by Marc Secchia
* * * *
Ardan peered over the edge of the sinkhole. “We’re going down there?”
Kylara’s forbidding stare scorned the tremor in his voice. “Aye, slave. Scared?”
“That’s Cloudlands–”
“Seen through the bottom of the Island, aye,” said Rocia. “Half of this peninsula hangs over the Cloudlands, boy. Hold on tight.”
Kylara and her troops broke out compact gliders from their travel packs. Ardan measured the cavity yawning before them with his eyes, desperately unhappy. Two thousand feet across and many thousands deep, the bottomless pit made him imagine that a monstrous Dragon had chewed right through the underside of the Island. The hole was so immense that the couple of windrocs circling down below were specks against the turquoise Cloudlands. Ferns and whole trees grew from the sides, compounding his sense of insignificance.
“You’re planning to fly …”
Rocia and a number of the warriors chuckled cruelly. Rocia made a show of pinching her nose. “Dirtied our loincloth at the thought, boy?”
“Only a fool wouldn’t fear this,” said Ardan.
A dozen warriors led the ponies away. They must hide the animals nearby, he realised. Perhaps they also had a secret back entrance to their hideout.
Hanging a rope over the edge would do no good–it would simply dangle in space, because the hole grew conversely wider as it burrowed through the Island’s substrata. What rope could be that long, anyway? Ardan watched silently as Rocia and several of her warriors assembled a larger glider with a wingspan of around twelve feet. The simple wing had a frame attached to it for a person’s body. It was far too flimsy for his liking.
A cloudy dawn crept over the eastern hills as the warriors completed their preparations. The suns tried to pierce the heavy cloudbanks, but failed. The air smelled moist; rain before the morning was out, he predicted. A decent storm.
“We use these to travel between the smaller Island clusters,” said Kylara, breaking his train of thought.
Ardan asked, “Isn’t it dangerous?”
“Not that dangerous if you can find a high enough launching place. Less dangerous than keeping Dragonships.”
Ardan thought back to the first village, which Kylara’s force had been unable to reach in time. Crossing that inlet in flight would have been impossible, unless they had found a thermal or a higher launching place. The cliffs on the far side were too sheer. Flying between Islands by glider was a novel idea. He had never seen it done before.
“Buckle up,” said Rocia. “Ya let me do the flying, or you’re a dead man.”
He let Rocia strap him to her body. At her low command, he walked forward in concert with her until they stood right on the edge of the drop. Odd. Now he wasn’t scared any more–either that, or he was so terrified his brain had just shut off.
“Fly the winds!” cried a warrior, running past them. She launched off the edge.
Rocia leaned forward. “Jump, on three.”
His stomach surged violently into his throat, but then an unexpected whoop of joy escaped his lips as the glider sliced through the air. Ardan opened his eyes and whooped again, laughing.
Just above him, Rocia chuckled, “Thought ya were wettin’ yourself, big boy.”
They spiralled downward under Rocia’s expert control. Ardan’s neck swivelled as a flight of warriors, including Kylara, shot past them, hooting and shouting catcalls at each other as they raced neck-and-neck down toward the Cloudlands. The hole continued to open up, undercutting the basal rock until he found it hard to imagine how half the Island did not crack and tumble into the void. He spied a deep horizontal crack tucked beneath the overhang, hundreds of feet wide and deep. The warriors arrowed for the crack, where an excited crowd had gathered. He also noticed several Dragonships hidden beneath camouflage netting.
Rocia aimed their glider and made the landing look easy.
“Caves back there. Don’t ya go wandering,” said Rocia, unsnapping the harness that held them together. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “Caveworms digging all around here, boy. Ya seen a caveworm?”
Ardan nodded. “Aye.”
But he caught the tail end of a possessive frown Kylara directed at Rocia. So–competition between the women? He added this morsel to his ‘required to survive’ list.
He remembered stories about caveworms a hundred feet long. Caveworms were blind but highly aggressive. They ate through anything, even solid rock. How did the Leopards keep them away from this busy community? Again, he observed his own responses, learning about himself. Ardan scanned the wide ledge, noting a perimeter guard to the south which might indicate a cliff-edge trail to the top. A number of men patrolled the edge, not allowing any children to come to harm. His eye picked out defensive war crossbows placed cunningly amongst the rocks. He perceived the respect that Kylara commanded even among the older members of her community. Something about this scene felt familiar to him. Had he been a chief, too?
The porch of Kylara’s underground lair bustled with the sounds of arrival–children laughing and playing, men and women embracing and some weeping as people realised a loved one was not coming home. Ardan received a fair number of suspicious looks. Most of the men resembled slender youths compared to a man of his muscular bulk. No male warriors? Strange. Their women must do all the fighting.
After a period of being ignored, Ardan noticed a bent, elderly man beckoning to him from beside the farthest cave entrance. He jogged over lest the old man feel the need to approach him.
“Garganthan,” said the old man. “You can call me Garg.”
“Ardan,” he said, returning the proffered forearm-clasp. Garg had a grip like a vice.
Garg’s eyes twinkled up at him, startlingly green beneath massively shaggy eyebrows. “Aye?” he said. “From Jeradia Island, I am. Before you ask.”
Ardan masked his surprise. “Jeradia? I thought they grew giants there?”
“More of a hunchbacked tortoise, I am,” said Garg, with a self-deprecating laugh. “You from, let’s see–tattoos and a shaven head? Naphtha Cluster?”
“Aye,” said Ardan, liking the old man at once. His gaze lingered on the Warlord as Kylara issued orders to a troop of a dozen warriors. She had struck him again that morning after one too many smart comments from her slave. For a woman, she had a punch like the snap-release of a war crossbow.
“Liking something you see?” asked Garg.
Ardan flushed. “Just thinking how she punched me earlier. I’m her new slave, Garg.”
“Aye. So I hear. Broke a scimitar on your skull; has you sleeping in a secure store-room off her quarters. Smell Cloudlands stink on the wind, do I, young man? ‘Cause I warn you, that girl’s like my own daughter. Wouldn’t want to see nothing bad happen to her.”
“Tough story?”
Garg nodded. “Not for me to tell. Through here. Main assembly cave, this is. Living quarters back and left in those four tunnels, training caverns to the right, stores directly ahead and further along the caves. Down the third tunnel is my work room.”
“Blacksmith?” guessed Ardan, taking in the size of the place.
“Aye.”
“I know how to work a forge.” Truly? Ardan bit his lip.
But Garg welcomed his offer. Talking steadily, he filled Ardan in on the general layout of Kylara’s lair. Ardan knew there was much left unspoken, but he also knew better than to voice his questions. He offered the few morsels of knowledge he had gleaned in the five days since he woke beneath the prekki-fruit tree, telling the tale of the village battle without denying the truth of what had happened–whatever that truth was.
The bright green eyes gauged every word.
As Garg had noted, Ardan slept in a secure storeroom off of Kylara’s quarters. Each evening, after he had completed all of the distasteful, dirty and unmentionable jobs they could invent for a slave to do, he was locked in behind a triple-bolted metal door. The stone chamber beyond had not been completely cleared, so his ru
de pallet occupied a space between towering stacks of ready-to-be-fletched arrows and barrels of crossbow quarrels. Anything of real value had been moved. He saw the marks of several large chests left in the dust.
Ardan worked his fingers raw, but without protest, measuring the state of his wounds and waiting for healing. Soon, he stopped limping, and the cut on his skull turned into a knobbed, scarred ridge that spoke mutely of Kylara’s mighty scimitar blow.
He dreamed from the moment his head struck the pillow-roll, until dawn. Every night was the same. Twice, Kylara came to pound on the door with her fist, demanding his silence. Ardan found himself less terrified of her than of his dreams. Black flames burning. Consuming. Hunting ravenously, desperate to sight a buck or a wild ralti sheep to eat. Fighting. Chaotic battles. Had he ever dreamed like this? Dreams that woke him in a cold sweat, his heart thumping so violently in his throat he feared it might burst. Dreams of war and chasing so vivid that he ran into the metal door in his sleep and fell on his back, half stunned, bleeding freely from his forehead. Dreams of a consuming madness, of a shadow that dwelled in the depths of his mind, a slippery, clawed thing that chittered at him out of the darkness, that drove him into screaming ruin …
“Dreams?” said Garg, at the beginning of his second week in Kylara’s lair.
“Aye.” Ardan worked the bellows while Garg heated a metal rod, which he would shape into a scimitar’s pommel. “Kylara told you?”
“Half the caverns heard that episode last night, boy.”
Somehow, when Garg said ‘boy’, it was fine. When Kylara called him ‘boy’, his blood boiled. Ardan said, “Garg, look at me. I’m a grown man, maybe thirty summers. I’m a warrior. I don’t fear death. But these dreams–I’m going mad, Garg. I can’t sleep, I run like a coward, and curse it, I was standing at that door screaming and pounding with my fists and weeping to get away from something I imagined. I’m like a child with the night-terrors. What’s the matter with me?”
“How many offers of the bedroll have you spurned, boy?”
His grin flashed briefly. “A few, Garg.”
“A lot. Rocia’s been whining amongst the women, she has. What’s keeping you?”
Ardan watched his own biceps bulging as he worked the forge bellows, the firelight leaping upon his skin, the sweat running freely down his hard-muscled body as he laboured in the heat, and said, “Secretly, I’m a man of integrity, Garg. I hope Kylara sees that.”
The old man snorted, pausing his pounding of the red-hot rod to plunge it back into the furnace with a long pair of pliers. “You don’t act it.”
“Garg, she’s perfect. I can’t help myself.”
“That’s as certain as the dawn,” said Kylara, right behind him. Ardan and Garg both jumped. “Talking about me? Garg, you should know better. What can’t you help, boy?”
“Being the man who’s going to warm your bedroll,” he shot back.
Ardan blenched. Maybe he should trim his tongue with a scimitar at the first available opportunity.
The Warlord leaned close to him, the light of the open forge setting her dark pupils aflame. “Understand this, slave,” she spat. “No coward who’s afraid of his own shadow is getting anywhere near my bedroll. I should’ve finished you off beneath the tree.”
“What’re you so afraid of, Kylara?” he rapped back, stung by the truth in her words. “Afraid of a man who can fight? Afraid of a real warrior?”
“You know nothing. Nothing!” she roared back. “You’re a preening parrot, not a man–what do you care for except your precious ego? You cower in your pathetic world, all pretty words and no substance, while my people are dying out there. They burned another village today. Herded the people into their grain store, dumped burning oil on top, and you … where’s your mind?”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry? You arrogant, self-absorbed, uncaring worm!”
She struck quicker than a cobra. Her knuckles connected him flush in the mouth.
Ardan spat blood. She had loosened a tooth. But he was too maddened to do more than steel his jaw, filled with a black inferno of fury and desire. He said, “Well, you’re not going to get a soft aye-man out of me, Kylara. I’m not the man you think I am.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You can beat your slave all you like, Chief. It seems to please you. Torture me; I don’t care. You’re not going to change one grain of my opinion of you.”
He locked his gaze with hers, matching her heat for heat, glare for glare.
Suddenly, Kylara’s face crumpled. She pushed away from him and fled, stifling her sobs with her fist. Ardan froze over the bellows. What? He had expected another comeback, a furthering of their quarrel–aye, he seemed afraid of his own shadow. She had struck true there. Aye, he had acted the arrogant male rajal, lord of all he surveyed. Surely, mere words could not have wounded the Warlord so sorely?
Garg laid a hand on his arm. “Her mother killed her father, Ardan. Beat him to death.”
Chapter 7: Dragon Hunt
Leaving eight Dragonships behind to guard the south-eastern passage to Jeradia Island, King Beran’s forces swept into the far West, hustling and harrying the Sylakians with surprise attacks at four different fortresses, netting seven Dragonships in good working order, twelve that with repairs could be made airworthy again, and the services of seventeen Warlords who smelled freedom–when they weren’t plotting to slit each other’s throats.
Beran’s fury at another developing turf war between the hot-tempered Warlords was moderated only by the arrival of news from Commander Darron. His forces had overwhelmed the Sylakian garrisons at Gemalka and Helyon Islands, capturing eleven Dragonships and a fine haul of meriatite engine parts which they had sent back to Immadia Island. All was well with Zuziana and Ri’arion.
Aranya released a breath she had been holding ever since her father handed her the message scroll. She felt such a burden of responsibility for Zip. Turning to the night-dark window, she gazed unseeing at a sky occluded by storm clouds. In Dragonish, she said, May you burn the heavens, Dragon and Rider.
Aranya.
She shivered. What? A word half-imagined, falling like cool rain upon her fevered imagination? A word spoken in a warm, enfolding space, a prickle of light against her closed eyelids, accompanied by a memory of a gentle, rocking motion she recognised as Dragon flight.
Mother? Izariela?
A dream of the womb? She rubbed her forehead hard, as though she could embed the memory there forever. She knew so little of her mother. Sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, she wondered if she saw her mother looking out at her–she had the same wealth of multi-coloured tresses, but what colour had her eyes been? She wished she remembered.
But the waking dream surged forward. An awareness of magic suffused her. Aranya saw herself, quaking, bringing a vial of precious potion into her mother’s tomb. There Izariela lay, frozen in crystal, partially transformed into her Dragon form. Fearful expectation clasped her heart. Dragon sight brought her so near to her mother’s lips, she saw the tiny parting between them, a place not misted by breath since her apparent assassination. With a trembling hand she unstoppered the vial and poured several precious drops between her mother’s lips.
She spoke her thought as a single, strange word–was it even Dragonish? Arise to life, she said.
Waiting, interminably.
Watching the magic build in her mother’s body, an infinitesimal trickle of life returning to the pale, frozen limbs, a pinch of rose entering her cheeks. Rose that bloomed into red. Red that spread in bloody streaks over her torso to her limbs. Red? Red talons? The transformation gathered pace, a storm of change racing through her body now, the limbs elongating and thickening, clothed in Dragon scales, but her colour was wrong.
The Black Dragon raged, What have you done?
Aranya stumbled backward with a choked cry. “Mother!”
A blood-dipped muzzle thrust out of her mother’s face. Garthion’s fangs leered
at her, snapping …
Strong arms saved her from a fall. “Aranya?”
“Yolathion.” She leaned against his tall, spare frame, struggling to regain her tattered composure. “I had an ill dream. My mother transformed into Garthion.”
“That’s rough,” he murmured into her hair. “You dream with your eyes open, Aranya?”
Islands’ sakes, and the Black Dragon had spoken once more. She resented his intrusion into those precious, intimate memories. More to the point, she feared him–and shame washed through her as she realised how deep and irrational that fear was.
Allowing Yolathion to soothe her, laying her cheek against his chest so that she could hear and feel his strong heartbeat throbbing against her ear, she said, “How did we get the hawk system working so quickly, Dad?”
“Paid the traders to sort out the birds we captured along the way,” said Beran. Aranya knew he had missed neither any detail of her reaction, nor Yolathion’s swift response. “Nothing like the lure of trade free from Sylakian taxes to make them greedy–I mean, to impart the necessary motivation. Isn’t your Dad clever?”
Taking her cue from his jovial tone, she chirped back, “I worship the ground you walk on, Dad.”
“Jolly right, o empress of the air.”
Aranya said, “O faithful subject, her reptilian magnificence demands to know if there was any other news from Princess Zuziana?”
“This curl of scroll-leaf, marked for your eyes only.”
“Ha. I knew it.” She scanned the brief message. It was Zip through and through. “A kiss for the bearded pirate,” she said, wriggling free of Yolathion’s arms to deliver a smacker upon her father’s cheek, “and Yolathion, she dares you to kiss a Dragon.”
“Did that yesterday,” he retorted, stifling a blatantly fake yawn. “King Beran, we’re here, right? Right on the border of Ur-Tagga Cluster? Your proposed night attack surprises me. According to the moon almanac, Iridith will be below the horizon until the early hours–ah, but Jade, White and Blue are all full. Now it makes sense.”