The Pygmy Dragon

by Marc Secchia

  Pip unfurled the rajal skin with alacrity. Unfortunately, she forgot about her possessions inside. Bamboo sticks bounced this way and that. Her water gourd split on impact, soaking the man’s feet. Sheepishly, she scrabbled about collecting her meagre belongings while his stare burned holes into her neck.

  “I seek Master Kassik,” she said, finally, drawing the skin about her shoulders.

  “You? You’re far too young. Go home this instant.”

  “I’m fifteen this summer, Master …”

  “Shambithion. Master of Academics. Head of the Library,” he shot back, throwing his words at her as if he wished they were darts. “Fifteen, eh? How did you get here? Where are you from? Are you a midget? Hmm, shame there’s no minimum height requirement at this school. Who sent you?”

  “I’m from the Crescent Islands, Master,” she said, wishing she could not see up his flaring nostrils from her position two feet below. It was not a pretty sight.

  “A Pygmy?” He glared at her as though this were a personal affront. “Bah. Well, stop shuffling your feet, girl. Snip snap.” Perhaps having decided she was suitably cowed, he rattled, “Up the first stairs second door to the right go up the spiral staircase to the seventieth level proceed straight ahead through the main hallway and you’ll find Master Kassik’s office to your left hand between the white Dragon statues. Got that? Scram. Shoo. Revolting manners. Fancy wandering about this school looking like a half-starved little beggar.”

  “Um,” Pip gulped, and fled. It seemed the better part of bravery, just then.

  The school buildings were constructed of equal parts of sooty black granite and pink rose-quartz blocks. Fanciful patterns adorned the walkways, walls and balconies–zigzags and spirals and even a complete fresco of a Dragon. Pip’s neck grew sore with all her gawking as she walked along a wide paved pathway and over a bridge toward the main buildings. Here and there, people peered over parapets or practised archery on one of the wide balconies. She saw albino monkeys with long, plumy tails rushing about with breakneck abandon, swinging down the levels or leaping unexpectedly out of windows, scrolls or satchels clutched in their paws. Errand monkeys? She giggled. What a fine idea. Then she goggled as she spied a gorgeous Bronze Dragon slumbering lazily on a rooftop perhaps a thousand feet above her. None of the schools she had read about had ever mentioned Dragons.

  Would she attend class with Dragons? As Balthion was fond of saying, roaring rajals!

  Pip collected many a curious stare as she wandered up the first set of stairs and took the third door to the right by accident, interrupting what appeared to be a class poring over sculptures of different Dragons. The teacher scolded her roundly. The boys gaped and guffawed incredulously.

  After finding the correct door, Pip ascended a broad, soaring spiral staircase lit by what she assumed at first were oil lamps, but she quickly discovered they burned on their own with no discernable source of fuel. She ducked involuntarily as two tan buzzards zoomed past her head and down into the lamp-lit depths. She tiptoed to the centre of the staircase, and looked first up, and then down. Her hands clutched the guardrail. Great Islands! That was some fall … but someone had strung light nets across the space, she saw, and vertical ropes which the white monkeys scaled with tremendous speed and agility.

  She began to count levels. Had Master Shambles–Shambithion, she corrected her errant thoughts firmly–said seventeen, or seventy? She should ask the next person she saw.

  A gaggle of green-robed students pelted past her, cheerfully shouting insults at each other and laughing like a flock of parakeets. One threw a rotten tinker banana at another. Pip trudged on and on. The school was enormous. It was a jungle of stone, no place for a Pygmy warrior.

  By the time Pip exited the stairwell at the seventieth level, courtesy of a sympathetic servant woman’s helpful directions, her heart had sunk so far she imagined it was beating between her toes. She padded through a hall so enormous she seemed no larger than an ant creeping between the immense marble columns, and out of the door on the far side into a sunny garden complete with three waterfalls cascading at least twenty levels down the sides of the buildings around it, creeping vines, deep grass, and a bench where a small, tan girl sat plucking at a harp. Her skilful, tinkling notes mingled with the sounds of the flowing water. Pip let out a breath she had not known she was holding.

  Now this place she could grow to love.

  The girl raised a pair of jungle-green eyes, which twinkled as merrily as the water tumbling behind her shoulder. She had an elfin beauty about her. Although she was small for a big person, that still had to make her more than a head taller, the Pygmy girl thought. Her smile showed perfect white teeth. “Islands’ greetings, stranger. Are you lost?”

  Pip smiled back. “I’m trying to find Master Kassik.”

  “In trouble, are we?” Her eyebrow arched. “Casitha, fourth year, the only student without a Dragon.”

  “I–um, what?” spluttered Pip. “I’m Pip. Sorry.”

  “Mercy, you really are fresh off the Dragonship, aren’t you?” The green eyes did not seem to judge Pip’s confusion. Students had Dragons? This place was insane. “Where do you hail from, petal?”

  “Sylakia, sort of. I mean, the Crescent Islands, actually.”

  “By the Islands, you aren’t a Pygmy, are you? Master Adak’s a Pygmy. You’re a little late for joining the school year.”

  “I had an unusual journey,” said Pip, truthfully. If one of the Masters was a Pygmy, then it followed that the Academy must regard Pygmies as people. That was a relief. “Could you help me report to Master Kassik? Zardon instructed me to speak to him.”

  Casitha leaped up and seized her hand, chattering, “Of course I’ll help you. I’ll take you to his office Dragon-swift. Fellow Southern Islanders, we are. I come from Yelegoy Island, a tiny place just south of Remoy which isn’t more than a week’s travel from your Crescent Islands. We’re all petite. But you take the proverbial painted parrot. You’re barely up to my shoulder. Islands’ sakes, you don’t mean Zardon, as in the wise old Red Dragon, Zardon?”

  “That’s him.”

  “Zardon let you ride him?” At Pip’s hesitant nod, she almost shouted, “That’s so unfair! You aren’t even a student yet. You are so lucky, you have no idea. Nobody rides Zardon. It’s unheard of.”

  “Oh.” Pip followed Casitha through a doorway which bored straight through the trunk of a wide tree, and turned left into a long hallway. At the end were two white Dragon statues. Even at a distance, they towered over her. Pip disliked their glassy stares.

  She paused. “Casitha, what’s Master Kassik like?”

  “As tall and straight as a spear,” Casitha replied at once. “Jeradian warrior. White hair. He looks stern, but he has the finest heart in the Island-World. Watch out for his assistant Alathion, however. Everyone hates him. He’s like one of those yapping little dogs, forever barking at students and making the staff unhappy. Come on. Let’s see if the Master is in.”

  Halfway down the hallway, Pip turned again to Casitha. “Isn’t the Dragon Rider Oyda meant to be from Yelegoy Island?”

  Casitha tossed her mop of curly chestnut hair. “Famous, beautiful, incredibly capable Oyda. Yes, she rides Emblazon, the strongest of all the Dragons. I’m supposed to fill her shoes. Right. Can I tell you how easy that is?”

  Casitha and she nodded at exactly the same time. They understood each other.

  “Am I allowed one really stupid question?”

  “Fifty,” said Casitha. “We were all new, once. Some of us still feel left out.”

  “I’m sorry, Casitha,” she said, softly. Pip drew from her bubbling pool of questions. “What kind of school is this? I don’t understand. Students have Dragons? Dragons sunbathe on the roof? You live inside a volcano?”

  Casitha clucked her tongue. “I bet that scale-brained old fire-breather told you all sorts of useless and fanciful tales on the way here and conveniently forgot to tell you what exactly you’d be doing in
this school, right? Ay, I’m right. But I’m still jealous. Petal, this is Dragon Rider Academy. Students come here from across the Island-World to study to become Dragon Riders.”

  The other girl’s expression informed Pip that her jaw was sagging open like a wide-mouthed river carp sieving for food. “Rider … school?” she gasped. “Are you serious?”

  Bright, happy giggles exploded out of Casitha. She clutched her stomach and doubled over, laughing so hard that tears leaked out of her eyes.

  “Casitha!” A voice like a rusty blade cut across her laughter. “What is the meaning of this awful racket? You’ll disturb the Master.”

  Casitha stopped wiping her eyes and knelt, bowing her head. “Master Alathion.” She motioned for Pip to do the same.

  Dark eyes burned down the hallway. Alathion, a small, dapper man wearing what Pip assumed was meant to be a fashionable robe, pranced down the hallway toward them with a tap-tap-tap of his high-heeled boots. Only a stork walked like that. Pip pressed her knuckles to her mouth to stop a giggle in its tracks. With that name, he had to be Sylakian. She knew what Sylakian Islanders thought of Pygmies.

  “Explain yourselves, students.”

  “Master, this is Pip,” said Casitha. “Zardon the Red asked her to speak to Master Kassik about becoming a student here.”

  Pip said, “Master Alathion–”

  Alathion sniffed in her direction. “Stand up straight when you’re addressing your elders, child. How did you get here?”

  “Master, I flew Dragonback.”

  “And–merciful heavens, are you wearing a rajal skin? How did you get through the gate?”

  “I spoke to Jalador. He let me pass.”

  “He let you pass?” Alathion yelped. Pip jumped. “What use are Dragon defences if they let any child clad in reeking animal skins simply wander into the school premises unannounced?” He clutched Pip’s arm with fingers as cold and clammy as a wet banana skin. “Come to my office. You will explain everything to me, and I mean everything. And if I find you’re lying about the great Dragon Zardon, you had better wish … Casitha. Dismissed.”

  Chapter 12: The Master

  Master Alathion STOOD Pip in a corner of his office. “Wait here. Master Kassik is an extremely busy man.”

  Pip knew how to wait. She had waited seven years to escape, only to be kidnapped by a Dragon. But now, she found herself hopping from one foot to the other. Alathion’s desk, front and centre in his plush office, was the biggest, shiniest, most impressive piece of furniture she had ever seen. Hunagu could have sat behind it with ease. To the left of the door stood two rows of three further, much more modest desks. Each had a block of wood with the word ‘scribe’ on it, not the person’s name. Each desk was covered in scrolls and journals and piles of files, and was occupied by a harried-looking man or woman.

  They ignored her.

  Strutting sparrow-like from desk to desk, Alathion barked non-stop at his scribes. ‘Haven’t you signed the contract? What’s keeping you?’ ‘Where are my supplies?’ ‘The roof of block nineteen. Is it finished yet?’ His gold-ringed finger tapped a journal. ‘This mentoring schedule is all wrong. How many times do I have to tell you, the third year students …’

  After an hour or so of this, Pip began to wonder if she had been forgotten.

  Her eyes crawled up the walls. Paintings. Certificates and honours. Clearly, the Master was extremely well qualified for his job and needed everyone to know, in large gold letters, that he had been the best student in his year. The carpet tickling her toes was very fine, and smelled like the ball of white ralti wool Balthion had once shown her during a lesson. Through another impressive wooden door, which stood a little ajar, she could see through into what had to be a huge office. A carved wooden rajal in the corner stood taller than her, life-size.

  Pip stiffened. Someone was in there. She could feel him. She knew it was Master Kassik.

  Now, here was a dilemma. How did she know who was in the next room? Why that tell-tale shiver of awareness? How long was she prepared to wait for Master Alathion, who had looked at her as he might have looked at the sole of his boot to see what unpleasant insect he had squashed in passing? He pored over a scroll, oblivious.

  Her heart skipped into her throat as Pip stole through the door, jungle-silent.

  Tiny bare feet padded across the thick rugs lining the office floor. Pip blinked at the bright light streaming in through the curved, floor-to-ceiling crysglass windows which ran the length of a long, wood-panelled room. Oddly, she smelled wood polish mingled with a more pungent aroma of wet earth. Then she realised that the office was divided by two curved stone planters, which were filled with vegetation so familiar to her that tears sprang to her eyes. Jungle vines! A pot-bellied piper tree with its distinctive, flame-orange gourds! Carved animals clustered in the corners, making the entire room resemble a jungle scene.

  Beside the window, legs akimbo and arms clasped behind his back, stood a green-robed giant of a man, gazing out over the volcanic view his office commanded. So tall was he and so still his stance, Pip mistook him at first for a dark statue. The incredibly detailed profusion of silver brocade on his robe accentuated that impression, as well as the tall, formal Jeradian falki headgear, an ornate crown-like cap that added a further half-foot to his already commanding stature.

  Her creeping forward was arrested by the movement of his arm, rising to shade his eyes as he squinted at something she could not see. Pip suppressed an urge to sneak up on him and yell ‘boo!’ Now that she was this close to Master Kassik, she did not know what to say or do. She waited.

  Beside the spotless, modest desk located next to one of the planters, Kassik’s office was filled with curios from around the Island-World. She saw beautiful clay pots decorated with beads and shells, a display of at least a hundred different types of daggers, and metal and bamboo flutes in styles for which she had no names. The walls were hung with paintings; one, a painting of a Brown Dragon, filled a twenty-foot span and was so realistic is seemed to leap out of the wall at her. Pip gasped slightly.

  The man whirled. His hand dropped to his dagger as he scanned the room with the alert eyes of an experienced warrior. Pip saw it all–the moment of recognition, an intruder identified, the immediate scan of his surroundings to see if any other enemy lurked nearby. When she made no threatening move, his shoulders dropped slightly, but his hand did not drop from his dagger.

  “Master Kassik?” At his slight nod, Pip bowed in the manner of Pygmies. “I am Pip.”

  “I’m Kassik.”

  Calmly, the Master’s deep-set hazel eyes assessed her. She had the impression that he missed little. In fact, a slight tingling of her skin informed her that his examination involved more than just his eyes. Pip did not avoid his gaze. Great Islands, he was tall! Kassik’s face was lined like old leather beneath a fringe of pure white hair which curled beneath the falki, but despite his apparent age, his shoulders were square and his back held perfectly straight, giving him an air of enormous dignity.

  If semi-naked Pygmies sneaked into his office every day, he did not show it.

  The silence stretched. Pip wondered if this was some kind of test. Had she been foolish, creeping into his office? Had Zardon truly sensed something of worth in a Pygmy girl he snatched from a zoo?

  A smile broke across Master Kassik’s face like the suns burning through a cloudbank. “Well, Pip. I sense you are not a casual visitor. Do you have a message for me? Come, sit.”

  At his gesture, Pip moved down a couple of steps to a set of comfortable couches. She scrambled up into one, her cheeks reddening as she realised how small she must seem to Master Kassik. He, dropping his heavy cloak over the back of a chair and placing his falki on a free seat, seated himself opposite her. His hazel eyes concentrated on her with disturbing power.

  She said, “I was sent to you by Zardon the Red Dragon, Master.”

  “Ah, how is the old fire-tosser?”

  Pip did not know what to make of the gl
int her comment sparked in the Master’s eye. Haltingly, she began to tell him a little of her journey. But her tale soon ground to a halt beneath the intensity his gaze.

  “How is Zardon, Pip? The truth, if you will.”

  Kassik spoke mildly, but Pip knew he had sensed her covering up for Zardon’s fragmented state of mind. She squirmed as she recounted the Red Dragon’s visions. Abruptly, she began to shiver; a creeping sense of horror settled in her bones. But he seemed intrigued enough to ask several detailed questions. Just then, Alathion burst in, all a-bother.

  “You little rat …” he began to snarl at Pip. “Master. I am sorry for the disturbance. She sneaked in behind my back.”

  “No mind, Master Alathion,” said Kassik. “Do please send a monkey for Mistress Mya’adara. I believe we may have ourselves a new first year student, here.” Alathion stiffened as though he was about to say something malicious, but Master Kassik added, “And, could you arrange a meal? Pip has travelled far. Fruit, Pip? A little cold meat?”

  Before she could speak, Pip’s stomach spoke up for her. She blushed. “Thank you, Master.”

  “Alathion?” he said.

  “At once, Master,” said Alathion. He withdrew, shutting the door behind him.

  Kassik formed a tent of his long fingers. His gaze returned to that unnerving intensity, before which she feared her inmost secrets would be laid bare. “So, permit me to ask you the question I ask all prospective students, Pip. Out there in the Island-World, fifteen thousand youngsters apply to this Academy every year. Of those, we select between one and two thousand students to start our first year. By the second year, we shall have whittled the class down to the best one hundred. What makes you think, Pip, that you deserve to study at the Academy? And what would you make of this opportunity, should I offer it to you?”

  “Oh, I don’t deserve it, Master,” Pip replied at once, before trying to corral her errant thoughts. “I–well, Zardon seemed to think I was worth kidnapping. He said I had done magic.”