Free Bone War by Steven Harper Page A

truly fashionable Diamond District and who didn’t want an ocean villa. Low stone walls and hedgerows snaked among the fields, markingboundaries. A few trees stood scattered among them. At Kalessa’s direction, the carriage took them down a lane and toward what looked like a farm, complete with a house, outbuildings, and stone-lined fields and hedges of its own. However, when Kalessa alighted from the carriage, a giant green blur burst from behind the barn and rushed straight at her. While the driver tried to calm the panicked horses, the blur halted near Kalessa and coiled frantically around her, hissing like the world’s biggest teakettle.
    It was a wyrm, a great emerald beast easily thirty feet long and nearly as tall as a horse. Its golden eyes matched Kalessa’s, and its long tongue lapped the air. Huge coils all but hid Kalessa entirely, and she laughed within them until she was able to scramble out and drop in front of the wyrm’s sleek head. Its—his—tongue flickered over her. She laughed again and scratched the underside of the wyrm’s jaw. His tail whipped back and forth like a tree in a hurricane.
    â€œYes, Slynd, I have not forgotten you.” Kalessa put her forehead against the wyrm’s. “You are my first love forever, yes, you are!”
    â€œHe missed you.” An elderly man with a bent back, a walking stick, and a straw hat emerged from the barn and approached. “You didn’t come yesterday, and he was unhappy.”
    â€œDid you miss me?” Kalessa stroked Slynd’s head. Slynd’s coils writhed with happy excitement. “Mother is so sorry, and she missed her little one, yes, she did. Are you hungry, hmm? Come along, we will ride and then we will eat.”
    Slynd bobbed his head. Kalessa leaped onto his neck without even a saddle, and both of them rushed away. Kalessa raised her knife above her head and changed it into a sword with a whoop as they vanished into the distance.
    â€œMother,” Talfi muttered with a shake of his head. “Am I the only one who gets a little creeped when she says that to a wyrm?”
    Ranadar laughed. “After a thousand years of life,
that
curdles your blood?”
    â€œI’m just glad it’s not mating season,” said the old man, whose name was Neff. “These wyrms are difficult enough to handle without nesting time angrying up the blood.”
    â€œHow many wyrms are you taking care of right now?” Talfi eyed the barn.
    â€œSix at the moment, counting Slynd.” Neff shook his stick. “Most of them from orcs who are travelin’ through Balsia. Slynd is the only long-termer I have. Pays the rent, though, now that my sons and I—what is that?”
    Neff pointed with his stick. Zipping over the fields came a little ball of golden light. It rushed at the trio like a shooting star, trailing sparks as it came.
    â€œA sprite!” Ranadar put his hands up, but before he or Talfi could react further, the sprite cracked forward like a lightning bolt and struck Neff in the chest. The old man staggered and . . . changed. A golden nimbus surrounded him. His back straightened, his hat fell away, and his form puffed outward. In a blink, Neff had shifted from an old human man with a walking stick into a beautiful elven woman holding a scepter. Blond hair spilled in waves down her back, and her perfect, wide emerald eyes looked out imperiously from beneath a smooth forehead. Her ears came to graceful points. The early-evening sun sparkled off her silver gown and winked off her pearl-headed scepter. Her beauty was too perfect, too awe-inspiring, and Talfi knew it was a glamour, that she was trying to make herself so wondrous, but that didn’t keep Talfi from wanting to kneel before her perfection. He found his knees starting to bend, and only sheer willpower kept him upright. He did recognize her, and so did Ranadar.
    â€œMother,” Ranadar said, his tone