“Surely not the arrows of the elves.”
“Surely not, no, but we will not expend that kind of energy. We will wait them out. If they wish to try and overpower the dragon, it is their funeral.”
“Heh, the dragon, indeed. Why is he helping, anyway? Never in our history has a man ever befriended a dragon. Whill, do you know him?”
“I have seen him before, I think. Yes, I have.”
“Why did you never tell us of this before?” asked Zerafin.
Whill was surprised. “I don’t know. It was when I had first used my powers. It didn’t seem important.”
“Not important! And when we told you that the sword had been given to a dragon, to be kept safe until Whill of Agora came for it-did it seem important then?”
Whill was dumbstruck. “Do you think he could be the one?”
Avriel put her hand to Whill’s cheek. “Either this dragon is the first in history to meddle with the affairs of men, or this is the dragon of elven bedtime tales.”
It had been an hour since the battle in the chamber of trading, and Roakore and his unit were making good time. Over fifty such units, most of them a hundredth of this size, now waited for the appointed minute to blow the many tunnels. That minute would soon be at hand, Roakore thought, as he stopped at the subtunnel entrance to the exit chamber, the one that needed to be destroyed if they were to ensure that Whill’s dream did not come to be. He motioned for the five explosives carriers, and together with them he started down the tunnel. Scouts had been here already and had reported it deserted, and Roakore believed them. There was not a dwarf in the unit who could not hear the snarls, pounding feet, and shouts of the Draggard. Murmured and inaudible the sounds might be to men, but a dwarf with his ear to a rock could hear the heartbeat of a nearby rat. The Draggard were in the main chamber, the cavern that had first been settled by Ro’Sar. It acted as the kingdom’s largest city, housing over twenty thousand dwarves in Roakore’s youth. It was the biggest natural cavern of all the mountain kingdoms. Menacing stalactites hung from the ceiling, so mammoth that it would take fifty dwarves to reach around it. The massive stalagmites had been incorporated into the city, hollowed and polished, adding to the unique dwarven architecture.
Within that cavern, Roakore knew, Draggard awaited the order to charge out from the mountain and destroy every form of life that opposed them. The Draggards’ mouths drooled in anticipation of flesh, their claws ached with the want to tear, to gouge, to crush. They lived for one purpose: destruction. And for that reason, Roakore knew, they would never win, never be victorious. Life and love and light would always hold death and hate and darkness at a stalemate. The battle would rage on forever, but neither side could ever win lest they, as two parts of one, be destroyed also. None could ever dominate, for they were one. That was what Roakore’s father had told him at an early age, and that is what Roakore had told all of his children since before they could understand. The idea of good and evil was a stone in the religious foundation. They believed that, like love and hate, the world, the moon, the animals, even they themselves possessed two battling spirits.
Roakore came to the entrance of the exit chamber from the subchamber. As he had been told, not a Draggard could be seen. He thought of Ro’Quon’s heroic flight and how the kings of old were cheering him now, Ro’Quon among them.
The small battle raged on for almost an hour, but the ship did not stop nor change course. Relentlessly the riders came, swooping down out of the night, trying to capture their prize. Then suddenly and to Whill’s surprise they stopped, and every eagle he could see with his mind-sight turned and headed east and eventually out of view. The dragon circled still, sending rings of smoke from its nose every once in a while as if scoffing.
“What do you make of their retreat?” Whill asked.
“The dragon does not follow,” Rhunis said.
“And it is focused on the west. The opposite direction of the Eagle Riders,” Avriel said through closed eyes.
“Whatever it is, I doubt it is an ally,” added Abram from the wheel.
The Celestra was literally at the center of the great fleet of the many hundreds of ships. Looking west with his mind-sight, Whill began to see something, not an object, but a disturbance along the water. He began to relay this information when Avriel spoke.
“I see it also. What do you make of it, brother?”
Zerafin moved closer to the side of the ship and put his hand to the hilt of his sword. After a moment he spoke, unsheathing his sword. “Whatever it is, it is big, and moving with great speed.”
Like the elves, Whill could see through the surrounding ships, and unlike Abram or Rhunis, he saw as entire ships far off were bombarded with great waves as the disturbance in the ocean’s aura came close to them. Arrows were strung and feet planted as the disturbance came closer and closer still. The object was within two hundred yards when it disappeared. The silence that followed was disturbed only by the faint shouting of the crew on nearby ships. Suddenly off the starboard side of the ship came a huge wave as something of great size came out of the ocean. There was an ear-piercing shriek, and Whill could make out the water-covered silhouette of a huge red dragon and, to his surprise, an eagle dragon with a rider. As soon as the beast had come out of the water, he, Avriel, and Zerafin had shot an arrow each almost in unison. The circling red dragon also had attacked at that very moment, sending a huge sheet of flame at its fellow. The arrows flew true, as did the flame, but instead of hitting their target, each turned in flight and rocketed towards their sources. Before Whill could take in what had happened, his arrow came at him with blinding speed, only to be stopped by Avriel and Zerafin. The arrows were diverted to the ocean, but the flame found its mark, curving back even as the red dragon spat it, hitting the creature in the face and enveloping it in flames.
The red dragon immediately dove into the ocean, the fires going out with a weak hiss. The attacking eagle dragon was invisible to the naked eye, but with mind-sight Whill could still see its steadily fading outline as the seawater receded and fell from it.
“There has never been a dragon in the known history of this world that can become camouflaged as this one does,” Zerafin said.
“What!” Rhunis cried. “Another dragon-is that what that thing was? How in the name of the gods did it send back your arrows, and the fire?”
“It was not the dragon who did it,” said Abram, turning the wheel into a wave. “Its rider is a Dark elf.”
Roakore looked to his timepiece: less than five minutes until the explosives would go off. The explosives carriers had set the bombs in place and given the signal that they were ready. Roakore motioned for the remaining force to enter the cavern. The troops filed into the cavern with a silent stealth one wouldn’t expect from thousands of dwarves.
Two minutes until the many bombs would go off, and still his army was filing into the room. Mostly young dwarves they were, most under one hundred years old, hardly parents. Though it might seem that dwarves who could live to see a thousand years would have a hundred children by their middle age, in dwarf society one did not reproduce until he has proven that he has contributed his share to the kingdom, lest overpopulation plague the mountains. The dwarves could not have a child without the blessing of a dwarven monk. This was where the epic dwarven folk song “Leranna’s Curse” came from. It told the story of a young dwarf wife who went to the monk with her husband and asked to be blessed with a birth. As the monk gazed on her radiantly beautiful face, he was stricken on the spot. If he lived to be two thousand years old, he knew, he would not see such beauty again. He was a good dwarf, but he could not bring himself to allow the birth, and turned them away. A year passed and they returned with the same request. Again his heart stopped as he looked upon her; again he could not allow it. As long as he refused the birth, she would have to come back, and then he could gaze on her again. For one hundred years this went on, until finally, when Leranna’s husband’s grandfather and father, along with four brothers, had died, Leranna’s husband faced the end of his father’s line. So in love with Leranna was he, that he refused the advice to take another wife in order to produce an offspring. That year, on the day when the couple always visited the monk, only Leranna arrived. Without a word she stabbed him through the heart. The last thing he saw was her golden face, not weeping but smiling the most beautiful smile. It was then put into law that if a birth was repeatedly denied by the monks, the couple would go to the king, and if the king also denied it, they would ask the dwarves, a gathering of at least a hundred. The one day a year when most voted on this affair was called Leranna’s Day.