weak, breathing heavily and his wings drooping with each powerful beat, but he rallied all his might and plunged forward. In a flash, he struck the pillar head-on, ramming it with his great forehead. The crack of bone against hard stone was deafening and horrifying. The pillar trembled but still stood, so Chalintash pulled back and struck again, and again, harder each time.
Khalt drew an arrow from his quiver and shot it. Chalintash spun at the motion, but the arrow was not aimed at him. Its path was between him and Trinculo, and when it burst into a white flare that lit up the ruins brighter than midday, Trinculo spread his mirrorlike wings to catch the light, redouble it, and direct the reflection directly at Chalintash. The brilliant flash of light burned into the copper dragon's pupilless eyes and dazzled him.
Khalt drew into his quiver again and launched arrow after arrow directly at Chalintash, each of them sinking into the copper scales.
The howling dragon, burned, blinded, and wracked with points of pain throughout his body, located Khalt's direction and bounded after him, summoning the remainder of his power. Khalt was well beyond the range of the tether, but when it pulled tight Chalintash pushed forward, his shoulders straining till bones bulged through scales, until the pillar behind him snapped at last. With a mighty crack it collapsed, and the copper dragon was free. Khalt fled as Chalintash barreled toward him.
But before Chalintash could reach the elf, Trinculo flew in from the side, striking Chalintash full-on and knocking him against a broken wall that collapsed under the impact. The effect of Chalintash's gas was only just then wearing off, and Trinculo pummeled him with laborious blows of claw and jaw. Trinculo pinned the copper dragon to the ground, and held down his writhing, struggling body. A hard-planted claw on Chalintash's neck kept the snapping, drooling mouth at a safe distant. Chalintash's struggling began to slow.
'Elves…' muttered the copper dragon through clenched teeth. Khalt sidled up next to Trinculo, holding an arrow at the ready, trained at Chalintash's face.
'What about elves?' asked Trinculo, digging his claws deeper into Chalintash's scales. 'What about them?'
Instead of responding, Chalintash darted his head quickly, breaking free of Trinculo's restraint. His massive, snapping jaws thrust directly at Khalt, who loosed his arrow. It drove directly into the dragon's eye, and Trinculo closed his teeth around Chalintash's exposed neck. Trinculo pulled away a mouthful of flesh and Chalintash collapsed, a twitching wreck lying across the ruins of Ulcaster's school.
Spitting the meat out, Trinculo spun around until his back was to the dragon's carcass. He slowly walked forward to the fallen pillar that had restrained Chalintash. Khalt walked next to him.
'A brute!' Trinculo shouted. 'A brute-that's all the Rage made him. He could have turned this pillar to mud, Khalt! It shouldn't have held him at all. But he didn't know his own powers.'
'And a good thing too,' Khalt said. He regretted his words immediately, and he saw a certain barely perceptible twitch run all through Trinculo's silvery body.
The dragon's claws dug deeper into the ground and he tensed.
'We've got to go now,' Trinculo said. 'We don't have much time.' 'Where are we going?'
'Where do you think?' asked Trinculo. 'Evermeet.'
By the time the sun rose, Khalt and Trinculo were well over the Sea of Swords. And by the time it was beginning to set again, they had passed the Moonshae Isles, keeping high and fast so as not to draw attention from any angry humans, or worse still, other dragons. As the sunset spread orange and red light all across the Trackless Sea, Khalt, harnessed safely to the back of the speeding dragon, asked Trinculo about their destination.
'It calls me back,' the mercury dragon told him, his scales shining crimson. 'Evermeet's crystalline lakes and graceful trees… and the harmony. Yes, Khalt. Everything you've heard is true. If your people had taken the Retreat, you wouldn't have to contend with Dambrath, bandits, or gnolls. You could have lived and made your life in peace.'
Trinculo had barely spoken since they left Beregost, and Khalt was pleased to hear him speak so fondly of his birthplace.
'No struggle?' said Khalt. 'Where's the fun in that?'
'Why do you think I left?' asked Trinculo. 'When I took the pledge of Avachel, it gave myself an excuse to leave, to travel Faerun helping your people. But part of me always stayed on Evermeet. Even I need a little peace and quiet sometime.'
'We'll land in Leuthilspar,' he went on, 'and seek audience at Moonstone Palace. I met the queen once at night, on the banks of the Lake of Dreams. For once in my life I couldn't find words. She'll help us. I know it.'
A voice deep within Trinculo asked, Or will she?
'What will it be like when we arrive?' asked Khalt.
'They'll have a name for you,' he said. 'You're a windrider. All those warriors who ride dragons, eagles, and pegasi are windriders.'
'I like the sound of that,' said Khalt, feeling the breeze through his hair.
'The world's most beautiful cities, and the most temperate forests.' Trinculo's tone became more distant. 'Evermeet is paradise. To think, the elves only achieved it with this curse.'
'How many millennia ago was this?' asked Khalt. 'Probably no elf lives that remembers it.'
'Still,' Trinculo said, 'it says something of the elf mind that would design it. To exalt themselves at the expense of all others.'
'There is no excuse,' agreed Khalt. His heart was beating faster. He needed to pacify Trinculo, and quickly. 'I wish there was some way I could make up for the sins of my ancestors.'
'Hopefully that's what the queen will do,' said Trinculo. Khalt hoped that was the end, but then Trinculo started up again. 'I just think it's funny,' he said. 'I'm a dragon, my life bounded by my pledge to some elves. Avachel is, or was, a dragon and a companion to an elf god. Does he know about it? The truth of the Rage, I mean. Or is Avachel kept in the dark as well?'
Khalt looked around him, knowing exactly what he'd see. There was no land in any direction.
'Trinculo, you're worrying me,' he said, as he gripped the hilt of his dagger. He looked back at his bow and quiver, both lashed to Trinculo's side farther back along the dragon, just out of his reach.
'I'm really sorry, Khalt, really I am,' the mercury dragon hissed. 'But when you've just torn out the throat of one of your friends, we'll see how chipper you are.'
'You had to do it. He would have killed us both, and destroyed Beregost.'
'You must have enjoyed sinking that arrow into his eye,' Trinculo said, 'and tethering him to the rock like a dumb wyvern.'
'I hated it,' Khalt said. 'I hated that I had to do it.'
Trinculo laughed. It was not the joyous sound that Khalt had so often heard ringing through the trees of Amtar, nor the cheerless cynicism he'd gotten used to those past days. It was a terrifying, hollow sound, bubbling out from darkest corners of Trinculo's collapsing psyche.
'Don't do this.' Tears were dripping down his cheeks, rolling down the tattoo of Avachel. 'Do you want to be Chalintash? Stay with me… please, Trinculo. Don't leave me.' And he drew the dagger from its sheath as quietly as he could.
'Are you going to stab me, Khalt?' Trinculo muttered through clenched teeth. 'Sink it in the back of my neck? Or maybe if you slash my wings, you'd hurt me so badly I couldn't reach land. Is that what you're hoping to do, dear friend?'
His eyes full of tears, Khalt swung the dagger, snapping the harness that held him in place. He dropped the dagger and hopped backward to reclaim his bow, scrambling for handholds. He pulled an arrow of attraction from the quiver and spun forward quickly, ready to launch it into the back of Trinculo's head. But Trinculo dived sharply, pointing almost directly down into the vast, red-tinted sea below.
Khalt never fired his arrow. By the time Trinculo straightened out his body and flew forward, the elf was left far behind. The harness and the rest of the supplies slipped off the dragon's body as well. Trinculo didn't turn back, didn't look, didn't even listen for the splash. But a minute later, he felt a sharp pain, as if that arrow had dug into his brain. His senses unclouded and there was clarity again. His fury left him, replaced by something else.
Replaced by shame.
'Khalt,' he gulped.
He spun back and scanned the water for the elf, desperate for any sign of him. But the waves were rolling and fast, and he found not a trace of the wild elf.
