Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons)

by Secchia, Marc

  “She’s having a strange reaction to the serbial serum, my King. It’ll wear off.”

  “What is this, Zarbok?” said a new, resonant voice. “I told you last time, I’m not marrying some narcotic-addled pretty thing with no brains. We pay you good drals to kidnap the best. An honourable kidnapping is the least you could do. Did you check the ears?”

  “Perfect Fra’aniorian ears, Prince Ta’armion,” said Zarbok. Aranya realised he must be some kind of slaver. When she could manage to think about it, she was going to kill him. Zarbok wheedled, “Just take a look at this one, my Prince. She’s a classic Fra’aniorian beauty from Ha’athior Island. As tall and slender as a volcano, young and naïve, eyes of a brilliant hue–you will be amazed. Stupefied, my Lords. This is the one.”

  “Very well. Remove the cloak, Zarbok.”

  Fabric whispered off her shoulders. Aranya felt a cool breeze against her skin–but she was not cold. There was a short silence.

  “She’s volcanic, I’ll grant that,” said the Prince’s voice, full of approval. “Although, Zarbok, even volcanoes have more raiment than you managed to put on this one. Thinking to drive a high bargain by appealing to the baser lusts? Admirable subtlety.”

  “Look at the muscle on her, Ta’armion,” said the King’s voice. A finger prodded her stomach. “I’ve seen gladiators with abdominals like this. Where’d you kidnap this one, Zarbok? Is there a female warrior monastery we don’t know about? She’s very pale-skinned for Ha’athior.”

  She should be burning them with fire. Fancy poking and prodding her like a prize pet! But her brain would not stop to take the danger into account. Aranya giggled playfully and moved toward the voice of the Prince. “Shall I dance for you, my Prince?” she mumbled beneath the hood.

  “Ugh, she’s flying like a dragonet!” said the Prince. “I’ll speak to her if and when she returns with her wits from the Cloudlands.”

  “What’s the negotiating position, Zarbok?” demanded the King. “Where’s she from? Which family?”

  “Well, she arrived today by Dragonship with her aged grandfather,” said Zarbok. “We’ll start with him. Now, as to her Island–”

  “Remove the hood,” ordered the King.

  “Father, I would wait–”

  “Now!”

  A hand clapped her head, not gently. Fingers worked laces behind her neck. Aranya blinked as light entered her eyes. Three faces swam into view–a swarthy man from the Western Islands, probably Zarbok, and two tall blue-eyed men, garbed in sweeping indigo robes of the most resplendent tailoring she had ever seen, one much younger than the other. She guessed they must be the King and his son. The King frowned rather severely.

  “Hotter than volcanic!” said the Prince, stroking his neatly-trimmed beard with his fingertips. He looked ready to marry her on the spot. “Why, Zarbok, you’ve outdone yourself this time! What’s your name, beauty?”

  The King put his hand on the Prince’s arm. “Indeed, Zarbok has outdone himself, and that by an almighty margin. Guards! Guards! Clap this fool in chains and toss him into the dungeon. Find the Dragonship captain and do the same with him.”

  “Her? Father, what–”

  “Zarbok,” said the King, “have you any idea who you’ve kidnapped? And you, my son?”

  The men stared at her. Aranya simpered. “My Lords, do I meet with your approval? I can be very accommodating. Is this the Prince? He’s very handsome. Want to go flying with me, my Prince?”

  The King sighed. “With your leave, Lady, may I remove the face-veil?”

  “You can do anything you like with me, o King.”

  The Prince snorted. “Zarbok, are you certain it was serbial serum you gave her? This one sounds like you found her in a Sylakian brothel.”

  The King unclipped the face-veil and drew it aside delicately. “Now do you see, Ta’armion? Think of the painting in the Hall of Mirrors; consider our Island-allies. Where have you seen such eyes and features before?”

  Ta’armion puzzled over this, rubbing his neatly-trimmed beard with his fingers. “Father, I’m baffled,” he admitted. “Which Island rulers married Fra’aniorian women? Oh! No. She’s dead. Can’t be Immadia, who married from Ha’athior Island–”

  “Ooh, Immadia!” cried Aranya, clapping her hands together with a jingling of chains. “Clever Princey. Clever boy. You need a great big kiss for being so smart.”

  “I don’t,” said Ta’armion, fending her off despite her insistence on a kiss. “Father …”

  “I love Immadia. And I love you, nice Princey.”

  The slaver Zarbok had turned a pasty shade of grey. He said not a word as two guards escorted him out of the great hall.

  The King kissed his fingers, before touching them to Aranya’s forehead, left and right cheek, and chin. For a moment his mien was grave, but it soon gave way to a broad smile. “Welcome to Fra’anior, Princess–it must be Aranya. You can be none other than Izariela’s daughter, or I’m a senile, chattering old dragonet. This is a delight. I must apologise; I’m mortified by these events. We’ll find you clothes, of course …”

  Just then, there came a great commotion at the door of the King’s hall. “My King, we couldn’t stop him, sorry–my Lord, please.”

  Nak adroitly tripped the flustered herald with his cane and kept right on coming. “My King, there’s been a terrible mistake. The Princess of Immadia has been kidnapped,” he cried. “Break out the Dragonships! Sound the warning gong! Ban all marriages across the Islands. Scour the city for a sight of–oh, my poor old heart, now there’s a revelation. Who art thou, the delight of mine eye, thou paragon of surpassing magnificence?”

  “Nak!” Aranya danced in delight. “My old friend, my Prince, my saviour and rescuer. Give me a kiss, thou mighty warrior of yore.”

  Nak glared at her. “Stop pinching my ideas. Aranya, why are you wearing just your underwear?”

  “The better to seduce my Prince,” she said, sidling up to Ta’armion again. He dashed around to the other side of his father. “Oh, Prince Ta’armion, I crave for but the touch of your hand.”

  “Father,” wailed the Prince.

  “She’s high on serbial serum,” the King advised. “Nak–you aren’t the Nak, Dragon Rider, who rescued my grandfather from an erupting volcano?”

  “I am he!” thundered Nak, swiping the air dangerously with his cane. The herald, sneaking up behind the old man, received a firm poke in the eye. “I am the Nak, the only Nak, and only he who shall ever be the Nak, friend to Fra’anior, and protector of the virtue of Immadia’s Princess, here most scantily and, might I add, fetchingly clad.”

  “Er–yes,” agreed the King. “Can we get the Princess decently clothed before my Queen sees this, not to mention King Beran sending envoys demanding reprisals for this insult to his daughter?”

  “Aha,” cried Aranya, clutching Ta’armion’s robes. “I have you now.”

  “She’s mad!”

  Nak grinned hugely. “I’d give her that kiss, pup, before she turns into a Dragon and you have to kiss her fangs.”

  The poor Prince cried, “Not by the trees of a thousand Islands!”

  “I’m a Dragon?” asked Aranya. “Oh yes, now I remember.”

  In a wink, a Dragon leered toothily at the unfortunate Prince. The manacles pinged off in several directions. The pitiful scraps of her clothing fluttered to the marble floor. Prince Ta’armion fainted right into Aranya’s paws.

  “Ah,” said Nak, sidling forward, “I forgot to tell you, Aranya, that these Fra’aniorians are notoriously sensitive. Perhaps turning into a Dragon wasn’t the friendliest move, not to mention ruining my enjoyment of what was truly a stupendous choice of outfit for the occasion.”

  Aranya looked around her, clear-minded for the first time that day. “Can someone tell me what’s going on? Why’s this King worshipping me?”

  * * * *

  Aranya thought the Fra’aniorians would never stop apologising. She tried her best to be gracious and had no end
of chuckling over the incident later in the royal visitors’ chambers with Nak.

  The following day, Prince Ta’armion arrived early at her rooms to escort her and Nak by Dragonship to Ha’athior, her mother’s home Island. He appeared to be over his panic; now the Prince only flinched every time she looked at him. Perhaps he expected a Dragon to leap at him again.

  Served him right, having her kidnapped.

  Despite the early hour, the day was already muggy and the heat like a Dragon’s breath upon her cheek. Ta’armion passed Aranya a folding fan, beautifully decorated with tiny images of flying Dragons. “The volcano makes Fra’anior hotter than most Islands the year round,” he informed her.

  “May I watch from the forward gantry?”

  “What’s wrong with inside the navigation cabin?” he suggested, hopefully.

  “No breeze.”

  Aranya compared Ta’armion uncharitably to Yolathion in her mind. The difference between them might only be a couple of summers–and eight inches of height or so–but in maturity the gap was wider than the Islands spanned east to west. Yolathion was a warrior; a man of action. But she did approve of one thing, which was the Prince’s insistence on getting to know his bride-to-be, even if by that he meant, ‘manacled at my table’. She wondered …

  “Ta’armion,” she said, watching preparations being made for unmooring the Dragonship, “have you ever considered not kidnapping your bride?”

  He offered a wry smile. “That would flout every tradition of our Islands, Princess Aranya. But you’re right. What if the girl turned out to be a Dragon, for example?” His hands closed white-knuckled on the railing, she noticed, as the Dragonship shifted restlessly with the breeze. “My father is headstrong. I am not the man he is.”

  She glanced at Ta’armion, taken aback by his honesty. “I enjoyed your poetry last evening at dinner.”

  He bowed at the compliment.

  Ta’armion, like her, gazed about as the city revealed itself from their rising perch ahead of the royal Dragonship. Fra’anior was breathtaking. The city itself was constructed of gleaming onyx, malachite and blood-red garnet. Roof edges and garden paths and roads were trimmed in a white stone she did not recognise, perhaps quartz, she thought. Every last spare inch was taken up with gardens. The profusion of flowers, evocative on the breeze, almost overwhelmed the eye. Formal gardens crowned the flat rooftops, while immense, spreading broad-leafed trees provided shade. Birds twittered and cooed in the dense tropical foliage, bright of feather and beak, more varieties and species than she had ever seen in one place before. The tall, elegant Fra’aniorians strolled along beneath their colourful umbrellas, the women trailing five or more feet of train from their exquisite dresses, while the men wore sweeping cloaks and stylishly fitted clothes beneath. Refined, Aranya thought. No wonder her mother had always seemed so graceful.

  “Ha’athior Island lies diagonally across the caldera to the southwest,” said Prince Ta’armion, pointing. “Alongside Ha’athior, you will see a new Island rising from the Cloudlands. A new volcano.”

  “Is it always this hot?”

  “The breath of the Great Dragon,” said the Prince.

  “I’m grateful for this cool Fra’aniorian dress.”

  “You look resplendent,” Ta’armion noted. Aranya murmured her thanks. “A true lady of Ha’athior, for you have–as I believe you will see–much of the look of that Island about you.”

  She twirled her umbrella thoughtfully in her fingers. “Ta’armion, is that the graveyard? It seems busy.”

  “We bury our people each beneath a flame-tree, which symbolises a Dragon’s fire. Those, I believe, are the victims of Garthion’s visit here.” Aranya looked sharply at him. “You’ll see that the entire last row, where the people are standing, is freshly planted.”

  Aranya gazed out over the graveyard, a vibrant bloom of orange and yellow flowers upon its carefully pruned trees. A low, ravenous hiss of fire accompanied her exclamation, “That’s over forty people!”

  “The hand of the conqueror failed to discriminate.” Ta’armion sighed bitterly, his sensitive hands twisting on the guardrail as though he sought to bend the metal with his grief and fury. “He did not find what he sought. When he tired of chasing dragonets, Garthion hunted Islanders instead. You understand why I tell you this hard truth, as Fra’anior to Immadia. Those allied by marriage must be honest with each other.”

  Quietly, Aranya told him about her time in the Tower of Sylakia. Ta’armion questioned her at some length about her and Zuziana’s campaign as Dragon and Rider, and told her that the Sylakian Dragonships and forces had been withdrawn from Fra’anior to go and fight the Dragon–for the first time in years, only the Sylakian representative remained with a skeleton force. By his words and manner, Aranya deduced that there was little love for Sylakia around these Islands. His horror at Zuziana’s suffering was real; he wept at that point in her tale.

  To her surprise, as finished telling her story, the royal soldiers manning the Dragonship began to sing an ancient lay about a Dragon called Grandion and his Island love, Hua’liama. Their voices wreathed the Dragonship in haunting harmonies. She heard birds, somewhere in the trees not far below, pick up the tune and begin to trill it back to the soldiers, adding their own complexities and harmonies to the song rising about her. Aranya’s mouth hung open; for the first time, a candid grin lit Ta’armion’s features.

  “If you have never been to your home, Princess,” he said, “how can you know its wonders?”

  He joined in the chorus; Aranya stood spellbound. Ta’armion had a superb tenor–clearly well trained, but even so his voice was finer than any other aboard the vessel–and a range that climbed and climbed without losing an iota of its quality. He encouraged Aranya to join in the singing, which she did, although she found it intimidating to sing beside such a fine musician.

  Halfway through the fourteen verses of the lay, Aranya realised that the Dragon Grandion was a Shapeshifter.

  Ha’athior was four hours away by Dragonship, across the great caldera that smoked and smouldered constantly. Her Dragon hearts thrilled at the sight. Glowing rivers of lava crisscrossed the floor, far below, from which steam and gases rose in shifting veils, drifting and changing constantly. Pumice and lava blasted out of hidden volcanoes. The Islands stood on the rim, as if they comprised the black, roughly serrated turrets of a mighty fortress–many more than the seven inhabited Islands Aranya knew of. The rim was broken in several places, allowing the volcanic gases to mix with the Cloudlands clouds, creating a toxic brew.

  “I was taught there are only seven inhabited Islands,” Aranya said.

  The Prince chuckled. “A handy subterfuge, Princess. I would estimate twenty-three. There might be a few isolated warrior monasteries even we don’t know about. The monasteries are filled with men who follow the Path of the Dragon Warrior–the armed and unarmed martial arts for which Fra’anior is famed.”

  “I’m surprised the Sylakians ever conquered these Islands.”

  Again with refreshing honesty and a sparkle to his vivid blue eyes, Prince Ta’armion replied, “We’d like to think that their hold is tenuous at best. Or that they are caretakers of what was never, and will never, be theirs. They’re after the meriatite, of course. Sylakian prisoners are put to work in the lower mines here. Mostly they last a few months, maybe even a summer or two, before the gases kill them.”

  Aranya ground her teeth audibly.

  “Aye, I agree.” The Prince pointed. “Down there, do you see the white patch? Through the clouds–oh, it’s gone, now.”

  “I saw,” she said. “What was it, Ta’armion?”

  “It’s meant to be a Dragon gravesite, Aranya.” She gasped in amazement. “Truly so, Immadia. With a telescope, you can see the bones. Mighty ribcages the size of Dragonships.”

  “Surely you jest–”

  “Not so, Princess.” But her companion frowned. “Look to Ha’athior’s cone. Dragonets. Swarms of them.”

 
As the Dragonship pressed on, turbines humming, the dots resolved into swarms of tiny creatures in every imaginable, gleaming colour, moving in ways birds never moved, swirling in the thermals around Ha’athior’s active volcanic cone. Aranya’s Dragon senses prickled.

  “Ta’armion, are dragonets dangerous?”

  “Not usually.” He frowned. “Although, they seem agitated today. I’ve never seen quite so many out at once.”

  Aranya considered at the swirling dragonets, coming closer and closer to the Dragonship. She made a decision. “Ta’armion, I’m not going crazy, alright–just trust me. Get me out of this dress, fast. I’m sensing danger.”

  “Because you don’t want to ruin a fine dress?”

  “Unlace it, now!” Aranya snarled, with more than a hint of fire crackling in her voice. The Prince leaped to obey.

  The dragonets winged toward the Dragonship in a great swarm, all different colours–red, green, orange, blue, black, white and yellow–perfect miniature dragons, she saw now, with claws and teeth and wings similar to her own. Ta’armion’s fingers worked with commendable speed. No silly panic this time. Aranya felt the bodice loosen. She shrugged out of the dress and pushed it down to her ankles. There would be no time to loosen the under-dress or the shift beneath that. But they were not worth the fortune the dress must command. She kicked off her slippers.

  Aranya thumped Ta’armion on the shoulder. “Get inside. Your men, too.”

  The dragonets screamed in chorus as they winged rapidly toward the Dragonship. They resembled a swarm of bats, only this swarm was a hundred times deadlier. She felt their rage, their hatred, the unthinking lust for revenge on the object filling their sky. Garthion. This was his work. Aranya shivered in her bones. He had hunted the dragonets; now the dragonets hunted people.

  She meant to stake her life on an instinctive guess.

  Ta’armion and his men watched from inside the crysglass of the navigation cabin. The Prince tapped on the window, gesturing for her to come inside to safety.

  Instead, Aranya clambered over the guardrail. Now the men began to shout and bang the glass in panic. Dragonets whirred toward the Dragonship, baring their fangs, readying their talons. It was clear the hydrogen sack was about to be shredded by a thousand needle-sharp claws of these miniature Dragons. If she could harness dragonets to attack the Sylakians, that would be a trick.