The dragon was massive. It was terrifying. It was magnificent. Tears filled my eyes. For a moment, I gave up trying to find my feet. I forgot my companions. I fucking forgot to breathe.
Its head was as big as my torso. Its eyes, the color of molten gold, each the size of my two fists, with alien double-slit pupils, drifted from Derrek, to me, to Elana and Shadow, to Veralar and the knights. For a moment it posed atop the limestone cairn, head and wings held high.
I had never seen a dragon, of course. No dragon had been seen in elven lands since Rusyara Half-dragon had come to seek the wisdom of the treesingers and the Sisters of Amalai and had left with the greatest sorcerer of that generation for a husband, half a century before I was born. Excepting the great red Mathrankulranor, infamous for his tyranny over the distant city-state of Avhaar, it had been at least that long since a dragon had been seen anywhere that I knew of.
“Greetings,” it said. “I am Lynqxaemass. Who are you who seek to pass beyond the Eastern Veil?”
The dragon’s voice was massive, deep and musical, but not loud. Excepting its own name, broken in the middle by a tongue-click and ending in a hiss, it spoke the language of the Compact in the cultured accent of Naal. And it used the effeminate form of the verb “I am”, not the neuter, so I ought to be thinking of the dragon as her.
Having introduced herself, Lynqxaemass folded her wings down on her back and settled onto the cairn, which had clearly been erected for her convenience, foreclaws crossed in front of her like an enormous cat.
I rose, at last, and saw the others doing the same. Only Derrek and Veralar seemed to have kept their feet. Shadow did not rise. He shuffled backwards on hands and knees, out of the circle of the Prince’s Fighters, almost to the creek.
Elana stepped forward, back straight, dusting herself off with her hands.
“Hail and well met,” she said. “I am Elana Traiana, deposed Crown Prince of Vencar.”
The dragon dipped her head. It may have been a slight bow, or just a nod of acknowledgement.
“These are my companions,” Elana went on. “My dear friend and personal guard, Sir Rennin Ösh. My surrogate father and a general of my armies, Lord Sir Orland Borgon. Shan Khul Master Veralar Tann, former champion of the Imperial Arena, once a dear friend to my parents and now a dear friend to me. My friend and advisor, Master Khanaarre of the Order of the Black Mask. Our valued friend and ally, the Great Wizard Derrek Rowan of the Obsidian Cabal. And our new friend, Shadow of the Flint Knife pack, who has guided us here.”
One by one, we came in toward the prince and the dragon as we were introduced – all save Shadow, who genuflected from the sandbar. Rennin and Orland came within arm’s reach of her, taking their customary positions at her left and right hand. Veralar hovered a little behind Rennin, gazing up at the dragon with open-mouthed wonder. Derrek and I took our own places at Orland’s right.
The dragon dipped her head slightly with each introduction. Her gaze drifted over each of us again, more piercing this time than the last.
“The last scion of the House Traianum,” said the dragon. “And one of the so-called Great Wizards. A Shan Khul Master. And an elf who reeks of blood wizardry.”
Though she spoke mortal language clearly, fluently, effortlessly, she had no lips with which to smile or frown, and the angle of her stiff, scaled brow was inscrutable. It was the problem of human ears, but a hundredfold worse. I could not begin to imagine what she was thinking or feeling.
“Yes, my lady,” Elana said, hesitant.
“Fascinating,” said the dragon. “I had hoped to see one of the Great Wizards, if you yet lived when my time as guardian had passed.”
“The honor is mine,” Derrek said, bowing deeply from the neck and the waist, almost as deeply as he had bowed before the Prophet of Enhyl.
The dragon nodded, then turned her attention back to Elana.
“Tell me, O Crown Prince Elana Traiana,” she said. “Why have you come to the gate of the Eastern Veil?”
Elana took another step forward, bowed to the dragon as Derrek had, then looked up to meet the creature’s golden-flecked crimson gaze.
“We come to cross into the Holy Lands,” she said. “We search for the Blade of Xadaer, which the oracles tell me is the only way to reclaim my throne from the wizard who murdered my father.”
The dragon looked down at us from her stone dais. Slowly, she lowered her head to look Elana in the eye, her nose close enough to Elana’s face that the prince’s hair stirred with the dragon’s breath. Then she swung her great head on that long neck to look at each of us in turn. She breathed deeply, scenting us through mouth and nostrils both, and her red-gold eyes fluttered closed. Her breath was both sulfurous and sweet, tinged with something alien and unknowable.
“No,” she said at last.
“My lady?” Elana’s voice quavered.
“No,” the dragon repeated herself. “I will not part the veil for you. Nor will I stand by to see if you can part it for yourselves.”
A subtle tremor shook Elana’s shoulders. The knights’ armor clinked as they shifted their weight.
“I don’t understand,” said Elana. “Have we offended you? Is there something that you require, some offering or courtesy that we lack?”
Lynqxaemass shook her head as she reared back on the dais, a sinuous motion that had nothing in common with a mortal head-shake, but seemed to convey the same meaning.
“No,” she said, again. I thought that her tone might be sad. Her head held high, her gaze encompassed us all at once.
“The stars tell me that the fate of the world hangs on the balance of my decision,” she said, gesturing upward with a wing. “You all stink of ambition. Half of you reek of lies. One of you is a traitor.”
“Please,” Elana said, taking another step toward the dragon – a motion that elicited a strangled cry from Rennin – with her hands held up as a suppliant. “I beg you!”
“Your holiness,” Derrek said, stepping forward, as well. “We can offer you secrets, treasure, power.”
Lynqxaemass shook her head again and raised the other wing. Her tail, a moment ago coiled softly around the cairn, now lashed behind her.
“The path you seek is closed to you,” she said, hissing her sibilants. “Turn back now, while you still have your lives.”
As one, we took two long steps back.
“Please!” Elana begged.
This time, the dragon only hissed in response.
“Derrek,” Elana cried, “Khanaarre, what do I do?”
The look that fell over Derrek Rowan’s face was hard as stone, cold as ice.
“Fight,” he said in a voice even colder than his eyes.
His right arm was already raised in a warding gesture. He drew his knife as the dragon inhaled. His blade flashed and his blood welled as fire erupted from the dragon’s mouth. He spoke the word of power and the dragon’s fire splashed harmlessly across the air in front of us.
I screamed. Elana screamed. Veralar let loose a ululating cry that might have been terror, horror, or elation. The dragon roared in fury. The knights cursed and drew their blades.
“Fighting dragons is always a bad idea,” shouted Rennin.
“You can fight this one,” Derrek shouted back, “or you can give up all hope of putting Elana on the Imperial throne.”
The dragon reared again and spoke a power-word of her own. The air rippled with force, but Derrek spoke a counter-word and whatever effect the dragon had intended was lost in a thunderous explosion.
The knights charged, swinging at the dragon’s foreclaws, forcing her to lunge back, flapping her wings for balance.
“Khanaarre,” Derrek shouted. “Keep her on the ground!”
Shit. I had frozen.
“Fuck you,” I yelled, panicked, and then drew my wizard’s claw across my palm and did as he said.
I spoke the words and a fiery explosion erupted above and behind Lynqxaemass, the largest I could conjure and still control. I did not know if it was true that dragons were immune to fire, but even if they were, I thought the down-draft of the fireball should keep her from taking flight. And it did: the dragon was thrown so off balance that she fell entirely to the ground, shrieking in pain and fury, almost landing on Orland, and coming within reach of Veralar’s giant’s blade, which bit deep into her left bicep.
Another shriek, this one accompanied by another gout of flame toward Elana and myself. Derrek deflected this flame, as well, before I could even think of a counterspell.
My heart ached. My stomach churned. This was not like the fight with the Usurper’s Iron Guard, or the fight with the Flint Knives, or any of the other handful of battles I had fought with the Prince’s Fighters. This was a sacred guardian who had deemed us unworthy, and we were proving her right, violently.
Veralar struck again, but this time Lynqxaemass was ready. She dodged with lighting speed and lashed out even faster with her tail, striking Veralar in the ribs and throwing her across the clearing to tumble into the stream.
Rennin and Orland lunged forward again, too, their mortal blades barely scratching the thick green and black scales of the dragon’s hide. Lynqxaemass ignored them, and spoke another word of power. This one, Derrek tried but failed to counter, and a wall of force blew him, Elana, and myself all off our feet.
This, ironically, my training had prepared me for. I fell with the grace of an elven hunter and threw up a shield like a wizard of the Black Mask. I had expected the shield to deflect a blast of fire – not that different from the fireball it was meant to counter – but it worked almost as well against the viper-like strike of the dragon’s jaws. The dazed look as Lynqxaemass reeled back from the impact against my wall of force would have been comical under other circumstances.
Rennin and Orland seized the moment to strike for the dragon’s neck. The blows did not wound her greatly, but they did appear to hurt. She lashed out at each of them with her claws, sending them rolling along the hard-packed ground with deep dents and scratches in their breastplates.
“Flee,” she shouted at us, enraged. “Flee, you fucking arrogant two-legged imbeciles!”
“We cannot,” Elana shouted back, desperate. She had drawn her blade at some point, but clearly understood that this was a battle better left to her Fighters. “Please, let us bargain with you!”
That was the point at which Veralar rejoined the fray, leaping across the field as though thrown by a trebuchet. She had thrown off her coat and abandoned her giant’s blade in favor of her Shan Khul katana, and as she fell toward the dragon from on high, both she and the blade glowed with a bright blue light. Lynqxaemass dodged, but only barely: Veralar left a long, shallow cut across her sinuous neck.
I saw my moment and flung a bolt of pure force that struck Lynqxaemass squarely between the eyes. The blow, barely controlled, would have crushed the ribs of a mortal. The dragon merely reeled and staggered backward, leaving herself open to take a strike to the shoulder from Veralar, and a strike to each of her flanks from the knights, who had regained their feet as well.
Lynqxaemass roared in fury. She spun, lashing out with her tail and wings, and managed to knock all of our swordfighters to the ground.
I conjured another bolt of pure force, this one at her hind legs, causing her to stumble. Another, even stronger, strike to the same spot made her fall. Falling did not prevent Lynqxaemass from bellowing another word of power at us, calling lightning from the sky. Derrek deflected this attack with a gesture and another power-word of his own.
A low hum filled the air, and the taste of ozone. I risked a glance in Derrek’s direction. The right sleeve of his shirt was gone, and his arm was marked by the bloodstains of spent spells. His eyes had begun to glow golden-white. So, too, had the pillars of the gate.
Our sword-fighters were once more on their feet.
Veralar took another running leap, soaring high into the air with her sword held high. This strike Lynqxaemass saw coming in time not just to dodge, but to counter. A viper-like strike of her head, but with the crown instead of open-mawed, hit Veralar full force and sent her soaring back into the trees with a crash and a curse, audible even from this distance.
Rennin and Orland slashed at Lynqxaemass’ flanks. Their individual blows were insignificant compared to the threats posed by Veralar, Derrek, and myself, but they appeared to be taking a cumulative toll. Lynqxaemass had to hold her wings up high, out of their reach. I could see the tips of them beginning to tremble, and her steps were beginning to slow.
I was coming to the limits of my strength. Still, I conjured four more bolts of force, less powerful but more precise, each one impacting a different rib. Derrek followed with a volley of his own, targeting her wounded arm. Lynqxaemass bellowed again, but there was a note of desperation in this cry.
She spun, as she had before. This time the knights were ready, leaping and rolling backward to avoid her flapping wings and lashing tail. It still cleared her the space that she needed to retreat, limping, to the limestone cairn.
Turning atop the cairn, Lynqxaemass let loose another torrent of fire. Derrek deflected this one as well. His eyes glowed more brightly, and the pillars of the gate began to sound like tuning forks.
Lynqxaemass raised her wings to fly. I grimaced and raised shaking hands to detonate another fireball above her.
“No,” said Derrek, his hands still held out in a defensive position. “Let her flee.”
Elana’s head whipped toward him, eyes wide, mouth agape. For a moment, I thought she would contradict him. But when she turned toward me, she was lowering her own sword, and nodded.
Lynqxaemass was already in the air, making a prodigious leap straight up before even the first flap of her wings. I lowered my hands slowly, watching her wounded grace with awe and regret. A second flap brought her even with the tree line. A third was true flight, taking her up and away from us before she turned east and north, bellowing in rage and pain.
“Tell me that you did not see that in your divinations,” Elana spat at Derrek.
“I did not,” he said, his voice thick with regret. “I saw that we would flatter the guardian, barter with them, and cross unaided but unhindered. I did not see this.”
He shook himself. His eyes still glowed. The corona that always surrounded him shone brighter than ever. The stone pillars glowed with the same white-gold hue and continued to hum. Could Elana see any of it?
“Something has changed,” he said. “Something, someone, has interfered since we spoke to the Prophet of Enhyl. I must do more divination before we cross, but first … first we must all rest.”
< Previous Chapter | Home | The World | Next Chapter >
Thank you so much for reading!
New chapters drop every Sunday morning barring unexpected circumstances. New maps and art drop when I finish them, any time except Sunday morning. For the inside scoop, other stories set in Dathl’lyr, access to new chapters six weeks before they go public, and/or a look into all the other things I do, please consider joining my Patreon campaign! Don’t like Patreon or just want to support my work? Drop a tip in my jar over at Ko-Fi!