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  Rage of the Dragon

  ( Dragonships of Vindras - 3 )

  Margaret Weis

  Tracy Hickman

  Margaret Weis,Tracy Hickman

  Rage of the Dragon

  PROLOGUE

  “I am Farinn the Talgogroth, the Voice of Gogroth, God of the World Tree. Attend me! For now I will tell the tale of Skylan Ivorson, Chief of Chiefs of the Vindrasi, the greatest of the Chiefs of the mighty Dragonships.” The old man paused and then said, with a sigh, “The greatest and the last.”

  He paused, both for dramatic effect and to soothe his throat with a honey posset.

  The time was winter, the time for the telling of tales. Outside the great hall made of stout beams and hewn logs, the land was white with snow. The night was still and bitter cold. Inside the hall an enormous fire burned. Men and women sat at their ease on benches at long tables, holding small, sleepy children in their laps. The young woman and her friends sat on the floor in front of the old man, as close as she could manage, for his voice, like him, was frail and liable to break. The young woman did not want to miss a word of this part of the tale, for it was her favorite part.

  Sitting between two young warriors of the Torgun, she surreptitiously glanced over her shoulder to see if her mother was watching, for fear her mother would find her and seize her and drag her away. Her mother was always scolding her for acting in an unmaidenly manner, running off to play at war with the young men instead of tending to her household chores.

  The young woman was sixteen and her mother was talking of finding a husband for her wayward daughter, of grandbabies. The young woman wanted none of that. Not yet. Maybe not ever. She thirsted for adventure, like the heroes of the Voyage of the Venjekar. She hungered to visit those wondrous far-off lands, see them with her eyes, not just in her mind. She longed to do battle with ogres and fight a fury in the Para Dix and dance with the fae in their faerie kingdom. Her dream was an impossible dream, perhaps, but only the gods knew where her wyrd led. The gods, and this young woman, for she had made plans, secret plans.

  Her mother was, thankfully, gossiping with a friend and paying no heed to her daughter. Her father had his eyes on her. She smiled at him and he smiled back. She was her father’s favorite. Many (her mother among them) said he spoiled her. He indulged her odd whims to learn to use a sword and shield. He lied for her when she was practicing wielding her sword; he’d tell her mother she was in the fields tending the sheep. Her mother claimed he treated her like a boy because he had no sons.

  The young woman knew better and so did her father. Both of them rarely listened to her mother. Her father, at least, was not in a hurry for her to marry. When he had refused an offer of marriage (to an old man of thirty!), it had sent her mother into a rage that lasted for weeks.

  The young woman glanced at each of the young men seated on either side of her. They exchanged conspiratorial grins. They often called themselves “Skylan” and “Garn,” and she was “Aylaen” after the three heroes of the epic tale. Like the heroes in the story, the three had been friends from childhood. And because they were young and filled with hope, they had resolved that unlike Skylan Ivorson and his friends no tragedies would befall them on their grand adventure. They would never quarrel. There would be no misunderstandings or heartbreak. Nothing would ever come between them. No one would ever die.

  The three had made plans to travel to those far distant lands. There they would fight rousing battles and maybe suffer a bloody wound or two, nothing fatal, of course, just severe enough to leave an interesting scar. And most important of all, the three would remain true to each other. In the ruins of the Hall of the Old Gods, the three swore a solemn oath of friendship, making their vows to Torval and to Vindrash. The three swore this oath in the dead of night, for if the Torgun priestess of the new gods found out, they would be in no end of trouble.

  Her two friends were both chuckling over some jest and started to whisper it to her, but she hushed them. The old man, Farinn, was starting to speak.

  “When I left the telling of the tale of our heroes last night, Skylan Ivorson had built the funeral pyre and mourned the death of his dearest friend, Garn. Aylaen, the woman Skylan loved, had denounced him, blaming him for Garn’s death. Skylan was alone and desolate, and he thought he could sink no lower. But the gods were angry at Skylan, angry at his lies that shielded a murderer, angry at his lies regarding the cruel fate of his warriors at the hands of the Druids. The gods were themselves dishonored by the dishonor Skylan had brought upon the Vindrasi and the gods were determined to continue their punishment of him. Skylan and his people were ambushed and taken into slavery by Raegar Gustafson, Skylan’s cousin, who had betrayed his people and his gods.”

  The Torgun hissed, the young woman loudest among them. Raegar was the villain of the tale.

  Farinn was accustomed to the interruption and allowed time for them to settle down again before he resumed.

  “Raegar was now a priest of the new god, Aelon, and served on board the ship of Legate Acronis, who was pleased with his new slaves. He planned to train them to fight in the game known as the Para Dix.

  “Skylan and his men were shackled and made prisoners aboard their own ship, the Venjekar, which Legate Acronis was towing back to the city of Sinaria, to put it on display. The Venjekar’s dragon, Kahg, had not been there to save them, for he had been wounded in battle and fled back to his own realm to heal. His spiritbone, which the priestess used to summon him, had vanished.

  “Skylan and Aylaen and the other Vindrasi warriors, of which I myself was one,” the old man added with pardonable pride, “entered the once great city of Sinaria as slaves of the Legate Acronis. Skylan believed that he had been enslaved as punishment for his sins, but he soon came to think that Vindrash, the dragon goddess, had brought the Torgun here for a purpose-to recover one of the sacred Five Vektia spiritbones.”

  The old man went on to relate the various adventures and mishaps that had befallen Skylan and Aylaen and their comrades. The young woman knew them by heart, could repeat them word for word and fill in the gaps of the story the old man inadvertently left out. He had seen eighty-five summers; his memory was not what it had been.

  When the story reached its dreadful climax, the three friends drew nearer to one another, listening with grim disapproval to hear how Aylaen’s treacherous sister, Treia, using the Vektia spiritbone, disobeyed the command of Vindrash, the dragon goddess, and summoned one of the Five dragons in order to defend Sinaria against the invading ogres.

  In a fatal paradox, the misuse of the power that was meant to create brought about death and destruction.

  “Skylan and his comrades escaped the terror of the Vektia dragon and the ogres, only to find themselves and their ship, the Venjekar, alone in the sea, surrounded by their enemies with no hope or chance of escape.”

  The old man paused. His dimming eyes looked back in time and they brightened. These days, he could see the past far more clearly than the present. The three friends hardly dared to breathe. They knew what was coming and the three clasped hands, held fast to one another.

  “I remember well that moment of despair,” said the old man softly. “We all of us looked to Skylan and we asked him what we were going to do. And he said…”

  “We stand together,” said the young woman.

  The old man paused to look at her fondly. The young woman had not meant to speak and she felt her cheeks burn. Her mother, clucking in dismay over her hoyden of a daughter, shook herself loose from her husband’s attempts to restrain her and began to make her way through the tables and people to scold her daughter and send her to bed.

  The young woman and the two young men scra
mbled to their feet and dashed outside into the biting cold of the winter night.

  The young woman heard her mother’s voice rising in shrill anger, calling her name and ordering her to come back. Shaking her head, the young woman gathered up her skirts and continued to run over the hard, frost-rimed ground. Her two friends laughed and called out for her to slow down. She taunted them as she outpaced them, for though the men were stronger, she was the swiftest of the three and always won their races. She ran until she came to the boundless sea, inky black except for the frothy white waves that broke upon the shore at her feet and the gleaming stars above her head.

  Her two friends soon caught up with her. The three stood on the beach in silence, for the heart needs no voice. The threads of their destinies unrolled before them, leading to distant horizons, star-bright and sparkling with promise.

  For they were young and knew they would live forever.

  As had the tale of Skylan Ivorson …

  BOOK 1

  CHAPTER 1

  “Where’s Keeper?” Sigurd asked, peering down into the hold.

  “Dead,” said Skylan.

  His comrades stared at him in shocked silence. Then some of the men glanced grimly at the ogre ships with their triangular sails that were approaching them cautiously, wary, no doubt, of the reputation of the Vindrasi dragonships.

  Other men watched Raegar sailing after them in his new dragonship, Aelon’s Triumph, that he had ordered built along the same lines as the fabled dragonships of his cousins. Raegar’s ship was dedicated to the God of the New Dawn, Aelon. His dragon, Fala, was dedicated to the new god, as well. Both of them were traitors to the Vindrasi and the Old Gods, the true gods.

  “So what do we do now?” Sigurd demanded, breaking the silence.

  “We stand together,” said Skylan.

  Sigurd snorted. “You mean we die together.”

  “Better than dying alone,” said Skylan. “Like Keeper.”

  “How did our Keeper die?” asked Legate Acronis, frowning. He had known the ogre godlord a long time and although they were nominally slave and master, the two had long been friends. “He had a cracked head, nothing for an ogre with their thick skulls.”

  Skylan’s gaze flicked to Aylaen. Worn out after her battle with the Vektia dragon, she was sitting on the deck, slumped back against the bulkhead. He and Aylaen had fled Sinaria disguised as the military escort for Legate Acronis and they were both wearing the segmented armor worn by the Sinarian soldiers, as well as the breastplate and the leather skirt that was too big for her slender waist. Aylaen had removed the helm, claiming that she couldn’t see properly. Her legs were bare from her thighs to her tightly laced boots. Skylan was surprised her stepfather, Sigurd, hadn’t berated her for exposing her body in such an unseemly manner. Perhaps Sigurd had given up the fight to salvage his wayward daughter’s honor. She had, after all, just saved his life. Skylan hoped Aylaen was asleep.

  She wasn’t. Hearing the news of Keeper’s death, she opened her eyes wide and pushed herself to her feet.

  “Keeper’s dead?” she said in dismay. “How did he die? What happened?”

  “How he died doesn’t matter,” Skylan said in flat, dry tones. “What matters is how we die. If Raegar captures us, he will take us back to Sinaria and slavery.”

  Skylan held out his arm, still bloody from where the blessed sword of Vindrash had slashed through the tattoo that had branded him a slave. “For myself, I choose the ogres.”

  “The brutes will board our ship to find one of their godlords dead,” Erdmun pointed out. “They’ll think we killed him. They’ll butcher us.”

  Skylan sighed. Erdmun could always be counted on to take a negative view of the situation. Though Skylan had to admit, in this instance there wasn’t much positive.

  “So we’re going to just sit here and wait for death,” Sigurd said, scowling.

  “We will not sit here. We will pray,” Aylaen said. “We will turn to our gods.”

  “Our gods have been such a big help to us up to now,” Erdmun sneered.

  Aylaen angrily rounded on Erdmun.

  “We’re still alive,” she said, her green eyes flashing. She pointed back to the city, to the smoke that blacked the sky and the orange flames that burned so fiercely not even the torrential rains could douse them. “The people in that city cannot say as much. We are alive and we are free. We have our ship and we have our dragon and we have each other.”

  The men were listening to her. She was wet and bedraggled, her face smeared with grime and soot, her red curls plastered to her head. She was a mess, but to Skylan she was beautiful. He had never loved her more than he loved her now, and he had loved Aylaen all his life.

  “Our gods fight for their survival even as we fight for ours,” Aylaen continued. “They have given us what help they can. The rest we must do for ourselves.”

  The men were impressed. Aylaen turned to face the carved figurehead of the dragon that proudly graced the prow of the Venjekar. Kahg’s eyes glittered red. The dragon had refused to fight Raegar’s dragon, Fala, saying he would not fight one of his own kind, no matter that she served a treacherous god. Kahg had not abandoned them, however. The dragon was with them, sailing the dragonship, imbuing the ship with his spirit.

  Aylaen began praying to Vindrash, the dragon goddess, thanking her for her blessings, for her help in saving them from a Vektia dragon. Skylan was proud of her, proud of her courage, her strength. She had become a Bone Priestess reluctantly, led to the decision by a lie that held more truth for her than she wanted to admit.

  “Vindrash,” Aylaen said in conclusion, gazing up at the heavens tinged with smoke. “We need a miracle.”

  Skylan said his own prayer. He did not pray to Vindrash. Now that the Dragon Goddess had given him the secret to the Five Vektia dragons, Skylan hoped she was done with him, that she had punished him enough and there would be no more horror-ridden dragonbone games played night after dreadful night with the draugr of his dead wife, Draya. Skylan had worked hard to make amends for his past misdeeds. Aylaen was a Bone Priestess now. She and Vindrash could commune and leave Skylan out of it. He clasped his hand over his amulet, the silver hammer he wore around his neck.

  “I don’t need a miracle, Torval. I need a favor. I need time,” Skylan said beneath his breath. “Anything that will gain me more time. Do that, and we can handle the rest.”

  His prayer dispatched, Skylan looked with concern at his warriors. They had escaped Sinaria aboard the Venjekar, hauling the ship overland until they reached the river and then launching it. They were wearing the traditional armor of the Torgun, “barbaric armor,” the Sinarians termed it-leather tunics, padded leather vests, and chain mail, newly made for the Para Dix games. Some wore swords, others carried axes, depending on their preference. Skylan, as a Sinarian soldier, carried a standard-issue sword; a weapon neither good nor bad.

  Sigurd’s head was bowed in prayer, but Skylan thought he was only pretending. Sigurd cast darting glances at the ogre ship from out of the corner of his eye. Grimuir, his friend and ally (allied in their dislike of Skylan), was watching Raegar’s ship. Acronis, former Legate of the doomed city of Sinaria, did not bow his head. Skylan knew he did not believe in gods, in any gods. His only beloved daughter had died yesterday. His beautiful home had been burned to the ground. His city was still in flames; the smoke from the burning buildings crept over the water, stinging the throat and eyes. He had lost everything except his life and he must hold that life very cheap right now, for he had tried to kill himself. Small wonder he turned his back on the gods, who had turned their backs on him. He was dressed in his ceremonial Sinarian armor, his finely made sword at his side. He gazed out across the restless sea and scratched his grizzled chin.

  Bjorn seemed to pray in earnest; Erdmun prayed, Skylan was sure, because he was hedging his bets. Farinn, the youngest of them all, looked as if he prayed fervently through lips that trembled.

  Farinn is afraid of death, Skylan reali
zed. And he imagines he is alone in his fear. I must remember to give him some task to keep him occupied.

  The ship was quiet, the only sounds the waves slapping against the hull and the murmurs of men praying. Wulfe, the fae child, son (so he claimed) of the daughter of the Faerie Queen, sidled up to Skylan and announced in a loud voice, “Treia murdered Keeper.”

  “Shut up!” Skylan clapped his hand over Wulfe’s mouth, but he was too late. Aylaen turned to stare at the boy in shock.

  “What do you mean?” She looked at Skylan. “What does he mean?”

  “He’s just talking. He doesn’t know anything,” Skylan said, gripping Wulfe by the arm.

  “I do, too,” said Wulfe defiantly. “Treia poisoned him. I’ll tell you how. She gave him a potion and told him it would help-Ouch!”

  Wulfe glared at Skylan indignantly and rubbed his head. “You hit me.”

  “Because you tell tales,” Skylan said. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Aylaen. He’s crazy. He thinks he talks to dryads-”

  “Does he also think he can turn himself into a man-beast?” Aylaen retorted. “Because he can.”

  Skylan opened his mouth and closed it. There was no denying that. They had both been witness to the startling transformation. One moment a scrawny boy of about eleven years had been standing before them and the next moment he was a yellow-eyed, sharp-fanged wolf.

  “Tell me the truth about Keeper, Skylan,” said Aylaen.

  “He died,” said Skylan. “He just died.”

  Aylaen shook her head and then she vanished. Wulfe vanished. The mast behind Skylan vanished. The dragonhead prow above him vanished. Fog, thick, gray, greasy smoke-tinged fog rolled down from the heavens and engulfed them in a blinding cloud.

  Skylan could see nothing for the thick mist that floated before his eyes. He knew he was standing on the deck of his ship only because he could feel it solid beneath his feet. He couldn’t see the deck, he couldn’t see his feet. He had to hold his hand close to his face to see it. He was reminded of the terrifying journey he had made on the ghost ship, haunted by the draugr of his dead wife, Draya. He wondered if he was the only person on board the Venjekar; he had to swallow twice before he could force his voice to work.