Chapter 16

The flakes whirled faster in a growing wind that scoured the Snow Sea. The wind, instead of the whistles and cries it had emitted amid the rocky hills leading to the vast plain, resolved itself into a long, continuous moaning, like a woman in pain. Several times Ayshe imagined he could hear words in its lament, but he knew he must be mistaken.

The figures of his companions became gray shadows ahead of him, toiling onward, bent against the blast, like old trees clinging to the soil amid a winter storm. The dwarf’s short legs struggled through the drifts to keep up with them.

The snow grew thicker. Several times the dwarf lost sight of Jeannara, the elf closest to him, but then her bent back and legs came into view again.

A gust of wind roared over the Snow Sea, catching Ayshe by surprise and upending him into a drift. He struggled to free himself and at last stood up, soaked to the skin, shivering violently. Of the elves, there was no sign.

He rushed forward to catch up. His eyes were glued to the landscape in front of him, searching for signs of his companions’ passage, but the swift-falling snow blotted out all tracks. He shouted, but the wind swallowed his words.

He looked about. Was he right? Was that the direction in which they had been traveling? He searched his senses but couldn’t be sure. Again and again he cried out, but there was no answer but snow and wind.

He had stood in one place so long the snow had drifted against him, piling around his legs as high as his thighs. He had to move forward, or he would be covered. He was dizzy, aching from his fall, and soaked to the skin. He could feel the dampness hardening into a sheet of thin ice covering his flesh. The impenetrable whiteness blotted out everything. He blinked in an attempt to clear his eyes, and still everything swam before him. He rubbed his eyes and, choosing a direction at random, set out, bending his head against the storm. He staggered on until, his feet like lead, he sank to his knees.

A feeling of futility came over the dwarf. Was there any point? He was lost and alone in that great expanse of snow with nothing to shield him from the elements. Who knew how long the storm would blow? Who knew how long before his companions would miss him? And even when they discovered him gone, would. they imperil the quest to turn back and look for a dwarf, one who had, in a way, forced himself on their company?

It would be easier, so much easier to remain there. He felt drowsy, and for the first time he could remember, his legs and feet were growing warm. He was not even aware of sinking deeper into the snow. Visions flashed before him: of Chaval and Zininia sitting before the fire in their home, Zininia cuddling her new baby; of afternoons boating with Kharast, both of them pretending to fish but really floating idly and enjoying the comfort-of companionship and warm sunshine. His memory stretched further back to his first wanderings away from the Khalkist Mountains, and before that time, to the great caverns where he and his fellow dwarves had mined for riches.

A gray veil fell over his sight, and he reached up to push it away. Beyond it, dark shapes were moving.

Dark figures.

They had found him! Ayshe lifted up a shout with every ounce of strength left in his aching chest. The veil parted, and a hand grasped his cloak and pulled him out of the bed of snow.

No, a clawed hand!

Ayshe followed the arm, clad in heavy black armor. It was attached to a muscular shoulder, from behind which protruded a pair of slender wings. The nightmare vision was topped by a narrow, reptilian face with a pair of bright red eyes.

The clawed hand reached for the dwarf’s face, and blackness mercifully blotted out his consciousness.

He was bound tightly, hand and foot. That was the first thing he was aware of. The second was that he was warm, more or less. His face and limbs tingled, but he was awake and alert, free of the paralyzing drowsiness that had overtaken him in the storm.

Ayshe looked around and realized that although he was warm, the storm had not abated. He could hear the howling of the wind, and his nose smelled snow in the air. Yet he was sheltered from the worst of it. He lay on the floor of a tent made of animal skins crudely stitched together. A fire was burning in the middle of the tent—a magical fire, Ayshe surmised, since it appeared not to consume any fuel and did not give off smoke. But it filled the tent with heat, and that was all that mattered to him.

Around the fire, sitting cross-legged, were four or five of the creatures who had captured him. Their wings, Ayshe saw, were too small to give support to their ungainly bodies. They were eating—tearing at meat still on the bone. What sort of meat it was, the dwarf did not care to imagine.

Ayshe had never seen them in the flesh before, but from others’ descriptions, he knew they were draconians. Formed from a corruption of the eggs of good dragons toward the beginning of the War of the Lance, they were, by all accounts, savage and uninclined to kindness. A part of the dwarf’s brain wondered why he was still alive, why they had not hacked him to death on the spot.

One of the dragon men noticed him stirring. The creature rose, took one of the meat bones, and held it out to him with a gesture indicating that he should eat it. Ayshe shook his head, and the draconian shrugged and returned to the fire. Shortly afterward, he offered Ayshe some water, and that the dwarf drank greedily.

The draconians’ language seemed to be made up of hisses and snarls, and Ayshe could make no sense of it. In a while, though, another draconian came through the tent flap, shaking snow from his armor. The others rose hastily and saluted. The officer returned their salutes and came to crouch near Ayshe.

He was bigger than his comrades, with flaring horns on either side of his head. His eyes glinted with intelligence and malice.

“Well, my little friend,” he growled in heavily accented Common, “what brings a dwarf so far out into the Snow Sea?”

Ayshe, his blurred mind racing, made no reply. The draconian casually slapped him. His claws left deep scratches across the dwarf’s face. They burned, and Ayshe wondered momentarily if the draconians’ claws carried poison of some sort.

“I… I was lost,” the dwarf managed to gasp through cracked and swollen lips.

“Lost?” The creature gave a short, harsh bark of laughter. “One doesn’t lose oneself in the Snow Sea. Where were you going?”

The few moments had given Ayshe time to focus. Whatever the cost, he decided, he must keep the draconians from learning of the presence of Dragonsbane in the Snow Sea. The dragon men were strong, well fed, warm, and well equipped—more than a match for the elves. To what end the draconians were traveling there and what plans they had in mind for him he could not fathom, but he was sure he would not survive his capture. Let that be his sacrifice, then, his final atonement for Chaval, Zininia, and their child. The thought filled him with a great peace.

The draconian leader repeated, “Where were you going?”

Ayshe clamped his mouth shut.

The leader shrugged and nodded to a pair of the smaller dragon men. They dragged him out of the tent and back into the howling wind and driving snow. Dimly he could see the shapes of other tents, set in orderly rows radiating out from a central space. To that space he was pulled by the draconians. One produced a short knife with a jagged blade stained with something dark. Ayshe tried to keep his thoughts on his friends, on the smith and his wife, but he could not keep his knees from trembling.

The draconian made a quick slash. Ayshe, to his surprise, felt no pain. His cloak fell to the snow, cut from his shoulders. The draconian tore away his shirt, and the dwarf felt the sting of cold wind and snow against his bare flesh. Only then did he notice the officer was wielding a short, savage-looking whip. A moment later, the first blow fell across his back.

The draconian was far more skilled in torture than the jailer in Than-Khal. The dwarf thought he had never known what pain was until that instant. The cold wind blew against the welts raised by the whip, and Ayshe’s mind wandered along dark roads to far-off places.

He must have fainted. He felt himself borne along, slung roughly over the shoulder of a draconian. A blanket—or the remains of his cloak, he was not sure—had been thrown over him and secured with a rope. It rubbed against the raw, bleeding flesh of his back with each step the draconian took. His mouth was dry, his face numb from the cold. He could no longer feel his hands and feet and gave them up to frostbite. He coughed.

The draconian carrying him looked around, his face inches from that of the dwarf. He gave a raucous screech of laughter. “Waking up? Had a good sleep? Well, sleep while you can, you maggoty slime. You won’t get much when we get to Brackenrock.”

Ayshe managed to gasp a single word. “Brackenrock?”

“Yes. That’s where we’re taking you, my beauty. To Brackenrock.” The draconian gave a high-pitched giggle that ended in a squeal. “You’re lucky, little maggot. It’s almost time for—” His voice veered into a torrent of guttural syllables. “Dragondream. That’s right. Maybe you’ll get to witness part of it before they cut you into pieces and feed you to the yeti.”

Despite himself, Ayshe felt better. Concentrating on the draconian’s speech, which was slurred and difficult to understand at times, seemed to help. It made him feel less cold and made his back hurt less.

“What’s Dragondream?”

The act of talking fluently while running did not seem to bother the creature at all. He bore the dwarf as if the latter were made of feathers.

“Every twenty years, the Great Wyrm of the South sleeps. And in its sleeping, it sends out dreams to us. At Brackenrock, the great festival of Dragondream celebrates five years of such dreams as you can’t imagine. They are rr’spathgh chal’achrragh…” His voice spun away into the noises of his own speech, as if he’d forgotten he was speaking to the dwarf. Finally he caught himself and laughed again. “Perhaps you’ll have a part to play in the festival, you stinking dwarf maggot. Perhaps we’ll eat your flesh and drink your blood in honor of the Great Wyrm.”

Ayshe fought down a wave of nausea. “Where… does the wyrm sleep?”

A cry from the leader cut short whatever reply the dwarf’s bearer might have given to the question. The draconians halted, and Ayshe was flung down in the snow. Flakes still filled the air, stirred by a restless wind, but the draconians had marched or run without hesitation, as if their noses could detect the scent of home in that wilderness. Still, their progress had been slow, hampered as they were by the drifts. The dwarf guessed the party might-be ten miles from where he’d been captured but no more.

On the orders of the captain, the dragon men set about their assigned tasks with military precision. Swiftly they cleared the snow from a large area and erected their tents, following the same wheel-spoke pattern Ayshe had noted earlier. Some of the dragon men skilled in magic kindled fires in the tents and one large fire in the center of the encampment. It gave off a generous heat and melted the snow beneath their feet. One dragged Ayshe near the fire, as much to guard him in comfort as for the dwarf’s benefit.

When all was done to ready the camp, the draconians assembled in their ranks and faced southwest, their faces toward the driving snow. Led by their captain, they began a slow, sonorous chant in the draconian language. The wind whipped away the words from their narrow lips. Ayshe could make nothing of it, but several times he was sure the dragon men had chanted the same words used by his captor when speaking of Dragondream.

Perhaps it was only his imagination. A great weariness stole over him. So that was to be his fate: Torn apart by draconians as part of a ceremony worshiping a mysterious white dragon in the frozen south. If he’d heard the tale years before, he would have laughed at it.

The ceremony over, his captor returned and carried him to a tent. There, the draconian soldiers sat, eating and drinking, shouting every now and then with laughter at some jest in their snarling language. Ayshe, tightly tied, listened, hoping for a clue, though he knew any more information he gained about the White Wyrm was pointless. He drank water and ate a bit of bread that was offered him.

Finally, when the conversation had died down, he asked, “What dreams does the wyrm send you?”

The draconians were silent, and Ayshe wondered if they were surprised or offended by his effrontery. Then the draconian who had carried the dwarf during the day squawked with laughter and turned to Ayshe. He seemed to enjoy talking.

“Why do you want to know, maggot? Want some of the dreams? The wyrm doesn’t give her gifts to maggoty dwarves.”

“She?” Ayshe asked. In the time he’d been with Dragonsbane, he could not remember that the wyrm had been assigned a gender.

The draconian ignored the question and went on. “She sends us dreams of the world ruled by dragons. A world where dragons fill the skies and the thunder of their wings makes all over creatures flee in terror. Tasshaff’shch marellcha gach massstichent…” He shook his head and glared at Ayshe, as if he’d been trapped into revealing too much. “Such things are not for the maggoty likes of you.”

Ayshe nodded humbly. “Does the wyrm visit Brackenrock?” he asked.

“Nay. Such things are kept hidden in secret places. She lairs beneath the Mountains of the Moons, and from her Dreamchamber she sends forth her thoughts over the frozen lands.”

One of the draconian’s companions put out a claw, attempting to restrain the other from speaking, but the speaker shook it off angrily and hissed a reply, with a jerk of his head toward Ayshe. Without understanding their language, Ayshe could read the meaning plainly: he would be dead soon, and whatever knowledge he gained would die with him.

With nothing to lose, he asked, “Where are these Mountains of the Moons?”

The draconian stretched out his hand. “Beyond the Snow Sea. Through the Pass of Tarmock’s Fangs lies the Valley of White Death, surrounded by the Mountains of the Moons. There lies the Great Wyrm’s Dreamchamber.

Ayshe shut his eyes. It was the supreme irony, he thought. He had it. He had the knowledge for which Dragonsbane had been seeking all those long decades. And he was going to die.

Presently the draconians in the tent rolled themselves in blankets and lay down. They kept no watch over the prisoner, since as well as his bonds, there was nowhere for the dwarf to go should he escape from the tent. Ayshe, well aware of that, lay on his side, thinking. A draconian had thrown a blanket over him as well, and the magical fire continued to burn. The dwarf found it odd that under the circumstances he was more physically comfortable than he had been while in the company of his friends.

The snoring of the draconians made his head ache, and his heart was oppressed with the knowledge that there was no way out for him. Even if he could slip free, it was impossible for him to traverse the long miles over the Snow Sea back to Zeriak with no direction and no supplies. Only death awaited him, in some hideous form at Brackenrock.

Draconian voices swelled in a hideous cacophony that not even the tent and the still-falling snow could mask. They drove against the dwarf’s mind like the strokes of the whip he’d endured earlier. There seemed something odd about their guttural voices, however. They contained not ecstasy, but a note of terror.

With a great effort, the dwarf rolled over and raised his head. The draconians in the tent were on their feet, swords drawn. Several rushed out, while the one who had earlier spoken with Ayshe grabbed the captive and hauled him outside into the whirling snow and cold.

The snowflakes parted like a curtain, and a lithe, leaping, dark figure burst through them, a sword in one hand, a long dagger in the other. The attacker swept the sword across the throat of the draconian, pirouetted, and plunged the dagger into the neck of another. The dragon man went down, kicking and clutching at the blade. He pulled it out, and a shower of blood from a severed artery turned the snow around him to crimson. He thrashed a few more times and was still.

Another dark figure sprang forward and thrust a blade into the torso of a draconian standing near Ayshe. The attacker—she, the dwarf saw her long hair flying out behind her—pulled the blade up and gutted the creature, who fell backward, knocking Ayshe to the ground.

Shrieks and groans came from other parts of the camp, accompanied by the clash of steel and the soft hiss of arrows. Ayshe, face pressed against the snow by the weight of the body across him, could see nothing. Then the pressure was relieved and a pair of hands raised him to a sitting position. Someone slit his bonds, and he was able to stretch his hands in front of him. He looked up and saw Samustalen’s eyes dark in a face swathed with cloth to keep out the cold and wind. Without saying a word, the elf clapped him on the shoulder.

Around them, the sounds of battle diminished as the snow grew less and stopped altogether. Bodies lay sprawled on the ground, shrouded in white. Samustalen led Ayshe around them, at the same time wrapping a fresh cloak around the dwarf’s shivering shoulders.

A short distance away, they found Harfang cleaning his sword. The draconian leader lay in the snow, arms outstretched, claws digging into the frozen ground. The first mate looked at Ayshe with satisfaction. “Master Dwarf! Still with us!”

Ayshe nodded and managed a smile. “Aye, sir.” He wanted to say something more in gratitude but couldn’t find the words.

Jeannara appeared, nodded to Ayshe, and said something softly to Harfang. The lines in the man’s face deepened, and he cursed. Spinning on his heel, he walked away. Jeannara followed, and Ayshe and Samustalen joined her.

They found the mate and several other companions of Dragonsbane staring at a body sprawled in the snow. It was Omanda, the elf healer. Her bag, containing herbs and potions, lay beside her, its contents spilling onto the snow. Her face was peaceful despite the horrid wound that gaped at her neck.

From somewhere Tashara appeared. She stood next to the body for a moment, sniffing the air. “Omanda?” she asked.

“Aye!” Harfang’s answer was spat out.

The captain nodded. “Give her the best burial we’re able.” She turned away. “Take the stores of these creatures and make an inventory. The tents will be a welcome addition. Burn the draconian bodies.”

Harfang looked after her, his expression unreadable.

Ayshe touched his arm. “Sir?”

“What?”

“I’m… I’m sorry about Omanda, sir. It’s my fault. If I hadn’t gotten lost in the snow storm, you wouldn’t have had to come after me, and she’d still be alive.”

Harfang shook his head. “In Dragonsbane, we leave no one behind. Did you not know that by now, Master Ayshe? Omanda was a good warrior and a good companion, but she took the same chances we all took when we joined Dragonsbane. She’s no different than Feystalen, Armidor, or Riadon in that regard.” He rubbed his head. “But without a healer…”

Samustalen finished the thought. “…what chance do we stand against the White Wyrm?” He turned and left the mate and dwarf standing in the snow beside the body.

“Was she that important to your battle plans?” Ayshe asked miserably.

“Not so much to the battle itself. But out here where the slightest injury can mean the risk of death…” He shrugged. “I could advise the captain to turn back, but it’s no use. She’ll not listen. We’re plunging deeper and deeper into that”—he gestured toward the Snow Sea—“with no idea where we’re going or how to get there, let alone what awaits us if we should find it—”

He stopped and looked closer at Ayshe, who was chewing his lip. “You know something. What is it?”

Ayshe nodded. “When I was captive, the draconians spoke of the White Wyrm. They said something about Dragondream and the Dreamchamber. They seemed to know where the lair is.” He was so excited he forgot Omanda and his cold and aches and pains from the beating he’d received. “Sir, they said the wyrm is returning to sleep, sending out dreams to the draconians. It’s returning to its Dreamchamber.”

“Which is where? Did they say that?”

“Yes. We should look for the Pass of Tarmock’s Fangs and the Valley of the White Death. That’s where we’ll find the Mountains of the Moons and the lair.” Ayshe pointed to the southwest, as nearly as he could remember the direction the draconians had been facing. “The draconians worship the wyrm. They were going to sacrifice me to it, I think, at Brackenrock, in some sort of ceremony.”

Harfang listened in silence. Ayshe felt pride at his information and the vigor returning to his frozen limbs.

“This is our chance, sir!” he said. “If the wyrm is sleeping and dreaming—”

Harfang turned his face to the dwarf.

“Ever woke up a sleeping dragon, Master Dwarf?”

Ayshe faltered.

“It’s an ugly business, hunting dragons, even if they’re asleep. They’re far bigger than us, far stronger. I should have thought you’d have learned that by now. Even with a strong band, well rested and fully equipped, it’s a dangerous business.” He gestured around. “Do you see such a band? Tired, cold, and now without a healer.” He shook his head. “Only our swords and ourselves. Not very good odds, Ayshe. Not very good odds at all.”

The elves gathered in the center of the camp. To one side, they had gathered the draconians’ bodies, and a word and gesture from Malshaunt had set them flaming, sending spirals of greasy smoke into the still-snow-filled sky. The elves stood in a line next to a pyre made of wood scrounged from the camp. On it rested the figure of Omanda, her hands crossed over her breast, her dagger clasped between her hands.

Tashara stood to one side, her sightless face watching the scene. Next to her, Malshaunt lifted his hand.

“Now!” the captain ordered.

Flames sprang up around the pyre. At the same time, the elves began to sing, voices rising and fading against the hiss of snow and the whine of wind. The language was not any Elvish that was spoken in Krynn, but one that would have been recognized by elves four thousand years before—a tongue both rich and strange, words twisting in complex syllables that seemed to wend their way about the fire as it rose higher, obscuring the figure of the healer. Unlike the fire that had consumed the draconian corpses, the fire around Omanda sent out no smoke and little heat but burned bright and cold against a slowly clearing sky.

To Harfang, watching without joining in the elves’ song, the scene seemed to mark the end of one life and the beginning of another for him. The years of standing faithfully by Tashara’s side, of battling dragons, sailing the seas around Krynn aboard the Starfinder, those faded as if consumed by the flames. But the future still remained hidden to the mate.

That night, after he retired to his tent, grateful for the shelter from the elements, he once again laid out the (baron cards. And once again, he sat staring at the last card as his mind turned over and over what to do.

Malshaunt stood by the pyre until the last of it was consumed by his magical flames. The nearby snow had melted and ran in puddles that froze in glittering mirrors, reflecting the starlight above. Of Omanda’s body there remained not a trace. The mage looked at the spot for a long time. Then he turned, bowed low in the direction of Tashara’s tent, and disappeared into his own shelter.