Then had come the great storm. Above the fearsome winds, blasting lightning, and booming thunder, these dragons had heard a voice telling them to prepare, to make ready, to come when summoned.
Tired of living in fear, longing for revenge for the deaths of their mates, their children, their comrades, they answered the call, and now they flew to Silvanesti, their many-colored scales forming a terrible rainbow over the ancient homeland of the elves.
The dragons’ scales glittered in the sunshine so that each might have been encrusted with a wealth of jewels. The shadows of their passing rippled along the ground beneath them, flowing over hillock and farmhouse, lake and forest.
The swift-flying blues took the lead, wing tip to wing tip, keeping time with matching strokes, taking pride in their precision. The ponderous reds brought up the rear, their enormous wings moving a single sweeping flap to every four of the faster blues. Blacks and greens were scattered throughout.
The elves felt the terror of their coming. Many collapsed, senseless, and others fled in the madness of their fear. Dogah sent his men after them, bidding them to make certain no elf escaped into the wilderness. Mina’s men ran to collect their gear and any supplies that could be carried on dragonback. They brought Mina’s maps to her, she said she needed nothing else. They were ready and waiting to mount by the time the first of the dragons began to circle down and land upon the battlefield. Galdar mounted a gigantic red. Captain Samuval chose a blue. Mina rode the strange dragon, the dragon she termed the “death dragon.”
“We travel by darkness,” said Mina. “The light of neither moon nor star will shine this night so our journey may remain secret.”
“What is our destination?” Galdar asked.
“A place where the dead gather,” she said. “A place called Nightlund.”
Her dragon spread its ghastly wings and soared into the air effortlessly, as if it weighed no more than the ashes that drifted up from the pyre, where they were burning Targonne’s body. The other dragons, bearing the soldiers of Mina’s army upon their backs, took to the skies. Clouds foamed up from the west, blotting out the sun, gathering thick around the multitude of dragons.
Dogah returned to the command tent. He had work to do: comandeering storehouses to hold the loot, establishing slave-labor camps, interrogation centers and prisons, brothels to keep the men entertained. He had noted, when in Silvanost, a temple dedicated to an old god, Mishakal. He would establish the worship of the One God there, he decided. An appropriate place.
As he made his plans, he could hear the screams of elves who were probably, even now, being dispatched into the One God’s service. Out on the battlefield, Silvanoshei remained where Mina had left him. He had been unable to take his eyes from her. In despair, he had watched her depart, clinging to the rag of hope she had left him as a child clings to the tattered blanket he clutches to keep away the terrors of the night. He did not hear the cries of his people. He heard only Mina’s voice. The One God. Embrace the One God, and we will be together again.
14
The Chosen of the One God
Ten members of the kirath and ten elves of Alhana’s army were hiding in the forests outside Silvanost to watch the I funeral. They were hiding there when the dragons came. Wearing the magical cloaks of the kirath that made them invisible to any who might be watching for them, the elves were able to creep within close proximity of the funeral pyre. They saw everything that happened but were helpless to intervene. They could do nothing to save their people. Their numbers were too small. Help would come later. These elves were here with one mission, one purpose, and that was to rescue their young king.
The elves heard death all around them. The stumps of dying trees cried out in agony. The ghost of Cyan Bloodbane hissed and howled in the wind. These elves had fought the dream with courage. They had fought ogres without blanching. Forced to listen to the song of death, they felt their palms sweat and their stomachs clench.
The elves hiding in the forest were reminded of the dream, yet this was worse, for the dream had been a dream of death, and this was real. They watched their brethren mourn the death of the strange human girl child, Mina. As the Knights cast their torches onto the pyre, the elves did not cheer, even in their hearts. They watched in wary silence.
Crouched among the boughs severed from a living aspen that had been left to wither and die, Alhana Starbreeze saw flames crackle on the pyre and smoke begin to rise to the heavens. She kept her gaze on her son, Silvanoshei, who had been dragged in chains and now appeared on the verge of collapse. Beside her, Samar muttered something. He had not wanted her to come, he had argued against it, but this time she insisted on having her way.
“What did you say, Commander?” Kiryn whispered.
“Nothing,” Samar returned, with a glance at Alhana.
He would not speak ill of Alhana’s son to anyone but himself, especially not to Kiryn, who never ceased to defend Silvanoshei, to maintain that the king was in the grip of some strange power. Samar liked Kiryn. He admired the young man for having had the wit, resourcefulness, and foresight to escape the calamitous banquet, to seek out the kirath, and alert them to what had happened. But Kiryn was a Silvanesti, and although he claimed he had remained loyal all these years to Alhana, Samar did not trust him.
A hand touched his arm, and in spite of himself, Samar started, unable to repress a shudder. He looked around, half-angry, though if he had heard the sounds of the elven scout approaching, he would have severely reprimanded such carelessness.
“Well,” he growled, “what did you find out?”
“It is true, what we heard,” the woman said, her voice softer than the ghostly whispers. “Silvanoshei was responsible for the human girl’s death. He gave her a ring, a ring he told people came from his mother. The ring was poisoned. The human died almost instantly.”
“I sent no such ring!” Alhana said, seeing the cold stares of the kirath. For years, they had been told Alhana Starbreeze was a dark elf. Perhaps some had even believed it. “I fight my enemies face to face. I do not poison them, especially when I know that it is my people who will suffer the consequences!”
“This smacks of treachery,” Samar said. “Human treachery. This Lord Targonne is known to have made his way to the top by climbing a ladder of the corpses of his enemies. This girl was just one more rung—”
“Commander! Look!” The scout pointed.
The elves hiding amid the shadows of the death-singing forest watched in amazement to see the human girl rise whole and alive from the blazing pyre. The humans were proclaiming it a miracle. The elves were skeptical.
“Ah, I thought there would be some trick in this,” Samar said. Then came the strange death dragon, and the elves turned dark and shadowed eyes to each other.
“What is this?” Alhana wondered aloud. “What does it portend?”
Samar had no answer. In his hundreds of years, he had roamed almost every portion of Ansalon and had encountered nothing like this horrible creature.
The elves heard the girl accuse Targonne, and although many could not understand her language, they were able to guess the import of her words by the expression on the doomed human’s face. They watched his headless corpse topple to the ground without comment or surprise. Such barbarous behavior was only to be expected of humans.
As the flight of many colored dragons formed a hideous rainbow in the skies above Silvanesti, the song of death rose to a shrieking paean. The elves shrank among the shadows and shivered as the dragonfear swept over them. They flattened themselves among the dead trees. They were able to do nothing but think of death, to see nothing but the image of their own dying.