Ship of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 3)

by C. Greenwood

  I was too desperate to care that I was on dangerous ground, demanding gifts and favors from a powerful being. If this keeper refused to help, I had little hope of survival or success anyway.

  In response to my demands, the keeper was silent. Had she gone away? I kept still, listening to the patter of rain drumming down on the rocks and the muddy earth. Pools of dirty water had formed at my feet. In the distance I could hear the rushing of the little stream near the clearing, as it swelled with the rain.

  Thunder rumbled overhead, making the ground tremble beneath me. Then suddenly a flash of light split the night. I winced against the blinding glare, sparks dancing before my eyes at the brightness. The fork of lightning struck the ground directly in front of me, sending chunks of soft earth exploding into the air and showering me with mud.

  It was over in an instant, the shard of lightning disappearing in the blink of an eye. I stood fixed to the spot, blinking in the abrupt return of darkness. It took a moment for my vision to adjust to the blackness again. When it did, I stepped away from the rocky overhang, walking out into the rain.

  “Keeper?” I called into the night.

  “There is a boat not far from here that once belonged to the coastal people.”

  I started at the unexpected answer, for I thought she had gone away, leaving me alone.

  “Follow the banks of the stream, and you will find your craft,” she continued. “Take also the gift I leave you and use it well.”

  “What gift?” I asked, confused.

  I blinked against the falling rain and scanned the area, but there was no gift in sight. Walking forward, I stepped into a shallow trench that had been gouged out of the earth by the lightning strike. I stumbled against something hard, a solid object that was long like a stick. It was heavy enough to hurt my foot and made a metallic clinking sound as my boot collided with it. I bent and examined the area. At first I saw nothing. Then my eye caught something glistening wetly in the dimness. I explored it with my hands. It was like a thing made of glass or ice, solid to the touch but only semivisible as reflections and shadows. My hands told me it was a long metal shaft with sharp fork-like prongs on the end—a trident.

  Although any weapon was more useful than none, this wasn’t what I had hoped for when I requested aid from the keeper.

  “Is this all you can do for me, give me a weapon and an old boat?” I protested to the rain. “Surely there is something more?”

  The only answer I received came in the form of the rain, which began to fall more heavily. Thunder rumbled angrily overhead. The temperature had been warm earlier, but now, impossibly, I began to feel little pellets of ice mixed in with the rain. It was sleeting. Only moments ago the falling water had been a gentle shower. Now it drove down with the force of an offended keeper hurling icy torrents.

  Too late I realized I had made a mistake in pushing for more favors.

  Strong gusts of wind blasted at me from nowhere, ripping at my clothing and whipping my hair into my face. I couldn’t stand before the sudden gale but was swept off my feet. The wind lifted me up as if I were nothing but a small piece of debris. Rising into the air, I was blinded by flashes of green lightning circling around me.

  Caught up in the heart of the storm, I felt myself being flooded with some new force, a rush of power the likes of which I had never before experienced. It was greater than the magic the nathamite machine had ripped from me. It was like the long-ago day I had first touched the Sheltering Stone and felt its strength roar through me.

  I lost all sense of myself then. I no longer felt the lashing wind and rain. I was no longer afraid of the powerful keeper. I was filled with my own awesome power now, a raw magic that swept through me, driving out every stray thought. My world ended abruptly with a burst of green light.

  * * *

  When I returned to my right mind again, I found myself lying in a puddle on the muddy ground. The rain and wind had gone. The storm was over.

  Although I was collapsed on the ground, I didn’t feel weak or drained, only cold and shivery. The power that the keeper had given me didn’t exhaust me as other forms of magic did. Instead, I felt energized by the experience. I climbed to my feet, peeled strands of wet hair out of my face, and looked up to find the sky now clear overhead. No storm clouds veiled the moon and sparkling stars.

  I was aware of a lingering tingling sensation all over my body. I couldn’t tell if I was still feeling the sting of the recent sleet or if this was the residue of the uncontrolled magic that had flowed through me moments ago.

  “Keeper?” I called out into the night. “Are you still with me?”

  No answer came. The ancient being had gone, evaporating with the rain. But I didn’t feel abandoned. She had left a great gift of magic behind.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I didn’t realize how long I had been away from the cave until I heard Basil’s voice in the distance, calling my name. After taking up the semivisible trident the keeper had left for me, I followed the sound of his voice. Forgetting the firewood I had planned to bring back, I trudged across the mud-soaked ground until I reached the clearing and the entrance to the abandoned mine.

  “There you are,” Basil greeted me when I walked out from among the trees. “You were gone so long I was starting to worry you’d collapsed out there in the dark somewhere, especially when the storm came.”

  “I took shelter from the rain,” I explained briefly.

  “Really? You look more like you took a bath in it,” he said, taking in my clinging clothes and soggy hair.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s just go to sleep. We don’t need a fire anymore.”

  I was right. Despite the recent storm of ice, the night had grown warm again, almost as if the keeper were apologizing for pelting me with hail.

  My encounter with the immense flow of magic had briefly filled me with adrenaline. But now as I ducked beneath the low roof of the cave, the events of the day returned to take their toll. It had only been a short time ago that I had been so drained by the nathamite machine that I had been unable to walk upright without help. My magic was no longer suffering, but my body remained sore, my muscles aching.

  I collapsed to the hard floor of the cave, not caring about the darkness of the night or the emptiness of my stomach. At least we had a little light offered by the glow of my magic hand.

  Basil seemed to follow the direction of my thoughts. “Isaura, look at your hand.” He sounded uneasy.

  “What about it?” I moaned, not opening my eyes. It felt good to rest.

  “Just look,” he insisted. “It’s not reddish anymore. It’s green.”

  He was right. I looked down to find the hand that had touched the Sheltering Stone no longer glowed with a reddish-purple light. It shone green.

  I marveled at the change that must have been wrought by the keeper when she had wrapped me up in her storm of power.

  “What happened out there?” Basil asked, eager for an explanation. “And what is this?”

  As if noticing it for the first time, he picked up the trident I had laid on the floor of the cave beside me.

  “We have been given gifts,” I told him sleepily. “A weapon and directions to a boat we can go searching for tomorrow. Also, I think my magic has been… expanded.”

  My cousin was full of questions, so I gave him a brief description of my encounter with the keeper. But I didn’t tell him of the greatest gift our benefactor had given back to me—renewed hope.

  * * *

  Despite the seriousness of our situation, I woke in the morning with a sense of optimism. There was no good reason for it. We remained stranded without resources on the Bleak Coast. We were still separated from Skybreaker and the mapmaker’s young apprentice. What was more, for all we knew there were pirates combing these hills searching for us. We might yet be reclaimed as prisoners.

  But I doubted that last. I had seen the look of defeat on Captain Ulysses’s face as he realized all his plans had come to ruin.
I knew he would never again attempt to use the nathamite device. And without the possibility of time travel, he had no further need for me. It would not make sense for him to waste time and manpower searching for us now.

  We had nothing to eat at first, but I managed to catch a small fish with my hands in the nearby stream. It wasn’t much when divided between the two of us, but there was no time to forage for anything more. I felt driven by a sense of urgency—I didn’t know for what. I only knew that it seemed important we be on the move as quickly as possible.

  Following the directions the keeper had given me last night, we traveled downstream, leaving behind the clearing and mineshaft and keeping to the high side of the bank. We didn’t have to go far to find what appeared to be an abandoned hut built of mud with a thatched roof. There was no one around the home. All signs suggested no human had inhabited the spot for years.

  Searching the surrounding area, we uncovered a storage space, a small underground cellar. There wasn’t much of use in the place. If there had even been food stored here, it was long since rotted away. But one thing we did uncover was exactly what we were looking for: a small dugout canoe, skillfully made and well preserved from years of weather by having been stored in the dry shelter. Pleased to find that it was light and easy to move, we carried it up into the outdoors. Under the light of day, we examined our discovery.

  “It isn’t much,” Basil warned, as if reading the direction of my thoughts. “A canoe like this is only good for navigating the rivers and fishing in shallow bays off the coast. It wouldn’t survive long in open seas.”

  “Then it’s lucky we only need it to hold together very briefly,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” He looked uneasy. “What have you got in mind?”

  I didn’t explain the plan that was beginning to take shape in my head. “Can you fashion a workable sail for this thing?” I asked. “Quickly?”

  Basil took off his three-cornered hat and swept a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “Probably,” he admitted, “if I could find the right materials.”

  I could tell by the way he said it that he was reluctant to engage in whatever mad scheme I might be concocting now.

  “We should check first to be sure it’ll even hold water,” he continued. “It looks in fine shape for its age, but you never know.”

  I agreed and we carried the canoe down to the creek. It bobbed on the edge of the swollen stream, secured to the shore by a length of rope we had found in the cellar. The craft tossed about in a way that didn’t bode well for my purposes, but at least there weren’t any obvious leaks.

  “How long will it take you to modify it with a sail?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “That will depend on whether I can find the parts I need.”

  We found them. Rummaging through the abandoned hut and its cellar eventually turned up enough scrap pieces of canvas and timber to meet Basil’s requirements. While he spent the afternoon working on the canoe, I found empty vessels that could be used to hold water and food supplies. There was no food here. This place could not provide everything. But I gathered familiar berries from bushes in the surrounding forest and caught several fish in the stream. I smoked and dried the fish to better preserve them, although I didn’t truthfully expect to need such provisions for long.

  I also foraged supplies that might be useful to us later from the hut and cellar. I carried these items down to the water and stowed them in the bottom of the canoe. Among the provisions was a long length of chain fastened to a heavy metal weight with curved claws that hooked upward. It reminded me of an anchor, although such a small thing would never be of use out on the ocean. I suspected it was intended only to anchor the canoe in shallow bays, where its users could fish. All the same, I stowed it away with the other things. Perhaps we would find a later purpose for it.

  As the sun sank lower, I sat on the edge of the creek bank and watched Basil raise the makeshift sail he had constructed for the canoe. Sewn together from strips of canvas sacking, the brown sail flapped in the evening breeze. It just might work for our needs, I thought, if it could hold together.

  I gripped the weapon the keeper had given me across my knees. Even in full daylight the trident had remained only semivisible, its edges glittering under the sun while the rest remained transparent as ice. My fingers felt runes engraved along the shaft, but they were invisible to my eyes. I wondered how the weapon had been made and whether it was created just for me or if it had belonged to others before, perhaps to other dragonkind favored by the good keeper. Had anyone ever wielded it in such a desperate time as mine? Had they ever had the entire fate of their people and the dragon race weighing on them? I doubted it.

  Before the sun set, I took advantage of its last golden rays to spear more fish in the creek, using my trident for the first time. Although it was an adjustment to get used to the forked prongs instead of the single-headed spears I was accustomed to fishing with back on Corthium, the trident was surprisingly light in my hands. I could get used to the thing. More importantly, it provided a meal for Basil and me. We would need our strength for what I had planned for tomorrow.

  We slept beneath the roof of the empty hut that night, making use of the sturdy shelter. There was no telling when we would next have the luxury of a roof over our heads. We made a small fire in the middle of the dirt floor. Its warmth and smoke circled around the room before finding their way out the smoke hole in the roof.

  As I lay down and enjoyed the heat of the flickering flames on my face, I could feel Basil’s eyes on me. He was wondering what I had planned next. He didn’t ask questions, but I knew the ordeal ahead lay on both our minds. There was no reason to ask what I intended to do—only how I would do it. I was only half-sure of the answer myself.

  I closed my eyes and dreamed of a gentle cleansing rain.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The following morning we breakfasted early and loaded the last of our supplies into the canoe.

  “What’s this?” I asked as Basil dropped a long, flat blade in the bottom of the craft. The clumsy piece of rusted metal with its splintered wooden handle looked as if it was made for chopping down vegetation.

  Basil shrugged and nodded toward the semivisible trident clutched in my hand. “You have your weapon. I’ve found mine.”

  I didn’t argue, although the idea of the rusty tool being used for anything but harvesting crops was as unlikely as the thought of my cousin wielding it.

  We cast off from the steep bank, and our little canoe nosed out into the swift stream. With the wind catching our makeshift sail, we used our paddles only to guide the boat and keep from bumping into the narrow shores to either side. Green trees and rolling hills swept past as the water pulled us along. Soon our little creek met a larger river. We picked up more speed then, for the fast-moving water was swollen from the other day’s rain.

  As we traveled, I tried to get my bearings. The height of the surrounding hills made that difficult, but it seemed to me we were traveling a parallel route to the way we had come after escaping the pirates. This direction bypassed the ruins of the abandoned city.

  “I don’t guess there’s any point in asking where it is we’re going?” asked Basil.

  I didn’t answer. At the rate the current was pulling us, we couldn’t have battled our way any direction but downstream if we had tried. It was easiest to go with the flow. Luckily, that flow was moving exactly the way I wanted.

  Cutting around the valley of the old city where we had last seen the pirates, the river rounded a bend, and our first destination became visible. The current pushed us out to sea.

  I was concerned about landing in the hands of the pirates again if their ship still stood guard off the shore. But the river let out in a different spot, away from where the Sea-Vulture was so recently anchored.

  The day was only half-spent. Thanks to the direct path of the river, we had reached the sea quicker than I could have hoped for. But it wasn’t quick enough. The Gold Ship Voya
gers would be many days ahead of us by now. I knew there was no choice but to do the thing I had been contemplating. I was filled with a confused mixture of fear and excitement at the thought.

  As soon as we were a safe distance from the shore, I stood up in the bottom of our little canoe. Balancing was difficult as the boat rocked from side to side, gripped by waters rougher than any it would have encountered in the inland streams it had been built for.

  I tried to remember the way it had felt the other day when I was swept up in the keeper’s magic, tried to summon again the power that had rushed through me then. I imagined the flashes of green lightning circling around me, the howl of the wind, and the raging of the storm. It had been the keeper who had brought those elements to life last time. My efforts to reach them now, let alone command them, were experimental. But I focused on the magic, feeling the new wilder strain that had been joined to the more familiar power drawn from the Sheltering Stone. The keeper’s magic felt different, untamed, and harder to channel. But I was reaching it, touching it.

  I tapped into the stream of power and tried to direct it. I focused on a memory of the terrible storm that had taken us up in its grip as we crossed the cursed seas near Zoltar’s dark mountain. We had known then which direction to sail in our pursuit of Gold Ship Voyagers. We didn’t have that advantage now. I could rely only on the magic and the sea to show us the way.

  Little sprinkles of water began to patter down on my skin. I didn’t open my eyes. I had to keep my thoughts focused. I felt the wind off the ocean pick up, tugging at my hair. Our boat’s sail flapped noisily beside me, and I hoped Basil had fastened it securely enough to hold in foul weather. The sea grew rougher as thunder pealed overhead. I blocked those things from my brain, concentrating on what I needed to do. In my mind’s eye I shaped and formed a swirling funnel of a storm with us at its center.

  “Isaura,” Basil called nervously over the rising wind.

  I ignored the tension in his voice. There was no time to explain to him that using my magic was the only way we would ever make up the time we had lost.