by Marc Secchia
“He vexes and flatters in the same breath,” Jalfyrion purred.
Jisellia rolled her eyes. “What maverick nonsense are you intent on perpetrating in our roost, Kal?”
He glanced about the Dragon roost, curious to see how Dragons lived with their Riders. Vaulting, curtained crysglass panels framed the entryway, which led to a spacious chamber built to house a Dragon. Jalfyrion evidently slept in the outer chamber, from which position he could best protect his Rider, Kal noted. Several other chambers led off the main living space, some sized for a Dragon, some for a Rider.
Jisellia, with a coy bow, said, “Ablutions through there. That’s our cooking alcove in the back, complete with cold storage to keep large quantities of meat fresh. When I’m not sleeping in here, beside Jalfyrion’s neck, I have a private chamber through those hangings.”
“I love your paintings,” said Kal, admiring several sprawling works. The detail was exquisite; the Dragons so lifelike they almost flew off the canvas. “Who’s the artist?”
“Your nemesis.”
“Uh–Aranya?”
Jalfyrion growled, “Most of us address the Amethyst Queen with a modicum of respect, Rider Kal. What do you seek here? State your purpose without fancy words.”
“I ask your aid to help me fetch my daughter Riika from Jos, to bring her back to the Academy.”
“A daughter, Kal?” Jisellia turned to her Dragon. “What say you, Jalfyrion?”
After his opening mini-lecture, Kal expected an even fierier response from the Red. Instead, he fixed his burning gaze upon Kal. “This strikes me as a worthy pursuit. Illegal, but completely worthy.”
Jisellia’s annoyance evaporated; she bounced on her toes, saying, “I fear you may just have spoiled our boredom, Kal, with a nefarious yet irresistible proposal. Consider us your students. How do you propose to fly out beneath the eyes of all those Dragons out there?”
“Saddle baggage.”
* * * *
“You are nothing if not old baggage, Dad,” said Riika, once she had dispensed with the embarrassing business of being hugged. “And you smell like a sack of mouldy old boots.”
Grimy but happy-looking, Riika met them as arranged at the Dragonship port outside of Jos. Kal scratched his beard with unwarranted vigour. When he was young, any old field passed for a Dragonship port. Now there were gantries and assigned landing bays, a busy cargo operation and even an area cordoned off for Dragons–fireballs and hydrogen dirigibles tending to mix with unhappy results for anyone stuck within the blast-radius. Kal’s businesses had recently hired several unfussy Dragons to act as fast couriers between Islands, a highly profitable side-line.
Bah. Who cared for drals? He had a daughter.
“Dad!” A Pygmy-sharp elbow bruised his ribs. “I’ll teach a windroc to peck that silly smile.”
“Jalfyrion, Jisellia, may I introduce my daughter Riika. I can’t stand the little harridan, but I suppose I have to do my duty.”
The Red Dragon blinked, clearly misinterpreting a Human’s sarcasm, but Jisellia laughed brightly, “She does look like you. It’s the air of incessant mischief and the diamond spear of a chin, methinks.”
Kal and Riika both growled, “Hey!”
“Unexpected depths to your Island, Kal,” said his fellow-Rider, touching his arm familiarly. He distinctly heard Jalfyrion’s belly-furnace protest the action. “Alright, Jalfyrion? A haunch of meat or a drink before we go re-burgle the Academy?”
Kal suspected the Red Dragon would rather tear a strip off his Rider. Bah. That was Jalfyrion’s fault, and the Dragon could just stew in his own juices for all Kal cared.
Riika said, “I’ve sourced information, none of it promising. I take it you haven’t resolved anything at the Academy?”
“Not a whole lot, no,” Kal admitted. “Tazi hates Aranya, the arrogant Amethyst still wants to run her foreclaw through my chest, all of the Academy Dragons loathe my guts and it appears that our Indigo Dragoness is a lost Princess of Immadia who also happens to be Aranya’s shell-daughter. How am I doing thus far?”
He collapsed in stitches of laughter at Riika’s expression.
* * * *
Fed and watered, Jalfyrion hurled himself at the bright afternoon sky as though he personally wished to assault the moons and smash them between the Islands. Kal marvelled at the differences between Dragons. Jalfyrion was all muscle and power, beating the air with every wing-stroke as if it had caused him grave affront. Tazithiel was hot quicksilver flowing over diamond edges. She had power. Aye, there was a truth, yet she possessed a fiery sinuosity of flight-expression that to his mind, elevated her above any other Dragon he had seen fly. Old-Kal used to despise comparisons. He drove himself beyond the Islands to prove he was not as other thieves, perhaps afeared of being thought common. He was cleverer. Bolder. More brutal.
Now, he learned from comparisons. Seeing Tazithiel alongside her mother allowed him to glimpse a vision of what she might become. Pride, passion and power. It killed him to see pain and bitterness consuming her life, for as she healed in body, the wounds of her soul seemed only to fester.
Riika’s journey to Mejia had been difficult, but successful in part. She reported that Endurion led a group of Dragons based at a huge, ancient roost upon an Island-spit half a league off the mainland. They were avowed adherents of draconistic philosophy, which in its simplest expression asserted the innate superiority of Dragons over Humans. They followed the old traditions, including the oppression of a Human slave population, regular sport in the form of razing Human villages and slaying unwary travellers, and disrupting Mejia’s trade with other Islands. But their entertainment of choice consisted of preying upon Shapeshifters. They had honed their killings to a terrible pitch of efficiency, as Tazithiel knew all too well.
“Assassins!” spat the Red Dragon. “They model themselves upon the Dragon Assassins of yore!”
Endurion’s Rider remained a mystery, therefore–both his origins and the fact that these Dragons appeared to follow his lead unquestioningly. “Word is he’s an Enchanter or Shapeshifter from the East,” Riika explained. “He’s called Talon. Theories about his true power or nature abound. But I discovered several fascinating snippets of information. One, Talon has mind-powers, as we know, but this power manifests in a peculiar way. He appears to have uncovered an ancient scroll of powerful magic called Ernulla-kul-Exarkin. Does that mean anything to you, noble Jalfyrion?”
He shook his muzzle. “Sounds like Old Dragonish to my ear, little one, and I am no scholar. I’d hazard a guess from the word-root that it has to do with hands or paws. How did you get someone to reveal this?”
“I … encouraged his free speech.”
Kal winced; Riika, peeking out of her saddlebag beside Jisellia’s left thigh, made an apologetic clucking sound with her tongue. “Sorry, Dad. But I judged it important.”
Jisellia’s white-knuckled grip on her saddle horn suggested she did not want to know. Kal did. She meant torture. The Guild of Assassins were renowned for their ability to turn the unwilling into loquacious informants.
He said, “I trust your judgement, Razorblades. What did you uncover that justified this action?”
Jalfyrion snorted an approving fireball at an inoffensive passing cloud. “Is the suppression of Shapeshifters not reason enough?”
Kal kicked the Dragon surreptitiously through his saddlebag, located to Jisellia’s right side.
Riika said, “The scroll describes a power of many hands or many minds, which somehow allows Talon to manipulate the physical realm in unprecedented ways. So as we saw with Tazithiel, he was able to seize the Dragoness in many places at once, almost as if he controlled the air around her, opening her up for the killing blow. Similarly, Talon controls the insides of Dragons’ minds. That’s what this man said. He controls them at a level deeper than conscious thought–including their Dragon Riders, who are of course slaves to the Dragons they serve.”
“Is this Talon slave or master?” Jisel
lia asked wisely.
Riika shook her head. “I’d guess master, from what I learned.”
“So, do we just pinch the scroll of whatever and thus solve the Talon problem?” Kal mused.
“Dad …” Her smile accused him of naïveté. “Perhaps. Apparently, Talon has not yet mastered this power. My informant thinks he’ll be unstoppable when he does. The final piece of intelligence was that Endurion and Talon are in the process of developing a super-weapon and are planning a devastating attack on the Academy. We have to warn them.”
Jalfyrion said, “When? When will this attack be?”
Riika added, “He seemed unsure whether they meant to simply destroy the capability of the Dragon Riders or to capture the Queen of Dragons and seize her Star Dragon powers for their own purposes.”
“Spreading rainbows of cheer and joy across the Islands,” Kal chirped. Dragonish joy involving the simple pleasures, such as the annihilation of all Humankind, and establishing a new age of Dragons led by similarly-minded draconic tyrants.
“When?” snapped Jalfyrion, rather less focussed than Kal on the return of Humans to the slavery of a thousand years before.
Riika’s squirming reached a new pitch. “The last word I heard was, ‘Next–’ and then my knife sort of, well … slipped. Before he finished.”
“Next week? Next month? Next season?” thundered the Red Dragon.
“I’m sorry! I failed, alright?”
“Sorry is not good enough!” The Red’s displeasure deafened them all.
“Jalfyrion’s right,” Jisellia said tightly. “But to seek more also would’ve been foolish. We must impart this information carefully and quickly. You cannot be the source, Kal. You’re not trusted.”
“But you and Jalfyrion have helped a renegade,” Kal returned.
“I will take responsibility.” Riika’s tone allowed no argument. “For reasons best known to her, Queen Aranya seems to trust me. I must finish my mission even if all I earn is wrath and disgrace.” She peered at Kal over Jisellia’s legs. “Now, I believe you have earned your bragging rights. How, by the heavens above and the Islands below, did you pull the proverbial sheepskin over all those Dragons’ eyes?”
Kal straightened his back. “I refuse to share trade secrets with the uninitiated.”
Jisellia said, “Jalfyrion, my beauty, I do believe it’s time for someone’s impromptu flying lesson.”
“My pleasure, noble Rider.”
“Bragging? A gigantic dollop, served without delay,” Kal shot back, pretending to quail in dread. “So, this idea of sheer, Island-shivering magnificence stemmed from the fortuitous conjunction of my towering burglarising genius and a ralti sheep fated to fly …”
* * * *
Laying low in their saddlebags, Kal and Riika returned to the Dragon Rider Academy in the early evening, having traversed the length of Jeradia’s exhibition of mountainous natural beauty in the mere matter of four hours, Dragon-speed. Ensconced in a thick blanket of sheepskin–literally, for Jisellia returned the old ralti furs in exchange for the new–they enjoyed an effortless ride down to the stores, free of charge and prying Dragon eyes. His honesty-and-truthfulness rash was definitely starting to subside, Kal thought happily, skipping through a few hallways to purloin a school application form from a locked storeroom to which he most certainly did not own any key. He locked the door afterward, of course. Politeness was surely the backbone of any enlightened society.
Following that, Kal took Riika via the kitchens to charm his favourite twin Jeradian serving-girls, buxom wenches with dimpled smiles ready for a hardened miscreant, into providing them a tasty dinner of roast buck, sweet tubers and vegetables. He ordered a twenty-sackweight haunch of ralti sheep for a ravenous, recovering Dragoness.
They ducked through an off-limits corridor, snuck along a secret route Kal was convinced the school administration knew nothing of, and exited behind a shelf stacked twenty feet high with Dragon bandages in the back of the infirmary.
As Kal and Riika approached her bed, Dragoness-Tazithiel glanced up, fire-eyes agleam with delight. “Well, if it isn’t the proverbial pair of bad brass drals. How do you do it, Kal?”
He made a lewd gesture at his side, hidden from Riika, but hurt his recovering wrist in the process. “With remarkable flair and immodest Islands-full of skill.”
Riika punched his shoulder anyway. “Save it for the pillow-roll, Sticky-Fingers.”
Reaching out, Tazithiel snaffled the Pygmy girl into her paw for a Dragon hug, which involved the miraculous transformation of a nut-brown Pygmy into a straining, groaning impression of a purple prekki fruit. “Hey, Razorblades. The old man treating you alright?”
“No, he stuffed me into a saddlebag,” Riika returned pertly.
“I suppose you do come conveniently packaged for ease of transport,” the Dragoness grinned.
“Shut it, fang-face! And I was just about to say something nice about scaly princesses. How is royalty treating you, o newly promoted scion of Immadia?” Aside, Riika added, “How was that, Kal? I practised for hours.”
Kal said, “Royally pontificating.”
Tazithiel snorted, “I never asked to be tarred with that brush. Does my mother have to feature in every conversation? Honestly, it’s enough to turn one’s stomach. Besides, I’m an ordinary princess enamoured with a magnificent, mighty and marvellous king.”
“Of thieves,” Riika put in.
“Of adjectives,” said Kal, thinking this distinction far more important.
Later, when Riika had recounted her tale and they had discussed the matter of Talon’s powers to death and beyond, the girl curled up in Tazi’s right paw and promptly fell asleep. Kal spread a blanket up to her neck, touching her cheek gently. Hollow. Riika’s skin stretched like delicate silk over the loom of her bones. He must go to Aranya and beg her to pour out her healing power.
When he observed Tazithiel watching, he grunted, “Aye. Soft as duck-down, eh?”
“Why are men always embarrassed about showing tenderness? Kal, you’re a wonderful parent. Heart firmly on the right Island.”
“We can’t chase our dreams to the Rim-Wall Mountains, Tazi. Not now.”
“I know.”
Kal pressed his forehead against her upraised left paw, wishing for fire and strength to fill him. How could the daughter of the Empress of Dragons profess to be enamoured with a common crook? “I’m sorry. I’ve always laughed at death, Tazi. Cheated it. Connived, scraped, escaped. Yet this is not an arrow in the darkness. I’d liken this to grey swamp waters creeping slowly, insidiously, toward snuffing out her life, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Nothing.”
Tazithiel bowed her muzzle, curving her paw to press his body against the smaller scales of her neck. “We’ll do what we can. Speak to Yozora. You will consult the Amethyst Dragoness. We will tap the knowledge of the Dragonkind and consult the lore-library here …”
“While I’m trapped in this infirmary, forced to skulk about a school, Islands’ sakes!”
“No. No more skulking. Well, only when necessary.” Way down in her great body, fiery laughter chuckled like a boiling spring tumbling over boulders. Tazi said, “May I make a proposal?”
“Propose away.”
“Move in with me, Kal.” He made a favourable sound. “Let’s have our own roost. A family roost, with Riika, at least for this time. If you’re agreeable, I’ll ask for one.”
“Mmm. Private space with thee, which is not in the midst of a busy infirmary? Tough choice.”
Tazi flexed her talons against his back. “Choose well, or it shall go ill with thee, my little larcenist–how was my evil-Dragoness voice, Kal?”
“You’ll never make a con-artist,” he said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Listen. ‘Come to my roost, pretty girl.’ That’s how it’s done.”
“Ooh, you made my fires shiver!” she laughed. “Now, who do we speak to?”
Kal drew himself up. “My dear Dragoness, o sweet and innocent
walking brazier of my heart, please leave the doing to the experts.” Over her rumbling laughter, he explained, “Why ask, say I, when a roost is ours for the taking? I shall make all the arrangements. Watch and learn.”
“You’ve corrupted the school administration already?”
Affecting an air of mystery, Kal declaimed, “When you have a messaging system driven by monkeys, what do you get? Monkey business.”
Chapter 21: Second Chances
STALKING INTO THE infirmary, Riika uttered an obscenity that made Human-Tazi’s eyebrows crawl and Kal yelp, “Riika! Do you even know what you’re saying?”
She began to gesticulate before the movement collapsed in sheepish realisation. “Not really, Dad. But Kal–”
“But nothing. Bad, bad word. No.”
“They won’t listen! And they won’t take my application.”
When Riika had finished ranting, which involved a good ten minutes of shouting, flinging tears of exasperation in all directions, storming around Tazi and Kal like a thundercloud hitched to a spinning-wheel, making Yozora hiss in annoyance and several patients on the far side of the infirmary bury their heads under their blankets for a modicum of peace, Kal held up his hands. “Right. Leave it with me, Riika.”
“I hate it when you take charge, Dad! I can do this!”
“Listen, Razorblades, I am most unequivocally not taking charge–more precisely, I am taking charge of giving you a chance. Taking that chance will be up to you.”
Riika’s eyes were huge, black pools, sodden and enervated from all her emotions. She coughed; licked blood off her lips. “Alright. But I do the talking.”
Kal enthused, “Done and bargained for, and a fine deal it is! We need to check your dosage. While I’m away making a few arrangements, will you go speak to Yozora? Did you fill in the application scroll?” Her curls bobbed in the affirmative. “Excellent. Apparently the Queen of all creation has departed on a critical mission, but when she returns I suggest you go bat your pretty eyes at her and beg her to find whatever miraculous healing powers the ballads–enough already. Back in an hour.”