Death of the Dragon

43

“I’m beginning to wish the goblins had driven us back to Jester’s Green,” a war captain panted, as they toiled up a slope wet and slippery with goblin gore. “At least it’s flat.”

Azoun chuckled. “If you think I’m sparing breath to sound a horn right now…”

“I’d have to be crazed enough to be King of Cormyr, hey?” Lanjack Blackwagon grunted.

The king laughed aloud and clapped the oversword on the back-or tried to. In the attempt he slipped on a tangle of goblin bodies and almost fell instead. Three arms shot out to steady him.

Perhaps twenty men in once-magnificent armor, now scarred and hacked, spattered with mud and blood, and creaking and clanking where it was torn or twisted, still stood around the king and the puffing, red-faced highest-ranking wizard in the land. War captains all, officers of senior rank through noble birth or battle prowess, they were all that was left, it seemed, of the once-mighty army that had fared forth to leisurely rout one more goblin rising before eveningfeast.

Well, the wrong side might have done the routing, but goblins now lay dead in their thousands on this rolling field-yet there still seemed to be many around, stooping among the slain to pluck up swords and knives and coins. They kept well away from the small, purposeful band of their human foes, but cast many baleful, hissing glances at the passing men.

Ahead, atop the hill the battered-armored Cormyreans were climbing, the Devil Dragon was rallying more goblins, her huge batlike wings arching up into the air like restless, menacing sails as she skulked to and fro. This battle was far from done yet.

“Aye, if we were on the Green, the ladies could almost watch us from the walls of Suzail,” Kaert Belstable joked, striking a valiant pose.

“And adjust their bets,” the lancelord next to him added dryly, touching off a chorus of mirthful grunts and chuckles.

Azoun glanced around and met the startled eyes of Ilberd Crownsilver for an instant. He gave the lad a wink and a smile as they crested the hill-and found themselves facing a lot of goblins.

Goblins who looked fresh and eager for battle, drawn up in three neat ranks, their shields gleaming and maces hanging ready in their hands, flanked by wedges of spear carriers who were even now trotting forward to encircle the small and weary band of humans. Above and behind them hung the heavy-lidded, leering head of the Devil Dragon, regarding her last handful of foes in open triumph.

Harsh, high voices barked commands, and there was a rattle of chain as hundreds of goblin arms moved in unison, laying maces back on their shoulders for that first blow before they charged. Ilberd Crownsilver licked his lips and glanced swiftly to his left and right. He seemed to be the only fearful man present. On the older faces around him he saw only fierce determination and grim resolve.

Ilberd swallowed, shaking like a leaf in a freshening wind, then heard a disturbance behind him. He turned almost wearily, fearing silent goblins had risen up in their rear to transfix the last few men of Cormyr on their spears, like boar spitted for the fire.

No goblins, nor even alarm. Someone was pushing forward through the ranks, someone old and stout and armorless, his breath ragged. It was Vangerdahast, wearing that strange iron crown. War captains slid smoothly aside to give him room.

Ilberd Crownsilver relaxed. A spell from the court wizard or a blast from his wands, and the battle would be done.

Vangerdahast reached the forefront of the Cormyrean band and threw up his hands. The crown on his brow seemed to sparkle for a moment, dazzling the eyes. His voice, when it came, thundered across the battlefield as if he were an angry god or colossus. The words that boomed and rolled forth were harsh and unfamiliar to Ilberd’s ears. They sounded akin to the shrill cries of the goblins. When they ended, there was a little silence but for the last rolling echoes, as the humans and the goblins regarded each other.

Then, in eerie silence, the goblins went to their knees, laying their weapons gently down on the much-trampled ground, and touched their faces to the dirt.

The dragon’s head snaked back and forth in obvious astonishment as she saw her force disarm itself. She reared back and bounded into the air. All around Ilberd, armor rattled as warriors tensed, trying to raise shields they did not have.

Vast she was, yet sleek and terrible in her power. The young Crownsilver gaped at her magnificence, standing transfixed as she soared into the sky then turned, wings rippling, and plunged down upon them. He’d never seen such catlike grace, or sheer size-the beast was as large as some castles of the realm. He’d never seen such

– swift and casual death. The dragon raced into the Cormyreans, spewing fire when she was perhaps twenty paces from the royal magician and following it like a giant torch thrust through cobwebs. Men were hurled in all directions. Ilberd saw Elber Lionstone tumbling along the dragon’s scaled back, his face a mask of pain and his frantically stabbing dagger rebounding from its scales in futility. He fell sideways from view, to crash somewhere back down the hillside whence they’d come. Red fire streamed along the dragon’s path, blazing in the grass around their boots. Men groaned or cursed weakly as they staggered or struggled to rise. Many a gauntlet dipped to a belt flask to quaff enchanted healing and banish searing pain.

For a moment it seemed the royal magician had vanished-burned to ashes by the dragon’s fire or devoured by it, perhaps-then, as the Devil Dragon passed overhead, returning to her chosen spot, Ilberd saw King Azoun staggering along with a body in his arms that seemed more ash than flesh. Ilberd stumbled forward to help. Azoun gave him both a fierce grin and the limp, senseless, and gods-be-damned-heavy Vangerdahast to hold.

“Time for swords, it seems,” the king said cheerfully, watching the goblins who’d surrendered stream down and away from the hilltop.

They left their weapons behind, shields and gleaming steel covering the hilltop between the dragon and the Cormyreans like a cloak of war metal. At the base of the hill, cleaving up through them, were other goblins, answering a hissed call from the dragon. These new earfangs held their weapons ready, and showed no sign of imminent surrender.

“I must get to the dragon!” the king shouted suddenly. “To me, men of Cormyr!”

A breath later, they were pounding across the hilltop, slipping and sliding on the discarded weapons underfoot, and the dragon was turning her head in their direction, looking as startled as any boy surprised in a pantry in mid-theft.

She gathered her mighty wings to spring aloft, and Azoun roared, “Don’t let her fly away!”

“Ahead of you, my king,” a lancelord with the arms of Tapstorn on his shoulder shouted back. “Behold!”

Ilberd saw a ring on his finger-a prized heirloom of the Tapstorns, no doubt-gleam with sudden fire. Magical fire blazed only for an instant as the ring blackened and crumbled away, leaving Murkoon Tapstorn wincing and shaking scorched fingers. The flames streaked across the hilltop to pounce on the dragon’s head, raining down blows of something unseen like a crashing, ringing chorus of forge hammers. The great wyrm shrank back, ducking her head and retreating. The striking spell seemed to move with her, its battering ceaseless.

They reached the first hissing, snarling goblins, mere steps from the great bulk of the dragon. Ilberd was gasping under the weight of the royal magician, who rode upon his shoulders like a dead man-who, by the gods, might well be a dead man.

The clang of steel began, quickening swiftly to a constant skirling song as the weary men hacked and hewed in a mad frenzy, cutting their way through an ever-increasing flood of goblins with cruel hooked blades in their hands and hatred in their eyes. Ilberd saw Skormer Griffongard fall, the battlemaster’s helm torn away to reveal his long, tawny mane of hair and his eyes two blazing flames of fury as he hacked and stabbed his way through wine-purple goblin blood. They literally ran up his body, cutting and stabbing, and he sank from view under their howling tide.

Murkoon Tapstorn staggered, spun around with blood streaming from one sightless eye socket and a snarl of pain on his lips, and fell over a goblin corpse. A dozen or more earfangs pounced on him, and the gauntleted hand that was punching and tearing at them soon went limp and fell from view.

Ilberd swung Vangerdahast’s body around like a ram, its limp boots smiting aside squalling goblins, and kicked out with all his might. He felt ribs break under his boot and that goblin sailed away, trailing a thin scream. Ilberd charged forward into the space where it had stood, stepping high and not caring what he trampled. A sharp, burning pain just above his left knee marked a successful stab into his leg. He roared out his pain and punched that goblin assailant in the face, wheeling to stab down with his sword. The movement made the wizard fall from his shoulders, crashing down atop half a dozen squeaking goblins. Freed of the weight, Ilberd spun and lunged and danced like a madman, butchering goblins until they fell back around him and he could scoop up Vangerdahast once more.

As he turned and straightened, he saw six goblin spears pierce Kaert Belstable, sliding bloodily out of the oversword’s back. Belstable staggered, dark blood gushing from his mouth and nose, and with a snarl threw himself forward onto one of his attackers, clawing at the earfang’s eyes with bloody, failing fingers. They went down together, and goblins swarmed over the warrior, stabbing enthusiastically.

Lanjack Blackwagon-or rather, the twisting top half of him-crashed down bloodily onto goblins streaming forward beyond that fray, his legs and guts spilling from the jaws of the Devil Dragon as she laughed aloud.

Ilberd watched in horror as that head-as long as a cottage, and lined with yellowed, hooked teeth as tall as a man-reared. Murkoon’s battering spell was gone, and the beast opened steaming jaws to savage the man who stood beneath it, sword raised.

The king!

Flame gushed forth in a white-hot torrent, setting the grass alight and driving goblins into shrieking flight in all directions. It was too hot to see through, but when it died away and Ilberd blinked the afterglow from his eyes, Azoun of Cormyr was standing where he had been before, his great warsword raised, enchanted runes glowing blue up and down its blade. He was unscathed.

Even as Ilberd gaped at what he was seeing, Azoun sprang forward like a much younger man-and the dragon followed her gout of flame with a lunge of her own, her many-toothed jaws snatching at the running man, to bite his torso from his legs as she’d served Lanjack.

Azoun gasped something, his armor flashed, and his breastplate suddenly became a bar of steel, a double-ended piercing javelin as long and as thick as a man. The dragon’s jaws closed on it, black blood spurted, and the Devil Dragon screamed in pain. The cry sounded female, and somehow… graceful.

The dragon was still shaking her head to dislodge the steel fang that had so wounded her when Azoun tore something free from a sheath or wrappings beneath his breastplate, and struck the nearest flailing piece of dragon-its right wing. There was a flash of golden light so bright that the clouds overhead momentarily lit up, and the dragon screamed again.

For just a moment, Ilberd Crownsilver thought it dwindled from a huge, scaled wyrm into a nude, winged elf maiden, dancing in pain with her long red hair swirling around her and her broken, many-feathered wings dangling. She threw back her head sobbing, and her eyes were two diamonds of fury and fire. Then she reared back with a roar that made Ilberd’s ears ring and was a dragon again. He blinked, scarcely believing he’d seen that other form.

“Man,” the dragon roared, “what did you strike me with?”

“The Scepter of Lords,” Azoun replied calmly. “The greatest of Lord Iliphar’s craftings.”

“You’re unworthy to even utter his name, human!” the dragon spat. Tiny tongues of fire spilled out of her jaws, but seemed to curl away from what the king held. In the hand that wasn’t full of a notched, darkening warsword there was a golden scepter carved into the likeness of an oak sapling sprouting delicate branches seemingly at random, its pommel a giant amethyst carved into the likeness of an acorn.

“No, Nalavara,” the King of Cormyr told her, almost conversationally. “Lord Iliphar bargained with my ancestor, and gave him the power to rule, and rule well. That bargain has come down to me. In some ways, he’s the guardian and father of my house.”

The Devil Dragon shrieked in utter fury and tried to pounce on the man before her, but her broken wing failed her, and she fell sideways to the earth, crashing down atop many goblins and rolling upright again heedless of how many she crushed.

The thunder of her fall was loud in Ilberd Crownsilver’s ears as a goblin sprang up onto his shoulder and tried to slit his throat. The goblin died when Ilberd, surprising himself as much as the goblin, reversed the blade into the little humanoid’s own throat. Ilberd let the goblin fall onto a pile of its comrades and knew that even if that goblin had succeeded in killing him, he’d seen the Devil Dragon die, and Cormyr saved.

In truth, though, the dragon was far from dead.

Azoun struck once at the dragon’s head, reaching as far as he dared, knowing he might never have so fine a target in this fray again. Hot blood gushed from between the scales a little forward of her right eye, but Nalavarauthatoryl the Red tore herself free and away from him, crushing more goblins heedlessly, and snarling, “Elves do not hold to bargains with murderers of their kin! Iliphar bargained with you, but no soft words will bring back my betrothed. Nigh on fifteen centuries the one I was to marry has been dust, fifteen centuries have I been alone-never to know his arms again, never to have the happiness together that should have been ours. I spit upon your bargain, human-spit fire upon it!”

Flames roared forth again from the dragon’s throat, but this time they were dark red, fitful, and came with a spray of much smoking black blood. The dragon shook her head in pain and frustration, even as the flames she’d snarled forth began to blaze in a spreading ring on the hilltop, driving back chittering goblins and leaving the king alone with his foe-and the fallen, including one ash-cloaked royal magician.

Azoun circled slowly sideways, forcing the dragon to turn and follow, until he stood over Vangerdahast. Perhaps he’d able to snatch some bauble of magic or other from his old tutor’s body, or

“I, too, have known loss in this war,” the King of Cormyr told the dragon, raising both his sword and the scepter, his blade outermost to protect Iliphar’s precious crafting from the swipe of a claw or wing or tail.

Unlike a true dragon, Nalavarauthatoryl never seemed to use her tail in a real battle, but forgot it save as something to keep her balance. “Hundreds of my subjects lie dead, fallen before you and the creatures you have whelmed.”

“Pah! What are their deaths to me? They’re vermin-vermin who must be destroyed or driven out to cleanse these forests for the elves. I will see their fields, stone towers, and all torn up that the trees may once again grow over all.”

Nalavara bit down, but winced away as that sharp blade laid open her lip, just at the edge of her scales. Shaking her head with a savage roar, she batted at the lone human with one clawed forefoot. The warsword struck again, and with it-with another burst of golden light, and more searing, numbing pain-the Scepter of Lords.

The Devil Dragon hissed and drew back. Her eyes glittered with hatred as they met Azoun’s, but the king looked back at her calmly.

“I, too, have lost a beloved to you,” Azoun said. “My daughter Alusair was burned to bones in the fire you gout.”

“So what is that to me, human? In what way does a human life equal that of an elf?”

“Both are ended,” the king said bleakly. “Both are gone, never to tread this fair land again.”

The dragon bit down again but this time wheeled away from the ready blade before being cut-and before actually biting anything.

“And even if they were measured equal, human, why should I care-when humans have raped and despoiled the land itself? What is this Cormyr but the Wolf Woods all thinned and cut back and choked with your refuse and your stone buildings and even your graves, earth wasted to lay out bones that could feed new trees and flower forth?” Nalavara turned restlessly, seeking to use her greater size to outpace the king’s sword and reach around to strike at him from behind.

“This Cormyr,” Azoun told her almost gently, “that you burn and tear apart and visit plagues and goblin infestations and insect swarms and the like on, Lorelei Alavara, is the fair land you care so much about.”

“How dare you?” The dragon almost sobbed, rearing up above him in a tall and terrible way. She threw herself down upon him, broken wings spread, snarling, “Have my life too, then, human! Strike me down. Or is it you that shall go down first, eh?”

They rolled, the human frantically, to avoid being crushed, and the dragon after him, seeking to grind him into bloody pulp with her great weight. She clawed at him as she went, gouging great furrows in the earth. Goblins fled down the slopes of the hill crying in terror.

After a dazed and drifting time, Ilberd Crownsilver remembered his name. He remembered his fall, and the terrible lunge of the dragon before it, and the battle before that. He was lying sprawled on his back with the same gray, tattered-smoke clouds above him that had hung over him then… and he was lying on cold, still, and unpleasantly sharp goblins. He was seized with the sudden desire to get up and stand again and know his fate-even if it was to die under the blades of scores of cruel earfangs.

The young nobleman struggled to his feet, the world heaving and rocking through his swimming eyes. Something red-his own sticky blood, he discovered, looking at his fingertips calmly-was streaming into his right eye, and he’d hurt something low on the left side of his belly that involved torn armor and more blood beneath.

“Well, you did want to taste glory,” he growled to himself. “Tastes a lot like blood to me, but there it is, hey?” He coughed weakly, spat out a lot of blood, and looked around. There were goblins in plenty, wandering the field dazedly or picking over bodies for blades and helms, but none near. Some of them even seemed to be fleeing from the hill he was standing on.

Ilberd looked back up the hill to where he’d stood with the king against the Devil Dragon-in time to see that great wyrm hurl herself down on Azoun and roll about trying to claw at him, for all Faerun as if king and dragon were two children brawling in the dirt.

“Glory,” he said in disgust and spat blood again. His helm and dagger were gone in his fall, somewhere, but his sword was still in its scabbard. He drew it, deliberately, admired its weight and heft in his hand one last time, and started up the hill.

Cormyr needed him-and if that was good enough for his king, dying in the dirt up there under a dragon’s jaws, well… it was good enough for him. Smiling, Ilberd Crownsilver went to find his doom.

“This is madness, Nalavara,” Azoun gasped, as they rolled apart and clambered upright, each in their own way. “We both fight for Cormyr-to guard and keep unstained the land we love!”

The red dragon’s eyes glittered. “Clever words,” she hissed. “Humans are always spewing more snake-tongued cleverness. Die, human king!”

Her flame this time was but a few wisps that barely challenged the failing defensive magics of his blade, but her bite was as swift and savage as ever. Armor plate shrieked under a tooth as she crushed Azoun’s left shoulder and sent him staggering back, despite his thrusts into her chin with both warsword and scepter.

“I strike in sorrow,” he gasped, as the golden light flooded around him once more, “and apologize to you for the sin of Andar Obarskyr and for the sins of my father and grandsire and forefathers back to Andar in keeping secret the murder Andar did-and for my own part in doing so, too. Will offering you my life for that of your beloved end all this?”

The red dragon drew back and stared at him in amazement, dragging her broken wing.

“What did you say, human?”

Azoun spread wide his arms, allowing her a clear path to his breast, clad only in sweat-soaked leather where the transformed and sacrificed breastplate had gone. He looked old, his hair white and his face weathered and careworn, but he also seemed almost contented.

“Will my own life atone for what you have lost?” he asked again. “If so, I yield it gladly. Take it, so long as you restore peace to Cormyr and, by your honor, Lorelei Alavara, all who dwell in it.”

For a moment the red dragon’s scales wavered, and he was seeing the sleek bare body of an elf maiden, her red hair cascading around her in a long and glorious cloak, her large, dark eyes almost pleading, her mouth trembling on the edge of a smile.

Then it was gone, and he faced the dragon once more-a smaller wyrm, it seemed, but bright-eyed in its renewed fury.

“No!” Nalavara snarled, “Your trickery comes too late. Too long has my hatred carried me, human, until it is all I have left. Nothing you can say or do will bring back my Thatoryl. As he crumbled, so shall you all. The peace you seek will fall upon ‘fair Cormyr’ only when the rotting corpse of every last human feeds the forest that has been so defiled!”

“Time changes Faerun, as the dragons gave way to the elves, and your kin to mine,” Azoun said gravely. “I can’t bring Thatoryl Elian back, but I can raise a stone-or plant a grove-in his memory. My huntmasters tend the land even now, and leave some stretches untouched. I can make Cormyr far more a forest again… but the paradise you hunted in is gone, I fear, forever. Can we not work together to plant its echo? Must this end in more blood?”

Nalavarauthatoryl the Red reared up again, beating her wings despite the pain her broken one caused her, and snarled, “Of course it must, human! How else, whatever our ‘civilized’ pretensions, do elves and humans and dragons settle their disputes? No better than the goblins are we-and I cannot be something I am not. Die!”

Her jaws swept squarely down on Azoun this time, heedless of his warsword cutting into them and the scepter striking home-even when its golden radiance burst inside her head and her eyes blew out in twin balls of flame.

Ribs broke and the organs within burst before those jaws parted, sagging open again in death. Torn, Azoun gasped aloud at the pain, barely noticing as the Scepter of Lords caught fire in his trembling hands.

Yet its fury revived him from sinking into oblivion. He stood his ground, holding it deep in the dragon’s jaws, and snarled, “For Cormyr!”

Let those ladies on the walls of Suzail change their wagers, damn them. He had a realm to save, whatever the cost, and this self-damned dragon was taking far too long to die.

Hot black blood boiled out of Nalavara’s gullet then, washing over his chest and arms, drenching his wounds and raging through him wherever it touched his own blood. Azoun growled in pain and staggered as his foe shivered once, from end to end, then slowly gurgled into eternal silence.

As the Devil Dragon fell away, smoke rising from her empty, staring eye sockets, Azoun went to his knees atop the familiar form of Vangerdahast. It was done, his strength was spent, and it was time. Time for even a king to leave his throne behind in favor of a calmer place.