Secret of the Dragon Egg (Dragon Riders of Avria Book 1) by N. A. Davenport

Author:N. A. Davenport [Davenport, N. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: N. A. Davenport
Published: 2021-03-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The darkening sky stretched overhead, murky with a thin layer of mist. A cool night breeze rustled between the sleepy buildings. Here and there orange candlelight flickered from windows.

Will’s feet tapped purposely forward along the cobblestone street as he put the bard hall behind him, along with the comfortable bed and hot food.

He couldn’t sleep anyway, he told himself. But the truth was he’d studied the map that Master Bard Aven had given him, showing him the route to the hatching ground, and the distance was much farther than Will had assumed. The hatching ground was nearly as far away from Aldlake as Aldlake was from the bridge where Elder Madoc had found his family. And it had taken them many days to travel that far.

Will hoisted his bag higher on his back and tried to pick up his pace. The arch of his foot, where his still-healing skin rubbed against his shoe, ached at the strain, but he had a goal to achieve. About a quarter of the way to the hatching ground, a small village was marked on the map. He decided that he would try to get to that village by sunset the following day; that way he would know he could get to his destination in time for Hatching Day.

It took a few hours to get out of the closely packed buildings and nighttime activity of the city. Street cleaners wandered up and down the roads, cleaning up after cormants. Shop owners swept the steps outside their businesses. A few buildings still had lights on, and rowdy music and laughter drifted from a few of them.

As he was leaving Aldlake behind, Will noticed that instead of a wall, tall stone towers bordered the city. They looked like something you might see attached to a medieval castle, tubular with narrow slits for windows between the rough-hewn stone. In fact, they looked similar to the huge gray fortress standing in the middle of Aldlake, like they were all hundreds or maybe thousands of years old. Whoever had built them had done so to defend against a powerful enemy—an enemy that walls wouldn’t stop, no matter how high they were.

Will thought of the pictures of the swarmers he’d seen in the tapestry. It was one thing to see black and brown threads woven together to depict giant flying bugs. It was another to see these towers, huge, ancient, and very real, and realize how terrified people had to be to build these things, to realize that many people had probably died before the towers and fortress were complete. How big would these swarmers actually be? He imagined a flying scorpion the size of a horse and shuddered at the mental image.

Beyond the towers, familiar-looking fields and vineyards met him. Will breathed in the cool, sweet, grassy-scented air and checked his map to make sure he was still going the right way. In Avria, it didn’t look like such things as suburbs existed. People either lived in cities, villages, or the countryside.

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