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

  “Take us back to the time of the city’s fall,” ordered Captain Ulysses. “Return us to the day and the hour of our disaster.”

  I assumed he was talking to me, but I was helpless to do what he asked even if I had wanted to. All the power belonged to the machine, and it would not be ruled by me.

  The ground shook beneath my feet. Or maybe it wasn’t the ground that moved, but me. I was overwhelmed by a dizzying shifting sensation. The confused expressions on the faces of the men around me said they felt it to. I had a feeling of moving at great speed, even while I was standing still. Darkness washed over us in the middle of the day and then, just as suddenly, light. Turning my head skyward, I watched the sun and moon race repeatedly across the sky as quickly as the blink of an eye while day and night flashed around us. Time was passing, and the time was moving backward, not forward.

  Afraid, I tried to stop the rush of days, weeks, and months that were roaring past in the space of a few breaths. But I had no control over the magic. Captain Ulysses was commanding it, I realized. His spoken will was guiding the machine, and the machine was steering the magic. My magic. I could feel it being sucked from me, like water drawn from a skin. And like a waterskin, I knew that in a short matter of time I would be drained empty.

  I looked to our surroundings and saw the ruins of the city transforming before my eyes. The buildings were changing, aging backward, growing new again. The hills in the background were flashing green, golden, gray, and green again as seasons flew by. The decay and abandoned air of the place lifted, and I saw it as it must have been in Ulysses’s youth, when it was still occupied.

  Then there were people. It was a startling sight, men, women, and children in loose gowns and brightly colored robes suddenly appearing where no one had been mere seconds before. They flowed past us, standing, staring, running.

  There was a sudden jarring sensation, as if we were jerking to a halt, as if we had reached the end of some invisible chain and were being abruptly snapped back. My stomach lurched at the sharp stop, and I might have fallen to the ground if I hadn’t been fastened to the machine at my back holding me upright. Around me, Basil and some of the pirates did fall. Not Ulysses though. He stood as solid as the now-young stone arches around us, drinking in the sight of his childhood home.

  We had landed somehow in the middle of a flood of people. For a brief confusing second, I thought they were running frightened from us. It would be an understandable reaction to a party of time traveling ghosts having suddenly landed in their midst.

  But then I realized it wasn’t us the citizens were fleeing. Down at the base of the hill, what looked to be enemy invaders were pouring through a broken gate—the same broken gate I had entered through with the pirates earlier. Only we had come through alone. Now there was a crush of people rushing between the gateposts. They carried great curved swords and weren’t dressed like the city people. They wore gold lap clothes, and golden veils hid the lower halves of their faces. Gold Ship Voyagers.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Our journey through time had been a success, I realized. Somehow, impossibly, I—or rather the machine channeling my magic—had carried us back twenty years. It must be more powerful even than the minute glass to have done such a thing. But already I was feeling the cost. My head was pulsing with pain, and my vision was growing blurry as if I were about to pass out.

  We had brought with us a small army of time traveling pirates, and now Captain Ulysses commanded them to draw their weapons and defend against the invaders. But something was wrong. No matter how they tried, neither Ulysses nor his men were able to move more than a few paces from where they stood. It was as if some invisible magnetic force was holding them in place, anchoring them to the machine.

  We watched helplessly from our little bubble of safety as Gold Ship Voyagers cut down fleeing citizens. The streets were quickly stained with blood. Ulysses shouted angrily at me to draw more magic, to do something with my power to come to the people’s aid. But there was nothing I could do. I was already wielding more magic than ever before, more than it was safe for me to hold. I couldn’t even control what I had.

  All around us, the scene of violence began to waver, to flicker like a candle’s weak flame. The machine was losing its grip on this time and place. Or maybe it was me whose grasp was slipping. I could feel the last dregs of magic emptying from me. Just keeping us here was costing me all my strength.

  Ulysses must have seen enough of the Voyagers’ killing, must have been unable to bear the frustration no longer of witnessing events but being unable to act to alter them.

  His voice was ragged as he shouted to me, “Enough! Bring us back!”

  Maybe he had forgotten it was he and not I who controlled the magic now, through control of the machine. No matter. The nathamite device followed the pirate’s will. As soon as he pulled a lever at the back of the contraption, the reality around us shivered and crumbled and collapsed inward like the walls of a cave. Once more, sun and moon raced across the sky at the speed of many rapid blinks. I couldn’t follow the shift this time. Too dazed by the loss of magic, I collapsed against the chains holding me to the machine and fought waves of dizziness.

  When next I gained any awareness, I realized the shifting sensation had stopped and we were, once again, in our own time. Ulysses had moved around to stand in front of the machine. But it wasn’t me or the device that had his attention. His expression held a dazed look as he beheld the ruined city around him. The horror of what he had seen, reliving the tragedy of his childhood, was written all over his face. He had discovered once and for all that his dream was impossible.

  I had no thought to spare for the pirate captain. I was too overcome by waves of nausea. I was sick all over the ground and the front of my clothes. I hardly even noticed when Basil made a commotion among our captors, trying to get them to free me, before ultimately stepping forward himself to unbind me from the machine. No one tried to stop him. The entire company was still in confusion.

  Free now from the nathamite device, I leaned heavily on Basil and tried to stop the spinning in my head.

  A sudden noise split the stillness. A deep sound like the booming of thunder echoed across the valley and bounced between the walls of the city. It sounded like the cannon of the Sea-Vulture. Everyone but me spun around, trying to pinpoint where the noise was coming from. I was too weak even to try to understand what was happening.

  Most of the pirates began to run toward the noise, stampeding down the stone steps and into the lower portion of the city.

  “What is it?” What’s happening?” I asked Basil dizzily.

  For a second he seemed as confused as the rest of us, then it must have struck him.

  “Nyssa,” he whispered.

  Of course. I remembered seeing Basil’s sister slip away from the group earlier in the day. I could only guess what she was up to.

  “She must have smuggled some gunpowder from the ship to create an explosion, a distraction for the pirates,” Basil said quietly.

  I didn’t know what gunpowder was but assumed it had something to do with the ship’s powerful cannons. Certainly it made an attention-grabbing amount of noise.

  Basil took advantage of the pirates’ attention being directed elsewhere and began to pull me off to one side, through a stone arch and down one of the steep pebbled paths running away from the hilltop. I looked back to see Captain Ulysses gazing after us, a vacant expression upon his face. He made no move either to prevent our escape or to join his men, who were all rushing away toward the explosion. He looked as if he no longer cared where we went or what happened next. It would probably take some time to recover from his failure with the time travel experiment.

  I had no more thought to spare for the pirate captain, because I had problems of my own. In my weakened condition, any walk would have been an effort, let alone the struggle to stay on my feet on the sharp incline. With Basil propping me up, we labored down the hill, following the rocky path to an empty
city street below. From there, we hurried as quickly as I was able away from the direction the booming noise had come from, going the opposite way from that the pirates had gone. We didn’t know how long our enemies would be content to let us run loose. At any moment, Ulysses might come back to his senses or we might encounter a band of straggling pirates and we could be taken captive again. Now that we had outlived our usefulness, I had no illusions about what they would do to us. With the time travel having failed, there was no longer any reason to keep us alive.

  I tried to carry my own weight and not be a burden to Basil, but it was difficult to do since my recent ordeal had drained me of energy. My vision remained blurry, and blinding flashes of pain still pulsed through my head. Yet somehow I stayed on my feet. We followed one dusty street after another until, finally, we found a side gate letting out of the city. Not until we were outside the walls did I begin to hope we might truly escape.

  Out among the green hills, we had no idea of what direction to take, except that we couldn’t go back the way we had come. That road would lead us to the shore and to the Sea-Vulture anchored just off the coast. Instead, we traveled farther inland, stopping often to rest. I knew Basil didn’t need the frequent pauses. He was just giving me a chance to catch my breath. Gradually the more distance we put between us and the abandoned city, the more I began to recover a little of my strength. It was as if moving farther away from the nathamite machine that had leeched my energy was giving me my strength back.

  My hand tingled and glowed faintly. I could feel my magic like the brush of gentle fingers against the back of my mind. For the first time in a long time, I had free access to my power and it was fully in my own control. I didn’t attempt to embrace it. It was too soon for that. But I was comforted to know my ability was at least there, waiting for me. When I used it again, it would not be with the terrible machine channeling my magic for someone else’s uses.

  For the next several hours, we traveled slowly overland, always looking behind but seeing no signs of pursuit. Whatever the pirates were doing, they were clearly too interested in the source of the explosion we had heard earlier to come chasing after us, particularly now that their captain seemed to have no further need for us.

  I was concerned for Nyssa, afraid she had sacrificed her safety to save Basil and me. But my cousin didn’t seem to share my fears. He assured me Nyssa knew very well how to take care of herself. He said even now she was probably finding a way to make the explosion look accidental or to shift the blame for it onto someone else. Ultimately it didn’t matter since we were in no position to circle back and look for her.

  * * *

  By the time twilight fell, we two fugitives had buried ourselves deep within the green hills, miles away from the shore and the abandoned city. At last we decided to halt for the night inside a little clearing near a shallow stream. There was no sense in wandering about in the semidarkness when we were fast losing daylight. Besides, after the draining events of the day, I was ready to collapse.

  There was a pile of rocks against a hill near the stream, and exploring this spot, we quickly located what seemed at first to be a small cave. Delving deeper into the cavern, we discovered it was a man-made hole and might actually be an abandoned mineshaft built by the natives who had long since been driven from these shores by the Gold Ship Voyagers. What they had mined for here was impossible to guess. Knowing there was a possibility of falling or becoming lost in the deep shadows, we had no desire to explore further. Instead, we made our camp just inside the mouth of the cave.

  As the darkness deepened and a nighttime chill crept in over the stone, Basil wanted to build a fire. Our enemies wouldn’t see a low blaze as long as it was screened by the cave’s walls. Basil was ready to go out for firewood, but I stopped him. He was obviously exhausted after the effort of half dragging me through the hills. It was time I did my share. I insisted on going to gather kindling, leaving him behind at the cave. I had no intention of going far. I couldn’t even if I had wanted to, for despite my reassurances to Basil, my strength was at a low ebb.

  My weary body wasn’t all that felt heavy as I tramped around beneath the trees a short distance from the clearing and gathered armfuls of dry brush. My spirits sagged as well, consumed by the despairing knowledge that I might be free again but I had lost my chance to catch the Gold Ship Voyagers. By now, Skybreaker and the mapmaker’s apprentice would be impossibly far away. I had no hopes of reaching them even if I could get back to the sea and obtain another vessel. The memory of our small ship so recently blown to bits by the pirates was another cause for gloom.

  While I was lost in these dark thoughts, a cold mist began to patter down on me. Surprised by the suddenness of the gentle shower but hoping to keep my newly gathered kindling dry, I took shelter beneath a rocky overhang that loomed up out of the darkness. Maybe if I waited here a few minutes the shower would pass.

  I set my bundle of brush down at my feet and stood in the shadow of the overhang, listening to the sprinkles falling all around. It was a light rain that made an almost musical sound as it slapped against the rocks and drummed softly onto the earth. Waiting in the darkness, it began to seem to me that there was an extra sound murmuring through the rain, something almost like a human voice.

  I dismissed the silly fancy. But then the voice became more distinct.

  “Dragonkind,” it whispered.

  I started at the invisible voice.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A dreadful memory rushed through my mind of a time Basil and I had been pursued by ghostly voices on an island we had once been stranded on. But those angry voices had belonged to cursed souls and were carried on the wind.

  This voice was feminine and gentle, not hostile. And it wasn’t coming from any wind. It was coming, impossibly, from the rain.

  “Dragonkind,” it repeated in a murmur.

  I realized it was calling to me.

  “What are you?” I asked shakily. There was no point in trying to hide in the shadows from this mysterious presence, for it clearly knew where to find me.

  “I am the rain and the morning dew, the little rivers and streams that are the lifeblood nourishing the Bleak Coast,” came the soft response. “The dark deeds of man have wounded this land. Long ago, Gold Ship Voyagers cut down the trees and mined the gold from the rocks. They destroyed the people and the wild creatures. This became a hopeless place. But then I pitied the land and chose to bind myself to this spot, healing the earth and bringing new growth through the element of water.”

  It was a lot of information to absorb but not really an answer to my question.

  I tried again. “Do you have a name?” I asked.

  “You should know it already, dragonkind,” was the response. “Did I not protect your people with the gift of the Sheltering Stone? Zoltar’s jealousy would have destroyed you, but I thwarted him. Because it pleased me to watch dragons and dragonkind dance through the sky on glittering wings, I shielded you from darkness.”

  My heart beat faster. “You are one of the old ones,” I realized. “The ancient keepers of the world.”

  My mind went back to the story that had been told to me, a history of the Nine Isles as seen in the shifting scenes of a magical wall. The story had told of the evil keeper, Zoltar, determined to sink the Nine Isles. It told also of a good keeper who had given the dragonkind the magical stone that kept Corthium afloat after all her sister islands had gone to the bottom of the ocean.

  “Maybe you have not heard,” I said. “But my people have since come to disaster. The last and greatest of the Nine Isles has sunk. My race and that of the dragons are nearly extinct.”

  “There is little that is unknown to me.”

  It was a neutral answer. I couldn’t tell whether or not the voice was troubled by what had become of the dragonkind. But she was supposed to be our champion. Surely our extinction was not what she wanted?

  “If you are aware of our trouble, why have you done nothing?” I asked bo
ldly.

  “It is not the way of keepers to interfere in the natural course of the world.”

  I didn’t give up. “But you gave us the Sheltering Stone long ago. You were persuaded to intervene in our fate then. Will you not guide us again now? I am nearly all that remains of the dragonkind. There may be a few others. I know of at least one. But the burden is on me alone to preserve the dragonkind legacy. I wish to have your help in this.”

  “I know. I have been watching you, Isaura Seastrider,” responded the voice. “Do not think it is an accident you have survived when others did not. Your family name is familiar to me. You are descended from a line of heroes.”

  Heroes? I had been born a lowly servant, as had my parents before me. How could my ancestors have ever had any claim to greatness? But there was no time to consider this unlikely statement.

  “You’re saying unseen forces have protected me this far?” I prompted. “That other keepers in this part of the world have sympathy for the name of Seastrider and for the cause of dragonkind?”

  She neither denied nor confirmed it. “Not all are friends to dragons and dragonkind,” she said opaquely.

  “I know that,” I answered impatiently, remembering how the cursed stretch of ocean around Zoltar’s mountain had tried to break me upon the rocks. “But surely you can do something to aid me. Point me toward the place I seek, a mountain where I can find a new Sheltering Stone. Or give me allies to lead the way.”

  “This is a journey you must make alone.”

  I refused to accept it. “At least give me information, the strength and the tools to finish my quest. You must offer me something.”