“Aylaen!” he called.
“Here!” she gasped, somewhere to his right.
“The rest of you shout out,” Skylan ordered.
One by one they all replied-from Sigurd’s deep bass to Wulfe’s shrill, excited yelp.
“Aylaen, ask the Dragon Kahg if he can see.” She was a Bone Priestess, the only person on board who could commune with the dragon.
“Kahg is as blind as the rest of us,” Aylaen reported. She paused a moment, then said wryly, “The dragon tells me you did not pray for a miracle. You asked Torval for a favor. The Dragon Kahg says you have it. The fog blankets the ocean, blinds our enemies. Make the best of it.”
Skylan almost laughed. A thick, blinding, soul-smothering fog wasn’t exactly the favor he’d had in mind, but he’d take it. The Dragon Kahg slowed the ship’s progress through the sullenly stirring waves to a halt. Every ship’s captain must be doing the same, for Skylan could hear muted horn calls, while voices, muffled by the fog, shouted orders. The last he had seen of the ogres’ ships, they had been clustered together and were likely to smash into each other. Raegar’s ship was too far away for Skylan to hear anything, but he had no doubt Raegar would also be forced to stop lest he inadvertently sail into what remained of the ogre fleet.
“I’m standing near the hold,” Skylan called out to the crew. “I’m going to keep talking. Follow the sound of my voice and come to me.”
The men made their way to him. He could mark their progress by their swearing as they stumbled over the oars, barked their shins on the sea chests, or bumped into each other.
“A strange phenomenon, this fog,” Acronis observed.
“Nothing strange. Torval sent it,” said Skylan.
Acronis regarded him with good-natured amusement. “On the contrary, my friend, the fog was caused by the smoke from the fires combined with the humidity.”
The two stood practically toe-to-toe and yet they could barely see each other. The air was heavy and difficult to breathe. Skylan could feel the fog catch in his throat.
“You and I will argue about the gods when we are safely back in my homeland,” said Skylan impatiently. “Now I need your learning for more important matters, Legate-”
Acronis shook his head. “I am no longer Legate, Skylan. I am no longer your master.” He gave a wry chuckle. “You would say I never was…”
Skylan had once hated Legate Acronis as the man who had enslaved him. He had since come to honor and respect the older man as an able military commander and because they had ended up on the same side in this war, fighting the same foe. Having lost everything, Acronis had elected to bind his wyrd to Skylan and his Torgun warriors.
“You are not my master,” Skylan agreed, smiling in turn. “But you are a learned man, worthy of respect. You have made a study of ogres, sir, so Keeper told me. What do you know of their rituals for the dead?”
“I know quite a bit,” said Acronis, puzzled. “Why?”
“Because Torval sent you to me, as well,” said Skylan.
“Skylan, over here,” Aylaen called.
He made his way to her and found her clutching Wulfe by the arm. “He almost fell.”
“I was trying to talk to the oceanaids,” Wulfe said.
“Keep hold of him,” Skylan said to Aylaen. “Stay by the mast. Both of you.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“What I have to,” he said.
Aylaen silently nodded. Her face was the gray of the fog. Her green eyes and red hair seemed the only color in a gray world. She feared Wulfe was telling the truth, that Treia had poisoned Keeper. Skylan wished he could stay with her, talk to her, tell her some comforting lie. But there wasn’t time. Torval’s favor would not last forever and when the fog lifted, they had to be ready.
Led by Skylan, the Torgun warriors stumbled down the ladder that led into the hold. They had to feel their way, for the hold was dark, the mists were thick, and they couldn’t see a thing. Skylan heard a terrified gasp and a rustling and he remembered that Treia was down there somewhere.
She must be afraid we are coming after her.
He said nothing to disabuse her. Let her spend a few moments in terror. None of the others spoke to her. They had all heard Wulfe’s accusation and most probably believed it. Still, murdering the ogre was not the worst of her crimes. He had kept from his comrades the fact that Treia had summoned the Vektia dragon who had leveled a city and nearly killed them all. Skylan had kept silent not because he gave a damn about Treia. He cared about Aylaen, who cared about Treia.
The men gathered around Keeper’s body lying on the deck of the hold, shrouded in the gloom and the darkness.
“All right, we’re down here,” said Sigurd. “What do we do now?”
“We are going to honor the dead,” said Skylan. “We are going to return Keeper to his people.”
CHAPTER 2
Aylaen listened to the heavy footfalls, muffled in the thick fog, clumping down the stairs into the hold. She heard the men fumbling about, bumping into each other and then, when they were quiet, Skylan stating that they were going to honor the dead. Of course, Sigurd immediately launched into an angry tirade about how Skylan was wasting time honoring a dead ogre when they should be arming for battle against live ones. Skylan patiently explained his plan. Aylaen smiled. She remembered a time when the hotheaded Skylan would have used his fists to explain. As it was, the men listened and Sigurd grumbled that it might work. Skylan asked Acronis to tell them about ogre funeral rites. Aylaen could hear the creaking of the Venjekar’s timbers, the waves rolling beneath the keel, water dripping. In the distance, an eerie-sounding horn called from one ship to another.
She was still keeping fast hold of Wulfe, who was growing bored and starting to squirm. Aylaen bent down and whispered into his ear. “I need you to do something for me.”
Wulfe looked up suspiciously. “I’m not going to take a bath.”
Aylaen removed the necklace she had been wearing. Golden bands twined around the spiritbone forming the tail of a dragon. Golden wings spread from the bone with a golden chain attached to the tips of each of the wings. The head of the dragon reared up from the bone. Emeralds adorned the spiritbone, set above the head. Two smaller emeralds were embedded in the wings.
“What’s that?” Wulfe asked, eying it curiously.
“The spiritbone of one of the five Vektia dragons,” Aylaen replied.
“What’s a Vektia dragon?” Wulfe asked.
“You’ve heard Skylan and me talk about the Vektia dragons,” said Aylaen.
“You Uglies are always talking,” said Wulfe, shrugging. “Mostly your talk is boring and I don’t listen. Is it like our dragon?”
“You have to listen now,” said Aylaen sternly. “I’m going to depend on you and I need you to understand that this is important.”
Wulfe heaved a deep sigh. “I’m listening.”
Aylaen told him how Torval was roaming the universe and how he came upon this world, ruled by the great dragon, Ilyrion. How Torval wanted this world and he and the great dragon fought over it.
“The world didn’t belong to either of them,” Wulfe interrupted, scowling. “It belonged to the faeries. My mother told me so.”
“Just listen!” Aylaen said, exasperated. “We don’t have much time.”
Then, as concisely as she could, she told him the rest. How Torval killed the dragon, Ilyrion, but had come to admire his foe and honored her by placing the power of creation in five of her bones. Fearing that other roving gods might come to try to take the world, Torval gave the five bones to his consort, Vindrash, the dragon goddess, to hide away. She gave one each to four of the gods who had come to join them in ruling over the world. The fifth she gave to the Vindrasi, her chosen people.
For many thousands of years, the gods remained undisturbed, and then came the Gods of Raj and of Aelon, God of the New Dawn, to challenge them. They fought a great battle in heaven. The Old Gods were defeated and forced t
o retreat. One of their own, Desiria, the daughter of Sund, God of Farseeing, and Aylis, Goddess of the Sun, was slain in that battle.
“Sund grieved the loss of his child,” said Aylaen. “He looked into the future and saw only death and despair and to try to prevent that, he gave the spiritbone of the Vektia that was in his care to Aelon. When the ogres attacked, Aelon’s Warrior-Priests tried to use this spiritbone to stop them. Treia was a Bone Priestess and she summoned the Vektia dragon and ended up destroying a city.”
Aylaen gazed at the spiritbone, admiring its delicate beauty even as she trembled at its terrible power. Someone who knew the secret of the Five could tame the dragon’s destructive power: the only way to control the Vektia was to obtain all five spiritbones, summon all five dragons. If that could be achieved, the Old Gods would be able to use the power to drive out the interloper gods and retain rulership of the world.
How? Aylaen wondered, turning the spiritbone in her hand. What will happen when the Five come together?
She had no answer. All she had was one spiritbone, one given by the traitor god, Sund, to his enemy. The Vindrasi had lost their spiritbone, through fear, when the cowardly Chief of Chiefs, Horg, gave the spiritbone set in the Vektan Torque to the ogres in an effort to save his own skin.
Aylaen had one. They needed to find all five. They had been planning to sail to the ogre kingdom to take back their spiritbone. But that plan had gone sadly awry. Now they were drifting on a fog-bound sea, surrounded by their enemies, and the fate of her people and her gods was going to be in the hands of a fae child.
Wulfe was eleven years old or somewhere thereabouts. His hair was shaggy and uncombed; he wore whatever came to hand, which by now had mostly been reduced to rags and was unrecognizable. He was a fae child, if one believed his tale about being the grandson of the Faerie Queen. And he was a savage killer. In his man-beast form, he had murdered and dismembered two men. According to his story, he had been certain those men were going to kill him and he had decided to kill them first. Aylaen had watched him turn into a wolf. She had watched the fur sprout from his body, his teeth lengthen into fangs, his yellow eyes gleam.
“I listened to the story. Why are you staring at me like that?” Wulfe asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“You and I are going to hide this away,” said Aylaen. “But first I must ask you a question and you must tell me the truth. Did my sister kill Keeper?”
Wulfe flung up his arm. “You’re going to hit me!”
“I’m not going to hit you. Is it true?” Aylaen asked, giving him a little shake.
“Yes,” he said sullenly.
“How do you know?”
“I saw her do it. I was watching her,” said Wulfe. His eyes narrowed. “I always watch her.”
“Why?” Aylaen asked, startled.
“Because she hates me. She wants me dead. My daemons keep telling me to kill her, but I don’t listen to them. I know if I hurt her you would be mad at me.”
“Telling me my sister is a murderer makes me mad at you,” said Aylaen. “So you better not be lying.”
Wulfe wriggled in her grasp. She tightened her grip. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Treia was being nice to Keeper, asking him how he felt and if he was in pain and if there was anything she could do for him. She was nice to me once like that and she ended up hurting me.”
Wulfe shrugged. “He should have known better, for he didn’t trust her, either, but I guess he must have been groggy from being hit on the head. He told her the injury was nothing. He’d suffered a cracked skull more than once in the Para Dix. Treia went to that chest of hers where she keeps her stuff and mixed something in a cup and gave it to him and told him to drink it. She said it would ease the pain. He drank it and then he slumped over and I thought he was asleep. But then Skylan came down and said something to him and shook him and Keeper toppled over and Skylan said he was dead.”
“And how do you know my sister killed him?”
Wulfe shrugged his thin shoulders. “Because Keeper wasn’t dead until he drank whatever Treia gave him. Skylan knows what she did,” the boy added defensively. “Ask him.”
Aylaen touched the spiritbone with the tips of her fingers. She could feel the terrible power, a tingling vibration. Closing her eyes, she saw, not for the first time, the bodies in the river, the corpses littering the street, mothers wailing over dead children, husbands weeping over dead wives; families lying dead in the rubble of their homes: an entire city destroyed.
She opened her eyes to look at the boy shifting restlessly from one bare foot to the other.
Aylaen felt the muscles in her face stiffen, her mouth dry. Down below, she could hear the men swearing and shuffling about. They were trying to lift Keeper’s body. Skylan knew the truth about Treia. That’s why he hadn’t answered her. She didn’t have much time. She held out the spiritbone to the boy.
“You must hide this away. Put this in the same place where you hid the spiritbone for the Dragon Kahg.”
“You mean in the-”
“Stop!” Aylaen said harshly. “Don’t tell me. Hide it away now. Hide it quickly before the fog lifts.”
Wulfe eyed the necklace and put his hands behind his back. “I can’t. It will burn me. Maybe kill me.”
Aylaen had forgotten that the fey child could not-or would not-touch metal of any kind.
“It’s not going to kill you. Look, I’ll wrap it up in part of my shirt-”
Wulfe was shaking his head. “It doesn’t like me. I can tell…”
“Wulfe, I need you to hide this!” Aylaen said desperately. “We might be captured and … and…”
“You don’t want Treia to find it,” said Wulfe.
Aylaen was quiet a moment and then she said softly, “Yes.”
Wulfe slipped his hand into hers. “We’ll hide it together. I’ll show you where. You put it inside and I’ll use my magic to keep it safe. And the dragon will help us.”
Wulfe started running, tugging her along. The moment Aylaen let go of the mast and stepped into the gray world she became disoriented and confused. She could not see anything; the mist swam before her eyes. Wulfe appeared to have some sense of where he was going, for he dragged her along confidently. She stumbled after him and tried not to think about tumbling overboard.
“We’re here,” Wulfe said. “There’s my hiding hole.”
Aylaen put her hand on the carved wooden neck of the dragonhead prow. Above her was the nail from which hung the spiritbone of the Dragon Kahg. Aylaen knelt down on the deck and stared intently where Wulfe was pointing at the bulkhead.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Wulfe. “It’s hidden.” He added something beneath his breath about “stupid Uglies.”
“How do you get into it?” Aylaen asked. The wooden planks looked as though they hadn’t been touched in years, since the carpenter nailed them in place.
Wulfe began to sing.
Open to my waiting hand.
Open to my knowing eye.
Open to my little song.
Open it and don’t take long.
To Aylaen’s vast astonishment, a piece of the plank disappeared, revealing a snug cubbyhole that had been carved out of the bulkhead. The hole was lined with sail cloth and filled with objects too varied and numerous to count. Aylaen caught a quick glimpse of what looked like a lock of her hair, a piece of charred bone, and a silver thimble. Then Wulfe clapped his grubby hands over her eyes.
“Don’t look!” Wulfe ordered. “I have important things in here that you mustn’t see.”
“I’ll keep my eyes closed,” Aylaen offered, mystified by what she had seen.
“You better,” said Wulfe, and he slowly drew away his hand.
He put his hand on her hand that was holding the spiritbone and guided her to the cubbyhole. She wondered if there would be room inside for the necklace, for it was large, and the cubbyhole had seemed very small and almost stuf
fed to capacity. It must have been larger than she imagined, for she had no trouble sliding the necklace inside.
“Don’t open your eyes yet,” Wulfe cautioned.
Aylaen obeyed and sat back on her heels, her eyes squinched tightly shut. She heard him rooting about in the cubbyhole and then, when he apparently had arranged everything to his liking, he told her she could open her eyes. Aylaen saw that everything, presumably including the spiritbone, was now covered with the sail cloth.
Aylaen hesitated. “Will I be able to the find the hiding hole again? Will the magic work for me?”
Wulfe snorted in derision. “You’re an Ugly! No, it won’t work!”
He cast a glance in the direction of the dragon’s head that was somewhere above them and whispered, “But I think if you wanted the necklace and the dragon wanted you to have it, the dragon would help.”
Aylaen couldn’t see the dragon’s head, obscured by the thick mist, but she could see a flicker of red gleam from Kahg’s eye.
“You can close the hole now,” said Aylaen.
Wulfe replaced the plank and began to sing another song.
Keep safe from thieving hands.
Keep safe from spying eyes.
Let them meet a swift demise.
Aylaen blinked. The cubbyhole was gone. The bulkhead looked as though it had never been disturbed. She could even discern rust on the nail heads. She reached out her hand to touch it and felt the wood, rough and solid and wet beneath her fingers.
“What does ‘demise’ mean?” Wulfe asked.
“‘Dying,’” Aylaen answered. She wrapped her arms around herself. The fog was chill and damp. “In this instance, ‘death.’ ‘Let them meet a swift death.’ If you didn’t know what the word meant, why did you use it?”
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