The Onyx Dragon (39 page)

Yet he watched, and saw a petite black form rising through the melting-away mass of Night-Red and Academy Dragons to oppose them. Alone she came, of all the thousands of Dragons inside the volcano.

He saluted her courage. Pip! Dark Dragoness, arise!

Ay, Dragons of both sides instinctively shied away as Re’akka began to spin in his dive, the magic steaming coldly off his scales to gather around him and in his wake in a coruscating spiral, easily visible to Dragon sight. The cold his father generated was immense, a gripping, shattering chill that made Silver wonder how he even managed to fly in its grip. A low humming began in his body, a sonic vibration slowly climbing through the register. Silver pushed his power at the White Shapeshifter, who accepted it with a low chuckle.

Re’akka roared,
Ay, you would face this? Then be it on your head, Dragoness!

The Pygmy Dragoness hovered a half-mile above the Academy buildings, looking up as though measuring the Marshal’s assault, undaunted. Silver narrowed his eyes. She was … humming, too? He saw the sound-waves fluctuating about her body. Her power was a dark, fantastically compressed nucleus, as though a star had turned its own existence inside out to expose the unimaginably dense core matter to an alert Dragon’s scrutiny.

The unstoppable force. The immovable obstruction.

Knowing crammed into Silver’s mind. Fra’anior was right. He must change the Balance. Much as it made his Dragon hearts convulse in pain, he must add to his father’s attack.

Silver power flared. Blue fire hissed from his father’s throat in a long streamer that billowed before him with the force of his charge, centring unerringly on the Onyx Dragoness’ upturned nose. The magical charge Re’akka generated was so immense that lightning began to spit around them, tearing the very fabric of the darkening evening air, lighting the tails, hindquarters and wings of the Dragons fleeing the inevitable destruction. An insane howling built in Re’akka’s throat. The legendary power called Shivers, Silver remembered, unable to tear his gaze off his unflinching, immobile girlfriend.

Why, Fra’anior?

As the blue-white thunderbolt capped with silver fire reached her, Pip rose in a whirl of black wings as if to greet their attack, making a circling gesture of her paws.

She cried,
Orbit!

Silver fire and cold-fire bent to her Command. Silver’s scales crawled with wonder. Ripping the twilight with an angry hiss, as though denied the opportunity to assume the form of massive, inescapable destruction, the ultra-concentrated stream of Dragon fire diverted to flow around her rotating form as though Pip conducted a concerto of bravura brilliance. A disk of fire. A blazing ring forced to orbit her dark planet.

The two Herimor Shapeshifters stared in shock. The Marshal’s output stuttered, but he still unleashed the Shivers with such venom and fury that it stalled his vertical dive, wrenching his body with the effect of extreme gravitational forces. Before their disbelieving eyes, the darkness opened subtly, accepting the charge like the Shadow Dragon lovingly enveloping its victim in death. Yet this was far too much for any one Dragoness to contain. Her face stretched in an agonised scream which precisely mimicked the pitch and tempo of the Marshal’s secondary attack–the sound-waves which would have outstripped his fire by a small margin, Silver realised. That was the Marshal’s secret. Pulverise and burn-freeze. What could stand against that combination?

Those tiny dark paws lifted to the heavens.
Flower! Reflect!

He perceived her hesitation, the moment mercy won over the desire for revenge. She could have unleashed the Marshal’s attack on every Dragon in the nearby airspace, annihilating them. Instead, Pip chose to tilt that roaring disk and discharge it into the evening skies. Silver barely had time to register the cold flowering upward in response to her Word, when he realised the import of her second command. Dragon reactions! Silver slammed up a shield a millisecond before the Shivers struck him and his shell-father like a mountain tossed into the Cloudlands.

Dragons fell. Silver fell with them. All he remembered was astonishment fading to black. Pip’s colour. The colour of his mortality.

* * * *

Seven blue-white comets seared the darkling sky before exploding miles overhead in a shower of fine white particles. Yet Pip had no eyes for beauty torn from the jaws of ruin. Her wings folded, lacking the power to beat. Her hearts folded, lacking the will to live.

SILVER!!

His shell-father cradled that limp, broken body, staring at her with an unreadable draconic mask fixed on his handsome yet hateful face. Then he winged away raggedly yet with great speed, the legions of Night-Reds closing behind him as though slamming a door in her face. She had killed him! Silver, silenced forever! The heavens stood mute before the force of her terrible outcry. Cold white dust drifted over the volcano like the ash of death.

Dimly, she became aware of Kassik’s shoulder and right wing beneath her, bearing her tenderly back toward the mountainside. All he said was,
I know, little one. I know.

It was enough.

* * * *

Pip lived a waking nightmare. For five days and nights, the Dragon Assassins attacked in fits and starts. The Academy defended itself with tooth and claw, with courage and tenacity, yet the cost was daily paid in the bodies of Human and Dragon lives alike. Eridoon Island stood a league offshore, grimly silent. No-one saw the Marshal. No-one saw Silver.

She wept as though her heart were a Cloudlands ocean, capped by white clouds of sulphuric acid, underpinned by impossible deeps and bottomless rifts of grief. Pip stumbled about in a fug, unable to think or eat, unable to respond. Desolation ruled her heart.

Four Blues had died supporting her. Shimmerith and Chymasion recovered after a day of forced rest each–how they chafed and grumbled! Pip made mistakes, almost striking Arrabon down in battle as she mistook him for an enemy Green Shapeshifter. Nothing anyone said seemed to penetrate, either the kindness of Oyda, Mya’adara and Casitha, or the apologetic but inflexible words of Kassik as he forbade her to go find out if Silver was alive. “Not in your state,” he said bluntly. “You cannot risk this Island-World’s future for one double-crossing Herimor snake!”

He was right.
Oh, Silver!

Then there came a night when the Shadow Dragon hunted. Seventy-four Dragons entered the eternal fires.

The following morning, Pip woke in Shimmerith and Emblazon’s roost to find the Sapphire Dragoness asking Chymasion to take Amfyrion and Inzuriel down into the training caverns for their hatchling classes. With Oyda and Emblazon out on patrol, that left Pip alone with Shimmerith and Nak. She dressed pensively. An off-duty morning. What would she do? Rest? Ha! She wandered into the Riders’ bathroom to wash her face in the laver of cold water which was usually set there on a Jeradian hardwood dresser, along with Oyda’s oils, perfumes and womanly effects, and a few odds and ends that belonged to Nak.

“Islands’ greetings, Pygmy girl,” said Nak, decent for a change, trimming his beard with a dagger. “Flaming with the dawn, thou dusky–”

“Nak. I’m not in the mood.” Pip stared at him in the mirror. Her reflection was hollow-eyed, Nak’s unusually solemn.

“Fie, what of thy declaration of love everlasting, I ask thee?”

Her lips tried a twitch, but the movement only hurt. “Nak, I do love you, but–”

“Enough. It’s more than enough.” First a typically florid Nak gesture, then he turned and bent toward her. Pip froze as Nak kissed the top of her head. Nak? What possessed him? “You have to go, you know.”

“I, uh … no, I don’t. Kassik’s orders.” Nak snorted dismissively. “I’m being obedient, Nak.”

Nak began to hoot with laughter, then cut himself off abruptly. “Pip, my petal, my delicate jungle flower. Oh, windroc droppings on that nonsense! Pip, let’s be honest. Obedience is not your style. So I have taken the liberty of laying a variety of devious and despicable plans this day to help you be delightfully disobedient.”

He just could not resist making verbal floral arrangements. “Look, Nak, Kassik was very clear. And right. Fate of the world, hot-headed Pygmy nonsense, taking responsibility, unequivocal betrayal–message-hawk received. Loud and clear.”

“Don’t you take that vulgar tone with me, young lady!” Nak made yet another of his collection of rude noises.

“It’s true.”

“Kassik tried it before and look where it landed him!”

Pip flushed hotly at the reference to Master Kassik’s first wife. “Nak, that’s … that’s just …”

“Alright. Sorry. I’m only … great Islands, Pip. Fates aside, this is love. You don’t find it on every Island. And actually, this is the responsible thing to do because look at you, you’re a wreck.”

“You’re so considerate of a girl’s feelings.”

“No, you really are. Beautiful, but a wreck. A boot without a foot. A Dragoness who’s misplaced her fire. Useless to man or beast until your heart is revived.”

“Nak …” She clenched her fists. Fra’anior help her or she would punch him right through that mirror!

Nak, blast him, knew he was winning the argument and was smirking like a boy with his mouth stuffed full of sugar-bamboo sap. “Furthermore, I have recruited co-conspirators. You’ve no choice. One will advise, one will shield us and one will be your Rider.”

“I don’t want a Rider! I want Silver! I want him back. Curse it, Nak, I killed him …”

He held her gently as one sob–just one, a sob that tore her heart like a Dragon’s rending talons–did violence to her frame.

He whispered into her hair, “Trust me. This one, you cannot refuse.”

Knowing Nak had intended to rile her did not stop Pip from spinning away from him, hands on hips, her dark eyes sparking. “Try me, Rider Nak.”

He bowed fluidly, indicating the doorway to the main roost-chamber.

Pip stalked out in her best high dudgeon, chin high and little feet stamping an angry beat–anything to drown out her heart’s weeping. That Nak! Thought he could shift her grief, did he? She almost chuckled at the sight of Nak’s three recruits caught in guilty tableaux out in the roost, however. Shimmerith, Yaethi and … “Maylin? Maylin!”

Nak won.

Her friend made a stiff half-bow. Maylin said, “I blame Emmaraz. He bullied me into this.”

“Into what, exactly?” asked Pip.

“Raiding Eridoon Island in broad daylight,” said Nak.

“Convincing you to sway the Balance,” Maylin smiled. “I hope he’s worth it. I think he is.”

“Working with Shimmerith to redesign the craziest, most amazing shielding in history,” said Yaethi. “An effect only Istariela was ever capable of achieving.”

Pip lost control of her tears. She whispered, “I don’t understand. Why?”

When the others appeared lost for answers, Nak put his hand on her shoulder and said, “Because even the world’s worst romantic poet knows that the only way to ambush fate is by using one’s heart.”

* * * *

Five hours of headaches, two solid meals in Human form and one for a Pygmy Dragon, a great deal of frustration and a rush of blood to the collective heads of four people later, Pip and Shimmerith winged away from the roost upon gossamer wings, utterly invisible. More invisible than invisible, Nak joked, giving Shimmerith at least her twentieth hearty slap of approbation. Yaethi had dashed off to cover for them. Maylin rode Pip, not as her formal Rider, but as her friend.

Pip would have smiled gratefully at Nak, except she could see neither hide nor hair of his mount, never mind herself. Yaethi’s prismatic shield had seen to that. It blocked nothing–neither suns-light nor wind, nor dust nor magic, nor sound nor even radiation, nor any spectra of Draconic sight or senses. Instead, the prismatic effect folded all of these emissions or particles around the Dragon and passed them along to the other side, unchanged and undisturbed. The science of it was beyond Pip, but she did not mind. Her headache was worth it. She and Shimmerith had achieved Istariela’s fabled shield, perhaps imperfectly, thereby proving she was a Star Dragoness.

Proving they lacked both brains and the common sense accorded any gnat.

All she sensed was soundless, frictionless motion and telepathic thought. They could not work out how to bend thought around a Dragon’s awareness.

Feel for the oath-connection,
the Sapphire Dragoness’ voice intruded in her mind.
If he’s alive, it will be there. The Dragonfriend’s lore makes that clear.

I will,
said Pip.

Shimmerith’s mind conveyed the sound of Nak happily singing to himself a line from the vocal saga of Saggaz Thunderdoom, also famously a Sapphire Dragon:

Like wingéd lightning his mighty paw,

Struck the skies asunder!

Isn’t he the sweetest?
Shimmerith chuckled.
He is my Rider!

Nak had refused to tell Emblazon or Oyda. “Sticklers,” he sniffed. “They’d put a talon through this mad plan, make no mistake.”

They flew following Pip’s instinct through a perfect, cloudless Island-World afternoon, passing anxiously between dozens of Night-Dragon patrols and four layers of Island-shielding, all without incident. They were ghosts behind the crysglass pane of reality. The Dragons exchanged thoughts to keep together, to keep close. And as they passed that fourth barrier, Pip began to feel something. An umbilical in her mind. A knowledge of connection. Silver …