by Marc Secchia
Snarls hailed his words.
“Dragons! This Human is the daughter of Azziala, leader of the Dragon-Haters. She came to Grandion, shell-son of Sapphurion, and seduced him with promises of ruzal. She rode Dragonback.” His voice throbbed with outrage, making the tall metal bell sing in response. Over the rising thunder of the watching Dragons, Razzior roared, “Now she twists other Dragons to her ways. But I say we are the masters of the air! Lords of every Island! Never will a Dragon be shackled. Our task is clear. We must immolate these Dragon-Haters with our fire, starting with this one right here! Who will speak for this Human?”
* * * *
Sapphurion groaned, “I will … speak.”
As if unchained, Hualiama rushed to the Blue Dragon. “Sapphurion. Mercy …”
The great eyes darkened as his fires receded. Then, the Blue Elder appeared to rally. By his suffering, he commanded their attention. “No Dragon can know peace … while his fires … yet burn! Dragon-kin, I know this hatchling. I raised her in my roost for three years. I fed her from my own paw. There is no fire in her but the fire of Amaryllion Fireborn, the fire-gift of an Ancient Dragon!”
Hualiama bowed, weeping as the great Dragon struggled to speak his last words. “Sapphurion …”
“Warring among ourselves, we grow weak. For the future of the Dragonkind, for the sake of our shell-sons and shell-daughters, let us bind lasting peace between Dragons and Humans!”
He remembered! Long ago, Lia had begged the Dragon Elder to bind his purpose to peace; she had risked all to prevent open war between the Dragons and Humans of Fra’anior Cluster. That stage seemed tiny in comparison, now. Azziala had fallen, but Razzior and Shinzen still vied for the ultimate power.
I have third-heart-loved her as my own hatchling! Sapphurion roared, spitting his words between gouts of blood pouring from his muzzle and neck. Truly she is named the Dragonfriend. Witness how I pass my soul-fires to my beloved shell-son, Grandion. For he is worthy! And my only blindness was not to love his fires from the first.
With that, the great Dragon heaved one final time to his paws. A whisper-storm of fire rushed over Hualiama and poured into Grandion. Sapphurion collapsed. The rasp of his breathing slowed.
Thou my soul’s fires, my guiding star, she heard Grandion whisper.
Sapphurion lay silent.
Razzior pounced! With his paw, he swatted Hualiama aside. “Away from this noble Dragon, beast!”
“What?” Lia groaned as her injured arm struck the Dragon’s Bell. She stumbled to her knees, too enervated to stand. “I–”
“I’ll be the first to celebrate this Dragon’s passing into the eternal fires! I will raise my Dragonsong the loudest and the longest in praise of Sapphurion’s noble deeds,” declared Razzior. Fire leaked from his nostrils to accentuate his words. Very slowly, playing his role to the hilt, he raised his fore-talon to point at the Princess of Fra’anior. “But first, we must execute this liar.”
“I’m no liar!” she shouted. “You twist Dragons to your bidding.”
The Orange sneered, “Her secret gift is even deadlier than the power of these Dragon-Haters!”
“What gift?”
Across from her, Grandion’s muzzle poked out from beneath a pile of Dragon bodies. She saw his fire. If she could hold Razzior’s wrath for a moment longer, might he recover? What strength could oppose Razzior now? He had these Dragons eating out of his paw. She read it in their mood, in the slow, sinuous approach of Andarraz and Tarbazzan, of the Dragons slinking around her, even up the mountainside to gain a view. Razzior’s long, lava-coloured body smoked with the force of his passion; that passion was what drew the Dragons to him, fire to fire. Honeyed words, they would say on Fra’anior. Words to turn Dragons feral with rage.
“She loves a Dragon,” he said, stabbing a claw toward Grandion. “That Dragon.”
Hualiama saw her chance. She could destroy the ruzal. She had to. With its power, the living knowledge secreted inside her being by Ianthine, Razzior would be unstoppable–and the only thing which prevented her from unleashing her dark magic upon him, was that she refused to become like her father. Ra’aba had not mastered ruzal. The magic had used him; burned and destroyed him.
A fate worse than death.
Aye, Razzior’s serpentine voice slithered into her mind. Use your magic. Give it to me.
Desperately she searched the storehouses of her being. Where was the white-fire now? Where was the power of laughter, of dance? Her soul rained sorrow. Only in sacrifice could the light shine, a light that would free Grandion from the taint of her presence.
To the heavens, she shouted, Aye, I love him, heavens have mercy! But he never loved me.
Chapter 36: Dragonlove
ALL DRAGONS WOULD know the truth of her words. Grandion stared, appalled. She truly believed he held no regard for her? Impressions cascaded through his mind. Her laughter. Lia’s song trilling out over his back as they flew that first time together, offshore of Ha’athior. The fires of her soul. A moment of wicked desire as he admired her nudity … that had shaken him down to the paws. How could he feel that way about a Human?
The truth excoriated Grandion. Words and emotions seemed to stick to his shrivelled tongue. In all the time he had known Hualiama, he had never admitted to love. Never found the courage. Now his vaunted strength was spent. His magic, exhausted. What could he give? What could a Dragon do, but unchain his heart and bid it fly?
As he lay unspeaking, the hint of ghostly fire overlaying her being diminished. She meant to die for him. She would die to keep her powers from Razzior, who had stolen so much–and was still stealing, the Tourmaline realised. Razzior had stolen her Word; now, he fed off her power, his ruzal secretly siphoning off whatever draconic or magical power it found in his surrounds. The Orange Dragon was insatiable.
Razzior postured, spitting acid upon the idea of a Human loving a Dragon. He fuelled the furnaces of their rage and pride with visions of the end of draconic power in the Island-World, and promised a new reign of justice–led by himself, of course. Hualiama knelt, apparently submitting to her fate, while all around the rumbling of Dragon-fires swelled until the heat of their fury shimmered the air.
This was wrong!
The Tourmaline began to roar, I–but the weight above him bore down suddenly, redoubled.
Even now, Razzior fought him. The Orange Dragon feared what he could do. Grandion surged, the sorrow-rage granting him the might of many Dragons, but he could not gain his paws. A hundred Dragonkind surrounded his Rider, his peerless Human, and he lay powerless to intervene. Even his telepathic Dragonish seemed to be blocked. Razzior. His mental grip overlaid the Dragons subtly, so gargantuan yet subtle that his kin had no idea they were being manipulated. Heat rose around the draconic shadows–his vision was returning!
Amidst that draconic congregation, Hualiama knelt. Never more beautiful. Never more tragic.
* * * *
“And so, I invite all Dragons of true draconic fires to join me in burning this lawless Dragon Rider, this heinous Dragon-murderer, this child of ruzal, to ashes!”
Razzior’s final challenge sparked a sudden hush of expectation. Fire-eyes and bared fangs surrounded Hualiama, headed by the trio of Razzior, Tarbazzan and Andarraz. To her right hand, Qualiana lay unmoving. Sapphurion’s hearts still beat, occasionally, but the fires had departed from his eyes. Ianthine lay further away, surmounted by Andarraz’s paws. So much death. All, as Razzior had accused her, because of the Dragonfriend. Why had fate cursed her? The Island-World would be a better place without the indwelling darkness.
Grandion seemed unable to speak. Was that an enlivening spark of fire she saw in his eyes?
Now, as Lia prepared to release her spirit, the world’s freshness tantalised her nostrils. Heat stole the breath from her lungs. Streamers of white-fire burnished the sky. The Dragon-battle aloft had paused, as if alive to the knowledge that enfolded her soul in a starkly wonderful truth.
A love tested i
n the crucible of fate must burn, or die.
Through the oh-so-languid blossoming of fires in the multitude of muzzles encircling her, Hualiama saw as through a white tunnel, Grandion’s face. Courage flowed from his spirit to hers. There was no need for speech, though the exhausted, battered Tourmaline’s mouth worked to expel the Dragonsong of his soul. She knew him. He knew her.
In that final instant of silence, all she knew was her soul’s longing for the unattainable, beautiful beyond.
The world exploded.
Hualiama knelt within the heart of a living volcano of Dragon fire. Screaming. Burning. Tormented beyond comprehension. The searing fires turned the rock beneath her knees to slag, and consumed her clothing in a millisecond. Fire lapped and boiled around her as though she soared across heavens ablaze, passing through veils of reality loosened by the all-consuming magic of Dragon fire, and through the thunder resounding in her ears, filling and somehow amplifying the vortex of fire, Grandion’s shout carried to her awareness:
HUALIAMA! HUMANLOVE!
Joy vanquished her grief. Disbelief supplanted the fear. She had submitted to death’s final claim upon her accursed existence, and … what? How could she be alive? Thinking? He … loved her? Her Dragonlove loved her!
Surely, she dreamed.
* * * *
Abruptly, Lia saw stars. Dazzling ribbons of stars adorned a velvet night sky. What? Was this a vision of death? She trod stairs of milky white marble up to a hexagonal colonnade made of the same ethereal stone, silhouetted against the darkness. Barefoot, noiseless, Lia stepped lightly between the columns. At the centre, close enough to touch, she found a huge bed covered in white linens, surrounded by filmy white drapes depending from a vaulting, gazebo-like bedframe.
A girl slumbered upon the bed. Midnight-blue tresses tumbled over the pillow-roll, obscuring her face from view. The Princess of Fra’anior tilted her head quizzically. Despite its improbable colour, the girl’s hair seemed oddly familiar. Apart from a slim hand embracing the pillow, it was the only splash of colour in the entire place.
Why was she here? Hadn’t she been dying somewhere? Burning to cinders?
Memories flitted about in her mind, as teasing as Fra’aniorian fireflies investigating a crimson fireflower.
She felt safe. A sense of timelessness pervaded this scene. Nothing else existed. Slipping between the hangings, Hualiama perched upon the bed’s edge. Did she recognise this girl?
Reaching out, she clasped the other girl’s hand. “Wake up.”
She woke quickly, as though woken from a daydream. She rose on her elbow, keeping hold of Hualiama’s fingers, and whispered, “I’ve waited so long. What kept you?”
Lia gasped, “You’re …”
“Don’t be afraid.” The girl smiled shyly. “I’m Hualiama.”
“I’m Hualiama.”
The desire to know this person trumped the fear that insisted she snatch her hand back. The connection between them was so intense, so deep and inexpressibly sweet …
“You’re me.” For an awkward second, Hualiama was unsure which of them had spoken. “I mean, you’re perfectly me, but … are you me?”
The blue-haired girl chuckled, exactly the same throaty note Lia knew she made. “It’s complicated. I didn’t mean to scare you. I know it must be a shock–”
“I know! I mean, I’ve always known … right, I’ve no idea which Island I’ve landed on. Who are you?”
Reaching up, the girl tucked a strand of platinum hair behind her mirror-image’s ear. “You’re beautiful, Human girl.”
Hualiama looked away, stammering, “O-O-Oh, that’s just freaky.” The girl’s laughter trilled across her embarrassed explanation, “Me telling me I’m beautiful? No. I’m not vain. Am I dreaming? Is this some incipient insanity, the ruzal turning me into an Ianthine or–Islands’ sakes–much worse, my father?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve waited so long, ever since you woke me–”
“I woke you? I woke me?”
Specks of starlight shone in the other girl’s eyes. Impossible! Everything about her was Hualiama, from the way she held her head, to the magic suffusing those blue orbs. She said, “When you cried, ‘Let it be–’ ”
Unbound. Lia shuddered. “You aren’t the ruzal taken form and life–no. I sense your goodness. I unbound you? You were my captive? But I’d never–I’m babbling like a dragonet, aren’t I? My head hurts. How can you be me? Hualiama?”
“Be at peace. All will become clear.”
Lia scowled at herself. “If you really are me, you’d know how much I hate it when people say that.” But she could not suppress the upward curve of her lips which accompanied those less-than-heated words.
The girl wriggled into a kneeling position. Squeezing both of Lia’s hands in her own, she said earnestly, I’m you. We’ve been together since before you were born. I’ve protected us. I took this form because I thought it would help you understand. While I believe we are meant to be together, I could not force myself …
The nuances of Dragonish conveyed so much. Appalling truths. The girl meant how Ra’aba had forced Azziala, how Azziala’s madness had killed her unborn babe, and how the draconic way was to command without question, the way Grandion had dominated her before. Mirror-tears streaked mirrored cheeks. The fragile connection deepened, gathering strength and significance. This girl, this maybe-spirit-creature, was somehow her and not her, as if life indwelled a facet of her pre-existent personality. Understanding filled Hualiama. Conviction. This was right.
They spoke simultaneously, I waited for you.
Love squeezed her heart. Both of their hearts. Bizarre as it seemed, she loved herself, unselfishly and completely, yet with a freshness that touched her soul with astonishment. All the Islands of her world should quake, and they did, but she knew peace.
Blue-haired Hualiama added, through her tears, “I waited in our dreams for you to find the way.”
“Truly, I don’t understand.”
“I know, but if I told you …” Other-Hualiama wrinkled her nose drolly. “I think you’d believe me. But I’d prefer to show you. We love surprises.”
“You’re as cheeky as–me. I’ve so many questions! Who am I? Where did I–or you–spring from? Protecting me, how? Why have you been hiding all these years?” An enigmatic smile was her answer. “Do you have all my memories? Our memories? I don’t have words … I feel as if I’ve known you all my life, but I don’t. What do I call you? Me? Other-me?” Lia begged, “Please. Help me understand.”
“You will.”
“Are you an unborn twin?”
“No.” Her alter-ego’s blue eyes twinkled with gladness; love, even. “Surprises first. Clever guesses later.”
Blonde-Lia growled, “I take it if I swat you, I’ll only hurt myself?”
“Indeed. You’re so me, but you need to go now.”
“How will I find … me, again?”
“Sheer stubbornness?”
That final, mischievous grin exploded into a constellation of stars as an overwhelming force gripped Hualiama. She cannoned into a realm of heat and fire.
* * * *
Irrepressible laughter thundered from Grandion’s throat. Seventy feet away, Razzior’s fire choked off as though the Tourmaline had personally flown over and stuffed it back down his gullet.
Echo upon echo rolled away over the Cloudlands as the Dragons ceased their assault.
Hualiama’s depthless blue eyes–oh, how he longed to see more than the traces teasing his scarred vision–lifted, luminous with power, and her hair shone as though inhabited by the fire which had passed over her, yet left her untouched. Her soul-fires seemed haunted, as though fragments of her life-force still roamed the Island-World.
The Tourmaline knew. His seventh sense knew the truth …
“You herd of feckless, overgrown ralti sheep!” Grandion snarled. “You’ve all the fire of a herd of woolly bleaters. Bring me some real Dragons, not pathetic null-fires a
nd windroc hatchlings. Shall I add some lightning? Maybe you should try burning her again, with hotter fires?”
* * * *
Hualiama’s scandalised cry cut through her Dragon’s laughter. “Grandion!”
The Dragon was mad. She was mad. How could she be standing knee-deep in cooling rock? Lia gaped as Grandion taunted Razzior. He had burned her before. She should know. Her skin … was not even blistered. The heat alone should have turned her to ash. The blast should have blown those ashes over the Cloudlands. Mercy.
The Orange Dragon’s talons raked trenches in the rock as he gaped slack-jawed at the impossible sight of a Human who had survived his most incendiary Dragon fires. Then, his body juddered. His scales shimmered with the fire and heat churning within him. Here it came. Immolation.
Razzior’s rage shook the mountain. White-hot lava gushed from his throat, endless streams of molten rock that pinned Lia against the Dragon’s Bell, swallowing her up. The other Dragons followed suit, producing an unbridled conflagration, a volcanic Cloudlands hell vented upon the lone Human. Unendurable. An orange sea boiled around her. Riven with agony, her sanity threatened to expire in Dragon fire.
She could not believe, but she must, for the torment raged unending. Even death’s Isle would not have her.
Distinctly, she heard Grandion’s whisper in her mind, Dance, my beloved. Become the fire.
What did he know that she could not grasp?
She escaped to the dance. It was the only way. Dance could lead her to the inner flame. The Flame Cycle, always her favourite, captivated her with its mystical depictions of a Dragon’s soul. There, in the crucible of her greatest affliction, the great Black Dragon seemed to smile upon her once more. She danced the soul-dance in honour of Amaryllion. Her bare feet tripped across molten rock, no longer feeling solid ground. She bathed in the fire, breathed it in, welcoming Dragon fire into her soul. Even the sharp pain of her broken arm seemed to diminish, for she was fading now, melding into the glorious fire-dance which had always beckoned and seduced her innermost desires.
