“Come down, Trip!” Mik shouted up to the kender. “Before you’re struck by lightning!”
“Aye, captain!” the kender called back. He swung around the mast and felt with his foot for the rigging. As he did, something in the breakers off the stem caught his attention. Trip put a hand over his eyes and peered into the storm.
“Crazy minnow!” Ula yelled up to him. “What are you waiting for?”
“I see something!”
“What?” asked Mik.
“Sharks! Sharks running before the storm! Hundreds, thousands of them!”
“He must mean porpoises,” Karista called from the bow. “Sharks do not run before storms-not on the surface anyway.”
“I mean sharks!” Trip called back, pointing. “Look for yourselves!”
The aristocrat and the captain peered in the direction the kender indicated. The wind whipped stinging spray into their eyes, and they had to blink away the brine to see.
The sea behind Kingfisher boiled angrily, and not just with wind and waves. Tall dorsal fins broke the whitecaps as schools of sharks swarmed forward: redtips, swordbeaks, manglers. Many leaped from the breakers, their toothy maws snapping at the salty air.
“What’s happening?” Karista called from the bow.
Astern on the bridge, Mik shrugged and shook his head. “Maybe they’re chasing something.”
“Or perhaps something is chasing them,” Ula suggested. Her green eyes went wide as she gazed at the foaming sea.
“What is it, girl?” Karista shouted.
“Can’t you feel it?” Ula called back. She turned her head from side to side, as though seeking the cause of the feeling.
“I feel it,” Mik replied. The sensation was like a large knot twisting within his stomach. He tightened his grip on the tiller; his brown eyes flashed, questing, across the whitecaps.
“I feel nothing!” Karista shouted, annoyed. “I…”
As she spoke, the waves behind them erupted, and the dragon burst from the deep.
Chapter Nine
Tempest exploded from the breakers like a blue green mountain. Boiling steam erupted from her massive jaws; her yellow eyes shone with the fury of the storm.
Hatred of the Dragon Isles and all those who sailed to them burned in her black heart. She would make sure that if she could not reach the archipelago, no one would.
The sea cascaded away from Tempest in huge waves. The sudden torrent crashed against Kingfisher, threatening to tip it on its side. High on the mast, Trip clung desperately to the rigging. Sharks, razorfish, and Turbidus leeches as thick as a man’s arm sped in a maelstrom circle around the tottering caravel.
The crew working Kingfisher’s deck toppled when the waves hit and screamed as the dragon-fear swept over them. Mik hung onto the tiller, but the backwash from the waves carried Ula toward the rail.
Mik stabbed his hand out, but Ula slipped away from him.
The sea elf slammed against the gunwale and regained her footing. A razorfish, carried high into the air by the swell, flashed past her face. Ula barely ducked aside in time. The fish flopped onto the deck, and she seized it in one slender hand. She dashed the fish’s brains out against the hull and threw the body back into the raging surf.
At the front of the ship, Marlian, Karista, and Bok froze as the dragon rose before them. Marlian pushed them all to the deck as the breaker hit. All three of them got wrapped up in the anchor chain, which kept them from heaving over the side in the backwash.
Poul wasn’t so lucky. The old man had been working amidships when the wave struck. The water seized his thin body and thrust him toward the bow. Marlian reached for him as he swept past, but her outstretched hand merely brushed his callused fingertips.
The tall sailor woman struggled out from under the tangled chains and lurched to her feet. Poul was hanging half over the rail, his feet dangling toward the raging water below. Marlian grabbed his right arm just as he went over.
“Help me!” she cried.
Bok lurched to his feet and toward the lanky woman sailor. Marlian’s fingers dug into the old man’s stringy flesh. Terror flashed across Poul’s ancient face.
“I won’t let go,” Marlian said. “Hold on!”
A glimmer of hope lit within Poul’s ancient eyes. The breakers clawed at his bare legs and feet as he tried to scramble aboard once more.
A huge mangier shark burst from the waves below the wizened mariner. The creature’s blue-gray sides glistened with foam. Seaweed and huge Turbidus leeches hung from its flanks. Jagged triangular teeth jutted from its gaping mouth. Poul’s legs disappeared into the fish’s maw; the shark bit down on the sailor’s midsection.
Poul gasped, and blood spurted from his mouth. Marlian screamed.
The shark lunged forward, clamping its jaws down over the old man’s head. A hideous crunching sound filled the air. The shark jerked its head to the side and dived back into the deep.
Marlian clung to the old man’s arm, but Poul was no longer attached to it. The momentum of the shark’s dive jerked her half-way over the rail. She flailed with her hands but found only rain, crashing water, and wind. Wide-eyed, she gazed into the deep. A dorsal fin cut through the water in front of her terrified face.
Strong hands grabbed Marlian’s ankles. “Karista, help!” the big bodyguard cried. He clamped his thick fingers tight, but Marlian’s legs were slippery with rain. Bok began to lose his grip.
Lady Meinor staggered forward, trying to keep her footing on the rocking deck. Kingfisher surged and she fell into the rail, almost going over herself.
Bok grabbed her and lost his hold on Marlian.
Marlian screamed as she disappeared into the brine. Razorfish swarmed in her wake and stained the ocean red with blood.
Trip clasped his fingers tight around the rope atop the masthead. He watched in fascination as the dragon dived past the ship on the starboard side. Several deckhands threw themselves off the ship in a frenzy of terror. What Trip felt was more of a thrill. He’d never seen a dragon before and was determined not to miss a moment of the experience, even if it killed him.
Lightning flashed through the sky, narrowly missing the mast. As quickly as he could, Trip scrambled down the rigging toward the deck.
Another dragon-spawned wave struck Kingfisher’s side. The boat pitched wildly, and Trip found himself hanging in the air, holding onto a rain-soaked rope by only his fingertips.
“Whee!” he squealed as his hands slipped free. The feeling of soaring unfettered through the air was one the kender knew he would treasure for the rest of his life-even if that life was about to end. Trip smiled at his friends on the madly bobbing ship below as the waves rushed up to meet him. “Will I hit the deck, or the water?” he wondered. “Will it hurt much?”
Karista grabbed Bok’s shoulder and clung to him as he pulled her away from the rail.
“Lower the boat!” Karista cried, staggering toward the skiff, stowed amidships. “If we lower the boat, we could get away!”
“Away to where?” Bok replied, gazing frantically around the surging seas, trying to find the islands.
Dragon-fear held the crew firmly in its terrifying grip. Most of the hired hands dashed madly about the deck, or dived for cover through the hatch and into the hold. Following Karista’s suggestion, several sailors began to unlash the ship’s boat and push it toward the rail.
“Belay that, you fools!” Mik shouted from the bridge, but the crew wasn’t listening. The captain cursed as the heaving seas threatened to yank the tiller from his hand. Kingfisher bobbed and swerved wildly, nearly heaving onto its side.