The Dragons

by Doug Niles

  Once she rose and strolled tauntingly before the great gates. She laughed as arrows arced toward her, skipped nimbly out of the path of some of the missiles. Others she transformed into harmless flowers with a flick of her hand, or dissolved into sparks with a snap of her fingers. Always she taunted the dwarves, waving at them, summoning them to come out in a cooing, playful voice.

  Only when the harvest had been thoroughly mauled, grain burned or crushed into mud, fruit squashed and broken, trees of ancient orchards snapped into kindling, did Crematia shift back to the body of her serpentine self. In the waning light of dusk, the two dragons took wing, coursing through the skies, vanishing into the shadowy gorges of the high Khalkists. Flying under moonlit skies, they soon left the ruined dwarven realm far behind. As she flew, the ancient female relished the memory of thousands of dwarven eyes, glaring with impotent hatred at the leisurely departure of their omnipotent enemies.

  Returning to the valley of fire that half encircled Darklady Mountain, the two dragons found their legions of bakali and ogres eagerly waiting. For many seasons, the monstrous warriors had been gathering here, training and learning and worshiping their mighty crimson mistress. Now that the dragons had flown to retrieve the last dragongem, the troops knew that at last the period of waiting was almost done. Masses of troops thronged across the ground, shouting accolades and hoarse cheers, whooping in raw delight as the pair of serpents flew overhead, bellowing and snorting flames.

  The mighty reds came to rest on a flat shelf of rock at the foot of the lofty peak, a natural stage where they could rise above their assembled horde. The promontory and its two illustrious occupants were visible from across the entire floor of the valley. Deathfyre bristled in stiff-winged pride while Crematia lifted her supple neck, raising her head far above the gathered horde.

  This was an area naturally lighted by the fiery rivers of lava flowing down the Darklady’s slopes and from gouts of flame and bubbling rock that frequently erupted from fissures on the valley floor. Yet now the ogres augmented the illumination, igniting great bonfires before the raised platform so that the two mighty red dragons were brightly lit in angry, surging flames, their crimson bodies slick and alight in the brightness cast by the massive pyres.

  Crematia reared still higher, clutching the blackstone in her claws and raising it above the lustily cheering mass. Her twelve lesser offspring brayed and roared, adding their accolades to the wave of noise.

  Finally four bakali shamans who had demonstrated remarkable talent—and great loyalty to Deathfyre—came forward. The lizard men priests, like the rest of their kind, were lean and supple creatures, marked by protruding muzzles and low, sloping brows. Forked tongues darted from fanged jaws, while heavy tails stretched behind, lending balance to the strangely dainty walk of the monstrous warriors.

  Each of three bakali shamans carried a single dragongem of green, white, or blue. The fourth knelt before the still-upraised Crematia, tilting its snakelike head, leaning far backward to balance on its outflung tail.

  The dragon abruptly dropped to her belly, crimson scales stopping a hairsbreadth short of smashing the shaman to the ground, a blow that would have certainly broken the wretched creature’s spine. Yet the bakali remained faithfully rigid, singing the praises of the mighty red wyrm. Pleased, Crematia gave it the blackstone.

  All four of the stone-bearing bakali marched between Crematia and Deathfyre, then started up the steep slope of the mountainside. Each clutched its stone in one taloned foreclaw, with the other hand pulling upward to aid in the long ascent. Crematia watched for a long time, relishing the awestruck silence of the legions gathered behind her as they, too, observed the four shamans gradually disappear into the darkness and haze of the heights.

  “Fly with me, my children!” cried Crematia, taking to the air with a downblast of wind. She soared low over a sea of bakali and ogres and was lifted, borne aloft by the force of their relentless cheers. Behind the crimson matriarch, Deathfyre and the other red dragons took wing, following their mistress in an awe-inspiring flight over the massed army. Red wings filled the sky, like deadly awnings spreading above the rumbling horde.

  Gradually the serpents climbed until they, like the lizard men shamans, had disappeared from the view of the legions on the ground. Even so, as she looked down, Crematia could still see the raging bonfires and the jagged streaks of the lava rivers crossing the valley floor. But now her eyes turned skyward as she strove steadily through the night. The air was warm, tainted with sulfurous gases from the bowels of Krynn. Often she tasted the metallic taint of copper or iron, solids rendered into vapor by the heat within Darklady Mountain.

  Finally the lofty summit was there, emerging from the murk, the rim of the crater a sharp-edged circle in the sky. Crematia and her young came to rest along the crest, facing the plunging shaft, feeling the infernal heat baking against their faces and breasts. The giant matriarch loomed over them all, with mighty Deathfyre rising large to one side. The lesser serpents of her wyrmlings perched, still and patient, to either side along the rim of the Darklady’s crater.

  For a long time, Crematia made them wait, knowing the bakali would climb the mountain slowly. She watched carefully, and when Hodyo showed signs of slinking back from the inferno, she seared the end of his tail with a blast of breath, then sneered as he nearly toppled forward in a panicked effort to escape.

  “Show strength, my dragons! Welcome the Darklady’s heat! Fire is your spirit and your soul, and it shall not harm you—it sustains and renews. Remember, never show weakness!”

  Finally she discerned a glowing brightness down the mountainside, soon recognizing the illumination of the whitestone. The green and blue were next to appear, and she had located all four of the bakali shamans before she found the sleek, inky perfection of the blackstone.

  Though the lizard men had labored throughout the long night on an ascent that few, if any, landbound creatures had ever attempted before, they showed only eagerness as they reached the rim of the mighty crater, kneeling on the stony crest, two to each side of Crematia. The mountain rumbled, waves of heat blasting upward, billowing clouds of smoke and ash roiling in the bottomless depths.

  “Splendid work, my shamans.… You have earned our queen’s pleasure.”

  The bakali shivered, their faces pressed abjectly to the ground. Each clutched its dragongem tightly to its scaly chest as the grumbling in the mountain grew to a palpable tremor. Fire roared, and ash swirled through the air like stinging needles of hot sleet.

  “See, my children … she rises to show her magnificence.”

  Now the bakali and the dragons looked toward the massive crater, where the billowing clouds of smoke had evolved into five distinct pillars. The central, and mightiest, was lit by an internal stream of flaming gas, glowing brightly with a crimson light. The columns of smoke on either side writhed and twisted like lesser snakes, alternately pale or dark, while the red central pillar rose even higher, spuming flame and ash into the sky.

  “Now, shamans—jump!” Crematia barked her command, head rearing back to insure that each of the bakali obeyed.

  Her precaution was unnecessary. At the command, each of the shamans leapt exultantly from the rim of the crater, clutching its dragongem worshipfully as it vanished into the gulf of fire and smoke. Immediately the mountain roared, waves of heat and light bursting into the sky.

  “Now fly, my children! Take wing with me!” The mighty red took to the air, the thirteen younger serpents following. They circled the lofty summit, fighting their way through churning clouds of roiling air, watching as more and more convulsions rocked the Darklady.

  “Deathfyre, fly to the valley. Lead the army away to the south,” commanded Crematia as sections of rock slipped away from the summit, tumbling in landslides toward the lowlands masked by smoke and dust.

  The red male swept away, and the matriarch turned her attention back to the mountain, secure in the knowledge that her scion would lead the army to safety. For a lon
g time, the great summit rumbled and shook, firing clouds of debris into the air. Even as sunrise illuminated the sky, this remained a region of perpetual shadows. The red dragons circled through the murk, wyrmlings flying behind their mighty matriarch, glimpsing the shuddering, conical peak through gaps in the swirling smoke.

  Abruptly the top of the mountain exploded, the force of the blast sending even mighty Crematia reeling through the skies. She plunged downward and away, pulling herself out of the dive and guiding her nestlings—except Deathfyre—back toward the shattered summit.

  But now there was more than smoke and ash roiling through the air. Crematia’s heart pounded at a glimpse of blue wing slicing through the edge of the cloud, at a green tail that flickered into sight, then vanished. Then scaly shapes passed to all sides, giant serpentine bodies borne by leathery wings.

  At last the slopes of Darklady Mountain tumbled away, shattered by convulsive explosions, wracked by mighty destruction. Lava surged into the air, gouts of liquid rock sizzling through the clouds, splattering against the heaving ground below. Rocks as big as Crematia’s wing floated past, tossed like marbles by the violent pressure of the dying mountain.

  The pressure of noise shook the air with thunderous force, but the crimson matriarch exulted in the violence, knowing that the convulsions were nothing less than the power of the Dark Queen. More of the summit was blasted into dust, and she brayed loudly, a shrill cry of delight.

  One whole shoulder of the massive peak sloughed away, thundering downward in an avalanche of dust, gravel, and flaming debris. More slopes fell, some collapsing inward, others falling out, sliding with glacial power into the smoldering, trembling valleys below. Colors flashed within that roiling murk, here a patch of white and blue, there a blur of green, a smudge of perfect black.

  Then they were all around, filling the skies, crying deep challenges and exulting in freedom after long centuries of confinement. The chromatic dragons of the Dark Queen, released from their prisons in the dragongems, swept away from the mountain that had now collapsed into three lesser, but still mighty, summits. The wyrms of Takhisis bellowed their joy at their freedom and roared with rage at the thought of vengeance that had been too long denied.

  “Fly, my kin-dragons!” cried Crematia. “Take wing with me to the south, where our armies march—and where we shall take our revenge against the elven lands!”

  Chapter 20

  Memories of Light and Darkness

  2693 PC

  Aurican drifted in a pleasant haze of memory and reflection. Sprawled across the great mountain ridge of the High Kharolis, he knew as he looked down that he was watching Callak and Auricus chase each other’s tails through a maze of valleys and gorges. Specks of bright metal darted, looped, and raced in the full enthusiasm of youthful flight, their gold and silver wings a blur of shimmering reflection.

  Yet a part of the mighty gold’s mind could almost believe that it was himself and Darlantan down there, perfecting those maneuvers for the first time, chasing and wrestling, hunting together or tormenting their kin-dragons of the brown metals. When he drifted into these reflections, he felt like a young wyrmling again, ready to flex his wings and buzz like a hummingbird through the vast realm of the sky.

  But when he shifted and stretched, he was vividly reminded that he was an ancient dragon now. His wings crackled, comfortable in repose but reluctant to respond to the commands of elderly muscles. His neck and back were sore, and he wanted nothing more than to absorb the warmth of the sun soaking through the shiny metallic scales. Was it his imagination, or did his spine actually creak as he raised his head to look off the other side of the mountain? He was slightly restless—worried, perhaps, about some unnamed threat to the nestlings, but not so agitated that he felt it necessary to move.

  Though, in fact, these youngsters gave him many things to worry about. Callak and Aurican, of course, were strong and proud, and would someday be worthy heirs to the silver and gold clans. Auri learned magic with real talent, and his silver nestmate showed promise in the arcane arts as well. But they were impetuous and reckless in ways that disturbed the venerable gold, as if they didn’t acknowledge the possibility of danger, the threat implicit in the Queen of Darkness and her currently dormant dragons. Naturally Aurican tended to forget that he and Darlantan had lived for thousands of years before becoming aware of that menace.

  And the males of the brown metals were even more worrisome. Flash was every bit as selfish and hot-tempered as his sire, Blayze, had been. The younger copper showed little patience for the concerns of his nestmates and had been quick to bite—or even to spit a nasty stream of acid—when his young kin-dragons displeased him. From an early age, he had shown a tendency to wander off, to hunt and dwell by himself. Flash had located his sire’s lair, Auri knew, but he feared that the vast treasures concealed therein had spoiled the young copper, making him even more suspicious and resentful of the others.

  And Brunt, the offspring of strong, thick-skulled Burll, had sadly shown little of his sire’s placid nature. Like Flash, Brunt had found a separate lair, and he spent much of his time hoarding treasures and avoiding the company of the rest of Paladine’s brood. Whether it was the same place Burll had used Aurican didn’t know, but the young bronze always returned from his journeys with the scents of brine and fish that had distinguished the elder bronze.

  At least Dazzall had carried on the sociable legacy of Smelt. He was already well known among humans and had proven to be a peacemaker among the nestmates. Although he was a passable student of magic, he lacked the concentration of Auricus or the native intelligence of Callak.

  Aurican’s attention drifted as his head swept through a serene, regal inspection. He saw the two lakes, where Oro and Kenta had gone to their final rest, side by side, their waters now emerald green following the spring melt, and sighed with loneliness. He was acutely aware that he was the last of his nestmates, the only one of Patersmith’s pupils still alive.

  It had been within the last fifty winters that the two elder females had finally weakened. Kenta had gone first, crawling from the lair into the mountains, laying herself on the ice so that she had been entombed by the thawing of spring. Then, the next year, golden Oro had followed her silver cousin into the realm beyond life.

  Aurican thought about a thing he had learned from elves and humans, the strange concept of love. He had tried to understand this intangible bond. He knew that it connected mates to each other, and even stretched between siblings, parents and children, and close friends. Silvanos had once confessed that, despite their differences, he and Kagonos had shared a bond that could only be described as love. Yet when Auri looked at the place where Oro was buried or thought of the death of Darlantan, he wondered how the two-legs could bear it—to have such a bond torn apart in the short life span that was, at least in the case of humans, inevitable. While the ancient gold was saddened by the loss of his mate and his kin-dragon, their deaths had left him lonely, but not grief-stricken. Indeed, the very thought of an end to life made him more curious than anything else.

  Aurican was not at all certain about whatever awaited one when mortal flesh at last yielded to death. To be sure, he had spent time—centuries, in fact—on the study of this particular question. Yet the mystery had eluded even the most penetrating of his meditations, researches, and self-posed queries. Even his dreams, normally a potent source of learning, had yielded little insight.

  His musings, like so many of his reflections, made Aurican feel like a relic from an earlier era. Had he really ever been a wyrmling, sleek and supple like Auricus? Or were those memories merely dreams? For that matter, was there, in the present, a significant difference between a dream and a memory of the distant past?

  This had been the question of philosophy that had occupied his thoughts for the last dozen or so winters, and he had yet to determine a truly satisfying answer. Naturally there were differences between dreams and memories, but were they significant when viewed from the portal of
the present? With a pleasant drooping of his leathery lids, so that they half covered the still-clear orbs of his golden eyes, Aurican began to review the arguments in favor and opposed.

  He thought in particular of Daria, the boldest of the female silver nestlings. She had always spoken of very vivid dreams, and several times Aurican had dreamed of Daria’s destiny … a danger and a fate that would be revealed to her in a dream. He made a vow to speak to her of this, for he had the strong feeling that he himself would be dead before this destiny was made clear.

  “Grandfather!”

  A shout of forceful urgency brought his musings to an abrupt halt. Raising his head so quickly that a jolt of pain shot down to his shoulders, Aurican looked around for the source of the noise.

  Little Agon was flying toward him, flapping his small wings with desperate urgency. “Grandfather Aurican!”

  “Yes … what is it?” he asked as the silver wyrmling came to rest on the mountainside slightly below the venerable gold. Agon was a likeable and enthusiastic wyrm, stunted in size since emerging from his egg, but popular among all of his kin-dragons. Much to Aurican’s pleasure—and surprise—the runty silver had demonstrated almost as much magical aptitude as had golden Auricus.

  “I heard something! It was loud, braying like a horn, and it seemed as if it were calling me. But I couldn’t see anything! What was it?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Th-the east, I think. But I was flying with Dazzall, and he said he didn’t hear anything.”

  Aurican’s brow furrowed. He saw Dazzall as the brass dragon winged upward to join them. In moments he had landed, nodding his head in confirmation of Agon’s words.