DW01 Dragonspawn

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Prologue

THE ANCIENT ONE
could retreat no farther. She had neither the strength nor the will. She lay along a snow- and ice-covered ledge near the summit of her secret place, a great mountain in the northeast of the world. Her battered scales no longer glowed their ruddy hue; already the transformations of death were overcoming her. The pale sun was a ball of haze in the gray, frozen sky; it offered her no warmth. The mountain face that rose behind her was a final barrier both to her passage—for her wings hung in useless shreds at her side—and to her foe’s. Above her giant head a shelf of ice extended almost to the end of the ledge.

The Ancient One stared with her one remaining eye at the hated elf who had vanquished her. Arrogant hatchling, she thought. He couldn’t be more than seven hundred years old, yet he had defeated an entire race of creatures who had terrorized the world from time immemorial.

Steam rising from her pooling blood clouded the Ancient One’s vision. But she could still see him, his feet spread wide and planted firmly on the granite beneath the snow and ice that crowned the mountain. He stood not ten feet in front of her, the sheer precipice to the abyss below at his back. His armor—there was a filthy elven trick! His reddish black armor, covered with great gouts of her blood, had been fashioned from the very scales of her own offspring. Time and again it had protected him from the fiery blasts of her breath, and it also insulated him from the numbing cold of the icy wind that howled around her final, secret aerie. How many centuries had it taken, she wondered, for elven hands to fashion that armor, gathering the scales one by one, shaping them, stitching them to a soft leather backing, forming them into this impenetrable suit and great helm that now confronted her? Even the boots were covered with dragon scales; only the eyes of her foe could be seen.

A bolt of pain shot through the Ancient One’s body from the great gash in her belly. She moaned involuntarily, a great, near-final death moan that began as a rumbling bass sound and soared upward in pitch and volume like the death shriek of a mighty race. The wail caused the very rock of the mountain beneath her to vibrate in response. Snow and ice loosened their grip on the craggy granite face behind her and tumbled down on her back and legs. But the elf neither flinched nor trembled. His black eyes remained locked on her eye, unblinking, unforgiving, unyielding.

The mother of dragonkind refused to die in front of this enemy. She closed her eye, the better to focus her mind. Wounded, aching muscles contracted. Claws stronger than steel bit into the icy surface beneath her sinuous, prone body. With tremendous effort, she pushed back with her powerful hind legs. Her bulk began to rise.

The elf watched carefully as his lungs gulped down the freezing air in huge gasps. He saw the dragon slowly rise once again. Incredible, he thought, that any creature, even one as powerful as this, could still be alive. He had chased her across a hundred leagues or more, pummeling her with half the spells known to elvenkind. He had pursued her for two days up the sides of this mountain in a land known to the elves only in legends and songs. Then, on the sides of this mountain, clad in armor made from the scales of her own race, he had attacked, wielding an enchanted blade proof against the fire of dragon breath. Again and again he had hacked away at the sides and belly of the great beast, darting in, striking, darting out—all the while dodging the blows of her lethal claws. One hit would have stunned him, perhaps ripped him in half. The next instant he would have died between her powerful jaws—jaws that reputedly had once snapped around the sacred oak of the Homeland Wood, destroying the Birth Tree with one bite. He had plunged his enchanted blade into the left eye of the beast and with a flick ripped it from its socket. The dragon had fought on as though it hardly noticed the loss. But at last his moment of opportunity had come when the great beast reared on her back legs. The elf had lunged, stabbing deep, then yanked his great sword upward, ripping open the old dragon’s tawny belly. Her roar had nearly deafened him, and he had feared it would bring down an avalanche upon him. The old worm had spilled blood and innards in great gouts then, but still had the strength to retreat higher up the mountain to this ledge. The elf had followed carefully, for he knew that though victory was near, so was the end of his own strength.

Now she was rising again. The elf began to doubt that she would ever die. Perhaps, despite his years of preparation for this moment, it would be he that met death on the dragon’s mountain. But it would never do to show fear. He kept his eyes locked on her and watched, watched for the sign that another potentially fatal blow was about to be launched by this tireless creature that had lived longer than the elves could tell even in legend.

First, the dragon’s hind legs tensed. Then slowly the body rose, the great crippled wings hanging like dead skin from the arched, scaly back. Then the horrid neck began to tremble. He could see the muscles straining, almost beyond their ability, beneath the covering of nearly impregnable armored scales. Finally, the head lifted from the bloodied snow, lolling to one side. The horrid mouth opened. The elf braced himself, raising his shield, expecting once more the fiery breath that had slain so many of his ancestors. But no fire came forth from the dragon’s mouth. Instead, the narrow, slimy tongue flicked against the huge teeth, forming the sounds of elven speech!

The Ancient One hated the sounds the elves made. They were like the sounds of icicles clattering against rocks when they melted and fell in the spring or like the sounds of singing finches in the forest trees at night. They were not the wholesome, gravelly, guttural tones of honest dragon speech, but rather a rippling, flowing, rising and falling series of tinkling notes, repulsive to her ear. Nonetheless, duty to her race, to the world, to the future, demanded that she now use the hated tongue. She must have some tribute before dying.

“Stay your deathblow, elf, long enough to tell me the name of the one who slays me.”

The elf staggered backward in surprise. He had heard dragons speak before—he had even heard them casting spells. But never had he heard a dragon speak the elven tongue. And this dragon spoke it perfectly. Quickly he steeled himself again—this could be a trick.

“You are dead, Ancient One. Ask no questions,” he replied. “It is best you submit quietly. I will make the deathblow swift. You will not suffer more.”

“You do not know what suffering is, elf,” the old mother of her race replied. “To see your entire race die, that is suffering. To see all the children of your nest destroyed by lesser things that mutilate even the words of magic, that is suffering. Be just. My death is certain. Tell me your name.”

The dragon’s head rolled up and back as another wave of pain coursed through the length of her body. Her tail thrashed from side to side, pounding the snow. The sound of the blows echoed from the nearby peaks while the elf pondered her words.

To tell her his name would be dangerous, he reasoned. This dragon knew magic—almost as much magic as the elves. To give any mage one’s true name was to risk destruction—for a great part of magic consisted in knowing the true names of things, their names in the language of magic. On the other hand, elven custom demanded that when one elf slew another, the killer reveal his own true name. The giving of the name was a kind of equivalent to the giving of one’s own life—a life for a life. The dragon, the elf reasoned, was wise to base her demand on a custom he would normally respect.

“I see you know our elven ways,” he retorted. “Then know this: you are not an elf or a creature that elves must respect. You are a beast to be destroyed. I am under no obligation to you.”

Rage shot through the dragon, rage even greater than all her pain. She tilted back her head once more and roared her anger at his insufferable arrogance.

The elf darted to one side as more than a thousand pounds of snow and ice, suddenly loosened from the mountainside above, fell toward his head. Then he ran forward, toward the beast, his sword held level, the point aimed at the already gashed belly of the lizardlike horror. If he was to die buried in the ice of the ages atop this timeless rock, the beast would die with him.

The dragon, ignoring the avalanche crashing down atop her, raised one huge forepaw and struck. Her blow caught the elf squarely on the back. He plunged downward, headfirst, face flat in the snow.

“Fool!” the Ancient One rumbled, as his body and her foot were buried in the slide. “Do you think me ignorant of you or your kind? You would slay me, but you will not show respect to me? You kill my entire race and dare to call me a beast? Then know this: your name is already known to me. It is Lelolan, though you are commonly called Elrond. And this, Lelolan, is your fate: you shall live to see the disappearance of the last of your kind at the hands of lesser beings. Now, be wounded but live—to suffer.” The dragon raised her forepaw from Elrond’s back, shaking off the mounds of snow and ice as though they were weightless. Then she stamped down again with all her remaining strength. The elf, still barely conscious, heard his ribs crack and his backbone pop. Pain drew his stomach up toward his lungs, but before he could be sick in the snow, blackness overwhelmed him.

The old serpent saw her prey grow still. Without another word she turned and slithered away over the face of the rock she had called home since the early days of the world, her great foreclaws tossing aside the mounds of ice and snow. She had one task left to perform—and just enough strength, she believed, to perform it.

Unerringly the tired, wounded creature drew herself along the ledge until she came to a narrow crevice cut into the mountainside. The crevice sloped sharply down toward the bottom of a small crater hidden in the timeless rock. Her muscles could no longer hold her bulk; she slithered and slid down the icy crevice, tumbling in a painful heap onto the crater floor.

There she lay while time stood still. How long she rested, dying, she did not know. The evening stars were blazing against the clear, freezing night sky when her consciousness returned. She looked for one last time upon their light, then spoke a single word in the dragon tongue, a word unknown to elves and men then as now. The bottom of the crater rumbled and quivered. In the side of the crater wall a new crevice opened, a crevice that led down into thick blackness below. Into this crevice the beast hurled her body.

The rocky sides of the passageway tore at her scales and ate into her wounded belly as she half crawled, half fell farther and farther down into the interior of the mountain. Driblets of gore marked her passage, but she did not care. She knew the way behind her would be sealed forever at the moment of her death. Onward she went and downward into the blackness, guided by the dimming sight of her remaining eye that could see, even in the darkness, the tiny spots of heat that marked the outlines of the jagged, twisting tunnel.

At length her head emerged into a great chamber where an underground lake, fed by a warm spring, offered her both drink and comfort for her death wound. She let herself glide into the water, luxuriating in its warmth. Then she kicked with her rear legs and swam, as she had countless times before, to the far side of the underground pool. She dragged herself out on the granite shore to lie by the side of a great heap of gold, silver, gems, and jewelry, a heap so large it dwarfed even her own great body, stretching more than sixty feet along that hidden shore.

She closed her eye and began to dream. She could see them clearly now—the countless thousands of her kind that she had mothered. She could see them, hundreds strong, in great flights that blackened the sky as they soared beneath the shining sun, their scales gleaming crimson, and the earth beneath them erupting in flames as they passed. Whole forests would disappear to appease their malicious anger; countless elves would burst into flames like tiny torches at the touch of their breath. They were a great armada in the sky, destruction on the wing—invincible, invulnerable masters of the world.

But then the elves had learned. Had some god taught them magic? Had some foe of the creator of dragonkind guided their detestable tongues and their nimble little hands? The Ancient One did not know. But their learning was a terror. She saw the endless fights that had turned dragon against dragon, maneuvered by the clever elves with their magic and their lies. She saw the horrid battles in which fiery breath and physical might were turned to naught by magic; then dragon after dragon was slain by creatures barely strong enough to hold their swords. It had taken centuries, but the elves had won. Now she was dying, the last of her kind, while her killer slept in the snow far overhead.

She dreamt of Scratch, her mate, a magnificent dragon twice her size but with less strength of will. How they had frolicked in the early days of the earth when the gods who had made them were still young themselves! What joy they had had in populating the world with their own kind—and what sorrow she had the day Scratch had fallen, giving himself to save three of their sons cornered by a pack of elves. That had been just two short years ago—she and Scratch had had a final frolic just the day before.

The Ancient One’s head shot upward with a jerk, her eye wide open. Two years—two years ago to the day! It was the time. It was the time. That was why she had dragged herself here. She must remain awake, must not let the death sleep come just yet. One great task remained to be done.

The great worm curled her tail up beneath her body. She clamped shut her jaws and strained, fighting back the pain that came afresh from her death wound. The great lizard trembled all over for a moment like a dead leaf in a gentle breeze. Then her body relaxed, went limp. The great jaws opened and the dragon gasped.

Slowly she uncurled herself and crawled toward the heap of gold. On the rocky shore behind her, beneath the spot where she had lain, were two large, leathery eggs. Their dull brown outer cover was tough but flexible. From base to crown each egg was a little over three feet long. They rested side by side, motionless, pregnant with the hopes of a slain race.