Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - The Dragons At War

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THE DRAGONS AT WAR

Edited by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman

OCR'ed by Alligator

croc@aha.ru

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Dream of the Namer

Michael Williams

2. People of the Dragon

Mark Anthony

3. Quarry

Adam Lesh

4. Glory Descending

Chris Pierson

5. A Lull in the Battle

Linda P. Baker

6. Proper Tribute

Janet Pack

7. Blind

Kevin T. Stein

8. Nature of the Beast

Teri McLaren

9. Even Dragon Blood

J. Robert King

10. Boom

Jeff Grubb

11. Storytellers

Nick O'Donohoe

12. The First Dragonarmy Engineer's Secret Weapon

Don Perrin and Margaret Weis

13. Through the Door at the Top of the Sky

Roger E. Moore

14. Aurora's Eggs

Douglas Niles

Introduction

Margaret Weis

It is storyteller's night at the Inn of the Last Home. Tika began the

institution in order to boost sales during those cold winter nights when

people would much rather stay home near the fire than venture out into the ice

and snow.

They became enormously popular and now, periodically, she and Caramon send

invitations to the most renowned storytellers in Ansalon, offering to pay room

and board if they come share their tales.

This evening, the Inn has a fine collection of bards.

Caramon stands up on a keg of ale to be seen over the crowd, and makes the

introductions.

"First, I'd like to present the old-timers like me," Caramon says. "These

friends date clear back to the time of the War of the Lance. Just raise your

hand when I call your name. Tasslehoff, put your hand down. We have tonight:

Michael Williams, Jeff Grubb, Nick O'Donohoe, Roger Moore, Doug Niles,

Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman ... Where's Tracy?"

Caramon peers out into the crowd. There are shouts of laughter when Hickman is

discovered wearing mouse-colored robes and accusing everyone of stealing his

hat.

After the noise subsides, Caramon resumes. "A few of our bards this evening

are making return appearances. Please raise your hands. No, Tas, that doesn't

include you. I-Wait a minute! What's that you're holding in your hand? That's

tonight's cash box! Tas! Give me that!"

General confusion. Caramon clambers down off the keg.

Tas's shrill voice rises in protest. "I was just keeping it safe, and a good

thing, too! There's a lot of shady-looking characters in this crowd tonight."

"No, that's just Roger!" calls out Michael Williams.

When order (and the cash box) are restored, Caramon introduces the bards who

have told stories here before: Janet Pack, Linda Baker, Mark Anthony, and Don

Perrin.

"Finally," says Caramon, out of breath and red in the face, "I am pleased to

introduce several bards who are newcomers to Ansalon. Everyone please welcome

Adam Lesh, Chris Pierson, and J. Robert King."

The newcomers are warmly welcomed and advised to keep their hands on their

purses.

Caramon bows to thunderous applause and returns to his place behind the bar.

Tika makes a final call for ale.

Come, friend. There's room on this bench next to me. Sit down. Order a mug and

be prepared to laugh and cry, shudder and shiver.

Tonight, our storytellers are going to talk about The Dragons at War.

Dream of the Namer

Michael Williams

The song of the high grass,

the twinned lamps

of the arcing moon,

the whisper of stars

and the darker moon

we must always remember-

these are the guides

on the first of the journeys

to a time past remembrance,

past the words for time

into the Namer's country

where we venture in dreams.

The time of the walking,

the Namers call it:

the time of the breath,

the forgotten time

when the lamps of the moons

wink out in an instant

and we steer by the dark

unforgettable light,

by the lost heartbeat.

It is the dream

of the Namers' time,

the convergence of visions,

when the moon and the wind

the strung bead

and the parables of sand

unite in a story

we do not remember

until we have traveled its country.

On the eve of the wars,

the signs and omens

bright as mirages,

I walked in a dreaming,

through an emptied country

bloodied with iron and sunlight,

and there in the dream

I asked three times

for the voice of the god,

and he came to me quietly,

a shimmer of smoke

at the edge of imagined country,

where the whispered truth rises,

and the words that you dream

are here and suddenly elsewhere.

It is the old voice

felt on the back of the neck,

the thing under reason and thought,

when out of the smoke of your dreaming,

out of the harbor of blood,

out of the ninth moon's drowning,

the dead rise are rising

have risen and speak

in the language of sparrow and drum.

And oh may the gods

believe in my telling,

in the dream I recount,

and may the long dead listen

in the wind-drowned lands

in the dust's generation

as I tell you the seventh

of seven visions,

the song of the dragon's wing.

III

First there was eye,

then night, then immutable north,

then the smell of the springbok

over the launched horizon,

and then I was walking,

over a dying plain

littered with rock

and immaculate bone.

Ahead in a cavern

of dazzled sunlight,

on the sunstruck and burnished

edge of the world,

the dragons, dark jewels,

a flicker of ebony wings,

a frenzy of beetles

feasting on carrion,

and I cannot tell you

in memory's dream,

whether the sight

or the seeing drew me

whether I went

of my own accord

or drawn like a jessed bird

hard to the falconer's will.

But what did it matter

when the dark thing ascended

in an old smell of blood,

of creosote and coal?

I looked to the sun

and I saw them in legion

wingtip to wingtip

in the western skies

and it was for this

I was brought to the summit,

it was for this

that I dreamed the philosopher's dream.

Sunlight under my riding

and an alien heartbeat,

the cold pulse of blood

like the waters' convergence-

on the back of the monster

the sunlight was dreaming to shadows

as the wings passed over

the dying world.

And out of the lifting heartbeat,

out of the drum and shadow,

a voice rose around me,

inveigling, caressing,

a voice indistinct

from my own in my dreams,

a voice indistinct

from the chambered shadows,

from a century's nursing

of venom and fire,

and all of my dreaming

had brought me to this,

had prepared me to ride

on the wings of the darkness,

and the voice of the serpent

I heard in the air

as she spoke to me

saying ... saying ...

Do not believe

this is only beginning,

Oh do not believe

of my dark and interminable legions,

that as long as the heart

is a thicket of knives,

we will not prevail

regardless of knights

and their rumored lances.

I am telling you this

from the heart of the storm,

from the tumult of wings

at the edge of your vision.

Over the miles

of a dozen kingdoms

I hasten toward Huma

toward his forged

and impossible lance,

toward victory, though

the hot abysm of dreams

swells with a voice

that is telling me always

it will end in this age,

in expected convergence

of dragon and darkness,

of the plain appointed

and the point of the lance.

Oh do not expect

there is ever an ending,

for even the sunlight

that closes around me

masks a nation of shadows,

the sigh of the desert

drowns out the wails

of the buried and beaten,

and do not believe

this is changing,

that the endings are happy,

that the cycle of seasons

awaits an eventual spring,

that the sunrise riding

the wake of the darkness

is more than a mutual dream.

Oh do not believe

as I ride into battle,

that the battle is more

than an accident, formed

in the clumsy collision

of sunlight and shadow,

that a morning will pass

in an unending sunlight

without the dark brush of a wing.

And as I arose on the Lady's back,

the wake of her wingbeats

blossomed in darkness,

darkness surrounded me,

darkness expanding

and harvesting light,

and around us a tumult of wings

settled like ashes

in a winter of loss.

So circled the Lady

over plain over sunlight

toward the knight and the lance,

and I clung to the darkness,

to the spiraling chasm

that swallowed my clinging hands

to the scale to the flesh

to a cavernous nothing

that opened beneath and around me,

to a darkness so deep

that the shadows around it

paled to a grayness

a darkness devouring

all color all light

a darkness entangled

expanding contracting

a pulse that I heard

in the walls of my riding veins.

As she flew toward Huma

I fell toward the heart

that was slowly becoming my own,

and there at the source

of stillbirth and scar

of the hunger of knives,

there at the source

of a failed mathematics

in the chambers of knowledge,

where the mind says

this it is this no this

as the damaged world

slips from the net of numbers,

Oh the heart of the Lady

was fractured ice

was iron was fever

the sharp and insistent

hook in the flesh,

was famine pellagra

the tedium of days-

all of it stirring

the waters of darkness,

all of it saying

you are here you are here

you are home.

They tell you a story

of lances and daylight,

the old song of Huma

spreads over the desert of night

like a balm like a blinding

like an old narcosis of dreams.

We remember the lance-wielder

waiting in history,

we remember the story

the thousand contractions

of light and the absence of light,

and it was the dream

of Huma the Lancer

from which we have never awakened.

Oh continue to choose

the bright lance-wielder,

the feigned historical morning

in exchange for the heart

you have veiled in the dreams

that your Namers make idly

and the centuries sing

through a long desolation of night,

as the old heart inhabits

the innermost moon

you must never must always remember.

People of the Dragon

Mark Anthony

When the valefolk uncovered the old grave, they sent for me at once.

The warm winds of spring had rushed into the valley only seven days before,

breaking winter's hard grip on the mountainous lands of Southern Ergoth. As

always, I was thankful for the change of seasons. Though cool and even

pleasant in summertime, the cave in which I had dwelled these last years was

during the dark months a tomb from which no fire-be it mundane or

magical-could fully drive the bitter chill. However, winter had finally fled,

and I had cast back the leather curtain that hung across the narrow mouth of

the cave, letting light and air stream inside to dispel the dank darkness

within.

The cave was small, no more than five paces across and thrice that number

deep. Despite this, it served me well enough. The floor was dry and sandy, and

there was more than adequate room for my scant possessions: a cot of bent

willow supporting a pallet woven of rushes, a rack for drying herbs, and a

shelf to hold wax-sealed clay pots filled with oil, salted fish, and wrinkled

olives. A small fire burned in a brazier in the center of the cave, while

coils of smoke sought an escape through unseen cracks in the ceiling above.

Sitting on a threadbare rug beside the brazier, I examined a tiny mole

skeleton that I had affixed to a piece of bark with pine sap. By nature I am a

man of learning, and I have always been particularly fascinated with the way

in which living creatures are put together. I always found that each animal I

examined possessed features perfectly designed for its manner of survival.

The mole was no different. Its almost fantastically convoluted arm bone

allowed attachment for the powerful muscles used in digging, and its sharp,

pointed teeth were well suited to piercing the shells of beetles, which were

its primary food. I dipped a feather pen into a pot of ink made from

nightshade berries. Then, on a piece of stretched sheepskin, I carefully drew

the mole's skeleton, noting interesting features as I went.

A shadow fell across the doorway.

I looked up in surprise. A thin silhouette stood in the mouth of the cave. The

dark figure froze at my sudden movement, then turned to run.

"Wait!" I called out.

The silhouette halted but did not step any nearer. Setting down my pen, I

stood and approached the door. As I stepped across the stony threshold from

dimness to daylight, I saw my mysterious visitor fully: a boy, no more than

twelve winters. He was clad in loose clothes of rough cloth, and he shifted

nervously back and forth on his bare feet.

It was not uncommon for the valefolk to come to me. From time to time, one of

them trod the winding footpath that led from the ramshackle village below, up

through the grove of silver-green aspen trees, to my cave. Usually they came

seeking salve for a cut that had turned septic, or herbs to ease a toothache,

or a tea to help a barren woman conceive. To the valefolk, I was simply a

hermit, a wise man who had shunned the outside world, and had come to the

mountains to conduct his studies in solitude. Mad, perhaps, but not dangerous.

Of course, if they ever learned my true nature, the valefolk would certainly

turn on me and burn me alive in my cave.

It had been five years since I fled the destruction of the Tower of High

Sorcery at Daltigoth. Sometimes I still dreamed about the flames.

The mob had come sooner than any of us had thought. The Kingpriest had decreed

all mages to be anathema, workers of evil, and magic itself to be heresy. But

Istar was nearly a continent away. Daltigoth was on the western fringe of the

Empire. We had thought we had time- time to finish our work in progress, to

carefully pack away our books and journals, to travel to secret havens where

we might resume our magical studies in peace.

We were wrong.

The edict of the Kingpriest had traveled across the face of the land like

wildfire, ignited by fear, fueled by hate, sending up thick clouds of

ignorance like dark smoke in its wake. When the throng surged through the

streets of Daltigoth toward the Tower, brandishing torches and gleaming

weapons, we did not fight back. To do so would have only damned our kind

further in their eyes. Instead, we let them stream through the open gates to

set ablaze centuries of knowledge and cast down our shining Tower in rum.

I had been one of the lucky ones. I had escaped in the confusion with only

small injuries, and had fled south from the city, into the mountains, to this

remote valley where none knew the look of a wizard. Sometimes I wondered how

many of my brothers and sisters had escaped the destruction of the Tower. If

any had, they would have hardly recognized me now. Once I had been Torvin,

Mage of the White Robe, a bold and dashing young wizard. These days I was

simply Torvin the Hermit. I wore only drab brown, and had let my dark hair and

beard grow long. I was still tall, but living as I did had left me thin,

almost gaunt.

In all, I quite looked the part of a recluse. And to that, I owed my life. The

valefolk were loyal and fearful subjects of the Empire. If ever they

discovered that I was no mere hermit, but a worker of magic, they would brand

me a heretic. And there is but one punishment for heresy-fire. It was not an

easy life, always concealing the power that dwelled within me, denying who and

what I was. Sometimes I wished that I could fly away on wings of magic, and

escape the fear, hatred and ignorance forever. But until then, it was better

to dissemble than to die.

Before me, the vale boy chewed his lip, his eyes wide with fright. I offered

him my most reassuring smile. "Don't worry," I said in a gentle tone. "Hermits

don't bite. That is, unless they're terribly hungry. However, you're lucky,

for I've just eaten. There's still some soup in the pot. Would you like some?"

The boy stared at me as if I had just offered him a bowl of poison spiders. He

swallowed hard, then finally managed to find his words, speaking in an urgent

voice.

"My father sent me to fetch you. They've found bones. In the field, while

plowing."

I raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "Bones?"

The boy nodded vigorously. "They found this with them. And more things like

it."

He held out a small object, being careful not to let me touch him as I took

the thing from his dirty hand. I turned the object over in my fingers, my

excitement growing. It was a knife of stone.

The artifact had been fashioned from a piece of smooth brown chert. Flakes had

been expertly chipped away from one side to yield a sharp cutting edge, while

the other side was blunt and rounded to provide a grip. The knife fit easily,

comfortably, into my palm. I knew at once that the last time it knew the touch

of a human hand had been thousands of years ago.

It was not the first stone artifact I had examined that had been retrieved by

accident from long burial beneath the soil of time. Many believed that such

things were created by goblins or trolls, but that was not so. The makers of

the stone knives and obsidian arrowheads and copper axes were not goblins.

They were people. People who had lived a long time ago, before cities were

raised, before horses were tamed, and before the secrets of working gold and

iron were stolen from the dwarves. I know, for I have used the things they

left behind to see through their ancient eyes.

"We were afraid to keep plowing," the boy went on, growing bolder now.

"Scaldirk claimed it was an ill omen. My father said to come fetch you, that

you could say what the bones were, and appease the spirits in them."

I knew nothing of the craft of appeasing spirits, but I did not tell the boy

that. I clutched the stone knife tightly in my hand. "Take me to where this

was found."

The boy nodded and turned to pad swiftly down the narrow footpath. I hurried

after him. My cave was situated at the foot of the ridge that bounded the

north side of the valley. In the center lay the rushing river near which most

of the people dwelled, in stone houses with sod roofs. To the south, the

valley narrowed, rising steeply in a defile that plunged deeper into the blue

mountains. It was a pass-a way into the mountains- though one that was never

tread, as far as I knew.

The defile climbed past countless massive shoulders of rock, making its way

toward white-crowned peaks that hovered like sharp clouds in the far distance.

Though all must be dizzyingly high, one summit soared above the others: a

great horned peak that seemed to rake the sky. "Dragonmount" the valefolk

called it, after the horned summit. Or, at least, so I always supposed.

I followed the boy across open heath and patches of scree. At last we crested

a low rise, and I saw the knot of valefolk. They stood in the center of a

fallow field, clad in grimy garb of brown and gray, gazing at the ground.

Gathering my robe up around my ankles, I approached across the muddy ground.

White shapes protruded from the dark, freshly turned earth. I knelt in the

broken soil, my breath fogging in the moist air. With growing excitement, I

examined what the plow had uncovered. Carefully I brushed away bits of dirt,

my wonder growing at the ancient objects before me.

It was a grave.

Looking carefully, I found I could see a faint line where the color of the

soil changed, marking the edge of the burial pit that had been dug and filled

in again so long ago. The skeleton was largely intact, save the legs, which

had been disturbed by the plow. By the shape of the hip bones, the lack of

brow ridges on the skull, and the smallness of the bony protuberance behind

the hole of the ear, I knew this was a woman.

However, the caps on the ends of her arm bones looked only barely fused to the

shafts, and her wisdom teeth, though erupted, were barely worn down. It was

the skeleton of a young woman then, perhaps twenty when she died, no more.

They had curled her body, knees to chin, like a child in the womb, returning

her to the embrace of the world that had given her birth. Rusty red stained

the soil, remnants of the ocher with which they had colored her skin.

By the grave goods, I knew that she had been a princess of some sort. Beads of

jade and carved bone in the soil around her neck bespoke a necklace, though

the strand that had bound it together had rotted away centuries ago. Copper

rings still encircled her fingers, and an ivory cup lay next to her, along

with a comb fashioned from antler. Such riches would have accompanied only an

important woman into the afterlife. I imagined she had been a chief's

daughter. Though more careful examination of the artifacts would be required

before I could be more certain, my guess was that she had been laid to rest

over two thousand years ago by a forgotten people who had dwelled in this

valley long before the valefolk.

My concentration was broken as one of the men spoke. By the similarity of

their smudged faces, I took him for the father of the boy who had been sent to

fetch me.

"What think you, Torvin?" the man asked. Fear shone in his small, dark eyes.

"I have never seen things such as these. Is it an elf?"

One of the other men, a squat fellow with bowed legs, let out a brash laugh.

"Bah! There aren't no such things as elves, Merrit." But his laughter fell

short on the cool air, and the others looked around nervously, making the sign

against evil with their fingers.

I did not tell them that there were indeed elves. I had never been so lucky as

to see one myself, or to travel to their secret forest cities. But I had

learned something of elves in my studies, enough to know that they would never

fashion such crude artifacts as these. Gold they worked, and crystal, not bone

and chert.

I told the gathered valefolk that there was nothing to fear, that this was

simply a grave, and that the bones within had belonged to a person no

different than us. If her possessions seemed strange, it was only because she

had lived so very long ago. My words seemed to reassure them somewhat. I

instructed several of the men in the manner in which the bones and artifacts

were to be removed, and explained I would bury them myself in a secret place,

where the woman's spirit would disturb no one.

I did not tell them that I intended to study her first. They would not have

understood my scholarly goals, and would have feared my interest in the dead.

As the men labored, I moved a short distance away. I sat upon an old stump and

watched, to make certain they did not work too carelessly. That was when I saw

it. An arc of stone protruded from the freshly turned soil near my feet, far

too smooth and regular to be natural. I dug my fingers into the soil and

pulled, freeing the object. Brushing off the heavy stone, I examined it in my

hands.

The stone had been carefully ground into a half moon shape. One end was broad

and notched, and could have easily been bound to a wooden haft with sinew or

twine. The other end came to a point, like the end of a dwarven pick-axe. I

had seen such artifacts before. It was an adze. No doubt this was the tool

with which the grave had been dug.

A sudden impulse came upon me. It was dangerous. I knew I should wait until I

was safely in my cave where none could possibly see me, but that would mean

waiting hours. Besides, the valefolk were busy with their work, and were

paying me no attention now. They would not notice. I wanted to know who the

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摘要：

THEDRAGONSATWAREditedbyMargaretWeisandTracyHickman(c)1996TSR,Inc.AllRightsReserved.OCR'edbyAlligatorcroc@aha.ruTABLEOFCONTENTS1.DreamoftheNamerMichaelWilliams2.PeopleoftheDragonMarkAnthony3.QuarryAdamLesh4.GloryDescendingChrisPierson5.ALullintheBattleLindaP.Baker6.ProperTributeJanetPack7.BlindKevinT...

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Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman - The Dragons At War

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