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

  I had no sooner poked my head above the water to suck in my first gasps of air then I heard the heavy sound of Basil hitting the water next to me. He must have decided, like me, that his odds were better in the sea. At least he had cleared the rocks.

  I floated, waiting for him to resurface. Above, I could just make out the indistinct outline of a row of figures crowding along the edge of the cliff we had just escaped. The distance and failing light made it impossible to make out the expressions of the villagers. Even if water hadn’t been clogging my ears, I wouldn’t have understood the shouts that echoed down at us in the language of the locals. But there was no mistaking their wrath as sticks and stones began to rain down at us.

  “Swim fast!” I shouted to Basil as soon as his head broke the surface beside me.

  It was an unnecessary instruction because we were in no position to do anything else, bobbing upon the water and holding our chins up above the rolling waves.

  We struck out toward the open sea, taking ourselves beyond the reach of the missiles hurled by our enemies. In the fading light, it was hard to get my bearings. But I had a vague sense of swimming past the sandy beach of the skull-shaped cove on one side while the dark shape of our ship loomed ahead in the distance. I swam toward that shadowy outline against the darkening sky, Basil following with strong strokes after me.

  I was an island girl and had spent half my life in the sea, swimming and fishing in the little coves around the Ninth Isle. Maybe that was why I reached our vessel first. I caught hold of the rope ladder we had left dangling over the side and clambered up onto the boat.

  Collapsing in a soggy heap on the deck, I coughed up the seawater I had inhaled during my swim and struggled to catch my breath. I heard Basil drop to the deck beside me.

  “Well, that was the maddest thing I’ve ever done,” he wheezed between gasps for breath as water pooled around us.

  “I doubt that,” I said, pulling the canvas sack off my back and drawing out the bundled-up mapmaking tools. Miraculously, the oilcloth around them had kept everything dry and undamaged. Most importantly, the mapmaker’s unfinished last work was safe.

  My heart rate slowed down, even as the adrenaline of the flight and the swim seeped away, leaving me tired and shaky. I didn’t realize my relief at our narrow escape until I heard the sound of weak laughter and became aware it was my own.

  Basil shook his head. “You’re as mad as your dragon,” he said, sliding his own bundle of supplies off his back.

  That sobered me. During the excitement of pursuit, I had forgotten all about Skybreaker, about my terrible dilemma. Now I remembered that I still had an awful decision ahead, one that had been haunting me ever since learning the Gold Ship Voyagers had taken Skybreaker. In the process, they had abducted the mapmaker’s young apprentice, Aetios, a local boy who had lived among the cove dwellers.

  I sat locked in internal turmoil as Basil alone stowed the provisions and then bustled around the ship, preparing to set sail. Despite all his early protests, it had become evident on this journey that my cousin had far more experience with ships than he had first let on, having been born the son of a sailor and raised in a port town. It probably helped that our vessel was a comparatively small one.

  “Give me a hand with this,” he instructed now, and I hurried to help him haul up the anchor.

  “Which way do you want to sail?” he asked when we were done.

  I had been dreading that question. Perhaps it was cowardly of me to want to shift responsibility, but I answered his question with another.

  “You remember that I see things happening in other places, through my dreams?” I asked.

  Basil adjusted his hat. “So you’ve told me,” he said, looking uncomfortable.

  I knew he had always been confused by my magical abilities and that, even now, he only half believed in my dreams, despite seeing the evidence of them with his own eyes. Usually I tried to spare him confusion by keeping the dreams to myself. But I couldn’t do that this time.

  So I spilled out the story of the pregnant dragonkind woman I had been seeing in my dreams of late, the one I had last seen shipwrecked on an island and being stalked by a jungle cat, after the violent death of her husband.

  “And you say this woman, if she really exists, is the only other survivor of your sunken island?” he asked when I had finished.

  “I think so,” I said. Then I had to admit, “Of course, before I began dreaming of her, I believed I was the last surviving member of my race—the only dragonkind left in existence.”

  “And you’re determined to find and rescue her?” he continued.

  “That’s just the dilemma,” I said. “I know I must save her. She and the child she carries are the only hope of bringing the dragonkind back from the brink of extinction. It is my responsibility to protect them.”

  “But it’s also your responsibility to keep searching for your new magic rock,” he observed.

  He was coming to know me well enough to predict what I was going to say before I said it. The magic rock he spoke of was really a legendary mountain where I hoped to find a new Sheltering Stone to replace the original that had sunk to the bottom of the ocean the day the Ninth Isle was devoured by the sea. I had taken up an urgent quest to find a new stone and use it to raise up Corthium again, thus preserving the legacy of my people and, with any luck, saving the Three Hopes, the last dragon eggs in the world. Like my own race, the dragons faced extinction. Unless those eggs could be brought up undamaged out of the water, my bonded dragon Skybreaker would be left the last dragon in existence.

  “But the dilemma is worse than that,” I said to Basil. “There’s Skybreaker and the boy to think of as well.”

  I could see my cousin was made as uneasy by talk of the boy as he had been when I spoke of the pregnant dragonkind woman. Despite my dreams having proved true thus far, he obviously still wondered whether this boy neither of us had ever laid eyes on in person truly existed or if he was purely a figment of my imagination.

  I did not share his doubts. I had seen the boy with my own eyes, the young pearl diver from the cove, who had befriended my dragon and learned about mapmaking at the elbow of the old mapmaker. My need to find that boy and put him to work finishing the map I had commissioned from his master was as important as my need to reclaim Skybreaker from the enemies who had stolen him. Without both of them, my quest was at an end.

  Basil broke into the whirl of my thoughts. “It seems to me that without the dragon, you’ll never find either your magic rock or the shipwrecked woman,” he said. “But with the help of the beast, both rock and woman will be more quickly reached. So as much as I hate to say so, getting back the dragon should be your first priority.”

  I was well aware he was able to look at the matter with clarity only because he didn’t particularly care about any of the people or the stakes involved. But that didn’t change the fact that he was right. The mountain of stones was going nowhere anytime soon. As for the shipwrecked dragonkind woman, she had shown herself to be surprisingly strong thus far. Somehow she would have to survive on her own until I was able to come for her.

  “It’s decided then,” I said aloud. “We’re chasing after the Gold Ship Voyagers.”

  “Wait now, hold on,” he protested. “When I said your mad dragon should be retrieved, I wasn’t really volunteering myself as part of the rescue party. You’ll need a dozen ships and an army of sailors to man them if you want to go up against the Voyagers’ fleet. And I have to tell you, you’ll never find anyone willing to do it. The Voyagers are as feared in these waters as they are hated.”

  “That’s why I’m not going to attack them with an army,” I said. “I have another plan in mind.”

  I was lying. I had no plan in mind, not even the nugget of an idea. But I would work out the details later. What mattered now was to keep Basil on my side. I couldn’t tackle the dangers ahead on my own.

  The sky above was pitch-black now, but it was a good clear night, perf
ect for navigating by the stars.

  “Take us away from here,” I said to Basil. “We’ll figure out our course later but, for now, head for the open seas.”

  I didn’t explain how we would guess which direction the Voyagers had gone. The truth was I had no idea. As our sails unfurled and our little ship headed out into the wide ocean, I could only hope the luck that had kept me alive this far would provide another miracle.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Although we could only guess which direction to take, we sailed straight into the open seas as if we knew our course. Exhausted by our flight from the mapmaker’s home shores, we rested in shifts, one of us keeping watch while the other slept. There was little enough “watch” to keep since we had no notion where we were going.

  I felt overwhelmed by the impossibility of our task, as I took my turn lying beneath the stretched awning Basil had created to act as our shelter. At least now, unlike the last time we were aboard this ship, we had plenty of food and several full waterskins for the voyage. I felt the provisions against my back, forming a warm wall that blocked the night wind sweeping across the deck.

  I had spent so much time on the water lately that I was growing accustomed to the gentle rolling motion of the waves and the creaking sounds of the ship. The last thing I heard as I drifted off to sleep was the gentle flapping sounds of our sails fanning out in the breeze.

  * * *

  This time my dreams didn’t take me to the place of pillars and pulsing life threads that I was so often carried to when I closed my eyes. Ever since I had touched the Sheltering Stone, setting off the chain reaction that sank Corthium, I had experienced vivid magic-tinged dreams that pulled me into the bodies of strangers and allowed me to witness events my waking eyes were too far away to see. I was growing used to being dragged by accident into the empty, silent courtyard surrounded by crumbling marble columns. Every time I shut my eyes now I expected to be drawn once more to the place where thousands of slender threads hummed and vibrated with the energy of vast numbers of lives, the lives of strangers.

  But that wasn’t where I went now. Instead, I soared high above the water, suspended between the night sky and the sea below. Swooping through clouds far above dark waves, it was unclear how I traveled. Was I dreaming of flying, perhaps on the back of Skybreaker?

  But no, I was alone and I had no control over where I was going. The night was cool and calm at first, the tranquil ocean spread beneath me reflecting back silvery moonlight.

  Then I saw it, a looming shape appearing suddenly on the horizon. Its jagged ridges and rough peaks etched out the shape of a mountain soaring so tall it blotted out the light of the stars behind it. A sick sense of dread cut through me at the familiar sight. I knew that mountain. I had witnessed it before with my waking eyes. It was the home of Zoltar, an ancient being legend said was responsible for the original sinking of the smallest of the Nine Isles. Why did my thoughts, both awake and asleep, keep returning me to this same spot?

  According to the stories, Zoltar’s curse had doomed the isles. Only the intervention of a different, merciful keeper had protected Corthium, the largest isle, from suffering the same fate as her sister islands. The good keeper had brought us the Sheltering Stone, a magical rock that had guarded us for a time from the evil of Zoltar—until I had accidentally broken the power of the stone, absorbing its magic in the process.

  Now as I swooped through the sky, drawing closer and closer to the dark mountain that imprisoned Zoltar, I was helpless to turn back or avoid the place. Some invisible force pulled me in. Out of nowhere a strong wind began to buffet me. The waters below grew rough, like a once-smooth pond that some giant hand had cast a handful of rocks into.

  I knew why the waves below tossed so angrily. I was approaching Zoltar’s killing ground, a cursed stretch of sea surrounding the mountain. Here the skeletons of many ships protruded from the waters, wrecked upon the shallow reef concealed below the surface.

  Basil and I had crashed upon those same shoals not long ago. The furious ocean had dashed our ship against the rocks, obliterating the vessel. Basil had drowned, and only I had survived, hopelessly stranded at the foot of the black mountain. But then a miracle had occurred. I had smashed an ancient relic I carried, a tiny minute glass that turned out to have magical properties. The spilling of the glass’s sand had erased our accident, pushing back time by a few minutes and setting Basil and me safely back outside the stretch of cursed sea. Once again, our ship had been whole, our lives restored. But at a terrible cost. The breaking of the minute glass had drained me, its power sucking away at my life force so badly that I had taken days to recover consciousness afterward.

  Now as I soared ever nearer to that dark mountain, fear wriggled like a snake in my belly, making me wish I could wake up from the dream that held me captive. Far below me on the water, I spotted a boat, a tiny dot sailing against the storm. For an instant I thought I was having a memory, was witnessing again the events that had occurred the last time I was in this place, just as I had back at the mapmaker’s home earlier. How many times was I doomed to revisit this scene?

  But a closer look revealed the ship below was not ours. It was a sleek and powerful vessel, larger than the one we sailed, with many masts and sails—golden sails.

  The ship was not alone. I counted more of them below, perhaps as many as a dozen of the gold-sailed ships driving against the wind.

  The gold ships didn’t approach Zoltar’s mountain. Maybe their captains knew enough to avoid it. Instead, they skirted the edges of the cursed stretch of sea, buffeted by the wind and tossed by the waves but not quite entering the killing ground. They would cut around the mountain and steer safely past.

  “Isaura, we’re coming into a storm.”

  The voice sounded like thunder rippling through the sky. I looked around, trying to see where it came from.

  “Isaura.”

  Something was shaking me roughly, and this time it wasn’t the wind. The scene before me, the white-capped waves, the threatening mountain, and the fleet of gold-sailed ships was ripped from before my eyes, suddenly evaporating into nothingness.

  * * *

  I blinked against the salty sea spray blasting me in the face. I might have left my dream behind, but a strong wind was still tugging at me, tossing my hair into my face like a soggy blue veil. I shivered as the cutting wind sliced through my damp clothes. I tried to regain my bearings. There would be time to consider my strange dream later.

  “What’s happening?” I asked Basil, whose shadowy form loomed over me. It was still nighttime. In fact, it was now darker than ever, thick clouds having cloaked the moon and stars. It was a strange echo of my nightmare, a calm and peaceful night suddenly interrupted by the coming of strong winds and tossing waves.

  “We’re sailing into a storm,” Basil repeated. “It came out of nowhere.”

  Out of nowhere.

  The words awoke fear in my heart, and a tingle shot up my spine. Was this an ordinary squall that happened to sweep our way? Or had it come looking for us? Perhaps there had been a reason for my dream. Perhaps it was warning me that Zoltar’s mountain no longer sat waiting for victims to happen across that cursed stretch of sea. Perhaps the bad weather of that place had been sent to hunt us.

  I didn’t bother to voice the thought aloud, instead scrambling to my feet and hurrying to the ship’s rail. What I saw ahead seemed to confirm my fears. Even as I stood there, a lashing rain began to fall. Through the howling gale and the sheets of driving water, occasional flashes of lightning illuminated a great whirlpool directly ahead. It was cutting through the ocean, racing our way. If I squinted, I imagined I could even see thick bits of broken timber caught up in its powerful, swirling grip—not driftwood but pieces of broken ships, carried all the way from Zoltar’s killing ground.

  “How did it come so suddenly?” Basil asked, coming to grip the rail beside me. He had to shout to be heard over the roar of the wind.

  “Magic,” I said, my ow
n voice raised. “A dark force drives the storm to pursue us.”

  He must have been getting used to the way magic of all sorts seemed to follow wherever I went, because he only nodded, accepting the answer.

  “What do you think we should do now?” I asked.

  Basil gazed toward the heart of the storm and clamped a hand down on his three-cornered hat as an especially strong gust of wind tried to tear it off his head. It took him only a moment to come to a decision.

  “If we can’t outrun this evil storm, we’ll steer into it,” he said.

  I followed his thinking. “You mean if we cling to the edges we can ride it out?”

  “Either that or it’ll sink us,” he answered. “There’s no knowing which.”

  His words didn’t give me confidence, but I noted that for once my cousin’s jaw was set with determination. He had finally found an enemy he couldn’t outrun. In the face of that, an unexpected streak of courage seemed to bolster him.

  I drew my courage from his.

  “Tell me what to do,” I said.

  * * *

  I scurried across the pitching deck, making adjustments to the sails as Basil shouted orders from the helm. But there was little time to brace ourselves and little preparation that could be made for what lay ahead. As Basil steered our prow into the heart of the storm, the swirling waters caught us in their mighty grip and began to pull us into a narrowing circle. Carried along like driftwood, we were helpless to break free. The world seemed to spin all around as we sped so quickly I could see nothing but blurred flashes of lightning ripping across the sky.