James V. Viscosi - Dragon Stones

The dragon tasted the corpses of her hatchlings ...

The bodies were cool, their internal fires stilled. She moved them aside, finding the carcass of a man beneath them. He lay face-down, arms spread wide. She rolled him over; his face had been smashed in, rendered concave and unrecognizable.

She peered at the man for some time, considering. The damage had been done with a weapon. He must have come with companions, and they had crushed his head to keep her from taking it, showing it to other men, tracking him by his appearance.

"Cursed man," she hissed. She examined the body, turning it this way and that, but he bore nothing that spoke of origin or maker. He looked no different from any other thug who had come into her lair in search of booty; only the torn and broken remains of her young marked him as more remarkable than most.

"I could swallow you whole," she told the dead man, "but you are vermin and unworthy of such an honor." She tossed him into the bone pit, hearing him clatter to the bottom and come to rest in the darkness below.

These were no bumpkins. These were knowledgeable, dangerous, murderous villains.

Who had just made the biggest mistake of their lives.

This is a work of fiction. The people, events, locales, and circumstances depicted are fictitious or used fictitiously and are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to any actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, whether living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Dragon Stones

a novel

by James Viscosi

CHAPTER ONE

T'Sian smelled blood as soon as she landed, there on the barren spine of the mountain, where the orange-grey rock crumbled under the ceaseless onslaught of rain and snow.

Pressing herself flat against the stone, the dragon crept along until she came to the black mouth of her lair, concealed by the jumble of boulders she had heaped around it. She flicked her tongue into the opening, tasting the stale air that wafted from the depths of the cavern. The meaty aroma of decay: Nothing unusual about that. The little ones were always hungry, and since they had grown large enough to hunt, they had made a practice of dragging small beasts back to the cave, where they could feed in safety. Something else, though, some alien odor, had woven itself into the customary smells of fire and flesh.

Men had been here.

T'Sian pulled her wings close, molding them to her body, and entered the chimney, crawling down the near-vertical shaft, narrow and well-worn from the scouring of her metal-hard scales, her talons finding their familiar holds in the stone. At the bottom, the tunnel curved sharply, becoming horizontal. Her long body, malleable and supple as a snake, bent with it; she emerged into her lair, slipping through a crack in the wall.

She immediately turned and climbed up to the ceiling, her long, curving claws finding easy purchase in the craggy rock. She scanned the mammoth chamber that formed the main portion of her lair, a natural cavity that she had spent decades excavating, shaping, transforming it from cavern to home.

The darkness held no secrets from her, but where she should have seen the warmth of her hatchlings, she saw nothing. Perhaps they were not here; but that was a false hope, and the dragon knew it. T'Sian tasted the air again.

Men. Their scents were not fresh; they had been and gone some hours earlier, while she had been sunning herself on the rocks to the west. Lured by rumors of dragon hoard, most likely; in their arrogance, men insisted on believing that she had some use for the gilt trappings of their petty civilizations.

She spotted something, a flicker of warmth from the back of the lair, faint as a long-extinguished fire. She let go of the ceiling, twisted in midair to land feet-first on the stone floor. T'Sian moved cautiously toward the heat source, her black tongue flicking in and out, bringing her the strengthening scent of blood. She found the little ones in the back, near the pit where they tossed the bones they did not care to eat.

They had been hacked to pieces.

The dragon tasted the corpses of her hatchlings, tasting men as well. The bodies were cool, their internal fires stilled. They were not the source of the warmth she had seen. She moved them aside, finding the carcass of a man beneath them. He lay face-down, arms spread wide. She rolled him over; his guts spilled out, stringy, stuck to the floor. His face had been smashed in, rendered concave and unrecognizable.

She peered at the man for some time, considering. The disembowelment was the work of dragon claws, but the damage to his head had been done with a weapon. He must have come with companions, and they had crushed his head to keep her from taking it, showing it to other men, tracking him by his appearance.

" Cursed man ," she hissed. She reached out with her long and clever tail, extending it forward over her head, snaking it around the man's waist, lifting him up. He was clad in some sort of armor, leather with pieces of metal affixed to it, a feeble imitation of her own scales. She examined the body, turning it this way and that, hoping to identify where he had come from, but he bore nothing that spoke of origin or maker. He looked no different from any other thug who had come into her lair in search of booty; only the torn and broken remains of her young marked him as more remarkable than most.

" I could swallow you whole ," she told the dead man, " but you are vermin and unworthy of such an honor. " She tossed him into the bone pit, hearing him clatter to the bottom and come to rest in the darkness below.

The dragon backed away from the corpses, feeling the heat in her breast where the crystals danced. She raised her head and let the flames fly, illuminating the lair with dancing light. N ictitating membranes slid across her eyes as the flames poured out, preventing the close, intense heat from blinding her temperature-sensitive vision. The stone ceiling, already cracked and soot-stained, took the punishment mutely; fire rippled along its surface, flowed around the stumps of sheared stalactites. She cried out, a hissing wail to accompany the silent inferno, echoing up the chimney and out across the rocky slopes and thinly forested valleys of the mountain range.

At last she closed her throat, choked off the fire. She would put her scalding breath to better use, once she found the men who had invaded her lair. She crept along the floor, up the wall, to the alcove where she stored her crystals. She thrust her head and neck into the niche, and knew at once that what she sought was gone. She should have seen and felt the radiance of the stones, but there was nothing, only the faintest of traces, lingering in the rough rock walls. Her tongue flicked across the dry, empty pocket of stone.

The dust tasted like men.

She drew her head back, shocked. The humans had taken her stones. Why? Had they, in their ignorance, thought the crystals some sort of precious gem?

That was certainly possible; but men were superstitious, unpredictable. She knew how they thought: Always believing that some secret ingredient, some missing element, would cure whatever ailments bedeviled them. Perhaps some alchemist had decided he needed the crystals for a potion to turn lead into gold, or some noblewoman believed that they would keep her youthful. Over the years, she had heard both those excuses, and more, from men she had caught searching for her lair.

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