Dragonsoul

by Marc Secchia

A brown fist flattened the door. She caught a glimpse of glistening grey-brown scales slithering aside from her doorway–an Anubam? No time. Dragonets poured through the doorway in a living wave. White wings, two feet in wingspan. Pinkish eyes, fixed on her with a oneness of purpose she had never observed in dragonets before. They did not attack immediately, but surrounded her with slow menace, so closely linked, they all breathed and blinked at exactly the same intervals. Freaky!

  Bring me the Star Dragoness.

  Numistar! It could be no other. Hualiama had but a fragment of time to ponder how the dragonets’ draconic minds seemed muted, almost inaccessible to her magic, when Azziala’s mental voice boomed:

  AMBUSH! DRAGONS, OBEY!

  Muscular spasms immediately claimed a dozen or more dragonets, but their fellows turned, squeaking, ‘Release. Release.’ Several dragonets returned to their previous posture, but most did not. Wild, brief scraps developed before the overtaken animals were slain without a hint of remorse. Line of sight, Lia remembered. The Haters required visuals to enact their Command magic. How did Azziala do it? She clutched her blades, breathing evenly, watching the single-minded organism watching her. Was this assassination? Or a kidnap attempt?

  The dragonets sprang! Hualiama had no chance, no room to move aside. Instead, the blades flashed around her person in the wings-of-iron defensive technique, shearing their way through dozens of the creatures. Flicker! She heard his cry over near the fireplace; immediately, she carved through a swirling mass of bodies, her head jerking as small, strong paws seized her hair and clothing, her arms and ankles; her rising Dragoness-magic shoving them away briefly, but she had so little to give … the blades sang faster through the air as the agile white dragonets attacked not with fire, but with clouds of icy white breath that chilled her skin and rimed her nostrils …

  DRAGONS, OBEY! The massive wash of Azziala’s blanket-Command darkened Lia’s vision. Dizzied, she crashed to her knees. Blood spurted from her nostrils. Dragon-thunder in the corridor! Her mind seemed trapped down a dark tunnel, her need clamouring within, the ruzal uncoiling hungrily in response as tens and then hundreds of paws seized her besieged body and raised her into the air.

  Dragon, please!

  We … can’t, oh Humansoul …

  She couldn’t Shapeshift? She lacked the strength? Mercy, if the Empress would simply release–dimly, she heard the chants of Dragon Enchanters in the corridor without, suddenly cut off. Too many dragonets. They were accustomed to picking individual targets; only Azziala’s extreme brand of power allowed her to attempt otherwise. Through the mental network, she heard cursing as her mother tried to teleport into the chamber, only to be denied by Blue Dragon shielding; by Dragons stolen from Affurion’s forces. Numistar had to be imitating Azziala! The adjoining door burst open to admit Saori, screaming and brandishing her daggers, and Elki running in holding a blanket–what? Deeper in the fortress, more screams. Minds winked out of the mental network. Many minds. Images of thousands of dragonets pouring through the sleeping levels, slaying indiscriminately, flashed into her awareness. She was cold, so cold; Numistar’s power exerted through the dragonets stifled her ability to respond except in her mind. Azziala countered with monstrous fury expressed in psychic blasts that struck down dragonets by the hundreds and many of her Enchanters too.

  Hualiama twisted and bucked, fighting tooth and nail. Her forehead slammed against the doorjamb!

  Elki, blood streaking his cheeks, dived for her with the blanket outstretched. “Lia! Wrap up!”

  Wrap up? She almost laughed, before the blanket smothered her and the stone floor rose to smash into her left hip, elbow and shoulder. Drat, her bother weighed a ton! He was somewhere on top of her, thumping and kicking dragonets through the thick blanket–and bruising his outraged sister’s jaw–but the jolt somehow helped her to focus.

  Azziala bellowed, DRAGONS, DIE!

  Her heart almost seized up. Flicker! Please … sweating, screaming, fading, she knew only the warmth of her Dragoness bracing her within.

  BRING ME HUALIAMA! Now the Ancient Dragon’s mental roar overwhelmed the Dragon-Haters’ shared mental space. BRING HER!

  Grief, between her mother and Numistar, there was no room to think. Paws seized the blanket, jerking her about; Lia’s head popped out. At least two hundred dragonets seethed over her prone body. Elki gripped a dragonet by the tail, employing the hapless, shrieking creature like a swatter to smack his opponents left and right. Flicker fought and bit his way over her stomach, defending her with ferocity disproportionate to his size. Drat the pests, they had tied her up! To her astonishment, Hualiama discovered that the dragonets had managed to truss her inside the blanket using a pair of Elki’s trousers for her torso and Saori’s underwear for her ankles!

  Up and away! squealed the dragonets, heaving in concert.

  She scooted helplessly out of the doorway and down the stone corridor, dragged feet-first by fifty members of Numistar’s new body. Saori raced after, managing to flow like quicksilver between the attacking dragonets while simultaneously dicing them up with her sword. Dragon attack! The Eastern Isles warrior rolled smoothly, dodging a Brown Overmind who sprang past Lia, destroying a section of the wall of the chamber next to Elki’s room. What? Where had that beast–oh!

  “Affurion, help!” yelled Hualiama.

  Her head and accordingly her view, rattled with every bounce along the rough corridor floor as the dragonets charged onward. She saw the huge Brown fold himself double in the narrow corridor. His crimson eyes lit upon her, before his flame-filled mouth gaped open.

  Oh no!

  Chapter 19: Land, Ho!

  GRRAAARRRGGH! A fireball blossomed behind the sprinting Saori, silhouetting her slender, sword-waving form against a background of roiling orange flame. The warrior dropped flat on her face; exactly the right reaction, because the fireball sizzled less than half a foot over her back and pounded into Hualiama’s upraised, blanket-wrapped legs, cleaning every dragonet off her body save Flicker, who had somehow flattened himself over her mouth and face–protectively.

  Was Affurion enthralled? Azziala’s stooge?

  Enwrapped in smouldering cloth, Hualiama had no time to think of anything but figuring out how to breathe around Flicker’s unmentionables. Alright, he had saved her face from a roasting. Clever dragonet. Now he leaped into her chest, hissing at the Brown Overmind, who charged directly at them, not holding back an ounce of his strength. Fangs! Blazing eyes! Terror shredded her belly as Affurion’s thundering paws shook the corridor. Thirty tonnes of enraged, jaw-champing, fire-sizzling male Dragon stampeded toward the royal ward of Fra’anior. Trussed as neatly as a Crescent Islands porker to a spit, it was all she could do to try to squirm aside. She managed a half-roll before Affurion’s talons scraped the stone beneath her body, flipped her roughly into his palm, and imprisoned her torso.

  Dragonfriend! he panted. Away with thee!

  Away? What the volcanic hells are you playing at, Affurion?

  “Yaah!” shrieked Saori.

  Get off my tail, you madwoman! howled Affurion. Lia was being pounded up and down with his every running step, but suddenly she scented clean air. His wings snapped wide. They were airborne. The back of her head clipped the low retaining wall of the porch as the Brown Overmind dipped rapidly over the edge, clearly aiming to avoid any line-of-sight attacks. She cried out, but the damage appeared to be superficial.

  DRAGON, OB–the cry of three Dragon Enchanters manning a Dragonship directly ahead of them cut off abruptly as a speeding Grunt transformed the bow end of their vessel into a crumpled mess of struts, fabric and shattered crysglass. Hualiama flinched. Not pretty.

  We learned from Siiyumiel and Grandion how to detect their special optical shielding, said Affurion, baring his fangs at the destruction. And how to improve our own.

  Behind, from the rapidly receding Chenak Stronghold, clouds of white dragonets fluttered swiftly out of the nostrils, attacking Dragonships and Lost Islands Dragons
with indiscriminate abandon. Numistar had sought her, Hualiama realised. That was the goal of the attack. The Winterborn and the Empress continued to trade pleasantries, shaking the Air-Breathers and every living soul borne upon their backs, while Affurion accelerated rapidly away to the South. Untouched. Unconstrained.

  “What are you doing with me, Affurion?” Hualiama demanded.

  “Lia!” Saori shouted from way behind.

  “By my wings, are you still there, you pest?” snapped the Brown, bending his neck to regard his tail with consternation.

  So she was. Saori clung to his tail just above the final tail-spike with the air of a thousand year-old lichen attached to her favourite boulder. The prospect of flying several miles above the Cloudlands on the tail of a peeved Brown Dragon clearly did not faze her in the slightest. The girl waved her sword threateningly. “Nobody steals my friends, understood, Affurion?”

  His eyes blazed, but to Lia’s surprise, he grunted, “Very well, warrior-girl. Come up here and cut your friend free.”

  A whiplash flick of his tail shot Saori through the air above them. With a wicked chuckle, Affurion flexed his wings and surged after the screaming warrior, before catching her nonchalantly in his free forepaw. Being a male Dragon, this performance came complete with a variety of triumphant, muscular contortions and a bugle of self-congratulation. Reversing her sword, Saori stabbed him between the knuckles in the very same movement that he used to catch her!

  Hualiama felt the jolt of pain surge through Affurion’s body, but a second surprise piled hard on the heels of the first. The Eastern Isles warrior and the huge Dragon eyeballed each other. Flame met fury. Dragon fire met Human determination. The air crackled audibly as the Brown Overmind bent his blazing eye upon Saori, but she did not move a muscle, apparently mesmerised or terrified, Lia did not know which. Twenty or more shallow breaths later, she saw the Dragon’s eye-fires mellow through orange and apricot colours to a beautiful, clear yellow, the very palest hint of yellow, and the ensorcelled girl gasped, her hand relinquishing the sword to fly to her throat. She swallowed audibly.

  Thou … his voice husky with emotion, Affurion could barely splutter a word.

  Saori giggled like a girl ten years her junior, “A-A-Affurion?”

  The Dragon growled, “What trickery is this? A glamour of Herimor? She–Dragonfriend! Explain at once, before I … before I–” he choked out “–release me at once!”

  “Nobody’s holding you, mighty Affurion,” said Hualiama. Ha. The Dragon Rider magic had the Brown in its sights, and though he looked as comfortable as a shorn rajal, Affurion would soon learn he had no choice in the matter. “Saori, help out here, would you? Why are you taking us South?”

  This question swung Affurion’s wings onto an easier bearing. He said, “I promised the Tourmaline I would act when I saw fit to drag you forth from your mother’s roost. Perceiving Numistar’s cowardly attack, we seized the opportunity. And, removing you from the Lost Islands increases our chances of survival, o Star Dragoness.”

  He had the grace to state the last with a few token regret-indicators in his sub-vocal Dragonish that accompanied the Island-Standard delivery.

  “I understand,” said Lia, tersely. The avaricious eyes of Azziala and Numistar would be drawn to Kaolili, for that must be his intent, rather than to the Lost Islands Dragonkind.

  “Do you?”

  Did she understand who was the prey in this game of Dragons? “Well, I appreciate you weren’t about to pause to ask the Winterborn or the mad Dragon-Haters for permission. That would have been marginally less fatal than your fireball.”

  “Hmm!” he rumbled forcefully. “Perfect shot. Roasted toe of Human Princess aside, I achieved my exact goal.”

  Hualiama and Saori both laughed at his droll humour, although the Eastern Isles warrior still sounded rather more breathless than the situation warranted. Now, the Dragon transferred his cargo into one paw so that Saori could exercise her carving skills on the blanket. In a moment, the charred cloth dropped away to reveal a Princess clad only in a scanty, mid-thigh under-shift, and a face that contorted as she checked her smoke-blackened toes. Aye, ten. Mostly unharmed. She touched her left eye gingerly. Swelling up like a ripe prekki-fruit.

  Saori sneered, “I see we are dressed for the occasion as always, Hualiama.”

  Lia bristled. Call her a tramp without saying the word, would she? “Grow your hair, Saori, I dare you.”

  “Down, little rajal.”

  Claws extended, Lia leaped at her friend and took a snap at her throat! She pulled back in embarrassment. “Uh … sorry. Dragoness.”

  Affurion peered curiously at her. “The other manifestation of your fire-soul can–”

  “–transform your hair colour?” said Saori, wonderingly. “Look. Amazing.”

  “Oh mercy, not again.” The hank of hair Saori produced was a striking mixture of white-blonde and deep blue tresses. Setting aside her Nuyallith blades with a glum air, Hualiama perched her rump on the Brown Overmind’s inner left knuckle. “Alright. I can’t fix my weirdness. But as for you, girl, I’m afraid you have a major fixation on Affurion here.”

  Saori’s face moved through a fine spectrum of apoplectic rainbow colours. Ha! Sweet revenge.

  “Fixation in a magical sense,” Lia clarified. “Oath-fixation.”

  “If I understand your obtuse logic, then may I categorically state that I am not the type of Dragon to desire a Dragon Rider,” Affurion snorted crisply.

  “Nor am I fixated on a Dragon, unlike you!” muttered Saori. “Though I’ll grant, you appear to have reason. Bizarre, but definitely reason. When I first saw you making moon-eyes over that Tourmaline Dragon, I thought you were the most disgusting, immoral piece of filth I had ever–”

  “Stop! Islands’ sakes, Saori.” Lia fanned her cheeks unhappily. “I’m not exactly comfortable with the outcome, alright? I’d enjoy being reminded of who’s the freak around here just a little less often. Can we agree to stuff your war-hammer honesty down your fumarole? Now. I’m not sure either of you can deny this Dragon-Rider linkage, once it’s present. But you can try.”

  Affurion and Saori snarled almost identically at her.

  The Princess of Fra’anior made a typically Fra’aniorian shrug, twirling both hands to emphasize her frustration. “Very well, stubbornness rules the day. Whichever of you chooses to see sense, write me a scroll, will you?”

  * * * *

  “Land, ho!” Saori sang out, pointing ahead.

  Still visibly, smokily miffed, the Dragon muttered, “Told you an hour ago.”

  Affurion sounded as though he had swallowed a bushel of crossbow quarrels. His plan, which had drawn protests from both Saori and Hualiama, involved dropping the Princess off with the first friendly Dragon or Dragonship they spied, and then beating his wings back to the Lost Islands as quickly as possible. Saori would return to take care of Prince Elki, who by virtue of being Mizuki’s Dragon Rider, ranked somewhere rather higher in the Brown’s draconic reckoning than either girl he now carried–with patent prickliness–between the spine-spikes above his shoulders.

  Being a Dragon, the extent of dissent he tolerated was a Dragon’s whisker above zero.

  Lia promptly demanded a return to his paw, curled up, and took a nap.

  She awoke from an eggling-dream of her White Dragoness shell-mother to hear a ding-ding-ding nearby. Oh. Dragonship. Qilong’s Dragonship! Well, here was a surprise worthy of the name. The navigation bells jingled cheerfully as the Steersman brought the Dragonship onto a new heading and Qilong, he of the purple shirt and violently clashing suns-orange trousers, strutted out of the navigation cabin and took his habitual legs-akimbo stance on the forward starboard gantry.

  “I am Qilong, dread pirate-lord of forty-three Islands!” he yelled.

  Well. No change there.

  His eyes lit upon Saori, seated far above Hualiama’s position in Affurion’s left forepaw. The Prince of Kaolili described a sumptuous bow. “Ah, sh
e who was once my bride-to-be, how many moons is it since I had thee ensacked in my cabin, awaiting my majestic ravishment?”

  “Ensacked, my lord Qilong?” Saori had to be chewing on her own liver up there, judging by her tone. Lia was certain ‘ensacked’ was not even a word.

  “For I, the mighty Qilong, dread scourge of fifty-eight Islands, do declare–”

  “We brought you a present, o most puissant Qilong!” the Eastern Isles warrior interrupted. “Behold!”

  Puffing out his chest, Qilong examined Affurion’s length and quite clearly came up with nothing at all. He called up, “Thou art a gift most kingly. What fair wind brings thee to mine dining-table, o most ravishing maiden?”

  What is this peculiar little fellow doing? Affurion asked privately, with great amazement. Is this a Human courtship ritual?

  Lia chuckled, In a manner of speaking. Watch.

  Standing up in Affurion’s paw, she waved to attract the crew’s attention. Ah, there was Genzo, the First Mate who was the brains of the operation, and the mountainous Steersman Sumio, who had to be part Eastern Giant, or she was a pink-spotted rajal.

  Closer, Affurion.

  Affurion had to furl his wing carefully to avoid buffeting the Dragonship. He extended his forepaw, granting Lia a first-hand viewpoint to appreciate the exact pallor of Qilong’s terror as it dawned on the dread pirate-lord exactly what, or who, Saori intended her present to be. With a long, piercing wail that would have been the envy of any vapid court maiden the Island-World over, Qilong bolted down the gantry, threw open the nearest cabin door, and pitched headlong inside, with a huge clash and clatter of what sounded like body armour.

  Impressive, said the Brown Overmind, meaning it.

  A further scream sounded from within that room. “Spider!” squealed the redoubtable Qilong, emerging to fling a very substantial, very hairy specimen of the Eastern bird-eating spider into the Cloudlands. The door immediately slammed shut behind him once more. Lia was not quite certain, but she thought she heard sobbing and gnashing of teeth in there.