by Marc Secchia
“A … few. Just last night I dreamed – a nightmare, really – that the Star Dragoness was chained up in this cage, unable to escape. The Dragons there had no idea who she was. They were making her fight many terrible enemies. Asturbar, you aren’t listening to me. Are you thinking about your betrothed? Must she always interfere –”
“I’m thinking about names,” he said.
“Oh.”
“Many beautiful names. I’m thinking about the flare you produced yesterday, when your scales became like white gold, and I had suns-spots all the rest of the day.”
“Which is why you tripped over a bush and skinned your poor sensitive elbow?”
“Grr. And I can be thankful I didn’t drop my training boulder upon my granite skull at the same time, yes.”
“I’m such a stupid, jealous … girl!”
“No, you’re not. If you must know, I was thinking of the colour of iridium fired in a furnace. That whiteness and purity of your flare attack seemed so … I don’t know. Intense. Wildfires. I wasn’t even sure where it came from, or if we could learn to focus it – but it could be your most potent weapon.”
Her eyes were laughing at him now, sparkling with that selfsame power seething within her. Asturbar had realised it was growing every day. The more they trained, the more power seemed to become available to her, but conversely, the more indications there appeared to be that she might be able to learn to control that chaos magic. Subtle signs. Successful transformations. Occasional mastery of fire or light attacks. Less of the panicked flickering and more deliberation.
Yet even in the gleam of her eyes, questions lurked.
Asturbar blurted out, “If I were to guess your name, I’d say it might be related to who you are. You’ve told me your skin also changed when the magic came upon you, but I wonder if there wasn’t a hint of foresight in whatever name your parents gave you.”
“Nothing to do with blue or silver,” she said.
“And it’s not a traditional name from Yazê-a-Kûz?”
“You’ll never guess.”
Would he never guess why she suddenly sounded uncertain? A touch breathless?
He stroked her flank, realising that she must already apprehend the wild irregularity of his pulse, and the movement of his throat as he swallowed hard. “Iridium is the colour of your skin. But that’s no name for a girl. Therefore, I think you must be … Iridiana.”
She could not speak, but the illumination streaming from her being was more eloquent than ten thousand lines of a balladeer’s finest poetry. Fires ignited. Tears welled from her eyes, bubbling as they spilled upon her febrile cheeks. Then, the exuberant outpouring of her joy translated into a stream of effervescent light that blew the front door clean off its hinges and soared into the profound depths of a starry night, transforming the floating Islands into glorious reflections of her celebrations. She fizzed. Dived. Spiralled. Laughed in silvery glissades of unearthly sound.
For his part, Asturbar sprinted outside to watch. After a long while, he raised his hands to the heavens, and roared, “IRIDIANA!”
Chapter 12: Storm’s Chaos
ODDLY, it took Asturbar a considerable time to grow used to calling her Iridiana, and so frequently, he slipped back to Nyahi. Perhaps that was right. Their pet names for each other had special meaning; an integral link in the story two souls sought to forge together. She often called him Boots, affectionately, or Commander when she was feeling naughty, and he called her Nyahi in moments of tenderness or passion.
They trained relentlessly. Iridiana ran the Island’s trails with him and developed her physical fitness, agility and flexibility using exercises and drills he prescribed for them both. He taught her weapons-play with sword, hammer, axe and dagger, and a solid range of lethal and non-lethal unarmed combat techniques – a far cry from the tenor of her gentle-born upbringing upon Yazê-a-Kûz! In the evenings he taught her battle strategy and she taught him how to sing and to play the sithastroon, repaired now courtesy of ragion cement Asturbar sourced from beneath a small, nearby Island. He glued two of his fingers to the instrument in the doing, but that was a different issue. In between, they experimented with the extraordinary diversity of her forms, trying to discover their capabilities and how they might be controlled.
As a Dragoness, one of her ‘standard’ manifestations, Iridiana was a lithe, sleek beast measuring some nine and a half of Asturbar’s regular paces or thirty-seven feet in length, he calculated, muzzle to tail-tip, but to their disappointment at that size, he was unable to fit between the relatively closely-spaced spine spikes above her shoulders to sit there as they both believed Dragon Riders were wont to do. Not that there were many Dragon Riders about these parts. Most were said to live in the Vassal States on the far side of the Mesas, not even in Wyldaroon itself – Asturbar himself had never met one, although Nyahi remembered one who had visited Yazê-a-Kûz in her youth.
The question then became, how could the pair fly into battle together, should that day ever come?
Iridiana showed him a set of her very fine talons. “Maybe I should just slice a few rump steaks off here; a few inches there?”
“With those girly talons?” he sneered. Yes, a good foot and a half to two feet in length, and apparently made of razor steel. Weapons indeed! “My behind is far trimmer than your mighty haunches, noble Dragoness.”
The girl-Dragon chortled happily. “Mmm. All the better to sit on you with, Commander Asturbar! Consider that when next you decide to ‘accidentally’ explore the assets.”
“ ‘Only doing my duty, ma’am-sah!’ ” he roared.
“Alright then, I will sit on … oh.”
“Hmm. Where did I leave that flowerpot?” He chuckled at the very annoyed-looking posy of purple daisies rooted beside his boot. Seven flowers hissed at him. “I can’t for the life of me think what use this form will be in battle, but I’ll come up with something. Dazzle the enemy with your perfume, perhaps? Tickle them until they howl with laughter?”
The daisies sulked.
“What I really need is iridium battle armour for … bloodsucking bantalizards!”
“Mrrrr … what’s this form?” his left bicep inquired.
Asturbar looked down at his body. “Apparently this manifestation constitutes rather effeminate but useful-looking battle armour – maybe based on an insectoid draconic life-form? Certainly weighs a ruddy tonne.”
“What are you saying about my weight, mister? Or my protective capabilities?” complained his shiny new carapace.
“Well, I can’t actually move my elbows or knees right now, which could potentially be a liability in battle. Otherwise, it is amazing.”
“You don’t like it.”
“Right. Does ‘amazing’ mean something different where you grew up? Silly Shapeshifter! This is an incredible disguise as well as being practical for all sorts of reasons related to battle – if impacts don’t hurt you, for example –”
“Your multifunctional metalloid girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“Who weighs a tonne? Or more?”
“Umm …”
“I could add this part.”
“Nyahi! Now I couldn’t see a speckled champer-lizard even if it was shovelling me down its gullet.”
“The helmet clearly needs refinement,” his new armour goaded him blithely, “diverting as this game could be. If we don’t have your eyes, we’re rather stuck, aren’t we? Or, what did you have in mind for armour? Bulkier? More manly?”
At the speed of thought, the armour reformed into Nyahi’s Human form and Asturbar felt a great deal less enclosed, and a great deal more diverted. This was hopeless. He growled, “What did I have in mind? The Commander shall now demonstrate.”
Iridiana giggled as he reached for her. “Ooh, I do love show and tell!”
* * * *
Three weeks later, Asturbar could run around the Island for an hour wearing some ninety stone of girlfriend. He could charge a boulder head-on and not hurt her, only rattling his
own person. She was heavier yet more functional and flexible, and offered better overall protection and shock absorption, than any armour he had ever worn. It was the first of her forms that they perfected, and he and Nyahi celebrated together with a romantic moonlit meal beside the big pool. Asturbar might have given significant numbers of ingots for a good skein of Blakkurdan Red wine, but he decided he should make plans for berry wine. Berries were in no short supply, not anymore.
Nyahi said, “I see we are to be graced with the presence of your harem, Boots.”
“Ah, the Seven Scamps. And – ping my skull with a Dragon’s tail, we have a thin Fatty. Congratulations, Fatty! She must have laid her eggs.”
“Fatty? You don’t think that’s a touch demeaning?”
“Naming accident.” Asturbar patted his belly. “Takes one barrel to – well, she was significantly fatter when she was with egg. Now she’s positively lissom.”
She glared at him as though ‘louse’ were scribbled upon his forehead. “I hope you aren’t going to call me names if I become pregnant.”
Asturbar felt the blood drain from his face as though a plug had been pulled in his heart.
“Nor should you turn that pasty if I mention children! Honestly, what’s the matter with you –” her eyes heated to glowing embers as he discovered his hands would not move “– you feeble excuse for a warrior? I guess now’s as good a time as any to find out that’s how you feel about having children! Well, for your information, you Bazu’kazik dracoswine, I would very much like children – many children – and what’s more …”
Her words faded around him. Something was wrong with his tongue; it felt as thick as a python in his mouth, and his body would not move. He wanted to speak, but what emerged was a choked, helpless groan that frightened him to the core.
He saw her face change. “Boots? Boots!”
* * * *
He came around feeling nauseous and muzzy. He thought he heard himself speaking, but Nyahi clearly could not understand a word. The world faded and returned through the whiteness of a blinding headache. Eventually, he was able to sit up and take a few sips of water.
“You had a seizure,” she said softly.
“Thorry,” he slurred.
“Frightened me half to death. I had a little brother who lived just two years.” Her throat bobbed. Iridiana squeezed his hand tighter. “Zaku used to have … these. So I have … some experience. Then, one day, Zaku seized and just never woke up. I’m so sorry I got angry with you …”
“Ish arroit.”
Asturbar could only rock her in his arms, and found himself crying too – great tears that splashed upon her neck and wet her dress. When had he ever cried like this before? He tried to explain that it was unprecedented; that he was as healthy as a battle-ready Dragon, but he just did not understand. A seizure? Was this something to do with the Jewels in his stomach? They never had come out. Maybe they were poisoning him slowly, his extra-concentrated Azingloriax stomach acids doing their insidious work. He apologised over and over again for scaring her so badly. Who knew what wounds a person carried?
When he expressed this thought, the girl said, “You couldn’t have known.” She paused. “I should have told you.”
She spoke until late in the evening, until the dragonets burrowed a little into the warm sand all around them and fell asleep, as the stars rose over the oasis’ floating Isles and the play of lights began. Asturbar wondered if their communication seemed more urgent than usual, if somehow they were trying to speak to him, but he did not understand and Iridiana’s story was too compelling for him to concentrate on anything else.
A girl born to a noble Line, she had grown up amongst every luxury, which her father and mother, the Uxâtate and Uxâtati of Yazê-a-Kûz respectively, one of the greatest if not the greatest single nation in all of Wyldaroon, had lavished upon their children. Yet they were always distant, always busy with matters of state, always to be addressed as Father or Mother. Every interaction was undertaken in a formal setting. Authoritarian, Asturbar thought. Distant yet demanding. Bound in the unbreakable chains of honour and tradition that characterised Kahilates or nation-states the world over. Children were expected to succeed the Line, to be trained for rulership from birth, to be serious and scholarly and a credit to their parents. Imperfection was intolerable. Punishments were harsh and to his way of thinking, exceeded the misdemeanour by some considerable margin – perhaps, in some ways, similar to his harsh military upbringing. If he ever had children, he thought … surely there must be room for the tenderness both of them had so seldom known?
Her ‘coming into her powers’ broke them. Her mother went mad with grief – or perhaps, with reflected shame, Nyahi related, mordant in her sadness. Her father Shan-Jarad raged, whipped her and locked her up in his dungeons, but later his true heart emerged. He broke down and wept with her, revealing for the very first time a man stifled; a heart bleeding and a life breaking beneath the burden of rule. He asked for forgiveness many times over. Yet he had still been the one to exile her, secretly. Few in Yazê-a-Kûz knew anything but that she had disappeared. The terrible monster in the dungeons was gone. Shan-Jarad ruled alone, and his four faultless sons were dutiful in every way, taking on the tasks of state as they came of age. Iridiana was forgotten.
“That’s their way,” she finished. “Face and honour are everything. I … I don’t know if I could go back, Asturbar. Yet Yazê-a-Kûz lies deep in my soul. Deeper than I imagine, I guess. I do dream about going back home, but I would most likely hold neither rank nor inheritance, nor any place in the Uxâtaayn Kahilate at all. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Yet it most surely did.
What a turn of events for a mercenary and a princess, which was what her previous title of Uxâtati-a-Tân meant, to fall over the Islands for each other. A liaison forbidden by class, status, heritage and every written and unwritten law of the Isles of Herimor. According to the histories, Hualiama had been the Princess of the celebrated Island Cluster of Fra’anior, before her elevation to Empress and eventual deification. Her mate Grandion was also a Shapeshifter, shell-son of the legendary Sapphurion, leader of all Dragons North of the Rift. Yet had Hualiama not once been like Iridiana, young and ingenuous, yet bursting with such mighty power she had not known what to do with it? He grimaced. These considerations must make for outright sacrilege in most corners of Herimor and Wyldaroon.
She must have come from somewhere. Star Dragonesses did not just bud on every bush. Nyahi might be one to quickly bend the knee, but not this soldier.
* * * *
Over the weeks that followed his strange seizure, Asturbar came to realise that this oasis in the Doldrums could describe a metaphor for his own life. In a sense, his Island-World had been the barrenness of the toxic Cloudlands, a dry, lifeless place where he had done his best to ensure nothing ever changed. He had his routines, his soldierly disciplines and his obsession for the work. Nothing else had mattered. Here, everything had changed. This green paradise, so isolated and inaccessible, was nonetheless fertile soil for the flowering of his soul. He discovered new purpose. Nothing articulate or immensely noble as such, but simply a desire to be a better man, and moreover, to do better for others. Some of his soldiering had been undertaken for laudable reasons, but much had been for greed, aggrandizement, petty revenge or territorial expansion. In Iridiana he found more than a companion and more than a diversion. He found a soulmate, someone he connected to at levels he had never imagined.
The oasis was their private domain outside of the main ebb and flow of the world. He felt intensely jealous of their time together, for as she dreamed a second time and third of this Amethyst, and of events sweeping by their tiny patch of intimacy, he knew their time would end – nay, it would continue, he vowed, but in different ways. Courage, soldier! Have faith in the incalculable, Island-swaying might of love.
Love had been stolen from him once before, most cruelly.
A sympathetic word from the Marshal
rang in his memory. “We were attacked by a Scorpiolute Assassin. I regret to inform you that Rezhine was among those who lost their lives. I’m sorry, Commander Asturbar.”
Regret to inform. His huge fists clenched. He had not even been given the chance to be present, to battle the enemy, to make his voice and his strength count. What did strength matter when the assassin destroyed in secret? Now he found it nigh impossible to leave Nyahi’s side for a second.
That morning, waking before dawn beside his beloved, he had deliberately torn himself away to climb the ravine behind the hut. As he braced himself across the crack and pressed his way up, Asturbar wondered at the motivating power of fear. Was fear not intimately linked to survival? Was it the voice of inner cowardice, or was the Isles proverb true, that fear was the hidden face of wisdom? To protect. To love. To prepare. Any soldier took these matters to heart, only he would have preferred a sense of healthy cognizance of consequences rather than the raw, choking, visceral dread that had settled in his craw like a lump of molten lead this morning. Perhaps it followed his dreams. He had seized thrice more over these weeks. How could he be strong and reliable for this young woman, this Chaos Shifter who needed him to guide and understand her transformations, if he just fell over in a heap, frothing at the mouth, at random intervals?
That was the core. He felt his masculinity was at stake. He must not fail, yet unseen, unknown dangers loomed larger than Islands over his life and he … he was afraid. Afraid!
He climbed.
An hour later he sat cross-legged upon an East-facing outcropping, thinking. Reflecting. Absorbing the dawn’s beauty through his pores, through the colours playing against his eyes, imagining the very palette of creation seeping into his soul. Nyahi was a wellspring of endless creativity. Just yesterday she had presented four new forms, ranging from a wasp-like predator to an elemental form that had shifted around their hut like a constant play of prismatic lights; he could pass his hand through her insubstantial being and feel nothing but a slight tingling of magic.