by Marc Secchia
The backlash of oath-magic through their linkage smashed her beyond the stars, into darkness.
* * * *
Ardan folded his muscled arms and glared at Aranya as she rested in a hammock inside Yiisuriel’s fortress. The day’s fighting was done; Thoralian’s forces were regrouped outside the overarching shield that now protected Leandrial’s entire command, including the Star Dragoness. They had won through. Now, strategies must necessarily be redrawn.
Yet all of this paled into insignificance before the soul-electrifying power of a pair of amethyst eyes that regarded him now.
Ardan roared, “You are the most granite-headed, intractable, storm-creating excuse for a stray lightning-bolt I have ever encountered! Your so-called friends won’t let me in the blasted door for fear that my very presence will knock you sill –again–half of Herimor apparently worships your wings, and I am fated to love a veritable goddess who cannot see her own tail if it slaps her in the jaw! And if they are eavesdropping–” he sucked in an enormous, shuddering breath–I WILL LOSE MY FREAKING TEMPER!!
The Princess did not point out the obvious, but he could see what she was thinking. Half of the Island had just heard him bellow. A pleasingly draconic bellow …
Mewling and spitting in anger, Sapphire whizzed into the room and buried herself in Human-Aranya’s arms. Aranya calmed the dragonet with a deft touch, irritating Ardan further, because his treacherous brain immediately pictured him as the dragonet, purring beneath her caressing hand.
He gritted out, “You are impossible! Can’t love you, can’t not love you … what do you want, woman–Dragoness? Answers on a handy scrolleaf!”
“I do not want to put this war at risk, right now, by trying to untangle this fiendishly intricate knot that binds us,” she suggested sensibly.
He shook a fist at the ceiling, as if railing at the skies might better express the depths of his frustration. Zip had pointed out that maddening each other was just the other face of the dral of love. Ardan had to leave the room at that point or he would have committed a morally reprehensible act. He was good at those, apparently.
He said, “May I mention the war-interrupting storm raging overhead at present?”
“Aye.” An Island-World’s weight burdened her sigh. “Ardan, I don’t have many answers, but I can tell you this. I am not negotiating with some seventh-generation niece of mine about rights to you. The very idea makes me feel tired. Besides, if I know you, you’re more stubborn than that scimitar-stopper you wear atop your shoulders. You command your own heart. I should not interfere.”
“For the tenth stupid time, Aranya–interfere! I want you to interfere! Must I grovel until you change your mind for sheer, bloody shame, woman?”
Aranya’s eyes glistened between the folds of her royal purple face-veil. He could not begin to enumerate the emotions roiling within her. She whispered, “I need that storm, Ardan.”
He growled, “So, you want me to–”
“No.”
“You don’t want me to–”
“No.”
Ardan roared a very impolite word at this juncture. It did not improve his mood that she giggled at his reaction. “Maybe I’ll just come over there and start with a few kisses,” he threatened, then almost cursed again as a shadow crossed those incomparable eyes. “I am a decent, patient man!”
Now, a twinkle of amusement. “Is that so?”
“Alright, if you want honesty, Immadia, I need my Dragon. I can’t fight the Thoralians without my Shadow. Won’t you just–”
“I can’t heal what isn’t there.”
“Can’t you?”
Suddenly, the room seemed a quarter of the size it had been before, and the heat, like a furnace. Aranya’s eyes were as wide as a startled Dragoness’, rife with ideas sparking in all directions.
Rather more feebly, he added, “Maybe I should turn you over my knee like Nak always threatens to.”
“That almost set your scales alight last time,” she retorted diffidently, yet he sensed her blushing even beneath the veil. “Ardan, the bigger issue is that I can’t defeat–we can’t defeat the Thoralians, without the whole Daughter of Storm … piece. I need you, your magic and your presence. I’m sorry if that makes you feel used. Of course that’s offensive and I am acutely conscious–I’d feel the same way. But I am confused and vulnerable, Ardan. There’s a heart in here that resents acting the victim, but I just don’t see how this story ends with ‘and they winged happily into the suns-set together’. Tell me you understand that much, at least.”
“No.”
She stared at his upraised, scarified eyebrow.
Clapping his hands together so sharply she jumped, Ardan said, “Right, Star Dragoness. We’re in a war. Afterward, you will unbend this ridiculous stance, or so help me, I swear …”
“The knee?”
“By Fra’anior’s sulphurous armpits, my knee!”
He was ashamed of shouting at this woman, but she seemed to understand his emotions–Aranya was attuned to Storm, after all, and stormy draconic emotions were what raged, choked and burned inside of his breast now. Ardan had always considered himself a forbearing and self-controlled man, insofar as he remembered. But not where Aranya was concerned. Never, with her …
“Now that I’m awake, we should confer with the lovely Dhazziala.” Aranya had the nerve to wink at him. “She has fine taste in Shapeshifter Dragons, I hear.”
“She’s seventy-two flaming years old! It’d be like … kissing someone’s grandmother!” Ardan contorted his face, making her laugh merrily. “Even Western Isles barbarians have their standards.”
“Except regard–” She bit off her words. Except regarding teenage princesses? But Aranya ad-libbed graciously, “If you kissed her you’d probably bring down an Island or three. Maybe we can turn that power against Thoralian?”
“Should I skip Dhazziala and kiss Thoralian instead?”
“I think you’d rather kiss a dead rat floating down a sewage pipe,” Aranya suggested, as they laughed together. “Well, let’s keep that strategy in the back pocket, agreed? You scared Nak silly last time, anyways. Now, can I tell you what passed between Fra’anior and me? It’s … huge. Pun intended.”
Council chamber, now, said Dhazziala, directly into his mind.
Ardan offered his arm. Your Majesty, we are expected.
As the First Hand’s anger flared, the oath-magic responded and Aranya, halfway risen from her hammock, executed a very unroyal tumble. Ardan’s Dragon-swift hand saved her head a nasty crack against a nearby wooden chest.
A monstrous peal of thunder shook Yiisuriel to her roots.
Mercy. Finding her feet groggily, Aranya picked up Sapphire and popped the dragonet upon her left shoulder. You should stick with me, Sapphire, for I’ve a feeling … anyways, what’s this I hear about you channelling Blue powers, you lovely little mischief? At least with this driving storm, even the Thoralian-triplicate can’t cause too much trouble for us.
I disagree, Ardan said bluntly. That’s what this meeting is about.
He caught her a second time as Aranya faltered, clutching her head. Sapphire’s magic flared gently, soothing the pain. Then, Star leaned on Shadow’s arm as they walked out of the chamber together, as if they belonged to each other.
* * * *
The Azure Dragoness winged down between the enormous flanks of the Air-Breathers to meet Leandrial, who together with, Zip, Aranya and Huaricithe, proposed to make the trip to the invitingly named Pit of Despair. The Suald-dak-Doon began a mere seven leagues beneath the Cloudlands, two leagues beneath the feet of the Land Dragons who surrounded the ancient mine. One of these guardians was Yiisuriel, and it was her flank that passed by Zip’s right wingtip as she descended.
Despite their objections, Ri’arion and Ardan had been left behind, but would monitor and assist mentally via Yiisuriel.
They had thought Leandrial was old, Zip chuckled to herself. Yiisuriel claimed a venerable one thousand, four hun
dred and seventy-six circuits of the Island-World about the suns, apparently not an uncommon age for creatures boasting such a slow metabolic rate. Leandrial acted most put out. To stand with one’s feet eighteen miles below one’s breathing spiracles, and to house tens of thousands of lives in one’s rocky shell-exudate, was no mean feat.
Yiisuriel had known the Dragonfriend and was most ‘fierily tickled’, therefore, to make Aranya’s acquaintance. In a fit of uncharacteristic impertinence during her descent, the Immadian had requested that the phlegmatic Air-Breather tell her amusing stories about her Aunt.
Well was it said that good friends grew alike.
As they descended, the pressure intensified steadily. In the recesses of her mind, Zip felt a slight tingling as Ri’arion checked and approved her auxiliary countermeasures against airborne and magical toxins. How peculiar to hear her faraway monk, Ardan and Yiisuriel discussing the sweeping lines of enemy Fire-Sporters and Bottom-Huggers–she burst out laughing as that name impinged on her awareness, startling Aranya and Huari–invading the vast plains area between the Vassal States and the Inscrutables, which were cut on an East-West plane by four relatively narrow impossible deeps. Soon, she realised Yiisuriel’s stolid presence was amplifying the men’s thoughts. Telepathy only carried so far.
Leandrial awaited them in the soft, dim blue two leagues below the Cloudlands, her eye shining like a vast, welcoming lantern. Without preamble, she said, Dhazziala has despatched envoys to agree alliance with the Vassal States and their Dragon Riders–a tardy move, but not unwelcome. As predicted, we are now surrounded by hostile Land Dragons, but allies gather in the Eastern deeps of the Southern Kahilate, and North of the Vassal States. The third Thoralian approaches from the Straits with a vast force, conservatively estimated at forty thousand Lesser Dragons and a million drakes.
A million? Aranya gasped.
Zip heard her friend’s annoyance at that draconic love of dropping news into a conversation like a boulder tossed down a cliff.
Merely, said Yiisuriel, chuckling massively. Now, little ones, I’ve a job for you. I feel an irritation on the lower base of my shell, down where your paws would be. I need you to take a look.
Leandrial said, Very well. Only nine miles to go, little ones.
Zip tittered, Aye, you Land Dragons are unutterably humungous, Leandrial. You put the shivers of colossal awe into my exceedingly tiny wings.
You’re so eye-wateringly gargantuan, o mighty Leandrial, that I need to dust off my truly outsized thesaurus of draconic hyperbole to merely attempt speech with such a leviathan, Aranya chipped in, drawing a strange look from Huaricithe.
Don’t teach properly civil Dragons your insolent Northern ways, sniffed Leandrial, cracking open her jaw. Shall I eat you now, or later?
Later, said Zip. With a dollop of that delicious sauce the Lost Islanders serve over orrican meat?
The Welkin-Runner dived. Do try to keep up.
Lightning-girl and her Storm-munching sidekick, said the Remoyan, snidely elbowing Aranya in the ribs.
Storm-girl and Lightning-in-her-britches, retorted her friend, thinking something that for a change, made Zip’s belly-fires blush dramatically.
Zuziana chased the surprisingly blue Star Dragoness down into the depths, swimming the precipitous cliffs of Yiisuriel’s great flanks with broad, languid wing-strokes. Below the three-league mark, the ambient bacterial light petered out, leaving just a broad reach of darkness surrounded by ten hazy mountains rising into the murky heavens–their Air-Breather friends. The upper Pit was two leagues across, Dhazziala had briefed them, and narrowed as one progressed deeper than the level the Air-Breathers stood upon. Over the centuries, their heavily armoured shells had fused with the bedrock and each other, making them true mountains, but they could crack that seal at any time and amble off to another location. Yiisuriel, the largest of her kind, measured six point nine two leagues in diameter, her great bulk bordering fully a quarter of the Suald-dak-Doon.
Leandrial’s eye-beam speared ahead of them, picking out the grey-black ramparts of the Land Dragons. They flew down a slope almost entirely devoid of vegetation, and no wonder, for little could grow in that gloom, Zip imagined. As they swung around to a more westerly heading, skimming across Yiisuriel’s flank toward the inevitable encounter with the inner shield which for over a century had concealed the First Egg’s resting-place from the Island-World, they crossed a band of luminous, lichen-like growths which marked the level of Yiisuriel’s upper mouths–sealed on all sides but her eastern flank, where she sucked in and filtered all of her nutritional requirements. Her ear-canals creaked like old leather under strain, protesting the growing pressure.
The saddle, said Huari, pointing ahead to the place where Yiisuriel and her neighbour’s shells converged. Three and a half leagues depth. She groaned and stretched her wings. Pressure’s a headache!
Here, this should help, said Aranya, reaching out to touch the Blue. The Dragoness’ eye-fires flared as white as fresh duck-down. Now, to work on your pressure constructs …
Unstoppable Immadia! Contrariwise, Zip’s attention was drawn ahead. There. A veil of diaphanous, shimmering indigo magic denied access to the inner world. They had travelled untold thousands of miles to reach this place, but as she peered ahead, only one word came to mind.
Dismal.
Chapter 32: Thundering Islands
CHoice was limited. Choice was crucial, an unalienable right of intelligent beings. Choice, her instincts told her, was an illusion bounded by fate and circumstance. Aranya wondered if beneath it all, she was simply afraid of opening her heart to one who threatened to love her for who she truly was–not who she desperately yearned to be, but the new-normal Aranya. Twisted, despised Immadia. Vulnerable Immadia. She who could not fight a single battle against Thoralian without suffering mystical visions and collapsing in a defenceless heap.
Ugh! She curled her left paw so tightly, it shook. How different and distant this Aranya seemed from the girl who had frantically splattered Dragons onto canvas in the Tower of Sylakia.
As Yiisuriel modified the shield-construct in order to allow ingress, Aranya felt a frisson of magic run the length of her spine-spikes to her tail. Magic had so many dimensions. She must bring her utmost strength against the Thoralians. Storm was her right, her heritage and her power.
If it were a matter of willpower, the Thoralians would already be defeated.
She should not feel a hidebound fraud hiding a seventeen year-old Humansoul who still, in her mind, painted Dragons. Odd to be rationalising about her second-soul in this way.
Within, her linked-consciousness said, If we can learn to sing in the colours of Storm, Hualiama, then it must surely be enough, mustn’t it?
Dragoness-Aranya raised her brow-ridges. She was talking to Hualiama in there?
The temperature plummeted as they entered the Pit proper. The four Dragonesses linked minds lightly, sharing strength and overlapping their psychic shields. Senses cast about for imminent danger, but there was none–suspiciously so, Leandrial noted. Her eye-beam prodded the murky darkness and the stillness of long-stagnant air; to her annoyance, Aranya’s nostrils crinkled at a faint, acidic rankness. There were still odours percolating through her shield! What did they have to do to cut off all poisons–stop breathing? The Star Dragoness scanned the terrain ahead as they continued to press downward, working harder and harder against the frigid air congealing around their wings and limbs, as if they pressed through layers of numbing blankets.
After half an hour’s further descent into the blackness, Leandrial vented a resounding hmmmph! That should not be there.
A mile below, the pit ended abruptly in a vast, smooth cupola of gold-infused black metal. Aranya peered ahead. What a strange colour, tricking the eye, seeming to deceive the very light that fell upon it! The slightly curved surface glistened across the breadth of the Suald-dak-Doon, appearing to press upward from beneath like a vast growth that exactly filled the Pit and every
serrulation of its edges. Leandrial’s beam bobbed back and forth, examining the phenomenon.
Meriatonium? asked Aranya.
Zuziana said, Aye. Hear that? What’s that noise?
My impression is that something’s drilling under there, said Huaricithe.
They winged downward more charily, thinking the same. The Egg’s rising should have fully been two leagues lower, inside the Pit. How could the Land Dragons have missed this?
Definitely meriatonium-based, but I’m not sure this is entirely … Leandrial’s voice trailed off. If I didn’t know better, if it wasn’t impossible, I’d say this is a derivative of meriatonium. It negates and evades magic in the expected ways, but it … flows. As she spoke, she fed multiple streams of data to Yiisuriel, including a mineral analysis, full-spectrum readings, and measurements of ambient temperature gradients and the air’s mineral content. Down to the base. Let’s take a closer look.
Close for Leandrial was a five-hundred-foot gap. Her smaller companions swam right down to the curved surface; Zip touched the metal with her talon, but could not so much as scratch it. Meantime Aranya wandered to the edge, thinking that if the measurements taken by the previous survey team held true, the strange metal must have overlapped Yiisuriel’s base by several hundred feet already. Not even a mosquito could have squeezed into the gap between rock and metal. And while she had been fed a steady diet of the First Egg’s monstrous power, not so much as a whisper of magic seemed to emanate from below. Meriatonium was famously resistant to magic. Only Dragons possessed the science and technology to mine it, whereas its cousin meriatite, the mineral ore, was open to Human exploitation and fuelled meriatite furnace engines the Island-World over.
Idly, the Star Dragoness scratched a line on Yiisuriel’s flank. This was the kind of place in which a Shadow Dragon might feel comfortable, but how could a star shine in such soulless darkness?
Whang!
Aranya back-winged sharply as the metal vibrated just beneath her. Leandrial … she stared at the spot she had just scratched. Gone. Swallowed up.