Dog and Dragon-ARC Read Online Free PDF

Cardun, she looks about to fall over. And so young too. Come, child. We’ll see you safely bestowed.”
    Obediently Meb stood up. Tears pricked at her eyes. She hadn’t had much female sympathy, or company, since the raiders had destroyed her home. And even there…she’d been an outsider. “Thank you,” she said gruffly. “I am very tired. It’s been a long and awful day.”
    “With Prince Medraut and Mage Aberinn at the end of it,” said the sympathetic one.

CHAPTER 3
    A chemical brine steamed and frothed as it gushed through the new tear in the black road that crossed the shattered ash lands. Something hissed up from a fissure, taking shape into one of the elemental creatures of the smokeless fire. Díleas backed away, barking. So did the travelers. “Back on the carts, men, it’s one of the big Beng!”
    Fionn had spotted what he had been hoping for, deep down. This dolerite dyke had blocked it, and now the creatures of smokeless flame had cracked that. The bells that were ringing from the carts helped to hide the sound he made, as he sat down next to Díleas and scraped rock-sign onto the stone.
    The fire-demon was less easily fooled than the travelers. “What does one of your kind want here in our demesnes?”
    “Yours? I thought you liked places of ash and smoke and flame,” said Fionn mockingly, answering in the creature’s own language. “Not such a place as this is about to become. I am one of the advance surveyors.”
    “Surveyors?” hissed the creature.
    “Yes, that is what they call those who make accurate measurements and determine the boundaries. Those are busy changing,” said Fionn, with exaggerated patience, as if explaining to a simpleton.
    “We changed them, in order to stop this endless incursion into our lands!”
    “You did, did you?” mocked Fionn. “I was of the impression you liked incursions. Devoured their essences or fed them to your pets.”
    “These have protections. We seldom get one. So we have broken their road.”
    “And that has broken your land. You should have guessed that when you got the brine-boil instead of the lava,” said Fionn, with all the confidence in the world.
    “We frequently have fumaroles,” said the creature of smokeless flame.
    “Do they usually get cooler?” asked Fionn, his voice even. He had redirected sufficient heat downward for that to start to happen. All that heat was cracking the dome far below now. When there had been tiny fissures…the water had boiled and picked up minerals on the way up. But, if those fissures grew, more water would flow from the strata below. Water that had been trapped down there for millennia, under increasing pressure. A lot of water. Fionn chuckled to himself. The fire creatures would hate it, but it might help their ashpit world regenerate. They were running out of coal measures, and once, after all, it must have been wet and warm here to grow the forests to make the coal. It would ease the balance of forces here. So good to achieve two things at once. And seeing the look of startlement on the creature of smokeless flame’s features—you couldn’t really say “face”—was a joy.
    Ah, he’d forgotten the pleasure of being the trickster in the last little while. The wider worlds needed him. Aside from rebalance, there was the pure delight in overturning the expected and changing the order of things.
    The creature of smokeless flame left hastily, with no further words, not even of farewell, or of threat. No doubt it had gone to consult with its superiors. They had a habit of doing that, whenever confronted with something different. They were so hierarchical they struggled with independent thought. It was their weakness. Which was just as well, really. They needed some weak points.
    Fionn watched its departure with some satisfaction. And went on talking. He did the fire-creature’s speech part too, while he backed up to the cart, and felt for the catch to their hideaway with his foot. The travelers