The Dragon's Egg

by Pauline M. Ross

  “It’s this,” she said. From a fold in her wrap, she produced a ball made of clear glass. There was no light from it, or from anywhere else, though, apart from our single flickering candle.

  But I’d seen the glass ball before. “That’s Tella’s. You stole it.”

  “No. It’s mine.” Was it my imagination, or was her voice less flat than usual?

  “Whatever is it?” Shakara whispered.

  “Tella brought that ball from the Karningplain,” I said. “They used them there to determine if people spoke the truth or not. The Tre’annatha call them mage balls, and the tower at the Keep – the one on the end of the promontory – is probably full of them, if only anyone can find a way in. Demons, Drusinaar, you can’t just take things that don’t belong to you.”

  “It’s mine,” she said, lifting her chin.

  I’d never seen her defiant like this before, not with me, not with any of us. She’d argued with Kestimar, but that was just repeating book stuff. This was very different.

  “It called to me,” she said. “It wanted me to take it. And now lots of things talk to me, much clearer than before.”

  “What?” It was bewildering. It sounded like nonsense, and yet she was so earnest.

  “It called to me. That’s why I unlocked the door on the island and went to find it. But I found the dragons instead, the first time.”

  “Did they talk to you, Dru?” Zarin said softly. “The dragon’s eggs?”

  “No. They only talked to the dragon-boy, but they let me see inside them.”

  “So, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “The ball was calling to you, so you went to find it, unlocking the door on the way. But you found the dragon eggs instead, and talked to Ruell. And then I took you back to the tower, and I don’t recall you leaving it again.”

  “I went out on the last night. Couldn’t leave without it, because it’s mine.” Was there a hint of challenge in her tone?

  “The last night?” Zarin said. “When we were all shackled?”

  “She can unfasten those,” I said. “See, she has nothing on her wrists or ankles right now. How do you do that? Because it’s a clever trick.”

  “Locks talk to me. They’ve always talked very clear. I ask them to open, and they do. Very well-behaved.”

  “But some things talk to you more clearly now?” Zarin said. “When you hold the ball, you can hear things better?” She nodded. “What things can you hear?”

  She frowned, thinking about that. “Everything metal. Not just locks, knives, swords, buckets, a lot of things I don’t recognise. The wind in the sails, and the woman who blows it. The clouds. The water the ship moves in. Animals. The rats in the hold. The sea sprites beneath the ship. Although…” A deeper frown. “I think those are porpoises. And people. I hear what people feel.”

  “Gods,” I muttered. I had no idea what to make of it, but for some odd reason I believed every word of it.

  “And can you make fire?” Zarin said, his voice so low he was practically inaudible. “If you hold the ball, can you make fire?”

  She lifted the ball a little, holding it in her left hand. It began to make that eerie glow again, lighting up one side of Drusinaar’s face but casting the other side into darkness. Then she held out her empty right hand, and it filled with licking flames.

  “Yes,” she said. “I can make fire.” She smiled.

  ~~~~~

  Each morning we were allowed on deck for a little fresh air. The priest liked to walk about, muttering contemplations, but the rest of us huddled in a sheltered spot, out of the wind.

  None of us had slept a wink, I don’t imagine. Apart from Drusinaar herself, who had tucked her glass ball away and curled up as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t just produced flames from her fingers.

  She had the ball with her now, I knew that. One hand was constantly inside a fold of her wrap, touching it, drawing some energy from it. Some magic, I suppose. In a way, it made her seem more normal. The way she stood and moved and spoke were just like anyone else now. And she smiled, and had even laughed at one of my feeble jokes over the porridge. But it also made her even more strange. Not just the fire business, either. It was clear she could see things we couldn’t.

  She was watching one of the sailors who sat at the foot of the mast, motionless. That was one thing that hadn’t changed – her eyes still stared unblinking, although they were darker than usual.

  “What are you looking at, Drusinaar?” I said.

  “The wind-blower.”

  “The what?”

  “The one who blows the wind to make the ship move.”

  That made no sense to me, but then I was having trouble with a great deal of Drusinaar’s words just now.

  “Would you like to go closer?” Shakara said.

  “Yes, please.”

  The two of them set off down the deck, Drusinaar striding the full extent of her ankle shackles, Shakara swaying her hips in her usual provocative way. I saw the reason for her display, about half-way down the deck – the slaver and his three shadows, inspecting some device or other with the captain. It worked, too. The slaver looked up, nodded to her, exchanged a few words. Well, there was no harm in that, especially if she was going to buy my way into the slaver’s gaming circle.

  I shuffled nearer to Zarin. “Tell me something – anything – about this glass ball.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were the expert. You know more about them than I.”

  “Tella’s never did much. If you picked it up, it changed colour and then stopped on one colour. Then, if you told a lie, it flared blue. And that’s all I’ve ever known it do, I swear. Although she hated anyone to touch it. She said it was evil. A keepsake to remind her of evil times.”

  “Hmm. Interesting. But when Dru was holding it, there were no colours, it looked like no more than plain glass. But the glowing light… Most unsettling. She is very attached to it. I wonder how she would react if the ball were taken away from her?”

  I huffed in annoyance. “She’s not some strange creature you found in a rockpool, to be studied with a magnifying glass. She is a human being.”

  “Is she?” His tone was mild as milk.

  “Yes! And she needs help, not people poking and prodding and doing things to see how she reacts.”

  “The Tre’annatha would know how to help her,” Zarin said. “The homeland is the best place for her, without doubt. But it is of no consequence, for we cannot get her there. Look at it, no distance away, yet we cannot get there.” He pointed to one side of the ship.

  “What? I can’t see anything but a bit of mist. Oh, wait – there is land there, but very hazy.”

  “The magic still protects it, yes, but we are in the Straits of Ath’roon now, and passing the homeland to our left. Although all the land on the right is Tre’annatha-controlled, as well. The Golden Coast. Not so golden at this time of year, but when the grains ripen it is quite a spectacle. So I am told.”

  I gave up staring into the mist, trying to make out vague shapes of headlands or hills that slid out of my vision as soon as I focused on them. Turning the other way, the land looked very friendly, with rounded hills rolling gently towards golden beaches. Grasslands were dotted with cattle and sheep, or perhaps they were goats. Behind the beaches, neat farms filled the river valleys. Here and there a tower gazed impassively from a promontory, although none of them glowed. It all looked very tranquil.

  “Dru’s glass ball,” Zarin said, dragging me back to the present. “You called it a mage ball. That is one name for it, but it is also known as a scrying stone. Each of the towers that hold the balls has a large scrying stone at the top of it. There are reputed to be twelve towers in total.”

  “Twelve?” I said. “Only five have been discovered.”

  “And only one opened fully – the Ran’ashilla Fah tower, beside Drakk’alona. The Tre’annatha found a way into it, took all the balls, looked through the scrying stone at the top, and then
—”

  “Then?”

  “It sealed itself again, and no one has been able to get in since.” He laughed. “The Tre’annatha think they are so clever, but many secrets still elude them.”

  “Well, someone got into the tower on the south coast,” I said. “Although that is sealed up again now, too.”

  “Maybe Dru could get in to one, now that she has the ball,” Zarin said. “Who knows what she might be capable of? She seems meek enough, but she could be very dangerous.”

  ~~~~~

  I put my proposal to the slaver at second table. His eyes glittered, and he looked sharply at Shakara, then back to me.

  “That would be of interest,” he said. “If the lady is willing. I will not force anyone into my bed.”

  She smiled, lowering her eyes. “I am willing.”

  “How much time are you offering?”

  “The whole night?” she said.

  “Hmm. A single night will not buy your friend very many bones.”

  “Three nights, then. Three nights with you, or one night each for you and your friends.”

  One of the other men leaned forward, leering at her. “Or one night with all three of us.”

  My stomach turned over at the thought, but Shakara just laughed. “If you wish. That sounds like fun.”

  I really think she meant it, too.

  We played the first game that evening, in the slaver’s cabin. It had ‘Captain’ painted on the door, but the slaver had commandeered it. It was a finely furnished room, with expensive rugs, a polished wood table and matching chairs with velvet cushions, and a vast bed half curtained off. Room for half the crew in that bed, if they wanted, and certainly not a squeeze for the four of them.

  Shakara was there, too. The slaver had insisted on that, perhaps to make sure she didn’t disappear over the side before the fee was paid. He made her sit in a chair in the corner, though, arranged so that she couldn’t see any of the play. Maybe he thought we were working together, and she would signal to me, but I’ve never depended on anyone else. It’s much less suspicious that way. My skill is impossible to detect, and it’s much safer to work alone.

  The slaver liked to play with flats, a series of thin pieces of wood, each painted with a different picture, a number of dragons, or crowns, or ships on each. The idea was to collect all five of one picture, if you could, and some pictures were worth more than others. I’d never come across this particular game, but I’d played similar types.

  “First, some rules,” the slaver said to me, as we sat down, the five of us. “No cheating, or I skin you alive and toss you overboard, understood?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Second, we get the woman anyway, so do not think you can make a few bones and buy her back, because you cannot.”

  “Fine.”

  “Third, she has bought you thirty bones. You will need fifty to free each member of your party, and a hundred for yourself.”

  I did the numbers rapidly. Three hundred. Not too difficult, but I didn’t want him to know that, so I pulled a face. “I’d be happy to leave the priest behind if I fall short.”

  The slaver laughed at that. “These godly types! Not much use for anything. But no, it is all or nothing. You make the three hundred and you all go free, or you fail, and you all go to Mesanthia as slaves.”

  “And you and your friends will bring enough to the table?”

  “For you to win? Yes.” His eyes glittered with amusement. He was very sure of himself. “See?” He produced a small velvet bag and tipped a heap of bones onto the felt cloth covering the table. “There are three hundred bones there. Here…” He counted out a small pile and slid it across to me. “Your thirty. The rest I will divide it amongst the four of us. You have half a moon or more, before we reach Mesanthia. That should be enough time for you, if you are any good. Are you satisfied?”

  I swallowed. So I had to win every last bone, or I would lose. Tricky. “Very well,” I said.

  “Good. Stronn, pour the wine, and we can begin.”

  I played slowly at first, bidding low and assessing the players. I quickly determined that the slaver and the woman were the ones to beat. The other two men gave too much away in their faces. I didn’t even need to look through their eyes to know whether they had good hands or bad. The other two were much better. The slaver tended to overact, so if he had a good hand, he would pull faces and appear to be dithering, and if he had a bad hand he would smile a little, and play decisively. But that was easy to interpret. The woman was a blank slate, though. I couldn’t read her face at all.

  But I wasn’t depending on their faces. I skipped from head to head, seeing exactly what flats they held in each round. Then I could play accordingly. My only worry was that the view through the slaver’s eyes was as clear as glass – he had some magic in him, somewhere. But many people had a magical ability in them. He might not even know about it, or he might not know how to use it, or it might be something irrelevant – an affinity for fish, for instance. Nothing to worry me, anyway.

  Once we had been through the pile of flats once and I knew all the pictures, I could begin to make progress. Win a little, lose a little, win a little more and end the evening ahead. That was the way to do it. Nothing to alarm anyone. It would get more difficult later.

  But it was harder than I’d thought. The slaver won a couple of rounds that I’d have sworn were mine. Was he cheating? Yet I couldn’t see how. I knew all the standard tricks, and I watched his hands carefully, but I saw nothing suspicious.

  It was only when I shifted my mind to look through his eyes later that I discovered how he did it. His hand had a couple of dragon flats, one of books and a couple of flowers. As I watched, the Two Books blurred and shifted in his hand and became the Two Dragons. A winning combination.

  That was depressing. It would be difficult enough to win, but if he was able to cheat with magic too, it would be impossible. Shakara’s sacrifice would be for nothing.

  ~~~~~

  I felt guilty leaving Shakara with the slavers, although she seemed relaxed about it, and emerged late the following day smiling, and wearing a new, rather stylish gown.

  “Are you all right?” I whispered to her at second table. “They did not – hurt you?”

  She giggled and blushed like a girl. “I am fine, Garrett. No need to fuss.”

  That night she was there again, although I got no extra bones. That was irritating, if she was prepared to give it away for no benefit. She could have negotiated something for her services, I was sure.

  That was a strange evening. The flats fell into lumps, as one of my regular opponents used to say. There were some spectacular hands, mixed with some dreadful affairs. I had forty-seven bones, so the slaver divided two hundred and fifty-three between the rest of them. I’d hoped he would allow some extras in, to make things easier for me, but he wasn’t prepared to help in the slightest.

  The woman collapsed early on. She had a couple of unlucky hands, narrowly defeated, and then bid everything on what should have been a winning hand, but the slaver managed to top it. Then one of the other men went out too. The three of us played on, and I had winning hand after winning hand, purely from the fall of the flats. I’d never seen anything like it.

  It looked like the slaver was intentionally allowing me to get close to my three hundred, so I would be tempted into bidding everything. Then he would cheat to win. I had no intention of doing that. If I won enough from him, he would have to bid his last bones to stay in the game, and I could win without risking everything.

  I knew at once when he started to cheat, because I was looking through his eyes constantly. First a Five Moonroses became a Five Eagles, then a Three Moundrats became a Three Crowns.

  But then he made a mistake. He changed a Four Sparrowhawks to a Four Dragons, and I knew that one had gone two games earlier, because I’d played it.

  I had no more than two heartbeats to decide what to do. Accusing my captor of cheating was not likely to end
well. But he’d made the game impossible to win anyway, and I’d been a gambler all my life.

  “No,” I said. “The Four Dragons? No. That’s a problem.”

  14: Drakk'alona (Garrett)

  The silence was so deep you could have drowned in it.

  “What exactly are you suggesting?” the slaver said, eyes narrowed. He had gone white about the lips, and one hand moved reflexively towards the knife at his waist. I watched it cautiously, mentally calculating distances to the door, and the probability of survival of a man jumping overboard wearing heavy iron manacles on wrists and ankles. Not good, I decided.

  Different strategy.

  “May we talk? In private?”

  Another long silence. The woman had gone to her cabin in disgust some time before, but the slaver’s two friends were still sitting either side of him. I could see how twitchy they all were. I didn’t move a muscle, my hands flat on the table, trying to look unthreatening. Shakara was sitting in her corner, but she would be no help to me, I knew that. I was going to have to talk my way out of this by my own wits.

  The slaver nodded curtly. A flick of his head, and the two men made for the door. “You too,” he said to Shakara. Her eyes shifted from him to me, then back again, hesitating. For a moment I was afraid she was going to argue about it, but then she got up slowly from her chair and swayed out of the room. The door clicked shut behind her.

  “Now, my friend,” the slaver said, leaning forward so that his face was barely a handspan from mine. “This had better be good.”

  “The Four Dragons on the table there? Not possible. I played the Four Dragons myself in my last hand. It’s sitting somewhere near the bottom of that pile there.”

  “You dare to accuse me of cheating?” His tone was mild, as if he were merely enquiring about my health, but his face reddened with the effort of maintaining control of his temper.

  “Cheating?” I said. “I don’t call it cheating. It’s perfectly natural if you have a magical ability.”

  That surprised him. He sat back in his chair, eyeing me thoughtfully. “Magic? Explain.”