by Marc Secchia
She shook her head in consternation, but her smile had never been more brilliant.
“What?” he growled.
“You’ve turned into quite the despot.”
How he purred!
Chalice said, “Truly masterful, Dragon. That’s how to treat Humans.”
“Aye, I agree. Every now and again, these silly little Humans just need a subtle paw to shove them in the right direction.”
The Princess giggled, “Oh, you were inconceivably subtle, Dragon. I mean, I had no idea what you were doing. Oh, I get it now! You don’t think they still like each other, do you? I must have completely missed that.”
He snapped toward her hair. “Shut it, pipsqueak.”
“Bully.”
“I know. Isn’t it marvellous how one can learn new skills?”
“Indeed. After all, I aggravate Dragons for a living.”
* * * *
Garan’s capable apprentices could sharpen Dragon talons with the best of them. They were also a dab hand at buffing and burnishing scales. He and Chalice positively gleamed by the time they were done.
However, their friend was nowhere to be seen.
Still talking?
Hmm. Rising, he padded over toward the office despite Azania’s quiet protest. The door was shut, but the office had a window covered by curtains inside, only, they had been left open a crack. Putting his eye to the right spot, he peered inside … and almost shed his scales laughing.
He padded back to Azania. “It’s going well.”
“Well?”
“They aren’t talking.”
“No? Is something wrong? What could we have –”
“Princess, I understand it is a positive sign when two people start sucking one another’s faces, correct?”
“Dragon!”
“Grotesque, I know. What about when she grips his rump like this and squeezes so?” He made the appropriate motions with his paws.
“Dragon! They are not … are they?”
“No, it’s not what you are thinking. They are still fully clothed. Unless Humans –”
“I was not thinking – you wicked reptile!” she squealed. “Will you stop pulling my leg? You’re terrible. Oh … Jossun, was it?”
The dark-haired youth smiled uncertainly at her. “We’re meant to be closing up. Is Master Garan still in there with the lady? They must have a lot to discuss.”
“They’re friends from long ago,” the Princess said. “Tell me, is he a good Master?”
“Oh, ma’am – the best! I do hope you have some work for us, though. The Master has been very worried lately. He keeps it to himself, but I hear him walking up and down sometimes at night. He’ll say he’s looking after the little ones, ma’am, but …”
She said, “We hope they can agree. Please, call me Azania. We’re of an age, aren’t we? I’m seventeen.”
“Seventeen? But you look like a doll, barely twe – uh, sorry, ma’am. I just thought –”
“That’s alright. A lot of people say that. My people are petite to begin with, and I am one of the smaller ones of a small nation. I’m tough, though.” She flexed her right bicep. “See?”
“Impressive,” he lied.
“What’s impressive is this place,” she smiled back. “Quite the team.”
“We all look after each other. We have to. Most of the kids here don’t know their parents, or they lost them in the wars. Sometimes kids are just dumped on our doorstep. Not everyone is as good as the Master – ah, here he comes.”
The pair were taking pains not to look as if anything had happened, but Dragon saw his fingertips brush hers as they approached.
Garan flicked his head. “Jossun. Gather the troops, lad. We’ve something important to discuss. Yardi-mae, please come by tomorrow evening. We should have an answer for you by then – but I’d like to invite you for dinner, to … ah, meet the children and learn about what we do. Princess, I expect you’ll be wanted at the palace?”
“Indeed. This evening.” She wrinkled her nose. “I might have to dress up, I guess. Or, what are your feelings about women wearing trousers, Garan?”
He almost jumped out of his skin. “Uh … you’ll find I’m quite progressive, ma’am.” He tried and failed not to glance at Yardi’s legs. “It was most certainly an interesting proposition, as your Dragon suggested.”
Dragon put in dryly, “Did you clinch a deal?”
Azania gave him a warning glare which Yardi picked up on. The blacksmith’s pulse flickered wildly in her neck.
He added, “Well, I hope you explored her options, Garan – I mean, by my wings, what a slip of the forked tongue! I hope you’ll have a positive reply for us tomorrow evening. The Dragons will need all the help they can get, or I’m afraid the Skartun may choose to rearrange the seventeen kingdoms to their liking.”
The minute they were out of sight of the forge, Azania slapped his neck – hard, for her. “Dragon, I can’t believe you said that!”
Yardi growled, “What did I miss?”
“Oh, you didn’t miss anything, I believe,” he purred archly.
Azania spluttered, “Dragon! What’s gotten into you today, that you must –”
“Me?” Turning to Yardi, he said, “Confession time. Since your negotiations were taking a while, I peeked through the window. You were talking –” the woman’s eyebrows shot up “– aye, talking fluently with your hands, and your body, and then with your lips …”
Yardi turned the colour of the sunset. “You – you!”
“Just call me Dragon.”
“Azania, where did you get him?”
“Corner shop, priced to fly off the shelf.”
Gnarr-hrr-hrr, he chortled. “For my part, I got short-changed at the second-hand royal sale.”
Even Chalice smacked him for that one.
* * * *
Three days later, with travel sums having been done, goodbyes said and promises made, Dragon and Chalice set wing for the westering suns. They planned to fly all together to Hamirythe, where Dragon and the Princess would promptly turnabout and fly almost the same return journey. Two long sides of a very flat triangle, as Azania put it. The other option would have been to cool their heels at Mornine for over a week, which did not make a jot of sense.
Chalice bore Yardi upon her back.
The Dragoness did not appear overly comfortable with the arrangement, but she had requested it, claiming the need to practice for the return journey. No way was she walking from Hamirythe to Juggernaut’s lair!
Excuses. He grinned to himself. Corrupted another Dragon into doing the unthinkable. He would just change Solixambria one creature at a time.
Dragon bore Yarimda in a lightweight travel litter. She was not well enough even to sit for long periods of time, but her complaining about her mode of transportation certainly sounded lively enough. Doctor’s orders. He kept his forepaws curled about her bed. The comments could just wash off. This first stretch of a couple of hours until nightfall was just to test her out and assess if she would be able to cope with the far longer journey.
Hamirythe was within reach. He could smell it.
How had she kept her condition hidden for so long? One tough woman.
“So, you still have a deal?” Azania prompted, calling over to their friend from Dragon’s neck to where Chalice flew slipstream just behind and slightly below his left wing.
“We do. Garan plans to make everything ready by the time I return. He’ll finish up all his orders and hand the forge over to a group of his graduates, who are keen to take over the business. The children were more than excited to embark on an adventure. Over forty! I do hope Juggernaut knows what he’s getting into …”
The Princess said, “Rest assured, when he sees how they work, he’ll be more than grateful.”
Chalice put in, “You’ll need to be open with him about your relationship with Garan, but the point regarding giving orphans a hope and a future – that will not be lost upon him. Nor upon
any Grinder. We may not be the most forward-thinking Clan, but we do like to fly against a trade wind.”
“Why is the wind?” Azania asked.
The Dragoness chuckled appreciatively. “Why is the ocean breeze, o Princess?”
“Quite.”
Yarimda called weakly, “The question is, granddaughter, do you know what you’re getting into?”
Stiff-backed, she stared at her relative.
“Dear one, I do believe people can change,” she smiled. “Please don’t misunderstand; you both explained everything and I accept that. What I meant is, should all proceed as I hope, are you ready to be a mother of over forty all at once?”
The blacksmith shook her head. “I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve no idea what I’m doing. But I am getting along to be thinking about my own children, grandmother. This is a cause I could … I could thrive in. I truly believe that. I’m not saying it won’t be probably the hardest thing I have ever tried – but the most worthwhile? Aye. Best of all, I won’t be running away from my past anymore. Nor will he.”
Perceptive.
“He isn’t the only one who has changed, child.”
Oh, by his wings! This was so intimate, he could barely stand to overhear.
After a moment, he said, “She’s fallen asleep again.”
Yardi wept silently.
Chapter 18: Ocean Bright
IN FOUR LONG DAYS of flying, the pair of Dragon Rider teams crossed half the breadth of Solixambria, covering hundreds of miles with the aid of a variable breeze from the northeast.
“We’ll be flying against that all the way back,” he told Azania.
She made a face that would have shocked any decent Princesses right out of their dainty slippers.
Leaving the dense, tall forests of Dorline in their wake, they swept over a wild hill country where wooded hilltops punctuated dark green streams and patches of saltgrass. Nothing much of use grew in the briny soils. Midway through the journey, they flew across the Taribonli River, well to the north of the ruined, deserted kingdom, and then joined the busy coastal road for the run across the Hamirythe peninsula, past the rugged, windswept coastal mountains famous for their bamboo stands and man-eating tigers, and on to the edge of the Lumis Ocean once more.
The capital city, Hamir, was a gorgeous cluster of blue-tipped turrets and spires located upon the edge of a sheer white cliff that cut away into the turbulent ocean. The Ociane family was one of the wealthiest and most prominent in the kingdom, owning a massive mansion right on the cliff tops. Yardi’s father was a Lord. He would never have thought it of her. Curious what people, and Dragons, might hide beneath their scales – just as Azania had been mistaken for a robber for the first time in her life.
He had not stopped tugging her wings about that.
As Yardi directed them into the grounds of her family mansion – a pretty castle with whitewashed walls and blue turrets, for all intents and purposes, comprised of two interlocking pentagons with no less than eight towers and a permanent staff of a mere two hundred and sixty servants – the Princess reflected out loud about her upbringing in comparison to what she had seen of life so far out in the rest of the kingdoms. So privileged. All the wealth, means and station she had always taken for granted; the effortless assumption that her every care and whim would be taken care of by servants.
“I do love wandering the world in disguise,” she murmured. “Plus, there’s this teensy-weensy matter of the chance to fly wherever we wish. That is a gift, Dragon. Truly, a gift.”
“Aye, one we Dragons don’t half take for granted,” he agreed.
“Looks like the servants are awake.”
The mansion resembled a freshly disturbed anthill.
“I can’t wait to go fishing,” he said. “I’ve a yen to toss something fresh and salty down my gullet. Have to be on the lookout for Sea Serpents, I suppose. Did Yarimda tell us that the beaches are right at the foot of the cliffs?”
“Aye, in these tiny inlets. Some are only accessible at low tide.”
Deep he breathed of the saltiness in the air. Wonderful! Was it pleasure at the fresh nip of that scent, or something deeper, perhaps a connection with the oceanic demesne? He could not imagine what it was like out there – underwater, or a thousand miles from land. The ocean was said to be a realm far, far vaster than all of Solixambria.
He also realised that this would be one of the hardest leave-takings of his life.
How fond he had grown of Yarimda.
Deliberately circling in a short ways over the stark white cliffs merely so that he could appreciate the glare of Taramis upon the spume-tossed waves, Dragon crooked his neck in surprise at Azania’s exclamation:
“Look, there’s a rider coming out of town. Fast.”
“My father,” Yardi called. “I’d know that blue cloak anywhere.”
Would he be as terrified the day he returned to the family lair, or the moment they faced the open ocean, knowing there could not be the slightest mistake? Would Aria be his and Azerim hers?
He said quietly, “Azania? When we face our fears, remind me to be gracious.”
“You always are, Dragon.” A tiny hand stroked his neck scales. “Far more so than me.”
She knew exactly where his thoughts dwelled.
Yarimda stirred in his paws. “Dragon? Do me a favour?”
“Aye?”
“Call her. Call my … Wavewhisperer.”
“I don’t know how.” She sighed. “I will try. Can you tell me –”
“Ocean always rises. It knows. Why is the wind?”
In the simplest words, she broke down his unbelief. Five hearts stirred within him; a strange tingling spread from the centre of his breast across his scales and out along his wings and tail. The tips sparked, as if he were charged with electricity once more. He could not have put a talon upon what he understood inside of him, only that her words must be true in some way that defied logic.
Why is the wind? Why are the waves?
Gazing out over the Lumis Ocean, he sent forth the searching of his soul.
A sound like a soft, fluting groan built within his chest. It was not the thrilling bugle of before, but something far more personal. A lament? Almost. Nay, an expression of yearning that seemed to form deep within his bones, and resonated out of him far, far beyond the limit of what he could have imagined a simple sound could convey.
≈Wavewhisperer,≈ he sang, and almost choked up in shock before he managed to continue, ≈Friend needs … come.≈
“What was that?” his Princess asked. “So powerful. Did you just … communicate?”
“That’s … my Dragon,” Yarimda whispered.
Ah! His grief song keened within him as Chalice led the way to their landing on an open area of green lawn that abutted the cliff’s edge. Only a perfect white fence separated a walker from disaster.
He touched down with the greatest care possible, soft-pawed so as not to jolt Yarimda, but still she groaned slightly.
In a broken whisper, she said, Dragon, I thank you for your selfless service. You have brought this soul home. Perhaps on the morrow, I will ask you to take me down to the shore, and we can call for her again. She will come, you will see. She will take me home to where my heart has always been.
To the ocean. Some part of her was already out there.
He bowed deeply. Yarimda, this Dragon soul has been honoured to travel with you.
Cradling her pallet most tenderly in his paw, he carried her up to the house, to where perfect ranks of servants clad in white awaited them. Hoofbeats thundered up the stone path that led to the house. That was the only sound in all the world, save the faraway, restless voice of the ocean at the bottom of the cliffs, and the haunting cry of a seabird.
When the servants recognised Yardi-mae, a ripple ran through them. A murmuring. Some bowed, others looked openly incensed.
When they saw whom he carried in his paw, numbers began to weep.
“Raise me up that I m
ay see, Dragon.”
He tilted her bed so that she could gaze upon the faces of these she so clearly loved.
Yarimda whispered, “Oh, my dear ones, I should never have left you. I have been the cause of so much hurt. Will you ever forgive me?”
“Mother! Mother – and Yardi-mae!”
The rider leaped off his horse. An elegant, silver-haired man he was, perhaps in his seventies, but he was stained with sweat and breathless from his gallop up from the town.
“You came. Oh, you came!” he wept. “You swore you never would.”
“People make stupid oaths and foolish promises, Ivarn,” Yarimda said, holding out her arms. “Do I have a story for you –”
“I see that. You always loved to make an entrance, mother.”
“Oh, this Dragon? I picked the best, of course.”
Lord Ivarn ran to her. He enfolded her in his powerful arms, wailing like a child. After a moment, an arm reached out and beckoned to Yardi. She fell into her father’s embrace.
* * * *
Dragon, Chalice and the Princess slipped away while no-one was looking. Easy. The family had carried Yarimda off inside the house as if she were a great trophy, and why not? They promptly forgot all about their visitors.
He led them back to the cliff side, where a giant black walnut tree spread over both land and ocean a mile below. A hundred and five feet tall, the bookish Dragon within him estimated as they approached.
“I think we’ll just settle down here,” he suggested.
Azania said, “They might notice a couple of Dragons in the garden at some point, but there’s really no rush. Shall I remove our saddles? Chalice?”
“Thank you, Princess.” The yellow Dragoness blinked slowly. “I’m exhausted, but I finally understand two new things: one, why the Human tradition of hugging is important, and two, exactly why you two invented Dragon Riding.”
“That wasn’t us. Yarimda gave me the idea,” Dragon admitted.
“That was Dragon Swimming,” Azania corrected, then chuckled brightly. “Listen to me – I’m starting to sound as pedantic as you, Dragon.”
