The Dragons

Chapter 35

1027 PC

A wild elf brave, Ashtaway, reached Lectral only a few hours after the grievously wounded dragon had sounded the ram’s horn. Marked by the spiral tattoos of black ink that had marked his clan since the time of Kagonos, the warrior found the shallow cave in which the silver serpent had sought shelter. Aided by a Kagonesti maid, Hammana, the brave brought venison to the injured dragon, while the healing skills of the elfmaid helped to stanch the bleeding of his worst injuries.

Slowly, dreamily, he allowed them to tend him, welcomed their ministrations and their company. For a long time, he remained under their care, depending on Ashtaway for food, relying upon Hammana’s poultices to heal his many wounds. Though the brave was often absent, the maid stayed at his side for many days, and the large dragon welcomed her presence. At the same time, Lectral was aware of a deep irony: He had come to save the Kagonesti, and instead it was they who had saved him.

And in his darker moments, when the two elves left him alone, he acknowledged a deeper truth. He had not flown southward solely to serve the Kagonesti, to fulfill a sense of his own duty. Rather, he had also done so to avoid the painful reality of Heart’s choice, her love for a human. Unaware of the course of the war raging in the north, he remained lost in his own musings, occasionally brightened by the presence of the two wild elves.

As he watched them together, saw the tenderness in their mutual looks and hesitant touches, perceived their concern for each other and the longing in Hammana’s eyes when Ashtaway was absent. He realized they were in love with each other. He found the knowledge both heartening and sad. The attraction seemed very natural, their joy together almost palpable-and he could only think of Heart. Could she possibly feel this same kind of affection for her knight?

Over the course of a season or more, his injuries slowly healed, though one rear leg and his wings remained badly damaged, so much so that he still couldn’t fly. Then, late on a warm day, after Hammana had gone back to her village, Lectral heard a rustle of silver wings and saw a familiar snout peering at him from the sunlit woods beyond his shallow cave.

“Silvara!” he declared, his heart pounding with a joy he had thought vanished forever.

The silver female padded into the small cave. “I am glad I found you, Honored Elder. I feared for you more than I can say.”

“And you, Little Sister-you’re a sight more welcome than you can possibly know.”

“You’re hurt!” she declared, moving forward to inspect the red scars of his wounds.

“I have been well cared for. I will live and probably even fly again, given time. But now, tell me of the war, the dragons and their lancers in the skies…?”

“The war is over. The dragons of Takhisis are gone, sent from the world by the Dark Queen herself, in a vow forced upon her by the knight Huma, in exchange for her own life.”

“Heart was right about him, then… He is a man of true greatness.” Lectral felt a stab of shame, sharpened by the fact that he couldn’t completely banish a flush of jealousy.

Silvara lowered her head, and with a growing ache of grief, he suspected the next thing she would have to tell him.

“And what of Heart?” he asked, barely daring to breathe.

“The cost of our victory was high. She was slain, perishing at the same time as her knight,” the silver female replied.

Lectral was silent for a long time. His thoughts churned in a stormy mixture of guilt and grief, wanting to blame the human knight for the death of his nestmate. With another rush of shame, he found that he could not. If anyone was to blame, it was he.

“Have you heard of the red dragons… of the one called Tombfyre?” Lectral thought of the wicked serpent who had taunted and fought him, and now he trembled in profound rage. If he was unable to save her, at least he could look forward to revenge!

But Silvara looked at him sadly, as if uncertain that he could understand her words. “Banished like all the others. He has departed from Krynn together with all his evil kin-dragons. But there is more, and that is what brings me to you. I come to tell you that we are departing from Ansalon as well.”

“We? The silvers?” Lectral was stunned.

“All of us… all the dragons of Paladine.”

“But why? Did you not say that the war was won?”

“It is another part of the oath, so that the people of the world can rule themselves without the interference of mighty beings.”

She told him of the sacred vow that had taken the Dark Queen and all her dragons from Ansalon, and of the price that the good dragons were to pay as well. They would journey to a place called the Dragon Isles, where they would live out their lives and their generations.

“These islands are said to be idyllic realms, perfect of clime, with space for all the metal clans.” As she spoke, her eyes turned outward, fixing upon the forests and mountains beyond, and he sensed that, like him, she wasn’t ready to leave all they knew behind.

“But how can I go? I cannot fly,” he declared.

“Saytica will bear you, but you must assume the form of a two-legs. She comes tonight.” Silvara told him that Saytica had been a heroine of the war, bearing the knight who had struck down mighty Deathfyre, the leader of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.

And when the mighty silver female came to him later that night, Lectral was able to shift his body. He chose the shape of the white-bearded sage, the same form that had been favored by Darlantan so many centuries before. Finally Lectral straddled the strong, silver shoulders and rode through the skies on the back of Saytica.

They passed over the lands vacated by the fleeing armies of Garic Drakan. The mighty silver flier remained silent, sensing the distress of her battered, grieving clan-dragon. All around them were the other silvers, a great airborne armada soaring through the cool air, starlight glimmering from a multitude of reflective wings.

Lectral looked helplessly, saw the horizon of the High Kharolis passing to the left, but already the snowy skyline of the mountain ridges had vanished into the distance.

And already, too, it seemed that his once vivid memories of the place were beginning to fade.