Yes, Ragh said the dragon wasn’t Sable.
It wasn’t Sable, but the fetidness still heavy in his mouth, the sounds of the swamp that crept into the cave——all of that told him he was in the Black’s realm. So if it wasn’t Sable, what other dragon was in the overlord’s swamp? Why was Maldred in its thrall?
He lowered the sword a little. “All right. I’m listening,” he told Maldred. “Talk fast.”
From behind him, he heard Nura Bint-Drax hiss as Ragh and Fiona shuffled deeper into the cave, resigned to their fate. So, his words hadn’t aroused the draconian after all.
“I said I was listening, Mal.”
“Dhamon,” Maldred began. “I know I owe you the truth. The dragon isn’t controlling me now—or ever for that matter. But I am… in league… with him. I brought you here at his request. I have my family to consider, my nation, and I…”
Dhamon’s unblinking eyes narrowed and met the film-covered ones of the dragon. There was something familiar about the creature, especially its eyes, those odd-shaped slits. For an instant Dhamon saw himself reflected in them, but a different self—one who was a few years younger, one with wheat-blond hair, one who was righteous and undaunted, one who almost died, a red dragon scale embedded firmly in his thigh.
“The shadow dragon,” he said.
Yes. It was the shadow dragon who once had healed him with his blood—and with the help of a silver dragon. The dragon’s blood and magic broke Malys’ mastery over him, but turned the large scale on his leg black, his hair black, colored his soul.
He felt a coldness in his heart. He peered closer at the shadow dragon.
Dhamon had changed since that fateful day, but what about this dragon? He was obviously older too, but that was strange. In the span of those few years the dragon shouldn’t have aged much at all. Dragons lived for centuries upon centuries.
A rumble shook the stone and earth, and it took Dhamon a moment to understand that it was the dragon speaking for the first time.
“You remember…?” the dragon said. “In the mountains far from here.”
“Aye, dragon. Long miles away and short years ago.” Dhamon would never forget. Not even the great sorcerer Palin Majere could cure the scale, but the shadow dragon had saved him that day on which Dhamon accidentally stumbled into his cave. The dragon could have killed him then, as he could certainly kill him now, but it had saved his life.
The shadow dragon was not only unaccountably older but larger now, considerably so. Dhamon could tell he must be nearly two hundred feet long. Why had he grown so large? And why did he look so old? What could have aged it? Magic?
“Aye, dragon. I remember,” was all he said.
The stone floor vibrated again from the strength of the dragon’s voice.
“Aye, you saved my life, dragon, and I admit that I owe you for that.”
“You know this dragon?” Ragh said to Dhamon, as he furtively glanced over his shoulder at Nura Bint-Drax. “You know the dragon and the snake-woman? How can you…?”
Dhamon silenced the draconian and concentrated on the rumbling sounds to make out the dragon’s deep and drawn-out words. Not only older and bigger, the dragon looked weary, Dhamon thought. Old and worn-out, though he should be neither.
“You wish to collect on my debt to you?” Did Dhamon understand the shadow dragon correctly? Had he manipulated Maldred to bring Dhamon here? Debt or no debt, he didn’t have time to help the dragon. The scales were burning him out. He had to aid Fiona, find Rikali and his child.
“What do you want?” What could a dragon possibly want from a man?
Once more he made an effort to sort through the rumble for the words.
“Kill Sable,” the shadow dragon said. “I want you to kill the Black who rules this swamp.”
“No!” Dhamon felt the color drain from his face. “That isn’t possible!” In fact, this was all impossible—being brought here by his friend Maldred, standing before an old, decrepit dragon who was young and vibrant just a few years ago, having Nura Bint-Drax lurking behind him as a giant snake, being urged to slay an overlord. “One man cannot stand against a dragon,” Dhamon said, “let alone stand against an overlord. No. Dragon, I honor the fact that you saved my life, but I won’t even attempt such a foolish thing.”
“I saved you from the Red only so you would serve me now.” The dragon dug a claw into the cave floor, making an excruciating noise. “I saved others, too, tried to mold them to my purpose, but you are the most promising. You are the one.”
Nura hissed, as Maldred tugged his sword out of the distracted Dhamon’s grip.
“I don’t understand your part in this,” Dhamon said to Maldred bitterly. “You can damn well try to explain it to me later, after we get out of here. Which I intend to do now.” He made a move to leave, but Maldred’s hand closed firmly on his arm.
“You can’t go, Dhamon,” Maldred said. “Not yet. You must agree to kill Sable first.”
“You’re as mad as Fiona!” Dhamon shook off the big man. “Kill an overlord? No man—no army—can kill an overlord. Why does this shadow dragon even want Sable dead?”
“To claim Sable’s realm,” the shadow dragon said in a low rumble. The cave darkened for an instant, as the shadow dragon closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the yellow glow seemed to be aimed directly at Dhamon. A lip curled upward, revealing shadow-gray teeth. The dragon’s tongue snaked out teasingly.
“You can kill Sable. You are the one.” This was spoken by Nura Bint-Drax, who had slithered up behind Dhamon. “I have tested you, Dhamon, and I know the deeds you are capable of performing.”
Dhamon turned to stare up into her cold snake-child face.
“Maldred was testing you, too. He pulled your strings more cleverly than me.”
“I had no choice,” Maldred cut in, as Dhamon furiously wheeled to face the ogre-mage.
“Tested me?”
“Sable… the Black… everyday the swamp grows larger. You know what is happening. You’ve seen it happening. Eventually the swamp is going to swallow all of the ogre lands, my homeland, Dhamon—unless something is done to stop the overlord.”
“This is all about Blode? This is about the stinking mountains and your father’s damnable kingdom? I thought you despised your father.”
“My people’s land. And… I fear for my father’s safety, if the overlord succeeds.”
“This is all about this swamp?”
A nod.
“What in the world do you expect of me? Me! If you and your ugly relatives want the Black dead, you can damn well go to war against the dragon yourself. I want no part of it.”
Maldred shook his head sadly. “My people are not the greatest of warriors. Not anymore. We need someone who is fearless, someone who has extraordinary reserves of strength and resolve—”
“You’ve been testing me?”
“To make sure you are the one,” Nura interjected.
“And these tests…”
“My sisters and I,” she said amusedly. The naga was referring to a group of cutthroat women who tried to kill Dhamon and Maldred in the Blode foothills. “Giant spiders. The Legion of Steel who tried to hang you. All of that and more. It was all our doing, all part of the test. You should be proud, human. You passed every test… so far.”
The veins stood out like cords on Dhamon’s neck.
Hands clenched, he seethed with rage, staring bitterly at Maldred. “Friend.” Dhamon spat the word. “I called you friend, Maldred! I considered you as close as a brother. As much as one man can love another, Mal, I loved you. I risked my life for yours a dozen times over, and…”
“Dhamon….”
“You manipulated me? Deceived me! For your damnable ogre race?” The words were hard and fast, daggers hurled at the big man.
Maldred tried to say something, but Dhamon didn’t give him a chance. “I’m done with the dragons, ogre. And I’m done with you. I never want to see you or your friends again.” Dhamon’s th
roat grew dry, as the air constricted around him. He fought for breath.
“Nura,” Maldred cautioned. “Let him alone.”
The naga slid forward and twisted her tail around Dhamon’s legs, coiling herself as she squeezed his throat. Her eyes glowed faintly green. The glow spread down her body, melting into Dhamon and fixing him to the spot. The glow spread to Ragh and Fiona.
The naga, wrapped completely around Dhamon, turned to face the shadow dragon. The eyes of the dragon closed momentarily After another suffocating squeeze, the naga uncoiled and retreated. “He is the one, master,” she said silkily, “but he seems unwilling to participate.”
The shadow dragon lowered his head, barbels spreading on the floor as he stretched his neck forward. His dry breath struck Dhamon like a strong desert wind, but it carried no scent.
“I am the one to make him willing.” The dragon extended a charcoal gray talon, drawing it down Dhamon’s pant leg and parting the material as though it was thin parchment. The large black scale—and all of the lesser scales—gleamed darkly in the light reflected by the dragon’s eyes. “The scales grow because of my magic, human. The scales pain you because of my magic. They’re killing you.”
The dragon glanced at Nura, and the naga retreated farther so that Dhamon could now breathe easier.
“I promise to stop the scales and the pain,” the dragon continued, “if you slay Sable. I will provide the cure you so desperately seek. I will let you live, and I will make you wholly human again, without any further interference from me.”
Dhamon felt his limbs tingle as he regained control of them. Over his shoulder he saw that Ragh and Fiona also had been restored to normality.
Dhamon stayed silent for several minutes. A cure? While the shadow dragon probably told the truth, Dhamon wondered if there was any cure for the accursed scale. He would die soon enough, for the scales were multiplying like an unchecked rash. But he couldn’t agree to try to kill Sable. That would be a suicide faster than any death from the scales.
He glanced at the Solamnic. She was staring wide-eyed at the dragon, but her thoughts couldn’t be fathomed. He looked at Ragh, who characteristically shrugged. It was up to him, Ragh was saying. The damn draconian couldn’t even remember his vendetta against the naga. Wights! What else had they stolen from Ragh?
Dhamon glared at Maldred. “You know that it is not within one man’s power to slay a dragon.”
The shadow dragon’s voice vibrated. “You will have help. My servants Maldred and Nura are both magically powerful. Your friends called Fiona and…”
“Ragh,” Nura supplied. She seemed puzzled and offended the draconian had not recognized her. “Wingless Ragh and the Solamnic Knight Fiona.”
“And you, human,” rumbled the dragon. “You have powers you have yet to discover.”
Rot! But Dhamon felt he had no choice but to agree. Later, away from the shadow dragon’s cave, he could hope for an opportunity to escape from Maldred and the naga—or kill them both. Later, he, Fiona, and Ragh might have a chance. But now…
“All right,” Dhamon said solemnly. “I’ll go after Sable for you. And if by some twist of fate I win, you’ll grant me this cure.”
The dragon raised his lip in approximation of a smile. “Of course,” he rumbled. “I will cure you, and I will grant you more than a cure.” The creature lifted his head, staring toward the entrance of the cave, where a wall of mist was forming. “I will grant you the safety and well-being of your family.”
An image appeared on the mist, of a torchlit village in a dry land. Scrub grass and stunted trees grew along a road. A snort from the dragon, and the scene shifted to the interior of a small building. A silvery-haired half-elf was propped up on a weathered bed.
“Riki,” Dhamon said with emotion that surprised him, falling to his knees.
Riki was covered in furs and attended by three human women, one of them wiping the sweat from her forehead and trying to calm her.
“Pigs, but this hurts!” Dhamon heard the half-elf’s familiar curse. “Where’s Varek?”
“Outside,” one of them answered. “We’ll call him in soon. After the child comes.”
Riki tossed her head back and moaned.
The image shifted again, pulling away from the village. Beyond the meager treeline was a crude military encampment that circled a large bonfire. Dozens of hobgoblins milled around. A particularly large one sat on a wooden crate, sharpening his spear.
The cry of a baby cut across the encampment, and the magical image wavered. The mist in the cave disappeared.
“The hobgoblins are my pawns,” the dragon said in his rumbling voice. “They’ll leave the newborn baby—and the half-elf and her husband—alive, if you do my bidding.”
Dhamon stared the dragon. “I said I’d go after Sable,” he said through clenched teeth. “I keep my word.”
“I know you will,” the shadow dragon returned. “Nura, will you give them some special weapons with which to slay Sable?”
The naga slithered away, reappearing minutes later no longer as a snake but in her Ergothian guise. Dhamon’s old tunic was belted around her. In one hand she carried an elegant long sword, one Dhamon once had turned over a fortune in gems to obtain. He had bought it from the ogre chieftain, Maldred’s father, who claimed it once had belonged to Tanis Half-Elven. The naga stole it from Dhamon during one of her tests. It was supposed to have hidden magical powers. Rather than handing the sword to Dhamon, Nura gave it to Fiona, who stared at her reflection in the polished blade.
In her other hand the naga carried an impressive polearm with an axe edge that caught the light from the dragon’s eyes. A few years past, a bronze dragon had presented this weapon to Dhamon to aid him in his struggles against the overlords. A magical artifact, the glaive cut through metal armor. Dhamon had nearly killed Goldmoon with the glaive, back when he was under Malys’ control. He’d wanted no part of it thereafter. Dhamon had tossed it aside, and Rig was quick to claim the magical glaive. The mariner had loved exquisite weapons. The glaive, too, had disappeared during Dhamon’s tests.
Now Nura thrust the glaive at him, nodding when he reluctantly accepted the magical weapon. The dragon meanwhile plucked a small scale off its body and passed it to Maldred. “When the deed is finished,” the dragon said, “use this to return here.”
“What about him?” Nura asked the dragon, indicating Ragh.
“I don’t need anything,” the draconian snorted quickly, before the dragon could say anything. “I go where Dhamon goes, and I have my own special… resources.”
Maldred tucked the scale under his tunic and motioned for Dhamon and his companions to follow Nura Bint-Drax.
“What if Sable kills us?” Dhamon thought to ask the shadow dragon before leaving the cave.
“You should make sure Sable does not,” came the low-rumbling reply. “But… for trying I will spare your child. Only the child, however.”
“You’d better make sure you’re successful, Dhamon Grimwulf,” Nura hissed.
Dhamon took one last glance at the shadow dragon, trying to read the obscure meaning in his film-covered eyes. Then he walked out behind the others.
“I hope you know we’ll get ourselves killed going up against Sable,” Ragh muttered, as they stepped out of the cave into the night-drenched swamp.
“Everyone dies,” Fiona said indifferently. She sheathed the sword in her belt and reached for Dhamon, slipping into the crook of his arm and staring admiringly up at the glaive’s blade. It caught the moonlight that spilled in through a gap in the branches. She smiled warmly. “It is good to be together again. I’ve missed you so very much, Rig.”
Chapter Nine
The Skin of Shrentak
Dhamon stood on a rise bordering the eastern edge of the sprawling city ruled by the black dragon overlord Sable. Fiona leaned against him, staring up at his sweat-streaked face. Below them, a mist covered the streets, cloaking some of its filth and decay. Its rising tendrils helped to sof
ten the appearance of the crumbling towers that reached like gnarled fingers into a pale, gray-orange sky.
Dhamon tried to look past the ugly surface of the place—seeing men and women shuffling about, as they walked about in any other city on Krynn. There was joy here, somewhere. He heard a child laugh, a man offering a pleasant greeting, a dog barking excitedly. People eked out a living, loved each other, raised families just as they did in Palanthas or Winterholm or Solanthus. Just like any city. Except this city belonged to Sable, the black dragon overlord, and it lay smack in the middle of a swamp teeming with spawn, giant crocodiles, and all manner of other horrors. While some of the frightful denizens of this place crawled beneath the streets, others walked freely around the city.
He noted a pair of spawn trudging past a woodworker’s shop, dragging the carcass of something large covered in hide. A dozen or so spawn milled about on corners and under building overhangs in the merchant’s quarter. There were a number of conspicuous abominations, grotesqueries mixed from draconian blood, dragon magic, the husks of elves and dwarves, and perhaps even kender. These were not as sleek as their spawn brothers and had corrupt bodies—extra limbs, misshapen wings, snakelike tails, and more. Dhamon believed he was turning into such an abomination, and he believed that when the transformation was complete his human brain would be displaced by… some otherworldly intelligence. The new being would be loyal to its creator, the shadow dragon.
As Dhamon continued to observe the city, he saw a sivak draconian leap from a blackened spire and spread its wings, lazily circling the center of the city before diving and losing itself in a tangled of ruined buildings and swirling mist.
The city stank of the swamp, of human waste and rotting corpses. The scent of evening meals cooking was faint amid the foulness. They’d eaten very little since leaving the lair of the shadow dragon. He knew Fiona and Ragh were hungry—he could care less about the welfare of Maldred and Nura Bint-Drax. Perhaps he could find something reasonably edible at an inn. It was important Fiona and Ragh keep their strength for whatever challenge was to come.
[Dhamon 03] - Redemption Page 13