Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [172]
“Yes, I do. If my people found out that the druids killed my wife—”
Wulfe interrupted. “The druids didn’t kill her. The druids don’t kill people.”
“I saw them drive a stake through her belly,” Skylan said harshly. “Don’t argue. Just listen! If my people ever find out what happened, they will sail to Apensia and use their swords to kill the elder and the others.”
Wulfe smiled at his friend in reassurance. “They can’t. The faeries won’t let them. Your people would be the ones to die.”
Skylan gazed out across the sea, dark in this dark night.
“Wulfe,” said Skylan, “if my people hear the truth, I will die. They will kill me.”
“I’ll say you found me in the sea,” said Wulfe.
BOOK
4
THE DRAGON ISLES
CHAPTER
1
The Vindrasi were going to war.
A month had passed since Skylan’s return from his ill-fated voyage. The Vindrasi celebrated the summer solstice that launched the time of Skoval, the raiding season. The weather was hot and continued dry. Rain came in sporadic bursts, pelting the hard ground with huge drops that were of small benefit to languishing crops. The Vindrasi needed a week of gentle soaking rains. The Bone Priestesses offered prayers to Akaria, but the temperamental goddess did not see fit to respond.
Despite these ongoing concerns, Skylan was in good spirits. The time of his return had been dark and unhappy, but now that was over. His sun had risen once more, and hope for the future shone brightly. He moved from Luda to Vindraholm, took up residence in the house of the Chief of Chiefs, empty now that his wife was dead.
The funerals for the Heudjun dead had been hard, but he’d managed to get through them. If he was somber, people put it down to sorrow. Skylan expanded on the heroics of the warriors, describing the make-believe fight with the giants in detail. The Heudjun mourned their dead and honored them for their heroism and then made ready to go to war.
Draya’s funeral was the most difficult. Skylan grieved for Draya with a grief compounded of guilt and remorse and self-recrimination. He tried to assuage her restless spirit and his conscience by giving the statue of Vindrash the lavish gift of a valuable turquoise necklace. The offering did not work. The draugr continued to plague him. Night after weary night, she came to Skylan before he slept and forced him to play dragonbones with her. He could not understand why she did this. It seemed her only purpose in walking this earth as a corpse was to play this game—a game he never won.
He had to admit the draugr had made him a better player. He kept hoping that if he finally beat the draugr, she would leave him alone, and thus he concentrated more on the game than on anything he’d ever done in his life. Previously he had always made his moves as the moment took him, rarely thinking more than one or two moves in advance. He had been quick to see his foe’s weakness, but had generally failed to note her strength until it was too late.
The draugr was an excellent dragonbone player. Skylan had never gone up against such a skilled opponent. She was better than Garn, who had beaten everyone among the Torgun so often that now no one would play him. Skylan eventually realized that if he studied the way she played, the tactics she used to defeat him, he might learn something to his advantage. He began to do that, and he began to see that the game was far deeper and more complex than he had realized. He forced himself to be patient, to be observant, to think first before he acted. He still never won. But the matches more frequently ended in draws.
Skylan’s next official duty, after presiding over the funerals, was to rally his people for war. Escorted by a troop of young warriors, he rode Blade or sailed in the Venjekar to meet with the other Clan Chiefs, convince them to give him warriors and what wealth they had to pay for the expedition against the ogres.
The Chiefs needed no convincing. All of them were eager to fight. The Vindrasi had long chafed under Horg’s unwillingness to allow so much as a blood feud among kin.