The Veiled Dragon

by Denning, Troy

  “I don’t give a squid’s lips what you say, Arvold! I order a man to swim, I’ll not have to throw him!”

  Ruha tried to open her eyes, found the effort too tiring, and settled for reaching down to feel her savaged leg. Her thigh was girded by a crude tourniquet, and her aba was torn clear to the hip—that would cost her the use of a few sand spells, depending upon how easy she found it to reconstruct the torn symbols. Her flesh was not yet numb and still warm to the touch, so the witch guessed she had been unconscious no more than two or three minutes.

  “There’d have been no need to throw me, if it were worth going in,” growled Arvold. “But there was no call to swim for the witch. We should’ve let the sharks take her.”

  “That’s for the captain to say, not you!” Captain Fowler’s declaration was followed by the creak of a weapon’s blade being torn from a plank. “I’ve no use for cowards, sailmender!”

  “Captain Fowler, you have little room to be calling other men cowards.” The spell of loudness had lapsed when Ruha fell unconscious, so her voice sounded as weak and frail as that of any woman who had nearly bled to death. “I fail to see how a man who hurls another into danger is any braver than his victim.”

  The witch forced her eyes open and raised her head. Her two companions sat on the front of the raft, each facing the other from his own corner. Captain Fowler, who was holding a boarding axe in his fist, brought the weapon down and buried its head in the edge of a plank.

  “It’s a good thing you were the one in the water, not me.” Fowler glared at his sailmender. “Do you think Arvold would’ve pulled us back? He’d have left us to the sharks and thanked Umberlee for the chum.”

  Ruha let her head fall back to the deck, then rolled it to one side so she could study Arvold’s face. The sailmender had a sharp-featured face with a hawkish nose and dark, glistening eyes, and in his expression there was no denial of anything Fowler claimed. Still, whether he had done it willingly or not, Arvold had saved the witch at the peril of his own life, and she was not so far gone from Anauroch that she had forgotten what such an act meant to a Bedine.

  “Perhaps what Captain Fowler claims is true, Arvold,” Ruha said. “But even so, you saved my life at the risk of your own. Until I have done the same, I am yours to command.”

  Captain Fowler winced at the statement. Arvold’s lips curled into a lecherous grin, and he ran his dark gaze up the witch’s exposed leg, over her bare hip, and up to her dark, ripe lips.

  Ruha’s cheeks burned with embarrassment, for she was unaccustomed to having men ogle her naked face. Save for her short tenure as a spy in Voonlar, she had ignored the Heartland women’s custom of baring their visages in public, preferring to keep her own face concealed beneath a heavy scarf. All that she usually showed were her brown eyes, her aquiline nose, and, when her veil slipped low, the tribal hash marks tattooed on her cheeks.

  “Well now!” Arvold continued to leer. “That changes things.”

  Ruha turned away, raising a hand to cover her face. “I did not mean I would …” The words caught in her dry throat. “My words did not imply what you think. In Anauroch, they are a pledge of allegiance and debt.”

  “We’re not in the desert, witch!” Arvold snarled. “We’re in the middle of the bloody Dragonmere—and I say you owe me something for that, too!”

  The raft bounced gently as Arvold crawled across the deck. Ruha let her hand drop to her jambiya, both angered by the fool’s lechery and frightened she would have to slay him to save her honor. He could not believe she had meant to offer herself as a woman—or could he? She raised herself on an elbow and looked toward the sailmender. He stopped just beyond her reach, his gaze fixed on the curved dagger at her belt.

  As Arvold contemplated his next move, a dark fog began to gather at the edges of Ruha’s vision. The sharp angles of the sailmender’s face seemed to soften before her, and his rough complexion grew smooth and yellowish. His hawkish nose shrank to a more graceful size and curved upward at the end. Folds of skin appeared at the corner of his eyes, giving them a narrow, slanted appearance, and his hair turned black and silky.

  Ruha’s hand loosened around her dagger, but she did not gasp, or even worry that she was falling into unconsciousness again. She had been suffering visions since before she could walk, so she recognized the change in Arvold’s face for what it was: a mirage from the future. Sometime soon, she would meet a man with the face that had appeared over the sailmender’s. She could not say what would happen then, but she doubted it would be anything good. It was never anything good.

  Ruha’s first mirage had been of thousands of butterflies. Later that year, her tribe had been forced to camp at an oasis infested with moths, and soon every piece of cloth in the khowwan was full of holes. Later, the face of a handsome stranger had appeared over that of her husband, Ajaman. Ajaman had died that night; the handsome stranger had arrived soon after to help Ruha’s people fight the ones who had murdered her husband. She had eventually taken the stranger, the Harper named Lander, as a lover—only to see him felled by the same enemy that had slain Ajaman.

  Noticing Ruha’s distraction, Arvold slid forward, still wearing the face of a slant-eyed stranger. When he stretched a hand toward her dagger, his fingers suddenly changed into sharp talons. The flesh of his arm turned black and scaly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed into vertical slits with irises as black as obsidian. A crest of jet-colored fins sprouted along his back, and the long, lashing tail of a dragon appeared at the base of his spine.

  Ruha tried to pull her jambiya, but the sailmender’s claw lashed out quick as a serpent and caught her wrist. She cried out and slammed her forehead into the strange face. Arvold raised his free hand to slap her, and it, too, was a black claw.

  Captain Fowler appeared behind his sailmender and caught the man’s scaly arm. Arvold’s dragon tail disappeared instantly, as did his scales, his talons, and his crest of dark fins. His pupils grew round, the yellowish tint vanished from his skin, his nose grew hawkish again, and Fowler continued to hold his wrist.

  “Arvold, you know what the witch meant to say. Do you really want to hold her to the letter of what she said, knowing what she’s liable to do if you anger her?”

  The sailmender continued to stare at Ruha’s bare face, his leer more angry than lustful. Though she felt bashful and naked without her veil, the witch forced herself to return his gaze with an icy glare.

  At last, Arvold released the witch’s arm. “Ah, Umberlee take you!” He pushed himself to his corner of the raft. “If that’s how you repay your debts, I’ll have nothing to do with you.”

  Ruha let her head fall back onto the deck, weakened by both her vision and the trouble with Arvold.

  Captain Fowler’s swinish face appeared over her.

  “Sorry I didn’t move faster, Witch,” he whispered. “But after you nearly called me a coward, I—”

  Ruha raised a hand. “Do not apologize, Captain. You warned me before not to question your judgment—and I should have been able to handle Arvold without your help.”

  Fowler nodded. “Aye, any Harper should’ve, but you hesitated—and why you let him grab your dagger arm, I’ll never know.”

  “I have lost a lot of blood,” Ruha said.

  The witch balked at telling Fowler about the mirage, for she had long ago learned that few people understood her visions. Her own tribe had banished her from their camps, believing her wicked magic caused the calamities she foresaw. Even in the Heartlands, she had twice been stoned for warning people of disasters about to befall them, and once she had been accosted for not foreseeing a catastrophe that befell the flirtatious young daughter of the mayor of Teshwave.

  The witch rolled her head away from Fowler. “Perhaps I was just too weak.”

  The captain checked the tourniquet on her leg, then laid his leathery palm on her forehead. “You’re losing no more blood, but you do feel cold as a barnacle.” He grabbed her chin and pulled it around so he could look her
in the eye. “You wouldn’t be thinking of dying on me, would you Witch?”

  Ruha tried to chuckle and failed. “Not without your permission, Captain.”

  Fowler glared at her from the corner of one eye. “Aye, that’s good.” He grabbed the collar of his tunic and turned it inside out, displaying the Harper’s pin Ruha had given to him. “I’ve every intention of collecting on your promise—and don’t think you can squirm out of it, like you did with Arvold.”

  Ruha managed a weak smile. “Get me to Pros, and you shall have your ship.”

  “That I shall, Witch—and it’ll be easier than you think.” The captain grinned broadly, then stood and turned toward the front of the raft. “Arvold, man your paddle!”

  Three

  The caravel’s bowsprit shot over the dune crest, less the twenty yards from the raft. Beneath the giant spar, illuminated by the pearlescent sphere of a silver glass lantern, hung the magnificent sculpture of a square-snouted dragon. With its delicately curled horns, ball-shaped eyes, and lustrous green scales, the beast looked nothing like the wyrm that had destroyed the Storm Sprite. The figurehead’s glowering face appeared more reproachful than vicious, and there was nothing in its expression to suggest bloodlust or insatiable greed. Still, the thing was clearly a dragon, and that was enough to give Ruha pause.

  The caravel’s great prow burst through the back side of the dune, hurling curtains of spray high into the air. Ruha pointed at the figurehead.

  “Do you see that, Captain Fowler? Is that not a dragon’s head?”

  The witch sat near the back corner of the raft, her mangled thigh extended before her. During the twenty minutes it had taken Fowler and Arvold to paddle into the caravel’s path, everything below the tourniquet had grown numb and cool to the touch, and now the leg was beginning to turn blue, as she could tell whenever the moon’s silver light flashed across her bare flesh.

  When Captain Fowler did not comment on the figurehead, Ruha asked, “Why does the caravel carry such a thing on its bow? Could that be the reason the dragon attacked it?”

  Fowler set aside the plank he had been using as a paddle. “I think not, Witch. Half the prows on the Dragonmere bear figureheads of such fiends, to scare off monsters of the deep.”

  Ruha studied the figurehead more carefully, then shook her head. “That carving does not look frightening to me.”

  The captain had no time to answer, for the bow of the great caravel was already slipping past. Along the wales stood a dozen dark figures, all shining storm lanterns over the rail. Both Fowler and Arvold jumped to their feet and waved their arms in excitement. From the shadows behind the lantern bearers emerged a figure holding a large bow nocked with a white, round-nosed arrow.

  The man loosed his bowstring. The white shaft sailed over the raft, trailing a thick dark cord. Fowler let the line fall upon the planks, then grabbed it and pulled the arrow aboard. He snapped the shank at its base, then he and Arvold started to thread the rope through the raft lashings. As they worked, the caravel continued to lumber past, taking up the rescue line’s slack at an alarming pace. The lantern bearers walked toward the great ship’s stern, trying to keep their lights focused upon the raft. The heaving sea made their task an impossible one, forcing Ruha’s companions to labor in an irritating kaleidoscope of flashing beams. By the time the pair finished, the rescue line was stretching taut and the lantern bearers were standing atop what remained of their ship’s battered poop deck.

  “Hold fast!”

  Resuming his place at the front corner, Arvold fell to the deck and grabbed the edges of the planks. Fowler dropped beside Ruha, flinging one arm over her shoulders and pinning her to the wet planks. The witch had barely twined her fingers into the lashings before the rescue line snapped tight and jerked the raft so violently it left the water.

  The flimsy vessel splashed into the water an instant later. From that moment on, it seemed to Ruha that they spent as much time traveling beneath the surface as they did above it. Every time they came to another sea dune, the rescue line would drag them through its steep face, burying the raft under a foamy torrent that threatened to sweep the witch and her companions into the Dragonmere. A moment later, they would emerge on the other side and drop into the trough, then slam into the face of the next dune and disappear beneath the raging sea.

  Between dousings, Ruha gasped, “Surely, there is a—” She grunted as they slammed into a trough. “—a better way to bring us aboard!”

  The caravel pulled them through another sea dune. When they came out the other side, Fowler asked, “Can you fly, Witch?”

  “That is bird magic,” Ruha answered. “If I could fly, why would … ugh!… why would I have hired you to sail me across the Dragonmere?”

  After they plunged through another dune, Fowler said, “Then this is the only way. In a sea this rough, a big ship like that can’t be stopping to take aboard passengers!”

  They slammed into another trough; then the ride smoothed out as they entered the caravel’s wake. The ship’s crew hauled the raft up to the stern corner and lowered a rope. Fowler tied Ruha in first, and the line tightened around her chest. She rose alongside the rudder more than fifteen feet before she reached the somercastle and began to scrape along its back wall. The witch bit her lip to keep from crying out. Though her mangled leg was too numb to feel anything, she had many other cuts and bruises that protested the rough treatment.

  After a painful ascent of another ten feet, several pairs of hands caught her beneath the arms and pulled her into the ruins of a luxurious officer’s cabin. The walls, or rather what remained of them, were draped with silken tapestries depicting fanciful scenes of domestic bliss, and the floor was covered by wool carpet as plush and finely loomed as those woven by Ruha’s own people.

  A pair of rescuers leaned over the witch, and she gasped. Both men had smooth, yellow-tinted features, with small noses and narrow, slanted eyes. Neither face matched the one she had seen in her vision, but they obviously belonged to the same race as the man in the mirage.

  The elder of the pair, a distinguished-looking man with graying hair and a yellow patch over one eye, spoke to the other in a lilting language of short syllables and fluctuating pitches. Both men were slight of build and no taller than Ruha herself, and they wore high-necked tunics with long sleeves and hems that swept the floor.

  When the first man finished speaking, the second bowed to him, then bowed to Ruha. “Please to allow me to present Mandarin Hsieh Han Liu, Imperial Minister of Spices to Emperor Kao Tsao Shou Tang, Jade—”

  The one-eyed man hissed at the speaker, who continued his introduction with barely a pause, “Jade Monarch of Shou Lung and of all Civilized Lands.”

  The one-eyed man bowed to Ruha, who sat upright and dipped her chin in return. Across the cabin, several more small, yellow-skinned men were hauling up the other end of the rescue line, which they had tossed down to the raft once she was aboard. Anxious to avoid being dragged overboard if their hands slipped, the witch began to untie herself.

  “I am called Ruha.” She spoke directly to the one-eyed man, who could hardly have corrected his translator without himself understanding Common. “I thank you for saving my life, Minister Hsieh.”

  “Many thanks to you, also. You save Emperor’s ship, and lives of many humble servants.” Hsieh bowed again, letting pass his façade of not speaking Common. He motioned to a corner behind Ruha, and an old man with a knobby, shaven head stepped out of the shadows. “Please to allow physician to see leg.”

  “Physician?”

  “The mandarin’s healer,” explained Hsieh’s assistant.

  When the witch nodded, the physician kneeled at her side and set a box of carved ivory upon the floor. He pulled her tattered aba away to inspect the savaged leg. The constant deluge of sea water had kept the wound surprisingly clean, so Ruha saw that the fish had cut a circular laceration into the side of her thigh. The bite was nearly a foot in diameter, and in one place so deep she saw a wh
ite sliver of bone.

  Captain Fowler clambered into the cabin and stepped brusquely to Ruha’s side, mercifully drawing her attention away from her leg. “How you faring? Will you live until I get my cog?”

  Frowning at the half-orc’s swinish face, Hsieh stepped back and called something sharp through the cabin’s shattered doorway.

  Ruha cocked an eyebrow at Fowler. “Surely, you do not intend to be rude, Captain.” She gestured to the mandarin. “Allow me to present you to Minister Hsieh Han Liu, Imperial Minister of Spices to the Emperor Kao Tsao Shou Tang—”

  “Jade Dragon of Shou Lung and all civilized lands—I know.” Despite the undue emphasis he had placed on the word civilized, Fowler bowed deeply to the mandarin. “I’ve run cargo for the Ginger Palace a time or two—though I’ve never had the pleasure of boarding one of your junks before.”

  Hsieh relaxed and once again called down the corridor, then returned the half-orc’s bow—though not so deeply, and without taking his gaze from Fowler’s eyes. “Captain Fowler? Then you give order to attack dragon?”

  “Aye.” Fowler nodded. “But it was the Lady Witch’s idea, and her magic that destroyed it.”

  Both the mandarin and his assistant regarded Ruha with renewed respect, and the physician began to probe her wounds more gently. Hsieh bowed to Ruha again. “Forgive my discourtesy, but you do not call yourself Lady Ruha. Do you require anything?”

  Ruha scowled, puzzled by Hsieh’s reaction. She was accustomed to strange reactions when people discovered she was a witch, but that did not seem to be what troubled the mandarin.

  “Please, Minister Hsieh, I am not …”

  Fowler’s head twisted ever so slightly from side to side.

  Since the captain had at least some acquaintance with the Shou, Ruha decided to follow his lead. “Please, I am not accustomed to showing my face. I need a shawl and veil.”

  Hsieh glanced at his translator, who said something into his ear. The mandarin scowled, and they had a short exchange, then the assistant bowed and scurried out of the cabin.