Dark Thane

"It's a dragon scale!" the Klar captain said as he struggled up the slope, dragging it behind him.

"It can't be," Tarn said. "It's too big." Even as he said it, he knew that he was wrong. It was, indeed, an enormous dragon's scale, many times larger than the scale of any dragon native to Krynn. Tarn had only seen a few loose dragon scales in his life, but none were anything like this one.

The captain clambered up next to him and flung the thing on the ground. Tarn knelt and ran his hand along the rough, cracked edge, feeling the stonelike texture.

"It must have come from her!" Mog hissed. He flipped it over, revealing the pink underside. A ragged bit of bloodless flesh clung to the upper flattened edge of the scale. Mog drew a dagger from his boot and sliced off a piece of the stringy, waterlogged flesh. He held it up to his nose then tested it with his teeth. He turned and spat.

"Dragonflesh!"

A hissed warning sounded from the trees. Looking up, Tarn saw one of the guards pointing across the lake. He crouched lower, peering through the haze rising off the horror-filled water. Something had crept out of the forest on the far side and stood at the water's edge. Something else joined it. The two began to creep along the shore, bending low as though sniffing the ground. Batlike wings rose from their backs, and long tails snaked behind them.

"Draconians," Tarn said.

"Looks like someone survived after all. Probably looking for something to eat," Mog growled then shuddered at the thought of the scavengers' banquet floating in the lake. "We should leave."

Tarn gazed around at the woods, the hills, the broken crystal spires rising from the lake. He was reluctant to depart without first discovering the fate of his army. Maybe some dwarves had survived. He couldn't allow himself to believe that everyone had perished. If any did survive, they would head for the dwarves' nearest stronghold, the fortress straddling the pass between the elven and dwarven lands.

"To Pax Tharkas, then," he said.

Mog nodded. As Tarn scurried back to the relative safety of the trees, Mog heaved the huge dragon scale onto his back. Staggering for a moment to balance its weight, he followed his companions up the slope into the wooded hills.

Tarn paused to wait for him at the edge of the trees. "Are you going to carry that all the way back to Thorbardin?" he asked grimly.

Mog nodded under his burden. "This is proof of Beryl's death," he said.

"You don't know that," Tarn said. "We can't assume anything."

"I'll make a shield out of it, then," Mog grunted as he started off, pushing his way through the forest undergrowth. "Dragonscale armor is worth its weight in steel."

"Reorx knows, we paid enough for that one," Tarn muttered into his beard as he stared back at the lake. More bodies than he could count filled the water as far as he could see.

3

Crystal Heathstone paused and set aside her hammer, pushed down the leather mask protecting her face from the heat, and dragged the heavy leather gloves from her hands. Behind her, red coals pulsed and waned from the air pushed by a bellows pumped by a young male dwarf of her household. He leaned over to check the quality of her work then shook his head ruefully. He let the bellows fall, exhaling a last gasp into the forge coals.

She flung her gloves on the floor. "My forge skills never were much to brag about," she said, "but no one here in Thorbardin knows how to make a decent pair of shears. I promised Aunt Needlebone I'd make her some shears, but these will never work." She dragged a battered pair of tongs out of a barrel and lifted the still glowing but hopelessly warped shears from the anvil.

"This is pathetic," she said laughing as she plopped them steaming into a bucket of water. "How many is that I've ruined, Haruk?"

The apprentice thoughtfully stroked his wispy blond beard. "Eleven? Or is it twelve? I forget, Mistress. Why don't you just send me to the Hylar market to buy a pair?"

Crystal untied her leather apron and folded it lovingly before stowing it in a wooden chest. "Everything there is made for cutting leather, heavy wool, or mushroom fiber. Auntie needs something with a finer edge for delicate work. As she says, 'leave it to a mountain dwarf to chop wood with a battle-axe.' "

"What sort of delicate work?" Haruk asked. He shut the cover on the portable forge Crystal had set up, then he screwed down the damper to cool the fire within. The chamber grew dark, lit only by a single candle burning on a side table.

"Just some frilly things she wants to finish," Crystal answered quickly as she bent over and fished the cooled shears from the cooling bucket. She flung them onto a heap of scrap metal. "You know the kind of things she wears. It's not important. Her heavy shears will have to suffice until my forge skills improve."