The End of Time Read Online Free PDF

eye to eye with the creature. He yelped and dropped out of sight in the half-barrel platform.
    The dragon’s claws bit deep into the mast. The wings spread wide and flapped again and again, forcing the ship into a dangerous tilt. Sandar and Balfour wrapped their arms around the helm, and the sailors seized the stays and rails to keep from sliding across the deck. Hap heard things rolling and crashing in the hold below, and he saw Oates with one arm curled around the foremast and the other hand holding a sprawling, squirming Hameron by the collar, saving him from a painful tumble. The dragon turned its jaws toward the sky and unleashed a plume of fire. The wings kept flapping, and the ship was nearly sideways. The sailors wailed and screamed.
    When the Bounder seemed inches from capsizing, the dragon made a chuffing sound and folded its wings. The ship rolled back to horizontal and beyond, and a few men lost their grip and tumbled across the deck into the port-side rail.
    Why did it stop? Hap wondered. The dragon extended its long neck and stared down with smoke drifting from its jaws. As its muscles moved, the metallic scales shimmered. Hap followed the serpent’s gaze and saw Sophie lying on the deck just outside the hatch, with her hand pushing Jewel’s cage in front of her. Jewel raced back and forth within the bars, taking two strides and whipping her slender body around to face the other way.
    The golden dragon climbed halfway down the mast and angled its head, inspecting the cage. It called out again: not the earsplitting roar they’d already heard, but a long, warbling cry.
    Some of the crew stood cautiously as the ship stopped rocking, while the rest stayed low, cowering. Hap saw Hameron tug at the cuff of Oates’s pants. “You’re the fighter, you big oaf—do something!”
    Oates laughed bitterly. “Do what? Get my head bitten off?”
    The dragon stared down, turning its gaze on anyone who moved. All motion stopped, except for the blinking of eyes and heaving of chests.
    Hap looked at Sophie, who had gotten to her knees next to the cage, clutching it with a shaking hand. “Should I open it?” she whispered.
    Hap nodded. “Do it!”
    “I’m scared,” she said.
    Hap craned his neck to watch the dragon and took a slow, sliding step toward Sophie. When the dragon didn’t notice him, he took another, and a third. And then the serpent’s long snout swiveled toward him, and its sapphire eyes narrowed and focused. Terror fused Hap’s feet to the deck, and hot beads of sweat sprang up along his hairline. He looked sideways at Sophie and saw someone appear in the threshold over her shoulder, coming slowly up the stairs from the deck below.
    Umber looked like a man roused from a drunken stupor as he wobbled up the last step, gripping the rail to steady himself. His eyes were slits, and he blinked at the daylight as he stepped onto the top deck. His mouth opened and twisted sideways in a long, loud yawn, which froze wide when he spotted the dragon on the mast. His tongue wagged, and he might have said something if a second dragon had not burst out of the mist.
    It was larger than the first and more coppery in hue. With wings flexed wide it glided to the front of the ship and landed on the prow, gouging the planks and snapping off the bowsprit. The copper beast sang a warbling reply to the golden dragon, and then growled at the cowering people on the Bounder .
    Then the copper dragon did something astonishing. It bent its neck and lowered its head to the deck. Hap saw a man perched on the dragon’s shoulders, in a leather saddle. The man swung his legs to one side, kicking off the loops that secured his feet. The dragon raised its foreleg, offering a place to stand, and lowered the man to the deck. He stepped down and took two strides forward. The dragon’s head hovered over the man’s shoulder, teeth bared.
    The man was dressed head to toe in spotted goat hide: boots, leggings, tunic, and gloves. His forehead