Twice Drowned Dragon (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

orchard smelled of bruised fruit and sun-burnt grasses but there was a hint of something else underneath that, a more sour note that my nose couldn’t quite place. The track opened out into a courtyard and I stopped with a gasp.
    Star pears. Two huge trees, their bowls thicker than Azyrin and Makha’s girths put together, formed a vast canopy over a mostly intact reflection pool. The trees were thick with moss and their wide blue-green leaves blighted with lichens, but a few of the bright white fruits showed here and there among the branches. Star pears were rare and difficult to grow even for my people. Their tart flesh had been her favorite. . . I shoved away the memory of thinly sliced star-shaped fruit, pale against golden-brown skin. These trees were ancient, perhaps even as old as the Barrows themselves.
    “The elf is stuck,” Makha said behind me.
    “Those are some impressive trees, you got to admit,” Drake said. “Wonder what they are?”
    “Star pear,” Rahiel said with almost enough reverence in her voice. “If only they were ripe and I had the spells to transport them. Those fruits could make us all a fortune in Glassnesse.”
    “Sure, dipwing. Cause people will pay for some blighted fruit. Right.” Makha clanked past me and drew her sword. “Let’s poke this pool and see if any dragons pop out. Unless ya’ll want to pick some fruit, maybe have a picnic, sing a song.”
    I ignored her and walked up to one of the star pear trees and laid my hand on its gnarled blue-grey bark. I could almost feel the slow, thick flow of its life, the weight of the ages it had endured, the stretch of its massive roots deep into the soil of this place. We endure , the tree seemed to whisper.
    “This pool isn’t deep enough to have a dragon in it,” Makha said, swishing the water with the tip of her sword. Disappointment tinged her voice.
    “Mayhap that crumbling building there will?” Rahiel said.
    “Not as crumbling as it should,” Azyrin said. He and Drake had walked up to the old half-wall that circled the inner courtyard beyond the reflecting pool. I pulled myself away from the beautiful trees and the black wave of my own terrible memories. The stone wall had seen some repair. Fresh wagon tracks marred the ground and the grasses were beaten down, some nibbled on. I pulled up a hank and looked at the ends. Horse, most likely.
    The keep itself was little more than two thick towers mashed together. It was perhaps three stories in height with narrow windows missing their shutters and glass, if they had ever had glass in the first place. The stones were worn and moss covered, but the brush around the edges of the building had been recently cleared and there was more fresh stonework bolstering the foundations near the large door.
    “There’s another track that leads off, there,” Rahiel called from where she and Bill had flown up into the air to check the lay of the land here.
    Fresh stonework. Place where horses grazed. Or, perhaps, mules.
    “What’re the odds that this has nothing to do with that cranky bastard attacked by those spiders?” Drake asked, his thoughts following mine.
    “Sure, two totally separate groups of stonemasons came out this way with a cart. I can see it.” Makha snorted and turned away from the reflecting pool.
    A thick, foul stench fogged the air and Fade started to growl, backing away from the pool. The algae-clogged water rippled. That was the only warning we had.
    I barely had an arrow out of the quiver when the dragon broke the surface of the not-so-shallow pool and spewed forth a stinking cloud of noxious black gas. The dragon’s head was mostly intact, its black scales fixed on black bones and its eyes burned red just as Nabbe had said. The rest of its body was rotting away, great swaths of scales and flesh hanging from its bones or missing entirely.
    I threw myself to the side, bringing my arm up to cover my nose and mouth as I held my breath. The poison was thick and wet,