[The Year of Rogue Dragons 01] - The Rage - Richard Lee Byers (retail) (epub) by Forgotten Realms

Author:Forgotten Realms [Forgotten Realms]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-01-15T11:54:34+00:00

The night was warmer than Dorn had expected. Balmy air had blown up from the south to provide a first teasing promise of spring. Still, though he’d done plenty of it in his time, he disliked traveling cross-country in the dark, even when the territory seemed as clear, settled, and peaceful as the farmland surrounding Lyrabar. Something could still creep up on you.

Accordingly, he supposed he should be glad Kara retained something of a dragon’s keen senses even in human guise. She seemed to see in the dark as well as Taegan, maybe even as well as Raryn, which meant the band had another able lookout watching for trouble. Yet it irked him somehow.

His mood soured still further when she dropped back from the head of the column to tramp at his side along the slushy, rutted road.

“If we truly are about to part,” she murmured, “I want to thank you and apologize for deceiving you.”

“Just pay what you owe.”

She sighed. “I understand why you hate dragons. But we aren’t all alike.”

He didn’t bother to answer.

“If you think about it,” she persisted, “you’ll realize I only lied that first night and only about how I received my wounds. Everything else I told you was the truth. I just didn’t give you all the details.”

“You did lie afterward. You pretended to like me.”

“I did. I do.”

“Like me …” It was hard to say. The mere thought seemed to trigger a chorus of derisive laughter inside his head. “Like me as a woman likes a man. A trick to make sure I’d fight to protect you even against Lareth’s agents.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Curse you, can’t you talk straight even now, or does your tongue always fork whatever form you wear? We’re two completely different kinds of creature.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Through the ages, drakes who can shapeshift have often loved humans or elves.”

I doubt they picked cripples and freaks to be their partners, Dorn thought, but that retort was too bitter to utter.

Instead, he said, “Maybe every species has its perverts.”

“It isn’t perverse. It’s natural, particularly for song dragons. We differ from the rest of our kind in a number of ways, and one is that we’re particularly at home in human guise. We spend the majority of our time that way. We have a legend that our earliest ancestors were entirely human, until a god blessed them with the power to transform.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I’m just your hired bodyguard doing a job that’s nearly over.”

“Very well, if that’s the way you want it.”

She lifted her hand as if to touch him, evidently thought better of it, and returned to the front of the procession.

A few minutes later, Raryn called, “I think I see it.”

He led them off the road and up a hill. Deep snow lay there, untrodden by anyone before them, and they slipped and floundered as, their steps crunching, they made their ascent. Taegan spread his raven-feathered wings as though he meant to fly to the summit, then opted to remain on the ground.

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