Soldiers of Paradise (44 page)

In the middle of the square, standing in the wreck of broken horses, Aspe shouted again. Above him, the dragon spread its shining tail. For a moment, Thanakar saw it drifting in the wind, saw the sun glinting on its scales as he dropped his boat out of the belly of the boathouse. Mrs. Cassimer hid her face; Jenny pointed, and as the boat hung suspended from its slings, he looked up too, but only for a moment. As the boat dropped to the water, he bent down to fill the engine from a flask of powder. And after that, he had to guide them through the flooded streets, and through all the floating debris and the tops of houses and the spires of sunken shrines, and all the complicated water till they found the river. It wasn’t until they had almost reached the far shore, where the current ran deep and straight into the sea, that he looked back.

For half a mile along the river, the city was on fire. Ash fell like snow above a cluster of dark warehouses. There, on a promontory opposite the boat, flames had reached the roof of a small building, a temple or a dockside shrine. Thanakar watched it burning for a moment and then turned away downstream, just as the steeple collapsed into the water and filled the air with sparks.

 

This ends the first part of the Starbridge Chronicles, which are continued in Part Two:
Sugar Rain
.
Other eBooks Soon Available from ElectricStory.com
Michael Bishop
Unicorn Mountain
No Enemy But Time
Terry Bisson
Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories
Tony Daniel
The Robot’s Twilight Companion
Mark Jacobson
Gojiro
Paul Park
Sugar Rain
The Cult of Loving Kindness
Rudy Rucker
The Secret of Life
Lucius Shepard
Beast of the Heartland and Other Stories
The Golden
The Jaguar Hunter
Richard Wadholm
Astronomy
Howard Waldrop
Dream Factories and Radio Pictures

Other books

Summerchill by Quentin Bates
Hounded by Lust by Chambers, D. A.
The Price of Freedom by Joanna Wylde
Photo Play by Pam McKenna
The Hollow Man by Dan Simmons
Feline Fatale by Johnston, Linda O.


readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024