The Journey to Dragon Island Read online

  Brine’s eyes filled up with furious tears. “You can’t do this! Kaya, please, Tom’s still in the castle. He hasn’t done anything to you. Are you really going to let him die?”

  “If Peter’s plan succeeds, he’ll have plenty of time to go back for them,” said Kaya. “And by then we’ll be far away.” His voice trembled; his eyes filled with an awful resolution. “Please try to understand. We can’t captain the ship if the former captain is on board. Hiri and Ebeko have put the crew to sleep, but the spell will break soon. I’m going to explain there’s been a terrible accident and we are the only survivors. I’ll tell them we have to set sail straightaway or Marfak will erupt into the sea and kill us all. I need you to help me convince them. They’ll listen to you.”

  The fire in Brine’s throat turned into a volcano. When they had forced Kaya to give up the dragon eggs, they hadn’t just pushed him into a corner, she thought; they’d pushed him off the edge of sanity. She backed away from him. He really believed she’d give in, just like that, and do what he said.

  Kaya put a hand out and gently stroked a tear from her cheek. “I’m doing this for you, Oshima. I told you, I stole your memories once, and I won’t do it again. I know you’d never be happy living on the island. I will captain the Onion for the time I have left and you’ll help me. When I die, you’ll take over from me. Trust me, it’s better this way.”

  “Better? Better for Tom and Cassie and Ewan to die? Better for the crew to live as your slaves?” Brine threw herself at him, trying to wrestle the staff from his hand. Ebeko ran and pulled her off and held her around the waist as she kicked and struggled, and Kaya watched sadly. He looked sorry; that was the worst thing. As if he genuinely regretted what he was about to do, but he was going to go ahead and do it anyway.

  “What would you prefer?” he asked sadly. “Tell the truth and set off a fight in which most of us will be killed, or accept the inevitable? Cassie will understand. Either Peter will go back for her in time or she’ll get the heroic end she’s always dreamed of. Maybe one day people will tell tales of her last heroic battle against the one enemy she couldn’t defeat. Tragedy has a special appeal, you know. It makes a story get into your heart and stay there.”

  “No, it doesn’t!” Brine shouted. “Tragedy just means people die.”

  The tip of Kaya’s staff began to glow. “You still don’t understand, do you?” he said. “You’re young, and your memories of Orion’s Keep are lost. We’ll make new memories together—starting now. Remember your duty as my daughter.”

  Brine’s thoughts swam. “What about my duty to my friends?”

  The lines around his mouth grew hard. “Your friends are bravely sacrificing their lives at this very moment. You can’t do anything about it, so you might as well just accept the fact. The sooner you do, the easier it’ll be for you.”

  Brine felt her eyes begin to close. Maybe Kaya was right. She felt like she was a ship being swept along by the sea. She couldn’t control the direction she was taking, but she could decide whether she sank or stayed afloat. Kaya was going to do this anyway, so she might as well make the best of it, stay afloat, do what he wanted. Besides, she was tired of fighting.

  Then she heard a laugh, and her eyes snapped open.

  Kaya nearly dropped his staff.

  Mind control, Brine thought. Kaya’s staff was full of spells, and of course one of them would be mind control. The First Magus had to control his people. Brine sagged back, resting her whole weight on Ebeko, and then she kicked back.

  Ebeko let go of her with a startled yell. Brine kicked her again then ran, tearing past the frozen crew and through the open hatch to the underdeck. She heard Kaya’s voice. “Don’t worry—she can’t go anywhere.”

  Brine slammed the hatch and locked it, then dropped down the steps. She stood, panting. She was trapped. All she could do was hide and hope the spell wore off the crew before Kaya found her. She ran past the hammocks and Trudi’s galley and on into the place where Peter always hid, the small space between packing crates at the back of the ship. Some of the boxes from the castle were here, too. A few of them held books, but others were full of sand that glittered with flecks of gold. Of course, if the magi were going to steal the Onion, they’d want gold to fund their voyage.

  Then something stirred beside her. A patch of cold that wasn’t there a moment ago.

  “I was wondering when you’d show up,” said Marfak West.

  CHAPTER 31

  After the extinction of the dragons, the magi tried to re-create them. They cast spells on various animals and birds on the island, but instead of dragons, they created monsters, which people called dinosaurs. These animals are persistent and intelligent, and some of them can even be trained.

  (from STORIES OF APCARON)

  Peter watched the teradons soar closer. He wasn’t too worried—he’d seen Boswell chase off a whole flock of them on the Onion, and he didn’t expect these would be any different. Most of them began circling as soon as they came near the balloon, and Boswell soared out to meet them. But one of them came straight for the balloon, its claws outstretched, and Peter saw the glint of gold around its leg. Peter aimed a push spell at it. It veered aside, but the basket swung wildly as well.

  Stella grabbed hold of a rope. “They’re Marapi’s,” she said. “I don’t believe this. She’s trying to stop us.”

  Of course she was, Peter thought; they should have expected this. They were about to change the island forever, and Marapi wanted to keep everything the same. She wanted to stay in charge. Everyone said that magic corrupted, but it seemed that any type of power could corrode the mind until only the desire for more power remained.

  He leaned out and watched the teradons. They were keeping well away from Boswell, but they weren’t fleeing, either. Peter pushed at another pair, and the basket swung backward. Aldebran Boswell’s third law of motion, he thought—for every action there was an opposite reaction. The balloon already felt unstable. He couldn’t just keep hitting the teradons out of the way.

  “Take us lower,” said Peter. Boswell screamed at some nearby teradons and they scattered, but seconds later they came back, keeping their distance for now, but for how much longer?

  Stella adjusted the heatstones, and the balloon sank lower in the sky. Boswell landed on the edge of the basket, making it swing even more. They had to finish this quickly, Peter thought. Leaning over the basket’s edge, he saw a dull red crack running in a diagonal stripe about halfway up the volcano on the coastal edge of the island. “Aim for there,” he told Stella. “Keep the balloon as steady as you can.”

  Stella nodded and tugged on one of the ropes, releasing a panel of fabric on the balloon. A gentle hiss of escaping air came from overhead and the balloon dropped sharply, making Peter’s stomach lurch. At the same moment, a group of teradons plunged straight for them.

  Peter swept up a handful of magic and drew a quick spellshape to push them all back. He managed to catch two of them, and they collided and spun away, shrieking in pain. Peter watched, feeling slightly ill. He didn’t like hurting things with magic, he decided, and the knowledge made him glad. Whatever kind of magician he turned out to be, he was not going to be like Marfak West, who’d hurt people for fun.

  The ground swung dizzyingly, not too far below. At this rate, they were going to fly straight into Marfak’s Peak. Peter held on to the dragon eggs to keep them steady. Some saying about not putting all your eggs in one basket flashed through his mind. “We’re too low now,” he said worriedly. “Take us back up.”

  “I can’t,” said Stella. “The heatstones are running out.”

  Peter grabbed Boswell as he swooped past and pushed him under the balloon. The dragon struggled as teradons squawked, then he blew out a gust of orange flame that disappeared into the balloon’s canopy. Peter grinned in triumph. “Now we have heat,” he said.

  The balloon billowed out and their descent slowed. Boswell seemed to understand what Peter wanted him to do and starte
d breathing out fire in little gusts, enough to provide some lift without setting the balloon alight.

  Then Peter heard a shriek behind and turned to see three teradons diving together. He reacted without thinking, sweeping his hands around to bat the teradons aside, and sent the basket into a swinging spiral. The box of dragon eggs slid sideways, and so did Boswell.

  “Peter, look out!” shouted Stella.

  Peter swung around, too late to do anything. Boswell’s next flaming breath set the box of eggs alight. For a second, the flames leaped high, and then, as if all the heat had been sucked out of the air, the fire went out.

  There was a moment of shaky silence. Stella grabbed Boswell. “That was close.”

  Peter could only stand and stare. Stella didn’t understand what had just happened. Dragon eggs needed two things to hatch—fire and magic—and now they had both. Back on Marfak West’s ship, Boswell’s egg had absorbed fire from all around it, sat dormant for a minute or so, and then it had exploded.

  He looked at the eggs, all four of them, and then he looked up at the fragile canopy of the balloon. “Look after Boswell,” he said.

  He put one hand on the box of eggs, put his other on the starshell in his pocket, and thought about how he needed to get down to the mountainside, right next to that long crimson crack in the rock.

  “Peter, what are you doing?” asked Stella.

  Magic pooled in Peter’s hand and flared to life, and the world shifted.

  * * *

  Another teradon shrieked, but the sound was suddenly far away. Peter was sure Stella must have shouted, too, but he didn’t hear her at all. His feet hit solid rock, and he stumbled and almost fell. A sudden gust of smoke set him coughing. He’d cast the spell exactly right, setting himself down just a few steps away from the crack in the mountain.

  Looking up, Peter saw the balloon dipping toward him and teradons still circling. He reckoned he had about a minute before the eggs started to hatch, and when they did, they’d draw in every scrap of magic from the area and then explode. The only thing Peter could do was to leave the eggs here and magic himself back to the balloon while he still had time. With a bit of luck, the explosive hatching would rupture the mountain. The dragons might survive, and he and Stella would have a chance to get away.

  But “might survive” wasn’t good enough—not after he’d come this far.

  “This was a stupid plan right from the start,” said Peter, dragging the box of eggs up to the scarlet crack in the volcano. He half hoped Marfak West would be listening, but there was no response from the magician’s ghost. Fine. He didn’t need Marfak West’s help anyway. Peter pulled his sleeves down over his hands to protect them from the heat of the eggs, then he picked the first one up and placed it carefully on the ground. Smoke coiled around it, not all of it from the volcano.

  If the four eggs hatched along the crack in the mountain, it might be enough to blow out the whole mountainside, but he couldn’t leave the little dragons to die in the lava. If he waited, he might be able to grab each dragon as it hatched. He wasn’t sure how he’d get away then, but he’d think of something.

  The second egg trembled as he set it down.

  If he survived this, Peter promised silently as he placed egg number three, he’d leave all the planning to Brine forever. Brine thought about things like teradons attacking just when everything was going well.

  The fourth egg was so hot when he picked it up that his sleeve caught fire, but the flames vanished straight into the egg. Peter put it down where he was standing—there wasn’t time for anything else—and scrambled back to crouch in the scrubby grass behind a rock. He wished he’d asked Tom how fast lava moved, but surely it couldn’t be that fast. Rock was still rock, after all, even if it was hot, and rocks weren’t known for their speed. He might still have time to grab the baby dragons as they hatched and run before Marfak erupted completely.

  The first egg began to wobble, and then its shell blazed white as it burned with magic.

  A rope hit the ground at Peter’s feet.

  “Peter!” yelled Stella. “Climb!”

  He hadn’t even noticed the balloon coming close; he’d been so intent on the dragon eggs. He jerked his head up and saw Stella hanging out of the basket right above him, so close that he could almost grab her hand.

  He stood up and waved his arms at her. “Stella, there’s no time. Go higher! Quickly—the eggs are hatching.”

  The first egg exploded.

  Fire shot skyward in a roar as if the world had been torn in two. A rush of wind threw Peter backward. He landed flat on his back, the air knocked out of him. Above, he saw Boswell soaring up to safety, the circling teradons torn apart by the blast, and the balloon collapse in on itself and then come tumbling down.

  CHAPTER 32

  Never be last to leave any structure that is falling apart.

  (from THOMAS GIRLING’S BOOK OF PIRATING ADVENTURE)

  Kaya’s estimate of an hour had been optimistic: Orion’s Keep was already starting to fall apart. Tom pulled a lump of stone off the battlements. Stone ought to be one of the most solid things in the world, yet it crumbled to nothing between his fingers. His vision swam as he looked over the side. He knew the castle hadn’t risen in the sky, but the ground looked farther away than ever. He could just about see Stella’s balloon, skimming rapidly around the slopes of Marfak.

  “Tim? Trudi?” said Ewan into the speakstone. No one answered. “Useless thing,” he said, hurling it over the side of the castle. “I knew we shouldn’t have trusted that magician. Magicians are all the same.”

  “Apart from Peter,” corrected Tom automatically. He saw movement in the sky near the balloon, and his heart jumped. “Are those teradons?”

  Ewan watched for a moment. “Don’t worry about Peter,” he said. “He’ll be all right. We need to find a way out of here.”

  Tom didn’t want to argue with Ewan, but Peter was about to fly into a volcano hanging from a balloon made of flammable material and with teradons chasing him. If Tom were making a list of things that were all right, that wouldn’t even make it onto the page.

  Tom tried to breathe steadily. His head felt funny. It was probably the height, or the fact that height wouldn’t be a problem much longer. “Just because Kaya hasn’t come back yet doesn’t mean he won’t,” he said. “Brine won’t let him leave us. There’s probably just been some holdup.”

  “Our problem is a lack of holdup,” said Ewan as one of the four corner towers started to collapse in on itself. “Is there another way out? Remember how we got trapped at Magical North and found a tunnel?”

  Cassie cast a glance over the side of the castle, and her face turned greenish. “I think we’ve already established that there are no tunnels. Tom, do you still have that finding stone you were talking about?”

  Of course. Tom got it out and rubbed it hard. “How do we get off this castle?” he said.

  Amber magic speared out and headed directly down.

  “That figures,” said Ewan.

  Cassie gave them a shaky smile. “It could be worse. Let’s assume we’re on our own, then. We need rope, or something we can turn into rope. It’s a long climb down, but we can do it.”

  “And Kaya will come back for us,” said Tom determinedly. “Or Peter will.”

  “Yes. One of those two.” She took a few unsteady steps toward the nearest door, then paused and straightened. Her hand crept up to grip the emerald around her neck. “I don’t know about you,” she said slowly, and some of the fire returned to her voice, “but I find that sitting around on disintegrating castles is exciting for a few minutes, but after that it gets really quite dull. Let’s keep ourselves busy, shall we?”

  They gathered ropes, sheets, anything that could be cut into strips and tied together. Tom gathered a couple of small books from the library. Many of the shelves were already empty, and Kaya’s secret under-floor stash of books was gone, too.

  “We’re going to climb down, remember,
” said Cassie. “You won’t be able to take anything with you.”

  Tom nodded as he stuffed the books into a bag. They’d never be able to tie all of this together into a rope, and as for climbing down, maybe Cassie and Ewan could do it, but he definitely couldn’t.

  But at least it gave them something to do while they waited to be rescued—because they would definitely be rescued. Tom kept hoping through all the long minutes during which Kaya failed to come back for them. Kaya was with Brine, and Brine wouldn’t let him leave them here.

  Then the air trembled, and a roar of fire and smoke tore Marfak’s Peak in two. The seaward side of the volcano vanished under a fog of thick black smoke.

  “Something’s happening,” said Ewan. He could have been commenting on the weather.

  Tom nodded. That would be Peter, saving the dragons and the island. That was good. He’d probably guess they were still stuck on the castle, and Stella would bring the balloon back for them. They’d have to write the whole story down later so they could send it back to Barnard’s Reach.

  A piece of the castle battlements fell away, then another of the corner turrets crumbled and slid off into the sky. Tom tied knots faster. It would be all right, he promised himself. Peter would come back for them, or Brine would be back soon. Brine always came up with a plan; she wouldn’t leave them here.

  CHAPTER 33

  Stories make us who we are. With all the millions of stories in the world, the only one that really matters is your own.

  (from THOMAS GIRLING’S BOOK OF PIRATING ADVENTURE)

  Brine wasn’t in the mood for any more surprises. She folded her arms across her chest and glared at the ghost of Marfak West. “You’re dead,” she said. He’d better be, because if he was still alive, it meant they were all in far more trouble than she’d thought.

  The ghost gave a little shrug. “Peter keeps telling me the same thing, and yet I’m still here. Weird, isn’t it? Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. The afterlife is quite tedious enough without inviting you into it.”