by Marc Secchia
“How perceptive thou art, monk-love.”
Zip wanted to chuckle as her Dragoness immediately copied his archaic speech, but the moment was too precious, and too fragile, to be defiled. He ran his fingers over her throat-scales and along her powerful chest and flanks, making Zip shiver as though a fey breeze had tickled her sensitive Dragon-nerves. As his magic prickled oh-so-gently, Ri’arion muttered, “Better.” His thumbs tested the surface and edges of her scales, tracing the whip-scars patterned so faithfully upon her azure hide. “Aye.” Ridges as deep as a man’s thumb. Twisted scar tissue. Yet he touched even the worst blemishes. “Definitely improved.” He caressed them. And just when she was on the cusp of transforming to kiss the man who cupped her third heart in his hands, he growled:
A bane upon the loins that spawned the coward who scarred thee, Zuziana of Remoy!
She stared at her man. “Ri’arion …”
“What?”
“That’s just plain creepy.”
Unfortunately, her thoughtless remark triggered their first married fight.
* * * *
Fortunately, there was kissing and making up. Oodles of delicious kissing, followed by various regrets and confessions, and barrel-loads more kissing. So much kissing, indeed, that the monk laughingly claimed to have pulled a muscle in his jaw the following morning.
Human-Zuziana perched her hands on her hips. “If some people wouldn’t keep throwing oath-magic about!”
“If some girls wouldn’t insist on being so overwhelmingly draconic.”
“Uh … sorry about the sparks. And the spontaneous lightning-bolt which singed your backside. Are these your only pair–”
Ri’arion smirked, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Laughing happily, Zip reached for his trousers. “Maybe I’ll just tear them off.” Rrrriiiip! “Oh! M-Mercy, I-I’m sorry, Ri’arion. Look … look, they just …”
The monk doubled over, hooting as one finger wagged toward her, “You should see your face! I can’t … oh … you’re priceless! Oh, Zip! You’re worth a million laughs.”
Zuziana flung the scraps of material at him. And a lightning-bolt, which thankfully, he was wise to on this occasion–a Nameless Man shield saved his blushes. Then, she twigged. He had cut the stitching of his ruined trousers beforehand … but how? When? Fury roiled in her belly, bubbling together with grudging mirth. Mad-monk! Grr!
“How?” she seethed. “How did you know what I’d do?”
Ri’arion smiled sweetly, “I’ve two words for you, Princess. Completely predictable.”
Even more galling, now he mimicked exactly how she’d baited Nak! Her Dragoness wanted to belt him right off the Island. The petite Remoyan settled for a snarl, “Oh, Mister Monk is so clever.”
He shrugged. “The trousers were done for.”
“Joker.”
“Learned from the best,” he claimed.
“The sight of you in a loincloth has always steamed me up,” Zip said roguishly. “That first time, we were interrupted by a Dragonship. But today, I must admit to harbouring despicable designs upon the scanty remains of your outfit.” She plucked his loincloth impishly. “What say you–”
“Dragons! Jump!”
Chapter 18: Ardan’s Harem
WHen THE SHADOW Dragon came to, it was to startle at a blaring chorus of Dragon-challenges, and to groan at a fleeting recollection of Amethyst power slapping him so hard across the Isles, he could barely remember his name, let alone guess where he was.
What he knew was that he had barrelled into the midst of a large Dragonwing. They were vexed.
Capture the Black! bellowed a powerful, female voice. Alive!
Other draconic voices barked, At once, Marshal! We obey! Seize the Black! Take him!
Dazedly, Ardan began, Now hold on a stinking …
He was distracted by a tickling sensation in his left palm. Ardan’s curled fist unclenched to release a flash of sapphire-blue scales, but his immediate attention was fixed on the cruel paws gripping his body, his legs, his wings. These Dragons were all grey-green monsters, his size or up to a third larger … Ardan punched his first captor instinctively, a mighty fisticuff driven by fear and anger. KEERAAACK! One down. Maybe they’d show respect–no.
Shadow!
His being flickered, confusing them. Dragons grabbed each other, champed down on fresh air, cried out in surprise and even panic as Ardan un-Shadowed and lashed out with his tail, claws and fangs. He was a Dragon-warrior. He’d teach these slugs!
Ardan snapped left and right, Give me space! Back, thou worms!
Now he was channelling Rider Nak?
What fun!
Low, vicious Dragonsong burbled out of his throat as Ardan swirled through the heat of battle, all Dragon-reactions and ire. He crushed a Dragon’s windpipe with a bite. Ha-ha-harrrr! He whirled, striking with a combination of open-taloned slaps. Wham! Bla-da-bam-bam-bam! He tore bloody, fifteen-foot stripes through a Dragon’s primary starboard flight-muscles and found an eye-orb stuck to his talon.
Tasty! he grinned, popping the morsel into his mouth. Actually, it was vile. He spat it at another Dragon, who ducked in surprise, perhaps expecting a fireball. Have at me then, you puny butterflies.
Take him alive, you worthless sons of slugs! roared the female. What do I pay you for, Hor’tax’tix? Get in there before I skin you alive! Morons! Null-fire jumbuki slugs! Fight!
Curse it, he had no magic! His Shadow power guttered like a dying candle, just enough to slide him through the fray for a half-breath, tricking the enemy. Attack a Dragon without exchanging pleasantries? Ardan caved in a Dragon’s ribs with a mighty back-kick, smashed the bone of the outer third of a wing with a cunning flick of his tail, and tossed another hulking hundred-and-thirty foot female over his shoulder with a monk-inspired twirl that bodily slammed that tonnage into two of the brute’s friends.
KEERAAACK! Ah, the sweet snap of breaking bones.
For the Onyx! roared Ardan, trying to rouse his fires. Not a whole lot of fireball inside, either. What did a Dragon have fangs for? Decoration?
The Shadow Dragon corkscrewed between three converging fireballs, deliberately deflecting one off his belly into the face of an attacker. Oddly, these Dragonkind were all the same unsightly Grey-Green colour except for the Red, the vast female who commanded this motley gang of four-pawed bandits. She cursed up a colourful storm as Ardan took pleasure in thrashing her Dragonwing, making mistakes and taking a severe beating himself, but they were hampered by this crazy desire to capture him, while he had no such reservations. Four Dragons had already dropped to the … floating Island! Freaky!
Ardan smashed a hopeful Grey-Green across the nose. Down, you bleating lamb!
What–floating Islands everywhere? He must have taken a harder blow to the skull than he had imagined.
Execrations flowed in a foul river from the Red. Must I do everything for you scum-born, null-fire dimwits? He did hear one thing, however. A phrase in a strange, twisted dialect of Dragonish. Power drain!
His strength evaporated.
Unholy windrocs! Ardan gasped as the sky tipped up and he dropped like a stone.
Fourteen Dragons shepherded him down to the nearest Island, a jade-green, verdant mass of jungle vegetation that reminded him favourably of Naphtha Cluster. Ardan’s eye-orbs slowly rolled in his head. Islands above. Islands below. A Dragonwing at least fifty strong trailed the commanding female. Peculiar draconic creatures swarmed all over the base of each Island. Millions of sparks of life. Where was he? And more importantly, where were Aranya and Leandrial and the others?
The Dragons holding him dumped Ardan onto his nose in a meadow of blue grass and unfamiliar yellow flowers that smelled, incongruously, like Aranya’s magic.
He surged–Power drain. Power drain!
Ardan slumped.
Landing, the Red Dragoness stalked him with a limber flexion of her chunky body. Her eyes were shaded with the green of draconic avarice. Oh, he’s a f
ighter, this unknown Black, she purred. An unexpected boon for our House. Which lineage is his? We shall find out. We shall have plenty of time to know each other, Black.
He could not lift a wingtip. How had she stolen his magic? Ardan’s head lolled aside. He spied Sapphire lurking in a stand of bushes nearby. By shielded telepathy, he cautioned, Be shrewd, little one. Stay hidden.
The Red loomed over him, her strangely spiky scales standing out against a cloudless noon sky. Noon? Where had the time fled? All he had was useless questions.
Come, Black, wheedled the Red Dragoness. I am Yar’nax’tix, or Tixi, which is the last word my enemies breathe across their perishing lips. Enough fighting. You’re my captive and I shall place you in my harem for safekeeping–Changu! A collar from the supply-depot. Triple-strong, for this one.
At once, Mistress.
Wings beat the air.
Her Dragonish was harsh upon the ear, all unfamiliar gutturals and nuance-indicators Ardan did not understand. A harem? What was that? He stared upward, held splayed upon his back by eight Dragons as the Red looked him over lasciviously.
I like taming strong Shapeshifters, she continued. Your glamour is unusually powerful, so unique! I shall taste your magic and have it for my own, o Black. You shall give it up willingly.
How did she know he was a Dragon Shapeshifter?
Ardan began, In your dreams, you yapping cur–
Sleep, she said, touching his neck delicately with two extended talons. Sleep, and wake as a man, Black Dragon.
* * * *
Waking, Ardan found himself trapped beneath a Dragon’s paw. His day had just continued its descent into the vortex. He was a man. Naked, and furious. He stirred.
Lie still, or I’ll squash you like a bug, growled the fifty-tonne Grey-Green Dragon standing on his chest.
Power–cried the Red Dragoness.
He appeared beside her, and snapped her jaw shut with a perfect right cross. By way of rejoinder, she swatted him so hard with her clenched knuckles that Ardan’s flying body cracked the rib of a Grey-Green standing guard nearby. Ardan bounced, shook his head, and charged the shocked Red. She belted him again. Instinctively twisting in the air as a male Dragon tried to snap him up in his jaw, Ardan the man landed instead on the Dragon’s tongue. The mouth ground closed, trapping his foot between a set of age-chipped fangs. He put his fist through the Dragon’s upper palette.
Spat out together with a gobbet of golden Dragon blood and a furious fireball, Ardan found himself snaffled by the Red, away from the flames. Power drain, she commanded, and flung him onto the sward with a snort of disgust. Hold the bastard son of a goat, you weaklings!
Ardan fought off two Dragons.
Power drain. Ruddy power drain–so strong, Black? snarled Tixi, as he kicked about in their grasp and then, with a flexion of his arms, pounded two disconcerted Dragons together above his head. Power freaking drain … better. Power drain! Where the poxy hells is that collar? Get me that thrice-accursed collar!
How does he yet fight? asked one of the males.
Another Dragon, standing on Ardan’s left arm, growled, A skin-hardening glamour, Kuratarr? And not only illusion, but teleport–
Shut your blaspheming tongue, Taragarr! snarled the other, shifting his grip on Ardan’s legs. The effect must have been achieved by mass hypnosis. Killed five on his own–and not even a full-grown male, the foul scale-biting Nurakik-slime!
Shapeshifter secrets, hissed Taraggar, making a superstitious clucking noise with his tongue.
Yet Ardan detected nuances in their manner he had very seldom observed in the Dragonkind. A grin touched his lips. Fear.
Summoning up the hard-learned lessons of Ri’arion’s mental disciplines, Ardan tried to section off whatever the Red’s magic had done to his ability to resist, but he could not find a clear path. The suns slowly tracked across an eggshell-blue sky as he lay in the grip of three Dragons. Every so often, Tixi snapped her power-sucking command and whatever of his power was available, including his physical strength, seeped away. He was not about to be tamed by anyone. He’d made the mistake of pursuing a relationship with Kylara before. Ardan could not even grind his teeth together–freaking Red! Suddenly, insight dawned. She was a Shifter–she had to be, for the way she eyeballed him left no possible doubt. If she desired a toy, Tixi would learn the hard way he was for one Shapeshifter Dragoness only.
Perhaps an hour later, Changu reappeared, flying at high speed–most probably, he didn’t want his backside shredded by his larger leader. In fact, Tixi was easily the biggest, most dominant Dragon of a physically impressive crew. How large did they grow these grubby farmer-Dragons in Herimor?
The sight of that collar in Changu’s paw put the freakish shivers into his bones, however. Ardan had no other word for it than evil. There was nothing externally noteworthy about the three-stranded, braided metal circlet that he should feel this way. The metal was a silver-gold alloy, with no visible clasp. It was a fine piece of workmanship, fine enough to pass for jewellery. Yet when Tixi clasped it in her paw, the metal appeared to stretch. Ardan eyed the thing with horror. Its aura! Darkness, dominance, a brand of magic he immediately wished he had never sensed …
As the Dragons’ hold intensified, Tixi reached down. He screamed, Aranya!
There was no answer from his oath-magic, not from anywhere in the Island-World. Devastation crushed his spirit. No. No! She could not be gone. The fight deserted him; Ardan slumped as the Red Dragoness worked the circlet down to his neck. For the first time in his life, his Dragon vanished. He had never realised how close that second-soul was, but its absence left a frozen void. Gone. Snuffed out. The hateful collar clasped his neck delicately, so cold it made him shiver. He gripped it with his hands, and the jolt he received knocked him flat on his back. Ardan tasted blood.
If I were you, I wouldn’t try that again, said the Red Shapeshifter, clearly well contented with her capture. Take him to the lair, and enclose him in my harem. I’ll question the Black later.
Aloud, Ardan croaked, “What the sulphurous hells is this thing?”
He dared not touch it again.
“You fool, it’s a Lavanias collar,” she replied scornfully. “It suppresses Shapeshifter powers. I look forward to interrogating you later, Black. Once I find out your bloodline and your powers, I’ll have your oath of service. And if you keep resisting, that will be … interesting, for me. Excruciating for you. I’m sure you’re well aware of the ways that a Lavanias collar can be used to break the mind. I almost hope you don’t cooperate. Almost.”
He shuddered at the malice in her tone.
* * * *
The Dragonwing took off with Ardan ensconced in Kuratarr’s right paw. The Grey-Green leaned in close to hiss, “You’re a dead Shifter!” Tixi overheard, and promised to flay his scales if he harmed so much as a hair on Ardan’s head. Suddenly, it struck him. He could see Dragons speaking to each other telepathically, for the shade and nuances of their eye-fires changed as they communicated, but he heard not a sound. The collar had even cut off his ability to hear Dragonish. This boded ill!
His head swivelled surreptitiously, looking for Sapphire. Would she understand? These mangy windrocs would not hesitate to squash … the dragonet casually hitching a ride on Taraggar’s shoulder, two hundred feet aft and below! His eyes popped like a land-snail’s roving eye-stalks. Clearly, he had underestimated the mite’s resourcefulness by a mere thousand leagues. Instinctively, he tried to focus his eyes, but he was reduced to Human sight now. Nonetheless, he checked Sapphire carefully; she seemed unharmed. Aranya would never forgive him if–he clenched his fists–if she were still alive.
Ardan went through the motions. He could not ignore his warrior heritage. His eyes roamed his surrounds, cataloguing, checking, forming hypotheses relentlessly, even as his sundered heart bled. O Amethyst! O Immadia!
The Dragonwing flew two compass points south of due west through a varied terrain of Islands which floated on thin air,
clustered and clumped together in groups for no apparent reason. Some were linked by foliage–perhaps vines–or bands of long, thin yethiragions, a subdraconic life-form Leandrial had described to them as ‘Island-binders’. They hung like purple hawsers between groups of Islands, twined together in strands up to fifty creatures thick. The Islands floated courtesy of the gas-producing hentioragions swarming on their undersides. There were literally thousands of different types, all of which apparently enjoyed the singular distinction of producing enormous quantities of lighter-than-air gases for flotation purposes. Ardan could not remember the major subclasses Leandrial had described, for he might have been guilty of not paying much attention at that point of her lecture. He saw other pod-like Dragonkind drifting between the floating Islands, and smaller types of Dragons that flocked like birds, boasting wingspans of twenty feet or more, and worm-like, flightless Dragons that lived in and quarried caves on the lower sides of Islands.
No dragonets, however. His gaze returned speculatively to Sapphire.
The Islands themselves came in every conceivable shape and size, thickly overgrown with trailing, fernlike vegetation characterised by very fine leaves, some types sporting leaf-blades over thirty feet long, and thick sprays of tubular flowers. Insects abounded, most of species he did not recognise, but far too many of the annoying flying midge-types seemed to wish to investigate the back of his throat. Higher up on the Islands, he saw forests of succulents and even a few white-striped barrel cacti in the driest patches of exposed, russet-coloured sandstone, enjoying the ferocious heat that simmered relentlessly over this peculiar archipelago.
No single Island stood where it should in the Cloudlands. His Western Isles sensibilities crawled beneath his skin like an infestation of maggots. What manner of realm was this, where Islands sailed the skies and Dragons all boasted a single colour–apart from the Shapeshifter Red? Interesting. So, his sooty black colour had instantly marked him for a Dragon from one of Herimor’s noble lines. He chuckled softly. Noble-blooded Ardan–a noble warrior for a noble Princess. Could he turn this to his advantage?