Hip Deep in Dragons Read Online Free PDF

a Marzinian marsh dragon, so it is smaller, but because they have so many natural enemies in their homeland, they reproduce quickly. The clutch could contain from twenty to thirty eggs, and if only half of them reach sexual maturity—which can be in as little as a year with a good food source, and no natural predators—in about three years…”
    “We’re going to find ourselves hip deep in dragons,” I finished for him.
    “It will, I suspect, solve your python problem. A serpent to a dragon is like chocolate to you or me, but when the snakes have all been eaten, the dragonlings will start in on the local wildlife: deer and panthers, even wild hogs and alligators when they get larger. After that it will be livestock, and then I fear humans will be next. So you can see why I have to stop that bloody great worm, now.”
    “Dragons have natural predators where you come from, don’t they?”
    “Aye, gryphons. A pride of gryphons can take on all but the largest dragon. And they burrow into the nests, their beaks sharp enough to break open the eggs and feast on the contents.”
    “Couldn’t you just import a couple of gryphons to take care of this?” I asked. “ No, that wouldn’t work, would it? Then you’d have to bring in the gryphon’s natural enemy… Gryphons do have enemies, don’t they?
    “Oh, aye, manticores, but pray you don’t get any of those in your world.”
    “What makes you think the dragon will be there?” I pointed to the map.
    “It would not stray far from the Gate and the out-flow of magic coming from it.”
    “Gate?”
    “On the Road.”
    “That line you traced? There’s no road there.”
    “Not a road, the Road. The Wizard’s Road. The Road Between the Worlds.”
    I remembered the quote about believing impossible things every day before breakfast. Well, I’d already had breakfast, and here I was on to my second impossible thing. I had a strong feeling the third one wouldn’t be far behind.
    “Worlds,” I asked. “You mean like parallel universes?”
    “Aye, if I understand your science correctly, although I must admit reading your tomes on physics makes my teeth ache. I am more comfortable with the analogy of worlds within worlds, much in the way an onion has layers around layers.”
    “An onion? You couldn’t find a less pungent example?”
    He laughed, a joyous outpouring of mirth that caused velvet shivers to flow up and down my spine.
    “I said much the same thing to Master Procyon Bey when I was but a youngling, and he rapped my knuckles with his cane for it.” His smile faded. “Perhaps I have been unwise to involve you in this.”
    “No,” I said, perhaps a bit too loudly, then continued in a more level tone. “No, I’m glad you did. It just seems like somewhere in my childhood, I stopped believing in all the magical things in the world and since then, my life has been just a bit, uh… grayer for it. I like the thought that there can still can be dragons.” I snorted a wry chuckle. “Even if one is nesting practically in my back yard.”
    He cocked his head at me, his pale eyes narrowed, and then he nodded, the decision he’d been pondering apparently reached. He held up his hands, one above the other, his palms bracketing a space of about a foot and a half. Air began to flow into it, pulling all the sunlit motes out of the room and into a spiral that wheeled between his fingers like a newborn galaxy. It condensed into a ball of golden fire, nestled within shell after shell of lights from a deep orange to a blue so dark it was lost against the blackness that surrounded the illusion.
    It resembled a computer generated wire frame model, a 3-D display rotating in an immense cosmic mainframe. The shells closest to the orb were ginger hued, fading almost imperceptibly to yellow until, half way to the outer darkness, one world flickered and sputtered like a dying neon tube. I was surprised how quickly I’d come to think of those, not as lines drawn on a magical