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.His claws were painted with white dust.Flame still flickered around his bared teeth.Screams and roars filled the night.Three other dragons flapped behind him, spitting flame and fending off arrows.‘Durnus!’ Towerdawn boomed, almost deafening them.‘It’s time to leave!’‘That it is, Old Dragon!’‘Climb aboard!’ Towerdawn forced the edge of his mighty wing into the corridor, and the mages clambered aboard as quickly as their weak limbs let them.Once Elessi was safe, Modren turned to Jeasin, hand held out for her to grab.Towerdawn was slowly losing his footing.Arrows clattered off his head.‘Jeasin! Come on!’ shouted the mage, but Jeasin wasn’t moving.She stood in a circle of rubble, staring about wildly.Her keen ears could hear the sounds of guards and soldiers running to them.She bit her lip.Her new world was crumbling like the corridor.‘No,’ she said, backing away.Pissing your luck up the wall.The phrase ran through her mind over and over again.No.She could still turn this around.‘I’m stayin’ here!’‘You’re what?’Jeasin waved her hands.‘I’m stayin’ here!’‘Have you gone mad?’ Durnus was incredulous.‘I’m no more mad than you two! I’ve been dragged around enough already.I understand this place.I’ve got a chance ‘ere.’‘Suit yourself!’ shouted Modren.‘Let’s go Towerdawn!’As the dragon wrenched himself free of the broken wall, Durnus stared into the corridor.Jeasin stared right back.They would never have known, but their eyes met then.‘If you see Farden…’ she yelled.‘I will tell him!’Jeasin nodded, and that was that.Jeasin had chosen her path.Its name was Malvus, the ruler of the Arka.A path along a knife-edge, true, but a better path than Tayn could have ever offered.As the great dragon launched himself from the wall and into the cold air over the clamouring city, Jeasin threw herself into the rubble.She ignored the pain of the broken marble grazing her hip, of the jagged glass scraping at her skin.Then, like a true professional, she took a breath and began to scream.‘Help!’Chapter 17“Whales are curious creatures.As old as the dragons and as fickle as the wind, they are seldom seen these days.I hardly find it a surprise.Why should a whale come to sing its song for us, when all it receives in gratitude is a spear in the back.Oil and meat are not worth the silence of its song.”From ‘The Edda of the Sea’ by Captain NorfumliIt was said that a cup of hot farksa could cure any ailment short of a missing limb.It was doubtful how true that was, but there was one thing it could cure like no other, and that was a cold morning.The storm had broken in the early hours.The wind blew itself out and the rain had slunk away to the south.A sliver of moon had shown its face in the west; a split-bone pendant dangling in a sky thick with clouds.It played hide and seek with them until the sun chased it away.With the sunrise came a calm, bitterly cold morning.Breath like pipe-smoke rose from the sailors and soldiers on deck, like steam from a battlefield.The deck resembled one too.The storm had wrought a warlord’s path across the Waveblade.‘There’s a hair in my farska,’ muttered Eyrum, darkly.He had spent most of the night making friends with the bottom of a bucket.Like Farden, he was not fond of ships and stormy seas in the slightest.Farden sipped his steaming hot cup gingerly.He too had been at the bottom of a bucket.‘Better keep that quiet, otherwise everybody will want one,’ he whispered.‘You’re lucky, Siren.I got a splinter in mine,’ Roiks eyed his farska.‘Oh, tell a lie.Sliver of parsnip.’ He fished it out with a pair of rope-stained fingers and slurped it up eagerly.The bosun looked exhausted.Deep, dark rings surrounded his eyes.‘This ship looks a mess,’ Farden said, eyeing the tangled rigging around his boots and the ugly broken tip of the mizzenmast.‘Give it an hour.I’ll guarantee it’ll look as though we just sailed though a meadow, not a storm.’‘Mhm.’ Farden wasn’t so sure.Eyrum was still trying to get the hair out of his cup [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]