Dragons of a Fallen Sun Page 4

  Malys gazed upon the empty eyes of the skulls with pleasure, and perhaps she dozed, because suddenly it seemed to her that the eyes of skulls were alive and they were watching her. She snorted, reared her head. She stared closely at the skulls, at the eyes. The lava pool at the heart of the mountain cast a lurid light upon the skulls, sent shadows winking and blinking in the empty eye sockets. Berating herself for an overactive imagination, Malys coiled her body comfortably around the totem and fell asleep.

  Another of the great dragons, a Green known grandiosely as Beryllinthranox was also not able to sleep through the storm. Beryl’s lair was formed of living trees—ironwoods and redwoods—and enormous, twining vines. The vines and branches of the trees were so thickly interwoven that no raindrop had ever managed to wriggle its way through. But the rain that fell from the roiling black clouds of this storm seemed to make it a personal mission to find a way to penetrate the leaves. Once one had managed to sneak inside, it opened the way for thousands of its fellows. Beryl woke in surprise at the unaccustomed feel of water splashing on her nose. One of the great redwoods that formed a pillar of her lair was struck by a lightning bolt. The tree burst into flames, flames that spread quickly, feeding on rainwater as if it were lamp oil.

  Beryl’s roar of alarm brought her minions scrambling to douse the flames. Dragons, Reds and Blues who had joined Beryl rather than be consumed by her, dared the flames to pluck out the burning trees and cast them into the sea. Draconians pulled down blazing vines, smothered the flames with dirt and mud. Hostages and prisoners were put to work fighting the fires. Many died doing so, but eventually Beryl’s lair was saved. She was in a terrible humor for days afterward, however, convincing herself that the storm had been an attack waged magically by her cousin Malys. Beryl meant to rule someday in Malys’s stead. Using her magic to rebuild—a magical power that had lately been dwindling, something else Beryl blamed on Malys—the Green nursed her wrongs and plotted revenge.

  Khellendros the Blue (he had abandoned the name Skie for this more magnificent title, which meant Storm over Ansalon), was one of the few of the dragons native to Krynn to have emerged from the Dragon Purge. He was now ruler of Solamnia and all its environs. He was overseer of Schallsea and the Citadel of Light, which he allowed to remain because—according to him—he found it amusing to watch the petty humans struggle futilely against the growing darkness. In truth, the real reason he permitted the citadel to thrive in safety was the citadel’s guardian, a silver dragon named Mirror. Mirror and Skie were longtime foes and now, in their mutual detestation of the new, great dragons from afar who had killed so many of their brethren, they had become not friends, but not quite enemies either.

  Khellendros was bothered by the storm far more than either of the great dragons, although—strangely enough—the storm did not do his lair much damage. He paced restively about his enormous cave high in the Vingaard mountains, watched the lightning warriors strike viciously at the ramparts of the High Clerist’s Tower, and he thought he heard a voice in the wind, a voice that sang of death. Khellendros did not sleep but watched the storm to its end.

  The storm lost none of its power as it roared down upon the ancient elven kingdom of Silvanesti. The elves had erected a magical shield over their kingdom, a shield that had thus far kept the marauding dragons from conquering their lands, a shield that also kept out all other races. The elves had finally succeeded in their historic goal of isolating themselves from the troubles of the rest of the world. But the shield did not keep out the thunder and rain, wind and lightning.

  Trees burned, houses were torn apart by the fierce winds. The Than-Thalas River flooded, sending those who lived on its banks scrambling to reach higher ground. Water seeped into the palace garden, the Garden of Astarin, where grew the magical tree that was, many believed, responsible for keeping the shield in place. The tree’s magic kept it safe. Indeed, when the storm was ended, the soil around the tree was found to be bone dry. Everything else in the garden was drowned or washed away. The elf gardeners and Woodshapers, who bore for their plants and flowers, ornamental trees, herbs, and rose bushes the same love they bore their own children, were heartbroken, devastated to view the destruction.

  They replanted after the storm, bringing plants from their own gardens to fill the once wondrous Garden of Astarin. Ever since the raising of the shield, the plants in the garden had not done well, and now they rotted in the muddy soil which could never, it seemed, soak up enough sunlight to dry out.

  The strange and terrible storm eventually left the continent, marched away from the war, a victorious army abandoning the field of battle, leaving devastation and destruction behind. The next morning, the people of Ansalon would go dazedly to view the damage, to comfort the bereaved, to bury the dead, and to wonder at the dreadful night’s ominous portent.

  And yet, there was, after all, one person that night who enjoyed himself. His name was Silvanoshei, a young elf, and he exulted in the storm. The clash of the lightning warriors, the bolts that fell like sparks struck from swords of thunder, beat in his blood like crashing drums. Silvanoshei did not seek shelter from the storm but went out into it. He stood in a clearing in the forest, his face raised to the tumult, the rain drenching him, cooling the burning of vaguely felt wants and desires. He watched the dazzling display of lightning, marveled at the ground-shaking thunder, laughed at the blasts of wind that bent the great trees, making them bow their proud heads.

  Silvanoshei’s father was Porthios, once proud ruler of the Qualinesti, now cast out by them, termed a “dark elf,” one cursed to live outside the light of elven society. Silvanoshei’s mother was Alhana Starbreeze, exiled leader of the Silvanesti nation that had cast her out too when she married Porthios. They had meant, by their marriage, to at last reunite the two elven nations, bring them together as one nation, a nation that would have probably been strong enough to fight the cursed dragons and maintain itself in freedom.

  Instead, their marriage had only deepened the hatred and mistrust. Now Beryl ruled Qualinesti, which was an occupied land, held in subjugation by the Knights of Neraka. Silvanesti was a land cut off, isolated, its inhabitants cowering under its shield like children hiding beneath a blanket, hoping it will protect them from the monsters who lurk in the darkness.

  Silvanoshei was the only child of Porthios and Alhana.

  “Silvan was born the year of the Chaos War,” Alhana was wont to say. “His father and I were on the run, a target for every elven assassin who wanted to ingratiate himself with either the Qualinesti or the Silvanesti rulers. He was born the day they buried two of the sons of Caramon Majere. Chaos was Silvan’s nursemaid, Death his midwife.”

  Silvan had been raised in an armed camp. Alhana’s marriage to Porthios had been a marriage of politics that had deepened to one of love and friendship and utmost respect. Together she and her husband had waged a ceaseless, thankless battle, first against the Dark Knights who were now the overlords of Qualinest, then against the terrible domination of Beryl, the dragon who had laid claim to the Qualinesti lands and who now demanded tribute from the Qualinesti elves in return for allowing them to live.

  When word had first reached Alhana and Porthios that the elves of Silvanesti had managed to raise a magical shield over their kingdom, a shield that would protect them from the ravages of the dragons, both had seen this as a possible salvation for their people. Alhana had traveled south with her own forces, leaving Porthios to continue the fight for Qualinesti.

  She had tried to send an emissary to the Silvanesti elves, asking permission to pass through the shield. The emissary had not even been able to enter. She attacked the shield with steel and with magic, trying every way possible of breaking through it, without success. The more she studied the shield, the more she was appalled that her people could permit themselves to live beneath it.

  Whatever the shield touched died. Woodlands near the shield’s boundaries were filled with dead and dying trees. Grasslands near the shield were gray and
barren. Flowers wilted, withered, decomposed into a fine gray dust that covered the dead like a shroud.

  The shield’s magic is responsible for this! Alhana had written to her husband. The shield is not protecting the land. It is killing it!

  The Silvanesti do not care, Porthios had written in reply. They are subsumed by fear. Fear of the ogres, fear of the humans, fear of the dragons, fear of terrors they can not even name. The shield is but the outward manifestation of their fear. No wonder anything that comes in contact with it withers and dies!

  These were the last words she had heard from him. For years Alhana had kept in contact with her husband through the messages carried between them by the swift and tireless elven runners. She knew of his increasingly futile efforts to defeat Beryl. Then came the day the runner from her husband did not return. She had sent another, and another vanished. Now weeks had passed and still no word from Porthios. Finally, unable to expend any more of her dwindling manpower, Alhana had ceased sending the runners.

  The storm had caught Alhana and her army in the woods near the border of Silvanesti, after yet another futile attempt to penetrate the shield. Alhana took refuge from the storm in an ancient burial mound near the border of Silvanesti. She had discovered this mound long ago, when she had first begun her battle to wrest control of her homeland from the hands of those who seemed intent upon leading her people to disaster.

  In other, happier circumstances, the elves would not have disturbed the rest of the dead, but they were being pursued by ogres, their ancient enemy, and were desperately seeking a defensible position. Even so, Alhana had entered the mound with prayers of propitiation, asking the spirits of the dead for understanding.

  The elves had discovered the mound to be empty. They found no mummified corpses, no bones, no indication that anyone had ever been buried here. The elves who accompanied Alhana took this for a sign that their cause was just. She did not argue, though she felt the bitter irony that she—the true and rightful Queen of the Silvanesti—was forced to take refuge in a hole in the ground even the dead had abandoned.

  The burial mound was now Alhana’s headquarters. Her knights, her own personal bodyguard, were inside with her. The rest of the army was camped in the woods around her. A perimeter of elven runners kept watch for ogres, known to be rampaging in this area. The runners, lightly armed, wearing no armor, would not engage the enemy in battle, if they spotted them, but would race back to the picket lines to alert the army of an enemy’s presence.

  The elves of House Woodshaper had worked long to magically raise from the ground a barricade of thorn bushes surrounding the burial mound. The bushes had wicked barbs that could pierce even an ogre’s tough hide. Within the barricade, the soldiers of the elven army found what shelter they could when the torrential storm came. Tents almost immediately collapsed, leaving the elves to hunker down behind boulders or crawl into ditches, avoiding, if possible, the tall trees—targets of the vicious lightning.

  Wet to the bone, chilled and awed by the storm, the likes of which not even the longest lived among the elves had ever before seen, the soldiers looked at Silvanoshei, cavorting in the storm like a moonstruck fool, and shook their heads.

  He was the son of their beloved queen. They would not say one word against him. They would give their lives defending him, for he was the hope of the elven nation. The elven soldiers liked him well enough, even if they neither admired nor respected him. Silvanoshei was handsome and charming, winning by nature, a boon companion, with a voice so sweet and melodious that he could talk the songbirds out of the trees and into his hand.

  In this, Silvanoshei was like neither of his parents. He had none of his father’s grim, dour, and resolute nature, and some might have whispered that he was not his father’s child, but Silvanoshei so closely resembled Porthios there could be no mistaking the relationship. Silvanoshei, or Silvan, as his mother called him, did not inherit the regal bearing of Alhana Starbreeze. He had something of her pride but little of her compassion. He cared about his people, but he lacked her undying love and loyalty. He considered her battle to penetrate the shield a hopeless waste of time. He could not understand why she was expending so much energy to return to a people who clearly did not want her.

  Alhana doted on her son, more so now that his father appeared to be lost. Silvan’s feelings toward his mother were more complex, although he had but an imperfect understanding of them. Had anyone asked him, he would have said that he loved her and idolized her, and this was true. Yet that love was an oil floating upon the surface of troubled water. Sometimes Silvan felt an anger toward his parents, an anger that frightened him in its fury and intensity. They had robbed him of his childhood, they had robbed him of comfort, they had robbed him of his rightful standing among his people.

  The burial mound remained relatively dry during the downpour. Alhana stood at the entrance, watching the storm, her attention divided between worry for her son—standing bareheaded in the rain, exposed to the murderous lightning and savage winds—and in thinking bitterly that the rain drops could penetrate the shield that surrounded Silvanesti and she, with all the might of her army, could not.

  One particularly close lightning strike half-blinded her, its thunderclap shook the cave. Fearful for her son, she ventured a short distance outside the mound’s entrance and endeavored to see through the driving rain. Another flash, overspreading the sky with a flame of purple white, revealed him staring upward, his mouth open, roaring back at the thunder in laughing defiance.

  “Silvan!” she cried. “It is not safe out there! Come inside with me!”

  He did not hear her. Thunder smashed her words, the wind blew them away. But perhaps sensing her concern, he turned his head. “Isn’t it glorious, Mother?” he shouted, and the wind that had blown away his mother’s words brought his own to her with perfect clarity.

  “Do you want me to go out and drag him inside, my queen,” asked a voice at her shoulder.

  Alhana started, half-turned. “Samar! You frightened me!”

  The elf bowed. “I am sorry, Your Majesty. I did not mean to alarm you.”

  She had not heard him approach, but that was not surprising. Even if there had been no deafening thunder, she would not have heard the elf if he did not want her to hear. He was from House Protector, had been assigned to her by Porthios, and had been faithful to his calling throughout thirty years of war and exile.

  Samar was now her second in command, the leader of her armies. That he loved her, she knew well, though he had never spoken a word of it, for he was loyal to her husband Porthios as friend and ruler. Samar knew that she did not love him, that she was faithful to her husband, though they had heard no word of Porthios or from him for months. Samar’s love for her was a gift he gave her daily, expecting nothing in return. He walked at her side, his love for her a torch to guide her footsteps along the dark path she walked.

  Samar had no love for Silvanoshei, whom he took to be a spoilt dandy. Samar viewed life as a battle that had to be fought and won on a daily basis. Levity and laughter, jokes and pranks, would have been acceptable in an elf prince whose realm was at peace—an elf prince who, like elf princes of happier times, had nothing to do all day long but learn to play the lute and contemplate the perfection of a rose bud. The ebullient spirits of youth were out of place in this world where the elves struggled simply to survive. Slivanoshei’s father was lost and probably dead. His mother expended her life hurling herself against fate, her body and spirit growing more bruised and battered every day. Samar considered Silvan’s laughter and high spirits an affront to both, an insult to himself.

  The only good Samar saw in the young man was that Silvanoshei could coax a smile from his mother’s lips when nothing and no one else could cheer her.

  Alhana laid her hand upon Samar’s arm. “Tell him that I am anxious. A mother’s foolish fears. Or not so foolish,” she added to herself, for Samar had already departed. “There is something dire about this storm.”

  S
amar was instantly drenched to the skin when he walked into the storm, as soaked as if he had stepped beneath a waterfall. The wind gusts staggered him. Putting his head down against the blinding torrent, cursing Silvan’s heedless foolery, Samar forged ahead.

  Silvan stood with his head back, his eyes closed, his lips parted. His arms were spread, his chest bare, his loose-woven shirt so wet that it had fallen from his shoulders. The rainwater poured over his half-naked body.

  “Silvan!” Samar shouted into the young man’s ear. Grabbing his arm roughly, Samar gave the young elf a good shake. “You are making a spectacle of yourself!” Samar said, his tone low and fierce. He shook Silvan again. “Your mother has worries enough without you adding to them! Get inside with her where you belong!”

  Silvan opened his eyes a slit. His eyes were purple, like his mother’s, only not as dark; more like wine than blood. The winelike eyes were alight with ecstasy, his lips parted in smile.

  “The lightning, Samar! I’ve never seen anything like it! I can feel it as well as see it. It touches my body and raises the hair on my arms. It wraps me in sheets of flame that lick my skin and set me ablaze. The thunder shakes me to the core of my being, the ground moves beneath my feet. My blood burns, and the rain, the stinging rain, cools my fever. I am in no danger, Samar.” Silvan’s smile widened, the rain sleeked his face and hair. “I am in no more danger than if I were in bed with a lover—”

  “Such talk is unseemly, Prince Silvan,” Samar admonished in stern anger. “You should—”