The Runaway Dragon
Read The Runaway Dragon Online
Authors: Kate Coombs
ALSO BY KATE COOMBS
The Runaway Princess
F
ARRAR
, S
TRAUS AND
G
IROUX
N
EW
Y
ORK
Copyright © 2009 by Kathryn Coombs
All rights reserved
Distributed in Canada by Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Printed in July 2009 in the United States of America by RR Donnelley, Harrisonburg, Virginia Designed by Jaclyn Sinquett First edition, 2009
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coombs, Kate.
The runaway dragon / Kate Coombs.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: The runaway princess.
Summary: When her beloved dragon Laddy runs away from the castle, Princess Meg and some of her friends embark on a quest to find him and bring him home.
ISBN: 978-0-374-36361-1
[1. Fairy tales. 2. Princesses—Fiction. 3. Dragons—Fiction.]
I. Title.
PZ8. C788 Ru 2010
[Fic]—dc22
2008034362
For my sister, Loni, who used to say,
“Tell me a story!”
ROLOGUE
T FIRST MEG VISITED LADDY A LOT, RIDING HER
horse from the castle through the Witch’s Wood Hookhorn Farm, where her friend Cam’s sister lived. Meg would sit by the fire in the big farmhouse kitchen and talk with Janna, scratching Laddy behind his ears and then along his little scarlet-and-amber dragon back. Not that Laddy was so little anymore. He was growing quickly, feasting on sausages and stew chickens at Hookhorn Farm. If Meg’s father, King Stromgard, hadn’t made provision for Laddy’s keep, the baby dragon would have eaten Janna out of house and home.
When Meg had found Laddy in his mother’s cave, surrounded by dragon treasure, she had discovered that she could talk to him in her mind. He had never answered with words, but she could tell by the way he responded that the little dragon understood her—a
handy thing, since Meg and Cam were trying very hard to save Laddy from a pack of princes.
Of course, the princes were long gone. A year had passed, and Laddy wasn’t a baby anymore. He proved it one bright morning while Meg was visiting the farmhouse.
Such a beautiful boy!
she thought at him.
Yes, I am
, she heard in her mind.
“Did you
talk?”
Meg said out loud, startled. Laddy merely blinked at her with his black eyes slit with gold.
“What?” called Janna, bustling around the kitchen.
“Nothing. Just talking to Laddy.” Meg tried again, this time in her head.
Laddy, did you talk?
Nothing. But Meg knew of a surefire conversational gambit for young dragons.
Laddy, are you hungry?
There was a brief silence. Then she heard,
Hungry for gold.
Meg grinned and reached for the pouch at her side.
Janna had stopped her bustling to look at the two.“What is it?”
“I think he wants a gold coin to play with,” Meg told her.
“I’d like a few coins to play with myself,” Janna said.
Meg opened the leather pouch and took out a gold coin. It had her father’s profile on it, looking much more handsome than in real life. Whoever had a nose that aquiline?
The young dragon stretched his head forward, watching Meg’s hand as she brought the coin closer to him.
Mine
, he told her in her mind.
Yours
, Meg agreed.
Laddy opened his small oven of a mouth and took the coin delicately from Meg’s palm with his slender scarlet tongue.
Are you really going to eat it?
Meg asked.
That’s when Meg first heard a dragon’s giggle.
No
, Laddy thought at her.
Silly princess.
Laddy reached out one of his clawed front feet and placed it on Meg’s knee, retracting the claws so they wouldn’t hurt her.
Mine
, he said again.
Yes, Laddy
, Meg thought,
I’m your
—she hesitated to say “owner”—
friend.
Meg’s father called Laddy her pet, but Meg knew nobody really owned a dragon. For that matter, nobody she knew had even
tried
to own one.
Laddy is a baby name
, the little dragon told her.
Meg looked at him more carefully. She used to be able to drape Laddy across her lap, or at least her feet, and now he was as long as she was tall, not counting his crenellated tail. His butter-colored wings often crashed into the furniture, and last week, according to Janna, they had swept three hours’ worth of dinner preparations onto the floor. Janna had warned Meg that soon Laddy would have to stay in the barn all day. He was simply getting too big for the house.
Meg wished, not for the first time, that she could take Laddy back to the castle, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it.
New name?
Laddy prodded.
Grand grownup name?
Meg
had
promised to give him a better name someday, since “Laddy” wasn’t exactly her idea. But she’d gotten used to it by now. They all had.
You’re not grownup yet
, Meg told him.
Laddy huffed out a little cloud of smoke, clearly dissatisfied.
All right. I’ll think of one soon
, Meg said.
At that Laddy smiled dragonishly and settled down for yet another nap, the gold coin shining between his two front feet.
The next time Meg saw Laddy, he was sulking over being banished to the barn. He wouldn’t look at her, wouldn’t even talk to her. Then Meg got really busy with her lessons, especially magic, her worst subject. Meg didn’t go out to Hookhorn Farm for a long while.
That was probably a mistake.
EG PUT THE BACK OF ONE HAND TO HER FORE
-head and leaned against the windowsill of her chamber, looking out over the royal vegetable garden to the city of Crown, her imagination flying across the rest of the Kingdom of Greeve and into the wide world beyond. Her green gown flowed gracefully down her semi-slim sides. Her golden tresses—well, her light brown tresses—flowed almost as gracefully down her back. “Alas and alack,” Meg said in a breathless voice, “will no one come to take me away from this foul place?” She snickered.
Boring
place was more like it.
Meg’s mother was worried about the lack of princes comingto court her daughter. Meg wasn’t. She was more interested in coming up with a way of convincing her parents to let her go on a quest.
Meg left the window to change into a more serviceable skirt, tunic, and short, soft boots. She clipped her
hair back and buckled on her sword, then headed downstairs for her first class of the day. She nearly crashed into Dilly, who was coming up the stairs. Dilly used to be Meg’s maid, but now she was Meg’s one and only lady-in-waiting. “Sword lessons?” Dilly asked, after neatly stepping out of Meg’s way.
“Sword lessons,” Meg answered. Swordplay was Meg’s favorite class, followed by statesmanship, a class taught by the austere Lady Fralen. Meg had expected to hate it, but to her amazement, she was pretty good at diplomacy and sort of liked it. Years of trying to get around her mother so she could hunt for frogs or roam the woods with Cam the gardener’s boy had taught her a lot about smooth talking, and it turned out that was what statesmanship was. That and figuring out what the other person wanted.
Meg tried not to think about her other classes for today, etiquette and magic and dance. She was bad at all three.
“Lucky you,” said Dilly.
“Why, where are you going?”
Dilly made a face. “Eugenia invited me again.” Queen Istilda’s ladies-in-waiting were trying to turn Dilly into a fluffbrain, but so far Dilly was resisting.
“You can tell me about it tonight.”
“Oh, I will!” Dilly gave a positively evil little laugh. Her reenactments of the embroidery-and-gossip sessions put on by the queen’s ladies were getting better
with practice, though Meg suspected Dilly left out some of the talk about Meg not being courted by anyone. Laughing more normally, Dilly went on up the stairs, her brown gown and tidy black hair looking suitably demure.
Meg’s swordplay instructor, Master Zolis, was already warming up when she arrived. Meg greeted him and began going through the stretches herself in a shaft of sunlight from one of the unadorned windows along the outer wall.
Master Zolis wasn’t a big man. In fact, he looked nearly as unassuming as Garald, the king’s dull prime minister. Master Zolis’s hair had disappeared entirely on the top of his head, and his shoulders weren’t particularly broad. But everyone in the castle knew that the swordmaster wielded his weapon as if it were a wizard’s wand. All of the guardsmen stood in line for the chance to practice with him. Meg got her very own lessons twice a week.
Meg smiled a little as she leaned over her left leg and touched the worn wooden floor. As a teacher, Master Zolis wasn’t one to dish out praise just because his pupil was a princess, but after Meg’s last lesson, he had said, “Not bad.” Meg had been treasuring the words ever since. Practicing in her room had paid off. She’d only cut her bed hangings once, over on the back of the bed where it didn’t show from the door.
Master Zolis was usually a man of more sword strokes than words, but today he had something to say. He gestured to Meg to sit on a bench beside him. “Princess Margaret, you have learned enough to put on a very pretty exhibition match.”
Meg hoped this was a compliment, but before she could say thank you, the swordmaster went on. “However, what will you do if someone really wants to kill you?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been teaching me for?”
Master Zolis shook his head, causing his bald spot to catch the light. “What I’ve given you is a mere beginning. If someone does try to kill you, you’re best off running away.”
Meg thought of all the imaginary monsters and dark sorcerers she’d been killing in her room lately and frowned. “That’s not very heroic.”
“No, it isn’t. Now think, Princess. If an archer shoots an arrow at you, what do you do?”
“Duck,” Meg said, not sure where Master Zolis was going with this.