The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (28 page)

‘Of course,’ she said, puzzled. ‘But how?’

‘Then I’ll summon the shipwrights today!’ he exclaimed.
‘You’ll need your own boat for this – a new
Spearwa
. And there’ll be some land-journeys as well as the voyage.’

A new
Spearwa. The words had taken Elspeth’s voice away, and all she could do was stare. The dog looked at her with its limpid brown eyes.

‘I’ll be sending you back to Francia, and to the Danes – and to the Snowlands,’ Edmund told her, and now the enthusiasm was clear in his voice. ‘I want to send letters of friendship to the Frankish emperor and the Danish king, to start to build alliances. And you’ll take supplies and gold to the Ice people, and to Fritha and her father. To help them rebuild after Loki, and to thank them.’

She was still speechless, gazing from him to the dog. A note of anxiety crept into Edmund’s voice. ‘What do you say, Elspeth? Will you be my messenger?’

‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘Can you doubt it? We’ll sail for you, as far as ever you want, and as often. Edmund – I don’t know how to thank you.’

‘No one could do this better than you,’ he told her. ‘And you’ll come back afterwards, and tell me of all your travels?’

‘Always,’ she promised.

Tomorrow there would be work to be done. But for now they sat together in companionship, beneath the quiet sunshine. Edmund took her hand, and Elspeth smiled as they talked, gazing across the fields to the harbour, and the open sea.

And far to the north, off the rocky coast of Hibernia, something fell from the sky.

Torment had strained his ragged wings until he could fly no more. His enemy was destroyed, and the maddening voices had gone from his head. But his belly still burned with the creature’s fire, and he was tired as he had never been.

There were cliffs ahead, grey and inviting, and he dived towards them, crashing into the water below. It cooled him, lapping over his scorched sides, and he folded his wings. He would rest here for a while, in the healing wetness. When he was whole again, he would fly...

The great rock seemed to have appeared from nowhere, the sailors said. It loomed out of the water, jagged and blue-grey, and its top, like a monstrous head, was visible even at high tide. The more superstitious of them shuddered and gave it a wide berth. But the children came to gaze at it from the cliff-top, and some of their parents told them stories of battles far away, between monsters and heroes. It would become a landmark: a monument of the times when such things flew, and changed the world around them.

The Sleeping Dragon.

Also available in the DARKEST AGE series
BOOK ONE:
THE COMING OF DRAGONS
BOOK TWO:
THE BOOK OF THE SWORD

www.bloomsbury.com

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Copyright © Working Partners 2008

First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
www.darkestage.com
www.bloomsbury.com

This electronic edition published in December 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

The moral right of the author has been asserted

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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

eISBN: 978-1-4088-2996-7

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