Chapter 34 #2
Beside him, Syla threw her weight against the orb as assiduously as he. Perhaps more than the others, she was well aware of how close they were to disaster. If they didn’t get this onto a ship soon…
Except that wouldn’t be the end of it. Even if a sturdy cargo vessel waited for them, they would still have to sail for hours to reach the harbor on Castle Island.
The memory of the dragons flying over the sea between the islands and attacking them came to mind.
Even if they avoided Vorik, how, by the eyes of the moon, would they get past loitering dragons?
“Trouble coming.” Tibby, who’d been adjusting her spectacles again, pointed to the north.
A powerful blue dragon was flying in their direction.
Syla swore. “How far are we from the cove?”
“Another mile,” Fel said.
The dragon, its great wings flapping hard, was flying fast. They would never reach the cove before the creature arrived.
“We have to hide this.” Syla looked around bleakly.
Other than a stunted tree no taller than she, there was nowhere to hide anything, certainly not an orb eight feet in diameter.
Thanks to its dormancy, it didn’t exude magical energy, the way it had when she first walked into the chamber, but with that beautiful iridescent exterior, the dragon wouldn’t miss seeing it. Nobody within three miles would.
“Where?” Fel kept pushing, but he looked at the oncoming dragon.
Good question.
Syla removed her robe and tossed it over the top of the orb. She ran around it, tugging the material to hide as much as she could, but, as large as the loose healer’s robe was, it only covered the top of the big orb.
Fel stared at her making adjustments as if she were daft. The dragon flew closer.
“Maybe if we lean casually on it, as if it’s an interesting rock formation,” Syla suggested and did so, resting her shoulder on the orb. She crossed her arms over her breasts, feeling foolish for standing naked in her shoes.
A dragon probably didn’t think anything of human clothing, but what about its rider? She imagined Lesva staring condescendingly down at her.
“Lean casually,” Fel grumbled, then stepped out in front of the orb with his mace in hand and glowered defiantly at the dragon.
“You’re a brute,” Tibby told him. “Weapons can’t solve all problems. They can’t even solve most problems.”
“You’re still angry because I beat up your nefarious tractor, aren’t you?” Fel asked without taking his gaze from the dragon.
Blue scales gleaming strikingly in the sun, it had reached the shoreline and kept flying in their direction.
It didn’t have a rider, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t allied with the stormers.
Even if it was a wild dragon, like Wreylith, it would probably pluck up the orb and maybe even destroy it.
All the dragons wanted access to these islands, the same as the stormers.
“I’m perturbed about that, yes.” Tibby joined Syla in casual leaning, trying to use her body to cover up another portion of the orb.
The dragon looked down at them, slitted yellow eyes cold and intense. A chill went through Syla as she feared defeat had already found them.
But the dragon didn’t slow down as it flew over them.
After that look—that dismissive look?—its gaze returned to its route ahead.
Further, the dragon shared a telepathic vision, that of a furry gray animal the size of a horse but with an elephant’s trunk that snuffled at mushrooms on the forest floor.
That was an eliok, wasn’t it? In the vision, the dragon was swooping down between the trees to obtain the creature.
A gleeful thought accompanied the imagery: Delicious prey!
“Did you hear that?” Tibby wondered.
“Yes.” Syla looked toward the sea. “But I don’t think the message was for us.”
The dragon might have been calling to others of its kind, inviting them to join the hunt.
“If that one sensed the barrier is down, others will too, and they’ll be here soon.” Fel hung his mace on his belt and pulled down the robe, handing it to Syla. “We need to get out of here before one working with the stormers shows up and knows the significance of this giant orb.”
They returned to pushing, Fel alternately grunting and directing them.
He pointed toward the cove they were angling for, the lava-rock field sloping downward around it.
They would have to be careful not to let the orb start rolling of its own accord.
A vision of trying to pluck it out of the ocean came to Syla’s mind.
“I forgot to ask earlier,” Fel said, glancing at Syla and scanning the area around the cove, “what happened to the enforcers? Are they still out here? Do we have to worry about them jumping out at us?”
“Oh. Yes.” Tibby blinked and looked at Syla. “How did you get away from them?”
The urgency of their mission must have made them forget the circumstances under which they’d parted ways. Neither had asked how she’d come to be with Vorik.
“I’ll explain later.” Syla grimaced, spotting another dragon on the horizon. “But they’re not a threat, no. Not that particular group anyway.”
Grim, she remembered the ambitious sergeant and all the other men that Captain Lesva had slain. It worried her that Vorik had implied his colleague had survived that fall and that she might return to be a problem for Syla. She had enough problems to worry about.
“All right.” Fel pointed. “That’s where I lit the flare.”
“I’ll check.” Tibby ran ahead, reaching the cove first.
As Syla and Fel pushed, sweat dribbling down her spine, she kept an eye on the new dragon.
It was green, but she didn’t think it was Agrevlari.
Still, Vorik’s dragon had to be around somewhere.
And once Vorik woke up and communicated with him, they would reunite and come after the shielder. It was his mission. He had to.
“They’re here!” Tibby blurted with relief, waving at someone in the cove below.
Thanks to gravity, the orb rolled more easily the last hundred yards. Fel ran around it, shoving his back against it to stop it a few feet from the edge of a cliff. It was, as he’d said, not as high as the others they’d encountered on the island, but Syla still wouldn’t want to fall off it.
She dragged her sleeve over her sweaty forehead and joined her aunt on a precipice overlooking the cove. Tibby gripped her shoulder and pointed downward.
There were not one but five ships down there.
The largest wasn’t the cargo vessel that Syla had imagined, with a hold that might have contained the shielder and hidden it from view, but a whaling ship with harpoon launchers on each end.
The four smaller craft accompanying it were armored guard ships, their rails lined with cannons.
Such vessels usually accompanied cargo ships on journeys between the islands.
They would have holds, but they would be filled with ammunition.
“A whaling ship isn’t what I imagined,” Tibby said, “but that we got anything at all is a wonder. I’m going to give Sherrik a kiss when I see him next.”
“Will you be able to keep from looking at your scroll long enough to manage that?” Fel asked.
“By employing suitable self-restraint, yes.” Tibby gestured to a gray-haired man who came out of the wheelhouse of the whaling ship and waved to her.
“Is that your engineering friend?” Syla asked.
“No. I doubt Sherrik came along. I presume that’s the captain of the whaling ship, the one we’ll have to pay for transporting us.
” Tibby pointed for the man to bring the vessel closer to the cliff.
“I don’t see anything like a crane for lifting.
We may have to push the orb over the edge and into the water.
It should be sturdy enough to survive that, though the thought of treating it so makes me ill.
I fear we don’t have time for a more elaborate solution. ”
“I agree.” Syla spotted a gray dragon joining the green one flying over the sea. And did they have riders? Her vision was too blurry at that distance to be certain, but she feared so. “But it can’t go on the big ship.”
“What?” Tibby looked at her.
Syla pointed at the whaling vessel. “That’s going to have to be the decoy ship.” She shifted her finger to one of the guard vessels. “That’s going to take the shielder home in its hold.”
“The hold will be full of cannonballs and powder,” Fel said.
“They can move the ammunition out or over to make room. The shielder can’t sit out on the deck where every dragon and rider in the sky can see it.”
“I don’t think—”
“This is our only chance,” Syla said firmly.
“You and I will go on the decoy ship and try to lure all the stormer dragons after us while Aunt Tibby and the shielder go the long way around Castle Island and slip into the harbor, hopefully unnoticed by our enemies. She’ll get it installed and restore protection to our homeland.
And we… We’ll keep the dragons busy so they don’t think to check out that ship. ”
Fel looked at her. “That’s a suicide mission.”
“I know. I’m sure you’re again regretting that you feel urges to obey my wishes.
” Syla thought about telling Fel to go with her aunt again, but Vorik would be suspicious if her bodyguard wasn’t by her side.
Besides, they would need every fighter who was capable of defending the whaling ship.
They had to survive long enough for the real transport vessel to escape.
Fel waved away the comment with a chopping motion. “I’ll go on that ship if it’s to face off against dragons. You should stick with your aunt. Get yourself and the shielder back home.”
“I can’t,” Syla said. “Vorik will be looking for me. If I’m not on the whaling ship, he’ll know it’s a decoy.”
“He’s not out there among those men.” Fel pointed toward the horizon, his less myopic eyes identifying for certain that the dragons carried riders.
“Not yet, but he will be. He’s their commander.”
“Vorik.” Fel spat the name like a curse. “You should have let me cut his throat last night.”
“I know,” Syla said sadly but couldn’t regret the choice.