by Marc Secchia
She soothed Sapphire with a touch. Don’t mind my moods, little one.
Ar-ar, chirped Sapphire, in the cute baby-dragonet voice she was developing. She curled her tail around Aranya’s neck and nibbled her earlobe, pouring forth a stream of Dragonish nonsense. The dragonet was growing in understanding, Aranya thought. She had clearly been displeased to be left behind when Aranya and Yolathion left to scout Yanga Island. How much could dragonets truly know? Nak had told her a legend about Hualiama and the dragonet Flicker, who had established a famous friendship after the dragonet saved her life. The tale was over five hundred years old and had at least seven distinct and conflicting versions Nak could recite. But those legends often contained more than a grain of truth, the old Dragon Rider had assured her.
The night was black and so still, it lured her toward the concave crysglass panels. Aranya shivered delicately, half-expecting to see Fra’anior’s gigantic, multi-headed form peering back at her from the depthless darkness. She stiffened, hugging herself. Fra’anior had commanded her to seek the Dragon of the Western Isles. Had he orchestrated the whole encounter?
Magic trickled into her awareness. Aranya whirled. “Who’s there … Ardan!”
“It’s me.”
“What’re you–why–you’re far too good at lurking in shadows. Stop it.”
He shifted toward her with draconic poise, saying nothing. The curve of his lips multiplied the tumult in her heart.
Aranya blurted out, “I dreamed of the Black Dragon.”
Inanities! A foil against the storm stirred by his appearance. Storms broke and crashed in her mind, mingled with a faraway roaring of the Black Dragon. In the faint moonlight, Ardan’s eyes were pools of night, with an evasive glint of magic in their depths.
He said, “I wasn’t dreaming of a Black Dragon.”
Aranya clutched at the frayed threads of her composure. Unsteadily, she said, “Maybe you’re a Dragon of Shadow. That’s right–not black, but shadow.”
“A Dragon of the absence of colour?” he frowned, joining her at the forward-facing crysglass window. “What are you trying to say, amethyst eyes? That I have no Dragon powers?”
Were words swords or scimitars, Aranya imagined, they would be sparring, circling, clashing over the truths that hung unspoken between them. She said, “Of course you have powers, Ardan. There’s your Dragon fire, at least, and much magic besides. And tell me, this strap you wear on your wrist–what is it? Because I’ve noticed it stays with you when you transform. That’s impossible.”
“Shadows must be cast by light,” he said.
A delicious warmth flared in her belly. Magic imbued his words with myriad shades of meaning. He was the shadow to her light? Shadow could be good? Aranya had been entirely unprepared for this response. Dreamily, she reached out to touch just the leather upon his wrist, not the skin. She dared not touch his skin. There was far too much magic coursing through her veins to take that risk.
I wear the ur-makka of a Western Isles warrior, he said, switching to Dragonish to answer her previous question. It names me threefold, for family, person and spirit, but symbolises much more. In Western Isles culture, each family name has a guardian spirit–it’s just a chip of wood encased in leather, Aranya, but–
He broke off at her low gasp. Her hair! What now? Aranya stumbled against the cool crysglass.
As he stretched out his hand toward her, automatically, Aranya’s multi-coloured tresses stirred again, yearning toward him, animated by the magic gently gleaming in every strand. Her hair had grown long during her political exile in the Tower of Sylakia, reaching to her waist, and was becoming almost impossible to wrangle into braids fit for hiding beneath a proper headscarf. The tugging sensation was surprisingly forceful. Aranya balked, fighting back as Ardan’s hand froze mid-gesture. Her hair strained sideways as though electrified.
“I’m not terribly intuitive, but I sense you might still desire me,” he smiled, pausing just inches from the waving tendrils.
Aranya tried to slap her errant hair down, but her struggles only served to encourage the magic. The Black Dragon’s roaring battered her mind–he wanted this, not her! She would keep her promise. She was Aranya, Princess of Immadia, not some puppet to an Ancient Dragon bully who wanted to tear her morals asunder. Had she not just shared an agreeable dinner with Yolathion in his cabin? Was he not her chosen one?
Sapphire launched off her shoulder, mewling in fright, her tiny claws pricking sharply through the thin fabric of her nightclothes. The dragonet perched on the back of King Beran’s desk chair.
You breathed the soul-fire! Fra’anior bellowed in her mind.
Aranya pressed her palms against her temples, as if that futile gesture would shut him out. No. You can’t make me.
Obey your destiny!
No!
But her shout of denial came out as an elongated, terrible rasp, a sound much closer to a Dragon’s roar than any Human throat should have been able to produce.
Ardan, clearly concerned for her state of mind, asked, “What’s the matter, Aranya? Who’re you talking to?”
But he could utter no more, because at that moment, Aranya’s hair brushed against his fingertips. A discharge of magic struck like lightning in the navigation cabin. Before she could stop it, her thick tresses wrapped around his hand. Her hair slithered up his arm to the elbow. Aranya stumbled into his ambit, drawn headfirst by an irresistible, painful tugging on her scalp.
“No, no,” she repeated, trying to ward him off with her hands, but her hair seethed and coiled around his shoulders and torso, crushing her against his chest. “No, I won’t … stop me, Ardan. Help me stop.”
Ardan’s fingers clasped the back of her neck. He said, ragged of breath, “Woman, you bring out the Dragon in me.”
There was a savage bent to his lips and a dangerous, fey light in his eyes. Aranya tried to bury her face against his shoulder, but the compulsion was visceral, and the magic flooding her being so sweetly intense, that resistance became a torment past bearing. Her chin tilted upward. Instead of meeting his ready lips, she inhaled the breath of his lungs in greedy gasps, perhaps seeking the soul-fire they had shared before.
Thunder! Storm clouds roiling without or within her being, she no longer knew which. Dragon fire flared about them. Aranya panted, “No, I promised. I will not!”
“To a Cloudlands volcano with those promises,” he hissed. “This is–”
“Ardan?” A sleepy voice echoed up the corridor.
Ardan and Aranya sprang apart as though a catapult mechanism had snapped when fully wound. Her fires around the room quenched instantly, but the pervading inner magic barely subsided, searing her body and spirit, throbbing with a tempo that echoed the vast, faraway storms of the endless Cloudlands.
Quick as lightning, Ardan whipped the ur-makka off his wrist and laid it on the table between them. He began to peel apart the thin layers of leather.
Kylara stood in the doorway, barefoot, yawning. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Aranya had a dream of the Black Dragon,” said Ardan, as if all was well. “She asked about the ur-makka–why it comes through transformations with me.”
“Among my people, the elders would tell you that the ur-makka is an extension of the spirit-world,” said Kylara, drawing close to him. Aranya’s fingers clawed at her sides. “They would say that name-runes like yours are given by the Ancient Dragons, Ardan.”
The Warlord’s dark gaze rested on Aranya, standing tongue-tied beside her father’s desk. Nothing was singed, not a paper curled into ash at its edges. Had she imagined it all? Her hair rippled once against her back, and then lay as tranquil as if to assert its innocence. She took a mental snap at Fra’anior. How dare he, Ancient or none, try to force her to submit to his bidding? What perverted power of magic was this, that it should drive her into another’s arms, against her will?
Did he mean her harm?
“It’s a shadow power,” Aranya heard herself say. “A type of Drago
n magic unique to you, Ardan. That’s how you slipped through those manacles. Somehow, you manipulate the physical world.”
Kylara slipped her arm into the crook of his. “Why don’t you manipulate me back to my cabin, o mighty Dragon?”
And Ardan departed without a backward glance, leaving Aranya to swallow the bitter sting of the Warlord’s words–Kylara’s tone made their target abundantly clear. Worst of all, she was right, and well within her rights. Aranya wished she had something handy to sink her fangs into.
Her thoughts were embittered. And you, Fra’anior? How can I trust you now?
The night was mute.
Aranya’s gaze fell on Ardan’s wrist-pouch, lying forgotten on the desk. As if reading her thoughts, Sapphire picked it up with her forepaws and leaped deftly over to her shoulder, this time sheathing her claws on landing.
Ippich? chirped the dragonet, presenting it to her.
Ur-makka, said Aranya. Had the Western Isles warrior left it for her? Should she take it? Might it appease Fra’anior? Not that she wanted to appease anybody or any Dragon. In her mood, she would rather have kicked the Black Dragon right in his ridiculously enormous fangs–however futile that act might prove. She pictured herself attacking one head, while another bit her tail off from behind. No. That was not the way.
Pensively, Aranya extracted Ardan’s name-chip from the leather pouch. The chip was mottled with age, almost the size of her thumb. Ardan, she read. And Yoaggaral. She mouthed the unfamiliar word–his family name, perhaps? The last of his clan. Flipping the chip over with the dexterity of one who had spent far too much time playing Staves with Zuziana in the Tower of Sylakia, Aranya puzzled over the rune on the reverse side.
Was that his spirit name?
She could not read runic script, but a word slipped into her mind–Sha’aldior. Scarcely had Aranya registered the deep magic behind that word, when a fresh insight struck her with the force of a Dragon’s cold, steely talons slicing into her gut. This was why the Sylakians had razed Naphtha Cluster. He was why. They knew, somehow, just as Fra’anior had known, about the rise of a Dragon in the Western Isles. A creature of shadow power.
Thoralian’s response had been swift–extermination.
Born deep in the bones of one of her forms, Aranya knew her intuition was right.
Grimly, she strapped the ur-makka about her wrist, and secured Ardan’s name-chip inside as best she was able. Kylara could have the man. Aranya would keep his spirit. On second thoughts, she fastened the strap about her ankle. It fit better there, given the thickness of his wrist, and Yolathion would never notice it beneath the long skirts he so patently preferred for women.
Ha! A Dragoness in skirts? It beggared belief. Now, if she wore Western Isles armour like Kylara, Yolathion would fall over in a gasping, red-faced heap!
Turning again to the forward crysglass window, Aranya gazed out over the rolling, billowing Cloudlands, faintly lit by the Jade and Mystic moons, struck afresh by the incongruity of her existence. She bounced slightly on her toes, wishing to feel faraway breezes ruffling her wings as they sailed ever eastward toward Mejia Island. How was it she could be born to this, the life of a Shapeshifter Dragon? How was it that her life had become the nexus of such overwhelming forces? And why, if he claimed to be her ally, was the Black Dragon driving her into madness?
She would neither be a slave to him, nor lust helplessly for another Human or Dragon, no matter if he came disguised in all the beautiful, magical soul-fire in the world.
Or did Fra’anior and his kin seek to break back into Island-World, through her?
Sapphire’s distressed screech perfectly expressed the chill that this thought introduced to her body. Aranya stroked the dragonet’s neck ruff, crooning softly to her in Dragonish, Hush, little one. He cannot harm us.
If only she could believe that were true.
Chapter 13: Siege Mentality
CoMMANDER DARRon Knocked courteously on the door of Ri’arion’s cabin. Zuziana of Remoy lifted her head from her monk’s shoulder. She had been dozing on the bed alongside him, on top of the covers. “Enter.”
The Commander’s grizzled face cracked into a warm, slightly lopsided smile. Zuziana did not know why, but Commander Darron treated her as his own daughter. She suspected that if she divulged that she knew about his sweet-as-sugar-bamboo spot for her, he’d start growling and spitting feathers like a Dragon fighting a windroc.
Zip pushed her tangled brown locks back from her face. “Do I look like a windroc which has been dragged through a bush backward, Commander?” she greeted him.
“Remoy has never enjoyed a finer hour,” he said. “I’m sorry to have left you this long. Lie down, Princess. That’s an order. Medics patched you up? How fares our Nameless Man?”
“Better,” said Zip.
“I’d also fare better were I treated so well–lie still, I said! If your head dares to leave that pillow-roll, I swear …”
Zip’s tan cheeks flushed. But she riposted, “I suppose you’d also fare better if you were cuddled up to a Princess-Dragon.”
“Nay is what I say to that, lady. Don’t you get too big for your Dragonish paws.”
The Remoyan winced. If he indeed treated her as a daughter, should she be displeased that he chose to discipline her for a thoughtless comment? Aye, it smarted.
The Commander added, “I’ve been married these twenty-nine summers, and never been happier. Caught me a sweet Island girl from the northernmost sliver of Immadia’s Kingdom, I did.” Darron wagged his forefinger at her. “Tell me what went wrong today.”
“What’s your wife’s name?”
“Estalia. You know her. She’s the Steersman on this vessel.”
“Oh. Oh! But she’s …”
“Young? Too pretty for an old buzzard like me?” he grinned. Zuziana shook with laughter as their conversation took a dive in an unexpected direction. “I was a late starter. Much too focussed on the military career, you see. Married in my fortieth summer. Now, I’ll have your report before I have to tan that blue hide of yours even bluer. Tell me about the ambush.”
After relating how the Ferial Islanders had filled their cargo holds with coal storks and dropped them on Ri’arion’s head, Zuziana explained how the mind-meld had broken down.
“Pain communicated between you?” said the Commander. “That’s tough. Aye, and what did the medics say?”
“That they’ve put more stitches in him than one of those tapestries you Immadians love,” Zip smiled, but a tear dropped on the pillow-roll beside her head. She placed her hand tenderly on Ri’arion’s still, pallid cheek. “He’ll live to fight again, but not for a few weeks, or … longer. Nothing fatal. As long as there’s no infection, all he’ll have is scars. There might be permanent damage to his left shoulder and bicep.”
“You don’t have Aranya’s healing powers?”
Zip shook her head.
“Right. Need to think about that.” Commander Darron clasped his hands behind his back. “This is a setback for our plans regarding Yorbik.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. Our strategy with the specialists was imperfect. I should’ve expected a surprise. In battle, it’s the unknowns that kill.” Darron’s hand waved that away. “We took all eleven fingers without too much trouble. Ferial is secure; our troops are swarming over it like ants enjoying the castle kitchens. A few hours ago, I despatched twenty-four captured Dragonships to fetch more soldiers from our allies at Helyon, Gemalka, and more easterly, from Pla’arna and Herliss Clusters–although they are small. Every man will count–and woman, and Dragon–when it comes to laying siege to Yorbik.”
“Consolidating the gains so far?”
“Aye.”
“What about scouting Yorbik Island?”
“Since you offer so politely–get back on that pillow-roll!” he barked. “By the five moons, Dragon lady, can you not keep an order in your head for more than a single minute?”
Ri’arion shifte
d and moaned in his sleep. Zuziana reached up to smooth his brow, but grimaced as the movement stretched her side. All that thrashing about as their link transmitted his pain to her, had strained the muscles along her right flank. Her scars from Garthion’s torture ached. Ri’arion had noticed that the scales of her Dragon chest and flank were knobbed and rough in places, reflecting the injuries to her Human form. She could hardly believe that had happened less than a year before. How her life–and the entire Island-World–had changed since.
She remembered fainting when she first saw Aranya transform into a Dragoness. How inexplicable that her friend’s decision to steal her from the Tower of Sylakia had led to the Sylakians’ first defeat in over a decade, and now here she was, tucked beneath the covers with a magical monk, who stank of herbal medicines and astringent antiseptic paste.
Life was an enigmatic Island.
Darron’s frown mellowed. “Scouting can wait a day or two. You must rest.”
Zuziana said, “But, who would scout with me? My Rider can’t.”
“We’ll find someone.”
Her Dragon senses detected an almost imperceptible catch in his voice as he spoke. Would he be offended if she missed that signal? “You’re sending in spies, of course?”
The Commander had turned toward the door, but now he paused. “Of course. Don’t think we Immadians can’t match you Remoyans in espionage.”
“Good,” she said. “As you know, we Dragons of Remoy are very fussy about who we allow to ride us.”
“And?”
“Go ask your wife for permission, Commander.”
Just the tiniest smile cracked the corner of his mouth. “Is that an order, Princess?”
“For this Azure Dragon, it is a matter of honour.”
* * * *
