by Marc Secchia
Hualiama nodded, the rush of reckless abandon giving way to trepidation. The habits of six years would not be easy to slough off. “I will,” she agreed. “But can we use the travel-time to Ya’arriol for you to transfer knowledge of all of the remaining Nuyallith forms to me? I suspect I’ll have need of them.”
Ja’al’s brows arched toward the crown of his shaven, tattooed head. “All ninety?”
“All of them,” Lia said firmly. That was an invitation to an Island-thumping migraine, and they both knew it.
She helped Ja’al drag her solo Dragonship out from under the cover of a grove of massive giant fig trees. At over one hundred and fifty feet tall, they easily sheltered her small Dragonship. Hallon and Rallon came to lend a hand.
Once Ja’al had finished instructing the twins, he made a face at Lia. “Only now, running this monastery, have I truly come to appreciate Master Jo’el’s attention to detail.”
“All monks on board. This Dragonship is leaving,” said Lia, stoking the stove’s fire.
She could not have sworn to it, but it did appear that both Hallon and Rallon were still blushing.
Ja’al leaped in lithely. “Right, short shrift, time to open that devious dragonet’s brain of yours. Let’s fill it with something substantial, for a change. Don’t forget to set your controls.”
Egg-head, she said in Dragonish.
“I know what you said!”
Ooh, been learning Dragonish, Mister Clever Monk?
Ja’al grimaced. “No, but I do know when my hawser is being tugged.”
The Dragonship rose silently into the gleaming dawn skies above the volcano on a westerly heading, making for Ya’arriol Island, already visible in the distance. Another volcanic Fra’aniorian dawn, Hualiama thought, savouring the subtle tints of the Cloudlands and the luminous quality of the light beyond the long shadow cast by Ha’athior Island. The world seemed pregnant with opportunity.
“Right,” she said. “Our heading’s fixed and the oven’s warm. I’ll pedal whilst you fry my brain. Agreed?”
Ja’al loomed over her with a discomfiting sneer. He cracked his knuckles deliberately, making her exclaim in annoyance. “Shall I tidy up a bit whilst I’m in there?”
“Sure. And while you’re at it, will you just rustle up a vision of my destiny and tell me exactly where to find my mother?”
“Deal.” Ja’al’s long, sensitive fingers touched her temples. “First one.”
For the three hours it took them to fly to Ya’arriol, Ja’al poured into his subject all the remaining Nuyallith lore he had ‘harvested’–to use his descriptor, which made Hualiama squirm–from Master Khoyal before his death. Overhead, the rigging creaked under the variable pressure of a capricious breeze. The hawsers rasped against their pulleys and blocks, and the sails flapped lazily. The stove, which fed the turbines and hot air sacks, crackled cheerfully as Ja’al flicked in chunks of pre-cut, dense jalkwood at intervals between ladling dollops of knowledge into her aching brain. Lia fidgeted and sweated, fighting a migraine that seized her head like a ralti sheep squeezed by a marauding Dragon’s talons.
Ja’al paused to mop his brow. “A touch more northerly please, Steersman. Are you alright, Lia?”
“Surviving. Don’t spare the meriatite, Master Jo’el.”
“Not Jo’el,” he smiled. His uncle, Master Jo’el, had perished in the battle for the Kingdom of Fra’anior, six years before. Ra’aba had much to answer for.
Ra’aba, her father. He might be her blood-father, but he meant nothing more. Lia sucked in her cheeks, scowling at the rigging. Traitor, usurper, evil magician, despoiler of women and would-be murderer of his daughter. Charming! How could her mother match up to the Roc? Somehow, the stinging in her bones suggested, her mother Azziala would do all that, and more. Azziala had journeyed from the Eastern Isles to the Halls of the Dragons. At Gi’ishior Ra’aba had forced himself upon her. A child resulted, whom Azziala immediately abandoned to the Dragoness Ianthine’s tender mercies. How often had Lia not dreamed of wonderful parents, only to have the truth of her origins strike her with the force of an Isles earthquake?
Was the inner force which impelled her to seek her destiny, at least in part a desire to atone for her parents’ misdeeds? And what of the strange connection between Ra’aba and Razzior, the Orange Dragon who had tried to burn her?
Hualiama stiffened as a torrent of knowledge thundered anew into the bowl of her skull, despite Ja’al’s avowed attempt at gentleness. Too much! Muscles rigid, burning, a soundless scream rising from the marrow of her soul … she spiralled into darkness.
“The spirit of Nuyallith is dance,” she heard Master Khoyal’s ancestor instructing him, many, many summers before Lia ever opened her eyes to the Island-World. “And what is dance, but the purest expression in physical movement of the spirit of a person? Therefore, the spirit must be trained as much as the body requires training–even more so than the physical flesh, truth be told. Just as we feed the body and care for its needs, so we must provide the spirit with the nutrients it requires.”
“What do you mean, great-grandfather?” The voice in her memory was a boy’s tenor, not the aged rasp Hualiama had known.
“A person could spend a lifetime filling the Cloudlands from shore to shore with scrolls upon the subject, Khoyal. Simply put, to meditate and act upon principles such as truth, integrity, beauty, justice and holiness, is to feed the spirit with goodness. The spirit of a person is like fire. Starve a fire of fuel, and it will gutter and die. Feed the fires, boy. Always feed the fires, and be hungry for more.”
“Is the power of goodness greater than the power of evil, great-grandfather?” asked the boy.
“How does it seem to you?”
“That the deeds of evil are the greatest fire, which rage and consume all.”
“Such a melancholy opinion from a boy of nine summers’ age?”
Hualiama jerked awake as though a fisherman had hooked her in the cheek and heaved her out of the water in one powerful pull. “Gaaah!”
A hand smoothed her overheated brow. “Easy, petal.”
“Yualiana?” Lia whispered. Her eyes flicked open.
She found herself lying abed, the focus of a number of concerned expressions–Ja’al’s mother Yualiana and his father, Master Ga’athar, Ja’al himself, her best friend Inniora, and Chago, Inniora’s hulking, dark husband who cradled one each of their twin two-month-old baby girls in either arm.
Yualiana slapped Ja’al’s shoulder. “You great lump of a monk! What did you do to my little petal?”
“Nothing, I swear–”
“I’ll nothing your backside like I used to, Master of Dragon Warriors or none!”
“Now, mother–”
“Aye, and do you know what your mother says? Go put on a shirt! This is a decent household. You should know better than to parade half-naked around impressionable young women.”
Lia wanted to tell Yualiana to go easy on Ja’al, but she was enjoying their interaction far too much. However, Yualiana caught Lia’s grin before she managed to wipe it off her lips. One raised eyebrow was all it took for a volume of scrolls to be spoken.
Hualiama prattled, “I’m fine. I made Ja’al do it.”
“Oh, is it, petal?” Any self-respecting Green Dragon would have gnawed off a limb to enjoy that much acid.
After Ja’al had secured clothing and Lia had offered explanations, Master Ga’athar rolled his eyes and growled, “I see you two are still matched in having a quarter of the brains accorded the silliest dragonet.”
When Ja’al’s mother and father scolded her, which was infrequently, Lia wished they could have been her parents. She heard love beneath their Dragon-like snarls. Were King Chalcion to chastise her … aye. Another scrolleaf would have unfurled, scribed in pain.
The Master continued, “Now, Lia. Ja’al tells us you bring news. You’d better start a volcano spitting before Yualiana cracks her rolling pin over your head.”
“As if I�
��m the impatient one, Ga’athar,” his wife retorted. “Come, petal. A pinch of restorative for your headache and a bite to eat are the medicines you need. When last did you sleep, Hualiama?”
“Ah–”
“I thought so!” A finger wagged beneath Lia’s nose. “The Queen will pluck my guts for bowstrings. Lie down. Down, I said! Cheeky dragonet. We’ll serve you. Ja’al, quick wings to the kitchen, boy. Inniora, fetch another pillow-roll. Ga’athar, make yourself useful with your grandchildren.”
Thus with bark and bite, Yualiana rallied her family. Hualiama sighed. How different this was to palace life, here on a small Island, in an even smaller village. She knew which she preferred.
Lia held out her arms. “Chago, may I demand a cuddle?”
His dark, scarified face broke into a grin. “Aye, Princess. That you may. Left arm or right?”
“Right–that’s Bithinia, right? How you tell them apart … so, how are you coping with two sets of twins?”
“I thought warrior training was exhausting,” he rumbled, passing the babe over to Hualiama. “Two three-summers boys roaring around the place pretending they’re Dragons, and now these two hatchlings–it’s a blessing, truth be told, but a vast surprise. Zero to two to four! I was set against the idea at first, but Inniora convinced me we needed help and I’m grateful to have Master Ga’athar and Mistress–”
“Master this and Mistress that, son?” Ga’athar snorted, plucking the other twin, Yaziala, from Chago’s arm and settling her with the ease of a father of eleven children. “How many years will it take you to address us as your parents?”
“At least one more,” said Inniora, returning with a pillow-roll for Hualiama. Her smile lingered upon her husband in a way that made Lia blush and lower her eyes. Oh, for someone to love like that, not a hulking, scaly lizard with scales the colour of gemstones …
Shortly, the family gathered again. Inniora held a bowl of spicy ralti stew for Hualiama, who had a Dragon-sized hunger, as she used her free hand to scoop up the delicious stew with chunks of sweetbread. She said, “Yum. That’s wonderful. What’s the grin for, Ja’al? Aye, they do feed royal wards in the Palace! Yualiana, may I trouble you for another helping?”
“Mercy, petal. I mean, have mercy upon Ga’athar, and tell him a few things before he bites off your arm with impatience.”
“Well …” Hualiama puffed out her cheeks. “I apologise if I’ve been acting a bit strange, these past six years …” She told them of how the near-disaster upon the Receiving Balcony, and how Amaryllion had compelled her to forget.
Master Ga’athar’s eyes flicked several times to the half-healed cut on her cheek, and the yellowing bruise surrounding it, as she tonelessly described the King’s treatment of her. No-one, least of all Lia, seemed keen to dwell on the subject.
“Your eyes have changed colour, Lia,” Inniora confirmed. “They’re definitely bluer; a shades darker than my brother’s.”
“What do you plan to do now?” asked Yualiana.
“Find Grandion,” said Lia. “He has suffered on my account.”
“You actually–”
“Flew Dragonback, Master Ga’athar.” Lia had no need of his hiss to understand how severely he disapproved. “Worse, or more accurately, Grandion and I exchanged oaths. I promised to aid and protect the Dragonkind against whatever terrible future the rise of this third race might portend, should the prophecy come to pass, and he vowed to aid and honour me, out of his freewill as a creature of fire and magic.”
Yualiana sighed, “Petal …”
“I know. He’s a Dragon and I’m not. Yet I am fond of him–” she squirmed, but in the end, a desire to lay out her entire sordid history won out “–I’m fond of Grandion in ways which are rather more heretical than I ever felt about Flicker. I’m sorry! The fire drives me, don’t you see? Long before Amaryllion ever passed Flicker’s gift on to me, I felt driven … and I know how reckless and irresponsible it must seem to you all, yet the song must be sung, and the deed done. I must find Grandion. I’m certain of few things, but I know that breaking my oath would be a sin greater than any I have committed thus far.”
Inniora squeezed her hand gently. “Don’t apologise for being who you are, Lia.”
“But I don’t want to be who I am!” she burst out. “Islands’ sakes, that’s the whole problem with my life and it’s driving me off the proverbial Island-edge of sanity! Am I moons-mad? I want wings; might I not more hopefully pine for the stars? I cannot have what I want. It’s impossible.”
Yualiana said, “Having no wings of your own, you want his? It’s a heart thing, petal.”
Hualiama scowled unhappily. She loved Yualiana, but her self-righteous tone deserved a Dragon-sized slap.
“How do you plan to find Grandion?” asked Ga’athar.
In a tone designed to shock, Lia replied, “I plan to fly to Gi’ishior and ask his father.”
“Mercy!” cried Yualiana.
“You’re moons-mad and more!” barked Master Ga’athar. “Have you no inkling how fragile is the peace between Dragons and Humans–of course you do. You salvaged that peace last week, but Lia …” He ran his hands through his hair, clearly fighting for calm. “Girl, you know we love you as one of our own. Always have done. But … they’ll kill … freaking feral windrocs! Speak to her, Yualiana.”
“Petal–”
Ja’al cut his mother short with a peremptory gesture. “Mom, Dad–this is Hualiama of Fra’anior, Dragon Rider and Dragonfriend.”
Inniora put in, “As in, the dancing dervish who kicked Ra’aba’s hideously hairy butt all over–”
“Inniora!” Yualiana snapped. “Mind your language!”
“It’s true.” Inniora folded her arms mutinously.
Ga’athar grunted, “Fine. We’re all ralti sheep dancing around the five moons. How do you plan to approach Sapphurion, Hualiama? Twist his wing? Dragonfriend, aye. You know what else the Dragons say? You’re a Dragon killer.” Half an expletive exploded from Ja’al’s mouth, perfectly expressing how Lia felt. Thumping the tabletop with his fist, Ga’athar shouted, “You cannot trust a Dragon! Never! They’ll eat you alive, girl.”
Far from being taken aback by his vehemence, Hualiama looked inward, and discovered unyielding clarity of purpose. “Master Ga’athar,” she replied. “Mistress Yualiana. I’ve always felt welcomed and loved in this house, and it means more to me–mercy, I’m going to cry–more to a foundling who was abandoned …”
“Easy, rajal,” said Yualiana, squeezing her arm.
Lia sobbed, “Yet it seems I’ve found … love … in unexpected places, all my life.”
Master Ga’athar breathed, “Aye, petal. We know.”
Her brokenness held them spellbound. Lia glanced at the infant slumbering in the crook of her arm, winding a curl of baby-soft hair about her finger as she fought for control. “This little one enters life at the dawn of a new era in our Island-World. None of us know what the future may bring. Amaryllion told me of war engulfing the Islands; that entire cultures would be erased. He said, ‘The bridge between Dragons and Humans will be thy soul, and according to thy choices, this age will rise or fall.’ This little girl must have a future. And if that means I must fly into a Dragon’s champing jaws to secure it, then so be it. I shall fly.”
Ja’al interjected, “And may the courage of a Dragon be your heart’s portion.”
Smiling gratefully at him, Lia added, “In that library beneath Ha’athior, some person or Dragon had been reading about ruzal. I take that to mean either Ianthine is loose, or my father escaped draconic justice–incredible as that may seem. I cannot find Grandion on my own. The Island-World is vast. How many years has he been missing? And when I consider his fate–” she pressed her hand to her stinging heart “–it is as though part of my soul flew abroad and tarries there, as you said, Ja’al. I fear I’ll never be whole without it. Without him.”
Lia groaned, her fist clenching on the bedclothes. Why such pain? Surely her
feelings should have mellowed with time?
“Master Ga’athar, there’s a secret about Sapphurion and Qualiana … before Ianthine was banished, I believe she brought me from the East to Gi’ishior as a newborn. Certainly, I was no older than Bithinia, here. I’d need to ask Queen Shyana how old I was when they adopted me, but I believe it might have been between two and three years of age.”
“Brought up by the Humans on Gi’ishior, surely?” said Ga’athar, at exactly the same time as Ja’al gasped, “You’re not saying Sapphurion–the Dragon Elder Sapphurion–”
“I’ve lucid memories of running into his paw, Ja’al. I could show you, if you’d like.”
“I believe you,” said Ja’al, exchanging incredulous glances with his father.
“Grandion remembered his mother caring for a green-eyed Human baby. He was terribly jealous. And how come I know Dragonish so well?”
Ga’athar tugged on his beard as though he wished to pull it out by the roots. “Lia, you believe Sapphurion will deal fairly with you, because you are that girl he and Qualiana somehow hid from every other Dragon, against every draconic law, for several years?”
“If my memories do not play me false, Master. If this isn’t some stupid, girlish longing for a past more palatable than mine has been. If, if … mercy, too many ifs!”
“The risk! Appalling–”
“Aye, the risk, Master. If I can learn where my Dragon has gone, over the Isles and beyond, I plan to fly first to Fra’anior Island and take leave of my parents–”
“No!” At least three people shouted at her at once.
Lia soothed Bithinia, who had squalled at the noise.
Yualiana huffed, “Petal, honestly. Blasphemous fondness for a Dragon I can handle–roaring rajals, will you hear me? Whatever prekki-fruit mush has clogged up the innards of your skull, can you scrape it out now, please? Ja’al, you didn’t–”
“Yualiana–I promised.” At a further chorus of scornful snorts, Lia protested, “I promised the Queen and my brother I would not travel beyond our Island-Cluster. A promise is a–”
“Heavens above, Lia!” Master Ga’athar threw up his hands in disgust. “Your father will beat you, toss you in his dungeons and throw the key off the Island! I will personally rattle that cage upon your shoulders until the monkey-nuts inside fly out of your ears!”