by Jean Rabe
The Knight of Neraka commander barely managed to leap out of the way of the attack, yet he was sorely misted by the acid breath. The acid continued to burn and sizzle on the edges of his black breastplate, marring the lily etchings.
“You will have the bodies disposed of promptly, Commander Bedell,” Sable rumbled. “They taint the beauty of this place.”
“Of course,” the knight was quick to reply. “Right away, Mistress Sable.”
“As for the shadow dragon called Dhamon…”
“We found no trace of him in his lair, Mistress. It was as though he had abandoned it.”
Sable’s eyes narrowed to thread-fine slits. She allowed her fear aura to grow stronger, until the knight shivered and sweated. “What makes you so certain it was the Dhamon-dragon’s main lair and not some decoy?”
Commander Bedell gave a curt nod, releasing a breath he’d been holding and doing his best not to pass out from the nausea. “We’d been searching for the lair for nearly five months, and we knew it must be near the lake in the lowlands, a favorite haunt of the beast. It was very well hidden. Had the wind not been blowing so strongly to disturb a veil of leaves, we would have missed it.”
“Why did you not raid or destroy it then?” A blob of spittle rolled out of Sable’s mouth and hissed as it fell to the floor, sizzling between her talons.
He glanced at the still smoking corpses of the bakali. “We found bakali weapons there and took this as proof, Mistress Sable.” He held up a statuette of a night bird. “The last force that we sent against your foe carried this… uh, item. It is enchanted, and one of our gray robes… a venerable Knight of the Thorn… used his magic to find it.” He placed the statuette next to the mound of steel pieces.
“Like a dog tracks a rabbit,” Sable mused.
Commander Bedell stood stiffly at attention. “We thought it best to leave and track the Dhamon-dragon. Intrude as little as possible. Don’t alert the dragon unnecessarily. Perhaps it will yet return to its lair, and we can trap it there.”
“I suppose.”
The Knight Commander trembled faintly, and this pleased Sable.
“How much of a hoard is there?” Sable asked.
“Nothing compared to what you have here, your majesty.”
“So the Dhamon-dragon claims little wealth as far as I am concerned but is intent on claiming more and more of my land,” Sable said sulkily.
The black dragon stretched her front legs out and clicked her talons against the stone inches away from the dissolving bakali corpses. It was reminiscent, the knight thought, of the bored gesture a man might practice, thrumming his fingers against a desk.
“It looked as though the creature had not been there for weeks,” Commander Bedell told Sable. “It was unfortunate, as this time…”
“…as this time I gave you more than enough bakali and men to deal with the foul fiend,” Sable finished. “I underestimated the Dhamon-dragon before, but no longer.” The talons clicked louder. “Now that I have given you enough men and bakali, you will leave on another mission right away. This time I don’t want you to come back alive until you kill or capture the Dhamon-dragon.”
The commander shook his head and blinked at the sweat that was running into his eyes. “I fear the shadow dragon is gone, Mistress Sable. I have scouts near the lake he frequented and others scattered in the lowlands, where we found old tracks of the sivak that is loyal to him. They report no signs of the dragon. There is a Gray Robe attempting to divine the dragon’s whereabouts, though so far he has been unsuccessful and claims the shadow dragon has simply left your lands.”
Stacks of paintings fell over as Sable roared her discontent. There was a cascading of coins and gems, too, as gold and steel pieces rolled off the mounds and jewels rattled in their various containers.
“Men are so pitiable, especially your gray-clad sorcerers, Commander Bedell! You claim that the Gray Robes are wondrously powerful, yet they cannot find the Dhamon- dragon!”
“We did find its lair,” the knight risked saying, trying to assuage some of the dragon’s anger, “and we brought you some spoils as proof. We will continue to search for the dragon, though I believe it is as the Gray Robe reports, that he has for some reason left the swamp, wisely surrendering it to your might and…”
“Hmm. I will narrow your search.”
Sable opened her eyes wide and slowed her breathing. The mounds of coins and display of treasure faded from her sight, and in their place she now saw lofty cypress trees and black willows, spreading ferns and hanging vines, everything shades of green and the air intensely humid. She pushed her senses outward. So close in spirit to the swamp she nurtured, Sable could feel the dark life festering in the blessed fetidness that surrounded her. Her mind touched alligators, young and old and those that had grown to giant proportions because of the arcane nature of her realm. Her mind brushed against birds, snakes, and curly-tailed lizards that scampered along the highest branches of the uppermost canopy. She sensed a few lesser black dragons, all professing their loyalties to her, the spawn and abominations she had created, and the draconians that patrolled the city above and the swamp villages at her behest.
Sable couldn’t sense the Dhamon-dragon anywhere— not in the lowlands, nor by the lake, none of the usual places he seemed to favor and where she had sensed him before. She couldn’t find the nuisance in the far south near the Plains of Dust, nor to the east where the swamp was encroaching on ogre lands and was wearing away at the mountains. Like Commander Bedell had said, the Dhamon-dragon had disappeared from her sacred swamp. Why?
The Dhamon-dragon could be dead, Sable knew, no thanks to her forces. He could have drowned in the lake or have been swarmed by the giant alligators; he could have run afoul of the lesser black dragons. Sable briefly considered sending the knight and his fellows in search of her fellow blacks to ask if they’d killed the Dhamon-dragon, but as quick as the notion came to her, she dismissed it. The blacks would have been the first to brag of the Dhamon-dragon’s demise.
“Yes, the Dhamon-dragon has indeed left my swamp, as you believed,” Sable finally purred. The knight relaxed visibly. “Not as good as his death, though acceptable.”
“If he returns, we will kill him.”
“If he is truly wise, he shall not return,” Sable said.
“You pose too great of a threat,” the knight said, venturing a lavish compliment.
“He shall attempt to claim other lands, craft another lair elsewhere and fill it with other trivial baubles and steel pieces too few to be of any interest to me. More’s the pity you were not able to kill him. I would have fancied his head mounted above Shrentak’s gates. Pity that, after all, you failed me.”
The knight showed his penitence by bowing his head and rounding his shoulders. “I would be happy to search for him beyond your swamp.”
“No.”
“Then I willingly give my life, Mistress Sable, and the lives of my men for our failure. Our blood for the blood we were not able to shed in your glorious name.”
“You know that you are more use to me alive than dead, Commander Bedell—for the moment.” The overlord dismissed the knight with a curl of her upper lip. “Remove the stuff you collected from the Dhamon-dragon’s lair,” she said. “It is not worth adding to my own. Give it to the destitute in the city above, and make it known that it came from me, that I am being magnanimous to my subjects.” She clicked her talons rhythmically. “Return this night for more instructions. Perhaps I shall think of a menial task or two that you will be better able to manage.”
The knight was quick to summon more bakali and order them to gather up the remains of their brethren, scour the stone beneath the bodies so that it gleamed, and to take Dhamon’s purloined treasure away from the cavern.
“A lamentable hoard the Dhamon-dragon had,” Sable said to herself when she was finally alone, “not worthy of even a hatchling’s collection.”
She focused on the flames that flickered in the delicate sil
ver candelabrum and illuminated the one hundred and seventeen perfect rubies that were as shiny as fresh blood. Soon she was dozing peaceably, dreaming of the inevitable death of her despised foe.
5
Dhamon often caught Feril staring at him, eyes wide and unable to wholly conceal her disbelief. Though she acknowledged that he was a dragon, he knew she was having a difficult time accepting it, and he knew that as much as she loved all creatures and might have once loved him, a part of her was horrified. Dhamon understood; he knew that he was repellent, even to Ragh, his only friend. All dragons had a particular odor—he remembered Malys the Red smelling of brimstone and ashes; Sable of decaying plant life and fetid water; Brine of the foul sea. His own smell was poisonous; his breath reeked of metal and blood.
Still, the Kagonesti had stayed close. Dhamon intently watched Feril, noting the Kagonesti’s slightly upturned nose, her high cheekbones and rounded chin, those gently pointed ears that he once caressed—back when he was human.
When the sunlight hit her eyes, which were blue flecked with green and saffron, they sparkled dark green like emeralds. Perhaps they were whatever color she wanted them to be, he thought, recalling that late at night under the stars they seemed to shift between deep blue and gold. There was a magic about her after all, and perhaps her eyes changed color with her mood or her setting.
Feril’s hair reminded him of the rich shade of leaves just beginning to turn in the early fall, and though he at first thought he missed her long mass of curls, he decided that he actually liked this new hairstyle better. Her hair was so short that nothing competed with her face. Her skin was lightly tanned like the bark of a young hickory tree, her complexion smooth and flawless. The only exception was a tiny scar on her forehead where a tattoo once had been. He would ask her later what happened to the tattoos and where she had lived these past few years.
He closed his eyes, in his mind still seeing her vividly, and he offered a prayer to whatever god would listen to a dragon, that he could always see her just like this. He wanted to be able to perfectly recall her image after she left him again forever. He wanted to remember what she smelled like—newly opened wildflowers and sage grass, her hair carrying a suggestion of honey and ginger.
She would leave him eventually—this time permanently, he was convinced, but how soon? Wild elves were solitary figures, and Dhamon thought before that it had been a struggle for Feril to stay as long as she did with Palin and the others when they were all Goldmoon’s champions and fought against the overlords.
He just hoped she would stay this time long enough to be of use to him.
Though there had been many women in Dhamon’s life—back when he was human—Feril was the only one he truly had loved. He’d come close to settling down once with a half-elf thief named Riki, who bore his child. He had genuine affection for Riki, but he couldn’t bring himself to commit to her, not considering his reckless nature, and not considering that Feril was too often in his thoughts.
Feril had changed, other than cutting her hair and removing her tattoos. Dhamon noticed that she seemed more confident, that her arms and legs were muscular, yet somehow she moved even more gracefully than in the old days.
She has changed for the better and I so very much for the worse. How long before she leaves? he thought one last time. Then he pushed his musings aside.
It had been just past dawn when Feril led Dhamon and Ragh down a wide path and into this grove of unusual trees. There were lofty black wattles and spreading rusty laurels, and stretching above them were silky oaks and silver basswoods. Feril pointed to tamarinds thick with bellbird vines, and to clumps of pink ash growing amid red muttonwoods. She slowed her pace when they passed an exotic acacia with huge silver-blue feathery leaves and orange flowers in foot-long spikes. The bark had a scent similar to raspberries, and it cut the sulfur odor of the sivak and the smells of the swamp that still clung heavily to Dhamon.
Feril noticed Dhamon admiring some of the trees, in particular a dome-like giant with heart-shaped leaves and copious clusters of vivid scarlet blooms.
“That one and some of these other trees shouldn’t be here,” she said.
“Like I shouldn’t be here,” Dhamon whispered. His soft voice was nonetheless loud enough to be felt by all as it resonated through the ground.
Feril tilted her head back and stretched an arm up so her fingers could tease the soft flowers of the exotic acacia.
“Dhamon, what I mean is that these trees were meant for warmer lands. I know it is hot now this summer, but come winter the snow could lay thick in these woods. They weren’t meant to stand such cold, these beautiful trees.”
Feril explained that when Beryl ruled this forest, the dragon must have done something to the earth or perhaps to the trees themselves so they could thrive here, but would the dragon’s magic eventually fade without her around to nurture it? Did the Kagonesti even want to be in these woods come winter to find out?
Dhamon had offered to fly Feril and Ragh to the Nalis Aren, and at first the sivak had championed the idea.
“What is it about Nalis Aren that might help you become human again?” Feril asked.
It wasn’t the lake itself, but what was in the lake, Dhamon explained. Feril wanted to know more, but he dismissed her questions with a shake of his massive head.
“Later, Feril. When we reach the lake.”
“Why do you need my help so badly?”
“Later, Feril.”
Feril refused to fly with him to Nalis Aren. Dhamon suspected she was just being stubborn; she would insist on taking her time traveling to Nalis Aren, just as he insisted on taking his time revealing everything that had to be done.
“It is not terribly far from here, the Lake of Death.” Feril shook her head vehemently when he noted that they could avoid all these trees and fly there directly. “We can walk. It’ll take three days at the most if we keep up this pace. We’ll follow the river. I want to see if there are any more bandits or knights along the way, and I want to see if there are more burnt places, things we might not be able to see from the sky.”
They all knew the land had been scorched by fire and magic, and that here and there were mass graves of Qualinesti elves. Indeed, they ran across a small group of marauders that they dealt with summarily. They had come upon the raggedy men skulking near a long, deep rut that ran parallel to the river. Perhaps the rut had been dug for a reason, but Feril couldn’t fathom why. Perhaps it was made by a dragon, Dhamon speculated as he smoothed it over with his claws—after burying the bodies of the bandits they had killed deep in the trench.
They continued on without sleep and so reached Nalis Aren after two days. It was afternoon and the sun, though high and intense, was not enough to burn off the thin mist that hung above the massive crater-lake. It was roughly shaped like a triangle and filled the entire valley. The south end touched the foothills of the Kharolis Mountains, and the center of it was more than two miles across.
“Lovely,” Feril said.
It was more than lovely, she thought, it was also unnatural—the color of the water was murky, yet the surface lay as smooth as polished glass despite the White Rage River surging into it. Where the brown foamy river met the lake’s edge was where the water changed color and grew still. The sand around the shore was the shade of eggshells and sparkled in places from what Feril guessed were grains of quartz. No trees grew within a hundred yards of the sand and the nearest were old oaks that reached eighty or more feet into the sky.
They stood just inside the treeline staring straight ahead at the strange lake.
There were traces of old roads leading to the water from all directions, though they were now overgrown with milkweed and fennel and a scattering of seedlings. Feril noticed bootprints on the path they’d traveled to get here, and she suspected the tracks were made by either Knights of Neraka or bandits, but in no significant number and not within recent days. There were odd prints, too, goblins most likely, though it looked like the
y had tried to cover up their tracks. Feril could study the tracks more closely to make sure what creatures left them, or she could ask Dhamon, who was an expert woodsman. These prints, too, were weeks old.
“This lake,” Feril said in a hushed voice, “is where Qualinost used to be.”
Ragh staggered forward. “Qualinost, the elf capital…”
“Yes, the city was right out there… somewhere out there. Dhamon, I know you and the sivak have been living in a cave, but don’t you know about the elves? Even on the Isle of Cristyne we heard about the demise of Qualinost.”
“There’s a lot about what’s going on in the world that we don’t know,” Ragh said tersely. “It’s not easy for… such as Dhamon and I… to walk into a city and hear the latest news and gossip. Hard enough finding you, elf. That took a big satchel of steel and lots of threats.” He made a tsk-tsking sound and shook his head. “The whole city. Gone? I’d seen it almost seventy, eighty years ago… from high above. I thought it impressive for something of elven construction.”
Feril’s eyes narrowed at the insult as she approached the lake reverently. Her gaze drifted warily between the water and the sand. She glanced down at her feet. The grass was thick and mixed with stunted fennel and felt good between her toes. It reached no taller than her ankles, as if it had been regularly grazed upon. She smelled sulfur and swamp rot and knew Dhamon and Ragh were close behind her.
“You move quietly,” she flung over her shoulder.
“No animal prints, Feril.” Dhamon had been intently studying the ground. “You’d think there would be creature tracks in the sand, but there are none. Something is cropping the grass around here, though.”
“Nothing drinks from the lake,” Ragh cut in, “and here I am thirsty. Wonderful.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean the water’s bad,” Feril said. “Let’s see.” She bent to her knees and took a deep breath. “It does not smell tainted, yet I agree it is unnaturally dark. Perhaps animals are scarce here or do not drink from the lake along this section of shore, but they might drink from it elsewhere.”