Dragon Rigger Read Online Free PDF

he wants, either."
    Windrush asked softly: "Others?"
    "Silence!" shouted Hodakai, his shadow-form reappearing in the spirit jar, expanding and contracting angrily. "You pests, you meddlers, you flies upon the earth!" He was answered by tiny peals of laughter, which made him angrier still.
    Windrush blinked slowly. "So, Hodakai—what others do you speak to? Perhaps you are not so isolated here, after all! Is this some treachery of yours, to make me think otherwise?"
    Hodakai hissed.
    Windrush angled his head, searching for the sprites as he called out to them. "You say, creatures in the shadows, that there are others with whom I must contest?"
    "Quiet! Silence!" shouted Hodakai, even more furiously than before.
    Windrush heard more laughter, then silence. He glanced back at Hodakai. "Well now, it would seem that we both seek something. Are you so certain that you wish to oppose me? Would you not prefer civility between us?" He recalled that the last time he and a rigger had met, it had been the rigger who had proposed civility.
    Hodakai didn't answer; but Windrush felt something shifting in the underrealm. He heard a rumbling sound and glimpsed flashes of light at the edges of his vision, just out of focus. Deep in the underweb, some tightly wound sorcery had just been released. Instinctively, he crouched in readiness; a shiver passed through his body.
    Hodakai cackled.
    Windrush spat fire at the demon, but his own hot breath washed back at him. The spirit jar was shrinking. He couldn't tell what was happening in the confused twistings of this new sorcery. But one thing was certain—another trap was springing. His muscles coiled for a leap.
    He caught himself. The ceiling loomed low over his head, much lower than before. A leap would have sent him smashing into it.
    Was the ceiling dropping? No—he was growing! He was about to be crushed against the rock. To his left, a visual distortion was unkinking, and he glimpsed a much larger space there. He lunged sideways, keeping his head low. His wing pinions scraped the ceiling, but then the floor dropped away and the ceiling vanished—and he leaped out into a vast open space. He landed with a roar and swung his head back and forth, shocked at the extent to which he had been deceived. Surely these spells were the work of the Enemy! He probed again at the underrealm, trying to shake free any further folds of illusion.
    At the sound of laughter, he turned to face Hodakai.
    The laughs came from a jar that was no larger than one of Windrush's foreclaws. It sat in a small alcove carved into the side of the cavern. It was in that space that the shrunken dragon had been standing—and nearly crushed—when the spell had been released. Hodakai's laughs sounded thin and reedy now, as Windrush peered in at the jar. "So! Your true stature is shown!" he muttered, wishing he could be more triumphant. "I grant you your skill in the use of the spells, spirit—even if you stole them."
    "Stole them?" Hodakai squawked.
    "Come, these spells are hardly your working."
    The spirit responded wordlessly and angrily. The dragon felt a sudden draft in the underrealm, as though another opening spell had been triggered deep in the mountain. Was some new power coming into the cavern?
    He glimpsed a movement in the shadows to his left and jerked his head, catching the smell of drahls. Fool! he thought. He should not have remained here so long, in a place where he was disadvantaged in a fight. Now it was too late to slip away.
    Three drahls abruptly appeared—dragonlike shadows, above and to either side of him. Hot fire rose in his throat. He raised his head and blew flame at the drahl overhead, then swung side to side, breathing fire at the other two. The flames crackled and lit the cavern. The drahls vanished in the fire, but reappeared a moment later, farther away. They hissed in unison: " You are a trespasser here, and trespassers die! "
    Windrush breathed fire again. It passed through the drahls as they