Read To Green Angel Tower, Volume 1 for Free Online Page B

don’t think that I’m strong enough to kill it, even’ with a sword like Thorn.
    But the strange thing was, although Simon had told everyone exactly what happened on Urmsheim and what he thought about it all, still some of the folk who now made the Stone of Farewell their home were calling him “Dragon Killer,” smiling and waving when he passed. And although he had tried to shrug off the name, people seemed to take his reticence for modesty. He had even heard one of the new settlers from Gadrinsett telling her children the tale, a version that included a vivid description of the dragon’s head struck loose from its body by the force of Simon’s blow. Someday soon, what really happened wouldn’t matter at all. The people who liked him—or liked the story, rather—would say he had singlehandedly butchered the great snow dragon. Those who didn’t care for him would say the whole thing was a lie.
    The idea of those folk passing false stories of his life made Simon more than a little angry. It seemed to cheapen things, somehow. Not so much the imagined naysayers—they could never take away that moment of pure silence and stillness atop Urmsheim—but the others, the exaggerators and simplifiers. Those who told it as a story of unworrying bravery, of some imaginary Simon who sworded dragons simply because he could, or because dragons were evil, would be smearing dirty fingers across an unstained part of his soul. There was so much more to it than that, so much more that had been revealed to him in the beast’s pale, emotionless eyes, in his own confused heroism and the burning instant of black blood ... the blood that had shown him the world ... the world....
    Simon straightened up. He had been nodding again. By God, sleep was a treacherous enemy. You couldn’t face it and fight it; it waited until you were looking the other way, then stole up quietly. But he had given his word, and now that he would be a man, his word must be his solemn bond. So he would stay awake. This was a special night.
     
    The armies of sleep had forced him to drastic measures by dawn’s arrival, but they had not quite managed to defeat him. When candle-bearing Jeremias entered the Observatory, his entire frame tense with the gravity of his mission, it was to discover Simon sitting cross-legged in a puddle of fast-freezing water, wet red hair dangling in his eyes, the white streak that ran through it stark as an icicle. Simon’s long face was alight with triumph.
    “I poured the whole water skin over my head,” he said with pride. His teeth were chattering so hard that Jeremias had to ask him to repeat himself. “Poured water over my head. To stay awake. What are you doing here?”
    “It’s time,” the other said. “It’s nearly dawn. Time for you to come away.”
    “Ah.” Simon stood up unsteadily. “I stayed awake, Jeremias. Didn’t sleep once.”
    Jeremias nodded. His smile was a cautious one. “That’s good, Simon. Come on. There’s a fire at Strangyeard’s place.”
    Simon, who felt weaker and colder than he had thought he would, draped his arm around the other youth’s lean shoulder for support. Jeremias was so thin now that it was hard for Simon to remember him as he once had been: a suety chandler’s apprentice, treble-chinned, always huffing and sweating. But for the haunted look that showed from time to time in his dark-shadowed eyes, Jeremias looked just like what he now was—a handsome young squire.
    “A fire?” Simon’s thoughts had at last caught up with his friend’s words. He was quite giddy. “A good one? And is there food, too?”
    “It’s a very good fire.” Jeremias was solemn. “One thing I learned ... down in the forges. How to make a proper fire.” He shook his head slowly, lost in thought, then looked up and caught Simon’s eye. A shadow flitted behind his gaze like a hare hunted in the grass, then his wary smile returned. “As for food—no, of course not. Not for a while yet, and you