At that moment, a braying cry of alarm rang out from the rear, and Lectral and his two mighty companions curled through a tight turn. They strained for altitude in a sky sparkling with metallic shapes, gleaming wings and scales bright in the pale midwinter sun.
“Look there!” cried Dargentan, who had often demonstrated his remarkable eyesight. “Coming from the ocean, to the south.”
A crimson shape winged from the southern skies, flying arrogantly toward the mass of metallic dragons, and Lectral bellowed in stiff-necked fury, propelled by instinctive antipathy. For a moment, he was a young serpent again, flying to battle in the skies over Ansalon. The red dragon brought a flame of emotion more intense than any feeling he had experienced in a thousand years.
But then he remembered that this was the present time, these were the Dragon Isles, and he realized that this chromatic serpent could not possibly be coming to attack. He fell into flanking position, watchfully poised above and behind the red dragon. From his vantage, he saw that the scarlet serpent was huge, as ancient as Lectral himself.
Many silvers, golds, and dragons of the brown metal clans had also winged into the sky, and now they flew in a great oval formation toward the valley beyond the city walls. In grim silence, the metallic serpents escorted the hated intruder.
The crimson serpent flew toward the city’s center, on a course leading to the plaza that had been sanctified by many centuries of dragon ceremony. The massive wings tilted into a sweeping curve, gradually descending. But when it seemed as though the hateful serpent was going to land on the city square, Lectral acted on an instinctive wave of fury.
He dived past the red’s nose, breathing a blast of ice into the air before the crimson serpent. The red veered away with a growl, but reluctantly settled to the ground beyond the city walls. The younger good dragons remained circling in the air, while Lectral came to a careful rest before the intruder. Regia and Arumnus were there, too, as well as the venerable copper Cymbol.
“Where are our eggs?” snarled the latter, drooling a spatter of deadly acid from his jaws onto the ground. “Answer me or die!” The copper wings buzzed in a fan of agitation, and Lectral wondered if the still-impetuous ancient would spit his corrosive breath at the red dragon right here and now.
“If I am harmed, you will never see your eggs again,” declared the dragon, turning a reptilian smile to Regia, ignoring the fuming copper.
“Why do you come here?” asked the golden female coolly.
“To give a chance to save those eggs for which you seem to display such ardent concern,” explained the red.
“Who are you?” Lectral asked abruptly.
“I am called Harkiel, Burner of Copper Scales,” the wyrm said, grinning wickedly at Cymbol, “and I speak for Takhisis, the Queen of Darkness herself.” The voice rumbled with surprising power, echoing back from the walls of the City of Gold.
“What is your purpose, then? How may we save our eggs?” demanded Regia, with patience that Lectral found almost as infuriating as the red’s cruel arrogance. Even so, her golden wings bristled; looking closer, Lectral saw that she was striving hard to control her rage.
“To present you with an oath-a sacred oath, sworn on the name of Paladine and the Dark Queen. If you swear this oath, then your eggs shall remain safe and will be returned to you in due time.”
“Never!” cried Cymbol as Lectral shook his mighty head in grim disagreement.
“What is the content of this oath?” Regia pressed, as if unaware of her kin-dragons’ agitation.
“You must pledge to remain aloof from affairs in Ansalon, even though you may receive pleas for help from the pathetic wretches who dwell there.”
“Help in a strife against your queen’s dragons, no doubt,” Arumnus intoned, as if discussing an abstract fact of historical insignificance.
“Correct.”
Lectral could see the red dragon sneering. He felt a swelling of hatred in his gut, but he forced himself to restrain a violent response. Truly, the golds were displaying the proper attitude. A matter like this could only be treated with aloof disdain. Patience, he told himself. Vengeance could come later.
“And the eggs will remain safe?” asked Regia.
“You have the pledge of my mistress that they shall,” replied Harkiel, with a dip of his head.
“Then I do not see that we have a choice,” replied the golden matriarch.
With a sad shake of her head, she summoned the younger dragons to her, requesting them to pass among the islands to gather the rest of their kin-dragons…
… so that all could take the oath to the Dark Queen.
Chapter 38
352 AC
The silver dragon came to rest on the ledge beyond Lectral’s lair, the wide cavern near the top of Glacier Peak. During the years since the theft of the eggs, the ancient serpent had taken up permanent residence in this deep cave. He was able to command a view of the oceans south of Misty Isle, and, perhaps even more important, anyone who sought him with news would know where to find him.
Now Dargentan had done just that, folding his wings with an ease that Lectral could only envy. Still, it made him proud to look at his handsome and capable offspring. Dargent was in his prime, a fast and powerful dragon with serene self-confidence and pride. He would one day be a worthy successor to bear the ram’s horn.
“Was there a sign… any kind of word at all?” asked Lectral, with very undragonlike haste. He looked past Dargentan, as if he would confirm with his own eyes the reports from far beyond the horizon.
“It seems certain that Silvara is not anywhere on the isles,” Dargent explained, with a shake of his head. “As to word from the mainland, it is… incomplete.”
“Of course-because of that accursed oath!” barked the elder, his voice deepening into an unconscious but heartfelt growl.
“Even so, from what I have pieced together from the griffons, there have been no reports of dragons of metal anywhere on Ansalon. The serpents of the Dark Queen, in contrast, seem to be spreading like a plague. The destruction has already blighted more than half the world.”
Lectral whirled about, his tail cracking like a whip as he pictured the High Kharolis and smoking Khalkists, Silvanesti and Solamnia, all darkened by the same scourge he had observed more than a dozen centuries before. He thought of the cities of men in which he had dwelt, more than fourteen hundred years earlier, and the pastoral forests of the elves.
Of course, rumors had come to the dragons on their remote isles, tales of a great Cataclysm, a darkness descending over the face of Krynn that had brutally changed the face of the world. Indeed, the gold dragons, and Regia in particular, had held this vast destruction to blame for the hundred winters of rainy weather that had beset the isles before the time of Saytica’s death.
“What is the word of other dragons?” Lectral asked.
“Harkiel, who brought us the oath, is in Sanction. Word is that he has become horribly corrupt, sickened. And another great red has appeared… one you will know.”
“Tombfyre?” growled the ancient silver.
“Aye. He leads the Red Wing and carries their emperor on his back. He seems to be little more than a flying horse,” Dargent declared contemptuously. “Albeit, his rider is the greatest warrior in the Dark Queen’s legion. That one, the Highlord Ariakas, has fashioned himself Emperor of Ansalon, and the griffons claim that he has hundreds of thousands of troops under his command. Indeed, he is known to have won many battles.”
“It’s like ancient times-Huma’s war, being waged all over again! But this time the queen keeps us out, by virtue of that accursed oath!”
“Regia counsels patience, as always,” Dargent said wryly. “She reminds us that the queen is bound by her pledge to return our eggs safely, when at last the course of her destruction is done.”