by Marc Secchia
Moreover, she did not stop. Lia fell to tearing off her coverings in the most amazing hurry. She literally tore the cloth, wrenching her arms out of her tunic top with what sounded suspiciously like curses–to his knowledge, his Lia never cursed. The dragonet flicked his wings in consternation as Hualiama’s leggings flew in one direction and the under-tunic in another, and then his belly fires rumbled as she shucked her underclothes too! That was an Island too far, as the saying went.
Glancing aside awkwardly, he saw the Tourmaline Dragon, forepaws planted shoulder-width apart on the rim of his lava bath, staring at straw-head with equal incomprehension. Lia charged into the pool, screeching like a starving Dragon hatchling, and thrashed about in the water with all the grace, he had to admit, of a fish speared on the point of a dragonet’s talon.
Whatever was the matter with her?
Grandion began to guffaw at her gyrations. Insensitive clod! Flicker’s anger burned at the Dragon.
Lia began to rise and then collapsed again with a yelp. Concerned, the dragonet darted over to the water’s edge. Perhaps she had gone feral? Ianthine had been most ungentle with his lovely girl. The knowledge that her own shell-father had tried to murder her could not be easy to live with.
Finally, Lia found her feet. She checked her body with her hands–searching for scale mites, perhaps? Not that Humans seemed to get those. Hualiama was careful with her hair, though, keeping it clean of pests and infestation. Dragon hide was so much easier to maintain, apart from the ever-tenacious scale mites. Flicker scratched his neck. Even the thought of them seemed to make him itch.
Grandion was still chortling so hard, he hiccoughed spurts of fire involuntarily between his fangs.
Lia whirled on her heel. “Grandion–ants! There were ants, you wretched, unfeeling reptile …”
“Fire ants?” asked the Tourmaline Dragon. “You slept on a nest of fire ants?”
“Stop laughing! It was painful. They bit me here, and here … oh.”
Lia stiffened.
Flicker’s eyes leaped to Grandion. The Dragon’s expression had changed. His laughter seized up in his throat. The Tourmaline Dragon gazed hungrily at the Human girl as though, having unexpectedly sighted the most tempting treasure hoard in existence, he had been overcome by what Dragons called the gold-fever. His talons clenched, splintering the rock he held. His jaw cracked open. Flicker smelled the hot, sulphurous burn of his breath from twenty feet away, and the tempo of his triple heartbeat was that of the height of battle.
Lia covered her nudity with her hands, stammering, “G-G-Grandion, d-don’t look at m-me … like that.”
“Like what?” purred the Dragon, yet it was far from a pleasant sound. Flicker was quite convinced his draconic companion was about to pounce on Lia and gobble her up.
* * * *
Hualiama had never seen such a hateful, predatory light in Grandion’s eye. The quivering of his muscles, coiled for action, speared dread into her stomach. What had she done? Was it the mere sight of her nudity, which–Islands’ sakes, he was a Dragon!
She ventured in reply, “Like you want to … devour me?”
Grandion slithered up out of his pool, sixty-five feet of sinuous muscle and draconic grace. Molten lava sheeted off his flanks. He stalked closer, fixated on Lia as she stood thigh-deep in the water, quite incapable of movement. In Human lore Dragons were synonymous with greed and savagery; their cunning and love of jewels and precious things, the fodder of legends and ballads. Grandion did not speak, but his all-consuming gaze and his dominant stance spoke of all this and more. Dragons were beyond Human understanding, her quaking body told her. Raw, animal emotion …
Lia shook herself, crying, “Stop. Get away from me … Grandion, please.” Her voice cracked. “Flicker, do something. He’s gone mad.”
The dragonet looked between them several times, very quickly. “Well,” he said with studied unconcern. “It’s a bit pointless trying to hide like that, wouldn’t you say?”
Lia blinked, feeling her cheeks heat up to a furnace temperature. “Flicker, this is hardly the time for another of your crude jokes!” When the dragonet only smirked at her, she added, “Speak to him, Flicker! Tell him to stop scaring me–”
Flicker drawled, “The Human girl really needs bigger hands to cover her beauty properly–wouldn’t you agree, Grandion?”
Hualiama gave a small shriek of fury, sinking down to her neck in the water. “You are toast!” she yelled at the dragonet. “I’ll barbecue your entrails for dinner! I’ll wring your scrawny, worthless neck and tan your hide into saddle leather! And after that, do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to kick your scaly backside over the next ten Islands, you vulgar, insolent … flying slug!”
A gruff bark of amusement startled them both. Abruptly, Grandion sat back on his haunches and began to shake with truly belly-shaking guffaws. “Flying slug,” he chortled. “That’s a good one.”
Flicker stalked off a few paces, miffed.
Lia did not know whether to throttle the dragonet or kiss him. By some miracle his joke–which she did not appreciate in the slightest–had punctured Grandion’s freakish avarice, and the tension which had practically boiled the water between them, evaporated as the mists of the dawn. His eyes lost their sheen of green. A softer, yellower flame burned there, an altogether more enticing colour.
The Dragon’s gaze was unblinking. Compelling. Utterly irresistible.
Despite an echo of peril lingering in the air and the erratic hammering of her heart, Lia found herself paddling closer to the Tourmaline Dragon as if drawn to him by an invisible hawser. So tranquil was the afternoon that even the slightest ripple stirred by her body created echoes, while the tinkling of the waterfall made an interplay of melodies between the stone walls.
Was this wise? Not on any Island, but her body refused to obey.
“Are you trying to hypnotise me?” Lia whispered.
Equally softly, he responded, “I am trying and failing to understand what power you have exerted over the fires of my soul since that very first day I struck you down with my paw, Hualiama. Can you not taste the magic surrounding us?”
“It burns within me, Grandion. Oh, I wish … how I wish things were different.”
He sighed, stirring the water with his left foreclaw.
“I don’t want to be without you. Ever. I wish …” How could she make him understand these choked-up feelings locked in her heart, bound and chained in the laws, traditions and practices of a thousand years? Lia choked out, “I wish I could fly.”
Were he to regard her like that, she must wish to have wings, scales and Dragon hide. Not two legs, soft tan skin, and an absence of draconic raiment.
“We can fly whenever you want, Lia.” I would show thee the marvels of this Island-World, my Rider, my … he also seemed on the verge of saying something more, but could not.
Two Islands they were, longing to bridge the silence of things that could never be spoken.
Then, she rose.
Knee deep in pearlescent blue water, Hualiama of Fra’anior straightened her back, clad only in her tumbling platinum hair, the Dragon scale, and the raiment of her skin. She smiled tremulously, spreading her hands. “Here I am, Grandion. This is my hide, and this is all there is to me. Simply, a Human girl.” The Dragon’s eyes widened. He seemed to have mislaid the power to breathe. Clearly, Lia heard the complex thudding of his hearts, louder and louder, coming to her senses as a distinct, fervent gallop. “I’m neither tall nor strong, and I weep for happiness and sing when I’m sad, and my heritage seems a shameful thing. I befriend Dragons from the smallest to the greatest. I speak a forbidden language, have a history of desecrating holy Dragon Islands, and generally make a nuisance of myself by refusing to die when I’m supposed to.”
The Tourmaline Dragon bowed gravely to Lia, almost dipping his muzzle in the water. “Simply? What I see is gritty, crazy and beautiful Human …” Grandion’s long th
roat worked as he searched for words. “Forgive my blundering tongue and my deplorable behaviour. I’m confused, Hualiama, my hearts captivated by this magic … and by all you are. I know not what to make of it. One thing I understand. This Dragon is profoundly honoured to have you as his Dragon Rider.”
The pulse in her throat seemed attuned to the drumbeat of his Dragon hearts. It burned on her tongue to tell Grandion about her dreams, yet she withheld. Something in the gravity of the moment prevented it. Then, the chance evaporated.
Lia said, “You frightened me.”
“Aye,” he growled, with a piratical leer, “we must keep our slaves in line, we must! A nibble here, a beating there …”
The Human girl chuckled, “Allow me to remind you, my humble means of transportation, of who rides who in this relationship?”
Not to be outdone, Grandion declaimed:
Cruel was she, that Dragoness fair,
A cunning heart in evil lair,
Black-fire burning in hearts of stone,
She tossed that slave about like a bone!
Hualiama pretended to draw a dagger out of her heart. With a dramatic, swooning swoop to her voice, she sang:
“Nay, foul traitor, thou hast wounded me most grievously.
My love, my soul’s rest, I die …”
The King, beset with grief, cried, “Away with thee, beast,
O perfidious Blue Dragon, thou hideous fiend of Gi’ishior–
Grandion’s guffaws drowned her out. “Now you’re just making it up.”
With that, she reached out and smacked the Tourmaline Dragon on the nose, crying, “Slowest one’s a mangy cliff-fox!”
Dragon and dragonet looked at each other.
“Cracked as Fra’anior’s caldera,” suggested Grandion.
“Crazy as a monkey dancing in a storm,” agreed Flicker.
Hands on hips, Lia grumbled, “Great Islands, I feel like the prize ralti sheep. You’re supposed to chase me. Don’t you know the game? Don’t Dragons play games?”
“Oh, she’s playing wingtips!” cried the dragonet.
“Do Dragons play games?” Grandion eyeballed Lia in a mock-fury, before making his lunge.
She skipped beyond his reach. “Too slow.”
A second time, the Dragon’s claws clicked shut on thin air.
With a taunting dance, Lia cried, “What’s the matter, Grandion? Is your fat old belly weighing you down? Here I am–no I’m not! You cheat, don’t herd me with your wings. Ha, fooled you.”
The Nuyallith forms allowed her to keep ahead of the Tourmaline Dragon for a few seconds at least, although she suspected Grandion was not trying his hardest. Lia kept expecting him to return to hot avarice, but instead, discovered a mischievous side to the Dragon’s personality. He pounced on her but missed on purpose, swiped at the air as though drunk, and pretended to be blinded by her beauty, allowing Lia to scuttle between his legs to safety. When, declaiming that she had died from Dragon fear, Lia fell face down on the black sand beach, Grandion nosed about the backs of her knees and the nape of her neck until the tickling became unbearable and she curled up, giggling helplessly. The Dragon scooped her up in his forepaws, only to pretend that she was as slippery as a bar of well-used soapstone. He used a cunning flick of his talon to ‘squirt’ her thirty feet through the air into the deepest part of the pool.
They played and laughed together–oh, how they laughed! Knowing her mother’s name made an irrepressible joy bubble up within Lia. Her mood clearly affected Grandion. Seizing his lower lip, Hualiama dragged the Dragon into the pool for use as a diving platform. They had a mock fistfight, ending in Lia knocking the Dragon out, whereupon he pretended to fall over, only to slip over the edge of his lava caldera for real. His howls had Lia in stitches.
“Treacherous Human slave,” he growled, grasping her in one fist while he threatened her throat with the talons of the other, “you didn’t clean my talons properly yesterday.”
Hualiama pressed his talon with her hand. “I enjoy the magical power of commanding talons to disappear.”
Retracting his claws into their flexible sheaths, the Dragon cried, “You’ve grown mighty in the lost art of declawing the Dragonkind, Lia!”
“You’re all hot air and smoke, Grandion.”
“Aye? Then meet my most fearsome Dragon power yet.” And he blew smoke into her face until she began to cough.
When the smoke cleared enough for her to speak, Lia inquired, “Are your claws battle-sharp?”
“By my wings, that was a polite way of suggesting my claws are in a sorry state,” the Dragon said. “I’ll admit, they aren’t at their best.”
Lia said, “I read that it was customary for Human slaves to tend to their Dragons’ needs, including sharpening their claws for battle.”
“I wasn’t looking for a slave, Hualiama–except earlier.” A softer yellow entered his eyes as he spoke, Lia noticed, a gentle refulgence similar to candlelight. His voice dropped to a low, beguiling throbbing. Grandion said, “If I were to speak honestly of my soul-fires, I have dreamed about keeping you for my own, impossible as that is. How can this be? You’ve neither wings nor tail. I have seen many Humans upon many Islands. Yet nothing in my nineteen summers has ever made me feel this way, Lia. You stir things in me … deep things.”
She whispered back, “Other girls dream of Fra’aniorian lace finery and grand weddings. I dream of standing on mountaintops with a Dragon, or flying to the farthest horizons.”
White fire sheeted across her vision.
Lia started. How long had she been gazing into Grandion’s eyes, mesmerised?
They broke eye contact awkwardly, Lia mumbling something about needing her swords to shave his toenails, while the Dragon discovered an urgent itch requiring his attention.
And so she sharpened the Dragon’s metallic talons, and tried not to dwell on her sense of foreboding. This wondrous season in her life must draw to a close, shadowed by the march of time.
When Flicker returned from hunting and Lia had completed her work on the three foreclaws of Grandion’s right forepaw, and moved on to the two opposing hind claws of that foot, she called the dragonet over. “I’ve something special to share with you both,” she said. “I dreamed of my mother–my real mother–today. I learned her name.”
The dragonet smiled, “Hence your joy. Oh, Lia. My fires soar for you.”
Hualiama said, “I feel as though my life is coming together, piece by piece. I don’t like all of the pieces, but I wondered if Ianthine’s ruzal magic corrupted my father–if he might not have been a good man, once, or if there might still be good in him now.”
“Ra’aba is not your father,” said Grandion.
The tip of Flicker’s tail twitched in irritation. Lia was glad she was not the only one affronted by Grandion’s confident statement.
The dragonet said, “But Lia, there is a certain naïveté about that statement. Some creatures turn to evil, or are born evil. I know you love the Island-World and expect it to love you back without reservation, and see good where others see only darkness and despair–”
“No creature is irredeemable,” Hualiama protested, anticipating where Flicker was leading with his thoughts.
“Nor are some creatures lacking in stubbornness,” said Grandion, gently enough that Lia did not quite contemplate trimming his entire toe off his foot. “What’s your plan for Ra’aba, Lia?”
“He’s probably at the Royal Palace,” she said. “There’s a secret entrance into the dungeons I doubt even Ra’aba knows about, which my brother Elki and I discovered a couple of years ago. You, Grandion, must fly to Gi’ishior to fetch a Dragonwing so that we can counter the Green Dragons allied to Ra’aba. Meantime we infiltrate the palace building together with the monks, demolish his cronies and defeat Ra’aba.”
“And when you face him, and have to slay your own father?” asked Flicker.
“Pray that I find the courage of a
Dragon.”
* * * *
It was only in looking back that Hualiama spotted a curl of smoke.
The day following their overnight stay at the blue pool, they spent twelve hours criss-crossing a sea of Islets off the north-easterly tip of Ur-Tagga Cluster, little pockets of copper-headed vegetation dotting the Cloudlands like a peculiar form of the pox, which was due to being overrun by a larger relative of the prekki-fruit tree which abounded in these parts. Golden eagles nested in the coppery treetops, while crimson flycatchers inhabited the lower reaches of the rugged cliffs of each Island in their millions. Lia had never heard such a monotonous cacophony of birds. Fra’anior enjoyed variety. This corner of the Island-World enjoyed two things: flying insects and birds to eat them.
“My belly is going to pop!” Flicker declared. He had taken to riding atop Grandion’s shoulder, the better to simply hang his mouth open and enjoy the airborne offerings.
Lia ducked away as another flurry of iridescent flying beetles bombarded her body. Maybe she should face backward. That might save her the indignity of copying the dragonet in his bug-munching exploits.
That was when she saw smoke.
“Grandion! Flicker! Down there … I saw something.”
“Where?” asked Grandion.
“Just trust me and turn around, would you?”
The Tourmaline Dragon flicked his wings to execute a neck-wrenching screamer of a turn, evidently irked by her request, but seconds later, he stiffened. “That’s it. Well spotted, Lia.”
“Especially with your weak Human eyesight,” Flicker added. “How do we know that’s what we’re looking for?”
“We don’t, not yet,” said Grandion. “But any building which is so well concealed halfway down the side of an Island, in such a remote location, has to be hiding something. My guess is a secret mine.”
As they flew closer, Grandion deployed his concealing magic in full force. They ghosted by a quarter-mile offshore, eyeing the portion of tan-coloured brickwork they could see, set flush against the side of the Island. Narrow windows provided some ventilation, but were clearly designed to be difficult to detect, especially as the suns lowered on the far side of the Island, deepening the shadows on the east-facing cliffs. Little else was visible from afar.
