Trinculo had barely spoken since they left Beregost, and Khalt was pleased to hear him speak so fondly of his birthplace.
"No struggle?" said Khalt. "Where's the fun in that?"
"Why do you think I left?" asked Trinculo. "When I took the pledge of Avachel, it gave myself an excuse to leave, to travel Faerun helping your people. But part of me always stayed on Evermeet. Even I need a little peace and quiet sometime."
"We'll land in Leuthilspar," he went on, "and seek audience at Moonstone Palace. I met the queen once at night, on the banks of the Lake of Dreams. For once in my life I couldn't find words. She'll help us. I know it."
A voice deep within Trinculo asked, Or will she?
"What will it be like when we arrive?" asked Khalt.
"They'll have a name for you," he said. "You're a windrider. All those warriors who ride dragons, eagles, and pegasi are windriders."
"I like the sound of that," said Khalt, feeling the breeze through his hair.
"The world's most beautiful cities, and the most temperate forests." Trinculo's tone became more distant. "Evermeet is paradise. To think, the elves only achieved it with this curse."
"How many millennia ago was this?" asked Khalt. "Probably no elf lives that remembers it."
"Still," Trinculo said, "it says something of the elf mind that would design it. To exalt themselves at the expense of all others."
"There is no excuse," agreed Khalt. His heart was beating faster. He needed to pacify Trinculo, and quickly. "I wish there was some way I could make up for the sins of my ancestors."
"Hopefully that's what the queen will do," said Trinculo. Khalt hoped that was the end, but then Trinculo started up again. "I just think it's funny," he said. "I'm a dragon, my life bounded by my pledge to some elves. Avachel is, or was, a dragon and a companion to an elf god. Does he know about it? The truth of the Rage, I mean. Or is Avachel kept in the dark as well?"
Khalt looked around him, knowing exactly what he'd see. There was no land in any direction.
"Trinculo, you're worrying me," he said, as he gripped the hilt of his dagger. He looked back at his bow and quiver, both lashed to Trinculo's side farther back along the dragon, just out of his reach.
"I'm really sorry, Khalt, really I am," the mercury dragon hissed. "But when you've just torn out the throat of one of your friends, we'll see how chipper you are."
"You had to do it. He would have killed us both, and destroyed Beregost."
"You must have enjoyed sinking that arrow into his eye," Trinculo said, "and tethering him to the rock like a dumb wyvern."
"I hated it," Khalt said. "I hated that I had to do it."
Trinculo laughed. It was not the joyous sound that Khalt had so often heard ringing through the trees of Amtar, nor the cheerless cynicism he'd gotten used to those past days. It was a terrifying, hollow sound, bubbling out from darkest corners of Trinculo's collapsing psyche.
"Don't do this." Tears were dripping down his cheeks, rolling down the tattoo of Avachel. "Do you want to be Chalintash? Stay with me… please, Trinculo. Don't leave me." And he drew the dagger from its sheath as quietly as he could.
"Are you going to stab me, Khalt?" Trinculo muttered through clenched teeth. "Sink it in the back of my neck? Or maybe if you slash my wings, you'd hurt me so badly I couldn't reach land. Is that what you're hoping to do, dear friend?"
His eyes full of tears, Khalt swung the dagger, snapping the harness that held him in place. He dropped the dagger and hopped backward to reclaim his bow, scrambling for handholds. He pulled an arrow of attraction from the quiver and spun forward quickly, ready to launch it into the back of Trinculo's head. But Trinculo dived sharply, pointing almost directly down into the vast, red-tinted sea below.
Khalt never fired his arrow. By the time Trinculo straightened out his body and flew forward, the elf was left far behind. The harness and the rest of the supplies slipped off the dragon's body as well. Trinculo didn't turn back, didn't look, didn't even listen for the splash. But a minute later, he felt a sharp pain, as if that arrow had dug into his brain. His senses unclouded and there was clarity again. His fury left him, replaced by something else.
Replaced by shame.
"Khalt," he gulped.
He spun back and scanned the water for the elf, desperate for any sign of him. But the waves were rolling and fast, and he found not a trace of the wild elf.
"Avachel!" he shouted. "Avachel, aid me!"
But the god was silent.
"I've failed!" Trinculo cried. "I've broken the pledge. I've shamed Avachel."
He closed his eyes tight, trying to shut it all out, but the Rage was not a force from without but from within, bound to the very soul of dragonkind. It thrived in weakness, in anger, paranoia, and shame. All that was Trinculo melted away, lost like a single teardrop into the sea.
The mercury dragon flew toward the sunset. He would not look back before he reached Evermeet.
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The Realms of the Dragons 2 a-10 Page 23