by Marc Secchia
Tazithiel winged down a mile-long sandstone canyon which wriggled between two malformed, slumped-over Islands, just piles of stone fringed with withered brown bushes. Kal wriggled as though he had fire-ants in his trousers, which was a once-experienced, never to be repeated incident in his chequered past. A cunning trap in a vault on Seg Island, as he recalled–Kal’s dancing skills had attracted much ribald comment from the four female guards who turned up to apprehend the trespasser. Kal related the anecdote to the tune of chuckles from his mount.
Tazi inquired–how had he escaped? Kal suffered a coughing-fit.
“Let me guess,” the Dragoness growled, suddenly turning into a fire-stuffed hazard to all intelligent life, or at least to buccaneers with skills in more than lock-picking, “you seduced one of the guards, borrowed her keys and escaped in the dead of night, leaving her heartbroken and destitute and the vault, ransacked?”
Kal muttered, “Not destitute, anyways. I left her a diamond.”
“Oh, a diamond?”
“She was … sweet.”
“Sweet?” Tazithiel launched a fireball down a tunnel to their left. “That’s what you have to say?”
“Look! Something moved over there!”
“Coward,” the Indigo Dragoness snarled over her shoulder. “Don’t think you can avoid my wrath, o Kallion of Shrinking-Lily Island.”
Her heat was the stuff of riled belly-fires. But suddenly, the temperature in the canyon seemed to skyrocket. Tazithiel, unleashing one final fireball down the maw of a huge cavern bitten out of a sharp corner just ahead, stiffened perceptibly. Her wingbeat developed a hitch; their senses attuned as Dragon and Rider searched the menacing, bare rock-faces and yawning tunnel entrances which hemmed them in. Too close. Too restrictive. If it were possible for stillness to grow even stiller, they knew it for a fact. A stillness of oppressive disquiet, the only question not if, but when danger would avalanche over them.
Kal froze. His cry stuck in his craw for an endless moment. “Down, Tazi! Down!”
Chapter 12: Huntress
KinETIC DRAGON-POWER knocked them five Dragon-lengths downward. From their right flank, a sweeping section of stone exploded slowly, almost lazily, from the canyon wall as hundreds of brown, writhing bodies swam through the basal rock, not just creating an avalanche, but spraying Dragon-sized boulders hundreds of feet through the air with the force of their irruption. Razor-sharp pellets sprayed Kal’s side and left leg as he attempted to dodge, but of course found himself strapped in the saddle as he ought to be. Tazithiel performed evasive manoeuvres with a violent corkscrewing motion. Snap! Kal slewed onto her flank, saved by one remaining thigh-strap. The others had been severed by a peppering of dagger-sharp rock fragments.
The Indigo Dragoness unleashed a battle-challenge, dodging boulders at a terrific speed, before throwing up a shield. Brief, incomplete respite. Boulders rained down, battering the Dragoness and numbing Kal’s elbow.
More Anubam burst forth! The burrowing Dragons were brown or tan in colour with stubby legs and vestigial wings, strangely elongated creatures that suggested a blend of Dragon and snake. Rock shattered with sharp reports, while a guttural groaning resounded between the overarching walls, shaking Dragon and Rider bodily. Each Anubam’s roar was a strange series of guttural barks, so low they were almost subliminal, as though each creature possessed the capability to trigger an earthquake by the power of its voice alone.
“Suffering hells!” Kal swore. “Brace, Tazi!”
GRRRRAAAA … BOOM!
The Indigo Dragoness flapped wildly, but the mouth that burst out of the Island-wall ahead of them was three times wider than her wingspan, lined with granite-block teeth. The breath of its throat scorched Kal, even though he was fortunate to be dangling on the far side of his Dragoness. Lightning burst from Tazithiel’s mouth and claw-tips as she executed a desperate swerve to avoid the scooping bite of that orifice. Flap! Flap!
Kal screamed, “Go, Tazi! Away!”
The sky above vanished as a ridged cavern engulfed the foolhardy duo. The Dragoness’ roar turned into a wail as the Anubam’s jaw clamped down on her midsection. Crazy lights played across Kal’s vision. A shield? Was she holding a rock-chewing monster’s mouth open with her Kinetic power?
“Kal … get out!” Tazi groaned.
“I’m not leaving you!”
“Listen, you stubborn–gaaaaaaaaahhh!”
Listen? She spoke to the wrong man. Finding a sword in his hand, Kal slashed through the final thigh-strap. He slid down Tazi’s flank as those table-sized teeth ground against her backbone, yet somehow the Dragoness found the strength to withstand. Kal bounced on the Anubam’s rubbery lip just beyond what he realised was a triple row of the flat, spatulate teeth.
“Out! Jump!”
“I’m not jumping–” Kal reversed his sword “–into a canyon filled with–” he stabbed downward with all his strength “–flying worms!”
Nothing happened. Could he even hurt an animal this size? Yet Kal knew there must be a nerve buried somewhere beneath a lip as thick as a solo Dragonship’s air-sack. Another cry of pain from Tazi decided him. Stab! Hack! Twist and wrench! Kal set to work with the zest of a demented butcher. No beast was taking his girl!
“Accursed spawn of Dramagon!” he shrieked. Enough!
Kal had in his mind a pleasing picture of a seven-headed Ancient Dragon turning this monster into a whopping Dragon-kebab. Unfortunately, that did not transpire. But he struck gold, so to speak–perhaps the very nerve he had wished for. With a shattering roar, the beast spat Tazithiel a thousand yards across the canyon. The row of close-fitting teeth, taller than his shoulder, spared Kal the brunt of the superheated blast, so he had time both to appreciate the fact that his already grizzled hair developed an instant layer of extra frazzle and that his Dragoness struck the far wall so hard, she bounced. Roaring rajals!
Smaller burrowing Dragons, ‘small’ denoting sizes upward of two hundred feet in length, it seemed, lunged out of the wall near Tazi. She batted them away with wild sprays of ice and lightning. Somehow the Indigo Dragoness managed to swim through a veritable terrace lake of lunging teeth, writhing bodies and waterfalls of boulders. Anubam separated from their native rock and fell screaming into the canyon. The Cloudlands would reap a harvest of death this day.
The mouth holding Kal began to grind shut. He did not pause to think. With a despairing cry, the thief enacted his best impression of a windroc as he hurled himself into space.
Sadly, his tribute to windrocs failed, for Kal demonstrated all the flying prowess of a brim-full wineskin. Plummeting, he wailed, Taaaazzziiiiiii!
Oddly, against the rushing canyon walls, the boulders in his vicinity seemed to hover in the air. Were they falling at the same speed? Part of Kal’s mind insisted on debating the physics of this experience while the rest of him was bizarrely preoccupied with wondering how large a splodge of crimson a Human body would make on the rocks far below.
The incoming Dragoness described a blur of rainbow-coloured Dragon scales upon his vision. She outstripped the largest Anubam by a few wing-lengths as she roared down through the debris, carving a path with such speed that a bow-wave of debris preceded her. The monstrous, dun-coloured Anubam thundered after, its squat legs somehow gripping the rock with the ease of a gecko running across a ceiling. Boulders disappeared into a white-hot furnace visible deep in its gaping throat. Great Islands! That was their magic? Boulder-pulverising breath?
Tazi had to summon the mother of all Anubam, didn’t she?
Got you!
With a triumphant bellow, the Indigo Dragoness’ magic snagged his falling body, bouncing Kal heavily off a boulder before plastering him against her belly. The impact knocked the air clean out of his lungs. He did not care. Rough handling? Infinitely better than having his grin rearranged at the bottom of the canyon, wherever that was.
“Hold on!” yelled Tazithiel, swerving so forcefully that blackness washed over Kal’s vision.
; Kal rattled about as boulders ricocheted off her flank. The monster Anubam lunged! But her speed was too great, throwing off the great lizard’s attempted interception.
Missed, you great worm! Tazithiel crowed.
The Anubam curled into a ring, unreasonably flexible for such a monster, and hastened their departure with a roasting blast from its throat, melting boulders into slag and superheated vapour before Kal’s startled gaze. Tazi jinked rapidly, weaving a safe course through the boulders and the freakishly large ‘baby’ Anubam which charged out of their caverns and tunnels in a bid to hack off pieces of prey. Hot air punched their bodies cruelly as the massed ranks of Anubam grumbled their fury in low, Island-shaking chorus.
The Indigo Dragoness did not hold back. Ignominiously, Dragon and Rider fled the scene of their defeat.
* * * *
“Nice bruises,” Kal complimented Tazithiel. Her entire abdomen was ringed with one great bruise, while she sported a decent stippling of other contusions on her arms, shoulders and left cheek.
“You’re not so pretty yourself,” she replied.
“Nothing new there.”
“The only change being the degree of ugliness?” she needled.
Kal held up Chemi’s pot of ‘magic ointment’ she had insisted accompany them on their travels. “However, I know exactly how to make you purr.”
Human-Tazi smiled wanly at his joke. “We were pretty stupid today, weren’t we, Kal? Me with firing fireballs into Anubam caves and you with waving that crystal around. Let’s not do that again, shall we?”
“Being alive does rather compensate for a multiplicity of mutual idiocy,” he noted. “Now, what does ‘metagrobolising’ mean?”
“You just can’t stand not knowing, can you?”
“Listen here, I’m threatening to do diabolical things to you with this pot of ointment. Last chance.”
Tazithiel laughed. “Diabolical, Kal? Do your worst!”
They rested from mid-afternoon until dawn the following morning in a shallow cave on an Island apparently not infested by Anubam, although that did not stop Kal from waking at every noise, until the cruel, heartless girl-fiend, returned to her Dragoness-form, placed her paw atop his head and chest to force him into stillness. To his surprise, Kal slept very well after that, and woke up aching in only two dozen places or so.
Tazi woke, and groaned. She stretched her wings gingerly, and groaned louder. She stood, and shook the cavern with a groan of prodigious conception.
“I’m sorry you’re feeling so sore after all your exertions yesterday, Tazithiel,” said Kal, with withering insincerity. “Do you think you’ll be able to fly? Or shall I take over?”
“You’re a great flier, Kal. I loved all the arm-waving and the screaming. Very theatrical.”
“Who pulled his best girl from between a malodorous monster’s teeth, may I ask?”
The Indigo Dragoness pursed her lips. “A kiss for my brave champion.”
Kal, turning away in mock-horror, was more than startled to receive a firm bunt in the backside. “Fie, woman, I’m not kissing your scaly rump in return! Help me mount up. This valiant warrior who rode his Dragoness into battle yesterday has many aches and pains, the least of which–”
“The aches and pains of a man over forty summers in age,” suggested the Dragoness. “Though, you do know about the Dragon Rider effect, don’t you?”
“Might you be referring to my vastly augmented prowess on the pillow-roll? My ears ring with your repeated attestations.”
“No, you buffoon. Not everything in this world relates to that peculiar mushroom inside your trousers. I mean that Dragon Riders live longer lives than ordinary men and women.”
“They do?” Kal scaled her flank with the ease of a man half his–well, with ease. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“So I become more youthful? Is that why you look barely old enough to … uh, hold … um … will you stop doing that thing with your eyes?”
Tazithiel whirled her eye-fires again. “Don’t inflict your dirty fantasies on me, old man. We Dragons call this ‘making moon-eyes.’ ”
“I can’t think when you do that.”
“Evidently.” The Dragoness seemed as pleased as a young woman whose smile had just caused her admirer to walk straight into a doorpost. “No, Dragon Riders age more slowly, it seems. I’ve heard of Riders reaching two hundred summers, although most die younger–in battle.”
Kal sighed. Of course there would be a fly in this particular ointment. Not a large fly, given as he intended to avoid conflict wherever possible–and he was certain he was developing a generalised yet severe allergy to fireballs, champing fangs and flashing talons–but a fly nonetheless. Deftly, he fastened temporary ropes around his upper thighs and waist, securing himself to the Dragon Rider saddle and the spine spike behind him.
“Ready to see some drakes today?” asked Tazithiel.
Bah. Could he not just go rob a nice vault in peace? At least conventional treasure-troves did not bite or try to scramble his brains with hypnotic eye-fires and inarguably alluring eyelashes.
Two days, fifty-eight drake sightings–Kal insisted on keeping count–and two hundred and thirty leagues of flying later, the Indigo Dragoness finally spotted a Dragonwing of Dragon Riders. Kal counted half a dozen pairs silhouetted against a rose-pink dawn sky, besieged by innumerable, smaller flying Dragons. Drakes. He had better not make the mistake of naming them Dragons!
“They’re clearing out a nest of drakes,” Tazithiel hissed. “Shoddily.”
The dynamic of her wingbeat changed. Her belly-fires soughed eagerly. A hotter, more acrid smoke wafted to Kal’s nostrils. The Indigo Dragoness was primed for action. The man aboard, somewhat less so.
“Tazi, can we talk before we go charging in?”
“Talk? Why of course, Kal. Our fellow Dragons and Dragon Riders are being eaten alive. What would you like to talk about? Don’t forget your helmet.”
Kal limbered up his Dragon war-bow. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps his initiation to Dragon-battle was best enacted in a desperate arena where his fellow-Riders were being shredded by shoals of vicious, snapping enemies; receiving the long end of the noose, as thieves might jest. Rather morose, thieves, as a rule fond of fireflower humour suited to wild nights spent mooching in graveyards.
Meantime, Tazithiel accelerated to attack velocity as she swooped down upon a melee which did not become the slightest bit more attractive, the more detail Kal made out. The drakes struck him as the hired thugs of the Dragon world–all intimidating spiked armour, mean underslung jaws and the need to hunt in packs to down a single victim. Nasty customers. They behaved like schools of fish he had seen in terrace lakes, only these thirty-foot snapping monsters were vicious and armed to the teeth, and their fighting strategy appeared to major on eating opponents alive.
The group of Dragon Riders was only six strong, while at least four dozen drakes mobbed them. Why had they allowed themselves to become so outnumbered, he wondered?
“Oh–that Red, I know him!” Tazithiel bugled. “That’s Jalfyrion, from Mejia. Mmm, he’s found himself a female Dragon Rider.”
The powerful rust-red Dragon crushed a drake with his jaws; the two halves waggled either size of his muzzle for a few seconds as he had a good chew before spitting out the remains.
“Charming,” said Kal.
Thundering her battle-challenge, Tazithiel joined the fray with powerful lightning-strikes that slew two drakes on her first pass. Kal had never experienced a fight like this. Upside-down, sideways, jerking and jinking, slipping through the scrimmage with the speed and guile of a Dragoness … firing arrow after arrow to a chorus of encouragement from Tazithiel, screaming in joy as one struck a drake in the eye … laughing in concert with the Dragoness’ cruel battle-joy as she broke a drake’s neck with a snap of her powerful jaws and gasping in awe as she encased a trio of the lethal lizards in ice, sending them to a smashing death on t
he Island far below.
Green Islands. As they wheeled into clear air, enjoying a momentary breather, Kal had a second or two to consider their surrounds. The landscape had changed dramatically over the last day to verdant Islands broken by deep ravines and caves–perfect hiding and breeding grounds for drakes, Tazi had suggested. An army could hide in this region which comprised over five hundred rugged Islands clustered together in a shape oddly reminiscent of a Dragon’s outstretched wing, seen from high up.
Clutching his bow, Kal attempted to sight his shots despite Tazithiel’s unpredictable flight patterns. She lurched, dropping to crush a drake in her talons, while simultaneously yelling, Kal, fire! Kal could not believe it. Smoothly, as though he had plotted a line with great forethought, his arrow shot fifty yards across open air and plugged to the fletching in a drake’s eye. He could do that? For a few seconds, he seemed to exist in another world. Three arrows. Three kills. Who was this Kal, Dragon Rider, blood hazing over his vision as they swung through the heat of battle? Tazithiel lashed out with her ice and lightning, driving the drakes away from a beleaguered pair of Dragons and their Riders, who quickly regrouped.
Kal blinked. One, two … hold on. Where was Jalfyrion, Tazi’s stocky friend?
There. Two ravines over, he saw drakes dive-bombing what had to be a Dragon, although their quarry was hidden by the terrain.
Tazi! Jalfyrion needs our help!
Jalfyrion! Bellowing wildly, Tazithiel swept over on a burst of her power, overshooting the conflict. She doubled back on a brass dral. The Indigo Dragoness’ body rocked as she smashed half a dozen drakes away with powerful strikes of her tail and claws, while she dealt death with another lightning-strike. Jalfyrion was dangerously near the treeline, the subject of an ugly brawl. He had two drakes dangling off his upper lip, while another blunted its fangs on the armoured torso of his petite Rider. Several more hung off his right wing, dragging him toward a densely forested ravine. Kal slammed a four-foot arrow through a drake’s skull. Nice!