by Marc Secchia
Blergh! he spat, taken aback. “You’re serious?”
“Sad,” she said.
Reaching out, he gave her an awkward paw hug. “I know that these are meant to work marvels for the Human heart by a process no Dragon understands.”
She shivered. “I haven’t had a great many hugs in my life. Nahritu-N’shula was not a believer in physical affection. I had most of mine from a nurse companion who travelled with us for some years, because an eminent Psyromantic Mage could not be bothered with caring for a whinging infant.”
So bitter, at eleven years old.
This was her life’s experience. Deliberately, he said, “Well, I haven’t had many hugs either. Very undraconic. In fact, many Dragons believe Humans carry unnameable infectious diseases. The way they talk, you’d imagine their scales were in danger of falling off.”
“Like yours?” Azania said, pulling at his tail.
To say he jumped was an understatement. He nearly leaped out of his scales. WHAT?
The Princess held up a scale. “I think you might be shedding.”
“DRAGONS DO NOT … sorry, but …”
She prodded at her ears. “Please, Dragon, I understand that you’re upset, but those sonic effects are going to burst my eardrums one of these days. It hurts when you’re that loud.”
“Sorry!”
“I didn’t mean to scare you, but don’t Dragons lose scales all the time?”
He stared at the patch on his mid-tail. Not like that. Not as if he had mange. Lifting the next one over with his talon, he felt how loose it was. How flimsy. Upon investigation, he noticed many other brittle patches peppered up and down his flanks, along his back, and right down to the end of his tail.
Not to mention the holes the green had clawed in his hide, oozing copious quantities of silver blood. No flying on today.
He said, “My quest for new fires appears to have taken an unexpected turn.”
“Plot twist,” said the Princess.
“I don’t like plot twists; they hurt,” Dragon growled sulkily. “Could I have a new author, please?”
Azania smiled, “I’ll hire a decent one, tomorrow. Instant new coat of scales. For now, let’s get you patched up, my friend. I don’t like the idea of you leaking quite so much.”
“Dragons do not leak!”
* * * *
Unfortunately, that was not entirely true. He oozed. A lot. Nor had the Terror Clan beast bothered to clean his talons before tucking into his guts with zest. Desperately wanting a swim to clean off and relieve his inflamed scales, Dragon wallowed about in the shallows but still had to flame the waters regularly to keep the little pests from nipping around his ankles. When one absconded with a scale, he decided that enough was enough. In what may have been described as a temper tantrum, which he should have grown out of by the time he was five, he turned fifty feet of river into a steam bath.
The water did not care, but the barbecued fish did.
With utter predictability, his fish dinner tasted as disgusting as it looked. Spiny, oily and altogether disagreeable.
Time for a nap on that sandbank.
“Tuck you in with a duck-down pillow and silken sheets, Dragon?” Azania cooed.
“Watch out, I’m known for my biting humour.”
“Aye, your jokes have a real snap.”
“Sharp wit, Princess.”
“I have you to sharpen my claws upon, gnarr,” she chuckled, pretending her fingers were rending talons. Decent impression. Never in a million years would he admit how amusing she was.
“How’s that hole in your hide, Highness?”
“Shall we compare? Or are you just going to be all ‘holier than thou?’ ”
This time he guffawed so hard, he sprayed sand in her face.
Served her right.
He added, “I am holier than thou, but then, I have much more scope to be holy than you.” Flexing his shoulder muscles to illustrate the point with suitable draconic gravitas, he reached out to chuck her beneath the chin. “Quantity over quality, say I.”
“The art of the self-defeating argument.”
“I am perfection personified.”
“How do you personify a Dragon? Dragonify?”
“Good point. On a more serious note, is your sister alright?”
“Long but shallow scratch, thankfully. The armour took care of the worst, but that piece is never going to be wearable again. Even Yardi can’t rescue it.”
The armourer nodded. “That wasn’t a friendly pat upon the shoulder.”
“My first all-out Dragon battle. Yours?”
Yardi nodded pensively.
The silly question being a different, related art. Chuckling to himself, Dragon went to chat to Azania. They needed to work out a plan to get Yarimda up to a height she would never have been before. He had to admit to a longing for it just to be the two of them again. Maybe that day would come again. For now, he must be a parent with responsibilities.
Having opted not to light a fire that evening for fear of being spied upon from afar, they slept a short ways from the river, under cover of a large copse of gum trees. In the morning, they rose lazily from their sandy beds. A couple of their number decided they might not be leaking too badly, and within an hour, were on their way on a north-westerly heading, up toward the snowy slopes of the higher mountains. The battle had taken far more out of him than he had imagined, Dragon discovered. It was he who had to call for an early lunch break.
After lunch, they flew two more shorter stints, ending in a green valley of medium height, one endless meadow of mauve flowers that ran for twenty miles or more up into the Tamarine Range. At Yarimda’s request, they strolled along slowly for an hour, enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine and the fragrant mountain airs.
“So clean. So pure!” Inzashu exclaimed, filling her lungs with delight.
One forgot what it was like to see the world, Dragon told himself, doing the same. Adjusting his spectacles, he gazed about. Forget about the dusty heat and all that death down in the desert – yet he could not help but consider how the sands would run dark with blood once the Skartun armies returned in the full panoply of their might, their dark-tufted helms waving in the breeze. He paused to examine wildflowers close up, and told Inzashu how he would bury her in snow up to her neck.
“Oh, I’ve never seen snow before!” she cried. “Only from a distance, like this. Skartun doesn’t have snow. Is it truly cold?”
“Can you feel the chill in the air? That’s a foretaste.”
“Aye. It’s … bracing.”
He did not have the heart to clarify that they were barely up to one-third of the height they would need to fly to reach Juggernaut’s lair. Instead, he told her that tomorrow, they would be flying over snowfields and between peaks that never lost their white robes. With an ounce of luck, she might see wolves or panthers, and most probably they would be met by a Dragon or two – hopefully friendly ones this time, on the alert for intruders in their territory. He picked pensively at his scales.
When it was time to put his best paw forward, he was looking worse and worse. If he did not know better, he feared to lose the entire coat of scales. What happened then? He had never heard of a draconic moult. Perhaps this was a peculiarity of Sea Dragons?
“Oceans on your mind, young Dragon?” Yarimda inquired.
“A bit,” he admitted.
“Could we find a place to rest? I grow weary, even of joy.”
“At once.” She gave him a withering glance that suggested a keen youngster was being far too polite. “Honoured Yarimda, it might sound trite, but I was worrying about my scales. Dragons of the Tamarine Mountains are not known to moult.”
“A worm forms a chrysalis, and out comes a butterfly.”
There, old narked Dragon made his appearance with a low growl. Worm! She dared the comparison?
Yarimda arched her left eyebrow.
He chose to say, “I would make for a severely overweight butterfly.”
“Oh, severely,” she agreed. “This old woman was trying to come up with a plausible link between the probable origin of your egg and the change to the Sea Dragon migration.”
“Indeed?”
“I remembered a tale I once heard in my youth, of a Dragon who was tragically killed in a storm – near the Kingdom of Amboraine, actually. Do you know of Bonewhite Valley?” He shivered. “Aye. How is it, Dragon, that after all these years – decades, even – the Dragonkind still have a communal aversion to that place? Almost as if there is a racial memory shared from dam to egg, and Dragon to Dragon.”
He could only shake his muzzle. Deep, uncanny lore.
She said, “Here’s a nice spot. Let’s camp here. Azania, would you be a dear and prepare me a sweet herbal brew?”
“Of course, Yarimda. What were you and Dragon talking about?”
“Creepy things,” he intoned, blowing on her hair. “Eerie, ghostly stories.”
“Stop bothering your Princess like that, young Dragon,” Yarimda said tartly, rapping her walking stick against his lower jaw.
Azania thought she could hide that smile from him? Wretch!
He threatened her with a talon behind the old woman’s back. Azania pasted on an innocent expression.
After repeating the story for the Princess, Yarimda added, “I wondered if there might not be a scent memory, to use the Draconian word, which changed the Sea Dragons’ behaviour. Say there was a place from which your egg was stolen, be it by force or by guile, to your dam a tragedy no less than that of Bonewhite Valley. Say that place became to Sea Dragons just such an aversion – nothing you ever think about or could put a talon to – which made them take a different route.”
He rasped, “Where? Up north and all the way around the Vaylarn Archipelago?”
It made sense. With the route changed, the Sea Serpents had found the seas between Vaylarn and the mainland much to their liking. That spelled the end of Azerim’s fleet, and indeed, all coastal shipping from Lymarn in the south to Ermine in the far northeast.
“Possibly. The annual Sea Dragon migration is one of the greatest natural wonders of our realm, young Dragon. I imagine they might circumvent Solixambria itself, or even our entire world in the course of their journeying. It is a sight – ah, such a sight – as to infuse the music of the deepest seas with the magic of one’s soul. I remember it well …”
Sitting upon a blanket the Princess had laid out for her, the old woman clasped her hands to her chest, suddenly lost in the mists of time and remembrance.
After waiting a moment to see if she would speak more, Dragon departed soft-pawed to help Azania light a fire – Dragon the firelighter!
Joy in the smallest things. Even if he exploded her pile of sticks on the first attempt.
Chapter 7: Fly High
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, LEAVING a pile of brown scales behind him that he was not at all grumpy about, Dragon winged steadily up-valley between the jagged, white-tipped peaks. By mid-morning, however, the weather had changed for what he liked to call a miserable mountain special. Low, brooding clouds came rolling toward them, soon obscuring the towering cliffs and white-dusted slopes. The chill breeze freshened by the minute, blustering and buffeting like an angry bully blowing his threats.
Suddenly, all was grey and damp. His Riders shivered.
“I’ve never flown through a cloud before!” Inzashu cried, waving her hands as if she could catch the moisture.
Ridiculous girl. He cracked a huge grin.
“I can’t feel my nose anymore,” Azania put in, sounding surprised.
“Hmm, a blue-black Princess, how intriguing,” he said. “Anyone else feeling cold, you poor things?”
At least two people kicked him, if not three.
Since he did not know this terrain well, he reduced altitude until the lay of the ground became clear. Gone, the pretty mauve carpeting of flowers, replaced by dry brown boulders and tan, high-growing clumps of grasses, as tall as Azania. Not saying much, mind, since she was all of four feet and eight inches tall – but she acted taller, he had always thought. Something about the way she filled a lair, or a room, with her presence.
Dragon said, “Bear with me for a moment. I don’t know the area, but usually, caverns start about half a mile higher up , where you see the foot of those vertical cliffs –”
“See?” Azania put in mildly.
“I was speaking metaphorically,” he snorted.
“Ah, I would have completely missed the allusion, but thank you for the Dragonsplanation.”
“The what and how much?”
“A Dragon explanation – I just made that up,” she chortled. “It’s to do with the way certain male creatures must point out the blindingly obvious to the ignorant little females –”
“I’d say, ‘Be silent, little female,’ but as I understand this to be a physiological impossibility for Humankind’s so-called fairer sex …”
“Ooh, fighting talk.”
“If you can’t stand the heat –”
“Don’t pull the Dragon’s tail!” Inzashu yelled, startling them all into laughter.
“Excellent twist,” Yardi smiled back over her shoulder. “I was going to say, don’t stick your hand in the forge, or the Dragon’s jaw for that matter – here, grandmother. Cover your mouth and nose like this against the cold.”
“I am not that feeble yet!”
“Clearly not. Would you like to light our next fire with your Dragon breath?” her granddaughter put in sweetly.
“No need for rudeness, child. Dragon, if you’re intending to find a cave –”
“Ooh! Look, there’s snow on the ground!” Inzashu exclaimed. She was having a squealing morning, Dragon thought sourly, then decided he felt sour about feeling sour. Why slap down another’s joy? “So white! So gorgeous! So fluffy!”
Although, what it was with Humans and fluff, he could not fathom.
And the need to squeak at that ear-hurting pitch. Totally unnecessary, in his expert opinion on the subject. Dragonsplanation indeed!
Yarimda huffed, “Well, if some people would let the old lady with the creaky bones finish, we are not about to find a cavern flying up the middle of a valley in a cloud! You need to go to the edge, Dragon.”
Tell a Dragon how to fly?
“Except for that, grandmother?” Yardi said, pointing.
Four pairs of Human eyes and one pair of Dragon eyes stared at the great hole in the ground in surprise. Perfectly round. Unknowably deep. One thing was for certain. He was not going anywhere near that hole without knowing exactly what had made it. That something was either a natural process, or a creature roughly the size of a Bloodworm.
He growled, “While that’s intriguing, I am not going down there for all the gold in these mountains.”
“Dragon instinct?” his Princess asked.
“No, it’s a vertical hole. The snow which is about to arrive would still be falling on our heads down there, Highness. Then my scales would get wet and I’d be even crabbier than usual. Trust me, none of us want that.”
On that self-deprecating note, he sideslipped in the air and began to hunt in earnest for a cave in which to hide his hoard of Human females, odd collector that he was.
Jolly mountain weather. Predictable in its unpredictability, which had to be the very definition of feminine logic.
There. Dragonsplain that! Or not, if one wanted to live a long life.
* * * *
A brief but violent mountain squall shrouded the upper valley in white. Spring in one place, and a blizzard eighteen miles on. Having found a shallow but serviceable cavern, Dragon blocked most of the weather by dint of planting himself across the entrance. A bitter wind moaned over his back. When it became clear that his Black Roses of the Desert were shrivelling somewhat due to the plummeting temperature, Dragon trialled warming the cavern by breathing fire toward the back. Very soon, he had four eager pairs of hands warming themselves beside the stream of his fire.
All part of the service. Flying cart, royal conveyance, firelighter and now oversized cavern warmer. He was definitely moving up in the world.
Better not sneeze. That could end badly.
As the storm died down, however, the younger Princess decided now was the time to go romp in the snow. Dragon had barely uncurled himself when she returned with a shriek. “Wolf!”
“I’ll pop out and talk to it,” he offered, rising with a yawn and a stretch.
Faced with a Dragon, the grey wolf and its nine hungry companions proved to be poor conversationalists. A swift clack of his fangs sent them sloping off minus the intended royal breakfast. Could they have been using this cavern? There had been no particular canine smell he could detect. Nonetheless, he was the apex predator around here. Wolves? Good riddance.
With a regal sweep of his forepaw, he said, “Playtime, Princess?”
Even eleven year-olds found that tone discourteous.
No mind. Pretending to root about in the snow while he stealthily gathered a large pawful, he said, “Snow is light, soft and very cold, Princess – want to try some?”
“Dragon. Dragon!”
He chased after her, chortling, “Snow shower for you today?”
“No!”
“Snow, did you say? Say, ‘no snow snow no no snow snow no snow’ very fast. It’s that lisp of yours.”
“I do not – Dragon!”
One freshly frosted felon. Glare!
“Don’t go wearing my name out now. I must say, you look very fetching with snow in your curls. Truly the winter Princess.”
Voicing what had to be a Skartunese war cry, she scrabbled for snow of her own. “You had better start running now, Dragon! When I catch you, you’re going to get one in the fangs, I swear …”
She had an excellent arm on her. Human snowballs were tiny, but that was hardly the point. They gambolled about until she declared her fingers were so numb they hurt. More logic that made complete sense. He had the same sensation in his paws. Since Yardi had put a kettle on for tea – most civilised, everyone agreed – they decided to have a warming herbal brew before flying on. Inzashu added herbs to stimulate blood flow. Eminently sensible.