“And another plague on how they did it!” snarled Darlantan, his fury at last pulling Aurican’s golden head around. The silver dragon’s pain had faded into the background of his awareness, replaced by a grim fire, an emotion more chilling than any he had ever felt.
He was learning to hate, he knew.
“Beware!” The sound was like the keening cry of an eagle, but Darlantan recognized the word spoken in the language of the griffons. Immediately he banked, and Aurican followed in a lazy spiral over the forest.
“Up there,” the gold dragon said, and his silver cousin angled his head, observing the winged creature diving toward them.
“A scion of Ravenclaw,” Darlantan said as the griffon slowed with a rearing gesture. The massive feathered wings bore the creature easily between the two mighty serpents. “Have a care, my friend. There are new dangers in the skies.”
“This I know, and I have come in turn to warn you. There are two dragons, deep black in color, who have claimed the meeting knoll. They disturbed one of my young a short time ago, when they landed there.”
The pillar of cliff-draped rock was already in view, thrusting upward from the surrounding forest.
“We will kill them!” Dar pledged, his belly tightening at the prospects of revenge.
“But first you must find them, and that is why I warn you. After they landed, they changed… disappeared so that they cannot be seen. But still my nestling could smell them. He knew they were there.”
“Invisibility magic!” hissed the silver dragon, feeling another surge of outrage.
“We will deal with them,” said Aurican. “Of that you may be sure. And thank you for the warning.”
“Be careful!” urged the griffon, banking into a gentle dive. Soon he was a speck fading into the distance.
They approached the craggy knoll of granite, the barren summit perhaps twice as high as the loftiest of the pines. The dragons of Paladine scrutinized the place, seeking some sign of the invisible dragons.
“There, to the left,” murmured Darlantan, indicating a clearing where several saplings had been flattened.
“Right-and there, on the rocks, is the second,” Auri said.
“Where the bushes are crushed,” Darlantan agreed, feeling the killing frost swell in his belly.
Side by side, the two metal dragons winged toward the bluff. Darlantan lowered himself into a gentle glide, as if looking for a good place to land. He marked both dragons, not because he could see them but because their massive bodies had inevitably disturbed the crowded terrain. Nearing the flattened patch of grove, Dar abruptly lashed his head downward, exploding with a blast of surging, churning frost.
The enemy dragon shrilled its pain and fury, and Dar veered away as a fountain of acid exploded from frost-coated jaws. The black dragon, clearly outlined in rime, twisted upward, but the vengeful silver was too fast. Darlantan settled onto the snakelike serpent, crushing with his silver claws, squeezing his powerful jaws over the squirming throat. With a shudder, the black dragon grew still.
Aurican, Darlantan saw, had dispatched his foe with similar quickness. The pair of metal dragons tossed the limp corpses into the forest below and finally settled to rest on the rocky crest, tucking their wings and squatting between rough outcrops. With a shrug, Aurican shifted into his more compact two-legged form, and Darlantan quickly followed.
He found it a relief to tend to some mundane affairs, gathering some brush for a fire while Auri cleared the stones from the area where they had chosen to sleep. Finally they settled before a small blaze, both of them reflecting on the many centuries of their brothers’ lives… and their violent ends. They talked of Burll’s strength, of Smelt’s lightning quickness. Together they imagined the deadly menace that hot-tempered Blayze would have become, should he have survived the first ambush long enough to embark on a quest for vengeance.
“That revenge shall be our task now,” Aurican murmured, still speaking with the serene detachment that, under the circumstances, Darlantan found profoundly disturbing.
“Sssst!” The body of the bearded sage hissed the warning as the silver dragon heard an almost silent footfall from the thicket near the precipitous edge of the knoll.
Darlantan rose to his feet, unafraid. In fact, he almost hoped to see an ogre, or even a dragon, of the Dark Queen burst into view and give him a vent for his fury. He felt a swelling in his human chest, but he resisted the impulse to expand to his full size.
Instead of ogres, a pair of lithe figures emerged from the shadows, moving toward the welcoming warmth of the fire. Only elves could have approached so quietly, and the dragons recognized both of the sylvan visitors. One had hair of harvest-straw gold and was dressed in silken leggings and tunic, while the other was dark-haired, nearly naked, his body covered in swirls of dark war paint. At his side, he bore the horn of a mighty ram. Silvanos and Kagonos advanced and squatted beside the small fire, soaking up the welcome radiance, saying nothing as their ancient friends settled back beside them.
“We grieve for your splendid city,” Aurican said, solemnly addressing the proud Silvanos.
“One of a hundred, a thousand tragedies of a scope too grand to comprehend,” declared the revered leader of the elves. “And in truth, the destruction of buildings and lands and constructs is as nothing compared to the losses of fathers and mothers, sons and sisters, that have ravaged our people since the coming of the dragons.”
Silvanos looked squarely across the fire, meeting the eyes of Auri and Dar as he struggled to blink back tears. His voice, when he spoke, was strangled by a very unelven passion.
“The coming of the ogres was a thing we could fight, and we did-but dragons! By all the gods, when they swept from the sky, breathing lightning and ice, burning acid and deadly poisonous gas, we could only flee to the woods.”
“We are all elves of the forest now,” said Kagonos, furrowing his dark eyebrows. His face and body were painted in the whorls and lines of the inky dye favored by his tribe, and his gray eyes were serious as they regarded the flesh cloaking the two dragons. “We would have warned you of the danger had we received word of your return in time. As it was, by the time the news arrived from the south, you had already been lured into Crematia’s ambush.”
“Ah… a good name for that fiery killer,” Aurican observed, still speaking in the same infuriating tone of detachment. “What about the spell magic that she used? Did this Crematia creature bring it from the Abyss?”
“Aye, my friend,” Silvanos agreed, his golden eyes keen as they studied Aurican. “What does that mean to you?”
“Simply that spell magic resides in the realms of the gods… that if we want to fight the power of sorcery, we shall have to seek powers of our own-powers that come from the gods.”
“But not from the Abyss…” The golden-haired elf spoke with certainty.
“No… no, of course not.” Auri’s manner was breezy.
Silvanos held up a hand. “There are others, perhaps, who can help. Do not be alarmed by their appearance, for they travel under our protection.”
Three elves, a trio of lithe but apparently elderly males, advanced into the clearing. Except for the colors of their robes, which were red, black, and white, respectively, the three might have been mirror images of each other. Each had long hair of iron gray, and they regarded the quartet with dark eyes that flashed with curiosity and something else.
The black-robed elf hung back, his gaze glaring with almost physical brightness, while the two in white and red took hesitant steps forward, bowing, regarding the transformed dragons with inscrutable expressions.
“I present Fayal Padran and Parys Dayl,” murmured Silvanos, indicating the elves in red and white, respectively. The dark-garbed figure in the back stared silently. “And Kayn Wytsnall as well.”
“Welcome to our humble fire,” Dar offered.