“Yah not roosting together, not in mah school.”
“Now, calm down, lady,” began Tazzaral, in his ringing tones.
Mya’adara steamed right up to him. “Ah’ll calm down when Ah’m well and ready to calm down, young Dragon!”
He was tons of Dragon, but her wrath made Tazzaral take a backward step.
“Duri and Kaiatha will not be sharing a roost,” Kassik put in. He curled his paw around Casitha’s shoulders with a mischievous grin. “But Casitha will be moving into my quarters.”
“Well, Ah–” the Mistress’ eyes bulged. “Yah
what?
Casitha, yah …”
“And we’ll need double quarters,” Oyda interrupted. “Nak and I.”
“That Ah saw coming from ten Islands away. But yah!” She pinned the Brown Dragon with a glare that could have melted stone. “Ah’ve heard it all, now. What kind of example yah setting these young ones? Eh? Casitha, what did this old rock-chewer say to yah, eh?”
Casitha nuzzled against Kassik’s paw. “That he loves me.”
Pip wanted to cheer for her.
“Well.” Mya’adara put her hands on her hips. “Ah see how it is. This is mutiny, this is. Sheer mutiny. Yah all gone ralti-stupid. Fra’anior do this to yah? Kaiatha? What’s in the air around yah Island? Bah, don’t answer that.” She dismissed Kaiatha with a wave of her hand. “Yah jumped off the Island long ago. Pipsqueak. Yah found a boyfriend, too?”
“No, Mistress Mya’adara,” Pip replied.
Maylin kept a very straight face. Pip knew she had to be dying to make a wisecrack.
Yaethi said, “No, but our Pip did tangle with a Silver Dragon Shapeshifter–who was about the nastiest piece of windroc vomit imaginable. And she talked to a Land Dragon.”
“Yah only talked with a legendary beast?” Mya’adara rounded on Yaethi. “Yah taken to yanking mah hawser, girl? Ah had yah being the sensible one in this lot.” She glared around the circle of startled faces, Dragon and Human alike. Her ire rose like the crack of a whip. “Yah Dragons. Yah better be on yah best behaviour with mah students, do yah understand? Ah love these girls–and that boy–like mah own little ones. Ah’ll have yah scaly hides if anything happens to them. Clear?”
Like a group of naughty children, the graduate fledglings bobbed their heads and chorused, “Yes, Mistress Mya’adara.”
Pip turned a bubble of laughter in her belly into a suspicious-sounding cough. Only Mya’adara could tell off a group of Dragons like that.
“Don’t know where we’ll put yah all, mind. Take a few days to arrange. Dragons coming out of mah ears.” Mya’adara scratched her head. “Well, yah lot–don’t just stand there. There’s a storm brewing and yah got Dragons to unload. Snip snap, Maylin and Kaiatha. Duri–look alive, boy.”
Kassik called out, “What she means, Dragons, is to welcome you one and all to Dragon Rider Academy.”
Nobody dared to laugh.
Mistress Mya’adara snapped her fingers rudely at him, before snaffling Casitha and tucking her under her arm with a proprietary air. “Yah bachelor quarters are a disgrace. And yah plan on moving this precious petal in there, yah wicked old fire-breather?”
“Don’t you think
you’ve
breathed enough fire?” said Kassik, falling into step with Mya’adara. “I see many new Dragons.”
“Refugees,” she said darkly, looking to the sky.
Pip stared at the two of them, and then at the curtain of iron-grey rain slanting diagonally toward the school. An unseasonably chill breeze made her shudder.
Kassik rumbled, “It’s just the beginning. Let’s get these students indoors.”
K
aiatha brought her
father’s diary to Pip that evening. She tracked Pip down in Master Adak’s indoor training cave just in time to see her storming through a sequence with the Weapons Master. Maylin and Yaethi looked on, chatting.
Pip was dimly aware of her wet friend–she could smell the damp steaming from her clothes–huddling in discussion with the other two, but fighting Master Adak was done with one’s fullest concentration or not at all. Like now. With a cunning twist of his wrist, he disarmed her. Pip danced away, slipping the ribbon daggers out of her hair. She hurdled a low blow, lashing out in riposte. Adak caught the snapping ribbons on his shield.
“Good. Tighter arcs, Pip. Keep the control close to the body.”
His blunted training sword flicked out. Blunted or not, it still hurt like the blazes if he struck her, because the Master was beyond pulling his blows in her training. She trapped his sword with a ribbon, leaning away from the path of the blade as it sliced down into the sandy cavern floor. She stepped on the blade with her boot. Adak, hissing, lashed out with the rim of his metal training shield. Pip yelped and fell, clutching her knee.
He bowed. Speaking Pygmy, he said, “Good-good fight, student. Tired?”
“Exhausted.”
“Bruises keep you alive when it matters,” he jibed.
“Then, I thank you for every bruise, Master.” He laughed dryly, towelling off his scarred upper body. Pip flushed. “I meant it much-much.”
“I know, Pip’úrth’l-iòlall-Yò’oótha.”
She loved hearing her tongue, Pygmy, spoken. The Master had once confessed that he loved hearing it, too; that he longed to return to the jungle. But now, they both startled at Yaethi’s rising exclamation.
“Say that again,” she repeated. “Pip–whatever he just said. The Master, sorry. What was that word?” Yaethi was so excited, she was hopping up and down. Pip had rarely seen her friend so animated. “You’re speaking Pygmy, right? The last word.”
“My name? Say, ‘Pip’úrth’l-iòlall-Yò’oótha,’ Yaethi, I dare you.”
Yaethi’s eyes danced brightly beneath her headscarf. “That’s your name? Look. Look at what’s written here.” She waved the diary beneath Pip’s nose. “Kaiatha thought it was just decoration at first, this rune … here … and here … but this one I can read. I did a little study of Ancient Southern–”
“Yaethi, slow down. You’re making no sense.”
Pip examined the diary. It was full of drawings and diagrams and inexplicable markings worked into the neat but old-fashioned handwritten script. But there, marked alongside the year entries, was an unmistakable Ancient Southern rune, just like the ones tattooed on her leg. “That’s ‘iòl’,” she said, pointing. “This one is ‘trríaoií’.” She made a bird-call. “It means high respect, or honour.”
“The runes spell words, Pip,” said Kaiatha. “I began to suspect my Dad was up to something as I read through his diary. But his mind! Pip, he’s–he was–”
“A genius,” Yaethi interrupted. “Fascinated by mysteries and arcane knowledge. My guess is that he must have been a member of the Order of Onyx. Pip, read these for us. This year. What’s this?”
She frowned over the faded rune. The paper was so delicate. But the contents of the chest they had dug up in the front garden of Kaiatha’s cottage had been properly packaged and sealed against damp. Her father had meant for his diary to be found.
Pip shook her head. “I don’t know that rune. Master Adak?”
“Can’t read at all,” he said, cheerfully.
Kaiatha groaned. “There’s something here, Pip. I can practically smell it. Why hide the diary? Why bury it? Why fill it with hints and misdirection and references to stories he told us as children?”
Maylin soothed, “Now, Kaia, you don’t know that for certain.”
“I do!”
Maylin sucked in her lip. “Sorry, Kaia.”
“What we need is an expert in Ancient Southern,” said Pip, scratching her tumbling ringlets before making a vague attempt at putting her ribbon daggers back in place. She needed to oil her hair again. It was becoming horribly tangled. “We need my old mentor, Master Balthion.”
“Do I hear some little Pipsqueak taking my name in vain?”
With a gasp, Pip whirled towards the cave entrance. There, outlined by the ever-burning magical lamps, was …. “Master Bal–Arosia! Oh, my Islands! What are you doing here?”
She flew across the sand. Pip crashed into Arosia, making her stagger, and then they were hugging and laughing and exclaiming all in a happy babble. Balthion said something about moving his family to the Academy. Arosia accused Pip of actually growing an inch. Kaiatha, Maylin and Yaethi looked on in bemusement.
Seizing Arosia’s hand, Pip dragged her over to meet her friends. “This is Master Adak, a Pygmy like me.” Arosia greeted him in respectable Pygmy, making his white teeth flash into a grin. “This is Arosia, Duri’s little sister.”
“Little? Look who’s talking, squirt.”
Pip was far too happy to snap up Arosia’s bait. “Yaethi, a magician with all things scroll-shaped; Maylin, a terrible tease–oh, and they all have Dragons, you have to meet them, Arosia–and this is Duri’s girlfriend, Kaiatha, who lives on top of an active volcano.”
Arosia seemed miffed. “Girlfriend? That brother of mine. Couldn’t he string two words together to tell me as much? Kaiatha, you and I need to
talk
.”
Maylin butted in, in typical Maylin fashion, “You tell us the rajal’s paws about Duri, Arosia, and we’ll give you the last hair on its tail about our Kaiatha. Deep Islands and all that. Isn’t that so, Kaia?”
Shuffling her feet, Kaiatha mumbled something unintelligible.
“Well, what’s the mystery?” asked Master Balthion. After Yaethi explained quickly, he quipped, “I knew I should’ve borrowed your leg to study. There are some unknown runes. I’d need to get my notes–Yaethi, is it? You strike me as a studious sort of girl, unlike that Pipsqueak.”
Yaethi threw Pip a not entirely friendly look. “She came second in the exams without finishing half of one paper.”
Balthion waggled his ears, making Pip giggle. “Fell into the old trap of setting rote knowledge questions, did they? I need to have words with Master Kassik.”
Maylin took Arosia by the arm. “Mercy, you’re a beauty, too. Stay away from any boys I like, alright? We need to teach you the Pygmy salad song. Did you hear that one?”
“Hey,” Pip protested.
“Come along, Pygmy Dragon.”
Arosia stumbled on the sand. “Her nickname’s ‘Pygmy Dragon’, Maylin?”
“Nooooo.” Maylin seemed keen to draw out the suspense. “She’s a Shapeshifter. As in, she
is
a Dragon. Your friend is the cutest, sweetest little fire-breather I ever did see …”
Clapping both hands over her mouth did not prevent an ugly snarl from emerging. Pip blushed so heatedly, she thought her ears might catch fire. Arosia’s face was a picture.
“Dragon fire,” drawled Maylin, her eyes sparkling with mischief. Human-Pip wanted to shout at her friend to stop. She wavered as the magic surged inside of her. Please, no … “Watch this, everyone. I’m thinking about hulking, muscular, sexy Dragon backsides, Pip.”
“Maylin!” snapped Adak and Balthion, simultaneously.
“What about searing fireballs and flying battles and Dragons thundering over the Cloudlands …”
A Dragon’s bellow shook the cave. Pip lunged at her friend. But Master Adak, who had already sprung into motion, knocked Maylin aside before the Dragon tore into her.
Master Adak shouted, in Pygmy, “Pip, remember who you are!”
She shuddered, fighting to still the singing in her blood, the bloodlust that raged through her body. All she wanted was to kill. Her claws worked, scoring and scraping the rock underlying the sand. Her muscles trembled; her breath rasped as a heated wind in her throat. For a long time, Pip just stared at her friend.
She said, “Satisfied, Maylin? Happy I nearly killed you?”
Swallowing her furious sobs, she fled the cave.
* * * *
Throughout the following day, Pip stalked her friends from the shadows.
She could not help it. The rage lingered. How could Maylin be so selfish? Now Arosia hated her. Or feared her. Probably both. She watched her friends gather in Balthion and Shullia’s apartment, located in a recently re-opened section of the Academy with a view of the beautiful white plume of a waterfall which fell from the volcano’s rim almost to the caldera floor. They were discussing the diary. They had guessed a secret Word of Command was scribed in those runes, and were determined to find it. She knew three. Surely, three was enough. The strike, the stop, and–she shuddered–the forbidding, which had wrenched Hunagu back from the spirit world.
Instinctively, Pip flew into the waterfall. Hanging onto the slippery rocks with her claws, she allowed the torrent to pound against her head. Maybe the roar would help her forget. Maybe she could just wash it away.
Where did such knowledge come from? Three words she had known, without being taught. They simply existed inside of her. Pre-existent, even. Fully formed. Potent. Was that what Kaiatha’s aunt had meant by suggesting that the Onyx Dragon Fra’anior lived on in her–worse, that he would inhabit her spirit, like some inner demon breathed into life? How else could one explain those words? ‘Poor girl,’ she had said. Words to paralyse a soul. Why not fortunate girl?
She wished the waterfall would pound that memory right out of her.
Later, Pip searched for Hunagu. He was nowhere to be found. Even the messenger monkeys had not seen him. She asked them to track him down.
Pip flew to see Shimmerith. A ferocious growl from within the roost kept her outside, however. She stole a whole leg of ralti sheep from the butchers’ shed behind the kitchens and lugged it over to her friend, only to collect a fireball in the teeth for her trouble.
Thank the heavens above for Dragon fangs and hide.
She soared back to the first year dorms through the storm winds, lashing in once more. It was late in the evening, past the students’ bedtime, and very gloomy out. Steely rain battered the volcano, hissing and spitting on the open magma pits, battering the ground so hard that the droplets leaped upward upon striking as though the ground itself trembled. The giant tortoises had retreated into their shells, just another patch of slick boulders. Lightning forked across the sky. She had a crazy desire to ride the storm, letting the thunderclaps drive all thought and memory out of her mind.
Pip’s gaze fixed on the first year building. She hoped her friends were asleep. She could not face them. Who would want to befriend a Dragon who had so little self-control, that she tried to kill her friends over a teasing word? Poor Maylin. Stupid Maylin, more to the point, but her heart balked at the name-calling.
Odd. A messenger monkey bolting out of her dormitory window?
As she stared, a long, thin scream carried over the roaring of the rain and the hiss of the wind to her ears.
Pip’s body jerked. Fear seared her throat. Fear, and fire. Her wingbeat stuttered, then drove her forward as though she had been shot from a war catapult. Another monkey! Ten, a dozen monkeys now pelting in the other direction, into the dorm, banging the shutters as they swung through. Hunagu’s bellow. He was hurt!
A serpentine body, half-seen through the window. Pip folded her wings, making herself as small as possible. It was moving to her left. Instinct shaped her flight path. Next window. Pip exploded through the shutters as only a Pygmy Dragon could have, smashing out blocks of stone with her shoulders, claws extended in the strike position. A long, centipede-like creature, thicker than a Human torso, flashed in her gaze. She saw girls fleeing, shrieking, hiding beneath beds, tossing a blanket over one of the heaving beasts. She struck. The impact threw her and her prey across the room, smashing a bed into kindling. She groaned,
Unnh.
Pincers gnashed at her wing. Pip bit deep, and severed the thing’s spine. Still it writhed and fought, the head end snapping toward a group of girls huddled in the corner.
She saw Maylin, bloody, wielding Pip’s Immadian forked daggers, facing another of the creatures. Hunagu, stuck in the dormitory doorway, his body jerking as something attacked him from outside. Whooping messenger monkeys rode a centipede into a wall. Pip flipped onto her paws. She snapped at the half-creature attacking Maylin, catching its skull between her jaws. She crushed it. Another! It rose above a broken knot of student bodies, hissing at her. Metallic, oily chitin, a spit of violet poison, a many-legged, many-segmented body fronted by champing mandibles slathered in blood and gore. Pip slashed instinctively with her claws. The centipede creature lunged open-mouthed at her. Pip didn’t even need to think. A fireball rocketed into that gaping maw, striking the back of its throat.
She whirled, searching for more enemies. None left.
Pip rattled, “Maylin. Help Yaethi. You. Those students. Use the sheets, girl. Come on.”
Hunagu bellowed, striking something with his massive fist. Past his back, through the gap, Pip saw Mistress Mya’adara lopping off the tail of another of the creatures with her scimitar. Somewhere, the school alarm began to sound.
Why was Hunagu hunched over like that? Why was he not charging, as a male Oraial would do by instinct? Her wings flared. Pip leaped over the bunk beds, scraping her wings and smacking her nose on a bedpost, but she did not care. She was Dragon-Pip. She was mad. The scent of blood, her friends’ blood, incensed her.