The Dragon's Doom (dragonlance)

by Ed Greenwood

  "How many fingers have you left to count with?"

  Blackgult snorted as he handed Craer back the reins of his horse. "Now that's a waste of time, Embra: trying to trade witticisms with Lord Delnbone. I take it the only way of learning how to fight down the plague is the hard way-and through such battles coming to understand the Serpent-magics of the Malady well enough to break them?"

  Embra nodded. "It… changes, each time I contact it. Except…" she frowned, and added slowly, "when the infections have come from the same source. I think. I'm not sure yet, beyond knowing the differences are there and that the Malady seems to alter itself when assailed. So each battle's different, but one learns what to do-the same way armaragors master their weapons, I guess."

  Hawkril swung up into his saddle. "You forgot one small but crucial part of achieving weapon mastery that must prevail through all battleblood practice: staying alive."

  They rode on, practicing staying alive as they crossed the wooded ridges that kept this part of Glarond little visited by outlander merchants. It was a country of small farms, rolling hills, and unmarked lanes-but now held a wearying harvest of corpses and fearfully skulking Glarondans, though overduke-seeking arrows became fewer.

  The five rode even more warily as their trail descended into broader valleys where more prosperous farms sprawled, but not a single cart or traveler did they meet. It was as if the land had been emptied, everyone rushing off downriver to Sirlptar to some festival or other, leaving their farms and shops and smithies to-

  Wolves! As Craer and Hawkril, in the lead, rode around a bend where the trail curved between two hills crowned by gnarled everember trees, three panting farmers sprinted across the road-with a man-sized wolf loping hard on their heels!

  Its jaws were agape, the hindmost farmer only just ahead of them as he crashed through a blackthorn bush, stumbled on uneven ground, and then staggered on.

  Craer sprang from his saddle, right into the wolf's path. The beast blinked at this obliging apparition, shied aside as if to race around it, causing Craer's riderless horse to rear and then bolt, and then whirled in at this new arrival from one side, biting down-onto the procurer's sword, helpfully slammed flat, edge-on, into its jaws. Its strike bowled Craer over, and he rolled over on his shoulders snarling like a wolf himself, putting his boots into the beast's ribs to keep it from pinning him with its weight.

  His toe-blades made it yelp-and then Hawkril was there, bounding from his own saddle to pounce on the beast. Wrapping an arm around its neck, he shoved aside Craer's sword and used his weight to roll the beast over on its back, putting an ungentle knee into those same ribs-the wolf yelped again-and then ramming his armored forearm between its jaws.

  "Forefather!" he yelled in pain, as it bit down hard enough to crush his bracer deep into his skin. "This one's a right monster!"

  Freed from his own rolling on the road, Craer bounded up and reached a hand in to swat the wolf hard on the end of its nose, breaking its bite and sending it into a helpless flurry of mingled sneezing and growling. Hawkril shifted his grip, getting both hands firmly around the shaggy throat, and bent the struggling body back over his knee…

  "I can't-" Embra gasped, as Dwaer-light washed over the struggling bodies. "I can't find a man's mind at all, inside that, that… thing…"

  "Daughter, that's a real wolf," Blackgult snapped, keeping his own firm hold on the Dwaer, "not a plague-borne monster!"

  "Graul!" she gasped in horror, staring down at the wrestling bodies in the road as their horses danced and Blackgult held them back from fleeing by main strength. "What'll I-?"

  Her father gave vent to an exasperated growl of his own, and did something to the Dwaer that made it burn in Embra's grasp. She caught her breath and hissed in pain, dropping it-and as it spun out of her hand to hang in midair, linked to the Golden Griffon's fingertips only by tiny crackling tongues of energy, something like a flash of white lightning burst well beyond the fray, spitting bolts back toward them.

  A moment later, Craer was hurled back between the horses like a small, ragged ball, voice rising in fear as he spat an endless stream of curses. Hawkril crashed into the ditch by the roots of an everember tree, and the wolf was flung the other way.

  "What-?" Tshamarra cried, looking wildly around for Craer as the Stone flickered in midair, raggedly lighting a sudden mist of its own spinning.

  "Use the Dwaer to quiet the horses," Blackgult ordered her, "before the pack beasts get all the way back to Stornbridge and Craer's mount finds the next barony or tries to leap the Silverflow and the mountains beyond, hmm?"

  Tshamarra gaped at him.

  "Use it!" he roared into her face-and she shuddered, gulped, and reached out for the Dwaer… which obligingly drifted toward her hand.

  Embra was already scrambling down from her saddle, the Dwaer forgotten. "Hawk? Hawk!"

  "That's right," Craer announced sarcastically from behind them all, making Tshamarra gasp in relief and evoking a growl from Blackgult as her Dwaer-guidance wavered, "run to see if the man as big as a horse and covered in armor as thick as a castle door is hurt! Don't bother about the acrobatic and incredibly clever Craer Delnbone, hurled away through the trees in great peril to life and limb! Spare not a thought for the brilliant mind that tricked the Tersept of Launsrar out of four horses and the pay-coach they were hitched to! Or the Seneschal of Mrorn Castle of his beautiful daughter! Or"-the trudging procurer caught sight of Tshamarra's startled look, and added hastily-"well, perhaps we'll not mention her, after all. Perhaps we'll dwell instead on…"

  "Catching the horses and belting shut our overclever lips for a change," Blackgult snarled, leaning down from his saddle in a jangling of shifting armorplates to shake the procurer down to his fingertips.

  Nose to nose they regarded each other for a moment, ere the Golden Griffon let go his tight grip on the procurer's throat, dropping Overduke Delnbone back onto the road with the comment, "Besides, you must have relieved Launsrar of his pay-silver whilst spying on him for me, so the chests in that coach should have been mine-and I don't recall seeing one thin coin from them!"

  "Father, stop it!" Embra screamed from the ditch behind Blackgult, bursting into tears. "You may've killed Hawkril-using lightning when he's all in armor, you idiotl-and all you can-"

  One great hand rose from the armored form she was draped around and patted her shoulder reassuringly, before lifting to stroke her hair. "M'lady," a familiar voice rumbled, "I live. I-"

  "Hawkril!" Embra flung her arms around her man, heedless of the bruises his armor dealt her, and let loose a flood of tears.

  "-confess that I can't hear you, just now… my ears seem to be all a-roar… Is the wolf dead?"

  Craer looked up from his examination of the smoking beast in the far ditch, wearing a grin that wouldn't have looked out of place on the face of the wolf itself, and said, "Very." Then the armaragor's words sank in, so he stopped talking, lifted his hand in a salute, and then made the circling, pointing-at-the-ground hand gesture Aglirtan warriors use to denote death.

  Hawkril lifted an arm out of Embra's swarming embrace to return the salute, and Craer's eyes, following the movement, found themselves looking straight into an unfamiliar face in the trees beyond. A dark-eyed, intent man, wearing-Serpent-robes!

  The procurer's favorite dagger was in his hand in an instant, and out of it in the next, with a second fang coming to his fingertips even before he burst into a racing sprint that took him across the road, made Tshamarra's horse rear in startlement and Embra gape at him, and gained the far bank at a dead run, bouncing from tree to tree in his snarling haste to get to where-

  – the Serpent was choking his slow way to the ground, with the hilt of Craer's dagger under his chin and a look of hurt disbelief in his eyes. Craer used his second blade to slash at the man's fingers, spoiling any desperate last spell the priest might have been trying to cast-and then saw a shimmering in the air beyond the tree the priest had been crouching behind.

  T
here was a face in that roiling of the air, but Craer saw only the coldly furious regard of one eye ere the shimmering turned and shrank in on itself, collapsing into-

  Nothing but a spark or two, as Craer savagely plunged his blade through the air where it had been, snarling and hacking, hacking, hacking…

  "Craer?" The voice behind him was Tshamarra's, and it was low but laced with alarm.

  The procurer whirled around, dancing to one side out of long habit in case someone was planning to put a shaft or lance through him as he turned. His lady stood alone, the Dwaer spinning above her left shoulder, shaking her head with a wry smile on her face. "Did you see who it was?"

  Overduke Delnbone shook his head. "A man, not someone I know. He saw me. Another Serpent-priest, of course, probably this one's superior. That was a talking magic, wasn't it?"

  Tshamarra nodded, and then embraced him. As their lips met, his hands tightened on her hips, and she murmured something wordless and held him tighter, lips working against his, until-

  "I can't think any of this is calming the horses," Blackgult observed calmly from just behind the Lady Talasorn.

  She stiffened, and Craer lifted his mouth from hers to give his onetime lord master a rather cold look. Blackgult crooked an eyebrow-and then grinned like a pranksome lad and turned away.

  A startled Craer saw Hawkril smiling at him from the road, and Embra sighing and crooking a beckoning finger. The Dwaer floated to her, and Tshamarra turned swiftly in the procurer's arms, feeling it move-and then relaxed. "Lord Blackgult," she said after a moment, her voice holding a clear warning, "I shall devote some time, as we ride on, to considering what's most suitable to say to you."

  "But of course," the Golden Griffon replied with a courteous bow, as he took the reins of his horse and prepared to mount. "I'd expect nothing less-and my as-yet-unspoken reply awaits you."

  "Oh, thank the Three," Embra observed sarcastically to the cloud-studded sky. " 'Tis wonderful to discover my father, under his armor, fame, and years of swaggering wooing, is just another Craer."

  'Just?" Craer demanded indignantly. "Just? Lady Embra, I begin to regret deeply that I ever broke into your bedchamber to steal your gowns I do!"

  "No," Hawkril rumbled, "you just regret that we got caught. I don't, though." He grinned at his lady, and added unnecessarily, "I can hear again."

  Embra looked at Tshamarra, and the two sorceresses rolled her eyes together.

  "Bowdragons have always been masters of magic," Maelra answered the Spellmaster, a trifle stiffly. "We were archmages in Arlund before there was an Aglirta, kingless or otherwise."

  That earned her his soft smile. "How nice," he purred, in a tone that was anything but. "Yet you'd do well to remember that a tradition of sorcery and mage-lore, while vital to all who work magic, means nothing to the accomplishments of any one practitioner. Do the Wise rule realms, or advise kings daily at court, or dictate policies by their very presence and feared powers?"

  He strode across the room, and then turned and snapped, "No. 'Tis archmages who can truthfully claim such accomplishments. Twas an arch-mage that made this" he added, lifting the Dwaer, "and now an archmage wields it-alongside a baron."

  Those last three words sounded like a hasty addition to Maelra, and no doubt they did to both of her hosts, given the way Ambelter flushed and the Baron Phelinndar strode swiftly to his side, to lay a firm hand on the Dwaer.

  "In short, young Bowdragon, many may prance and take airs in their attempts to gather importance and to cow warriors and petty rulers. But those who work magic know better: beyond our ability to guide and harness the forces we call 'magic,' we're none of us special. We're simply masters of greater or lesser amounts of technique, experience-and power."

  The Spellmaster made the Dwaer flame, causing Phelinndar to flinch and shrink back, favoring Ambelter with a dark look. " This is power, little one," Ambelter continued, ignoring the baron. "With it, we're mighty; but even without it, as men of Aglirta, we've more experience and expertise in the hurling of spells and of their precise consequences and effects than all of your uncles put together. Your sire and his brothers practice magic at leisure, exploring as they will-but the good baron and I confront magic in battle almost daily, and constantly work with it, straining spells to their utmost and reshaping them for new uses. Bowdragons may master magic out of pride, and take the time to hone castings and details we cannot… But if we make a single mistake, 'twill mean our deaths-and yet here we are, very much alive."

  He took a step toward her. "If our paths are to run together for the nonce, 'tis best that you respect our power properly, so obedience to us will become your watchword, and pride in your heritage be set in its rightful place: a comfort to you, but not a throne you can relax upon, or a mirror you can sneer at yourself in. You should rightly take pride only in what you alone have done-and the way to win such pride is to follow our orders, and in that doing come to be someone your uncles will regard with awe."

  The Spellmaster glanced at the baron, a silent signal that brought Phelinndar forward until they stood side by side once more, each with a hand on the Dwaer-Stone. "Watch, and taste just a little of the power we wield," Ambelter added, as the Stone flared into brilliance that should have blinded Maelra, but instead somehow surrounded her with white, gleaming light-as if she was enveloped in clear, interlocking gemstones large enough to meet above her head.

  She gasped in wonder, narrowing her eyes in case this glory might become a flash to blind her-for she'd truly be an obedient slave to these two men then, if they desired her so-but instead each facet around her kindled an inner flame that built until it became a different scene of somewhere in Asmarand. Countrysides seen from castle ramparts, seacoasts where boats wallowed past on rolling waves, mossy and overgrown ruins in deep forests, dark fastnesses lit by flickering torches, busy markets with cobbled streets… all of them windows onto living vistas where birds flew, winds blew, and folk strode and waved and pointed.

  She cried out in pleasure, seeking to peer at several scenes at once. But even as she did everything shimmered, the scenes flowing into their constituent hues, and she heard Ingryl Ambelter cry out-with anger and surprise, not pleasure.

  "What is it?" Baron Phelinndar snapped, his voice somehow distant and echoing.

  Ambelter was closer. Maelra could feel as well as hear his reply as he said, "Another Dwaer, very close by! We must-"

  Then their converse shifted, plunging into a bright but private thread of thoughts, not voices, that Maelra could not follow. She could still feel, though, through the rushing of shifting radiances and flowing, swirling power-and she beheld, across a dimness that could only be a place where the power of the Dwaer was not present, a rising, rushing arc of power akin to what she was caught up in, but somehow subtly different…

  That must be the other Dwaer, or rather its power unleashed-and this, here beside her, rising in urgency and brightness, must be whatever Ambelter and Phelinndar felt they "must" do with their Dwaer to… to…

  Lash out, in a burst of ruby-red and defiant power that shook Maelra with its might even as it thrilled her… clawlike bolts that slashed at that other flood, stabbing across the darkness between like fingers of lightning, seeking to disrupt!

  Seeking, and succeeding. With a thrill that left her gasping, Maelra Bowdragon watched that great arc of power split apart, riven asunder to thrust streamers and sprays of energy in all directions. A backlash slammed into the flow around her, thrusting her up above the chaos of wrestling energies. Such power Such… By the Three, to be able to ride this, across all Darsar like a roving dragon, slaying wherever it glanced…

  That other Dwaer-flow was shattered entirely now, curling in all directions with a mighty grandeur, turning, turning…

  A scrying-whorl burst apart, shedding spinning arms with a fury that rocked the cavern where a lone figure with a surprised and melting face crouched over it. Even as the whorl-blast plucked him from his feet and hurled him back, the Dwaer
in his hand spat forth a flood of sparks that became stabbing spears of lightning-bright bolts that raced all over the grotto, glancing back amid showers of shattered stone, to stab through him.

  With a scream that was more rage than pain, the ever-shifting figure sprang into the air, using the Dwaer that was searing his hands as a flying steed to take him up above the lancing death. Smokes trailed from his blackened body as he flew, snarling as he fought down his agonies to heal himself and master the roiling energies of his disrupted Stone once more. Whirling across the cavern he came, fighting, fighting… and prevailing.

  Whoever had struck at him-and 'twas not the Silvertree lass, but some other-would taste the fire of a Dwaer wielded by someone who knew how to use it! The Koglaur threw back a head that sported only a mouth to gasp away pain and draw in deep gulps of the lightning-reeking air, and came to a halt, floating in the air high above the cavern. Smoke curled in the light of the last few lightning bolts, as he sucked them back into the Dwaer in his hands until it quivered, as red as blood and as angry as he was.

  He turned his eyeless head as if he could see-or smell, in the sharp smoke-stink-his foe. Turned, stiffened, and acquired a grim smile. Slowly he lifted the Dwaer in both hands.

  There were two, both with hands on the same Stone. Well, 'twas time to let them burn! Right about-now!

  The world flashed and splashed, and Maelra Bowdragon was suddenly back in the Spellmaster's lair, its flagstone floor rocking under her boots as wild lightnings and showers of sparks burst from the Dwaer in Ambelter's hands.

  Yes, the Spellmaster's alone-the armored form of Baron Phelinndar hurtled away from that outburst of wild magic with a raw cry of terror and pain.

  The very air crackled and flowed, forcing its shuddering through Maelra's body-and suddenly she wanted nothing so much in life as to be far, far away from it, somewhere safe from this dark cave where magic that could blast castles apart could at any moment veer a trifle and make scattered ashes of Maelra Bowdragon…

  She whirled around, to flee she knew not where, and from behind her came the roar she'd feared and expected: the sound of Ingryl Ambelter's voice raised in anger. Wordless, wet and bubbling anger, as if he was spewing forth soup or wine and trying to snarl at her around it-a sound that lent her even more fear and swiftness.