The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine

Author:Gail Carson Levine
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-03-17T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

* * *

BELLA HAD TAUGHT US about dragons, and Meryl used to pore over the tomes in Father’s library for dragon lore. They were known to hunt for a day or more at a time, preying on horses, cattle, goats, or sheep, and, when the mood struck them, on people. They’d usually gorge on the livestock immediately, and the animals’ owners would find the bones. But human bones were never found. And more than once a dragon had been spotted flying with a captive clutched in a coil of its tail. We believed that they toyed with their prisoners, sometimes for months, before killing them. In Drualt the hero rescued a maiden after slaying the dragon Yune, and the maiden was witless and half dead from five weeks of torment.

When not hunting, dragons slept a great deal, but they also gloated over their hoards of bones and plunder—weighing, counting, admiring. What else they did I didn’t know, whether they recited poetry or sang or whittled chair legs.

I knew one thing more. I knew I’d never defeat a dragon in combat. My only hope lay in tricking it. But how would I trick a creature known for its cunning? I thought about it, and the morning ticked by.

Finally an idea came to me. I’d go to its lair while the dragon was asleep or away hunting. I’d stand still in my seven-league boots—no mistakes, no stumbling—and wait for the dragon to awaken or to return. As soon as it did, I’d say that I expected to die for the knowledge, but would it please tell me the cure for the Gray Death? It would think I couldn’t get away, so it might tell me. As soon as it uttered the words, I’d take a step and be gone.

It seemed simple.

I pulled out Rhys’s map of the western desert. There were few landmarks—an oasis near the desert’s northern border, another in the central desert, and the lairs of three dragons. A lair marked Kih was within twenty miles of our western border with the kingdom of Pevir. Another, marked Jafe, was southeast of the first, about a hundred miles away. The third was in the central desert, not far from one of the oases. That one was marked Vollys, the same Vollys who had swooped down and taken a farmer last year. The same Vollys whom Meryl had hoped to slay.

I raised the spyglass, meaning to direct it toward the desert. But my arm had other ideas and aimed it north, at Bamarre castle. I held my breath and then began to breathe again. The gray pennant did not fly. Meryl was holding her own!

She was in bed, leaning against her pillows and staring out her window. I wondered if she had any hope I’d find the cure.

I lowered my spyglass and set the rings where I guessed Vollys would be. She was believed to be the oldest dragon in Bamarre, and I reasoned that she was more likely than the others to know the cure for the Gray Death.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.