Chapter 4

Feystalen was short for an elf, a relief to Ayshe, who was tired of looking up at Harfang. Also unlike the first mate, he seemed friendlier and less inclined to look on Ayshe as an intruder. He patiently answered the dwarf’s questions, showed him about the rest of the ship, and offered advice as to which food to eat and which to avoid in the ship’s mess.

At the conclusion of their tour, they returned to the forge, where Ayshe set about acquainting himself with his new tools, reorganizing them so they would be ready to hand as he was accustomed. Feystalen sat silently watching him.

Ayshe made bold enough to ask the question that had been most troubling him. “What’s the point of it all?”

Feystalen fumbled in his pockets and came up with a slender pipe, similar to that which the dwarf had seen in the hands of the other elf. He drew out a worn pouch, carefully filled the pipe, lit it with a spark from a tinderbox, and breathed out a long feather of smoke. Ayshe waited patiently.

“What I tell you,” the elf said at last, “stays aboard the ship. None but the crew and Captain Tashara know the truth.” He looked sternly at the dwarf. “Were you to disclose it to anyone else, your life would be forfeit.”

Ayshe said nothing, which the elf took as a sign of assent.

“Have you ever heard of… Dragonsbane?”

Ayshe shook his head. “Never. What is it?”

“I’m not surprised. It’s one of the best-kept secrets on Krynn, and there are few now alive who remember its history. Its beginnings lie nearly a millennium and a half in the past, during the Third Dragon War. In that war, evil dragons attacked Ansalon. When they bent their attacks toward the Kingdom of Solamnia, the representatives of the Orders of Sorcery—Red Robes, White Robes, and Black Robes—met at the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas. There they created five dragon orbs to guard against the onslaught. This also was the age of Huma Dragonsbane, forger of the first dragonlances.”

He paused and looked at Ayshe. “You. know nothing of this history?”

The dwarf grunted. “A bit. The name Huma has reached my ears, and I suppose I may have learned of the dragon orbs at some time past. What does that have to do with this ship, though? Something to do with Huma? All the events you’re speaking of were a long age in the past.”

“No, not Huma exactly, though we revere his name. During the war, the elves formed a secret organization to fight the dragons. We put little trust in the deeds of men and of other races; they are short-lived and easily forget the danger to this world. So this organization of elves met in secret and kept their order hidden. The dragons they killed were often slain in such a way as to make their deaths appear as accidents, and no one knew behind these deaths was a band, cold as ice, hard as steel, sworn to one another and to the death of the dragons.

“None knew, I say, but the elves who belonged. The band called itself Dragonsbane—out of admiration for Huma and his sacrifice, perhaps; who, now, can tell?”

Ayshe nodded. “Aye. So what happened to them? If I recall, the Queen of Darkness-was defeated by Huma and left Krynn, taking her dragons with her. What did. these elf heroes of yours do when there were no more dragons left to fight?”

“When the dragons left,” Feystalen continued, drawing on his pipe, “the elves knew they would someday return. Human memory, as I say, is short, but elves bear the wisdom of the long lived, and they know each day, each month, each year is only a fleeting moment in the great cycle of birth and death.” He paused for a moment, seeming very sad, then went on.

I “Dragonsbane remained. Father passed the knowledge of it to son—and often enough to daughter, for the warriors of Dragonsbane made no distinction in terms of sex.

“And then, more than a thousand years later, when the War of the Lance swept over the land, Dragonsbane once again arose.”

Feystalen put down his pipe, his eyes distant. “I was one,” he said, speaking no longer to Ayshe. “I answered the call. My father and his father and his father’s father had kept the secret. But it was I who was chosen to serve.” He turned back to the dwarf, who sat looking at him, open mouthed with awe.

“We tracked many dragons in those days. Some we slew, always careful to preserve our secrecy. Some others we merely tracked and marked down for future death.” He fell silent again.

“And when the war ended?” Ayshe prompted.

Feystalen shrugged. “The war ended.” He looked at the dwarf with a half smile. “Hard it is when you’ve done heroic deeds, even in the shadows, to return to an ordinary life. One’s hand longs for the sword or bowstring; one’s heart aches for the thrill of battle.”

Ayshe said nothing. A weight settled in the pit of his stomach as he thought about Feystalen’s words.

What does it take to make a hero? Chance and will.

What does it take to make a coward? Chance and fear.

The elf watched his companion’s face attentively but said nothing. Ayshe resumed his reorganization of his tools. “But the dragons came back,” he said. “Or rather, different dragons. The overlords came after the Chaos War. What then?”

Feystalen looked sad again. “We fought them,” he said slowly. “We did fight them, but they were too big and we were too few. Many elves fell in secret struggle, and none but us marked their resting places.” He relit his pipe. “Dragonsbane is now but a shadow of its former self. Our numbers are reduced, our warriors slain or grown old. Many had no children to whom they could pass their legacy. We”—he spread his hands, indicating the Starfinder and its crew—“are almost all that is left. The mighty band of Dragonsbane elves.”

“Nay,” growled Ayshe. “Now with a dwarf. And a man. What about Harfang? Where did he come from?”

“Harfang hails from Solamnia,” the elf told him. “From Solanthus, I believe. Captain Tashara met him in Palanthas. We’d put ashore there to water and replenish our stores. The captain came aboard with a young lad in tow. He was dirty-faced and foulmouthed, but the captain insisted we keep him as cabin boy. She said she’d found him starving on the streets and he didn’t know who his mother and father were. He’d wandered the roads from Solanthus until he came to Palanthas. There he might have fallen in with some gang of cutthroats if the captain hadn’t rescued him.

“We undertook the training of him, and for a year we wrestled with him. He fought every man and woman aboard, save the captain, but when he was beat and knocked down—and he always was, at first—he’d get back up without complaining. He’d sit in silence on the deck, and you could see him thinking out what he’d learned and how he was going to defeat his foe the next time.”

“And he did?”

“And he did!” Feystalen acknowledged. “After a while we began to see what the captain had seen in the lad. That was twenty years past. Harfang rose through the ranks. Today he’s Captain Tashara’s right hand. Nothing happens on this ship without his word. The captain sits in her cabin most of the time, so Harfang’s the real master of the Starfinder.

“And the mage? Chap with the long hair?”

Feystalen nodded. “If Harfang sits on the captain’s right, Malshaunt is ever on her left. He is her oldest servant. He was with her before any of the rest of us knew her, and he knows more of her mind than any aboard the ship.”

“Good with magic is he? In a fight?”

Feystalen smiled. “Oh, I think? you need have no doubts upon that score, Master Dwarf.”

Ayshe, having finished rearranging his tools to his satisfaction, inspected a series of shelves set on the wall of the hull. He turned to Feystalen. “What’s all this?”

The elf eased himself up to stand at the dwarf’s shoulder.

“In all our time fighting dragons, we’ve accumulated some specialized equipment.”

Ayshe reached onto one shelf and picked up a long spear. The end, sharply pointed, included a barb and was razor sharp. At the other end of the haft, which was made of steel and not of wood, a strong metal ring was fused. In fact, the dwarf saw, the entire spear was made of a single piece of metal, so worked that no part seemed weaker than another.

The dwarf handled it carefully, noting with admiration the intricate designs that had been worked along the shaft where two intertwined serpents mingled their forked tongues. The blade itself was slim but strong. The entire weapon was astonishingly light, unlike the heavy iron-headed spears Chaval and Ayshe had forged for the villagers.

“What is it?” asked the dwarf. “A dragonlance?”

Feystalen shook his head. “Alas, no. There are so few dragonlances—even less after the War of Souls and the reign of the overlords. We’ve never obtained one, despite long years of searching. It’s said the warriors of Dragonsbane made use of one long years ago in the slaying of a great red, but none of us know now what became of it.” He took the spear from Ayshe, spinning it in his hands, handling it with the easy familiarity of one long accustomed to such weapons.

“This is a wyrmbarb. The warrior throws it at his prey and secures a chain fastened to this ring at the end. If several do this, it impedes the dragon’s movements, giving others of the band the opportunity for a strike.”

Ayshe looked in awe at the spear. “It must be a frightful thing to have a dragon at the end of that.”

Feystalen nodded. “Aye, that it is. We have several folk among us, though, who are skilled in the art.”

The dwarf nodded. “Very well, but where do you strike a dragon that is vulnerable? I’ve never seen one—or hadn’t until a few days ago—but I understand their scales to be hard as iron.”

“You understand rightly,” the elf replied, replacing the weapon on the shelf. “But a dragon has its points of weakness.” He tapped his neck. “Here and”—he motioned beneath his arm—“here are where you must strike if you wish to penetrate its flesh. Elsewhere, bladed weapons are useless.” He gave the dwarf a keen glance. “Also, you must avoid its breath weapon.”

“Its what?”

“Each dragon kind,” Feystalen explained, “has a weapon particular to its color. The black spits acid from its jaws, the green, corrosive gas. The blue vomits forth lightning on its foes. The white sends a blast of killing cold. And the red… the red breathes fire and destruction.” His gaze turned inward. “I saw Malystryx, the great red bitch, once,” he murmured, “before she was killed by Mina of hateful memory. I should have liked to have taken her head in trophy.”

Ayshe was silent a moment then said, “The dragon that attacked my village seemed white or gray and breathed freezing cold. But it seemed also as if it could summon electricity from the clouds.”

Feystalen nodded. “Yes. Now we come to it. This is no ordinary dragon we seek now. It is a storm dragon. Perhaps it’s the only storm dragon in existence—in which case the people of Krynn should thank the gods for their mercy! Born of some great cataclysm of the skies, this wyrm can command the heavens. It moves through clouds and can cause them to appear or vanish. It brings fire and ice in its wake. I’ve seen it only once, but that was enough. Perhaps that’s why the captain took you aboard the Starfinder so you might serve as a guide to us in our battle with the White Wyrm.”

“You say you saw it once. What happened then?” Ayshe asked.

Feystalen became occupied with filling his pipe. Ayshe waited for an answer, but none was forthcoming, so he tried another question.

“How long have you been chasing it?”

The elf breathed in the fragrant smoke. “A long time. Aye, a long time indeed.” He closed his eyes and pondered.

“It was in the last year of the War of the Lance,” he said finally. “We were on foot then, a band of forty companions. We heard a strange tale of a white dragon laying waste up and down the coast of Nordmaar. We traveled there, eager to do battle, but we found nothing but destruction. Wrecked villages and dead bodies were strewn along the coast, but the dragon had vanished.

“Then, when we were prepared to give up the chase, since plainly the dragon was no longer in the area, some among us began to cry out, looking out to sea where the mist rose in the morning. From out of the white fog, a ship came, looking like a vessel of the dead. We could see no one aboard it, and its black sails caught just enough wind to move it within hail of the shore.

“From the foredeck, a voice called to us—the voice of Captain Tashara. She bade us come aboard. She seemed to know all about us and about Dragonsbane. We took a few boats that survived from the ruins of the village and rowed out to the ship. When we climbed aboard, we found Tashara and the mage Malshaunt were the only crew aboard. None among us could imagine how these two—one blind, the other slight of build—could manage sailing such a ship between them. Tashara told us her name and that her craft was the Starfinder; but not a word would she speak of where she came from or how she and Malshaunt had sailed to us. Nor would she tell us how they had found us or how they knew of us. She told us only that they also were Dragonsbane» and that they sought the Great White Wyrm, so she called it.”

His pipe had gone out, so intent was he on his tale. Listening to him, Ayshe had the sense of a story prepared for telling to children and grandchildren yet to come, almost a song rather than spoken words. The elf relit his pipe and continued.

“What could we do? We were Dragonsbane, pledged to seek out the beasts wherever they might be found. Tashara, too, was Dragonsbane, and she called herself captain of the Starfinder. So we gladly became her crew and set sail. A week or two later, we heard of an attack to the south at Sargonath in Kern. We traveled to the land of the ogres, but once again the beast had vanished before we arrived.

“One thing we determined: the dragon appears only near the sea. Most often it seems to come in summer and early fall. It came and went over the years, and we gave chase. Sometimes we nearly caught it. At other times we were half a continent away. But over all that time, we sailed the seas of Krynn, searching, always searching for it.

“Always we found the same tale. Always buildings smashed, temples crushed, people slaughtered. At times, rumor of the wyrm ceased altogether, and for a few years we almost believed it had vanished, but Tashara never doubted there would be a reckoning. And always the White Wyrm reappeared, and the chase resumed.”

“So the dragon never strikes inland.”

“Never. There is something about water that attracts it. It carries out its depredations along the coasts-of Ansalon. Three decades ago, it was, we caught up to it.”

The dwarf waited, but Feystalen’s pipe was clamped firmly in his lips.

To break the silence before it grew awkward, the dwarf rummaged on another shelf, one containing pieces of armor. Other bits and pieces of plate mail and chain mail hung from hooks on the hull or stood awkwardly against one another, as if they might at any moment be cast over by the motion of the ship. Ayshe’s experienced eye roved over them, noting minor spots of rust to be rubbed away, a joint weak and in need of repair, a few links of broken chain. Feystalen watched him, saying nothing.

A clatter sounded from the top of the ladder, and the crew began to descend. From somewhere above, Ayshe heard a bell tapped.

The elves gathered around the newcomer. Ayshe’s experience with the race having been limited, he was somewhat surprised to see how different they were from one another, though he would have been insulted had anyone made a similar observation about dwarves.

None were as tall as Harfang. Some were fair-skinned with light brown hair. Others, darker and shorter, had hair of a deeper, richer brown.

Ayshe, average in size for a dwarf, stood about four feet and some inches to spare, and he discovered he was not much shorter—perhaps a foot—than the tallest of the elves.

Most striking among them were two who resembled each other so closely in face and form that Ayshe guessed they were brother and sister. They were barely taller than Ayshe and, while the other elves were clothed in flowing costumes with loose sleeves and pants that allowed the greatest ease in moving about the ship, these two wore close-fitting leather gear, fringed and feathered.

It was their faces and arms, bared to the shoulders, that most attracted the dwarf’s attention. Almost every inch of exposed skin was elaborately tattooed with intricate designs. The dwarf detected similarities between the motifs that adorned their skin and those that appeared on the haft of the wyrmbarb he had handled earlier. The elves’ tattoos extended to their faces as well, and their bright eyes seemed sunk in a whirling maze of colors and shapes.

The elves examined Ayshe closely, like dogs sniffing a new member of the pack. None spoke for a time. Feystalen faded silently into the background, as if waiting for a sign, while the elves and the dwarf circled round, waiting for someone to speak.