Dragonlove

by Marc Secchia

Hualiama said, “So, I’m off to see the Dragoness Yukari in the morning.”

  Her brother sniffed, “You’re lucky. I get to sulk in camp while Copper-lady goes recruiting around the Isles.”

  “Sulk? You have Miss Silken Bowstrings in there–”

  “Elki? Are you coming back to bed?” The voice issuing from within the tent cut short her spiteful comment. In a moment, the flap twitched. Saori emerged, not even slightly tousled. “Elki, you left me so cold–oh, sorry, Lia. I didn’t see you there.”

  Hualiama scowled daggers at a blameless blue star twinkling on the horizon. “No. People rarely do.”

  Now Saori was giving her the magical itches! No disrespect to her personality, of course. Oh–did they have to? Lia pretended to examine the stars around the crescent Jade Moon, and White blazing pinpoint-sharp nearby, while princess-perfect Saori and her brother made noises like dragonets feeding. Shameless hussy. Meantime, Lia examined the odd sensation inwardly. Mercy, why was she in such a porcupine mood? Should she scratch where it itched?

  Immediately, Saori exclaimed, “Ouch! What pricked me?”

  “Ow-ow-ow, you little rajal.” Elki stood rubbing his chest, making a royal meal of his hurts, as usual. “That hurt.”

  Next he’d be pouting and running to Queen Mommy. Lia grinned. Now, what was the magic up to?

  Saori snapped, “What’re you grinning at, short shrift?”

  “Me?” Once again, the Eastern warrior’s nerve rattled her. Nobody but her brother called her ‘short shrift.’ With that, Hualiama’s thoughts pitched in an unexpected direction–aiming to create trouble between Saori and Mizuki. She found opportunity at once. There. A tenuous magic, if magic it was, linked the Copper Dragoness with her brother. What on the Islands … Hualiama stood stock-still, silenced by a thrill of recognition.

  Oh! Dear sweet rainbows over the Cloudlands, was this what Amaryllion had meant when he spoke of the unfolding of a magical bond between Dragons and Humans? She could not keep it to herself. The world of white-fires revealed an inclination of Mizuki’s fire-soul toward a yearning of equal intensity within the Prince’s being. Lia visualised the magic as an eruption of delicate, frond-like filaments of the purest turquoise Helyon silk from the glorious, burning essence of the Dragoness, and similarly from the noble, eagle-like soul that must belong to her brother.

  At one level, Lia was dumbfounded that such a power even existed in the Island-World. She should not be. She knew it for herself. Yet, the connection was incomplete. It required a catalyst. A delicate touch to meld the threads. Aye, this was magic to set a soul alight. Here lay a true labour of love.

  Lia’s affirming thought caused a quiet ripple of magic to lap over her brother. The filaments altered, growing in length, becoming kaleidoscopic in colour as they melded with the Dragoness’. Elka’anor lurched away from Saori, his hand fluttering to his heart. Mizuki found her paws, moving forward with a curiously high-stepping fluidity, her eye-fires utterly radiant, utterly fixated upon the Prince of Fra’anior.

  Thou … Mizuki whispered.

  “I don’t know … what is this … bonfire in my heart?” The Prince stumbled to his knees, within touching distance of the trembling Dragoness. “Lia?”

  “What in a Cloudlands hell is going on?” Saori complained.

  “I only helped release what was there all along,” said the Princess, brushing off Saori’s grasping hand. Her feet seemed to float across the dew-damp grass to a point where she completed a triangle with Elki and Mizuki. She gazed from one to the other, suddenly formal, even bashful. These were forces that shaped lives, and seized destiny by the throat. Lia felt humbled. Unworthy. What could one say to crown such a magical moment?

  Glancing to the skies, it seemed to her that the face of a well-loved friend gazed back from the stars, at once as black as soot, and as white as star-fire. Aye, she smiled. Thank you, Bezaldior, for giving this gift.

  The Ancient Dragon dipped his muzzle solemnly.

  Lia drew a huge breath. “Mizuki the Copper Dragoness, and Elka’anor, Prince of Fra’anior, I believe it would be appropriate to say this oath to each other: ‘Let us burn the heavens together, as Dragon and Rider.’ ”

  A jewelled spiderweb of silence glistened between them.

  Smiling, Hualiama prompted, “Let us burn …”

  As Elki and Mizuki began to stammer through the simple vow, a strangled cry rose from nearby. Saori fled.

  Neither the Dragon nor the Human even noticed, lost in their private communion.

  * * * *

  Riding a southerly breeze, the Tourmaline Dragon rose above the Islands at dawn three days later, visibly sleeker and more powerful than before. That was the advantage of a Dragon’s physiology, Hualiama thought. They used nutrients so efficiently. Her mount was surprisingly scientific in his approach to diet, seeking out not only the protein to rebuild his massive musculature, but fruits and even peat from a bog to supplement the minerals that he required. His long, sensitive nostrils could tease out trace metals and minerals, or identify the herbs best suited to cleansing his digestive tract and easing a painful wing joint.

  They flew east, seeking Yukari’s wisdom. Here the jagged, fern-fringed Islands were sparsely populated by jungle-dwelling Human tribes. Lia hoped that Shinzen would not bother with these people. Naoko had disparaged them as savages and cannibals. As she gazed over the sprinkling of low Islands spearing like uncut emerald rods out of the Cloudlands, Hualiama recalled Grandion noting that he smelled hints of smoke on the breeze, and her thoughts turned often to the south. Pillage and raze, was Razzior’s plan.

  One morning, Lia remembered to ask, “Grandion, what did you say to Saori to ease her mind?”

  The Dragon had insisted he speak to Saori. The Eastern Isles warrior had emerged from her tent an hour later, deathly pale but determined, and flown off Dragonback with Elki and Mizuki in the morning, heading westward for the nearest colony of Dragons just offshore of Haozi.

  “I told her of the ways of Dragons and their Riders,” he replied. “I insisted that the Copper Dragoness can never replace her in Elki’s affections.”

  “Because Humans and Dragons are never meant to be together?”

  “In a sense.” Before Hualiama could do more than recognise the hot disappointment rising in her gorge, the Dragon added, “Still your heated words, my Rider. Two days hence, I felt you create magic of a kind hitherto unknown in this Island-World. It may seem a fresh, wondrous thing. But we must be cautious. The Ancient Dragons did not craft our laws without cause or reason.”

  “I released–”

  “–what was already present. Aye. So you said.”

  “Thanks for the measure of trust, Dragon.” Ponderous, pontificating … animal! Would she ever understand him?

  Grandion rumbled, “You think my restraint unjustified. You think I despise and regret what we share, even though I continue to act upon the oaths we spoke together.”

  Hualiama knew she had to bottle up the frustration paining her breast. She schooled her reply into a measured response. “I think–I had hoped–it might be … different … between us, Grandion.”

  “You’re a special, magical woman.”

  “But?”

  “Do you feel compelled by a binding oath when you’d rather be chasing other, less belligerent and blind Dragons about the Island-World?” Grandion asked. Lia hissed wordlessly. “Is it that you don’t want to push me into a romance with the Copper Dragoness, but your ungovernable heart insists you must? Aye, you’re about as subtle as a volcano blasting an Island off its foundations. So you can stand aside once more and be little Lia, the bitter, cast-off victim this time not of fate, but of your own injudicious decisions?”

  There was something so breath-taking and infuriating about having her emotions read accurately by a creature of another species, that Hualiama felt her blood begin to fizz and boil. He deserved to be windroc bait!

  Her heart was truly as ungovernable as the fires which burst from b
eneath the Island-World’s skin. Could what she had never suffice? All her deeds, all that she had wrought and sacrificed and wept or rejoiced over, what she had fought for and learned and dreamed of–it was never enough. She was Lia. A royal ward, not true royalty. An unwanted Enchantress, hunted by Dragons. A person so enamoured of the madness of riding Dragons that she wished the same for others, and apparently possessed the power to make it so? Yet her life felt hollow. Fallen somehow short of its true potential.

  Hualiama kicked against the goads. Rebelled. Struggled endlessly, just as her life had been an unceasing struggle for acceptance and love. She was obsessed with chasing a love she could never have. She might better chase a breeze laden with fireflower pollen across the Islands!

  Why? Why did fate choose to scorn and scar her?

  Wrapped in silence, they flew on.

  The edge of the Island-World was a barren ocean of tan Cloudlands. With evening closing in, the shadows of the Islands reached out like long fingers intent upon grasping what lay beyond the horizon. Had she Dragon sight, Lia might have seen the tips of the Rim-mountains. Perhaps no eye could see that far. Yet Hualiama would dream of flight beyond the moons. The Dragon, pulsing with fiery life, oriented upon a talon-shaped Island right on the edge of that uncrossable desert, and his great, leathery wings creaked as they furled to trigger the descent to the place Akemi had described for them. ‘I shall not come,’ the old woman had said. ‘It is not my place to soar Dragonback. I will stay with my people and help with the exodus.’

  Was it not? Hualiama wondered about that statement from a woman who should also by rights be called Dragonfriend. She had held her tongue. What right of interference had she?

  Faster, faster flew the Tourmaline Dragon, drawn by a surging of hope in his breast, Lia recognised. His flight-muscles flexed like steel bands beneath his armoured hide. His neck stretched out for streamlining, while his four paws tucked up beneath his elongated body. Just the smallest flicks of tail or wingtips governed his course. Within, Hualiama considered the soul-fire creature that hovered within the portal of her being, coming no closer, not taking her over–as he had promised. Never again. A Dragon burned there, angelic.

  Strange word. Hualiama had once helped an archivist monk at the monastery offshore of Ha’athior to copy several scrolls of ancient lore relating to mythical beings. Leviathan was easy. Every Dragon was a leviathan, yet the monk averred that the word referred to a sea-creature, perhaps a swimming Land-Dragon. Lia had wondered aloud what might become of the Island-World if the Cloudlands turned to water–to an ocean, another impossible, magical idea. The archivist had chuckled softly at a girlish fancy, but rather than disparaging her, had said, ‘Girl, you must be an angel. Read this reference. Angels are spirits of the purest fire. A thousand summers ago, Humans used to believe Dragons were the embodiment of these angels, fire-spirits clothed in flesh, an eternal fire-soul trapped in corporeal form.’

  Girl, you must be an angel. She had never forgotten his words, a nugget of kindness in a dark place.

  What a fey Isle greeted a Dragon and his Rider. Using Lia’s sight, the Tourmaline Dragon brought them in low, so that together they could appreciate the stone archway that bridged the middle of the Isle, forming it into the shape of a wedding band a quarter-mile in diameter set upon its edge on a pedestal of rock. Thousands of jinsumo trees bearded the bridge in lush emerald foliage, sweeping hundreds of feet downward and sideways, the great veils of vegetation heavy with creamy blossoms. They shifted and stirred like a maiden’s long hair in the light breeze. The perfume was heady and enigmatic … and dragonets! A dark shadow seemed to ease from her soul as she spied a flight of sleek, tiny green dragonets whizzing through the portal. Oh, the birdsong! The dragonet-song! Though it was different in many characteristics, the Isle reminded her of exotic Fra’anior, and the thought of home was a pang so sweet, Hualiama gasped and rubbed away a crawling sensation on the nape of her neck.

  Grandion’s huge wings flared, bringing them to an abrupt landing in the shadows of that archway. His knees flexed to take the shock of touchdown, driving draconic footprints two feet deep into the soft soil. A chorus of tropical birdsong assaulted her ears, while damp, loamy odours filled her nostrils. Hualiama sighed and stretched luxuriously. Wow. Dragon flight made her ache in the oddest places.

  Inclining his muzzle toward her the Dragon whispered, I’ve a brash and foolish tongue, Lia. I’ve hurt thee.

  If that rocky arch was a wedding-band to place about one’s finger, then Hualiama Dragonfriend was the bride of sorrow, for she could never have her beloved. Lia said, “O Tourmaline, I wish for what lies beyond … life. Possibility. This entire Island-World.”

  Taking a moment to formulate her heartsong into words, she vocalised:

  Oh for wings to bear my soul,

  Beyond the cloudscapes of my dreams,

  Escaping the mortal coil that binds a being,

  Into flesh and blood and bone.

  Beyond this present world,

  Into eternity.

  White-fires touched her world. Somewhere beyond, yet within her being, Amaryllion dipped his great head, as if to acknowledge an oath. What did it mean? Where had those words come from, if not from her soul … or from whatever lay beyond, unreachable?

  Thrice-fold you wished for the beyond, Grandion sighed, palpably moved. May it be so, Rider. Let’s go find the Aquamarine Dragoness.

  Aye, Dragon. Don’t let me drag you into my melancholy.

  The Tourmaline Dragon raised his forepaw. Will you take the easy way down–for once?

  Lia laughed. What bitter, penetrating insight from her Dragon. Aye, Grandion. I grieve for what cannot be. I must learn to look to the brightness, to the Dragon fires and miraculous beauties of our Island-World, and not to my soul’s warped cravings. I’m sorry …

  Sliding down Grandion’s shoulder into the cup of his paw, Lia allowed herself to be conveyed to the ground. She looked about, and the Dragon looked from within her.

  A narrow trail appeared to lead beneath the archway, through ferns and fronds that brushed Hualiama’s shoulders, to a pool which had gathered there from the water which tinkled or trickled down from above. She stretched her legs along the trail, keenly regretting the loss of one Nuyallith blade. Her double-sheath seemed unbalanced, but she had her Immadian forked daggers on her belt and the rest of her weaponry secreted about her person once more. Lia’s boots sank into soft loam, and even Grandion’s tread was muffled, although he left a much wider trail of broken and crushed ferns in his wake.

  They should find Yukari near the pools beneath the archway. The Dragons believed that the pools had magical properties–physical restoration would have been perfect, but these were pools used by Dragon-seers and mystics seeking to penetrate the mysteries of the present and future.

  That meant no healing, unless Yukari as a Blue-coloured Dragon had healing powers like Qualiana’s.

  Hualiama brushed through a veil of jinsumo blossoms which hung right down to the ferns, dusting her shoulders and hair in creamy, aromatic pollen, to find herself standing on the shore of a set of interlinked pools which were exactly the colour she imagined Yukari might be. The still pools called to her spirit with promises of serenity. So alluring was the call that Lia pictured the stillness of death, and shivered. Beautiful, but undeniably creepy.

  She asked, Do you sense her?

  Nay, said Grandion.

  Hualiama wandered down to the shore, peering into the clear waters. An unusual mineral deposit turned the stones of the pools aquamarine blue, making a startling contrast to the dark ferny banks, so that for a moment, the Human girl imagined she looked downward into the sky. Vertigo tugged at her senses, but Grandion pinched her shoulders lightly with his forepaw, a steadying touch.

  Without speaking but in constant communion with each other, she led the Tourmaline Dragon around several pools, before finding a small animal path that led deeper beneath the archway, to a wider pool completely undisturbed by
water trickling from above. Here, the illusion of sky was nigh-perfect. Hualiama stepped up onto a blue boulder, the better to peer down into the water. Odd. The stones were a more regular size here, making a pattern she could follow with her eyes, suddenly picking out the crook of a massive foreleg and the edge of a wing …

  Mercy! Oh, G-Grandion!

  Chapter 22: Aged Wisdom

  Lunging forward, the Tourmaline Dragon snaffled Lia roughly off her perch as the ground shifted, transforming into the knuckle of a Dragon’s paw. The girl’s eyes rolled wildly before settling upon the skull-spikes of a Dragoness rearing out of the pool, her crushingly vast muzzle cracking open to vent a chuckle that melted Grandion’s bones. Never in his life had he imagined such a venerable Dragon Elder! Her size! Her presence! The purity and power of her Dragon fires! Before her he felt as a newborn hatchling, soft with yolk as he broke the shell for the first time, and trembling, beheld his shell-mother.

  You’ve found Yukari, little ones, rumbled the Dragoness.

  Bowing his muzzle to the ground and arching his wings in a gesture of the deepest deference, Grandion said, The most sulphurous greetings of Fra’anior be thine, noble Dragoness. I am Grandion of Gi’ishior, shell-son of Sapphurion and Qualiana. My companion is–

  Hualiama Dragonfriend, Princess of Fra’anior, she chirped, and I befriended an Ancient Dragon who was twenty times your size, Yukari. You don’t scare me.

  Disrespecting an Elder! Grandion’s fires howled his dismay. Catching Lia about the waist with an angry squeeze of his claw, he snarled, Don’t you dare cheek your elders and betters, hatchling!

  Peace, Grandion, said Yukari, unaccountably amused by the Human’s antics. We females play deeper games than you imagine. Come. Of late, the Island-World’s winds communicate much strangeness to my nostrils. You’ve travelled far from your Cluster. What do you seek of old Yukari?

  Healing for my sight, said Grandion.

  Lia added, I seek to help my Dragon, but I do wish you’d return to see Akemi, mighty Yukari. She misses you.