Song of the Storm Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  Humansoul danced within her second-soul, free, feisty and furious.

  Then, the world seemed to slow. Tahootax charged. His mouths gaped. Her wings unfurled lightly, balancing her on a brass dral. She remembered, with thoughts so languid as to feel pressed through a barrel of sugar bamboo sap, the free dance Hualiama had tried to inspire within a gangly, foot-tied Immadian’s soul. Laughter blossomed. Her wings swished her out from beneath the Orange-Red’s champing muzzles. She somersaulted lithely over a double-fireball so mighty, it washed from the floor of the arena up to the cage. Choking, sulphurous black and yellow smoke billowed like an uncontrolled forge-fire. His talons scythed the air, but the Dragoness folded her wing-struts to pass between them like a speck passing through a sieve, her shaped shield lacerating the webbing of his left forepaw. Tahootax’s aggrieved bellowing rocked the arena.

  Aranya bellowed back, and her rage was the sevenfold fury of Fra’anior resounding from one throat. Storm winds blasted the monster backward, opening the Dragon’s wings in an involuntary flaring motion, akin to a draconic surrender. Her intestines spilled out of her gut with the force of her outcry, but Aranya swept them up with the aid of her left forepaw and a hard-pressed pneumatic shield, trying to hold them in. Fire avalanched across the arena toward her, gathering speed even in her hyper-awareness as the firestorm-output of both of his throats mingled into a storm so superheated, it melted granite.

  Inanely, she heard Ri’arion’s mental voice pinpointing the blast-temperature of meriatite-extracted hydrogen as exceeding two and a half thousand degrees.

  Tahootax possessed so much power. How could she defeat this brute, and quickly?

  The cage. It sang of magic.

  The Dragoness rode the thunder of Tahootax’s insane battle-rage, slipping like pollen between the avaricious talons of his mental power, borne aloft by the fierce thermals generated by his flaming. His flame stopped for a breath, for him to gather the contents of his stomachs. Aranya sensed the extraordinary heat of those fires, fuelled by meriatite while being both contained and augmented by magic. She drifted on the thermals, plotting.

  Four fire-eyes bulged beneath her as the massive Orange’s necks swivelled, orienting him for a strike at her vulnerable underbelly. Tahootax hesitated, searching for the ruse, for the reason Aranya would expose herself. Mentally, she hunkered down behind a veil of deception. Agony flared in her wounded belly. Desperation. Fear, even, of the greater Dragon.

  With a low, ugly laugh, Tahootax released the valves controlling his fire- and meriatite stomachs. Pallid yellow flame erupted from his agape throats straight up toward the cage.

  The Amethyst swirled through the enveloping fire, controlling the flow with a twisting motion of her wings that parted his shots, and passed them behind her. Her world became yellow flame and stultifying waves of heat. Then, she imagined a dagger spinning toward Zip’s back. She leaped beyond the explosive, compressed hydrogen somehow transported within Tahootax’s shots; unexpectedly removing herself from the path of the impending explosion. A monstrous wave of heat curled her wing-edges and sucked the air out of her lungs. The cage-magic shrieked at the power demanded of it, rattled so powerfully by his blast that the anchoring stonework crumbled.

  Quick as flickering flame, Aranya twisted her neck to shoot a tiny, highly pressurised blue fireball of her own straight down his nearest throat.

  GRRAAABOOOMM!!

  The exponential power of his own blast flattened the mighty Orange-Red Dragon, but perhaps in that entire arena, only Aranya’s ears were quick enough to detect the additional, high-pitched whistle of her fireball passing down the windpipe into his stomach. Compressed hydrogen detonated within his body, blowing a hole the size of a house in his port flank and lower neck region.

  Tahootax staggered. Three steps. Four. One mouth gaped, the other slumped to his knee, hanging by a thread of muscle. The stillness that fell over the arena was as thick and hot as the golden Dragon blood flooding out of his shattered hearts. Then, the enormous Orange-Red Dragon fell, shuddered once, and perished.

  In a grief- intensified peal of Storm-thunder, the Amethyst Dragoness declared her name, I … AM … ARANYA!!

  Sundered, the cage split and fell.

  * * * *

  “Scrap, you ruddy well destroyed the Pit.”

  “I … I don’t understand, Gang. But I remember you flying over; taking the brunt of the cage’s fall for me. Thank you.”

  “Aye. Broke four ribs. It was nothing. Now you–you’re a freak! How do you blow up a Tahootax?”

  Smarting at the word ‘freak’, Aranya snarled, “I told you. Dragons who swallow meriatite should not play with fire. And it was Tahootax’s attack that broke the cage, not mine. Uh … what’s going on out there?”

  “It’s a leveraged buyout,” Gang said with a conspiratorial wink. Outside the infirmary cave where Aranya had been ordered to wait, a hubbub of voices rose and then abruptly faded. “Any Pit that loses its ability to operate can be snaffled up by an available buyer. Marshal Huaricithe happens to be the wealthiest Dragoness in Wyldaroon, besides that she bet a large slice of her sizeable fortune against Tahootax–they hate each other with a legendary passion. They were lovers once, see? Before he jilted her.”

  “That bit I understand. Explain the negotiations.”

  “Huaricithe proposes to sell the Pit back to Montorix for a tidy profit, minus one Dragoness–you. She commands an all-female Dragonwing. The whisper on the wind is, she came here in search of Montorix’s champion female because she plans to fly Aranya the Assassin against Thoralian.”

  Gnaarrrgghhh!

  Gangurtharr patted her shoulder. “You really hate the old Marshal, don’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  “So, while your purchase is being negotiated–”

  “Purchase?”

  The scarred Gladiator-Dragon looked at her strangely. “You’re a peculiar one, Scrap. Can’t figure you sometimes. Of course she’s buying your sassy hide–think you’re different? Special? In here, we’re all no better than slaves fighting for our lives.”

  Sometimes, Aranya felt the isolation of a royal upbringing so acutely. Assumptions. Rights. Privileges she patently took for granted and others could not afford. Her father’s many lectures on the subject suddenly took on a whole new dimension. She understood. Shame made her flush, but Gang did not seem wont to press the point further.

  He said, “When Huaricithe comes, treat her respectfully. She’s tougher than Dragon hide but invariably fair–few Dragons are white-fires in all their business dealings, but she is.” He let fire lick between his fangs. “She’s a good owner, Scrap. And you’ve earned your chance at a better life–GRRR–did I just mistakenly compliment you? Advancing senility. Shut your flapping trap and get out of here.”

  Aranya touched wingtips fondly with him. “I’ll miss you, Gang.”

  “Push off.”

  “A remarkable victory, Aranya the Assassin.” Both Dragons whirled as a new voice, as smooth and thick as honey, poured over them. “Gang, you scurvy old reprobate. Stirring up whirlpools of trouble as always?”

  “Huaricithe,” he said gruffly.

  Aranya almost leaped out of her Dragon hide. Gang? And the powerful Marshal? No flat statement of her name could hide the truth that flashed intuitively into her knowledge. He loved Huaricithe, or had done in the past. Huaricithe was beautiful–a sleek, Navy-Blue Dragoness who carried her presence like an invisible but nonetheless palpable royal robe. Her eyes whirled with effulgent cascades of rainbow colours–Shapeshifter colours, Aranya realised. Like her own hair. Huaricithe was physically smaller than many Herimor Dragons Aranya had faced or rubbed shoulders with in the Pits, but no sane person or Dragon could doubt her authority.

  Then, she knew also the peril of this Dragoness’ high intelligence. Secrets would be sniffed out ere they were conceived. Her magic touched subtly, not like Va’assia’s clumsy war-hammer strikes, but with the most extraordinary finesse–a spider’s kn
ack upon silken threads.

  Mercy! She had to hide, shield, deflect … Aranya lowered her muzzle and her fires simultaneously. “Marshal Huaricithe. We are honoured.”

  “Aranya. Quite the reputation you’ve carved out in just a few weeks in the Pits of Wyldaroon,” purred the Marshal, in a voice rife with exotic, flute-like intonations. “You and I will have to talk … about your origins, and where you contracted such a powerful strain of the pox.”

  Shapeshifter pox, her eyes hinted. Aranya bit her tongue. “I am yours to command, Huaricithe, but–”

  “Are you?”

  Roaring rajals! Ten seconds of conversation and she was more alarmed by this Dragoness than by Montorix, Tahootax and Ecuradox rolled into one. Dragons were not supposed to be able to sweat.

  Aranya gave the Marshal the benefit of her best chin-jutting, Princess-of-Immadia scowl. “I want you to purchase Gangurtharr too. Please.”

  Huaricithe’s laughter filled the infirmary with rich tones of amusement at the flat non-interrogative. “Oh? Has he worked his old magic upon the Assassin? Aye, I know you’ve been training and roosting together, but Gang … oh, you haven’t changed one scale, have you?”

  Gang shuffled his paws. “Not my fault.” To Aranya alone, he thought angrily, What are you doing, Scrap? Stay out of my wing-space, or I swear–

  Push off yourself, she returned, feeling discourteous but meaning it. Aloud, the Immadian said, “As you’d expect of an honourable Dragon, Gang advised the contrary. This is my wish.”

  “You’d refuse to leave without him?”

  Danger! Her scales crawled as Aranya whispered, “I know he’s a dreadful inconvenience, but–”

  “Insolent wing-flip!” snorted Gang, clamping his fangs upon her shoulder.

  “This young one humbly asks you to consider a boon, o Marshal.” Aranya lowered her muzzle once more, acutely aware of the Blue Dragon’s long, heated glare. Her answer was the perfect middle ground of diplomacy, and they both knew it. Battle joined.

  At length, Huaricithe growled, “A boon for a boon, Aranya the Assassin. That is the draconic law in Wyldaroon. Are you quite certain you know what you ask?”

  “No,” she said, flaring white-fires honest. “But if you give me a chance to fly at Thoralian, mighty Marshal, then I swear I will not fail you.”

  Gangurtharr sniggered, “I’m warning you, Huari. This one’s trouble.”

  Chapter 25: The Assassin Unleashed

  Smoking wildly at the nostrils, Yar’nax’tix the Red kicked open Ardan’s door and yanked him off his pallet by his left foot. “We’ve found her!”

  “Found, uh, whom?”

  “Aranya!” snarled the Red Dragoness. “The one you screamed for when we captured you. The image that captures your heart like a warded glamour and keeps it from becoming mine!”

  Dangling upside-down in front of an incensed Dragoness’ nose was not the only reason his heart leaped into his throat. Aranya! Alive! Could it be?

  Tixi growled, “As mute and stupid as ever, Black? Let me remind you of a little Grey-Green who has all the Pits of the Gladiator Dragons, those filthy hovels of crooks, bandits and lowlifes, in an uproar. Deny you know her. Deny you know Aranya the Assassin, the deadliest fighter in all Wyldaroon!”

  “A-Aranya … the Assassin? Did you hit your head on the way in, Marshal?”

  His scornful laughter made the Marshal clack her fangs against his skull, but even a Dragon’s bite merely pierced the skin, not his ridiculously armoured cranium. Blood dripped from a spot near his left ear, and another above the right temple. He and Tixi eyeballed each other from a distance of several feet. Her Dragoness-eyes flamed crimson; her breath was like charred anise, an odour he had never quite smelled around a Dragon before. No. That cave where Yolathion had attacked Kylara and Jia-Llonya …

  Ardan knew the Dragoness was far beyond any measured approach, now.

  She said, “Tell me about this Aranya, Black Dragon. Tell me all. For if you do not, I will bring those two sweet boys before you and I will torture them so horribly, and unhurriedly, that you will never forget their screams as long as you live.”

  “Aranya isn’t a brawler,” he said eventually. “She’s a Princess of a faraway realm, not a fighter.”

  “The message called her ‘the foulest pox-scarred Grey-Green fledgling you ever saw’,” said the Red. “Sound familiar? Cheekbone shows here. Scars all over the body.”

  “Can’t be. Her colour isn’t–” Ardan pulled up, wishing he could have pulled out his tongue by the roots.

  The Dragoness purred happily. “Oh? This Dragoness carries a glamour of concealment powerful enough to fool the wards of Montorix’s Pit? Or they know …” She flexed her talons purposely in front of Ardan’s eyes. “What is her true colour?”

  He gritted his teeth.

  “If you dislocate the jaw, you can slide your smallest talon right down the throat,” Tixi added. “It takes a very long time for a boy to die when impaled that way. Or, you can squeeze the skull in your paw until the eyeballs just–”

  “Purple!” he gasped.

  “Purple?” The light in her eyes continued to grow stranger and stranger, as if the colour bleached slowly to a ghastly, sallow grey. “What kind of purple, exactly?”

  He felt sick. “Amethyst.”

  “The prophesied Star Dragoness! She has come!” The Red Shapeshifter seemed enraptured by an all-consuming, private vision. In low, throbbing tones she said, “I knew I smelled fate’s paw upon him the day a Black Dragon fell into our midst; the day a star blazed her trail across the farthest reaches of Herimor. Now, he is the key. For legend teaches us that she who commands a Star Dragoness, commands the very soul of heaven’s riches and glory. Whipped, manipulated, cajoled, he will lead us to the star. But we must be cunning; oh-so-draconic in applying just the right leverage. Oaths, aye, oaths must be made. Fine oaths to bind even a Star Dragoness to us, for she is young. She can be turned if the price … the price is right, the price …”

  As she hissed the word ‘price’ three times, her eye-fires fixed upon Ardan, shifting to an avaricious green. “Yeeeesssss … how will you help me find her, Ardan? How? I know you can. I have read the truth in your soul.”

  How could Aranya have disguised herself as some kind of fighting Dragoness? That daughter of a royal house–how was it possible? Temptation warred with caution in his heart. Find the Princess, aye. But lead this Red Shapeshifter to her? The stakes were enormously high; one mistake could ruin them all.

  “The Lavanias collar constrains me,” he said.

  “Remove the collar, he says?” One huge, blood-red paw rose to worry at a loose scale on her jaw. “Oaths first, Black. You will serve me until I have the Star Dragoness in my paw–swear it!”

  “I–”

  “You will turn Aranya over to me. You will serve my purposes unswervingly until she is mine.”

  “You will harm neither the boys nor the dragonet,” said Ardan. Sick? His stomach was tying itself in knots and trying to abscond through his bone-dry throat all at once. Yet via this accursed bargain, could he find freedom? Could he believe he was doing right by returning to the woman who spurned his oath, and rejected his love?

  “You can be so amenable when threatened properly,” cooed the Red. “Agreed, Ardan?”

  “I will not fight for Marshal Thoralian,” he added.

  “Agreed. Now, swear!”

  Ardan had to force iron into his reply, for the fear that clenched the innards of his torso and throat rivalled the grip of an angry Dragon’s paw. “I swear upon my fires as a Dragon that I will serve you, Yar’nax’tix the Red, until you have the Star Dragoness in your paw.”

  “And I swear I will remove the collar, leave unharmed only those you have named, and release you from this oath the day the Star Dragoness is mine.”

  He had never seen Tixi look so satisfied. Her talon slipped coolly up behind his neck, and released the collar with a curl of magic. She said, “On our fast-moving
orbital cycle, my Islands already approach the Vassal States. I harbour only hatred for the old Marshal, you can be assured of that. Today we pack. By this evening, we will fly south for the Straits of Hordazar, and Wyldaroon. Meantime, you will tell me everything you know about Aranya.”

  She dropped him abruptly; Ardan landed upon flexed arms and rolled smoothly to his feet. From the corner of his eye, he spied Sapphire peeking out from beneath his blanket. A tiny chirrup of telepathic Dragonish entered his mind, Ardan do good. Need Ari.

  Great leaping Islands, did he ever …

  The Red Dragoness added, sibilantly, “After being suppressed so long by a triple-strong Lavanias collar, Shapeshifter powers return very slowly–if at all.” Ardan gasped, remembering Aranya’s inanition following her period of captivity at Sylakia. His collar had been triple-strong. “Don’t think you’ll be flying away anytime soon, Black Dragon. You are still mine.”

  Suddenly, a picture of Aranya entered his mind–eyes flashing with amethyst fire, her gorgeous locks yearning toward his hand, and that assured tilt of the chin that informed anyone who knew her, that this was no woman to be trifled with. Tixi had not the first conception, had she? Like any proud Western Isles woman, Aranya was a warrior in her own right; sharp of scimitar and sharper of deed. To Ardan, that strength was intoxicating.

  Smiling as Aranya might, he raised his chin. “You are mistaken in one detail, Marshal. I am not Black. I am the Shadow Dragon, the shadow against which Aranya’s star blazes brightest. You would do well to remember that.”

  The Red laughed arrogantly as she departed the harem, but it was poor cover for the disquiet betrayed by her belly-fires. Glamour or no glamour, he had shaken the Marshal to her core.

  Retreating to his pallet, Ardan drew Sapphire into his arms. Hey, girl. Aranya’s … alive. There was the abandoned collar. He was unleashed. Hot emotions jammed in his throat. Would she understand, or would she feel betrayed once more?