The Puppet King

Prologue

“The blues left... and you stayed,” said Silvanoshei, standing to stare directly into one of Aerensianic’s huge, golden eyes. “When the storms came, you could have stayed hidden, remained in this lair your cherished so much. Samar has told me that you did not. But what is it that drew you out of your cave?”

The dragon snorted in amusement. “Something came to me—something that I could never have expected—but once I found it, I could never turn my back.”

The dragon paused in his story for a moment, lifting his head and fixing his eyes toward the mouth of the cave. “Wait,” he said.

The two elves watched as he lifted the great body onto his four legs and crept, catlike, out of the corner of his lair. Aeren’s eyes were fixed upon the trough in the floor of the cave, where the tide had advanced in a gently surging wave of seawater. Something splashed in that wetness, and then a sleek body vanished beneath the surface.

“A seal,” whispered Samar, holding up his hand to halt Silvanoshei as the younger elf started to move. Instead, they both sat still and watched.

The brown-furred animal popped its head above the surface again, and by this time, the green dragon had reached the edge of the water. With a single, practiced gesture, Aeren snapped down, lifted his prey upward, tilted back his head, and swallowed the animal in a massive gulp, a convulsion of emerald scales rippling along the length of his sinuous neck. He remained still for a few minutes, then uttered a contented sigh and returned to the pair of elves.

Samar still had his hand on the dragonlance, but although he kept his eyes upon the wyrm, watching for any sign of aggression, he didn’t lower the weapon. Instead, Aerensianic settled to the ground over his meager treasure pile and nodded contentedly.

“There’ve always been seals in these waters—that’s one of the things that attracted me here. Even in that summer, when the air was so hot and the sun seemed to scorch the sky, they came to the shore, and I ate well.

“I took to perching on a certain ledge on the face of the bluff over the sea. Even though it was scorching hot, especially as the summer moved on, the heat was somewhat mitigated by the sea breeze. Here, beyond the reach of the splashing surf, I could watch the rocks on which the waves crashed just below. Often the creatures would climb onto the perches, confident that they were safe from sea predators. Rare was the seal who could escape the strike of my jaws from above as I lashed down to snatch the hapless creature around the head.

“Thus I was content to watch and observe... or so I thought.

“On one of the warmest of the midsummer days, I was startled by a large winged shadow that flickered past. Of course, at first I though it was a blue dragon attack, and I lunged backward into the cave.

“Only then did I look up, and imagine my surprise at the sight of another green dragon, a splendid female! She was not as large as I, and she banked and came to rest on the ledge with a willingness that I found strangely enticing.

“‘Greetings, O strange clan dragon,’ she said, politely dipping her neck. ‘I am called Toxyria, and I am happy to find you here along a coast I thought had been abandoned by our kind.’

“‘Greetings, Beautiful Toxyria,’ I returned, and I explained that I had lived there for but a single winter. ‘And is your lair along here?’ I asked.

“‘A half day’s flight to the south,’ she explained, purring at my flattery. ‘And do you live here with your mate?’ she inquired demurely.

“I admit that in my delight I huffed a plume of green mist from my nostrils, and Toxyria inhaled the gas with obvious relish. ‘I have no mate,’ I explained. ‘I have flown here alone, from a forest a thousand miles and more away.’

“‘There is a plentitude of edibles in these seas,’ she noted, which I interpreted to mean that she did not regard me as unfriendly competition for the local food supply. ‘You will find that the winters are mild, for the sea is warmed by a northern current—that is, if you decide to stay.’ She looked at me with an expression I can only describe as hopeful.

“‘I have never found better hunting, nor a finer cave,’ I said. ‘All that was missing was the companionship of my clan... and perhaps that lack may have been very recently addressed?’

“She moved into my lair the next day, bringing the few baubles of her treasures that she deemed worth saving. I confess that I was embarrassed about my own poor hoard, but I explained the lack by reason of my recent arrival, and Toxy proved quite understanding. In fact, I wondered if she had purposely left many of her treasures behind out of a wish to spare me humiliation. Her tender actions gave me a powerful resolve to plunder sailing ships, perhaps even raid a few castles on distant Ergoth, in order to quickly establish a trove that would make her proud.”

The dragon’s voice turned melancholy, and his expression was far away as he stared toward the twilit entrance to the cave.

“She came here?” Silvanoshei pressed. “Then where is sh—?”

He stopped as Samar put a hand on his arm. The young elf looked annoyed for a moment, but he didn’t press the question.

“That detail, I suspect, our friend will get to in good time...”

Chapter Seventeen The Truth About Treachery

The crushed mint was sweet, hot, and biting on his tongue as Gilthas bit down on the vial of powder. As Samar had instructed, he tried to envision his destination. Magic surrounded him, and for a dizzying second, he thought he was dying. He had no sense of focus, of place... nothing surrounded him, and he couldn’t picture that any solidity awaited him.

And in the next instant, that crazed sensation passed, and he was staggering, trying to regain his balance as he felt a floor underfoot, saw walls come into view around him. He lurched two steps to the side before he felt his footing level out, and then he stood still, blinking, holding his arms out to the sides as the sense of motion slowly receded.

He was standing within his own study, in the Speaker’s House beside the Tower of the Sun. True to Samar’s word, the magic had returned him to Qualinost. A look out the window showed that it was still the dark of night, so Gilthas assumed that the other part of the warrior-mage’s statements were true, that virtually no time had passed while he was teleporting.

Still dazed, Gilthas reconstructed the magical journey, the hundreds of miles traveled in the blink of an eye. The warrior-mage had told him to carefully visualize his destination, and so he had chosen this room, the place he was most familiar with in all the city.

He thought with a pang about Kerianseray, who would be returning to Qualinost on the back of a griffon. Irrationally he feared for her because she had to travel alone, though when he paused to think about it, he knew that his presence had been more a liability than an asset when it came to safety.

But finally his agitation began to settle, and he started to focus his thoughts, knowing that he had work to do. He needed to find Guilderhand and... His mind balked at the implications of impending violence, but he realized immediately that he needed a weapon.

He immediately went into the formal receiving room, automatically chanting the magic word that brought the crystal chandeliers into blazing prominence. There, arrayed on the stone wall above the massive fireplace, were the weapons of elven heroes—several long swords, a pair of crossed arrows, and an odd collection including a scimitar, long-hafted halberds, and even a wicked and obviously very heavy battle-axe.

The long sword being the traditional weapon of the elven warrior, Gilthas automatically went to the smallest of those, lifting down the keen weapon, surprised by its weight. He touched a thumb to the blade and winced at the drop of blood that quickly welled from his skin. Clearly the weapon was sharp enough to kill. He tested the balance of the sword, wielding it back and forth in front of him, trying without success to imagine what it would feel like to plunge that steel tip into flesh.

But how would he carry it? Or conceal it, for that matter? It was not like the Speaker of the Sun to go armed about the city.

His first question was answered when he found an assortment of scabbards in a nearby closet. One of these easily fit the sword, and though it took him several minutes, he finally figured out how to suspend the weapon from his belt. As to his second worry, he decided to bluff it out. If anyone questioned him, he would haughtily reply that the Speaker of the Sun would carry whatever he damn well pleased when he went about the city. Somehow the grim determination evoked by his words gave him confidence as he stalked through the quiet house and carefully opened the front door to step into the stifling air of the night.

Only then did he remember the Dark Knight guards who had so diligently patrolled the nighttime streets of Qualinost. He knew that his arrogant declaration would carry very little weight with these humans who had seen the elves surrender like whipped puppies even before a blade had been drawn in anger. There was no alternative. He would have to evade the patrols and hope that, on his own, he could be as successful as Kerian had been proven herself to be.

And how would he find Guilderhand? Would the spy teleport himself directly to Rashas? If so, then of course Gilthas would already be too late—unless for some reason the senator had not been where the spy expected to find him.

It was a hope, and the only one Gilthas could arrive at. He trotted down the winding path to the street and then paused to look up and down, trying to spot the patrols that had been so frequent around the Tower of the Sun. Already he was sweating, though he forced himself to breathe quietly, not wanting to make any undue noise. Surprisingly, there were none of the Dark Knights in sight. He didn’t waste time wondering where they were; instead, he darted along the shadows beside the road, hurrying to the nearest corner, where he ducked into a side lane.

Here the path was much darker than the main street, but he still tried to move quietly, loping along and holding the sword, which he quickly realized had a tendency to jangle. He dashed around another corner, trying to remember the street leading to Rashas’s elegant manor. It should be familiar, he thought wryly. It had been the first place he had visited in Qualinost when he had ridden into town all wide-eyed and gawking, never even suspecting why he had been brought here or that he would soon be the senator’s prisoner.

The side street angled back toward the main avenue, and the neighborhood looked familiar. He reached the edge of the wide route. There it was!

The large house, behind its sculpted hedge of lush blossoms, was unmistakable. He saw the lofty tower where Alhana had been held prisoner, and the other, lower wing where he himself had been reclused after Rashas had decided that he should be separated from the queen. He crouched in the shadows at the intersection, again studying the main avenue, alert for the presence of Dark Knight patrols.

Again he saw no sign of the city’s human occupiers. He began to think that was strange, but he didn’t waste any time wondering about his good luck. Instead, he started toward the gap in the hedge that led toward the front door.

Here he hesitated, however, as other questions began to assail him. What should he do about Rashas’s Kagonesti guards? With the exception of Kerianseray, who had come with him when he had moved to the Speaker’s house, the senator’s slaves had seemed fanatically loyal, not to mention fierce and bloodthirsty. His hand came to rest on his sword, but Gilthas knew he’d be no match for one of these savage warriors if they met on hostile terms.

Studying the house, he was surprised to see that many lights were on. His heart sank, and he immediately suspected a reason: Guilderhand had returned here, and the senator was busy learning about the Speaker’s meeting with the outlaw. It would be foolishness—almost suicide!—for him to walk into that conversation.

Before he could make up his mind to turn and flee into the night, however, the front door burst open and none other than Senator Rashas came rushing out, trailed by several of his wild elf bodyguards. The elder elf stumbled to a halt at the sight of the lone figure standing in his gateway. Rashas blinked, then uttered an oath as he rushed forward.

“Where in the Abyss have you been?” he demanded. He seemed ready to grab Gilthas by the arm and shake him, but apparently thought better of such a presumptuous action. Instead, he planted his hands on his hips and glared at the Speaker of the Sun. “We’ve been looking for you since this morning. There are things happening, and you were needed in the councils! And now with the summons—by Paladine, you know we were supposed to be there an hour ago!”

“Things happening?” Gilthas was stunned, his mind trying to keep up with the words. He had been prepared for the senator’s anger, but his questions were merely mystifying.

“I ask you again, where have you been?”

“I—I went for a walk in the forest. I wanted to do some thinking by myself.”

Rashas lowered his voice to a hiss, a strong, penetrating force that pushed its way into Gilthas’s ears alone. “Don’t ever do that again! Do you understand? We need to know where you are at all times!”

Through it all, the younger elf was realizing one thing: Rashas didn’t know! He hadn’t spoken to Guilderhand! Almost light-headed with relief, he nodded dumbly, made sounds of assurance with his dry mouth and clumsy tongue.

“Come on, then. At least you’re dressed now, and I don’t have to drag you out of bed.” Rashas took hold of Gilthas’s arm and pulled him along the street toward the Tower of the Sun. “We’ve got to get to Lord Salladac!”

The Speaker had enough presence of mind not to ask why they were going to see Lord Salladac. Instead, he trotted along beside the older elf, who was moving along at what would normally have been quite an unseemly pace. They hurried down the main avenue, and once again Gilthas took note of the absence of Dark Knight guards. It had not been his imagination. Clearly they had been ordered to other duties than the night patrols of Qualinost’s streets.

As they approached his own house, the young elf flushed at the realization that he’d left the chandelier blazing in his receiving room. Bright light spilled from the windows across the garden, casting bright splashes of illumination through the shadowy street. Again Rashas made no remark about anything strange, so fixed was he on reaching the tower. Holding his sword to keep it from jangling, Gilthas was startled to realize that the senator hadn’t even commented on the fact that he was armed.

They arrived at the Tower of the Sun at the same time that Lord Salladac, coming from the other direction, approached at the head of a small company of guards.

“Thank all the gods he’s not been waiting for us,” Rashas whispered. “I’d hate to think what would happen to your head if he’d been here on time!”

Gilthas merely nodded, further mystified.

Silent servants admitted them to the vast council chamber, which was illuminated by a few small candles, though the corners around the walls and the yawning space overhead all expanded into utter darkness. Salladac seemed to like it like this. He bade the two elves join him on the rostrum while the guards—Dark Knight and Kagonesti—all halted a discreet distance away.

While they settled themselves on three stools, Salladac’s eyes fastened on Gilthas with a penetrating stare, and for an instant, the young elf was certain that he had been caught. He thought of the sword, knew beyond doubt that he could never draw it in time to strike, and he saw, too, that any damage he could do here was useless to the cause that had brought him back from Porthios’s camp.

Then the lord sighed and seemed to relax, stretching his arms over his head and making a great show of working the kinks out of his back.

“These nights are too hot, and your elven mattresses are too thin,” he said by way of introduction. “Even after a good night’s sleep I wake up stiff, and now, with all this alarm in the wee hours, I swear I’m lucky I can even walk.”

“What is the source of the alarm, my lord?” Rashas asked quickly.

“Urgent word from Lord Ariakan at the High Clerist’s Tower,” Salladac said bluntly. “I received a message, carried on dragonback, just after sunset.”

“Word about what?” Gilthas blurted.

“It seems there’s a new threat developing in the north,” the human lord explained. “I don’t doubt that it’s something we’ll be able to handle, though I admit there was a peculiar urgency to my lord’s missive. The Silvanesti campaign has been indefinitely postponed. My dragons are being recalled as of this morning, likewise about half of my brutes.”

“You’re leaving Qualinesti?” asked the young Speaker, now totally mystified. Guilderhand was utterly forgotten in the midst of these startling developments.

“Only temporarily, I assure you,” the lord said. He glowered sternly. “Don’t get any ideas about changing the new order of things. I anticipate that I’ll be back, with my dragons, in a matter of days.”

“We have no such thoughts, I assure you,” Rashas said. “But we would like to know about this threat. Is it a danger to Qualinesti as well?”

“I wish I knew,” Salladac admitted. “But to tell the truth, I’m afraid it might be. There are reports of fires burning where they don’t belong-over the ocean, to be precise. All Palanthas is in an uproar, and Ariakan wants all the talons of his dragon forces gathered in one place.”

“Is it an invasion?” wondered Gilthas.

“Tough to say for certain, but it could be. My lord used the term ‘Storms of Chaos’ when he talked about the things he’d seen. It’s not terribly specific, but it was the tone of his letter as much as anything else that has me worried.”

Salladac let the elves digest this disturbing bit of news as he looked back and forth at them frankly. “If the worst comes, then Qualinesti will be attacked by forces more horrible than anything we’ve—either elf or human—ever faced before. And we’ll have to fight it together if we are to have any chance. That’s why I called you here—both of you.”

“Of course,” Rashas said, though he cast a sneering, sidelong glance at Gilthas.

“Rashas, if the unexpected happens, you will be in charge of maintaining calm in the city. Gilthas, my lord Speaker, you will need to muster a military force—all the elves who can hold a sword or shoot a bow. My knights and brutes, such as remain, will help you, but until I get back, you must take charge!”

“Me? I mean, of course,” stammered Gilthas, utterly flabbergasted by this development.

“Is that... I mean, have you thought this through?” asked Rashas, his own eyes wide. “No offense to the young Speaker, but he has never been in battle before!”

“And you have?” The human’s tone was biting. “Let’s just say I like the young fellow’s mettle.”

Rashas frowned but clearly knew better than to forcefully argue with the lord who had conquered his city. Instead, he cleared his throat and waited for Salladac to invite him to speak.

“Speaking of enemies, there’s the other matter,” the senator began, with a hesitant look at Gilthas. “Perhaps we should speak in private?”

“Talk to me now,” the human said brusquely. “Surely you can see we’re in a hurry.”

“Yes, well... about my agent, Guilderhand. I have yet to hear his report, but if he’s successful, then we may have more enemies than just this ‘Storm of Chaos’ to deal with. If that’s the case—”

“I’ve spoken to Guilderhand, just tonight,” Salladac said breezily.

Despite the man’s light tone, Gilthas felt his heart sink to his knees. He knows—and I’m doomed! Again he thought of the sword, weighed his chances, and knew he would be dead before he pulled the weapon halfway out of its scabbard. Vaguely, as though from a long distance away, he heard the lord continue to talk.

“Don’t look so surprised,” chided Salladac, speaking to Rashas. “And you certainly shouldn’t be hurt by the fact that he didn’t come directly to you. You see, there was a feature inherent to that ring of teleportation that he thought he stole from me. In reality, as I told you, I provided the thing to him, though I kept that feature a secret. No matter where he wanted to go, the magic would bring him directly into my presence.”

“And he used the ring... He found... that is, he made a report,” pressed Rashas.

“And the ring took him to you?” added Gilthas, appalled at the implication and wondering why the lord hadn’t already ordered him arrested or worse.

“Oh, yes,” Salladac said smugly. He cast a meaningful look at the young Speaker, then shifted his attention back to Rashas. “He told me many things.”

“Where is he now?” demanded the senator. “I have to see him, to talk to him myself!”

“I’m afraid that’s quite impossible,” the human replied.

“Why? Why?”

“Well, you see, I decided that the little weasel was giving me nothing but a pack of lies. You’ll understand, of course, that I had no choice in what to do.”

“What did you do?” gasped Rashas, the color draining from his face.

“The same thing I’d do to anyone who told me lies,” Lord Salladac replied, rising from his stool and stretching again. “I had him hanged.”

Rashas, too stunned for words, had departed with his Kagonesti guards. The senator would return to his house and begin making plans for keeping order in a city menaced by a hitherto unknown threat. Gilthas had started for his own house, but had been delayed by the subtle gesture of one of the human knights escorting Lord Salladac.

After Rashas had vanished down the street, he was led back into the tower, where the lord met him with a stern glare.

“Guilderhand’s report was interesting, as I’m sure you can well imagine,” Salladac said without preamble. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“For what?” blurted the elf, whose head was still spinning.

“For killing him and saving your life. What do you think senators like Rashas would have done if they’d had the chance to talk to him?”

Gilthas didn’t need to exercise his imagination too hard. Hadn’t he been prepared to commit murder, just to prevent those conversations from occurring?

“Th-thank you,” he said, realizing that he was indeed grateful to the man, even as he was powerfully mystified. “But why did you do it?”

“Frankly, I wondered a little bit about that myself,” Salladac admitted. “And it comes down to a couple of reasons.

“One, it goes back to what I said before. I like your mettle. You haven’t had a chance to show it much, and with that vulture staring over your shoulder, the queen knows you don’t get much of a chance to do so. But I think you’ve got some good stuff in you, and what Guilderhand said didn’t do anything to change my mind. At the same time, just between you and me, every time I talk to Rashas I come away with a bad taste in my mouth. Between giving you over to him or tightening a noose around his pet spy, it was a pretty easy decision.”

“Then I thank you again sincerely,” the elven Speaker said. He decided to be blunt and forthright. “But surely you know that I was seeking to undermine your rule, even to find a way to resist the Dark Knights’ conquest.”

“Certainly. But I think that mission has been overtaken by events. Another thing I meant: Lord Ariakan sounded damn worried, and he’s not a man given over to worry. These Storms of Chaos are a real threat, and if they come here, it’s not going to be Rashas and—I admit—not you, either, who’ll put up a real fight.”

“But Porthios...?” Gilthas said. Finally he saw the reasoning, some reasoning, behind the knight’s actions.

“Aye, lad. We will need fighters like Porthios on our side—on both our sides.”

“You fear it will be that bad?”

“I fear it will be worse... a fight for our very lives, a battle for the survival and the future of the world.”

Gilthas found it odd that he felt a greater respect for this human warlord, conqueror of his people, than he did for the elves like Rashas who had led Qualinesti into the place where it could so easily be overrun. His own pride made it difficult for him to acknowledge these truths, but he declared that he would do whatever he could to prepare his city for defense.

“And as to Porthios, I will try to reach him, to let him know of the danger... and to bring him into common cause,” he pledged.

“That’s all we can hope for,” Salladac replied. “Good luck to you.”

“Thank you, lord.” Gilthas hesitated, then knew what he really felt. “And good luck to you as well.”

Turning to go, the elf sensed a strange hesitancy, looked back to see that Salladac had something more he wanted to say.

“What is it?”

“There is more news from the Tower of the High Clerist... news of a personal nature. Grim news, I’m afraid.”

Instantly Gilthas knew—he had sensed it, from the moment he learned about the Dark Knights’ invasion. He knew that there were people, many people, who would resist that onslaught and that many people would pay with their lives.

“My father...?” he said, his voice a dry rasp, hoping that he was wrong, yet knowing he was right.

“Tanis Half-Elven fought bravely. He almost won the struggle to hold the main gate,” Salladac said, his voice devoid of emotion. “In the end, he died a warrior’s death... a death that should make a son proud.”

Chapter Eighteen Storms of Chaos

The two green dragons passed a week in sublime relaxation. Toxyria’s next season for mating was still several years away, which spared them the frantic, even savage passion of an immediate draconic rut. Instead, they hunted, feeding each other the plumpest seals, catching dolphins to share, and lolling on their bluff with leather-lidded eyes peeled, constantly studying the northwestern horizon in search of a promising sail. Aeren remained alert for danger from the forests, too, but his earlier observation seemed accurate: The blue dragons had apparently abandoned Qualinesti.

If not for the oppressive heat, it would have been an interval of splendid peace and rest. Yet the unnatural weather was too extreme to ignore, and the relentless presence of the baking sun, the utter lack of moisture in the air, caused the two dragons to share a lingering sense of unease. The sky remained devoid of clouds, but it never reached the depths of blue that normally would have characterized fine summer weather. Instead, the sun blazed relentlessly, trees wilted, and the world seemed to wait... for something.

And the green dragons watched.

The first sign of significance, noticed by both of them at the same time, was not the indication of a passing ship that Aeren had been hoping for. Instead, it was a glowing redness that, with startling rapidity, suffused the sky to the north and west.

“It looks like the reflection from a great fire,” Aeren said worriedly.

“But there’s nothing except ocean out there. It’s almost a hundred miles to Ergoth!” Toxy, who had spent more time familiarizing herself with the area, explained.

“Then maybe Ergoth is burning,” the male surmised. From his secluded ledge, he lifted his neck and head high, peering over the top of the bluff behind them, scanning the skies for signs of danger. But there was nothing else unusual, aside from the—by then—normal state of heat for that summer. Still, both dragons agreed that the bizarre redness was a strange and unsettling phenomenon.

“I’m going to fly over there and have a look,” he announced, feeling very brave.

“We’ll both go,” Toxy said, fanning her wings beside him.

And so the pair of emerald dragons launched themselves from the cliff, gliding upward in the face of the stiff offshore breeze. Soon the coastline was a verdant fringe to the rear, and the waters of the wide strait expanded before them and to both sides below.

The sun was shining, but the surface of the sea had a curious, leaden quality; it was not the shimmering swath of diamond speckles that they had both become accustomed to. And the air had a strange taste—not like smoke, exactly, but as if an acrid scent somehow permeated everywhere. It reminded Aeren of the ozone aftermath of a lightning strike, though there were neither thunderclouds nor blue dragons in evidence.

The shore thinned farther behind them, and the strange swath of radiation grew more pronounced. Aerensianic was grateful for the female’s company, and he couldn’t deny that he was growing more and more afraid. Yet because of Toxyria, he was determined to put on a show of bravery. He flew with his neck and head fully extended, his tail trailing straight behind as he boldly glared at the distant sky.

“Look there!” gasped Toxy, banking and angling her head downward to point.

Aeren, who had been looking upward, ducked to see specks of brightness bubbling through the water, as if fires were somehow burning in the midst of the brine. They grew more intense, and he counted three patches of orange flame, churning and roiling toward the air with explosive force.

One broke from the surface in a hiss of steam and immediately angled upward. Squawking in astonishment and fear, Aeren saw that this was a fiery flier—a creature of flames, in the shape of a dragon! Moments later the other two burst from the sea, and there was no mistaking the nature and the threat. These were three dragons of pure fire, and they were rising rapidly, blazing wings stroking as they flew straight toward the pair of greens.

“Flee!” cried Toxy, obviously appalled at the horrific apparitions. She banked tightly and, wings driving powerfully, bore toward the Qualinesti coast.

Aeren was right behind. He cast a horror-stricken glance beneath his belly, confirming that the fiery monsters were indeed chasing them. They had altered their climb as the greens had turned and now were swerving after them in crackling, spark-trailing pursuit. Even worse, they were closing the distance!

“Faster!” he gasped, winging powerfully, wishing he could push Toxy through the skies. The larger of the pair, he was also the faster flier, and though he was nearly mad with fear, some deep and unsuspected reserve of courage wouldn’t let him pull ahead of his companion. Instead, the two greens flew side by side, streaking through the air, riding the crest of the wind, instinctively racing toward the safety of their oceanside lair.

Once more Aeren looked back and saw that the fire dragons were even closer. Black, lightless eyes gaped like death from their orange faces. Everywhere a normal dragon would have been scaled, these monstrosities had surfaces of seething, boiling fire. Their wings were like flaming tendrils, somehow smooth and solid enough to bear the beast’s weight. The green dragon couldn’t imagine what it would be like to touch that flame. He pictured it searing his talons away, consuming his flesh with hungry fingers of pure heat. He saw that the leading fire dragon was only five or six lengths behind them, with its two mates a similar distance beyond.

“No good!” he gasped. “They’re... too fast!”

His heart swelled, and in an instant of pure, furious decision, he did something more selfless than he had ever done before. “Keep going!” he cried to Toxy.

Then he curled through an upward loop and flew straight at the fire dragon, his emerald jaws spread wide in a cry of challenge and pure, unadulterated fear.

With the revelation that they’d had a spy in their midst, Porthios realized the elven outlaws would have to move camp again. Privately he placed little hope in Gilthas’s attempt to prevent Guilderhand from reaching Rashas. At best, he hoped the young Speaker might be able to talk his way out of a dungeon, or to avoid an even grimmer fate.

But to the prince, that was a minor problem compared to the threat of blue dragons once again winging downward into the trees. At Splintered Rock, they lacked even the minimal defensive benefits of the ravine, so the elves’ only hope of survival was to keep their location a secret. Despite the many comforts of the site at the base of the craggy bluff, the Qualinesti outlaws and their Kagonesti allies decided they once again had to pack their belongings and begin a trek through the forest.

The outlaw prince was becoming increasingly aware of the difficulties inherent in his status as an outlaw. Qualinesti was a vast forest, surely, but there were only a limited number of places where a large group of elves could find comfortable camp. They needed not only plenty of food, but also a steady supply of clean water—especially now, when summer’s unnatural heat so oppressed them. Also, they had to have a tall canopy of leaves that was thick enough to screen them from aerial searchers, and ideally enough flat and open space between the trees for five hundred elves to camp in some semblance of comfort.

At the same time, he realized how perfect the Splintered Rock site was. A wide stream flowed into the lake, bringing a steady supply of fresh water. There was plenty of space, and ample types of wild game in the area. Both the lake and the stream were well stocked with fish, and since the tribe had arrived here, they had managed to eat very well.

Still, a day after his nephew’s visit, Porthios was agitated and restless. He paced back and forth through the camp, looked around, saw the perfection of the locale... and knew that it was no good to stay there, not since the location was known by the spy called Guilderhand.

Late that afternoon he called a council of his most trusted lieutenants. Alhana, Samar, Dallatar, and Tarqualan all joined him in the snug grove where he had first met with Gilthas. They dispensed with the normal ritual of a fire, since the air was already superheated and the utter lack of wind would have insured that any smoke would merely have formed a haze around their heads.

“I’m thinking that we have to leave,” said the prince. “I don’t want to, but with our position discovered by the spy, it’s too dangerous to stay here.”

“I agree,” Dallatar said. “Though in many ways our camp here is ideal, we have no real protection against an attack.”

Samar and Tarqualan nodded, too, while Alhana, cradling a sleeping Silvanoshei, seemed too weary to make any kind of signal. Instead, she slumped against a tree trunk and watched the proceedings without expression. Porthios couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under her eyes, the outline of her strong bones through the pale skin of her increasingly gaunt face.

The prince forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. He addressed Dallatar. “You know these forests better than any of us. Is there another place that might fulfill our needs?”

Alhana lifted herself to speak. “A place not terribly far away,” she said. “The people are tired and many are wounded. They need rest and food, a chance to get their strength back.”

The wild elf chieftain thought for a little while. Finally he gestured to the stream that flowed past the encampment. “We can follow that creek toward its headwaters in the southern highlands. Perhaps three days’ march will take us into the hill country. There are many valleys there, still thickly forested, with plenty of game. However, the trail will climb steeply toward the end. It will not be an easy march.”

“That’s too far!” Samar interjected. “You heard the queen. Many of us cannot make a trek like that!”

The others looked at him, startled by his vehemence, while Alhana reached a restraining hand to his arm.

“It’s all right,” she said quietly. “I know we can do it. The strong will help those who are weaker, and the tribe can make it.”

Porthios felt that increasingly familiar twinge of jealousy. He shook his head, angry at himself. Why did he let it bother him? He knew that his wife loved him, that she had given birth to his baby! Wasn’t that enough?

Tarqualan was speaking. “I suggest we use the griffons to move those who are too weak to walk. It’s even possible that we could get more of them to join us, though it would take a few days.”

“I know there were many griffons in Qualinesti years ago,” Porthios said. “Do you know where they’ve gone?”

“Most are dwelling in the valleys of the High Kharolis,” said the scout, speaking of the lofty mountain range that sprawled over the dwarven kingdom of Thorbardin, miles to the south and east of Qualinesti.

“Do you think they would agree to help us?” wondered the prince.

Tarqualan nodded, but it was Alhana who spoke. “They abandoned the Qualinesti just a year ago, after Rashas ordered me imprisoned. It may be the knowledge that the prince has returned and I am now free could bring them to our assistance.”

Porthios was somewhat heartened by this news. “For this move, I don’t think we can count on more help than the griffons we have with us right now. But if we can make this march and reach a new camp, then we can send an emissary to the mountains to see if we can bring more griffons into our camp.”

“That emissary would have to be you,” Alhana said, addressing her husband.

“Why?”

“You are the symbol of Qualinesti, of the heritage that the griffons have served for so many centuries. If you were to go to them, to speak to them and show them our need, I think they’d follow you back here.”

“Very well,” Porthios agreed. “For now, we’ll move out first thing in the morning, and as soon as we make a new camp, I’ll see if I can enlist the aid of Stallyar’s clan.”

Later in the evening, with pickets posted on all sides of the camp, the tribe settled down to a night of rest. Sometime before dawn, Porthios awakened with an uneasy sense that something was amiss. He listened for the normal sounds of the nighttime forest and immediately realized that he could hear nothing except the rippling of the nearby stream and the soft breathing of Alhana who, with Silvanoshei wrapped in her arms, lay beside him. The stifling, muggy heat made it feel more like a midsummer day than the middle of the night.

But there should be soft birdcalls whistling through the woods, heralding the imminent arrival of dawn. Tiny mammals should be scurrying through the brush, looking for a last morsel of food before daylight once again sent them cowering into dens and burrows. Bats, too, were common in these forests, and their shrill, almost inaudible cries had been an accompaniment on every night spent out in the open.

Now there was none of that.

Instantly tense, though not yet alarmed, Porthios rose to his feet and silently made his way among the slumbering elves. He was holding his sword, only because the weapon gave him a sense of security, and he probed into the undergrowth beyond the clearing.

“Guards? Are you there?” he whispered, quietly approaching a sentry post. Odd... he had personally appointed all the pickets, but now he had no memory of the elf he had sent to watch this quadrant. The lapse in recollection was deeply disturbing, uncharacteristic of him and very unsettling in this strange, still night.

He stumbled over something. He looked down with a gasp to see a helmet and an empty shirt of leather armor. There was a sword, a longbow—This was the guard’s equipment! But where was the man? He stared into the underbrush, trying to see through the thick swaths of darkness that gathered so closely beneath the trees.

And then, with a chill of icy horror, he realized that the shadows around him were alive.

Gilthas couldn’t help but be pleased with the results of his second effort at recruiting. For some reason, now that they had already been conquered by the Knights of Takhisis, the elves seemed more inclined to realize that their kingdom could actually be facing an additional threat. Rumors and tales about the “Storms of Chaos” had spread through all strata of city society. In addition, the hot weather, the unnatural stillness of the air, and the thickening miasma that seemed to plague each breath all contributed to the feeling of impending disaster.

In any event, young elves, males and females both, came forth in the hundreds to join the ranks of the “Qualinost Legion,” as the Speaker was calling his new command. They joined him on the hillcrest where the Hall of Audience spread under the open sky, and Gilthas found all his skills taxed as he tried to organize them into ranks, companies, and platoons.

In these efforts, he had the assistance of a burly Dark Knight sergeant named Fennalt, a man assigned by Lord Salladac as the elven commander’s aide. Curling mustaches framed a square face with a stern, rocklike chin, making the veteran soldier a picture of strength and competence. Fennalt took charge of the actual organization and training, a fact that relieved Gilthas as soon as he heard the man’s voice boom across the makeshift parade ground.

Still, the Speaker was kept busy with matters of procuring supply, continuing to gather recruits, and maintaining accurate records of the legion’s formation and training. In fact, he was glad for the distractions created by this mountain of work, for it kept him from worrying about the thing that would otherwise have been at the forefront of his consciousness.

Kerianseray had yet to return from the camp of Porthios. Two days after his own arrival, the young elf had seen no sign of her, nor did any of his other servants admit to any knowledge of her whereabouts. Even when the workload was filling his head with facts and figures, he found his mind drifting away, occupied by concern for the beautiful wild elf slave who had risked so much for him.

Until he awakened in his house, the third day after his return from the forest, and was delighted to see Kerian enter his sleeping chamber to bring him his day’s garments.

“I-I’m glad to see you!” he blurted. “I was afraid for you. I didn’t know if you were safe.”

“I stayed with my father and his tribe for a day. Last night I flew on the back of a griffon to the city. The elves are preparing to move again, for they feared that Guilderhand might have revealed their position—and I feared that you might have met difficulties when you got back here.”

Gilthas quickly described the events following his return. “Thank you for taking me to Porthios... and for coming back to me.”

“As you can see,” she replied in a level tone, “I have willingly returned to slavery.”

He flushed and shook his head. “No... you have your freedom. You shall do what you want with your life.” His heart pounded, and he watched her carefully, wondering if she would immediately start for the door.

“Then I will stay here,” she said simply. “Where I am needed, and where I can do some good.”

She came to him and he reached out to her. This time their lovemaking was a slow process. Exploring and touching and teasing each other, they merged into a singleness that seemed to represent utter perfection. It was a long time before the Speaker of the Sun got out of bed.

Finally, refreshed and more invigorated than he had ever been in his life, he went to the Hall of Audience for the day’s exercises. He was pleased to see that the elven recruits were learning to follow simple commands, to march, to wheel in response to an order. Gilthas, too, found himself feeling more and more comfortable with a blade in his hand. As he had previously, he joined in the drills and began to learn the rudiments of handling his weapon, the long sword he had removed from the wall in his house on the night when he had gone to seek Guilderhand.

Fennalt, for his part, had expressed appreciation bordering upon awe for the ancient long sword and had willingly showed the Speaker the proper techniques for wielding the light, supple blade for defense and attack. Like Gilthas, many of the recruits were armed with swords and often shields, while others bore spears, and of course many were skilled with the longbow that was such a staple of the elven armory. A few trained on horseback, though the vast majority worked as infantry.

Lord Salladac had gone back to his camp outside the city, where he was organizing the remnant of his army—the troops that were left after so many had been called away to campaigns in Silvanesti or Palanthas—into light companies. The blue dragons were gone from the city, and though the Dark Knights occasionally raised a cheer or clashed in a loud combat drill, they remained outside of Qualinost. At times, Gilthas even began to convince himself that he was the ruler here, the true master of the city.

Rashas came to the practice grounds late that morning, watching the drills for a while and then gesturing to Gilthas. Leaving his troops under the care of the knight, Fennalt, the Speaker walked over to the senator.

“There has been a message from your mother,” Rashas said curtly. “The famous Lauralanthalasa of House Solostaran is on her way to Qualinesti.”

“Good,” Gilthas replied. “We must do everything in our power to make her feel welcome.” Perhaps it was the new confidence he was feeling, or else he was relishing the feel of the sword in his hand. In any event, the young ruler spoke boldly to the senator who had placed him on his throne.

“This is the city of her ancestry. Undoubtedly her return will be greeted with joy. I want you to remember that I’m bringing her here for her protection.”

“Of course. She no longer has authority over these elves, but she will be welcomed as a heroine.”

Gilthas stared into the eyes of the elven senator. “I know you think to trap my mother when she comes here. Know this, Rashas: Should you make any move to harm her, I will fight you and all you represent. You will never more have your pliable youngster sitting on the throne.”

“As you wish,” declared the senator in a tone that lacked any sense of irony, at least so far as the younger elf could hear. “She will be treated as befits a former princess and a true heroine of Krynn.”

It was shortly after the senator’s departure that the practice was disrupted by shouts of alarm, screams bordering on hysteria. Neatly trimmed ranks broke in confusion, and horses whinnied, bucking and rearing wildly. Casting weapons to the ground, many of the young elves fled, screaming, from a threat that Gilthas couldn’t see. The Speaker raced across the Hall of Audience to see Fennalt cursing, elves running in all directions.

And then a figure strode into view, swinging rock-hard fists, crushing those few elves too slow to get out of his way. Some swung their swords or stabbed with spears, but these weapons broke or bounced against the creature’s skin. With a horrid laugh, the monster came onward, and Gilthas finally got a good look.

The attacker was cloaked in the body of a tall elf, but it was distorted by burning coals of fire where his eyes should have been. His mouth stretched wide to reveal sharp fangs, and his voice was a howl that seemed to rise from the darkest depths of the Abyss. No one could stand against him, and as he stalked through the parade grounds, the Qualinost Legion could only dissolve into panic.

Chapter Nineteen Fall of the Thalas-Enthia

“Rally to me! Stand and fight, you blackguards!” shouted Sergeant Fennalt. The knight’s face was purple, his voice hoarse as he shouted at the fleeing elves. He swatted at his recruits with the flat of his broad blade, but the terrified warriors just broke around him and ran in panic away from the Hall of Audience.

Gilthas, too, shouted, cursed, and railed, but he was caught up in the wave of panic, running elves knocking into him, pushing, shouting, clawing at each other in mindless desperation to escape. Though he tried to push his way through the terrified recruits, the best he could do was hold his ground, watching as the human warrior faced the apparition from... from where?

The creature had the physical appearance and size of an elf, yet somehow it seemed much larger. Eyes of pure, bright fire glowed in its face, easily dissolving any suggestion of mortality. It stalked across the ground without pause or hesitation, reaching out and attacking on the move, striking at any elf too slow to get out of its way.

Like a demon from the Abyss, the monster bashed and howled, clearly enjoying the slaughter it was wreaking on these pathetic mortals. Abruptly it turned to the side, striding across the field, ignoring the horses, now riderless, that bolted past. With a lightning lunge, it reached out to grab a fallen elf by the foot, twirling the hapless fellow over its head and then casting him like a rag doll far across the ground.

The Dark Knight sergeant, apoplectic with rage, roared at his recruits, but even the fury of his loud voice couldn’t control the panic. Indeed, headlong flight seemed like the only proper response, and the companies of Qualinesti recruits raced from the hilltop in all directions. One or two bold elves tried to slash at the creature with their weapons, but the being of chaos merely laughed as the blades snapped against his flesh, or bounced back with no visible effect. A few archers shot, and though their aim was accurate, the arrows merely sizzled into ash as they struck the monster’s impervious skin.

“Who are you? How dare you come here!” demanded Sergeant Major Fennalt. “Now you’ll taste a knight’s steel!”

“Fennalt! Fall back—we can’t fight that thing!” Gilthas clearly saw the futility of attack, realized that their weapons were useless against this horrible apparition. He shouted at the knight, urging him to flee.

But the burly sergeant would have none of it.

Instead, the knight raised his huge, two-handed sword and stalked forward, ready to face the fire-eyed horror that now stood atop the hill, in the center of the Hall of Audience. The elven figure paused, and then twisted and grew. Gilthas gaped, horror-stricken, as he saw an image of a leering giant, the bearded face distorted by the rot of death—and still marred by those hellish eyes. Then the monster changed again, growing into the visage of a draconic face and hulking, scale-covered body.

Fennalt paused for a moment, staring upward with his sword raised. Then he drew a deep breath, shouted a battle cry, and charged. He stabbed, but his sword bounced back from the scaly flesh.

And that monstrous being reached out with hands that had suddenly sprouted cruel claws. It reached for the human, tore his arms from his torso, then gored him with a single sweep of those horrible claws.

The sergeant of the Dark Knights perished in an instant, and by then the rest of Gilthas’s elves had raced for the streets of their city. Appalled, sickened, and horrified, the Speaker could only turn away and join in the flight.

Gilthas made his way to the Tower of the Sun. Everywhere he passed through streets filled with panicked elves, some crying out in fear, others angrily demanding explanations of the inexplicable events of which, finally, they were beginning to learn. But those who had seen the onslaught were too frightened to stop, too terrified and stunned to articulate what they had seen. Instead, they merely shrieked sounds of mindless terror, and fear swept through the city like an irresistible tide.

The sun remained high, baking the hapless metropolis, and in places Gilthas came upon truly bizarre scenes. He saw an elderly elven matron, utterly naked, run screaming from her house, crying that her nightmares had come to life. A few steps later, he saw a burly warrior, a large sword clutched in his hands, frantically dashing around his garden, slashing at the trees and bushes, wood chips and branches flying as he wailed aloud about the end of the world.

Finally the Speaker reached the base of the lofty tower, where he found a large crowd surging outside the doors to the great council chamber. He forced his way through the throng and saw that the golden doors were actually standing ajar. The chamber within was even more crowded than the street, but through sheer will and the considerable use of his elbows and fists, Gilthas managed to push his way farther and farther into the great, circular room.

“The world itself is aflame!” shouted one senator, his voice shrill with panic. “The knights have abandoned us. We have to flee!”

“Silence!” roared Rashas, his own visage pale, his mouth white-lipped and tense. He whirled to confront Gilthas, who was making his way toward the rostrum. “What have you seen? What’s going on out there?” he demanded harshly.

The Speaker climbed the steps and shook his head in a mute admission of ignorance. “I wish I could tell you,” he declared. “We’re attacked by forces unlike anything ever seen in this realm or, I suspect, any other.”

“It’s the Storms of Chaos—they break upon us!” shouted the agitated senator who had previously, and hysterically, given voice to his panic.

“Please try to be calm!” Gilthas pleaded. “Such fears accomplish nothing save to fan the fires of their own making!”

He still wore the ancient sword that he had first taken off the wall in his house a week before. Now the young elf drew and raised the weapon, brandishing silver steel over his head.

“Listen to me!” he cried. “We can’t let ourselves panic. We must try to understand what’s happening!”

The crowd grew silent as Gilthas tried to make sense of the chaotic attack that had ripped through his legion, killed his sergeant, and sent the elven troops fleeing in panic through the streets of their city. And though he had, for the most part, kept his wits about him, he couldn’t decide what had happened, nor could he make any guess as to the nature or homeland of the horrible attacker.

“What happened in the Hall of Audience?” Rashas asked. “We’ve heard reports of a fire-eyed warrior, a giant of unparalleled cruelty!”

The Speaker sighed and nodded grimly. “I saw the thing with my own eyes. It seemed to come from the city streets, walked right up the hill—though how it could have passed among us for long, I don’t know. But when the bravest man of my legion turned to fight the thing, it tore him apart as though he was a child’s toy.”

“And the knights and their dragons?” demanded another elf. “Where are our conquerors now?”

“Lord Salladac is still outside the city,” Gilthas snapped. “He told me his dragons had been summoned to Lord Ariakan, in preparation to face the threat that has now so savagely come upon us.”

“We need him here!” shouted an ashen-faced senator.

“I agree,” Gilthas said, the urgency of the situation overcoming his shame at seeking the human general’s help. “I need volunteers, swift runners to race to his camp and let him know what’s happening here!”

Six elves quickly offered to make the journey, and the crowd parted enough to allow them to leave the tower.

“Now, the rest of you... you need to go to your homes, arm yourselves and your families!” Gilthas ordered, even as he wondered what good weapons might be against the horror he had observed on the hilltop. “Gather everyone who can fight—sons, daughters, servants—everyone! And make haste!”

Some elves started to disperse to follow his bidding, but many members of the Thalas-Enthia milled around in the chamber, shouting at each other, demanding information and protection. Even when Rashas shouted his agreement with the Speaker’s orders, these panicked elders could only wring their hands and cry.

Through the chamber’s golden doors burst a panicked herald. “It’s coming!” he cried, gesticulating wildly. “The demon approaches, and it brings in its wake serpents of pure fire!”

Immediate pandemonium rocked the chamber as the senators scrambled for the main door. Shrieks arose from outside, and through the open portal, Gilthas caught a glimpse of the crowd streaming away. Some of the cries rose to expressions of pure horror, and the air glowed red, as if a fire was showering from the skies themselves.

At the door, the herald disappeared, and in his place was the fiery monster Gilthas remembered from the Hall of Audience. Now it was in the guise of a Dark Knight—resembling the bold Sergeant Major Fennalt, in fact—though the fiery eyes dispelled any appearance of normalcy. Throwing back its head, the creature emitted a laugh of rock-shaking power and strode into the chamber.

The flood of fleeing senators broke back upon itself, but now the chaotic warrior was among them, picking up esteemed members of the Thalas-Enthia and tossing them into the air like rag dolls. The monster pulled some of the elves apart, crushed others with blows from hammerlike fists. All the while it uttered that ghastly laugh, crowing like a fiend from the Abyss, exulting as it spread horror, panic, pain, and death.

Other senators turned toward the two small side entrances to the tower, pulling open the doors and spilling out as fast as they could force their way through the narrow openings. Fear filled the room with an acrid stench as the formerly dignified elves clawed over each other in desperate attempts to escape. Shouts and screams echoed from everywhere, and the esteemed members of the Thalas-Enthia punched and tackled each other, tore mindlessly at robes and hair.

But now fires rose from beyond these doors, and the screams of dying elves, accompanied by the horrific stench of charred flesh, roiled into the chamber amid clouds of black, churning smoke. Heat blasted inward with the smoke, and beyond each door, orange flames glowed even brighter than daylight, radiating into the chamber in waves of searing heat.

“Dragons! Dragons of fire!” cried one senator, his face blackened and peeling from a blast of supernatural heat. “The city is burning—Qualinost dies!” he groaned, toppling to the floor and quivering in the throes of convulsion.

Gilthas watched, horrified, as death surrounded the chamber, wading through in the person of the fire-eyed warrior of Chaos, pouring into the side doors as beings of living, boiling flame. A dragon stuck its head through one of these smaller apertures, and the elves recoiled from a visage of gaping jaws and pure, roiling flame. A cloud of fire burst from those jaws, roaring through the chamber, crackling in greedy hunger, killing all the elves across a wide swath of the floor.

“What can we do?” Rashas demanded, staring wildly around, reaching forward to clutch Gilthas by the arms.

“This way!” the Speaker said, breaking away and racing toward the stairs that curled upward to the tower’s higher reaches.

With Rashas at his side, Gilthas darted onto the steps, pounding upward, dashing away from the carnage in the main hall. He left the screams and cries below him, climbing until he was gasping for breath, until his lungs rasped desperately for air. Trying to think, he sought to make some sort of rational plan, but in the end, all he could do was run. Rashas, screaming for him to wait, was left far below.

On an upper level, he burst through a door to find himself on one of the side balconies, perhaps halfway up the thousand-foot spire of the Tower of the Sun. He gaped in horror at the scene of Qualinost spread below him. Immediately he saw that events had advanced rapidly, even in the relatively short time since he had entered the council chamber.

The rainbow bridges flanking the city had collapsed and now smoldered as twisted ruins to the west and south. The sun was still high, red and stark and unforgiving as it blasted downward from a sky of pure, roiling white. It seemed to the elf that it hadn’t moved from its spot at the zenith of the heavens.

Flames broiled upward from many parts of the city as groves, gardens, and splendid buildings were consumed by fire. He noticed, with odd detachment, that even structures of marble and crystal were engulfed, tongues of orange licking along surfaces of solid stone, charring and melting the rock. One lofty spire, the mansion of a great and ancient noble family, shriveled and bent before his eyes. With a groan of helplessness, he watched the structure topple, crashing into the street to crush dozens of panic-stricken elves who fled this way and that.

Here and there he saw more of the fire dragons, at least a dozen creatures of pure, living flame. They seemed to frolic and cavort with monstrous cruelty, trailing sparks, bellowing hate, belching flame. Everything they touched was incinerated, and they howled in unworldly exultation when their fiery tails lashed around to consume the people of the city.

At the base of the Tower of the Sun were two of these creatures, eagerly pouncing on the few elves who had escaped the council chamber below. These wyrms paused only to raise their heads to the skies, roaring in triumph, blasting gouts of fire and sparks from their widespread jaws. Then they dropped to the ground again and resumed their murderous game.

White wings flashed before him, and Gilthas saw a griffon approaching, incongruous in this sky of fire and death. The creature’s feathers were seared by fire, its flesh torn and bleeding, as the valiant animal crashed into the balcony.

Only then did Gilthas see that the creature had a passenger, an elf woman who had been clinging desperately to the saddle. She had long, golden hair, though some of it had been charred away. The skin of her arms was reddened by fire, and she moaned in pain as the Speaker helped her to slump down from the saddle. Only then did he get the shock of recognition.

“Mother!” he cried, taking her in his arms, easing her from the saddle.

Like the griffon, Laurana had been burned. Her skin was blistered, and some of her tunic had been singed away—clearly the griffon had barely evaded one of the fiery wyrms. She was weeping, and he laid her, as gently as possible, on the floor of the balcony. A low wall blocked their view of the tortured city, though Gilthas was keenly aware of the fires that had burned through marble and of the monsters still cavorting at the base of the Tower of the Sun.

The balcony’s tower door burst open, and Rashas tumbled through, gasping for breath, his face streaked with lines of age and horror. Wiping the sweat from his brow, he dropped to one knee and drew deep, ragged breaths. He didn’t seem to notice Gilthas or Laurana as he cowered against the wall, his eyes fixed upon the door that he had slammed behind him.

From within the tower came a sound that chilled the young Speaker’s blood. It was the fire-eyed monster, climbing the stairs, and he could clearly picture it tossing back that grotesque head, mouth gaping as it once again gave voice to that cruel mockery of a laugh.

At that sound, Laurana groaned and opened her eyes. They fixed upon Gilthas, but then widened as the horrible laughter was repeated. Wincing in pain, she struggled to raise herself to a sitting position.

“Mother, what’s happening?” asked Gilthas.

“The Storms of Chaos, my son. They have broken upon us, upon all of Krynn! I was on my way to you when I saw the first signs of war—fires everywhere, dark shadows writhing across the land. And these daemon warriors, such as that thing that we hear now, everywhere leading the forces of Chaos across the world.”

Now the thudding crashes of the daemon warrior’s footsteps boomed beyond the door and halted.

“You—you have a sword!” cried Rashas, suddenly pointing at Gilthas. “You must stand against that thing—fight it, slay it, or we’re doomed.”

Gilthas shook his head, denying the truth. He looked at the griffon, then at his mother. “Get back in the saddle. Fly away from here to safety!”

“Osprey will do no more flying,” the elf woman said gently as the griffon struggled unsuccessfully to raise its proud head. “And in any event, there is no safety, no refuge save what we make for ourselves.”

The door splintered outward, crushed by the impact of a mighty fist, and Gilthas scrambled to his feet, clumsily drawing his sword. This situation was absurd, he knew, remembering the way Fennalt’s sword had bounced off this same creature’s breast. He moaned, fighting back tears, afraid not so much for himself as at the thought of his mother similarly ripped by this unstoppable beast. She had come to him in answer to his summons, when he had called her here for her protection! Now she would die horribly in the hour of her arrival.

Yet somehow he found his feet carrying him forward, his hands—in the maneuvers that Fennalt had taught him only in the last few days—clutching the hilt of the long sword, raising the blade to slash warningly before the daemon warrior’s laughing face.

And even now that face resembled the visage of the warrior the monster had slain, the curved mustache and blocky chin that had once represented such competence to Gilthas. The beast crowed with a cruel caricature of the arrogance that Fennalt had displayed toward the untrained elves he had sought to prepare. Yet now that hauteur had a sneer of real viciousness, and the look of contempt caused Gilthas’s stomach to lurch and his knees to quiver.

But when the monster reached forward, enough of the young elf’s instincts remained that he slashed the sword through a frantic, wheeling arc, driving the keen edge against the daemon warrior’s arm even as he prepared for the aftershock when the blow bounced away. Closing his eyes, gritting his teeth, Gilthas put all of his strength into the attack, praying to every god. With fear and hate, he drove the weapon through the monster’s flesh, lopping off one hand, continuing on to slash deeply into the second wrist. The daemon warrior howled, falling backward for a step as the stunned elf opened his eyes and looked at his bloodied blade, gagging in horror at the sight of the dismembered hand twitching on the floor at his feet.

A flush of energy overtook him, and Gilthas raised the blade, lunging toward the hissing daemon warrior. He saw the fiery light flare brightly in the wicked pools of the creature’s eyes—and then he hesitated as the visage before him changed, shifted, sprouting a beard, the human’s features lengthening into an image that was at least partially elven. The creature closed its eyes, and immediately that horrible presence was gone.

“Father...” whispered Gilthas, recognizing Tanis Half-Elven in that once-ghastly face. He looked down at the hand, shocked and grieving. “Forgive me...”

The wounded image of Tanis bent double, moaning in pain.

“Kill it!” cried Laurana, pushing herself up to her knees and shouting. “It’s not your father! It’s a trick!”

Gilthas stared dumbly at the person he knew so well. He brought up the sword, but he couldn’t drive it forward, couldn’t force himself to attack. “It’s Tanis, don’t you see? Look!”

The half-elf was hunched over, his wounded hand clutching the stump of his bleeding wrist. “Help me!” he gasped, his voice taut with pain. It was the voice Gilthas knew so well, the sound of the man who had given him life, who had raised him from infancy until his destiny had brought him here.

“I’m... I’m sorry,” he said, lowering the blade and stepping forward.

The bearded face came up a little more, but there was a flash of something there, and suddenly Gilthas saw the hateful fire burning in those eyes.

And all the force of his rage, of his frustration and betrayal, went into his arms and hands as he thrust the sword forward, driving the keen steel through the monster’s breast, tearing away at the foul stuff of its innards.

The daemon warrior screamed, an unworldly howl, and stumbled backward, writhing on the steel blade, finally breaking free to tumble to the floor. Tanis’s features disappeared. Instead, Gilthas was staring at a beast of unspeakable horror, a gaping maw bristling with sharp teeth, skin black as oily coal except for the hellish fires of its eyes.

Slowly those flames faded to dull embers, and then went dark.

Chapter Twenty Nightmare Woods

Porthios tumbled back into the clearing, shouting an alarm, waving his sword, frantically stabbing... at what? Despite the aura of menace, the bone-chilling horror he felt, there was no substance, no mass of flesh to these attackers.

For the writhing shapes seemed to be nothing more than pure shadow, insubstantial patches of darkness that closed menacingly around him yet had no bodies, no physical form. But when he recalled the empty helm and cuirass, he knew that somehow these bizarre nothings had destroyed the life and the soul of at least one brave elven warrior. And they were relentlessly determined to close in, to kill again and again.

The steel long sword in his hand, hallowed weapon of his family and cherished artifact of elvenkind, tore through one of the shadows with a sound like water sucking down a drain. Porthios felt the resistance, knew that he had gouged one of these shadows. But there were more, dozens more, oozing out of the darkness. They came at him from all sides, clearly attacking, though he could distinguish no details of face or body on any of them. At the same time, he knew they were real, and he sensed the deadly menace in the chilly and silent advance. They reached with tendrils of horrific darkness, lashing limbs that changed in shape or size as he dodged and retreated.

He shouted as loud as he could, desperately trying to raise an alarm in the camp. Then he stabbed and slashed again with his sword, lunging forward, dodging to the side, striking like a snake as he made sure than none of the tentacles of inky black could reach far enough to come into contact with his skin. Each time his sword cut through the tenuous shape of a shadow, he heard that awful gurgling death and saw the darkness wisp away.

But there were so many of them! They began to close a circle around him, and in seconds, his retreat was nearly cut off. Spinning frantically, slashing in every direction, he cut at the things, dissolving more of them, opening a gap in their ranks that allowed him to tumble past. Porthios rolled across the ground until he slammed against the trunk of a tree. Instinctively he knew that to be touched was to die. He was on his feet in a half a heartbeat, slashing and parrying, holding the eerie things back as once more he raised his voice in alarm.

“To arms, elves of Qualinesti! We’re attacked!”

In the camp, the elves were already aroused, griffons growling and screeching, warriors raising their weapons, other elves streaming into the woods, fleeing the mysterious attackers that were now emerging from between the trees. Most of the outlaws abandoned what few possessions they had brought with them, splashing through the stream, racing through the woods around the base of the Splintered Rock bluff. Porthios saw that Alhana had already snatched up Silvanoshei and fallen back, joining the flight that threatened to become a panic. Only then did the elven prince turn back to the fight, brandishing his blade, striking at any of the shadows that came within range of his steel.

He saw a dozen brave elves charge, instinctively forming a battle line, but their blades sliced harmlessly through the looming shadows. A moment later the tendrils of darkness reached forth, and the elves were simply gone. In their places, weapons dropped to the ground, shirts and belts and boots still tumbling from the momentum of the charge, but of the flesh and the lives that had been there, Porthios saw nothing. It was as though the courageous warriors had never been there.

More shadows swirled toward him, and his blade cut through them, killing some and driving the others back. Already he was realizing an important truth: His weapon, blessed by ancient powers, was potent against these things, but the blades of nearly all of his warriors were utterly useless against these beings of foul magic. The elves as a whole had no means of fighting this unnatural enemy.

Another rank attacked before Porthios could call them back, and these, too, perished, vanished utterly except for the tools and clothing that they had carried into the fight. His elves did not lack in courage, but they had no effective tools for battling this foe. More of them were turning to run, overcome by fear and lacking any means of stopping the horrific assault. Griffons, too, were winging away after too many of them had flown at the shadows, only to vanish in utter, complete dissolution.

“Fall back!” the prince shouted, still wielding his own blade against a press of attackers. “Get out of here! We’ll regroup on the far side of the bluff!”

Many of the warriors heeded his command, fleeing with the elders and children. But others stayed behind to wage the fruitless fight. Porthios recognized a brave warrior, silver sword flashing like lightning in his hand as he raced to defend his prince.

“Tarqualan!” cried Porthios, watching as that elven warrior came up against the rank of seething, squirming shadows.

And then the valiant fighter, veteran of so many of his prince’s battles, was gone, vanished in body and sight... and even, Porthios realized with a chill, in his very memory. He couldn’t recall the name of the bold commander who had stood so staunchly in the face of a nightmarish attack, who had ridden at his side through twenty years of campaigns in Silvanesti.

And finally all the elves were running, stumbling through the undergrowth, fleeing in mindless panic through the dark, haunted woods.

Dawn broke as Porthios was still following at the rear of the band. He had no idea how many of his elves had been lost to the horror, though he took some minimal comfort from the observation that the shadows were not vigorous in their pursuit. Samar now fought beside the prince, the two of them forming a rear guard as the rest of the elves had crossed the stream and made their desperate way through the woods. The Silvanesti’s dragonlance, like Porthios’s sword, had proven to be lethal against the dark and insubstantial attackers.

Finally they pulled away, leaving the shadows lingering in the deep woods as the elves gathered around the far side of the Splintered Rock bluff. The sun was up, the heat already pressing downward like a sweltering blanket. Amid the milling band of wailing, crying elves Porthios found his wife clutching Silvanoshei. The baby was squalling loudly. The elven prince tried to think, but the shrieks of his son were driving daggers through his mind.

“Can’t you make him stop crying?” he asked, fear and helplessness boiling over.

“He’s terrified!” Alhana snapped back. “And so am I—so are we all!”

“I’m sorry. Here, let me hold him,” Porthios said softly. “We’re safe here, at least for a while.”

“Do—do you think so?” she asked, trying bravely to conquer the quaver in her voice.

The baby fussed and twisted in his arms, and Porthios couldn’t lie to her. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know what attacked us, where they came from, or what they want.”

All around him, elves were gasping for breath, lying in various states of exhaustion around the tree trunks and rocks at the base of the mountain. Somehow they had made their way here through the darkness, but now he had no idea of where to go, of what to do next. And through this panicky confusion, his son’s distressed wails had pierced his awareness like a knife cutting through soft flesh.

“How many of us got away? And what about the others? They’re just... gone.”

Alhana spoke numbly, but Porthios knew what she meant. He remembered acts of bravery, bold warriors lifting steel to stand against the shadowy attackers that had emerged so silently from the woods. But when he tried to recall individual battles, the last fights of brave elves, some of them warriors who had fought under his command for two decades, there was simply nothing there.

Desperately he tried to remember a name, to picture the stalwart face of a loyal lieutenant. It was as though the shadows, having killed an elf’s body, had also sapped away any memory of his existence, any legacy he might have left behind.

The griffons, too, had fought the attackers valiantly. Many had perished during the battle, vanishing into space like the bodies of the elves who had been touched by shadow. The others had finally flown away, seeking the safety of the skies when the entire camp had been overrun. Now a few of them had returned to light on the upper slopes of the craggy bluff. Though Porthios looked upward, scrutinizing the heights for a sign of Stallyar, he had seen no indication of the familiar silver-feathered wings.

“My lord Porthios!” cried an elf, gliding low on the back of a griffon. Porthios recognized Darrian, a courageous and skilled archer and a veteran of the Silvanesti campaign.

“Here!” he shouted, waving from the ground.

The griffon came to rest on the forest floor, and Darrian leaped from the saddle and came stumbling toward him. The warrior looked haggard, his skin scratched and torn by brambles, though he didn’t seem to be otherwise wounded. Indeed, Porthios reflected grimly, the shadowy attackers didn’t seem to have injured any of his elves. Either the outlaws had escaped, terror-stricken but whole, or they had been touched by those chill tendrils and vanished utterly.

“What? Are we attacked again?” asked the leader of the ragged band.

“No, but soon! The shadows are coming around the bluff, blocking our flight. They’ll hit us from the other side within the hour.”

“How close?”

“A mile, no more. They move slowly, but deliberately. They don’t seem to stop for anything!”

Porthios looked at Darrian’s empty quiver. “Did you damage them, do any harm at all, with your arrows?”

The warrior shook his head. “Not at all—save once, when I used an arrow given to me by your father, the Speaker of the Sun.”

“Was that missile unique?”

Now the elf nodded. “My king told me that its head was of purest steel and that the shaft had been blessed by Paladine himself.”

“And what happened when you used it?”

“I shot into a mass of shadows, lord, and it seemed as though they were all torn, ripped into scraps of darkness. They made a hideous screeching, and then they vanished.”

Porthios described the small success he had had with his own sword, and Samar with his dragonlance. “And those, too, are weapons blessed by the gods, imbued with powerful magic. As to the rest, even the keenest of elven steel seems useless against them.”

The sun remained high, as if it was going to stay at zenith forever, and as the rays drove downward through the leaves, the forest grew hotter and hotter. Insects droned, and the sounds of grief and despair wailed even louder within the elven prince’s mind.

“What are we going to do?” Alhana, who had been listening anxiously, asked.

“They’ve cut us off from the east and west,” Samar noted. “We have the lake to our north and the mountain to our south. Do we stay and fight them here?”

“We’ll have to climb the bluff,” Porthios declared, instantly making up his mind. “I don’t know how we’ll stop these things, but we’ll roll rocks down onto them if nothing else.”

The stronger elves helped the weaker, and slowly the band of outlaws made its way up the steep, jagged boulders that lay scattered in profusion on the slope of Splintered Rock. As they gained altitude, they could look across the canopy of the forest, and they saw many places where smoke billowed up from the distant trees. The sun was a fiery orb, a searing spot of red in the white sky, and it blazed with merciless force onto the trapped elves.

By midday, the surviving outlaws had all gathered near the jagged summit, and Porthios wasted no time in appointing lookouts to hold stations around the entire perimeter. The deadly shadows seemed to move up the rocks behind them, though they came only very slowly, creeping a dozen paces over the course of an hour. Still, from the top of the bluff, the elves could see that it was only a matter of time before they were overwhelmed.

Dallatar, who had wielded an axe of legendary power against the shadows, found Porthios and reported that every ravine, every gully down the slopes seemed to be guarded by the slowly climbing shadows.

“There would seem to be no escape from here,” he concluded grimly.

“Then we’ll fight them,” the prince replied with more determination than he felt.

“At least we will die as warriors... but still, I would prefer not to die at all, at least not yet,” noted the wild elf, with a shake of his head.

“We can use the griffons to escape,” Samar suggested. “There are at least a hundred of them up here, and maybe four times that many elves. Over the course of half a day, they could carry all of us to safety, set us down somewhere in the woods where we can gather again.”

“But who knows what we’ll find there?” Porthios asked in despair. “We’d leave part of our band hopelessly exposed while the rest are being moved!” His mind quailed at the thought of Alhana and Silvanoshei exposed to these horrible attackers while he was off with another group, unable to protect them, to do anything to save them.

“The griffons in the High Kharolis!” his wife said suddenly. “You were talking about them just a little while ago—where they gathered after they left Qualinesti. You should fly there immediately, ask them—beg them if you have to, for help! If they came to our rescue, we could all fly at once, stay together, fly away from the shadows if they try to come after us in the forest.”

“It’s our only chance!” Samar agreed. “I saw where they laired when we flew here from Silvanesti. I can describe the spot to you.”

“It’s a chance, I admit,” Porthios said. At the same time, he was thinking about this wonderful elf woman and about the son they had brought into the world. He remembered especially the long years in Silvanesti, while she had worked in Qualinesti, doing the work that was really his own legacy. How much of their current troubles had arisen because he had been willing to leave her for so long?

“But I can’t go,” he said firmly.

“Why?” demanded the Silvanesti warrior-mage.

“Too often I have neglected my wife for matters of state and leadership. Now we are in our worst danger, and I will not abandon her.”

“But you’d be coming back!” Alhana tried to persuade him.

“No... because I won’t be going.” The prince turned to Samar. “You’ll have to go in my stead. You know where the griffons are, and Stallyar will take you.”

Samar looked at Alhana, then nodded slowly to Porthios.

“I understand... and I will do this, my prince,” pledged the warrior-mage.

And the shadows crept closer from below.

Chapter Twenty-One Dragon War

Aerensianic roared again, fury somehow overcoming his terror as he hurled himself toward the imminent collision with his blazing pursuer. He didn’t look away, only hoped that Toxyria was winging with all speed toward the coast. Below him, the gray sea spread flat and metallic, and then the blazing image of the fire dragon filled his view.

Wyrms of fire and poison collided in a hissing tangle of green smoke and red fire, talons ripping, fangs slashing, and powerful wings driving the monsters together with headlong speed. Aeren felt his nostrils burning, sensed the scales ripped away from his flesh under the onslaught of that awful heat. But at the same time, he realized that the fire dragon was falling, that its flames sizzled and died within the billowing ball of the green’s lethal exhalation. He expelled another cloud of deadly vapor, then plunged onto the still-burning back of the fire dragon, tearing with his claws, ignoring the heat that burned his mouth as he bit down on the other serpent’s spine.

He tore into the fiery flesh, biting deep, driving his fangs with hissing fury into scalding flesh. With convulsive force, he ripped away a piece of the monster’s backbone, spitting the smoking flesh to the side. At the same time, he felt a reflexive quiver in the great body beneath his talons, a shudder that convinced him that the other wyrm was dead. Spreading his wings, he felt those massive membranes crackle and strain where they had been scalded. Nevertheless, they bore his weight, pulling him away from the now lifeless hulk that tumbled toward the sea.

Aerensianic spun toward the fire dragon’s two companions, both of whom dived toward him with widespread jaws and wings that left trails of smoke and sparks in the air. The green dragon knew he couldn’t avoid the twin attackers, and so he spread his own jaws and belched a massive cloud of gas straight into the path of the nearest fire dragon. His wings cracked and blistered from the heat as he strained to hold himself aloft. Inwardly he quailed at the prospect of another clash with the unnatural monsters. Still, he held firm to his course, ready to fight and even prepared to die.

He was vaguely aware of another cloud of gas, a churning mist of green that enveloped the second fire dragon, and then Toxy was slashing into the fight. She screamed in pain as flames charred her body, but she bit and clawed and rent before belching another massive cloud of lethal gas. The supple body collided with his own, and then the two greens pushed off of each other, wheeling and snarling back into the fight.

The four mighty serpents whirled and dived and banked through the skies, surrounded by mixed clouds of fire and lethal gas. Teeth and talons tore at flesh of scale and fire, while cries of pain mingled with roars of fury. It seemed to Aerensianic as though the world was tilting on its axis, that the sun might have been standing still in the sky. The gray seascape was like a sheet of cold steel, as hard and firm and unforgiving as any metal shield.

Hellish heat blistered him, while chaotic sounds merged into a cacophony of fury and pain. Cries of his own agony were mingled with bellows of ultimate fury. Numbed to the hurt of his own burns, Aeren slashed and whirled through the melee with howls of pure hatred, latching on to his enemy’s fiery flesh, pressing and crushing with killing force. Ignoring the blistering heat, the agony that shivered through every portion of his being, he slashed another fire dragon to ribbons. Nearby, Toxy did the same to the last of the chaotic beings, and finally two more corpses plummeted into the gray sea.

The pair of green dragons, singed and scarred but alive, spread their wings and glided painfully toward their coast. Behind them, sizzling plumes of steam rose from the sea, while overhead sunlight slashed downward, cruel and blistering. Despite the heat, Aeren shivered, and he saw that Toxy was trembling beside him. He sensed intuitively, and knew that she shared his awareness, that something about their world had utterly, fundamentally changed.

Though Toxyria was even more badly burned than Aeren, she was able to make it back to the coastline, landing with a barely controlled crash before the sea cave that served as the green dragons’ lair. Aerensianic, ignoring the pain of his own wounds, circled over the crashing surf, watching anxiously as his companion slithered out of sight, vanishing into the shady coolness of the cavern.

Only then did he lift his head, seeking through the air, looking to all horizons to see if there was any sign of more fire dragons. Only the sun shared the sky with him, and once again he had that eerie thought—the blazing orb remained directly overhead, stubbornly refusing to move from the zenith. Finally he too landed, creeping into the lair to curl up in a dark, moist alcove of the cave. Gently Aeren licked at the horrible wounds that scarred Toxy’s flanks, while she lowered her head and breathed out a mournful sigh.

At last they slept, for how long Aeren couldn’t tell. He awakened with a groggy return to consciousness, aching in every nerve. Despite the pain, he crawled to the entrance to peer outside. The sunlight still beat straight down outside the cave, though he found it hard to believe that they had slumbered through a full day. Still, he felt a little stronger, and the pain in his neck and wings had diminished considerably with the rest.

“Stay here,” he whispered as his companion moaned.

She shook her head in reply, lifting her sinuous neck.

“We have to get help,” she said. “This is a danger that is greater any we have ever seen, greater by far than the threats of metal dragons or of the lances that pierce and kill.”

“What should we do?” Aeren asked.

“You go north... seek more greens, and the blues, too, if you can find them. Tell them of these fire dragons and bring them here.”

“And you?”

“I will go south... there, too, I hope to find greens. And beyond that, there may be white dragons living in the realms of ice. I will bring them, and in all our numbers, we will fly against the Storms of Chaos.”

Aeren wanted nothing more than to hide, to wait inside his lair and hope that the awful storm would pass. But somehow now, confronted by Toxyria’s strength and determination, he couldn’t allow himself to cower away from the world. The pain of his burns was a chorus of agony, seeming to penetrate everywhere through his body. Fear numbed, almost paralyzed him, but he would force himself to be strong for her.

“This is a good plan,” Aeren agreed. “But be careful. Now that I have found you, I should grieve to lose you.”

She blinked, leather lids drooping over her slitted eyes in a touching gesture of affection. “I will be careful—and you do the same, won’t you?”

Aeren nodded and gently nuzzled the female’s long snout. Finally the two dragons took to the air, soaring over the forests of Qualinesti. Toxyria disappeared, following the coastline south, and Aeren flew in the opposite direction. His goal was specific: He had seen the blue dragons rising from an encampment to the north, and now he went to seek them. Though they had not been in the sky recently, they could certainly have been waiting, hiding on the ground. Distrustful and admittedly afraid of his kin-dragons, he had not been bold enough to check as far as their lair.

Now, for Toxy, he would.

All the while the sun stood high in the sky, red and implacable, shining downward with radiation of powerful, unforgiving heat. The vault of the heavens was an expanse of deathlike pallor, white, hot, and dead. The pain in Aeren’s burned limbs soon returned, but he ignored the discomfort, emboldened by the knowledge that Toxy, who had been hurt even worse than he, had somehow found the courage to fly forth.

At times the green dragon bellowed aloud, braying the distress call of a chromatic dragon, a cry that should have brought any of his kin-dragons in earshot flying to the rescue. But he saw no sign of scale nor wing, nothing to disturb the relentless sameness of the forest. In the distance, plumes of smoke rose from the woodland and seemed to promise that elsewhere, too, there were attackers of chaos and fire wreaking their destruction upon the helpless world. Once, far away, he saw a conical mountain, spires of jagged rock rising from the steep slopes, while a curious swath of darkness seemed to seethe and writhe around its base. The place had an eerie sense of menace, and he circled wide, giving it a broad berth as he continued his search.

He found several camps of the blue dragons, but these were abandoned and—judging from the dried droppings the green dragon inspected—looked to have been vacated several days earlier. Of the human knights who had brought these dragons here, there was no sign, and Aeren concluded that the dragons and their riders had all departed in response to some command from their distant and unknown masters. They had gone, leaving this part of the world to the mercies of the Chaos storm. It seemed obvious that if this forest was to survive, Aeren himself would have to play a large role in protecting it.

The green dragon calculated that he searched for many hours, even for more than a day, but always the sun remained immobile, fixed and glaring as it scorched him, scalded the poor forest even as it seared the wounded flesh on the green dragon’s back, neck, and shoulders. Sometimes Aerensianic wondered if the fires he saw in the distance were caused merely by the dryness of the woods, the helpless tinder yielding to conflagration upon the first spark. But he readily recalled the unnatural horror inspired by the blazing, spark-trailing dragons, and in his heart, he knew this was not the case, knew that the forces that had attacked Toxy and himself were striking everywhere upon the world.

Finally he circled back, winging southward again, flying toward the rendezvous at the oceanside lair. His course again took him within sight of the same conical peak he had seen earlier, and once more he noticed the broad swath of unnatural darkness. Biting back his fear, Aeren cast his spell of invisibility over himself and resolved to investigate the strange phenomenon.

Unseen by anyone on the ground, he soared close to the jagged bluff and noticed that the sides of the mountain were teeming with elves. Still cloaked by concealing magic, he winged through a wide circle, looking around. He noticed griffons flying through the air, circling over the summit... and among those fliers, he was startled to see a creature of silver-feathered wings, a griffon unlike any other in the world.

More frightening, and unnatural in the same bizarre manner as the dragons of fire, he saw that the shadows at the base of the hill were thick and alive, seething with a motion like angry waves. Aeren’s blood chilled at the sight of them, and he knew that these were beings of Chaos, every bit as deadly and unnatural as the burning serpents. The dark shapes swarmed around the hill, thick in the woods, projecting an unmistakable aura of chill and death.

And like the fire dragons, they seemed to indicate nothing so much as the very end of the world.

Finally Aerensianic glided southward, following the coastline back to the lair he had found in the sea cave. In places, he passed forests that had been decimated by fires, and then he would fly beside long swaths of still pristine woodlands. So far as he could tell, he was the only dragon in this part of Krynn.

Eventually he recognized the spit of land just north of his cave, and he dived, anxious to return to the lair, hoping that Toxyria would be here as well. He came to rest on the rocks of the shoreline and ducked his head into the cavern.

“Toxy?” he asked with a hopeful snort.

Only then did he catch a whiff of the sulfurous taint of soot and smoke, unnatural evidence of flame in this moist environment. With a reflexive leap, he sprang into the air, barely avoiding the gout of fire that exploded outward from his lair. Straining his huge wings, the green dragon rose, desperately gaining altitude, pulling away from the ambush that had been laid for him.

He banked and flew along the coastline for a few strokes, then caught an updraft and rose higher, away from the surf and beyond the crest of the coastal bluff. His mind was torn by fear, anguished by one question: Had Toxyria returned and been slain in the lair by the hateful wyrms of fire?

He looked below, seeing that no fewer than three fire dragons had emerged from the cavern. Trailing sparks and smoke, they were flapping after him in determined pursuit. If she had been in the cave, she was certainly dead.

Rage clouded his senses, driving him into a battle fury as he tried to imagine the fate of the female that, he had hoped, would someday become his mate. His own forlorn flight and fruitless search only aggravated his bitterness. If they had killed her, he vowed that he would not allow them to survive.

The fire dragons swept upward from the cave, and with a bellow of rage, Aerensianic turned about and dived toward his fiery pursuers. He roared, a wave of sound that echoed off the cliff and thrummed through the air. Jaws gaping, he spewed his breath of green gas at the first of his pursuers.

The first burning serpent shriveled and steamed, then tumbled from the sky. The next wyrms came after him, and once again Aeren flew into a conflagration of hellish heat. His claws ripped at fiery skin as he felt the membranes of his wings curl and tear from the onslaught.

And then there was more gas around him, and the last two fire dragons were plunging toward the ground. He felt a blast of cold against his wings and actually relished the chill as it soothed the pain of his burns. He saw white dragons diving past, breathing their icy breath to douse the last of the fire dragons. The lifeless bodies of the Chaos wyrms plunged, sizzling, into the sea, and the dragons of ice and poison soared side by side over the western cliffs of the Qualinesti shore. Aeren banked, ignoring the pain that shrieked through his torn and scalded wings. Proudly he nodded his thanks to these kin-dragons, ice-breathing cousins who dwelled on the vast glacial reaches to the south.

Finally he saw the green shape that he had missed, that he had feared for. Toxyria fell into pace beside him, and he saw that she had returned with several more greens as well as a trio of white dragons. The serpents came to rest on the bluff overlooking the sea, and for a moment they were silent, observing the three pillars of steam that marked the graves of the fire dragons.

“What news from the north?” Toxy asked after they had nuzzled snouts long enough to ensure that each was relatively unharmed.

“No dragons to be found there, but it seems as though all Krynn is aflame,” Aerensianic reported grimly. “I saw great forests burning across the land of the elves. Also there were living shadows, deadly and hungry. They were battling with elves, including one called Porthios, whom I once tried to kill.”

“As to finding our kin-dragons, I had better luck,” Toxyria reported, indicating the greens and whites that had come to rest around them. “I flew far, and our kin-dragons were glad to see me, for they had heard strange tales of events here and across the world. They were willing to fly to our lair to seek your advice and wisdom.”

These serpents, none of whom was as large as either of the mature greens, watched respectfully, and Aeren sensed that they were hoping for his approval.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said gravely. “Not only did you help Toxyria, but your arrival no doubt saved my life.”

“There is other news, brought by our kin-dragons,” the female green dragon added. “As you surmise, this storm wracks the whole of our world.”

“Are the chromatics all battling in the cause of our queen?” Aeren asked.

“Not just the dragons of our own kin and clan,” Toxy said, surprising the big male. “But even silvers and golds have joined with blues and reds, all of them battling the Storms of Chaos that have struck so many places at once.”

“Together?” asked Aerensianic, truly stunned.

“Everywhere,” Toxy declared, fixing him with a look that he found curiously compelling, even as it made him feel just a little bit trapped.

“What should we do?” asked the male.

“You are the biggest, the mightiest of us all,” Toxyria replied in a tone that informed him that her mind was already made up.

Aeren slumped. In point of fact, he wanted nothing more than to fly away from here, to find some shore where the Storms of Chaos had not yet broken. Yet even more than that, he wanted to be with Toxyria, and he clearly understood what that entailed.

“I think we should go and fight these attackers wherever they can be encountered,” he found himself saying.

“I do, too,” the female said, obviously pleased. “And you told me that some of the creatures of Chaos have come as shadows and make their attack upon elves.”

“Then,” Aerensianic declared, making it sound as though it was his idea, “we should go there as well!”

Chapter Twenty-Two Flames Across the Forest

Gilthas helped his mother toward the doors of his own house. Laurana, burned from her encounter with the fire dragon and bruised from the crash into the tower, limped bravely beside him, but he sensed that without his support, she would have fallen. Still, though she was white-lipped with pain, she made no complaint nor any sound except an occasional gasp for breath.

It had taken them more than an hour to make it down from the Tower of the Sun and across two hundred paces of the besieged city. For some reason, probably nothing more than the luck, good or evil, that seemed to mark the chaotic progress of the attackers, the Speaker’s residence had been spared the damage that had scorched so much of Qualinost. Everywhere across the city, however, the vista was scarred by evidence of the onslaught. Ruined houses and yards, sometimes a whole block of utter destruction, smoldered next to other structures that had been untouched by violence. Across the street, a garden bloomed and a small fountain sprayed merrily in ironic contrast to the shattered house just beyond. Pillars of smoke rose into the sky, marking the destructive swaths of the fire dragons, while panic-stricken elves sought shelter in many of the remaining buildings.

Rashas, trembling with fear, trailed right behind Gilthas. The senator had refused to leave his side since the younger elf had slain the daemon warrior. Indeed, the elder had literally clung to Gilthas’s arm as they had made their way through the charnel house that had once been the chamber of the Thalas-Enthia. The rostrum and the circular floor were covered with charred bodies. The golden doors had been twisted off their hinges, and one had even melted into a puddle of now-hardened metal. Here and there, one of the blackened elven shapes twitched pitifully or stretched open a mouth to draw a rasping breath.

Escorting his wounded and weakened mother, Gilthas had roughly pushed Rashas away, ordering him to go to the aid of some of the elves who moaned so piteously in the ruins. Instead, the senator had slunk along behind him, ultimately darting through the door of the Speaker’s house as if he feared that Gilthas intended to lock him outside.

Kerian and the other terror-stricken members of the household were there to greet them, and swiftly Laurana was carried to a nearby couch, where she was given water and fruit while the young Kagonesti maiden went to fetch some of the poultices she had made up as an antidote to burns. The house was crowded with refugees, many of them burned, others bleeding, and all of them dirty and frightened.

All looked to him with hopeful eyes, and Gilthas felt a bitter sense of irony—now they turned to him for help, when there was nothing he could do for them.

“What’s happening?” Kerian asked quietly after Laurana had been made as comfortable as possible. “I saw dragons. They looked like they were on fire!”

Gilthas described the attack in as much detail as he could bear. “My mother called these the Storms of Chaos. They sweep across the world, and they have struck our city with unspeakable violence.”

“What can we do?”

Here the Speaker could only shake his head and groan in despair. “Nothing, so far as I can see, except fight them where we can and probably die.”

“The shadows are starting to come up faster,” Darrian said, moving back from the crest of the bluff to Porthios and Alhana. “What do you want us to do?”

“If nothing else, we’ll do what I said before—roll rocks down on them,” the prince said, even though he found it hard to imagine that such crude defenses could have any effect on the lethal, yet insubstantial, attackers.

Still, he and Dallatar rousted the weary elves who had sought respite and shelter amid the scraggly trees growing across the mountaintop. Besides the two leaders, he had identified a few—no more than a dozen—who possessed weapons of ancient power, swords that had proven to have some effect against the shadows, and these went to the tops of many of the ravines that scored the mountainside. There were other routes that were left undefended, but Porthios couldn’t bring himself to expose a defender whose weapon would be useless against these things.

Other elves pried at some of the great rocks that lay precariously balanced at the edge of the bluff, though they waited for a signal from Porthios before pushing them all the way free. He skirted the full perimeter and saw that the shadows were in fact seething and slipping up the slopes of the mountain more quickly than they had before. They curled over rocks, oozed up sheer faces, and slipped through the rough gaps between the many obstacles dotting the slopes of Splintered Rock.

Completing his circuit, he found himself again beside his wife, who held their baby against her breast and stood at the edge of the bluff, looking down with a hard, unflinching expression. He touched her arm and she looked at him, and still her expression was devoid of fear. Porthios was profoundly moved by her strength and deeply aggrieved at his own inability to protect her or to shield all the elves from this unspeakable onslaught.

“How long ago do you think Samar left?” asked the prince, knowing it would take at least two days for the Silvanesti to reach the griffon aeries in the Kharolis and return.

With a look at the still stationary sun, Alhana shook her head, yielding to a measure of discouragement. “Not more than twenty-four, maybe thirty hours at the most,” she said. She didn’t voice the obvious conclusion, but Porthios knew that she understood as well as he did: Even if they answered the elven plea for help, the griffons would never get here in time to save them from this onslaught.

“My prince, they approach quickly, right below here!”

Darrian spoke urgently from nearby, and Porthios ran to look over the edge. He saw that several of the shadows had surged above the rest, slithering across the rough surface to ascend the steepest portions of the bluff.

“Drop some rocks on them,” he ordered curtly, and immediately the elves pushed and prodded, breaking loose several of the granite spires that jutted from the edge of the precipice.

Slowly, grudgingly, the rocks worked free of their foundations. First one, then several, and finally a cascade of boulders tumbled down the slope, bouncing, cracking, breaking into smaller pieces, sending fragments shooting far away from the face of the bluff. Sounds of collision echoed and pounded through the air, rising into a rumble like a constant thunder, shaking the ground under their feet. Debris showered through the shadows, and then the first of the rocks smashed into the attackers with crushing force.

A cloud of dust obscured the slope. Porthios squinted, trying to see through the murk, to determine if the shadows had been affected at all by the crushing rockslide. Finally the cloud settled lower, and the elves raised a cheer when they saw that the heights of the slope had been swept free of shadows.

But the cheers quickly faded as the dust continued to blow away. Far below, among the jumbled boulders near the base of the slope, the shadows still seethed. They crawled over jagged stones, swept through the gaps between large rocks, and once again resumed their inexorable progress up the hill. It was impossible to tell if their numbers had been thinned by the rockslide. As far as Porthios could tell, the shadows still seemed to cover the whole slope.

Still, the rocks had delayed the onslaught. Porthios sprinted around the top of the bluff, telling all of his elves of their success, encouraging them to wait until the shadows were very close. On the far side of the mountain, the attackers had crept far up the slope, and here the rocks began to fall immediately. Soon they were tumbling from all around the rim of the summit, as everywhere elves worked to loosen stones, continued to send an avalanche of granite into the unnatural shades.

For long hours, the elves battled, sweating under the merciless sun, prying loose every rock that showed any signs of instability. And when those were gone, they set to work on the more firmly footed stones, chopping with weapons, digging and scraping with swords, and working makeshift levers quickly whittled from some of the mountaintop tree trunks. They threw smaller stones by hand, even dumped clods of dirt and loose tree trunks into the creeping darkness.

But finally it was clear that the deadly shadows were not going to be stopped by any such onslaught. Each time they were bombarded, they came back more quickly than before, sweeping across the increasingly barren slope with relentless, lethal purpose. Porthios imagined that the mountain was sinking into a morass of darkness. The black outline completely masked the bottom of the slopes and rose inexorably up the sides.

Some of the shadows slithered through the ravines that led straight to the top, and the few elves with magical weapons held out valiantly but were gradually forced to fall back to prevent themselves from being surrounded and overwhelmed. Porthios ran from one position to another, stabbing and slashing with his sword, exhorting his elves to greater effort. He rushed to a place where the shadows began to creep over the crest of the bluff, chopping and hacking, surrounding himself with the horrible gurgling sounds of the creatures’ death throes. His arm was leaden with fatigue, and sweat ran unimpeded into his eyes. He knew he couldn’t last much longer.

“Look to the west!” At first the cry was voiced by a lone elven child, standing and pointing through the hazy sky.

Others took up the cry, and Porthios squinted, making out huge winged shapes soaring toward them. These were dragons, he saw immediately, and he soon discerned that their colors were green and white. The relentless approach of these ancient enemies sent a shiver of terror through his body. Groans of fear rose from the elves, who now all but collapsed underneath a wave of hopelessness. How could the gods abandon them so thoroughly?

“Fall back! Form a ring in the middle of the summit!” cried the prince. Why had he allowed Samar to leave and take his dragonlance with him? He shook away the regret, knowing it was a petty reaction and understanding that a lone lance, however bravely wielded, would have no chance of stopping a force like this, numbering at least six or eight dragons.

And now the wyrms were sweeping into an aggressive dive, swirling around to encircle the upper slopes. The tactic startled the prince, who thought the dragons would have merely swept forward in level flight. They banked along the face of the bluff, apparently ignoring the terrified elves who huddled so miserably on the crest.

Even more surprising was the target of the dragons’ attack as they dived down to sweep the slopes of the bluff with blasts of frost and gaseous breath. Icy gusts of cold roared across the rocks, leaving the granite ice-limned and slippery, sweeping away the shadows in the fury of chilly death. Clouds of green gas billowed across the mountainside, permeating through the shadows, sending the horrid darkness recoiling rapidly downward.

“They’re here to help us!” Alhana cried in delight, the first elf to vocalize the stunning truth.

And then all the elves were cheering as the chromatic dragons, clans that had been regarded as evil throughout all the ages of elven history, relentlessly attacked the lethal shades. Porthios killed a few of the shadows that moved up to escape the dragons, but most of the dark forms abandoned the attack to slip hastily, soundlessly down the mountain. Some of the shadows withered under the brutal onslaught of dragon breath, while most retreated, slipping and sliding down the slope to finally gather in the shelter of the forests clustering close around the mountain’s base.

Finally the dragons rose to circle overhead while one, a massive green, came to rest on the summit of Splintered Rock. Porthios was struck by a sense of familiarity, especially when the wyrm opened its mouth and spoke in smooth, cultured tones.

“Porthios of the elves, I am pleased that at last we meet.”

The prince tried to calm the quaking of his knees as the dragonawe swept over him. “I... we are all grateful for your assistance,” he said. “And I am surprised that you know me.”

“I came from Silvanesti. There I tried to kill you,” the dragon said, without any tone of apology or regret. “I must say, it seems a good thing that I failed.”

“I, for one, am glad,” said Alhana smoothly, stepping forward to take Porthios by the arm. “And what is the name of this dragon who has rendered us such crucial aid?”

“I am called Aerensianic, lady elf.”

Another green dragon, slightly smaller and more graceful than this huge serpent, came to rest beside the first. “And this is Toxyria.”

“We are grateful for your timely assistance. As you saw, we were on the brink of complete disaster,” Porthios said, bowing formally to the female dragon.

“These attackers are strange,” said the second serpent, nodding her head politely. “We breathe on them and they retreat, but they do not die.”

Indeed, the shadows still seemed thick at the base of the mountain, though at least they made no pretense of attacking. They lurked among the trees, occasionally creeping onto the jumbled rocks at the foot of the mountain, but then falling back as soon as one of the dragons soared near.

But the shadows did not vanish entirely. Instead, they skulked through the forests, still completely encircling the mountain. Their presence would block any attempt by the elves to climb down, to make an escape on foot.

For several hours, the elves and their ancient enemies rested together on the mountaintop, exchanging tales of the chaos storm, warily watching the shadows that lurked below. Porthios learned that Aerensianic was in fact the dragon he had battled in Silvanesti. He wanted to ask the serpent more about that campaign and about his reasons for coming to the western realm of the elves, but his thoughts were interrupted by a cry from across the mountaintop.

“Look, it must be Samar!” shouted a sentry, pointing into the distant sky.

The elves rushed to see what at first looked like a massive flock of geese, hundreds of dark specks in the sky winging closer to Splintered Rock. But as the forms got bigger and bigger, the feline legs trailing to the rear became visible, and finally it was clear that one of the griffons—a silver feathered male in the lead—was bearing a rider who carried a long, slender lance.

And then the skies were full of griffons, led by Stallyar and Samar. They were startled and cautious when they spotted the dragons and circled warily until the shouts and cheers of the elves coaxed them down. Finally they came to rest among the others on the mountaintop. Many griffons settled among the rocks on the high slopes, while others remained circling overhead, cawing and screeching.

“The griffons knew about the Chaos storms,” Samar explained. “They were willing to come, especially when I explained that it was you who called for help.”

Porthios was touched. “I thank you,” he said to Stallyar. The proud eagle’s head dipped in a polite response.

“Now we can get away from here,” said the prince, gesturing to the thousand or more griffons around them.

“But it is not enough to flee,” said Toxyria as Aeren nodded his head sagely in agreement.

“No,” Alhana chimed in. “We know that the whole world is imperiled. We have to do what we can to save it.”

“Lord Salladac is coming. He attacks across the east bridge, bringing a company toward the center of the city.”

The report came from an exhausted sentry, who had obviously run all the way to the Speaker’s house. Alerted by the elf’s shouts, Gilthas met him in the front garden.

“When will he get here?” The Speaker felt a momentary flash of hope, until the sentry continued.

“He can’t come any closer. His company was surrounded as soon as he got into the streets. There are more of those daemon warriors, and now the fire dragons are moving in that direction.”

Gilthas shook his head, wanting to deny the report, to curse the messenger. All around him, the city was dying, fires and destruction spreading as far as he could see. A few minutes earlier he’d heard reports of a new threat, vile shadows that slipped silently through the streets and sucked the life from anyone they touched. More daemon warriors, too, had emerged from the forests to smash and destroy. Knowing that one of the monsters had been enough to rout his entire legion, he couldn’t face the thought of fighting a multitude of the beings.

“By the gods, we’re doomed,” he whispered, his voice a groan that barely reached his own ears.

“Be strong, my son.”

He heard Laurana speaking behind him, and somehow her voice gave him strength. He straightened and raised his voice to address the elves, several hundred in number by now, who had gathered before his house. Many of these were warriors who had been training in the legion, while others included nobles and slaves, merchants and laborers. All were armed in some fashion or another, and all looked to him for guidance, for leadership.

“We have to take the city back,” Gilthas declared, hoping that he looked stronger and more confidant than he felt. “First we’ll need to arm as many of us as possible with weapons that will do some good against these forces of Chaos.”

“I have three swords here, ancient relics of Kith-Kanan that have been held in my family for generations,” declared one elf, a male the Speaker recognized as the young senator Quaralan. He had been exiled from the city upon the Dark Knights’ arrival, but now he had obviously returned to fight for his homeland.

“I’m grateful to see you here,” Gilthas said. “Use one blade yourself, and give the others to warriors who know how to use them.”

Quaralan quickly found a pair of willing volunteers, while Gilthas led many of the warriors into the house. There he proceeded to hand out the hallowed artifacts that decorated the wall of the formal gathering room. Some of the fine blades he gave to veteran elves, while the larger weapons, such as the axes and halberds, he bestowed upon the brawniest of his warriors. There were two dragonlances as well, and these he gave to a pair of warriors who had served under Laurana during the War of the Lance.

“You cannot do this—you have no right!” Rashas insisted, whispering to him from the shadows near the fireplace. “These are sacred relics of our people.”

“And I will give them to the fighters who have the greatest chance of returning our city to elven control,” Gilthas snapped. He wanted to say more, but Rashas bit his tongue and backed away, so the Speaker contented himself with this minor victory.

At the same time, he resolved that he would have more to say to the elder senator—much, much more. He was through answering to the commands of this craven elf, a creature whom he realized was as much a servant of the Dark Queen as any red dragon or any Knight of Takhisis. But the time for that accounting would come later.

Finally he led the force of elves out of the house, moving them along the street at a trot. Laurana had been remarkably aided by Kerian’s potions, and she came along at his side, bearing a slender blade of shimmering steel. The wild elf maid, similarly armed, advanced at his other side.

“We’ll go down the main avenue,” Gilthas decided, “and try to fight our way to Lord Salladac.” He thought for a moment about the irony—now the elves were advancing to the rescue of their conquerors—but then his mind quickly focused on more practical concerns.

In line they advanced, those bearing the enchanted weapons in the front rank. They jogged past smoking buildings, stepping over rubble and even bodies that were scattered through the street. Almost immediately they encountered a swath of the seething shadows, and the defenders of Qualinost charged into the battle. Gilthas led the way, chopping to his right and left, exulting at the feel of his sword cutting through the dark harbingers of Chaos. With each slashing cut, one of the shadows disappeared, dissolving in a gurgle of surreal agony.

Laurana and Kerian used their weapons with unfailing courage to strike at the supernatural shadows that now began to melt away before the advancing elves and humans. Everywhere the chaos creatures swept backward, recoiling from the startling assault until finally they retreated to either side. The road once again lay unobstructed before Gilthas and his elves.

Soon the bold company was moving on, charging toward a block of burning buildings. Cheers and battle cries rose from all the ranks as the hope of victory sank in. These elves were ready to fight, and believed that they could win. Once Gilthas noticed that Rashas, apparently frightened of being left behind, was accompanying them, though he stayed in the middle of the group, well back from any actual fighting. Quaralan, in contrast, led a band of young swordsmen who alertly guarded the rear of the formation.

Finally they saw the knights, the pennant of the Dark Queen rising above a small knot of men embattled in the center of a wide intersection. The elves advanced with more cries, but then shadows came forward from the buildings on both sides. Looming daemon warriors led them, and dragons of fire howled in exultant fury as they swarmed toward the elven company. The attackers came from before and behind and closed in quickly from both sides.

It was then that Gilthas realized that he had led his elves, including his mother and his lover, into a deadly trap.

Chapter Twenty-Three King of the Elves

“Stand fast, there!” Gilthas shouted as the elves on the left flank of his impromptu line started to back away in the face of the charging fire dragons. “Quaralan, look to the left!” he called, drawing the attention of the young senator.

Immediately Quaralan led his swordsmen to stabilize that part of the line, drawing the two elves bearing dragonlances with him. The first fire dragon roared forward in a blaze of flame and sparks, but the lancers stood with admirable courage, planting the butts of their weapons on the road and allowing the monster to impale itself on the silvery heads. With an unworldly howl, the serpent disintegrated into a cloud of smoldering ash.

Coughing and choking, slashing at the fires that scorched their faces and arms, the elves fell back, but the following fire dragons veered up and away, apparently daunted by the fate met by their comrade.

Gilthas looked to the front, where the street was black with the deadly shadow wights, the creatures milling and surging in the gap between the elf company and the Dark Knights. The monsters slithered closer, and though several were slashed and destroyed by the magic weapons of the elven company, others reached forward with their lethal tendrils, sucking vitality, even flesh itself, from any victim in reach. The line was quickly fragmented, and Gilthas was horrified at the prospect of the shadows slipping into the mass of elves, striking and killing in every direction.

He wanted to shout a warning, but his tongue, even his mind, seemed frozen by indecision. What could he say that wouldn’t add even more to the confusion?

It was his mother who came to the rescue.

“There!” Laurana called, tugging at his arm, pointing to a walled courtyard at the side of the road. “We should take cover there—bring the dragonlances around to cover against attack from the skies.”

“Yes—go!” shouted Gilthas, immediately seizing on the plan. He raised his voice to a shout that penetrated above the din of battle. “Fall back to the right, behind the wall. Quickly!”

Instinct compelling the move toward safety, the elves instantly obeyed. Gilthas felt a flush of pride as he saw that even under this horrifying scourge they did not yield to panic. Many of them poured through the gates, while others scrambled over the shoulder-high wall.

Gilthas, Kerian, Quaralan, and the two lancers were the last to fall back, and they stood at the open gates for several moments, slashing at a couple of shadows that came close, stabbing the lances to drive back a fire dragon that padded across the street. Only after the dragon once again took to the air did the Speaker and his companions enter the courtyard, allowing the gates to be slammed behind them.

Gilthas quickly saw that they had found a fairly effective defensive position. The courtyard was attached to several other gardens and yards, and the elves had rapidly spread out to garrison all these interconnected areas. He wasted no time in scrambling up to a small tower that overlooked the street. Many shadows, eerie and silent, swirled about at the base of the wall. Apparently immune to the effects of gravity, some of the swaths of darkness slipped up the wall and reared over the top. Elven blades slashed, and most of these fell back or gurgled into dissolution.

The Speaker of the Sun looked across the avenue of chaos and saw that the company of Dark Knights had formed into a hollow square for defense, but that formation was sorely besieged. Shadows sucked at the fringes of the unit, draining away man after man in lethal attacks. Apparently a few of the knights were armed with weapons that were effective against the chaos creatures, but many of the others seemed utterly vulnerable. Gilthas saw Lord Salladac wielding a massive two-handed sword, standing at one corner of the square and chopping a huge daemon warrior in two with a single slash of the weapon.

“Salladac—over here!” cried the elven leader, his voice once again booming over the ground. He saw the human meet his gaze. With a gesture to the nearby gate, Gilthas urged the lord to bring his company into the makeshift fortress.

With a grim nod, Salladac shouted at his standard-bearer, raised his sword, and led his men into the mass of shadows. The banner of the Dark Queen surged forward, and the knights came after, a hoarse cry bellowing over the field.

Gilthas jumped down from the tower and raced to the gates. “Open them!” he shouted. “Elves of Qualinost, charge with me!”

“No!” cried Rashas, who had been cowering behind the wall nearby. “You’re mad! You’ll let those shadows in here—they’ll kill us all!”

“Get out of the way,” growled the Speaker. “We’ve got to get the knights in here. Together, we have a chance!”

“Don’t listen to him!” cried Rashas, throwing himself against the elves who were beginning to unbar the gate.

Gilthas roughly pushed the senator out of the way, and the gates swung open. A surge of willing elves charged with the Speaker into the street, and the wailing Rashas was borne along in the front of the rank.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Let me go!” Desperately Rashas squirmed to the side, finally tumbling free from the press of attacking elves. Almost immediately a shadow loomed right behind him, dark tendrils extended.

“Look out!” cried Gilthas, horrified at the soulless, fleshless apparition that seemed to rise higher than the gibbering senator’s head.

Rashas stared at the horrifying image but seemed unable to move his feet. Gilthas reached out and grabbed the senator by the shoulder, pulling him away from the shadow. Another elf, one of those armed with a dragonlance, stabbed with his weapon, and the black shape dissolved into tattered remnants of darkness.

Stumbling away from the rank of attacking elves, Rashas looked at Gilthas with wide, staring eyes. Abruptly he turned and raced away, running along the wall of the courtyard—outside the barrier that was protecting the rest of the elves.

The fire dragon had been circling overhead, and this lone elf created a tempting target. With a shriek of triumph, the creature tucked its wings and dived, leaving a cloud of sparks trailing through the air.

Rashas heard the serpent’s bellow and looked up, his mouth jabbering soundlessly. The senator fell to the ground and tried to claw his way through the quartz paving stones along the road. The flaming dragon fell on him, crouching firmly on the writhing elf, and Rashas’s screams rose to a fevered pitch before abruptly ceasing.

“Kill that dragon!” shouted Gilthas, perversely enraged by the sight of the serpent’s triumphant bellow. With the lancer beside him, he rushed forward, and the twin weapons slashed into the blazing flesh. With a writhing lash of its fiery tail, the wyrm toppled over and thrashed its last.

Only then did Gilthas notice that the knights had fought their way out of the intersection and were charging toward the elves. The vanguard of the Qualinesti stood aside, fighting as a rear guard as Salladac’s men spilled through the gates.

Finally the elves, too, fell back, and once again the gates were closed and barred.

“Good work,” declared the Dark Knight lord, gasping for breath and wiping the soot from his brow. “I thought we were lost out there.”

“What’s the use?” growled Gilthas, still horrified by the gruesome end of the man who had brought him to Qualinesti. He had hated Rashas on some level, but in another sense, the elder senator’s demise was profoundly unsettling. “We’re trapped in here. It just might take a little longer to reach the end.”

“Then at least we can die with honor,” declared Lord Salladac.

Great swaths of the forests were burned and blackened, with destruction spreading to the far horizon. The vast formation of griffons, dragons, and elves flew above tortured, blistered landscapes, often veering away from the plumes of smoke rising from the still-smoldering ground. In other places, trees had been felled as if by an angry giant, a great swath of shattered timber that had been plowed through the woods by a force of unimaginable and unspeakably chaotic power.

Scouts on griffon-back reported that the shadowy attackers at the base of Splintered Rock were not pursuing. Even so, Porthios maintained the vigorous speed of his flight. He felt a deep, fundamental fear for his land, even for the city elves who had branded him an outlaw.

Alhana, still bearing Silvanoshei in his tai-thall, flew beside him, her face an image of taciturn strength and desperate determination. Every time he looked at her, Porthios felt his heart breaking as guilt assailed him with the knowledge of the trials his wife and child were subjected to. Samar flew just beyond, his silver-tipped lance extended.

Porthios used his knees to guide Stallyar over, until the silver-feathered griffon flew right beside the warrior-mage. The prince looked over his shoulder, saw that Alhana was some distance away, and spoke to his old comrade in a low voice.

“My friend, I want to talk to you before this battle.”

“Speak, my prince,” Samar replied, raising an eyebrow in surprise but keeping his own voice quiet as well.

“If this fight goes wrong—for me, that is—if I am lost, I want you to pledge your protection to your queen. Please protect her with all the loyalty you have displayed through the years—and please extend that loyalty and protection to my son as well.”

Samar’s eyes widened, but he quickly nodded. “Aye, my prince. You have my pledge.”

Porthios rode along in silence, wrestling with the rest of what he wanted to say. Finally he cleared his throat. “It may be that I have been unfair to you... that I have allowed unworthy suspicions to color my feelings and my actions. If so, I am sorry. I know that your affection for my wife has been noble and pure.”

Now it was Samar’s turn to be flustered. He looked down at his saddle, then back to Porthios. “I told you once that before you came to Silvanesti I think I was a little bit in love with her. Perhaps that has not changed in all these years.”

The prince nodded. “Even so, I know that your actions have always been those of an honorable man.”

“You are correct, my lord, and I thank you for your trust.”

“You are worth far more,” Porthios replied, once more clearing his throat awkwardly. “Now let us go to war.”

Finally they reached Qualinost, and they found the city all but engulfed in flames. Columns of smoke rose into the sky from many places, and the skyline of the elven metropolis had been altered almost beyond recognition. Many of the silver and marble towers had been felled, and the bridges that had flanked the edges of the city now lay as twisted wreckage in the deep ravines.

At least the Tower of the Sun still stood, though several fires burned nearby. Sounds of battle rang throughout the city, and with frantic haste, the elves of the outlaw force soared over the deep ravines, winging into the polluted air over the city.

“There!” cried Dallatar, pointing toward a cluster of walled courtyards near the city’s fringe. They saw a battle raging, with elves trapped in the crude fortifications while shadows seethed outside and fire dragons surged through the air overhead.

Porthios led Stallyar and the other griffon riders through the air. The formation, bright with white wings, spread across the sky, angling downward into the besieged city.

“Look, we have new hope!” cried Kerian, seizing Gilthas by the arm and pointing upward.

He gaped as the sky overhead filled with griffons, many of them ridden by elves. The fliers soared into battle, slashing through the fire dragons. One of the elves bore a dragonlance, and with the silver-tipped weapon, he speared one of the flaming serpents, ripping the creature into two pieces.

Then there were more dragons there, wyrms of white and green diving from the clouds, rending the fire dragons with breath of lethal frost and thick, toxic clouds of emerald smoke. These serpents roared and attacked in vengeful fury, diving into the aerial melee without hesitation.

Other griffons came to rest within the walls of the courtyard. Elves, including many Kagonesti, dismounted from them. Another flier came to rest nearby, and Gilthas saw a familiar figure on the creature’s back.

“Alhana!” cried Laurana, recognizing the elf woman at the same time. She helped the queen to dismount, gingerly assisting with the baby, who rode silent and wide-eyed in his tai-thall.

The two females hugged in teary relief as Gilthas joined them. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he said. “Did the prince come with you?”

The Queen of Silvanesti pointed to the skies, where griffons wheeled and screeched between dragons of fire and scale. “There—he leads the warriors.”

“I see!” cried Gilthas as a silver-feathered griffon slashed into combat with a blazing dragon. Horrified, he gasped, then whispered to himself. “By Paladine, be careful, Uncle!”

Alhana, with Silvanoshei held against her heart, gasped as her husband rode his griffon into the attack. She scarcely seemed to breathe as she watched the spectacle of horror and destruction that sprawled through the skies above the once-splendid city. The griffons dived and whirled, aided by chromatics breathing frost and clouds of lethal gas.

From below, a serpent of flame arose, trailing sparks, vengefully roaring as it gained altitude, and the elven prince on his griffon turned to do battle. Arrows flicked through the sky, apparently vanishing into the fiery aura of the dragon’s burning nature.

The dragon opened its mouth, and a blossom of fire erupted. Alhana screamed as the fire surrounded the silver-feathered griffon. Porthios and Stallyar disappeared into the hellish cloud. The flames crackled and boiled, roaring with the heat of a coal furnace, lingering in the air for a long time.

Moments later the limp forms of a griffon and an elf tumbled out of the flames, falling toward the ground in a lifeless plummet. The queen’s scream was still echoing around her as the charred body of her husband vanished into the smoldering heat of the ravine beyond the city.

Aerensianic saw the silver-feathered griffon perish in the grasp of the blazing serpent, and the green dragon was filled with a rage as powerful as it was inexplicable. He flew into the battle with a roar, ignoring the pain as his talons and fangs ripped through the fire dragon. He wanted to avenge the elven prince, to hurt this Chaos dragon who had slain the enemy that Aeren had once tried, and failed, to kill.

Toxyria flew at his side, and she, too, slashed at the wyrm of flame. The creature, lethally torn, tumbled lifelessly to the ground.

Two more fire dragons dived from above, and Aeren bellowed in fear as he saw the female vanish in a cloud of boiling, churning flame. With a white dragon flying at his side, he flew against the diving pair, and in moments both wyrms fell, their flames permanently doused by the violent attacks of the vengeful chromatics.

But it was too late for Toxy. Her wings charred to ash, she tumbled from the sky. Her yellow eyes fastened one last time upon Aerensianic. In bleak and helpless horror, he watched her smash into the ground with bone-crushing force.

He plummeted after, coming to rest beside her shattered form. She lay broken and battered, sprawled across a wide street, and he nuzzled her neck, her nostrils, desperate for some hint of breath, of vitality.

But he was too late. She was already dead.

Charging humans and elves swept forward, and the last of the shadows vanished under magical steel. At last Gilthas looked at a sky that was vacant of fiery serpents. A final daemon warrior wailed, pierced by lance and sword, and then the creatures of Chaos were gone.

Humans and elves gasped for breath and looked at each other as if mystified by the end of the battle. Griffons began to land all around them, and even dragons of green and white came to rest in the city of the elves. Those serpents, Gilthas saw, were gathered around a motionless green shape that had tumbled to the ground about a block away.

Of Porthios Solostaran, there was no sign.

A few minutes later Samar landed. His dragonlance was seared and scorched but, like the elven warrior-mage himself, intact.

“The prince apparently fell into the stream in the bed of the ravine,” he said grimly. “I fear that his body was washed away.”

Alhana pressed a hand to her mouth but made no sound. Laurana wrapped her arms around her brother’s widow, pulling her close, and for long moments, the two women stared wordlessly at the sky, at the expanse of the ruined city.

“He died for us all,” said the queen.

“And he will be remembered as a hero of elvenkind,” Laurana added, “who sacrificed his life in our darkest hour.”

The Dark Knight lord came over to the elves, stopping to face Gilthas.

“We have won—the day is ours,” Salladac said, placing a hand on the elf’s shoulder. “You are a hero of Krynn. Word of your deeds this day shall be carried to Lord Ariakan at once.”

“Perhaps our battle, and the loss of Porthios and all those brave warriors, will not be in vain. Perhaps the Storms of Chaos have been halted, held at bay.”

“No doubt my lord will send word about matters in the rest of Krynn,” agreed Salladac.

“Your Lord... Ariakan. He still fancies himself the master of Qualinesti, no doubt,” Gilthas replied.

“Fancies himself, and is that master in fact,” Salladac said. “We have a treaty, you may recall.”

Gilthas gestured to the ruins that lay scattered about the base of the Tower of the Sun. “A treaty signed by a senate that no longer exists,” he observed.

“But a treaty signed, nonetheless,” declared the lord, still calm. His dark eyes remained focused, unblinking, on the Speaker of the Sun.

In contrast, the young elf felt his temper slipping. They were surrounded by hundreds of elves and only a fraction that many Dark Knights, and he couldn’t abide this man talking to him as if Qualinesti was still a conquered realm. “Perhaps this is the time to overthrow the invaders,” he said, trying to bluster.

Salladac sighed. He, too, made a gesture, one that encompassed the green and white dragons who lolled, licking their wounds but still an obvious presence, up the street. “They, as well as we humble knights, are servants of her Dark Majesty. Would you care to ignite another battle so soon on the heels of the last?”

“Please, man and elf,” said Laurana, quietly advancing to take her son’s arm. “This is not the time for starting a new war. Look around you, at the devastation and the death. Look even to the sky.”

Gilthas did, and he saw that the scorching sun had barely begun to inch its way toward the horizon.

“Can’t you see?” Laurana continued. “Krynn is entering a new age. Would you have the histories record that you two welcomed that age with an act of war? Our survival has been attained because you worked and fought together. Surely you can continue that cooperation, make it your legacy for the future!”

The Speaker of the Sun looked at the human lord and heard his mother’s words. There would be room for both of them in Qualinesti, he saw. There would have to be, for he could not bring his nation into another war.

Salladac, too, felt the same, for he extended his hand in a gesture of peace.

Gilthas reached forward and took that hand, and the new age of the world began.