by Marc Secchia
Breathe out. Grit the teeth. Oh–last-second check for lurking Dragons. Lia could not see any, but since Dragons could see a hundred times better than Humans, especially in the dark, that meant little. Seven stutter-steps launched her into the air. She flew, briefly weightless before the rope’s pendulum swing rushed her to the far side. She landed catlike on a flat rock. Hold still.
Hualiama half-expected the Island to transform into the fabled Black Dragon himself and with a shiver, fling an irreverent Human mite into the abyss. Instead, she remembered why she had come. A quiver nearly did unbalance her.
Why did Amaryllion have to die?
She tied the rope to the base of a gnarled purple-currant bush. Hopefully, any prowling Dragons would think it was just a trailing vine.
Ahead of her lay a challenging climb, and a race against the coming dawn.
An hour of scaling the vertical cliffs brought Hualiama to a cave, where she rested briefly, panting, checking her fingers, battered and torn by the sharp-edged volcanic rocks. Climbing gloves would have served her well. Ha’athior’s shadow stretched almost to the western horizon as the twin suns rose behind the main volcano. She had made it by a Dragon’s whisker. Not that Dragons had whiskers–people said the most ridiculous things.
Lia scrambled to her feet.
A warm, well-remembered breeze caressed her cheek, redolent of Dragon-scent–a complex aroma of cinnamon, burnt umber and magic tingling at her senses like an almost-heard, faraway starsong. With it came memories, rustling through her mind with a crackling like dry leaves. A friend long departed. A phantom prickle of claws on her shoulder, a warm dragonet curling himself about her neck. ‘Straw-head,’ he used to whisper. Dear Flicker. Surely, his death had purchased her life, and restored the King to his Onyx Throne.
Oh, this place was shadowed with memories, the requiem of a weeping heart-wound.
Lia felt her way into the tunnels behind the cave. Now all she needed to do was remember the path through Ha’athior’s underground maze, and try not to fall over any of the myriad drop-offs. Flicker, with his typically blunt honesty, had been fond of calling her ‘slow-slug’, too.
Ha. A dragonet need not fear falling.
For her, falling from a height was a recurring nightmare.
Hualiama’s soft footsteps echoed loudly in the stillness. She jogged where she remembered the way was safe and smooth. The caves and tunnels were warm and never without light, just faint hints of radiance at first, growing into patches of crystalline splendour as she penetrated the Island more deeply. She could see how the numinous quality of this light might suggest sacredness to the Dragonkind.
She came to a dark, faceted wall, and turned along it. Lia steadied herself with her left hand, and then on an impulse, pressed her ear against the wall to listen. A steady, complex drumbeat came to her hearing, a draconic warmth of flesh and life.
Amaryllion.
Oh, Dragonfriend … why speak thee to mine underbelly?
Great Islands, that deep voice quivered her surrounds as if the volcano shook its skirts preparatory to erupting. Lia realised what had confused her. This part of the tunnels had always been fully dark. Now the crystals irradiated his scales. Each was as wide and tall as her outstretched arms.
She laughed, Because I’m as silly as a dragonet.
After a long pause, his answering laughter beat against her senses, but it sounded frail and faraway, as though his Dragon-spirit had already begun its journey into eternity. Lia, precious one. Thou hast always brought light to mine darkness. Come to me.
She ran, but it was another ten minutes through the tunnels before she finally broke out into the cave into which she had once chased Flicker, and found herself in the awesome presence of an Ancient Dragon. Then, all had been pitch-dark save for his burning gaze. Now, she threw up an arm to shade her eyes.
Lia gasped.
She stood on a rocky outcropping which brought her to the level of Amaryllion’s gigantic eye, which stood twice her height–an eye she knew well, but she had never fully appreciated the mountain of Dragon-flesh which contained it. The ageless Dragon appeared to lie in an ancient underground stream-bed or gully, his muzzle mostly below her feet, his neck-ruff and skull-spikes looming two hundred feet above her head. Inanely, she realised she could comfortably walk upright into any of his three ear-canals on the near side of his head. Mighty Sapphurion was smaller than a dragonet compared to this beast.
The curve of his orb seethed with Dragon fire, but the luminescent white streamers of fire today seemed darkened and diminished to Hualiama, foreshadowing his demise. Nevertheless, the power of Amaryllion’s gaze made the Human’s entire body tingle, as though she stood upon a mountaintop caressed by an unseen breeze. Lia clenched her teeth to still their chattering. Visions and impressions of a life aeons long cascaded through her mind. Dragons raised Islands from the abyss, building nests and terrace lakes. A terrible war engulfed her, pitching the Dragons above the Cloudlands against the Land Dragons below … abruptly, the torrent ceased. A touch to her nose brought her forefinger away daubed with blood.
I’ve caused thee suffering, little one. That was not mine intention … now, as the time approaches, the visions beset me.
Must you die, Amaryllion?
Oh, Dragonfriend, grieve not for me. His magic soothed her anguish. Even for the most ancient of lizards, a time must come to join our spirits to the great dance of eternal fire. Switching to her tongue, Island Standard, the great Dragon said, “Tell me, little mouse, what remembrance hast thou of the Dragon Grandion?”
Grandion? He touched her pain so unerringly. “We journeyed together. He saved Fra’anior …”
“How exactly did a Human and a Dragon journey together?”
Lia’s brow creased in puzzlement. “I don’t remember. By Dragonship, I think, and I remember meeting a Maroon Dragoness who told me Ra’aba was my real father …” Her voice trailed off as Amaryllion’s eye suffused with a dull, reddish flame signifying inner pain. “O Amaryllion, what is it? Have I neglected you so sorely?”
“Nay, Hualiama. It is I who have wronged thee.”
“You … did? How?”
“I caused thee to forget–wrongly, and too much, believing I should thus best protect thee. With thy permission, might I restore thee to thy right mind?”
Doubt shadowed Lia’s thoughts. What had she forgotten? She knew there were blemishes upon her memory, as if she saw indistinctly through patches of fog, but she had always put that down to the trauma of the events surrounding Captain Ra’aba’s attempt to murder her, and her eventual triumph over the pretender to restore King Chalcion to the Onyx Throne.
If she agreed, what terrible secrets might be revealed? But Lia knew she must trust the Ancient Dragon, for that, too, was a price friendship should always be willing to pay.
At her pensive nod, draconic power smote Hualiama to her knees. A white-golden light expanded within her mind, driving away the shadows and the mists, a song of magic awakening what had long slumbered beneath a touch she now recognised as the signature of Amaryllion’s mind. The world blazed, set afire by his magic. Memories danced amidst the flames. Lurid. Searing. A deluge of bittersweet moments, unfolding the enormity of her loss.
Inwardly, Hualiama howled, You stole all this from me?
Words cannot convey mine sorrow, little mouse. His great mind bowed in regret. Such potential which is thine! And more … more than thou or I might imagine. Answer me now, how did a Dragon and a Human journey together?
Her thoughts were a scattering of fragments upon volcanic winds. Lia stammered, A-As a D-Dragon and his … his …
Dragon Rider, sang the Ancient Dragon. The first Dragon Rider in our Island-World’s long history.
I’m dead! Hualiama wailed. They’ll kill me … the Dragons, they’ll–
Hush. Do not profane this sacred bond with the dark-fires of limited understanding! Amaryllion’s mental thunder stunned her into silence. At length, the Ancient Dragon whis
pered, “Two thousand, seven hundred and two years have I lived, and tarried to witness at last the unfolding of this magical bond between Dragon and Human. It will be glorious. Yet this was not the prime purpose of my waiting.”
A cold, callous blade of betrayal pierced her heart. Now Lia remembered all which had passed between her and the Tourmaline Dragon, and she knew she would never have allowed six years to elapse, had Amaryllion not interfered. She would have sought Grandion with her heart and soul and utmost strength, be that to the twenty-five league tall rim walls at the end of the Island-World, or beyond. Such a waste. A travesty. Fragments of the Tourmaline Dragon’s effervescent laughter kindled her memories. She quivered at the gentle touch of his paw. She remembered moments of blushing discomfiture beneath the Dragon’s possessive, pyretic gaze and the glory of Dragon flight. Then came the slow, soul-destroying acceptance of the fact that her Dragon was never coming back. The cancer to her hope. The immedicable wound.
She had flown Dragonback!
She had touched the fiery spirit of a Dragon; he had touched hers. They had shared oaths. Now she was made an oath breaker because of the Ancient Dragon’s actions! How could Amaryllion have robbed her so cruelly?
Sapphurion called him a traitor, she realised aloud. Grandion was prevented from returning … he’s dead, isn’t he?
Nay, Hualiama, said Amaryllion. Lost, but not beyond hope.
Another memory slipped into Lia’s mind, grown fevered with remembrance. “The comet, the prophecy … you said the third great race of the Island-World would emerge from the shadows–”
“Soon will this word be fulfilled,” said the Ancient Dragon. “Hear me now, Dragonfriend. My craft allowed me to draw from the magic of these caves to be the sentinel, the one who remained after all others until the balance of the harmonies reached its fruition. But now my time must end. The era of the Ancient Dragons passes with me. It was given to me to be the last egg of Fra’anior, the Great Dragon. And you and I share this grief, for like thee I was the unwanted egg, the son who could never meet his father’s expectations. I was tiny and stunted for one of my kind–”
Lia’s incredulous laughter burst out before she could bite it back.
“Aye, a titchy Ancient Dragon, I am. I call thee little mouse. They called me a hatchling. Canst thou believe it, Lia?”
She said, softly, “If you hear a popping noise, Amaryllion, that’s the sound of my brain bursting.”
“Then what would thy brain do if I divulged this? It is for thee I waited.”
“I-I …”
The rumbling of Amaryllion’s voice filled the cavern, but though it shook her through and through, it was also slow and gentle, the speech of a dear friend. “I’ve learned much in these short years since a slip of a girl first set foot in my abode, bringing her song and dance and laughter, her ten thousand questions and her zest for life, to gild mine elder days with a rare and precious light.”
Lia allowed her tears to fall unmolested. “You’re too kind, Amaryllion.”
“I choose my words with care!” he thundered. Shame blistered her cheeks. “Truly I named thee Dragonfriend–and here is another word chosen with care–know that I have loved thee dearly, little mouse.” She made a wordless squeak of horror, but he continued inexorably, “I love thee as I would have loved mine own hatchling, had I been able to conceive. The Dragonfriend and the Ancient Dragon can speak openly of love, for love takes many forms, and none of them are profane, despite all thou hast been taught and all the laws of our respective kinds. They know not the first heartbeat of love.”
With all the soul-achingly beautiful nuance of the Dragonish language, he declared, Thou art my third heart, Hualiama. I love thee.
I l-l … Lia gulped, feeling sweat bead thick and hot as fresh blood upon her brow. I-I … l-love thee, Amaryllion Fireborn. Thou art more than a friend to me. She groaned softly, weeping in response to the words she had just uttered. Anathema! Outlawed! Her heart should cease beating from shame …
The Dragon said, “To some, it is given to fight, to others to learn, some to teach or be parents or prophets, but to some, it is given to love with such power and purity, that no taboo can stand against. Tell me, taboo-breaker and friend, whom hast thou loved in this life?”
Wishing she could read the hypnotic swirls of his incandescent Dragon fires, Lia replied, “My parents and siblings, of course–some more than others, in truth. But it was Flicker who taught me the true meaning of love.”
And one other. But she found herself unable to speak his name. Hualiama might have crossed to a forbidden Island, but fear of the inviolable still dominated her stupefied mind; voices, screaming, ‘How could you? Sick, perverted lawbreaker!’ Yet her mouth had spoken that fateful word–love. Fie, the insanity! Her mind must have been overshadowed by some perverted psychosis of draconic origin …
“The priceless gift of life.” The Ancient Dragon’s gentleness drew Lia back from the pit of madness. He shifted slowly, a gargantuan movement that dislodged torrents of grit from the cave roof above her head. At length, the Dragon’s paw rose above the rock Lia sat upon, and he delicately touched her with its smallest digit, thicker than ten of her rolled together. “Before Flicker died, he gave me a gift to pass on to thee. But I withheld it at the time out of concern for its effects on thee, a Human. I thought thee too immature to use this gift well. I failed thee, Hualiama. Two thousand years is too long. I was cynical.”
She whispered, “What was it?”
“Fire. A Dragon’s soul is fire, but not an ordinary flame such as that of a candle.” Amaryllion sighed. “Grasp my paw. I will show thee. Of course, it is magic, but of a deep and ancient kind. This fire is how the Ancient Dragons were able to travel to this world inside their First Eggs, which for aeons, lay beneath this Island, before the rising volcano brought them to the surface. The essence of a Dragon’s being is fire. And the absence of fire is the absence of life.”
Hualiama scrambled up into Amaryllion’s gigantic paw, larger than thirty royal beds laid end to end, realising now that she had never touched him before. His rough Dragon hide radiated heat. On a whim, she knelt to inhale the scent of his skin, a complex aroma of burned spices and ancient, evocative places which spanned the deeps of the Island-World and its highest glories–not at all what she had expected. His paw conveyed her past the wide tunnels of the Ancient Dragon’s nose to his mouth, a cavern in its own right.
“You won’t burn me, will you?”
“It’s not that kind of fire,” the Dragon chuckled, cracking open his jaw. “It’s far more dangerous, a fire that inhabits a creature’s very soul. Wilt thou accept this gift, Hualiama Dragonfriend?”
Lia stared into Amaryllion’s mouth, a hall large enough to hold the King of Fra’anior’s annual ball several times over, lined top and bottom with hundred-foot columns of the purest white marble–his fangs–and a tongue the length of a field of mohili wheat.
Her heart’s churning, like an active caldera, expressed itself in the tremolo underlying her response. “I don’t suppose too many Humans have enjoyed this view of an Ancient Dragon, have they? Not those who lived long, anyhow. Amaryllion, is this gift just Flicker’s fire? How can you keep that separate from your own … er, soul-fire?”
“Ah.” His laughter blasted her headscarf loose. Hualiama, a time is coming when this Island-World will face grave danger, when Humans and Dragons will ride to war, and many will be slain. Entire cultures will be erased and their Islands fall into the Cloudlands. I foresee a great role for thee in this age to come–perhaps a role unimaginable to thee today, but it must come. And I, selfishly, would hand on my mantle to thee. Thou must both watcher and judge be, and speak as the voice of reason. The bridge between Dragons and Humans will be thy soul, and according to thy choices, this age will rise or fall.
Me? The squeak in her voice embarrassed Lia. Courage, girl!
It is no trivial charge, Dragonfriend.
That much was clear from the multifacet
ed shades of meaning conveyed by his use of Dragonish. Lia wished she understood more. Only ten thousand questions, he had said. However, before she could accept his request, she knew she had to voice what lay heavy on her heart.
“Amaryllion, I once did evil to a Dragon I … liked.”
“Grandion?”
“Aye, Grandion. Amaryllion, I forced him to carry me Dragonback and I just learned a few days ago that he’s a traitor and probably banished and I’m afraid it’s all my fault!”
“Peace, little mouse.”
Peace? Lia cried, “Amaryllion, I remember everything, now. I made him feel so guilty for not repaying me for helping him escape when he was trapped in the caves … how truthfully, and how terribly, you label me ‘taboo breaker’! I was so foolish and so preoccupied with my own needs.”
Away to her left and right, Amaryllion’s lips peeled open in what Lia belatedly realised had to be his Dragon smile. “Hualiama, thou hast described one of the qualities I most appreciate in thee. To thee, this world’s rules and mores are not unbreakable chains, but function more as … guidance.”
Her laughter emerged low and bitter. “Ah, the singeing flame of truth.”
“This quality accords thee great power, but can also cause great harm. Little one, what if the chance to right that wrong presented itself?”
In one breath he cowed her. In the next, he detonated a hydrogen-like blast of hope that made her reply desperately unsteady. “My delight would light the moons themselves! But Amaryllion, that’s impossible, isn’t it?”
“I advise thee to seek your chance. Create it. This knowledge thou must grasp, Hualiama. Every Dragon has a secret name. Mine is Bezaldior!”
His unexpected roar blasted her across his palm to fetch up against his curled digits. Lia clambered unsteadily out of the crack between his talons. “Easy on the power there, mighty Dragon.”
“Sorry,” he chuckled, but it was a wickedly unrepentant sound. “It means ‘strength of the fire-born.’ ”
She nodded, mouthing the word with care.
