fight, whether Thelvyn wanted to play along or not. If he couldn't even control his own mind and body, then he could not hope to take on the Overlord. All he
could do now was wait and hope he didn't suffer too greatly.
Needless to say, the Overlord anticipated his charge and responded quickly, lifting his neck up and out of the way and stepping aside so that he could easily swat his much smaller opponent out of the air with the back of his claw. Thelvyn was caught by the blow in midleap and knocked backward. Kharendaen moved to try to break his fall, but once again she was pushed aside by some unseen force. The force of the impact was great enough that Thelvyn was thrown all the way across the wide pit, crashing his back heavily against the top of the low wall of the pit.
Thelvyn slumped to the floor of the pit and sprawled limply. Waves of pain exploded from the middle of his back, and he could only lie with his back and neck arched stiffly as he waited, trying to endure the first few moments of agony. Kharendaen couldn't help him even if she had been free to go to him. Isolated from the Great One in this strange world, she didn't even have her healing powers as a cleric to call upon.
'Now see what you've done. You've gone and hurt yourself,' the Overlord said, moving to the edge of the pit to stare down at him in mock pity. 'You should not have undertaken tasks that were beyond your limited abilities. But that was decided for you, wasn't it?'
Thelvyn could barely turn his head slightly to look up. The gray mists were gathering close again, and the darkness seemed all the heavier and more oppressive through the haze of his pain. The Overlord's nightmare face was hovering just above him, and now the Masters had also gathered about the edge of the pit to witness his defeat and humiliation. They did not laugh or ridicule him in any way, nor did they offer any compassion. They only watched him closely, with expressions he could only describe as patient hunger, like a dragon awaiting in pleasant anticipation of a roasted haunch of elk. He believed that they looked upon his defeat as the last remaining obstacle to their conquest of the world they had once tried to claim as their own, and the punishment of those who had once denied their ambitions.
There was nothing he could do to stop them, Thelvyn realized bitterly, not now and perhaps never again. He was too weak to stand up to the power of the Overlord. At that moment, he wondered if he would ever fight again. Pain burned like a raging fire in the middle of his back, and he couldn't move his hind legs or his tail.
'Are you beginning to learn what it means to be a dragon?' the Overlord asked as the faces began to draw back into the enclosing mists. 'Perhaps you did not know that even you possessed the tremendous pride of a dragon until your pride was turned to bitterness. What would the dragons think of their king if they knew you had always believed you did not share the faults of their draconic nature, their pride, their temper, their greed, their capacity for cruelty, because you were not born a dragon? You thought you were better than they because you were the chosen of the Immortals.'
Thelvyn closed his eyes so that he didn't have to see those faces fading away into the mists, but he couldn't stop himself from hearing those terrible words. He could only weep quiedy for all the pain he was being made to endure.
'You thought that you were a king. Now you are nothing more than a slave, a weak and crippled thing. Contemplate that well until I return, and then we will have another lesson in humility prepared for you. I will visit you each day until your dragon's pride wills you to die rather than face me once again.'
The voice was gone, but the pain did not begin to release him for a long time. He had been a fool, indeed a far bigger fool than he would have ever thought. Above all, he had been a fool for continuing this quest when he had known he should turn back. He had not yet discovered just how powerful his true enemy was, and yet he had been aware that he was overmatched. He had told himself he needed to know more before he could face the Overlord in battle, and all he had learned was that this was an enemy he could never hope to match. And he was twice a fool for bringing Kharendaen here.
He had no idea how long he lay lost in his torment. Clearly the Overlord and the Masters had long since left him, satisfied in knowing there was no peace or rest for him, even alone with his thoughts. The intolerable pain in his back began to ease slightly after a time, so that he no longer had to pant with the mere effort to draw a breath. He knew he had been badly hurt in the collision with the wall. His terrible injuries would seem to limit the time that he would be tortured and allowed to live. The Overlord had other, greater conquests at hand.
The irony was that he had come to learn the secrets of an enemy he had hardly known, yet the Overlord had known secrets of his own that he had never guessed he kept hidden. Secrets, it seemed, that he would have been better off if he had never known, but which he could not deny. He had thought the fact that he hadn't grown up as a dragon had isolated him from their common faults. And he had always assumed that the fact that he was the chosen of the Immortals, indeed the son of an Immortal, implied that he must somehow be perfectly suited for the task that had been assigned to him. He had assumed a great many things that had seemed simple and obvious and really not all that important, which he now recognized as an expression of his draconic pride.
The Overlord was very right about one other thing. In nothing else had Thelvyn so proven that he was a dragon at heart than in his dragon's pride. He was surprised that he didn't find it quite the insult it had been intended to be.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that he and Kharendaen were no longer in the pit in the immense, mist- filled chamber but had somehow been moved to a smaller chamber or cell of some type, still more than large enough for the two dragons. There was no sign of any window or even a door. He saw Kharendaen sitting back on her haunches with her tail curled around her legs, looking down at him.
'How do you feel?' she asked when she saw him open his eyes.
He started to lift his head, but it hurt too much. 'How. . how long does it take a dragon to die?'
She looked startled and concerned. 'A dragon can take a very long time to die, depending upon the nature of his injuries.'
'I think my back is broken,' he told her plainly. 'I cannot move.'
'Then do not try to move,' she told him firmly. 'You might also be surprised by what a dragon can survive, and how quickly you recover.'
'I doubt that I will be allowed the time,' Thelvyn complained, then lifted his head slightly to look around in spite of the pain. 'When did they move us here?'
'We have not been moved anywhere,' Kharendaen explained to Thelvyn's surprise. 'After you lost consciousness, ihe darkness closed in all around us, and then these walls formed at what had been the edge of the pit. The Overlord has come to look at us from time to time, somehow removing the walls and then restoring them when he left.'
'How long was I unconscious?' Thelvyn asked.
'You have slept these last two days, at least insofar as I can judge time,' she told him. 'I began to wonder if you would ever be coming back to me.'
Thelvyn laid his head down on the cold stone floor and closed his eyes for a long moment. He had been hurt worse than he had thought; he had thought that only a few long minutes of pain had passed, and that he had not slept at all. He wondered what was happening in his own world. Were his allies beginning to think he would not be returning to defend them? He also wondered if there was some way that he could get Kharendaen out of this place, and he wondered what would become of her when he was gone. He had made a hopeless mess of everything. Bitterly he thought the Immortals had been foolish to insist upon sending him to this place.
'Perhaps there was never any hope,' Kharendaen said softly, guessing his thoughts. 'Perhaps the risk of this journey was simply too great. We took the chance, the only chance we had. You have done the best you can, and you must not blame yourself. You were given the responsibility to try your best, and you have done that.'
'There was never any room for failure, not in this matter,' 'Thelvyn said bitterly. 'The price of my failure will be our world. I have lost everything.'
'You have not lost me.'
Thelvyn turned his head away. 'You could not leave if you wanted to.'
Kharendaen laid back her ears, perplexed. Then she rose and moved slowly around to sit down again direcdy in front of him, where he could not so easily ignore her. 'You have been stung by words that were meant to deceive you. I would not leave you now even if I could. Why do you suddenly seem to think I want to shun your company?'
'I haven't exactly made a good showing as Dragonking, have I?' he asked, then closed his eyes. 'I've been playing the part of the hero who boldly saves the world. What a disappointment I've been.'
