The Tower of Bones (21 page)

‘Fishy girly spider thing – mmmmm!’

Kate ran at the creature and kicked it, barefooted, on its scaly belly. ‘Ow – ouch!’ She hopped about the sand, holding her injured foot. The kick had hurt her a lot more than it did the dragon. His scales seemed to be cast of iron. Kate’s throat was still dry with fright but she still couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I mean, what are those stumpy bits? Are they supposed to be your wings?’

The creature stood up and opened its jaws wide, as if to roar. And Kate stood back several paces on realising the disproportionate size of the jaws, now they were yawningly ajar, with twin rows of long, needle-sharp teeth that seemed to occupy half of its face. It made a hawking sound deep in its throat, but nothing happened.

‘Don’t talk about eating me again. Don’t even joke about it.’

With a sigh, it closed its jaws and, wriggling the stumpy things on its back, it hung its head.

‘We need to sort this out.’

Kate flopped down to sit in the sand, screwing up her eyes against the grit carried in the wind, and she rubbed at her bruised toes. ‘I can’t believe it – a baby boy dragon! Oh, my – the den, the collection, it must have been your hoard. I’m so sorry about that.’

It reached out a forepaw and tried to brush her wrist.

‘That’s it! You’ve got to get this through your head. There is no question of girl-thing being fish for you.’

‘Lovely bones!’

Suddenly the oraculum in Kate’s brow flared. The dragon recoiled as its body was scorched by the emerald light. Squealing with outrage he ran under a rocky overhang, where Kate could make out his bulky shape in the shadows.

‘Not fair!’

‘Oh, for goodness sake!’ Kate crossed to what had been the floor of the den, looking for the spot where she had been sitting when her oraculum had blown it all away. There was precious little left of the little dragon’s hoard. She shoved her hands down into the soft sand and drew back something brilliantly opalescent. It was a nautilus shell, made of pure mother-of-pearl.

‘Mine! Mine!’

The dragon shrieked and hurled itself into the air, performing a series of somersaults, shaking the ground whenever he landed.

‘It’s really beautiful.’

The little dragon wheeled its head from side to side. ‘Gift from Momu – mine – my gift! Girl-thing please not break shiny thing!’

‘I just want you to answer my questions.’

‘Girl-thing puts back shiny thing – or dragon will fight. Dragon will kill. Slaughter!’

‘Don’t exaggerate.’ Kate held the nautilus shell up to
the sun and attempted to peer through it. ‘It’s really lovely.’

‘A bargain is made. Dragon will answer questions. A bargain made! Dragon promise is not broken.’

Kate was uncertain whether to feel afraid or amused. ‘A lopsided bargain – with a hungry dragon that wants to eat me.’

His eyes never leaving the nautilus shell in her lap, the dragon uttered a sigh. He lifted up his eyes, now speckled with gold dust and ruby splinters, to plead with her. His tail thumped the sand like a drum. He did one of his somersaults, crashing back to earth with claws fully extended. Sand and chips of stone showered over Kate, settling in her bedraggled hair and her tatters of spidersweb.

‘Dragon promises – gives Dragon back his shiny thing?’

‘Your shiny thing is safe with me.’

The dragon peered at her resentfully.

‘We need to get to know one another. My name is Kate. But what do I call you?’ She gazed once more at his starved and bedraggled shape, so like a piece of driftwood. ‘Driftwood – that’s what I’m going to call you.’

‘Driftwood, pah!’

‘What else does Driftwood have to offer Kate, as part of this bargain – besides agreeing not to eat me?’

His head fell, and his eyes could not face her. ‘Driftwood has nothing.’ With a sudden, furious stab of his forepaw, he extended a claw to within half an inch of her oraculum, causing Kate to wince. ‘Dragon secrets!’

‘You can keep your secrets if you’ll promise not to eat me.’

‘Scrags ’n’ bones!’ He ran in a circle, thrashing his tail. He howled and hopped, trumpeting through his nostrils.

‘Poor Driftwood!’ She laughed in spite of her returning exhaustion and hunger, watching how he had flopped down onto the rubble of his den, his weight crunching shells and stones. He was gazing out at her with reproachful eyes. ‘Is there nothing at all to eat in this godforsaken place – besides each other?’

‘Driftwood dreams of eatings. Of swallowing um whole, squirming and wriggling in his belly!’

Kate reached out and ran her fingers over the sticking-out bones of his chest, her hand brushing his back and stopping at the stumps of what must once have been wings.

‘Did you eat them? Were you so hungry you ate your own wings?’

He lowered his head and squinted back at her.

‘Ah, sure I know you’re miserable with hunger.’ Kate sighed. ‘I am too.’ She considered her situation. She recalled how Granny Dew had warned her that the tidbits would last, at most, for a few days. She shook her head. ‘But Granny Dew wouldn’t have sent me here if there was nothing to eat.’

Kate looked at what was left of the den. She laid the nautilus shell down on the sand close to where she had first scooped it out.

‘Here you are – your shiny thing.’

Picking it up with a delicate pinch of his claws, he curled his body around it. He licked away the adherent sand with his long blue tongue and crooned.

‘Lovely … lovely … my shiny!’

‘You wouldn’t dare to eat a girl.’

‘Hundreds of girls Driftwood has gobbled up. We likes um fat. Flesh and bones crackling! Mmmmmmmmmmmmm!’

‘You’ve never eaten anybody. There haven’t been any live things – am I right? Not so much as a frog, or even a lizard?’

‘Scrags ’n’ bones girl-thing not worth the eatings of!’

‘I only wish you had a taste for succubi.’

‘Succulent succubi! Gobble um live.’ He smacked his lips.

‘You’re so hungry you fantasise about eating anything that moves.’

He smacked his lips again. ‘Nnnnggggrrrr!’ He emitted a purring sound, as if to indicate how he felt when fat and contented.

Kate sighed. ‘You and me, we should stop this talking about food.’

‘Fat uns. Fat little girl-things. Fat’n juicy. Mmmmmmmmmmmm!’

‘You’re incorrigible!’

Driftwood curled his blue tongue through a bone with elongated eyeholes and huge interlocking teeth. It looked
like the skull of a small crocodile. It was well and truly gnawed already. He started chewing.

Kate looked down at her bare legs and feet below the tattered rags of cobweb. She ran her hands through the squalid wreck of her hair. Tears sprang into her eyes. She supposed that she should search again for some kind of a shelter. But memories of the Tower made her glad that the sky was over her head. No more had she forgotten Faltana, or the Gargs and the wolves. But her weariness overwhelmed any continuing sense of caution. Curling into a ball on her side in a hollow, she could hear the gnawing sound of the dragon’s teeth in the background, like the comforting rhythm of an old rocking chair.

She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. ‘Oh, Driftwood, I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. But can I trust you to keep out of mischief while I sleep?’

There was a hesitation. Then, the munching continued.

‘Don’t even think about eating me.’ She drifted for a moment or two, came to again. ‘Though I don’t expect you’ll be able to stop fantasising about it. We’ll look for food. I promise – when I wake up – okay?’ She was drifting again, her voice increasingly slurred. ‘We’d better … Or our bones will end up in someone else’s hoard.’

At daybreak Alan stared up into a spindrift of snow falling through the rigging of the enormous mainmast. He couldn’t believe it – snow in what should be sub-tropical waters. He stretched out his hand to let those first tiny flakes fall into his palm, and immediately regretted it. The snowflakes scorched his skin, the freezing equivalent of sparks from a blacksmith’s forge. Even as he blew into his cupped hands, the breeze that had so conveniently filled the sails for a week grew fierce, tensing the canvases to rigid bellows and stretching taut every inch of rigging.

Forced to turn his face away from a polar blast Alan headed back to his cabin to wrap the fleecy coverings of his bunk over the existing protection of his greatcoat. When he returned to Siam’s side, his face now hooded against the snow, a rising storm was breaking about the pitching and rolling decks. The air was so cold it pained
his nostrils just to take a breath. He shouted to Siam above the howling of the wind.

‘What’s going on?’

Siam lifted his face into the wind and snow to peer directly at the lurid star that appeared in the gaps of cloud, even in daylight, and which seemed to follow their every twist and turn. Even the gnarled Olhyiu chief, who must be inured to cold, had to squint his eyes under a furrowed brow already rimed with frost.

‘The Witch’s doing – curse her bones!’

Alan shook his head. ‘We’re still a good two days sail from the coastline, and even further from her Tower. I can’t believe the Witch can get to us here!’

Siam shrugged, turning to the Kyra, who had stayed with them in the prow. It was the Kyra who now spoke, her eyes narrowed as they peered into the worsening weather. ‘Olc is wily. She is second in malice to the Tyrant himself. Yet even I wonder if she can cast a malengin thus far.’

‘What else would explain it?’

‘What advice did you receive from the ancient sister in the Council-in-Exile? Did she not speak to you of her fears?’

Alan frowned, thinking back. It wasn’t altogether clear what Sister Hocht had tried to tell him. ‘It was when she was dying … consumed by the deathmaw. She talked about some ancient prediction that mentioned a rath of bones.’

Ainé’s eyes turned to look into his own.

Alan shook his head in bafflement. He felt a prickling dread that erupted over his skin. If only he could fight back against the eye – but still no matter how hard he probed it with the oraculum, he could discover no substance there to attack.

Siam raised his face, as if sniffing at the star. ‘Is it not plain to see? The Witch’s malice has invaded the blessed night.’

As the hours passed the red star remained luridly brilliant, even through the falling snow, and the sense of its menace grew in his mind so that Alan could barely look at it. No other star or moon was visible. Even the ocean, heaving and breaking about the bows, was aglitter with lurid reflections as if the pounding waves were flecked with blood. High above them a spar snapped in the force of the driving wind, tearing free of the rigging. They stared up as it flapped and splintered, then came crashing down onto the decks amidships.

Siam cursed. ‘Nature raises its hand against us?’

‘Get a hold of yourself, man. The last thing we want to do is panic.’ Alan was about to argue it out with the Olhyiu chief when he felt Ainé’s hand grip his shoulder, heard her voice whisper closely, urgently into his ear.

‘Tell me more – of when the ancient sister was dying?’

Alan thought back to those terrible moments when he had turned the power of his oraculum inwards to protect himself, yet still he had clasped the hand of Sister Hocht
as she was consumed by the deathmaw. He attempted to recall her exact words:

‘She talked about the Witch. How she was resurrecting the soul spirit of the titan, Fangorath.’

Ainé’s eyes bored into his own. ‘What else?’

‘There were things I didn’t understand. You have to realise how hurt she was … She became confused.’

‘Recount her words to me – exactly.’

Alan returned in his mind to Hocht’s faint whisper, her voice so low he had to move his ear over her mouth to catch her dying breath. His hand reached up to his cheek, where Hocht’s dying fingers had risen to touch him as she whispered her final counsel. ‘She said Fangorath was half divine, “a being of darkness”.’

‘A being of darkness!’ Ainé’s tawny head lifted to stare up into the red eye, as if assessing it anew.

‘She also called him “Dragonbane”.’

‘Ah!’

‘This means something to you?’

‘In legend, Dragonbane was the King of the titans. He is said to have led them in a terrible war against the Dragons, in which there was no quarter given.’

‘She talked about that. She said that Fangorath ended the Age of Dragons.’

The Kyra looked worried. ‘Did she say what the Witch might want of such a resurrection?’

Alan hesitated. ‘She talked about a Third Portal.’

‘Are you sure of this? You said she was confused.’

Alan stared up into Kyra’s eyes. ‘Ussha De Danaan spoke to us of three portals to the Fáil. We know that the Tyrant has control of one – and a second is located in Carfon. I wondered if the Tower of Bones marks the position of the Third Portal.’

The Kyra stared at him, evidently stunned.

‘You think this is what Olc is really after?’ he asked.

‘If so, our mission has grown a good deal more dangerous.’

The Oraculum of Bree flared in the Kyra’s brow and she lifted her head in a way that suggested she was communicating urgently with the Shee throughout the fleet.

‘What is it?’

‘I believe that we face an impending attack. The fleet is mostly merchantmen, burdened ships that have little protection. We cannot tell, as yet, what form the attack will take. But I presume that it will focus on the Temple Ship. The remainder of the fleet must pull away – find a safe distance from the attack.’

Squinting through the freezing snowfall Snakoil Kawkaw, with just his head and shoulders emerging from his hidey hole, rubbed at his ears, which were already raw from the excoriating wind.

‘Scheming hog’s entrails!’ He slid a tentative leg out of the pit that had concealed his presence from the fish-gutters – a hidey hole he had discovered just before the Ship set sail. He had discovered many such hidden places
long ago as a boy, when the derelict hulk had been the children’s playground. Kawkaw hadn’t been able to believe his luck when the Ship had turned back to its old galleon shape. Who better than he knew every nook and cranny? Had he not played hide and seek here with Siam the stupid and the lovely Kehloke, whom he had already planned to be his future bride? Even then he had kept a sharp eye for advantages, such as this pit, where he could hide the trinkets he stole. But now his hidey hole had enabled him to conceal a present for his enemies. Emerging onto the heaving decks he exulted with a power for mischief undreamed of by the fish-gutters and the huloima brat with the bauble embedded in his head.