Authors: Elizabeth Haydon
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Action & Adventure, #General
The Dragon's Lair
THE DRAGON'S LAIR
The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme
FROM STARSCAPE BOOKS:
The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme
by Elizabeth Haydon
The Floating Island
The Thief Queen's Daughter
The Dragon's Lair
The Tree of Water
(forthcoming)
THE DRAGON'S LAIR
The Lost Journals of Ven Polypheme
Text compiled by
ELIZABETH HAYDON
Illustrations restored by
JASON CHAN
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,
and events portrayed in this novel are either products of
the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE DRAGON'S LAIR
Copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Haydon
The Tree of Water
excerpt copyright © 2008 by Elizabeth Haydon
Reader's Guide copyright © 2008 by Tor Books
Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Jason Chan
All rights reserved.
Endpaper map by Ed Gaszi
A Starscape Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haydon, Elizabeth.
The dragon's lair / Elizabeth Haydon.
p. cm.
"A Tom Doherty Associates book."
ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-2671-3
ISBN-10: 1-4299-2671-6
1. Dragons—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Fantasy. I. Title.
PZ7.H313889 Dra 2008
[Fic]—dc22 2008003001
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO
Mary Jo
WHO INSPIRES AND UNDERSTANDS GWADD
BECAUSE SHE IS ONE
.
PREFACE
Long ago, in the Second Age of history, a young Nain explorer by the name of Ven Polypheme traveled much of the known and unknown world, recording his adventures and the marvelous sights he witnessed. His writings eventually formed the basis for
The Book of All Human Knowledge
and
All the World's Magic
. These were two of the most important books of all time, because they captured the secrets of magic and the records of mythical beings and wondrous places that are now all but gone from the world.
The only copies of each of these books were lost at sea centuries ago, but a few fragments of Ven's original journals remain. Recently discovered by archaeologists, some of those diary entries are reproduced in this book, in Ven Polypheme's handwriting, as they were originally written. Some of them are little more than a few words, or a sentence or two. A number of sketches from his notebooks also survived and are reproduced here as well. Great care has been taken to reconstruct the parts of the journal that did not survive, so that a whole story can be told.
A separate notebook containing only sketches of dragons, plus drawings of what appear to be cards made out of dragon scales, is still being restored. It was found, buried with the journals, in a waterproof chest lined in gold. In this, the third of the journals discovered in the dig, a reference to this book of dragons finally appears.
It is perhaps the most deeply magical book of all time.
The dragon scales appear to be cards in an ancient deck that allowed a special reader to see the Past, know the Present, and predict the Future. They apparently had older, deeper powers of magic, which we are just beginning to learn about. This journal contains the first account of Ven encountering a live dragon. Because it is the last of the journals found at this site, we cannot be sure whether he survived that encounter or not. Our archaeological dig is continuing in other places Ven was thought to have visited, but so far we have not turned up any more journals.
So this may be the record of Ven's final journey.
These few scraps of text and sketches provide a map back in Time to hidden places, where pockets of magic might still be found.
Contents
