Dragonlove

by Marc Secchia

  Mid-afternoon of the following day signalled an unexpected lull in the storm. The weather-front rolled away southward, leaving a smattering of broken clouds in its wake. Hazily, through the clouds, Hualiama made out the tiny specks of the northernmost Islands of the Eastern Archipelago, curving like the tip of a bow to the east. This was where they might find Qilong, the King had told them, investigating a suspected incursion by the Dragon-Haters.

  Grandion had been aloft for forty-two hours, a massive undertaking for any Dragon. He was grumpy from tiredness and hunger.

  “I’m fine to continue,” he growled, in response to her fifth, increasingly anxious query.

  Lia ducked, but the wind’s force had the curious effect of keeping his belch of smoke exactly where it appeared around his muzzle. The Dragon sneezed mightily. He had slowed, she realised, barely keeping pace now with the Dragons’ Highway, which raged unabated.

  “But I’m not fine,” she said. “I don’t have your endurance, Grandion, and I can’t feel my ears and nose anymore. Please.”

  Who was she fooling? Grandion knew exactly what she meant.

  The Dragon’s wingbeat stilled. Dipping his muzzle, Grandion entered a long, rapid dive from the boundless realms of the skies to the world of Islands, people and Dragons below. Hualiama calculated the distance they had flown in a mere day and a half on the mental map in her head, and gasped. Upward of fifteen hundred leagues, or she missed her mark!

  Before their noses, Kaolili’s Isles tapered off rapidly into the Cloudlands. This was far further north than Lia had ever travelled, right up at the latitude of Helyon Island. The Lost Islands lay yet further north, over the horizon. The King’s Cartographer put his ‘best guess’ at a further eight hundred leagues from their position–fifty-three hours for a fast-flying Dragon, given favourable conditions, and beyond the range of all but the most powerful adult Dragons, Grandion had noted. No wonder these Islands were so isolated, and unknown. Legend was plentiful, and readily available from the King’s Library. Facts had proved to be in scant supply.

  They had seen no sign of Qilong, any Dragonships, or any Human habitation whatsoever, only a colony of Red Dragons who had kept their distance. Grandion said the Reds’ behaviour indicated they should be left well alone.

  “You’re trembling,” Lia said, sensing the Dragon’s fatigue through her knees.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Dragons never lie.”

  “I’m fine to make it to a landing place,” said Grandion. “Then, I must rest. Satisfied, Rider?”

  Lia yawned several times to pop her ears as the air pressure increased rapidly. “No. What should I look for?”

  “Ordinarily, I’d seek a volcano with a nice pool of lava to ease my muscles, or at worst, a terrace lake.” His voice was choppy, gasping with effort. “Blast these cramps. I thought I was in better shape.”

  “Would any Dragon be in excellent shape after flying so far, so fast? Right. Volcanoes seem to be in short supply. Search for a handy lake? Or can you sniff out a volcano–sulphur, gases, and so on?”

  “Usually, my sight would pick out volcanic gases.”

  “Aha, because Dragons see in a wider spectrum of colours than Humans?”

  “And hear in many more frequencies.”

  “Awesome,” said Lia, meaning it. Grandion’s weak snarl informed her that he had misunderstood. She said, “Do you find auditory echo-location limited in range, Grandion? Probably not terribly useful unless your prey’s right in front of your muzzle, right? Would producing sounds at higher frequencies help? Or sounds at faster or slower rates?”

  “I need rest!”

  Clearly, he was in no mood to discuss potential solutions.

  Hualiama puzzled over this problem as the Islands loomed larger in her vision. Grandion angled for a small inland lake she absently pointed out, preoccupied with issues surrounding acoustics in the outdoors such as atmospheric turbulence and pressure, obstacles, spreading and absorption of different types of surfaces and conditions. How could it work? Range was one issue, accuracy another.

  At the last second, Lia realised he was coming in far too fast. “Brake!” she shouted. “Flare!”

  The Dragon spread his tired wings, but his left wingtip smacked into a lone coniferous giant, slewing him off course. Grandion corrected, but either his muscles cramped or his wing collapsed, because the next thing Hualiama knew, he struck the ground with a fearsome blow, flipped over as if he were barrel-rolling mid-air, and tumbled away like a runaway cart. An unseen blow punched her right shoulder. Lia struck the lake’s surface so hard that she skipped several times before halting in a spray of water.

  No time for whinging. Lia kicked for the surface, cradling her right shoulder, which felt dislocated. A cloud of pretty, gold-coloured fish surrounded her body. Scales flashed around her, followed by a nibbling sensation at her fingers and especially near the wound on her thigh. Carnivorous? Suddenly, she could not swim fast enough. The pretty fish mobbed her, tearing at the bandage over her cut. Lia broke the surface as though she intended to launch herself skyward, like a rainbow trout leaping for a tasty insect.

  “Grandion! Heeeeeelp!”

  Chapter 27: The Lost Islands

  YELLING FIT to imitate a squad of soldiers charging at the enemy, Hualiama churned across the terrace lake before Grandion heard her tread crunching upon the shingly bottom. That was when he started laughing. Lia clearly did not appreciate his reaction, nor his inaction in saving his Princess.

  “Pernicious reptile!” she howled. A jolt of lightning struck him square in the flank.

  “Found a few Scavenging Brightfish in the lake?” he inquired.

  This time, her response frazzled his tongue.

  “Simmer down!” Grandion bellowed.

  “Me, simmer? I’ll show you simmering! What were those–there’s one stuck to my ear!”

  “One of the wonders of the Island-World,” he explained, smiling as a ‘plop’ told him where the wonder had ended up. “Scavenging Brightfish are healers. They eat dead tissue, suck away infections and apply a healing salve to wounds. Very rare. You could make a fortune if you remember this place.”

  “Lake-dwelling bloodsuckers? I’ll pass.”

  “Is her Highness injured?”

  She growled, “Your excellent landing dislocated my shoulder, but I think that moment of panic you found so ruddy hilarious has served to pop it back into place.”

  Grandion chuckled softly, “You’ll be pleased to know I landed on a sharp rock. The only parts of me which are punctured are my rump, and my pride.”

  “Well. Forty-two hours and a crash landing? You aviation-loving ralti sheep!” Far from being spent, her ire surged afresh. “Next time, will you listen? I do, on the rare occasion, attempt to talk some sense into that block of granite you mistake for a cranium!”

  “Lia–”

  “Lie down!” she roared. “Better yet, why don’t you let your friendly Brightfish feast on your august rump while I go hunt for us?”

  “Hualiama of Fra’anior …”

  “What!”

  “Thank you.”

  Muttering something that mangled the words ‘pestiferous’, ‘malfeasance’ and ‘wisdom of a ralti sheep’ together into a description of a certain Tourmaline Dragon, his Rider steamed off.

  * * * *

  Hualiama’s fury lasted as long as it took her to walk one hundred yards around the lake shore, whereupon she stepped directly between the coils of a large, irritable reticulated python. She yelped. Dropping her half-drawn bow caused an arrow to zing off across the corner of the lake, passing close to the startled Dragon. Nuyallith blade in hand, Lia hacked at the python.

  “Die!” She missed. “Just freaking hold still, will you?” Six cuts later, Lia finally managed to land a killing blow. “Stupid snake!” She chopped it in half for good measure. “Huh, not so tough now, are we?”

  A touch of unnecessarily vicious butchery later, and she was done. Panting. Victorious.
Mighty hunter she was, using herself for bait. Lia hauled a length of snake over her good shoulder, and marched back to Grandion, who lazed in the lake on his side, with a swarm of fish boiling around his left hind leg and rump area.

  “Killed the snake good and dead?” the Dragon ribbed her.

  Dragon hearing. She should have known. “Open the maw, beast.” Lia deposited the length of python onto his tongue, and stomped off to fetch another chunk of python, wishing just for once, she could kick that Dragon right in the manly jewels.

  A day’s recuperation at the warm lake was the perfect medicine for Dragon and Rider. Grandion had sorely abused his body during his marathon flight, but he had the resilience of a Dragon’s superior physiology to speed his recovery. Python meat, several hefty chunks of rock salt Hualiama carved off a cleft above a warm spring for him, and a good long drink of the mineral-rich waters were what Grandion needed to replenish his depleted reserves. After daring to bathe in the lake–she was only ever in danger of dying from laughter as the persistent fish nibbled her toes–Lia held up a chunk of python meat spitted on a stick, and Grandion cooked her dinner. Excellent!

  Lia experimented with tossing chunks of meriatite down Grandion’s gullet. Dual-purpose science, she claimed–helping his diet, and a chance to produce hydrogen-powered fireballs, combining the gas of one stomach with the fire of another. Impressive! The first successful hydrogen fireball Grandion produced was so powerful, it literally blew him off his feet. Hualiama had a turn laughing at the Dragon until, smarting with injured pride, he placed a paw upon her chest.

  “Oh, come on!” Lia gasped. “Don’t you want to do that to Razzior?”

  A-HA-HA-GGRRRAAARRGGGH! A staggering hose of Dragon fire, eclipsing an adult Red in the heat of his mightiest rage, erupted out of his muzzle. Three hundred yards long and fifty wide, she estimated. The draconic world had not seen such a firestorm since the age of the Ancient Dragons.

  She quipped, “Well now, there goes my fortune. You boiled all those expensive fish. More dinner?”

  Grandion laughed until he started hiccoughing fireballs.

  Quietly, as night wrapped the Isle in a velveteen stillness, Lia talked to the Dragon about her hopes and dreams for finding her mother. Fragile dreams. Knowing that joy and pain balanced on a knife-edge. Her father had tried to murder her. Could Azziala do worse? “Who wants to tempt fate, Grandion?” she asked, her voice as hollow as a gourd. “Yet she was an envoy of the Dragon-Haters. She must have been a woman of importance and power.”

  “And some courage, to make the journey to Gi’ishior,” said the Dragon.

  “Or madness. The Maroon Dragoness mentioned a twin–the madwoman, she said.” Hualiama shuddered at the memory. “Grandion, it could be … awful. How can I love the woman who turned me over to Ianthine? Amaryllion always said my power was grounded in love. But its opposite is hate. And that’s where we’re headed. The realm of the Dragon-Haters.”

  “Or the Human-Haters, according to Dragon lore. A strange, fey tribe of Dragons inhabits the Lost Islands, Lia. Dragon legends have no good word to speak of them.”

  “Perfectly matched,” she whispered, shuddering. “Lost in so much more than name.”

  “I will be with you.”

  Hualiama clasped his fore-talon in her hands. “Grandion …” She could not say ‘Dragonlove’, though the word burned on her tongue. Lia finished lamely, “You’re a rock.”

  The low rumbling of the Tourmaline Dragon’s fires percolated into her awareness. Soothing. Ever burning. And if they were quenched? So too the fire-spirit, the eternal essence of a Dragon.

  “I’m afraid for you,” she said.

  Grandion’s wings rustled restively. “Aye? Same here. Can you check my claw-sheath? Your hand’s right on a tender spot.”

  “A shard of volcanic glass,” she said, after a minute. “I’ll dig it out.” Arranging his paw over her lap, Lia drew her dagger. “Now, this might hurt. No nasty little fireballs or snappish fangs, alright?”

  “I’m not a hatchling!”

  Lia jabbed her elbow into his muzzle. “Joke. Simmer down.”

  Later, beneath a clear, two-moon sky , the Princess of Fra’anior walked a slow circuit of the Island with her Dragon. The night was so still, they heard every night-bird’s call and the chirruping of myriad insects. Insects, the prey of rats, gerbils and marmosets, she noted inattentively. They in turn fed the numerous snakes. This was the Island’s basic ecosystem, of which her awareness probably only scratched the surface.

  She said, “Did I ever tell you the detail of that dream about Azziala?”

  “Remind me.”

  “The Dragoness said she had come for me, according to their bargain. Ianthine gave her knowledge in exchange–the knowledge of ruzal, from the Scroll of Binding. Azziala was triumphant. Her cry sounded like a windroc’s screech after a successful hunt. And then she gave me to Ianthine. Just so. She said, ‘Take Ra’aba’s whelp, Ianthine. Use it against him.’ It, Grandion. She called me an ‘it’! And then the Dragoness said, Oh, you supreme fool, that I will.”

  “Two things,” the Tourmaline Dragon said slowly, when Hualiama fell silent. “One, Ianthine must have read the Scroll of Binding. What became of it afterward? It cannot be in your mother’s possession. These Haters have some power over Dragons, but not the unstoppable, all-conquering power I believe is promised by the Scroll. When she was interrogated by the combined might of the Dragon Elders at Gi’ishior, Ianthine had no knowledge of it–no knowledge of ruzal save some fragments sourced from the Dragon Library at Ha’athior.”

  “Did that interrogation drive her mad–feral?”

  “No, she was mad already, my shell-mother said.” But Grandion lifted a talon to his lips in a surprisingly Human-like gesture.

  “What?” Lia asked.

  “I’ve always harboured doubts. That type of psychic examination is harmful to a Dragon. We aren’t merciful creatures, and the Dragoness was rightly accused of teaching ruzal to Humans. The interrogation would’ve been brutal. Razzior recognises your power of ruzal. He, and many Dragons loyal to Sapphurion, would slay you instantly were they aware that you have such a power. And–Hualiama, do you remember anything else? Anything more you dreamed about your mother, or Ianthine, that could brighten our mind-fires?”

  In his passion, the Dragon slipped into directly translating concepts from Dragonish, Lia noticed, nodding. “Aye. There’s one more thing, which I don’t believe I ever told you.”

  Ignoring his low murmur of encouragement, Hualiama focussed on recalling the exact phrasing of the Maroon Dragoness’ words from her dream.

  Hush, little one, the Dragoness whispered. We return to the Isle of your father. This is the hour of my greatest triumph. All Dragons will know that Ianthine saved them from a fate worse than death.

  “Say that again?” Grandion wheezed.

  Repeating her words, the incongruity struck Lia even more forcefully. “Ianthine believed she was saving the Dragons from a fate worse than death. Human-death, the nuance suggests–doesn’t it, Grandion? A death that doesn’t join a Dragon to the eternal soul-fires of their kind. Is that even possible?”

  Bellowing, Grandion began to swing his muzzle toward her, before raising his long neck to the sky to voice a terrible, despairing scream. It cut her to the living pith of her very soul, wounding. Weeping. A cry of such anguish, it seemed to her that the Dragon’s three hearts stopped pulsing, and the silence that followed their scream communicated every ounce of the terrible idea she had unthinkingly voiced. Grandion stood rooted, every talon clamped into rock and soil as he fought to master his emotions.

  The Maroon Dragoness had returned to Gi’ishior expecting a heroine’s welcome. Instead, she had been accused, mentally shattered, and cast out to live in the most squalid, demeaning captivity Dragons could dream up. Another truth struck Lia, then. Ianthine was the only Dragon ever to return from the Lost Islands alive.

  But she dared not reveal this insight to Gra
ndion. She had never seen him so shaken.

  * * * *

  Northward they flew, bound by oaths made to each other and to the Dragon Elders of Gi’ishior. Pensive. Lost in their private thoughts. Filled with trepidation. As Grandion’s wings stretched above the pearlescent white Cloudlands and a glorious suns-rise fired the eastern sky as though the soul-fires of all Dragons had joined together in joyous, world-spanning harmony, Hualiama called to mind those she had left behind to make this journey. Ari, Shyana and Ja’al. Master Ga’athar and his family. King Chalcion. Elki and Saori. Yukari and Akemi, united at last. And even Shinzen, Razzior and Ra’aba. Friend and foe alike, she had left all behind. Now she and Grandion, the first Dragon and Rider in the Island-World, flew into the unknown.

  They spoke not a word all day, but it seemed to Hualiama that much was spoken between their spirits which could never be framed in word or thought. Dragon and Rider travelled with unconscious closeness, flowing together without need for speech, as though they were one creature that lived and breathed and laughed and loved, dancing upon the winds of the Island-World, sharing a soul-deep intimacy. The weakening Dragons’ Highway was their friend. Lia kept expecting some great omen–perhaps the back of a Land Dragon breaching the unbroken expanse of Cloudlands beneath them, or a comet to streak across the evening sky, but no such portent saluted their traverse of the void between the Islands. Perhaps the stars themselves regarded their presumption with bated breath.

  Could it last? Could two souls travel together, forever?

  They flew directly toward crescent Jade, as though seeking to rise above the curve of the moon itself. Soon, the Blue moon rose to pour forth great sheets of radiance, until it seemed to Lia that the Cloudlands had become a single, vast terrace lake. An ocean. A place where Dragons swam and sported … she shivered. Could those poisons ever be transformed into something so beautiful? Only the Ancient Dragons boasted such almighty powers.