"Are you beginning to learn what it means to be a dragon?" the Overlord asked as the faces began to draw back into the enclosing mists. "Perhaps you did not know that even you possessed the tremendous pride of a dragon until your pride was turned to bitterness. What would the dragons think of their king if they knew you had always believed you did not share the faults of their draconic nature, their pride, their temper, their greed, their capacity for cruelty, because you were not born a dragon? You thought you were better than they because you were the chosen of the Immortals."
Thelvyn closed his eyes so that he didn't have to see those faces fading away into the mists, but he couldn't stop himself from hearing those terrible words. He could only weep quiedy for all the pain he was being made to endure.
"You thought that you were a king. Now you are nothing more than a slave, a weak and crippled thing. Contemplate that well until I return, and then we will have another lesson in humility prepared for you. I will visit you each day until your dragon's pride wills you to die rather than face me once again."
The voice was gone, but the pain did not begin to release him for a long time. He had been a fool, indeed a far bigger fool than he would have ever thought. Above all, he had been a fool for continuing this quest when he had known he should turn back. He had not yet discovered just how powerful his true enemy was, and yet he had been aware that he was overmatched. He had told himself he needed to know more before he could face the Overlord in battle, and all he had learned was that this was an enemy he could never hope to match. And he was twice a fool for bringing Kharendaen here.
He had no idea how long he lay lost in his torment. Clearly the Overlord and the Masters had long since left him, satisfied in knowing there was no peace or rest for him, even alone with his thoughts. The intolerable pain in his back began to ease slightly after a time, so that he no longer had to pant with the mere effort to draw a breath. He knew he had been badly hurt in the collision with the wall. His terrible injuries would seem to limit the time that he would be tortured and allowed to live. The Overlord had other, greater conquests at hand.
The irony was that he had come to learn the secrets of an enemy he had hardly known, yet the Overlord had known secrets of his own that he had never guessed he kept hidden. Secrets, it seemed, that he would have been better off if he had never known, but which he could not deny. He had thought the fact that he hadn't grown up as a dragon had isolated him from their common faults. And he had always assumed that the fact that he was the chosen of the Immortals, indeed the son of an Immortal, implied that he must somehow be perfectly suited for the task that had been assigned to him. He had assumed a great many things that had seemed simple and obvious and really not all that important, which he now recognized as an expression of his draconic pride.
The Overlord was very right about one other thing. In nothing else had Thelvyn so proven that he was a dragon at heart than in his dragon's pride. He was surprised that he didn't find it quite the insult it had been intended to be.
When he opened his eyes, he saw that he and Kharendaen were no longer in the pit in the immense, mist-filled chamber but had somehow been moved to a smaller chamber or cell of some type, still more than large enough for the two dragons. There was no sign of any window or even a door. He saw Kharendaen sitting back on her haunches with her tail curled around her legs, looking down at him.
"How do you feel?" she asked when she saw him open his eyes.
He started to lift his head, but it hurt too much. "How. . how long does it take a dragon to die?"
She looked startled and concerned. "A dragon can take a very long time to die, depending upon the nature of his injuries."
"I think my back is broken," he told her plainly. "I cannot move."
"Then do not try to move," she told him firmly. "You might also be surprised by what a dragon can survive, and how quickly you recover."
"I doubt that I will be allowed the time," Thelvyn complained, then lifted his head slightly to look around in spite of the pain. "When did they move us here?"
"We have not been moved anywhere," Kharendaen explained to Thelvyn's surprise. "After you lost consciousness, ihe darkness closed in all around us, and then these walls formed at what had been the edge of the pit. The Overlord has come to look at us from time to time, somehow removing the walls and then restoring them when he left."
"How long was I unconscious?" Thelvyn asked.
"You have slept these last two days, at least insofar as I can judge time," she told him. "I began to wonder if you would ever be coming back to me."
Thelvyn laid his head down on the cold stone floor and closed his eyes for a long moment. He had been hurt worse than he had thought; he had thought that only a few long minutes of pain had passed, and that he had not slept at all. He wondered what was happening in his own world. Were his allies beginning to think he would not be returning to defend them? He also wondered if there was some way that he could get Kharendaen out of this place, and he wondered what would become of her when he was gone. He had made a hopeless mess of everything. Bitterly he thought the Immortals had been foolish to insist upon sending him to this place.
"Perhaps there was never any hope," Kharendaen said softly, guessing his thoughts. "Perhaps the risk of this journey was simply too great. We took the chance, the only chance we had. You have done the best you can, and you must not blame yourself. You were given the responsibility to try your best, and you have done that."
"There was never any room for failure, not in this matter," 'Thelvyn said bitterly. "The price of my failure will be our world. I have lost everything."
"You have not lost me."
Thelvyn turned his head away. "You could not leave if you wanted to."
Kharendaen laid back her ears, perplexed. Then she rose and moved slowly around to sit down again direcdy in front of him, where he could not so easily ignore her. "You have been stung by words that were meant to deceive you. I would not leave you now even if I could. Why do you suddenly seem to think I want to shun your company?"
"I haven't exactly made a good showing as Dragonking, have I?" he asked, then closed his eyes. "I've been playing the part of the hero who boldly saves the world. What a disappointment I've been."
"Do you think that I am disappointed in you?" Kharendaen lifted her head in astonishment, suddenly realizing what was bothering him. She laid back her ears, looking very sad. "What a life you have been asked to lead. Never allowed to know who or what you are, never allowed to know your own place in the world or find your own sense of worth. Having been raised among the Flaem, always having to prove yourself to them, you might come to think that the only measure of worth in the world is by what you have done or what you should be able to do. All that you have ever known is what was expected of you."
"So?" he looked up at her, confused and annoyed. "What else is there?"
"Our deeds and abilities count for a great deal, but they are by no means the only measure of a person's value. I know you do not judge others by such shallow standards, so why do you expect yourself to be judged in that way? Did you think you must earn my companionship by the honor that I received from the dragons from being your mate?"
"No," Thelvyn muttered, not quite certain what he wanted to say. "But I feel that I've let you down."
"There are some things that dragons are. . especially poor at saying," Kharendaen explained haltingly, rising and walking in a tight circle before she returned to sit beside him. "We always leave certain things left unsaid, tilings that should have been said, so perhaps I can't blame you for coming to your own conclusions. You've always been able to make it clear to me how much I mean to you. I've taken it for granted that you understood how much you mean to me as well."