I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) Marc Secchia (most read books .TXT) 📖

“Mikian, there’s a good surgeon up at the castle. You’ll need that ankle seen to in the morning.”

“We’re thankful, but we can’t afford something like that,” he said.

“Put it on my bill.”

The couple acted openly shocked.

“Since I helped to save the kingdom this week, I figure they owe me a bit. Please try. If they give you any trouble you can tell them that the white Dragon will be paying a visit. Here. Take one of my scales as proof.”

“As you command, Dragon,” said the woman. “Thank you once more.”

“I’ll leave you now to rest.”

* * * *

Dragon left the sleeping family in the early hours, covering the broad width of Dragon Isle during the remaining hours of darkness. His hearts knew nothing but that he needed to keep going. Going, until there was nowhere left to go.

Growing weary, he kept going until he found a clifftop perch from which to watch a gorgeous white dawn blazing over the eastern oceans. This side of the island was so rugged! Steepling black cliffs, lonely seabirds nesting in the most infeasible cracks above frothing waters, a light mist drifting over myriad tiny islands. He gazed out over the most northerly of the four ‘talons’ of the Archipelago, wondering again at the extraordinary likeness to a draconic paw print.

It almost implied design. When did one move from a scientific perception of complexity to a theory of design? Did that even make sense? He had read a couple of scholarly articles on the debate without coming to any personal conclusion. Fascinating topic.

So fascinating, he took a long, contemplative snooze upon the matter.

In the late afternoon, he took a long, pleasant flight up that northerly talon, first crossing a churning sea channel before playing in the frisky breezes along the talon. Despite its narrowness, the mountains were over a mile high to start with, but tapered off as he approached the talon tip.

Powerful tides ripped through dark blue channels. The colourful reef became restricted to a few smaller, sheltered inlets, with what the water colour proclaimed were steep drop-offs into far greater depths. Yet when he crossed to the south side, he found strips and pockets of pristine white beaches perhaps never trod by the foot of Man or the paw of Dragon. He tried not to think about how he missed the Princess, or what she must be thinking or feeling just now. She had sent him away. Only fair that he obeyed, that he allowed the silence and beauty of this place to permeate his being. He must marshal his inner strength. That fumbling fool was not him anymore.

Would there be pursuit? What would it take to excise this pain from his soul?

I’m not a hatchling! Then, don’t act like one … go!

He shuddered.

Across another channel was one final larger island, then just a few dots that made the final talon tip. This island, to his surprise, was shaped like a runic E in draconic talon runes, with an elongated upper bar which was broken in several places, creating a curved, beautifully sculpted bay on its south-eastern side. Well sheltered from oceanic storms. This made it both the most northerly and most easterly place in the Vaylarn Archipelago. Deliberately, he flew out further, right to the last rock that remained unwashed by the pounding surf, where he surveyed the endless blue with a strange hunger deep in his hearts. Out there, the Lumis Ocean was said to be far larger and more treacherous than the crossing he and Azania had completed.

Wilds of ocean, monsters of the deep.

As he perched on that boulder watching the glorious colours change all around him, he spied the first Sea Serpents he had seen during his journey. A family, perhaps. He did not attack. Observing their speed and state of exhaustion, he found himself wondering again why that family had not been attacked and consumed. According to Aria, this was a distinct danger in those deeper channels between the major islands, away from the reef.

Bending forward, he drank deeply from the ocean without taking his eyes off the azure Sea Serpents. These were not large, perhaps thirty to forty feet in length. They swam adeptly in a sinuous side-to-side motion supplemented by small, fan-like pairs of fins located along their bodies.

He watched them round the point and wriggle off to the south.

Animals. Despite their size, they gave no sign of intelligence, unlike the Sanbris Whales. They responded to external stimuli like any beast.

Stimuli … like music?

The oddity of Mikian’s observation gave him pause. Paws for thought? Nay, wings!

Before Wavewhisperer came to their aid out on the reef, there had been a burst of underwater music which preceded her much more powerful, yet no less melodious battle challenge. Did the Sea Dragons sing their way around the oceans? Was that why the Serpents had fled?

They flee the song …

His wings twitched of their own accord. Leaping forward, he extended his neck and tucked his paws close, spearing into the ocean with a degree of grace he had always thought would evade him. Fifty-foot white javelin. Bubbles burst around his body, tickling his hide as he tested the swell and felt the powerful, cooler current tugging at his body. To his surprise, there was a busy reef below his body, but it lay at least two hundred feet beneath the surface. Much stonier and harder-looking than the reefs he had paddled or stepped over.

However, all that was passé.

No music? No, there was none, save slight, haunting hints of what he took for whalesong. He drifted there in the cool, quiet waters for ten minutes, waiting.

Nothing.

Did he dare? He knew her name in Dragoceanic, and he knew how to call. He must brace himself for disappointment. Yet when hope went to war against timidity