Dragonlove

by Marc Secchia

  “Found us accommodation and a hot bath,” he called up to Lia, earning himself instant redemption.

  “Great. Down in a wing-flip.” Rope in hand, she let herself down from the ‘wing’ of the Dragonship and alighted at Elki’s side. “What? What’s that look for?”

  “Glue on your chin,” he averred, rubbing it with his thumb. “Mind you, a little fur and I could affix a nice beard.”

  “No accounting for what you fancy in women,” she retorted.

  Brother and sister walked up into town, taking their few valuables with them. Up the main street, boarded sidewalks provided relief from the stinking mud through which the pony-carts dragged their loads, and slave-carried litters transported the well-to-do. The inn was clean and not overrun with raffish patrons–a good choice, Lia approved. An hour later, bathed and refreshed, she decided she might even smell somewhat like a Princess of Fra’anior again. They ate a solid if unexceptional meal of ralti stew, not spiced nearly as much as the Fra’aniorian version, before retiring early.

  An egg-dream stole Hualiama away. This one was stranger than most. Often she dreamed of a White or a dark Blue Dragoness brooding over her clutch, but this time, she dreamed she was inside an egg, submerged in a soft, yolky warmth.

  You will fly to the moons, my little eggling, came her mother’s voice.

  Mamafire? Mamafire? The Dragoness was gone, and the egg was cold and alone. Another had come, but it was not the same. Mamafire, don’t leave me! Mama …

  Her third heart broke. The tiny Dragoness yearned for that comforting maternal voice, never seen but always loved, always reassuringly present. She was gone. Mamafire! Her baby presence floated on the world’s winds. Her eggling-wings were not yet strong enough for flight, rubbing against the smooth inside of her egg as she dreamed, yet her fire-spirit roamed free and far. Danger! Instinctively, she hid from a great, tyrannical presence, cowering inside the egg. The dark one passed over, his many-fold power seeking, always seeking.

  No, she must protect her egg-brother and egg-sister, those other infantile presences which she had known since before her first lucid thought. Her magic reached out. She sang:

  Hush thee, hide thee, be not afraid,

  I am thy sheltering wings.

  Countless moon-cycles after she had sensed the dark one, the little Dragoness peered out again with eyes which reached beyond her body, beyond the shell. No, she must not break out. That time would come. Yet she sensed an impending tragedy. What was this? The anguish called her, a summons more imperative than the needs of a Dragoness’ body when the birthing-pangs came upon her. She must protect. She must nurture. There was a little one crying out to her, just a spark of a sweet, alien soul, and it sang to the Dragoness’ fire-soul with the beauteous melody of her mother’s fire, as pure as starlight.

  Egg-sister, the Dragoness whispered. Soul-sister. Obeying instincts so deep they transcended words, the unborn hatchling sang again:

  Silver-fire, be mine. Steal me away,

  Let her pain be mine, is my vow,

  May we be one.

  Drawing a cloak of silver-fire about her according to the magic she had perceived in her mother’s mind, the unborn Dragoness transformed.

  The shell stood empty. Never cracked, never born, lying between two others which also remained whole but filled with Dragon-life. An ethereal draconic presence winged away over the Island-World, questing.

  Lia awoke weeping for Grandion. As Flicker would have said, shards take it! She dashed her tears away. Control. Why was she always behaving like a mawkish teenager when it came to that Tourmaline troublemaker? No wonder people thought her cute and frivolous … but thoughts of the Dragon paled as Lia became aware of a portentous heaviness upon her spirit, not linked to Grandion, but to the melancholy dream–a dream of immedicable loss and hurt, a mother’s abandonment of her precious clutch.

  The room was too still. Where was Elki?

  Before she knew it, Hualiama flung aside the covers and rose smoothly to her feet, blade in hand. Shoes. Daggers. She corralled her wild hair with a headscarf.

  She cast about the inn, calling her brother names in Dragonish she had learned from Flicker and his fascination with all things vile and disgusting. No sign of him, even in the busy downstairs. Pensively, she approached the innkeeper, a portly fellow who looked as though he and a tankard of golden Sylakian ale were the best of friends.

  “Have you seen my brother?” she asked. “Tall, thin fellow. Pointy ears.”

  “Aye, him?” The innkeeper’s three chins wobbled together. “Left ‘bout an hour ago, lady. Two women with him.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  Lowering his voice and hiding his mouth with his hand, the man whispered, “Try the Luscious Sow. Two roads over, north side of the city. Them women have a business preying on strangers.”

  Fire crackled in her voice. “You allow their kind in here?”

  “Can’t keep watch on every customer, lady,” said the man, drawing back in alarm.

  She exited the inn at a healthy clip. Quick, bearings. Hualiama set off at a run, her feet pounding the boards up to the first crossroads. Carousing, drunken laughter, shouts and curses rent the night air. How had she slept through this? Stupid brother! When had he started seeing strumpets?

  Lia knew Elki was in trouble. She felt it like cold oil sliding along her bones.

  Two roads later, she stopped a couple singing at a street corner. “The Luscious Sow. Where can I find it?”

  “Sweet lady like you don’t want that place,” slurred the man.

  His companion slapped him, and screeched, “Keep yer eyes to yerself, husband! That way, lady. And leave my man alone.”

  Well, she’d take whatever help she could get. Hualiama sprinted away.

  A fire blazing brightly in a metal bowl advertised the delightful premises of the Luscious Sow. Men and women danced in the mud around the fire to the tuneless wail of the Sylakian triple pipes and a hand-drum. Putting a hand to her dagger, Lia slipped past them and into the building. The din inside was incredible. No sign of Elki. She pushed through the crowds, yelping as a vulgar hand pinched her behind. Upstairs? Had to be. Lia forced her way to the stairs, ruing her diminutive stature as not being much use in boorish, ale-soaked crowds. At the top of the stairs, a man lurked in the shadows.

  “Have you seen a Fra’aniorian-looking man come up here with two women?” she asked.

  The man looked her up and down as though she was a sweetbread he intended to sample. “What’s it to you, lady?”

  “He’s my brother,” she said.

  “Been naughty, your brother?” drawled the man. “Through there. Last door at the end.”

  Hualiama had an inkling of what he intended. Three breaths later, a squeaky floorboard alerted her to the fact that she was being followed–even above the tavern’s roar, she picked up his tread. Lia focussed her senses. Muffled voices. A groan–Elki’s? She heard the breathing of at least five or six people in that room as she made her light-footed approach. Now, the thud of fist against flesh.

  That sparked her fire. Lia kicked the door open with her foot, as it was already ajar. Her eyes leaped to Elki, tied to a chair, lolling as blood dribbled from his mouth. Two women huddled in a corner, scared … she somersaulted up and over a hammer arcing toward her stomach. The Nuyallith blades whispered free of their sheaths, striking a half-breath after she landed, left and right simultaneously. Lia cartwheeled to her left. Two miniature crossbow bolts whispered past her flailing limbs to bury themselves in the torso of the man who had been torturing Elki. He doubled over, losing interest in the battle.

  She whirled. Her glance took in two more men lurking in the shadows, besides the one out in the corridor.

  Lia knew she should not cross the space in front of the door, but Elki was vulnerable. Dive! Lia rolled awkwardly into the space behind her trussed brother. Seizing the solid wooden chair-back, she yanked Elki toward her. Another quarrel plunked into the wood beneath his r
ight thigh.

  She reached into her bodice.

  Mister Crossbow out there was still winding up his weapon when a dart found his exposed bicep. He convulsed as the powerful poison took effect. Lia stalked the last two men. One fled past her strike. She hacked into the door-frame as he dived through. The second man was not as fortunate. Lia expended her rage on him with a swooping dragon technique, and yanked her blades out of the lifeless body before it struck the floor.

  “Elki, dear one–”

  “Crummy brother, aren’t I?” Blood dribbled out of his mouth. “Got drunk, stupid …”

  Drawing her dagger, Hualiama severed the ropes lashing his hands and torso to the chair. “Easy, Elki. What did they want? Jewels?”

  “Information,” he gasped. “Do you know a person called … Raz … Razzal?”

  “Razzior?”

  Even ahead of her brother’s confirming nod, Lia’s breath whooshed out of her lungs in a pained wheeze. No! The Orange Dragon had found them! Should she be surprised that some beast among the Dragon Elders did not want to see the Tourmaline Dragon return? Stupid, naïve Dragonfriend! Pray Razzior was only casting his net, and that an invisible hook was not already reeling them in.

  They had to flee. Now.

  * * * *

  Mizuki’s wish held true for Hualiama and Elki as they fled Sylakia Island four hours before dawn. A stiff following breeze filled the spinnaker. Sylakia’s massive cliffs raced by on their starboard flank. Thankfully, dark clouds crowded overhead, reducing the visibility to what should have been a dangerous minimum. Patched by his sister’s hand, Elki resembled one of her early engineering experiments, Lia decided with a bleak chuckle.

  “So, you don’t see that promontory up there?” Lia pointed.

  “How many days are there in a week?”

  “Nine, why?”

  “For the tenth time, no.” Elki winced. “Ouch. Mustn’t smile. I do not see what you see. You’re definitively and irrevocably weird.”

  Lia grimaced in return. “Before I definitively do irrevocable things to the position of your head on your shoulders … Elki, please. What’s happening to me?”

  His hand moved to find hers in the dark. “Scared? Aye, I’d be. You swallow down an Ancient Dragon’s fire thinking nothing of the effects?” Lia bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood. “Amaryllion admitted he couldn’t separate his fire from Flicker’s gift. The true weirdness is what he said afterward, that whatever you’re born to be is even more important than the fire he gave you. Besides, what’s wrong with seeing in the dark? It’s a splendid gift, which merely enhances your all-round awesomeness.”

  “What do you want, brother?”

  “Ooh, don’t make me laugh. Hurts …”

  “Teach you not to listen to your big sister.” But she squeezed his fingers sympathetically. “We’re flying into the proverbial Dragon’s maw–Merx.”

  Elki chuckled hollowly. “Let’s hope your prediction is less accurate than mine about wanting a Dragoness.”

  Fair winds hustled them across the wild northern reaches of Sylakia Island, so that by dawn, the black granite cliffs were drawing aside to allow the rising suns to strike them full abeam. “Syros.” Hualiama pointed far to the northeast. “That must be it.”

  Elki squinted and offered a grunt of negation.

  Lia groaned, “No …”

  “Aye. Either my eyes have grown weak in my old age, or … shall I pilot while you sleep, sister?”

  “You’re injured. Rest.”

  “The last thing I need is you mothering me on this voyage!” He mussed her hair fondly. “Sorry. Why don’t you set our course and catch a few winks yourself?”

  Lia could not sleep. She fiddled with the sails while Elki, who could apparently sleep for the both of them, snored like a purring dragonet. She must not think of Grandion. If she experienced another waking dream, she might end up flying them straight into the side of an Island. Instead, one of her and Flicker’s favourite songs, albeit a melancholy one, came to mind. She sang quietly:

  Alas for the fair peaks, my love, my fierce love,

  Alas for the scorching winds, which stole thee away,

  Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

  And fly to thee.

  Most of the Island-World’s denizens would think it insanely inappropriate for her to be singing such a song, the soul’s cry of a Dragon and Dragoness pining for each other. This first verse was the Dragon’s lament as he mourned the scorching winds which had stolen his third heart away, his Dragoness-love. Then, the Dragoness replied:

  Alas for the long leagues, my song, my soul-lost song,

  Oh alas for fate’s grieving, my tears a fiery rain,

  Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

  And fly to thee.

  Hualiama rubbed a knuckle rather fiercely at the burning sensation in her eyes. No. The draconic way was not to weep and wail and mourn and rail, even if the ballad she sang exposed her deepest longings. She must be strong–stronger than Razzior, stronger than her father or Ianthine or even her fate, and certainly, stronger than the pain of loss, the secret grief a person could conceal all their life. Perhaps six years of imposed forgetting meant that the remembrance should come the more powerfully upon her now, for she had not dealt with her bereavement in the ordinary way.

  She slumped back on the pilot’s chair, enervated by an unforeseen outpouring of magic. From the White Dragoness’ scale she wore around her neck, Lia saw the fiery form of a dragonet emerge. He seemed to smile at her. An invitation.

  Mercy. She was going crazy.

  Impulsively, Lia addressed the spectral fire-creature. Tell Grandion, I come.

  Just that. Simple words, but the utterance of hope demanded no edifice of eloquence.

  The fire-creature opened its muzzle and voiced a plaintive cry which seemed to shiver between the winds of the world. It raced away over the eastern horizon where Lia saw a momentary flash of light, before all became preternaturally still.

  Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

  * * * *

  … And fly to thee.

  In the darkness, a Dragon stirred. He barely remembered who he was. Yet a strange shiver trickled along his long-unused wings, teasing the sensitive membranes with the memory of wind flowing in forceful flight, glimmering like forgotten fire along the tracery of arteries and veins criss-crossing the great flight surfaces, and burrowing beneath his scales with the insistence of a thousand scale-mites all scrabbling at once.

  A troubled groan forced its way between his chapped lips.

  What was that–a memory of a song once sung? This cage consumed all magic, for it had been built by Dragons for the containment of Dragons, but with that signature touch of magic–surely, an incendiary spark delivered deep into the forgotten depths of his belly–like the sluggish progress of a cooling lava flow, the workings of mind and body rekindled. Malnourished, clothed in the forever-darkness of his blindness, the Dragon knew nothing of the redeeming light of the twin suns, even when it blazed for an all-too-brief two hours daily through a tiny hole in the top of his cage. All he knew was its precious warmth upon his back. Warmth upon his back …

  Alas for the far shores, my heart, my third heart,

  Alas for the stars, illuming thy doom.

  The Tourmaline Dragon’s neck-vertebrae creaked and popped alarmingly as his long neck jerked. Coveting the light of a presence he had long given up hope of, and concealed in the most inviolable depths of his third heart, his muzzle gaped open to vent a cry of haunting distress:

  GRRRRAAAAARRRGGGH!

  * * * *

  Hualiama cried, “Grandion!”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s only your dear brother.” Elki clasped her shoulder. “You were moaning fit to wake the dead … great Islands, Lia, you’re so cold!”

  “The fire left me,” she whispered, appreciating her brother’s embrace. “I felt him. I felt Grandion, Elki, and he w
as so lost, and cold and alone … how can a Dragon lose his fire, Elki? What’s wrong with him?”

  Elki’s expression made it clear he was more concerned about what was wrong with his sister. But he shooed her gently off the pilot’s chair. “You’re stretching yourself too thin, short shrift. Now, take your orders like a good girl. For the love of–oh, roaring rajals, I’ll just say it then–for the love of Dragons! Get some sleep.”

  Hualiama rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms crossly. “Elki! Don’t say things like that.”

  He sang, “Love, love, love. My sister’s all about love.”

  Ridiculous man! She smiled at him. Even if he said things that shivered her world, turning it white with magic, she still loved him.

  “There’s power in voicing the forbidden, isn’t there?” And he laughed, not without an undercurrent of unease, “I’m starting to sound as mystical as Mom–freaky. Now, what do you make of that Dragonship astern? Just a trader, right?”

  Lia narrowed her eyes. “Aye, their markings make them a trader out of Cherlar, I believe. Wake me when something exciting happens.”

  Finding a sunny spot at the front of the basket, Lia curled up like a cat and fell asleep. For once, she did not dream.

  Waking as they sailed by the improbably square-cut outline of Syros Island, Lia sipped water from a gourd and peeled a tinker banana. “Thanks for piloting the day away, beloved brother. I needed the extra sleep.”

  “Oh, I whiled away the hours singing songs, braiding my lovely locks and dreaming of Dragons,” he teased.

  Lia coloured hotly. “Listen here, monkey mischief, I think that fiery Copper Dragoness took quite a fancy to you, handsome specimen that you are.”

  Well, that made two of them blushing away like a volcanic suns-set. Lia scanned the far horizons, batting away persistent concerns about what she intuited regarding the Dragoness’ intentions with regard to her brother, before her gaze lingered on the trailing Dragonship. It was no nearer, but no further behind either. She did not like it. Time to deploy a few sails and blow them away like dust.