Free The Legend of Vanx Malic: Book 02 - Dragon Isle by M. R. Mathias

every scuff of boot or tumble of rock that his keen ears could hear. Dragons could hear just as well and there was no lack of noise from their passage. He hoped the fresh devil goat carcass would draw it away from them.
    Zeezle was having a hard time figuring why his lifelong friend had so readily exchanged his life for that of the young smith. Darbon was likable, but his whole life would pass like a month of Vanx’s existence. This entire affair confounded his senses. Already a handful of men had died, or been injured. For what? To save a single girl? Why was her life worth so much more than their own? As far as Zeezle was concerned it wasn’t. He had half a mind to just abandon these fools and row the longboat back to Zyth. He could do it. If it came down to trading his life for these fools over the stuff that might or might not even save the girl, he’d just have sore shoulders. For Vanx’s sake, though, he’d stick it out. His friend had died for this, as had Sir Earlin. He owed his friend that much. Still, if his own life came to more risk than he felt he could manage, he would stay alive. Besides, the idea was starting to sink in that if he let Darbon die now, then Vanx’s life would have been wasted. That fact, and Trevin’s sheer determination, was enough to keep him on task for now.
    “There is another cavern just up ahead,” he whispered to the others. “We’ll stop there for a bit and clean those wounds better while we rest. We still have a long way to go before we top the ridge. A bite of meat and cheese, and a few sips of that watered wine will go far toward getting us all there…” He started to say, “in one piece,” but thought better of it when the idea of Vanx being torn limb from limb and chugged down a hungry dragon’s gullet stopped him. He was glad that he was leading, for now the tears streaming down his face were flowing freely.

    Vanx stayed there against the cliff face as still and quiet as he could. He hoped that when the dragon finished its meal it would go off somewhere, but he wasn’t that lucky. Not long after the sound of its feasting died away he heard the beast growling about and grunting. It finally left its niche, but only for a heartbeat or two. The whole time it was gone, Vanx imagined it seeing him and coming around to snatch him from the rocks.
    The dragon came swooping back in and sent another crumble of scree over him. Soon it was feeding on something else. The sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bones, along with the wet smacking, gave Vanx the cover of noise he needed to explore the handholds and footholds he’d spotted earlier. Whatever the dragon was eating now was sizable, for it was still munching a good while later when the ledge on which Vanx huddled broke away with a loud, cracking rumble.
    The sensation of falling, and the helpless panic that came with it, overwhelmed him. But that wasn’t the most intense of his feelings. The dragon’s feeding had stopped, and its wings had snapped open. Vanx knew that as soon as he hit the ground it would devour him.



The dragon belched his fire
    and the knight he did a dance.
    It was for naught, the fire was hot
    he didn’t have a chance.
    – Dragon’s Song

C oll looked down at the trio of guards sleeping soundly on the wine-colored marble floor. The spell that had rendered them that way was a simple one. They would wake in a few hours and not even remember falling into the potent state of slumber. The fact that they had not been warded against such an attack gave Coll pause. He had to assume that a more formidable spell was protecting the Blood Stone from theft. Even though he was reasonably sure he hadn’t been recognized for what he really was, Coll knew Quazar wasn’t foolish enough to leave such an artifact unprotected. Or was he? The elder wizards of Quazar’s order sometimes grew lazy and overconfident in their protected stations. The old white-beard probably couldn’t imagine anyone or anything with