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

  But as I looked at those pale sandy beaches pounded by white surf, I felt something, an inexplicable tugging sensation, like an invisible thread was drawing me toward the island. More and more these days, I was learning not to ignore my instincts.

  I agreed with Basil’s suggestion, and we dropped anchor a little distance off from the island. We left our mapmaking equipment and all our supplies safely stowed aboard ship, taking only the waterskins we meant to refill.

  Then we began the clumsy business of clambering down over the side of our vessel and swimming for shore. It was only a short distance to cover, and then we were climbing up the beach, wringing seawater out of our clothes and hair.

  As I stood in the wet clinging sand, looking up and down the shore, I felt again that strange stirring inside me, almost like a premonition of danger. It made little sense. What had I to be afraid of here? All the same, I missed the spear I had lost not long ago. I would have liked to have been armed just then.

  I glanced down at my hand, glowing as it always was with the reddish-purple light of the magic I could not access because of the metal shackle the pirates had used to keep me prisoner. I was surprised to find myself missing the magic now. What had once seemed like a curse had proven useful of late.

  But it did no good to think of it in this moment. I was all but magickless and as helpless as anybody else these days. I could only hope that wouldn’t matter on this island. Certainly there was no sign of threat around us, nothing to justify this vague concern nagging at me.

  “We should go inland and look for a spring,” Basil said, shaking out his three-cornered hat and clapping it back down on his soggy head.

  My cousin’s dark hair was plastered like a frame around his face. I realized I probably looked as much like a drowned rat as he did. As we trudged up the beach and into the trees, I scraped handfuls of my long hair back from my face and twisted them into a knot at the back of my neck.

  I was alert as the shadows of the trees closed over us, but I needn’t have been. Aside from a few colorful birds flitting through the treetops and a small furry creature I glimpsed scurrying across our path, there was no sign of life. As Basil led the way deeper inland in search of a possible pool or spring of fresh water, I began to relax. Maybe for once I had found an island where there were no vicious one-eyed giants, evil voices trapped in the wind, or anything else that might want to kill us.

  The tension between my shoulder blades was just beginning to ease when a sound fell upon my ears, a low threatening rumble like the soft roll of thunder. Only this sound wasn’t coming from the sky. It was very near.

  “Do you hear that?” I whispered at my cousin’s back.

  But he had already come to a standstill, stopping so suddenly I nearly crashed into him.

  “Isaura, don’t take another step,” he said to me, his voice tense.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I peered around Basil. What I saw made me feel as if I had been dashed with cold water. There was a stand of spiky bushes ahead, and behind the waving greenery I glimpsed a flash of orange-striped hide.

  For an instant I felt as if I had stepped into one of my dreams. An image flashed through my mind of the green-haired pregnant woman being stalked by a massive jungle cat. I knew in that moment what I had failed to recognize until now. I was on her island. The dragonkind woman was here.

  There was no time to struggle with the implications of that, to wonder what mechanizations of fate, either natural or otherwise, had brought me to the exact same shores she had tread. We were in danger right now. Every other thought would have to be sorted out later.

  The big cat lay low behind the bushes, watching us. I saw its round eyes glinting from the shadows.

  “When I say ‘go,’ we’ll make a run for the beach,” Basil said lowly.

  “No,” I disagreed. “I’m familiar with this kind of beast. We had big cats like this back on Corthium. They’re fully capable of devouring a person. The worst possible thing you can do is turn your back on them. We have to stand our ground. If anything, we need to make ourselves look bigger, more threatening.”

  “How can we look threatening to a cat as big as a cow with jaws that could swallow us in one piece?” he argued.

  While we were talking, the jungle cat’s glowing eyes blinked out. I could no longer see snatches of its orange-striped hide through the bushes.

  “It’s moving,” I told Basil. “Where did it go?”

  We looked around us, but all was still. Even the birds in the trees had fallen silent. The surrounding shadows suddenly seemed deeper, more unnerving than ever. Through the treetops I glimpsed streaks of gold and rose-colored sky. The sun was setting, and soon it would be dark.

  I held my breath and listened for any stray noise. I scanned the nearest trees and bushes, searching for the beast I knew must be circling us. I didn’t see him.

  As seconds ticked by, I dared to breathe again. “I think we’re safe this time,” I said. “Something must have frightened him away.”

  That was when a shadow fell over me. I looked up to see a large orange blur descending. The jungle cat had climbed up onto a nearby boulder and launched himself toward me. I threw a hand up to shield myself and fumbled for my spear before remembering I was unarmed.

  It happened so fast I didn’t have time to be afraid. One instant the cat was flying through the air. The next, I felt its weight slam into me, knocking me backward and off my feet. I fell to the ground, one arm protecting my face from the snarling jaws that flashed above. I felt the cat’s fangs sink into my arm, tearing through thin fabric and into my skin.

  This was it, I thought. The end. It flickered through my mind that this was a strange way to die after all I had survived up to this point. Then that idea and any others were driven out by the pain of the cat’s teeth as they pressed down on my forearm.

  Just as I thought the beast was about to rip me to pieces, it released its hold on my flesh and let out a sudden roar. It wasn’t an angry sound but a pained scream. From this angle, I couldn’t tell what was happening, only that the cat shifted its weight, struggling with something that was attacking it from behind.

  Was it Basil, I wondered in confusion. But it couldn’t be. He had nothing to fight with, except a little belt knife that would do little damage to such a massive beast.

  While the cat was occupied, I squirmed out from under it and crawled out of reach. I looked for a stick, a big rock, anything I could use to defend myself in case the animal came at me again. My searching fingers found a pointed rock that I snatched off the ground.

  I whirled just in time to see the cat give another pained scream and collapse to the ground, its orange fur now streaked with red. It lay limp and lifeless, stretched across the ground.

  Looking up, I found myself face-to-face with the end of a spear.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A strange sensation rippled through me as I beheld the person gripping the blood-soaked spear. I had seen her enough times in my dreams that her face was familiar to me. But I had never expected to see her here.

  Judging by her startled expression, her surprise was even greater than mine. The young dragonkind woman shook her green hair out of her wide eyes, as if to get a clearer look at me.

  “It’s impossible!” she said in apparent amazement. “I was the last. We were the last.”

  She placed her hand on her round belly, swollen with the child she carried.

  I found my tongue. “No,” I told her gently. “You are not the only survivor of Corthium. It’s a long story, but I too managed to escape the Ninth Isle as it was sinking.”

  She gave a laugh that sounded as much relieved as joyous.

  “It is a miracle!” she exclaimed. “I had lost all faith, but now it is restored. Are there others with you?”

  She gazed past me hopefully.

  “I’m sorry,” I had to tell her. “You and I are the only dragonkind survivors I have encountered. But I suppose it’s possible there might be others in th
e world somewhere.”

  I didn’t explain why I was coming to feel that. This wasn’t the time to tell her about my magic dreams or about a particular tangle of weak, barely pulsing threads I had viewed in the dreamworld, a group of life threads I suspected might belong to more of our kind.

  The other woman’s face fell slightly as I spoke.

  “I do not see much chance of other survivors. We must be alone,” she said sadly.

  Basil, who had been hovering nearby in silence, now cleared his throat, reminding me of his presence.

  “No, not entirely alone,” I told the girl. “This is my step-cousin Basil. He’s not one of us, but he’s…” I fumbled for something reassuring to say. “…he’s occasionally helpful.”

  Basil, who had taken up a big stick, I guessed to fend off the jungle cat during the attack, dropped it to the ground now.

  “Thank you for the words of praise,” he said dryly. “But I’m only upholding my end of our bargain.” Then he added almost under his breath, “A bargain that did not include cursed seas, magic storms, or hungry jungle cats.”

  I realized that I had introduced my cousin but not myself.

  “I am Isaura Seastrider,” I told the green-haired young woman. “I lived in the north side of the city and worked in the Depository of Knowledge until the day of the sinking.”

  She nodded and returned, “I am Cassia from the east end of Corthium, where I was a servant in the king’s palace.”

  Corthium had been a large isle and the city of the same name heavily populated. It wasn’t surprising that Cassia and I had never met. What was surprising was the unexpected comfort that washed over me at looking upon one of my own people and hearing again the names of places familiar to us both.

  Cassia told us briefly of how she had escaped the sinking of the island on a hastily built raft, only to lose her husband to the sea and eventually wash up alone on these shores.

  I didn’t interrupt to tell her I already knew those things, that I had seen as much from my dreams. Instead, I gave a hasty explanation of my own escape, leaving out the part where I had caused the island’s doom in the first place. I told myself it wasn’t shame at confessing the truth that I had touched the Sheltering Stone. It was only that Cassia might react strongly to the information, and I needed her on my side right now if we were to be of any help to one another.

  When I told of how it was Skybreaker who had saved me from the angry sea, she gasped.

  “Skybreaker? The mad dragon? The devourer of men?”

  I had almost forgotten he was known by those names. Since our bond, I had ceased to fear the dragon and had almost forgotten what he had once represented to all of us—a kind of mingled disappointment and tragedy, a reminder of a better time for our people.

  “I have been separated from Skybreaker, but I will find him again,” I told her. “And when I do, you will see that he is different now. I have bonded him, like the dragonkind of old, and our bond has restored his reason. Somewhat.”

  I actually had no idea if what I was saying was true. But at least I was fairly confident Skybreaker wouldn’t harm Cassia or me. Anyway, I needed to make her believe in him.

  Cassia’s expression was one of wonder when I explained about my bond with Skybreaker, but I detected something more in her mood. A strengthening of hope. To an outsider it would have made little sense, but I understood the reason for it. Dragons, even a mad one like Skybreaker, had long been a symbol of courage to our people. Just knowing one still existed in the world meant that some part of the dragonkind’s legacy remained. Cassia surely drew comfort from that.

  Basil broke into our conversation now. “Uh, I hate to interrupt. But are there any more of these we should be worried about?”

  He gestured nervously toward the big cat lying dead at our feet.

  He was right. This was no time for reminiscing.

  “I haven’t seen others,” Cassia answered. “But I fear there may be more. That is why we should get out of this place. It is not safe to be in the open. Come.”

  And she began to lead us away.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as we followed her through the trees. The last of the daylight had all but faded from the sky now, and the surrounding jungle made the darkness still deeper. I could hardly see the dragonkind girl just a short distance in front of me.

  “You will see when we arrive,” Cassia said mysteriously and refused to explain further.

  During my brief dreams of this place, I had seen no sign of any kind of shelter other than the rough pile of rocks Cassia had hidden in to avoid the jungle cat. Surely she was not taking us there? But no, she could not be, for my ears told me we were moving farther away from the beach and traveling deeper inland. The already distant sounds of the ocean waves crashing on the beach faded further.

  Following the dim outline of Cassia through the darkness, my eyes lit on the crudely made spear she carried, the weapon she had used to slay the jungle cat threatening my life. Something about that spear was vaguely familiar, and it wasn’t only because I had once owned one like it.

  That was when I remembered my last dream of Cassia, of how she had been kneeling alongside a pool of water when some unseen person had attacked her, thrusting a spear in her face.

  And yet she said nothing now of any kind of enemy other than possible jungle cats. She made no warning that another person, or perhaps many people, lurked on the island. She did not tell of having been held at spearpoint or of how she had escaped.

  With these unspoken realizations rushing through my head, an uneasy feeling began to grow inside me. Why should our guide keep those things from us? Could she be leading us into some sort of trap? Where, or to whom, was she taking us?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I dropped back to walk alongside Basil.

  “Keep your eyes open,” I said lowly, when I was certain Cassia was too far ahead to hear.

  “Why? Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  There was no time to explain that the three of us weren’t alone on the island, that Cassia might be leading us into an ambush. Instead, I quickened my pace and kept close to the other dragonkind female, afraid I would lose sight of her in the dark. I decided I would trust my instincts for now. Those instincts told me that whatever she might be withholding, Cassia was not a danger to us.

  It wasn’t a long distance we covered. It couldn’t be, considering the small size of the island. Within a few minutes’ walk, we pushed through a screen of palm fronds and found ourselves in a clearing. Here the light of the rising moon revealed a steep rocky hill rearing up before us. In the face of that rough hillside was a hollowed spot, a small cave. Timber posts taller than my head had been planted in the ground around the mouth of the opening, an arrangement that must have taken some time. The tops of the posts had been sharpened into points, a defensive measure surely intended to keep out predators like the orange-striped cat we had already encountered. Who was responsible for this construction, I wondered uneasily. Surely not Cassia, for it would have taken weeks at least to build a wall such as this.

  As we drew nearer, Cassia gave a low whistle, as if to signal our approach.

  “What was that for?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea.

  Before Cassia could respond, a new voice called out from the other side of the timber wall.

  “Is that you, girl? Did you bring back our dinner?”

  The speaker became visible a moment later as she swung open a rough door I only just now detected built into the spiked wall. She was a startling sight, an old woman with tangled silver hair flowing loosely down to her waist, her feet bare, her clothing stitched from animal skins.

  “Helia, I have brought friends,” Cassia told the old woman as we came closer. “This is Isaura, one of my people who, like me, escaped the sinking of our island. And with her is her cousin Basil.”

  The old woman held up a glowing torch in one hand to take a closer look at us. She must have grabbed
the burning stick from a campfire, because I could see the flicker of orange light filtering through the door behind her.

  Cassia told Basil and me, “This is Helia. I would not have survived this long if not for her protection. I spent my first few days on the island, hiding amid the rocks on the beach, stalked by the jungle cat. When thirst finally forced me to venture out of the rocks, I met Helia, who brought me back here.”

  The old woman interrupted Cassia’s introduction. “So. There are two of you strange-looking girls now,” she stated, taking in my horns and lightly scaled skin with little sign of surprise.

  Seeing the firm set of her jaw and the steeliness of the gray eyes inside her lined face, I had the feeling it would take a great deal to surprise this woman, despite her years.

  Cassia said, “I found them near the beach, Helia. They were being attacked by Nightwalker. I left him dead.”

  I guessed that Nightwalker was the name the two of them had given the orange-striped jungle cat.

  “Good,” the woman called Helia said on hearing the news. “One less danger to worry about. But now the important thing…”

  She came closer and shoved the torch so close I thought she would set my face afire.

  “Did you bring a ship?” she asked.

  I felt the heat of the flames making sweat stand out on my skin as I looked into the intense eyes of the old woman.

  “No,” I found myself lying. “We have no ship. Only a little dinghy scarcely large enough to hold my cousin and me.”

  Beside me, Basil made a surprised sound.

  I poked him with my elbow to keep him from giving away the lie.

  Helia’s face fell, the brief flash of hope disappearing from her eyes to be replaced by resignation.

  “Then it is not rescue they bring but only more mouths to feed,” she said as if to herself. She shook her white head and turned away. “Ten years I have been cast away on this cursed island with no human company but for the girl washed up on the beach the other day. And now that help finally arrives, it is no help at all.”