Beautiful Fury

by Marc Secchia

  They had been travelling at a very high altitude of three and a half leagues above the Cloudlands in a tripartite bid to avoid the insects, evade detection and avail themselves of the reduced friction advantages of the thinner air. But they were not catching up with Leandrial fast enough.

  The Shadow Dragon stretched his wings, driving himself to yet greater speeds. They must not arrive late. He felt it in his bones.

  * * * *

  That evening, the fast-flying team passed over two groups of patrolling Dragonships and put down near a large village with the intent of securing culturally appropriate clothing in case they needed to infiltrate the Ruby City. From the cover of a redolent patch of berry bushes, Aranya and Yazina regarded the bucolic village scene with shocked inhalations.

  Ardan snorted appreciatively. “Mmm, I’d like to see you in skirts that short, Aranya.”

  “That is … so inappropriate!”

  He drawled, “They do cover the essentials. I see that Iridiana –”

  “Barely! This was a bad idea.”

  Zip put in, “I like their style. See, they wear tight silk shorts underneath those slightly flared thigh-length dresses so that, as Ardan noted, they do just about conceal the necessities.”

  “Thigh?” he protested. “Barely.”

  Aranya prodded Ardan in the ribs. “Stop drooling this instant. It’s despicable.”

  “I’m just imagining a certain Princess of Immadia so clad …” He ogled her legs outrageously. “A veritable banquet of delights. Right. Shadowy theft in process.”

  “Men!” she accused his invisible, departing person.

  As Human Ardan shadowed away in search of supplies and necessities, for which they planned to leave jewels by way of payment, Aranya focussed inwardly, reaching for that faint trace of Iridiana’s familiar signature. Leandrial was virtually invisible, but the touch of her maybe-sister’s mind was a lure too great to resist; similarly to her instinctual connection with Ardan, she had discovered she could detect Iridiana from afar. Leandrial would have called this an echo of Balance. Shortly, she hissed in exasperation.

  “We’re still not catching up!”

  Zip said, “The maths remains firmly against, right? They’re almost a day ahead –”

  “Twenty-three hours,” Aranya clarified.

  “Pernickety Princess. Aye, and we have two full twenty-seven hour periods to traverse the 854 leagues to Sanzukê. At our best speed we’ll arrive half a day behind them, give or take. And I can’t shake this feeling that you and Ardan should not overextend yourselves with those tricks you played on each other when we were approaching the Mistral Fires.”

  “What do you sense, Zip?”

  “Trouble.”

  “Nothing unusual where you’re concerned, Remoy. What sort of trouble?”

  “The talons-and-fangs sort.”

  Aranya shook her head. “Against Iridiana’s people? I’d like to avoid that if – hmm. That’s odd.”

  “Odder than an Immadian contemplating showing an illicit quarter-inch of ankle?”

  “No, you ridiculous prekki-head,” she said, chuckling hoarsely. Aranya wondered if she was coming down with a cold. “I’m detecting flickers of Ardan’s Shadow self against those buildings over there. He’s definitely making a disturbance which should not be possible in the Shadow state – and it’s not like him to be careless – or something even more peculiar is going on. I don’t like this. We should withdraw.”

  Zip’s tsk-tsking informed Aranya that she felt retreat was an unnecessarily conservative measure, but after warning Ardan, they hiked back to a small dell about half a mile from the settlement, deep in conversation. Sapphire also seemed unusually chary, and the Chrysolitic dragonets restive. Ardan rejoined them partway with supplies, and corroborated Aranya’s observation. His presence had clearly been detected; the Islanders had rushed through him with a great uproar and rather less effectiveness. The Shadow was more than annoyed. He was worried. He marched up and down the dell, his bare feet trampling gorgeous mauve flowers and tiny white pepper-daises with abandon as he fulminated, seemingly without drawing breath, for a good ten minutes.

  Eventually, Aranya rose and seized him by the right bicep. “Ardan. Calm down.”

  Apparently his version of calm involved imitating an active volcano. Yazina looked alarmed.

  Zip said, “Try flirting. That always works for me.”

  Touching her hot, taut throat in disbelief at her elevated levels of concern, Aranya said slowly, “Look, friends, we’re stuck between an Isles cliff and a volcano. I’m going to call on our resources.”

  “What resources?” growled the Western Isles warrior. “And don’t tell me those ruddy strange chain-linked Dragonships aren’t on our tails, too. What technology or magic do these people possess, that they can detect my Shadowed self? This is beyond forbearance!”

  “I’m off to consult with Aunty Hualiama.”

  Gnarr. “Very well,” said Ardan. “I’ll keep a Dragon’s eye on our surroundings. Keep your mystical muddling to a minimum, alright?”

  Aranya tilted an eyebrow rather precipitately at him.

  “Aye, and I’ll try to be less grumpy about it,” he grumped, but moved to clasp her hand against the swell of his bicep, and then he guided her fingers to stroke the mound of iron-hard muscle. “In my culture, we flirt like this. Mmm, aye. Doesn’t that feel ever so … squeezable?”

  “Ardan!”

  He pressed his lips to her scarred knuckles. “Aranya?”

  “You are incorrigibly … ah, whatever!”

  “Desperate,” Zip suggested.

  To Aranya’s further surprise, the dark Western Islander actually managed to colour noticeably. “I am not desperate!”

  The Immadian Princess snorted, “What are we teaching the teenagers, might I ask?”

  “Bah. Less of the mendacity and more of thee, Immadia,” Zip ad-libbed, imitating Nak rather badly.

  On that absurd note, Aranya sat down cross-legged, closed her eyes, and prepared to consult her relative, the illustrious Dragonfriend.

  Unsuccessfully.

  Over a light dinner of nuts, fruits and unfamiliar bread that was so dark it was almost black, they discussed the strange interference both Ardan and Aranya had experienced without reaching any sensible conclusion, and decided to snatch a few hours of sleep before taking off once again and trying to push right through, two full days on the wing.

  Aranya could not drift off. Her thoughts were too preoccupied with Yazina’s sleepy question just before the teen had shuttered her eyes. ‘Princess, if the Chameleon did infest my father, what are the chances he’s still alive?’ She had no answers. Ardan had replied honestly but gently that they should hope for the best but prepare for the worst – exactly how she felt about her own mother. Why, o Fra’anior? Why? Why had he been absent from her dreams for so long? Why could an Ancient Dragon not simply lift this burden from her shoulders?

  That was one answer she knew, but knowing made the situation no less painful. Hope could be so tenuous. So unattainable in the now – which was both its power and its affliction, she realised, shifting restively before stilling herself. Ardan must not wake. He had been working so hard.

  Through the canopy of aromatic jastunimki hardwoods fringing the dell, with their characteristic clover-shaped leaves hanging from spreading boughs, Aranya watched the stars watching her. Maybe out there were other Stars like her, or perhaps unimaginably different beings enwrapped in robes of eternal light – beings who spoke in chimes like the notes that tinkled upon her very brow now, it seemed, drawn to her – she laughed soundlessly to herself – elemental starriness? Her throat strained to reproduce the lucent sounds she had heard once before.

  /Stardrop./ Were such a miracle true … This stardrop needs serious help, her Dragoness helpfully teased.

  No words came, but a transcendent awareness of bourgeoning peace caught Aranya entirely unawares. Breathtaking! It was as if at this moment, every last scintill
a of her being breathed in oneness with the cosmos, and whispered poems of effulgent enigma into her soul. Was this the wonder which had gripped those Ancient Dragon star travellers, or had it been terror? What power in the universe could possibly threaten an Ancient Dragon?

  Despite these thoughts, the unexpected sense of tranquillity only deepened.

  “Awake, beloved?”

  Ardan’s husky whisper was accompanied by an equable squeeze of her arm. She had pillowed her head upon his stomach and lay at right angles to him, with his left hand resting warmly upon her crooked elbow. Just a touch possessive. An oh-so-draconic, mine. She liked that.

  “The moons are bright,” she temporised, struggling to articulate her feelings.

  “That’s you lighting up the dell,” said he.

  “Oh.”

  His hand moved to her cheek. “So erudite this evening? What troubles you?”

  “I just – beware!”

  Mercy! Her light winked out as Aranya reflexively yanked her hood over her face. Sight? No mind. She had other senses that responded to the sound and scent of soldiers on the slight night breeze, and the muffled wuthering of turbine propellers as unfamiliar Dragonships approached. Through Ardan’s sight she realised that the crews had stilled the engines in order to approach undetected, but the slight forward motion still stirred the propellers and that was what she had heard. Great nets shot over the trees. The cords glowed greenish in her magic-enhanced sight rather than the familiar chains of runic magic language she knew; that fact alone stopped her from transforming.

  Great leaping rajals, these people were smart; better-prepared for draconic or even Shapeshifter incursion than she had ever imagined!

  Ardan –

  GRRRAAOORRGGHH!! The Shadow Dragon’s monstrous challenge split the night, making Yazina scream. CAPTURE ME, WILL YOU? Dark crimson fires lashed Aranya’s mind as her mate went feral, charging into the darkness, tangling up in the nets, demolishing trees and leaping at the incoming Dragonships. Such was his power, even the anchored nets did not stay his crazed course. Threads of pain laced his hide and then pierced him sorely as the soldiers struck back with their weapons, great multi-stringed upright bows and ten-foot lances tipped with the same green … mineral?

  Aranya paused. “Yazina. Steady now. Sapphire?”

  Ready for Ari’s word, panted the dragonet.

  Collect your brood but be very, very careful of those nets, alright? That green mineral is dangerous.

  A mineral akin to chrysolite? Its antithesis? Even the houses of that village had been constructed from this green stone, which somehow appeared reactive to draconic life and even to the Shadow state – or Flow, as her Aunt’s writings named it, she remembered.

  Inflamed by pain, Ardan leaped and smashed three of the Dragonships together, bringing an end to the rain of green-tipped arrows. His body looked as if he had run headlong into a gigantic thorn bush. His backside alone had to sport forty quarrels. He ripped up a tree and managed to kinetically hurl it back across the clearing where they had slept, damaging a further flight of Dragonships. The slender vessels, linked by light chains for reasons beyond Aranya’s ken – they are their own net, Zip panted as if she was running about in there, pregnant with triplets – slapped together and tangled themselves up.

  Seizing Yazina by the hand, Aranya ran in the direction of Ardan’s thrashing. That was probably the last direction the teen would have wanted to run, but the instinct to rescue her Dragon overrode all else. The dragonets fluttered all about them in a cloud, chittering in alarm.

  Ardan. ARDAN!

  Nothing. It was as if he had vanished into a black spiral of madness, his normally unflappable presence subsumed by the most basal parts of his draconic being. A reaction to being captured again?

  See the light, Sha’aldior. Come to my light.

  He struggled and heaved, entangling his wings still further. Despite his enormous bulk wrecking the forest, she felt no fear, only the rising of pure flame within her being. She had no weapons but her hands, yet gifted with inner fire, she was her own weapon. She released Yazina for fear she would burn the girl. Flame flared from her hands, encasing them up to the wrists, and Aranya hacked at the trailing hawsers, looped about the tree trunks Ardan dragged along behind him in his feral rage. Not enough. She needed whiter, more beautiful fire. Drawing air deep into her blighted lungs, she summoned a memory of her mother, not as one struck down, but envisioning her in the full panoply and beauty of her White Dragoness form.

  Izariela!

  Her cry sped her past Yazina, who had drawn twin serrated daggers from her waistband, weapons as long as the girl’s own forearms. Yazina sawed vigorously at the hawser. Nice! Spinning about the axis of her torso, Aranya danced into the netting wrapped around Ardan’s left wing with powerful but not terribly balletic sweeps of her hands. How Hualiama would have laughed. The metal- and mineral-infused cord resisted, but the purity of her purpose was greater. Springing up onto Ardan’s reflexively raised wingtip, she ran deftly along the leading wing edge, slicing with instinctive accuracy. So focussed was she, the Immadian did not even touch his hide with her fire. One wing freed; up onto the mound of his shoulder, striking left and right!

  Net incoming! Zuziana shouted, drawing close as they had learned during those first few battles against Yolathion’s Dragonships.

  Aranya stabbed her arms upward in a star shape and spun again, slicing the enveloping net open before it could enmesh Ardan. She bounded up his long neck, her flying feet barely seeming to touch the tough hide alongside his spine spikes, before she forward-somersaulted over his hugely flared skull ruff and landed squarely between his startled eyes.

  Kneeling, she gazed right into his flaming orbs and shouted, Dragon, you are MINE!

  Snick! Swish! Slash! Her flashing white blades bracketed his muzzle.

  Gnarr-gurk? the Shadow Dragon blurted out.

  “With me!”

  Aranya dived into a tucked somersault again, somehow passing between two intersecting lances as she parted the flame spurting from his nostrils, and landed awkwardly ahead of his forepaws. The massive Dragon looked utterly bemused as she blurred beneath him again, cutting and slicing about her path like a demented woman flailing at swamp insects. Despite the collapse of her right knee, she finished the job with aplomb.

  The netting sloughed off his body.

  Suddenly, his guttural laughter was all relief and admiration. Thou!

  With the hawser at his tail sawn through, the Dragon found himself fully freed. He swept the girls up in one forepaw and Sapphire and her brood in the other, coiled his thighs, and rocketed skyward, easily outstripping another two catapult-launched nets.

  Whap! Whap! He drove upward, sweeping his tail to jink them around a second, higher layer of Dragonships which had not managed to completely draw the trap shut.

  How did they do that? he growled. Thanks, ladies.

  “Oh!” Yazina gasped as she fumbled a dagger.

  Dropping fifty feet, Ardan lined Aranya up to snag the weapon. His body blurred and appeared to destabilise as he Shadowed, but he was still pinned by the strange quarrels – only by their tips, Aranya noticed peripherally, as Yazina howled in pain. Arrow through the foot! For Ardan the experience was even more uncomfortable. He had green stone fragments embedded inside his lungs, dangerously close to his second heart, and up in his skull beside the lower brain stem. Aranya unleashed healing power, then belatedly ordered him to Shadow again. Her telekinesis forced the jagged fragments back out the way they had entered his body before she soothed away the pain as best she could. It would take time to work on the right healing paths, a luxury they could not afford right now.

  Aranya touched his mind. Physical deflection shields, Dragon.

  Complying.

  Storm winds could do what Shadow could not, apparently, given this mysterious technology. In seconds Ardan darted between a quartet of intersecting Dragonships, folding his wings to avoid their chain links before he speare
d into the night.

  Storm winds. Light. Chrysolitic dragonets. Flow.

  There had to be a crazy, brilliant, eminently workable idea in here somewhere. The Amethyst Shapeshifter bit her lip, curling in upon herself as she focussed deeply. She wasn’t a pinch on the engineer her Aunt had been – or was – but she did rather make a habit of turning the impossible on its head.

  She might not know why something worked, just that it did.

  Did Chaos pause to ask permission of ordinary physical laws? Did light ask permission of the night? Did a waterfall beg the chance to hurl itself joyously into the abyss …

  “She’s laughing to herself in there,” Ardan commented.

  “I know. Some sort of madness that stems from snowy mountains,” Zip averred. “Let’s get these Riders onto your back, Ardan.”

  Aranya said, “Aye, and then we need to surround you with the dragonets, Ardan, and work out how we travel through Flow space. I’ve an idea that I fervently hope will be absolutely brilliant. If not – we might just arrive too late to save Iridiana and Asturbar. We’ve already lost far too much to allow this. Will you work with me?”

  * * * *

  It took the better part of fifteen hours for the combined efforts of the companions to produce the desired result, but Aranya was her usual implacable self and Zip, although she would have preferred to be catching a few winks herself – intangible pregnancy was so tiring – thought it the better part of comradeship to stick with her best friend all the way through. To provide useful commentary. Jokes. Encouragement. General annoyance.

  Her contribution was nothing if not memorable, Ardan grunted at one point.

  As the Shadow Dragon speared across a brilliant night sky and onward into a dawn of blazing orange fires over serrulated, perfectly outlined white mountain peaks, they tried and discarded literally hundreds of formations and possibilities. Flow was an energy state they barely understood, a way of seeing the Island-World as if matter itself were constellations of infinitely tiny brilliant motes interacting in ways Zip had never imagined. Even Aranya’s instinctual grasp of physical magic needed to be entirely re-learned and reimagined here.