by Marc Secchia
His fireball struck one of the rising Dragons squarely on the left wing, blasting a thirty-foot hole in the wing membrane. And then, his world became fire.
For the first time, Ardan knew the blistering heat of Dragon fire. Four or five fireballs struck him simultaneously from different angles. His scales burned. The muscle and tissue inside the cuts he had already sustained, sizzled and crisped in the tremendous heat. These were mature Reds, capable of spitting a stream of molten rock hundreds of feet through the air. Ardan shook himself like a wet hound, but the rock stuck. An agonised whimpering arose from his throat; the Shadow Dragon realised it was the song of his own pain.
“Use your Shadow power!” Kylara cried, over and over.
He could not. They’d catch her; kill her with the ease of a cat slaying a bird. He needed a blink of power. Focussing through the burning of his nerve endings, Ardan released his magic. What he achieved was akin to a very rapid shiver, a ripple effect which passed from his muzzle to his tail. The Dragon-spit lava sloughed off his body. Another shiver, and it was gone.
Just beneath him, a Red laughed open-mouthed as Ardan writhed. The Shadow Dragon’s fireball smacked him square in the throat. Dragon fire could not damage him much in that location, but the blast surprised the Red enough that he gulped and stalled. Driving forward, Ardan slapped him open-clawed across the muzzle, tearing his right eyeball out of the socket. With a parting snap at the Red Dragon’s neck, Ardan fled beyond him, finding clear skies for a vital second.
Kylara shouted, “Go, Ardan! Keep going!”
Coward, one of the Reds roared after him. Ardan almost stopped.
“Go,” said his Rider. “You’ve done enough damage–one kill, two serious injuries.”
Ardan could not resist bellowing a parting few insults at the Red Dragons, accompanied by a fireball which missed its target by over two hundred feet. After that, he flew on until he had far outdistanced any pursuit. But he also flew further from Aranya and any hope of saving her, for Kylara was right. Fra’anior needed him more.
But his hearts dragged a hundred leagues behind him.
* * * *
Zuziana stood on the bow gantry of her small trader’s Dragonship, staring hungrily at the pulse-pounding sight of Fra’anior towering out of the vermilion Cloudlands, as if a bloody tide washed up against what had to be the greatest volcano in existence–greater even than the one she, Aranya and Ri’arion had once stopped at in the middle of Immadior’s Sea.
It was dawn over Fra’anior, a sight to make poets swoon.
“It is as I said, Captain,” she said to the man standing beside her. “The royal purple of Immadia flies over those Dragonships. Fra’anior is ours.”
He grunted, “You can see that far, Princess? I thought I had sharp eyesight.”
Zip danced a little jig of delight. “I can’t wait for you to meet Aranya. She’s awesome.”
“Nothing can be as awesome as an Azure Dragoness who–unholy caroli!”
She had learned that ‘caroli’ was a Helyon oath, the name of a disease-carrying rodent. It was singularly apt at that moment, because the Dragon which had just dropped from the sky ahead of them was at least the hundred-foot length of their Dragonship. He smiled toothily, casting a sinister gaze over their vessel. Awestruck, Zuziana took in the length of his fangs, his thicket of black skull-spikes and his monumental musculature. How could she fight such a freak? Half a world apart from that black beast was not far enough to feel safe.
There was a woman on his back who looked just as beefy as her Dragon, a muscular warrior with biceps fit to put most men to shame. Zuziana felt very much the diminutive Remoyan in comparison. No, she was an Azure Dragoness! And deadly in her own way, just not deadly enough to tangle with that beast, not without her monk.
“Where’s the Dragon?” the beast called. “Where are you hiding him?”
“Dragon? What Dragon?” Zip shouted back, but her voice wavered and cracked on the second ‘Dragon’. “Are you a friend of Sylakia?”
How, by the Islands, had that beast sensed she was a Shifter? That alone was enough to put the fear of rajals into her. Zip pinched her thigh to still an urge to transform. Please be on our side, she babbled inwardly. Please.
Smoke and flame spurted from his nostrils in reply. “Never. Answer my question, little one.”
She had no choice. Zuziana pushed back the hood of her cloak. He had better be the Dragon Aranya had set out to find, or she was about to be barbecued for breakfast, and her charred, gnawed-upon bones used for toothpicks.
Stealthily, she readied her magic, while saying, “I am Zuziana of Remoy, Shapeshifter and Azure Dragon.”
“We’re friends,” he rumbled, managing a graceful tilt of his head, “and this is Immadian territory.”
Zuziana clutched the railing to rescue her sagging knees. Sweet, sweet words!
The huge Dragon leaned slightly into the breeze, drawing close beneath their Dragonship, until his Rider sat just a few feet from Zuziana’s position on the gantry. The woman raised her scimitar in salute. “I am the Warlord Kylara, and this is Ardan, a Shadow Dragon. We are friends of Aranya’s and allies of King Beran.”
What did Aranya think of that dark beast? He could probably hear her heart burbling about like a confused fowl, see her pulse racing in her neck, and smell her natural dread of an aerial predator despite a tingle of excitement playing along her spine. The Shadow Dragon’s lips peeled open, revealing a cavern rimmed by gleaming white swords–his grin.
“Delighted to meet you,” the Princess of Remoy managed.
“We’ll escort you in,” said Ardan. “We’ve urgent news; a Dragonwing of seven or eight Reds–”
“However many we left after bloodying their noses,” Kylara put in. “Thoralian’s family is on the move.”
The black-in-black eyes gleamed with something more than moisture. Magic … and suspicion. Ardan said, “Spotted you on the way in. You make my scales itch, Zuziana. You, and someone else still hiding inside your Dragonship.”
“I’ll explain,” said the Remoyan. “We need Aranya, and fast. Where is she?”
The smile faded. The massive, armoured head shook, just once.
This time, Zip did sag. But the Captain caught her beneath her elbow. “Full power to the turbines!” he bellowed. “Men and meriatite! Fra’anior needs us.”
“Yes,” whispered Zip. “But we need Aranya more.”
* * * *
Zuziana faced off against Ardan in a trembling, tearful fury. “I’ll go fetch Aranya; she’s my friend.”
In Beran’s council of war, the heat was threatening to crack the crysglass panes of his Dragonship, and they had only been talking for a couple of minutes. Breakfast lay untouched on the table between them as the two Shapeshifters in the room quarrelled.
The rajal-sized Western Islander fixed her with a stony-eyed gaze. “What’s your plan, Princess? Can you hear her, as I? Can you fight Dragons who are three times your size? Can you fly far and fast enough?”
“I owe her my life.”
“Every day she spends in Thoralian’s grasp is one less day we’re likely to find her alive.”
“She’s my friend!”
“Easy there, Zuziana,” said Kylara, restraining her with her powerful arms. “I agree–you must go to your friend. One Dragon is not enough to take Sylakia’s Tower, no matter how formidable an opinion he holds of his powers. Is there no other way, King Beran?”
Ardan folded his tree-trunk arms across his chest, frowning at the Remoyan who simpered, then mouthed, ‘Ooh. You’re so big.’ Grr! His pulse throbbed at his temples.
The Immadian King scratched his beard. “I don’t pretend to understand this mystical connection Ardan has with Aranya, but we really are stuck between two Islands here–or three or four. Does it matter?” He dismissed the matter with a click of his fingers. “We’ve an injured monk who needs healing, seven or eight enemy Dragons who’ll reach Fra’anior any hour now, and we have two Dragon
s and no plan. I can neither spare you to fly to Sylakia, nor afford to keep you here. And one indisputable fact remains–judging by the intelligence you gathered, Princess Zuziana, Thoralian has assembled an unknowable number of Shapeshifter Dragons at Yorbik Island. This Dragonwing may be the first of many.”
“Sir! Message hawk, sir.”
A Jeradian soldier rushed in without knocking. In a conflict where every second counted, niceties were an unaffordable luxury.
“Here,” said Ignathion. He unrolled the scrap of scrolleaf with a practised hand. “Well. Your spies report Thoralian flew north yesterday morning, Beran.”
“Leaving Sylakia unguarded?” snorted Ardan. “Even a blind man believes in the five moons. Why don’t we take the fleet and fly straight to Sylakia? Burn them like they burned us?”
Only a Dragon could have expressed his desire for revenge in that tone–a crackling of fires barely withheld, an animalistic snarl rippling beneath his words.
Dragon-Zuziana’s response was immediate, a full-throated roar of outrage. Everyone stared at the diminutive Remoyan. She said, “The issue is one of timing, Ardan. The longer Thoralian has to train those Dragons he has secreted in Yorbik, the worse we’ll fare. We cannot afford to take the fleet to Sylakia when the real danger lies at Yorbik.”
“You are for leaving Fra’anior unguarded?” inquired Prince Ta’armion. He had been content to follow the discussion quietly; perhaps his thoughts were occupied with his new wife, perched on his knee. But no newly-wed euphoria could deny the sharpness of his question.
Zip flushed. “No … I will go to Sylakia. Ardan–you must lead the fleet to Yorbik.”
“I will not leave Aranya to moulder in a Sylakian dungeon!” Ardan shouted, achieving a volume that made the crysglass windows rattle.
At once, the Dragoness retorted, “Nor will I! So you can just stuff that idea down your meriatite pipe and smoke it!”
“No,” said Kylara, piercing the silence that followed, “because you both love her.” Her hand fell from her scimitar-hilt, clenched, unclenched. “You love her.”
Ardan sighed.
No-one in the room dared to look at anyone else.
A slight cough in the corridor outside heralded the arrival of a visitor to their council. “Flying monks,” gasped Ri’arion, clutching the doorway for support.
“Ri–” Zip shrieked, flying across the room as though she had taken to her Dragon form. “You foolish, foolish … man! Whatever are you thinking? Get back to your bed.”
Her slender frame buckled beneath Ri’arion’s weight. But Ardan leaped to her aid from one side and Kylara from the other, saving them a nasty landing. Instead, Ri’arion and Zip ended up lying beside each other on the floor beside Beran’s desk.
“See? I am lying down for you,” said the monk.
Zip said, “He’s delirious.”
Ri’arion said, “Warrior monks and Dragons.”
Zuziana mopped his brow with her sleeve. “Help me get him back to the cabin. Look, you’ve torn open these stitches, you daft–”
But the monk seized her arm with a passion that silenced her protests. “Listen. I’m not … crazy. And when two Dragons start shouting at each other, a Dragonship’s walls are only so thick.”
“What do you mean?” Zip asked.
“Fra’anior has hundreds of monks. We have magic.”
“Magic?” said King Beran, up off his seat, leaning over the warrior monk. “What magic?”
Rather than reply, Ri’arion levitated half a foot off the metal floor. Zip hissed and yanked him back down.
“Flying warrior monks?” Ignathion rumbled. “Won’t the Sylakian Dragons just gobble you up?”
Ri’arion’s smile was a cobra’s grin, beastly and sly. “The warriors of Fra’anior are ready, friends. They have waited all their lives to serve the Great One, the Black Dragon of the Islands. They call this the Way of the Dragon. We fly–some, better than I. Some of us shield. Others have magical arts in attack and defence. Our arrows are made of more than metal.”
“The monks can heal?” asked Zip.
“Some, but nothing close to what Aranya could achieve,” said Ri’arion, resting his head on the floor. “It will not be easy. Beran, Ignathion, talk strategy with Ta’armion. He knows many of our abilities–you must work out how to protect the Dragonships, and how you’ll penetrate the Dragons’ defences. We must fly quickly to rouse my brethren. I must go, for the Nameless Man’s word still holds weight around this volcano. A map, King Beran. I will show you where to send your Dragonships, even to the most secret monasteries.”
Ardan said, “I will take you at once, Ri’arion.”
“He’s my Rider!”
Lightning shot out of Zip’s mouth, crisping a strip of Ri’arion’s beard on its way to burning a neat hole in the starboard crysglass panel.
“Mercy,” said Zip.
“Good thing that wasn’t directed upward,” Ignathion added.
To Zip’s intense irritation, Ardan seemed to find her anger cute. He said, “Do all of the women around here either want to bite your head off or split your skull open?”
Zuziana deliberately turned her back to Ardan and her attention to Ri’arion. “You are going nowhere in your condition, you moons-mad monk.”
He also had a smile for her. Zuziana decided she was going to sink her fangs into one of those nice smiling faces in a moment. She bit back the urge to transform, telling her Dragoness to bide her time. Soon, she would be unleashed upon the hot volcanic winds.
Ri’arion said, “Thus said Hualiama to the Dragon Grandion, ‘I love thee not as a Human loves a Dragon, in all thy draconian majesty; nor for thy first heart, pulsing with nobility, nor for the courage of your second heart, which is as wide and deep as the Cloudlands themselves, but for thy third heart, which is pure love. And it is that love which has captured me, and set me upon a course more certain than that which the twin suns sail across the heavens. Thou canst deny it no longer, Zuziana. I am for thee, and thee alone.’ Hearing that, he transformed for her. He was the very first Shapeshifter to reveal his true nature. And she was called Dragonfriend.”
“Oh, how sweet,” said Ta’armion, wiping his eyes. “He said ‘Zuziana’ in place of Grandion. I’ve never heard anything so romantic in my entire life!”
“The perfect mistake,” said Zip.
“Then kiss me, my Azure Dragoness, and let us go stir up an army.”
“Aye, my very own Dragonfriend,” said Zip, glad to do as she was bid. “Will you tell me the tale of Hualiama and Grandion, soon?”
“Oh, forbidden love, it’s so poignant!” Prince Ta’armion burst into tears.
Lyriela startled as her husband pillowed his head on her shoulder. Rolling her eyes, she muttered, By the Great Dragon, what do I do now?
Ardan exchanged equally startled glances with Zuziana. Mentally, he growled, Lyriela, are you hiding a Dragon, too?
Aranya thinks so, and Nak and Oyda, said the girl. But I’ve never transformed. I’m Aranya’s cousin.
Oho, said Ardan. We need to talk.
Beran’s sharp eyes had not missed their swift-as-thought exchange, even though he would not have heard anything. He crooked a finger at Zuziana. “A word outside, if you would, Remoy.”
Half an hour later, Zip was flying south along the rim wall of the largest volcano in the Island-World, with a sick monk on her back and fresh hope singing in her heart.
Chapter 22: Roar over Fra’anior
Directly across the caldera from Ha’athior Island, as they departed Ri’arion’s old home near Lyriela’s village, Zuziana spotted seven burly Red Dragons beating toward the northern end of the volcano. Dragons, heading for Fra’anior. Her perceptive gaze swept the caldera. Several Dragonships full of warrior monks should arrive at the main Island within an hour. Nine others were in various stages of progress from the south-eastern and southern Isles, four hours by Dragonship from Fra’anior–perhaps three with a helping breeze.
&n
bsp; Their plan was about to come unstuck, unless the Reds intended to rest before throwing themselves into battle. She could imagine that. They had laboured the day long against a robust breeze sweeping in from several points north of west, the same breeze which buffeted her and Ri’arion, who was looking greyer the further they progressed. They had visited eleven monasteries in the seven hours since leaving Beran’s forces at Fra’anior city. Six to go before the race back to Fra’anior. Could Ardan hold off all seven Dragons until nightfall? Did nightfall matter for a Dragon attack?
Putting her head down, the Azure Dragon pushed on despite her fatigue. Just think of the next stop, no further. Every minute saved, might mean the life of another Fra’anior Islander.
“What’s the matter, Zuzi?” asked Ri’arion.
“I see Thoralian’s Dragons–two, maybe two and a half hours away,” she said. “We’ve run out of time, Ri’arion.”
He sighed, “I feel so useless. All my hope was fixed on finding Aranya here. I’m so angry with her–and what has she done wrong? The healers at Ya’arriol helped, but not enough. I can’t fight! I can’t, I just can’t, my sweet …”
Zuziana gazed at him over her shoulder, hating the hopeless note in his voice, yet loving him. “You carried me at first. Now, it’s my turn.”
“Literally,” he groaned.
“You’re killing yourself raising up an army of crazy magical monks to save your Island-Cluster from destruction, Ri’arion. That strikes me as a vaguely worthwhile pursuit.”
“Now you’re being positively Immadian,” he chuckled, but he held his left shoulder and arm very gingerly. “Zuziana, I can’t go to Sylakia with you.”
Again, that hint of a protective nature underlying his austere monk-face. She wished he’d smile more, sometimes, even if it made every smile the more precious. “I’m an ugly fire-breathing lizard, monk-love. I understand. Besides, I have to babysit that Western Isles monster. You know the type. He’ll smell out the thickest trouble and fly straight into it.”
