Dragon Kin: Lily & Oceana

by Audrey Faye

  She snorted. Respectfully. This time, the yellow dragon had picked the wrong enemy. Water could not be vanquished. It must simply be avoided. Even the arrival of a dragon so strange as the blue-green one did not have the power to alter such a fundamental truth.

  She bowed her head. His call to battle had been magnificent, stirring up her blood even as she slept. She could feel the power of it, pushing against her scales from the inside. No dragon living could fail to be moved by such a summons. Even her old and tired wings yearned to rise and join with such might.

  She snorted again, this time at herself, and tucked her head back onto her tail. It was early yet, the first light of the sun not yet fully chasing away the dark, and smart dragons with spring campaigns to plan needed to get their rest. The yellow warrior lived in a time and place far removed from the Veld. It would be others who must respond—and gently turn his fierce heart to wiser battles.

  He had a good queen. She had both age and wisdom. She would know what to do with an old warrior who had lost his way.

  Lovissa tried once again to settle. This dream had been uncommonly disturbing. She rolled a little, her shoulder aching from old battle wounds. Always, the ache was worse in the winter, but she did not wish the pain away, for that would mean spring had come, and danger along with it.

  She closed her eyes. A warrior must sleep when she could.

  An enormous roar sounded in the valley outside her cave.

  Lovissa was on her feet in a single beat of her heart, ready to throw body and soul into protecting the Veld. She made it as far as the mouth of her cave, preparing her own call to add to the alert—and then the message in Baraken’s roar landed in her sleep-fogged head.

  She froze on the cliff’s edge, gaping at the utter silence below.

  There was no danger to the Veld. No elf invasion. Baraken was not sending a battle cry—he was answering one. The one that had sounded in her dream.

  The one calling all dragons to the water.

  -o0o-

  Lovissa spotted her quarry and angled for the cliffs below. It wasn’t the first place she had thought to look, but Baraken’s large bulk wasn’t hard to find.

  He gave her a hard look as she glided in for a landing, but queens were made of sterner stuff than to melt under a warrior’s glare, even a warrior as fine as this one. She flapped her wings in the movements that would have once landed her as gently as a flower blossom touching down on a meadow of grass. These days, she felt fortunate if the thunk wasn’t overly jarring. She did not let the lack of grace embarrass her. All flyers eventually lost their skill to age—and in its place, gained wisdom.

  She was here to see whether it was age and wisdom that chased her finest warrior, or something else. She had reason to be concerned. He had been bellowing all through the night, roaring his answer to the challenge in her dreams. It had woken half the Veld, and not the half that tended toward reasoned and temperate behavior.

  She folded her wings neatly on her back and stared out over the choppy gray water. Not a dragon’s usual choice of views. “We must speak.”

  He stared down at the water far below, at the line where it met the sands that were all that remained of what had once been proud cliffs. It reminded Lovissa oddly of the ashes of the queens.

  She waited. He was not always quick to speak, but it was generally worth the wait.

  His rumble formed into words. “I must go to the water. Touch it.”

  Cold struck her bones. His words edged far too close to her dream. “Why?”

  “I do not know.” He blew smoke down at the waves encroaching on the beach. “The summons is clear.”

  She had heard it, but it had not been calling to her. Perhaps it had not been calling to him either. “I have dreamed of this. It comes from the dragons who will come after us.” She moved her head a little closer to his, the most a queen dared in trying to soothe a warrior. “It is not our challenge, Baraken. It is for those who will come from us.”

  She wasn’t sure she believed the words even as she spoke them. It was one thing for a queen to receive the visions. It was entirely different for her finest warrior to have seen them too.

  “It is for me.” He sounded absolutely certain, even as a shudder moved over his body.

  She knew why. Water was an enemy second only to the elves, and often used by them. An aversion at the deepest levels of instinct, made stronger by experience. “Perhaps you need only to be close.”

  His wings unfurled. “No. I must touch the water.”

  Unease gripped her throat. “For how long?”

  His shoulders rippled. “I do not know.”

  That wasn’t acceptable. She needed him. Some skirmishes had already been fought, and the major campaigns of spring needed planning. She needed his skill and his might and his rock-solid certainty that they would win.

  Baraken of the cliffs did not feel certain of anything, and it unsettled her greatly. “Come back with me. We need to calm the youngsters you’ve woken with your bellowing. They think we march on the elves today.”

  “You will calm them. They will listen to their queen. I must stay here.”

  On that, his certainty felt absolute. A warrior who would not be swayed, even if his cause was a wrong-headed one.

  Lovissa sighed. The planning of the spring campaigns could wait a day or two, but no more. The snow in the passes melted early this year. “I will send one of our fastest flyers if we require your presence.” No warrior of the Veld ever truly got to stand down.

  He nodded. “That is acceptable.”

  It wasn’t his choice. She was his queen. She would have some of their scouts check on him. He would not be the first warrior to get cracked in the head. Battle broke many things, and not all of them were visible.

  She unfurled her own wings. The battle with the water was one he must fight alone.

  She had dragons to ready for spring.

  Part III

  Voices from Afar

  Chapter 15

  Irin looked up from his work at a high table as Lily and Oceana entered the nursery. “About time you two showed up.”

  Lily blinked, and then blinked again as a very alert golden eye scanned her. It was still early, and Kis was rarely awake before midday. “I’m sorry—did you send for us? I didn’t get the message.” After a dawn swim, she’d decided to bring her hungry dragon into the village for breakfast. Kellen was on kitchen duty this morning, and she wouldn’t threaten Oceana with a ladle for coming too near the soup pot.

  “I sent for you,” said a voice behind her. Karis walked in with a very drowsy Sapphire and an even sleepier Lotus. The peach-pink dragon headed straight for a nook beside Kis, turned herself around once to get settled, and promptly fell back asleep. Karis shook her head at the young dragon and nodded briskly at Lily. “We went by your pool to pick you up, but evidently you’re early risers this morning.”

  Lily took a seat on a low stool. “We didn’t sleep much. Too many dragons flying overhead.”

  “Indeed.” Karis cast a wry glance at Kis’s visible eye. “Care to explain yourself to mere elves, old man? I assume you don’t actually intend to lead a flight of dragons off to war.”

  Irin snorted and stabbed a piece of cheese with a small knife. “Is that what your dragon told you?”

  Karis raised an eyebrow. “No. Afran is being uncharacteristically silent.”

  Irin folded his arms and stared at his dragon. “Indeed.”

  Lily and Sapphire exchanged glances. This didn’t bode well. Lily had no idea what was going on either. Kin bonding with a dragon was supposed to let you in on most of the dragon chatter, but if even Karis and Irin didn’t know what was happening, this was a very strange morning.

  And a scary one. Lily shivered, and it wasn’t from the cold. The nursery was always the warmest place in the village.

  Karis gave her a small nod. Then she took the bread and cheese Irin offered and pinned Kis with a stern gaze. “Enough with the mystery. Explain your ch
allenge, please. We’re kin, and leaving us in the dark is going to turn this thing into a cock-eyed mess.”

  ::Kin are not a part of this.:: Kis sounded clear and stern and a lot less cranky than he usually did. ::It is dragons who have erred, and dragons who must fix this.::

  Karis and Irin both looked ready to pound on something. Irin growled. “Explain, old man.”

  The golden eye didn’t move, didn’t blink—but something in its depths gentled. The eye shifted to look straight at Lily. ::You worry that your bond with your dragon is not strong enough. I believe you are wrong in that:: His eye shifted to include the others. ::There is a bond that is far too weak, however, and it is the one that runs from the small blue-green one to other dragons.::

  Kis stopped talking, as if they were smart enough to figure the rest out.

  Lily swallowed, her head feeling like she’d drunk too much mead.

  It was Irin who blew out a sharp exhale. “Warriors fight best when they know who they fight for.”

  ::Exactly. The small one is marked of the Dragon Star, and yet she feels like an outsider. This must not be allowed to continue. She will one day be called to save all of dragon kind. To do that, she must know us, or she will have no reason to take to dangerous skies.::

  Like Kis had done once. Lily’s stomach clenched.

  Kis’s eye gentled again. ::I do not speak of literal skies, missy. I do not believe it will be arrows you face.::

  Lily wasn’t sure they were capable of facing much of anything.

  Kis’s eye moved to Oceana, who had wrapped herself around Irin’s warm mug of cider. ::She lives in a fog, one born out of years of solitude. The only ones to have made it through that fog have come to join her in the water.::

  Lily thought of Oceana’s glee as Kellen, Sapphire, and Alonia had jumped in the pool. And of her pleasure when Kis had laid down at the water’s edge and communed with her, the tip of his tail in the water.

  Kis rumbled. ::She must know us. We have failed in leaving the task for forming that bond in her hands.::

  “We’ve been working on it,” Karis said quietly.

  ::You have not been working correctly. You have been asking the small one to come out of her fog instead of seeking to understand it.::

  Lily winced at the hard words. Karis merely frowned.

  ::There has not been enough respect.:: Kis paused, and the nursery reverberated with his sternness. ::Especially from the dragons. We laugh when the small one hisses when we make fire. We do not honor the chosen of the Dragon Star. We must begin. We must ask her to wrap her fog around all of us.::

  He gingerly guided the very tip of his tail into Irin’s cider. ::We will come join you in the water, small one. We will swim.::

  The force of his promise reverberated in Lily’s bones.

  Irin eyed his cider and raised a wry eyebrow. “I’m thinking a dare would have gotten the job done, old man. Did you really need to issue a battle challenge?”

  ::Yes.:: Kis looked exactly like Lily imagined a dragon warrior would look—and not an old and cranky one. ::They are marked of the Dragon Star. I take this as seriously as any battle of my lifetime.::

  Shock hit Irin’s face. “You’re making sure they all come. Every dragon. All those able to travel.”

  Kis merely blinked. ::Indeed.::

  Irin snorted. “You’re crazy.”

  ::No. I am the warrior who will be first into the water.:: Kis raised his head and looked straight at Lily. ::Please ask Kellen to fetch me some of her stew for breakfast. There are preparations to make. We must begin.::

  Lily was still stuck on what Irin had said. “All the dragons will come?”

  Kis blinked slowly. ::Of course. They will not ignore my summons.::

  Lily gulped. There would be hundreds of dragons. Most wouldn’t fit in the warm pool all by themselves, and even the river could only hold a handful at a time. “I don’t think there’s enough room.”

  Kis’s rumble sounded amused. ::We will go to the bay of a thousand waterfalls. There will be room for us all.::

  Lily blinked. She’d been there twice. It was a beautiful ocean bay fed by springs and water cascading down from the cliffs, but it was at least three days away by foot, maybe more. Kis could hardly make it to the sunning rocks. She swallowed and found the courage to look straight into his eyes. ::That’s really far away.::

  ::I will be leaving directly after breakfast.:: Kis’s head rose right to the ceiling of the rondo. ::In fact, I believe I will eat my stew outside.::

  Lily scrambled out of the way as three dragons of very different sizes headed for the doors, four astonished kin following in their wake. Karis looked at Irin on the way out and shrugged wordlessly. Irin grabbed a canteen and a knife and a pack from the corner. “I go where he goes.”

  That seemed to spur Karis out of her shock. “I’ll go organize supplies. Walk with what you absolutely need. We’ll ferry the rest.”

  Afran could fly to the bay, and so could Lotus. Lily sighed as she exited the nursery, realizing she only had one way of getting there. One that involved a lot of dust and a very cranky dragon. She looked over at Oceana, who had found a perch on a nearby rain barrel. Maybe she could be convinced to fly with Lotus and Sapphire while those who had to walk marched through the dust.

  Karis waved Sapphire off. “Go wake everyone.”

  That was going to be a lot of people, and not all of them had dragons to ride. Kellen would probably walk without complaint, but Alonia was not going to be happy about this. Except for the part where every single dragon within three days’ travel was going to be there. Lily hid a sudden grin. She was pretty sure matchmaking wasn’t part of what Kis was trying to do, but Alonia never waited for permission. Not if there were cute boys or dragons in the vicinity.

  Irin slapped his hand to Kis’s shoulder. “Eat your stew, fearsome warrior, and we’ll see if we can talk someone into flying our gear to where we’ll overnight so I don’t have to lug your dinner.”

  Lily winced—she knew exactly how much a small dragon could eat. Feeding Kis on the trail was going to be a logistical nightmare.

  “We’ll sort it out.” Karis straightened from her conversation with a newly arrived Alonia, who looked uncommonly serious. “You go. We’ll get the gear ready, recruit a few of Lotus’s friends to be our supply train, and we’ll be on the trail after you by mid-morning.”

  Lily cast a surreptitious glance in Kis’s direction. At any speed she’d ever seen the old dragon walk, even the slowest travelers would catch up to him by lunch.

  Alonia walked over and rubbed Kis’s nose. “I’ll forage for berries along the way. The first ones should be ripe by now.”

  That was a really excellent bribe, especially if Kellen could be convinced to toss them into some trail pancakes, but food wasn’t going to get Kis through this journey. Lily didn’t doubt his courage, but his body barely worked these days.

  She shook her head. Irin didn’t look worried, and Kis wasn’t who she should be fussing over. The journey would be hard, but others would lead—and if Irin couldn’t get Kis there, no one could. It was the destination Lily needed to worry about. Several hundred dragons who hated water were not exactly ideal candidates for a swimming lesson, and she was pretty sure she knew who the swimming teachers were supposed to be. She let out a sigh, and then clapped her hand over her mouth, realizing it had been a really noisy one.

  Irin glanced in her direction. “You worry about getting yourself on that trail, missy. Kis and I have never been left behind on a march, and we won’t be starting now.”

  Lily felt her cheeks flushing. She hadn’t meant for her doubt to be so obvious. “I’m worried about the swimming, too.”

  “Worries are eased by doing, youngling.”

  Lily looked over at the unfamiliar voice—and stared. Elhen, queen of the dragons and so old she was almost transparent, stood beside the nursery rondo with her two guardians at her back.

  The village had gone absolutely silent. />
  Elhen surveyed the frozen people, the half-gathered supplies, and the golden dragon at the center of all the action. A wave of amusement reverberated in Lily’s head. “You called, old man?”

  Kis looked almost sheepish. “It was not necessary for the queen to answer.”

  Elhen snorted. “There has been only one battle cry sounded in my lifetime. I wasn’t going to stay in my cave and eat strawberries.”

  Kis dropped his head. “I follow where you lead.”

  This time, Elhen’s mental merriment jangled like bells. “Oh, no, old man. You started this one. You lead.” She paused a beat. “You have issued a challenge for all of dragonkind—and I believe you have issued it correctly. Our past and our future may well rest on how many of our number can meet your bravery.”

  Lily could have sworn Kis was turning pink under his golden scales.

  Elhen turned her head and sought out Kellen, who stood awed and still, a loaf of bread in one hand and a pot of stew in the other. “I have heard rumors of your wondrous stew, young Kellen. Perhaps I might trouble you to bring me a bowl.”

  Kellen held up the pot and tried to say something that mostly came out as a stutter.

  Elhen’s eyes twinkled. “Three bowls, if you please.” Without even a pause, the queen daintily dipped her tail in the rain barrel where Oceana perched. Lily didn’t hear what was said, but from the stunned, shy look on her dragon’s face, she had just been invited to dine with royalty.

  Chapter 16

  Lily dropped down on the rocks at the edge of the cliff that overlooked the bay of a thousand waterfalls and moaned in relief. Four days of living hell, but she’d survived. Barely. She glanced overhead as Oceana shot by, Lotus hard on her tail, Sapphire screeching at her dragon to stop.

  Lily grinned. Oceana’s nosedive would take her straight for the water. Lotus was going to get thoroughly splashed if she wasn’t careful.

  Moments later, a blue-green streak arrowed into the water, and Lotus blew fire at the splash. Ocean popped up safely out of range, chittering happily.