Between the lines is written in fire. Natalie Yacobson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ dragon’s gone too. Poisonous smoke swirled over the flaming road, making her skin red and her eyes watery. It was urgent to take cover. It was worth going back to the cave. Rosamunda crawled there. She tore her dress. She hurt her shoulders and arms.

      Inside, it was cozy and warm. Instead of a glowing spinning wheel, the whole interior of the caves now glowed. Someone had brought a whole pile of gold in here. What a surprise!

      Rosamunda approached the gold pile and almost jumped with fear. The pile of gold was alive. It had a tail and wings that she hadn’t noticed at first. It was a dragon! It was satiated, exhausted, and sleeping. It was a good thing its spike-topped head was turned to the other side of the cave. The queen in her sumptuous dress with train was only a tiny biped to him, impossible to see under a magnifying glass. So there’s probably nothing to fear. He won’t even notice her, but Rosamunda felt a shiver in her knees.

      It’s a dragon! It’s alive! It’s real! He’s burned an entire troop, and he hasn’t touched her. Why? Probably just didn’t pay attention to her.

      Outside, everything’s burning and collapsing. Still, we’d better get out of here. Just because a dragon is asleep doesn’t mean it’s not dangerous. It could wake up at any moment and crush her with a single claw.

      When Rosamunda got out of the cave and managed to get past the cracks to the narrow mountain path, she noticed that her carriage was hanging there over the cliff. Another moment and it would fall. But Dandy, drinking something from a flask, didn’t even think of panicking. He was perched on the rump, clearly waiting for her.

      «Hurry up, or we’ll burn,» he nodded at the blazing road below, when he saw Rosamunda.

      «You don’t think we have a flying crew, do you? How are we going to turn around and get away?»

      The clawed coachman laughed wildly again. He laughed so often that he resembled a madman. Rosamunda’s heart trembled. Who is more dangerous: him or the dragon?

      The carriage turned as if it were supported by wings. And so they drove off, with Rosamunda barely managing to climb in. Partly the carriage hung over the cliff, as if carried by invisible wings, partly slid with its wheels along the narrow path. It all resembled a ridiculous dream, but sometimes it seemed that the wings growing straight out of the walls of the carriage were really rustling above them.

      A commotion at court

      The dragon swooped down in the morning. Barely awake, Rosamunda learned that several villages and hamlets in the south of her kingdom had burned to the ground. If this continues, she will be left without a kingdom at all.

      «Are you sure it was the dragon and not the neighbors who came to war without warning?» She asked hypocritically to her omnipresent advisors.

      «Knights from the forts on the borders and sentries from the lighthouse saw the dragon in the spyglass.»

      The answer was frightening. If the only survivors were those who were so far away from the fires that they had to use a spyglass, then everyone in the villages had burned.

      «Any survivors?» The queen inquired.

      «No one is from the burned areas.»

      «That means we are left without the best grape growers and plowmen,» Rosamunda sighed.

      Dandy was hiding somewhere. Probably he was hiding under her bed. Or maybe he was in her jewelry chests. He was frightened. When people saw him, he’d hide immediately. They must have teased him more than once for his ridiculous appearance. For Dandy, except for his scholarship, could pass for a little monster. It might have occurred to someone to catch him and show him in a circus. Maybe it would be for the best. Because of Dandy’s advice, she had inadvertently awakened the dragon.

      Rosamunda climbed to the highest tower of the castle to survey the damage with her own eyes. The damage done to her domain by the dragon’s fiery breath was colossal. All the lands to the south resembled a scorched wasteland.

      Rosamunda almost fainted. One of the loyal knights supported her. Otherwise she would have fallen into the castle moat, or worse, crashed into the sharp stone blocks below.

      The sky was still bright and calm. No dragon was traveling across it. Rosamunde would have found it hard to believe there was one if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes last night. She had no business going for a walk in the mountains. It was all Dandy’s advice.

      The scorched earth may have been a consequence of the war, but there’s no enemy army marching towards the capital. So the dragon raider is the most likely possibility. It is the duty of the queen, whose country has suffered from dragon fire, to send her best knights to fight the monster.

      Rosamunda didn’t really know the best knights in battle, so she would have ordered the lot to be cast. But luckily for her, many had volunteered.

      «Now we need to find a wizards to determine where the dragon’s lair is,» one of the advisors suggested.

      «That’s easier said than done,» said another, «because all magicians, prophets, and astrologers flee the kingdom as soon as they cross its borders.»

      «They probably sensed the dragon in absentia, and that’s why they fled.»

      «But where is a single wizard now?»

      The councilors looked at Rosamund as if she were the wizard.

      «I know a fool who can lead you to the dragon’s lair without magic. I’ll call him right away,» Rosamunda promised, and went to find Dandy. There was no sign of him under the king’s bed, and she was sure he was hiding there because she had been trying to sleep all night to the accompaniment of his nasty snoring.

      Dandy was not hiding in chests and closets either. Could it be that he had decided to flee in fear of the awakened dragon? He had behaved boldly, even daringly, last night. Rosamunda decided to look for him in the stables and she was right. Dandy was huddled between the wine barrels and bales of provisions in the carriage in which they had traveled to the mountains yesterday.

      The sides of the carriage were battered and scratched. The grooms and coachmen had escaped from the stable for some reason. Probably the drunken song of Dandy, who had touched the uncorked bottle of wine, had frightened everyone. No one would be happy that an evil spirit had taken up residence in their cellar or stables.

      «You’re going to run away!» Rosamunda rebuked him.

      «I’m just preparing a backup in case of an emergency,» Dandy stroked the wine barrels he’d stolen from the cellar.

      «There’s no room for me in the carriage, so you’re the only one who can escape in an emergency,» Rosamunda said.

      «There are plenty of other carriages,» said Dandy. «There’s enough room for ten queens, not just one.»

      «By the way, why didn’t you return the carriage to the carriage barn? You said you’d take care of everything.»

      Dandy nearly choked on his wine. And the horses in the stalls bellowed and banged their hooves in a frightened manner.

      «These animals smell us like a thunderstorm,» complained Dandy. «They always want to get mad at the СКАЧАТЬ