Read The Dragons of Argent and Silver (Tales from the New Earth #6) for Free Online Page B

intent.
    “They're all yours,” he
said loudly as he waved a hand at the two bodies. “I just need
this. Enjoy.”
    And he disappeared with loud crack like
thunder while the forest came alive around the meadow and the
monsters came out to fight over the remains.

    The deserts of the former country of
Australia were not all barren and lifeless. Scrub brush, hummock
grasses and stunted trees managed to survive in one of the driest,
hottest areas on Earth. It was the perfect place to find red dragon
nests.
    At least that was what Incendus was
telling himself as he searched the broken landscape. Truth be told,
the fire elemental was bored. He had reluctantly agreed to retrieve a
dragon egg for the wizard, Simon O'Toole, and was now regretting his
own eagerness.
    Not that he didn't want to help the man
with his rather unusual problem, Incendus told himself. He had huge
respect for the wizard. But those born of fire, by their very nature,
were in constant need of stimulation and this country was extremely
dull.
    When fire elementals traveled long
distances, they assumed a form of pure flame. If anyone had spotted
Incendus flying high over the arid country, they might have mistaken
his blazing form for a meteorite. He moved with incredible speed, as
fast as his air elemental cousins, and scanned the ground below for
signs of a nesting dragon.
    Damn that primal for giving his lesser
dragons the ability to mate, Incendus cursed to himself. It was an
unbelievable abomination. The world would be buried under the wings
of thousands of those twisted monsters.
    It was bad enough that their insane
queen still lived, although she at least was witless and only a vague
threat at the moment. But to allow dragons to mate? It was beyond his
comprehension.
    But enough of that, the elemental told
himself irritably. The battle against the dragons was a task for the
future; one he relished. Right now, he had to find an egg for the
ritual to tear the wizard and the silver dragon apart.
    What had Simon O'Toole been thinking
when he'd made that agreement? What was the dragon's thinking?
Incendus wondered briefly if the two of them weren't as mad as the
dragon queen in their own way.
    A movement ahead and below him pulled
the elemental out of his gloomy reverie and he halted abruptly and
floated on the wind, a crackling, shifting ball of fire hundreds of
feet above the ground.
    He focused his attention on a patch of
sunken ground surrounded by stunted brown trees and what looked like
heaps of displaced dirt. Was that a flash of red in the otherwise
colorless landscape?
    It was, the elemental thought
gleefully. It was a dragon, wings spread out, brooding on a crude
nest.
    The question was, were there eggs down
there?
    He watched intently, waiting for the
creature to move.
    “Come on. Come on, you stupid
beast,” he muttered, willing her to fold her wings so that he
could see the nest beneath her.
    After a moment, the nesting mother
finally did shift and close her wings slightly and Incendus smiled to
himself.
    “Got you,” he said with a
satisfied chuckle as he saw a handful of shiny pale ovules resting
beneath her.
    Incendus could perhaps be forgiven for
what happened next. He was, after all, seeing a dragon's nest for the
first time ever and his attention was focused entirely on it. But for
whatever reason, he was caught completely by surprise.
    From the blazing sky above him, a red
dragon arrowed out of the sun and slammed into the distracted fire
elemental. Over fifty feet in length and weighing a dozen tons, the
monster bellowed its rage as it attacked its target, obviously
defending its mate and offspring.
    Incendus was stunned by the attack and
tumbled downward, confused and out of control. The magical nature of
the dragon allowed it to harm an elemental creature like him and he
was wounded by its talons; a sharp lance of pain that he hadn't felt
in millennia.
    As he fell, Incendus saw the dragon
below look up from her eggs, screech in rage