they could pay her that she would value … gems, perhaps, but unadorned as the nyphids were, jewels seemed unlikely.
'Art thou interested?' pressed Kadagan 'You don't waste much time, do you?' asked the dragon. 'We have none to waste,' Kadagan said, suddenly grim-faced. 'Dela is dying.'
Khisanth sat up. 'I'm listening.'
'First, watch the maynus,' said Kadagan, then nodded to Joad. The gray-haired nyphid stepped up before the dragon and cupped his slender hands. The bright globe slipped between them. As Khisanth watched, a moving picture began
to form where before small bolts of lightning had danced.
The image of a nyphid in a white tunic appeared, curvy and golden-haired, obviously female, with the same backlit glow of the others. There was an etherealness about her that instantly engendered in the dragon a notable urge to touch the globe. Khisanth looked at Kadagan.
'Dela,' the dark-haired nyphid supplied. 'My betrothed. Watch closely,' he commanded with an insistent gesture toward the globe.
Dela knelt at the bank of a stream that appeared to cut through the grassy plain. Lying on its side in one of her tiny hands was a hummingbird. Its head sagged as it gamely sipped water Dela had scooped into the other palm. With the maynus a barely visible glow at her shoulder in daylight, Dela touched her finger to the bird's diminutive, iridescent breast. Sparks flew. Khisanth thought Dela had killed the thing. But the creature, more butterfly than bird, sprang up, and its wings began to beat so swiftly they blurred.
'Dela heals animals. That is her gift, as herbs are Joad's,' explained Kadagan.
Khisanth's eyes remained on the maynus. In the globe, a smiling Dela tossed the rejuvenated hummingbird into the sky, and it flew away. The nyphid pulled herself up to her bare feet and turned away from the creek.
Four creatures sat above her on horseback.
'Human males,' supplied Kadagan, noting the dragon's puzzled look. Khisanth had seen all forms of animals as a young dragon before the Sleep, but never a human. She was not particularly impressed.
The men were obviously impressed with Dela, though, their stares entranced, covetous. Dela blanched, flabber shy;gasted by their unexpected and unwanted presence. Diapha shy;nous wings sprang from between her shoulder blades. She had cleared the grass on the bank when a fine net dropped upon her. Its weight knocked the nyphid back to the ground. Two of the men slid from their horses and reached for her, to secure the net and simply to touch. The two still on horse shy;back closed in on either side and waited.
The men's hands fell upon the two-foot nyphid crouched under the net. Dela's mouth opened in a shriek, though the image in the maynus was silent. Two bolts of blue-edged lightning shot from Dela's body. The flashes slammed into the chests of the men who'd touched her, tearing a huge, black-rimmed hole in each and tossing them high into the air.
Their comrades on horseback looked stunned but unafraid. One had vivid green eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. Lashed across the rump of his horse was another human, his hands and feet bound. The other horseman was small and wiry with slanted eyes. They pulled their horses back just slightly. The green-eyed one waved and pointed toward Dela. Abruptly, a number of oddly colored creatures, much taller than the humans, streamed into the maynus's field of vision for the first time and rushed the netted nyphid.
'Ogres,' said Kadagan.
'Why doesn't she stand and use the lightning bolt again?' demanded Khisanth as Dela collapsed under the net.
'Dela did not do it intentionally the first time. The electri shy;cal bolt is our involuntary response to contact with humans and others like them. Thou art not like them, which is why we sought thee. Humans cannot help but touch nyphids when they see us, and we cannot help but harm them when they do. The contact with them so drained Dela's energy that she fell unconscious herself.'
Khisanth remembered the tingling she felt whenever the nyphids touched her. Shuddering, she looked back into the maynus, where a large drawstring sack of rough weave was being lowered over Dela. The nyphid was carefully hauled up by the strings of the sack. With that, the green-eyed human put two fingers in his mouth, blew, and the entourage set off toward the south, horsemen in the lead. One ogre car shy;ried the sack at arm's length. Then the picture in the globe blurred to the usual yellow glow.
Watching his daughter's kidnapping in her maynus globe had etched deep lines of worry into the elder nyphid's face, cold determination into Kadagan's eyes. 'We had heard that humans, ogres, and even red dragons were rising up in the region, but we did not realize they had encroached so far into our forests.' Kadagan sighed raggedly. 'Had we known, we would not have left Dela even for the few moments it took to gather berries and water for the morning meal.'
'I don't get it,' said Khisanth. 'Why did the picture stop?'
Kadagan shrugged. 'The maynus is not sentient. Dela was unconscious, and it had no direction. Nor did we. Joad and I searched for Dela all that day. Finally, when darkness fell, we sighted her maynus glowing across the field where she had been kidnapped. It was several more days before we realized it had recorded her capture.'
Kadagan could see that while the dragon found the globe's ability to project pictures fascinating, she had not been per shy;suaded to help them.
'We do not ask thee to rescue Dela simply because she is Joad's daughter and my betrothed.' Kadagan paused, as if he, too, were just fully understanding the impact of what he was about to say. 'We are the last of our kind. Without Dela, nyphids will die off entirely.'
'Why don't you use the maynus to find out where she is and rescue her yourself?'
Joad colored noticeably at the question, but remained silent as always.
'We know where she is.' Kadagan struggled with the words to explain. 'Dela sends … feelings, for lack of a better word, to Joad. These feelings led us to a village in the south.' His brow furrowed. 'When I was sleeping, he slipped into the town to free her.'
'What went wrong?'
Knowing the subject was painful to Joad, Kadagan searched for gentle words. 'In his desperation to free his daughter, Joad walked into the human settlement unmasked. Thou canst guess, from seeing Dela's capture, the impact Joad's presence had on the humans there. When I realized where he'd gone, I covered myself with clothing I borrowed from a farmer's wash line. I managed to find him, but not before he, too, had been surrounded and rendered unconscious. That
energy drain, as well as his sadness over losing Dela, has brought on his muteness.'
Kadagan saw the dragon's disgust at their ineffectual attempt at rescue. 'We are neither warriors nor mages, nor are we physically strong. Thou art all of these things.'
Khisanth stood and stretched her muscles, then resettled into a comfortable position that resembled an enormous black ball with a head. 'Let's assume that I'm interested in rescuing Dela,' she mused. Her long snout was perched on her claw arms as she regarded the nyphids with heavy-lid shy;ded eyes and asked, 'What could you possibly possess that I would value as payment?'
'We can give thee something that will grant thee unparal shy;leled strength and wisdom.'
The horns on Khisanth's head shifted as her eyebrows rose with undisguised interest. Kadagan had to be talking about a very powerful artifact. The maynus globe, perhaps? Its pow shy;ers were certainly impressive enough for it to be the first item in her dragon hoard. At the thought, the salivary glands in the pink folds of flesh next to her second row of teeth sprang into action.
'We can teach thee the discipline of qhen.'
Khisanth blinked in disbelief, and her images of a dragon hoard vanished. 'You think a tiny creature made extinct by humans,' she spat the word in distaste, 'has anything to teach a member of the mightiest race ever to exist on Krynn?'
'It is true that nyphids are on the brink of extinction because of humans. They kill us or display us as possessions because what they do not understand frightens and intrigues them. Yet those are also the reasons that dragons have nearly perished.'
Khisanth pushed herself up to her haunches and gave Kadagan an indignant poke in the chest that sent him reeling. 'We haven't.. 'nearly perished'! We were ordered to go underground and sleep until. ' Her voice trailed off weakly, and Khisanth felt foolish as she realized how slim the dividing line was between extinction and the eternal
