“If I am harmed, you will never see your eggs again,” declared the dragon, turning a reptilian smile to Regia, ignoring the fuming copper.
“Why do you come here?” asked the golden female coolly.
“To give a chance to save those eggs for which you seem to display such ardent concern,” explained the red.
“Who are you?” Lectral asked abruptly.
“I am called Harkiel, Burner of Copper Scales,” the wyrm said, grinning wickedly at Cymbol, “and I speak for Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness herself.” The voice rumbled with surprising power, echoing back from the walls of the City of Gold.
“What is your purpose, then? How may we save our eggs?” demanded Regia, with patience that Lectral found almost as infuriating as the red’s cruel arrogance. Even so, her golden wings bristled; looking closer, Lectral saw that she was striving hard to control her rage.
“To present you with an oath-a sacred oath, sworn on the name of Paladine and the Dark Queen. If you swear this oath, then your eggs shall remain safe and will be returned to you in due time.”
“Never!” cried Cymbol as Lectral shook his mighty head in grim disagreement.
“What is the content of this oath?” Regia pressed, as if unaware of her kin-dragons’ agitation.
“You must pledge to remain aloof from affairs in Ansalon, even though you may receive pleas for help from the pathetic wretches who dwell there.”
“Help in a strife against your queen’s dragons, no doubt,” Arumnus intoned, as if discussing an abstract fact of historical insignificance.
“Correct.”
Lectral could see the red dragon sneering. He felt a swelling of hatred in his gut, but he forced himself to restrain a violent response. Truly, the golds were displaying the proper attitude. A matter like this could only be treated with aloof disdain. Patience, he told himself. Vengeance could come later.
“And the eggs will remain safe?” asked Regia.
“You have the pledge of my mistress that they shall,” replied Harkiel, with a dip of his head.
“Then I do not see that we have a choice,” replied the golden matriarch.
With a sad shake of her head, she summoned the younger dragons to her, requesting them to pass among the islands to gather the rest of their kin-dragons…
… so that all could take the oath to the Dark Queen.
Chapter 38
Betrayal
352 AC
The silver dragon came to rest on the ledge beyond Lectral’s lair, the wide cavern near the top of Glacier Peak. During the years since the theft of the eggs, the ancient serpent had taken up permanent residence in this deep cave. He was able to command a view of the oceans south of Misty Isle, and, perhaps even more important, anyone who sought him with news would know where to find him.
Now Dargentan had done just that, folding his wings with an ease that Lectral could only envy. Still, it made him proud to look at his handsome and capable offspring. Dargent was in his prime, a fast and powerful dragon with serene self-confidence and pride. He would one day be a worthy successor to bear the ram’s horn.
“Was there a sign… any kind of word at all?” asked Lectral, with very undragonlike haste. He looked past Dargentan, as if he would confirm with his own eyes the reports from far beyond the horizon.
“It seems certain that Silvara is not anywhere on the isles,” Dargent explained, with a shake of his head. “As to word from the mainland, it is… incomplete.”
“Of course-because of that accursed oath!” barked the elder, his voice deepening into an unconscious but heartfelt growl.
“Even so, from what I have pieced together from the griffons, there have been no reports of dragons of metal anywhere on Ansalon. The serpents of the Dark Queen, in contrast, seem to be spreading like a plague. The destruction has already blighted more than half the world.”
Lectral whirled about, his tail cracking like a whip as he pictured the High Kharolis and smoking Khalkists, Silvanesti and Solamnia, all darkened by the same scourge he had observed more than a dozen centuries before. He thought of the cities of men in which he had dwelt, more than fourteen hundred years earlier, and the pastoral forests of the elves.
Of course, rumors had come to the dragons on their remote isles, tales of a great Cataclysm, a darkness descending over the face of Krynn that had brutally changed the face of the world. Indeed, the gold dragons, and Regia in particular, had held this vast destruction to blame for the hundred winters of rainy weather that had beset the isles before the time of Saytica’s death.
“What is the word of other dragons?” Lectral asked.
“Harkiel, who brought us the oath, is in Sanction. Word is that he has become horribly corrupt, sickened. And another great red has appeared… one you will know.”
“Tombfyre?” growled the ancient silver.
“Aye. He leads the Red Wing and carries their emperor on his back. He seems to be little more than a flying horse,” Dargent declared contemptuously. “Albeit, his rider is the greatest warrior in the Dark Queen’s legion. That one, the Highlord Ariakas, has fashioned himself Emperor of Ansalon, and the griffons claim that he has hundreds of thousands of troops under his command. Indeed, he is known to have won many battles.”
“It’s like ancient times-Huma’s war, being waged all over again! But this time the queen keeps us out, by virtue of that accursed oath!”
“Regia counsels patience, as always,” Dargent said wryly. “She reminds us that the queen is bound by her pledge to return our eggs safely, when at last the course of her destruction is done.”
The eggs! For the thousandth time, Lectral pictured the precious spheres of gleaming metal. His guts churned at the thought of the clutch in the hands of the queen’s horrible minions. Would they even know to keep the silver eggs cool, or would the wyrmlings wither and suffocate in the midst of oppressive, ultimately lethal heat?
“Does Regia, or any of the golds, even know the meaning of concern, of genuine worry?” Lectral didn’t want to scorn his kin-dragon, but his deep exasperation further sharpened the elder’s tone.
“There is one bold one-you remember Quallathan. I have heard him counsel his elders that we must at least confirm the Dark Queen’s compliance. But they demur, claiming that the oath must stand in its original words, that anything less would be unfitting of us!”
“I remember Quallathan,” Lectral noted. “A strong flyer. He’s even a little bigger than you, isn’t he?”
“Perhaps I’m shorter by a scale or two,” the prideful scion replied. “Of course, he was born on Ansalon, before the exile. He flew during Huma’s campaign.”
“Aye, you’re right,” recalled the ancient. He reflected, and not for the first time, on the sad fact that his offspring had never seen the wonders of the High Kharolis.
Dargentan continued. “Still, you’re right about his strength. And, too, he’s one who’s not afraid to let his wings show.”
Lectral chuckled sharply at Dargentan’s phrase, which meant that Quallathan spent much of his life in his actual dragon body, rather than the two-legged forms favored by so many of the golden serpents.
Except for Quallathan, who shared Lectral’s and his scions’ anguish, the other good dragons seemed to have talked themselves into an air of acceptance and complacency. Regia and Arumnus had retreated to their lofty libraries and serene gardens to discuss matters that Lectral didn’t even want to guess about.
Of course, there were other exceptions as well. Cymbol’s rage and frustration were well known, and he had whipped a number of the younger coppers into a similar frenzy. Kirsah, a good-sized dragon of brass, was another young firebrand. He had even threatened to fly to Ansalon to seek the eggs himself, until Regia, together with Kirsah’s venerable sire, Kord, forbade him forcefully from making the trip. The council of elders, which was a casual board centered around Regia and grim Arumnus, had threatened the young brass with magical confinement if he should dare to disobey.
A
nd so the dragons on their islands had returned to a life of stasis, though it was a life that continued without the eggs that were their promise of a future. Indeed, the earlier lethargy that had possessed the metal clans seemed to have lifted, to be replaced by a nervous energy. It was a place where the dragons didn’t do much of anything, but they were taut and nervous in their inactivity.
Until the day that Silvara returned.
Lectral was in his usual post, occupying the mouth of his cave, eyes turned southward. The silver female flew from that direction, waves splashing brine against her belly, so low over the ocean that Lectral didn’t see her until she had nearly reached the shore.
And with that first sight, he knew that this was Silvara. He leapt to his feet and bugled a greeting, a long and sonorous trumpet cry that allowed the female to pinpoint his location on the high mountainside. Immediately she swept upward, wings stroking for height.
Then Lectral saw the rider upon her back, and he was struck by a staggering moment of recognition-but how could this be Heart? And certainly that wasn’t the human knight, Huma, who rode astride the beautiful silver neck! He shook his head, once again reminding himself of the present time and place.
No, the dragonrider was an elf, a golden-haired male who rode mighty Silvara with serene grace, though his face was locked in an expression of haunting sorrow.
“Fly with me to the Silver Summit!” cried Silvara as she glided past Lectral’s ledge. “I–I have news that must be shared with all!”
Propelling himself into the air, the ancient male strained to catch up to the younger female’s swift flight. He felt a deadly chill, terrified by the sounds behind Silvara’s words. For, despite the maturity and patience and wisdom that was her due as a dragon of more than a thousand winters of life, she had been unable to keep an edge of raw, hysterical fear out of her voice.
Lectral still trailed behind as Silvara came to rest in the valley below the gleaming massif. Regia and Arumnus were already here, and somehow Lectral wasn’t surprised by the fact. He settled to the ground beside Silvara as the lean elf who had ridden her across the ocean slid down from her silver serpentine neck and stood stiffly with a hand on the female dragon’s shoulder.
Silvara changed shape before Lectral or any of the others could speak, and the ancient silver found himself looking at a beautiful silver-haired wild elf. He gasped, once again moved by the powerful resemblance to Heart. The maid stepped forward and gestured to the sylvan warrior she had carried to the isle.
“This is Gilthanas, an elven prince of Qualinesti,” she said, her words spilling out in a tremulous rush, a display of emotion so strong that Lectral felt the disturbing intensity all the way to his core.
“I have traveled with Silvara, and I, too, know of that which she speaks. If it were not for the need, neither of us could bear to relate the tale.”
Silvara looked at Lectral, and the elder was struck by the age and weariness in her gaze. She seemed like an ancient herself, wracked by a grief greater than anyone should have to bear.
The elfmaid tried to speak, forced out a stammering word, then buried her face in her hands.
“Take a moment, child,” Regia soothed, bobbing her head before the body of the wild elf female. “Let the words come from beyond. Allow yourself to be their filter, but not their creator.”
Slowly, tremulously, Silvara began to speak. Her words brought forth a tale of horror and corruption, relating a journey that she and Gilthanas had made into the bowels of the Dark Queen’s temples. It had been a long search, which she had conducted always in her elven guise. There, below the festering city of Sanction, she had found the eggs-and at this point in her story, she broke down into tears.
Gilthanas, with grim-faced discipline, told the rest… of the precious eggs, corrupted by the Dark Queen’s priests… of craven draconians, monstrous troops for her evil legions, born from the eggs of metal dragonkind.
The elf’s words were brief, his terms concise and mundane as he described the varieties of draconians, the corrupt brutes that were spawned from the hope of metal dragonkind’s future. Yet so appalling was the horror revealed by those simple phrases that the entire gathering of metal dragons was struck mute. Wind ruffled, moaning in a sympathetic lament as it coursed down the Silver Stairs. Those steps, when Lectral’s eyes shifted to the side, seemed somehow tainted and dark, as if they had been stained by the blood of many dragons.
“Thanks to Paladine that you are alive, both of you,” whispered Regia. The shimmer of her scales had darkened, and, in fact it seemed to Lectral that a cloud of mourning had been drawn over all the wyrms, tainting the immaculate perfection of their metal forms. Regia slumped numbly, and the ancient silver was surprised by a pang of real sympathy for the oftentimes aloof gold. But then, he felt sorry for them all, for as he tried to comprehend the catastrophe, he wondered if their entire race, all the clans, were not actually doomed.
Then abruptly Silvara shimmered silver again, rearing high and roaring a challenge into the sky, a challenge that was followed by an explosive wave of icy frost. Cries of betrayal, shouts for vengeance, rumbled from the gathered dragons. Wings buzzed in the air, and more than one serpent belched forth a cloud of frost or fire or spat a bolt of crackling lightning toward the heavens.
Only then did Lectral note that the elven prince bore a long silver-shafted weapon, a spear that was poised on the ground, its lofty tip of silvery steel a full twenty feet overhead. He sensed the aura of magic within the mighty lance and knew that he beheld a return of ancient might.
“There is more,” Silvara declared, her tone sterner, hopeful again. “A weapon of the ages, reforged again, ready to wield against our ancient enemy.”
“The Dragonlance…” murmured Lectral, suddenly understanding.
“The lances of Huma have been forged!” Silvara cried. “Who will fly at my side?”
Again Lectral saw Heart before him, saw the beautiful silver dragon who had been drawn to the love of a mortal. She, too, had pleaded with him to take up a rider, to bear a lance into battle with the Dark Queen’s legions.
And he had refused.
In a vivid instant of shame, he remembered his petty anger, the jealousy that had sent him away-and left him with a legacy of a thousand years of guilt.
“I will fly with you,” he said, and he added a silent plea to long-dead Heart, begging her forgiveness-and her understanding.
Amid the accolades of the other dragons, roaring and bellowing in a frenzy of battle-lust, Silvara heard his words, looked at him-and, for the first time since her return, she allowed her eyes to flare with a light of real and genuine hope.
Chapter 39
Allsar Dane
352 AC
The human knight was a young nun, powerful and lean and, to all appearances, quick to learn. Like his fellows, he was brave enough to volunteer to fly, was willing to place his life in the hands of a mighty winged serpent, to do battle with the evil dragons of the Dark Queen in the war-torn skies over Ansalon. Now he advanced with a walk of catlike grace, clearly a warrior of self-confidence and maturity.
Yet Lectral took an instant dislike to the first man he had met in something more than thirteen hundred winters. He looked down his great shining snout, glaring between the flexing apertures of his broad nostrils as the man strode boldly up to the great silver dragon. Only with an effort did he avoid a disdainful snort.
The towers of Palanthas rose just past this parade ground, and the lofty ridges of the northern Kharolis range, still limned in the whiteness of spring snow, formed the horizon beyond. Together with a multitude of metal dragons, he had made the flight from the Dragon Isles to this legendary city. Now Lectral had to force himself to lower his gaze, to confront this insignificant human when his eyes longed to fix upon the great mountain range.
The knight knelt, looked frankly at the ancient creature looming over his head, and then bowed his head and spoke in serious, dignified tones.
“Esteemed Anci
ent One, I beg to request the great honor of mounting your immaculate shoulders and of riding your mighty self into battle. I pledge to strive mightily against the foe of your people and mine. I pray to the Platinum Father that together we can do great injury to the Dark Queen’s hopes.”
“I don’t have ‘people,’ ” Lectral retorted sharply, though he was forced to admit to a certain approval of the knight’s bold words and his properly deferential air.
“I beg your forgiveness, Honored One. As you may have deduced, I am inexperienced in the ways of dragons. I can pledge that I will not make the same mistake twice.”
Lectral was becoming embarrassed by all the fuss. “It is a minor matter. But tell me, knight, how are you called?”
“My name is Allsar Dane, Knight of the Crown,” declared the warrior earnestly.
“You may address me as Lectral.” The silver dragon studied the human a little more closely than he had upon his first inspection. The man was tall and strapping, bearing the weight of his heavy plate armor with an easy grace that suggested he was a person of significant strength. He stood with dignity, yet had been able to ask for the dragon’s forgiveness without, apparently, feeling that he acknowledged any weakness in his own honor.
That was a lesson that more than one copper dragon might take to heart, Lectral thought with a chuckle. Then he reflected upon his own reaction of sourness at his first meeting of Allsar Dane, and he felt an uncomfortable flush of guilt. Perhaps age is making a bitter old nag out of me, he rebuked himself silently.
Finally he realized that the knight was still standing before him, waiting for a reply.
“Indeed, I agree to bear you in battle.” Lectral knew that he could carry the knight, though the thought was still strange. “But I warn you that holding on shall be your own affair, for my habits of flying, like everything else about my ancient self, are rather thoroughly ingrained.”
The Dragons lh-6 Page 27
