The Veiled Dragon

by Denning, Troy

  Ruha found no rushing streams or pulsing tides, but she could count her inspection only a partial success. The swirling saltwater made it difficult to distinguish an oozing flow from a gushing one. In the end, she decided the mere fact that she did not feel light-headed was proof enough that she was not bleeding to death. And she thought of at least one good thing about being adrift: in the desert, some hungry jackal or lion would smell her blood and come running, but such a thing could not happen at sea. No creature she knew could follow a scent through water.

  Having convinced herself she would not be dead by the time the caravel returned, Ruha turned her thoughts to making certain she would be found. Her own people, the Bedine, used large, curled horns called amarats for such purposes. The witch did not have an amarat, since only the men were allowed to use them, but she did have wind magic.

  Ruha drew a deep breath. Then, speaking from her belly, she uttered a wind spell. Within her chest, she felt a tremendous sensation of expansion, as though her torso were growing as large and round as an oil cask. She tipped her chin back and cupped a hand around her mouth.

  “I am here!” The voice that came from her lips sounded like that of a giant, deep and resonant. It was so loud that it made the water reverberate like a drum. “Come and help me!”

  Ruha pulled her hand away from her mouth and silently counted to a hundred, then repeated the message. As before, her voice was that of a giant. The witch counted again, then fell into a regular pattern of silence and calling. She was always careful to keep constant both the strength of her voice and the duration between her cries, hoping that would help the caravel captain determine whether he was moving closer to her, or farther away.

  Ten calls later, Ruha’s cries became thunderous croaks, for her throat had begun to ache from the sheer power of her booming voice. Nevertheless, she continued to shout, determined not to vary her routine until her windpipes burst—though she was starting to fear the cold would kill her first. Goose bumps were rising all over her body, and she felt a cold numbness creeping into the marrow of her bones. To make matters worse, the flotsam from the Storm Sprite was drifting apart faster than she had expected. She could see nothing close by except a handful of splintered deck planks, an oil cask riding low in the water, and several slabs of rotten dragon flesh.

  As Ruha watched, one of the scaly chunks vanished beneath the sea. The slab did not slip gently under the surface, as though the meat had become too waterlogged to float. It plunged downward with a sharp swish, leaving nothing on the surface except a small circle of swirling water.

  Ruha was not entirely puzzled. She had seen fish take insects swimming on the surface of oasis ponds, but the slab of dragon meat had been as large as her head. The witch could not even imagine the fish big enough to swallow such a morsel. She thought of her bloody legs dangling in the water and wished for a larger piece of timber—one onto which she could crawl entirely. Ruha pulled her jambiya from its sheath and prayed it would not slip from her grasp. The long, curved dagger was not particularly valuable, but it had once belonged to a man to whom she had been married for two days. He had died fighting a band of brutal invaders, and the jambiya was all she had to remember him by.

  The time to call came again. “Please hurry! Something is under the water!”

  Ruha forced herself not to think about her dangling legs and tried to study the sea around her, watching to see if the dragon meat continued to disappear. The task was an impossible one, for no sooner would she glimpse a slab than a dune would heave up in front of her. When the water subsided, the scaly chunk was as likely as not to be gone. The witch never glimpsed any telltale circles to indicate the morsel had been taken by a fish, but she knew better than to assume she would in such dark, rough water.

  Ruha felt herself rise on a dune, then something bumped into her knee and rubbed past her thigh. Her scream filled the sky with a cry that boomed like thunder. She thrust her jambiya into the water and sliced into a sinuous body, her knuckles brushing along a gritty hide. A huge tail fin slapped her arm, and the creature flitted away.

  The witch let out a breath she had not realized she was holding. It had only been a fish—one as large as a man, but a fish nonetheless—and apparently it intended her no harm.

  A distant voice came to her on the wind. “Keep yelling, Witch! Do you think I can see you in this murk?”

  Ruha glanced toward the voice and saw the blocky silhouette of a small, makeshift raft cresting the next dune. On top of it kneeled two figures, both digging into the water with short sections of deck planking. One of the men appeared rather lanky and gaunt, but the other was stocky and stout, with the jutting brow and swinish snout of a half-orc.

  Ruha slipped from the crest of her dune and lost sight of her rescuers. “I am here, Captain Fowler! One dune ahead!”

  “What was … booming about?” Now that the sea had risen between Ruha and Fowler, the wind rendered his voice almost inaudible. “Are … hurt?”

  “I am well. Something bumped my leg, but it was only a fish.”

  Fowler’s voice remained silent for a brief moment, then suddenly rose above all the other sounds: “… yourself! That fish could be a …”

  Ruha scowled and tried to pull herself farther onto the beam, but it only twisted and dumped her back into the sea. She tried again, kicking her feet to help lift her weight out of the water. Something slammed into the thick part of her leg. Her arms slipped free of the wet wood, and she felt herself spin and glide away from the timber. She heard a peal of thunder and realized it was her own wail of agony, magnified a thousand times by the magic of her wind spell. A keen, crushing ache erupted in her thigh and raced through the rest of her body, and finally she noticed the teeth. They were clamped around the thick part of her leg, driven deep into her flesh.

  Ruha thrust her free hand into the water and caught hold of a gritty dorsal fin. The fish began to work its jaw back and forth, scraping the points of its serrated teeth across her thigh bone. She pulled herself toward its tail and plunged her jambiya into its flank, then dragged the curved blade back toward herself. A torrent of cool, greasy blood gushed from the wound, covering her hand.

  The fish dove, dragging Ruha into the black stillness beneath the sea. She could not see its lashing body, but it seemed to be the same creature that had bumped her earlier, about six feet long, with a slender, lashing body and a plethora of long, pointed fins. She twisted her jambiya in the wound and pushed it toward the creature’s underside, praying she would find something that resembled a throat.

  The blade struck bone, and the jaws of her attacker closed more tightly, threatening to crush her thigh. The fish whipped its head from side-to-side. Ruha’s flesh tore, and her lungs burned with the need for fresh air. She thrust her jambiya into the side of the beast’s head and slashed through something soft. She felt a rush of frothy water, but the creature seemed to feel no pain. It whipped its body around and went deeper, jerking her after it. A sharp crack reverberated up her spine, followed by a brutal, stabbing pang that seemed to spring from her bone marrow itself. The witch opened her mouth—she could not stop herself—and screamed.

  A deafening roar throbbed through the water, striking Ruha’s eardrums with such force that it seemed her entire skull had shattered. Without realizing she had raised them, the witch found her hands clamped over her pulsing ears, the hilt of her dead husband’s jambiya pressed against her temple. The sound had a much greater effect on the fish. The creature’s body went slack, its jaws opened, and it began to squirm about drunkenly, nearly tangling itself in her aba before it scraped its gritty tail across her cheek and vanished into the black waters.

  Ruha had a fierce urge to cough and realized that her body had been trying to fill its air-starved lungs with seawater. She clamped her jaws shut and kicked toward the surface—then nearly forgot herself and screamed again when a sharp jolt of pain shot through her thigh bone. Continuing to kick with her good leg, the witch lowered a hand and found a ma
ngled circle of flesh just below her left hip. The water felt alarmingly warm, and she could feel a steady current of blood flowing from the wound.

  When Ruha’s head finally broke the surface, her ears were still ringing from her underwater scream. She could not hear the wind wailing, but she did feel its cool touch upon her skin and immediately started to gasp and cough, causing such a roar with her booming voice that she felt it in her feet. Already, she was growing dizzy from blood loss, and she feared she would die before her coughing spasm ended.

  Ruha slipped her jambiya into its sheath and set about unbuckling her belt. As simple as the task was, she could hardly accomplish it. With only one leg able to move and both hands required to undo the clasp, she could barely tread water. Her sodden aba kept dragging her beneath the surface, and she feared that if she allowed herself to sink too far, she would not have the strength to swim back to the surface.

  From behind Ruha came the muffled, distant-sounding murmur of a man’s voice. She spun herself around and, less than twenty yards away, saw a ragged section of hull planks lashed to three, low-floating oil casks. Atop the makeshift raft stood Captain Fowler and the other man, both shouting at the witch and waving her toward the raft.

  “I am unable to swim!” Ruha’s voice roared like a falling wall inside her own head, and both Fowler and his crewman cringed at its volume. “A fish attacked me. My leg is—”

  Ruha’s explanation ended in a strangled cry of alarm as a huge, gritty snout bumped into her back. The witch took three deep breaths while the body of the great fish brushed along her flank, its dorsal fin harrowing the water like a ship’s prow. At last, the creature passed, drawing a sharp hiss when its massive tail slapped the witch’s mangled leg.

  Ruha stopped fussing with her belt and filled her lungs, at the same time glancing in Captain Fowler’s direction. The half-orc’s eyes were bulging out of their sockets, and he was frantically tying a rope around the waist of his trembling companion.

  A mountainous dune rose beside Ruha, and she saw the dark line of a dorsal fin emerging from its face. She closed her eyes and buried her head in the water, at the same time voicing the mightiest, deepest bellow her aching throat could manage. Again, the water throbbed, hammering her eardrums with a terrible, pulsing ache.

  Before the witch could pull her head from the water, the enormous fish hit her—but she did not feel its long teeth tearing through her torso. Instead, the beast’s nose slipped beneath her hips, and she slid along its spine until the creature started to roll toward her. With one hand, the witch caught its dorsal fin and pushed away, narrowly escaping being forced beneath the surface. The monster floated belly up for a moment, then slowly writhed down into the sea.

  The snout of a smaller fish nosed Ruha’s shoulder; then she felt the rough skin of yet another creature rasping across her foot. “There are more?” she shrieked. “By At’ar, I hate this sea!”

  Over the roaring of the dunes came the alarmed murmur of Captain Fowler’s voice, so muted by the ringing in Ruha’s ears that she could not understand what he was saying. She looked up and saw him only ten yards away, pointing in the direction in which the monstrous fish had vanished a moment earlier. Beside him stood the sailor with the rope tied around his waist, staring into the dark waters and stubbornly shaking his head.

  The witch filled her lungs with air and spun around to see a huge black fin slicing toward her, albeit on a somewhat crooked course. She pushed her head beneath the water and, summoning her voice from deep down in her bowels, bellowed. Again, the sea pulsed with her fear and anger, and again the great fish rolled on its back.

  Ruha turned toward her rescuers and saw six more of the beasts floating with their bellies toward the sky. They all had wedge-shaped snouts and small, pitiless black eyes and shovel-shaped mouths. She began to pull herself through the surging waters. Her head was spinning from the loss of blood, and she did not know how she would find the strength to reach the raft before the monsters recovered and swarmed her again.

  The witch had taken no more than three strokes before Captain Fowler grabbed the reluctant sailor by his collar and belt, and pitched him into the sea. The man splashed down two yards away. Ruha expected the fellow to turn away and swim for the raft, but instead he cast an angry glance in her direction and thrust out his hand. She stretched forward and caught his wrist, digging her fingernails deep into the flesh of his forearm. The sailor scowled, but rolled onto his back and started to kick his legs. Captain Fowler hauled on the rope, pulling them back toward the raft.

  Ruha looked over her shoulder and saw the stunned fish already beginning to twitch and squirm. She wrapped her hand into the short length of rope holding up the sailor’s dingy trousers.

  “Cover your ears!” The man cringed at the sound of Ruha’s booming voice. “And keep kicking!”

  After the sailor put his hands to his ears, the witch pushed her face beneath the surface and let out another bellow. The concussion once more stunned the small fish into inaction, but the monster was too far away. Its fins continued to flutter, and its immense body slowly rolled in the water.

  Ruha felt Fowler’s thick hand in her hair. He twisted his fingers into her unbound tresses and lifted her out of the water. It was a painful way to be hauled from the sea, but the witch did not complain. She grabbed a lashing and scrambled completely aboard, hissing in pain as she dragged her savaged leg across the wet planks. She rolled onto her back and saw the sailor clutching the edge of the raft, struggling in vain to pull himself aboard. Behind him, the huge fish had righted itself and was already swinging its snout toward the raft.

  “By the burning face of Afar!” Ruha snarled, swearing her oath in the name of the fiery Bedine sun goddess. She thrust her hand into her aba and rummaged through its blood-soaked pockets. “That monster has troubled me enough!”

  The sailor looked back toward the great fish. The creature was half-submerged, snaking a slow, crooked path toward the raft. Captain Fowler reached past Ruha to grab the man’s shoulder, but the fellow shook his head and swam away. At first, the witch did not understand what he was doing; after his initial reluctance to help her, he hardly seemed the type to draw a sea-monster away from his companions. Then, when the beast did not change course, she noticed the slippery red ribbon she had left on the raft planks. Perhaps lions and jackals could not follow blood trails through water, but they did not breathe the stuff.

  Fish did.

  Ruha withdrew two small packets from her pocket, one filled with sand, the other with lime. She poured the contents of both packages into her palm and spit on them. As the witch mixed them together, Captain Fowler took a boarding axe from his belt and stepped forward to meet the advancing fish. She grabbed the half-orc’s leg and pulled him roughly back.

  “This fish belongs to me, Captain.” Though Ruha was trying to speak quietly, Fowler flinched and instinctively retreated from her thunderous voice. She drew him to her side. “Help me stand.”

  The captain glanced at the approaching monster, which had now submerged almost completely. Only the tip of its dorsal fin still showed, slicing across the face of a heaving dune. Fowler slipped a hand under Ruha’s arm and pulled her up.

  The dorsal fin was only five yards away when the rising dune swallowed it. With Fowler’s help, Ruha retreated to the back of the raft. A dull buzz started to drone in her ears, and swirls of dark fog swam along the edges of her vision. The witch had lost too much blood to be standing. Her knees buckled, and, had it not been for the captain’s support, she would have fallen.

  As Ruha struggled to call her spell to mind, a huge gray snout burst from the water and crashed down on the corner of the raft. A pair of tiny, wide-set eyes flared briefly; then the monster squirmed forward. The raft listed toward the trough of the dune, and the witch feared they would flip over. Her vision narrowed to a black tunnel. She reached out and slapped the fish on the nose, smearing the sand mixture over its rough hide.

  The fish twisted sideways
, temporarily preventing the raft from tipping farther, and opened its mouth. The beast’s teeth were as large and ugly as spearheads, and Ruha knew they would tear her into bite-size pieces with a single snap. She uttered the incantation of a stone spell, at the same time hurling herself backward into Fowler’s arms. They fell onto the deck together, leaving their attacker’s great jaws to clap shut on empty air.

  A pearly sheen swept over the head of the great fish and down its huge body. The creature squirmed farther onto the raft, forcing Ruha and Fowler to the very edge of the vessel’s high side. It slapped the water with its tail, driving itself forward, and the magical luster of the witch’s spell suddenly drained from its gritty skin. The beast grew as drab and gray as ash, and the duller it became, the slower it moved. By the time its jaws were within striking range, the monster’s entire body had grown as drab and motionless as a mudstone sculpture.

  Captain Fowler stretched a tentative leg toward the gaping jaws and, when his foot did not get bitten off, pushed the monstrous head off the raft. The fish slipped from sight and vanished beneath the dark water as swiftly as a stone. The witch slumped onto the deck and began fumbling at her buckle, praying she could stay conscious long enough to tie her belt around her bleeding leg.

  Ruha had barely unlocked the clasp before her head thudded onto the planks and her vision went entirely black. She felt Fowler’s stout fingers tugging at the belt, then the tinny sound of a man’s fading voice: “Hey! These sharks …”

  Sometime later, the witch awoke to a throbbing leg and the sound of arguing voices.

  “… witch for?” whined the sailor. “She’s the reason we’re here, I say!”