Khisanth stepped into the chill, murky pond and waded toward an enormous tree whose roots arched majestically some eight feet above the pool's green surface. She bent her head to the water and half ducked, half swam, through the archway into the tree.
Nature had hollowed the place as if it were intended as a dragon's lair. Bright, glowing lichen that looked almost mag shy;ical clung to the moist, corklike walls. Pond water reached halfway through the chamber. Toward the back of the lair, the tree climbed onto the bank and provided solid ground for abed.
Living so close to water, Khisanth had learned to glory in swimming, to revel in the feel of tepid water gliding over her scales and filling her nostrils. The feeling would never replace that of flying, but it was a close second.
She discovered a whole new world underwater, where fish and other aquatic creatures provided tasty tidbits so flavorful they surpassed even the most tender moose. Though she was the largest creature to swim in these waters, Khisanth had learned to glide beneath the surface so quietly that she could surprise beavers on their dams and gobble them whole, before panic could spoil the flavor of their meat.
Territorial skirmishes had given Khisanth the chance to taste creatures whose flavors, no matter how rewarding the kills, were unappealing. The lizard-bird cockatrice's ability to turn her to stone with its touch caused her to forego her favorite trick of biting off its head. Instead, she'd leveled it with her acid, leaving little to taste. Then there'd been that giant poisonous toad. Khisanth still shivered at the taste of its slimy, scaleless body filled with bitter-if not deadly- poison.
Still troubled by the thought of being followed, Khisanth curled up on the floor of her lair and fell into her favorite pas shy;time: counting and sorting the treasures hung on her choker. Though the necklace had been conceived to transport her cache and leave her claws free, its constant presence around her neck had become a comfort, a talisman. She'd taken to stringing the skulls of her enemies between the shiny weapons as spacers, to keep the trinkets fanned out around her entire neck instead of sliding down to hang in a clump from her throat like a lead weight. She removed the choker only to add new valuables, or to count and stroke her baubles, or to stare into the most valuable of all her prizes, the maynus globe.
Khisanth's thoughts frequently turned to those who had given her the maynus and what they had taught her. The memories began warmly enough, of Kadagan's patient train shy;ing and Joad's healing hands. But the remembrances always turned prickly when she would recall the younger nyphid's last words to her. They had planted seeds of doubt that easily germinated in the fertile, damp silence of the moors.
Khisanth knew now that she had not done everything she could to save Dela. If she'd not gotten so distracted by her human form, she would have killed the entire party the sec shy;ond she was certain Dela was in the wagon. Even before.
The dragon suffered no guilt at this failure, but she did feel regret. She deeply rued that she'd been so horribly wrong about Led. Yet, she was convinced that she wasn't responsi shy;ble for that, either. She blamed her faulty thinking entirely on her human form.
As the dragon began to muse about the nyphids and the limitations of humankind, a familiar, unpleasant sensation dragged her attention back to her lair. Khisanth fell as still as stone, her musings banished. There it was again, that feeling…. Whoever it was had come close to her home this time-too close for Khisanth's peace of mind.
She was rising to her feet when a piercing series of shrieks rang out above her willow tree. Khisanth clapped her claws to her ear holes. Her head felt as if it would be split in two by the hideous noise, which seemed to come from the Abyss itself.
Khisanth knew of only one creature that made that sort of noise-a dragon. The spine-tingling, high-pitched screeches might have come from her own mouth. Khisanth dived through the archway to the pond and looked up just in time to confirm her suspicions. The body of an enormous black dragon, wings fully extended, sped away through the dusky sky. Its underbelly was well scarred.
Khisanth looked upon the first fellow dragon she'd seen since before the Sleep. The strange wyrm tucked its wings, turned sharply, and dived right for her lair. When it seemed the dragon would plunge straight into the tree, a slight twist of its wings sent it into a sharp bank. The wyrm-Khisanth could see he was a male now-leveled off just yards above the delicate willow branches, blasting leaves from their limbs. Still moving impossibly fast, the dragon curled his lips back from the yellowed knives of his teeth. The night ex shy;ploded in a crackling billow of stinking green acid.
Bile engulfed the graceful, arching branches of Khisanth's beloved willow. The ancient tree split and splintered. Great holes opened as branches exploded and spun into the air. Raising a claw, the attacking dragon boldly swooped to within a tail's length of his astonished target. Retracting one talon, he raked two deep scratches into the living wood above Khisanth's head. Then, with a mighty pump of his wings and a last threatening screech, he rose above the siz shy;zling willow and into the dark sky.
The shriek of challenge finally shook Khisanth from her daze. She gave a mighty slap of her tail that sent a wave of water crashing over the still-smoking husk of her willow tree, washing away whatever was left of the other dragon's acid. The corrosive bile sputtered wherever it touched the water. Khisanth's lair at the base of the tree was still largely intact, though hideously scarred.
Think twice, act once, Kadagan had always said. Khisanth called on her qhen training to still the fury and the urge to chase after the wyrm. She had learned the price of such foolishness the hard way-lost information from her first battle with ogres, pain and humiliation from the disastrous skir shy;mish with the young Solamnic Knight at Needle Pass.
At least this unprovoked attack had solved one mystery. "He's obviously the one who's been watching me," Khisanth muttered aloud. But the intent of the assault still puzzled her. The dragon's acid could easily have destroyed her lair, if that was his goal. He was either a bungler or a rival for the same territory.
Her fury turned to puzzlement, then curiosity. Another dragon … It would be interesting to talk to another of her kind. Looking at her still-smoldering lair, she thought it unlikely he had conversation on his mind.
Khisanth sprang from the ground and into the air. She headed west, in the direction the other dragon had taken. From her one flight over the rest of the moors, when she had scouted for her lair, she knew the place was enormous. Even a simple flight from east to west would take many days, and the moor was twice as long from north to south as it was from east to west. A shrub-by-shrub examination could take a lifetime. Pushing herself hard, she hoped she would gain enough ground to catch sight of the dragon again, but she couldn't be sure of his flight trail.
After some time, when her wings began to ache and she had seen only Lunitari in the dark night sky, she landed. The dragon adopted the shape of the first creature she saw. Upon questioning, the blue-necked mallard admitted seeing another flying creature, much larger than itself. But it had never encountered the winged creature on the ground.
Khisanth traveled westward on foot in a variety of guises, from snout-nosed aardvark to zebra, questioning everything she met for some sign pointing to the other dragon's lair.
Her first useful clue came when, as a curly-tusked warthog, she learned of a place over which an enormous winged crea shy;ture flew regularly. The other warthog had also heard loud rumblings just beyond a ridge of rocks to the north and west. Changing yet again into the sleek, weasel-like body of a meerkat, hoping to be overlooked as a rodent by a wary