Beyond the Moons (2 page)

The pair were standing in the middle of the melon field, which filled one small corner of Teldin’s land. The farmer’s property extended from his cabin to a wooded ridge an acre away, beyond which lay Liam’s farm. Teldin scanned the horizon as he tried to guess just what had gotten his neighbor so excited. To the west, the yellow-red glare of the setting sun burned through the thin clouds to dazzle his eyes. Blinking, Teldin let his gaze follow the cottonwoods that ran past the edge of the field. There was no sign of a dragon above the stream where the cottonwoods grew. Teldin turned almost completely about and faced northeast, where his simple cabin stood. The wavering branches of an apple orchard behind the house rose above the roofline, but even there Teldin saw no sign of anything that looked like a dragon. Neither did the chickens in the yard show any sign of alarm. Instead they lazily scratched the ground outside their coop. The young farmer threw one last glance around the small dale that enclosed his land. “Where?” Teldin skeptically demanded.

Liam Shal, with his worn, ill-fitting clothes flapping like a scarecrow’s, bobbed nervously and excused himself with a grimace of embarrassment. The scrawny old farmer practically hopped from foot to foot, one hand jabbing at the sky, the other balancing against his own hoe, firmly set in the broken dirt. The scrawny melon plants’ yellowing leaves scratched at Liam’s bare legs. “Teldin, look up in the sky! It must a be dragon, right? You saw them in the wars right? That’s a dragon, isn’t it?”

Teldin leaned against his hoe, dubiously scanning the horizon where Liam pointed. The older man was a good farmer, but Teldin knew his neighbor had never seen much of the real world. Even at dusk, weeding out the melon field was hot work, and the farmer wondered if his neighbor had conjured up an imaginary dragon as an excuse for a break. Not that he really cared, for his own taut muscles suddenly motionless after a day’s worth of hoeing, ached agonizingly. Stiffly flexing his shoulders, Teldin brushed back trickles of sweat into his stubby, light brown hair, and, shading his eyes, peered into the reddish western sky. This time he took care not to gaze into the setting sun, but looked more toward the faint image of Solinari, the Moon of Silver, as it hid behind wispy clouds.

At first there was nothing to see. Teldin looked toward his neighbor. “Liam, you’ve been in the sun too long,” he declared with a snort.

“No, look over the big oak on the ridge, just below the clouds!” Liam thrust his arm under Teldin’s nose, his finger pointing toward a distant spot in the sky.

Teldin barely noticed the rich, salty tang of sweat and dirt emanating from Liam’s grimy skin. Instead he squinted and tried to sight on Liam’s outstretched fingertip without luck. Then a sparkle, hanging over the top of the big oak that Liam had named, caught his eye. A familiar childhood landmark at the end of the field, the tree stood above most of the others. Teldin squeezed his eyes down to wrinkled slits against the glare, then saw a series of brilliant, red-gold flashes that seemed to shoot from the oak’s topmost branches. Before the two farmers could say another word, though, it was gone into the wispy tails of a glowing cloud bank.

“Dragon fire, I bet, just like you saw in the war,” Liam blurted, obviously confident in his identification. The older man nevertheless looked eagerly to Teldin for evidence that he had guessed right. Although half again Teldin’s age, Liam had the bubbling enthusiasm of a child.

“Could be,” Teldin cautiously allowed, not letting the old man influence him. With such scant evidence, Teldin reserved his judgment, pointedly avoiding the faults of his late father. Amdar’s fierce opinions had been one of the reasons Teldin had run away to become a soldier in the first place.

The few dragons Teldin had seen as a youth during the War of the Lance were always at rest and never fighting. The truth, which Teldin had never broached with Liam, was that in his years as a soldier, the young farmer had been little more than a mule skinner. The older farmer was pleased to know a “war hero” and Teldin just could not disillusion him.

The fact was that he had never been in anything but a few minor skirmishes, let alone seen a dragon fight in earnest, using its fearsome breath to scorch men to cinders. Coming after the warriors, though, he’d seen the results. At the Battle of the High Clerist ‘s Tower, Teldin had buried men – and things that weren’t men – all roasted by dragon fire, blasted by lightning, or eaten away by corrosive spittle. It was an awful memory that filled him with horror, and he quickly shut it out of his mind, but not before his neck instinctively tensed and strained already stiff muscles even more.

Liam, still prancing about from foot to foot, thought of dragons only as exciting. The grizzled neighbor finally despaired that the thing he had seen would return. The lustrous evening sky was already darkening. Both Solinari, with its smooth, silver disk, and Lunitari, Krynn’s other, blood-red, moon, were well up into the heavens. Stars were faintly visible in the east, opposite the setting sun.

“Well, it’s gone,” Liam said dejectedly, after spitting at a gob of dirt between the melon vines. Teldin blinked, trying to get the sun’s dazzle and sweat out of his eyes.

Teldin walked over beside his neighbor. “All for the best, Liam,” he consoled. “Dragons are bad business.” Taking up the hoe, the young farmer hefted it for another try at the weeds that lay thick among the melon hills at his feet. His shoulders, barely rested, ached so that Teldin let out a surprised grunt, and he let the hoe fall. “Oh, gods, that’s enough for today.”

Teldin stiffly clapped his friend on the shoulder. “No more today, Liam. You should be getting home. I can finish the field tomorrow.” The pair had worked all day and even if they were not done, Teldin was content with their progress.

Liam stood firm. “Teldin, these melons have got to get weeded, and you’ve been letting it slip for a week now. Those weeds are going to choke off your vines real soon. If this were my field, I’d be out here hoeing by torchlight.”

Teldin shrugged somewhat painfully, ignored the older man, and began to march off toward his cabin. “It’s not your field,” he called back upon reaching the porch. “There are more than enough melons hoed for me. Who else is going to eat them?” Teldin set the hoe against the cabin’s log wall and disappeared inside. The cabin was old and small but well cared for. Teldin’s grandfather had cut the timber back when he first had claimed the land. He had dressed out the logs and cut the joints to fit them together. Teldin’s father had replaced the thatch roof with hand-split shingles and built the stone chimney that thrust up through the center of the roof, replacing his father’s original smokehole. After returning from the war, Teldin, grateful to be home, added the porch that wrapped around the front, and whitewashed the logs until the place looked like the village houses found in other parts of Estwilde. The whitewash gave the cabin a cozy, speckled gray look that Teldin liked. The house seemed to blend in with the trunks of the few trees around it. Although he had lived alone ever since his father had died, Teldin kept the house neat and in good condition. It was home, and now he was proud of it. He had run away once, but now he was staying.

When Liam didn’t come out of the field, where he still stubbornly swung his hoe, Teldin stepped back onto the porch and held up a pair of wooden cups. “You can stay and hoe if you want, but I’ve got a fine cheese and a fat skin of wine cooling in the stream. Join me for a swim and a drink!” he yelled. “Or are you too old to remember how to do that?” Teldin grinned at his neighbor’s determination, trying to get in a few more moments of work by the last rays of the setting sun. Old Liam lived for nothing but farming, but Teldin preferred a balance of work and relaxation.

Still, the offer was enough for the old farmer. With a higgledy step, scrawny Liam picked his way through the melon hills to the house. He followed Teldin across the yard, all the while chiding in mock irritation, to where the stream ran close by the house. The pair sat on a rock and let their feet soak in the cool water. Not bothering to pull off his shirt, Teldin slid down into the stream and let the water play over his tortured shoulders. Liam stayed on the rock and dabbled in the water with his feet.

“Liam, thanks for helping with the melons. I know you’re busy with your own place and everything,” Teldin said sitting up, “but I’m grateful for the help.”

The older man kicked up some water in mock disgust. “Your father and I helped each other for years while you were soldiering. Just because he’s passed on doesn’t mean I’m going to stop.

Amdar was a painful subject, one that Teldin just as soon hoped didn’t come up. Memories of his stern father churned upward from the pits of Teldin’s past – the painful years of fights and criticism that finally drove a young farm boy to run away to the war. There were other memories, those of the strange silence between them when Teldin finally had come home. Neither man had spoken much of their years apart, leaving each to his peace. Even now a Teldin wanted to respect that silence.

Climbing out of the stream, Teldin clacked the wooden cups together. “Let’s have a drink.” Water dripped from the goatskin bag as he fished it from the stream. Strong, homemade purple wine sloshed into the wooden cups.

The two men sat in silence, enjoying their drinks until the sun was completely set, leaving only a faint glow on the horizon. This was complemented by the light from the twin moons, causing the trees, crops, cabin – everything – to leave twin shadows tinged in red and silver. Teldin was content, even a little bored.

Finally Liam set his cup down, “Time I headed home, Teldin. My old eyes are too weak to see that path in the dark.” Liam grinned a crooked-toothed smile. Teldin snorted at the joke, knowing perfectly well that Liam’s eyes were not nearly that bad or that old.

Standing, Liam wobbled a little, the wine apparently taking its toll. Teldin corked the wineskin and stood to see his friend off. “Now, you sure you can handle that melon field?” Liam pressed as he held out his hand.

Teldin took the smaller man’s hand and clasped it firmly. “It’ll be fine, Liam, just fine. Go home now, before Eloise starts worrying. You be sure to fetch me when it’s time to do your haying.”

“I’ll do that, I will,” promised Liam. With one last “swipe at the sweat on his brow, the smaller man turned and headed across the fields toward his own farm. It would be a long walk back. Teldin’s homestead was cut off from the other farms in the area by the wooded ridge to the west. Most of the other farmers lived clustered in small villages along the road from Kalaman, which ran through the main valley about two leagues away. Only a few smaller homesteads, like Teldin’s, were situated in the side valleys. Teldin’s father had liked it that way, and it suited Teldin just fine, too. Teldin, like all the Moores, had never been a particularly sociable man. The isolation did not bother him, because he never thought about it. When Teldin felt the urge for company, he visited Liam or some of the other farmers in Dargaard Valley, particularly those with pretty, young daughters.

As Liam disappeared into the woods, Teldin sighed, finally ready to give up. He was getting a crick in his neck. There were still chores to do, and milking the goat was first. Slow and stiff, he went back into the house for a bucket.

As Teldin came out the door, a small spark of light caught his eye. It left a fiery streak like a shooting star, though the fact that it flashed through the sky beneath the clouds went unnoticed by Teldin. Then the spark turned, suddenly shifting more in his direction.

Stars don’t dart about, Teldin realized, his curiosity suddenly piqued. The spark kept moving, jigging slightly this way, then that, like a tadpole in a stream, while all the time holding to an almost straight line toward Teldin. The more he watched, the larger and faster the light grew. Teldin thought he could almost hear a hissing noise, like a drop of water skittering in a hot skillet.

The imaginary sound grew louder, now more like a redhot stone cast in a pot, then changing again as deeper rumbles sounded beneath the popping hiss. Weak echoes came back to Teldin from the hills of his small valley. The spark had become a glowing coal surrounded by a fiery nimbus, almost the size of brilliant Solinari at full.

Teldin stood watching, waiting for the thing to change course again. It did not heed his wishes and instead bore downward, resolving into a great, dark shape, like a tapered oval, silhouetted by sparkling points and tongues of flame

Teldin abruptly realized that it was plunging straight toward where he stood dumbfounded, bucket in hand. The yeoman squinted at the thing that charged out of the sky, bright enough now to hurt his eyes. A great jutting beak and bulging, glowing eyes clearly marked it as some kind of maleficent beast. Gigantic wings, billowing with fire, flared out from the sides and trailed showers of fiery sparks. A roaring filled the air over the silent farm, like the teeth-grating scream of an enraged fiend.

“Paladine’s blood!” swore Teldin as his amazement wore off and he saw doom descending. Instinctively he threw up one arm to shield himself. The bucket dropped, and with his other hand he groped about for the hoe, a poor weapon at best. The flaming beast still bore down from the sky, relentless in its approach.

Self-preservation finally overcame inertia, and Teldin flung himself to the side, springing and stumbling to evade the creature’s charge. Leaping from the porch, his hoe in hand, Teldin hit the ground, tripped over a root, pitched forward, and rolled across the dirt yard. The goat, waiting to be milked, ran with terrified bleats as Teldin, dirt-smeared and panting, scrambled to his feet. The farmer twisted around to see if the fiery beast still pursued him.

All thoughts were shattered by a crackling screech as the monstrous, dark underbelly scraped across the field. The beast smashed into the ground, not slowing in the least for its landing. The great bulk plowed through the melons, throwing up dirt like a plow cutting a furrow. Vines and fruit were gouged away. Under its driving landing, the earth shuddered, as if the soil were struck by Reorx’s hammer itself.