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She wore tattoos on her face not terribly long ago—a lightning bolt and a jay feather, the latter symbolic of her favorite bird, the former declaring that she once claimed a pack of wolves as her family. Fast as lightning the pack used to race along Southern Ergoth’s sea cliffs—sometimes in pursuit of prey, but most often just for the sheer exhilaration. It was, perhaps, the best time in her life. There was beauty in the simplicity of those wild days. Now when she thought of that blissful time, she swore she could once again feel the soft, thick-bladed grass beneath her feet and the cool of the woods’ afternoon shadows. She could still imagine the sweet, salt-tinged breeze blowing east from the Sirrion Sea and the pleasing sounds of the gulls and blue herons. All of that was several years ago and many, many miles from here.

She hadn’t run with wolves since the overlords arrived. The white dragon Frost had descended on the island continent of the Kagonesti elves and turned nearly all of it into a frigid wasteland. Not many of the wolves survived the dragon’s coming. Not many of the Kagonesti chose to stay and struggle against the harsh conditions. They left for other lands. Feril left too, though not with any of the nomadic bands of her kinsmen. She struck out on her own, roaming, backtracking, circling, never staying in one spot for more than a few days…until she crossed paths with Dhamon Grimwulf and his rag-tag crew—all champions of the legendary mystic healer Goldmoon. For a reason still unknown to her, Feril defied her solitary nature and joined them. She fought at their side, grew close to them, to Dhamon in particular. She gave every ounce of her nature-magic and physical strength at the Window to the Stars, an ancient portal where the dragon overlords gathered one night. She and her companions couldn’t best even a single dragon there, but they experienced some measure of victory and gained hope that mortals might someday triumph.

After the Window they had parted company.

The leaving was hard for her, but fated to be, she thought at the time. Necessary, she told Dhamon, when he tried to persuade her to stay. She then went to the isle of Cristyne and aided refugees who had fled there from her homeland and elsewhere. The work was hard and rewarding and distracting—she rarely thought of Dhamon. After a year she moved on again—to Witdel, then Portsmith, Gwyntarr, and Caergoth, where at a shop near the docks she paid an old sailor to remove the tattoos that so easily branded her as a Kagonesti. She wasn’t trying to hide her elven heritage, as she still wore the fringed leather clothing favored by her people and made no effort to conceal her pointed ears, but she was trying to put distance between herself and her past, and the tattoos were a symbol of the past.

She cut her hair a month ago. Once it had been a gorgeous, unruly mass of curls that cascaded past her shoulders like a lion’s mane. Now she was keeping it cropped short, too short to festoon with hawk and jay feathers and painted wooden beads like she used to do. She told herself it was a practical measure, as she was living in the forest now, and long tresses would only become tangled in the lowest branches. In truth, it was one more step in creating a new identity.

Another new start, another new home—this time the Qualinesti forest of Wayreth. There were wolves here— she’d seen their tracks and spoor several times—and right now she was watching one that sat a dozen yards away, across the creek she was bending over to slake her thirst. The gray was a young female, large and well fed, and her eyes met the Kagonesti’s, making Feril remember those days of racing along the sea cliffs.

Run with me, the wolf teased with her eyes. There was no misreading the invitation, as Feril understood animals far better than people. Run with me along this stream. Discover where the water takes us. Run with me, sister.

A part of Feril wanted to shout yes. Let’s fly like lightning! This new identity came with new responsibilities, albeit self-imposed ones. She sadly shook her head. Later, my wolf-sister, her eyes replied.

“There are men I must find this day,” she said aloud. “I have serious work to do.”

The wolf tipped her muzzle back and howled softly. Other wolves concealed in the trees to the north answered the cry. A last look at Feril, and she ran toward a copse of river birch to join the hidden pack.

Feril dipped her hands in the creek and splashed water on her face and the back of her neck, cutting the heat of this late summer day. She drank her fill and stood, looking to the trees for some last sign of the wolf, then reluctantly turned in the opposite direction. Keeping after the tracks she’d been so diligently following for the past day and a half, she loped through the high grass and cherry laurel.

There were four or five men, she thought, though she couldn’t be entirely certain. It had rained briefly last night, which, though making the forest smell fresh and wonderful, made following the tracks challenging. Fortunately the men were armored and were wearing hard-soled boots. There were other signs she relied on, too—fallen twigs that had been snapped by heavy footsteps, crushed beetles, broken branches on a crowberry shrub, a scraped piece of bark. The men hadn’t been building a fire at night, though she could tell where they camped yesterday because of the tamped-down grass and a few discarded apple cores.

“How far ahead are you?” she mused. She knelt beneath a gnarled, striped maple and thrust her fingers into the moist earth. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her senses, her mind touching the husks of long-dead insects, brushing up against the tree’s spreading roots. She envisioned herself as the earth, felt low-spreading evergreens and chamomile herbs growing, worms and earwigs gently and tenaciously burrowing. She sensed a doe treading lightly a mile or so away, a rabbit near the doe, two ground squirrels cavorting, a young wolf running. At the edge of her senses was a wild boar in rut. There was no trace of the men. She wasn’t near enough yet.

“I will find you,” she vowed. “I must.” Her new life, in this new place, her self-imposed responsibilities, her pledge to keep the people in these woods safe all depended upon it.

For the better part of the day she continued to track them, stopping from time to time to converse with animals—a family of woodpeckers making its home in a yellow walnut tree, a large starling paralleling her path, and an elderly fox that proved most helpful. The fox had watched the men come this way after dawn. He couldn’t tell Feril how many there were, as numbers were unknown to him. As many or more than the woodpeckers in that tree, he tried after she persisted.

Four or five, Feril translated, which was already her guess.

The trail led her through an idyllic glade—weeping birch and thin, graceful larches, the bases of which were ringed by hostas, creeping dogwood, and spreading ferns. She slowed her pace for a few minutes so she could better appreciate her surroundings, then, when she passed through the glade and the foliage drastically changed, she started to run.

Abruptly the forest turned repulsive, the trees for the most part dead, the scant living ones scrawny and twisted, looking thoroughly corrupted. The devastation went on as far as she could see—it was a much larger section of scarred woods than what she had passed through a few days ago. Dark magic was in large part to blame, Feril realized, as she noted the scorched perfect circles on the ground and the trunks completely stripped of bark. She’d traveled with the great sorcerer Palin Majere long enough to recognize the remnants of certain spells. But other forces were also responsible; she spotted patches of burned bark and places where hatchets had slashed deeply into maples and elms. To the west she saw the charred remains of a few cabins. To the south of the cabins were large earthen and rock mounds marked by carved, weathered staves. She suspected these were mass graves gone months untended, most likely holding remains of numerous Qualinesti elves. She considered stopping to pay her respects to the fallen, but she did not want to tarry in this unpleasant place. The sooner she was back in a vibrant part of the forest, the better she would feel.

By late afternoon she had passed beyond the bleak woods and was running along a game trail. The section of forest she traveled through now was very old. The giant pines stretched more than two hundred feet into the cloudy sky, and there were oaks with the circumference of a small cottage. Feril had been to the Qualinesti woods some years ago with Palin, when the great overlord Beryl held sway. She had seen with her own eyes how the dragon had used magic to age the trees and cover every bit of earth with something growing. The distorted lushness was a perversion of nature, Feril knew, but she had to admit—then and now—that it was somewhat to her liking. Though the dragon overlord was dead, Feril was pleased the gargantuan trees remained. If only men and creatures left the dragon’s woods alone, she thought. If only they didn’t have to destroy things…

She stopped suddenly, hearing some noise beyond a tight row of poplars.

Feril dropped to her stomach and crawled forward, the aroma from the grass and the rich earth beneath it heady. She found herself distracted by the scents, and it took some effort to force her senses to flow through the ground and past the poplars, down a small rise and across a clearing that was cut by a branch of the White Rage River. The men she sought must be there, on the far side of the river. Looking small because of the distance, they were standing in the growing shadows of a thick stand of maples and sycamores. The setting sun was making their dark armor shine, flickering amidst the tall grass and the river, making the muddy water that churned against the banks sparkle like bits of gold.

There were fourteen Knights of Neraka, the ones she’d been tracking having met up with others. A small force as far as the Knights were concerned, and only some of them were wearing the traditional heavy black plate mail of the Order. As she edged through the poplars and to the crest of a rise, she could make out more details. There were raised lilies on the pauldrons and breastplates and on shields that had been propped against tree trunks. Half wore coats of plates, leather jerkins with pieces of black metal riveted on them—not warriors, these, perhaps scouts or agents of the knights, perhaps assassins or trackers. As she watched, another knight joined the group, hinting that there might be yet more camped beyond the trees.

“Fifteen now,” she whispered. “Quite a nest of vipers I’ve found.”

The newcomer was larger than the rest, wearing blued armor—fine black metal that had been heated to give it a blue sheen. There were skulls on his plate mail instead of lilies, so Feril decided he was a priest, no doubt their commander; the others were clearly deferring to him. All of them wore gauntlets and either hard leather boots or sabatons, boots covered by plate segments. They had flowing black capes and visored helmets, some of which were sitting on the ground near the shields. Their faces were glistening with sweat.

Among Goldmoon’s champions had been the Solamnic Knight Fiona. Feril marveled at how the woman could wear fifty or more pounds of plate armor under the warmest of conditions. Why anyone would want to wear so much armor was still a puzzlement to her. While it afforded protection, it also most certainly made its wearer thoroughly miserable, especially in today’s considerable heat, Feril could have heard what the Knights were saying if she wanted to; she could have spread her senses and put enough energy into a spell. Perhaps she should, she thought for a moment, as their conversation might provide useful information. She was weary from tracking them for so long, and she wanted to act swiftly before any more joined the group here beneath the trees and presented a force too large for her to deal with. She directed all of her energy into a different enchantment, letting the magic begin to flow outward from her fingertips.

Like an artist spreading paint with a palette knife, Feril smoothed the magic onto the ground and pointed it toward the knights, stretching it away from her, and then beyond them to the trees that towered above and behind them. She instantly felt cooled by the shadows those trees cast, and by the river that ran nearby. Rejuvenated, she felt even stronger and her spell grew more powerful.

“Help me,” she entreated the trees. “Help me stop the defilers of these woods and the slayers of my elf cousins. Bend.”

She cast her energy into the roots of the great maples. It pulsed into the trunks in time with the beating of her heart. Feril closed her eyes and guided the energy up and up, high into the treetops, outward to the very ends of branches. A silent prayer sent to Habbakuk, whom she revered most among Krynn’s gods, then she felt the branches begin to rustle.

“Commander!” one of the Lily Knights shouted loud enough for her to hear. “The trees are alive!”

First the branches became limp and hung like ribbons, then a heartbeat later they whipped up to curl around the arms and legs of the surprised knights. Under Feril’s command the branches stiffened and recoiled, lifting the knights off the ground and bringing them close to the trunks.

“Help me,” Feril urged. “Help me slay the defilers!”

The trees complied with her command, their limbs constricting, the smallest of the branches finding their way beneath the pauldrons on the knights’ breastplates, inside the cuisse plates on their legs, into the gaps on the gorgets about the men’s necks—and tightening like nooses.

Feril continued to concentrate on the enchantment, speaking to the trees as she stood and bounded down the rise and to the river, no longer concealing her presence.

“Kill them!” she called to the trees. “Twist the life from them as they have bled the life from this priceless forest!”

In the back of her mind she saw the devastation clearly: the mass-grave mounds of the Qualinesti elves and the scorched remains of village after village she had passed through on the trail.

She paused and watched the Knights of Neraka struggle. They were only fifty yards in front of her, their eyes bulging and filled with fury, the one in the blued armor red-faced with rage while frantically working his fingers to begin his own spell. Skull Knights were priests, Feril reminded herself, therefore capable of magic. With a gesture from her, fingerlike branches swept down and tangled the priest’s hands, another wrapped across his mouth in order to keep him from uttering any arcane words. His frustration grew and he struggled harder.

Feril waded into the river, all the men watching her fearfully. It was relatively shallow, but after a few steps she could no longer touch bottom and she felt herself being tugged by a strong undertow. Feril swam quickly across to keep from being pulled to the bottom. The trees continued to strangle the men, and most of the knights were dead by the time Feril climbed out of the water near them.

“Despoilers and ravagers, all of you!” she called to the few still clinging to life as she approached. “Murderers! You’ll kill no more!”

The few remaining knights looked piteously at this slight female Kagonesti who had so easily caused their downfall.

Why? one mouthed.

“The last village you attacked,” she explained as she drew closer, surprising herself by answering the knight. “The last village you burned, the last elf families you slew. I tracked you from there. You’ll kill no more, I say. This I swear!”

The branches tightened, sapping more energy from Feril. Her eyes locked onto the Skull Knight’s florid face. He was gasping and thrashing feebly now.

Then without warning came a commotion, loud noises emanating from somewhere to the east—well beyond the knights and the old maples and sycamores. More Knights of Neraka? Feril wondered. How many more? Perhaps an entire talon of them was lurking deep in the woods. She could handle a few more, she knew, maybe a dozen, as she was surrounded by eager trees and branches and she still had some magical energy left. What if they were too many? She was tired from the journey, from casting this difficult enchantment. Her strength was ebbing, and she was going to be vulnerable all too soon.

Feril took a few steps back toward the river and watched as the rest of the knights gradually stopped struggling, hanging limp from the trees as if they’d been tried and sentenced by a jury and hanged for their crimes on a scaffold.

The approaching noise was growing louder, and after long moments Feril saw shapes thrashing amid the trees. More Knights of Neraka were arriving and they, too, were being scooped up by the deadly tree branches—charged, sentenced, and hanged according to Feril’s swift justice. She focused on the ground, on the arcane energy she was continuing to feed and that was animating the trees.

“So tired.” The more she put into this powerful spell, the more it disoriented her. Feril’s arms felt wooden, her head so heavy she could hardly hold it up.

“Everything,” she whispered, feeling as though she was giving the last measure of her arcane strength. The magical force pulsed into the roots fast and unfalteringly, and the branches grabbed at the new foes. There must be at least fifty knights arriving, Feril estimated, and some of the knights were breaking through the entangling branches despite the intensity of her spell. A small group was now racing toward her.

Swords drawn, eyes wide, and spittle flying from their open mouths, they charged. A few were shouting, all were spreading out to surround her—her senses were so acute that she felt their heavy steps like painful thunder rumbling through the ground. The summer heat and their heavy armor did not seem to impede them. She slammed her eyes shut and waited for the end to come, knowing she was too weak to flee and that she had no weapons to defend herself. Then the pounding swept past her, and she opened her eyes to discover that the knights were not running toward her—they were running away from something still cloaked by the trees.

A thrashing noise coming from the trees grew deafening, and then she spied a much larger shape. It was easily brushing aside the lashing, entangling limbs and bending the smallest trees completely over, snapping most of them.

“In Habbakuk’s name, please give me more strength.” The magical pulse she had used to enchant the trees was dimming to nothing. She had no energy left.

It was some great shadowy beast, she realized faintly. She heard it utter a harsh, ear-splitting snarl, heard the splashes of the Knights of Neraka who had plunged into the river in order to escape its clutches. She hadn’t been able to touch bottom in the river where she had crossed, nor could they. Without looking, she pictured their heavy plate metal dragging them down, the strong undertow sealing their doom. Only a few wisely avoided the river, running southeast parallel to its banks, dropping their swords and shields as they went.

The howl of the creature shook the ground. Feril’s spell was finally dissipated. The Knights of Neraka she’d hung in the maples and sycamores fell like discarded dolls amidst their shields and helmets.

“By Habbakuk’s fist,” she said in a hushed voice, when she realized what the monstrous shape really was. “A black dragon.”

A wave of fear struck her, as palpable a blow as if she had been struck over the head with a club. She lost all focus, shivered uncontrollably, and her legs gave out.

The dragon emerging from the trees was singular in that most of its scales looked like black mirrors, a few shimmering silver, a scattering of blue ones glimmering here and there. Its shadowy-black horns resembled those of a red, the wings looking scalloped like a blue’s. The claws were webbed like a white’s.

“Black, but not a black dragon,” Feril murmured, as she tried to struggle to her knees and crawl away. “What is it?”

The dragon spat out a Lily Knight and brushed away the body of the Knight Commander that had fallen on the ground in front of it. Blood dripped from the dragon’s mouth, and Feril could see where a black tabard was caught on a tooth.

“Tired,” she said. “So tired. I’m finished.” She wouldn’t surrender so easily to one of Krynn’s damnable dragons, she vowed, gritting her teeth. She spread her fingers wide against the ground. “Habbakuk, guide me. I beseech you to give me one last…there!” Somehow she managed to send a feeble stroke of energy toward the trees, virtually begging them to aid her a final time. She fed some of her essence into the spell and was rewarded by faint feeling, a small wave of energy moving up the thick trunk of a maple, edging toward the top branches.

She watched the dragon step close to her; half of the huge creature was clear of the trees, but its haunches still rested under her enchanted maple. The dragonfear nauseated her. Closer, the dragon looked at once elegant and grotesque. Blood dripped from its jaws, a slimy rope of spittle edging over its lower lip. Its stink was overpowering. The dragon smelled like rotting wood, moldy leaves, and a dozen, disquieting worse things she couldn’t put a name to. When it opened its maw wide, she nearly swooned with disgust.

“Habbakuk, guide me.” She watched as the animated branches dipped lower, snaking out to try to ensnare the dragon. Then she stared in horror as the dragon effortlessly ripped away those branches and headed straight toward her. She watched the beast’s eyes, its massive black eyes that reflected…something.

Something familiar.

The dragonfear wavered a little, and she pulled herself closer, forward, trying to fathom what she recognized in the eyes.

There was a man’s face reflected there.

“Not possible,” she said aloud, her voice barely audible.

A face all angles and planes, once handsome, and with a rare, flashing smile.

“By all the gods, it’s not possible.”

Then the last of her stamina vanished and she slumped, the shadows that stretched from the trees to the dragon to the dark parts of her mind, claiming her.

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