by Marc Secchia
Dragonstar
Book 4 of Dragonfriend
By Marc Secchia
Copyright © 2017 Marc Secchia
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
www.marcsecchia.com
Cover art copyright © 2017 Joemel Requeza
Cover font design copyright © 2017 Victorine Lieske
www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com
Dedication
Life is but a fragment of starlight,
Given to shine for a time,
So fleeting.
Yet its glory shall touch and illume,
Eternity itself.
From Elegy by Hualiama of Fra’anior
Table of Contents
Dragonstar
Dedication
Table of Contents
Map of the Island-World
Chapter 1: Under an Immadian Sky
Chapter 2: In Pursuit of Dragons
Chapter 3: The Treasures of Immadia
Chapter 4: Incursion
Chapter 5: The Frozen Mists
Chapter 6: Ever so Magnetic
Chapter 7: Beyond the Mists
Chapter 8: Shapeshifter Flows
Chapter 9: Northerly Star
Chapter 10: Ensnared
Chapter 11: The Theft of an Egg
Chapter 12: A Sinking Feeling
Chapter 13: Rivers of Fire
Chapter 14: S’gulzzi
Chapter 15: Unfathomable Fires
Chapter 16: Juggling Eggs
Chapter 17: An Unholy Bargain
Chapter 18: Censure
Chapter 19: No Roost for the Wicked
Chapter 20: Faster than Magic
Chapter 21: Fra’anior, Ho!
Chapter 22: Paean of Hatred
Chapter 23: Volcanic Cracks
Chapter 24: Never Trust a Dragon
Chapter 25: Crowning Glory
Chapter 26: Firebird
Chapter 27: Beds Dangling over Islands
Chapter 28: Tourmaline Trickery
Chapter 29: Southerly Fates
Chapter 30: A Nation in Action
Chapter 31: Infernal Fires
Chapter 32: The Darkest Fires
Chapter 33: Fallen Star
Chapter 34: Tessellations of Reality
Chapter 35: Above and Beyond
Chapter 36: Myriad Stars shall Fall
Epilogue: The History of the First Egg
About the Author
Map of the Island-World
Larger size available at www.marcsecchia.com
Chapter 1: Under an Immadian Sky
AURORAE GLISTENED ABOVE the towering, white-capped mountains of fabled Immadia, the Island-World’s crowning beauty. Delicate, shimmering veils of prismatic colour reflected in long streamers that seemed to reach down across precipitous white slopes of ice and snow to play amongst the dark, silent streets. In the deep alleyways, slipper-clad feet whispered across frozen stone while a city slumbered beneath the stars.
Sneaky Shapeshifter Dragonesses did not.
Pausing to glance at the brilliant display sweeping across a four-moon night sky, the petite girl adjusted the hood of her heavy black robe. She could not see the Tourmaline Dragon who tracked her progress from a height of over a league overhead, but she sensed his keen regard with a sixth-sense prickle against her nape. With all the fiery disdain of a ninety-foot flying blast incinerator, Grandion had disparaged her quest this night – and then, when she took affront, claimed only to be tugging her wingtips. Exasperating lump of a soot-sneezing lizard! Furthermore, his Scaly Highness had loftily decreed that he would be watching over her, for whom his eye-fires burned brightest and best, with a roguish smile that summarily turned all three of her Dragoness-hearts into a wobble-kneed pile of steaming mush.
At that point, Hualiama could gladly have slapped her Dragoness right over those aurora-spangled peaks behind the city. Physically impossible. Existentially? More than possible, apparently, in ways that made her brain hurt.
Instead, she focussed on the sounds of an Immadian night. Fra’anior’s ever-song imbued even the warmest volcanic dusk – for the active caldera lit even the darkest night with its ruddy lava glow – with sleepy dragonet-chirping, the sharp, haunting cries of night birds and the volcano’s constant background rumbling. In contrast, Immadia’s vast nocturnal tranquillity seemed to embrace little but starlight, and the exotic exhibition of aurora borealis – a draconic-scientific phrase of exotic, undeniably obscure origin. A few small, domesticated silvery-grey felines prowled the clean streets, and smoke still curled from the odd chimney, but at this hour, most decent people slept. Above the sloped grey slate rooftops set atop thick whitewashed walls, heavily insulated against the cold, the air felt so thin and pure, there seemed little barrier to the song of stars, her heritage.
She did not understand the peculiar pull she felt to Immadia; only that it spoke a lodestone’s imperative to her heart’s course. Let Grandion fulminate. Lia must dance with fate.
As she ghosted along the deserted streets, the below-freezing temperatures burned her nostrils and settled with frigid purpose in the base of her lungs. Hualiama avoided the Watch, shrinking into the shadows with magical ease learned from Jinichi. She wound deeper into the alleyways dividing the poor quarter at the city’s edge like capillaries snaking through frozen flesh, seeking her goal with all seven senses alert. That tingling. That tracery of magic which tantalised her perception. When she paused at the junction of six narrow entrances, yet another byzantine variation on the general lack of formal town planning in this area, Flicker murmured, Second opening to your left paw, straw-head.
Oh, don’t come out and look, she snipped back, prodding his flank gently.
No point in frittering away my reborn fire-life in this icy wasteland, he complained. Especially not when you’re warm enough to toast bread.
Hualiama chuckled quietly, padding deeper into the increasingly polluted, ill-used lanes. As a Human girl, not so much as a whisker above five feet in height, she might have feared trouble in these narrow quarters. As a Dragoness in her own right? Pity any rogue foolish enough to accost her.
Her inner Dragoness appeared to preen in her mind’s eye. Exercise my beautifully honed talons? Most certainly.
You stay put, my fierce beauty. We need these Immadians for allies, not talon fodder.
Predatory laughter shivered her soul.
Flicker, in his second incarnation a perfect ice-dragonet of just one foot in length, with a delicate white-pink muzzle and button-sized fire-eyes, added blithely, Besides, any creature that operates at my habitual levels of awesomeness, season in and season out, does require his restorative sleep. Wake me when something interesting happens, my darling conveyance. And, by the First Egg, will you refrain from jostling the royal hide? I’m a sensitive soul, quite aside from being so exceedingly handsome, it insults mere mortals …
As the dragonet prattled, she prowled.
That elusive thread of fate-magic led her eventually to a locked cellar door, just one of tens upon this street. Her heart twitched within her chest as if she held Flicker beneath her ribcage and not beneath her cloak. Alright, Jin, saboteur extraordinaire. Time to see if his teachings were worth a brass dral.
Placing her hands on the solid jalkwood door, Lia concentrated. Five minutes later, she smiled and stepped back, then twizzled her neck. Good. She threw the deadbolt from the outside, picked two unusual padlocks, oiled the hinges with a touch of grease borrowed from a nearby refuse pile and with a touch of m
agic, painstakingly drew aside and laid down a dagger placed so as to drop if the door was opened, without the slightest scraping of metal. After this, she sweated over the lock for a further ten minutes – ruing the loss of her lock-picks – before her magical senses finally worked out the combination of levers and tumblers, and a soft, satisfying snick advertised the success of her work. For a poor family, they had excellent taste in locks. Stolen from a rich house?
Lia grinned, easing the door open soundlessly.
She slipped inside. Darkness. Breathing. She heard two persons sleeping beside the fireplace; one set of lungs wheezing weakly and the other, young and strong. The third breather stood to her right hand, and judging by the creak of the bowstring and the feverish gallop of the heart that had tweaked those fingers and muscles, she knew her ingress had been discovered. How?
She rapped, “Wait. I’m a friend –”
Twang!
Her left hand snapped out.
Nice catch, Humansoul, her Dragoness approved.
You know that was your work, gorgeous Dragoness, she returned. Conversation at the speed of thought.
Hualiama opened her other palm, willing a small flame into being. “I am a friend,” she repeated, deliberately calm. “I’d like to talk.”
“How did you – how?” squeaked the would-be archer. “Zanya, wake up! The Guard’s found us.”
The girl beside the fire had already sat up, her hair like flowing sable in the dim light. She cradled a small crossbow in her lap. Over that pointed welcome, her ice-blue eyes reamed Hualiama with a gaze fit to grace a Blue Dragon’s most irascible mood. “The hood, girl, or I’ll lance a poisoned bolt in your neck before you can blink.”
Catch another? Flicker was the show-off, not her. With a soft word of assent, Lia raised her hands to her hood and tipped back the material.
Brother and sister gasped identically.
After a breathless second the girl, who was about Hualiama’s age, said, “Brazo, lower your weapon. It’s worthless against the likes of her.” Without so much as blinking, she added bitterly, “So, they stoop to sending vile Enchantresses against the likes of us? Does the Queen herself pay your wage? Where do you hail from?”
Lia’s sigh communicated a thousand words. “I am no assassin. Aye, I’ve magic, but my errand has nothing at all to do with the Queen of Immadia and everything to do with you. May I explain?”
“Sure, pull up a floorboard, not that there are any,” Brazo jested grimly, lowering his Immadian short bow with a sigh of his own. “First, show us what’s wriggling under your cloak.”
At Lia’s touch, Flicker shrilled in annoyance, “Unhand me, peasant. My awesomeness is entirely wasted on these songbird-tongued Immadian yokels.”
“Out!” she ordered.
Zanya’s crossbow wavered before settling with renewed resolve on the Shapeshifter’s stomach. “Slowly!” commanded the girl. Even her demands sounded musical. These Immadians all had remarkable, lilting accents that turned their vowels into a vocalist’s delight.
“You’re such a pest,” argued the dragonet. “Can we not apprehend the deleterious effect of lack of sleep on the lustre of my scales?”
The proverbial brass dral plinked down in her mind. When did you learn to talk like –
A Dragonsoul? averred the dragonet, smirking audibly. Lia shook her head in confusion. Her snarky-tongued, resurrected companion had just grown up with indecent haste.
Scamp! she accused him. Flicker just snickered.
As Brazo and Zanya exclaimed over the dragonet, drawing a chorus of approving purrs from her shameless companion, Hualiama said, “I am Hualiama of Fra’anior, called the Dragonfriend. I’ve come bearing the fire-gift of an Ancient Dragon, which I believe is meant for you – both of you. It’s not quite assassination, mind –” she laughed uneasily “– but some might argue I’m being disingenuous for saying so.”
Brother and sister stared at her, then at the dragonet and the four walls of their small underground home. Everything in this place proclaimed lives lived at the edge of desperation, an existence eked out on society’s edges where a crust of bread was worth killing for. Hualiama waited, listening with her sense of Balance. Aye, this was right. She had never felt the call more strongly. Yet what gave her the right to demand this fate of others? That was what she had done to Jin; only, the fire had already been present inside of him. These were untouched souls, yet laden with potential.
Thus, she hesitated.
Zanya said, “We can’t go anywhere without our mother. She’s sick.”
“I will do everything in my power to heal what ails her.”
“And then?” Brazo demanded, still coldly furious in tone and demeanour. “What would you want of us, Enchantress?”
“Bluntly put, I plan to breathe Dragon fire into your souls, turning you into Shapeshifter Dragons – persons who can assume the form and nature of a Dragon at will. Then, I will invite you to join me in fighting the paramount evil of this age.”
She could have sold their expressions to replace Fra’anior’s crown jewels.
* * * *
Around noon of the following day, Prince Elki of Fra’anior booted his cherished sister sharply in the anklebone beneath the royal lunch table. His kick clearly communicated, ‘Simmer down, Dragoness.’
He must feel her heat chargrilling his elbow. Smiling a hundred-fang Dragoness’ smile across the priceless expanse of polished ooliti wood at the belligerent Commander Surzaya, head of the Immadian Garrison, Hualiama said blandly, “Is that so, Commander?”
“Aye, it is so,” said the heavyset woman, clearly wishing for a sword and the opportunity to cleave a few Fra’aniorian heads. “No Dragons have ever penetrated this castle or this room. Our protections are perfect.”
“You could be speaking to a Dragon right now, Commander. Insulting them, moreover.”
Elki repeated the kick. Harder.
Brothers!
The irate Commander lashed out, “Who’s going to stop me, some pointy-eared terhal chick who storms our Island with all the arrogance of her Fra’aniorian heritage? Or, her foppish brother and his pet lizard?”
Now, her developing Dragon senses detected the increase in Elki’s pulse rate as his indignation peaked. For a rascally stowaway who had saved her life multiple times and travelled over the Islands and through Land Dragons’ digestive systems with her, he was a decent sort.
For some Immadians, this fragile alliance was clearly a non-starter, despite Queen Imaytha’s assurances to the contrary. The Queen spoke to placate her three Commanders of Garrison, Air and Army, but she received no support from her sister, Princess Shayitha, who sat stiffly to the Queen’s right hand in the formal banqueting chamber of the Immadian castle, glowering at everyone. The castle was very much under construction, but parts were serviceable. Despite Shayitha’s throne being set markedly lower than the Queen’s, the younger sister towered over the diminutive Immadian Queen. The white-lipped rigidity of the Immadian warrior-princess’ expression could have been welded for Dragonship stanchions, Hualiama thought uncharitably.
Dragonsoul?
I’ve said my piece! Her inner Dragoness curled smoke into an ode of frustration.
So she had. Human-Lia settled her hands on the table, but had to twitch them away when the cloth began to crisp beneath her wrists. Dancing dragonets!
Elki? she inquired in telepathic Dragonish.
Queen Imaytha paused to dart a glance at the pair of Fra’aniorian royal runaways. Around them, the servants were clearing the dishes from the second course, a fine selection of roasted vegetables and hand-sized purple peppers that introduced volcanic fires to the stomachs of any who dared sample their piquant flesh.
Staring straight at the Queen, his grey eyes flashing with an anger that rarely surfaced above his habitually cheery exterior, Prince Elka’anor said, “It would do well to know one’s allies. Here’s a suggestion, noble Immadians. We’ll make a deal with you. You will show us the lore s
crolls of the Chrysolitic Dragons, which you keep hidden in your mountain fastness behind this building, and we’ll show you that there’s a Dragon hidden right here in this room – despite the Commander’s so-called protections.”
Hualiama froze.
“Insults!” snarled Commander Surzaya.
“There’s no Dragon present here, nor do any Dragonkind lurk within the walls of our fair city,” Queen Imaytha said mildly, querying Elki with a slow blink of her amethyst eyes – the mesmeric gaze of an Immadian Enchantress, which had Prince Qilong spouting in unending poetic raptures, to everyone’s annoyance. Lia noticed he had not been invited to lunch. Interesting.
The Queen added, “I give this assurance freely. Now, why are we trying to turn the oncoming winter into a balmy summer’s day in this room? Let’s calm ourselves and start with the broad quill-strokes of our agreement –”
What are you doing, Elki?
He replied privately, Truth rise-must, or dance shall this we fail. Evermore.
Truth? Ignoring the details of his broken Dragonish, Hualiama considered the Balance inherent in his words. Her scoundrel of a brother so often voiced insights before others saw the true lay of the Isles. This course was a risk, but she saw white-fires momentarily sheeting over the congregation. The Queen suspected something was afoot or, at the very least, mistrusted the visitors she had invited to her table. A sense of kinship counted for only so much. Elki was right. Trust must be built.
Had Grandion been here … she shivered. All of the Dragons were relegated to a camp outside of Immadia Town, but that was almost deserted as the Dragons, Riders and Humans worked diligently on repairing the damage they had invited to Immadia’s shores as Numistar Winterborn vented the fury of an Ancient Dragoness on those who dared to oppose her. These Immadians were frightened.
Elki proposed she frighten them more.
If I may have a gentle word … purred her Dragoness.
Hualiama distrusted the spectral grin she discovered within herself. Far too bellicose, her second-soul. Furthermore, the Prince was much, much angrier than he let on. She said, You will behave, Dragonsoul, or I shall –