by Marc Secchia
That third morning, as a misty dawn leached unwillingly through the trees–the Dragon imagined such a dawn, straining to touch his hide with a breath of heat tempered by the damp–Lia muttered, “I sense giants.”
“All passengers aboard,” Grandion said cheerfully.
Hualiama sighed and climbed up his thigh, eschewing a proffered paw.
“May I use your sight?”
She sighed again. “If you must.”
“I won’t touch anything else.”
“Sure. I trust you.”
Never had words rung hollower. Grandion’s belly-fires declared his frustration all too eloquently. The Dragon reached for her sight as the pint-sized paragon of vexation who masqueraded as a Dragon Rider clambered up to his shoulders.
With serpentine undulations of his body, the Dragon navigated the waterways, using his tail as a rudder and for propulsion, and his mighty paws as additional paddles to push through the reeds, muck and rotten vegetation. He swam the deeper parts. Thirty-foot giant salamanders and toothy reptiles Grandion recognised from a scroll attacked them repeatedly. “Crocodiles,” he said. “One of Dramagon’s misadventures.” Drawing no response from his Rider, he added, “It seems Dramagon did not encourage visitors.”
She said, “These three years, the spirit of Dramagon has been your mentor.”
The Tourmaline Dragon choked on his own fires.
He stared unseeing into the swamp-mists. Misery. A mighty Dragon, reduced to borrowing a Human’s inferior eyesight–and he should be grateful for the pittance. Bitter dark-fires soured his stomach. When a crocodile snapped at his left thigh, Grandion crushed it with a single bite, thinking how impossible it was to fathom that Lia’s words could wound worse than a Dragon’s claws or fangs. He had never imagined … she was speaking. His Dragon hearing brought her speech to his ear-canals with perfect clarity.
Hualiama said, “Before he died, Amaryllion Fireborn spoke to me at length. One thing I remember is what he said about love, that some creatures–he meant me–are given the power to love with such power and purity, that no taboo can stand against. He did not warn me that love can make us vulnerable. In my life, I’ve made terrible mistakes. But I have always allowed love its way, no matter the anguish and suffering it might cost.”
Why did she speak of love, the Dragon wondered? He knew many words for love. Did she mean kinship-love, sacred-love, roost-love, or heavens forbid–
“You and I are taboo-breakers, Grandion. We’ve broken, and continue to break, one of the oldest taboos in existence on this Island-World.”
What they had done was to obey the obligation of oaths recklessly taken, but grave in their consequence! Yet, he would never recant. Grandion began, “Which cost me–”
“Hush.” A word, and she banished his hissing. Dragon fires surged behind his blind eyes, a sudden splash of colour where he expected none. “I know my deeds harmed you, Dragon. I can only apologise, here and now. I don’t presume to teach a Dragon his path. I don’t expect you to fly to this Island of fate with me … but we are united, Grandion. United by oaths which we swore freely, heart to heart, and we added to that the oath of seeking this Scroll of Binding together. We joined our fates in the strongest ways known to our respective kinds. You seem to imagine an oath is a malleable thing, to be used or set aside at a whim. You think the same of your Rider. Use her. Abuse her. Rip from her what you need.”
Like mist, her words seeped into his mind–only her words were not clammy. They seared his third heart. “I know about abuse, Grandion. I’m versed in behaviours as twisted as ruzal itself, and I hate my past. If to grasp the essence of love means to grasp its diametric opposite, then I am detestably educated. I’m a detestable being.”
Grandion quivered with the effort that it cost him to keep listening. Bonfires and lightning and storm powers raged in his stomachs, screaming around his thoughts like feral windrocs mobbing a fresh carcass. How could she be detestable? How could she speak this way?
“There’s a fine line between bending in love and being a victim.” She shifted restlessly on his back. “Bear to your left, Dragon. The going’s easier. I think the swamp will end soon.”
He knew that. He heard the sound of water rushing down a cliff, and the change in the way the wind flowed over his scales. There was vertical air movement, and the chattering of cliff-larks. Was he ready to fly?
Was he ready to fly–with her?
“The habit of being a victim scars and stunts a person. It becomes an easy posture to maintain, the default posture. I don’t understand how to break free of its chains. I broke my adoptive father’s ribs. I beat my blood-father in hand-to-hand combat. Aye, I handed the Onyx Throne from one father to the other–and am I the better person for it? I don’t know what to do now, Grandion. With you. You hurt me, so … so …”
“Effortlessly,” he mourned. “A cold, calculated raid.”
Warmth dripped upon his back, warmth that tingled with a redolence of Hualiama. Even her tears, he thought. Even those were magical.
“I don’t presume to say, ‘Never again,’ because–” she snuffled hugely, scaring several nearby water-birds into a honking panic “–because I’m probably stupid and craven enough to give it all over again, for the chance to save you. But you need to trust me, Grandion. Don’t ever think me a tool, or a pet. Nor am I indestructible, nor without feelings. Somehow I envisage equality between Dragon and Rider. A partnership not founded upon grasping what we want, but thriving in mutual need and interdependence. We’re two souls of equal worth–and if that sounds naïve to a mighty Dragon’s ears, then I’m sorry, but that’s how I see it.”
Was it partly instinct, rooted in the simple physical disparity in their sizes? One of the deepest Dragon instincts was to protect hatchlings. His accelerated Dragon development had meant he outstripped her, moving through the Dragon equivalent of human childhood and teenage years in two summers, while Hualiama remained a child far longer. Lia’s acumen had penetrated the heart of the conundrum. His intuition informed him that these ideas were merely the surface expression of a far deeper misperception on his part. Upon the scales of his draconic worldview, Humans weighed a mere fraction of what Dragons did. Undervalued. Belittled. Enslaved.
Dark-fires of shame excoriated his magical and emotional pathways. He had done evil. He just did not know how he could have done differently. She deserved an apology. Grovelling might have repaired some small part of the damage. He rebuked his fierce Dragon pride, flailing for words which eluded his grasp.
Beneath the water, Grandion’s claws clicked on stone. He walked up a short slope, sloughing swamp water and muck off of his flanks and limbs, flicking it off his scales, flaring his wings as his body quickened at the prospect of flight. He had not risen aloft for three years.
He asked, Do you sense anything ahead, Lia?
Nothing, she replied. Only mists drifting over an unknowable chasm.
The Tourmaline Dragon extended his wings, a song rising in his heart as he remembered the ways of the winds over the Island-World, and the joy of soaring and swooping, and the rush of wind upon his muzzle and spine-spikes. He began to tip forward.
One more thing, said Hualiama. Right now, you are not, by any measure under the twin suns, Dragonlove. You’re just Dragon.
And his hearts sank even faster than a Dragon’s plunge off the cliffs of Gao-Tao Island.
* * * *
Nightmares pulled Lia’s soul into darkness. The odour of falgaweed and alcohol choked her. So deeply was she mired in her dream, she was unable to escape the slow, creeping terror. Zalcion. His weight on her back, his stinking breath hot on her neck … she thrashed and screamed, but could not escape. Suddenly, the man’s already inescapable weight seemed to double, to quadruple. In the darkness, a Dragon’s cruel laughter washed over her. His paw held her fast. The terror of violation detonated in her heart. No longer was he the shining, beautiful spirit of a Dragon. Grandion was a dusky storm sweeping over Lia’s being,
all-knowing and all-conquering, a creature of bestial appetites and the power to crush her beyond redemption. Her white-fires fled before his mighty presence, shredded, brilliant petals cast adrift on an Island-World breeze.
This is the fate of the child of the Dragon! he roared. Never will you dance again!
Lia shot into wakefulness like a Dragon broaching the surface of an oily lake, screaming, “Gaaaaaaaaah!”
Grandion held her!
“Get off! Get off! Oh, great … get off me you freak!”
His paw lifted as though he had stepped upon a crossbow quarrel. “Lia? Are you alright?”
“No!” Her chest felt as though a Dragon still stood upon it. For long moments Lia leaned over, head tucked between her knees, trying to will breath into her lungs. Her world comprised the need for air. With excruciating reluctance, the invisible paw seemed to ease its grip. Hualiama hugged her knees, bidding her nausea settle and her headache abate.
“Can I help?” the Dragon asked.
The Yellow moon glinted off the Dragon’s scales, highlighting how his great bulk filled the tiny valley in which they had snatched a few hours’ rest. All was calm.
She said, “You can stay away from me.”
All around, fifty-foot bamboo forests concealed Dragon and Rider from casual view. The Island was small, just a half-mile or so across, one nameless Isle among thousands which littered their northward flight path. Lia scowled at the four paces which separated her from Grandion’s forepaws. It may as well have been a mile, crossing a chasm filled with Land Dragons the size of the creature she had seen off the Eastern Isles, or a hike across a bubbling lava lake.
Somehow, setting out, it had seemed so easy. Hualiama Dragonfriend would cross the Island-World for love, rescue her Dragon, and the stars and the moons would join in beneficent Dragonsong to celebrate the union of their hearts. Now, she feared him. She feared him with a soul-shrivelling, panic-inducing level of phobia she had never imagined. Perhaps the Dragon had touched a fear common to all women, a fear encapsulated in what she had feared her uncle intended to do to her, and Grandion had achieved in mind and spirit. Somehow, she felt complicit in her own violation. Surely, she had sparked his actions by reaching into his mind first. She had shown him the way. Her magic had enticed him. Was it even his fault?
Aye! No! She did not know. All Hualiama knew, was that she despised this woman. She loathed them both: Grandion for his unthinking dominance, and herself for the curled-up weakling she had become as a result.
Razzior had stolen her word.
Bezaldior. Alastior, she breathed. Nothing. The Orange Dragon had stolen her greatest weapon.
I am Alastior, Grandion replied, misinterpreting her words. What of it?
What did she know of love? For Humans, love was one word with meanings as scattered as the stars spanning the heavens. Infinitely complex. Infinitely pliable. Dragons, with their love of linguistic precision, codified love into many words. Was there a Dragonish word for wounded-love? Soul-crushed love? Love which caused the Islands to weep? Even now, the tremor of Grandion’s paw asserted his feelings. Yet if she went to him it would proclaim forgiveness–a lie, for understanding and pardon were in scant supply in her heart. But could a Rider and her Dragon stand opposed when Razzior sought the power of the Scroll of Binding for himself? That way spelled madness. Failure. And, an oath-breaking.
Hualiama, worthless as she might be in every other respect, was never an oath-breaker. Not willingly. All it needed from her, all the grace she felt she could give, was a decision.
She would rise. She would dance. She would love again.
Suddenly, Lia found her feet. Approaching Grandion, she laid her hand firmly upon his muzzle, wishing upon a thousand stars that she could gaze into his eyes once more.
Grandion, I might seem small and insignificant to you, but I have a dragonet’s courage. I want you to know that I am Hualiama Dragonchild. An Ancient Dragon tarried in this world for me. I carry the fires of Amaryllion Fireborn in my soul, and I will never let them die.
The Tourmaline Dragon vented a bemused grunt as Lia scrambled over his forepaw, and deliberately pulled at his talons until he made a nook for her to curl up into. He must think her cracked in the head. Good. Let him think it. She would play him like a harp, with a Dragoness’ cunning and a Human’s flair for the unexpected.
The treacherous, beautiful warmth of a Dragon compelled her eyelids to flutter shut.
Later, nightmares drowned Lia’s soul in darkness. The odour of falgaweed and alcohol choked her … Lia shot into wakefulness like a Dragon broaching the surface of an oily lake. “Razzior!”
Scrambling to his paws, Grandion asked, “Aye, he has sensed us. But how?”
“A Dragon’s eye.” Hualiama threw sand onto the embers of their fire. “I think he might have one of my Nuyallith blades. I didn’t tell you the rest of my tale after I crash-landed right into the tents of Saori’s people, did I?”
Nor had she pondered the Copper Dragoness’ disturbing regard for her brother. Lia frowned. What was the Island-World coming to, when Dragonesses flirted with Human men? A score on which she was hardly blameless, mind–no better than the twin suns arguing with each other which was the brightest! This could not be the change which the prophecy implied, could it? Improved relations between Humans and Dragons could not cause stars to fling themselves out of the skies, nor account for Ra’aba’s terror at the prophecy’s implications.
Grandion deposited Hualiama upon his shoulder. “Quick, take your seat.”
“You possess concealing magic?”
“Aye,” he growled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you just steal it from me when you had the chance?” she shot back, and bit her tongue. “Go on, Grandion.”
With a thrust of his massive thighs that articulated his rage, the Tourmaline Dragon launched himself skyward, beating his wings hard to rise above the treeline. He levelled off and pointed his muzzle to the northern sky. Seated between his spine-spikes, Hualiama twisted about to scan the horizon. “Dragons,” she said. “Twenty, maybe thirty …”
“Try this, Rider. Hold what you see steady in your mind, as though you frame a picture. Aye, good. I can touch it already. Now, imagine bringing it closer. Will the picture toward you.”
Lia gasped as the image leaped, magnified. “Drat, it’s gone out of focus.”
“Try again.”
The Yellow Moon waxed lambent, illuminating every Island for leagues around, but Lia had eyes only for the Dragonwing scudding in low from the south–hunting them, she realised. There was something strange about those Dragons. They flew poorly, as though heavily laden, but there was no mistaking the way that they headed directly for the Island which Hualiama and Grandion had just departed. The Tourmaline flexed his wings powerfully, driving them onward into the wind-still night, and although she knew that his magic concealed their presence from the naked eye, she also respected a Dragon power which could track them when unseen. Had Razzior sent those dreams into her mind? She shuddered, realising that if he could wield her deepest doubts and terrors against her, the Orange Dragon boasted at least Grandion’s power–and he had his ruzal to accomplish the rest.
The Tourmaline Dragon’s features blurred in the window of her soul. Transforming. Hualiama blinked. Gazing back at her, smiling, was the young man of the brilliant blue eyes. Not Ja’al, as she had sometimes suspected. No, he was different. He never spoke. Turning, he walked with the ease of a spirit-creature through the window, which seemed to be a portal to the understanding of mysteries which had plagued her since before her birth. Yet Lia could not follow. He beckoned; she glanced over her shoulder, seeking the Tourmaline Dragon in the dreamscape of her thoughts, but he was gone. Only the young man remained. A gesture of his hands brought her perception into focus. ‘Like this,’ he seemed to say, and her white-fires responded to his direction, the most delicate filaments springing like a perfect spiderweb toward his fingers, a web of gossam
er delicacy and astonishing tensile strength.
Tracing that pearlescent web with her mind, the Fra’aniorian Princess began to grasp what Grandion had shown her before. The picture distorted strangely before steadying, many times magnified.
“Ah,” said Grandion. “The Dragons carry Shinzen’s forces.”
Each Dragon carried a forty-foot bamboo pole clutched in his forepaws, and hanging from the pole were–she counted swiftly–fifteen armoured giants per Dragon. Surely these Dragons could not bear such a load far? The picture was faraway, but clear.
Beneath her, the Tourmaline’s belly-fires spoke urgently. “Aye. They cannot move fast, but there’s no need. That force will crush any Human settlement in these Isles. We must warn your friends from Eali Island.”
“How fare your wounds, Dragon?”
“I’m alive. I’ll be wishing I wasn’t after this day’s flying, however. You?”
“Alive. Aye. Glad to see my fires. Razzior only stole my words … I don’t understand, Grandion. How could he do that?”
“Steal an individual Dragon power?” Grandion shook his muzzle. “I wish I knew. Now, I need to know about this Dragon’s eye. We must subvert Razzior’s chase.”
During the course of that perfect, sunny day over the Eastern Isles, Grandion and his Rider put the dust of the long leagues between themselves and Razzior’s Dragonwing. Islet after dazzling green Islet passed beneath them, until in the dying suns-shine of evening, Hualiama began to recognise the shapes of the Islands from a map Naoko had ordered her to memorise–a woman as inflexible as her daughter, Lia observed sourly. They had flown in nineteen hours, the same distance a Dragonship might cover in four days and nights. Grandion had overworked himself. She, as his Rider, ought to have been taking better care of him than this!