by Marc Secchia
One glance at her mate – her Dragon – there in the shadows of his chamber, surrounded by seven Dragon Enchanters each unwearyingly holding a slumbering dragonet in his or her hands, however, disabused her of that notion. His half-lidded eyes gazed upon her with loathing.
Star.
A syllable of untrammelled spite.
Aranya raised her chin. Ardan. Shall we not be reconciled?
Never.
I hear Thoralian speaking, not Sha’aldior.
His reply was to rest a gaze of brooding, predatory patience upon her. Only the rasping breathing of a massive male Dragon filled the chamber, along with his musky, burned-oil scent – which had changed along with his state of mind, Aranya realised. No longer was it the evocative, complex, infinitely changeable scent she had come to associate with draconic magic. His servitude to the Thoralians had been effectuated with terrible entirety. The enemy’s mastery in the mental spaces. And should he escape – the ultimate assassin.
Danger. Desire. This was her beloved, still the cry of her heart after all they had been through.
Hiding her discomfited reaction, though she knew it must communicate to him through their oath bond, Aranya moved around the circle of dragonets, waking them each with a gentle touch and a quiet word.
Leandrial approached, bringing Asturbar and Iridiana.
She shivered.
Knowing her response for a premonition, the Immadian Princess picked up her train and jogged purposefully up a set of stairs to a gantry set above Ardan, where Sapphire rested under the aegis of a leading Dragon Enchantress, Sumkira by name.
The dusky woman bowed courteously. “The night passed without incident.”
“All slept well?”
“All.”
“And the Shadow Dragon’s wounds?”
“The seepage of ichor and blood has slowed, but he will tolerate none of our ministrations,” replied Sumkira. “The dragonets’ shield remains inviolate.”
“Good.” Aranya rubbed her arms, thinking upon the threat of a Chameleon Shapeshifter – their kind had tracked her from the beginning, and come within a rajal’s whisker of serving her up to a similar fate to that of her mother. She snapped her fingers. Dragonets, we must move. “I’ll bring him –”
Enemy!
Mercy! The air shuddered at Ardan’s upward blow, which staggered Aranya on the gantry – despite that she had not been touched, physically. She glared down at the hulking Shadow beneath her, over one hundred feet from muzzle to tail tip, and built like a stone fortress through the beam, all fire-stuffed muscle and sinew. Do not lie to me, o son of Fra’anior!
Another time, she might have laughed at Ardan’s expression. Fangs flashed in a comically agape maw; his throat worked to the tune of a massive, bemused, Harrrum-gnarr!
Aranya smiled sweetly down at him. Thou art the majesty of draconic fires incarnate, thou … I still love you, you colossal slab of onyx, alright?
Enemy …
This time, a yearning whine. Invisible pincers applied a wrenching torque to her heart. He still cared! He remembered! The Princess stifled her delight beneath an imperious mien, but suspected the Dragon was observant enough to catch the amused puff of air that crossed her smile-quirked lips, even beneath her face veil.
Dragons, Enchanters, attend.
The slim young woman exited the chamber through its massive doors trailed by fifteen persons; six white dragonets, one sapphire dragonet, seven Dragon Enchanters and the silent Shadow Dragon. Due to the mysterious power of these Chrysolitic dragonets, his automatic paw tread touched only the shielding magic; they feared that should he set paw to ground, Ardan might be able to siphon himself away through Yiisuriel’s basal rock. Therefore, they whisked him along upon an airbed.
Just occasionally, having power was fun.
Aranya’s gnarled fingers twisted into fists at her sides as she made haste, following the updated report on Leandrial’s progress. Trust that old sludge-dwelling rebel to surprise everyone with an early morning arrival, right on the heels of the stream of refugees who had poured in all night. She appraised the data. No sign of a Chameleon infestation – yet. The protective protocols appeared faultless, but Chameleons were notorious for their shiftiness, if she could excuse the pun, being far better at camouflage even than the legendary Scorpiolute slayers. Yuaki’s report had been incontrovertible. Somewhere amongst thousands dwelled an impostor.
Yiisuriel. What else can we do to pin this Chameleon Shapeshifter down? What vectors have we missed?
Concentrating fiercely upon the thought-speed tête-à-tête with her ally, Aranya was nonetheless aware of her unbound hair yearning unsubtly toward Ardan, as though caressed by a zephyr purposed for them alone. Glance over her shoulder? The Enchanters glanced away in sevenfold concert, embarrassed at being caught staring. The dragonets started giggling, while Ardan’s temperature seemed to leap hundreds of degrees between breaths.
Catching hold of her errant locks, she sternly ordered them to behave.
They did anything but.
So much was churning inside of her as she reached the main hangar level, Aranya thumped her shoulder painfully against a doorframe and then stubbed her right smallest toe for good measure on a battle-axe that lay discarded just beyond. Why was it always the smallest toe that hurt the worst? She limped on quickly, trying to regather her poise and thoughts and unexpectedly poignant sense of foreboding. Thrust work aside. Be battle ready.
Ahead, lines and knots of refugees snaked across the hangar floor as the surviving Mistral Fires waited patiently for processing by the Scholars, who were compiling, examining and comparing the personnel lists in the hope of reuniting families and relatives separated in the chaotic evacuation. She gazed past a pair of sobbing men and a dark-haired woman clutching an infant to her breast with a choked wail of relief. Here was Leandrial’s mighty muzzle wedged in beneath the hangar door, and there, beside her frankly cliff-like lip, the beautiful Iridium Dragoness helped the last few stragglers make the descent to the stone floor.
“… burns,” the Immadian heard. “Found under … how, Makul? How?”
Peripherally, she noticed the husband, most likely, curving his arms about both woman and child … the thin wail of the hurting infant making Aranya’s steps stutter and turn of their own accord, drawing her toward them even as she directed an apologetic smile toward Iridiana. Tiny detour.
The Princess reached out. “Be healed, little one.”
A startled gurgle met her touch, mellowing into a coo that turned at once to baby laughter, as though she had tickled his tummy. That was cool, refreshing water to a thirsting soul.
“What?” spluttered the man, Makul.
The woman whispered, “The Star … t’was the Star …”
Absently, treading the paths of her too-dim foresight, Aranya said over her shoulder, “Bring him to me later. I will treat him further.” Better still, she should make herself useful in the infirmary.
As a young woman, she possessed a light tread and a natural grace that superseded her royal training. As a Shapeshifter, she moved like a hunting Dragoness, her magical and draconic senses augmenting her five Human senses to an almost preternatural degree. Aranya drifted between people like pollen upon a zephyr. Listening. Striving. It must be the Chameleon. He was here somewhere; she knew it. There went the former Marshal Chanbar and his family, a slim teenager in their midst casting an inscrutable glance in Iridiana’s direction. Her? No. Could Chanbar be hiding sinister motives toward the new Marshal, just now riding his girlfriend’s paw down into the congregation of his people? He would bear watching. She tagged a note to Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron. Could the Chameleon be Iridiana herself? Now, there was an intriguing possibility.
Her mind snapped to attention. Those thin white streamers of the wards, visible suddenly in her sixth sense, played like a veil across the Dragoness Iridiana’s face as she pressed forward into the hangar. Aranya’s unique strands were present, but there were other, deeper layers to t
he powerful wards. Strands hoary with age. Strands woven of draconic languages born aeons before Humankind had walked the surface of the Islands above the Cloudlands, describing magic unfamiliar to her. Why had she never noticed before? Of course, these great Air Breathers had powers and capabilities all of their own. Fascinating. Complex. Rich, nuanced draconic language given shape and form, caressing the faces and bodies of refugees as they passed through into Yiisuriel’s cavernous spaces, touching, lighting, coming alive now to Iridiana’s presence, reacting –
BONG! BONG!
Flashes of white fires magic exploded across Aranya’s vision, dazzling her, but she was intently attuned to the pandemonium exploding both around her and in the mental space as the highest level of alert she had ever experienced turned the mind crimson at all levels. The drop-everything-else protocol, they laughingly but charily called this one. Life or death. Blue-robed Enchanters raced out of hidden alcoves. Grunt Dragons moved to close off the surrounding passageways, whilst the scattered Overminds in every nearby hangar raced to the connecting entrances. Leandrial’s voice sounded particularly aggrieved as she boomed – nasally, for the hangar door had slid downward to entrap her muzzle – for someone to identify the danger. Asturbar crouched immediately; he and Nyahi were surrounded by multiple, ultra-dense layers of magical shielding as if they were the source of the complaint, but she could still hear the soldier cry:
“It must be the Chameleon!”
Yiisuriel thundered, NO, YOU!! THE LITTLE … ABOMINATION!
Chaos reigned within that shield bubble. Aranya’s hand snapped out, breaching a host of deathly protocols before they could harm Iridiana. She demanded, Yiisuriel, what is this?
THAT CREATURE SHALL NOT ENTER!
Trying to wrestle through all these powers closing in upon the hangar, to prevent them from crushing the helpless refugees, she cried to the air, Which creature? Where’s the danger?
She could not fathom the kickback Yiisuriel’s incoherent psychic thrashing produced – as tight-knit as the mental network was, she realised, that very interdependency could be its weakness. The Air Breather seemed maddened beyond reason; not paralysed, but her reaction was more akin to a Human struggling for words as nameless emotions screamed for release, only on a scale multiplied many tens of thousands of times by the innate power of her mind. She was the structure and the boundaries of their mental network, and the repository of the Lost Islands lore. Now, Aranya poured healing and calm into them, momentarily taking command, but the Air Breathers acted as a group to immediately wrest it back – augmenting their control, their hold on the area bounding Asturbar and Iridiana, returned to her man … and the levels of their ire rose far beyond the dangerous, a dark and terrible rage ruling them as they prepared to strike!
Aranya shrieked at a pitch calculated as much to break through the agonising mayhem in her own mind as everyone else’s: Order! Order in the mental space! What are these accusations, Yiisuriel?
Yiisuriel howled, CHAOS! ABOMINATION! DESECRATION OF YORE! KILL IT NOW!
No! This was about Iridiana! Aranya called urgently, She’s an ally! Let me explain – Yiisuriel, no! I forbid –
DIE, THOU FIEND!!
Always, under her greatest duress, Aranya knew her instinct was to protect, to succour those she loved, to draw them to her bosom. Thus it was that she flung herself in a seemingly slow, never-ending dive toward Asturbar and Iridiana, the foci of the Air Breathers’ malcontent – but her soul moved beyond, and her Dragoness with her, marshalling in a fractional instant the combined strength of Ri’arion, Zuziana and Leandrial herself to deny the thunderbolt of pure, intensely complex fractal magic that their own allies unleashed.
It seemed her cheek merely kissed the cool stone, but the full weight of the Island-World crashed against the back of her skull.
Unnnhhh! she spiralled into darkness.
* * * *
A star guttered.
A Star Dragoness, fallen.
Extinguished.
Light glimmered in the Shadow Dragon’s awareness, radiating through the vector he had come to understand represented his oath connection with Aranya. So faint. So enfeebled, it could barely summon so much light as the farthest-travelling mote which leaped from a bonfire’s skyward-dancing heart might essay before a fatal instant snuffed out its febrile beauty.
Her pain was his. Her suffering, his penance. Her expiration, unthinkable.
He reacted mindlessly, reduced in that instant to a level more fundamental even than the primal imperatives of life, to a response of the soul – that part of him which could never be chained – as he cleaved to that spark with every last drop of his strength, and fanned it. Delicately. Desperately. Irrationally, yet with mounting joy as he felt a deft, distinctly otherworldly touch enable his mind to subvert the shackles, and with a contortionist’s miraculous ease, shake itself free.
ARAANYAA!
Her body juddered upon the stone in response to his yearning.
Meantime, Leandrial roared, What have you done? The Star –
I will evict the abomination! Yiisuriel declaimed, her speech rife with murderous overtones. Much have I suffered within the corridors of my upper reaches, and much more below, but this desecration I will never tolerate. Never! I swear this upon my eternal fires. In all my centuries of life, never did I imagine that a whelp of Iosaxxioa should dare to step paw in my halls! Take it away! Away, thou loathsome Chaos Beast! Flee and never return, and let thy miserable life be wracked by the wrath of holy Fra’anior for all eternity!
Iridiana is a fledgling Shapeshifter, Leandrial cried, levering the broken hangar door open with her forepaw.
Ardan gaped from one to the other. That was – it was her who had just touched his mind! Small wonder she had been able to subvert the Thoralians’ plan, for they had never encountered her like, and neither for that matter, had he. He wore bruises aplenty to prove it.
Shapeshifter … but what kind?
Quick as his thoughts were, the battle between Leandrial and Yiisuriel escalated as the Air Breather boomed, More the fool are you for sheltering such –
Who is a fool, Yiisuriel?
YOU ARE, LEANDRIAL!
The other Dragoness hissed, It is you who lacks understanding, great one. Iridiana is a Chaos Shifter, the first of her kind. She is good.
YOU BENIGHTED FOOL, AS YOU ALWAYS HAVE BEEN REGARDING THESE LITTLE ONES! YOUR BARRENNESS BLINDS YOU TO THE TRUE PERIL!
Ardan bit his tongue in horror. That was beyond insult.
On the hangar’s unforgiving stone, Aranya stirred and moaned, but he could not reach her. Sapphire … it’s me. I’m back. Get me out of here. I have to help. The mite hesitated, clearly unwilling to believe him. Ardan would not have believed himself. Gnashing his fangs, he could only gaze upon the debacle – and turn his attention to the Immadian Princess. With his limited means he tried to reinvigorate her, to give of himself through their bond. She must feel his return! She must shine!
Flee, thou ill-starred child of Chaos, Yiisuriel thundered in measured, rolling tones. Flee, and never return. I and the brethren of the Air Breathers have spoken our final word on this matter. And you, Aranya – you must shun this abomination, too, before the dread evil of Chaos destroys us all.
The crazy girl shifter popped into a dragonet form now, hissing, He whom I destroyed is called Thoralian, your archenemy.
Yiisuriel snapped, SILENCE, THOU MITE!
The man-mountain of a Marshal put in, How dare you injure Leandrial, Iridiana and Aranya herself? I –
GET OUT! YOU AND YOUR ACCURSED PIECE OF CHAOS FILTH! NEVER SHALL YOU ENTER MY PORTALS AGAIN!
He had never heard draconic speech akin to this – only, perhaps, that in his most fevered nightmares he had imaged Dramagon the Red could twist his speech with such nuances of execration, abhorrence and vitriol. Whatever could have moved the great Air Breather, always a measured if implacable voice amongst the Dragonkind, to attack a youngling like this? Every bone in his body
, every iota of the fire and magic that made him Dragonkind in his own right, protested that this was wrong, ignominious, unprecedented.
The Iridium Dragoness had conspired with Aranya to bring a Thoralian low. Now Yiisuriel sought to cast her out?
Ardan shook his great head slowly, with care for its tenderness. A ragged whisper escaped his lips. Strength, Iridiana. Aye. Just look at her courage now, the proud but not haughty tilt of the chin that said, ‘I have integrity. I am a force to be reckoned with.’ It reminded him of none more than his own Aranya.
Iridiana said, For all your great wisdom, Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron, your speech only heaps dishonour upon your own conscience. Asturbar, will you take us away from here?
Bravo, Iridium, he breathed, and felt Leandrial’s regard snap to him. Aye. I am back, he said even more quietly and privately to the Land Dragoness. Muster thy courage, great one of dauntless service; moreover, my noble friend. When the Star knows of my restoration, she shall be revived. And we shall not stand for this travesty.
The fires of Leandrial’s mighty single eye fixed upon him, swirling with the tides of her burning emotions. Then, as the hangar door rose again, her immense paw hove to in the gap where even Genholme had inserted her metallic frame in an attempt to attack the danger – she had to steady her wrist upon the rock – to gather Iridiana and Asturbar to herself in an unmistakably maternal gesture. Her paw curved tenderly; her hearts’ fires, even more so.
Then, she passed into the morning’s mists steaming off Yiisuriel’s flanks, and was gone.
Chapter 15: Song of Chaos
Manly Shoulder pillow. Aranya awoke to the curious sensation of Zuziana withdrawing from the forefront of her awareness, the better to observe her reaction. What was this? Despite that she was accustomed to her best friend’s predilection for high jinks, one never quite knew what the Remoyan, diminutive in stature but immense in mischief, might be plotting.
