Read Dragons Rising for Free Online

golden, almost like the dead firedrake's
scales. If anyone searches for our buried friend, you'll look a bit
like him from the air. My scales are red and would stand out for
miles. Go on--shift, my noble steed!"
    Cade
knew it was pointless to argue with her. And besides, his feet were
aching, and his boots weren't getting in any better shape from the
long miles on the road.
    It'll
be nice to fly, he tried to convince himself . To spread my
wings, glide openly in the daylight, a firedrake in disguise. It
was risky, he knew, but then again, Domi had disguised herself as a
firedrake for years. Surely he could survive a few days as a dragon,
just until he reached Draco Murus. He swallowed a lump in his throat. Are you heading there too, Domi?
    "All
right, Amity." He stepped back, grumbled, and shifted. "But
it's going to be damn hard carrying your backside with all those ribs
and taters you ate."
    The
sun was low in the sky when Cade took flight, a golden dragon clad in
Templer armor. He soared higher until the tavern looked like a toy,
the road like a thread.
    "Faster!"
Amity cried on his back. Clad in white armor, she laughed and jabbed
him with her spurs. "Faster, mighty mount, or I'll whip your
hide!"
    Cade
twisted his head to look over his shoulder. She sat in his saddle,
her visor raised. He puffed smoke from his nostrils onto her.
"Silence or I'll roast you."
    "Hush!
Firedrakes don't talk." She hoisted her banner, displaying its
tillvine sigil. "Now fly. Fly north! To the mountains!" She
spurred him again. "Fly, my mount!"
    He
grumbled but he flew onward. The sun sank in the west, and darkness
engulfed them. The stars emerged, and as Cade flew, he wondered if
Domi, Fidelity, and the others were looking at those same stars now.
He missed them. In the darkness, their faces floated in his memory,
and he didn't know if he'd ever see them again.

 
 
BEATRIX

    On a
midnight of cold wind and no stars, Beatrix stepped into the
graveyard of dragons.
    A
few scattered oaks creaked in the wind, their bare branches reaching
out like the gnarled fingers of lecherous old men. Dry leaves
rustled, scuttled along the ground, and crunched underfoot. The full
moon peeked between the clouds, bloated and pale like the waterlogged
face of a drowned corpse, then vanished again. Boulders rose in the
darkness like tombstones. There were no true tombstones in this
graveyard, no true graves, no names for the fallen--yet a graveyard
this was. Here underground lay buried the greatest warriors of the
Cured Temple, the firedrakes who had fallen for the Spirit.
    "The
firedrakes were human once, did you know?" Beatrix said. She
turned toward her daughter. "They were born as human babes,
cursed with the ancient disease of reptiles, able to shift into
dragons."
    Mercy
walked alongside her, clad as always in the pale armor of a paladin.
Her hand rested on the pommel of her sword. "And you killed
them."
    Beatrix
raised her eyebrows. "Killed them? Yes, I suppose so. In a
manner of speaking. I burned their human forms away, then collected
dragon eggs from the ashes--eggs to hatch firedrakes. But firedrakes
too can burn. Firedrakes do not live forever." She sucked in the
cold night air. "The Vir Requis showed us that. They slew too
many of our mighty reptiles. But tonight, Mercy . . . tonight we will
create champions that no man or beast can kill."
    Mercy
frowned. "Mother, I sank a thousand ships. I slew a hundred
thousand barbarians of the Horde. I slew two weredragons--the silver
beast Julian and the green beast Roen. I--"
    "You
let five weredragons escape." Beatrix kept her voice calm. She
kept walking over the fallen leaves, holding up the hem of her robes.
"You were tasked with slaying them, and instead, you played
little games of war and conquest. Sinking ships? Burning barbarians?
Any brute can do these things. You wasted an army and still killed
only two weredragons. The others survived. Amity, the Red Queen, the
leader who almost rose to crush us.