Two of Jherdar's red dragon bodyguards came over the wall and tore into the renegades furiously. Jherdar pulled free of his attackers a moment later, catching one of the black dragons by t he neck and dragging it down. The three surviving renegades tried to break free to retreat into the shadowed depths of the cavern, and the remaining gold and red dragons began leaping over the shattered wall to pursue them. Marthaen paused, feeling odd points of pressure against the armor of his legs and belly. Glancing down, he was almost amused to see a small army of goblins swarming over him, trying to slip their swords and spears inside the joints of his armor. He responded by spinning quickly, his long tail scattering the goblins like vermin.
The attack was essentially over a few moments later. Marthaen followed the others into the depths of the cavern, leaving a couple of his bodyguards to chase down the surviving goblins. The bodies of two of the renegades were tossed out of the cavern a short time later, their necks broken.
But the two elder dragons did not come out, having unfinished business of their own deeper within the cave. Thelvyn hoped that they would remember how treacherous a renegade king could be in his own lair. He folded away his wings and approached the smoking, dusty ruins. Kharendaen hurried to join him. The bodyguards were already clearing away some of the wreckage, pushing the broken stones aside so that they could haul the bodies of the black dragons out into the open. Marthaen returned from the depths of the cave a few minutes later. Jherdar followed more slowly, pulling the renegade king out of his own lair by the tail. Murodhir was bleeding slowly from his ears.
"That was quite an impressive show," Jherdar said to Thelvyn as he dragged the renegade out into the clearing and released his tail. The black dragon lay limp and panting in the trampled grass.
"We seem to have made an impression on Murodhir,"
Thelvyn said as he approached and sat back on his haunches so that he could take the renegade by one horn, lifting his head. "Good day, Murodhir. You don't mind us just dropping in like this, do you? We want to have a little chat about the Collar of the Dragons."
Murodhir began to take a deep breath, but Thelvyn was too quick for him, clamping shut his snout. Black dragons breathed deadly acid rather than flame like the larger breeds, although the acid was usually an ineffective weapon against other dragons. Nevertheless, Thelvyn would have suffered grave harm if he had caught it in the face at such close range.
"Come on, now. Breathe out," Thelvyn told the renegade firmly, knowing that black dragons lacked the ability to use their breath weapons through their nostrils. "Do you want me to make Jherdar sit on you?"
Murodhir relaxed. "What difference is that to me? I don't expect you will allow me to live."
"You already owe me for the grave injury you did to my friend Solveig White-Gold," Thelvyn said. "But what happens to you depends upon what you decide. You can answer my questions now, or you can go back to Windreach to answer to the dragons for the theft of the collar."
The black dragon fell silent and began to quiver in fear. The worst of all possible fates he faced at that moment was being taken to Windreach to stand trial. The dragons would be especially inventive in punishing the greatest traitor their race had known in a long time.
"The question is really quite simple," Thelvyn continued, having given Murodhir a moment to think about his options. "Were you the one who stole the Collar of the Dragons for the Fire Wizards? Yes or no?"
Murodhir sighed loudly. "I knew the Fire Wizards from the time when they first came into the Highlands over a hundred years ago. They had always paid me well for information, especially about the dragons. Kalestraan proposed a bargain by which I would help him to gain the power he desired to rule the human races, and in return he would give me the power to rule over the dragons. He said that he would make it possible for me to steal the Collar of the Dragons and defeat the Dragonlord.
1'hen, when he was done with the collar, he would give it back to me so that I could proclaim myself Dragonking."
"Then you were the one who told him where the Collar of the Dragons was kept?" Thelvyn insisted.
"No. He knew that already," the renegade insisted. "He gave me an artifact of magic that allowed me to safely pass through the barriers that guarded the collar."
"Then you don't know how Kalestraan knew of the collar and its location? He did not learn of it from you?" Thelvyn asked.
"No, I swear that," Murodhir responded earnestly. "I brought the collar to him in the woods near the city of Braas-tar. That was the last I saw or heard of it. Some months later, he sent word of the day and the time when I was to attack the Dragonlord, but the attack did not go well. He hadn't warned me that you commanded magic other than the enchantments of the armor."
"Do you have any idea what Kalestraan did with the collar?" Thelvyn insisted.
"No. I tried to learn, so that I could still claim the collar for my own if Kalestraan tried to trick me. All I know is that I placed the collar in the back of a wagon. The wizards covered it over with a canvas and drove off into the night. I tried to watch, but after they had gone a mile or so, there was a flash of light beneath the trees and I never saw them again."
"Well, at least that's something," Thelvyn said. "You can take us to that place, I trust?"
Without warning, Murodhir suddenly panicked, as if something the others did not understand had filled him with terror. He began to twist around violently, trying to get his legs beneath him so that he could pull away, except that Thelvyn was still holding him by the horns. Realizing he couldn't get away, the renegade seemed to lose all sanity and became a snarling, thrashing beast. Unable to pull back from his captor, he abruptly thrust himself forward.
Thelvyn was not caught entirely by surprise, but he was in an awkward position. Sitting up on his haunches, he was unable to keep his balance as the weight of the black dragon was suddenly thrown against him. He crashed heavily on his back, and Murodhir was on him in the next instant, the sharp fangs of the renegade snapping inches from his throat. Moved by an instinct to defend himself at any cost, he pulled Murod-hir's head to the left, since he was still holding the renegade's horn by that hand. With an effort, he reached around with his right hand until he was able to get a firm grasp of Murodhir's other horn, then twisted sharply. The renegade king instantly collapsed and went limp, his neck broken.
"A pity you had to kill him," Marthaen said as he pulled away the body of the black dragon so that Thelvyn could climb free. "I don't know if we can find the place where the Fire Wizards took the collar without him."
"I'm not sure that's really important," Thelvyn said. "If there were anything in the woods outside Braastar for us to discover, Murodhir would have found it long ago. If he had any idea where the collar is, he would have stolen it for himself after Kalestraan died last summer."
"That's true," Jherdar agreed, looking discouraged. "So now what?"
"First, we're going to search every inch of Murodhir's lair," Thelvyn replied. "We know that the Fire Wizards were paying him something for all his little chores and errands. Something they gave him might provide some clue about where to look for their hidden stronghold. Frankly, I was hoping that Murodhir had been in contact with the surviving traitor wizards since Kalestraan's death and would know where they were. But I believe that he was frightened enough to tell us all he knew."