by Marc Secchia
Azziala said, “I have observed much about you, my daughter. I know that ruzal cannot be stolen from you. It must be given willingly. And I understand that despite your avowed affection for this lizard, you would regard withholding the power of ruzal from those you see as evil, as a higher imperative even than suffering the sight of his death–and I can make that death the most terrible, lingering event, unimaginable to you. Misguided as you are, you have inherited your mother’s flair for intractability and wilfulness.”
She could not focus her eyes, but Hualiama saw the golden form of her mother leaning into her field of vision from her right side.
In a strange voice, Azziala cried, “I Reaved thee, my flesh and blood, with the Reaving of love, and thou hast despised thy inheritance. I succoured thee to the place of thy birth, and thou hast denied thy inheritance. In all thy dealings, thou hast played me false, Hualiama. And so I conclude, that a foul spirit hath inhabited thy very soul, and by this spirit thou my true and beloved daughter, hath been brought to the place of mockery and wrongdoing.”
She could not break in. Azziala could never break in …
“Thou art two, not one, lizard-soul and Human-soul ensconced in one flesh. Truly it was that day, you did not die. Hualiama, your soul was stolen away by Ianthine the Insane, the first and last lizard I ever made the mistake of trusting. She took an unborn infant to her laboratory, and there, by the power of her ruzal, she fused Human life with the draconic and birthed the monstrosity that you are!”
Her shriek could only make Hualiama jump inwardly. No! This was a crazy, twisted misinterpretation of those events. The eggling spirit had danced with her, had it not? She had sought Hualiama across the many leagues, across the Island-World … and they had connected in a place of dying need and in love. That was the truth. Incontrovertible truth.
“And now, it is my duty–for the sake of the goodness of this world–to correct this foul perversion which is meet in your flesh.” She paused to breathe raggedly through her nostrils. “Hualiama, as your loving mother, it is my duty to Reave the Dragon-spirit out of thee. I will rend thy being in twain. And when you are released from the demonic spirit, you will at last be free, and mother and daughter can be together forever. It is our destiny.”
Demonic? Draconic? Lia’s mind spun. She had once heard that most ancient language from a monk. What was his name? He had recounted to her the ancient belief that angels were spirits of pure fire, and that Dragons were the embodiment of those spirits.
‘Girl, you must be an angel.’ Tears leaked unheeded down her cheeks as she recalled that conversation with the kindly old archivist monk. Had his words been prophetic?
Equally, she knew that angelic spirits had their opposite. Ancient spirits of pure darkness, of evil. Demons. Some scroll-lore posited that various forms of insanity proved the case for possession by these spirits–how else could a man gain strength enough to lift and throw a boulder larger than he was tall, or to wrench a house off its foundations? So old was this language, it had been rarely used for the last thousand years.
Would that she could quiz Fra’anior about this ancient lore …
Azziala seemed to view her unbidden tears as evidence of defeat. Leaning closer, until Lia could see the exact gleam in her eyes, she said softly, “We cannot touch you from without, Hualiama. We both know that. Still, even the most impregnable fortress can be betrayed from within–historically, that is the most successful and efficient tactic in warfare. I know about your psychic bastion-ward. I have examined all of the protections the profane lizard-spirit placed around your being. You think you’re invulnerable. But I say there is a way in. A way through the heart.”
With that, she glanced at Grandion. “I’ll have the Dragon attack you through your precious oath-connection. Do you think you can withstand that, Hualiama? Your very love for this beast will be your downfall.”
Hualiama’s soul cried out in mortal terror.
* * * *
An eternity later, Azziala continued to attack Hualiama with all the force of Tourmaline-founded power. Lia screamed for the umpteenth time. Her world was pain. Everything was pain. Such agony wracked her being that it seemed even the paralysis must be overwhelmed, for she was slowly, inevitably being forced apart by a sensation like a burning wedge being driven into her mind by a gargantuan hammer, her inmost being fraying and tearing as the Empress tried to cleave Dragon from Human. Her form wavered, flickering back and forth between a sickening multiplicity of phases, growing and shrinking bizarrely as the Shapeshifter magic struggled against the forces applied via the oath-connection. Droplets of golden Dragon blood as well as crimson Human blood squeezed from her brow. Her bones morphed and changed, stretching her flesh into strange new shapes before snapping back to normality.
The Empress would not relent. Hualiama would not relent. The sensation was deeper than thought, deeper even than pain, an excruciation of her living soul. Lia considered death. It had never struck her as nearer or sweeter; as a respite from hate and hurting, loneliness and despair.
She screamed again as the wedge drove deeper. Had she not been paralysed, she would have long since bitten off her tongue, Lia realised. She had relented once and given in to the ruzal, only to hear her mother crow in delight and seize the offering for herself. No. She must never, never give her mother what her ambitions demanded–neither in life, nor in death.
The Dragoness writhed in as much distress as her, and Lia could not stop it. She watched the destruction of her own self, the spiralling into madness, and she knew she could not hold out much longer. Her mind would snap.
And Grandion? Would he know? Twice, the Dragon had roared and apparently tried to fight back, but the Haters reinstated their Command-holds and Azziala’s torture continued.
Could a Word of Command divide the indivisible?
At some point as she floated in a burning river of suffering, she remembered King Taisho commenting that Jin had fled, that he would despatch his spies to track down the youth and finish him. So much for his reward. A dagger between the ribs would be his just portion. Just moments later, Prince Qilong arrived to demand to know the source of all the commotion. He departed speaking no word of response to his father’s low dismissal. Worthless popinjay.
Now she floated on that volcanic river once more, no longer aware of where or who she was. Dragoness and Human seemed committed to a macabre dance of tearing apart and coalescing and shifting, all the while being immolated in the dark furnace of Azziala’s imperative, but she knew her two forms would suffer worse than death for each other. No matter the force or cost, they always came back together. Perhaps the Empress sought to defy a fundamental law of the universe such as gravity or entropy or eternity; again and again, Lia reached for her Star-power or white-fire or anything that she could possibly imagine to fling back at her mother, save the dreadful, abstruse temptation of ruzal, that ultimate repudiation of all that was wholesome and beautiful about magic and draconic fire-life. Yet there was no power here. No possibility. Only the endless, macabre dance of anguish.
The sound she heard was the breaking of her soul.
No! What? A vast draconic bellow–the roof came crashing down!
“Numistar!” someone shouted.
Chapter 26: Awesome-Pants
Half of the King’s Hall lay in ruins. Inanely, Hualiama thought it a boon that Shinzen’s body had not been desecrated, crushed by falling masonry. Another part of her brutalised mind observed a grey wing rapidly passing over the brand-new hole. What the–ice pelted in, exploding with sharp reports on the green marble flooring. Azziala shook her fists at the sky, yelling her Commands, but there was nothing up there, just bleak, towering cloudscapes and icy rain blasting into the hall.
A mighty clap of Dragon-thunder shook the Palace.
“The Ancient Dragon! Get the King to safety!” Qilong made himself heard, although in a reedy, pathetic whine. “You! Watch the Princess! O Empress, help us, please. We’re getting slaughtered out there.
”
Azziala cast Lia a longing glance, then turned on her heel. “Fetch me a Dragon. Numistar must have detected our subterfuge. Princeling, that girl’s your responsibility. Get her somewhere safe. Do you think you can possibly guard a paralysed prisoner?”
“As you command, mistress,” said Qilong, quavering of voice.
The hall resembled a chaotic battlefield, strewn with ice and bodies, Giant and Human. From the sounds Lia heard, Azziala and King Taisho rushed out together. A detachment of the King’s Guard stood over her, sharing uncertain glances, those she could see. But now, the dread pirate-lord of a variable number of Islands plucked her out of the pool of blood with nary a squeamish squeal, and surprising ease, crying, “Follow me, men.”
They marched through an endless set of corridors, passing from opulence to a clearly more functional part of the Palace. Lia’s head lolled against Qilong’s garishly green-striped uniform jacket or alternately, flopped against his forearm.
“Waaarrrggh?” Lia asked.
Shouting! Lurching! A roar! Suddenly Qilong was running. Lia caught a glimpse of Makani to the rear, casually gluing a cohort of royal soldiers to a stone ceiling. Mercy. Sumio’s bald pate gleamed briefly in lamplight. The man darted off and she heard a horrible gurgle as he did something unmentionable to an unseen assailant. Then Flicker dived into her unresponsive, unfeeling arms and tried to burrow beneath her neck-armour, crooning and flicking her face with his hot forked tongue.
Jin cried, “Where to?”
What on the Islands was happening? Lia’s battered mind could not string events and impressions into a coherent sequence.
“Follow me, men,” cried Prince Qilong. He did not do well with variety in his stock lines, but Hualiama’s dulled ears caught the sounds of a growing number of boots in the corridor as they raced along, now a whiff of herbs, perhaps a storage room, now mohili grain, now a dank, dimly-lit section of underground tunnel, clearly little-used.
She almost giggled. Qilong planned to rescue her?
What of Grandion? They’d left him behind! No! “Ulllmaarrrggh,” she protested.
Qilong spared a moment to pat her cheek absently. “Don’t you worry, little Princess. We’re taking you somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from that freakish rajal you call a mother.”
“Lurgle praaaarrrgh?” That was all she could gurgle. Little Princess? Insufferable … saviour! Lia tried a grin, but that slack-jawed effort clearly only managed to frighten him.
“I’ll explain everything, I swear,” he gasped. “Save your strength.”
Right he was. She had never felt quite so much like a sack of skin in which the bones had been shaken up and left in odd orientations. Her eyes rolled about without any control whatsoever. Jin, that traitor, ran alongside Qilong as though it were the most natural place in the world. She had to force herself to remain conscious. She faded into and out of darkness, her physical body somehow disconnected from her mind. That was a stranger’s body, a body aching in every muscle and ligament, and deeper yet. A body only beginning to scream about violation, anguish, ruin …
Fighting! Weapons crashed and clanged somewhere; there came a crescendo of shouting and Prince Qilong lowered his head to bull through a crowd of battling men. Qilong? Power, focus, man of action–Qilong? Lia caught glimpses of the pirate-lord’s crew dealing with Royal Guards with commendable competence before Makani shot past in a gust of cinnamon-scented wind and did what Dragonesses did best. Blood and gore, and indeed entire body parts, dripped from the tunnel’s walls and ceiling.
“Alright. Sack.”
“Grragurrr!” Lia howled. No chance. Into a burlap sack she tipped. Onions. The sack reeked of rotten onion peel.
Then there was more bouncing and jouncing and at least four kicks and cuffs that she counted, along with a slew of uncouth banter about the sack’s contents and what might be done therewith, before she heard the unmistakable creaking of a Dragonship’s hawsers and boots banging urgently on metal gantries. The two-timing sneak! Treacherous rajal! Having given up on Saori, Prince Qilong had seized the chance during the mother of all battles to snitch a new bride and abscond to the furthermost Isles of his benighted kingdom!
The number of names she called him in her mind. Did he not care for the destruction of Kaolili? For the fact that the Empress of the Lost Isles was about to seat herself upon the throne of the East, upon his father’s throne? What by all the volcanic hells of Fra’anior itself did Qilong think he was doing? Because when she woke, and her Dragoness woke with her, she would give that quisling Prince far more than rotten onions to deal with!
As a tide of exhaustion caught up with her, Lia noticed that evening had already fallen. She heard the leathery snap of sails being deployed, the chanting of men on the back-breakers as they worked the manual turbines, and a heading of Yorbik being announced by the Steersman.
Yorbik? Ridiculous. That was way, way across the Cloudlands …
* * * *
The Tourmaline Dragon surfaced from a sleep filled with dark-fire nightmares in which he repeatedly burned Hualiama until a face of charcoal screamed at him from his sleep. He woke, bellowing, GNNAAARRGGHH!
Wing-brother! Be silent. Good, you’re awake.
Grandion gathered his thoughts from the farthest reaches of the Islands. H … Huuuu ….
Good news. She’s gone with Prince Qilong. A paw checked his eyelids. Grandion blinked in pain as light stabbed in. The Empress makes plans to depart the East for Gi’ishior.
Qi-uunnnh?
The Brown Overmind checked his eyes again. What was the null-fires idiot doing? Why could Grandion not rise and greet the dawn as any Dragon worth his wings ought to?
He blasted his brain into order. Wha … what is this? Where? Her?
Rapidly, Affurion said, Four days have passed.
Four! It could not be. The Tourmaline’s thoughts scattered in undraconic, dark-fires dread, unable to accept this information. No. What could the Empress have done in four days?
Azziala used your oath-connection to torture Hualiama, but in a surprise manoeuvre, Makani broke into the Palace that evening, pretending to be Numistar, the Brown explained. In the confusion, Prince Qilong absconded with the Blue-star and the boy called Jin. The Grey Dragoness travelled with them. By fast Dragonship, they made for Yorbik Free Federation.
Impossible! snarled Grandion.
It wasn’t our plan, said the Brown. As best we’ve pieced together the evidence, this crazy scheme was initiated by her dragonet.
Flicker? The dragonet? At last, the Tourmaline dragged his eyes open and tried to focus on his wing-brother. Impossible. That feral-brained little whippersnapper … what happened after that?
Affurion performed a wing-shrug. Briefly, Numistar did return to engage Azziala, but they appeared to reach some agreement before the Winterborn chased off West in pursuit of Qilong’s Dragonship. Then, Azziala gathered her people and began to transfer them back to the Air-Breathers.
Grandion’s brows furrowed. By the First Egg, Affurion–four days? FOUR? Please assure me that you jest.
The Empress drove you both to the brink of fire-extinction, wing-brother. Healing has been difficult, but Sunfyora performed a miracle of fire-stoking to bring you thus far.
No … she’s been gone … Makani’s with … and Jin? That’s good, isn’t it?
Affurion shook his muzzle. Jin was the betrayer, noble Grandion. Word is that Hualiama slew Shinzen with her own hand, before the boy poisoned her with a special compound which his Nikuko tribe–
NO! Grandion tried to surge to his paws and fell back, panting heavily. No. I trusted him–I let him … help me, Affurion. I must go to her. I cannot allow … never again. Never!
The Brown stilled him with a wingtip-touch upon his muzzle, firm yet sympathetic. You’ve just recovered from the Command-hold, as has Mizuki. Elki and Saori have been working with the Dragonkind to design a strategy to combat Azziala. Rumour is that she seeks the First Egg in the Natal Cave of Fra
’anior Cluster. Do you know of such a legend, noble Grandion? Could this be true?
No, he said, bewildered. I don’t know. The Cave’s been empty for as long as Dragons have lived at Gi’ishior. Does she seek to rule all Dragonkind, Affurion? Does she?
That is the knowledge we must seek. Meantime, gather your strength. You will fly to the rescue of your promise-beloved. We will make that happen. By my wings, we will!
His fires wept. Once more, the foundling star had been torn from his paw. This time the fault lay squarely upon his shoulders. The Dragon-Haters had found a way to assail and injure Hualiama through the deepest oaths that bound a Dragon to a Dragoness, through Grandion’s own third-heart fire-promises. When it counted most, his paw had not been strong enough.
He did not deserve to love a star.
* * * *
Hualiama awoke aboard Qilong’s Dragonship minus fetters, minus sack and in full possession of all of her clothing and weapons. Confused, she stared about the cabin. There was a pleasant taste in her mouth and her stomach was neither gnawing through her backbone, nor was her throat even dry.
However, every inch of her body felt like a bone which had been chewed over by rabid hounds.
She checked the cabin again. Aye, these were Qilong’s personal quarters. No, there was no sign of the self-styled terror of the Isles. Aye, her paired swords lay close at hand, and a white dragonet, the delight of her soul, snoozed upon her pillow-roll. No, the sack lay neatly folded at her bedside as if to proclaim its lack of complicity in any crime whatsoever. She sniffed the air. Someone had set a brazier smoking, supplied with incense and medicinal herbs upon fresh coals, if she did not miss her mark. Her brow furrowed. Right, she had found a rat–someone had removed her clothing, bandaged her in various places beneath, and then returned everything to normal.
A light snore sounded from the foot of the bed.
Roaring rajals! If that was Qilong, she was about to frighten him out of every remaining year of his life. Taking a light grip of one of the swords, Hualiama crept down the bed with difficulty. She peeked.
