Выбрать главу

In an effort to rouse herself the better to contemplate this puzzle, the young dragon rolled over onto her belly and unwound her tail from her pile of treasure. It was a small pile, to be sure, but how much could a dragon hoard in a mere century of life? And how many opportunities did she have, she who was reduced to a few short bursts of activity? The Forest of Tethir was cool, but hardly cold enough to provide comfort to a dragon of her kind. Eileen spent much of her time in her cave, in a stuporous lethargy.

She dared not venture out too often. Though she was nearly thirty feet long and almost full-grown, there were still creatures in the forest who could give her a good fight. These enemies could find her far too easily; with her enormous size and glistening white scales, Eileen didn't exactly blend into the landscape. Unless forced by hunger into hunting, she stayed in the cave, for she felt dangerously conspicuous except on those few days when a dusting of snow touched the forest, or when storm clouds turned the sky to a pale and pearly gray.

All things considered, Eileen longed for the frozen Northlands of which her parents had spoken-and to which they had returned when she was barely more than a hatchling.

Eileen had been too small to keep pace with the larger dragons, but she had managed to fly from her birth-place on the icy peaks of the Snowflake Mountains as far as Tethir. Someday, she would fly to the far north along with the forest's other white dragons who shared her plight. A flight of dragons, and she its leader! How glorious! All she needed was an extended cold snap and favorable winds…

Another sharp, stinging blow brought Eileen back to the matter at hand. The dragon yawned widely, then set-tied back on her haunches to consider the situation. The air was moist and fairly warm, even down here hi the cavern. Yes* it was early summer, the most reasonable time for a hail storm, yet she was in her cave, which meant that actual hail was highly unlikely.

The dragon came to this conclusion, not so much with words, but with the instinctual awareness that even the slowest-witted creature must have of its surroundings in order to survive. Of all Faerun's evil dragons, whites were the smallest and the least intelligent. And even by the modest measure of her kind, Eileen was hardly the sharpest sword in the armory.

Swinging her crested white head this way and that, the dragon looked about for the source of the disturbance. Another stinging slap to the neck-this one dangerously close to the base of one of her leathery wings- came from the direction of the eastern passage.

Eileen squinted into the tunnel's darkness. A shadowy form lurked there. She could make out a two-legged shape and the loaded bow in its hands. But whether the bowman was human, or elven, or something more or less similar, she could not say, for the tantalizing aroma of wintermint masked his scent.

The annoying creature let loose yet another arrow. It struck tile dragon squarely on the snout and bounced off without penetrating the plate armor of her face. Even so, it stung!

For a moment, the dazed and cross-eyed dragon stared at the pair of humanoid archers that had invaded her lair. She gave her head a violent shake, and the two melded back into one. Still, that was one too many.

Eileen let out a roar of pain and anger and exploded to her feet. The archer turned on his heel and ran down the tunnel, with the dragon in hot pursuit.

Well, maybe warm pursuit; Eileen's last nap had lasted several weeks, and since she had a habit of sleeping on her side-plate-armored cheek pillowed on scaly paw-one foreleg was numb and uncooperative. Therefore what she had intended to be a fearsome charge was in feet reduced to an uneven, loping, three-legged hop

Eileen skidded to a stop and plunked herself down on her haunches. She lifted both forelegs and regarded them. After a moment's thought, a solution presented itself, one she thought quite ingenious. The dragon sucked in a long breath of air, held her good leg up close to her fanged jaws, and blew upon it a long, icy blast. This, Eileen's breath weapon, could put out a raging fire or freeze a full-grown centaur to solid ice in midstride. It could even slightly benumb her own flesh, despite her natural armor and her uncanny resistance to cold.

Eileen dropped back onto all fours and tested her front legs. Yes, they were both equally numb now. With her equilibrium restored, the dragon resumed her charge, slowly, to be sure, but with a more even and dignified gait.

Her two-legged tormenter was well out of sight now, but Eileen easily followed the scent of mint. Although her wit was about as sharp as a spoon, she possessed a keen sense of smell-not to mention a particular fondness for wintermint.

As the dragon trotted through the cavern's tunnels and out into the forest, two things happened. First, both of her front legs gradually returned to normal and her pace accelerated into a dizzying, plant-crushing charge. Second, it began to occur to her that she was very, very hungry and that perhaps this interruption was not such a bad thing after all.

Night was falling upon the Forest of Tethir, and Vhenlar eyed the deepening shadows with an intense and growing dread. In the days that followed the battle at the pipeweed farm, the mercenaries had pursued the elven raiders deep into the forest-far deeper than ever they had ventured before, and much too deep for Vhenlar's peace of mind.

The ancient woodland was uncanny. The trees had a watchful, listening mien; the birds carried tales; the very shadows seemed alive. There was magic here-primal, elemental magic-of a sort that put even the hired mages on edge, even the high-ticket Halruaan wizard in whom Bunlap put such store.

Other, more tangible dangers abounded. Since daybreak, unseen elves had been clipping arrows at the humans' heads and heels, nipping at them like sheep dogs gathering a flock for spring shearing. Beyond doubt, the mercenaries were being herded-toward what, Vhenlar could not say.

But he had little choice other than to move the band as swiftly northward as they could go. He'd tried to keep on the trail of the southbound elves, and lost five good men for his troubles. And so they headed northward, as their unseen tormenters intended. They would pick up the trail later, after… whatever.

Nor were the wild elves the mercenaries' only unseen foe, or their unknown destination their only worry. There was trouble enough to be found along the way. Not even the best woodsmen among them-and these included foresters, hired swords who'd knocked about in a dozen lands, and a couple of rangers gone bad-could identify all the strange cries, roars, and birdcalls that resounded through the forest. But all of the men had seen and heard enough to know there were creatures here that were best avoided. They'd stumbled upon a particularly unsubtle piece of evidence shortly before highsun. It was an image that stuck in Vhenlar’s mind: a pile of dried scat in which was embedded the entire skull of an ogre. Whatever had killed that ogre-which had been an eight-footer, by the look of the skull, a creature probably as strong as any three men-was big enough to bite off the monster's head and swallow it whole. Ogres were bad enough, in Vhenlar*s opinion, and he didn't even want to contemplate a creature big enough-and hungry enough-to eat such grim fare.

Monsters had always lived in the forest, but if tavern

tales and lost adventuring parties were any fair measure of truth, the sheer variety and number of such creatures was spiraling into nightmarish proportions. To Vhenlar's way of thinking, this was partly the result of the troubles the elves were currently facing. Their attention had been diverted from forest husbandry to the more pressing matter of survival. This was, of course, precisely what Bunlap and the mercenary captain's mysterious employer had intended.

"Bunlap just had to order us to follow them elves," muttered Vhenlar. "Don't matter to him, what with his being snug behind fortress walls with nary a tree in sight, and no damn wild elves planting arrows in his backside!"