Dave Smeds: The Schemes of Dragons

The Dragon dived three times more, wreaking havoc, though less each time, as a sorcerer here or there remembered the ancient lore that a dragon's powers are weakened by the energies stored in dry land. The magicians called upon the spirits of the soil and their wards began to withstand, bouncing the blazes back up into the air. The Dragon trumpeted his mockery and abandoned the tactic. He had no more than one burst left anyway.

He raced toward the knoll, straight for Keron.

Keron anchored the scepter in the earth. A ward spread, covering him, Treynaf, the pikemen, and most of the hilltop. The dragonfire enveloped them, raged for a moment, and withered without harming them. The Dragon seemed unconcerned. He flew back across the river, landing at the rear of his army.

Within moments, he had risen again, clutching something in his great talons. Keron felt a pang of recognition. Gloroc carried his burden over the Tamisanese trenches and dropped it. A curtain of flame leaped around a ward, dancing off it to lick at a siege tower. Oil. The Dragon was employing the tactic that had made his presence against the ships of Elandris so formidable. He could fly high above arrows and other projectiles, dropping fire bombs until the wards of the victims gave out.

He destroyed the cohesiveness of the Tamisanese forces. His phalanx crossed the ford, splitting the defenders down the middle. Unless stopped they would continue straight up the slopes and attain the high ground.

"Sound the retreat," Keron yelled.

Trumpets blared. The sultan, if he survived, would curse him for a coward, but there was no choice. The Elandri troops responded to the signal, and gradually the Tamisanese and Simorilian forces also ceased their panicked scurrying and began to organize themselves, surrendering ground in an orderly fashion. The Dragon's army would win the river crossing, but it would not break Tamisan's back in one stroke.

Gloroc himself was the problem.

But even the Dragon was vulnerable. He was apparently drawing power from the storm clouds, but it could not be nearly as much as he drew from the sea. With him over land, several superb sorcerers working together could spin a trap, perhaps negate the fundamental spells that allowed his massive body to fly. Keron sent for his head magicians. He would gather them on the knoll and use the scepter to protect them during the casting.

Gloroc rose into the clouds, his laughter blanketing the battlefield, and was gone.

Keron drooped like an eighty-year-old man. The Dragon had gained what he wanted: a beachhead for his army. He would let his human minions mop up, risk their lives, expand his empire. He had breached the last country on the coast of the Dragon Sea still free of his domination. Fear and time would finish the job for him.

Treynaf had stood like a statue throughout the battle, even when Gloroc had aimed his breath at the knoll. Now he stirred, spoke, his voice resonant, unclouded, poetic:

"A shadow shall sprout in the Dragon Sea

And grow till it covers the East,

Swallowing the armies that stand in its way;

On wizard's children dragons will feast."

"Spare me your auguries!" Keron bellowed. "I've had enough of your doomcrying."

Treynaf did not flinch. "Those were not my words. The stanza is one of the prophecies of the great seer, Shahera of Acalon, written fifteen centuries ago. It came to me suddenly."

"I don't care. Give me something useful. Give me knowledge that will help me fight Gloroc. Otherwise be silent."

"There is something there," Treynaf murmured, as if speaking to himself. "The poem contains a clue."

Keron scoffed. "Perhaps the line about wizard's children? Shall we poison your flesh and feed it to the Dragon?"

"I don't know." Treynaf stroked the globe. "I see a palace beneath the sea. I see a dragon, dead."

That, at least, was moderately cheering. For the thousandth time in his life Keron wished that some member of Alemar the Great's descendants would be born who could use the globe to its potential. He turned from Treynaf and found himself face to face with his herald.

"Summon two messengers," Keron snapped. "They're to carry the news of the battle. One will go to my son and daughter in Cilendrodel. The other goes to Struth."

The herald saluted and ran to do as he was told. On the battlefield the Dragon's men had seen that their momentum was checked. They fell back to reinforce their beachhead. Both sides resigned themselves to a long, bitter engagement.

The Flower Of Victory

You let your magic tortoise go,

And look at me, frowning.

Inauspicious.

– I Ching, 27th hexagram, first line

THE STRANGERS HAD BEEN tracking him for two days. Toren stilled his breathing and listened again. The forest hummed with its sounds: a firemoth laying eggs underneath a nearby leaf, birds chirping in the heights, beetles rustling through the mulch at his feet. Yet, the frogs were quiet, back along the overgrown path where he had been not long before. By now they should have resumed croaking.

Toren bent down and loosened his moccasins. His legs throbbed from knee to toe. He had run as only a modhiv could run, for two days, foregoing food and sleep. The breeze struck his sweat-drenched clothing and sent chills down the sides of his torso. His eyes burned.

He had run enough. It was no longer a case of personal danger. Before him was the stream that marked the borders of his tribe's land. Duty demanded that he protect his people.

He knelt on the muddy bank, pulled three small blocks of pigment from his pouch, wet his brush, and began his deathmask, using the stream's surface as a mirror. He took his time, painting the area under his eyebrows just so, mixing the colors to the exact hue he wanted, recreating the design that his grandfather's grandfather had worn to his grave. Once it had dried, he cast the blocks to the current.

So be it. If the strangers followed him now, someone would die.

He rubbed his feet, ankles, and calves with an ointment and waded into the stream, his passage making almost no sound. He travelled downstream at the same rate as the current, disturbing the silt as little as possible. Within minutes, a school of chikchik gathered around his feet, flashing their razor teeth inches from his skin. They smelled the ointment and swam on to find other, perhaps larger, prey.

Toren did not seize the first of the many branches that overhung the water, nor even the tenth. When he saw the one he wanted, he used it to lift himself from the stream, crawled hand over hand toward the trunk, and waited until his feet had dripped dry. He jumped directly from the trunk onto a jumble of rocks and restored his moccasins. By the time he had to step once more on soft ground, he was many yards from the bank.

That would not stop the strangers from finding the trail, not if they had failed to be thrown off by the other, more sophisticated tactics he had used during the past two days. It would, however, give the impression that he was still trying to hide it.

He hurried into Fhali land. After an hour he passed a hoary old tree where he had cached food ten days earlier, on his way to scout the territory of the Amane. The cache was still there, in a cleft long ago created by lightning. He scooped up the satchel and ran on. Presently, however, he began a wide circle that brought him within sight of the tree again, near the path down which he had originally come.

He hid deep within the brush beside the trail, tortured by the thought of the food he had retrieved. He dared not chew; the action of his jaws would dull his hearing. His ancestors encouraged him to have discipline, and he put hunger and the cold weather to the back of his mind. He focused his bloodshot eyes at the trail. Not once had he actually seen-or directly heard-whoever or whatever followed him, but he could sense the danger dogging his heels. There were at least two, possibly three, pursuers.