Knight, E.E - Age of Fire 01 - Dragon Champion by Knight E.E

Author:Knight, E.E [Knight, E.E]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780451463630
Publisher: Penguin Group USA
Published: 2010-11-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Hungry, thirsty, and cold, Auron asked himself for the eighteenth time, in as many days, what drove him from friendship and comfort into a waste. When he had first thought of finding NooMoahk, it had been a vague wish, an effort to find a new foundation for his life, and to discover the truth behind Hazeleye’s story about discovering a weakness in dragons.

But he hadn’t counted on the power of the wasteland. It was vaster than the dwarf maps indicated.

The dwarves prepared him for the desert as best as they could. Dry meat, especially sausages, and bladders of water filled the two saddlebags adapted for drakeback. Auron found when he emptied the water he could eat the skin, the tough leather gave his stomach something to work on through the cold nights. For this was no desert out of legend, a hot expanse of rock and sand—at least at this time of year—but a cold, dry waste of rattling pebbles and windblown rolling weeds bouncing off larger rocks.

Auron saw his tail and midsection thin perceptibly over the journey, as even one set of leather saddlebags disappeared into his hungry gullet, and he feared his fire bladder was reabsorbing the liquid fat contained within. He did his best to trot along as the wolves did, hardening his heart and muscles to the unnatural gait. He went steadily south, every night the object of the Bowing Dragon’s homage sunk a bit further toward the horizon. Sometimes, if he was lucky, at twilight or dawn he could catch hopping little rodents who sought bugs beneath the stones. Their hairy little bodies made him even more thirsty. He caught several, and in stands of brush found termite nests that he opened by using the dwarsaw to open their fortresslike towers, so he could shift them and dig out the nests underneath.

The blue smudge on the horizon that appeared on the twentieth day without water gave him hope. It must be the Bissonian Scarps of the old dwarf maps as rendered from the tongue of the people of Tindariuss, and somewhere within the dragon’s home. Auron could no longer jog along, but he could walk. He stalked the mountains as if they were prey, planting alternate feet front-and-rear with dried-out muscles and joints that creaked as he walked.

Something floated above, on wide wings with feathers that spread like fingers. Auron walked on, ignoring it, and it came lower in a half-hour’s worth of lazy circles. Its shadow passed over him, and a cold tail-tip of dread ran up his spine.

“You should have been picked over a week ago, if you came out of the north, dying one,” it called down to him, in bird speech. “Why did you choose my desert to kill yourself, hatchling?”

As though inaccurate old maps were my fault.

“I’m no hatchling, I’ve breathed my first fire, feather-wings,” Auron croaked.

“You should rest more. You’ll pant your life out in cramp and pain otherwise. I’ve seen a dozen kinds of desert death, and can foretell yours easily.

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