Kelvin 1 - Dragon's Gold by Piers Anthony

Author:Piers Anthony [Anthony, Piers]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781594261466
Publisher: Mundania Press, LLC
Published: 2005-11-25T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Queen's Ire

KELVIN LOOKED BACK AT the column of Knights following him and Jon and the Crumbs and Palmweaver. They had gone about two leagues and already the horses were noticing the steep ascent.

No road here, only the paths made by deoose, meer, and other large game. The footing was rough; broken shale and fallen boulders made it hard on men and horses. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. Ozone made the air sharp, as did the needletrees' scent of aromatic green spice. Owlhawks hooted in the woods. A bearver lumbered across their path, its dark red coat blending subtly with the reddish moss that grew on the tree trunks and boulders.

"It's a long, long way to Gorshen, as I told you," Morvin said. "By now we could be at Heenning."

Yes, Kelvin thought, and an hour from now we could all be dead. But he did not say such to Morvin, mainly because he knew it wouldn't be expected of a tool of prophecy.

"What say, Kel?" Lester asked jovially.

"I say that we will take them by surprise at Gorshen."

"I sure hope you're right, brother mine," Jon gasped. She had insisted on coming along, but her enthusiasm was waning as she got tired.

At Heenning, a huge dragon reared its golden head, smacked its enormous mouth, and looked about the deserted barracks. Where were the brownberry shirts and greenbriar pantaloons of the morsels it had been driven here to find? It stepped on a fence, squashed a roof, and bit in two a large timber that had formed part of a now ruined catapult. The dragon always knew hunger and rage, but now it knew more. It also knew the growing frustration of having come so far and finding not the tasty bits that had somehow beckoned. How much better it would have been to dream with some dragonberries, and range across the world and down into The Flaw with complete abandon!

Behind the big dragon were four lesser dragons that came barely above the rooftops of the barracks. They reacted as strongly. Dragons liked feasting and dreaming and mating, in that order, and combinations of the three when they could work it. They did not like hunger or boredom.

Tails lashed. Walls smashed. Timbers splintered. The strong smell of dragon urine and excrement mingled with the lesser odor of human beings. The smell of food. But where was it? The buildings were being demolished, but they were empty.

Then the breeze changed. The big dragon raised his snout, sniffing.

There, hiding on the hillside: food!

As appetites sharpened, the dragons rushed for the blue-and-gold-clad men hiding behind bushes and trees and rocks. They brushed aside the little sticks that rained off their scales, and the larger sticks leveled at them by men astride horses. The dragons slapped their tails, gnashed their teeth, chomped, squashed, and ate.

There was food here after all.

The Queen's guardsman arrived on a lathered horse at the gate of the palace. He called to the gateman and was admitted, then was taken by a guard directly to the audience chamber.

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