63
Hulwen’s Trophy
Stop!” Leeli said, and the dragon did.
It froze, so close to Leeli that she could have reached out and touched the tip of its nose.
And she did.
For the first time in an age, someone touched a living dragon.
Seawater washed down the sides of the dragon’s slick face and puddled on the deck. Its mouth, full of teeth longer than Leeli was tall, was stretched open to eat Podo whole. The old pirate knelt with his eyes closed.
Janner sensed the dragon in his mind, who was speechless with surprise that this wavy-haired little creature would have such courage. The tips of her delicate fingers rested on the dragon’s nose. She looked calmly into its eyes, though they were as big as wagon wheels and deep as the sea. A little burst of air from its nose blew back her hair.
It was your song that fell from the cliffs.
“Yes! It was her song!” Artham said, and Janner realized his uncle could hear the voice too. Artham broke away from the Kimerans at the stern, flew to the prow, and landed where Podo knelt. “Lords of the sea,” he said with a bow, “before you stands the Song Maiden of Anniera.”
The dragon blinked, and again its thoughts were spoken in Janner’s mind.
Impossible.
“It’s true, lords,” said Artham.
Anniera has fallen. The dream is ended, and the world is dark.
“If the dream is ended,” said Artham with a flap of his wings, “how do you explain these feathers? How do you explain Leeli’s courage? How else could I hear your words if I were not a Throne Warden? It is true the Shining Isle is smoke and ashes and that darkness is wide over the land. But your long memory has failed you. Of all creatures, you should know that the darkness is seldom complete, and even when it is, the pinprick of light is not long in coming—and finer for the great shroud that surrounds it.”
The dragon was silent.
Artham beckoned for Nia and Janner to approach. Nia took Tink from Janner’s arms and rested his furry head on her shoulder, holding him close like she had a thousand times when he was very young.
Janner was ashamed to admit he was glad she took him. He didn’t like the feel of the Fang fur or the eerie change in his brother’s features; it was a reminder that the Throne Warden had failed. No matter what anyone said, though he knew it wasn’t true, Janner would never escape the feeling of responsibility for what had happened to his brother. And then he began to understand something about his uncle: it was guilt that drove Artham P. Wingfeather mad.
Nia climbed the steps with Tink in her arms, and Janner followed. They stood beside Podo and Leeli, all of them wet and cold, shivering in the blustery sea wind.
“The heart of the kingdom stands before you. Behold,” Artham said with a sweep of his hands, “the pinprick of light.”
The dragon brought its head low and studied each of them in turn. When the giant eyes settled on Janner, he fought the urge to kneel as Podo had done. The beast was as old as mountains, and its gaze was heavy. When it looked at Leeli, she smiled and curtsied, and it bowed its head in return.
The dragon’s eyes fell on Podo again, and a rumble issued from its chest. Our anger is deep. However, for the sake of the old friendship with the Shining Isle, and for the Song Maiden’s spirit, the ship may pass.
“Our thanks, sea lord!” said Artham with a sigh of relief. He squeezed Podo’s shoulder and whispered to the others, “They’re letting us go. Thank the Maker, they’re letting us go!”
The ship may pass, the dragon continued, but Scale Raker is ours. His offense is great, and we will not so easily let him tread our waters. Long have I ached to foul his flesh.
“No,” Janner moaned.
“Please,” Artham said.
“What did it say? Tell me!” Nia demanded.
“Hush, lass,” said Podo. He looked up at Nia with a gentle smile. “Me voyage is over. I knew the sea held nothing but death and shame for me. Couldn’t bear to lay me eyes on it all these years. I knew sooner or later me waters would carry me back here and there would be a reckoning.”
“Quiet!” Nia said. “I’m too angry at you to let you die. This reckoning is nothing to what Mama would have said! To have kept this hidden from us, to have done these things—”
“She knew,” Podo said quietly.
“What? Mama despised the dragon hunters. She hated what they did!” Nia sputtered.
“Aye,” Podo said. “And so do I. Hate it more than you ever could. Many’s the time I wished I could go back and fix it all, undo the things I done on the Strand and on the sea. But when yer mother gave me her heart, I left the old Podo behind and said good-bye to the sea. I never thought I’d see the ocean again once I married your ma in the Green Hollows, but then Esben chose you as his queen. Remember how I sent you and yer ma ahead and waited till winter before I crossed the strait to Anniera?”
“Yes, I remember,” Nia said.
“I was scared silly that the dragons would rise up as they have now. The dragons took me leg, and they knew me scent. It was a miracle I made it across the strait to Anniera, and I made peace with never settin’ foot on a ship again. Broke me heart, but I’d broken plenty of others and saw it as me just penance. Then Gnag the Nameless attacked, and that storm blew us across to Skree. I thought the dragons would gobble us up on the way, but I reckon the Maker had different plans. All those years I stayed at the cottage on Dragon Day because I couldn’t bear to look out at that wide horizon and know I’d never sail it again.
“Listen, daughter. I’m glad beyond telling that it’s just me they want. When we come out of that tunnel, I thought for certain that me deeds would be the end of you too. But they’re lettin’ you go. Nia dear, I’ll go to the Deep happy knowing that.”
“Enough!” said Nia. She rounded on Artham. “You tell these dragons I’m the Queen Mother, this is my father, and I pardon him for these crimes. They must let him pass!”
Artham hesitated.
“Tell them!” Nia snapped.
The dragon’s chest rumbled again, and its eyes narrowed. Janner had the disturbing sense that its patience was wearing thin.
“I don’t have to tell them,” said Artham quietly. “You just did. They understand you.”
“Nia, don’t,” said Podo. “I’ve done things that ain’t been paid for, and it’s time I stopped running from that.”
Listen to the old man, said the dragon.
“It says—it says you should listen to Podo, Nia,” Artham said.
“No!” she said with all the authority she could muster, clutching Tink so tight that he whined.
The dragon was finished listening to Nia. It reared its head and hissed at them. The other dragons writhed, the ship rocked, and it seemed they would break the vessel to pieces and swallow it whole.
“Please, sir,” said Leeli to the dragon, “isn’t there something that can be done?”
The dragon’s answer was a name.
Hulwen! it said. Come forth, daughter! Let these grovelers see what Scale Raker has done.
A ruby red dragon rose from the waters at the old one’s side. It was half the size of the others and swam in a graceless lurch. As it approached, the gray dragon drew back to allow it room. One of its eyes was missing. A long, twisted scar ran from the top of its head, past the missing eye, to the corner of its mouth. One of its fins hung limp, cut into shreds, and in several places its scales were twisted and corrupt where, Janner guessed, harpoons had pierced it long ago. Instead of a row of fine glimmering fangs, teeth were missing or stuck out at odd angles.
Podo shook his head like a child. “I beg ye, masters, please don’t. I can’t bear it.”
The creature hung its mangled head over the deck of the ship, turned its good eye on Podo, and grunted. Janner waited for its words to fill his mind, but none came. Leeli and Nia hid their eyes.
My daughter, said the old dragon, who was once as beautiful as the rising moon. My daughter, whose ma
ny scars came from Scale Raker’s blade and the spears of his henchmen.
Janner felt sick. It was one thing to learn his grandfather had done terrible things. It was another to see those terrible things with his own eyes. And this was only one of the dragons he had attacked. Janner tried to look at Podo but couldn’t.
Do you remember her, old man?
“It wants to know if—if you remember her,” Artham said. “It’s the old one’s daughter.”
Podo shook his head.
Then remember this! said the old dragon. Show him, Hulwen.
The ruby red dragon sighed.
Show him!
The smaller dragon dipped her head into the water. When she emerged, she spat something at them. A clean, white bone clattered to the deck where Podo knelt.
“Me leg,” he whispered. He looked up at the red dragon. “It was you. I remember. Oh Maker, I’m so sorry.”
Hulwen, vengeance is yours, said the old gray dragon. Kill the one who killed so many.
64
And the Sea Turned Red
No!” Janner screamed.
The ruby dragon grunted, reared back—and hesitated.
Do it! said the old dragon.
But the young dragon’s eye fell on Leeli and her twisted leg. It looked at Podo, trembling and bent on his knees.
No, said Hulwen, a young, weary voice in Janner’s mind.
What? said the old one.
Let them go, said Hulwen. His scars run deeper than mine.
Then she sank beneath the waves.
The old gray beast’s fury shook the air. Its flanks rippled like a flag in a windstorm. The dragon’s wordless cry stabbed Janner’s mind, and he clamped his eyes shut and pressed both hands against his forehead. The other dragons shared the old one’s rage until the water around the ship foamed like Fingap Falls.
Artham launched himself into the air and waved his sword at the great beast as it descended. With a flick of its nose, the dragon threw Artham against the glacier so hard that hunks of ice crashed into the sea. Artham was stunned, but his wings beat the air as he fell. The tips of his toes touched the water as he swooped up and circled the dragon again.
Janner no longer heard words in his mind. The creature had gone wild. He knew that if Artham hadn’t distracted it, the dragon would have splintered the ship already and they would be dead.
“Janner!” Leeli said. “Get the First Book. Hurry!”
“Why? I don’t know where it is!”
“Ask Errol. Gammon said our things are on the ship. Go!”
Janner had no idea what Leeli had in mind, but he was glad to do something other than wait to be eaten. He took the steps down from the foredeck in one leap. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Oskar still flailing about on his back, unable to find his feet on the rocking boat. Errol and the rest of the crew had subdued the Grey Fangs and held them against the ship’s rail at sword-point.
“Errol! Where are our packs?” Janner cried.
“In the captain’s quarters, through that door!”
Janner burst into the room and saw his pack in a pile of bedrolls and furs beside a large desk. He rummaged through it and yanked out the old book, wondering what Leeli planned to do.
When he emerged from the cabin, he saw the great dragon wheeling about, snapping its teeth at Artham as he flew around its head like a gnat. The sound of the dragon’s jaws closing on empty air was like lightning splitting an oak in two. Janner wondered why Podo and the others hadn’t sought cover, but he knew as well as they did that it was futile. If the dragon wanted Podo, the dragon would have him. Even if the old man hid in the ship’s hold, the creature would have little trouble crushing the ship with one bite.
Janner bounded up the steps and skidded to a halt in front of Leeli. She frantically flipped through the pages, thrust the book at Janner, and said, “Hold it open where I can see it!”
Janner looked at the page but saw nothing but odd letters and lines.
Leeli reached inside her coat and removed the whistleharp. Light reflected from it and glinted on the dragon’s face. The dragon stilled.
Leeli raised the whistleharp to her lips with trembling hands and studied the markings on the ancient paper. A great silence seemed to descend on the world. The Kimerans, Artham, and even the Grey Fangs waited to see what would happen.
Then the melody broke on them like a sunrise.
After the first few notes, the dragon drew in a slow, deep breath and closed its eyes. Leeli’s song grew in strength and tension and beauty, and as she reached the first refrain, the sea dragon exhaled a warm, mountainous note. Its voice was round and rich and somehow fragrant, like the song a tree might sing when it blossoms in springtime.
“Yurgen’s Tune,” said Oskar, who stopped struggling and lay back on the deck with a big smile on his face. “Good lass, Leeli.”
The dragon raised its face to the sky with careful grace until its gleaming scales caught the sun and the beast towered above them like a giant golden scepter. Soon the other dragons joined it in song, and Janner felt that his heart might burst. He heard the clatter of swords as they slipped from the Kimerans’ limp hands while the big men stood in awe. Artham spread his arms and wings wide and basked in the song as if it were sunlight.
Podo knelt behind Leeli as still as a statue, unwilling or unable to raise his eyes to her or to the dragons. On his face was a look of insufferable shame, both for the killing of young dragons and for the way his treachery had nearly killed those whom he loved.
Leeli lowered the whistleharp when she had played all she could of “Yurgen’s Tune,” but the dragons continued.
“Grandpa,” Leeli said gently. Podo lifted his eyes as if they weighed a thousand pounds. “Get up,” she said. She took his old, crooked hand in her tiny, elegant one and raised him. Janner believed no other force in all of Aerwiar, not the finest words nor the strongest grip, would have been enough to lift the broken old pirate—only Leeli’s voice and tender hand.
The Grey Fangs covered their ears. They howled with pain, but the sound was faint and distant and had no power to disrupt the dragons’ music. Tink squirmed in Nia’s arms. His eyes remained closed, but his claws dug into her skin and drew blood. She held him tighter and kissed his fur.
“Get these beasts below deck,” Errol said. “And see to the wounded.” He and his men bound the arms of the six remaining Fangs. The creatures, groggy and disoriented, were led to the ship’s hold without protest. The dead Fangs had already turned to dust. Clumps of fur collected in the corners and lifted away on the breeze.
Janner hoped that when the song ended, the dragons would sink away as he had seen them do so many times before, but they did not. Instead, the old gray one arced its neck and looked down on them with a fierce stillness.
At last, said the dragon, comes one who can ease our sorrow with song. We thought we would never again hear this music. How, little one, did you come to learn this melody? You sang something like it when the half moon rose, but it has been long since we have heard it as it was written.1
“She learned it from this book,” Janner said. “It’s one of the First Books.”
The First Books? the dragon said. They have been lost for epochs.
“And yet,” said Artham, “the Song Maiden has just played ‘Yurgen’s Tune.’ How else could she have learned it?”
Janner sensed the dragon remembering things from long ago, things the sea dragons had forgotten they ever knew, as if Leeli’s whistleharp were a key that unlocked a secret chamber in the dragon’s mind. He saw the ages turn like pages in a picture book. The old gray dragon glided backward through the waters of time with fins like wings, appeared younger by a day every hundred years, and led its herd a thousand times from Fingap Falls to the deep caverns of the Sunken Mountains, where stones gave light and the walls swirled with pictures.
He saw the dragons in pursuit of pirate ships, young dragons roped and hauled to the decks. He saw that in the days of the pirates,
young dragons traveled the waters alone and were vulnerable. Only when they banded together as a herd did the pirates fear them and the hunting cease.
Then Janner sensed the dragon swimming back to an older time, when the world itself felt younger, when the sun was brighter and the waters warm. The old dragon saw itself wrecking ships, battering helpless sailors and their families. It remembered worming its way onto the shore to flatten villages and scar the land while the people wailed. Terror was in their eyes, and the dragon knew its own deeds were once dark.
It pushed further into memory but was met with a gray nothingness. No explanation for its fury, no cause for the killing. It would take another song to open those chambers. Janner felt a new emotion arise in the dragon’s mind—contrition. The dragon had done evils of its own and regretted them.
Hulwen the ruby dragon raised her disfigured head from the water. The gray dragon closed its eyes and nuzzled her. Janner could tell they spoke with each other, but they had closed him off. He could hear nothing of what they said and wondered if the same were true of Artham. When the dragons finished, Hulwen looked into Janner’s eyes and nodded.
A final passage, she said, and she sank away again.
Janner and Artham looked at each other with surprise.
There is no evil in justice, said the gray dragon. The old man himself knows this. Though “Yurgen’s Tune” has awakened pity in my ancient heart, yet the blood of our children cries out for justice. We will allow him the mercy of one last passage across the sea. Scale Raker may live out his last days in peace.
But should he enter these waters again, the dragon said, his days on Aerwiar will end. Without anger, without warning, we will rise from the deep and swallow him. So shall our dead be honored. Do you understand?
Janner and Artham nodded gravely.
“Yes, lords,” said Artham. “We thank you.”
“They’re letting him pass!” Janner ran to Podo and hugged him around the waist. “Grandpa, they’re letting you go!”
“Eh?” The look on Podo’s face alternated between disbelief and joy, which caused his bushy eyebrows to rise and fall like foamy waves. Nia raised her head to the heavens and mouthed a prayer while Leeli squealed and hopped into Podo’s thick arms.
North! Or Be Eaten Page 37
