Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [143]
Skylan had brought them to this. He was their commander.
“Forgive me, Father of Trees,” Skylan said humbly to the druid as the vines tightened around him. “I should not have come to Apensia, and if you will free my men from whatever dread enchantment you have cast upon them, we will leave and never return! I swear by Torval!”
“We offered to share all we have with you, Skylan Ivorson. You spurned our offer and returned it with violence.” The druid sighed deeply. “Steel and blood rule the world. We cannot change that. But we can make certain war does not come to Apensia.”
“You pagans will regret your defiance,” Raegar snarled, clenching his fists, a gesture that lost much of its effect due to the fact that his hands were bound to his thighs by vines. “I will see to that!”
“We would regret far more losing our way of life,” the druid replied.
Folding his hands in the capacious sleeves of his gray robes, he walked away.
“What do you mean to do to us?” Skylan shouted after him.
The druid did not respond. He kept walking and was soon lost among the trunks of the tree known as the strangler fig.
Skylan understood how it came by its name. He strained against his bonds, bunching his arm and shoulder muscles in an effort to break the vines. Tough and sinewy, the vines grew tighter the more he struggled. When they drove the links of his chain mail shirt painfully into his flesh and started to constrict his breathing, Skylan sagged in defeat. He could only watch in heart-wrenching agony as one by one, the rabbits took fright and scampered off into the shelter of the woods.
“Where are your men?” he asked. “Are they close by?”
Raegar glowered and shook his head. “Do you have any more men?”
“Only the two I left to guard Draya—Draya!” Skylan gasped in excitement. He wriggled as close to his cousin as possible and said in a loud whisper, “What about Draya? Did you—?”
“No,” returned Raegar. “I never had the chance.”
“But that is good! When I do not return, she will come looking for me,” said Skylan. “She will find that we have been taken prisoner, and she will summon the dragon and he will lay waste to this—Why do you shake your head?”
“Because I have no doubt that Draya is a prisoner, just as we are,” Raegar remarked gloomily.
“How do you know?” Skylan demanded.
“I will tell you. We arrived three days ago, presenting ourselves as peaceful traders. We entered the settlement to offer our wares in trade. The pagans would not let us. They stated that they did not approve of slavery and they would trade with us only after we had freed our slaves. That was nonsense, of course, and we said so, and returned to our camp. The next morning we woke to find our slaves gone. They had been set free during the night.”
“You saw nothing, heard nothing?” Skylan asked, amazed.
“Not a sound,” Raegar growled. “My slave woman, who was sleeping right next to me, vanished from my bed! As for the men, we found their shackles and leg irons locked to the post, but they were gone. I assumed the pagans had helped the slaves escape. I demanded that they either return my slaves or give me what they were worth. The pagans said neither yea nor nay. I made myself clear about what would happen to them if they defied me.
“That was yesterday afternoon. This morning,” Raegar continued, his face darkening, “I woke to find myself alone. My partners had vanished in the night, just like the slaves. Again, I heard nothing.”
Skylan caught sight of a rabbit hopping about among the trees, and he shuddered.
“When I saw your dragonship sailing toward the island, I was going to warn you to sail away from this accursed place as fast as possible. I was starting to shout when the next thing I knew, I woke with a pounding head and blood on my face, tied to this tree. So, you see, you can’t count on Draya saving us.”
Skylan mulled this over. “What do you think the druids mean to do to us? They left us alive, after all.”
“Nothing good,” Raegar muttered.
“Perhaps they’re going to hold us for ransom.”
“The pagans don’t hold people for ransom. They put no store in gold or