Free The Golden Griffin (Book 3) by Michael Wallace Page A

dragons aren’t together.”
    Palina pursed her lips. “How can you be sure? Maybe the battle is for show.”
    “Father said that two adult dragons can never live together.”
    “Be skeptical of your father’s dragonlore. Some of it was speculation. The rest came from oral histories and old letters. Before this year we hadn’t faced a full-grown dragon for generations.”
    “It wasn’t just Father. Markal doesn’t think the fighting is for show, either.” Daria shared the wizard’s strange reaction when she’d told him that the dragons had been battling in the mountains.
    “Even so, that doesn’t validate your father’s speculation.”
    “He’s dead, Mother. There’s no need to criticize him anymore.”
    Palina touched her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
    Daria’s irritation dissipated like frost in sunlight. She held her mother’s hand for a long moment before they separated and turned their attention to the burned hillside.
    The rumbling grew in intensity. It wasn’t loud, but it was deep and penetrating, reaching into Daria’s bones and making her jaw ache. The stink of sulfur filled her nostrils and coated her mouth until she wanted to spit. Her instincts told her to jump on Joffa’s back and flee and it was only with effort that she kept from doing just that. The griffins crouched in silence, as if terrified by some ancestral memory that warned them that their most deadly enemy was nearby.
    A dark shape appeared against the sky, huge, its wings spread, its coat of blackened scales thick and formidable. Heat shimmered in the air as it passed.
    It was at least eighty feet from its snout to the tip of its tail. Its head alone looked big enough to swallow a griffin whole. By the Brothers, had it been so big two months ago? Had she really faced such a monster in open combat? Fear burrowed into her gut.
    It soared down over the hillside and disappeared. Daria let out her breath. A shiver worked its way through her body.
    “We’ve seen enough,” Palina said in a low voice. She sounded shaken. She started to rise, but immediately ducked back down.
    The dragon reappeared in the sky, this time above them on the mountainside. All it had to do was turn its eye a fraction and it would spot them. Would it roast them alive, or swoop down to tear griffins and riders apart for its breakfast? Daria made to spring for her swords, still tied to Joffa. Grant her one sword thrust before she fell, that was all she could hope.
    The dragon flew overhead, then landed on the burned hillside below. It swung its monstrous, knobby head from side to side. Searching. Its nostrils flared and contracted. Smoke dribbled from its mouth and nose. It roared.
    The roar was a clap of thunder that rolled over the hillside. Daria slapped her hands over her ears until the terrible noise passed. Then came an answering bellow, this one from the earth beneath her feet.
    A second dragon crawled out of the hillside no more than twenty feet to their left. A choking cloud of sulfur rolled over the hillside as it emerged and spread its wings. Daria grabbed her mother’s hand and squeezed. The entrance to the cave holding the second beast had been concealed among the boulders only twenty feet from where they hid. When it was out, it stomped toward the first dragon, smoking and bellowing and lashing its tail.
    The second dragon was smaller than the first, although it would have looked terrifying enough if it hadn’t been facing off against a dragon that was even larger and heavier. It had a single, sharpened horn on its head, as long as Daria’s forearm. The bigger dragon, in comparison, carried twin horns that curved like scimitars. The head of the smaller beast was narrower, but with longer, more wicked-looking teeth. It was black like the first, but when it turned in the sun, it shimmered almost indigo blue. Both animals had scars and scratches along their sides, some healed completely, perhaps wounds from