Master of Dragons Read Online Free PDF

voices were growing louder, and he could hear the monks bumbling
through the woods. He ran lightly and easily on his clawed feet into the trees,
jumping from one grassy hillock to another, making certain that he left no more
tracks.
    Once safely hidden
in the wilderness, he paused to consider his next move. His first thought was
to race back to the city, but then the idea came to him that he might learn the
answers to his questions by spying on the monks. He crouched among the foliage
and waited.
    Blood trickled
down his side, tickling him. His wound was still bleeding. He pressed his hand
over it and willed it to stop.
    Three monks in
their ankle-length brown robes came blundering out of the forest. They were hot
and sweaty and scared, and they peered and poked about. Their eyes, with that
strange half-mad glint, went from ground to water and even sky, as if somewhere
in their confused brains they imagined that their prey might have grown wings
and taken flight.
    “They’re not here,”
said one, bewildered.
    “What did you
expect?” another asked. He seemed more sane than the rest. His searching had
been more methodical. He’d stared a long time at the footprints. “That they’d
wait around for you?”
    “I don’t know.
Maybe.” The other two continued to search, not with hope of finding anything,
but because they didn’t know what else to do.
    “The boats are
gone,” one pointed out.
    “They used the
boat to escape,” said the lucid monk.
    “But all the boats are gone,” the first reiterated.
    “They set the rest
adrift.”
    “Ah!” The monk
seemed to consider this an act of genius, for he stared, wide-eyed, at the
sluggishly flowing water. “I’ll go find them.”
    He plunged into
the river, splashing and floundering, his arms flailing. The lucid monk,
shaking his head, waded in to grab hold of his companion and drag him back to
land.
    “What do you think
you’re doing?” the monk asked sternly. “You can’t swim. You’ll only end up
drowning yourself.”
    The monk shook
free. He cast a look back at the water—a look that was bleak and wistful—and
then he turned away. Ven shivered in the cool shadows and was sorry he’d
stayed.
    “What do we do?”
asked the sopping wet monk plaintively. “We can’t go after them. We have no
boats.”
    “We go back to
Dragonkeep.”
    “What do we tell
Grald?” The monk sounded nervous.
    “That we couldn’t
find them. And that there were no boats.”
    “Grald will be
angry.”
    “Grald is always
angry,” said the leader, and he shrugged.
    The three did not
leave immediately, however, as Ven had hoped. The leader stared intently up the
river, as though he were reaching out, searching with his mind. The other two
continued to poke about in a desultory manner.
    Ven cursed them
silently and willed them to depart. The mysterious explosion had thrown the
city into confusion and turmoil, but he was afraid that now his absence would
be noticed. He was just thinking he would have to risk slipping off into
wilderness, when the lead monk announced that they should be returning.
    “Grald will be
eager for our report.”
    “He didn’t seem eager,”
one of the monks muttered. “Otherwise he would have opened the gate when we
first reported that the two escaped.”
    “Grald has his
reasons.”
    The monk who had
jumped into the river spoke up. “I heard that the dragon did not open the gate
because he feared that the man we’ve been told to find—the one Grald calls ‘Draconas’—
would be lost to him.”
    Ven’s ears
pricked. He wanted to hear more. Unfortunately, the monks now began walking
back toward the city. Ven cursed them a second time. His dragon-blood gave him
the ability to hear better than humans, and he stretched his ears to the limit.
    “Grald finally did
open the gate,” another monk argued. “So this Draconas must have been caught.”
    “He wasn’t,” said
the leader. “We have been told to keep searching for this man. Either