Song of the Storm Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  ’Ere thy gentle edicts doth shiver mine Islands,

  Most deliciously–

  “Ardan!” she squawked, blushing so hotly he saw heat shimmering right though her face-veil.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you know what you’re saying?”

  “A ballad Ja’arrion was whispering to his mate the other … oh. Do I sense another cross-cultural mishap?” Holding her gaze with his febrile Dragon-eyes, Ardan watched her colour deepen intriguingly. He rumbled, “Aye, Aranya?”

  “Aye. As in, that’s–” she switched languages mid-sentence–an expression reserved for roost-love. And a naughty expression at that. Quite inappropriate.

  Naughty? Inappropriate? Immadians clearly did not excel in sharpening the verbal scimitar near the conjugal hut, as Western Islanders would put it. Ducking away in an attempt to disguise her blushes, Aranya proceeded to march off in a high dudgeon. Ardan’s eyes inadvertently lit upon the decidedly less-than-straitlaced action of her hips. Great Islands, how the poetry of Immadia simmered in tailored leather trousers!

  He checked surreptitiously. Aye, his scales were smoking.

  Chapter 9: Seeking Dragon Lore

  ARAnya Fumed, AWARE she had erred. Doubtless, Nak would extol the virtues of playing with a man’s affections. That was not her style. So, what had she been thinking–to distract Ardan? Mission accomplished. Fire his futile desire? So done, as his scenting of her person signified. As self-directed irritation lengthened her stride, Aranya listened to and felt the Dragon’s massive tread trailing her. She had to inform Mister Sulphur-Breath soon about her decision soon, but she could not. Their oath-magic was too consuming; her loss too raw.

  Dragons should not look at girls like that. It was just … it was the yearning between two oath-bound Shapeshifter-souls. It was right and proper, cried the voice of her inner storms–no! She must not admit this folly. Friends only, and not a scale’s-edge more!

  Who was she trying to fool?

  Aranya walked rapidly, but the Shadow Dragon took one step for every four of hers. As they exited Gi’ishior’s library through a tunnel, his rasping breath, burbling belly-fires and leathery scraping of paws on stone were magnified, and Dragoness-Aranya happily drooled over his warrior-Dragon wafting odour on the slight breeze from the rear. Her Human turned up her nose, mentally. Her Dragon had better behave herself–well, better than Human-Aranya, anyways.

  Ardan paused as the fierce suns-shine broke over them; crouching, he shifted his hind left paw toward her foot. Mount up, Dragon Rider.

  Stepping up onto the arch of his left foot, Aranya placed her boot on the nub of his ankle bone and levered herself up toward his tightly bent knee. She hesitated in surprise. Why the smoke, Ardan? Indeed, upon closer examination, wisps of smoke curled all over his body. Are you sick?

  Not quite, he laughed gruffly, curving his neck to regard her progress.

  I demand the truth, Dragon!

  Very well. Too much flagrant ogling of thy peerless posterior, Immadia.

  What? Aranya’s left foot slipped, landing the Princess flat on her stomach, in a fine pickle of wriggling embarrassment, partway onto his knee. A Nak joke? Too many truth-indicators shading … the truth! Ardan, how dare you–

  He reached back to pat the upturned object of his desire. Need a paw now?

  Paws off! Off, I said! Ardan, are you trying to vex me?

  Aranya levered herself up with an angry flexion of her arms, before taking the route up the steely bulge of his phenomenal thigh muscles to his lower back. When she turned to glare at him, bending her knees to account for the slope of his black scale-armour, a sardonic, appraising Dragon-smile enflamed her fury. Stop … looking at me!

  Slowly, the Shadow Dragon rumbled, Looking and vexing? I admit to both. Too much the Princess to handle the truth you stipulated?

  Men! Dragons!

  No, not that, she gritted out mentally. Ardan, I am not … I am no longer capable–I cannot be with you! Man and woman, it cannot ever be.

  Kindly allow me my own opinions on the matter! the Dragon snarled. Aye, riddle me this, Princess: since when was love so one-dimensional? I spit upon this null-fires gibberish from a supposedly educated royal–

  Thundering Dragon fires! She threw back, This is nothing to do with my station.

  Then, I will admire what I will admire! Thou …

  Abruptly, his cantankerous, smoke-billowing response mellowed into a purr that almost shook her off his back. Aranya climbed rapidly up to his spine-spikes. No! She had decided–spineless Immadia. Aye, she had provoked him, and now this? He had to desist! It was the only way.

  She had to desist. Mercy.

  He drawled, I fail to understand why we are arguing over the exquisitely inarguable, Princess.

  Arguing over the what? Aranya snorted, before thinking the better of her response. Thunder resounded together with her cry, ARDAN!

  His mighty body shook with laughter, still smoking visibly. Aye, Immadia? Might I endeavour to express how the delicious rondure of–

  Not under any moon!

  At once the Shadow Dragon bowed, acting unconcerned by her ire. Then, what is my lady’s pleasure today? The Islands are ours, the skies, the world below–where to?

  A circuit of Fra’anior Cluster.

  Agreed.

  Shortly, Aranya had her straps affixed. Now Ardan could turn somersaults and she would merely bobble a bit on her seat between his spine-spikes. And he could ruddy well stop his shameless eyeballing of her pox-raddled personage! So much for denying the oath-magic. She settled her trembling hands on her lap. Fra’anior grant her strength to stay this dreadful course.

  Oh, Sha’aldior!

  At her low request, the Shadow Dragon sprang upward, his first leap taking them to double the height of a Dragon before he flexed his mighty wingspan, driving them toward the skies. The gemstone-encrusted walls of Gi’ishior’s volcano flashed by.

  She whooped softly as the powerful young Dragon shot out of the volcano as though flung by an explosion, already exceeding a velocity of twenty-five leagues per hour. Oh, roaring rajals–Dragonflight! How different Ardan was to Yolathion. No well-bred, proper son of Jeradia would have dared to compliment her posterior in such a fashion–for the first time, she appreciated the irony and inanity of that notion, well-bred. What was not well-bred about a warrior who chose to shed his lifeblood for a kingdom not his own? He had Islands more honour, dignity and majesty than many a man or woman born into so-called high station. One mistook him for a simple man at one’s peril. Perhaps she would have governed Yolathion more than was healthy in a relationship. Ardan would not be dominated. They might clash, but he had already demonstrated the maturity to apologise for mistakes–apologies did not come as easily to proud Immadia, did they?

  Fra’anior Cluster spread out before them, its mighty ramparts wreathed in a storm which had swept in low across the Cloudlands, washing around the base of the Islands of the south-eastern rim like a grim black tide, yet it did not reach high enough to surmount the league-tall cliffs. Another isolated storm embraced Fra’anior Island, its grey, drifting skirts proclaiming heavy rainfall; still a third approached Ha’athior, occluding the wilder, uninhabited southern rim-Isles beyond.

  Clearly riled, Ardan indulged in a southerly sprint from Gi’ishior, just a quarter-mile offshore of the rim-wall, putting leagues between them and the Dragon patrols. Oh no, another Dragon patrol lurked high overhead, so high that her Human eyes only just caught the glint of suns-shine upon scales. One tropical Island slipped by. Two. Pocket-sized Human villages stood amongst the lush greenery, from this height seemingly populated by ants. She should memorise their names. Hualiama would have known these Islands like the palm of her hand.

  Suddenly, her head swivelled. Ardan. Behind that storm …

  What?

  Instinct. Balance. A tingling in her bones. She had only the thinnest of descriptors to encompass the rich feedback of Dragon senses that led her to direct Arda
n to fly low along the eastern flank of Ha’athior Island. She bade him slow, scouting the vine-festooned cliffs, hunting with her developing senses. His wings flexed and adjusted constantly upon the changeable winds. Gusts kicked them about so hard that twice, Ardan’s wingtips sliced the foliage. They sideslipped through cotton-puff ranks of white cloud; Aranya sensed Ardan’s concern, but she would not relent.

  There! she yelled.

  Ardan jinked, cutting his approach so narrowly that he employed his tail to knock them a few feet further from the cliff, before executing a cunning twist that took them beneath the stony outcropping and into a narrow crevasse that led to a cave. She breathed in the Shadow Dragon’s excitement. There were signs of recent occupation–broken vines, stripped leaves, a passage carved through a thick veil of trailing linger-vines.

  Draconic occupation.

  “Kylara!” gasped Aranya.

  Ardan flared and braked as best he could manage in the narrow space, landing almost atop Kylara’s head in the sandy entrance of a hidden cave. “Wounded,” he growled.

  “Ardan. Aranya,” the Western Isles warrior greeted them with a curt, pained bow.

  Having already unclipped her harness, Aranya stepped rapidly down to Ardan’s shoulder. “Where’s Jia-Llonya? Yolathion?”

  “Freaking feral Dragon’s gone,” Kylara cursed unhappily. “You ever tried to catch a feral Dragon without killing him, Princess? Go to Yedior–please. He’s the worst wounded. He kept Yolathion from killing us.”

  A rapid paw-ride later, Aranya’s boots thumped down onto the sand. She ran after her erstwhile love-rival into the cave. It did not broaden out much, but it was deep. She smelled sulphur, dank smoke and the complex vanilla and anise-like scent of magical Dragon blood. Her boots squelched on what she realised was sand mixed with golden blood. As her eyes adjusted from the bright suns-glare, she saw Jia-Llonya lying to one side, nursing a severely burned arm. Yedior the Brown lay slumped beside the girl, the savage bite-wounds on his neck wadded with probably every item of clothing the two Riders possessed. Neither of them even wore trousers, she observed inanely.

  Aranya snapped, “How long?”

  “Four days,” Kylara said. “We’ve been waiting, calling for help … surviving.”

  “Five,” Jia-Llonya whispered. “We felt something–was it you, Princess, kicking the Islands about?”

  Never mind her weak joke. Rescue? Carry them back? Aranya knew she could not Shapeshift again this day and still have enough magic left to work on their wounds. She turned an unworthy curl of jealousy at these two chasing Yolathion about the Islands, into a fierce summons to her healing gift.

  Yedior said, I’ve been lying still to conserve energy. We knew someone would come.

  You did well with the clothing, Aranya noted. Ardan. Help me. Mind-meld. I’ll need your strength.

  Then she reached for the Brown and laid her hands against his neck. Please, let her strength suffice. Please … Aranya rode the floodwaters of a familiar power. Let there be healing!

  The Brown Dragon’s wounds had come within a rajal’s whisker of fatality, for Yolathion’s fangs had punctured the major neck arteries in four places. The Jeradian girl’s spare dress and Kylara’s wadded-up underwear had saved his life, she told them. Having contained the bleeding, the Dragon’s natural healing power had been at work meantime. Following Leandrial’s detailed instructions, Aranya drew also on Yedior’s strength and innate Balance–for in the Land Dragons’ philosophy, healing was a form of re-Balancing a physical, emotional or spiritual state–to repair the most life-threatening damage. The Brown sported other wounds upon his wings and paws, with three talons entirely torn from their roots, but Aranya understood those would regrow.

  Now, the Dragon pointed her to Jia-Llonya. I’m well enough, for which I thank thee, Star Dragoness. Now, see to my Riders.

  Infection had set in. Aranya swayed and almost fainted as she beat back the fever and hurting, trying to cleanse her friend’s arm as Jia-Llonya had once nursed her with the pox. Ardan’s presence was like a deep-rooted rock. The entirety of Jia’s left arm had been seared with Dragon fire, which had washed against her left flank and up to her neck. Aranya sweated three hours over her wounds.

  “We’ll need cleansing herbs, salve and bandages,” Aranya said finally, becoming aware from the angle of the shadows how the day had advanced. “Kylara?”

  “It’s just a cut,” growled the Warlord of Yanga Island.

  “Which merely lifted a flap of skin off a granite-filled skull?” Aranya sniped, checking the wound behind Kylara’s head.

  Kylara’s answering laughter told Aranya exactly how territorial she was being around Ardan. The Warlord said, “We tracked Yolathion down to Fra’anior. He’s been hiding around Islands and pinching ralti sheep. But at Rolodia he attacked a village–the buildings, actually, rather than people. Yedior drove him off. He’s completely wild, Aranya. Any advice for belting feral Dragons into their right mind? Assuming you don’t want to return the favour he bestowed upon you at Sylakia’s Last Walk …”

  “I’m over that.” Aranya sighed. “And him. So over him. Not that I’m calling Yolathion leftovers, mind. He’s a good man in his own right, and honourable–”

  “I’m to sup on a Princess’ leftovers?” Kylara shouted.

  Jia-Llonya interrupted, “You don’t understand Immadian understatement.”

  “Stuff it up your fumarole!” swore the Warlord.

  However, Yedior turned a mesmerising eye upon the young Warlord; her hand trembled upon her scimitar hilt, before falling away. “Precious Rider,” the Brown rumbled earnestly, “how my hearts sing at the raging of your fires!”

  Aranya did not understand what passed between the new Dragon-Rider pair, but Kylara appeared to relent. Soon, Yedior found his paws, stretching gingerly. I thank you, my Star-Shadow kin, he said. With your aid, I shall fly to Gi’ishior. We must scour the lore for the right methods to succour our wing-brother Yolathion, for our task is unfinished.

  If this is your will, I shall carry your Riders, Ardan replied, overriding Aranya’s immediate protests. My Rider is right. We shall fly low to the Isles, Yedior the Brown, and I shall fly beneath. You will rest as needed upon my shoulders. Word of a Dragon?

  Aranya sucked in her lip at Ardan’s tone. Dragon-direct! However, Yedior seemed pleased–this proposal winged the path between honour and shame, she recognised belatedly. His wounds and incapacity were shameful; worse, his defeat in battle. He had to show his strength by flying to Gi’ishior at once, or he was no Dragon. Aye. Sighing, Aranya summoned the dregs of her magical strength.

  Perhaps, between them, she and Ardan might keep this stubborn lizard alive.

  First, they had truly burned the heavens. Now, two Dragons and three Riders would limp home. This was her new life as a Shapeshifter Dragoness. Soul-inspiring. Tragic. Magical.

  * * * *

  Come the glorious deepening of evening that same day following a fiery Fra’aniorian suns-set, a second perturbation struck the much-abused volcano of Gi’ishior.

  ARANYA!

  Land Dragons had a way of making themselves heard. And he had just been chasing the largest fish he had ever seen. With a bubbling sigh, Dragon-Ardan breached the surface, shaking the water off his wings. He launched himself westward toward Leandrial’s head as she loomed above the terrace lake, searching with her eye-beam.

  He bugled, “All is well, noble Leandrial.”

  He called a second time in telepathic Dragonish, whereupon the powerful beam swept toward him. Ardan barrel-rolled smartly to his port flank, avoiding any impact, before accelerating with his utmost strength. Wind whistled across his ear-canals and scales. His flight muscles creaked and burned as he poured out his power, revelling in the joy of flight. To his surprise, he caught a telepathic chuckle from Leandrial.

  Enjoying yourself, little one? Now, explain!

  Compressing his thoughts into bite-sized chunks, Western Isles-style, Ardan peppered Leandria
l with information. Aranya was fine. She had spoken a Word of Command; Leandrial replied that she had heard the Amethyst Dragoness over two hundred leagues away! He fired Ri’arion’s shielding ideas at the Land Dragoness and summarised the information they had received by message-hawk from Sylakia and Telstroy regarding Thoralian’s probable flight-path. He related their latest plan of eschewing the detour to Jeradia, if only they could extract information from her mind; Ri’arion also had ideas about how he might eavesdrop on Leandrial’s thoughts, if she was willing.

  Then, he decelerated by cupping his wings, riding the violent forces conducted through the wing bones to his formidable shoulders and ready body.

  Of course I’m willing, said Leandrial, apparently unruffled by this controversial idea. No mind-reading will be required, just the services of a mind that sees like yours. I will borrow their thoughts.

  This pronouncement came accompanied by a thoroughly discomfiting grin. Ardan stretched his wings to disguise his unease; at exactly that moment, he heard Aranya’s call. The Amethyst Dragoness swirled through the tunnel entrance, having to take evasive action to avoid a fire-spitting Dragonwing. Their first thought had clearly been–attack!

  Half an hour of explanations and bustling arrangements later, Leandrial’s knuckles curled over the terrace-lake edge in a posture of unalloyed frustration. Too many chiefs among these Dragons, Ardan decided, eyeing the commotion with a fiercely rolling eye. Two hundred monks and one hundred Human servitors sat on the terrace lake wall facing the volcanic cone, keeping a healthy distance from Leandrial’s mighty paws. King Beran rode Ja’arrion aloft, together with every single Dragon from the volcano, including Yedior and his double Rider-team. Jia-Llonya had evidently wangled or burgled her way out of the infirmary; she appeared deathly pale, and her green eyes dull with pain.

  The Amethyst Dragoness, Sapphire and Ri’arion had alighted on the Land Dragoness’ towering muzzle and stood with their eyes closed, absorbed in whatever briefing Leandrial had for them. He eyed Aranya balefully. That Dragoness’ wingtips drooped, but she was still pushing herself beyond the edge of the Isle …