Of Shadows and Dragons Read online

  “I’m thinking of the fine, hot dinner we’ll have when we get to the palace,” he told Nadja, giving her a smile. He glanced down at her fingers, as he had a hundred times before on their long journey. The girl’s hands were pink and full of blood, despite the bitter cold. She never wore gloves, saying they irritated her. Gruum had never understood how she kept from freezing.

  “Humph,” Nadja said, “Dinner? I’m not thinking of that at all. I’m thinking of the games father has told me of.”

  Gruum forced his smile to freeze on his face. He nodded encouragingly. Nadja was too young, in his opinion, to witness the blood sports the Hyboreans so reveled in. The games turned his stomach at times, especially when he felt sorry for those sentenced to participate for one minor infraction or another. He had to remind himself, not for the first time, that he was not Nadja’s father.

  Therian turned and glanced back at Gruum and the girl. His daughter responded by waggling her bare fingers at him. Then she shoved her hands back into the horse’s snow-crusted mane.

  Therian returned to his hushed conversation with the guardsmen. He did not acknowledge his daughter’s wave.

  -2-

  By nightfall they had reached the palace and Gruum headed down to the lowest levels of the south side. He paid two silver pieces and gratefully sank into his first hot bath in months. The tub itself was a natural one, a large, stone cavity filled with bubbling water. The cavity was almost big enough to swim within. Heated by infusions of sulfurous waters from deep beneath the earth, the baths of southern Corium were famed for their health-replenishing properties. Gruum didn’t know if they would heal his hurts, but the heat certainly felt good. It sank into his bones, which he believed had been permeated by frost all the way down to the marrow.

  Dozing in the pool, Gruum nodded off momentarily. He immediately began to dream.

  #

  Gruum met Yserth the Red Dragon. The Dragon was greater in size and even more terrifying of aspect than Anduin was, when she took her natural form. Gruum stood upon a flat, muddy strip of land that bubbled with heat. He suspected the heat came from a source not unlike that which warmed Corium’s baths.

  Looking up from the landscape, Gruum stared fixedly at the Dragon. Every red scale it wore was blackened by soot and many scales were large enough to serve a soldier as a kite shield. There were bony ridges around each of its huge orbits. The eyes within were yellow, with vertical slits for pupils. Gruum’s eyes met those of the Dragon, but he did not speak. The monster opened its mouth.

  “You dare return?” Yserth asked. “Where is my promised gift, tiny mote of meat and dust?”

  “I—I have none, lord Dragon,” Gruum managed to stammer out.

  Yserth’s great claws moved forward, causing a sound like the falling of boulders upon sand. One step, then a second. The Red Dragon now loomed over Gruum, blocking out the ruddy sun that baked this world.

  “How is it you slip in and out my realm so freely, when you are no sorcerer?” Yserth asked him.

  Gruum could not answer the huge creature, such was his fright.

  “It is not yet time for you to be here, traveler,” Yserth said. “In fact, I have grown weary of your visits. I will come to find you next time.”

  The Dragon dipped its great head with the jaws yawning wide. Hot breath swept over Gruum. There was no escape, no way out of the expanse of the mouth, nor of the hot, muddy flatlands.

  Gruum was swallowed alive.

  END Excerpt

  To purchase the entirety of the fourth book in the series, search for The Swords of Corium on your Ebook Seller's website, or go to BVLarson.com

  HYBOREAN DRAGONS SERIES

  To Dream with the Dragons

  The Dragon-Child

  Of Shadows and Dragons

  The Swords of Corium

  The Sorcerer’s Bane

  The Dragon Wicked

  HAVEN SERIES

  Amber Magic

  Sky Magic

  Shadow Magic

  Dragon Magic

  Blood Magic

  OTHER BOOKS

  Swarm

  Extinction

  Mech

  Mech 2

  Shifting

  Velocity

  Visit BVLarson.com for more information.