Fistandantilus Reborn - Douglas Niles [50]
The shadow that flickered across him was moving too fast to be a cloud and was too large to be a bird. Danyal gaped upward, then fell to his rump, stunned beyond words by the sight of a massive red dragon. Rocked by a numbing wave of dragonawe, he could only stare, trembling in all his limbs, feeling his guts turn to water in his belly.
The serpent was gliding low, so low that the tip of the creature’s sinuous tail trailed through the tops of the tallest cottonwoods. As the monster drifted out of sight beyond the trees, Danyal’s first conscious thought was that he was safe. The serpent obviously had flown past without taking notice of him.
His next thought was of the village.
“Mom! Pap! Wain!” he cried, leaping to his feet, his voice shrill and urgent as it pierced the woods. And then he was running, his fishing pole forgotten, desperately sprinting toward the village where all the people that he knew in the world resided.
Before he had taken twoscore steps, he heard the first of the screams, cries of horror that rang even louder than his own urgent shouts. By the time he was halfway home, the smell of soot and ash was heavy on the summer breeze.
And when he scrambled up the bank and burst through the last of the trees, toward the rear of the blacksmith shop, he thought he had stumbled into the aftermath of a terrible war.
Smoke was thick in the air, stinging his eyes and nostrils. Even worse was the heat, a physical blow against his face that slammed him to a halt, brought his arms up in an effort to shield his skin from the searing blazes that threatened to blister his forehead and cheeks. He squinted, trying to see through the smoke and tears.
It seemed that every building in the village was ablaze, and most of them had been smashed into kindling. Bodies-the corpses of his neighbors, his family!-were scattered everywhere, many gored by horrific wounds, others burned beyond recognition by lethal flames. He staggered sideways and caught a glimpse of the common square. The tuns full of grapes had been shattered, and the spilled red wine provided a grotesque carpet for the torn and shattered bodies that lay motionless among the wreckage.
A great scarlet wing sliced through the roiling smoke overhead, and Danyal fell to the earth, crawling frantically under the shelter of a broken door. He watched the lashing tail of the dragon as the beast flew away, toward the north, returning along the direction from which Danyal had first seen it.
Slowly Dan stood up. The fires had settled somewhat, though his face still burned from the surrounding heat. He edged around a nearby building, skirting the destruction as he stayed beneath the shelter of the trees alongside the riverbank.
Something moved and the lad lunged backward, tumbling into the underbrush as a great, black shape emerged from the burning wreckage of the blacksmith’s shop. He saw the shining pelt, the wild eyes, and then noticed the cruel gouge of a fresh, bleeding wound on the panicked animal’s shoulder.
“Nightmare!” he shouted as the horse plunged past him, skidding around the first bend of the stream trail at a full gallop. The lad was not surprised when the frightened creature ignored his cry.
And then he was possessed by a panic as deep as the fear that had driven the horse. Danyal, too, turned his back on the village. Without conscious thought, he felt his feet carry him onto the streamside trail, away from the ruin, away from everything he had known in his life.
CHAPTER 18
Ashes
374 AC
Fourth Misham, Palesivelt Danyal’s feet pounded the smooth dirt of the trail as he relied on subconscious memory to avoid the rocks and roots that jutted forth from so many places. Certainly he did not see these obstacles; his eyes were blinded by tears, and his mind refused to let go of a specific picture: the remembered shape of a child’s body, someone his own age charred black and stretched on the ground, reaching with outstretched arms toward the edge of the village, the stream, toward Danyal himself.
It was that last recollection