by Marc Secchia
Then, he put Tazithiel’s tale of her past together with what he had said. Brutal. Unsavoury. Utterly unacceptable–who was the beast now, Kal?
Yet his soft apologies seemed to rebound off her armoured hide. Tazithiel was gone. In her place was a feral Dragoness, chased by a storm.
* * * *
Home was a cluster of Islets twenty-five strong, inhabited by a clannish tribe of Southerners who called themselves ‘the Undone’, although what they had done or undone in their past history, Kal had never worked out. They were an odd bunch of misfits collected from around the Island-World, which suited him perfectly. The Islands resembled a bundle of rough-hewn quills jutting from the flank of a beast called the Cloudlands, connected at their tops by such a motley collection of rope bridges, Kal imagined ten spiderwebs had been smashed together and the result deemed acceptable. With one voice, the Islanders of this Cluster resolved never to name their home anything at all. An excellent arrangement for one who prized anonymity as he did.
In the dead of night, he directed a docile Indigo Dragoness to a landing on the northernmost-but-one Island, amidst driving rain and powerful winds. He demanded she transform, before helping a pale, trembling woman across a swaying rope bridge to his nondescript basalt-and-granite stonework cottage with green shutters set at the northern tip of a rambling village of forty-three other mismatched cottages and cabins. No one building matched the others in style or colour, stone or wood. But the result was startlingly harmonious, if only for the reason that the mind boggled so severely it began to hallucinate that there must, somehow, be an order to matters.
Kal dropped their saddlebags in the hallway and whisked Tazithiel into a cosy bed draped in Helyon silk hangings and the finest sheets sourced from–he grinned at the memory–a rather irate nobleman’s love-nest, before Kal had whisked his highly-paid courtesan off on a two-week romp around the Northern Islands. He dried the Indigo Shapeshifter off and drew the covers up to her chin. A squeeze of her fingers indicated her gratitude.
Had she known his thoughts, a punch would have been a more apt response.
After returning with their Dragon Rider saddle and tack, Kal quickly checked that certain other security measures were all in order. Then he shucked his wet clothing, stretched out alongside Tazi and fell sound asleep in the act of settling his head on the pillow-roll.
Most jewellery acquisition consultants were light sleepers for good reason. Alertness was proof against daggers in the night, poison, unhealthy brushes with righteous lawmakers and citizens, and the attentions of fellow professionals who were understandably bilious over one’s inimitable exploits. Therefore, when Kal awoke to the scent of Jeradian spiced tea brewing upon his compact outside oven, and cool emptiness beside him, he was more than startled. He leaped out of bed, dagger in hand, as though he had discovered himself cuddled up to a cobra. Kal settled himself with a low laugh.
Only Tazi.
Through the triangular crysglass panes of his bedroom window, Kal spied Tazithiel lying in his favourite hammock, stretched between two flame-trees imported from Fra’anior. She had moved it outward! She swung above a three-mile drop … no danger for a Shapeshifter, right? He exhaled. Dear sweet Islands, this relationship truly threatened to reconstruct the innards of his skull. Tucked up to the chin beneath his patterned Remoyan throw, Tazi gazed out over the umber-burnished Cloudlands with a melancholy air. Self-loathing pierced Kal’s gut. Yesterday, he had opened his tactless tripe-trap and spewed hate all over her. Put himself in the Dragons’ boots–paws–indeed! Who under the suns did he think he was?
A sneak, that’s what.
Barefoot, he tiptoed outside. The air had that breathtaking storm’s-aftermath freshness about it, the boundless vistas as clear as the finest crystal. Dawn, as yet a rubescent glow upon the eastern horizon, would ignite the colours of this morning. A fitting backdrop for her blazing beauty. Kal framed the image in his memory, for fate smiled upon the man who treasured this woman. Fate? Fortune favoured the uneaten! One fine morn, Kallion of Fra’anior had journeyed abroad to seek a Dragon’s treasure. He had his plans, his maps, his hopes and avaricious dreams, and self-confidence sufficient to sink whole Dragonships. He had not planned upon meeting his match.
Most especially, he had not planned for any treasure to steal him.
Kal ghosted to the cliff’s edge. He said, “Islands’ greetings on this fine morn.”
She jerked so hard, the hammock tipped. Kal shot out one long arm to steady her, but the distance was a few inches too far. Next moment, he found himself dangling above the abyss, feet scrabbling for purchase, the fire-trees creaking at his additional weight.
Archly, Tazithiel inquired, “How do you sneak up on a Dragoness, Kal?”
“Tazi, please …”
“No wings, no magic?” She tempered her teasing by supporting his feet upon a bed of air; Kal gulped down a lump the size of a Dragon’s knuckle. “How’s about a kiss for your favourite enchantress?”
Kal could see windrocs circling a mile or two below his toes, no doubt praying as overlarge carnivorous avians might for fresh meat to fall from the sky. “Right now, you can have anything you want. While I’m sure you’ve prepared an extensive list, may I assure you I am usually found to be more coherent when firmly stood upon–thank you.”
Levitating herself from the hammock, Tazithiel glided toward him before dropping suddenly, making the wind billow the material of her long white inkaliar up above her waist. “Oops.”
“Forgive me, I just had a lustful contemplation,” Kal grinned, stealing her into his arms. “You’re a wicked little Shapeshifter, aren’t you?”
Her body became as rigid as a moored Dragonship’s hawser.
“Unholy suffering volcanoes!” he groaned. “Oh, hand me a rock that I might personally brain myself.” Half a thought later, a fine specimen of a sandstone boulder floated into his field of vision. “That was figurative language, woman! Mmm … language that appreciates a woman’s figure–figurative. Alright. Sadly unfunny.”
“Tea?”
“Excellent idea. Settle my nerves.”
His girl busied herself with the metal kettle, while Kal watched with the covetous attention of a pickpocket eyeing up a fine ruby ring adorning a noblewoman’s finger. A bloom of colour in her cheek disclosed her awareness of his scrutiny. Kneeling before the tray, arranged with delicate Jeradian crysglass tea-saucers, honey, a tea-strainer and a posy of wildflowers, Tazithiel began to perform the tea ceremony with such grace, she robbed his throat of any capacity of speech.
Kal knelt opposite. Human-Tazi kept her gaze downcast, appearing so much the youthful blossom that Kal took six looks at her where before, one might have sufficed. Demure? A Dragoness? Like a blossom in all her muscled, lethal tonnage? Her arm bent with the grace of a heron’s wing to pour the tea from an exact height, frothing, into the saucers. The herbs within uncurled, releasing sweet aromas to enliven his senses, while his eyes traversed the slender length of her limbs to the ruched neckline of her traditional outfit, perfectly modest, the immaculate white material setting off the creamy russet tones of her skin and the midnight-blue wealth of her hair, curled upon the upturned soles of her feet.
She said, “When I first learned to be Human, my challenge was to perform this tea ceremony.”
“Isn’t this a Jeradian custom?”
“Aye. I flew abroad to take instruction there, rather than risk the Dragons at Mejia. By minute observation, I copied my peers. How they walked. Spoke. Dressed. Ate. Flirted.” She suited actions to words, a coy dart of her eyes beneath those alluring lashes. “I see now that to be Human is so much more than all those things. My heart-language burns Dragonish. Humanity is a second skin, a foreign language, a culture in which one might make one’s home, but it always feels slightly alien. Wherein, then, is the true humanity of a Shapeshifter to be found?”
Setting the small tray aside, Tazithiel shifted her weight forward until her knees touched his. Lifting a tea-saucer
, she balanced the shallow bowl upon the spayed fingertips of her left hand. In a delicate dance, Kal imitated her movement, raising his saucer until their wrists touched. Simultaneously, they bent forward from the waist, until each ceramic rim touched the other’s lips.
“We share life,” she said.
“We share home and hearth,” he replied.
Kal sipped cautiously three times, following the ceremonial forms. Seen through the steam coiling upward from his bowl, Tazi’s eyes appeared huge and brimming with magical potentials, but he no longer read the cold terror of death in those lustrous depths. When had this come to be?
“We share hope,” Kal said, taking his turn to lead.
“We share joys and fears.” Her lips quirked upward. “We need not drink ourselves into a stupor and raze towns out of fear.”
Understanding swelled in his breast, hot and taut. She feared him? Nay, she feared what she felt for him … this was more storms-over-the-Cloudlands than he had ever imagined, a deep-seated, dangerous liaison. Had she not avowed she was simply snaffling up a plaything? When had ‘play’ mutated to ‘play upon the harp-strings of my soul’? And why was she pinching his love of poetic metre and language? The better to wind a jaded transgressor about her smallest talon? Yet her honesty was a fragrant breeze over his Islands, an expanding of consciousness, a stirring and yearning of inner places Kal had long thought defunct.
She added, “We need not dread the vulnerability stemming from hearts, once ironbound and secreted in some nameless crypt for eternity, being retrieved and exposed to the light. Nor need we tremble as the unattainable is delicately revealed. Yet this treasure is fey–”
He put in, “That which is other is equally to be treasured.”
Tazi’s hand shook, almost spilling her tea. A teardrop glistened upon her curling lashes. She breathed, “Truly?”
“A vile pox upon the tongue that spoke otherwise,” Kal growled, pointing the thumb of blame firmly at himself. “Certainly, both hearts know fear, or, if I may be so bold, the five hearts we own between us–two Human, three draconic. But fear will not fly a Dragoness and her Rider beyond the Rim-Wall, Tazithiel. Fear will stifle, cast down and destroy. Fear will not win us so much as a footnote in history.”
“You vain parakeet.” Her soft laughter–relieved, marvelling, ringing with nascent hope–ruffled his tea in a tiny echo of the storm-surge she had created in his life. “You want a whole scroll to yourself.”
“I’m offended. An entire library, if you please. For us, to share.”
Her smile seemed to radiate from the fires of her inner being.
After a long silence, he said, “The tea grows cold. Come, let us drink the third libation, o twofold manifestation of one unforgettable soul, after which I must perforce steal your beauty away from dawn’s jealous gaze. I’ve something to show you this morning, unrelated to the natural glories of our Island-World. Something important.”
Chapter 10: Kings and Queens
FiFTEEN DEADLY TRAPs, four complex doors boasting multiple locks and tricks of their own, designed by a master locksmith with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of such mechanisms–to wit, one Kallion–two thousand steps and the better part of an hour later, Kal paused before a set of double jalkwood doors, ten times his height and thirty feet wide. His secret lay within touching distance. Probably, her Dragoness-senses could already smell what lay ahead.
Tazithiel, blindfolded but still smiling, squeezed his arm. “Have we arrived?”
“We have. Did you know the tea ceremony is traditionally performed by a Jeradian consort for her intended?”
Did she know that the prospect of taking an Indigo Dragoness beyond those doors shrivelled his living pith with terror? The phenomenon of Dragon-lust for gold and precious items of all kinds was well documented. This was the pinnacle of his life’s work, a realm no other living person, to his best knowledge, had ever set foot within.
“Your breathing and heart-rate have accelerated, Kal. Why’s that? Are you thinking about consorting with me?”
“Unlike the insouciantly polygamous, vow-shirking Jeradians,” Kal replied, with a snort meant to convey that he had been the diametric opposite of those savages for at least the last two weeks of his life, “would I have thee to consort, I would choose and be beholden to thee alone, for all the days I am given beneath the twin suns. I am a traditional man, Tazithiel. I would have vows with thee, or nought.”
“Traditional?” Evidently, his lapse into old-fashioned Northern-Isles wedding language amused her greatly. “You aren’t a traditional Fra’aniorian bride-kidnapper?”
With piratical mien, he growled, “Tremble, o maiden most fair, for this blindfold is but the beginning of my nefarious plans for thee!”
Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle gasps of laughter. “Oh, Kal!”
“Binding a Dragoness being a pursuit about as fruitful as farming on Fra’anior’s caldera floor,” he pontificated, “I must therefore resort to subterfuge.”
“In which case, I accept your proposal.”
“Ah …” Kal spluttered, losing his line of thought. “What?”
“To marry you.”
The noise that emerged from his throat was a cross between the squeal of a cane-rat trapped beneath a rajal’s claws, and a blocked drainpipe emptying.
Tazithiel began to laugh, but Kal thought he detected an underlying edge of disappointment. She chortled, “Kal, I can almost hear the blood deserting your face!”
“It’s not like that.”
But his intended piratical kiss of Tazithiel turned into a softer and altogether more apologetic affair, before he whisked the cloth away. She blinked. Blinked again. Her gaze travelled the height and width of the doors, taking in the exquisite, charred and Dragon-claw-carved frescoes that covered the towering jalkwood panels from floor to ceiling. He held up a lantern.
“Kal?”
Despite all her power and magic, Tazithiel trembled.
He pressed the doors; they swung silently open on massive ball joints Kal had restored with his own labour. “Welcome to my humble abode.”
A four-hundred-foot gallery opened before them, lit from above by chandeliers of living crystal, the walls lined to a height of thirty feet with rare and priceless artworks from around the Island-World. The temperature was always perfect in these caves, never too dry, never too humid. Kal had no idea how old many of the paintings were, but he had worked zealously to extend the collection. As if trapped in a dream, the barefoot Indigo Dragoness drifted down the centre of the gallery toward the glow emanating from a much larger cavern beyond. Kal followed, hands clasped behind his back to keep them from shaking. Here it came. The moment of truth.
Tazithiel stepped out upon a balcony above his treasure chamber, a vaulting, perfectly circular cavern Kal had measured at eight hundred and ten feet in diameter. The majority was covered in golden hills and valleys. Coin slopes. Pyramids of treasure chests. Weapons and armour, trinkets and baubles. Priceless tapestries hung from a wide balcony that completely encircled the cave. Numerous further galleries and chambers opened off the main cavern. All was lit by crystal light streaming from above.
“The ruby room.” Kal pointed to a reddish glow nearby. “Emeralds through that door. Diamonds. Different shades of garnet and tourmaline jewels. A lore-library, which alone occupies fifteen smaller caverns and tunnels. That room holds over a thousand crowns, coronets and tiaras, all labelled in runic script. Quite the collection.”
The Dragoness’ knees crumpled.
He caught her arm reflexively. “Easy!”
She wheezed, “Kal … the magic in here … I don’t understand. It’s singing to me.”
That was not at all the reaction he had expected. Swiftly, Kal scooped Tazi up, and strode into the tunnel leading to his bedchamber.
She murmured against his chest, “Oh Kal, this … you never told me, you dirty old liar. How dare you! This treasure–it’s a Dragon hoard beyond imagination!”
“I know,” said Kal, modestly.
“Where did you … how did you acquire all this wealth?”
“Told you, I’m a procurement specialist and you, o sentient jewel, are undoubtedly my finest acquisition.”
Her voice rose an octave as they entered the bedchamber. “Acquisition? Where exactly do you intend to deposit your acquisition amidst this ridiculous fortune?” Kal tilted an eyebrow at the oversized, silk-bedecked royal bed. “Oh–don’t answer that question. Oh Kal, this is a-a-a …”
“A Dragoness’ chamber. Her roost.”
“No. No … oh, Kal …”
He was rather enjoying the way she kept gasping ‘oh Kal’. It had firmly put him in the mood for mussing the bedcovers with a draconically delectable damsel, when Tazithiel tore free from his arms and whirled. Kal reflexively ducked a Dragon-swift slap.
She snapped, “Will you stand still?”
“What in the name of–what’ve I done?”
You deserve a slap from my Dragoness!
He was about to protest when the volatile Shapeshifter seized him by the hand. “Look, this bowl is where she used to sleep. And see here, Kal, a diamond-encrusted geode for sharpening her talons. She used to scratch her scales here, on this column. Do I smell a lava bath?”
The slap? Apparently forgotten. Now she flitted about the chamber like an excitable dragonet eager to show off her aerial dancing skills.
Kal pointed. “Through that archway. Complete with an icy waterfall and a secondary bath with warm running water. All Dragon-sized. Oof!”
Her power biffed him in the stomach and hurled him through the air to a crash-landing on the bed he had been eyeing wistfully just a moment before. Her face was dark, as though thunderheads of draconic Storm powers swelled within her.