by Marc Secchia
The Dragoness’ rage and grief lit up miles of sky with a titanic lightning bolt.
Kal smelled the sharp tang of ozone, a smell he associated with storms. His fists clenched painfully. Oh, to have Tazithiel’s power unleashed upon the Guild of Assassins!
He said, “Riika’s brave, but she doesn’t talk about her past. This is why I couldn’t leave her. Do you understand?”
“Aye. We grew us a teenager overnight. Life isn’t all petals, is it?”
Kal said, “You seem to have worked wonders already. She respects you.”
“Dragon fires, Kal, let’s pick the humiliated hermit for a role model.”
“On the other hand, I thought you displayed astonishing trouser-divesting skills, Tazi. That’s the hallmark of a desperate yet admirable woman.”
“Dream on.”
He laughed curtly. “Let’s concentrate on figuring out how to ensure the school survives Riika, alright? How many hours should I lecture her about the need to respect her teachers? What rules should I set?”
“Rules? For teenage girl-assassins? Kal, Kal, Kal.”
“Fine.” Kal poured syrup into his voice. “Listen to how reformed and humble I am. O Indigo Dragoness, I entreat you to instruct me in where I’m going wrong with the female of the species.”
She chortled, “Ten thousand years, Kal, and you still wouldn’t have a clue.”
* * * *
On the way to Elidia Island, Kal succeeded in convincing Riika that she might be able to shake hands or accept a traditional kiss upon the palm, given as not everyone in the Island-World was potentially planning to kill her. The rest of his rulemaking fared less well.
Kal congratulated himself on his stellar parenting skills.
Elidia and Mejia Islands had always struck him as having an unfinished quality, as if a juvenile Ancient Dragon had smashed together a pawful of proto-Islands like blobs of clay and then plopped the result on top of a handy foundation rising out of the Cloudlands. They had none of Fra’anior’s majestic league-tall cliffs, nor its austere, brooding volcanic majesty–in his geologically astute and wholly impartial opinion. What they possessed in abundance was range upon range of lumpen mountains, with one unique feature which had always intrigued Kal. The mountains rose from below. Same parts of these two Islands and their small outlier Islands were so unstable, neither Dragon, Human nor beast chose to live there. A farmer could lose half a field overnight as it swelled, cracked and tumbled over the edge of a cliff. Kal had seen mountains popping up before his disbelieving eyes.
“These Islands breed peculiar people,” Kal said to Tazithiel, expounding on his observations. “They are resilient, yet so fatalistic. I mean, they even build their huts without foundations so that an entire village can up and move at the proverbial flip of a dragonet’s tail.”
“But they do breed spectacular Dragons.” Tazi winked at him over her shoulder.
Riika made a gagging noise. “Will you two quit flirting? It’s weird, alright? I’m bored. When are we going to be there?”
“I’m not the local ox-cart,” growled the Dragoness. “We’ll get there when I decide.”
With exaggerated amazement, Riika cried, “Great Islands, the cart speaks!”
Over Kal’s hoots of laughter, Tazi snorted, “This cart bites, little girl. Now, who’s for a bath in hot springs and the luxury of long, soft grass to sleep upon?”
“Me,” said Kal, managing to turn the word into a vulgar proposition.
“I’m fourteen! I don’t need to hear these things!”
Sometimes, Riika still wanted to be the child she had never been. Kal wondered how greatly the loss of childhood innocence affected a person. His story had been one of falling in with the wrong friends and learning a new trade. The loss of innocence had quickly followed at some point between his eighth and ninth summers. Riika’s young life had been marred by a different scale of brutality altogether.
“Say, Tazithiel, riddle me this,” said Kal. “I’ve noticed that upon transformation, your dirt falls off but the Dragon scale-mites remain. Does that mean the mites transform with you? Remember, you said that Shapeshifter babies transform within the womb?”
Riika punched Kal’s knee playfully. “What’s the grin for?”
“I propose an experiment. Let’s say Dragoness-Tazi on the off-chance happened to swallow an insolent half-Helyon half-Pygmy urchin into her food stomach, and then transformed. What would happen to the little ragamuffin? Shall we find out?”
“For that insult, I challenge you to a duel, Sticky-Fingers.”
“You’re on, Razorblades. I’ll even let you choose your weapons.”
“Let me guess–her tongue?” Tazi put in.
The young assassin smiled the smile Kal had dubbed ‘the poisoned blade’, and rolled her eyes at the Dragoness. “You wait your turn. Dragons, I tell you. Always so pushy.”
“For that insult, you two can clear the feral windrocs away from our bathtub.”
Kal said, “But one fireball, my darling Dragoness …”
Tazithiel yawned hugely. “I’m so tired after all this flying, lugging two identically lippy specimens of Humanis Aggravatus–” she lapsed into mock-Dragonish scientific language “–between the Isles. Couldn’t summon so much as a spark. Nor lift a talon. I’m feeling so–what was that four-letter word you used the other day? Weak? My wings are drooping. My spine aches. My–”
“We get the point!” Kal limbered up his war bow. “Come on, Razorblades. Let’s teach this puny, limp, prim–help me here, I’m running out of words–Dragoness a thing or three about shooting down windrocs.”
Tazithiel drawled, “Just remember, miss one and it’ll have your hand for breakfast. Tell you what–I’ll keep score. I can manage that.”
Suddenly, Kal’s throat felt as dry as the desert they had just flown over.
Feral windrocs were akin to Dragons in their wild, uncontrolled aggression. Kal had many times encountered feral windrocs on his travels across the Island-World. They would attack without provocation. A few pecks of a tasteless air balloon usually convinced them dinner was not on the menu and they would start fighting each other, which was apparently fun and far more rewarding. Occasionally a windroc would not give up. Kal’s preferred method was to waste a poisoned throwing knife on the persistent ones.
Shooting a bird with a twenty-foot wingspan was not usually the problem. Doing enough damage to dissuade them was. Most times, an arrow in the gut merely served to annoy an already belligerent animal.
Seeing their hated enemy gliding in toward a sizzling lava-pool, which Kal fervently hoped was not Tazi’s notion of a warm bath, the windrocs rose in a cawing, squabbling mass and employed the only reasonable strategy. They attacked the Indigo Dragoness.
Kal scored with his first shot, which was hardly a miracle given how the huge, brown-and-cream birds were bunched together. “Ha!” he yelled. “Beat that!”
“I will,” said Riika, raising her much more compact Pygmy bow. Her little shaft zipped through the air. With a soft whomp, pieces of windroc splattered the raucous flock of birds.
“What the hells was that?” Kal shrilled.
“Experimental arrows. My design.” Riika downed another bird in an explosion of feathers. “The blasting gel’s still far too unstable for commercial use, but I have the research division working on the problem.”
“You have my researchers doing what? Riika!”
“While you were off gallivanting around the Islands, I was sadly neglected and bored. I sort of borrowed a few of your scientists and engineers for my pet projects.”
Kal swore luridly. By complete fluke, the arrow he released in anger speared two windrocs through the head, threading them like meat kebabs on a single arrow-shaft. “By the beard of the Great Dragon himself!” he crowed. “Did you see my shot?”
“Incoming!” yelled Riika. Twisting in her seat, she pinned a windroc angling for Kal’s cranium. Crump! Feathers, blood and a meaty slab of bird smacke
d him in the back of the head.
That served to focus the mind.
Kal and his ward traded each other shot for shot and insult for insult, while the Indigo Dragoness glided in to her landing without so much as bloodying a claw. Riika’s exploding arrowheads were more than effective when she landed a shot, but Kal intended to haul the snarky virtuoso inventor over the coals for storing unstable chemical compounds in the quiver right next to his knee. Not that her wise old guardian was without a few tricks of his own, Kal smirked. His marks developed an odd hitch in their wings and a glazed look in the eye before tumbling out of the sky, paralysed.
Two could cheat at this game.
Landing right in the lava with a showy flare of her multi-segmented wings, Tazithiel wriggled her tremendous rump down into the molten rock. She sighed, “Much better.”
“What was the score?” asked Riika excitedly, pulling a length of windroc intestines out of her hair.
“Eight to you, eight and a half to Kal.”
“Yes!” Kal danced an outrageous jig on his saddle as Riika let out a loud groan. “And you can just suck on windroc eggs–”
“But I’m subtracting one because you let a windroc bite my wingtip, Kal.”
“Naaaaah! Suck on a luminous flesh-eating slug, old man!”
“Unfair! I demand a recount. And can we get out of the lava, please? Boiling.”
Riika simpered, “Who’s a sore loser, then?”
“Pick your weapons, my fledgling apprentice, and I shall beat a lesson in black and blue upon your worthless hide!”
With blunted training blades, Kal and Riika clashed with a combined speed and ferocity that had the dell ringing and the Indigo Dragoness looking on with bemusement. Riika dented her adopted father’s skull with a flurry of blows, fighting two-handed. Kal returned the compliment with a crushing blow to her knee. The girl crumpled, only to fold up as if she were a contortionist. Riika slithered out from beneath his pounce to deliver a flurry of cobra-swift strikes to his kidneys. Kal lamed her left arm with a pressure-point strike and cursed unhappily as Riika kissed his lip with her boot-heel. Ten minutes of all-in combat later, they spun apart, laughing.
“I just healed up!” Kal dabbed his mouth.
Riika gave up her proud stance to bend over, panting. “You’re like a strip of goat sinew. You just get tougher with age.”
“Monk training,” said Kal.
“I went easy out of respect for an old man.”
Rajals take it, the truth stank, but it remained no less the truth. Riika had grown stronger and faster than he could have imagined. This only proved Riika had a soft heart beneath all that bristling Dragon-armour. Bah.
Kal said, “I practically changed your wet-cloths and wiped your snotty toddler nose mid-combat, Razorblades.”
“I’ll have to–” she coughed so violently that Kal moved over, putting his arm around her shoulders. His eyes flicked to her hand. Blood? She quickly clenched her fist and hid it behind her back; casually done, but he knew …
“Alright, Razorblades?”
“I missed our fun little sparring sessions, alright? Satisfied?” Riika straightened her back. “Dragoness! Where’s that hot spring you promised us, or are you too busy baking the reptilian brains over there?”
Tazithiel squirmed to her paws with a hiss of exasperation, sheeting lava off her flanks and spine spikes. “You two finished throwing four-letter words at each other? ‘Love you.’ ‘Love you too.’ ‘Love it when you break my ribs.’ ‘Oof, I really felt the love that time.’ ” She chuckled as her Human companions stiffened identically, her eye-fires swirling with bright yellow streaks of humour. “Aye, I used the L-word and it’s the truth, Dragon’s honour. And you both can just use that to whet your blades.”
Riika’s lips twitched, as did Kal’s. They shared a sheepish glance.
Kal said, “Never thought anything could sneak up on a pad-foot of my extravagant talents.”
“I should’ve killed you right the first time.” Riika grinned impishly, but a shadow of pain flitted across her eyes. “I sure messed up, didn’t I, Kal?”
He saw crimson seep from the corner of her mouth and it nigh destroyed him.
“Aye, Razorblades, you stink in so many ways, I simply can’t keep track anymore,” said Kal. “Let’s start by tossing you into that hot spring.”
* * * *
Elidia to Jos, the capital city of the Island of Jeradia, was a half-day’s Dragonflight under ideal conditions. Unfortunately, this late in the season, Jeradia had its own particular blight in the form of cool air that swept in from the Southwest and blanketed the Island in the most impenetrable, soupy fogs known to the Island-World; fogs so thick and hearty, Kal imagined his lungs clogging up with lumps of soupy air. Of course, mists and malefactors were the most excellent of friends, and not friends of the shake-hands variety, either. More like intimate bedfellows. Kal had accordingly spent many an hour cheerfully skulking about Jos during a youth which had included absolutely none of the finest education money could buy, no Island home for longer than a season or two at a time, nor any regular supply of actual food. Hunger focussed the senses. Starvation turned the mind into a dagger. Jos had been his training ground and his first stint in prison, aged seven.
Halfway to Jeradia, the mists closed in.
Ordinarily Kal would be piloting his trusty Dragonship, now abandoned halfway around the world. Tazithiel’s navigational instruments ranged from a homing sense, similar to messenger hawks, to directional senses, scent and even what she called the ‘song of the stars’. Riika had giggled at that one, provoking a minor bonfire from their mount, a prolonged case of the fiery sulks and dire imprecations about draping a certain impertinent waif’s guts all over the mountain peaks of northern Jeradia.
Kal unbuckled to stretch his legs. “Long legs and Dragons,” he groused. “You need to grow into your Rider, mighty Tazithiel.”
“What, wear myself in like a pair of old boots?”
Trust the Dragoness to conjure up exactly the wrong image.
“Like form-hugging leather trousers,” Riika put in. “You have to wear them in for a perfect fit.”
Tazi snarled, “I’d rather gnaw off my own tail than wear a flagrant, immodest scrap of animal hide like you.”
Kal had a most gratifying image of Human-Tazi in the backless Franxxian gown floating about in his memory. Oh, aye. Modest indeed. He was not about to call a Dragoness a hypocrite to her face, however, not when she was out-grumping a seventy-foot freshwater crab. Odd. What had riled her so?
Riika, however, did not know the meaning of the words ‘back down’. Widening her eyes as the Dragoness glared back at her Riders, she said, “A Dragoness in leather trousers? Wow, Tazi, I bet you’d turn heads so fast, there’d be a rash of male Dragons flying into mountainsides. Thump! Thump-thump … ooh, great Islands, you can’t wear that in public!”
“I have my own gleaming hide and I’ll thank you to remember–Kal? What is it?”
Kal sat. His hand stole to his Dragon war-bow. “I’ve the oddest feeling …”
“A feeling?” Riika snickered.
“He has them,” said the Indigo Dragoness, but Kal perceived a subliminal disturbance as she extended her senses into the surrounding mists. Fruitless, he thought. They could barely see the end of Tazithiel’s muzzle, never mind Jeradia’s sixty-league, mountain-capped bulk somewhere ahead. He rather wished Riika had not joked about flying into a mountainside.
Silence. Abiding quietness, the inkling that the Dragoness hung suspended in an endless dreamscape of mists. Lost. Soul-lost … Kal’s mind wandered, unexpectedly, to Tazithiel’s awful tale of how her shell-parents had sold her out to Endurion. He tensed. There, as clear as a cloudless morning in his mind, was an image of a massive, battle-scarred Green Dragon Kal knew for a fact he had never seen before. A devious smile twisted the Dragon’s ruined lower lip. Great walls of olive-coloured Dragon hide glistened as though wet with mucus or slime. Was he picking u
p images from the Indigo Dragoness’ mind? Was that even possible?
Danger!
His throat constricted. No word would emerge, so he thought, Tazi. Shields up!
She said, Kal, is this another of your prem–
TYRANTOR! ZUDANI! AZZARON! INFERNION!
At first, Kal thought he had seen orange lightning flash in the mist. Multiple Dragon-challenges deafened him, followed by a terrible combined impact that hurled Tazithiel sideways through the air. Heat! Burning! Wings flashed in the gloom. He shook his head; Riika lolled half-senseless between the spine spikes just ahead of him in their double Dragon Rider saddle, blood streaming from a cut above her left eye. The Indigo Dragoness flapped weakly, struggling to overcome the effects of that first devastating fusillade.
“Tazi–brace!” Mid-yell, Kal saw a Dragonwing of Reds plummeting from above. A hoary bonfire-red male thundered into Tazithiel’s shield from above. Despite her magical protection, the impact was an earthquake. Kal understood the transfer of inertial energies. Being battered by a quintet of unfriendly Red Dragons queuing up to hurl their tonnage at her shield was another matter entirely. Two further Reds crashed against thin air, yet the shockwave transferred to Tazithiel’s body or mind in ways Kal did not understand. The Dragons scrabbled at the shield with their talons and fangs as Tazithiel’s power denied them a taste of her blood.
ZUDANI! bellowed a hundred-foot female Red, firing a molten rock fireball at Tazi’s right flank.
INFERNION! resounded from above as another massively muscled male smashed into her tail-region, knocking the smaller Dragoness spinning despite her shield.
The naked savagery! Stunning. Kal ducked reflexively as another fireball roared over their shield. Then, he knew white-hot anger. Tazithiel might not be able to counterstrike, given the pounding they were taking, but he could. Reaching forward, he plucked an arrow from Riika’s quiver. Time to see if these Dragons enjoyed a taste of explosive gel.