Bracing herself against the binnacle, Ruha rolled her pebbles between her palms and called upon her stone magic. The rocks began to buzz and shake, vibrating so violently that it hurt her bones to hold them. She tossed the stones up before her face, and there they hung, sput- tering and whirling around each other like angry wasps.

Recovering from its initial shock, the dragon ceased its flailing and stopped trying to wheel on its attacker. It beat its wings more slowly and contented itself with stay- ing aloft.

"I said now, Witch!"

Fowler's eyes were locked on the dragon, and Ruha knew what concerned him. Smaller wyrms than this could spew fire and acid twice the length of the Storm

Sprite's harpoon lines, and the witch had no illusions about what would happen if such a spray caught the little cog. The serpent's neck began to curl toward the Storm Sprite.

"Wait no longer!" Fowler pleaded.

At last, a faint sapphire gleam appeared inside the pebbles. Ruha blew upon the swirling stones, at the same time breathing the incantation of a wind spell. They sizzled away, screeching like banshees and trailing a rib- bon of blue braided light. The dragon had almost brought its head around when the pebbles tore through its wing and blasted its flank, spraying shards of shattered scales in every direction. The wyrm stiffened and dropped toward the water, but when its belly touched the heaving sea dunes, it roared and once again lifted itself into the air.

Fowler's face paled from green to yellow. "I was a fool to listen to you, Witch! To think a woman who'd take a slaver's coin could know dragons-"

"Captain Fowler, wait." Ruha wrapped an arm around the binnacle, then pointed at the wyrm. "The spell has only begun its work."