The branches tightened, sapping more energy from Feril. Her eyes locked onto the Skull Knight’s florid face. He was gasping and thrashing feebly now.
Then without warning came a commotion, loud noises emanating from somewhere to the east—well beyond the knights and the old maples and sycamores. More Knights of Neraka? Feril wondered. How many more? Perhaps an entire talon of them was lurking deep in the woods. She could handle a few more, she knew, maybe a dozen, as she was surrounded by eager trees and branches and she still had some magical energy left. What if they were too many? She was tired from the journey, from casting this difficult enchantment. Her strength was ebbing, and she was going to be vulnerable all too soon.
Feril took a few steps back toward the river and watched as the rest of the knights gradually stopped struggling, hanging limp from the trees as if they’d been tried and sentenced by a jury and hanged for their crimes on a scaffold.
The approaching noise was growing louder, and after long moments Feril saw shapes thrashing amid the trees. More Knights of Neraka were arriving and they, too, were being scooped up by the deadly tree branches—charged, sentenced, and hanged according to Feril’s swift justice. She focused on the ground, on the arcane energy she was continuing to feed and that was animating the trees.
“So tired.” The more she put into this powerful spell, the more it disoriented her. Feril’s arms felt wooden, her head so heavy she could hardly hold it up.
“Everything,” she whispered, feeling as though she was giving the last measure of her arcane strength. The magical force pulsed into the roots fast and unfalteringly, and the branches grabbed at the new foes. There must be at least fifty knights arriving, Feril estimated, and some of the knights were breaking through the entangling branches despite the intensity of her spell. A small group was now racing toward her.
Swords drawn, eyes wide, and spittle flying from their open mouths, they charged. A few were shouting, all were spreading out to surround her—her senses were so acute that she felt their heavy steps like painful thunder rumbling through the ground. The summer heat and their heavy armor did not seem to impede them. She slammed her eyes shut and waited for the end to come, knowing she was too weak to flee and that she had no weapons to defend herself. Then the pounding swept past her, and she opened her eyes to discover that the knights were not running toward her—they were running away from something still cloaked by the trees.
A thrashing noise coming from the trees grew deafening, and then she spied a much larger shape. It was easily brushing aside the lashing, entangling limbs and bending the smallest trees completely over, snapping most of them.
“In Habbakuk’s name, please give me more strength.” The magical pulse she had used to enchant the trees was dimming to nothing. She had no energy left.
It was some great shadowy beast, she realized faintly. She heard it utter a harsh, ear-splitting snarl, heard the splashes of the Knights of Neraka who had plunged into the river in order to escape its clutches. She hadn’t been able to touch bottom in the river where she had crossed, nor could they. Without looking, she pictured their heavy plate metal dragging them down, the strong undertow sealing their doom. Only a few wisely avoided the river, running southeast parallel to its banks, dropping their swords and shields as they went.
The howl of the creature shook the ground. Feril’s spell was finally dissipated. The Knights of Neraka she’d hung in the maples and sycamores fell like discarded dolls amidst their shields and helmets.
“By Habbakuk’s fist,” she said in a hushed voice, when she realized what the monstrous shape really was. “A black dragon.”
A wave of fear struck her, as palpable a blow as if she had been struck over the head with a club. She lost all focus, shivered uncontrollably, and her legs gave out.
The dragon emerging from the trees was singular in that most of its scales looked like black mirrors, a few shimmering silver, a scattering of blue ones glimmering here and there. Its shadowy-black horns resembled those of a red, the wings looking scalloped like a blue’s. The claws were webbed like a white’s.
“Black, but not a black dragon,” Feril murmured, as she tried to struggle to her knees and crawl away. “What is it?”
The dragon spat out a Lily Knight and brushed away the body of the Knight Commander that had fallen on the ground in front of it. Blood dripped from the dragon’s mouth, and Feril could see where a black tabard was caught on a tooth.
“Tired,” she said. “So tired. I’m finished.” She wouldn’t surrender so easily to one of Krynn’s damnable dragons, she vowed, gritting her teeth. She spread her fingers wide against the ground. “Habbakuk, guide me. I beseech you to give me one last…there!” Somehow she managed to send a feeble stroke of energy toward the trees, virtually begging them to aid her a final time. She fed some of her essence into the spell and was rewarded by faint feeling, a small wave of energy moving up the thick trunk of a maple, edging toward the top branches.
She watched the dragon step close to her; half of the huge creature was clear of the trees, but its haunches still rested under her enchanted maple. The dragonfear nauseated her. Closer, the dragon looked at once elegant and grotesque. Blood dripped from its jaws, a slimy rope of spittle edging over its lower lip. Its stink was overpowering. The dragon smelled like rotting wood, moldy leaves, and a dozen, disquieting worse things she couldn’t put a name to. When it opened its maw wide, she nearly swooned with disgust.
“Habbakuk, guide me.” She watched as the animated branches dipped lower, snaking out to try to ensnare the dragon. Then she stared in horror as the dragon effortlessly ripped away those branches and headed straight toward her. She watched the beast’s eyes, its massive black eyes that reflected…something.
Something familiar.
The dragonfear wavered a little, and she pulled herself closer, forward, trying to fathom what she recognized in the eyes.
There was a man’s face reflected there.
“Not possible,” she said aloud, her voice barely audible.
A face all angles and planes, once handsome, and with a rare, flashing smile.
“By all the gods, it’s not possible.”
Then the last of her stamina vanished and she slumped, the shadows that stretched from the trees to the dragon to the dark parts of her mind, claiming her.
3
Feril opened her eyes and saw her own reflection— smooth, unmarked face, short hair, bewildered expression. She gasped when she realized she wasn’t looking into any mirror but into the eye of the dragon. That eye was just inches away, the dragon’s head tucked into its neck at an odd angle to be able to scrutinize her closely. This near, the scent of the beast was overwhelming, and she felt weak. She rolled on her side, retching until there was nothing left in her stomach.
She told herself to be brave and accept her fate as, fighting dizziness, she struggled to her knees. Her teeth chattered. The Kagonesti couldn’t run away from the creature, she knew, and she certainly couldn’t stand and fight. She must still be alive because the creature wanted information. She knew some dragons were curious, so this one might mean her no harm at all, or it might mean to swallow her quickly after it gleaned whatever tidbit of knowledge it sought.
“Feril.” The word softly rumbled, shaking the ground. The dragon repeated her name, certain she hadn’t heard him the first time.
She wiped at her face, squared her shoulders. She thrust her chin out and adopted a proud, defiant look. She managed to keep the look of surprise off her face that the dragon somehow knew her name.
“Feril, I was wrong to come here. I should have let the past stay buried. I should have stayed in my swamp.”
There was something reassuringly familiar about the sonorous voice, and also about the dragon’s eyes, where not a touch of menace appeared to lurk. Feril searched them for a hint of the man she thought she detected earlier, but all she could see was her own reflection. She continued to tremble from the dragonfear, though not as much as before—less and less, it seemed, with each passing moment.