by Marc Secchia
“ENLIGHTEN-WHAT?”
He coughed out a fireball at least ten feet in width, destroying a prekki-fruit tree across the dell from them. Oh, Grandion! Teasing him was a sport she could never tire of, even if it affronted a proud young Dragon. Despite his quick smile, Grandion’s belly-fires proclaimed his annoyance for an hour afterward.
Much discussion of the Maroon Dragoness’ words ensued, and much debate about the bargain Lia had struck with Ianthine. Grandion was scathing. “For what purpose did you grant that vile slug a favour? For knowledge which will haunt your nightmares ever after?” Flicker was more pragmatic. “As long as you never meet Ianthine again, Lia.” Hualiama concluded that if she could discover from which Eastern Island an envoy had come to Gi’ishior, fifteen and a half years ago, then she might learn her mother’s name and fate. But first, they had to return to the monastery offshore of Ha’athior.
As for Ra’aba, she refused to speak about him.
“We will not return to directly to Fra’anior,” said Grandion. “We must find your family, Lia.”
“Master Jo’el was very clear on the order of events–”
“On his order of events.”
Quirking an eyebrow, Lia smiled, “You’ve a better idea? Tell us.”
Grandion naturally set off on the wrong wingtip, snarling at Lia and squashing her–only half-jokingly–beneath his forepaw, before Flicker intervened to inform him that Lia was being neither insolent nor obtuse, but merely asking for clarification. His fires simmered down to a dull roar.
Arrogant male Dragon that he was, he made no move to release her.
Lia demanded, “Let me go!”
“Judging from the direction you say the Dragonships took while leaving the Fra’anior Cluster,” Grandion said, ignoring his captive’s wriggling, “we can surmise that Ra’aba removed your family toward Yaya Loop, or to Ur-Tagga Cluster, the closest of the Western Isles–both of which make for strange choices. Yaya Loop is inhabited by cannibalistic Human tribes, and Ur-Tagga would invite an enterprising Western Isles chieftain to take matters into his own paws for profit.”
Lia corrected, “Hands.”
Flicker burbled, “And you say I play with my food, Lia? Just look at Grandion.”
“I am not food! And I’d thank you to get your fat foot off my chest this instant, you weirdly flying chunk of flexible gemstone.”
“She might do that squeaking noise if you squash her a little more,” the dragonet suggested.
The Human girl drew breath to yell at her draconic companions, when the cunning reptile tapped his paw against her diaphragm. What came out was, “Grand-eeeyooo!”
Grandion snickered happily, making smoke billow out between his fangs. “Perfect.” Flicker zoomed around the Tourmaline Dragon, touching wingtips with him in celebration.
“Islands’ sakes, gently with the little Human,” Hualiama complained. “We’re breakable.” She shoved Grandion’s paw with all of her strength, but she might as well have attempted to move an Island. Lia gave up with a long-suffering sigh, peering up at the Dragon between his knuckles. “Fine. Grandion, where do you suggest we look?”
“Well, I conclude that we’ll find the King of Fra’anior in neither of those places.”
Hualiama pictured a map in her head. “You’re thinking they switched direction? I’d guess offshore of Naphtha … but that’s relatively close to Fra’anior.” The Dragon showed rather more of his fangs than Lia would have preferred. She pouted, “Pray explain the workings of your incredibly dense reptilian brain, you overweening tyrant, and stop oppressing me!”
“Op-pressing?” Flicker hooted. “Good one, Lia!”
Affecting a haughty sneer, Grandion pontificated, “Pay attention, you vanishingly primitive life-form. Human cartographers have clearly passed their delusions on to you. It is over seven hundred leagues from Fra’anior to the Western Isles, a distance not even the most powerful Dragon could traverse in a single flight. Noxia to the Western Isles measures nine hundred and fifty leagues, give or take a few Dragons’ tails.”
“Correction noted, you suns-addled lizard,” she retorted. “So?”
Flicker said, “So our route must lie northwest, past Remia to Horness Cluster. From there, there’s a little known under-Cloudlands ridge by which we might be able to Island-hop to the Western Isles. We skirt the Western Isles, exploring southward. There are plenty of hiding places up to a hundred leagues offshore of the main body of the Western Isles–isolated Islets, boulders, volcanoes and such. If your family are anywhere to be found, it will be there.”
“Bravo, little one,” said Grandion, “and the Dragonkind beat Humankind for two minutes of history, at least.” With that, he raised his paw.
Lia stormed up the length of the Dragon’s body to kick him in the neck. Hurting her foot was rather pointless, but Grandion’s goggle-eyed reaction certainly was gratifying.
* * * *
Looking to the skies, Grandion said, “What say you we make the hop over to Remia Island and roost there for the night?”
Handy, when you could ‘hop’ several hundred leagues from Island to Island. Lia considered all the preparations she would have made for such a journey in her solo Dragonship–stores of food and fuel, filling up on hydrogen gas, extra ropes and sails … and a Tourmaline Dragon simply spread his wings and flew where his whimsy took him. She was just beginning to feel sour about the differences between her huge draconic companion and her wingless, fireless, talon-less self, when the Dragon suddenly nosed the back of her neck and rumbled:
“Best clothe thyself, o Princess of Fra’anior, before this despicable beast develops a craving for Human sustenance.”
How his voice trembled her Island! Lia, making for her clothes and weapons over a perfectly even, lush stretch of meadow grass, yelped as her knees crumpled–she managed a frightfully undignified wobble that turned into a hands-and-knees scramble, landing her on top of her belongings with a huff of infuriation. Grandion’s hot snort of laughter flipped her hair over her head. Sly beast! He knew exactly what mischief he had wrought. When Hualiama made to mount up, he offered her his cupped forepaw with a measure of debonair flair that threatened to put the most pompous Fra’aniorian courtier to shame. Fire blossomed in Lia’s cheeks as she lowered her eyes to evade his scrutiny, while her breath quickened for no good reason.
What peculiar mood possessed the Dragon?
Worse, what was wrong with her? Surely, she no longer feared the Dragon? And she was no giddy thirteen year-old to simper over handsome courtiers or servants at the palace. Unlike her sister Fyria, Lia had always regarded herself as the one with her feet firmly grounded on her Island, and to the windrocs with self-indulgent behaviour. Now her feet were grounded upon a Dragon’s shoulders, about to fly ten thousand feet above the Islands.
Life seemed a different prospect when soaring Dragonback.
Trumpeting, “Let’s burn the heavens together as Dragon and Rider!” Grandion launched into the sky on the wings of turbulent emotion. Power and grace. Fire and fury. He exhibited a driving anger which Lia did not understand, but it mirrored how she felt when she thought about Ianthine, and considered the curl of her claw about an innocent baby. There were depths to that interaction she could not fully grasp; an intertwined fate whose story was yet to be written upon the scrolleaf.
And so it was that as the dread of her future threatened to embroil Hualiama and drag her into the toxic Cloudlands of despair, Grandion began to sing:
Still be thy soul, let thy fears take flight,
Gaze upon the dawn bright and fair,
For the spirit of fire unquenchable lives on,
There is no death, only flame everlasting.
Dragons had three areas of the long throat in which to produce sound simultaneously–the booming depths of the chest, the warbling tenor of the middle throat, and a soft, flexible flap of the palette which a skilled Dragon could manipulate to produce notes of pierci
ng clarity which rose to pitches inaudible to the Human ear. A symphony of sound poured from the Dragon’s throat, as though he were the singer and his instruments merged together. Such music no Human could ever produce. It was otherworldly, stirring a wild, inexpressible conflagration in Hualiama’s breast. Shucking her saddle straps–to Flicker’s gasp of dismay–Lia stepped out to dance upon the Tourmaline Dragon’s broad upper shoulder, as though he were the stage and the Island-World spread out before them, an audience of uncountable millions of souls.
The dragonet burst into a rapturous, trilling descant as he sprang into the air, surrounding Hualiama in a complex aerial dance. The sweeter her draconic companions sang, the higher she danced, careless of any consequence. All that was pain could be surrendered to the splendour of this endless moment. Three souls worshipped in ways common to their kind, yearning in their oneness for a greater, more exhilarating reality beyond the veil of world and flesh, a place where the song never ended.
Later, they soared over the deeps in profound silence.
The Dragon rose into the skies, his gemstone scales gilded by the sky-fires, which Flicker told them in dragonet mythology signified the eyes of the Great Dragon. Grandion laboured aloft until at a height of two and a half leagues he reached a Dragons’ Highway, a jet stream of such a wind as Hualiama had never imagined. Despite being protected by his magic, in which the Tourmaline Dragon cocooned Lia and Flicker from the effects of the extreme altitude, the wind snatched her breath away. It picked Grandion up and hurled him westward so that they soon left Noxia far in their wake, screamed over Remia Island and its smaller, outlying satellite Islands at a speed of over fifty leagues an hour, according to Flicker’s calculations, and then arrowed toward the pin-sharp peaks of Horness Cluster at the same breathtaking velocity. A Dragonship could manage just three to four leagues per hour, Lia discussed with the dragonet. He just chuckled, making his eyes whirl with fire to express how quaint he found her idea.
A tick or two shy of five hours later, they descended upon Horness Cluster like a bolt of blue lightning seeking to blast the Islands asunder.
Lia and Flicker slept curled up in the crook of Grandion’s paw, alongside his neck.
Chapter 24: Searching
The creak OF a Dragonship’s rigging woke Flicker. Stirring, his eye-membranes blinked rapidly as he tried to process what he was seeing. His muzzle dropped open. Unholy monkey droppings!
The dragonet butted Lia’s cheek. Hss. Straw-head. Stop snoring. We’re in trouble.
Rock me in your paw, Mama. Hualiama chuckled in her sleep.
Flicker poked her with his talon. Up. Think of something, o she of miniscule brains. Grandion! Couldn’t you have warned us?
“Sir, it’s a Dragon.” A voice carried clearly on the breeze.
“Ready catapults! Back up, Steersman! Take no chances, men.”
Grandion said something low and rude under his breath as his belly fires growled mightily. I was sleeping too … shards take it! So many … Lia, do something. Quick.
Oh, so it’s up to me, you two pebble-brained reptiles? Lia’s mental tone brought an image of an irate wasp to Flicker’s mind.
Leaping to her feet, the Human girl quickly scanned their surroundings, realising what Flicker had already determined with his penetrating intellect. An army of Dragonships had drifted in from the north during the night, but she and Flicker had been fortuitously hidden behind Grandion’s bulk as the Human fleet approached.
Of course, being a straw-head Lia wandered right out into the open and stood staring up at the Dragonships, coming in low over the trees, just forty feet overhead. A rope ladder dangled from the nearest vessel. A young, dark-haired Human officer dangled fifteen feet above the ground on that ladder, caught in the act of descending to investigate. He, too, gaped with a most unbecoming, slack-jawed, typically Human expression at Lia.
“There’s a girl!” he exclaimed, making Hualiama sound like the most astonishing sight in the world.
Well, Flicker could relate to that. She was astonishing. Do your fluttering thing with your eyelashes, Lia, suggested the dragonet.
Lia looked fearfully at what had to be four Dragonships’ worth of war crossbows with their giant, metal-tipped quarrels all trained on Grandion, and another three dozen Dragonships drifting down the breeze toward them. At least a hundred fighting men clad in brown leather armour, armed to the teeth with swords, javelins and longbows, stared down at them from the gantries abutting the Dragonships’ cabins.
I’ll burn them all, growled Grandion.
From the corner of her mouth, Hualiama whispered, No. Lie still, Grandion, and use your magic to look old.
The Dragon snorted, What?
Old. Decrepit, said Flicker. Senile as a mouldy bat–
I’m going to start killing things any second!
Hush, just do it, said Lia. Magic rippled as the Dragon deployed his wiles.
“Islands greetings, noble sirs,” she called, gaily. “What fair breeze brings thee to my little dell? Is that a flying bird machine?”
“It’s a Dragonship,” said the man.
“Ooh, I’ve got a Dragon.” Lia bounced up and down on her toes. Interesting, thought Flicker. A bit of jiggling and that poor man’s jaw sagged like a Dragon taking his widest yawn. “Look, isn’t he cute and adorable? I call him Grandion. It’s a bit of a silly name for such a timeworn, snaggletoothed beast–”
Grandion clamped his jaw shut. Still, fire leaked around his fangs and the roar of his belly fires was unmistakable.
“He sounds dangerous,” said the officer, looking Hualiama up and down with an appreciative grin. Flicker’s claws clenched. He would perpetrate a murder or two of his own if that carried on!
“He has the most terrible indigestion.” Lia gave the man a silly wave and fluttered her eyelashes, ignoring Grandion’s fang-grinding response right behind her. “Ooh, you’re kind of cute too. Do you want to come down and play with me?”
To Flicker’s fascination, the man’s colour flushed to a rich beet-red. Hoots of laughter sounded from the gantries of the Dragonships above as the soldiers relaxed; hands dropped from their weapons. A few began calling out ribald suggestions to the increasingly steamed officer. “Bring her up, sir!” “I want to play, pick me.” “Sir, why don’t we kill the Dragon?” “She’s a simpleton, you idiot.” “Simply volcanic.”
“Stand down!” he called to his men. “Where are you from, girl?”
Hualiama made a few small circles in the grass with her big toe as she gazed demurely up at the officer. “Just over there.” She flapped her hand absently. “Can’t you play with me? The Dragon’s nice. He’s two hundred years old and he tells nice stories, but he sleeps most of the time. I’m so lonely.”
“Oh, my Islands!” yelled one of the soldiers, from a Dragonship which was directly overhead now, casting a shadow over Lia. “Can I be lost on this Island, sir? Pleeeeeeeeaaassse?”
Another voice called, “Permission to shoot the Dragon, sir?”
“We’ll see plenty more Dragons at Fra’anior!” snapped the officer. “Stay at your posts. Stand down, but stay alert.”
Several of the men took to advancing creative ideas about the games they might like to play with Lia. The bold one shouted, “O beauteous maiden of the Isles, we are soldiers from the Yorbik Free Federation, and we’ll come back this way once we’ve finished making our demands of the Dragons at Gi’ishior. Remember me, my suns-shine! My name is–”
“Attention, soldier!” A gruff bark silenced them all. “What’s the meaning of this? Giving away military secrets?”
The brown-shirted one protested volubly to the new arrival, an older Human man wearing golden bands on his arms that appeared to raise his status in the hierarchy. Flicker’s grin widened as the high one summarily ordered his inferior to take a double shift on the turbines to work off his excess energy. His Lia could certainly provoke these Human males! A flick of her wings, a spark
from those fiery green eyes … any Dragoness could take lessons from this one.
Then, golden-bands leaned over the side of his vessel, scanning the scene with alert interest. “A feeble old Dragon and a girl … who happens to match the description of a lost Princess of Fra’anior?”
No fool, he! Flicker almost rushed over to Lia; he knew her so well now, he had no need to hear her heart bolting off like a startled lemur scenting a hunting dragonet, to recognise her dismay. A pause of wing-tearing horror ensued, the dragonet frozen, the Dragonship slowly drifting by, the hard-eyed man’s gaze fixed upon Lia.
Her face screwed up in apparent endeavour. “Where’s franor … frilly … frallior?” When no-one answered, Lia kicked a tuft of grass with a petulant cry, “Mean boys! Nobody wants to play with me.” She stomped off a few steps, muttering crossly.
The senior man shook his head. “Nah. No chance.”
Lia was doing an excellent impression of a thumb-sucking Human youngster Flicker had once seen while snooping about their dwelling. Ah! Now he saw the twin suns. She imitated a Human hatchling, playing to their natural instinct to protect their younglings. Smart girl. And brave, keeping her fires banked while she dealt with the danger.
Gold-bands called down, “Girl, Dragons are dangerous creatures. You should take more care. Now, wish us well as we fly south to treat with these treacherous beasts at Gi’ishior, for they have been ravaging our Islands and people.” Straightening up, he bellowed at his men, “The job of soldiers is to protect the innocent! We are moral men, soldiers of the Federation, neither dogs to pillage and despoil where we please, nor men who murder the elderly and vulnerable, be they Dragon or Human! Move out!”
Hualiama waved and blew kisses to the men on the Dragonships as the fleet puttered by overhead, collecting sundry offers of companionship, marriage and even the Jade moon. When they had vanished over the low hills to the south, she sagged against Grandion’s flank.
The Tourmaline Dragon took a playful nip at her knee. “Snaggletoothed, eh? Cute and adorable? And you, dragonet–did I hear the words ‘mouldy bat’ trip off your tongue?”