The Dragons

Chapter 37

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.

“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.