by Marc Secchia
This is called a hug. She pulled them closer with her tiny strength. Like this.
She had never heard Dragons purr in quite the way Qualiana and Sapphurion did now, but their combined vibration thawed places in the core of her being which Lia thought had been excised, and lost forever.
We Humans do this with people, and Dragons, we love.
Chapter 8: Flyaway
Having TARRIED With the Dragons until the evening following her arrival at Gi’ishior, Lia hurried home. Her heart rued the rush, but with a frisky following breeze and every sail including her custom-made spinnaker deployed to its maximum, her solo Dragonship speared through the ruddy, late-afternoon volcanic sunshine like a crossbow bolt trailing golden streamers of dust. She raced over tiny Giaza Island, where she had seen Dragons sporting with Humans, tossing them to each other or into the Cloudlands, before steering a more southerly bearing to cross the north-south length of Fra’anior Island to the main city located on its southernmost peninsula. Rugged, jungle-choked ravines broken up by jag-toothed black peaks constituted the untamed interior of Fra’anior, while great flocks of luminous green lovebirds, brilliant parakeets and white finches burst out of the foliage as the Dragonship whooshed by just thirty feet overhead.
A flight of five dragonets came to play around the sails, chittering non-stop to each other or making shrill exclamations such as, ‘Look at me!’ ‘Watch this!’ ‘A faster wing-flip, silly!’
Hualiama sang them a lively ballad, although her heart was not in it. The dragonets seemed aware of her distraction and after playing briefly, parroted their own ditty in return before darting back to their warren.
As the twin suns melted into the gleaming copper Cloudlands of the western horizon, Lia approached her home town, the city of Fra’anior. A beautiful job of reconstruction belied the devastation of the Green Dragon invasion six years before. The buildings and homes were built from malachite blocks, onyx stone and the finest garnet, resplendent in the suns-set, while the formal gardens had been restored to the full glory of arguably the greatest collection of exotic plants and flowers in the Island-World. Even aloft, Hualiama filled her lungs with a richness of pollens and scents which left her gasping.
Her gaze tracked the flight of eleven honking blue cranes over the Palace building, only to be distracted by a flash of crimson. A firebird! The fabled firebird of Fra’anior was said to be a cross between avian and dragonet, able to ignite its feathers if threatened but not burn up. Isles legend told that if a firebird could be tamed, it would lead a person to a forgotten Dragon-hoard containing fabulous riches. An amusing tale. But her life had an odd parallel with that firebird, she sensed. Lia had burned but not been consumed. Perhaps she was a firebird.
Perhaps the Dragon astronomers, who watched the skies for the advent of the comet that portended the rise of the third great race of the Island-World, should be watching for the Dragonfriend as she streaked to her fiery demise in the Cloudlands–oh, windroc droppings. That image was scant comfort.
Choosing not to conceal her approach to the seat of the Onyx Throne of Fra’anior, Hualiama landed in her customary berth at the Dragonship bays behind the Palace building. She tossed hawsers to the servants, who tied them off to bollards on the ground. Bank the oven’s fires, secure the controls, take her weapons … Lia tossed a short rope ladder over the edge of her basket and clambered to the ground.
A Royal Guard, puffing out his purple-uniformed chest, barked, “Princess Hualiama, by the King’s order I place you under arrest–”
Hualiama’s smile, modelled on Grandion’s best, lip-curling, fang-revealing, Dragon-fire-breathing efforts, appeared to cork his throat pleasingly. She said, “You can try.”
And she left the nonplussed soldier and his squad of four gaping at her back as she marched off. Faintly, she heard a voice inquire, “Why didn’t you arrest the Princess, sir?”
“I prefer staying alive.”
“Aye!” the others agreed fervently.
So, King Chalcion chose to show his hand? Lia strode toward the palace building as though she were a Dragonship driven by her own burning engine. She would make good her promise. Please, let her treat her father better than he had treated her. Let him see Lia for who she truly was. Let her fury not spill over into violence.
She knew her family would be dining at this hour. Lia recognised her fey, dangerous mood for what it was, and fought for control. Six years of abuse and humiliation. Before that, a long, sordid history of the King’s uncontrolled temper dominating his family. He would see her act as open defiance. And who should she tell about her uncle Zalcion’s treachery? Could it be proved? No-one in this Palace would trust the word of a Dragon.
A hand seized her arm. “Lady Hualiama, you are under–”
Lia chopped down with the hard edge of her palm. The Royal Guard yelped in pain. She walked on.
Portraits of tall, unsmiling royal ancestors bobbed past her as Lia took the stairs up to the dining hall three at a time. Ahead, heavy jalkwood doors stood slightly ajar, their polished wooden panels inlaid with rubies the size of dragonets’ eggs to form the glowing heart of Royal Fra’anior’s crest, a stylised volcano. Of course. And people mad enough to live atop a volcano, also had volcanic temperaments to suit.
Smiling grimly at the Royal Guard standing to attention beside the ten foot-tall doors–too tiny for a Dragon, she noted–Hualiama said, “Will you let me in, Ha’arukion?”
“I should by rights arrest you, Princess,” he rumbled, but his hand did not stray to his sword-hilt. Instead, he peered narrowly at her. “What’s wrong with your voice?”
“Dragon in my throat.”
The soldier’s regard did not waver. “Seems the girl who stole away with the Queen-mother a few days ago, has come back … changed.”
“You knew?”
A slow grin crinkled his cheeks right up to his eyes. “Aye. I warn you, Princess, the King is spitting like a maddened Green Dragon. But I see that pointy chin. You step easy. Now, I’ll be investigating a strange sound behind that hanging. Didn’t see you slip past.”
“Thank you, Ha’arukion. You’re diamond.”
Lia pressed open the door, and slipped into the informal dining-room–a circular chamber a mere fifty feet in diameter, wherein sat a priceless table hand-carved from a monolithic block of jade. Her family looked up, and gasped as one. No Chalcion. The knot behind Hualiama’s left shoulder eased slightly.
“Islands’ greetings, dear ones,” she rasped.
Oh, their faces! Queen Shyana’s colour became as pale as her plate. Flame-haired Fyria dribbled purple prekki-fruit juice down her chin. Her brother Kalli dropped his spoon into a bowl of green oats, while Ari and Elki yelped in delight.
“Lia, no weapons at the table,” Shyana said automatically. “Cold stole your voice?”
“What’s for dinner, Mom? I’m starving,” said Lia.
“Short shrift …” Elki could only shake his head.
“Sulphurous greetings to you all from Sapphurion and Qualiana,” Lia added, seating herself in her customary position between Elki and Ari. “Mom, can I ask you how old I was when you adopted me?”
“Sapphurion?” gasped Elki.
Kalli, with his unbreakably serious expression, said, “I remember. You were around three summers old, Lia, no bigger than a dragonet, just these huge green eyes and a shock of white hair.”
Queen Shyana said, “Kalli wanted to call you ‘little grandmother’ until I taught him better. Lia, sweet petal, you do know what you’re doing, don’t you? Chalcion–”
“Does she ever?” Fyria sniped.
Fyria was her charming self, of course. Hualiama helped herself to a bowl of ralti stew and fresh sweet tuber mash. No telling when she might enjoy her next square meal. For a few minutes, the family ate in silence. Lia found her appetite had fled. Soon, she heard a familiar tread in the private corridor leading to the dining room. Her family only reacted several seconds after she heard it.
&
nbsp; Her mother whispered, “Petal …”
“I know.”
King Chalcion, deep in conversation with uncle Zalcion, entered through a doorway partially hidden behind a purple tapestry depicting the constellations of Fra’anior’s sky. He wore his magnificent, sweeping robes of office, the deep purple of Fra’anior picked out with volcanoes and rajals in gold brocade thread, and he cradled his crown in the crook of his arm.
Apparently sensing the family’s stillness, he looked up. His eyes roamed the table. A jolt. Chalcion’s face drained of colour, before reversing the process with miraculous speed, assuming the colour and aspect of a rotten prekki fruit, purple and blotchy.
“Where have you been?”
“Islands’ greetings, father. Are you well?” Lia responded, fighting an urge to sink into her seat.
Chalcion rounded the table inexorably. Hualiama pushed her chair back on the thick pile carpet and stood, willing herself to remain calm, to put aside the habits of six years of being victimised. She who could stand in an Ancient Dragon’s presence, could not stand up to a Human man, King or none? She hated the feeling of inward curling, like scrolleaf tossed into a bonfire blackening and rolling up at the edges.
“You deliberately disobeyed me!”
“I-I w-went–”
“Stop that contemptible stammering, girl! Where in a Cloudlands hell have you been?”
Lia gulped. The King’s face halted mere inches from hers, his final words depositing spittle on her cheek. No, she would not quail. Let her words spread fire across her tongue.
“I travelled to Ha’athior Island, father, to attend the passing on of the last Ancient Dragon, called Amaryllion Fireborn. You might have seen the light from here, two days ago, and felt an earthquake strike the Cluster. Then I travelled on to Ya’arriol to meet with friends there. Yesterday, I consulted with Sapphurion and his Dragon Elders at Gi’ishior, before returning.”
Chalcion’s throat worked as though he had a slice of sour haribol fruit stuck in his craw. The King grated, “Who let you out? Who helped you? Someone must have–Elka’anor? Shyana? Who helped this little dragonet flout a direct order from her King?”
Shyana’s chair tipped over as she stood. “I did.”
“Mom!” Lia gasped. Once again, her mother intended to shield her from Chalcion’s wrath.
Abruptly, the King whirled and ran at Shyana. Lia sprinted after him. A tap of his ankle with her foot brought him down. Hualiama sprang past him and whirled, fists clenched. “You leave Mom alone!”
“Get out of my way!” he roared.
Chalcion rose, wiping a trail of spittle off his chin. A feral glint lurked in his eyes. Bellowing, he charged, tackling Lia about the waist. She rolled with his assault, bringing her knees up as they landed on the plush carpet. The King received the point of her right knee directly in his sternum. Still, he was mad enough to throw a punch. Lia blocked the blow automatically.
Shyana threw herself on her husband’s back, screaming, “What’s the matter with you? You’re an animal!”
Cursing, Chalcion threw his Queen off. Lia twisted aside, avoiding his lunge, rolling smoothly to her feet with the ease the many long hours of training with the warrior-monks had instilled in her. She had wrestled men stronger than Chalcion. But she did not want to hurt him.
As he pushed to his feet, Hualiama said flatly, “Dad, stop it. You will no longer bully us. And if you lay a finger on Mom, ever again, I promise that I will do to you what I did to Ra’aba.”
Drawing a dagger from his belt, Chalcion roared, “Fight me, would you?”
“No. I will not draw a blade against my King.”
Vile curses flooded from his mouth as the King swung the blade at his daughter. She whispered aside, dance-step following dance-step. He could not touch her.
He panted, “How dare you defy me? Zalcion, help me, brother.”
“Help? He’s the one selling secrets to the Dragons!” Lia glanced at her uncle. A sword sprouted in Zalcion’s hand. He stalked closer, murder blazing in his eyes. Realisation struck. Was Zalcion behind her father’s behaviour? Feeding his anger? Worse, doing something to poison him or cripple his ability to rule effectively?
Zalcion snarled, “You been whoring with Dragons again, girl? Nauseating whelp of a diseased ralti sheep. We know all about your precious Grandion.”
His vile, twisting words clogged Lia’s thoughts with fire. Suddenly Chalcion was upon her, the blade stabbing for her gut. The Princess stood her ground and punched her father with all the force and Dragon fire her petite frame could muster, coupled with the rigorous training she had endured in the monastery. Crack! Bone splintered beneath her fist. Chalcion turned grey, clutching his lower ribs.
Lia stared at him, breathing in short, agonised gasps. She had done it.
As the King collapsed, she gritted out, “Never again, father.”
“I’ll … disown you.”
“As if a scroll makes family,” she retorted.
Queen Shyana’s scream alerted her. Hualiama dodged Zalcion’s overhand strike, losing a neat fillet of flesh on her right shoulder to his blade. Her twin swords sprang to hand seemingly at a thought. The Nuyallith forms flowed awkwardly, feeling the rust of too many seasons’ disuse. Lia blocked twice with the iron-elbow technique before sneaking in a skill called the switch and double-cross, in which she parried with her stronger left hand while simultaneously bringing her right-hand blade down from high on her left side in a vicious back-handed swing, contrary to the ordinary angle of attack. She pulled the blow at the last second.
He cried out as Lia’s blade smashed through the radius bone of his forearm and chinked against the ulna. She kicked his sword away from where it dropped. Zalcion staggered backward, as pale as the fires which had consumed her.
Hualiama thought to feel triumphant. Instead, the victory felt hollow. She had become the bully. Could it be that this was the only language her father understood? What an indictment.
Maybe it was time to speak another language.
Sheathing her blades with a convulsive thrust of her arms, Lia knelt. She touched her father’s cheek, ignoring his weak, pawing attempts to push her away. She said, “Many of my friends died to restore the Onyx Throne to you, father. You could at least pretend a measure of gratitude.”
Chalcion flinched as if her touch scalded him.
Smiling with terrible gentleness, now, she continued, “Love is a peculiar form of madness, isn’t it? I still love you. Maybe you don’t grasp that. So I want you to know that for your good, I’ve struck a bargain with Sapphurion. The Dragons will be watching. If you lift as much as your little finger against one of my family again, they’ll know. And then you’d better wish all the Dragons of Gi’ishior had burned this town off the map rather than face my wrath. Understood?”
King Chalcion flung an arm over his eyes as though to shield them from her glare. “Aye,” he whispered.
Rising, Lia said, “I would also disperse the forces you’ve been secretly assembling at Seg Island. The Dragons know all about them, thanks to my dear uncle.”
And she turned her back upon the King.
Squeezing her hands together to stop their shaking, Hualiama looked to her mother. Shyana displayed that preternatural calm which Lia knew acted as a shield to the world. It did not stop her wanting to shake her mother and shout in her face, ‘And? Didn’t you see what I did?’ Any reaction would have been better than none at all.
Queen Shyana said, “I’ll see to Chalcion. What will you do now, daughter?”
Hualiama reached for the fruit basket and helped herself to a prekki-fruit and a ripe green tinker banana. “I’m going to hunt a Dragon.”
* * * *
There was no silence as profound as the space between Islands, no vault as large as the moons-lit sky, hoarding its treasury of stars, nor a loneliness as soul-shadowing as the loss of betrayal. This Hualiama knew as she piloted her Dragonship away from Fra’anior Cluster. She could not sleep. I
nstead, she searched the emptiness with the eyes of her heart, longing for a glimmer of moonlight upon gemstone scales, for a sign that all was not dust blown into the Cloudlands.
Flicker. Amaryllion. Masters Jo’el and Khoyal. The long-dead face of her Nuyallith tutor, his knowledge lodged in her mind, unforgettable. Sometimes, she felt as though she carried more ghosts than living flesh upon her diminutive frame. She yearned for her spirit to abandon what the ballads called her mortal coil, to roam the Island-World upon wings less substantial than the wind itself; faraway, flyaway, free.
If she listened with the ears of her sixth sense, tasting and experiencing the tides and times of the Island-World, could she not rediscover that bond she had felt between herself and the Tourmaline Dragon, and sing the melody of souls united by oaths stronger than death?
Softly, she poured her heart forth in tuneful lament:
O my Dragon, I search for thee,
My spirit flying far and free,
I call to thee, Grandion. I beg, I burn,
Wilt thou not hear?
Wind keened among the inner hawsers binding spirit to flesh, and flesh to bone. Lia felt a sense of straining, perhaps the Dragon fire of Flicker’s gift bound in the form of a Human. Her hands played upon the controls as in a dream, setting a south-westerly course for Erigar Island. The sails were fully deployed to gobble up a bellyful of the night breeze. The stove burned cheerfully. She topped it up with a few chips of dry jalkwood.
A dream seemed to creep over her, a darkness deeper even than the night.
A Dragon lay in his lair.
Nay, not a lair, but a cage of indestructible Dragon bone, bound with bands of magic-infused iron. The Dragon shifted restlessly, as if gripped by dreams of his own–or touched by hers. Anger had long since guttered into grief. Hope lay crushed beneath a burden of despair. The Dragon circled his cage one more time, dragging his steps, and no light of the Island-World entered his eyes. He was blind.
