Dragon Stones by James V. Viscosi Page B

the water.  Before long, the lagoon was awash in drifting wreckage and floating corpses; she found none alive to tell her what the ship was doing here or why it smelled the way it did.
    She spied a small, thin craft drawn up on the rocks near a waterfall.  She made her way to it, tasted the little canoe, the nearby stones.
    Men.  Perhaps there were still some alive on the island for her to interrogate; they had not yet returned to claim their tiny boat.  She pierced it with two of her talons in order to sink it; then, deciding that the damage would be too easily repaired, she picked it up and ground it to kindling.
    That done, she followed the scents the men had left behind as they climbed the low wall, then stayed alongside the stream as they moved into the interior of the island.  Four of them, she thought, three similar to each other, one different.  She slunk along the same path, continually tasting the air to make sure that she didn't lose the trail, finally coming to a near-vertical wall of rock.  A rope dangled down the palisade, indicating that the men had climbed up to the cone.
    No doubt remained:  They had come here seeking the stones that grew in the volcano, as if the ones they had so cruelly cut from her hatchlings had not been enough.
    She spread her wings and lifted herself into the air, landing on the edge of the crater.  She circled it slowly, scanning the darkness for the men.  Eventually she found one, a single body, nearly invisible against the surrounding heat of the rock.  He was curled up, apparently asleep; she did not think he was dead.
    Could this single human have killed all those others?  She didn't know much about men, but she doubted it; there must be others somewhere.  Perhaps this one had somehow escaped their attention.
    He would not escape hers.
     
    Ponn hurried along a jungle path, running at top speed toward his village, paying no attention to dangling vines, protruding roots, moss-slicked rocks.  He reached the main gate of the stockade, found it closed; but with a great push, it swung inward, then fell off its pivot with an echoing crash.
    He ran through the opening.  The town was quiet, deserted.  Houses which had been in good repair when he had left lay in ruins, thatched roofs torn away, interiors open to the sun and rain.  He raced to his inn; miraculously, it stood undamaged, exactly as he remembered it.  He went inside.  No guests, no fire, no family.  Ponn crossed the common room, entered the apartment.  The children's room was bare, just walls and floor, bedding and toys gone.  He moved on to his own room, which still contained its accustomed furnishings.  A shape lay in the bed, covered by a blanket.  Plenn?  He went to the bed, knelt on the edge, pulled back the covers.
    "Clever innkeeper," Gelt said, stabbing Ponn in the heart with his own bone-handled knife.
    Gasping, clutching at his chest, Ponn awoke, not in the village but on the island, under the volcano, shivering with a chill.  He had rolled out of the niche where he had been sleeping, perhaps while thrashing in the grip of his nightmare, and now lay beneath the cloudy sky.
    Horrid, horrid dream, suggesting that Gelt had returned to the village and further harmed his family.  It could not be true.  Gelt was done with him; he had taken what he wanted.  He had no reason to visit any more malice upon Plenn and the other children.  None but his own malicious amusement, anyway.
    Suddenly, Ponn heard something from the slope above him, faint scraping noises, like something large and hard moving over the rocks.  A landslide?  He scrambled back toward the shelter of the overhang, only to be blocked by a thick, scaly tail that descended in front of him like a giant snake.  He cried out as a massive claw closed over him, knocking him down.  Long, knobby fingers curled around his body, sword-like talons digging into the stone, sealing him in a warm, living cage.  His greatest fear had been