Dragon Rescue

Novels by Don Callander

Published by Mundania Press

The ‘Mancer Series

Pyromancer

Aquamancer

Geomancer

Aeromancer

Marbleheart

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The Companion Series

Dragon Companion

Dragon Rescue

Dragon Tempest

Dragon Winter

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The Warlock Series

Warlock’s Bar & Grill

Warlock's All & Sundry

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Other Books

Cruise of CSS Pocahontas

Teddybear, Teddybear

Book Two in the Companion Series

Dragon Rescue
copyright © 1995, 2007 by Don Callander All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conven-tions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

A Mundania Press Production

Mundania Press LLC

6470A Glenway Avenue, #109

Cincinnati, Ohio 45211-5222

To order additional copies of this book, contact: [email protected]

www.mundania.com

Cover Art © 2007 by SkyeWolf

SkyeWolf Images (http://www.skyewolfimages.com) Book Design, Production, and Layout by Daniel J. Reitz, Sr.

Marketing and Promotion by Bob Sanders

Hardcover ISBN-10: 1-59426-193-8

Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-59426-193-0

Trade Paperback ISBN-10: 1-59426-194-6

Trade PaperbackISBN-13: 978-1-59426-194-7

eBook ISBN-10: 1-59426-192-X

eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-59426-192-3

First Edition • April 2007

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2005934698

Production by Mundania Press LLC

Printed in the United States of America

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Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investi-Dedication

While all my children, my grandchildren, and my step-children and step-grandchildren and even step-great-grandchildren have been enthusiastic, interested, and encouraging spectators of my books, the one who has been at it longest and with the very least doubt that I would, in the end, get into print and sell is my oldest son, Miles Bruce Callander, of Falmouth, Virginia.

Bruce, I love you and your wonderful wife, Alane. As for my grandson, Andrew Morgan Callander, tell him the next book will be his when it’s published.

Love you guys!

Don Callander

What Happened Before...

In
Dragon Companion,
Librarian Thomas Whitehead was suddenly transported to a strange land called Carolna. He was befriended by a fifty-foot, green-and-gold, fire-breathing gentle Dragon named Retruance Constable. Together they drove a force of Mercenary Knights from Overhall Castle, the Achievement of Lord Murdan, the Royal Historian.

Tom was hired as Murdan’s personal Librarian and plunged into the struggle between mild-mannered King Eduard Trusslo of Carolna and his ambitious brother-in-law, Peter of Gantrell.

In flying succession Tom and his Dragon met a runaway Princess, helped her escape from Peter of Gantrell, and rescued Murdan’s daughter and her three small children from Lord Peter’s flunkies. Then Tom saved Retruance, with the assistance of Princess Manda and a woodsman named Clematis, when the Dragon was trapped inside a hollow mountain.

Murdan and Princess Manda, on their way to Royal Lexor, were captured by Lord Peter. Tom, in Lexor to protect Eduard’s new wife, who was about to bear him an heir, hurried south to release them.

Together the adventurers returned to court, assisted the King against the usurper’s schemes, and drove Peter into exile.

Tom and Manda were married and planned to establish their own Achievement in Hidden Canyon and live happily ever after.

But now...the young couple received news of an invasion by no-madic Northmen warriors—and the kidnapping by fiery Dragon of Manda’s half brother, the baby Crown Prince Ednoll.

Chapter One

Librarian’s Lot

His great, tapered black leathery wings stretched to their full eighty-foot span, trembling only a tiny bit at the trailing edges, curving upward at their far tips. Wicked emerald claws were held tucked close to his tummy and chest as he swung his spear-pointed tail as a rudder, guiding his course through the clouds.

He circled over the tropical shore flats and slowly soared over the deep velvet of jungle, his body lifted by the humid thermals from the blue Quietness Ocean a dozen miles to the west, then swept a thousand feet into the bright morning sky as the warm wind suddenly breasted the steep western slopes of the stark Isthmusi Mountains.

He was aware, as he turned south to glide silently along the rising slopes, of his brother Furbetrance Constable, thirty miles away to the north, sweeping an identical, ever-watchful circle over choked and teeming tropical forest.

The nearly impassable cypress jungles of the seacoast
gradually
thinned as they rose into the
uplands. From the dark, oily green of the coastal wilderness the forest slowly turned to the lighter greens of tropical hardwoods: teak, ironwood, logwood, and mahogany.

The Dragons saw neither track nor trace of civilization below them, relying on Dragon instincts to sense what was hidden beneath the leafy canopy.

The topmost levels of the high forest were inhabited by bands of shrilly calling monkeys, frightened by the swift-gliding shadows of the two huge Dragons overhead. The little brown-and-white simians hid under dense clumps of bromeliads and orchids, huddled together, whimpering in fear.

Nothing larger than the rare Great Condors of the Isthmusi uplands even approached the Dragons’ size, wing-spread, and slow, de-liberate soaring. The monkeys feared the terrible beasts above sought prey—and hoped against hope that monkeys would not appeal to a Dragon’s appetite.

In the shadowy levels just below the tops of the tallest trees almost all movement and sound was stilled. Here lived, generation after generation, the Green Sloths, looking—and feeling, if the truth were to be told—very much a part of the foliage. Only once every hour or so a sloth would reach slowly out to pluck a ripe fruit from the underside of a leafy bough and slowly, slowly slide it into its mouth.