Jean Rabe - Dragons of a New Age

Khellendros silently regarded her. He was impressed with her drive for power, yet he was more than a little concerned by it. Malys was determined. If she managed to realize her goals of dominating people, what would she consider next? “You need me,” she hissed, interrupting his thoughts. “You need me as an ally.”

“I would not want you as a foe.”

“And I need you,” the Red continued. “You are powerful, larger than the other dragon overlords. Together, you and I can orchestrate the taking of Krynn,” she said silkily. “And when the time is right, you and I can breed a new race of dragons to walk on the face of the world.”

Khellendros agreed to Malys’s scheme. As he flew toward his desert home, he recalled his exact words to her. “There is no other on Krynn I would ally myself with. I am honored, Malystryx, you chose to include me in your plans.”

The pact sealed, he left her to return to the Northern Wastes. Khellendros hadn’t lied to her. There was no one on Krynn he would consider as a partner. Kitiara’s essence was in The Gray, so. Malys would do as an ally for the time being. It was safer to be with her than to stand against her. She was greedy, ambitious, manipulative, powerful—she had the traits he admired. But she was not Kitiara. And she could never take Kitiara’s place.

“I shall use humans as cattle, Malys,” he whispered, as his course took him over Neraka’s tallest mountains. “But not in the manner you would suspect.”

The Blue spent most of his days entrenched in his lair beneath the Northern Wastes’ vast desert. Khellendros had enlarged his cavern, using Malys’s techniques for molding the terrain. There were several underground chambers now, and a few of them held humans—barbarians he snatched from their villages along the Shark Reef.

They stared at him with frightened eyes. They knew better than to talk to him, ask what would happen to them, dare to challenge him. Humans are more intelligent than you give them credit for, dear Malys, Khellendros thought.

The Blue worked with his captives, separating them, playing upon their fears and weaknesses. He had to corrupt them, turn them against each other or drive them insane. Through the process of creating spawn, Khellendros learned that only evil humans, or those who had been rendered near-mindless, made suitable offspring. Strong-willed humans with good hearts always seemed to die in the process or result in empty blue husks that lacked the comprehension to follow even the simplest of orders.

But I shall find a way to overcome that obstacle, he thought. I shall find a way to transform any human, regardless of its nature.

At the end of a month he had a dozen suitable candidates for the process, and an angry captive sivak draconian that would fuel their transformation. But the dragon’s tears wouldn’t come, and he needed a tear—a bit of himself—to complete the transformation of each of his offspring.

The dragon paced in his expansive underground lair. He concentrated on Kitiara, thought about her body’s death, about how he had failed her. A great sense of sadness overcame him, but at the back of his mind he couldn’t deny that a trace of hope, of bringing her back and giving her the body of a spawn, still remained. And that trace of hope kept him from producing that vital tear.

The Blue’s curses reverberated like thunder in the cavern, causing the walls to shake and crack. The ominous rumble in his belly began, and only the gasps of his human prisoners kept him from releasing a lightning bolt.

His great claws pounded over the stone floor and carried him out into the desert. It was night. The stars winked down at him as if they were mocking him. The sand was cool beneath his feet, signaling that it was late, that the ground had been given hours to cast off its heat. Khellendros had lost track of time, and he howled in frustration. He sent a bolt of lightning skyward and roared deafeningly.

“No!” he screamed. “I shall not be defeated!” He spit another bolt of lightning, this time toward the horizon, blasting a patch of offending scrub grass. He thrust his claws into the sand, digging and scratching to vent his anger. The grains flew all about him, as if tossed by a violent wind. Suddenly he stopped his tirade and stared at the hole he created.

“The sand,” he whispered. “The blessed sand.”

Khellendros opened his eyes wide and shoved his head into the hole. The coarse grains of sand worked their way beneath his eyelids, rubbing, irritating, causing tears to well up. He pushed his head in deeper, ground his eyes and nostrils against the desert floor until the sensation was overwhelming and he could scarcely breathe. Then at last he pulled back, raised his face to the sky, and turned toward his lair. The sand forced his eyes to water, forced the tears he so desperately needed for his spawn.

He hurried into his underground chamber and began muttering the words to the enchantment he had learned in the portals beyond Krynn. His teardrops splashed onto the rocky floor and shimmered.

The dozen blue spawn that stood before Khellendros were his first successful ones. Corrupted before their metamorphosis, their eyes gleamed evilly in the dark chamber beneath the desert. Diminutive bolts of lightning crackled around their jet black claws, and their sapphire wings fluttered gently. The spawns’ scales were tiny, looking like dark blue chainmail that had been oiled and well cared for. Their forms were manlike, with broad-chested torsos, long legs, and muscular arms. But their heads looked more like the snouts of lizards, and each had a jagged ridge that ran from between their eyes down to the tips of their stubby tails. Their feet were webbed and clawed, resembling Khellendros’s, but in miniature. Their noses flared as they alertly sniffed their surroundings.

Khellendros sat back against the far wall of his lair and intently studied them. He was as proud of them as any father would be of his young children. But these children were not soft and cuddly, they were warriors, and they would do the Blue’s bidding without argument or question. One of them would be chosen to become Kitiara’s body, perhaps the one that distinguished itself most in battle.

“Soon there shall be more of you,” Khellendros gushed to his attentive pupils. “Many more. You shall be an impressive force, and you shall ravage the desert and, after that, the sweet countryside of Palanthas. Together we shall steal the humans’ precious magical items—their scrolls and swords, anything that pulses with enchantment. We shall somehow find enough magic to force open a portal. And no one shall stop us. Your very appearance shall so frighten every living creature that—”

As one, the spawns’ eyes flashed to the right, toward the entrance of the lair. Khellendros growled and padded past them, curious to see what or who might have wandered into his cavern, hoping it wasn’t Malystryx. He had not intended to share news of his creation with her, and it was critical that she not learn about his plans to open a portal and bring Kitiara back to life.

“Hello?” a small voice called.

Not Malys, Khellendros realized. But who? He peered into the darkness, his acute vision seeing only shadows and a hint of light.

“May I join you?” One of the shadows separated from the wall, or rather a portion of the wall split off. The small block of rock shuffled forward, changing its shape as it neared Khellendros. “Remember me?” the rock queried as it continued its transformation. “I know it’s been almost thirty years since we met, but I like to think that I’m hard to forget.”

“Fissure,” the Blue growled. It was the huldrefolk, the one he saw at the circle of stones portal, the one who explained why Khellendros could not return to The Gray. The Blue rumbled, hostilely preparing to blast the creature who so arrogantly strolled into his lair.