I am Dragon (Dragon Fires Rising Book 2) by Marc Secchia (famous ebook reader TXT) 📕

me nothing about his past. However – Dragon nudged her shoulder playfully, and teased in a lilting growl – I think his fires burn ever so bright for the yellow, the yellow, the fiery little yellow …

She clouted him again.

He grinned to himself. Job well done.

Chapter 12: Rains in Amboraine

AFTER LUNCH, THE RIDERS switched positions once more. Inzashu with Yarimda. Azania considerably out-muscled by Yardi. Seeing them together, it became clear to him that adult Humans varied in stature and bulk as much as Dragons. At six feet and two inches of solid muscle, Yardi stood a foot and a half taller than the Princess and measured a foot wider, too. She must weigh at least two and a half times his tiny Rider. Interesting. He wondered if Humans treated bigger people as special. His unusual stature amongst Dragons made others leery of him, or painted a target upon his back.

Such a massive bruiser.

So intimidating.

GNARR!!

“Something you’d like to share, Dragon?” Azania asked politely.

“Just clearing my throat,” he suggested, flexing his shoulders until the muscles rippled beneath her feet. Would Aria like the new, freshly peeled look?

Imaginary conversation: Aye, Aria, I’m like an onion, a complex, virile creature of many layers. And she would reply: Shall I peel you a little further, you big beast, to reveal yet more complexity?

Ouch. Not very appealing.

True to form, his reaction had absolutely not passed the Princess by.

“Ready to assault the high passes, team?” he roared.

Various ‘aye’s’ and ‘ouch, my ears’ greeted his outburst. On that note, they winged up into the sky in a long, long thirty-five-degree incline. After an hour, Chalice complained about his holding back for her. Dragon snidely suggested he might take her upon his back as well, which had the desired effect of firing up her rage as the slope turned to sixty degrees, finally soaring into a spectacular vertical cliff face that had the advantage of hosting a breeze that could only be called a thermal by virtue of the fact that it was warmer than the biting cold that otherwise surrounded them. Nice rest. Both Dragons spread their wings and circled upwards. He helped Inzashu to check all their Riders, including herself.

“You’re doing better this time,” he told her.

Desert Princesses were not half bad at growling, he had discovered. Now was such an occasion.

Chalice said, “I scent bad weather on the other side of the pass.”

“Storm?”

“Aye. I’ve a reliable weather sense.”

Intriguing. Like his emotional sense? He had heard of weather senses and even a gold-sniffing sense, for that matter.

“Let’s put down where the ridge flattens out, up there,” he suggested, pointing with his foreclaw. “Get our Riders ready for a rough ride – reason being, we need to straightaway go down the other side to get everyone back to a safe altitude.”

“Very good.”

“Is the Kingdom of Amboraine all white people?” Inzashu asked unexpectedly.

“Very much so,” Yarimda said. “All of the Kingdoms north of the Tamarine Range are white-skinned apart from Vaylarn, as best I know.”

“Kind of strange to imagine it,” she said.

“You’ve been to Chakkix Camp,” Dragon said.

“Mostly white, with a few tan and desert folk,” Yarimda pointed out. “Darker tones are definitely in a minority unless you’re in the south – and Thobe, Trondis and Lymarn, I believe. Are there not many peoples beyond Skartun, Princess Inzashu?”

“Very many,” she agreed. “Only one tribe is white. They are called albinos – not in a positive sense. Many people hunt them for their body parts, said to be useful in dark magic rituals.”

“Isn’t that in the realm of Unicorns?” Dragon asked.

“Mythical,” Azania said, at the same time as her sister said, “Real.”

They shared sisterly glares-into-smiles. The older sister made an inviting gesture with her hand.

“I once spent several months in Altyrine while living with my mother,” she said. “She was hunting Unicorns. I was young, but I remember that was the first time I learned that she was evil – this beautiful Unicorn foal, as black as the darkest night, had his hoof caught in her snare. I remember his terror all too well. We spoke … he helped me to understand, and I let him go. Nahritu-N’shula was so furious. I … I remember that, too. It was the first time she beat me until I bled.”

She rubbed her arms.

Raising his paw, Dragon touched her knee. “I am sorry about your dam, Inzashu.”

“I’m sorry about yours.”

“I guess we share that dam problem,” he put in helpfully, and then when everyone shouted at him, had to splutter that it was an unfortunate slip of the forked tongue.

Great. He’d misbehave more in the future if this was the kind of hornet’s nest he could stir up!

Could command of Equitone, the horse language, run in the family? Mental note to check that one of these or those days.

Shortly, they put down on a steep slope at the foot of the final climb up the pass, a crack between peaks which over many years must have been filled with snow and ice. Chalice urged quiet and haste due to the instability under paw. Right she was. The very instant they took off once more, the slope shifted and an avalanche began that quickly spread over a width of several hundred Dragon-lengths.

He nodded to Chalice. “Good call.”

The Dragons winged upward once more, each wingbeat tougher than the last. The air became noticeably thinner, their heavy breathing steaming like smoking fumaroles as they worked their way up the endless slope. Inzashu worked initially with Yarimda, but soon had to support the others as well. Here they went. Over the top and out onto a plain of several miles that led to one more smaller ridge. Beyond that? Nothing but a gorgeous blue sky into which the white tops of cumulonimbus