“Wasted trip. She couldn’t help him,” Ragh continued, a little louder. “We left Shrentak, and Dhamon’s scales kept spreading. I guess you knew him about the time he got that first big scale, huh? It was some years ago from what I understand. He said it was red at first, just like the overlord Malys. He also said a shadow dragon and a silver dragon broke the hold Malys had on him because of the scale, and in the process the big scale turned black. ’Course, the magic the shadow dragon worked on that scale, we didn’t know it at the time, but I figure it eventually caused all those other scales to sprout. It just took time.”
The sivak waited for Feril to say something. He scratched at his chin and let out a deep breath. He heard the hoot of an owl, and then a closer owl hooted longer at a higher pitch. The owls were waiting for it to get a little darker, then they would fly in search of mice and ground squirrels. He allowed himself a moment of envy, then brushed a beetle off his leg and resumed his tale.
“It was a little more than a year ago, I’m talking about, when the small black scales had started to sprout like fever blisters. Like I said, we had left Shrentak and were cutting through the swamp trying to help Dhamon. We took a boat across the New Sea and went north through goblin lands and into the mountains. It wasn’t an easy trip, definitely dangerous, and Dhamon was hurting more and more all the time. Dhamon wouldn’t give up, though, and we stayed with him. He was after the shadow dragon, figured it was his only chance to stop the scales from covering him entirely. Figured, I guess, that since the shadow dragon caused his problem, the shadow dragon could cure him.”
“The shadow dragon was in the mountains?”
Ragh bit his tongue in surprise that Feril finally had deigned to speak to him.
The sivak nodded. “Yes, in a lair deep in the mountains, but Dhamon was scarcely human by the time we arrived there.” Ragh slid down the trunk and sat cross-legged. “By then Dhamon looked like a draconian, biggest one I ever saw, but he was black as night, like one of Sable’s spawn, and he had wings. He started growing even bigger every step closer that we got to the shadow dragon.”
Feril was definitely listening now. She leaned forward, intent on Ragh’s story, nodding for him to continue.
“Deep, deep under the mountain we learned that the shadow dragon wanted Dhamon to turn into a dragon. The shadow dragon was dying, old and spent, and was looking for a new body—Dhamon’s. He had control of Dhamon for a while and almost had him trapped for good, but all of us fought hard to free him.”
Feril’s lips formed a thin line. “And you won?”
Ragh nodded. “If you can call it that. We killed the shadow dragon and left Maldred in ogre country when it was all over. I’m the only one who stayed with Dhamon. He’s not great company, I’ll tell you. I don’t think he cares for being a dragon.”
Neither said anything for a while. Feril rubbed at her palm and looked far into the woods, seeming to watch something the sivak couldn’t see. There was a flapping sound, wings directly overhead, a large white owl taking flight.
“You said all of that was a year ago, sivak?”
“About a year, give or take. Hard to mark time when time doesn’t matter much.”
“Rig and Fiona…where are they now?”
Ragh didn’t answer at first.
“Did they fight the shadow dragon, too?”
“Fiona did,” he said finally. He quickly changed the subject. “Dhamon and I have been living in Sable’s swamp. He’s built a lair, collected some treasure.”
She edged closer, raising an eyebrow. “Wealth never mattered that much to him.”
“When he was human, maybe,” Ragh said. Maybe when he was with you and the powerful Palin Majere, he added to himself. The sivak knew that when Dhamon traveled with the cunning Maldred, it was different; the two were always scheming to rob people or find buried riches. Treasure was at the top of their priorities. “Dhamon thinks dragons have some deep instinct to build a hoard.”
“Is his treasure around here? If not, what is he doing here?”
Ragh gave a great shrug of his broad shoulders.
“He came looking for me, isn’t that it?”
“Yes,” the sivak said. “You mean a lot to him for some reason.”
It was her turn to shrug. “Once he meant a great deal to me, too, but it feels like that was a lifetime ago.”
“When he was human.”
“Yes. I met him even before he had the scale.”
“When he was a Dark Knight?”
She shook her head as she stood up. “He was as chivalrous as a knight, though, all puffed up with notions of honor.”
It looked as though she might say something else but stopped herself. Her face became hard again and set itself in a scowl, as if she were angry for talking this much to a sivak, a monster without humanity.
“You have a problem with my kind?” he said, sensing her discomfort.
She answered swiftly, her words sounding brittle even to her ears. “Sivaks killed my father and sister. I ran away before I could see the beasts eat them, but I was a child, too small and too frightened to do anything except run.”
She brushed at her legs and then walked to the edge of the trees and looked out over the clearing. Twilight was starting to claim the sky, and the river was dark and still churning.
She stood there waiting for Dhamon, never once glancing back at Ragh.
It took him longer than she expected, but he had fished all the bodies out of the river, too, heaping them all in one mass grave, marked with shields and swords, in front of the trees from which she’d hung them.
Now he was slowly lumbering toward her, his blue and silver scales dim in the fading light, his equine snout pointed straight at her. He had put effort into suppressing his aura of dragonfear, so Peril felt not even a twinge of dread. A few yards away he stopped, letting her finally break the silence.
“The Knights of Neraka have been hunting the Qualinesti elves living in these woods,” she said.
“Thus, you’ve been hunting the knights?”
A new life, a new code of responsibilities.
“And goblins,” she said. “Tribes of goblins, hobgoblins, and worse are roaming the forest. Mostly I’ve been hunting the bandits, but I get my share of knights.”
“Bandits?” His eyes blinked questioningly. “Can’t the Qualinesti deal with bandits?”
Feril laughed lightly, and Dhamon thought it sounded like crystal wind chimes teased by a slight breeze.
“Where in all the world have you been, Dhamon Grimwulf? Beryl is dead, and most of the Qualinesti have fled from the woods. This land they’ve held since the Age of Dreams—now it’s lost to them. The stragglers don’t have enough of a force to fight the bandits or anyone else. The north country is ruled by Captain Samuval, an outlaw who’s offering land to any man who’ll serve for a time in his so-called army. Samuval’s army has been killing or driving away any Qualinesti they find.”
Dhamon lowered his head until the barbels that hung from his chin brushed against the ground. He cringed to see Feril wrinkle her nose at his odor. “What about your allies, Feril? Who is helping you fight the knights and the bandits?”
She put on a defiant look. “No one.” After a deep breath, she added, “Nature is helping me, Dhamon. You saw how many knights I managed to take down on my own. I’ve become more proficient with magic since you knew me.”
He opened his great mouth and canted his head to the side. “I shouldn’t have come here, Feril. I should have stayed in the swamp. It’s my home now. I shouldn’t have tried to reach back into the past.” He paused, glancing beyond her to the draconian. “My friend over there wanted to fly for a bit, so I obliged him.”
“How did you find me?”
He drew his head close to his neck and something sparkled in his eyes. “That wasn’t so easy,” he said. “It was mostly Ragh’s doing. Some time ago he was a spy for Sable, and he still has some old contacts in the swamp, including ones who worked for the Knights of Neraka. It took more than a month and the liberal spreading around of steel pieces and pearls that I really had no other use for anyway. Eventually, one of Ragh’s contacts told us that a wild elf was waging war in the Qualinesti forest of Wayreth. The description didn’t closely match, but Ragh wanted badly to explore, and I wanted badly to…”