Dragonstar (Dragonfriend Book 4)

by Marc Secchia

  Should he be afraid?

  At once, his nostrils quested even as he conversed with the Tourmaline. What new magic might the Dragonfriend require this time? New, or old? Where had she disappeared, for even though they expected the sounds or signs of battle to erupt from deep inside the Rift, there was nothing unusual, just a growing sense of pressure and the groaning of overstressed rock. Hours of nothing. He, Grandion and Yiisuriel, with the support of legion Hater scientists and all of Affurion’s legions, put into process every investigative technique they could imagine. They must find a way to communicate with Hualiama, there, deep within the Rift. Meantime, their powerful Shell-Clan kin laid down a trail of oils for the Air Breathers, and the long slide to Herimor began.

  Meriatonium was itself an outlandish substance, like a void of magic. It was incredibly dense yet light, and structurally far surpassed the strongest materials known to Dragonkind – in many senses, it was stronger than Dragon scale armour. A perfect building material for Hualiama’s creative shell-father, the dragonet supposed. The Land Dragons slid along the path forged by Infurion, two leagues wide and three deep, pressing deeper along what was effectively a canyon formed between mighty grey-black walls of tortured, broken stone riddled with the dark-fires of this realm. Flicker sensed the corruption emanating from within those walls. Every second was a struggle; even Yiisuriel had resorted to plumbing the First Egg held within her body for resources to continue the battle as she and her kin gingerly glided upon their immense carapaces up a very slight, freshly oiled slope and into the heart of the Rift.

  Of the enemy, there was no sign for the remainder of that day, nor for the next three.

  The Lost Islands nation travelled in marching order – first the Runner Clans cleared the path ahead of rockfall, which was plentiful; then came the Shell-Clan, laying down a trail of oils across the width of the strangely slick black meriatonium. Then came the mighty Land Dragons, slithering along gingerly just one at a time. Flicker imagined caterpillar-like peristaltic movements of their thousands of legs, slicked by the viscous oil, by combined effort managing to find just enough leverage to slide their shells along on a bed of oils and levitation magic. It was a fine art. They had tremendous momentum. Yiisuriel kept adjusting her course to prevent the inevitable snags on the sides of the canyon, for she filled its width in its entirety, and several of the youngsters lost control of their weight and skidded slowly sideways until they crunched into the canyon walls. If their Land Dragon kin did not escape in time, they would be crushed.

  Infurion had done a fine job, but the path was not perfectly level. The ups and downs had the Air Breathers thumping into each other; parents pushed their younglings along and guided them patiently to avoid accident or injury. Still, several cracked carapaces and many mangled leg pods ensued.

  Flicker scouted ahead and above with Grandion, but they observed no change in the endless, steaming ranks of peaks. They conversed for many hours, plumbing what they knew of the Blue-Star to try to divine a strategy she could use against Earthen-Fires based magic, and guarded zealously against ambush.

  That fourth evening, the dragonet felt especially restless. He flew aloft with Gracewing, carving out a path of their own through the everlasting, smouldering leagues.

  At last, he turned to his companion and said simply, I fear for her.

  I know, Flicker, she said, indicating encouragement with a rapid blinking of her secondary eye membranes. The issue is not that we’ve heard nothing from Hualiama. It’s … time.

  Time to what? Flicker twirled a wingtip flirtatiously.

  Time.

  Time for me to demonstrate how insatiable –

  No … time. Time, my fire-heart. It is … I can’t … it’s time, don’t you see? He took pause at the note in Gracewing’s voice and the truths conveyed by the urgent whirling of her apricot and blue eye-fires. Time, time, there is –

  Time! yelled Flicker. She’s been pulled out of time – why? The Balance she spoke of must be reaching fruition and the timing is the crucial element! She’s frozen? Paralysed? No, think, Flicker. She’s an incredibly smart – well, almost as smart as me – girl. It takes a great deal to take her out of action. Gracewing, you’re the best! Aye, and he was babbling now, but Flicker knew she had touched upon a truth no other had apprehended. This is the reason for the delay. The magic is being prepared by Dramagon’s wicked brood down there and we must interrupt their plans, strike a blow – bring out the First Egg! Aye!

  Gracewing yelped in surprise as he danced around her, vibrating wingtips with ultra-rapid taps before tweaking her tail. Flicker!

  I know. I’m a mad genius. Let’s go convince the Tourmaline.

  The pretty dragonet paused dramatically. Convince them? They all agree you’re mad already.

  Chapter 33: Fallen Star

  Grandion LURKED with the Dragonwings as Tiiyusiel very carefully extracted the First Egg from what, in polite circles, was called an ejector spiracle. Flicker called it the nasty end of a Land Dragon’s digestion. He thrust aside the worrying issue of what the First Egg’s passage inside her body had wrought – the changes to the functioning of her digestive system, and the abutting organs which had apparently been transformed into a variant of horiatite. Those still functioned, but not entirely as before.

  And, it’s out, he breathed at last.

  The day, having dawned overcast, had moved to driving rain which had eased a touch over the last half-hour. First warm and black with soot, the rain had become clearer and cooler as the day wore on, until even the Air Breathers declared some relief – with their internal reservoirs refilled, they were able to flush out systems clogged by the poor air quality. Still, the meriatonium base of their gently curving pathway across the Rift was hotter than boiling temperature, so that the rivers of water collecting down there steamed and boiled merrily, adding to the general miasma drifting over the Rift.

  His eyes turned to Flicker. Clever mite. Never to be underestimated.

  Now came the part where they baited the enemy. Egg waving. That had to be one for the ballads. Or, Yiisuriel nudging the First Egg along like a boy insouciantly kicking a pebble down a path.

  Their guess was that Dramagon’s spawn would not be able to withstand the lure of the First Egg. That would in turn communicate to Hualiama and alert her … aye, a long Dragonflight into nothingness, but the best option they had. The only option.

  Barely three minutes later, he had his answer.

  Numistar! screeched Flicker.

  On the southern edge of the black-paved canyon, perhaps three leagues ahead of the foremost Land Dragon, rock detonated in slow motion as Numistar blew her way out of a cavern in the rocky cliff side. A familiar blue-white muzzle pressed into the rain, gathering a sheet of ice as her inner cold froze huge quantities of water instantly. He was just about to speak when a region immediately to the west suddenly appeared to destabilise under the impetus of dozens of stubby grey tentacles breaking through the surface. Wasting no time, the creatures oriented on the thinly spread line of Air Breathers. With a mighty report that arrived seconds after the action began, Numistar pursed her lips and breathed over the mountains. Cold billowed before her in waves, freezing the rain in solid blocks as large as Runner Land Dragons, that she subsequently hurled at the tentacles. Where ice and dark-fires creatures intersected, dull detonations began to resound. The Ancient Dragoness swept into the battle, driving the cold of interstellar comets before her, a cold so intense that Grandion saw rock shatter beneath its impact. The tentacles only seemed to multiply.

  Numistar and a whole heap of trouble, Grandion said. Legions, hold your positions. The battle will come to us. We must allow the Winterborn the honour of taking damage first .

  The mind-meld rippled with grim laughter.

  In anticipation of trouble appearing from afore, one of the oldest Air Breathers had been given the lead. With the way ahead blocked, however, she slowed down; as the Land Dragons jostled together, they held lightly ready t
he shield constructs the Star Dragoness had modified and created for them. Grandion had a passing sniff of their complexity. Dizzying. Beautiful. How did she do that? Was everything about her a dance, that she could persuade the very laws of physics to bend before the gesture of her peerless paw?

  The Tourmaline Dragon shook himself deliberately. Besotted in the best possible way. Flicker. Initiate attempts to communicate. Dragonwings, on my mark … his intuition, far more than sight, tracked a disturbance through the mountains toward them. Farther afield, Numistar bellowed in pain as the tentacles clearly found their target. GO!

  Right at the back of the miles-long column, three of the young Air Breathers jostled excitedly as the moment of their contribution to the plan arrived. They settled. Leg pods retracted. Magic activated. Around them, five older Dragons readied the amplification constructs and shield elements necessary when one played with earthquakes beside eight mile-tall, unstable cliffs.

  Thousands of pods hammered downward in concert. BOOM-DA-DA-BOOM! BOOM-DA-BOOM! This was an old messaging language he had discussed with Hualiama, a shorthand used to communicate with mirrors and lights between the Islands of Fra’anior Cluster. She would know it.

  In seconds the Rift rocked to a thunderous message.

  Then, his gaze snapped to the line of Air Breathers. Here came the first Dramagon-spawn, their sac-like bodies pulsing strangely as they jetted through the rock.

  The Tourmaline snapped his wings outward. DRAGONS, ATTACK!

  * * * *

  Hualiama tumbled limply through space, held always by the fulcrum of that grip, which had shifted to behind her eyes. She had been relentlessly battered like a carpet hung out for beating by a corps of overzealous Palace cleaners until thought fled together with sanity, and all that held her together was the knowledge of a purpose greater than her, a purpose that she must at all costs cling to. The damage was not psychological. Far from it. Infurion had suffered worse. She did not know how he still lived; only that the darkness of his fires guttered low, and whatever his type of Dragonkind understood as anguish, it wracked him in great, shuddering bursts. The servants of Dramagon were endless in number and monomaniacal in purpose. Kindness was not in their nature.

  She recalled imagining that if only she folded the eerie fires about her being, she would be shielded from outward harm, yet forfeit her soul. These fires were acid. Ruzal by any other name …

  Her thoughts spiralled inward, wounded beyond comprehension. She puzzled over her fragmentary memories. In a flash, she saw discovery of her true fires as the massed Dragonwings turned the rock upon which she stood into molten slag. Why could she not simply summon a burst of starlight akin to that which had slain her foes, that day? The penumbra lying over her brain seemed to stir sluggishly at the idea. Must she remember? What must she remember? To … dance?

  An interminable time later, change made her stir. A change in the tempo of the tentacles lashing her unresponsive body. Why had her bones not been ground into dust? The thrashing seemed long enough. Powerful enough, aye, and more. She stirred agonisingly, still haplessly rotating around that anchor point. Why the variance? Why the hazy view over shadows retreating, vacillating, the unbreakable command of many suddenly wavering and … colours exploding behind her fire-eyes … music briefly coursing through her veins before the shadows ate it … Istariela hovered nearby … was she hallucinating?

  Faintly, she heard a booming. The dark-fires creatures smothered it with animate purpose, but she sensed the pulsation beating against breastbone. Although it cost her dear, she focussed on the sound, for she imagined it might have meaning. A word?

  You … star …

  Tucking her limbs and wings closer to her body – when had a girl earned wings – as if the motion could help her focus more narrowly, she turned her attention to the faraway booming.

  Time passing … days.

  Days? How many days? Alarm coursed from her glands and organs up into her brain, which did not know how to interpret the sensation. No single thought connected with another. Instead, faces whirled about her head, shouting, screaming and accusing until she found herself flailing at them, shrieking, ‘Go away! Go away! Go … please …’

  Why could she not summon laughter?

  * * * *

  Legion Dragons clashed with Dramagon’s creatures as they swam steadily toward the First Egg, trying to build bridges into thin air or wrap their tentacles about it, but the farther they were forced to reach from their native fires, the weaker they seemed to grow. Not that weakness was an issue. Landslide after landslide had half-buried Yiisuriel’s left flank, but she continued to shield the nearby Runners and Shell-Clan as they fought long and tenaciously, keeping the grasping tentacles at bay.

  Flicker surveyed the battle with grimly clenched paws. He did not enjoy flitting above like a useless appendage. Far better he had been at Hualiama’s side.

  Using Grunts armoured with Hualiama’s clever protective constructs, the Lost Islands Dragons kept smashing the long black appendages, and several times had turned the eerie Dragons against each other, although not very successfully. Farther afield, Numistar Winterborn still fought to close the gap with their position. She had wreaked great damage yet made little headway.

  Stalemate.

  Or was it? Gracewing’s insight haunted him. What if something was happening, deep in the Rift’s bowels, and Hualiama was insensitive to it? All the signs pointed to an exponential increase in the level of instability. Dark flames flickered between rocks and even through them. The ambient temperature was reaching dangerous levels for Dragon Riders. Every horizon was darkened by the conflagration brewing all around him; the ground trembled and the cosmos screamed at the magical overload and all he could do was hover? Dramagon must be laughing his two heads off.

  What was needed was a tiny white paw. A touch of pure class.

  Which might, more truthfully, be called outright cheek. Flicker made his decision. Warming up with a superfluous but deeply satisfying aerial twirl, he chirped to Grandion, Listen up, you galumphing excuse for a dyspeptic, mouldering windroc. Stop cogitating with your oversized rear end. Something’s wrong with Hualiama. It’s bad.

  That captured the Tourmaline’s attention.

  * * * *

  Straw … head.

  A Dragoness forced her eyes open. She groaned as the temptation to shut them again, to shut out everything and simply fade into the darkness, swept over her.

  Straw … head … straw … head …

  What? How dare that – who had said that? The beat teased and tormented her.

  Straw head. Straw head. Straw –

  “Flicker!” Her shout made no echo. The gloom consumed without returning so much as a hint of an echo. Hualiama gritted her teeth. “I’ll swat you from here to – to …” But he was nowhere near. The sound was so deep, it resonated in her bones. How had a one-foot ode to mischief made the Rift fires roar at his command?

  Reality, and pain, crashed through her person, momentarily lifting a terrible fug. Hualiama began to voice a curse but bit through it before she could complete the thought. No. She did not even deserve the luxury of imprecations. How gaily and unthinkingly had she sallied forth to beard Dramagon in his den? She should reserve those words for her arrogance. Had she imagined his magic could not reach across the aeons to touch a Star Dragoness?

  Red-hot pain clamped in a rod that seemed to spear right between her temples, but this time, Lia was prepared. Humansoul!

  It was as if her soul in passing, reached out to caress her Dragoness’ cheek. Rest, my armoured petal. Prepare to avenge with the sevenfold wrath of our shell-father, Fra’anior.

  Nothing gentle about that thought!

  And then she was a girl flying into darkness, profoundly deep, fearing even to draw a shield about herself and calculating furiously as she theorised about the nature of Dramagon’s attack. Some kind of psychic power. A consciousness attack? No, deeper still. An attack based on the basal tessellations of a Dra
gon’s magical mind? Unbelievable. Lia caught her breath, and winced as a sharp edge of bone stabbed into her right flank. It was akin to a Command-hold but operated so differently, so deviously – his creatures must know everything about her, surely? How deep was she? The pressure was insane; she recalculated three times before arriving at a figure approaching fifty-two leagues! Yet here she experienced such a paucity of Sky-Fires magic, indeed of physical substance, that she could not at first believe she was not in Flow space. She lived? Nothing was as it seemed. The laws of physics were not so much immutable as mutable; yet it seemed to her that if Fra’anior could learn to shield a world and protect it using a secondary plane of existence, that Dramagon might be able to plagiarise his shell-brother’s signature work.

  No time for conjecture. For she knew that if Flicker was summoning her by her much-hated nickname, that he must be in peril.

  It seemed they descended endlessly into an upside down night sky, for at the edges of her perception, Hualiama began to make out pinpricks of light against the unrelentingly dark surroundings, like a cloth of pure sable drawn across the cosmos to conceal its true nature. Pushing the pain of her injuries aside – definitely a couple of broken ribs – Lia looked deeper, utilising skills taught to her by Shill and Fra’anior.

  She and Infurion descended into a vast cathedral lined by Dramagon’s spawn, which had linked tentacles to create a three-dimensional lattice eerily reminiscent of that which Numistar Winterborn had drawn over Immadior’s body as she searched for the First Egg. They surrounded an area some thirty leagues in diameter in layers five or more creatures deep. Each black sac sported a thicket of ten or a dozen powerful tentacles which stretched out to embrace their neighbours, creating an organic netting effect of beautiful regularity, and in the quarter-mile gaps between their individual bodies, an oily sheen of magic soiled the air. In places, their massed bodies entirely plugged the tunnels they had drilled to enter and leave the area of greatest instability, here deep inside the Rift, building a trap for Infurion. She had to rouse him! Yet, how could she presume or dare to try to heal a creature so different to her?