Dragons Lost Read Online Free Page B

we return home. The weredragon won't bother us no—"
    Mercy stepped toward
the paladin and thrust her sword into his neck.
    The man gasped and
gurgled. Blood filled his mouth. He twitched, held upright upon her blade.
    Mercy leaned in closer,
sneering. "We will not rest until the weredragon is found."
    The other paladins
stared, silent. Mercy tugged the blade free. Sir Lancino gave a last gasp, then
fell down dead. Mercy spat on his body.
    Good riddance, she thought. The man had been a fool, and she had hated that ridiculous chin of
his.
    She turned toward the
other paladins and raised her dripping blade. "Now fan out and find him! Find
the weredragon, or I'll slay you all. Go!"
    The paladins nodded.
Leaving their firedrakes, they began to race between the trees, seeking Cade.
    Mercy marched through
the forest, sword raised, the hot blood sticky on her fingers.
    Cade had hurt
her. He had escaped her. He would scream with the pain of ten thousand tortured
men.

 
 
CADE

    Cade lay on the forest floor,
bleeding, head spinning, not sure if he was alive or dead. Smoke and flame rose
above him, raining ash. He could see nothing but the inferno.
    "Where is he?" rose the
shriek. "Find the boy! Find him!"
    Mercy's voice—no longer
fair but twisted with cruelty, dripping bloodlust and rage.
    Cade tried to move. He
lifted one arm and grimaced with pain. Welts rose across his skin—burns from
his own dragonfire, the blaze he'd blown when still in dragon form. His memory
slipped in and out of his mind. He had become human again. He had fallen,
crashing through his own fire, hidden within the blaze. He had landed here, bruised
and burnt. He was dying. He—
    "Find him!" Mercy
roared.
    Firedrakes
swooped above, claws reaching through the dispersing smoke. Paladins moved
through the forest, boots thumping.
    I have to move.
    Cade tried to rise to
his feet, but pain flared through him. He bit down on a scream and fell. He
rolled.
    He found himself
tumbling down a mountainside, his body slamming against rocks and roots. He crashed
into the trunk of a pine, and needles rained down onto him. The firedrakes
streamed above, rising and falling from the forest. Trees shattered.
    Up, Cade, he
told himself. On your feet. Up!
    He didn't want to rise.
He wanted to lie still, to wait for death to take him, to sink into warm
forgetfulness, an end to pain.
    Stand up!
    He balled his hands
into fists. He could not die here. Not while his family needed him. Little
Eliana—he had to help her. He had to move.
    He rose to his feet.
His legs swayed, and he began to run.
    The pines shook at his
sides, and the shrieks of the firedrakes rose from every direction. He was high
in the Dair Ranin mountains, and the air was thin. The slopes were steep,
strewn with rocks and thick with pines. The trees thrust out from the
mountainsides like green stubble on a giant's stony face. Cade stumbled down
the slope toward a fold in the land; the trees were thicker down there, a green
cloister, a place of shadows and burrows.
    A white firedrake
streamed above, and Cade cursed and leaped under a pine tree, hiding beneath
its lower boughs. He peered between needles. The beast swept down the slope,
flying only several feet above the treetops. A saddle still rose upon its back,
but no rider; perhaps the man had died in the battle, and perhaps he was
searching the mountains afoot. Cade shuddered to think that this firedrake
itself had once been human, the soul burnt away, the reverse of purification.
Now the mindless beast screeched madly. It passed over Cade, the air from its
wings rattling the pine he hid under, and dipped toward the gorge. The reptile
soared again, crying out, flying off to seek Cade upon another peak.
    When the beast was
gone, Cade emerged from under the pine, began walking back down the slope
toward the cover of the lower trees, and saw a paladin climbing toward him.
    For an instant, they
both froze.
    The paladin stared up
at him—a tall, gaunt man, half his