The courtier continued. “We were on the verge of entirely losing our navy and our fishing fleet!”
“No!” I burst out. Sea Raiders never attack just humble fishermen. Maybe some of the larger merchant vessels, but never the small skiffs and yachts of a family just making their daily food.
“It’s true, princess, I am afraid. The royal family were setting out on a perilous journey to Torvald, to petition the new King Bower and Queen Saffron for aid…” The courtier stated sadly. “But they never returned. Their boat was caught by the Sea Raiders, and the royal family vanished. Lord Havick told us that they – you – must have all been pushed over into the sea…”
“They were dead when the Raiders got to them,” I told him, although the courtier didn’t understand how I knew. That was what Lasarn had said. Poisoned nobles on a boat, and a baby.
“It was all Havick,” Danu said grimly. “It is the only explanation.”
“Some of us feared so, of course,” the courtier said in a mousey voice. “Especially when Havick declared himself the ruler, and his reforms were so harsh! He has nigh doubled the taxes for the Roskildeans, and the outlying islands have to pay a protection tithe on top of that! All to build his galleons and warships.”
I nodded. So that was where the monstrous navy had come from. “And the Sea Raiders – their attacks slowed during Havick’s reign?” I asked lightly, already knowing what the answer was but wanting to hear this man’s answer.
“Oh, yes. Dramatically so. Now, the Lord Havick claims that they are almost all destroyed!”
“Not quite.” I said through gritted teeth.
“But, princess, the good people of Roskilde still revere your parents,” the courtier said earnestly. “They speak with such fondness for the times of peace under the true Roskildean family…”
“Good for them. But none of that explains why you were masquerading as a Torvald boat!” I said tersely.
“Ah, well…” He swallowed nervously. “I did not agree to this, but Lord Havick made me. He drew his senior advisors and courtiers aside and revealed to us that Torvald has once again started to encroach on our territory, just as they did during the bad times under the Dark King.”
“What?” Danu coughed a sudden laugh. “That is crazy.”
The courtier’s look was owlish with confusion. “It was not such a hard lie to believe in. The Dark King ruled for so long and was so vile… Now that he has been overthrown and the new rulers are in charge, all of a sudden, they have Dragon Riders again, who patrol their borders so aggressively…” he looked fearfully around at the timbers of the lopsided ship, and I remembered the blackened scorch marks up and down its hull and across its decks.
“It is not so large a step to believe that Bower and Saffron, too, might turn towards evil…” he added.
“No,” I snapped. Not them. Not a good island girl. “That was a lie, courtier, as well I think you know.”
“Yes.” The weaselly man nodded. “So we were told to disguise our boat, and drive deep into Torvald territory, past the Broken Coasts— to spy.”
“But the Dragon Riders discovered you?” Danu concluded.
“Yes. When we couldn’t answer their questions, they attacked us, and left us beached on the rocks here. Most of the crew managed to escape to the nearby island, but I thought that Lord Havick would at least send a rescue party to retrieve us. It was his idea, after all...”
“He will never come to save you, you know that, don’t you?” I said heavily, and the courtier nodded.
“I know,” he said in a sad voice. “It seems that the old wisdom is right: you cannot keep faith with someone who has a bad heart. They will never return your sacrifice.”
I felt a surge of anger then at Havick – and it wasn’t like the usual anger and annoyance I had felt for him before over the fact that he thwarted us Raiders, that he was always a step ahead of us. No, this was a hatred of the man himself. He was at least meant to look after the people who worked for him! Who were loyal to him! And yet here this thin, frightened aging man was cast to his doom by the man who had asked for his loyalty.
I had grown up thinking that the crew that I worked with – as rough and as crude, and as ill-tempered as they could be sometimes – they were my family. I had entrusted my life into their hands, and they had entrusted their lives into mine. It was the only way you survived out at sea.
But this Lord Havick…? I felt utter contempt, and there was an answering roar from Crux outside.
“Your dragon!” the man gasped. “I had thought that you were Dragon Riders yourselves, come to finish us off when I heard you in the airs. But you are not. You cannot be, princess?”
I can be if I want to be, I thought. “We do not come from Torvald, sir.”
“But you do have a dragon? You are the princess who has come back to free her people?” He looked at me hopefully.
“Lila?” Danu prompted me, his eyes shining with pride—in me.
I shook my head. I didn’t know what I was. “I am no princess,” I said quickly. “But I will take you to your fellows on the nearest island. There will be a small fishing village on the far side. I’m sure that you and the survivors can barter or work for passage to Roskilde. If you want to go back.”
The courtier’s eyes were shadowed. “I think I might try to convince them to leave these troubled waters and head inland. They are capable sailors and soldiers. There will be work for them without one mad king or another…”
“Very wise, sir,” Danu said.
I couldn’t be in this room anymore, I thought as I sheathed my sword and went out onto the lopsided deck to see Crux lazing over the forecastle, rubbing the side of his snout against the bowsprit.
“Oh, what should I do, Crux?” I said wearily, climbing the stairs up to the forecastle deck where I could lean against him against the fierce wind.
“Should do?” Crux stopped his scale-scratching to look at me with what I was certain was a humored curiosity in his giant eyes. “You are who you are, Lila wave-rider. Why do you keep on thinking that you have to be something else?”
“I don’t!” I said out loud. “It’s everyone else who keeps on saying that I am this or that. I am a princess or a chief’s daughter, or none of these things at all!”
“Do they?” Crux observed. “It does not matter what people say you were, Lila. I was once an egg. Then a very naughty newt. But now I am a dragon, and I do what I am.”
“So – you are saying I should just follow my instincts?” I said in exasperation.
“It works for me,” Crux commented dryly, and I was sure that he was making fun at me, until he said again into my mind. “Listen to your gut, Lila wave-rider, air-rider. What I have seen in humans is that they spent many years trying to be something that they are not, and listening to people tell them they are this or that, without ever listening to what they feel.”
“Huh.” I sniffed. “You sound pretty wise, for a wyrm.”
“Sckrech!” Crux snapped out a tiny belch of flame and soot at my insult, but I could feel in the back of my mind that it was meant good-naturedly.
“And you are pretty slow, for a dragon. But for a human, I think you will do,” he returned. He made me laugh, as I thumped his scales playfully. Having a dragon for a friend was proving much better than I had thought at the start.
So… Listen to my instincts? I leaned back as I saw, across the boat, that Danu was attempting to coax the courtier out towards Crux. The man looked suddenly appalled at what he had agreed to.
But what did I really feel? I felt loyal to my foster-parents, I felt loyal to my family the Sea Raiders. But I also felt that I was different now – and that a large part of that was having Crux here. He and Danu had changed my life and my outlook fundamentally. There was more than just me and this season’s loot to think about.
Like the Roskildeans, I thought in despair. Even though I didn’t know them, the courtier’s story had touched me. The Roskildean people had been done a
terrible wrong when Havick had paid my own foster-father to traumatize them.
Havick was an evil man, of this I knew, and I felt a deep revulsion for him. He was even trying to start a war with the Kingdom of Torvald, I thought in astonishment.
“But is it really my job to stop him? Does it have to be me?” I whispered into the storm winds. In return, they only gave the lonesome, howling answers that they always gave such silly questions.
“You know there is only one place where you can find out that, don’t you, Lila?” Crux answered me instead.
Yes. “Danu?” I called out.
“What?” he sounded distracted, as the courtier was clutching onto his arm for dear life.
“After we have freed this man, I will need to know what the rest of that prophesy says.” I had made my decision. I would go the Haunted Isle of Sebol.
Part III
The Prophesy
Chapter 23
Danu, returning home
Something had changed about the dark-haired young woman I rode with. It was in her bearing, the way she rode with her back leant low, her head peering intently to the southern horizon. I could see it in the way that her gloved hands gripped the scales of the great dragon beneath us.
“She has found who she is.” The words of Crux broke into my mind, surprising me as they always did with the ease and strength that he could share his intellect with mine.
But who is that? I wondered. Lila the Dragon Mercenary? Lila the Princess of Roskilde?
“Lila,” Crux said cryptically to me, leaving me none the wiser.
It had happened on that wrecked ship. Something the courtier had said about who she was, and her real parents had made her intent on finding out about the prophesy. The prophesy I had lied to her about, I thought, feeling a sudden lurch in my stomach. She knew that I didn’t know all of it, and she was angry at me.
After leaving the courtier on the nearest island, Lila had asked Crux to find her father and the Ariel, and then told me that we were to prepare for a long journey. It took us the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening to catch up with the Chief Kasian’s ship, but Crux promised to fly us over the waves straight towards it.
“Of course! I can smell the fish a hundred feet under the waves – do you think I couldn’t find a boatload of unwashed humans?” Crux was enjoying this task, I could tell. He snapped and beat his wings in powerful rowing movements, catching on the slightest currents of air to swoop forward, faster and faster. Lila wasn’t trying to hold him back, or to make the flight comfortable for either herself or me, I thought, and Crux delighted in that.
By the time that moon was rising into the sky, the Ariel was a haven of yellowing lamplight on the dark waters, slowly plowing through the waves.
“Skreyar!” Crux called a greeting to the boat, and, in return there was a shout and one of the lead lanterns on the bowsprit was dipped and lit.
“Bring us down, Crux,” Lila said through clipped tones, and the dragon swept in wide circles around the boat as other Sea Raiders scrabbled to their positions. Even now, after having seen this very same dragon up close and in their home town, they still clutched bows and spears defensively. When will humans get over their fear of these great beasts? I wondered.
“Kasian! I have returned!” Lila called down in a strong voice as Crux flew lazily around the Ariel.
“Lila? Lila – what are you doing? I told you to stay on Malata and train the others!” The large form of the chief gripped the railings as he leaned out to shout up at his daughter. Behind him, other of the sailors watched the confrontation warily.
“Father – I do not wish to disobey you, but there is no time to talk,” she shouted. “Due east of here, almost to the Broken Coasts, you will find one of Havick’s ships scuttled on a reef, wearing Torvald colors. I came to tell you that it’s ripe for plunder.”
“My child! Did you take it? Alone?” the chief was incredulous.
But Lila had already told Crux to lift off from his swinging flight. “No! We’ll talk when I return, Father!” she called.
“Lila! Come back here!” the man shouted, but Lila was not pausing for argument or debate. I felt the mighty pull of the Phoenix dragon’s muscles as we turned, and Lila was waving farewell at her father.
“When I return!” she called, ignoring the chief’s shouts to her.
“Why did you do that?” I said, feeling like I had missed a step somewhere. This wasn’t like the Lila that I had been trying to befriend for the past few moons. She still seemed confident and stubborn, but now she seemed to have less regard for the wishes of her father.
“We fly to the Haunted Isle, Danu,” she shouted back at me. “I have to know what the prophesy says about me.”
Why now? I was about to say when I stopped myself. I didn’t want to pour doubts into her, when she was heading down the path that I had wanted her on from the first day I had realized who she was.
Above us, the stars started to appear, and the waters became a textured silver and shadow blanket. The wind slowed, and our world was encircled by the sigh and snap of the dragon’s wings. It felt like we were flying out of the normal and into a world of dreams. Up above us, the stars grew brighter, now added with silvery drifts of star-stuff, and the occasional spear of light as a shooting star winged its way past. Lila was silent, and for a while I slept on the wing.
When I awoke, it was to the change in the winds as Crux circled down to a wooded island, and a mound of rock. It was still dark, and Lila was yawning when the dragon delicately set us down.
“I am tired,” the Phoenix told us. “I will rest and wait for the dawn.”
“Thank you, you have flown far today, my friend,” Lila said tiredly, undoing the saddle and sliding from the great back to the floor below.
“Batash,” I said, recognizing the shape of the hill and the sea-cliffs beyond, from which I could hear the disturbed hooting of the nesting gulls. “It’s the nearest island to Sebol,” I volunteered helpfully. It was also one of the lookout points the Western Witches kept an eye on – if they could see a pinpoint of fire on this very hilltop, they would know visitors were coming. I relayed the information to Lila. “Do you want me to start a fire, then?” I said as I thumped to the floor, already looking for dead twigs and leaves.
“No,” Lila said quickly. “You said that one of the West Witches – this Ohotto Zanna – is working with Lord Havick. How do we know that the rest of them aren’t?” Instead, she rolled out her blanket against the dragon’s warm throat.
“They can’t be,” I said quickly. “It is against the witch’s code.”
“You mean it used to be. That witch told Havick about me. She is helping the lord find me, probably to kill me,” Lila muttered darkly, making me pause. She was right. Something must have changed at the court of Chabon – either that, or Ohotto was working toward her own devices. But defy the will of Chabon? I thought that was a step too far, even for sharp-tongued Ohotto.
“Okay,” I agreed, chewing a bit of the dried meat I had managed to find at the bottom of my pack, before unrolling my blanket on the other side of Crux’s neck, and finding it surprisingly warm. I don’t need a fire at all, was my last wakeful thought.
“So, tell me what you know about the Haunted Isle,” Lila said to me the next morning, as she stretched in the grey, predawn light. Crux had already got up, diving into the cold waters to catch his breakfast as I sat on the warm flattened grass he had vacated.
“You mean Sebol. That is what we call it,” I said.
“Whatever you call it. I want to know how to get in there without being detected, and how to get to this library of yours.”
I thought for a moment. The Witches of Sebol lived mostly on the near eastern side of the island, with Chabon’s hut and observatory on the western. The library itself was almost in the centre of the eastern “village” and connected to the council hut, the kitchens, the stores by wooden walkways that snaked throughout the woods. “Impossible,” I advi
sed, describing the layout. “You know, I am certain that my mentor Afar will listen to us. Whatever the other witches have done – she will listen to you.”
“You think?” Lila looked at me critically. “Would she be willing to get the prophesy for us?”
I thought for a moment of my austere witch mentor. She had a much stronger interpretation of the prophesy – of all prophesies, as a matter of fact. That we had to be the ones to bring them into being. That we were the agents for their reality – but the thought of her directly breaking the word of the old Matriarch and head of our order, Chabon?
“Hardly.” I shook my head. “The Library of the Witches is their most treasured resource, you see. It is the repository of knowledge entrusted to them by the Dragon Monks of old. They didn’t even let me go in there!”
“Well then, we’ll just have to fly in then, won’t we…” Lila shrugged, buckling her leather armor about her and reaching for her sabre.
“No, wait!” I sprang up. There had to be another way than this. What would the witches do when an angry Lila descended upon then with an even angrier dragon? And me with them. Half of the witches had thought me a liability, a boy with magical powers. I was surely to turn to evil just as the last mage – the Dark King – had.
I had wanted to show to them all that I could prove the prophesy right. That I could use my powers for good. That they could teach me the secrets of a mage… Me riding down on the back of an angry dragon would close that path forever to me.
“The witches aren’t all bad.” I pleaded with Lila to consider reason. “Chabon, Afar – they know a lot. They could help us!”
Lila paused, hands on hips, looking out to the west and the bluing morning light. Behind her, the shape of Crux broke free from the surface joyously, with a giant Marlin between his teeth. Lila smiled at Crux’s clear enjoyment of the hunt and of the kill.
“Okay, fish-boy,” she turned back to me. “Have it your way. Can we fly to the island unseen? If we can do that, then you can approach your Afar and Chabon, and ask them what the prophesy really says, and what it means. But as soon as it looks that they are going to deny us, then I will be heading to that library, no matter who is in my way.”
Dragon Raider (Sea Dragons Trilogy Book 1) Page 16
