Isle of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 1)

by C. Greenwood

  Although I felt half-starved, I didn’t immediately eat my catch. Instead, I crossed the sand to where Skybreaker still stood like a sentinel gazing across the blue waves. For a moment, he looked less wild to my eyes—almost regal. Then he must have caught my scent on the wind, for he rounded on me, hissing. He crouched low, like a jungle cat about to leap on his prey. I had no intention of going any closer to the mad creature. But it seemed best not to let him sense fear in me.

  “You can stop baring your teeth, dragon,” I said to him with forced casualness. “I don’t think either of us plans to eat the other. Not today, anyway.”

  I tossed the large flat fish and one of the smaller striped ones his way. He must have been accustomed to having food thrown at him from a distance. Perhaps that was how his keepers had done it, back when he was in chains. He caught the fish in midair, swallowing them whole, bones and all. The speed of the devouring made it obvious such small bites could not sustain him for long. Soon he would need a larger meal. I hoped it wouldn’t be me. Despite my bold words only a moment ago, I was still wary.

  The beast appeared to be waiting for more food but I had no more to spare. Trying to appear confident, I deliberately turned my back on his unnerving golden gaze and walked away. In the shade of a nearby stand of trees, I gathered the dead and dried fronds lying at their base. I built these into a pile, then knelt in the sand and smashed two rocks together until their sparks ignited the leaves. I had found these stones at the edge of the beach and immediately recognized their similarity to the fire-maker rocks we had back home. With my small blaze now flickering away, I tucked the rocks into my beltpouch for future reuse. At least I wouldn’t have to spend any more cold nights here.

  On the tip of my spear, I roasted my last fish over the fire and consumed it with all the hunger of one who hadn’t eaten in nearly two days. While I ate, I kept a watchful eye on Skybreaker. I imagined he watched me back with equal interest. But he made no move to attack, despite the hunger that the smell of roasting meat, combined with his previous small snack, must have awakened in him. Was that the influence of the magic still shimmering in my hand? I tried not to think about it. The magic made me even more uncomfortable than the dragon. Who knew its real use or what it was capable of? One thing was sure, it was impossible to wash it off or cast it away from me. At least the dragon I could fight or flee. But there was no escaping the reddish-purple brilliance that clung from my fingertips to my wrist.

  When I had finished eating, I drank some of yesterday’s leftover rainwater that had puddled in the crevice of a nearby rock. I was grateful for the freshwater but knew I must soon search for a more lasting source. The day-old water would soon evaporate, and who could say how long it would be before the next rain? Certainly I couldn’t drink from the salty sea.

  That gave me a thought. I got up and roamed the beach again until I found something I had passed earlier. The hollow shell of a giant clam rested at the edge of the sand. There was no sign of the creature that had once inhabited the half shell. But the thing formed a perfect iridescent basin, and inside the bowl was more rainwater. The thing was difficult to lift because of its size. But I hefted it onto my shoulder, and careful to spill none of the precious contents, I carried it down the shore.

  Skybreaker watched unblinkingly as I set the clamshell down a little distance from him. Maybe he didn’t know what to do with it. But after I had backed away, he plodded over to the basin and sniffed its contents. With a curious snuffling noise, he dipped his nose into the freshwater and drank. He didn’t take much, only a taste. Perhaps dragons didn’t require water as frequently as people did. I had heard that dragons of old could live in desert places for prolonged periods without water. But at least he had it now if he wanted it.

  When the dragon finished drinking, I screwed up my courage. I had been thinking about this while wandering the beach and had arrived at the conclusion that I had no choice in what I must do next. I had no plan for the distant future. But for my immediate survival it had become clear there might well be only one way I would ever get off this island. I had to tame Skybreaker. He was my best hope of escape. For that matter, he might be my surest protection against any predators lurking within the dark jungle beyond the shore.

  I stood a little distance off from the mad dragon and reached out to him with my thoughts, just as I had done last night. It was easier this time. I concentrated and immediately connected with his mind—or at least with the nameless swirl of emotions and flashes of awareness that seemed to be what served for thoughts in a dragon. It wasn’t clear or linear, like human thinking. But it was a powerful barrage of anger and confusion, even sights and smells. Battling the mad whirl of his fierce emotions that tried to pull me in, I played him like a fish at the end of a line, attempting to draw his mind toward mine. He didn’t like it and tried to tug back. But this time it was my mind that clung to his.

  Gradually, I felt the power of his anger diminish. I saw myself through Skybreaker’s eyes, an insignificant being with a short memory and a brief lifespan. To him, I wasn’t exactly an insect but something more like a horse, without great importance yet potentially useful. The thing that made me stand apart from the valueless creatures that were his natural prey was this startling ability to brush against his thoughts. He was intrigued by it. He also approved of the scales at my cheeks and temples and the horns spiraling from the top of my head. We were linked by these similarities. But I sensed that my lack of wings confused him.

  Then there was my magic hand. Its shimmering glow fascinated him, as some types of birds were fascinated by shiny treasures. Realizing that, I crept toward him with my hand outstretched. I sensed his uncertainty. He wanted either to charge me or to back away. But his gaze fixed on the magic. Its reddish-purple brilliance was reflected in his large golden eyes. Slowly, I came close enough to feel his warm breath. I rested my hand, light as a feather, on his long scaly snout. For a second, we stood unmoving.

  Then Skybreaker gave a sudden angry snort and reared back, abruptly breaking the contact between our minds. He flared his wings and lashed his long tail, sending a spray of sand flying in all directions. The row of spikes on the back of that tail could easily pierce me. I backed away quickly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  For the rest of the day, I didn’t try to approach the mad dragon again. Instead, while the great beast stood in the background looking on, I combed the beach for more of the fish and little sand crabs that would keep me alive.

  In the process, I made a surprising discovery. A large net filled with holes was caught on a rock at the edge of the surf. It looked old and appeared to have washed up from the sea. Even so, it was the first sign I had seen that other people had been near this island before. I dragged it out of the water and stowed it in a safe place. Perhaps later I could find a way to mend it and put it to use.

  Skybreaker soon lost interest in my activities and lumbered off the beach, disappearing into the shadows of the jungle. I briefly worried that he had abandoned me and wondered if I should follow him. But when I heard the sound of the dragon crashing swiftly through the trees, followed by the cry of some wild animal, I realized Skybreaker was hunting. A beast so large couldn’t survive on only the small fish I had caught for him. Later, he reappeared and my concern was eased. For one reason or another, the dragon seemed inclined not to go far from me. Maybe it was his fascination with my magic hand that kept bringing him back.

  That night I slept along the tree line just above the sand. I didn’t dare let down my guard inside the dark jungle. Not after the glimpses I had caught of the long-armed, sharp-teethed little creatures living among the trees. Who knew whether they might be flesh eaters? No, I felt safer in the open, with the moonlit beach spread out before me. I curled up on a bed of loose fronds that had fallen from the trees, my new spear within easy reach. Nearby, Skybreaker’s crouching bulk was a dark outline in the night. I couldn’t decide whether the presence of another creature, a fellow castaway on this strange
island, was a comfort or a source of worry. The beast had so far refrained from devouring me. But my brief brushes with his mind had convinced me he was as mad as ever.

  As I lay there trying to fall asleep, my mind went to fears for the future. I should be making some plan for survival or escape, thinking of a destination to flee to if I ever did manage to get off the island. But instead, my thoughts were consumed by the past. I remembered the death of my grandmother. My feeble efforts, even the stealing of the minuteglass I still carried in my beltpouch, hadn’t saved her. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw again the horrifying sight of Corthium sinking beneath the angry sea. To sooth myself, I reached beyond that awful memory, delving further into the past.

  My childhood had been a happy one, spent swimming in the sea, fishing from the beaches, and playing in the jungled hills surrounding the city. It wasn’t until I had grown older that I had been required to take up work at the Depository of Knowledge. It wasn’t what I would have chosen for myself. Neither had I wanted the awful removal of my wings in adolescence. But one of my low birth must not question the role assigned to her. Everyone on the Ninth Isle had their place, and mine was as a servant in the depository. And servants could not have wings. Those ornaments were reserved for dragonkind of highest rank, rulers and warriors. Maybe I had always harbored a secret resentment of my wingless state. Maybe it was that anger below the surface that had compelled me to do the unthinkable, touching the Sheltering Stone.

  Frowning into the darkness, I instantly rejected the disturbing idea. No matter how wronged I felt, I would never have consciously retaliated by breaking the stone and sinking the island. There was nothing to be gained by destroying everything I knew and loved. And Corthium was a sacred place, as precious to me as it was to every one of my people.

  I returned to my memories.

  “I had no other family,” I said aloud, speaking to no one in particular. “There was only my grandmother and me. But we were happy, just the two of us, until she died when the island sank.”

  Nearby, Skybreaker made a low rumbling sound in his throat. Was it in response to what I said? Was the dragon listening to me? Or perhaps merely sensing my emotions? I wasn’t sure exactly how dragon bonding worked. But if I was having occasional brushes with Skybreaker’s feelings, maybe he was beginning to pick up on my moods as well.

  I continued talking my thoughts out, because it felt good to say them aloud. Even if the only one listening was a cursed beast who probably understood none of it.

  “We weren’t always alone,” I said. “Grandmother used to tell me of my parents. But the story I liked best was the one of my aunt, the sister of my mother. As a young girl, she fell in love with an off-islander, one of the wingless traders who visited Corthium. Grandmother called him a pirate, but then she didn’t like him much. He was probably only a harmless sailor. Because of my aunt’s love for him, she did the unthinkable. She cut off her horns and became like one of his kind, who are not kin to dragons.”

  Skybreaker gave a contemptuous snort, as if expressing what he thought of this.

  I continued, “My mother’s sister ran away to an off-island seaport with her sailor and was never heard from again. So you see, I am not entirely the last of our kind. It’s comforting to know there is another out there somewhere.”

  I rolled onto my back and gazed up at the stars. “I haven’t given up hope there’s more of us,” I said to the sky. “There could still be other survivors from the Ninth Isle. I saw most of the ships sinking before they could leave the harbor. But maybe some made it out. Or maybe we were all wrong in thinking no dragonkind could fly to the nearest land. It could be that a few of the strongest will reach safety on some distant shore.”

  My voice betrayed that I didn’t truly believe it. How could anyone possibly have survived the destruction I had witnessed? It was only the powerful Skybreaker that had saved me. The wings of the dragonkind who tried to fly from the sinking island would not have carried them any real distance. All the same, I clung to the faint hope as I shut my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  I stood in the center of a lonely open chamber with a tiled floor and surrounding marble columns. With no roof or walls, the space reminded me a little of the king’s Chamber of Rule back on Corthium. Except this ancient ruin had been touched, not by quakes or floods, but by the passing of time. The pillars were worn and chipped, the floor overgrown with weeds. And when I looked beyond the columns, I didn’t see the jungle or rocky beaches encircling my home city but smooth green hills that rolled as far as the eye could see in any direction.

  It was nighttime here, and the sky was studded with sparkling stars. A crescent moon hung directly overhead. Crickets chirped in the distance.

  I was vaguely aware that I was dreaming. Yet the floor felt solid beneath my boots. The cool evening breeze against my cheek seemed real. The wind was the only thing that moved in the big chamber. There was no living thing in sight. And yet I wasn’t alone. Strung all around me, filling the open space while seemingly connected to nothing, was a web made up of hundreds of gossamer threads that glowed and shimmered in the dimness. If I held my breath, I could hear the threads emitting a soft thrumming sound as they vibrated with energy.

  I hesitated to touch them. Bad things had happened the last time I laid a hand on something seething with mysterious magic. Instead, I backed away from the strands. But in trying to avoid them, I accidentally brushed against one.

  Instantly, I was transported away from the ancient place of marble columns. I suddenly found myself looking out toward a dark sea, holding a rough net in my hands. I was in a little rowboat that rocked with the movement of the waves, making me slightly queasy. A lantern was at the boat’s bow, providing enough light for my nighttime fishing. To my surprise, the lantern’s pale glow revealed that the clothes I was wearing were not my own. In fact, the hands gripping the net before me were wrinkled and spotted with age. Startled, I realized I had been somehow drawn from my body and was trapped in some other form, that of an old fisherwoman.

  Instinctively, I jumped out of this stranger’s body and back into mine. Again, I stood in the center of the empty chamber of ruin, encircled by ancient pillars. What had happened to me? How had I shifted into that other place and then back into this roofless chamber? I spun around, trying to escape the surrounding gossamer strands. Instead, I became entangled in another one.

  This thread transported me to yet another unfamiliar place. I was flying through the darkening sky, toward the setting sun. My wings felt weak and I was aware of a heavy weariness as I scanned the horizon for land. There was none, only endless ocean on every side. Hopelessness tugged at my heart, like the exhaustion that dragged me down. I had been flying without rest longer than any dragonkind had ever been known to fly, and my strained muscles could take no more. Gradually, I gave in to the weakness and drifted downward until I skimmed the cold water. I struggled to keep flapping my puny wings, to hold my body above the surface. But it was no use. In seconds I would sink beneath the waves, just like the Ninth Isle, to rise no more.

  * * *

  I started awake, gasping as if choking underwater. Heart hammering, I looked around frantically. Only when I found myself huddled safely on solid ground did I relax. I was back on the island where I had been stranded these two days, lying at the edge of the beach. In the darkness I could just make out Skybreaker’s hulking form nearby.

  I drew deep breaths of the salt-scented sea air and tried to calm myself. What had it been, that strange and confusing dream? How had my unconscious mind summoned up a place like the ancient columned chamber filled with its webs of magic? And was it only a dream? There had been something so real about it all. I had touched those threads, and they had pulled me away to distant places and dropped me into strange bodies. For a few brief seconds I had been one with an elderly fisherwoman, an off-islander who might have been located anywhere. Then I had jumped into the body of a different stranger but one whose wings a
nd scales were familiar to me. He was one of my own people, a young male dragonkind struggling to escape the destruction of Corthium.

  For those short seconds, I had become those people and shared in their experiences. I had seen through their eyes, felt what they felt, possessed some of their knowledge and memories. While in their bodies, I lost consciousness of myself, except as a tiny bundle of awareness at the back of my mind, mostly drowned out by the emotions and sensations of the host. Unable to control the old woman or the dragonkind youngling, I could only watch and feel.

  I tried to shake away my discomfort. But I was afraid to go back to sleep. I had the unsettling feeling that I might stray again into that place of ruined pillars and gossamer threads.

  I looked at my magic hand glowing faintly in the dark. I knew so little of what the magic I had absorbed was capable of. What if it was what had given me my strange dream? Perhaps the Sheltering Stone had transferred to me some horrible ability to wander through dreams and enter the bodies of others? I shivered, thinking again of the dragonkind youngling whose experience I had briefly shared. If he was in fact real, then I had just witnessed the final struggling moments of one of my people drowning—perhaps the last fellow survivor of the sinking of the Ninth Isle.

  Sickened by the thought, I turned my head away so I wouldn’t have to look at my hand, glowing with its reddish-purple light. Not only did I not know how to use this new power the magic had given me, I didn’t want it.