Dragons of Winter Night

Dragons of Winter Night is a fantasy novel by the American writers Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, published in 1985. It is the second book of the Dragonlance Chronicles.

The series came out of the Dragonlance game modules, and this book picks up the story of the Heroes of the Lance after the fall of Pax Tharkas and the freeing of its refugees. The novel opens in Thorbardin, where the dwarves are being asked to shelter those refugees in exchange for the Hammer of Kharas, and the companions are sent on to the port city of Tarsis to look for somewhere more permanent. Tarsis turns out to be a shrunken, landlocked town rather than the sea port they expected, and while they are in it the dragons reduce the city to rubble.

During the attack the group divides. One party escapes on griffins with the Silvanesti princess Alhana Starbreeze towards the old elven homeland, and the other leaves with the Knights of Solamnia under Derek Crownguard. Before the city falls the companions also learn that dragon orbs, ancient objects capable of controlling dragons, still exist somewhere, which is the kind of weapon the war has not yet given them.