Treasures of Fantasy - Margaret Weis [31]
“They seek to harm you, to get you into trouble,” Owl Mother had told him. “That is because they are miserable and they want you to be miserable, too.”
Wulfe was miserable now and he hadn’t even given in to the daemons. He was miserable because Skylan and his friends were miserable. Wulfe tried to be hopeful. He had his magic. If only he could figure out a way to use it to help.
Wulfe pattered down the gangplank, grateful for the rain that blotted out the light of moon and stars and hid him from the sentries. He waited until no one was looking, then he scampered onto the beach, ran across the sand until he reached the treeline, and vanished into the shadows.
He tried to strike up a conversation with the dryads, who lived in the trees, but they were sleepy and told him to go away. The animals that prowled by night were intent upon their own business and wished him well and scurried past. Wulfe walked in the woods.
He always hoped, on these walks, that some night he would venture into a coppice and there he would find his mother, beautiful as a moon glade, her hair bound with stars, dancing with the other faeries. He imagined her catching sight of him, laughing with joy and holding out her hands to him, calling him to come join her. He would dance with her and she would take him back to the faery kingdom and they would be happy together always.
“Still, then I would have to leave Skylan,” Wulfe said to himself. A hard choice. He could never decide, from one night to the next, which he would choose.
Fortunately, this night, Wulfe was not called upon to make the choice. He saw no faeries. On a drizzly, dark night like this, they were probably snug and cozy in their underground dwellings, sipping honey wine from clover cups and listening to beautiful songs about how wonderful their world had been before the gods of the Uglies had come and ruined it.
Leaving the woods, Wulfe returned to the beach. He had traveled a good distance away from the ships and the soldiers with their horrible smell of iron. He took off his clothes and left them on the beach and ran into the water. The oceanaids—beautiful denizens of the sea, guardians of the sea and all who lived within it—were awake and they came to play with him.
The Uglies could not see the oceanaids, for their skin was translucent, taking on the color of the water in which they lived. The oceanaids brought dolphins for Wulfe to ride and kept him company until the sky began to grow light. He bid them goodbye. He had to sneak back on board ship before anyone saw him.
He shook off the water like a dog and, shivering a little in the cool air, he put on his clothes—a pair of wool trousers and a wool tunic. He had been given stockings and boots, but he never wore them and had no idea where they had got to.
He ran down the beach, keeping watch on the sentries, planning to time his dash up the gangplank the moment no one was looking. Wulfe was drawing near the Venjekar. So were the sentries, but, fortunately, they stopped to talk. Wulfe started heading for the ship, then something white, sloshing about in the waves, caught his eye.
He thought it was a fish, caught in a tide pool, and he went to free it. Drawing nearer, he saw that it wasn’t a fish. He wasn’t certain what it was—a large shell, maybe. He was curious now and he squatted down to pick it up. When he knew what it was, his hand froze in midair.
It was a spiritbone. The spiritbone of the Dragon Kahg.
Wulfe felt eyes staring at him, the dragon’s eyes. He trembled, afraid to look up at the dragonhead prow, knowing he would see the dragon’s eyes, red and baleful. The Dragon Kahg did not approve of him, or so Wulfe believed, for the dragon always seemed to be glaring at him.
“Don’t worry!” Wulfe said to the dragon,