Sea of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 2) Page 3

  I got straight to the point. “I can see your maps are valuable. I must tell you we have little to pay you today. But if you will begin work right away, you have my word you will be paid when the map is complete.”

  I didn’t add that I had no idea how I was going to keep that promise. Where could I possibly come up with enough money?

  The mapmaker didn’t seem concerned by the question. “Yes, you will pay,” he agreed. “But the price might be higher than you know, for the maps I make do not always serve their recipients as they expect.”

  His words made me uneasy, but I couldn’t afford to be put off by the warning. The future of the Ninth Isle and the legacy of the people of the dragon depended on me.

  “We would like you to begin immediately,” I pressed.

  “Aye, that I will do,” he said, his eyes brightening behind his spectacles. “It is always a pleasure for me to begin a new project. But to complete this commission will take time. And if I may return to the question of payment, there is something I would happily take in lieu of silver and gold. Perhaps you will not take it amiss if I asked for a few of your marvelous scales?”

  “My scales?”

  Taken aback by the request, I touched the smooth scales patterning my cheeks. They were my pride, a symbol of my people’s ancient connection to dragons.

  The mapmaker looked apologetic. “I’ve heard that dragon scales contain unique qualities. As you say you come from an isle of dragons, your scales may be the closest to those of a dragon I may ever acquire. I would like to experiment with them as elements for one of my maps.”

  It was the first reference he had made yet to my unique appearance. I supposed I couldn’t fault his curiosity.

  “It’s a deal,” I said.

  I didn’t mention that I had a real dragon not far away, whose scales the little man might claim instead. I suspected Skybreaker would be less than cooperative in such a bargain. Besides, I had no right to promise away what wasn’t mine.

  “Excellent!” said the skinny mapmaker, rubbing his hands together in excitement. “Now you must both be my guests until the completion of the work.”

  * * *

  The mapmaker seemed eager to make us comfortable that evening. He lit all the lanterns in the cabin until the shack blazed with a glow that was probably visible for miles across the swamp. Once he had chased away the gloom indoors, he cooked dinner for us. The meal was crusty bread and a thin broth containing some sort of tough meat I tried not to examine too closely. Basil did little to disguise his distaste, but I was mindful that this was probably the best food the little man had to offer us. And it was more than welcome since we had eaten nothing all day but the fruit given to us by the old villager.

  After dinner, the mapmaker drew two dusty bundles of netting from a battered chest. These turned out to be old hammocks, half-rotted through and filled with holes but good enough for our purposes. Since the interior of the shack was small and it was rapidly growing overheated by the cook fire that the mapmaker seemed in no hurry to put out, Basil and I took the hammocks outside and slung them between the poles of the porch out back.

  Basil crawled into his sling and, judging by the snores that soon emanated from that direction, went straight to sleep.

  But I couldn’t rest yet. My body was tired, but my mind was wide-awake. Besides, I was wary of sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I never knew if I was going to be visited by nightmares of the sinking of the Ninth Isle.

  Worse, the magic my hand had absorbed through the Sheltering Stone gave me dreams of a different kind. When I slept, I saw things through the eyes of other people, strangers whose lives and experiences I had no reason to be aware of. Only this morning, after flying away from Port Unity, I had dreamed briefly of a Gold Ship Voyager I had met in a tavern back at the port. In my dream, I had seen the Voyager and a whole fleet of golden-sailed ships setting off after Basil and me. Even if the vision was real, it was unlikely they would ever succeed at following Skybreaker. But the dream had unsettled me, as had every similar dream where I had been given glimpses of things it should have been impossible for me to witness.

  Anyway, I had business to take care of. I walked around to the side of the porch that wrapped around the shack. Porch and shack alike were raised on poles, and from my high vantage point, I could look down over the gloomy swamp to one side and see the moon’s reflection atop the still waters. In the opposite direction, I could look inland to where a thick growth of trees formed a world of shadows and mystery. There was no knowing what sort of wild creatures lurked among those trees.

  I turned my back on them and drew close to a window on the side of the house. There was no glass here, just an open hole in the wall, covered with a strip of cloth to keep out the buzzing insects. In the glow of lantern light escaping around the edges of the cloth, I took a vial out of my belt pouch. The mapmaker had given me the tiny stoppered bottle, along with a straight metal blade that was probably normally used for shaving. I removed the stopper from the bottle and set it on the edge of the windowsill.

  Then feeling my way blindly along my face, for I had no mirror, I scraped the blade carefully across one cheek. Tiny pale flakes rained down, dislodged scales fluttering onto the sill. I kept scraping until I had a fair-sized collection of them. The scales would be shiny and iridescent under sunlight. But right now they were just colorless little flecks. Even though their removal was painless, it felt strange scraping away something that was such an important part of me. Like a less traumatic repetition of the time my wings had been cut off when I was young. Only, unlike my wings, the scales would grow back.

  Shoving away the unpleasant emotions that came with these thoughts, I swept the fallen scales off the windowsill, using the palm of my hand to dust them into the open vial. When the bottle was half-filled, I put in the stopper and returned the vial to my belt pouch. I would give it to the mapmaker in the morning.

  While my hand was in the pouch, my fingers accidentally brushed against something cold and smooth. I pulled the small object out and examined it. I had forgotten all about this hourglass—really its size made it more of a minute glass. It was a tiny bubble of glass no bigger than my thumb and encased in a brass frame. A hook at the top indicated it was intended to be dangled from a chain, perhaps worn as a necklace or even a hair ornament. The value of the minute glass was in its age. I had stolen the ancient artifact from the Depository of Knowledge back in Corthium with the plan of selling it to buy my dying grandmother medicine. But my grandmother was dead now and the Ninth Isle sunk beneath the sea. So much had changed in the short time since I had snatched this little relic.

  I replaced the minute glass in my pouch. Sooner or later I would probably trade it, if not for money than for provisions to see Basil and me through our quest. Meanwhile, it was a comforting reminder of home.

  I returned to the back of the porch and crawled quietly into my hammock. It was a strange feeling to lie suspended a few feet above the floor on a sling of rough netting. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the large insects that buzzed around me in the dark. Soon I drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  My boots were the first to land on the moonlit beach.

  My men followed me, stowing their oars and leaping over the side of the dinghy. While they dragged the vessel up onto the shore, out of reach of the crashing waves, I advanced up the sandy beach and took in my surroundings. In the distance I saw the outline of a row of huts, dark now, as the locals slept. I wasn’t interested in tangling with the people who lived here. It was the girl with the magic in her hand I was looking for. And according to reports, I would find her with a dragon.

  I wasn’t sure I believed that last part, but there was no harm in being cautious. After anchoring my ship and paddling off in the dinghy, I had issued orders for my landing party to avoid the dragon if possible.

  At the edge of the pale sand, I stared into the deep blackness of the trees that led inland. Any sort of ambush could be waiting for us
in there. But it was the direction the blue-haired girl had likely gone, so there was no choice but to follow. No one had any reason to know we were coming. Even if they did, the dozen tough men I had brought with me would be more than a match to any resistance we encountered. With one hand on the hilt of my sword, I waved the other arm, silently beckoning my followers onward.

  In the shadows ahead, a night bird screeched.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I bolted upright in my hammock, startled awake by the cry of a bird. Disturbed by my sudden movement, the hammock swung side to side, nearly pitching me onto the floor.

  It took me a second to figure out why my heart was thundering against my ribs. It wasn’t the bird that had frightened me. I had been dreaming again. I had looked through the eyes of another and had seen enemies landing in the skull-shaped cove. I wasn’t sure this time whose rough consciousness I had entered. But then how many men could it be? I had already been warned in my last dream that the Gold Ship Voyagers were chasing us. Against all odds, they must have discovered our landing spot.

  “Basil!” I called urgently, struggling out of my hammock. “Basil, wake up!”

  “Umph?” came Basil’s questioning response out of the darkness nearby.

  “Get up!” I repeated, dragging on my boots as I hopped across the porch toward him. “Something’s about to happen!”

  He only made a sleepy noise until I stood over his shadowy form and dumped him out of his hammock.

  He tumbled to the floor in a heap.

  “What’s the matter with you!” he exclaimed, now fully awake. “Have you lost your mind?”

  But I didn’t answer. I heard echoing thuds around the other side of the house, the pounding of many feet running up the winding steps leading from the bank.

  “Too late,” I realized aloud. “They’re here.”

  * * *

  “Who’s here?” Basil asked.

  Before I could respond, there was a loud crashing sound, the noise of someone trying to smash through the front door of the house.

  “Enemies have arrived,” I told Basil quickly. I hurried to snatch up my spear, which was leaning against a porch pole where I had left it.

  “There are many armed men determined to capture us.” I didn’t explain how I knew this. “We have to protect the mapmaker.”

  “We have to protect ourselves,” Basil disagreed.

  I had anticipated this sentiment. I caught the back of his collar just as my cowardly companion was about to leap over the porch rail and into the marshlands below.

  “There’ll be no fleeing,” I snapped, surprising myself with the determination in my voice. “Without the mapmaker our quest is doomed. We must defend him.”

  Basil shrugged out of my grip, saying, “It’s more your quest than mine anyway.”

  There was no time to argue with him. I didn’t look back to see if he followed me as I ran across the porch and rushed through the back door of the house.

  I stopped short just inside, surprised. I had expected to see the intense-eyed Gold Ship Voyager I had met in the tavern in Port Unity, flanked by companions with curved swords and gold-colored veils.

  Instead, I found a collection of filthy-looking men in sailor’s garb, armed with cudgels and cutlasses. They were a tough and hardened crew, but they weren’t Gold Ship Voyagers. They had the complexions and clothing of typical off-islanders, like those that made up most of the population of Port Unity. As I entered, they were overturning chairs, smashing furniture, ripping shelves down from the walls.

  The little mapmaker was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he had seen the approach of enemies and managed to somehow flee while Basil and I were busy arguing out on the porch.

  But running away myself was not an option, for I had been seen. On finding me in the doorway, the nearest intruders paused in their destruction of the shack and its contents and turned on me, weapons drawn. They had ugly faces, scarred and weathered by the elements, and their expressions were grim.

  I pushed down my rising panic and leveled the tip of my spear at them as they moved toward me, although it was obvious I was hopelessly outnumbered. In a flash, I remembered how I had used my magic hand in the past to repel enemies. It had been an accident the first time I did it, during an attack by giants. Later, I had been defending Basil from a group of toughs in the port town when I had again thrown up my hand and unintentionally unleashed a barrier of magic.

  I raised my gauntleted hand now, palm toward the incoming sailors, and tried to remember how I had pushed outward with my invisible shield on those other occasions. I hadn’t been thinking anything special or really even concentrating. I had simply been overwhelmed with the frenzied need to defend myself. Maybe that was all I needed—the instinct to protect.

  A faint glow of reddish-purple penetrated through the gauntlet. A tingling sensation gathered in my hand. I was doing it. The shield was about to form.

  Then a floorboard creaked behind me. I caught a dark blur of movement out of the corner of my eye. Before I could turn to see who stood there, a sudden blow rang across the back of my head.

  Blinding pain exploded through my skull. I collapsed to the floor, only vaguely aware of the impact of my fall. As I was assailed by dizziness, my world dimmed. For an instant all thought and awareness of my surroundings were knocked from my mind.

  Then gradually my vision began to clear and I became aware of the floor beneath me, of my hands clutching my head. My spear lay before my face, where I must have dropped it after the blow. As the pain in my head receded, I reached shakily for the weapon. But a booted foot entered my field of vision, coming to rest on top of the spear. My fingers closed around the wooden shaft, but all strength had been drained from me. My weak effort to pick up the spear was no match for the weight of that large boot, holding it down.

  I looked up at the tall blurry form towering above me. The aftereffects of the blow made the room seem to spin so that it was hard to focus on the face of the stranger. I saw a blue coat and a broad-brimmed hat that cast the person’s features in shadow.

  Before I could make out more, a second person was kneeling at my side, grabbing my arm. I felt something hard and cold being clamped around my wrist—a thick metal bracelet that made a clinking sound as it closed.

  My leather gauntlet was ripped off, uncovering the reddish-purple glow that had emanated from my hand ever since the day I had touched the Sheltering Stone back on Corthium, absorbing its mysterious power.

  I had forgotten how bright its radiance was without the glove. In my disoriented state, I squinted at the sudden light so close to my face.

  The person who had taken my gauntlet, a scruffy man missing his front teeth, waved the glove in front of my face.

  “Not so brave now without your magic, are ye?” he taunted.

  I didn’t know who he was or what he was talking about, but clearly he was no friend to me.

  I turned my glowing palm toward him and pushed outward with my power. But nothing happened. No bright semivisible shield appeared in the air between us to force him back.

  My enemy appeared delighted at my confusion. “She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know,” he crowed. “Methinks she’s never seen nathamite before.”

  He rattled the metal shackle encircling my wrist. “Ye be right, Captain,” he said to the man looming above us. “The nathamite takes her magic away.”

  Captain? I could think of only one captain I knew, the pirate I had met back in Port Unity. But what could he be doing here? During our brief encounter at the Blue Mermaid, he had taken a mysterious interest in my magic. But how could he have followed me all this way? And why should he want to? Perhaps I was mistaken and this was some other captain.

  When I looked to confirm the identity of the man standing over us, he had turned away, distracted by a commotion at the front of the shack.

  Sounds of angry protest came from outside, and a moment later a pair of muscular men came through the front door, dragging a struggling Basil between t
hem.

  “We caught this one around back trying to run away, Captain,” said one of Basil’s captors. “We thought you might want him.”

  “Well, well, a double prize,” I heard their leader say. “We hoped to cross paths with the treacherous Seastrider again, didn’t we boys? But who’d have thought it would be so soon?”

  The other pirates laughed. It was now becoming unclear to me which of us was their main target, Basil or me.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding,” Basil protested, trying to wriggle free from his captors. “You must be mistaking me for someone else.”

  “Not likely,” sneered one of the pirates. “We’d recognize yer cowardly stench anywhere.”

  The speaker looked vaguely familiar, possibly one of the sailors we had fought off back in the port town when a small gang of them had attacked Basil in an alley behind the Lucky Anchor. It appeared that setting fire to his old home in the crow’s nest of the abandoned ship he used to live in had done nothing to appease whatever grudge they had against him.

  “Take him away,” snarled the pirate captain. “Put them both aboard ship.”

  I was seized by a thick-armed man who dragged me up from the floor. My hands remained free and unbound. But with my spear gone and the single shackle around my wrist seemingly blocking my magic, there was little point in resisting. I couldn’t hope to outfight or outrun this many enemies. Certainly not with so many sharp weapons hovering around me.

  Basil was shoved, still twisting and protesting, out the front door. I was drawn in the same direction. Around us, the rest of the pirates returned to destroying the furnishings and ripping the beautiful maps down from the walls. The men seemed to have little purpose but cruel destruction. Bits of crumpled and shredded maps, once so marvelous and lifelike, now littered the floor, ruined.