by Marc Secchia
Unholy, smoking fumaroles! What had she missed? What had she – oh no! A thin trickle of gold leaked between his Dragon’s fangs as the new Dragon slowly turned his head, blinking myopically. She heard new-Dragon thoughts, wonder and confusion and exultation.
“Get off me!”
Zanya gaped, and then chortled in amazement. “Oh, you really are tiny, Human – huh? Is this my voice?”
The rhythm of Brazo’s Dragon hearts was all wrong. Flicker and Grandion were starting some inane male-Dragon celebratory routine, and Zanya reached out to prick her brother in the flank, when a stupefied expression crossed the other Ice-Blue Dragon’s features. Hualiama’s own heart lurched painfully in response. No. He would not die! Not on her watch! She had given of Amaryllion’s fire-gift to make him what he was …
Grandion! Hualiama took. Forgive her, she took so much of his strength that the Dragon collapsed to his knees with a pained wheeze, and then she wrenched herself upright, hurling Zanya three hundred feet into the air with a massive flexion of her arms and legs. “Get off me, I said!”
Hualiama stumbled over to Brazo. Gold. So much blood that she slipped and fell, but she caught his slackening jaw with her outflung right hand. One way to the second heart. The quickest way. Throwing herself over his fangs and flattening herself upon his tongue, Lia hastily reformed her shield, infusing it with elements that would hopefully withstand the madness she planned.
She yelled, DRAGON, OBEY! SWALLOW!
* * * *
“You are wholly and irrevocably ralti-stupid!” Grandion stormed, about ten minutes later.
Hualiama smiled up at him.
“You insist upon putting your life on the line for other Dragons!”
She twirled a hank of her bloodied, tangled hair about her fingers, and tried a coy flutter of her eyelashes. It was somewhat spoiled by a blob of encrusted Dragon stomach mucus and clotted blood that slid down her right cheek.
“I was ready to cut you out of that Dragon’s stomach!”
“But you didn’t, and Hualiama saved my brother’s life,” purred Zanya, much happier now that she had all four paws back on the ground and Brazo had been pronounced well.
“You could’ve warned me he had a heart condition,” Lia growled. When the Dragoness essayed a passable impression of a ralti sheep, the proverbial brass dral dropped. Sucking in her lips, she whispered, “You were hoping that the transformation would heal him? But, the replication between Shapeshifter forms doomed – oh, windroc spit. A power which had healed Jin’s scars could not touch Brazo? How’s that possible?”
“Congenital condition?” whispered Brazo.
“Shh. You rest as ordered,” Lia snapped. “Today’s lesson: magic is unpredictable.”
“Hualiama is unpredictable,” Elki murmured.
She folded her arms across her chest, letting her annoyance show. How could they be so unfair? Stop … looking at me like that, Grandion! To the others, she said, “Now, everyone, let’s get back to work. I’ve a few ideas –”
“I’ve not yet finished telling you off!” snarled the Tourmaline.
Enough. Reaching out, Hualiama tapped the panting, sulphur-fulminating Dragon pertly upon the nose. “Yes you have, or I will never kiss you again. So you can just shove that into your fire stomach and roast me a nice dinner.”
Grandion’s jaw cracked open as a swelling snarl reverberated inside his throat.
Hualiama trapped his upper and lower lips one in each hand, arresting the movement but not the angry sound. “No. More. Kisses. Consider yourself warned.” Ignoring the dangerous bulge of Grandion’s eyes, she added affably, “Well, I might change my mind … if you’re a very, very good Dragon from now until, say … eternity?”
Planting a loud smacker on her boy-Dragon’s lower lip, she marched off, giving the hips a jaunty workout.
GGIIIIRRRLLLSS!! Grandion vented his spleen toward the heavens.
“Good. You’re finally learning,” she threw over her shoulder.
Chapter 20: Faster than Magic
an hour before dawn, Tiiyusiel and Siiyumiel breached the Cloudlands abaft the southeast corner of Seg Island, and woke Hualiama by means of the imperious application of a light cannon shot to the rump. Thankfully, the blast was modulated so that she only suffered smouldering blankets and a scorched rear end. Rather less to her amusement, the Land Dragons first chortled at her telepathic howl of outrage, and then proceeded to upbraid her for bargaining with Numistar at considerable, detailed and vitriolic length.
Mutinously, she listened with half an ear while she tried to work out exactly how they had bent light to singe her behind alone, amidst an encampment of thousands.
Dragons!
There was useful intelligence. Life under the Cloudlands was busy indeed. It seemed that every Land Dragon within four thousand leagues was on his, hers or its way to Fra’anior Cluster, with at least five separate wars being fought en route. Numistar, after tarrying near Noxia for two days for no purpose even the great Wisdom could discern, had made good progress around the Spits and now stood poised south of Rolodia Island, ready to make a full-frontal assault on Fra’anior Cluster. All she awaited was word that the Star Dragoness and her forces had taken off from Seg, and Affurion and the Lost Islands Dragonkind from Xinidia, which they had invaded and overrun, although at a cost. The great Air Breathers bearing the nation of Lost Islands Humans on their backs had settled around the southerly curve of Fra’anior Cluster, protecting the Island which Azziala had symbolically declared her own – Fra’anior Island, alias, King Chalcion’s former stomping ground.
Significant. By this move, she distanced herself from the Dragonkind, Hualiama realised, and the Air Breathers could form a second layer of fortification, one outside the Cluster and one within, reached, she assumed, through the deepest channel between the rim Islands at the easterly tip of Ha’athior Island. That turned Fra’anior Cluster into a virtually impregnable fortress – unless one was a Dragoness the size of Numistar. Then, all bets were rendered null and void.
We suspect she will confront you and Numistar near the Natal Cave, Siiyumiel continued to expound. Again, a politically and historically astute move. If she is able to mine the power of horiatite, that choice will position her in a place of great power indeed. The Air Breathers manoeuvre to make ingress to the caldera difficult. Furthermore, the Empress has succeeded in dominating our mighty brethren at last and making them hers. We must expect no help from that quarter. We have, of course, treated with Affurion of the Lesser Dragonkind – on your behalf, before Numistar informed us of your perfidy in granting that Ancient Power access to the First Egg.
From the spit of rock she had chosen to overlook the Cloudlands and the shells of the two mighty Land Dragons, Hualiama bowed gingerly. Am I to be allowed to explain, noble –
NO! Siiyumiel somehow managed to form a frown that measured a mile from edge to edge. I trust Fra’anior will shatter his shell-daughter’s farcical hubris.
Good. In case she had harboured any self-doubt whatsoever.
She said, Noble Dragons, please inform Affurion’s forces that we fly for Xinidia forthwith and should be there within thirty hours. If Grandion had huff and puff enough to keep them sailing rapidly and on course.
Our Tourmaline can bluster with the best of them, Dragonsoul chirped within.
I heard that. Grandion was awake, and amused.
Oh, said her Dragoness. I must have neglected to notice I was speaking to you also, furnace-breath.
With a lazy hop-flap, Grandion glided over the encampment and out to where Hualiama stood watching Siiyumiel fold himself back into his shell. In the predawn semidarkness, the stellate protrusions of his shell gleamed like mountains lashed by a recent rainstorm. The horizon pinked beneath the heavy overcast above. Hualiama glanced backward with a moment of misgiving, but the Tourmaline handled his ninety-foot bulk deftly, landing beside the Human girl with only a rearrangement of her hairstyle to show for it. His left forepaw settled at her left flank, and
after a second, corralled her delicately. His huge nostrils snuffled down her back.
She jumped. “Grandion, enough with the backside!”
“I’m concerned about your burns.”
“Aye. Those would be due to Siiyumiel’s reprimand.”
Kissy kissy better? suggested Dragonsoul.
Grandion laughed, Silence while I’m talking to my girlfriend, you rascally usurper. Even amongst Dragons, that gesture communicates deleterious, even humiliating inferences – save, I’ll admit, inside the roost. That’s different. He supplied a comical expression in place of words.
For all his brawn and bristle, Grandion could be surprisingly straitlaced at times. Or, did Dragons only speak of these matters after the fire-promises were made? She must inquire discreetly, perhaps of Mizuki or one of the older females in their Dragonwing. Perhaps this could be a way for her and Istariela to kindle a relationship afresh? Why had Istariela left her eggling alone for so long? Could it be that after their soul-merging in the womb, she had been unable to communicate as she wished because Lia’s Dragon form had been suppressed by Ianthine’s so-called ‘gift’ of the ruzal?
Therefore, it was not the White Dragoness’ fault.
The Dragon pinched her left thigh delicately between his equivalent of the Human thumb and forefinger. “To quote someone I’m learning to know well, ‘Look at the meat on these looooovvveeelllyyy thighs!’ ” To the trilling of her merriment, he added, “Don’t think you can escape the frightful maw of a slavering, ravenous Dragon.”
“Slobbering,” she retorted, wriggling in his grasp. “Let me go, you chthonian fiend.”
Flicker bobbed over, rubbing his eyes with his paws. “If you’ve quite finished toasting your breakfast, o Tourmaline terror, the other Dragons are wondering when you plan to take off.”
Grandion and Hualiama both startled.
“We caught the bit about Affurion,” said the dragonet. “That was public telepathy. And, the bit about her haunches. Public indecency. If you’ve quite finished this execrable exhibition of egregious … ah …”
“Run out of alliterative antics?” Hualiama suggested acidly.
Flicker pinned her with his fiercest stare. “Exhibitionism!”
“Used that one already.”
Taking command of her left ear with his sharp talons, the dragonet growled, “How’s about I round off the edges of this very pointy flap of cartilage?”
“Ooh, how I quiver.” Hualiama’s eye ran over the encampment – given as Grandion helpfully opened his talons to give her a viewing porthole – already stirring as the Dragons communicated the news telepathically. “Grandion, let’s get them moving. Flicker, what happened to Shill and the other Chrysolitic Dragons?”
The dragonet said, “They followed Numistar.”
“And the Egg,” said Grandion.
Hualiama stared at her companions, her heart burning in her throat like acid. “Why?”
“We didn’t trust her word,” said the Tourmaline.
Flicker said, “That’s not what she meant. Of course every Dragon suspects foul play. But what this says is, we didn’t trust Hualiama.”
Grandion nodded. When he spoke, he refused to look Hualiama directly in the eye. “Aye, we didn’t trust that Lia wasn’t thinking with Human logic. That’s what she’s been for the longest in her life, after all.”
The dragonet gasped.
Lia immediately put her hand to his flank. “Let him go, Flicker.”
She watched the Tourmaline move off, bugling the wake-up call. His draggling tail betrayed his unease with his own words. At her neck, the dragonet’s muzzle bobbed in agreement as Lia showed him her thoughts; he nuzzled her neck to show support. Indeed, who is he speaking for? Do I hear Fra’anior’s dulcet little thunder bombs? Or the interference of other null-fires fools amongst these dull-as-dishwater Dragons?
Grandion always had been susceptible to peer pressure, she remembered. Why was he bringing these pressures to bear now? She very badly wanted to dance her cares away.
Romance? Vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke.
If Flicker trimmed her ear, she would shove that bleeding scrap of flesh down her mother’s throat and hope she choked on it!
Her tiny, white-scaled friend purred into her ear, Precious girl, there are many dances to life. You danced across the Island-World. You danced your love for that undeserving beast when he was feral, and he burned you for it. You dance in battle and you dance in your dreams. What you call action, even action of the most flagrantly straw-headed sort, is still dance – so, borrowing an Elka’anor thought, what will your dance be today?
Are you Flicker, or are you the personification of Amaryllion’s two thousand-plus years of wisdom? She scratched his skull spikes fondly. You’re so … you’re just so …
He nuzzled her cheek with his muzzle, putting both paws and both wings around her neck in a peculiarly dragonet-hug, as if he were a child hugging his parent with both legs and arms. He said, I know. Your tears say it all.
Three seconds later, Hualiama snapped her fingers. I know what to do next.
* * * *
Flicker was his girl’s shadow as the fleet rose into the dawn skies, enjoying just a few minutes of the twin suns’ rays reaching between what struck him as Cloudlands below mirrored by Cloudlands above, turning both layers of cloud into roseate, resplendent mirrors of reality. Magic was another such mirror. White-fires linked all, and pervaded all. What was perceived by the eye was almost a draconic subterfuge on the microscopic and even atomic level, a kind of mirroring back to the sensory organs of what was expected, an acceptable interpretation of reality.
The dragonet knew Hualiama was listening, but that was not the reason for his philosophical musings.
What astonishing reimagination of reality made it possible for his soul to fly toward the fires, only to return and live in an impossibly different form inside of Hualiama’s – what? Her own soul? Her Dragonsoul’s soul? And then to be separated again, reincarnate … he was privileged above all creatures. Enormously fortunate.
The rigging of many Dragonships creaked as the hot-air vessels rose upon the gentle dawn breeze evoked by Grandion, their sails billowing and filling with the wind, and their hawsers groaning as the stoves roared, feeding the swelling balloons. Hundreds of monks and soldiers would ride with the Dragons, practising their flying partnership. Lia had declared no opportunity should pass them by; Grandion implemented her orders with roars and the odd kick.
What little news had filtered out of Lia’s home Cluster was grim. Azziala ruled with an iron fist, and every Dragon had fallen under her sway. The Islands were now buttressed by a strange shield. No Dragon flew in or out.
Hualiama winged pensively between Mizuki and Makani. In a moment, she said, Flicker, Elki, I’m leaving briefly, but I’ll be close by. Don’t let them panic.
Elki snorted, Don’t think I would – Short Shrift? Lia, where the hells are you?
Flicker could only ruffle his wings in astonishment as his girl vanished. No magic, no shield, no aura-trace of Dragonflight. Nothing.
She did not reimagine reality. She just manufactured her own.
Tremble, Azziala! Be afraid, o Winterborn …
* * * *
Enveloped in the now familiar constellations of Flow space, the Star Dragoness listened briefly to the beat of draconic telepathic communication around her. Grandion’s shock. Elki’s fuming. Mizuki soothing the Tourmaline. It felt rather too good to be tweaking Grandion’s wings in this way. Not for the first time, Lia wondered what risks she took by entering the Flow. Cosmic radiation, perhaps. The same magical parasites or sicknesses that preyed upon the Chrysolitic Dragons and drove them mad? Every star in her compact formation shivered.
Shape the communication. Aim it toward the region where she calculated Shill might currently be.
Her v
oice was tiny, a whisper’s echo from this distance, but a swift sleight-of-magical-amplification made her understandable. Hualiama breathed a sigh of relief.
Shill was gone. Extinguished, judging by the terrifying tail of her final telepathic cry. Had she just given her life to feed information back to her, Lia wondered? Please, let that not be her fate!
Puzzle it out. Numistar had been cooling herself to a temperature colder than outer space? Outer space was cold? She was not familiar with the theory, apart from Amaryllion’s statement that the First Eggs had travelled in a comet in order to be shielded from the ‘abyssal chill’ of outer space. Whatever that meant, it was likely to be as horridly freezing as Numistar’s original cometary landing, if not more so. Rogue draconic elements, probably Chrysolitic Dragons under Numistar’s command, had been helping her get the chills?
Hmm. In a manner of speaking. This meant cold fireballs, or something far nastier if the Ancient Dragoness stayed true to character. Chrysolitic Dragons could already kill a Dragon with their cold fireball attack, by snuffing out their basal fires. Could they expect some kind of Numistar-sized freezing attack on all of Fra’anior Cluster? Or upon the Dragon Hater strongholds? She had not included Azziala’s people – sigh, very well, her own people by blood and nothing else – in her bargain with the Ancient Dragoness. Nor, the dragonets. Manky windroc entrails! They had entirely missed the dragonets in their discussions of strategy. She needed to speak to Flicker. Yesterday.
Nor had she explicitly included Affurion and his Lost Island Dragons, except under the general term of ‘allies’. She had definitely not considered the Air Breathers … that was it. The Air Breathers and their Land Dragon kin. Perhaps other Dragons. Numistar must intend to use cold fireballs to breach the new shield they had heard of, and to reach Azziala in that way.
On the verge of returning to her normal plane of existence, Hualiama paused, struck by a new thought. How did a cold fireball travel through the physical world, that it could evade all known types of draconic magi-physical and psychic shields?
