Shadow Dragon (13 page)

The suns burnished her flank as she angled her flight path, trimming her wings for the deadly, attacking swoop. Ri’arion’s sword rasped free of its scabbard.

Let’s burn the heavens, Dragon.

Would that I had the fire to do so, Rider,
she replied.

Then thy very scales shall blind them with thy glory,
he said, but with a certain underlying grimness that Zuziana neither enjoyed nor understood. She felt chastened, very much the diminutive Remoyan, indistinguishable amongst her many siblings–and when had she started to think of her family in this way? Disgust soured upon her tongue.

Abruptly, Ferial’s Dragonships loomed in her sight. Alarm gongs crashed and catapults creaked, taking their aim. Ri’arion rose upon her back to prepare for his leap onto the first Dragonship.

Wait.
Through the mental link, she helped him choose the instant she had side-slipped between their first shots, when her flight path would help him most.

The Azure Dragoness rocked under the force of his thrust. Zuziana’s long throat choked out the roar she had thought should stun them, but it sounded like a kitten’s meow compared to Aranya’s storm-powered thundering. However, her speedy pass ripped a jagged, fifty-foot rent in the side of her chosen target.

Simultaneously, she was with Ri’arion, darting along the top of the next Dragonship, slanting his huge blade first downward into the hydrogen sack, then veering as a crossbow crew aimed at him, fleet of foot, spinning his weapon to sever the crossbow’s tensioning arm in conjunction with the hand that operated it, now lifting his eyes to check her position, thinking:

We’ll catch at the edge; swing over to the next vessel–

She pulsed back,
Three more Dragonships east half a league, incoming–

–leaping–

–I’m here, beloved–

Landing lightly, perfectly synchronised on her back, Ri’arion said,
Where are all the archers?

The Azure Dragon banked rapidly, but the mental forewarning of her action allowed him to adjust as though he were standing on level ground. He did not even attempt to grab a handhold. She slipped beneath the overhanging cabin of a Dragonship, bringing her Rider to his next target. Ri’arion sprang free, flying sixty horizontal feet to a safe, two-footed landing on the side of the Dragonship. Although he flew well, she sensed the output of magic required to levitate was a significant drain on his resources.

A slight change in air pressure was enough to warn her. Suddenly, the air above their heads was thick with dark wings and feathers. Coal storks! Ambush! Zip raced to claw and bite her way free, driven by Commander Darron’s assessment that the storks would immediately attack any Dragon–but that was a mistake. She broke into clear air.

Zuziana!
Ri’arion’s shout rang in her mind.
Too many …

Hacking, spinning, whirling that great sword about him as though he sought to surround himself with a wall of flashing death, the monk kept the mobbing birds at bay. Ten feet in wingspan, with leathery skins and beaks so tough they were able to deflect his blade, the entire flock of coal storks besieged the Nameless Man. Understanding flashed between them. It was the monk they wanted; he was the font of magical power, and they hated it with a passion that communicated itself in the set of every beak and claw.

Where had they come from? Zip’s frantic glance, as she flipped over in the air with a desperate change of direction, took in the open cargo bays beneath two of the Dragonships. The Ferial Islanders had modified their tactics. Each Dragonship concealed a deadly cargo. Even as she watched, doors swung open beneath the Dragonship just below her. Black feathers boiled free, cawing hungrily.

WHOMP!
His magic flared, searing the air around him, burning the Dragonship’s sack. She responded instantly.

Zuziana flung herself at Ri’arion at the utmost speed her wings could produce. No time for a magical attack. He dived over the edge of the Dragonship, surrounded by birds jabbing at him with their beaks, and before she could cross the hundred-foot gap between them, an agonising pain stabbed into her shoulder. The Dragoness jerked as the birds gored her Rider. His mind-meld transmitted the pain of each and every puncture wound with perfect clarity, as if they struck her very soul with fear and pain. She floundered, thrashing as desperately as a hooked fish.

Even mid-air, the monk defended himself grimly.

KAARAABOOM!

Zuziana’s eyes cycled through black. A shockwave punched her body, but that was nothing compared to how it struck Ri’arion. He shot sideways, away from the knot of birds, thankfully colliding with the soft sack of a flanking Dragonship. Smoke billowed around them. Charred birds and Dragonship parts rained from the sky.

She wailed inwardly,
No wonder they hid the archers. No need.

Help me, Zip!

Hundreds of coal storks and one frantic Dragon dove for the Nameless Man, who had shielded himself from the hydrogen explosion with his magic. His daggers flashed as he slid downward; Zip forced herself to ignore the flashes of pain in her arms and neck as the birds gouged and clawed the monk, seizing and shaking his boots, goring his thigh to the bone. She tried to sever the connection, but that made white agony flare within her skull.

Tooth and claw! That was what a Dragon did best. Zuziana snapped and clawed and burrowed into the falling mass of bodies, a haze of rage consuming her mind, spitting feathers and bones and crackling now with an electrical energy all of her own. He would die. One beak sliding into the wrong place, between bone and muscle, and her beautiful monk’s eyes would shutter forever. Hearing on the edge of her awareness yet another cargo bay creaking open, she bellowed in despair. Where was he? Why could she not win through to him?

Aaaaah!
She arched in agony as a beak speared Ri’arion near the kidneys. He had to stop the meld. She could not fly properly.

The Azure Dragoness vented a primal shriek. Careless of life or limb, she smashed her way into the incoming flock of coal storks. Wing edges, claws, the whiplash of her tail, she did not care. But Ri’arion had fallen free of the Dragonship now, tumbling into the open air above the Cloudlands. The coal storks chasing his magic were so thick that she could barely see the man.

She needed Dragon fire. Ri’arion held that secret.

Give it to me!
The Azure Dragon delved into his pain-crazed mind. Despite his resistance, she tore from the soft inner parts the knowledge she needed, from his memories of the time he had forced Aranya to produce Dragon fire.
Don’t hide it–finally! Now I have it.

A song of fire exploded in her mind, in her belly. Zuziana gulped as the fires finally ignited within her stomach. Heat rushed through her body, a sensation so exquisite and consuming that it threatened to set her scales ablaze. She bathed in the fires, crooning as if to a long-absent lover.

Zuziana … please!
he moaned.
I need you. Give me your powers.

No!
This was what she had feared. Appalled, the Zip’s wingbeat stalled. She had violated the man she loved.

Then, her neck extended. Her tongue rolled into a new shape.

He was shielded by his magic, now. It sucked up all the strength he had left. The coal storks attacked zealously, but could not penetrate his defences–not for the vital second it took her to summon her Dragon fire for the very first time.

Her hearts thudded:
boom-boom-boom.

A cone of fire scorched the beautiful dawn. It passed perfectly around the falling body of her monk, igniting everything it touched.

Keening tenderly, the Azure Dragon reached through the drifting ashes to catch him in her paws.

D
ragon and Rider
winged toward the setting suns, making over twenty-five leagues per hour. Murky cloud battlements dominated the south and south-western horizons. Aranya’s nostrils identified a metallic yet noticeably humid tang on the air. A big storm, her Dragon senses warned. That strange tension returned, taking up residence behind her breastbone, a dull ache as heavy as a misplaced boulder.

A storm such as those Fra’anior loved to frequent.

Pushing thoughts of the storm aside, Aranya scanned the scenery from half a league above the Islands–all the height that Yolathion’s still-healing ears could tolerate. Her eye gladdened at the wild, unspoiled majesty of Ur-Yagga Cluster’s eleven Islands, the tangled forests, deep ravines and monumental cliffs. Never mind hiding just one Dragon in here! Fra’anior could have hidden an army of Dragons and she’d have little chance of winkling them out.

To think this was the westernmost Cluster in the world, the edge of nothing. Breathtaking!

But Aranya had no time for sightseeing. How did one track down a Dragon? She tried to focus on that tiny tendril of magic she had detected from Naphtha Cluster, but it was either absent or so far away she could not detect it. Ask around the villages? What welcome might a Jeradian and a Northerner find? Could she ask after Kylara and find out if she knew of a Dragon?

Aranya spotted a charred village from the air. There, that was Dragon work, surely?

But when she touched down at the edge of a massive inlet, she recognised her error. Scarred carcasses of Dragonships lay at either end of the deserted village. Much had been burned, but she had seen these patterns before. Sylakian destruction. There were no bodies left. Perhaps the Sylakians had visited a second time to remove their dead. She wondered what had become of the villagers.

Yolathion agreed quietly with her assessment. He said, “This must be the village the Sylakians mentioned. They said a madman attacked them here, a madman who fought alongside Kylara’s troops. I can’t see the Warlord allowing that, can you?”

“No.”

“Let’s keep scouting. Kylara’s hideout can’t be far.”

Aranya asked, “Any tracks?”

The tall Jeradian walked back through the village, examining the signs with the eyes of a trained warrior. “Strange. If Kylara’s force is as strong as they say, I’d expect to see boot prints or pony prints, like these ones here between the huts. I’d say someone’s swept them away. We’ll do better airborne, Aranya.”

Rider and Dragon swept southward along the spectacularly jagged cliff tops, sighting a family of black rajals from the air and tangling briefly with a lone, feral windroc.

“There must be a thousand caves along here,” Yolathion groaned. “This Island is as riddled as yeast-bread.”

“I wonder what’s out there to the west,” Aranya said, gazing to the horizon. “Surely the Islands don’t just end?”

“Mind on the job, Dragon.”

She bared her fangs at the emptiness. Yolathion!

With darkness closing in, Dragon and Rider camped on the cliff-top in the lee of a massive clump of boulders. Curled up, Aranya thought she must look like just another boulder, albeit a decidedly purple one. Yolathion slept where Zip had always preferred to sleep, in the crook of her neck. Surreptitiously, she tried slipping a paw around his body, but that made Yolathion moan and stir. She touched him with her healing power anyway. She poured healing into her Dragon-body, before sleep sucked her irresistibly into its embrace.

She dreamed of fleeing from storms that behaved like female rajals on the hunt, stalking her from all directions.

Come morning, the approaching storm covered half of the sky in a portentous green-black barrier. It engulfed the rays of a clear, burning suns-rise in the east as though a vast Land Dragon’s mouth had risen from the Cloudlands, intent on swallowing the suns. After taking to the air, Aranya spotted King Beran’s Dragonships moored at the eastern periphery of the Cluster, as planned. They must have arrived during the night.

Even at this distance, Aranya’s Dragon sight identified how the freshening breeze caused the Dragonships to strain at their anchor hawsers. She resisted an urge to scowl at the storm, or to think ralti-stupid thoughts about omens and premonitions. She had a job to do. The Black Dragon demanded no less.

Aranya and Yolathion followed the imposing cliffs southward. They were a league above the Cloudlands here, a jaw-dropping vertical plunge worthy of the Last Walk, where Yolathion had once thrown Aranya off a cliff, expecting her to die.

Instead, she had learned to spread her wings.

Aranya squirmed at a strange prickling sensation along her spine-spikes. She probed the terrain with every sense alert, from the rolling, densely tangled hills of the interior to the dagger-slash of a cliff at her right wingtip. They passed over an enormous sinkhole–at least, what she took for a sinkhole, until Yolathion said:

“Slap me over the head with a windroc, Aranya, that’s Cloudlands down there. That hole goes right through the Island.”

Her hearts gambolled fitfully in her chest as she passed over the great hole. Now, there was a place Dragons would love to roost, she thought. But a tiny trickle of awareness drew her onward, just a teasing on the breeze, a thought more unconscious than conscious … and growing stronger? Aranya trimmed her wings, bringing them lower.

“Found something?” asked Yolathion.

“Not sure what, though,” said Aranya. “It’s more of a Dragon-sense.”

“Follow it,” he ordered.

Yolathion was supporting the idea of Dragon senses and magic? That was novel–and encouraging.

Instinctively, the Amethyst Dragon slowed. She drifted away from the cliff, flying over the Cloudlands now. They passed cave after cave. After a while, the trail faded again. They agreed to double back. Aranya drew close to the cliff. She was almost certain something was holed up nearby, perhaps a Dragon in a cave.

“A trail,” said Yolathion, pointing. “Look.”

“Right.” How had she missed that?

Aranya scanned the trail from a hundred feet offshore. “Fresh pony tracks, Yolathion. I sense this is the cave we should check.”

“If there’s a Dragon in there, those ponies would’ve been eaten.”

Aranya flared her wings, bringing them in for a landing on the narrow ledge. “Let’s go sniff around the entrance.”

* * * *

He heard the creatures before he saw them. The beast retreated deeper into the cavern, suddenly still, his senses suddenly prickling with readiness. Invaders, in his domain! Careful. One out there had hunting skills akin to his own. A slight scratching of claws on rock, the way the creature sniffed the air–it put him on edge. The air currents were flowing the wrong way for him to detect any scent, but that creature must surely sense his presence.

He could not escape this cavern. But his belly was full. He had no need to hunt, unless those stupid creatures came to disturb him.

To his amazement, he heard the two creatures slowly approaching along the narrow tunnel which led to the bright place, the place which hurt his eyes. They must be incredibly rash. And blind, because they carried their own light. There was a big one and a smaller one. The big one had a metal stick with him, while the smaller one with the strange multi-coloured pelt on its back, carried nothing. The big one moved as though he intended to protect the little one. That tiny metal stick against his great clawed feet? Silent, murderous laughter flooded his hearts.

The beast held his breath. He willed his hearts to slow, to beat softly, so as not to alarm them even by the smallest sound. The two hairless worms entered the cavern where he hid, holding up the light and peering about them as though they saw only darkness. They exchanged sounds. Perhaps they had some rudimentary intelligence?

The creature paused as he considered this. Odd how this thought resonated within his being. Until now he had thought only of food and sleep, and his frustration at being unable to find any exit from the cavern. But these pathetic creatures with their skin coverings entered with ease.

His muscles trembled in readiness. Which one of them was the hunter? He sniffed the air.

The little one froze.

Without thinking, the beast reached out his paw and swatted the bigger of the two creatures aside. He slammed into the tunnel wall, his limb crooked beneath him at an odd angle. He lay unmoving. The little creature made a sound like the cries of the great birds he had heard outside, but it ran on spindly legs toward his upraised wing. Attacking him? Surprise froze him for a moment.

Right, he’d crush the life out of this one, too.

Colours and light smote his gaze. The beast howled, blinking furiously. The little thing was gone. In its place stood the most glorious beast in all creation, one who smelled familiar yet as different to him as the moons were from the stars. The aroma of it–her, he realised–was a heady perfume, a singing in all his senses. At once, frenzied emotions pooled thickly in his throat. His muzzle lowered instinctively, his prodigious chest puffed out and his wings flared, displaying his full hundred-and-ten foot wingspan. He overshadowed her with his muscular bulk, making her tremble violently as she retreated, amethyst eyes wide-agleam, drinking in the sight of this creature who confronted her.

A low crooning burbled from his throat. She was lithe and slender, a dancing wisp eluding and enticing his understanding. He became acutely aware of the rapid throbbing of her hearts, of the dilation of her nostrils and the sinuous curve of her neck.

With a roar, he mock-pounced at her. The Dragoness slipped aside with ghostly grace.

Then she said, in a voice like a glissade of delight,
What’s your name, o delicious Dragon? Ah, I mean …

* * * *

The greyish-black Dragon paused in his ritual to regard Aranya with eyes as depthless as the shadows that he slipped into and out of with such hypnotic ease. The idea of having a name seemed to have seized him by the throat.

He coughed,
I … Ardan. My name’s Ardan, I think.

Aranya knew there was something important she was supposed to be telling him, but instead, all she could do was echo,
Ardan?

The male Dragon was monstrous. As an Amethyst Dragon she was smooth and sleek, whereas the spines growing from the base of his skull, and his neck-ruff, were up to four feet long. He was built like a Sylakian fortress, four-square and brawny. His lumpen shoulders clustered together behind his neck as though he had invited a brother Dragon to perch upon his back. Even his wing struts bulged with extra muscle, and the striations in his major flight muscles had to be five inches deep. Aranya was certain he would fly like a rock, or be able to bore his way through mountains just by chewing a tunnel with that rugged jaw of his.

The beast called Ardan stalked her with unwavering curiosity. The Amethyst Dragoness found herself wondering what it might be like to be caught by this feral monster. She was faster than him, faster by far. But his sheer presence mesmerised her. All she desired was to shelter against his bulk and have his vast wing curve protectively over her body. His scent was the deep, enigmatic essence of a creature of shadow and dominion, the kind of scent the artist in Aranya imagined might be shared with starlight, incongruously conveying a hint of cinnamon and sulphur.

Her hearts pulsated in her throat, chest and belly. This was not at all the encounter she had imagined with a feral Dragon. It was more perilous by far. He was breathtaking. Neither Garthion nor Harathion had affected her like this.

Fright stoked her belly-fires to an almost unbearable pitch.

Slinking forward upon his thick legs, the great predator asked,
And thou, o delight of mine eyes? How shall I sing to thee?

I’m c-called A-Aranya,
she stammered, retreating again.
P-Princess of Immadia.

What is this Immadia?

An Island far to the north of here, Ardan,
she replied, finally remembering her mission.
I came to get you out of this cave–

Aranya yelped as he lunged at her. She leaped the wrong way, confused and sluggish, smashing into a solid stone column. In a flash and a flurry of wings, the dark Dragon was upon her. A cunning paw trapped her legs, flipping her onto her back. She growled, writhed, scrabbled at his hide in a frantic attempt to escape, but he slapped her muzzle and seized her with his paws. Then, Aranya gasped at the enormous upper-body strength of a fully-grown male Dragon as he pinned her to the cavern floor. Had an Island perched upon her chest, she could have been no less trapped.

Stillness settled upon the cave, broken only by the thudding of many hearts as the Dragons’ gazes fused together–astonished, heated, turbulent. Was this a tightness in her chest, or had she forgotten how to breathe? Aranya suppressed the blue-hot fireball which had risen into the back of her throat, trying to tame her dread.

If he had been feral, he was no longer.

Did he not want to hurt her? Tear her limb from limb? The Dragon’s claws were unaccountably gentle upon her scales, and his great jaws did not gape open to rip holes in her hide. Could she still speak to him, she wondered? Reason with him? For what she perceived in his eyes was no longer hunger, but a volcano of emotions far more complex and wide-ranging than that.