Shadow Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  Well, it had only been a week since her first transformation. Should she be surprised that everything felt new and strange? She had been comfortable as a Dragon Rider. But actually being a Dragon–that was different. Now she understood how Aranya must have felt, the force of the emotions driving her, the whole, incredible Dragon experience …

  She sighed, “I don’t have any powers, Ri’arion. Everyone else can burn the heavens or bring down almighty curses on their enemies and I can’t do anything.”

  “You told me Aranya couldn’t even light a cooking-fire when you first declared war on the Sylakian Empire. And you call me moons-mad?”

  “Fine, I’m a tiny Azure Dragon with an outsized self-esteem problem.”

  Ri’arion chuckled at this. Then he fell silent. Zip could practically smell the smoke rising from his thoughts back there–so very Ri’arion. Always thinking, always analysing, relentless in his pursuit of knowledge and understanding.

  The twin suns setting behind them set the Cloudlands afire. They should reach Gemalka Island soon, having departed Immadia three days before. But the winds had been contrary–unusually, for this season. Zuziana scanned the horizon, focussing her Dragon sight as Aranya had taught her. Details came alive to her senses. A flight of six windrocs, flying so low their bellies threatened to scrape the Cloudlands. A sliver of Blue moon, peeking over the stroke of the horizon as though it felt too shy to rise into the evening sky, wearing its insubstantial rings like a halo. What was that odd colour against the Blue moon? She concentrated harder, willing her eyes to provide more detail. Four rings, a crater on the surface, a strange smudge of darker colour below the moon’s rim?

  Ri’arion said, “But, my Dragon-love, you are more beautiful than the most achingly perfect suns-set.”

  Zuziana’s Dragon hearts squeezed in her chest. Suddenly, she wanted to cry. He loved her! It was the craziest thing, and it made her bounce along as her spirits lifted.

  “Since you’re so stuck on my back, I think you should give your Dragon a kiss,” she suggested, curving her head back over her shoulder and puckering up her very large Dragon lips.

  The monk chuckled, but squirmed in the saddle. “Do we have to fly all the way to Remoy Island to speak to your father, Zip?”

  “I insist, Ri’arion. In Remoyan culture, any less would be an insult to my father and mothers.”

  “Meantime, you will tease me most improperly?”

  “I’ll tease you until you steam like that volcano you used to live on top of.”

  “Steam?” said Ri’arion, scratching his neat beard. “I’ve an idea. Azure Dragons should have powers of Dragon fire, lightning and shielding, and they’re supposed to excel at special water attacks. We need to find you some water, Zip.”

  Zuziana twisted her neck around to peer at her Rider. Ri’arion sat straight-backed in his Dragon Rider saddle. A quiver of prepared fire-arrows was strapped to his left thigh. A holster on her right flank held his enormous sword, the monk’s favourite weapon–but he was equally deadly with his arsenal of throwing daggers, or just his bare hands. The Pygmy bow Zip had used to such great effect against Sylakia’s Dragonship fleet, poked out of a leather saddle-bag in front of him. Oddly, she had begun to sense the even greater powers that lurked within him–the warrior-monk’s Nameless Man powers. There was fire, similar to Dragon fire, and arcane knowledge, and the steely touch of his formidable mind. Perhaps his mind was a weapon in its own right, she thought, shivering delicately.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, frowning.

  “Uh …” Zip stumbled, ashamed of fearing her Rider. “Look, I see Gemalka ahead.”

  Ri’arion was not fooled. In a tone of stern rebuke, he said, “You think you’re small and weak for a Dragon, but I perceive your hidden potential. Perhaps we should test your powers at Fra’anior Island, as we once tested Aranya.”

  Uneasily, she murmured, “Perhaps.”

  He reached forward to pat her neck. Despite the armour-plating effect of Dragon scales, a thrill coursed along her sensitive nerves. How was it that she felt his touch–and every shift and nuance of the airstream across her body, wings and tail–so clearly? No wonder Aranya had complained about the overwhelming responsiveness of her Dragon senses.

  Ri’arion added, “Now, if that is Gemalka, we need to brief Commander Darron at once.”

  “On my way, dear Rider,” she replied.

  Zuziana trimmed her wings, starting a spiralling descent back down to the Dragonships. They had been training together each day. For all his abilities, Ri’arion was leery of leaping onto her back from a Dragonship, and Zip knew it would take her some time to become used to diving off a gantry and transforming into her Dragon form mid-air, as Aranya did so fearlessly. Ri’arion said he wanted to stand on her back to fight. All she could picture was the monk falling helplessly into the Cloudlands. Just a few days’ training, however, had seen a marked improvement in her flying abilities. She did not have Aranya’s stamina–the Amethyst Dragon had once flown for forty-three hours straight, and almost killed herself in the doing–but she could now stay aloft for four or five hours at a time without her arms and shoulders feeling as though they were ready to drop off.

  She alighted carefully on the extra landing pad which had been fixed atop the Commander’s Dragonship. Furl the claws, she told herself, those seven-inch daggers that adorned her toes in retractable, cat-like sheaths. Ri’arion unclipped the saddle and tossed down his weapons and the saddle bags.

  “Cloak, your royal lizard-ness?” he smiled, averting his eyes with a very monkish correctness that made her heart wriggle happily. He was so gallant. Not just any man would be content to wait for them to reach Remoy and formally ask permission.

  Transforming, Zip donned the garment and belted it shut. “You reprobate, insulting the royal personage so brazenly. I demand an apology at … mmm.”

  His kiss made her tingle down to her toes.

  “See?” she said. “I taught you well. Even ex-monks can learn a few tricks.”

  Zip gasped, suddenly finding herself floating a foot above the Dragonship. Seizing her by the waist, Ri’arion twirled her in the air. “I’ve a few tricks of my own,” he said. “Flying kiss?”

  “Despicable enchanter. Kiss me again.”

  * * * *

  Commander Darron opted for an attack at false dawn. During the night, the Dragonships traversed the remaining leagues to Gemalka Island. They hid beneath the level of the Island’s cliffs.

  The walls of the huge terrace lakes for which Gemalka was famed, rose steeply above the Immadian convoy. The ancients had been able to construct seamless retaining walls hundreds of feet tall, anchored immovably in the bedrock, which held the rainfall or river flow of an entire Island. Gemalka had four levels of terraced lakes with dozens of six hundred-foot waterfalls running at planned intervals from one level to the next.

  Rainbow trout, thought the Azure Dragoness. Yum! She sucked up a mouthful of water and tried to place it in the right stomach.

  Zuziana coughed and snorted water out of her nostrils. “Not that one.”

  “But it’s warm,” said Ri’arion. “Try to make some steam this time. Then we need to join the attack.”

  This time, she almost vomited.

  They took off from the edge of the lake, a vertical take-off that Zip was still working on. She flapped strongly, surging through the air toward the groups of Dragonships closing in on the Sylakian fortress from three sides.

  “They’ve seen us,” said Zip. A moment later, a gong began to sound in the fortress. “Only five Dragonships, Ri’arion.”

  “Ready to disable them?”

  “Flying ralti sheep,” gasped the Dragon, seeing one of the Dragonships already rising into the pale light of false dawn. “Were they expecting us?”

  “Probably,” grunted the monk. “Our counterattack is the logical response. What I don’t understand is why they left only five Dragonships here. That’ll barely slow our advance on Yorbik Isla
nd.”

  Zip tried to point with her wing. “There! Another … ten, at least. Behind that hill.”

  “Aha! Nice work.”

  Ri’arion quickly pulled several flags out of their saddlebags and waved them in a prearranged signal, signalling both the direction of the danger and the number of enemy Dragonships.

  The monk leaned over her neck. “I’m lighting the oil. Let’s go burn the heavens, Dragon.”

  “Aye, Rider.”

  Adrenalin pulsed through her arteries. Dragon-Zuziana’s body responded as though she had been stung. Fire roared to life in her belly; magic whispered its uncanny song in her mind. She had only known magic since meeting Aranya. She had known and feared the powers growing within her since Aranya had saved her life with her Dragon tears. But what did one do with a storm churning within? The Dragon fire that burned; a choking sensation in her throat, an awareness of stomachs and power points and valves controlling the outlet of those powers? Dragon-song swelled in her hearts at the expectation of battle. She was the weapon. It scared and thrilled her.

  She concentrated as Ri’arion had suggested she do, trying to separate out the different sensations. She should deal with them one at a time. Know the powers, accept them, welcome them as part of who she was. It was tough. Human-Zuziana feared that she might just explode with all that potential. She could not identify much of what she felt.

  Then, it was too late.

  Dragon and Rider closed swiftly with the rising Dragonships. Crossbow quarrels shot out to greet them, but their engineers had loosed them too early. Over the rushing of wind in her ears, she distinctly heard the Pygmy bow creak. Flames hissed through the air. She watched Ri’arion’s shot as it slowed in her perception, smelled the tiny trail of smoke it left in the air, and sensed her body responding as another quarrel homed in on her flying form.

  KAARAABOOM!

  A mushroom-cloud of fire filled her vision. Smoke tickled her nostrils. A Dragon’s savage laughter boomed out of her throat. She was appalled at her appetite for destruction, yet she knew she should give the Dragoness rein. Her instincts would carry Zuziana through this battle.

  The Azure Dragon twisted, picking her next target.

  “Surrender, Sylakians!” roared Ri’arion, amplifying his voice somehow. “Surrender, or be destroyed! A pass over the fortress, Zip.”

  She flowed with his request, dodging catapult-shot and arrows, homing in on the south-eastern battlement. She heard the monk muttering in what sounded like Dragonish to her ear. The catapult emplacement lining up a shot at them burst into flame. Men leaped for their lives, screaming and cursing. Ri’arion gestured to his left. Catapults creaked on their moorings, snapping, spinning to the ground. Sucking in a huge breath, the monk let rip with an invisible attack at the fortress gates. They rattled as though kicked by a giant, but held firm. He shouted in frustration.

  “The Dragonships,” said Zip, braking sharply to avoid taking a load of fragmented metal in the nose. “Ready, Rider?”

  Ri’arion slapped the release levers on the buckles holding his thigh straps closed. “Ready.”

  Zuziana targeted four Dragonships rising as a group to engage Commander Darron’s oncoming fleet. None of them had war crossbows or catapults on top of their hydrogen sacks, but they could cover each other with the weapons on their gantries. She hissed as two arrows ripped through the membrane of her right wing.

  “Steady … now!”

  Releasing his waist-buckle, Ri’arion rose to his feet and leaped down onto the Dragonship beneath them. He ran lightly along the top of the sack, opening a long gash with the point of his sword. Instinctively, she slapped a six-foot crossbow quarrel out of the air with her forepaw. Wow. That was quick. Zip picked up her monk at the nose end of the Dragonship and leaped over to the next one, only fifty feet away. The first Dragonship sighed like a hoarse old man as it deflated and sank toward the ground.

  Her unsheathed claws ripped Ri’arion’s shoulder open as she dropped him off atop the next Dragonship.

  “Sorry,” wailed Zip.

  “Forget it,” snarled Ri’arion, striking the hydrogen sack with his sword. “Quick. That catapult.”

  Zip flipped over, diving upside-down at the catapult opposite. The men aiming it at her saw the better side of wisdom and leaped for their lives. The Azure Dragoness crashed into the gantry, splintering the wooden safety railings. She smacked the catapult with her tail. The catapult fired, blasting a hole in the cabin wall of a nearby Dragonship. She saw right through into the furnace room. Fire spilled out of the broken meriatite furnace.

  “Ri’arion!” she howled, kicking away desperately. No, he was on a different Dragonship–flying! Briefly, the monk steadied himself with his magic to complete an impossible hundred-foot bound to another Dragonship. He caught the netting expertly. Tail pointed at the explosion, Zuziana felt a wave of heat roll over her body. She scudded forward, sweeping toward the monk–but he was agile enough to dodge her flailing paws and grab hold of her tail one-handed.

  “Don’t panic, rajal,” he grinned. “Next?”

  She dropped the monk onto the last Dragonship in the group near the fortress. His great sword slashed the sack repeatedly. In the distance, Darron’s Dragonships had reoriented on the intended ambush and the battle was already joined. She saw quarrels buzzing angrily back and forth. A Dragonship flying the Immadian royal purple drifted toward the ground, its cabin dangling by a single hawser.

  Two warriors had clambered up the netting to engage Ri’arion. Zuziana threw herself back toward the Dragonship, menacing them as they closed with her Rider. A swipe of her paw sent them spinning to the ground, far below.

  Ri’arion wiped his forehead. “I could’ve dealt with them.”

  “Just tidying up. How’s the shoulder?”

  “A scratch,” he said, climbing back into the saddle as the Dragonship tilted alarmingly. That so-called scratch was leaking bright, fresh blood. Zuziana felt terrible. But her proud monk, judging by his expression, would not welcome any sympathy.

  The Dragoness pointed with her chin. “Shall we go even the odds?”

  “Aye. I’m in.”

  She launched off the flaccid hydrogen sack. Bright flares lit the southern hills as three Dragonships exploded within seconds of each other. Zip’s secondary optical membranes adjusted automatically, cycling through a near-opaque state to clear again. The conflict was thick and brutal. Dragonships tangled together in the sky. Troops hacked at each other from twisted gantries and leaped from netting to netting, trying to down or gain entry to enemy vessels. Catapults and war crossbows fired point-blank at each other. She saw knots of Immadian troops falling from a stricken Dragonship. Rage rose in her throat. This was wrong. As a Dragon, she was supposed to be protecting these people.

  The Azure Dragon accelerated sharply, catching Ri’arion by surprise.

  He called, “Zuziana …”

  But she no longer heard him. Held hostage by her rage, Zuziana shot across Gemalka Island’s rugged terrain, aiming for the centre of that conflict. Three Sylakian Dragonships, flying crimson flags and the screaming windroc, the symbol of Sylakia, clustered together there, pounding an Immadian vessel. Her neck prickled. Her vision narrowed, darkness closing in as power coalesced in her belly. The Azure Dragon revelled in its seductive song. She fed it without stinting. She lost herself in a blue ocean, electrified by the charge building inside her body.

  Rise! she sang to herself. Rise and strike the enemy.

  Her throat opened. The lightning within her leaped for freedom, branching to strike the three Sylakian Dragonships with a crack! that echoed off the hills. The detonations were instantaneous. Bits of gantries and turbines and war catapults rained from the sky.

  Only a black, empty hollow was left inside her. Too much … she had nothing left. Nothing.

  Her azure wings crumpled softly.

  She heard a voice in the distance calling, “Zip! Zip!” But the gathering darkness was irresistible.
<
br />   * * * *

  When her eyes opened, Zuziana saw Commander Darron’s boots just a foot from her nose. He was arguing vociferously with two of his officers about what to do with the captured Dragonships. She shifted her throbbing head. Ri’arion … three men knelt around the prone body of her Rider!

  The Dragoness surged to her paws.

  “Zip!” said the Commander. “He’s alright. They’re just dressing his wounds.”

  “I’m fine,” Ri’arion called.

  He sounded so enfeebled! Zuziana pressed her muzzle between two of the medics. “Ri’arion?”

  “Are you ralti-stupid? Lie down.”

  “Nice to see you alive, too.” Zip bared her fangs. But she sank to her belly, deflated. “Ouch. I hurt everywhere. You rescued us–how?”

  “Well, it was tough, but I can levitate, as you know.” The monk grinned at the ferocious growl her fire-stomach voiced at this comment. “So I tried to levitate both of us–only, you’re slightly bigger than a Human.”

  “But we’re alive.”

  “Aye. It’s my favourite way to be. What of the battle, Commander?”

  He grunted, “Glad to see you two made it. Dragon lady, you hit them with a triple lightning strike. Their courage jumped off the Island at that. We lost five Dragonships. Two more are too damaged to repair, but we gained thirteen, making a net gain of six. Forty-three warriors died or are too injured to continue. The Gemalkans want to be our allies.”

  Ri’arion laughed, but clutched his shoulder. All three medics hissed at him at once. “That’s enough for me,” he said. “See to the Princess.” Blank looks passed between the medics. “The Dragoness. Perhaps you should transform, Zuziana.”

  “But I’m wounded. Aranya said that transforming with large wounds–”

  “Only bruised, according to the medics,” he corrected her. “And, you’ll use up far less supplies in your Human form.”

  Deciding that his comment was worth neither a growl nor a smart reply, Zip transformed and accepted a thin ralti-wool blanket one of the medics passed to her. Her chest and sternum ached as though she had been butted by a male ralti sheep. Her landing must have been rough. Various flesh-wounds adorned her body, but none appeared serious. Nevertheless, the medics cleaned and dusted the wounds with healing herbs and bandaged her until adding clothing seemed superfluous.