by Marc Secchia
The Amethyst Dragon cleaved the air with the force of her passage. Yolathion could not get the spark-stone working to light his oil pot, especially as she side-slipped three crossbow quarrels and then lifted dramatically to dodge a glittering spray of metal shards shot from the Dragonships’ catapults. Human-Aranya always had a temper. Her Dragon form made controlling her anger almost impossible–the overwhelming effect of adrenalin, the responsiveness of her fires and her emotions flaring and falling like sparks soaring from a bonfire, the power of a body and mind primed for hunting, battling and killing–she had to learn control. Otherwise, she’d hurt someone she loved.
“Rolling,” she warned Yolathion.
Aranya spiralled to her port flank, doing her utmost to confuse the catapult engineers as she feinted for one of the smaller Dragonships, before abruptly homing in on the largest. Intense blue fire seared out of her throat, the biggest fireball she had ever produced. It struck the windroc symbol on the side of the Dragonship squarely on the beak.
“Now burn, you beauty,” she whispered, looking on with an ominous smile.
The Dragonship was heavily armoured, a quarter-inch of metal sheeting over solid timbers, she had learned. How it even stayed up in the air was a mystery, given its monstrous bulk. Aranya tilted her wings into a graceful swoop as her Dragon sight detected molten metal dripping down the Dragonship’s flank, like bright blood pouring from an open wound. Yolathion needed no further warning. He raised his arm, highlighted by a brilliant light as if the suns reflected off a mirror. She felt the concussion wallop her entire body at once, while registering the sound as a dull thump against her eardrums. Suddenly, the sounds of battle roared into her ears again. How did her Dragon senses do that? Now she could hear crossbow quarrels; Aranya furled her left wing to take her into a dive.
“The fortress,” Yolathion ordered, unnecessarily.
Aranya ducked through the pall of oily, thick smoke, an amethyst-coloured shadow stalking the fortress. She let her instincts carry her through the field of fire, the massed ground and airborne weaponry desperately trying to track her swift flight.
Pfft! Pfft! Aranya punctuated her attack with a barrage of miniature fireballs. From her saddle, Yolathion took several speculative shots at barrels of oil standing in the courtyard, which were used by Dragonships when fighting ground troops. She remembered Harathion. As she thought about his Green Dragon attack, a strange magical perturbation shook her body. Aranya glanced at her paws in surprise. Her colour had taken a definite slew toward a sickly green. Moreover, she had an unaccustomed feeling in her belly. Perhaps she had learned to use another of her five stomachs?
As she arrowed toward the fortress gates, she expectorated three horrid gobs of rich green phlegm in quick succession. Her throat again acted like a long thin barrel, and the power of her shots made her gasp in surprise. Acid? She could produce an acid attack? Rich, fluorescent green splattered across the gate beams and the tall hinges. Acrid smoke boiled up as it ate both wood and metal. Screams rose from the Sylakian soldiers manning the gate.
“Up and right, there’s a Dragonship,” said Yolathion, drawing the bowstring back to his ear.
Her wings slashed the air, hurling them upward. Aranya hissed as catapult-shot pattered against her tail and tore holes in her inner left wing. Pfft! Her fireball streaked toward the offending emplacement.
KAARAABOOM!
Yolathion was learning to work with her, she thought, with a grateful smile.
The Sylakian Dragonship fleet drifted apart as they came under heavy attack. Once more, King Beran’s orders were to try to capture as many Dragonships as possible, but the Sylakians had no such scruples. Crossbow quarrels criss-crossed the sky like flights of angry windrocs sparring for territory. Two Sylakian vessels sagged, taken down by the dragonets. She saw three tiny white shapes falling to the ground.
Her Rider wiped his brow. “Gate emplacements. Our ground troops are nearly in position.”
“At once, Rider.”
She whirled into the heat of battle, letting a thunderclap of rage roll over the fortress. The madness was there within her, lurking, feasting on the smoke and fire and screams and the clash of metal upon metal. She fed the madness to her fires.
Aranya pursed her lips. Pfft! Her fireball exploded against a war catapult’s frame. Flames engulfed the wood. She saw a man running briefly, wreathed in fire, before falling off the battlement. Sadness reverberated within her Dragon hearts. If only there was another way. Now, melancholy eclipsed her exultation. These were peoples’ lives being spilled, and no amount of talk about the freedom of the Islands could bring them back to the Island-World. But they had chosen to serve Sylakia. Pfft! Another fireball lanced forth.
Turning her head to the sky, Aranya put the fortress’ destruction behind her. The gates, fallen. The raging fires. The soldiers still manning the walls. The screams of men locked in mortal combat, the howling of the Western Isles troops as they stormed the gates.
Why did she sense a Dragon? Wasn’t it just unease related to that storm darkening the horizon?
Aranya rose into the wind, smelling this way and that, extending her senses, her flight path taking her well above the battle.
“What’s the matter?” asked Yolathion.
“I thought I sensed a Dragon. Far away.”
Her Rider made a wordless snarl of frustration before grinding out, “You’re obsessed with this other Dragon. The battle is here! Concentrate!”
He was right. “Yes, Yolathion.” She sounded so meek, she hated herself. “Diving.”
Suddenly the wind buffeted them powerfully. Her acceleration made her Rider howl in surprise. From an almost standing start Aranya threw herself into a dive of over forty leagues per hour, faster than a man’s falling body. Amethyst streaked the sky.
Whomp! Aranya landed atop a Dragonship, using the soft hydrogen sack to break her fall. It ripped apart. The Amethyst Dragon rode the falling vessel for a moment, smiling at her father’s Dragonship directly opposite, before hurling herself at another group of three, where the dragonets were doing their deadly work. Her eyes lit on a soldier who crushed a dragonet with his war hammer. Aranya’s scream of raw fury cut across the battlefield.
Cutting across the path of a passing Dragonship and smacking it with her tail for good measure, ripping huge holes in two of the hydrogen compartments, Aranya aimed for the hapless Sylakian Hammer. He leaped to his death rather than face a Dragoness’ wrath. Aranya’s claws crunched into the dangling cabin. She punched her forepaw through the armour, finding the furnace room and smashing the furnace engine with a single blow.
Amethyst Mama-Dragon! called the dragonets, abandoning their attack to greet her.
My friends, Aranya welcomed them. Work with me.
Leading the dragonets, Aranya worked systematically to down the remaining enemy dirigibles. The Sylakian Hammers gave no quarter and refused to surrender. But they could not stand against the might of King Beran’s forces combined with the awesome power of an Amethyst Dragon.
* * * *
Aranya limped around the map table to place her finger on the map. “Ur-Yagga Cluster, Yanga Island, Dad. Somewhere here, or around here, one of these eleven Islands–”
“My daughter can hardly walk straight and has used up half my store of bandages, but she insists on going to hunt Dragons?”
Beran, patched in a few places himself after helping the ground troops mop up the pockets of Sylakian resistance inside the fortress, regarded her sternly. His tone made Sapphire bare her fangs; Aranya soothed the dragonet with a touch of her mind. As was her habit, Sapphire sat crouched on her left shoulder with her thin, whip-like tail coiled around Aranya’s neck.
But then King Beran shook his head and began to chuckle.
“What? What’s so funny, Dad?”
King Beran said, “When you get that determined look in your eye and jut your chin out just a bit, you look exactly like your mother. And I mean exactly.” Aranya favoured this idea with a disda
inful sniff, but secretly, she was pleased. “To make your life easier, I shall therefore order Yolathion and four Dragonships to accompany you on this scouting mission.”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “Dad … Islands’ sakes, you’re just too observant sometimes.”
“Give your Dad a kiss, then.”
“A Dragon kiss?” she said, pertly.
“Right here.” He indicated his bearded cheek.
“With pleasure.” Aranya said, “An order would help. Skip the Dragonships, Dad. Yolathion and I can catch up with you far faster if we don’t have Dragonships slowing us down.”
“I want you to recruit some troops, Sparky.” There, the wily cliff-fox was back, his expression sharp in the cabin’s lamplight. “Our allies tell us that Yanga Island has a warrior force comprised solely of women.”
“Women warriors? In the Western Isles? Did they disparage them?”
“Severely,” said Beran. “What does that tell you?”
“They’re good.” Aranya grinned. “Any corroborating stories from the Sylakian captives?”
“Excellent, you’ve been listening with at least half an ear,” her father complimented her. “Apparently this all-female warrior force downed five Sylakian Dragonships about two weeks ago. Ground troops taking out Crimson Hammer troops and their supporting Dragonships, Sparky–you and I both know what a feat that is. Their leader is a woman called Kylara. She’s said to be tougher than a piece of dried goat sinew, and deadlier than a rajal.”
“You want me to recruit her?”
“That’s my girl.”
Chapter 9: The Fingers of Ferial
ENJOYING a turbulent following breeze, Commander Darron’s Dragonship fleet swept southwest from Gemalka to Helyon Island in just three days, pausing briefly to take on supplies before proceeding to Ferial, which lay only hours north of Yorbik, the largest known Island, which housed the well-fortified Dragonship factory site.
In the lamplight of the forward navigation cabin that evening, Darron’s face was as graven and leathered a map as the worn scroll which his forefinger rested upon. “Ferial Island is a Sylakian stronghold,” he said. “They’d like as welcome us with a crossbow quarrel between the teeth.”
Around the table, his captains nodded. One, with typically Immadian understatement, said, “Then we’ll tickle them with the feathers sticking out of our mouths, Commander.”
At her right side, Princess Zuziana sensed rather than saw Ri’arion smile.
Darron added, “It’s also the northern gateway to Yorbik Island–and I don’t need to tell you what a prize those shipyards are. We must not leave our backs vulnerable when we close the pincers on the Supreme Commander’s Dragonship fleet. Our spies still place them at Sylakia, as best we know, but the intelligence is almost a week old. Thoralian must respond, either to defend against Beran’s advance from the west or to protect Yorbik.”
“Or both, Commander.”
The grizzled Immadian Commander clinked slightly as he turned his gaze to Ri’arion. He always wore his armour. The armour had been polished, but still displayed the dents and dings of many years’ service. A plain sword and a pair of Immadian forked daggers hung at his belt. There was nothing flashy about him, yet the respect his captains accorded him was plain.
“Your sense of danger, Ri’arion?”
“It remains,” said the monk, firmly.
“But not Ferial? Definitely Yorbik Island?”
“Aye. I sense magic. Dimly, as if deeply hidden–yet the sense grows stronger the closer we draw to Yorbik.”
Darron’s lips compressed into a thin line. “You travelled this way once before.”
Ri’arion’s smile was an unapologetic grimace. “Aye, Commander. I cast my mind back, but I do not recall any such inkling then.”
“And what does your inkling indicate?”
Another military man might have poured scorn into that question, but not Darron, Zip thought. His father had been a Dragon Rider–the last Rider of Immadia Island, she had learned.
Ri’arion’s hand tightened on her waist as he replied, “Dragon magic.”
“Aye? Very well, ” said the Commander. His finger stabbed the map once more. “First, we must deal with the unique challenges Ferial Island will pose for us. Princess, when your father and I scouted Ferial–”
“Wrong Princess,” said Zip, with a small chuckle. “You keep doing that, Commander. I’m the undersized Remoyan one, remember?”
The Commander guffawed, “Aye, I’ve written your name in bold, bad red ink on the scroll of people who dare to burgle my castle. And, you’ve a decidedly oversized lightning attack. That was impressive.” Zip decided not to alert him that her and Ri’arion’s mind-meld experiment was not progressing quite as impressively. He said, “Now, even a Dragoness needs to be wary around Ferial. The secret to their defence is the coal storks.”
“Coal storks?” Ri’arion frowned. “Aren’t they extinct?”
“Everywhere except Ferial, where they breed and train them in secret,” said the Commander. “Coal storks are carrion eaters. Wingspan around ten feet. Black as the night and the ugliest birds you’ll ever see–hence the name. But they have a two-foot beak that can stab through armour. Twenty or thirty can take down a Dragonship.”
Or a Dragon, Zip told herself, shivering, never more grateful to lean against Ri’arion’s solid frame. But a contrary, aggressive growl forced its way past the constriction in her throat. She snarled, “Just let me loose. I’ll shred those flying slugs!”
Zip clapped a hand over her mouth. What?
“Who unleashed the Dragoness?” chortled Ri’arion, patting her head. He dodged adeptly as she snapped at him. “Down, girl.”
Zuziana swallowed, shuddering, fighting her Dragon as it threatened to overwhelm her. “I’m … sorry, I …”
Ri’arion’s smile wavered. “Zuzi?” His cool fingers touched her forehead. “Here, how’s–”
“Get off me!”
She crashed against the crysglass window behind her. Choking. Weeping. Sweating. Yet with clenched jaw and an inner wrench, she denied her Dragon egress. No! These were her friends, her allies, and her beloved, who hurriedly re-established his inscrutable monk-face. For Ri’arion, the temptation to intervene with his Nameless Man powers must have been almost unbearable. She read his pain and anger with the sensitivity of her Dragon senses, the minute play of muscles along his jaw and the narrowing of his deep blue eyes, those windows to a universe of magic and power.
Zuziana stared at the tall Fra’aniorian. “Sorry, Ri’arion.” She smoothed her simple, turquoise Immadian gown with compulsive strokes of her hands, assuring herself, yes, she was Human-Zip. No, she was not an untameable beast. Dragon-Zip wanted out. She wanted to seize control, and the power she promised was both dangerous and frighteningly addictive. ‘When the time is right,’ she placated her Dragon-self. ‘Battle will come.’
They must think she was off-the-Island crazy.
Was she quite convinced of her own sanity?
Deliberately, Zip pushed herself off the cool crysglass and moved over to tuck her head beneath Ri’arion’s chin. “Hold me,” she whispered. Demanded, in truth, as her invisible but palpable Dragon form stirred her hidden pools of magic. Bathed in them. Drew on their strength. She had assumed the Dragon part of her would simply be her. Why this sudden lurch toward independence? Surely it was impossible for a Shapeshifter to cleave apart what was one, inextricably interwoven being? Yet she sensed an inner warring …
“Almost transformed,” she said into Ri’arion’s loose-weave shirt, holding him as though she could absorb his strength, his humanity, through her skin. After a brief pause, she turned her head. “Carry on, Commander. I’m fine.”
She was not. Zuziana had the distinct impression that her Dragoness was unimpressed at being subordinated to her Human form, and planned an insurrection at the earliest opportunity. Great Islands! Her Shifted form could not be a parasite, surely? What if Aranya had created a
monster which planned to gobble her up … she gave herself a mental slap. What was she doing, dreaming up the night terrors of a five year-old? No. She would bring her two forms together, even if it killed her–no! She sighed.
Darron’s voice remained very dry as he said, “The birds are the first problem. We’ll load up with shrapnel and archers to counter them. The second problem is the fingers themselves. Ferial is like an upraised hand, as you know. Eleven fingers. Each rock spire is connected by the famous bridges. But it’s less well known that the bridges can be collapsed at strategic locations. Our goal is simple. Destroy the birds and disable their Dragonships. Thus isolated, they cannot harm us. And we will achieve this by sabotage.”
“Sabotage, Commander?” asked one of the warriors.
“Aye. I’ve a Dragoness up my sleeve.”
On cue, Zip’s Dragoness uttered a vicious growl.
* * * *
Dragon-Zuziana spent the remaining hours of darkness ferrying forty black-clad Immadian ‘specialists’, as Darron politely called them, three at a time, to the spires of Ferial. Eleven spires. Thirteen heavily-loaded trips–four men on the last, which was poor planning on her part–after which Zuziana thought her wings might just fall off. She clung to the Commander’s Dragonship, panting and groaning alternately, while her Rider fulminated beneath his breath at an Azure Dragoness who allowed others to ride on her back.
Zuziana was too puffed out to even crook a claw in protest.
The larger spires required four or five men to carry out Beran and Darron’s devious plans. Stealthily, using long ropes and climbing equipment especially developed for the frozen peaks of Immadia Island, the specialists rappelled down the allegedly unclimbable, sheer cliffs of Ferial, a mile or more before they reached the inhabited levels. In years past, spies had attempted to map out the caverns berthing Ferial’s Dragonship fleet and the coal stork holding pens. Now, that intelligence would be put to the test.
By the time Commander Darron joined her atop his Dragonship, Zip had regained her strength enough to playfully kiss the top of Ri’arion’s head. “My scales itch at the prospect of battle,” she said.
