The Dragons of Lazaronia (Book 2)

By Laraine Anne Barker

“Where did she take you?” a voice hissed in his ears. “Tell me and I’ll let you go.”
“Where did who take me?” Mark gasped. ...
“... Where did that old hag Lazaria take you in your dreams?”
“Nowhere: she just showed me how you—how you sent part of yourself out on the wind.”
“And the dragons—the baby dragons? You saw those too, didn’t you?”

There could be only one reason for Ignarius’s interest in Flame’s babies—and the wizard makes it quite clear that he is more than a match for any dragon. How can Mark and the Princess Esmé make sure Ignarius doesn’t succeed in killing Platinum, Ebony and Ash—especially as Ash is crippled and will never learn to fly properly?
But when Flame leaves Mark to look after her babies, it seems it isn’t just the wizard who poses a threat to their safety. Mark finds himself helpless to stop the dragonlings from being stolen by a strange race of little people with extraordinary powers ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laraine Anne Barker
• Release date: May 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9780987665010

Laraine Anne Barker

Laraine Anne Barker has always enjoyed telling stories. As a child, when playing with dolls with her younger sisters became boring, she would make up stories featuring the dolls. She also remembers how she and her sisters wrote stories into exercise books and even illustrated them, using crayons to colour them because they found that rubbing on the crayon pictures gave them a shine similar to that of glossy colour pictures in magazines. Laraine submitted her first book (for adults) to a publisher at about the age of 21 and received a very kind rejection letter in which the editor suggested the story could be rewritten for young readers. She regrets she didn't keep the rejection and follow up on the advice. She didn't start writing fantasy for young readers until 1986. After many rewritings the book started then became The Obsidian Quest (published under the Hard Shell imprint of Mundania Press). The Obsidian Quest was a finalist in The Dream Realm Awards 2001 and was followed by Lord of Obsidian and The Third Age of Obsidian, also published under the Hard Shell imprint of Mundania Press. The Mark Willoughby series was started in 1992. Silvranja of the Silver Forest was short-listed (one of three) in 1998 for a major New Zealand prize, The Tom Fitzgibbon Memorial Award.

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About The Dragons of Lazaronia

Where did she take you? a voice hissed in his ears. Tell me and I’ll let you go.

Where did who take me? Mark gasped. …

… Where did that old hag Lazaria take you in your dreams?

Nowhere: she just showed me how you—how you sent part of yourself out on the wind.

And the dragons—the baby dragons? You saw those too, didn’t you?

There could be only one reason for Ignarius’s interest in Flame’s babies—and the wizard makes it quite clear that he is more than a match for any dragon. How can Mark and the Princess Esmé make sure Ignarius doesn’t succeed in killing Platinum, Ebony and Ash—especially as Ash is crippled and will never learn to fly properly?

But when Flame leaves Mark to look after her babies, it seems that it isn’t just the wizard who poses a threat to their safety. Mark finds himself helpless to stop the dragonlings from being stolen by a strange race of little people with extraordinary powers …

Prologue

It was a still night lit by a particularly brilliant full moon. Over the peaks of a snow-capped mountain range in a kingdom called Lazaronia a flying machine like an oddly shaped moth could be seen—if anyone had been there to see it. It appeared to be a hang-glider—but it wasn’t. It seemed to be fashioned from the bodies of living bats—and it was.

A man dangled from this strange machine’s harness. He had been shouting curses into the chilly mountain air. Now, knowing them to be useless—and sensing there was no longer anybody on Geheimberg, the Secret Mountain, to hear—he fell silent and stopped his futile and undignified struggling. This was when anyone who might have been watching should have sensed danger.

Despite the humiliation of his position, it would have been immediately obvious to any observer that this was no ordinary man—even if he had not been dressed in robes worthy of an emperor. Although suspended helplessly from the set of wings that the bats had made with their bodies to carry him to a place of eternal sleep, the man had a dignity belonging only to someone of noble birth. And, as he thought of a plan to free himself from the fate awaiting him, the power that suddenly radiated from him revealed this was no mere nobleman—or even an emperor. This was a sorcerer.

There was an apparently unexpected gust of wind. A pair of silver eyes watching from a great distance—from as far away as Lazaronia’s moon—saw the wind. The owner of the silver eyes was too late in grasping what was about to happen. Something visible only to those silver eyes separated itself from the figure hanging in the harness. To the owner of the silver eyes it was almost as though the wizard had become two beings. As the silver eyes watched in horror, the second being deliberately threw itself into the path of the wind and was swiftly but gently carried away.

Horror turning to rage, the owner of the silver eyes reached out from the surface of the moon. Moments later the gentle wind changed to a raging gale. However, the gale made no effort to touch the sorcerer—for he had created the original wind. He turned to look over his shoulder at the shadow he had set free. A glint of anger briefly lit his eyes. Then anger turned to scorn.

Much good that will do you, you silver-eyed freak, he muttered under his breath, looking up at the moon.

But he was forced to watch as the spirit he had sent out on the wind to later find his body and release it from its eternal sleep was whisked out into space, where the hurricane became an intergalactic storm that swept the spirit to the farthest corner of the farthest galaxy.

And there the silver-eyed Goddess Lazaria finally—reluctantly—turned it loose.

Chapter 1: Dreams of Dragons

Mark was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming and that he had dreamt the same dream—or one very similar—many times. But much to his disappointment, on waking he wasn’t usually able to recall much about these dreams.

However, on this particular night Mark’s dream was especially vivid, and when he woke up it remained clearly in his mind. In his dream he stood on a mountainside. Before he could work out anything more, a blurred patch of colour swept across the mountains. Mostly red and blue, shading into purple, the vaguely man-shaped shadow passed in front of him, moving at an ever-increasing speed.

The hairs on the back of Mark’s neck rose. Then the wind carrying the shadowy form away became a gale. The sound rose, swelling to a deafening howl as though an enormous pack of wolves had been let loose on the night air. The colourful shadow changed shape violently like clothes flapping on a clothesline. It was almost as though the wind was trying to break it up. It resisted, but was swept away.

The dream changed direction with the abrupt lack of logic common to dreams. This time Mark was inside a cave—a huge limestone cavern with stalactites and stalagmites joining to create tall pillars and great pearly archways. Why did it seem so familiar? Then something black blocked his view. Sudden insight into what he was about to see hit Mark. Surely he had dreamed this before?

However, the expected vision of a clutch of large eggs didn’t come. Instead, the black bulk moved aside to disclose something that gathered all the light to itself, shimmering eerily as though made out of moonbeams. But moonbeams, Mark told himself, have no substance. Then he realised it had to be a sterling silver ornament from the treasures of the Godking that were still buried in Geheimberg’s caves. About ninety centimetres long, it was like a long-necked lizard. With unwinking eyes like polished rubies it stared up at him. It was amazingly lifelike. Even in the dim light Mark could see that every scale on its body had been delicately moulded in the finest detail, the whole ornament having been painstakingly polished to a brilliant sheen. Mark received a mild shock when he realised it wasn’t a lizard but a dragon—for surely it had wings. They were small, but they were definitely there.

He received an even bigger shock when the ornament blinked at him. It scuttled away in agitation, chattering furiously in a strange animal voice Mark had never heard before.

After such a surprise, it now seemed perfectly reasonable that he could understand what the creature was saying. The prince has arrived! Mother! Mother! It’s Prince Mark of Lazaronia!

The black bulk, still hovering at the edge of Mark’s vision, moved back into range. A head snaked dow on a long, graceful neck and Mark stared into another pair of eyes like rubies—this time set in a black scaly face.

Flame!

It was indeed the blue-black dragon Flame the Tame, upon whose back he had flown—when was it now? It felt like yesterday, while at the same time seeming ages ago. But it must have been a while ago, for Flame, no longer looking after her eggs, was now the proud mother of three babies. They all crowded around him, stumbling against each other and tripping over their own feet