Shadow Dragon (37 page)
They spoke the day long, commiserating, bickering, cursing Thoralian, weeping and dreaming of the future. Aranya learned about the new-technology weapons and the Shapeshifter Dragonwing awaiting them at Yorbik. She marvelled at the flying warrior monks of Fra’anior. She silenced her friends with her description of the storm she had generated, and the Chameleon Shapeshifter who had poisoned her. She stunned them with the knowledge that only Thoralian knew how her mother might be cured.
It was Kylara who said, “You carry such an Island’s weight of burdens, Aranya. And I thought my leadership a heavy load.”
With the aid of a cool, brisk breeze, the Dragons made excellent time, taking a midday rest at a tiny Island unknown to Zip, whose cliffs were inhabited by the strange, monkey-like people they had once seen climbing the lower cliffs of Sylakia. Aranya was grateful to her friend, who described what she saw from time to time, so she knew of the Dragon’s first sight of the Spits, and the strange, greyish clouds that cast a permanent gloom over the jumbled rock-spire wilderness. She remembered a four-day journey from the Twenty-Seven Sisters through the Spits to Sylakia by Dragonship. Flying as fast as they were, at more than triple the speed of a Dragonship’s four leagues per hour, Zuziana expected them to raise Seg by the early evening, which they achieved.
Aranya joshed her friend about being so precise, and for her trouble received a sulky grumble about basic mathematics being lost on Immadian Princesses who were so tall that their heads were lost in the clouds.
They alighted on a remote peninsula on the western cliff-edge of Seg, where Ardan had spotted a cluster of hot springs.
Zuziana, unchanged from her Dragon form due to the possibility of running into Sylakian patrols or sympathisers, took Kylara and the doctor in search of herbs and roots to treat Yolathion and make up a purgative for her. “Nasty!” Aranya made a face at that idea.
“Anything to encourage your magic to return,” said Doctor Chikkan, suddenly as keen as a hyperactive dragonet. Aranya wondered how greatly Thoralian’s retribution figured in his thinking.
Seeking time alone with her thoughts, Aranya slipped away to the nearby hot springs, which were ringed with tall ferns and steaming slightly in the cooling evening air. She tested three pools before finding one of a bearable temperature. Great Islands, actual hot water to bathe in. She needed to get the dungeon stink, as Jia-Llonya had politely termed it, off her body and out of her hair. If only she could wash away the memory of Thoralian so easily. Aranya decided she should be planning her revenge, rather than cowering behind her friends.
‘Why, if it isn’t the poxy Princess of Immadia,’ she imagined Thoralian sneering. Maybe Zuziana would know how to arrange a headscarf so that it hid her face.
The hot spring was only just large enough for a tall woman to stretch out. Aranya sighed at the luxurious warmth. Above her, the sky deepened from the vibrant oranges of suns-set to the unfathomable purple of night. If only the answers to life’s mysteries were written in the stars. Had she hoped the Lavanias collar’s removal would inspire an instant return of her magic, then she was disappointed. Chikkan had advised that it would take days for the drugs to wear out of her system, even with the help of his delightful-sounding medication.
A prickle against her senses … magic? “Alright, you can come out now,” she said. A quiver in her voice betrayed the fragile hope that impression had conjured up.
A patch of boulders rose and transformed into Ardan’s shoulders and neck. “Ha,” he snorted. “You heard me? I was practising my Shadow skills.”
“By spying on me?”
“Watching over you,” he claimed. “Look, I’m the largest chameleon in history. Ri’arion’s idea.”
His camouflage was imperfect, but he still managed an impressive rendition of a dusty boulder, which could be overlooked by a casual glance. “Stalking a half-blind woman?” she said. “I guess you have to start somewhere.” His Dragon-fire stomach protested rather violently at this. “And you need to learn to control those belly-fires, or you’ll give yourself away every time.”
“Ha!” But he aimed the fiery plume of his snort at the sky.
“How much did you see?” she asked.
“It hasn’t been a day yet, Aranya, yet I feel I’m the one who is being tortured.”
What answer could she give him? Mutely, she watched the Shadow Dragon settle down in a much larger pool close by, making the scalding water overspill the sides and run into her pool. Truth? Could he handle enough truth to put the matter beyond doubt?
“Ardan, I don’t know how to say this without being brutally plain. There are other factors to consider,” Aranya said, striving for calm in order to wrench loose the words she must say and dangle them before him. “I am not only repugnant to look at. I’m breathing poorly because this Shifter pox attacks the internal membranes. My lungs are scarred and the airways restricted. Furthermore, the disease is likely to have rendered me infertile.”
Coldly, he said, “Do you think a Western Isles warrior so fickle and uncaring–”
“Ardan! Must I write it on a scrolleaf? I am maimed, inside and out, and I could not … I can never … I hate this! I hate it …” She buried her face in her hands.
“I’m sorry. I understand.”
The Shadow Dragon tried to pat her shoulder. Aranya appreciated the gesture, awkward as it was, and the deep regret in his voice.
She whispered, “That magical day we had could never happen again, Ardan. That’s why I need you to forget all about the Princess of Immadia. She’s gone forever.” The incongruity at speaking about such matters with a Dragon, and the loss of the only foundation her life’s Island ever had, lent her words a terrible weight. “Kylara is a strong, very fine–”
“I don’t love her. Not in that most Island-shivering sense.”
The raw cry of her heart was, ‘Then, do you love me?’ But he could not. Must not. She denied those words, telling herself that he was the ravening Shadow Dragon of old, a brutish Western Isles warrior with scarification marks covering his chest, nothing like any man she had ever imagined loving, but it was as futile as dust blowing upon the Cloudlands.
As his great, gleaming muzzle bowed to the ground, her blurred vision made the Dragon seem even more shadowy than usual. His words tiptoed across the space between them. “I should have followed you into the storm. I failed you, Aranya.”
“You can take no blame for this.”
His fires surged, volcanic. His anger burned, vengeful. The Shadow Dragon growled, “Will you show me your body, Aranya, once more? I want to picture how he mutilated you when I tear his hearts out and toss them to the windrocs.”
Shadow and fire. Aranya shivered beneath the all-consuming gaze of a Dragon.
She rose from the pool.
* * * *
Chikkan’s purgative made her next day a misery, giving Aranya a blinding headache and intermittent, debilitating stomach cramps. Exactly the plan, he claimed. Aranya begged Ardan to toss the doctor overboard.
The two Dragons spent the morning labouring against contrary winds, beneath iron-grey skies. Zuziana had to rest in her Human form while Ardan carried six passengers for an eight-hour stint from noon to nightfall. But even he was not indefatigable. The Princess of Remoy mined Ri’arion’s knowledge to begin their instruction in mental techniques and disciplines, and drilled them with an air that struck Aranya as far more monkish than the carefree Remoyan of old.
Aranya had the distinct impression that Ardan was pleased to be the one carrying her. Being fought over the previous evening by two Dragons intent on having her sleep in the protective circle of their necks had served to cheer her, daunting as it was. Feisty little Zuziana taking on the monstrous Shadow Dragon? She smiled. Her friend had won that round, at the expense of promising to sleep pressed up against Ardan’s flank while he kept watch. Come dawn, the two Dragons were pressed together very cosily, their shared body-heat meaning that none of the Humans needed a blanket for sleeping.
She was not jealous at all.
By the following afternoon, Ardan was once again reduced to carrying six Riders. Zuziana did not have his stamina. She made up for that by increasing the pace of her teaching.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of a lesson about focus, Zip said, “Why a Land Dragon? Riddle me that, Immadia. Why destroy the Tower?”
Aranya shook her head, losing whatever focus she had managed to achieve. “I just don’t know, Zip. It couldn’t have come from Fra’anior, because he supposedly wants me alive.”
“Alive and enslaved, you mean,” Kylara put in.
Ardan flinched, losing the rhythm of his wingbeat. “Aye. You’re no use to him dead. Do Land Dragons go feral? It would be the oddest coincidence, otherwise.”
Zip said, “There’s no such thing as coincidence when it comes to magic, Ri’arion likes to say–usually when he’s pontificating about something or other.”
“That’s what I meant!”
“We all understood your point, Shadow Dragon,” said Zip, tartly. “And you, Jia. Please spit out whatever you’ve been brewing all day. The duties of a Dragon Rider may or may not include arguing with your Dragon, but speaking your mind is mandatory.”
“Zip-Zap being our resident expert in this skill,” Aranya put in.
To her surprise, a roar of perfectly Dragonish fury flipped Aranya’s hair over her shoulder. She twisted in her seat on Ardan’s spine-ridge to glance at the diminutive Remoyan, seated directly behind her.
Zip grimaced. “Sorry.”
Jia checked the rolled-up cloak they had used to tie Yolathion in place once more, across her legs, before saying, “I call this the ‘everyone wants a bite of Aranya’ theory.”
“Oh, you know all about having a bite of someone else’s boyfriend,” said Zuziana.
“Zip!” gasped the Jeradian girl.
“Speak, o boyfriend-snatcher of Jeradia.”
Aranya reached back to smack Zip’s knee. “Honestly, Zip, leave me to fight my own battles. Jia doesn’t deserve this.”
“For the official scrolleaf,” huffed Jia, appearing hotter and more bothered by the second, “Yolathion was the one chasing two rogue Shapeshifters all over the Island-World, not me. And, might I add, taking a second consort is perfectly acceptable in Jeradian culture, even if Immadians want to pinch other peoples’ boyfriends and keep them exclusively to themselves. Plus,
she
used her magic, which is unfair–or her magic used her, I guess.”
Only the leathery creak of a Dragon’s wings broke the resulting silence.
Aranya chuckled, “Zip, can you teach her to give a little less of her mind, please?”
She could hear Zip’s smirk; no need to look. “Oh no, she’s an excellent student.”
Jia-Llonya said, “Back to the bite-of-Aranya theory. It doesn’t make sense unless you think about it this way. Fra’anior requires the Amethyst Dragon to carry out his purposes in the Island-World, which, if we read our histories, are highly unlikely to include any benefit for the Human race. Although, he did snag us a handy Shadow Dragon. Nice work there, Aranya.”
The Black Dragon had slammed two fast-moving Islands together, Aranya thought, as she and Ardan coughed simultaneously. Now, they had to deal with the resulting cataclysm.
Nothing that her new heart of stone could not block out.
“Secondly, Thoralian wants Aranya to help him track down the First Egg, which is somewhere across the Rift in Herimor.”
“Did I say that?”
“Thoralian himself told you so,” said Jia-Llonya, who had pressed for his exact words the day before.
Aranya did not want to think about Thoralian and his vile plans, but now she recalled the incident all too vividly. “Oh, yes–definitely Herimor. Simple, right? Take a jaunt across the Rift, pick up the old Egg, conquer the world. Which puts him at cross-purposes with the Black Dragon. So we can conclude they both want me miserable, but alive.”
Nobody laughed at her joke.
Jia added, “Which brings us to these Land Dragons, who seem to be popping up everywhere you fly.” She cast an apologetic look back along the line of Ardan’s Riders. “Sorry, Aranya. I’m trying to cheer you up, can you tell?”
Aranya waved her hand. “I’m smiling.”
“Well, truth be told, your sightings over the Sea of Immadia are the first such report in over a hundred years–apart from what we saw, was it only yesterday?”
“Yesterday morning,” said Kylara. “I saw something, too. Animal. Not a shadow of doubt–like one of the eels we get in our inland swamps, only a thousand times bigger.” She affected an exaggerated shiver. “We Western Islanders have a legend that Land Dragons chewed up our Islands and spat them out. And you both saw that hole through my Island, Ardan and Aranya. What could possibly have carved such a hole, save a million caveworms, or a Land Dragon?”
Aranya scowled off to starboard. “So the Land Dragon pulled down the Tower of Sylakia because …”
“The Land Dragons want to prevent the daughter of a Star Dragon from stealing back the First Egg,” suggested Ardan, “and they’re prepared to send their forces across the Rift to ensure they keep its power for themselves?”
“See what your disobedience to the Ancient Dragon has set off?” said Zuziana, patting Aranya on the shoulder.
This time, she was certain. Fiery butterflies inhabited her stomach, and it was not the doctor’s medicine at work. Aranya sensed that her magic was beginning to trickle back. She gulped. Surely she was not imagining this? Could she hope?
