The Coming of Dragons: No. 1 (Darkest Age) (2 page)

But this storm was different. It had blown up from nowhere – out of a calm spring night.

Now with every crack of timber, cold terror gripped her. Not that she would let that pale, scared boy see her fear. She was a seafarer, and proud to ply a trade more usually the domain of men. The sea was her life, her love, since her
mother had died of fever and her father had brought her aboard. Some of the crew had muttered darkly, of course; there had been some hard looks at first, but she had won them over. She’d learned fast, reading the compass, helping her father check the goods in the hold against the tally sticks, even reefing the sails with Master Seaman Harkiron. And now, at eleven years old, it was well known that one day Elspeth Trymmansdaughter would succeed her father and become master of the
Spearwa.

But now all seemed to be lost, and Elspeth thought fearfully of her father, still battling with the tiller, and longed to be at his side in this war with the sea.

When the pale boy screamed her eyes snapped open. Ahead a black spur reared up like the tower of the godshouse at Bradwell, with more columns of basalt behind like black dragon’s teeth. But the boy stared only at the sky. What had made him cry out like that?

Crash!

The
Spearwa
slewed into the massive pillar of rock. Elspeth clung tight to her harness. But the boy had nothing to hold him fast. When the deck reared up, he went sprawling backwards to the starboard rail. In a moment he was gone, swallowed by the sea.

Screams and curses rang in Elspeth’s ears, but then they too were drowned. Next came more terrible crunching of splitting wood.
Father!
But her scream blew away with the spray, into
the dark where only chaos ruled. She saw one of the sailors – Bron, she thought – pitch past her. As he fought for a footing on the deck it seemed he was dancing. The next moment he hit the rail smack in the ribs and folded forward into the sea.

Now the boards beneath Elspeth’s feet began to crack like kindling. She gasped as the ropes clutched like a snake. If she didn’t loose the knots, the tumbling mast stump would drag her through the hold and snap her back like a twig.

But the knots were slick and swollen with water, and Elspeth’s hands were stiff with cold.

She fumbled for the scaling-knife at her belt; prayed to her father’s stern-faced god that it still had an edge from the last time she’d stropped it. All fingers and thumbs, she sawed at the first rope, and then at another, while around her the
Spearwa
gave up its struggle against the rocks and sank, piece by piece, into the frothing sea.

She felt the mast list towards her, the planks sagging beneath it. Now! Now she must move. She struggled out of the remaining ropes. But one foot was caught. It twisted painfully as the mast leaned closer still. She tugged, and tugged again, and dragged it free as the mast crashed through the planks where she had just been kneeling.

Elspeth turned to stern: that was where her father would be. But before she had gone two steps, the remaining deck planks parted under her feet and she fell in a storm of rent wood.

Down and down she plunged.

For an age Elspeth floundered. Strong swimmer she may have been, but the sea’s cold stunned her – and made her desperate to cling to this life. After all, her father might not be dead. She forced herself to think, to move.
Which way is up?
her mind screamed. At last she kicked her legs, arched her back and, finding gravity’s pull, pushed through the churning swell towards the surface. On and up she fought, and just when she thought her lungs would burst, she breached the waves and gulped down ragged shards of air.

But again the waves took her down, tossing her round and round like a rag doll in a mill race. She let it take her. To fight now would use up precious energy. And so three times more she rose and fell, gulping a mouthful of air whenever she could. On the third time a great bolt of lightning lit up the rocks below her and the basalt spires of a seabed city reared up through the hissing waves. In desperation, Elspeth twisted away, struggling with every breath in her body.

Gasping, she broke the surface, into the frenzy of rain and hail. She cast about for sign of the
Spearwa
, but what with the night and the stinging spray she could scarcely see two yards ahead. No men. No wreckage.

‘Father!’ she screamed. ‘Father, where are you?’ But the crashing of sea on stone drowned out her cry.

She felt the fight drain out of her then. What was the point? She was tiring fast. She could not win this battle with the waves. But just when she thought to give up, the storm threw her an unexpected gift. A wooden chest broke the
surface close by. With a burst of new strength, she struck out for it and caught hold of one of its handles. It was oak chased in iron, sturdy and strong and seemingly proof against the waves. Elspeth clung to it, gasping and gathering her strength.

The next thing she saw was a body. She almost let go of the chest with the shock of it. Like all Dubris children she knew what the sea did to the dead. Scenes of white, bloated faces, seaweed-twined limbs flooded her mind. But she forced herself to look for it again among the tossing waves. It might have been any one of the
Spearwa
’s crew: Beron or Inch. It could have been her own father!
He could still be alive!

She searched about her for the wave-born figure. Then she saw it, a dark, limp form in the jagged sea. This time she struck out towards it, leaving behind the sea-chest haven.

The waves dragged her crazily to right and left, threw her like a ball, and the rain and spray merged in a world of snarling water.

When she saw the body again it was a few yards to her right. Clawing her way through the heavy swell, she snatched a sleeve and hauled it to her. It was lighter than she had expected, and moved easily. And then she saw why: it was not a seaman, but the boy, Edmund. Alive or dead she could not tell – but dead for sure if she couldn’t get him back to the sea chest.

She looked for it again in the darkness, knowing her own death was certain if she didn’t find it. Beside her the boy dipped beneath the waves, and again she hauled him to the
surface. And just when she thought all was lost, there was a hideous flare of red light and in its glow she saw the chest was no more than five yards away. She hooked one hand around the boy’s neck, and struggled clumsily towards it.
Please
, she thought.
Please let us reach the chest
…

The sky bled fire like a bullock with its throat cut. Aagard bared his teeth in the dark and mouthed a silent curse. From turbid East to drowning West, men would be staring in horror into that blood-boltered sky. Aagard winced as he saw more bursts of fire across the sea. A great evil had been loosed in this night’s storm, with worse to come.

The old man turned from the sea with a sinking heart. There was nothing he could do about the storm, and at this moment he had more pressing business. Life and death business, if he was not mistaken. He trudged along the rain-drenched beach, counting his steps in the face of the storm.

Ninety-three. Ninety-four. Ninety-five.

He stopped and looked out beyond the waves. This was where the dream had told him to come, but it had not told him what he would find. Only that something would come out of the storm, something of great importance that must be kept safe at all costs; something that might not look outwardly precious …

Aagard frowned as another fiery tongue seared the sky.
Outwardly precious!
As if he needed his dreams to warn him about outward trappings! He had learned that grim lesson
two years ago in Venta. These days it was only his soul, his dreams, his mind’s eye that he trusted; even so, he thought wryly, this particular dream might have been a little more specific …

At last he saw it. Something bobbing in the tide’s white horses. A black shape looming in the storm’s reflecting glow. It was too far out to reach, first drifting in towards the strand and then clawed back in the undertow.

Quite suddenly, with the ninth wave there it was, deposited directly before him, ten strides out on the wet sands. Aagard stared at it, half expecting some further revelation to explain its purpose and his mission. And that was when he realised: it was not one thing, but three.

Aagard picked his moment carefully. He was too old to fight the sea, but he couldn’t risk losing this strange delivery. Yet as he paused, some inner voice nagged:
Trust your dream! Watch the sky! Act now, before it is too late!
He struggled across the sucking sands to the largest of the three shapes. It turned out to be a sturdy oak chest.

A stillness came over him. The chest was familiar; ominously familiar. He had hoped never to see it again. And to see it now of all times, on this night of unnatural storm, made his blood run cold. Uncertain and fearful, he knelt to look at the padlock. It was still firm, the runes around it blackened with age and wear, but seemingly untouched.

‘Well, then,’ he muttered. ‘We’re not wholly undone. Not yet.’

He leant over the chest to see what else the sea had brought him, and gasped.

Of all the things he had thought might come to him out of the madness and malice of the storm, this was the least likely, and the most baffling. But no, he had seen them before! This dark girl and pale, pale boy. Now he remembered. Had he not also glimpsed them in the dream?

The children of the storm.

Edmund rose, gulping, from the waves. Above him the huge winged monster swept down … his breath turned to stone … he lashed out …

Edmund’s eyes flicked open in disbelief. Instead of the storm’s roar there was quietness, and instead of freezing wetness there was warmth, and the burst of red that had so terrified him before was only firelight crackling in a hearth. The scaly apparition had disappeared. The storm was gone. He was safe.

Gods be praised
. His mother’s offerings for a safe journey had worked after all. Edmund gazed around him. He was in some kind of cave. Candles flickered on high stony ledges, casting little pools of light. Beneath him was the rustle of clean straw over which a warm blanket had been spread. Even his clothes were almost dry – steaming a little in the heat from the fire. Next to him the girl slept on, under a blanket of her own. Edmund stared at her sun-bronzed cheek, where black strands of hair stirred a little on her breath. That dark hair
made him think of his mother again, and again the storm came roaring back. His heart leapt with shock. The last thing he had seen was … was that thing in the sky … then the waves burying him. What had happened? How had they got here? And
where
were they?

The cave was furnished like a learned man’s chamber, with a shelf of books against one wall and a lectern on which to rest the larger volumes so as to read them more easily. There was also a table and stools, and on the table a platter and knife set out for a meal.

Beyond the firelight, someone was speaking very quietly. No. It was singing rather than speaking; a man’s low voice, chanting words he could not fathom. Edmund raised himself on his elbow, wincing at the stiffness in his arms.

In the furthest corner of the cave a man was standing with his back to him. He was bending over something with his hands outstretched, and as Edmund watched he finished his chanting and knelt down. There was a small, metallic noise; then the man straightened up, sighing. But he seemed to know Edmund was awake for he turned calmly and came over to him.

He was old, his face seamed and wrinkled and his beard more silver than black. But his eyes held a piercing and unsettling darkness, and his carriage was proud. He stood like a king, or a man used to speaking with kings.

‘You are welcome here,’ the man said. His voice was clipped, but not unkind, and his accent more like Edmund’s than he might have expected so far to the west.

The old man raised his eyebrows in faint enquiry, and Edmund said, ‘My name is Edmund.’ He was not prepared to give away any more of his identity than this, especially as he knew nothing about this man. Was he rescuer, or captor?

Suddenly the man bent closer and searched Edmund’s face as if trying to solve a riddle. ‘You are wondering where you are,’ he said. ‘This place is called Gullsedge, and you are in my home.’

‘How did I get here?’ Edmund asked. His voice sounded strange – low and hoarse. ‘I was … a wave swept me off the deck, while I was looking at …’ He hesitated. How could he describe the thing that he had seen in the eye of the storm? No one sane would believe him. He glanced across at the girl. She was still asleep, oblivious. Had she seen it too?

‘I am Aagard,’ said the old man. ‘Once of the kingdom of Wessex, now of Dunmonia. The sea cast you up here; you and something else.’ Once again, he gave Edmund a searching look. ‘If you are well enough to stand, there’s something I would like to show you.’

He turned and walked away, further into the cave, and Edmund rose shakily to his feet and followed, shivering at the night’s dank air beyond the firelight.

Aagard went to the thing he had been bending over before. It was a chest, rimed with salt water and draped with bladder-wrack. It looked very old and its metal edges were black and corroded. A huge padlock of rusted iron held it shut, but as far as Edmund could see, the lock had no keyhole.

Aagard pointed at the chest. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘And where did it come from?’

Edmund stared at him, confused. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen it before.’

‘It was washed up alongside you,’ Aagard said. ‘Did you not cling to it when your ship broke up?’

Edmund shook his head. He had no recollection of anything after the waters closed over his head.

The old man looked again at the chest. ‘But it must have come from the ship on which you travelled,’ he persisted. ‘Do you really not know where –’

‘Wareham,’ said a new voice.

Edmund and Aagard turned to see Elspeth walking stiffly towards them. ‘We took it aboard at Wareham. My father loaded it himself.’ She broke off and curtsied awkwardly. ‘Elspeth Trymmansdaughter, sir,’ she said. ‘Is it you I must thank for my life?’