Two days later, in the morning, while Dalamar sat in the scriptorium with the usual basket of quills to sharpen, a message came to the Temple, a short missive tersely worded, saying that the servitor Dalamar Argent must go to the home of the Head of House Mystic, and he must be there before the noon hour. Dalamar presented himself long before that time, where he learned-not from Ylle Savath herself but from one of her mages-that he would be among those who would travel north to the borderlands, there to bespell a dragonarmy.
"Let him live or die by his plan," Lady Ylle said on the day that Lorac announced he'd follow the advice of a servitor.
That she'd said as one pronouncing a dark doom. Yet, Dalamar heard her command as the first note of a brave song, one to tell of his dream, long thought impossible, at last waking to reality.
Chapter 5
Phair Caron looked over her army spread out below like a great dark sea, restless and hungry. The long-legged woman in her red dragon armor, the lusty shape of her not hidden by mail and breastplate, stood like a queen overseeing her kingdom. Her hair, normally bundled up under her dragon helm, hung loose now to her shoulders, a golden spill of waving curls to catch the sunlight. It was her beauty that softened, if only a little, a face long ago shaped to hardness by want and rage. Eyes the color of the blue edges of swords, she looked around, satisfied. The tors of the Khalkist Mountains were her stony halls. Rising higher than the towers of any elf-lord, they housed her well. All round their base supply camps ranged, cook tents and food depots, even a small dry of smiths with their forges. The smoke rose up like the smoke over a battleground. Anvils rang as brawny human smiths worked at repairing breastplates and greaves, at forging new blades for swords damaged in the fighting. She could have wished for dwarf smiths, but those were hard to come by, locked up in Thorbardin while the Council of Thanes decided whether or not to get involved in the war.
Phair Caron looked west to the land of Abanasinia, whose spine was the Kharolis Mountains. The estranged cousins of the Silvanesti lived there, the wood-dwelling Qualinesti. Humans lived there, and hill dwarves. Already Verminaard, the Highlord of the Blue Wing, had his eye on them, laying cruel plans and ready to swoop down upon those lands like an eagle after its prey. One day, if not sooner then later, all these lands and all the people who lived therein would belong to Her Dark Majesty. The forces of Takhisis would sweep south to Icewall and north to Solamnia to topple the towers of Vingaard and Solanthus. In her might, the Dark Queen would range even so far as the Ergoths. All of Krynn would be hers, a shrine to her glory built upon the bones of those who defied.
Her blood humming in her, her heart high, Phair Caron looked south, to the dark line of the Silvanesti Forest. The Highlords of Takhisis would be as kings and queens in Krynn. She smiled, a wolfish baring of her teeth. This Highlord would rule from Silvanost, and she would have for her slaves the lords and ladies of Lorac Caladon's court.
A roar came up distantly from below, the sound of her army, the restless hordes of humans and goblins, draconians and ogres. It had not been easy, organizing this army of disparate races. Humans refused to camp near ogres, who would not be anywhere near goblins. No one could get within striking distance of any of the three breeds of draconians without small wars erupting, and among mem, the Baaz hated the venomous Kapaks, who loathed them in turn and despised the Auraks.
A long dark shadow passed over the hilltop as Blood Gem sailed on the warm currents, drifting on the sky. Terror kept all the factions of the Highlord's army in line, the dread of the dragons sunning themselves upon the tors. Often bored between forays into the forest, the mighty wyrms were happy to snatch a recalcitrant ogre or insubordinate human right out from the crowd of his companions and make a proper example of him. The dragons were Phair Caron's insurance of good order. With that general order insured, she practiced the kind of hard-handed control for which she had become known among the Dark Queen's Highlords. Whichever of her lieutenants failed to keep order among his men failed only once. There were, here and in the lands she'd early conquered, plenty of others willing and able to take the place of the man or woman who could not maintain discipline.
Above, a wing of dragons circled in the sky, long lazy rounds that took them out over the aspen forest just turning gold with the approach of autumn. Blood Gem abandoned his lazy circling and went to join his kin. Phair Caron felt the joy in him as he looked down upon the destruction he and his kind had wrought, the smoldering, and the wide swaths of land that would not see a tree again for many long years.
It is good! the dragon called, feeling her thought touch his mind.
It is good, she agreed silently, the woman who had once scrambled in gutter-filth for a bent copper tossed her by an elf too disdainful to wait for her thanks. The flames of her ambition, of her long need for revenge, burned in her blood, firing her heart and her soul. It seemed to Phair Caron, as she stood upon the heights, that she could see as far as Silvanost, as far as that day when Lorac Caladon would be led before her in chains, condemned to death, the sentence carried out by stoning in the widest square of his city.
A small figure moved among the army, his step determined, his way clearing easily before him. Goblins moved aside, their ranks rippling as he went. When he crossed the unofficial boundary between their camp and that of the ogres, it was the same. This one went untroubled as soldiers who had only the day before dealt mercilessly with elf villagers scrambled to get out of his way. Thus did the mage Tramd o' the Dark make his way to the high side of the army's encampment, the place where water came down in trickling streams from the tors. Two tents stood there, a small space apart from each other and well apart from all those housing the lieutenants and captains of the dragonarmy. One was of red silk and had a bright red pennon waving from the center pole. Peaked, even chambered, it stood like a splotch of bright blood amidst the dun and black and browns of the army. The second tent was a simpler affair, smaller, with leather sides and no pennon flapping from the pole. To the first Phair Caron looked, for she knew that was where the mage was going, head down and moving quickly.
Blood Gem, she called.
My lady?
Tell him to meet me in my tent.
As you wish, my lady.
The red dragon peeled off from the others, stretching his long neck and bugling to the sky. The army moved, shifting like an uneasy sea before a storm wind. Ogres raised knotted fists to the sky, all bravado. Humans moved restlessly among themselves while goblins scurried. In the far eastern part of the encampment, draconians gave no sign of having heard. They felt about dragons as dragons felt about them. Tramd stopped and looked up, then he turned his steps away from the red tent and toward the leather one.
Phair Caron smiled grimly. He was a good mage, this Tramd, and a good man in the field when it came to leading battles from dragonback. Among the elves he was known and not known, his presence felt in bloody carnage, though no two elves ever seemed to be able to agree on a description of him. Ogre, human, dwarf, even once an elf-all these were reported as being seen leading the attacks on the villages, a mage whose terrible voice boomed out over the burning and the killing. They thought he was a shapeshifter, some terrible creature out of the bloody Abyss. He was not that, though he was terrible.