The Dragon's Curse

  “No!” I blurt, a little too enthusiastically. “It is confusing after you tried so hard not to touch me, and then tried to convince me that our love is doomed.”

  He reaches out and takes my hand in his. “I thought you were going to die from Yassim’s poison. While you lay unconscious in the hammock, I thought about what Enzio said to me at the inn and realized how stupid I was for not taking advantage of every moment we’d spent together in Trevon. I regretted the days where I could have been close to you but let fear rule my life. I will never let fear be my ruler again.” He runs his thumb across the calluses on my palm.

  I do a quick visual scan of the ship’s deck again. “Where is the Ilaadi princess?”

  Hatred smolders in his eyes. “She is in the cargo hold,” Golmarr says, words clipped with anger. “We gave her the chance to remain above deck, unrestrained and free to move about, but she got into a tussle with Yerengul shortly after we set sail.”

  “A tussle? How does Yerengul tussle with someone?” I ask.

  “Very violently. It ended with both of them bleeding and Yerengul pinning Yassim to the deck. So, the second day, we tied her to the mast, but her incessant cursing and threats earned her a spot where we don’t have to hear her.”

  Taken aback, I look at him. “Wait. How long have we been sailing?”

  He raises his eyebrows and takes a small step closer to me. “Three days, sleepyhead, but it felt like a year’s worth of worry.” He touches my elbow. “Are you hungry?”

  I press on my stomach. “A little.”

  “Well, you should be.” He smiles, but it is strained. “How does pickled eel and seaweed paper sound for lunch?”

  “Please say you’re joking,” I whisper, feeling decidedly less hungry than a moment before.

  Golmarr’s smile widens, moving all the way to his eyes. “Not joking. Apparently pickled eel is a delicacy in the city of Ilyaro—bones and all. Something about the pickling process turns the bones to the consistency of almonds.” The smile slowly slips from Golmarr’s mouth, and he cups the side of my face in his hand. “I am so glad you are awake.”

  I cover his hand with mine and lean into it. “Me too.”

  “You owe Nayadi your life.”

  “Nayadi?” My skin prickles as I remember the blackness devouring her…or me, and the terrifying sensation of my bones trying to rip free of my flesh. “Where is she?”

  “Nayadi is watching Yassim. Apparently, the Ilaadi princess fears her. She fears Nayadi’s magic.”

  Suddenly cold, I hug my chest and rub my biceps. Yassim isn’t the only one who fears the crone. “What did Nayadi do to me when I was poisoned? It felt like she was trying to kill me.”

  “She temporarily stopped your heart to put a halt to the spreading of the poison, and then she sucked the poison out.”

  I hug myself tighter and try to decide which is more disturbing: Nayadi stopping my heart or sucking the poison from my thigh. “No wonder I have been asleep for three days.”

  “It was the only way she could save you,” Golmarr says.

  I nod but don’t unwrap my arms from my body. “So, when the poison was sucked out, she simply restarted my heart?”

  “She did.”

  When Yerengul was stitching closed the wound Golmarr gave me, Nayadi numbed it because she said she was too weak to heal even the simplest of wounds. But this time she stopped my heart? The thought makes me start to panic, so I change the subject. “What about the two-headed dragon?”

  “When we set sail, it was circling the dock looking for us, but the moment we lifted anchor, the wind started blowing so hard we sped out of the harbor. The dragon followed, but we haven’t seen it since the sun set our first day at sea.”

  “Golmarr,” Jessen calls, his voice heavy with worry.

  Instead of answering his brother, Golmarr spins in a quick circle, his eyes sweeping the sky and horizon. I know he is looking for the dragon.

  “Stop searching the blasted sky and come here,” Jessen growls.

  The helm, the ship’s wheel, is located on a raised dais at the front of the ship. I follow Golmarr up the steps and stop beside Jessen. His arms are crossed over his broad chest, and he and the captain, Yeb, are glowering at the turquoise sails.

  “What is wrong?” Golmarr asks, his gaze sweeping the horizon again, both the water and the sky this time.

  “We don’t see the dragon, so you can relax,” Jessen says. “Captain Yeb, why don’t you explain?”

  The captain inclines his red-turbaned head and motions toward the sail. “As far as I can tell, we are moving south, as planned.” His accent is thick and hard to understand, and his pale eyes are tight with worry.

  “That’s good,” Golmarr answers, but he’s frowning, waiting for the captain to say more.

  “Look at the sail,” Yeb says.

  We all turn north, toward the sail, and study it. It is several shades lighter than the sky and swollen with wind. I lift my hand, letting the wind stream through my spread fingers. The sail is swollen the wrong way.

  “Shouldn’t the sail be bulging southward if the wind is blowing us south?” I ask.

  Yeb nods. “Or, if the east or west wind was blowing, we would zigzag south. But if a north-blowing wind is filling the sail, like what we are seeing right now, we should be moving north. We are moving south, in direct opposition to the wind. I cannot control this ship.”

  “Look at the water,” Yeb says.

  Golmarr and I walk to the railing and peer down at the sea. It is so still, I see myself reflected in it, with Golmarr reflected at my side. The only place the water has a single ripple is in the wake created by the boat cutting through it.

  “I thought the ocean was always moving,” Golmarr says.

  Captain Yeb groans. “In my forty-seven years at sea, the water has never been this still.”

  “If the wind were blowing, the water wouldn’t be still,” Jessen says. “So there is no wind. Yet the sail is swollen with air and we are moving.” He looks at Captain Yeb. “Is this an enchanted ship?”

  “No. Magic has been lost to us for sixteen years. This vessel is only eight years old.” His eyes narrow. “You are the ones who brought the old woman onto my boat. Is this her doing?”

  “No.” Golmarr takes one more long, worried look at the smooth sea and then turns his back to it. “This is not our doing. We should be asking ourselves: Are we controlling the boat, or is the boat controlling us? And if the boat is controlling us, who is controlling the boat? We need to pull the sails down and drop anchor.”

  Captain Yeb swallows again, making his Adam’s apple bob. “You should not have ordered my crew to jump overboard. We need them now more than ever.”

  “Put us to work. Tell us what to do. We are strong and able,” Jessen says.

  Yeb studies each of us individually and then nods. “Very well.” He starts giving orders to Golmarr and his brothers, telling them what to do to lower the sails. When they have started working, Yeb turns to me. “Do you fear heights?”

  I shake my head. I miss heights—miss flying like a dragon the same way I imagine I would miss air if it were ever denied me. But…I have never flown. That thought should not have entered my head. Yeb studies me with bloodshot eyes, and I wonder if he has slept at all since we pirated his ship. “Are you nimble enough to climb to the top of the taller mast?”

  Hand blocking the sun’s glare, I look at the taller mast. It has rungs sticking out on either side of it, all the way to the top. “I can climb it.”

  After a long moment, Yeb nods. “Climb the mast to the crow’s nest and tell me if you can see Draykioch. There is a spyglass already up there. I have been warned, with a good wind, it takes only four days to reach the cursed island, and we have made very good speed.”

  I hurry to the mast and start climbing. The higher I
climb, the swifter the air seems to be moving, whipping my hair, which I never had the chance to braid, into my face. At the top of the mast is a small, round deck with a swiveling spyglass screwed onto the railing—the crow’s nest. I climb into the nest, push my hair out of my eyes, and smile. It is a little like flying, being up here with the wind pushing my clothes tight against the front of my body. The water is as flat and smooth as glass. The sea and sky seem to have no end, dissolving into each other, so it feels like we are sailing in a giant blue bubble. For a moment, I close my eyes and let the wind blow against my skin, let the sun shine golden against my eyelids, and breathe.

  Looking into the spyglass, the southern horizon grows clear, the line between water and sky distinct with no land in sight. “No land yet,” I call down. I swivel the spyglass north and peer through. It takes some searching, but eventually I see a dark spot against the horizon. The longer I watch it, the easier it is to recognize the uneven, flapping wings of the two-headed dragon.

  Below, the heavy anchor splashes into the water. “Hold the railing, Princess Sorrowlynn,” Yeb calls, and I brace myself as the ship jolts and slows down. A long, dark shadow moves out from below us, surging forward through the water before disappearing from sight. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. I stare down at the water, waiting, but the dark shape doesn’t reappear.

  “Did you see that?” I call down.

  “See what?” my father asks.

  “Something dark was swimming below the ship. When you dropped the anchor, it kept moving.”

  Everyone but my father and Enzio, who are still lowering the anchor, stops what they are doing and runs to the railing, peering over it. “I don’t see anything,” Golmarr says.

  “Nor do I,” Captain Yeb calls, but he does not stop searching the water.

  “I have let out the anchor as far as it will go,” my father says. “We are too deep for it to hit bottom, I think.”

  Captain Yeb stops staring at the water and starts pacing, his hands clutched behind his back. After a long moment, he looks at Ornald. “Pull the anchor back in. I cannot control this vessel. It seems we are at the mercy of the sea.”

  * * *

  I stand at the bow of the ship the rest of the afternoon, looking down into the water and waiting for the dark shape to reappear, but I see nothing aside from a few fish and my own reflection. Golmarr, Enzio, Ornald, Yerengul, and Jessen have all gone belowdecks to sleep while the captain stands tight-lipped at the tiller, eyes glued to the southern horizon.

  When the sun has almost reached the level of the ocean, the captain asks, “What are you looking at so intently, down in the water?”

  “I am looking for the creature I saw below our ship when we dropped anchor.” I stand with my back braced against the railing and study Yeb. He has the deeply tanned, wrinkled skin of a man who has seen many years at sea. His worry is evident in the taut way he is holding himself.

  “How well did you see it? What did it look like?”

  “It was distorted by the water, but as far as I could tell it was a long, black, snakelike creature.”

  Yeb’s body grows even more tense. “I believe you saw the sea serpent—a water dragon with power to control the ocean.”

  I nod. That is the same thing I thought.

  He steps to my side and braces his hands on the railing, letting the wind whip at the faded red turban covering his hair. His eyebrows are sun-bleached to a nearly translucent white, and I wonder what color his hair is. “I am Yassim’s uncle. Did you know?” He studies me with gray eyes that appear as washed out as the rest of him.

  I shake my head. “I didn’t. Are you an Ilaadi prince?”

  Yeb smiles and shakes his head. “No. Yassim’s father, King Jaquar—though he was not yet the king at the time—fell in love with my youngest sister. You see, Jaquar’s first wife, an Ilaadi noblewoman by birth, died in childbirth, and my sister was the midwife’s assistant. She stayed with Jaquar to help care for his newborn son, and they fell in love. Against the desires of his parents, he married her, a humble commoner, and elevated her status to royalty.”

  “His parents didn’t try to put a stop to it?”

  “Prince Jaquar had a wizard helping him. The wizard promised Jaquar’s father if he allowed Jaquar to marry my sister, one of their children would help establish peace between Ilaad and Trevon.”

  “Did the wizard mean Yassim?” I ask, voice skeptical. I cannot imagine her promoting peace of any sort.

  “We did not know to which child the wizard was referring, but as Yassim is King Jaquar’s only remaining child, it can be no one else.”

  I think of what Yassim said the day we took her ship: the sandworm killed her brothers. For a moment, compassion for Yassim outweighs my dislike of her.

  “My sister had two boys, and then bore Yassim,” Yeb says as his eyes sweep the ocean. “She was killed shortly after Yassim was born. Whether by poison or illness, I do not know. But by the time she died, the wizard had left her husband’s service and never returned.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “for your sister and her husband. For Yassim’s brothers. But this wizard…” My voice trails off and I clear my throat. “Did he have a name?”

  “Melchior.”

  Yeb’s face wavers before my eyes, replaced by the face of a newborn baby, and then everything around me disappears.

  * * *

  The baby girl tightens her tiny fist around my finger and laughter bubbles from me. For more than a thousand years, I have walked this world, and still a newborn baby fills me with joy. The child’s eyes meet mine, and a jolt of recognition sends my heart pounding. She is the one I have seen in my visions, the one who will spread her kingdom from the shores of the sea and back into the abandoned desert, making it bloom and thrive again. This is the child who will at long last sign a peace treaty with the king of Trevon and put an end to their fighting.

  Tucking the yellow silk blanket beneath the baby’s chin, I carefully lift her and whisper, “You are going to change the world.” I press my lips to her tiny, warm head, right on top of a tuft of dark red hair. “What is she to be called?” I ask, turning my attention from the child to the woman sitting on the cushioned chaise beside me. I can see why Prince Jaquar fell in love with her. Though her dark red hair and olive skin are stunning, Princess Reyla’s honey-brown eyes hold none of the scorn or haughtiness of a normal Ilaadi noblewoman. Her beauty radiates from within.

  I blink and her face is replaced with the image of hands and a goblet of wine. The hands hold a vial above the red drink, letting a single drop of liquid fall into it. So that is how she will die, I think, and look back at the baby as sorrow pricks my heart. This child will grow up without a mother. “Have you chosen her name?” I ask again.

  “Yassim Reyla Jaquara,” she says.

  I nod and pronounce a birth blessing for the mother’s ears alone. “Before this child, Yassim Reyla Jaquara, turns one-and-twenty, she will bring peace to Ilaad.” Something shivers inside me, and I feel the wet sea air on my skin as another vision radiates before my open eyes; ocean, sunset, and my dear friend Captain Yeb staring at me with concern in his eyes.

  “Sorrowlynn?” Yeb says.

  “No, I’m—”

  * * *

  “Melchior,” I say, peering into Yeb’s eyes.

  Yeb frowns and pats his rough hand lightly against my cheek. “Are you all right? You got lost in thought.”

  “What was Yassim’s mother’s name?”

  “Reyla.”

  “And was her hair red like Yassim’s?”

  Yeb nods. I force myself not to inhale a breath of surprise. As a child, I spent many hours piecing together puzzles with Melchior. He always compared the fate of the dragons, or Faodara, or Anthar to the puzzles. Every time we finished one, he would say, “It isn’t until all the pieces come together that we
see the whole picture, Sorrowlynn.” I am beginning to see more and more of Melchior’s pieces coming together.

  “How old is Yassim?” I ask.

  “She will be twenty at the end of spring.” I feel his gaze on me, so look at him. “We have a dragon below us, and a dragon behind us. Will you please let Yassim come out of the cargo bay?”

  At the thought of seeing Yassim, the bruise left by the poison starts to throb. I press on it. There is a hard, tender lump beneath my skin. “I do not trust her.”

  Captain Yeb takes a deep breath. “Please. If anything happens to this ship, she has no chance of surviving. She will drown, locked away down there with a yentzee.”

  I do not know that word. “What is a yentzee?”

  Captain Yeb spits over the side of the ship. “Dark witch. User of evil.”

  His words create a surge of anger in me. “She is a witch, yes, but the ability to use magic does not make a person evil. Think of Melchior. He was not evil.” And I am not evil simply because I possess the ability to wield fire. And neither is Golmarr.

  Yeb’s shoulders droop, and he looks back at the horizon. “Will you climb to the crow’s nest and look for land one last time before the sun sets?”

  I nod, glad for the excuse to quit our conversation, and climb the mast to the crow’s nest.

  The sun, half-hidden below the horizon, is painting a line of shimmering gold to the side of the ship. The sky around the sun is a deep, hazy orange. The eastern horizon has faded to pale purple with a single star glowing in it.

  Pressing the spyglass to my eye, I look south. A smear of gray, a scab against the blue, is visible, and I know, without a doubt, we are almost at Draykioch.

  “I see it!” I blurt as I skid to a stop in front of Captain Yeb. “I see Draykioch.”

  All the color drains from the sea captain’s face. He purses his colorless lips and his eyes scan his ship as if he is seeing it for the last time. “We will be there before the sun rises. If my ship does not stop moving forward, she will be dashed on the reef surrounding the island, and she will sink.” He raises his watery gaze to mine. “Please reconsider the fate of my niece. She is the only living family I have left.”