Dragonfriend (31 page)

He rumbled, “I swore an oath.”

Gazing into the turbulent fires of the Dragons’ eye as though she wished to penetrate his very soul, Lia suddenly grasped an inkling of what he meant. No. He could not. She had thought the same, but never seriously, because no sane Dragon would ever consider it. Yet, the longer Grandion regarded her, the more convinced she became that her irrational thought might not, in fact, be quite so irrational after all.

Hualiama whispered, “Dragons possess a magic of concealment, do they not?”

“Especially Blues,” he clarified.

“So, hiding a Human would be how difficult, exactly?”

“Trivial. I hope you are not thinking what I am not thinking, Princess.”

“Er … of course not. I would never dream of thinking what you are not thinking. We are perfectly agreed on not thinking … um. That.”

A brittle silence stretched between them.

Grandion said, very carefully, “I am still not thinking the unthinkable, Hualiama. One must certainly not think about such taboos, for what is worse–to be an oath breaker or a taboo breaker?”

“Yet here a Human girl stands upon Ha’athiorian soil, conversing with a Dragon.” A hoarse chuckle broke past the tightness in her throat. “You aren’t much of a respecter of rules, are you, Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon?”

He roared his laughter until the ground shook beneath her, and his paw had to rescue her from a minor avalanche he had instigated. What panic his touch sparked! While a curl of flame heated her cheeks, Hualiama was more surprised to sense the surging of the magical insight Master Jo’el had begun to teach her during their return from Ya’arriol Island. For a moment as brief as a star’s twinkling, she
saw
him. Into him. She beheld the furnace-heart of Grandion’s Dragon soul, potent and noble and true. Yet she caught also an intoxicating whiff of treachery, darker currents of memory and experience that eddied amongst the purer light …

Grandion was there. A being of pure white flame intercepted her intrusion into his spirit. Hualiama sensed his shock and confusion; it ejected her as surely as if he had cuffed her with his paw. A physical shudder ran the length of his body. And when he spoke, it was with a levity that failed to disguise the inner disquiet Lia saw so clearly.

“I see that you remember my insults as well as any Dragon might,” said he. “Nay, I am a rebel through and through. I like you, little Human. So, we’re definitely agreed not to think about this?”

“I’d think even less about it if I could return briefly to the monastery to collect a few unnecessary items,” said Hualiama, smiling through the nausea churning in the pit of her stomach. Oh, flying ralti sheep, what had she just promised him–promised a
Dragon?
She was mad. Set aside the magic raging between them, she was off-the-Islands, loopier than an overexcited dragonet, mad! “Will you wait for me?”

“And stink like a cesspit before my benefactress? I think not.”

With that, the Dragon snatched Lia up. His forepaw covered her body from her neck to her knees.

“G-G-Grandion?” she squeaked, a pathetic and mortifying sound. “Put me d-down! N-No!” This was as he considered the vine connected to her waist. “Wait. What are you doing?”

With a deliberate flick of his talon, he severed the vine. “Ready?” The massive muscles of his thighs coiled.

“No! Grandeeeeee … yoooooonnnn …”

The Island-World turned on its head as the Dragon performed a backflip off the edge of Ha’athior Island.

Hualiama unashamedly wailed her heart out as the world turned over again, twice, for the Dragon wished to show off his aerial prowess to the melody of the joy gushing through his hearts. His grip almost stopped her breath, but it was also comforting in an utterly overpowering way.

And her mind was as cracked as an earthquake-cleft Island. Lia had just about mastered her terror when the Dragon growled, “Roll?”

“Noo … wooo … ooooeee!”

Before she knew it, Grandion thumped down on the rim wall of the volcano, right beside the boulder where she and Ja’al had kissed. He set her daintily upon her feet.

“How did her Royal Highness enjoy her first Dragon flight?”

Lia wobbled and would have collapsed, had Grandion’s paw not flashed out again to steady her. Now if she could only recapture her heart and stuff it back inside her chest!

With a coy glance at him, she complained, “That was not nice, you great big bully.”

A wickedly unrepentant chuckle, chock-full of Dragon fire and arrogance, constituted his response. Grandion rumbled, “Go collect those unnecessary items, little one. I shall bathe in this lake.”

“Let me alert the guards before–”

“They’re already alert,” said Grandion, nonchalantly dropping toward the lake on outspread wings. “Tell them to keep out of my way.”

“Tyrant,” Lia muttered.

“I heard that,” floated back to her on the breeze.

* * * *

Ja’al shouted, “You’re doing
what?
” Lia had never seen the tall, tan monk turn quite so pasty. “Lia, people don’t ride with Dragons, or on them, or any such nonsense! Where do you think … oh, no, no … NO! You and your dreams about flying! You’re forcing this poor Dragon to stick his head in a noose for you. Foolish girl! Don’t you realise how forbidden this is?”

“How can something be more or less forbidden, Ja’al?”

“It’s wrong!”

“It doesn’t feel wrong to him–to us.”

The way Ja’al’s eyes bulged brought a horrid, constricted feeling to Hualiama’s gut. “You have … feelings … for this creature! Unholy, perverted feelings.” He made a sign of the Great Dragon’s warding. “Lia, please. Tell me it isn’t true.”

“Look,” she said, her face flushing hotly, “I have feelings for Flicker and you don’t call those unholy. He’s my friend. I care for him, Ja’al. I owe that dragonet my life, and if anyone laid a finger on him, I’d destroy them. It’s that simple, yet the feeling runs so deep it’s like a river thundering into the Cloudlands; a river so deep and wild, it can never be grasped or contained. How I feel about Flicker is more than friendship, Ja’al. It’s a kind of love–a good, wholesome love.”

“I knew you’d use that word.”

Hualiama shook his hand off with an irate hiss. She shrugged the scabbard for her Nuyallith blades onto her shoulders and buckled the strap across her upper chest. “Aye, love!” She emphasized the word with a
zing
of the blades as she pushed them home.

“Always driven by your feelings, Lia. I hadn’t pegged you as the type. You aren’t weak, you’re the strongest woman I know.” Poor Ja’al, he was physically shaking as he tried to express the depths of his horror. “This is criminal. It’s inconceivable!”

Suddenly, her anger evaporated. Softly, Lia said, “Listen to me. Please, dear brother Ja’al. You know how you felt about your vows? That you must deny all, even a prodigal Princess and her pathetic attempts to distract you with a swift peck on the lips, to serve the Great Dragon?”

“Aye,” he muttered, unwillingly.

“That is how I feel about Grandion. It feels right. My whole life I have dreamed of Dragons, learned about Dragons, even been brought up by Dragons on Gi’ishior, it seems. Now I have the chance to right a monstrous wrong. I see only one path, although it is difficult and dangerous and probably profane. Ja’al, if this is the path the Black Dragon has set before my feet–”

“–then may you tread it with the courage of a Dragon,” he finished the ancient saying for her.

“Thank you.”

“But you’d go without my blessing.”

Lia paused in tying a pouch of supplies onto her belt. Consumed by dread, did he not see how he wounded her with his words? “Won’t you wish me well, Ja’al?”

His sigh deflated his chest like a punctured Dragonship balloon. “I wish you less moons-madness and several Islands’ worth of good sense in exchange, but I see you will not be dissuaded. Frankly, I’d rather argue with that feral Dragon than a woman whose mind is clearly made up! Therefore, I will say this: Go burn the heavens with your Dragon, Hualiama of Fra’anior.”

Distantly, the mighty Black Dragon’s thundering quaked the Island-World’s roots–a sound felt more in the spirit than in a physical sense. Lia’s spine crawled with the awareness of momentous magic. She gaped open-mouthed at the monk, who appeared as nonplussed as she.

“What was that, if not a blessing?” she objected.

“Heavens above and Islands below, I haven’t a clue, Lia,” he whispered. “Strange events are afoot, and stranger days will be dawning, should the Great Dragon place his beneficent paw upon this wool-brained venture.”

They shook their heads in tandem.

“Very well,” said Ja’al. “I shall attest to Master Jo’el what you have done and trust he does not summarily shorten me by a head.” Unexpectedly, the monk enfolded Lia into his strong arms, and hugged her until her ribs creaked. “Hurry back, moons-mad girl. We need to end Ra’aba’s reign.”

She hugged him back as hard as she could. “Silly monk. You couldn’t stop me if you tried.”

* * * *

Running lightly along the trail up above the crater lake, which faithfully reflected every star in the skies above, Hualiama tried to shake Ja’al’s words, but they clung to her mind like a clammy mist. Was she perverted? Was it profane to maintain a high regard for Dragons? How could she characterise what had passed between her and Grandion, if not by using the very words Ja’al had seared on her mind? Forbidden. Unthinkable. Against the law. There was still time to backtrack. It could be explained. Only a few taboos had been tossed off the Island of sanity so far.

No. She had sworn an oath.

Despite Grandion’s accusations, Lia thought, she was not a disrespectful person. The law was good and just. It had great value. What if her oath was profane – or did the Black Dragon’s response rebut her qualms? What was there to fear if a Human should ride with a Dragon?

Ride with a Dragon? Hysterical laughter burbled upon her lips. Where would she even ride? In Grandion’s paw? Just consider the power of his grasp, and be reminded of the sensation of stalwart talons encircling her torso! One tiny squeeze and Hualiama’s insides would pour out of her ears. The only time Humans rode in Dragons’ paws, the histories suggested, was when they were condemned to ‘a short ride to a long drop’–a cheerless phrase referring to execution by being tossed into the Cloudlands or an active volcano.

Lia rubbed her arms. How could she trust a Dragon who planned to openly flout a rule regarded as inviolable for over a thousand years? People who played with Dragons risked being burned, the Isles saying went. On the other hand, why should Grandion trust a Human who spoke Dragonish and danced with impunity upon the holy Dragon Isle?

What a merry pickle!

From the rim wall above the monastery, Hualiama turned to see Grandion breaching the crater lake’s dark surface. Water sheeted from his muscular body. Mercy, what a monster! As a juvenile Dragon he was slimmer through the torso than an adult male, but what he lacked in physical size, he compensated for in strength. This Dragon had fought off two fully-grown males. She liked that his muzzle was a little slimmer than some. The skull spikes that adorned the back of his huge head and jaws were a spectacular thicket, four feet long and wickedly pointed, giving him an arresting, rakish air. A single row of spine spikes ran the length of his body, from the tallest three-foot spikes above his burly shoulders, decreasing in size down his long, whiplike tail.

And his colour! Great Islands, what wouldn’t a girl give to be so pretty? The dirty blue had been washed clean, revealing the striking tourmaline of his armoured scales which indeed imitated the gemstone for which his rare colour was named. Blue-coloured Dragons were often capable of summoning lightning and storm-wind attacks, or hail and ice. The most powerful Blues were also masters of magic-casting and shields, making them formidable opponents in battle. The lore she knew suggested that Grandion’s gemstone rarity signified unique Dragon powers.

If she was not mistaken, the Tourmaline Dragon took full note of her regard and flew up to her position with studied elegance, making his landing soft-pawed just twenty feet from her right hand, careful to furl his wings without striking her.

“Any improvement?” he inquired.

Smug reptile! Her grin widened, for he knew full well her answer. Time to see if he responded to compliments as Flicker did. Lia declaimed, “O mighty Dragon, outshining the very stars, do I know thee?”

At once, Grandion’s fire-stomach rumbled energetically, and his eyes blazed amber with pleasure as he inclined his muzzle to spurt Dragon fire twenty feet from his nostrils. Lia scented smoke, the tang of charred minerals, and the alluring hint of cinnamon she recalled so clearly from the time he held her powerless beneath his paw.

The Dragon strutted toward her with all the arrogance of a courting bird displaying its beautiful plumage, growling, “Indeed?”

“As my mother would say, Grandion, you do scrub up very nicely.”

“Hmm,” he blinked at her mischievous tone. “As for you, how many knives does a Human girl need? Four?”

“Fifteen, counting the hidden ones,” said Lia.

Pure white sparks eddied in his eyes–approval? Grandion whispered, “You are arrayed in splendour as a Dragoness for war.”

Oh, mercy. Hualiama struggled to control an abiding weakness in her knees. An undignified splutter emerged from her throat, “S-s-soooo w-whaa …” She folded her arms at his smoky laughter, and evaded his gaze. “Vexatious reptile! Er, what now, Grandion? What are you neither planning nor thinking about? I wanted to say, I really don’t want to leave Flicker behind. We need to find him.”

“We’ll probably catch the dragonet before he reaches Gi’ishior,” said Grandion. “Are you planning to scream every time we fly?”

Lia fumed, “I’d smack you for that comment, but I fear it’s rather pointless.”

On cue, Grandion struck what he probably thought was a heroic pose. Actually, when his knee-joints were the height of her nose, and his massive stance brought all of the striations in his major flight muscles into sharp relief, he did rather succeed in shooting lightning bolts along every nerve in her terrified little body. Dragon fear turned her bowels to mush. There was something so instinctual about standing beside a beast within which Hualiama could hear fire boiling away, that her body simply screamed, ‘Run away!’ Only, that would be as futile as whacking his flank. He could catch her more easily than a windroc snagging an unwary lemur.