Sea of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 2)

by C. Greenwood

  So I sat still and watched the water rise higher, creeping up past my ankles and then approaching my knees. The sides of the boat sank down even with the water and then the gently lapping waves outside the craft began spilling in over the edges.

  This was it, I thought. After all the wild dangers and fearsome enemies I had faced, it was strange that it would come down to this peaceful moment with the beautiful water swirling all around, waiting to pull me down to my last rest. Strange that it was ultimately the sea that would kill me. But perhaps that was always destined to be the case. I would go down like the rest of my people, buried beneath the deep blue waves.

  Just as I was coming to accept the idea of my impending doom, I saw something: a large dark shape moving beneath the water. It disappeared from sight as quickly as I had spotted it, and for an instant I thought I had imagined it. Then something bumped against the bottom of the boat. Not a hard bump, just an exploratory nudge.

  My heart froze.

  I knew what swam beneath the sea and stalked helpless prey. From childhood, I had heard the stories of fishermen on the island, the tales about sharp-toothed fish bigger than men, who devoured swimmers and overturned small watercraft.

  I had been prepared for death by drowning, but I hadn’t imagined I would have to face being eaten alive by sharks. I wished I still had my spear with me, but that was long gone. Neither would an oar do me much good as a weapon.

  All the same, I couldn’t just sit here and allow myself to be eaten without a fight. I mustered my strength to grip the nearest oar. But there were no more bumps against the underside of the boat. All was quiet. I scanned the surrounding water but saw no sign of the dark shadow that had circled us before. Had my mind been playing tricks on me?

  Then I saw it. A brown slippery thing that was something between a hand and a flipper came up out of the water and slithered over the side of the boat, gripping the edge. The skin was thick and shiny like the hide of the seals that used to play in the coves of Corthium. There were fingerlike nubs, similar to a human hand but with webbing in between.

  While I stared at the startling sight, something bumped the hull of the boat again. There was more than one of the creatures out there, I realized.

  I could see little of the mysterious beings, other than the one hand gripping the side of the boat. The creatures stayed beneath the waves, visible only as vague shadows. While one of them clung to our craft, the other circled us, occasionally skimming the surface. I caught quick glimpses of sleek hide glinting in the sunlight, and then the thing disappeared again, lost beneath the water.

  I couldn’t tell if the strange beings were threatening us or if they merely found our boat an interesting plaything.

  As one of them thumped loudly against the side of the boat again, Basil started awake.

  He gave a strangled cry upon finding the fingered flipper holding to the side of the boat in front of him.

  “No. Don’t hurt them,” I said, stopping him as he grabbed an oar as if to smash it against the flipper.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded. “What are these things?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “They only appeared a moment ago. But I don’t think it would be wise to anger them. They’re big enough to turn over our boat if they want. Right now it almost seems like they’re keeping it afloat.”

  It was true. We had stopped sinking since the fingered hand had taken hold of our craft. It seemed to be holding us aloft, even towing us forward through the water.

  “Are they pulling us?” Basil asked, echoing my thoughts.

  “Whatever they’re doing, I don’t think they mean us any harm,” I said.

  “Maybe not yet,” he corrected. “But that doesn’t mean they won’t turn on us once they get tired of playing with the boat.”

  I didn’t disagree. The truth was we had no way of knowing what these creatures wanted—or what they were capable of. I searched my memory for stories of any water beasts like these, but none came to mind.

  Basil’s upper lip curled in distaste as he edged away from the webbed flipper gripping the boat. But although I shared his nervousness, I was more in awe of the mysterious beings than disturbed by them. From what I could see of their dark forms below the surface, they weren’t much bigger than I was. But they darted and danced beneath the waves with speed and grace. What was more, they had granted us a temporary reprieve from drowning.

  Basil’s voice cut into my thoughts. “Is that what I think it is?”

  He was pointing, not at the water creatures but at a pale smudge in the distance. I strained my eyes against the glare of the morning sun reflecting off the ocean and tried to make out what lay ahead.

  “I think its shore,” I said, my voice rising in excitement. “It is! It’s an island!”

  Basil let out a whoop that echoed my own relief. He started to take up the oars again, but I stopped him. It seemed to me that the sea creatures were pulling and nudging us toward the land on the horizon. If that were the case, it would be best to allow them to keep towing us while we conserved our strength. We could not have rowed long anyway. My arms were still shaky with weakness, and I knew Basil’s must be the same.

  And so we sat still and watched as the mirage in the distance grew closer and closer. Eventually it resolved itself into a blur of pale beach, backed by green trees. At about the time we began to make out the details of the island, our mysterious companions suddenly seemed to lose interest in us. The brown flipper hand that had clutched the side of our vessel suddenly released us and disappeared under water. Leaning over the side of the boat, I saw the pair of dark shadows racing away. They leaped playfully as they swam, breaking the surface with splashes of silvery water, their brown hides glinting wetly in the sun before plunging beneath the waves again.

  “I think we’ve been abandoned,” I told Basil.

  “Good,” he said. “We’re well rid of the nasty things.”

  He might have felt differently when the boat began to sink. With no powerfully swimming creatures to hold us afloat and pull us forward, we lost all momentum.

  I took up my bucket again, although every muscle in my back and shoulders screamed in protest. I ignored the pain and weariness of my body. The sight of the island in the distance gave me the strength to keep going.

  Basil seemed to find his strength renewed too, for while I concentrated on bailing water out of the boat, he returned to his oars and rowed us toward shore.

  As we drew nearer, the tide itself began to help. Rolling waves pushed us in toward the beach. When the water grew shallow enough that we could see the sandy bottom, Basil jumped out of the boat. I joined him, and together we splashed through the knee-deep shallows, towing the dinghy in behind us. It was an incredible relief to feel the ground again. Only a short time ago I had been sure it was all over. Now as I sloshed up onto the beach, it was all I could do not to immediately collapse. But I couldn’t rest just yet. Not until we had dragged our vessel far enough out of the water that the tide wouldn’t reclaim it later.

  Only then, when the boat was secure, did I finally drop down to sprawl in the sand. Basil joined me. Neither of us spoke, just enjoyed the feeling of solid ground beneath us again. My aching muscles began to relax, and I could have fallen asleep right there. It had been a long night and morning.

  But thunder rumbled overhead, signaling the arrival of another storm. A light mist began to fall from the sky.

  “We should find shelter,” I told Basil. “We can rest when we’ve got someplace dry to sleep.”

  He nodded agreement.

  On weary legs, I staggered back to the boat and withdrew the waterskin and soggy provisions I had found beneath the seat earlier. We might soon have need of them.

  Then Basil and I set off up the beach. We didn’t stray far from the shore, just roamed along the sandy waterfront, looking for overhanging rocks or a thick stand of trees. It didn’t take us long to find a natural cave that had been formed by a stack of large jagged rocks lean
ing against one another. The alcove wasn’t large or deep, but it would do for now. We didn’t have the strength to search any farther. We crawled through the tight opening, curled up on the cold sand, and rested.

  Outside, the light sprinkles gave way to heavy rain that pattered down onto our stone roof. Water ran down the sides of the rocks and found its way through crevices to drip onto our heads. The wind picked up, howling with a threatening voice that sounded almost human.

  I was too weary to care. Grateful for the warmth of Basil crowded against my back, I listened to the storm outside and wondered where Skybreaker was right now.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I wasn’t aware of falling asleep until I found myself again in the ancient temple. I was becoming so used to being transported here that I was hardly surprised anymore to look around and see the cracked pillars and endless threads crisscrossing the open space.

  I didn’t debate what to do. I was getting practiced at this next part as well. It seemed perfectly natural that when a particular tangle of the pulsing threads whispered wordlessly to me, I approached it. One of these threads belonged to the mapmaker we had been so abruptly torn away from. I didn’t know how I came by that sudden knowledge. I simply felt it to be so.

  A thread here represented his life energy. I tried to figure out exactly which thread it was. But there were a tight network of them twisted in and around each other. It was difficult to separate out a single one without brushing the others. So I took a guess, lightly touching the thread that seemed right.

  I felt the sudden disorienting shift that signaled I was jumping out of my body and into someone else’s. Then it was done, my consciousness melding with the new host’s.

  It was not the mapmaker whose consciousness I entered. Instead, I became a youngling, a boy no more than twelve years of age, who was running barefoot across a sandy beach.

  There was no storm here. The morning was bright and pleasant, the breeze gentle on my sweaty skin. The sun-warmed sand felt hot beneath my feet. Over one shoulder, I carried a bag made of an old fishnet. It was weighted with the treasures I had promised the mapmaker: conch shells, seaweed, pieces of coral, and little dried sea creatures. There was one special item I had brought up from out near the great reef just this morning: a certain type of anemone the mapmaker valued for its magical properties. It was found only in the deepest, most dangerous diving areas. No other pearl diver in the cove could reach these. But I had been bringing up this special material for years. I supplied all the items the mapmaker required from the sea for his magical maps. He paid me well for my help.

  That was where I was going now, as I left behind the cove with its scattering of little huts where my family lived and headed into the trees. The interior of the land was less pleasant than the wave-swept beach. Here the trees crowded in and the air grew close and thick with little buzzing insects. The ground grew muddy, and there were scattered pools of murky water. Poisonous snakes and other dangerous creatures liked to lurk in the dirty pools, so I avoided splashing through them. I ran a long time until I came to a muddy bank where the ground gave way to a smelly swamp.

  It was a place I was familiar with. I dug through a stand of tall reeds until I found what I was looking for—a little one-person raft I had made long ago by binding together rotten logs with bits of rope. The raft was flimsy and low in the water, but it stayed afloat as I clambered on board and unlooped the bit of cord that held it to a tree overhanging the water. Then I shoved off, using a long, sturdy stick to push away from the shore. Ever on the lookout for the sharp-toothed man-eating swamp lizards that swam these waters, I poled my way through the swamp.

  When at last I reached the place where I could see the mapmaker’s house sitting high atop the bank, I drew up to the dock and tied my raft in place. Then I climbed the crooked row of stairs leading to the shack high above.

  The place seemed quiet as I ascended the stairs. That wasn’t unusual. The mapmaker lived in a lonely spot and had few visitors. But something felt wrong this time. I didn’t know why. Maybe it was the hush of the surrounding marshlands. The birds in their trees should be screeching at this hour, but they weren’t.

  There was no sign of the mapmaker when I reached the front porch. The curtain in the doorway stood open, letting daylight flood into the interior. I hovered in the doorway, taking in the mess before me. The one-room shack seemed to have been torn apart inside. The furniture was smashed, maps had been torn down from the walls, and possessions lay shredded, spilled, or trampled on the floorboards.

  Whatever had happened here, someone had certainly been determined to do damage. What if they were still here? My heartbeat quickened. I didn’t see anyone around, but they could be hiding behind the house. I felt a sudden desire to run away, to hop back onto my raft and escape this eerie scene.

  The only thing that stopped me was a rustling noise that came from a corner of the shack. My eyes followed the sound to see a hunched-over form half-hidden in the shadows. I had been wrong in thinking the place abandoned. For there at his desk was the familiar skinny figure of the white-haired mapmaker. He sat leaning over his desk, the only furnishing in the house that hadn’t been overturned. I had seen him this way a hundred times before, his head bowed over a scrap of parchment, all his concentration focused on his work. He gripped a quill pen in his hand and was surrounded by the usual green stoppered bottles and other tools of his trade. Only he had fewer materials ranged around his desktop now. It was easy to see why. I recognized the smashed glass vials and the upended pouches of dried seaweed scattered across the floor near the mapmaker’s feet. Most of these items had been brought here by me. They were the result of months, sometimes years, of gathering only the best materials from the sea.

  “Who has done this? Who would destroy such precious things?”

  My questions cut through the stillness, startling me, for I hadn’t meant to speak them aloud.

  “Pirates broke into my home,” came the response from the corner of the room. The mapmaker never looked up from his work, yet he didn’t seem surprised at my arrival.

  “The thieves burst in here last night and destroyed nearly everything,” he continued. “I was able to salvage only a few tools and materials. They took people away when they left too, a young man and a blue-haired girl. The pair had commissioned a map from me. But now they are gone.”

  I didn’t know what to make of this news. Pirates rarely came to our shores. Ordinary sailors visited sometimes to trade goods with us. But they never gave much trouble. Most people around here had nothing worth stealing. It was a mystery why pirates would terrorize the old mapmaker, who had no enemies and never hurt anybody.

  But I didn’t ask questions. Instead, I stepped farther into the house. There was something strange about the way the mapmaker’s attention was focused entirely on the work before him while the rest of his possessions lay in ruins. Maybe he was so upset by the destruction that he couldn’t bring himself to look at it. The soft scratching sounds of his pen moving across the parchment filled the silence.

  I picked up a chair that lay on its side, setting it upright. There was a straw broom near the door, and I took that up too, thinking of sweeping the broken glass out the door. Then I thought better of it, seeing the scattering of dried fish scales and powdered coral between the bits of glass. Instead, I began sweeping these precious materials into a dustpan, preserving as much of them as I was able.

  While I worked, I could hear the mapmaker rattling his bottles around and blowing over his parchment to dry the ink.

  “What are you making that’s so important?” I couldn’t resist asking. I didn’t add that it might be wiser to put his house back together now and think about his maps later.

  “They desired a map, one that will lead them to a mountain of magic stones,” the mapmaker said.

  “Who desired it?” I asked. “The pirates?”

  “No, the young man and the girl,” he answered. “I told you they commissioned a map.”

&
nbsp; “But you also said they were taken away. Why are you still making their map if they cannot claim it?”

  “It is the magic,” the mapmaker murmured. “It calls to me.”

  I knew what he meant. I had seen him like this before. Some maps had this effect on him, inspiring him so much that he worked on them night and day, unable to rest until the pictures in his mind took their physical form on the parchment.

  Curious, I went to his desk and peered over the old man’s shoulder. There was little to see yet, only a few lines scratched across the page.

  My standing there seemed to draw the mapmaker out of his trancelike state. He set down his quill and leaned back to stretch.

  “What do you think of it, Aetios?” he asked, taking off his spectacles to rub his bony hands over his face.

  There were dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he had been awake a long time.

  I returned my attention to the map. “How do you map places you have never been?” I asked.

  It was a question I had brought up many times before, but I never tired of hearing his answer.

  The mapmaker didn’t disappointment me. “It’s true I have lived my whole life in this place, Aetios. I have never sailed across the ocean or walked on distant shores. But you see these?”

  He picked up a conch shell that had rested atop his desk.

  “The creatures that once inhabited these shells have traveled all over the world,” he said. “And when I hold the shells to my ear, they whisper to me, telling me their secrets.”

  It was a variation of the stories he had told before. Sometimes he said the magic of the sea whispered to him. Other times he said he drew inspiration from the materials I plucked from the water for him.