Realms of the Dragons by Philip Athans

Author:Philip Athans [Athans, Philip]
Language: rus
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WAYLAID

Thomas M. Reid

Marpenoth, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR)

"You can't just go traipsing through Silverymoon Pass by yourself, girl! I don't care what sort of package you have to deliver, or to whom. It's the middle of winter! If an avalanche doesn't kill you, the beasts will! No book is worth all that."

Those words—delivered at Lynaelle Dawn-mantle's back as she had walked out the door of the Silverlode Arms two days previous—had seemed innocuous to the girl. But caught near the summit of the pass in a howling, stinging blizzard, with a huge white dragon rearing above her, Lynaelle realized with sudden clarity just how foolish she had been to ignore the proprietor's admonitions.

She desperately wished she was still sitting in the common room of the Silverlode, enjoying one of Hostwyn Bramblemark's fine meat-and-mushroom pies. Instead, gaping jaws of icy white descended toward the half-elf wizard from out of the swirling curtain of snow, a massive, tooth-lined cavern of a mouth that very easily could engulf her whole, and was just about to.

Lynaelle wanted to scream, to run, but she could not. She found herself rooted to the spot, stark terror holding her fast. She couldn't breathe. As the fangs neared her head, the girl clenched her eyes shut, trembling and praying to Mystra that the end would be quick.

The stabbing pain of death did not come.

Lynaelle opened one eye and found herself staring at another eye, an orb almost as big as her balled fist and the color of glacial ice. That lone eye regarded her from a mere foot or two away, staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and malevolent eagerness while the winter storm raged all around them. The larger eye was set into a bony face, all shiny blue-white, smooth and glistening, like the frozen skull of a bird with a hooked beak, but with hundreds of icicle-teeth as long as the half-elf s fingers. The head bobbed low at the end of a serpentine neck covered in thick, jagged plates.

A dragon.

Lynaelle's knees lost their strength, and she crumpled into the snow that surrounded her. She realized she was holding her breath and exhaled sharply, then drew one shuddering gasp of air. The act nearly made her pass out, for she caught the scent of the beast's own breath, a cold, chemical odor that made her cough and choke. It reminded her of the distilled goat urine the smith back in Galen's Ford used to use to temper his forge work.

A dragon.

The beast's neck stretched up and away, connecting to a body that loomed high above the girl, indistinct in the swirling haze of snow. Lynaelle could barely make out two broad, leathery wings, bent and ribbed like the bat's, fanning out to either side of the huge monster. Even at five paces away, they were nothing more than a slightly darker shade of gray in the overwhelming white of the snow storm. And still they blotted out all light. They could have easily reached and engulfed the girl where she cowered, still trembling.

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