Dragon Stones Read online

  The dragon tasted the corpses of her hatchlings ...

  The bodies were cool, their internal fires stilled. She moved them aside, finding the carcass of a man beneath them. He lay face-down, arms spread wide. She rolled him over; his face had been smashed in, rendered concave and unrecognizable.

  She peered at the man for some time, considering. The damage had been done with a weapon. He must have come with companions, and they had crushed his head to keep her from taking it, showing it to other men, tracking him by his appearance.

  "Cursed man," she hissed. She examined the body, turning it this way and that, but he bore nothing that spoke of origin or maker. He looked no different from any other thug who had come into her lair in search of booty; only the torn and broken remains of her young marked him as more remarkable than most.

  "I could swallow you whole," she told the dead man, "but you are vermin and unworthy of such an honor." She tossed him into the bone pit, hearing him clatter to the bottom and come to rest in the darkness below.

  These were no bumpkins. These were knowledgeable, dangerous, murderous villains.

  Who had just made the biggest mistake of their lives.

  This is a work of fiction. The people, events, locales, and circumstances depicted are fictitious or used fictitiously and are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to any actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 James Viscosi

  ISBN-13: 978-0-6152-0881-7

  All Rights Reserved

  Also by James V. Viscosi

  www.jamesviscosi.com

  Available Now

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  Dragon Stones

  a novel

  by James Viscosi

  CHAPTER ONE

  T'Sian smelled blood as soon as she landed, there on the barren spine of the mountain, where the orange-grey rock crumbled under the ceaseless onslaught of rain and snow.

  Pressing herself flat against the stone, the dragon crept along until she came to the black mouth of her lair, concealed by the jumble of boulders she had heaped around it. She flicked her tongue into the opening, tasting the stale air that wafted from the depths of the cavern. The meaty aroma of decay: Nothing unusual about that. The little ones were always hungry, and since they had grown large enough to hunt, they had made a practice of dragging small beasts back to the cave, where they could feed in safety. Something else, though, some alien odor, had woven itself into the customary smells of fire and flesh.

  Men had been here.

  T'Sian pulled her wings close, molding them to her body, and entered the chimney, crawling down the near-vertical shaft, narrow and well-worn from the scouring of her metal-hard scales, her talons finding their familiar holds in the stone. At the bottom, the tunnel curved sharply, becoming horizontal. Her long body, malleable and supple as a snake, bent with it; she emerged into her lair, slipping through a crack in the wall.

  She immediately turned and climbed up to the ceiling, her long, curving claws finding easy purchase in the craggy rock. She scanned the mammoth chamber that formed the main portion of her lair, a natural cavity that she had spent decades excavating, shaping, transforming it from cavern to home.

  The darkness held no secrets from her, but where she should have seen the warmth of her hatchlings, she saw nothing. Perhaps they were not here; but that was a false hope, and the dragon knew it. T'Sian tasted the air again.

  Men. Their scents were not fresh; they had been and gone some hours earlier, while she had been sunning herself on the rocks to the west. Lured by rumors of dragon hoard, most likely; in their arrogance, men insisted on believing that she had some use for the gilt trappings of their petty civilizations.

  She spotted something, a flicker of warmth from the back of the lair, faint as a long-extinguished fire. She let go of the ceiling, twisted in midair to land feet-first on the stone floor. T'Sian moved cautiously toward the heat source, her black tongue flicking in and out, bringing her the strengthening scent of blood. She found the little ones in the back, near the pit where they tossed the bones they did not care to eat.

  They had been hacked to pieces.

  The dragon tasted the corpses of her hatchlings, tasting men as well. The bodies were cool, their internal fires stilled. They were not the source of the warmth she had seen. She moved them aside, finding the carcass of a man beneath them. He lay face-down, arms spread wide. She rolled him over; his guts spilled out, stringy, stuck to the floor. His face had been smashed in, rendered concave and unrecognizable.

  She peered at the man for some time, considering. The disembowelment was the work of dragon claws, but the damage to his head had been done with a weapon. He must have come with companions, and they had crushed his head to keep her from taking it, showing it to other men, tracking him by his appearance.

  "Cursed man," she hissed. She reached out with her long and clever tail, extending it forward over her head, snaking it around the man's waist, lifting him up. He was clad in some sort of armor, leather with pieces of metal affixed to it, a feeble imitation of her own scales. She examined the body, turning it this way and that, hoping to identify where he had come from, but he bore nothing that spoke of origin or maker. He looked no different from any other thug who had come into her lair in search of booty; only the torn and broken remains of her young marked him as more remarkable than most.

  "I could swallow you whole," she told the dead man, "but you are vermin and unworthy of such an honor." She tossed him into the bone pit, hearing him clatter to the bottom and come to rest in the darkness below.

  The dragon backed away from the corpses, feeling the heat in her breast where the crystals danced. She raised her head and let the flames fly, illuminating the lair with dancing light. Nictitating membranes slid across her eyes as the flames poured out, preventing the close, intense heat from blinding her temperature-sensitive vision. The stone ceiling, already cracked and soot-stained, took the punishment mutely; fire rippled along its surface, flowed around the stumps of sheared stalactites. She cried out, a hissing wail to accompany the silent inferno, echoing up the chimney and out across the rocky slopes and thinly forested valleys of the mountain range.

  At last she closed her throat, choked off the fire. She would put her scalding breath to better use, once she found the men who had invaded her lair. She crept along the floor, up the wall, to the alcove where she stored her crystals. She thrust her head and neck into the niche, and knew at once that what she sought was gone. She should have seen and felt the radiance of the stones, but there was nothing, only the faintest of traces, lingering in the rough rock walls. Her tongue flicked across the dry, empty pocket of stone.

  The dust tasted like men.

  She drew her head back, shocked. The humans had taken her stones. Why? Had they, in their ignorance, thought the crystals some sort of precious gem?

  That was certainly possible; but men were superstitious, unpredictable. She knew how they thought: Always believing that some secret ingredient, some missing element, would cure whatever ailments bedeviled them. Perhaps some alchemist had decided he needed the crystals f
or a potion to turn lead into gold, or some noblewoman believed that they would keep her youthful. Over the years, she had heard both those excuses, and more, from men she had caught searching for her lair.

  T'Sian returned to the bodies of the hatchlings. She hated to do this, but she had wasted a considerable amount of fire venting her rage, and the stones were of no use inside her dead young. Delicately, she lifted one of the carcasses, only to find that the small dragon's chest had been cut open, the leathery sac slashed, the crystals taken. She dropped the corpse and examined the other. It, too, had been plundered of its stones. What she had taken for mere brutality had instead been surgical: The men had slit open her babies and taken the stones from their gizzards.

  Now she understood. Men had come here specifically to steal her crystals. There had been no mistake. They had not thought they were taking diamonds or rubies; they had no interest in dragon's horns or scales or whiskers. They had wanted the stones and knew, somehow, where in the body they could be found. These were no mere adventuresome bumpkins; these were knowledgeable, dangerous, murderous villains.

  The dragon pivoted, turning back on herself. She crawled to the crack in the wall, climbed up the chimney, emerging onto the windswept summit where the rocks were as cold as the wind. She crept away from the opening to her lair, sweeping her head back and forth, flicking her tongue along the ground. She quickly picked up the scent of the men, following their trail along the ridge until it disappeared in a riot of strange, birdlike odors. Perhaps they had carried chicken carcasses, dragging them around to confuse their scent.

  She raised herself up, tasted the air: Rain and pines and distant snow. No trace of the murderers lingered; no trail led off the mountain, showing her where they had climbed. It was as though they had simply vanished from that spot.

  The dragon lowered herself again, hugging the rocky spine, considering her next move. She needed more of the red crystals; she could tell, by the chill in her belly, that they would soon be exhausted, leaving the blue ones inert as the rocks that lay scattered on the mountaintop. Obtaining red crystals meant a long flight to the distant volcanoes of Enshenneah, giving the killers ample time to flee; but these were unusually devious villains, and she could not face them without her fire.

  The dragon's idly twitching tail dislodged a small boulder, sending it bouncing and clattering off the cliff and into the cold, barren valley below. She glanced at the rolling rock as it vanished into the chill mist; then, her course of action determined, she tore down a few scraggly nearby trees and jammed them into the chimney. That would keep trespassers out until she returned.

  Satisfied, T'Sian spread her enormous wings and leaped off the cliff. The vast membranes filled with air; lazy flaps carried her away from the mountaintop. She circled it three times, scanning the crags and crannies for any sign of the murderers.

  Nothing. How could men just disappear?

  Frustrated, she veered away, flying off to the southwest, toward the distant volcanic islands.

  Tolaria had been waiting outside Klem's office for hours, responding to an urgent summons, only to find herself perched on a narrow, uncomfortable bench, staring at the senior oracle's closed door. With nothing else to occupy her, she had begun going over all the other slights she had endured over the three months she had been here.

  Three months! She remembered her excitement at being assigned to the Crosswaters, the largest oracular institution outside the college at Flaurent. Situated with Barbareth to the south, Dunshandrin to the east, and Madroval to the north, overlooking the frothing union of the Knopp, Achen, and Red rivers, the Crosswaters saw petitioners from throughout the continent. Even Enshennean traders stopped by from time to time, and merchants brought her news from her homeland, icy Yttribia, beyond the grey waters of Lake Achenar.

  Unfortunately, she was not permitted to show off her skills as an oracle to any of these visitors, because—

  The door to Klem's office opened, and her sour-faced superior poked his head out into the barren waiting room. If a raisin had been given ears, nose, and mouth and trained to speak, she thought, it would likely look and sound like Klem.

  "Tolaria. So sorry to keep you waiting. Please come in."

  She entered the man's office, finding nowhere to sit. Klem did not trouble himself with such foolishness as chairs for visitors. The room smelled of food; he had probably kept her waiting so that he could dawdle over his breakfast.

  The senior oracle settled into the chair behind his desk and regarded her with small, sunken eyes, his raisin face inscrutable. Was he waiting for her to say something? Had she transgressed again in some way? She would not speak first, she decided. He had summoned her; let him begin the conversation.

  She had not been in this room since the day of her arrival, when she had handed him her letter of introduction from the headmistress at Flaurent. Tolaria had not been permitted to read the missive, but she had been given to understand that it named her the most gifted oracle that the headmistress had seen in a generation. Klem had perused the letter, given Tolaria an unfriendly look, and promptly assigned her to dispute mediation.

  Finally she could no longer bear the silence, and said: "Sir, may I ask what this is—"

  "I've received a request from Lord Dunshandrin," he said.

  "Oh?"

  "He has requested the immediate dispatch of our best and most accurate oracle. Naturally I thought of you."

  "Me, sir?"

  "Of course." He pulled a parchment from his desk, unrolled it, looked it over; she recognized it as the letter she had brought from Flaurent. Had he kept it all this time? When she had left his office, fighting back tears, he had been holding the paper near a candle and she assumed he had burned it. "Headmistress Damona sings your praises quite loudly in this document."

  "She does?"

  "Tolaria's visions are of a clarity and quality quite extraordinary for one of her youth and inexperience," he read, his voice a mocking singsong. "She exhibits a discipline that would be remarkable in one twice her age." Klem fixed his gaze on her face. "Tolaria has the makings of a superb head oracle."

  As Klem rolled up the parchment and put it away, Tolaria felt herself growing flush. Little wonder he had treated her with such hostility; he hadn't even found a room for her in the main temple, instead housing her in a ramshackle cottage, once the dwelling of a groundskeeper, on the periphery of the grounds. The banishment hadn't sat well with her at first, but at least it allowed her some privacy, as well as giving her a small plot to tend; she could grow the aromatic herbs she needed for her unused trances, medicinal plants to practice her healing skills, flowers to brighten up her surroundings. The small hut had fallen into disrepair since the groundskeeper's death by drowning, and Tolaria was expected to fix it up; but this proved an unexpected benefit, as working with her hands helped relax her after days of tense mediation.

  Now she would lose even the comfort of her routine. The Headmistress's enthusiasm had not done her any favors here, under Klem's petty tyranny.

  He shut the drawer with a bang, startling her from her reverie. "You will attend to me while you are in my office," he said severely, the raisin angered.

  "My apologies. Sir."

  "You are dismissed. Gather your things quickly; a wagon waits for you at the front gate."

  "May I ask why Lord Dunshandrin requires an oracle dispatched, rather than coming here to see us, as is custom?"

  "When you meet him, perhaps he will tell you."

  "Very well." Seething, she turned, started for the door.

  "Oh, another thing," Klem said.

  She stopped, waited.

  "Your servant. She will be needed here in your absence; I am afraid she cannot accompany you."

  She pivoted, facing the other oracle again. "So I am to be sent to Dunshandrin alone."

  "Of course not. Lord Dunshandrin's emissary will travel with you." He smiled, showing her his teeth; then he looked away and began shuffling papers on his desk. "Enjoy
your journey."

  "Thank you," she said. "I'm sure I will."

  Pyodor Ponn didn't think his newest guests had come to Enshenneah on a holiday.

  They had arrived two days earlier, landing in his wife's garden, riding eagles as big as horses, trampling her vegetables with their enormous yellow claws. Ponn had never seen such creatures before, and had no idea how to care for them. Fortunately, the men didn't expect him to; in fact, after moving moved the birds into the stable, they had given explicit instructions that the stalls were not to be approached.

  Two days after the eagle-riding strangers had arrived, Ponn's wife came into the kitchen as he was washing the wooden breakfast bowls and said: "Pord tells me the birds are gone."

  "Are they?"

  "Yes. I checked."

  This suited Ponn; he didn't like the sharp looks the creatures had given his smaller children. It reminded him of hawks eyeing prey. "And have their riders gone as well?"

  "No."

  "Do they know that their mounts left without them?"

  "Yes," she said. "I asked them about it, and they just smiled." Then, after a moment: "Who are they, Ponn?"

  "I don't know, Plenn," he said. He handed her a bowl, which she dried and placed on the rack. "It's better not to inquire."

  "They're asking about the islands."

  "They are?"

  "Yes." She folded her arms. "They aren't merchants; they have nothing to sell. They aren't traders; they have nothing to barter. What are they doing here?"

  "Perhaps they came to buy," he said. "They brought an extra bird, it could be a pack animal. Why are you so curious?"