by Marc Secchia
Plopping herself down between Zip’s spine-spikes with a sigh of evident relief, Aranya said, “Will you do this Rider the honour, Zip?”
A soft bugle escaped Zip’s throat as she tilted her wings to catch the breeze. “Let’s burn the heavens together, as Dragon and Rider,” she cried, launching off the Shadow Dragon’s back.
Slowly, as if intending to sail into the sky, the Tower of Sylakia tilted in a westerly direction. The rumbling sound deepened as the slide gathered momentum, millions of tons of rock in inexorable motion. The Shadow Dragon angled northward, racing to take them beyond the probable path of its fall. The other Dragonwing, four Reds and a Green, scattered as they too saw the danger–all thoughts of pursuit tossed to the winds, necks outstretched and wings beating so hard they clapped together beneath the Dragons’ bodies. Craning her neck, Zip searched the Cloudlands near the Tower’s base, uncertain as to what she had seen, or felt … there!
“Great Islands, Aranya, did you see that?”
Her Rider said, bleakly, “No, Zip. What did you see?”
“Well, I saw–I thought I saw–the body of a Land Dragon down there. It was huge, like a green island broaching the clouds. You don’t think it pulled the Tower off the side of Sylakia, do you? Why would it do that?”
Zuziana was in such a state of high agitation, it took her a number of wingbeats to realise the oddity of Aranya’s question. Whatever mountain of a beast’s back she had just seen slipping beneath the Cloudlands, Zip knew it was unmissable from a height of two or three miles, even with a Human’s inferior sight. She had flown Dragonback often enough to know that for certain. But it was Aranya’s tone that truly troubled her.
However, the spectacle of the Tower toppling into the Cloudlands rendered her speechless; the demise of what should surely be immutable. For many minutes Zuziana simply paced Ardan, until it was obvious they were well clear of danger and the Tower vanished into the Cloudlands in a bizarre, irreverent silence. Surely they should hear it crash somewhere, she thought. Surely it deserved the recognition of a shattering impact, flinging plumes of rock and dust into the air, gouging a trench several miles long.
“Shame you neglected to tie Thoralian’s tail to the Tower,” said the Azure Dragoness, hearing herself force cheer into her voice. “Petal …”
“I’m alright,” said Aranya, but she averted her face. “Zip, have I told you how incredible you are? Burgling the Tower and all. I heard someone else did it first, but then an Azure Dragon did it with more style. When they write your legend, they’ll be telling how you flung it into the abyss with a titanic firebolt loosed from the twin suns themselves.”
Zip sighed. “Petal, what’s the matter with your eyes?”
Her Rider raised her chin in a haughty gesture that was old-Aranya, but Zuziana knew her too well to be fooled. Her gaze was off-centre, the once-clear amethyst gaze turned milky, almost opaque. Her Dragon sight brought out the details far too clearly.
“What did Thoralian do to you? I’m your friend, Aranya. You can tell me.”
The proud expression crumpled. Aranya put her forehead to the spine-spike just in front of her, clutching it as if for safety, and her shoulders began to tremble. “I’m so scared,” she said. “I’ve lost my magic and my Dragon and … he stole my face, Zip! He stole my face! Can you imagine what that’s like? Oh … ralti sheep droppings, of course you can. Of course. You, of all people …”
“Petal,” Zip soothed.
“I can’t see well out of my right eye, Zip. The left is bad–just shadows and vague shapes. The pox can make a person go blind. He deliberately had me infected, Zip. Deliberately!”
“I’m so sorry.”
Aranya’s answering laughter was hollow, almost sepulchral, giving Zip the soul-lost shivers all over. “Is this the price you and I have to pay, Zip?” Aranya asked. “When they’re free from Thoralian’s tyranny, do you think the peoples of the Island-World will thank us for these scars we’ve earned?”
“Battle scars,” said the Princess of Remoy.
“Battle scars? How glorious you make it sound. My head says it’s worth the cost–oh, Zip! But my heart’s a terrace lake of bitter waters.”
As surely as the moons moved around the Island-World, she was going to kill Thoralian for this, Zuziana vowed. The Azure Dragoness knew a killing rage, her fires and lightning powers literally sizzling inside her belly. As she struggled to contain her feelings, Zip’s gaze swept the skies ahead of them, then to the rear. There was no pursuit, nor any sign of the creature she had glimpsed ducking back into the Cloudlands. How could anything live down there? Surely, a living creature of that size was impossible?
She said, “It seemed so uncomplicated when we set out to bait the Sylakians. Had we known? I’d like to think we’d still have had the courage to set out on that first flight, Aranya.”
“I’ve lost now, Zip. I’m so … beaten.”
“Wounded, not beaten,” the Dragoness replied, but her hearts were not in her words. She had never heard Aranya sounding like this, the undertone of defeat that weighed on every word. Her own scars, she could hide beneath her clothing. Aranya would have no such luxury. She asked, “What’s that collar you’re wearing? It feels–”
“Evil,” said Aranya.
* * * *
When Zuziana suggested seeing through a mind-meld, this provoked a low, resentful cry, “What use is a half-blind Dragon, Zip? Tell me. You have to see crossbow bolts in battle!”
“We’ll get there, petal.”
Aranya knew she’d hurt her friend. Angry with herself, she too scanned the skies for signs of pursuit, until the Azure Dragon gently assured her that the only Dragons which had survived the Tower’s fall had retreated to Sylakia’s mainland.
Her new, darkened world required courage of a different type, she was learning, and Aranya recalled her friend’s struggles only too well. Zuziana might never nurse a child, which for a Remoyan mother, was unimaginable. Quietly, she leaned over the Dragoness and poured out her heart for over an hour, during which Zip, unusually for her, said not a single word.
Then, Aranya stood up. “Let’s get this collar off.”
“Petal! Don’t do anything foolish.”
Aranya forced levity into her voice. “Hold on. I get to call you petal, now. The Azure Flying Petal of Remoy. And you will address your Rider with due respect.”
Zuziana’s chuckles were equally born in a murky, hopeless place. Curving her neck until her muzzle pressed up against Aranya’s leg, she sniffed hugely and offered Aranya a toothy Dragon smile. “Mmm. How do Riders taste, do you think?”
“Stop it, you … you petal-ish fiend.”
The Dragoness waggled her long, forked blue tongue at her friend.
“Rude Dragon–fine!” Evidently, that Nak-like offering was far too feeble. Aranya cudgelled her brain. Thou, whose suns-shine illuminates my heart.
Thou, the rainbows gracing my storm’s aftermath.
Smiles, through welling tears.
When a Dragon’s storm powers became uncontrollable, Aranya thought, to be told that she was the rainbow after the storm … she should cherish those words forever. And if Zip kept doing that, she’d weep all the way back to Fra’anior, when she had made up her mind to case her heart in stone. No more distractions. No inner turmoil. She had to focus on regaining her magic, if she could, and defeating Thoralian.
Aranya stepped onto Zip’s upraised paw, and was being cradled with care while Zip tried to slide her talons beneath the collar to pop the rivet at the back, when Ardan winged over with a such a bellow of outrage, it shook them to the bone. “What are you two doing?”
“Taking off this collar, o Shadow Dragon,” said Zip.
Ardan’s eyes bulged. “And if you drop her? If you–”
Aranya interrupted their glaring at each other by saying, “I have two of the finest Dragons in the Island-World to catch me. I couldn’t fall ten feet without one of you two scooping me up. And, this Lavanias collar m
ust come off. Tell him, Jia.”
“I-I couldn’t argue with a Dragon.”
“Arguing with him is fun,” said Zip.
“And I think of you as a blue wasp up my left nostril.”
With a mental warning to the two Dragons to stop squabbling like hatchlings, Aranya said, “Jia, in my vast experience with a Dragon Rider, all of several months now, I’ve learned a few things about teamwork–”
“First, we should set a course,” said the Shadow Dragon. “Zip? You carry a map in your head.”
The Azure Dragon’s alert gaze took in the position of the moons in the lightening sky. Vast Iridith waned into the north-west horizon, while White was a tiny point of light almost directly south, and the full glory of Jade blazed jewel-like above where Aranya thought the Spits should be.
“Three points more westerly, Ardan,” said Zuziana. “Aranya, our first stop is Seg Island. Nak said we might find a Dragons’ Highway to help us skirt the Spits. Apparently, they’re too high for a Dragon and Rider to fly over–and easy to become lost in if you choose to fly through. But the lower Spits around the edges should be easy to navigate.”
“Are we skipping Fra’anior?” asked Aranya.
“Straight to Noxia from Seg to catch up with your father,” said Zip. “The warrior monks of Fra’anior are travelling with him–aye, we’ve a few things to tell you. They have healers. And we’ll have your story, too. We heard a great deal from Nak and Oyda …”
Unbidden, Aranya’s eyes flicked to Kylara, sitting very straight-backed between Ardan’s tall spine-spikes. She saw dimly, but enough to grasp the Warlord’s response. Not everything, she said to her Dragon companions. Not if you want me to live.
Nak told me, said Zuziana.
She already suspects, Ardan added. Aranya, you and I–
Can never be together, Ardan. How Aranya wished for Dragon fire to cleanse the heartache those words cost her! I’m scarred inside and out. I cannot be any use to anyone like this. You must choose Kylara, and love her well. It is over between us.
Zuziana sighed so heavily, it dipped them twenty feet in the air before she rose again.
He whispered, I am so grieved for you, Aranya. Horrified, and spoiling for a fight with Thoralian. Thou, my soul’s eternal–
Don’t, it’s too distressing. Please. Aranya stared into the distance, unseeing. Numb. Finished with all that the soul-fire had cost her, with anything to do with the fascinating Shadow Dragon. Ardan, it cannot be.
Only if that’s what you truly want, o jewel of Immadia.
Aranya sucked in a breath, mentally and physically. Time for the most terrible lie of her life. It is, Ardan.
She wondered why Fra’anior did not roar so loudly, it should break her mind and drive her insane. But there was only silence from the Ancient Dragon. With a squeal of metal and a soft ‘plink’, the rivet behind her neck snapped. Aranya lifted the hateful collar from her neck, thinking she might keep it, to study it, or to remind her of Thoralian’s treachery.
Very softly, pitched so that only Aranya could hear, Zip breathed, “You’re letting Thoralian win.”
“Then he wins,” said the Immadian, swallowing her nausea, the self-loathing, the despair as deep as the Cloudlands.
Flying into a perfect, cloudless twin-suns dawn over the Island-World, Aranya knew she could see little of it. She turned her gaze to the first sun’s dazzling face, letting the warmth fill her, be a balm to her desolation, hoping the breezes might blow her to a new destiny–one she chose, the destiny of a ruined woman robbed of her gifts and graces, and cast into a Cloudlands volcano. Let Zuziana disapprove. This was the result of an Immadian Princess’ arrogance. Yolathion, dying. Jia, losing her baby. War sweeping across the Island-World, sparked by two friends who tried to make a difference. Genocide at Naphtha Cluster. Even Ardan, deeply wounded during his battles inside the Tower, wincing a little with every wing-stroke. Storms, burning, dying. She was the epicentre of it all.
They spoke the day long, commiserating, bickering, cursing Thoralian, weeping and dreaming of the future. Aranya learned about the new-technology weapons and the Shapeshifter Dragonwing awaiting them at Yorbik. She marvelled at the flying warrior monks of Fra’anior. She silenced her friends with her description of the storm she had generated, and the Chameleon Shapeshifter who had poisoned her. She stunned them with the knowledge that only Thoralian knew how her mother might be cured.
It was Kylara who said, “You carry such an Island’s weight of burdens, Aranya. And I thought my leadership a heavy load.”
With the aid of a cool, brisk breeze, the Dragons made excellent time, taking a midday rest at a tiny Island unknown to Zip, whose cliffs were inhabited by the strange, monkey-like people they had once seen climbing the lower cliffs of Sylakia. Aranya was grateful to her friend, who described what she saw from time to time, so she knew of the Dragon’s first sight of the Spits, and the strange, greyish clouds that cast a permanent gloom over the jumbled rock-spire wilderness. She remembered a four-day journey from the Twenty-Seven Sisters through the Spits to Sylakia by Dragonship. Flying as fast as they were, at more than triple the speed of a Dragonship’s four leagues per hour, Zuziana expected them to raise Seg by the early evening, which they achieved.
Aranya joshed her friend about being so precise, and for her trouble received a sulky grumble about basic mathematics being lost on Immadian Princesses who were so tall that their heads were lost in the clouds.
They alighted on a remote peninsula on the western cliff-edge of Seg, where Ardan had spotted a cluster of hot springs.
Zuziana, unchanged from her Dragon form due to the possibility of running into Sylakian patrols or sympathisers, took Kylara and the doctor in search of herbs and roots to treat Yolathion and make up a purgative for her. “Nasty!” Aranya made a face at that idea.
“Anything to encourage your magic to return,” said Doctor Chikkan, suddenly as keen as a hyperactive dragonet. Aranya wondered how greatly Thoralian’s retribution figured in his thinking.
Seeking time alone with her thoughts, Aranya slipped away to the nearby hot springs, which were ringed with tall ferns and steaming slightly in the cooling evening air. She tested three pools before finding one of a bearable temperature. Great Islands, actual hot water to bathe in. She needed to get the dungeon stink, as Jia-Llonya had politely termed it, off her body and out of her hair. If only she could wash away the memory of Thoralian so easily. Aranya decided she should be planning her revenge, rather than cowering behind her friends.
‘Why, if it isn’t the poxy Princess of Immadia,’ she imagined Thoralian sneering. Maybe Zuziana would know how to arrange a headscarf so that it hid her face.
The hot spring was only just large enough for a tall woman to stretch out. Aranya sighed at the luxurious warmth. Above her, the sky deepened from the vibrant oranges of suns-set to the unfathomable purple of night. If only the answers to life’s mysteries were written in the stars. Had she hoped the Lavanias collar’s removal would inspire an instant return of her magic, then she was disappointed. Chikkan had advised that it would take days for the drugs to wear out of her system, even with the help of his delightful-sounding medication.
A prickle against her senses … magic? “Alright, you can come out now,” she said. A quiver in her voice betrayed the fragile hope that impression had conjured up.
A patch of boulders rose and transformed into Ardan’s shoulders and neck. “Ha,” he snorted. “You heard me? I was practising my Shadow skills.”
“By spying on me?”
“Watching over you,” he claimed. “Look, I’m the largest chameleon in history. Ri’arion’s idea.”
His camouflage was imperfect, but he still managed an impressive rendition of a dusty boulder, which could be overlooked by a casual glance. “Stalking a half-blind woman?” she said. “I guess you have to start somewhere.” His Dragon-fire stomach protested rather violently at this. “And you need to learn to control those belly-fires, or you’ll giv
e yourself away every time.”
“Ha!” But he aimed the fiery plume of his snort at the sky.
“How much did you see?” she asked.
“It hasn’t been a day yet, Aranya, yet I feel I’m the one who is being tortured.”
What answer could she give him? Mutely, she watched the Shadow Dragon settle down in a much larger pool close by, making the scalding water overspill the sides and run into her pool. Truth? Could he handle enough truth to put the matter beyond doubt?
“Ardan, I don’t know how to say this without being brutally plain. There are other factors to consider,” Aranya said, striving for calm in order to wrench loose the words she must say and dangle them before him. “I am not only repugnant to look at. I’m breathing poorly because this Shifter pox attacks the internal membranes. My lungs are scarred and the airways restricted. Furthermore, the disease is likely to have rendered me infertile.”
Coldly, he said, “Do you think a Western Isles warrior so fickle and uncaring–”
“Ardan! Must I write it on a scrolleaf? I am maimed, inside and out, and I could not … I can never … I hate this! I hate it …” She buried her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry. I understand.”
The Shadow Dragon tried to pat her shoulder. Aranya appreciated the gesture, awkward as it was, and the deep regret in his voice.
She whispered, “That magical day we had could never happen again, Ardan. That’s why I need you to forget all about the Princess of Immadia. She’s gone forever.” The incongruity at speaking about such matters with a Dragon, and the loss of the only foundation her life’s Island ever had, lent her words a terrible weight. “Kylara is a strong, very fine–”
“I don’t love her. Not in that most Island-shivering sense.”
The raw cry of her heart was, ‘Then, do you love me?’ But he could not. Must not. She denied those words, telling herself that he was the ravening Shadow Dragon of old, a brutish Western Isles warrior with scarification marks covering his chest, nothing like any man she had ever imagined loving, but it was as futile as dust blowing upon the Cloudlands.
