Tytiana
Page 24
How? How could she be strong, when she could not change into a Dragoness or even burn the ropes that had held her captive; when at the moment of crisis, her only thought had been to cry out for a strong man to save her? Islands sakes’, that was pushing the outermost bounds of courage, wasn’t it? Tytiana felt small and silly and weak and … ugh! How had she become the very kind of woman she despised? That was not who she wanted to be!
Yet he was gesturing again. You and me. Together. We’ll find a way home.
Thanks, she mouthed back.
Her fingers traced a deep cut on his shoulder. The fire that had eased the throbbing of her own foot, slipped into his flesh as if seeking a home, and the cut drew closed before their eyes. Magical. Motes of fire swimming beneath his skin, reluctantly fading into this man in the same way that her feelings seemed to want to dissolve into him every time they were together. How could she possibly want some poncey fancy-pants above Jakani?
That had been a rather immature decision, hadn’t it?
Could anyone survive a Tytiana in the full panoply of her Dragoness’ wrath? Yet Jakani … she might not even be able to burn him!
Kerpoof. There went her brain, her dreams, her realisation of what this fate might mean – consumed in an awareness of wonder that made her tingle from head to toe. ‘Father, my requirement for a suitor is that he be completely fireproof. Care to arrange that?’ She chuckled soundlessly, shaking her head. ‘Who else would want to marry my flaming self?’
Tilting his shoulders, Jakani raised his other hand and then slipped it beneath her neck, drawing her head onto his muscled upper arm. Oh. He must have misinterpreted … well, she had decided she was done with complaining. This position was comfortable and she was very, very weary indeed. Healing always knocked the stuffing out of her. Never mind escaping an outright murder attempt. Besides, Excorion would take them where he wished and there was nothing at all they could do to stop him.
So, why not steal a forbidden snuggle? She could keep Jakani warm, if nothing else. Only the stars would ever know.
Chapter 17: Caged
TOWARD MIDAFTERNOON of the day following their abduction, Excorion dropped them off on an Island that was little more than a patch of boulders two hundred leagues or more offshore of Gemalka. He growled, “I’m going to sleep. Do not disturb me.”
Ten seconds later, he was snoring up a thunderstorm.
Tytiana waggled an eyebrow at Jakani, who shrugged. This was an open-air prison, and a very effective one at that, unless they could grow a pair of wings each. Apparently this Brown Dragon did not believe in feeding and watering his captives. He also slept with one eye cracked open.
Most speedily, they needed to improve their use of sign language. Jakani abandoned Tytiana to go relieve himself behind a boulder. He returned to find the heiress hopping about with much the same needs as him, but it took him several frustrating minutes to work out what she was trying to ask. Cheeks aflame, he took the similarly flustered Choice to another boulder and showed her how to remove a pad of moss from the underside. He mimed wiping himself … well, he was not sure how this could possibly have been more awkward, but it certainly numbered amidst the most embarrassing moments of his life. Cringe! Make a joke. Quick. Flipping the moss over to show her its sandy underside, he aped not wiping with that side. His pained facial contortions made her snort with laughter, which drew a warning growl from the Dragon.
Surely rich people were not so lazy as to have servants do all of this business for them?
His noble service did, however, earn him a full Tytiana the Radiant smile upon her reappearance from behind the boulders. Aye. He instantly felt fifty feet tall.
Lunch was a rather less inspiring collection of sparrow’s eggs and assorted lizards. He tried to have Tytiana cook the eggs in her hands, but they had to settle for eating them raw since her control of the fire was not well developed as yet and the temperatures she could generate were too low. The Choice could not bring herself to try lizard, but Jakani did, and almost spewed his overconfident guts all over the boulders. Phew. Eyes watering, he managed to down the skinny, scratchy scrap. He’d best leave the rest for the windrocs.
Azure skies. Magical solitude. They could have been the only people in the Island-World, for all he knew. The colour of the Cloudlands several hundred feet below this patch of boulders had begun to shift toward a more teal colour, similar to Adazara’s scales. He wondered where the Dragon would take them – Gemalka? Farther still? Despite the bright afternoon suns-shine, the air was crisp, more than hinting at the changes they could expect as they travelled northward. Tytiana had once tried to explain to him that Helyon lay in a zone less prone to the chill northerlies, which provided effective natural protection for the fenturi crop; two hundred leagues farther North, the weather was very different indeed. Brr. And how! It appeared they might skip Pla’arna and its infestation of Dragon pirates, heading directly for Herliss, a Cluster of three major Islands that was close to being as northerly as fabled Immadia itself.
He had no idea how great these distances were. It was a further day’s travel before Excorion sang out sight of Gemalka. When he asked Tytiana with some fancy hand signs how fast they might be travelling, she held up ten fingers. Ten leagues per hour? That meant they must already be over five hundred leagues from home! Wow! His poor mother. Isimi must be beside herself.
Excorion certainly was a crafty character. Flying in low through a localised storm, he found a cavern on the side of the watery Island, which was distinguished by having over three-quarters of its surface covered by terrace lakes stuffed with world-famous trout, and deposited his captives in its mouth. After checking the back of the cave, he waved his paws and the stone shifted, sealing a few cracks which Jakani had been eying with keen interest. Then, he walked to the lip of the cave mouth and snarled without bothering to turn around, “Don’t even think about trying to escape, worms.” And he sealed the entrance with impenetrable rock!
“Wow, can’t see a … oh,” said Jakani. “Nice glow, o Choice Tytiana.”
Hands on hips, she faced him. “Can we dispense with the o Choice this and that? Could you just call me Tytiana, please?”
“Absolutely not, honoured Choice. Out of the question.”
Infuriating, wasn’t he?
He trotted off to check the back shadows of the cave before Tytiana could think up a suitably acerbic response, or somehow sensed his smugness, which would have blown her top completely. “Hmm. There’s a pool here. Useful. Pah! But very bitter.”
“Jakani, please?”
“It is inappropriate. My father would box my ears for such impertinence.”
“Here, you are not lamko.”
“I feel like one.”
“How’s that?”
“Well …” He scratched his beard. “I suppose you’re right. Stop laughing at me, Choice Tytiana. Of course you’re right. You are always right. Noted. It’s only that you’re asking me in one fell swoop to ditch my heritage, the entire caste system, and all the notions of honour that have been drilled into me for the last seventeen years. The heart is willing but the tongue – aye, the tongue is weak.”
“You are just a young man, and I am the young woman you slept beside last night.”
“Tytiana!”
“There, was that so hard?”
“It … freaking windrocs, woman, you do weird things to my head. Alright, o Choice – suffering caroli, do you hear how automatic that is?”
She said, “Jakani, it would do me great honour if you were to address me in a more familiar fashion. I will not order it. That seems pointless. But I don’t want my last moments on this Island-World to be tainted with hearing you addressing me as the Choice of the House, you being the untouchable lamko and me being the daughter of privilege, separated by a gulf deeper than the very Cloudlands. We are two young people facing an uncertain fate that may well devour us. Therefore I will ask, won’t your pride let me win this little argument? Pretty please with Immad
ian ice-sugar sprinkles on top?”
* * * *
Jakani faced her, looking as if a storm swept through his soul. His eyes were wild and his hair even wilder, seen in the light of her glowing skin and hair. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. Tytiana was not sure the Dirt Picker should frighten her quite so badly, but in that moment, she realised she had no concept of the forces that she had just unleashed in his being. Was his sense of honour truly this powerful? Her own glow brightened as if seeking to protect her.
She said quietly, “I would not force you.”
“But coerce me, you would.” He raised a hand to forestall her protests. “I’m sorry I’m so weak-willed. There are few things indeed I would not do for you, o Choice – o Tytiana, but this is hard. I don’t know who I am anymore. Or what I’m becoming.”
“What is different is that you now have the chance to choose.”
“Because you say so?”
She spoke truth, as he must know, but his voice still crackled with challenge. “You are hardly weak-willed, Jakani.”
“No, I am a blob of pure stubbornness that grew legs. Very well, if you concede the next battle, I’ll grant you this one.”
“I don’t even know – how am I supposed to ‘aye’ that?”
“Trust me.” His eyes glittered perilously.
Was this a test? What were these bizarre vibes she was sensing from him? “Very well. You’re an honourable man, Jakani. I do trust you.”
At once, he bowed, and he was just the same Jakani she knew – or thought she did, Tytiana realised. Did she truly know him much at all? He said, “O … Tytiana. Tytiana. You are now imprinted upon my mind as Tytiana.”
It took a long time that day for the strangeness between them to subside, but as they had nothing better to do, Tytiana and Jakani fell to talking about anything and everything that came to mind – families, childhood memories, hopes and dreams, and all the vastly differing ways in which they had grown up despite living a mere five miles apart. They might as well have inhabited two different worlds. Yet there in the cave it was safe, if a touch airless, for no-one else could possibly overhear or see what they shared. They spoke until the evening drew in outside, which they saw when Excorion suddenly returned and demolished the seal over the cave entrance with a few swipes of his paw and his Brown Dragon magic, and then they returned to enforced silence as the Dragon took them aloft once more.
That long night was far bitterer than before. Tytiana woke toward the darkest hours around midnight with a sense of foreboding. Aye. Jakani was shivering just a few inches apart from her, and she heard the unmistakable sounds of a thunderstorm brewing nearby.
She breathed, “Cold?”
He shook his head.
“You’re a terrible liar.” She was not sure she heard him exactly, for a thunderclap drowned out half of her sentence, but the word ‘liar’ brought a wan smile to his lips. Keeping her voice very low, she whispered, “Come over here, Mister Tough Stuff, and I’ll warm you up. Come on now. Don’t be shy. Let’s have full body contact – ahh! Your feet are blocks of ice.”
“I’ll have you know this is deeply uncomfortable for me,” Jakani growled as she wriggled closer to him.
“Can’t have you freezing to death. What would I say to your mother?”
“Uh-hum. Right.”
What a perfect, convenient excuse.
Apparently his version of being honourable involved lying there as stiff as a board as she tried to keep him warm with her measly fire. Excorion must think Human boys were prize-winning morons. She was certainly beginning to agree. Catch a hint, you wool-brained Dirt Picker! He’d rather freeze to death than be close to her?
Tytiana sighed. Imaginary conversation time. Alright, Mister Sakazi. Which part of a girl putting her arms around you do you not understand – the fact that she might hold you and keep your stupid blockhead from freezing solid in the night, or the fact that she might like the idea of holding you?
It was all down to his honour, wasn’t it?
Not that she could say a word. She had inhibitions of her own. But his cold, almost indifferent posture was what truly maddened her. Stubborn? Oh, twenty Islands of that, Jakani! And as she dwelled upon her frustration at a trait which was not unknown to her either and nursed her sense of injustice, the familiar crimson glow spread across her skin, not a wild burning, but a phenomenon which surprised her with its constancy. A cocoon. Yes. She envisioned cocooning them both in her radiant warmth. The glow strengthened, lighting the ridged underside of Excorion’s armoured chest as well as his curved talons and cupped paw which held them in his customary flying position. She felt rather than saw Jakani’s eyes widen.
The warmth was peaceful and all-encompassing, seeming to stream into and around him wherever they touched. Her cocoon was a rosy space of indefinite boundaries, perhaps a way of extending her magic into the air around them, so that it glowed with what she imagined might be microscopic motes of fire. All within was an ardent expression of her fire. The rigid back at last unbent by degrees, and Tytiana pressed closer, putting one arm over his robust chest and one beneath his neck.
“Cosy?” Am I a freak?
He said, “You know what you are?” Freak, weird, fiery … “You’re amazing, o Choice … ha ha. Tytiana. Just amazing.”
Amazing was him reading her fears right out of her mind. “Close one.”
“How? Would you rather I call you walking, talking bed warmer?”
Tytiana flushed heatedly. “What kind of a tasteless joke is that?”
“Lighten up – ha ha.”
Oh, groan! Somebody smack Mister Conceited Clever-Shirt over the Blue Moon for me.
To her further vexation, she promptly lost the knack for several long minutes, but when he urged her to relax and not overthink it, the glow returned. Now what a trick it would be if she could keep this up while sleeping. How? Just make a decision and hope her usual determination maintained the magic?
Excorion bent his thickset neck to regard his charges. “Interesting. Your price rises by the hour, worm. I can’t wait to negotiate with your father.”
“He hates me.”
The Dragon laughed horribly. “For the sake of your continued survival, I very much hope that is not the case. If there will be no negotiation, I plan to leave you both to rot.”
* * * *
They flew on for the best part of a day and a half through thunderstorms, rain and violent hail, in temperatures that never seemed to rise above freezing. This was the North. Jakani had not realised winter would already have arrived here.
As Excorion the Brown swooped down to his landing somewhere around the three major Islands of the Herliss Cluster, the weather turned even more cheerful. A white blizzard driven by blustery winds enveloped them. But the Dragon negotiated the fearful gusts with apparent ease, searching along a tall, bleak shoreline they caught glimpses of between flurries of snow. Jakani had never seen cliffs like these. Two miles tall, the Islands soared out of the Cloudlands in stark, jagged majesty. The vertiginous cracks and drops were all speckled grey granite, whereon tufty olive green coniferous trees clung with infeasible tenacity. Silvery drifts of snow highlighted serrated edges everywhere. High above, he caught sight of what appeared to be a man-made wall, the edge of a terrace lake which stored water and was stocked with fish for the inhabitants of the Islands above; Dragons in the main, he understood, with a few barbaric Human tribes scattered here and there.
Delightful place. Like a snotty cold waiting to happen.
Shiver!
Excorion finally wheeled in close to the rock face and angled directly into a dark, vertical crack which was well hidden by a snow-capped overhang. The wind was gusting so hard Jakani saw snow flurries being plucked up off the rocks and hurled about. Tilting his entire body ninety degrees, the Dragon shot through that crack with breathtaking prowess before flinging out his wings to brake so hard, black spots danced in front of Jakani’s vision and Tytiana gasped.
“An old slavers’ lair,” Tytiana spat.
“Indeed, worm. Indeed,” said Excorion, landing right in the lava. He sounded satisfied. Thankfully his charges were protected enough that none of the molten rock splashed upon them. “Built for the purpose. Off with you now. Climb inside the cage.”
She said, “You can’t leave us here.”
Jakani echoed, “No. What will we eat?”
He would rather have argued with a feral windroc than get inside that cage. Not only was it small – about ten feet by five, and seven tall – it was also damp and utterly devoid of comforts. No blankets, no straw, nothing to lie upon. The metal bars were solid, perhaps an inch around, and the whole affair looked depressingly well-constructed. It was even bolted into the bedrock with bolts an inch thick. No escaping that in a hurry.
“I’ll find you a few rats. Maybe a buck. You can lap water off the rocks. It drips from the ceiling all the time.” Excorion grinned as if he found their complaints most diverting. “You can keep each other warm, Choice – you and your lamko lover.”
She made a squeal of outrage.
“Aye. Imagine what your shell daddy would think? His precious pet keeping a lamko rat warm at night? Aye, I know all about your caste culture, and it disgusts any creature of true white fires.” He chortled massively, GURR-HURR-HURR! “Get inside. Now.”
They ducked through the small doorway. What else could they do?