Dragons of a Vanished Moon Page 5

  Mirror left his charge only to fetch water for them both.

  Skie drifted in and out of consciousness. During the times he was awake and lucid, Mirror was able to question the blue dragon about the One God, a god to whom Mirror was now able to give a name. These conversations took place over long periods of time, for Skie was rarely able to remain conscious long.

  “She stole the world,” Skie said at one point, shortly after he first regained his senses. “Stole it away and transported it to this part of the universe. She had long planned out her actions. All was in readiness. She awaited only the right moment.”

  “A moment that came during the Chaos War,” Mirror said. He paused, asked quietly, “How are you feeling?”

  “I am dying,” Skie returned bluntly. “That’s how I am feeling.”

  Had Mirror been human, he would have told some comforting falsehood intended to sooth the dying dragon’s final moments. Mirror was not human, although he now walked in human form. Dragons are not given to telling falsehoods, not even those meant to comfort. Mirror was wise enough to know that such lies bring comfort only to the living.

  Skie was a warrior dragon. A blue dragon, he had flown into battle countless times, had sent many of his foes plummeting to their deaths. He and his former rider, the infamous Kitiara uth Matar, had cut a swath of terror and destruction across half of Ansalon during the War of the Lance. After the Chaos War, Skie had been one of the few dragons in Ansalon to hold his own against the alien dragon overlords, Malys and Beryl, finally rising in power to take his place among them. He had slaughtered and gorged on other dragons, gaining in strength and power by devouring his own kind. He had built a hideous totem of the skulls of his victims.

  Mirror could not see the totem, but he could sense it nearby. He heard the voices of the dead, accusing, angry, crying out for revenge. Mirror had no love for Skie. Had they met in battle, Mirror would have fought to defeat his foe and rejoiced in his destruction.

  And Skie would have rejoiced in such a death. To die as a warrior, to fall from the skies with the blood of your foe wet on your talons, the taste of lightning on your tongue. That was the way Skie would have wanted to die. Not this way, not lying helpless, trapped in his lair, his life passing from him in labored, gasping breaths; his mighty wings stilled; his bloodied talons twitching and scrabbling on the rock floor.

  No dragon should die this death, Mirror thought to himself. Not even my worst enemy. He regretted having used his magic to bring Skie back to life, but Mirror had to know more about this One God, he had to find out the truth. He inured himself against pity for his foe and continued asking questions. Skie did not have much time left to answer.

  “You say Takhisis planned this removal,” Mirror said, during another conversation. “You were part of her plan.”

  Skie grunted. Mirror could hear the massive body shift itself in an effort to ease the pain.

  “I was the most important part, curse the eon I met the conniving bitch. I was the one who discovered the Portals. Our world, the world where I and others of my kind were born, is not like this world. We do not share our world with the short-lived, the soft-bodies. Ours is a world of dragons.”

  Skie was not able to say this without many pauses for breath and grunts of pain. He was determined to continue his tale. His voice was weak, but Mirror could still hear the anger, like a rumble of distant thunder.

  “We roamed our world at will and fought ferocious battles for survival. These dragons you see here, this Beryl and this Malys, they seem to you enormous and powerful, but in comparison to those who ruled our world, they are small and pitiful creatures. That was one reason they came to this world. But I jump ahead of myself.

  “I could see, as could others of our kind, that our world was growing stagnant. We had no future, our children had no future but to eat or be eaten. We were not advancing, we were regressing. I was not the only one to seek a way off the world, but I was the first to be successful. Using my magic, I discovered the roads that led through the ethers to worlds far beyond our own. I grew skilled at traveling these roads. Often the roads saved my life, for if I was threatened by one of the Elders, I had only to jump into the ethers to escape.

  “It was while I was inside the ethers that I came upon Her Dark Majesty.” Skie ground his teeth as he spoke, as if he would be glad to grind her between them. “I had never seen a god before. I had never before beheld anything so magnificent, never been in the presence of such power. I bowed before her and offered myself to her as her servant. She was fascinated by the roads through the ethers. I was not so enamored of her that I foolishly revealed their secrets to her, but I gave her enough information so that she could see how they might be of use to her.

  “Takhisis brought me to her world that she called Krynn. She told me that on Krynn she was but one of many gods. She was the most powerful, she said, and because of that, the others feared her and were constantly conspiring against her. She would one day be triumphant over them, and on that day she would give me rich reward. I would rule Krynn and the soft-bodies who lived on it. This was to be my world in exchange for my services. Needless to say, she lied.”

  Anger stirred in Mirror, anger at the overweening ambition that gave no thought or care to any of those living on the world that was apparently little more than a bauble to Queen Takhisis. Mirror took care to keep his own anger hidden. He had to hear all that Skie had to tell. Mirror had to know what had happened. He could not change the past, but he might be able to affect the future.

  “I was young then,” Skie continued, “and the young of our species are the size of the blue dragons on Krynn. Queen Takhisis paired me with Kitiara—a favorite of the Dark Queen. Kitiara …”

  Skie was silent, remembering. He gave a deep sigh, an aching sigh of longing. “Our battles together were glorious. For the first time, I learned that one could fight for more than survival—one could fight for honor, for the joy of the battle, for the glory in victory. At first, I despised the weaklings who inhabit this world: humans and the rest. I could not see why the gods permitted them to exist. Soon, I came to find them fascinating—Kitiara, especially. Courageous, bold, never doubting herself, knowing exactly what she wanted and reaching out to seize it. Ah, what a goddess she would have made.”

  Skie paused. His breath came with a painful catch. “I will see her again. I know I will. Together, we will fight … and ride once more to glory.…”

  “And all this time,” Mirror said, leading Skie back to the main topic, “you worked for Takhisis. You established the road that would take her here, to this part of the universe.”

  “I did. I made all ready for her. She had only to wait for the right time.”

  “But, surely, she could not have foreseen the Chaos War?” A terrible thought came to Mirror. “Or did that come about through her machinations?”

  Skie snorted in disgust. “Clever Takhisis may be, but she is not that clever. Perhaps she had some inkling that Chaos was trapped inside the Graygem. If so, she had only to wait—for what is time to her, she is a god—for some fool to let him loose. If it had not been that, she would have found some other means. She was constantly watching for her chance. As it was, the Chaos War played right into her hands. All was in readiness. She made a show of fleeing the world, withdrawing her support and her power, leaving those who relied on her helpless. She had to do that, for she would need all her power for the enormous task that awaited her.

  “The moment came. In the instant that Chaos was defeated, the energy released was immense. Takhisis harnessed that energy, combined it with her own power, and wrenched the world free of its moorings, brought it along the roads I had created with my magic, and set it here, in this part of the universe. All of this happened so fast that no one on the world was aware of the shift. The gods themselves, caught up in the desperate battle for survival, had no inkling of her plan, and once they realized what was happening, they were so depleted of their own power that they were helpless to stop
her.

  “Takhisis snatched the world away from them and hid it from their sight. All proceeded as she had planned. Bereft of the gods’ blessing, stripped of their magic, the people of the world were thrown into turmoil and despair. She herself was exhausted, so weak that she was reduced to almost nothing. She needed time to heal herself, time to rest. But she wasn’t worried. The longer the people were without a god, the greater their need. When she returned, they would be so thankful and relieved that they would be her abject slaves. She made one minor miscalculation.”

  “Malys,” said Mirror. “Beryl and the rest.”

  “Yes. They were intrigued by this new toy that had suddenly dropped down among them. Weary of struggling to survive in their world, they were only too happy to take over this one. Takhisis was too weak to stop them. She could do nothing but watch in helpless frustration as they seized rulership of the world. Still, she lied to me and continued to promise me that someday, when she was again powerful, she would destroy the usurpers and give the world to me. I believed her for a while, but the years passed, and Malystryx and Beryl and the rest grew more powerful still. They killed the dragons of Krynn and feasted on them and built their totems, and I heard nothing from Takhisis.

  “As for me, I could see this world degenerating into a world like the one I had left. I looked back with joy to my days of battle with Kitiara. I wanted nothing more to do with my kind, nothing more to do with the pathetic wretches who populated this place. I went to Takhisis and demanded payment.

  “ ‘Keep the world,’ I said to her. ‘I have no need of it. I do not want it. Restore Kitiara to me. We will travel the roads together. Together we will find a world where glory awaits us.’ ”

  “She promised me she would. In a place called the Gray, I would find Kitiara’s soul. I saw the Gray. I went there. Or thought I did.” Skie rumbled deep in his chest. “You heard the rest. You heard Mina, the Dark Queen’s new toady. You heard her tell me how I had been betrayed.”

  “Yet, others saw you depart.…”

  “Others saw what she meant them to see, just as all saw what she meant them to see at the end of the Chaos War.”

  Skie fell silent, brooding over his wrongs. Mirror listened to the blue dragon’s labored breathing. Skie might live for hours or days. Mirror had no way of knowing. He could not find out where Skie was wounded, and Skie himself would not tell him. Mirror wondered if the wound was not so much heart-deep as soul-deep.

  Mirror changed the subject to turn Skie’s thoughts. “Takhisis faced a new threat—the dragon overlords.”

  “The overlords.” Skie grunted. “Yes, they were a problem. Takhisis had hoped that they would continue to fight and eventually slay each other, but the overlords agreed to a truce. Peace was declared. People began to grow complacent. Takhisis feared that soon people would start to worship the overlords, as some were already doing, and have no need of her. The Dark Queen was not yet strong enough to battle them. She had to find a way to increase her power. She had long recognized and lamented the waste of energy that passed out of the world with the souls of the dead. She conceived a way to imprison the dead within the world, and thus she was able to use them to steal away the wild magic and feed it to her. When she deemed she was strong enough to return, she came back, the night of the storm.”

  “Yes,” said Mirror. “I heard her voice. She called to me to join her legions, to worship her as my god. I might have, but something stopped me. My heart knew that voice, if my head did not. And so I was punished. I—”

  He halted. Skie had begun to stir, trying to lift his great bulk from the floor of the lair.

  “What is it? What are you doing?”

  “You had best hide yourself,” said Skie, struggling desperately to regain his feet. “Malys is coming.”

  “Malys!” Mirror repeated, alarmed.

  “She has heard I am dying. Those cowardly minions who used to serve me must have raced to her with the glad tidings. The great vulture comes to steal my totem. I should let her! Takhisis has usurped the totems for her own use. Malys takes her worst enemy to bed with her every night. Let the red monster come. I will fight her with my last breath—”

  Skie might be raving, as Mirror truly thought he was, but the Blue’s advice to hide was sound. Even had he not been blind, Mirror would have avoided a fight with the immense red dragon, much as he hated and loathed her. Mirror had seen too many of his kind caught and crushed in the mighty jaws, set ablaze by her horrific fire. Brute strength alone could not overcome this alien creature. The largest, strongest dragon ever to walk Krynn would be no match for Malystryx.

  Not even a god had dared face her.

  Mirror shifted back to human form. He felt very fragile and vulnerable in the soft skin, the thin and delicate bones, the paltry musculature. Yet, a blind human could manage in this world. Mirror began to grope his way around Skie’s massive body. Mirror planned to retreat, move deeper into the twisting maze of corridors in the Blue’s labyrinthine lair. Mirror was feeling his way about, when his hand touched something smooth and cold.

  A shiver passed through his arm. Mirror could not see, but he knew immediately what he had touched—Skie’s totem, made of skulls of his victims. Shuddering, Mirror snatched his hand away and almost lost his balance in his haste. He stumbled into the wall, steadied himself, used the wall to guide his steps.

  “Wait,” Skie’s voice hissed through the dark corridors. “You did me a favor, Silver. You kept me from death by her foul hands. Because of you, I can die on my own terms, with what dignity I have left. I will do you a favor in return. The others of your kind—the Golds and Silvers—you’ve searched for them, and you cannot find them. True enough?”

  Mirror was reluctant to admit this, even to a dying blue dragon. He made no reply but continued groping his way along the passage.

  “They did not flee in fear,” Skie continued. “They heard Takhisis’s voice the night of the storm. Some of them recognized it, understood what it meant. They left the world to try to find the gods.”

  Mirror paused, turned his sightless face to the sound of Skie’s voice. Outside, he could now hear what Skie had heard long before him—the beating of enormous wings.

  “It was a trap,” Skie said. “They left, and now they cannot return. Takhisis holds them prisoner, as she holds the souls of the dead prisoner.”

  “What can be done to free them?” Mirror asked.

  “I have told you all I know,” Skie replied. “My debt to you is paid, Silver. You had best make haste.”

  Moving as fast as possible, Mirror slipped and slid down the passage. He had no notion of where he was going, but guessed that he was traveling deeper into the lair. He kept his right hand on the wall, moved with the wall, never let go. Thus, he reasoned, he would be able to find his way out. When he heard Malys’s voice, strident and high-pitched—an odd sound to come from such a massive creature—Mirror halted. Keeping his hand firmly against the wall, he hunkered down onto the smooth floor, shrouded in the lair’s cool darkness. He quieted even his breathing, fearful that she might hear him and come seeking him.

  Mirror crouched in the blue dragon’s lair and awaited the outcome with dread.

  Skie knew he was dying. His heart lurched and shivered in his rib cage. He fought for every breath. He longed to lie down and rest, to close his eyes, to lose himself in the past. To once more spread his wings that were the color of heaven and fly up among the clouds. To hear Kitiara’s voice again, her firm commands, her mocking laughter. To feel her hands, sure and capable, on the reins, guiding him unerringly to the fiercest, hottest part of the battle. To revel again in the clash of arms and smell the blood, to feel the flesh rend beneath his talons and hear Kitiara’s exultant battle cry, challenging all comers. To return to the stables, have his wounds dressed, and wait for her to come, as she always did, to sit down beside him and relive the battle. She would come to him, leaving behind those puny humans who sought to love her. Dragon and rider, they were a tea
m—a deadly team.

  “So, Skie,” said a voice, a hated voice. Malys’s head thrust inside the entrance to the lair, blotted out the sunlight. “I was misinformed. You’re not dead yet, I see.”

  Skie roused himself. His dreams, his memories had been very real. This was unreality.

  “No, I am not dead,” he growled. His talons dug deep into the rock, fighting against the pain, forcing himself to remain standing.

  Malys insinuated more of her great bulk inside his lair—her head and shoulders, front talons and neck. Her wings remained folded at her side, her hind feet and tail dangled down the cliff face. Her small, cruel eyes swept over him disdainfully. Discounting him, she searched for the reason she had come—his totem. She found it, elevated in the center of the lair, and her eyes glistened.

  “Don’t mind me,” she said coolly. “You were dying, I believe. Please continue. I don’t mean to interrupt. I just came to collect a few mementos of our time together.”

  Reaching out her talon, Malys began to weave a magical web around the skulls of his totem. Skie saw eyes in the skulls of the totem. He could sense his Queen’s presence. Takhisis had no care for him. Not anymore. He was of no use to her now. She had eyes only for Malys. Fine. Skie wished them joy together. They deserved each other.

  His legs trembled. They could not support his weight any longer, and he slumped to the floor of his lair. He was angry with himself, furious. He had to fight, to take a stand, to at least leave his mark upon Malys. He was so weak, shivering. His heart pounded as if it would burst in his chest.

  “Skie, my lovely Blue!” Kitiara’s voice came to him, mocking, laughing. “What, you sluggard, still asleep? Wake up! We have battles to fight this day. Death to deal. Our enemies do not slumber, you may be certain of that.”

  Skie opened his eyes. There she stood before him, her blue dragon armor shining in the sun. Kitiara smiled her crooked smile and, lifting her arm, she pointed.