Omensent: Princess Of Dragons (Book 5) (16 page)

"What, in the name of the gods, was that about?" Damion demanded in confusion.

"Your guess is as good as mine." Captain Harper nudged the dead man onto his back. "Wait a second!" He snatched the rag from the corpse's head, revealing a pair of pointy ears." This isn't one of my men! It's an elf!"

"How did an elf sneak aboard without being noticed?"

"That's a good question." Captain Harper looked over to the other attacker, who was still laying in an unconscious heap. "Grab that man and bind him before he wakes!" He bellowed at a group of sailors who had rushed over to investigate the commotion, then he glanced down at the corpse. "And somebody toss this mangy cur overboard before he starts to stink!"

Raven and Damarius suddenly appeared from below deck, followed closely by Brody and Delilah.

"What is going on up here?" Damarius asked, watching as several sailors bound the unconscious man's hands and feet.

"It appears we have some stowaways on board." Captain Harper scowled angrily. "All hands!" He bellowed, causing his men to freeze mid-step. "I want this entire ship searched from hull to crow's nest! If there are any more stowaways on my ship, I want them found!"

The sailors immediately jumped into action and began searching the ship for any other stowaways.

"How did they get on board?" Raven asked with a puzzled expression.

"I don't know," Damion murmured, kneeling down and removing the red rag from the unconscious man's head, revealing a pair of pointy ears. "but I have the feeling they have something to do with what's happening on the island."

Delilah gasped as her eyes fell upon their prisoner. "He's elven!"

"If I had to guess, I would say that this would be one of the elves that your captain friend found drifting at sea." Damarius murmured to Captain Harper. "But where is the other one?"

"He didn't survive." The old sailor growled, gesturing to the nearby corpse.

"Do you know this elf?" Damion asked Brody, who was staring at the dead elf with an unsettled expression.

"I do." The elven man nodded uncomfortably. "His name is Relvin. He is the son of one of the queen's advisors."

"Do you think that they are blood elves?" Raven asked as Damion propped the unconscious man up against the ship's mast.

"It is almost a certainty." Delilah murmured worriedly. "They must have found out about our mission, and were trying to stop us."

"Do you have anything that'll wake him?" Damion asked Damarius. "I'd like to ask him a few questions."

"I have just the thing." The old wizard rummaged through the pouches on his belt for several moments, then withdrew a tiny glass vial. He carefully removed the vial's stopper, then waved it under the unconscious elf's nose.

The elf's eyes suddenly flew open, and he made a violent retching sound, then he groaned and fell over onto his side gasping for air. "My ribs!" He wheezed in agony, desperately trying to draw a breath.

"Yes," Damarius carefully probed the bound elf's ribcage. "You have several broken ribs. Here," He rummaged through his pouches again and withdrew an amber vial. "this should help with the pain." He dropped several drops of a clear liquid into the elf's open mouth, then stepped back. "It will take a few moments to take affect."

"What did you give him?" Captain Harper asked curiously.

"Just a little something that I cooked up a few decades ago." The old wizard shrugged. "It's a powerful painkiller that has a few interesting side effects."

"Such as?"

Damarius grinned. "The user cannot help but speak the truth when under its effects."

"A truth serum?" Shirk blurted in surprise. "Does it really work?"

"Oh yes." The old wizard nodded. "It almost works too well. Once you ask them a question, they will not stop talking until the effects finally wear off."

"I think it's beginning to work." Raven pointed to the elf, whose breathing had become far less labored.

"Feeling better?" Damion asked in an almost pleasant tone.

"Much better, thank you." The elf sighed, drawing in a deep breath. "I don't think I have ever been in so much pain in my entire life. That kick nearly crushed my chest! One second I'm attempting to kill you, and the next I'm flying backwards through the air, and..."

"Yes, yes," The huge warrior interrupted the elf to keep him from rambling on. "Tell me, how did you and your friend make it aboard this ship?"

"Oh, that wasn't very difficult at all." The elf informed him with a shrug. "We just bartered some sailors' garbs, hid our ears beneath some rags, and walked aboard. We knew that the sailors would think that we were nothing more than a couple of new deckhands. No one even noticed us, which, of course, was our plan all along. Once we were aboard, we hid among the cargo until we were well under way, then we made our way up to the upper deck where we attacked you and you kicked me in my chest." He gave Damion a reproving look. "That really hurt, you know."

"I know." Damion nodded again. "How many of you were there altogether?"

"It was just Relvin and myself, which was okay by me. Relvin and I have been friends ever since we were children. He's more like a brother, really. I even lived with his family for a time after my parents died." He looked around with a frown. "Where is Relvin, anyway?"

"He didn't survive the attack." Captain Harper growled in a hard tone, gesturing to a pair of deckhands as they heaved the elf's corpse overboard.

"Oh," Eldrin sighed sadly. "That's a shame. He was a good friend." He looked at Damion. "Did I mention that we grew up together? He was more like a bro..."

"How did you and your friend reach Sierra?" Damion asked, cutting through the elf's rambling.

"We stole a small dingy, then paddled our way out into one of the shipping routes that pass our island." The young elf  shrugged. "We crossed paths with a merchant vessel heading south, and pretended to be nothing more than refugees lost at sea. Once we finally reached Sierra, we asked around until we found the ship the Ava Delilah and Etha Brody had traveled on, and discovered that they had already departed for Sevria."

"You were following us?" Delilah asked in alarm.

The injured elf nodded. "We knew that you and Etha Brody were attempting to locate the Dragon Lord in the hopes he would come to our island. We were watching the trade road when you finally returned with him. We didn't have an opportunity to strike before you boarded this ship, so we decided to sneak aboard and..."

"That stuff
really
works, doesn't it?" Shirk muttered to Damarius while the elf continued to rattle on.

"Yes, it does." The old wizard turned to gaze at the bearded bandit. "Perhaps I should slip a few drops into your ale later and see what kind of things
you
have to say."

Shirk gulped, then began to shuffle in place uncomfortably.

"Who sent you to stop us?" Brody demanded angrily. "Was it your high priest? How did Yrinn know that we were going to seek out the Dragon Lord for help?"

"Yrinn?" The elf suddenly looked confused. "Who..."

"We know that Yrinn has returned to our island to seek followers for the dark god, Hetris!" Brody snarled, his eyes blazing with hate. "Where is he hiding?"

"I-I have no idea where Yrinn is hiding." The injured elf told him, an odd expression on his face. "We've never even met him. Our orders came from someone else. We were ordered to kill the Dragon Lord and his companions, and..."

"You're lying!" Brody snarled in fury. "Yrinn discovered that we planned on seeking out the Dragon Lord for aid, and decided that we had to be stopped! That's why you were ordered to kill him, wasn't it?"

"He can't lie." Raven reminded the elven ambassador. "The potion Damarius gave him won't allow him to lie, remember?"

The injured elf acted as though he hadn't heard Brody's accusations. "You know," He looked to Damarius, the color slowly draining from his face. "I really don't feel very well." An enormous fountain of blood suddenly erupted from the elf's mouth, spraying across the deck of the ship, and causing Brody to leap backward in surprised confusion.

"Ah, damn!" Damarius growled, watching as the elf slumped over onto his side with a gurgling sigh. He rushed over to check for a pulse. "He's dead. One of his broken ribs must have pierced a lung."

Brody let out a string of curses, then turned away from the dead elf, and stomped over to the ship's railing, his expression a mingling of fury, frustration, and disgust.

"That's unfortunate." Shirk frowned in disappointment. "There were still a lot of questions that he could have answered for us."

"Well, that's not going to happen now." Captain Harper grunted, nudging the dead elf with one toe. "His days of answering questions are over." He placed his hand on his dagger cautiously as one of his deckhands approached. "What is it?"

"We've searched the ship from stem to stern, Captain, and didn't find any other stowaways."

"Good," The old captain grunted. "It appears that he really
was
telling the truth." He looked back to the deckhand. "Toss this pile of meat overboard, then grab a mop and clean this mess up before the blood stains my deck."

"It appears that our plans have been compromised." Delilah murmured to the others with a frown. "We had hoped to keep the Dragon Lord's involvement a secret until we arrived so the blood elves wouldn't have time to devise a counter plan. Now we've lost that advantage."

"Dealing with these blood elves may prove trickier than we first thought." Shirk said, watching as a pair of sailors heaved the dead elf overboard. "There's no way of distinguishing between them and other elves. We're going to have to be suspicious of everyone."

"There are a few that we know that we can trust." Brody assured him. "We can depend on them to help us. They have proven their loyalty to Petra time and time again."

"Not to us, they haven't." The old bandit disagreed. "We're not going to risk our lives by trusting some elves whom we've never even met."

"I agree with Shirk." Damion murmured with a frown. "We cannot risk putting our trust into someone whom we do not know.
But,
" He held up one hand as Brody started to object. "we also can't turn down any assistance offered to us. It may prove to be the difference between failure and success."

"Who is this high priest?" Raven asked Delilah curiously. "Yrinn, I think Brody said his name was."

"Yrinn is an outcast." The elven woman said the name like it left a foul taste in her mouth. "He was banished from our island over a century ago for plotting to overthrow the queen."

"We should have killed him." Brody growled angrily, still staring out over the railing at the open sea. "Many of us thought that his crimes deserved nothing less than death, but the queen felt that since he was last of one of the noble houses, killing him would be too excessive." He sighed, then shook his head. "If we had known then what we know now, perhaps many of our people would still be alive."

"We believe that he has returned to the island, and has been discreetly gathering followers for Hetris." Delilah continued, her face grim. "Many of us have suspected that he was the one behind this attempt to destroy Petra's faithful, but there has never been any proof that he had returned. Only rumors."

"And rumors are still all we have." Damarius murmured. "If these elves worked for this Yrinn fellow, it doesn't appear that they knew it. There's no way that the elf could have lied to us while under the influence of my truth serum."

"Well,
someone
discovered that we were coming here to seek the Dragon Lord's aid, and was disturbed enough to try and stop him from returning with us." Delilah pointed out to the old wizard. "And the only elf that fits that description would be Yrinn. He and his blood elves can't afford to have you and your companions interfering with their plans."

"Then our mission has become even more urgent." Brody stated in alarm. "If Yrinn has returned, and has discovered our plans, there's no telling what he may have done in our absence." He looked to Captain Harper. "We must reach our island as quickly as possible. The life of our beloved queen could hang in the balance!"

"The Fearless Lady is the fastest ship in these waters." The old captain assured him calmly. "We'll be have you back home before you know it."

The next couple of weeks were uneventful, save a brief rainstorm that tossed the ship about for several hours before moving on, leaving them all a bit battered and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. They finally arrived at the secluded Elven Island early one morning, just as the sun began to peek above the horizon.

"There is a large island just ahead."
Snowfeather reported to Damion as he returned from hunting with a large fish grasped in his talons.
"I'm guessing that it's the Elven Island. It's the only land in the area, anyway."

"Snowfeather says that there is an island just ahead." Damion reported, watching as the isle appeared as a dark smudge in the distance. "He's pretty certain that it's the Elven Island."

"At last!" Brody sighed in relief. "It will be nice to finally return to civilization!"

"We haven't been at sea all
that
long." Captain Harper told him as he, Brody, and Damion stood together on the bow of the ship, watching as they slowly drew closer to the huge island. "We were in Sierra just a few weeks ago."

"Sierra wasn't exactly what I would refer to as civilized." Brody sniffed, wrinkling his nose in distaste. "It was crude, almost primitive, in comparison to life on the island. I will be most relieved once I finally step foot back in my blessed homeland."

"It sounds as though you wish you had never left in the first place." Damion observed with a slight frown.

"It matters not what I wish," The elf told him, his eyes lost in thought. "The only thing that is important is the continued survival of my people. My queen had need of my service, and I am ever her royal majesty's loyal servant." He sighed heavily. "In all honesty, if I hadn't been ordered to try and secure your help, I would have never left in the first place. I am wholly unsuited to mix among the other races. My prejudices run too deep, I'm afraid."