Dragons of a New Age

27 Blue Spy

Khellendros had watered from the bowels of his lair deep beneath the desert. He had watched as one of his children was slain in midair by an audacious human who refused to give in to its sharp claws and lightning. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, with wheat-colored hair that blew in the breeze about his intense face.

Khellendros had watched the man repeatedly drive a blade into the blue spawn’s chest. The spawn was in an agony that Khellendros shared. He had felt the lifeblood of his first successful creation ebb away. He had felt his child gasp for breath and discover blood, not air, in its lungs.

The dragon had pulled himself back, detached his senses—not wanting to feel his first offspring’s death, not wanting to know what death was like, what Kitiara experienced so long ago when he had failed her and her body died.

But his concentration had been interrupted by the death of another blue spawn, this also at the hands of the wheathaired man.

“No!” the dragon had shouted. The walls of his cavern shook and grains of sand had rained down like falling snow through the cracks in the stone ceiling overhead. The wyvern sentries had stared blankly at him.

“Do what?” the larger had asked.

“Do nothing,” the other had suggested.

The Blue’s ranting and raving had gone on for several minutes.

Now more than two dozen spawn watched and waited behind the wyverns. They looked past the dull-witted guards, watched their master, but kept wisely silent and did nothing as the sand continued to rain down.

“I shall not be bested!” Khellendros cursed. “Not by a handful of mortals. I shall send more spawn. I shall...” The dragon paused, sensing a third child in the barrens, one the humans had not killed. It was relatively uninjured, but it was frightened, and it was... trapped?

Through the eyes of his mud-encased spawn, Khellendros saw faces framed in green. A kender, one well into life and with thick streaks of gray in her hair. The man was there, too, looking down with his wheat-hair fluttering about his face. The man was saying something, but Khellendros couldn’t quite make it out. And the blue spawn was getting more frightened with each passing moment. The thunderous beating of its heart drowned out practically all else.

“Calm,” the dragon communicated to the creature. “Show no fear.”

The spawn relaxed, but only a little. With the dragon’s persistent coaxing, its heart slowed, quieted. Then Khellendros heard a word.

“... Palin’s,” a man said.

Palin? The dragon furrowed his brow. The name was vexingly familiar. A human name that had significance. Ah, yes. Palin Majere, a baby born to Caramon and Tika Majere, humans who meddled in dragon affairs and angered Kitiara—Heroes of the Lance, their brethren called them.

Kitiara’s nephew?

And the man was also called a hero himself for managing to survive the Chaos War and for founding the Academy of Sorcery. He was a recurring problem.

The dragon was curious, wanting to see this offspring, learn how his parents died—if they were dead. Caramon and Tika were often a bane to Kitiara, which meant they were a bane to Khellendros. He would learn what happened to them, share the news with Kitiara when he recovered her spirit. Perhaps he would kill them all, Caramon and Tika if they still lived, and their whelp—show Kitiara their bodies as a homecoming present.

“They think you a common draconian, my spawn,” Khellendros hissed conspiratorially. “They think you a simple creature, not a complex being born of a draconian and a human and given life by my essence. I am a part of you.” The dragon was immensely pleased with himself, relishing the prospect of seeing this Palin Majere—being taken to him via the blue spawn.

“A fine spy, you will be, my spawn,” Khellendros continued. He felt his creation’s heart beat with pride now, happy that it could satisfy its master.

The Blue instructed his spawn to test the prison. It was a strong net, but not truly magical. With only a minimal amount of effort, the creature could tear its way free. Its talons were sharp enough to slice through the seaweed. Its nails crackled with lightning, sparking against the tight weave and threatening to sunder it so it could fly free.

“Stop!” Khellendros ordered. “You must not free yourself—not yet.”

The spawn settled back, confused and trying to make itself comfortable. It feebly wrestled with the net now and then to make the bag jiggle and to keep up the illusion of captivity.

This kept its master happy.