Dragonsoul

by Marc Secchia

  When none of the Dragons answered immediately, he added, “Grandion, I’ve a poser for you. Tell me about my sister–tell me about when you knew her. Before she came to the Royal Court of Fra’anior, I understand there may have been a more-than-illegal patter of bare feet in your roost. How was that for a Tourmaline hatching? What was Hualiama like?”

  He sighed. “It was complex. I was a jealous little beast. But let me tell you of Hualiama. She spoke Dragonish before she ever spoke a word of Human, Elki. She lapped it up like her mother’s milk–not that she ever … well, perhaps the happier memories. Her bare feet did not patter so much as whisper around our roost, for from the moment she could pull herself up with Qualiana’s talon or against Sapphurion’s resting-couch, she was destined to dance. My shell-mother would sing for her and she would dance, at first just a step or two before she’d wobble and fall over, laughing breathlessly; then two or three steps, and then a babyish twirl … I remember it well. There were times it seemed to me that smoke indwelled her eyes and shadows beset her soul, for night after night, she would wake screaming from her hatchling-nightmares. I understand that now, for Azziala planned to murder her in the womb. Egglings sense these things. And then there was Ianthine and the battle with my shell-mother for her possession. All of this must colour a person’s perception of life, o Prince. Perhaps this is why the Blue-star’s feet are ever restless. She is always dancing, running, fleeing the nightmares of the past.”

  The Dragon startled. He had ruminated aloud and gained new insight. Peculiar. The lore-scrolls said Human females were exceptionally adept at this skill, tweeting their thoughts like parakeets, but gaining insight and understanding in the doing.

  To his further surprise, Grandion felt the Prince, unbuckled from his seat, walk boldly down over his skull-ruff and onto the ridge between his eyes. There the Prince knelt and put his arms as far around the Dragon’s muzzle as he could reach. He whispered into an ear-canal. “Then you must show my sister the place called home, Grandion. Can you do that for me? Will you?”

  A second time in twenty-seven hours, the power of speech was struck from the Dragon’s mouth. He had no reply. Who was this Prince, that he could speak thus to a mighty Dragon of Fra’anior?

  Oh for wings to bear my soul …

  What barrier did a few thousand leagues present to the wings of his soul? Calling urgently to Mizuki, the Tourmaline Dragon launched skyward with the Human still clinging to his nose. To his everlasting shock, the Prince was laughing uproariously.

  Madman.

  * * * *

  Oh for wings to bear my soul …

  So she had sung, and she had grown wings.

  Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

  So she had yearned, and her soul had winged to worlds beyond her imagination.

  Mamafire!

  So an eggling had cried, and the White Dragoness had responded, placing her shell-daughter at the centre of the enmity between her and the great Onyx, Fra’anior. How she longed to reconcile them, to find where her shell-mother had fled and to understand the reasons behind that apparently self-imposed exile. Why did Fra’anior hate her so? How could such a love, celebrated of ballad and fable, have descended into the pit of hatred?

  Now she sat with Flicker and reminded him of the ballads he had loved, and to her wonder and delight, he remembered them well. He sang his old descants flawlessly. Lia embarrassed herself by weeping up quite the terrace lake. The dragonet touched her cheeks in wonder, delicate of paw, and his tiny eyes turned a deep, rich orange colour at the emotions her smoky soprano stoked in his breast. The little creature lapped up the tears with his tiny, flicking tongue, snorting at the saltiness. Then Flicker decided that nipping her left ear was his new favourite game.

  Her song ended in a yelp of pain. I’m not meat! Your fangs are far too sharp.

  Straw-head.

  Go chew on a knuckle-bone, you–oh, whatever. Shall we raid the kitchen?

  Smile cook meat?

  Aye, I’ll bat my eyelashes at the cook and secure you his tastiest treats, Hualiama growled, trying to decide which part of the rascally parakeet who considered her left shoulder his personal perch, to chargrill first.

  Flicker returned to investigating her earlobe. My straw-head.

  He knew he was irresistible. Grr.

  Having secured a tender strip of venison haunch for the voracious dragonet, Hualiama wandered up the starboard gantry, picking up her shadow on the way. Isiki treated her assignment with life-and-death seriousness at all times. In the main crew cabin, she heard the men training at wrestling, judging by the grunts, shouts and thumps shaking the Dragonship. Maybe Sumio was walloping them five at a time. Most of the men were afeared of taking her on, or perhaps Prince Qilong issued further orders regarding the royal personage. Lia whirled suddenly.

  “Isiki, how are your hand-to-hand combat skills?”

  “I’m competent, Mistress,” she said, lowering her gaze. “But I am ordered–”

  “To help the Princess take gentle and appropriate exercise.” Indeed, Lia knew she would have to ease into further exercise or training. She still hurt in far too many places and had attempted to hide how much replenishing the Dragonship had taken out of her. “Agreed?”

  “I could not stop you, could I, Mistress?”

  That demure murmur was the most ridiculous cover-up she had ever heard. Nevertheless, Lia said, “Of course not. I’d chew you up like this venison I’m feeding Flicker here.”

  This time, she watched attentively for Isiki’s reaction. Easterners were very guarded emotionally, but there were signs to be read, especially if she focussed on channelling her Dragoness’ senses through the narrower, more limited ambit of Human perception. A leap of the pulse. A slight whitening of her tan knuckles. Indeed! Her challenge had struck home, and Lia was perversely pleased. Indeed, she was feeling decidedly cantankerous, seeing as her ear was being chewed up like an old bone and her Shinzen-provided bruises painted her skin in a variety of purples and yellows that made her look like a surreal suns-set splashed on canvas by a deranged artistic genius.

  Perhaps she should confirm her suspicions. Lia said, “Isiki, is it my imagination, or are these bruises and wounds healing faster than normal?”

  The slave-girl, just an inch taller than Hualiama, considered her for a moment with those dark, almond-shaped Eastern eyes. “The truth is, Mistress, that your notions of normal should be adjusted for life as a Shapeshifter Dragoness. Have you studied the matter at all?”

  Now bluntness bordering on insult, disguised in her polite, lilting Eastern speech-patterns? Lia ventured, “Isiki, can you read and write?”

  Again, a frisson of anger. “I am educated, Mistress.”

  “Sorry. Didn’t want to assume. Hidden depths to your Island, you devious little dragonet.” After a confused moment, Isiki essayed a tiny smile of understanding. “Will you help me document … things?”

  “Things. Of course, Mistress.”

  “Shapeshifter issues. Like how often I can safely transform. Linkage between the forms. Aspects of magic affecting one manifestation or another, new Dragon-Rider lore, battle techniques, shared mental techniques where one enhances the other–I suspect you’ve a secret scholar hiding behind that Eastern reticence, haven’t you? And will you teach Flicker to read?”

  Now, Isiki’s hands trembled noticeably as they approached Jin on the bow gantry, leaning against the railing and staring moodily over a spreading disturbance beneath the Cloudlands. Without turning, he said, “There’s a legend of a volcano out here somewhere in Immadior’s Sea, Princess–a volcano raised by Immadior the White. She was the shell-sister of Numistar, as good as the Winterborn was evil, even though the two could easily have been mistaken for twins. Well, Makani tells me Dragons usually come in triplets. What a brood that must have been!”

  Lia nodded. “I know the legend, Jin. They say that the middle of Immadior’s Sea is the place farthest from an Island-shore anywhere in the I
sland-World. The deepest, loneliest stretch of Cloudlands of all.”

  “Before this journey, I’d never been more than an hour offshore of an Island,” he said. “Ordinary sailing, Prince Qilong informs me, should take us from Helyon to Immadia Island via Pla’arna and Gemalka in a matter of sixteen days.”

  “Sixteen?” Over her hand, which muffled her gasp, Isiki’s eyes had flown wide.

  Jin gazed earnestly past Hualiama to Isiki. “I’ll protect you ladies–uh …”

  His Eastern tan could not hide that blush, nor did Lia miss Isiki’s instant colouration on her other side. Grief, maybe she should just pop the teenagers in a room together? Then again, she was not much used to playing the matronly chaperone. Nor did she intend to start. Ever.

  Lia inclined her head. “We are grateful you chose to journey with us, noble warrior.”

  “Noble?” Bitterness turned his voice to acid.

  Hauling out her inner Princess, Lia dusted her off and sallied into battle, royally. In a voice of honeyed iron, she said, “Nikuko warrior, the Island-World away from the Eastern Archipelago is wide and its peoples many. Nobody knows your heritage. To them you will be a mysterious Eastern warrior. They will judge you by your deeds. Therefore, I adjure you to teach them what it means to be Nikuko. What matters is right here.” She thumped his chest with her forefinger as though wishing to implant the truth by dagger-strike if necessary. “Right in here, you carry the seeds of–”

  His fists clenched on the metal safety-railing. “I have no sword.”

  “I will give you a sword.”

  “I have no honour!”

  Honestly? The only person who could claim that honour, was himself!

  At which, Princess and Dragoness switched places in a flash and Lia saw crimson. “Aye, what you do possess in abundance is the obstinacy of an entire flock of ralti sheep!” she roared. “If a Princess of Fra’anior who just happens to be a Star Dragoness and the shell-daughter of Istariela, her fabled, gloriously starry self, cannot give you a ruddy sword and the opportunity to go recover your benighted, longsuffering honour, then tell me, Jin: who in the entire Island-World can perform this miracle, you bleating, null-brained excuse for a smokeless volcano?”

  A long, painfully tongue-tied moment of shock faded into Jinichi’s unexpected smile. He guffawed just once, as though an unknowable burden had been torn from his chest, and then he turned to face Lia, and bowed very deeply, holding the pose until she scrambled to match his bow with one of her own.

  “As the Star Dragoness has decreed,” Jin said softly, “so let it be.”

  And then he entirely spoiled the gravity of the moment by inquiring, “How exactly does a smokeless volcano go about bleating?”

  Chapter 28: Immadior’s Roost

  “We Plan TO change direction?”

  Grandion scratched his chin unhappily. Walking about a living Island talking to the ground beneath his paws certainly brought out the worst in his scale-mites, but this was a Dragon of a different colour. Tiiyusiel surged through the billowing Cloudlands, the choppiness of the air in this region of converging currents forcing the Lesser Dragons to shield themselves and their Riders from upwellings of brown-tinged toxic gases. Nothing about Tiiyusiel’s carapace, save the regularity of her budding mountains, indicated that they stood atop a Dragon. How was it that there had been so little commerce and interaction between the Dragons of the heights and the Deep-dwellers over the centuries? They each lived as if the other kind did not exist.

  The Land Dragoness repeated, “I spoke to Siiyumiel last night by longwave-speech. Reception was imperfect but we were able to exchange essential information. The group of Land Dragons–Stellates, Deep-Dwellers and Mountain-Runners, together with the kidnapped Hura Shell-Clan–emerged from the Trench of Maa-Ak-Uura near the Island-mass you high-dwellers call the Fingers of Ferial and travelled on into the Sea on a north-westerly bearing.”

  “Immadior’s Sea?” asked Saori. “Siiyumiel is concerned for your safety. Why?”

  “Safety is my Shell-Clan Elder’s duty.”

  The Eastern warrior paused to take a sip from her water gourd. “Of course. I meant, what is the danger to a mighty Land Dragoness?”

  Tiiyusiel said, “We speculate. It is unprecedented for ancient foes to cooperate in this way. We Land Dragons are not famed for peaceful co-operation, unlike the Gi’ishior-centred command of the high-dwelling Dragonkind.”

  “Speculation?” Saori pressed.

  Grandion smiled appreciatively at the Eastern warrior. Dragon-direct.

  “We surmise that a great common cause has united these disparate clans,” Tiiyusiel said, not without a deep vibration caused by the roaring of her inner furnaces. “Or … they are mad. It is not easily understood. There are tones to the communication we’ve overhead, which lead us to theorise about some hitherto undetected form of … of mental imbalance. Which is more than unusual in Dragons so closely attuned to Balance and Harmony. It is–”

  “Unthinkable,” Saori said quietly. “Against your fires, or however you Dragons might put it. Minds in harmony self-regulate, right? The presence of other Clan-members helps this process.”

  The Land Dragoness gasped, “You understand?”

  Saori rubbed her perfectly flat stomach. “I suppose I’m moved to think differently about life these days.”

  “She’s referring to her baby,” Mizuki clarified for Tiiyusiel’s sake.

  “Our baby,” Elki corrected. Then he paused as if struck by a Dragon’s paw. “Our … oh. We’re having a baby! Great leaping Islands, we’re …”

  The Prince fainted with spectacular abandon.

  * * * *

  The long leagues. The gulf. The Cloud-ocean, the far song, the moon-drowning chasm and the never-ending horizon. The balladeers had coined many names for the emptiness between the Islands. No words that Hualiama could ink, could perfectly capture the soul-quivering, monotonous, illuminating vastness of the spaces between the Islands. Distances so enormous that no technology of Man or Dragon had ever served to accurately measure their extent. Dragonship Steersmen talked about days and weeks of travel. Three days here. Six there. Immadia was so far North that few scholars or balladeers had ever laid eyes upon its rugged mountains, yet many had written odes in celebration of its beauty. Even Helyon silk was costly in part due to the transportation cost, and that Isle stood only partway to Immadia.

  Hualiama found it inspirational.

  What if the Islands could be brought closer? By Dragon Riders or by better Dragonship technology? The problem was the age-old issue of fuel for fires. Fires to heat air, fuel to propel a vessel. The best fuels were dense, long-burning ooliti wood or various oils, but both sources were costly and prohibitively heavy. Oils were extracted by labour-intensive pressing processes and ooliti wood was primarily found in the far South. Again, transportation was an issue. Hualiama had no doubt turbine design, streamlining, improved heat retention and better sail technology could refine a Dragonship’s performance, and she sketched out or recorded a slew of ideas for all of those, drawing Jin into her musings, but the fundamental limitation of fuel remained. Perhaps steam-driven engines would be more powerful? But that would require stores of water. Another weight.

  Ugh. She rubbed her temples, peering at Jin, seated to her right at the writing desk and Isiki opposite him. Both dark heads bent assiduously to their work. Maybe she could design a love-powered Dragonship? Every other ballad suggested love was the most potent force under the twin suns. Or, she studied Flicker, who was making an intent examination of the runes Isiki scribed with her quill pen on a scrolleaf, could she design a dragonet-powered engine? They had inexhaustible fonts of energy, apparently. Strap a hundred dragonets to a large wheel and they’d propel a Dragonship hundreds of leagues … and shred her afterward.

  Peculiar, how Numistar appeared unable or unwilling to corner the fleeing Dragonship and drown it in the Cloudlands. Had all the battles with the Haters, Affurion’s Dragons, Shinzen’s forces
and the Shell-Clan depleted the Ancient Dragoness’ resources so severely that she now lacked the strength to land a killing blow? More likely, the Winterborn tarried for some reason that escaped them as yet.

  Aye, a mere fifty-league-wide localised storm that appeared to reach deep into the Cloudlands? Lack of strength? Silly Human, her Dragoness would say. Now, if she could hitch up a Dragoness and create some kind of Dragonship star-drive …

  I would chop your insolent bones into inch-sized pieces and mount your head on my wall, suggested her Dragoness, neither asleep nor hibernating as Human-Lia had assumed.

  “Fire,” said Flicker, reading in his babyish voice. “Ship … ship–”

  “Shapeshifter,” Isiki encouraged. “Say, ‘Shapeshifter.’ ”

  “Straw-head?”

  “That’s hair,” said the slave-girl. “Shapeshifter hair.”

  Lia blurted out, “That what? What dragonet-scrawl are you writing over there?”

  “I’m writing about physical changes in the Shapeshifter race,” Isiki said. “For example, the shift in your natural eye-colour from smoky green to blue. You mentioned accelerated hair growth. Have you noted any other changes? Excess body hair?”

  “No!”

  Isiki chewed her quill pen, then pointed. “Those can’t be normal.”

  “These? My br–you flaming wretch!” Lia pulled her hands back under the table again, but the damage was done. Poor Jinichi looked as if he was about to combust. “I am petite, but …” She indicated Jin and mouthed, ‘Shut your fumarole!’

  Flicker looked on with a gleam in his eye that Hualiama did not trust one iota. Did he remember a particular conversation …

  “Big,” he piped, as clear as a tiny bell.

  “Flicker, I swear–”

  “Big fruit!” he squeaked, darting for the ceiling. Lia lunged for him, tipping a table full of ink-pots and quill pens and spare scrolleaf onto Jin’s lap. The teenager produced an unhappy gurgle of shock-cross-mortification.