aren't simply after my treasure.' The old dragon extended a talon and scratched his other, withered claw arm. Drawing blood, Pteros held the limb toward Khisanth. 'We must blood-min shy;gle in the tradition of those who came before.'
Khisanth did not hesitate, thrilled to be participating in a ritual of her race. She tore open a scale viciously in her eager shy;ness. Blood welled up; Khisanth's bright red droplets ran with Pteros's and mingled between their pressed arms. For long seconds, both creatures could see into the other's heart and mind. Recognizing purity of purpose in each other, they drew back from the ritual almost reluctantly.
'The arrangement is sealed,' Pteros said with sudden sternness. 'Never trust a dragon with whom you have not blood-mingled.'
As steam rose from their blood on the chill night, the ancient dragon's words sounded almost prophetic.
Chapter 11
Pteros hauled his bulk from the pond and slithered onto the bank, the ground made warm and marshy by an unusually muggy late-autumn day. 'Have you been practicing your spells, Khi shy;santh?' Tiny green circles of algae clung to his scaly black body from snout to tail. 'How about the fireball you begged me to show you?'
A smile of joy pulled up the corners of Khisanth's leathery mouth. 'Of course. I have a few bugs to work out, but I can conjure a flame and toss it, though not very far. How about you? Have you been flying to strengthen your wings?'
'Of course. Don't I look trimmer?' Pteros stood on the bank and preened, admiring his newly tightened muscles.
The black dragons were cooling their scales in the tepid pond outside Khisanth's lair. It had taken all of her skill in per shy;suasion to get the taciturn Pteros to partake of the pond's soothing waters. She had to talk him into doing anything more strenuous than sitting in his lair and counting his treasure. Pteros was proving to be fainthearted and rather joyless, as if he had already given up on his life.
Strangely, the old wyrm had opened up a whole new world for Khisanth. He knew, though seldom used, a wide range of difficult spells. The dragon shared his secrets willingly enough, but it was clear he could see little point in it. Khisanth was determined to learn everything he knew, and she hoped to renew the great old wyrm's zeal for life at the same time.
Pteros was reclining now in the webby shadows cast by the bare branches of a neighboring willow. The leaves of the tama shy;racks had turned color and tumbled from the trees since the dragons had blood-mingled. The landscape was the color of rust and mud. Brown cattails drifted apart in fuzzy white tufts. Plaintive, rhythmic honking above signaled the departure of the last of the gray-and-white geese that inhabited the summer moors.
'Your skill with magic is rather obvious,' said Pteros from the shadows. 'You're fortunate the skill comes so easily to you. Human spellcasters must spend years studying and memorizing words to perform even the simplest incanta shy;tions.'
'Yet another sign of their inferiority,' sniffed Khisanth. The hot sun beat down on the dragon as she slithered onto the bank, settling onto her haunches. She let her hind legs dangle in the stagnant water. Her jaws snapped open to catch a large dragonfly.
'I'm curious about something,' said Pteros after a time. 'How did you learn to shapechange? It's a very advanced spell for one so young.'
Khisanth saw no danger in telling the elder dragon about the nyphids-to a point. 'It's not a spell, really. It's more a mental discipline.' She tried to explain qhen as best she could, assiduously avoiding any mention of Led or the nyphids' deaths.
'I'm too old to learn it myself. Just show me how you do it,' invited Pteros.
Khisanth spotted a red-winged blackbird springing from a withered cattail. The dragon unconsciously hooked an eye-tooth over her lip as she concentrated. Her bones contracted painlessly, her wings shrank, and her leathery hide changed to feathers. Khisanth swooped around Pteros's head as a red-winged blackbird and settled her tiny, clawed feet onto the webbing of his folded left wing.
Pteros's face was filled with admiration. 'I've heard of a few dragons who could change shape, but they could never become anything so small.'
Khisanth hopped down from Pteros's wing and reassumed her dragon form. Situating herself in the shade, the dragon closed her eyes for a languorous moment and sighed with con shy;tentment. 'Your turn, Pteros,' she said, her voice lazy. 'Tell me about the time before the Sleep. Were you at the battle where Takhisis struck down Huma?'
'You mean when she betrayed us?'
There was bitterness in his voice, which surprised Khisanth. Her eyes turned skyward anxiously. 'Aren't you afraid of her retribution for such words?'
Pteros shrugged. 'Thinking, speaking, if s all the same to a god.' He pulled his wings tight to his body and dived into the pool headfirst, surfacing with a snort and a spray of water.
The ancient dragon slithered onto shore again. 'No, I wasn't at the final battle with Huma. I was quite young. Even younger in experience than you now are.'
'Yet you were good enough to fight in the Third Dragon War?'
'The geetnas pushed the young wrymlings more in my time, knowing that the queen was gearing up for war. They empha shy;sized magical ability, as well as flight.' Pteros settled himself into a ball. 'It was a different time then, Khisanth. Dragons roamed freely, beloved children of the gods, and humans were but links in the food chain. But that was before we were betrayed.'
The dragon's eyes took on a distant look. 'Prior to the Sleep, one thousand thirty years before what the humans call the Cat shy;aclysm, the Great Moors were nothing but sea. I lived my young adulthood far away from here, in a small marsh to the west. My lair was at the mouth of what is still known as the Vingaard River.
'The seasons had passed perhaps ninety-six times in my life. I'd fought in fewer battles in the Third Dragon War than you could count on a claw hand'- Pteros softly touched a claw to a long-faded scar — 'when the dragon elders an shy;nounced our queen's defeat at the hands of the knight, Huma Dragonbane. In truth, it was the dragonlance that bested Takhisis. Huma was simply a warrior who had perhaps a bit more skill than most.'
The old dragon's expression turned bitter. 'The end result was the same, though. Takhisis exchanged our freedom for hers, ordering us to go underground and sleep. She was our goddess, and we had no choice but to obey, or die.
'Now I'm an old dragon,' he continued bitterly. 'Most of my prime years were spent in slumber.' With an oddly equal measure of satisfaction and sadness, he gazed at his own reflection in the still water. 'In the Sleep I did not age as I would have if awake, but those years are still lost to me.'
'You have plenty of years ahead of you, if you'd only stop thinking of yourself as old and feeble,' said Khisanth.
'I'm not certain I want to be useful in the world that exists today,' muttered Pteros. 'Nearly two hundred years ago I awoke underground without explanation, along with a hand shy;ful of other dragons who had turned old while they slept. Each of us clawed our way to the surface, only to find Krynn a much different place than we had left it. Instead of soaring above men and striking proper terror in their hearts, dragons made pacts with ogres and their ilk,' Pteros spat, a droplet of green acid escaping his jaws in his disgust.
'Pacts with ogres?'
Pteros nodded. 'These agreements are part of Takhisis's newest plan to rule. She appeals to the corrupt natures of all creatures in an effort to recruit them. Once she attempted to dominate the world with dragons alone as her soldiers, and she lost. Now she thinks she needs more than her own chil shy;dren to defeat her foes.'
'I've had no one to ask this before, but I have wondered. How is it that she's returned now?'
'Many human years ago, Takhisis found a way to Krynn from the Abyss. She walked the land as a human, awakening the elder dragons she'd known before the Sleep and telling them of her plan.'
'That could explain why I didn't awaken until recently, and why you're so much older than I,' mused Khisanth. 'I'd been little more than a wyrmling at the time of the banishment. What happened to the other dragons
