The Dragon Caller (Brightmoon Book 9)

by Pauline M. Ross

  “Yes, and let’s use the sail-master, if she’s agreeable,” Garrett said, still driven by a sense of urgency. “The more distance we can put between ourselves and the Windblown Isle, the better.” Or between themselves and the dragons, but he didn’t mention that. He didn’t need to. It was the unspoken fear that lurked at the back of every mind.

  Elestra was delighted to put her talents to immediate use. Unlike other sail-masters he’d seen, she didn’t position herself below the mast, or make any adjustments to the sails. Instead, she sat at the stern, her back against a wooden locker, chatting comfortably to Mikah. Garrett ran back and forth to the galley for food – a decent stew, since the cooks had got the range working at last – and then sat quietly nearby, listening to the conversation. Occasionally, Elestra fell silent, concentrating on the winds at her command, but mostly she chattered away, interrupted only now and again by Mikah’s not very subtle bragging. Garrett reckoned sadly that she’d be in his bed within three days.

  When he found himself nodding off, he went below to sleep, leaving the deck to the two of them and the silent helmswoman, as the ship scudded steadfastly along.

  He jolted awake to find the ship motionless. All around him in the bunk room came the soft noises of many sleepers, with gentle snores, little grunts and long, slow breaths. He slithered from his hammock and quietly pulled on trousers and boots, then his sword belt. From under his blanket, he drew out the bag with his glass ball, and slipped that onto his belt, too. Thus equipped, he crept towards the ladder, where the dim glow of dawn gave him enough light to climb sure-footedly.

  On deck, he found the captain and several of her senior crew, gazing across the empty sea. To one side of the ship, the rocky shores of the Golden Coast were a dark, jagged line, but to the other side was nothing but grey haze and a small blob on the water, far away.

  “Trouble?” he said.

  “Not sure,” she replied. “Here.” She handed him a distance viewer. “They gave us the signal to stop, but friendly, not hostile.”

  The small blob resolved itself into a small boat rowing steadily towards them, containing several people wearing indistinguishable dark clothes. A uniform? Hard to tell.

  “There’s nothing out there, is there?”

  “We’re just coming into the Straits of Ath’roon. Passed the marker an hour or so back, so they must be from the homeland. Never knew them send out a small boat from there, though. They don’t need to, since they manage all the ports on the other side. They just lurk there, hidden by those weird mists.”

  Tre’annatha. Yet what could they want? Could they know who was on theSundancer? Word had obviously reached High Rock ahead of them, so that the Director and her minions were primed to turn them away without a sail-master, but was it possible that even the homeland knew of them? Garrett cursed every hour their departure had been delayed, firstly by all those changed orders at Sand Eagle Bay, and then… but no, he couldn’t bring himself to grumble at Elestra’s many boxes. Then he chided himself for his foolishness. There was no room for sentimentality in this business. His job was to get Ruell safely to Mesanthia, and nothing must be allowed to disrupt that.

  “What’s going on?”

  He jumped at Elestra’s voice in his ear, almost as if he’d willed her to appear just by thinking of her. “Tre’annatha, by the look of it. Want to see?”

  He offered her the distance viewer, but she shook her head, with a look on her face of… surely not fear? Light-hearted, ever-smiling Elestra, afraid of the Tre’annatha? Well, maybe she had reason, for they were a strange people, easy to fall foul of if you weren’t very careful.

  “I’ll go and get dressed,” she murmured, and scurried away. He watched her go, her bare feet silent on the deck, her silk shift flowing around her ankles. She had only a shawl wrapped around for warmth.

  Tearing his eyes away, he found the captain grinning knowingly at him. “You’ll have competition there.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “She’s far above my station.”

  “You think so? She deserves better than that cocky guard captain of yours, that’s for sure. Krannen, prepare to let down the ladder.”

  When the small boat came alongside and the ladder was lowered and faces appeared over the ship’s rail, the distinctive features of the Tre’annatha were no surprise. The oval hazel eyes, honey-coloured skin and the soft brown curls could not be any other race.

  “Good morning, captain. Thank you for halting,” one of them said, in heavily accented Low Mesanthian, the common language all along the north coast. “We not keep you long. Just some little questions.”

  “Taxes are paid, and we have all the proper seals and stamps,” the captain said curtly.

  “Oh, certainly. We not interested in taxes. You fly flag for passenger, yes? Not cargo?”

  “No, private vessel. Not commercial.” Then when his face showed bewilderment, she added, “No payment taken.”

  The rest of the boarding party had now scrambled over the rail. There were three Tre’annatha, and now that he could see them up close, Garrett realised that they were not wearing a uniform. There was a similarity of arrangement, but each of them wore a slightly different style of leather coat. There was a fourth man with them, quite different, not Tre’annatha at all. He was skinny and pale, wearing the sort of nondescript clothes a field worker might choose, or someone who wished to avoid attention in a busy town. He was looking around avidly, and appeared to be sniffing.

  The captain was discussing with her crew the exact numbers on board. Eventually, she settled on a number, the Tre’annatha smiled and thanked her, warned them politely of some contrary winds ahead and that was the end of it. They disappeared over the side again, and shortly afterwards their boat could be seen heading slowly back to the homeland.

  “What was that all about, do you think?” the captain asked Garrett.

  He shrugged. “No idea, but I don’t like it. Let’s get going again.”

  She nodded in agreement, and before long the deck was ringing with shouted orders, and the rigging hands were scampering aloft to see to the sails.

  “What did they want?”

  Elestra again. She had an uncanny ability to sneak up on him. It was disconcerting, and made him wonder if his talents as a guard and swordsman were declining.

  “Can’t say, but nothing good, I’m sure of that,” Garrett said. “They came, they asked about numbers of people on board, they went away again.”

  Elestra was dressed now in wide trousers and a tight bodice, with a complicated wrap arrangement, and scarves covering her pretty hair. She’d put some sort of powder on her face, too, so she looked pale, almost ill.

  Impulsively, he said, “Are you all right?”

  “Of course!” she said, but as she turned her hazel eyes on him, the smile looked forced.

  “You seemed a bit nervous of them, that’s all.” When she turned away from him, saying nothing, he went on easily, “As any sensible person would be, of course. I’ve known a few of their kind over the years, and most are… not bad, exactly, but so absorbed in their own affairs that nothing else matters to them.”

  “No, most of themare bad – bad to the core,” she said, so quietly that he wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. “Ah, mainsail’s in position. Good. I’ll get back to work, then.”

  “Can I fetch you anything? Some porridge?”

  She was already skipping down the deck to her usual position, but she spun round with a grin and a wave. “Yes, please!” she called, before spinning away again.

  He laughed and went off to the galley.

  Somehow, he couldn’t quite say how it was, he ended up spending the whole morning on deck with her, fetching drinks or plates of fruit or whatever she fancied, while she chattered away merrily tohim instead of to Mikah, who hadn’t been seen all morning. Several of his troops appeared at regular intervals and attempted some training on deck, lurching about with the waves, tripping over coils of rope and getting in the w
ay of the sailors, but there was no sign of their captain. So Garrett had the exclusive rights to her company, and she seemed just as happy to talk to him as she had been to Mikah.

  She talked a lot about her father, who was something very important at High Rock, seemingly, a scholar of some kind, but very rich. The way she talked of it, he was revered almost in a godlike way, although Garrett didn’t really understand it. She said very little about her mother, or her step-mother.

  And among the artless chatter, she asked him where he was from and then how he’d got from the Plains of Kallanash, the bleak and windswept heart of the continent, to the western coast thousands of marks away, and to his surprise he found himself telling her most of his life story. Not the secret that he could never tell anyone, but everything else – the temple orphanage, the streets, the gambling, the exile to the borders and the endless war, which, by some strange alignment of the moons or the gods or the will of strong men, had indeed come to an end. And he told her of his wanderings with Tella and Kestimar and all their misadventures, which had led in time to the Windblown Isle. And she listened, and looked grave when he talked of fights and arrests and deaths, and laughed at the silly happenings, and he wished with all his heart that she were a few years older or he were a few years younger, so that he could scoop her into his arms and cover her face with sweet kisses. And then he chided himself for his stupidity.

  Eventually, Mikah appeared and swaggered towards the stern.

  “Well, I’d better go and see how Ruell is,” Garrett said, jumping to his feet.

  “I heard him throwing up, the poor boy,” Elestra said. “When you’ve seen to him, will you bring me some fish soup? I saw the cook’s helper fishing earlier, so I’m sure they’ll have made some.”

  He paused, looking at Mikah approaching, and then back to Elestra’s smiling face.

  “Please?” she said, smiling up at him, and his insides melted.

  “Of course.”

  And he would, too, but he knew that no matter how many bowls of fish soup he brought her, she wasn’t for him.

  21: Seasickness (Ruell)

  Ruell thought he was going to die. Then, like all those who suffer from sickness at sea, as the hours wore away he began to fear that he wouldn’t die at all, but was destined to suffer this tormented existence for ever, or at least until they reached Mesanthia, maybe half a miserable moon away. He’d been fine at first, and neither the slight swell off Sand Eagle Bay or the rougher waves around High Rock had bothered him. But as soon as they’d entered the straits, he’d been hit hard.

  What was worse, his mind seemed to be filled with fog. The comforting golden stars, the far-away glows of dragon consciousness, were gone. He hadn’t tried to connect with any of them, not since Yannali had flown away, but it had been comforting to know they were out there, going about their dragon business, growing and feeding and waiting to be reunited with the adults.

  But now they were gone, and he was spending his time with his head in a bucket, no longer a dragon caller, just very tired, sick and lonely, with no purpose to his life any more. And when his head wasn’t in the bucket, but lying damply on the pillow, he remembered all that he’d lost in the last few days and wept like a child.

  Garrett came to see him now and then, cleaning out the bucket and bringing water for him, which he promptly deposited in the bucket.

  “Why don’t you come on deck for a while?” Garrett said. “A bit of sunshine and fresh air would do you a power of good.”

  But he couldn’t face the effort required to drag himself up the ladder. So he lay on his bed, half-dozing away the afternoon between bouts of vomiting. But then he felt suddenly anxious, almost on the brink of panicking. He sat up, wondering if there’d been some sound or movement that had caught his attention. But no – nothing. The ship continued onward in the same rhythmic way, the only sounds the constant creaks and groans of wood and rope and sailcloth under strain.

  He was awash with fear, shaking from head to foot, yet he couldn’t imagine why. Whatever was the matter with him? Was he going mad?

  Garrett would know. He pushed himself onto unsteady feet, and swayed the two paces to the cabin door. Opening it, he saw no one in the corridor that he could send to fetch Garrett. He would just have to try to find him by himself. Holding tight to the rail, he shuffled along the corridor, one wobbly step at a time. He was so weak, it was impossible to move any faster, but the anxiety inside him burned with fierce urgency. He had to… well, he wasn’t quite sure what he had to do, but it was imperative that he do it at once.

  He reached the ladder and began to climb, one rung at a time. The ship lurched about, up, up, up, a long pause, then a downward swoop, as if trying to throw him off. He gripped the uprights with white fingers, trying not to think about his roiling stomach. He kept his eyes focused on the ladder. Up another rung, then rest. Up again, then rest. Another rung, and his head was above the deck, swept by a gusty wind that grabbed at his hair and tossed it here and there like a whip. Another rung, more battering from the wind.

  Then, miraculously, Garrett was there, taking one arm, and Mikah the other, lifting him, half carrying him to a sheltered spot blessedly free of wind. He sat immobile on the deck propped up against a locker, eyes closed, enjoying the feel of the sun on his face.

  “Water?” Garrett again, with a flask in his hand.

  Ruell sipped, his stomach churned, then decided that it couldn’t be bothered rejecting the liquid.

  Abruptly, his mind was flooded with happiness, so intense that he burst out laughing. His eyes shot open.

  “What is it?” Garrett said. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “Ruell! Ruell! There you are! We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  He sat upright.“Yannali? Is that really you? Where—?”

  Out of the blue sky, a dark shape materialised in a blur of wings, skittering to a landing on the ship’s rail. It folded its wings neatly, then bobbed its head back and forth, crooning. Mikah jumped backwards, his face shocked, one hand on the hilt of his sword. Garrett stood up slowly, with a wary expression, but his hand reached, not for his sword, but into his waist bag, for the glass ball. Behind the two men, Ruell saw the fearful faces of the sailors, carefully backing away.

  “Ruell! It makes me so happy to see you! We were worried about you when you vanished.”

  “Vanished?”And, then, nervously,“We?”

  Another blur appeared and then a third, landing either side of Yannali, just as full of exuberant delight to see him. And the strangest thing happened, for all his weakness, the churning stomach, the shaking limbs disappeared and Ruell felt as well as he’d ever been in his life.

  “Drannamassh. Gheessha. I’m happy to see all of you, of course, but… you must go back to the island.”

  Their sorrow was a palpable thing. As one, their heads and wings drooped, and all the joy drained out of them.

  “But we want to stay with you,”Gheessha said plaintively.“It was so hard to find you, and now that we have, we’d like to be near you. We can be useful,”she added brightly.“We’ll catch fish for you. There are some delicious squid in these waters, so juicy and tasty.”

  Ruell pulled a face, but he didn’t have to tell them what he was thinking, for they could see his distaste in his mind, and he could see the amusement in theirs.

  “We can defend you,” Drannamassh said, flexing his wings and extending every claw.

  “I have men with swords to defend me. It’s better if you go.”

  “But we were so worried when the darkness hid you,”Yannali said.

  “What darkness?”

  “The bad magic from over there.”He jerked his head towards the open sea.“The land that tries to pretend it isn’t there.”

  Ruell looked, but saw nothing, only shreds of mist. When he looked closely, he could almost make out cliffs and headlands and the deep gashes of river valleys, but somehow the wisps of solidity slid away and becam
e mist again. The homeland, invisible to his eyes.

  But then he had a thought – or perhaps Yannali had planted it his mind, who knows? He shifted his consciousness to look through the dragon’s eyes, and gasped in astonishment. There before him was no mist, but a sea-washed rocky coastline, as clear as its partner on the other side of the strait. But whereas the Golden Coast was a familiar landscape of fishing villages, small towns huddled around sandy bays and the endless cornfields that gave the region its name, the homeland was quite different, a mass of solid walls and low domes, towers and spires, and strange angular constructions reaching to the sky. He withdrew hastily from Yannali’s mind, and when he looked at the homeland now, he saw only mist. Was that bad magic? He couldn’t say whether it was good or bad, but it felt inescapably alien.

  Yannali hopped off the rail and landed on the deck next to where Ruell sat, cross-legged. Gently, the little dragon rested his head on Ruell’s knee, his eyes half-lidded.

  “Please, Ruell.”

  Absently, Ruell reached out to scratch Yannali just above his eye ridges, somehow knowing the exact place. The dragon sighed with pleasure, and the whirling eyes were covered completely. Ruell sighed too. How he wished they could stay with him! His own dragons, their affection filling his mind, making him happy. It would be wonderful. But behind these young ones would be the adults, their minds full of anger and hatred for humankind in general and Ruell in particular. No, he could never keep them.

  “I’m so sorry,”he said, meaning it,“but you must go. You have to wait for the adults to find you.”

  “They will find us here,”Yannali said, raising his head and opening his eyes. Such mesmerising eyes, gazing sorrowfully into Ruell’s.

  “And then they will find me, too, and maybe they will eat me.”

  “We won’t let them.”

  “Or they may burn the ship and all my friends will die. Please… Yannali… Drannamassh… Gheessha… please go.”

  They hopped from foot to foot unhappily, their hypnotising amber eyes slowly swirling. Then, in unison, they stretched out leathery wings and took off in a flurry of wind-churning effort. They circled once above Ruell’s head, then a second circuit high above the ship, then they were gone.