Magic shimmered, and a small figure who had been looking down at the throng of dragons suddenly grew, golden scales and wings coming into view, reflecting the bright rays of the noontime sun as Regia loomed above her kin-dragons. The golden female, wise and patient as ever, looked at Lectral with such disturbing clarity that he shifted awkwardly and cleared his throat with an impatient harrumph.
“She was great and wise and mighty… and so terribly unhappy,” Regia said in dignified farewell. “It is without gladness, but also without grief, that we witness her ascent to the heavens.”
“Farewell, Saytica of the Silver Wing,” came the deep chant from the gathered dragons.
“I commend thee to the vault of the skies,” Regia declared, her tone sonorous and deep as it echoed throughout the small valley. “And may all the blessings of Paladine rise with you.”
At that, Regia dipped her head, allowing her snout to touch Saytica’s motionless nostrils. She murmured a long incantation, the words to the spell inaudible to the wyrms gathered below, and then flames appeared, surrounding the silver shape with a sparkling aura.
Finally the ancient gold spread her wings and took flight, gliding from the mountaintop to settle beside Lectral and Silvara.
The gathered dragons held their attention on the summit and its massive, motionless burden. Saytica’s scales gleamed more brightly than ever, reflecting the rays of the sun with an intensity that seemed to actually increase the brilliance of the glow. Shimmering like a surface of vibrating liquid, the scales seemed to flow like quicksilver, but the great body remained whole and dignified in its final repose.
Then, as the magic took hold, Saytica’s silver shape glowed so brightly that the dragons were forced to watch through the protective screens of their inner eyelids. Yet none turned away from the blinding illumination. The surrounding peaks stood out in brilliant detail, scorched by a flare like burning magnesium, a fire burning so brightly that even the sun seemed to pale in comparison.
Lectral dared not take a breath, so rapt was he at the sight upon the mountaintop. The brightness rose to a truly blinding level, until his only awareness was that spot of light.
Yet the blazing glow was curiously heatless, radiating no increase in warmth. Instead, it consumed the dragon who lay inert at the core of the brightness. When the fire slowly faded into nothing, there was no sign of Saytica.
With a collective sigh, the watching dragons settled, necks relaxing, wings stretching and ruffling in the still air. Many of the youngsters took off in a series of steep, upward pounces that Lectral could only envy.
“It is good,” Silvara said, and for the first time Lectral realized that she had remained at his side. “Regia was right; this is not a time for grieving.”
“You’re right, it’s not,” Lectral agreed, already feeling a familiar, numbing fatigue. “But is it a time for anything at all?”
Chapter 37
296 AC
It was young Dargentan who awakened first, at least among the silver dragons. The young male rose to his feet with a barely contained sense of energy, a feeling of profound unease. Sniffing the air, he crossed with a clattering of claws to the pool of water at the back of his cave. When he found it frozen, he emerged from his lair to blink into the pearly rose light of dawn.
He saw that the surface of Misty Isle’s highland was buried under a blanket of snow, a layer of white that glistened in pristine perfection across the pastoral valleys and rolling summits of the highlands. Graceful cornices curled from lofty ridges, and the wind had marked long drifts, scoring sharp lines from numerous trees, rocks, and other irregularities.
All but the highest pines were fully buried, and Dargentan’s breath frosted visibly as he snorted from his great nostrils. It was a startling thought, but true, to realize that just a few miles away the island’s coastal lowlands were already balmy with the coming of spring.
But when his eyes rose toward the glacier wall, his unease clattered into full alarm. He saw that something had disturbed the snowfields up near the ice-draped nests of silver. Great furrows of dark ground were visible among the snowfields, where the snow had been churned and clawed away.
With a pounce, he took to the air, driving for altitude, fear choking upward into his throat. He flew closer, blood pulsing as he acknowledged a terrifying truth:
The nests had been raided!
He soared above the ridge where the ice-shrouded bowls of silver rested, and one look at the empty mangers confirmed his worst fears: The metallic eggs had been stolen.
Braying in alarm, Dargentan flew among the mountain summits. He knew that he had to find Lectral.
“You say that the eggs- all the eggs-are gone? Stolen from the nests?” demanded the ancient silver, a fundamental sense of urgency driving away the vestiges of his lingering fatigue. He rose and shook himself, twisting and stretching his stiff body, sloughing off old scales in a glittering silver shower. “When did this happen?”
“While I was sleeping-while we all were sleeping,” Dargentan explained breathlessly. “I found them all dug up, and I came to tell you right away.”
“That was wise,” Lectral agreed, though his guts were churned into an icy ball by Dargentan’s news. He stalked, stiff-legged, to the mouth of his cave and looked into the snow-swept valley beyond. From the position of the sun, near the northern horizon of jagged mountains, he knew that the isles had moved only slightly into spring. “Fly with me to the nests. We will see for ourselves.”
Together the two silver dragons took wing, stroking toward the valley of the high glacier. By the time they arrived, they found more of their argent clan gathering.
The nests were high on a cliff, cloaked by ice and shadow year round. Here Lectral and Dargentan landed, finding Darlant probing through an empty icebound nest of silver wire.
“Look!” exclaimed Darl as the pair of big males joined him. He pointed to claw marks along the ledge, where mighty talons had scraped the ice. “These were dragons.”
“And here!” Dargent pointed to a flake that at first appeared to be a large plate of ice. It lay on the edge of the narrow shelf, near where the protective layer of frost had been torn away from the nest.
Only when he sniffed, recoiling at the crocodilian scent, did Lectral admit the truth.
“A white dragon scale… Our nests were raided by the wyrms of the Dark Queen.”
“And every one of them is empty,” confirmed another silver, returning from a flight over the far end of the glacier-draped ridge.
“Word from below,” reported a wyrmling, buzzing up to the ridge where the silver dragons sat in stiff-winged agitation. “The brass dragon eggs were stolen, too, right out of the hot springs!”
“We must fly to the City of Gold,” Lectral declared, his voice stern enough to silence all the younger wyrms. “Perhaps the golden eggs are gone as well. In any event, Regia and Arumnus must be told.”
In a cloud of sparkling metal that belied the grim foreboding in each dragon’s heart, the silvers took wing. By now a dozen or more of the clan followed their venerable ancient as Lectral flew above the valley of the glacier that trailed downward from the massif.
Soon the river of white became a grayish brown, and then it vanished-or was transformed, more accurately, into a splashing flowage of meltwater that spilled downward, through a series of emerald lakes linked like gemstones on a silvery chain. Finally the city of golden towers and lofty palaces rose from the coastal mists.
“Look-we’re not the only ones to fly here,” Darlant observed, and Lectral turned to view a great cloud of brown metal dragons emerging from a side valley. They were coppers, he saw as they got closer, and together with the silvers, they filled the skies above the City of Gold. The mighty ancient of that clan was Cymbol, and he drew up to Lectral with an air of grim disquiet.
“Your eggs were stolen?” asked the silver, his deep voice barking through the windstream of flight.
“Aye. Yours as well?” asked the copper, with a snort of acid spattering from his nostrils.
