Dragonlove

by Marc Secchia

  May it be, Lia whispered, checking the position of the stars.

  Grandion tipped forward slightly, bringing them into a steady descent. Aye. They must not miss the Lost Islands. Lia rubbed her arms. Brr. One could really feel the difference in climate after travelling thousands of leagues in the course of a week. Odd how she had always thought of the Island-World as flat, but now, after flying with Grandion at enormous altitudes, she knew that it curved away to the horizon. Oh for the eyesight of a Dragon, that she might see the Rim-mountains. That would be another first. The only way Humans knew about the Rim wall, was from scrolls of Dragon lore.

  Hualiama scanned the semidarkness.

  “I see lights,” said Grandion.

  “Where?”

  “East. Six points from where you’re looking, I think.”

  “Oh.” Lia swallowed as the twinkling lights of fires or lanterns, barely visible as specks across the miles, resolved in her vision. “Grandion, I wanted to say, if we don’t make it–I mean, I believe we will, but …”

  “We Dragons say, Our soul-fires are always within us. They’ll burn together, no matter what befalls.”

  She could barely squeeze a whisper past the lump in her throat. “Aye, Grandion. Now, let’s carry out our mission. No doubts. No regrets.”

  “Aye. We’ll scout as softly as moths in the night.”

  The Dragon shed height rapidly, drawing his cloak of concealment tightly around them. Lia popped her ears. Wow. She checked her weapons, right down to the lock picks concealed in her armoured wristlets and the poisoned darts concealed in her bodice. If only she had her missing Nuyallith blade to complete the set. Grandion ghosted closer and closer to the Island, a velvet shadow enveloped in velvet darkness. He had subdued the natural gleam of his scales, she observed, and even stilled the wind’s whistling over his spine-spikes and wings. Nothing was left to chance.

  The Island-Cluster hove from the Cloudlands, white-backed and rugged, serenely illuminated by the White and Blue moons. Snow and ice, she realised. Was the season already so advanced? Surprisingly substantial, the Cluster stretched away northeast like a double line of fangs embedded in an Ancient Dragon’s lower jaw. Above the lights, a lone volcanic peak rose like a flagpole to an improbable white point. Several Islands further east, Lia saw the unmistakable glow of lava. Some said the Dragons still built the Islands from beneath, that the activity of volcanoes was really the stirring of vast magma-Dragons who lived beneath the habitable realms above the Cloudlands.

  Just a mile offshore, now. Lia strained to see the details of those lights. Something about them struck her as man-made.

  Grandion whispered, I hear the sounds of habitation. Animals, scavenger birds and the thrum of furnaces or a forge. The wind’s wrong to scent them–oh. Is there something behind us?

  Lia swivelled in her seat. Nothing. You sure?

  Could’ve sworn I smelled something, but it’s gone now. Here, examine this scent-memory.

  Wood smoke. From back there? She scanned the Cloudlands and the skies, high and low. Dragonship? Grandion, that’s jalkwood. I’d know that smell from a thousand leagues … the wind’s blowing southerly. It can only have come from a Dragonship. You see anything? Sense anything?

  Nothing.

  Her skin prickled as Grandion strained his Dragon senses to their utmost. Long minutes passed.

  Can you form a magical pulse? Like this? You’d have to send it out like concentric sound-waves, and then listen for the echo, however that translates into Dragon magic-speak.

  I understand your meaning, he said, drolly.

  Hualiama’s stomach wobbled slightly as the Tourmaline Dragon shaped and released his power. Almost immediately, she felt it return. Huh? Right in front–Grandion! Turn!

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  “Dragon!” a man bellowed. “Watch! Summon the Enchanter!”

  Grandion sheared away from a Dragonship with enormous power, accelerating so forcefully that Lia could neither drag herself away from the spine-spike grinding against her back nor expel the breath trapped in her lungs. The bell tolled frantically. Lia glanced backward, shocked. Where had that vessel sprung from? How had they missed it in a moonlit sky? The Dragonship was thinner through the beam than the Fra’aniorian design, and almost twice as long. The stippled material of its air sack reminded her strongly of pebbles on a terrace lake beach.

  Just as her head turned to the fore, Grandion’s body convulsed like a trout stung by the fisherman’s hook. One second, he was present, a pinpoint light in her consciousness. The next, an oily darkness swallowed the Dragon’s being. Black, yet gleaming like mercury running across glass, the eerie magic surged through their link and inundated Lia.

  “Dragon, obey.” A commanding voice seized all the Islands of her world, utterly compelling. “You are my slave. You will do exactly as I command. Turn, and follow.”

  Her last, despairing thought was, ‘ruzal?’

  * * * *

  Human voices impinged on her awareness. The cloying stench of oil lamps singed her nostrils. Lia heard the creak of a Dragonship’s rigging. These impressions woke her, but she remained in darkness, although she could hear activity all around. She smelled a cavern’s dankness, metal armour, aged leather and the musky odour of animal sweat, thinking: Enslaved. The Dragon-Haters had a power that enslaved Dragons. Was she trapped inside Grandion’s psyche? How? Lia kept her body limp, even in a position as painfully hunched over as she was, hoping to learn what she could before anyone took notice.

  She had not fallen off. Grandion? she ventured, just a wisp of a thought. Grandion, are you there?

  “Captured us a Dragon!” someone announced, in a barbarous dialect, all clipped-off consonants and guttural vowels. “Plenty power in this one.”

  “Empress will be pleased. Stock’s running low, y’know.”

  “Aye, but she’ll whip the Watchman. Sleeping on duty. Fancy missing a lizard this size?”

  “Slackers! Paw-lickers!” This voice was even more clipped, and clearly in command. “Get the bastard Blue down to the pens before I stripe your sorry hides! Where’s my pipe?”

  Lia imagined Grandion was a lake and she was rising to its surface. In a few moments, lamplight filtered through her carefully slit eyes. Her awareness separated from the Dragon’s.

  Suddenly, a volley of curses erupted from above. “Spit me with Dragon-shell, there’s a girl! Idiots! Scurvy, mange-ridden sons of rock goats, a girl! There, on the beast’s back!”

  Lia glanced around the huge, lamp-lit cavern. Moored Dragonships. Grandion walked slowly along a bustling ledge, overlooked by a wide wooden platform. Everywhere, she saw pale men clad in unfamiliar uniforms of tight azure leather and blue skull-caps, their muscled upper bodies left bare, apparently to display the fantastical, swirling body paint they wore. Aye, there was a girl. She was livid. Reaching out with her white-fire magic, Hualiama performed a desperate hatchet-job of undermining the inexplicable, oily coils she found entwined in Grandion’s psyche.

  GGRRRAAARRGGGH! The Dragon’s battle-challenge resounded in the cavern. A vast, churning fireball roared out of his throat, splashing liberally over the nearest Dragonships and down into what appeared to be a cargo handling area. Flame sheeted upward, enveloping the gantries and observation posts overlooking the operation. Men bellowed in pain.

  Grandion–Islands’ sakes, Grandion, are you sleeping?

  Impressions cascaded through her dazed mind. No response from the Dragon. Shouts and curses from his captors. “Get the Dragon Enchanters!” A quiver ran through the Dragon’s muscles.

  Terror shaped her response. They had to escape! Hualiama tried to scream Amaryllion’s name, but rediscovered that Razzior had done his work too well. Her white-fires seemed to lack use as a weapon. That left ruzal, or the weapons upon her person. Drawing her Nuyallith blade with speed born of instinct, Lia stabbed it into the muscle of Grandion’s left shoulder. The effulgent blue blade slipped several feet into the meat of his main f
light muscle.

  Pain yanked the Dragon into the present.

  GNNAAARRR! This time, his Storm power smashed two Dragonships across the cavern, raising a brief windstorm that had men staggering, falling over barrels and toppling off the edges of gantries.

  Quick, Grandion! Turn around!

  Lia … where’ve I been? Where are we?

  Her shout in Dragonish was like a slap to his jaw. Attack, you ralti-brained–

  Eat this, you sons of dogs!

  The Tourmaline Dragon found his voice and his fires simultaneously. Lia clapped her hands over her ears as a wall of fire and ice swept halfway around the cavern, bulldozing everything in its path and setting the debris afire. Her laughter mingled with the Dragon’s as they surveyed the damage. Fabulous. Now, to escape …

  “Dragon, obey.” A commanding voice seized all the Islands of her world; multiple voices, layered over each other in an eerie almost-harmony. This time, she anticipated the venomous vortex of their magic’s allure. “You are my–”

  Hualiama shouted, “No!”

  The oil-slick magic sucked at her strength, viscous and cold, so very cold, before receding. Grandion shuddered, seeming to shake off the effects with her help.

  Neck swivelling, she searched for the source of the terrible voices. Three men stood in a triangular formation on a gantry above, wearing long blue robes and tall, mushroom-shape hats which buckled with a thick strap beneath the chin. Their mesmerising blue eyes locked upon the Dragon as they raised their right hands in concert.

  Lia, give me your power, Grandion begged. You must–

  “DRAGON, OBEY.” Triple-strong, their voices swelled, cutting off his mental communication instantly.

  “NO!” Her magic staggered the Enchanters.

  For a moment as long as a breath, the oily darkness evaporated. Whipping the Haozi war bow off her shoulder, Hualiama placed an arrow perfectly into the chest of the foremost member of that trio. Adrenaline made her draw so powerful that the arrow protruded a foot out of his back. She nocked a second arrow to the string.

  “ENOUGH.” Lia twitched as an unseen power seized her body. “I WILL DEAL WITH THIS ONE.”

  Helpless, she struggled against succumbing to the voice of a mental giant–an Enchantress, she realised. Unseen hands plucked her off Grandion’s back. Hualiama shot sideways as though she had been swatted by a Dragon, slamming into the wooden support of one of the platforms. She cried out in pain. Mercy. Blood trickled from the corner of her lip. Lia rolled over and tried to stand, but her knees buckled.

  “Dragon, obey,” came the hateful voices in a fivefold chant.

  More of their magicians? Lia’s fingers clawed at the wooden gantry she had landed upon. She groaned, “Nooo … Grandion! I’m coming! Leave my Dragon alone!”

  “You are our slave.”

  Alastior! Don’t leave me! Her cry fell on emptiness. Once more, the Dragon was gone, subverted to the repulsive power of the Dragon-Haters. His wings folded, and the fire which glowed behind his fangs, extinguished in a curl of smoke.

  Bezaldior, if ever I needed your white-fires … she remembered how Grandion had used her fire, charging through Shinzen’s giants as though his entire body were a blade wreathed in irresistible white flame. Raising the Nuyallith blade, Hualiama ignited it. Her eyes blazed. She was a warrior-monk, following the Way of the Dragon Warrior. Distinctly, she felt the heavy tresses of her hair slap against her shoulders and back, leaden with the waves of magic suffusing her body. She sprinted ahead, trying to find a way to reach her Dragon. The workers who had begun to gather to gawk, fell back, giving way to the advance of a well-organised squad of soldiers clutching round shields and unfamiliar, curved blades. They trotted around Grandion’s flanks with a jingle of chainmail armour, keeping their formation with impressive discipline.

  The Dragon shifted away, heedless.

  The Princess scowled at the squad of soldiers, lowering her blade. She growled, “You’re in my way.”

  Perhaps it was the white lightning playing along the length of her blade, or the sight of her eyes, spitting with fury, but the entire squad seemed to draw together with a collective intake of breath.

  One man sidled forward. “I’ll accept your challenge, stranger.”

  Lia barely understood his accent. He was no bigger than the rest, but the easy way he moved proclaimed the man’s skill and confidence. “Let’s just be clear, I’m with the Dragon. Understood?”

  The soldier crooked a finger at her. Ra’aba had once done exactly the same, before teaching her a lesson in swordplay and hurling her bleeding body off his Dragonship, destined for the windrocs. Rage detonated within her breast. For perhaps the first time in her life, Hualiama knew the pure, killing rage Grandion sometimes spoke of when he described a Dragon’s love of battle.

  Dancing forward, Hualiama performed the triple-feint hidden underhand strike technique, designed for use with the single Nuyallith blade. Her thrust pierced his breastplate smoothly. A sweetish wisp of smoke drifted to her nostrils as the man fell. Charred flesh. Lia sprang over his dead body, and charged the rest.

  “REMARKABLE,” said the huge female voice.

  Lia clashed with the soldiers, her kneeling, horizontal sword-stroke powering through two shields and a soldier’s sword-arm. A thrown blade pierced her right bicep. Spinning, a man’s head seemed to leap off his shoulders as her blade passed perfectly between his shoulders and the base of his helmet. She parried smoothly with the Immadian forked dagger in her weaker right hand. Her blades crossed in a fraction of a second. The attacker jerked as her sword-point entered his eye and drove through to the brain.

  “ENOUGH. TAKE HER ALIVE.”

  An Island dropped on top of her head and burrowed inside. Lia could think of nothing but the pain screaming inside her skull, overwhelming all rational thought, all capacity to resist, all that she was.

  Fists and boots battered her head, ribs and abdomen.

  Only oblivion could win such a battle.

  Chapter 28: Enchantress

  “By magic, she broke a Dragon Enchanter’s command-hold.”

  Fingernails tapped upon stone. Tac-tac-tac. An agitated rhythm.

  “She was seated upon the Dragon’s back.” Hard as granite, the soldier’s voice nevertheless conveyed an edge of disbelief and dread. “She fought to rejoin the lizard.”

  Distinctly, she heard the man gulp.

  “Go on.” This voice was icy, as cold as the stone Lia lay upon.

  “Her provisions were strapped upon the beast’s back. She slew four Royal Elites with ease before your grand intervention, Empress. And … she called …” The man faltered. Confined beneath a leather hood, Lia’s nostrils nevertheless flared at the stench of his terror. “She called the lizard b-b-by n-name, Highness. Mercifully cut out my blaspheming tongue, o Fire of the Dawn, I beg you.”

  Silence greeted his words. Hualiama wished she could wake from this nightmare. No. She must take stock. That was what the Master of Shadows, the monk who had trained her in espionage, had always stressed. ‘Assess your situation, no matter how hopeless it appears. There will be a way out.’ Heavy metal fetters adorned her ankles and her legs above the knees, she judged from the chill against her flesh. Her wrists were chained to a belt encircling her waist. Someone had taken advantage of her dancer’s flexibility to shackle her elbows so tightly, they touched behind her back. A leather hood covered her head, while a leather harness forced a chunk of wood between her teeth. She was hurt but alive, resting on her side where she had apparently been thrown. Hope had long since fled. What had become of Grandion? Where was she now?

  “Request denied,” came the woman’s voice. “Continue, soldier. What did she say?”

  “Something like, ‘Grandion’,” the man blurted out. “But definitely, she claimed to be with the lizard, even shouting, ‘Leave my Dragon alone!’ ”

  A low curse issued from the woman. Lia heard a sound like a stick striking flesh.

  “May thi
s pain cleanse my soul,” groaned the soldier. “I thank you, Empress, for deigning to–”

  “You reported well, soldier. The fool Watchman from my Dragonship shall endure five hundred lashes, tomorrow at dawn, on the eastern outlook.” Lia stiffened. That had to be a death sentence. “Belay that. Have him await my displeasure. The Masters will cleanse you with ten lashes. Dismissed.”

  Slippers whispered on the cold stone.

  “What to do with this one, Highness?” asked a new voice. Aged. As cruel as a feral Dragoness. “Surely, no lizard of this Island-World would dare to commit an act of such profanity with a Human?”

  “Aye, Feyzuria. Or one of our people, with a reptile. Abhorrent.” The Empress was the Enchantress of the overpowering voice, Hualiama realised. Of course. She struggled against a tightness clamping her chest and her heart’s leaden throbbing. “She is conscious. Guards! Raise this filth and uncover it, that I might spit upon its hideous, Dragon-worshipping visage.”

  Rough hands grasped Lia’s chains, forcing her into a kneeling position. She felt a tugging at her neck as a soldier unclasped a buckle. Frigid air swirled beneath the hood, providing a small measure of relief to a face taut and swollen after the beating she had received. Her weapons had been taken, she realised. But these Dragon-Haters could not possibly imagine all the weapons which she possessed. The soldiers tore the hood off her head, yanking her head almost to the floor. Then, with a parting shove, they drew back.

  Again, silence. This Enchantress was a master of using silence as a weapon of fear. Clenching her jaw in the manner Elki had always teased her was her ‘determined look’, Hualiama steeled herself, heart and mind. She would not cower before a Dragon-Hater. She was the bearer of Dragon fire.