Read Online Return of the Sorceress by Tim Waggoner - Free Book Online Page A

glittering off its iridescent scales, was a blue dragon.
    Terror slammed into Nearra, so strong and intense that it was almost a physical force. Dragonfear, she realized, and though she’d experienced it before, it was all she could do to keep from screaming.
    “Get inside, both of you!” Eric shouted. He started running toward the back of the cottage, presumably to find Jirah. Filled with dragonfear, he moved haphazardly, body trembling.
    “We won’t be any safer in there than we are out here!” Nearrasaid. “The dragon can tear our home apart as easily as if it were a pile of sticks!”
    The dragon swooped low over them, and Nearra and her mother were knocked to the ground by a blast of air. The dragon arced upward and began gaining altitude once more. Nearra helped her mother stand.
    “We need to make for the forest!” she said. “A creature that size will have a hard time getting between the trees!”
    “How do you know this?”
    “Believe me, Mother, I’ve had some experience with dragon attacks.” Nearra glanced upward and saw that the dragon was slowing in its upward climb, that meant it was going to come driving down toward them any moment.
    “C’mon! We can’t stand around here talking!” Nearra tried to tug her mother along after her, but she resisted.
    “We can’t leave your sister and father!”
    Nearra felt the same way, but she knew they’d all stand a greater chance of survival as two pairs instead of one foursome.
    Just then Eric and Jirah came running around to the front of the cottage. Both gripped axes used for cutting wood. They were tools, not weapons, but even if they had been battle axes forged from the finest steel in Ansalon, they would’ve been useless against a creature the size of the blue dragon.
    “Are you mad?” Nearra shouted. “You can’t fight a dragon with those! We have to run!”
    Eric stared up at the dragon. His gaze was filled with terror, but his jaw was set in a determined line. “This is our home. I built it with my own two hands, and I’d sooner die than let it be destroyed without a fight! Take your mother and your sister and run! I shall deal with the beast!” Eric’s voice quavered, but his grip on the axe remained sure and steady.
    Jirah wasn’t managing her fear quite so well. Her face waschalk-white and her eyes were wild, like those of a trapped animal desperately looking for escape. Nearra tugged at her sister’s arm. But Jirah wouldn’t move.
    The blue dragon paused at the apex of its flight. The gigantic beast was so far above them that it looked no larger than the small lizards Nearra found in the woods as a child. The sky around the dragon suddenly grew dark and storm clouds began to form. They were dark, angry clouds colored a pure, deep black. If it was possible for something like a cloud to be evil, then these were.
    The dragon flapped its wings and hovered in place. Great gusts of wind buffeted Nearra. So strong was the sudden gale that she was forced to huddle against her mother and sister to keep from being knocked to the ground.
    The blue dragon peered down at them, arcs of blazing white energy crackling from its eyes. And then the monster opened its mouth and a sizzling burst of lightning shot from its tooth-filled maw.
    Nearra screamed as the bolt raced to earth and struck the roof of their cottage. The dry thatch caught fire instantly and flames rose into the air.
    “No!” Eric shouted. “Come down and face me, and I’ll show you what a woodsman’s axe can do!”
    The wind was howling so loudly now that Nearra could barely hear her father’s words. The dragon must have heard Eric, though, for the beast stopped flapping its wings, folded them against its scaly sides, and dived toward them.
    “Come on!” Nearra still had hold of her mother’s hand and now she grabbed Jirah’s as well. She pulled as hard as she could, and they allowed her to lead them away from the blazing cottage—perhaps because they’d realized the