secrets. If you can't learn anything useful from this renegade dragon, I might have something more for you soon.'
'We might need your help,' Sir George remarked. 'I keep thinking that this renegade would only know where Kalestraan hid the collar if he was the one who actually put it there. Which is not unlikely, considering the size and weight of the collar.'
Soon after that, Solveig saw Alessa to the door to return to the Academy. The others were still discussing what they knew of renegade dragons when Solveig returned to the den a few minutes later. Their plan now was to leave as soon as it was fully dark and seek out dragons who might be able to tell them where to find a renegade black dragon who wore a ring in one ear.
'I'll have Taeryn get you something to eat before you go,' Solveig said. 'At least now you have a lead.'
'Yes. . apparently Alessa came through for us,' Thelvyn said with some reservation. 'Still, I'll have to take your word that she's come over completely to our side now. She didn't seem particularly happy to see me again.'
'You probably frightened her,' Solveig insisted. 'I suspect that seeing you again unnerved her. You have to keep in mind that the old Alessa did a few things that the new one finds embarrassing.'
Thelvyn and Kharendaen shared dinner with the others as a matter of courtesy. They would be returning to dragon form soon, and they would need a dinner of dragon proportions, which meant catching something in the wild. About an hour after nightfall, they went out into the yard. Thelvyn slipped into his harness while Sir George helped Kharendaen with her saddle. Minutes later, they climbed quickly into the dark sky over Braejr.
The two dragons immediately turned eastward toward the Colossus Mountains, where they planned to hunt and then wait out the rest of the night while they cooked and ate their catch before continuing northeast toward the wilderness of Norwold and the hidden city of Windreach. They needed to talk to Marthaen, and possibly other elder dragons as well, about the matter of the black renegade with the gold earring. Thelvyn remained reluctant to enter Windreach until he had recovered the collar. Kharendaen agreed. She decided she would bring Marthaen out into the mountains of the Wyrms-teeth to speak with him.
They were nearing the rugged western face of the Colossus Mountains when they saw a pair of dragons flying out to intercept them, followed at some distance by nearly a dozen others. Their presence came as no surprise. They were probably members of the band of young reds that had been left behind to keep watch on the Highlands. However, Thelvyn was afraid he wouldn't be able bluff his way past them a second time. But as the pair came nearer, they could see that the two lead dragons were quite large, obviously elder dragons by their size. The silver of moonlight glinted from their armor, revealing one to be a mature red while the other was a gold.
Thelvyn immediately sensed that this meeting was probably more important than a simple challenge by the sentries guarding the borders of the Highlands. Kharendaen followed him as he slowed and began circling in a wide arc as he waited just beyond the dark wall of the sheer mountainside. As the dragons came nearer, he was surprised to recognize them as Marthaen and Jherdar.
'Dragonking!' Marthaen called out to him as they pulled alongside him in a slow glide. Jherdar looked vaguely dissatisfied, as if he were uncomfortable with the use of Thelvyn's title.
'Find a place where we can spend the night in peace. We have something to explain to you,' Thelvyn responded.
They made camp for the night in a narrow, forested valley deep behind the fold of one of the lower ridges of the Colossus Mountains, where the light of their fires would be hidden from the farmlands to the west. Marthaen instructed his bodyguards, a collection of gold and red dragons, to go hunt for their dinner. Once they were alone, Kharendaen quickly explained about their conversation with the Great One and what they had learned so far in their search for the collar. She remained silent about the matter of Thelvyn's hidden parentage, knowing that Jherdar would be upset to hear such a thing.
'A black renegade king with a gold ring in his ear. .' Jherdar repeated slowly to himself, searching his memory. 'That does indeed sound familiar.'
Marthaen glanced at his old friend, quietly amused. 'When the guards we had left in these mountains reported that you were on your way to Silvermist, and that you went into the Highlands the next night, we thought that we should look into the matter to see if we could be of any assistance.'
'You have saved us a long journey to Windreach,' Kharendaen told him. 'We were on our way there to consult with you about this mystery.'
'A gold earring,' Jherdar repeated to himself, his neck bent in a stiff arch so that he was staring at the ground as he struggled to remember. Suddenly he lifted his head, his ears laid back. 'Yes, I know of such a dragon. The black dragon in question is Murodhir, an especially nasty sort, although calling him a renegade king is flattering him. The last I heard, he had only two or three dragon cohorts, although Thelvyn probably killed one of them last year. He also has a few goblin retainers. His true strength is in his command of magic, since he hardly has much else going for him. Murodhir lives somewhere along the north shore of Lake Amsorak, on the southeastern border of the Highlands.'
'Murodhir?' Sir George asked incredulously. 'Why, he's the bane of every drake in Darokin and Traladara.'
'Then he must be good for something,' Marthaen declared, impatient with the old knight. 'If you knew about Murodhir, then why were you looking for the dragon who stole the collar everywhere else in the world last year?'
'Because Murodhir is also a monumental coward,' Sir George answered defensively. 'He fears only one thing-other dragons-but his terror of them is so absolute that I could hardly imagine him going into Windreach after the collar. I'm still not sure I believe it.'
'Then perhaps we should discover that for ourselves,' Marthaen commented coldly. 'I suggest we pay Murodhir a little visit in the morning. Jherdar, would you like to come along?'
'Indeed I would,' the red dragon replied eagerly, anticipating the event with delight.
'You would help me?' Thelvyn asked incredulously.
Jherdar stared at him. 'I am not enthusiastic about the prospect of having you as the Dragonking, and I will oppose your policies if I do not agree with them. But I am certainly no traitor, and I have no patience for any dragon who would betray his own kind. I want to see the Collar of the Dragons recovered, even if I have to see you wear it.'
Thelvyn was careful to hide his amusement over Jherdar's qualified statement of support. But it was more than he had expected from the red dragon he had once defeated in battle as the Dragonlord.
*****
The dragons left the Colossus Mountains well before dawn in order to pass directly over the Highlands with little concern for being seen. If they followed a straight path, the journey to Lake Amsorak was a fairly short one, perhaps three hours for dragons who were rested and eager. They came within sight of Lake Amsorak while the day was still young, and they turned to pass westward along the north shore in search of their quarry.
Amsorak was the largest lake in that part of the world, perhaps in all the world. Its vast proportions almost qualified it as an inland sea, although its waters were fresh, fed by the icy meltwater of the snows from the great range of the Amsorak Mountains to the north. Even though they knew that Murod-hir's lair was somewhere along the north shore, that included a couple of hundred miles of remote territory. And the lair itself was just as likely to be somewhere in the mountains, several miles inland from the lake itself. The lair of a renegade king could be difficult even for another dragon to find.
As it happened, Murodhir's own cohorts betrayed the location of their hidden lair. The dragons were still fairly early in their search when Marthaen's keen eyes suddenly spied a pair of black dragons winging northward as quickly as they could fly, hanging low over the trees along the shore of the Amsorak River as it stretched northward toward the mountains. The blacks had seen the approaching dragons first and were sprinting for the protection of their lair, knowing that they faced an overwhelming force. Immediately Marthaen led the pursuit.
'We'll never catch them before they reach home,' Jherdar said, struggling to keep pace with the gold dragons.
'We don't want to catch them yet,' Marthaen said. 'Let them lead us to their lair. Otherwise we might spend days searching.'
The dragons pushed their pace as hard as they could, determined not to lose sight of their prey. Indeed,
