The eggs! For the thousandth time, Lectral pictured the precious spheres of gleaming metal. His guts churned at the thought of the clutch in the hands of the queen’s horrible minions. Would they even know to keep the silver eggs cool, or would the wyrmlings wither and suffocate in the midst of oppressive, ultimately lethal heat?
“Does Regia, or any of the golds, even know the meaning of concern, of genuine worry?” Lectral didn’t want to scorn his kin-dragon, but his deep exasperation further sharpened the elder’s tone.
“There is one bold one-you remember Quallathan. I have heard him counsel his elders that we must at least confirm the Dark Queen’s compliance. But they demur, claiming that the oath must stand in its original words, that anything less would be unfitting of us!”
“I remember Quallathan,” Lectral noted. “A strong flyer. He’s even a little bigger than you, isn’t he?”
“Perhaps I’m shorter by a scale or two,” the prideful scion replied. “Of course, he was born on Ansalon, before the exile. He flew during Huma’s campaign.”
“Aye, you’re right,” recalled the ancient. He reflected, and not for the first time, on the sad fact that his offspring had never seen the wonders of the High Kharolis.
Dargentan continued. “Still, you’re right about his strength. And, too, he’s one who’s not afraid to let his wings show.”
Lectral chuckled sharply at Dargentan’s phrase, which meant that Quallathan spent much of his life in his actual dragon body, rather than the two-legged forms favored by so many of the golden serpents.
Except for Quallathan, who shared Lectral’s and his scions’ anguish, the other good dragons seemed to have talked themselves into an air of acceptance and complacency. Regia and Arumnus had retreated to their lofty libraries and serene gardens to discuss matters that Lectral didn’t even want to guess about.
Of course, there were other exceptions as well. Cymbol’s rage and frustration were well known, and he had whipped a number of the younger coppers into a similar frenzy. Kirsah, a good-sized dragon of brass, was another young firebrand. He had even threatened to fly to Ansalon to seek the eggs himself, until Regia, together with Kirsah’s venerable sire, Kord, forbade him forcefully from making the trip. The council of elders, which was a casual board centered around Regia and grim Arumnus, had threatened the young brass with magical confinement if he should dare to disobey.
And so the dragons on their islands had returned to a life of stasis, though it was a life that continued without the eggs that were their promise of a future. Indeed, the earlier lethargy that had possessed the metal clans seemed to have lifted, to be replaced by a nervous energy. It was a place where the dragons didn’t do much of anything, but they were taut and nervous in their inactivity.
Until the day that Silvara returned.
Lectral was in his usual post, occupying the mouth of his cave, eyes turned southward. The silver female flew from that direction, waves splashing brine against her belly, so low over the ocean that Lectral didn’t see her until she had nearly reached the shore.
And with that first sight, he knew that this was Silvara. He leapt to his feet and bugled a greeting, a long and sonorous trumpet cry that allowed the female to pinpoint his location on the high mountainside. Immediately she swept upward, wings stroking for height.
Then Lectral saw the rider upon her back, and he was struck by a staggering moment of recognition-but how could this be Heart? And certainly that wasn’t the human knight, Huma, who rode astride the beautiful silver neck! He shook his head, once again reminding himself of the present time and place.
No, the dragonrider was an elf, a golden-haired male who rode mighty Silvara with serene grace, though his face was locked in an expression of haunting sorrow.
“Fly with me to the Silver Summit!” cried Silvara as she glided past Lectral’s ledge. “I–I have news that must be shared with all!”
Propelling himself into the air, the ancient male strained to catch up to the younger female’s swift flight. He felt a deadly chill, terrified by the sounds behind Silvara’s words. For, despite the maturity and patience and wisdom that was her due as a dragon of more than a thousand winters of life, she had been unable to keep an edge of raw, hysterical fear out of her voice.
Lectral still trailed behind as Silvara came to rest in the valley below the gleaming massif. Regia and Arumnus were already here, and somehow Lectral wasn’t surprised by the fact. He settled to the ground beside Silvara as the lean elf who had ridden her across the ocean slid down from her silver serpentine neck and stood stiffly with a hand on the female dragon’s shoulder.
Silvara changed shape before Lectral or any of the others could speak, and the ancient silver found himself looking at a beautiful silver-haired wild elf. He gasped, once again moved by the powerful resemblance to Heart. The maid stepped forward and gestured to the sylvan warrior she had carried to the isle.
“This is Gilthanas, an elven prince of Qualinesti,” she said, her words spilling out in a tremulous rush, a display of emotion so strong that Lectral felt the disturbing intensity all the way to his core.
“I have traveled with Silvara, and I, too, know of that which she speaks. If it were not for the need, neither of us could bear to relate the tale.”
Silvara looked at Lectral, and the elder was struck by the age and weariness in her gaze. She seemed like an ancient herself, wracked by a grief greater than anyone should have to bear.
The elfmaid tried to speak, forced out a stammering word, then buried her face in her hands.
“Take a moment, child,” Regia soothed, bobbing her head before the body of the wild elf female. “Let the words come from beyond. Allow yourself to be their filter, but not their creator.”
Slowly, tremulously, Silvara began to speak. Her words brought forth a tale of horror and corruption, relating a journey that she and Gilthanas had made into the bowels of the Dark Queen’s temples. It had been a long search, which she had conducted always in her elven guise. There, below the festering city of Sanction, she had found the eggs-and at this point in her story, she broke down into tears.
Gilthanas, with grim-faced discipline, told the rest… of the precious eggs, corrupted by the Dark Queen’s priests… of craven draconians, monstrous troops for her evil legions, born from the eggs of metal dragonkind.
The elf’s words were brief, his terms concise and mundane as he described the varieties of draconians, the corrupt brutes that were spawned from the hope of metal dragonkind’s future. Yet so appalling was the horror revealed by those simple phrases that the entire gathering of metal dragons was struck mute. Wind ruffled, moaning in a sympathetic lament as it coursed down the Silver Stairs. Those steps, when Lectral’s eyes shifted to the side, seemed somehow tainted and dark, as if they had been stained by the blood of many dragons.
“Thanks to Paladine that you are alive, both of you,” whispered Regia. The shimmer of her scales had darkened, and, in fact it seemed to Lectral that a cloud of mourning had been drawn over all the wyrms, tainting the immaculate perfection of their metal forms. Regia slumped numbly, and the ancient silver was surprised by a pang of real sympathy for the oftentimes aloof gold. But then, he felt sorry for them all, for as he tried to comprehend the catastrophe, he wondered if their entire race, all the clans, were not actually doomed.
Then abruptly Silvara shimmered silver again, rearing high and roaring a challenge into the sky, a challenge that was followed by an explosive wave of icy frost. Cries of betrayal, shouts for vengeance, rumbled from the gathered dragons. Wings buzzed in the air, and more than one serpent belched forth a cloud of frost or fire or spat a bolt of crackling lightning toward the heavens.
Only then did Lectral note that the elven prince bore a long silver-shafted weapon, a spear that was poised on the ground, its lofty tip of silvery steel a full twenty feet overhead. He sensed the aura of magic within the mighty lance and knew that he beheld a return of ancient might.