Dragonfriend (36 page)

“Please, Grandion, tell me what happened to the child.”

His muzzle curved around until his lower jaw lay almost in the fire, and both of his eyes fixed on Lia. Though her question was plaintive, a tiny giggle suddenly escaped her lips.

“And what’s that giggle for, you green-eyed imp?” demanded the Dragon.

“I was just imagining what it might be like to have a neck like yours. I could look completely backward.”

“I see that Humans excel at barbed compliments, just like Dragons,” he smiled. “Well, let me put your mind at rest. I hid the girl in the leaves and bade her be as still as a mouse. When Yulgaz and Ra’aba arrived I attacked them and lured them away. That Human hatchling lives, as best I know. The Dragons chased me to Ha’athior Island, and the rest you know.”

“Ra’aba?” Lia echoed.

“Razzior. I said Razzior.”

“No you didn’t, I clearly …” Some unknown, poisonous quality in Grandion’s gaze corked the words in her throat. A soul-lost feeling swept over her, an awareness that if she pressed the point, the Dragon might tip over the edge of sanity. “I misheard.”

Flicker’s mouth was catching flies. He fidgeted with the splint on his ankle; Hualiama told him off sternly, while her thoughts raced off over the Cloudlands. No, it was an honest mistake–it had to be. Dragons could not be Humans, could they? Besides the impossibility of mixing Human seed with Dragon, the very idea was repugnant and physically unfeasible. Perhaps Dragons could change shape? But nothing in all the volumes of Dragon lore she had ever read, even hinted at the possibility. The engineer in her knew without a shadow of a doubt that the sheer size and physical volume of a Dragon could never be compressed down into Human size. Matter did not vanish into nonexistence, only to reappear. Magic itself operated according to laws similar to the physical realm. It did not arise from nothing–nothing arose from nothing! Magic existed intrinsically in the very substance of the world.

Just before he attacked her, Hualiama remembered thinking how strongly the Orange Dragon’s body language, tone of voice and even a peculiar aspect of his gaze, had reminded her of Ra’aba. Could a Dragon’s spirit or power subjugate a Human mind and inhabit a person’s living soul, making Ra’aba the mindless thrall of the Orange Dragon? She whispered, “A magic capable of binding minds.”

The Tourmaline Dragon almost tied his neck in a knot, until his nose bumped against her leg. “You speak of forbidden things,” he whispered. “Fearful powers.”

Laying her palm flat against Grandion’s nose, Lia said, “Permission for a titchy Human girl to scare a fire-breathing colossus?”

He blinked. “I’d claim with all my draconic arrogance that you can’t scare me, Hualiama, but I find entirely too many mysteries in your existence for that to resemble anything but a flight of foolishness. Speak.”

“Promise you won’t breathe fire?” She patted his nose; the dragonet helpfully tittered away as Grandion snorted uncomfortably. When he nodded, Lia summoned up Amaryllion’s words. “Brace yourself. ‘At that time, 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’.”

Grandion could not have looked more stunned if she had slapped him in the muzzle with an entire Dragonship.

“Do you know of a third great race, Grandion? Do you–”

“This is deep Dragon lore, Hualiama!” he hissed, his eyes filling with ember-like orange fire in the semidarkness of a three-moons night. “How came you upon such dread knowledge?”

There were moments when Grandion seemed just like any good friend, and other times when he seemed as alien and terrible as the infamously wicked Dramagon, who legend named the father of all Red Dragons. Dramagon was said to have subjected his Human slaves to terrible experiments and torture. Hualiama was quite certain that the temptation to shorten her life at his claw-tip, quivered in his body in that instant. Pretending unconcern, she returned to working a particularly stubborn knot out of her hair, but was grateful when Flicker hopped into her lap.

The Tourmaline Dragon whispered, “By the First Eggs of the Ancient Dragons … you would fracture the very foundations of this Island with such thoughts!”

Pensively, Hualiama outlined Ra’aba’s words, that fateful evening when she had met the Nameless Man. “Ra’aba tried to murder me, or have me murdered,” she said. “He believed that would break the prophecy. Amaryllion also believes that the prophecy and I are somehow linked–and, I recall, that I might have been born somewhere in the East.”

“Not with those ears,” said Grandion. Abruptly, the tension seemed to drain from his body. “We Dragons say ‘but one egg is laid at a time’, by which we mean, events will befall us as they will. Let us focus on Ianthine and the dangers she represents. You mentioned before the need to learn
Juyhallith
, the way of the mind. As you know, we Blue Dragons are skilled in the ways of high magic, for example, the shield I built for you this afternoon to help you withstand the cold of our altitude, or the concealing magic to hide your presence–never mind, those matters have already passed beneath our wings. I know a few
Juyhallith
techniques and will teach you, if you wish.”

Hualiama swallowed. How could she trust a Dragon to meddle in her mind? “What must I do?”

“Describe at length how astonishingly handsome a dragonet I am,” Flicker put in.

Mustering her courage, Lia raised her chin to meet Grandion’s gaze without recourse to her natural diffidence. “Dragon?”

Grandion’s grin seemed especially draconic as he said, “You must make yourself vulnerable.”

* * * *

Over the following two days, Grandion and his companions winged northwest to Rolodia Island, enjoying a stiff following breeze. Hualiama trained at shielding her thoughts from casual ‘borrowing’, as the Tourmaline Dragon called it, while they approached the broad, shallow oval of Rolodia Island from the air. The locals liked to name the Isle the ‘Lake of Jade’, referring to the colour of the terrace lake waters which surrounded the entirety of the Island, four tiers in all, and the densely vegetated interior, which ranged from tall jungles to towering bamboo forests.

Grandion landed stealthily near Rolodia’s only town at the southerly tip of the Island in the early afternoon. Reasoning that either of her draconic companions would attract too much attention, Lia convinced them that she enter the town alone to purchase herself a bow and a quiver of arrows. The gate guards questioned her rudely; a trader barged over her foot. Unfriendly place. Lia adjusted her headscarf self-consciously, confirming that her distinctive Fra’aniorian ears were hidden from casual view. She received a number of openly hostile looks as she inquired at an inn just inside the gates for directions to the market area. Hualiama had visited Rolodia before, but as a royal guest. This was startlingly different–probably a good experience, she told herself. Who was she trying to fool?

Lia drifted along a narrow row of brick-and-board shops, the dark eaves providing the barest sliver of protection against the white-hot twin suns’ glare. The market area seemed far too quiet. Where were all the customers? A quartet of guardsmen loitered about in an alleyway she passed by, eyeing her with the air of dogs considering a juicy bone. Ugh.

“Oi, ah fancy me that bit of skirt,” she heard as she ducked inside a likely-looking establishment.

Inside, the weapons shop was dim, and stank of oils and leather, together with the tang of hot alloys from a forge which was being worked somewhere in the back. A little apprentice boy, spying her, pelted into the back crying, “Da! Da! Is a lady.”

“A lady, you say?” The man’s voice was gruff but not unkind.

“A pretty lady, Da! Will ya marry her? Will ya? She wearing swords and all, Da!”

A hugely muscled man ducked through a hanging bead curtain leading to the back room. A Western Isles warrior! Hualiama tried not to stare, but his dark-skinned kind were uncommon enough around Fra’anior to arouse her curiosity. The armourer’s eyes were dark points in a broad, scarred face, and his gaze dropped briefly to the Immadian forked daggers at her belt before leaping to note the hilts of her swords rising behind her shoulders.

“Well, lady,” he rumbled, his accent thick and unfamiliar. “I hope you know how to use those swords in this town. I am Jarrik the Armourer. How may I serve you?”

“I am looking for a good bow,” said Lia, realising she had been foolish on two counts. She wore rare Immadian daggers on her belt. First mistake. The second mistake, not remembering Remoyan attitudes to women who bore weapons.

“Long, short, crossbow or recurve?”

“Recurve. Compact size with a strong draw.”

Without a word, Jarrik moved to a weapons rack affixed to the wall above three neat heaps of round shields, and selected a bow. “How would this suit you?”

Lia raised an eyebrow at him, which was a long way up. Jarrik looked to be the kind of man who could beat through walls using nothing but his head. “It’s pretty, I’ll grant, but I’d need something sturdier.”

He presented her the weapon. “Test the draw for me, please. What’re you hunting?”

“Windrocs,” she said, drawing the bowstring to her ear with ease.

“Aye? Would you indulge me with two further impositions, lady? Show me your palm, and show me one of your swords.”

With a slight bow, Hualiama drew the Nuyallith sword from her preferred left side, and laid the weapon in his hand. The Armourer’s brow furrowed. He tested the sword’s weight and balance with a professional flourish, and then ran a finger reverently along the blade. “Sweet. Windrocs, eh?” He turned her palm over in his blunt-fingered paw, pursing his lips at the well-used calluses which her training had developed. “Hmm.” He passed her the blade; Lia sheathed it without hesitation.

Jarrik dismissed his rack of bows with an irascible wave. “None of these. Come into the back, lady.”

He moved to a cupboard opposite the furnace, reached inside without looking, and selected a weapon. Lia’s eyes moved to the little apprentice, who stared at her open-mouthed. She winked at him. Sweet lad.

“This is the weapon for you.”

Hualiama examined the bow curiously. It appeared to be constructed of an exotic type of lacquered hardwood, and the recurve of the tips was slightly more pronounced than she was used to. The grip fit her hand as though crafted for her alone. The craftsmanship … aye. Gorgeous.

Jarrik explained, “It’s a Haozi hunting bow, from the far southern end of the Eastern Isles. They ride a type of giant boar on their hunts, beasts that rival a ralti sheep for size. With practice–” his teeth flashed a quick grin at this “–you should be able to draw it fully.”

Right he was. Hualiama grinned back at him as she managed just over a three-quarters draw. “This is an excellent weapon. I don’t have enough coin for a bow of this quality, however. Would you accept an alternative form of payment?”

“As in?”

“Excuse me.” Reaching down her tunic front, Hualiama liberated a ruby the size of the top joint of her thumb from a secret pocket. A shadow fell upon her spirit as she remembered Inniora’s plight. Please let Ra’aba have mercy on her … “Will this do?”

Jarrik raised the gemstone to the light. “It’s more than adequate, aye. You will require a quiver and arrows? My best for you, lady.”

“And a few leather belts,” said Lia, measuring rapidly in her mind as an idea popped into the forefront of her mind. Aye, she could ride Grandion alright. He was about to be thoroughly vexed by her plan, however. She knew exactly how she would pull his leg, or wing, or whatever …

Having settled with Jarrik the Armourer and wrapped her more obvious weapons in a cloth he provided her, Lia stepped out into the dazzling suns-shine. Unease tickled her spine. In the narrow road to her left, a dozen youths played a strategic game of stone-tossing against a wall. Right, a similar number, standing and staring at her with the peculiar intent of those inciting each other to mischief–not of the humorous kind. Pretending to rub her eyes, Hualiama adjusted the cloth to provide easy access to her swords, knowing in her bones that if Grandion was prowling somewhere high above, these youths were already dead.

The youths closed in rapidly from her right, limbering up a motley assortment of weapons. Lia had expected a few insults, perhaps a way she could use her feminine wiles to slip by. No posturing from these. This confrontation was planned, organised and dangerous. She spied the town guardsmen looking on from the mouth of the alleyway with bored inattention. No help there.

“Sword-wearing rajal!”

“You trying to start a riot, foreign girl?”

“Beat her!”

Thankfully, the viler comments were swallowed up in a general ruckus as the youths broke into a run.

Little Lia briefly considered retreating into the weapons shop, but a fierce fire burned in her breast. Bullies. She hated bullies. Lia dropped her bundle, leaving a sword in each hand. Stepping out into the cobblestone street, she gathered her concentration as Master Khoyal had so painstakingly taught her. Mentally, Lia saluted him. ‘I never appreciated you enough, Master. This is for you.’

The thudding of feet matched the thudding in her senses as Lia’s mindfulness expanded in concentric ripples. The footing, the precise quality of the dust in the air, the smell of silverback trout baking in a nearby shop, the sound of Jarrik pumping the bellows to bring his forge up to heat, all filtered into her awareness. Time seemed to slow. The foremost youth charged in with his iron-shod staff levelled at her belly, his fellows just a couple of steps behind. Lia stood still, arms relaxed at her sides, her blades hanging toward the dirt. But inside, she was as taut as a coiled spring.

Now.

Let the dance begin.

A step off her left foot allowed the staff to slide by her torso, not an inch from her skin. Her red-tinged Nuyallith blade lifted gently, severing the youth’s arm at his wrist. Spinning beyond her howling victim, Lia gutted an intrepid swordsman with a clean slash across his belly, her right arm rising into a vertical parry, the left swinging beneath a club to spear a man in the thigh. These were ill-trained fighters, but the onrush caught up with her. Lia collected a cudgel blow to the shoulder and a painful stamp upon her foot, momentarily arresting her dance. Her blades shimmered darkly, left and right, leaving attackers screaming in their wake. Those at the back skidded to a halt. Vaulting a fallen dark-headed man, Hualiama rebounded off a shop wall, smashing her head into the jaw of a man just behind her.