Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [149]
The boy was always striving to please the elder, to do things that brought a look of pride and pleasure to the aged face instead of the look of sorrow. Wulfe tried to learn to read, though that was proving impossible. The words seemed to crawl around like bugs and made no sense. He tried to sit still with the other ovates in their classroom among the trees, but unlike the other ovates, who could hear only the voice of the teacher, the boy could hear nymphs dancing in the woods, calling to him to come join them, or the giggling gossip of the dryads, or the lewd jokes of a satyr. Small wonder he couldn’t pay attention.
The worst were the nights, when the daemons sometimes made the boy do terrible things. Horrible things. Things he didn’t like to think about, and so he didn’t. Ever.
The druids thought they understood the boy’s struggles. They had once been confident they could teach him to find the strength to turn a deaf ear to the songs of the nymphs and the whispers of the daemons. The druids still hoped he would outgrow it, for they took an optimistic view of life. But Wulfe was eleven now, and their hopes were growing a little ragged.
In the end, the daemons won as they almost always did. Wulfe bolted out of the woods. Running across the narrow strip of sand, he came to a halt before the dragonship. He gazed up in awe at the carved figurehead, which was not, in his eyes, a thing made of wood. He saw scales glittering in the moonlight and a gilded mane and fiery red eyes.
“Please, Mighty Dragon, may I come aboard your ship?” Wulfe asked politely.
He had been taught that when speaking to great personages, such as dragons, it was important to be polite.
The Dragon Kahg stared down at the boy in astonishment. The dragon didn’t know how to respond, for such a thing had never happened in all the years of his existence. The boy had done what no mortal could do. He could apparently see the dragon’s spirit. That was impossible, and therefore the Dragon Kahg decided it wasn’t happening. The child must be playing a game of make-believe.
The Dragon Kahg chose to ignore the boy.
The boy chose to take the dragon’s silence for approval.
Wulfe happily splashed out into the moonlit water and ran up the gangplank and boarded the dragonship. He wandered around the deck, standing on the chests and investigating the single large rudder that steered the ship. He climbed down the ladder to discover that someone had built a house inside the ship, or so it seemed to the delighted boy.
The hold was dark, but he could see well in darkness, and he gazed around at the furs that made a bed, plates and bowls for eating, and a lovely carved wooden chest. He would have opened the chest to see what was inside, but it was locked with an iron lock, and the boy hated iron. He hated the feel of it. He couldn’t even stand the smell.
Wulfe wandered back up on deck and walked over to the prow with the dragon’s curved neck and fierce head and the spiritbone, hanging from the nail. Wulfe could sense the spiritbone’s powerful magic, and though his inner daemons urged him to touch it, he was daunted by the majesty of the dragon, and for once he was able to ignore the daemons. He gazed at the spiritbone from a respectful distance and left it alone.
Wulfe climbed up the dragon’s neck, his bare, nimble feet finding easy purchase, and, clinging to the head, he stared out at the beauty of the vast moonlit sea, marveling that it looked so different from this vantage point than it did from the shore.
He wondered what it would be like to sail over the shining waves, and when he returned to the deck again, he sat on one of the chests, enjoying the feel of the ship sliding up and down gently with the waves. He was afraid the druids would be coming any moment, and he told himself he should leave. But the sight of the moon forming a silver path over the dark waves was so entrancing, the boy could only