by Marc Secchia
“Oyda,” she called. “We have to rescue Emblazon.”
The rear Rider slapped her waist and thigh strap releases. “Pip. Islands’ sakes, where’ve you been? What’s wrong with Emblazon? Is he feral?”
Pip landed on Kassik’s back, mindful of his spine-spikes. She kept one eye on Emblazon, circling nearby, judging the moment of his attack. “Long story. Hop on.”
“I can barely squeeze between your spine-spikes.”
“You, Oyda?”
The Dragon Rider grinned fiercely as she wriggled into place, putting on a brave face. “Guess who swears I have the second daintiest but definitely the sweetest behind in all the Island-World?”
“Save it for the windrocs,” Pip grumbled, launching off Kassik’s back. Mercy, having a Rider was hard work. Petite as Oyda was, a Pygmy Dragon definitely felt the additional weight.
“You smashed that Silver Dragon,” said Oyda, pointing.
The Silver Dragon was being whisked away from the battle by what appeared to be four or five of his Night-Red Dragons.
“Darn, they’re escaping.”
“Pip …”
“Mind power, Oyda. Or hypnosis, I don’t know. They got to him. He and the Silver Dragon attacked me in the Natal Cave, but I managed to escape.”
“You’re a mess.”
Pip wheeled through the sky, orienting on Emblazon. “Thanks for the encouragement.”
Oyda slapped her neck below where it had been sliced by her efforts to free herself from the collar. “You’re some friend, you know that?”
“Let’s go rescue another friend.”
With a clip of her wings, Pip angled for the confrontation between Kassik and Emblazon.
A few moments of shouting at Emblazon from a safe distance did nothing to change his unfriendly disposition. So Oyda did what any reasonable Dragon Rider would do. She asked Pip to drop her on his head. “If I can just touch him,” she argued.
“I’ll be ready to catch what bits of you are left, shall I? Hold on.”
She spiralled in from beneath the two Dragons, suffering a shredded wing membrane from Kassik’s slashing claws in the process. She managed to use his wing as a shield before whipping out from behind it and dropping four-paw-clawed on Emblazon’s head. Oyda leaped down at once. She grabbed for the nearest handhold–his ear canals. Pip executed a hasty backflip to avoid the swipe of Emblazon’s paw. Two hundred feet below the grappling behemoths, she waited as promised, in case Oyda fell.
“Emblazon.” Oyda kicked him sharply in the eye. “Listen to me, you blithering ralti sheep. You’re attacking the people you love. Will you–” she thrust with her legs to avoid his clawing at her “–get it into your thick skull that these people love you?”
With a toss of his head, Emblazon flipped her high into the air. His enormous mouth gaped open.
Pip, crying out, darted up from beneath them. Her wings sped in frantic half-beats. Too late! Durithion passing close by on Jyoss caused her to lose a vital second. Oyda reached the top of her arc and began her descent into his maw.
Despairing, she bugled, Be free!
Emblazon shuddered. Many of the Night-Red Dragons around them did the same. He began to close his mouth, realised what was happening, and stuck his tongue out instead. Oyda landed in a riding position in the exact fork of his violet-coloured tongue.
Weakened by her outpouring of magic, Pip reeled in the sky. Too much. Transforming, now the Word of Command … somehow, she tore from herself the will to keep her wings from collapsing. She saw a wing of Dragon Assassins screaming in, six of them, and tried to orient herself to repulse their attack. Did she have another word? Did she have the power? Her wings were so heavy. Her hearts laboured to drive her body on despite what she had ripped out of it.
But they did not attack her as expected. They were unthinking; feral, perhaps ensnared by the Silver Dragon’s power. The Dragons crowded her from all sides, trapping her in a crush of bodies and grasping paws. They made no attempt to fly. All they did was hold her as they plunged toward the Cloudlands.
They sought only to drag her to her doom.
* * * *
Trapped between the heaving mass of bodies, the Pygmy Dragon caught occasional glimpses of the dying battle above. Duri on Jyoss and Kaiatha riding Tazzaral, swirling in tandem, harrying a huge Night-Red female. Kassik, with a resounding bellow, smashing his opponent against the cliff face. Somehow the battle had brought her over the edge of the Island. She fought, but it was as though she were trapped in that barrel of sugar bamboo sap. The air felt viscous. Her strength gave out. The air roared hollowly around her ears, the sense of falling diminishing as she faded inward.
Help. Help me. Her own voice sounded like a mewling kitten.
A flash of sight. Maylin’s Red Dragon swooped for them, too far away, but even from that distance as the Cloudlands closed overhead, she saw and sensed her friend’s horror. Arrabon and Yaethi came from nowhere, spearing through the mist–how had they done that? A wingtip flashed by. He missed, called for her, and was gone.
Stubbornly, Pip held her breath. She knew little else save the need to hold on for as long as possible. She did not know how far she had fallen, nor how long, but it seemed inevitable that they should soon strike the rocky foundations of the Island. The cliff could not continue forever beneath the Cloudlands. Two of her attackers had already fallen away, choked to death by the poisonous mists. One huffed against her ear, a strangling hurgh ha-hurgh sound, dying.
There was something nearby. Magic. Enormous magic.
A surging presence.
But still she fell, until time ceased to have meaning.
Finally, the earth itself struck them from beneath, crushing the Dragon beneath her, knocking the others spinning to their doom. The impact sent pain thundering through her right shoulder. She was supposed to be dead. Pip groaned. Flipping over on her paws, groaning, she tried to strike some balance between frantically working out what had happened and the agony of multiple wounds and broken bones grating together in her shoulder. Her Dragon magic eased the pain.
She was on a … boulder? A ledge? Moving through the Cloudlands? She was breathing?
Impossible.
Off-the-Island ridiculous.
The Dragon beneath her contorted and sank its claws into her flank. Howling, Pip tore herself free, at the expense of bloody holes punctured in her hide. Her injured shoulder collapsed. And then, she saw something she rather wished not to have seen.
A pair of claws pinched the Night-Red Dragon’s body and flicked it away into the Cloudlands. She froze. That could not be. Claws, handling a fully-grown Dragon as though it were an ant?
She was clearly hallucinating, her brain addled by breathing in toxic gases. But the other Dragons had died so quickly …
Pip whimpered as she tried to put weight on her injured right leg. The pain pulsed that she was alive. Wait, the ground was not rock. It was slightly softer, a greyish-green platform still lofting her steadily toward the night. The Yellow moon burned through the last mists of the Cloudlands; the stars never so welcome, the air fresher and sweeter than she could comprehend.
She saw pillars ahead of her, ending in talons. Three before, two behind. A Dragon’s paw.
She had shrunk. She truly was a Pygmy Dragon.
Pip turning slowly, sensing monumental movement behind her. The creature holding her rose from the Cloudlands. Kassik, dwarfed into insignificance, back-winged frantically as a vast, hoary mouth opened beneath his wings, a cavern larger than the Natal Cave. Tendrils trailed from its jowls, barbed like the carp of the Jeradian lakes and rivers. Rock and dirt avalanched off a spatulate, reptilian body. Bugling with alarm, several other Dragons–bearing her friends and other Fra’aniorian Dragon Riders–swerved off in different directions as if a hawk had plunged into a flock of birds. The creature climbed the side of Ha’athior Island as though the rock were made of the softest soil. Any one of its claws could have skewered an adult Dragon for dinner.
Now it slowed, as if confused by the clear skies above it. A two hundred-foot tongue tasted the air. An Island-shaking roar emanated from the beast, shaking the Fra’anior Cluster to its very core. Fresh magma burst from the caldera. Rocks tumbled down cliffs. The ground shook as at an eruption.
The paw surged upward. Pip thought about fleeing, but a force beyond her understanding held her immobile. Perhaps it was the same force which had allowed her to breathe? That same breath rasped harshly in her throat as she considered what had captured her. She rose past the mouth. She passed nostrils she could have flown into with room to spare. A single, milky white eye opened in the creature’s forehead. The creature was blind, she realised–but a wash of magic against her senses, beautiful and complex and unique, convinced her that it had no need of ordinary eyesight.
YOU SUMMONED ME?
Pip tried to put her paws over her ears. The blast within her skull vanished as quickly as it had begun.
Who spoke the ancient tongue? Was it not you? Much gentler this time, only a thunderclap inside her skull.
The milky eye was as wide as her wingspan, and taller than a Pygmy hut. Pip made a valiant attempt at grasping a few scattered thoughts. I summoned … you?
Fear not. Even softer, almost a normal speaking voice, for a Dragon. I am Leandrial, as best my name translates into your tongue. Soothe your friends. They fear for you.
Why shouldn’t they? Pip gazed at her captor in speechless reverence. Should she wish–oddly, she sensed the creature was female–Leandrial could have grasped an Island in her claws and tossed it to its doom. Here, a thousand or more feet above the Cloudlands, the bulk of her body and hind legs were still hidden in the seething mists. She smelled of ancient things, of secrets hidden since the dawn of time, of the rank roots of the world and many mysteries besides. Perhaps she had hatched when the world was young.
Kassik? Pip called. I’m fine, I think.
He circled at a safe distance. Pip? Don’t worry, we’re all here.
My gift of goodwill. Leandrial breathed over her. No, not her breath, for her nostrils were somewhere beneath Pip’s position on her paw. Magic. A torrent of magic, bathing and soothing her wounds. Now, tiny Lesser Dragon called Pip, who speaks the ancient magic, my time above the clouds is short, for this air has no goodness in it. Your questions are many. The evil arrayed against you is great.
The colours popping and fizzing inside her head faded. Pip flinched as a Dragon landed next to her, but she smiled with relief as she realised it was Maylin upon Emmaraz.
“Your kind call us Land Dragons,” said Leandrial, switching to fluent Island Standard. “We are ancient, but not the first denizens of this land. I myself have lived a mere 267 circuits of this world about its suns. I know the doubts of your hearts. Hear me well. Within the floating Island lies one of the First Eggs, stolen from our realm by the traitor Shurgal, may his bones rot in the abyss for all eternity.”
Her gigantic voice vibrated through her paw into Pip’s body. “There is a nameless being of Herimor, a being of mighty dominion called the Marshal, who has corrupted the power of this First Egg. That power reached across the infinite vastness of time and space to summon one of those creatures from whom the Dragons first fled–a Shadow Dragon, the true Assassin. Those fools of Herimor dare style themselves after it! They know nothing. The Assassin is insatiable. It feeds upon Dragons and their magic. It exists to devour. Well fed, it grows mighty. It will strip this world bare. All Dragons will die.”
Pip gazed deep into the white eye as Leandrial spoke, reaching out with all of her senses to understand the essence of the creature. Her magic was profoundly beautiful, so intricate, it shimmered like a myriad jewels within jewels. She said, “Which is more powerful, the Marshal or the Shadow Dragon?”
“We do not know. Both.”
Perhaps that was the wrong question. “Can you help us, Leandrial?”
“Am I not?” But her magic darkened, as if with sorrow. “We feel safe, deep in our lairs. But should the Shadow Dragon find one of us and steal our power, that would truly be the end. We Land Dragons debate, as is our way, unhurriedly in comparison to the lives of those who flit by above the clouds.”
“But you came.”
“You, little one–you have the power of Command.”
What use, arguing with such a monster? Still, Pip persisted, “You were nearby.”
The talons clenched inward, a spasm that betrayed Leandrial’s anger. “And if I was?” she roared. Pip cringed in the palm of her paw. “You think too much of yourself.”
The blind gaze nevertheless pierced her soul with the ease of a blade. She did not flinch, this time. She knew she had done no wrong. Instead, she replied evenly, “I do not. I would not dare to Command you, Leandrial.” Yet, she had. “If I call, next time, will you come as a friend?”
Her question provoked a penetrating silence.
Disbelieving, delighted, multi-harmonic magical Dragon laughter rippled over her. Pip, in her earnestness, gave a growl of annoyance.
She watched and trembled as a talon appeared over the rim of her perch and touched her spine spikes. It was the Land Dragon’s other paw. Together, they could have squashed her, Maylin and Emmaraz like bugs. The mighty, metallic blade was three times as long as her, nose to tail, perhaps the greatest blade in history. Yet it slid past her until the skin of the Land Dragon’s digit touched the hide of her flank.
“You’re so small to hold this power,” said Leandrial, now with an almost motherly gentleness. “You will need much wisdom to defeat the Shadow Dragon. Its power is not of tooth and claw, but the potency of its mind to dominate, subjugate and enthral a Dragon’s mind. Protect yourself–all of you must learn how. Use your power well, Pip. As you Lesser Dragons would say, my third heart goes with you. Call, and I will come.”
Pip bowed deeply.
“Now, fly.” The paw launched her and Emmaraz irresistibly into the air.
Leandrial turned with astonishing grace for such a colossal creature. The only sound of her passing back into the Cloudlands was the steely scraping of her talons, piercing and leaving the basal rock.
Thank you for the rescue, Pip whispered.
The Land Dragon was gone.
Chapter 27: Evacuation
NIght passed and a dawn of delirious, roseate magnificence spread over the Islands of the Fra’anior Cluster. Neither Rider nor Dragon had slept. Kassik and Turquielle had made the decision to move all the Dragons, Riders and hatchlings to the Academy on Jeradia Island. They would not be safe from the Silver Dragon otherwise.
“Our first priority is survival,” he said. “Too many have already perished. We can return for the knowledge we need.”
Emblazon cornered the Onyx Dragon in the burnt-out stone courtyard of the main school building. Four hundred years old, the stone buildings had been razed by the fires, which still smouldered in corners and beneath fallen wooden beams. Teams of men and women, faces blackened by soot, were working on extricating any supplies and records which could be salvaged.
“I’m so ashamed, I could die,” he said.
The note of anguish in the young Dragon’s voice seized her tongue; a shock coursed through her body. What terrible act did he intend? Emblazon lowered himself to one knee. “Noooo …” she breathed. He rolled ponderously onto his shoulder, then over onto his back, exposing his neck to her–the ultimate shame for a Dragon.
“Kill me. I am disgraced. My honour is no more.”
Her hearts squeezed within her. Molten-lead fire made her entire body flush, overheated, horrified. Pip eyed the place below his throat where thick, golden Dragon blood throbbed against the softest part of the throat. Although it was armoured by scales, even she could–if her jaws even fit around his neck–inflict a brutal and possibly fatal bite there.
Behind her, she heard Oyda’s cry, “Oh, Emblazon.”
And Kassik, low and troubled, “No, Oyda. He must do this.”
“I don’t want to kill you
, Emblazon,” Pip said, fighting for calm. “You’re my friend. Oyda’s my friend. This would be akin to chopping off my own wings.”
The Amber Dragon moaned, a soft, keening sound bubbling from his chest. Suddenly, the cry escalated to a shrill scream, a sound which cut knifelike through the dawn. Pip had never heard a Dragon make such a sound. She flinched, all three of her hearts winging away, doves a-flutter.
Deliberately, he brought his claws up to his throat, talons angled to slash. “Say the word and I will rip my own hide open so that you may drink my blood. It is better than I deserve. I betrayed you. I betrayed everyone here.”
Pip jerked into motion, racing to his side. “Emblazon, please! There’s been enough bloodshed already. Please … Oyda, tell him. Talk to him.” She grasped his paws with her own, pathetic little paws, hating how helpless she felt. She could prevent him as well as she might have been able to prevent a Cloudlands-bound waterfall from dropping into the abyss. A roaring filled her ears. “Don’t. This isn’t necessary.”
Emblazon overpowered her. His talons began to pierce his hide. Runnels of gold blood oozed from the shallow wounds.
The Word of Command lurked in her mind, treacherously, as if she concealed a venomous cobra ready to strike. Yet she must not use it. Fury rose. This was wrong. What could she do? Silence enveloped her; within, all she could hear was the complex triple-drum of her heartbeat. She held his life in her paw. Emblazon had betrayed her, and by his actions, initiated the Night-Red Dragons’ attack on the school. Many had died. Should she judge him? Should he die?
Pip howled inwardly.
Then, in a rush, she released her anger to snarl, smoking and flaming from her mouth and nose, “Emblazon, I did not–Oyda did not–risk our lives to save your stupid, wretched hide for this. You … you prize ralti sheep! How many Dragons do you think have fallen under their sway? Dragons older, wiser and more cunning than you or I? The Silver Dragon has a terrifying ability to conquer hearts and minds. It is no dishonour to be beaten by a greater Dragon, as we all may have suffered at Leandrial’s paw.”