Dragonfriend (24 page)

“Not that I know of … twelve …”

“Eleven. You didn’t touch your chin to the bar. And where exactly are you sneaking off to this evening?”

Between bouts of stretching her scarred back, Lia grunted, “Why won’t the Master let me … dance, Inniora? All I do … is blasted exercises … and copy blasted scrolls … and spend blasted hours admiring my reflection … in that blasted pool … meditating on what I’ve learned.”

Master Khoyal said, “Finish your set, Lia. Then I would speak with you both.”

Her breath streamed out in a long, frustrated hiss. Great. Could Inniora or Flicker not have warned her?

When, groaning and quivering, Hualiama had forced herself to complete her twenty-eighth repetition, she dropped to the sandy cavern floor and accepted a cloth from Inniora to mop herself down. They knelt, attentive to the Master’s words.

“I’m sorry, zephyr,” he said, unexpectedly mournful. “I’ve been too preoccupied with trying to work out how to train you. You see, I’m a Master, but I am no master of Nuyallith. All I remember is the hours I spent watching my great-grandfather training here, in this very chamber, and trying to copy him. But thus far, our experiments have failed. You could polish your patience. What chews at the roots of your Island?”

“Minor things,” she said absently, fixated on what he held in his hands. “Ra’aba, the prophecy, my family’s fate, the inexplicable stirrings of my magic, and the Tourmaline Dragon’s misfortune …”

“Aye, such a pawful even an Ancient Dragon should struggle to hold.”

“Aye,” whispered Lia. “Those blades, Master … I
feel
them.”

Kneeling with considerable difficulty, the Master placed his burden on the ground between them. Two slightly curved blades, each just over three feet long, nestled beside each other in a double scabbard of an unfamiliar style–Lia noted plain leather and straps meant to hold the slender scabbards not upon one’s belt, but upon the back. The swords were unadorned, yet the craftsmanship of what she could see was exquisite. But it was their nature that made her heart gallop into her throat. It was as if the swords pulsed with an inner energy, yearning to spring free of their confinement, to sing in the wielder’s hands with a wild, lethal song.

“Tomorrow, you will start dancing with reeds,” said Khoyal. “But today, Hualiama of Fra’anior, I offer you these Nuyallith blades. They belonged to my great-grandfather. I would be greatly honoured if you were to accept them.”

“I am not worthy, Master.”

“Not ready,” he corrected. “Draw the blades–just a few inches will suffice.”

Reaching out, she grasped the two hilts as though expecting a shock, but there was none. The swords voiced a silky, metallic song as they slipped out of the scabbards. The blades were perfect, inscribed with a runic script that ran down the centre channel. The strangely dark blade in her left hand exhibited a slight sheen of blue, the right a ruddy hint, as though a living flame indwelled the metal.

“It is said that these blades were forged from the pure ore of a meteorite,” said Master Khoyal. “The metal is incredibly light and flexible, yet the blades hold their edge like no other. Seventy years on, you can still shave with these. Strangest of all, is what my great-grandfather told me of their forging. Can you sense it?”

Lia said, “It’s impossible. Metal cannot hold magic.”

“He said these blades were forged in a flame hotter than any furnace.”

“Dragon fire,” she said.

“Aye, zephyr. Forged in Dragon fire.”

T
He Lowering Suns
slipped between layers of cloud, splashing rose highlights across the Cloudlands and enflaming the underside of the cloud cover overhead. Hualiama and Ja’al stood at the edge of the chasm. Lava seethed below. Hundreds of dragonets played in the dense bushes nearby, darting about with squeals of excitement as they chased their buzzing, crawling or fluttering dinner. Flicker’s hearts tripped along. How he wished to join his brothers and sisters! But his task was clear, and his purpose exalted. The trivial complaints of an empty stomach could wait.

The monk laughed apprehensively as he laid one hand on Lia’s vine rope swing. “So, this is your secret, Hualiama? This is how you stole into our monastery?”

She shook her head, golden glints of amusement dancing in her eyes. “Ja’al, you’ve all the patience of a rajal kitten mewling for milk.”

“Do you know what my lovely brother Hua’gon thinks of this venture?”

“Spare me.”

Flicker purred contentedly. His Lia still liked to show her teeth to the monk, and the monk still regarded her as though he wished to bathe in her fires. What did those silly vows serve, but to keep a female from a suitable mate?

Swinging across the chasm, Lia landed lithely on the far side. She swung the vine back for Ja’al, calling, “Come on, slow-slug.”

“This is the bit where the Dragons kill me, right?”

Remember the Great Dragon’s words, straw-head,,
said Flicker.

With a crazed grin playing about his lips, the monk launched himself into space. In seconds, he gripped Hualiama’s left wrist and allowed her to assist his landing. After tying off the vine, they set out to climb the cliff.

Flicker had helped Lia shift linger-vines into helpful positions and affix them, making the climb far easier than before. Still, it was a sheer vertical ascent, so it took the slow Humans an hour to traverse the cliff to the tunnel, skirting the avalanche site to the southern side. The shaking of the dragonet’s head as he examined the Dragon’s grave made his spine spikes quiver. The place was ill-omened, a monstrous jumble of rock and bushes dropped into a ravine which must cut deep into the Island, perhaps an ancient watercourse. It made his scales itch. Could it be that the Dragon was trapped further within, as Lia thought?

Egg-head followed straw-head into the tunnels. Flicker gave a toothy grin of amusement. Ja’al’s very fires were about to be snuffed out in shock.

The monk paused, his voice rising to a squeak, “There’s something down here, Lia. What is it?”

“Come on, Ja’al,” she urged.
He senses what we know, Flicker.

Bah, you think he’s that clever?

Traversing the wondrous geodes and tunnels lined with sparkling crystal, they came at length to the place where the Ancient One brooded in darkness. Amaryllion had lain silent all this time, but he perceived their approach. Flicker knew that the Ancient Dragons had the power to send their senses out into the Island-World, observing and gathering information, tasting magic upon the breezes and reading the hearts and minds of the Lesser Dragons and Humans. Ah, which reminded him, he should see if the Dragon library held any information that could help his girl. Lia would be delighted.

Fiery, monstrous, the Ancient One’s orb opened to light upon the threesome–the little ones, who quaked before his majesty.

“Ja’al the Just,” he said. “Welcome.”

To his credit, Ja’al did not fall down as Hualiama had done that first time, but neither could he speak.

“I am Amaryllion Fireborn, the last Ancient Dragon of this Island-World,” he rumbled, his voice filling the tunnels and caves with thick draconic resonance. “We live in a great crater, thousands of leagues in diameter, forged by the explosion of a comet as it collided with this world, which flung up the shielding rim-wall mountains, twenty-five leagues tall and more, and carved the depths now filled by the Cloudlands. Little ones, the world beyond the mountains is greater still, a world of blue oceans and white sands, of mountains and deeps, within which myriad creatures roam, great and small, good and evil–and wherein dwell many more of thy kind.”

“What’s an ocean?” inquired Lia, in a small voice.

“Imagine the terrace lakes of thy native Island, little mouse,” growled Amaryllion. “Now imagine those waters as endlessly wide as the Cloudlands, sparkling blue beneath the twin suns. Therein creatures as great as Dragons do sport, indeed, creatures called Whales which rival even my size. And they speak a tongue akin to that of Dragons.”

* * * *

Hualiama quivered with wonder. Even Flicker seemed stunned. Imagine whole oceans churned into a fury by mighty talking fishes, and a world greater than their own? Who had ever seen the rim mountains? Perhaps from the frozen Isles north of Immadia, or perhaps south of the Rift in Herimor, such sky-scraping peaks might be visible–but no traveller’s account she had ever read, had described what must surely be an unforgettable sight.

“I would instruct thee, Ja’al,” said Amaryllion, “but mostly, I would know thee. I am not Fra’anior, who blessed thee this day, but I am his kin. Hualiama and Flicker I call friends, though they are small and I am mighty.”

The yellow fires in his eye surged as the Dragon’s mind fixed upon Lia. “The way of Ancient Dragons is to deal first with business. Therefore, I charge thee to find and succour the Tourmaline Dragon, little mouse. The Dragon is alive, but unwell, and sorely wounded. Find him beneath the avalanche, buried deep within the mountain.”

Pensively, she nodded, stealing a glance at Ja’al. Poor man! Dragon fear and awe gripped him in equal measure.

“There is an ancient prophecy I had thought lost,” said Amaryllion. “The creature Ra’aba uses it to forge his destiny. It speaks of a time of change and turmoil, when a giant comet shall streak across our skies and the balance of the Island-World shall be thrown into disarray. Old powers will fail, and a new race–the third great race of the Island-World–will rise from the shadows, a race born of magic. That is what Ra’aba fears.”

As if his mind were a claw, the Ancient Dragon’s deliberations pierced her. “A Maroon Dragoness lives, though I know not where. Her name is Ianthine. I have not sensed her presence in many a year. Since the Dragons drove her out, they must know where she lives. Ianthine is a wicked creature and never to be trusted, for she practices a vile form of magic called
ruzal
in the ancient Dragon tongue. The word means ‘twisting’ or ‘binding’. It is a magic of subterfuge and concealment, a magic capable of binding minds, even the minds of Dragons. And I suspect its touch upon thy life.”

Lia shook off a chill. Either the Ancient One had read her thoughts, or he had spoken with the Nameless Man. All these different powers circling her life, no better than windrocs stalking a likely victim!

“Long have I wondered about thee, Hualiama, pondering the enigma of thy existence. Surely, Gi’ishior Island was not thy birthplace.” A note of vexation crept into Amaryllion’s voice, a roaring of the vast furnaces of his faraway belly. “A redolence of the East, I guess.”

Her response slipped out, unthinking, “A guess, Amaryllion?”

“AYE A GUESS, EVEN I!” he thundered.

The power of his fury knocked the trio down the slope they had ascended to reach his eye; not far away, rock cracked and roared away in an unseen avalanche.

“S-sorry great D-Dragon,” stammered Lia, picking herself up. She dusted her knees. “I doubt thee not. This mystery pains my soul.”

What? Just listen to what spouted from her mouth! Somehow, ancient speech-patterns seemed to come to the fore whenever she spoke with Amaryllion, even if she spoke Island Standard. Why was that?

“I meant no harm, little one,” said the Dragon. “Speak thy heart.”

“I discovered I have magic, Amaryllion. Art thou surprised?”

“Vastly,” he snorted, a suitably titanic snort of amusement. Heat rolled over her; Lia realised that the Dragon must have breathed fire from his mouth, somewhere unseen beyond the wall of rock away to her left hand.

She chuckled, “And doth mine feminine mystery suffice to flummox a Dragon most ancient?”

HAARRRAA-HA-HA! Amaryllion boomed.

Precious Ja’al. He had saucers for eyes. He probably thought her utterly mad for jesting with an Ancient Dragon–never mind that the force of his laughter made them both stagger drunkenly back up the slope as they approached his eye.

“Come, Ja’al,” he said. “I would teach thee the Dragonish art of reading pictures and memories from the mind. Thou might thus aid Hualiama in her learning, by taking of what thy Master Khoyal remembers, and making it known to her.”

At last, the monk found his voice. “Of course, o Ancient One. Am I to understand that Dragons can read minds?”

“Of course, little mouse,” Amaryllion echoed. “It is a magical art, a gift claimed only by the most powerful Dragon magicians. The best subject is a willing mind, one open to examination. Beware, for a mind-reader can snatch thoughts from the unwary, and the most powerful–like Ianthine–can squeeze a mind dry, even as you Humans squeeze berries for wine. Tell Master Khoyal that he must instruct thee in the arts of
Juyhallith
, the way of the mind.”

* * * *

Departing the Ancient One’s cave, the two Humans and the dragonet spent the remainder of the night searching for the Tourmaline Dragon, but found no clues as to his existence. Footsore and wing-weary, they returned to the monastery at dawn, just in time for a full day’s training.

“I must find him. I must.” Lia repeated her mantra.

To Flicker’s disgust, Inniora’s consternation and Master Khoyal’s fury, Hualiama spent the following three nights doing exactly the same, traversing the slopes and walking the inner tunnels of Ha’athior Island, searching.

“When last did you sleep?” stormed the Master.

“Er … I don’t remember,” Lia replied, thinking it best if she did not.

“I cannot teach an apprentice who falls asleep on their feet–literally! Go to bed!”

“But I have to find the Dragon.”

How could she explain what drove her now, the imperative felt as a migraine squeezing her temples, throbbing, the restless tingling in her bones? She scowled at the sight of Flicker spying on her in the darkness. Islands’ sakes!

She tiptoed out at the hour of midnight.

Hallon and Rallon guarded the stairway beneath the prekki-fruit tree. Having flirted her way past the giant twins once, Lia knew she should not drop them into hot lava a second time. A sigh escaped her lips; she stared at the Jade moon, half-crescent as it sailed over the Island massif above, bathing the scene in a deathly green glow. Defeated. The Dragon’s chances of survival diminished by the day.