Song of the Storm Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  Too many, she muttered. Thoralian’s Dragonwings will shred us if we try to escape with so many young and injured. I have failed … but we must try, or we are no Dragonkind.

  I can see you safe, said the Azure Dragoness.

  Suk’itarix the Green snarled furiously, How can I trust a Dragoness I met but a half-hour ago?

  I am Brityx, said her shell-mother, her bulk obscuring the suns. I say her fires burn white. What is this idea, little one?

  Zip grinned fiercely. I propose to snaffle you away below the Cloudlands, in the mouth of a Land Dragoness.

  Chapter 20: Defiance

  After his first interview with the Marshal, four servants dumped Ardan inside the harem’s doorway. The proud warrior of Ur-Naphtha tried to arrest his slide against a wall, but fell against an ornamental plinth. A priceless golden vase by a Fendoon Master toppled. “No!”

  Lurax caught the vase, averting disaster. “It were bad?”

  Ardan spat blood. “Piece of sweetbread.”

  “Bane. Bane!” called the boy.

  Shizina and four other small, dark women emerged from a nearby chamber to ogle at the source of the commotion, but they turned at once and disappeared, giggling–as usual. He tried not to blush. Shizina had loudly proclaimed her opinion of the contents of his briefs the previous evening, during dinner, and exactly what she would like to do with a muscled warrior. Grr. He was admittedly a head taller than any of these Herimor men or women, and probably twice their body weight, but that exacting commentary on all of his dimensions made him squirm like a rat trapped in a python’s grasp.

  “I’ll walk,” said Ardan.

  Lurax helped him stand; it took three tries just to find his feet. Ardan wobbled a few steps before Bane ran up and shoved his shoulder beneath the Western Isles warrior’s left armpit, saying, “Being a warrior mean acting more stubborn than a hunk of week-old flatbread?”

  “Aye. Crust like granite.”

  “Mistress didn’t like your answers?”

  Ardan laughed painfully. “I think it was when I said I’d rather pillow-roll with a scabby windroc’s regurgitated breakfast–”

  “Pillow-roll?” puzzled Lurax.

  Bane translated, “Shim-shamming, like you refused us last time. That what you mean?”

  “I don’t–curse it, I’d rather slit my own throat than do that with children!”

  His horror only made the boys look downcast. In silence, they helped him to his pallet, where Ardan collapsed. Bane brought water to wash his blood-gummed mouth; Lurax fetched a cup of spiced hoosik-milk yoghurt from the cold store. Ardan had the impression a hoosik was some kind of hexapede related to the common goat. He swilled water and allowed the tart yoghurt to cool his throat.

  Finally, he said, “I’m Ardan of Naphtha Cluster.”

  The boys clasped forearms with him, although they clearly did not know what the gesture meant. Herimor culture–at least in the harem–appeared to major on different kisses upon the cheek, ears or shoulders, which was rather unfortunate, since even a casual kiss triggered his wards.

  Tixi had found out his name, but only that much. She had demonstrated, at length and in sadistic detail, the ways in which the Lavanias collar could be used to torture a Shapeshifter Dragon.

  More gently, Ardan said, “Mostly, in this Island-World, children are allowed to be children. At least, they should be. The stronger should protect the weaker, not take advantage. In my culture what passes in this harem would be beyond taboo. It’s unthinkable. What happened to you, Bane? Lurax? How did you enter the Marshal’s service?”

  Bane said, “I was the spoils of war. Started here when I was five.” He laughed bitterly, Islands away in his memories. “I thought I was meant to sing nicely for the Marshal’s guests. Fool I was.”

  Lurax added in his sweet, piping voice, “My family were in debt to a landowner. One day, a trader came by. He said, ‘A pretty price for a pretty boy.’ Took me to the back room to … to check the goods. My father told me not to cry. But I cried a lot … ’cause … and my father were ashamed. He beat me for making the trader drop his price.”

  “I guess your body get used to it,” Bane reflected.

  “Your soul don’t,” Lurax put in, rubbing his eyes fiercely with his knuckles. “Tears? As Bane says, tears are for fools.”

  “You think boys like us got souls, warrior-man? After what we done?” Again, Ardan squirmed at the knowing sneer in Bane’s voice, an old man speaking from a child’s mouth. “In this House, we’re nought but toys and baubles. We sold to the spirits of volcanoes, man. We’ll burn forever.”

  Ardan looked from Bane, all bitterness and fire, to the haunted depths of Lurax’s eyes, and he wondered what he would not do to rescue such as these.

  “Take my hands,” Ardan said, reaching toward them. The boys flinched in concert. “See? You’re afraid I’ll drag you down right now. I can say what I like, right? Promise you the five Moons, and you still wouldn’t trust me after what you’ve been through. Never mind I couldn’t rise off my pallet lest you tied my nostril hairs to a passing meteorite.”

  Silence trembled between them.

  With a snort of laughter that sounded agonised, Bane touched Ardan’s hand with his. He seemed ready to bolt. After a moment, Lurax did the same.

  Gazing at their linked hands, Ardan said, “We all have souls, but none of us is perfect. I wish I could teach you that there are different kinds of touch to what you have experienced, and regard that respects a person, even soul-deep. People can love each other without it being about shim-shamming, or abuse. Touch can be precious, true-fires loving and affirming. I know you don’t see that now, Bane, or you, Lurax, but you can learn another way. We can all learn. Dragons say it with different words, but they mean the same. Their young are precious, never to be ill-treated or molested.”

  A flash of deep blue scales announced Sapphire’s arrival in his small chamber, barely large enough for a sleeping pallet and a rickety commode. Without pause, she curved down to land neatly beside Ardan, and laid her muzzle upon his chest with a contented sigh. Her eyes shuttered.

  What did the dragonet mean by this? The boys were intrigued …

  “Love is meant to be true-fires,” Ardan continued, finally, more intent upon impressing his views on his own heart than upon listening ears. “It nurtures and ennobles the spirit. As I said, we all fail to love rightly. But the point is …” Aranya’s smile, her sorrow, her futile horror played through his memory. Ardan whispered, “I will tell you how I have failed. The point is, when we set ourselves heart, soul and sinew to love, we become more. That is life’s greatest and worthiest labour.”

  * * * *

  I need ten volunteers to fly interference, snarled Tari. The rest, line up with me. Smaller hatchlings? Find yourself an adult partner. Fledglings, you will fly in compact formation. I don’t want heroes, I want you watching each other’s hides. Azure?

  Aye, Marshal? said Zip, flaring her wings in surprise.

  Lead out.

  I’m … honoured.

  Her expression said, ‘Shut the trap and fly,’ but the Green Dragoness inclined a wingtip. Then summon us unto battle, o lightning from clear skies!

  Zip bellowed, Dragons, let’s burn the deeps!

  She beat her wings with rapid quarter-strokes, launching out of the narrow gully. At once the Dragons following the Azure raised a great windstorm of wingbeats, rising into the air as they formed up around the fledglings. Those carrying hatchlings and eggs flew lower in the formation, as the traditional angle of Dragon attack was to dive from a height.

  The compact Dragonwing broke out of cover from the side of the floating Island, diving in a low, shallow arc almost directly southward to give the illusion of fleeing for the next archipelago. Meantime, ten Dragons drove skyward to engage the Dragons wheeling above. The massive Dragonwing stalking from the suns-rise side reoriented immediately, keeping the jaws of their trap tight. Meantime, Ri’arion wasted no time, instructing the Gr
ey-Green Dragons capable of shielding in the arts of filtering poisons. They would have to do their utmost until they reached the safety of Leandrial’s powerful shield.

  Only one issue. Zip did not know where the Land Dragoness was. By shielded telepathy, she cried, Leandrial! We need you!

  The ochre Cloudlands remained silent.

  One hundred and eighty pursuing Dragons did not. The voice of their fury and battle-lust was as thunder shaking the Islands. Ignoring the frantic drumbeat of her Dragon-hearts, Zuziana slowed a little so that she did not pull too far ahead of her more heavily-laden charges.

  She yelled with her utmost mental strength, LEANDRIAL!

  Ri’arion did not even blink.

  Discouraged, the Azure scanned the soon-to-be battlefield rapidly. Those Dragons were too close. Dragon-fire flared in the upper corner of her vision. Zip held course, weaving between the verdant Islands as Thoralian’s Dragonwings belled out their challenges. Grey-Greens lurched as an airstream buffeted them, but Tari’s command held true, flying three or four abreast as they poured between the Islands floating five miles above the Cloudlands like a dark, scaly river. There was no bad weather to provide cover. For the first time, Zuziana appreciated what it meant to be hunted by Dragons. Where could one hide? By all accounts, the Yellow-White Marshal had dispatched his Dragonwings far and wide in the preceding months, hunting … what? A wing-brother? Sign of pursuit from the North? The First Egg itself? Whatever the case, Thoralian’s forces had thrown the entire Northern Kahilate area, the surrounding Vassal States and most of the Southern Kahilate into chaos.

  The executions of Humans, Dragons and Shapeshifters already numbered in the tens of thousands, Tari had informed them.

  The encircling Dragons were less than half a mile distant. The small covering Dragonwing raced westward, trying to outrun four times their number of fire-belching Dragon-warriors.

  She steadied a wingtip. Ready … dive!

  Every Dragon in the command tossed their tails up and their muzzles down, and pumped their wings.

  Dragonkind plummeted like rain between the great ruddy Island cliffs. Vegetation flashed by. Vines. Burrowing Dragons. Legion greyish ragions holding entire Islands aloft in their limpet-like paws. The Azure Dragoness risked a sideways glance. The chasing Dragons belatedly gave chase–would the gap be large enough? The Grey-Green Dragons surged, taking huge, sweeping strokes of their wings as they evidently realised the sprint was on. They were not quite fast enough, Ri’arion judged within her mind. The slower fledglings would be caught.

  Wheeling, Zip said. Azure flashed beneath an Island, so close that she smelled the musty scent of the ragions. Her wingtips brushed their backs.

  Stay the course! the monk cried to Tari, his hands clawed as he rose to his feet upon Zip’s back. My magic is ready. Steady, girl. Let’s wake these lizards to a volcanic Fra’aniorian morning!

  Multiple billows of Dragon fire greeted the Azure Dragoness as she speared out of cover, one Dragoness assaulting thirty. Ri’arion muttered away like a demented man talking to his invisible friend, making sweeping motions of his hands.

  Sensing the power coalescing around them, Zip hissed, Brace for backlash …

  Oh, manky windrocs that won’t–I’ve a better idea, the monk chuckled unexpectedly. Watch this.

  Sweeping up hundreds of ragions with the shaped shield he had intended to thrust at the incoming Dragonwing, Ri’arion set about firing the bulbous subdraconic creatures across the divide five at a time, then in tens as he found his rhythm, crying, Stick, my beauties! Stick!

  The Azure goggled as the ragions, clearly confused by Ri’arion’s overriding mental command, frantically clasped whatever they could catch with their multitude of small, hook-like talons–wings, scales, toes, it did not seem to matter. They stuck like the finest glue–apparently, some subspecies boasted sizeable suckers on their bellies as well as talons, ensuring that they never fell off an Island once attached. The startled, be-suckered Grey-Greens swerved and bellowed and tangled with each other, raising a comical chorus of complaint–Zip occupied herself, however, with repaying lightning-strikes for fireballs with a quintet of enemy Dragons who managed to avoid the irate snarl. Several Dragons, swamped in ragions, floated helplessly up past the Islands, tearing off their own scales in an attempt to loosen the pests.

  Zuziana cooed, Creative as well as handsome? What a man!

  Her kind of man very nearly lost his head as an unseen Dragon ambushed them from below, driving the smaller Azure against the flank of a small Island. Wing-struts snapped; Ri’arion cursed, holding the Dragon at bay with a swipe of his sword aimed at the searching muzzle. Zip skittered away, running upside-down over the bubbly ragions’ backs before throwing herself into a sweeping backward dive. Furious Dragons roared port and starboard as her abrupt manoeuvre whipped her out from beneath their noses, causing a decent collision between several hundred tonnes of indignant Dragonflesh.

  Slobs. Your mothers whelped dim-witted boulders, sneered her Dragoness as the Azure gave them the slip.

  Wow, said the Human within. We need to work on our insults, Dragoness.

  Freaking Ancient Dragons, this was the time to learn to talk to herself? Zuziana furled her wings and let her superior aerodynamic shape sweep her away from the conflict, meantime panting hard to replenish her oxygen. The hard part lay just ahead.

  LEANDRIAL!!

  A faraway bellow shook her from tail to wingtips. White flared, together with a gorgeous yet deadly crescendo of Harmonic magic, only Leandrial had somehow contrived to modulate her attack to perfectly wash past the fleeing Azure Dragoness. Crazy. Ragions evaporated. Islands exploded. Boulders and entire chunks of Island came spinning out of the boiling black smoke overhead.

  Suk’itarix rallied her Dragons with a fierce cry. Our ally! Be strong, my kin!

  Leandrial surged out of the Cloudlands ten miles distant as though she were a freshwater trout leaping for a tasty fly.

  Two fledglings bolted and were snaffled up by Thoralian’s Dragons, those neither caught up by the wash nor fleeing the flying debris. The rest drew in tighter, faithfully chasing the Green and her Dragonwing down into the Cloudlands. Fireballs vanished in the murk as the dank clouds closed overhead, and the Lesser Dragons hurtled down into a realm none of them had ever seen, bar Zuziana.

  Yet as she descended, she heard one of the Dragons cry out in a harsh, guttural language, Chase them, my kin. Destroy!

  Dark, chittering magic surged against her mind, carrying echoes of the Rift-Storm. Ri’arion shouted angrily as their shields guttered; only a massive rallying effort prevented wholesale collapse. He kept their Dragonwing on song with a steely touch of his mind, drawing the command close, warning against predators. Yet Zip was searching ahead with her senses, hearing an echo of urzul from somewhere faraway, below. Mercy. What did Western Islanders say–meat fallen from the spit-roast into the flames was best eaten charred?

  They broke into the upper layers to the awesome sight of Leandrial’s paws churning toward them and many huge, shadowy bodies closing in from the South.

  The Land Dragoness’ mouth yawned hugely. In here. Quick!

  Fra’anior’s teeth, what are those? Ri’arion gritted out, before yelling at a Grey-Green, Hold that hatchling! This is Leandrial.

  And those others? Tari snarled.

  Theadurial-infested hunters, Leandrial thundered. Deep-Runners of enemy Clans. Now, are you with me?

  Her mouth loomed over the Dragonwing, then gently drew shut as the Dragons made their landings on her tongue.

  Leandrial declared, Now, I shall show these ugly flatfish that I am not for nought called a Welkin-Runner. The beat of her tail lashed them away, back toward the North and the safety of greater depth.

  Zip’s relieved laughter startled more than a few of the Dragons. She said, Little ones, climb into the cheek-pockets for safety. There. Go there. Organise yourselves, Dragons, and place the eggs carefully. Those who are able, join Ri’arion in th
e shielding. For Leandrial alone, she added, Today, thou shalt succour eggs and younglings by thy mighty right paw, Leandrial. Thus, thou art mother to us all.

  * * * *

  Ardan’s defiance brought out the Dragoness in Tixi. The Marshal had thought to break him, but she had many other problems, for the war swept ever closer. He endured two more cruel torture-sessions with her before she left for the war, and the boys finally prevailed upon the Curator to allow Ardan access to the library on the third level below the harem living-quarters.

  Often, he gazed to the far North, where Aranya had disappeared. How could star-life, or Dragon-life, be snuffed out so abruptly? Surely her fate was not thus circumscribed? The Amethyst Dragoness had always risen before. She possessed a talent for surviving the most improbable adversity, such as being chained to a rock and tossed off a league-tall cliff by that traitorous Jeradian who had dared to court her afterward. Blunder, o Princess. Especially since he was so unbiased in all matters pertaining to the Immadian beauty, and his own history … Ardan gritted his teeth. He believed her beauty would rise like the fabled dawn-star discussed in the ballad he was just reading.

  To rise anew.

  Ardan himself had risen from the flames of Naphtha Cluster. He still healed at Dragon speed. Whence emerged the strength of Shadow, if not from the Great Onyx himself?

  If only Fra’anior would speak to set him free of this bondage.

  His eyes flicked back to the scrolleaf. Arm thyself with knowledge, warrior. He must learn the history of Thoralian, but so far, the Curator chose to deny him access to the genealogies. How long since they had crossed the Rift? Three weeks?

  Sapphire nosed the scroll, saying, “Hoo-lee.”

  “What?”

  A dagger-sharp claw rose to tap a precise spot on the text. “Hoo-lee,” said the dragonet, firmly.

  The dawn-star rune! Cold sweat pearled Ardan’s brow.

  * * * *

  For eight days there was little time or energy for detailed discussion. They fled, hunted by the relentless pack of Deep-Runners. Leandrial wanted to break out of the Northern Kahilate through the Vassal States that pinched in along its south-western border Islands, to where she said the voices of Welkin-Runners had identified the rising of a ‘great power from the deep’. From the snippets and sounds of battle she had overheard from thousands of leagues away, Leandrial posited that the Shell Clan Land Dragons had laid siege to the S’gulzzi, seeking the First Egg, while the S’gulzzi employed the Egg’s magic to raise themselves up out of their habitual cracks on the floor of the Island-World, and strengthened their slaves, the Theadurial, for the fight. All-out war raged beneath the Vassal States and the Southern Kahilate, perhaps spreading as far afield as Garashoon, Indaroon with its famously red Fire-People, and The Immovables, an Island-Cluster which six centuries before had settled in a favourable location above the largest gold, diamond and meriatite mines in Herimor, and refused to budge ever since.