by B. V. Larson
“I meant the sea,” she said. “That is my home.”
“You will be reunited with your mother soon enough. She will comfort you.”
“I do not like it there. It is too dry, and mother is unpleasant.”
Therian gestured, and one of the sand golems clamped Humusi’s maw shut. Gruum and Bolo eyed one another, then walked forward slowly. It was impossible to approach such a formidable group of monsters, both conjured and hatched, without terror.
“The neck,” said Therian. He coughed, then continued. “I don’t think I have the strength left to saw it through. You must help me.”
The men looked at one another with wide eyes. Neither of them moved.
“What’s wrong with you?” shouted Therian, suddenly displeased. “You gave up seven of your crewmen’s lives, Bolo, to help me slay this foul being. She has sunk a thousand ships, by her own admission. Do you love her so? Or do you lack the courage to slay a helpless monster?”
For Gruum, it was neither of those things that held him back. It was the horror of the task. He’d never been a whaler. He’d never hunted game bigger than a deer or a forest boar. Somehow, sawing at the neck of a massive, ancient creature that was capable of speech disgusted him. But he could see that it must be done. He looked to Bolo and caught the other’s eye.
“It must be,” said Bolo.
It took a long time. Occasionally, the monster lurched and heaved. They bled her until the sands were caked for a dozen yards in every direction, but she did not die. In the end, when they managed to sever the spine by hammering their swords into the top of the neck, she gurgled and stared out toward her beloved sea in death.
Therian stood upon that head, and when the moment came, he did speak his words. Dragon Speech rent the air. Out over ocean, the sun was setting with orange-pink beauty. A line of sea birds flew away from them, leaving the island.
The life of Humusi thus ended, and she was sent home to her mother’s domain from whence she’d come. The Dragon-Child had been returned home.
Therian lowered his arms and stood with head bowed, weary and spent. The seven sand golems instantly froze in place. Driftwood weapons dropped from crumbling hands. Legs cracked and split, spilling into dry, shifting piles. Vague faces melted and tore apart, disintegrating into a million particles of fine grit.
The beach, and the entire island, fell quiet again. Only the wind sighing over the sands and the crash of the waves could be heard. Gruum walked away from the battleground, looking back over his shoulder.
The golems were conical piles of sand with debris trapped inside. The dead Dragon-Child was a wet hillock of dark, rubbery flesh. The sailors had been buried during the titanic struggles. Only one was in evidence, his headscarf fluttering in the sea breezes. By the size of the man’s belly, Gruum figured it was the coxswain.
Gruum stopped and stood wearily for a moment. Then he reversed course. He took the time to bury those that had given their all to defeat the monster. He hoped they would sleep easily with the Dragons, if only for this single night.
But he had little hope for them.
-10-
The three men journeyed with little speech back to the Innsmouth. The tide had freed her, and she floated at anchor. The wind spirits were gone, but there was enough of mundane wind to allow them to get underway.
Too tired to sail that day, they loaded what supplies they could aboard the ship and settled upon the decks to rest. By unspoken agreement Therian and Gruum slept in the stern, while Bolo slept upon the prow.
It was sometime after midnight that a strange calm descended over the ship. Gruum thought to hear a stealthy scraping, and forced himself awake. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and hair for a time. Nothing came to his ears, however, and he rolled upon his side.
Then it came again. A single, dragging sound, like that of a stick crossing a deck board. Gruum reached for his dagger as a shape loomed over him.
“Bolo? Have you not yet been sated with blood?” demanded Gruum.
The other made no reply. He came forward with an odd, shuffling gait. There was something in his hand. A scrap of cloth that fluttered and danced in the night air. Gruum reached to a lantern that they had left to burn all night. It had been covered, and Gruum slid away that cover, burning his fingers on the hot metal.
He stood up and walked down to meet Bolo on the main decks. This would be the last time they crossed swords.
Gruum halted when he reached the main deck, however. The figure was man-shaped, but it was most definitely not Bolo. He stepped forward, lifting the lantern and squinting in the night.
The figure that stood watching his approach did not move. As Gruum’s view of it improved, he wished he had stayed on the stern deck above. A rickety structure of bone and tattered flesh, the dead man swayed as the ship rolled gently underneath it. The skull had only scraps of hair still attached. One eye slewed about, lidless and feral. The other socket was empty of flesh, being full of twisting sea worms instead.
“Karn,” said Gruum in recognition. He swallowed hard. “So, you finally caught up with us.”
The other lifted the fluttering thing in its hand, as if it were an offering. It placed it on the deck, and then shambled away.
“Cut it down, Gruum,” said Therian’s voice from behind him.
Gruum’s lips squirmed in disgust, but he shook his head. Karn jumped overboard and splashed back into the sea.
When the dead thing had gone, Therian came down to examine the cloth it had left behind. “What’s the significance of this?”
Gruum took a deep breath. “It is part of a green scarf.”
“I can see that. It is burned. What does this mean?”
Gruum looked at his lord squarely. “The cabin boy wore a green scarf, if you care to remember.”
Frowning, Therian nodded. He walked to the prow of the ship. Bolo lay there, apparently still sleeping.
“His throat has been cut in the night,” said Therian.
“I know.”
“Did you do it?”
“No. It was not I.”
Therian walked back and nodded in understanding. “It is your belief, then, that Karn will not follow us further?”
“It is my hope,” said Gruum.
“Mine as well. We have many more ports to sail to before our quest is done. I hope we will not see Karn again on our journeys.”
Gruum sat on the deck after that, listening to the sea and the groaning of the Innsmouth’s timbers. He waited for the bright light of morning.
Sleep was unthinkable.
End of Hyborean Dragons, Book #2
BONUS Excerpt:
Of Shadows and Dragons
(Hyborean Dragons #3)
by
B. V. Larson
-1-
Gruum and Therian rode upon the dilapidated decks of the Innsmouth. She was a two-masted brig whose deck had seen more than its fair share of blood. The pair of them had traveled the seas for months, meeting with wonders, terrors and sadness in equal measures.
As the skies darkened and the weather turned cooler, Gruum thought they might return to Corium. But instead, his master headed out into the open sea without stating his purpose. There they became becalmed, and for a full week, no breath of air stirred their sails. The days were long—and the nights even longer. Each morning, when Gruum arose and dared glance sidelong at Therian, he saw his master had become yet grimmer of aspect.
Therian’s lips grew cracked, but he would take no food or drink. His eyes seemed to expand in size, color and intensity, but he would not sleep. He stared upon Gruum when addressed, but he did not respond. Gruum became increasingly concerned, knowing his master had withdrawn from the world of sunlight and sparkling waves.
During the gray days Therian stayed in the darkest recesses of the ship’s stern hold. At night he came out and walked the decks while Gruum tried to sleep below. Gruum found sleep next to impossible. The boards creaked all night under his master’s pacing tread. Gruum’s h
eart pounded in rhythm to each of his master’s countless footsteps. When the steps paused, Gruum’s heartbeat paused with them, wondering what his master might be doing in the dark above. What strange thoughts must be twisting in the King’s mind?
In the middle of the eighth night, Gruum was unable to find sleep at all. Growing restless, he ventured to the deck. The ship had felt no breath of wind for days. No moon hung above them. Only cold stars gazed down upon the two men, who stood on the deck of the dead-seeming Innsmouth. In the starlight, Gruum could make out his master’s tall shadow.
“Milord?” Gruum whispered. “How is it you have not weakened? How is it you still walk when you do not eat, rest or—or perform sorceries?”
Gruum had asked the King a hundred questions over the last week, but all had been ignored. Up until that moment, however, he had never dared inquire as to the source of Therian’s continued strength. It was the question he had thought best left unspoken. Gruum had suspected that the answer, when he learned the truth of it, would fill him with horror.
The creaking upon the deck stopped. The night’s relentless pacing had come to an abrupt end.
Gruum retreated as Therian turned and approached him. Gruum’s father had often said he’d rather a dead son than a grown fool, and the old man had endeavored to beat what he called a ‘dose of sense’ into his boy. Gruum had developed an acute sense of self-preservation as a result. His feet moved him to the ship’s rail. He was very aware that the only being aboard the Innsmouth his master might feed upon was Gruum himself. He was determined to throw himself into the placid night seas rather than become the plaything of the Dragons this eve.
“You’ve asked the question,” rasped Therian, standing a few paces away.
Gruum tensed, with one leg lifted and the boot planted upon the ship’s railing. He calculated that if Therian lunged at him, he should still have the time to make it over the side. He prayed the Hyborean wouldn’t dive into the deeps after him and skewer him anyway. Gruum doubted he could swim faster than his master when the sorcerer was possessed by bloodlust. He wondered at the nature of his death, should it be fated to come now. Would the Dragons recognize their own speech if Therian spoke his foul spells underwater? Gruum wondered if he could drown himself fast enough to escape. And would he keep his soul, if he did?
“You’ve asked the question,” Therian repeated. “The question I’ve been awaiting.”
“Tell me the answer then, master—if it is your wish to do so.”
In the starlight Gruum could not see Therian’s burning eyes, but he felt them upon him. He waited for his master to either lunge or speak further. While he waited, he stared in the darkness and witnessed imagined events. In his mind, he saw bubbles swirling in seawater with clouds of his blood blossoming amongst them. Words meant to be spoken by a Dragon’s throat rose up, locked in colorful globes of breath. Each bubble shone silver, crimson or lime with eldritch light.
“Slaying the Dragon-Child Humusi has changed me,” Therian said, speaking at last. “The passage of such a soul was not like that of others I’ve consumed. Rather than a single powerful draught, it was a full meal. The strength of such a creature has sustained me much longer than might the mortal soul of a dockhand.”
“Why then do we sit here? Can you not summon the wind spirits with your new strength to bear us on our way?”
“Why would I do that?” Therian asked. “This is exactly where I wish to be.”
“But we are nowhere, master. This place can’t be found on any known map. I do not know the name of this sea, nor even if it has a name. There is no land in sight in any direction by daylight. The stars are wrong here as well, and do nothing to guide me.”
“Yes, exactly. You describe the place I have long sought.”
“Why, milord?” Gruum asked.
“I wait to be summoned.”
“Summoned? By whom?”
“I await her. She who will call me to her dreams.”
Gruum paused, beginning to understand. “You wait for the Dragons?” he asked, whispering the last word lest it be heard by distant ears. The boot he had placed upon the railing slid down to the deck again. He realized he was in no immediate danger, but wondered if his next hours of life might prove worse than drifting at the bottom of this nameless sea.
“Like us, they must sleep,” Therian said. “They must dream. Only then can I meet them.”
“You cannot, ah, open a way to their realm?”
“This is not a place of power, and I do not know this part of the world well enough to find such a spot.”
“Perhaps, milord,” Gruum said, trying to hide the hope and pleading in his voice, “we should return to Corium? To the altar beneath the palace?”
Therian made a rustling sound and came a half-pace nearer. Gruum could not see, but thought he had thrown back his cloak. Was the King about to draw Seeker and Succor? Had this entire discussion been a ruse to lull him? Gruum’s left boot again found its way back to the top of the railing. He doubted he would have time to dive over the side, but knew he would attempt the leap anyway.
Therian froze in the attitude of one who listens intently. Gruum opened his mouth to speak, but Therian shushed him. For long minutes the two men listened to the sounds of the night. Gruum heard the slapping of water against the ship’s hull. He heard the timbers creak, rubbing against one another as the Innsmouth rolled gently upon the endless sea.
Gruum squinted suddenly. Was there a new sound buried beneath the rest? It was a sighing sound, which ruffled the mainsail. Could that be a breeze? Gruum’s heart leapt at the thought.
“Milord?” he said.
Therian lifted a single, black-gloved finger to shush him again. The breeze grew with a gentleness that was almost undetectable. Gruum mounted the steps and grabbed hold of the helm, which they had lashed down and which had set them upon this course to nowhere. He could not stop from speaking, such was his excitement. “The wind had returned! What course should I set?” Gruum asked in a whisper.
“There is no need.”
“But the breeze, milord,” Gruum hissed. “We would do well to catch it!”
“That is no breeze, faithful Gruum. It is the exhalation of the Dragon. She breathes in long, slow puffs when resting. Soon, she will fall asleep—and then we must slumber with her.”
Gruum blinked. Often, when traveling with Therian, the prospects of madness had been presented. He had all but grown accustomed to it. He had never discovered the true source of the madness, however. Was it his King, or the universe itself?
“What should I do then?” Gruum asked.
“Prepare us both a cup of strong drink. We will sleep now.”
Gruum went below and did as Therian bid. There, he dared to light a tiny lantern. His master had forbidden the use of any such light upon the decks at night. But down here, in order to pour drinks with his shaking hands, Gruum found a small flame was necessary. He caught sight of himself in a tiny, broken mirror as he worked. He wondered briefly which one of the dead pirates who’d previously owned this vessel had hung the mirror there. He looked at his distorted reflection and saw big, haunted eyes, a dark growth of bristling whiskers and a mouth twisted with worry.
Gruum smashed the mirror with his fist. He grabbed up two leather cups which sloshed with rum as he carried them up to the decks.
Sleep overcame him very swiftly. He would not have believed it possible, but the moment he lay down, darkness glided into his mind like a thief with whispering feet. Perhaps it was the strong drink, or the release of his pent-up worries—or even the breath of the Dragon which Therian insisted now surrounded the ship. He knew not and cared not. He fell asleep on the rough decking beside his lord.
END Excerpt
To purchase the entirety of the third book in the series, search for Of Shadows and Dragons on your Ebook Seller's website, or go to BVLarson.com
More Books by B. V. Larson
HYBOREAN DRAGONS SERIES
To Dream with t
he Dragons
The Dragon-Child
Of Shadows and Dragons
The Swords of Corium
The Sorcerer’s Bane
The Dragon Wicked
HAVEN SERIES
Amber Magic
Sky Magic
Shadow Magic
Dragon Magic
Blood Magic
OTHER BOOKS
Swarm
Extinction
Mech
Mech 2
Shifting
Velocity
Visit www.BVLarson.com for more information.
Table of Contents
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BONUS Excerpt: