by Marc Secchia
Somewhere, a tiny voice was shouting for her. Hualiama. Hualiama!
Over twenty leagues from the source, the power of their Harmonic magic was still enough to overwhelm her utterly. Singing. Dancing. Weeping terrace-lakes for the Island-World she loved …
Hualiama. Come back.
She tumbled and played in an ocean of sound. What else mattered?
ALASTIOR!!
Shaken! Lia crash-landed mentally and picked herself up in almost the same quarter-note, painfully aware of her mistake. The shield was broken. Grandion fought like a beast, a vicious light in his eyes. Yukari snapped with her mighty jaws, taking a knot of three Dragon-heads at once and crushing them with a single bite. She had allowed this! Her, and her absurd notions of dance–no, that was the very point, the way the Harmonic magic flowed into her now, as though she were the focal point of a spiritual world that drew an endless, almighty breath. The dance was a physical expression of the Harmony of her being, of the way she perceived her world. Essential. Formative. Soul-song. She lifted her voice to croon:
A twirl of wings did greet the suns,
Frolicking, prancing, gambolling amidst motes,
Of life’s streaming gold.
* * * *
Her song was barely a murmur expressed via the musical capabilities of a Dragoness’ throat, but it turned every Dragon’s head for hundreds of feet about. Mesmerising. As enthralling as the colours of dawn, the little Star Dragoness floated slightly apart from her Dragonwing, and Grandion saw in her fire-eyes and spilling from her scales a radiance of unearthly allure, as if her song spoke in all the colours of rainbows, with the warmth of eternal fires and the chiming notes of his own soul.
All that was right and wholesome and pure dwelled within her paw; yet purity possessed a terrible power. This hymn of Harmony demanded that all sing its song. It reamed evil, for there was no place for Disharmony within its dominion, no compromise, no leniency.
Hualiama gestured. The Harmonic magic gushed out, and she knocked Dragons from the sky.
Despite his hopes, there was nothing pretty or easy about what the Shell-Clan Elder had suggested she should do. The power demanded was extreme, the labour and concentration required, more so. The Orange Dragons resisted with the collective fury of the Dragonkind, swarming about the invading Dragonwing with vicious snarls, resisting the punishing force of the Harmonic magic to the last. Drinking deep of the oath-connection between her and the Tourmaline, Lia shone upon the enemy, rebuking, chastising, whipping the Dragons until their fires snuffed out and they fell in twos and threes, then tens … minutes crawled by, then hours. Everywhere they turned, there were more Dragons. The battle roiled and raged, the thunderous mental commands of the Dragon-Haters growing ever more distant as Oranges mobbed the Dragonships, driving them away to the southwest. Enchanters smashed down on the fields in a rain of blue robes. Shreds of Dragonships drifted down to cover their bodies. Dragons fought each other to the death; the carnage, unlike anything Grandion had ever beheld.
Hualiama held her part powerfully, seemingly indefatigable.
The last quintet of Mist-Runners, victorious at last, crushed hundreds of fallen Orange Dragons as they slowly limped back to the edge of the Island, twenty leagues distant, and clambered back down to the deathly realm that, conversely, supported their life.
Grandion fought with Yukari. The elderly Dragoness was neither as quick as she had been in her prime, nor was her vision as channelled through Akemi perfect, but what she saw, she killed. Together, they rallied their Dragonwing and kept the Star Dragoness in their midst, safe to continue destroying the enemy. Slowly, the Orange horde drove his Dragonwing backward, away from the Haters and toward the city, until at last even the magical fonts of the Shell-Clan must have been exhausted, for the magic guttered and with it, Hualiama’s strength failed at last.
The suns were high in the sky, but on the point of being overtaken by the oily-dark storm Hualiama had observed. They had been fighting for five hours.
Yukari said, It is time, Tourmaline. Execute the plan.
You sensed–Grandion lowered his eyes to the city. In the square courtyard of a house close to the Palace, he saw a dozen Giant raiders boiling out of the ground, closely pursued by a battle-group of Affurion’s Anubam. They fought in a tight snarl, crushing houses as the tiny figures of dark-haired Easterners fled the scene. Makani! Call the Dragon Riders, Yukari. I must prepare …
The Dragons retreated toward Affurion’s forces now. They hovered over the city against a gloomy backdrop of oleaginous cloud, beating back the fringe of the Orange Dragonwing. Grandion eyed the weather suspiciously, tasting notes of tingling magic and premonition upon his tongue, meantime conversing rapidly with Hualiama. She would have to transform into her Human guise to penetrate the Palace, he told her, using Jin’s expertise and local knowledge–the boy knew far more than Grandion wanted to question him upon. But he was loyal, and that counted for much in the Tourmaline’s estimation. Makani would shadow them with the fabled hunting skills of a Grey Dragoness and Grandion would remain in close contact via their mental link.
Good hunting, said the Tourmaline, sharing strength with her.
* * * *
Hunting? Her wings were ready to drop off with exhaustion. The Grey Dragoness slipped swiftly out of the fray and down to the city, where Dragon Riders patrolled to prevent random Orange Dragons from fire-bombing the populace. The streets were still not empty. Hualiama had expected King Taisho to exert better control over his people.
Down in the barracks, she disappeared to find her clothing and weapons. Transforming into her Human form was a desperate struggle that again, proclaimed how diminished her magical resources were. A prickle on her neck? She whirled, but saw no-one. Fuming, almost certain someone had been spying on her, Lia donned her armour and sheathed her weapons.
She stalked back to the barracks, but Jin was exactly where she had left him, speaking with Makani in low tones.
In that Eastern fashion Lia had observed, the teenager refused to meet her eyes, appearing to focus on the region of her chest instead. Hualiama came within an inch of hitting him. Great leaping Islands, her draconic emotions were just so volatile–not that her Human had been anything less than volatile, she reminded herself with a deep chuckle that evidently startled Jinichi.
They prowled the streets of Kerdani City beneath thunderous skies.
He moved beautifully. Hualiama had never thought that about a Human before, far less a man. Ra’aba had possessed a rajal-like grace of movement, but Jin’s hunting style was like a shadow moving beneath a leaf. Magical? A flash of his eyes to check her location, and she knew that for a truth. What a burden to be the last of his people; in some ways, similar to her. One of a kind. So with sympathy and grim purpose united in her heart, she tracked the lithe youth through the back streets of Kerdani, coming by shadowed alleyways and unexpected shortcuts to a back wall of the Palace grounds. A thirteen-foot grey brick wall greeted them.
The first droplet of rain struck the back of her neck. A chill wind ruffled the trees behind that wall, as though clawed fingers ran through hair preparatory to sinking their razor-sharp points into the skull beneath.
Jin took a running start, two steps up the brickwork surface, and wriggled onto the top with the ease of a dragonet. He whispered, “Need a hand?”
Hualiama took a similar run-up, stepped lightly against the wall, and caught the top with her fingertips. A wriggle and a heave later, she sat beside him. “I’m fine.”
He somersaulted out over a backing ditch filled with sharp stakes. Lia did the same, landed and forward-rolled. She came smoothly to her feet and darted after Jin as he scooted through the thick foliage behind the Palace’s attractive ornamental gardens. Every bush and tree had been shaped by hand, creating a fantastical landscape of the creatures of the Island-World. They padded past a couple of soldiers, coming at last to a small metal grating set in the ground.
“Aeration for the storage chambe
rs,” he said, not even breathing hard. “You’ve trained at espionage?”
“I was a warrior-monk,” she said.
Jin picked at a scab on his chin in consternation. “What kind of a Princess are you?”
“That answer would probably shake you out of your boots; besides, I haven’t entirely worked it out myself. Care to open the grating, or shall I?”
A hailstone plinked off the grating. Two more.
The teenager knelt, pretending to work with a tool, but Hualiama felt his magic reach out in the same breath and turn the simple lock. Click. Fraudster.
They worked together to lift the heavy, rusted metal grating and set it aside. Then, the heavens split apart at the glacial roaring of Numistar Winterborn, and she hurled the fury of her retribution down upon the Island of Kaolili. Ice. Ice as thick and heavy as stone, smashed into the city with a thundering that drowned out all else. Lia and Jin bolted down the hole like a pair of scared rabbits. Lia dropped in feet-first, but Jin followed with a headfirst dive, landing right on top of her. They clashed heads sharply.
“Idiot!” snarled Lia.
“Move, you stupid vixen!”
“There’s another grating. Just a–mercy!”
Jin’s body jerked as ice pounded the ground outside and shot into the hole in a spray of needle-sharp fragments, slicing open Lia’s cheek and nose. Jin fared worse. Bracing herself amidst the flying shards and aware of the teenager cursing in her left ear, she booted the grating. Twice. It broke free with a horrendous clatter that was thankfully drowned out by the storm’s full-throated roaring outside. In a trice, the two Humans wriggled through the gap and dropped a short distance into a chamber three-quarters filled with sacks of grain.
They took stock. Lia dabbed her nose. “Won’t improve my looks. Can I help there, Jin? Defending yourself with your backside?”
“Get your freaking hands off me!” he snarled. Crimson spread visibly down his leg.
“Touchy. But your foot’s bleeding badly.”
“I’ll live.”
“And Shinzen will rue the day. Now shut your stupid fumarole, boy.” Lia ran her hands over his foot. “It’s a deep cut. It’ll hurt, but this is the real problem.” Without warning, she reached for his thigh, her hand a blur of speed. She yanked a dagger of ice out of his thigh and slapped her palm over the spot. “Pierced your artery. You were bleeding to death.”
“What have you–” His anger subsided in a gurgle of amazement. When she lifted her hand, the bright flow of blood had already subsided to a trickle.
“You’ll live to insult a few more women,” Lia growled.
Jin dropped his burning gaze, seething with emotions she could guess at. She bound his thigh with a length of cloth the teenager cut from his own shirt. At length, he grunted, “We’ve Giants to worry about.”
With one last, incredulous glance at the size of the chunks of ice shattering inside that short, curved aeration vent, Hualiama followed the sulky youngster into the darkness beneath Kaolili’s royal palace. He was right. She could practically smell Giant in here, that dank, oily power of Shinzen’s which so closely mirrored the ruzal still lurking within her.
Lia rubbed her breastbone dejectedly. How would she ever be rid of this curse?
* * * *
The Tourmaline Dragon blinked as he saw the storm turn to pursue the Dragon-Haters. Great, writhing black thunderheads filled the sky, speckled with white in the upper reaches where Numistar’s dragonets appeared to be riding the powerful updrafts. Her voice was the booming of thunder, a cacophony of hatred and ruin, and her presence created chill so deep, it froze the golden Dragon blood in his arteries and hearts. He knew they had miscalculated terribly.
Get down! he screamed. Affurion, the Browns–dig us shelter! Now!
At once the proximate Lost Islands battle-group turned on a brass dral and dived, from the slowest Grunt to the fastest Swarm Dragon. Affurion bellowed at the stragglers, a triplet of Overminds still wheeling over the North quarter of the city, engaged with several dozen Orange Dragons. Anubam reared up in dozens of locations across the city, flicking paving stones and even houses off their heads and backs as they stared upward in patent astonishment.
Grandion’s eyes were for the North. Those stupid Dragons, those people and soldiers still wandering around on the streets … in a Storm-amplified voice, he rattled the shingles and shutters of the city for a half-mile about. “Danger! Take cover! Take cover!”
He had never seen a storm like it. Oily darkness like staring down the open maw of the largest Dragon in existence. Palpable malice. A load of ice in those upper altitudes that he could only marvel at. The wind was a frigid whip, knocking the smaller Dragons about as they descended; Affurion roared his orders, but his voice was drowned out by sharp clattering that began to the North of Kerdani City. Hailstones. Not pretty, round hailstones. These were chunks of ice larger than a Human’s head. Smashing. Exploding on impact. In the blink of his eye, the northernmost battle-group of Dragons vanished into a pounding storm-front that from this distance resembled an iron curtain, only the Tourmaline knew better. That was death, even for Dragons.
Down! he bellowed, slapping Yukari across the muzzle with a wingtip in his desperation. Get underground, Dragons!
The Anubam below quarried into the ground like the maddened caveworms Grandion had once encountered in the Western Isles. Dragons darted under cover as the hailstorm intensified, driving across the city faster than a man could run. Affurion ordered the Grunts to be the last under cover–they, of all the Dragonkind, would be the most likely to take the brunt of that storm and survive.
As Grandion paused to allow other Dragons to scuttle into the hastily-dug tunnels, he had a moment to glance toward the already-obscured Palace, to hope that Hualiama had made it indoors in time. He would not be able to keep his promise to help her if she encountered Shinzen now. By his wings, he had never been more thankful that the Dragon-Haters had been driven off, at least for the time being. If the Ancient Dragoness would kindly chase down and destroy that Dragon-Hater fleet and the Empress of all Haters in the doing, so much the better for everyone.
Aloft, the voice of Numistar Winterborn roared and raged, sparking thousands of bolts of lightning that hammered into the already besieged city, smashing tiles, caving in roofs and battering down doors. Any resulting fires were instantly buried under untold sackweight of ice. Her Storm swept across the city unheeding of any life in its path.
Affurion grabbed his wing. Hide!
Like worms, the mighty Lesser Dragons cowered beneath the earth and hoped that the Ancient Dragoness’ ire would leave them unscathed.
Chapter 25: Mother of all Battles
Jin ran lightly upstairs, balanced on the balls of his feet. Reaching an unsuspecting guard, he chopped the base of the man’s neck with a hard-edged hand. The man slumped; Jin caught the body and eased the unconscious fellow to the ground.
Hualiama zipped by him, taking the stairs three at a time. Giants! She smelled their earthy scent. The tingle of magic was there in her nostrils, causing strange lights to flare behind her eyes. She slipped behind a large column opposite the entrance to the King’s Hall, where they expected to find King Taisho. Though she moulded to the shadows, her young accomplice seemed born to them. He flattened himself momentarily beside her, before pointing to a secondary column and motioning upwards.
Not the direct approach. Good. Too dangerous.
Jin pressed a short length of treated rope into her hands. “Know how to use this?”
“Ladies first,” she said, indicating he should proceed.
He did not enjoy that! Lia reminded herself that she had not the first idea what notions of honour his Nikuko warrior-caste might entertain. This was evidently a grave insult. No mind. She took the sting off her words by beating him to the column.
Casting the rope around the foot-wide grey stone column, she wrapped the free ends several times about her wrists, before tugging sharply to check her grip was se
cure. Then she walked upward, gripping onto the column with her knees and the inward-turned soles of her boots, making an inchworm motion. Good speed? Jin clucked at her from below, suggesting she should hurry up. Hualiama froze as a Kaolili Guardsman paraded by in full view. If she smelled Giants, why were these soldiers completely oblivious? Or was that another Shinzen trick?
Continuing up the twenty-foot column, Lia reached the base of a tertiary-level walkway around the King’s Hall. Reaching up, she gripped one of the ornamental railing supports and swung herself neatly up onto the walkway. She crouched, checking both ways. The boots of patrolling soldiers disappeared around a corner not ten feet away. Perfect. Now–oh, Jin was already with her. He dropped even more lightly than her, scanning the area.
He pointed two fingers at an archway. Go.
They flashed across the space, again hugging the shadows as they peered inside. Soldier. Hualiama stole forward, elbowing Jin in the process, and did the necessary.
The young warrior let out a hiss of annoyance. “He was mine.”
Lia just held a finger out and mouthed, ‘No talking.’
And now a sulk. Great. Had she been this awful when she was fifteen, traipsing around the Islands with a Tourmaline Dragon and–where on the Islands was Flicker? Grief, she needed to start looking after that dragonet properly.
No time. For Shinzen’s voice boomed within the King’s Hall, demanding outright surrender.
Lia peeked over the hip-high balcony. King Taisho stood before his plain, tall-backed throne on a small dais at the head of the hall, flanked by the bevy of Councillors that kept his elbows warm. His face was expressionless yet somehow severe at the same time. Facing him was Shinzen, fronting a wedge of ten Giant soldiers, while further Giant-magi patrolled the smaller functionaries’ doorways and the main entrance of the hall, throwing up the magical barrier which Hualiama had detected earlier. She felt its subtle draw. Everything was normal. Nothing to report here.