Jean Rabe: The Lake of Death

Feril clutched Ragh’s hand. “They are killing each other.”

“Pray,” Ragh answered. “We can only watch and pray.”

Lunitari and Nuitari were starting to rise above the canopy.

Sable screamed deafeningly, lashing out one last desperate time. Then she and Dhamon, clutching each other violently, plummeted into the lake. They fell into the shallows, with the overlord’s body cushioning Dhamon’s fall.

Ragh and Feril stumbled toward the two dragons as they twitched slowly, almost automatically unraveling from each other. The Overlord bore hundreds of slash marks that glistened with blood in the moonlight. The draconian and the Kagonesti waded out into the water to meet the one crawling wearily onto the bank.

“Dead,” Dhamon pronounced, his eyes dazed. “Sable will corrupt nothing again.” Blood dripped from his teeth and jaws. His lower lip hung loose and a great gash across the side of his head spilled thick blood into the water.

Feril climbed onto his snout and peered with concern into his massive eyes. “Dhamon, you are magnificent. A dragon like no other. Ragh and I know how to work the spell now! With scales from Sable we can make you human!”

He shook his head, nearly unseating her.

“No!” she wailed, her trembling fingers moving over the small scales around his eyes.

Ragh saw in the same instant that his friend was mortally wounded. His black blood continued to spill into the lake, his breathing growing shallower.

“I can heal you!” Feril searched for the spark inside. Quickly the warmth rushed from her chest and down her arms, into her fingers. “Be strong. Be well….”

Dhamon looked long and hard at her. She briefly caught an image in his huge eyes. It was a face she well remembered from long ago—all angular and handsome with wheat-blond hair and sparkling eyes. Then the great dragon eyes closed as a last wisp of gray lacy breath escaped from his nostrils.

“By all the gods, no!” Feril cried in anguish and anger. “No! By Habbakuk’s grace, no!”

Ragh tugged her down and held her, his own tears streaming down his face and onto her shoulder.

They left Sable’s corpse to rot in the shallows of the lake. By dawn, the giant alligators that had survived the dragons’ battle had returned to feast on the slain overlord.

“Dhamon knew it would take his life, going against Sable,” Ragh said ruefully. “There was nothing you or I could have done to save him once it had begun. He didn’t fear dying that way. Better than living, cursed as a dragon.”

Feril was pale and weak from weeping. Her chest ached as she knelt on the marshy loam and spoke to the land, coaxing it into creating a deep depression and swallowing up the dragon that had been Dhamon Grimwulf. His grave was far from the Overlord’s carcass, yet still in sight of the foul water. Not Dhamon’s favorite place, but it would have to do.

Another Lake of Death for Krynn, Feril told herself.

The sun would touch the grave in the morning, but the trees that rose above it would shade it and keep it cool during the hottest days. Fitting, Ragh thought, that most of the time Dhamon’s grave would lie in shadow.

“If I hadn’t been Sable’s puppet…” Feril began.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Ragh interrupted her. “Sable would have found another way to slay Dhamon. It was fate. He understood that. Nobody can blame you. I was little help to him in the end, too.”

Ragh helped tamp down the ground, then stood back as Feril urged the vines to rise up and shroud the massive grave. The sivak bowed his head for several minutes, then went off alone into the trees. When he returned some time later, Feril was sitting on the grave, fingers deep in the earth, her lips still moving.

He waited for her to finish whatever spell or prayer she was invoking. His own throat was dry, his chest tight with anguish. He’d never had a true friend before, so the loss was profound for him. Even breathing seemed an effort.

When she looked up and their eyes met, he held up what he’d found. It was a small chokeberry bush, the kind Dhamon had always favored, and now, with Feril’s help, he planted it at the head of his friend’s grave. Feril used her magic to strengthen its roots.

“I loved him,” the elf said simply, feeling surprised at her own words. “I don’t know if I ever told him that.”

“You didn’t have to. He knew,” the sivak answered, equally surprised that the elf was confiding in him, “and he loved you with all of his being. You were the one thing he left the swamp for; you were always in his mind.”

“He’ll always be here,” she said, pointing at her heart and then her head.

The sivak nodded. “A good man, my friend Dhamon.”

They stayed at the grave until the sun set and the two moons rose over the lake. They spoke little, only a few sad words. They left when the night birds took flight and the great horned owls went off in search of prey.

“Where are you headed?” Feril asked tentatively. “Do you want to come along with me?”

“What, looking for those Qualinesti elves who left the forest?”

She nodded. “Looking for an old elf woman named Elalage. I need to tell her about her brother Obelia. He, too, was a friend of Dhamon’s, to the end.” She stared up at Ragh, her eyes still misty. “Who knows? We might stick together. I’m sure you’ve got some stories to tell that’ll pass the time, and I’ve got some to tell you about Dhamon in the old days, too.”