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  SHIP OF DRAGONS

  QUEST OF THE NINE ISLES, BOOK THREE

  C. Greenwood

  Copyright © 2017 C. Greenwood

  Edited by Victory Editing

  Formatted by Polgarus Studios

  Cover art by Michael Gauss

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Excepting brief review quotes, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the express written permission of the copyright holder. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, real events, locations, or organizations is purely coincidental.

  SHIP OF DRAGONS

  QUEST OF THE NINE ISLES, BOOK THREE

  In my dreams I see it all again. The Sheltering Stone failing. My people dying. The Ninth Isle being sucked down into the sea. Ever since the day I inadvertently doomed my home island it has fallen to me, the last of the dragonkind, to protect the legacy of my fierce race. With my bonded dragon, I recently set out on a desperate quest to find a magical mountain of legend—a hidden place that may not even exist. But my magic powers have since been weakened and my dragon has been stolen away by Gold Ship Voyagers. The only one who could have pointed the way to the mountain, a mysteriously gifted mapmaker, is now dead. My one hope is to rescue the mapmaker’s young apprentice, a boy with the powers to finish what his master began, from the clutches of the Gold Ship Voyagers.

  More than cursed seas and bloodthirsty pirates stand in my way. The dark forces of an ancient and vengeful being are set against me. Will my companion, Basil, and I survive long enough to reclaim what is ours? Or will the battle that lies ahead be our last?

  * * *

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  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  As our ship drifted deeper into the gray fog, a distant sound fell upon my ears—the roar of crashing waves. I looked out over the surrounding choppy waters but could make out nothing through the mist.

  “I think we must be near the shore,” I shouted to Basil over the wail of the wind. “I hear the sea crashing on the beach.”

  “That’s not shore,” Basil argued, his face strangely pale.

  “What do you mean? What else could it be?”

  Instead of answering, he commanded, “You act as lookout while I take the helm.”

  “Lookout for what?” I protested, but he only hurried away with no explanation.

  I peered ahead into the swirling clouds of gray. The angry sounds of dashing waves grew suddenly louder and nearer.

  Then I saw it, a dark, jagged shape jutting up from the water. It was a rock, one large enough to pierce a hole in the hull of any ship that ran up against it.

  “Rock ahead!” I shouted to Basil.

  “I see it,” he called, steering our craft around so that we passed wide of the obstruction.

  For an instant I felt relief. Then I spotted more of the dark, hulking shapes protruding out of the fog. With a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized we were surrounded by those rocks. It was going to be a near thing to steer clear of all of them. To make matters worse, the sea was growing rougher by the moment, the powerful waves thrusting us toward danger.

  I called out the positions of the rocks as quickly as I saw them, and Basil navigated between and around. But I knew there could be an invisible reef just beneath the surface, capable of ripping the bottom out of our ship if we ran over it.

  I clambered clumsily up the single mast of our vessel and clung to the arm of the lowest sail, where I had a better vantage point. From there I could see over the first layer of fog to what lay beyond the gray mist. My heart froze at what stood directly in our path. It was a seemingly endless stretch of deadly shoals, jagged rocks thrusting up into the air or shallowly submerged below the water. And among the rocks was a graveyard of ships. Magnificent three-masted galleons and smaller vessels little more than fishing craft, all alike had been transformed to wreckage. Many rotting ship skeletons were stuck where they had smashed upon the rocks. Others had sunk partially below the waves, only the tops of their leaning masts breaking the surface.

  Beyond that awful scene was a looming black shadow, the shape of a massive mountain jutting up from the sea. Cold fear gripped my spine as I gazed upon the heap of barren rocks.

  “What do you see?” Basil called up to me.

  Before I could answer, there came a mighty rumbling sound accompanied by the force of impact. Our ship had rammed into a shoal. I was nearly knocked from my perch, catching the yardarm with one hand at the last moment and dangling precariously above deck.

  Hanging there, I was battered by wind and ocean spray. I caught blurry glimpses of Basil wrestling with the helm while the rough waves leaped all around. The sea was roiling as angrily as it had on the day it swallowed the Ninth Isle. A strong gale blasted at our sails, unsnagging us from the shoal we were caught on. Then the world spun wildly as the wind and the sea swirled our craft like a bit of bobbing driftwood caught in a storm.

  We bounced from rock to rock, the strength of the impacts vibrating through the wooden yardarm I clung to. How long could we continue crashing into every obstacle before our ship broke apart?

  Now it loomed up before us, the dark, barren mountain, larger and more threatening than any of the other rocks we had been dashed against. I knew this was the obstacle that would break us to pieces. But I was helpless to stop it. The turbulent sea was like a living thing, seething and foaming with the fury inside the mountain. It gripped us now and rushed us directly at the towering heap of black rocks. Basil must have tried to turn us aside, because the ship veered partway so our prow was no longer pointing at the mountain.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  We smashed sideways against the mountain with a force like a hammer’s blow.

  * * *

  “What are you doing? We should get going.”

  Basil noisily dumped an armload of supplies on top of a table nearby.

  I started, my cousin’s sudden arrival interrupting my thoughts. I had been gazing out the window across the surrounding marshland. It wasn’t the swamp and its gloomy moss-covered trees that I was seeing. I had been caught up in a daydream, entangled in a nightmarish memory of events from a few days ago.

  I shoved aside those thoughts now. Basil was right. We had survived our wreck upon the dark mountain, thanks to the use of a magic minute glass. But this was not the time to dwell on how we had gotten to this place.

  We stood in the mapmaker’s dilapidated shack on the edge of the swamp, surrounded by scattered possessions and broken furniture. Everywhere was the damage the pirates had wrought on the place and, more recently, the destruction of the Gold Ship Voyagers. We had buried the white-haired little mapmaker not an hour ago. His blood still stained the floorboards at our feet.

  I returned my attention to what I had been doing, gathering up the materials and green-stoppered vials that had been the tools of the mapmaker’s trade. He would no longer have use for them
, but we might.

  “What’s all that?” I asked Basil, glancing over at the pile of items he had dumped onto the newly righted table.

  “With any luck, enough food and provisions to keep us alive for weeks,” he said.

  “More like months,” I observed, raising an eyebrow at the heap of goods as he began bundling them into a pack, presumably to carry on his back.

  Basil shrugged. “If that’s how long it takes you to finish this mad quest,” he said.

  I pretended not to notice his use of the word “you” instead of “we.” Clearly he was still resisting the idea of accompanying me to my mission’s end. He had hoped to dispense with his responsibility to my cause by delivering me to the mapmaker. Now that that had failed, he obviously wasn’t happy to find himself still tied to me. I suspected it wouldn’t be long before he would try again to back out of his promise to help.

  I had found a big sheet of oilcloth in a trunk full of the mapmaker’s belongings. Now I used it to bundle up his tools, carefully rolling parchments, leather, and bottles of octopus ink inside the protective skin. With any luck, it should keep them safe and dry even if we had to swim for the ship we had left anchored offshore back at the cove. While I was at it, I packed in an old compass I found among the mapmaker’s things, along with the tattered remains of a couple of his maps that might help us navigate the surrounding seas. Lastly, I rolled up the most precious map of all, the unfinished one we had specially commissioned from the mapmaker. It wouldn’t do us much good in its incomplete state, but someday…

  “Do you hear that?” Basil asked just as I was finishing.

  “Hear what?” I asked, fastening the precious bundle to my back.

  But then my ears picked it up, the sound of a commotion outside. I heard faraway raised voices and the noise of many feet pounding the ground.

  I ran through the back door onto the porch and looked out through the surrounding trees. In the distance I could see a mob of raggedly dressed people rushing this way. They were shouting in an unfamiliar language and brandishing clubs and other crude weapons.

  “Basil, get out here,” I called urgently.

  Before the words left my mouth, he was already at my side. “What’s happening?” he asked. “Aren’t those the villagers we met last time we were here?”

  He was right. The dozens of angry-looking people hurrying toward us did look familiar. We had encountered them on first visiting these shores some days ago. Only then they had been peaceful. One of them even acted as our guide, showing us partway to the mapmaker’s house. But now they suddenly seemed less friendly.

  The mob caught sight of us leaning against the porch rail. Their threatening noises rose to a roar, and they sped up their pace, running straight at us.

  Basil backed away from the rail. “Why are they so angry?” he asked.

  “More importantly, why is their anger directed at us?” I returned. “Maybe they hold us responsible for the pirates coming to their village.”

  It made sense. The last time we were here, a horde of greedy pirates had descended on these shores in pursuit of us. They had threatened the local villagers to get what they wanted. Worse, a landing party of Gold Ship Voyagers had come in their wake, torturing and murdering the inhabitants of the nearby cove. Perhaps the locals resented our bringing those violent enemies of ours to their land?

  Whatever it was that spurred their fury, they were coming on quickly now. In a matter of minutes they would be upon us.

  “We should get out of here,” I realized.

  I glanced down at my hand. It still glowed with its faintly reddish light. Its magic had been useless ever since the pirates had clapped a nathamite shackle around my wrist. I wore it still, the mysterious metal somehow blocking out most of my magical abilities. In this condition, I couldn’t use my magic hand to form a force shield for self-defense. And even if I had been willing to use my spear to defend myself against the justifiable wrath of the locals, I had lost that weapon long ago. There was only one option open to us.

  “We need to run,” I told Basil.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” he said.

  My cousin was already rushing through the door and back into the house. I followed close on his heels. Inside, we paused just long enough for Basil to snatch his three-cornered hat off the table and to snag his pack of provisions. I grabbed the dirty canvas bag where I had stowed the mapmaking tools. Then we bolted out the front of the house.

  There was no need to discuss our route. The enraged mob rushing overland left only one path open to us. We hurried along the rickety stairs leading down the side of the bank on which the house stood. When we reached the dock at the bottom, the muddy swamp waters spread out before us.

  Luckily, the little boat we had brought with us last time we were here still stood tied to the dock. It was half underwater, due to a leak in the bottom. But we were in no position to be particular. Basil and I waded hip deep into the murky waters, and working together, we turned the boat over, emptying the water. Then we tossed in our belongings and clambered aboard.

  Basil took up the oars, and I grabbed an extra stick I could use like a barge pole in the places where the swamp was shallow enough. We shoved off from the dock just as our pursuers came into view. I saw them looking down on us from the top of the bank.

  They hurled heavy rocks and sharp sticks at us while we navigated our way through the reeds and out of their reach. As I sat opposite Basil with foul-smelling swamp water running off both of us, I was grateful for our narrow escape. But I also knew it was only a temporary reprieve. Our progress through these waters would be slow, and there were probably many places where the villagers could intercept us if they chose to run along the banks and give chase.

  I swatted away the insects buzzing around my face and applied my full strength to poling us through the shallows. Something told me nothing good lay ahead.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It took us an hour of struggling through the swamp before we finally abandoned our boat along a muddy shore and took to our feet again. We followed a circuitous route that would lead us wide of the local village. I was half guessing the way as I led us through the tall, itchy weeds and under the ominous shadows of the moss-draped trees. I had a general sense of which direction would lead to the sea but could only guess whether we would come out on the sandy beach of the skull-shaped cove near where our ship was anchored.

  Twilight was coming on now. The constant heat of the marshlands was letting up a little, but the buzzing biting insects were out in full force. Worse, more than once I caught sight of glowing pairs of eyes peering out at us from beneath the vegetation. I tried not to think of the giant swamp lizards and other sharp-toothed creatures that might lurk in these unfamiliar parts, ready to tear us to pieces.

  We seemed to be making good time. But just as the trees thinned and I imagined I could smell the scent of the sea on the breeze, I realized we were no longer alone.

  “They’ve found us again,” Basil said, looking behind us.

  I didn’t need to turn around. I had already detected the distant sounds of our pursuers crashing through the underbrush. I tried to pick up my pace, but my breath was already ragged with the effort of stumbling across this wild terrain. The marshlands were overgrown, and deep puddles and pits of sucking mud dotted the ground, slowing our progress.

  Luckily, the vegetation was thinning. Even as the sounds of pursuit grew closer behind us, I could see that the land up ahead was growing firm and rocky. That was bad news because it suggested we weren’t about to come out on the beach as I had hoped. But at least it meant no more bogs to struggle through.

  We burst out of the cover of the last trees and clambered up a rocky slope. Basil, now ahead of me, came to a sudden stop. I nearly ran into his back.

  “Why are you—” I began.

  But my words cut off abruptly as it became obvious why he had stopped. We stood on the precipice of a steep cliff jutting out over the sea. The tossing wav
es of the ocean broke upon a scattering of rocks far below. Through the gloom of evening I could just make out our ship in the distance, anchored off the skull-shaped cove. We were near the right spot. We had just come out too high.

  “What now?” Basil asked, looking over his shoulder.

  There was no time to hesitate. Our pursuers would be upon us any minute. My hands checked that the precious bundle of mapmaking tools I carried was secure across my back, even while my eyes scanned the dark waters below, looking for a stretch that would see me clear of the rocks. I tried not to think about the hidden obstacles that might be lurking just below the surface.

  Basil read my mind.

  “You’re not serious? You’re really going to jump?”

  My gaze measured the distance, even as my feet took me to the very tip of the precipice. I forced a strained grin. “Since when do you want to stand your ground?” I asked.

  “Since the alternative is a hundred-foot drop.”

  I didn’t argue. “You do what you think best,” I said. “But I’d rather take my chances with the sea than with an angry mob.”

  I took a last quick breath, ignoring the nervous quaking in my stomach, and jumped.

  As I pushed off from the cliff, I had a brief sensation of flying, of soaring weightlessly through the air. Was this what it would have been like if I hadn’t been dewinged as a youngling? To have this feeling of freedom and space? The pleasant sensation was fleeting. All of a sudden, gravity made itself known and I was no longer floating but sinking, dropping like a heavy stone, diving straight down toward the hungry waves below. I had a blurry impression of gray water and jagged rocks spiking up all around.

  Then the sea rose up to meet me, and I plunged feet first into the icy waters. As the force of the drop propelled me downward, I expected every second to meet resistance, to feel myself slamming into one of the rocks I had glimpsed from above. Instead, I was embraced by the sea, the water softening my landing. I opened my eyes, ignoring the sting of the saltwater. I could see nothing in the dark depths but a stream of bubbles that was the air escaping my lungs. I struck out, kicking and paddling in the direction I instinctively knew was up. It seemed a long time before my head broke the surface.