Dragonsoul

by Marc Secchia

  Then decry this fate, o Tourmaline! Deny it! I will not separate my forms. I cannot. Tears pricked her eyelids warmly, but she blinked them away. Not now. Not when she needed to be vigilant. We made oaths. But my Dragoness and I, we are one. Kill one, you kill both. Suppress one and she will die. What is done cannot be undone.

  And should not be, he shot back.

  Hualiama looked down in surprise. She was certain they were rushing through the air, but in the intensity of their conversation, the world’s doings slowed to a crawl. She saw a rat peering up at them, its paw frozen in the act of raising a small, gristly bone to its gaping mouth.

  What do you mean? Don’t you experience self-doubt, Dragon? Is everything so straightforward to you, every problem solvable?

  No.

  Then speak. What will you do, Grandion?

  I … I don’t know! But I know I love you, Blue-star, as the stars love the–

  Love is not enough. She sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath of realisation. It’s the brutal, unadorned truth, Grandion, my sweet, sweet darling. I cannot be other.

  No! he groaned, the communication between them private, tense, throbbing with grief and anger, hurt and shattered hope. At the speed of thought, their conversation raced onward. The rat was only starting to register surprise.

  Isn’t that the draconic way? To speak true-fires as we see it?

  It is … the great Dragon gulped. His mind worked so furiously, an image of waterfalls of mental fires played within her mind. I can … I will find a way, impossible as it seems.

  Do not speak to me of ways. My father Ra’aba found such a way with Razzior, and it was a perversion, Grandion. Such evil. And I fear I am similar.

  The Tourmaline seemed to want to shake her; what lay deep within him could not find expression. He struggled, fought, kicked at the goads and failed to articulate the great waves of emotion crashing through his breast. At length, he snapped:

  Never. Not that. If you truly are the shell-daughter of Istariela and Fra’anior, then there must be a way, a power–

  This is not about powers, my third heart! Her cry cut him short, cut him to the quick. This is about souls, about the elemental mysteries of life itself–

  You transferred a soul into a dragonet.

  We cannot be together, Grandion. I cannot be that person, bargaining with souls, shaping life–no person should be. I am so sorry I never told you about Fra’anior, but it was too immense, too crushing; a heritage far more than I could face, to learn that after all this … I still cannot have my parents. Only your shell-parents were true.

  I AM TRUE! He thundered mentally, then stilled just as quickly. I was not, before, but now I am. White-fires of truth wreathed his words. Lia knew a mighty declaration was coming; her entire being froze somewhere between wonder and outright horror as he said, very slowly, This I swear upon my honour and fire-life as a Dragon, Hualiama–

  –Nooooooooo! Grandion!

  He paused. What do you think I’m going to say?

  Hualiama threw up her hands mentally, and then on second thoughts, swatted his inward grin with a psychic paw sized to please her shell-father. Something as reckless and wholly impracticable as this Dragoness-girl I know?

  Exactly. Whiter burned his fires, until in her mind, Grandion’s presence shone as brightly as her own star-fires. Pure belief, without a trace of a shadow. For if I love thee greatly enough, o song of my third heart; if I love thee more greatly and widely and deeply and intimately than a Dragon has ever loved his beloved, then I swear I shall change my fires and magic for thy sake, o Hualiama of Fra’anior. A third time I swear, that if truly I do love thee, I shall become as thou art. I shall become Human.

  Almost it leaped off her tongue to scorn his draconic pride, when a familiar perturbation shook the inmost fabric of her world.

  A vow. Thrice spoken, once ordained.

  Aloud, she whispered, Oh beautiful Tourmaline, who is all of mine heart, what mighty deed hast thou wrought?

  I have wrought love.

  * * * *

  The Tourmaline Dragon emerged from his inner dialogue with Hualiama, cleansed. Renewed. The world burned in shades of splendour so inexpressible, his hearts wept.

  Hualiama! His was the Dragonsong of love.

  And though the world’s rushing intruded upon his senses, he knew only an abiding sense within his deepest fires that he could only describe as consecration. At last, after so many disasters, a Tourmaline Dragon had spoken a true word and the voices of the ancient Dragon Spirits had honoured him. What did it mean? Must he divest his Dragon hide for Human flesh? He knew not, but he trembled. Destiny engulfed his fire-life and the feeling was so unadulterated, so exquisite, that all else paled into insignificance. Arise, o Grandion! Arise to love a living star!

  The Dragon shadowed Raiden closely as the Blue oriented on Shinzen’s towering pavilion, watching the quadruple catapult-strike rip through the tent’s walls and through the inner chamber, and he saw … nothing. The Warlord was not present. Of course.

  Alert! Sound the alarm!

  Grandion’s mental bellow was directed tightly enough at Zulior, Raiden, Vinzuki and Makani that no other Dragon heard; at once, the Red Elder changed his course to angle directly skyward, casting about with sight and magic and every Dragon sense at his disposal to sniff out the danger.

  He snarled down at Raiden, We complete the experiment, but watch the skies.

  On Raiden’s back, the crossbow engineers reloaded proficiently. Jin snapped, “Targets, Grandion?”

  “Fire at will!”

  Some unseen, unheard signal passed through the camp. Giants scrambled out of their tents, fully armed and ready for battle. What was this, Grandion wondered? Had they stumbled across a secret night-time assault?

  Thwack! Thwack! The first two crossbows fired true, pinning a pair of Giants squarely through their torsos. The third missed, but Jin did not miss his shot, feathering an arrow perfectly through the slit in the visor of a Giant who flashed by beneath them. The fourth crossbow bolt sprang aflame. So, the oil and spark-stone trick had worked. The Dragon’s eyes followed the bolt’s path into a pile of supplies.

  Barrels … KAAABOOOMM!

  The Dragons rocked violently as a mini-volcano of oil barrels exploded in sheets of flame a hundred feet high. Strengthen shields, he ordered, knowing the light would reveal their presence. No time for optics. They had to find out what mischief Shinzen was fomenting.

  Hualiama’s bowstring sang. Another Giant dropped in his tracks. Others sprang aloft, taking wild swipes at the Dragons passing overhead. Raiden took several blows to his shield but held firm, his paws snapping out to decapitate one luckless Giant who jumped better than his fellows.

  “Catapults take too long to reload,” Lia muttered.

  “Fifty Dragons-worth?” Grandion inquired.

  “Hmm. And how many tens of thousands of those green-headed lizards?”

  They shared toothy grins, briefly. Grandion spitted a Giant on his talons and cleaned his paw with distaste. “Tough as Dragons, aren’t they? Dramagon must have mixed in qualities drawn from the Dragonkind.”

  Below, Raiden’s catapult engineers rapidly worked the winches, tensioning their weapons. The loader dropped in a bolt as soon as the tough cord was fully tensioned, settling it in a groove running the length of the weapon. ‘Clear,’ each man called as the loading completed. Their fellows took aim, fingers curled on a trigger just beneath the weapon as they sighted along the shaft. Then came a sharp twang followed by whap! as the bolt crashed home, hopefully accompanied by a yell of pain.

  “There!” cried Grandion, echoing Zulior’s cry, far above.

  Hualiama saw a dark river of Giants pouring toward the moat on the city’s western periphery. Orange Dragons flew ahead of them, but rather than attacking the defenders on the wall, they began to cast themselves bodily into the moat! Quickly, a pile of bodies built up. The Tourmaline snarled something acerbic beneath his breath as the living bridge g
rew before their disbelieving eyes. Lia rubbed her eyes. Why not just airdrop Giants into the city? What was this?

  Lia said, “My guess is this is punishment for failing to kill us in the South. The Warlord is stamping his authority.”

  The pile was ten feet above the waterline and growing. Dark specks flew over the ramparts as the defenders threw down oil barrels, then came a massive explosion as Ryuki the Red did what his colour loved most. On his back, the Human girl gasped softly.

  “This is war,” growled the Tourmaline. “But those are not Dragons. They are worms. Come. Fly with me.”

  Shinzen had clearly decided the Dragons’ entire role in his initial attack would be to pave the way for his Giants to assault the city. And Humans called the Dragonkind arrogant?

  Orange Dragons continued to fling themselves on the burning pile, coming under withering fire from the battlements. The bodies slid about, slick with water and boiling juices, but the sheer mass and weight anchored Shinzen’s bridge within the moat, and bodies continued to pile against the wall, quickly covering the spikes and reaching upward. In the background, the Giants waited in a single dark mass, several thousand individuals in number.

  “Shinzen!” Hualiama cried, pointing.

  There he was. Head and shoulders taller than his kin. His black scale armour made him look like an upright-walking Dragon. A leather belt over a foot wide girdled his midsection, holding a pair of massive hammers. Upon his head, a silver helm crowned the dark, flowing hair, overshadowing a furrowed brow that was as craggy as it was brutishly majestic. Grandion’s right paw fisted. Hualiama had cast herself into that Giant’s paw to rescue her Dragon.

  Shinzen’s hands rose. He flung them outward, smashing two Western Dragons out of the sky. Where they landed, the Giants descended like an oily river, their hammers rising and falling in a dreadful rhythm.

  He’s mine, snarled the Tourmaline. The siege of Kerdani has begun.

  Flexing his talons, he summoned Hualiama to the battle.

  Chapter 23: Giant Rage

  RAiden flowed below Hualiama and Grandion, his Riders picking targets with ease. Crossbow bolts smashed into the unmoving press of Giants, gathered before the eighty-foot ramparts with chilling immobility. Hualiama saw several bolts penetrate two Giants, pinning them together. Mere flea bites on the body of the beast. Her vision, sharpened by Dragon sight, focussed narrowly on Shinzen. He had dangled her from his paw. She had danced for him; tried to assassinate him. Why was he here, if not seeking the power secreted within her being by Ianthine, the mad Maroon Dragoness?

  Once, she had absconded from Shinzen’s lair aboard a blind, captivity-weakened Dragon. Now she rode a fit, battle-hungry beast against the Warlord. Potentials surged within Grandion’s breast. Storm. Ice. Lightning.

  White-fire lightning, she said, touching his powers. Melding with him. Giving her strength to the Dragon, curiously, for how could a Human be the more powerful creature? Yet she was starlight enwrapped around a core of Onyx. He was the readiness of paw and scale, the hair-trigger reflexes, the sculpting of ice and lightning in flawless tourmaline gemstone.

  Grandion swooped, steadying, feinting for the right flank of Shinzen’s forces. The Warlord ignored the Dragon’s subterfuge, sprinting toward them. Lia suspected they had one strike.

  She shouted, Alastior, arise!

  The Tourmaline stiffened. Shinzen thundered on, raising his hammers.

  GRRRAAANDION!!

  The Dragon’s challenge deafened her. His muzzle snapped sideways. A shaped bolt of lightning-chased ice rocketed out of his throat, centred on Shinzen’s torso. Simultaneously, oily black fire spat from the Giant’s hammers. Lia had a second to think that the Giant wielded a variant of ruzal; that there would be negation or cancellation. Instead, magic detonated between them. A giant paw slapped Grandion sideways. Shinzen flew backward, literally flew, having sprouted eight-foot shards of ice in his belly and left shoulder.

  Lia saw and comprehended in slow, unfurling snippets of awareness. Grandion’s mind winked out, unconscious. Shinzen slammed into a squad of his Giants, knocking over two dozen. The explosion catapulted her helplessly off Grandion’s back before the Dragon crash-landed; she saw the flash of an armoured belly and then keerump! She bounced off a Giant, perhaps a scout, who had been crouching ahead of the main force. She found her knees, shaking her head. The Giant’s face was bellowing, but she could not hear so much as a whisper. He raised his hammer. Boom! The shock conducted through her feet. Lia forward-rolled under the rotating, flaccid body of the Tourmaline Dragon as he bounced over her and slammed into the Giant, breaking his neck with a terrible crunch of bones.

  Good. That left her standing next to an unconscious Dragon, facing a few thousand peeved Giants. And Shinzen. The black eyes gleamed like obsidian as he considered the girl straightening up, her hands loose, not immediately leaping to her swords.

  Then he rose with massive, deliberate menace, wiping crimson off his mouth.

  No Giant moved. Shinzen hefted a war-hammer in his left hand, then pointed it at her. Dragon fire slammed down not ten feet behind him. A crossbow quarrel pinned a nine-foot thug to his left, and the Warlord did not twitch an eyebrow.

  “You have my ruzal, girl.”

  The ears were working again. She said, “Come and fetch it.”

  Oh, Humansoul, the Dragoness groaned inside of her. Baiting the Giant?

  How’s about we help each other?

  To the Giants either side of him, Shinzen growled, “Slay the lizard. Leave the girl for me.”

  He flexed those gigantic shoulders, before plucking a shard of ice out of his stomach. He tossed the bloodied chunk aside. Reaching up with his left hand, Shinzen yanked the piece out of his shoulder; it had pierced him clean through the torso below the collarbone, but that seemed little bother.

  Whirling the hammer from hand to hand, Shinzen stalked her. He said, “I’ve heard that Numistar Winterborn seeks a Princess of Fra’anior. Could it be she seeks my prize? Or could the answer be more … starry?”

  Hualiama breathed deeply, centring her mind on the Nuyallith forms, trying to keep somehow between the ranks of advancing Giants, Shinzen, and Grandion. What did he know? Did news travel this fast amongst the evildoers of the Island-World?

  Wake up, Dragon! Wake …

  Acid! Crossbow bolts! The Giants leaped forward as Dragons attacked from above; Hualiama ducked at the passing swish of Makani’s claws as the Grey wheeled overhead, collected five blows from leaping Giants before her boiling-glue attack splashed over them. Giant-flesh melted like water where her glue struck and stuck.

  Hualiama’s hands rose. Fra’anior, if ever I needed your strength, NOW!

  Shinzen’s power slammed outward from his hammer. She met a moving wall of air and fire with the twin blades crossed in front of her face, the iron-hands technique cleaving the force as his dark fire passed either side of her body. Hualiama drew the blades apart, calling upon her Dragonsoul’s fire to imbue all she had learned from Master Khoyal.

  Then she darted sideways, engaging the Giants closing in on Grandion’s prone form.

  Fire flowed along her arms and hands in living rivers, turning red and blue as it passed along her blades. Hualiama whirled into the advance. Her blades streaked the night with colours as she tore into the Giants nearest Grandion, by sheer desperation forcing them back, by the power of blades slicing through flesh and armour with predatory abandon. She danced lightly beneath flying hammers and leaped up onto Grandion’s nose before diving off again to break apart a knot of Giants aiming for his head.

  Roaring, “She’s mine!” Shinzen waded through his own men, flailing with his hammer.

  The air froze around Hualiama. She shattered that hold with a laugh, the ruzal joining in gleefully, conflicting, pulling her defences apart as it slithered between her and the knowledge of Nuyallith, corrupting the forms.

  The Warlord pounced! Hualiama rolled aside, her now-dark left sword skittering off his leg arm
our. Raiden and Vinzuki hovered directly overhead, braving the danger of leaping Giants as their Riders and crossbow-men made their shots count.

  Again, Lia dodged the crushing hammer. One direct hit and he’d break her arms like twigs. She danced in and out, striking so fast that she opened a flurry of cuts in Shinzen’s legs, arms and back, but he too was faster than any mortal man, stronger of body and mind, and deadlier by far. His hammer-strikes arrived faster and faster, chasing her around Grandion’s head. Shinzen guffawed at her increasingly frantic efforts to protect both herself and her Dragon. He palmed the second hammer and attacked at double the speed.

  “What? Protecting the lizard?” he sneered, smacking Grandion a glancing blow on the brow-ridge.

  Slamming, crushing, his hammers fell upon Grandion’s muzzle like rain, the sounds a dire drumbeat on her consciousness. Chips of white fang-enamel sprayed out of the Dragon’s mouth. Hualiama flung herself at the Warlord. The blazing blades skidded off his magical armour, sliced into his belly, his right knee. Shinzen roared! Then, with a thrust faster than a cobra’s strike, she pierced his left wrist, causing his nerveless fingers to release the hammer. The blade stuck between his bones. Lia refused to release her weapon. The Warlord roared with mad laughter, twisting his hand slowly, forcing her to her knees. Then he twisted rapidly in the opposite direction. Lia sprang upward in anticipation; even as she rotated upside-down vertically before his face, she jerked her knee forward to smash his nose. The nose-cartilage popped with a fleshy snick!

  She landed lithely, still clutching her sword. The blade burned in his flesh, but far darker burned the eyes of the Giant above her. His right hand shot down to trap her fingers against the hilt. With the right blade, she pierced his armour above the heart and drove as deep as her reach allowed, just four or five inches, before the Giant’s huge left boot kicked her legs out from underneath her.

  “Diseased whelp of a windroc!” Shinzen roared, stamping with his boots, putting all the monstrous weight of his body behind each kick.