Song of the Storm Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  Below, the darkness stirred, assuming a new form from which even the S’gulzzi fled like rabid curs. Flapping and screeching and thrashing about in their millions, the shielded pipe between the Air-Breathers emptied to attack the legion Dragons and drakes above, but Aranya’s gaze was drawn to the gloom below; the moving coils of darkness, embracing the First Egg’s gleaming beauty with loving malevolence. The enormity of the creature down there, its eyes glowing like old coals.

  A debased form of Dragonish roared over her, filled with clicks and nuances and haunting power of a kind she had never heard before.

  SO, YOU THINK MY MINIONS WERE THE TRUE S’GULZZI?

  Its power was that of the Rift-Storm, eroding her white-fires magic. Earthen-fires? Or urzul? The Star Dragoness drifted backward, separating herself from the Thoralians as she struggled to preserve her sanity and magic.

  Gazing up at the Thoralians, the creature bellowed, THIS IS MY EGG! YOU GAVE UP THE URZUL, YOU FOOL!

  The S’gulzzi had stolen the secret of urzul from Thoralian? When?

  Eye-cannons blazed in concert, inundating the creature’s enormous obsidian coils with Harmonic magic and light. It shook the Air-Breathers with the bellows of its pain and rage, and the shield disintegrated. What a sound! Aranya could not think before it, feeling as if her very bones were melting. The creature was urzul personified. Already, Lesser Dragons and drakes, Land Dragons and Shapeshifters and even the S’gulzzi themselves wilted before the wash of its corrupting power.

  The Thoralians cried, The First Egg is mine!

  Never! Aranya surged toward them, gathering her Storm, only to trigger the Yellow-White’s maniacal laughter.

  The Egg or the friend, Storm Dragoness? he said. My corrupting spirit is ready, present and potent within her body. I, at least, shall survive this encounter.

  The Yellow-White drifted downward; Aranya tried to read his intent. Zip still hovered motionless, not falling, just stuck in the sky as though pinioned to a taxidermist’s dissecting table. The Star Dragoness saw, with the eyes of her sixth Dragon-sense, the corruption lurking in her best friend’s body, enclosing the womb, poised to poison her egglings just as the Chameleon Shapeshifters had left their mark upon Aranya’s own body.

  Daimonic spirit! she howled.

  The Thoralians folded their wings. The First Egg is mine! Enjoy your friend’s demise, Amethyst.

  He hurtled into the conflict below, the Land Dragons scrabbling over each other in a bid to be first into the Pit of Despair to secure the Egg; screaming at the putrefying touch of the creature that awaited them, curled around that priceless jewel, its mere breath enough to turn their flesh to dust and their bones to water, the song of its destruction cutting into the Air-Breathers as the Island-sized Dragons began to flee, drifting apart with cries of agony indistinguishable from the general chaos.

  Aranya saw the instant the Thoralians’ vicious magic whipped toward Zuziana. Yet, even telepathy travelled only as fast as thought.

  Zuziana!

  Starlight glimmered across the divide.

  * * * *

  Ardan shuddered together with Leandrial and Ri’arion as their force was inundated in a sea of bodies, but the Theadurial-infested Land Dragons had no further interest in fighting them. All they wanted was the First Egg, and the press of their bodies piled up an under-Cloudlands wall ten miles high and fifty wide, crushing tens of thousands. He fed Leandrial’s command pictures of the obsidian-scaled Dragonworm lurking inside the Suald-dak-Doon, the S’gulzzi of all S’gulzzi. Now, they knew what had been lifting the First Egg for two decades. They knew what had been hidden beneath the meriatonium cap concealing that subterranean realm.

  The Air-Breathers howled.

  Leandrial cried, Steady, my kin. The mountains will break apart. Then, we must be ready to fire. We will be the cannonade of Fra’anior’s justice against that S’gulzzi fiend.

  Aye! roared a thousand Welkin-Runners.

  Aye, rumbled the enormous stellated Shell-Clan, overshadowing even the Runners gathered before them.

  Link minds, said the monk. Then, he cried, Zip, no!

  Ardan saw light flicker right over where Zuziana had been. What? Where was she? Where were they, the Star and the Azure?

  His Dragonwing drew together at Dhazziala’s command. S’gulzzi surrounded them on every side, like a living, pulsing river of oil, so thickly gathered that they entirely obscured the battle. Their reddish eyes glowed in what Ardan realised was pleasure at the destruction to come. Briefly, he spied Bane and Lurax peering out of one of the Bullet Dragon slits on Genholme’s mountainous back.

  Those boys trusted him. But he was no Shadow. He was a Dragon-less … Dragon. Aye, he might not have his Dragon, but he did remember a big-mouthed Western Isles warrior claiming something about starlight shining best against shadow, or some such mystical malarkey?

  How could he lift up a Star, if not by helping her to shine?

  Across the mile separating them, he called, Even stars must dance to a new song, Aranya-my-soul!

  And to the Dragons around him, he cried in a great voice, Art thou Dragonkind? Thou art pure as white-fires, as noble as the suns, as proud as the day is long!

  Ah, a tingle of Nak in his bones! Leaping again to his feet, Ardan declaimed, This is Gangurtharr the Great-Hearted, who roost-lived with a Star Dragoness. Over there is Genholme, the Fortress of our hopes! And here is Dhazziala, First Hand of a mighty nation of Dragon-Lovers!

  The S’gulzzi stared at him as if he had gone moons-mad. Arguably, he had. They neglected to attack as the Shadow Dragon’s voice rose stridently above the sounds of thousands of wings beating the air, and the booming of Land Dragons. He bellowed:

  I AM SHA’ALDIOR, SON OF SHADOW!

  Well, that sounded impressive. But he could do one better, for his throat thickened at a touch of Storm borrowed via his oath-connection. Ardan’s song boomed over the Islands:

  Arise in wrath magnificent, thou sons and daughters of Fra’anior,

  Thou pride of his right paw, thou voices of infinite justice,

  Dragons of Herimor! Unite to smite the foe!

  Ooh, Nak would be chortling now.

  * * * *

  Aranya whirled in mid-air, frantic. Where was Zip? Sapphire? She called to them, forlornly, but the silence mocked her desolation. Where were her friends?

  She stared at paws white as starlight. Betrayed? How?

  When she finished this task, she might ask her questions.

  Furling her wings, the Amethyst Dragoness plunged toward the Suald-dak-Doon, entering a howling maelstrom of Harmonic magic, screaming urzul and bellowing Land Dragons, intensely aware at the same time of the proliferation of S’gulzzi and the guttering of so many fire-souls. This was wrong. Destruction fed urzul as nothing else–that was what had roused the creature in the first instance. She apprehended her mistake now. When she had poured forth the paean of her Storm-powered anger and grief, the S’gulzzi had supped well. Now its song rose triumphant, brutalising the Dragonkind. Minds snapped. Theadurial writhed. Lesser Dragons fell senseless into the Cloudlands and Dragon Riders screamed. The S’gulzzi swelled in power and stature, glutted on the terrible cry of their god, or whatever that thing was. They would gut the Dragonwings.

  Dimly, she heard Ardan sing within her mind, yet his notes struck her profoundly, at the level of her soul and their oath-magic:

  Even stars must dance a new song, Aranya-my-soul!

  You alone can bring us the starlight,

  Be the star.

  Sparked by his belief, incredulity gave way to insight. Choice. A choice framed in love so raw and potent, it galvanised her inmost being with wings of white-fires. She knew clarity. Just as she had demanded of Fra’anior, she had a choice now, at this crucial moment. It lay in her paws.

  She could chase the First Egg and ultimate power, or she could change the Balance.

  Her Dragonsong could espouse destruction, or she could sing the greater song Ardan alluded to, an
anti-urzul song, the song of a true Daughter of Storm. For that was urzul’s power–annihilation. Anti-creation, anti-life, anti … anti-love.

  Ardan?

  A-A-Aranya? He grasped this truth burning lambent in her breast!

  Ardently, she called, From this day forth, Ardan, I promise to be authentic with you. No more hiding. No more falsehoods, Ardan-my-soul’s inmost fire, for I … I have played thee false, wretched fool … I am … her mental voice cracked. I am for thee, and thee alone, if thou wilt have me. Eternally.

  He choked out, Thou … I love thee, heavenly Immadia. I’ve always … helplessly–

  And I thee, Sha’aldior.

  I-I am for you. And, I would … have you. I will–forever!

  They spoke brokenly, yet the oath was forged afresh, and in that burgeoning beauty of oath-fires, Aranya saw a new way. Her heart seemed to tip onto a new axis, recalibrated, Balanced.

  The star believed.

  The First Egg sank steadily into a morass of writhing, smoking, crumbling bodies. Thoralian and the S’gulzzi clashed over it, and the conflict they created would devastate all, for its power brutalised her senses with mind-numbing force. The pile collapsed faster and faster as the badly injured Air-Breathers fled the battlefield at their maximum speed, a stately walk.

  Yiisuriel, I need your strength, the Star Dragoness commanded. Ardan, summon your Shadow. Dhazziala, turn your people to my command.

  Seconds stole away from her as her friends organised themselves.

  Then, Aranya seemed to rise on weightless wings, sovereign over the Island-World, for the immense resources of an Island-nation of Dragons, Humans and Shapeshifters shifted into her mental paws, but she was only the vessel. She was the focus and the filter of a merciful, nascent Dragonsong.

  She lived in fire. She was the purity of starlight.

  Aranya exhaled.

  Starlight exploded from her breast, her body, her paws and wingtips and tail. It shot outward in a series of concentric rings of pure splendour, washing over and through the moving mountains and the mounded bodies and the ranks of S’gulzzi and Dragon Riders, and all the armies of the Lost Islands, lapping from the puffy white clouds now fragmenting to reveal a twinkling night sky, to the floor of the world hidden beneath the Cloudlands, and over every living creature ensconced within the warm ambit of her love. The soundless soul-concussion whispered of broken chains and freedom from corruption. It spoke of an end to urzul’s ghastly song. It breathed life into brokenness and dissolved the Theadurial still greedily sucking upon the brain-stems of Land Dragons, and blew the marauding S’gulzzi away like pollen on a breeze.

  Perhaps her power was a zephyr of starlight, after all. A greater Storm had never struck her Island-World.

  Aranya touched the white scale hanging just beneath her throat on its slender leather thong. Miraculously, it had survived everything. Thus I honour thee, Istariela, shell-mother of my lineage.

  A mighty chorus of Harmonic magic answered her song as the Welkin-Runners and Shell Clan fired down into the Suald-dak-Doon, enveloping the S’gulzzi giant in a blinding stream of light. The ghastly obsidian of its corrupt flesh began to crumble beneath an inexorable onslaught. Vapours shrouded the S’gulzzi as it voiced a single, final blast of defiant fury, and that blast fizzled into a violent hiss that presaged its protracted demise. At the last, the Star Dragoness gave of her song to finish the beast, as the coils incinerated from within in great bands of dusty black Earthen-fires.

  Then Araya saw the First Egg tumbling end-over-end into the gloom, already eight leagues deep and plummeting as though sucked away by the S’gulzzi still hiding beneath the Island-World’s crust. No Lesser Dragon would catch it now, not even Leandrial’s kin who chased the Egg into the deeps.

  Where were the Thoralians? Destroyed in that final, titanic blast?

  Victory!

  A pyrrhic victory, for she had failed to succour the Pygmy Dragoness and at the last, had allowed the First Egg to slip through her talons. So many souls snuffed out. And Zip. Oh, Zip and her egglings, and precious Sapphire! The cost was unbearable.

  Aranya lowered her muzzle, and wept.

  * * * *

  Upon the melted brow of Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron, Ri’arion stood as stiffly as an aged plank as the Star Dragoness did a passable job of drowning his boots. Ardan understood tears. After all, he had cried more in these last months than he suspected he had ever cried in all the years of his warrior-life before. The night’s work had been storm winds and lightning and starlight. Dawn’s work, clearly, was the wet and wild end of Aranya’s Storm-making, and in true Aranya style, she was letting it all gush out. The floodwaters were rising.

  All around, Dragons slowly congregated upon that stone peak as the first light of dawn pinked the eastern sky. Riders milled about, checking their Dragons. Human soldiers conversed or just stood by, dazed. Leandrial and fifty Welkin-Runners perched atop the great stellated carapaces of Shell-Clan just offshore, shining their light-beams on all who needed healing–they used their Harmonic healing-song, rather than plying their destructive eye-cannons. The Air-Breathers had halted their flight, desperately injured but no longer in immediate danger. The area below their mountain flanks seethed with Land Dragons, especially Shell Clan and Living Springs attending to the healing of their kind, and the nimbler Runners diving and returning with fallen Lesser Dragons, some of whom could be resuscitated.

  Most especially, they watched the girl they had come to know as the Star Dragoness.

  Kneeling before the painfully embarrassed monk, Her Celestial Majesty, worshipped by three quarters of Herimor and feared by the remaining quarter, the incomparable Enchantress of Immadia, granddaughter of an Ancient Dragon, Islands’ sakes, vanquisher of the powers of evil and a legend whom balladeers would swoon over for centuries to come, clutched Ri’arion’s bootlaces and blubbered and bawled and tore at her hair …

  “Don’t,” said Ri’arion, capturing her wrists gently.

  “I lost my best friend!”

  “I’m not convinced about that,” said the monk.

  Aranya wailed, “I destroyed her babies!”

  “Now, we’ll see–”

  “Sapphire! Zip! Oh, Ri’arion.”

  “We’ll find them.”

  “I b-b-burned them … i-in starlight … in a s-s-star …”

  Drawing the tall girl to her feet, Ri’arion said firmly, “No. That’s not what I saw, nor Ardan.”

  “I don’t have your faith!” she shouted. “How do you know? I killed them, Ri’arion. I’m a wretch, a beast–don’t hold me! Curse me, Ri’arion! Curse these hands–”

  “No!” Again, the monk held her, but not roughly, trapping Aranya’s hands as she gouged at the already-ruined flesh of her cheeks. “Calm yourself.”

  Aye, it was enough. Stepping forward, Ardan declared, “You had faith enough to illuminate the Island-World with starlight.”

  Aranya blinked past Ri’arion’s shoulder. “What?”

  “Faith enough,” Ardan laced his fingers into hers, “to stand up to an Ancient Dragon, and to carve out a new future for all Herimor.”

  She made an unconvincing noise–dissent, of course.

  Disentangling himself from Aranya’s arms, Ri’arion impelled her toward Ardan, adding, “Faith that conquered a tyrant and his hordes, through the power of oath-love forged mid-battle.”

  “Uh …”

  Ardan loved it when the Shapeshifter Princess was lost for words. Now was such a moment, as he drew her resolutely into his embrace. Her gemstone eyes were wells of amethyst, never more luminous, never more lovely. Slowly, he lowered his lips toward hers. “Faith enough …”

  “Ardan, I–”

  “Immadia, enough is enough.”

  “But, Ardan,” she protested, suddenly a-tremble. Aye, she had never trembled like this during a battle, but that was Aranya. Beneath the adamantine will and Island-shaking powers lay a heart craving and deserving to be wooed. He twined his arm around her trim waist,
and added a brief headshake as he gazed longingly into her eyes. Aranya spluttered, “Oh. But … mmm?”

  A tremulous, wistful smile spread either side of his silencing finger.

  He said, “Today’s work is finished.”

  “Why, you obstinate–” Aranya inhaled sharply as her yearning Shapeshifter locks weaved their way around his upraised fingers and wrist, and from the shoulder of the arm that drew her irresistibly against him to his waist, binding them together in ropes of multifaceted glory. “Well, if you must insist, Shadow Dragon.”

  “I most certainly do insist,” he growled, and deliberately shifted his hand to shield their protracted, passionate kiss from the onlookers.

  Nonetheless, the cheers of thousands rocked the Islands.

  Chapter 35: Second-Soul Enigma

  Upon Yiisuriel’s mountaintop, the Shapeshifter Princess received the fealty of the peoples of Herimor. She had argued the odds, but Huaricithe and Brityx, Dhazziala and Gangurtharr, Ardan, Leandrial and Ri’arion, and finally, the irresistible, venerable voice of Yiisuriel herself, determined her course. Oaths must be made. Fealty observed. The all-important honour of Herimor Shapeshifters, Humans and Dragons must be restored, in order to shape the future wisely.

  Aranya put on her best royal face, donned a magnificent robe of samite, and stood erect even though she was utterly bone-weary, and endeavoured to speak her utmost, gracious, fiery, worthy-of-Fra’anior words to every creature that approached her impromptu throne–Gang’s paw.

  Naturally.

  First came the Air-Breathers, the stateliest of the Dragonkind. Then the powerful Shell Clan Stellates in all their varieties made homage, and following them, Mist-Runners and Welkin-Runners, Blue- and Deep- and Current-Runners, and fifty minor varieties besides, and with Leandrial, the Thunderous Thirty who now numbered two hundred and five individuals–tripping rather less snappily off the tongue, Aranya chuckled inwardly. After these came the Land Dragons who could not easily rise above the Cloudlands, but were lifted upon the shells of Stellates to make their obeisance, such as the Living Springs and Fire-Sporters, and the Cerulean Potentates with their more illustrious cousins the Cognates. From the deeps came the booming rumble of the Deep-Dwelling Clans making their oaths; they could not survive passage into lower pressures.