With a word, Ja’alion lit a globe of fire upon his right palm. He raised his hand above his head to light their way as they filed into the mountain. But the tunnel was broad and easy, twisting several times before Aranya saw light filtering through a curtain of greenery ahead. When they pushed through they found themselves standing on the shores of a round, lime-green lake, directly across from a low building opposite, a place of curved pagodas and vaulting columns, roofed in a carpet of vibrant orange flowers Aranya smelled right across the lake. The walls of the building were constructed of unrelenting onyx, giving it a brooding, ancient air. There men trained at a form of combat she had never seen before, working with a short stave in either hand as though war were an expressive dance designed to dazzle the eye.
A rowboat bobbed at the lake shore, tied to a stake hammered in between the rocks. Ja’alion took up the oars and gestured for them to board.
Prince Ta’armion sat beside Aranya, with Lyriela and Nak opposite. Aranya would have been a fool to miss the dewy eyes the Prince tried very hard not to make at Lyriela. He also tried to keep well away from the dragonet, which seemed intent on examining his hair for edibles–lice, perhaps, Aranya thought with an ill-disguised snort.
“Ja’alion,” she asked, “am I permitted to ask what relation Lyriela might be to me?”
“No.”
“A cousin, perhaps?”
Ja’alion bent his back to the oars. “I see that patience comes poorly to the House of Immadia.”
Aranya wanted to reply, ‘And discourtesy to the house of Ja’alion,’ but her eye caught a sign Lyriela made in her lap. Beside her, Ta’armion’s chin bobbed almost imperceptibly. Ha. So, she was right. Ja’alion could just stuff his rudeness back down his volcanic pipe. Lyriela must have followed her thoughts, for her smile widened until her eyes crinkled. Her hands moved fluidly.
Ta’armion cleared his throat. “Princess, Lyriela asks how you came to hurt your wrist.”
“In battle against the Sylakians,” Aranya replied.
“You’re a warrior?” the Prince interpreted for Lyriela.
“As much a warrior as this little dragonet here,” said Aranya, trying to work out how not to tell a lie. “The Sylakians had captured me in a net and dragged me aboard their Dragonship. The Third War-Hammer Yolathion–a Jeradian warrior–stood over me, demanding my surrender for acts of unspeakable violence against Sylakia’s tyranny–”
“Looking unspeakably handsome,” Nak interrupted, resentfully.
Lyriela’s eyes jumped. Prince Ta’armion again interpreted for her. “Handsome?”
“Jeradians are very tall. Yolathion told me had had been a warrior from his youth. He’s seven feet tall, perhaps a couple of inches over.”
“And devilishly handsome,” Nak sighed.
Aranya developed pink spots on her cheeks. “Nak, I do not consort with the enemy. He tried to kill me. His soldiers smashed my–uh, wrist–with their huge Sylakian hammers.”
“He’s a poet, too,” added Nak. “Did he not say, ‘I shall watch the dawn skies for the sign of Immadia?’ A warrior-poet hath stolen thy heart, and I am bereft, o Immadia.”
“Nak! You’re happily married.”
“Ah, young love,” said Nak.
Lyriela laughed soundlessly, opposite, as Aranya blushed furiously.
The oars plopped and water gurgled against the hull as Ja’alion propelled the rowboat across the circular caldera lake. Aranya trailed her hand in the warm water. It was full of algae drifting beneath the surface. She saw bubbles rising from below. The lake was just a few hundred paces in diameter, surrounded on all sides by a rim so steep and tall that the monastery building lay in shadow even toward midday.
At length they came to a small beach of black, sparkling sand. Ja’alion and Ta’armion leaped out to pull the rowboat a ashore. The Prince offered his arm; first Lyriela, and then Nak accepted his aid. Ta’armion lifted Lyriela’s instrument from the bottom of the boat, eager to help–and as transparent as crysglass, Aranya chuckled to herself.
They walked up a set of worn stairs, centuries old, coming to an open patio area where the monks were training. They did not stop fighting to acknowledge the visitors. Young and old, they wore but a brief loincloth. Their muscular bodies glistened in the late morning heat. Aranya saw they were not withholding their blows; even as she watched, a staff shattered beneath a bone-crushing blow and a young monk fell, bleeding freely from his temple. Dazed, he still slithered beneath the follow-up blow and threw himself upon his attacker, striking with a bewildering array of knees, elbows and blows of his hard-edged hands.
The monks froze. Weapons came to rest; the monks darted into rows and knelt on the flagstones, their shaven, tattooed heads bowed, hushed in expectation. Aranya saw that a black-robed man had appeared in an archway. His head was clean-shaven and tattooed in blue swirls like his fellow-monks. His deep blue eyes came to rest upon the visitors. Aranya sensed a colossal, forbidding power behind the man; his gaze fell with a profound weight upon her mind and body.
Ja’alion knelt, too, and Lyriela alongside him. Only Aranya and Ta’armion stood upright. The Prince hesitated before he knelt, but he did not abase himself. Aranya opted for a formal genuflection, a deep bow of Immadian respect. Her Dragon form bowed its head, while her inner fires flared and died as though to mimic the action.
Aranya’s breathing came hard in her throat. She felt a stab of real fear. Who was this man? How did he have the power to see through her?
“The Nameless Man,” Ja’alion intoned. To Aranya, he said, “He has taken a secret vow and has never been known to speak.”
“He’s younger than I imagined,” Aranya said.
“He is also the mightiest warrior amongst a mighty brethren,” said Ja’alion, making his displeasure at her comment plain. “He’s not a man to be trifled with.” Raising his voice he called, “Nameless Man, we bring Aranya, Princess of Immadia, to be tested. May the Great Dragon speak with wisdom through your testing.”
The man beckoned to Aranya.
After a moment, her legs managed to obey. The others followed at a small distance.
Aranya ascended the steps to the archway from which the man had appeared. He led her through a short stone corridor to an open amphitheatre, similar to the place where Aranya had fought Zuziana. She saw a black sandy arena, ringed with seats that rose right from the sand a dozen or so levels to a series of recessed alcoves set around its circumference. Each alcove housed a different Dragon statue.
With a soft susurration of footsteps the monks filed in and sat around the lowest two levels of seats. The Nameless Man directed Nak and Prince Ta’armion to be seated. Lyriela uncovered her instrument, a beautiful harp, and seated herself on the topmost level, on a low pedestal within an otherwise empty alcove. The Nameless Man pointed to the arena floor.
Swallowing hard, Aranya walked down to the indicated spot. Did they scare seven summers-old children like this? She hated the testing already and it had not even started.
Ja’alion called, “Is the candidate ready?”
“I’m ready.”
Liar, Aranya told herself. All the watching eyes made her nervous. She wished she could have taken a sip of water beforehand.
The Nameless Man’s hands clapped together above his head.
An immense pressure squeezed her temples. Aranya cried out, falling to her knees on the soft sand. The sapphire dragonet screeched in anger and fled. Abruptly, fire erupted from her fingers and scorched the midday heat to light up one of the Dragon statues. It turned red.
“The gift of fire,” Ja’alion intoned.
The Nameless Man bowed slightly to his left hand. Aranya heard Lyriela’s fingers form an intricate glissade of sound that surrounded her with images of the green grasses of an Immadian meadow in the springtime. She saw her mother walking toward her, garbed in a beautiful Fra’aniorian gown, smiling. But as Izariela approached, her face began to change. Cracks appeared in her skin. Orange fires app
eared in the cracks, similar to the fires of the caldera between Fra’anior’s Islands, and her skin dried out until it resembled lizard skin. Her face crumbled.
Aranya raised her hands, splashed with tears. She ran to her mother’s side to heal her. Then Izariela was gone.
“The gift of healing,” said Ja’alion.
She glowered at the Nameless Man. How dare he summon up her mother?
Suddenly, Aranya’s ears buzzed. Her scalp crawled. Every hair on her head lifted as unnatural energies surged through her body. She fought a presence in her mind, screamed at it, ripped it loose and sent it spinning into the air. An arc of lightning burst across the arena. Every monk on that side ducked reflexively as the bolt hurtled into the statue above them, turning it blue.
“The gift of lightning.”
Now the green eyes bore down on her, pits of pitiless evil, eyes that reminded her of a foul swamp which housed a green Dragon. Surging toward her, the Dragon’s mouth opened to display a set of poisonous fangs. Aranya found herself tied to a log, lying prone. She was helpless. The presence assaulted her mind once more; she denied it, although it was much harder this time. Blood seeped from her nostrils. She spat at the Nameless Man.
A gobbet of green poison splattered against a statue to her left. The statue instantly became a vivid green, the colour of springtime sword grass.
“The gift of living things.”
Aranya heard a murmuring rise about her ears, but the Nameless Man pinned her with his eyes. He made a peremptory gesture and signed something at Ja’alion.
“The Nameless Man demands you allow him into your mind for the testing.”
“Well, I’m trying, but he’s hurting me.”
“The Nameless Man says he will not be denied.”
Suddenly, Aranya stood upon an isolated spit of rock above the Cloudlands. A horizon-spanning storm whistled toward her, great cumulonimbus clouds reaching to the heavens, dark and pregnant with a load of hail and wind and rain. Out of the storm came a Dragon, a mighty grey Dragon who menaced her as if he were a thunderhead full of snow and ice and wintery winds, and his breath was the storm that slammed into her frail Human body, sending it tumbling away into the clouds.
Her head slammed against the arena floor. The sand felt as hard as rock. Pain exploded behind her eyes; pain that surged out of her in a wave of sound, a titanic thunderclap amplified in the small space of the arena. A Dragon statue opposite her quivered and turned black. Lightning crackled crazily from column to column above the alcoves. A chill wind whipped across the arena just once, blasting sand against the watchers to Aranya’s right as a grey Dragon statue came alive to its colour, too.
Ja’alion’s voice shook as he called, “And, the gifts of ice and storm.”
The Nameless Man threw off his black robe and strode down to join her on the sand. He was sweating freely, Aranya saw, runnels of sweat pouring down the slender column of his muscled torso. He raised his arms to the sky as if beseeching the spirit of the Great Dragon to imbue him with power–and her skin crawled as something entered him or emanated from him, a presence of immense, brooding power. It was neither good nor evil, but it was unstoppable, a gathering of elemental forces into the person of the Nameless Man.
His hands lowered to point at her.
Aranya quailed. This was leagues beyond anything she had endured so far. The force that bore down upon her could not be withstood by Human flesh. Through it she sensed the Nameless Man’s frustration. Never before had a candidate rebuffed him. The humiliation moved him beyond his testing to a vengeful fury, seeking to beat her down, launching the all-out assault of a warrior in the awesome peak of his power. He struck out. An unseen force smashed her across the arena. Before she could move he soared across the space between them and grasped her throat with his hand, crushing the breath out of her.
The world moved. Aranya saw a storm, a dark, boiling maelstrom of clouds out of which the many-headed Black Dragon burst forth, writhing and thundering amidst blinding bolts of forked lightning. Its voice resounded across space and time: Why do you not yield, little one?
She could speak to the Dragon of her dreams! I’m hurting, o mighty Black Dragon–but there’s more, isn’t there?
More gifts? The great mouths opened in laughter, but it was neither cruel nor mocking. The Black Dragon’s heads examined her from many angles, eyes of many colours stripping her defences bare. Yet though his power was utterly dominant, he did not dominate her. He withheld. Perceptive, little one. It is not the Nameless Man’s place to usurp the dictates of time. Open your mouth and tell him Fra’anior named him at his birth, Ri’arion. Say, ‘Follow me’. He will understand.
Aranya felt herself fading. Wait! She cried, You’ve always helped me–why? Are you not an Ancient One? Why am I important to you?
No Dragon should seek to grow larger than her wings, he censured her.
No. I meant, how can I thank you?
Thank me? She saw an image of herself, many times smaller than a dragonet, flying amidst the titanic black heads. Little one, I like your spirit. Only promise to heed my call when it comes.
She had made a mistake, Aranya feared. She had offered unconditional service to this ancient being, who had evidently accepted. What his call might unleash in her life … she trembled. But she mustered her courage. Agreed, Fra’anior.
Abruptly, she found herself back on the black arena sands, having the life choked out of her. Aranya gasped a word of Dragonish power; a word unheard in the Island-World for hundreds or even thousands of summers. Had she been asked directly afterward, she would not have been able to repeat the word, for it fled her mind the instant it was spoken.
The Nameless Man flew off her as though she had shot him from a war crossbow. She stood, dusted off her Fra’aniorian gown, and strode across the arena sands toward the astonished monk. As she walked, her hands unlaced the back of the gown–she had the laces tied with a slip knot this time, in case she had to transform quickly. He raised his hands like blades, taking a warrior’s stance. His muscles trembled with readiness.
“You are not the Nameless Man,” she said, “for the Great Dragon Fra’anior named you at your birth. Your name is Ri’arion.”
No blow of hers could have struck him harder than those words. The monk’s façade crumbled. His body sagged as though bereft of the power to hold itself upright. She saw fear flash into his eyes, then anger, resignation and finally, wonder.
As though speech came to him with difficulty, he croaked, “I am Ri’arion. I am reborn.”
“HE IS BORN!” shouted the monks. “HE IS BORN!”
Ja’alion’s face lost its colour. He sat abruptly and buried his head in his hands. Aranya wondered if he feared for his life; she sensed it keenly.
The man called Ri’arion cast himself at her feet. “What is my purpose?”
“Follow me.”
“I am reborn. I am named Ri’arion. I will follow you.”
Strangely, Aranya too felt reborn. Gazing around her, the world struck her as a different place to when she had stepped into the arena to face the Nameless Man. She could not say how or why.
Ri’arion looked to the sky. From every side, the monks watched him as though his merest word could jolt them into an explosion of activity. He said, “Brothers, we have angered the Great Dragon this day. I am no longer fit to be called the Nameless Man. A new Nameless Man must be chosen. I call upon our musicians to soothe the Dragon. Is there one among us who will give a song-offering?”
“I will sing,” said Prince Ta’armion, rising eagerly to his feet.
The monk turned to Aranya. “Would you honour the Great Dragon by revealing to us your true form? Many of my brothers have never seen the Dragon-kind, except for dragonets. Will you also summon the dragonets to celebrate with us?”
There was only silence inside the caldera. The twin suns blazed down, pressing their heat and light into the gathering. The day waited in serenity for what would come.
“I
have one more gift,” Aranya said, at last. She stepped out of her gown. “The gift of transformation.”
An Amethyst Dragon stood upon the black sands of Ha’athior Island. Her triumphant bugle thundered up the throat of the volcano, echoing around that immense natural chamber. To her surprise, many thousands of tiny voices responded. The dragonets came winging down from the clear skies in their myriads, a glorious riot of colours, flitting playfully about the watching Humans. Lyriela plucked a chord upon her harp, a harmonic minor of exquisite intricacy, which the dragonets picked up and began to hum along to before branching out into a dozen harmonic lines. Lyriela’s head bowed over the instrument as though her soul were weeping the music she began to play, for her music moved the world in ways of which Aranya could barely grasp the beginning. Prince Ta’armion, standing beside the harpist as though they had played together a thousand times, raised his voice to the heavens in a lyrical torrent.
Every scale on Aranya’s body thrilled to the sound. And her fires danced within her.
Chapter 21: Race to Sylakia
Ri’arion stared unblinkingly out of the Dragonship’s forward crysglass window during their approach to Fra’anior’s main Island. Aranya watched him covertly. Scary man. The monk never seemed to sleep. The sword which he carried strapped crosswise to his back had to be five feet long. He carried eighteen daggers. He practised chopping obsidian blocks to harden the edges of his hands. He said little, but clearly considered himself her slave.
Aranya did not want a slave.
She turned to Prince Ta’armion. “If you will ask Nak for advice, what do you expect? Besides, did I not hear you wonder if I’d been found in a Sylakian brothel?”
Ta’armion flushed a fine colour. “We kidnapped the wrong woman.”
“When my father hears about this–”
“My life won’t be worth a brass dral,” he moaned. “King Beran, he who withstood the Sylakians for twelve summers, will–”
Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Page 28