The Master cried out in pain, but he still knocked her over with the force of his charge. Then, suddenly, the arena was still.
The Pygmy Weapons Master had turned as white as a man of his natural colour could be. Pip gasped, “Master …”
Adak grimaced. Drawing a short dagger from his belt, he severed the wrist and forearm straps of the shattered shield and let it fall to the ground. He raised his left arm, slowly, as though to salute the morning sky. His hand and wrist hung at a ghastly angle, broken as cleanly as could be.
“Let this be a lesson to you all,” he grated. “This student speaks wisdom. Never,
never
underestimate your opponent.”
* * * *
Oyda punched Pip on the arm. “That’s for giving me extra work.”
“Um, is the Master–”
“He asked to see you. Demanded, actually. He was madder than a rajal stung by a hornet because we had to put him out to set the arm straight.”
“Our sweet Pipsqueak is having an eventful first week,” said Nak, popping up to dangle his arm over Pip’s shoulders. “Burgled the Academy, tried to burgle it a second time, riled up the Dragons, broke a Master’s arm, and did you hear what she did to Prince Ulldari? Bruised his chances of continuing the royal succession, she did.”
Oyda smiled archly at Nak. “Reminds me of a troublemaker I know.”
“Ay,” said Nak, preening like a male parakeet displaying its shimmering feathers. “Learned from the best. Why, just yesterday, I was telling this feisty little warrior–”
“Shimmerith needs you,” Oyda interrupted.
“Oh, my Dragon-darling, my sweet little heap of scales …” Nak rushed off.
Oyda rolled her eyes at his back. “Insufferable man. What my Emblazon sees in him, I’ve yet to fathom.”
“Why haven’t I met Emblazon, yet?”
“We, uh … had a fight.” The Dragon Rider tossed her ringlets, her pretty features drawn as if in pain. “The Dragon Elders decreed a month’s separation while Emblazon and I are supposed to reflect on the appropriate relationship between a Dragon and his Rider. I miss him, Pip.”
“You love him?”
“It’s not romantic love, Pip, if that’s what you’re asking. No? Nice blush, anyway.” Oyda gazed over at Shimmerith, who was talking animatedly to Nak. “With Shapeshifters, that’s possible. But I’m a Human and Emblazon’s a large male Dragon. I suspect he’s off courting a few females while I’m not watching. He’s been oddly broody, lately, more like a mother hen than the mighty male Dragon he likes to think he is.”
“The girls say Emblazon’s a monster.”
Oyda laughed happily. “The kind of monster with three good hearts, if you can see past the fangs, claws and Dragon fire. He’s good, Pip. Touchy, but good.”
“You do love him.”
“You precious parakeet, of course I do.” Oyda wagged her finger at Pip. “But Pip, a little fledgling tells me you won past Jalador by charming him. Jalador received the whole wrath of the Dragon Elders for that incident, yesterday. I’d keep clear of the Dragons for a few days until things simmer down–not to say they aren’t always bubbling on about something. Short tempers, those Dragons.”
Oyda was right. How much more trouble could she cause in a week? There was one more day left, the day of rest for students. Pip dared not think about the ninth day.
Instead, she moved on to Master Adak’s bedside.
“Pip?” he mumbled, unable to focus on her face.
“Master Adak? You summoned me?”
“Pip.” He groaned softly. “They gave me too much fever-brew. I feel sick … Pip, tell me, how does a girl punch a hole in a metal shield?”
“I … don’t know, Master.” Pip spied Mistress Mya’adara angling across the cave toward her, waving her hands. Here came trouble.
He clutched her arm feverishly. “Do you have any idea–any idea, girl, how much force it takes to even dent a training shield boss?” The Weapons Master groaned again. “You. You pierced solid metal with your bare hand. Who
are
you?”
“Pip.
Pip!
” The Western Isles warrior took hold of the scruff of Pip’s tunic. “No disturbing the patients. Off with yah.”
Hanging her head, Pip shuffled off.
“That was unfair, Mya’adara,” she heard Oyda say behind her.
“Unfair? How does a first year break a Weapons Master’s arm, Oyda? There’s more to that girl than meets the eye. Ah’m right. Yah’ll see.”
Pip stopped up her sobs with her fist. No tears, warrior girl!
But when she arrived at her bed in the dormitory, someone had left their calling card.
Go home, monkey,
was scrawled in large letters on the wall above her bunk. There were fresh monkey droppings smeared all over her clothes, her blankets and even stuffed inside the bag Mistress Mya’adara had given her. They had smashed her bamboo flute for good measure.
She screamed at the four walls of the empty dormitory.
H
ow she wished
she could disappear. In the jungle, a Pygmy warrior could vanish utterly. But in a school, it was not so easy, especially for someone who fit in so well she might as well have been wearing a sign on her back saying, ‘Kick the little person’. Pip tried to visit Hunagu again, but a blast of Dragon fire bathed the tunnel ahead of her.
“I am Emblazon,” snarled the Dragon. All she could see of him in the darkness was a flash of fangs. “Nobody sneaks past me. Go back before I report you.”
Pip fled.
But the exams arrived all too quickly. Kaiatha, Yaethi and Maylin, her new friends, had helped her clean up after the monkey dung incident. They helped her study. But they could not stop all of the bullying.
The day before the exams, Telisia appeared at Pip’s dinner table to drop a dead rat on her plate. “Special treat,” she said. “I heard you used to eat these in the zoo.”
For a moment, Pip froze on her seat. Mocking laughter from the first and second year students surrounded her. Then, she picked up the rodent, bit off its head, and spat the severed head onto Telisia’s robes. She had aimed for her face, but missed.
Telisia screamed.
Journeyman Gelka, who took the first years for geography, hauled them both outside the dining hall and gave them an ear-singeing lecture at the height of his considerable volume.
The following day, the school went deathly quiet as the first year students sat for examinations eight hours a day, over a thousand students lined up at desks in the great meeting hall, which dwarfed even their number.
Pip’s second examination, after lunch that first day, was Dragon lore. She pored over the questions, finding them rather easier than she would have expected. Her quill pen scratched rapidly over the leaf as she concentrated fiercely, knowing she had to give a good account of herself in order to repay Master Kassik’s faith in her. The quill-tip received a good chewing along the way.
Oh. She should write to Master Balthion to let her know she was alive. What an idiot she had been!
Scowling at her paper as though she wished she could burn the questions away by the force of her anger, she was utterly unprepared for a scroll smacking down on her small table and being lifted out of her chair by a handful of her curls. “You cheat!”
In a room of a thousand students in which the only sound was the scratching of quills on scroll-leaf, that was the equivalent of dropping a bomb.
Journeyman Gelka was purple with rage. “Turn out your pockets, girl. What are you hiding? Where is it? Where?”
Pip was so shocked that she stood stock-still as he pawed at her clothes. Then she shoved him away. “Hands off me, you disgusting–”
“You’re cheating. I know you are.”
“I’m not a cheat.”
The Journeyman picked up the scroll he had dropped on her desk and tried to whack her with it. Pip blocked the blow with her elbow. “This,” he snarled. “Your paper from this morning. It’s perfect. Every single word.”
Master Shambithion arrived, breathless, from where he had been walking between the desks. “What’s the meaning of this, Journeyman? Accusing a student? Isn’t there a better place for this?”
“She’s copying the texts, exactly. Look here. And here.”
“I don’t cheat.” Pip began to shake as Shambithion rapidly scanned her answers from earlier that day.
“Word for word,” Journeyman Gelka insisted. “Every question. Look. She’s quoted perfectly from Rallix on the legend of Gemmiss the Azure Dragon.”
“I d-don’t understand,” said Pip, aghast. “It’s the right answer.”
“Of course it is, if you copy it. Turn out your pockets, you wretched–”
“It’s a serious accusation, student Pip,” said the Master, pursing his lips. “These answers do look as if they’ve been copied.”
Heat rose in her body. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Pip was gasping, fishing for words, when a chair crashed nearby. Gentle Kaiatha leaped to her feet, crying, “Pip doesn’t cheat. I can prove–”
“Sit down!” roared Gelka.
“No, wait,” said Master Shambithion, scratching his extraordinary beak of a nose. “Kaiatha, I’ve seen you two studying together in the library. What are you saying? You can prove something?” And then, evidently aware of a thousand pairs of eyes watching the altercation, some with malicious interest, he rapped, “Stop the timers! Since you insist on a public airing, Journeyman, we shall proceed. Kaiatha? Your word, please.”
Kaiatha shook like a reed in a torrent. Nevertheless, she turned to her friend and said, “Pip. Quote the Rallix piece. Start on the fourth stanza.”
“I … right.”
Deeply conscious of every stare, hot and ashamed, Pip had a panicked moment when her mind went blank. But then the familiar words began to parade in front of her. She recited:
Gemmiss the Azure did strike her noble claw,
Upon the blazing peak of Fra’anior.
‘Fie,’ saith she, ‘I shall but send this volcano,
To the bottom of a Cloudlands sea.’
“Carry on.”
Pip reeled off the epic poem from memory, until Master Shambithion nodded and breathed, “Aha.” He stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Now I understand. Student Pip. Please name for me the legend on page 147 of the First Year Lorebook.”
“Page 147 is a title page, Master–
Miscellaneous Legends
. But 148 starts with the
Tale of the Two-Headed Dragon
. It is followed by
Jex of Jeradia
, middle of the page.”
Journeyman Gelka’s jaw sagged.
Master Shambithion beamed at Pip as if he had opened a dusty old chest and unexpectedly found it full of treasure. “Quote the entire page to me, Pip.” After a moment, she began to recount the page, her voice echoing in the vast, still hall. The Master’s eyes fluttered shut in a strange kind of ecstasy. He chuckled gently when she noted a punctuation error in the text. Poor Gelka’s jaw just leaned open like a broken door.
“That’s the end of the page, Master,” said Pip.
Shambithion said, “You see, Journeyman Gelka, the oral cultures of the Island-World have extraordinary powers of memorisation. Pip. Geography textbook. Let’s see. Tell me about … Ramgee Island.”
“Certainly, Master.” Pip pictured the page in her mind’s eye. “Ramgee Island, previously called Rambala Island. Location: South-easterly quarter 15.16 degrees equatorial 87.56 easterly. Land mass 12.23 square leagues. Height varies 0.36 to 0.57 leagues above the Cloudlands. Tallest mountain is called the Hammer. Predominant weather Northern, frosty winters, permanent ice-cap. Three peripheral Islets noted, two inhabited, one an active volcano. One major city, seven villages and ninety-four hamlets. Population total 5,739, taken in the eleventh century census by Master Fellik of Hermithia Island–which lies 32.2 leagues north-east of Jeradia and constitutes the nearest major Cluster. Primary economic activities are … shall I continue, Master?”
Shambithion returned Pip’s scroll of answers from the morning to the Journeyman. “If you ask for rote memory, Gelka, that’s what you’ll get. Satisfied?”
The Journeyman’s throat worked. “Yes, Master. But that’s–”
“Extraordinary. Fabulous, I know,” crowed Master Shambithion, spitting slightly in his excitement. “What a mind! Uncanny, isn’t it? Now, Gelka, you will apologise to our student.”
“Pip, I am deeply sorry. I was wrong. You did not cheat.”
She bowed stiffly. When she sat down again, Pip picked up her quill pen and stared at the page for a very long time. The letters swam before her, mocking, circling with the predatory intent of carrion birds sizing up a carcass.
Her world was bleak. She belonged nowhere. Even the Masters and Journeymen distrusted her.
Cheat! Cheat! The words rang in her ears, a chorus drowning out all else.
Finally, when she could stand it no more, Pip scrawled several words below the question she had reached, midway through the paper. She put up her hand, and waited for Master Shambithion to collect her scroll.
“Finished, Pip?” She nodded. “You may leave quietly.”
Pip did not run until she was outside.
Her final written words on the examination scroll were, ‘
I HATE this school!
’
* * * *
She ran away. But how did one break out of a school guarded by fire-breathing Dragons, who to a beast thought the Pygmy girl enjoyed causing trouble for their kind?
Shucking her tunic top, Pip scaled the main volcano wall above the school that afternoon. By evening, she was climbing down a vertical cliff toward the forested gorge below. Three times, she hid from Dragons with all the craft of her jungle upbringing, either spotting them aloft or sensing a hint of magic stirring the hairs on the nape of her neck. She spared the spectacular, horizon-spanning crags of central Jeradia barely a glance. Her full attention was directed toward staying alive.
Thankfully, the volcanic rock was rough enough to provide plenty of handholds and footholds. Pip could climb with the ease of any monkey. Ha. Like a monkey. She revelled in the challenge. Pip glanced down once more. Half a mile below, Jalador was sleeping again. She stiffened, hugging the rock face and keeping utterly still as the gleaming bulk of an Amber Dragon appeared, drifting around the base of the volcano. From Oyda’s description, that had to be Emblazon. All she had seen of him previously was fangs and Dragon fire. He was colossal! He flew low and fast, spearing toward Jalador, probably trying to surprise him. Ah, crafty on both counts. The Green Dragon had not been sleeping after all.
They swapped places, Emblazon relieving the much smaller Jalador. After some discussion, Jalador departed and the Amber Dragon shrank into the shadows near the cave. Pip almost whistled aloud. Great Islands, was that magic? He had disappeared.
She clambered down the remainder of the cliff in utter silence, careful not even to breathe loudly, let alone dislodge a rock. Pip had no desire to attract Emblazon’s wrath. Oyda called him the ‘proudest young Dragon’–apparently, this included extraordinary strength and a temper worthy of a starving rajal.
It was fully dark by the time she ghosted into the forest, making for a point back along a faint animal trail where she and Hunagu had agreed to meet. Suddenly, there he was, a boulder rising from the forest, a great arm reaching out to engulf her in a hug. Pip buried her head in his fur and made a sound somewhere between a scream and a groan of anguish.
Hunagu just held her for a very long time. “Pip sad?”
“School hard. Hunagu alright?”
He sighed, a gust of air that flipped her hair about her face. “Good-good.”
Liar. But Pip did not say it. “Forest good?”
“Forest fine. Many Dragons. Bad shadow-thing here.”
With that, Pip’s humiliation in the examination room faded into nothingness. “Hunagu …” Her heart lurched into a gallop. “What shadow–”
“Shadow thing, from before. Sylakia beast.”
With a great deal of questioning, given the limitations of the Oraial language to express complex ideas, Pip managed to establish that Hunagu meant the same shadow-creature which had flown over their cage in Sylakia–the creature which had inhabited her dreams ever since. It had left again, but the way he described it left no doubt–it was the strange oily shadow which seemed to move through things but still had a substance of its own. There was an overwhelming perception of evil’s presence and the impression that it had wings like a Dragon.
Nausea churned in her stomach, as though a Dragon’s claw were slowly winding her intestines tighter and tighter. The hunting beast was surely nothing to do with her … was it? Whatever it was, she had to hurry back to the school and warn Master Kassik.
Hunagu kept asking, “Pip safe? Pip no trouble?”
“Pip safe,” she said. “Pip worry for school friends. Pip warn Dragons.”
“Good-good,” agreed the Oraial, wringing his huge hands. “Pip safe? Pip good-good? Pip careful?”
She punched his arm. “Hunagu careful? Hunagu safe?”
“Hunagu jungle king.” The Ape thumped his chest, but Pip felt it boomed a little hollowly.
Her abortive escape was over. Pip silently lamented the concern that would drive her back up the mountain to warn her friends. She could no more leave them vulnerable than she would choose to dine with a python. But Emblazon’s fury would be immeasurable if he learned she’d sneaked past him. Could she burgle the school a third time?
The Pygmy thief, she should be called.
By the early hours, as the moons drifted behind the volcanic cone, leaving her only the star-frosted sky for company, Pip was high up the mountainside once more. She had successfully evaded Emblazon’s notice. An easier route had allowed her to scramble upward quickly, avoiding some of the overhangs which had challenged her and torn off a fingernail before. She sucked that finger pensively. Blazing Dragon-fires, it hurt.
The night was cool and hushed. Even the wind, which usually sighed and sang over the volcanic peaks above the school, seemed cowed.
Why?
The barren volcanic cliff held cracks and places where a Pygmy could conceal herself. Her heart pumped furiously. She sensed … Pip raced lightly up the steep slope, angling for a patch of boulders silhouetted against the milky background of stars.