Read Dragon City for Free Online Page B

only natural that the young men would choose to dream when walking within a place that seemed plucked from one.
    They turned a corner, and up ahead they saw a great saurian head looming over them like some dinosaur from another era, its reptilian smile indulgently benign. The thing had narrow eyes that shone with a faint trace of fire red in the blazing afternoon sun as it glared at them from its high arching neck. For a moment all three men took it to be alive, and they reared back in fear, as if the thing might snap down on that thick neck, the flat arrowlike head reaching toward them down the length of bone-white street. But it did not. It merely waited there, serene in its majesty, a lizard sovereign waiting for who knew what.
    “Is it a statue?” Mahmett asked, not daring to look away.
    Yasseft studied the head where it loomed high above them like a cloud, blotting the sun where it waited. He estimated that the head was at least as large as a toolshed; perhaps even larger, like the house of newlyweds.
    “I don’t like it,” Panenk finally said, breaking the silence that Mahmett’s brother had left.
    “Who made it?” Yasseft said aloud, knowing neither of his companions could supply the answer.
    “Six months ago, this whole region was empty,” Panenk reminded them. “This place came to life…” He stopped, embarrassed and scared by his unfortunate choice of words.
    “There’s no life here,” Yasseft stated firmly, as if to reassure himself. “Nothing. Not even death. It’s empty.”
    “But people have searched,” Panenk said. “People have looked and they have never come back. There are things, man-made things…”
    Yasseft fixed him with his stare. “What things?”
    “My grandfather spoke of his time with the army,” Panenk said. “He saw things that had been made. Not just to hurt people, but to change landscapes. Perhaps this is one of those things.”
    He turned to Mahmett, asking the lad’s opinion but the boy didn’t answer.
    Though silent, Mahmett had doubled over, his arms wrapped around his stomach.
    “Hey, Mahmett,” Panenk urged. “Hey, what’s up with you?”
    Mahmett looked up when he heard his name, and Panenk saw the way he ground his teeth, the fearful look in his wide eyes. If he had tried to speak, no words had come out.
    “Yasseft,” Panenk hissed. “Your brother…”
    Hearing the edge to Panenk’s tone, Yasseft turned his attention reluctantly from the dragon’s head at the end of the street and checked on his younger sibling. Mahmett clutched at his stomach as if trying to hold his intestines in place, and sweat beaded on his forehead like cooking oil. “What is it? Something you ate before?” Yasseft asked.
    Mahmett shook his head, the movements jagged and abrupt as if he couldn’t stand to do so for long. “S-something inside…me!”
    As he spoke this last, his mouth opened and a torrent of water rushed up his throat and past his teeth, splashing on the ground in a rapidly forming puddle.
    Yasseft grabbed him by the elbow, pulling him close and looking at his brother as the younger man remained doubled over. “Look at me, let me see,” Yasseft urged.
    Mahmett looked up, his dark brows arching in whatever pain it was that was driving itself through his body like a knife. Yasseft had been there when his brother had been born fifteen years ago, and he saw something in his brother’s eyes that he had not seen for a long time. He saw tears, the type that stream like pouring water with no effort from the one who cries. Water streamed from Mahmett’s tear ducts, thick lines running down the dusky skin of his face almost as if they were placed there by a paintbrush.
    “What is it?” Mahmett mumbled, seeing the fear in his brother’s eyes.
    “You’re crying,” was all Yasseft could think to say.
    From deep inside, Mahmett felt the swirl of liquid charging through his guts, racing and churning with the power of nearby thunder, rocking his frame and shaking