The Dragonbards

Chapter 1

I think there are no more singing dragons on Tirror. I have searched with my restless thoughts as surely as if I flew, myself, across Tirror’s winds.

—From the diary of Meriden, Queen of Auric, written ten years before the battle at Dacia.

*

The swamp shone dark green, a steamy tangle of knotted, ancient trees thrusting up from sucking mud. It stank of rotting leaves and small decaying animals. Heavy moss hung down, and between the twisted trees, small pools of water shone. All was silence, the only sound the hushing whisper of insects, as if this land had lain untouched for a thousand years.

But suddenly screams shattered the stillness. The shadows flew apart and the quiet water heaved as a white dragon came plunging through, bellowing with terror.

Her iridescent scales shone with sky colors, and her wings were sculptured for flight. But she could not fly. One wing dragged, bloody and broken. Blood coursed down her gashed neck and shoulder staining a trail on the mud. The shouting behind her grew louder. She could hear the pursuing horses splashing and heaving. She fled between trees so dense that the arrow shafts sticking from her sides caught at them, jarring her with pain. Her broken wing pulled her sideways, and her great head swung as she reared to free herself from sucking mud. The shouts of the riders thundered just behind her. She tried again to fly, beating her wings in despair. Then she spun to face her pursuers, belching flame at the dark warriors.

They did not fall back; they fired—their arrows pierced her face and throat. Floundering, screaming with pain, she tried to bring a vision to frighten them, tried to fill their minds with full-grown dragons swooping at them spitting sheets of fire.

But no vision came. She was too unskilled, and the dark powers were too strong. She fled for a small lake between the trees, dragging her torn wing. Dizzy and seared with pain, she crashed heavily through a tangle of willows and dove deep.

She stayed under until her breath was gone, feeling her blood wasting from her, her mind calling out to her nestmates and to a power greater than theirs.

The horsemen drove their mounts belly deep into the lake. When the white dragon surfaced, gulping air, they had surrounded her.

They made quick work of killing her.

The young dragon floated on the bloody lake, her broken wings spread white across the red water. The cheering soldiers raised their fists in victory, their faces twisted into cold smiles. Three of them put ropes on her body and whipped their horses until they had pulled her to a rise of earth.

They cut off her head and strapped it to the back of a packhorse, to carry as a trophy to their dark leader. Finished with her, they wheeled their mounts and stormed away through the mire.

The soldiers were disciples of Quazelzeg, master of the unliving. Three of them were un-men, soulless creatures alien to Tirror. The other five were human men warped to the sick ways of the dark—all of them hated the singing dragons and the human bards they paired with.