wings all but buzzing from the strain of his flight. The others trailed behind, darts of metal hurtling through the air. Wind whistled over their scales, and the darkness passed in a blur.
The flash of gold went by him so quickly that the silver dragon wobbled in the air, almost losing control. In disbelief, he strained even harder, but could only watch as the golden tail pulled away. Within moments, Auricus had disappeared into the distance.
By the time Callak had led the rest of the brood into the sunlight warming the Valley of Paladine, Auricus had assumed a position of casual ease on the lordly rock that dominated the valley floor. Licking traces of rabbit fur from his jowls, the golden dragon regarded his approaching nestmates with an affected air of great boredom.
“Whatever in Krynn is the reason for your delay?” he asked, golden eyebrows rising in a mask of perplexity.
“You’ve learned another spell, I see,” replied Callak sourly, having figured out by now that his nestmate had employed some kind of enchantment that greatly increased his speed. “What do you call this one?”
“It’s the haste spell-quite a simple casting, really. Would you like me to teach you?” Auricus asked, innocently lowering his translucent inner eyelids.
“No, I would not!” huffed the silver wyrmling, lashing his tail in frustration. “I’m still trying to learn what each spell is called, while it seems that you’re casting them one right after the other.”
Auricus frowned. “Well, sometimes I have to. It’s the only way I have to keep you from beating me all the time. After all, you’re faster and stronger, and you can fly for days at a time, while I need to land for rest after each sunset.”
It intrigued Callak to think that his golden nestmate actually felt he was getting the poor end of the competition. After all, the gold’s sire was their collective tutor, and Auricus’s intelligence often made the rest of his nestmates feel slighted and inferior. Still, if even Auricus could feel like this, Callak decided that life, perhaps, was not so unfair after all.
As to the other males, Bolt and Tharn had already shown tendencies toward the solitary life that had occupied the later years of their fathers. Each had discovered his patriarch’s secret hoard and returned with tales of mystery and wonder, aggressively guarding against any hint that would lead to the location of their ancestral treasures. Dazzall, in the meantime, had made many friends among the humans who populated Krynn in ever- increasing numbers.
With a flexing of his silver wings, Callak took to the air, at first skimming the soft grass that layered the Valley of Paladine. He flew in long, lazy circles, and over a leisurely afternoon, he spiraled far above the valley floor. Finally he approached the ridges themselves, the precipitous heights that encircled the vale.
First he passed the reclining form of Oro, greeting Auricus’s mother with a respectful nod. The mighty gold was stretched along a high crest so that, with just a turn of her head, she could see a hundred miles to the west or the east. She blinked lazily as the silver wyrmling flew onward.
Finally Callak saw another silver form, the sinuous shape coiled around the summit of a steep, conical peak. He came to rest beside Kenta, curling under her wing, nudging her flank with his snout. She was serenely placid, barely aware of him as he tried to recline with the regal grandeur of an adult dragon.
But soon Callak grew restless again. Then, inevitably, his narrow wings swept outward to carry the silver serpent over his steadily expanding world.
Chapter 18
circa 3000 PC
Crematia spread her wings wide, gliding through the cool night air, drawing close to the black pyramidal mountain she had visited a hundred days before. She broke from the overcast and screeched a warning of her presence, enjoying the panicked maneuvers of the dwarves as they scattered from their fields and roads, scrambling chaotically in a hundred different directions. Like ants revealed beneath an overturned log, they darted about in a vast and instantaneous reaction to her presence, a reaction that pleasantly reassured Crematia of her own might:
Yet by the time the red dragon’s echo had returned from the opposite elevation, every one of the dwarves on the ground had disappeared. Crematia blinked, wondering if her aging eyes were suffering from the effects of minimal light. But no-she could see the roads and trails, even spot the picks and shovels dropped by the scattering work crews as they had funneled into an apparently infinite number of holes, niches, hatches, and caves. Her first impression had been right: The dwarves had all vanished.
She settled to the ground on the still-scorched paving stones of the plaza, the same place where she had earlier demonstrated her infernal might. Now she raised her head to the massive stone doors leading into the mountainside, allowing a deep growl to rumble from her belly. She sensed the reverberations of the sound vibrating the great gates, and she trusted that the import of her message was reaching the dwarves, who were no doubt cowering within. Still, it frustrated her that she was unable to attack, even to see, the wretched denizens huddling within their stone shelter.
Patiently Crematia waited, and while she did, she studied this valley of dwarves. The tower on the mountainside was a secure fortification. She saw that steel shutters had been drawn across the windows and doors, a barrier that might possibly prove resistant even against the killing heat of her breath. And the great gates of the dwarven city were set deep into an alcove in the wall of the mountainside, anchored by huge stone hinges and reinforced by straps of heavy steel. She could see slits and gaps above the entryway, and imagined that the resourceful creatures would no doubt find ways to attack her through these openings if she made an attempt to smash the sturdy gates.
Still, the dwarves were vulnerable otherwise. Their terraced hills were lush with crops approaching harvest, a harvest that Crematia could eliminate in a few hours. And she took it for certainty that the bearded creatures would not be content to dwell within their mountain for a long time without glimpse of the sun. After all, they obviously had labored with nearly inexhaustible energy on a variety of major projects throughout the valley of their realm.
So she was not surprised when a tiny aperture opened in the base of the great gate and a figure came out. The tiny fellow was dressed in a blue robe that trailed along the ground far behind him. His chest was as broad as a barrel, his arms strapping, terminating in powerful, callused hands. Though he wore no weapon at his waist, he bore a satchel of leather over his shoulder.
Naturally Crematia could have slain the dwarf with a slap of her forepaw or a minor sneeze of her breath. But she was impressed by the fellow’s courage and curious about his intentions. She held her violent impulses in abeyance, at least long enough to hear what the dwarf had to say.
“Who are you?” she demanded, punctuating her question with a puff of black smoke.
“I am Bayrn Takwing, a chieftain of this delving,” the dwarf replied, with a belligerent glare, as if he would have welcomed the dragon’s precipitous attack-a notion that lingered temptingly in Crematia’s mind.
“Have you obeyed me?” she demanded, once again sparing the insolent dwarf with a supreme effort of will.
“We have here one of your ‘eggs,’ Mighty Killer,” declared the dwarf, glaring upward with an audacious display of ill temper.
“Then you have failed me, for I bade you bring four of them,” growled Crematia, rearing back in unconscious surprise at the dwarf’s manner. “Know that I am not one who is tolerant of failure.”
Fire swelled in her belly, barely restrained from lethal release. Smoke puffed from her nostrils, but something in the dwarf’s manner held her in check.
The fellow’s beard bristled, and he slung the satchel forward, opening its mouth to allow a perfect sphere of white to tumble out. The stone sat still on the stony road, but seemed nevertheless to move with some sense of inner vitality. It pulsed and radiated, brightening the surrounding ground with a wash of icy light.
“And you have lied to us, for this is no more an egg than you are a horse. It is a gemstone, and you should be glad that it’s magic. Because of that, we’re content to be rid of it, and you are welcome to take it away from here.
