Dragonfriend (32 page)

The glint in his eye suggested that he knew all this; that the treacherous Dragon perceived the exact rhythm of her runaway heart, and that an apology was the very last matter on his mind. Molten heat rushed into her cheeks. Was the hulking serpent stalking her? What thoughts lurked behind that scorching regard, his eye-fires smouldering, changing colour and character before her fascinated gaze? Lia wanted to fall into his eyes and burn forever.

Grandion reached out with the speed of a cobra’s strike.

“Oh!” Lia beat her fists uselessly against his talons. “What are you doing?”

The Tourmaline Dragon paused with the Human girl’s feet dangling eight feet in the air, rumbling, “Currently, you have a monopoly on being executed should the Dragons discover your secrets. I wish to unite myself to your fate. Therefore, I am placing you in the dominant and conceivably the only comfortable position I can imagine for an extended flight–between my spine spikes, above my shoulders.”

Lia gasped, “My riding on your back would be regarded as dominant? As in, a five-foot Human girl dictating terms to a multi-tonne fire-breathing Dragon? Which of the five moons do you live on?”

“Isn’t it droll?” he chuckled.

“Ridiculous!”

Grandion shrugged hugely. “I don’t make the law. And, I fancy the idea of making history, even if it’s a potentially fatal sort of history.”

Truly the young rebel, Hualiama thought. Once she defeated her nerves, she would have to ask him about his past. What had he done to bring the Orange and Brown Dragons down on his neck? Why was he prepared to go to such lengths to help her–merely for the sake of an oath, spoken in haste, or did a deviously Dragonish reason underpin his behaviour?

Her feet touched down on the Dragon’s neck.

“Can you manage?” inquired Grandion.

Lia smothered a nervous, high-pitched giggle. Control yourself, girl! “Well, since we have neither been struck by lightning from a clear night sky, nor been torn apart by the enraged Spirits of the Ancient Dragons … isn’t this the easy part?”

How exhilarating to be standing, literally, on a dream she had treasured since her childhood. Lia walked charily up Grandion’s colossal right shoulder, expecting her feet to sink into soft skin. No, these were the iron-hard muscles of a Dragon, swathed in virtually impenetrable Dragon scale armour. When he shifted edgily beneath her, the muscles rolled like animate boulders beneath his hide. Was he as nervous as she, despite his bravado? Snagging a spine spike with her hand, Lia thrust a leg over to the Dragon’s left shoulder and settled down. It was not an uncomfortable position, a kind of natural saddle between his spikes, but she knew that after an hour or two, her backside would be numb.

What should she do now? What did one say to a Dragon? What emerged from Lia’s mouth was, “I’d really need a saddle.”

Grandion stifled a roar with a snap of his fangs. “Don’t even think I’m some beast of burden! I knew at once you’d have the wrong idea.”

“I am honoured, Grandion,” Hualiama whispered. “Humbled. And, were I to dare a little honesty–” she chuckled hollowly “–you scare the living pith out of me. Just that teensy … thing. Soul-destroying terror and–”

“Very wise,” he said, bending his flexible neck to check her position. “Hold on and trust me to do the flying. Dragons are not for nought called the lords of the airy spaces.”

She hugged the spine spike ahead of her as Grandion tramped toward the volcano’s edge, her throat as dry as dust, her stomach already turning cartwheels. The Tourmaline Dragon paused above the abyss, seeming to gather his thoughts. Heat rolled up Lia’s body, despite the night’s coolness, bringing a roaring to her ears and an overpowering sense of dislocation. Her brain refused to process the idea that she was about to fly Dragonback. The Cloudlands lay two miles below, Islands’ sakes!

Deep in her mind, Amaryllion spoke,
Fly strong and true, little mouse.
She had a sneaking suspicion he was laughing at her.

Then, Grandion tipped forward.

I
N MUTE AMAZEMENT,
Hualiama’s soul welled up. Tears streaked her cheeks, whipped away by the wind generated by Grandion’s passage. Dragon wings spread out to either side, supple upon the breeze, and the slow, powerful thrust of each wingbeat caused them to surge through the air. Lia marvelled at the purity of Dragon flight, unembellished and silent save for a slight, leathery creaking as his wing membranes flexed. Nothing in her experience of flying and piloting Dragonships had prepared her for this sensation. The Tourmaline Dragon propelled them along as if the air were a vast sheet of Helyon silk he simply slid along; not the boring action of a bulky dirigible balloon, but the sleek, streamlined flight of a supreme aerial predator.

Abruptly, Lia stretched out her arms as wide as she could reach. Throwing her head back, she began to laugh. At first, it was the staccato gasps of a pair of lungs which had forgotten how to breathe, but soon, her mirth swelled into a torrent of uninhibited, effervescent joy.

Grandion reacted as though stung. His neck twizzled around until he could stare at her with both eyes. “Are you laughing or crying?”

“Both!”

A low hiccough caused them to bounce in the air. Grandion began to laugh, too. “We’re crazy. Like a pair of dragonets drunk on fermented fruit.”

He felt the same way!

At last, her throat opened. Hualiama poured out in song the response of a soul taken flight. Her hymn drank deep of the magic which had restored the Tourmaline Dragon’s sanity, and rang forth with the beauty and majestic panoply of a Dragon’s passage across the Iridith’s broad, yellow face. Resounding from the dark cliffs of Ha’athior Island, which lay upon their starboard bow as they winged northward, her melody fell like sweet rain upon the Cloudlands misting Ha’athior’s shores, here backlit by a miles-wide orange lava flow. And it seemed to her, as Grandion swept a Human girl out into the moonlit night, that the stars themselves should answer in bell-like notes of rapturous approbation, and that having experienced this, nothing in the Island-World could ever amaze her again.

A sonorous bugle resounded from deep within Grandion’s chest, a sound that caused her to shiver pleasantly.

When she fell silent, the Tourmaline Dragon said, “Happy?”

“You’ve given me the greatest gift of my life, Grandion. Should I not exult?”

The Dragon rubbed his muzzle with his forepaw in a gesture Hualiama had learned signified deep Dragon emotion. He said, “And we Dragons take the power of flight for granted. Shame on us. I should deploy a little concealing magic, now that you’ve woken the entire Island.”

“Grandion?”

“Songbird of Fra’anior?”

“Do Dragons sing?”

He riposted, with a knife-edge ill-concealed in his tone, “Do Dragons rule the Island-World from shore to shore?”

“Except for the large majority of Islands which are ruled by Humans, aye,” she agreed. “You can have all the air; just leave us Humans the Islands.”

“You are exceedingly generous, your Highness,” he said, his displeasure crackling in an undertone of fiery reproof. “Though, I find your social and political education sadly lacking in foundation.”

“Don’t tell me you believe Dragons should rule by right.”

“By right of superior beauty, physical prowess, intelligence, scientific endeavour and achievement, breeding, and–”

“–modesty,” Lia snapped. “You’re awfully strong on modesty.”

Grandion coughed out an impressive plume of fire at her comment. Lia ducked, but the wind wafted the choking, sulphurous smoke into her face. As she coughed, he snarled, “Humans are nothing but the fleas infesting the armpit of this world.”

Fire roared over her vision. Rather than being cowed by his tone, Lia found herself snarling right back, “You’ve eaten so much monkey meat you’re starting to sound just like one!”

“Most Dragons would kill you for that insult!” he snarled.

“Well, it’s blindingly obvious good manners and charm didn’t land you up in that hole!”

GRRAAAAAGGGHHH!

A crack of thunder! Hualiama clapped her hands over her ears as Grandion roared so loudly, he almost stopped in the air with the effort. She distinctly heard boulders crashing down the nearby cliff, shaken loose. The Tourmaline Dragon flew straight for several moments, panting, while Lia clung to his back as though glued in place. Fantastic. He had spoiled her good mood with one thoughtless slur. Well, a slew of insults, truth be told.

Now her ride wanted to eat her.

At length, he commented, “You surprise me, Hualiama. You’re quite the little Dragoness.”

“I’m sorry, Grandion. I didn’t mean to–”

He cut in, “An apology? In my culture, that’s even worse than the preceding insults. It’s regarded as a sign of cowardice.”

“So, the flea must keep fighting?”

Just like that, the fire and stiffness in his manner vanished and Grandion began to chortle helplessly, shaking his head. “You are incredible. The nonsense that gushes from your mouth, mingled with the most sublime insights! Nay, I don’t want to fight with you, Hualiama. I don’t even know why I am wont to spoil your first flight with crass and worthless words.”

Lia pushed herself upright, peering past his spine spikes to catch a glimpse of his eye as he inclined his head. So, he could apologise but she could not? She smiled, “Thanks, Grandion.”

“Girl, in reply to your earlier accusation–I ended up in that hole because my shell-father ordered me to do something useful with my life, or never return home again.”

What could she say to such a bald statement? Even King Chalcion had not gone that far. No, she laughed hollowly. He preferred to keep her around so that he could beat her personally. Perhaps a cautious question or two could distract the Dragon from his unpredictable mood?

“Who are your parents, Grandion?”

But he shut his muzzle with a click of his fangs. “I will not speak of them.”

They flew north for several hours, each mired in their own thoughts, before Grandion curved his flight toward the northerly tip of Ha’athior Island and alighted in the mouth of a wide, shallow cave a mile beneath the top of the flat peninsula which formed part of Fra’anior volcano’s rim wall.

“Tired?” Lia asked quietly, as he walked beneath the overhang.

“Three months of inactivity doesn’t leave a Dragon flying-fit,” he admitted. “I need to rest. Of course, my superior Dragon physique will quickly adjust to the demands of flying–you’ll see. Meantime, how are you planning to descend the muscular mountain which is my overly conceited self?”

That was a curious form of apology, but it worked.

Hualiama surveyed the prospect of sliding down his shoulder from a height of fifteen feet, and shook her head. “I’d break an ankle … no, wait. I might try your hind leg. Bend your knee, please.”

Gingerly, she walked along the row of spine spikes, before sitting on her rump and making the slide down to the bulge of his upper thigh, and thence his knee. After that, it was still a respectable hop down onto the arch of his hind paw, and at last to the ground. Lia stretched, groaning.

Grandion furled his wings with an even bigger groan, before curling up abruptly, his head tucked back toward his tail. “Wake me if something exciting happens.”

Ten seconds later, Hualiama turned around to speak, and found the Dragon sound asleep!

Hands on hips, she waggled an eyebrow at her co-conspirator, feeling daring–as daring as a certain dragonet, in fact. She had flown Dragonback! Hualiama was a rider of Dragons. Her vision darkened. Lia leaned over, trying to find a way to draw breath despite the feeling of bands of iron clamped about her ribcage. What was this? Slowly, the attack eased. Mercy. It had been a busy night–was it really not yet dawn?

She had not eaten since Ra’aba’s assault on the monastery, she realised.

* * * *

Hualiama woke up with a horrid jolt. Dragon! No, he was neither trampling her, nor standing over the royal ward with a toothy grin, considering how exactly he might turn five feet of Human girl into a between-meals appetiser.

Tucking into a handful of nuts drawn from her pouch, Lia considered their mutual madness. Oaths made between Dragon and Human? Aye, for evidently, ralti sheep danced upon the Blue Moon! And what of this inexplicable magical imperative which seemed to have seized them both by the throat and winged them off to an uncertain destiny? Had Grandion noticed her accidental use of Dragonish? Which brought to at least three the number of reasons he should summarily execute her with a blast of Dragon fire. She peered at Grandion from the corner of her eye. No, he was neither a single inch smaller, nor any less … Dragon. Mercy. Double mercy with huge fire-breathing serpents on top!

There would be no escaping this cave without him.

Grandion nigh filled his half of the cave, a slumberous mound of Dragonflesh clothed in gemstone raiment fit for a king. She snuck a little closer to examine the detail of his scales, shaking her head. How could she describe such a blue? Pearlescent? Mesmeric? Each scale on his flanks was the size of her two hands placed side by side, reducing to tiny, thumbnail-sized scales around his eyes. Lia felt as though she were gazing into the inner part of a gemstone which had inexplicably assumed the structure and form of draconic scale armour. She had a sense of falling inward into a hypnotic, perilous crystalline world. One could lose oneself in such scrutiny.

Fascination and Dragon fear. Aye. So had it ever been between Dragons and Humans. So it was with her now.

Lia drank sparingly from a trickle of crystal-clear water at the rear of the cave before shucking her blades and her belt with all its supplies. She owed it to Master Khoyal, let his soul fly upon the eternal winds, to complete her training. She would first limber up with a dance before moving on to the many forms of Nuyallith burned into her mind. Some were inexplicable or mystical. Ja’al had not yet transferred ninety of the lessons, but Lia already felt like a walking library of lore–or an ambulatory headache.

Grandion stirred in the late afternoon, when the heat pressed down as if intent upon smothering the Islands in a thick, sweltering blanket. A storm brewed out there. The eighteen league wide caldera generated so much ambient heat that Fra’anior Cluster never grew cold, but the heat also caused massive thunderstorms to boil around the Islands year-round, with a particular concentration in the storm season–which would arrive within the month, she realised. Ra’aba had been on the throne far longer than anyone would ever have imagined.