Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons)

by Secchia, Marc

  She heard Zip whisper to her father, “Yes, you slept with one of these in your bed for years.”

  Her father did not appear to appreciate the joke.

  But Aranya watched Zip’s magic glowing in her eyes, a blue so vibrant it rivalled the skies above, which had cleared since the early morning. King Beran had already despatched several Dragonships to spy out the impending arrival of the Sylakian Dragonship fleet. Ri’arion had informed him in no uncertain terms that a Dragon could do the job far better.

  Her own magic had been triggered by fear, anger, or other high tides of her emotions. What would Garthion’s arrival trigger in Zip? Her fires surged in her belly as she imagined confronting Yolathion. How would she manage that?

  Immadia had fifteen Dragonships outfitted for war, many hidden from Ignathion’s fleet at the time of Immadia’s surrender. Aranya wondered if Ignathion had searched as thoroughly as he might have for the remains of an old friend’s war fleet. Ten further traders’ Dragonships had been converted for war, although they were not as speedy or powerful as the warships. He had one newly built vessel, a Dragonship fitted with five long-range war crossbows, a recent innovation which had not made it into the Immadian fleet before they had been betrayed at Rolodia. In all Immadia had twenty-six Dragonships, one Dragon and her Rider, and a crazy monk who had been talking to Commander Darron about being launched via catapult at Garthion’s flagship.

  Zuziana had tried to argue him out of his plan, and failed.

  Immadia had six thousand soldiers, from the greenest recruits to old men who could barely swing a sword. The Sylakians would arrive with two hundred Dragonships and field ten thousand trained men of war.

  When King Beran seemed at a loss for words, Commander Darron put in, “Haven’t seen one of your kind since I was a boy. My father was a Dragon Rider. The stories he told …”

  Beran said, “I never imagined, Sparky. You’re colossal … my daughter’s a Dragon?”

  “Dad!” growled the Dragon. Zip had her fist stuffed in her mouth, evidently on the cusp of exploding with laughter. Aranya itched to slap her with a Dragon-sized paw, the little wretch.

  “You flew here–sorry, I know I sound stupid,” said the King, clearly trying to set his shock aside. “Where are you hiding my Aranya?”

  “I am Aranya, Dad. There’s Human-Aranya and Dragon-Aranya, and we’re … oh, for the Islands’ sake! I know you don’t believe me, but I’m still your daughter.”

  “My, what big fangs you have, darling,” chortled Zip.

  Aranya and Beran shouted at her simultaneously, “Zip!”

  “What powers does a purple Dragon have?” asked the Commander.

  “She’s an Amethyst Dragon,” Zuziana replied promptly. “She can blow fire, spit fireballs, chew meriatite and use the gas to produce fire, heal herself and others, and do a few other things we haven’t worked out yet. We think she has Storm powers–wind, lightning and thunder–but those are very new. I use a Pygmy bow, which is powerful enough to punch burning arrows through most Dragonship armour.”

  “May I?” Darron examined her bow with a professional eye and tested the draw. “By the mountains, imagine if we built war crossbows like this, my Lord!” The grizzled old warrior clapped Zip on the back. “A mite like you can draw this bow?”

  “I’m improving.”

  “This is unbelievable,” Beran muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, “but it makes a weird kind of sense. I just never imagined. My daughter’s a Shapeshifter, risen from the dead, bane of the Sylakians.” Now his normal grin reasserted itself. “Aranya, when exactly did you decide to take over the family tradition of bearding Sylakians?”

  “Learned from the best,” she chuckled.

  The Commander bowed formally over Zuziana’s hand. After blowing on her knuckles, he made a sign Aranya had never seen before. “Well, punch my guts out with a catapult shot, a real, fire-breathing Dragon and her Rider. We’ve got some strategizing to do, my Lord. I don’t like the odds, but the scales weigh more evenly now.”

  “We haven’t seen this invasion fleet yet,” put in one of his sub-Commanders.

  The King and Commander both fixed him with poisonous glares. But it was Darron who rasped, “You doubt the word of a Dragon Rider?”

  “No sir.”

  The Commander growled, “Besides, that Dragon’s the King’s daughter.”

  Aranya leered at the unfortunate man, who looked to be counting the remaining seconds of his mortality.

  “Right,” said Darron. “You two need to brief us dagger-sharp with everything you’ve got on the Sylakian forces, weapons and aerial tactics, this new Dragonship armour and technique with nets you mentioned, Yolathion’s experience and disposition, what you did to the Supreme Commander’s son, how you escaped the Tower of Sylakia–”

  King Beran interrupted the Commander’s growing list with, “I’d like you to scout, Aranya. If Dragon eyes are anything like the stories, you’ll see the fleet long before our scouts do. I’ve a gift for you, a little something the Sylakians dropped off with a thousand questions after you–” he shook his head at this point “–you really are like me in all the worst ways as well, Aranya. After your raid on the Tower of Sylakia. Your Immadian forked daggers came to us courtesy of First War-Hammer Ignathion. It landed us in a barrel of Cloudlands poison, let me tell you–imagine me trying to explain how Immadian daggers turned up …”

  Darron rapped at his sub-Commander, “All-points order–the Dragon is ours, alright? She’s an Immadian Dragon on our side. No-one shoots her or I will personally load them into a catapult and see if I can’t land them on Sylakia Island from here.” He glanced at the sky. “In one hour she will take a flight over the city.”

  A squire came running up with King Beran’s armour. “Sire, we, uh–” His eyes bulged and the rest of his sentence turned into a wordless squeak.

  Beran began to pull in his armour with an air of purpose which had been missing in him since that morning, Aranya realised, and possibly for months before. “Help me strap these on, boy, when you’re done gawking at the Dragon. She won’t eat you.”

  “I don’t eat people,” said Aranya. “But if you had a handy haunch of sheep …”

  Commander Darron clapped his hands for a messenger. “Meat for the Dragon, at the double.”

  The messenger’s eyes clearly measured her up and down, trying to decide on a suitable portion.

  “A whole haunch, boy, from the kitchens. Go!” Darron grinned at Aranya, and added a comradely slap on the shoulder. “In case I forget to say this later, my lady, you look magnificent. All those stories my father told, don’t do you a pebble’s justice compared to a whole Island. You haven’t got any Dragon armour, have you? No? Hmm. Do me a favour. When you do your sweep of the city, give them a proper Dragon roar. That’ll shake them in their furry underwear.”

  * * * *

  It was freeing, being up in the air again. Aranya had not realised how much all the fuss would affect her; all the feelings rushing through her heart, the pain and joy mixed into a bittersweet brew. Oyda had been so right. Becoming a Dragon was like being reborn. Nothing was the same.

  She swooped down over the city of Immadia. The city bustled with preparations for war. Teams of women and children wet down the rush roofs of houses lower down in the city and prepared barrels of water for putting out fires. Soldiers rushed back and forth. Carts groaned as they carried loads of crossbow quarrels and catapult ammunition to the emplacements scattered around the city. King Beran had broken open the armouries of the secret caverns. Sacks of meriatite made their way to the Dragonship field. Outside the city, shepherds hurried their flocks away into the forests. A last straggle of conscripts marched in from one of the remote villages.

  “Well?” said Zip.

  “Well, I’m afraid of what’s to come.”

  “No, you silly sheep–you promised the Commander a roar.”

  “I guess I did.”

  Zip laughed her belly-laugh. “Aw
, who’s a shy little Dragon, then? Mommy gave her so much milk it drowned out her fire?” She made baby-noises. “Aw, so cute.”

  An irascible rumble of fire announced itself in Aranya’s belly. She opened her mouth and released a roar so resounding it shook her from muzzle to tail. Half of the city came to a halt; the other half looked to the skies in amazement, wondering where the thunder had come from. The tall, flightless terhal birds carrying the wealthy notables of Immadia scattered in a squawking, flapping panic in every conceivable direction. Echoes reverberated from the mountains behind the city. She supposed there had to be something awe-inspiring about hearing a Dragon roar overhead. Her Dragon senses prickled; Human-Aranya, however, warned against a surfeit of Dragonish pride.

  “Oh, yes,” shouted Zip. “Back over the castle now with a roar for the Commander. Then up over the mountains as ordered.”

  “You’re unusually obedient today, Zip,” she teased.

  Aranya swooped smoothly through the clear noon skies, heading back up to the castle. She saw a few hands waving at her from below. Most people seemed stunned. Aranya thundered over the castle, giving Commander Darron an ebullient rendition of his boyhood wish, before angling for the mountains.

  “That roar of yours,” said Zip, after some time. “It has magic in it, Aranya–a touch of thunder. Real thunder.”

  Dragon-Aranya directed a wide-eyed gaze over her shoulder at her Rider. “Storm powers?”

  “I think.”

  “You’re sensing magic, Zip-Zap?”

  “Can we please not fly into the mountainside?” Zip whooped as Aranya rolled into a vertical climb, skirting the flanks of the spectacular peaks that framed the city. “Show off. And stop making up nicknames for me.”

  “You just have to try flying, Zip.”

  “Oh, you’re so sly,” said Zip, pressed back in the saddle as they climbed, still accelerating. “I am flying, Dragonback. Yes, I definitely sensed something. You don’t realise how loud you are, do you? I’m going to need ear plugs if that power develops any further. I sense magic in the mountains–”

  Aranya cut her friend off with a growl, saying, “I sense Dragonships, Zip. The breeze is against them. But I can’t see any, yet.”

  Zip shuddered. Aranya glanced back with concern, but her Rider merely raised her chin–as Aranya might have–and essayed a determined frown. Dragon-Aranya, however, knew how fast her friend’s heart was pulsing, like a Dragonship at full speed. To her annoyance, Zip kept glancing back at the mountains as though they were more important than the Sylakian fleet. How could she have all these doubts about her friend, right before an important and possibly fatal battle?

  As Aranya continued her upward surge, Immadia Island receded to the size of a small painting, a forlorn outpost of memories and love and longing and pain in the midst of the Cloudlands. She loved that sight. Islands looked so different from above. A large textured dot was the city, a white field beside it the soaring, ragged-toothed mountains, a fringe of variegated greens the forests and fields, a smattering of tiny outlying Islands, several inhabited, before the emptiness of those endless horizons of gold-shot Cloudlands.

  Zuziana leaned forward, saying, “Aranya, I don’t understand what’s bitten me. I want to fight. I’m trying to be strong. But there’s this thing in me that’s acid inside, eating away. I’m just so frightened. I want to hide under those mountains. I’m sorry. I am fighting it, Aranya.”

  “Zip, I understand.” But the Princess did not believe. Aranya wanted to scream or shake some sense into her. “We can do this, Zip. I’m not letting Garthion near you. Understood? Say the word–”

  “Aranya, no. You are not abandoning your Island for me.”

  “What, then?”

  “I couldn’t live with myself. Don’t you see?”

  What Aranya saw was that Zip’s body, hands and face were glowing like the beautiful sheets of light that danced in the northern skies during winter. The power was growing wildly within her.

  Aranya took a deep, ragged breath of frigid air into her lungs, scanning the eastern horizon. “Zip, I have never and will never regret breaking you out of the Tower. A Rider chooses as much as she is chosen. I don’t want anyone else. If this is your fight, then it is mine, too. If it’s my Island, it is your Island, too.”

  She gasped; the labour of her lungs stalled and Aranya’s wings hung limply in the air.

  “Dragonships?”

  “Oh, Zip. So many …”

  Deliberately, she chose to train her eyes on those miniscule dots rising above the horizon. She magnified the picture with all of her strength. For the first time, she felt Zip nearby–her mind, nearby, somehow attuned with hers.

  “Hundreds,” Zip said, dreamily. “A group peeling away to the north, Aranya. They mean to outflank us from behind the mountains, as King Beran suggested. Wait, we should count them.” Aranya shivered. Now Zip could read her mind? Bizarre. “Around fifty to the north, Aranya. Too many to count in the east.”

  “They’re still cresting the horizon,” said Aranya.

  “Ooh, I feel ill.” Zuziana swayed in the saddle, putting her hand to her forehead. “That wasn’t a good idea. Let’s take our intelligence to the Commander, Aranya. Oh, I need to take those measurements first. Hang on.”

  “Oh, I’ll just hang on the breeze.” When this received no response, Aranya added, “I’ll hook my wings to a passing cloud and dangle.”

  “You’re making a noise, beast. Shh.”

  When Zip was finished, Aranya asked, “What is that thing?”

  “A league-logger,” said the Princess, rather too smugly for Aranya’s liking. “Something your Immadian scholars apparently found described in an ancient scroll. It measures angles and works out horizontal distance–in this case, fifty-three leagues to the Dragonships. Making four leagues per hour against the wind; they’ll reach Immadia by this evening.”

  After returning with their intelligence, Aranya and Zuziana were ordered to rest until late afternoon, when they flew on another reconnaissance, very similar to the first. The Dragonships were much closer, but not in a particular hurry.

  “Closing the northern jaw of his trap,” said King Beran, pacing up and down like a caged rajal. “Sink him into a Cloudlands volcano, I’d do the same. He’ll make a frontal assault around dawn with the bulk of his fleet, on land and in the air, while waiting with his second flank until the battle has been joined and our forces are committed to one front.”

  “Aye, Sire,” said Darron. “Where’s Garthion’s flagship, Aranya?”

  “With the northern group, Commander,” she replied. “And … please don’t take this the wrong way, but we didn’t make any assumptions he would be with his flagship. Princess Zuziana and I agreed that we sensed his presence inside the flagship. Call it a Dragon sense. He once tortured the Princess of Remoy. Now it seems there’s a strange connection between them.”

  “Does it go both ways?” asked the King.

  Aranya’s fires flared at the question. Perceptive! She had not thought about that. Poor Zip had nearly fainted at the touch of Garthion’s mind, at the awareness of his proximity and evil. She had been raving for a while, babbling about chains and Dragons and the skin being flayed off her body.

  “I don’t know. It could. Dad–also, I need to be honest. My Rider’s not well. Can I talk to you and Commander Darron privately?”

  She explained how Princess Zuziana had reacted; that this was unlike her, especially given as they had been through battles before. She told them about her fears about the Dragon tears.

  “Aye, Aranya,” said Darron, when her tale was told. “Dragon magic’s spawned a thousand tales of strange powers. Could be the torture broke her mind; could be your magic still working within her. You chose well to tell us, girl. Thank you for your honesty–and your trust.”

  King Beran nodded. “Aye, I’m proud of you, Sparky.”

  “Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Commander Darron.”

  “Now, you should rest,”
said the King. “You’re swaying even as you speak. We’ve spied the Dragonships and will keep a Dragon’s eye on their advance. Any trouble, we’ll wake you at once and meet on Izariela’s Tower. You’ve my word on that.”

  “Dad, we can’t hit them tonight, can we? One flash of an exploding Dragonship and they’ll see me.”

  “Aye. But an attack from above in the morning–that should send those ralti sheep fleeing for the hills. Darron and I will discuss how best we might use you. I’ve never tried to plan strategy around a Dragon.”

  “But Dad, there’s just one of me.”

  “So we need to make you count for ten. Your tame monk has given me a few ideas.”

  Aranya kissed him on the cheek. “You get some sleep, too.”

  “It’ll work out,” said Beran, touching his cheek where she had kissed him. “I just know. Call it a father-of-the-Dragon sense.”

  She stared at him. Shaking her head, Aranya went to try to find some elusive sleep.

  * * * *

  Bang! Bang-bang-bang!

  Aranya jerked awake. She had kicked the sheets into a ferocious tangle. Beside her on the bed, Zuziana sat up at once.

  “Quickly,” came the call. “To the tower.”

  “An attack?” mumbled Aranya.

  Zip had slept fully dressed. She ran to the door. “Sleeping in the clouds? Hurry!”

  Aranya had been dreaming about the Black Dragon. What had he been saying? She could not remember, but it was important. She ran after Zuziana.

  The two Princesses burst up onto the tower. As they did, a flash of fire lit the eastern sky. Aranya rubbed her eyes as she scanned the horizon. “An attack? Where?”

  “They’re attacking each other,” said King Beran. “At least, we think so. Can you transform and tell us?”

  At least her father was awake. Aranya waved her arms. “If you clear enough space.”

  Aranya’s sleeping-shift fluttered to the ground, torn. In her place stood an Amethyst Dragon. She peered into the night. Her hearts leaped fitfully at the excitement. “Yes, they’re attacking each other. It’s hard to tell … the fleet is drifting apart and there’s a cloudbank in the way.”