The wooden skis rasped across the snow, barely marking tbe icy crust. Kagonos worked his way between frosted pines, carefully remaining below the knifelike crest of the high ridge. On the sunny northern slope the surface already grew soft and slushy, threatening a deadly avalanche, but here on the southern face the snow remained hard, crisp.

The lean, sinewy wild elf skied with steady urgency. Despite the chilly air, Kagonos wore only a pair of leather keepings and a buckskin vest. At his side he carried the tfcree-spiraled Rams Horn, suspended by a sturdy thong. Sfcsfr moccasins, lined with fur, protected his feet. Currently devoid of warpaint, Kagonos's skin was a rippling surface of gleaming, almost metallic bronze, shiny with a sheen of sweat and oil. His black hair fell in a long, thick coil down his back, wrapped into a single braid with a feathered thong.

Hissing softly, the skis glided down the incline into a deep, wide ravine. With a leaping turn at the bottom, the wild elf aided his momentum with plunging stabs of his poles, smoothly coasting halfway up the opposite slope. Kicking hard, still poling, he pushed himself quickly through the last, steep stretch.

Beyond the ravine, the wild elf picked up speed. Climbing gradually, he remained near the summit of the ridge, skimming over the snow with the combined force of his kicking feet and steadily poling arms. When he reached a clump of rocks that had been blown free of snow by the steady wind, Kagonos paused. He kicked off his skis and dropped to his belly, ignoring the icy surface against his naked arms. Crawling slowly, he worked his way between the boulders, carefully raising his head just high enough to see into the broad valley beyond.

His caution may have been extreme-the nearest ogres were at least a dozen miles away. Still, there was no other way Kagonos could have approached this lofty horizon. To the wild elf, there was no such thing as "unnecessary" caution, for once one became used to taking chances, discovery and disaster were inevitable.

His hazel eyes flashed at the sight of the huge army sprawling across the plain in an irregular column. For many days the Dark Queen's horde had followed the fringe of the Khalkist foothills, closing in on the army of Silvanos, which remained out of sight somewhere to the south. The ogres were creatures of lofty places and would have preferred to march in the heights, Kagonos knew-it was only the commands of their dragon masters that brought them down from the mountain summits.

Of those masters, it was hard to believe that only one clan of evil remained to menace the world. For more than a century and a half Kagonos and the Elderwild had been unwilling participants in the battles against the five children of Takhisis, Queen of Darkness. These dragons-of green and black, of blue and white and red-had plundered Ansalon for most of those decades, bringing death and destruction to elvenkind and humanity.

The tide of evil had been stemmed, finally, when three gods had conspired to bestow potent gifts upon the elves. These artifacts were the five dragongems-magical stones of life-trapping. During the most recent years of the war, Silvanos and his legions, aided by warriors mounted on flying griffons, had created clever traps. In their great, flying wings, evil dragons had fallen to the elven ambushes, until the greens, reds, whites, and blacks had all been ensnared, their lives trapped within the potent gemstones- the stones then buried in the depths of the Khalkist Mountains.

Finally only the blue dragons remained, and the great leader Silvanos had planned for his final victory. Before the battle could be joined, however, disaster had struck in the form of an ogre raiding party-the Bluestone was stolen! Vanishing into their mountain fastness with their priceless trophy, the ogres had taken from Silvanos his only effective means of fighting the blue dragons.

Recriminations had been many, with the House Elves of Silvanos blaming humans, and the humans-so recently escaped from ogre-bound slavery-quick to turn the blame against the elves. Word had reached the Elderwild through several routes-a trader of beads and steel arrowheads had come from Xak Tsaroth, trembling with predictions of doom, and several wild elves had come north, refugees from the House Elf compounds, carrying the tale ot consternation among the Elderwild's kin.

Kagonos believed that the ogres were more to blame then either humans or elves, for they were the ones who had actually stolen the precious artifact. He had been amused to hear the tales of bickering and blaming, none or which changed the central fact that the Bluestone was missing.

The blue serpents, in many ways the most evil and malicious of the five children of Takhisis, had plundered, raided, and ravaged all the north coast of Ansaion during the winter. Now, with summer arrived, even one knew they were winging toward the central plains. When they arrived, the damage they might do would be beyond measure-and without the Bluestone, the forces of Silvanos had no way to stand before the potent, massive wyrms. The great elven army would be dispersed, Sil- vanos's power broken, and the survivors of his legion scattered across Ansaion.

Reflecting on the potential for disaster, Kagonos wondered about his own, private knowledge-the secret he now carried to the top of the mountain. It did not seem possible that he and his braves could change the course of fate, yet he had to hope that they might do just that.

The elf squinted into the distance. Tall, billowing clouds rose into the skies over the plains, towering like mighty marble columns. Sunlight reflected from these alabaster pillars with a brightness that almost forced the wild elf to look away. But still he stared, shifting his eyes only slowly among the great cumulus.

Finally he blinked, satisfied-for the moment, at least- that the blue dragons did not soar above the marching army. They would come, he knew, and probably soon, but he drew some satisfaction from the knowledge that they had not yet arrived. The two armies on the ground were still many miles apart, so it seemed that the battle would not occur for several days.

He thought for a moment of the Elderwild tribes, gathered only a day's march from here in a deep, sheltered valley. His people had come when Kagonos had summoned them with the Ram's Horn. As always, even the chiefs of the different tribes turned to their Pathfinder for hope in time of danger-yet never in their history had the threat of destruction been so imminent and so complete. For the most part, since the Dragon War had raged, the Elderwild had dwelled in small bands, rarely venturing from beneath the protection of their treetop canopies. Only the command of the great horn could bring them into a large gathering, and only the secret knowledge Kagonos now possessed could have motivated him to make that summons.

Of course, the elves of Silvanos had developed another tactic during the course of the war-one that enabled them to dwell in large tribes, and even to defend themselves against the dragons. They had fortified their great cities as bastions against evil. When a dragon flew against one of these walled enclaves, it was forced to do so without the ogres who formed the other potent club of the Dark Queen's hordes. Thus unsupported, the tough- scaled serpents proved slightly vulnerable to elven arrows-to the extent, at least, that the steel-tipped weapons fired in volley struck the dragons as a barrage of vexing stings. Ultimately, though cities had been ravaged and many elves slain within them, the evil wyrms had learned to avoid the House Elf strongholds. The great serpents were basically cowards and preferred to work their villainy in ways that brought little risk to themselves.