by Marc Secchia
Suddenly, the arrow broke through into the brain. Convulsing once, the Red Dragon’s body went flaccid, his paws sliding limply off Ardan’s wing. The Shadow Dragon threw himself into such a sharp turn, he felt the blood drain from his head. Blackness crowded in around his vision.
Foliage slapped his wingtip as he zipped along the cliff, dangling Kylara like a kite on a string.
Ardan slowed deliberately, catching his Rider in his forepaws as he watched the Red smash into the near-vertical cliff face, bounce off, and careen toward the Cloudlands. For a moment, he and Kylara simply breathed. Alive.
She kicked his wrist with her boot. “Get me in the saddle, Dragon. We’ve a job to do.”
A minute later, a Shadow Dragon and his Rider rushed up from the depths, into a new battlefield.
Monks soared across the darkling sky threes and fours, attacking the Red Dragons as they lumbered about in pursuit of the Dragonships. Mosquitoes attacking ralti sheep, Ardan thought, although they were having some effect. Quick spikes of flame spurted from the clusters of monks, some keeping their shape and whirling about as if they were thirty-foot swords, while others pursued the Red Dragons with the animate purpose of the minds guiding them. The return fire did not touch many, but those it did, were consumed instantly. More deadly were the Dragons’ claws and fangs. They shattered the groups of warrior monks or struck them spinning away from the battle, some to crash into Dragonships or fall unconscious to the Island below.
Blinding flashes marked the demise of two Dragonships.
I am Furion! Roaring his name, the jag-toothed Red hurtled toward Ardan. Fight me, you putrid whelp of a windroc. Or will you flee again?
Anger ignited the fires of Ardan’s belly, but he fought to keep his cool–literally. He could not serve Fra’anior if he went mad. Rather, he should use Furion’s insults to fuel his powers. Aranya had explained the idea to him; now he felt its effect. A painful tightness akin to cramp developed in his belly. Dragon blood gushed from his three hearts to feed the needs of his body. Ardan turned to face Furion’s charge.
“Ardan, what are you doing?” Kylara asked.
“I’m fine.”
“What’s the plan?”
He knew without looking that she had an arrow to the bowstring. Closer and closer came the massive Red, filling his vision. His build was all jagged edges, right down to his scales which resembled splinters of crimson granite. Ardan’s Dragon sight focussed in on the flames fluttering inside his nostrils, the magic condensing within the other Dragon, judging the moment he would attack. Now! Flame rocketed across the space between them. The Dragons fired simultaneously, but Ardan’s shaped bolt sliced through Furion’s blob of molten rock, making it fall harmlessly beneath him and to either side. Magic and Dragon fire detonated together against the other Dragon’s chest.
It was far from enough to stop him. The Red Dragon’s momentum drove him on to ram Ardan with terrible force, but the sound was unexpected, not fleshy, but rather as if two rocks had slammed together. Kylara shouted as the impact rattled her. Ardan wrestled the burning Red with his forepaws. A ten-foot hole had been blasted front and centre in his chest, exposing the ribcage and burning away half of his second heart, but he still possessed the strength to fight on. The scent of burning flesh made him slaver as he clashed fangs with his enemy.
The Red shouted, Curse you, you monster! Die!
The Shadow Dragon was in no mood to comply. Hooking the two opposable thumbs of either forepaw into the Dragon’s chest, Ardan summoned his utmost strength. He poured magic into his muscles. A monstrous bellow shook them both as he ripped the Dragon’s ribcage open, splintering the bones and exposing his innards.
Ardan reached in, and plucked the Dragon’s triple jugular veins with his claws, severing the vital flow of blood from the second and third hearts to the brain.
Ha ha ha! His unbridled joy resounded off the cliffs of Fra’anior. Another Dragon fell.
“Three out of seven,” he said, grinning at Kylara.
“Four,” she said. “The monks forced one to the ground. But the Dragonships are taking a beating, Ardan. That Red, Karathion. He’s a killer.”
“Right. Let’s take him.”
“Where’s the Azure Dragon?”
Dragon-Ardan peered across to the north-western rim-wall of Fra’anior. More Dragonships, a dozen, speeding across the caldera on their way to Fra’anior. “Up at–ah, Gi’ishior, I think that Island was called. Last two stops there.”
“She’ll miss all the fun.”
Ardan managed to swagger a little in the air. “Aye, I love shredding Dragons with my paws.”
Sha’aldior …
The faraway cry arrested his posturing. Aranya? Are you alive? She sounded so faint.
Beware, Thoralian is coming, and he brings …
Silence. The weak connection vanished. Ardan’s three hearts galloped in wildly differing directions. He knew his return cry had fallen upon deaf ears. His great, dark head swivelled this way and that. Thoralian. Where was he? What was he bringing?
Chapter 23: Drakes and Dragonets
JiA-LLonya Slapped Aranya’s cheek with rather more enthusiasm than Aranya thought was justified. “Wake up. You’re daydreaming.”
The Immadian shoved her away. “I’m awake. Stop hitting me.”
“It was that or a Sylakian war hammer to stop your snoring.”
“I do not snore!”
“Oh aye, it’s your Dragoness snoring, I forgot.” Jia laughed merrily. “How gullible are you? No wonder Zip teased you mercilessly. It’s easy.”
“Gullible? Islands’ sakes, here I’m dreaming about Ardan coming to rescue us and all you can do is yank my hawser–”
“About Ardan? Remind me one more time how uncomplicated your love life is?”
Aranya growled something unintelligible about Dragons sitting on cheeky Human beings until they turned purple in the face. It was that or sink into the doldrums thinking about how no man would ever love her again, unless it was in a darkened room on a dark night and he could ignore the knobbly scars covering her body. Ardan would turn to Kylara. Yolathion would retch. Jia-Llonya could have him, for all she cared.
See, Fra’anior, what you have wrought?
If Yolathion was not dead already, he was certainly dying. Aranya was ashamed at her thoughts, but they kept running through her mind like windrocs plundering a carcass.
She should concentrate rather on discovering why everyone was so surprised she could speak Dragonish whilst wearing the Lavanias collar. How did that work? If it was some kind of mind-trick, she could not work out what it did to her mind, or to her magic.
“I read that women of the Kingdom of Kaolili wear face veils,” said Aranya. “Do you think I could manage that?”
Jia-Llonya sighed. “I hear some people are grateful just to be alive. Do you think you could manage that?”
If she had expected Aranya to produce a fireball at that comment, Jia would have to be disappointed. The truth was, they were both sick of being caged up. Aranya eyed the pitiful scraps of scrolleaf and the virtually hairless paintbrushes the Sylakian guards had procured for her. So much for imagining she could reproduce some of the painting she had enjoyed last time she was in the Tower.
Idly, she picked a black charcoal stick out of her meagre supplies box, and said, “Jia, if I sketched the Dragon Rider school I saw in my dream, do you think that would help us find it?”
The Jeradian girl rolled over on her end of the bed they had been forced to share. “Maybe you could draw some of the Dragons you saw, too. What about Fra’anior?”
“Not him.”
“Maybe if you put him to scroll, you wouldn’t need to fear him so much. And–don’t bite me for this one, Aranya–but you know how ralti-stupid I am about Dragons. Would you be willing to sketch your mother, Izariela, in her Star Dragon form?”
For the first time since the Chameleon Shapeshifter had stabbed her in the chest, a genuine smile curved her lips.
“That, I’d love!”
But her hand began to draw a second head on her scrolleaf, and the outline of a third … Fra’anior. Even now, having brought her to the bleakest point in her life, a hellish pit from which there could be no return, he refused to relinquish his hegemony over her fate. Aranya sketched on, adding detail after detail, retreating into a world of deep contemplation, biting her lip in concentration. There was an indefinable core to the Black Dragon, she felt, some connection she could not quantify, and it captivated her imagination in a way that was at once both fascinating and repellent.
She tossed the page away. No. She had to do better.
After an hour or two’s drawing and four scrolleaves covered in Fra’anior’s heads, she became aware of Jia-Llonya peering over her shoulder.
“Seven heads?” she said. “Wow. Is this speck you?”
Aranya nodded. “He’s roughly the size of an Island. Always appears within a storm. I find it so calming, dreaming about him.”
Her leaden sarcasm made the Jeradian girl chuckle. Jia said, “He’s incredible. I love the way you’ve portrayed him; so lifelike. Gives me the soul-lost shivers, all over.”
“Sorry. But that’s how I see him.”
Jia tilted her head quizzically. “Only one thing that’s odd about this drawing.”
“What?”
“Why’ve you made him look like you?”
* * * *
Plucking a pair of tumbling monks out of the sky with a cunning swoop, Ardan raced across to Beran’s flagship. “Get me Beran,” he ordered, in a voice resonating with Dragonish thunder. Two of the warriors manning the forward gantry dropped their hammers in fear.
“Put the poor monks down,” said Kylara, amused. “And stop scaring the men.”
Ardan placed them carefully atop the Dragonship before hooking his forepaws, talons sheathed, into the netting for a moment. The Dragonship groaned and tilted.
“Ardan. Kylara,” said King Beran, apparently unfazed to find a Dragon hanging sideways off his vessel. “Report at once.”
“The battle progresses well. Zuziana is an hour distant as yet,” said Ardan. “I just heard from Aranya. Thoralian–”
“Aranya?”
Ardan nodded. “She’s alive. She warned us–Thoralian is either here, or he’s close. Either way you need to expect an ambush. And she began to say he was bringing something, but I missed the rest of the message.”
The King of Immadia, a seasoned campaigner, was already calculating in his mind, Ardan saw. Beran said, “Right. We’ll signal the highest alert. Can we spare you to scout? Maybe. The monks fare well and we’ve captured one Shapeshifter Dragon. But we’ve lost a dozen–”
KAARAABOOM!
“One more Dragonship,” said Kylara. “Karathion is devastating our forces.”
“Another Dragon joining their side would not be pretty,” said Beran. “Right. Ardan, you go clip Karathion’s toenails. After that, I need you to scout. Find me Thoralian. I’ll be here trying to herd bunches of random flying monks who don’t understand our signals–never mind.”
“I’m sure the Immadian Fox will prevail,” said Ardan.
King Beran’s eyebrows crawled skyward. “Are you still here?”
The Shadow Dragon fell away into the gathering night.
Ardan recalled the too-brief conversation he’d snatched with Ri’arion before the Nameless Man had flown away with Zuziana. ‘Gather the darkness around you,’ the monk had advised. ‘Shadow loves concealment. Subterfuge. You must fly not only with power, but with great cunning.”
Now, he stalked Karathion in the darkness. No booming challenge to give away his intent. No warning flare of fire, nor should the wind whisper over his scales when the shadow power could soothe that away. Even that soft susurration could alert another Dragon. Enwrapped in a silence so profound he felt it should surely still the very volcano upon which the Fra’aniorians made their homes, Ardan ghosted across Iridith’s pallid crescent. Just a sliver of a moon; no others were abroad as yet. He hunted his own kind.
Karathion apparently possessed an endless supply of fireballs. He flew with a graceful economy of effort, which Ardan found admirable in a creature so vast. Unconsciously, he copied what he observed. What freedom was his!
He ambushed the Red Dragon leader from beneath–from the most unexpected direction. Perhaps a flicker of movement, more sensed than seen, saved the great Red. Karathion half-dodged Ardan’s initial strike, taking a painful but not crippling blow on the lockable second joint of his left wing and losing a ten-foot strip of wing membrane to Ardan’s claws. His tail lashed out. Ardan wheezed as he was struck squarely between his hind legs. His natural Dragon armour protected his worst blushes, but the blow still knocked the breath out of him. Grunting and snarling, the two Dragons wrestled and tore at each other with the ferocity of male rajals in the mating season, falling through the air toward the Island massif.
Kylara succeeded in firing three arrows into the Red Dragon’s torso before Ardan broke with the enemy Dragon. “Good shooting,” he panted, eyeballing his enemy as he too gathered his breath, no more than three hundred feet away in the gathering gloom.
“You still planning to have children?” asked his Rider.
“Grr!”
Her question galvanised him. Ardan closed with Karathion, trying to bring his great strength to bear, but the old Red was powerful too, and far more experienced in battle. As they traded blows and bites over the course of minutes, Ardan began to sense that he was getting the worst of the bargain. He still had Thoralian to deal with, if Aranya’s warning was to be acted upon.
He wheeled away, panting.
“Let’s take him,” he growled to his Rider. “Aim at his muzzle. I’ve an idea.”
His wings pumped, closing the gap.
Kylara fired an arrow into Karathion’s face at point-blank range. The arrow drilled into his muzzle. As the Red Dragon reared in surprise and pain, the Shadow Dragon dived in. He punched the Dragon in the neck. No wasting niceties on claws or fangs. Ardan punched him right above the second heart, and then twice more, making Karathion shudder with the force of his blows. The wily old Dragon faltered. Ardan punched him one more time in exactly the same place; now, his blazing yellow eyes dulled, and rolled back in their sockets.
Then, Ardan saw fire flare in the darkness over the caldera–just where Zip should be.
* * * *
Zip constructed a shield with studious care, copying one of the models Ri’arion had presented to her in his mind. It collapsed.
“Good,” he said. “Excellent progress for a beginner.”
“Let me try again.”
“You’re tired,” said the monk. “Don’t forget, the battle for Fra’anior still awaits.”
The Azure Dragon sighed. “I’m flying as fast as I can, and the breeze is helping. We’ll get there. One more shield.”
“Fine.” The monk surfaced an image in his mind for the umpteenth time. “This is a fire shield. Rather than trying to hold the entire construct in your mind at once, try to let it grow out of your body as a natural extension of who and what you are. Concentrate, dear one.”
“I’m exhausted.”
However, the Azure Dragoness clenched her jaw. No giving up now. Imagine Aranya’s life would depend upon her mastery of this skill. She scoured the recesses of her Dragon-mind for the power she hoped to find. Show me. A silvery trickle of magic played along her spine-spikes; a sense of awakening, of expansiveness.
“Oh, very good,” Ri’arion encouraged her. “Roaring rajals, Dragon–that’s excellent!”
Zip wanted to bite her lip, but that was not so easy when one had a mouthful of wickedly pointed fangs to consider. She settled on pressing her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth.
Islands’ greetings, little one, said an unfamiliar voice. Come fly with me, and I will show you wonders you have never imagined.
Her shield wavered. Ri’arion?
“Dragon below!” shouted th
e monk. His mind clamped down on the wheedling, hypnotic voice. Leave our minds now!
That’s very unaccommodating of you.
To Zip’s horror, a Yellow-White Dragon half again as large as Ardan materialised from the hot gloom, dimly backlit by the lava flows more than a league below. He was just a few hundred feet below, to her starboard side. Where had that monster been hiding? He flew poorly … but she had no time to consider this.
I AM THORALIAN! His voice crashed against her mind.
Ri’arion threw up a shield at the speed of thought, damping Thoralian’s attack. Zip dipped, having momentarily stalled, but the mind-meld helped to orient her. Flying ralti sheep, what a headache she had now!
Keep the shield steady, girl, said the monk. Make for Fra’anior, quick as you can. Even a Dragon of his size can’t touch us.
Touch you? I don’t need to when I have my drakes.
Drakes? The Azure Dragoness hesitated, sensing the enveloping movement of other aerial predators.
Thoralian commanded, Go, my fierce friends. This is your hunt.
Suddenly, the air beneath them was bursting with red drakes–Zip thought at once of the many dragonets she had seen on her circuit of the volcanic Islands, but these were creatures apart. She saw mean, underslung jaws. Burning red eyes. Wing-struts trimmed with thorny spikes, and double-ended spiny tails to round them off. They were kindred to Dragons but without the high intelligence, she sensed. With harsh caws of excitement, the drakes fanned out across her path like the painted dogs of the north-western Isles Aranya had once described to her. As a pack, they closed in on the Azure Dragon and her Rider. Not one of their number was less than half her size.