by Resa Nelson
Now balanced on his belly on the railing, still reaching out as if to pet the whale he had no hope of reaching, Lumpy glanced back at his brigand friend. “Look what we got here!”
Broken Nose took a few quick steps forward, grabbed Lumpy’s belt, and hauled him back on the deck. “What were you thinking, man?” Broken Nose shouted at him. “It’s too pitchy to horse around! You could have fallen overboard!”
The whale plunged out of sight, and the ship quaked. The whale appeared on the other side of the boat, bobbing happily in the water while it studied the ship.
Crying out in joy and wonder, everyone except Peppa and Broken Nose ran to watch the whale. For a good long while, the whale continued its pattern of swimming beneath the ship and appearing to bob in the water on the opposite side of where it had been minutes before. No matter how much Broken Nose shouted, no one paid attention.
Trep noticed Peppa bent over the other railing, apparently having spent the last few minutes alone. Concerned, he joined her side. Placing a gentle hand on her back, he said, “Peppa?”
In response, she vomited into the sea.
Lumpy joined his side and gave Peppa a quizzical look until she threw up again. “Oh,” he said. “She’s sick of the sea. When it gets rough like this, it’s common enough.”
Mimicking Peppa’s position, Lumpy leaned over the railing and spoke to her. “Look up to the horizon, Mistress Peppa. Keep an eye on it all the time, and that’ll make you feel stable and sound.”
Keeping a steady hand on Peppa’s back, Trep smiled to see her take Lumpy’s advice and raise herself enough to rest her forearms on the rail, lean on them, and stare at the line between the sea and the sky.
“That’s it, Mistress Peppa!” Lumpy said.
“Feel any better?” Trep said.
Pale and drawn, Peppa nodded slightly, never taking her eyes from the horizon.
The ship pitched slightly, and the whale surfaced in front of Peppa while the rest of the Boglanders raced over in pursuit.
Peppa leaned forward and threw up again.
“Look!” Lumpy shouted, pointing at the whale. “The creature likes her!”
Looking overboard, Trep noticed the whale seemed to watch Peppa with curiosity and interest.
Lumpy nudged the doubled-over Peppa. “See how close it is? He likes you most of all! Who would have thought we’d be so lucky?”
“I don’t care,” Peppa moaned. “Make it stop. Make it go away.”
“Oh, Mistress Peppa,” Lumpy said. “Life comes with good and bad at the same time. Take the good along with the bad!”
Trep looked at the brigand in surprise. Lumpy had a valid point.
“Stop!” Broken Nose shouted, pushing his way through the crowd of Boglanders gathered at the rail. He reached Lumpy, grabbing his colleague by the shirt at his throat. “Cut out this foolish nonsense! We have more pressing matters at hand!” With his free hand, Broken Nose pointed beyond the whale.
Following the direction, Trep squinted against the sun in his eyes. Once his vision adjusted, he made out the outline of a Western Island and the familiar shape of Krystr ships in its harbor. “We’ve drifted in islander territory,” Trep said.
“If you hadn’t been so busy playing with your whale you would’ve noticed we’d left course some time ago.” Broken Nose let go of Lumpy in disgust.
Heaving a sigh, Lumpy followed Broken Nose and helped him adjust the sail, making the ship take a sharper course to the north.
But the adjusted course put them in the path of an oncoming storm. Knowing it would do no good, Trep called out for Kikita’s help anyway. No answer came.
Everyone on board tied themselves to the ship, hoping not to drown while the waves became stronger and fiercer.
Trep braced himself for the worst, knowing that if they survived the storm, it could hurtle the ship into a part of the sea far from any land they had ever known.
Or worse, it might push them back toward the Krystrs on the Western Island they’d just narrowly missed.
CHAPTER 39
Drageen accepted a bread trencher filled with vegetable stew from the Western Island woman who served him. The islander boys and elderly men who trounced the Krystr soldiers and tied up the survivors then turned to discover the presence of Drageen and the alchemists.
Instead of attacking them, a man Drageen’s age recognized him, apparently telling the islanders about the Scalding in their own language. He then turned to Drageen and introduced himself as Hevrick, speaking Northlander with a lilting Midlander accent.
Hevrick mentioned being a member of an encampment on the Southern coast of the Northlands, which explained why he spoke a language Drageen knew. But Hevrick insisted that Drageen tell his own story first, although Drageen preferred to ask questions so he could piece together the current state of the world.
And he opted to say nothing of Tower Island and its demise.
The islanders returned to their homes protected by the low, rolling hills and gathered dry wood. Now, Drageen sat among them in the late afternoon around a hearty fire on the beach.
Normally, he would have been offended at the peasant food served to him and the casualness with which the islanders treated him. Surely, they understood the high rank and meaning of the Scalding name.
Not quite sure what to do with the vegetable stew and the bread trencher, Drageen watched the islander men hold the rim of the bread trencher to their lips and drink the stew out of it. Following their lead, Drageen recognized the depth of his hunger the moment he tasted the well seasoned, delicious stew. Only its steaming heat prevented him from gulping.
Grateful, he shuddered and the chill left his bones. In that moment, he no longer cared about proprieties. The time of war had come, and he knew he had to take his place among these men to protect the Northlands.
“Mandulane conquered my village in the Midlands months ago,” Hevrick said to Drageen. “His Krystr soldiers burned every home to the ground. They took our women and killed the men.”
“But you escaped.” Drageen’s tone lightly questioned Hevrick’s story. Drageen learned at an early age to never take a man’s story at face value.
Hevrick nodded. He finished eating his own portion of vegetable soup and tore a small piece of stew-soaked bread from the trencher. “The Krystrs attacked early in the day. One of the cows wandered away during the night, and I’d gone out looking for it. The other men were in the village at the time the Krystr soldiers came. When I came back, I could hear the noise from a distance. My first thought was to run back to the village, but my gut told me to duck and hide in the woods where I’d found the cow. That’s the only reason I still live.”
Drageen studied the taut expression on Hevrick’s face and believed him. Other than what the dragons told him on Tower Island, he knew little about what had happened in the world during the past few years. The last he’d heard had been from a merchant who spread the word that a new god caused the destruction of the Temple of Limru in the Southlands.
Hevrick spoke briefly to the islanders in their own language and then turned back to face Drageen. “Every merchant that any of us has known said your sister killed you. What proof do you have that you are Drageen Scalding? Or that you are even a Scalding at all?”
“Have you not noticed the color of my eyes?” Drageen said, feeling the full weight of his words, a weight he didn’t want to discuss because he still struggled beneath it. “Only the Scaldings have such eyes, and not all Scaldings have them, Astrid among them.”
More truthfully, it’s only dragons and Scaldings with dragon blood that have such eyes, and even then Astrid is not among us.
Hevrick translated Drageen’s words to the islanders, who peered at the Scalding and then spoke excitedly in their own language. One islander pointed at Drageen’s eyes and then clapped his own hands together, looking dumbfounded, as if he had just noticed the obvious.
“My sister didn’t kill me,” Drageen continued. “We fought, but Dragon�
�s Head took me alive. It consumed me but failed to kill me. To this day, I do not know how long I remained trapped within Dragon’s Head.”
Standing behind the men circled around the fire, the alchemist Bee cleared her throat and cast an annoyed look at the Scalding.
Noticing her, Drageen waved his hand as if shooing away a bothersome biting fly. “The alchemist found herself trapped as well, but that bears no consequence.”
Bee groaned and shook her head.
“And your sister?” Oddly, Hevrick’s forehead creased with worry.
“She is trapped within Dragon’s Head.” Drageen cleared his throat, surprised to feel it closing up.
Hevrick’s jaw slackened, and a look of fear crept into his eyes. “Astrid? She’s dead?”
A shock of realization hit Drageen. “You know my sister?”
Hevrick nodded. “Tell me. Is she dead?”
Drageen shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps not. I found myself trapped inside Dragon’s Head…”
He heard Bee clear her throat again, louder this time.
“Along with my alchemist,” Drageen continued, growing more irritated with her by the moment. “And we both live.”
Hevrick sighed in relief. “We fought together last spring. I would miss Astrid very much. Everyone would.”
Drageen frowned. “Everyone?”
Hevrick nodded and began eating his stew-soaked bread. “The man I told you about—Komdra—once held a position of great respect on this island.”
Glancing at the men surrounding him, Drageen noticed they brightened at the mention of Komdra’s name.
“After I escaped the fields where I’d hidden when the Krystr soldiers destroyed my village, I roamed the Midlands. I met Komdra. The Krystr soldiers conquered this island last winter. Komdra and other men from this island used a small fishing boat to escape. They came to the Midlands in search of help but found the Krystrs had overtaken most of it. I joined Komdra’s men, and then we met Astrid and her Iron Maidens.”
Drageen finished his stew and tore his own bread apart. “Iron Maidens?”
Hevrick nodded again. “Women trained to use weapons and fight against the Krystrs. We traveled with them. When we encountered Mandulane and his men, we all fought against them.”
Hevrick smiled briefly. “That day I thought Astrid killed Mandulane, because I saw what she did with my own eyes. She kicked him overboard into the sea, and we all assumed he drowned. But we’ve since learned he survived.”
Drageen chewed his bread, savoring the taste of stew it had absorbed. Iron Maidens? Astrid almost killing the leader of the Krystr soldiers? What had the world come to in his absence?
“Komdra and the Northlanders set up camp along the lower coast of the Northlands,” Hevrick said. “They are desperate for more ships to protect the Northlander waters. He sent me here as soon as we acquired a small ship with the hope that I could steal other ships from the Krystrs on this island. Instead, they captured me.”
Hevrick grinned. “But when the flood came, everything changed.”
“I have a ship,” Drageen said. “I can lead you and these men back to the Northland shores.” He devoured his last piece of bread. “We will find Mandulane and kill him.”
CHAPTER 40
The storm in the Western Sea ended early that evening.
Trep stood at the ship’s rail and studied the clearing skies above. Despite the gentleness of the waves lapping against the ship, a cold wind cut him to the bone. Trep wrapped his heavy woolen cloak around him like a cocoon, mindful of the sleeping dragon in his pouch. His gaze traveled to the horizon.
Can it be? Am I looking at land?
A few Boglanders puttered on deck, putting oars that had fallen off the stack in the center of the ship to their rightful place. Everyone else slept below. The ship creaked and groaned, rocking in the arms of the quiet sea. The only piercing sound came from what seemed to a throng of seabirds screeching in the distance.
Seabirds.
The thought confirmed Trep’s suspicion. Didn’t seabirds keep mostly to coastal land? Didn’t they typically fish in shallow waters near shores? How far did such birds range out to sea?
Trep turned again, and this time he convinced himself he saw the solid outline of a distant but large island. “The Land of Ice,” he whispered. For the moment, he’d hold on tightly to this quiet moment and savor it. He’d tell the others soon enough.
He gazed at the island, resting his hand on his pouch, feeling the tiny rise and fall of dragon’s breath.
* * *
Hours later, the brigands guided the ship onto the black sand beach of the Land of Ice, well lit under a bright moon and a wealth of stars. The Boglanders jumped over the railing and onto the sand, followed by the brigands. Grabbing the low railing, they hauled the ship onto the beach.
Lumpy skipped in circles and then dropped to his knees. He ran his hands through the sand. “It’s soft!” he called out to no one in particular. “Feel it! It be baby soft!”
His wife, cradling their child in her arms walked up to Lumpy and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Grinning, he stood, cupping a handful of sand. He took the child with his free arm and poured the sand into his woman’s open palms.
She smiled.
Trep stood on the black sand beach. It stretched far and wide, fenced inland by endless piles of black rocks that looked as if they’d once been carried by a river to the shore. To the right stood a cliff, and a towering, narrow waterfall crashed over its edge into a stream wrapped around the cliff’s base. The falling water roared and sparkled in the starlight. Trees and grass thrived at the top of the cliff, which looked like a hill that had been cleaved in two by a god’s sword. The seabirds he’d heard from the ocean settled in the sloppy nests they’d built with dried seaweed on the rocky face of the cliff.
Several of the Boglanders headed toward the waterfall. The fresh water they’d brought with them had begun to run low. Already, they seemed to have found all the water they’d need.
Broken Nose stood next to the ship, keeping one hand on its rail. “Land of Ice?” he shouted. “How can this be the Land of Ice when there’s beaches and waterfalls and trees? This can’t be the right place!”
Trep walked across the sand to the piles of black rocks behind the beach. Kneeling, he studied them. They appeared to be unlike any other rock he’d ever encountered. He tried to pick one up but discovered most of the rocks had fused together. It took a while to find one he could hold. The lightness of the rock surprised him because he’d assumed it would weigh heavy in his hand, but the thing looked full of holes like some types of cheeses he’d eaten. It seemed strong and weak at the same time, like a bloom of iron that didn’t know its own character.
“They say there are dragons so great they breathe rivers of fire,” Peppa said. “And when the fire has gone out, all that’s left behind are bloodstones blackened by the flames.”
Trep turned to see his sister walking toward him. “Those are just stories,” he said, not entirely sure he believed his own words.
Peppa shrugged. “The brigands have filled us with all kinds of stories about the Land of Ice. Maybe a great dragon once lived here. Maybe it still does.” She walked past Trep and climbed on the black rocks.
“Careful!” Trep said. He showed the rock he held in his hand to her. “They may be so weak they can’t bear your weight.”
Peppa looked over her shoulder at him, smiling sweetly. “Better my weight than yours.” She scrambled up a tall pile of rocks like a mountain goat. Once at the top, she stared into the interior of the island.
Trep tossed the rock onto the beach, noticing how its color matched the sand.
This beach must have once been made of rock. The ocean wore it down to sand. That’s why the sand is black.
“Trep,” Peppa called, still staring toward the center of the island from atop the pile of black rocks. “I think I know why they call this the Land of Ice.”
He squinted at
her. “Why?”
“Come up and see for yourself.”
Trep took his time, finding the most secure footholds he could spot before taking each step upward. At one point he discovered a gap so large between rocks that he could have fallen through it had he not been paying attention. Finally, he made his way up high enough so his head reached Peppa’s shoulder.
She pointed.
The dry riverbed of black rocks stretched to the left. To the right, hills and valleys rolled sharply. Following Peppa’s finger, Trep saw what had caught her attention.
In the far distance, a mountain of ice stood steadfast above the landscape, glowing white and crystalline in the moonlight.
* * *
Trep and Peppa helped the Boglanders unload most of the ship’s cargo. They’d packed the lower deck full with iron, tools, food, cloth, and other goods, not knowing what they’d be likely to run short of in a new and unknown land.
“Come with me,” Trep said. “You don’t belong in a land wracked with ice.”
Peppa cast a cautious gaze toward the sea. “You heard what the brigand said about the Land of Vines and the terrors that live there.”
“People say the Land of Ice lived only in people’s dreams. Look around. It’s real enough.” Trep willed himself to believe his own words. “If Northlanders can be wrong about the Land of Ice being a legend, they can be wrong about the Land of Vines being a dangerous place. Some of it must be peaceful.”
Peppa’s face drained, and she stared straight ahead.
Years ago they had a similar conversation, and Peppa ignored her brother’s advice, leaving to marry a man she’d one day come to regret ever meeting.
Letting Peppa walk away had been the most difficult thing he’d ever done. Trep didn’t like the arranged marriage from the start. With both parents long dead, their uncle selected a man for Peppa to marry, one whose wealth would bolster his own. The day they met the man Peppa would marry, Trep’s skin prickled. He didn’t like the man’s easy charm and the way he so quickly acted devoted to Peppa.
Trep had known Astrid for quite a good while before he’d been struck by the notion of her being a woman first rather than simply a fellow blacksmith. He saw beauty in her spirit, which allowed him to look past her scars long before she transformed them.