by Marc Secchia
Kylara switched hands. “Unlike you, slave-to-be, I am left-handed,” she smiled. “And I was just getting warmed up.”
His eyes flew wide. The surrounding warriors laughed cruelly.
Ardan wiped sweat from his forehead. At that precise instant, Kylara struck, kicking the arrow stump embedded above his knee.
Pain blasted into Ardan’s leg, beside which the punch was nothing. For a moment all he could see was white agony. He heard a grinding sound; his teeth grating together like mohili wheat kernels beneath a grindstone. When his vision cleared, it was to see Kylara standing just a few feet off, twirling her scimitar indolently between her fingertips.
With a sardonic smile, she said, “Payment for the kiss, boy. Give up?”
Mockery!
Fire raged in his body, blazing through the pain and clearing his mind of any remaining rational thought. He was not Ardan. He was fire. He was the flame of the dawn. Ardan felt his muscles swell, ingesting a flood of adrenalin and strength. A low growl throbbed in his chest. He was a rajal unleashed. The massive black felines, which stood shoulder-high to a man, had always fascinated him. Now, he pounced with catlike swiftness.
The primal fury of his attack staggered the young Warlord. A dozen blows of his scimitar brought the flash of fear into her eyes. For the first time, he forced Kylara into frantic defence, dodging and parrying with only one thought in her mind–preserving her life. Her warriors skipped backward with surprised cries. Someone shouted that she needed help. Kylara scrambled away, but Ardan bore down on her relentlessly. He beat her and beat her, blow after massive blow, but she would not fall even when crushed to her knees–her spirit and her courage denied him.
An arrow hissed past his left cheek. Kylara shouted at her warriors not to interfere. Ardan used the distraction to jab through the armour protecting her left breast, but suddenly, she slipped out from beneath his assault and launched a pugnacious counterattack of her own, hissing between her teeth with every clash of their blades. They struck so hard that they both shuddered at every blow. Kylara was beyond mockery now. No beating him to the ground for her. His insults had seen to that.
For a brief instant, he smiled at the irony.
Words gave way to grunts and hisses of effort. Darkness lurked at the corners of his vision; not shadows, but a flickering of black flames. He knew he had to remember, for there was something very important about the inferno within him … Ardan’s arm worked mindlessly as he deflected another assault from Kylara. He sensed a power buried within his being, familiar yet forbidding, an eerie, depthless pool that stirred as if aware of his regard. He feared it. He dreaded the monster within, yet if only he could exploit that power, he would surely crush this gleaming dark woman, who, with a snarl pasted on her otherwise attractive lips, was slowly but surely beating the living pith out of him.
Ardan wondered if he had ever encountered a more formidable warrior, male or female.
His sword-arm jabbed repeatedly overhead, blocking her dominant overarm swings as she sought to split him in two. Kylara howled, a building of rage that had a terrible force of its own, surging toward her final onslaught. He had to stop this before she killed him. Ardan stepped hard on his right foot, intending to smash both arms upward to break her wrist as she struck again. In that instant, his wounded knee buckled and collapsed, flinging him forward onto his knees. He broke his fall with his elbow.
As the muscles of Kylara’s arms, shoulders and abdomen contracted, bringing her stroke from a full overhead stretch down to intersect with the precise centre of his skull, Ardan had time to grasp that his defence had gone hopelessly awry. Kylara’s expression registered surprise. But she could not temper her stroke in time.
The scimitar blade smashed into Ardan’s skull.
The lurking darkness snatched him away.
Chapter 2: Campaign
Aranya, DRAGON-Princess of Immadia, shuffled her massive paws restively. Yolathion was making an awful fuss of his first flight on Dragonback, she thought. Patience was apparently not a Dragonish virtue. His fussing made every scale on her amethyst hide prickle as though she had a severe case of the scale-mites Zuziana had just been teasing her about.
Her friend, the equally scaly first lizard of Remoy, was already zipping about in the air above the castle, home since olden times to Immadia Island’s royal family. The Azure Dragoness’ scales glinted like suns-light sparkling off a perfectly clear mountain lake. Ri’arion, Zip’s Rider, waved at Aranya as they swooped by at high speed. Zip performed a barrel-roll to starboard followed by another to port, which ended in a snarl and a stall. Her hiss of annoyance carried all the way to where the Amethyst Dragon perched on the top of Izariela’s Tower.
Her perch gave her a panoramic view of the Island of Immadia, her home. Aranya’s hearts soared with a draconic delight in high places. In contrast, her new Dragon Rider was a taut bundle nerves, pacing around behind her.
Dragon-Aranya tilted her head coyly. “I say, Jeradian warrior?”
He essayed a wry smile. “Aye, Dragon lady?”
“Those are my haunches. On a Dragon, the part of me which speaks is at this end.”
“Ah, I wasn’t … right.”
Aranya loomed over her boyfriend as she nosed him toward her shoulder. “Mount up. It’s a perfect Immadian afternoon and you’re dragging your oversized boots.”
“Look, I’m over seven feet tall. I am not used to being overshadowed by anyone, least of all my girlfriend. My forty-three foot, two and one-quarter inches long girlfriend, as measured yesterday.”
Aranya’s rising irritation made smoke curl out of her nostrils. “Whatever happened to, ‘I am ready to fly with thee’ and all those other lovely things you said–when was it?”
“Beneath a quintet of full moons, these four evenings hence, I did declare my love for thee, Immadia,” declaimed Yolathion, but he rather spoiled the effect by slipping off the scales of her right leg and falling on his rump. A treacherous snort of Dragon laughter blew his dark fringe over his eyes. He said, “The problem is that in your Human form you are beautiful-beautiful, Aranya, while in your Dragon form, you are scary-beautiful.”
Rising, he dusted off the seat of his trousers. With that frown of concentration she had come to find so endearing, Yolathion gingerly negotiated the hop from her leg to her shoulder. He took one gigantic stride up to her spine-spikes and stepped carefully into her Dragon Rider’s saddle.
“Nak didn’t make such a fuss on his ride,” she said.
Yolathion buckled the straps over his thighs and fumbled with the waist belt. “Aye. And he had a hundred and how many years’ experience flying Dragonback? Look, it’s my first time. I want to remember–” and he sighed so deeply that all three of Aranya’s Dragon hearts leaped as one, “–everything. Ready. I hope.”
He really was too funny, Aranya thought, stepping over to the edge of the battlement. Her injured knee twinged unhappily as she put weight on it–Garthion’s parting gift. But her healing was proceeding at Dragon speed. Two or three more days, and the joint should regain its full function.
If his life could be neatly jotted down on a scroll and ticked off item by item, Yolathion would have it that way. King Beran’s eyebrows had crawled toward his hairline more than once. Aranya knew that her father was considering the differences between his artistic, grapple-with-life’s-surprises daughter and the surprises-are-evil man on her back. She could reform him, given time. Especially when he smelled so scrumptious–but she must remember not to call his Jeradian perfume … well, perfume. He had been so insulted. What had he called it, shaving balm?
Aranya grinned toothily over her shoulder.
“Is that a smile, Aranya?” asked Yolathion. “Or rather, ‘you look like a snack’?”
“Mmm,” she rumbled, licking her lips with her forked tongue. “Seven feet of Jeradia’s finest man-steak served on a platter? I could sink my fangs into that!”
Yolathion’s heart-rate doubled, coming to her fantast
ic Dragon hearing as a mad drumbeat.
Great, now she had scared him. Aranya would have preferred a little more trust on his part. Maybe that would come, too, given time. She eased up onto the battlements, wincing again as pain radiated from her knee. The rents in her scales also needed to heal, gouged by six-foot crossbow quarrels.
“Ready to burn the heavens, Rider?”
“Aye.”
They gazed over the Island-kingdom of Immadia. Much of the capital city had been burned in the great battle against Sylakia’s Dragonship fleet, in which they had defeated Garthion, the son of Sylakia’s Supreme Commander, with the help of a defection by Yolathion and his Jeradian forces. Beyond the city walls, a wide field filled up steadily with Dragonships cobbled together from salvaged parts. An Amethyst Dragon’s fire or her Rider’s burning arrows did not leave much behind when they exploded one of the hydrogen sacks. But the Immadian fleet and the ground emplacements of war crossbows and catapults had downed many Dragonships, too.
Zip was now a Shapeshifter, changed irrevocably by Aranya’s life-saving Dragon tears. Zuziana, Princess of Remoy, was now able to transform between her Human and Dragon forms at will. Guilt and happiness roiled in Aranya’s breast whenever she remembered what she had done to her friend. Zip said she was happy. She had to cling to that, or the remorse would grow wild-animal claws and fangs within her.
With a heavy sigh, Aranya spread her wings. The huge, flexible flight membranes flexed at will, the thousands of auxiliary muscles along her wing bones and flight struts turning them into the highly responsive instruments of Dragon flight. Garthion had fallen onto the flagpole set upon this very tower. Speared through the brain, he had died instantly. His crimson Dragon body still filled the castle courtyard below–the body of a Shapeshifter Dragon, the Sylakians’ great secret.
If the son had been a gigantic Red Shapeshifter Dragon, what about his father? Or any other siblings and relatives?
“Now you’re the one dawdling,” said Yolathion. “Why so pensive, beloved?”
“I was thinking about Garthion.”
“Forget that coward,” Yolathion said. “Fly, Aranya. Let the splendour of Immadia Island fill your Dragon hearts and erase that man’s evil forever.”
Thank the heavens he understood.
The merest tilt of her wings caught the breeze. Aranya glided over the rooftops of Immadia city. The streets had been cleared of bodies, while the graveyard beyond the city walls had swelled immensely, filled with Immadian Islanders and Sylakian troops alike. So many killed. So many immolated upon the pyre of Sylakia’s ambition to rule the Island-World.
She eased into a few wingbeats and peeked over her shoulder. Precious! Yolathion’s face was a picture of wonder.
Aranya climbed, circling slowly to give her Dragon Rider a fine view of Immadia’s jagged, snowy peaks north and west of the city. The Island was only five leagues long; seven if one counted the outlying Islands to the north. Around the edges, above where the Island massif rose from the poisonous gases of the Cloudlands, the ancients had built great terraced lakes to trap Immadia’s unreliable rainfall. Iridith covered fully two thirds of the south-eastern horizon, while the crescent Jade moon dominated the northern sky as if to form an archway leading to the end of the world.
Her Rider shouted, “This is incredible, Aranya!”
“No need to shout, you daft rajal,” she returned. “Ready for a bit more?”
“Er, steady as she goes, gorgeous Dragoness, or my lunch will make a bid for freedom.”
“Look, here comes Sapphire,” said Aranya.
The tiny dragonet abandoned Ri’arion’s lap and shot over to Aranya and Yolathion, calling shrilly. Aranya laughed. Hello, you ridiculously beautiful creature, she greeted her in Dragonish. Sapphire flitted around Aranya’s muzzle, her jewel-like eyes swirling with excitement and appreciation. At only one foot long and perhaps one and a half in wingspan, the dragonet was as manoeuvrable as a bat. Right now, she demonstrated her skills in a spiralling double-backflip, before suddenly noticing Yolathion in the saddle and coming to a mid-air stall of surprise. She volleyed a series of querulous chirps at Aranya.
He’s my Rider, she said. My … er, mate. He’s called Yolathion.
“What did you say to her?” asked Yolathion, crossing his eyes as the dragonet flipped around his head, examining him suspiciously.
“That you’re my Rider,” said Aranya, editing her response hastily. Despite that, her belly-fires soughed, stoked by her embarrassment. “I think she expected Zip–who is far daintier than you, you great lump. You weigh a ton.”
He laughed, flexing his powerful frame. “I’m sure you’ll grow into the task, o mighty Amethyst Dragon. No, I am a man and a warrior, riding a great winged beast over the Islands, not a diminutive wisp of a Princess from Remoy. And you are dainty in your Human form, compared to me.”
Her height did seriously reduce the potential pool of boyfriends who were taller than her, Aranya thought. She loved it when he tucked her head beneath his chin, making her feel safe and cherished. But he seemed so wrapped up in her looks, as though a Princess should be perfectly coiffed at every hour of every day, and her smile should never fail to dazzle. Perhaps a hundred-fang smile was a little over-dazzling? And should come attached to rather less of a Dragon?
“Who’s diminutive and wispy around here?” growled Zuziana, slipping into formation with Aranya. Ri’arion greeted them across the divide.
“Easy on the fires there, Dragon-love,” said the Fra’aniorian monk, giving his own mount such a hearty slap it had Yolathion’s eyebrows hopping. “We’ve been practising fire-breathing. Zip hasn’t learned to burn the heavens yet, but if you keep insulting her, it shan’t be long.”
“Darn right,” said Zip, still snarling. “Nice of you to saunter up here this afternoon, slow-slugs. King Beran has a job for us.”
Aranya interjected, “Don’t you find it cute to hear that soft-as-dorlis-flower Remoyan accent growling between a Dragon’s fangs?”
“Bah, says the Immadian parakeet who pronounces every vowel six distinct ways?” retorted Zuziana.
The Dragonesses took playful nips at each other, startling their Riders.
“Zuziana is dainty compared to my Dragon,” the Jeradian put in. “Aranya says that when she grows up to be a big Dragon …”
They all laughed as the Amethyst Dragon’s belly-fires rumbled and a hiccup of flame flared ten feet out of her nostrils. Sapphire gave a squeak of delight and dived into the flame, bathing in it.
“Well,” said Zuziana, as surprised as everyone else at the dragonet’s response. “How’s about a trip into the mountains to see if any of Garthion’s Dragonships are still salvageable? Beran interrogated the Sylakians who survived the hike down. They said the Dragonships the ice-dragonets downed weren’t destroyed–but they couldn’t repair them because of the cold. Do you think you could manage that, or do Jeradians turn as blue in the snows as my monk from the overheated volcano-Island, here?”
“It will be freezing,” said Aranya.
“Oh, don’t you worry,” Zip smirked. “Yolathion can cuddle you all you want later, Aranya.”
With a clip of her wings, she darted away toward the nearby peaks.
Aranya gasped, “Zuziana of Remoy! Just you wait until I catch you …”
* * * *
Family dinners had now expanded to include Ri’arion, Zip, Yolathion, Beri and Commander Darron. The table was a riot of laughter as Zuziana had them in stitches with her colourful retelling of how they had dealt with her diarrhoea while flying from Ferial Island to the great volcano in the middle of Immadior’s Sea, the huge Cloudlands space south of Immadia Island. After that, Aranya retired to bed feeling just as warm as Zip had promised. She touched her lips, still tingling from one last kiss. Yolathion was gallant in just the right measure. Perfect manners accompanied by an ever-so-wicked kiss.
Leopard, to borrow Zip’s favourite phrase.
She eased onto her pillow-rol
l, wondering when Zip might leave off whatever naughtiness she was perpetrating with her monk–now ex-monk–and come to bed, too.
They had managed to drag a Dragonship’s hydrogen sack intact out of the mountains, and had located nearly a dozen salvageable vessels. Beran would despatch several troops of soldiers and engineers in the morning.
Mercy, she was tired. Her wounds ached. A storm rolled in behind her closed eyelids.
Aranya fled on the wings of her inner fires.
For an interminable time, she soared across the Island-World, embroiled in a bizarre mixture of battles and falling into the Cloudlands. Garthion’s paw reached out from the smoky, billowing storm clouds to tear her wings. Battered, tattered, she escaped once more. But the storm swelled, growing blacker and more menacing by the moment.
Zip’s cool fingers soothed her brow. “You’re burning the blankets, Aranya.”
She moaned, flopped over onto her right side, and dreamed again. Thunder pummelled her world. As fast as she flew, the storm moved faster. Evil green-black thunderheads boiled all around her, trapping her Dragon-self in a cloud-canyon. Lightning jagged nearby.
Suddenly, three of the Black Dragon’s seven heads lunged out at her, roaring, How dare you flee? Listen to me!
Aranya screamed.
His voice was a crack of thunder. Find me the Dragon of the Western Isles! Aranya tumbled into the maelstrom.
She jerked upright, tasting a metallic tang of blood in her mouth, panting, “Fra’anior? Great Dragon?”
The dream was gone. Suddenly wide awake, Aranya hugged her knees to her chest. Why was the Ancient Dragon so furious with her? Perhaps foolishly, she had once promised him her help–puny as she might be in comparison to his Island-shaking might.
Aranya slipped out from beneath the covers. Great. Another couple of scorch-marks. Zuziana’s soft breathing assured her that her friend was sound asleep in the bed opposite. She padded over to the drapes and peeked out of the tall crysglass windows of her royal bedchamber. Dawn in two hours, she judged from Jade’s position in the sky. The Mystic moon rose within Jade’s crescent, a perfect disc clasped by a lover’s two arms. The artist in her sighed. Beauty to snatch one’s breath away.