Another important difference was that these slender dragon-folk were apparently intelligent, while wyverns were nothing more than wild beasts. Recalling what fierce warriors they were, Thelvyn's first thought was that he and Kharendaen were about to be attacked, or perhaps called upon to surrender. Certainly these three were a delegation of some type, although they were hardly enough to take on two gold dragons.
To Thelvyn's surprise, the three bowed their heads to him, and their leader stepped forward. When Thelvyn turned to face him, the leader cautiously came a few steps closer and bowed his once head again before looking up and speaking earnestly. 'Please … we must speak. . quickly. .'
'Do you understand him?' Kharendaen asked quietly.
'Somewhat,' Thelvyn answered. These dragon-folk spoke a language of their own unlike any that Thelvyn knew, but he was able to understand some of their words by the means of some latent magic of his own. Clerics often had the ability to understand unknown languages and sometimes to be understood by those who did not speak their own tongue.
'Do you know what I am saying?' Thelvyn asked, speaking slowly.
'Yes,' the leader answered, although he spoke a great many words that Thelvyn didn't recognize. 'Are you. are you an enemy of the Masters?'
'I am,' Thelvyn replied, taking the chance that the dragon-folk were also their enemies. 'I am the Dragonking, chosen by prophecy to fight and defeat the Masters.'
'You have come to fight them?'
He thought he recognized a note of cautious hope, although it was difficult to be certain. 'I have come to try to learn their secrets, so that I can fight them in my own world where my strength is greatest.'
'I am Long Spear, leader of my clan,' the speaker said, introducing himself at last. He seemed at last to have grown to trust these strangers, as if had to overcome long-held suspicions and resignation. 'My people are called the Veydran. Once this world belonged to us alone. Then, in a forgotten time some five thousand years past, the Overlord came upon us.'
'He is not of your own world?' Thelvyn asked.
'We do not know. If we ever knew, it has long since been forgotten. All we know now is that he came to us long ago. At first, he was our god and protector, and we prospered. Then the Overlord's heart turned to the blackness of utter evil. He told us that we lived only to serve him, that we had no life or thought of our own. But he could not control us, and so he tried to destroy us with a great Wind of Fire that swept through the world, turning the seas to sand and the sky to dust. Our land turned cold.'
'But he could not control you?' Thelvyn asked.
'He cannot control us, for we know his name,' Long Spear explained. 'Some of us were taken away. Their children were Stolen from them and never allowed to learn his name, and so they must serve him. But they were not enough to satisfy his ambitions. He began to conquer other worlds where he could control others who do not know His name.'
'Is that when the Masters came?'
Long Spear stared at the ground sadly. 'The Masters came and shared with him the visions of the world they had left, the world of the dragons. The dragons had sent them away. Their black hearts were bitter, and they hated this cold, dry world just as the Overlord hates it. The Overlord could never pass through his own gates to leave this world, but now the Masters had a way to lead him into their world. They have waited a long, long time, gathering their strength so that they could defeat and control the dragons. Then the Overlord would depart, but we would still not be free.'
'I will destroy the Overlord if I can,' Thelvyn promised. 'But it is beyond my power to make your world the way it was.'
'It would be enough for us to be free.' Long Spear took another step forward, cocking his head to stare up at the gold dragon. 'The Masters are very busy. They fly constantly between their strongholds, but they do not have the time to bother us. They are fighting you, and you are here. Take a look at their great places, but be careful not to go too close, not unless you are ready to fight them.'
The three Veydran bowed their long necks once again, then turned and disappeared quickly into the shadows. Thelvyn guessed they never dared to stay out in the open for very long, a lifetime habit that kept them alive in a hostile world that had not belonged to them in a very long time. He suspected that it would also be wise for him to avoid open places for very long.
'That was the most interesting chat I've had in some time, whatever language it was in,' Thelvyn commented, then turned to look at Kharendaen. 'Did you understand any of it?'
'I caught enough to understand the gist of it. The Veydran seem to consider the Overlord a god. I don't like the idea that he has enough power to completely devastate a world. You may find yourself fighting one who has powers greater than those of an Immortal.'
'No wonder the Immortals themselves seem to fear him,' Thelvyn said, preparing to launch himself into the air once more. 'Come on. If we hurry, perhaps we can reach their main stronghold and get back again before morning.'
The two dragons spread their wings and leapt into the sky, leaving behind the ruins of the ancient town. Once again they passed swiftly through the night, keeping as much as they could to the deep shadows of the valleys as they made their way steadily northwest. For a time, Thelvyn felt so distracted by his thoughts that he wasn't being as cautious as he should have been in such a strange, hostile land.
He was beginning to form a full understanding of the situation. What impressed him was not how desperate it already was but how much worse it could yet become. Perhaps the Immortals had chosen him as their champion, but he wondered now if even they had fully appreciated what they expected of him. He suspected they had not. The Great One had apparently known only that the Overlord was a being of tremendous power. Under the circumstances, Thelvyn realized he couldn't completely trust in the knowledge and the judgment of the Immortals. The fact that they had prepared him for the task of fighting and defeating the Overlord did not mean that he could assume he would win.
Like the Immortals, he needed to know just how powerful his true enemy actually was, to judge how best to fight the Overlord … if fighting him was even a real possibility. The fact that he had devastated this world with fire was intimidating on the surface and made the Overlord seem very powerful indeed. But that was not necessarily so, Thelvyn knew. Such magic could have been prepared carefully, the power behind it drawn from many sources or gathered over a long period of time. The Overlord was still a very powerful being, but as long as he was less powerful than the Immortals, then either they or their champion could still defeat him. Thelvyn needed to know just how powerful the Overlord really was, and he could think of no way to judge that except in combat.
He had already learned a few things about his enemy, but not enough to do him any good. He could guess already that the Overlord wasn't a true god, an all-powerful enemy he could never hope to defeat. So far the Overlord had acted only through his servants, channeling his magical power to the Masters and leaving the actual fighting of his wars to them. And although he had long waited for the chance to leave behind the world he had nearly destroyed, he apparendy needed the magic of the Masters to make that possible. Perhaps at the Overlord's own stronghold, Thelvyn would see evidence from which he
could infer just how powerful his true enemy really was.
Another hour or so brought the two dragons near the lands where they expected to find the greatest of the strongholds of their enemy, and their progress was slowed by the need of being more cautious than ever. It was a remarkably rugged, mountainous area, and many of the larger open areas were lakes of drifting sand. But a few deep valleys offered enough protection from the harsh wind to be carefully cultivated. In these remote valleys, even the smallest bit of land was used for fields of crops or pastures for animals. The dragons had been weaving a path in and out of the valleys to keep themselves hidden from sight, but now they were forced to fly over the barren heights.
Thelvyn hoped they would be mistaken in the darkness for gemstone dragons even if they were seen. His image of the true size of dragons had changed somewhat over the last few months, so that he no longer thought of them as being as large as they had once seemed to him. All the same, he reminded himself, a dragon was a very big creature and not very easy to hide. As they traveled deeper into inhabited regions, his apprehension continued to grow. He knew that he was taking a tremendous risk, and he would have preferred to turn back at once, but that would mean his quest had ended in failure. He knew now that he could not hope to win this war until he found a way to defeat the Overlord.
