The Dragons lh-6

by Douglas Niles

  Trying to focus his hazy memories, Lectral wasn’t even certain upon which of the isles he had most recently been sleeping. One of the smaller islets, certainly. Was it Jaentarth, or perhaps Alarl? No matter, really. With the exception of Cloudhome, the isles were quite similar, almost interchangeable in the ancient silver’s opinion. True, each was for the most part a paradise of plentiful food, balmy weather, and pastoral wilderness. But they were also boring. And after this ceremony, Lectral would eventually find another lair amid the perfect terrain of the Dragon Isles, curling up and going back to sleep. In fact, it would probably be very soon, for there was little to do here except sleep.

  With a twinge of sadness, he wondered: was this to be the destiny of all the young silvers as well, the proud and mighty descendants of him and his mighty sire, and their ancestors back through the dawn of time? Would they merely grow large so that they could move from cave to cave, spending increasing periods of their life asleep, too torpid even to note the arrival of a new summer or winter?

  In truth, the summers on the Dragon Isles were things Lectral would just as soon spend in the depths of a cool and sunless cave. When he did emerge during the hot season, he invariably sought the glacial heights of the islands’ central massifs, where the altitude was sufficient to hold even the scorching heat at bay. A silver’s temperament was not made for the tropics.

  Of course, the gold dragons seemed to be content in exile, since they seemed to find contentment in everything. Led by Regia and Arumnus, they dwelt in great airy palaces and manors in the City of Gold, spending most of their time in the human or elven guises they preferred. The ancient matriarch and her stolid, ever predictable mate presided over arguments in philosophy or created artworks and poems during their periods of activity and awareness. Of course, the younger silvers had told Lectral that lately even the golds were spending increasing amounts of time sleeping in their silk-draped chambers. It was as if a plague of tiredness was besetting dragonkind, sapping their might and their imaginations and, eventually, even their very animation and spirit.

  The dragons of the brown metals had grown wild and disparate during the millennium of exile. For the most part, they chose solitary lairs on the outer islands, or in the deepest wilderness of Misty Isle. Brass, bronze, and copper invariably regarded each other with jealous distrust, and all had become suspicious and hostile toward the brighter wyrms. The silvers and golds, for their part, tended to leave their lesser cousins alone.

  On his current flight, Lectral glided across a deep valley that he recognized. Numerous hot springs spouted from the marshy floor, and he knew the bronze dragons nested and laired here. Strangely, he saw no activity in the great lake centering the swampy lowland, and he wondered if the bronzes, like all the rest, had become listless and torpid.

  True, some dragons remained restless. Silvara, for example, much as her elder sister had done a thousand years ago, spent long periods of time traveling unknown reaches. Though no one accused her to her face, it was widely rumored that she was violating the stricture against travels on Ansalon. But certainly she, too, would be present for the ceremony of her elder sister’s commending.

  Shaking his head, Lectral realized that he had arrived, his flight at last crossing the ridge bordering the bronzes’ swamp. Now he glided toward the small, circular vale at the foot of the Silver Summit.

  True to Lectral’s guess, the valley below was flocked with silver shapes, all of them supple and wiry… and young. These were not wyrmlings by any means. Dargentan and Darlant, who cleared a path for their venerable sire, were mighty serpents in their own right. Each was already larger than Lectral had been at the time of Huma’s war, though the ancient one was now half again as huge as either of his proud scions.

  The sire came to a rest in the middle of the silver throng, and with measured dignity, he dipped his chin in acknowledgment of the honoring bows, heads dropping all the way to the ground, of the younger wyrms of argent. Folding his wings with precise care, Lectral turned his attention to the nearby mountain and its glimmering path of ascent.

  The steep slope leading to the Silver Summit climbed in metallic perfection from the base of the valley to the top of a small, pyramidal mountain. Saytica’s body lay atop the flat peak, which was a space just large enough to contain the massive silver corpse. Solemnly the gathered dragons raised their heads, all eyes focused on the edge of the mountaintop.

  His height allowed Lectral to see that several gold dragons were present as well, standing to the side of the gathered silvers in a little knot of human and elven bodies. The ancient silver knew the golds would claim this was because space in the small valley was limited, but he believed that his golden kin-dragons actually preferred to spend their lives in their tiny two-legged bodies.

  “Greetings, Elder Brother,” came a familiar voice, and Lectral’s heart soared with an emotion he hadn’t felt in too many winters.

  “Silvara! It’s a joy to see you, Little Sister, even in the sadness of our gathering.”

  “It is a mixed sadness,” declared the graceful silver female, advancing to Lectral’s side. Dargent and Darlant bristled, holding the rest of the wyrms back from the pair. “I do not mean to be cold, but Saytica had not been truly living for more than a thousand winters.”

  “No,” agreed Lectral. “Not in the way we once lived upon Ansalon…”

  “I must confess,” Silvara said softly, “I would have stayed away from here if I could.”

  Lectral thought of Heart, and suddenly he felt very old and very sad.

  “Did you love her? Saytica?” asked the silver female softly.

  Lectral shook his head. “She was special to me, a treasure. But I have learned that love is not-or at least, shouldn’t be-a concern of dragons. Let the lesser creatures suffer from that whim.”

  “It is to be wished,” Silvara said, but there was a strange sadness in her eyes that didn’t quite match her words. Lectral remembered again the rumors, whispered by young wyrmling and wandering griffon, that she had visited the continent in violation of the exile. He wished that he could warn her of the danger-certainly Regia or Arumnus would have been able to-but his heart broke at the thought of forcing her to an unwilling confinement.

  A whisper of attention hissed through the crowd, and all the gathered dragons turned their eyes toward the top of the gleaming slope.

  Magic shimmered, and a small figure who had been looking down at the throng of dragons suddenly grew, golden scales and wings coming into view, reflecting the bright rays of the noontime sun as Regia loomed above her kin-dragons. The golden female, wise and patient as ever, looked at Lectral with such disturbing clarity that he shifted awkwardly and cleared his throat with an impatient harrumph.

  “She was great and wise and mighty… and so terribly unhappy,” Regia said in dignified farewell. “It is without gladness, but also without grief, that we witness her ascent to the heavens.”

  “Farewell, Saytica of the Silver Wing,” came the deep chant from the gathered dragons.

  “I commend thee to the vault of the skies,” Regia declared, her tone sonorous and deep as it echoed throughout the small valley. “And may all the blessings of Paladine rise with you.”

  At that, Regia dipped her head, allowing her snout to touch Saytica’s motionless nostrils. She murmured a long incantation, the words to the spell inaudible to the wyrms gathered below, and then flames appeared, surrounding the silver shape with a sparkling aura.

  Finally the ancient gold spread her wings and took flight, gliding from the mountaintop to settle beside Lectral and Silvara.

  The gathered dragons held their attention on the summit and its massive, motionless burden. Saytica’s scales gleamed more brightly than ever, reflecting the rays of the sun with an intensity that seemed to actually increase the brilliance of the glow. Shimmering like a surface of vibrating liquid, the scales seemed to flow like quicksilver, but the great body remained whole and dignified in its final repose.

 
Then, as the magic took hold, Saytica’s silver shape glowed so brightly that the dragons were forced to watch through the protective screens of their inner eyelids. Yet none turned away from the blinding illumination. The surrounding peaks stood out in brilliant detail, scorched by a flare like burning magnesium, a fire burning so brightly that even the sun seemed to pale in comparison.

  Lectral dared not take a breath, so rapt was he at the sight upon the mountaintop. The brightness rose to a truly blinding level, until his only awareness was that spot of light.

  Yet the blazing glow was curiously heatless, radiating no increase in warmth. Instead, it consumed the dragon who lay inert at the core of the brightness. When the fire slowly faded into nothing, there was no sign of Saytica.

  With a collective sigh, the watching dragons settled, necks relaxing, wings stretching and ruffling in the still air. Many of the youngsters took off in a series of steep, upward pounces that Lectral could only envy.

  “It is good,” Silvara said, and for the first time Lectral realized that she had remained at his side. “Regia was right; this is not a time for grieving.”

  “You’re right, it’s not,” Lectral agreed, already feeling a familiar, numbing fatigue. “But is it a time for anything at all?”

  Chapter 37

  The Price of an Oath

  296 AC

  It was young Dargentan who awakened first, at least among the silver dragons. The young male rose to his feet with a barely contained sense of energy, a feeling of profound unease. Sniffing the air, he crossed with a clattering of claws to the pool of water at the back of his cave. When he found it frozen, he emerged from his lair to blink into the pearly rose light of dawn.

  He saw that the surface of Misty Isle’s highland was buried under a blanket of snow, a layer of white that glistened in pristine perfection across the pastoral valleys and rolling summits of the highlands. Graceful cornices curled from lofty ridges, and the wind had marked long drifts, scoring sharp lines from numerous trees, rocks, and other irregularities.

  All but the highest pines were fully buried, and Dargentan’s breath frosted visibly as he snorted from his great nostrils. It was a startling thought, but true, to realize that just a few miles away the island’s coastal lowlands were already balmy with the coming of spring.

  But when his eyes rose toward the glacier wall, his unease clattered into full alarm. He saw that something had disturbed the snowfields up near the ice-draped nests of silver. Great furrows of dark ground were visible among the snowfields, where the snow had been churned and clawed away.

  With a pounce, he took to the air, driving for altitude, fear choking upward into his throat. He flew closer, blood pulsing as he acknowledged a terrifying truth:

  The nests had been raided!

  He soared above the ridge where the ice-shrouded bowls of silver rested, and one look at the empty mangers confirmed his worst fears: The metallic eggs had been stolen.

  Braying in alarm, Dargentan flew among the mountain summits. He knew that he had to find Lectral.

  “You say that the eggs- all the eggs-are gone? Stolen from the nests?” demanded the ancient silver, a fundamental sense of urgency driving away the vestiges of his lingering fatigue. He rose and shook himself, twisting and stretching his stiff body, sloughing off old scales in a glittering silver shower. “When did this happen?”

  “While I was sleeping-while we all were sleeping,” Dargentan explained breathlessly. “I found them all dug up, and I came to tell you right away.”

  “That was wise,” Lectral agreed, though his guts were churned into an icy ball by Dargentan’s news. He stalked, stiff-legged, to the mouth of his cave and looked into the snow-swept valley beyond. From the position of the sun, near the northern horizon of jagged mountains, he knew that the isles had moved only slightly into spring. “Fly with me to the nests. We will see for ourselves.”

  Together the two silver dragons took wing, stroking toward the valley of the high glacier. By the time they arrived, they found more of their argent clan gathering.

  The nests were high on a cliff, cloaked by ice and shadow year round. Here Lectral and Dargentan landed, finding Darlant probing through an empty icebound nest of silver wire.

  “Look!” exclaimed Darl as the pair of big males joined him. He pointed to claw marks along the ledge, where mighty talons had scraped the ice. “These were dragons.”

  “And here!” Dargent pointed to a flake that at first appeared to be a large plate of ice. It lay on the edge of the narrow shelf, near where the protective layer of frost had been torn away from the nest.

  Only when he sniffed, recoiling at the crocodilian scent, did Lectral admit the truth.

  “A white dragon scale… Our nests were raided by the wyrms of the Dark Queen.”

  “And every one of them is empty,” confirmed another silver, returning from a flight over the far end of the glacier-draped ridge.

  “Word from below,” reported a wyrmling, buzzing up to the ridge where the silver dragons sat in stiff-winged agitation. “The brass dragon eggs were stolen, too, right out of the hot springs!”

  “We must fly to the City of Gold,” Lectral declared, his voice stern enough to silence all the younger wyrms. “Perhaps the golden eggs are gone as well. In any event, Regia and Arumnus must be told.”

  In a cloud of sparkling metal that belied the grim foreboding in each dragon’s heart, the silvers took wing. By now a dozen or more of the clan followed their venerable ancient as Lectral flew above the valley of the glacier that trailed downward from the massif.

  Soon the river of white became a grayish brown, and then it vanished-or was transformed, more accurately, into a splashing flowage of meltwater that spilled downward, through a series of emerald lakes linked like gemstones on a silvery chain. Finally the city of golden towers and lofty palaces rose from the coastal mists.

  “Look-we’re not the only ones to fly here,” Darlant observed, and Lectral turned to view a great cloud of brown metal dragons emerging from a side valley. They were coppers, he saw as they got closer, and together with the silvers, they filled the skies above the City of Gold. The mighty ancient of that clan was Cymbol, and he drew up to Lectral with an air of grim disquiet.

  “Your eggs were stolen?” asked the silver, his deep voice barking through the windstream of flight.

  “Aye. Yours as well?” asked the copper, with a snort of acid spattering from his nostrils.

  “It was the chromatic dragons. We found the scale of a white on the high glacier.”

  “And a griffon tells me that blacks were seen poking about the swamp that protected our nests.”

  “Look below,” noted the silver, as they crossed over the city wall, a looming barrier of shiny burnished gold. “It seems that many of our kin-dragons have awakened to the same kind of alarm.”

  The new arrivals commenced a great spiral over the broad central commons. Many bronze and brass dragons were here as well. In fact, the vast plaza that was the city’s heart was a virtual sea of metallic scales and twitching, agitated wings. Dragons squirmed and pushed through the throng, some crowding into the great temples raised to either side of the square.

  “Let’s stay aloft,” suggested the ancient silver to his two scions as Cymbol and his band of copper dragons descended, landing with much shoving and snorting amid the tangled mass below.

  “Good idea,” Dargentan agreed as he and Darlant took position on either side of Lectral’s wings.

  “Have either of you seen any sign of Silvara?” the ancient dragon asked.

  It was Darlant who replied. “I flew past her most recent lair, but it was empty. I don’t think she’d been there for a score of winters, perhaps more.”

  At that moment, a braying cry of alarm rang out from the rear, and Lectral and his two mighty companions curled through a tight turn. They strained for altitude in a sky sparkling with metallic shapes, gleaming wings and scales bright in the pale midwinter sun.

  “Look there
!” cried Dargentan, who had often demonstrated his remarkable eyesight. “Coming from the ocean, to the south.”

  A crimson shape winged from the southern skies, flying arrogantly toward the mass of metallic dragons, and Lectral bellowed in stiff-necked fury, propelled by instinctive antipathy. For a moment, he was a young serpent again, flying to battle in the skies over Ansalon. The red dragon brought a flame of emotion more intense than any feeling he had experienced in a thousand years.

  But then he remembered that this was the present time, these were the Dragon Isles, and he realized that this chromatic serpent could not possibly be coming to attack. He fell into flanking position, watchfully poised above and behind the red dragon. From his vantage, he saw that the scarlet serpent was huge, as ancient as Lectral himself.

  Many silvers, golds, and dragons of the brown metal clans had also winged into the sky, and now they flew in a great oval formation toward the valley beyond the city walls. In grim silence, the metallic serpents escorted the hated intruder.

  The crimson serpent flew toward the city’s center, on a course leading to the plaza that had been sanctified by many centuries of dragon ceremony. The massive wings tilted into a sweeping curve, gradually descending. But when it seemed as though the hateful serpent was going to land on the city square, Lectral acted on an instinctive wave of fury.

  He dived past the red’s nose, breathing a blast of ice into the air before the crimson serpent. The red veered away with a growl, but reluctantly settled to the ground beyond the city walls. The younger good dragons remained circling in the air, while Lectral came to a careful rest before the intruder. Regia and Arumnus were there, too, as well as the venerable copper Cymbol.

  “Where are our eggs?” snarled the latter, drooling a spatter of deadly acid from his jaws onto the ground. “Answer me or die!” The copper wings buzzed in a fan of agitation, and Lectral wondered if the still-impetuous ancient would spit his corrosive breath at the red dragon right here and now.