The Dragon Book: Magical Tales From the Masters of Modern Fantasy by Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois

Author:Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois [Dann, Jack & Dozois, Gardner]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Juvenile Fiction, Fantasy & Magic, cookie429
ISBN: 9781849398763
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2009-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

A shaft of light caught Ros as the sun breached the far horizon. His hands shook in the golden radiance. He barely had strength to pull the thick mat of threads from his face.

But it was done. He had killed the dragon. All he had to do now was prove it to Master Pukje. The proof he required lay in the remains of the web. His master had known what awaited him here, he was sure. Just the sight of Ros would be enough. He was practically encased in the stuff. It would take days to get all the threads out of his hair.

He laughed hoarsely. The sound echoed back from the canyon walls like a sob. A cocooned caterpillar, what would he become when his chrysalis opened? Would Adi still want him, this killer of defenceless dragons?

In that crystalline moment, he felt his reluctance to honour his promise to Adi become fear, and knew that the course of his quest had led him to pitfalls that, until now, he had never needed to navigate.

A rattling of crabblers brought him out of his desperate introspection. Six of them had crawled over the lip of the canyon, and more followed behind them. Their clattering was wild and incoherent. He had never heard them like this before. They swarmed down the cliff wall and over the remains of the web. Were they shocked at what they saw? Ros couldn’t tell. More and more poured into the Divide, and he retreated from their thickening tide.

The sound of stirring water disturbed the silence behind him. He spun, raising the knife. The brackish pool was quiet no longer. Waves crossed its black surface as though something large was moving back and forth beneath.

The wind whipped around him with increasing strength, raising a whirlwind of dust.

Stones rained from the canyon walls.

Clouds undulated in the sky.

No, he realised through growing alarm. Not clouds. The very same cloud that he had seen yesterday while approaching the web. The one that had blocked the moon. It hadn’t moved in a day and a night, but did so now in defiance of wind and weather, its own kind of being.

Some live in the sky …

White, feathery wings unfurled. A long neck uncoiled. At the same time, a tower of water shot up out of the pool and spread wings of its own. Crabblers climbed acrobatically over each other, manoeuvring with eerie precision to become eyes, beak, talons, and tail, while boulders tumbling from the Divide wall landed to form legs, arms, a hunched back. The whirlwind of dust took a similar form, towering over him and flexing its muscles. Ros barely heard the strand beast explode as every bottle strapped to its side burst asunder, releasing the air trapped within.

Dragon of air.

Dragon of dust.

Dragon of stone.

Dragon of water.

Dragon of cloud.

He reeled back as the full import of what he had unleashed sank in. Even the crabblers, now gripped together in a grotesque tangle of legs and fat bodies, had been coopted by the dragons into their bizarre masquerade.

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