Ja’arrion pulled up so rapidly, he blocked two other Dragons and tangled up with them.
Va’assia, my third heart, where’ve I been? Dragon-kin–there’s a battle! To me!
Suddenly, most of the Dragonwing were shaking themselves, gazing about in surprise, apologising or bugling the alarm or scrapping amongst themselves for wing-space. Aranya laughed at the sight, a healthy dose of relief mingled with admiration. Lyriela had tapped the power of a mother’s instinct to break Thoralian’s mental shackles. Bold, and brilliant!
Kill the Amethyst Dragon!
Thoralian’s forceful voice intruded.
Only one Dragon started toward Aranya. Ja’arrion slapped him across the muzzle, open-clawed, and then spat a glob of acid accurately into the Red’s right eye. He fled, yowling.
Ja’arrion rounded on Aranya.
What were you doing with my daughter?
Aranya faced down his thunder with a smile.
Islands’ greetings … uncle.
What?
Surprise made him expectorate a fireball.
Ducking the blaze, Aranya said,
I am Aranya, daughter of King Beran and Izariela of Ha’athior.
She may as well have slapped the Green Dragon across the muzzle with a gigantic trout. He shook his head like a hound drying its coat, his eyes filled with suspicion and wonder.
You’re … who? My niece? You do have the look of Izariela about you …
unexpectedly, he thrust his muzzle into her face, and breathed deeply. A deep sigh quivered his mighty frame.
Aye. That’s my twin. How can this be?
You’ve been asleep for years, uncle, captured and held by Thoralian.
Fire surged into his eyes.
Thoralian!
However, Ja’arrion could not resist looking over at his mate. Aranya’s gaze followed his.
Lyriela had never appeared happier, coddled against a Red Dragon’s bosom, Va’assia crooning softly to her. Aranya wanted to be her so badly, it knotted up her Dragon hearts. Why not Izariela bending her muzzle over her daughter? Why did she have to be the one to settle for visions of a hopeless, longed-for future, when the reality slumbered icy-cold in an Immadian tomb–if slumber it was?
Her cousin had an understanding nod for Aranya.
Dad, Mom, we’re in the middle of a battle here. Will you help us?
Va’assia’s belly-fires announced her ire.
You speak? You can’t be our girl.
She’s a Shapeshifter, too,
said Aranya.
The Red mother-Dragon’s eyes whirled with curiosity as she examined her captive.
My darling, my petal, where have the years fled? You’re all grown up. That Thoralian! I’m going to kill him!
I can’t wing into battle without a Rider,
Ja’arrion worried.
I go feral.
Aranya began to shake her head in frustration, but a perfect solution made all three of her hearts skip and dance.
Hurry to Beran’s flagship, my kin. There you’ll find two old Dragon Riders, Nak and Oyda. Won’t you take them into battle? They’ll fill you in on all the details. Thoralian is below–
That traitor!
snarled Va’assia.
Then you know the enemy,
said Aranya, launching into a highly compressed summary of events. It struck her that just as a mother’s instinct had broken Thoralian’s hold, so a mother’s fury would scorch him.
Half a battlefield away, part of her mind watched Sha’aldior as he and Ri’arion began their assault on Thoralian’s position. Perfect timing. Her gratitude rippled across the link between them.
Strength to you, mighty Shadow Dragon. We’re coming.
Sha’aldior bellowed,
CANNIBAL! YOU ARE MINE!
But, just a second later, her half-blind gaze whipped about.
Roaring rajals, what was that?
A
s the armies
on the ground and the airships in the sky convulsed in the paroxysms of war, the Shadow Dragon’s head rose in wonder. “They turned the Dragons to our side. Look. That one’s cuddling Lyriela.” To his surprise, the monstrous Shadow Dragon felt his hearts squeezing in his chest. “Beautiful,” he sniffled.
Ri’arion nodded. “Lyriela’s one smart girl, faking her fall. This changes the balance. What’s Beran signalling?”
“It’s about the Dragons,” said Ardan. “We’ve work to do, monk.”
“Aye.”
Mentally, the monk and the Shadow Dragon drew together. Thoralian. He was the target, the lynchpin of the Sylakian effort. He had to be stopped. Ri’arion fashioned a shield as Ardan took off, firing a couple of parting fireballs to blow holes in the Sylakian formations facing Kylara’s forces.
“Great Islands, is that Prince Ta’armion down there?” said Ri’arion, sending Ardan a mental picture of a blood-splattered, grinning Prince fighting at the forefront of a knot of female Western Isles warriors.
“He’s using a scimitar?” said Ardan.
“Half a scimitar, and his effectiveness doesn’t seem to be lacking.”
The Shadow Dragon puzzled over this. “Evidently, having a Dragoness for a wife does wonders for some men.”
As the Dragon powered upward, they quickly became ensnarled in the thick of the battle. Darron’s smaller fleet had run into stiff resistance from eight of the Dragon-carrying dirigibles. Thoralian glided into the heart of his forces, using them for shelter as he concentrated on controlling and positioning his minions. Rapid-fire, they exchanged thoughts, while they observed a Dragonwing assembling around Aranya. The monstrous Green took Nak on board, the Dragon Rider gesticulating and spouting a hundred words when one would do. Both Human and Dragon chuckled at this. They spied the tiny dot of Sapphire buzzing around Aranya’s head. King Beran’s dirigibles steadily drove a wedge into the Sylakian Dragonships, fighting with taut discipline as four Dragons from the now-friendly group winged over to assist them.
“Her Star Dragon power is remarkable,” said Ri’arion, enviously.
“I saw. So, we’re agreed?”
“Aye.”
Tilting on his wingtip, Ardan quickened his wingbeat. Summoning the fires. Shaping them. His neck stretched out, perfectly straight. The Nameless Man supplied him with a surprise infusion of power, his incredible brain calculating the precise confluence of Dragonships moving at different angles and velocities, feeding this data to the Shadow Dragon, who responded in perfect concord, trimming his wings ever so slightly, and a dip of two feet … he became a volcano, a glossy darkness merging into his Dragon fire as it erupted from his maw.
“GRRAAARGGH!” The discharge jolted Ardan.
A dark bolt of fire passed perfectly through a line of converging Dragonships, four explosions in succession enveloping three of Thoralian’s kin in the heat of hydrogen fires, and still there was enough to splash against the Yellow-White Dragon’s flank. Thoralian flinched.
Ardan accelerated along the path he had forged, raging a wordless challenge. Aranya! Remember her pain! Two more bolts departed his maw, almost bringing him to a standstill. Fire blasted against their shield. Ri’arion held firm, but as the smoke cleared, Ardan found himself surrounded by at least ten Dragons, all pounding him with shot after shot. They knew exactly what to do against a shield.
Ri’arion yelled, “Move!”
The Shadow Dragon imitated a flying boulder. Ha. The Princess of Remoy’s taunt had now turned into a useful reality. “Surprise!” he growled, sinking ten talons into the spine of a Red below him. The female screeched like a windroc.
Leaping away from his paralysed victim, Ardan surged through a cloud of smoke Ri’arion had somehow produced from his storehouse of tricks, and ambushed a Green. A mouthful of wing later, the crippled Green Dragon spiralled toward the ground.
“Watch the ice!”
A deluge of freezing rain collected against the shield, accompanied by a barrage of hailstones up to six inches in diameter. The Nameless Man groaned, forced under immense strain to extinguish their shield. The monk’s hands waved, bending the air about them, sending the flow of Thoralian’s hailstone attack into a flanking Dragonship, redirecting an incoming fireball into the maw of a Dragon opposite. Ardan smashed straight into the ensuing explosion, savaged his opponent, and broke away.
Then, a brilliant new power infused his being, cutting through the Yellow-White Dragon’s ice attack as though his hail and ice shards were pollen blown on a breeze. How had Ri’arion–no, not the monk. Aranya, the unique character of her clear, refining fire seething within him … had he drawn on her power, somehow, through their link? He must not drain Aranya; yet he sensed it was not so. The brighter the light, the stronger the shadow it cast.
Thoralian’s jaw dropped as the Shadow Dragon emerged from the chaos and smoke, a vengeful distillation of all that was dark and beautiful about the night.
Ardan roared,
CANNIBAL! YOU ARE MINE!
The Sylakian froze, the panicked flutter of his flanks and wings clear to Ardan’s Dragon-sight.
Then, with a cruel smile, he lowered a talon to point at the sinkhole, directly beneath him.
Release the drakes,
he commanded.
* * * *
Nak waved his cane as though he intended to poke Thoralian in the eye and kill him. “We’ll clear you a path, Aranya. Stay tight, Dragons.”
Seated atop Ja’arrion, Oyda grinned with a ferocity that was all Dragon. She reached down to smack her mount on the shoulder.
Thou, the fires of Fra’anior!
“Fly strong and true, my beauty.”
Thundering his challenge, Ja’arrion launched his Dragonwing, fifteen strong, into battle.
Not to be outdone, Nak cracked his cane against Va’assia’s neck, crying,
Let thy volcanic heart burn, o draconic song of the Islands!
He stared stupidly at the splintered half left in his hand. Then, he yelled, “This sliver of wood has Thoralian’s name on it!”
Flying in the centre of the formation, Aranya shook her head. That was so Nak. She had never seen Oyda look so alive. Islands’ sakes, the old woman was waving a Fra’aniorian bow! But as they traversed the sky, Aranya suddenly imagined them as the King and Queen of all Dragon Riders. She blinked. Dragon tears? Now?
Her vision shimmered. With the sweep of her eyelids, an acidic tingling entered the orbs. Aranya blinked again, and the world swam into focus–imperfectly, but better than before. Mighty Dragon-challenges around her alerted Aranya to the world as it was, the lethal beauty of a Dragonwing slicing through Thoralian’s forces, laying them to waste, setting a course for the self-styled Emperor of the Island-World.
Thoralian rested on the wing, undaunted.
For a long moment, her universe consisted of her and Thoralian, seen through a narrowing tunnel of drakes. Aranya husbanded what little power she had left, praying it would be enough to sustain her.
Fra’anior, if ever I needed your aid, now is the hour.
The Black Dragon was silent, but he watched. Why?
A cloud of red butterflies rose from the sinkhole. Hundreds. Thousands.
Zuziana, flying to her port side, gasped,
Drakes! Danger, my friends!
Aranya gasped as her waking vision cleared, revealing the truth. Wicked, cruel animals spat out of the sinkhole as though a living eruption were in process, occluding the suns in their multitudes, and still they came. Their harsh, chittering chorus was a travesty of birdsong. Chilling. Alien. Greedy for the taste of Dragon blood.
Thoralian’s smile seemed especially meant for her.
Arise, my darlings. Kill everything.
Clouds of drakes mobbed anything that moved–man or machine, Dragon or dirigible, they did not care. But their hatred burned most strongly against the Dragon-kind. Suddenly, Thoralian’s forces over the sinkhole had to fight for their lives. Snarls of Dragons and drakes developed as if by magic. They tore engineers off catapults and exploded themselves together with the Dragonships they attacked with their fire. A hundred drakes piled on a Sylakian Red Dragon, shredding his wings in seconds. Onward and upward they teemed, overwhelming the fleets and the ground troops as though the Cloudlands themselves, turned crimson, poured over everything in a tide of destruction and death.
He’s mad!
Aranya exclaimed, overcome by the spectacle.
Follow me!
Ja’arrion roared.
Lyriela, be strong. Va’assia, my fire-breathing kin, clear our path. The Star Dragon must face Thoralian and destroy him.
Champing jaws. Tearing claws. Spiked tails lashing into soldiers. Drakes dropped in their hundreds as the Dragonships responded, firing blindly into the mass. Still they streamed up from the caverns beneath Yorbik Island. The day turned dim. Dragons bellowing, thrashing and writhing on the ground as they tried to scrape off their attackers, Hammers cowering beneath their shields, Dragonships firing every weapon they could command, Sylakians and Immadians fighting side by side, all thoughts of their previous battle, ashes upon the Cloudlands.
The Shadow Dragon glided through it all, untouchable.
Upon Ja’arrion’s command, the Dragons opened their throats. Fire, acid and lightning streaked the sky, carving a tunnel through the swarming drakes which ended in the monstrous form of Thoralian. Aranya was surprised to see fire spurting from Lyriela’s mouth. How did she do that so easily? It had cost her many days and a burned throat before she produced so much as a puff of Dragon fire. Was everyone else a better Dragon than she was?
Sha’aldior! From below, the Shadow Dragon’s fire roared upward, passing not ten feet in front of their muzzles. He had come to their aid. The drakes closed in with a vengeance, turning their flight into an ugly brawl. Dragons fell, snarled up, fighting tooth and claw. Ja’arrion and Va’assia fired at a measured tempo, with the calm of long experience. Aranya readied her fireballs. Thoralian was not a good flyer, fattened by his preferred diet of Dragon meat.
She intended to roast him like a ralti sheep.
Zuziana!
The Azure Dragoness vanished in a swarm of drakes. Lightning flashed between them, charring the attackers. She saw Va’assia flying headlong into the thickest pack of drakes yet. Another two Reds peeled off to help her.
Nak shouted, “Attack indirectly! Guard your mind!”
And then he too was gone as Ja’arrion had to swerve to avoid a Dragonship. Acid burned across her flight path. Aranya was alone. Her wings trimmed for the utmost speed. Wind whispering across her sleek scales. Power and grief coalescing in her belly, thunderheads swelling against her breastbone and up into her throat.
Thoralian opened his mouth and breathed out a stream of freezing air. Aranya jinked so hard she felt something tear in her right wing. The cold passed her by, numbing but not disabling. The Yellow-White Dragon gasped as a fireball engulfed him from below–Ardan! Now the Shadow Dragon stalked Thoralian, firing dark-flame fireballs at him, making his shield vibrate and glow white-hot as he and the Nameless Man flung all of their wiles into the fray.
Thoralian endured.
Pfft!
Pfft!
Pfft!
Aranya joined the fray, striking his shield with such power that although it did not fail, she knocked Thoralian toward the ground. The direct attack would be her feint. Aranya knew she had to be wilier than ever. Could she close with him? Use the star-fire?
Her form shimmered at the thought.
Abruptly, Thoralian assaulted her mind. Image after image bombarded her. Pictures of herself, suffering, dying, being eaten by worms from the inside. Yolathion twisted up in the machine, so hoarse from screaming that he could hardly produce a whisper. Immadia being fired by a Dragonwing who slowly moved over the city, methodically setting each building alight. Pox. Wounds. Ulcers. Scars. Ugliness.
As her loathing blazed, so her Dragon changed colour, deepening into the Red range.
Yes,
said Thoralian.
Join me, Aranya. Swear loyalty to me and save your precious mother.
A touch of his mind set all the drakes in the immediate area at the Shadow Dragon’s throat. Ardan’s dark fire burned, but the sheer weight of their numbers drove him back, away from Aranya. Ri’arion and Ardan’s magic flared over and over again, cutting the drakes to pieces and burning them by the hundred, but still the creatures swarmed the Shadow Dragon, innumerable, forcing Ardan to break away to save his own hide.
Kill me if you dare,
the Yellow-White Dragon mocked.
They circled each other, momentarily, as if the clear air were an arena set aside for their battle. The other sounds faded away. In her world, only Thoralian existed, and the horror he represented. His sallow eyes glistened with magic, drawing her in. Mocking. Hypnotising. Offering the price of her mother’s cure.
The Amethyst Dragon attacked with a throbbing howl, shame and rage mingled into a toxic brew. They grappled–no shields for Thoralian, now. He was bigger by far, and the cuff of his paw sent her spinning. Aranya darted toward his left wingtip. He countered with his ice-breath. Storm winds shielded her from that deadly blast. A blue fireball formed her riposte, but it was too powerful, torching a neat hole in his upraised wing membrane as it whizzed through and away.