Egelric sees a dragon

Egelric stopped just outside his shack and stared up at the rising moon. It was as round and bright as a silver coin, and it seemed enormous there just above the tops of the pines.

So much time had passed already since the moon had been dark and they had found the dead elf. So much time would pass again before the next new moon. God only knew what awaited them then.

His mother had taught him a small prayer to say when he looked at the full moon, to protect him from its evil influence. He had come to see it as a friend, rather, and it was the moonless nights that he feared, but he said it now anyway before he went inside and stretched out on the bed without undressing.

That elf had been the first dead elf that anyone had ever seen. No one knew how the elves could live and die in their midst without ever leaving a trace of their presence, but for nearly ten years they had.

There was something wrong, then, if they could find a dead elf just outside the dwelling of the men. What could have driven an elf so close to the castle? Had he been fleeing to them? And what could he have been fleeing that could drive an elf to the protection of men?

Had Druze and Midra turned on the elves?

Was it the wolves after all? They had seemed almost unearthly, so large were they.

Egelric’s greatest fear was for his daughter. So long as it had been elves killing men, and insofar as he believed Midra’s assurances that she and Druze could not harm his daughter, he hadn’t feared for her. But if something was killing elves…

Iylaine too seemed frightened, though she would not speak of it with him. Of course he had not been able to hide the news from her. The guards had seen, and they told. But all she had asked was whether it had been a boy or a man. He had told her it had been a man with a beard and long, dark hair, and this had satisfied her.

But had she asked to find out whether elf children were in danger, and hence herself, or because she feared for some elf in particular?

Egelric snorted awake. He had fallen asleep somehow, and he hadn’t even undressed. He thought he must be getting old.

He sat up and began to untie his cloak, but he paused and frowned when he looked over at the far wall. The narrow line of blue light that rimmed the door had dimmed since he had come inside, yet there had not been a cloud in the sky then. Rain was the last thing they needed for the work they had planned for tomorrow. Before he undressed, he thought he would step outside and have a look at the weather.

It was as dark as a moonless night. Egelric stood for a moment in the doorway, uncomprehending. Surely the moon should be rising at this season? Then he took a step outside and looked up at it, and he understood.

The moon was not much higher in the sky than when he had come in, but it had changed utterly. The thin slip that remained had been changed from silver to a dull, corroded bronze. The rest was blotted out.

He had seen the moon go brown before. He had even seen the bottom quarter of it go quite dark, but he had never seen the entire moon obliterated as it was now, and the sight chilled him.

He did not know the significance of the new moon to the elves Druze and Midra, nor whether it had been a coincidence that he had met the one called the Dark Lady on a night of the new moon. If it had been only the moon’s light keeping them away the other nights, then there was perhaps a grave danger tonight – and he was alone at the lake, and could not warn the men.

Egelric stood and watched as the last sliver of moon darkened and then vanished, leaving only a brownish void in a blue-​​black sky.

He slipped his hand into the hole in his cloak and rested his hand on the hilt of his knife. How long would it remain dark? How long before there would be light enough again to keep the evil at bay?

A few stars went dark for an instant, but winked back again before he could do more than gasp. There was a dark shape passing overhead: an enormous bird – an owl, perhaps. Were the animals troubled too by this strange event?

Egelric looked back at the moon, but the bird circled back and flew over his head again, closer now. Its wings blanked out many stars at once. He tried to follow it with his eyes, but his shack was in the way as it flew off to the west.

His heart was beginning to pound, and he drew his knife. “It’s only an owl,” he growled to himself, but were not owls the messengers of death?

When it came back for the third time, he saw that it was not an owl.

A dark shadow passed over his roof and blotted out the entire sky for a moment, before wheeling and coming to land before him with such a rush of wind that his cloak blew around his legs.

It happened so quickly that he scarcely had time to be frightened. The creature was enormous – taller than a barn. Its wings were wider than the clearing in which he had built his shack, and it held them up so that they did not brush the trees on either side. Its mouth seemed large enough to hold a man whole, and its throat glowed like embers, lighting up dozens of dagger-​​like teeth.

Egelric flattened himself against the wall of his shack. The monster swung its massive head around so that it could peer at him with one glittering eye, its mouth gaping so as to light up his face with its smoldering glow. Its sulfurous breath scorched his skin as if its mouth were indeed an oven, or a pit into hell.

Surely it was Satan himself, the great dragon.

He found himself remarkably calm in his last moments. He even had the presence of mind to wish that he could tell the King that the prancing green and golden dragon on the small embroidered cushion that he so cherished was all wrong.

The monster reared its head back and Egelric closed his eyes, waiting to be engulfed by that cavernous mouth. But he was smacked instead by another gust of wind, and he looked up to see the creature leap away, flapping awkwardly at first over the water, and then rising rapidly before clapping its wings to its sides and plunging like a boulder into the broader lake beyond the pines that bordered the inlet.

He did not think that the men at the work site could have slept through the crash. Perhaps they would come to the lake to see. He did not know what he would tell them.

He leaned for a while against the rough boards of his shack, still dazed, but there were no further sounds. There was only the dark moon to show that all was not as it should be. After a time he pushed himself away from the wall and went inside to light the lamp and sit and pray.