by C. Greenwood
There was little time to recover. Through the darkness, I could hear the pounding of many feet running across the walkways we had just crossed.
I straightened up and found a row of wooden casks stacked against the side of the building. I scrambled up these as quickly as I could go without upsetting the stack. I could hear Basil climbing after me, although by now he had to be doubting my plan.
I was beginning to doubt it myself. What if Skybreaker hadn’t waited for me? Maybe the mad dragon hadn’t understood my instructions. Or maybe we didn’t have as much of a bond as I thought. Perhaps he had decided to abandon me.
The first gray smudges of dawn were just beginning to streak the horizon when I dragged myself over the edge and up onto the rooftop. My heart lifted at the sight that awaited me. There, with the lightening sky behind him, was Skybreaker.
On seeing me, the dragon shook out his wings and gave a deep rumbling noise, like the growl of a tiger, as if asking what had taken me so long.
A startled exclamation came from behind me, as Basil reached the rooftop. “You really do have a dragon!” he said, as if he could hardly believe it, even now that the beast stood before him.
“Of course I have,” I said. “Now let’s get out of here before those bloodthirsty friends of yours find out where we’ve disappeared to.”
“Wait a minute.” He looked incredulous. “You don’t actually expect me to climb onto the back of that thing?”
“I don’t see that you have much choice,” I said.
It was true. Already voices and clumsy noises from below indicated our pursuers were clambering up the stack of casks after us.
He scowled. “You brought me this way on purpose. You knew if you got me cornered up here I’d have to agree to join your wild quest to restore the island. So you trapped me.”
“That’s exactly what I did,” I admitted. “Now you’d better make up your mind quickly, because it sounds like we’ve only got a few seconds to spare.”
I was wrong. Already a face appeared over the edge of the roof, as our first enemy pulled himself up.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I charged at the man with a fierce cry and my spear upraised. He flinched, released his hold on the ledge, and fell. The noise of crashing bodies and splintering wood suggested he had knocked down his companions and the whole row of barrels along with him.
“That won’t delay them for long,” I warned Basil. “By the time they get back up here, Skybreaker and I will be in the air, beyond their reach. It’s up to you whether you’ll be gone with us.”
Basil appeared to come to a hasty decision. “It’s a bargain. Save me, and I’ll help you on your way.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I needed a helper who would see this quest through to the end. I was also mindful of the fact this long-lost “cousin” of mine made it a habit to form deals he had no intention of sticking to. But I was in no position to argue. Already our enemies were probably finding an alternate route to the rooftop. I had to take what I could get.
“Good enough for now,” I said, starting toward the dragon. “Climb onto Skybreaker’s back and hold tight.”
He looked nervous. “Exactly how does one hop aboard such a beast?”
I gestured him to follow as I went to Skybreaker. I didn’t blame him for looking reluctant to approach. I wasn’t sure how the mad dragon would react to a stranger, especially an off-islander.
Skybreaker flared his nostrils as he took in the unfamiliar scent of the newcomer.
“Easy, boy,” I said, as if calming a skittish horse. “This is Basil. He’s not dragonkind, but he’s practically related to me and he’s going to help us.”
I placed a hand on the beast’s snout and pushed a suggestion at him, an image of the three of us flying through the sky.
I was afraid he wouldn’t accept the idea. But perhaps our bond was stronger than I thought. When I showed Basil how to grab the spikes on Skybreaker’s near wing and use them for handholds while climbing onto the beast’s back, the dragon didn’t protest. He was easily large enough to hold both of us between his shoulder blades.
We had no sooner climbed up than a wave of enemies appeared, clambering all at once over the top of the wall. How they had made it back so quickly I didn’t know.
Skybreaker must have sensed my dread of these people, because he gave a roar that reverberated across the rooftops. But it wasn’t only the sound that shook the roof. The dragon ran toward our enemies, splintering the wood under his feet with every step as we closed in. The whole building was in danger of collapse.
“Skybreaker, no!” I shouted, as he swiped his spiked tail at the group of newcomers. The broad tail caught several of the men and swept them off the roof. I could hear their screams as they plunged down. Likely the drop would not be far enough to kill them.
A memory flashed through my mind of the Big Thunders, the distant row of a hundred cannons aimed at the ships moored in the port. They could potentially be used on anyone who broke the peace of the town. I didn’t know if the weapons could reach us from here or even what would happen if they did. But anything powerful enough to sink ships wasn’t a weapon I wanted unleashed on me.
More armed men raced toward us, dodging swipes from the dragon’s tail and from his massive wings spiked with bone-tips. Skybreaker snaked out his long neck and snapped at them.
Basil must have been thinking about the cannons too. “Can’t you control this monster?” he shouted in my ear. “Make him stop fighting and get us away from here!”
“It’s not that simple,” I yelled back. “You try making a lizard this big do anything he doesn’t want.”
But I placed my palm against the dragon’s scaly back. With the leather gauntlet covering my hand, I couldn’t see the magic shimmering over it anymore. But I knew Skybreaker sensed it was there. Again I pushed at him the image of the three of us flying through the air, of the rooftops of Port Unity dropping away far below us.
This time he got it. With a final angry roar at the men ranged around him with their upraised swords and cudgels, Skybreaker suddenly whipped around and made a run for the opposite edge of the roof. Teeth rattling at his jarring strides, I feared he would sink a massive foot through the roof and break a leg.
I caught a quick glimpse of the edge appearing before us, and then, before I had a chance to brace myself, we plunged straight down toward the shadows below. I gripped a row of small spikes along the ridge of the dragon’s neck, and Basil grabbed onto me, both of us nearly unseated in the steep drop.
The sea and the wooden walkways crisscrossing the water rose up to meet us. Just when I thought we would dash into the platform below, Skybreaker beat his powerful wings, pulling us out of the dive. We narrowly missed the walkways and skimmed above the surface of the water. With each beat of the dragon’s muscular wings, we gradually lifted higher.
I looked back to see Port Unity shrinking in the distance, like a small pile of driftwood floating on the endless expanse of ocean.
* * *
As soon as we were safe, Basil tried to wiggle out of our deal. I had expected nothing less of him. We had barely left Port Unity behind when he began nervously demanding to go back, to be dropped off in a different part of town, where he hoped to evade his enemies. Unluckily for him, Skybreaker was uninterested in his commands. The beast was barely interested in mine.
We continued soaring through a peaceful sky, heading away from the floating port city. The sun was rising from beyond the ocean’s edge, streaking the horizon with hues of gold and pink. It was a beautiful scene I had witnessed a thousand times before, but I still wasn’t used to seeing it from up among the clouds. I wished I were watching it instead from the shore of the Ninth Isle.
I shook aside the painful tug I felt inside and returned my attention to Basil’s continued complaints.
“Port Unity isn’t going to be a safe place for you any time soon,” I pointed out to my companion. “Your home on the old ship is destroyed a
nd there’s no place in town for you to hide from those murderous sailors. Anyway, you made a promise to help me save Corthium. One way or another, I mean to hold you to that.”
Basil muttered under his breath but didn’t argue further. I couldn’t see his expression because he was sitting behind me. But he must have realized he was in no position to refuse.
“I propose a new agreement,” he said. “I don’t see what use I could possibly be to your little quest. But what if I take you to someone who can help you? Someone who can point you to one of those magical stones you’ve been wanting?”
“A Sheltering Stone,” I supplied.
“Whatever you call them,” he said, as if it didn’t matter. “Would that fulfill my end of the deal?”
“That depends,” I said doubtfully. “Tell me more.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Basil insisted on being mysterious about his plan, making me suspicious that it might be one he knew I wouldn’t agree to. I could get nothing out of him but that we should fly to the nearest shore north of Port Unity and land at a cove shaped like the mouth of a skull. I did my best to convey these directions to Skybreaker. I could only guess whether the dragon was familiar with the place I described through mental images. It was difficult for me to show him a place I had never seen with my own eyes.
We flew on all that morning and into the afternoon without spotting any land. There wasn’t so much as a tiny island to break up the endless sheet of blue stretching away beneath us. The temperature grew hot and the sun became blinding, glaring down from above and reflecting back from the mirror of water below. I promised myself the next time I traveled this way I would bring a waterskin and something to eat. I worried about Skybreaker, but the dragon never seemed to grow weaker. I remembered he was able to go long periods without drinking, and he had demonstrated before that he could fly for a full night without tiring. I had never tested his limits and could only guess what he was really capable of.
The previous night had been an exhausting one. At some point early in the afternoon it became difficult to keep my eyes open. Basil and I agreed to take turns sleeping, so that one of us could always be on watch for land. More importantly, there was a real danger of rolling over in our sleep and plunging off the dragon’s back. At least this way whoever was awake could keep an eye on the other. I leaned forward against Skybreaker’s neck and closed my eyes.
Despite the bright sunshine, the rhythmic beating of the dragon’s wings and the feel of the wind whipping past soon lulled me to sleep.
* * *
I stood in the center of a lonely open chamber with a tiled floor and surrounding marble columns. I had been in this place before. I recognized it at once as the setting of the strange, lifelike dream I had had while stranded on the island of the one-eyed giants.
The ancient ruin still had no roof or walls. Its pillars remained worn and chipped. Green weeds grew up between the floor tiles. Beyond the marble pillars, green hills rolled on as far as the eye could see in any direction. It always seemed to be nighttime in this place, the star-studded sky and crescent moon as constant as the distant chirping of the crickets.
The floor seemed solid beneath my feet, even though I knew it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Not when my body was far away, soaring through the sky on the back of a dragon. A cool nighttime breeze ruffled my hair and carried the scent of flowers to my nostrils. Not the sweet-smelling blossoms from the jungles of the Ninth Isle but a subtler scent.
Just like last time, I was alone and yet the chamber wasn’t empty. Strung all around me, filling the hollow space while seemingly connected to nothing, was the now-familiar web made up of hundreds of gossamer threads that glowed and shimmered in the dimness. I held my breath and listened to the soft thrumming sound emitted by the threads as they vibrated with living energy.
I remembered what had happened the last time I touched them. How I had been transported into other bodies, bodies I could feel and understand but not control. I had been like a passenger riding inside those foreign vessels, seeing and experiencing the same sensations they did, sharing in their knowledge. I had maintained only the vaguest awareness of my true self. The hosts whose bodies I shared had appeared to have no consciousness of me at all.
I recoiled from the uncomfortable memory. And yet I was also intrigued by the glimpses I had received of those other lives. What was it that had given me this strange power? Was any part of it real, or had the things I witnessed been only vivid dreams? I thought of the final moments I had seen of a young male dragonkind struggling to keep flapping his wings as exhaustion overtook him. That glimpse, I felt, had to be a true view of what had occurred. I had sensed the host’s fear and pain too sharply to have imagined it from nothing.
But if it were real, was this an effect of the magic I had absorbed from the Sheltering Stone? And was it a pointless talent, or could I potentially put it to use of some kind?
I gathered my courage for an experiment. I tried to relax my mind, not to focus particularly on any single strand of the web. Instead, I let my gaze drift over all of them, seeing if any one called to me. There was a pale thread not far away that seemed to thrum louder than the rest. Something drew me to that slender strand.
I drew closer, summoned my resolve, and reached out to brush the strand with my fingertips. Instantly, I was transported away from the ancient place of marble columns.
I now stood on the sunny upper deck of a great ship. At my back was a railing, and before me tall golden sails flapped in the wind. I watched the prow of the vessel—my vessel, I somehow knew—plow through the water. The wind whipped the white-capped waves, casting a fine mist into the air. It was refreshing on my sunbaked skin. I unwound the veil that covered the lower portion of my face and inhaled the sea air.
This was familiar to me, the feel of speeding across the water, driven by a powerful wind. I had been on ships like this one since boyhood. I had been raised for this, voyaging, discovering, conquering. My father, the emperor, relied on me to bring new goods, lands, and people into his possession. I had gained him many prizes.
But none would be as great as the one I was about to capture. As soon as I had seen the magic shimmering from the hand of the blue-haired girl in Port Unity, I was intrigued. I knew the tales, the stories spread by the superstitious sailors in these parts. They spoke of a forbidden island inhabited by horned and scaled dragon people, a place protected by a magic stone held sacred by their race. I had dismissed such stories until I had seen the evidence with my own eyes, in the form of the horned girl with her scaly cheeks and glowing hand.
I would have investigated her further, but the pirate captain had got in my way.
My mouth twisted downward at the memory, and I paced the deck, scanning the horizon for some glimpse of what I sought. Although I saw nothing but empty blue sky, I barked orders to the bare-chested crewman at the helm to continue a northward course. Some instinct told me we were sailing the right direction. Behind us, my entire fleet of gold-sailed ships followed in our wake.
I was not easily thwarted. Back in Port Unity, I had sent someone to trail the girl. My spy later brought reports that she had fought enemies, gained a young male companion, and that the two of them had flown away together on the back of a dragon. Until then, my curiosity had been solely directed at the girl’s magic powers. But on hearing of the dragon, my interest sharpened. These great creatures had not been seen in my homeland for many generations. Up to now, it was thought they had died out. Now it seemed that assumption was wrong. If I could capture and control such a monster and bring it back to my father, it would have incredible value as a potential weapon of war.
And so I led my fleet in the direction the dragon had last been seen flying. My searching eyes still caught no glimpse of him on the clear horizon. He was too far ahead and traveled too fast for us. The only winged creatures I spotted in the sky were the seabirds wheeling above the blue waves. But that would change. The dragon couldn’t fly forever, and there were
only so many near shores.
* * *
I awoke with a start to find myself back on the scaled shoulders of Skybreaker. Once again, we were gliding through the sky, held aloft by the up-and-down motion of the dragon’s massive wings.
“Is something wrong?” asked Basil behind me. He must have seen me jump in my sleep.
“Nothing,” I said distractedly. “Just a dream, I think.”
But that wasn’t really what I thought at all. The place of magic threads had seemed real. And the memory of the dangerous golden-skinned man was too vivid to be dismissed. Could it be a true warning? Were a fleet of Gold Ship Voyagers sailing the ocean in search of us? I leaned over the dragon’s neck and scanned the waters below. But from this height, all I saw was a flat sheet of empty blue water.
I couldn’t relax again. A feeling of urgency drove me. Somewhere out there, enemies were coming for us. It seemed impossible, but I knew it in my bones. Would it be the Gold Ship Voyagers? Or what about Captain Ulysses back in Port Unity? We had left him and his ship, the Sea-Vulture, behind. But remembering the look in the pirate’s eyes when they had fixed on my glowing hand, I had the nagging feeling we may not have seen the last of him.
I had more reasons than these to be uneasy about the quest I was heading into. I had a goal, yes. To raise up the Ninth Isle again. But my way to obtaining a new Sheltering Stone was unclear. And I could hardly set out with a more unreliable companion. I had hoped for an ally I could trust. Instead, I got the unpredictable Basil. I knew there was some secret behind the trouble with the sailors back at Port Unity that he hadn’t told me. More importantly, his promise of help had come unwillingly. Would he go back on his word at the first opportunity?
The only thing I could be sure of, as Skybreaker carried us through a sapphire blue sky, was that everything I had been through up to now was only a beginning—a cruel test for the challenge before me. The sharpest pains and deepest dangers lay ahead. I only hoped I would survive them.