by Marc Secchia
Dragonet and Dragon swapped notes.
Flicker said, “To the left of the building is a cave or ravine heavily overhung by those prekki-fruit trees. I thought I saw the tailpipe of a Dragonship in there. And you saw that Green Dragon leaving to patrol, Grandion. We’ve been very fortunate on the timing.”
“What would they mine in there?” asked Lia.
“Gold or gemstones,” said the Tourmaline Dragon. “This is the way Dragons used to work their Human slaves. You see, the closer you get to the Cloudlands, the better the pickings. It has something to do with the way that the Ancient Dragons raised the Islands. But the atmosphere is poisonous lower down. So it is safest to mine inside of an Island. That outlet you spotted, Hualiama, is likely to be the exhaust for a smelting operation. They’ll mine, refine and work the metals down here, and then ship out the finished product by Dragonship.”
“Lighter than handling all that ore,” she agreed. “I’m familiar with the theory, Grandion. But if the King was being held here, why would they have just one Dragon guarding the entire Island?”
“Actually, it’s the presence of that Green which reveals Ra’aba’s hand,” said Flicker.
Grandion snorted, “Is one Dragon not enough?”
Her emphatic agreement elicited a chuckle and an aerial bounce from her ride. His fires began to fulminate, a low vibration transmitting itself through his Rider’s seat into her bones.
“Down, Dragon,” said Lia. “We need to find the King first–and who says there aren’t more Dragons inside?”
“Dragons do not sneak about, it is dishonourable–”
Typical Dragon! Lia interrupted, “Grandion, why don’t you go challenge that Green with a nice bit of honourable thundering and leave the sneaking to the little people? If Ra’aba’s men know we’re coming, they might kill my family. Besides, I’m already disgraced.”
Swiftly, they hammered out a plan. Flicker and Hualiama would have two hours inside before Grandion attacked, or if the dragonet warned him earlier, he would ‘tidy up’ for them, as the Tourmaline Dragon put it. Lia readied her blades and implements of sabotage. If only the Master of Shadows could see her now, she thought, tying her black head-covering in place and blacking her face with coal dust mixed with a little oil. She slung the Haozi hunting bow across her back, clipped a quiver of arrows to her belt, and readied her Immadian forked daggers at her hips.
Grandion turned, and flitted toward a narrow, square window beside the exhaust outlet Lia had identified. Go burn the heavens, Rider, he said in her mind. And, be careful.
I will.
The Dragon added, Don’t let her do anything rash, Flicker. Call me the instant you need me.
Lia said, Stay out of sight, Grandion. Paw?
She clambered over his wrist onto his paw.
Scouting swiftly, Flicker returned to say, The Dragonship’s flying the purple of royal Fra’anior, but has the symbol of a windroc.
Ra’aba, she nodded. He isn’t here, is he?
Seems unlikely, the dragonet reassured her.
Balanced in the palm of Grandion’s right forepaw as the Dragon hovered just twenty feet from the building, Hualiama sucked in a breath. This was it. This was the moment of change; after which, a Human might never again ride her Dragon. Yet her duty was clear. She must set aside her feelings for the sake of her kingdom.
Grandion tossed her gently across the gap. Lia made a soft-footed landing courtesy of her tacky shoes, and grasped the ledge. She lifted herself into the gap before glancing back.
You’ll hear me before you see me, said the Tourmaline Dragon, bending his neck in a regal bow. Go. Save your family, Dragon Rider.
Thanks, Grandion.
Hualiama’s eyes blurred as she squeezed her slight frame through the window and dropped into the room beyond.
Chapter 26: The Slave Mines
BUrglary. Flying Dragonback. Search and rescue of banished royal families. Living in a volcano full of young warrior-monks–this was the brand of mischief a royal ward perpetrated in her spare time. Lia suppressed a nervous chuckle as she allowed her eyes to adjust to the gloom of a storeroom which was filled with barrels of mohili flour, judging by the musty smell.
Hualiama began to draw her Nuyallith blades before sheathing them with a grimace. The Master of Shadows would’ve striped her hide. ‘Weapons only when needed,’ she mimicked his sarcastic tones. ‘No time to braid your hair, Princess.’ Finding the door locked, Lia raided her wristlet for lock picks. She had raced against time often enough to know exactly what needed to be done to this type of lock. With a horribly loud click, she turned the simple mechanism and eased the door open. Faraway, the low thrumming of machinery came to her hearing.
I’ll investigate, said Flicker.
Hualiama nodded. Go. While it made sense to take advantage of her Dragon companions’ superior abilities, it did leave a Human feeling rather stuck on the ground and inadequate, at times.
She padded down a corridor dimly lit by oil torches set in sconces on the wall. Up or down? The slaves’ living quarters had to be lower down, close to the mines. That would make it easier for Ra’aba’s men to control them and prevent escape. So these levels would likely be used for storage, or accommodation for his men.
Lia came to a central staircase leading to a lower level landing. She shrank into the shadows. Flicker. Mercy, the sudden, silent movement had scared her.
Found something, he said. One level down, a set of guarded apartments. I think it might be your family’s accommodation. Two soldiers at the door.
Let’s take a look.
Lia bounded down the stairs, three at a time, before flattening herself against the wall and peering around the corner. Forty feet down this corridor, two soldiers moped either side of an imposing-looking doorway. Promising.
She motioned to the dragonet. Distract them.
Next she knew, Flicker sauntered out into the open and began scratching his rear! Lia gaped at his gall before taking the opportunity to scan her surroundings. A warm breeze on her cheek brought the acrid tang of smoke and metals to her nose and throat, suggesting that the entrance to the mines proper was nearby, lower down. Lia heard male voices deep in discussion.
“Huh? There’s a dragonet,” said a voice, in the familiar accent of her home Island. Aye. This was the place, alright.
“Chase it off,” said the second soldier. “Ra’aba doesn’t like anyone near his quarters, despite that a few dragonets would keep the rat population down around here.”
Hualiama froze, but the first man replied, “He isn’t here. Scoot, you dumb animal! No food here.” Footsteps sauntered closer. “Scoot!”
Hualiama palmed one of her forked daggers. Drat, the soldier would appear on her less favoured right side. Closer, closer … Flicker walked past her, still scratching his unmentionables … the soldier marched around the corner and straight into the razor-sharp blade of an Immadian forked dagger. He gurgled. Lia tried to lower his body silently, but the soldier’s sword clattered on the stairway.
“Fa’arric?” called the other man. “You alright there?”
Plucking an arrow from her quiver, Lia set it to the string and drew hastily. Time to see what her Haozi hunting bow could do. Stepping just an inch clear of the corner, she sighted her shot.
“Who’s–” The man’s voice cut off. Lia had aimed for his chest, but the soldier’s reflexive duck meant he took the arrow right beneath the rim of his open-faced helmet. Not the most pleasant end for any man, but certainly quick and painless.
Lia stole along to the door, checking in both directions. She tested the door handle. Locked, of course.
Flicker said, Quiet in there.
She retrieved her arrow with an effort, a gory but necessary task. No telling how many more arrows she might need. Right, lock picks–this lock had been recently oiled, but was considerably more complex than the previous one. Lia bit her tongue, listening and concentrating. Cli
ck. There, a welcoming sound. She pressed the door open, keeping to the closed side of the double door as she had been taught. A light glimmered inside. Was Ra’aba truly absent?
Oh, come on, said Flicker, darting through the doorway.
Swish! Thud!
Had the dragonet stood an ordinary Human’s height, he would have been struck by five arrows, whose points penetrated the wooden door but stopped an inch shy of Lia’s chest. As it was, Flicker received a nick to his shoulder, but was otherwise unhurt. Reckless beast that he was, the dragonet shrugged off the near-miss and merely flitted further into Ra’aba’s chambers! Lia searched with her senses. A false flagstone? A trip wire or other traps and triggers? Clearly, Ra’aba wished no disturbance in his absence. Her skin prickled. There was something in here, something dangerous …
Magic, Flicker’s voice entered her mind. I’ll see if I can disarm it …
A magical trap? Her training had not included much on the subject, although her readings of ancient lore had suggested that Blue Dragons in particular were adept at constructing fiendishly clever magical traps. As the dragonet hovered, the Human felt that unmistakable prickle of magic at the back of her retinae. Mercy. Flicker had been right.
I think that’s it. Proceed with caution, said the dragonet.
Lia crept into the room. Clothes in a chest. Weapons. Parchment and quill pens arranged with exactitude on a wooden desk tucked into the corner, where it might receive light from another of the tiny, square windows. Led by instinct, Lia approached the desk. Ra’aba–or someone–had been copying a scroll. A half-finished fragment peeked from beneath a neat stack of what appeared to be sealed royal missives, scrolls prepared with the royal authority of the new King of Fra’anior. But the scrap was out of place. Just a single sheet.
Her eyes fell on the last line, and a gasp tore out of her chest.
… third Great Race will emerge from the shadows,
And take their place at destiny’s helm.
The flowing, beautiful script delighted the eye. The contents paralysed her. The prophecy! They had just stumbled upon the prophecy by blind luck … chills racked her body. What terrors and what hope might this knowledge represent?
Her hand reached out, and touched the parchment.
* * * *
Voicing a soundless scream, Flicker hurled himself through the air. Flame erupted from a tiny hole in the wall above the desk. Straw-head was already ducking, alert to the danger but too slow, her hand scraping the pile of parchment onto the floor as she tumbled sideways. Burning scraps blew off the table as the dragonet flashed between his girl and the flame. She clutched something to her chest, snuffing it out by rolling rapidly across the floor.
Another danger-sound, a snick from above the bed! Poisoned darts skittered off the stones where Lia had been just a dragonet’s heartbeat before, but her swift motion saved her. Of course, she clobbered the back of her head on the bedframe. For a second, the Human girl lay still.
Flicker, darling?
Ooh, he could sing flame-songs all day when she said that! If only the Tourmaline lout could hear how dear she held him in her regrettably singular heart, he would turn into a Green from sheer jealousy. I’m fine, Flicker replied gruffly. Hotter than usual, but you already appreciate my lava-hot–
Lia clucked crossly. Took care of that trap, did you, mister daring dragonet?
Saved your hide from a roasting, didn’t I?
She turned the parchment over in her fingers. “Oh, toss it in a Cloudlands volcano …”
Half of the page was scorched, charred holes riddling the parchment as if worms had attacked a leaf. Flicker flinched at the shock and disappointment writ on her pallid face. He thought she might be sick.
He said, Tuck it away for later, fire-eyes. We’ve your family to save.
Not straw-head? Wretchedly, fingers trembling, she folded the parchment and secured it inside her belt pouch.
Never again, said Flicker. But he felt the sting of having failed Lia. He must gather his courage, for to have her look so defeated again on his account would surely extinguish a dragonet’s fires.
They penetrated deeper into the strange Human warren. Flicker did not understand this Human desire to delve into the bowels of the Island to retrieve metals and stones of dubious value. Lesser Dragons loved treasure, but what would a dragonet want with cold stones which could never warm a warren? Give him twenty warren-mates any day.
They passed several guard posts by the expedient of sticking to the shadows and once, crawling beneath an iron gateway which could shut to seal off the inner part of the mine from the outer world, he presumed, but there was gap enough beneath it for an audacious dragonet and his petite Human companion. Hualiama had to remove her Nuyallith blades to fit through. Soon, the darkness assumed a ruddy glow, and they came to the edge of an enormous shaft riven into the living rock. Four square cages hung from thick chains, driven by winches and spindle-wheels the size of Dragons. Two counterbalanced pairs, Lia whispered to him. One cage travelled up while its running-mate travelled down.
The din was louder and closer. Furnaces roaring. Metal clanging. Shouts and curses, the crack of a whip. Heat shimmered down there, rising past their faces as though the shaft were a living volcano.
As they crouched behind a great wooden box filled with mining tools, examining the guarded cages, Lia said, They must keep the slaves on this level. Look. Locked dungeon doors. Four levels, maybe more. How many slaves do they have working here?
A huge gong crashed somewhere below.
“Change of shift,” said one of the purple-clad soldiers. “Let’s get those slaves up here.”
Can we wait here? Lia asked.
Grandion will attack in less than an hour, Flicker reminded her. Finding your family is of the utmost importance. I haven’t seen any other Dragons down here, though, so we might stand a chance.
Down we go, said the Human girl.
Wait, here comes our chance.
Three men approached along a side passage, hauling a cart of what appeared to be water rations. They paused next to Lia’s hiding-place to have a short but rancorous argument with the guards at the transportation platforms. Unknown to them, they picked up two infiltrators in that short space of time. The cart rumbled forward and clanged onto the metal. With a deafening squeal of the winches, the platform began its slow descent, a thousand feet or more, into the caverns below.
The men stood about and griped about their lives in the mines, the toes of their steel-shod boots just inches from Hualiama’s nose beneath the cart, braced between the axles. Her eyes seemed preternaturally agleam in the gloom, Flicker thought. Just how much magic inhabited his lovely straw-head? No, not straw-head! When the dragonets sang this tale in the histories, she would be Lia Fire-Eyes, friend of Dragons.
They swung through the roof of a monstrous cavern lit by bulbous smelting pots and tens of roaring, open furnaces. Hundreds of men and women laboured down here.
Flicker bellied to the edge to look down. Another shaft like this one leads further down, he told Lia. Heaps of Humans coming up. They look exhausted.
The dragonet crept back to Hualiama, feeling cowed. He heard more commands being shouted. Whips seared the air with cruel cracks. Ore thundered into tumbling or stirring machines incomprehensible to a dragonet. The miserable cries of Humans in pain darkened his fires, while clouds of steam and smoke created a pall over the scene.
Strength to you, noble dragonet, Hualiama sent into his mind, accompanied by a picture of a dragonet wreathed in white fire, a golden circlet upon his head.
His fires sizzled. Lia knew him so well!
As the cage descended and the other rose to the top of the second shaft, fifty feet away, Hualiama and Flicker had a clear view of many pale, soot-blackened faces staring unseeing at the cavern. The Human girl stiffened with a soft cry. “Mother …”
“And how are we today, your kingship?” A soldier called, not unkindly,
his voice carrying to where the pair hid. “Come on, the day’s work is done. Time to rest and sup. There’s more on the morrow.”
At least he’s not a beast, said Lia. I see Shyana and Fyria, and Ari, but where are Father and Elki? And Kalli, my oldest brother?
The slaves began to file out of the other cage, waiting their turn for the cage Hualiama and Flicker had taken down. Bracing her hands and feet across the gap between the cart’s axles, with Flicker gripping the wood with his talons, Lia clung on like a swamp leech as they bounced off roughly. A boulder smacked the Human girl’s rump as the cart jounced, scraping her loose. She yelped. Then, as the heavily-loaded cart rumbled forward, the royal ward tumbled out helplessly, snarling herself amongst the feet of the men pushing from behind.
There was a taut, shocked silence. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at the commotion.
“You!” shouted a man, grabbing Lia by her collar.
Flicker bit him in the calf muscle.
* * * *
Hualiama heaved free of the men with a flash of her throwing daggers, one in either hand. With a flip of a blade, she downed one of a trio of soldiers standing alongside the slaves. The second received a knife in the belly. Then, soldiers closed in from everywhere. Lia immediately drew the much longer Nuyallith blades and began her dance, springing lithely upon her first foe using the pouncing rajal technique, slitting his throat before he had time to raise his weapon; now spinning into a powerful, sideways double cut which gutted two soldiers, soaring above a wild cut to slash a man’s face on the way past. Thrust! Slide! She weaved among the flying blades. The dragonet screamed before her, firing tiny fireballs, so that it seemed that a single fire-spitting, blade-wielding creature of an impossible number of arms, legs and wings tore into Ra’aba’s soldiers.
Suddenly, Lia arrived at Queen Shyana’s toes.
“Mother,” she exclaimed softly, gripping the Queen’s arm.
