Dragonlove

by Marc Secchia

  Winding through the crowd, the soldiers brought her before the Warlord and thrust Lia to her knees.

  “The firebird, mighty Shinzen.”

  His eyes were too bright. The Warlord looked her over, before grunting, “Why’s she wearing such dross? Foreign filth–no, leave her clothes. Come here, girl.”

  Hualiama’s skin crawled as Shinzen drew her into his stinking, sweaty embrace. She needed to pretend no reticence. “Look,” he pointed with the pipe at a trio of sloe-eyed beauties clad in wisps of Helyon silk, who simpered on cue. “Those are real women. What’re you planning to show me? Hedonistic practices from your Island?”

  “I-I’d gladly d-dance for you, mighty Lord Shinzen.”

  “Dance? How boring. I’ve a hundred dancers.” He mauled her right thigh with his fingers. “No meat on these bones. What Dragon would want this?”

  “I dance with fire, my lord.” If only she could shoot a fireball of her own down his throat, Lia imagined, yelping as he squeezed her tightly against his stomach, the Island-World would be a better place.

  “Flaming torches? I’ve jugglers–”

  “No. I make my own fire, my Lord. Magical fire.”

  Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. Hualiama sensed a fearful intelligence there. It was all a sham. Lies and subterfuge. Shinzen was very, very intrigued by her statement and he was not half as drunk as he pretended.

  “I’ll show you why I’m called the Firebird of Fra’anior.”

  And then if he could kindly toss her to the Dragon, her life would end at the point of a talon and nobody need concern themselves with the rise of a third race in the Island-World. Perfect.

  Shinzen raised his hand languidly, creating an instant hush. “Clear a space. This luckless wench would dance for us.” Turning to Lia, he added, “Bore me, and you’ll be dancing for my soldiers in the barracks. They’ll take any trash, foreign or none. After the first hundred finish with you, you’ll be begging for the mercies of my pillow-roll.”

  His booming laughter chased Lia out into the space between his guests.

  Frightened and fired up in equal measure, Hualiama spoke briefly with the head musician, a flute-player who clearly found speaking to a foreign woman a distasteful affair. She settled for Chasing the Wind, the energetic yet haunting penultimate dance from her favourite Flame Cycle. But she found that the flame had deserted her. Suddenly she was graceless Lia, awkward and unsure of herself, ensnared in the coiling terrors of her own imagination.

  Grandion! The memory of his fire slipped into her mind, the day he had burned her in the tunnel beneath Ha’athior Island. Though flame filled the halls of her mind, her magic remained stubbornly quiescent. She saw Warlord Shinzen yawn. No. His handling repelled her, for a Dragon’s paw was all the touch she desired. Frantically, Hualiama sifted through her memories, the dance growing jerky, her limbs heavy … and in a flash, she saw Grandion soaring into a sky dark with Green Dragons. She sensed the Blue Dragon power called ‘Storm’ swelling in his belly, and gasped as the first sparks crackled off her toes as she extended into a split leap. Touchdown. Here came the fire! Mercy … soaring again, whirling, a shower of sparkling blue. Her audience inhaled and clicked their fingers in approbation.

  Joining in the quickening tempo, the Fra’aniorian dancer built up to the finale. She launched her body into the leaps with mounting joy. Grace became her wings, the swirling robes of her fire. The song of her soul escalated, drawing her closer to the fire, her limbs wreathed in beauty, her hair spinning about her like a golden halo as she swung her head in a series of increasingly violent rotations, the death-throes of a Dragon. This she knew. Grief tinged the expression of her joy, the sparks growing darker, through aquamarine to a deep sapphire.

  Flare! Arms pointed at the ceiling, blue lightning blasted from her fingertips. Lia leaped lithely aside as masonry exploded from the point of impact. Flare! The crowd yelled and ducked as lightning crackled above their heads.

  “Stop her!” someone screamed.

  A clean, sharp scent, like the freshness of the Island-World after a storm, struck her nostrils. This was spectacle enough for the Warlord, surely? Her hands ignited as she swept into the complex, rippling passages that spoke of storm winds sweeping over the Island-World, as the Dragon-lovers took their tumultuous parting, separated in body but united in their fire-souls. Lia’s feet barely seemed to touch the floor. The stench of burning fabric wreathed her spinning body. Upon every dragonet-light step, blue sparkles burst from her neatly-pointed toes.

  “Assassin!” bellowed another voice.

  Shinzen began to heave himself off his divan. Halting in the final, dramatic pose, Hualiama’s intertwined hands lowered to point directly at the Warlord. Lightning flashed across the space between them, detonating among the pillow-rolls and cushions he used for comfort. Shinzen roared as fire enveloped his massive frame.

  Wood spun end-over-end toward her. Pain exploded between her temples.

  * * * *

  The Tourmaline Dragon flared his nostrils, drawing in the scents of the world outside his cage. Why did he scent ozone, when he tasted no incipient storm-moisture on the breeze? What did all the shouting in the depths of the Warlord’s fortress signify? The urgent thudding of booted feet and the rattling of gates and armour? The Dragon took it in uneasily. Great events were afoot.

  Could it be the girl?

  Later, he heard footsteps approaching the tiny, impossible-to-leave door of his cage. He heard four Human heartbeats, one much lighter and quicker than the others. He smelled the greasy oils adorning freshly repaired chain armour, and heard the clink of weapons. A low muttering, ‘Hurry with the lock.’ Grandion sniffed in disdain. Periodically, Shinzen’s warriors tested him with a warrior or two, and several times, they had provided him with female slaves he assumed had been disobedient in some way. Shunned by the Dragon, the females had all chosen to risk the uncertain destination of the small stream that flowed through the cage. The foul, mammal-sweaty warriors had departed the same way, either clawed, flattened or burned to death.

  Was this their idea of feeding a Dragon? He abhorred the taste of Human flesh.

  Grandion had not fed in a month. He dreamed of meat, any meat, great slabs of flesh dripping with blood, of the joy of sinking his fangs into a hapless ralti sheep and bolting great, slippery hunks down his throat, of lapping up deliciously iron-rich blood with his tongue, swollen rivers of blood …

  This was another Human. He must be strong.

  The Human stood near the entrance, its heart tripping along as if to cry, ‘I’m here.’ Its breathing sounded strangely muffled, but it smelled female. Unmistakably female.

  Pacing toward the creature, Grandion hissed, Hualiama?

  No reply.

  If it is you, speak to me. The creature made muffled noises of distress, but as it moved, his ear-canals detached a soft clink. Metal. Stupid Humans. A female warrior–of course. He was wise to their tricks.

  Grandion spat a low, vicious chuckle. He spoke mentally, So, little Human. Come to test your courage against a Dragon?

  The petrified Human could not speak. A whiff of mammalian terror-sweat tickled his nostrils most agreeably. Ah. Fear. Acrid fear. His stomachs began to boil with fiery contempt. No, this meant joyous battle. Her weapons against his talons. The Tourmaline Dragon’s hearts accelerated, priming his muscles for action. Ever since he had detected Lia’s magic, he had begun to exercise again, as much as he was able in the restrictive below-ground space. Although he was half-starved, Grandion incongruously felt fresher than at any time in the last several years. The missing element was his magic. Still, talon and fang would suffice for this trifling task.

  He would teach this pathetic Human what it meant to bait a Dragon.

  * * * *

  As the door clanged shut behind her, Hualiama halted, afraid to run headlong into an obstacle.

  The leather hood snugged down to her neck rendered sight useless, and breathing next to useless. Her hands had been twi
sted up between her shoulder blades, courtesy of her dancer’s flexibility, and lashed in place with what seemed cord sufficient to furnish a Dragonship. Her hands were therefore useless. But that had not been enough for the Warlord. Before his men affixed the hood, Shinzen had taken manifest delight in checking the ridiculous gag which corked her mouth more effectively than a skein of wine readied for transport, firmly buckled beneath her chin and in three places behind her head. That rendered her mouth … useless. She could shout about as loudly as a mewling kitten.

  All this for someone they planned to turn into a Dragon’s snack? Lia would not have wasted the equipment, even if it did honour the Dragon-spirits in some inexplicable way. No single Human warrior on foot could dream of defeating a Dragon, could they? Except one who wielded Nuyallith blades. But she was weaponless, and trussed like a ralti sheep ready for the spit. She could trust the Dragon to light up the barbecue. As the great beast moved, Lia sensed the vibration through her soft slippers, and heard the metallic brushing of Dragon scales against stone. The tiny bit of air leaking up to her straining nostrils brought her the powerful, pungent odour of an adult male Dragon–charred cinnamon and sulphur, and an exotic spiciness that made her head reel.

  Lia called in her mind, G-G-Grandion? Is that you?

  Silence.

  Dragonish was the only language which would communicate to the beast. Lia pleaded, Speak to me, o Dragon. Please. I’m Hualiama, called the Dragonfriend.

  A laugh of booming malevolence turned her bones to water. Oh, mercy, mercy, a thousand times mercy … this was no Grandion. He would never have laughed like that. Despair choked her more effectively than the glob of mouldy material they had packed into her mouth. Draconic smell-memory was like a Human memory of pictures, he had taught her. Dragons could remember particular smells–their shell-mother, the scent of their mate–for decades. If this Dragon knew her, he would know her scent.

  Yet how could the Dragon think she came to fight him in this ridiculous state? She was no threat. He must be blind.

  Dragons did not forget. Was this Grandion, or not?

  “Hmm-mmm!” she called.

  A sharp rustling warned her. Lia sprinted to her left, dodging the Dragon’s opening pounce. Who cared for the darkness? Her head slammed into a wall, and that was how the Dragon came to miss his follow-up swipe. The ground shook as the Dragon pounded by.

  A pause. They both listened for each other.

  Ah … Bezaldior? Bezaldior!

  Nothing. Not a whisper of magic, nor even an echo of a whisper. The Dragon’s belly-fires growled with subliminal, unending intimidation. Hualiama tried to extend her senses. She sidled along the wall, on tiptoe and breathless, trying not to deal herself another bruising encounter with an unseen obstacle. Perhaps if she neither drew breath nor allowed her heart to beat, the Dragon would not be able to track her–no, he still had his nostrils. What chance did she have of avoiding the Island-World’s apex predator in his own lair?

  Run!

  A Dragon’s paw slapped her, flipping Lia effortlessly off her feet. She tried to land and roll, but the Dragon was upon her in a flash. A massive weight settled upon her stomach and legs.

  “Mmm!” Lia screamed into the gag.

  * * * *

  By his wings, the way the little thing wriggled beneath his paw! The flutter of her heart! The trembling of her limbs! The muted snuffling of her breath–it all reminded Grandion so forcibly of prey in the instant before he gutted a creature, that his mind blanked in a pre-gustatory welter of ecstasy. Food! Oh, just a morsel … the sweet burst of bodily fluids upon his tongue, followed by the muscular palpitations of his long throat as fresh kill slid down into his food stomach …

  Saliva splattered over his talons and doused her torso.

  Smell the food. Another whiff to savour … oh, she was glorious! An aroma as complex and beguiling as a Dragoness’ filtered into his astounded nostrils. No Human, slave or warrior, had ever blasted his olfactory nerves to cinders like this.

  His prey struggled so deliciously, so defenceless beneath his controlling paw, that a wave of heated pride surged through the Tourmaline Dragon. He was mighty. He was also starving. His stomach had shrivelled to the size of a large nut. It had long since given up screaming at him to be filled. No more scruples about cannibalism of his fellow intelligent creatures. He had to survive. Survival demanded sacrifice–this Human to his appetite, and his ethics to grim reality.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he rumbled.

  Raising the morsel to his lips, Grandion drew breath to chargrill his meal.

  * * * *

  Her mouth was stuffed with so much material, Lia knew the Dragon could not understand a word she spoke. Trapped beneath his paw, so much larger than Grandion’s had ever been, she knew only endless cloudscapes of desolation. It ended here for a Princess of Fra’anior. She had gambled and lost. This feral beast intended to eat her, for as he raised her in his fisted paw, she knew she would feel the Dragon’s fangs next. She could practically taste his hunger, the helpless quivering of a Dragon who had already entered the portals of starvation.

  Her magic was dormant. Her Dragonish would not communicate. Was this a key property of a prison capable of holding a Dragon?

  Then, he voiced an undraconic apology.

  Hualiama almost swooned as the Dragon’s voice resonated, it seemed, within the very marrow of her being. Grandion! Her heart skyrocketed upon wings of peerless tourmaline, swooping and playing with him among the Islands. The darkness beneath the leather hood exploded like the birth of constellations in a moonless night.

  As the Dragon drew breath, Hualiama’s spirit drank its fill from the wells of her exultation, summoning his secret Dragon-name from the treasuries of her soul.

  Uncontainable, his name rang forth, Alastior!

  Chapter 15: Reunited

  GRANDION SWALLOWED HIS flame with a gulp of the most arresting astonishment his Dragon brain had ever known. All three hearts raced off in different directions, competing and contradictory, howling in celebration all at once. A newfound, ravenous hunger raged through the Dragon–a beast of passion, unchained. The yowling of his stomach beat against his consciousness without meaning. He breathed in again, dying for the scent of her, desperate to draw into his fire-soul the inmost essence of the creature, the wonder, the girl he cradled in his paw. It seemed his entire being was aflame. Body, soul, he could not separate it. Understanding blossomed within him, as though the world were a flower unfurled before his gaze, unguarded to its vulnerable core.

  His throat thickened, while his chest swelled prodigiously. Taking a mighty, four-pawed stance, the Tourmaline Dragon released what he intended to be a Dragon-challenge, only it was a deeper, sweeter, more sonorous sound than he had ever imagined, a song of her name:

  HUUUAAALLLIIIAAAMAA!

  * * * *

  In such beauty, a soul could only dance. No chains, physical or spiritual, could have denied the response of Hualiama’s soul to the wrathful, mournful, mind-blowing cry of the Dragon. She sang in her heart:

  AAALLAAASSTIIIOOORRR!

  Their cries mingled at a level beneath conscious thought, perhaps the magic of their oaths once made to each other, or a deeper, more fundamental form of communication still. Lia knew the softness of his paw and the wash of the Dragon’s breath. She knew the fire of his breath as though it were scribed in tongues of fire inside her eyelids. Her spirit mingled with his, communed with his, indwelled him even as he indwelled her.

  For a breath within a breath, all was glorious. Lia became the fire she had always desired. She was light and song, a dancing wisp. Freedom’s sweetness honeyed her tongue. Then, darkness rose to eclipse that glorious expansion of her consciousness. Hualiama shuddered at the power of an inner command.

  Let it be bound.

  The ruzal within her had spoken, and tainted the sweetness irretrievably.

  She wept.

  * * * *

  Grandion wondered at the stifled,
snuffling sounds Hualiama began to make. Was she crying? Struggling for breath? Dying?

  Frantic now, his claws clamped on her head, trying to peel off the covering she wore. Stinking animal hide. Ropes. By touch he identified what had eluded his understanding–she was a prisoner of these Dragon Keepers. Lia’s pained mumblings informed him what a poor job he was doing with his clumsy talons. He was fearful of harming her, for she seemed much smaller than he recalled. Fool Dragon. It was he who had grown. Six years. Where had she tarried for six years? What would she make of a blind, defenceless Dragon?

  Before he knew it, Grandion set Lia down and retreated, shaking his head. If this was the Grandion of captivity, he was caged more surely than he had imagined. His fury raged against this Dragon. Where was his courage? Flown to the five moons? Lia made a soft interrogative noise. When he did not respond immediately, her query escalated into a mewl of distress so akin to a hatchling’s wail of terror, that Grandion charged toward the sound before he considered the wisdom of tossing his tonnage blindly about the cavern.

  Thump. Yelp. Growl in dismay. Growl for real as he felt an accurate kick on the tendon just below the wrist bone of his left forepaw. Pain lanced up his limb. Suddenly, the Tourmaline Dragon found himself guffawing. Had he been in any doubt, that kick confirmed it.

  “Feisty as ever,” he rumbled, righting her with an awkward touch.

  Mumbling something acerbic, Lia felt her way along his paw to his talons. “Hmm-mmm.”