by C. Greenwood
I didn’t know which it was, but I knew we couldn’t count on this respite lasting for long.
Basil and I didn’t say a word to each other. It was obvious what we needed to do. We hurried toward the large boat floating on the black river that flowed through the cavern. We worked together to release the craft from its final holdings, and then Basil clambered up over the side. He reached a hand down to me and dragged me aboard after him.
“Now what?” I asked, facing the formidable challenge of handling a craft I knew nothing about. “How do we get this thing out to sea?”
“What makes you think I know?” Basil asked.
“You must have seen sailors taking ships to sea before. Try to remember how they set sail. You grew up in a port town,” I pointed out.
“And you lived on an island.”
I started to protest that we had only little fishing boats on the Ninth Isle, and that surrounded by larger ships every day, he had more cause to know about the operating of them than I did.
But there was no more time for argument. I felt a stirring of cold air and looked up to see the vines over the cave’s entrance fluttering in the wind.
“It’s coming,” I said. “You’ve got to remember something.”
For once, Basil didn’t argue.
“Right,” he said and licked his lips nervously. He began to scramble around the boat, tightening ropes that unfurled the single sail on its tall mast.
“Shouldn’t we raise the anchor?” I asked, watching uselessly.
“Already done,” he said, scurrying across the deck to the helm.
Overhead, the white canvas grew taught as the breeze caught it and fanned it out. There should have been no such breeze in this enclosed space.
But now the wind worked to our advantage. We were floating freely, no longer fastened to the spot. Slowly our little ship moved out into the center of the river. Then as the current caught hold, it pulled us along.
Behind us, the full force of the howling wind suddenly flooded into the cavern. As it pushed us away, our speed increased so quickly I was caught off guard by the lurching motion and nearly fell to the deck.
We shot down the covered passage, the walls of the cave flying by as we rushed onward toward the open daylight just visible in the distance.
“What should I be doing to help?” I called to Basil, as the sails snapped overhead.
“Everything,” he shouted back, looking frantically to the ropes and the sails. His dark hair blew across his face, and his coat flapped in the wind.
“This ship was never meant to be manned by a crew of two,” he continued loudly. “Get over here and take the wheel while I look to the sails.”
I did as he said and rushed across the deck to take over the helm. My palms were sweaty as I grabbed the wheel.
“Just keep it straight!” Basil yelled into my ear over the rising roar of the wind. Then he was gone.
The rough wooden wheel felt unfamiliar in my hands. I had a sudden panicked feeling that I was going to crash us into one of the rock walls to either side. What did I know about steering a ship? Even as the fierce wind pushed us to greater speeds and the pinpoint of daylight in the distance grew wider, the walls up ahead began to narrow.
“Basil!” I cried in alarm.
But Basil didn’t hear me. The wind snatched my words and carried them away.
The walls narrowed further until we were shooting through what was little more than a tunnel leading toward the outside. The roof of the cave lowered. I wondered how much longer it would be until our mast scraped the stone ceiling. But the ship had sailed through this passage before, during the days of the ancient dragonkind. Surely that meant it could make it through. Then again, those ancient dragonkind were probably skilled at navigating their craft and were unlikely to have sailed it under a wild wind the likes of which was driving us.
There was a sudden screeching noise, the sound of splintering wood. At the same time, I felt the jolt of a side impact. One side of our ship was scraping against a tunnel wall.
“What are you trying to do? Get us killed?” Basil shouted at me, waving his arms.
I ignored him and gripped the wheel so hard my hands ached, steering us away from the wall. But I overcorrected, and the opposite wall suddenly loomed large in front of us, so close I could see the cracks and indentations in the stone.
We were just about to crash into the barricade of rock when suddenly we shot out the mouth of the tunnel and into open waters.
The bright sunlight was blinding after the gloom of the cavern. Squinting into the glare, I looked out over serene turquoise waters. There was nothing ahead but free seas. The speed of the wind that had propelled us this far suddenly slackened, and we slowed down. A glance over my shoulder revealed we were in the clear, the cave already growing smaller in our wake. As the shores of the island shrank away, I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t realize how tightly I had been clamping my jaw until now. I relaxed my death grip on the wheel and sat down right there on deck. I couldn’t help it. My legs suddenly felt like jelly.
Basil leaned against the mast and gave a visible gasp of relief as well.
I looked to the sail overhead and saw that it was no longer snapping in the wind. We had left the gale behind.
“We made it,” I said aloud, more to reassure myself than Basil. “We escaped.”
But there were no whoops of celebration. Both of us were aware our struggle was only beginning. We had fled the island so quickly there had been no time to gather our meager supplies, salvaged from the leaky dinghy left back at the beach. We had no food but the crumbly biscuits still carried in my belt pouch. I realized with greater alarm that we had no water either. How long could we survive without it? How far would we have to sail to make it to the next shore? As the gravity of our situation sank in, my spirits fell. We might be one step closer to returning to Skybreaker and the mapmaker. But we were also one step closer to death. So much could go wrong.
But at least the gray weather that had prevailed since our escape from the pirate ship had lifted. The horizon was a combination of brilliant blues where sea and sky met. There wasn’t a cloud in sight.
“At least we have a bright day for our voyage,” I offered half-heartedly.
“Great,” Basil muttered sarcastically. “A hot sun to make us thirsty faster and no hope of rain to supply freshwater. Our circumstances are really looking up.”
I tried not to share his pessimism. We had gotten this far. Surely fate wouldn’t allow us to die of anything as simple as dehydration. I got to my feet and went to the front of the ship. If I could have set aside the danger we were in, it would have been a pleasant experience, feeling the breeze and the ocean spray in my face as we cut like a knife through the smooth waters. It reminded me of the exhilaration of flying through the clouds on the back of Skybreaker. In the distance, I saw a school of jumping fish leap by. White gulls wheeled in the sky overhead.
But I couldn’t relax for long.
“What now?” I asked as Basil came to stand beside me.
“You ask like I should know,” he said.
He took off his hat to wipe sweat from his brow. It was growing warm beneath the relentless sun.
I said, “It seems to me you’re the captain of this ship. You’re the one who grew up among sailors and pirates.”
“Why do you keep coming back to that?” he complained.
I shrugged. “Fine. Then I’ll be captain.”
“And what is your first official command?” he asked. “Keep in mind that I won’t do it if it’s stupid.”
I considered. “What did the woman in the wall say? Follow the hunter’s arrow?”
“With only the stars to guide us, we’ll need to wait until evening to get our bearings,” he said.
“And until then?”
He rubbed his stubbled chin and looked up at the position of the sun. It was squarely in the middle of the sky. “I suggest we steer… that way.” He pointed to one side.
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“Why that way?”
“The sea looks bluer over there.”
I stared at him, and then we both burst out laughing. The relief of our narrow escape had hit us now, as had the ridiculousness of our situation. It would have been impossible to find two sailors more useless than we. But the fate of the Ninth Isle depended on our voyage.
I sobered at the thought. We were going to have to overcome the odds and our own inexperience if we were to survive long enough to help anybody.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We sailed on without incident for the remainder of the afternoon, heading in the direction we hoped was right. Later when the sun began to sink a little lower into the sky, its position confirmed we were on the correct course. All that day a brisk breeze had filled our sails and carried us along beneath a clear sky. But as early evening came on, a heavy fog rolled in, affecting visibility. I couldn’t tell where the sudden vapor came from. It seemed almost to rise up from the water itself.
As we drifted deeper into this world of gray, our boat became eerily isolated, cut off from the world outside. The blue sky above disappeared. Now the water looked dark and choppy, the wind whipping up white-crested waves all around. In the distance I heard a faint sound that took me a moment to identify. The roar of crashing waves.
Excitement filled me. Could it be that we had reached our destination so soon?
“I think we must be near a shore,” I said to Basil. “I hear the sea dashing against the beach.”
But Basil didn’t appear to share my excitement. He stared into the fog, a sober look on his face.
“That’s not shore,” he said.
“What do you mean? Do you see something?”
He didn’t answer. “I’m taking the helm,” he said. “Act as lookout and let me know what’s coming ahead.”
“Lookout for what?” I asked.
But he had already hurried away, leaving me standing alone at the front of the ship. Confused, I gazed into the mist in the direction Basil had been looking. At first there was nothing but the swirling clouds of gray. The sounds of dashing waves grew louder and nearer.
Then I saw it, a dark jagged shape jutting up from the water. It was a rock, one large enough to pierce a hole in the hull of any ship that ran up against it.
“Rock ahead!” I shouted to Basil.
“I see it,” he called, steering our craft around so that we passed wide of the obstruction.
For an instant I felt relief. Then I spotted more of the dark hulking shapes protruding out of the fog. With a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized we were surrounded by these rocks. It was going to be a near thing to steer clear of all of them. To make matters worse, the sea was growing rougher by the moment, the powerful waves thrusting us toward danger.
I called out the positions of the rocks as quickly as I saw them, and Basil navigated between and around. But I was painfully aware there could be an invisible reef just beneath the surface, capable of ripping the bottom out of our ship if we ran over it.
I clambered clumsily up the single mast of our vessel and clung to the arm of the lowest sail, where I had a better vantage point. From here I could see over the first layer of fog to what lay beyond the gray mist. My heart froze at what stood directly in our path. It was a seemingly endless stretch of deadly shoals, jagged rocks thrusting up into the air or shallowly submerged below the water. And among the rocks was a graveyard of ships. Magnificent three-masted galleons and smaller vessels little more than fishing craft, all alike had been transformed to wreckage. Many rotting ship skeletons were stuck where they had smashed upon the rocks. Others had sunk partially below the waves, only the tops of their leaning masts breaking the surface.
Beyond this awful scene was a looming black shadow, the shape of a massive mountain jutting up from the sea. Cold fear gripped my spine as I gazed upon the heap of barren rocks. I seemed to hear again the voice of the woman in the wall.
Beware Zoltar. His mountain guards the route you must follow. If he can, he will prevent your passage and vent all his fury upon you.
Zoltar. I didn’t know how I knew it, but some instinct told me the oppressive mountain of death I gazed upon was indeed the place we had been warned of. The home of Zoltar, the ancient being of myth, who manifested his fury at his imprisonment by wrecking the ships of unwary sailors. Somehow we had stumbled onto his killing ground.
“What do you see?” Basil called up to me.
Before I could answer, there came a mighty rumbling sound, accompanied by the force of impact. Our ship had rammed into a shoal. I was nearly knocked from my perch, catching the yardarm with one hand at the last moment and dangling precariously above deck.
Hanging there, I was battered by wind and ocean spray. I caught blurry glimpses of Basil wrestling with the helm while the rough waves leaped all around. The sea was roiling as angrily as it had on the day it swallowed the Ninth Isle. A strong gale blasted at our sails, unsnagging us from the shoal we were caught on. Then the world spun wildly as the wind and the sea swirled our craft like a bit of bobbing driftwood caught in a storm.
We bounced from rock to rock, the strength of the impacts vibrating through the wooden yardarm I clung to. How long could we continue crashing into every obstacle before our ship broke apart?
Then it loomed up before us, the dark barren mountain of Zoltar, larger and more threatening than any of the other rocks we had been dashed against. I knew somehow that this was the obstacle that would break us to pieces. But I was helpless to stop it. The turbulent sea was like a living thing, seething and foaming with the fury inside the mountain. It gripped us now and rushed us directly at the towering heap of black rocks. Basil must have tried to turn us aside, because the ship twisted partway so our prow was no longer pointing at the mountain.
But it wasn’t enough.
We smashed sideways against the mountain with a force like a hammer’s blow. Shards of splintered wood flew through the air. I felt the exact moment when the body of the ship, trapped between the hard mountain and the fierce sea, could take no more. Over the screaming of the wind, I heard the vessel give a deep moan, like the surrender of a dying animal. The mast I clung to tilted sharply as the ship rolled over on its side.
The black rocks at the foot of the mountain rushed up at me as I fell. I released my hold on the mast at the last instant and tried to kick away from the wooden beam so I wouldn’t be crushed beneath it. I crashed into the rocks with a shock that knocked the breath from me. Pain shot through my body as I made contact with the hard stone. The broken mast smashed down beside me, shaking the ground and rattling my teeth. I was suddenly enveloped in white sails and rigging, unable to tell up from down.
There was a roaring in my ears that drowned out all other sound. A black mist bordered the edges of my vision, as if I was about to lose consciousness. But somehow I found the strength to lift an arm, shove aside the swathes of white canvas, and gaze in confusion at the world around me. I was slapped in the face by the wind and the cold sea spray. Towering swells carrying broken bits of wood swept past. The ship’s deck had already vanished underwater, and I was just in time to see the prow, protruding at a tilted angle, follow it down to be swallowed beneath the hungry waves.
Basil was nowhere in sight.
It had all happened so fast I was numb with the shock, unable to feel anything but the shivering of my wet body and the chattering of my teeth. The angry ocean splashed at my ankles as I sat at the foot of the mountain, watching the bits of wreckage dragged to and fro by the dark waves.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
And so our short voyage had come to its end. More than that, my quest to restore the Ninth Isle was over. Wrecked alone upon the mountain of Zoltar, there was no possibility of continuing, no possibility of survival.
Even as my benumbed mind struggled to come to grips with the horror of these events, I sensed the malevolent hatred of the mountain seeping up from the black rocks I crouched upon. The mountain wanted to de
stroy me as it had destroyed the last hope of the dragonkind. All the elements in this place seemed to conspire with Zoltar. The ocean continued to beat at the shore, and the cold raging wind ripped at me, cutting through my soggy clothing and throwing my hair into my face.
Through the net of waving blue strands, I saw a black shape drift past my field of vision. Basil’s three-cornered hat swirled across the waves.
When I leaned forward to fish it out of the water, something crunched beneath my foot. I looked down to see that the tiny minute glass, the relic I had taken from the Depository of Knowledge, had broken from the string that bound it around my wrist and fallen to the ground. The delicate glass bubble embraced within a cage of brass was crushed now, the glass broken and the pale grains of sand spilled across the black rock.
I didn’t know why, but this destruction of my last remaining item from home broke through my emotional numbness and flooded me with loss and despair. I collected the crushed brass frame and began frantically trying to scoop up the scattered grains of sand, as if I could put them back into the shattered globe of glass.
If only I had been keeping a better lookout before we entered the fog, none of this would have happened. We could have steered wide of the shoals and Zoltar’s mountain. Our ship would still be whole, Basil wouldn’t lie drowned somewhere at the bottom of the sea, and our mission to save the Ninth Isle would still be alive. I didn’t try to stem the tide of pain but let its bitterness flow over me. If only I could go back, everything would be different.
My thoughts were interrupted by a faint tingling sensation in my hand—the magic hand. A trickle of red blood ran across my palm where I had been collecting the pieces of the minute glass. I had cut myself on a jagged shard. But that wasn’t what was causing the tightness spreading up my hand. This was a sensation akin to that I had felt the first time I touched the Sheltering Stone, a prickly feeling that was hot and cold at the same time. It couldn’t be my magic coming to life, for I still wore the nathamite shackle. Besides, I hadn’t been trying to tap into my magic.