Read Online Dragon Coast by Greg van Eekhout - Free Book Online Page A

and fear, and resentment, and love.
    There was no other osteomancy quite like this. There was no osteomancer quite like its source.
    He was smelling Daniel.
    The firedrake climbed a few hundred feet and wheeled around, aiming for a stony peak shaped like a weathered flint ax.
    â€œAh, that’s Mount Whitney,” Annabel said with warm appreciation. “Tallest peak in the Southern realm. A very fine place for dragon.”
    Sam leaned over the controls. Even in the fading light, he made out three human forms, bundled up against the howling cold.
    Daniel was looking back at him through binoculars.
    Daniel had done it.
    He’d found Sam. He’d crossed the kingdom, he’d figured out a place where the firedrake might show, he’d baited the air with his own scent, and he’d climbed more than fourteen thousand feet to find Sam. And of course Moth was with him, his ridiculous, giant shadow. And Em, not because she was loyal to Daniel, but because she was loyal to Sam.
    Sam raised his hand in a greeting he knew none of them could see.
    â€œYou know those folks?” Annabel asked.
    â€œFriends of mine,” Sam said.
    â€œLooks like two of your friends are fixing to fire a harpoon at us.”
    Sam smiled. He’d wondered what Daniel was planning to do once he tracked down the dragon. He bet Daniel had gone through quite a bit of trouble to obtain whatever bone was on the end of the harpoon.
    Sam wanted the firedrake to hover there and take whatever was coming to it. He only wished he could find a way to let Daniel know it was okay, because if things went wrong and Daniel ended up killing him, Sam didn’t want Daniel to spend the rest of his life moping around with guilt.
    The harpoon flew at the dragon. There was not so much as a bump, a shudder, or even a noise when it struck the dragon’s belly. But Sam could tell right away something was happening. The dragon’s wing beats slowed.
    Annabel sniffed the air. “That smell like alp to you?”
    â€œNo. What’s alp?”
    â€œIt’s a shape changer. Doesn’t even have a native form. But you can cook it into a powerful tranquilizer.”
    â€œPowerful enough to put the firedrake to sleep?”
    â€œNot unless it’s mixed by a phenomenally good osteomancer. Are your friends phenomenally good osteomancers?”
    â€œOne of them is,” Sam said as the dragon lost altitude. It reached out with a talon, tearing loose tons of rock, and kept sinking. The floor pitched, and Sam and Annabel grabbed on to the pilot’s chair for balance.
    â€œI think your friends might actually manage to put the dragon to sleep. What do you think they have planned for us next? You think they can kill us?”
    The dragon’s wings stopped beating. It fell, crashing against the mountainside. Boulders shattered into shrapnel. The dragon dragged massive parcels of rock and dirt in its wake as it slid down the slope to a precarious rest on a ledge.
    â€œThey’re not going to kill us,” Sam said, trying not to hope too much. “I think they’re going to save us.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œI don’t know. But Daniel will.” Annabel’s life was in as much jeopardy as Sam’s. She had a right to know Daniel’s name. She had a right not to have secrets kept from her.
    Annabel made a skeptical noise. “I don’t think those airships are part of his plan.”
    Sam looked out the dragon’s eye where she was pointing. Three enormous airships cruised in from the west across the desert.
    They weren’t from the Southern realm. They were from the North.

 
    SEVEN
    Gabriel lived in a windowed perch above the Mulholland Locks. His views spanned the San Gabriel Mountains to the towers of downtown, all the way out to the sea. On clear nights it was as if an entire skyful of stars had fallen and shattered across the Los Angeles basin.
    He came home after an eighteen-hour workday