they were actually gaining slowly on the pair of frightened black dragons, although they were still nearly a mile behind as they came to the foothills of the mountains. Murodhir's lair was less difficult to locate than they had expected. A wide, dark cave opened beneath a broad overhang of moss-covered stone along the western shore, where the river had cut deep as it cascaded down from the heights. A high wall of dark stone, massive but crudely set, had been laid across the lower part of the entrance to the cave, leaving the upper portion open to the approach of dragons.
The two black dragons flew directly into the dark opening, landing quickly and folding away their wings as they turned to crouch behind the wall, raising their heads to peer out. They seemed to offer a poor defense, but they were not alone. A company of goblins began to file out at a run along the top of the wall, most of them still putting on their armor and helmets. There were about a hundred goblins in all, and they were armed with powerful crossbows.
Since Marthaen was still in the lead, he elected to bring their company down into the open field before the cave, landing just out of range of the crossbows. The goblins held their position, waiting. Sir George leaped down from his saddle as soon as Kharendaen settled to the ground, hurrying to get out of the way. The battle seemed hopeless for the defenders. Besides Thelvyn and Kharendaen, both Jherdar and Marthaen had their bodyguard, a dozen more young dragons. Even so, they did not fancy taking on so many crossbows.
Marthaen rose and reached over his back to draw the massive sword he always carried. If the dragons made a sudden charge at the wall, they were unlikely to take any serious harm before they were over it. Then it would be a simple matter to scatter the goblins and capture the two black dragons.
'Wait a moment,' Thelvyn said. 'Let me try to crack open their fort.Then you can drag them out without any bother.'
'I suppose that the Dragonlord has such powers,' Jherdar commented.
'Perhaps he does,' Thelvyn agreed. 'But I think that the time has come for us to see what the Dragonking can do. I need for all of you to be ready to rush in the moment after I
strike.'
'When we go in, you wait outside,' Marthaen told him. 'This is not work for the Dragonking. We will bring the
renegade out to you.'
It was all right with Thelvyn not to go into that dark, damp hole, and not because he was afraid. He was determined to scatter the goblins before they had a chance to use their crossbows. The last thing he wanted to see was the barbed bolts of those weapons penetrating Kharendaen's sleek armor. He rose to his hind legs and lifted his arms with his wings half open, reaching within himself for the powers that were his to claim as the child of an Immortal.
His own part in the battle was brief, if spectacular. His form began to glow with a soft light of pure silver as he gathered raw destructive power to himself. Then great, swift spears of lightning shot out from him, eight or ten rapid bolts of power in rapid succession, leaping across the clearing with the sound of thunder. Each bolt struck a separate part of the crude stone wall, progressing along its length in a line as they ripped apart the stone, sending great blocks and jagged splinters of stone flying along with the burned bodies of the defenders.
The last echoes of the lightning were still fading as the dragons leaped forward, crossing the clearing in long, swift bounds. Jherdar raced ahead of his companions in his eagerness for battle, but there was more of a fight waiting for him than he had expected. As he leapt over the ruined wall, he expected to face only a pair of dazed black dragons. Instead, he found himself pulled down by five renegades, who had been waiting for him. They were on top of him before he could begin to fight back. He could feel their claws pulling at his armor and their sharp fangs snapping for a death grip on his neck.
The attackers outnumbered the black dragons, and Jherdar should have had no great cause for alarm, but the tight quarters in the mouth of the cave kept his companions from assisting him. Marthaen climbed up on the highest part of the ruined wall, desperate to help his old friend before the renegades gained a hold on Jherdar's neck. The area just inside the wall was packed with blasted stone. He could barely see occasional glimpses of red armor beneath the tangle of black bodies writing below him. Hardly knowing what else to do, Marthaen arched his back and leapt down into the midst of the battle with the indiscriminate fury of a lightning bolt, crashing down with his greater weight onto the back of one of the black dragons. Not daring to pause, he pushed his way into the middle of the fight, thrusting aside the smaller black dragons to give Jherdar a chance to force his way free.
Two of Jherdar's red dragon bodyguards came over the wall and tore into the renegades furiously. Jherdar pulled free of his attackers a moment later, catching one of the black dragons by t he neck and dragging it down. The three surviving renegades tried to break free to retreat into the shadowed depths of the cavern, and the remaining gold and red dragons began leaping over the shattered wall to pursue them. Marthaen paused, feeling odd points of pressure against the armor of his legs and belly. Glancing down, he was almost amused to see a small army of goblins swarming over him, trying to slip their swords and spears inside the joints of his armor. He responded by spinning quickly, his long tail scattering the goblins like vermin.
The attack was essentially over a few moments later. Marthaen followed the others into the depths of the cavern, leaving a couple of his bodyguards to chase down the surviving goblins. The bodies of two of the renegades were tossed out of the cavern a short time later, their necks broken.
But the two elder dragons did not come out, having unfinished business of their own deeper within the cave. Thelvyn hoped that they would remember how treacherous a renegade king could be in his own lair. He folded away his wings and approached the smoking, dusty ruins. Kharendaen hurried to join him. The bodyguards were already clearing away some of the wreckage, pushing the broken stones aside so that they could haul the bodies of the black dragons out into the open. Marthaen returned from the depths of the cave a few minutes later. Jherdar followed more slowly, pulling the renegade king out of his own lair by the tail. Murodhir was bleeding slowly from his ears.
'That was quite an impressive show,' Jherdar said to Thelvyn as he dragged the renegade out into the clearing and released his tail. The black dragon lay limp and panting in the trampled grass.
'We seem to have made an impression on Murodhir,'
Thelvyn said as he approached and sat back on his haunches so that he could take the renegade by one horn, lifting his head. 'Good day, Murodhir. You don't mind us just dropping in like this, do you? We want to have a little chat about the Collar of the Dragons.'
Murodhir began to take a deep breath, but Thelvyn was too quick for him, clamping shut his snout. Black dragons breathed deadly acid rather than flame like the larger breeds, although the acid was usually an ineffective weapon against other dragons. Nevertheless, Thelvyn would have suffered grave harm if he had caught it in the face at such close range.
'Come on, now. Breathe out,' Thelvyn told the renegade firmly, knowing that black dragons lacked the ability to use their breath weapons through their nostrils. 'Do you want me to make Jherdar sit on you?'
Murodhir relaxed. 'What difference is that to me? I don't expect you will allow me to live.'
'You already owe me for the grave injury you did to my friend Solveig White-Gold,' Thelvyn said. 'But what happens to you depends upon what you decide. You can answer my questions now, or you can go back to Windreach to answer to the dragons for the theft of the collar.'
The black dragon fell silent and began to quiver in fear. The worst of all possible fates he faced at that moment was being taken to Windreach to stand trial. The dragons would be especially inventive in punishing the greatest traitor their race had known in a long time.
'The question is really quite simple,' Thelvyn continued, having given Murodhir a moment to think about his options. 'Were you the one who stole the Collar of the Dragons for the Fire Wizards? Yes or no?'
Murodhir sighed loudly. 'I knew the Fire Wizards from the time when they first came into the Highlands over a hundred years ago. They had always paid me well for information, especially about the dragons. Kalestraan proposed a bargain by which I would help him to gain the power he desired to rule the human races, and in return he would give me the power to rule over the dragons. He said that he would make it possible for me to steal the Collar of the Dragons and defeat the Dragonlord.
1'hen, when he was done with the collar, he would give it back to me so that I could proclaim myself Dragonking.'
'Then you were the one who told him where the Collar of the Dragons was kept?' Thelvyn insisted.
'No. He knew that already,' the renegade insisted. 'He gave me an artifact of magic that allowed me to
