Highland Dragon Master

by Isabel Cooper

  “Your father owned many horses?”

  “Sold them. My older brother does now—or last I was in port long enough to see him. I was trained in that too, but—” He shrugged.

  “Never liked the beasts overmuch?” Erik asked.

  Samuel nodded. “Too temperamental. Too messy. Fine mounts for noblemen, of course,” he added hastily.

  Erik laughed. “You needn’t fear to give offense. We’re not much for riding when we can avoid it. Few horses can abide us calmly.”

  “Ah,” Samuel said, and scraped away a bit more at the stake. “Stands to reason, that does. They’re damned panicky beasts at the best of times. Now, going to trade them was likely what gave me the taste for the road—it just took a different form. I remember my first sight of the ocean. Went on forever, it did, and could take me anywhere.”

  “Not quite mild-mannered itself,” Erik pointed out, gesturing around them.

  “No. But it smells better.”

  “Were you always with Toinette?”

  “Nay, I ran away—more than fifteen years gone now.” Samuel scratched his head with the slow gesture and the startled look of a man finding that time tallied up faster than he’d expected. It was an expression long familiar to Erik, on mortal and dragon-blooded face alike. None of them could ever keep up. “I’ve been five with the Captain. I’ll say, I knew she was an odd sort of a woman, but I never thought anything like—” He waved his hands, heedless of knife and spear alike, in an inarticulate gesture.

  “Hard to think of it,” said Erik, “until you know it’s possible. That’s probably true of a good many things.”

  “Mmm. Do you know each other? Even when you don’t know each other, that is?”

  “Not mostly, I’d think,” said Erik. “There are signs: often we’ve odd-colored eyes even as men, and fire won’t burn us, and we live a long time. But you’d have to wait around a long while for the last, plenty of mortals have strange eyes, and you can’t go around shoving people’s hands into the hearth on suspicion. And then, we’re not the only uncanny creatures in the world.”

  Samuel cast his eyes down to the rosary looped through his belt. “Are there demons?” he asked.

  “Oh, aye,” said Erik. “I’ve never seen one, but a few of my cousins have fought them. Nasty things, from the stories they told me. Not so likely to trouble most folk, though, save those that anger a wizard of great power and no morals. Generally they’ve got to be called up.”

  That news looked to calm Samuel a trifle. Erik wished he could have been more certain; he’d only a few stories to go on. It was true that most men went their whole lives without seeing more demons than came out of a wineskin, but that was in the known world, with the Church and magic like Artair’s to hold the fabric of it together.

  Erik suddenly became aware of how much water surrounded the island, and how few people were alive on it. For Samuel’s sake, he repressed the urge to shudder, or to cross himself.

  Twelve

  “We didn’t find the spring yet,” said Toinette, seating herself on a rock. “But there’s a stream up there that’ll do nicely. Means we can bathe too, so long as we do it downstream of where we get water.”

  “Couldn’t you bathe in the ocean?” Erik stacked another piece of driftwood onto the fire.

  Samuel, assisting him, shook his head. “Salt itches. Surprised you haven’t noticed.”

  “I’ve been trying not to feel too keenly.” Erik didn’t look at Toinette when he said it. He hadn’t meant lust when he spoke, but it was all of a piece, in a way: the damp sand for a bed, the dried salt on his skin, the restless urges that they hadn’t the solitude to satisfy. Best, he thought, to avoid dwelling on any of it.

  “We’ll drink what we brought first,” Marcus said from the other side of the fire pit. “It’ll go stale, else. Should we cast off, we can refill our casks then.”

  “Water and food,” said Franz. “Fortune is with us.”

  John hastily knocked on the nearest piece of driftwood, glaring at his companion. While Erik didn’t bother with the glare, he was glad he’d been touching wood already, and his sympathy was with the Englishman. Call no man lucky until he’s dead, his mother’s people said. They meant it as philosophy, but given everything, speaking of their fortune did feel like tempting it.

  “We can go back and set snares in the morning,” Toinette said, pulling off one of her boots. Accomplishing this task meant stretching out one long, muscular leg, and Erik couldn’t take his eyes from her tawny skin, nor the way her butchered skirt fell back above her knee. He bent forward quickly, glad of the excuse building the woodpile offered. He was no stripling, but he didn’t entirely trust his self-control where his body was concerned.

  “Means I’ll be going out again,” Raoul said, “or should.”

  “You can have two days down on the beach after. It’s not my fault you’ve got certain valuable skills,” Toinette said. Her other boot thumped onto the sand.

  “Rewards of knowledge,” said Marcus cheerfully. “That’s why I’ve never tried to be an expert in anything.”

  “Oh, is that why?” asked Samuel, to general laughter and a mock growl from Marcus.

  Erik stepped back from the fire pit. “We can add more if you think it wise,” he said, addressing himself to Marcus and Toinette alike, “but I think my part of this is done—unless you’d like me to light the fire.”

  “No,” Sence said straightaway.

  The others—whether they’d seen the teasing lift of Erik’s eyebrows or simply were relieved that Sence had spoken and relieved them of the need—laughed again. Toinette’s voice was the last to join in, considerably behind the others, and her chuckle was brief and subdued.

  Erik glanced over his shoulder. Toinette was sitting on the rock, slim, bare ankles crossed in front of her. Her eyes were unreadable as she watched him, but when she saw him looking, she shrugged and grinned. “Don’t start volunteering, or they’ll ask me to do it. Besides, we take up enough room as it is.”

  Neither joke was very funny, and she looked more tired than amused. It had been a long few days, longer for her—perhaps that was all, but perhaps not. Erik might have asked, had they the privacy for such a conversation, but he wasn’t sure she’d have told him the truth even then.

  * * *

  The water closed over Erik’s head: darkness, salt, ice. He’d learned to swim as a child, by way of his father throwing him into a lake. The dragon-blooded didn’t drown easily, yet the mortal part of him had shrieked in terror at the time, until instinct had fired his limbs. That had been calm water, in summer, and nothing to the raging ocean in the storm.

  He gathered himself for the change of shapes, a vague familiarity dancing in the back of his head. The change was second nature, literally, but he thought he’d been in just such circumstances before. Erik brushed the thought away, as a distraction at a time of need, and concentrated harder on the power in the center of his chest, calling it forth to sweep over his body.

  It didn’t answer.

  Always the shift had come at his call. The difficulty, in youth or at times of great strain, was control, not summoning. Yet now when Erik bent his will toward it, the power slipped away, draining into the ocean’s chill. He remained two-legged, wingless, fragile, and mortal. Waves slapped at his face as he paddled frantically, and the water forced itself into his nose and mouth with a persistence even the sea had never possessed before. He coughed frantically, the salt burning his tissues while the water scorched his lungs.

  Inside his nostrils, the water had a smell beyond salt and seaweed, one he couldn’t place. Even as the thought struck him, sharp ridges closed around his calf.

  Erik kicked instinctively, and with all his strength, but the grip was strong. He looked down, through water grown suddenly and horribly clear, and screamed without caring about either witnesses or waves.

/>   All the dead waited below the water. Soldiers in rusting chain stood by priests black and disfigured with plague, rotting while they yet lived. Erik’s grandfather watched with dead white eyes in an age-withered face, white mustaches floating above his missing jaw.

  The hand around Erik’s ankle led to the arm that had been the only part of Gervase left truly whole. The body beyond it was a shambling horror, meat sculpted into a rough man-shape with chunks of bone sticking out haphazardly. The gold earring shone beside the eyeless, mouthless oval where the face would have been.

  Around him, a voice came sliding through the water, and he didn’t know whether it was from the dead or the sea. This, it slobbered. This waits.

  Even after he opened his eyes, saw the dying fire in front of him, and felt the sand beneath his fingers, the voice lingered in his mind.

  * * *

  “Captain.” John’s face was pale above her, his hand heavier on her shoulder than he would ever have dared without fear behind the touch. “There’s somewhat happening, Captain. I can’t understand it.”

  Toinette dragged herself up the long, steep tunnel to wakefulness, leaving an unpleasant stew of half-formed images. She never truly remembered her dreams, and she’d likely be glad of that. The impression of worms eating a human tongue lingered for a heartbeat before she shook it off, turning her attention to the waking world.

  The fire in the cave burned low. Around it, sleeping men stirred fitfully. Peaceful nights were likely hard to come by all around, once exhaustion had given way to memory. Toinette knuckled sleep out of her eyes and got to her feet. “Show me,” she said, keeping her voice low.

  Barefoot, sword in one hand, she followed him out of the cave. Outside, waves lapped against the shore, calm and steady, and the sky above was clear. Still, when John gestured and Toinette turned to face the cliffs, she could no longer see the stars above the trees.

  Gray-green light flickered over the forest instead. Toinette watched as it curled upward into vague tendriled shapes, flickering and fading and vanishing only to rise anew from the treetops, branching into the sky as if it were lightning in reverse.

  “By God and all the saints.” She didn’t have to remember to lower her voice. The breath to raise it had gone out of her, leaving her winded and dizzy as she stared upward. The sword hung from her hand, a motionless, alien weight.

  Toinette had sailed for a long time, and wandered before that. She’d seen red tides on the beach and blue fire wreathing ships, men who walked barefoot over hot coals and beasts out of a drunkard’s legends. The light above the trees was nothing that she’d ever even heard of.

  “There’s more,” said John, and gestured. “Watch the trees.”

  When the next flash of light came, Toinette saw what he meant. The night was calm. A faint breeze stirred from time to time, but it wasn’t enough to lift a strand of her hair. Despite that, the trees on the cliff thrashed as if in a gale. Their tops stood out against the light, malformed fingers clawing up toward a goal Toinette could not know and did not want to imagine.

  “Earthquake?” she asked, but doubtfully. The sand beneath her feet was as stable as any ground she’d ever trod, nor did it seem likely that the island could shake so violently not a mile from her while remaining solid where she stood.

  “I looked to the cliffs before I woke you, Captain,” John said. “No stones are falling. Not even a pebble. I thought perhaps to climb the path and see what happened above, but—”

  “No,” said Toinette.

  The answer came more hastily to her lips than she could have explained. In all the scene before her, she could find no direct threat. Light and the motion of trees were nothing to harm a man. Yet, watching, she felt her hackles rise and her gut twist in an unease she’d never felt from storms or pirates.

  From the relief on John’s face, he shared her sentiments. “It’s a foul night, Captain.”

  “It is,” she said, and again could not have said why. Typically she used the term for storms, or at least the sort of rain that made everything stink of wet wool at best. The air was peaceful, dry, even warm. Toinette would almost have preferred sleet falling sideways. “Plenty of time to go up in the day. No sense breaking our necks on fallen logs, to start with.”

  “Aye,” said John, and grimaced, but there was a hint of relief in it. Toinette had named a good solid reason for staying below. Now they could pretend that the other possibilities didn’t exist, or not speak of them, which would do almost as well. He sat back down on the wide rock outside the cave. “I’ll, ah, just wait out my watch, then. Sorry to wake you.”

  “Don’t be,” said Toinette. “You did right. In fact”—she glanced up at the sky again—“I’ll wait with you, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’d be glad of it. Best two of us are awake—in case the earth does shake or there is a storm coming up.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Toinette. “And, you know, it may be just that. The cliffs may simply keep the wind and the lightning off us, and the landscape can play funny tricks on a man.”

  She didn’t know if either of them truly believed her, but she was glad to have said it. Nor did she particularly want to reveal her other reason for staying awake: that she didn’t much like the prospect of sleep just then.

  Toinette settled herself down onto the rock by John. As with all of the men save Raoul and Sence, they’d spent nights enough just so in the past, when the horizon looked threatening or there was unrest in port. Trouble was nothing new. You stayed quiet, you stayed awake, and you kept a hand on the hilt of your sword.

  If that hilt was less comfort than it ever had been, John didn’t speak of it. Therefore, Toinette thought, there was no reason for her to broach the subject.

  Thirteen

  Come the morning, Toinette gathered the others and told them. Better that they hear it from her, and all together, than that the story spread from man to man and grow distorted in the telling.

  She laid the matter out with all the calm she’d learned in her life. She spoke of northern lights, desert mirages, and rings around the moon, and of how she’d seen it rain on one side of a street and leave the other dry. “There could have been a storm up there we didn’t get down here,” she said.

  In daylight, with the trees calm against clear blue sky, Toinette could believe herself more easily. No matter that she’d seen no clouds; the light might have obscured them. And if the light hadn’t looked like any lightning she’d ever seen, well, neither had she ever been in this part of the world before. Doubtless a sandstorm had seemed demonic to the first man caught on its edges.

  The men listened uneasily. All looked almost as tired as Toinette felt, including Erik, who’d not taken a watch the night before. “If you think it nothing, Captain,” Samuel asked, “why tell us?”

  It was a good question, and a fair one. She could cheerfully have kicked him for asking. “So that you’ll not wake the rest of us if it happens while you’re watching tonight,” Toinette shot back, and regretted it when she saw John wince. She added, “And because caution’s not wrong. It might be nothing, it’s likely nothing, but we’ve no way of knowing. The world is often stranger than we think.”

  “Even we,” said Erik.

  Toinette added him to her list of people she could have struck. It was not the moment, if one ever existed, to remind the men of their nature. She cleared her throat and lifted her chin. “And we’ll need to go back up there as long as we stay on this island. It’s wise to know the place as well as we can.”

  “We’ll leave soon, though, yes?” Raoul asked.

  “As soon as we repair the ship and replace the stores. We’ll get the wood for the first today. Perhaps I should go back up the cliffs with you, in that case. Erik won’t know how to choose for a mast.”

  “But Marcus will,” said Erik, “and I vow I’ll abide by his decision.”

 
Toinette’s instinct was to contradict, and none too kindly: Will he know from the air, fool? She bit it back. No human shipwright could choose from the air, and yet they picked masts well enough. Marcus knew more of such arts than she did, in truth. It wasn’t Erik’s fault that she’d slept poorly the night before.

  Settle yourself. Let your mind guide your tongue, not your temper.

  “As we planned it last night, then,” she said. “We’ll keep a watch here. If you do find trouble, send a man back—don’t come yourself.”

  As yet, they’d not seen signs of anything intelligent enough to lay an ambush, but it never helped to be careless. One man running back through terrain he knew even slightly would be better than the group’s best protector abandoning them with the unknown ahead.

  As Toinette thought about that, she realized the other reason for her irritation: a cover for relief. She shouldn’t have been glad of the excuse not to enter the forest again, but she couldn’t deny that she was.

  * * *

  Light or no light, Erik welcomed the distance from the water. The sea had never held much terror for him, or no more than for any other man, but this morning he couldn’t look at it without thinking of his dream.

  This waits.

  He’d broken his fast only perfunctorily, swallowing bread and washing it down with overwatered wine out of the knowledge that his body required the fuel, not any real appetite. The task ahead became a welcome distraction.

  They went further than Toinette and her party had gone before, taking advantage of the trail the others had broken for them and then following the stream inward. Briars tore at their clothing, until Erik loosed his sword and began to chop them out of the way. Doubtless it would dull the edge, but he wasn’t inclined to care. He had other weapons at his disposal if he needed to fight.

  “You could change,” said Franz. “Burn a path for us.”