The dragons descended into darkness, and Thelvyn braced his legs to catch himself when he landed. Suddenly warm lights appeared out of the deep shadows beneath the forest, and a moment later he landed in the wide yard before the large, rustic house that was the sanctuary of Silvermist. The main door burst open, and several elves hurried out to greet their visitors, keeping a discreet distance while the dragons folded away their wings. Sir George had already dropped down from his saddle, and Kharendaen crouched so he could remove his bags.
Silvermist was just as Thelvyn remembered it from nearly six years earlier. This place had always been special to him, although he had been here only once before. This was where he had first met Kharendaen, even if he had not known that it was her until recently. He was now aware that Silvermist was not a sanctuary of the Immortal Terra, as most outsiders believed, but of the Great One himself. For the first time, he was able to see that several of the elves were actually dragons in enchanted form. Previously, his natural ability to detect dragon- kin had been suppressed as a part of the spell that had prevented him from assuming his true form.
The only member of the gathering Thelvyn recognized was Derrion, a true elf. He approached Kharendaen eagerly, as if they were old friends. The tall female elf in his company, an enchanted dragon, was clearly the senior cleric of this sanctuary. Thelvyn suspected that this dragon cleric in enchanted form had come here to replace Kharendaen when she had left here five years earlier to serve the Dragonlord in her true form.
'Ferial,' Kharendaen said, greeting the dragon cleric. 'The last I had heard, you were at a sanctuary in the south of Alfheim.'
'I have been here since you departed,' Ferial replied. Then, to Thelvyn's surprise, she led the others in turning and bowing to him in respect. 'Hail, Dragonking.'
'That remains to be seen, but I thank you anyway,' he answered awkwardly.
'How may we serve you?' Ferial asked.
'We have been directed here to speak with the Great One ti might at his sacred place,' Kharendaen explained. 'We must he going there soon.'
'We can at least offer you a quick meal,' Ferial suggested.
Kharendaen removed her saddle and changed form, since the bulk of a gold dragon was awkward and inconvenient indoors. She did not return to the shape of the elf maiden Sel-lianda but took her Eldar form, taller and darker than modern olves, as she had when Thelvyn had last seen her. Thelvyn also removed his harness, but then he hesitated. He hadn't changed form since the night when the Great One had broken the spell that had held him in Eldar form. For a moment, landing on two legs was as difficult for him as walking on four had been at first.
'There are perhaps fewer of us here than you might recall,' Ferial said as they walked slowly toward the house. 'Several of i he dragons flew back to the north last autumn when the northern sanctuaries were opened once again.'
'Did many clerics of the Great One stay here in Alfheim during the last few years?' Thelvyn asked.
'That is so. Although we were not exactly in disgrace during the time of the Great One's absence, disappearing for a time helped us avoid difficult questions we were not permitted to answer.'
They were given food and drink, then talked with the clerics of Silvermist for a time. Later Sir George was shown to his room, while Kharendaen and Thelvyn returned to dragon form and followed the forest path to the Great One's sacred place. The small, quiet pool below the waterfall was just as Thelvyn remembered it, and he was more sensitive than ever to the sense of ancient magic and a strange, mystical presence. This place was much smaller and more intimate than the sanctuary at Shadowmere. Even cleriis did not often enter the sacred places unless they were invited.
The dragons did not sit together on the narrow bank at the near end of the pool as they had before. Instead, Kharendaen led them to the wide bank at the far end, where the cool water drained into a small forest stream. This bank was clad in deep, thick grass, not easily damaged by the armored bulk of dragons. Kharendaen settled herself on the bank to wait, and
Thelvyn sat close beside her.
'I do not believe that our wait will be a long one,' she offered. 'The Great One is no longer so restricted in his ability to act.'
'And so it begins,' Thelvyn remarked softly, almost to himself.
Kharendaen turned her head to regard him curiously. 'Are you concerned?'
'I'm not frightened, if that's what you mean,' he explained. 'I've come to trust that I will always be granted the powers and even the guidance I need to do any task required of me. However, I am worried about making mistakes, especially because of my inexperience as a dragon. And more than anything else, I find myself regretting that we never had any real time together, to lead a common, uneventful life.'
'I fear you ask the one thing that I cannot give you,' a voice said, speaking out of the darkness.
They looked up sharply to see that the Great One had quiedy manifested himself before them. He had not assumed the fierce and intimidating form of the great three-headed dragon as he sometimes did. Instead, he appeared in what may have been his true form, that of an old, wise dragon of some ancient breed, perhaps the ancestors of the golds. His ghostly form, radiating a soft light, seated itself on the mossy bank to their left.
'I know that you both must have many questions,' he went on. 'I fear that even now I cannot tell you everything that you might wish to know, but my powers are still returning, as you will soon understand. It is best that you proceed only a step at a time. The dragons face a new and unexpected danger. Only by acting together will they survive and prosper, and only you can bring them that unity.'
'I recall being told, when I first became the Dragonlord, that a part of my task was to bring unity to the dragons in their time of conflict,' Thelvyn said. 'It is my impression that their conflicts have been largely resolved.'
'Only their conflicts with themselves,' the Great One answered. 'The future of your people begins with you, and you must begin by understanding your past. All that you have been told is true. You are indeed Thelvaenir, a gold dragon and the child of the dragon cleric Arbendael. Have you given any thought about who your father might be?'
'That matter has eluded us,' Kharendaen answered for him. 'We know that none of the senior gold dragons such as Gheradaen or Lhorandyn could be his father, which leaves us with no hint of just who it might be.'
'That is because his father is not a gold dragon,' the Great One said. 'I thought the full extent of my involvement in this matter would have been more obvious. You see, I am his father.'
The Great One's statement was so unexpected that Thelvyn did not even appreciate its implications at first. He had to know more, and he needed time to consider what he was hearing before he could make sense of it. Kharendaen was so surprised that she had to sit down, and her unusual reaction distracted him from his thoughts.
'I always thought that was impossible,' she said after a moment. 'The Immortals have great powers, but their ability to interact directly with our world and the people in it is rather limited. Some of these restrictions they have placed upon themselves and each other to prevent insensitive or ambitious Immortals from using our world as their own. But it was my understanding that there were some things an Immortal simply did not have the power to do, such as having a child.'
'That is true,' the Great One said. 'But my need for a special champion was great, so great that many other Immortals aided me or at least promised not to interfere in my quest to bring forth a champion to lead the dragons and save their world. But I will speak more of that in the near future. I confided the details of the danger and my secret need only to the gold dragon Arbendael, and she agreed to bear my child. But to accomplish that, I had to surrender for a time the greatest part of my own Immortality, so that I again became little more than a mortal dragon cleric.'
'And that was why you removed yourself from the affairs of the dragons?' Kharendaen asked, lifting her head. 'For more than two decades now, we have not known if you were forced to abandon us or if you had done so by choice.'
'It was a dangerous time for the dragons, and I knew that it would be,' he continued. 'That was why I could give only limited help when Thelvyn's mother was pursued by the rogue dragons. At the time, I realized that Thelvyn would be best protected if he was brought up apart from dragons, and safer still if the dragons had no knowledge of his birth. I was required to spend many years since then in my own plane, regaining my former strength. I have not yet recovered fully, and I admit that Thelvyn is not as ready as he could be, but we are
