"Perhaps Dwarfskinner may be avenged," Flayze allowed. "But tell me more. How many winters have passed since the coming of the metal dragons?"
"Four, Excellent Flaming One," replied the sentry who had done most of the talking. "The latest just recently melted into water."
"Good," Flayze declared, with a nod of satisfaction. That meant that enough time had passed for certain concerns, such as his disobedience to the commands of Ari-akas, to become irrelevant. At the same time, however, there were likely to remain aftereffects from the war, factors of chaos and violence that would make the red dragon's existence a little easier.
"Would his lordship care for a taste of jerky?" asked one of the draconians, with obvious reluctance.
Flayze snorted contemptuously, looking at the scrawny dragonmen as he remembered his sumptuous repast in the marsh. "No," he replied curtly. "I take wing again- and I shall look for scales of brass."
CHAPTER 15
356 AC
Third Kirinor, Yurthgreen
Recalling the location of Skullcap, Flayze flew toward the great mountain with unerring accuracy. Fire pulsed in his belly, and his mind was inflamed with eager thoughts of battle. A brass dragon! None of the metallics was more hot-tempered, nor more irritating to the presence of a beautiful chromatic such as Flayzeranyx. The thought of a vicious battle, of the killing that would follow, drove him near to a frenzy as his broad wings soared northward through the dawn.
A brownish-gray fog lay low across the Plain of Der-goth, and the fire-breathing dragon had to forcibly resist the notion that he flew through a realm of ether, a place lacking substance and boundary. Occasionally the vapors would part to reveal a glimpse of the cracked and broken ground below, and this was enough to reassure Flayze about his bearings. So he swept onward, slicing the vaporous cloud with his sharp wings and smooth body.
He could have risen above the blanket of mist, but it suited him to remain within the concealment of the fog. He remembered that the plain below him was featureless and flat, offering no upthrusting obstacles that would suddenly burst from the fog to endanger him. And if there was in fact a brass dragon at Skullcap, Flayze felt no obligation to give the serpent a great deal of warning about his approach.
Other reds might have handled the situation differently, Flayzeranyx knew. Perhaps they would have concealed their flight beneath a spell of invisibility, or even altered their beautiful, perfect shapes with a polymorph spell, flying in the feathered guise of an eagle or condor. The red snorted, scorning such arcane deceits. Like all of his clan dragons, Flayze had an arsenal of magic at his command, but as he had throughout his life, he now disdained the casting of spells. He preferred instead the integrity of hot fire, the trustworthy strength of powerful sinew and sharp, rending claw and fang.
By the time the sun started to burn away the fog, the red dragon was only a few miles from the skull-shaped mountain that gradually materialized in the middle distance. He approached the mountain from the front, flying at an altitude that was even with the great pock-marks in the cliff that so resembled the eye sockets of an actual skull. The rounded dome formed a smooth summit of whitish-gray stone, and the whole edifice was still and ominous.
Drawing closer, he saw no sign of any inhabitant, not in the yawning maw of the entrance cavern at ground level-the skull's "mouth"-or in the large apertures that gaped above the craggy cliffs of the preternatural cheekbones. Any one of the three entrances was large enough to have concealed a good-sized dragon, so Flayze didn't allow his caution to recede. Instead, he banked, gliding through a leisurely circle around the edifice. On the back side, downwind from Skullcap, he caught a hint of sulfurous, steaming heat, the distinctive spoor of the brass confirming the draconians' reports.
Flayze dived past the face of the ghastly mountain, bellowing a challenge, turning to spit a gout of fire that raked all three of the entrances scarring the rocky face. Then he veered to the side, circling sharply, looping to come to rest on the smooth, rounded summit.
His blast had no sooner dissipated along the craggy rock than did the front of Skullcap exploded in a hiss of blistering air, a gout of heat that seared outward, emerging from the skull's left eye to linger in the space before the mountain. Flayzeranyx prepared to leap, expecting the serpent to burst out of that same hole.
But the brass took him by surprise. It lunged from the right eye socket, curving sharply down and away. The red leaped after it, breathing fire, only to see the brass tail flicker out of sight around the side of the mountain.
Reacting by sudden instinct, Flayze flew upward, tilting to the side, flying in a wild, rolling cartwheel over the rounded crest of Skullcap. Immediately he saw brass jaws gaping before him, realized that the metallic had tried the same tactic-but the red was faster. Flayze's lethal fireball exploded around his enemy, searing the scales back from its face, boiling the glaring eyeballs in their sockets.
The two dragons met in a crash of talon and fang, but the brass was blinded and too sorely hurt to make an effective attack. Flayze seized his enemy's supple neck in his foreclaws, then struck with a single, crushing bite. The serpents, coiling together almost like lovers, collapsed to the dusty ground, shivering and lashing about for a moment, then settling into utter stillness.
Slowly a single head-a head cloaked in scales of bright crimson-rose from the corpse of his foe. Flayze twisted, uncoiling from the tangled body, shaking the sulfurous stench away. One final sniff confirmed that the brass was utterly dead.
Finally the red dragon turned toward the mountain. Already he entertained thoughts of making this his lair. Indeed, with the forbidding aspect of the skull visage, it seemed a perfect place for a red dragon. He padded through the entrance, ducking low to pass beneath the stalactites jutting down like great fangs.
A short distance into the cave he drew up short, puzzled by an object on the smooth floor. Squinting, Flayze discerned that it was a skull-a human skull. Surprised, the dragon picked it up, balancing it between two massive foreclaws. He felt a pulse of magic in the bony object, and at the same time knew a strong sensation that he should leave this place.
He scuttled out of the cavern with alacrity, looking over his shoulder at the mountain with a newly critical eye. In fact, he now perceived, this place had many faults as a lair. Most notably, it was stuck here in the middle of a desert. His comings and goings would be observed, on a clear day, by any creature within dozens of miles.
No, Flayze decided, taking wing again, he would find another lair. There was certain to be a better place around here; perhaps he would even return to the cave where he had hibernated.
At the same time, he pinched the piece of bone between his powerful claws. For some reason that he didn't clearly understand, he was utterly determined to keep the skull.
CHAPTER 16
374 AC
Fourth Bracha, Paleswelt
Flayze lounged easily in the steaming depths of his cavern. Water spilled from a narrow chute high in the cave wall, pouring in a cheery rivulet down the steep slope, then splashing into a pool of crystalline water. The overflow of that pool sloshed down a sloping slab, then gushed into the depths of the lower caverns. There it spattered onto rocks that were deceptively dark, but the sudden burst of hissing vapor provided quick proof that those stones were very hot indeed.
In fact, Flayze knew that, should he break one of those lower rocks in half, he would find that the center was a fiery red core of viscous lava. He knew because, more than once, he had done it. He relished the fiery depths of his lair, delighted in the fact that living, flowing rock slowly oozed into the lower reaches.