The History of Krynn: Vol I

by Dragon Lance

  “Sthenn!” Duranix bellowed. “Stay and fight!”

  The old beast continued his plodding progress toward land, still more than a league away. “Not today, little friend,” he wheezed. “Not... today!”

  Duranix tore after his fleeing foe. So intent was he on the chase that he didn’t notice a second fleet of paddle craft just below his right wing. At a range of a hundred paces, eight vessels flung their firepots. On converging courses, the pots collided directly beneath the bronze dragon.

  The shock of the blast flipped him upside down. Sulfurous fumes filled his chest. He plunged to the water and struck hard, headfirst.

  The impact stunned him. He was conscious for a few moments, feeling something encircle his neck, sensed he was moving through the water, being towed. Then he blacked out.

  Time passed. The sun climbed higher, its heat thinning the early morning clouds. Blue reclaimed the wide sky. Sea birds, leery at first of the enormous creature beached on their turf, slowly came out of hiding and began to wheel and dive for food again.

  Duranix awoke slowly, slitting his eyes against the blinding brightness of sky. He lay on his back in the surf, wings extended but buried in wet sand. His tail drifted side to side with the motion of the tide. Cold seawater gurgled in his ears.

  He raised his head, and the web of fiber lines wound around his neck snapped and fell away. Having stunned him, the paddle crafts had wrapped him in a stout net, towed him ashore, and hastened away. Why they didn’t try to harm him further he couldn’t guess.

  The ocean was dotted with wreckage – broken timbers, oars, the shattered remains of boats. Underneath the pervasive smell of sulfur and niter was the tang of burned flesh. Whether his, Sthenn’s, or that of the warring creatures on the boats, he couldn’t tell.

  Rolling onto all fours, Duranix shook off the netting and damp sand. A look up and down the beach showed him Sthenn was gone, so he set about putting himself to rights so he could resume the chase.

  Each wing had to be preened of sand. If the sand was allowed to work its way under his scales, it would cause painful sores. The preening was a cautious operation, requiring concentration. His claws and horns were hard and sharp, and his wing membranes were delicate.

  When he was finished, Duranix spread his wings a bit to dry them. He strode up the shoreline to the highest dune. From this vantage, he saw a green line of trees inland. More importantly, he saw Sthenn’s narrow, three-toed claw prints. The old dragon had come ashore here, and his prints led directly toward the distant forest. He must have been hurt if he wasn’t flying – or could this be another of his endless tricks to put Duranix off guard?

  It scarcely mattered. Duranix had no choice but to follow his tormentor’s mincing tracks. The trees were still a long way off when he found the ancient stone marker.

  It stood in the midst of the dunes, a sandstone column carved flat on four sides. It was old and weathered, and its base was askew, causing the tall column to lean. Strange figures were carved in deep relief on all four faces.

  Duranix started to walk around the column but paused. The carvings caught his attention.

  The reliefs showed a crowd of two-legged beings (vaguely like humans or elves) swarming ant-like up the side of a mountain. They toppled large round objects – boulders perhaps – off a cliff while others of their kind fought a pair of large, four-legged creatures with long, serpentine necks.

  Duranix stared hard at the worn images. Were those wings folded on the creatures’ backs? Was he looking at some kind of memorial to a battle fought against dragons?

  The shrieks of gulls spiraling overhead broke his contemplation. With Sthenn still roaming free, this was no time to puzzle over artifacts. The green dragon’s trail led without deviation to the forest; he must be seeking the kind of cover he knew best.

  Duranix flexed his wings experimentally. They were dry and free of sand. He leaped into the air.

  From this height, he could see the woods were wide and dense, separating the beach from a series of cliffs beyond. The escarpment was composed of a light blue stone, making it hard to distinguish from the hazy sky.

  When he reached the trees, Duranix spread his powerful senses wide in search of Sthenn. Immediately, he picked up the scent of a dragon – but, surprisingly, it wasn’t Sthenn.

  The old wyrm exuded a putrescence Duranix knew as well as he knew the smell of Amero (poor soft-skinned humans could never get truly clean). This new scent was certainly draconic, but metallic and clean. There was something else, a difference he couldn’t quite fathom. The closer he came to the escarpment, the more pronounced the distracting scent became.

  Extending his rear claws, Duranix landed on a ledge of blue stone. It was a pretty species of slate, only slightly darker than a summer sky. He put his back to the plateau and studied the forest below. He had an excellent view of the land, and in that position he remained, unmoving as the stones around him, while the sun passed its zenith and began its descent.

  Many animals and birds passed beneath his gaze, but not Sthenn. Puzzling. The green dragon’s presence should have disturbed the local animals greatly, yet he saw little sign of it. Predatory birds circled in the warm air. Tree-climbing rodents cavorted among the leafy branches. Clouds of insects swarmed over the narrow stream flowing through the heart of the woods. The largest beast Duranix saw was a kind of long-legged pig, with a ruff of stiff, white fur around its neck and a pair of vicious-looking tusks. About half the size of a wild ox, the ruffed pigs left the shade of the trees in twos and threes to dip their long snouts in the stream. If Sthenn was around, he was being extremely discreet. The pigs looked completely untroubled.

  They also looked quite tasty. Duranix’s stomach rumbled. His last meal had been a school of leaping sailfish two days ago, and he found his attention fixed by the prowling pigs.

  Then came that feeling again, the sensation another dragon was near. A broad shadow flashed overhead. Acting purely on instinct, he sprang straight up at the shadow. He had only a glimpse of bright scales and slender wings before he slammed into the belly of another dragon.

  The stranger bleated in surprise. Duranix knew immediately it was not Sthenn. He tried to disentangle himself but was firmly held by the other. Together they dropped from the sky and crashed into the forest. The spicy, resinous smell of fractured cedar filled the air.

  Powerful clawed feet kicked at Duranix’s chest. Nothing like the vicious attacks he’d weathered from Sthenn, they still hurt. Tired, frustrated, and ravenously hungry, Duranix lost his temper. He seized the other dragon’s hind legs, reared, and flung him into the trees.

  There was a glint of bright metal. The dragon hit the cedars and flattened them. Rolling over several times, the stranger came quickly to his feet.

  Duranix blinked, his eyelids clicking down and up several times. The stranger was not a he but a she – a bronze dragon, smaller than himself.

  She shook off the effects of the crash and faced him, back arched like an enormous wildcat, horns, spines, and barbels rigid with fright and fury. Extending her neck, she opened her jaws and hissed.

  He was surprised, having expected her to loose a bolt of lightning. Assuming a passive stance, he relaxed his coiled muscles. “Greetings.” he said. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

  “Greetings!” She growled angrily, deep in her throat. She was half Duranix’s weight and two-thirds his length. Thin, too, but well muscled. Her scales were bright and well buffed.

  When he failed to get any further response, Duranix asked, slowly and deliberately, “What is your name?”

  The female bronze finally lowered her back and raised her head. “Blusidar. Blusidar is my name.”

  “I’m sorry I attacked you, Blusidar. I mistook you for an enemy. There is a green dragon in your territory, a creature of great evil. I’ve pursued him around the world to this spot. When you flew past me, I thought you were him.”

  She stepped over broken tree stumps, carefully keeping her distanc
e from the imposing stranger. “I see no dragon but you, and I did not see you till you struck.”

  She was young, Duranix realized. Very young. Still, she was the first bronze dragon he’d encountered since the death of his mother and clutchmates many centuries ago. In his travels around familiar lands, he’d met other dragons: the loquacious brass Gilar, who dwelt in the far eastern desert, and the copper twins Suphenthrex and Salamantix, who lived on twin mountains northeast of the Valley of the Falls. Other dragons he had known had dwelt on the borders of the great savanna, but one by one, they’d been killed or driven off by Sthenn.

  “This green dragon – his name is Sthenn – is here somewhere close by, hiding,” Duranix told Blusidar. “I wounded him in the sea and I tracked him ashore. You’re not safe with him here.”

  She pondered that for a moment, then asked, “What? I am safe with you?”

  “Certainly!” he said indignantly. She flinched when his voice rose. Schooling himself to calm, Duranix added, “What land is this? Who dwells here besides you?”

  “This land is the land. I know no other,” Blusidar said. “Came you through the Zenzi?” At his obvious lack of understanding, she explained, “Zenzi – walk on two legs, like birds, but have no feathers. So big.” She held her claw off the ground at about the same height as a human child.

  “These Zenzi, do they use large boats to cross the sea?” he asked, and she nodded. “Then I saw them, fighting others or among themselves. Who are they?”

  Haltingly, pushing the limits of her vocabulary, Blusidar told him about the Zenzi and this, her homeland.

  It was an island, quite large, with a ring of blue stone mountains in the center. She was the only dragon on the island, though once there had been others. The Zenzi had confined the dragons to the island long, long ago.

  “How is that possible?” Duranix demanded. “Creatures no bigger than humans imposing their will on dragons? I don’t believe it!”

  “Not big dragons like me, you.” She cupped her foreclaws around an imaginary sphere. “Vree-al.”

  Duranix was startled. The sound Blusidar made was the one clutching females used to comfort their unhatched offspring.

  She continued, relating an amazing tale that explained the weathered column he’d seen on the beach. Ages ago, the Zenzi had dumped fertile dragon eggs on this remote island. After hatching, the dragons grew up in isolation and ignorance, having no idea of the wider world beyond the shores of their island. Over time, a few had taken a chance and flown away, certain there must be more to their world than this island. None had ever returned, and the rest had lived and died here. Blusidar was the last.

  “You go,” she said, finishing her story “This place is mine. You go back where you came.”

  She seemed unmoved by the fact that Duranix’s very existence confirmed a wider world beyond her tiny island.

  “I shall leave,” Duranix said, “but not until I find Sthenn. If I leave him here, he’ll kill you.”

  Blusidar backed away, keeping her dagger-shaped pupils fixed on Duranix. “Then go soon. Too many dragons are trouble. Find your Green and go!”

  She slipped between the closely growing trees and disappeared. Duranix advanced a few steps. Pigeons rose in a cloud from the trees, marking the fleeing bronze’s path.

  Something hard jabbed his foreclaw. Duranix lifted his leg and saw a bright bronze scale embedded in the trunk of a shattered cedar. He worked it loose with his talons. One of Blusidar’s. Unlike his own scales, which were large, curved, and shaped like an acorn in silhouette, Blusidar’s were flatter and almost circular. The edges were smooth, another sign she was less than a century old. From the scale wafted the clean, bright smell he’d sensed while flying over the island.

  The image of Blusidar staring fearfully up at him, knowing he was larger and stronger, yet facing him with foolish bravery, caused Duranix to close a powerful claw around the scale.

  Here was one dragon Sthenn would not harm, he vowed. He would not allow it.

  Chapter 4

  Dawn arrived in awesome silence. A light morning mist filled the low places below the walls of Yala-tene and hung over the clear waters of the Lake of the Falls. Despite the early hour, the parapets were lined with people – somber, gray-faced, as stony as the wall on which they stood.

  On the valley floor, lines of horsemen were deployed in a great arc around the besieged town, from the rocky flats below the waterfall to the now empty ox pens on the north end of Yala-tene. In places the line was only a single rider deep, but they were there, armed and ready.

  A small party of raiders rode out from their camp by the river, making straight for the western entrance to the town. In their wake came a dozen raiders on foot, four of them bearing a litter on their shoulders. Showing off their best horsemanship, the approaching raiders wheeled about just out of throwing range. The morning sun flashed off their purloined weapons and armor.

  Four raiders put ram’s horns to their lips and blew a flat, wavering note that carried from one end of the valley to the other. A single man on a pale gray horse rode forth a few steps from the group, then stopped. Like most of the raiders, he was masked – his was an elaborate creation fashioned from the skull of some horned beast and adorned with leather flaps and paint. He removed his skull-mask, revealing a surprisingly youthful face and light brown hair.

  “People of Arku-peli!” he called. “I am Zannian, chief of this band! Do you hear me?” A shower of stones spattered the ground a pace in front of his horse.

  His lips thinned in a grim smile. “I see you do. I have words for your headman! Bring him out, so I may speak with him!”

  The crowd atop the wall stirred, and two people shouldered to the front. One was an elderly man with thinning gray hair and a long nose. The other was a woman half his age with chestnut hair drawn back in a thick braid. She leaned on a spear.

  “Say what you need to say to me!” the woman called.

  “Begone, woman! I will speak only to your Arkuden!”

  “Begone yourself then, butcher. The Arkuden is too busy to waste words on you!”

  Puffing under their load, the litter bearers arrived alongside Zannian. Seated in the contraption of hide and poles was a woman of forty summers, though she looked much older. Her fair hair was liberally streaked with gray, a shade reflected in her dark, flinty gaze, and her face was deeply lined. Once a warrior herself, she traveled now by litter because her right leg ended at the knee, the limb lost years before to a shattering injury.

  “Go back, mother,” Zannian said to her under his breath. “You’re not needed here.”

  “I want to see their faces,” Nacris replied. “I want to be here when they admit Amero is dead!”

  “Bring out the Arkuden!” Zannian shouted once more. “Bring him out, if any of you want to survive this fight!”

  The woman and the elderly man conferred, then the old man called down in a quavering voice, “The Arkuden has been wounded. He can’t yet stand on his injured leg. Speak to us, raider. We will carry your words to him.”

  Nacris pushed herself up on her hands, screaming, “Show us his corpse, you liars! We know he’s dead! I want to see the work done by my Jade Men!”

  Furious, Zannian leaned down and shoved the crippled woman back into her seat.

  “Meddling old vulture! Shut your mouth!” To the men holding up her conveyance he harked, “Take Nacris back to camp!”

  “No! I deserve to see his blood! Stop, men! I killed him, Zan! You couldn’t do it, but I could! Stop right now! Take me back —”

  Wary as they were of the formidable Nacris, the litter bearers were more afraid of their leader. They continued down the hill with the woman ranting at them all the way.

  “Listen to me, foolish people!” Zannian declared loudly. “This is your last chance! By Moonmeet, we’ll have the means to overcome your wall! When that happens, no one in Arku-peli will be spared! Do you hear? You’ll all die! Tell that to your wounded Arkuden – you have u
ntil the morning of Moonmeet to yield. After that, no mercy!”

  In answer to his ultimatum, many villagers on the wall turned their backs and lifted their kilts in contempt.

  Zannian laughed despite himself and donned his skull-mask again. He rode back to his waiting captains. The eldest of them, Hoten son of Nito, greeted him.

  “Any sign of the Arkuden?” the elder man asked.

  “No. Mother’s assassins may well have succeeded.”

  Another raider said, “She promised they would submit if their Arkuden died.”

  “My mother says many things. You’d be wiser to listen to me, not her.”

  The raider chief and his captains rode back to their band. Hoten pulled the skullcap of bear and panther teeth from his head and rubbed a hand over his sweaty pate.

  “I don’t like it, Zan,” he said. “What if the mud-toes don’t give up in time? Will you really set a pack of ogres on them?”

  “Assuming that rogue Harak returns with any, yes.” Zannian glared at Hoten’s shocked expression. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”

  “But ogres, Zan! How can we ally ourselves with such monsters?”

  Zannian’s laugh was as sharp as a bronze sword. “Are they any worse than a green dragon?”

  He kicked his horse’s flanks and cantered away. Raiders eager for his favor followed him, leaving Hoten behind. The camp by the river soon rang with Nacris’s shrill denunciations, punctuated by her son’s deeper-voiced replies.

  *

  By the time the first mountain peaks appeared on the western horizon, Beramun was beside herself with worry. So many days had passed since she’d left the Valley of the Falls – days without word of Zannian’s raiders or the fate of Yala-tene. She chafed at the deliberate pace Karada set for her band. When she complained at their slowness, Karada told her the horsed contingent couldn’t leave behind the unmounted members. If the band became strung out, both the head and tail of the line would be vulnerable to raider or Silvanesti attack.