Sea of Dragons (Quest of the Nine Isles Book 2)

by C. Greenwood

  “Is that all?” he grumbled. “Did you try beating it with a rock?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you try beating yourself while you were at it?”

  I returned his sour look. “There’s no sense being prickly just because I woke you up,” I said. “We’ve had enough rest. It’s time we explored this island and figured out what we’re going to do next.”

  He turned in a circle, taking in our surroundings. “You’re sure it’s an island?”

  “Only one way to find out,” I said. “And one thing’s for sure; we won’t learn anything standing around here. We’ve got to get our bearings and start planning how to get back to the mapmaker.”

  He stared at me with a look of disbelief. “That’s what you’re thinking about at a time like this? Getting back to your ridiculous quest?”

  “My home—or what’s left of it under the ocean—depends on me,” I reminded him. “If I don’t raise up the Ninth Isle again, no one will.”

  “Unbelievable,” he muttered. But then he shrugged. “I suppose whatever keeps you motivated to get us out of this situation,” he said. “What’s our next move?”

  “I think we should strike off into the interior,” I said, pointing inland through the trees. “We should find out whether this place is inhabited and if there are any large ships that can carry us back to the mapmaker’s home shores.”

  “No doubt if there aren’t, you mean us to hop back into the leaky dinghy and start paddling toward your beloved mapmaker on our own.” He grunted.

  “Maybe. If that’s what it takes,” I said, undeterred. “But first let’s explore all our options.”

  “I can agree to that.” He clapped his three-cornered hat onto his head. “Let’s get moving.”

  Judging that it would be best to bring some food in case we got hungry on the way, I delayed just long enough to rummage hastily through one of the bundles of provisions I had discovered under the seat of the dinghy. I found a couple of biscuits that weren’t too soggy, but I had no way to carry them.

  So I upended the little pouch that dangled from my belt, spilling its contents onto the sand. The little bits and bobs had no value. But they were the last possessions I had from Corthium. So I stowed them for later retrieval inside the cave where Basil and I had spent the night. Only the armband belonging to my dead aunt did I keep on me. I already wore its twin on one arm, and now I slid this one up around the bicep of the other. I hung onto the tiny minute glass as well, the one I had stolen from the Depository of Knowledge on that long-ago day back on the Ninth Isle. I strung its tiny hook onto a piece of strong thread that I had unraveled from my tunic and fastened around my wrist.

  Then I filled my now-empty belt pouch with the crumbly biscuits.

  After that we set out through the trees, leaving the rolling ocean and beach behind. To my surprise, as we moved deeper inland we found the trees more scattered than I had first imagined. There was no thick, lush jungle like I had encountered on the island of giants. Neither was there smelly marshland like that we had struggled through when we visited the mapmaker.

  Instead, we found something new: seawater. It soon became clear that this island was half-submerged, with thick rivers cutting across its middle and flowing out to sea. There was no possibility it was freshwater, for it tasted salty. The farther we explored, the more we came to the conclusion that this island had either been under water for some time or that it was in the process of gradually sinking. The latter possibility was alarming, but the former excited me. If this island had once been submerged and had since partially risen, that gave me hope that the Ninth Isle could somehow do the same.

  We had not gone far when we made another startling discovery—ancient ruins. At first it was only a stone archway we encountered and the remains of a low, crumbling wall. They were mostly worn away with age and, if my theory was correct, with time spent underwater. But they still retained enough of their graceful lines and smooth marble-like surface for me to see they were the work of expert craftsmen. Once a fine civilization must have stood here.

  We passed through the freestanding archway and found a set of stone steps beyond it. Climbing these, we entered an area where tiles were set into the earth, barely visible beneath the overgrowth of grass and leafy vines.

  Setting foot across those tiles gave me a tinge of homesickness. Much of what we could see in the bits of architecture from this abandoned place reminded me of Corthium. I saw a marble pillar ahead, a broken column with a jagged top that reached toward the gray-clouded sky above. I went to the pillar and rested my palm against the cool stone, amazed at how similar it was to the columns I had walked through every day on my way in and out of the Depository of Knowledge back home. My fingers traced the long grooves cut into the stone until suddenly they stopped. Startled, I took a closer look, not believing what my fingers told me. There was a design etched into the rock, a pattern I knew very well. It was the same design of interlinking rings that was worked across the armbands of hammered metal that I wore around my upper arms. It was the same symbol that was etched into the pillars of the king’s Chamber of Rule and many other pieces of architecture around Corthium. It was the ancient sign of the Nine Isles.

  My mind reeled at the implication. There was only one reason this symbol could be here. I was standing on one of the Nine Isles, surely one of the “lost isles” that had been the first to sink. All my life I had believed, as everyone had, that the old stories were correct—that every isle but Corthium had been buried beneath the sea for hundreds of years. And yet here was living evidence that one had survived. How had we not known? How could one isle have remained above the surface and none of our kings or elders have heard of it?

  The only answer I could imagine was that this must be one of the more distant, smaller isles connected to our ring of islands only through the signal beacons that each island used to communicate with the others. None of our flyers had the strength of wings to travel this far, and we had no great ships to cross the waters and keep us informed of what occurred from one island to another. Without our fiery beacons, we were blind. So when the “linking” islands between this and ours sank during the great catastrophe, this isle had been thought lost to us. And likely, we had been thought lost to them as well.

  Excitement filled me as I realized that could mean there were others like me on this very island, more dragonkind that had survived the events that destroyed most of our people. But even as my heart raced, logic kicked in. We had been trapped here for some hours and had seen no signs of human life yet. We hadn’t even seen any animals. And the first evidence of civilization we had found—these ruins—had obviously been uninhabited for centuries.

  This led me back, reluctantly, to the idea that this isle had been submerged at some point and, due to the shifting ocean floor or some other phenomenon I couldn’t explain, had somehow resurfaced. Perhaps it had never even been all the way under but had suffered the same floods that we had on the last day of Corthium. I could easily imagine massive waves washing away people and buildings as the island sank lower in the water until all that was left was this partially submerged location where only the hills and high places stayed above water.

  Even as my heart sank and my hopes of finding more dragonkind here slipped away, I clung to one piece of good news. After all my travels, the many miles I had come on the back of Skybreaker and the night I had spent imprisoned aboard the Sea-Vulture, I had not come as far from home as I had thought. I was still in the general area of the Nine Isles. And one of them, incredible as it seemed, was beneath my feet right now. I stood on ground no dragonkind had inhabited for likely hundreds of years. The isle of a winged, horned race with light scaling and vividly colored hair—my people—was the closest thing to coming home I could hope for in a world that no longer contained Corthium.

  A warmth of comfort welled up within me. One of the Nine Isles still existed. And I knew from the dreams I had experienced, the nightmares of suffering dragonkind strug
gling to survive, that it was possible more of us were still out there. My original fear that my kind had been forever extinguished and I only left alone was becoming less a certainty.

  I was so caught up in my emotions at these new revelations that I didn’t notice the first time Basil called my name.

  “Isaura!” he said. “What’s the matter? Why aren’t you answering me?”

  I realized he had been trying to get my attention for some time.

  “What is it?” I asked, annoyed to have such a significant moment for me interrupted by his ceaseless complaining.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked, his expression uneasy.

  “Hear what?”

  I tilted my head and listened. The only sound to meet my ears was a faint moaning of the wind as it whipped through the trees and over the ancient ruins. Far in the distance I thought I could make out the sound of ocean waves crashing on the beach we had left behind. Overhead, a white gull screeched as it circled the island. These were all the ordinary sounds of such a place. There was nothing to cause the note of alarm in Basil’s voice.

  But then I heard it too.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was a faint thing hidden in the wind, a sound like the whisper of voices. At first I thought it was nothing but the rustling of the treetops that surrounded the ancient ruins. But it was gradually growing louder and separating itself from the wind. This was a distinctly human sound, a murmur that grew in intensity. I couldn’t make out exactly what it was saying, but the many voices were deep and the words had a sharpness that felt threatening. My mind flashed back to the previous night, when we had fallen asleep in our rocky shelter. I remembered how the rain had fallen and how the last thing I had heard before drifting off to sleep had been the howl of the wind, an almost human sound. I had thought it nothing but the noise of a natural gale.

  But now here it was again, a threatening chorus that seemed to be carried by the wind itself. Until now I had ignored the growing gusts around me. It was often windy this close to the ocean. But suddenly I became aware in a new way of the little breezes playing through my hair and tugging at my clothing.

  “Where are the voices coming from?” asked Basil. “Someone must be around.”

  He turned in a circle, scanning our surroundings. But we appeared to be utterly alone.

  The breeze increased. Basil’s three-cornered hat was ripped off his head, and he had to dive after it as it danced across the ground. As the gale grew stronger, the nearest tree branches began to creak.

  “Do you think another storm is coming?” I asked Basil as he clapped the hat back onto his head and held it there. “Maybe we should take shelter in the ruins.”

  I didn’t say aloud what both of us must be thinking: it wasn’t the wind that was unnerving us but the disembodied voices that came with it.

  I looked upward. The sky was no more overcast than it had been when I awoke earlier. There was no thunder or lightning, no sign of an approaching storm. All the same, we began searching for shelter, someplace to get out of the wind.

  But before we found a spot, we realized the gale was lessening.

  “They’re going away,” Basil said. “The voices are leaving with the wind.”

  He was right. As soon as the gale faded, so too did the eerie chorus it had carried.

  “What was that?” I asked when it was over. “How can wind have a voice?”

  Basil was obviously as confused as I. Neither of us had ever encountered anything like this before.

  Still confused and unsettled, we nonetheless decided to continue exploring the island.

  We left the ancient ruins behind and traveled on to a rocky area. Here, among great leaning boulders, we found the entrance to what looked like a cavern. From inside came the sound of lapping water. Pushing aside a curtain of vines that covered the opening, we entered the shadowed interior. From here it was easy to see where the splashing sounds were coming from. One of the island’s many little rivers ran through the cavern. Most of the interior was underwater.

  But it wasn’t the waves lapping against the walls of the cave that caught our attention. My eyes were drawn at once to a large shape along the near side of the cavern. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness sufficiently to recognize what it was—a boat. Propped up on timber logs, the vessel sat just above the waterline. It was small compared to the Sea-Vulture, not much bigger than the little fishing boats my people had used to dart around the coves of Corthium. But it was much older than any of the boats we had possessed.

  “Amazing,” I murmured, approaching the ancient vessel. It was similar in construction to our craft back on the Ninth Isle but more crudely made. It had obviously been made in a more ancient time when building methods were less developed. Vines coated the exterior now, and as I drew nearer, I saw that the sail was deteriorated with age, the single tall mast swathed in cobwebs.

  “Why didn’t they use it to escape?” I wondered aloud.

  “What are you talking about?” asked Basil.

  I briefly explained my belief that we were on one of the eight isles once linked to my own Ninth Isle. This was a place long supposed to be lost. The people here must have faced a similar disaster to that I had experienced with the sinking of Corthium. Quite possibly none had escaped. If they had, they certainly hadn’t managed to spread the tale of their fate as far as Corthium. And they hadn’t taken their boat, a craft large enough that it could have held dozens of people on board.

  “Perhaps it all happened too fast,” I decided. “Or nobody remembered this boat was stowed here.”

  At least it was easy enough to see why it was kept in this place. The boat was sheltered inside the cavern but had close access to the water. It would be easy enough to navigate down the river and from there out to sea. I could even see how they had done it. The boat rested on an incline atop a row of logs. It would only take the removal of the front timbers propped against it for the ship’s own weight to carry it down to the water, helped along by the rolling logs underneath.

  “We should test it,” Basil said. “Let’s see if we can get the boat into the water and, once there, whether it floats. It’s looking more likely by the moment that we’re not going to find any civilization on this island. And if we have to return to the open seas, I don’t know about you, but I’m not doing it in the leaky bucket that brought us here. Not if there’s a bigger, sturdier boat available.”

  He had a point. More than that, I was curious to find out if this ancient craft from another era was still seaworthy.

  Working together, we pulled down the posts holding the vessel in place. They were thick timbers, well embedded in the ground, and it took us a long time pushing and pulling to get them down. When at last they fell, things happened quickly. One moment the boat stood as firmly as if permanently fixed to the spot. The next, it dipped forward and began a swift slide downhill.

  Basil and I barely managed to scurry out of the way in time to avoid being crushed, as the heavy boat rolled over the logs beneath it and splashed into the water.

  “We did it!” I cried, barely able to believe our success.

  Once in the river, the ship appeared as sound as if it had been only yesterday that it was last sailed.

  But the mood of celebration didn’t continue long. Basil and I had no sooner got the boat into the water than we realized what should have occurred to us before. A vessel of this size was never meant to be sailed by only two people. Basil, who knew a bit more about ships than I did, felt it would take a full crew to manage the boat once it got out onto the open water.

  “Then our better option is to patch up the dinghy,” I realized in dismay.

  “At least we know where to get the materials for the repairs,” Basil pointed out. We can take parts from this ship.”

  It was true. Our discovery had left us in a better position than before. But I still felt disappointed as I took a last look at the impressive vessel and accepted that I would never get the chance to walk its de
ck.

  By the time we emerged from the cave, several hours had passed since we had departed the beach. I was growing thirsty and had begun to think longingly of the waterskin we had left back at our rocky shelter near the ocean’s edge.

  But just when I was about to suggest we return to the beach, my ears picked up a distant sound.

  Basil heard it at the same time. “It’s coming back,” he said needlessly.

  He was right. It started as a soft moaning in the distance. Then a breeze came out of nowhere to ruffle my clothes and whip my hair into my face. Through the strands of blue, I watched the approach of the main part of the gale, its force visible as it swirled leaves and bowed tree branches. I could see it was stronger this time. And with the wind came the eerie voices, an unintelligible, ghostly chorus. It sounded threatening. Vengeful.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “We should run,” I said to Basil.

  My cousin didn’t have to be told twice. He was many paces away, scrambling across the rocks before I even began to follow. Behind us, the powerful wind chased after. Gusts of it raced ahead, picking up leaves and grit and tossing them in our faces. But the main force of the wind was at our backs, pursuing us over and around the loose rocks and boulders.

  Pebbles skittered beneath my boots, making it hard to keep my footing on the uneven ground. Something hard thumped against my back, and then another something. The wind was throwing sticks and clods of dirt at us. Up ahead, tree branches whipped wildly. The tail of Basil’s coat flapped like a dark flag as he ran before me. Somehow the wind leaped in front of us, slowing us down. Then it was all around, pushing, pulling, making it hard to continue. It felt as if I was close to being lifted off my feet by the swirling gusts. And always there were the voices howling to be heard over the roar.

  I saw a blur of movement at the edge of my vision and for a brief instant thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Large rocks fully the size of my head were being lifted up from the ground and hurled by the wind. One of them smacked my shoulder, sending a jolt of pain through muscle and bone. We were going to be beaten to death by the rocks, I realized.