elders into foolish and arrogant young draconic skulls.
And he’d best be spreading more than a few tales of the ancient past, and, lessons on hunting as well. Thauglor almost sighed aloud. He preferred to hunt, though he knew of blue wyrms and reds who would settle for the scavenger’s life. But corpse wings-little more than scaled vultures-descended from his blood? Hmmph. Perhaps Casarial, who as youngest had always been spoiled, was remiss in training her young. Thauglor bore no qualms about eating creatures he hadn’t slain, but he’d sired a family of hunters, not corpse buzzards.
Yet that was a matter for another day. The summer sun was glimmering brighter in the cloudless blue sky, and already black flies were swarming about the cooling carrion. The young dragon waited his turn at the spoils, shifting no more than one errant talon in his growing impatience. Thauglor thought of carrying off the remains as a lesson or burying them in dust, but relented. A hungry hunter hunts poorly.
Thauglor arched his back and gave a great catlike yawn. Then he spread his wings and, without addressing the youth again, leapt into the sky. The black’s old muscles and pinions strained as he scalloped the air beneath his wings in great, heavy beats, seeking the chill heights with a speed no smaller-winged youngling could hope to match. One more warning to the youth, Thauglor thought.
Thauglor circled back over the clearing to find the youngling still crouched in the same spot, a little more eager, perhaps, but unwilling to rush forward until he was sure that Thauglor was finished. And gone. Most definitely gone.
Thauglor suppressed a grin and rolled slightly in a half-mocking salute as he passed over the clearing again, gaining altitude with every stroke. Yes, a grand tour of his domain was in order, on the excuse that recent encounters had made it necessary to ensure that younglings of his line were being properly trained, but in truth just as much to remind Casarial and the others who the true master of the forest was. Obviously she had not taught that one-Kreston?-well enough.
Beneath the great dragon, his forest kingdom stretched out in a great green patchwork. The bulk of the land was closely spaced trees, broken every few miles by a tree-fall clearing, bare patch, or a bald tor. The lighter phandar and silverbarks dominated marshy spots, while the shadowtops and duskwoods rose like spires on the drier hills, and they in turn gave way as the land climbed to the cinnamon hues of gnarled felsul and coppery laspar that ringed the timberline, where the soaring rock began.
Thauglor’s land was bounded by mountains on three sides and a narrow inlet of the Inner Sea on the fourth. To the west rose the youngest of the mountain ranges, still sharp-toothed and newly crafted, its peaks sharp and forbidding. To the north was the largest range, a great buttress of stone against the failed and fallen wizard kingdoms beyond, an impassable wall made more hazardous by continual storms, whose flashing lightning lashed its flanks almost daily. Thunder ruled in the eastern mountains as well. Though tall, these peaks were more weathered, splintered by ages of rain and snow. This last range was broken by a number of low passes, where the forest spilled out into flat coastland beyond. Their peaks marked the eastern border of the lands of the Black Doom. All that lay between these mountains was his.
The southern border of his lands was guarded by a slim, silvery arm of star-carved sea, a drowned gulf born in violent skyfall so many eons ago that even Thauglor knew of it only through legends from his grave-gone elders. The shore was twisted and boggy, as if the land were slowly sinking into the island-dotted coast. A few great manyroots rose in their gnarled, defiant glory here, but the shore was more the domain of silverbarks, willows, and other water-loving things. For a dragon, it was a short hop to lands farther south, but these belonged to other wyrms, and the narrow sea made a suitable border.
Within these bounds Thauglor ruled supreme. There were reds and blues in the mountains, some older even than the great black wyrm, but they were sluggish, elderly creatures, driven to slow and vague wakefulness only a few times a millennium by hunger and thirst. Generally they gave the large black with the purpletinged scales a wide berth. The wyverns that nested around the lake at the heart of Thauglor’s domain paid fealty and treasure to him and his brood. All other draconian beasts who came winging over the mountains paid their respects, and their tribute, or were driven off.
Still, Thauglor was getting old. With each passing year, his scales lightened, so much so that now he was more violet than ebony along the sinuous ridge of his spine. His eyes, too, though as unerring as ever, were shifting from yellow to a dusky purple. His naps were now lasting upward of a month, and when he awoke, it was with ravenous hunger. Would he soon become as removed from waking life-from cold reality-as the old wyrms of the mountains, scarcely knowing if some other black claimed his forest kingdom?
The thought of anyone, even his own children or grandchildren, replacing him as the mightiest creature in the forest, its undisputed master, disturbed Thauglor. He pressed such dark concepts into the back of his reptilian mind.
The King of the Forest Country swooped low, disturbing a flock of craw vultures roosting in the skeleton of a lightning-struck oak. Squawking, the carrion birds scattered before him as the buffalo had done earlier, but Thauglor did not bother even to snap at them as they fluttered and squalled. Yes, a tour of his domain was in order before he settled down for a long nap. Best to determine now which of his children was strong enough to challenge him.
Thauglor’s nostrils flared at a new scent in the wind, a mere whiff of smoke on the breezes. It was too late in the season for a spring lightning strike… Perhaps one of the younger reds was immolating a corner of the forest to flush out prey, or a pack of hellhounds had come down from the northern range again.
The great dragon banked his huge body and glided toward the sharp western peaks. There was still an hour or so before the sun touched their higher mounts, casting premature nightfall across the land. The smoke scent had come from that direction…
As the ancient black wyrm drifted westward, the scent returned, growing sharper and more pungent. Thauglor saw a thin, lonely wisp of smoke above the trees. With idle grace, the massive dragon glided earthward in the softest of dives, the wind sliding past with nary a whistle.
The ground drew nearer, and nearer. The fire was at the base of an old massive oak, a many-branched giant that should be able to support even a large dragon’s weight.
Thauglor backbeat his wings once, curled the tips to steer and brake for one last, deft instant, and landed delicately on the great bole, his talons closing with almost fastidious care. Even so, the great tree groaned in protest as smaller branches were ripped away to crash to the forest floor below. The black spared their cascading fall nary a glance, focusing his eyes instead on the source of the smoke.
It was a cooking fire, smoldering and abandoned within a hearth of loosely packed rocks. It had been burning for some time, but was in little danger of spreading. That made Thauglor a trifle uneasy. A fire made by a lightning strike or a red dragon could be contained, and would often drive game into the open. This was the work of other sentients… men, goblins, or dwarves.
The site was abandoned, but Thauglor remained immobile on his perch, waiting. Tribes of northern goblins often hunted in these lands, and occasionally a band of Netherese refugees-gaunt, hungry, and powerless without their magic-would try to cross his territory. Dwarves distrusted the woods from some long-past racial trauma and would only risk crossing through a dragon’s domain if there were rich metals to be found. Thauglor gave them little desire to explore.
Thauglor waited. Any humanoid with half a mind would be fleeing for the mountains at full speed or cowering behind some toppled log, waiting for the black-winged death to move on. That was right and proper, and with luck the escapee would live to tell others of his narrow escape and warn them to avoid the forested basin, home of the great black wyrm.
There was movement to Thauglor’s right, and he turned his head in that direction. It was gone as soon as he saw it, fading back into the forest. Yet, for an instant, their eyes had locked, and the black dragon knew who was trespassing on his land.
The intruder was an elf, more slender than even the gauntest of humans, taller than the dwarves, more graceful than the goblins and their brutish kin. This one was dressed in green, the better to hide among the surrounding trees. Jade-colored leggings and jerkin, a green cape with a mottled green hood. The only flash of metal came from the guards of a scabbarded blade, undrawn at the elf’s belt.
The elf was gone, fading back into the trees, leaving the remains of its fire for Thauglor. The black dragon knew the intruder would not return to this site. The black dragon also knew the elf would be fleeing for safety beyond the mountains.
In the half-breath when their eyes had met, Thauglor had looked into the soul of the elf invader. He saw there wonder and amazement at Thauglor’s size, a kindling of new respect for the might of dragons.
