Bones of the Dragon - Margaret Weis [47]
In return for the dragons’ guidance and protection, the Vindrasi people pledged to give all the jewels they captured to the dragons. The dragons sorted through them, kept the gems they wanted, and returned the rest as a reward to the warriors.
The Vindrasi had no idea why the dragons wanted the jewels. It might be supposed that the gems the dragons kept would be the most valuable, but that was not case. Skylan himself had seen Kahg select a small emerald, badly set and crudely cut, and hand back a large ruby with a heart of fire.
The Vindrasi did not know what happened to the jewels the dragons took with them. Legend spoke of vast hoards stashed away in secret caves on the Dragon Isles, kept safe by a curse placed on them by the Goddess Vindrash. There were always, in every generation, a few greedy and irreverent men who would defy the goddess and set out in search of the dragon hoards. Such warriors always came to a bad end. Their stories and their gruesome deaths made for cautionary tales told during the long winter nights.
The Vindrasi imagined that dragons were like crows—fascinated by anything bright and shiny. None ever came close to understanding the truth, for that was a secret the dragons had kept for centuries and intended to keep for centuries more.
Skylan thought of all this as he swam through the water, his gaze fixed on the dragon’s fierce head. Treia had said the Dragon Kahg had not answered her summons because he was angry with the Torgun for not keeping their end of the bargain. Last year’s raiding season had brought only a handful of jewels, all of which the dragon had tossed aside in disdain. This year’s raid had brought no jewels at all, only ogres, and now the loss of the Vektan Torque, which contained a sapphire said to be of immense value. The Dragon Kahg might well be so furious that even if Skylan succeeded in bringing back the spiritbone, the dragon might refuse to fight for them.
“Perhaps you would like to see us impaled on ogre spears,” Skylan remarked, speaking to the dragon’s head, whose red eyes seemed to glare down on him with a baleful expression. “I am not saying that we have not deserved your wrath. But keep this in mind—if the ogres defeat us, there will be no more jewels for you, ever.”
Trusting that the dragon would take this reasonable view of the matter, Skylan treaded water near the prow of the dragonship and concentrated on listening, hoping to be able to judge how many ogres guarded the ship and where they were located. He heard the tread of heavy footfalls. One ogre at least walked the deck. Skylan, staring upward, was startled to see a bald head outlined against the stars, leaning over the side, gazing down.
Skylan ducked beneath the waves and remained there, holding his breath as long as he could. He surfaced some distance away, snatched a gulp of air, and looked. The ogre’s head was gone. The heavy tread of boots was moving on. Skylan did not hear any voices, and he hoped the ogres had posted only one guard on board. Skylan himself would have posted three, but then, these were ogres.
He didn’t dare take any more time to investigate. The chill of the water was starting to sink into his bones. He heard the ogre walking away from him. He swam silently to the prow, where the dragon’s long, gracefully curving neck formed the ship’s stem. The wooden carving that represented the Dragon Kahg was beautifully rendered. Each scale—and there were hundreds, each about as large as a man’s hand—had been carefully delineated. The grooves in the wood outlining the scales had been carved deep enough so that Skylan could dig his fingers into them and use them to assist him in climbing up the neck. One of his jobs when he was nine years old had been to “scale the dragon.” He had climbed the long neck, then clung