there a blur of green, a smudge of perfect black.
Then they were all around, filling the skies, crying deep challenges and exulting in freedom after long centuries of confinement. The chromatic dragons of the Dark Queen, released from their prisons in the dragongems, swept away from the mountain that had now collapsed into three lesser, but still mighty, summits. The wyrms of Takhisis bellowed their joy at their freedom and roared with rage at the thought of vengeance that had been too long denied.
“Fly, my kin-dragons!” cried Crematia. “Take wing with me to the south, where our armies march-and where we shall take our revenge against the elven lands!”
Chapter 20
2693 PC
Aurican drifted in a pleasant haze of memory and reflection. Sprawled across the great mountain ridge of the High Kharolis, he knew as he looked down that he was watching Callak and Auricus chase each other’s tails through a maze of valleys and gorges. Specks of bright metal darted, looped, and raced in the full enthusiasm of youthful flight, their gold and silver wings a blur of shimmering reflection.
Yet a part of the mighty gold’s mind could almost believe that it was himself and Darlantan down there, perfecting those maneuvers for the first time, chasing and wrestling, hunting together or tormenting their kin- dragons of the brown metals. When he drifted into these reflections, he felt like a young wyrmling again, ready to flex his wings and buzz like a hummingbird through the vast realm of the sky.
But when he shifted and stretched, he was vividly reminded that he was an ancient dragon now. His wings crackled, comfortable in repose but reluctant to respond to the commands of elderly muscles. His neck and back were sore, and he wanted nothing more than to absorb the warmth of the sun soaking through the shiny metallic scales. Was it his imagination, or did his spine actually creak as he raised his head to look off the other side of the mountain? He was slightly restless-worried, perhaps, about some unnamed threat to the nestlings, but not so agitated that he felt it necessary to move.
Though, in fact, these youngsters gave him many things to worry about. Callak and Aurican, of course, were strong and proud, and would someday be worthy heirs to the silver and gold clans. Auri learned magic with real talent, and his silver nestmate showed promise in the arcane arts as well. But they were impetuous and reckless in ways that disturbed the venerable gold, as if they didn’t acknowledge the possibility of danger, the threat implicit in the Queen of Darkness and her currently dormant dragons. Naturally Aurican tended to forget that he and Darlantan had lived for thousands of years before becoming aware of that menace.
And the males of the brown metals were even more worrisome. Flash was every bit as selfish and hot- tempered as his sire, Blayze, had been. The younger copper showed little patience for the concerns of his nestmates and had been quick to bite-or even to spit a nasty stream of acid-when his young kin-dragons displeased him. From an early age, he had shown a tendency to wander off, to hunt and dwell by himself. Flash had located his sire’s lair, Auri knew, but he feared that the vast treasures concealed therein had spoiled the young copper, making him even more suspicious and resentful of the others.
And Brunt, the offspring of strong, thick-skulled Burll, had sadly shown little of his sire’s placid nature. Like Flash, Brunt had found a separate lair, and he spent much of his time hoarding treasures and avoiding the company of the rest of Paladine’s brood. Whether it was the same place Burll had used Aurican didn’t know, but the young bronze always returned from his journeys with the scents of brine and fish that had distinguished the elder bronze.
At least Dazzall had carried on the sociable legacy of Smelt. He was already well known among humans and had proven to be a peacemaker among the nestmates. Although he was a passable student of magic, he lacked the concentration of Auricus or the native intelligence of Callak.
Aurican’s attention drifted as his head swept through a serene, regal inspection. He saw the two lakes, where Oro and Kenta had gone to their final rest, side by side, their waters now emerald green following the spring melt, and sighed with loneliness. He was acutely aware that he was the last of his nestmates, the only one of Patersmith’s pupils still alive.
It had been within the last fifty winters that the two elder females had finally weakened. Kenta had gone first, crawling from the lair into the mountains, laying herself on the ice so that she had been entombed by the thawing of spring. Then, the next year, golden Oro had followed her silver cousin into the realm beyond life.
Aurican thought about a thing he had learned from elves and humans, the strange concept of love. He had tried to understand this intangible bond. He knew that it connected mates to each other, and even stretched between siblings, parents and children, and close friends. Silvanos had once confessed that, despite their differences, he and Kagonos had shared a bond that could only be described as love. Yet when Auri looked at the place where Oro was buried or thought of the death of Darlantan, he wondered how the two-legs could bear it-to have such a bond torn apart in the short life span that was, at least in the case of humans, inevitable. While the ancient gold was saddened by the loss of his mate and his kin-dragon, their deaths had left him lonely, but not grief-stricken. Indeed, the very thought of an end to life made him more curious than anything else.
Aurican was not at all certain about whatever awaited one when mortal flesh at last yielded to death. To be sure, he had spent time-centuries, in fact-on the study of this particular question. Yet the mystery had eluded even the most penetrating of his meditations, researches, and self-posed queries. Even his dreams, normally a potent source of learning, had yielded little insight.
His musings, like so many of his reflections, made Aurican feel like a relic from an earlier era. Had he really ever been a wyrmling, sleek and supple like Auricus? Or were those memories merely dreams? For that matter, was there, in the present, a significant difference between a dream and a memory of the distant past?
This had been the question of philosophy that had occupied his thoughts for the last dozen or so winters, and he had yet to determine a truly satisfying answer. Naturally there were differences between dreams and memories, but were they significant when viewed from the portal of the present? With a pleasant drooping of his leathery lids, so that they half covered the still-clear orbs of his golden eyes, Aurican began to review the arguments in favor and opposed.
He thought in particular of Daria, the boldest of the female silver nestlings. She had always spoken of very vivid dreams, and several times Aurican had dreamed of Daria’s destiny… a danger and a fate that would be revealed to her in a dream. He made a vow to speak to her of this, for he had the strong feeling that he himself would be dead before this destiny was made clear.
“Grandfather!”
A shout of forceful urgency brought his musings to an abrupt halt. Raising his head so quickly that a jolt of pain shot down to his shoulders, Aurican looked around for the source of the noise.
Little Agon was flying toward him, flapping his small wings with desperate urgency. “Grandfather Aurican!”
“Yes… what is it?” he asked as the silver wyrmling came to rest on the mountainside slightly below the venerable gold. Agon was a likeable and enthusiastic wyrm, stunted in size since emerging from his egg, but popular among all of his kin-dragons. Much to Aurican’s pleasure-and surprise-the runty silver had demonstrated almost as much magical aptitude as had golden Auricus.
“I heard something! It was loud, braying like a horn, and it seemed as if it were calling me. But I couldn’t see anything! What was it?”
“Where did it come from?”
“Th-the east, I think. But I was flying with Dazzall, and he said he didn’t hear anything.”
Aurican’s brow furrowed. He saw Dazzall as the brass dragon winged upward to join them. In moments he had landed, nodding his head in confirmation of Agon’s words.
“A horn, you say? Like a trumpet?”
“Yes, Grandfather!” Agon said with a vigorous nod.
The gold dragon remembered the ram’s horn, safely stored in the grotto, but he knew that another of the
