“Who are you?” she demanded, punctuating her question with a puff of black smoke.
“I am Bayrn Takwing, a chieftain of this delving,” the dwarf replied, with a belligerent glare, as if he would have welcomed the dragon’s precipitous attack-a notion that lingered temptingly in Crematia’s mind.
“Have you obeyed me?” she demanded, once again sparing the insolent dwarf with a supreme effort of will.
“We have here one of your ‘eggs,’ Mighty Killer,” declared the dwarf, glaring upward with an audacious display of ill temper.
“Then you have failed me, for I bade you bring four of them,” growled Crematia, rearing back in unconscious surprise at the dwarf’s manner. “Know that I am not one who is tolerant of failure.”
Fire swelled in her belly, barely restrained from lethal release. Smoke puffed from her nostrils, but something in the dwarf’s manner held her in check.
The fellow’s beard bristled, and he slung the satchel forward, opening its mouth to allow a perfect sphere of white to tumble out. The stone sat still on the stony road, but seemed nevertheless to move with some sense of inner vitality. It pulsed and radiated, brightening the surrounding ground with a wash of icy light.
“And you have lied to us, for this is no more an egg than you are a horse. It is a gemstone, and you should be glad that it’s magic. Because of that, we’re content to be rid of it, and you are welcome to take it away from here. Otherwise, understand that you’d not be seeing its likeness again.”
“Bold words for a dwarf whose city cowers behind him.” Crematia was amused more than angered. Indeed, she was almost grateful, as she felt her hopes flaring at the sight of the dragongem. “Know that my displeasure has wasted greater realms than yours.”
“Bah! We’re safe enough.” The burly dwarf crossed his arms over his chest and made a great production of turning to the side and spitting casually into the dust.
Crematia reared back, seized by a deep rage. It had been many hundreds of years since anyone had dared to speak to her like this. “Do not expect mercy from me, foolish dwarf. Mercy is weakness, and weakness is death!”
“Oh, sure, you could kill me now, maybe even break down a few of our doors. But then you’d never see another one of these stones.”
“So you admit the others are within your delvings? You dare to hold them from me?”
“They’re down there somewhere. Our priests have felt the magic, and they don’t like it much, neither. But there’s no sayin’ when we’ll get down to the stones themselves.”
“I shall return in another one hundred sunrises, and you will produce all of the stones. Otherwise your city will die.”
“No. You’ll take this white stone and be gone for now. You should come back in one hundred years. By then, we might have one of these stones for you.”
“One hundred winters?” demanded Crematia, aghast. Her belly swelled, fire surging anew, pressure rising from the involuntary fuel of her rage.
“And if you damage our crops, or indeed even try to damage our city-not that you’d have any luck-then you can consider those stones gone forever.”
Crematia clenched her jaws and snatched up the whitestone, forcibly resisting the temptation to sear this insolent dwarf into charcoal. He would have the other stones, she knew, and she could force herself to wait for a while before they became hers.
So instead of destroying this place, she took to the air, already resolved to wait the hundred winters-what was that time, really? — before she returned.
Chapter 19
2698 PC
A red dragon male was the first to hatch, and he proved to be the largest and most powerful of Crematia’s large brood. He grew with a quickness that astonished and delighted the venerable matriarch, displaying cruelty and malice, bullying his nestmates, and immediately asserting his superiority. Even as a wyrmling, he ate voraciously, once killing and devouring one of his weaker siblings when his mother had been slow to bring fresh food.
By the time he had entered his second century, Deathfyre was flying as swiftly as an eagle and bringing down prey that varied in size from young dwarves to the burly, spiral-horned rams that dared to graze in the heights of the Khalkists. He took a keen delight in killing and invariably tortured even the meanest of his prey with a deft cruelty that fascinated and impressed his savage matriarch.
By his two hundredth winter, Deathfyre had flown far beyond his mother’s lofty vales. Sometimes he returned with meat-even humans and elves fell to his cruel claws-and other times with rare treasures, or news. He mastered a tribe of minotaurs and brought new bands of ogres into the fold of Crematia’s gathering horde.
And in his third century, he returned with the bakali.
The craven lizard men swarmed in some stagnant fen in the lowlands. Deathfyre had demonstrated his power by slaying several of the tribe’s elite warriors, finally blinding the chieftain as a reminder of his superiority. Then he had ordered the bakali to march into the mountains, to gather beneath the red dragon lair on Darklady Mountain. Bearing their maimed and eyeless ruler-a great, spike-spined lizard with strapping shoulders and brawny arms-on a feather-draped litter, a file of savage warriors encamped around the steaming springs of the Khalkist valleys.
Crematia herself remained close to the lair, for her other hatchlings were not so strong nor so capable as Deathfyre. She tutored and trained them, punished every weakness or tendency toward mercy, rewarding cruelty, always demonstrating the efficacy of merciless violence.
Every hundred winters, she journeyed to the dwarven home, and twice since her first successful visit had she come away with a dragongem. Now, corresponding to the arrival of Deathfyre’s legion and the growing maturity of her other offspring, who numbered thirteen in all, the interval had passed again, and it was time to collect the last gem, the blackstone.
Her proud son accompanied her, the two dragons winging eastward through smoking, ash-laden skies. Deathfyre was already two-thirds of Crematia’s own serpentine length, with the black mane of an adult bristled in a steadily thickening thatch around his cruel jowls. He was a strong, swift flyer, and the scarlet matriarch shivered with a thrill of pride. She admired his sleek frame, the sinewy muscle rippling beneath the crimson perfection of his scales.
Arriving over the dwarven vale, Crematia wasn’t surprised to see that all the dwarves had once again taken shelter within their underground lair by the time she and Deathfyre settled toward the ground. She bade her son to remain watchfully back from the gates, then stalked forward with her crimson head held high. The great red dragon had already resolved upon at least one thing: After the dwarven king gave her this last stone, he would have no more hold over her, and thus she would slay him as just punishment for his past insolences.
Unfortunately the wretched delvers had apparently anticipated her intent, for this time, no berobed dwarf emerged to present her with the gem. Instead, a small hatch in the base of the gate swung open, and a sphere of perfect blackness rolled forth. Momentum carried the stone to Crematia’s feet, and by the time she looked back at the gate, the hatch had slammed shut and she heard the sound of metal bolts being drawn.
She opened her mouth and belched a searing cloud of fire against the gates, taking minimal satisfaction from the slick surface of melted stone, the scorched blackness that now ringed the city’s entryway. Changing shape with a twinkling of magic, Crematia stood in the flesh of a tall human woman, her body a shape of slender curves and flowing red hair clad in a gown of shimmering green. She reached down and picked up the blackstone, then turned back to Deathfyre.