Jean Rabe - The Eve of the Maelstrom

“Yesss Massster,” they replied. They skittered past the dragons, toward their post at the entrance to the lair.

“Away?” Fissure asked. “You’re going somewhere? Where?”

Khellendros narrowed his eyes. “Where I go is none of your concern, faerie.” The overlord turned toward Gale. “Malys desires my presence, and I would not like to give her cause to suspect my plans by refusing her. I shall be gone for some time. How long, I am not certain. But in that time...”

“I will train your spawn,” the lesser dragon finished.

Khellendros pivoted and glided up through the tunnel that lead to the desert above. Gale followed at a prudent distance.

“There are barbarian villages to the east,” Khellendros advised when they were back on the sand. “I raided them and captured their strongest warriors. It was from them that I fashioned the spawn in my lair. Take care, for the villages’ remaining warriors might come seeking their stolen brethren.”

“It will be my pleasure to slay any who come uninvited. They will pose no threat.”

“Take care that you do not underestimate them,” the Storm said. “Malystryx, who calls me, has no fear of humans. Neither, it seems, do the other overlords. But I know better.”

“As do I.” The lesser blue closed his blind eyes. “One did this to me. One I once called partner and friend. I never underestimate humans.”

He sniffed the wind and turned toward the east. “The faerie,” Gale added. “While I am training the spawn, can he be trusted with your treasure? The artifacts?”

“No,” the Storm answered. “I do not underestimate him either. He can be more formidable than a human. But he is far, far less a threat in this instance. Besides, I took steps to protect the artifacts.”

The blue overlord took to the sky, the draft from his wings sending a shower of sand across Gale and toward the immobile scorpions who stood guard at the lair.

Deep inside, Fissure shuffled toward the artifacts. “Khellendros, The Storm Over Krynn. Khellendros, the Portal Master. Khellendros, the Procrastinator, he should call himself. He wants to wait to open the portal to The Gray. Wait... wait... wait,” the huldre muttered. “Time to a dragon is... well, the mighty Khellendros will discover how waiting has cost him. I have been absent from The Gray for far too many years. And I have no desire to wait any longer. I thought I’d need his help to open the portal, was certain I did. But Huma’s lance... There is so much power contained within it. Maybe I don’t need The Procrastinator’s help after all.”

He held his small hands a foot above the medallions, sensing the magic that pulsed in them. It was a pleasing sensation. “No. Maybe I will not need Khellendros any longer, now that I have these within my grasp.” He passed his fingers over the keys, sensed the cool smoothness of the crystal, the tingle of the enchantment. His fingers lingered a few inches above the smallest key, one crafted to open any lock, and he closed his eyes to bask in the arcane aura.

“No. I certainly will not wait. I must try to go home. I will destroy these myself and open a portal to The Gray with the released energy. If I cannot do it myself, perhaps Gellidus the White or the big green can be duped into helping me. The Storm Over Krynn will be angry, but he will not be able to follow me; he has no more artifacts to destroy, nothing to empower his plans. I will be safe, safe at home. And he will be stranded. Stranded so very far from his poor, lost Kitiara afloat in The Gray.”

The gray man giggled and stretched his fingers toward Huma’s lance, felt the intense vibrations of energy the weapon loosed into the air. “I saw how the lance burned Khellendros,” he whispered. “It will not burn me. I am not so evil as the overlord. No, not evil. Not at all. I just want to return home. Pity that the humans who once wielded this magnificent weapon could not feel this power.” He edged his hands closer to the lance handle. “Pity. Such a... argh!” The surge of power scalded him as if he’d thrust his hands in boiling oil. Waves of energy crashed into his tiny form, jarring him, sending him reeling and writhing to the cavern floor.

Through a haze, the dark huldrefolk shuddered uncontrollably and glanced at his seared skin. “Khellendros... cast a spell on the items... warded them. He did not trust me.” He gasped for breath, then mercifully lost consciousness.

Overhead, Khellendros banked toward the southeast, toward Malystryx’s realm. The first rays of the setting sun painted his desert a pale red. “No,” Khellendros murmured softly. “The faerie is far less of a threat.”

The ground was cracked like a dry riverbed: flat, desolate, and warm beneath the claws of the five dragons gathered in a circle atop it.

Gellidus, the white dragon overlord, did his best to veil his discomfort at his hot surroundings and stared straight ahead at the distant mountain, the Peak of Malys, ringed by glowing volcanoes. Called Frost by men, ruler of ice-covered Southern Ergoth, he presented a stark contrast to Malystryx. Frost’s scales were small and glistening, white as snow. His crest looked like a halo of inverted icicles, and his tail was short and thick compared to the other dragons.

The red overlord was easily twice Frost’s size, with shield-shaped scales the hue of freshly drawn blood. Massive twin horns curled into the air, and twin streams of smoke spiraled from her cavernous nostrils. She glanced briefly at Frost. Then her dark eyes drifted skyward, following Khellendros. To her right was a lean red dragon, who, curled like a cat, looked slightly smaller than the white overlord.

Khellendros landed nearly a mile away from the circle and took in the other two dragons with his stare as he approached. Beryllinthranox, the Green Peril, sat opposite Malys. She was the color of the forest she ruled—the lands once held by the proud Qualinesti. Beryl’s narrowed eyes were intent. Perhaps she was trying to gauge the others’ reactions to Khellendros. Her serpentine tail, extended straight behind her, undulated slowly. Beryl gave the blue overlord a perfunctory nod, then turned to the Black.

Between Beryl and Gellidus sprawled Onysablet. Acid dripped from the black dragon’s equine-shaped leathery jowls, forming a bubbling pond between her claws. Unblinking eyes that gleamed like twin pools of oil, so dark that irises could not be distinguished from pupils, were fixed on Malys. Her thick, glossy horns swept forward from her narrow head.

Beryl was regaling the Black with tales of her domination over the elves, but Sable showed bare interest. Malys held most of her attention.

Khellendros took a position between Beryl and the smaller Red, Malys’s lieutenant, Ferno, sitting back on his great haunches. Malys was the only dragon larger than he, and he was careful, for propriety’s sake, to keep his head lower than hers. Too, he kept his wounded claw flat against the earth, not wanting the other dragons to question him about his injury. He nodded to Malys. He was the Red’s acknowledged consort, openly favored by her. But the Red’s continued glances toward Frost hinted that Malys was sharing her ambitious affections.

Malystryx returned Khellendros’s nod. “We can begin now,” she said, her voice resonant and booming across the arid land. The noise touched the Peak of Malys and echoed hauntingly. “We are the most powerful of dragons, and none dare stand up to us.”

“We crush our opposition,” Beryl hissed. “We dominate the land—and those who live upon it.”

“None challenge us,” Sable said. She drew a talon through the pool of acid in front of her, as the liquid trailing from it sizzled and popped over the barren ground. “None dare, because none can.”