by Marc Secchia
“She shot me.”
“Pip, release me. Just say the word. I can help.”
“No … trust ….”
Chapter 34: Alive to Ride
Pygmy warriors danced in her memory. She battled the Silver Dragon from the fastness of her jungle home, tearing his hide and scooping out his eyeballs with her talons. He reincarnated. Every time she turned, every time she defeated him or impaled him on her monstrous Pygmy spears cunningly hidden amongst the trees, he simply rose again as though reborn from the toxic mists of the Cloudlands. He burned her body with his fire. Someone helped her, soothing, mopping her brow with cool, clear water which ran into her eyes.
Suddenly, she saw herself swimming in a terrace lake. Zardon was there. Little monkey, he jeered. Little black monkey.
His face mutated to the mocking features of Prince Ulldari. Pip screamed at him, but all that emerged from her mouth was monkey-chatter.
She jerked awake with a horrible lurch, a moment when the spirit feels like a hooked fish being yanked out of the water by a fisherman to lie gasping, dying, beneath the twin suns.
“Silver, no …”
Silver? She sensed his presence nearby. But she could not see. Cloth, on her face. Herbs. Bitter smells. She must be in the infirmary. Pip tried to raise her arm to move the blindfold, but subsided with a groan.
A Dragon’s paw plucked the cloth clear, delicately.
Silver! Great Islands, no! What was he doing … had he captured … escaped … where was she?
Pip moaned.
“Softly, little one,” said Silver. In the cavern’s dim light, his scales were luminous, shedding a faint effulgence of their own. It must be late, she realised, hearing the sounds of others sleeping nearby. An Orange Dragon across the way was snoring up a volcano.
“Peace. Lie still, you stubborn girl. Still!” His paw trapped her against the pallet. “It’s alright. Everything is fine. You’re alive.”
She knew her eyes were huge with fright beneath his paw, but she could not help it. Her magic was dormant. Vanished. There was no Word to be shaped by her lips. She felt as if her third Dragon-heart had been surgically removed.
Her throat worked painfully. “I’m your captive. Again.”
“If I may quote someone I know,” he grinned, “this is becoming quite the habit with you.” His tone was playful, his paw, resting ever so lightly on her chest. “Before you ask, you are clothed, this time.”
Pip glanced down. Silver raised his paw to let her see the bandages swathing her upper body, from her lower ribs, over her breasts to her shoulders. She thought she detected Oyda’s hand in the neatness of the work. A blanket covered her waist and legs.
All was perfectly decent, yet she blushed. “Clothed?”
“Seeing as your nude behind is apparently a weapon of Dragonish destruction.”
Pip could not believe what she had just heard. She began to laugh, but pain flared in her body. She sank back in a sweat. Gentle magic rippling out of him palliated the pain. At his low offer, she accepted several sips of water–brought to her lips by a touch of magic from a jug standing on a low table at her bedside. Silver occupied the entire space to her right side, sixty feet of Dragon lying so near at hand, she could feel heat radiating from his body. She remembered Rajion telling her how Dragons believed in the healing power of touch; conversely, that a hatchling would pine and die for the lack of loving touch. Perhaps Silver’s nursery upbringing had been like that.
“I’m getting rather tired of lying about in this infirmary,” she said, desperately trying to discipline her thoughts into making sense. “Look at these scars you left me, you beast. Why are you free? Shouldn’t you be buried four hundred feet deep under solid rock?”
“You set me free. Don’t you remember Telisia?”
“I …” Great Islands, she had made a mess this time. Kassik would peel her hide for a rug to decorate his office. Silver must have taken over the Academy. And she had let him loose. That was the only explanation. But how could she … she could not tell him about the hollow inside her breast, could she? She could not even transform. She had to stall. “What happened, Silver?”
He trapped her lightly with his paw once more, apparently enjoying her helpless state, the flutter of a panicked heart against his paw.
Silver said, “We’ve worked it all out. You and I are going to fly to the Crescent Islands and find out what your Pygmy battle-name means. Also, there’s knowledge buried there, knowledge of–”
“You’re not using my Word of Command, Silver. I defy you.”
“The Order of Onyx,” he said, acting as if she had not spoken. “That’s the knowledge we seek, what we learned from Fra’anior. They are the guardians of the Word of Command. We need to find them, Pip, to stand any chance at all in the coming war. The Marshal is many times more powerful than–”
She spat, “I said, I defy you! You and your schemes and your power-lust …”
The Silver Dragon huffed a longsuffering sigh, directly in her face. Pip closed her eyes, feeling sick. Let him menace her with his fangs. She had to work out how Silver had wormed his way into everyone’s good graces. Recover her magic. Then, kill him. He was obviously far too powerful and devious to be trusted.
Her enemy’s thoughts, though, were not just on a different trail. They might as well have been tramping through the jungles of a different Island altogether. He said, “We will Ride together, Pip, you and I. You’d honour me greatly in this. What do you say?”
Honour him? As his slave, his little Pygmy puppet? Pip laughed in his face. “You must be ralti-stupid if you think I’m riding you anywhere.”
Silver seemed most put out. Fire flared from his nostrils, but he snuffed the flames with his free paw before they could harm her. “You stubborn–”
“Oh, now it’s my fault?”
“Your skull’s harder than the foundations of the Island-World. Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve been saying?”
Pip’s head was all a-whirl. For a moment, his muzzle blurred above her. She squeezed her eyes shut. Had she heard a giggle somewhere? A tiny shuffle of feet? No.
She demanded, “Tell me what happened.”
“Or, perhaps there’s a block of granite on those shoulders.” Pip scowled to show him she did not appreciate his facility with comparisons. “Look, after Telisia finished using you for target practice, you set me free with one of your Words. I saved your life. I pulled out the arrows and treated the poisons. I dug the two of us out of that dungeon and brought you here, where you have been sleeping and recovering for five days.”
“Five days?” Pip’s eyes widened. Five days for Silver to work his dastardly schemes. Five days for him to ruin everything, to spread his rot at the very core of their Academy.
“I’d hazard a guess that you’ll be feeling very odd, right now,” he continued. “You were poisoned with one of the so-called Shapeshifter poisons. It’s a big family of over a thousand subtle, magical poisons designed to do all kinds of nasty things to Shapeshifters and Dragons. Rather popular in Herimor, unfortunately, but I do have a certain amount of experience with assassination by poison. Your Dragon-form is … ah, well, think of it as paralysed. My assessment is that it could be as long as a month before you recover. That’s why you have to Ride me. Do you understand?”
She had lost her Dragon? That was all she heard. Telisia might just as well have gutted her like a Dragon disembowelling a spiral-horn deer. Mutely, Pip shook her head. Her left eye leaked one silent, treacherous tear. It had been a good Dragonride. But it was over.
Beside her, the Silver Dragon grew visibly frustrated. His claws briefly unsheathed either side of her body, before slipping back again with a stertorous grunt of effort. His belly fires made the low, almost subsonic growl of their presence known.
Pip rubbed her eyes. “I’m injured and hurting, Silver. If you think I’m going to drive some kind of bargain with you in this state …”
“You asked how you can ever trust m
e,” he said. His eyes softened, pleading with her. Pip gritted her teeth. Traitor. Scheming son of a slug. “Master Kassik knows all about this plan. In fact, he suggested it. But, to ensure my cooperation, Master Ga’am has implanted two trigger words in my mind. One will render me unconscious. The other will kill. You may ask him for those two words.”
Insane! Troubled, Pip asked, “Silver, who knows this?”
“Ga’am and Kassik. And you, if you wish.”
“I don’t.” Pip snapped her mouth shut after her words. She searched his eyes, the hints of darkness and danger mingled with the brighter, more beautiful silver. What was he thinking? What if the Marshal captured Kassik or Master Ga’am? Or was Silver lying to her? Much more plaintively, she added, “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me all this? Why place yourself in such danger? If the Marshal ever learns those words–”
“Then I’m as good as dead, anyway. I am already.”
Two Islands of thought warred in her head, and Pip could not decide between them. One insisted that Silver had to be playing her for a fool. Everything he had said up to this point, in the cell and now in the infirmary, had been calculated to toy with her emotions. Even Telisia could be in his thrall. The situation, calculated to drive her to free him as only she could, to place her once more beneath his paw. The second Island was that of hope. What if he was a changed Shapeshifter? What if the remorse he had spoken of, was real? What if he felt the same way as she did, deep in his soul?
“Pip, be my Rider,” he begged. “Let us burn the heavens together.”
“No. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think, Silver!”
“I can help you. I can allay your inmost fears.”
Despair twisted a cold blade into her heart. “You took control of my mind while I was unconscious. You rummaged through my thoughts.”
“Dear sweet Islands, then how would it be possible that you’d still be so bloody stubborn!” he roared, losing his temper with an impressively volcanic string of fireballs that raced out of the open cavern mouth. Pip blinked to clear her vision. “All I was going to say is that as a Shapeshifter, you are fully Human and fully Dragon! You fear you aren’t Human, Pip, and that you’ve had to give up your dream of being Human, but in reality you have the best of both worlds. That’s your deepest fear, you impossible, you … you pint-sized bundle of vexation. Believe me, if I had any control of your thorn-bush of a mind, you’d be polishing my scales right now. I’ve fought you. I’ve battled your mind. Only I know how ridiculously and unrelentingly Human you are!”
Pip gaped at him.
Silver glared back, his fangs champing just inches from her face as he roared, “I’m a proud Dragon! Must I ask thrice? Will you, or will you not, do me the honour of being my Rider?”
Panting after his outburst, he fixed her with his burning silver gaze. His claws curled spasmodically around her ribcage. Any moment now they would clench, and finish her.
“Yah get yah fat stinking paws off mah sweet Pipsqueak,” said Mistress Mya’adara, appearing right at her bedside.
With a shimmer of the air, Master Kassik appeared beside her. He said, “Silver, take your paws out of your mouth before you hurt yourself. I thought you said you could handle this?”
“Idiot,” said Yaethi.
“Prize idiot,” said Kaiatha.
“Biggest idiot within a hundred leagues,” added Maylin, never to be outdone. “How do you spell ‘romance’, you blundering lump of … urgh! Whatever you are.”
The Pygmy girl sank back on her pillow-roll and wondered if the Island-World had just flipped upside-down. Nothing made sense any more. Nothing. Was this some bizarre dream or delusion she was having? Where had they all come from?
Silver shared his raging temper with them all. Spluttering fire from his nostrils, he said, “Well, then you handle that … stupid Pygmy … that Dragoness is not for handling, I tell you! She’s intolerable and headstrong. I will not have it.”
There was a brief, frosty silence. The Silver Dragon stamped off a few paces.
Pip glanced about the half-circle of her friends suddenly gathered to her bedside. Oyda, Nak and Casitha were all present. Nak and Shimmerith … oh, her last hatchling would surely have cracked the shell by now? Why had they been lying in wait for her at this hour? Her brow furrowed. Despite having slept for five days, her senses were suddenly alert, and a hyper-sensitised clarity pervaded her thoughts. They wouldn’t be present and acting like this, unless …
Nak said, “Still, Silver, wouldn’t you agree that she has the cutest bottom in the–ouch!”
Oyda’s slap echoed in the infirmary cavern.
“Very well, only the second-cutest … I’m not supposed to look? Fie, woman, why don’t you just gouge out my eyeballs and roast them on sticks?”
“Rider Nak,” said Mya’adara, fingering her scimitar purposefully.
“Quiet, all of you,” said Pip. It was not a Word of Command, but it silenced them nonetheless. There was a sweet roaring in her ears, an expanding mindfulness of an Island-shivering decision–indeed, what she had known since she first beheld the Silver Dragon in the Natal Cave. “Help me up, Casitha, Oyda.”
“Not yet,” said Oyda, with an apologetic pat of her shoulder. “Sorry.”
Pip called, “Silver, will you come here, please?”
“Not in a thousand–”
“Then I will crawl to you.” Half a dozen friends leaped at her, shouting ‘no!’ Pip ignored them. “Silver, please. Let me go, Oyda. I must … go to him.”
“Silver,” Oyda pleaded. “She’s hurting herself.”
“Bah. Now I’m supposed to care?” But his hearts were not in his words. Silver’s back muscles rippled as if he were fighting an urge to rush back to her bedside. Pip was certain he muttered something about ‘Onyx enchantress’ and ‘heart of stone’. But she was flesh and blood, and the ache of her heart was greater than any of her injuries.
She said, “Silver, why did you rescue me?”
He shuddered. “Evidently, because I’m a prize fool.”
Perhaps she was the fool. Zardon the Red Dragon had once advised her to test everything against her heart. Her head said he was a killer, the enemy, a Dragon who had not truly explained the evil he had wreaked with his power, and why. Her instincts disagreed. And her heart disagreed most eloquently of all. She knew she might never understand the magic that inhabited her heart at this moment, and which sealed what she was about to create by a few simple words.
Pip sucked in an everlasting breath, and let out the tiniest whisper, “Silver, when you first saw me in the Natal Cave, did you feel as soul-struck as I did?”
His Dragon hearing caught her words perfectly. He heard her friends gasp as one, their indrawn breath signifying words which carried a different, special magic all of their own. He whirled, trembling; his eyes, gentler than she had ever seen them, a clearing of the swirls of darkness to the pureness of burning silver, confusion and angst yielding ground to hope.
Pip said, “This magic is my power over you, as you said, but it is also your power over me.”
With a lithe half-bound, Silver closed the space between them. His muzzle lowered toward her. Pip reached up to caress the small scales below his eyes, as high as her little arms could reach. They both spoke at once, spluttered to a halt, and found rather silly grins spreading across their faces. After a long, breathless pause, Pip added:
“I don’t think I could face this war without you, Silver.”
“Nor I. Nor life. Nor anything.”
Pip smiled, “I don’t think I dare ask you to repeat your question, do I?”
“No.”
“But if I did …”
His paw caressed her cheek, just the touch of a knuckle, claws sheathed. “And I did …”
“I can’t promise to be a Rider for long. After all, I’m a Shapeshifter and an Onyx Dragon. Maybe an occasional Rider,” she mused. His grin only broadened. “Would that work for you?”
�
�You’re just being stubborn again. The word you are looking for, Pip, is–”
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes,” he agreed. “A thousand Islands shout yes!”
Quietly, a Silver Dragon and a Pygmy girl began to laugh together. Two hearts, entwined. She who was born in the jungle and caged in a zoo, knew what it was to be free and loved, body and soul.
About the Author
www.marcsecchia.com
If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com or telling your friends. It would be greatly appreciated.
The Pygmy Dragon is the first part in a planned two-book series called Shapeshifter Dragon Legends, which supplements the bestselling Shapeshifter Dragons series. Aranya: Shapeshifter Dragons Book 1, which is packed full of adventure, romance, battles and intrigue, is also set in this world near the end of Nak and Oyda’s lives. Click here for Aranya. But Nak and Oyda still have a great part to play in the fate of the Dragons. Look out for Western Isles: Shapeshifter Dragons Book 2, coming soon.
Marc is a South African-born author who lives and works in Ethiopia with his wife and 4 children, 2 dogs, a rabbit, and a variable number of marabou storks that roost on the acacia trees out back. On a good night you can also hear hyenas prowling along the back fence.
When he’s not writing Marc can be found travelling to remote locations. He thinks there’s nothing better than standing on a mountaintop wondering what lies over the next horizon.
Amazon Author Page
Other Books by Marc Secchia
Aranya: Shapeshifter Dragons Book 1: (Teen & Young Adult and older readers)
Chained to a rock and tossed off a cliff by her boyfriend, Aranya is executed for high treason against the Sylakian Empire. Falling a league into the deadly Cloudlands is not a fate she ever envisaged. But what if she did not die? What if she could spread her wings and fly?
Long ago, Dragons ruled the Island-World above the Cloudlands. But their Human slaves cast off the chains of Dragonish tyranny. Humans spread across the Islands in their flying Dragonships, colonising, building and warring. Now, the all-conquering Sylakians have defeated the last bastion of freedom–the Island-Kingdom of Immadia.
