by Marc Secchia
As his great, gleaming muzzle bowed to the ground, her blurred vision made the Dragon seem even more shadowy than usual. His words tiptoed across the space between them. “I should have followed you into the storm. I failed you, Aranya.”
“You can take no blame for this.”
His fires surged, volcanic. His anger burned, vengeful. The Shadow Dragon growled, “Will you show me your body, Aranya, once more? I want to picture how he mutilated you when I tear his hearts out and toss them to the windrocs.”
Shadow and fire. Aranya shivered beneath the all-consuming gaze of a Dragon.
She rose from the pool.
* * * *
Chikkan’s purgative made her next day a misery, giving Aranya a blinding headache and intermittent, debilitating stomach cramps. Exactly the plan, he claimed. Aranya begged Ardan to toss the doctor overboard.
The two Dragons spent the morning labouring against contrary winds, beneath iron-grey skies. Zuziana had to rest in her Human form while Ardan carried six passengers for an eight-hour stint from noon to nightfall. But even he was not indefatigable. The Princess of Remoy mined Ri’arion’s knowledge to begin their instruction in mental techniques and disciplines, and drilled them with an air that struck Aranya as far more monkish than the carefree Remoyan of old.
Aranya had the distinct impression that Ardan was pleased to be the one carrying her. Being fought over the previous evening by two Dragons intent on having her sleep in the protective circle of their necks had served to cheer her, daunting as it was. Feisty little Zuziana taking on the monstrous Shadow Dragon? She smiled. Her friend had won that round, at the expense of promising to sleep pressed up against Ardan’s flank while he kept watch. Come dawn, the two Dragons were pressed together very cosily, their shared body-heat meaning that none of the Humans needed a blanket for sleeping.
She was not jealous at all.
By the following afternoon, Ardan was once again reduced to carrying six Riders. Zuziana did not have his stamina. She made up for that by increasing the pace of her teaching.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of a lesson about focus, Zip said, “Why a Land Dragon? Riddle me that, Immadia. Why destroy the Tower?”
Aranya shook her head, losing whatever focus she had managed to achieve. “I just don’t know, Zip. It couldn’t have come from Fra’anior, because he supposedly wants me alive.”
“Alive and enslaved, you mean,” Kylara put in.
Ardan flinched, losing the rhythm of his wingbeat. “Aye. You’re no use to him dead. Do Land Dragons go feral? It would be the oddest coincidence, otherwise.”
Zip said, “There’s no such thing as coincidence when it comes to magic, Ri’arion likes to say–usually when he’s pontificating about something or other.”
“That’s what I meant!”
“We all understood your point, Shadow Dragon,” said Zip, tartly. “And you, Jia. Please spit out whatever you’ve been brewing all day. The duties of a Dragon Rider may or may not include arguing with your Dragon, but speaking your mind is mandatory.”
“Zip-Zap being our resident expert in this skill,” Aranya put in.
To her surprise, a roar of perfectly Dragonish fury flipped Aranya’s hair over her shoulder. She twisted in her seat on Ardan’s spine-ridge to glance at the diminutive Remoyan, seated directly behind her.
Zip grimaced. “Sorry.”
Jia checked the rolled-up cloak they had used to tie Yolathion in place once more, across her legs, before saying, “I call this the ‘everyone wants a bite of Aranya’ theory.”
“Oh, you know all about having a bite of someone else’s boyfriend,” said Zuziana.
“Zip!” gasped the Jeradian girl.
“Speak, o boyfriend-snatcher of Jeradia.”
Aranya reached back to smack Zip’s knee. “Honestly, Zip, leave me to fight my own battles. Jia doesn’t deserve this.”
“For the official scrolleaf,” huffed Jia, appearing hotter and more bothered by the second, “Yolathion was the one chasing two rogue Shapeshifters all over the Island-World, not me. And, might I add, taking a second consort is perfectly acceptable in Jeradian culture, even if Immadians want to pinch other peoples’ boyfriends and keep them exclusively to themselves. Plus, she used her magic, which is unfair–or her magic used her, I guess.”
Only the leathery creak of a Dragon’s wings broke the resulting silence.
Aranya chuckled, “Zip, can you teach her to give a little less of her mind, please?”
She could hear Zip’s smirk; no need to look. “Oh no, she’s an excellent student.”
Jia-Llonya said, “Back to the bite-of-Aranya theory. It doesn’t make sense unless you think about it this way. Fra’anior requires the Amethyst Dragon to carry out his purposes in the Island-World, which, if we read our histories, are highly unlikely to include any benefit for the Human race. Although, he did snag us a handy Shadow Dragon. Nice work there, Aranya.”
The Black Dragon had slammed two fast-moving Islands together, Aranya thought, as she and Ardan coughed simultaneously. Now, they had to deal with the resulting cataclysm.
Nothing that her new heart of stone could not block out.
“Secondly, Thoralian wants Aranya to help him track down the First Egg, which is somewhere across the Rift in Herimor.”
“Did I say that?”
“Thoralian himself told you so,” said Jia-Llonya, who had pressed for his exact words the day before.
Aranya did not want to think about Thoralian and his vile plans, but now she recalled the incident all too vividly. “Oh, yes–definitely Herimor. Simple, right? Take a jaunt across the Rift, pick up the old Egg, conquer the world. Which puts him at cross-purposes with the Black Dragon. So we can conclude they both want me miserable, but alive.”
Nobody laughed at her joke.
Jia added, “Which brings us to these Land Dragons, who seem to be popping up everywhere you fly.” She cast an apologetic look back along the line of Ardan’s Riders. “Sorry, Aranya. I’m trying to cheer you up, can you tell?”
Aranya waved her hand. “I’m smiling.”
“Well, truth be told, your sightings over the Sea of Immadia are the first such report in over a hundred years–apart from what we saw, was it only yesterday?”
“Yesterday morning,” said Kylara. “I saw something, too. Animal. Not a shadow of doubt–like one of the eels we get in our inland swamps, only a thousand times bigger.” She affected an exaggerated shiver. “We Western Islanders have a legend that Land Dragons chewed up our Islands and spat them out. And you both saw that hole through my Island, Ardan and Aranya. What could possibly have carved such a hole, save a million caveworms, or a Land Dragon?”
Aranya scowled off to starboard. “So the Land Dragon pulled down the Tower of Sylakia because …”
“The Land Dragons want to prevent the daughter of a Star Dragon from stealing back the First Egg,” suggested Ardan, “and they’re prepared to send their forces across the Rift to ensure they keep its power for themselves?”
“See what your disobedience to the Ancient Dragon has set off?” said Zuziana, patting Aranya on the shoulder.
This time, she was certain. Fiery butterflies inhabited her stomach, and it was not the doctor’s medicine at work. Aranya sensed that her magic was beginning to trickle back. She gulped. Surely she was not imagining this? Could she hope?
“Insolent Remoyan,” Aranya grumbled. “So now Fra’anior, Thoralian and the Land Dragons are all conspiring against me? And the five moons are up there whispering about which of them will descend to clip my wings?”
Jia said, “Wrecking the Tower and tossing it into the Cloudlands strikes me as a touch drastic. Perhaps if you’re the size of a Land Dragon, one doesn’t negotiate with Dragons a mere hundred feet in size, which compared to you resemble scale mites.”
“The cheerfulness continues like a rain of windroc droppings,” laughed Zip.
Chikkan cleared his throat self-importantly. He said, “Even fo
r a Land Dragon, crossing the Rift is no trivial exercise. Do you have the first conception of what the Rift is like? No? You cannot simply fly a long-range Dragonship over it.”
“Did you come over the Rift, Chikkan?” asked Aranya.
“My grandfather did,” he said. “When I was young and he still lived, he told me that the Sylakians knew the secret method of passing across the Rift. I presume that is how he transported the drakes you spoke of, lady Zuziana. That route is called the Way of Fizurial–and I don’t know what that means, except that Fizurial is a mythical Island said to move in conjunction with the Mystic Moon. As for the Rift itself, my grandfather spoke of a place of storms which reach from the root of the world to the portals of the moons–storms of molten lava, wind and magic. The fires of the underworld blast upward, creating windstorms so powerful they will shape mountains, and strip flesh from bone. It is said that a hundred-league-wide maelstrom appears and vanishes at random intervals, sucking entire Islands into its maw. And the Rift-storm churns up the Cloudlands, spewing poisons and magic so many miles into the atmosphere, not even a Dragon could overfly it.”
“Yet here you are,” said Ardan.
“Service to Sylakia is all I have ever known.” The doctor turned to smile at Aranya, a discomfiting light gleaming in his eyes. “My grandfather taught me to worship Star Dragons. Fear not, lady, for I would not go so far–but I once heard him tell a legend of a people called the Foam Riders who live inside the Rift, who claim that only a Star Dragon is able to tame the Rift-storm. Were you searching for the way, I would ask them.”
“See, even these Foam Rider creatures want a bite of Aranya,” said Zip. “My jealousy grows no less.”
Aranya rolled her shoulders as if that could somehow release her burdens. Land Dragons tracking her across the Rift? That was about as likely as, say, a Chameleon Shapeshifter tracking her by magic. How many more Chameleons might be out there? Did that mean she needed to watch her friends more closely? Her father? Ignathion? Now there was a thought to scare the living pith out of a person! Who could she truly trust?
Suddenly, that sinister light in Chikkan’s eyes … she’d scare herself ralti-stupid this way.
Sighing, Aranya said, “My duty lies first to our Island-World, north of the Rift, and to Yolathion and Ri’arion, if by some means I can help them.”
Ardan asked, “Are you suggesting that your magic has returned?”
“It’s far too early for that,” Chikkan disagreed.
Aranya groaned loudly and long. Two minutes of hope, wrecked.
Chapter 26: Beran with Bite
Skirting the south-Western tip of the Spits as narrowly as they dared, the small Dragonwing turned their noses to the north and gathered speed. Windrocs were a constant danger, but the Shadow and Azure Dragons flew high enough that the birds gave up following them. To their right hand or paw, a sprawling landscape of rocky columns loomed beneath a tablecloth of unbroken grey cloud, as though a table of a million legs stood above the Cloudlands. The spires were surprisingly uniform in height and shape, and up to a quarter-mile square. Some leaned against their neighbours, or appeared to have been severed by unimaginable forces in times past. Two days of hard flying, dawn to midnight, brought them past the cut-off dome of Rolodia Island, once an ally of Immadia, now spoiled, burned and its lake-terraces deliberately destroyed.
Aranya could not see Rolodia, but Ardan’s low-voiced description more than satisfied her curiosity. “Perhaps it’s better not to see,” she said.
“It’s better to see and remember what Thoralian did,” said Jia-Llonya, seated one position ahead of her on Ardan’s back. “That’ll give us the strength we need to beat him.”
And this was the doe-eyed consort she had imagined?
Aranya gazed at the young man stretched over Jia’s lap. Doctor Chikkan said it was only a matter of time before Yolathion died from his mistreatment. They had made him as comfortable as possible, and forced pain-killing herbs down his throat. What more could they do?
“He has strength,” said Chikkan. “But I don’t know that he’d want to live. He’d be a cripple.”
Later, when Zuziana took her turn flying with Aranya and Kylara, the Dragoness said, “Do you think your tears could heal him, Aranya, as they did me?”
Sadly, she told Zip and Kylara how Yolathion had declared that he never wanted to become a Dragon. His healing would require a miracle. Zuziana had been deathly ill when Aranya cried her life-changing tears, but her body had at least been whole. Yolathion’s bones were broken in more places than they could count, his joints dislocated, his spine twisted. Nothing could save him now, this sweet young man who had once dropped his helmet at her smile.
Having overnighted on the mountainous slopes of Nox Island, famous for its excellent, earthy red wines, Ardan and Zuziana set course for Remia, and within three hours, sighted King Beran’s Dragonship fleet on the horizon.
“Ha. Slow-slugs,” said Ardan.
“You forget how time-consuming Dragonship travel is,” added Zip, snorting dismissively. “Being a flying boulder, I bet you can’t catch me!”
With a flip of her wings, she shot ahead.
Aranya wondered if she had been so full of herself as a Dragon. Most probably. But when she thought about seeing her father again, her hand rose instinctively to touch her cheek. Perhaps she should borrow a headscarf from someone. Or hold her head high, and brave the inevitable gasps her appearance would cause.
* * * *
Beran’s eyes filled with tears when he saw her. He clasped Aranya in his arms. “Sparky.”
“I missed you, Dad.”
Love and horror. Her father’s body trembled as she had only ever felt once before, on Izariela’s Tower when she had returned to give the King, and her people, new hope. His hands moved on her shoulders, touching the scattered lumps, and his breath caught in his throat, a stifled moan. Shuddering in response, Aranya knew that Thoralian’s chosen method of torture was so devious, it even injured those she loved without him ever touching them.
She maintained her composure enough to add, “Can we debrief first thing? And then I need time, and space, to myself. Please … you understand, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
Only a lifetime’s training in kingly duties kept King Beran moving from the top of his flagship, where he had chosen to meet the incoming Dragons, to his navigation cabin. Aranya felt his gaze every step of the way.
Seen across the conference table, his grey eyes expressed such a depth of distress that she could not bear to look at him. Beran appeared to have aged twenty years in as many days.
Let him stare. Let them all stare. She was a stone, unbreakable, as immovable as an Island.
Gazing into space, Aranya repeated much of what she had told the others, before fielding an endless gauntlet of questions from Ignathion, Nak and Oyda–necessary and gentle questions, she understood, but harrowing nonetheless. After three hours, the Immadian King cut them off to excuse her.
She entered her cabin and shut the door, overcome by an eerie echo of her journey into exile with First War-Hammer Ignathion. How little she had known, then. Could she have imagined becoming a Dragoness? A felon? Disfigured beyond salvation? Aranya perched on the bed. Here she sat, scrabbling through the ashes of her life.
Glass crashed next door. Fists, pounding the wall; a familiar voice raised in a muffled, faltering cry. Aranya flinched. Her poor father. Beran was raving next door, calling down blood-curdling curses on Sylakia and Thoralian, such words as she had never before heard pass her usually dignified, articulate father’s lips. Aranya knew she should cry. She should weep whole terrace lakes, but all within was a wasteland. She buried her head beneath the pillow-roll, but could not shut out his voice.
At length, the council returned to more measured debate and planning–discussing her, no doubt. Probably exchanging appalled, sympathetic comments about her condition.
Perhaps an hour later, a rap at the door startled her.
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s me, petal.”
“Oyda, please. I don’t want to speak to anyone.”
“It’s important, Aranya. May I come in?”
“If you have to.” Oyda entered soft-footed, and shut the door behind her. The Princess said, “Did my father send you in to pat my head and tell me everything’s going to be alright?”
Oyda did not raise an eyebrow at Aranya’s tone. She said, “Are you ready to listen, petal? I’ve something to say which you need to hear.”
“I need to hear what, exactly?”
She sat up, but hid her face from the old woman, fearing that her sympathy would sear like acid. Oyda’s feet entered her peripheral vision. Aranya wanted to cry out, ‘Don’t touch me!’ Could they not understand it hurt too much?
Oyda said, “I know how presumptuous this is going to sound, Aranya, so if you want to yell at me, that’s fine. I want you to imagine that I’m your mother, and I am going to speak Izariela’s words to you.”
Aranya wondered that the whole world did not catch its breath at Oyda’s audacity. Her mind seemed to expand inward and outward at once. A full-throated roaring filled her ears. Her lungs ceased to function. Aranya saw her mother before her, leaning over as if to comfort a babe in her crib, the pure light of a Star Dragon’s power shining from her face and eyes.
She stared at Oyda, and saw Izariela.
The apparition said, “You’re still my beautiful girl.”
She knew storm power. In her Amethyst Dragon form, Aranya had soared on storm blasts, played between boiling thunderheads and dared the lightning bolts to strike her down. But Oyda’s words conveyed an even greater power; so acute, it carved into her soul like the sharpest of Immadian forked daggers.
“You are beautiful.” The shining figure reached out.
Aranya screamed, throwing herself back against the cabin wall, away from the questing fingers. “No! You can’t do this to me! You’ve no right. No!”
