The Dragon-Child (3 page)

Gruum, his hands bound, kicked to the surface, but the weight of his clothes pulled him down. He was a man of the earth, and not a good swimmer. He began to tire and sink. His head slipped under the waves and he felt himself going deeper. After struggling for perhaps a minute, a moment of peace reached his mind. It was not a bad way to go, he had the time to reflect, for a man who had lived life by his wits and his blade. Most men such as he were destined to die in a cooling puddle of their own blood.

Then a shape loomed near, a shadow he felt as much as saw. His heart grew cold in fear, despite the nearness of death. Was he to be devoured in his final moments, denied a peaceable end after all? A worse thought came to him, as the shape seemed vaguely like that of a man. Was it Karn? Had Karn somehow followed the ship all this way? Surely, not even a deathless shade could have swum so far, so fast. The unnatural winds the spirits had blown upon the sails had driven the
Innsmouth
with great speed. No man could swim so fast. Not even a dead man, Gruum would wager.

The shape grabbed him with an impossible grip. Iron hands encircled his wrists like shackles and ripped loose his bonds, nearly snapping his finger bones with the force of the motion. The shadow left him then and he swam after it with what strength he could muster.

Gruum knew the touch of his master. In possession of a fresh soul, Therian was almost as frightening as Karn had been. Gruum kicked and stroked with numb limbs. He rose quickly toward the distant surface. He gasped desperately for air when he reached the open night again. Waves rolled over his head and choked him. He dared not utter anything other than gasps as he drank in sweet air. He rubbed at his swollen wrists in between a hundred gasps and coughs. Saltwater burned his throat. Soon, his mind and his body were functioning fully and he marveled at his own survival.

Gruum finally noted that Therian floated beside him. Together, they gazed after the retreating stern of the
Innsmouth
. The Hyborean King didn’t breathe harshly or shout with rage after the ship. His master’s rage was there, Gruum could feel it, but it was a cold thing.

“Milord?” Gruum said above the winds and the slapping sounds of the open sea. “You came back for me?”

Therian made no response. He glowered after the escaping ship. The hanging stern lanterns formed gleaming, yellow-orange points wrapped in the hulking shadow of the vessel itself. Distantly, as if in a dream, the sounds of cheering and celebration could be heard floating back to them on the sea breezes.

“They hold festival,” said Therian in a quiet, dangerous voice. Gruum found his master’s mood disturbing. He half-expected Therian to summon a great spell of vengeance. Perhaps the ship would burst into wrathful sorcerous flame and sag down into the depths.

“Could you have taken the ship? Instead of coming after me, I mean?” asked Gruum, curious now as to how valuable he had become to his lord. He found it hard to believe his life had been valued more highly than the ship, and even more incredibly, his master’s dignity. Therian had been tossed overboard by a throng of stinking ship-rats, and that had to wound the King’s pride.

Therian glanced at him in the darkness. “Probably not. I was disarmed.”

Gruum was alarmed. “Seeker and Succor
have been lost? The blades of kings have slipped into the depths?”

“No, I lost my swords on the ship. I saw your saber go down into the sea, however. In fact, when I fell over the rails, I had to choose between climbing back onto the deck, saving you, or saving the saber.”

Gruum made a sputtering sound. “Milord, I thank you—“

“Don’t,” interrupted his master. “You were saved by the fact I was unprepared to face an armed crew without a weapon. That, and the fact that your flesh sank much more slowly than did your steel.”

“Ah, of course,” Gruum said, feeling strangely relieved. His master had made no sudden changes in demeanor. The logic of Therian’s actions was cold and clear, as usual. Gruum understood that saving his life had probably been the third most important item on Therian’s list of possible actions, but it had been the most achievable goal.

Gruum thought to ask what they would do next, but held his tongue. They were lost as sea on the blackest of nights. The moon had set hours earlier and dawn was hours still away. Only the stars hung overhead to light their world. At any moment, a sea creature might well up and devour them for supper. At least the seawater wasn’t deadly cold, but neither was it comfortable. They’d long ago left the numbing cold of the northern seas behind. Soon however, their muscles would tire.

A thousand questions ran through Gruum’s mind, but he sensed his master had a plan. He waited quietly for the moment and worked to tread water as economically as he was able.

Therian let three strange, guttural syllables tumble from his lips. Gruum wanted to clap his hands over his pained ears, but before he could do it, the words had been spoken. The words soon floated off into the night air, but they remained in the mind. They rolled around in Gruum’s head, like a bard’s song that could not be banished from one’s thoughts. Fortunately, they were not followed with more words, Gruum noted with relief. The spell, whatever it was, must have been a simple one.

Gruum waited, tensely, wondering what would happen. After a minute or so, a glimmer of light came to his eyes, from somewhere down within the infinite depths beneath them. Looking down, he thought to see the distant bottom, or perhaps it was only the dark shapes of vast slumbering monsters that existed a league beneath his churning feet.

Fear gripped Gruum’s heart with fresh intensity. Long experience in the presence of sorcery allowed him to keep himself under control, however. He did not whimper or cry out. The light became an unnatural bluish in color and the nimbus of it soon outlined the long features of his master, who he could now see still wore his iron helmet and his shirt of chainmail. Gruum marveled at this, as any normal man would have been sucked down into the depths by the weight of the armor.

The light had formed a blue globe which Therian now cupped in his hands. He handled it as would a man nursing a tiny tongue of flame into a blaze. This flame was unnatural, however, and burned about a foot beneath the surface of the water itself, but without causing bubbles or heat. Without thinking about it, Gruum let himself drift several feet further away from his master and the shimmering blue globe.

Looking down into the sea, Gruum found he could see a great distance by the cold, growing light of the globe. He imagined he could make out a few details of the bottom itself, far below. A dark shape moved here and there. One of the shapes, even as he watched, seemed to take notice of the globe. It swam nearer, rising swiftly as a great bird might soar upward with a gust of wind.

“Master, I—” said Gruum, eyeing the approaching sea creature with alarm.

“Shhh,” said Therian, in a hushed voice. “You make a terrible fisherman. Do you still have your dagger?”

Gruum nodded and pulled his leaf-bladed weapon from his belt, careful to keep a firm grip. It was the only weapon he had left.

Therian gestured impatiently. Gruum handed the dagger to Therian. He already suspected the way of things to come.

The creature paused, circled once, and then dashed in. It had been attracted by the light as a wolf might be drawn to the bleating of a hobbled lamb. Therian played the part of the lamb until the final instant, when his hands drew apart and the will-o-wisp of watery flame vanished. Cast into sudden and total darkness, Gruum could only imagine the splashing struggle that came to his ears and which blasted cold shocks of water into his face. Therian hissed and howled—the sea-creature thrashed and twisted. Soon, it was done and the black waves smoothed out again.

“Milord?”

A deep, self-satisfied sigh rolled out from his master’s lips. Gruum knew relief, but he also had to shudder slightly at the unnatural sounds coming his sated lord. They were not entirely human, those sounds. It was more akin to listening to a great predator while it did its natural work in the pitch-black of night.

“Quiet,” said Therian, his words thick in his mouth. “Don’t speak for now, lest your voice become tiresome to me.”

Gruum blinked his eyes and his heart sped up in his chest at this suggestion. It would have been far easier, he realized quietly, for his master to slaughter the useless servant that floated so near, than to spend the time and effort it required to summon creatures up from the deeps.

After a time, in the darkness, foul words were uttered. They grated on Gruum’s mind so much that he ducked his head beneath the waves, hoping to escape the sound of them. His gambit didn’t work, as he could still hear the Dragon Speech through the seawater as clearly as if Therian had whispered each syllable into his ear. Whatever spell Therian cast, Gruum was sure it was a powerful one.

When the chanting was done, nothing seemed to happen immediately. Gruum paddled at the water, feeling the cold more in the blackness. He felt so cold and alone he considered asking his master to light the blue globe of sorcery again, but he did not quite dare to speak yet.

More long moments passed before a single bubble—a very large bubble the size of a horse head—came up between them from the sea and popped. A noisome gas issued from the bubble, causing Gruum to cough and retch.

It then seemed to Gruum that the very sea beneath his body roiled. The water lurched about as if they swam in a huge goblet while an impossibly huge hand tipped the goblet and set the wine within to sloshing.

“Get ready,” said Therian thickly, speaking for the first time in several minutes.

“For what?” asked Gruum, suspecting an army of new, stinking bubbles. The truth, when it dawned upon him, was so much stranger that his mind could scarcely grasp it.

Suddenly, a great object struck his feet and heaved him upward out of the water. He was dashed onto the surface of it. The only cause he could imagine was that the parent of the sea creature they had lured to the surface had risen up to swallow them in vengeance. So broad was the back of this dark monster which rose up beneath them he was lifted completely up out of the sea and began to slip away over the side. Instinctively he threw himself flat on his stomach on the monster’s back, he clutched at whatever his groping hands could find. His fists closed on something large and round and jagged, perhaps the great horn of the beast.

“Master, we can’t defeat such a monster!” cried Gruum, clinging to the horn and almost reduced to blubbering.

“What are you babbling about, man?” Therian asked. Then his master laughed at him, and Gruum felt hot shame. He was again the ignorant barbarian in the presence of the learned. How he been made the fool this time?

“Stand up, man,” Therian told him with a mixture of annoyance and amusement in his voice. He reached down and jerked Gruum to his feet as a father might lift up a toddler by his nightshirt.

Gruum stood unsteadily on the surface, which he noted was fairly even. “What manner of beast have you summoned, milord? Is this one at your service?”

Therian snorted. With a flourish he produced another blue globe of light, which he hung upon the horn that Gruum had so recently clung to.

Gruum’s jaw sagged down in amazement as he realized the rounded thing he had clung to, assuming it to be the great horn of some fantastic beast, was in truth the broken mast of a ship. Indeed, he gazed around and realized he stood upon the deck of a lost vessel, sunken eons ago to the bottom of the sea and now raised from the depths to do Therian’s bidding.

There were no sails, nor was there a rudder. There were holes in the ships gunwales, but the seawater stayed outside the vessel, as if afraid to enter. Therian stood tall at the prow of the ship with his arms outstretched. The derelict swung around to face away from the wind, to face in the direction the pirate ship had vanished over the horizon.

“My blade!” said Gruum, scrambling over the deck. In the prow, stuck down deeply into the rotted timbers, was his saber. It had sunk to the bottom and stuck here in the ancient deck boards. Gruum could scarcely believe the providence.

“What are the odd, milord?” he asked.

“The odds of what?”

“My retrieval of this blade.”

Therian shrugged. “Quite high, I should think. There were many ships down there. We floated over the site of an ancient sea battle. I chose to call upon the one that bore your blade stuck in its back. It seemed an expedient way of rearming us.”

Gruum looked at his master with wide eyes. Sorcerers were indeed difficult to get used to.

Therian directed the vessel to pursue the
Innsmouth
. Gruum knew that his mind burned with the desire to retrieve his own ancient blades, which in his view her crew had stolen from him. The derelict vessel they rode upon followed his silent bidding as if the ship were fully-fit and well-manned.

Gruum tried to relax, but instead shivered and dripped seawater. He was unsure that he preferred the ghost ship’s deck to floating in the clean sea. He thought of going below to get out of the wind, but rejected the idea. He feared he may meet up with the horrors he suspected may well lurk beneath the rotted, barnacle-encrusted timbers.

They headed southward on their enchanted ship. After the breezes dried Gruum’s clothing, he was able to think more clearly. He sat huddled at the stern, where scraps of rickety railing still stood and felt reasonably secure. When the dawn tinged the skies pink, he found himself nodding off. It had been an exhausting night.

He dreamt strange dreams. In them, the things beneath the ocean moved. The mountains that lurked there in the silent dark shifted and glided about quietly. They made waves that ruffled the surface. They made the storms rise up, as a boiling pot made steam rise into a smoky kitchen.

He awoke with a start to the welcome heat of the sun in the sky. It warmed his bones, and for the first time he truly appreciated the warmer clime of the southern seas. Therian still stood in the prow of the vessel, his black cloak and equally black hair fluttering in the winds.

“Master?” croaked Gruum. He rubbed salt from his bleary eyes. “Where are we?”

Therian treated him with a cool glance. “We have paused in our journey. Our quarry is nearby.”

Therian pointed to the starboard. Gruum followed his gesture and squinted. He shielded his eyes with his hand. Before he saw the ship, he noticed an island of fairly large size dead ahead of them. The island was covered in rocky hills and thick green vegetation. Looking along the shoreline, Gruum spotted what must be the
Innsmouth
. The ship had an odd appearance to it. He had to stare for a few moments before he understood what he was gazing at.

“The sails are in tatters and the ship lists to one side. They have anchored at that island?”

“They’ve run aground, more likely,” said Therian. He produced a small spyglass from his pouch and handed it to Gruum. The lens had cracked at some point, and the metal shaft of it had some seawater sloshing about inside, but the instrument still worked.

Gruum eyed the ship and the island further through the spyglass. It seemed to him that he could still see the sparkle and shimmer of the wind spirits from time to time, as if they winked at him. Gruum stepped up to the prow at Therian’s side. “I’m surprised such experienced men would run aground in broad daylight.”

Therian turned him a half-smile. “The wind-spirits are without guidance, but are still chained to serve the ship. They have gone mad, and have driven the
Innsmouth
hither and yon. Now that it has run aground, the crewmen are probably more petulant and insufferable than usual.”

“Couldn’t they steer away?”

“A strong enough wind will break a rudder or render it useless.”

“They should have brought down the sails then,” suggested Gruum.

“Yes. But I doubt there were many volunteers for the job of climbing the rigging and facing irate spirits,” said Therian with a dark chuckle.

Gruum looked at the ship and the island with uncertainty. “Perhaps we should just sail on and head to our destination, milord?”

Therian shook his head. “I can accept the loss of honor and even their rudeness at putting me off their ship. But I’ll not lose Seeker and Succor so easily.”

Gruum rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Only the two of us, half-armed and in broad daylight… do you think we can take the whole crew, sire?”

Therian stood silent for a time. Then slowly, he nodded. “Yes. If we must. This makeshift vessel will soon return to its rightful place at the bottom of the sea in any case. Notice the freeboard. We are half-sunk even now as the power of my spell fades.”

Gruum looked over the side and saw with alarm that Therian was right. In fact, if anything, they looked to be three-quarters sunk. “Are we just going to walk up there and demand they return your swords?”

“Certainly not. Give me your saber. You will bear your dagger. It will have to do. We will have to pull around to the lee of the island and head into the forest there. We will need fresh water and food… or at least, you will.”

Gruum made no arguments. They were sinking, and he could tell that arguing would be useless in any case. He would have to trust to his master’s prowess once again. He handed over his saber and tucked his broad-bladed dagger into his belt. He did not relish facing that crowd of angry cutthroats again, with a weapon that was less than a foot in length. They would be desperate now, driven perhaps more mad by the spirits Therian had left behind to swarm over their vessel. They would see the once beneficial spell had turned into a curse, and they knew with certainty who had laid this curse upon the
Innsmouth
.

Out of sight of the other ship, Therian brought his derelict around the island to float in a lagoon on the far side. Both men jumped overboard and Gruum found himself soaked and floundering again. At least this time he was able to wade out of the water onto solid land.

Therian stood upon the white sands and faced the sinking derelict from the deeps. He made dismissive gesture. The ship reacted as if stricken. It drifted away, to the deeper end of the lagoon, then quickly took on a fatal dose of water. The nameless dead vessel listed to one side, then rolled over slowly and sank. Gruum stared into the clear, light blue waters. He could still see the dark hulk of the wreck down there. He shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.

Gruum turned to find Therian striding up the beach toward the cool, green gloom of the forest. He hurried to catch up. Once they entered the forest, Gruum was stricken by how different the growths were here. The plants were brighter green and had leaves of great length and breadth. They waved like a thousand scarves in the beach breezes that never seemed to pause.

As they walked into the interior, Gruum tasted many fruits and found most of them palatable. They found a stream and drank their fill. Therian ate only sparingly. Gruum felt his belly roil and growl within him. He longed for a clean haunch of freshly roasted meat.

“I wonder if there is any game on this island. Besides the squawking birds, that is.”

Therian pointed aloft. Gruum followed the gesture. A monkey regarded them curiously from the strange treetops. The creature ate seeds and spat out the shells one at a time.

“I’m not eating that!”

Therian shrugged, bored with the topic. They climbed toward a rise on the island. The entire scrap of land, Gruum estimated, could be no more than a league long and half as wide. Still, while climbing in the hot sun, it seemed large enough. He hoped they would not run into the crew of the
Innsmouth
on open ground. He doubted they could beat them all, and he knew Therian would be too proud to run from them.

They reached a long open slope of crumbling land. Nothing here grew, as the land was blackened and volcanic in nature. An ash field, Gruum recognized it to be. They stood near the peak of the highest hill on the mountain, and Gruum studied that peak. Was that perhaps, a wisp of sulfurous vapor rising up from the top?

“Oh, hold milord.”

“What is it?”

“This, I do believe, is a volcano.”

“Of course it is, Gruum. These islands rise up from the distant floor of the sea. I’ve read about such places. What we walk upon is the crown of a huge mountain that is buried beneath miles of seawater.”

Gruum swallowed. He tried not to look sick. “Milord, such places are vile in every way.”

“Not always. A bit of healthy caution is in order, however.”

Therian continued with the ascent to the crown of the volcano, but Gruum held back. Finally, he forced himself to follow his master. He’d never scaled an actual volcano before, but in his own lands such places were known to harbor the worst of fiends.

It was there, in the open exposed lands at the top, that they met the men of the
Innsmouth
. The crewmen had come up the volcano from the other side. Apparently, each group had had the same idea, planning to move to the high ground and spot the other.

Therian stood tall. Gruum halted at his side. The cone of the volcano was filled with water, not lava. The crater of the volcano was an open, steaming lake a hundred yards wide. On the far side of the lake the crewmen of the
Innsmouth
stared back at them.

Bolo pushed through his stunned, muttering men and stood staring at Therian and Gruum.

Therian put the cracked spyglass to his eye. “The impudent bastard dares to wear my blades.”

Gruum eyed the group, looking for crossbows. None of them were in evidence.

Bolo cupped his hands and called out to them. “Fancy meeting you here, sorcerer. Come closer, so we may parlay.”

Therian cupped his own hands and called back to them. “What is there to discuss?”

“We have a ship, but it is cursed. Lift that curse and all will be forgiven. We will take you to the nearest port.”

“And what of my blades?”

Bolo hesitated only an instant. “They will be returned,” he shouted back.

“Don’t trust them, sire,” said Gruum in a quiet voice.

Therian huffed. “I would sooner trust an eel.” He raised his voice to shout back to the crewmen. “I would forge a different bargain. Thrust my blades into the earth where you stand and retreat down the mountain to your ship. After I retrieve the swords I will release the wind spirits.”

“What of you?”

“We will fend for ourselves here.”

This seemed to surprise them. For a minute or so, they talked amongst themselves. The men, by their gestures, appeared to like the arrangement. Bolo, however, seemed less than pleased.

“I’m sure his plans did not include letting us live,” said Gruum.

“That is my reading as well.”

In time, the crewmen agreed. Seeker and Succor were thrust upstanding into the soft earth of the volcano’s cone. The crew left them behind.

Gruum was in favor of moving around the cone of the mountain with great caution and stealth. Therian would hear nothing of it. He strode to his blades and drew them from the earth. “They have been scratched in several places,” he complained.

Gruum, hunkered down and moved almost on all fours. He came up beside Therian, looking everywhere at once. “I expect an ambush at any moment.”

Therian shook his head. “There is nothing to fear right now. They want the curse lifted. Time is on their side. Once I have released their ship, they can decide to hunt us down or leave. If the curse does not lift, they believe they can kill us to lift the curse directly.”

“Will you lift the spell, sire?”

“Of course, I gave my word. But I did not specify when I would lift it. I have not yet decided upon the timing of the act.”

Gruum looked at his master sharply. It wasn’t like his master to go back on a deal. He eyed the stern lines on the other’s face. “You think they will come back up here for revenge, once the spell is lifted?”

Therian flicked his eyes to Gruum, then back to the downward slope that plunged to the shores. Barely visible over the treetops was the
Innsmouth
. It still sat listing in the waters offshore.

“It is my revenge that needs to be feared upon this scrap of land,” said Therian. “But as to my concerns, have you thought, Gruum, of how we will leave this island once they maroon us here?”

“I had thought you might raise the sunken vessel again. I had thought sorcery would be employed to rescue us.”

Therian nodded slowly. “I have fed the Dragons a single soul in the last dozen days, that of the lookout I dropped upon the deck of the
Innsmouth
.”

“What of the other sailors you fought with, milord?”

“I had not the time, nor the breath to spare, to relieve them of their souls—just their lives.”

“Ah, so you’re saying you don’t have the strength left to cast more powerful sorceries?”

“I have enough strength to fight, but without a fresh soul, I doubt I will be able to get us off this island.”

“A fresh soul?” asked Gruum. Certain realities began to sink into his mind. “If the sailors leave, that leaves a few monkeys and birds… and me.”

“Exactly.”

Gruum’s eyes slid about in his head. “I think the crew of the
Innsmouth
do not deserve to be dealt with honorably, sire. They mutinied and broke our deal. They attempted to murder us in our beds.”

“Now,” said Therian, turning to him with a wintry smile, “I believe you and I have achieved a mutual understanding of the situation.”

Gruum gazed downslope at the ship sitting offshore. “Soon, they may calculate that you are delaying. They will assume you have broken your word. They will come back… and they will be insistent.”

“Just so,” said Therian. “We must prepare for them.”

“How master?”

“We will dream.”

“Dream?” Gruum asked. He thought immediately of the last time he was invited to dream with Therian. He suppressed a shudder with difficulty. “Why would we dream here? Will you ask Anduin for aid?”

“She would not give it.”

“Why then?”

“Tell me, Gruum, what was the last thing you dreamt of?”

Gruum thought hard. He wasn’t sure at first, then the memory of the things under the water, the unseen things of the deep, came back to him. “I recall something about moving mountains—under the water. Vast creatures.”