Lemborg's mouth dropped open, and bits of chewed fig fell out. "Ah, many apologies are due," he said with embarrassment. "Appearances were deceiving. A kingly figure, too, for a brass dragon."
"Queenly." The white cavalryman . . . what was the gnome planning with it? She was finding it hard to concentrate on the game. Something the gnome had said....
"Que-a female brass dragon?" The gnome was amazed.
"I am a female brass dragon."
"Ah . . . many more apologies are due, then, but nonetheless for one so young as well as a female brass dra-"
"Old. A dragon is strongest and happiest when it grows old in its power, and I am very old. We are not like humans, who treasure only their youth."
Lemborg thought there was something odd about the way Kalkon said that. He looked down at the blue-and-white marble playing board. He thought about his next words carefully. "Well, then, obviously life must be at its very best right now."
Kalkon moved a claw anyway, lightly tapped a blue cleric along a row of hexes, and left it in what she knew was a bad spot. It was the only good move she could make. She suddenly lost interest in the game.
Lemborg moved his white queen immediately afterward. The word "check" was on his lips, but the dragon had turned her head away to look at a distant wall.
"Obviously it must be," said the dragon. "Obviously."
Perhaps it was best to change the subject, Lemborg sensed. Home and family were usually safe topics, at least with humans. He looked at the board, coughed, and said "Check" under his breath. Then, more strongly: "Are there any young ones who come here now and then to visit? Any hatchlings happy to see the old home and mother's wings?"
The huge dragon did not respond, but continued to stare at the wall and the darkness.
Lemborg waited until he began to fidget again. He coughed but got no response. Had this game been played in the Mount Nevermind Academy for the Endless Study of Khas and Nothing Else, Kalkon by now would have had to forfeit the ga-
"I do not know where my children are," said the dragon in a remarkably quiet voice. "They are probably dead, and I can only hope that they are."
No adequate reply came to the stunned gnome's mind. He stared at the dragon. A little time passed.
"I had a clutch of eggs," said Kalkon softly. "Four little eggs. A little less than a hundred years ago, the Dark Queen took them with all the other eggs of our kind, promising their return after the coming war. We feared for our children and swore our neutrality. Then she secretly poured foulness into the eggs with magic. They hatched into draconians, stunted mockeries of their parents. My four children were turned into Baaz, destroyed in body and spirit, corrupted and broken. If there is mercy in the world, they are long dead now. If any of them survive, they would not know me, nor know anything of what I or our kind know. They would be evil and lost to me forever, and if I saw them I would have to kill them, my own children."
Lemborg stared down at the khas board. It suddenly meant nothing to him.
"Forgive my sudden leaving, but I will return in the morning," said Kalkon, getting to her feet. Her great wings unfurled and stretched. "I feel the need for a long flight and a drink from the ocean. My congratulations on your style of play. I must resign the game."
The great dragon left quickly. After a long wait, Lemborg slowly put the game pieces back in their starting places, feeling miserable. It was all his fault for asking about her children. He wished he had been born mute. He slowly unrolled the carpet Kalkon had found for him, wrapped himself in it, and blew out the oil lamp that had provided light for the game. He lay down but found no comfort in the silence and darkness.
*****
Faint red light fell over the plaza. Lunitari was full, the other two moons out of sight, and the sky above full of glittering stars. Kalkon lifted her head toward them and wondered what she had done to deserve this life. She went through the motions of living with nothing behind them. Fleeing to a deserted ruin did not insulate her from the guilt and pain, so she slept and flew and ate and kept her mind as empty as she could. In the end, it did not help. Her children were destroyed, and she was in part responsible.
She swiftly crouched and threw herself into the air, wings unfurling and thundering down in great pumping motions that lifted her into the red moonlight. Her gaze fell upon the great empty city of darkness below. Nothing moved but windblown sand. The city was hollow like her life, dead like her children. Her eyes lifted and listlessly skimmed the rooftops and spires.
An object floated into view from behind the one remaining tower of the Great Temple. Moonlight gleamed from the tall golden shell and the polished wooden tentacles aimed at her.
Kalkon blinked. How did that get here?
They shot her five times in as many seconds.
White-hot blows hit her in the neck, right foreleg, and right side of her great scaled chest. She inhaled sharply; shattered ribs and ballista-launched spears stabbed into her lungs. A sharp blow from a catapulted weight broke the main bone in her right wing. The entire wing folded up as she shut her eyes and roared in agony, rolling to the left and falling toward the abandoned military stables one hundred feet below.
*****
Lemborg sat up, still wrapped in the carpet. The roar and the rumbling sound afterward were fading. An earthquake? He had never heard anything at Mount Nevermind about the Northern Wastes being subject to earthquakes. It seemed unlikely.
He got out of the carpet, unable to sleep. He thought he should go see what was going on, but he dreaded the thought of running into Kalkon after his gaffe during the khas game. He should leave on his own before the brain eaters returned, or before he made an even greater fool of himself before the dragon. Kalkon had rescued him from the crashed technojammer, healed him, entertained him, and he repaid her with this. His face burned with shame.
He could still see a bit in the huge, dark room. After collecting his few belongings, he walked out into a long, high hall, trying to recall the way out. He walked to one end of the corridor, took two lefts and a right, and realized he was completely lost. A window loomed ahead, faint red moonlight shining through its sand-dulled panes. Disgusted with himself, Lemborg dropped his few belongings and managed to pull himself up to the window ledge to look out over the dark city.
He was still on the administration building's third floor. Lunitari's red light fell over the ruins. Thousands of gnomes would walk on the red moon's surface someday, Lemborg thought. Gnomes would build magnificent cities there, spreading their great inventions across wildspace, and there would be hydrodynamics for all. But it was impossible to care about it now. It meant as little as the khas game. Lemborg blinked back tears and sighed. He dropped his gaze.
A pole rose up right in front of his window, in the middle of the air not twenty feet away. Tied to the pole were human skulls. Holes had been gnawed in their bloodstained crowns.
With a gasp, Lemborg let go of the window ledge and ran the moment his feet hit the floor. He left his belongings where they fell. Behind him, the huge golden coiled shell of the brain eaters' spelljammer rose up and stopped, hovering beside the translucent window like an upright coin. It began to turn, the bow swinging wide.
Lemborg saw a corner ahead. He dove around it as the great window exploded inward behind him. The spelljammer's long bow raked the window from right to left, knocking out hundreds of panes in a glistening waterfall. Before the noise had ended, gaunt human figures in ragged clothes leaped down from the tentacled bow into the corridor. Shards of glass crunched under their bare feet. No one cried out-all faces were empty, even of their purpose. They set off immediately after the gnome.
They are going to catch me, the terrified gnome thought as he ran down a dark hall. They are going to catch me, and then they are going to eat me. The certain knowledge spurred him on even faster. He took two rights, a left, and found a spiral stairway down. He descended two floors, turned left again as he left the stairs, then fled down a narrow hall. Footsteps echoed
far behind him.
He dodged through a doorway and found himself in a four-way intersection. He went right. Faint light was ahead. He stopped, unsure what it was, then moved forward cautiously to check.
Ahead was an open doorway leading to the night air. He crept close, boots crunching softly on windblown sand, and peered out into the moonlight. The plaza lay before him. The faint smell of scorched paint lingered in the air, drifting over from the visible wreckage of the Spirit of Mount Nevermind.
He squinted. Moving around the pointed nose of the Spirit were manlike figures in long robes. They did not seem to be walking; instead, they moved as if floating over the ground.
Brain eaters. Lemborg had seen them levitate during the chase aboard their nautiloid spelljammer, vainly trying to catch him. He turned and ran back into the building, through the archway into the four-way intersection.
A four-fingered hand there sank its claws into his left shoulder. Hysterical, Lemborg turned and sank his teeth into the creature's skin. It was cold and slimy like a live eel. The hand jerked away from him instantly. But more hands grabbed him by his arms and clothing, human hands with scarred, filthy skin. He fought them insanely, screaming as he did, but they had him tight and there was nothing he could do. They held him down just as they'd held down the man whose brain was eaten out while he was still alive.
Gently rubbing its injured arm, the brain eater waited until the gnome had exhausted himself. Then it raised its uninjured arm in the dim light and gestured toward the plaza. The empty-eyed humans who held the gnome nodded and followed their robed master as he left, taking their captive with them.
*****
Three other brain eaters waited by the Spirit and the dry fountain, their feet hovering scant inches over the sand. Their robes rippled in a cool breeze. Shivering in the grip of the human slaves, Lemborg recognized the milky eyes and obscene tentacles, writhing like worms, hanging from the mauve horrors that passed for faces among brain eaters. They kept their thin hands hidden within their wide sleeves, arms crossed in front of them as if considering judgment.
The slaves halted before their floating lords. A long moment passed in silence. Then one of the slaves walked over to face Lemborg. He struggled once more to free himself, but could not.
The raggedly dressed human, a woman, looked down at Lemborg. In the red moonlight her eyes were bottomless holes, as if she had died weeks ago and rotted away inside.
"You are the cause of much needless trouble," she said without accent or inflection. She could have been reciting something she read on a sign. "You would have escaped, your deeds unpunished, were it not for the power of our telepathic masters to read the simple minds of vermin like you. You will tell us where the passage device generator is hidden."
Lemborg struggled, even less effectively than before, before he subsided. The woman was looking over his shoulder, as if listening to something that Lemborg couldn't hear.
"You left the generator inside your ship, beside your pilot's chair," said the woman. "It is unguarded. Does anyone else know you are here?"
Lemborg, breathing heavily, simply stared up at her.
"Only the old female brass dragon," said the woman. She waited, then added, "which is dead. We shot it down with our ship's catapults and ballistae. Two of our masters are examining the body now. Do you know of any other valuables in this city?"
"Shut up!" Lemborg shouted at her in fury. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Tears suddenly ran down his whiskered cheeks.
"You hide nothing from us. Our masters take the information from your mind as soon as you think of it. They tell me what to say so I may communicate with you. Your thoughts are as simple as those of fish." She paused. "You have not seen any treasure here. As that is the case, our masters have only one more use for you. They are tired and hungry from hunting you down. Our masters will now feed, and they will feed on you last so you will know what is to come." The woman stopped, a puppet hanging on its strings.
One of the hovering brain eaters drifted forward, toward the woman and Lemborg. Its feet touched the ground directly behind the woman. Narrow fingers seized the woman by the arms, long claws digging into her bruised and dirty skin.
The empty-eyed woman sank down to her knees, her head tilting back abruptly. Wide eyes reflected the red moon above. Her pale lips trembled.
The brain eater gently lowered itself over her until the moist tentacles where its mouth should have been touched her face, then stretched out and covered her head from the eyes up, tightening their grip in seconds.
The woman shuddered, then spasmed violently. She opened her mouth and screamed up at the night sky like the damned. Lemborg threw back his head and howled with her, eyes squeezed tight and feet kicking wildly.
A monstrous roaring broke over the city. It drowned out both cries. The roar crashed and echoed through the night, fading into echoes and the howl of distant wind.
Lemborg opened his eyes, gasping and shaking. The other brain eaters now stood on the ground and stared off to Lemborg's right in silence. Forgotten, the woman lay on her side, knees drawn up and hands entangled in her blood-matted hair as she sobbed. Lemborg looked in the direction the brain eaters faced.
There was a low thundering, like a heavy thing running with a strange gait. At the far end of the sand-covered plaza, a huge moonlit shape hurled into view from around a street corner. It quickly turned toward Lemborg and the brain eaters in a loping run, favoring its right foreleg as it came on. It was very fast.
Kalkon. Whatever the brain eaters had done to her, it had obviously not been enough. Certainly, if she could heal Lemborg, she could do something for herself.
It took a moment before Lemborg realized what was going to happen. Escape was critical. Thrashing wildly, he wrestled his left arm free from a distracted slave's grip, whirled, and bit the hand of the slave who held his right arm. The slave let go with a curse. Lemborg fled from the group in panic. Kalkon would not be able to see him in the darkness as she attacked, and he wanted to get as far from the brain eaters as possible.
He was wise. Kalkon did not wait for the brain eaters to display any tricks or talents they had. When they discovered she was alive, the two who were investigating her body had tried to destroy her mind in some excruciatingly painful manner. Their smoking bodies, half sunk in a wide pool of molten sand, now lay together in the street outside the ruins of the military stables.
Kalkon opened her mouth when she was within range of the brain eaters and blew death at them. A roaring jet of superheated air rushed from her jaws. One of the brain eaters vanished into thin air before the blast struck it. The other three and their human slaves were thrown back, smoke billowed from their roasting, dancing bodies. Inhuman shrieks rang out as they quickly fell, limbs jerking spasmodically. Then they grew still, as small flames crackled over their smoldering clothing and charred flesh.
Even as the superheated jet left her throat, Kalkon felt lances of mental force stab her between the eyes and sink deep into her head. It was the same mind-destroying attack the other two brain eaters had launched at her, only many times more powerful and desperate. The lances exploded inside her mind in blinding, agonizing light. The pain was too great to hold in. It tore apart her very thoughts in a second.
Lemborg felt the heat wave engulf him as he fled. The air was scorching, too hot to breathe. He fell and covered his head with his arms, burying his face in the sand. Screams rang from behind him and died. He heard the deep thumping of the dragon's feet, felt the ground vibrations through his flesh. The skin on the back of his neck and the top of his head felt badly sunburned.
The thumping and huffing continued from behind him, in the direction of the wreckage of his ship. Smarting from pain, Lemborg lifted his head and peered around when the heat had passed. Kalkon was there, rearing and stamping the ground. She made bizarre rumbling noises like grunts and whimpers. Her fractured right wing dragged in the sand as her tail whipped around, throwing up a great cloud of sand that slowly
filled the plaza air.
A clawed hand dug into Lemborg's shoulder, jerking him to his feet. He looked up. "Kalkon!" he screamed.
The dragon staggered and looked around wildly. The charred remains of the brain eaters and their slaves hung from her claws in shreds. She started forward in Lemborg's direction, favoring her right leg.
I will kill this one if I am attacked, buzzed a voice in her head.
Kalkon jerked back, her eyes unnaturally wide. She shivered and looked for the source of the cry. Fifty feet ahead of her was a brain eater, clutching Lemborg in front of it like a shield.
I will get the passage device generator and leave if I am not attacked, buzzed the voice, which Lemborg as well heard inside his own mind. I will then teleport again, but this time to my ship and while holding this small one. I will then set the small one free. I will get the passage device generator without interference.
Finished, the brain eater slowly edged toward the Spirit of Mount Nevermind, keeping Lemborg between itself and the dragon.
Kalkon rocked unsteadily, wide eyes blinking twice. "Queen of Darkness," came her low reply, "give back my eggs."
The brain eater hesitated, then continued moving toward the wrecked ship. Half-dragged along by the brain eater, Lemborg reached out a hand to the dragon. "Kalkon," he said. His face was filled with terror.
Kalkon drew back her head, then lunged forward. She covered the fifty feet to the brain eater in less time than passes between two heartbeats.
The startled brain eater shoved Lemborg at the onrushing dragon, then turned to flee. The gnome stumbled and fell. Something heavy and huge came down on his right leg and broke it in four places below the knee with a single loud snap. Wailing, Lemborg rolled on his back, grasping his crushed leg.
A flying thing thumped down on the ground beside him. He saw it, but its meaning did not register through the all-encompassing haze of pain. It was a brain eater's arm, its four-fingered hand still twitching. The rest of the brain eater was not there.
2 - The Dragons at War Page 25