“Don’t just consider. Do something!” Silvara insisted.
Lectral, too, sensed the rising compulsion of a martial summons. “Yes. We silvers shall fight as well. This is the fight that our ancestors waged… that drove our fathers and mothers from the grotto.”
His mind flashed to a thought of the Kagonesti forest in the realm south of Sanction, and he tried to picture the horror if the scourge of dragonfire and waste should spread there. Guilt surged as he realized that it had been many winters since he had flown over the wild elf realms.
“What now? Who’s this?” Arumnus pointed toward the sky, where a silver-winged shape glided across the faces of the rising moons, then settled toward the ledge.
“Heart!” cried Silvara, frantically waving a slender hand.
The elder female silver dragon settled to the ledge, and then she, too, became an elfmaid, as beautiful as Silvara, though with the fullness of a mature woman. Lectral remembered that shape, and again the memories of a forest chase came back. He felt a dizzying sense of emotion, all but staggering as he stepped toward his silver nestmate. He embraced her, felt her arms tight around him.
“Hello, my Heart,” he said thickly, taking her elven hands in his own. “It is good to know that you are safe and well.”
“And you, my nestmate,” she replied, the pressure of her fingers sending ripples of agony through his heart until she broke free of his touch.
“Hello, Sister,” said Silvara, going to Heart and quickly hugging her.
“Greetings, Little Sister. And to you, my friends.”
Lectral’s heart pounded, and he felt a rush of blood in his ears. A raging storm of memories returned to him, and he recalled every detail of the time he had chased her through the woods, had almost captured her.
And, looking at the distant focus of her eyes, he understood that she had, at last, eluded him forever.
“Do you know of the war?” asked Silvara.
“Indeed. The dragons of the Dark Queen have taken to the skies,” Heart declared grimly. “Already some of the brown metal dragons have joined the knights, but we silvers should go as well! The humans are brave and fight valiantly, but they need our help. Saytica has already flown to join them.”
“Of course!” Silvara said. “And what of Huma?”
Lectral looked at Heart sharply, jolted by the question. She returned his look with an expression of frankness and a plea for understanding. “There is one man in particular… the knight called Huma,” she explained. “He has moved me with his courage, his goodness. In part, it is for him that I come to you to beg your help for the knights.”
“The knights… or this one knight?” asked Lectral, his tone a soft growl.
Heart’s head whipped back as if she had been slapped. Then she raised her chin and met her nestmate’s gaze. “I cherish him very much. And I believe that he may lead the knights to victory.”
Lectral suppressed a surge of jealousy. A very strong part of him wanted to find and squash this human who dared to enthrall his nestmate, and he worked very hard to restrain an impulse toward violence.
“What about the wild elves, the Kagonesti in the east?” he asked anxiously. “Who knows whether or not they are suffering under the dragons as well?”
“Who can know?” countered Heart. “But there is more. You all remember the Spear of Paladine, the prophecy as foretold by our honored mother, Daria, at the time the grotto was abandoned.”
“Yes!” cried Silvara excitedly. “The weapon of the gods that would give us means to strike at the Dark Queen.”
“It is a lance!” the elfmaid dragon explained. “A Dragonlance, formed by the hammer of Kharas and wielded by knights from the backs of dragons.”
“And you have these lances?” asked Arumnus.
“We have twenty lances,” she said. “Many are the knights who have volunteered to wield them. We need nineteen dragons to fly with me. I have already heard from Saytica and Cymbol and Bolt, and Arkas as well.”
“And I shall fly at your side!” pledged Arumnus.
“And I!” Silvara cried.
Heart turned her firm expression to the younger female. “You are too small, Little Sister. The lance-wielder must be an armored knight, and I fear the burden would be more than you could carry.”
Silvara slumped, but then turned her expression to Lectral. “You can go, too, can’t you?”
The silver dragon took a deep breath, for the first time his elven chest feeling like a constricting vessel. He shook his head, still fighting against an explosion of temper.
“By the time you fly to Palanthas you will have your twenty, and many more,” he said, with a penetrating look at Heart. “As for me, I must fly to my Kagonesti.”
She came to him and placed an elven hand upon his taut arm. “I understand. But know, Lectral, that this man Huma is a good man. And I love him.”
“Love?” The Kagonesti eyes flashed scorn. “Have you forgotten you are a dragon?”
“No, I haven’t. But perhaps I’ve learned that even dragons can know love. Perhaps that’s a gift we silvers can teach to our kin-dragons. We can love.”
“ You can love, perhaps.” Lectral’s voice was as tight as a Kagonesti bowstring. “As for me, I choose to fight.”
Chapter 33
1028 PC
Lectral took to the air, propelled by a sense of profound rage, driving relentlessly through the skies, leaving the High Kharolis behind. Borne by his fury, silver wings carried him over the broad Vingaard plains. He tried not to think about Heart and her knight, but his mind was aflame with the memory of her last words to him.
Love-and for a human? How could she even imagine such a thing? It was an abomination, a blasphemy of the darkest kind! If there was indeed such as concept as love, it belonged to the two-legs-lesser creatures who lacked the majesty of flight, of thousand-year life spans, of inherent magic and devastating breath-weapons!
Powerful wing strokes devoured the miles as Lectral passed the forested foothills and moved to the fringe of the dusty plain, flying over realms he hadn’t seen in many years. Eventually he perceived the great darkness in the north and knew that this was the present area of contention of the Dark Queen’s war.
Drawing closer now, he soared above vast legions, a dark tide overrunning the plain all the way to the Khalkists. Dragons of evil wheeled and spiraled amid the clouds, and Lectral masked himself in invisibility. Even in his nearly blinding rage he retained enough patience to know he should study his enemies, should acquaint himself with their habits instead of making an impetuous attack.
From a distance, he observed dragons of red burning villages, landing to tear at human-built constructs of stone and earth. He wanted to strike at them, but he wouldn’t, having convinced himself that his duty was to the wild elves. Watching one mighty red in particular, he determined that this was the leader of the Dark Queen’s wyrms, and he spotted another crimson wyrm, almost as big, that led many other serpents in the onslaught toward Palanthas. Once, as Lectral circled on the fringes of the battle, that sinister monster raised its head, and the invisible silver shivered to a sensation that he had been discovered.
But Lectral turned toward the east, seeking the foothills of the Kagonesti forests, and the red wyrm turned back to lead his offensive. Closer now, black clouds roiled in the skies, blanketing the plains with a cloak as heavy as the gloom that shrouded the silver dragon’s heart. And still Heart’s words echoed through his mind, mocking and taunting. Love! Could she really believe it?
He growled, knowing that she did. Again he remembered that wild elfmaid who had led him on the chase through the woods, and a plume of frost exploded from his jaws in an unconscious expression of his rage and grief. If the knight, Huma, had appeared before him, Lectral felt certain he would have ripped the man into small pieces.