The Dragons

by Doug Niles

  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.

  “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 ancie
nt 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.

  And 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.