Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [157]
Skylan recognized the draugr. It was Draya. She had come back to claim her revenge on him.
Skylan had never known such terror. His heart lurched and thudded erratically in his breast. His bowels gripped, and his stomach shriveled. He could not breathe. He could not speak. He had no thought of fighting the draugr. He stood staring at it, paralyzed with fear.
The draugr’s face—Draya’s face—was corpse-white, her eyes fixed and staring. Blood stained her gown and dripped from her hands. Her hair was unbound and fell about her shoulders. She walked toward him, her hand outstretched.
Skylan fell to his knees, babbling incoherently, begging for mercy. The cold fingers touched him on the shoulder. Skylan shuddered and closed his eyes, waiting to die.
The hand patted him timidly.
“You’re safe,” said Wulfe. “The draugr’s gone.”
Skylan opened his eyes and looked wildly about. The deck was empty except for the boy. Skylan seized hold of him, and was thankful to feel warm flesh.
“You saw her? The draugr?” Skylan gasped, and he shuddered again at the thought.
Wulfe nodded. “She is the woman I saw steering the ship. I didn’t know then she was a draugr. Who is she? Do you know her?”
Skylan sank back onto the deck with a groan. “She is . . . or was . . . my wife.”
CHAPTER
14
Skylan sat hunched miserably on a sea chest, his head in his hands. He had no idea what was happening to him. He could not see the sun for the thick wall of fog. He could not see the land, though he knew it must be near, for he would sometimes sight a broken branch or leaves floating on the water. The sea was flat, sullen, an oily gray. Fog shrouded the ship, hanging from the mast like a tattered sail, and it dripped like saliva from the dragon’s fangs. The fog transformed the Venjekar into a thing he did not know.
Skylan, who had crawled the decks of this ship before he could walk, could not distinguish starboard from port, aft from stern. He stared into the mists, trying to pierce them, but the fog made his eyes swim, and he grew dizzy. The air was smothering, clogging his lungs. And out of the fog had come the apparition of his dead wife. Skylan wondered, with a feeling of dread, if he was trapped in the Nethervold.
The boy was no comfort, for though he was made of flesh and bone and warm to the touch, there was something strange about Wulfe, something not of this world. He could see the dragon in his spirit form, and that was not possible.
“Did you murder your wife?”
The boy had been quiet such a long time that Skylan was startled by the question. “Is that why the draugr came for you?”
“I did not!” Skylan cried, and he grasped hold of the amulet and raised his face to the sky he could not see. “I swear by Torval, I meant no harm to come to Draya!”
“Then why does she haunt you?” Wulfe asked.
Skylan could think of many reasons, but he chose not to. “You are awfully calm about it,” he said, somewhat resentfully. His heartbeat was just starting to return to normal.
“The draugr didn’t come for me,” Wulfe pointed out. “She came for you.”
“Do you . . .” Skylan licked dry lips. “Do you know why?”
“Sometimes draugrs come only to kill, because they hate the living. Sometimes they come back for a reason. There was a draugr in our village who came back to be with his wife. The draugr was a real nuisance, scaring away all the men who wanted to marry her. The elder tried to talk to the draugr, but he wouldn’t listen, and finally his family had to dig up the corpse and burn it. Since the draugr didn’t kill you,” Wulfe concluded, “she must want something from you.”
“You mean she’ll come back?” Skylan asked, horrified.
“Oh yes. They always do.”
Skylan groaned. “I can’t bear this!”
Groping his way through the thick fog, he crossed the deck to the rudder. He had decided to remove the lashing and steer the ship toward where he thought he would find land. He could feel the dragon’s baleful gaze on him, but Skylan didn’t care. If he didn’t escape this ship, he would go mad. Skylan tugged desperately at the knots of the rope that held the rudder in place.