“I will kill her now,” declared the silver dragon, crouching, wings spread, ready to fly.
“Wait, my brother.” Aurican’s voice held Dar back. “My scales cannot be burned by her fire. Let me go after her. You watch here for the blues, or wait for word from Kagonos.”
Darlantan growled, but he knew Auri was right. The gold dragon’s gilded scales were proof against Crematia’s fiery breath, a protection that Darlantan could not claim.
“Fly with the speed of sorcery and the Platinum Father,” Dar urged.
“I shall.”
In the echo of that word, Aurican was gone, a rush of air swirling in his wake. Darlantan squinted and saw the golden form diving toward the red dragon. Crematia darted away at impossible speed, and Auri, though unenchanted, pursued like a shooting star. Rapidly the two dragons dwindled to tiny specks of color far out over the dusty plain.
Returning his taut, uneasy inspections to the north, Dar squinted along the horizon. The scourge of the blue dragons had been well reported by elven scouts as the vicious serpents spread a swath of devastation along the eastern coast of the world. Moving northward, they had continued their way along the shoreline of the great ocean. Recent reports told of their intentions to rejoin Talonian.
So they would have to come from the north, Darlantan knew.
Soon his certainty was rewarded as tiny flecks of azure appeared in the distance against the rusty brown of the plains. The blue dragons swept toward the field with relentless determination, flying in a broad wing. There were five of the serpents in all, soaring below the level of the puffy clouds that scudded through the sky.
Darlantan took wing immediately, climbing through the clouds into the thin, frosty regions where he had rarely ventured. He took an evasive, wayward course, using the largest of the cumulus clouds as concealment from the onrushing serpents. Finally, far above them, he circled and waited.
Every once in a while he glimpsed a blue wing or the trailing flick of a tail through the obscuring vapor. Mostly the view below was blocked by the thickening overcast, and this concealment suited Darlantan. The wyrms were flying well below the clouds, doubtless to insure that they would have plenty of time to react to an attack from above.
That is, an ordinary attack. But Darlantan had a new plan in mind, a tactic that would require careful timing and a measure of luck. The leading blue dragon blinked into view again in the gap between two nearby clouds, and the silver dragon put his plan into action.
The body of metallic sheen shifted and grew smaller in the instant of his thought, and in an eyeblink, it was the body of a frail, white-bearded sage poised high in the air. Lacking wings, the body naturally began to fall straight down, and here Darlantan hoped for the intervention of luck.
He plunged through the clouds, blinking away the tears that formed in his eyes from the buffeting force of the wind. Tucking his arms around his skinny legs, he made himself as small an object as possible, a tiny ball of humanity plunging from the lofty clouds, directly toward the back of the leading blue dragon. Doubtless the following serpents would have noticed something as huge and visible as a dragon of gleaming silver, but none of them took notice of this insignificant fleck of nothing tumbling downward.
But in another eyeblink Darlantan became a dragon again, poised directly above the back of the massive blue. He struck his target with crushing force as the silver head whipped around. Jaws gaping, he blasted an explosion of killing frost into the startled face of the next blue in line.
Beneath him, the wyrm snapped and writhed, trying to bring those lethal jaws-and that deadly lightning-to bear. Darlantan’s claws closed around the blue’s throat, crushing and tearing, until his own fangs ripped through its scales. Slowing the descent with his outspread wings, the silver dragon twisted once more to make sure his foe was dead.
Then he released the lifeless carcass and dived toward the ground, sweeping away from the two armies clenched in their distant, sprawling struggle. Bellows of rage still echoed, and the acrid scent of spent lightning stung his nostrils as he drew deep breaths and strove for altitude.
Three blue arrows plunged from the sky in vengeful pursuit as Darlantan headed for the scant concealment of a range of rugged foothills. He dodged into a chasm, flying around a massive bluff and swinging over the plains again, leaving the blues straining to keep him in sight. Upward and still upward he rose, the powerful strokes of his wings carrying him high above the land, higher than he had ever flown before. Passing through the tenuous layer of clouds, Darlantan found himself in a realm of twilight chill, though the sun burned from just past zenith overhead. The wetness on his scales turned to frost, and he sensed that the blues struggled with the uncomfortable chill as they labored in pursuit.
But they still had their magic, and in a heart-stopping moment, the three blue serpents materialized in the air before him-and Darlantan knew he was defeated. A trio of cruel maws gaped as the mighty silver tried to veer aside, knowing he was too late. The blue dragons were arrayed in lethal formation, poised to kill no matter which way he turned.
Then a great rock was there, a massive orb that was somehow suspended in the sky. The surface was silvery and bright, coated with frost, and the great sphere was moving very fast, tumbling crazily into the midst of the aerial melee. Darlantan veered, dodging as the massive globe swirled past the chromatic dragons.
Lightning blasted, and shards of white-silver stones flew past Darlantan. But the blue dragon’s aim had been thrown off by the great sphere of stone. His shot missed the silver serpent, instead splintering into the great, floating mass of rock. Dar had no time to ponder the mystery of the flying stone. He curled around the gradually rounded surface, realizing that the body of rock was monstrously huge. Certainly it would be visible to those on the ground, though he had never seen nor heard of such a body in the skies above Krynn.
Sudden darkness loomed, as if something had abruptly doused the sun. But then he saw that it was another sphere of rock streaking after the first, this one midnight black in color. Indeed, the stone was so dark as to resemble a hole in the sky more than any solid surface of rock. Again lightning blasted, and this time shards of the black orb exploded upward as the blue’s bolt missed its target and gouged into the mysterious globe.
Flying faster, Darlantan curled away from the black object, now seeing another great rock heave into view. This one was as red as blood, and it seemed to trail the other two through the sky. With three blue dragons in pursuit, the silver veered toward this third massive sphere, hoping beyond belief the good fortune that had blessed him until now would hold firm.
Sensing the blues close on his tail, the silver serpent curved sharply, driving his wings through long strokes, almost skimming the surface of bright, blood-red rock. The monstrous orb hurled past, obviously trailing the other two on a trajectory that would carry it even higher into the sky-above the clouds, above the loftiest dragon-flight, seemingly beyond the very air itself.
Darlantan twisted instinctively, warned by familiarity with his foes. Once more lightning spurted past, driving into the surface of the cosmic rock, missing the silver dragon by a mere hairsbreadth. Then the crimson orb was streaking away, leaving a trail of shards from the lightning strike that, like the black and silver debris from earlier blasts, tumbled lazily through the air, falling with deceptive grace toward the ground below. The three great spheres, white and black and red, coursed quickly upward and away.
Without the moons for cover, Darlantan relied on his speed once more. He pushed himself through the air, blinking against the onrush of wind, tilting into a plummeting headlong dive. The snaky line of the Vingaard River expanded into clarity, and once again the dragon of metal outdistanced his azure foes.
But there was still that magic, and abruptly two of the blue serpents popped into view below him. Jaws agape, they waited in perfect attack position as Darlantan curved his neck and stretched his wings, striving desperately to pull away.
The lightning exploded with a violent flash, though curiously the silver dragon heard no sound. For a moment, everything was impossibly bright.
And then there was no light at all.
Chapter 14
