The Veiled Dragon (5 page)

boarding axe from his belt and stepped forward to meet the advancing fish. She grabbed the halfore’s leg and pulled him roughly back. “This fish belongs to me. Captain.” Though Ruha was trying to speak quietly, Fowler flinched and instinctively retreated from her thunderous voice. She drew him to her side. “Help me stand.” The captain glanced at the approaching monster, which had now submerged almost completely. Only the tip of its dorsal fin still showed, slicing across the face of a heaving dune. Fowler slipped a hand under Ruha’s arm and pulled her up. The dorsal fin was only five yards away when the rising dune swallowed it. With Fowler’s help, Ruha retreated to the back of the raft. A dull buzz started to drone in her ears, and swirls of dark fog swam along the edges of her vision. The witch had lost too much blood to be standing. Her knees buckled, and, had it not been for the captain’s support, she would have fallen. As Ruha struggled to call her spell to mind, a huge gray snout burst from the water and crashed down on the corner of the raft. A pair of tiny, wide-set eyes flared briefly; then the monster squirmed forward. The raft listed toward the trough of the dune, and the witch feared they would flip over. Her vision narrowed to a black tunnel. She reached out and slapped the fish on the nose, smearing the sand mixture over its rough hide. The fish twisted sideways, temporarily preventing the raft from tipping farther, and opened its mouth. The beast’s teeth were as large and ugly as spearheads, and Ruha knew they would tear her into bite-size pieces with a single snap. She uttered the incantation of a stone spell, at the same time hurling herself backward into Fowler’s arms. They fell onto the deck together, leaving their attacker’s great jaws to clap shut on empty air. A pearly sheen swept over the head of the great fish and down its huge body. The creature squirmed farther onto the raft, forcing Ruha and Fowler to the very edge of

the vessel’s high side. It slapped the water with its tail, driving itself forward, and the magical luster of the witch’s spell suddenly drained from its gritty skin. The beast grew as drab and gray as ash, and the duller it became, the slower it moved. By the time its jaws were within striking range, the monster’s entire body had grown as drab and motionless as a mudstone sculpture. Captain Fowler stretched a tentative leg toward the gaping jaws and, when his foot did not get bitten off, pushed the monstrous head off the raft. The fish slipped from sight and vanished beneath the dark water as swiftly as a stone. The witch slumped onto the deck and began fumbling at her buckle, praying she could stay conscious long enough to tie her belt around her bleeding leg. Ruha had barely unlocked the clasp before her head thudded onto the planks and her vision went entirely black. She felt Fowler’s stout fingers tugging at the belt, then the tinny sound of a man’s fading voice: “Hey! These sharks

” Sometime later, the witch awoke to a throbbing leg and the sound of arguing voices. “

witch for?” whined the sailor. “She’s the reason we’re here, I say!” “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 ofloudness 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 ofTeshwave. 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