Douglas Niles: The Dragons

“Perhaps it is a gift only of gold dragons,” Dar suggested, trying to conceal his disappointment.

“No, I suspect that it will work for you-albeit not for our nestmates of the brown metals. You must form a picture of your new shape,” Aurican encouraged. “Choose what you will. I became an elf, in honor of our hosts. But any form is available. Just be sure it’s something that will fit between the trees,” he added with a grin.

And then Darlantan knew. His claws closed around the chain, and he felt the world expanding. In a heartbeat, he stood among the elves, securely balanced on his clawless feet. His stature was broader than the elves, though he was their equal in height.

“Very appropriate,” Aurican declared with a pleased nod.

Darlantan touched the whiskers that cascaded from his chin, strangely delighted by the arcane transformation and pleased that he could make his shape a tribute to Patersmith. A moment later the sturdy figure of the tutor, his gnarled hand still touching the silver chain, followed the file of elves into the forest shadows.

3553 PC

Darlantan coiled along the crest of the high Kharolis, content to allow the sun to glisten from his silver scales. He felt the warm breeze of summer ruffling his wings and tugging at the mane that had begun to bristle around his jowls. Lord of all within his sight, the silver dragon was pleased to reflect on his own invincibility.

The Valley of Paladine was a sprawling landscape below, vast and peaceful, but somehow confining as well. Darlantan realized the great mountain-flanked vale was shrinking in the same way the grotto had seemed to diminish so many centuries ago.

He knew it would soon be time to move, to once more fly toward new corners of Krynn. Of course, he had often explored the regions beyond the valley. He and his nestmates were well known among the griffons, Ravenclaw’s descendants, who dwelt in the High Kharolis, as well as to the elves of the vast woodlands. Touching the curling bell of a ram’s horn that Darlantan wore on his silver chain, he thought with deep affection of one elf in particular.

As to his nestmates, in the last dozen centuries, the growing dragons had spread far from the grotto. Smelt had learned a multitude of languages and become a fixture among mankind. Dar knew that many a city or town considered the benevolent brass dragon to be its special benefactor. Whole realms had been freed from the threat of ogres or lizard men, and Smelt was welcomed far and wide, feted to feasting and drinking whenever he appeared, and always finding partners for the conversation that was as important as food to the sociable brass dragon.

Burll and Blayze had taken more solitary paths. The bronze male had at last grown tired of the competition with his more quick-witted brothers. Burll had disappeared once, more than a thousand winters ago, returning only after many centuries, smelling of brine and fish. Now he spent much of his time in some distant, secret lair, revealing to Darlantan only that he dwelt beside an unimaginably huge tract of water.

Blayze had become increasingly irritable, taunting and fighting his nestmates relentlessly. He had killed many of the griffons of the High Kharolis, so that even Darlantan, who had always gotten along with the hawk-faced predators, had ultimately lost track of Ravenclaw’s clan. Finally, after an acid-spitting incident in the grotto itself, Aurican, Darlantan, and Smelt had together chased the hot-tempered copper away from the high ridges. Occasionally one of the others encountered him in the Kharolis foothills, but always the copper dragon had fled these meetings, using his superior quickness to escape.

Certainly Blayze, too, had established a secret lair and probably gathered treasures there. Darlantan and the others would have welcomed him back at any time-in fact, the silver dragon couldn’t even recall the nature of the argument that had resulted in Blayze’s hasty exile. But it had been a hundred or more winters since the other nestmates had so much as seen their copper kin-dragon.

The females of all the metals had remained close to the grotto, bringing Patersmith morsels of food and dwelling in the ancestral cavern of their kind. The last time Darlantan had visited was scores of winters ago, and then he had been surprised to discover his sisters, under the guidance of Kenta and Oro, gathering metals and gems with which they were expanding the size of the nest.

For their own parts, Darlantan and his golden brother had taken to spending much time in the woods. Assuming the bodies of the elf and the bearded sage, they had dwelt for long seasons among the sylvan folk. Aurican, in fact, spent most of his time in the guise of his elven body, speaking, meditating, and debating with the elders of the clans. Together Auri and the elves had composed ballads and epics that they delighted in re-creating, much to Darlantan’s boredom. The silver dragon enjoyed the elves, but he could never remain on the ground for long periods of time. As always, the glory of flight, the spread of his silver wings in the uncontested skies, was the thing that truly brought him to life.

The elves who had most appealed to the silver dragon were the clans of the dark-haired Elderwild, the tribes that refused to gather in the towns favored by the golden elves. The silver dragon had befriended one of the wild elves, a stoic warrior named Kagonos, and now his thoughts stirred with the memory of that friendship, a suggestion that he should fly to the east and seek out the brave in his forest haunts. Again Darlantan touched the ram’s horn, thinking of its mate, borne by Kagonos, knowing that with the horn, the wild elf could summon him if he needed the dragon’s aid. It was a symbol, a mark of the deep bond between them.

A strange scent came to him on the breeze, a spoor subtle and alluring. His head came up, and immediately he detected a flash of silver along the lower slope of the mountain. It was Kenta, and the female dragon’s scent carried a shockingly powerful allure. She looked at him with a sidelong glance and then, tail twitching, darted away. Urgent emotion thrummed within Darlantan-not fear, nor even alarm, but instead a kind of tingling excitement he had never before experienced.

Instinctively he pounced toward that metallic gleam, racing down the mountainside in a series of gliding leaps, then springing upward, seizing a crest of rock with his forefeet, pulling himself through a tight turn. He raced over the ground with explosive, catlike leaps, reluctant to take to the air for fear he would be unable to turn quickly to pursue his evasive quarry in a new direction.

But Kenta was crouching there, waiting for him. Head down, wings buzzing excitedly at his sudden approach, she leapt upward and glided away, trilling laughter in the air behind her… and leaving a trace of that wondrous, intoxicating elixir that had aroused Darlantan from his rest atop the mountain.

The silver male flew in earnest, body arrowed, long, powerful wing strokes quickly narrowing the gap between himself and the silver female. In fact, he gained on her so fast that-despite the game she had apparently initiated-he had the clear impression she wasn’t actively trying to get away. Kenta’s flight took her over white-capped peaks, around the ridges of lofty divides, and finally above a serenely rolling glacier piled deep with fresh, powdery snow.

The alluring silver female veered around a looming shoulder of rock, making a surprisingly sharp turn that Darlantan was unable to follow. He brushed the mossy knoll, but scrambled for footing and once again hurled himself into the air. The force of his pounce sent him soaring after Kenta, overtaking her in a quick rush of flapping wings.