by Marc Secchia
How did Azziala’s power of Command arise, communicate to and impact its victim?
Even the Flow form of telepathy was not instantaneous. There had been a clear delay in her conversation just now with Shill. If Dragons stood beside one another that delay must be infinitesimal indeed, but even telepathy travelled only – only – at the unimaginable speed of thought.
Sound had speed. The number of two hundred and twenty leagues per hour sprang to mind, but she could measure to be certain. What about magic? How swiftly did a Command-hold become effective and when, in what infinitesimal order or by what exact mechanism, did it seize its victim? What if the intended victim was not actually, physically present? Teleportation was impossible – impossible, according to all Dragon science. But, what about Flow? What if a Dragon could travel through Flow? That must resemble teleportation. No. If material issues such as density affected the Flow plane of existence, then spoken magic must surely do the same.
This line of enquiry seemed fruitful, however. She was just not convinced she could actually use it.
Snapping back into being, Hualiama interrupted the Tourmaline Dragon mid-bellow. “Grandion. Can Dragons detect sound as it travels?”
His eye membranes twitched ominously.
She added impudently, “Thank you for your concern. I mean, more precisely, can Dragons detect sound waves?”
“Thank you for your … concern?” he choked out.
Makani reached out to tip the Star Dragoness’ wingtip with hers. “Better still, we can see sound waves.”
Grandion’s expression … Lia said, “Ah, we see sound?”
“Aye, so see this – YOU SELFISH, THOUGHTLESS NUISANCE!” As an ultra-rare Blue, Grandion could produce a Storm-powered battle challenge, as he proved on Hualiama now. The force of his blast knocked her tumbling through the air.
Flow. Return.
Facing him across two hundred feet of space, Hualiama chirped, “Oh, yes! That was exactly what I needed. Could you do that again?”
Not her proudest moment. Two older Dragons nearby were commenting favourably upon Grandion’s methods of dealing with a high-spirited hatchling, when his second broadside arrived complete with a simultaneous fireball and lightning bolt. She failed to react in time and suffered the ignominy of being struck so hard, she momentarily blacked out and had to be rescued by a quick-thinking Green female.
Then, under the watching eyes of seven hundred plus annoyed Dragons, she limped over to Grandion and made her formal apology.
Welcome to the age-dominance hierarchy of the Dragonkind.
And the honour of being the lowest and least in the great pageantry of draconic life.
* * * *
Fra’anior’s beard, that girl-Dragoness had spirit! Grandion had always admired this quality in Hualiama. Vivacious personality, audacious as the day was long and the skies were wide, more than occasionally lippy – but a heart of pure, solid Dragon gold. He had struck out in a flash of dark-fires anger. Yet even so, she had the courage to stand up again. Every time.
He clenched his right paw with inward-directed fury. That was old-Grandion. He must do better.
The woebegone look she essayed melted all three of his hearts, but the Tourmaline knew other truths about draconic behaviour. The elder Dragon’s role was now to instruct the hatchling in where she had gone wrong. To refuse was not pride, it was condescension. The way of draconic pride was to demonstrate knowledge, mastery and understanding in accordance with his position. Therefore, he sucked in a deep breath, rolled his voice through the gravelly pits of a high-ranking Dragon’s authority, and said:
Blue-Star. Attend me.
Did she understand? Hualiama’s semi-transparent sapphire wings clipped three times, speeding her to his side, whereupon she made a muddled but acceptable wing-and-fires obeisance denoting respect.
He arched his neck proudly. Good.
Mine fires quicken to the dominion of thine eminent teachings, noble Dragon.
No Dragon had spoken that way in five hundred years. Ruthlessly, he clamped down on an errant urge to chuckle, and take her to roost with him … twirling his right wingtip in acknowledgement, Grandion mined his love of the old lore for an apposite response. May our fires burn whiter together, o joy of the Onyx Dragon’s crown.
Her secondary membranes blinked rapidly, at least five times!
Having made every fire in her body shiver agreeably, Grandion said, Now, ask your questions, and I shall instruct you. With the utmost protection of mental privacy, he added for her alone, A craven strike earns no Dragon roost-favours. I shall find better ways of wing and paw.
I understand, came the appreciative reply. Thank you, my third heart.
Now, her eye-fires shone with a lustre which must be unique to a Star Dragoness. Grandion disguised the favourable bent of his fires from all but her. Glorious!
They worked hard and steadily as the Dragon quickly grasped the import of her questions. He did not have answers, but he could instruct her in how to see sound waves, and how to look for the signs of speech in a Human’s neck and throat muscles. Using her newfound Flow power, they measured the speed of sound as two hundred and twenty-two point six-one leagues per hour. In any encounter with Azziala, that speed would grant a vanishingly small window of time in which to react. But when it came to measuring the rapidity of magical transfer, the Dragons soon found themselves stumped. They turned to their closest companions for help. Imaytha had a few ideas which they spent an agreeable three hours experimenting with, but the speed appeared either to be immeasurable, or to be as instantaneous as the thought that triggered the magic. Even Elki, usually the possessor of surprising insight into the inmost nature of the Island-World, declared himself befuddled.
Eventually, Flicker piped up, “Unless, for the sake of learning, Hualiama placed a Command-hold on a willing Dragon?”
Grandion, Mizuki and Makani snarled identically, while Hualiama cried out, “No!”
Elki said, “It’s a good idea. I’ll volunteer to go first.”
Mizuki gave him a withering glare. “You’re pretty, insofar as Humans go, but you’re missing a few essentials.”
“Like brains,” the dragonet put in.
“You mean wings, scales and tails, you soot-brained snowflake,” said Saori. “Elki –”
“Well, I’m no Dragon, but she’s my magical sister and I would like to help,” argued the Prince. “I can’t imagine any Dragon willingly subjecting himself to –”
At least twenty Dragons nearby immediately snapped, “I will!”
Elki rolled his eyes. “Drat. I forgot what you Dragons are like. Grandion, I beg of you, no fireball tutorials. I’m not half as tough as my sister. O mighty Dragon, please show restraint in your teachings.”
His facetious begging caused the Dragons to burst into laughter. Soon, they played a game of mathematical chance and Makani drew the draconic equivalent of the short straw – the smallest number which could not be factored into any other number the other Dragons had chosen.
The Grey Dragoness faced Hualiama. “What are you waiting for?”
The far tinier Dragoness pursed in her lips as if she had sucked on a mouthful of haribol fruit and washed the meal down with a famously putrid bamboo rat. “Makani, you’re my friend. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“Good. Make sure you keep it that way,” snarled the Grey.
Dragons! Grandion bugled. Hearken as the Star Dragoness teaches us the Command-hold of these Haters, of which we have spoken. This is what we will face in battle. Their greatest weapon. Hold, Dragoness! You will retreat over there. Three miles using your exact measures, and my sonic and magical measures which we developed while I was blind. That’ll give us a chance to compare the velocity of your sound wave production to the progress of the magical construct.
He knew what she was thinking. He read it in the darkening swirls of fire within her eye-orbs and the visible wilt of her wings. If the Dragons did not trust her before, after se
eing this power, they never would. Yet better they understood this now than in the heat of battle. In a moment, the gleaming night-blue mite flitted off into the distance, paralleling the course they flew to Xinidia Island, four compass points north of southwest. Out there, the clouds were at last beginning to show signs of breaking up, but from the north, the direction of the Spits, a storm swept down upon them that did not strike his Dragon senses as entirely natural.
Steady flight, he adjured the Dragoness.
She nodded, grim of mien, her fires bubbling restively. Any sane Dragon would feel the same. The horror of being infested or controlled … not for the first time, he wondered at the help Numistar had required to reform her body. One forepaw was missing, but since the flightless Dragoness had eight paws in total, that was no great loss. Hualiama had not spoken of it, but he knew her little genius-engineer had been taking copious notes on the makeup of that body and its functions. Always seeking advantage. Seeking … more.
More than a Tourmaline Dragon could give?
Through their private telepathic link, Hualiama said, No. More than I deserve. When this is done, Grandion, gather the Blues. I must teach you how to undo the Command.
But … we don’t …
Copy like parakeets? Of course you can, she scoffed. Seize any and all advantage, blue-eyes. Furthermore, please minutely observe the physiological, outward, inner-fires-tenor and magical pathway changes the Command might trigger in her being. Everything. I will be testing you later.
He teased, Does this win me kisses?
Huh. O salacious Flicker, how rapidly you’ve grown into a husky Tourmaline skirt-chaser. Ready?
The Dragons tensed as her final word communicated to them all. Grandion and Lia took split-second measurements.
DRAGON, OBEY!
* * * *
Later that morning, when a hatchling Dragoness could no longer sustain her flight with the bigger, stronger Dragons, Lia landed upon Grandion’s broad back. There, she transformed. Imaytha helped her to dress, having bid Prince Qilong, on pain of improbable punishments beginning with deep-freezing his toes in snow, to turn his back.
“Meant to be conserving my magic,” Lia snorted, pulling on her under-trousers. She was pleased to see she had put on not an ounce since Inniora had last taken her measurements. “Aye, o Queen, this is a rather barbed and hazardous storage area,” she added, pointing to her torso. “Poison darts, vials, lock picks and three garrottes.”
“Hazardous indeed,” Imaytha agreed sardonically, apparently reading more into her words than Lia had intended.
Hualiama raised an eyebrow.
“A most enviable arsenal,” the Queen elaborated, with a perfectly straight face that would have served any gambler well.
“A decent blow in the offing, though,” coughed the Princess, blushing up to the points of her ears.
Imaytha reached over to pat her knee. “Don’t try to change the subject. You’d better advise Grandion to stick to the safe areas – if there are any. Man traps? Stray misplaced Shapeshifter teeth? Hellish, fire-spitting fumaroles into which no man may venture save at the gravest peril …”
Another droll waggle of the eyebrow, this time aimed at a strategic location below the belt, caused Lia to fold up in fits of mirth. Immadian humour was just too much. In a world dominated by war, she laughed far too little. Grandion’s inquiring what was so funny only compounded the hilarity, especially when Imaytha mimed a reaction so inappropriate, Lia could not have repeated it in polite company.
Eventually, dressed and armed for war, she settled into her Dragon Rider saddle, and fingered her old Haozi war bow pensively. Perhaps, after this, she should gift it to a friend. Not the Nuyallith blades, though. They were like a pair of old friends.
As Dragon wings darkened the noon sky like a harbinger of the storm to come, Hualiama’s thoughts were filled with images of the coming battle.
Chapter 21: Fra’anior, Ho!
The late afternoon and night turned into a struggle of paw and hand against a powerful thunderstorm that fell upon the fleet in three distinct acts, like a Fra’aniorian opera scribed in a bravura score of howling winds, violent hail and the shouts and bellows of frightened men.
At some point, Hualiama remembered Grandion snarling, “Numistar!”
Seventeen Dragonships were lost amidst the chaos, struck by lightning or damaged by hail, but thanks to the unstinting efforts of the Dragonkind, only five soldiers died due to burns suffered in an exploding Dragonship, and a further trio who flung themselves into the Cloudlands and died before they could be chased down and caught. Come dawn, the battered fleet sighted Xinidia Island in the distance, lying pristine in the Cloudlands and surmounted by a quartet of picture-perfect, overlapping rainbows.
“Well, that’s hideously unfair,” snorted Elki.
“The most beautiful boot in the Island-World,” Hualiama responded flippantly.
Xinidia was famously shaped like a Sylakian soldier’s boot with its clumpy, separate soles at heel and toe, and a fat collar to protect the ankle from an ancient practice of using canines in battle to disable enemy troops. The Prince added his distinguished opinion that its shape resembled a half-drunk, discarded wineskin slumped over a month-dead windroc’s corpse.
Saori sniped, “I see that Fra’aniorian royalty is not at all biased against the beauties of other Islands.”
This comment sparked an argument that, predictably, ended with a certain amount of unsociable kissing, Dragonback.
Imaytha said, “So, noble Grandion, are you taking detailed notes?”
Gnarrr!
Lia clapped her hands. “Jinichi! Zanya! Flying practice with Makani.” Brazo glared at her, looking so much like a Dragon that she almost expected a few talons to pop out of his eyes and skewer her where she sat. “Alright, Brazo. You can transform, too, but, Islands’ sakes …”
“Take it easy?” growled the Immadian Shapeshifter Dragon.
“You’ve thirty stitches in your artery!” Lia grinned at the volume she produced. Decent roar! “Grandion, your powerful paw please, o plenipotentiary potentate of my heatedly hammering Human heart.”
The Tourmaline Dragon’s belly fires roared into life as his wingbeat stuttered with overwhelming pleasure. He spluttered through several completely unintelligible sentences before pulling up with a snarl as a pair of mischief-makers started chortling upon his back.
Lia slapped Flicker’s paw with her hand. “Winner!”
“What?” growled the Tourmaline.
“Huh. I am the king of alliteration, and the lord of all lyrical verse,” announced the dragonet, with his customary humility.
“And the master of overblown oratory,” snorted Grandion, flinging Hualiama across the divide with perhaps a touch more force than was strictly necessary. “Shoo. Aye, I mean you, dragonet. You need to earn the right to touch my magnificent scales.”
Leaving the bickering pair in her wake, Lia swooped over to Mizuki’s back. “So, my fire-burnished coppery beauty …”
The Dragoness raised a brow ridge with studied nonchalance, speaking over Lia’s compliment, “Your compliments will never – grraaarrgggh!” she broke off angrily as her voice struck a crooning note of relish. “Pest! You’re like grit irritating my talon sheaths!”
“Brazo, the jaw. Catching flies,” the Shapeshifter Princess said tartly, dropping from a hovering position onto the smooth swell of Mizuki’s major flight muscles, upon her upper left shoulder.
“It’s just the prospect of seeing my sister leap naked off a Dragon’s back eight miles above a bottomless chasm …” he grinned back.
“Just wait until a pretty Dragoness decides you’re a tasty catch,” she advised.
Brazo’s laugh emerged high-pitched and a touch frantic.
After seeing to the state of Brazo’s wound, the healing of which progressed with magic-assisted haste, Hualiama supplied further incentive for the flesh to knit, as she had been painstakingly taught by Sunfyora. Then, she tucked
Zanya’s clothes beneath her arm. “Well?”
“Uh … it’s – it’ll work, right?” Zanya peered nervously at the cloudscape below.
“If you don’t transform within thirty seconds, Mizuki will catch you.”
“The body is willing, but the mind baulks – ouch!”
Hualiama swatted the girl’s behind so hard, she stumbled onto one knee. A swift follow-up thrust-kick plunged her over the edge of Mizuki’s flank. “Be a Dragon!”
“I’m going to kill …” Whap!
An Ice-Blue Immadian Dragoness roared in a primal fury!
Elki said, “I think, therefore I am – a Dragon.”
While Mizuki bugled joyously at his reinterpretation of an ancient philosophy, Brazo paused at Lia’s appraising stare, one hand on his belt. “N-N-No you don’t. I’ll fling myself over the edge of my own volition, thank you very much!”
“Make it quick.”
With that, Hualiama turned her back and knelt quickly next to Saori. “How’s everything?”
“Your brother’s a worse pest than you.”
“Feisty. May I?” Lia quirked an eyebrow at the Eastern warrior.
“Touch my stomach? I think – ah, yes,” said Saori, failing to stop a chuckle from emerging as Lia mimed tossing her over the side, too.
“This is madness …” Brazo’s howl faded into the distance.
“There goes another one,” said Saori, loosening the buttons of her shirt. “I hope you know what a sacrifice this is, letting you paw my intimate parts.”
“The belly? Really? Elki – go pant somewhere else,” said Lia.
Her brother gave tongue like a rajal exhausted after the hunt. “Can’t I have a feel? Pleeeeassse? One teensy-weensy little tweak?”
Lia elbowed him in the ribs. “No.”
“Huh. I think Grandion and I need to have a man-talk.”
“You do that.”
All seemed well with the babe. She eased Saori’s queasiness as best she could, which was little, and checked her other vital signs. Good. No evil mouths hanging about the womb … she shuddered and wiped her clammy brow. Nauseating image. Be well, little one. Your mother and father love you dearly. They are so much better than mine ever were.