Dragon Raider

by Ava Richardson

  “Crux.”

  I heard the word as clear in my head as if Danu had whispered it into my ear, and with it, came a wave of mirth. The sides of its great maw appeared curled, and a fork tongue flicked into the air, as if it were making fun of me.

  “Let’s see how you like it, Lila of the waves!” The multi-colored dragon made a quick, pouncing charge, shoving its feet onto the sands between us and enveloping me in a plume of beach dust.

  “Ugh! Ack!” I coughed and hacked, brushing the film of sand from my face as I realized the dragon was playing with me. I didn’t sense any malice from its voice Instead, I felt a strong impression of laughter. It wasn’t trying to eat me, I thought. Then what was it doing? Just making fun of me?

  “Are you laughing at me?” I demanded of it, standing up to wave my finger at its snout.

  “Yes,” the dragon announced. “You are very small. I am big.”

  “Rargh!” I kicked sand at it, causing it to pounce back again, holding its head up and ears forward just like a cat does when it is excited. It made a churring, pleased warble of a sound as it then pounced forward again, showering me in sand.

  “Hey! Stop that!” I shouted, coughing and floundering in the sudden sandstorm before I fell over.

  “Now you look like a sea turtle,” the dragon chirruped, opening its mouth to hiss loudly, and I saw myself in my own imagination how the dragon was seeing me. On my back, covered in sand, limbs waving in the sand as if I was indeed an overturned turtle. I started to laugh. It was ridiculous. Is this dragon trying to…be my friend?

  My laughter was met by the sound of whistling peeps and hisses from the multi-colored dragon above me, as it trampled and stamped its feet in the sand some more, sending up plumes of sand over both it and me.

  “You idiot,” I said to it, still grinning.

  “Not as much as you, trying to bond with newts,” the words in my head said, laced with dragon mirth. “All they care about is chasing fluff and sniffing for rats.”

  “Huh.” I found myself grinning at the dragon’s words, even though they broke my heart. Yes. I had been wrong. It wasn’t the first time, but I wondered if it would be my last. After this, I would have to become the First Mate to the Ariel for good, and abandon my dragon dreams.

  “I am Crux,” the dragon repeated, the humor fading from its voice as it arched its neck to reach down and gently breathed in the air above me with its snout. But I felt no fear in front of the large dragon, none at all.

  Something hit my heart like a wave; no, something inside my heart moved like a wave. As I looked up towards the dragon, into it’s green-gold eyes, I felt an answering connection. Another misfit, renegade soul like mine, and it was reaching out to me.

  A dragon bond? I felt both scared and jittery with excitement.

  But this Crux was older than the newts. He sounded young in my mind, but perhaps of a dragon-age to me, a youth ready for adulthood. Not a baby. How will I train you? I thought, suddenly realizing that this alternative could even be worse than not having returned with a dragon at all. There was so much to learn. How to ride a dragon, how to handle the harness and saddle. Where to even get such equipment. How to attack Havick’s ships when called…. I know nothing about training adult dragons.

  “Lila of the waters. I am Crux, and I like you, I think.”

  He thinks?

  “If you do not wish to be a dragon friend then I will not blame you – not many would stand by a dragon, through thick and thin, when we have so many enemies.” Crux started to raise its head a little, and Lila had the feeling that she must have insulted it. She sensed a wariness coming from Crux. Was it that he was multi-colored? The only multi-colored dragon that she had ever heard about? Why was he not with the other dragons?

  “I have flown a long way to bear greetings to Sym’s brood. There are so few of us Phoenix dragons left…”

  “Phoenix Dragons?” I murmured.

  “That is what we call ourselves. The multi-colored. The dragons of many shades.” Crux was proud, defiant even. “We have no natural home, and all the other breeds are cautious around us. But no matter. I know what I am: a dragon, borne of fire, raised to be strong.”

  Crux was an oddball out here, just like me. That, I think, was when it happened.

  I reached out with my heart, completely unable to stop it from answering the Phoenix dragon’s call.

  “Crux? I am Lila wave-rider, Lila of Malata, Lila of Roskilde. Please forgive me—I would be honored to call you my friend,” I said, and found that Crux had already lowered his snout, crisscrossed with the scars of some old battle, and our skin and scales touched.

  A bolt of electricity between us, a sense of exhilaration as the contours of our souls met. It felt to me then, that I had been waiting all my life f0r such a true friend. I saw him and what he was; mischievous, a little proud, a little guarded around the other dragons, and he saw me for what I was; alone, always-vigilant, trying to be bigger and tougher than I felt.

  And both of us accepted each other just for what we were.

  “Come, Lila wave-rider. You shall be Lila air-rider, now!” Crux drew back from my touch to scoop my upturned-turtle body in his mighty claws and hop towards the open beach.

  “What are you doing?” I managed to say as there was a sudden crack as of mighty sails unfurling. His wings, dark on top and lighter beneath, had unfurled and blotted out my skies as he took another hop, and then, with all the strength of a firing cannon, he threw himself up into the air with a joyous roar.

  “Skreayar!”

  Part II

  Air-Riders

  Chapter 14

  Lila and Crux

  We flew. Crux was faster than any boat I had ever sailed upon, and his wings boomed with the sound of thunder as he made his sharp turns.

  “Skeyarch!” The bright sun was high above us, the sky was a deep blue, and the dragon above me called out a fierce challenge to the world.

  “Whooot!” I myself howled at the thrill of it. The dark waters of the western seas blurred below me, the wave tops becoming just white lines, and then the edges of gigantic ripples making their way across the ocean.

  I’m not scared, even though I am high up, and being held by his front claws that could rip me apart easily, I am not scared, I thought. I laughed at the wonder of it. Was some magic of the dragon’s holding me, or was it that something had clicked in my heart, that meant that I was no longer scared of falling and failing.

  “Wave-rider, air-rider. This is what you were meant to be, Lila.” Crux’s words, again filled my head as he swooped low over the oceans, so low that I could see the curves and curls of the waves, the leaping fish.

  With a sudden clicking noise, a trio of grey and blue dolphins leapt into the air, spinning and corkscrewing underneath us as they kept pace with the Phoenix dragon’s flight. I could reach out and touch the water behind them, before Crux once again cracked his great leathery wings, and we swooped up into the heavens.

  “Let me ride, brother dragon!” I called up. I didn’t want to be held anymore. I wanted to feel what it was like to ride a dragon just as Saffron rode a dragon. How all of the Sea Raiders will eventually ride dragons…

  Crux checked his speed, moving his claws up to his shoulder. “Careful, Lila,” his thought-voice came with his emotions, his care and thirst for adventure. I had spent my life on a boat, I could climb – even if I hadn’t liked it too much before. I set my hands to the scale-plates around his neck, and drew myself up, finding that there was a depression at the base of his neck and just ahead of the vast slabs of shoulder and wing muscle. Behind that, the tines of his back jutted out, looking wickedly sharp, while ahead, the nubs of his neck horns were smaller and rounded. With a grunt of effort, I managed to scrabble into this space, finding that my knees could slide over each side of his neck, a bit like I imagined what riding a horse must be like.

  “Ready?” Crux’s voice in my mind was full of amusement.

  Before I had a chanc
e to agree, Crux had taken a breath and snapped his wings, powering himself forward as he tucked his claws in under his body. I shouted, half out of fright and half out of joy as I seized the horn ahead of me, and felt my back press against the base of the thicker tine behind me. What about Danu, back on the island…? I had a moment to think, wondering if I should have said anything about my friend back there – but before I could, Crux was launching himself through the air at lightning speed. If I had thought that we were going fast before, then I clearly had no idea just how fast he could go!

  Crux shot over the oceans like a released arrow, heading out and up, until I could see the far impressions of other lands on the horizon. Was that… Roskilde? Had we really flown that far?

  Roskilde. It was a darker landmass, lifting its head into a haze of clouds. I had only ever seen the land of my supposed parents from afar, never up close – but I had no intention to see it now, either. That’s the place that Danu wants me to rule, I thought. That dark island was large, far, far larger than Malata and the rest of the Free Islands of the Sea Raiders all put together – but that made it appear heavy and stolid. Crux calls me wave-rider, air-rider – not throne-sitter! I thought, wondering if there was a way to turn the multi-colored creature.

  “I don’t want to go there, Crux!” I called out, knowing that he would hear me. On a boat there would be a rudder, or you could reef one sail and open another, or even use oars to turn. Not so with a dragon.

  Our flight slowed, but we still raced towards it. Crux cocked his great head up towards me, one giant gold-green eye spinning.

  “But I have so many things to show you, Lila. The southern part of that island has a lot of little men with painful darts, and many more smelly men who live in stone houses – but the northern part has frozen icefalls and snow fields that you can swim like the oceans!” Crux reveled in my ignorance – not mocking me, I knew instinctively, but rather he was like Adair was to his sister Senga whenever he discovered something new about an island or caught a fish that she had never seen before. The dragon was eager to show off the world that he had flown through.

  “And beyond that? I have never travelled to the far north, but east of here are mountains that scrape the heavens, and green lands where no human has trod for a hundred years! Deep forests and still lakes, river fish and canyons that howl with the winds…” Crux was making a twittering, almost singing sort of sound as he thought of all the marvels and wonders that he could show me.

  “No, please, Crux. Take me back,” I said, laughing. “I shall have to get a harness if we are to ride together.”

  “Never!” A ripple of unease shivered through the Phoenix dragon. “I have heard the tales of what the north used to do to the wild dragons—chains and harnesses, old mutton and rangy goat. I will never be tamed so!”

  The strength of his unease shocked me, I had to admit. His emotions were fiery as they rippled through me, as fast as thought. “Okay, okay – no harness and reins for you, ever – but I might need a saddle if this is to be comfortable!” I said.

  “You may have a saddle, since you are only very small.” Crux let out a hot breath of soot, before flaring his wing, one pointed skyward and the other down, and we turned in a wide circle, back in the direction that we had come from.

  Chapter 15

  Danu, dragon friends, dragon mages, and adepts

  Lila? Lila – where are you!” I called for what must be the seventeenth time this morning. Our camp was a mess, with sand everywhere, our fire completely put out, our blankets thrown aside. But the boat was still here, as was the small chest of jewels from her father. She hadn’t left, as I had at first been scared that she might have done.

  I had returned to our camp after watching the newts greet what I gathered was Sym’s previous clutch–dragons named Kim and Thiel. The two took to their little brothers and sister with great interest. After that, I was overcome by a sort of warm glow of happiness that everything was as it should be with the world – Lila could no longer turn the Sea Raiders into murderous Dragon Raiders, and that meant that she could follow her rightful path to the queenship – I had caught a brace of sea fish, returning up the beach to find our camp destroyed, and Lila gone, her things all still there. She hadn’t run away. Had she been attacked? But no human – not even a Raider – would surely sneak an attack on this island right now, with all of the dragons it had in the air.

  The dragons, I thought in a sort of petrified horror. Lila had managed, by the skin of her teeth it seemed, to impress Sym into attempting a bond, but that didn’t mean she had any idea of how to approach a dragon. Had a dragon challenged her? Had she offended it?

  I searched around the camp, for any clue, even as my heart felt like a block of ice, slowly being chipped into fragments. If a dragon had turned on the fierce Raider girl, then there was nothing that I or anyone else could do to try and stop it – or save her.

  But I had to, I thought, as my despair turned into a cold sort of fury. One that wasn’t fast and passionate as the Chief Kasian’s was, but the sort of anger that made all sound disappear from the world, and my jaw clench. I had come so close to fulfilling the prophecy, and I have faced the wrath and the mockery of the West Witches. Stupid Ohotto telling me that I was a fool for believing it. And Lila didn’t deserve to die, not like this. Not as some dragon’s play-meat. I looked up the beach, wondering how I would find the dragon responsible, and what magic I could summon once I did…

  “Skreyaar!” A cry split the sky.

  “Danu!” To my amazement, it was Lila – she was coming towards me, riding on the back of a type of dragon I had never seen before. She was laughing and whooping as she flew low over the shallow waters, the dark and red tail of the noble creature sending up sprays behind it.

  The dragon was a little like the native dragons of the Western Isles – in that its wings were more arrow-shaped, making it fast and light. But it was stockier and bigger, with larger limbs – and, of course, the black top scales that could almost look blue under the right reflection of light. These dark scales gave way gradually to blotches of purple and plum around the dragon’s sides, before a trim-line of viridian green snaked from just under the eyes to the tail tip. I had never seen the like of it – and I had spent a long time studying every scroll that the West Witches had on the different types of dragons there were in the world!

  “Lila? Are you all right?” I shouted, bending into what Afar had called her ‘attack crouch.’ One hand in front to cast any cantrips, one hand in the dirt to draw strength from the earth beneath me.

  “Ha! Yes!” she hollered, and the multi-colored dragon turned on an arrowhead to suddenly flare up above the beach, dropping into a crouch that shook the ground and sending a plume of sand in all directions as they landed.

  When I had finally finished coughing and rubbing the sand from my eyes, I saw that Lila had already stepped down and was hurrying past me to the boat. “I’m going to pack everything up. We’re going, Danu – we won’t be needing the boat anymore!”

  “Uh… okay?” I said, aware of how feeble I sounded as the stocky and fast, multi-colored dragon stood over me, looking at me quizzically.

  “Danu Geidt, dragon-friend, adept.” The dragon spoke in my mind, cocking its head to one side, and running its tongue along its jaws.

  “How do you know my name?” I swallowed.

  “Skreych!” It chirruped in amusement. “Most humans live in their minds like they live in their stone houses: closed doors, closed windows. But there are some like you, Danu Geidt, who live with all the doors and windows open.”

  “The dragon-friends?” I whispered. Wasn’t that something that Ohotto and Afar had tried to warn me about? Ohotto was one of the senior witches on Sebol under Chabon. They had both been responsible for my training, although it was Afar who was my personal mentor. And Ohotto had viewed both my magic and my dragon ability as dangerous.

  “Yes. Dragon-friends, witches, mages. They are all the same.” The dragon made t
he mental equivalent of a shrug, which made me laugh, as I couldn’t see the dragon make any such movement, but I knew, just by the power of the voice in my head alone, that was what was happening.

  “Then, then I am pleased to meet you, sir dragon,” I coughed, standing up and feeling more than a little awkward. You can’t exactly shake a claw, can you?

  The multi-colored dragon was silent for a long time, long enough to make me sweat, before he lowered his head to the sand, and then the rest of his body as well. “I think that you will do. I was warned by my den mother to beware of magicians and witches and humans with strange powers. There are legends that they come from strange and foul practices.”

  “Not so!” I found myself bursting out. “Although, I cannot speak for any other than myself and the witches that I know, obviously…” I stammered. Where did the magic gift come from? I wondered. Was it the same as my ability to talk to dragons? Afar had said they were tied – but she had never claimed any ability to understand these noble creatures. “Hearing dragons came to me naturally, when I was a babe. I didn’t do anything to get it.”

  “Yes. I can smell that on you.” The large eyes were a deep green, and I could tell just how easily someone could fall entranced by a dragon. They were fascinating and hypnotic. “You are one of the true dragon-friends, Danu Geidt. I am Crux, a Phoenix of the East.”