by Marc Secchia
In the maelstrom of power, she knew tranquillity. Lia whispered, You taught me that death is only a new beginning–Bezaldior!
The world shifted.
Perhaps in the place where pure and noble desire met desperation, where the will knew no other way save incoherent, desperate, soul-excoriating hope, the numinous might be compelled to pierce the present reality–or was the truth that those white-fires were always present, and a person simply lived among them, unaware?
Lovingly, she breathed fire over the egg. Let it be.
Elki yelped, slapping at his smouldering trousers, but Hualiama merely lifted the precious egg away from him, into the air, and exhaled again. A veil of shimmering fire expelled, impossibly, from her Human lungs, as if the air was transubstantiated into fire in the very act of breathing. Yet this was not physical breath, but rather, an expression of the outpouring of her spirit.
A dragonet danced fleetingly in the fire, so rapidly present and gone that all she saw was the afterimage upon her retinae, and then … a quiver!
“Mercy!” Lia almost fumbled the slick ovoid.
Kneeling now, cupping the jewel-like egg in her palms, Lia felt a distinct tapping against her palms. Her tears fell like sultry rain, unstoppable. Just beyond the rocking egg, Elki’s eyes were as round as wine goblets, brimming over with wonder. “Did you just … did you?” he whispered.
“I think I did. Well, not consciously.”
“Aye, I know,” he breathed. “You performed a Hualiama dance-step. One small step for Hualiama, and the world sang, ‘O death, thou art not welcome here’. Not this day.”
He quoted from the Lay of Rolodia, a ballad based on tragic events two hundred years before … yet her mind had no space for contemplation, for the egg wriggled as if to communicate delight. Then the tapping began again, becoming sharper and more insistent by the moment. Lia encouraged the eggling in Dragonish, speaking tenderly over it, promising warmth and welcome and love.
Tap-tap-tap. What a travesty to crack such a beautiful egg, with its pearlescent outer shell that trapped and refracted prisms of light … scratch-scratch … yet was not birth a kind of wrenching, a breaking free of the sheltering womb or eggshell, a portrait of life’s struggle for survival from the first? So it was for the eggling. For long minutes, as Hualiama wondered how her mother could not possibly have detected the magic unleashed nearby, the eggling tapped and scratched and scrabbled inside the egg with its tiny claws, and then before her astonished eyes … crack. A chink opened. No, a fissure. The white point of a nose peeked out as if to scent the world for the very first time, a delicate bud no larger than her thumb, crowned by a sharp, tooth-like bone that Hualiama realised was used for breaking open the shell. It withdrew, then attacked the eggshell once more as she sang mellifluously:
He breathes! He burns!
The Dragonsong of living fire,
Blessed eggling, born to fly.
The tiny creature stilled as if to listen to the notes of her song, then trilled inquisitively, Eep?
Suddenly, there was a flurry of movement within the shell. Lia did not know what to do. Cradle it? Put it down somewhere? Wipe her wet eyes? Fearful of dropping her rather lively burden, she drew it toward her lap. Elki’s eyes had become no narrower; was that a suspicious hint of moisture trapped in the whiskers of his left cheek? He mouthed, ‘Priceless.’
Indeed. What price, a life? A small, contrary part of Lia which had protested the breathing out of her spirit, suddenly expanded with realisation. She had not lost anything. Nor had she given up, or sacrificed part of her fire-soul. Instead, miraculously, she had multiplied Flicker’s gift into this living soul.
Chip-chip … crack! With a sharp report, the eggshell suddenly split in two, and there, in her palms, lay a perfect little dragonet curled up nose to tail, as white as snow with the daintiest pink trim around his talons and muzzle, the undersides of the wings, and the pinprick-small scales around his flaming eyes, which were no bigger than the fingernail of her smallest finger. Stretching luxuriously, the dragonet uncurled to a surprising length, at least seven inches from muzzle to tail-tip; exquisite in every detail, down to a decidedly rotund little pot-belly. Her eyes drank deep of his beauty. Breath-stealing. Humbling. Was this an echo of how mothers felt when they beheld their newborn for the first time?
The little male cocked his head sideways, exactly as Flicker used to, to examine her person. Eep?
“Wow!” said Elki.
Startled, the dragonet sprang to Lia’s shoulder, his claws pricking painfully as he managed to entangle himself in her hair. Easy, little one. She raised her hand; the dragonet squeaked, Eep! She laughed softly. No biting. I’m a friend.
The little creature hissed and warning-nipped at her knuckles.
The Prince laughed again. “Why, Hualiama, I do believe you’ve become a mother. Congratulations.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “Aye, I laid an egg. Well done, me.”
An inrush of breath clued her in to the fact that Saori was lying abed, well hidden by a pile of pungent orrican furs these Lost Islanders swore were better than blankets. Her almond eyes were aglow, the smile curving her lips, as unconstrained as Lia had ever seen of her.
“That was beautiful,” Saori said, perhaps referring also to the life stirring within her womb. “What was that many-coloured flame? Did you just soul-transfer to a dragonet?”
“Mercy, I suppose … I did?” said Lia, as darkness swirled around the edges of her vision. The last she remembered was the sensation of falling toward her brother’s lap.
* * * *
“You slept for three days,” Saori growled. “Your dragonet’s been an absolute pest, refusing to leave your side–save to eat the eggshell. Is that normal behaviour?”
Eep! Eep! Eep!
A white rocket shot into the furs piled upon her chest. Alright, little one. Alright. I’m awake. Rescuing the frantic dragonet from his misdirected flight, Lia brought him to her lips and dropped a kiss on top of his head, which had a prickly ruff with skull-spikes just half an inch long, and points as sharp as daggers.
Frreep! protested the dragonet, expelling a tiny curl of smoke.
“He doesn’t like kisses,” Saori observed.
“He’ll soon learn–like someone else I know.” Lia brought the dragonet to her neck, where he snuggled against her pulse.
“Break another of your fingers?” the warrior returned, but without the slightest trace of heat, apart from the traces of pink that infused her cheeks. “What’ll you call him? Why did you sleep so long? Overuse of magic?”
“Aye,” growled Elki, who also coloured as Lia’s gaze lit on him sewing one of Saori’s tops with a fish-bone needle. Domesticated, her brother. “How much magic does Shapeshifting require? And healing? How are you feeling, Lia? You looked awfully pale and worn that day you passed out. Poor, fainting little Princess.”
The growl that emerged from beneath the blankets was a thousand leagues from proper Princess-behaviour.
“Never mind, my little lambkin, big brother saved you from scraping your exceedingly lovely nose on that nasty, cold floor.”
“Elki!” Saori and Hualiama snapped in concert.
Nonetheless, Saori leaned over Lia to feel her forehead. “Hmm. Definitely Dragoness-temperature.”
“Whaaa … fine, you two pranksters,” Lia huffed, struggling to rise from her pillow. Still so enervated? “Missed me, perchance? Let’s see–aye, that magic sapped far more from me than I expected. My Dragoness is probably due to make an appearance, just as soon as I can figure out how to pay her back for making me swim through a lake of Land Dragon poo. I’m feeling well rested, thank you, and may I remind you that I am far more snappish than your average royal? As for a name, I haven’t decided yet. It feels wrong to call him Flicker.”
Erreeep, said the dragonet.
Saori said, “I think he disagrees.”
“Oh, we’re all experts on dragonet hatchlings, are we?” Lia fumed. Eep-eep!
“What does he want now?”
“Food, probably,” said Elki. “I’d want food, if I’d eaten a bellyful of eggshell. I’ve always wondered why there’s so little dragonet-shell to be found around Fra’anior. Now we know.”
Hatchlings eat shell to aid bone growth and scale-hardening, said Dragoness-Lia.
Thanks. Lia repeated this for her brother and Saori.
“I’ll fetch food and water,” Elki volunteered.
“For five,” Saori pointed out.
Hualiama tickled the dragonet’s tiny white spine-spikes with her forefinger; he took a playful nip at her hand, then with a joyous trill, burrowed beneath the pillow-roll. A slight quivering there and a querulous chirp betrayed expectation. “He wants to play,” she laughed, prodding the pillow-roll. Eep-eep-eep! The dragonet batted her fingers, claws sheathed. “Come here, you bundle of mischief. Let’s see if we can raise a growl out of you, you big, bad dragonet.”
Soul-transfer?
What was the gift Amaryllion had bestowed upon her, that day he breathed the fire of an Ancient Dragon into a Human girl? She could not keep this gift to herself. She must learn what it meant; how to find ways to pass it on to others, for that was what she sensed Amaryllion had purposed. The gift was for many.
A smile touched her lips. An Ancient Dragon’s instruction-manual to mystical gifts might have proven handy, rather than navigating as if on a starless, moonless night. Aye, but she sensed she was beginning to grasp the Balance represented by a tiny dragonet’s new life. It inspired a girl to dance.
Flinging aside her bedcovers, Hualiama stretched her limbs. Aye, life was a dance.
Dance was laughter.
Laughter could drive away her fears, for a time.
* * * *
Your life is a Dragonsong of dance, shell-daughter.
Hualiama startled so hard, she leaped out of her Dragon-hide–and then back into it. Manifestly, her Shapeshifter magic wavered away from her Human form and back to scale and hide, leaving her shaken. She whirled. Fra’anior!
Island-flipping, sneaky-pawed monster! How did an Ancient Dragon of his size sneak up on anyone? Was this a waking dream? Disconcerted, she could not summon so much as a puff of irritated breath.
The great Onyx regarded her with the quadruple grandeur of four heads jutting out of his habitual thunderstorm, eight massive draconic orbs roiling with fire and spitting lightning, and his own personal thunderstorm prowling and growling about his long necks. He had the awe and reverence part polished to a gemstone gleam, Dragoness-Lia decided, having to stiffen every joint to keep from quailing. He who overshadowed Islands must have grown accustomed to intimidating–well, the rest of creation, more or less. But then even Fra’anior’s heads, in concert, did a double-take. His eye-fires flared in surprise.
We are honoured, shell-father, said Human-Lia, slipping her hand into her Dragoness’ paw. Again, she found herself on that mountaintop above Fra’anior, but her instinct refused to accept that she dreamed. We dance to try to build an understanding of Harmony, as best we can.
We? Two of thee? Fra’anior’s mouths dribbled streams of fire.
Aye, this is my pet Human, said the Star Dragoness, but her voice cracked on the word ‘pet’, spoiling her cheeky statement.
Human-Lia just laughed merrily. Ah, mighty Fra’anior, meet my Dragonsoul. She’s pure mischief, but such a delight, I’m grateful … to her–she gulped–for my life.
Fra’anior just stood there, leaking multiple waterfalls of liquid orange flame. Then he shook himself from heads to faraway, unseen tail, she presumed. One soul? Human, or Dragon? One of the heads descended precipitately to examine her, so closely that Hualiama felt the heat of his burning eye. Mighty magic swirled within, reaming her through and through. Then he snorted, Only one fire-soul; thou hast but one. ‘Oh, thou two-tailed Dragon, how thou lashest thy foes!’
Lia smiled at the quotation from the Saga of Magioral Forlar, a famous Green Dragon of yore. I have but one tail, mighty Fra’anior, said her Dragoness–
–But what a tale it is, Human-Lia put in.
And that tale I will extract from thy sassy hide, the Onyx thundered in response, but he moderated his tone immediately. Fear not, little mouse. I am merely unaccustomed to … to having a shell-daughter. Listen. Long have I meditated upon the conundrum of this Empress’ Command-magic. There is a power which was known to my Istariela–while she sojourned amidst mine beloved Islands …
Hualiama would not have believed it, but as Fra’anior’s voice thickened, she realised what she should always have known–he had feelings. Powerful, raging feelings. His third heart, if he had but three, could be wounded. It had been.
He said, It is called the Word of Command. I believe Azziala, she who thou called the mother of thy Human form, uses a debased form of this magic. To combat it, thou must summon the ruzal–
No! No, please …
Aye, o fire of mine eye. A perilous path indeed.
Both of her forms shook their heads, taking in each other’s dread. “No, Fra’anior,” said Human-Lia, placing her slim hand upon her Dragoness’ shoulder. “Say it cannot be.”
The Ancient Dragon replied, Command magic is unique among the disciplines. It must be verbalised. Once spoken, the effect is immutable–it cannot be un-spoken. Natural magic may combat it or resist over time, but as I just saw in thy thought-memories, when that woman spoke the death of thy dragonet, the foul deed was thus instantly accomplished. I thought no power in the Island-World could oppose death–save thine, it seems, though thou must understand how fragile a work was wrought, was it but yesterday in thy time?
Aye. Yesterday evening. But noble Fra’anior, noble shell–Human-Lia’s telepathy stalled. He was too mighty! How could she claim even a fraction of his power, to be cut of such a draconic tapestry? I-I am … afraid. It is too much. Life and death, the mingling of fires and hosting of a soul within me …
To her embarrassment, Lia felt tears pricking her eyes. Her Dragoness stroked her back and shoulders with a warm paw. Peace, Humansoul. We will find a way.
She asked her Dragoness, And safeguard this power from Numistar, Shinzen and Azziala?
The hatchling clicked her talons. Simple–not so, mighty Fra’anior?
Not so, he replied, frowning ponderously. Clearly, her sarcasm washed past him; the tenor of his gaze communicated preoccupation, even dismay. Azziala’s form of this magic operates simultaneously upon the physical and the magi-physical planes of existence. They perform poorly on Humankind, but deathly-well upon the Dragonkind.
If what he said contained so much as a grain of truth, how could she have resisted her mother? Astonishing.
Carefully but firmly, the Star Dragoness said, The purity of white-fires must overrule.
Thou art stout-hearted, mine shell-daughter. Yet I fear this view may be mistaken. For the greater good, thou should ready thyself to unleash the ruzal even should it injure thee.
Dragon-Lia shuddered in concert with her Human girl. Must I suffer in my flesh that the enchained might know freedom?
The great muzzle lowered slowly, past the mountain, until a mighty ruff of skull-spikes soared forest-like above her awed gaze. Her eyes rose and rose. ‘Dragon kebabs!’ her mind wailed in a welter of strange echoes-within-echoes. Fra’anior was insanely huge. He was a beast for whom the honorific ‘mighty Dragon’ had surely been coined, yet failed miserably to capture the skull-bruising, brain-frazzling immensity of his presence. For an instant she was that eggling, terrified and alone, before the girl pressed her shoulder beneath her Dragon-neck, and lifted both hands to clasp her neck just behind the skull-spikes.
Fear not, they said to each other.
Fra’anior’s voice issued from well beneath Lia’s paws and feet, and also from his other heads, until his speech resembled storms thundering and fulminating between themselves. Courage, my shell-daughter. I shall instruct thee in the powers and perils of Command-magic. Yet hear me well. There is a greater danger called u
pon the one who speaks such magic, and this is the battle I fight for thee. Each time thou speakest mine younger shell-brother’s secret name, hast thou not heard? Or apprehended the ambit of this utterance? Tell me, how far does Amaryllion’s secret name resound?
Far, Hualiama said, with dawning realisation. Far beyond this world–doesn’t it, o Fra’anior?
Far and wide, indeed, he agreed. Once more, the head rose, until Hualiama faced what appeared to be a wall of fire–his eye, roiling like a volcano’s restless belly, with colours for which she had no names, as they presented themselves in dancing flame before her magical senses. See? Your world, your existence, is but one of many possible manifestations of life. In some planes of existence there live creatures of vile appetites, utterly unimaginable to thy kind … and they seek power, Hualiama. They hunger for what is thy possession. Numistar is one such creature, but many more incline greedy and insatiable eyes to the beauteous font of thy white-fire magic.
Blonde-Lia whispered, Must we refrain from using his name-power?
I will protect thee in the realms beyond thine ken; this is mine task, a high calling. All I ask of thee is to use these powers wisely and well.
And my task, mighty Fra’anior?
To deny Numistar Winterborn access to the last First Egg of the Ancient Dragons.
Chapter 15: Alastior!
SEVEN STRaight days and nights, Grandion and his Dragon-forces bloodied their claws in battle, before Kaolili’s lines broke.
Two armies brawled over a line of Islands stretching forty leagues from southwest to northeast, numbering one hundred and ten major landmasses, and innumerable smaller rocks and outcroppings which made the pale lime Cloudlands in these parts resemble a shallow, treacherous terrace lake. This area was called the Shintori Archipelago, or more fondly by the soldiers–at first, before they came to curse its rockiness–the Rock-Garden of the East. Following predictable Eastern mentality, five hexagonal forts of identical design guarded the archipelago at meticulously planned intervals, each dark granite-block massif constructed atop an artificial hill of similar standing, some two hundred feet above the otherwise flat, boulder-strewn Islands. Mohili wheat was the main crop of this region; it grew wild, sprouting in five-foot, lime-green streamers from every possible crack and crevice and beneath every black granite boulder, apparently requiring neither encouragement nor active cultivation.
