The Dragons

Chapter 14

3357 PC

Aurican dived, the scarlet-winged form of Crematia growing broad in his vision. With a bellow, he lunged, arrowing his body into a deadly spear, driving toward that hateful crimson matriarch. The long pursuit was over, he sensed… now they would finish their feud.

But the red dragon suddenly whipped about, halting in space, suspended by magic. Aurican veered, slashing at a crimson wing, and the two dragons met in the midst of a raging fireball, the combined blast of their lethal breath weapons. Still, neither of these mighty serpents could be badly hurt by fire, and so they broke apart, diving to regain speed, then swerving upward to recommence the fight.

Once again they clashed, Crematia now abandoning magic for the fury of fang and talon. Rending and tearing, they dived and coiled and twisted through the air. Aurican’s fangs tore into the crimson scales of his enemy’s belly. She screamed, folding her wings and dropping like a falling rock to escape the golden claws. As she plummeted, Aurican heard her muttering strange words, knew that she was casting a spell.

Abruptly a whirling shape materialized in the air, an elemental summoned by Crematia from a distant plane. Like a whirlwind, it roared after the gold dragon, tearing at Aurican’s wing, ripping the leathery membrane. Twisting, he snapped at the bizarre creature, but it dodged nimbly away-until he incinerated the elemental by belching a cloud of furiously churning flame.

Crematia again took flight, diving and then flying with desperate speed, but Aurican closed the distance with his quarry. For long hours, they raced and fought through deep canyons, over lofty ridges, and among the jagged peaks of the southern Khalkists. Slowly the gold dragon drew close, sensing that victory was imminent.

Then, in the blink of an instant, she was gone, leaving a hole in the sky. Aurican knew that she had teleported away, but he had no way of tracking her. Grimly furious, he banked to the side, squinting into the distance as he sought any sign of crimson scales… but there was nothing.

A squawk from below drew his attention to a griffon. As the creature flew closer, Aurican banked toward the hawk-faced flyer.

“What is the word from the east?” asked Auri as the griffon curled around to match his course and altitude.

“The battle was raging. Darlantan was in battle with the blues, flying high above the field, until at last we lost sight of him.”

“And the elves?”

“They did not fare badly. It looked as though Talonian might at last meet his defeat.”

“If the blues can be trapped… all our hopes depend on that,” Aurican said. “Forgive me, my friend, but I must hasten back there. But I would ask a question of you first.”

“As you wish,” declared the griffon, with a polite dip of its hawklike head.

“Your kind and ours have had many conflicts, many rivalries. Why, in the midst of all this, have you been such a loyal friend to my brother?”

“He showed my ancestor mercy once,” replied the descendant of Ravenclaw simply. “I am grateful.”

“Patersmith would be proud,” murmured Aurican, not surprised. Leaving the griffon wondering what he meant, the gold dragon turned back to the east. He flew for many hours until, near sunset, he found himself above the two armies.

The battlefield was a scar across the greensward below, a great wound in the world that glistened with flesh and blood, with the debris of broken weapons and punctured bodies. Fires blazed in many places, where war machines had been overtaken and put to the torch by victorious elves, or the ogres’ supply wagons had been captured and subsequently destroyed.

Aurican dived lower, wishing he could celebrate the victory, could share the joy that must be rampant in the elven camps by now. But there were good reasons why the gold dragon felt a lingering sense of melancholy. For one thing, Crematia had eluded him. For another, he was deeply concerned about his silver nestmate.

The gold dragon settled into the midst of the elven encampment, maintaining his true form as Silvanos and his chief general, Balif, came forward to greet him.

“What of the blues?” inquired Aurican with precipitate haste. His concern for his ancient nestmate forced him to set aside proper patience for formalities.

In reply, Silvanos pulled forth a stone of deepest turquoise. The large sphere pulsed with vitality as the hateful spirits of dragons thrummed and struggled within.

“There were but three of them left,” explained the elven patriarch. “My Elderwild cousin regained the stone barely in time. Quithas, astride his griffon, returned it to me here. When the three blue dragons swept downward to aid the battle on the ground, they approached me carelessly, and I was able to capture their spirits in the stone.”

“Darlantan…?” Auri felt a sense of bleak despair, knowing that his silver brother would have given his life to prevent the blues from getting through. “Did he know that you had the stone… or…?”

“He fought throughout the morning, killing two of the blues before they could reach us. But, no, he did not know that Kagonos had regained the gem.”

“Where is he?”

Silvanos pointed toward the riverbank beyond the camp. Night’s shadows had stretched across the plain, but in the glow of firelight, Auri saw the grief in his old friend’s eyes.

“I’m sorry. You had best go now if you hope to speak with him.”

The elven patriarch’s words were a murmur, barely whispered through the evening breeze, following the gold dragon who had already taken wing.

Aurican flew fast and low, and quickly he found the battered silver form stretched in the soft mud flats of the riverbank. Darlantan lay beside the broad flowage, the Vingaard, that drained this whole vast plain. Now the mighty head rose stiffly as the golden dragon swept through the night skies, gliding toward his nestmate.

Then Aurican was at Darlantan’s side, the serpentine body of pure gold coiling protectively around the battered silver flesh. With a glimmer of change, almost invisible in the starlight, the gilded serpent became again the kindly elven sage. Darlantan sighed as the hand, soft and soothing with the wisdom of millennia, gently stroked the gouged and burned scales at the base of his neck.

“The mud is cooling balm, and it helps to soften the pain,” the silver dragon admitted, allowing his head to settle once again to the ground. Still, Aurican knew that the soft dirt could do nothing to ease the various wounds gouged into the mighty serpentine body.

“Did… did the blues reach Silvanos?” Darlantan asked.

“No, my cousin. You killed two of them. And by the time the other three turned their attentions to the ground, Kagonos and his wild elves had regained the Bluestone. It was returned to Silvanos in time for him to capture the rest of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.”

“Crematia… as well?”

“Alas, no. I chased her across the plain, and through realms of smoke and sky, but she managed to elude me. The best I can claim is that she has gone to ground again. We can only hope that, with the loss of all her kin, she will remain aloof from the affairs of Krynn.”

“She does not know of the grotto, the eggs?” whispered Darlantan, suddenly stiffening.

“They are safe,” said Aurican. “Already some of the eggs are showing signs of motion. I understand that the females have their eye on a silver. They expect it will be the first of the hatchlings to emerge.”

Darlantan nodded, trying to absorb this suggestion of a future destiny.

“My son…” Darlantan’s voice trailed away with the wind, but Aurican sensed his nestmate’s joy at the thought of his own offspring coming forth into the world. The gold took some comfort from this knowledge, finding that it helped him to ignore the cruel wounds.

“Kenta is there, watching?” the silver serpent asked, his tongue flicking between his long fangs as he stirred weakly in the mud.

“Of course.”

“My son… the first of the hatchlings,” Darlantan declared dreamily. “He shall be named Callak. Here… please see that he has this when he comes of age.”

The silver wing shifted, revealing the curling ram’s horn and its chain of fine links. Aurican gently lifted the artifact, cradling it reverently in his two hands.

“It is done, my cousin,” declared the gold dragon with the body of the ancient elf. Drops of warm wetness trickled onto Darlantan’s brow and snout as Auri failed to restrain his weeping.

Darlantan’s eyes turned upward, toward the dark vault of the skies. He saw two moons there, a circle of red and another of white. Behind them trailed an orb of blackness, visible only as it blotted out the light of the stars.

“Even the heavens mark the passing of war,” he said softly, “for they have placed their lights in our sky.”

“Those moons mark more than the passing of war,” Aurican said. Even through the haze of his wounds, Dar realized that his brother spoke very seriously. “They are the tombs of nothing less than gods-Lunitari, Solinari, and Nuitari.”

“What gods are these?” Darlantan, who knew of few deities other than their own Platinum Father and his antithesis, the Queen of Darkness, asked.

“These were the three gods that gave magic to the world-the trio I visited with the brother mages. It was they who gave us the dragongems, that we might battle the scourge of the Dark Queen’s dragons,” said Auri regretfully, shaking his head in despair. “They are being punished by the greater gods for their transgression, though that transgression gave us our means for winning this war.”

“I will join them soon,” Darlantan said, once again yielding to that dreamy sense of departure. Then apparently something fought to bring his attention back to the present, and he forced himself to raise his head, to focus the increasingly vague center of his mind.

“Here,” he said weakly, lifting his wing to reveal the three shards of moon that had tumbled to the ground with him.

“But how did these…?” The gold dragon looked in wonder, shaking his head as he struggled to accept the reality of the stony fragments.

“The final battle took me… far,” Darlantan explained. “Even to what I now see are these godmoons. The lightning of the blues blasted the shards loose from the very bedrock of the spheres.”

“And these pieces…?”

“They tumbled back to Krynn with me… but now I give them to you. Or perhaps I give them to the future.” The silver head was upraised, the voice stronger than before. Those deep yellow eyes glowed, compelling the gold dragon to hear and obey as Darlantan gestured to the three large stones. One was as black as the encroaching night, another silver-white, while the third was as slickly red as fresh blood.

Aurican stood upright then, and in a shimmering of golden scales, he returned to his serpentine body. “I understand,” he said softly.

Crouching over the stones, Auri reached out with open jaws. His tongue snaked forward and scooped up the black shard, quickly drawing it into the gaping maw. Tossing his head high, the gold dragon gulped down the stone, an awkward bulge rippling the shimmering scales along the length of the sinuous neck. With swift stabs of his mighty head, Aurican took the white, and finally the red segments of stone, swallowing them after the black.

“Good,” Darlantan said as the silver head once again settled to the mud. “It is nearly finished. But it is time for you to fly.”

“Soon.” The great golden form settled beside the ravaged body of his ancient nestmate, and in silence, the great serpents felt the kinship of touch, a sensation familiar to them over scores of centuries.

“Your elf is coming,” Aurican said some time later. Darlantan couldn’t see, couldn’t raise his head, but the scent of Kagonos came to him on the evening breeze. In the distance, the camp of Silvanos rang with cheers and celebration.

“I will speak with him alone before I go,” Dar whispered. “Now, fly back to our grotto, my brother, and have an eye for my wyrmlings as well as your own.”

“You have my promise that I shall do that, and I shall compose a ballad that will live for the ages: the tale of brave Darlantan’s last battle.”

“I think I would like that, to have a ballad. And now it is time.”

With a nod and a last gentle touch to the silver-scaled neck, Aurican reared tall and shimmered in the pale starlight. Golden wings arced outward, scooped down to compress the air, and then he was gone, vanishing into the sky before the painted figure of the wild elf emerged from the darkness.