Dragon Rescue
Novels by Don Callander
Published by Mundania Press
The ‘Mancer Series
Pyromancer
Aquamancer
Geomancer
Aeromancer
Marbleheart
rs
The Companion Series
Dragon Companion
Dragon Rescue
Dragon Tempest
Dragon Winter
rs
The Warlock Series
Warlock’s Bar & Grill
Warlock's All & Sundry
rs
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.
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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
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Cincinnati, Ohio 45211-5222
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Cover Art © 2007 by SkyeWolf
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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.