The Dragons lh-6

by Douglas Niles

  The metallic dragons closed swiftly, with those curiously shining weapons raised, the wyrms bugling bold challenges of their own. Don’t they see the odds? Tombfyre was amazed and a little shaken by the foe’s tenacity.

  “Lances?” declared blue Azurus, gliding beside Deathfyre with a disdainful snort. “As if they could strike us down with mere pinpricks!”

  “Beware,” countered Deathfyre, “for those are more than pins.”

  The blue looked scornful, and Tombfyre himself was amazed to hear his sire speak of caution.

  “Spread out!” warned Deathfyre, urging the blues and whites to give them room, knowing that the eruption of red dragon breath would be deadly even to his own allies and that the lethal frost of the whites and the crackling lightning of the blues could prove equally harmful to the serpents of his own wing. It was far better to attack the enemy with a widespread formation, concentrating all the breath attacks against different portions of the sky.

  Azurus led the way, bringing his blues through a plunging curve, sweeping toward the head of the metal dragon flight. Some of these silver and gold wyrms rose toward the blues, while the rest winged on, bearing steadily toward the reds or warily eyeing the whites that swerved outward to make an attack from the other flank.

  Lightning crackled as Azurus spat a flaming bolt at the lead dragon, a large gold. But that serpent twisted away, leaving a cascade of sparks spilling from the dragon-scale shield protecting the rider. Then the lance of the leading attacker ripped through the blue membrane of a broad wing. Mighty Azurus, greatest of the blues, lurched and flapped pathetically, veering to the side, then toppling onto his back while the shredded membrane trailed behind him. With a shrieking cry of fury that swelled to disbelief, then curdled into sheer terror, he tumbled from the skies.

  Other keen lances ripped into the blues, and in a few shocking instants, a half-dozen of the sleek, powerful dragons had fallen. The metal serpents veered and dodged, maneuvering to avoid the effects of the deadly lightning breath. Now the dragons of Paladine attacked aggressively, spewing acid and cold and flame of their own, bearing the riders and those wicked lances into the midst of a swirling aerial melee. Slashing with metallic talon and fang, the good dragons desperately sought to rend the evil serpents who escaped the initial killing onslaught.

  The whites swept inward, but they were met by a trio of silvers, immune to the frosty blast of white dragonbreath. The metal serpents emerged from the cloud of icy spumes, three riders crouched behind their shields, lances poised steadily, aimed at the ranks of wounded enemy dragons. With piercing stabs, the serpents of Paladine drove relentlessly through the scattering whites, stabbing and slashing many of the alabaster wyrms out of the sky.

  For long, deadly moments, the formations wheeled through the sky, an aerial dance of exquisite beauty and lethal consequence. The evil wyrms struggled for the advantage of height, but even bearing their burdensome riders, the good dragons stayed close, stabbing and burning, knocking down one after another of the Dark Queen’s serpents. When the chromatic dragons separated, then swept inward for a concentrated attack, the knights on their dragons managed to hold them at bay. Meeting the onslaught with outstretched lances, they forced the attackers to veer up, down, sideways, as the dragons of metal wheeled through a protective circle, each lancer guarding the flank of the man and dragon before him.

  Suddenly a great presence loomed in the sky as clouds congealed into a shape, straining to achieve solidity. Again Tombfyre felt a shiver of awe, of lethal and immortal presence. Was it the queen? Would she come here, to Krynn, riding the victory of her legions? Tombfyre saw the writhing heads, the smoky clouds that formed the great immortal body now taking form, and his heart flared with hope.

  But one after another of Deathfyre’s wyrms were slain, and though a few of the good dragons and their riders were knocked out of the air, the battle developed catastrophically for the red dragon’s wing. The serpents of the Dark Queen surged from high altitude or tried to sweep upward from below. But always they were met with those terrible lances, the weapons relentlessly cutting and piercing and killing.

  Finally, with a shrill cry, Deathfyre dived away and led the surviving serpents of the Dark Queen in headlong flight, while the good dragons maintained their defensive spiral, apparently content to let the attackers go-until a mighty silver, mounted by an armored knight, appeared out of nowhere. The tip of his lance ripped through Deathfyre’s flank, and with a ground-shaking scream, the villainous red dragon, the ancient harbinger of evil who had lived for two thousand years, flipped onto his back and plunged, lifeless, toward the bloodstained plain.

  Tombfyre shrieked in rage as he saw his sire fall. But still more of those deadly lances rushed closer, an encircling ring of death, and he knew that this battle was lost.

  “We will marshal our forces and return with a hundred dragons!” he bellowed in fury, though the cry sounded hollow even in his own ears. In truth, they had been soundly defeated, his dragons all but driven from the skies.

  “My son, scion of Deathfyre… hear the will of your queen.”

  The words reached Tombfyre, and they were clear and precise, as if Takhisis spoke to him from close proximity. He whipped his head around, gaping at the sight of a massive, cloudy shape crowned by five writhing heads of smoke. The heads wailed and twitched, as if the immortal goddess were suffering grievous pain.

  “Speak, my queen, giver and taker of all life!” the red dragon begged.

  He saw the Queen of Darkness herself as she shimmered in the air. Again he felt a moment of soaring hope…

  … but then he sensed the whole truth. A terrible lance had pierced the gut of the five-headed monstrosity, and he understood that more than a battle had been lost. He thought of the silvers who had killed his sire, who had evaded him in the skies to the south, and he cried out in anguished frustration as he watched the dark goddess fade into the skies.

  He knew he should fly, should seek and kill his enemies.

  But he couldn’t move.

  “My chromatic children, you are banished, exiled. It is the price of my survival. You must come with me!”

  The will of the Dark Queen reached him through space, and he saw the awful truth: By oath had Huma freed the Dark Queen, and by that oath was Tombfyre bound as well.

  Takhisis would withdraw from Krynn, and as she had pledged to Huma, a vow made in exchange for her life, she would bear her children away with her, ordering them into exile from the world.

  But as always the Queen of Darkness sought to work betrayal.

  And as the chromatic dragons were pulled toward the Abyss, Tombfyre was given a lair of comfort and safety deep in the bowels of the world.

  And he felt a destiny of greatness and majesty laid upon his shoulders.

  Chapter 35

  Farewell to Ansalon

  1027 PC

  A wild elf brave, Ashtaway, reached Lectral only a few hours after the grievously wounded dragon had sounded the ram’s horn. Marked by the spiral tattoos of black ink that had marked his clan since the time of Kagonos, the warrior found the shallow cave in which the silver serpent had sought shelter. Aided by a Kagonesti maid, Hammana, the brave brought venison to the injured dragon, while the healing skills of the elfmaid helped to stanch the bleeding of his worst injuries.

  Slowly, dreamily, he allowed them to tend him, welcomed their ministrations and their company. For a long time, he remained under their care, depending on Ashtaway for food, relying upon Hammana’s poultices to heal his many wounds. Though the brave was often absent, the maid stayed at his side for many days, and the large dragon welcomed her presence. At the same time, Lectral was aware of a deep irony: He had come to save the Kagonesti, and instead it was they who had saved him.

  And in his darker moments, when the two elves left him alone, he acknowledged a deeper truth. He had not flown southward solely to serve the Kagonesti, to fulfill a sense of his own duty. Rather, he had also done so to avoid the painful re
ality of Heart’s choice, her love for a human. Unaware of the course of the war raging in the north, he remained lost in his own musings, occasionally brightened by the presence of the two wild elves.

  As he watched them together, saw the tenderness in their mutual looks and hesitant touches, perceived their concern for each other and the longing in Hammana’s eyes when Ashtaway was absent. He realized they were in love with each other. He found the knowledge both heartening and sad. The attraction seemed very natural, their joy together almost palpable-and he could only think of Heart. Could she possibly feel this same kind of affection for her knight?

  Over the course of a season or more, his injuries slowly healed, though one rear leg and his wings remained badly damaged, so much so that he still couldn’t fly. Then, late on a warm day, after Hammana had gone back to her village, Lectral heard a rustle of silver wings and saw a familiar snout peering at him from the sunlit woods beyond his shallow cave.

  “Silvara!” he declared, his heart pounding with a joy he had thought vanished forever.

  The silver female padded into the small cave. “I am glad I found you, Honored Elder. I feared for you more than I can say.”

  “And you, Little Sister-you’re a sight more welcome than you can possibly know.”

  “You’re hurt!” she declared, moving forward to inspect the red scars of his wounds.

  “I have been well cared for. I will live and probably even fly again, given time. But now, tell me of the war, the dragons and their lancers in the skies…?”

  “The war is over. The dragons of Takhisis are gone, sent from the world by the Dark Queen herself, in a vow forced upon her by the knight Huma, in exchange for her own life.”

  “Heart was right about him, then… He is a man of true greatness.” Lectral felt a stab of shame, sharpened by the fact that he couldn’t completely banish a flush of jealousy.

  Silvara lowered her head, and with a growing ache of grief, he suspected the next thing she would have to tell him.

  “And what of Heart?” he asked, barely daring to breathe.

  “The cost of our victory was high. She was slain, perishing at the same time as her knight,” the silver female replied.

  Lectral was silent for a long time. His thoughts churned in a stormy mixture of guilt and grief, wanting to blame the human knight for the death of his nestmate. With another rush of shame, he found that he could not. If anyone was to blame, it was he.

  “Have you heard of the red dragons… of the one called Tombfyre?” Lectral thought of the wicked serpent who had taunted and fought him, and now he trembled in profound rage. If he was unable to save her, at least he could look forward to revenge!

  But Silvara looked at him sadly, as if uncertain that he could understand her words. “Banished like all the others. He has departed from Krynn together with all his evil kin-dragons. But there is more, and that is what brings me to you. I come to tell you that we are departing from Ansalon as well.”

  “We? The silvers?” Lectral was stunned.

  “All of us… all the dragons of Paladine.”

  “But why? Did you not say that the war was won?”

  “It is another part of the oath, so that the people of the world can rule themselves without the interference of mighty beings.”

  She told him of the sacred vow that had taken the Dark Queen and all her dragons from Ansalon, and of the price that the good dragons were to pay as well. They would journey to a place called the Dragon Isles, where they would live out their lives and their generations.

  “These islands are said to be idyllic realms, perfect of clime, with space for all the metal clans.” As she spoke, her eyes turned outward, fixing upon the forests and mountains beyond, and he sensed that, like him, she wasn’t ready to leave all they knew behind.

  “But how can I go? I cannot fly,” he declared.

  “Saytica will bear you, but you must assume the form of a two-legs. She comes tonight.” Silvara told him that Saytica had been a heroine of the war, bearing the knight who had struck down mighty Deathfyre, the leader of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.

  And when the mighty silver female came to him later that night, Lectral was able to shift his body. He chose the shape of the white-bearded sage, the same form that had been favored by Darlantan so many centuries before. Finally Lectral straddled the strong, silver shoulders and rode through the skies on the back of Saytica.

  They passed over the lands vacated by the fleeing armies of Garic Drakan. The mighty silver flier remained silent, sensing the distress of her battered, grieving clan-dragon. All around them were the other silvers, a great airborne armada soaring through the cool air, starlight glimmering from a multitude of reflective wings.

  Lectral looked helplessly, saw the horizon of the High Kharolis passing to the left, but already the snowy skyline of the mountain ridges had vanished into the distance.

  And already, too, it seemed that his once vivid memories of the place were beginning to fade.

  PART IV

  Chapter 36

  Silver Ceremony

  127 AC

  The rains that had shrouded the Dragon Isles for more than a hundred winters had finally broken, swept over the ocean like so much debris pushed by a giant broom. Rays of sun sparkled from the limitless expanse of seawater; a brilliant array of iridescent facets surrounded the verdant islands jutting from that dazzling surface like soft mounds of green. Though each isle was crowned by at least one summit of dark rock and bright, snow-swept glacier, much of the coastal fringe remained thick and green with tropical growth.

  Lectral flew without haste, stretching his wings and allowing the warmth of the sun to soak into the ancient, leathery spans. He rode serenely on a coastal updraft, trying to put aside his thoughts, to ignore the purpose that would soon force him to turn and climb toward the uplands of Cloudhome, the Misty Isle-largest and most populous of the metallic dragons’ homelands-in-exile.

  Perhaps because of that purpose, he reminisced almost sleepily as he flew through the warm, tropical currents of air. For a moment, he was confused, which was a not uncommon state for him these days. His mind brightened with memories of a young silver female… was it Heart? No, Saytica… She had been a good companion during the long, uneventful centuries on the Dragon Isles. His mind drifted to the image of the lofty High Kharolis, and he sighed heavily at the thought that he would never see those mountains again.

  How long had it actually been since the dragons of Paladine had come to these isles, in their exile that had become a way of life? The question troubled him, for it was becoming increasingly difficult-almost impossible, in fact-to remember the time when dragons had dwelt upon Ansalon.

  Many hundreds of winters had passed, he knew, though perhaps it was more appropriate to count the summers here in this balmy, tropical clime. And for most of those annums, it had seemed that he and his kin-dragons had lived without meaning or purpose, merely passing the time from one period of wakefulness to the next. They dwelt in peace and harmony, true, but also in boredom and indolence.

  Once again he remembered the purpose that had drawn him to the Misty Isle, and his sense of melancholy swelled into a surging wave. Of course, a farewell to a dragon was always sad, and there was a real poignancy when the deceased was a sibling, one who had been born after Lectral in that long-ago era. Yet still he dallied for a while longer over the wave-washed coastline, enjoying the perfect, infinite turquoise of the shallows within the coral reefs along the shoreline below.

  But in his heart, he knew that it was time to go, and with a sweeping turn, he arced toward land. He made a straight line along a deep valley in the foliage-draped massif rising toward the island’s center, bearing toward the well-known gathering place concealed there. Certainly many of the younger silvers would already be present, and no doubt Silvara would have arrived as well. But Lectral was the venerable silver, and his presence was required before the ceremony could begin.

  Saytica had died peacefully, as was the
natural way of elder dragons. Soon her body would be commended unto the gods from the height of the Silver Stairs, and it was not only Lectral’s wish, but his sacred duty, that he be there.

  He continued to climb, following the winding valley of one of the mountainous island’s rapid, plunging creeks. He worked harder now, powerful strokes of his wings carrying him upward, past the steep, verdant walls of the narrow vale. Thankfully, the wind was off the sea, and he was able to ride the current of air inland, focusing his own efforts merely on staying aloft, gaining altitude only as it became necessary.

  He saw the snow-capped peaks, where the silver dragon nests, rich with eggs, were securely cached. He remembered the lifelong lesson, passed along by Callak and Daria-guard the eggs! It had been the goal of dragonkind since the days in the grotto, and at least life on the Dragon Isles insured that he and his kin-dragons had been able to accomplish this.

  As he flew, Lectral tried once again to remember the passing of the last dozen winters, but he realized that those memories were blurred. It had stopped raining before then, perhaps two or three dozen years ago. Preceding that, storms had wracked the islands for no less than a full century. That had been a dark time, when the world itself had rumbled underfoot, and ash and cloud had darkened the skies in a nearly eternal shroud. It had been an era when Lectral had yearned poignantly for the stability of his beloved Kharolis.

  He knew that more recently he had been sleeping for some time, until he had been awakened by the coming of a griffon. The creature had respectfully informed him of the passing of Saytica and presented the announcement that her commending would occur when the sun first reached its zenith following the spring equinox.

  Saytica… Unlike Lectral, she had flown to war when the call came, had borne a lancer against the chromatic dragons while mighty Lectral had ignored his nestmates and gone off on his own. His regrets had been strong, at first, but now even those emotions had been dulled by the passage of centuries. Dulled, perhaps, but they were still there.