The Dragons

by Doug Niles

  “He showed my ancestor mercy once,” replied the descendant of Ravenclaw simply. “I am grateful.”

  “Patersmith would be proud,” murmured Aurican, not surprised. Leaving the griffon wondering what he meant, the gold dragon turned back to the east. He flew for many hours until, near sunset, he found himself above the two armies.

  The battlefield was a scar across the greensward below, a great wound in the world that glistened with flesh and blood, with the debris of broken weapons and punctured bodies. Fires blazed in many places, where war machines had been overtaken and put to the torch by victorious elves, or the ogres’ supply wagons had been captured and subsequently destroyed.

  Aurican dived lower, wishing he could celebrate the victory, could share the joy that must be rampant in the elven camps by now. But there were good reasons why the gold dragon felt a lingering sense of melancholy. For one thing, Crematia had eluded him. For another, he was deeply concerned about his silver nestmate.

  The gold dragon settled into the midst of the elven encampment, maintaining his true form as Silvanos and his chief general, Balif, came forward to greet him.

  “What of the blues?” inquired Aurican with precipitate haste. His concern for his ancient nestmate forced him to set aside proper patience for formalities.

  In reply, Silvanos pulled forth a stone of deepest turquoise. The large sphere pulsed with vitality as the hateful spirits of dragons thrummed and struggled within.

  “There were but three of them left,” explained the elven patriarch. “My Elderwild cousin regained the stone barely in time. Quithas, astride his griffon, returned it to me here. When the three blue dragons swept downward to aid the battle on the ground, they approached me carelessly, and I was able to capture their spirits in the stone.”

  “Darlantan …?” Auri felt a sense of bleak despair, knowing that his silver brother would have given his life to prevent the blues from getting through. “Did he know that you had the stone … or …?”

  “He fought throughout the morning, killing two of the blues before they could reach us. But, no, he did not know that Kagonos had regained the gem.”

  “Where is he?”

  Silvanos pointed toward the riverbank beyond the camp. Night’s shadows had stretched across the plain, but in the glow of firelight, Auri saw the grief in his old friend’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry. You had best go now if you hope to speak with him.”

  The elven patriarch’s words were a murmur, barely whispered through the evening breeze, following the gold dragon who had already taken wing.

  Aurican flew fast and low, and quickly he found the battered silver form stretched in the soft mud flats of the riverbank. Darlantan lay beside the broad flowage, the Vingaard, that drained this whole vast plain. Now the mighty head rose stiffly as the golden dragon swept through the night skies, gliding toward his nestmate.

  Then Aurican was at Darlantan’s side, the serpentine body of pure gold coiling protectively around the battered silver flesh. With a glimmer of change, almost invisible in the starlight, the gilded serpent became again the kindly elven sage. Darlantan sighed as the hand, soft and soothing with the wisdom of millennia, gently stroked the gouged and burned scales at the base of his neck.

  “The mud is cooling balm, and it helps to soften the pain,” the silver dragon admitted, allowing his head to settle once again to the ground. Still, Aurican knew that the soft dirt could do nothing to ease the various wounds gouged into the mighty serpentine body.

  “Did … did the blues reach Silvanos?” Darlantan asked.

  “No, my cousin. You killed two of them. And by the time the other three turned their attentions to the ground, Kagonos and his wild elves had regained the Bluestone. It was returned to Silvanos in time for him to capture the rest of the Dark Queen’s wyrms.”

  “Crematia … as well?”

  “Alas, no. I chased her across the plain, and through realms of smoke and sky, but she managed to elude me. The best I can claim is that she has gone to ground again. We can only hope that, with the loss of all her kin, she will remain aloof from the affairs of Krynn.”

  “She does not know of the grotto, the eggs?” whispered Darlantan, suddenly stiffening.

  “They are safe,” said Aurican. “Already some of the eggs are showing signs of motion. I understand that the females have their eye on a silver. They expect it will be the first of the hatchlings to emerge.”

  Darlantan nodded, trying to absorb this suggestion of a future destiny.

  “My son …” Darlantan’s voice trailed away with the wind, but Aurican sensed his nestmate’s joy at the thought of his own offspring coming forth into the world. The gold took some comfort from this knowledge, finding that it helped him to ignore the cruel wounds.

  “Kenta is there, watching?” the silver serpent asked, his tongue flicking between his long fangs as he stirred weakly in the mud.

  “Of course.”

  “My son … the first of the hatchlings,” Darlantan declared dreamily. “He shall be named Callak. Here … please see that he has this when he comes of age.”

  The silver wing shifted, revealing the curling ram’s horn and its chain of fine links. Aurican gently lifted the artifact, cradling it reverently in his two hands.

  “It is done, my cousin,” declared the gold dragon with the body of the ancient elf. Drops of warm wetness trickled onto Darlantan’s brow and snout as Auri failed to restrain his weeping.

  Darlantan’s eyes turned upward, toward the dark vault of the skies. He saw two moons there, a circle of red and another of white. Behind them trailed an orb of blackness, visible only as it blotted out the light of the stars.

  “Even the heavens mark the passing of war,” he said softly, “for they have placed their lights in our sky.”

  “Those moons mark more than the passing of war,” Aurican said. Even through the haze of his wounds, Dar realized that his brother spoke very seriously. “They are the tombs of nothing less than gods—Lunitari, Solinari, and Nuitari.”

  “What gods are these?” Darlantan, who knew of few deities other than their own Platinum Father and his antithesis, the Queen of Darkness, asked.

  “These were the three gods that gave magic to the world—the trio I visited with the brother mages. It was they who gave us the dragongems, that we might battle the scourge of the Dark Queen’s dragons,” said Auri regretfully, shaking his head in despair. “They are being punished by the greater gods for their transgression, though that transgression gave us our means for winning this war.”

  “I will join them soon,” Darlantan said, once again yielding to that dreamy sense of departure. Then apparently something fought to bring his attention back to the present, and he forced himself to raise his head, to focus the increasingly vague center of his mind.

  “Here,” he said weakly, lifting his wing to reveal the three shards of moon that had tumbled to the ground with him.

  “But how did these …?” The gold dragon looked in wonder, shaking his head as he struggled to accept the reality of the stony fragments.

  “The final battle took me … far,” Darlantan explained. “Even to what I now see are these godmoons. The lightning of the blues blasted the shards loose from the very bedrock of the spheres.”

  “And these pieces …?”

  “They tumbled back to Krynn with me … but now I give them to you. Or perhaps I give them to the future.” The silver head was upraised, the voice stronger than before. Those deep yellow eyes glowed, compelling the gold dragon to hear and obey as Darlantan gestured to the three large stones. One was as black as the encroaching night, another silver-white, while the third was as slickly red as fresh blood.

  Aurican stood upright then, and in a shimmering of golden scales, he returned to his serpentine body. “I understand,” he said softly.

  Crouching over the stones, Auri reached out with open jaws. His tongue snaked forward and scooped up the black shard, quickly drawing it into the gaping maw. Tos
sing his head high, the gold dragon gulped down the stone, an awkward bulge rippling the shimmering scales along the length of the sinuous neck. With swift stabs of his mighty head, Aurican took the white, and finally the red segments of stone, swallowing them after the black.

  “Good,” Darlantan said as the silver head once again settled to the mud. “It is nearly finished. But it is time for you to fly.”

  “Soon.” The great golden form settled beside the ravaged body of his ancient nestmate, and in silence, the great serpents felt the kinship of touch, a sensation familiar to them over scores of centuries.

  “Your elf is coming,” Aurican said some time later. Darlantan couldn’t see, couldn’t raise his head, but the scent of Kagonos came to him on the evening breeze. In the distance, the camp of Silvanos rang with cheers and celebration.

  “I will speak with him alone before I go,” Dar whispered. “Now, fly back to our grotto, my brother, and have an eye for my wyrmlings as well as your own.”

  “You have my promise that I shall do that, and I shall compose a ballad that will live for the ages: the tale of brave Darlantan’s last battle.”

  “I think I would like that, to have a ballad. And now it is time.”

  With a nod and a last gentle touch to the silver-scaled neck, Aurican reared tall and shimmered in the pale starlight. Golden wings arced outward, scooped down to compress the air, and then he was gone, vanishing into the sky before the painted figure of the wild elf emerged from the darkness.

  Chapter 15

  Legacy

  3357 PC

  Aurican’s chest swelled with warm power, a fulfilling goodness unique in the gold dragon’s experience. He felt an impulse to breathe out, to spew an explosion of gas that would unleash this invigorating, barely contained power of magic within him.

  Instead, he clenched his jaws and felt the pressure rise, a glow of sublime might swelling him, bearing his golden body through midnight skies. His wings carried him higher and higher, parting the cool, dark air, gleaming with shining brightness under the night skies. At first, he passed through wispy clouds, an ethereal atmosphere that masked the vast plain of Vingaard below and obscured the soft starlight glowing above. But still the golden wings drove downward, and Aurican rose, splitting the mists, shimmering like a metallic ghost in the formless space. The cool, moist air felt good against his wings and his scales, and droplets of water glowed like gems against the metallic sheen of his body.

  And then the clouds were a soft blanket below him, rolling crests and swells, shadowy kettles and swales that seemed deceptively solid under the muted light from above. Still the pressure expanded within him, and though the force was great, the feeling was not unpleasant.

  Looking upward, Aurican beheld the three moons in close alignment, rising in the east, preceding the arrival of dawn by many hours. First came crimson Lunitari, then the dark shadow of Nuitari, and finally the brightness of Solinari. The loss of the three magical shards that now seethed within Aurican had left no visible scars, at least none that the gold dragon could see, yet he keenly sensed their influence within him as the magic surged.

  Faster flew Aurican, soaring through the skies like an arrow launched from a monstrous bow. The distant ridge of the High Kharolis came into view as the plains passed away beneath him, as a flight that would normally take him three days was accomplished in the space of a single night. On wings of the gods he glided, serene and aloof, grieving but triumphant.

  With a keen sense of destiny, he dived toward the secret entrance to the Valley of Paladine. He wasted no time coming to rest on the ground, instead flying with deliberate speed through the long entry tunnel, then racing over the still and silent waters of the subterranean lake. Like a golden arrow, he shot through the secret cavern, gliding toward the sacred grotto and its precious trove.

  Only when he reached the rim of rock beyond that sheltered cavern did he come to rest, and even then he paused only long enough to fold his massive wings against his flanks. He crept into the winding passage, smelling the familiar warmth of the grotto. Drawing that presence through his nostrils and into his deep chest, he was overwhelmed with thoughts of Darlantan, and of Smelt, Burll, and Blayze. He knew that he carried the legacy of them all.

  Approaching the nest, he lifted his head, conscious of the metallic females gathered along the cavern walls, watching him with bright, golden eyes. Gold and silver, brass, bronze, and copper dragons, all studied their patriarch as he rose above the precious clutch of eggs. Shifting restlessly, wings fluttering in barely contained agitation, the females rose and crept closer, surrounding Aurican and the nest in a ring of metallic scales and intensely staring eyes.

  Kenta curled protectively around one side of the nest, and Oro framed her silver sister on the other side. Aurican nodded at each of them, then turned his attention to the precious orbs protected within the sheltered confines. Carefully curling his tail behind him, he sat with precise dignity. Only then did he arc his long neck and lift his head to stare at the clutch of metallic spheres, his heart swelling with a sense of profound wonder.

  The pressure within him grew stronger, and Aurican clearly understood what would happen next, yet this understanding did nothing to cool his wonder. The golden jaws spread wide, and Aurican breathed softly, sharing the essence of magic, the power that was a part of every dragon’s being but that, in Aurican, had been expanded and amplified by the effect of the shards of the three moons of magic.

  A glowing mist floated forth, coalescing in the air, seething and roiling with colors that varied from black to silver to red. The gases swirled more rapidly, spiraling about the nest, slowly settling downward, touching the surfaces of the eggs, stroking the metal shells with ethereal fingers. The vapor sparkled with a glimmering wetness, slowly vanishing, as if absorbed by the pulsing, living treasures.

  For a long time, the glow remained, shifting from one egg to another, sometimes bright and focused, other times diffused, but always possessing a vibrant and inherent brilliance that would have shamed any light born of flame or sun. The brightness danced and swayed, cavorting back and forth like a living thing, and when the brilliance faded, it left a lingering aura within the eggs that was perfectly clear to Aurican and the female dragons. The tiny serpents sheltered within those eggs had been blessed by the essence of magic. The enchantment contained in the bodies of the three gods was bestowed upon the young dragons in the breath of their golden patriarch. It settled on the eggs, infusing the shells and the wyrmlings, enchanting them with a power that had been absent for millennia.

  Time, in seasons and then in years, passed while Aurican and the females waited with the serene patience of their kind. Watching and expectant, the great serpents held their attention upon the nest. Beyond the grotto, winters and springs and summers cycled through the High Kharolis in succession, a pattern mounting into the dozens, then the scores.

  Still the eggs glowed, and gradually the brightness increased until the entire grotto was illuminated as under a noonday sun. Very slowly and gradually, several of the eggs began to pulse and shimmer. A silver surface throbbed, and a golden membrane shimmered under the internal pressure of a sharp beak.

  Ultimately the two eggs ruptured, tiny metal newtlings crawling forth. Shaking away the muck of the eggs, clawing each other roughly aside, the dragons struggled toward the edge of the nest. Another egg, a brass, twitched and thrashed, and then several copper spheres began to show signs of movement.

  And then they were coming from everywhere. Enchanted by the breath of Aurican, surrounded by the aura of magic, the next generation of metal dragons poked and pushed their way into the world.

  PART II

  Chapter 16

  Crematia’s Lair

  circa 3000 PC

  The cavern of fire lay deep in the heart of the mountain, beneath an active volcano, with plunging roots descending into a tangled network of seething lava, searing gases, and barren, scorched rock. A vast lake of fire bubbled and surged here, w
aves of liquid lava rumbling and tossing in the grip of an eternal gale, propelled by the regular convulsions of heaving bedrock. From many places across the expanse of molten rock, black pillars of stone rose to merge with a lofty ceiling. Sheer rock walls, melted smooth by eons of infernal heat, surrounded the expanse, broken only by an occasional ledge or outcrop.

  A layer of soot darkened the vast ceiling. Many crevasses and gaps pocked that irregular face of cracked stone, giving vent to the buildup of heat and pressure. Far above, invisible from the huge subterranean chamber, geysers of gas, flame, and ash scarred the landscape in the rugged heart of the Khalkists.

  Yet those external signs had no significance to the great crimson being who coiled, torpid, deep within the hellish cavern. Here Crematia had come to recoup, to heal and to hide in complete safety. She knew that not even Aurican could follow her into this searing environment, and any lesser flesh, such as cloaked man or elf or ogre, would blister away within moments of arrival.

  The red dragon was a tangled, snaky coil gathered along a narrow ledge above the lake of lava. Crematia’s back and wings rested against the cliff wall, and the double lids remained closed over her eyes. The long tail curled back over her feet to end just before her wide nostrils. Those twin apertures flared slightly in a gradual cadence, the only clear proof that the mighty creature still lived.

  Soot and ash had settled over the serpentine shape over the course of a long hibernation. The stuff was a sticky goo that gummed Crematia’s eyelids and encumbered her wings. Yet even that murk couldn’t conceal the vibrant crimson of the dragon’s scales or the blood-red flaps of her massive, folded wings.

  She slept as she had slumbered for hundreds of years. Perhaps it was the lethal heat that drove her into this lethargy, but more likely her evil spirit needed time to restore itself following the wretched conclusion of her initial campaign. While she slumbered, her body healed the wounds inflicted by the mighty gold dragon, and even at her ancient age, she continued to grow.