The Dragons

Chapter 20

2693 PC

Aurican drifted in a pleasant haze of memory and reflection. Sprawled across the great mountain ridge of the High Kharolis, he knew as he looked down that he was watching Callak and Auricus chase each other’s tails through a maze of valleys and gorges. Specks of bright metal darted, looped, and raced in the full enthusiasm of youthful flight, their gold and silver wings a blur of shimmering reflection.

Yet a part of the mighty gold’s mind could almost believe that it was himself and Darlantan down there, perfecting those maneuvers for the first time, chasing and wrestling, hunting together or tormenting their kin-dragons of the brown metals. When he drifted into these reflections, he felt like a young wyrmling again, ready to flex his wings and buzz like a hummingbird through the vast realm of the sky.

But when he shifted and stretched, he was vividly reminded that he was an ancient dragon now. His wings crackled, comfortable in repose but reluctant to respond to the commands of elderly muscles. His neck and back were sore, and he wanted nothing more than to absorb the warmth of the sun soaking through the shiny metallic scales. Was it his imagination, or did his spine actually creak as he raised his head to look off the other side of the mountain? He was slightly restless-worried, perhaps, about some unnamed threat to the nestlings, but not so agitated that he felt it necessary to move.

Though, in fact, these youngsters gave him many things to worry about. Callak and Aurican, of course, were strong and proud, and would someday be worthy heirs to the silver and gold clans. Auri learned magic with real talent, and his silver nestmate showed promise in the arcane arts as well. But they were impetuous and reckless in ways that disturbed the venerable gold, as if they didn’t acknowledge the possibility of danger, the threat implicit in the Queen of Darkness and her currently dormant dragons. Naturally Aurican tended to forget that he and Darlantan had lived for thousands of years before becoming aware of that menace.

And the males of the brown metals were even more worrisome. Flash was every bit as selfish and hot-tempered as his sire, Blayze, had been. The younger copper showed little patience for the concerns of his nestmates and had been quick to bite-or even to spit a nasty stream of acid-when his young kin-dragons displeased him. From an early age, he had shown a tendency to wander off, to hunt and dwell by himself. Flash had located his sire’s lair, Auri knew, but he feared that the vast treasures concealed therein had spoiled the young copper, making him even more suspicious and resentful of the others.

And Brunt, the offspring of strong, thick-skulled Burll, had sadly shown little of his sire’s placid nature. Like Flash, Brunt had found a separate lair, and he spent much of his time hoarding treasures and avoiding the company of the rest of Paladine’s brood. Whether it was the same place Burll had used Aurican didn’t know, but the young bronze always returned from his journeys with the scents of brine and fish that had distinguished the elder bronze.

At least Dazzall had carried on the sociable legacy of Smelt. He was already well known among humans and had proven to be a peacemaker among the nestmates. Although he was a passable student of magic, he lacked the concentration of Auricus or the native intelligence of Callak.

Aurican’s attention drifted as his head swept through a serene, regal inspection. He saw the two lakes, where Oro and Kenta had gone to their final rest, side by side, their waters now emerald green following the spring melt, and sighed with loneliness. He was acutely aware that he was the last of his nestmates, the only one of Patersmith’s pupils still alive.

It had been within the last fifty winters that the two elder females had finally weakened. Kenta had gone first, crawling from the lair into the mountains, laying herself on the ice so that she had been entombed by the thawing of spring. Then, the next year, golden Oro had followed her silver cousin into the realm beyond life.

Aurican thought about a thing he had learned from elves and humans, the strange concept of love. He had tried to understand this intangible bond. He knew that it connected mates to each other, and even stretched between siblings, parents and children, and close friends. Silvanos had once confessed that, despite their differences, he and Kagonos had shared a bond that could only be described as love. Yet when Auri looked at the place where Oro was buried or thought of the death of Darlantan, he wondered how the two-legs could bear it-to have such a bond torn apart in the short life span that was, at least in the case of humans, inevitable. While the ancient gold was saddened by the loss of his mate and his kin-dragon, their deaths had left him lonely, but not grief-stricken. Indeed, the very thought of an end to life made him more curious than anything else.

Aurican was not at all certain about whatever awaited one when mortal flesh at last yielded to death. To be sure, he had spent time-centuries, in fact-on the study of this particular question. Yet the mystery had eluded even the most penetrating of his meditations, researches, and self-posed queries. Even his dreams, normally a potent source of learning, had yielded little insight.

His musings, like so many of his reflections, made Aurican feel like a relic from an earlier era. Had he really ever been a wyrmling, sleek and supple like Auricus? Or were those memories merely dreams? For that matter, was there, in the present, a significant difference between a dream and a memory of the distant past?

This had been the question of philosophy that had occupied his thoughts for the last dozen or so winters, and he had yet to determine a truly satisfying answer. Naturally there were differences between dreams and memories, but were they significant when viewed from the portal of the present? With a pleasant drooping of his leathery lids, so that they half covered the still-clear orbs of his golden eyes, Aurican began to review the arguments in favor and opposed.

He thought in particular of Daria, the boldest of the female silver nestlings. She had always spoken of very vivid dreams, and several times Aurican had dreamed of Daria’s destiny… a danger and a fate that would be revealed to her in a dream. He made a vow to speak to her of this, for he had the strong feeling that he himself would be dead before this destiny was made clear.

“Grandfather!”

A shout of forceful urgency brought his musings to an abrupt halt. Raising his head so quickly that a jolt of pain shot down to his shoulders, Aurican looked around for the source of the noise.

Little Agon was flying toward him, flapping his small wings with desperate urgency. “Grandfather Aurican!”

“Yes… what is it?” he asked as the silver wyrmling came to rest on the mountainside slightly below the venerable gold. Agon was a likeable and enthusiastic wyrm, stunted in size since emerging from his egg, but popular among all of his kin-dragons. Much to Aurican’s pleasure-and surprise-the runty silver had demonstrated almost as much magical aptitude as had golden Auricus.

“I heard something! It was loud, braying like a horn, and it seemed as if it were calling me. But I couldn’t see anything! What was it?”

“Where did it come from?”

“Th-the east, I think. But I was flying with Dazzall, and he said he didn’t hear anything.”

Aurican’s brow furrowed. He saw Dazzall as the brass dragon winged upward to join them. In moments he had landed, nodding his head in confirmation of Agon’s words.

“A horn, you say? Like a trumpet?”

“Yes, Grandfather!” Agon said with a vigorous nod.

The gold dragon remembered the ram’s horn, safely stored in the grotto, but he knew that another of the horns existed. That one was borne by the wild elves, and long ago Darlantan had told him its purpose: the Kagonesti could use the ram’s horn to summon help from the silver dragons, in a call that was audible to the wyrms of argent alone.

“Here come Callak and Auricus,” Agon noted, and the venerable gold saw that the pair were also flying upward, laboring hard toward the ancient’s lofty vantage. Both were stiff-necked, straining their wings in obvious urgency.

Immediately Aurican hurled himself into the air, and his wings responded as needed, sweeping outward to channel and guide the wind, easily steering his flight. Callak and Auricus fell into formation as the elder dived past them, trailed by Agon and Dazzall.

“Did you hear something?” Aurican asked the young silver.

“Yes, Grandfather-a horn, with a strangely compelling sound.”

“But you heard nothing?” the ancient demanded, turning to his golden scion. Auricus shook his head. “That seals it, then. What you heard was the ram’s horn of the Kagonesti. Gather the others. We have important matters to discuss.”

Before he could settle to the ground on the floor of the Valley of Paladine, Aurican was startled by a shimmer of magic below. A two-legged figure appeared instantly, and he realized that someone had teleported here. As he landed, the mighty gold saw that the newcomer was an elf. A river of blood trickled down the flank of the battered figure, and the dragon saw that his robes of regal silver had been rent and torn by cruel violence. The fellow looked up, took a weak step forward, and then fell to the ground.

Aurican scrutinized the stranger even as his gold dragon body shifted and shrank. Quickly the elder stood upright as he adjusted to his familiar elven body. He saw that the stranger had been gouged by a sword thrust to the side, and noticed by the irregular tears on the rich garment that the blade’s edge had been cruelly serrated-in other words, a weapon that no elf would wield.

“Greetings, honored elf,” Aurican said softly as Auricus and Callak came to rest behind him. They had not yet mastered the talent of the shapechange, and their metallic, reptilian heads rose over his shoulders as he regarded the battered newcomer. Dazzall and Agon held back slightly but also listened.

“Can you hear me? Do you come from Silvanost?” pressed the elder dragon. He had lived for a while in Silvanos’s city, already a legendary place of crystal palaces and towers rising from an island in the midst of a mighty river. Now Aurican pictured that pastoral place, which had been peaceful for centuries, and the golden serpent felt a shiver of deep, chilling alarm.

At the name, the elf’s eyelids flickered. His right eye was swollen shut, distorted by a purple bruise and cruel gouges on his cheek, but his left opened to regard Aurican with an expression of palpable terror.

“Again… she comes again,” croaked the elf, a spatter of bloody drool trickling from his lip.

“Who?” asked Callak and Auricus at the same time, urgency hissing in the words.

“Crematia,” declared Aurican, without any question in his voice. He looked again at the sword wound, then sniffed. The taint of acid was a sulfuric stench, faint but unmistakable, the effects visible in the holes that had been burned in the trailing edge of the elf’s robe. “And she has brought her kin-dragons, awakened from the heart of the Khalkists.”

The wounded elf arched his back, his jaws clenching soundlessly as he thrashed at an imaginary foe. Aurican leaned forward, touching him gently upon the forehead, and the fellow’s struggles immediately ceased. His good eye opened, but the madness was gone. Instead, he stared with a desperate, pleading intensity.

“They came from the sides… all of them, red and black and white and the rest. And on the ground, ogres, charging from the woods… and warriors like snakes, snakes with arms and legs, bearing cruel swords. Those came from the swamp and butchered all of us who tried to find shelter there. We fought them… we killed and we died… but there were so many…”

“What about Silvanos?” asked Aurican. “Does he live?”

“Aye, at last word before I was carried away. The three brother mages were there… the three robes… red and black-and the white one, too. Their magic was the only thing that enabled us to survive the first onslaught… walls of sorcery around Silvanost. The city stands, for now. They sent me here to find Aurican… to beg for help!”

The elf’s words burned with shame at the admission, but again the serene figure of the altered gold dragon laid a hand upon the injured messenger’s forehead. At the touch, the battered fellow once more drew a deep breath and apparently relaxed.

“You have done your job well, my friend. You must rest here, and grow strong. Know that I shall fly in response to your need.”

Abruptly Aurican was a dragon again, rearing high above the younger serpents behind him. He raised his mouth to the skies and, with a trumpeting bray, summoned the other nestmates from their hunts and meditations among the peaks of the High Kharolis.

“Who are these brother mages?” asked Auricus.

“Three elves I knew centuries ago,” the elder replied. Clearly he remembered the quest to the realm of gods, and the gifts that had led to spell magic on Krynn-and the three moons that, ever since, had loomed in the night sky. “They are still alive, and still mighty. Indeed, it sounds as though their magic is the best hope of elvenkind-at least, until I can get there.”

Soon the brood of his own offspring and his nieces and nephews had joined him, several dozen bright males and females of copper, brass, and bronze, together with Callak and his brother Arjen, and Auricus. One of the females, Dazzall’s sister Krayn, took charge of the wounded elf, bearing the messenger into the depths of the undermountain and its sacred grotto.

“I return to Silvanesti,” announced Aurican, fixing his stern glare upon the restless wyrmlings. “While I am gone, I expect that all-”

“We’re coming with you!” declared Callak, rearing up with a fluttering of silver wings, staring belligerently into the eyes of his ancient tutor.

The other wyrmlings cringed back, expecting an explosive response, but Aurican merely sighed heavily, sending a puff of warm smoke emerging from his nostrils.

“You cannot,” declared the elder. “You-all of you-are too young. Bold and brave, I know, but neither will keep you alive against the cruel dragons of the Dark Queen. And though our nest is here, we have no eggs, no clutch to guard. It is too great a risk, for we gamble with the whole future of our kind should I let you come to war.”

“What worth is a future if we allow the Dark Queen’s dragons to rule the world?” demanded Auricus quickly, raising a question with vexing logic as he came to his brother nestling’s aid.

Despite himself, old Aurican allowed himself a measure of pride in his youngster’s argument as he replied. “There is no cause to panic. It is not out of the question that I myself, with the aid of the brother mages, may deal with the threat.”

“But this is not your task alone!” asserted Callak. “Is not Crematia responsible for my father’s death, as well as those of our other patriarchs?”

“And you’ve told us how, during that war, the red dragon was not captured in the gem of life-trapping with the others!” silver Arjen insisted. “Now is our chance to slay her!”

“There are many wyrms of evil, are there not?” pressed crippled Agon, bobbing his head high to be heard in the midst of his silver siblings. “Surely you could use our help. At the very least, we could guard your back and warn you of ambush!”

“No more argument!” snapped Aurican sternly. “This is an affair of ancients, and my business to complete. Now go, all of you, and guard the grotto!”

“But there are other kin-dragons who don’t know about the danger,” Callak objected. “Flash and Brunt are gone, and Tharn! And my sister Daria, too…”

“Then that is your task! Find your nestmates and bring them here!” insisted the ancient gold. “I command you, in the name of the Platinum Father. Gather the kin-dragons to the grotto and await my word.”

Then, without a backward glance, he took wing toward Silvanesti… and war.