Dragonsoul

by Marc Secchia

  The hall’s roof was cracked in dozens of places, but held firm against the weight of ice. She realised that the hall could not be at the uppermost level of the Palace. If she was not mistaken, several rooms must have collapsed above, but not enough to break the strongly buttressed hall except in one corner, where some masonry had fallen onto the highly polished, green marble floor.

  Jin rotated smoothly through an overarm throw!

  Too horrified to stop him, Lia could only watch as his small throwing dagger arced toward the nape of Shinzen’s neck–poisoned, obviously–but the Warlord simply reached up a hand as if preparing to scratch an itch, and trapped the blade in the palm of his hand, careless of any cut.

  He said to the King, “Giants are immune to poison. Men, fetch me that fool.”

  Taisho had not budged. Hualiama squinted around the ornate hall one more time. Gold trim. Wonderful paintings and hangings. A thousand places an assassin could hide. Something struck her as odd down there, but she did not have time to work it out. If Shinzen appeared that confident, then he was the only threat she should care about.

  Giants sprang toward her from the ground level. Lia ducked out of the balcony and sprinted, soft-footed upon the carpet, back toward the head of the hall. Take the last balcony. Ignore the Eastern soldiers just starting to point at her as she sprinted forty steps along the walkway to the final, curtained archway. She forward-rolled beneath a speculative spear-thrust, kicked off the soldier’s boots and vanished between the curtains before the reflexive swing of a short sword trimmed her long braid and her neck with it. She leaped forward deftly, touched down on the balustrade, and somersaulted through the air, crossing twenty feet as she dropped against a tapestry. Clutching her blue blade above her head with both hands, she ripped a neat line down a priceless heirloom as she descended with the gracefulness of an acrobat lowered by a rope, just to the right of the King of Kaolili.

  Well. For once, a landing that went to plan.

  Lia drew her second sword.

  Shinzen, peering over the King’s head even though the monarch stood upon his dais, grunted, “Princess, you just keep turning up like the proverbial bad dral. Do you want to warm my bed this badly?”

  “The warming will be done by your blood after I gut you like the brainless ape you are,” she retorted. “Give it up, Shinzen. My Dragons have the Palace surrounded.”

  “You’re a terrible liar, Princess. This whole little charade had your name on it from the beginning. Give me my ruzal and we can all go home.”

  From the corner of her eye, Hualiama watched Jin shimmying down from the same balcony she had vacated as though he possessed a gecko’s sense of balance. Magic. She would have that boy’s guts … he was a fraction of a step ahead of several Giants. They stopped as Shinzen raised his arm lazily.

  “Come, girl. You and me. Single combat. Winner gets the power.”

  Still that odd, uneasy feeling! Lia wet her lips, trying to keep the conversation flowing while poking around the hall with her mind. The Giants’ magic interfered, however. “Ruzal is not so easily given, Shinzen.”

  “No. Nor is it adequate explanation for why the greatest powers of this age congregate where you walk, Princess.”

  Warlord Shinzen had no interest in playing the yokel this day. His speech was lucid, the hatred seething in his dark eyes, plain for all to see. The hammers lifted from his belt to be hefted in meaty paws the size of Hualiama’s head. He gestured curtly for King Taisho and his group to step aside.

  The King said, “I will not be bullied in my own hall, Shinzen. You and your kind are an abomination, a curse upon–argh!”

  Invisible magic shovelled the men aside, piling the King and his Councillors in an ungainly heap beside the dais. “I do not waste breath on lesser men,” Shinzen rumbled, his eyes filling with an unholy light. “We are alike, Princess, whether you like it or not. Your power sings to mine. They long to join … to feel our kinship.”

  On the haft of his huge hammer, his fingers fluttered in a curiously girlish gesture, and Hualiama felt a stirring in her breast. Ruzal. The blood drained from her cheeks, only to pulsate like gelid sap deep in her belly. A hungry awakening, as though the spirit of Dramagon stirred in recognition of his children. Shinzen’s whole concentration was on her now, his pupils dilated, the already defined veins on his neck and massively muscled arms throbbing manifestly, horribly, in time with the sensations invading her breast. His lips twisted into a bestial grin.

  She would not give the ruzal to a creature like Shinzen, no matter the cost. Never.

  “Aye, Princess. Rightly you say, this power is not easily given. It must be taken, stolen from the last dying gasp of breath crossing your pretty lips.” Now the full madness of his laughter crashed over her, knocking her backward against the tapestry and sending Jin stumbling involuntarily off the dais, his hands clapped to his ears in agony. Shinzen bellowed, “Dramagon’s power persists in death. It revels in death. It demands death!”

  The hammers whirled from wide on either flank. Lia barely leaped backward in time, her slightly trailing left foot catching a glancing blow on the arch that threw her off balance. She flutter-stepped on the sweeping arc of Shinzen’s left arm as the heavy hammers crossed, then executed a twisting sideways double-spin that aligned with the direction she was falling. Collapsing her knees to take the shock, she rolled smoothly into a warrior’s ready position. The Giant chased after with a shattering roar. She had to leap again. Shinzen’s power lashed out immediately, pummelling her body backward. Lia skidded down the long marble floor, gasping for breath.

  The Warlord pursued her more deliberately now, the hammers punching in a one-two motion that pummelled her into a forced retreat down the hall, jerking her about as though she were a straw puppet used for warriors to pound until their arms tired of the training. Yet she had strength. Her Dragoness voiced an approving roar as Lia braced beneath the onslaught. Her boots gripped the floor. Her fingers flexed on the sword hilts.

  I am Balance. She centred herself.

  I am the wind. She bent away from Shinzen’s blows, allowing them to pass over her.

  I will face the day of reckoning with courage. With a shout, Hualiama sprang to meet the Giant.

  In. Out. The swords hacked into Shinzen as though he were a block of granite. Shinzen executed his scissors-tactic once more, but Lia spun around the horizontal axis of her body, holding the swords almost flat against her frame to avoid the converging hafts of his hammers, before flicking the blades at the end, with an abrupt twist. One blade bit into his left wrist, the other severed the forefinger of his right hand.

  Even as Shinzen stared stupidly at the stump, Lia was rising into a leaping pirouette, whipping her swords around with the centrifugal force of her rotating body. Snick! Snick! The Warlord roared and swung as the blades slashed across his left ear and cheek, but she was a wisp, a Dragoness dancing through battle with that incredible, all-embracing awareness, that decelerated perception that allowed her a split-second’s extra time to anticipate moves as rapid as Shinzen’s. For this, she had eaten arena sand over and over again. She had taken beatings in training from masters and students alike and had risen to her feet, bruised and humiliated, to carry on. Even though she wore the welts and contusions of the Giant’s recent beating, she knew deep in the molten-fire core of her being that she could never allow a creature like Shinzen to prevail. His path was to consume, to dominate, to kill. Her way was to shine where nothing but darkness seemed able to exist.

  At last, she grasped something of her purpose. A convergence between the tidal forces pulling her life in so many impossible directions.

  Hualiama bent her back like a supple reed, allowing a hammer-blow to fizz past her chin, before slashing deeply with the blades once more. The Nuyallith forms rose in her mind, hypnotically implanted by the monk Ja’al. Knowledge injected itself directly into her muscles. The cobra-thrust up into his left armpit. The double-windroc technique spiralling into the whirlwind att
ack, piercing Shinzen’s armour in dozens of places, but as yet, she was unable to land a crippling blow.

  Blood splattered off the Giant, but he kept right on coming at her, bellowing like a bull. Hualiama folded softly around a blow meant to crush her ribs, riding the head of his left-hand hammer in a half-circle before falling away. She tumbled head-over-heels, then reversed direction to meet his lumbering charge and for the first time, caused Shinzen to trip over his own hammer. Nigh ten feet of Giant measured his length in the King’s Hall, shaking the paintings and tapestries on the walls.

  The Warlord rebounded with another brutish roar. His answering blow, even though she leaped and twisted away, flung her spinning through the air. Land. Twist again. Hualiama groaned at a glancing blow to her left shoulder, but wriggled away through his legs, hacking at his ankles on the way past, but the iron-like thews resisted being hamstrung. O mosquito, bite harder! Lia scrambled away to collect her thoughts for a vital half-second.

  She was the child of the Dragon, the great Onyx Dragon, and that heritage could not be denied. Four of Jin’s daggers whirred into the Giant’s back as Hualiama’s dancing turned a charging Shinzen this way and that, always cutting, always flitting away like a butterfly before he could land a decisive blow.

  Fire rose within her, shining and uninhibited and thrilling, fuelling the extraordinary height of her leaps as she performed the aerial splits right over the Warlord’s head. Her downward strikes chipped bone off his skull, opening fleshy gashes ten inches long. Maddened with pain, the Giant flung a hammer at her. It caught the inside of her right knee, a perfect, laming blow. She collapsed with a sharp cry, rolling away to the dais as he dogged her retreat. Jin! He was right behind her, trying to help her rise!

  Now she had to protect the boy.

  The Giant kicked her backward against Jin, brutally. Sharp pain stabbed into her left side. The ribs! He kicked again and again, battering her upraised legs, seeking to debilitate. Toying with her. Waiting for the moment of fatal vulnerability, when he could look into her eyes and see the dying terror he so craved.

  Never!

  Humansoul! cried her Dragoness.

  A picture. A desperate gambit. With a pointless war-cry, Hualiama threw her battered body at Shinzen as his boot swung in again. She collapsed against his shin. No need to pretend hurt. Blood dribbled from her mouth as she groaned loudly and long. The Warlord kicked her off with a curse; he thrust her body against Jin in order to create the space needed to swing his hammer.

  Dragonsoul, give me strength …

  “Curse you, Dragonfriend!” roared the Giant.

  Shinzen loomed over her, every muscle in his neck and shoulders standing out in rigid relief as he twirled the hammer into a massive, two-handed overhead wallop. Sliding forward abruptly on her knees, inside the arc of his blow, Hualiama whipped up her blades in the breaking-the-hammer defensive technique. They sliced exactly into the joints of Shinzen’s descending wrists. With a flaring of light, they sheared right through both wrists simultaneously. The power of his blow caused the Giant to dismember himself.

  Behind her, Jin cried out as the flying hammer-head audibly cracked bone.

  Lia ignored him, for the Warlord had dropped to his knees. His eyes bulged grotesquely as he took in the blood spurting from his severed wrists. Hot droplets splattered her armour, her neck and right cheek. Jerking forward with a wrist-reversal to flip the cutting edges to the outside, Hualiama thrust her blades upward into the base of Shinzen’s neck, grating against his backbone. She ripped outward with every last ounce of her Dragon-fuelled strength, tearing through muscle and tissue and the great carotid arteries feeding the brain.

  Even so, the Giant did not die easily.

  He slumped forward, knocking her once more against Jin. Shinzen’s head thumped into her lap. He tried to speak, but could only make a ghastly whistling sound from the ruin of his throat. His chest heaved. Unable to draw breath. Staring in disbelief, yet moisture leaked from the corner of his eye, a tiny echo of the crimson pulsing in ghastly waves from his gaping throat. Did he know regret? Then, very slowly, his eyes rolled up to white and his body gave a single, parting shudder. His spirit was gone.

  Silence struck the hall so deeply, it roared in her ears.

  Hualiama hesitated, but then reached over and pressed the Giant’s eyelids closed with her fingertips, saying, “May you sleep in death as you never rested in life, and the evil you represented, die with you.”

  The Dragonsong of death filled her being. Elegiac.

  Her head lifted. The Giants stationed around the King’s Hall stood petrified with disbelief, but King Taisho moved toward her, nodding sagely. “You have served my kingdom above and beyond a duty of honour, Princess Hualiama.”

  He nodded again …

  A hand slipped around her head to press something against her nose. Her ears caught a tiny tinkling of glass. A smell of bitter anise ambushed her, a pungent taint that she drew into her lungs in a half-breath before her mind registered–‘danger!’

  “Jin?” she gasped, her blades tumbling from nerveless fingers.

  Paralysing cold spread through every muscle in her body. With a soft exhale, Lia slumped like Shinzen before her. Any power of movement or feeling belonged to a stranger. The boy kicked himself out from beneath her, letting her head crack against the marble floor, but there was no pain, only numbness. Poisoned! Jinichi stood briefly in the frozen ambit of her vision, his lips compressed into a thin line as he regarded her with an expression somewhere between grief and hatred.

  “Begone, Nikuko,” said the King, harshly. “You’ve served your purpose here.”

  The teenager regarded the King darkly. “My reward?”

  “All that you are due will be given you,” Taisho said evenly. “All the peoples of Kaolili will thank you when we forge our new alliance. Behold.”

  Hualiama lacked the power to turn, but the sound of that first footfall was a death-knell to her hopes. Azziala! Low laughter beat against her ears. “Aye, the boy has served our purposes well, o King. And you have delivered your part of the bargain. My fugitive daughter. What was the poison you used, boy?”

  She felt nauseated. Betrayed by the King she had trusted and served. Betrayed by a jealous boy. Her heartbeat crashed louder and louder, as if war-drums swelled with their dreadful beat, until all the world collapsed around her.

  “Ordibathik serum,” he said, a word which meant nothing to Hualiama, nor evidently, to her mother either.

  “Which is?” Azziala grated.

  Jin’s voice shook slightly as he replied, “A compound particular to my peoples’ apothecaries. A paralytic nerve agent with additional magic-dampening properties. The Princess will be unable to use any of her powers for a period of time dependant on her resistance.”

  No magic? Aye, her Dragoness seemed dormant, her open connection with Grandion, blunted. Even her telepathic Dragonish was unavailable, somehow dampened and locked away by the serum. Magical poison? Hualiama had never imagined such an attack, especially not from Jin, whom Grandion trusted implicitly. This was the wrongness which had struck her about the King’s Hall. Even the Giants had not known that Azziala lurked in anticipation of executing her masterstroke.

  She was undone.

  The footsteps approached steadily. Azziala said, “Now, we wait. With Shinzen’s forces neutralised as Affurion and his lizards chase them to the death, we will require the Tourmaline’s presence here in order to force the Princess to obey. Meantime, Numistar Winterborn chases my phantom fleet to the South. By the time she realises her mistake, we will have possession of the ruzal and you and I, dear Taisho, will secure our places as leaders of a new world order. You will have the East, and I will command the rest of the Island-World.”

  The familiarity in her mother’s voice sickened her. So this was King Taisho’s plan to save his kingdom? A betrayal–did Jin know how he had been used? He must, although the boy gave no indication, for as he moved out of her line of sight, his
face was an unreadable mask. Traitor! Now she knew who had spied on her at the barracks, Jin and his virtuoso sneaking ability, leering at her nude, transformed body. What lies had Taisho fed him? Had he even known about the Empress?

  All too soon, the storm’s distant thundering abated as Numistar raced southward, hunting Azziala’s fleet. Those who would be sacrificed for the greater cause. And Grandion came.

  She still sensed that much. As always, the oath-connection operated at a level deeper than or different to ordinary magic. She could not say how she knew it, but she detected his approach before the Empress did, and though every fibre of her being wailed and warned, she could not prevent his seeking her, for the Dragon was frantic with need. Lia heard Azziala’s Dragon Enchanters readying themselves. Dozens of voices. Perhaps the greater part of the Dragon-Hater forces.

  And here she lay like a beached trout. Powerless. But her will was indomitable, she assured herself. A psychic bastion-ward could never be breached.

  Oh my Dragoness, what will we do now?

  She was silent.

  Grandion burst into the hall, bugling his fury, and lasted two seconds. Hundreds of Dragon-Haters piled in to subjugate the Tourmaline; despite his powerful protections, without the support they had always drawn from each other, he was unable to withstand their prodigious attack.

  Azziala raised her arms, drinking in their power. DRAGON, OBEY!

  With a groan, Grandion settled nearby. Her Dragon! Oh Grandion, shell-son of Sapphurion, how low thou art fallen! And now, the susurrus of blood in her ears was all the lament she could sing for him. Noble Tourmaline. Faithful to the girl who had spurned him.

  Again the tapping boots, circling her prone body. Hualiama lay where she had fallen, in a sticky puddle of Shinzen’s blood, unable to lift a finger.