The mariner closed the distance and slammed the creature hard in the back. The lizard man fell face forward, and Rig was on top of him in a heartbeat, rolling him over and straddling his chest. A blade flashed in the air.
“Alive!” Feril hollered.
“Then you’d better hurry with your questions!” Rig called back. “This thing might not be alive much longer.”
The mariner held the dagger at the lizard man’s throat, staring into its black eyes. “The lady wants some information,” he spat. “You’d better hope you speak her language.”
“I... understand your words... some.” The lizard man’s voice was raspy.
“What are you anyway?” Rig demanded while he waited for the Kagonesti.
The lizard creature’s scaly eye ridges furrowed in puzzlement.
“You’re not spawn. What are you?”
“Bakali,” it said after a moment.
“Never heard of ba-kah-lee,” Rig mumbled. “What’s a ba-kah-lee?”
“I bakali,” the creature returned.
“That’s not what I—”
“What was supposed to happen to these elves?” Feril interrupted.
The mariner pressed the blade harder against the bakali’s throat, creating a line of black blood under its edge. “Loose your forked tongue, ba-kah-lee,” Rig said, stumbling a bit over the unfamiliar word. “Answer her.”
“Spawn,” the creature returned. “Mistress Onysablet wants elves made spawn.”
“That only works on humans,” the mariner said. “We know. So come up with another answer.”
“Spawn,” the creature insisted. “Abominations. Humans make perfect spawn. Elves, ogres make spawn-abominations. Ugly. Corrupt.”
“The creatures by the pond,” Fiona breathed.
“Mistress Onysablet wants abominations. She likes things corrupt.”
“Are there more elves being held somewhere?” Feril edged closer. “Humans? Ogres?”
“Not know,” the creature answered. “Not care.”
“Then where do you take them?” Rig asked.
“Deep swamp. Mistress Onysablet find us there, take prisoners. We hunt more. Return deep swamp. Our lives a circle for the dragon.”
It was Jasper’s turn. “How deep into the swamp?”
The creature tried to shrug. “Don’t know. Until Mistress Onysablet comes.”
“Let’s get out of here,” the dwarf suggested. “If the dragon shows up...”
“Yeah,” Rig said. “If the dragon shows up, we’re dead.”
“Or abominations,” the emaciated elven woman added, nodding toward Feril and Groller.
With a single slash, Rig cut the creature’s throat. The mariner stood, glancing down at the black blood coating much of his clothes.
“You didn’t have to kill him,” Jasper whispered, as Feril gathered the elves and started ministering to them. “He cooperated.”
“If the dragon shows up, let her find only corpses. The dead don’t talk, my friend. Now see if you can help Feril, so we can get going.”
7
Lofty Plans
The dead lay all around them, butchered by sword, trampled by dragon claw, slain by strokes of Khellendros’s lightning breath. They were all unrecognizable: faceless husks among shattered pieces of armor.
Their deaths spoke volumes—of the bravery of the fallen. But to the great blue dragon the carnage was one more fine trophy. The acrid smell that rose from the bloodied ground was sweet.
The invasions of Tarsis, Kharolis, and the Plains of Ash to the south were grand. The conquests mounted, each more cherished than the one before. There were numerous victories in Hinterlund and Gaardlund, and Solamnia had been invaded. All for Kitiara, the human woman with a dragon’s heart.
As he lay on Malys’s plateau, The Storm Over Krynn could envision Kitiara plainly. The massive red overlord sat nearby, her eyes fixed on a volcano in front of her, as she repeated softly, “Dhamon, you must never drop the glaive.” Preoccupied with something, she had left Khellendros to his own thoughts.
Kitiara stood before Khellendros in his mind, wearing the blue armor that complemented his indigo scales. More dear than a daughter, he thought. More treasured. Soon she will be rescued and reborn. Soon they would be together, and there would be no more squandered time with Malystryx the Red.
Malys had adopted Khellendros as a companion of sorts, treating him not quite like a servant, as she had begun to treat the other overlords, and more like a lesser partner. But The Storm Over Krynn knew others occasionally shared Malystryx’s dark affections. He was certain the white, Gellidus, had played consort to her. But he kept silent on this matter and on many others, listening with mild curiosity as the Red directed a human pawn, Dhamon—he’d heard Gale mention that name—to follow the orders of someone named Commander Jalan and not to discard a glaive.
The blue overlord had given little thought to Malys’s schemes, or to her relationship to the other overlords and the Knights of Takhisis. His own alliance with the Red was one of convenience to keep himself above her suspicions. It was not against dragon nature to feign cooperation as he was doing.
However, in ages past Khellendros had defied dragon nature. He had been true to only one other dragon, a calculating blue named Nadir.
Nadir died during the Third Dragon War, but not before she had laid a clutch of eggs. Several of the eggs survived the Cataclysm, growing into Khellendros’s proud brood in the wastes of western Khur. Malystryx’s plateau was in Goodlund, and he was not so terribly far from Khur now.
One daughter distinguished herself in her zest for battle, joined Khellendros in service to the Dark Queen. Khellendros’s daughter, called Zephyr by men, was ambitious, but her father thought she lacked the military mindset needed to survive. So The Storm manipulated the pairing of partners in the Blue Dragonarmy and caused his daughter to be partnered with a young human woman rising in the ranks. Kitiara uth Matar. It went against custom, as dragons were usually paired with humans of the opposite gender, but then Khellendros had been reputed to go against tradition.
Khellendros’s choice of Kitiara was wise. Zephyr learned much from the human. She ascended to become first lieutenant to Skie and his partner, who was a cunning she-warrior named Kartilann of Khur. Together, the foursome could not be bested, leading strike after victorious strike above the battlefields.
Until a long time ago, during the battle on Schallsea.
Schallsea Island, Khellendros mused, was the place of ultimate sadness and destined revenge, where he had recently bested Palin Majere and stolen the precious artifacts. Where dreams died and dreams began.
“Do not discard the glaive,” The Storm Over Krynn heard Malys repeat. He ignored her presence; her words were not meant for him anyway. Instead he focused on his memories of the island.
It was decades past. Khellendros and Kartilann led a sweep of the island. There was no reason to fear the inferior enemy, no reason to suspect disaster. But a sniper’s arrow slew Kartilann, and shortly thereafter Zephyr, too, was killed. In the midst of Khellendros’s sadness, another breach of tradition occurred. In the Dark Queen’s Dragonarmies whenever a partner was killed, dragon or human, the surviving partner was ordinarily dishonored. And to be dishonored in the eyes of Takhisis was something Khellendros could not, would not, abide. He shrewdly made a pact with Kitiara, quickly re-teaming with her—in part to honor Zephyr, in part to save face before the Dark Queen.
Their partnership, born from dragon and human death, from two dissolutions, was a stroke of creative genius. So perfectly suited to each other were Khellendros and Kitiara that at first they appeared omnipotent. Together they carried the Blue Dragonarmy to one conquest after another—Tarsis, Kharolis, the Plains of Ash, and more.
Blue Lady, Kitiara was called. Highlord.
The humans called Khellendros Skie. An inadequate name, one lacking any hint of power, and one he had grown to despise—except when it rolled off Kitiara’s tongue.