by Marc Secchia
No Dragons. His feet did a silent, watery dance. Freaking thieving genius!
Now, all he had to do was sneak away from several hundred Dragon roosts guarded by Dragonesses zealous to ensure no-one pinched their eggs or hatchlings, cover a quarter-mile of open ground to the buildings and find the Dragon infirmary where, he trusted, he would locate one delectable Shapeshifter Dragoness.
Kal spied on the Dragon roosts. Most of the Dragonkind appeared to have settled down for the night, but there was a constant toing and froing of fire-eyes up there on the cliffs of what had to be a daughter volcano within this single huge caldera. The Academy buildings climbed the rim wall to his right, a dizzying jumble of balconies and alcoves and interconnecting annexes which had more floors than seemed feasible–his hawk-swift estimate suggested two hundred levels, perhaps more. Quite the location. At least ten Dragons roosted on the school buildings, as best he could tell from the odd crack of orangey-yellow light spilling from draconic eyes.
A few men and women he assumed were Dragon Riders returned to their roosts, following a path along the lake shore some fifty yards distant. All appeared to be wearing similar dark grey cloaks with a silver buckle or brooch at the right shoulder. Kal eyed them speculatively.
Soon, a gentleman of excellent potential appeared. Alone, weaving along the lake shore, the drunk Dragon Rider slipped into knee-deep water. Kal moved over purposefully, as if he intended to help the man. Congratulations. This fellow was the lucky winner of his ‘become the victim’ contest.
“Fine night, isn’t it, friend?” He clapped the fellow on the shoulder, unclipping the buckle with a deft tweak of thumb and forefinger. “Easy, the path’s this way. Had a few too many to go swimming, haven’t you?”
“Thanks,” slurred the fellow.
“You alright to get back?”
“I’ll call my Yenisia if I need her. Perfect Green … so beautiful.”
“Pleasant dreams,” said Kal, giving him a friendly shove in the right direction.
Nice cloak. A touch short. Time to fool these Dragons in inimitable Kallion style. Affecting a slight swagger, the scurviest brigand of the Isles marched up the path as if he belonged. Indeed, he did. He was a Dragon Rider as much as any other in this caldera. The only difference was the price on his head and the messy pancake Queen Aranya would make of his life when she employed his tenderised cadaver for a doormat.
Kal walked up-slope from the lake, crossing a footbridge over an open lava flow, striving for that purposeful yet relaxed walk which proclaimed his familiarity with this place. The path wound between several open lava pits, probably used by Dragons for bathing, before climbing quickly to a wide, manicured sword-grass field that stretched up to the Academy buildings. Great Islands, how many thousands of students and staff did they house here? The place was a miniature city.
Stretching his long legs did not settle him. Kal felt preternaturally on edge, alert to the night’s slightest sound, to any shift in the breeze or hint of danger. Several times, he sensed the touch of a draconic gaze. Keep calm. Blend, merge, be normal. Ignore the pain of his broken wrist and his throbbing backside. He put his hood up as he had seen several of the other Riders do.
When he heard voices, Kal did not hesitate. Prepare a story. A swift subterfuge, for as he approached the edge of the field and a staircase leading upward to the buildings towering thousands of feet above him, Kal heard familiar tones. His heart sank. Jisellia!
Oh … he could use this. Judge her position. Rounding a corner, Kal increased his speed and deliberately collided with the young Dragon Rider.
“Great Islands, oh–Jisellia! Oh, forgive me, I never expected to find you here!” Falling to one knee, Kal seized her hand and began to kiss her knuckles most fervently, hiding his face effectively in the process. Jisellia squealed as the kissing raged unabated and more than a few chuckles began to rise from the group. Kal murmured, “Forgive me, sweet one, I should never have left you. You were kind, oh so kind and gracious, and I treated you with the most shameful disrespect and ingratitude.”
Poor Jisellia gasped and blushed, and then flushed so powerfully, he sensed the heat right down in her fingertips. “Kal … uh, Kalzion! Why, you smarmy toad, you two-timing, double-crossing son of a mangy goat …”
“I cast my worthless self upon your mercy!” Kal cried, drowning out her risible insults, yet at the same time, never more thankful for her quick thinking. “I abase myself, o sweet blossom, o crowning glory of Mejia Isle. But my consort was so jealous of your beauty, bitterly gnashing her teeth and weeping day and night–”
“I’ll have words with you, Kalzion! Come here!” Kal bit back an urge to kiss her properly. What a girl! She dragged him off a ways, growling, “You grubby Sylakian farmer! How dare you … Kal, what the hells are you doing here? They’ll kill you. Every student and Dragon Rider has seen your picture–the Queen literally spat lightning when she briefed the Riders. The order is to kill you on sight.”
Bah. That Aranya couldn’t find ice in the middle of a hailstorm! Who did she think she was dealing with, some peasant dunce turned pickpocket who constantly tripped over his own feet?
“How’s Tazithiel?”
“Your Indigo? Rumour has it she’s not yet woken up. Never seen an injury like it, they say. The Queen herself has been healing her. Tazithiel needs you. Of course, that’s why you’re here.”
“Aye. I could not leave my Dragoness.”
Jisellia said, “How can I help?”
Kal kissed her cheek, decorously but gratefully. “Jisellia, words fail me. You’re amazing. Tell me where I can find the infirmary, and direct me to Queen Aranya’s chambers. I need to set right a misunderstanding.”
He lied, but Jisellia did not know it. Kal listened closely as she gave instructions, holding her hand in the manner of old friends. He did not miss the special gleam in her eye. Kal mentally added Jalfyrion to his list of wrongs to right, after he extracted his own neck from the noose.
When Jisellia had given him the information he required, Kal melted into the night.
* * * *
Wrath drove him to Aranya first. What hope for Tazithiel, if he died? Kal knew his motives were selfish, but the fire that drove him seemed born of a soul he had never before discovered. Righteous fury, his old Master Ja’amba would have said. Kal shuddered, clinging to an ivy-clad wall ten stories above a small enclosed garden. Purity was not in his makeup. His soul was tainted forever. Yet could this Kal, this freebooter who wished for liberation from past misdeeds, carry through what he intended? Only when he saw her, would he know.
Kal wreathed himself in his old friend called shadow.
Using a climbing hook tied to his left forearm to make up for the loss of his hand’s use, he scaled the wall steadily.
Up to the mosaic crysglass windows. Kal peered within, seeing only darkness, but what he sought could not be seen with the naked eye. He obeyed a slight prickling on the nape of his neck. Not this one. Swiftly, he tried four windows. Here. This one was unguarded. With great care, Kal picked the window-lock and spent a good ten minutes examining the frame before easing it open with even greater caution. A mere change of air pressure could wake a sleeper. The faint susurrus of Aranya’s breath sounded right. Working his shoulders through the narrow frame, Kal scanned the floor. Cunning. A magical trap worthy of the name lay just below the window, exactly where an intrepid intruder’s feet might land. Easing his body to the left, Kal landed soundlessly in his tacky climbing slippers, right behind the drapes.
A further twenty minutes saw him ghost across the outer chamber, a study, toward the inner chamber. An open scroll upon her desk outlined the terms of her death-warrant. Slay on sight, indeed! Who by the sulphurous, ever-burning pits of Fra’anior itself did this woman think she was? The most powerful Enchantress in history?
Aye, so she was. Star Dragoness. Queen. Destroyer of the Sylakian Empire. Saviour of the Dragons. Aranya of Immadia owned not just a legend, but a personal library o
f legends. Kal palmed his dagger. Here came the test.
A delicate tracery of magic enshrouded her inner bedchamber. Aranya took no chances. Every inch of wall, floor, ceiling and doorway was guarded by faintly shimmering wards; if he looked closely, they appeared to be runes of starlight inscribed in long, intertwined sentences upon thin air. Poised like a spiral-horn deer sensing a hunter, Kal hesitated. No. Tazithiel needed him alive. Should he proceed with slaying the Queen, would it change his fate?
But Kal had not survived forty-four years of skulduggery and delinquency by playing the shrinking violet. In his world, there was always a way out, a miniscule chance which had to be grasped with perfect timing; the space between actions and consequences which, when navigated with finesse, yielded unexpected results.
Reaching out, he stroked a line of runes with his fingertip, breathing in Dragonish, We’re friends, you and I. I’m but a breeze passing through. Nothing to fear here if you will bend.
Not so much the words, but the attitude, the mental space he carved for himself. The runes yielded to his presence but did not set any alarm bells jangling.
Again he caressed the air. Dance with me, my magical friends.
Kal parted her protections like a shroud and passed through into the inner gloom.
Approaching Aranya’s bedside, Kal moved like a zephyr soughing over a mirror-calm lake, the barest hint of a ripple of existence. This was his skill. His power.
The woman lay sleeping with her face turned away from him, her Shapeshifter hair blanketing her pillow-roll and torso in all its extraordinary, multihued glory, exactly as the fables told–tresses of black and auburn, blue and white, ochre and saffron, and many hues besides. She was not a three hundred year-old hag. Oh no. In form Aranya was a slender woman, perhaps mid-twenties in appearance, but the hand upon her pillow-roll betrayed the slightest tracery of age. Impossible! She seemed no older than Tazithiel. Shapeshifters and Dragon Riders lived long, but this … he shook his head. Well, her legend ended here. If he could move. If only his hand would rise, but it seemed to be clamped against his side by a force more mystical than magical.
Kal knew he must not kill her.
Faint-hearted fool! Was he not the King of Thieves? A man never before moved by beauty or legend, who held nothing sacred beneath the twin suns?
His pulse crashed in his throat. Ears buzzing, every fibre of his being groaning with the exertion, he raised the dagger. Aranya rolled over, murmuring, “Mother? Is that you?”
No! Kal inhaled … a faint, aghast wheeze of breath. Scandal!
Her eyes flicked open. Luminous with power, jewel-like and oh-so-familiar, yet she did not appear to behold the would-be murderer looming over her bed. The thief held his breath, poised, immobile.
The Shapeshifter Dragoness’ eyes shuttered. She settled against the pillow-roll, smiling in her sleep. “Oh, Izariela, how I long to be with you.”
This changed everything. He had to move. Get out of this room, before he screamed and railed against the absurdity of fate. Tazithiel, oh Tazithiel! How could he explain? Only a lifetime’s experience drove him past the paralysing shock to action. He summoned the will to direct his hand to place the dagger, point facing away from the Dragoness, next to her pillow-roll.
A simple message: I chose to let you live.
Kal retreated through the curtain of magic, trembling with adrenaline and despair. Tazi needed him more than ever, now.
The foundations of her world were about to be annihilated.
And the crowning insult? He could never have her.
Chapter 19: Old Eggs
KAL DID nOT recall descending from Aranya’s window, nor finding his way to the infirmary. Low lamplight glowed warmly against a vaulting cavern roof, showing him an open infirmary some one thousand feet wide and twice that depth. There were many bowl-shaped beds for Dragons and their Riders, only a few occupied, and a more traditional section for Humans over against the wall to his left hand. The scent of acrid, tangy medicinal herbs filled his nostrils. But Kal had eyes for one Dragoness alone. Tazithiel!
She breathed.
A perfunctory check of his surrounds revealed no medical personnel present. Kal ran despite the jolting pain in his wrist. Tazi, oh, Tazithiel, I’ve come! It’s me, Kal. Darling Dragoness, dear one …
The Indigo Dragoness reclined on her left side in one of the open Dragon bowls. Someone had made her comfortable upon heaps of ralti furs, even mounding them carefully beneath her neck. Kal observed that the stitching along her belly had been recently removed; the wound was clean and neatly closed, and there was almost no sign or smell of infection. He knew Dragons healed rapidly, but this was astonishing. Her flank rose and fell evenly, but as he watched, her right forepaw clenched and she whimpered, perhaps caught in the throes of a dream.
“Are you Tazithiel’s Rider?” The Dragon’s fantastically deep voice behind his shoulder made Kal leap like a frightened hare and lose a good few years of his life. “I sense you are.”
A hoary old Blue Dragon loomed over him, blind in both eyes. Kal began to stammer a reply, but the Blue only chuckled in a slow, easy manner, “You’ve made your oaths?”
“Aye.”
“Then leave me to deal with the Queen’s rash orders, youngling. Besides, I like to make up my mind about people in my own good time. Go to your Dragoness. She’s been pining for you.”
Kal stared. The Dragon’s accent was Eastern, and he had four wings rather than the usual two. “Go to her? How?”
“My name is Yozora,” said the Dragon. “I am the healer here, and in my infirmary, even Queens must bide their turn. You will first whisper in Tazithiel’s ear and then make yourself snug in her paw. A Dragon’s palm is more sensitive than you may think. A gentle stroking motion here–” he indicated with his talon “–will communicate via the magical pathways of her being. Don’t dawdle, youngling. Even I grow antiquated waiting for you.”
“I … don’t know where her ears are.”
“Ignorance admitted opens the mind to understanding,” said Yozora, seeming pleased by this confession. “Those three holes on the side of her head are the ear canals.” Kal stood on his tiptoes to bring his mouth close to one of the fist-sized earholes. “Tell her everything is well. The balance of the harmonies in your lives is restored; together, you will arise as a fresh flame awakens from the kindling.”
Kal decided he liked the philosophical old Dragon, although he doubted his ability to deal with the Queen of Arrogance. He did not understand how Yozora had sneaked up on him, but perhaps blind Dragons saw more than he supposed. After whispering all sorts of prekki-mush nonsense into the Indigo Dragoness’ ear for a few minutes, Kal made himself comfortable in her paw as Yozora had suggested. A shudder passed through the great draconic body. Her talons curved about his frame, and it seemed to him that something within Tazithiel relaxed, for her breathing seemed less laboured and her heartbeat stronger than before.
Yozora growled, “Budge an inch from that Dragoness’ side, Rider Kal, and I will do to you far worse than Queen Aranya promised, word of a Dragon. If you need anything, ask.”
An abeyance, at least until the morning, when Aranya’s fury would bring the cavern down. To Kal’s surprise, cradled in Tazithiel’s warm paw, sleep stole him away faster than any master pickpocket had ever filched a wallet.
* * * *
“Kal.”
“Shapely … shapely-Shifter,” Kal mumbled, enjoying a most gratifying dream. “Kiss …”
Soft lips turned his insides to liquid fire.
“Great Islands, that’s so good … great Islands!” Kal sat bolt-upright. “Great joyful dancing Islands, where did you spring from? Tazi! Lie down!”
“I am lying down.”
A most agreeably nude girl lay on the pile of furs nearest his right hand, so serene. She had the longest eyelashes he had ever seen. His heart lurched so hard, he feared permanent damage had been done. All that remained of her wound was a puckered red scar running fr
om her lower stomach up toward her heart. She looked pale and shaky, but he had to confess, alive was a beautiful state of being.
Kal buried his head against her shoulder, shaken by the storms ravaging his soul.
She held him. “It’s alright, Kal. I’ll be fine. Oh, what happened to your wrist?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s broken, you silly man.”
“As if that matters! How are you–why–what–are you?”
Her smile warmed all the Islands of his world. “You brazen reprobate. Must I wear a shirt before a coherent word will fall from your lips? Yozora came by this morning. I was awake … just watching you sleep. I thought I dreamed, but you’re here.”
He gripped her fingers, fierce yet fragile of mien. All he trusted himself to say was, “Aye.”
“He laid down the law,” Tazi added. “Apparently, a Shapeshifter must receive treatment in both forms before she can be fully healed. So I had to transform. Doctor’s orders.”
“Can I get you anything? Do anything? How’s the stomach? And your heart? What about–”
“You can get that bone set.” Yozora. A moment, please.
Tazithiel nodded off while Kal was having his wrist splinted and the windroc peck in his buttock cleaned up and stitched by an older nurse who clearly hailed from the humourless school of patient persecution. A medical student appeared to spread a blanket over the Shapeshifter and to giggle, pink-cheeked, at the location of Kal’s wound.
“Blasted windroc mistook my buttock for a hunk of meat,” Kal commented to the student. “I must look tasty. Do you think I look tasty, nurse?”
The walking battle-axe, a matron not shy of sixty summers and evidently more than accustomed to dealing with Dragon Riders, snapped, “About as tasty as a goat’s hairy behind, boy! Now lay down with your Dragoness before I lay you out with my fist, hear me?”
The dark Western Isles fist that waved beneath his nose looked well-used. Besides, the matron’s biceps were thicker than his thighs. Kal subsided meekly. “Aye, matron.”