Dragonfriend (37 page)

She stumbled, dazed by the violent clash of heads. Crossbow quarrel! Her left blade, the red one, deflected the incoming quarrel before its presence even registered in her mind. Where was the archer? Springing upright, she executed the double windroc technique on a luckless rogue who was still facing the wrong direction when her blades pierced his neck and right kidney simultaneously.

Here came the other dozen youths, aware now that their intended victim was not about to lie down and beg for mercy. Lia whirled out of the dancing crane into a modified kingfisher skill, pausing just long enough to allow a blade to swish past her stomach, before leaping high into the air and striking from above, lightning-quick. Her left sword pierced a man’s eye, the right slid into another man’s cheek.

Bellowing a Western Isles war-cry, Jarrik the Armourer came charging out of his shop, using his shield as a battering-ram to crush four men against the opposite wall.

“Fancied some exercise,” he grinned, abandoning his shield to twirl a two-handed war hammer about his head. “Just bop these thugs, one, two!”

Spill their brains was what he meant.

“Thanks!” Lia ducked a javelin and used the momentum to knock a man’s feet out from under him. Jarrik finished him off by the simple expedient of dropping his knee on the man’s chest, crushing his ribcage. Grandion would have approved of that move.

For a few moments they withstood a siege of cudgels and swords, before the youths saw the better value of cowardice and fled. Gathering her weapons with exasperated haste, Lia quickly armed herself and slipped her swords into their sheaths. No point in skulking about now.

“That way,” said the Western Isles warrior, pointing.

Halfway down the road at a dead sprint, Lia heard a tramping of booted feet ahead. A cohort of Rolodia’s grey-clad guardsmen marched into the narrow street between the shops, blocking it. She turned.

“Run!” yelled Jarrik.

The sound of more boots echoed up the street. The real trap was sprung. Lia spared a half-breath to wonder if Ra’aba might not somehow be behind this, before she realised what she must do. She bounded up onto a barrel and from there, sprang up to the eaves and swung herself smoothly onto the roof. Lia raced across the uneven surface as the monks had so often trained to run across the uneven boulders near the crater lake.

For a long drawn-out second, she thought she had made her escape.

Whap!
A weighted net snarled her body. Hualiama had not seen a rooftop guard post, but they had seen her and fired a net in her direction. Deprived of the use of her arms and legs, Lia toppled helplessly, rolled down a shingled slope, and tumbled into the street below. A mound of red-dyed cloth broke her fall, but she had no time to struggle free of the net. Cruel hands seized her.

“Now you’ll pay, girl!”

An unseen cudgel slammed her head into the cobblestones. Blackness overwhelmed her instantly.

* * * *

A Princess locked in a tower. The same prekki fruit of old,
Flicker chirped, slipping between the bars of Lia’s tower cell.

Flicker!
Hualiama gasped.
What … where did you come from?

The dragonet inquired archly,
Good shopping trip? What’re you still doing in here?

Escaping, of course.
Lia worked vigorously at the lock on her left ankle.
Toss it in a Cloudlands volcano, this one’s so blasted stiff …

Shall I fetch the keys off that hook, straw-head?
Her brilliant smile made him flip an aerial somersault–gingerly, to avoid further hurting his ankle. The dragonet chattered,
Aye, thank you Flicker. You are my saviour, my best friend and indeed, the true dragonet-king of all Fra’anior. Here. Loosen those chains while I call Grandion.

As the jail tower was a little ways out of the city, down near a garbage heap which smelled emphatically appealing to Flicker, he and the blue blunderer had decided that with a touch of Grandion’s concealing magic, they could rescue the Human girl and earn themselves kisses. Well, kisses were his privilege. By his wings, there was no way he’d allow that prowling Lesser Dragon to muscle in on his girl, shiver the thought and turn his fires to ice!

Having signalled Grandion as agreed, Flicker returned to the cell to find Lia gone! The door yawned open. In a flash he whizzed down the spiral staircase. He narrowly avoided crashing into the back of Lia’s head and instead, violently assaulted the man facing her with a crossbow levelled at her chest. Meantime, Grandion landed on the roof, shaking the building.
Twang!
A quarrel quivered in the wooden ceiling of the room beneath Lia’s previous cell.

Hualiama chopped the man down with the hard edge of her hand. “Flicker, I had it under control!”

“That’s what you’re doing with a lump on your head, in jail?”

“I was in the middle of escaping, you brainless lizard,” she complained. “Look, the guard captain laid all my things out nicely on his desk so that he could choose what he wanted for himself. Let me just collect–”

“Grandion is so upset with you–I’m upset with you!”

The Tourmaline Dragon thundered, “WHERE IS THAT PEST?”

“Hmm, sounds like he’s planning to rip the roof off,” said Lia, strapping on her daggers with a studied unconcern that had the dragonet gaping. Would he ever understand the ways of a two-legged female? “Tell him to wait just a rajal’s whisker, Flicker.”

Flicker coughed up fire as he squeaked, “You tell him!”

A huge blue paw smashed through the floorboards, shooting splinters and chunks of wood across the room. Grandion snarled, “You come here right now, you wretched bundle of vexation, or I swear I’ll pulverise this place–”

“Coming, Grandion,” she cooed.

Flicker blenched. That was completely the wrong tone to take with a Dragon … on cue, Grandion’s fury erupted in spectacular style. He roared so deafeningly and so long that the Islanders could probably have heard him back on Gi’ishior, never mind Rolodia. Rock detonated just a couple of feet above their heads, while the south tower wall bulged and cracked as he flexed his muscles. Nails shrieked as the incensed Tourmaline Dragon tore through the floor, tossing boards and sturdy beams to the winds.

Hualiama shrugged her Nuyallith sword harness over her shoulders. “Right, Flicker, just a couple more things and I’ll be ready.”

A wordless squeak of dread escaped the dragonet. Hualiama deftly sidestepped a grasping paw, as if the Dragon were fishing for her like a dragonet fishing in a pond, and scooped her belongings into her arms.

“Quick, Flicker. Upstairs now.”

“There’s neither an upstairs nor stairs left anymore,” he pointed out.

Grandion’s forepaws swept the room from either end, eventually corralling the Human girl near the middle. His muzzle punched through what remained of the ceiling. The Tourmaline Dragon glowered at Hualiama from a distance of six inches, panting great gasps of smoke, growling deep in his belly as his tail idly demolished another section of the Rolodian jail tower behind him. Flicker sensed that his righteous wrath had robbed him of words, or more accurately, he did not wish to open his jaw and embroil her in a deadly firestorm. Grandion’s sword-like talons flexed as if longing to burrow into a certain Human’s impudent neck.

Flicker decided that at this precise moment, the path of valour would be to bury himself beneath the rubble, or be flying a hundred leagues an hour in the opposite direction.

“I’m ready when you are, Grandion,” Lia chirped, with a radiant smile. “Oh, and this is for coming to pick me up after my shopping.” Leaning forward, Hualiama planted a kiss directly on Grandion’s left eye. “You’re the best.”

Although, a dragonet could be moved to contemplate murder on occasion.

H
uman, Dragon and
dragonet camped that evening on the wild, uninhabited northern shore of Rolodia Island, beside a terrace lake shimmering like fiery stained glass as the lambent twin suns fired their rays beneath the broad underbelly of waxing Iridith, dominating the south-western skies as only the yellow moon could. The mile-wide fourth and lowest band of terrace lakes, buttressed by mighty dam walls only the Ancient Dragons knew how to build, was home to a vast cornucopia of bird life which loved the violet-tufted reed beds and towering, impenetrable bamboo forests, and filled with the silverback trout famed throughout the region. An optical illusion made the far side of the unspoiled lake appear to run right into the Cloudlands, giving an impression of infinite distance. Warmly tinted in an awe-inspiring palette of colours, the evening was without equal.

Why a soul-lost sadness to darken such a day?

Hualiama sat on a grassy knoll overlooking this tableau, and hugged her knees to her chest. Grandion and Flicker bathed at the lakeside, the deft dragonet engaged–with much lip-smacking and trills of happiness–in plucking mites from beneath Tourmaline Dragon’s scales and gobbling them down.

The song of her heart was a haunting ballad:

Alas for the far shores, my heart, my third heart,

Alas for the stars, illuming thy doom,

Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

And fly to thee.

Alas for the fair peaks, my love, my fierce love,

Alas for the scorching winds, which stole thee away,

Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

And fly to thee.

So she had sung for Amaryllion, unwittingly, in the darkness beneath Ha’athior’s Island-massif, and the darkness had turned to magic and light, and that light was the naissance of a friendship few could have imagined.

Flicker’s voice rose, carrying clearly to her ears because of the stillness.
Evidently, your large cranial cavity is woefully underutilised, Grandion. Insipid follicular filaments my shell-mother’s warty backside! Let me teach you about Human females. I am an expert, after all.

From beneath her lashes, giving no outward sign that she overheard them, Hualiama spied on her draconic companions. This should be entertaining.

Firstly, you need to understand that just as a Dragon has three hearts, a Human female has three minds.

Three?
Grandion was as nonplussed as the Human eavesdropping on their conversation.

Aye, three, and you never know which one you’re going to get from one moment to the next.
Ooh, she was going to give that overgrown, armour-plated mosquito a piece of her mind–one of her minds. Lia hushed a giggle as the dragonet continued,
They can switch from one brain to the next at a speed that would make a bat’s head spin. At least one of their brains possesses a dismaying tendency toward contrariness and wing-shivering vexation, as you observed in the tower.

Aye, that makes sense,
Grandion nodded.

Secondly, a woman’s hair is always perfect,
the dragonet pontificated.
It is neither too long nor too short, too dark nor too light, nor does it ever resemble a windroc’s nest. Clear?

Give me scales any day,
muttered the larger Dragon.

Flicker drew himself up.
Lia’s hair is wondrous amongst her kind. It falls down her back like spider-silk threads of the whitest Dragon gold.

Grandion’s paw, upraised in the act of scratching his spine spikes, curled as if with a sudden cramp. Hualiama shivered at the tenor of his glance. Dragons were said to be covetous. Surely, that could not be what he wanted of her, to add a Human to his Dragon hoard? One fable told how Dragons could breathe out a magic which converted any object into pure gold. Nonsense, she told herself. Silly tales for children–and who would want a golden statue of Hualiama?

Perhaps Ra’aba, as a decoration for his throne room?

Now, Humans value diminutive size,
Flicker instructed.
She is cute. Dainty. Lia’s entire person, but especially her backside, is not to be commented upon except with the greatest consideration.

Huh?
Grandion snorted.
What Dragoness would not burn for a well-turned compliment?

Favourable comparisons to legs as sturdy as the Islands, and haunches as full and round as the Jade moon, are definitely forbidden,
said the dragonet. Lia almost choked with laughter. Imagine!
They are very particular about the taboo parts of their bodies, and believe their body coverings enhance beauty.

The Tourmaline Dragon snorted even more impressively than before, raising ripples on the lake surface.
Ridiculous! She teases and torments like a Dragoness, but then retreats behind her clothes? I could not even chastise her like a hatchling. You witnessed her tears. What did that mean?

Flicker sighed at the same time as Lia. In part seriousness and part teasing, Grandion had wanted to bend her over his paw to receive a beating for defying his commands back at the tower–she had disrespected her Dragon protector, she realised. Hualiama felt ashamed now at her screaming, her blind panic and revulsion … but how could she resist a Dragon’s strength? How could she tell him, that the action reminded her so clearly of a time her father held her down to whip her with a heavy weapons belt?

She is no hatchling, despite her lack of stature,
said the dragonet.
Perhaps it is taboo in Human culture, or signifies something mated Humans might do together?

She wanted to laugh bitterly. No, Flicker. It was only in speaking to Ja’al’s sisters, quietly that night she had visited his family, that she had learned that not all parents beat their children bloody, nor did they break their child’s arm–Elki, in this case–in a hunting ‘accident’ that everyone knew was no accident.

Abruptly, Lia pushed to her feet. Something needed to be said.

“Grandion?”

“Aye, Hualiama? I will catch you a trout, I promise, but our companion seemed hungry for parasites.”

“He often eats from beneath a log,” Lia smiled, wading out into the lake. She wore just her tunic top, having swum earlier with Flicker while Grandion soared aloft to scout.

“That’s where you find the best and juiciest grubs!” Flicker enthused. “And, I highly recommend those green crunchy beetles. They flutter in your mouth and sometimes right down your gullet, while the many-legged orange ones …”