by C. Greenwood
I rested a hand on my swollen belly as if I could protect the child I carried from the dreadful fate that lay ahead. Our little family had managed to survive this far, escaping the disaster at Corthium that had claimed everyone else. There was a good chance we were the last dragonkind left alive, our baby the only hope for our people’s future. We had seen so many others drown when the sea swept over the island. Were we soon to join them?
Over the howling of the wind came a sudden cracking noise that sent a shudder through the raft. For an instant I thought it was only thunder. Then I realized it was the sound of the timber that held our flimsy sail aloft, snapping in two. The top half of the splintered mast fell into the water with a heavy splash, trailing rope and sail behind it.
My heart stopped. Without the sail, all hope for us was truly lost.
To my horror, I saw my husband preparing to dive into the pitching sea as if to rescue the floating sail.
“No! Don’t!” I screamed after him.
But the wind caught my words and snatched them away. I lurched forward to stop him. But my awkward condition made me too slow.
Before I could get to him, he was gone, jumping over the edge of the raft and into the tossing black waters. For a second I saw him paddling with strong strokes after the sinking sail. Back home he had been a fisherman and a good swimmer. But that was in the safe, sheltered coves of Corthium. Here, trapped in the fury of the storm, he was no match for the wild ocean. A tall wave materialized out of the darkness, rolling toward us.
My heart in my mouth, I screamed my husband’s name as the wave washed over him. His head disappeared beneath the surface. I scanned the waters, waiting for him to bob back up to the top. But he didn’t.
The raft dipped wildly. In the distance, another great wall of water rose up to roll this way. Numb with horror, I could only watch its approach, knowing this was the wave that would upset the whole craft. The end had come.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I awoke with a start, heart pounding, brow slick with sweat. For a moment I could still see that massive wave bearing down on me, about to flip over the raft and sweep me into the sea.
Then the mists of my dream receded. The wet, flimsy raft bobbing beneath me was replaced by the more solid dry floor of my cell. The roar of the wind that had been howling in my ears gave way to the softer sounds of Basil snoring nearby.
I took a calming breath, and my racing heart slowed down. It wasn’t me out on that raft, drowning in the stormy sea. But it was someone real, someone with horns and glistening scales like mine.
My feelings were in turmoil at the dream. Before, I had imagined myself the last living dragonkind. Yet I now knew others had escaped the sinking of the Ninth Isle. There was the young male dragonkind I had dreamed about back on the island of giants. But he was dead. I had witnessed his final moments, just before he plunged into the sea. And now there was this couple on their raft somewhere out on the dark waters. The man had been washed overboard but what about the woman. Was she still alive? It was frustrating to realize that even if she was yet clinging to life, there was nothing I could do to reach her. She carried in her womb what might be the last hope for continuing the existence of our people. But she could be anywhere. Even if I were free and had the help of Skybreaker, it was unlikely I would ever find her.
Too full of nervous energy to go back to sleep, I got up and paced the narrow distance from one end of the cell to the other. In the distance, I heard a soft thud. I ignored it, thinking it was only the creaking of the ship’s timbers or the sound of some piece of cargo rolling around.
But a few moments later, there came a soft “Pssst” from outside our cell. The thud had been the sound of someone creeping through the door above the stairs.
I started at the sudden intrusion, instinctively moving closer to the scattering of hay under which I had concealed the sharp letter opener I had taken from the captain’s cabin earlier.
Then I realized the shadowy figure standing outside our prison didn’t belong to any of the burly pirates I had seen before. This person was short and skinny, his size emphasized by the looseness of the baggy coat he wore and the way the tops of his boots reached almost up to his knees. A red kerchief was tied around his head, covering shoulder-length dark hair. I judged him to be no more than fourteen or fifteen years of age. What was a boy so young doing aboard the Sea-Vulture?
“Pssst,” he whispered again, making an impatient gesture for me to come nearer. “Do you want to get out of this cell or not?”
Suspicious of the motives of this stranger, I crept closer to the bars.
“That’s better,” the boy said lowly. “We don’t have much time, so you gotta do everything I say and don’t ask any questions. Understand?”
“But who are you, and why should you help us?” I asked. “How do I know this isn’t some sort of trap?”
“Them’s questions,” the boy growled impatiently. He had a strangely deep voice as though he spoke from the back of his throat.
He jerked his head toward the still form of Basil. “Wake him,” the stranger instructed. “Quickly.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Basil’s voice came to us out of the darkness.
I started, for he had kept so silent I had thought him sound asleep.
Now he sat upright and lazily dusted loose pieces of straw from his coat. “You never could fool me,” he said to the stranger. “Did you really think to catch me off guard in this of all places?”
“You’ve been caught off guard already, seems to me,” came the response. “That’s how you come to be in this here smelly cell to begin with.”
I stared. Why were the two of them speaking in such a familiar way?
“You know each other?” I asked.
“You might say we’re a bit acquainted,” Basil admitted, glaring at the boy outside the cell. “We go back a ways… clear back to sharing the same cradle, in fact.”
I was confused. “You never told me you had a brother.”
“Ha!” Basil gave a mirthless laugh. “Don’t be fooled. She’s ugly enough to be a brother, but this is actually my sister Nyssa. I did tell you about her.”
“The one who ran away to be a pirate.” I remembered. It was true he had briefly mentioned back in port that he had a sister. I had simply dismissed her from my mind once I learned that she, like Basil, was no blood relation to me. The both of them were stepchildren to my dead aunt Thaleia.
Basil’s sister, Nyssa, clanged something metallic against the bars of the cell to recapture our attention.
“If you two are done talking,” she said, “maybe you’d like to get on with this escape.” She spoke in a normal way now, no longer keeping her voice low in her throat.
She jingled the object in her hand—the big key ring I had last seen in the possession of the pirate with the dark braids.
“How did you get hold of that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “The guard had to fall asleep sometime,” she said. “And with all the rum in him, it was a safe bet it’d be sooner rather than later. I’ve a knack for pickin’ up what unwary folks leave lying around.”
Now that I knew Nyssa to be Basil’s sister, I could easily detect the resemblances between them, both in their narrow weasel-like features and in their ways of speaking.
“Hold on a minute,” Basil said as his sister inserted the key in the rusted lock of the door. “I’m not sure I’ll be allowing you to rescue me. Not until I know the catch. What advantage do you get out of helping us?”
Nyssa made a face. “Can’t I just be trying to protect my own flesh and blood?”
But Basil was stubborn. “Nyssa Seastrider does nothing out of the kindness of her heart,” he insisted. “I want to know what kind of trap you have planned for us.”
Nyssa sighed, a sound of exasperated surrender. “Listen, brother. I’ve found myself a good place on this ship. I finally get adventure, spoils, the excitement of sailing the high seas. Everything I ever dreamed of when we
were younglings. All I’ve got to do in return is to keep up the character I’ve invented, a clever and useful cabin boy. They won’t have me as a regular part of the crew if they know I’m a girl. And if they know I’m related to the worthless Seastrider scoundrel who cheated them back in Port Unity? Well, the last thing I need is you opening your big mouth and getting me killed along with the two of you. And they will kill you sooner or later, no matter what promises they make.”
She said that last looking at me. What, I wondered, did she know about Captain Ulysses’s plans to make use of my magic?
At least Basil seemed content with the explanation. He snatched his three-cornered hat from the floor, dusted it off, and set it on his head.
“All right,” he said to Nyssa. “Your motives are self-serving enough that I’m satisfied they’re real. You can start getting us out of here now.”
He had no sooner spoken than Nyssa shoved the door open. It swung inward with a squeal of its rusty hinges. I winced as the noise echoed through the belly of the ship. I half expected someone to come investigate the racket. But even that danger didn’t make me rush off without my only weapon.
“Let’s go. What are you looking for?” hissed Nyssa, as I kicked at the straw on the floor.
“I hid something here,” I said. “I don’t want to leave without it.”
Basil cleared his throat, sounding sheepish. “If the thing you’re looking for is the letter opener, I may have snatched it earlier while you were sleeping. Only for safekeeping, of course.”
Why did that not surprise me? He must have been faking his snores when I had lain down next to him a couple of hours ago.
We exited the cell and, with Nyssa leading the way, hurried for the stairs leading toward the upper deck.
“Is there any chance that key ring of yours carries a key that would unlock this bracelet?” I asked our guide, indicating the nathamite shackle on my wrist.
“No,” she answered. “I think the captain hisself carries the key to that. I overheard him sayin’ it was too important to trust to anyone else.”
If she was curious about the bracelet or the powers it blocked, she didn’t show it. She had never more than glanced at my hand, although it cast a conspicuous reddish-purple glow down here in the darkness.
We ascended the stairs in silence. At the top, Nyssa motioned us to hang back while she softly opened the hatch. She was the first up on deck. After a tense moment of waiting, she waved us to come up after.
We needn’t have bothered to move so quietly. Up on deck, we found a strong wind was howling as it swept over the ship, setting the sails overhead flapping wildly. The moon and stars had disappeared, hidden behind thick clouds. The storm wasn’t here yet, but one was definitely coming.
For an instant I remembered my dream of the pregnant dragonkind female and her husband being tossed about on their little raft. Was the approaching storm the same one that had struck them?
One thing was sure. The deck was not as busy as it should have been in this weather. I would have expected to see crewmen scurrying about securing the ship before the storm hit. Instead, the deck was empty but for the lone silhouette of the helmsman in the distance. I remembered Nyssa’s suggestion that the pirate assigned to guard us was drunk somewhere. Perhaps the rest of the pirates were similarly distracted.
Nyssa ran doubled over across the deck, and Basil and I followed. We kept to the deepest shadows, mindful of the man at the helm and the fact there might be other unseen eyes around.
I still didn’t understand Nyssa’s plan. Grateful as I was to be out of our cell, our freedom did us precious little good while we remained trapped aboard the Sea-Vulture with no way off.
But when Nyssa led us to a long, bulky object shrouded beneath a sheet of canvas, my hopes rose. I recognized the craft by its shape, even before the pirate girl rolled back the covering. It was the dinghy that had brought us here.
We were lucky to have Nyssa with us, because she knew how to work the pulleys that lowered the small rowboat down to the water below. Afterward, peering over the side of the ship, I saw that the dark, choppy waves were tossing the empty dinghy around like a piece of driftwood. Nothing short of dire necessity would have made me descend the rope ladder Basil tossed over the side for us to climb down to the little boat. But considering the situation, I didn’t see any choice. I would rather risk the rough seas than remain a prisoner of the lunatic Captain Ulysses.
Basil must have felt the same, because he was the first over the side. There he suddenly hesitated, hanging suspended over the water far below.
“You’re sure you won’t come with us, sis?” he asked Nyssa, his face unexpectedly serious.
It was the first sign of brotherly concern he had evidenced since Nyssa had turned up, and it made me reevaluate my initial assessment of their quarrelsome relationship.
Nyssa shook the question aside like an unwanted embrace. “Of course I don’t want to come with you,” she said roughly. “I’m exactly where I want to be, and I know how to take care of myself. It’s you who should be worried. Storms headed this way. Try to get to shore before it hits. Row that way and you should find land.”
She pointed out into the darkness. Direction had little meaning when the sky was so cloudy that it was impossible to judge our course by the stars. But we were in no position to complain.
Basil gave his sister a farewell nod and, with no more ceremony, began climbing down the swinging rope ladder to the dinghy below. I took a breath, clambered over the edge of the Sea-Vulture, and followed him.
CHAPTER NINE
As soon as we cast off from the Sea-Vulture, I realized we’d made a mistake. As the dark shape of the ship with Nyssa silhouetted against the rail faded into the distance, the rough sea tossed our little dinghy across the choppy waves. My stomach lurched at the unfamiliar sensation. If I had thought the rolling motion aboard the big ship was unpleasant, it was nothing compared to the roughness of bobbing along in a smaller craft.
There were two pairs of oars on board, and Basil and I took them up, trying to row in the direction Nyssa had indicated, the way we hoped would return us to the mapmaker. But in the darkness, it was difficult to tell where we were going. With the Sea-Vulture quickly lost somewhere behind, we had nothing by which to orient ourselves.
Even if we had known which way to strike out, it would have been impossible to control our course. The wind had us in its grip, and between them, the angry sea and the powerful gale hurled us wherever they liked.
A crack of thunder overhead announced the storm was no longer hovering in the distance. It had arrived. The rain began as a light mist that gradually built up to a downpour.
“Can you see anything?” I shouted to Basil over the storm.
Basil shook his head.
He sat in the front of the boat. I couldn’t see his face, only his back and his shoulders that dipped as he worked the oars. But I suspected if I could see his expression, it would be worried. He was surely as aware of our predicament as I. My recent dream about the dragonkind couple drowning on their raft suddenly seemed like a premonition of my own future.
But I swallowed my fears and rowed harder. The storm couldn’t last forever. By morning, surely things would look better. All we had to do was make it through the night.
I had no sooner had the thought than I noticed that the rainwater seemed to be collecting in the bottom of the craft faster than it should be. It had only been raining a few minutes, and already the water was above my ankles. As it continued to pool in the bottom of the boat, a terrible realization hit me. This wasn’t just rainwater. Ocean water was also rushing in from below.
It must have struck Basil at the same time.
“We’ve got a leak!” he yelled over his shoulder at me. “I’ll row, you start bailing!”
Obediently I released my oars and looked around for something I could use to drain the boat. Beneath my seat, I found a waterskin and a bucket of dry food that must have been stowed there fo
r emergencies. I dumped everything out of the bucket—we would have no use for provisions if we sank—and began using the empty bucket to scoop water out of the bottom of the boat.
As quickly as I dumped the water over the side, more replaced it. In daylight, I would have looked for the leak and tried to plug it. But there was no hope of finding and repairing the source of the leak now. All I could do was fight the water as it came in.
I bailed until the muscles ached in my arms. It was just barely enough to keep us afloat. With no shore in sight and no sign of the storm letting up, I had the horrible feeling our time was running out. Surviving the next few hours began to look like an impossibility.
* * *
Somehow we battled our way through the night, Basil and I taking turns between bailing and rowing. Just when things began to look most hopeless, the storm finally abated. Encouraged by the fact that we now had only the leaky boat to contend with, we gave up any attempt at guiding the craft and concentrated all our efforts on keeping it afloat.
Morning’s first light found us soggy and exhausted, nearing the end of our strength. As I watched the pink and gold reflection of the dawn ripple across the now-calm waters, I knew I was seeing my last sunrise. My hands trembled with weakness, and I could lift my arms no longer. I let the bucket fall from my limp fingers.
“What are you doing? Keep bailing,” Basil mumbled, sounding as tired as I felt. “No time to rest.”
He was using his hat to scoop water out of the bottom of the boat. But his movements were slow and sloppy. In another moment, he too ceased his efforts and slumped against the side of the craft. His fingers twitched, and his hat fell into his lap. I knew he was asleep.
I contemplated joining him. But I was certain that once I lay down, I would never get up. It would be the end.
I thought of Corthium, of Skybreaker, and of how I was the last hope of my people. If I died now, the Ninth Isle would never rise again. The Three Hopes, the last dragon eggs in the world, would remain forever lost beneath the sea. Even those thoughts didn’t lend me the strength to pick up the bucket again. I couldn’t. My fingers were too weak to curl even if my arms had been capable of hefting the load once more.