by Marc Secchia
She cried, Orbit!
Silver fire and cold-fire bent to her Command. Silver’s scales crawled with wonder. Ripping the twilight with an angry hiss, as though denied the opportunity to assume the form of massive, inescapable destruction, the ultra-concentrated stream of Dragon fire diverted to flow around her rotating form as though Pip conducted a concerto of bravura brilliance. A disk of fire. A blazing ring forced to orbit her dark planet.
The two Herimor Shapeshifters stared in shock. The Marshal’s output stuttered, but he still unleashed the Shivers with such venom and fury that it stalled his vertical dive, wrenching his body with the effect of extreme gravitational forces. Before their disbelieving eyes, the darkness opened subtly, accepting the charge like the Shadow Dragon lovingly enveloping its victim in death. Yet this was far too much for any one Dragoness to contain. Her face stretched in an agonised scream which precisely mimicked the pitch and tempo of the Marshal’s secondary attack–the sound-waves which would have outstripped his fire by a small margin, Silver realised. That was the Marshal’s secret. Pulverise and burn-freeze. What could stand against that combination?
Those tiny dark paws lifted to the heavens. Flower! Reflect!
He perceived her hesitation, the moment mercy won over the desire for revenge. She could have unleashed the Marshal’s attack on every Dragon in the nearby airspace, annihilating them. Instead, Pip chose to tilt that roaring disk and discharge it into the evening skies. Silver barely had time to register the cold flowering upward in response to her Word, when he realised the import of her second command. Dragon reactions! Silver slammed up a shield a millisecond before the Shivers struck him and his shell-father like a mountain tossed into the Cloudlands.
Dragons fell. Silver fell with them. All he remembered was astonishment fading to black. Pip’s colour. The colour of his mortality.
* * * *
Seven blue-white comets seared the darkling sky before exploding miles overhead in a shower of fine white particles. Yet Pip had no eyes for beauty torn from the jaws of ruin. Her wings folded, lacking the power to beat. Her hearts folded, lacking the will to live.
SILVER!!
His shell-father cradled that limp, broken body, staring at her with an unreadable draconic mask fixed on his handsome yet hateful face. Then he winged away raggedly yet with great speed, the legions of Night-Reds closing behind him as though slamming a door in her face. She had killed him! Silver, silenced forever! The heavens stood mute before the force of her terrible outcry. Cold white dust drifted over the volcano like the ash of death.
Dimly, she became aware of Kassik’s shoulder and right wing beneath her, bearing her tenderly back toward the mountainside. All he said was, I know, little one. I know.
It was enough.
* * * *
Pip lived a waking nightmare. For five days and nights, the Dragon Assassins attacked in fits and starts. The Academy defended itself with tooth and claw, with courage and tenacity, yet the cost was daily paid in the bodies of Human and Dragon lives alike. Eridoon Island stood a league offshore, grimly silent. No-one saw the Marshal. No-one saw Silver.
She wept as though her heart were a Cloudlands ocean, capped by white clouds of sulphuric acid, underpinned by impossible deeps and bottomless rifts of grief. Pip stumbled about in a fug, unable to think or eat, unable to respond. Desolation ruled her heart.
Four Blues had died supporting her. Shimmerith and Chymasion recovered after a day of forced rest each–how they chafed and grumbled! Pip made mistakes, almost striking Arrabon down in battle as she mistook him for an enemy Green Shapeshifter. Nothing anyone said seemed to penetrate, either the kindness of Oyda, Mya’adara and Casitha, or the apologetic but inflexible words of Kassik as he forbade her to go find out if Silver was alive. “Not in your state,” he said bluntly. “You cannot risk this Island-World’s future for one double-crossing Herimor snake!”
He was right. Oh, Silver!
Then there came a night when the Shadow Dragon hunted. Seventy-four Dragons entered the eternal fires.
The following morning, Pip woke in Shimmerith and Emblazon’s roost to find the Sapphire Dragoness asking Chymasion to take Amfyrion and Inzuriel down into the training caverns for their hatchling classes. With Oyda and Emblazon out on patrol, that left Pip alone with Shimmerith and Nak. She dressed pensively. An off-duty morning. What would she do? Rest? Ha! She wandered into the Riders’ bathroom to wash her face in the laver of cold water which was usually set there on a Jeradian hardwood dresser, along with Oyda’s oils, perfumes and womanly effects, and a few odds and ends that belonged to Nak.
“Islands’ greetings, Pygmy girl,” said Nak, decent for a change, trimming his beard with a dagger. “Flaming with the dawn, thou dusky–”
“Nak. I’m not in the mood.” Pip stared at him in the mirror. Her reflection was hollow-eyed, Nak’s unusually solemn.
“Fie, what of thy declaration of love everlasting, I ask thee?”
Her lips tried a twitch, but the movement only hurt. “Nak, I do love you, but–”
“Enough. It’s more than enough.” First a typically florid Nak gesture, then he turned and bent toward her. Pip froze as Nak kissed the top of her head. Nak? What possessed him? “You have to go, you know.”
“I, uh … no, I don’t. Kassik’s orders.” Nak snorted dismissively. “I’m being obedient, Nak.”
Nak began to hoot with laughter, then cut himself off abruptly. “Pip, my petal, my delicate jungle flower. Oh, windroc droppings on that nonsense! Pip, let’s be honest. Obedience is not your style. So I have taken the liberty of laying a variety of devious and despicable plans this day to help you be delightfully disobedient.”
He just could not resist making verbal floral arrangements. “Look, Nak, Kassik was very clear. And right. Fate of the world, hot-headed Pygmy nonsense, taking responsibility, unequivocal betrayal–message-hawk received. Loud and clear.”
“Don’t you take that vulgar tone with me, young lady!” Nak made yet another of his collection of rude noises.
“It’s true.”
“Kassik tried it before and look where it landed him!”
Pip flushed hotly at the reference to Master Kassik’s first wife. “Nak, that’s … that’s just …”
“Alright. Sorry. I’m only … great Islands, Pip. Fates aside, this is love. You don’t find it on every Island. And actually, this is the responsible thing to do because look at you, you’re a wreck.”
“You’re so considerate of a girl’s feelings.”
“No, you really are. Beautiful, but a wreck. A boot without a foot. A Dragoness who’s misplaced her fire. Useless to man or beast until your heart is revived.”
“Nak …” She clenched her fists. Fra’anior help her or she would punch him right through that mirror!
Nak, blast him, knew he was winning the argument and was smirking like a boy with his mouth stuffed full of sugar-bamboo sap. “Furthermore, I have recruited co-conspirators. You’ve no choice. One will advise, one will shield us and one will be your Rider.”
“I don’t want a Rider! I want Silver! I want him back. Curse it, Nak, I killed him …”
He held her gently as one sob–just one, a sob that tore her heart like a Dragon’s rending talons–did violence to her frame.
He whispered into her hair, “Trust me. This one, you cannot refuse.”
Knowing Nak had intended to rile her did not stop Pip from spinning away from him, hands on hips, her dark eyes sparking. “Try me, Rider Nak.”
He bowed fluidly, indicating the doorway to the main roost-chamber.
Pip stalked out in her best high dudgeon, chin high and little feet stamping an angry beat–anything to drown out her heart’s weeping. That Nak! Thought he could shift her grief, did he? She almost chuckled at the sight of Nak’s three recruits caught in guilty tableaux out in the roost, however. Shimmerith, Yaethi and … “Maylin? Maylin!”
Nak won.
Her friend made a stiff half-bow. Mayli
n said, “I blame Emmaraz. He bullied me into this.”
“Into what, exactly?” asked Pip.
“Raiding Eridoon Island in broad daylight,” said Nak.
“Convincing you to sway the Balance,” Maylin smiled. “I hope he’s worth it. I think he is.”
“Working with Shimmerith to redesign the craziest, most amazing shielding in history,” said Yaethi. “An effect only Istariela was ever capable of achieving.”
Pip lost control of her tears. She whispered, “I don’t understand. Why?”
When the others appeared lost for answers, Nak put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Because even the world’s worst romantic poet knows that the only way to ambush fate is by using one’s heart.”
* * * *
Five hours of headaches, two solid meals in Human form and one for a Pygmy Dragon, a great deal of frustration and a rush of blood to the collective heads of four people later, Pip and Shimmerith winged away from the roost upon gossamer wings, utterly invisible. More invisible than invisible, Nak joked, giving Shimmerith at least her twentieth hearty slap of approbation. Yaethi had dashed off to cover for them. Maylin rode Pip, not as her formal Rider, but as her friend.
Pip would have smiled gratefully at Nak, except she could see neither hide nor hair of his mount, never mind herself. Yaethi’s prismatic shield had seen to that. It blocked nothing–neither suns-light nor wind, nor dust nor magic, nor sound nor even radiation, nor any spectra of Draconic sight or senses. Instead, the prismatic effect folded all of these emissions or particles around the Dragon and passed them along to the other side, unchanged and undisturbed. The science of it was beyond Pip, but she did not mind. Her headache was worth it. She and Shimmerith had achieved Istariela’s fabled shield, perhaps imperfectly, thereby proving she was a Star Dragoness.
Proving they lacked both brains and the common sense accorded any gnat.
All she sensed was soundless, frictionless motion and telepathic thought. They could not work out how to bend thought around a Dragon’s awareness.
Feel for the oath-connection, the Sapphire Dragoness’ voice intruded in her mind. If he’s alive, it will be there. The Dragonfriend’s lore makes that clear.
I will, said Pip.
Shimmerith’s mind conveyed the sound of Nak happily singing to himself a line from the vocal saga of Saggaz Thunderdoom, also famously a Sapphire Dragon:
Like wingéd lightning his mighty paw,
Struck the skies asunder!
Isn’t he the sweetest? Shimmerith chuckled. He is my Rider!
Nak had refused to tell Emblazon or Oyda. “Sticklers,” he sniffed. “They’d put a talon through this mad plan, make no mistake.”
They flew following Pip’s instinct through a perfect, cloudless Island-World afternoon, passing anxiously between dozens of Night-Dragon patrols and four layers of Island-shielding, all without incident. They were ghosts behind the crysglass pane of reality. The Dragons exchanged thoughts to keep together, to keep close. And as they passed that fourth barrier, Pip began to feel something. An umbilical in her mind. A knowledge of connection. Silver …
She led them soft-winged over the central hole, as black as the darkest night in its depths, and up the wooded mountain on the far side, following that faint trail. A trail that seemed more faith than substance, but it led them at length to a set of windows fronting underground chambers–the family quarters, she thought, judging by the number and quality of the draconic minds inside. She sensed the First Egg nearby, ever burning, unchanging.
They approached the windows with great care, taking time to seek out any potential trap. All was silent. Waiting, brooding, yet still there was no sign of detection.
Pip found her attention drawn to one particular window high up on the mountainside, a window framed in pretty hanging plants and flower beds outside, as though a person might step through it like a portal to take a few minutes’ refreshment.
She wafted up there, and saw him. Silver. Behind the crysglass he lay, brutally clamped to the same torture-block she knew all too well, and behind him stood Telisia, picking her fingernails with a dagger.
Chapter 32: Big Lizards can Fly
PIP’s Dragon-Hearts launched into wild battle-rage. The rest of her being arrested so sharply she felt as if she had flown headlong into a cliff-side.
Silent-wings, Shimmerith roared in her head.
Pip drifted upward, observing. Silver’s chest rose and fell. He had been beaten, cruelly. Yet he lived, and that was Dragonsong to warm a new dawn in her heart. He was pasty and sweating of flesh, bruised and bleeding in too many places to count, gagged and clamped to that infernal lump of malleable metal, yet he lived.
Telisia, in contrast, looked in fine fettle. Idly, she turned the dagger over in her fingers as she stared out of the window. “Ram-freaking-bastion,” she grumbled in disgust. “Had to go annoy the Master, didn’t you? Now I get idiot-watching duty. I’m so bored, I could die.”
Don’t be shy about the dying part, Nak encouraged her.
“Oh well, a few key changes and we should be able to slip into that Academy slick as a dagger sliding into flesh–wouldn’t you say, Silver?”
Pip suddenly realised that she was watching sound-waves through the crysglass rather than hearing sound. Weird. Why would the Marshal torture his own shell-son, if he were not a traitor? A traitor to which side, was the question.
She called, Silver.
It’s a trap!
His shriek caused her to recoil, but immediately, a new voice intruded. Of course it’s a trap, my son. But there’s nothing out there. The hallucinations are powerful, aren’t they?
Re’akka!
She sensed Shimmerith and Nak immobilised with alarm; she calmed them with a mental touch. She was the calm one? Hardly!
The Marshal moved into view from a hitherto unnoticed post in the room. To Pip’s annoyance, he too looked a picture of health. Better than ever. In fact, he positively glowed with magical vigour. Re’akka wore a dark, unadorned uniform with a high collar. Clasping his hands behind his back, he peered out of the crysglass window. Pip willed her wings not to whisk her away to the next Island. He could see nothing. He sensed nothing. She had to believe it.
That’s him? Maylin said in her careful baby-Dragonish.
Now, the Marshal glared back at Silver. “I know you’re a traitor, my shell-son. I cannot prove it, but I know you are. And by my seventh sense, I know she’ll come! That girl cannot possibly resist the trap I’ve laid for her.”
Remind me to explain to him your views concerning the word ‘impossible’, Pip, Shimmerith snorted.
Ay. Pip shushed her as they watched, unnoticed, from a mere thirty feet outside the window. Peculiar how a Shapeshifter with the Marshal’s power could look straight through two Dragons. Freaky.
She gasped as Re’akka backhanded his son across the mouth so hard that blood splattered against the glass. “No mind. Tomorrow, if she does not come, we will go strike a bargain for your miserable life. Whatever you did to disrupt my attack five days ago, Silver, know that you failed.”
Silver had–no! Surely, a lie! Silver had disrupted nothing. It was Pip who, in a moment of blind hate, had flung the Shiver-attack right back in his fangs. She had tried to kill him. That guilt was a clutch of cold boulders lodged in her breast, immovable. Perhaps, in another lifetime, they might attempt a relationship less rife with repeated attempts to murder each other?
Silver said, “I remain your servant, shell-father.”
The Marshal spat a curse Pip did not understand. “Know that if our bargain fails, Silver, I will unleash the Nurguz on that miserable, defiant scrap of rock until every Dragon’s fire-soul is sucked out their bodies and cast into the garbage-heap of another dimension!”
He turned again, peering out of the window with a knowing expression twisting his lips. I know you’re out there, Pygmy girl. I know you can hear this. I will kill him, Pip, if you do not yield your power to me. That is the promise of a H
erimor Dragon, made on the bones of my ancestors.
If you’re out there, Pip, said Silver, gazing past his father, know that I am my father’s faithful servant. You must give up. You cannot possibly win this war, not even with your darkest feminine wiles and your jungle ways. If I must die to see my race elevated to the heavens, then may I die with honour. Let it be so.
But his eyes. His eyes said something else altogether.
* * * *
Having returned to Shimmerith and Nak’s roost that evening, Pip passed a sleepless, fretful night. Three times, she flew up to stand on the rim-wall to gaze across to the Island of Eridoon, serenely floating upon the winds just offshore of the majestic granite cliffs, which on the Academy volcano’s northern aspect, sheared five vertical miles from the rim to the Cloudlands. Above Eridoon, the Shadow Dragon fed steadily. One Dragon every half-hour, she estimated. Did the Marshal store some Dragonkind simply as fodder for his pet? Perhaps the feeding was what kept the Nurguz faithful, although Pip doubted it. That beast must be controlled by more than appetite.
She had imagined rescuing Silver, but the Marshal’s appearance, his shocking seventh-sense intuition about her presence and the trap set for her, had put paid to that. Should she be demoralised or elated he was alive? What now, Fra’anior? What Balance should a Star Dragon seek, Hualiama?
The burden of destiny was so immediate, so intense, that she feared the merest flick of her talon might destroy the future.
Where was Leandrial? What of Shurgal? And Silver? Was he truly a traitor to his father, playing out the strategy Pip had first decided upon for herself? If so, he had joined her in failure. Her mind kept gnawing at the odd emphasis he had placed on the word ‘honour’, and the flash of emotion she thought she had detected deep in his silvery eyes. Was he inviting Pip to kill him rather than submit to Re’akka? If so, he and every Academy Dragon in the volcano would be in agreement.
Hualiama and Fra’anior remained silent, allowing events to proceed without interference. Yet Pip sensed them watching. Hoping. Supporting. She looked to the eastern horizon, seeking the blue star, her heritage-mother. She did not see Hualiama there, but if she looked within to the place where imagination bordered reality, could she not hear the chiming of star-forged laughter? Pip turned to scan the volcano. Most people and Dragons would be sleeping. The infirmary and forges were awake. Engineers worked through the night to repair harnesses and weapons and fortifications, the faraway ting-ting-ting of hammers mingling with the muted roaring of forges. She looked over the habitation of men and Dragons, the many lives given into her heart’s care.
