by Marc Secchia
Closer and closer he flew, until the hoary old-timer faced them from a mere hundred yards distant, and every sinew in Emblazon’s body thrummed with audible tension, at least to Pip’s imagination. Zardon’s left forepaw was curled beneath him as if he were injured, or did he hold something concealed from view?
Zardon said, The mighty Marshal demands the Onyx Dragoness enter his Island.
And where is this Marshal? Emblazon sneered. Let him show his craven face, not send some paw-licking lackey to irritate our ear-canals with his worthless buzzing.
Muscles twitched along the length of Zardon’s mighty jaw, but he appeared otherwise unmoved. Fiery words are welcome, young Amber, whom I remember from his hatchling years, but serve only to warm the air between us. I bring five hundred Dragons. You are but five.
Six, if they counted Kaiatha. Pip kept silent.
Regretfully, the Onyx declines Marshal Re’akka’s gracious invitation to be moulded into a null-brained, wingless fool, Emblazon sneered.
Ignoring the Amber Dragon as if his words were the wind whispering over the leaves all around him, Zardon said, What of you, Pip? Will you not join your old Dragon?
She said, Zardon, while my hearts sing Dragonsong to find you alive, my eye-fires see you are trapped in a living death. You know I cannot accede. Join us. We have turned one to our side; we will turn many more, until the Marshal is abandoned to his fate. We have the right and you know your actions for evil and dark-fires. Join us, noble Zardon. You are our friend.
Emblazon’s talons hooked up chunks of bark in his outrage at her statement, but the Amber did not interrupt her. Pip wondered at this. Where had this tact sprung from, his evident sensitivity to the nuances of a delicately poised situation? Zardon stared across at them, his eye-fires first brightening in understanding, then growing dimmer as shadows appeared amidst the flames.
Little one, these are the Marshal’s conditions. Surrender yourself, or he will command his Dragon legions to burn these Crescent Islands from their northernmost tip to the southernmost. Regard.
Zardon raised his foreclaw. Pip’s head turned to follow the movement as he indicated the next Island to the southwest of hers, a small, uninhabited volcanic cone swathed in the typical lush vegetation. So suddenly that she voiced a spontaneous squeak of dismay, hundreds of Dragons burst through the cloudbank a quarter-mile above the Island, and swooped. Rank upon rank. A dull roar resounded across the Cloudlands. Flame bloomed before them like a beam of pure suns-light spearing between dark storm-billows, at once beautiful and deadly. For a breathless moment, it seemed the damp foliage would resist that terrible assault. Then, her Dragon sight brought her the detail of foliage exploding into sheets of flame, a conflagration which swiftly engulfed the Island as the Dragons continued to supply fireball after fireball. Sparks leaped thousands of feet into the air, surmounted by an ominous column of dark smoke.
Zardon said, Thus, we will raze every green thing until the Crescent Isles are no more, and you are the last of your race, Pip, and you know the unbearable anguish of being the cause of the Pygmies’ annihilation.
He would not, she wanted to cry. Who could contemplate such a monstrous course of action? Nausea clenched her throat. She dropped her gaze, fighting for composure, seeing in her mind’s eye the battalions of Dragons sweeping over the Crescent, burning, burning, Tik burning, and No’otha, and her parents …
Give us time to consider, o Zardon, Emblazon called. Pip realised he was trying to sound unmoved, but the angst and dark-fire indicators in his Dragonish betrayed him.
You have until suns-set, said Zardon. And Pip …
She raised her muzzle.
What emotion entered his mien now? Sorrow? Regret? The old Dragon said, Though our oath-connection revealed your presence here in the Isles, it was never I who betrayed you. It was this person, who called you ‘demon-child.’ She came to us.
His left forepaw unclenched. Upon his palm, unmoving, lay Pip’s mother.
Desolation swept her Dragon hearts.
Zardon said, Do not fail to return by suns-set, Pip. Do not fail to supply the right answer. For this life is the first which would be forfeit, followed by the lives of all of your tribe. We know where they live.
He did not perceive it. There was no breath on her mother’s lips. She was dead.
* * * *
“No,” Pip moaned.
Returned to their place between the jungle boles, the conversation stuttered amidst helpless realisation. If Pip did not surrender, the Marshal would annihilate her people.
“That’s why he hides in his benighted Island,” Nak said bitterly. “Even should Pip expend a thousand Words downing all those Dragons, the Marshal will simply whistle up a hundred more, or drop the Shadow beast on her. He controls that thing, of that you can be sure. Then, the Pygmies die. We all die.”
“And if Pip does surrender–”
Emblazon drowned Arosia out with a furious bellow, then chopped off his own fires with his tongue. “Sorry, little–Dragon Rider. Continue.”
Arosia said, “What guarantee do we have that the Marshal will keep his word?”
Cinti said, “Word of a Dragon. Even Re’akka will keep that promise. You may think it strange, but Herimor culture lives and breathes honour.”
“A strange form of honour,” Nak growled.
“Ay, strange,” the Dragoness said equably. “Strange, and binding, sometimes beyond death. He will leave the Pygmies alone but continue to trample the rest of the Island-World into dust. We can also be assured of that fact. No. We have about an hour in which to concoct a miracle.”
Pip indicated the scroll-tubes secreted in a backpack attached to Shimmerith’s harness. “We’ve a number of imperatives, some of which conflict with each other. We’ve a duty to keep those beyond the Marshal’s grasp, and to use them to plot his downfall. That requires time and distance from these Night-Reds. We must keep the knowledge in my head away from the Marshal at all costs. We must learn the secret of Re’akka’s hold over the Shadow Dragon, deduce what part Leandrial and Shurgal must play in our fate, and succour the Egg.”
“Why not bid a million stars dance for our amusement?” Emblazon growled horribly, deep in his throat. “No. There must be a way out that involves you not surrendering, Pip. If that happens, we’re lost. The Marshal will suck out your thoughts and turn you into one of his minions. Imagine facing a Pygmy Dragon Assassin with the power of the Word of Command?”
Chymasion said, “She could do anything, shell-father. Sink the Islands. Stop the suns. Send every Dragon living to the eternal fires.”
Much as she wanted to decry their cheerless assessment of the situation, Pip knew they were right. What they required was a small, dark paw to tip the Balance. A paw that would not shirk from doing the unthinkable. Surely it hinged on what the Marshal wanted of her. Assurance of dominance? Or did he have some deeper, darker purpose altogether? She could not imagine. The new knowledge had begun to percolate into her understanding, to meld and morph and grow within her, and that potential–she could not begin to articulate it. Chymasion might be right. Emblazon was correct. Should the Marshal own the Word-power, what could stand against?
Defeat the Marshal, unleash the Shadow. She remembered its restraint that day the beast took Tazzaral and Jyoss. The sense of waiting, of abiding, for an opportunity that would arise between that creature and the Onyx Dragon. The Shadow’s understanding of Balance.
Again, the understanding crystallised within her. She had to change the Balance. How could she gain power over the real demon in the Island-World? Only by being close to the Marshal. Only by stealing his secrets, for her Word had not worked upon it. If the creature was immune to the Word but constrained by Re’akka …
A shiver seemed to pass from her Shapeshifter soul into her Dragonflesh.
Pip? Pip? Silver gazed quizzically at her. Will you open your mind–
No. Oh Silver, darling fire of my hearth, I cannot–don’t you see?
&nbs
p; You’re acting weird. Staring into space.
The laughter of starlight. Only that knowledge could rouse her courage from the pit into which it had sunk. An Ancient Dragon claimed kinship with her spirit. A star watched over her. Therefore, she should take them into the Marshal’s presence and let him do battle against Nature’s most primal forces. Or not. She did not know. Tip the Balance. Save lives. Save her people. Avenge her mother. Save the Dragons.
One simple factor consumed all else. The Marshal must be removed from the equation.
Impulsively Pip sprang upward, talons extending to grip a leaning tree trunk thirty feet overhead of the group. Every eye turned to follow her movement, startled. And into that moment, she spoke a Word of Command.
Be still.
Chapter 22: Inside the Island
ANTS, Frozen in amber. Time encapsulated. Petrified, yet alive.
Lithely, Pip landed on the soft soil. She was the only one who moved in that congregation, save for the faint hissing of draconic breath and the beating of hearts. Her Word of Command owned every particle of their bodies, but their senses remained intact. That was a mystery, one she would contemplate another day, should she live to see it.
Pip gazed at her beloved friends one by one, seeing them, imprinting them on her mind and in her heart. For if she did not return …
“Mercy,” she whispered at last. “Mercy, mercy, mercy … what have I done? What will I do?”
Please, Fra’anior, grant a Pygmy girl the courage to seize her destiny in both paws and haul it around each of the five moons, and the twin suns for good measure. For that was her assessment of their chances.
“Dear friends,” she began, and choked up.
Island vines, rise up and throttle that Marshal! Islands, fall upon him and crush him! Storms, throw his Island back into the abyss from which it rose!
She tried again, desperately unsteady of voice, “Dear friends, I do not leave you because I have no choice, but because I believe there are still choices which can be made. I will not surrender to Marshal Re’akka. No, I will fight him with every breath of my body and every scrap of fire in my soul, and if I cannot win, I will die rather than give him what he wants. I promise you that. I promise, and give you permission to slay me without qualm or second thought, should that terrible day come to pass.”
“I go, because the only way to defeat the Marshal is to get close to him. The only way to defeat the Shadow is to know its secrets. We cannot separate the two. Both must be defeated; their fates are inextricably bound up in each other. Understand that I go, because the Marshal cannot turn my mind. He must not. The Words dwell in my Pygmy memory, a living kind of memory, and if that alters, then his cause is lost and my power is denied to him forever.”
She surveyed them, but not one eye blinked in response. They could not. Almost, she wished to loosen the magical shackles that bound them against any form of reply.
Pip clenched her talons in the deep muck layered beneath the trees. “I must go … I can’t explain it in every detail, dear ones, for Re’akka might turn that knowledge against me. I simply know that this Balance cannot be allowed to stand.” She gazed at her paws, panting heavily. “For the sake of my people, it must be done. Their destruction would wound Fra’anior as nothing else. If I am the child of his spirit, then I must trust him to protect me.”
“I go for you. I go, because I love you.”
Again, her courage failed. She began to mouth another Word, tasted it upon her tongue, but did not allow it form and substance. Pip shuddered, feeling that if she had been in her Human manifestation just then, she might have sweated her own blood.
“Silver, I’m not on some ‘only Pip can do this’ trip. You must take these scrolls and use their knowledge and hide them far from the reach of Marshal Re’akka and his ilk. Silver, I …”
She raised her paw to his cheek. I love you, my beautiful Silver.
Her tongue could not be trusted to speak more, or she might reveal all. Quietly, Pip said, “When I leave, I will incite the Night-Reds. You will hear their response. At that moment you must snatch the opportunity to make good your escape. Shield, fly low, and don’t look back. Don’t even think about me. Silver, don’t do anything rash. Go to the Academy and prepare for the final battle. If it is at all in my power, by any miracle above the Cloudlands or beneath these heavens, I swear I will join you there in readiness to defeat the Marshal and this Shadow.”
LET … IT … BE!
Pip’s head spun as the entire Island-World seemed to shudder beneath her paws. She glanced about wildly. Fra’anior?
The faraway thunder rolled on and on, before fading into silence.
At last, her heart knew steel and valour, and the incongruous joy of Dragonsong. This was her choice. Pip of the Pygmies would shake the heavens.
Quickly, she touched her friends each one, murmuring, Love you. Love you, Shimmerith. Love you, Arosia, Oyda, Nak–don’t take this declaration the wrong way, you ridiculous old cliff-goat–love you, Chymasion and Cinti, Silver, Elder No’otha, warriors who I’m sorry I don’t know your names, and you, my precious father …
Grievous fires seared her Dragon hearts. Yet she must, at last, turn and reach for the skies. This Pygmy girl would fly, or die trying.
* * * *
Pip’s muzzle broached the final leafy screen guarding the sanctity of the open skies like a vole peeking from its burrow, scenting the air for predators. Briefly, she imagined launching into the beyond, unfettered by fate or circumstance. She felt the weight of lives keenly, not least that of her mother. It seemed someone else’s paws pushed her out into the open, climbing a branch ten feet wide, placing her squarely at the focal centre of hundreds of hostile fire-eyes.
Magic swelled within her breast, again with the inkling that the idea had not quite originated within the confines of her own mind. An unfamiliar pain grew behind her breastbone. Indigestion? Surely not such a banal problem. Pip sensed valves constricting in concert with those rising potentials. Her innards shifted, concentrating the power–oh, that was wild–she suddenly bared her fangs in a fine draconic grin, having a suspicion of what this might mean. Fra’anior had his legendary powers. If she was also Onyx, might she have inherited something of his fabled Storm? Not that she had ever loosed so much as a spark of electricity in any of her brief experiences as a Dragoness.
If she was right, it was time to greet Zardon and his cronies as they deserved.
Pip sprang eagerly into the air. Fate could just work on keeping up. With an efficient clip of her wings, she angled for Zardon, hovering a little beneath the orderly ranks of Night-Reds. The old Shapeshifter certainly ran a tight Dragonship. No bolt-hole had been left open, high or low, or at any point of the compass. Mercy, let her magic release her friends as planned …
She slowed in front of Zardon. I have come, you old fire-eater.
I knew you would. He bared his fangs.
She answered him tooth for tooth, in number at least. She had no answer for the size and menace of his lazy snarl. Planning to keep a Pygmy Dragoness in a cage is a perilous prospect, Zardon.
You would bare your fangs at me, little mouse?
Every scale on her body bristled with fury. Little mouse? She was Dragonkind! They had killed her mother! Zardon stiffened slightly in response, still subtly mocking in his relaxed mid-air attitude. Pip’s throat worked as if the muscles were tying themselves into a Dragonship Steersman’s knots. She recalled the Hatchling-Mother Imogiel’s sage advice. ‘A Dragon’s wings know what to do, Pip. Relax. Let your instincts rule.’ That was before her ecstatic first flight. Accordingly, she relaxed those points of pressure she felt inside.
Mistake! Momentarily, she panicked. The Dragon power roared forth regardless.
WHHEEIII-BOOOOMM!!
Thunder and storm winds smashed Zardon aside and blew a hole fifty Dragons wide in his blockade. Pip, unfortunately, found herself tumbling in exactly the opposite direction, victim of her own deed. Instinctively, she
waited. She must seize the element of surprise. The instant Zardon’s massed Dragonwing reacted to her challenge, startling out of their immobility, Pip performed a simultaneous barrel-roll and a forward somersault, changing her orientation in the air. She pumped her wings.
I’m yours if you can catch me, you herd of corpulent, yammering ralti sheep!
Roaring rajals, had she really just discovered a new Dragon power? Shimmerith had taught her that fledglings often experienced ‘leaps’ of ability as their innate magic developed. The Sapphire had come into her lightning powers early on, but only learned to shield four years later. And the powers continued to develop, with instruction or experimentation. Hadn’t Shimmerith used chain lightning for the first time in the battle with the Night-Red Dragonwing over Sylakia?
Thoughts and impressions raced through her mind, Dragon speed. Mistake? No way! Every muscle was primed for action, her body thrumming to the exhilarating, maddening Dragonsong of battle. Pip flexed her jaw, feeling the magic gathering again with shocking speed, the sharp stabbing beneath her breastbone … hold it, wait for the right opportunity … she braced herself.
WHHEEIII-AARRGGHH!
Whatever mess the Storm power made of her battle-challenge, it was also remarkably effective. And terribly draining. Blasting Dragons left and right with the power of her Storm-fuelled winds, regardless of any shields or other draconic magic, Pip shot through the new gap in their ranks with a pert waggle of her tail and a rude wingtip-gesture she had learned from Silver. That was enough to break their discipline. A rippling roar of draconic fury thundered over the Isles as the dark Dragons turned as one beast to chase her, responding to the ancient instincts of their kind. No Dragon could fail to react to the brash challenge of a much smaller creature.
The Onyx Dragoness led five hundred Dragons a merry chase westward over the Isles while, she prayed, her companions would wake and snatch their opportunity with paws or hands or whatever it took to slip through the Marshal’s clutches.
