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.“Make haste! We’re going to lose them!” Gilthanas said irritably.Walking soft-footed, he crept inside the tunnel.“Keep behind me,” he ordered his sister, “and take care you don’t hurt yourself with that thing.” He glared at the frostreaver.“What are you doing here, doorknob?” Flint demanded, glaring at Tas.“Gilthanas says I might be useful,” Tas said importantly.“In a pig’s eye!” Flint snorted.Doubting herself, feeling she was in the way, Laurana followed.She had to go.Gilthanas was acting strangely.Derek was acting strangely.Neither was himself, and it was all because of this dragon orb.She began to hope fervently they never found it.14The wolf pack.The trap.Laurana’s destiny.nside Sleet’s lair, now empty, the white wolf stood near his master.Though the dragon was gone, her magical snow continued to fall, drifting down around them in large flakes that landed on the wolf’s fur, forming a woolly white blanket.The wolf blinked his eyes free of the snow.The other members of the wolf pack stood or paced around him, ears twitching, pricking, listening.The lead female, mate to the wolf, lifted her nose and sniffed the air.She stiffened.The other wolves stopped their pacing, lifted their heads, alert, their attention caught and held.The she-wolf looked over her shoulder at her mate.The male wolf looked at Feal-Thas.The winternorn stood unmoving.The snow matted his fur robes, forming a second cloak.He stared down the tunnels, lit with the enchanted light, for he did not want his foes bumbling about in the dark, and he, too, sniffed the air.His ears pricked.The ground shook as though with an earthquake.The tunnels creaked and groaned.He could hear above him the screams of the injured and dying—the sounds of battle.The castle was under assault.Feal-Thas didn’t give a damn.Let the gods of Light throw their temper tantrums.Let them melt this place to the ground.It only needed to hold together long enough for him to destroy the thieves who were after his dragon orb.The snow stopped falling as Feal-Thas spoke words of magic, chanting a powerful spell.He sang words at the beginning of the chant, but it ended in a howl.The white fur of his robes adhered to his flesh.His nails grew long and curled under, transforming into claws.His jaw jutted forward, his nose lengthened to become a snout.His ears shifted, elongated.His teeth were fangs, sharp and yellow and hungry for blood.He stood on all fours, feeling muscles ripple across his back, feeling the strength in his legs.He reveled in his strength.He was a massive wolf, lord of the wolves.He stood head and shoulders over the other wolves of the pack, who slunk around him, staring at him with their red eyes, uncertain, wary, yet prepared to follow where he would lead.His senses heightened, Feal-Thas could smell what the other wolves smelled—the scent of humans borne on the frost-crusted air.He could hear the rasping of their breath and their firm footfalls, the clank of a sword, the occasional scrap of conversation, though not much, for they were saving their breath for breathing.His trap had worked.They were coming.Feal-Thas leaped forward on all fours, muscles bunching, expanding, bunching, expanding.His legs gathered up the ground, pushing off from it, reached out for more.The wind whistled past his ears.The snow stung his eyes.He opened his mouth and sucked in the biting air, and saliva spewed from his lolling tongue.He grinned in ecstasy, reveling in the run, the hunt, and the prospect of the kill.Inside the icy tunnel, Derek stopped to consult the map given to him by Raggart the Younger.The tunnels in which they stood had not been here three hundred years ago.The dragon’s lair was on the map, though it had not been named by the ancestor, since dragons had not been seen on Krynn for many centuries.The lair was denoted as a “cave of death” on the map, for the ancestor had seen a great many bones lying about, including several human skulls.An abandoned dragon’s lair would be the logical place for Sleet to use as her lair, or so Derek concluded [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]