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

by C. Greenwood

  “I hope you’re not afraid of heights,” he called down, reaching the top and waiting for me.

  I didn’t answer. I was used to clambering up and down the rocky sea bluffs back home, but this was a different kind of climbing. It required all my concentration not to get my feet tangled in the lines.

  When I reached my goal, I found that I had to draw myself up through a trapdoor in the bottom to get into the little house. Having arrived ahead of me, my guide was in the process of lighting a lantern and hanging it from a hook on the wall. As I pulled myself up through the trapdoor, he didn’t offer his hand and I didn’t ask for it.

  “So you actually live up here?” I asked, out of breath from the climb.

  “Of course. My little home is cozy, comfortable, and guests love it,” came the lazy response.

  I doubted him on all counts. What was more likely, I thought, was that it cost him nothing to sleep here. And for one who appeared to have some dangerous enemies, maybe this hideout made him hard to find and harder still to reach.

  Looking around me, I wasn’t sure that I felt any more secure now than I had when I was dangling from the ropes below. The flickering light the lantern cast across the close walls revealed the construction was as flimsy as it had looked from a distance, a lot of rotten boards held together by a few rusty nails. The whole thing creaked ominously beneath our weight. Since any movement set it to swaying slightly, I opted to sit in the floor by the entrance and not move.

  I didn’t have much choice anyway. The space was barely large enough to hold two people. The roof was low, and only toward the center would it have been possible to stand upright. My companion wasn’t terribly tall, and even he had to crouch as he moved around the interior.

  Incredibly, there was a window in here, a small round portal looking out over the town. I could see a few lights flickering in the distant houses. I was surprised to realize I could even see the shapes of a row of warehouses that might be the ones Skybreaker and I had landed near. But if the dragon still awaited me on one of those rooftops, I couldn’t see him through the darkness.

  I saw no sign either of the violent sailors we had escaped.

  “Who were those angry men threatening you earlier?” I asked. “I heard them say something about you failing to deliver what you promised.”

  My host shrugged. “A small misunderstanding. I may have made them some sort of deal during a card game the other night. Maybe I promised them something in lieu of payment for my losses. It was late. I can’t be expected to remember every bargain I strike.”

  Clearly he was determined to be vague, but I didn’t press him further.

  Instead, I returned to examining my surroundings. Every inch of space in the little house was made use of. Sacks and clothing items hung from hooks on the ceiling. There was a faded old map of the sea and the surrounding islands pinned to one wall. Shallow shelves lined the other walls, each cluttered with small items I supposed were the treasures of the owner: a book, a leather pouch, a glass bottle with a tiny wood-carved ship inside it. Stretched along the floor was a messy pallet of pillows and blankets barely long and wide enough for a grown man to sleep on. A small stool and a wooden chest in the opposite corner were the only furnishings. Atop the chest was a dented tin pitcher and a cloth-wrapped bundle that probably held some sort of food. In the dancing lantern light, I was pretty sure I saw something small and furry skitter away from the food and disappear into the shadows.

  My host appeared unconcerned by whatever rodents shared his home. He dusted aside a few cobwebs on one shelf and pulled something down.

  “Here,” he said, tossing it to me.

  Confused, I examined the item, a dark leather gauntlet.

  “That glowing hand of yours is bound to attract negative attention around here,” he explained. “Like wearing a valuable jewel in public. You’ll draw less notice if you cover it up… Not that anything is going to keep you from getting stares.”

  His eyes went to the twisting horns curving above my head. The way his upper lip curled in distaste was probably unconscious.

  I reminded myself I couldn’t afford to offend this young man, however insulting I found him. Not until I got the information I needed anyway. Besides, he had offered me a gift, even if the gauntlet was too large and a little smelly. He was also right. He could have no way of knowing it, but the magic shimmering from my hand had already brought me trouble once since arriving in town.

  Thinking of the pirate Captain Ulysses and the Gold Ship Voyager back in The Blue Mermaid, I slid my hand into the glove. It worked, covering the magic glow until my hand looked as ordinary as anyone else’s.

  I tried to thank my host but cut off awkwardly, realizing he still hadn’t confirmed my assumption of his identity.

  “Call me Basil,” he said, waving away my thanks.

  “Then you are the Basil Seastrider I’ve been looking for?” I asked.

  “That seems likely. I can’t imagine there are two of me.”

  He grabbed a half-empty green bottle down from the nearest shelf and peered inside, as if doubtful of its contents.

  “A better question,” he continued, “would be why have you been seeking me in the first place?”

  I said, “I’ve told you why. So you can take me to my mother’s sister, Thaleia.”

  He took an experimental swig from the bottle, grimaced, and set it aside. “I’m afraid no one can do that, little dragon queen,” he said. “Where Thaleia is, she can’t be reached. Maybe you’ll have better luck with one of your other aunts.”

  “I have no other family,” I snapped, annoyed at his flippancy. “Why are you trying to keep me from Thaleia? Just tell me where she is, and I’ll go to her myself.”

  “Be my guest,” he said. “You can find her at the bottom of the ocean. It was her last wish to be buried at sea.”

  I was so stunned I didn’t know what to say at first. Was it possible my hopes could be dissolved so suddenly?

  “I don’t believe you,” I said.

  He shrugged, but his mood became more subdued. “Believe what you like,” he said. “My mother has been dead nigh on ten years now. And my father took off not long after, probably to escape his debts.”

  I stared. “Are you saying Thaleia was your mother?”

  “Stepmother really,” he corrected. “But I liked her name, so I took it. Seastrider had an adventurous ring. And I liked her. She was good to me until she died.”

  I tried to absorb this new information. “What relation does that make us?”

  “You tell me, cousin,” he said.

  “You’re not truly my cousin,” I pointed out. “Not by blood.”

  He only shrugged, apparently a favorite gesture of his. “Anyway, I should have known you for one of her people. You look like her. Not for the blue hair and antlers. She didn’t have those. But she had these.”

  He indicated the light scaling above my cheekbones and temples.

  I didn’t tell him that Thaleia had once had horns like mine but had cut them off. She had probably colored her hair a duller shade too in order to better blend in with the off-islanders.

  He continued, “Thaleia used to say she came from an island called Corthium, the Ninth Isle. It was a secret place forbidden to outsiders, where dragons roamed and winged people flew through the skies. I thought they were only fairy stories. Until I saw the symbol on that armband you wear. It’s a sign I know. I’ll show you.”

  He rose suddenly from the blankets he had reclined on and went to the chest standing against the wall. After moving aside the tin pitcher and bundled food, he lifted the hinged lid. He rummaged around a moment until he found what he was looking for. Then he turned to me and produced a hammered metal armband identical to mine. He ran a thumb over the etched design of interlinked rings that symbolized the original Nine Isles.

  “This was hers,” he said. “After Thaleia died, it should have gone to my sister, but she was never one for wearing pretty things.”

&nbs
p; “You have a sister?” I asked, hopes rising. If Thaleia had produced a daughter, maybe I wasn’t the last of my kind after all. “Is your sister related to me by blood?”

  “Sorry to disappoint,” he said, “but she’s another step from our father’s previous wife, same as me. Thaleia never had children of her own. But I think she felt we were near enough to the real thing.”

  My regret must have shown.

  “You needn’t look so disappointed,” he said. “My sister is far from here, so you couldn’t have met her anyway.”

  He unhooked a small leather pouch from the ceiling, dropped Thaleia’s armband inside, and held it out to me. “You might as well have the match, cousin,” he said. “I’ve got no use for such a trinket.”

  Not knowing what to say, I took the pouch and tied it to the cord at my waist, alongside the other beltpouch I already carried there.

  “Why is your sister gone?” I asked. “She’s not…?”

  “What? Below the ocean, like Thaleia? Not a bit. No, she ran away to sea some time ago. It seems to be a common habit in our family.”

  I remembered my grandmother’s story of how Thaleia left Corthium with her handsome young sailor.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Your sister ran away with some pirate?”

  “Not quite,” he said seriously. “Became one.”

  I waited. When he didn’t laugh, I realized he wasn’t joking. It seemed tactful to change the subject.

  “I’m sorry about the death of your mother—or stepmother,” I said. “But I have to tell you, I didn’t come looking for long-lost kin for sentimental reasons. My island has been destroyed, and my people are more than likely extinct. That’s why it’s left to me, as the last of my kind, to save what I can, to raise up the Ninth Isle again.”

  His uncomprehending look made it clear my words were nonsense to him.

  But I pressed on with, “I hoped that, as another who shared the burden of being the last of our race, Thaleia would feel as strongly as I do the loss of the dragonkind, Corthium, and the Three Hopes. I wanted to enlist her to help me on my quest so that, together, we could find a new Sheltering Stone, bring it to the Ninth Isle, and reclaim our home island from the sea. But now Thaleia is no longer here. So it is left up to you and me.”

  He blinked. “You and me?” he said, as if he had heard nothing but those last words. “Exactly what is left to you and me?”

  “The quest, of course. You have to help me raise the Ninth Isle.”

  He laughed incredulously. “You aren’t serious? You expect me to run all over the world looking for some magic rock that can raise an island out of the sea?”

  I bristled at his attitude. “We won’t be ‘running’ anywhere. We have Skybreaker to carry us.”

  “And Skybreaker is?”

  “My dragon. I told you I have one.”

  He started to respond to that but was interrupted by a sudden commotion, the sound of angry shouts coming from outside.

  “Come on out, Seastrider! We know ye be up there!” someone called.

  We opened the trapdoor in the floor and looked down to see a lot of people gathering on the deck below. In the silver moonlight, I made out that some of them were the familiar figures of the sailors we had tangled with earlier. I had been wrong in thinking we had lost them.

  “They must have followed us,” I said to Basil, heart sinking.

  “Yes and this time they brought friends,” he answered.

  He was right. Before, we had faced only three or four enemies, but now there were over a dozen of them crowded below.

  They must have seen us peering down on them, because they began yelling threats. Some started to climb the same ratlines we had ascended a short while ago.

  We had nowhere to run.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Acting quickly, Basil produced a knife from somewhere and began sawing through the nearest lines. Seeing what he did, the invaders gave up that route of entry and scrambled back down just before the ropes fell in a heap onto the deck. I knew that might have slowed them temporarily, but it also worsened our position. We were now trapped up here with no way to exit.

  “It’s no good hiding up there in yer birdie’s nest, Seastrider!” one of them shouted. “We’ll smoke him out, won’t we, boys?”

  There was a sudden flare of light as a torch was lit. Basil and I watched helplessly while the sailors scurried across the deck below, snapping off rotten pieces of railing and other dry wood from the ship and piling it around the base of the mast that held us above their reach.

  “Whatever deal you broke,” I said to Basil at my side, “you really angered these people.”

  “I didn’t expect them to take it so badly,” he protested.

  Below, the sailors set their torch to the pile of dry wood. It blazed up quickly, the orange flames licking at the mast.

  “What now?” I asked Basil nervously.

  “Now,” he said, “we abandon ship.”

  He knelt against one wall and pried away a section of flimsy boards that appeared to have been nailed loosely for easy removal. When pulled back, they offered a view of the night and created an opening just large enough to crawl through. There was a tiny shelf outside, hardly wide enough to stand on.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, watching Basil squeeze through the exit.

  “Jumping,” he said.

  “I was hoping for a more inspired plan,” I argued. But he didn’t seem to hear me. Or maybe he just didn’t have any other ideas.

  I hesitated a moment and then crawled through the jagged hole after him. Outside, we stood with our backs against the outer wall and balanced, teetering, on the narrow ledge.

  From here, we were in clear view of our enemies. The thick smoke from their fire curled upward on the wind, its acrid smell burning my nostrils.

  I looked down and calculated the long drop. With the ship leaned at this angle, we were on the wrong side for jumping into the sea. There was no water directly below, only wooden walkways. I didn’t see anything to be gained by leaping, except a quicker death.

  But then I saw Basil was untangling a rope from a nail on the wall. Its other end disappeared into the darkness above. It took me a moment to realize it was fastened to the eaves of a taller building across from the old ship.

  “Come on, if you’re coming,” Basil said.

  I only had a second to understand what he had in mind, and then he leaped off the ledge, clinging to the rope.

  I made a flying leap after him and barely hooked the fingers of one hand onto the rope below his as the line was moving away. My other hand clutched my spear, leaving me to dangle by one arm.

  We swung out over the deck below and into the empty air. Gripping the rope with my one gauntleted hand so tight it hurt, I had a brief impression of our enemies looking up at us, then a blurry glimpse of a shadowed chasm that was the long drop beneath our feet. As our line reached the end of its arc and was about to swing back like a pendulum, the wooden shingles of a rooftop appeared directly below.

  Without warning, Basil let go and dropped away, leaving me clinging to the rope alone. I followed his example and released the line. There was a brief fall through the air and then a heavy thud as I landed in a crouch on the rooftop. Pain shot through my ankles.

  By the time I recovered enough to stand upright, I looked around and realized my companion was already gone. I could see his fleeing figure in the distance, leaping across rooftops. A glance over my shoulder revealed our enemies were clambering down from the ship and heading this way in pursuit.

  I didn’t know the town well enough to strike out on my own. Besides, I hadn’t come all this way to find another Seastrider only to lose him. I set out after Basil, scrambling across slippery slates and wooden shingles, jumping from roof to roof. My side soon ached from the running but I didn’t dare slow down. I could hear our enemies following not far behind.

  The buildings were becoming farther apart now and the gaps between them harder to
leap. At one especially long gap, I threw my spear across before me, then made a running jump. I fell short of my goal and only just managed to catch a handhold. The splinters of rough shingles cut into my hands as I struggled to hold my weight up. My kicking feet dangled above an empty alley far below.

  Suddenly a hand appeared, reaching over the edge to help me. I clung to it and gradually was lifted up. Exhausted by the run and this most recent effort, I knelt on the roof to catch my breath.

  Basil sank down beside me.

  “Glad you could make it, cousin,” he said, gasping for breath. “I thought you had fallen behind.”

  “No thanks to you that I didn’t,” I grumbled, remembering how he hadn’t slowed for me.

  He shrugged. “You had as much chance to escape as I did.”

  From the darkness below came the sounds of pursuit. I leaned to look over the edge and saw a couple of sailors running down the alley. There was no telling where the rest of them were. Maybe surrounding this building or running up ahead to cut us off.

  “We’d better move on,” Basil said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But this time we go my way.”

  I could see he was skeptical about my familiarity with the rooftops and backstreets of Port Unity. But before he could argue, I grabbed my spear and took off. I half expected him to split away on his own. But after a brief hesitation, he followed.

  I abandoned the rooftops in favor of the alleys. Basil had headed toward crowded parts of town where I guessed he thought we would lose ourselves more easily. But now I led us the opposite direction, away from homes and businesses. Several times, I thought I heard our enemies behind us, but it was impossible to be sure. We had left behind the areas that were well-lit by the lanterns hanging from poles. Now we were plunging down rough wooden walkways spanning the water. It was impossible to tell what lay in the shadows, either ahead of or behind us.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Basil panted to me when we slowed to a sudden stop in front of an abandoned warehouse. “Because it looks to me like you’ve brought us to a dead end.”

  I didn’t answer. My lungs were burning from the long run. I doubled over and clutched my knees, sucking in gasps of air.