by J. R. Castle
Emperor Vayn! Quinn recognised his gnarled face from flags and portraits around the island.
The Emperor’s eyes fixed on Quinn and Ignus.
‘Ignus!’ the Emperor snarled. ‘You should have stayed bound! You should have lived your pathetic, pointless life rather than dare to face me again!’ His gaze shifted to Quinn, and his expression darkened. His lip curled like paper in a fire. ‘Who are you, who dares to defy me …?’
Quinn stared into the eyes of the man who had murdered his mother and father, and he felt fury build up in him again. ‘I am the true heir!’ he shouted into the flames. ‘You killed my parents.’
The flames hissed and spluttered with magical rage.
‘You survived?’ Vayn cried. ‘I thought you had drowned with them.’
‘You thought wrong, Vayn,’ Quinn shouted.
‘No matter,’ Vayn continued, his anger sending purple flames across the rubble. ‘I will make you wish you had drowned. You think freeing a Dragon Knight will save you?’
‘No,’ Quinn admitted. ‘But once I free all six, we will save the Twelve Islands together.’
‘I defeated all six in one battle!’ Vayn laughed darkly. ‘You will never reclaim the throne. I will send a thousand Black Guard against you! Cut your own throat now, boy – before I cut it for you!’
With a hiss, the purple flames exploded into the air and the magical image of Emperor Vayn spun away.
Quinn felt fear try to rise inside him, but seeing Vayn made him determined. He squeezed the fear down. He wouldn’t let it beat him.
‘All of Vayn’s Guard will come looking for us,’ Ignus rumbled. ‘This is the first place they will come. The village isn’t safe any more.’
Quinn raised his chin. ‘We have to take the fight to Vayn. We can’t just wait for him to attack. We should find the other Dragon Knights and release them. That way we’ll have a chance.’
‘I agree,’ Thea added. ‘There’s no other choice.’
Ignus looked uneasily around the village.
‘I cannot leave these people undefended. Ordinary men and women cannot stand against the Black Guard.’
‘They won’t have to,’ Thea said, stepping out in front of Ignus. ‘Areck and Alysa have come into their dragon powers. They can defend the village! The Black Guard want you and Quinn. They might want to punish the villagers, but they’re not going to go up against two dragons to do it, not when we’re getting away.’
Ignus still looked unsure. ‘You underestimate the Black Guard. This village is too hard to defend.’
‘Then we’ll move to the Floating Mountains,’ Areck said.
Alysa chipped in. ‘There must be enough space up there. There’s water and land; the villagers can farm and build houses and they’ll have us for protection.’
Ignus thought for a moment, then nodded. ‘As you wish. Areck and Alysa will stay to protect the villagers and take them to the foothills of the mountains. I will go with Quinn to my brothers of old.’
‘And me!’ Thea chimed in. ‘We’ve come this far already …’
Quinn smiled. It felt good to have a magician and a dragon on his side.
‘Very well,’ Ignus said.
‘The villagers will be safe in the mountains,’ Areck continued.
Ignus nodded his gigantic head. ‘But nowhere is truly safe while Vayn still rules the Islands.’
‘Then we’ll find the rest of the Dragon Knights,’ Quinn said. ‘One Dragon Knight might be no match for the Guard, but six of them? We might just do it!’
He picked his father’s sword out of the dust and held it up. The reflection in the blade formed an image. It showed a misty marshland. Ominous shadows stretched across the landscape like long fingers.
‘That’s Keriss Island,’ Thea said. ‘There must be a Dragon Knight there.’
‘Then that’s where we’ll go,’ Quinn said.
As the villagers called their goodbyes, Ignus transformed once more. Quinn and Thea scrambled up onto his broad, scaled back and tucked themselves in the space between his shoulders. The dragon’s great wings beat, and they were up off the ground and flying high in the evening sky.
Below, the smoking ruins of the village slipped away. Quinn felt the rush of air through his hair. One day soon, he would fly like this, and he would bring freedom back to the Twelve Islands.
Emperor Vayn had ruled with cruelty and greed for twelve long years. That was twelve years too many. Now, at last, the Dragon Knights were fighting back.
This battle might be over, but Quinn’s adventure had only just begun …
CHAPTER 1
RAGING WATERS
Quinn stood on the ship’s foredeck while the storm raged all around him. Lightning crashed through the sky, splitting the clouds and flickering white light across the dark waves. Rain lashed into his face. Every time the ship was driven into the mountainous waves the impact made his teeth judder, and great sheets of spray surged across the deck. His clothes were soaked through and his hands were freezing where he gripped the wooden rail.
He’d been on the merchant ship, the Seagull, for two days now, ploughing his way through the storms that plagued the seas between Yaross and Keriss Islands. The days and nights merged into one now that summer had turned into a brutal, storm-laden autumn, and everything was shrouded in fog. But despite the rough conditions, Quinn preferred it up on deck.
‘Damn it!’ he cursed, dodging another wave that came crashing over his feet, soaking his legs. A voice called from above him as he grabbed onto the rigging.
‘You, boy!’ the voice growled. ‘Get below deck!’
Quinn could just make out the shadowy figure of the captain’s mate, high in his crow’s nest. Quinn mouthed a reply to suggest he couldn’t hear above the shrieking of the rain, and pulled his wind-blown hood back over his head, ignoring him. Even though Thea, his fellow runaway, and Ignus, the Dragon Knight, would be down there, all he wanted right now was the fresh air and the wind.
Just a few weeks ago he’d been an orphan living with his aunt in a tiny village on Yaross, the least important of the Twelve Islands of Alariss. It wasn’t until he’d been forced to join the Black Guard trainees and he discovered he had dragonblood – with the power to morph from a human into a fearsome dragon – that he’d had to run away.
Quinn had grown up believing that the Dragon Knights had betrayed the Imperial Family and murdered them; but it was all a big lie. His aunt, Marta, had shown him the truth. The person who had really murdered the Emperor and Empress was Vayn, the Emperor’s own brother. And even more difficult to believe, the Emperor and Empress were his parents and he, Quinn, was now the true Emperor.
Lightning flashed again, casting pink and purple forks of electricity pulsing across the sky. Quinn flinched and wrapped his cloak more tightly around him, gripping the wooden railing until his knuckles turned white. He heard the captain’s mate hollering again from above.
Back in Yaross Quinn and Thea had managed to escape the Black Guard and use Quinn’s magical sword to free the first of the Dragon Knights, Ignus, the Flame Dragon. Together they had helped to free Ignus’s village from the Black Guard’s tyranny, but Emperor Vayn had discovered what they’d done all too quickly.
That was why Quinn, Ignus and Thea had to bribe their way onto the Seagull: they were keeping a low profile until they were strong enough to face Vayn. Now Quinn spent his days deep in thought, Ignus made friends with the rowdy sailors and Thea practised her magic spells in a quiet corner.
The storm winds thrummed madly through the ship’s rigging, battering the creaking vessel into the gigantic waves. The clouds above were black as the gods’ rage.
‘Quinn?’ a voice shouted through the howl of the storm.
Quinn turned, half-expecting to see the grizzled face of an angry sailor. Instead, blinking the rain out of her eyes, Thea was staggering up from below deck and clutching on to a line. She tried to shield herself from the whipping rain, her bright red hair clinging to her
face as she struggled to find her feet.
‘What are you doing up here?’ she shouted.
Quinn reached out for her as she traversed the slippery deck. ‘I’m thinking,’ he called.
‘Try thinking down below, you idiot!’ Thea shrieked, stretching for his fingertips. ‘There’s less chance of being struck by lightning!’
Thea grabbed out towards Quinn and hauled herself up beside him, against the angle of the towering waves.
‘And more chance of losing my temper with those sailors …’ Quinn replied. Earlier, Quinn and Thea had been playing cards with the sailors below deck, but the cheating captain had got the fiery dragonblood coursing through Quinn’s veins once more. It was only a game, but Quinn couldn’t control it. It was a good job all he could muster was a golden talon or two. If he’d turned into a dragon the size of Ignus, the whole ship would have gone down.
‘Dragonform getting to you?’ Thea asked. ‘It’ll just take time – my magic didn’t come overnight …’
‘It’s not just that,’ Quinn shrugged awkwardly, although he did wish he had more control over his dragon abilities. ‘It’s my parents.’ He peered out over the rail at the heaving, dark water. Wind thrashed the top of the waves into foamy white crests and sent spray lashing through the air. ‘This is where they drowned – just off the coast of Keriss. Aunt Marta told me they were fishing …’
But she’d been lying, protecting him from the Black Guard. And yet it still hurt that she hadn’t told him the truth. She could have trusted me, he thought.
‘… But they weren’t fishing,’ Thea said. ‘They were the Emperor and Empress.’
Quinn nodded. ‘Whatever they were doing out here, they didn’t just sink – Vayn must have sabotaged their ship. My father was a dragonblood. He could have got out of there when it started to sink, but he didn’t …’ He stared gloomily into the water as it surged and fell away beneath them, raising the ship up and then dropping it down with a thump that shook the timbers. ‘Their ship is still down there somewhere.’
Once again he was snapped out of his thoughts by the captain’s mate barking from above.
‘Land ahoy!’ the sailor roared from his crow’s nest. ‘Beware the rocks!’
Shouts and crashes sounded across the ship. Quinn’s amber eyes flashed. Rocks? For a moment he imagined their own ship going down in these stormy seas, the cold waves crashing over the side, the planks splitting and breaking apart and the angry water closing over them …
Sailors came hurrying up from the hatches and raced for the lines; some of the ropes were as thick as Quinn’s arm. Ignus stamped up behind them, his face a sickly green. When he wasn’t playing cards with the sailors down below trying to distract himself, he’d been curled up on his bunk. Apparently flame dragons didn’t mix too well with water.
‘What’s happening?’ Quinn shouted as Ignus stumbled up to them uneasily. For such a big, strong man, he was clearly lacking sea legs.
‘We’re almost at Keriss harbour,’ Ignus rumbled in reply, running a hand across his stubbly chin. ‘Thank the Heavens. Look.’ He pointed a thick finger ahead of them.
The clouds and mist slowly began to lift, giving the voyagers a better view of where they were heading. However, what Quinn saw didn’t fill him with confidence. Rocks jutted out from the waves like a dragon’s talons, curving high above the ship’s mast; a narrow channel snaked its way between the cliffs to clear water beyond with the port in the distance. Water whirled through the channel – it looked like a shipwreck waiting to happen.
‘We make for the Kerissian Pass! All hands on deck!’ the captain called, grabbing the helm from a lowly member of the crew. The rest of the sailors manned their stations, pulling at ropes and bustling around on deck.
‘Are they crazy?’ Thea shouted up at Ignus. ‘We’ll never make it through there.’
‘It’s the only way,’ Ignus bellowed back. ‘You might want to hang on. This is going to get choppy!’
The sailors eased out the sails as far as they would go as the wind came around behind them; the ship ran before the wind, heading right for the cliffs, picking up speed. The captain seemed to be having trouble controlling its direction as they raced over the waves. Shouts and yells sounded as the sailors struggled to manage their lines. The curving talons of rock seemed to close in over the ship as it headed for the entrance to the harbour. Quinn was sure he could reach out and brush his fingers against them as the sharp rocks sliced by.
‘It’s not wide enough,’ he groaned.
‘Hang on!’ Thea cried.
As if in response, a gust of wind sent their ship slipping sideways towards one of the towering rocks. Quinn yelled in surprise, but the next moment the sailors were hauling on a line, pulling a sail across, and the ship darted in the other direction.
A sudden swirl in the wind sent the sail on the port side snapping across the deck – the wooden boom splintered like a matchstick. With a yell, a sailor holding his line was sent spinning over the planks to crash into the guardrail. The line he’d been holding slashed back and forth in the air as the sail snapped loosely from the mast. Immediately, the ship lost speed and began to drift, driven by the running waves.
Quinn and Thea stared in horror as the ship lurched directly towards a jagged spike of rock that rose up from the waves like a spear.
‘No!’ Quinn yelled. ‘It’s going to crash …!’
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2015
by Piccadilly Press
Northburgh House, 10 Northburgh Street,
London, EC1V 0AT
www.piccadillypress.co.uk
Text copyright © Hothouse Fiction Limited, 2015
with special thanks to Patrick Samphire
Map copyright © Prosper Devas, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
The right of Hothouse Fiction Limited to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978–1–84812–459–2
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