J
iA-LLonya Slapped
Aranya’s cheek with rather more enthusiasm than Aranya thought was justified. “Wake up. You’re daydreaming.”
The Immadian shoved her away. “I’m awake. Stop hitting me.”
“It was that or a Sylakian war hammer to stop your snoring.”
“I do not snore!”
“Oh aye, it’s your Dragoness snoring, I forgot.” Jia laughed merrily. “How gullible are you? No wonder Zip teased you mercilessly. It’s easy.”
“Gullible? Islands’ sakes, here I’m dreaming about Ardan coming to rescue us and all you can do is yank my hawser–”
“About Ardan? Remind me one more time how uncomplicated your love life is?”
Aranya growled something unintelligible about Dragons sitting on cheeky Human beings until they turned purple in the face. It was that or sink into the doldrums thinking about how no man would ever love her again, unless it was in a darkened room on a dark night and he could ignore the knobbly scars covering her body. Ardan would turn to Kylara. Yolathion would retch. Jia-Llonya could have him, for all she cared.
See, Fra’anior, what you have wrought?
If Yolathion was not dead already, he was certainly dying. Aranya was ashamed at her thoughts, but they kept running through her mind like windrocs plundering a carcass.
She should concentrate rather on discovering why everyone was so surprised she could speak Dragonish whilst wearing the Lavanias collar. How did that work? If it was some kind of mind-trick, she could not work out what it did to her mind, or to her magic.
“I read that women of the Kingdom of Kaolili wear face veils,” said Aranya. “Do you think I could manage that?”
Jia-Llonya sighed. “I hear some people are grateful just to be alive. Do you think you could manage that?”
If she had expected Aranya to produce a fireball at that comment, Jia would have to be disappointed. The truth was, they were both sick of being caged up. Aranya eyed the pitiful scraps of scrolleaf and the virtually hairless paintbrushes the Sylakian guards had procured for her. So much for imagining she could reproduce some of the painting she had enjoyed last time she was in the Tower.
Idly, she picked a black charcoal stick out of her meagre supplies box, and said, “Jia, if I sketched the Dragon Rider school I saw in my dream, do you think that would help us find it?”
The Jeradian girl rolled over on her end of the bed they had been forced to share. “Maybe you could draw some of the Dragons you saw, too. What about Fra’anior?”
“Not him.”
“Maybe if you put him to scroll, you wouldn’t need to fear him so much. And–don’t bite me for this one, Aranya–but you know how ralti-stupid I am about Dragons. Would you be willing to sketch your mother, Izariela, in her Star Dragon form?”
For the first time since the Chameleon Shapeshifter had stabbed her in the chest, a genuine smile curved her lips. “That, I’d love!”
But her hand began to draw a second head on her scrolleaf, and the outline of a third … Fra’anior. Even now, having brought her to the bleakest point in her life, a hellish pit from which there could be no return, he refused to relinquish his hegemony over her fate. Aranya sketched on, adding detail after detail, retreating into a world of deep contemplation, biting her lip in concentration. There was an indefinable core to the Black Dragon, she felt, some connection she could not quantify, and it captivated her imagination in a way that was at once both fascinating and repellent.
She tossed the page away. No. She had to do better.
After an hour or two’s drawing and four scrolleaves covered in Fra’anior’s heads, she became aware of Jia-Llonya peering over her shoulder.
“Seven heads?” she said. “Wow. Is this speck you?”
Aranya nodded. “He’s roughly the size of an Island. Always appears within a storm. I find it so calming, dreaming about him.”
Her leaden sarcasm made the Jeradian girl chuckle. Jia said, “He’s incredible. I love the way you’ve portrayed him; so lifelike. Gives me the soul-lost shivers, all over.”
“Sorry. But that’s how I see him.”
Jia tilted her head quizzically. “Only one thing that’s odd about this drawing.”
“What?”
“Why’ve you made him look like you?”
* * * *
Plucking a pair of tumbling monks out of the sky with a cunning swoop, Ardan raced across to Beran’s flagship. “Get me Beran,” he ordered, in a voice resonating with Dragonish thunder. Two of the warriors manning the forward gantry dropped their hammers in fear.
“Put the poor monks down,” said Kylara, amused. “And stop scaring the men.”
Ardan placed them carefully atop the Dragonship before hooking his forepaws, talons sheathed, into the netting for a moment. The Dragonship groaned and tilted.
“Ardan. Kylara,” said King Beran, apparently unfazed to find a Dragon hanging sideways off his vessel. “Report at once.”
“The battle progresses well. Zuziana is an hour distant as yet,” said Ardan. “I just heard from Aranya. Thoralian–”
“Aranya?”
Ardan nodded. “She’s alive. She warned us–Thoralian is either here, or he’s close. Either way you need to expect an ambush. And she began to say he was bringing something, but I missed the rest of the message.”
The King of Immadia, a seasoned campaigner, was already calculating in his mind, Ardan saw. Beran said, “Right. We’ll signal the highest alert. Can we spare you to scout? Maybe. The monks fare well and we’ve captured one Shapeshifter Dragon. But we’ve lost a dozen–”
KAARAABOOM!
“One more Dragonship,” said Kylara. “Karathion is devastating our forces.”
“Another Dragon joining their side would not be pretty,” said Beran. “Right. Ardan, you go clip Karathion’s toenails. After that, I need you to scout. Find me Thoralian. I’ll be here trying to herd bunches of random flying monks who don’t understand our signals–never mind.”
“I’m sure the Immadian Fox will prevail,” said Ardan.
King Beran’s eyebrows crawled skyward. “Are you still here?”
The Shadow Dragon fell away into the gathering night.
Ardan recalled the too-brief conversation he’d snatched with Ri’arion before the Nameless Man had flown away with Zuziana. ‘Gather the darkness around you,’ the monk had advised. ‘Shadow loves concealment. Subterfuge. You must fly not only with power, but with great cunning.”
Now, he stalked Karathion in the darkness. No booming challenge to give away his intent. No warning flare of fire, nor should the wind whisper over his scales when the shadow power could soothe that away. Even that soft susurration could alert another Dragon. Enwrapped in a silence so profound he felt it should surely still the very volcano upon which the Fra’aniorians made their homes, Ardan ghosted across Iridith’s pallid crescent. Just a sliver of a moon; no others were abroad as yet. He hunted his own kind.
Karathion apparently possessed an endless supply of fireballs. He flew with a graceful economy of effort, which Ardan found admirable in a creature so vast. Unconsciously, he copied what he observed. What freedom was his!
He ambushed the Red Dragon leader from beneath–from the most unexpected direction. Perhaps a flicker of movement, more sensed than seen, saved the great Red. Karathion half-dodged Ardan’s initial strike, taking a painful but not crippling blow on the lockable second joint of his left wing and losing a ten-foot strip of wing membrane to Ardan’s claws. His tail lashed out. Ardan wheezed as he was struck squarely between his hind legs. His natural Dragon armour protected his worst blushes, but the blow still knocked the breath out of him. Grunting and snarling, the two Dragons wrestled and tore at each other with the ferocity of male rajals in the mating season, falling through the air toward the Island massif.
Kylara succeeded in firing three arrows into the Red Dragon’s torso before Ardan broke with the enemy Dragon. “Good shooting,” he panted, eyeballing his enemy as he too gathered his breath, no more than three hundred feet away in the gathering gloom.
“You still planning to have children?” asked his Rider.
“Grr!”
Her question galvanised him. Ardan closed with Karathion, trying to bring his great strength to bear, but the old Red was powerful too, and far more experienced in battle. As they traded blows and bites over the course of minutes, Ardan began to sense that he was getting the worst of the bargain. He still had Thoralian to deal with, if Aranya’s warning was to be acted upon.
He wheeled away, panting.
“Let’s take him,” he growled to his Rider. “Aim at his muzzle. I’ve an idea.”
His wings pumped, closing the gap.
Kylara fired an arrow into Karathion’s face at point-blank range. The arrow drilled into his muzzle. As the Red Dragon reared in surprise and pain, the Shadow Dragon dived in. He punched the Dragon in the neck. No wasting niceties on claws or fangs. Ardan punched him right above the second heart, and then twice more, making Karathion shudder with the force of his blows. The wily old Dragon faltered. Ardan punched him one more time in exactly the same place; now, his blazing yellow eyes dulled, and rolled back in their sockets.
Then, Ardan saw fire flare in the darkness over the caldera–just where Zip should be.
* * * *
Zip constructed a shield with studious care, copying one of the models Ri’arion had presented to her in his mind. It collapsed.
“Good,” he said. “Excellent progress for a beginner.”
“Let me try again.”
“You’re tired,” said the monk. “Don’t forget, the battle for Fra’anior still awaits.”
The Azure Dragon sighed. “I’m flying as fast as I can, and the breeze is helping. We’ll get there. One more shield.”
“Fine.” The monk surfaced an image in his mind for the umpteenth time. “This is a fire shield. Rather than trying to hold the entire construct in your mind at once, try to let it grow out of your body as a natural extension of who and what you are. Concentrate, dear one.”
“I’m exhausted.”
However, the Azure Dragoness clenched her jaw. No giving up now. Imagine Aranya’s life would depend upon her mastery of this skill. She scoured the recesses of her Dragon-mind for the power she hoped to find.
Show me.
A silvery trickle of magic played along her spine-spikes; a sense of awakening, of expansiveness.
“Oh, very good,” Ri’arion encouraged her. “Roaring rajals, Dragon–that’s excellent!”
Zip wanted to bite her lip, but that was not so easy when one had a mouthful of wickedly pointed fangs to consider. She settled on pressing her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth.
Islands’ greetings, little one,
said an unfamiliar voice.
Come fly with me, and I will show you wonders you have never imagined.
Her shield wavered.
Ri’arion?
“Dragon below!” shouted the monk. His mind clamped down on the wheedling, hypnotic voice.
Leave our minds now!
That’s very unaccommodating of you.
To Zip’s horror, a Yellow-White Dragon half again as large as Ardan materialised from the hot gloom, dimly backlit by the lava flows more than a league below. He was just a few hundred feet below, to her starboard side. Where had that monster been hiding? He flew poorly … but she had no time to consider this.
I AM THORALIAN!
His voice crashed against her mind.
Ri’arion threw up a shield at the speed of thought, damping Thoralian’s attack. Zip dipped, having momentarily stalled, but the mind-meld helped to orient her. Flying ralti sheep, what a headache she had now!
Keep the shield steady, girl,
said the monk.
Make for Fra’anior, quick as you can. Even a Dragon of his size can’t touch us.
Touch you? I don’t need to when I have my drakes.
Drakes? The Azure Dragoness hesitated, sensing the enveloping movement of other aerial predators.
Thoralian commanded,
Go, my fierce friends. This is your hunt.
Suddenly, the air beneath them was bursting with red drakes–Zip thought at once of the many dragonets she had seen on her circuit of the volcanic Islands, but these were creatures apart. She saw mean, underslung jaws. Burning red eyes. Wing-struts trimmed with thorny spikes, and double-ended spiny tails to round them off. They were kindred to Dragons but without the high intelligence, she sensed. With harsh caws of excitement, the drakes fanned out across her path like the painted dogs of the north-western Isles Aranya had once described to her. As a pack, they closed in on the Azure Dragon and her Rider. Not one of their number was less than half her size.
Shield up,
Ri’arion pulsed to her through their mind-link.
I’ve shut Thoralian out. I’ve–uh!
His hands flew to his temples.
Thoralian,
Zip gasped. His new mental attack comprised powerful hammer-blows to their minds. The Nameless Man groaned, jolting about in the saddle at each successive psychic blast. The Azure Dragon experienced the impacts through their link, but Ri’arion–gallant to the point of idiocy–was protecting her, taking the brunt himself. He was in no shape to do that. Thoralian glided serenely below, tossing his barrage at regular intervals.