Dragonsoul

by Marc Secchia

  The tiny white muzzle peeped, Eep-aye. Clever Lia. Wrong place stop. Smell wrong.

  Huh, said Makani. We should teach the dragonet to speak less nonsense. He does, however, advance a sound idea. Our destiny lies far beyond Helyon, I sense.

  What Lia say? Flicker is awesome-pants?

  Laughing merrily, Lia asked, Where did you pick up that phrase, Flicker?

  Qilong teach me Human-speak.

  Makani snorted a great puff of smoke-laughter. Qilong? Of course, he primps and poses like the most narcissistic of male Dragons.

  “Awesome-pants,” the dragonet chirped clearly. “I am awesome-pants.”

  Chapter 27: The Reach of a Dragon’s Wings

  AFter Flying Several hours with Grandion and Mizuki, Affurion saluted them with a wing-dip. “May you fly beyond the five moons, Dragons and Riders,” he said formally. “We will track the Haters on their way West, with Siiyumiel’s help. May we meet in a place of white-fire suns.”

  “Fly strong and true, noble Dragon,” Grandion returned.

  Saori lifted her hand as if wanting to speak, but swallowed instead and turned to check the straps binding her seat between Grandion’s spine-spikes. The Tourmaline sighed. Wing-brother?

  We should not separate a woman with child from her man, he said stiffly.

  Grandion snapped, I’ve never met such an obstinate, prideful granite-head! He meant regarding the Copper Dragoness, too; all three Dragons knew it.

  Then let me be obstinate and focus on rescuing my kind and bringing them to a safe Dragonhold. Nevertheless, Affurion added aloud, “Elki, much remains that could be spoken between us. Promise me you will keep Saori and your unborn child safe until we fly together again?”

  Elki nodded. “I promise, mighty Affurion.”

  “I will … hold you all in my third heart,” he growled gruffly. “All of you.”

  “All that is Copper shall sing at the advent of thy wings against the fragrant skies,” said Mizuki, choosing a famous epic poem, but personalising it in a way the Brown Overmind could not possible misunderstand.

  Blushing up an enormous belly-fire storm, Affurion turned and blazed away to the South.

  Grandion shook his muzzle. “Ha.”

  Mizuki and Saori sniffed with equal perplexity. “Ha.”

  “I fear that to explain would be largely redundant,” said Elki, patting Mizuki’s powerful shoulder, “therefore I shall contribute a fine, ringing ‘ha!’ to the conversation.”

  They all looked at each other, and laughed.

  And so the northwest shore of Kaolili Island vanished into the distant horizon that morning, as the Dragons drove into the bright blue beyond at a steady eighteen leagues per hour–double a Dragon’s ordinary long-distance flying speed, but they had one large advantage forging through the Cloudlands two leagues beneath their position. Her spiked shell cleft the grey-green cloudscapes with enviable ease, her mighty bulk driving through the thick air and leaving a long trail of slightly sparkling disturbance behind her, the magic-enhanced output of her rearward-facing blast-ejectors. In other words, Elki took pains to inform them, Shell-Clan Land Dragons were the mightiest poo-powered predators of all.

  Tiiyusiel. Rather than suffering a slow Dragonship escort across the long leagues to Helyon Island–Hualiama had been spotted four hundred leagues shy of Helyon by a small Saga-Runner, the previous evening–they had a frisky, enthusiastic youngster. Siiyumiel’s talon-stroke of genius.

  The Dragoness’ stellated carapace slowly dipped beneath the clouds. I shall rise at dawn, my friends. Travel fast, for I forge forth to tame the mighty Sû-tar-Ingrar Current.

  At dawn! the Tourmaline called back.

  Aye, if Lesser Dragons had a handy moving Island to land upon and rest, they could envisage a crossing that was out of reach of even a Dragon’s wings. Perhaps they could catch up with the much slower Dragonship bearing Qilong and Hualiama.

  Grandion scanned the horizon all that long, golden afternoon as the Dragons winged northward, following the helpful airstreams swirling in the wake of Numistar’s forty league-wide storm. The suns vanished for a long period behind the waxing Yellow Moon, but toward evening, reappeared beneath Yellow’s underbelly, casting vast golden fingers of light across their path, a quality of light comparable in many ways to the unique volcanic suns-sets of the Fra’anior Cluster. So viscous and gilded was the sunlight, the Tourmaline Dragon pictured himself swimming in a terrace lake of pure, liquid gold, and so his hearts’ hope swelled into his throat and he sang in slow, worshipful Dragonsong:

  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.

  Mizuki made a harmonising bugle of approval, but Prince Elka’anor called over, “Is it common for snappish, hundred-foot armoured fortresses to be moved to feats of epic poetry, o mighty Tourmaline?”

  Grandion found his laughter sounded decidedly sheepish. Grr! Embarrassed, he spluttered droplets of fire from his jaw as he growled, “It is common in Dragons who have spent time around your sister. That was her composition.”

  “I thought I detected a special whiff of sisterly mischief,” the Prince said jovially.

  “There’s more mischief afoot,” said Saori. “We’re swapping, Elki. Mizuki and I want to have a girl talk. Privately.”

  “What, out here?” Elki sounded aggrieved. He waved his hands, indicating the pristine expanse of cobalt-tinged Cloudlands all around them. “There’s nothing but … nothing. Hundreds and thousands of leagues of nothing.”

  “Including that tiny bit of nothingness between his ears,” Saori put in, drawing monstrous chuckles from their mounts. Elki did not appreciate this in the slightest. He sulked out of Mizuki’s helping paw and mooched dramatically up the curve of Grandion’s shoulder to his spine-spikes.

  Saori blew kisses at him, standing boldly upright atop the Copper Dragoness’ left shoulder.

  “The more beautiful they are, the more fickle,” sniffed the Prince.

  Mizuki whirled her fire-eyes at him. “I greet thee most sulphurously, handsome Human.”

  Elki’s knees caved in. He sat down with a bump. “How do women do that?”

  “What is ‘girl talk’?” asked Grandion, as Mizuki wheeled away, cutting through the suns-beams with a simple flexion of her widespread wings. “A peculiar Human custom?”

  “No. It’s when girls get together and braid their hair and talk about boys–I think? Uh, not that Mizuki probably braids anything … except the limbs of her victims. Actually, I’ve no idea. Girls are a mystery. Wouldn’t you say, Dragon?”

  “Dragonesses are a mystery. Girls are–”

  “Worse?” Elki suggested mournfully.

  Softly, their laughter fell upon the evening’s endless silence and vanished from existence. Grandion winged on steadily, checking his speed. Good. Out here, a Dragon’s senses could begin to trick him; the unbroken emptiness, to play with the mind and will. But his hearts burned with unquenchable longing. This Tourmaline would neither be distracted nor dismayed, nor turn an inch aside from his course. This time, he would cross the Island-World for his beloved Dragoness and no power, draconic or magical or Human, would stanch his tenacious fires, nor mute his thunder.

  He had been lucid for some moments of Hualiama’s torture. A pox, a mighty curse upon that Hater’s head! May the claw of the Great Dragon strike her very existence from the face of the Island-World! Would that his fires had been snuffed out, than see his beloved suffer like that ever again. Did she know he had fought the Haters with every ounce of his magic, and beyond magic and willpower and knowledge, even? That he had fought like a dull, unthinking beast focussed only on her need? That he had seen, heard and experienced much of her suffering, for Azziala had callously left those channels open rather than entirely subjugating his mind as before? Before t
hat, he had seen her thought-memories and knew she had triumphed over Warlord Shinzen. And then a curious gesture, a Hualiama gesture … which moved his heart inasmuch as he failed to understand her ways.

  He said, “What does it mean when a Human shuts a dead person’s eyes?”

  “Who did that?” Elki asked in surprise. “That’s not an Eastern custom.”

  “Your sister, after she defeated Shinzen,” said Grandion. “The Giant had fallen, strangely, with his head on her lap. She reached out and drew his eyes shut, saying, ‘May you sleep in death as you never rested in life, and the evil you represented, die with you.’ She was …”

  The Dragon could not find words. Elki supplied, “Kind?”

  “Aye, kind. Why? The enemy deserved to be burned in flame, to be gutted and flayed–she killed him horribly. She cut off both of his hands and then opened his throat. Any Dragon would be proud.”

  “Oh well, that makes it all better,” Elki said sarcastically.

  Grandion blinked his secondary eye-membranes, certain he was being insulted but not understanding how or why.

  The Prince said, “Sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Grandion, there are behaviours we would say are quintessentially Human, that define our humanity. We do not desecrate the bodies of the dead. That’s a custom in the Western Isles. There are those who would argue that makes Western Islanders barbarians–dancing over the bodies of the enemy, eating their brains, mutilating their corpses, staking them upside-down to be eaten by ants–suchlike. I digress. Some believe we should not invite the vengeance of the spirits, for in a sense, they fear the dead or the wrath of their ancestors.”

  “This is far from Lia’s conduct,” the Tourmaline said heavily.

  “No, you’re right. She was showing compassion–”

  “To the dead?”

  “Even to the dead. Magnanimity in victory.”

  “Weakness!”

  Elki shook his head. “No, the opposite–strength. She showed respect for the deceased even when he deserved none. Don’t you see? This is moral backbone; transcending the baser nature, the animal … within.”

  Incensed, Grandion began to take a backward snap at the Dragon Rider, then halted the gesture with a shudder. Was this what Humans thought? That Dragons were just the thinnest layer of intelligence masking feral, vicious fiends? That they were animals acting upon bestial instincts? Now he could not even clash his fangs at the Prince lest he substantiate that very accusation! Grr!

  The Prince cried, “Hear me! We are all animals in some sense, Grandion. I can speak for my species. For certain, Human behaviour is sometimes worse even than what we see in the animal realm. Did you not witness the behaviour of Shinzen and Azziala, and even the craven King Taisho? But if we can set the animal aside to act with intelligence and integrity and honour, even when it hurts most–that is the mark of true character. That is what I’ve learned from you, and from Hualiama.”

  And just so, the fires of his understanding flared like molten silver, so pure and sweet and true, Grandion could scarcely gasp a breath.

  “That is why I stowed away on my sister’s Dragonship and followed her around the Island-World,” added the Prince. “What about you, Grandion? Why do you fly to her?”

  * * * *

  As Helyon Island loomed on the horizon, Hualiama and Makani commenced the replenishment runs, sparking a monstrous, flashing lightning-display from the storm behind. Numistar raged. Her thunder growled and crashed without pause along the entirety of her storm-front. The winds rose to a whistling shriek, bending the low fenturi trees whose broad, sheltering leaves and ovoid purple fruit-clusters supported untold millions of the famous Helyon silk-spinners, a type of fruitarian spider unique to the Helyon cluster.

  Helyon was a narrow Island lying low in the Cloudlands, entirely devoid of natural features that might break the force of Numistar’s breath. Its lovingly tended gardens rolled and tumbled through a series of pretty scooped-out dells, tracing the watercourses that criss-crossed the Island like an elegant Fra’aniorian lacework, its clear gemstone-green waters fringed by the thick burgundy shrubbery of fenturi trees. Most of the people appeared to live in small, grass-roofed lodge huts barely taller than the gnarled trees that supplied their livelihood, and as Hualiama swept low over their plantations bearing five one hundred sackweight bags of imported mohili wheat sold for a price that had turned Prince Qilong’s face grey, she saw small, pale faces upraised in wonder or fright.

  For the first trip, she and Makani battled the rising wind; Hualiama almost standing still in the air at times before the larger, more powerful young adult Dragoness, despite being heavily loaded with ten half-ton water barrels, reached out and literally dragged her aboard the Dragonship.

  No shame in being a hatchling, growled the Grey.

  Right. How far do you think Numistar will drive us? Hualiama asked as Qilong’s crew fell to unloading the Dragons. Each man wore a safety rope. Isiki and Jin were in the thick of things, wrestling one of the man-sized sacks of mohili wheat between them.

  Jin, Qilong and I discussed this question last night, said the Grey. Are you aware of the Ice-Dragons of the North, Dragons that hail from Islands far beyond Immadia?

  Er … I thought they were legend? And there was nothing beyond Immadia? Hualiama flipped away from the gantry, following Makani as they shot back to the town–more a hamlet with a very large Dragonship landing field and cargo operation beside it–to fetch more supplies. Fruit and unfamiliar northern vegetables, this time, along with a load of firewood to supply heat to the Dragonship’s floatation chambers. Just a girl from a hot volcano thousands of leagues to the South, here.

  Makani bared her fangs in a savage grin. Take pride, hatchling. You’re a girl-Dragon! We’re the fiercest, most beautiful creatures in the Island-World!

  We are, she agreed, with a certain lack of enthusiasm. Boasting. It made her scales itch.

  As they loaded up, the Grey Dragoness said, Our legends tell tales of a clan of Lesser Dragons from the North, whose scales are ice and whose claws spark the mighty lightning-storms of the North. Where they fly, eerie lights called aurora play in the sky above the vaulting, snow-bound peaks of Immadia. Their name is peculiar to the ear …

  Chrysolitic Dragons, Lia remembered. Chrysolite is an icy, whitish-green mineral, a type of metal silicate, if I recall rightly.

  Though what would a Chrysolitic Dragon look like? The scrolls were rather less clear on that point. A whitish, pale green Dragon-colour? And oddly, her mind dredged up a reference to ‘Dragons that looked like windrocs’. Feathered Dragonkind? Surely not.

  With a toss of her dagger-sharp skull-spikes that had the dock labourers falling over each other to vacate the immediate area, the seventy-foot Dragoness snarled, The far North is the ancestral seat of Numistar Winterborn, is it not? Numistar drives us hence. She wishes to go home, for there she might derive the power spoken of in her name, the power of deepest winter. You and I both hail from Fra’anior Cluster, with its eternal volcanic summers. We cannot imagine the power of winter. We have never known such a cold, beside which even the frosts of the Lost Islands must epitomise the balmiest springtide day. Does the Saga of the Winterborn not inform us:

  Born of the atramentous void between the stars,

  Numistar’s breath doth frost the heavens,

  In ice-spangled streamers of death?

  How Dragons adored a poetic turn of phrase.

  Would Helyon’s Island-gardens survive Numistar’s breath? Hualiama feared to entertain the question. For if they stopped, or wherever they tarried, they would invite the Ancient Dragoness to smite that nation with the very streamers of death her saga pictured so graphically.

  Would a Star Dragoness invite death to cross the threshold of Immadia?

  * * * *

  That day, as the Lesser Dragons rested upon her shell from dawn to noon, Tiiyusiel divulged news that the Prince’s Dragonship had whistled past Helyon Island in the grips of a terrible windstorm and sa
iled directly on into Immadior’s Sea. Again, Hualiama had been spotted with the Grey Dragoness Makani, before the Land Dragon patrols had been forced to dive deep to avoid a massive weather-disturbance beneath the Cloudlands. They had barely escaped with their lives.

  Grandion prodded Prince Elki with his foreclaw. “We’ve gained a third of a day.”

  “Unnh … how does a five-foot mischief beat a ten-foot Giant in single combat?” grumbled the Prince.

  A five-foot mischief? Perfect. He filed that in a Dragon’s infallible recall for future use. Grandion said, “How does a word from her lips realign the very stars?”

  “I know this game,” Elki mumbled, rubbing his eyes blearily. “Did I oversleep? Does my breath smell? How does a whisper of feminine guile wind a ninety-foot Tourmaline Dragon about her littlest finger?”

  “How does word of the East write its soul-bonds upon a faithful Prince’s heart?” Mizuki put in, with a fond clack of her fangs in Elki’s direction.

  “Apparently, with the proximate gleam of her beguiling eye. My girl, however–”

  “Saori’s sleeping,” the Dragoness advised. “She’s pregnant. The scrolls say Human females sleep extra during early pregnancy.”

  “What, are you to be our midwife too, now?” the Prince complained.

  Grandion snorted with laughter. “I suggest you grow used to the idea of being a father soon, o Prince of Fra’anior. The patter of bare feet shall soon enter your roost. Great happiness will be yours.”

  “How do you know?”

  The tenor of the Prince’s question caught the Tourmaline flat-pawed. He revisited his assertion, tasting it, checking the resonances so fleetingly present beneath his speech. Was this another moment in which his magic subconsciously drew on their oath-connection, drawing into his fire-soul a hint of the knowledge of Balance? Did he prophesy?

  Beneath his paws, Tiiyusiel rumbled contentedly, “He speaks with the assurance of Balance.”

  Elki stared wildly around him. “What? Happiness? When we’re chasing a vengeful Ancient Dragoness to her lair, there’s war beneath the Cloudlands, and the Empress of Haters is off to make merry mayhem at my home Cluster? Are you quite mad–happiness?”