Bones of the Dragon (45 page)

It seemed Wulfe could never make anyone happy.

The song dated back to the time when his mother’s people dwelt happily in a darkness lit only by the light of distant stars. A time before the first gods came to banish the starlight with bright, fierce fire and give the rulership of nature to fleshy, hairy creatures who had crawled out of the swamps and now walked upright on two legs. These creatures termed themselves “men,” and they were big and gross and ugly, and they used fire to make iron and used iron to kill.

Wulfe knew the meaning of the words in his heart, though not his head. Sometimes the words were joyous and sometimes cruel. They were funny and hideous and beautiful and shining. They were not afraid, for when the songs were first sung, there had been nothing to fear. The fear had come later.

Wulfe sang and pressed his hand over the Ugly One’s heart and hoped fervently that he would not turn the young man inside out. He breathed a sigh of relief to see the flesh remaining on the outside of the bones, where it belonged. The song seemed to work. The Ugly One drew a deep and easeful breath. His life’s blood tinged his face. The lines of pain smoothed away. His skin grew cool to the touch and beaded with sweat. The fever had broken.

The Ugly One flung his arm over his forehead and slept deeply. His soul was still in the twilight realm, but he was no longer doing battle. Wulfe pictured his soul walking through pleasant meadows filled with flowers.

Wulfe was pleased with himself. The Ugly One would sleep a long time,
and that would be good for him. Wulfe huddled down in the nest he’d made for himself among the blankets and whispered a thank-you to his mother. Thinking of her, he wondered sadly why she never came to sing to him anymore.

The boy missed her. He missed the elder. He missed his home. He felt so lost and alone that he began to cry, something he had not done since he was four years old and the druids had taken him from his father and the wolves who had been his family.

When Skylan woke, he was content to simply lie drowsily among the blankets, reveling in the warmth of the bed. He recognized his surroundings. He was in the hold of his
Venjekar
.

His contentment did not last long.

Memory returned, crashing into him like ogres crashing into the shield-wall. Memory, like ogres, stabbed him with sharp swords.

Warriors who suffered cracked skulls almost never remembered the blow or even the battle. Unfortunately, Skylan remembered everything. He saw his young warriors transformed into rabbits. He saw Draya’s gruesome death.

Skylan wished his eyes might have been gouged out before he saw that horrible sight, one he knew he would keep on seeing for as long as he lived.

He felt the ship’s motion and realized they had set sail. He wondered who was sailing the ship. The Dragon Kahg would never permit an enemy to seize the ship. Perhaps druids had released Skylan’s men from their enchantment. His men were taking him home.

Weak in mind and body, Skylan accepted this notion and drifted back to sleep. When he woke again, he saw the boy.

He was a strange-looking boy, thin and sinewy, with a thatch of shaggy hair. The boy was pouring water from a jug into a drinking horn, and he had his back to Skylan. Propping himself up on his elbows, Skylan stared at him.

“Who in the name of Freilis are you?” Skylan demanded.

The boy sucked in a hissing breath. Whipping around, he flung the drinking horn at Skylan’s head and fled, scampering up the ladder and disappearing.

Skylan wiped water from his face and licked it from his parched lips. He gazed up the ladder, trying to catch a glimpse of the strange boy. When the boy did not return, Skylan called out to him.

“No need to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Skylan heard the lapping of the waves against the hull and nothing more, and he realized something was not right. He should have heard his men
tramping about the deck. The silence made him uneasy. Who was sailing the ship? He coughed, cleared his throat, and tried again.

“I
can’t
hurt you, if it comes to that,” he told the boy ruefully. “I am weak as watered ale.”

The boy returned, hovering in the hatchway. He had yellow eyes the likes of which Skylan had never seen in a human, and he stared at Skylan distrustfully from beneath crudely cut bangs. He did not speak.

“What is your name?” Skylan asked.

“Names are powerful,” the boy countered. “Tell me yours first.”

He cautiously descended to the topmost rung of the ladder, but would come no farther.

“Skylan Ivorson,” Skylan answered. He was about to add proudly, “Chief of Chiefs of the Vindrasi,” but that wouldn’t sound well coming from a man lying naked in his own filth on sweat-soaked blankets. A man too weak to pour himself a cup of water.

The boy hesitated, then mumbled something.

“I couldn’t hear. Did you say ‘wolf’?” Skylan asked.

“Wulfe,” the boy repeated loudly, annoyed.

“Wulfe,” Skylan said, pronouncing the name as the boy did. “Would you tell one of my men to come down here?”

Wulfe shrugged. “There aren’t any men. Only the dragon. And maybe the woman.”

“This is no time for jests,” Skylan said sharply. “Someone is sailing this ship. I don’t know how you came to be aboard, but now that you’re here, send my men down to me at once!”

Wulfe shrugged again. He was dressed in robes like the druids wore, too large for his small frame, and when he shrugged, the opening for his neck slid down around his shoulder.

“I told you. There are no men. The druids brought you on board and left. The dragon made the ship sail away, taking me with it. I didn’t want to go,” Wulfe added in aggrieved tones.

“Then who is sailing the ship?” Skylan demanded.

“The dragon!” Wulfe cried. “I keep telling you that! Please ask him to take me home.”

“Why don’t
you
ask him?” said Skylan, annoyed. He thought the boy was making all this up.

“I don’t think the dragon likes me,” Wulfe said sulkily. “I asked him if I could come on board, and he didn’t say I couldn’t. But now he glares at me whenever I go up on deck.”

“You’re telling me you can see the dragon, speak to him?” Skylan frowned in disbelief.

Wulfe’s eyes widened in fright, and he edged back toward the ladder. “I didn’t know that was wrong! Are you going to kill me?”

“No, of course not,” Skylan said. “It’s not wrong, exactly. It’s just . . . odd. The only person who can speak to the dragon is a Bone Priestess. And even she cannot see the dragon until he answers the summons.”

Skylan still thought the boy was pretending, playing make-believe.

“Tell me, Wulfe, what does the dragon look like?”

“He looks like a dragon,” said Wulfe.

“Describe him,” said Skylan, thinking he would hear some outlandish tale.

“He has blue scales, and his mane is the color of sea foam and his crest is like the moon glade on the water I saw the other night. And his eyes are red and horrid.”

Skylan was astonished. Wulfe had accurately described the Dragon Kahg in his water form, down to the last scale. Here was a mystery.

The boy had to be telling the truth, incredible as it seemed. The Dragon Kahg had the power to sail the ship on his own if he chose. Skylan remembered watching the ship sail off with Horg’s corpse, and he shuddered. Perhaps the Dragon Kahg was carrying Skylan to his grave! Planning to dump his body where neither man nor gods could find it.

“Do you hurt somewhere?” Wulfe crept down another rung.

Skylan shook his head. Weak in mind and body, he turned his head into the pillow to hide his grief.

He heard bare feet patter down the rungs of the ladder and felt a hand timidly touch his shoulder. Skylan lifted his head, and Wulfe sprang back.

“You should drink.” The boy held the horn at arm’s length.

Skylan took the drinking horn and gulped the water thirstily and handed it back. He lay quiet a moment, wondering if he had the strength to rise. He didn’t have a choice. He had to find out what was going on.

“I need to go up on deck.”

Wulfe clutched the empty drinking horn to his chest. “Will you ask the dragon to take me home?”

Skylan gave a bleak smile. “I must first ask the dragon where he is taking
me
. You said the druids brought me on board. They must have brought you, as well. Why did they leave you here?”

Wulfe flushed and shook his head. “The elder didn’t know I was on the ship. I sneaked on. I know it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. The dragonship was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. Now I hate it,” he added sullenly.

“Can you help me up the ladder to the deck?”

Wulfe eyed him suspiciously. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to try to find out where we are—”

“I can tell you that. We’re on the ocean.”

“If I can see landmarks and the position of the sun, I’ll know where we are on the ocean,” said Skylan.

Wulfe seemed to think this over and decide it made sense. He gingerly slid his arm beneath Skylan’s shoulder. The boy was surprisingly strong. He helped Skylan stand.

Everything tilted and wobbled. Skylan shut his eyes and clung to Wulfe and waited for the dizziness to pass.

“Where are my clothes?” Skylan asked.

The boy gestured to a corner where he’d dumped the bloodstained trousers and shirt and boots in a heap.

“And my sword?”

Wulfe let Skylan loose and darted off into a corner. Bereft of his support, Skylan had to grab hold of a beam to keep from falling. The sudden movement sent pain stabbing through his head, but he was more worried about his sword.

“The weapon is valuable. Did the druids keep it? Tell me, what happened to it?” He was almost frantic with worry.

Wulfe pointed a jabbing finger at something. Skylan saw a blanket and the faint outline of a sword beneath it. He gave a huge sigh of relief. Clasping the amulet at his neck, he thanked Torval.

“I will leave the sword where it is,” he told the boy. “You do not need to be afraid.”

Keeping a wary eye on the blanket, as though fearful the sword might somehow wriggle out, Wulfe helped Skylan to climb the ladder.

Once on deck, Skylan was disappointed to find that the ship had sailed into a fog bank. He could not see the top of the mast, much less the sun. He could barely tell fore from aft.

Skylan drew in a deep breath. The air was thick and moist, but it was a welcome change from the stinking, fetid air below. He sat down on a sea chest. He could feel the dragon’s eye on him, but he didn’t look up.

“I want to bathe,” said Skylan. “Will you fetch me water and my clothes? You will find clean ones in my sea chest.”

Wulfe wrinkled his nose, indicating he agreed, and ran below. Skylan sat resting, a lone figure on the empty deck. The dragonship moved slowly, sluggishly through the fog. The sail was furled. Skylan saw that the rudder had been lashed in place. He was puzzled by this, wondered if the boy had done it.

Skylan’s sea chest had no lock on it. Wulfe returned with Skylan’s clothes and boots. He lowered a bucket attached to a rope into the sea and hauled it back up, sloshing much of it over his bare feet. Skylan rinsed off the dried
blood and filth, gasping at the cold water and wincing at the sting of the salt on his fresh wounds. He finished by dumping a second bucket of water over his head, washing his hair and new growth of beard.

Bathed and dressed, Skylan felt better. Wulfe brought dried meat and fruit and the rock-hard brown bread that kept a long time before going moldy. As he and Wulfe shared the meal, Skylan eyed the Dragon Kahg, barely able to see the dragon’s head through the thick mists.

Skylan needed to know where he stood. He had to find out what the dragon knew and if Kahg blamed him for Draya’s death and, if so, what the dragon intended to do about it. Skylan took some comfort from the fact that he was still alive.

Torval had again healed him, spared his life. The god had forgiven him. Hopefully the dragon would, too.

Skylan walked over to where the spiritbone hung suspended on the leather thong. The bone swayed gently back and forth with the motion of the ship. Skylan had never before spoken with the dragon. He was not even certain if he could. As he had told Wulfe, communicating with the dragons was the province of the Bone Priestess.

The thought brought Draya to mind, and guilt and remorse twisted inside him like a sword in his gut. He had brought her to that horrible place. He had brought her to her terrible death. He remembered Draya leaning against the dragon’s carved neck, and he remembered her final words to him. She was sorry she had wronged him.

Skylan placed his hand on the spiritbone and said in a low, harsh voice, not looking at the dragon, “Where are you taking me?”

It was Wulfe who spoke.

“The dragon says he is taking you to Luda.”

“This is serious,” Skylan snapped. He stopped, glanced back at the boy. “How did you know about Luda?”

“I don’t know anything about Luda,” said Wulfe. “What is Luda anyway?”

“Luda is my home,” said Skylan.

“Then that’s where we’re going. The woman told the dragon to take you there.”

“Who is this woman you keep talking about?”

“That woman,” said Wulfe, and he pointed.

Startled, Skylan swiftly turned.

A draugr stood behind him.

Most dead slept peacefully in their graves, but there were those who sometimes left their tombs to walk among the living. These walking corpses were known as draugrs, and the Vindrasi feared them, for draugrs hated the living and often went on murderous rampages.

Skylan recognized the draugr. It was Draya. She had come back to claim her revenge on him.

Skylan had never known such terror. His heart lurched and thudded erratically in his breast. His bowels gripped, and his stomach shriveled. He could not breathe. He could not speak. He had no thought of fighting the draugr. He stood staring at it, paralyzed with fear.

The draugr’s face—Draya’s face—was corpse-white, her eyes fixed and staring. Blood stained her gown and dripped from her hands. Her hair was unbound and fell about her shoulders. She walked toward him, her hand outstretched.