more prosperous than the last. Many are the elders and wee ones we buried in the high valleys with the spring thaw.”

  “But out here… surely the dragons will find you, if the ogres don’t.”

  “My people must eat,” Tarn replied, with a shrug of resignation that Darlantan found strangely moving. “But as I said, we thank you for your help in our fight.”

  The silver dragon took to the air again, impressed by this human. The Darlantan was pleased to scatter an entire legion of ogres that was apparently marching to reinforce the doomed attackers, and he returned to the forests with a sincere hope that Tarn Iceblade’s tribe would have a successful harvest.

  Then, finally, came a time when Darlantan and Kagonos met again upon the council knoll, the place where Aurican had departed from on his journey to the gods. The pair of venerable warriors sat in pensive silence around a fading fire, the dragon in his bearded human form. They had talked of strategies and battle plans, for Blacktusk was embarking on a new and implacable drive against the south. Yet their thoughts and hopes were elsewhere.

  A rustling in the greenery silenced the two warriors’ discussion, and they stared in taut anticipation as Silvanos emerged into view. He was somber, but stepped forward to embrace his kinsman with a hug of desperate, almost frenzied affection.

  “They will come… tonight,” murmured the elven patriarch.

  Darlantan had sensed this as well, and now his eyes turned with intuitive direction toward the sky, knowing that they didn’t have long to wait. He saw the winged form almost immediately, outlined against the stars, and his heart surged with a pulse of hope.

  Aurican landed, and his change of shape was such a smooth transition that by the time the golden wings had brushed down to the ground, four figures stood before the trio and their small campfire.

  “Greetings, kin-dragon,” said Auri in the voice of his elven body. Darlantan looked for some sign of his news, but the serene face was impassive.

  Fayal Padran, in his robe of red, stood at Aurican’s left, while white-garbed Parys Dayl advanced to his left. A fourth figure remained behind them, cloaked by the shadows, but Darlantan knew that Kayn Wytsnal was there as well.

  “I am glad to see you,” said Darlantan, his emotions overwhelming any attempt to speak further.

  “And I.” Auri’s elven face was suddenly creased by a tight smile, as if he had seen things that had inspired him to wonder, and perhaps awe. His posture was proud, and the light of triumph gleam
ed in his eyes as he looked at Darlantan.

  The newcomers knelt upon the ground, and Parys Dayl opened a satchel that Aurican had carried, revealing five large, glowing gems. The colors of the stones were clear and matched the array of hues Darlantan had come to despise: red, blue, black, white, and green.

  “Behold the dragongems,” said Fayal, his voice hushed with wonder. “And the means to defeat the wyrms of the Dark Queen.”

  “And welcome the return of magic to Krynn,” added Aurican, eyes rising toward the distant, stormy sky.

  Chapter 12

  A Trap

  3472 PC

  Darlantan came to rest in a sheltered valley, secure behind the rising ridges of the Khalkist foothills. Years of war had inculcated him with careful habits. No sooner had his talons touched the loam of the meadow than he changed shape. He had carried the carcass of a small deer in his claws, and now he hoisted the fresh meat easily, resting the animal over his shoulders as he looked around.

  The white-bearded human figure moved easily through the trees, skirting the clearing, insuring that he was unobserved. Only then did Darlantan proceed along the narrow, winding trail through the deep ravine. Sheer walls rose far over his head, barely an arm’s length to either side, but instead of constricting him, they represented security to the transformed silver serpent. He was masked from the skies above by the overhanging walls, and any dragon that tried to pursue him would be greatly hampered by the narrow confines.

  Of course, an ogre or two could squeeze in here, but then Darlantan almost hoped he would encounter a few of the brutish warriors. On another occasion some winters before, several heavily armed ogres had come upon an apparently frail, elderly human, and it had been the last mistake those particular monsters ever made.