Highland Dragon Master Read online

  She thought her eyes would grow back over time if necessary, but she wasn’t sure. Organs were tricky.

  “Here.” A voice spoke above her. Toinette didn’t open her eyes, lest vision make her spew the previous night’s fish along the sand, but she placed the speaker: human, male, English, and therefore John. When she didn’t move, he put a tentative hand under her chin. “Drink this.”

  She smelled watered wine, with a bit of honey in it, and sipped slowly. The first swallow left her sitting rigid on the sand, convinced that all her willpower would go to waste—and then her stomach shuddered and righted itself. She drank more quickly and, when she was done, tried to focus her sore eyes on John. “Thank you. How did you know?”

  He shrugged. “The Scotsman”—a glance over at Erik, who was finishing his own drink with Samuel in attendance, a fact that made Toinette feel better—“said last night that you might feel sick after. Wine with honey helped my Elsie when she was carrying. So I thought—” Another shrug. “Didn’t expect it this bad, though.”

  “Me neither.” Toinette wiped her lips. The wine did help, though her stomach twisted again at the mention of John’s wife—and his children. She at least had nobody waiting for her return. “The thing that’s keeping us here doesn’t want to be found.”

  “You saw nothing, then?” asked Samuel.

  Erik shook his head. “Not nothing. Only nothing definite. We got into the forest, past the Templars’ bodies. And maybe those should be our next try.”

  “Grave-robbing.” Samuel shook his head. “Unsettling.”

  “What isn’t?” John asked. “I’d dig up my own grandmother if it meant getting off this rock.”

  “Besides,” said Toinette, “it’s not actually a grave, is it?”

  As justifications for necromancy went, she knew, that was very thin.

  Twenty

  Necromancy had to wait.

  Toinette and Erik spent most of the morning either asleep or otherwise flat on their backs. Once Toinette woke long enough to see Erik’s face, only a short distance away, and to smell the warm scent of his body. A dim flicker of lust stirred even then, a quick spark in a body that had no fuel left to catch. More disturbing was the urge to roll over and lie against him, not out of passion but to enjoy his warmth and solidity.

  She stayed where she was, closed her eyes again, and was unconscious before too much longer.

  She was her own woman, and he was Artair’s man. Lust was acceptable, a working partnership necessary and even pleasant in its way, but comfort was a dragon-sized step too far. Artair acted for his own good and that of his people—and Toinette didn’t know that she counted. She knew that her crew almost certainly didn’t. Erik was his agent; she could trust him, but not depend on him.

  Not that she could, or should, depend on anyone else.

  In a few hours, she was more or less herself again, capable of walking and speaking like a normal human being, and even of helping to gather wood and build the evening’s fire. The muscles were quick to recover.

  “All the same, best were we to wait a day or two before trying with the bones,” Erik said. The two of them and Marcus were chopping up nettles and crumbling stale bread. They’d mix the result with water and boil it for a kind of pottage. It worked well enough, though passing the pot around got a bit awkward. “The soul hurts more than the body with magic, and what we face is formidable—if merely scrying on it took that much out of us, breaking a spell could be quite the task. And I’m sorely out of practice: I was always more squire than scholar.” He had the chivalry not to mention how rusty Toinette’s skills were. “Best to go in as hale as we can.”

  “You’d know,” said Marcus, though he cast a quick glance at Toinette first, getting her small nod before he spoke. It was a relief to see that, though he talked to her less than he had and often spoke to the crew without consulting her first. The men might look to other mortals before her or Erik. She’d expected as much, and the pain was endurable. Petty as it might be, she thought it would have hurt more if they’d preferred him.

  “Meantime, there’s the, ah, winter quarters,” she said. Keeping her mind on things she could do; that was often the key. “Plenty to do there. And if I remember rightly, some lifting and digging is often what’s wanted the day after.”

  Marcus gave her a bland look that, in a companion of more than ten years, said more than an illustrated breviary: It’s what you want, you mean, right now.

  He was right, of course, though not necessarily about the timing. Toinette mostly wanted to eat and follow that with more sleep. She was biding her time until she could manage either. After that, yes, she’d want to get her hands dirty with practical things. And she wanted to work alongside the men, where they’d be doing the same task and neither clumsy words nor awkward glances would be necessary.

  “Have you a place in mind?” Erik asked, breaking the silence.

  “Not yet,” Marcus replied. “You’ve already done a bit of clearing up where you fought the plants,” he said, glancing in Toinette’s direction, “so that might not be a bad spot, if we can be sure there aren’t any remaining.”

  “Found something,” said Raoul, stepping through into the shelter. In one hand he held a long brown root, twisted and knobbled into rings. “We dug up a sort of a sunflower while we were pulling more nettles. We’ve never seen the like, but I thought one of you might know if it’d be any good to eat.”

  Marcus took the tuber in one hand, sniffed at it, and shrugged. “The Ottomans make a tea out of something similar, I think. Or something that looks similar. I’ve never been one for knowing plants.”

  “I’ll try it,” Erik said. When Marcus and Raoul peered at him, he grinned. “Oh, I didn’t mention: it’s damned hard to poison us. Fatally, that is. We’re wonderful bodyguards that way. My cousin Moiread met her husband when she drank some ale meant for him that had hemlock in it, I think, or perhaps arsenic.”

  “Wonderful,” said Toinette. “Very romantic.”

  Erik continued, ignoring her. “I’ll try a bit, and if I don’t feel wretched, you’ll know you can most likely eat the thing.”

  “Well, all right, m’lord,” said Raoul. “If you’re certain.”

  “May as well be useful,” said Erik.

  Toinette swept her chopped nettles into the pot, careful to get all of them. She had no way of knowing if Marcus and Raoul were staring at her now, nor, she told herself, should they have any reason to be. They’d had plenty of reminders that she wasn’t human; what was one more?

  * * *

  Raw, the root tasted a bit like nuts, a bit savory, and quite starchy. “Probably better cooked,” Erik said, “but so far edible enough. Talk to me again in the morning.”

  “I thought,” said Raoul, “it’d be another bit of food for the winter, if it’s not poison. And it looks to be the kind of thing that’d keep well.”

  “That it does,” said Marcus. “If m’lord here doesn’t have a bad night of it, we can harvest more when we go to start clearing land. Two birds with one stone—or three, if we’re lucky enough to catch one.” He chuckled at his own joke, then added in Erik and Toinette’s direction, “Four, if you do want to try anything with the Templars. Rings and bones are all there, aren’t they?”

  “They are,” said Toinette thoughtfully, the first time she’d spoken for a little while. “And I think we should get all of them up. Whatever else we do, we can bury those men properly while we’re at it.”

  “We don’t have a priest,” said Raoul. “But neither did we for our men.”

  Toinette nodded. “Happens often enough, doesn’t it? We could bury them next to our crew, get a proper little graveyard going.”

  “If there’s more than one,” Marcus said, “we might have to guess at whose bones are whose. And they might be a bit incomplete—but come the Judgment, I hear that’ll all be sorted.”r />
  “God will figure it out, I assume.” Toinette leaned backward and took in Marcus and Raoul with a look. “In the meantime, our job’s to live like civilized men.”

  The glint in her eyes, and the line of her jaw, dared anyone to point out any reason she might not qualify.

  * * *

  After Erik passed an uneventful night, a day of clearing, cutting, and digging resulted in a small circle of bare earth, a pile of felled trees to one side, and the bones of three men. Most of the bones: there were three skulls and six hands, but only five feet, and nobody was quite sure about anything else. “Scavengers,” said Samuel.

  “That didn’t get killed themselves?” Toinette asked.

  “Not if they’re small enough—rats, say. Or the vines might sleep after a kill. Or only eat men.” He touched the burnt remnant of one of the vines and shook his head. “Truly, there are many strange beings in this world. I’d say it was a pity to kill the plants without learning more, if they weren’t so deadly.”

  “Natural philosophy can wait until nothing’s trying to drink my blood, thank you,” said Marcus.

  They found two more Templar rings with the hands, as well as a rusty chain shirt, two swords in crumbling scabbards, and the remnants of a boot top. “They must have been taken by surprise,” Toinette said. “Only one of them had time to draw steel.”

  “Poor souls,” said Raoul.

  Toinette remembered the quick strength of the vines. The Templars had been fewer, and none of them dragon-blooded. The fight would have been over quickly; God willing, they would have died quickly too. She shuddered.

  Yauuuw.

  The sound came from behind her: a low, scratching whisper that was almost a voice. You as a drunk or a foreigner might pronounce it, but with a hollowness that neither wine nor unfamiliarity could explain. Toinette turned, nails already starting to extend.

  The forest stood empty before her. The treetops swayed in the faint breeze, leaves and needles rustling. Had that been what she’d heard? It must have been.

  Wind hadn’t sounded like that before.

  “Captain?” Samuel asked. “Did you hear—”

  He left off before he could name what. He stood tense, his nostrils flared, frowning into the forest.

  “I thought I did,” she said, hiding her hands behind her back until she could get her claws safely away, “but I see nothing.”

  “Nor I,” said Marcus.

  “Likely we’re all on edge,” said Toinette.

  “But,” said Raoul, frowning, “is this a wise place to build? Meaning no disrespect,” he added toward both Toinette and Marcus, “but if men died here, mightn’t they take it amiss? And if”—he gestured toward the forest—“if that sound was real, what is it?”

  “It’s a fair question.” Not for the first time, Toinette wished that they’d brought a priest along, or that she’d learned more of magic with Artair. She spoke slowly, drawing her thoughts out on the words as thread on a wheel. “But men have died in many houses, and many by violence, and there’s plenty live there safely after. We’re burying these. With luck, that’ll count with them, if their spirits do linger.”

  “And whatever spell traps us here, it hasn’t done anything to harm us yet,” Marcus added. “Lights and noises have never yet been deadly. High tides in winter, on an island—I know that danger, and it’ll take more than a juggler’s trick or two to make me chance it.”

  * * *

  In the center of the magical circle, Erik sat facing three skulls. Having Toinette at his side bolstered his courage, but still he was far from easy as he began to speak the incantation. For one, he’d never learned any distinct spell for this. He knew a few ways to break spells, and he’d put this rite together by combining that knowledge with what little he’d learned of the restless dead.

  For another, he didn’t know that these dead were restless, whatever might be the case with their spell. He’d committed a great many sins in his life, repented of a few, and lived well enough with others. Necromancy was new.

  His throat was dry as he went on speaking. Each word took an age to form.

  Gradually his vision shifted. He rose up above his body, seeing the island from above once again. This time, though, he saw it wrapped in a dense web, the purple-black of plague sores. The furthest tendrils, fading almost to gray, reached far out into the ocean, and Erik knew in that moment that the storm had been no mere freak of weather.

  Drawing back to his body and the beach around it, he saw thinner black strands reaching for him and all his companions, wriggling obscenely, and then drawing back from the circle around the fire. Wood or flame or simply the presence of men drawn together to talk and eat like civilized creatures…something kept the web’s influence at bay. Erik was glad of it; he knew not precisely what that influence might be, but doubted it was good.

  He reached out and put a hand on each of the skulls nearest him, with Toinette doing likewise. Her fingers settled on top of his right hand, slim but callused from the sword and the ship’s wheel, and her power linked to his. They would send it through the skulls and punch a hole in the web.

  Indeed, the skulls took the power easily. Glowing golden, they rose from the sand and hovered in midair—but nothing else happened. The magic went into them, but the black web of the spell rested unmoving and unharmed around the island.

  Briefly, from a farther distance than Erik could truly imagine, he caught the wisp of a feeling from the skull in front of him: regret.

  Looking closer, he saw that the black webbing lay only lightly on the skulls, without the inward growth or the strength he would have expected from a true connection. Those bones, in life, might have partaken of the spell, or might have merely been trapped as Erik and his companions were, but they weren’t part of it.

  There was nothing there that he could use.

  Twenty-One

  “Now what?” Toinette asked. She would have felt bad pressing Erik on the subject under other circumstances, but the men were watching, she knew they were asking the question in their minds, and it was best she be the one to give it voice.

  Even so, she regretted the necessity. Erik looked gray and weary; since Toinette had a headache pounding at her temples and a mouth that tasted like the inside of a boot, she was sympathetic. She thought the spell had been a mite easier on them both than the scrying, which perhaps meant they were getting back into practice, but that was a low bar to clear.

  “They didn’t cast the spell,” Erik said, gesturing to the skulls. “We’ll need to find the people who did—or their bones.”

  “That means searching more of the island. Of course.” Toinette sighed.

  Erik turned toward her, eyes narrowing. “Would you rather be trying to break the spell by ourselves? Wi’ nothing to give us an opening?”

  “No,” she said. Even thinking about it made her headache worse. Nor could she truly accuse Erik of having engineered this, or even of taking pleasure in it. Still, she knew it would be a relief to him if he could tell Artair he’d looked as well as he possibly could. No sworn knight would lightly break off his mission, after all, and even escaping from a haunted island might count as light enough to trouble a man. Despite her angry words before they’d realized they were trapped—it seemed a lifetime ago now—she couldn’t fault the mission itself, either. With Balliol’s invasion, it had become clear that the English were acting out of vengeance now, and she could blame no man or country for wanting protection from that.

  Toinette wanted to spit, and cleared her throat instead. “Same as before, then. We each take a day to go forward and a day to help build, or fish, or whatever’s needed.”

  “Aye. I’ll take first,” said Erik, settling back into weary resignation. “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow. First we’ll have the burials.” Toinette looked back at John and Samuel. They’d briefly been studying the
landscape intently, as men did in proximity to an argument they wanted no part of, and the realization made her wince. She hid it with a smile and felt every muscle involved. “Think of it this way: the further in we go, the better chance we have of finding food besides nettles and roots and fish.”

  “Do you think there might be a deer or two in there?” Samuel asked. “I’ve seen a few tracks that made me think so, but they were old.”

  “If there was one, there might be more,” said Toinette. “I’ve seen squirrels enough that it’ll be worth getting good with a stone again.”

  John blinked. “Were you once?”

  “Once,” she said, only then realizing what weariness had led her to let slip. Before the island, that would have dismayed her. Since the men had seen her change into a dragon, it was harder to care. “I wasn’t a rich girl when I made the trip to Scotland. I walked a lot of it—and would have gotten taken up for poaching a time or two, likely, if I hadn’t been quick on my feet.”

  “You and Raoul both, ay?” John grinned.

  “The sea takes all sorts. You know that. But I was never caught.” Toinette felt Erik looking at her, shrugged, and stood. “And if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’m going to try to sleep this off.”

  She wouldn’t be around them when she was tired enough to speak of the animals she’d truly learned to kill with stones, nor of the myriad other ways she’d earned daily bread as a girl, nor yet of the household she’d earned for. They knew enough of her past, Erik especially.

  * * *

  Another three graves sprouted on the beach, and Erik thought of trinities. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; morning, noon, and night; land, sea, and air; and what would the dead men have been? Gervase, Yakob, and Emrich: the joyful, the hard-working, and the quiet, he supposed, though he’d known none of them well. He knew nothing of the three Templars they buried now, save that they’d come to the island and died, and that they’d not cast the spell of imprisonment.