by Marc Secchia
So close? South? The storm! Zuziana bit her lip. But a Gladiator–a fighting Dragon, purchased by a Marshal? That hardly sounded like Aranya. She said, “The description–”
“Perfect down to the scars, except she was a Grey-Green colour,” said the monk.
Zip nodded. “Her chameleon trick.”
Tari stiffened in every muscle and wing-strut. “She’s an accursed Chameleon-Shifter?”
“No. Her power is similar to Herimor glamour,” said Ri’arion, “except she produces a real, physical change. A cellular-level glamour is the best way to describe this unique ability–not a malleable-phasic change akin to the Chameleons, with whom we have recent experience North of the Rift, but an unbounded transmutodraconisation–even extending, for example, to her Dragon powers.” Over the Dragons’ escalating murmurs, he explained, “Do not be surprised. She is a Star Dragon.”
“There’s theoretical possibility and then there’s your crazy, pseudo-metaphysical wing-twisting!” complained Marshal Tari, sounding sceptical yet admiring.
A grand entrance via comet was genuine-Aranya, Zuziana thought, mutinously wishing that Ri’arion would not sound so ruddy awed by her friend. She was just … Fra’anior’s grandchild. Aye. No stress. And what Thoralian had demanded of her in exchange for three lives–the Princess of Remoy rubbed her stomach sadly. This choice would tear her apart. How could she possibly fly against a mother’s first and deepest instincts, even if the prospect of motherhood was nascent, beneath the shell as Dragons put it? In her native Remoy, motherhood from first conception was regarded as a hallowed state and a sacred duty. Miscarriages in the perilous first twelve weeks of pregnancy or stillbirths were mourned annually for ten years, among the women–and so many! Now, the visceral grief of those women she had joined in mourning wailed elegiac Dragonsong deep in her soul. She understood, as never before, something of the trauma they had experienced.
How could she give birth to another trifold Thoralian? How could she not?
How could she condemn her own children to death, or conversely, grant nurture and life to a monster?
She could not face these questions. She must believe she had only dreamed of Thoralian; that he could exert no such dominion over her unborn children.
Raising her face to the heavens, the Remoyan Princess prayed for inspiration.
Her answer came in the form of a wild, forlorn cry from the deeps. Zuziana! Ri’arion! Answer me, please! I sensed the spirit of Thoralian and a tipping in the Balance … tell me, little ones, are you safe?
Noooooooooo …
Chapter 28: Dragon Kisses
ARanya, In her Human guise, swept through the portals of Huaricithe’s fortress in a cold, consuming fury. Thoralian had visited. He had fire-bombed the place, hammered the defenders and moved on to the next Marshal’s territory. All the way down South toward the Straits, four hundred and seventy leagues that whipped by as they travelled the blast of her mightiest Storm-winds, they had seen Islands smouldering after the storm snuffed out his destructive fires. She did not understand. How could Thoralian have moved so fast? One triple-confirmed report, relayed by telepathic Dragon message-stations, had placed him three hundred leagues North, near a place called Entorixthu’s Cleft, at the same time as she and Huari had been discovering their kinship.
Her tenth-generation niece’s Dragon army had fought bravely before being overrun. The carnage was unspeakable. Dragons. Humans. Lives spilled across the front steps; four dead Dragons had to be dragged away from the main entryway to allow ingress.
People stared at Aranya, but only momentarily. Their eyes were hollow; their lives hollower.
Jerkily, the Princess of Immadia stooped to touch a child. “Be healed.”
This could have been Immadia. This could have been their fate the day First War-Hammer Ignathion’s army had descended upon the city; later, the Immadians had indeed paid a terrible price.
“Thank you,” said the distraught mother. “Say thank you, Shihooyi.”
The wounded girl’s face was all tan, impish chin and huge dark eyes framed in black ringlets. Gorgeous! Maybe four years of age. But as Aranya smiled instinctively, the girl’s expression crumpled. “Monster! Mommy, mommy … it’s a monster! Get away, monster!”
Aranya froze.
The mother stared at Aranya, and blenched. She made a superstitious sign near her throat, seized her child by the hand, and departed at a panicked run.
The Princess bolted. She knew not where she fled, only that she must hold her hair close to her face and shield and fly from the voice that shrieked in her mind, ‘Monster!’ She slammed her knees against ornaments, crashed into a doorjamb, and spun away. Blind. Mute. Even her voice was stolen from her, the voice of her grief; the voice of who she was.
Aranya found herself in a bathroom, staring into one-quarter of a broken mirror. It had been pretty, once. Even the shattered surface reflected her brokenness all too faithfully. ‘Always treasure a faithful reflection’ was a favourite saying of Beran’s. His daughter leaned over an ornamental crystal bowl standing on a carved vanity dresser beneath the mirror, and sobbed until her tears splashed freely in an inch or more of fluid. Snatching up a piece of glass, she bared her torso. Her hand trembled, then moved to make a decisive cut. Aranya was always resolute. Always in command. Another cut, a scooping slice into one of the lesions. She must cut them out. Slice away the evil. Somewhere beneath lay the true Aranya, a girl scarred inside and out.
Yet she knew no amount of hatred could be scalpel enough to restore what had been. The glass shard fell from her nerveless fingers. It shattered into the dust and slivers of her reality.
Monster. That was her. The sobbing seized her once more, harder and more wrenching than before. She wept for the smashed bodies strewn amongst the wreckage, the desolate populace, the fire-lives spilled on the altar of Thoralian’s ambition. Her tears ran copiously, plinking like delicate rain into the bowl. She had not crossed the Rift to see history repeated in Herimor. She had not even laid eyes upon the First Egg, gradually ascending from its secret home behind the greatest Dragon-shield in the history of the Island-World, produced by the eerie seven-sided Island-Cluster she had beheld in Infurion’s vision.
She had sworn an oath before the Ancient Dragon.
No. She would be stronger than hate. Aranya touched her torso as though wondering whose blood streaked crimson runnels upon her wraithlike skin.
Now, she felt wrung dry. Aranya straightened, regarding the royal mess in the mirror. She dried her face with her hair and touched her belly-scar tenderly. She had sobbed so hard, the newly-healed wound throbbed. Guess which prudish royal had just strolled through a fortress ten times the size of the average village robed only in her hair–so different to any of the close-curled hairstyles apparently all the rage in Herimor. No-one wore a headscarf or a face-veil, but their hair was coiffed to the point of wonderment, and for the men, teased upward into spreading bowls which were dyed many colours, creating soaring crowns and crazy, flat-topped styles that she found rather fetching.
For her part, she had her mad Shapeshifter locks, a veritable rainbow of colours reaching almost to her knees, these days. Perhaps she would never cut it. People could gawk at her hair and then scream at her face.
Aranya eyed the half-full bowl with mild surprise. What sane person cried like that? No wonder she felt parched.
The liquid was pearlescent with magic …
A gift.
Reverently, Aranya of Immadia scooped up the bowl and stepped out into the corridor, treading not upon lumpy soles, but upon a featherbed of wonder. This Amethyst Dragon had a work of service to perform. Finding someone who looked like a servant, she said, “Please take me to the wounded. I can help.”
* * * *
Human-Aranya woke when a small hand shook her shoulder. A tentative touch, it nevertheless put the fear of rajals into her. Looking around wildly, she saw the lamps had been lit in the great hall where she remembered collapsing while tend
ing the wounded. It must be evening. Someone had lifted her into a cot and placed a blanket over her shoulders.
She caught her breath as she saw who had woken her. “Shih …”
“Shihooyi,” lisped the little girl. “Why are you a star?”
“Uh …” How to answer that?
“You don’t shine none,” Shihooyi continued. “Are you a real star?”
“I am a Star Dragon, Shihooyi,” said Aranya, caught between smiling and not wanting to scare the girl witless again. “How’s that burn on your leg?”
She wriggled about to display her calf, saying proudly. “Almost better. Are you a broken star? Is that why you came to our Islands from heaven? What’s heaven like? Does it hurt? My mommy says you made lots of people and Dragons all better with your star-tears. Do stars cry starlight? Aren’t stars happy? Why were you so sad?”
“Starlight is happy,” said Aranya. That was all the response she trusted herself to make, for the girl touched one of her scars fearfully inasmuch as she had effortlessly touched Aranya’s heart.
“My daddy needs help,” said Shihooyi, pointing vaguely. “He’s over there. Can you shine on him?”
“Of … course.”
The little brow creased into a frown as the girl evidently remembered something. “My mommy said you was a broken star. She said a bad Marshal made you sick. Thor? Thor?”
“Thoralian,” said Aranya, reminded of a certain dragonet’s prattling.
“Well, I said you weren’t broken none,” said Shihooyi, slipping her little hand into Aranya’s hand. “I said you shined on all these people and made them better. One teeny drop of tears–” she illustrated with her fingers, squeezed firmly together “–and they shined inside. See? That girl shined. He shined. The big Dragon with our Marshal, even he done shined inside, just like a star. So I told my mommy, that lady’s a real star. All she got is Dragon kisses, all over.”
This brand of honesty was too raw, too searing, overwhelming her like Dragon fire. As they wound between the cots, Aranya could only gasp, “Dragon kisses?”
Shihooyi stamped her little foot. “You scared me! But when I seen you shined, I wasn’t scared no more. All I done seen is your insides through them Dragon kisses.”
Fighting the sevenfold roaring in her ears, Aranya gripped the bed guard to steady herself. She gazed down at Shihooyi’s father. He was a short, dark man with his chest heavily wrapped in bandages, and a clearly broken leg. His wife lay beside him, deeply asleep. Aranya remembered seeing her working tirelessly the previous day.
Once more, she felt flushed and aflame, as though her personal Rift-Storm burned too brightly through the cracks in her soul. Fra’anior’s thundering had filled her dreams. Portents. Sweat-soaked nightmares of the pox revisiting … the Immadian turned to the man and his wife, and touched them gently with her hands. Perhaps storms were not only about destruction. There was a wild, inexpressible song to be heard amongst winds and rain, thunder and pain … for pain was its own storm. Her lean, muscled forearms gripped the leg above and below the break.
“Can I help?” asked Shihooyi.
She reached for the girl. “Every star needs their best helper. Will you sit on your daddy’s leg here and hold it tight?”
Dragon kisses!
Setting about her work, Aranya marvelled at the mind of a child. The innocence that so simply, yet profoundly, grasped truth. The bitter beauty of unadorned insight to wound and heal, so unlike adults’ unstinting efforts to dance around the truth. This labour was her slow dance. A true song of Storm and magic.
The Immadian Princess eventually accepted a simple Herimor dress to cover her nudity; due to her height, it hung scandalously short. Someone pressed a man’s trousers upon her, but she had to knot the belt to prevent them falling off, for the belt could almost fit twice about her scant waist. She had to eat more. This storm was burning her up from the inside. And as she moved among the people, Aranya noticed them making a certain strange sign, pressing the splayed fingers of their left hand to the chest as the right hand made a swirling, outward-flowing genuflection starting at the heart. They held babies up to be blessed and children approached to touch an arm, a leg, even just her hair. How could she refuse? Even if unadulterated worship … itched. Madly.
Toward afternoon, Aranya took a meal of spicy Herimor breads and unfamiliar fruits with Human-Huari, Gang and Brityx. They talked strategy. Huari had summoned all the Marshals within a three hundred-league radius to a council of war, and sent messages to many more. Her army gathered. On the Eastern front, they already fought Thoralian’s legions, trying to ensure the safety of their people. Here at the fortress, they were not cleaning up save for placing bodies upon funeral pyres. They were preparing to ride to war.
Aranya shared her vision of the First Egg’s location; her companions immediately exchanged significant glances and Huaricithe said, “Easily identified, impossible to reach. That heptagonal Island-Cluster is unique in Herimor. It’s called the Inscrutables, and it is protected by the most powerful and unique Dragon-magic shield known to our kind. It has never been penetrated, not in six hundred years.”
The Cluster, it was said, had formed around the time of Hualiama Dragonfriend. Her Amethyst Dragoness stirred in the aether. That’s our place. Destiny’s Dragonsong.
“Well, that’s where we must fight Thoralian,” Aranya said firmly.
Gang threw her a longsuffering look.
The Immadian added, “I must clarify, Thoralian will want me there–yet I must go. You have your own battles; don’t feel that you have to fight mine for–”
“You shut the hells up!” Gangurtharr exploded, making Aranya fumble her bread and knock over a goblet of water.
“Gang!” gasped Huaricithe.
“What?”
“Be polite to the Star Dragoness.”
“Very well,” he said acidly. “With respect, your Celestial Majesty, I humbly refuse to be fobbed off by some irrepressible chit of a Star Dragoness when the most important battle in six hundred years is looming, and what, by Fra’anior’s paws, do you think you’re going to accomplish on your own, flying through hostile territory, when there are friends here willing to give their very wings for you? So you can tie that idiotic idea in knots and shove it right up–”
“Gang!” roared Huaricithe.
WHAT?
The Marshal eyeballed him, heat for heat, fire for fire. Slowly, the enormous Dragon’s fires receded to a muted roar. No, the heat had not reduced. Aranya saw a different fire emerging between them.
Flushing slightly, Huari said, “You’re such a Dragon.”
“And you, as a woman …” His eyes bulged. “What is this? I’m a good Dragon! Well, not a good one, but try to live with white-fires. Now, I’m finding Human hide … desirable. It is wrong! And your abnormal hair, Star Dragoness–” He choked on an expletive.
Aranya moved to stand beside her relative, gazing up into Gangurtharr’s bewildered eyes. “Uh, is now a good time to explain that my tears can turn people into Dragons, and possibly, Dragons into Shapeshifters?” Smoke belched out of Gang’s nostrils. Awkwardly, she added, “That’s why you’re having these unaccustomed feelings regarding Humans. My tears also heal in unexpected ways. I’m sorry, but all these people and Dragons who drank of my tears yesterday …”
Huaricithe breathed, “All those mortal wounds you healed?”
“Shapeshifters?” echoed Gang.
“Sorry? Aranya, you saved their lives,” Brityx growled. “Should we regret wings to bear us up in renewed life? Now, that old Marshal’s trembling in his mangy hide. Little ones, we’ve a battle ahead. Gang, you need to keep any further assassins at bay. Huari, you speak to the incoming Marshals. I’ll speak to our people and the Dragonkind.”
“We gave to hundreds …” Aranya’s voice trailed off. Shihooyi had claimed to see starlight in their flesh. A child’s truth once more. “Assassins?”
“During the night. Two Dragons, one Phase-Shifter and a Sco
rpiolute,” Gangurtharr said briskly. “I’ll oversee security–upon your word, Marshal.”
“Granted.”
“You will obey my instructions implicitly, Scrap.” Gang’s heavy talon tapped her shoulder with a staggering, no-nonsense air. “Understood?”
She wagged an eyebrow at him.
The huge Dragon snarled, with palpable relish, “Let’s clear the air about one matter, o former fodder of the Pits. Not every Dragon around here feels compelled to worship your scrawny, undersized haunches, alright?”
She laughed so hard, the scar on her stomach twinged. Oh, it was good to have the old Gang back.
* * * *
Leandrial traced a long curve on her mental map. “This is where the Balance-trail of Aranya’s Storm power leads us, down toward the Straits of Hordazar. Here, around these archipelagos, there’s a disturbance indicating great magic at work.”
“Got you, Aranya!” Zip said.
“I warn you, Thoralian will know this as well,” the Land Dragoness stated flatly.
Zuziana touched her belly. Leandrial said she had scented urzul, but it was either hidden so well or now absent … she must assume the worst. She could not tell anyone, not even her own husband, or the urzul would emerge to contaminate her babies. Thoralian’s vile plan had purpose and forethought.
Trapped.
“Then what are we waiting for?” asked Ri’arion.
Rapidly, they reformed their group and descended beneath the Cloudlands, angling for the minor Shuk-Shuhukii current, and the realms of the great Land Dragons East of the Straits of Hordazar. Shell-Clan. Welkin-Runners. Thousands of Land Dragons were already locked in battle in the Southern Kahilate, according to the intelligence Leandrial had gathered, and the Strait itself was blockaded by a division of Thoralian’s Lesser Dragons. They could use subterfuge again, or …