by Marc Secchia
Bigger than any Dragonship he had ever seen! Freaking volcanoes, what was this place?
“Tell us,” Bane and Lurax begged. “What did she say?”
He scratched her spine-spikes cheerfully. “Boys, this dragonet just saved our hides. She called in the Inscrutable Dragons–roaring rajals! Are they flying armouries, or what?”
“Never seen nothing like it!” Bane said feelingly.
“They’ve got different types–a flying fortress, a clever-mind type, these little swarming Dragon-things and Dragon emplacements on their battlements,” Lurax prattled like an excitable parakeet. “Some of them have, strike my soul, twenty wings!”
“And burrowing Dragons,” added Bane.
“And these Dragons that are so flexible, they link together to form a single bigger Dragon!”
“They live on Dragons!”
“What?” Ardan scratched inside his left ear as if mining for a few sensible thoughts.
Now, he remembered that the breakage of the first Island-spanning shield had led to one entire side of the heptagon folding away and disappearing beneath the Cloudlands, only for a second pentagonal Island-formation to be revealed in the centre … and a second shield. What a shield! It had even stymied Thoralian as he winged after Ardan, bellowing his possessive rage. He had wanted the Shadow Dragon. They had escaped. But what an awful, fitting fate for Marshal Tixi, to see her second heart eaten before her still-living eyes! Gaah, he could not wish that fate on any Dragon, not even one so evil. Vile beyond belief!
Suddenly, as if unleashed from a fog, his mind began to make connections. What were the Inscrutable Islands protecting, if not the First Egg? Were they keeping the Thoralians out, or the S’gulzzi in? Could it be that these fabled Dragonkind might be protecting the Island-World from the depredations of the S’gulzzi creatures who possessed all the power of a First Egg of the Ancient Dragons? He shook his head in amazement. He would never have thought it, but small threads began to twine together and make sense. Leandrial’s description of the Theadurial and how they had historically been slaves to the fire-spirits of the S’gulzzi. They had no love for their old masters. The beastly, elongated Yellow-White’s desperation to retrieve the First Egg, and his rousing of all the infested Land Dragons to purse his prize. Then, how could the S’gulzzi, those ravening, core-dwelling spirits, not have escaped with the First Egg?
Because there was something special about this place. Something that prevented them. A reason why this most peculiar Island-Cluster had settled here!
Wow!
These Islands dated from the time of the Dragonfriend, six hundred years before. The First Egg had returned to Herimor just one hundred and fifty years before. That discrepancy baffled him. He had to wonder … the approach of magic arrested his thoughts.
A woman shimmered through the metal door as though the metal were merely a gossamer curtain, saying, “Because we stole the First Egg to stop the war between the Land Dragons, Shapeshifter Ardan.”
Blue-in-blue eyes, devoid of distinction between the iris and the sclera, fixed upon him with extraordinary clarity. The woman had a face like a golden statue and beautiful white hair that fell to her waist. Her thick, sweeping blue robes were clasped by a high, stiff collar at her throat, and although she wore no insignia, Ardan knew her for a high-ranking official of these people.
“We have trespassed sufficiently upon your thoughts to know you are no friend of Marshal Thoralian’s, Ardan,” added the woman, in ringing, exotic tones. “For this act we make no apology. We are at war. Necessities must be such.”
He made to rise, but she halted his action with a small, definite frown.
“I am Dhazziala, First Hand of my people. Among my ancestors, I proudly name Hualiama Dragonfriend, the Star Dragoness, and Grandion the Tourmaline. Who are you?”
“Ardan of Naphtha Cluster, Dragon of Shadow,” he said, with growing excitement and astonishment. This idiosyncratic woman and Aranya must be related! “And if there is war to be waged against Marshal Thoralian, then I beg you to let me and my Apprentice Dragon Riders ride with you. Yet I must ask, why is the Egg not in your … paws?”
“Aye, Shapeshifter.” Her depthless eyes sparked. Dhazziala countered, “Why is your Aranya not with you?”
“That’s a story.” He inclined his head graciously. “In my culture, it is polite to allow ladies to speak first. After all, the wise-women of our tribes are responsible for preserving and extending the lore.”
“You are oath-bound, are you not?”
Ardan produced a fine example of the challenging glare.
Dhazziala laughed musically. “Oh, we discovered that link quite by accident. It’s one of the very few types of magic which is able to penetrate our shield; by that, and Thoralian’s maddened pursuit, we knew you for a Dragon of note. By our calculations from this morning, your Star Dragoness is travelling rapidly from mid-Wyldaroon through the Straits of Hordazar. She’s about to engage in battle.”
Alive! Coming for … well, not for him. She had made that as clear as crysglass. His smile had to be foolishness personified. Thinning his lips, Ardan said, “Aranya is not mine.”
The blue eyes turned effervescent, the magic practically leaping out at him. “Oh? It is said that the consequences of denying the oath-magic are dire beyond comprehension–this is a complication.” Ardan, listening closely, began to hear echoes within echoes as the woman conferred at the speed of thought with others. “Very well. In overview: The traitor Shurgal’s return with the First Egg sparked war between the Land Dragons. Great were the losses and the Clans have been weakened to this day. We posit this is the reason the Thoralian-triplicate was able to ally with the Theadurial–”
“Besides that they share knowledge of urzul?” Ardan put in.
The woman swore inadvertently, then apologised. “To have this confirmed! Ardan! You must brief my Council forthwith.”
OPEN! she commanded. The door dissolved into nothingness.
Ardan found himself staring into an egg-shaped chamber furnished with seven rows of curved benches, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with blue-robed, white-haired men and women. They looked so freakishly similar, his nape crawled.
Then it struck him like a Dragon’s icy claw speared through his gut. All the peculiar legends of Thoralian he had read in the Marshal’s library. This woman had just called him the Thoralian-triplicate …
Dhazziala nodded, confirming his suspicions. Three! Shell-brothers? Or something entirely more sinister? It made a twisted sort of logic, an explanation for his legend and confirmation of his amplified mental power; Ardan had just seen one Thoralian near the horizon, and then another arrived in ambush, thirty leagues apart. He had thought his memories played him false. Clearly, no. Where was the third? The First Hand turned already into a graceful genuflection, sweeping her right hand from her heart outward and behind her. The Council rose, and simultaneously, made exactly the same gesture at the same tempo.
“We are the Seventy-Seven,” they said.
Ardan steadied Lurax with a firm hand upon his shoulder. He said, “We greet the Seventy-Seven and the … uh, First Hand. I am Ardan, as you know, and these are my apprentice Dragon Riders, Bane and Lurax.” He almost chuckled at how Lurax straightened and Bane puffed out his chest. “This mighty dragonet is Sapphire, favoured companion of Aranya, the Star Dragoness, who has travelled from North of the Rift-Storm with the avowed intent of defeating Thoralian’s bid for supremacy and returning the First Egg to its ancestral home at Fra’anior Cluster.”
Ardan could no better have deposited an explosive fireball in their midst. The previously stony-faced Councillors descended into a shouting, gesticulating mess. Well-spoken, Western Isles warrior, he congratulated himself.
SILENCE, said Dhazziala, and gained exactly what she demanded. “Picking up my tale–so heavy was the fighting that the First Egg fell to the floor of the world beside the roots of our Islands. It was captured by the S’gulzzi–we spit upon their ancestors!”<
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“We spit!” chorused the Council.
Ardan blinked. Roaring rajals! A peculiar bunch, this, but definitely on the right side of this war.
“It is said, the First Egg falls where it wills,” continued the First Hand, in a sing-song tone that suggested she had told this legend many times. “The Egg fell into the only known deposit of meriatonium in all Herimor, the fabled mines of Dramagon himself, called Suald-dak-Doon, or the Pit of Despair. We surrounded the Egg with our Air-Breathers, the mightiest of whom is called Yiisuriel-ap-Yuron, constructed our shields, and discovered–stalemate.” Her voice turned bitter. “We could not reach the Egg, for meriatonium is anathema to magic. Impenetrable. As the Egg lay at twelve leagues’ depth, no Land Dragon could reach it from above. The S’gulzzi penetrated the cracks in the Island-World’s crust to reach that fabled treasure, but they lacked the physical substance to move the Egg or the knowledge to manipulate its power–until recently.”
“The Air-Breathers know the dark past of our people. They know whence we came, and why we tarried–our long-unconsummated purpose clarified the moment the First Egg fell into enemy paws. Four hundred and fifty years, and one hundred and fifty farther, we have awaited the Star Dragoness. Only she can illuminate those unimaginable depths and retrieve the Egg.”
Recently? chirruped Sapphire.
“Aye, my Dragon-kin.” The First Hand smiled brightly at the dragonet. “Two decades ago, the Egg began to move. Something is pushing it to the surface–despite our ultimate protections, and with a power that tips mountains. The Marshal Thoralians know this. His power has already breached our first layer of defence–we spit upon his ancestors!”
“We spit!” the Council shouted in unison.
Ardan scratched his chin, trying not to think of the incongruity of conducting this interview while ensconced in a hammock. These were Aranya’s kin? He rather suspected these were the type of relatives one preferred not to invite to family events. “We heard that your Islands have been located here for six centuries. If that’s the case …”
Dhazziala bobbed her head. “We are the Peoples’ Council of the Lost Isles, representing Humans, Shapeshifters and Dragonkind.”
No Dragons were visible, but that clearly meant nothing, judging by the amount of mental chatter in the aether. “But that’s–they were …” Ardan protested, pointing upward and to his right, locating the Lost Isles far above the Kingdom Kaolili in the far North-Eastern corner of the Island-World.
“One and the same. We relocated across the Rift and settled here,” said Dhazziala, making this implausible migration sound trivial.
“Well, welcome to the ‘not so lost after all’ Islands,” Ardan quipped, earning himself not a single smile in the chamber. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to hear all about the Star Dragoness and urzul, now?”
Seventy-Seven Councillors leaned forward in perfect concert and said, “Forthwith.”
Behind them Ardan sensed echoes within echoes of draconic minds, a vast congregation of mighty minds. What an ally to have discovered!
One thing was for certain. He must elide key details about how he and Aranya had met. Then, he remembered how easily Dhazziala had plumbed his mind. He stood in a chamber full of freakish mind-readers who lived atop a Clan of Air-Breathers, the largest Land Dragons of all, and they commanded the most mysterious, feared powers of any in the Island-World, according to the scroll-lore.
Ardan broke out in a cold sweat.
* * * *
On the wings of Aranya’s under-Cloudlands Storm blast, Leandrial’s enormous force churned toward a Land Dragon blockade beneath the Straits of Hordazar. They knew they were placing themselves between the jaws of a trap. One jaw swept from behind, the other undoubtedly waited for them beyond the Straits, somewhere between the Vassal States and the Southern Kahilate.
Their intent was to punch a neat hole in that jaw and go swim down the gullet of Thoralian’s plan.
At least, that was Zip’s charmingly graphic interpretation of Leandrial’s rather more elegantly presented strategy.
Aranya fiddled with the lumps on her neck, very aware that she had orders to rest and therefore, absolutely could not. The evening before last, there had been a terrible upset in the Balance. Leandrial had cried out about Land Dragons dying. All of her kin had looked shaken since, and there was something terrifying about creatures so powerful looking wobbly at the knees. Then, her dreams had morphed into a three-way battle between Fra’anior, Hualiama and Izariela, until she woke feeling as if a full-scale war had been waged inside her skull. She felt awful. Fraught. Struggling. Unprepared and fragile, when she should be in the fighting prime of her life to face Thoralian.
Still, she did not feel half as awful as the blockade was about to feel.
Leandrial had managed to co-ordinate eight thousand six hundred and forty-four Land Dragons into a dense fighting wedge, led by fifty huge Welkin-Runners bearing ready squads of Blast-Runners in their neck-ruffs. They had one simple job–demolish the enemy lines and keep blasting until everyone passed the blockade. Further back came many other types of Runners and then the less mobile types of Land Dragons such as Living Springs, Stellates and Cognates. Leandrial had mentioned a number of other Clans who lived too far afield, or were physically unable or openly unwilling to travel to war. Those Land Dragons who would not endanger travellers with steam-breath, fire, acid or vocal-Harmonic attacks, carried the Lesser Dragons, Shapeshifters and Humans, representing Marshal Huaricithe’s entire operation plus all of the additional Dragons supplied by the allied Marshals, in their mouths. In total, these forces numbered close to eleven thousand souls. Not all would be carried into battle.
Swept along by Aranya’s unending personal storm, the swarm of Land Dragons darkened the golden realms through which they swam, the middle layer here having been overrun with a type of microscopic fungal spore that generated a hazy golden glow–better than the dense, giant forests below and the prickly, vine-like mesh of blue-fleshed plants making the upper layer impassable even to Land Dragons.
I know you’re awake, little one, Leandrial said without rancour, opening her mind. Focus.
The view ahead of her suddenly leaped into sharp relief in the unfamiliar, greyscale tones of Leandrial’s Harmonic vision. The world was a textured layer two miles above and the jagged sea of plant-tips below. The Straits measured a ‘mere’ forty-two miles wide, which was apparently quarters close enough to make Land Dragons feel cramped. As Leandrial’s easy writhing motion shifted her vision to port and starboard, Aranya was treated to the sight of their twenty mile wide, five mile tall advance bearing down on a close-packed wall of Gather-Runners, a type of Land Dragon that dwelled and travelled in swarm-colonies thousands of individuals strong. They were omnivores notorious for descending upon an area, stripping it of all life and moving on abruptly, especially during their triennial mating season.
Leandrial and most of her allies regarded them as vermin.
Aranya shivered delicately as the Land Dragons, en masse, vocalised their battle-challenges in a rolling peal of thunder. Awesome power! As she shivered, a vision snatched her away.
Humansoul and Dragonsoul stood atop their mountain, hand in paw, watching the advent of a storm. Vast battlements of cloud spread from horizon to horizon, rolling toward their mountain with majestic, unstoppable unconcern.
This will be a mighty tempest, said her Dragoness. She spoke not of the now, but of the near future.
The Human girl responded, We will stand together, my soul’s song. Strands of pink and mauve, white and gold, raven-dark and shimmering blue, wound together about her wrist and the paw that engulfed her hand. We are strongest together, undivided and indivisible, our soul in plurality forged adamantine. When you fly, I will be with you. When you sing, I shall be your song. When you triumph, my hand shall hold thy crown.
For the longest time, Dragoness-Aranya could find no words to respond to Humansoul’s poetic outpouring of her heart. Then, she said in a br
eathless rush, Thou art the quintessential totality of my white-fires. We are strongest when you burn brightest, o my soul, and without thee, one fire-soul would ever live in Imbalance.
Oddly, she understood herself perfectly. She was just not sure anyone else would.
Aranya blinked as light flared brighter than the twin suns blazing in all of their brilliance, below the Cloudlands. A barrage of every Harmonic light-producing and raucous, shockwave-producing Land Dragon’s fury battered the opposing forces.
GRRAARRGH! The Land Dragons shook the atmosphere. Aranya smelled smoke and the sharp tang of ozone. Now came the staccato KRACK! KRACK! of the Blast-Runners opening fire upon pockets of the enemy from close range. Charred bodies spiralled and drifted apart in the viscid air, creating fanciful swirling patterns upon the black smoke; next came a rainfall of golden Dragon blood. Leandrial’s fast-moving force churned the remnants like a rancid soup, the Dragons behind almost blinded by the ghastly mixture, but sloughing it aside courtesy of their shield-deployment. Again and again, eye-cannons blasted and throats reverberated. Smaller battles tore off the edges of the advance as agile, pre-prepared forces whirled away to engage the enemy and relieve any beleaguered Land Dragons. Nevertheless, the result was hardly bloodless. Hundreds fell, snarled paw and limb with the enemy. Ri’arion lashed out with amplified psychic attacks bolstered by the linked Clans of Living Springs and ordinarily peaceable Cognates, disabling or knocking out enemy Dragons by the dozen.
It seemed to Aranya that she dwelled in a state of dislocation between present reality and the voice of Izariela, instructing her during that lonely vigil beneath the stars. Magic drifted around her in beautiful, rippling veils, belying the destruction, as though she flew through a world of Helyon silk hangings linked by delicate-appearing yet phenomenally strong gossamer threads. These were metaphysical expressions of existence, the communicative intricacy of magic impacting the physical world, depending on it, modifying it. Watching this and heeding the voice of Izariela speaking in her memory, Aranya thrilled to an emerging sense of comprehension even as the threads of magic coalesced, exploded, reformed and coursed throughout the fabric of her Island-World, always superimposed upon the battle without.