Dhurmic blinked, startled, then he winked at Nachal. “I think I’m in love.”
The woman snorted, and Nachal rolled his eyes. He didn’t bother trying to tell her his name. Besides, his name was probably a little more well-known than Dhurmic’s.
She opened the first door, Dhurmic’s room, and nodded for him to step in and look around. He didn’t bother. He dumped all of his belongings on the bed and shut the door in their faces. The woman opened another door to the right of Dhurmic’s and motioned for Nachal to enter. He gave it a cursory glance before he turned back to the figure just outside of his doorway. “Thank you,” he said sincerely.
She nodded. “Breakfast is served early. If it runs out, I don’t make more so you’re on your own.” With that, she closed the door firmly, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
He dumped all of his things on a light-grained pine chair, and looked around the room. Wooden floors, deep green curtains and quilt, and various pieces of tasteful furniture were scattered throughout the small, clean space. There was a soft scent in the air . . . almost like orange oil mixed with the faint hint of the sea. The window was open, making the curtain billow slightly with each light gust of ocean-misted air. He strode to the window and stared out to the sea for a few minutes.
Night had fallen and with it an unnatural stillness. He laid his forehead against the glass and closed his eyes. Was she safe? Was he already too late?
He lifted his head and slammed the window closed. He couldn’t sleep; he was too wound up. He needed out of this room, and he needed it now. He left the knives down his boots in place, getting rid of everything else, and strode for the door. He closed it with a soft click behind him and looked down the hall. All of the doors down the left and right side were closed firmly; the inn’s other occupants probably already asleep.
He looked up the staircase, remembering the innkeeper’s instructions regarding the top floor, and decided it might be a good place to have a bird’s-eye view of the town. His boots were whisper quiet on the stairs as he made his way up. There was a simple wooden door at the top.
He opened it.
There was someone already there.
A figure sat at one of the tables, cloaked in the deepest darkness available on the rooftop. They wore a hooded cloak that was pulled over their head, concealing their face. The figure turned, and Nachal sucked in a silent, surprised breath.
The eyes weren’t human. He wasn’t sure what they were, but they definitely weren’t human. Dragon? Elf?
The eyes delved into his, searching and sifting as though they could see straight to his soul. He stood stiffly, hands fisted at his sides. Waiting. After a few moments, the figure nodded, a slight movement of their head, and then turned back toward the view of the Sea of Mists.
Nachal let out the breath that he had forgotten he had been holding and stepped out cautiously toward the ledge. Three stories gaped in the darkness beneath him. It wasn’t much as far as heights went, but it was enough to make his palms turn sweaty, and a sick, roiling feeling enter his gut. He kept the silent figure in the cloak in his peripheral vision and backed off from the ledge a little. When he could only see out across the sea, and not down to the nauseating drop below, he stopped.
He studied the stranger with the burning, golden-amber eyes unobtrusively. It wasn’t so much the eyes as it was the intensity, and it wasn’t so much the intensity as it was the knowledge behind it. Cerralys was the only being he had ever met that could lay you bare like that. More than just standing unclothed in front of gawkers. More than having inner secrets revealed. It was soul deep. A look of understanding. A look of more awareness than any being should have. Ever.
He hated the feeling of being exposed.
He looked across at the waters and tried to put the cloaked figure to a corner of his mind. An aware corner, but a corner nonetheless.
His frustration had been silently mounting as he and Dhurmic had walked through the port town, and now here, finally, he looked out at the empty waters, and acknowledged something—he was in serious trouble.
How was he going to find Auri if there were no ships to take him to her land?
The cloaked stranger stiffened, and suddenly the intensity radiating outward from him increased a hundredfold. Nachal turned toward the being warily. The being stared at him, strange, golden-amber eyes blazing, body tense.
And then things got surreal. . .
“What do you want?” The being demanded in a hard, damaged voice.
He found himself—for some reason—answering candidly. “I’m trying to find someone.”
“Are they a friend?”
Nachal shook his head and looked down. Did the eyes somehow affect him, mess with his mind? Still, he found himself unable to answer that question without pain. He couldn’t answer. The pain lodged in his chest, in his throat, behind his burning eyes. He ignored the being and faced the ocean, trying to get control of himself.
The stranger got up, and from the build he could tell that it was male. He moved to the edge of the roof with unnatural grace, and stared straight down. Nachal couldn’t, wouldn’t, so he watched him instead. His eyes were luminescent. They swung toward him and Nachal’s breath stopped in his chest.
“Yes,” he finally answered. “To me she is.”
The being nodded. Something flashed quickly through his burning eyes and then was concealed. He looked back down at the drop below. “You are from Eldaria,” he said quietly.
Nachal shivered then found himself nodding. The things happening were too much like a dream. He wondered if he was even awake or whether this was some new, weird twist to the familiar nightmares.
“Eldaria, land of dragons and men. Men who fight for survival now.”
“Dragons who fight for survival as well,” Nachal said with a rough catch in his voice.
The burning eyes swung back to him. “Perhaps,” he allowed then looked away again. “Perhaps. You have the smell of a dragon, but not the mind of one.”
“I am dragon-friend.”
“Dragon-friend?” the being asked with a sharp twist of his lips. “A human?”
“Always,” Nachal bit out grimly.
A sardonic twist of the stranger’s lips. His eyes turned cold. Glacial. Before they had burned with a heat so intense, radiance so bright that it hurt to look at them, but now the heat was gone, and in its place was ice. “What if you do not find her, this person whom you seek?”
The cold from the stranger’s eyes pierced Nachal’s chest. He staggered, coming perilously close to toppling from the ledge, but caught himself. The stranger made no move to catch him, just continued to gaze at him intently.
Nachal finally looked down. The height made him dizzy, but the question took his breath completely away. It made his mind spin in impossible tangles, whirling around and around, until one thought landed, refusing to be blown away with the rest. He had one hand flat on the ground for support. One knee was touching the roof, the other was nearly so. He looked up, meeting the intent eyes of the stranger. “Then it wouldn’t matter that I’d die, not when you compare the death of one with the deaths of many.”
The being looked surprised. “She has this power?” he rasped.
Nachal looked down. He dizzily pushed up off the roof to stand again. “Over me she has all power.” He started to walk away. At the door he stopped, unable to look at the radiance of the being behind him. “Over the world?” He shook his head. “I just don’t know.” He opened the door and walked on hollow legs to his room.
He laid on his bed fully clothed, curled up on his side, and stared out the window that he’d opened again. The curtains billowed, catching the air like a sail. He watched them dully, thinking of her. Always thinking of her.
When he awoke, he noticed a single slip of parchment that had been shoved beneath his door. He sat up and stared at it, suddenly knowing without a doubt who the letter had come from.
The being with the golden-amber eyes.
H
e got up slowly, walked over, and leaned down to pick it up. It contained four lines of elegant, bold script.
Years bleed together until all of time runs in a constant lifeless eternity. It cannot be shrouded or taken away, only endured. Someone to care for makes the endurance lighter, even almost majestic in purpose. Care for the flame within you well.
Liran
He sat down on the floor, holding the paper delicately and looking down at it in confusion. He was still sitting there, trying to make sense of it, when Dhurmic knocked. He got up quickly, hiding the paper behind his back, and answered the door.
“Are ye coming down for breakfast?”
Nachal stared at him, trying to make his brain unscramble. “Breakfast? No. I don’t think I will. I’m going to get cleaned up. I’ll meet you later.”
Dhurmic nodded and disappeared down the stairs. Nachal closed the door and leaned against it, staring down at the note. Finally, he shook his head, stowed it with the map inside of the book, grabbed all of his dirty clothes and went quietly upstairs to the bathing chamber.
That night, a deep, gonging bell sounded the arrival of a ship.
Nachal scrambled out of bed and skidded to a stop in front of his window. What he saw made his eyes go wide. In the protected cove of the bay lay a ship. A huge merchant ship. Its sails tacked, its hull gleaming. A perfect, sound ship. He gripped the wooden window-frame fiercely, his nails leaving gouges.
In that ship was his salvation.
People came in droves to the docks until hundreds of them stood there, waiting for the lone figure coming ashore in a dark-wooded skiff. Some stood quietly on the edges of the crowd, weeping into their hands. Others surged forward as the captain touched down, angrily demanding information.
The door opened noiselessly behind him, and footsteps quietly trod across the wooden floor. He turned to see Dhurmic walk in with all of his gear loaded on his back. His face was grim, his black eyes tight. He came to stand beside him and they looked down upon the scene below in silence.
After a few minutes, Dhurmic nudged him. “Look,” he whispered roughly. He pointed to the dark, shadowy waters and to a smaller vessel that had just pulled alongside the larger merchant craft.
Nachal squinted. A cloaked figure sat in the small boat, waiting for another to climb the ladder and board the ship. The figure climbing the rungs had black hair that whipped freely in the wind about their shoulders, and they were slight of build. A woman. He looked back toward the cloaked figure, feeling its eyes upon him.
Even across the distance, he could see that the golden-amber eyes were alight. They burned into him, willing him to understand . . . something. . .
Nachal’s entire body went suddenly, utterly still. He knew what the figure was trying to tell him. He turned to Dhurmic with fierce determination in his eyes and in his voice. “We need to get on that ship.”
Chapter Eleven- Stowaways
They snuck on board in bare feet, with dripping, sopping clothes. Their boots were in the packs that they had been forced to hold above water as they swam. The map was safe. That was all that mattered.
They paused, listening intently for any sound on this side of the craft but finding none. Nachal moved forward first, but Dhurmic stopped him with a hand held out. “Me hearing and sight are better,” he whispered. Nachal nodded, and Dhurmic led the way, stealthily creeping, keeping to the darkest shadows of the ship.
The planks beneath their feet groaned at the slightest touch, but the night was still around them, concealing them in its thick folds. The wind gusted, flattening Nachal’s dark clothes against his body and plastering his cold, wet hair against his head.
Dhurmic led them to mid-ship, put a finger to his lips and pointed. The entire crew was gathered at the prow of the vessel, staring silently toward the shore, watching the scene unfolding on the docks with tense expressions. Dhurmic kneeled on the deck, and slowly lifted a hatch. Nachal watched the figures at the prow. No one turned. They were immersed in the drama on the shore.
Dhurmic eased himself onto the first rung of the ladder, and slowly made his way down into the darkness below. Nachal followed, closing the hatch door quietly above him and descending. He could hear the sound of Dhurmic breathing, but nothing else. He looked down. Dhurmic had paused, still and silent, listening hard. He looked up at him and nodded then lightly dropped down to the first level. The crew quarters.
They bypassed these cautiously, sweeping their eyes across the small rooms as they passed by. They eventually came to another hatch, which Dhurmic quickly opened and started down. Nachal closed this hatch too and descended after him.
It was a lot darker down this one. The further they descended the thicker the blackness became until, finally, he couldn’t even see his hands gripping the rung of the ladder anymore. He paused, reaching down with a tentative foot to find the next rung down. His hands—to his intense relief—found it easier to judge. Grip tightly. Release. Grip tightly. Release. The ladder seemed to go down forever.
Light flared and he froze, looking down in alarm. Dhurmic’s pale face looked back up at him. “S’ alright,” he said quietly. “Jus’ me.” He held a spiral lumacrystal stick up above his head, guiding the light toward Nachal so that he could make his way down to join him. Nachal reached the last rung and dropped silently to the floor. He drew one of his own lumacrystals out, and they both turned and surveyed the illuminated black of the hold.
“This is home for a while,” he whispered. Dhurmic grunted.
The first few days were maddeningly tense. He kept expecting Liran—the elf with the golden-amber eyes—to lead the others to him. But the days went by and no one came to drag them from their hiding place. It didn’t make him relax. In fact, it had the opposite effect. What was the elf’s game?
At the far end of the hold was their perfect hiding place. The hold itself was stacked high with crates and sacks of goods, creating orderly little walkways. But in the far corner, the crates created a deep pocket of obscurity. That’s where he and Dhurmic slept and ate.
They had both explored the goods for the first couple of days, and found the things that a normal merchant ship might carry: cloth, spices, food. The last was a necessity. He felt bad about stealing from the supplies, but the longer they stayed down here the better it would be. So they picked lightly from the food crates, making sure that their pilfering went unnoticed, drank from a water barrel that they dragged to their corner, slept with their blankets on the hard planks beneath them, and generally got annoyed with each other. Two people—a dwarf and a human—trapped in the dark confines of a ship’s hold with nothing to do was an experiment he wouldn’t care to try again.
It was day five out at sea. Dhurmic was sitting beside him, sharpening his axe, while Nachal was reading. It was a testament to how bored he was. The letters on the page started to swim as his eyes got heavy, lulled by the gentle motions of the ship. He jerked awake when Dhurmic hissed, tugging on his sleeve.
They quickly grabbed their lumacrystals and shoved them under their blankets then cleaned up the few things they had out and snuck around behind the crates that were almost shoved against the farthest wall of the hold.
Sailors came in and out for a while, tromping around and laughing, grabbing fresh supplies and taking them topside. Nachal barely breathed the whole time.
When they finally left, he and Dhurmic dug under the blankets to retrieve their lumacrystals then looked across the small space at each other. “That was close,” Nachal breathed.
Dhurmic’s face went red. “Ye must have melons in yer ears. Canna ye hear them stomping down the ladder?”
Nachal scowled and went back to his book. Dhurmic moved to sit on a crate at the far end of their secluded space and went back to sharpening his axe. His face was still red. Silence reigned supreme.
Nachal spun to the side, and jerked his sword up just in time to avoid the axe about to cleave his head off. Dhurmic didn’t mess around in sparring matches. He grunted and kicke
d the dwarf away.
“Ye fear my axe, is it not so?” Dhurmic taunted as he crouched on the floor where Nachal had shoved him, ready to spring again. Nachal eyed him warily, slowly circling.
“Fear is such a strong word,” he said in a purposefully bored drawl. “How about a healthy amount of respect?”
He jerked out of the way just in time; wood chips from the crate that Dhurmic just crushed went flying. “I think we’ve been down here too long,” he grunted, jerking aside again just in time. More wood chips sprayed the air; a sliver embedded itself in his arm. “You keep doing that to me,” he muttered. “What is it with you and throwing things?”
“Why do ye always duck?”
He laughed. “Self-preservation. How are we going to explain the crushed crates later?”
“Later? Who says ye will have a later?”
“Me.”
He stopped avoiding the fight, driving Dhurmic crazy by managing to dance out of the way of his repeated axe swings, and dove into it head first. He thrust with his blade, feeling the extension of it like it was a part of him. A lethal appendage. It bit into the axe that Dhurmic brought up. The blade whirled in his hands, spinning effortlessly as he adjusted his stance and came from the opposite direction. He smiled grimly, allowing no quarter as he backed Dhurmic steadily into the large stack of crates behind him.
Fighting against an axe-wielding dwarf was different than fighting against a human with a sword—their height was different for one. He smirked as he spun halfway around on his heels, brought his sword down hard with both hands, and cleaved Dhurmic’s axe handle in half.
Dhurmic looked at the two pieces in his hands in shock for a moment then he looked up, his face twisting in rage. He threw the broken pieces to the side of him, and slowly stalked toward Nachal.
“Ye broke mine axe,” he growled. “How am I supposed to defend yer sorra hide if I dinna, have … mine … AXE!” His last word rose to a shout, his face turning a mottled red at the rush of blood beneath his cheeks.
Dragon Dreams (The Chronicles of Shadow and Light) Book 1 Page 10