Dragon Thief

by Marc Secchia

  Then what was he doing standing on a Dragoness’ back?

  “Fishing for trout, noble Rider?”

  Noble Rider? Well! Kal squared his shoulders, blithely ignoring the snide look the Dragoness cast him. Now, her head snaked back to take a proper look. She said, “Don’t forget, I can reach you back there to snap your head off should you misbehave.”

  “Oh, no misbehaving, not me, noble sky-beast,” he retorted. “Obedience and deference to authority are–”

  “Glaringly absent in your psychological makeup and upbringing?” she cut in, punctuating her words with puffs of smoke. “Strap in, little man, unless you’d like to play with me in the air?”

  He pursed his lips. “If you’re suggesting finding sundry wicked uses for your levitation powers, aye. But somehow I fear there might be a little too much tumbling and screaming involved for my taste. Feeling a touch squeamish this fine morning. A few tummy-wobbles and suchlike. Nothing a healthy whiff of fresh air shouldn’t cure.”

  “If you wobble anywhere near my scales, I’ll teach you the true meaning of Dragon fear.”

  Roaring rajals. Dragon-Tazi certainly knew how to intimidate. Kal sat down with a bump on the finely-crafted, moulded leather saddle perched between her spine spikes, and secured the leather thigh and waist straps. Great. Now he was firmly fastened to the spit. All she needed to provide was a blaze. Not a problem for most women, let alone a cantankerous Dragoness.

  Kal clutched his seat as Tazithiel stepped forward. “Ready, thief?”

  “No.”

  His mount lurched, approaching the cliff’s edge. Beneath her forepaws, the granite cliff sheared away in a single, seamless drop to the Cloudlands two and a half miles below. The place had an awfully final, edge-of-eternity look about it. In a breathless instant, he developed a healthy respect for people of faith and prayer, such as the monks of Ya’arriol Island, although why he trusted an insanely magical flying reptile less than a Dragonship built of wood, metal and cloth, he could not fathom.

  They planned to fly southwest to the Southern Archipelago, nicknamed the underbelly of the Island-World for the sprawling curve–a thin-lipped smile, Kal had always imagined–the countless Islands described right across the world to the Western Isles, thousands of leagues distant. On the way, they would pass Yin’toria Island, heart of his business ventures and home to a special someone he could not wait to introduce Tazi to–if only he could devise a plan whereby they might not murder each other at first sight.

  Before the famously harsh Western Isles loomed the mountainous fastness of Jeradia, their eventual destination. On the Isle’s northern flank stood the famed Dragon Rider Academy, where Tazithiel hoped to find information that should help them in their madcap quest.

  His lips quirked. Plenty of opportunity for dalliance along the way.

  With a leathery rustling, the Dragoness spread her wings. Kal’s smile vanished like smoke in a storm. He squeezed his eyes shut, offering up a heartfelt plea as Tazithiel hurled them into the abyss, and his stomach made a many-clawed assault upon his throat.

  Wind pummelled his eyelids. It tousled his hair and played with his clothing in a reminder of Tazi’s startling ability to divest a man of his coverings with unseemly efficiency, overriding any protests to the contrary. Overriding. He scowled. An apt word to describe a Dragon’s power of persuasion. The notion of being subjugated by any person–or creature–made a certain scoundrel’s legs itch to be fleeing over the Islands with the alacrity of a cliff-goat attacked by a hive full of black flame-wasps. No. A beatific expression replaced the frown. Truth be told, he was a man ruled by passions that blazed like the belly-fires boiling audibly within the Dragoness, enamoured with an indigo-eyed enchantress who had the most alluring eyelashes …

  “Kal?” She interrupted his reverie. “How does it feel to fly Dragonback?”

  “Stomach-wrenchingly wonderful.”

  “And the view?”

  “Spectacular.”

  Sulphurous smoke puffed into his face. “The insides of your eyelids must be marvellous indeed.”

  “Sherwibble,” said he, cracking open his left eye.

  A fiery orb greeted him, filling his field of vision with the knowledge of a Dragoness’ irritation. “Where’s the trust, Kal?”

  “If man were meant to fly, we’d have wings. Look, don’t fulminate your furnaces at me, lady. My head trusts you to keep us aloft. But I’m pretty sure we abandoned my stomach back there on the cliff.”

  A cliff which had receded with frightening speed into the distance, while the untameable reaches of the Cloudlands engulfed a Dragon and her Rider, an endless realm of death awaiting the slightest mistake. Yet her wings cut the winds with supple simplicity, and her long body undulated to the rhythm of her surprisingly slow wingbeats. Kal’s heart rode high in his throat. From afar, he had many times admired the serpentine grace of Dragons winging across the five moons. This was … he had no words. Well, true to character, perhaps a few words. Breathless. Humbled. He felt intoxicated, high on the fumes of life itself. Also, slightly aggrieved. Dragons could shoot the winds like this whenever they wished? Unfair!

  “You’d rather be aboard your Dragonship, right?”

  “Wrong.” Kal’s grin was only semi-functional, but the iron in his voice pleased him. “Flying with you is an unforgettable shade of miraculous.”

  She spoke no word in response, but the tenor of her long, ululating trill lifted every hair on his arms and prickled the back of his neck. Until this moment, Kal realised, he had considered her to be beastly, an animal. But he realised now that her soul was also attuned to wonder. It made her comprehensible. Sentient. Not so much the bright-eyed beast.

  For a time, it seemed her song became the wings that floated them above the Cloudlands.

  At length, Kal wriggled uncomfortably. “Tazithiel, I’ve a question about Shapeshifters.” For questions could supplant this treacherous feeling welling in his breast, an emotion he feared more than any other …

  “A question about kissing lizards?”

  Kal planted a loud smacker on the spine spike directly ahead of his saddle, which stood half a foot taller than his eye-level. “One kiss duly delivered. May I ask, Tazi, how do you do the changing thing?”

  “My transformation? I think, therefore I am.”

  He sniffed, “Ancient existential philosophy is a poor substitute for solid science. Tazi, where’s your Human right now? Because–”

  “Shapeshifter magic is inherently transformative.” Tazi swivelled her neck to scan the horizon. “My joke has substance, Kal. I am one soul which exists in two forms, or two manifestations, if you prefer the Dragonish technical term. We believe there’s another plane of existence, a spiritual plane, which houses our non-manifest being. For Shapeshifters, the draconic fire-soul and the Human soul are intertwined, two but one. We exist simultaneously, intermingled.”

  “So could I speak to Human-Tazithiel right now?”

  “I am here.”

  “And Dragoness-Tazi?”

  I also am here. Her Dragonish filled his mind with colours and nuances of dizzying complexity. Why are you frowning like that, Kal? Should the wind change …

  “Tazi, I sense both of you.”

  A glitch in the Dragoness’ wingbeat betrayed her surprise. Her muzzle tilted, bringing an interrogative arch of her brow-ridge to his notice.

  “When I wandered into your lair with all the gumption and flair of a flummoxed ralti sheep, I knew there was a Dragon present–aye, snort fire! I know I was confused, thinking you were some kind of magical likeness or enchantment, but when I kissed you–”

  “Which confused you even more.”

  “Thoroughly addled my wits,” he admitted, eliciting a rumbling laugh from his magical sky-quadruped.

  “You kept calling me ‘Dragoness’,” she said. “I could not understand how you intuitively grasped my nature. We Shapeshifters are not exactly common about the Isles, and we keep a low profile. Did my distra
ction not work?”

  “Oh, that bit worked perfectly.”

  The Dragoness showed him the fire roiling on her tongue. “The stench of your lewd thoughts burns my nostrils, scoundrel. But Kal, how did you know?”

  Time for a knowing wink. “Magic.”

  “Magic? No magic in the history of this Island-World has ever been able to detect a Shapeshifter’s presence from either their Dragon or Human forms.”

  “With one exception–the magic of Hualiama Dragonfriend.”

  A monstrous fireball split the morning sky, expiring just above the curve of the Yellow moon, looming over two-thirds of the western horizon. Kal clutched his saddle, white-knuckled, half-expecting Tazi’s head to snake back over her shoulder and shorten him by a rather essential part of his anatomy.

  She panted, “How under the twin suns did you come by such knowledge? Kallion, this is deep Dragon lore; a Shapeshifter secret. Swear you will never repeat it! Swear!”

  Despite the flames boiling above his head as she hissed at him, Kal broke out in a cold sweat. Stiffly, he said, “There’s no need for intimidation, Dragoness. I wish for truth between us. I learned this when I lived with the monks of Ya’arriol Island for two years.”

  “See, I knew you were a monk.”

  However, there was scant levity in her tone. Kal knew he had overstepped an invisible line, boasting to a quick-tempered Dragoness. Fool. They had made no promises to each other. With a thought, she could loosen his saddle and drop him into the Cloudlands, where his bones would rot in oblivion for all eternity.

  “I took no vows,” he muttered. “I was searching their library for knowledge of your Dragon roost, Tazithiel, when the monks captured me.”

  “You learned Dragonish from the monks?” she growled. “I wondered at your accent. A touch barbaric, but linguistically accomplished.”

  Compliment or condescension? He could not tell. Kal settled for a flat, “Aye.”

  “Tell me what you know of Shapeshifters.”

  “The scrolls call Hualiama the mother of all Shapeshifters, and the first Dragon Rider. She broke the ancient taboo of Humans riding Dragonback. Some academics accuse the Ancient Dragon Dramagon of designing or breeding Shapeshifters, but the lore of the Dragon the monks worship–the Black Dragon Fra’anior himself–” Tazithiel’s shiver communicated to him through his seat “–clearly labels the Dragonfriend as the progenitor of your kind. Apparently there’s a trio of lost scrolls which recount her tale.”

  “The Dragonfriend Saga.” Her whisper was reverence itself.

  “Aye. Those scrolls must tell a tale indeed. A Human woman who called Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon, her Dragonlove?” Kal shook his head slowly. “I can only imagine that notion flying like a lead balloon among the Dragonkind. What singular courage she must have exhibited. Tazi, what colour are you? Tourmaline? Could you be Hualiama’s descendent?”

  “I’m Indigo, mostly.” Her voice was faraway, her mind engaged in contemplations Kal could only guess at. “Could you ever call someone your Dragonlove, Kal? Could you?” Tazi’s muzzle jerked away. “Don’t answer. Sorry I asked.”

  Kal let out the breath her question had trapped in his throat. He uncurled his clenched fingers from the saddle straps.

  “Heritage among Shapeshifters is peculiar, Kal. We do not always trace our roots by direct lineage, for there is also a spiritual heritage–why I should reveal such mysteries to a man of your ilk, I cannot fathom.”

  Distinctly, he heard her fangs grinding together. True. Painful truth, surprisingly. He would not trust himself with such secrets; secrets which could be sold for a king’s ransom. But if the reinvented Kal wished to place his mark upon the Island-World, upon history even–should such hubris not earn him a speedy talon through the neck–then he must evince more than a thief’s sense of integrity.

  “Tazi–” he winced as his voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s “–you doubtless sensed, even smelled, my reaction to your question. I will say this. Love is fragile, precious beyond any treasure of this world. It … takes time.” Suddenly, his throat was thick with unspoken emotions. “What this man knows is the first blush of infatuation. He would not know this madness from true love if it captured him, despoiled him and turned all the Islands of his world into butterflies that winged their way around the twin suns in eternally fluttering rainbows.”

  The Dragoness’ chuckle shook him so hard, Kal was thankful for the saddle straps. He asked, “Are you tempted to eat me, now?”

  “Too amazed for that.”

  “Of course. I am simply, jaw-droppingly amazing.”

  His preening triggered another draconic chuckle, complete with fire, billowing smoke and a choking puff of sulphur. “What you are is the vainest parakeet I’ve ever met.”

  “It’s a defence mechanism.” Kal snapped his mouth shut. What by the volcanic hells of Fra’anior–the largest active volcano in the Island-World at eighteen leagues in diameter–was he thinking, giving a Dragoness his inmost confidences? Quickly, he said, “Oh, so what shall I make of all that posing on the clifftop back there?”

  “Pre-flight checks.”

  Her tone suggested he had better not pursue the matter. Kal, being Kal, settled unerringly upon the diametric opposite. “Pre-flight muscular posing and checking the exact striations of your massive flight muscles in the full gleam of dawn’s pure light?” Her growling gathered the volume and menace of an approaching avalanche. “I mean, I can understand stretching your wings to loosen the joints and ligaments. But tilting them to maximise the gleam off the surface in order to dazzle your Human companion–”

  “Kal!”

  “You examined the sharpness of your talons because–”

  “We might encounter enemies.”

  “And that remarkable session of spine-stretching–” he imitated her morning limbering up, with slightly exaggerated sound effects “–whilst fishing for compliments with a coy inclination of your head and whirling fire-eyes?”

  “Kal!”

  “Oh roar my name once more, thou glorious breath of dawn’s fires.”

  “Shut the dragonet-babble, you vacuous vagabond.”

  “You love my poetry. Really. It’s alarming how I can turn a woman’s heart into prekki fruit mush with nought but a casual turn of phrase.”

  Tazithiel crisped a few passing insects with the force of her derision.

  Leaning forward in the saddle, he whispered, “Now, why don’t you show me what a Dragoness can do, Tazi? Can you soar over those quadruple overlapping rainbows up there?”

  The Indigo Dragoness’ challenge shook the cool, still morning. I shall rend the light with my claws! I am Tazithiel!

  Tazithiel surged skyward, once again leaving Kal’s stomach miles in her wake.

  Chapter 5: Call of the South

  A DAY ALOFT was enough to convince the most cynical sifter of swag that flying Dragonback was an experience which stirred the secret places of his soul. Between bouts of awe and curiosity, Kal spent an agreeable clutch of hours envisioning the citadels and fortresses he could plunder with the help of a Shapeshifter Dragoness. He drew blissful thought-pictures regarding the potential uses of her magical powers. Ah, how swiftly he could loot a treasure-chamber if he could just levitate the gold and jewels right out of it! Kal sighed. Soldiers? A puff of Dragon-fire would roast them in their tin-pot armour. Moats, sixty-foot walls and defending armies? Trifles.

  Of course, as a recently reformed rogue he was not truly intent on carrying out these undeniably sheep-brained plans. Instant holiness accompanied his Shapeshifter-like transformation, didn’t it? Aye. The only holey-ness was that inherent in his logic.

  His lips curved lazily. The acquisitive nature of Dragons was legendary. Attempt the impossible? Blow that off the nearest cliff. They could be rich! Sadly, this notion no longer warmed the innards of his cold, gluttonous heart. Kal rubbed his chest, reflecting that if he could have carved a window to check the supposed seat of his emotions–another non
sense for the superstitious masses–he would have discovered a tiny curl of Dragon-flame within.

  He dabbed his left eye furtively. Bah! Dratted filthy convulsions of the heart, now he shed a tear?

  “Weeping at the glorious suns-set, my gentle muse?” inquired the Dragoness.

  Kal champed a curse to nothingness between his teeth. Could he keep no secrets around this woman? Straightening his back, he scrutinised the western horizon with monkish zeal. Glorious? Here, one hundred and fifty leagues southwest of Tazithiel’s lair, there was neither Island nor moon to break the perfection of a copper-orange firestorm radiating from the setting suns as the twin orbs drank deep of the horizon. His gaze returned to Tazithiel, whose scales, wing-edges and struts, and every spine spike upon her back, glowed as though burnished in a furnace’s heart. Dragon royalty, resplendent!

  Contrarily, he grunted, “It’s sort of nice out here, isn’t it?”

  “NICE?”

  Trust a Dragoness to deafen him. Kal aimed a sly wink at her tail, before turning to confront Tazi’s gape-jawed bemusement. He said, “You, may I be so bold as to suggest, are very nice.”

  Had his words been a juicy spiral-horn buck, the Shapeshifter Dragoness would have rended them neck to crop and bolted her meal in an instant. Dragon-thunderous, she growled, “You’re trying to rile me.” He waggled an eyebrow. “What if you succeed, Kal?”

  Kal spread his arms. “I embrace the Island-World as a Dragoness’ wings embrace the darkling fires of the twin sun-Dragons.”

  Tazi’s eye-fires seethed at his statement, yellows and oranges chasing each other with mesmerising abandon. “I earn myself more poetic gibberish? I suspect too much time spent dusting off scrolls among the monks, Kallion.”