THE DRAGONS
Amberhill stood in the crow’s nest, exulting in the
wind that streamed through his hair and filled the sails into
billowing clouds beneath his feet. He felt he walked in the sky.
The horizon tilted around him as the Ice
Lady plowed through the waves of the Northern Sea, the green
cluster of islands that was his goal discernible in the
distance.
In Midhaven, he and
Yap had disembarked from Ullem Queen to
take passage on Ice Lady, a sealing
vessel headed for the arctic ice, a course that took them near the
archipelago. They’d not lingered on land for long before they found
Ice Lady, but Amberhill had taken what
little time they had to climb the Seamount Lady Estora had once so
lovingly described, and he found the vistas not wanting. It seemed
years, and worlds away, that day he’d sat with her and Zachary
talking of Coutre Province and his plans to take a
voyage.
His initial
seasickness after leaving Corsa Harbor, too, was a dim memory, for
he’d flourished at sea, his cheeks burnished bronze with the sun,
and he felt alive in the salt air as he’d only felt when inviting
danger as the Raven Mask. He’d taken to climbing to the crow’s nest
and along the yardarms to maintain his trim and challenge his
balance. His training as the Raven Mask made him as nimble as any
sailor, if not more so. Captain Irvine had invited him to join the
crew of Ullem Queen, and he’d only been
half-jesting.
Amberhill also
exercised with his rapier, repeating lessons once drilled into him
by Morry. Yap was pulled into these sessions as an awkward sparring
mate, using a practice sword carved for the purpose by the ship’s
carpenter, and a lid of a pot as a buckler. The crew was much
amused.
As for Yap, he was
permitted to assist the crew, but Amberhill made sure he did not
revert to his pirate ways, ordering him to maintain daily ablutions
and to launder his clothes as frequently as he did Amberhill’s. The
sealing vessel was far from luxurious, but Amberhill had personal
standards that must be maintained.
When gray-blue
clouds intruded on the horizon and the sails slapped fitfully
against line and timber, Amberhill climbed down from his perch and
sought out Captain Malvern on the bridge. She gazed through her
spyglass to the north, then turned east toward the building clouds.
The captain was a small woman, but no less imposing for it. She
kept her dark hair, peppered with gray, shorn short, and she looked
at him with eyes that seemed creased in a perpetual squint from too
many years of sun. She was another of those uncanny women, like
Beryl Spencer, or the G’ladheon woman, that made him uneasy. Like
the others of this ilk, she did not fall for his charms. Not that
he’d tried to charm her, but he was well-aware of his own natural
attributes, which were, he thought with a smile, enough to attract
women like ants to spilled sugar.
“We’ve a storm
bearing down on us,” she said. “Can see it, smell it, and my aching
bones confirm it.”
“Will you take
shelter then? The archipelago is ahead.”
“Nah. That’d be a
trap. The currents around the islands would tear up the
Lady. We’ll ride it out at sea, but it
means we go now.”
“Now?”
“Aye. Ready yourself
and Mister Yap, or prepare for a season of seal hunting with the
Ice Lady.”
Amberhill did not
doubt the captain’s weather sense—she’d not been wrong once since
leaving Midhaven, but the plan had been to leave him and Yap closer
to the islands. She had refused to take him into the archipelago
itself, citing the perilous currents and the more superstitious
clap-trap about witches and bad luck. Now he’d have to rely on
Yap’s experience as a seaman to get them there. Amberhill had
picked up a thing or two along their voyage, but little in the way
of practical knowledge. He had left the sailing to the
sailors.
“Mister Yap!” he
cried. “Prepare the gig!”
“Aye,
sir!”
When Amberhill had
sought passage from Midhaven to the archipelago, it had proven
clear that no captain desired to venture among the islands, not
even for a large purse, claiming them too far off course, or the
currents too hazardous, but underlying all these excuses, like
those of Captain Malvern’s, was superstition.
So Amberhill took
matters into his own hands, purchasing a sloop that had been the
gig of a merchanteer captain. The small vessel, Yap said, would
sail well around the reefs and currents of the islands. Captain
Malvern had not argued about hoisting the gig up alongside
Ice Lady when Amberhill paid extra. Her
voyage was proving profitable even before she reached the sealing
grounds.
Odd, Amberhill
thought as he watched Yap and crew secure their supplies in the
gig, that others should be so repelled by the very islands that
lured him. He was drawn to them like he was coming home. His true
home. His ring sent a pulse of warmth through him.
Captain Malvern
joined him at the rail. “Remember to steer clear of the
Dragons—that’s where the currents are the worst—and we’ll look for
you on our return from the ice. Otherwise, Spring Harbor is your
closest port in Arey.”
Amberhill nodded.
He’d pored over charts with Yap. Now that it was coming to it, he
felt a little apprehensive, a little queasy, like his seasickness
was coming back, but thankfully it was fleeting.
“Ready, Mister Yap?”
the mate called.
“Ready!” Yap
clambered back over the rail from the gig to the ship, and it was
lowered to the waves below. It looked small down there, tossing
like a piece of driftwood.
“Luck,” Captain
Malvern said as Amberhill followed Yap over the side of
Ice Lady onto the rope
ladder.
“And to you,” he
replied before scrambling down along the barnacle-studded hull.
When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he stepped carefully into
the gig. It bucked like a wild horse and only Amberhill’s excellent
balance prevented him from falling into the water.
Yap cast off the
lines holding the gig to Ice Lady and
scrambled from the bow to hoist the mainsail, and then lunged for
the stern to take command of the tiller. The gig heeled away in the
gusting winds. Amberhill was impressed by how quickly the distance
grew between them and Ice Lady, and he
felt at once free and anxious. Thunder rumbled in the
distance.
The storm rushed
upon them as they made for the islands, slamming them with rain,
waves washing over the rail. The gig strained, groaned, complained
at the forces that battered it. Lightning slashed through the sky
accompanied by deafening thunder. Yap fought with the tiller and
Amberhill clung to the mast and sent up a prayer to the gods. The
Ice Lady was completely gone from
sight, vanished behind walls of waves and curtains of
rain.
Both fresh and salt
water assaulted them, burning Amberhill’s eyes. All he saw was
water above, water below, turbulent darks and darker, visibility
cut off by downpour and foamy crest. Yap was yelling, but the roar
of wind slapped the words back at him. He pointed.
Amberhill peered
over the plunging bow. Was there something ahead? When the bow
reared back up and the gig climbed another wave, he saw only the
gush of rain. The bow surged over the crest and this time, as they
slid into the trough, he made out a pair of shapes darker than
waves or rain or clouds, green and white froth dashing against
them. They looked like monsters of the sea.
The Dragon
Rocks!
The bow reared
again. Monsters indeed—the currents around them would crush the
gig. He glanced at Yap. The expression on the pirate’s face was one
of terror.
“Steer clear!”
Amberhill shouted. “Those are the Dragons ahead!”
Yap jiggled the
tiller. It moved too easily. Amberhill did not hear the word, but
read Yap’s lips: “Broken.”
Like the stick of
driftwood Amberhill had imagined earlier, the gig was tossed around
by the ocean, and when they neared the chaotic, churning currents
near the pair of sea stacks called the Dragon Rocks, an enormous
wave curled over them and Amberhill found himself wishing he’d
taken an unexpected interest in seal hunting.
She walked among the wrack and blue mussel shells and
the foam at the ocean’s edge. Bare of foot, she stepped surely, as
though her toes knew every contour of every stone of the beach,
every cobble and pebble. A hermit crab scuttled out of her
way.
She liked to stroll
the shore after storms, for the ocean tossed up so many interesting
things. Sometimes they were secrets long hidden in darkling depths;
often they were the flotsam and jetsam of far passing ships. Today,
as gulls argued over a crab and an osprey tested its wings in air
currents still restless from the storm, she found a bottle shining
in the foam. She picked it up and discovered the cork still sealed,
the wine safe within. That was a rare gift. Continuing on she found
tangled fishing gear, some battered boards.
Soon she came upon
more debris: wood planking, a barrel bobbing in the shallows.
Perhaps she would be gifted with an entire cask of wine. She
smiled.
A sheet of white
undulating in the waves caught her eye, a sail, and it was snagged.
It was snagged around a man. The gods were being very generous to
her this day—if he still lived. She lengthened her strides to reach
him. He lay half out of the water, his head resting on his
outstretched arm, kelp trailing from his wrist. The sun sheened on
wet black hair that straggled across a well-formed face. Much more
handsome than the sailors she usually received.
He still breathed. A
wave stirred his hand in an eddy. The red of a ruby on his finger
flared in her eyes. She dropped to her knees and grabbed his hand
to see the ring close up. She knew it, had known the ring before
and the hand that had worn it, the hand that had caressed her so
tenderly, so lovingly, so long ago. She stroked the man’s hair away
from his face.
“Are you he?”
Yolandhe, sea witch out of legend, asked. “Have you come back to
me, my love?”