Dragon Heart Read Free Page A

another, and another, its head darting here and there at the end of its long, supple neck. She wrapped her belt around the spinal barb, to stay on, the barb thick as a tree bough, polished smooth and sleek as gold; she was sick to her stomach; she could not breathe; she knew that Jeon was dead, that they were all dead. She would die next. The beast whirled and her head struck the barb hard enough to daze her. The sky reeled by her, and then abruptly the dragon was plunging down again into the sea.
    She flung her head back, startled alert, and fought to untie her belt. The wet knot was solid. Just as the sea closed over her head she managed to draw in a deep lungful of air.
    The sea rushed past her. The light faded. They were going down, steadily down. She looked up, and far over her head she saw a body floating limp in the shrinking patch of pale water. Then the dragon was swimming sideways, and the water was rushing in one direction like a river, through some deep, cold place.
    The light vanished. In the pitch-darkness, surging along on the dragon’s back, she could not imagine an end. She had to breathe. Her lungs hurt. The dark water rippled on her skin. Her arms were wrapped around the barb, her body flying along above the strong-swimming beast. She counted to herself. Surely something would happen. When she got to ten she counted again. Her lungs ached. She could see nothing. Strange lights burst in her eyes and were gone. Nausea rose in her throat. Then the dragon was swimming upward and above them was sunlit water.
    She counted again, and at eight she burst into the light and the air.
    Her whole body shuddered, taking in great gulps of breath. She clung to the barb, looking around her. They were in a lake, or a lagoon, surrounded by high cliffs, the water salt but calm. She realized she was inside the headland, that some passage beneath the sea cliff connected this lagoon to the sea. Ahead of her the golden barbs ran up the huge coiled neck of the dragon; it was swimming toward the beach, a strip of sand at the foot of a pleated black cliff.
    She tore at her belt; with a leap of relief she saw the cloth had frayed almost apart in the wild ride, and with her fingers she ripped away the last fibers just as the dragon reached the shallow water. She plunged down the red-scaled side and ran up onto the sand.
    The black cliff there rose impossibly high and steep. But its sheer face was runneled and creased, and she ducked into the nearest of these seams, back into a narrow darkening gorge that bent sharply to the left and then pinched into nothing, a cage of rock.
    Far enough, she thought. She was only a few feet from the beach, but the opening was narrow and the beast couldn’t reach her here, and the bend might shelter her from the flames. She crept cautiously up nearer the opening and peered around the corner, to see out.
    The dragon had lain down right in front of her on the sand, its great head only about ten feet away. So it knew she was there. But it stretched out, relaxed, well fed, half-asleep. She leaned against the rock wall behind her and looked it over.
    At ease, the beast sprawled with its neck coiled, its head between its forepaws, arched claws outstretched, each claw as long as she was. The massive bulk of its body curled away, its tail half in the water still. The red arrow-shaped head lay half-turned toward her, the eyes closed. A glistening horn thrust up above each of its eyes, which were rimmed in gold, the wide, curled, oddly delicate nostrils also gold trimmed. The long red neck led back between the high, round ridge of shoulders with scales a yard across. Each scale was glossy red, gold edged, at the center a black boss. Below its barbed spine the scales overlapped in even horizontal rows, smaller with each row, red squares in golden outline. As they shrank, the black boss at the middle became smaller and fainter, the gold trim thinner; until the scales low on its sides were red alone.
    She