Bones of the Dragon (44 page)

He couldn’t see from his vantage point, but he could hear, and he sucked in a dismayed breath when he heard water splashing.

The druids were boarding the ship!

He looked about frantically for a better place to hide, and there was the ladder that led to the dwelling place below. He scrambled across the deck, tumbled down the ladder, and dived into the pile of furs, pulling them over his head.

He heard footsteps on the deck above him. He could hear people talking, and he recognized the voices of the elder and some of the men of the settlement.

“Carry the young man belowdeck,” said the elder. “He is badly injured. I will tend his wounds.”

Wulfe heard another voice, one he did not recognize, a woman’s voice, low and rich.

“Bah! Let him bleed a little,” said the woman. “He deserves to suffer. Pain will do him good.”

“Death, on the other hand, will not,” the druid said mildly.

Wulfe heard feet coming his way, and he snuggled deep among the furs. The young man they were carrying must have been heavy, for they had difficulty negotiating the ladder. They managed, or so he assumed, for he could hear them deposit their burden on the deck. Then they clomped back up the ladder and reported to the druid that they had laid the young man on his bed.

The boy peeped out cautiously from the furs.

“Skylan did show courage. He tried to rescue her,” the elder remarked. “The older man basely fled.”

“That is true,” the woman said. “Skylan did try to save Draya, at the risk of his own life. I must admit I did not expect him to do that.”

“He is lucky,” the druid said, sighing. “The spirits of the woods were extremely angry.”

“Skylan has Torval to thank for his survival,” the woman replied. “Though I doubt he will find much cause to be grateful.”

“You have entered the body of Draya in order to hide from your enemies, Vindrash,” the elder remarked. “Do you also plan to torment this young man with guilt?” He sounded disapproving.

“Skylan is a weapon in Torval’s hand. The god demands the finest steel, and this young Skylan is of poor quality, brittle and liable to break. He must prove himself or Torval will throw him on the scrap heap.”

Feet walked across the deck. Wulfe heard splashes in the water. The men were leaving the ship. He was about to slip out of his hiding place, when he heard the woman’s voice and he realized she and the elder were still on board.

“We will honor Draya’s memory,” the druid was saying. “Her spirit now dwells in peace with her gods. She will hear our hymns of praise, and when you have no more need of her mortal form, Blessed Vindrash, we will return her body to her people.”

“I thank you for everything you have done, Elder.” The woman’s voice was soft, no longer grim and harsh. “I know acting out the sacrifice was not an easy thing for you or your people.”

“We do not believe in human sacrifice,” the druid said severely. “I had to keep reminding myself that we were slaying a goddess, one who could not be slain. Even then I found it horrible to witness. I fear the dreadful sight will scar my people.”

“Your people saw the moonlight shining down on a glade and a foolish young man battling a tree,” said Vindrash. “Nothing more.”

“Yet I see you,” the druid returned doubtfully. “I see you now as the Kai Priestess, Draya.”

“That is because I permit you to see me in the human form. The evil Gods of Raj and Aelon, Lord of the New Dawn, look at me, and they see only a human, one ant in the anthill of humanity. Mortal minds see a goddess, and they cannot bear the sight and so they blot it out. Only Skylan will be able to see me. I will be his worst nightmare.”

“Poor young man,” murmured the druid. “He believes he saw his wife murdered before his eyes and that it was his fault. He will live with that forever.”

“Guilt is a powerful force,” said Vindrash. “As any mother will tell you.”

“And what of the dragon?” the druid asked.

“The Dragon Kahg is my loyal servant. He has sworn an oath that he will tell no one where I am hiding, not even the others of his own kind. I trust him as I trust you, my dear friend.”

“Our enemies are strong, and they grow stronger with every passing day,” the druid said. “I look into the future and I see flames and bitter smoke and a city built on the bones of our dead.”

“That is why we fight,” said Vindrash. “And why we keep on fighting when it would be far easier to sink into oblivion.”

Wulfe had no idea what the two were talking about. He generally found most of what adults said to each other either boring or confusing or both, and he quit paying attention. He was more concerned over what his stomach was saying, which was that it was past time to eat. Wulfe was relieved when the druid and the woman finally quit talking. He heard them walking across the deck and the sound of their feet going down the gangplank.

Wulfe didn’t stir. Not yet. He would give the druid and the woman plenty of time to return to the settlement so he wouldn’t meet them on the trail. The elder had an uncanny way of knowing just by looking at the boy that Wulfe had been up to mischief. To while away the time, Wulfe crept over to stare curiously at the young man.

He smelled disgustingly of iron.

At first Wulfe thought the young man was a corpse, for he was covered in blood. The boy studied the young man’s battered and bloodied face. “Ugly Ones” was his mother’s term for humans. Wulfe thought it fitting. He had watched this Ugly One strutting about in his iron shirt, brandishing the horrible sword, which now lay on the deck at his side. Wulfe eyed the weapon with disgust and gave it a wide berth as he hurried to the ladder. Unless some god loved him, the young man would likely die.

One less Ugly One in the world, his mother would have said.

Wulfe walked across the deck and then stopped to stare in blank dismay at the island on which he lived.

The island that was nothing but a black blotch on a starlit horizon. The moonlit ocean lay between Wulfe and his home.

The dragonship had sailed and taken the boy with it.

W
ulfe stared across the silvered sea in dismay. His home was gone, vanishing beyond sight.

“Stop!” Wulfe cried frantically, turning to the dragon. “You have to take me back. I’m not supposed to be here! I—Ulp!”

The words caught in his throat. He ducked behind one of the sea chests and crouched there, quaking. He was not alone. A woman stood beside the rudder, guiding the ship into the gentle wind.

This had to be the woman who boarded the ship with the druids, the woman Wulfe had overheard speaking to the elder. He had thought she left with the elder, but apparently not.

She looked like she sounded—stern and cold and severe. Wulfe was reminded of the time his mother had taken him to meet his grandmamma. He had been only three, yet he remembered his grandmamma vividly. She was radiant and beautiful and terrible. She had made his mother cry. She had made him cry. There was the same sort of something about this woman—something beautiful and terrible. She frightened the boy more than did the Ugly One who lay dying below.

Wulfe was in agony. He was afraid to stay where he was, and he was afraid to move. The woman seemed absorbed in either her task or her thoughts. Her gaze was fixed, abstracted. Wulfe decided to chance it. Crawling on all fours (he could move exceptionally quickly that way), he scampered across the deck and once more dived down into the hold. Landing soft-footed at the bottom, he kept very still, his ears stretched, listening for some sound that the woman was in pursuit.

Hearing only the sighing of the wind, he looked upward. A sliding trapdoor could be drawn across the hatch’s opening, closing it. Wulfe wondered if he dared. The woman might hear him. He decided to risk it. He stood
precariously balanced on a rung of the ladder, reached up, and carefully and cautiously, using the tip ends of his fingers, slid the trapdoor shut.

The hold was now dark and snug, giving Wulfe the comforting impression of being in a den. He crept over to check on the Ugly One. Wulfe squatted on his haunches, his chin on his knees, and regarded the young man in frowning consternation. Wulfe had often accompanied the druids when they tended the sick, for he had some skills in the art of healing. Since he was skilled in nothing else, the druids had encouraged him in this pursuit.

Wulfe had seen death before, and this Ugly One was dying. He burned with fever; his wounds were festering. His body twitched and jerked. He moaned in pain, and once, to Wulfe’s alarm, he gave a great shout. Wulfe tried to hush him, for he feared the woman would hear and come to investigate. She did not come—either she didn’t hear or she didn’t care. Night deepened; the Ugly One grew steadily worse.

Wulfe pondered. He had the power to save the young man. His skills in magic were considerable. They were also, unfortunately, erratic, sometimes ending in disaster. There was another problem. The druids had forbidden him to use his magic.

“Just because you
can
do a thing does not mean you
should
,” the elder had told him. “You do not understand these skills you possess, Wulfe. Are they a gift or a curse? You can do good, that is true. Sadly, you have also done great harm. Thus, until you understand how to exert control over this wayward power you possess, it is better that you do not use it.”

Wulfe was in a quandary. He was afraid of the Ugly One, who carried iron and stank of death. Yet Wulfe felt a strange sort of kinship for him. Like Wulfe, the young man appeared to be beset by his own inner daemons.

The druids taught that the soul leads an existence separate from the body. When the body sleeps, the soul travels to a twilight realm where it lives and loves and does all sorts of strange and wonderful things. But while beautiful, this realm was also dangerous. Souls were sometimes lost in the twilight realm. Unable to find their way out, they never returned and the body died. That was why one must never wake a person who was dreaming or sleepwalking, for fear the soul would not find its way back.

Daemons populated this twilight realm, taking the form of people known in life. Wulfe knew that for a fact. He often saw his father in the twilight realm, when his father had died long ago. These daemons were now besetting the Ugly One.

The young man begged someone called Draya to forgive him. He fought a daemon named Horg, and he groped about for his sword. This terrified Wulfe. He would have tossed the hideous weapon overboard, only he could not bear to touch it. Fearing the Ugly One would find the sword, which lay
on the deck near him, Wulfe threw a blanket over it. Then he crept into a corner of the hold and stayed there until the Ugly One’s battle with the daemons ended.

The Ugly One sank into a stupor. Wulfe was torn. He was afraid of the young man, afraid of the sword. At the same time, he pitied him. He was in such terrible pain. It occurred to Wulfe that if the Ugly One died, the dragonship might sail on and on forever, and Wulfe would never see his home again. He couldn’t decide what to do, and while he argued with himself this way and that, he fell asleep.

Wulfe woke to find the sun peeking in through chinks in the planks. To his astonishment, the Ugly One was still alive. Wulfe cautiously slid open the trapdoor a crack and peeked out. If the woman was still there, he would gather his courage and tell her the young man was dying and that the druids could help him and would she please ask the dragon to take him home.

The woman was gone. The rudder had been lashed in place, keeping the ship on a steady course. Wulfe searched the deck as best he could from his vantage point and did not see her. He was about to climb onto the deck, when he caught sight of the dragon’s angry eye swiveling in his direction. Wulfe hurriedly ducked back down into the hold. He did not go up on deck again.

He found food and water, and he ate and drank and tended to the Ugly One as best he could, bathing his hot flesh and forcing water down his throat and spreading a potion he found on the wounds.

None of that helped. The Ugly One grew steadily worse. He no longer sat up or cried out. His breathing was labored; his heartbeat was weak. Wulfe could barely feel a pulse. The young man’s soul was far from his body and roving farther still.

The only way to save him was for Wulfe to use his magic. The cure might kill him, but the young man was dying anyway. Wulfe was more afraid of the druids finding out that he’d broken their rules.

Wulfe decided to risk it. Hoping he didn’t do anything terrible, such as turn the young man inside out (Wulfe had mistakenly done this to a girl’s pet cat once—a horrible experience for all concerned), Wulfe put his hand over the young man’s heart and began to sing to him.

The song Wulfe sang in a thin and wavering voice was a song his mother had sung to him.

He had only vague memories of his mother. A woman lovelier than the dawn, she had smelled of laurel and rosemary and violet. She was clothed in gossamer and moonlight. Her long golden hair, which went to her feet, was spangled with dewdrops. He had never seen her by day, only by night, when she came to dance with him and laugh with him, hold him and weep over
him. At such times, the wolves who were his guardians would throw back their heads and wail in sorrow.

His mother sang songs to him, over and over until the songs became a part of him, like his blood and his bones and his skin.

“The Ugly Ones will seek to harm you, because you are not one of them,” his mother had whispered to him again and again. “I cannot be there to protect you, but so long as you remember the songs of your people, the Ugly Ones cannot hurt you.”

Wulfe had told the elder what his mother had said. The elder had looked very sad and said that, although his mother meant well, she should not have given him such a dangerous gift. At that time, Wulfe didn’t understand what the druid meant by the songs being dangerous. He had come to understand a little when he’d sung his songs to the poor sick cat.

Wulfe sang one of his mother’s songs to the dying young man. His mother would not have approved, for the young man was one of those very Ugly Ones who would try to harm him. The druid would not approve, for such magic was dangerous, and Wulfe couldn’t control it.