“Insolent Remoyan,” Aranya grumbled. “So now Fra’anior, Thoralian
and
the Land Dragons are all conspiring against me? And the five moons are up there whispering about which of them will descend to clip my wings?”
Jia said, “Wrecking the Tower and tossing it into the Cloudlands strikes me as a touch drastic. Perhaps if you’re the size of a Land Dragon, one doesn’t negotiate with Dragons a mere hundred feet in size, which compared to you resemble scale mites.”
“The cheerfulness continues like a rain of windroc droppings,” laughed Zip.
Chikkan cleared his throat self-importantly. He said, “Even for a Land Dragon, crossing the Rift is no trivial exercise. Do you have the first conception of what the Rift is like? No? You cannot simply fly a long-range Dragonship over it.”
“Did you come over the Rift, Chikkan?” asked Aranya.
“My grandfather did,” he said. “When I was young and he still lived, he told me that the Sylakians knew the secret method of passing across the Rift. I presume that is how he transported the drakes you spoke of, lady Zuziana. That route is called the Way of Fizurial–and I don’t know what that means, except that Fizurial is a mythical Island said to move in conjunction with the Mystic Moon. As for the Rift itself, my grandfather spoke of a place of storms which reach from the root of the world to the portals of the moons–storms of molten lava, wind and magic. The fires of the underworld blast upward, creating windstorms so powerful they will shape mountains, and strip flesh from bone. It is said that a hundred-league-wide maelstrom appears and vanishes at random intervals, sucking entire Islands into its maw. And the Rift-storm churns up the Cloudlands, spewing poisons and magic so many miles into the atmosphere, not even a Dragon could overfly it.”
“Yet here you are,” said Ardan.
“Service to Sylakia is all I have ever known.” The doctor turned to smile at Aranya, a discomfiting light gleaming in his eyes. “My grandfather taught me to worship Star Dragons. Fear not, lady, for I would not go so far–but I once heard him tell a legend of a people called the Foam Riders who live inside the Rift, who claim that only a Star Dragon is able to tame the Rift-storm. Were you searching for the way, I would ask them.”
“See, even these Foam Rider creatures want a bite of Aranya,” said Zip. “My jealousy grows no less.”
Aranya rolled her shoulders as if that could somehow release her burdens. Land Dragons tracking her across the Rift? That was about as likely as, say, a Chameleon Shapeshifter tracking her by magic. How many more Chameleons might be out there? Did that mean she needed to watch her friends more closely? Her father? Ignathion? Now there was a thought to scare the living pith out of a person! Who could she truly trust?
Suddenly, that sinister light in Chikkan’s eyes … she’d scare herself ralti-stupid this way.
Sighing, Aranya said, “My duty lies first to our Island-World, north of the Rift, and to Yolathion and Ri’arion, if by some means I can help them.”
Ardan asked, “Are you suggesting that your magic has returned?”
“It’s far too early for that,” Chikkan disagreed.
Aranya groaned loudly and long. Two minutes of hope, wrecked.
S
kirting the south-Western
tip of the Spits as narrowly as they dared, the small Dragonwing turned their noses to the north and gathered speed. Windrocs were a constant danger, but the Shadow and Azure Dragons flew high enough that the birds gave up following them. To their right hand or paw, a sprawling landscape of rocky columns loomed beneath a tablecloth of unbroken grey cloud, as though a table of a million legs stood above the Cloudlands. The spires were surprisingly uniform in height and shape, and up to a quarter-mile square. Some leaned against their neighbours, or appeared to have been severed by unimaginable forces in times past. Two days of hard flying, dawn to midnight, brought them past the cut-off dome of Rolodia Island, once an ally of Immadia, now spoiled, burned and its lake-terraces deliberately destroyed.
Aranya could not see Rolodia, but Ardan’s low-voiced description more than satisfied her curiosity. “Perhaps it’s better not to see,” she said.
“It’s better to see and remember what Thoralian did,” said Jia-Llonya, seated one position ahead of her on Ardan’s back. “That’ll give us the strength we need to beat him.”
And this was the doe-eyed consort she had imagined?
Aranya gazed at the young man stretched over Jia’s lap. Doctor Chikkan said it was only a matter of time before Yolathion died from his mistreatment. They had made him as comfortable as possible, and forced pain-killing herbs down his throat. What more could they do?
“He has strength,” said Chikkan. “But I don’t know that he’d want to live. He’d be a cripple.”
Later, when Zuziana took her turn flying with Aranya and Kylara, the Dragoness said, “Do you think your tears could heal him, Aranya, as they did me?”
Sadly, she told Zip and Kylara how Yolathion had declared that he never wanted to become a Dragon. His healing would require a miracle. Zuziana had been deathly ill when Aranya cried her life-changing tears, but her body had at least been whole. Yolathion’s bones were broken in more places than they could count, his joints dislocated, his spine twisted. Nothing could save him now, this sweet young man who had once dropped his helmet at her smile.
Having overnighted on the mountainous slopes of Nox Island, famous for its excellent, earthy red wines, Ardan and Zuziana set course for Remia, and within three hours, sighted King Beran’s Dragonship fleet on the horizon.
“Ha. Slow-slugs,” said Ardan.
“You forget how time-consuming Dragonship travel is,” added Zip, snorting dismissively. “Being a flying boulder, I bet you can’t catch me!”
With a flip of her wings, she shot ahead.
Aranya wondered if she had been so full of herself as a Dragon. Most probably. But when she thought about seeing her father again, her hand rose instinctively to touch her cheek. Perhaps she should borrow a headscarf from someone. Or hold her head high, and brave the inevitable gasps her appearance would cause.
* * * *
Beran’s eyes filled with tears when he saw her. He clasped Aranya in his arms. “Sparky.”
“I missed you, Dad.”
Love and horror. Her father’s body trembled as she had only ever felt once before, on Izariela’s Tower when she had returned to give the King, and her people, new hope. His hands moved on her shoulders, touching the scattered lumps, and his breath caught in his throat, a stifled moan. Shuddering in response, Aranya knew that Thoralian’s chosen method of torture was so devious, it even injured those she loved without him ever touching them.
She maintained her composure enough to add, “Can we debrief first thing? And then I need time, and space, to myself. Please … you understand, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
Only a lifetime’s training in kingly duties kept King Beran moving from the top of his flagship, where he had chosen to meet the incoming Dragons, to his navigation cabin. Aranya felt his gaze every step of the way.
Seen across the conference table, his grey eyes expressed such a depth of distress that she could not bear to look at him. Beran appeared to have aged twenty years in as many days.
Let him stare. Let them all stare. She was a stone, unbreakable, as immovable as an Island.
Gazing into space, Aranya repeated much of what she had told the others, before fielding an endless gauntlet of questions from Ignathion, Nak and Oyda–necessary and gentle questions, she understood, but harrowing nonetheless. After three hours, the Immadian King cut them off to excuse her.
She entered her cabin and shut the door, overcome by an eerie echo of her journey into exile with First War-Hammer Ignathion. How little she had known, then. Could she have imagined becoming a Dragoness? A felon? Disfigured beyond salvation? Aranya perched on the bed. Here she sat, scrabbling through the ashes of her life.
Glass crashed next door. Fists, pounding the wall; a familiar voice raised in a muffled, faltering cry. Aranya flinched. Her poor father. Beran was raving next door, calling down blood-curdling curses on Sylakia and Thoralian, such words as she had never before heard pass her usually dignified, articulate father’s lips. Aranya knew she should cry. She should weep whole terrace lakes, but all within was a wasteland. She buried her head beneath the pillow-roll, but could not shut out his voice.
At length, the council returned to more measured debate and planning–discussing her, no doubt. Probably exchanging appalled, sympathetic comments about her condition.
Perhaps an hour later, a rap at the door startled her.
“Leave me alone.”
“It’s me, petal.”
“Oyda, please. I don’t want to speak to anyone.”
“It’s important, Aranya. May I come in?”
“If you have to.” Oyda entered soft-footed, and shut the door behind her. The Princess said, “Did my father send you in to pat my head and tell me everything’s going to be alright?”
Oyda did not raise an eyebrow at Aranya’s tone. She said, “Are you ready to listen, petal? I’ve something to say which you need to hear.”
“I need to hear what, exactly?”
She sat up, but hid her face from the old woman, fearing that her sympathy would sear like acid. Oyda’s feet entered her peripheral vision. Aranya wanted to cry out, ‘Don’t touch me!’ Could they not understand it hurt too much?
Oyda said, “I know how presumptuous this is going to sound, Aranya, so if you want to yell at me, that’s fine. I want you to imagine that I’m your mother, and I am going to speak Izariela’s words to you.”
Aranya wondered that the whole world did not catch its breath at Oyda’s audacity. Her mind seemed to expand inward and outward at once. A full-throated roaring filled her ears. Her lungs ceased to function. Aranya saw her mother before her, leaning over as if to comfort a babe in her crib, the pure light of a Star Dragon’s power shining from her face and eyes.
She stared at Oyda, and saw Izariela.
The apparition said, “You’re still my beautiful girl.”
She knew storm power. In her Amethyst Dragon form, Aranya had soared on storm blasts, played between boiling thunderheads and dared the lightning bolts to strike her down. But Oyda’s words conveyed an even greater power; so acute, it carved into her soul like the sharpest of Immadian forked daggers.
“You
are
beautiful.” The shining figure reached out.
Aranya screamed, throwing herself back against the cabin wall, away from the questing fingers. “No! You can’t do this to me! You’ve no right. No!”
“You need to hear this, Aranyi,” Oyda insisted. “I love you, my beautiful petal.”
“NO!” Her storm-powered shriek broke in the cabin, thrusting Oyda against the door with a furious gust of wind. “No, please … don’t, you’re
killing
me …”
The old woman lowered her head and braved the blast, walking across the cabin. Reaching out, she cupped Aranya’s ruined cheeks in the palms of her hands. Her touch was not acid, but the warmth of Human affection.
Oyda wept as she added, “Your mother would say this, Aranya. ‘You are the suns sparkling on my terrace lake, and the snows gracing the peaks of Immadia. I will always love you, no matter what.’”
Had Nak spoken those words, she would have punched him.
However, Oyda had poured sweetness into unspeakable wounds. Aranya broke down, and wept on her old friend’s shoulder until she had no tears left to shed.
* * * *
Wiping her puffy eyes, Aranya asked, “How did you keep my father out of here when I screamed?”
“I ordered him,” said Oyda. “One hundred and seventy-seven summers gives one certain privileges over youngsters like Beran. And, on that note, I take issue with something I heard you say earlier.”
If her father was a ‘youngster’, what did that make her? A hatchling? Still stuck inside the shell, as a Dragon might say? She wished she knew more about what Dragon society and culture might have been like. All they had was the old fireside tales and the inexhaustible fonts of Nak and Oyda’s memories–apart from what the Pygmy Dragon had stolen from them. If her visions had been true, Dragons used to live in thriving communities … and Thoralian would toss it all into a Cloudlands volcano.
A brutal return to reality.
Smiling faintly, Aranya said, “Watch out, here comes the inevitable lecture.”
“Nak’s the one who lectures,” said Oyda, a touch astringently. “I warn you, I will do the fearsome mother-Dragon impression again if you take that tone with me, petal.”
“I saw her–Izariela. I saw her in the storm, as I told you, and I saw her here today.”
“You must have the Star Dragon power of visions,” said Oyda, with a secretive and pleased air about her. Aranya wondered if she had won a bet with Nak. “Are you quite certain you’re an Amethyst Dragon, Aranya?”
“It’s my natural form, isn’t it?”
And if Oyda would not rock her Island any further! Aranya spurned the implications, but knew the idea would bother her later. “Oyda, thank you,” she said. “You scared me ralti-stupid, but I survived the experience. You’re the sweetest, kindest … and I’m sorry I made you cry.”
Oyda nodded, her thousand-wrinkle smile almost closing her eyes. “I’m just a surrogate mother for you, petal, until you rescue your real one. You’re catching flies again. Shut the rabbit-hole and open the earholes instead.” Aranya clicked her teeth together with a Dragonish snap. “Here is the product of a hundred and however many years of experience. Ready?”
This is not your fault.
The abrupt switch to Dragonish made Aranya gasp. When Oyda said no more, seeming content just to watch her reaction, she said, “What isn’t my fault? I don’t understand.”
“Oh, let’s see. Sylakia annihilating all memory of their enemies. Magic-fuelled trysts with Shadow Dragons. War upon the Island-World. The impossible demands of Ancient Dragons, the torture of boyfriends by foul cannibal Dragon-Emperors, magic, uncontrollable storms, your tears manufacturing Shapeshifters, fate, the Shifter pox …”
“Oyda,” she said, with an appalled chuckle. “Stop, stop. Point made.”
“Ah, but I know how stubborn you can be. Has it penetrated that incredibly dense lump of material atop your shoulders, I ask?” Oyda wagged her finger beneath Aranya’s nose. “Thoralian started his mischief a hundred and fifty years before you were born. Sylakia invaded nations while your father was gallivanting around the Island-World with a Star Dragon in chains. Beran campaigned for years while you played with your dolls.”
She reddened. “I never played with …”
“Oh, it was Dragons and Princes with you, was it?” Oyda hastily removed her finger as Aranya pretended to bite it. “It’s not your fault! It cannot be.”
Aranya nodded mutely. Perhaps there was a truth within her words that she could learn to believe in.
Oyda’s expression became pensive, as if she were drawn to a long-ago, faraway place. At length, she appeared to come to a decision. “Aranya, I say this because I hope it might somehow help you. Many years ago, before I met Nak and became a Dragon Rider, a trusted family friend forced himself upon me. I’m not a big, strong woman, Aranya. I could not fight him off, besides that he had a dagger to my throat.”
“No, Oyda. That’s terrible.”
“I felt soiled afterward. So used. So helpless and filled with hate, both for him and within myself. When I trained to become a Dragon Rider, it was because I wanted a Dragon to call upon when I went to take my revenge. But there was a woman at the school in Jeradia who helped me–Mistress Mya’adara. I remember what she said to me, words which I have passed on to you. I see you walking the paths of that same dark Island, and I weep for you, petal, I truly do. Words can never erase it. But maybe, for you, this will be a beginning.”
“Oh, Oyda …”
Now she understood in some small measure why Oyda felt compelled to nurture those in her care, Aranya thought, hugging her friend warmly. She took in stray Shapeshifter Dragons and helped them piece their lives back together.
A new insight struck Aranya. Fate did not so much consist of single, self-contained threads, as the weaving of a tapestry. Her amethyst thread looped, knotted and intertwined with many others–the white of Izariela, Zip’s sky-blue, the dark patterns of a Shadow Dragon. Each thread was precious and unique. Some were thicker than others or more predominant, others thinner and weaker, yet they still formed part of an intricate whole.