Dragon Thief

by Marc Secchia

  “Truth be told, it was convict labour, mostly. But the monks were generous. I think they were trying to reform me, the pride of doddering old rajals.” A curt laugh escaped his lips as he pictured companies of white-haired monks stretching in the suns like the huge black felines of his native Fra’anior and the Western Isles, purring and snarling through their warrior-forms. “They burrowed beneath my skin, Tazi. Their love, I mean–it was as if this boy, who had never known his parents, landed among a hundred fathers and two hundred faithful brothers. Odd. I never considered …”

  Indeed, a host of impressions clicked together into new patterns in his mind. “That’s weird. I was the only labourer in the monastery. Breaking rocks. Daily hard labour coupled with nightly education–Islands’ sakes! Tazi, how did you know me? My name; my deeds?”

  “You’re a marked man among the Dragonkind, Kal.”

  “A marked–oh no. Get me out of here! Let me go, you wicked, wicked colossus!”

  “Where will you run, Kal? Down my tail?” Her eye-fires brightened with what he had begun to recognise as draconic amusement.

  Kal panted and cursed unhappily, then execrated his own curses. He slapped the saddle furiously. Trapped! “Fine. You’ve captured me. Congratulations, Tazithiel.”

  And who was the Islands’ biggest fool?

  “You could hardly imagine your deeds would go unnoticed, Kal. Not only did you spit upon the paws of all Dragonkind by burgling the hallowed Dragon-Halls of Gi’ishior–”

  “Successfully,” he put in.

  “–but I believe you may have raided a few other Dragon roosts before that, and helped yourself to a plethora of invaluable artefacts from Immadia in the North to Mejia in the South. I don’t know all the details, Kal, but I know enough. The word spread among the Dragonkind, oh, perhaps ten years ago. At the time, they placed a price upon your worthless head. Three thousand gold drals. Perhaps more by now, given you’ve been as slippery as a terrace-lake trout.”

  “Three thousand?” Kal did not know whether to be impressed, dumbfounded or just plain confused. A ridiculous fortune! That bounty would exhaust a king’s treasury. Or enrich a kingdom.

  “We Dragons don’t know where your hoard is–yet, Kallion. But we’ll find it. No place in the Island-World is hidden from the eyes of the Dragonkind.”

  Kal’s mind raced, awash with sick fury mingled with no small measure of appreciation. He must be a hundred leagues from the nearest bolt-hole, perched like a prize ralti sheep atop a hostile Dragoness, for pity’s sake, who had played him with the skill and finesse a master villain named Kallion of Fra’anior prided himself upon. Cunning beast! So brilliantly, brutally guileful! His hand clenched upon the Dragon war-bow, then relaxed. No. He could never hurt her. Neither in thought, nor in deed. Tazithiel was merely following the instinct, the orders of her kind. What to do? How to escape this fine clod of windroc-excrement he had gaily leaped into with both booted feet?

  “I’m not giving you the location of my hoard,” he snapped. “You can wrap my guts around your talons if you wish, dangle me from clouds, or slow-roast me in your most torrid Dragon fires–”

  “So there is a hoard? And you are a thief?”

  How could she have lied? Was everything she had told him, even that terrible story about her ‘correction’, a lie? He could not believe it. He was enough of a con-artist to smell a lie four Islands away. He must change tack. Probe until he understood …

  “Fie, I confess nothing, you wretched reptile. What would you do with another Dragon hoard, or three thousand ruddy gold drals, anyway? Warm them with your belly-fires? Tazithiel, there’s more to life than the pursuit of worthless riches!”

  “Are you quite certain you’re a criminal?” she jibed.

  “No I am bloody well not. I don’t recognise this nonsense vomiting from my mouth,” Kal griped. Oh, he was bitter. Soul-lost. The foundations of his existence had been annihilated. Who was he? He folded his arms across his chest. “You can slowly discombobulate my brains in the perfumed sweetness of your boudoir, you maddening Shapeshifter Dragoness … enchantress … ruddy beautiful woman–oh, volcanic hells how I ache to kiss you–and you will not wrest another secret from me. Not one. My lips are sealed. Permanently.”

  The great body quaked beneath him. Gusts of belly-laughter shook the golden air. She was laughing at him? As the man on her back howled at her mockery, the Dragoness laughed so hard her wingbeat stuttered. She could barely fly, jerking with every fiery hiccough that erupted out her long throat. She kept gasping, ‘Your face! Oh, Kal, your face!’ and collapsing in merriment once more.

  Kal maintained a mutinous silence of pursed lips and dark thoughts.

  Finally, she said, “I certainly hope your lips aren’t sealed.”

  He studied the horizon, the world-spanning canvas of luminous colours backlighting her draconic smile. Bah. Snarky shape-changing seductress. Custodian of his heart. Even on the road to Kal’s personal inferno, she tantalised him.

  “If you’d like, we can practise further discombobulations when we reach the Southern Archipelago tomorrow,” the Dragoness offered.

  Kal sniffed. Not tempting. Not in the slightest.

  “Dear Kal. Dear, sweet Kal. Kallion, o my Kallion, lover of all things bullion …”

  Now a ditty? He ironed a smile off his lips.

  “There. That’s better, my handsome hunk of humanity.”

  Whatever game she was playing, he was having none of it. “Dragoness, you’ve had your fun. When are you going to collect your bounty? Heavens above and Islands below, was three thousand stinking drals worth what we shared? Was I just entertainment; a draconic toy? You callous, conniving piece of–”

  She drowned him out effortlessly. “Kal! Haven’t you heard about the tenth day of the week?”

  He opened his jaw, and closed it. He opened his jaw, and fished for flies. Kal even caught one. Spitting out a bitter scrap of insect life, he said, “I … er … um, what? Oh, freaking windrocs, you don’t mean–you do. Do you?”

  “Never-ever day.”

  Her wings cupped the air, tilting to drive them forward once more. Steadily, Tazithiel gained height as she waited for Kal to gather his thoughts from wherever they had scattered across the Cloudlands. His frozen despair thawed beneath the twin-suns’ brilliance of hope. She knew him. Knew his scurrilous reputation, yet she refused the Island-sinking price upon his head and everlasting honour among her kind?

  “You stole my joke,” he croaked. “Why?”

  “I believe you, Kal. I believe in you.”

  “Terrible idea,” he grumbled. Great, now she was laughing at him again. “Tazi, look, no amount of heart-stealing could–you’re an intelligent woman. Highly intelligent. You can’t–”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I can or can’t do.” With a touch of magic, she corralled a fireball just inches from his nose and sucked it back into her mouth. “Sorry. I know this is all backward. Firstly, while my fires pulse green at the thought of three thousand gold drals, I have absolutely no intention of collecting so much as a rat’s dinner in exchange for your empty head. Zero. Secondly, I do believe in you. Ridiculous and ill-advised by any measure under the twin suns, but there it is. Thirdly, I possess emotional intelligence and cold-hearted reason enough to know what I’m doing, and I say the rest of the Dragonkind can just sizzle in their own acid spit for all I care. Fourthly, I’m curious about what exactly you stole to justify such an outrageous bounty. Fifthly–”

  “Wow,” he breathed. “Wow, wow … and here I thought it was all about my peerless prowess on the pillow-roll.”

  “You’re sweet, but unquestionably deluded,” she grinned. “Kal, remember that note from Master Ja’amba you told me about? ‘Seize your destiny.’ What do you think he meant?”

  Kal shrugged helplessly. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would the monks imprison me for years and then practically gift me a Dragonship and the freedom of the Isles? They must have known my intentions. And no, I’
m quite certain they didn’t believe in me. Wise men, those monks. Wiser than Dragons.”

  “It all smacks of a positively draconian plan, doesn’t it?”

  “Draconic? Draconian? No.” He gave in to the urge to scratch furiously at his chin. Relief always made him itch, along with the sneaking suspicion that matters might just go awry once more. “No. Tazi, that’s–no. Too many coincidences. So, promise me you don’t want that reward. Nor my hoard? You don’t want to pop a talon through my chest as a handy service to all Dragonkind?”

  “Word of a Dragon on the first two, and no promises on the third,” she returned, arrow-swift.

  “Ah … I’ll take what I can. Word of a … uh, my solemn oath as patently not offered earlier, never to reveal your Shapeshifter secrets. Or any other secrets, for that matter.”

  “Thank you, Kal.” The Dragoness pointed a claw at the horizon. “See that dark smudge? That’s bad weather incoming, by my wings.”

  He saw nothing. “Hmm. But you can outfly a mere storm, can’t you?”

  “Aye.”

  Kal rediscovered his cocky grin. Indeed, his entire body buzzed with release. Never had a woman confounded him as Tazi did. Rotten, shameless tease, and as stubborn as an Island’s foundations. He would have to watch this one closely. Very closely indeed.

  He said, “So do enlighten me, Shapeshifter Dragoness, as to your intentions regarding this gratefully alive man seated upon your shoulders?”

  “Immediately upon arrival in the Southern Archipelago,” she returned slyly, “I intend to transform, and then set about thoroughly discombobulating, addling and befuddling your dubious wits until you don’t know your Islands from your Cloudlands.”

  If he grinned any wider, Kal thought, his cheeks would crack like aged porcelain.

  Waving his arms, he cried, “Then let us burn the heavens, o Tazithiel, as Dragon and Rider!”

  … as Rider and Dragon! she echoed.

  BOOM! A strange quake struck Kal’s spirit. The deepening suns-set blinked into darkness.

  Why was he falling?

  * * * *

  “Unnh …” Kal stirred. He felt as though his head had been placed on a blacksmith’s anvil and pounded into several new shapes.

  Awake, o sleeper? Tazithiel’s Dragon-voice boomed in his mind.

  Kal flapped his arms unhappily, the more so as the wind cuffed them playfully side to side. Stop shouting, it hurts.

  I’m whispering. Buckle up, Kal. I mean, buckle up more. It’s about to get rough.

  With that, he sensed her Kinetic power release him. Muscles twinged in his lower back as Kal straightened up. The White and Yellow moons behind his shoulders illuminated a cloud-rampart ahead, facing them like a monstrous battlement erected to deny any westward passage. Great Islands! He rubbed his arms, seeking insight into a premonition that made him shiver not only physically, but in ways he did not understand. The storm’s skirts were black; uncompromising shadows far deeper than the moons-lit night. His eyes crawled upward in disbelief, tracing the bulging thunderheads that from his perspective, appeared to swell to the very stars, overshadowing Dragon and Rider. The storm-massif’s headwinds grew chillier by the second.

  “Put on your jacket. What’s the matter, Kal?”

  Bah. Mothered by a Dragoness? Shrugging into his fur-lined leather jacket, so essential for flight at the altitudes even a Dragonship could attain, never mind a Dragon’s untouchable capabilities, Kal rapidly fastened the toggles and snugged the thick collar beneath his chin. He donned a fur-lined, conical Jeradian Dragonship Steersman’s cap and wriggled his fingers into thick sheepskin gloves. Better. Now he was a fully clothed icicle.

  Tazi prodded, “Will you stop being a man and use actual words? I can’t read your mind.”

  “What happened when I blacked out?”

  “Why did you make the Dragon Rider oath?” Her annoyance carried to him as a wave of heat whipped back from her muzzle on the wind.

  “I read it in a scroll, once. It just … it felt good and true. Did I hear right; you echoed me? I didn’t realise oaths had magical power.”

  “You didn’t think an oath–” the Indigo Dragoness modulated her simultaneous vocal and mental roaring as her Rider clapped his hands to his head “–Kal, oaths are dangerous. Especially when you blurt one out without prior consideration.”

  “I meant it.”

  “Says the man who spills ten thousand words for a brass dral?”

  He gritted his teeth. “I stand by every flaming word of my oath, Dragoness. Do you?”

  Tazithiel gnashed her much more impressive set of dental weaponry. “While I’m sure this oath will return to bite me like the clash of an Ancient Dragon’s jaws, I spoke truly–Rider Kal.”

  Oath-bound to a Dragoness? His week was not flying high. No, it was accurately emulating a stricken Dragonship plummeting into the lethal Cloudlands. Bah.

  Kal muttered, “Anything you can do for this headache?”

  “I can’t heal you. I’ve many powers in the Red and Blue Dragon spectrums, but no healing.”

  “Tazi, I didn’t intend to knock us from the sky. Vows in my life have been few; usually unworthy ones.” And they had never shivered Islands …

  “You’ll have to work harder than that to down a Dragoness.”

  A sinking sensation developed in the pit of Kal’s stomach. With her fierce Dragon pride, Tazi was not about to enjoy his next statement. But one must never feed a Dragon milk, as the Isles saying went. He said, “Tazi, I believe we should consider turning around.”

  The expected fireball did not blister his nose. Instead, she hissed, “Explain your lack of trust, Kal. You and your vast experience of flying Dragonback, and your astounding expertise in the magical enhancement of draconic flight aerodynamics–”

  “This is not a trust issue!”

  She snorted, “Then exactly what flavour of windroc droppings is it, little Human? Explain yourself in words of one syllable so that even a stupid animal can understand.”

  Kal slammed his hands against the saddle, mouthing a word better suited to the dregs of the Sylakian brothel business. Confounded mud-grubbing pile of old lizard bones! Aye, she was a Dragoness, never more alien to his understanding. He had handled Tazi about as well as a thief who volunteered to be locked away in a local jail and left to rot. Still, no amount of kicking his deserving backside would undo the damage. Her poisonous expression demanded answers.

  “Look, you’re neither stupid nor an animal. I’ve a feeling, a fatuous feeling or premonition–” his voice grew smaller the higher her lip curled in scorn “–that flying into this storm’s a bad idea. Alright? I’m the one with the stupid feelings. That’s all it was. Fear, premonition, I don’t know.”

  “You disrespect me.”

  Tazithiel said no more, but Kal sensed the outrage pouring into every wingbeat as the winds freshened and the first hint of moisture tickled his nostrils. How could he explain what he himself did not understand? Most females in the Island-World, Dragon and Human alike, would rightly laugh his supposed powers of intuition into the proverbial Cloudlands soup. Yet instinct had always underpinned his pilfering prowess. He saw traps–poisoned arrows, trip wires, hidden switches and false floors–where others did not. He sensed when eyes were watching, and when attention wandered. He had sneaked beneath the noses of dozens of guard-Dragons and not been summarily incinerated.

  Touchy Dragoness. So distinct from Human-Tazithiel. Pondering this connection turned his headache into a throbbing Crescent Isles log drum.

  So, what magic had his involuntary oath triggered? It was Hualiama Dragonfriend who had conceived the Dragon Rider oath, he recalled learning. Once made, the oath bound Dragon and Rider in ways he could barely imagine. Many Dragon Riders apparently spoke fluent Dragonish and even acquired a smattering of draconic magic. Whatever they had unleashed, it had caused an unseen, Island-sized Dragon’s paw to smash an Indigo Dragoness right in the pearly fangs. Thank the heavens Tazithiel had recovere
d more quickly than him.

  Now, an impulsive oath shackled him to this beast. How bad, or how foolish, would this prove?

  Romancing a Shapeshifter was definitely wine of an unexpected vintage. Kal stifled a wry laugh, but the jerk in Tazi’s wingbeat told him her superior Dragon hearing had picked up the perceived insult. A menacing growl rose from his mount as Tazi plunged headlong into the storm-front.

  Dragon and Rider spent the balance of the night, already far advanced, driving deep into a never-ending, unyielding world of wind, cloud and hail. At first, Kal thought Tazi’s flight-strengthening Kinetic power would see them through, but the storm perversely intensified as the Indigo Dragoness began to show signs of strain. He dared not interfere. Gritting her fangs and blowing hard, she climbed steadily into a gap between the boiling thunderheads. The swirling gale seemed bent on attack from every conceivable direction, making Kal’s stomach-gyrations resemble dragonets frisking about on his native Fra’anior Island. They flew high, but the storm rose still higher, and not a prickle of starlight could be seen through the murky billows racing overhead.

  Lightning! Kal ducked as jagged after-images played across his retinae. That had surely struck …

  “Struck my left wing, Kal,” Tazi said. And she wasn’t a mind-reader? “You’re safe.”

  “Safe? How?”

  “I’m shielding you.”

  Trust. The word lingered unspoken, but was clearly communicated by her tone. Lightly, Kal said, “I meant, how does it work? I once saw lightning fry a rajal mid-leap on the western fringe of Jeradia Island. That was a big cat, and it was dead before it hit the ground.”

  The Dragoness grunted, “Three things, Kal. My shielding keeps you alive, my body has special tissues which act as conduits for electricity, and my tail is a discharge point.”

  “So you’re one giant–”

  “–lightning conductor,” she agreed. The thief noted the underlying stresses in her voice, but made no comment. After all, what experience did he have of Dragon flight? He felt sore, humiliated and keen to see the Dragoness return to her Human guise. “You Humans borrowed the idea for your fortresses, especially in the South and around Fra’anior, where there are many electrical storms.”