Ship of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 3) Read online

  The hurricane grew in my mind as I drew on more and more power. Wonder filled me at the realization of how much magic I now had access to. I had the dizzying sense of flying forward at breathtaking speed, of feeling the sea spray in my face. Or maybe it was the rain of a raging storm that pounded at me, soaking my clothes. Basil’s protesting voice was drowned out now. The only thing I could hear was the screaming of the wind and the sounds of the makeshift sail trying not to be torn apart by the gale.

  I lost all sense of time, all my energy focused on feeding the tempest I had created. Hardly knowing how I did it, I fed more strength into the storm until it seemed the wild sea must break us apart. I knew vaguely that I was using a skill similar to that I had once used to create invisible force shields to protect myself. Only now it was wind and rain I was shaping and pushing, and the effects were magnified a thousand times over.

  Eventually, inevitably, the hurricane began to spin out of control. Unable to keep hold of the storm, I lost my grip. Returning to the reality around me, I opened my eyes, only to be blinded by the driving rain. I couldn’t see Basil or anything else in the dark cloud that surrounded us. I shouted at my cousin to ask if he was still with me, but the wind ripped the words from my mouth and carried them away.

  The boat pitched beneath me, and I fell forward, striking my head on something solid. All became cold and darkness.

  * * *

  I awoke in the dreamworld, the place of cracked columns and overgrown tiles surrounded by distant green hills. It was nighttime, as it always seemed to be in this place. I didn’t hesitate over the thousands of gossamer threads crisscrossing the space, the pulsing strings that represented the energy of all the lives nearest me. For once, I knew exactly which life I wanted to enter. I crossed the echoing tiles and approached the one thread that called to me strongest, a thread that glowed pale among a web of other similar lines.

  I reached out and brushed the life thread carefully. Instantly the floor shifted beneath my feet, and I felt myself being sucked away from this place and traveling across the distance to somewhere else.

  * * *

  I was running through shallow waves, pushing a dinghy off from a shale-covered shore and into the water. Other pirates splashed alongside me, helping to push the boat safely out to sea. As soon as we were out of the shallows all of us scrambled over the side and took up the oars.

  I bent over the oar in front of me, letting the cold water dripping off my clothes pool around me. I didn’t take off my loose-fitting coat even though it was soggy. I was seldom seen by my shipmates without the oversized coat and the hat with its floppy brim shadowing my face. In all my time among Captain Ulysses’s crew, nobody had ever figured out that their scrawny cabin boy was actually a girl. I had no intention of drawing their attention to that fact anytime soon.

  I had already brought enough notice to myself with my risky stunt the other day. Smuggling a small amount of gunpowder off the ship, slipping away from the captain’s company, and setting off the explosion had been tricky enough. Concocting a weak story to persuade my companions the explosion had been accidental had taken even more effort. Everyone seemed to have bought my story in the end. I only hoped it had been worth my trouble.

  I gathered Basil and the strange blue-haired girl had made good use of the diversion I had created and had taken the chance to flee. I just hoped my foolish brother could figure out how to survive out there in the hills of the wild Bleak Coast. Arranging his escape would be a pointless gesture if he ultimately squandered this chance the same way he had wasted the last escape I had arranged. Whatever had possessed him to fall back into the hands of the pirates in the first place I didn’t know. I suspected the blue-haired girl with the magic had pulled him into some scheme or other. He was never very clever at looking out for himself.

  I pushed the thought from my mind. Basil and the girl were on their own now. I had done all I could. What concerned me more was my captain. I risked a look toward the prow, where I could see the straight, blue-clad back of Captain Ulysses. He had come out of his abandoned city a broken man with a lost look to him. Whatever had happened while I was separated from the others, I had an idea it wasn’t what he had hoped for—and not only because of the escape of the prisoners. Some part of his secret plan must have gone terribly wrong.

  He appeared to have regained his energy now, as we paddled out toward the hulking shape of the Sea-Vulture anchored in the distance. But I had seen the look on his face as we were leaving the rocky shores of the Bleak Coast. His expression had hardened into one of bitterness. I didn’t know what so angered him, only that I was looking at a man who had a thirst for revenge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On waking, it took a moment for my mind to return to my own body. When I felt the rolling motion of the sea beneath the boat, I thought I was still experiencing sensations through Basil’s sister Nyssa. But gradually I came back to myself.

  Cold rain and sleet fell on me, stinging my face. I squinted against the drops of water and ice and made out the prow of our little canoe cutting through the choppy waves ahead.

  So we were still on the water and we had survived the storm. I sat up, fighting the dizziness the motion caused, and looked around. There were still dark clouds overhead, and icy rain continued to pelt down on our craft. But the worst of the storm was over. The howling winds and angry waves had passed.

  “You’re awake then.”

  I turned around and found Basil seated behind me, clear relief written all over his face.

  He raised his voice over the rain. “I was beginning to think you would be out for days again, like the last time.”

  I knew he was referring to when my use of the magic minute glass had robbed me of consciousness for several days. I wondered why I had suffered lesser effects this time.

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “An hour. Maybe two,” he answered. “But you weren’t yourself for a long time before that. I kept calling to you, but you never answered, just stood up in the middle of the boat like a lunatic, as if there weren’t a tempest raging all around.”

  Vaguely I remembered how I had lost all sense of the passage of time as I had commanded the weather. I was surprised to realize how long I had stayed in the grip of that trancelike state. I wondered how far we had come and if the magic storm had brought us any closer to catching up to our quarry or if it had just driven us off course. It was hard to guess with the freezing rain making it impossible to see very far into the distance. I wasn’t even sure what time of day it was.

  “Did we take any damage?”

  Even as I asked it, I realized the obvious. We were missing our sail.

  “It snapped off during the storm,” Basil explained.

  I had no memory of that. All my awareness had been wrapped up inside me at the time. I told myself now that the loss of our flimsy sail wasn’t a disaster. Another magic storm could still push us farther on our way, closer to catching the fleet of the Gold Ship Voyagers.

  But when I steeled myself for a second effort and reached inside to summon another tempest, I was startled to find nothing there.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said, confused.

  My magic was simply gone as if it had never been. Panic rising, I scrabbled after the power, trying to find the invisible thing that gave me more strength than I could ever possess on my own. It was no use. The magic was gone. It was as if I had never touched the Sheltering Stone, never been given a gift by the good keeper. I looked to my hand, which had glowed green ever since my encounter with the keeper in the rain. It glowed no more. It was as ordinary as any other hand.

  Dismayed, I realized the truth. The incredible amount of power I had summoned to create the storm must have burned my magic out, at least temporarily. Maybe it would return and maybe it wouldn’t. It was a scary thing, not knowing. The very ability I had once found so foreign now seemed like a natural part of me, something I felt crippled without. I had possessed the magic again for such
a short while after escaping my nathamite shackle and Captain Ulysses’s machine. It seemed cruel to be robbed of it again so soon.

  But there was one good thing at least. I didn’t feel weakened by the experience of so much power passing through me. When I had used the minute glass and again when I had been forced to channel magic through the nathamite machine, I had been physically drained by the experience. Strangely, I felt no such effect this time. Maybe that had been part of the keeper’s gift, the ability to handle large amounts of magic without significantly weakening myself.

  I realized Basil was trying to tell me something.

  “What is it?” I asked, snapping out of my thoughts.

  “The storm,” he said. “It’s gone.”

  He was right. The freezing rain had stopped falling. The rough waves were calming. Overhead, the clouds were disbursing enough to reveal a faint glow of pinkish daylight in the distance. It was sunset.

  As I gazed at that sunset, I caught a far-off glimpse of something that made me catch my breath. The faint outline of golden-sailed ships in the distance.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  My magic storm had done it. Somehow either the magic or the sea had brought us exactly where we needed to be. I couldn’t comprehend how it had happened, but I was determined not to lose the opportunity fate had given us.

  “We have to keep up with them,” I told Basil, pointing out the string of distant ships.

  He didn’t argue. Maybe he had already resigned himself to the recklessness of our mission. He had to know something of what I had in mind when we set out from the Bleak Coast. The fact that he had chosen to sail with me anyway, against what had to have been all the inward protests of his natural instincts, made me grateful.

  “There’s something you should know,” I told him as we paddled after the ships, careful to keep enough distance they wouldn’t notice us. “Nyssa is safe. If you were worried about her, you don’t have to be.”

  “How can you know that?” he asked.

  “I saw it in a dream,” I explained. “I saw that the pirates didn’t figure out her betrayal.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “I’m glad to know it. Not,” he hastened to add, “that I was ever worried.”

  “Of course not,” I said. I knew Basil’s antagonistic relationship with his sister would never allow him to admit he had been afraid for her.

  I didn’t add that my brief look through Nyssa’s eyes had revealed that she was worried about what her captain was planning. I remembered her feeling that Ulysses was coming away from the Bleak Coast with a heart full of bitterness and a thirst for revenge. Revenge against whom, I wondered. Did he regret letting Basil and me escape?

  Basil cut into my thoughts. “What now?” he asked, nodding toward the ships ahead.

  I set aside my worry over the pirates. They were far behind us, a problem for another day.

  “Now we follow the Voyagers at a distance and wait for dark,” I told my cousin.

  We didn’t have long to wait for nightfall. Soon the sun had finished disappearing beyond the horizon. Only the moon and stars peered down on us, casting their glittering reflections across the dancing waves. I wished for the cover of clouds to blot out the moonlight. I wished for the storm to return and mask our approach. But I had no ability to summon either of those things anymore. So we relied on nothing but our own stealth, quietly dipping our oars in the water as we increased our speed to gain on the fleet of ships. I only hoped the darkness would be enough to cloak us from the eyes of any lookouts they had on board.

  My focus was on the largest ship in the fleet, the one lagging behind the others. I knew that ship. It was the one Skybreaker was on. If I had any doubts, they were erased as we drew nearer and I sensed the faint touch of the dragon’s presence. Our bond was a separate thing from my magic. Even with the power cut off from me, I could still feel Skybreaker’s nearness. Could he feel me as well?

  Hope rising, I reached out across the distance and tried to let the mad dragon know I was close by, that I was coming for him. What I could touch of his mind seemed dull, muffled, possibly by the low doses of poison his captors had used to keep him quiet. But I felt the shift in his mood that signaled his sudden awareness of my approach. I had made contact.

  “He knows we’re coming,” I muttered. “Hold on, Skybreaker. We’ll rescue you.”

  I had an inspiration then.

  As our light canoe skipped over the dark waves, approaching ever nearer to our target, I fed my thoughts to the mad dragon, tried to share the idea with him through mental images. I had never been good at this. It was hard to know if he understood what I wanted. I sensed confusion, then excitement as Skybreaker fought to break free of the drugged haze that clouded his mind.

  A loud cry, like the roar of a lion mingled with the scream of an eagle, rose up from the ship and echoed across the waters.

  “Is that what I think is it?” Basil asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Skybreaker is ready to fight.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t see what was going on aboard the great ship as our little canoe fell silently beneath its shadow. But it wasn’t hard to guess. We could hear the outraged screams of the dragon and the shouts and pounding feet of many crew members doubtless struggling to subdue him. We couldn’t have asked for a better diversion.

  Basil readied the chain and small anchor we had carried away with us from the uninhabited hut. Too light for use on the open sea, the anchor now had a purpose. Basil swung it in practice a few times and then threw it over the side of the tall ship we had drawn up against. Its curved edges caught the railing like a climbing hook and held fast. Luckily, there was too much commotion going on aboard the golden-sailed ship for any of its crew to notice the clanging noise.

  “Last chance,” Basil said to me as he shoved the flat, rusty blade he had brought through his belt. “Are you sure you want to do this? Because once we board, there’ll be no escaping any way but on the back of a dragon. If we fail to get Skybreaker free, we’re all doomed.”

  I didn’t hesitate. We had already come too far for turning back.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I took up my trident, semivisible as it reflected the moon, and shoved it through a strap I had fashioned across my back. My hands now free, I took hold of the cold anchor chain disappearing into the shadows above and began my climb.

  It wasn’t easy, clinging to the narrow chain swinging down from the rail overhead. The hard metal cut into my fingers as my weight dangled precariously above the little canoe and the dark ocean waves. I didn’t have to look down to know by the tension on the chain that Basil was already following after me. Not secured in any way, our little boat would already be drifting away. If I fell, I would knock Basil down with me and the both of us would be lost in the sea. All would be over before it had begun.

  But I didn’t fall. Hand over hand, I hauled myself up the chain until, at last, my head was even with the railing of the big ship. As I peered over the side, I saw a scene of confusion.

  Skybreaker, a nightmarish form of writhing shadows, was chained to an upper deck. I looked on as he lashed out with his thick tail to knock aside a Voyager with a spear who had stood poised to stab him. Doubtless the spear contained more of the poison that would weaken the dragon and dull his mind. Other gold-veiled Voyagers rushed to pin down the beast as one great wing broke free of a chain as easily as if it had been a bit of string. If any of the enemy managed to stick the dragon with a poison-tipped weapon, all hope would be lost.

  Taking advantage of the state of chaos, I scrambled over the rail and onto the deck. Seconds later, I heard the thud of Basil landing alongside me. For the moment, our arrival went unnoticed. I knew that small advantage wouldn’t last long.

  We had no sooner clambered on board than a hatch was opened nearby. Through the moonlight, I could make out the scene of a skinny boy being dragged up from the hold below and onto the ship’s deck. Aetios. Voyagers clutched him at either side, pulling him acro
ss the deck and toward the distant form of the struggling dragon. I realized what the enemy intended. They would harm Aetios to enforce their will on the dragon. Seeing the mapmaker’s young apprentice suffering for the dragon’s actions might quiet Skybreaker and make him give up his fight. I couldn’t let that happen.

  With no time to form a plan, no opportunity to lose my courage, I freed my trident and rushed across the deck, shouting to catch the attention of my enemies. The Voyagers stopped, startled. Before they could work out what direction this new danger came from and react, I closed the distance. My trident sank into the back of the first Voyager before he could even turn around. It took me a moment to free my weapon from his collapsed body, and by the time I had, Basil had attacked the second man with his rusty blade.

  I hadn’t expected my cousin to be much of a fighter. But his weak skills and his poor weapon made little difference now, when we had surprise on our side. While he kept the second enemy busy, another roar rose up from the dragon across the deck.

  Skybreaker saw me now and saw the boy briefly out of the reach of his captors. That was enough to feed the beast’s determination. It was too dark to see the fury blazing in his eyes, but I could sense it through our bond. Too long he had endured the outrages of puny little men with sharp sticks.

  He strained against his bonds, and I heard the snapping of metal links shattering under his strength. Both wings broke free, and then he shook aside the remaining chains. His long neck shot out, and he snatched up the nearest Gold Ship Voyager, a man who had been jabbing at him with a poison-tipped spear. Skybreaker hurled the man aside, tossing him over the rail and into the sea. Another enemy followed the first.

  Instantly other Voyagers rushed to subdue the beast.

  “Come on!” I shouted at the mapmaker’s young apprentice, urging him toward the dragon.