The Dragons

Chapter 9

3489 PC

“Join me in a flight to the southern forests… and together we shall see the new wonders raised by House Silvanos,” urged Aurican.

“Ah, the elves,” said Smelt quickly. “I haven’t visited among them for a long time. I will come.”

“I have a lair to tend,” Burll growled, shaking his head while Blayze looked around suspiciously, as though he thought his treasures were in danger that very moment.

The five male dragons were coiled atop the crest of the High Kharolis, each claiming one of a series of closely gathered peaks. The windless weather, and the fact that an overcast of gray clouds lurked not very far overhead, allowed them to converse with ease. They had spent a period of reflection and contemplation following the departure of their mentor, until the females had begun to make it clear that it was time for their mates to depart the grotto.

Darlantan had heard his brother’s words, but his own heart was lingering toward the eastern wilds-a place of no cities, nothing but wilderness and plentiful prey.

“Even you, Darlantan…” It was as if Auri were reading his silver kin’s mind. “Though we have only been in the grotto for a short time, you’ll be amazed to see what these elves can accomplish in the space of a dozen winters!”

“I can fully imagine,” declared Darlantan sourly, picturing how much of the woodland might have been flattened by now. He had never found a proper answer to the question of why the elves cloistered themselves so readily in that silent, aloof city?

Still, after this long period among his nestmates, he was not quite ready to vanish by himself, so he consented to join the flight. Even Burll and Blayze seemed to have some lingering need for communion, and in the end, five metal dragons took to the air, riding the high currents, coursing through empty skies. They were lords of air and land, following a leisurely course that gave them much time for hunting and for resting in pleasant bowers and shaded valleys.

Yet as they drew southward, Darlantan sensed an increasing urgency in Aurican’s manner. The gold dragon resisted a suggestion that the flying nestmates spend a day lolling beside a perfect mountain hot spring, and when the others grudgingly took wing, he led them on with unseemly haste.

“What’s your hurry, my cousin?” asked the silver dragon, straining to keep up with the fast-flying gold.

“Don’t you smell it?” asked Auri, speaking through taut jaws as he maintained his streamlined flight.

And then Darlantan did notice the taint of soot and char, a bleak hint of smell rising from an expanse that appeared to be lush forest. The odor was out of place here, strange and menacing, with evil portent, though the woodland below still appeared pristine and undisturbed.

But as they flew on, this notion was proved to be a cruel deception. They saw one clearing that was utterly black, smelling of ash, and they knew that a great fire had raged there. Soon they passed over more such swaths of destruction, and when they reached the broad river that intersected these woodlands, Aurican uttered a groan of pure, heartbreaking dismay.

Darlantan swept low over waters he remembered as crystalline and pure, which had once flowed over a bed of pristine gravel. Now the surface was a scum of mud and grime, with blackened timbers floating everywhere. More than once he saw a body, bloated by decay but still draped with the long golden hair of an elf.

Farther they flew, and now the destruction was more common than the undisturbed forests. A great landscape had burned, and the blackened trunks jutted from the charred ground in a mocking remembrance of the verdant carpet that once had blanketed the ground. Once-green trees were scarred and scorched, leaves withered away. In places, even mighty trunks had been smashed to the ground by unimaginable force.

Then Aurican uttered a strangled wail, and Darlantan saw what was left of the domes and towers that had distinguished Silvanos’s once-splendid city. The spires of crystal had been smashed, their circular bases jutting from the ruins like broken bottles. Finally the anguished gold dragon banked, swooping low, coming to rest in the midst of a broad, dust-blown square of bare dirt. The other four serpents silently accompanied their mighty brother, each of them looking around grimly, formulating images and speculation about the cause of the destruction.

Aurican padded away, shifting shape almost absently into the body of the lean, elderly elven sage he had so frequently favored. Darlantan came behind, stalking like a prowling cat in the silvery serpent that was his natural form. Only as Auri knelt beside a charred object, brushing away the soot to reveal a portion of a white marble bust and its cracked supporting pillar, did Dar realize that they were in the elegant garden his brother had shown him before.

And even with that memory, the place was unrecognizable. Only when the silver dragon stepped into a murky pit of mud did he realize that one of the elegant fountains had been filled with ashes and dirt. Shaking his foot, flicking the sticky goo from his talons, Dar followed the shambling form of Aurican through the ruins.

In one place, the frail figure who was the gold dragon scratched at the ground, clearing away muck to reveal a slab of white stone. Without visible effort, the elf’s body lifted the object back onto a pair of pedestals that stood nearby, restoring a once-elegant bench. Only when he saw the stubs of the rosebushes jutting upward from the soot, forming a perfect ring, did Darlantan realize that this had been the sheltered nook where he had been welcomed by Silvanos.

For the first time, he wondered about that elven leader, and it was a startling thought: Where were all the elves? There were some bodies here, true, but not nearly enough to account for the city’s population. Had they escaped into what remained of the forests? Or had they been hauled into captivity, perhaps slavery, by the invaders?

And that led to the natural consideration of who, or what, had done this, and here Darlantan had some specific ideas. He was tired of mourning, of probing through the wrack and ruin, and he decided that it was time to talk to Aurican. He found his brother, still in elven form, slumped over a splintered frame of wood entangled with slender wires. Aurican was weeping, tears streaking down the skin of his elven face. He looked up as the mighty silver dragon loomed over him, but his eyes remained distant and unfocused.

“This was a harp, Dar… it could make music sweet enough to break your heart. And now it’s smashed… like this whole place, this whole people, smashed!” Auri collapsed, burying his face in his hands as his shoulders shook with the convulsive force of his sobbing.

“Remember, my brother, you are a dragon!” Darlantan insisted forcefully, embarrassed by the wrenching display of emotion. “A mighty gold-patriarch of your clan!”

“And where was I when this was happening!” cried Auri, turning his face to the sky. “Where?”

“Stop it!”

Darlantan reached forward with a great forepaw and swept his brother’s elven form off the ground. He lifted Auri into the air and shook him forcefully. “Who knows, or cares, where you were? You’re here now, and you’ve seen what happened! What are you going to do about it?”

“Put me down.” Aurican’s voice was deadly calm, his face blank of emotion.

Darlantan gingerly set the elven body back on the ground and immediately reared back as he was confronted by a bristling serpent of gold, wings stiff and flapping with menace, lip curled into a fanged sneer. Raising his silver neck in response, Dar met his brother’s furious glare, saw the hatred in the gold dragon’s eyes flare and then, slowly, focus.

Aurican raised his taloned forepaws, revealing that he held several of his baubles, the gemstones he delighted in caressing, infusing them with the minor enchantments that were the limits of his sorcerous power. Now he took these stones, a bright diamond, crimson ruby, scintillating emerald, and smooth jade, and hurled them into the murk of the destruction. When he turned back to Darlantan, his reptilian face was blank of emotion.

“Who has done this?” Auri asked intently, his voice a rumbling growl.

“I have a guess that it was ogres,” Darlantan replied grimly. Burll and Smelt joined them, and he described the large war party that he had destroyed in the southern Khalkists.

“And you think the target of their strike was the Elderwild?” asked Smelt.

“They were on a march to approach the elven camp and fall upon them unawares.” Darlantan remembered the weapons bristling from the belts and fists of the mighty brutes and was more certain than ever that they had been plotting violence against the elves. With that memory came another fear: Had the wild elves suffered the same violence as the house elves of Silvanos? He pictured the serene wilderness with a shudder, wondering how much of it remained.

“I suggest we fly north, toward the Smoking Mountains,” Blayze said, using their old nickname for the volcanic Khalkists. “We will find ogres there, and I am thinking that they will give us answers first, and then perhaps a measure of vengeance.”

“Aye,” growled Smelt, with Burll and Darlantan nodding in grim agreement. All turned their eyes to Aurican, who looked once more across the swath of destruction, then lifted his eyes toward the northern horizon.

“Let us fly, then,” he declared. With regal grace and grim purpose, he took to the air, rising in a powerful downdraft of wind. Golden wings shimmered, shifting with the force of his long strokes, as the mighty serpent pulled himself into the sky.

The others followed, and it was a grim and silent quintet that winged over the wasted forestland. Darlantan flew at Aurican’s right wing, for it was the silver’s memory that guided them toward the realms of the ogres. Smelt, Blayze, and Burll trailed slightly to the rear, a little lower than the leading pair.

Before nightfall, Burll spotted a deer and took the hapless creature in a sudden dive. The group shared the feast and then once more, without speaking, took wing into the darkness. They flew through the following dawn, and still they soared on. Everywhere the wrack of war, the litter of chaos and destruction, had spread through the woods. In some places, the devastation was limited to isolated outposts, but elsewhere it had reduced huge swaths of forestland or meadow into burned char.

Darlantan lost track of the dawns and sunsets, the quickly killed deer or buffalo that sustained them in their steadfast flight. Gradually the ground rippled below them, the forests still claiming the surface of the land, yet yielding to the distinctive texture of hills. And then a range of mountains took shape before them, at first indistinguishable from dark cloud on the horizon, soon growing in definition and relief.

The distant Khalkists were a mass of conical peaks, shrouded by their eternal wreath of smoky cloud. Closer, rising as a lone summit away from the great center of the range, stood a single peak. The pyramidal block of stone lofted above a realm of lakes and woods, and Darlantan remembered the Gathering of the Elderwild he had seen among those pristine waters.

“It was on the other side of this mountain,” he told Aurican.

“Then let us be ready to do battle,” the gold replied with a low growl.

The red dragon appeared with shocking suddenness, a scarlet form that was, in an eyeblink of an instant, just there, hanging in the air, directly in Darlantan’s path. The silver started to twist as his flight took him past the crimson wyrm. He saw the jaws gape and tried to bellow a warning to Burll.

But the first sound was the roar of an infernal furnace. Dar’s head came around in time to see the bronze dragon fly fully into the hellish blossom of the dragonfire. Burll cried out, his wail a piercing, cloud-shaking keen of impossible pain-and then the cruelly burned dragon twisted and shriveled before Darlantan’s horrified eyes. The once-powerful neck tucked and curled, metallic scales burned away to reveal charred and blackened flesh. The two wings of rippling membrane hissed away in an instant, leaving the horribly burned body looking even more unnatural as it tumbled from the dissipating ball of fire.

Now Darlantan’s roar of warning was propelled by pure rage, echoed by the cries of Smelt and Blayze. Aurican, grimly silent, had already curled upward to reverse his course at the vicious red.

And then there were blue dragons there, nearly a dozen of them appearing as shockingly as had the lone red. It’s magic — they’re using sorcery against us! A portion of Dar’s mind shouted the frightening realization even as his body reacted with pure violence.

Jaws gaping, Darlantan blasted the nearest blue dragon, freezing the monster’s wings with the icy onslaught. Shrieking in fury and pain, the azure serpent twisted frantically before tumbling out of the sky. The silver body arrowed forward, crashing into the blue, and Dar bit down hard, snapping the hateful neck.

By then a roaring wave of fire crackled through the air as Smelt blasted his incendiary breath at one of the blues, while his fellow attackers spit crackling spears of lightning. Fire and electricity roared together in convulsive explosions, pounding with sound, quickly dissipating into a lingering aura of smoke. The stench of killing and destruction spread even faster than the visible vapors of lingering dragonbreath.

One of the blues shrieked and fell away, one wing burned off while the other flapped desperately, fruitlessly as the creature plunged to its doom. Even as it dwindled below, the echoes of its dying scream rose from the dusty ground to linger in the air.

But at least three of the lethal lightning blasts had torn into the roaring brass dragon, stilling his valiant maneuvers. Metallic scales flaked into the air as Smelt jerked violently, fatally around. Killed immediately, burned to a blackened corpse, he fell out of the sky with shocking finality.

Aurican swept into the melee with a bellowing cry of fury. His golden jaws spread wide as he spewed a massive fireball, a searing cloud of swirling flames that encompassed two of the blues. Oily fire licked across blue scales, scalding and burning. Both of the monstrous serpents screamed and writhed away. Fatally wounded, they struggled and wailed all the way to the ground far below.

Darlantan drove forward, taking position on Aurican’s flank as the gold plunged after the diving, frantically twisting red. That murderous serpent, a monstrous female, crowed in an exultation of triumph as she banked sharply, driving toward a gap in the looming foothills.

“Kill her!” rasped Aurican as Darlantan, wings scooping great beats out of the air, passed his golden brother, desperately straining for altitude and speed.

The silver pressed onward, pulling to draw within range of their foe’s crimson tail. His belly seethed, ready with a blast of frost, and he intuitively knew that the frigid blast would be deadly to the fire-breathing red. Just a bit closer and she would be his, frozen from the skies by the lethal blast of his icy breath.

But then the hateful serpent was gone — she simply vanished in the air as quickly as she had first appeared. Dar could only hope that she was still there, screened by some sort of invisibility magic. He strained forward, blasting the air with his lethal frost. A moment later he flew through the frigid wake of his own attack to find only empty space. The red had escaped.

Or had she? A cry of alarm pulled the silver dragon around in time to see the savage crimson wyrm land full on the back of Blayze, who strained to keep up a short distance behind Aurican. Her lethal breath surrounded the copper dragon’s head as cruel claws ripped into Blayze’s shoulders and wings. He screamed, twisting desperately to pull free from the inferno, but his scales had been scalded away, his jaws barren of flesh in a blackened, fang-baring snarl.

The red cast the dying copper away with a contemptuous gesture as another blue slashed in. Again lightning flickered in the cloudless sky, tearing into Blayze’s ribs, ripping flesh and scales away in a gory slash. Spiraling lazily, as if he were learning to fly all over again, Blayze whirled downward-but this time he never pulled out of the dive.

Aurican and Darlantan flew at the blue dragon that had delivered the lethal blast. Darlantan’s fury nearly blinded him, but a small portion of his mind reminded him that they were outnumbered, that it was wise to be cautious. Both dragons of metal swept apart as if on an unspoken command, veering out of the blue’s path as a second bolt of lightning hissed through the air between them.

Twisting back, Darlantan drew a deep breath, feeling the surging power of deadly frost fill his chest. His neck darted forward, pointing his head straight at the azure serpent. Argent jaws gaped as the explosion of dragonbreath wracked Darlantan’s body, spuming forward to engulf one side of the Dark Queen’s mighty wyrm.

The combined blasts of gold dragonfire and silver dragon ice pinned the blue in a fatal vise, burning away one wing as the other froze, then snapped into a thousand shards when the shrieking serpent tried to flex the once-powerful limb. The cry took on a piteous keen as the wyrm tumbled away, writhing in pain through the long fall to the ground.

“Flee!” Aurican gasped.

Darlantan was about to whirl around, to seek the red dragon with the last ounce of his vengeful determination. He whipped his head back, seeking some sign of the threat that had brought forth Auri’s desperate command. He saw many targets, great serpents of new colors, black and white and green, sweeping through the sky.

Snarling, Darlantan realized they had no choice. Sweeping into a shallow dive behind Aurican, he cast another glance backward and watched the chromatic shapes dwindle in the distance.

Yet even when they had disappeared from view, he looked around anxiously, wondering where these new and deadly enemies had gone-and when they would be back.