The Dragons of Noor

T
o the future High Meers of Othlore Isle, guardians of the dragon treaties and the Sylth King’s scroll, I pen this letter, which is my greeting and my warning. As meers you will have studied my dragon histories in three volumes, but the scrolls locked away here with this letter tell a part of their story not revealed elsewhere. In brief, I trace the history of my last meeting with the Damusaun, our Dragon Queen, the journey I took to Oth on her behalf, and the dire secret regarding the Sylth King’s decree writ here on his scroll, a secret each High Meer must guard with his life.

After the hundred years of war ended between men and dragons, the Dragon Queen summoned me. I was the only man who’d sided with the dragons in the war to bind the worlds, and it was an honor to be called before the queen. The night was clear on the eastern shore when we met, with a trace of moon like an eyelid over the sea. I bowed to Her Majesty.

“Rise Mishtar, friend of dragons,” she said. “We have fought together these many years. I know your wounds as you know mine.”

Her scales shone in the firelight, a fire she’d made with her own breath when I arrived at the beach. On her broad chest plate I saw the jagged scars: the names of the dragon dead, blood-written on her scales.

I rose to address her. I was in my fortieth year, and the muscles in my arms and legs ached from battle. “Damusaun, Queen. It has been an honor to fight with you.”

She was silent then, perhaps counting up her many losses. “You have fought well, Mishtar, but I would ask one more thing of you,” she said.

A wave washed up, the white foam touching the tip of her tail. She flicked off the moisture. “Mishtar, you
know it is against the law of the Old Magic to kill,” she continued.

I nodded. I also knew all who lived in the Otherworld of Oth were bound to follow the law of the Old Magic. The dragons had broken it when they went to war.

Wind bowed the bonfire, slanting the flames toward the sheer cliff, where more dragons waited for their queen deep in the cave.

The queen said, “For breaking the law of the Old Magic, the Sylth King exiled us from our homeland.”

“For how long, Majesty?”

“We have not been able to return home for the last hundred years.”

I’d not seen dragons using the deeply rooted Waytrees to leave our world of Noor, but I’d thought this was due to battle, that every tooth, talon, and fiery breath was needed for our fight.

“Surely the High Sylth King of Oth understood the need to fight to keep the Waytrees alive? If they died, there would be nothing strong enough to bind the worlds. Noor and Oth would split apart.”

The Damusaun shook her head, her neck scales rattling. “The Sylth King rules by the law, Mishtar.” She
flicked her tail, smacking a thin glaze of seawater on the sand. “Go to him for us. Tell the High Sylth King the way between worlds has been secured by our blood. The worlds of Noor and Oth remain bound together as before. Now that the war is over, the treaties signed, ask if he will grant us passage back to Oth. We are war-torn. We long to go home.”

And so I took the treaties we’d forged between dragons and men and traveled to the Otherworld, with the help of the deya spirits in the Waytrees.

In that beauteous land, I was escorted to the fairy palace of the High Sylth King. Bright sun sparkled through the glimmer walls of the palace dome room. I was made to stand in the glare until I was damp with sweat, squinting up at the Sylth King where he sat in judgment on his jeweled throne. I came to him proud to be the dragon’s Mishtar. He treated me as a beggar.

The king’s lip curled as he scanned the treaties. “Tell the dragons we do not forgive them for slaying men.”

“Sire,” I said, “if the dragons hadn’t fought, the men of my world would have taken the wild lands. I tell you the ancient Waytrees are nothing to these men but logs for building and wood for their fires. If they had
succeeded in felling the deep-rooted trees that bind the worlds, Noor and Oth would have been severed forever.”

The king tossed the treaties on the floor and called his scribe, bidding the man write the words he whispered in his ear. What was this? A new treaty? The ones the dragons signed with the rulers of Noor were binding and needed no addition. I stooped to retrieve the treaties from the floor.

The Sylth King spoke his final judgment as the scribe handed me the new scroll. Hearing the king’s sharp words, the very ones writ in the scroll, I was stunned to silence. Before I could argue, I was taken from his sight. Sylth guards marched me to the Waytrees of Oth where the roots are deep, and threw me out of their world.

Three days I walked through storms in my own world of Noor before I reached the Dragon Queen again. We took shelter under the boughs of an azure tree.

“The Sylth King said if you do not kill any men for seven hundred years, your exile from Oth will end. Then you can return to your homeland.” I showed her the king’s scroll.

The Damusaun’s eyes burned with fury. “Seven hundred … years?” she roared. “How can he expect us
to abide by this?” She stepped beyond the shelter of the boughs, lifted her snout, and sent angry red fire skyward. The flames hissed and fizzled in the falling rain.

The exile was long, even for dragons, who live more than a thousand years. Some of my friends would die before they would see their homeland again. But the Damusaun saw the real peril.

In her hour of burning anger, I waited under the branches. She would not turn her anger on me, her messenger, but still she released it until the rain cooled her scales and her rage was spent. She stepped back under the tree and wrapped her tail about her legs. “The king’s judgment endangers both worlds,” she said at last. “We must keep our exile from Oth secret, Mishtar. If men know we can no longer fight to defend the Waytrees, they will break our hard-won treaties and come again to cut them down.”

I left the dragons then and sailed back to Othlore Isle, a lone island set apart in Noor’s West Morrow Sea. On Othlore I built this school where the meers of Noor study the lore of Oth and apprentices learn the ways of magic. In the High Meer’s river house, I locked the scrolls away. Five scrolls in all, the treaties between men and dragons
signed after the war, and the Sylth King’s scroll. This last scroll is to be kept secret. Only the magician appointed as High Meer shall know why the dragons live in exile: that if they kill a single man in seven hundred years, they will never again be allowed to cross back into Oth. So I have guarded these scrolls for the last fifty years. I am old now and a dying man. The scrying stone the Dragon Queen gave me when we parted shows me much. As the centuries pass, I foresee a time when prideful men will break the dragon treaties. If men return to the ancient woodlands to fell Waytrees again, the dragons cannot kill a single man to save them. We are all in great danger if men should cut the azure Waytrees of the east, for if these offspring of the World Tree fall, the splitting worlds will pull farther apart, tearing deep roots in every land, and all Waytrees in Noor will die. Sever these most ancient azure trees, these dragon bridges that stretch between the worlds, and there will be no way between.