D& D - Mystara 02 Dragonking of Mystara Read online

  "What do you believe happened?" she asked simply.

  "I believe that renegade dragons took the collar," he admitted frankly. "I suspect that they may have been in league with either Alphatian or Flaemish wizards—most likely the Alphatians, who have been expanding their holdings in our lands lately. I will have to deal with them on that account under any circumstances, whether the Dragonlord likes it or not."

  "I believe that he would understand if you explained the situation to him," Kharendaen told him.

  "I am sorry for the need to call you here, but we very much needed to know about the Dragonlord's intentions," he said as he sat down on the cold stone floor, facing her. "We've already had one encounter with the Alphatians earlier today, which cost them a couple of their ships. I need to be able to prevent the dragons from doing something reckless that could lead to war."

  "I understand."

  "I am also concerned for you," Marthaen continued, choosing his words carefully. "I appreciate receiving your reports concerning the Dragonlord. They have done much

  to help the dragons contain their fear of him. Just the same, you have been in his service nearly five years now."

  "My service to the Dragonlord is a matter of my duty as a cleric," she said. "But it is also my own choice. He is my friend and companion."

  "Just so," Marthaen insisted. "I know that you are close to him, but I do not want your love and devotion to him to get in the way of your duty to the Great One and to your people."

  "The prophecy states that the Dragonlord will play an important role in the destiny of the dragons," she countered. "Is it not better for us that he should know us and think well of us? I feel that I am also serving my duty by | being a friend to him."

  "That is not what I mean," her brother insisted. "The Dragonlord is the greatest danger that our people have ever known. Although his intentions may be good, I fear that we may yet find ourselves at odds with him over some misunderstanding. My concern is for you. If I must yet deal with him as an enemy, I would not like to see you caught between us."

  Having spoken her piece, Kharendaen lowered her eyes and retired for some much-needed rest.

  CHAPTER ONE

  "Captain Glantri! There's smoke on the northern horizon!"

  Darius Glantri glanced up at the watchman, perched high atop the mainmast, then hurried to the port side of the deck for a clear view. He could just barely see it, but it was there, a vague, gray trail of smoke rising from some unseen point just beyond the horizon. The steersman had already responded by swinging the tiller around, bringing the great war galley slowly from a northeasterly course to due north. The other galleys in the Thyatian fleet were responding as well. Many of the sailors were watching from perches in the rigging. After a moment, the marines began to hurry up on deck to see for themselves.

  "We're not on holiday here!" Darius shouted across the deck. "Prepare the ship for battle. We may be in for a fight, and I want to be prepared for one. Get water buckets ready, in case we have fires of our own to deal with. Be prepared to cut away any burning sails or rigging."

  There was hardly any need to hurry. The sleek Thyatian

  war galleys were already racing before a brisk southerly wind, and the marines were busy unshipping the long oars for even more speed. The trails of smoke were at least ten miles away, perhaps more. Thyatian galleys were the fastest ships at sea, but even they could not cross such a distance in less than an hour, even with the favoring wind. If those fires meant that friendly ships were in trouble, he couldn't hope to come to their aid in time to do anything more than search for survivors.

  The captain paused, staring at the horizon. Unfortunately the bow of the galley came around at that moment, obscuring his view. Frustrated, he hurried down the steps and past the long main deck of the ship, climbing into the high forecastle well above the copper-plated ramming prow. By the time he could see clearly from the point of the bow, he was certain. Already he could make out the shapes of the unknown ships in the distance, a cluster of perhaps half a dozen tiny objects many miles ahead. Other dark shapes, like tiny birds, circled slowly above the burning ships or dived down at them. But those ships were too far away yet for him to have possibly seen birds circling above their broken masts. From this range, they could only be dragons.

  Darius hesitated. He had heard rumors that the dragons had seemed especially agitated since the middle of the previous winter, prowling the lands in great numbers from Wendar to the Steppes in the east and south to the great desert of Ylaruam. They seemed almost to be searching for something. If they were attacking someone, he had to know.

  "Watch!" he shouted aloft. "What do you see?" he shouted aloft.

  "It's dragons, sir!" the watchman called back. "I can see them clearly through the spyglass."

  On the main deck, the sailors paused in their work to grumble among themselves. Darius hardly needed to be reminded of the danger. A dragon and a wooden ship were a deadly combination. A ship was too vulnerable to flame, and dragons were swift and could easily stay beyond the range of any weapons that could be carried at sea. He wanted no part of this fight, and he fully intended to avoid it if he could.

  But he doubted that he had much choice, in spite of his inclination to turn his fleet about and flee while he could. If dragons were attacking Thyatians or one of his country's allies, he had an obligation to do whatever he could. And whether friend or foe, he had to know why the dragons were attacking in the first place. Dragons generally kept to themselves, and he had to know what had set them off.

  It was obvious that the dragon attack would be over before he could ever get there. He only hoped that they chose to go their own way when their grim work was finished. Whatever complaint they might have, he had no idea whether or not it involved him.

  The battle lasted longer than he would have expected. As he watched the dragons in the distance, he could see that they were not attacking in concert but were harassing the ships in a methodical, even cautious manner, never exposing themselves to danger while they picked away at the remaining defenders. They knew that they possessed every advantage, and they weren't going to risk being careless. The Thyatian warships were racing before a strong breeze. Darius now suspected that they might arrive before the battle was done.

  Darius stayed atop the forecastle, watching the fight progress almost lazily for the better part of an hour. He had fetched a second spyglass from his cabin, and he had grown familiar with the tactics that the dragons were using. They had long since disabled all the ships, largely by setting fire to their sails, forcing the sailors to cut loose the burning sheets and rigging. Then the dragons would cut out one ship after another, like a pack of wolves separating individual sheep from the main herd. They would carefully destroy any remaining defenses, then board the ship and push any survivors over the side. Next they would search the interior of the ship, an act that Darius found curious and incomprehensible, before they left finally the wrecked hull in flames.

  "They're Alphatian, Captain!" the watch called down at last. "Two Alphatian war galleys, escorting a small fleet of

  supply vessels."

  Darius had already seen the warships, although he hadn't yet been able to identify their type. All of the ships were badly damaged, no doubt from the initial phase of the attack that had left the fleet unable to defend itself. Even as he watched, the dragons turned their attention to the war galleys. The Thyatians were still some five miles distant.

  It was all over soon after that. The dragons circled for a short time over the last two flaming ships, then turned as a group and flew directly toward the approaching Thyatians. Darius waited tensely, watching them for any hostile move while the crews of his ships prepared to defend themselves. His fleet consisted of six of the largest warships in the Thy-atian navy, but they were no match for a dozen red dragons. And yet the dragons did not attack at once. Instead, they circled the ships slowly just out of bow range. At last, apparently satisfied their ships were not part of the Alpha
t-ian fleet, the band of dragons turned lazily and soared off toward the west.

  Darius sighed, unaware of just how tense he had been for the last several minutes. Whatever the dragons wanted, their complaint was obviously only with the Alphatians. A mutual enemy often made for unlikely allies, or at least it had in this instance. Once the danger was past, the sailors hurried back to tend to the rigging and the soldiers on deck lowered their bows. Darius turned his attention back to his own ship, aware that his marines must be tiring after an hour of hard rowing.

  "Ship the oars," he called. "The wind will have us there soon enough. Relay the orders to disperse the fleet to search for survivors."

  Another mile or so brought them to the edge of the area of battle. The last ship had since slipped beneath the waves with a loud hiss of steam. A great deal of wreckage floated in the water—crates and barrels and charred sections from the hulk of the Alphatian ships. The sailors hurried to take in most of the sails, cutting the ship's speed to a crawl so that they could search the area carefully for survivors. A skiff was already being prepared to lower over the side.

  A centurion joined him at the bow, saluting smartly.

  "Captain, I can speak Alphatian. I thought you might want to know in case we find any survivors."

  "Good man," Darius exclaimed. "We've got to find out what those dragons wanted."

  "I'm just glad they didn't want us," the centurion admitted with a sheepish grin. "For a while there, I was wishing we had the Dragonlord aboard."

  "Yes . . . the Dragonlord," Darius said, mostly to himself. "When I saw that the ships were Alphatian, I thought they must have done something to deserve such treatment from the dragons. If that is indeed so, the Dragonlord might actually have taken the side of the dragons."

  The last sail was furled, and the galley crawled forward, carried only by the slow sweep of the last four pairs of oars, the rest of the oarsmen being involved in the search. Darius saw that all the ships in the fleet were beginning to take aboard a fairly large number of survivors; apparently the dragons had been primarily interested in taking and destroying the ships, not in slaying the crew. When the first Alphatians were brought aboard, the centurion spoke with them in turn. While he waited, Darius thought about the Dragonlord and his companion, Kharendaen. He counted both of them as his friends from their occasional visits to Thyatis over the years. Kharendaen had always been pleasant company, civilized and intelligent, hardly a fierce monster of legend. He kept that in mind now as he considered the cold, calculating tactics the dragons had employed during this attack.

  *****

  The first clear light of morning was just touching the night sky as Thelvyn slipped quietly out the kitchen door of his house, closing it quietly behind him. The large gray stones of the courtyard felt cool beneath his bare feet, a condition that would change quickly once the early summer sun had risen. He paused a moment to watch the dawn sky, growing a dull silver behind the dark line of the Colossus Mountains far to the east. The roofs and chimneys and towers of Braejr stood black against the pale light.

  So far, there was hardly a sound to be heard in the city, only a cart or two rattling along the cobbled streets somewhere in the distance and the perfunctory barking of a dog challenging some imagined nighttime threat.

  Thelvyn paused a moment to listen to a cart rattle slowly along a nearby street, which turned the stream of his thoughts in a new direction. He had grown up in a remote frontier village, and even after five years, he was still used to the sounds of the forests and the mountains and the cool, fresh scents of the northern pines. These southern lands of the realm were flat and warm, and the city as often reeked of smoke and a thousand other smells. The streets were crowded and noisy. He missed his old home in the north, the comfortable house that he had shared with Sir George, and the life of simple adventure that the old knight had always lived. It was the life Thelvyn had always wanted, that of a trader in antiquities, traveling throughout the world seeking lost treasures. And that was where he would have preferred to have been now.

  At least the enclosed courtyard of his home served as an island of peace in this strange place. The yard was large, with a wooded garden at one end, and a high wall surrounded the entire estate. He crossed the courtyard to the massive block of the warehouse. The first owner of the estate had been a Thyatian merchant who had returned to his own land during the time of the dragon raids. He had obviously valued his goods so highly that he had built a warehouse on the grounds of his mansion. For that reason, it was no simple structure but solidly built of brick, plastered and painted with bright trim so that it rivaled the opulence of the house.

  Indeed the warehouse was the main reason why Thelvyn had made this place his home. It had served as Kharen-daen's lair for the five years that they had lived here. Thelvyn was about to open one of the two heavy wooden doors of the front entrance, but before he did, he paused to look around. Suddenly it seemed that every dog in the city had begun to bark and howl. A moment later a dark form began to circle over the yard, black against the pale sky. Thelvyn squinted into the semidarkness. It certainly wasn't a dragon, judging by its shape. As it came closer, he realized that it was a griffon, mounted by a Thyatian rider hearing what could only be an important message. Kharen-itaen opened the door behind him to glance outside, then drew back and closed the door quickly so that her own presence wouldn't startle the griffon as it landed in the courtyard beside the house.

  Thelvyn hurried to help with the griffon so that the rider could dismount. Griffons were smaller than dragons, but i hey were also mere beasts, fierce but stupid and extremely dangerous to approach. Their advantage lay in the fact that they were as fast as a dragon and also willing to be mounted, whereas dragons generally didn't allow themselves to be used as transportation. Although the griffon was steered by reins, it could be controlled on the ground by a large brass ring attached through the nostrils of its beak.

  "Never mind me," the rider insisted. "The emperor sends word. You are needed at once in Thyatis on a matter of great urgency."

  "Do you know what the problem is?" Thelvyn asked.

  "There is concern about war with Alphatia."

  Thelvyn nodded. "I'll be on my way at once. If you can keep your griffon away from the grounds until my dragon and I have departed, then you can come back here and rest for your journey home."

  The rider leaped back into his saddle, and Thelvyn released the nose ring. With a jerk of the reins, the great beast hurtled into the morning sky. There wasn't much that Thelvyn needed to do to prepare, although as a matter of courtesy, he hurried to Kharendaen's lair to ask if she was prepared for such a long journey. The dragon had overheard what was said through the door and was already preparing her saddle. Thelvyn helped her with the saddle, then went into the house for a few minutes to make his own preparations.

  There wasn't much that he required. He needed to tell his housekeeper that he would be gone, then leave a written message to be taken to the king later that morning. Unfortunately, he was rather uncertain about just what he should say when he knew so little himself. Ever since he had raised himself from the title of archduke to that of king, Jheridan Maarsten had devoted himself to preparing the Flaem for their long-awaited war with the Alphatians. More accurately, it would be a return to the ancient war that had destroyed their own world long ago. Jherridan had been enlisting the support of allies for some time, often quite aggressively. Thelvyn thought it best that Jherridan and his Fire Wizards did not begin making ill-advised plans of their own until they knew more about the situation with the Alphatians.

  His solution was to leave the briefest, vaguest message possible, stating only that he had gone to Thyatis to learn what he could. He strongly implied that it was only a simple matter, although he knew that Emperor Cornelius, a cautious and courteous ruler, would not have sent for him with such urgency unless it was a matter of dire importance. Kharendaen was waiting in the yard by the time Thelvyn was ready. She lowered her deep chest to the gro
und so that he could climb into her saddle, then leaped into the air. They were climbing into the sky over Braejr even before the sun had risen above the Colossus Mounts to the east.

  Thelvyn settied back into the saddle, making himself as comfortable as he could. The journey from the Highlands to Thyatis was a matter of hours for a dragon, but it would have taken weeks on horseback. The dragon saddle was comfortable, with a high back, shaped to support and hold the rider securely. The constant flood of fresh, cool air was more than enough to keep him awake on such a long journey; indeed, at times he had to struggle to draw a breath against the force of it.

  Kharendaen endured such long flights well, better than Thelvyn would have expected. She hardly even needed to use her wings for anything more than soaring, for she had an uncanny instinct for locating currents or rising columns of air. Mostly she propelled herself by magical means, inherent to the nature of all the greater dragons, invoking a spell not unlike levitation. She seldom flew straight but instead shifted directions almost constantly, often drifting

  Mi or right while banking her wings sharply, or else rising or falling to avoid contrary winds. The winds of the heights offered the dragon the fastest speeds, but they also kept her busy as she sought the most advantageous drafts, leaving Thelvyn to endure a sometimes quite unsettling ride.

  Now that Thelvyn was feeling a bit more awake, he was becoming even more apprehensive about the reason for his journey. It wouldn't come as a surprise if Thyatis and Alphatia found themselves involved in a major war after so many years of plotting and skirmishing. His own worry was that a war of such vast proportions would be bound to involve the dragons before it was done, especially if King jherridan and the Fire Wizards were able to win the support they had sought for so long with an alliance of nations against the Alphatians.

  It also worried Thelvyn that the king apparently believed that he could win even under the most adverse conditions. Five years ago, when Jherridan Maarsten had faced certain destruction against with the rogue dragons, the Dragonlord had fortuitously come to his rescue at the very last moment. Thelvyn hoped that the king hadn't come to expect victory even in the face of impossible odds, just because of the Tightness of his cause.