Dragon Weather Read Online Free

upward again, and between them hung a body as long and lithe as a snake, tail whipping and winding below. Its long neck arched elegantly, and it seemed to be staring right at Arlian.
    â€œOh,” Arlian breathed. The dragon was simultaneously the most beautiful and the most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
    Then it turned and soared away, moving through the sky as smoothly and effortlessly as a fish moves through water.
    â€œIt’s gone,” Arlian said.
    His grandfather took a cautious step forward, and Arlian hoisted himself up off the ladder, stepping through the doorway into the pantry.
    Then they both froze as the second dragon appeared.
    This one did not look their way, but simply flew across their field of vision, left to right and angling upward. Its scaled flank caught a gleam of sunlight and shone a dark, rich green, though the rest of it seemed as black as the other.
    It was definitely not the same dragon, however. The proportions were different—and the face, even when seen only from the side, was different.
    Arlian was startled at how readily he could know that. The dragons, he discovered, had faces as distinctive and as instantly recognizable as people. Why or how it could be so he did not know, but he knew it was.
    â€œTwo of them,” Grandsir said—he, too, had seen immediately that the two were not the same creature. “ Two dragons!”
    â€œAre they gone?” Arlian asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Grandsir said, stepping cautiously forward. He coughed as a swirl of smoke reached him.
    Just then a dragon reappeared—the first one, Arlian was sure. It swept down from the sky toward something Arlian could not see through the burning ruins of his family kitchen, and spat flame.
    It was just as Grandsir had said three days before—the dragon opened its mouth and flexed its jaw, and something sprayed out, then burst into flame. The fire never touched the dragon itself; instead a burning mist spattered down across the village below.
    Grandsir coughed again.
    â€œDragons or no, we can’t stay in here,” he said. “The smoke will kill us both. Maybe we can get to the cisterns—if we hide in there the flames can’t touch us.”
    Arlian nodded hesitantly, and stepped forward—and that was when the third dragon appeared in the kitchen doorway. It was afoot, strolling through the village rather than flying, and had thrust its immense black head into the flaming ruins of the kitchen to see what might be in the depths of the house. It stared into the pantry, directly at Arlian and his grandfather.
    Arlian screamed and stepped back involuntarily, back through the door. His foot missed the edge of the floor and he fell backward, hands flinging out in an unsuccessful attempt to catch himself on the doorframe. He tumbled heels over head down the ladder into the cellars and landed, bruised and dazed, on the warm stone floor.
    He heard his grandfather shouting wildly; at first he was too stunned to make out the words, but then his senses began to return.
    â€œâ€¦ our home! May the dead gods curse you and all your kin, dragon—what have you done with my daughter and her husband, and my grandson? You get out of here, back to your caverns! Your time is over! You have no place in the Lands of Man!”
    Arlian looked up and saw flames and smoke licking across the pantry ceiling, turning the familiar surface fierce and strange. Still bleary and stiff from his fall but desperate to get out, to not be trapped down here, he struggled to pull himself upright on the ladder.
    Then a shadow fell across him and he looked up again to see Grandsir standing on the brink, his back to the cellars, his heels almost over the edge.
    â€œYou get away from me!” the old man shrieked, his voice cracking with terror.
    And then there was a rush of air, of hot, fetid air laced with a biting acid stench like nothing Arlian had ever smelled before, and a deep,