Silver Dragon Codex by R.D. Henham Page A

tower. It was barren—nofurniture, bookshelves, or any sign that someone might live within. Instead, the walls were slick stone covered in frost, and there were no carpets at all.
    The only thing in the room was a flat piece of thick ice, square around the edges but curved in the center, like the old worry stone Jace used to rub while he watched his father walk the high wire. Soft furs, now old and crusted with ice, had been piled around the strange slab of ice. They were scattered on the ground around it, stiff and frozen in discarded lumps. Belen walked toward the stone stiff legged and knelt on the cold ground by the side of the slab. She reached out with one trembling hand and touched the furs, and they crackled beneath the pressure of her fingers.
    “Was this another bedroom?” Cerisse inched forward through the door, marveling at the icicles that decorated the ceiling beams. “Did you sleep there sometimes, on the stone? No, it’s too cold for a human, and too small for a dragon, that can’t be right.”
    Belen didn’t answer. Jace followed Cerisse, heading deeper in while Ebano stood in the doorway with the candles in his hand. Ice crunched under Jace’s feet. When he reached Belen’s side, he saw that she looked as if she’d been struck by a physical blow. Belen ran her hands along the inner curve of the ice and choked back a sob.
    “Belen, what’s wrong?” he asked her without thinking.Then his eye caught the shape of the indentation, and the evidence fell together into a single blinding insight. “By all the gods,” he said, his voice breaking as he stared in mingled horror and surprise.
    Cerisse was the one who said it out loud. “The crevice in the ice. It’s shaped … like an egg.”
    “They took it.” Belen’s voice was flat. Her eyes sparked like bright chips of cold ice, and her hand drifted to the center of the depression in the stone. “They took my egg. My child! Stolen!” Her body shook, and her mouth snarled into so fearsome a grimace that Jace could have sworn she’d grown fangs.
    “Belen remember?” Ebano murmured, a deep sympathy in his tone.
    Belen surged to her feet, hands clenched into tight fists. “I do remember! I was asleep. I’d slept for almost a year, waiting for it to hatch. Something woke me, and when I checked on the egg, it was gone. Stolen! Betrayed!” Jace was shoved back, struck by her shoulder as she rose, and her strength was enough to knock him over. He landed on one hand, frost crunching beneath his fingers as she lost herself to the rage.
    “Someone came in while I was sleeping and stole it. Only one village knows where I live. They must have taken it!” Belen was lost in the resurfacing memory, speaking topeople who weren’t really there. “You have my gratitude for awakening me, and telling me where to find my egg. When I return, you will be … well … compensated.” Belen’s knees gave out beneath her, her voice falling faint. Her eyes closed, tears brushing her eyelashes in small, frozen crystals.
    “I remember now,” she whispered, slowly coming back to reality. “That’s when I left—for the village.”
    Cerisse rushed forward to grasp Belen’s wrists, keeping the silver-haired woman from collapsing. “Belen!”
    “I wasn’t alone when I awoke. Someone was here,” Belen said softly, rage turning to sorrow. “They woke me, told me that the village stole my egg. That’s why I went there—to get it back. That’s why I attacked Angvale.”
    “And while you were fighting them, someone stole the stone.” Jace picked up one of the castaway furs and wrapped it around Belen’s slender shoulders. “We were right. You were set up. They say that the good dragons’ eggs were stolen by the evil dragons to make their horrible draconians for the War of the Lance. That village didn’t do anything—Takhisis’s servants did. Someone took advantage of that.”
    “Takhisis?” Cerisse asked, confused.
    “The Dark Queen.” Belen lowered