Return of the Exile

a dragon?”

He laughed. Not until he bit my head off. If I had known that, I would, not have gone after him with just a sword.

“Do you know where he is now?”

Do you mean is he dead? No. Do I know exactly where he is at this moment? No.

Linsha put her head back down and closed her eyes to hide the sudden surge of relief. “Fine. If you’re not going to be any help, you may leave.”

Something cold like mist trailed over her face, and she opened her eyes again to see Ian hovering very close to her. His features were clear and sharp as crystal in the starlight and the look on his face was sad.

I did love you in my own way, he told her softly. But there is another who is far more worthy of you. Stay alive for him. Watch out for the sharks.

Sharks? The word jabbed through Linsha on a shaft of fear. She bolted upright just as Ian’s spirit faded into the night breeze. “Ian, wait!” she called, too late.

Beside her, on Sirenfal’s other wing, Callista jerked awake. “Linsha? Who are you shouting at?”

Dazed, Linsha stared around her and realized that Ian was gone-if he had even been there. She was awake now, trembling in the chilly night, and wishing she were still asleep. Even talking to Ian in a dream was better than sitting on a sinking corpse in a vast sea while her body ached from hunger and her throat burned with thirst. She studied the sea around her hoping to see a dark mass of land, the white phosphorescence in breaking waves on a beach, or even the lights from a ship. All she saw was a tint of light on the eastern horizon foretelling the rising of the sun.

“Ian said to watch out for sharks,” she said.

“Who is Ian and how could he be talking to you now?” the courtesan asked.

Linsha shook her head to clear the cobwebs in her thoughts. “Ian is a better friend as a ghost than he was as a man. I don’t know. Maybe he’s just a phantom of my dreams. But he has a point. Sirenfal’s body will draw predators. We need to be higher.”

“She’s also sinking,” Callista said, a note of fear in her voice. “I don’t know how she stayed afloat this long, but I can see her body is deeper in the water.”

They crept off the wing vanes and sat together on the highest point of Sirenfal’s back, waiting for dawn. They were lucky in one thing-the sea was calm and the sky was clear.

When the sun rose, Linsha saw indeed that the dragon’s body was slowly sinking. Her head and neck were under water and the waves lapped up her sides almost to Linsha’s feet. Dismayed, Linsha racked her brains for a plan, for a course of action, for something that would help. What would she do with Callista when the dragon finally sank? The courtesan said she couldn’t swim, and Linsha knew she could not hold up the younger woman for long.

A shark fin sliced through the water near Sirenfal’s head and vanished underwater before Linsha could cry out.

She heard a sharp intake of breath and Callista’s hand grabbed her arm. “Did you see that?” the courtesan hissed.

They both felt a sharp tug on the corpse. A dark shape flashed by followed by a second and third. Something swirled the water near the dragon’s submerged tail, and Linsha turned to see two more triangular fins cut through the waves close behind.

“They’re all around us!” Callista cried, close to panic.

The corpse twitched and rocked a little as the sharks tugged on the scale-covered flesh. Blood swirled in the water.

And blood, Linsha knew, would attract more sharks. Anger roiled in her mind. She had to sit helplessly by while these beasts of the sea tore the dragon apart. In time they would probably kill her and Callista as well. This was not the way she wanted to die. She had survived wars and battles and duels, plagues and invasions, wounds and spells. Was she to die now in the teeth of some mindless creature that felt nothing but hunger? She would never know what, happened to Crucible or Varia, never see her parents again, never fulfill her vow to save the brass eggs. This was not right! There had to be something she could do to get herself and Callista out of this mess.

“Give me the dagger,” she said between clenched teeth.

Callista promptly handed it over. “What are you going to do?” she asked fearfully.

“I don’t know yet. Something.”

But there was nothing she could do. She had no boat, no tools, no real weapon against sharks, no help, and no escape. She sat and watched the sharks swarming around the body of her friend and tearing it to pieces underneath her.

One shark squirmed over the tatters of a wing and wriggled too close to Linsha’s feet. She looked down into its bleak, fathomless eye and stabbed it in the head. Bleeding heavily, it slipped back into the water and was immediately set upon by other sharks.

Callista began to cry behind Linsha’s back. “You can swim. Get off when you can and make a break for it.”

“For what?” Linsha said as calmly as she could. “I wouldn’t make it ten strokes.” She kicked at another shark that came too close and noticed the water was now halfway up Sirenfal’s sides. She pulled up her feet.

Sharks splashed and squirmed on both sides, tearing pieces off the dead dragon. In a few places Linsha could see the bones showing through the ragged flesh. Her anger grew sharper with fear.

All at once the body belched forth a huge bubble of trapped air and dropped deeper in the water. Callista screamed. Both women crawled to their knees and balanced precariously on the back of the sinking corpse. Linsha shouted furiously and fought off any shark that came close.

She was so preoccupied with the gray fins and the slashing teeth around her that she did not see the other gray fins that flashed by and disappeared in the swells. Nor did she pay attention to the faint voice that called in her mind.

Linsha.

Callista lost her balance and slipped into the water. Screaming, she grabbed for any hold on the polished scales. Linsha snatched her arm and managed to haul her back on the dragon’s spine. Both women clung to each other, panting and shaking as the sharks milled around in the water just an arm’s length away.

Linsha!

Linsha heard the call this time as clear and welcome as a morning bell. Her head snapped up. Her eyes lifted to the sky. “Varia?” she cried in disbelief. She turned her emotions inward and converted them to a mental cry for help, a cry she prayed her friend would hear. Varia! I am here! Hurry!

“What is it?” Callista demanded.

“Help,” was Linsha’s answer. “I hope.”

Then the sea was filled with more gray fins, but these fins were shorter, rounder, and curved. The animals that swam beneath them were fast and sleek and utterly fearless. They charged into the midst of the feeding sharks and slashed and rammed them time and again with their powerful noses. Linsha and Callista stared down in disbelief as dolphins killed several sharks and harried the determined survivors that refused to leave their meal.

The significance of the presence of dolphins dawned on Linsha like the hope of a new day. Rising unsteadily to her feet, she looked to sky and saw a small shape come diving down. It was too small to be a dragon, but it was the right size to be an owl with brown and cream feathers.

“Varia!” Linsha shouted in delight.

The owl looped around her, singing an aria of warbles and trills and screeches of pleasure. She soared up and dove again to come spiraling downward in a flight of joy.

Suddenly there was a great roar and a huge splash behind Linsha. Startled she turned around and saw all the sharks were gone. The only creatures left in the water were the dolphins and-she slowly lifted her eyes-one large bronze dragon. He floated in front of Sirenfal’s corpse, his wings half furled like sails and his bronze scales shining with water and sunlight. He lowered his head to look at her, and in that moment she stared into the depths of his amber eyes.