And waking dragons, Blood Gem echoed, sighing as though he yet recalled his long sleep and sudden waking. Now we are here. We are hungry to fight in her cause, Highlord, and we yearn to taste elf blood.

Phair Caron spoke aloud, her words carried upon the wind of their flight. "Soon enough. Soon enough you'll have what you want." She laughed, suddenly and sharply. "But elf blood is a pale drink, my friend. Watery and weak." She pointed downward to where the Thon-Thalas widened and the lights of Silvanost could be seen in the distance. "These elves have no use for any god but their puling gods of Good, Paladine-E'li, as they call him-and his weakling lot. They'll all be on their knees to us before the moons go dark."

And it would be, Blood Gem knew, like sweet wine on the Dark Lady's lips to see those Silvanesti elves bow the neck to her highlord, to be forced to tear down their pale temples to weak gods and use their vaunted skills to erect shrines to the dark gods. Morgion of the Black Wind would spread disease through their ranks. Hiddukel would turn all their feeble truths to lies. At last Takhisis herself, Her Dark Majesty, would rule in that land where her followers had for so long been forbidden to enter.

The dragon climbed higher and turned north toward the borders of the Silvanesti. Behind, in the southern foothills of the Khalkist Mountains, the bulk of Her Dark Majesty's army waited, thousands of soldiers, humans, ogres, goblins, and- Blood Gem made a sound of disgust-and draconians, the misbred dragonmen, spawn of an evil magic-making that corrupted the eggs of dragons. These were Takhisis's fiercest fighters. All the army waited impatiently to fall upon this forested land of wealth and beauty that for centuries had been denied to everyone but the Silvanesti themselves. High in the peaks of those foothills, a strong wing of red dragons brooded, impatient to take to the sky and, with their riders, lead that dark army into battle.

It will be a glorious battle, the dragon mused, his thought matching his rider's.

Phair laughed, the sound wind-torn from her throat and flung out to the hard blue sky. "It will be, and we will soak the forest with elf blood!"

Soon?

The highlord said nothing, but Blood Gem knew her, deeply as dragons know their riders. She had laid her plans in the winter, and those plans called for an army so strong that the elf defenders would crumble before it. A blood-lusty soldier, she was also a canny strategist. She would not commit her army until she was certain her numbers would overwhelm the elves. More soldiers were coming down from Goodlund and across the Bay of Balifor. Once these arrived, she would be ready. Until then, she would play as a cat played with a mouse-cruel games to amuse herself. Phair Caron despised elves, and of all elves, she despised Silvanesti most. If anyone needed a picture of that hatred's birth, Blood Gem knew the perfect one.

A near-grown girl shivered in the shabby winter streets of Tarsis, her rags clutched around thin shoulders, the bones of her face too clearly defined by hunger-carved flesh. In glittering gold, a party of Silvanesti walked past, holding the hems of their robes high out of the running gutter. One turned and saw Phair, the child whose face looked more like a skull than not. With one hand the elf drew aside the hem of his robe, the silk and the brocade all glimmering with jewels. With the other he covered his mouth and nose as one of his companions tossed a copper coin at Phair. The coin fell into the gutter, landing in a pool of muck.

Phair scrambled for it, never minding that she had to scrape through mud and worse to find it. Here was a week's worth of food! Enough to keep her sister out of the brothels where most of the gutter-girls went to earn their bread. Phair had served there herself at need, but never would she let her sister do that. Never. When she looked up, a word of thanks on her lips, she saw only the backs of the elves and heard one say, "Filthy gutter wretch. Why did you do that, Dalyn? The creature is no concern of ours."

"None," his companion had agreed. "But that will keep it from following."

But the gutter creature had followed, Blood Gem thought as he soared over the Sylvan Land. She followed those elves right home, didn't she? It took her a while of years, but she did. And now, a highlord in the army of the goddess elves most hate, Phair Caron had a kind of thanks to offer for their treatment of her, that thanks too long deferred.

Blood Gem banked and turned, soaring away north again. When he came within sight of the Khalkists and the northern border of the Sylvan Land where the trees were not so thick, he felt the uplifting currents of hot air. Three villages were afire, the acrid fumes of terror and dying wafted up to the sky. All around the smoking ruins, bodies lay, most looking like they'd been nailed there. Some had been- nailed by spears and ashwood lances. They looked like insects pinned to a display board. An impatient detachment of the dragonarmy had broken through the burning barrier into the stony area beyond where those three villages had lain. The dragonmen weren't going unmet, for even as they ran raging into a fourth village downriver, elves met them with bows and steel.

Phair Caron laughed again, and again the sound of it was torn from her lips. "Look there! Defenders. Now, that won't do, will it?"

It would not. With startling speed, the red dragon dropped down from the sky, bursting out of the bitter blue sky right over the battle. On the ground, the elves looked up, their faces pale ovals. One, a bold fool, lifted his bow and drew to launch an arrow. Blood Gem roared, the sound so loud the air trembled, the earth itself shook. Screams, like the thin whine of gnats, came up from the battleground. The elf who fancied himself a fortunate archer fell to his knees, terrified. His bow, like a little stick of tinder, fell to the ground.

Tinder, Blood Gem thought. Ah…

He thrust hard with his mighty wings, gaining the heights again, and turned round over the village. Nothing was afire there, not house, not barn, and certainly not the crowding aspenwood. This wasn't good. On the ground, a phalanx of draconians charged into the midst of the defenders, maces whistling, their ghastly voices like the screaming of stones. From so high up, Blood Gem saw the blood gleaming on the terrible points of the maces, though he did not smell it. Just as well, just as well. Had he smelled the blood he'd have been able to smell the misbegotten dragonmen too. He banked and turned. Upon his back, Phair Caron shouted a wild battle cry.

Roaring, Blood Gem dropped low over the aspens as the draconians drove the elves into the darkness of the forest. Behind, a house burst into flames, the fire kindled by a flaring torch in a draconian fist. Inside a woman screamed, a child wailed, their cries damped by the whoosh and roar of the roof catching. The sweet stench of burning flesh drifted upon black smoke.

"A pretty little fire!" Phair Caron shouted. "But we can do better!"

Blood Gem filled up his lungs with air and, as though those lungs were a bellows, he pushed air out past the place in his throat where dragonfire lived. Death's own banner, flames poured from between his fanged jaws. Flames touched the tops of the aspens, and Blood Gem flew past those, firing the trees beyond and to either side. Elf voices shouted in terror. Men, women, and children were herded into a deadly trap, bounded on three sides by fire and on the other by creatures from nightmare, winged draconians whose reptilian eyes held no warmth, whose powerful tails could break the bones of a foe with one swipe. The least of the tribes of dragonmen, these were the Baaz, and they loved nothing better than killing. Some, it was said, did feast on their kills.

"Now take us back," the highlord shouted. "This has been diverting, but I have work yet to do before the night is over."