title: Dragons: Worlds Afire (Forgotten Realms)
author:  R.A. Salvatore 
description: R.A. Salvatore has published numerous <b>Forgotten Realms</b> novels, most of which have been <i>New York Times</i> bestsellers.<br /><br />Weis &amp; Hickman are the original co-creators of the <b>Dragonlance</b> mythology. Together they have co-authored numerous <b>Dragonlance</b> novels and short stories.<br /><br />Scott McGough is a freelance author and editor. He has written many <b>Magic: The Gathering</b> novels for Wizards of the Coast.<br /><br />Keith Baker's <b>Eberron </b>setting was chosen out of 11,000 submissions to become the first new <b>Dungeons &amp; Dragons</b> setting in ten years.<br /><br /><br /><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>
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  **R.A.Salvatore**
  
  
  **The Ghost King**
  
  
  **Transitions III**
  
  
  **PRELUDE**
  
  
  
  
  
  The dragon issued a low growl and flexed his claws in close, curling himself
  into a defensive crouch. His eyes were gone, having been lost to the brilliant
  light bursting from a destroyed artifact, but his draconian senses more than
  compensated.
  
  
  Someone was in his chamber—Hephaestus knew that beyond a doubt—but the beast
  could
  
  
  neither smell nor hear him.
  
  
  “Well?” the dragon asked in his rumbling voice, barely a whisper for the
  beast, but it
  
  
  reverberated and echoed off the stone walls of the mountain cavern. “Have you
  come to face me or to hide from me?”
  
  
  _I am right here before you, dragon_ , came the reply—not audibly, but in the
  wyrm’s mind.
  
  
  Hephaestus tilted his great horned head at the telepathic intrusion and
  growled.
  
  
  _You do not remember me? You destroyed me, dragon, when you destroyed the
  Crystal Shard_.
  
  
  “Your cryptic games do not impress me, drow!”
  
  
  _Not drow_.