by Marc Secchia
“Down! Lie still!”
She lay beside the lake in the three-quarters circle created by Grandion’s flank, neck and tail, facing West, to a realm where the last traces of the suns-set laced the clouds with rose and fire. The lake-surface gleamed like the flanks of a brass cauldron sat beside an open forge. At least a hundred Dragons eavesdropped openly on their conversation, while the majority of those gathered on perches, inside tunnel-mouths and alongside the lake for an evening bath, play or courtship, inclined their fire-eyes to the unique pair lying on a black volcanic beach beside the lake.
“I humbly obey your commands, mighty Tourmaline,” Lia said, attempting a flirtatious flare of her fire-eyes.
“Plainly, that’ll be the day the suns fly backward around the moons!” he raged, losing his temper to the tune of an impressive fireball launched over the crater lake.
Mercy. Perhaps more cheek was needed? “You bellowed, my lord Dragon?”
GNNAAARRRRGGGH!
“Allow me, noble Grandion,” said a familiar voice.
“Elki!” Hualiama screeched, springing to her feet, only to stumble and fall flat over Grandion’s hind paw. Elegant. “Elki, is that–oh.” Lia meant to throw herself into his arms as she always used to. As a Dragoness, she summarily flattened the Prince of Fra’anior. Awkwardly, she squirmed off her brother’s chest. “Sorry.”
He made a song and a dance of patting himself down and checking all limbs were intact. “Alright, get over here, beastly sister.” A waggle of his eyebrows accompanied the word ‘beastly’.
For that, she stood–delicately–on his breastbone. “Very funny, Elki.”
“Glad as always to see your devastatingly handsome brother? First Human ever to set foot in Sarzun Dragonhold, let me tell you.” He strained, but failed to budge her paw so much as a half-inch.
“Inspiring application of the natural charm there, Elki.”
“I’d appreciate a touch less sarcasm, Short Shrift. So? Suitably surprised?”
“Bowled over.”
“That’s me,” he grinned. “Islands’ sakes, will you get off–better. What brings your inexpressibly wonderful brother here, you were about to ask?” Elki dusted off his reinforced leather jerkin. “Came to warn you. Your blood-mother neglected to inform you of the penalty if you fly more than twenty-five leagues offshore of the Lost Islands.”
“What, mother dearest doesn’t want to lose her lizard-daughter just yet?”
Grandion made a welcoming gesture with his forepaw. “What penalty, o Prince?”
“Azziala’s Dragon Enchanters perfected a subliminal, geographically bound Command last week. Fly one inch outside the demarcated boundaries, and your hearts will arrest instantly. Mizuki’s, too.” The Tourmaline Dragon bared every fang in his jaw. “Aye. Rather less charmingly, the Empress took the trouble to demonstrate on a sick Red.”
Ugh. Her mother. Hualiama scowled at no Dragon in particular. “So you’re playing messenger boy?”
“I didn’t fancy the alternative.”
“Wise. I’m grateful, too.” She glanced around quickly. “Where’s Mizuki? And Saori?”
“Mizuki–” Elki covered his mouth with a furtive gesture “–is over there. Preening for you-know-who. And my other deadly darling is back at Chenak Stronghold. Hostage. In case I work out how to restart Mizuki’s hearts before we perish in the Cloudlands, perchance. Your mother does enjoy dominating every detail of her disloyal vassals’ lives.”
Brother and sister chuckled darkly, like evil twins contemplating a bloody rebellion.
Chapter 5: The Blooding
Affurion had been behaving as if he was oblivious to the Copper Dragoness’ presence as he spoke to a group of grizzled Dragon Elders, but Hualiama had to stifle a chuckle as he broke away from them and sashayed along the shoreline toward their group. Oh, aye? That proud arch of the neck, the flexion of his powerful thigh-muscles, and the bared talons tearing up rock and sand with unnecessary force? He was twice the fraud she could ever be.
Nearing them, Affurion called, “Noble Star Dragoness, is this Prince Elka’anor of Fra’anior?”
“My brother, the Prince–we call him Elki for short,” said Lia, with an uncoordinated sweep of her left wingtip. “Elki, it’s my pleasure to introduce the mighty Affurion, leader of the Lost Islands Dragons.”
“May the most sulphurous blessings of the Great Dragon abide with you and your kin, noble Affurion,” said Elki, with a very proper Fra’aniorian bow–five hand-twirls each accompanied by a complex dance-step. Mercy, when had that sweetmeat-stealing scamp turned into a diplomat? “I am Elka’anor, Prince of Fra’anior, and I am honoured beyond words to be the Dragon Rider of Mizuki, the Copper Dragoness.”
“Aye, I had the honour to meet Mizuki as an ally in battle,” said Affurion, who knew exactly who the Copper was, but was playing his part to the hilt. Lia felt her fires roll in her belly like a Human rolling her eyes. “She is indeed magnificent.”
Said at a tone and volume guaranteed to carry to the attentive ears of a certain Dragoness. Naturally.
Affurion continued, “You must tell me more about this Dragon-Rider partnership, o Prince. For it is only for the Star Dragoness’ sake that we allowed a Human foot to tread within the portals of Sarzun Dragonhold. This bond-magic intrigues me.” The Prince bowed in assent. “But now, as you appear recovered after bringing the sacred gift of starlight into our presence, o Star Dragoness, I wish to formally invite you to the ceremony of First Blooding. Although we Lost Islands Dragonkind have a few customs peculiar to our realm, it is not dissimilar to the celebration granted to all Dragon hatchlings after the first week of their life. Yours has been delayed, but I would request the honour of proposing that the Blooding be performed here, at this ancient seat of draconic authority, and that your prime benefactors, in the absence of your true shell-father, shall be the Tourmaline Dragon and the Prince.”
Hualiama looked to Grandion, intrigued. Many scrolls of Dragon lore she had read hinted at this ceremony, but mention was always accompanied by a moniker or margin note that the ceremony was secret and of obscure origins, an oral tradition never handed down in written form.
The Tourmaline voiced a weighty rumble, made by deliberately stoking his belly-fires while leaving them trapped behind the powerful sphincter muscles controlling his fire-stomach. Common life, common blood, common fires. Aye. A pleasingly draconic proposal.
Affurion turned to Elki. I honour-much, said the Prince, in his broken Dragonish.
Lia lowered her muzzle. It shall be as you wish, noble Affurion.
At once the stalwart Brown, half again as long as Grandion but much leaner and more snake-like in the torso, flared his double wings and pointed his muzzle to the sky, trumpeting, ARISE TO THE BLOODING!
His evocative bugling pierced the early evening with the sweet, clarion note of a trumpet. At once, a group of fledgling Overminds burst out of a nearby roost-cave, laughing and exclaiming with excitement. A posse of several dozen stolid Grunts shambled down to the lake shore, accompanying an Elder who stood head and shoulders above the rest. He was a Dragon of such great age, his eye-fires appeared rheumy and dim, and he leaned heavily on the shoulder of a young helper with the stump of one amputated wing. Lia saw family groups gathering in the mouths of caves, from the largest grey Grunts to tiny Swarm hatchlings, barely a foot long but already filled with the energy of sackfuls of mosquitoes. The pinpricks of eyes drew together, the massing of incandescent orbs driving back the darkness until the vast caldera assumed the function of a natural amphitheatre, a strange realm gleaming between the vaulting, velvety sky, the jutting fire-lit cliffs, and the still, still lake below.
Upon the tranquil waters, Lia saw the reflection of stars and blazing Dragon eyes commingled, as if to depict a portent of her life, although its exact meaning eluded her.
Shell-daughter of Istariela and Fra’anior. White and Black. As Elki would say, roaring rajals! Every hair on her Human’s neck stood to attention lik
e a solider on the parade-ground … and that was a peculiar notion for a Dragon, akin to the scale-tingling wonder that made her shiver now. How did one ever grow into paws such as those that shaped the Island-World?
Not by fretting herself silly over the unattainable.
Rising, Hualiama indulged in a prolonged and delicious stretch of her spine. Fantastic! No wonder felines liked to test their litheness. She paced several impatient circles as Affurion waited for the arthritic Grunt to settle himself nearby, a mere thirty feet from Lia’s position near Grandion’s flank, while Mizuki threaded her way forward before settling on her belly beside Elki.
The Prince whispered, “Can’t help but think there’s ten thousand Dragons out there examining my edible properties, Mizuki.”
“We don’t eat intelligent creatures,” said Mizuki.
“That’s supposed to comfort me?”
“Depends if you’re intelligent or not. Are you?”
The Prince slammed his elbow into the Dragoness’ side, and then performed a silent, wincing dance, clutching his bruised limb. Dragon and Rider were clearly communicating excellently. Now, if Affurion burned for Mizuki, what of Affurion and Saori? Could they be a match? Enter Hualiama from left-stage, the wizened, toothless old matchmaker? She had to laugh at her pretensions.
Affurion raised his sleek muzzle to the sky, his ruff of skull-spikes very modest compared to Grandion’s thicket, and Lia noticed that he sported at least double the number of fangs of the more familiar Western Dragons, a double-row of slim white swords only a foot long–only? Only powerful enough to snap a ralti sheep in half in a single bite! With a visible throbbing of the throat, created by the upper palette vibrating to produce a Dragon’s highest song-notes, Affurion carolled in the Dragonish high-poetic style:
Many the burning ages, amidst the furnace of fire-life nascent,
Of soul-life transcendent, did the ancient Dragon-Spirits,
Upon the winds of cosmic fate, cast their kin to wander,
Even as the starry wanderer does cross our skies this night.
Grandion slipped a rapid thought into Hualiama’s mind, Dragons love to change the words every time, apropos to the occasion. That is why this ceremony will never be written down in the annals of our lore.
Ah. So it was a test of poetic skill as well as memory? Intriguing. Yet she glanced to the comet, blazing noticeably closer overhead. What a mighty comet must have brought the Dragonkind hence, the marvellous First Eggs hid within its belly like a Dragoness pregnant with a joyous abundance of her brood-to-be. Yet Istariela had somehow contrived to steal seed from Fra’anior, and this inference shocked her. Why would the noble Istariela, celebrated of ballad and lore, act like a common thief? Then she had chosen not to share the miracle with Fra’anior, her soul-mate, but rather, to hide her pregnancy from him? Bizarre. Was she entirely whole in mind? Or had she turned to evil?
She had a shell-brother and a shell-sister somewhere in the vastness of the Island-World. One day, she would seek those eggs. Another promise, gladly given.
Yet Affurion moved on, steadily recounting the histories in epic metre of elevated Dragonish, how the great egg-bearing comet had smashed into the world, and how the fires of that unimaginable conflagration shaped the mighty, uncrossable Rim-Wall Mountains and carved out the Cloudlands oceans wherein Land Dragons frolicked in realms as immense as the skies above. From amidst the ashes of destruction rose the Ancient Dragons, born of those star-travelling eggs. Fra’anior, firstborn of the Dragonkind, shaped the Islands with his deft paw and set the habitation of Lesser Dragons and Humans upon the heights, miles above the permanent layer of toxic clouds.
Then, the Brown leader’s tale took an unfamiliar twist.
Following a destructive war between the shell-brothers Dramagon and Fra’anior, Dramagon the Red fled eastward to carve out new lands for himself, far from the great Onyx Dragon’s dominion. Affurion related how Dramagon, having betrayed and sorely injured his older shell-brother in that terrible battle, had stolen a number of Islands and sailed them across the Cloudlands ocean toward the eastern stars. Archaeological evidence and fossilised plant matter suggested that the Lost Islands had once enjoyed a much warmer climate. The Dragon lore recounted how Dramagon had established his domain in the far South-East, near the fortress Shinzen had claimed for his own. But the interference of one experiment with another had led the mighty, misguided Dragon scientist to establish an ‘isolation laboratory’ where he intended to perfect the variants of Humankind and Dragonkind he had conceived of and bred, where the two main races might by centuries-long conflict sharpen each other into the tools he desired. Therefore, he caused the Lost Islands to migrate northward into the frozen latitudes they now occupied, and divided Humankind from Dragonkind by the stroke of his paw, creating the Buffer Zone. Dramagon struck record of this laboratory from memory and lore. Thus, the Lost Islands came to be.
While the elderly Grunt now raised his voice in recounting the genealogies of the Lost Island Dragons, Hualiama contemplated discussing this mystery with Siiyumiel. Surely, he must know the truth of ‘sailing’ Islands? The obvious possibility was that Dramagon had carried the Islands in his paw, or raised them as Fra’anior had been able–but that was not the inference of this retelling.
Her eyes were just beginning to shutter as the Grunt droned on interminably, when Affurion commanded every Dragon’s attention with another of his haunting bugles.
He announced, Two weeks ago, a different starry wanderer was conceived of battle-song, born amidst the fiery rage of fifty wicked Dragons of the West. We of the Lost Isles are honoured above all Dragonkind to witness the birth of a Star Dragoness, she who is spirit-sealed in the likeness of the fabled White Dragoness, Istariela. Moreover, she is Hualiama, named for the promise-star of the ascending fire-promises of the Dragonkind, the star whose light dances beneath the twin suns as they rise above the Eastern Rim Wall. If you search the skies, my kin, with all the strength and cunning of your paw and wing, heart and soul, you might one glorious morn sight Blue-star.
Yet this evening, Hualiama walks among us, a draconic fire-soul incarnate, wreathed in the veriest beauty of wing and scale, who breathes fire like any of us, yet hers are the purest white-fires of starlight. This I declare and aver, for I witnessed with mine own eyes the utter destruction this budding Star Dragoness wreaked upon the enemies of true-fires.
Lia bowed her muzzle shyly as a number of nearby hatchlings and fledglings purred audibly. Now a promise-star? Let it be! However, to be cast as the destroyer made her clench her paws angrily.
Affurion announced, The first Blooding signifies family, and this is the Blooding of heart. Prince Elka’anor, we ask you to represent Hualiama’s family.
A young Dragoness approached Elki bearing raw heart-meat in her paw; she appeared even more nervous than the Human. Elki scooped up a bloody handful.
Feed your sister, said the Brown. Yum. Human-brain was retching in a corner, but her Dragon had no problem with the bite of diced-up heart her brother presented her. A Dragon’s strength flows from the heart. Each time you eat, hatchling, may you be nourished by the heart of your prey. May a hatchling remember and honour the heart that once beat with animal life.
Hualiama bowed her head, and dined fastidiously from Elki’s hand.
Now, more Dragons began to line up on the shore–Grandion first, then the elderly Grunt and Mizuki, followed by several hatchlings not a month or two older than Lia.
Blood, Affurion continued. Blood is the carrier of life, the physical mystery which enables the existence of a soul in flesh, nourishing living creatures with its constant flow. Let a hatchling remember and honour the blood she drinks, and be nourished in soul as much as in flesh, by this life-giving liquid.
She drank from the Tourmaline Dragon’s cupped paw, acutely conscious of his proud, adoring gaze.
Gristle. Even the less tasty parts perform a function. May a hatchling be reminded that all Dragonkind were created with a purpo
se, from the least to the greatest, from the ugliest to the most beautiful. Gems may be hid within dross. May a hatchling eat gristle and be nourished, just as all Dragonkind nourish the magical life of the Island-World.
She ate.
Joints, Affurion continued. Joints remind us that no life is able to successfully exist in isolation. Just as the organism depends upon joints and ligaments for locomotion, so let a hatchling be reminded of the great network of life surrounding her, and may she be nourished, strengthened and protected by this life-affirming truth.
She crunched down a mound of knucklebones.
So the blessings and admonitions continued, some simple, some profound. Meat. Muscle. Intestines–oh, how fondly she remembered Flicker’s delight in slurping down intestines! Bone. Brains, for the seventh sense of prescience. Tongue. Hide. Blood vessels. Stomach. The liver, symbolically linking the filtering of blood to the way a Dragon’s perception filtered the world’s reality and presented it to the senses. Kidneys. Nothing was forgotten, no part left unexplained, until the night was far advanced and Hualiama’s belly swelled like a firm little barrel, squeezing her ribcage from the inside.
The ceremony of Blooding culminated with a final blessing from Affurion, Grandion and the Grunt Elder, who went by the name of Tome. They cried in concert:
Blood of our blood, bone of our bone,
May your life be nourished, its destiny known,
For in the great congregation of Dragons, when new flame is born,
All Dragonkind raise the joyous anthem …
Every Dragon in the congregation joined them in a thundering finale:
She lives! She breathes!
Blessed eggling, born to fly,
SHE IS BORN!
Utterly sated, Hualiama slept.
* * * *
Come the dawn, the Tourmaline woke her with a gentle paw. “Wake up. Time to hunt, my beauty.”
