The Dragons

by Doug Niles

  “Shhh.” Auri’s inner eyelids lowered lazily, his snout subtly gesturing toward the woods.

  Darlantan mimicked his brother’s air of indolence, allowing his gaze to shift far to the side in their childhood game of misdirection. He sniffed with casual curiosity, startled by a strange and intriguing smell wafting through the air. The odor was curiously sweet and complex, suggesting a variety of sources.

  But nothing unusual was visible.

  For a long time, the two serpents remained still. Finally Darlantan saw movement. Several figures skulked through the forest, advancing cautiously amid the shelter of the trees, drawing closer to the meadow, clearly interested in observing the dragons. The beings were quite pathetic-looking. They walked on two legs like Patersmith, but were skinny, if perhaps a little taller than the tutor. Though hair dangled from the scalps of these creatures, their faces were completely barren of whiskers. They wore skins of supple leather around their loins; their legs and arms were bare, with additional leather strapped to their feet. Darlantan could smell the skin of elk and deer.

  Finally the strangers emerged into the open, and Aurican tipped his head regally toward the newcomers, then turned to regard his nestmate, an expression of gentle rebuke in the downward curl of his snout.

  “You startled them rather badly, you know,” Auri explained. “I’ve spent many seasons trying to tame them. Actually, I’m rather impressed they returned so readily.”

  Darlantan studied the approaching figures, realizing that, despite the uniform slenderness of their physiques, they were well muscled, wiry sinew rippling visibly beneath their pale skin. They carried curved wooden weapons in their hands, and several were girded with slender blades worn at the waist. Their eyes were bright and curious, reflecting a certain natural intelligence.

  Then the silver dragon noticed the ornaments. Dar blinked in astonishment and envy as he saw a chain of golden links, the metal smooth and polished to the same sheen as Auri’s scales. The gold dragon inclined his head low, and one of the two-footed beings placed the beautiful chain over his head. Rising again, Aurican looked about proudly, letting the glimmering metal jangle down to his broad chest.

  Then the gold dragon turned over his forepaw, and Darlantan saw that Auri clutched one of the gemstones he was so fond of caressing. This stone seemed to be a large, smooth-surfaced opal, and it remained floating in the air after the golden talons withdrew. Slowly, reverently, one of the two-legged creatures advanced, reaching out to stroke the opal, then finally drawing the stone to his skinny chest. With a bow at the onlooking dragons, the little being stepped backward to show the gift to his companions.

  “They are called elves,” Auri explained as more and more of the pale figures emerged from the woods. “Remember? Patersmith told us about them. They are possessed of certain skills that even a dragon might find useful—and, Dar, I think they have a knowledge of magic!”

  Awed and once more a little jealous, Darlantan raised his own sinuous neck, his head rising just a bit higher than Aurican’s. He looked at the gathering of Aurican’s pets—his elves—and he found himself admiring their courage. He saw that they whispered and muttered among themselves, pointing at the two dragons, clearly conversing in some sort of crude language.

  “They even speak,” Auri explained, as if reading his nestmate’s mind. “In fact, they have a wealth of lore. I have met a chieftain who tells tales of my mother, Aurora!”

  “That seems an unusual discovery,” Dar agreed, “for beings so small, with neither scales nor hair, to have lore of the ancients. It is strange that Patersmith did not tell us more about them.”

  “Perhaps he did not know, for he believes magic to be vanished from Krynn, and yet these elves can work magic on metal.”

  Darlantan watched and listened attentively as Aurican said something to one of the elves in a strange tongue. The elf then opened a satchel at his side and held up a powder of bright flakes in his hand. Darlantan stared, intrigued, as the elf let the stuff trickle back into the leather sack, a shower of miniature sparkles, each as bright as Aurican’s scales.

  “They bring the gold from the rivers like this, but then they work a spell of magic, weaving the dust into these links that adorn me.”

  “That is a wonder,” Darlantan agreed. “But are you certain it is magic?”

  “Look.” Auri nodded toward the woods, where another elf was emerging into view. This was a tall, proud male, whose hair was dark, in contrast to the strawlike yellow of his fellows. He strode boldly up to Darlantan and raised a shimmering object in his hands, a thing so beautiful that the mighty dragon all but gasped in astonishment.

  It was a necklace of links, a gently chiming chain as perfectly brilliant as Aurican’s, save that it was made out of pure, gleaming silver.

  Darlantan lowered his head in imitation of Auri’s gesture of acceptance, allowing the elf to place the chain over his head. He felt the weight against his scales as he rose and allowed the chain to jangle down the length of his long neck. Now he, too, felt the adornment of the elves, and his earlier envy was replaced by a twinge of shame.

  “Can you tell them I am grateful?” he asked Aurican, looking with renewed interest into the elf’s deep, emerald-colored eyes.

  “I will tell them for now, but soon you will know their language as well.” The gold made a declaration in that lilting, musical tongue—it wasn’t primitive at all, Dar realized—and the elves bowed toward Darlantan. The dark-haired male who had bestowed the silver necklace made a soft, pleasant-sounding reply.

  “Now they invite us to journey into the forest with them,” Aurican explained. “They were just about to take me there when you arrived, but they have extended the invitation to us both.”

  Darlantan eyed the woodlands skeptically. “The trunks are close together, Cousin,” he said. “How do you intend to pass? Magic?”

  Aurican smiled slyly, rearing back on his haunches and placing his foreclaws onto the golden chain. “You are closer to the truth than you might think. Of course, spell magic was lost with our mothers, but we have within us the means.”

  Abruptly Darlantan wasn’t looking at Aurican, but at a tall, handsome elf who stood in the place where the gold dragon had been. The elf threw back his head and laughed, and only then did Dar recognize his nestmate.

  “That is magic!” he gasped. It was strange, even incomprehensible, to try to understand that this little creature was actually the mighty Aurican!

  “You must join us,” the gold dragon in the body of the elf said, bowing low and sweeping a hand before Darlantan.

  “But …”

  Unwilling to appear ignorant before Aurican and his pets, Darlantan reared back in the posture his golden nestmate had assumed, but nothing happened.

  “Perhaps it is a gift only of gold dragons,” Dar suggested, trying to conceal his disappointment.

  “No, I suspect that it will work for you—albeit not for our nestmates of the brown metals. You must form a picture of your new shape,” Aurican encouraged. “Choose what you will. I became an elf, in honor of our hosts. But any form is available. Just be sure it’s something that will fit between the trees,” he added with a grin.

  And then Darlantan knew. His claws closed around the chain, and he felt the world expanding. In a heartbeat, he stood among the elves, securely balanced on his clawless feet. His stature was broader than the elves, though he was their equal in height.

  “Very appropriate,” Aurican declared with a pleased nod.

  Darlantan touched the whiskers that cascaded from his chin, strangely delighted by the arcane transformation and pleased that he could make his shape a tribute to Patersmith. A moment later the sturdy figure of the tutor, his gnarled hand still touching the silver chain, followed the file of elves into the forest shadows.

  Chapter 6

  Restmates

  3553 PC

  Darlantan coiled along the crest of the high Kharolis, content to allow the sun to glisten from his silver scales
. He felt the warm breeze of summer ruffling his wings and tugging at the mane that had begun to bristle around his jowls. Lord of all within his sight, the silver dragon was pleased to reflect on his own invincibility.

  The Valley of Paladine was a sprawling landscape below, vast and peaceful, but somehow confining as well. Darlantan realized the great mountain-flanked vale was shrinking in the same way the grotto had seemed to diminish so many centuries ago.

  He knew it would soon be time to move, to once more fly toward new corners of Krynn. Of course, he had often explored the regions beyond the valley. He and his nestmates were well known among the griffons, Ravenclaw’s descendants, who dwelt in the High Kharolis, as well as to the elves of the vast woodlands. Touching the curling bell of a ram’s horn that Darlantan wore on his silver chain, he thought with deep affection of one elf in particular.

  As to his nestmates, in the last dozen centuries, the growing dragons had spread far from the grotto. Smelt had learned a multitude of languages and become a fixture among mankind. Dar knew that many a city or town considered the benevolent brass dragon to be its special benefactor. Whole realms had been freed from the threat of ogres or lizard men, and Smelt was welcomed far and wide, feted to feasting and drinking whenever he appeared, and always finding partners for the conversation that was as important as food to the sociable brass dragon.

  Burll and Blayze had taken more solitary paths. The bronze male had at last grown tired of the competition with his more quick-witted brothers. Burll had disappeared once, more than a thousand winters ago, returning only after many centuries, smelling of brine and fish. Now he spent much of his time in some distant, secret lair, revealing to Darlantan only that he dwelt beside an unimaginably huge tract of water.

  Blayze had become increasingly irritable, taunting and fighting his nestmates relentlessly. He had killed many of the griffons of the High Kharolis, so that even Darlantan, who had always gotten along with the hawk-faced predators, had ultimately lost track of Ravenclaw’s clan. Finally, after an acid-spitting incident in the grotto itself, Aurican, Darlantan, and Smelt had together chased the hot-tempered copper away from the high ridges. Occasionally one of the others encountered him in the Kharolis foothills, but always the copper dragon had fled these meetings, using his superior quickness to escape.

  Certainly Blayze, too, had established a secret lair and probably gathered treasures there. Darlantan and the others would have welcomed him back at any time—in fact, the silver dragon couldn’t even recall the nature of the argument that had resulted in Blayze’s hasty exile. But it had been a hundred or more winters since the other nestmates had so much as seen their copper kin-dragon.

  The females of all the metals had remained close to the grotto, bringing Patersmith morsels of food and dwelling in the ancestral cavern of their kind. The last time Darlantan had visited was scores of winters ago, and then he had been surprised to discover his sisters, under the guidance of Kenta and Oro, gathering metals and gems with which they were expanding the size of the nest.

  For their own parts, Darlantan and his golden brother had taken to spending much time in the woods. Assuming the bodies of the elf and the bearded sage, they had dwelt for long seasons among the sylvan folk. Aurican, in fact, spent most of his time in the guise of his elven body, speaking, meditating, and debating with the elders of the clans. Together Auri and the elves had composed ballads and epics that they delighted in re-creating, much to Darlantan’s boredom. The silver dragon enjoyed the elves, but he could never remain on the ground for long periods of time. As always, the glory of flight, the spread of his silver wings in the uncontested skies, was the thing that truly brought him to life.

  The elves who had most appealed to the silver dragon were the clans of the dark-haired Elderwild, the tribes that refused to gather in the towns favored by the golden elves. The silver dragon had befriended one of the wild elves, a stoic warrior named Kagonos, and now his thoughts stirred with the memory of that friendship, a suggestion that he should fly to the east and seek out the brave in his forest haunts. Again Darlantan touched the ram’s horn, thinking of its mate, borne by Kagonos, knowing that with the horn, the wild elf could summon him if he needed the dragon’s aid. It was a symbol, a mark of the deep bond between them.

  A strange scent came to him on the breeze, a spoor subtle and alluring. His head came up, and immediately he detected a flash of silver along the lower slope of the mountain. It was Kenta, and the female dragon’s scent carried a shockingly powerful allure. She looked at him with a sidelong glance and then, tail twitching, darted away. Urgent emotion thrummed within Darlantan—not fear, nor even alarm, but instead a kind of tingling excitement he had never before experienced.

  Instinctively he pounced toward that metallic gleam, racing down the mountainside in a series of gliding leaps, then springing upward, seizing a crest of rock with his forefeet, pulling himself through a tight turn. He raced over the ground with explosive, catlike leaps, reluctant to take to the air for fear he would be unable to turn quickly to pursue his evasive quarry in a new direction.

  But Kenta was crouching there, waiting for him. Head down, wings buzzing excitedly at his sudden approach, she leapt upward and glided away, trilling laughter in the air behind her … and leaving a trace of that wondrous, intoxicating elixir that had aroused Darlantan from his rest atop the mountain.

  The silver male flew in earnest, body arrowed, long, powerful wing strokes quickly narrowing the gap between himself and the silver female. In fact, he gained on her so fast that—despite the game she had apparently initiated—he had the clear impression she wasn’t actively trying to get away. Kenta’s flight took her over white-capped peaks, around the ridges of lofty divides, and finally above a serenely rolling glacier piled deep with fresh, powdery snow.

  The alluring silver female veered around a looming shoulder of rock, making a surprisingly sharp turn that Darlantan was unable to follow. He brushed the mossy knoll, but scrambled for footing and once again hurled himself into the air. The force of his pounce sent him soaring after Kenta, overtaking her in a quick rush of flapping wings.

  Just before he caught her, she rolled, gliding on her back and rising before the diving Darlantan. He reared but was unable to avoid her as her jaws gaped and she hissed a frosty cloud of musk into Darlantan’s face. The scent drove him further into his frenzy, and he reached for her with all four legs, even spreading his wings to try to clutch her to him.

  The two silver bodies clashed with violent force, but there was a subtle grace to their entangling. Kenta’s tail wrapped around Darlantan’s, pulling him close. Instinctively he reciprocated, coiling his neck about hers, clawing at her silver scales in an attempt to merge the two mighty forms. Wings thrashed and scales gleamed and shimmered, frothing through the snow. Together the two large serpents skidded into the sloping glacier, tumbling down the incline in an avalanche of loose snow and flailing silver coils. Dragonwings beat rhythmically, driving up great drifts of powdery whiteness, and the pair rolled over and over, sliding for an eternity down the vast, rippling incline.

  They reached the bottom and lay together as waves of loose, light snow cascaded around them. Still entangled, Darlantan shook his head, clearing away enough snow that they could breathe. His glistening brow was draped with tufts of frost as he looked over the surroundings, secure for the moment that the skies and snowfields were free of danger. Content with the icy landscape, he lowered his head to lie beside Kenta in the depression they had worn in the snow.

  When next he awakened, spring had warmed the glacier, melting the loose powder into slush. Kenta was stirring beneath him, and stiffly, awkwardly, Darlantan dug them out of the deep trough their bodies had impressed into the snow. He shook himself, sending a cascade of ice crystals flying, and blinked at the bright skyline. He knew where he was, but how he had gotten here remained a hazy memory.

  The draft of Kenta’s wings pulled his attention around, and he watched the silver female take wing
with serene, aloof grace. She made no move to look backward as she flew toward the mountains on the northern horizon. Restlessly Darlantan took to the air himself, choosing to fly in a southeasterly direction, possessed of an urge to find Aurican again.

  Many winters had come and gone since last he had spent time at his golden nestmate’s side, but even so, it wasn’t hard to know where to look. Flying steadily, Darlantan soon left the mountains behind. He enjoyed the sight of the woodland blanketing the landscape below. A layer of treetops, lush and green in the ripeness of early summer, stretched to all sides, fading into the distant flatlands. He knew from earlier reconnaissance that this forest extended from the Kharolis Mountains to the glaciers in the south, the jagged Khalkists to the east, and countless leagues to the north, until the forestlands gradually merged into the plains.

  Now, as he crossed over a broad river of clear aquamarine waters, his eyes were attracted by something in the distance, a bright image that broke the serene perfection of the forest. Soon he discerned spires, like giant, leafless tree trunks jutting high from a vast clearing. These towers were made of metal and shiny crystal, and it was the reflection of sunlight from these surfaces that had first drawn his eye.

  Closer still, Darlantan saw that many elves labored in this clearing, bustling like ants with blocks of stone, sluices of water, and panels of glimmering metal or clear crystal. Only as he saw other elves working at the forest’s edge with axe and chisel did he perceive the whole truth: The elves had created this clearing on purpose and were actively removing a great swath of formerly pastoral woodland.

  Indeed, much had already been changed. Darlantan flew low, ignoring the waves of welcome from elven watchmen, gliding over an expanse of carefully formed ponds and bright gardens scored by paths of crushed white marble. Figures walked along these paths or gathered in sheltered groves around ponds and fountains, and the silver dragon knew instinctively that he would find Aurican here.