Shadow Dragon (27 page)

“They rushed her to the cliffs. A Red Dragon met them there.”

Beran moaned, “No, please …”

Ta’armion said, “I regret to inform you, King Beran, that they flew east. Toward Sylakia.”

The King covered his face.

Ardan could not withhold. His anguish thundered into the night sky, which had never seemed colder, nor emptier.
Thou, Aranya.
His soul’s fire was gone, and Yolathion was a traitor. He could not begin to grasp the scale of his misjudgement. He should have chased her immediately, into the storm.

Three days, Dragonback? Aranya was already in Sylakia, as good as dead. Although, he still sensed her fire, burning within him.

His talons gouged trenches in the soil. He had to go after Aranya.

* * * *

Aranya awoke from a dream of her mother to harsh reality. She was flying, but not safely in the womb as she had dreamed, surrounded by the pulse of her mother’s life. She was tied to a Dragon’s back, one whose scales were the crimson of fresh Human blood.

“Islands greetings on this fine morn,” said Yolathion. “Feeling well rested?”

Aranya stared fixedly upward. She had no control of her eyeballs. She realised that Yolathion had rolled her into a cloak and tied her on board as though she were another of his saddlebags. “W–” she moaned. “W …”

“Where are we? Flying southeast from Talda Island. With this following breeze, we should reach your old haunt of Sylakia by nightfall. We’re going to the Tower.”

A hint of sensitivity had returned to her limbs. Aranya knew she must fight for her life. But the potent poison had disabled her. Her limbs and lower back had that dull ache of incipient illness. She could not even swallow; drool leaked down her neck from her flaccid mouth.

Yolathion reached out to slap his mount’s neck. When had he become so familiar with Dragons, Aranya wondered? “Serthion, we must hurry. Time is against us.”

“She resists?”

“This one is strong, despite her appearance.”

The Red chuckled horribly. “Thoralian will eat her alive. Tell the little one, my brethren approach. Beran’s days are numbered.”

Beran’s days had been numbered for ten years, and the Sylakians had only succeeded in defeating him through treachery–their favourite Island of all. Aranya snorted mentally at the Red,
You’re an idiot if you think that.

Serthion’s wings missed a beat. “She speaks!” His massive, age-rimed muzzle rounded upon her.
Hold your tongue before I tear it from your mouth.

“Peace, Serthion,” said Yolathion. “Thoralian will soon put a stop to that.”

“I told you we should have collared her immediately.”

“The poison is enough. Trust me, it was enough for her mother all those years ago, and she had Star Dragon powers. We marked her, we hunted her, and now we will destroy her. End of Island.”

Aranya had never heard Yolathion speak like this–grim, callous and altogether hateful. How had her sweet and dutiful boyfriend turned into this monster? It had to be a double betrayal, his apparent defection to Immadia having been a calculated move on Thoralian’s part, a ploy to worm his agent into the heart of the resistance. She had kissed this man. Shared her deepest secrets and fears with him. Loved him, even. Now, all was ashes scattered upon the Cloudlands.

O treacherous Jeradia!

She held her tongue, but only to save her strength for the fight.

Three hours later, as the Yellow moon rose to dominate the sky and eclipse the twin suns for a time, the rhythm of Serthion’s wingbeats changed.

“Karathion,” he called.
May the rising suns warm your wings, old one.

The winds speed your flight, Serthion. Go on, brothers. I will catch up.
“Is she the one?”

“She’s the one,” said Yolathion.

Aranya’s head lolled sideways. Karathion, a burgundy-coloured Dragon who rivalled Ardan for size, with a black underbelly and a dark mottling of age upon his wings, fell into formation with Serthion. Rheumy eyes regarded her across the gap between the flying Dragons. Aranya heard other Dragons’ voices now. Four, five Red Dragons swished past beneath them–she could just glimpse them from the corner of her eye, an awesome Dragonwing. Oh, Dad! Her ears conveyed the sounds of more Dragons passing, the leathery creak of wings and the swishing of air across Dragon scales. How many? A dozen? They’d tear her friends apart, and the Island after that.

But–if Beran’s days were numbered, then her father was still alive! A nugget of hope in a dark mineshaft of despair.

“She’s the Star Dragon’s daughter? You’re certain?” asked Karathion.

Yolathion said, “She has the mark.”

The mark? Aranya’s brow failed to move into a frown. She had no birthmark she knew of. Freaky hair, aye. Gemstone eyes courtesy of her Fra’aniorian heritage, certainly. But no distinguishing marks.

“Aye,” Serthion agreed. “Thoralian will be pleased.”

Yolathion said, “What does he want her for?”

Karathion’s laughter was a low, indulgent gurgle deep in his massive chest. Fire blossomed around his muzzle. “Thoralian has his ambitions, and they will not be shared with the likes of you. Trust me, there are worse fates than being eaten by a Dragon.”

Serthion said,
Fly strong and true, Karathion.

May your fires burn like a volcano’s heart,
came the reply.
In seconds, Karathion peeled away, and was gone.

She wanted to wish that the Shadow Dragon would descend from the skies to end this nightmare, but she knew that to keep up with her storm-augmented speed would have been nigh impossible for any other Dragon. He had to be several days behind Serthion and her double-crossing boyfriend.

Whatever she faced now, it would be alone.

Aranya wanted to weep, but the poison denied her even that. Her tear ducts had dried up. No, she would not weep for Beran, or Lyriela and Ta’armion, or Zip, wherever she was. She must bide her time and grow stronger. Thoralian would make a mistake. Then, her mother would be avenged.

That was her vow.

A
Lways treasure a
faithful reflection, King Beran used to say. Aranya wished this reflection were perfectly unfaithful. The amethyst eyes staring back at her from the doctor’s mirror were bloodshot and distraught. She touched a lesion on her left cheek–one of ten on her face. It was tight, hot and purple, raised half an inch from the skin’s surface.

“Shifter pox,” said the doctor. “But I’ve never seen this strain, nor one that acted so fast. This is bad, lady. Very bad.”

The doctor was a strange little man of an olivine complexion and a nervous manner, clad in a doctor’s black smock and gloves. Long, jet-black hair swept down to his collar, and his almond-coloured eyes were slit like a rajal’s. Even the timbre of his voice suggested a cat’s purr, with breathy vowels and rolled r’s as he spoke. She wondered which Island he hailed from–perhaps the deep South?

“Pox?” she whispered. Once, fifty years ago, a pox had swept through Immadia, killing almost half of the population.

“It’s also on the rest of your body?” Aranya, lying abed, rolled up the sleeve of her simple dress. Her arm was a maze of lumps and bumps, far more pox than clear skin. “Aye, purpling already. Lady, I must warn you. You’d rather wade through a pool of lava than have the pox. I’ll speak to Thoralian’s people. Maybe there’s a treatment they use here. Fever? Chills?”

She nodded. Her throat was swelling. Aranya had checked as far back as she dared. Several nodules were growing inside her mouth, one on her tongue, and more down her windpipe. Each nodule was the size of the top joint of her thumb. Would she be able to eat, soon? Would she suffocate?

“Food?”

“I can’t keep a bite down.”

The doctor gasped.

Aranya felt so unwell she feared she would never rise from the bed again, but she still noticed his reaction–far more clearly than during her arrival at Sylakia’s Tower. She had been semiconscious, then, and could not remember more than snatches of her journey down into the dungeons. This was her third visit to Sylakia’s infamous Tower, home of its political hostages from around the Island-World. Once, for her exile from Immadia. A second time, to rescue Zuziana–a madcap idea, but it had worked. And a third time? That was the number that stretched luck too far, the number Immadians believed signified evil, or death. She needed no such portents to magnify her misery.

He checked her collar, riveted in place around her neck. “Secure,” he mumbled. Twenty feet of chain linked the collar to a ring embedded in the wall of her cell. The metal was curious. It never felt warm, not even from her body heat. And it was beginning to chafe her skin.

She remembered that Yolathion had attended her at some point during that first day.

“Welcome to the Shifter holding cells, Princess of Immadia,” he had said, clasping his hands behind his back in a gesture that later, struck her as very unlike Yolathion. “You will note that this fine accommodation is sized too small for a Shapeshifter to assume their Dragon form. I would not advise any attempt to transform. A partial materialisation into solid rock may prove … uncomfortable.”

Fine accommodation? Four bare walls, a barred doorway, and a rough bed with one solitary blanket–oh, and a lidded waste-bucket in the corner, regularly emptied by a mute female servant. Her chamber was a rough rectangle carved out of solid bedrock, perhaps eight feet wide and fifteen long. A cell designed to contain a Shapeshifter Dragon.

Leaning over her, the doctor whispered, “What colour Dragon are you, Lady?”

“Amethyst,” she said.

What did that flicker in the cat-eyes mean? “Drink this,” he ordered.

Aranya struggled to rise onto her elbow. So weak! She sipped whatever bitter herbal brew the doctor had concocted this time. This one, a change from his usual sewage, was sweetened with honey.

Footsteps in the narrow tunnel outside her cell presaged Yolathion’s arrival. “Thoralian will see the prisoner,” he announced, swinging a set of manacles in his hand as though he meant to enjoy putting them on her.

The doctor said, “She’s too unwell. It’s the pox.”

“Thoralian’s not one to be kept waiting,” smirked her former boyfriend. Aranya wished her Dragon could whisk him away to the swift and nasty end he deserved. “He’s just flown in from Yorbik Island, and he’s in a good mood, luckily for you.”

A good mood? She’d have to see if she could spoil it.

With deft movements, Yolathion affixed the chains to her wrists and ankles. The doctor helped her rise. She stood gingerly. Had the lesions spread even to her soles?

“I’ll walk,” she said, raising her chin in an imperious gesture. She took one step, and collapsed.

Yolathion’s escort, two beefy Sylakian soldiers, gripped her beneath the armpits and marched her out of the cell, ignoring the doctor’s protests. They ascended an endless spiral staircase, holding up torches and lamps to light the way. Through the pain in her arms caused by the soldiers’ manhandling, she wondered how deep into the vast spit of rock cleft off the main body of Sylakia Island, these caves descended. And who could have carved such a perfect, regular staircase out of solid rock? The labour involved must have been unimaginable–or magical.

They passed galleries and tunnels that had a lived-in look about them, at least, in the past, for she saw solid ironbound doors and murals painted on the walls, and the rotting remains of carts and storage barrels. Aranya looked because she felt she should observe her surroundings. But little penetrated her awareness. Her world had reduced from the airy spaces, to the dungeon, to the prison of her own flesh.

At length the dead air within the caverns stirred, and a hint of coolness brushed her feverish brow. They entered a cavern in which the breezes sighed with eerie, disharmonic notes. Aranya’s escort halted.

“Lord Thoralian,” called Yolathion. “We’ve brought the prisoner.”

The shadows shifted. A hollow clattering ensued as bleached bones cascaded across rock. She first saw a pair of sallow Dragon eyes flick open, and then the creature slithered forward, disturbing the sprawling pile of bones which constituted his nest. She caught her breath. Although his form reminded her of a cave-salamander, this creature was definitely all Dragon–just longer and more snakelike than she had ever seen. The thickness of his torso made his belly scrape the ground as he moved. Thoralian was a monster, easily half again the size of Ardan, with pallid yellow-white scales, and bulbous, unnervingly hypnotic eyes which fixed upon her with brutish hunger.

The soldiers flung her toward the beast’s paws. Aranya landed hard, scraping open many of the pustules on her arms and torso. A scream of pain rose from her bloodied lips.

“I am Thoralian,” growled the Shapeshifter Dragon, trapping her body with his forepaw. His breath was redolent of rancid meat and sulphur, yet as cold as ice. Saliva dripped from his hoary muzzle, thirty feet above her, and froze where it struck the stones. “You’re looking unwell, Princess of Immadia. Are you not enjoying the gift I prepared for your arrival?”

The pox? He had planned to infect her with this pox? Her hatred was matched only by the animosity blazing in those saucer-sized yellow eyes.

He said, “Revenge is sweet, o murderer of my son.”

“He was the murderer,” she retorted, seeing her breath steam in front of her eyes. “
Aah!
”

Thoralian rolled her body slowly beneath his icy paw, abrading more of her skin on the rocky cavern floor. “How the mighty Amethyst Dragon has fallen,” he mocked. “The pox has just begun. Soon the lesions will burst open, weeping thick pus and blood, and then they’ll crust over and crack repeatedly. I’m told the agony is exquisite, that the sufferer is able to find neither rest nor sleep. Sometimes, it drives them insane.”

She tasted blood; but her pain was as nothing before the fear of a Dragon’s premeditated revenge. There was a quality in the way he observed and entered into her suffering, a bestial fascination, which reminded her of a cat playing with a half-dead mouse. He licked his lips at every detail. Unhurried. Deliberate. The strong taking vicious pleasure in crushing the weak. He wanted her to twitch, to struggle, to fight back, but in the end all that would be left was the chewed-over body of the mouse. Never had she been more aware of the lack of compassion in another creature. In his burning reptilian scrutiny, it was wholly absent.

“You can torture my body,” she began to gasp, already chilled through by his touch, but Thoralian’s booming laughter brought her up short.

“You call this torture, Princess? A few chains? The touch of my paw?” Almost tenderly–and hatefully–his razor-sharp talon tipped up her chin until she was forced to meet his gaze. The voice deepened, like boulders grinding within his massive chest. “You don’t grasp the first iota of my plans for you, Aranya of Immadia. First, I will break your body. I’ll tear your beauty from you, leaving you scarred and ghastly. People will gasp and cringe at the sight of your pockmarked face. Children will run screaming to their mothers. Then, I will break your spirit. I will steal all of your secrets, o daughter of the Star Dragon.”

His words pierced her body and soul. She knew that the Princess of Immadia could be arrogant–when she first met Zuziana in the Tower, that had been the sum of their relationship. She was proud of her beauty. Aranya knew she had lorded it over others, used her looks to smooth her way, even seduced Jia-Llonya into her web. The prospect of being scarred forever was a bitterer wound than she could have imagined, a mirror in which she beheld a new, dismaying aspect of her personality. This ugliness was truly Aranya? Despicable!

The Yellow-White Dragon’s hundred-fang smile told her he understood exactly what she was thinking. “Beran hid your power well,” he said. “When you came to my Tower, nobody guessed that you were a Shapeshifter.”

“Why not just kill me, Thoralian?”

“My Dragonwing shall reach Fra’anior by tomorrow,” he replied. “They’ll crush Beran’s little rebellion.”

Between chattering teeth, Aranya managed, “They’ll try. But your Dragons are old and fat.”

“Old and large, and ten in number. No Immadian fleet can stand against their combined power. And we know exactly where your precious father is. We’ve known all along.”

Her thoughts were moths fluttering aimlessly around the candle of Thoralian’s words. She had never known cold to literally burn, but that was how she felt beneath the wintry blast of his laughter. The Yellow-White Dragon must have powers of ice, frost and hail–powers the scrolls spoke of with awe and dread.

“You tracked me?”

“He did.” The Dragon indicated Yolathion with his foreclaw.

“Yolathion?”

Thoralian’s lip curled. “You still don’t understand, do you? I’ll show you your precious boyfriend.” He growled at the man standing alongside Aranya. “Bring her.”

Not-Yolathion grinned derisively at her confusion, causing doubt to mingle with the sickness in her stomach. He didn’t have a twin brother, did he? One whose smile was not quite true, whose mannerisms increasingly struck her as unlike the man she thought she had known–by the mountains of Immadia, had Yolathion
shrunk?

The soldiers picked her up once more, a limp rag of a body which had been the proud Princess of Immadia just days before, and followed the Yellow-White Dragon’s thumping, belly-scraping passage deeper into the cavern. She began to hear sounds above the wind’s keening–muffled shrieks, perhaps. At length they passed through a doorway wide and tall enough to accommodate Thoralian’s bulk, and the sounds suddenly took on a dreadful clarity. Torture. The awful, burbling screams of a man in mortal agony.

They entered a gallery above a deep cave. At Thoralian’s gesture, the soldiers forced her to the edge and bade her look down.

“I don’t like traitors,” said Thoralian. “I had no more use for him, but a quick death was hardly justified.”

Not-Yolathion said, “The brutality lies in the design, lady. Each and every joint in the body can be separately crushed, twisted, dislocated or broken. The machine creates these unnatural angles under a very slow, irresistible pressure. I doubt many of his bones are left whole.”

“A joint-breaker,” growled the Dragon, with a low, flame-filled chuckle.

It took Aranya a number of seconds to understand what she was seeing. There was a machine down below, a great mess of levers and pulleys, gears and chains, and dangling in the middle of it like a fly in a spider’s web, was a man. Yolathion. She barely recognised the broken, bleeding thing he had become. Only his size gave him away.

Aranya’s chained hands flew to her mouth, stifling her horror. His screams flayed her too, as though she were the one being tortured. Oh, Yolathion! Ruined, crushed …was this the result of her dalliance with Ardan? Was this the Black Dragon’s handiwork?

I loathe you!
Her mental scream was meant for Fra’anior.

Thoralian’s bulbous eyes measured her.
You speak Dragonish despite the Lavanias collar? How unexpected.

She made no reply, unhearing, mourning for Yolathion. His injuries were too grave. His knees and ankles had been crushed. Naked skewers of bone stuck out of his flesh in multiple places. His left wrist and elbow hung at inhuman angles. Blood and body fluids striped his body and pooled on the floor. This meant Yolathion’s death–how could he even live, having suffered thus?