by Marc Secchia
Still, she was very snug. Curled up beneath an orrican wool blanket, her cheek rested upon a stalwart slab of muscle, the slight scarified ridges of which struck her as familiar, and his smell … oh, his tangy, ever so slightly soapstone-and-lime scent was just the pinnacle of masculine scrumptiousness –
His? His … what? Ardan!
By rights she should have leaped off the pillow-roll shrieking in shock. Zip, however, slipped in half a blink before Aranya lost ten years of her life, chortling, Relax, petal. Ardan’s healed.
Her eyes snapped wide, wide open.
Roaring rajals! Mad songs of thunderous joy and disbelief rolled from her head down through her chest, making her toes curl against his thighs. Soft breath puffed across her lips as Ardan lifted his mouth slightly from hers, chuckling like the scabrous Princess-kissing pirate he so clearly resembled in that instant. He grinned inanely at her reaction, watching how she searched his face, his eyes, with burgeoning wonder; how her hand flew to her mouth, stifling an inhalation of joy.
“Ardan? Ardan, are you … you are!”
“I am.”
“You’re … aye?”
He leaned forward to brush the fingers covering her mouth with a kiss. “That I am, Princess.”
“And you are –”
“I am decently clothed, as are you, dearest heart. I’ve missed you.”
Aargh, a blush! Aranya was unsure what shade exactly described the heat in her cheeks, but she would not have done the average volcano any shame.
She spluttered, “I-I-I …”
Rascal! He took advantage of her confusion to raid another kiss, and then another before she could recover so much as half a breath. Rainbows over Islands!
“A-Ardan –”
His strong fingers laced into her hair. “Kiss me like you mean it.”
“Ardan!”
“Mwa-ha-haaaa, nice squeal, my girl,” he chuckled evilly, before he evidently remembered that his acting might be misinterpreted, given as he had been the Thoralians’ hench-Dragon just a day or two before. “I – uh, I’m healed. Somewhat. I’m fully free from the Thoralians’ influence, anyhow. Sorry. I should have made that clear before the mean laugh. Dhazziala’s crew have been meddling around in my brain’s innards, which feel like mashed, fermented prekki-fruit – but I’m very much back on the right side of this war, I’ll have you know, Princess – mmm!”
“That’s better,” Aranya murmured when finding air again became a necessity. “I like the strong, silent type of man-Dragon.”
He sniffed, “Flying monkey droppings and worse!”
“Are you really …”
“Really, really, really,” Zip interrupted from Aranya’s own mouth. “Trust me, I checked.”
“Can we not snoop when I’m having a –”
“Kiss? So fussy.”
“Zuziana of Remoy!”
“You are betrothed to the man, might I point out? A smidgen of canoodling – or a Dragonship-load, for that matter – is neither here nor there in the estimation of most peoples upon most Isles.”
Ardan said, “I cannot express how very sorry I am, Aranya, for everything –”
“You tried to save me,” she replied.
His black-in-black eyes grew shadowed, and he drew away from her as far as their position beneath the covers allowed. “It seems I am always the one to be held, to be captured, to be used against you. You must be tired of chasing after me.”
“What is ten thousand leagues compared to waking like this?”
Ardan sighed.
Aranya so desperately wanted to reach for him, but his curled, defensive posture gave her pause. She did not wish to slight his honour, so crucial in Western Isles culture, yet the rush of their feelings was like standing beneath a fast Dragonwing as it swooped into battle, and the stillness of souls intersecting like ripples playing across the pond of reality; joining, changing, merging and separating. She felt humbled that this man should choose to stand by her when she had suffered so much. Seeing him restored was too much – too much for words, too much for tears, too precious a gift to allow herself to believe it, yet Aranya knew she must.
This was reality. It was far from perfect, but it was beautiful, and hers.
Oh! Aranya chuckled, “Would you look at that? I’m glowing.” She held up her hand in the chamber’s semidarkness. A faint luminescence played beneath her skin, as if stars sported in her veins and peeked out from beneath her fingernails, her knuckles, even the scars that creased her skin and gnarled her joints. Inner starlight.
“I feel beaten,” he responded after a long, searching pause. “Beat, and beaten. But this – your light – helps me keep the faith.”
“Same.”
His arm drew her close. Uncurling, he shifted until they lay nose to nose in their own space, just a man and a woman affirming the intimate truths that intertwined their lives. “Together?”
“Forever.”
She saw her shining face reflected in his pupils. They talked quietly for a few minutes more by the light of her joy. Soon they must rise, and see to the fractured state of their alliance.
* * * *
Patience was not a virtue Zip possessed in great abundance, but this day put her reserves to the test as an ultimately fruitless seven-hour meeting with the full Council of the Lost Isles unfolded at less than scintillating pace. Yiisuriel’s recalcitrance wore Aranya and Ardan thin when they should both have been allowed to rest, or been tracking down the elusive Chameleon. All this over a matter of history. It was not even Iridiana’s fault!
Sitting in the great Council chamber, she quietly checked off the conclusions on her fingers while Aranya communicated surreptitiously with Leandrial for a second time.
One, Chaos was evil. Dragons of white fires mistrusted such a power because of the fundamental distinction they drew between Chaos and the works of Order, as best exemplified by Fra’anior’s creative endeavours but also a path trod by all right-thinking Dragonkind. Uphold the lore. Build civilisation. Teach magic and its uses to the next generation. To tear down thoughtlessly was to act chaotically, against the fundamental spirit and legacy of the Great Onyx. Two, Fra’anior hated Chaos because he had been betrayed – a tale related at considerable length by Yiisuriel – by an Ancient Dragoness called Iosaxxioa, whose core powers included a mastery of many forms. Chaos magic, historians determined later. As best Zuziana could fathom from the various accusations flapping about the chamber stuffed with overheated Dragons and inscrutable Lost Islanders, Iosaxxioa had been an eccentric, a misfit, amongst her more illustrious kin. She had come under suspicion as a result, and ultimately been ostracised and driven away by her peers, perhaps the unwitting victim of one of Dramagon’s internecine plots. Three, Iosaxxioa had been an Iolite Blue – the same colour as Azhukazi – and her Chaos powers thus by draconic logic inextricably linked Iridiana to a heritage of betrayal, necromancy and suspicion.
This had been the point of the latter two hours of debate. Aranya argued that Iridiana’s actions proved her character and worth. Yiisuriel raged, fulminated and lambasted all arguments advanced against her own position. She knew no reason.
Eventually, having made a general agreement to reverse course so that the Air Breathers could ascertain a viable route to the North in pursuit of the First Egg, the meeting broke up irascibly but without fisticuffs or outright collapse of the alliance.
Zip sighed. Small mercies.
Ri’arion immediately flagged their attention. What did Leandrial say, ladies?
Aranya replied, Ardan. Sapphire. Zip. Leandrial is hurt but adamant that she will assume charge of Asturbar and Iridiana for the time being, until some final decision is reached – until, according to Yiisuriel’s almost-directive, I decide to cast them out of our fellowship, since apparently that decision is mine to take and everyone trusts a Star Dragoness will follow white fires truth and bow to her grand shell-father’s ways!
Wow. Didn’t know you had entire volcanoes of sarcasm in yo
u, petal, Zuziana observed.
Saddling Aranya with the decision – how mature of them, Ardan growled, drawing her into his embrace, but it was a stiff, angry affair altogether. This is the worst form of injustice! It is wrong on so many levels. Beloved –
I take it you are with me then, Ardan?
He measured her fires with a gruff inward laugh. Aye, my vehement Dragoness, that I am!
Zip? Ri’arion? Sapphire?
Likewise! they chorused, and Sapphire trilled her approbation after.
Good, it’s decided then. Aranya wiped her brow tiredly. Let me explain. Ri’arion, we’ll need you to tarry here to oversee the training we initiated in order to better combat the Thoralians’ techniques next time. I propose that Ardan, Zip and I make a supplies run. Our sweet parakeets have very few requests of their own, but I for one need to speak with Leandrial, and I should make apologies to Iridiana. I don’t want to lose them so soon.
They’d be justified in jettisoning us, Ri’arion said, accepting the packing list from Aranya. I’ll see to – a large mirror? This is Iridiana’s request?
The Immadian shrugged. Who knows? I can’t imagine she has a narcissistic bent.
Maybe Iridiana’s faking the shyness? Zip added dubiously, then laughed at her observation. And maybe the suns orbit the Moons.
Indeed, it would be good for Aranya and Ardan to spend a few hours together, away, said the former monk, scratching his bald pate self-consciously. When Zuziana giggled, he formed his features into a mock scowl, and said lightly, I’m learning how to be romantic. It’s working, isn’t it?
Marvellous, said Ardan, clapping the other man on the shoulder. I’ll snip a leaf out of your scroll, my friend.
Sapphire said, See babies first?
Aye, agreed Aranya. Departure in one hour?
Keeping this alliance together was proving harder than she had thought. The Dragon Riders of the Vassal States had one set of ideas, the Land Dragon recruits quite another, and the Air Breathers, she had learned, were as stubborn as the mountains they were. Thrice now they had battled the Thoralians and this time won a partial victory, but the Egg remained at large. Now was hardly the moment for a Star Dragoness to wish she could go rogue – was it?
When it was just her and Zip Dragonback, life had seemed so simple.
Terrifying, but simple. All they had done was declare war on an evil empire – two teenagers, the wits they possessed between them, and a fledgling’s knowledge of how to be a Dragoness.
As disruptive as Chaos itself.
Quietly, Aranya summoned those memories to herself. King Beran would have said that oftentimes, there were too many choices. No person could rightly know whence a particular path over the Isles might lead, or what the outcome might be, for good or for ill. In such situations it was no cliché to follow the heart or to do what one knew to be right, consequences be tossed into a Cloudlands volcano. That was how Beran had snagged himself a Star Dragoness to wife, after all. From everything Aranya knew, they had been happy together – hounded to the ends of the Islands over the course of a decade by an implacable foe – but deliriously, over-the-rainbows happy.
Could she hope for such bliss with her Shadow?
She must put her affairs here in order.
Huari, Gang, Ri’arion, I’ve another task for you to perform meantime, she said. Something I need you to keep very quiet indeed.
* * * *
Upon an evening’s stormy blast and bluster, the Shadow Dragon of the Western Isles cloaked and shielded himself and his Rider, and cast himself exuberantly into the depths in pursuit of Leandrial and her two passengers. The Land Dragoness had taken them an hour’s travel north to a relatively stable under-Cloudlands region, while they awaited the results of this day-long Council. No good news on that front, yet his hearts bubbled and his flight needed no ferocious wind to remain buoyant. He was physically in fine shape for a relatively short flight, but the mental degeneration would take longer to heal, he had been warned. No mind. He carried Aranya upon his back. She was arguably the most powerful healer in the Island-World.
Her touch was enough; her shining, a constant source of wonderment. That was because of him, she had declared. Him!
Even now as he adjusted his aerodynamic shields before winging powerfully across the initial adverse current, he might steal a glance over his shoulder and see seated there, ahead of two saddlebags, a slender young woman of mysterious mien, for she was cloaked and hooded, and her face further concealed by a full veil that left only her eyes showing. Eyes lambent with power. A face so radiant, it lit up the inside of her hood. And her joy was so contagious, bubbling like many zestful springs, that his crusty warrior heart had become awash with half-formed poetic attempts to evoke how she made him feel. If he was shadow and absence, her light was his filling. If he was darkness, she was his polar opposite. Rather than banishing his Shadow, her light seemed to make him more substantial; darker, more powerful, and purer than ever before.
He truly liked the man he wanted to be around her.
Catching a counter-current, Ardan rode its buffeting with wings supple to its demands, the shearing effects of turbulence and the muscle-straining density of the atmosphere at this level, while he navigated steadily toward a deep mountain range, whose peaks reached some four miles beneath the Cloudlands. That was where Leandrial had, symbolically he guessed, taken refuge beyond a canyon which could not be crossed by the Air Breathers, not without the laborious and perilous effort of re-floating them again. He could not see her as yet amongst the thickets of obsidian spires, for the Land Dragoness was surprisingly well camouflaged and the air currents thick with debris, obscuring the vista from time to time as they winged steadily for an hour over a landscape of blasted emerald-hued badlands and bottomless black ravines.
At length his draconic eyesight picked up an anomaly down in a sheltered dell of sorts, where a white crack betrayed the fact that Leandrial observed their approach.
Great one, he said respectfully.
Ardan, we await the pleasure of your company, she said warmly, but he thought he detected notes of grief and anger in her voice.
We come.
Surging through the air, he hastened to her side, noting how she had concealed herself amidst the debris. Ardan’s quick eye scanned the visible expanse of her grey-green hide, checking for fresh wounds or signs of healing, but those he saw stemmed from the previous battle at the Suald-dak-Doon and were already well on their way to being fully healed. Considering her venerable age, Leandrial was in fine shape thanks in the main to Aranya’s ministrations. He soared up over the hump of her massive right shoulder, angling past her relatively modest skull ruff, sleek and frayed in places by the effects of battle and time, and swept across her cheek above her hoary muzzle, shooting past her cavern-sized nostrils toward the front of her mouth, which cracked open for them. Back-winging deftly, he rode the choppy currents to sideslip over her massive, spatulate teeth. He brought them to a neat landing upon her tongue.
Arching his neck proudly, Ardan raised his paw, intending to bring his Star to her own landing just in front of Asturbar and his nude girlfriend, who hid shyly in his lee.
“Help with the bags, Your Majesty?” the Marshal said dryly.
“That’s how one addresses kings in my culture,” Aranya returned, hefting the bags with aplomb. Not only was she no weakling, she was a Dragoness.
Zip snorted acidly, “Listen, you lump-tastic man mountain, I’ll have you know that this Princess carries her own bags, and she prefers friends to call her Aranya – and don’t think I haven’t noticed you rolling your eyes at the Star Dragoness-worship business. Well, so do I, mind.”
The girl chuckled, as did Ardan.
“Greetings to you, other-Aranya,” the soldier offered. If either he or Iridiana noticed the unearthly gleam of the Immadian’s countenance, they gave no sign.
“Other-Aranya? Of all the nerve!” the Remoyan howled, overriding Aranya’s attempt at speaking. “You
– yes you, fidgety silver girl with the incredible legs – slap him for me, would you? I don’t have hands these days, but if I had …”
“She does have incredible legs,” Asturbar agreed with boyish eagerness. Slap. “Ouch!”
Ooh. Romance, Dragoness-style. He agreed with Aranya’s assessment. He enjoyed this girl’s spirit; the Marshal would clearly need to be on his toes. He seemed to handle his girlfriend’s chaotic nature extremely well, however. Perhaps they could swap notes on how to handle errant stars and misbehaving chaos phenomena?
This seemed an opportune moment to demonstrate his own command of romantic parlance, the Dragon decided. He rumbled zestfully, “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one pair of legs in the Island-World for me. Trust me, I’ve looked – both sides of the Rift.” MMM-GRRR!
Ha! Another blush! For one who was avowedly not the blushing sort, being more of a vaporise-her-enemies-with-incandescent-starlight kind of girl, Aranya could certainly serve up an impressive shade of rose when properly ambushed. His culture made little of the balladeers’ obsession with the maidenly blush, but on a Northerner whose skin tone evinced only the faintest yearning toward tan despite the brutal suns-shine of Wyldaroon, the effect was fascinating indeed. He was still chuckling as she enclosed him in an opacity shield and snapped an order to transform.
Ardan growled, “Why don’t you come in here, beloved?”
“Put some clothes on,” Aranya retorted.
“They can’t see.”
“Male Dragons,” the Princess explained to their allies. “Here, Iridiana, this is one of yours, I believe.”
Clothing? Highly overrated around Shapeshifters, he had discovered. Even more overrated around his girl, and he would have to watch the direction of his gaze around Iridiana, or Zuziana would find some pretext to roast his … well, to roast him. Thoroughly.
“Ooh, my trousers are stuck,” he complained. “Aranya, will you help me, please?”
“Asturbar’s right on his way,” Zuziana cut in. “Woof, is that half a dress you have there, Sparkles? Takes me right back to summer in Remoy. My poor ex-monk was so embarrassed by the attire – all Helyon silks, and not much material on display, either. Nice pick on the colour, girl. Truly suits your eyes. Is your skin natural?”