She was still keeping fast hold of Wulfe, who was growing bored and starting to squirm. Aylaen bent down and whispered into his ear. “I need you to do something for me.”
Wulfe looked up suspiciously. “I’m not going to take a bath.”
Aylaen removed the necklace she had been wearing. Golden bands twined around the spiritbone forming the tail of a dragon. Golden wings spread from the bone with a golden chain attached to the tips of each of the wings. The head of the dragon reared up from the bone. Emeralds adorned the spiritbone, set above the head. Two smaller emeralds were embedded in the wings.
“What’s that?” Wulfe asked, eying it curiously.
“The spiritbone of one of the five Vektia dragons,” Aylaen replied.
“What’s a Vektia dragon?” Wulfe asked.
“You’ve heard Skylan and me talk about the Vektia dragons,” said Aylaen.
“You Uglies are always talking,” said Wulfe, shrugging. “Mostly your talk is boring and I don’t listen. Is it like our dragon?”
“You have to listen now,” said Aylaen sternly. “I’m going to depend on you and I need you to understand that this is important.”
Wulfe heaved a deep sigh. “I’m listening.”
Aylaen told him how Torval was roaming the universe and how he came upon this world, ruled by the great dragon, Ilyrion. How Torval wanted this world and he and the great dragon fought over it.
“The world didn’t belong to either of them,” Wulfe interrupted, scowling. “It belonged to the faeries. My mother told me so.”
“Just listen!” Aylaen said, exasperated. “We don’t have much time.”
Then, as concisely as she could, she told him the rest. How Torval killed the dragon, Ilyrion, but had come to admire his foe and honored her by placing the power of creation in five of her bones. Fearing that other roving gods might come to try to take the world, Torval gave the five bones to his consort, Vindrash, the dragon goddess, to hide away. She gave one each to four of the gods who had come to join them in ruling over the world. The fifth she gave to the Vindrasi, her chosen people.
For many thousands of years, the gods remained undisturbed, and then came the Gods of Raj and of Aelon, God of the New Dawn, to challenge them. They fought a great battle in heaven. The Old Gods were defeated and forced to retreat. One of their own, Desiria, the daughter of Sund, God of Farseeing, and Aylis, Goddess of the Sun, was slain in that battle.
“Sund grieved the loss of his child,” said Aylaen. “He looked into the future and saw only death and despair and to try to prevent that, he gave the spiritbone of the Vektia that was in his care to Aelon. When the ogres attacked, Aelon’s Warrior-Priests tried to use this spiritbone to stop them. Treia was a Bone Priestess and she summoned the Vektia dragon and ended up destroying a city.”
Aylaen gazed at the spiritbone, admiring its delicate beauty even as she trembled at its terrible power. Someone who knew the secret of the Five could tame the dragon’s destructive power: the only way to control the Vektia was to obtain all five spiritbones, summon all five dragons. If that could be achieved, the Old Gods would be able to use the power to drive out the interloper gods and retain rulership of the world.
How? Aylaen wondered, turning the spiritbone in her hand. What will happen when the Five come together?
She had no answer. All she had was one spiritbone, one given by the traitor god, Sund, to his enemy. The Vindrasi had lost their spiritbone, through fear, when the cowardly Chief of Chiefs, Horg, gave the spiritbone set in the Vektan Torque to the ogres in an effort to save his own skin.
Aylaen had one. They needed to find all five. They had been planning to sail to the ogre kingdom to take back their spiritbone. But that plan had gone sadly awry. Now they were drifting on a fog-bound sea, surrounded by their enemies, and the fate of her people and her gods was going to be in the hands of a fae child.
Wulfe was eleven years old or somewhere thereabouts. His hair was shaggy and uncombed; he wore whatever came to hand, which by now had mostly been reduced to rags and was unrecognizable. He was a fae child, if one believed his tale about being the grandson of the Faerie Queen. And he was a savage killer. In his man-beast form, he had murdered and dismembered two men. According to his story, he had been certain those men were going to kill him and he had decided to kill them first. Aylaen had watched him turn into a wolf. She had watched the fur sprout from his body, his teeth lengthen into fangs, his yellow eyes gleam.
“I listened to the story. Why are you staring at me like that?” Wulfe asked. “What do you want me to do?”
“You and I are going to hide this away,” said Aylaen. “But first I must ask you a question and you must tell me the truth. Did my sister kill Keeper?”
Wulfe flung up his arm. “You’re going to hit me!”
“I’m not going to hit you. Is it true?” Aylaen asked, giving him a little shake.
“Yes,” he said sullenly.
“How do you know?”
“I saw her do it. I was watching her,” said Wulfe. His eyes narrowed. “I always watch her.”
“Why?” Aylaen asked, startled.
“Because she hates me. She wants me dead. My daemons keep telling me to kill her, but I don’t listen to them. I know if I hurt her you would be mad at me.”
“Telling me my sister is a murderer makes me mad at you,” said Aylaen. “So you better not be lying.”
Wulfe wriggled in her grasp. She tightened her grip. “Tell me what you saw.”
“Treia was being nice to Keeper, asking him how he felt and if he was in pain and if there was anything she could do for him. She was nice to me once like that and she ended up hurting me.”
Wulfe shrugged. “He should have known better, for he didn’t trust her, either, but I guess he must have been groggy from being hit on the head. He told her the injury was nothing. He’d suffered a cracked skull more than once in the Para Dix. Treia went to that chest of hers where she keeps her stuff and mixed something in a cup and gave it to him and told him to drink it. She said it would ease the pain. He drank it and then he slumped over and I thought he was asleep. But then Skylan came down and said something to him and shook him and Keeper toppled over and Skylan said he was dead.”
“And how do you know my sister killed him?”
Wulfe shrugged his thin shoulders. “Because Keeper wasn’t dead until he drank whatever Treia gave him. Skylan knows what she did,” the boy added defensively. “Ask him.”
Aylaen touched the spiritbone with the tips of her fingers. She could feel the terrible power, a tingling vibration. Closing her eyes, she saw, not for the first time, the bodies in the river, the corpses littering the street, mothers wailing over dead children, husbands weeping over dead wives; families lying dead in the rubble of their homes: an entire city destroyed.
She opened her eyes to look at the boy shifting restlessly from one bare foot to the other.
Aylaen felt the muscles in her face stiffen, her mouth dry. Down below, she could hear the men swearing and shuffling about. They were trying to lift Keeper’s body. Skylan knew the truth about Treia. That’s why he hadn’t answered her. She didn’t have much time. She held out the spiritbone to the boy.
“You must hide this away. Put this in the same place where you hid the spiritbone for the Dragon Kahg.”
“You mean in the—”
“Stop!” Aylaen said harshly. “Don’t tell me. Hide it away now. Hide it quickly before the fog lifts.”
Wulfe eyed the necklace and put his hands behind his back. “I can’t. It will burn me. Maybe kill me.”
Aylaen had forgotten that the fey child could not—or would not—touch metal of any kind.
“It’s not going to kill you. Look, I’ll wrap it up in part of my shirt—”
Wulfe was shaking his head. “It doesn’t like me. I can tell…”
“Wulfe, I need you to hide this!” Aylaen said desperately. “We might be captured and … and…”
“You don’t want Treia to find it,” said Wulfe.
Aylaen was quiet a moment and then she said softly, “Yes.”
Wulfe slipped his hand into hers. “We’ll hide it together. I’ll show you where. You put it inside and I’ll use my magic to keep it safe. And the dragon will help us.”
Wulfe started running, tugging her along. The moment Aylaen let go of the mast and stepped into the gray world she became disoriented and confused. She could not see anything; the mist swam before her eyes. Wulfe appeared to have some sense of where he was going, for he dragged her along confidently. She stumbled after him and tried not to think about tumbling overboard.
“We’re here,” Wulfe said. “There’s my hiding hole.”
Aylaen put her hand on the carved wooden neck of the dragonhead prow. Above her was the nail from which hung the spiritbone of the Dragon Kahg. Aylaen knelt down on the deck and stared intently where Wulfe was pointing at the bulkhead.
“Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Of course you don’t,” said Wulfe. “It’s hidden.” He added something beneath his breath about “stupid Uglies.”
“How do you get into it?” Aylaen asked. The wooden planks looked as though they hadn’t been touched in years, since the carpenter nailed them in place.
Wulfe began to sing.
Open to my waiting hand.
Open to my knowing eye.
Open to my little song.
Open it and don’t take long.
To Aylaen’s vast astonishment, a piece of the plank disappeared, revealing a snug cubbyhole that had been carved out of the bulkhead. The hole was lined with sail cloth and filled with objects too varied and numerous to count. Aylaen caught a quick glimpse of what looked like a lock of her hair, a piece of charred bone, and a silver thimble. Then Wulfe clapped his grubby hands over her eyes.
“Don’t look!” Wulfe ordered. “I have important things in here that you mustn’t see.”
“I’ll keep my eyes closed,” Aylaen offered, mystified by what she had seen.
“You better,” said Wulfe, and he slowly drew away his hand.
He put his hand on her hand that was holding the spiritbone and guided her to the cubbyhole. She wondered if there would be room inside for the necklace, for it was large, and the cubbyhole had seemed very small and almost stuffed to capacity. It must have been larger than she imagined, for she had no trouble sliding the necklace inside.
“Don’t open your eyes yet,” Wulfe cautioned.
Aylaen obeyed and sat back on her heels, her eyes squinched tightly shut. She heard him rooting about in the cubbyhole and then, when he apparently had arranged everything to his liking, he told her she could open her eyes. Aylaen saw that everything, presumably including the spiritbone, was now covered with the sail cloth.
Aylaen hesitated. “Will I be able to the find the hiding hole again? Will the magic work for me?”
Wulfe snorted in derision. “You’re an Ugly! No, it won’t work!”
He cast a glance in the direction of the dragon’s head that was somewhere above them and whispered, “But I think if you wanted the necklace and the dragon wanted you to have it, the dragon would help.”
Aylaen couldn’t see the dragon’s head, obscured by the thick mist, but she could see a flicker of red gleam from Kahg’s eye.
“You can close the hole now,” said Aylaen.
Wulfe replaced the plank and began to sing another song.
Keep safe from thieving hands.
Keep safe from spying eyes.
Let them meet a swift demise.
Aylaen blinked. The cubbyhole was gone. The bulkhead looked as though it had never been disturbed. She could even discern rust on the nail heads. She reached out her hand to touch it and felt the wood, rough and solid and wet beneath her fingers.
“What does ‘demise’ mean?” Wulfe asked.
“‘Dying,’” Aylaen answered. She wrapped her arms around herself. The fog was chill and damp. “In this instance, ‘death.’ ‘Let them meet a swift death.’ If you didn’t know what the word meant, why did you use it?”
“My mother taught me the song. She taught me lots of songs and all of them are magic like this one. Only some of them are a lot more powerful.”
“Like turning yourself into a wolf?” Aylaen asked, shivering. The chill was creeping into her bones.
“My mother didn’t do that to me!” Wulfe cried, bouncing up angrily. “My mother loves me. She came to me every night and she held me and sang to me and told me to remember the songs because they would protect me from you Uglies who hate us and fear us.”
“I don’t hate you,” said Aylaen gently.
“But you’re afraid of me,” Wulfe mumbled. His eyes brimmed with tears that spilled over and ran down his cheeks, leaving tracks in the dirt. He dragged his hand across his nose. “Because I can change into a wolf.”
Aylaen leaned back against the bulkhead.
“I am afraid of you. Like you’re afraid of Skylan.”
“I’m not!” Wulfe said indignantly.
“Even though you know Skylan loves you and would never hurt you, you run away when he draws his sword.”
“I don’t like swords,” said Wulfe.
He sat down beside her. He was silent a long while, considering her words, then he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “I think I understand. And I want you to know that even if I am a wolf sometimes I would never hurt you or Skylan.”
Aylaen smoothed back the shaggy hair from his forehead. “I’m not afraid that you would hurt me. I’m afraid because I don’t understand why this happens to you.”
“My grandmother,” said Wulfe. “She put a curse on me because I am part human. My mother tried to lift the curse, but she couldn’t.”
Wulfe sighed. “I miss my mother.”
“I miss my mother, too,” said Aylaen.
She put her arm around him and felt his tense body relax against hers.
“I might hurt Treia, though,” Wulfe said, and before Aylaen could say anything, he jumped to his feet and ran off, disappearing into the fog. Aylaen could hear his bare feet pattering across the deck.
Hurt Treia … Back in Sinaria, Treia had looked straight at Aylaen and cried in fury,
This is your fault. You should be dead! Why aren’t you dead?
“My fault,” Aylaen repeated softly. “I am the one who should be dead.”
Aylaen was supposed to have died in Sinaria. But she had survived and her survival had somehow ruined Treia’s plans. Aylaen had tried for so long to love her sister. She had defended Treia. She had forced Skylan to rescue Treia from the dragon Treia had brought into being. Keeper had planned to take them to the ogres, speak for them. Treia had poisoned Keeper. Skylan had tried to warn Aylaen about her sister, but she had refused to listen. Now if the ogres captured them, they would die and it would be her fault.