As he watched and waited, the lean, graceful form of a gold dragon suddenly passed directly above him, hurtling down just above the treetops from the heights before rising and making a wide circle above the forest. Kharendaen was not hunting; she flew nearly every morning or evening for the joy of flight. Thelvyn was reminded of how they had flown together so many times in the past. Of course, on those flights, he had ridden in a saddle strapped to the base of her neck rather than actually flying with her. That had changed considerably in the
past few months.
Thelvyn stepped to the front of the large boulder and then leapt out into the morning sky, with only a brief glance at the steep, wooded slope that fell quickly away below him. Even ufter all this time, he could not leap out into the open air without a moment of apprehension. He felt his broad wings snapped out, and he tucked up his legs against his belly as he began to rise with long, powerful strokes of his wings, gathering speed slowly. Flying was hardly as effortless as it looked, but getting airborne was the most difficult part. Once he gained speed and caught the cold mountain winds beneath his wings, it became much easier.
Kharendaen began to circle back slowly to join him. He appreciated her beauty as a dragon would, seeing her as a creature of remarkable grace, even delicacy, with a narrow head and tapered muzzle, deep chest, and long, narrow waist, with powerful haunches and legs for leaping into the sky. As far as he was concerned, this was and always would be the true Kharendaen, although he had by now become used to having her about in her Eldar form as well. The Eldar were the ancestors of the elves, taller than men and powerfully built, copper-skinned, with black hair and large, black eyes, the same form that Thelvyn had been forced to assume by enchantment all his prior life. In the past, Kharendaen had also taken the form of the elf Sellianda, although the small, fragile elf maiden had always seemed like another person entirely to him.
The smaller female dragon came up slowly behind him, as if she intended to match his speed and remain close beside him. Instead, she rushed forward at the last moment with quick, powerful sweeps of her wings, darting past his nose so close that he was forced to draw back his head in alarm. The gesture was intended as a playful one, an invitation to match his skill in flight against hers, and she was no longer very forgiving of his inexperience. He turned and followed her as swiftly as he could, using his greater size and weight to overtake her while she remained in a shallow dive. She didn't allow him to draw too close, rising again to place him at a disadvantage, then making a tight turn that he was unable to duplicate.
Thelvyn had been frustrated with such games at first until
Marthaen, Kharendaen's older brother, had informed him privately that female dragons were almost always swifter than the males of the same breed, since they were leaner and lighter. And no dragon in the world was swifter in flight than a female gold. Thelvyn had to push himself to the limit just to hold his own, struggling not only with his inexperience but also with his large size. Still, he realized as he followed her twists and turns, maneuvers that had once taken a conscious effort were now beginning to feel natural.
He was beginning to feel comfortable using the small sails just behind and below his wings, attached to the base of his tail, to take all the effort of steering himself, folding and spreading the sails at need. Dropping his tail with the sails unfurled also helped to slow him quickly by cupping the wind. He was also beginning to acquire a feel for the air currents about him, knowing without deliberately searching where he would find rising or falling pockets of air, whether there was a strong wind or none at all. Learning to fly had been especially difficult for him, since he had to learn as a full-size adult, while most dragons learned to fly at a relatively young age. He still had dreams at night about falling.
Kharendaen suddenly broke off her playful antics and drifted on the morning breeze, as if she were listening to some distant voice. Thelvyn also spread his wings and glided, careful to keep his distance so he would not disturb her. After a moment she glanced over at him, then drifted as close as she dared to his side.
"I have been called," she said plainly. "The Great One wishes to give me new instructions."
"He wishes to speak with you?" Thelvyn asked, surprised. For whatever unknown reason, the Great One had had very little communication, even with his most trusted clerics, for the past twenty years.
"I half expected him to speak to me in a dream last night," she remarked. "But that is not important. We must return to Shadowmere at once."
She turned and headed northward, away from the mountains where they had been playing and out over the broad forests. Kharendaen set a brisk pace, although that was not a mutter of concern to Thelvyn. He might not be the most agile of dragons in the air, but he had grown swift and tireless in long, straight flights over open land. Shadowmere lay somewhere in the center of the great pocket of woods that lay encircled within the mountains of the great Wendarian Range. Known to both the dragons and to the elves of Wendar as the Foxwoods, this was an ancient, enchanted land blanketed in a deep, dark forest of the tallest trees in the entire world.
Shadowmere had at one time been the largest and most important sanctuary of the Great One. Thelvyn's own mother, Arbendael, had been the senior cleric and mistress of this place, before the attack of the rogue dragons had forced her to llee into the wild. Shadowmere had been abandoned since that time, until late the previous summer when the Great One had Kharendaen bring Thelvyn here so that the spell preventing him from becoming a dragon could be removed. They had remained here ever since, together with Sir George and nearly a score of dragon clerics who had come to serve them and restore the sanctuary to life. Elvish clerics later emerged from the forests of Wendar to join them; the half-wild northern elves looked to both Terra and the Great One as their protectors, and many had become clerics of the dragon Immortal. They had served at Shadowmere in the past, and they had been eager to return.
The sanctuary was difficult to locate from above, hidden as it was by the great trees of the Foxwoods. Fortunately, dragons were guided in flight by an unerring instinct for direction far more accurate than sight, a magical instinct that guided them even to places they knew only by description. Thelvyn's own sense of direction was still developing, so he depended upon Kharendaen to guide him. Soon she began to descend slowly in a wide circle above a deep well of darkness in the forest that was the small clearing in the center of the sanctuary.
Thelvyn followed her down with some misgivings. The steep, rapid descent into the clearing had always been tricky for him, and he had injured himself slightly on a couple of occasions. He preferred to go in first, so that he would not collide with Kharendaen if he lost control while landing.
He began his landing by dropping his tail and spreading his sails to slow himself until he felt he was just about to drop, cupping his vast wings to catch as much air as they could as he descended through the trees. The clearing still lay in morning shadow, so that even the night vision of a dragon could not show him the ground clearly until he was almost down. Only then was he able to select the exact place where he would land. He lowered himself with long, sharp thrusts of his wings until he struck the earth heavily on his braced legs. Kharendaen joined him a moment later, slowing herself and then landing lightly with long, graceful sweeps of her wings in the clearing several yards to his right.