Dragon Thief

by Marc Secchia

  “Palatial parakeets!” he shrilled.

  “What, your neck wasn’t stiff as a Dragonship’s spar already?” Tazithiel commented, with glacial sympathy.

  “No, no … it’s the mother-ship. I mean, your mother. Back there.” On the western horizon and growing smaller by the second, was an unmistakable purple blob. Kal probed, “I, the superior being, saw her first. What about Riika? Can you see–”

  “Can’t tell at this distance, even with my superior eyesight.” Tazithiel’s eyes coloured distinctly green; draconic jealousy, Kal had learned. But before he could blink, their colour modulated to the yellow-white of a bonfire’s heart. “Let’s sneak up on her, Kal. You game?”

  “How exactly do you plan to sneak up on the sneakiest, most powerful–”

  Tazithiel made a flat gesture with her paw. “Whizz … boom!”

  The King of Thieves offered his most sinister sneer.

  He loved sneaking. Add an agreeable enchantress and his rapture swelled a hundredfold. Dragon and Rider put the finishing touches on the most complex shielding they knew, including optical, auditory and magical suppression elements, as well as the precisely buttressed, sweptback contouring capable of transforming an ordinary Dragon Rider team into a living projectile.

  Then, they hunted.

  The rush! The thrill! Wild, disturbing laughter resounded in his heart as they closed in on the Amethyst Dragoness at over twenty times her speed. The energy output was crazy. He could practically watch Tazithiel wolfing down her stores of magic.

  Tightly, Tazi said, Saddlebags, Kal. She must have a Rider. Can’t see the mite. Can you?

  Probably lost in the motherly spike-forest up top, Kal muttered. Please, please let it be …

  At the very last instant, Aranya apparently sensed something, for she began to twist in the air, taking evasive action. WHAM! Tazithiel and Kal slammed past fifty feet overhead, pounding the Immadian Queen into a helpless, wing-tangling tailspin.

  Oh yes! Kal guffawed. She’s awake now.

  I saw Riika.

  Travelling at over a thousand feet per second, Kal and the Indigo Express–he gleefully coined a new name for his supersonic ride, making the Dragoness laugh abrasively–shot miles beyond Aranya before Tazithiel, bleeding off the speed at a ridiculous rate, seized Kal with her Kinetic power and executed a turn that made the air howl in protest.

  She lanced eastward, sucking in a huge breath. TAZITHIEL!

  ARANYA! came the response, a thunderclap of wild Storm power. The nearby Land Dragons shifted uneasily, making a few Islands bob about before Kal’s startled gaze.

  A tiny, dark figure danced like a frantic dragonet upon Aranya’s back.

  Suddenly, as if alert to the danger posed by the combined speed of their approach, the two Dragonesses pulled up in the air. Kal cried, “Get her over here. Riika. I want to … I need …”

  Riika was already running. Her legs scissored madly in nothingness as Tazi picked her up and wafted her across the divide; Kal punched his buckles furiously before remembering he could slip free at any time. He bounded to his feet, only to be bowled over by a Pygmy thunderbolt.

  “Dad!”

  Her arms were so strong. Her cheeks, gleaming with health. “Crazy girl, I missed you. Couldn’t ruddy well sleep a wink. You good?” Kal knew a fool’s smile was plastered on his face, but what did he care? “How are you? Returned to full nuisance value?”

  “I’m great, Sticky-Fingers. How’s thievery? Busy?”

  “Ah, a job’s a job. Let me look at you. Come on. What’s a-chatter in your jungle, Razorblades?”

  She threw back her head in glee at his mangling of a Pygmy saying. “Master Jandubior sends his personal thanks. Dropped him off the other day. It was love at first clash, I believe.”

  Aranya put in, “The whole Island rocked on its foundations.”

  “I say, o Queen.” Kal waggled an eyebrow; the Dragoness’ belly-fires rumbled audibly as she realised the vulgar implications of her statement. “You shameful tease, Razorblades, don’t yank my hawser. Or should I say, mighty Dragon Rider?”

  “Mighty Dragon. I’m just a Rider. I’m alright, Dad. Totally okay.”

  “Alright? Totally okay? That is not–details!” he screeched. “I need details.”

  “You know, there’s a species of monkey in the Crescent Islands called the howler monkey–ah. Less chit-chat, more truth?” Kal unclenched his fingers from an indelicate grip of his daughter’s neck. “Aranya’s Dragon Tears neutralised the poison. I don’t need the antidote anymore. Cyanorion and Aranya agree my heart’s growing stronger each day and I have loads of magic fizzing in my blood and I feel pretty weird, but alive is a nice sort of weird, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Wrapping his arms about Riika, Kal lifted her off her feet and held her. Just held her. Speech was superfluous. Perhaps it always had been, and a garrulous thief should draw a lesson from that.

  Over his shoulder, Riika said, “So, Tazzer. You rustled up a few Land Dragons and opened the way to the West?”

  The Indigo Dragoness cleared her throat with an embarrassed fireball. “I believe our mission is best described as, ‘tantalisingly close, but an abject failure.’ ”

  Aranya said, “I hope to help, shell-daughter. Come. Let’s fly together and you can tell us the tale of your deeds. You made it in one unbroken flight? I must admit, I’m even glad to see Kal alive. I’m sure we’ll see these Land Dragons breathing pink rainbows, next.”

  “What happened to your wing?” asked Kal.

  The Queen Dragoness flared her wing slightly, showing broken wing-struts depending from her primary wing bone on the right outer quarter of her wing. “Explain your boisterous behaviour, young man.”

  “Uh–sorry, mother Dragon.”

  Pointing to her mouth with her foreclaw, Aranya said, “Just remember, Kal, this fang has your name on it. Do we understand each other?”

  Kal turned an innocent smile on the Amethyst Dragoness. “O Queen, purely in the vein of idle speculation and in the absence of any sinister intent whatsoever, may I ask, has anyone ever stolen a fang from a living Dragon’s mouth?”

  GRRR! “We are not scribing that codicil in history, Kal. Not as long as I live to fly.”

  * * * *

  As they travelled westward at a steady thirty to forty leagues an hour, given Aranya’s ability to whistle up a following gale and Tazithiel and Kal’s ability to shield both Dragons in ways that had the Amethyst Dragoness shaking her head in disbelief, Aranya took her shell-daughter under her great wing. Kal watched them together, by turns moved, bemused and finally concerned. Aranya spoke non-stop during the daylight hours, recounting vast swathes of history, legends and stories from her past, and teaching them such Dragon lore as Kal imagined had never known the stroke of a pen or the custody of a scroll. In the evenings Aranya communed privately with Tazithiel or Riika, and even with Kal himself, sharing about the Shadow Dragon with great warmth and enthusiasm.

  After giving Aranya and Riika a tour of the waterfall, the foursome repaired to the nearest Land Dragon to talk strategy. Aranya and Tazithiel transformed into Human form, dressed and joined Kal and Riika for an evening repast. Kal watched in awe as Tazithiel steadily demolished an entire saddlebag of supplies.

  He joked, “No wonder no-one keeps Dragons for pets. They eat everything in sight.”

  Tazithiel leaned over and nipped his shoulder playfully. “Mmm, tasty Human. Can’t blame me for wanting flame-grilled man-steaks.”

  “I don’t think being the main item on your menu is a sound basis for our relationship,” Kal protested, edging away from the slavering Shapeshifter. Realistic, he could handle. Tazithiel’s predatory side made his skin crawl.

  “Kal, you’re always on the menu.”

  Flipping flying felons! Kal handed over his sweetbread roll, affecting a hangdog expression that made everyone laugh.

  That evening, the foursome chatted and laughed until their sides hurt. Ka
l and Riika spoke at great length and swapped stories, while later, Aranya and her shell-daughter retreated to a private world. When Kal wrapped himself in a warm cloak to sleep, Tazi and Aranya were still nattering away. They spoke as the Blue moon rose into the southern skies, and communed amidst intermingled rainbows of light as Yellow began its stately traverse toward morning.

  Kal awoke to find Tazithiel rooting about in the saddlebags again.

  “Still hungry, girl?” he asked.

  Tazithiel’s smile was an ode to feminine ambiguity. “I am eating for four, Kal.”

  Kal processed this statement in his sleepy brain, and drew a blank. “Try the other one. I think we’ve a few tinker bananas left. No meat.”

  Riika said, “Aranya, whatever’s the matter with your eyes?”

  The Amethyst Shapeshifter gazed at them with eyes turned a curious white-silver colour, as though her eye-sockets had filled with stars. Her smile was sweet yet melancholy, conveying the cares of the Island-World. Kal felt his chest close, the pounding of his heartbeat a private drumroll in his ears. Riika queried Aranya, but he knew.

  Then, it dawned on the teenager. “No.” She bit her fist. “No, Aranya …”

  “Aye. It is time.”

  For a moment she was Aranya of Immadia, the majestic Queen of Dragons, her height and otherworldly beauty marking her for a Shapeshifter of unmatched power and grace. Then she bent to enfold the tiny girl in her arms, transformed into mother and friend. They held each other with the fierceness of wild creatures and love as tender as the dawn flushing the eastern skies. Riika wept in huge, violent gasps that shook her cruelly; Aranya murmured to her, but her words carried to Kal, just a few feet away.

  “You are gold,” said the Queen. “Never forget it. You are dark jungle gold. Your spirit will never be tamed, my precious Rider. Your boldness has been the cause of great joy for me, and I cannot wait to see what is to come.”

  “That’s why you can’t go!” Riika sobbed.

  “Hush, my petal. Star Dragons never die, not as you and I understand death. I will always watch over you. Watch for me, for I will send my strength to you. Dear one, it is my time and nothing can change that.”

  Riika only held her tighter, mewling little hurt-animal cries and denials into Aranya’s chest.

  Aranya wept, her tears falling freely upon Riika’s head. “Precious, precious Riika. You are a symbol of restoration. I sense a fierce power within you, a power akin to the twin suns shining in all their glory, and wisdom beyond your years. You will need all this and more if you are to attain your destiny. Remember the suns. They are your heritage and your purpose.”

  Now, the Queen raised her arm and beckoned. “Kallion, my true son.”

  Her affection broke him. He stumbled in to embrace them both, begging Aranya to stay, telling her that she must for Tazithiel’s sake, for they had known each other for far too short a time. Yet the arm that held him burned against his skin, and he knew that the fires rose in her. The white-fires of creation. The fires of her true nature.

  Aranya said, “To me, you are the Shadow Dragon reborn. Ardan was my true Island, the strength to which I always returned. I see his integrity and nobility in you, Kal. Truly, you will need this Pygmy’s wisdom in order to love my fierce shell-daughter, for to love a Star Dragoness requires a heart as large as the Island-World, and strength to match. I believe you are that man. Shadow cannot exist without light. And light shines most brightly in the darkness. Already, you are inseparable. May you grow together into true oneness.”

  Now Tazithiel joined them, unspeaking, for Kal realised mother and daughter had already said their farewells. For the longest time, four sets of arms held on, desperate to deny what must be. Some might think them a mismatched family, Kal knew. Some must hate such powers. He did not know how Aranya could choose this moment to depart, but perhaps even she must at last bow to the dictates of destiny.

  The Star Dragoness’ mantle would pass to Tazithiel, the egg for whom Aranya had tarried over a hundred years.

  “I will always be with you,” Aranya repeated, her voice choked, yet strangely exultant. “Now, I must join those who shone before me. I must go home.”

  She slipped away from her family as white-fires flared in her limbs. The exquisite Fra’aniorian gown she wore burst into flame, but the Queen was beyond withholding her fires now. She transformed. An Amethyst Dragoness loomed before them, her eyes ablaze with starlight, her body growing whiter and fierier by the moment.

  “May I request company on my final flight?” she rumbled.

  Tazithiel bowed. “Of course, mother.”

  “Aranya, please!” Riika cried.

  Even as her inmost fires roared, lambent, Aranya still spared concern for the half-Pygmy girl. She said, “It has been the highest honour, Rider Riika. Will you not burn the heavens with me? And know that I will always smile upon you from above?”

  They rose on dawn’s wings, upon the radiant fires that each day beamed life upon the Island-World, and winged toward the dazzling eastward-facing cliffs of golden black, from which a waterfall touching twenty-one miles high poured rainbow-hued streamers of salt water down into the Cloudlands.

  A league from the incandescent cliffs, Aranya said, “Know that my heart is filled with love’s fires for each of you. Until the stars sing, my friends, will you sing for me?”

  Kal, Riika and Tazithiel gulped.

  For a second Aranya of Immadia hovered in place, a White Dragoness with just a hint left now of her famous gemstone scales, the greatest Dragoness of her age. Then, starlight flared, nigh blinding the threesome. A streak of white fire arrowed toward the centre of the gap in the black cliff, three leagues above the Cloudlands.

  Tazithiel sang of the first starlight that pierced the darkness, singing with clarion sweetness in a variant of Dragonish language Kal did not recognise, for its words were droplets of star fire and its notes a glissade of starlight dappling upon still lakes, incendiary and thrilling, ethereal and devoted. After a moment, song rose in Kal’s breast. He added sonorous notes of grief to shade and provide depth to the Indigo Dragoness’ song. Riika joined them a heartbeat later, singing in Ancient Southern, words and bird-trills and clicks that imbued their song with the gladness of green and living things, the teeming life of the Crescent Isles jungles of her first home.

  Whiteness plunged into the waterfall. Vanished? Kal held his breath. No. Suddenly, the waterfall was ablaze, lit from within by intense, radiant beams of white-fire.

  Quietly, mind to mind, Kal asked, What’s she doing?

  Tazithiel said, The Dragoness of yore outshines the very suns!

  Aye. For the longest time, Aranya has been mother to our Island-World. Keeping it for the next generation. Sacrificing all, especially her own life. She loved like no other before her.

  She loves still, said the Dragoness. Watch …

  Above! Riika cried.

  Kal startled. His daughter had just spoken Dragonish? Riika, standing between the spine spikes just ahead of him on Tazithiel’s back, seemed transfixed by the light streaming through the waterfall. Mesmerising, aye. But Kal himself stood up now, staring, for expectation stroked his spine with a rajal’s paw of wonder, at once delicate and terrifying.

  NOW! Magic erupted. It punched the breath out of Kal. He thought he saw a single, luminous beam of white strike Riika’s countenance.

  Aranya had spoken?

  The cliffs began to draw apart, northward and southward. Faster and faster. The waterfall’s roar swelled, becoming deafening, growing greater and greater in flow and volume until the mind failed to grasp the sheer scale of the spectacle. Thunder shook the Rim-Wall Mountains. Water erupted from the gap, spraying leagues wide and deep, falling from a height of miles overhead, but this was no rain.

  Shield! Kal bellowed.

  A lake dropped upon their heads. An ocean, blinding, relentlessly pummelling the Dragoness and her Riders. He triggered his Shadow power, but Tazithiel cried, Riika! Oh Kal, she’
s gone!

  Gone? Swept away. How had they failed to keep her within their shield?

  Thoughts arrowed between Dragon and Rider. Down. Dive to seek Riika. They plummeted into a screaming drop, tumbling with the water, searching with every sense alive. The din made shouting useless so they called out in telepathic Dragonish, finding it almost impossible to hear even their own thoughts. The world was water, cool and salty, a Cloudlands-bound torrent, and Kal knew what they wanted would feel like a boulder within that flow, a hardness of Human substance, so he flung out his Shadow power without stinting, chopping great swathes through the deluge.

  There! Saw something … Tazithiel lurched.

  Vanished again. A voice screaming above the thunder. Did he imagine something fey, screaming words which made no sense? The touch of a terrified mind?

  Faster, Tazi–down! Use all your strength! No ….

  She sobbed, I can’t fight this, Kal. It’s too powerful.

  Why the hells do you have to fight everything, Dragoness? In his excitement and terror, Kal’s words were a barely-coherent howl. Flow. Swim in the stream. This is nothing but thick air.

  Kal meant to thump sense into the frightened Dragoness, but through their bond, he detected the exact moment when his words translated into the spark that fired her belly-furnaces, stabilising her wings and reigniting her strength. Tazithiel swam like a fish. Vertically, downward. Incredulous mirth spilled from her lips. Now the secondary nictitating membranes swept her eyes clear, and her voice firmed.

  Do that Shadow-sweep again, my Rider-heart. Open this little puddle for us.

  Her fire spurred him to greater effort than ever before. Shadow power surged from Kal with torrential force, blowing through the magic-tinged waters in an explosion of his own making.

  Yes! There she is!

  That’s not my Riika, Kal blurted. That’s … that’s a …

  Water descended again as his power stuttered. Before the Indigo Dragoness could do more than begin a furious scream, Kal hurled himself outward again.