Feril shook her head and yawned. “I’d say that might make him the cleverest of the overlords. Why should he bother to directly involve himself?” She yawned again. “He has an army of spawn to do the work for him. He can lay back and count his treasure—or do whatever dragons like to do.”
“And he has the Knights of Takhisis in Palanthas working for him,” Blister added. “The knights run the city and the land around it. How does the dragon spend his time? Counting treasure would get boring after a while.”
Palin rubbed his neck. “He must be up to something if he has his underlings running everything. After we find this stronghold Rig’s interested in, I’ll contact my associates, see if we can figure out just what the Blue is up to. Perhaps we could—”
Blister had fallen asleep. The sorcerer glanced at the Kagonesti. She had curled up into a ball, her head resting on her arm.
“Perhaps we could discuss it later,” he said quietly. He closed his eyes and let sleep claim him, too.
Chapter 5
Spawning Ground
Khellendros glided several hundred feet above the desert floor. It was cool this night, too cool for his liking. He could make it warmer just by concentrating and casting an enchantment that would comfortably raise the temperature of the air around his massive body. But he knew the sun would bring the cherished heat with it in a few hours, and that would do. He had the patience to wait until then, and he pledged to devote at least part of the coming day to basking on the white sand and plotting.
He angled his sleek body toward his northernmost lair, soaring past a small ridge in which two men, an elf, and a kender slept. He didn’t notice them, so intent was he on reaching the underground cave. Nor did they notice him, for he seemed to fade into the dark sky. Khellendros’s belly was the lightest part of him, thick plates of iridescent azure ran from just under his jaw to the base of his tail. The rest of his body was covered with sapphire blue scales that were almost black in some places on his massive back. His dark wings were leathery and covered in small scales, and his claws were long and as white as the single, pale moon that hung low in the sky. Only Malys was larger than he; the Blue stretched nearly four hundred feet from nose to tail tip. Despite his immense size, Khellendros was incredibly graceful on the ground—fast and dexterous. But in the sky, his element, he was even more agile and could turn and bank in smooth, quick motions.
As he neared his home, he tilted his head and unleashed a bolt of lightning that shot up and buried itself into a cloud far overhead. The dragon closed his eyes for an instant, called to the cloud and merged his senses with its milky-gray tendrils. A moment later the cloud answered by caressing his body with soft rain. He released another bolt and another.
The flashing light revealed his magnificent visage. A spiny midnight-blue crest framed his huge head. His eyes, elegantly slanted orbs, were the color of lightning and had a hint of malevolence about them. Horns curved up and away from his jowls, twin spiky growths the shade of cream at the base and turning to steel blue at the tips. Khellendros was a most impressive dragon.
The rain came harder now, so he could better feel it against his thick hide. He rolled onto his back and let it run across his stomach plates. He rolled again and dove toward the sand, aiming for a large rocky ridge that sheltered an enormous cave. As he flew through the cave opening and down the tunnel, his claws never touched the ground. He tucked them in close to his body and the dark maw of the cavern swallowed him up.
“No!” the dragon bellowed, pulling up to a stop and hovering in the air. Khellendros narrowed his eyes to golden slits, and peered through the darkness to observe that part of his beloved underground lair had collapsed. There was barely enough room in the one chamber left standing for his massive form and the two wyverns who trembled nervously.
“Master home,” the wyvern stated. “Master free us?”
The dragon’s wings, flapped only a little in the now-cramped confines. But it was enough to stir up the sand on the floor, which stung the wyverns’ eyes.
“Free please?” the smaller implored as it blinked furiously and jiggled its head to shake off the sand.
Khellendros growled, a rumble that reverberated in his belly and sounded like an earthquake. Lightning flickered around his jagged teeth, and his eyes grew wide. “Explain yourselves! Explain this!”
The wyverns looked at each other, and then the larger one gulped, trembled violently, and swiveled its neck so it could look straight into the enormous eyes of the Storm Over Krynn. “Spawn caught men,” the creature began. “And elf. Made prisoners.”
The smaller wyvern nodded furiously. “Spawns popped.”
“After…” the larger wyvern searched its dim brain for a word, “magic. Elf made magic.” It looked down at its trapped claws and once more struggled to free itself.
“Elf,” the other wyvern agreed. “Elf made floor magic. Made walls fall.”
“Bad elf,” the larger one said. Then the creature described the prisoners in as much detail as its limited vocabulary allowed—the dark skinned mariner with a seemingly unending collection of daggers, the tan elf with paintings on her skin, the childlike kender who pelted the spawn with pearls, and the older man with brown-gray hair. The dragon paid particular attention to the description of the eldest in the group.
“Free now?” the smaller wyvern asked. “Free please?”
Khellendros growled louder. His huge nostrils quivered, taking in the foreign scents in his lair, and his eyes locked onto the bits of drying blood on the stone floor and along the walls. “Where are these prisoners now?”
“Escaped,” the wyverns chorused.
The dragon swung his head around to bring it close to the wyverns. His growl died to a soft rumble, and he sat back on his haunches, his tail trailing behind him and flicking angrily. “And…”
The smaller wyvern swallowed. “Prisoners popped spawn. Guards. Only two popped.”
“And ones below when cave fell,” the other added, then glanced hopefully at the dragon. “Free please now?”
“When Fissure arrives.” Khellendros stretched out in the cave as much as possible and closed his eyes. The wyverns* banter faded to plaintive whispers, then stopped. They were afraid to wake the dragon and incur his wrath.
But the dragon was not sleeping. Rather, he was thinking about his lost spawn, his lost hours of work, and of Palin Majere, whom he fully intended to find and slay. The sorcerer was the whelp of Caramon and Tika Majere, Kitiara’s nemeses. Therefore the sorcerer was the dragon’s enemy. And now, because of the sorcerer and his friends, Khellendros would have to rebuild his spawn army and reshape this lair. The dragon growled softly and let his thoughts drift to the storm outside, his mind playing with it. He ignored the nervous breathing of his ugly brown servants. The wind howled and thunder boomed—sounds he considered preferable to music. Lightning flashed down to kiss the sand. The storm continued to grow more intense, and then he thought of Kitiara.
Shortly before dawn a diminutive figure glided into Khellendros’s cave. Not much more than a foot tall, his smooth skin was the color of the rocky walls, His eyes were black, pupilless circles that seemed too large for his pinched face and his ears were flush with the sides of his bald head. He wore no clothes and had long-fingered hands.
The little man shuffled forward, past the wyverns, who looked at him expectantly but kept their mouths shut. He silently approached the Storm Over Krynn, stopping a few feet away from the tip of the dragon’s great blue snout. The large yellow eyes opened.
“Fissure,” the dragon rumbled. “Palin Majere was here “
The little man looked beyond the dragon and noted the collapsed walls. “Did he discover your plans?”