by Marc Secchia
“Bah, no honour among pirates,” Flicker snorted.
“What’s that?” Shalanya asked absently. Jakani realised that she must have closed her eyes, the better to stir the insides of his brain like a stewpot. Perhaps his interference had been an example better not set.
“Morazi and Death betrayed the Crimson Talons – drew them in, then slaughtered them like ralti sheep,” said the dragonet. “Report?”
“I do sense some kind of past taint, but the rest of his cranial cesspit seems to be presently unaffected,” the Princess said, deathly serious despite her joke. “It’s not a type of magic with which I am familiar, and it … disturbs me.”
Flicker said, “Is now when we wish we had been less stroppy during our history lessons and listened better to granny Aranya’s wisdom?”
“Shut it, you toothless old rat bag,” she said, fondly scratching him behind the skull spikes.
“Obstreperous, Dragon-stubborn teenagers! On that note, do keep scratching the encasement of my gargantuan intellect whilst we watch the very interesting developments out there. Looks like the cabals are about to parley with Juzzakarr and his mercenaries. Want to go join in the fun, Shalanya?”
“Ouch! What was that for?” Jakani glared as the Princess smacked the back of his head unexpectedly.
She said, “I thought I was the one with the inbuilt, virtually impenetrable psychic bastion-ward until you came along, Mister Mud-Splotter.”
“That’s Dirt Picker to you, Your Flit-a-Bit Majesty.”
Shalanya put her hands on her hips. “How long have you been planning to use that charming title?”
“I’m a disarming sort of fellow.”
“The word you’re looking for is, ‘infuriating.’ ” She sighed. “Never mind. I suppose I ought to flip over there, shocking the living fires out of all those nice pirate Dragons, flirt, dribble fire left and right, and try to work out what’s going on with my supposedly superior psychic skills and enormous experience in negotiating with other Dragons. For which, I shall need to be warded up to the eyeballs. Will you help, Flicker?”
“Dabble in your mind too, o Princess? With pleasure.”
* * * *
Excorion had a way of moving so silently, he was like a forty-tonne zephyr barely caressing a stone. Tytiana jolted in shock as she saw him already inside her pit, within one step of looming right over her. Thankfully she had been doing … well, nothing. Cooling her expensive heels. Feeling as useful as a frog afloat in a puddle of lava. His stealth of movement was all the more remarkable because of the silence without the cave. She had not been entirely paying attention, nor was she asleep either. How did he mask his presence so completely?
“Choice Tytiana,” he said heavily.
“Noble Excorion.”
“You are well?”
“Bored.”
“In a most peculiar and wing-shivering turn of events, the famously reclusive Princess Shalanya of Immadia has this hour arrived with a not inconsiderable force at her back. What do you know of this development?”
“As much as you just told me,” Tytiana returned truthfully.
“Huh!” he snorted, blowing her hair back with the force of his discontent. She coughed. Sulphur breath! “When a reputedly powerful and visibly rare Shapeshifter Dragoness who has never before left – nor been able to leave – her Island, arrives precisely at the moment a battle between the cabals is about to break loose, one’s fires do darken with suspicion.”
“Ah, the greedy cabals.” His fires were impossible to fathom. What game was this Brown Dragon playing this time? On an impulse, she said, “Is she pretty? This Dragoness?”
“Peculiar, aye, by my wings, but as pretty as a grossly overgrown butterfly.” Excorion first appeared to make his disgust plain, but then he added with as close to a draconic fire-sigh as she had ever heard, “Fey is she, but a rarity beyond description – a white and pink Dragoness, this Albino Shapeshifter of moderate size but immoderate beauty. Ah, how the fools sniff about her scales, and me too at first, until I realised she was playing us with a glamour-magic like unto the fabled draconic powers of Herimor, and even your father’s –”
He pulled up suddenly. Tytiana raised an eyebrow.
GNARR!! “Now you cause even this Dragon to speak too freely!”
The stone. He’s talking about the Nestrakil, that weird stone father never lets off his neck, always stroking it like a pet feline … as if it’s alive …
When his snarling had abated somewhat, she said with a gesture toward the air vents, “Night falls, o Excorion. Wherefore do we tarry?”
The Dragon’s blazing orbs narrowed as he stared down at her with a terrible expression. “Why do you speak like a Dragoness?”
Tytiana winced, clutching her head. Scorching pincers seemed to squeeze her temples from without and within all at once. “Don’t. What … are you …”
“You do not speak Dragonish?”
“No. Jakani always –”
She snapped her teeth shut in fury. Her turn to spout dangerous mysteries!
“Ah, by my fires!” Excorion hissed. “So, the boy was concealing a secret all along, a secret masked by your capricious fires!” His enormous right fore-talon aimed directly at her breast. “Admit it! He’s a Shapeshifter! Look into my eyes and deny this truth!”
She had to. Somehow, he compelled her and Tytiana did not understand, but when she replied, it was with a measure of calm unimaginable to her just moments before. “You know what I do, Excorion. Aye, he ran through an inferno to my rescue in that tower, and he was not incinerated. He was barely hurt. But he never changed into a Dragon, which is what I believe Shapeshifters are supposed to do. Neither do I. It is a great mystery.”
Simultaneously, her heart leaped and wept at the Dragon’s use of the present tense to describe Jakani. She knew; he knew that she knew, but belief never followed so easily. She was meant to be the Shapeshifter! Could Adazara have been sorely mistaken? Could her fires have been veiling – or kindling – the quintessential mystery of Jakani’s nature all along? His inordinate strength and speed? Mister fireproof kisses. Jakani of the beautiful gold-touched eyes. Was that glorious ember of eternity – had the spark always been his?
Tytiana reeled at the implications.
She knew this Brown had powers beyond those ordinarily ascribed to his colour. Could prescience be his gift?
Excorion’s fore-talon rasped at the armoured scales beneath his chin as he continued to stare down at her with the air of a doctor wishing to saw open her skull with his fore-talon. “Once more you speak truth. Yet why would these feckless Immadians be meddling in the affairs of Helyon and the cabals, were there not some sound reason? Princess Shalanya speaks of being en route to a wedding, but if it is to the reported match of this Prince Joi’izzion of Fra’anior, she is far too late. What force or mystery brings a reported hopeless agoraphobic out of seclusion? What is her agenda, the paw sinister in all this? Too much is herein hidden and the truth … that remains as fleeting as rainbows after storms. Is she working paw-in-hand with Juzzakarr himself? Seeking to influence the balance of this conflict, but to what end? Ah, but what a prize she would be …”
Tytiana really was not desperately interested in Excorion’s panting after this unusual foreign Dragoness, although the detail about agoraphobia did make her heart turn over. Imagine being a Dragon unable to fly? It was indeed a puzzling set of circumstances, but she was no closer to discovering a solution that could spring her from captivity than anything that had passed before. At her prompt, the Brown absently told her that the cabals had retired to consider a counter-proposal of Juzzakarr’s, and that the noises she had heard were two pirate Dragon groups wiping out a third – settling a long-held grudge with a payment of blood and splintered bone, as he called it. Delightful.
Finally, he said, “I hate it that you’re telling the truth. It is a most aggravating habit.”
“With respect, noble Excorion, I rather enjoy being aggravating in jus
t this way. It does seem strange to me that everything sounds so muffled in here, however. I’d really prefer to know what’s going on outside.”
“Magical shielding,” he noted. Ah! So, if there was help at hand … “Wouldn’t want you to feel poorly looked after,” added the Dragon. “Any attempt to infiltrate this cavern will go very badly indeed, trust me, so stop looking so hopeful. It’s a disgusting Human trait.”
“Ah …”
Stepping up over the rim of the pit, he called back over his shoulder with a gleaming, toothy sneer, “Keeping up hope in the face of overwhelming odds. It’s a puerile affectation of lesser creatures.”
Why did she sense Excorion was spouting mantras he himself did not hold to? Or were his words calculated to reach ears listening in and around this cave, ears that might burn at different, less draconic sentiments? So many agendas playing out on so many levels!
And if she did attempt to call upon Jakani, might he not leap into the jaws of this trap, and die?
What to do, Tytiana? What to do?
She stroked the egg softly, and on an impulse snuggled it in the crook of her neck. How would you proceed given this impasse, little one?
Snuggling fresh air. Her eyes popped wide open. What was it with this egg and its constant shenanigans? Even so, she felt sorely abandoned.
* * * *
At the onset of nightfall, the pirate Dragons withdrew several leagues to the North to continue their belligerent discussions. When Jakani wondered aloud at how they could not work together against Juzzakarr, Shalanya explained that due to their honour-dominance hierarchical society, such a concept was foreign to draconic thinking. One party had to be the recognised ascendant. One was top Dragon. In the gloaming eighteen of the Helyon Dragonships descended to Island level, while a dozen vessels plus many of the armoured mercenaries clearly remained on high alert.
He worked with Flicker and Shalanya, trying to puzzle out where on the Islands Tytiana might be. Magically concealed was the obvious conclusion. The Princess’ major flirtations had resulted only, she claimed, in a Dragonflight of broken hearts and confirmation of the power of the High Master’s sinister gem. With it he was definitely manipulating the Dragonkind, possibly even going so far as to control their thoughts and actions. Jakani eyed her warily in case she had changed into a Juzzakarr-serving sycophant. For her part, Shalanya was positively glowing after her exploits that evening, revelling in the attention she had enjoyed from so many burly brutes. Flicker had sourly reminded her they were a coven of spavined, null-fires murderers. Apparently, so much greater the thrill.
Girls! Girl Dragons, more like.
This was an aspect of femininity with which Tytiana had bamboozled him; now he was beginning to grasp further layers of connotations. He could only imagine how moody a teenage Dragoness might be! Nor would there be much mileage left for patriarchal societies. Say a man attempted to molest a girl. She turned into a Dragoness and ripped his head off. That was some kind of effective dissuasion, besides being well deserved – a far cry from ballads that enshrined romance as strong men wooing weaker women. Ha. Clearly those balladeers had never met the likes of a Shalanya or a Tytiana. They would have run off screaming, never to be seen upon the Isles again.
Sitting cross-legged in the navigation cabin of one of the Island-tethered Dragonships, perhaps a mile northeast of the Helyon forces, Jakani developed another almighty headache as they attempted, for two hours unceasing, to augment his desire to find Tytiana with Shalanya’s mental powers and thereby pinpoint her location. They failed.
“Obviously, not rainbows over Islands enough,” the Princess needled.
“Oh, he’s got the love-bite alright,” Flicker snorted. “Ugh. Boys and their nasty emotions. Give me true white fires love any ninth day of the week.”
Jakani sighed and opened his eyes. “Well, I think – ouch!” One hand rose to rub his bruised noggin, while the other snapped out automatically to catch the tiny white egg as it tumbled toward his lap. “Eh?”
Oh, my darling fire love, my tiny sparkling gemstone! the dragonet crooned unashamedly. Ignore thou this stone-tongued bumpkin, this blot upon Fra’anior’s most peerless – oh? This crass dirt-born son is of noble fires? Fie, what nonsense – thou sayest what? Indeed. Thou wilt – how, by the Onyx’s own beard, do you propose … well, that is novel. Excuse me! I shall not be edified by thee. I am thy sire! The cheek of a tiny unborn eggling to backchat thy illustrious progenitor, the eminent scion of – alright, alright, thou beauteous daughter of dawn’s verimost fires, keep your scales on. We shall proceed as you instruct.
Fascinating conversation, said Shalanya, all agog.
Aye, I understood perfectly, too, Jakani agreed drolly.
Flicker’s eyes showed the softest shades of yellows and apricots as he regarded his egg with enormous fondness. Quite the little tyrant, she is! Come on. Hop, skip and leap over the Isles, younglings.
You wouldn’t mind explaining what we’re actually doing? asked the Princess.
She will show us the way to the one she calls ‘the fire-head’ by highlighting the yearning inclination of your soul’s fires toward your beloved, noble Jakani, said the dragonet. Attend.
And before Jakani could quite catch his breath or vocalise the disbelief churning in his heart, a soft white flame-breath wafted out of his mouth, like a radiant spider’s web touched by dawn’s dew, wavered for a few long seconds, and then wandered gently away a few inches adrift of his left clavicle.
He let out a long, long gust of air. All … right?
That’s your left, Flicker snorted. Gaah, so much work to do with this one. Ignorant as your average granite boulder.
Where did you go to school? Shalanya teased.
I didn’t, actually. We lamko – whom you call Dirt Pickers – have no right to education. Nor any other rights whatsoever. Don’t know what that makes me now. One mostly illiterate Dragon?
The Princess’ jaw dangled, and stayed that way. Still speechless, she turned to Flicker and gave him a long, unreadable stare.
Aye. He riffled his wings self-consciously. Some parts of this Island-World are still lamentably backward, Your Highness – and I am not referring to your people, Jakani. I am referring to the masters, the oppressors, the tyrants and warlords, and yea, the Dragonkind who perpetrate these unjust systems in their respective societies.
It’s organised slavery! Shalanya growled.
Welcome to the world beyond Immadia, Flicker said, but the depth of his sympathy caused the Princess to dab at her suddenly glistening eyes. This is the field of labour of the Star Dragons and the Dragon Riders. One injustice at a time, Princess. First, we rescue this fine young Shapeshifter’s blazing beloved. Then –
We go kick Juzzakarr and his ilk past the Mystic Moon! Shalanya thundered, every inch the Dragoness she was. Jakani almost jumped out of his skin. Heavens weeping fireballs, Flicker!
The dragonet said, In my eight centuries, younglings, I have seen more of this Island-World’s manifold majesty than ever I could recount, and wonders beyond imagination or description. I have seen, in our time, the very essence of starlight incarnate bestriding these Isles. Yet also, I have witnessed atrocities and unfairness, wrongs and … even genocide. I have seen the hunting of my kind for sport, and Dragonkind cannibalising Humans. Heavy grows the burden upon my aged heart, little ones, to consider these matters. On many an occasion I have wondered at the virulence of evil, its corrupting and self-sustaining power and its allure for those inclined to its treacherous whispers, and I remind myself how thin is the line that separates us all from the abyss.
Now, the dragonet was regal in mien, and the depths of his gaze upon Shalanya and Jakani, unfathomable. He added, But I assure you there are those who will not stand for evil, nor rest idly whilst injustice blights the Isles. This is the tradition and the draconic heritage into which you were born, o Jewel of Immadia, but it is a mantle never cast upon an unwilling wearer. This would be your choice. And you, noble Jaka
ni – you re-enter your world as a rare and powerful Shapeshifter Dragon. What will you do with that power? What will you do with your power, Shalanya? WHAT WILL YOU DO?
He found a roar ready upon his tongue. I will fight!
And I! Shalanya cried, no less vehemently.
They glanced at each other, somewhat embarrassed.
Flicker chuckled, Very good. No need to break the crysglass windows, mind. Expensive to replace when Dragons start thundering like that. Right, Princess. It is time to put these Specialists of yours to good use. Follow me.
A half-hour later, with the darkness having deepened to full night, and the clouds driving in ahead of the storm front expected from the East, the Specialist forces deployed from a Dragonship together with Flicker, Shalanya and Jakani. They drifted across several Islands using a combination of lightweight deployable gliders and the merest curl of magic from the Princess, while Flicker apparently shielded their progress and cast a few ‘psychic phantoms’ about to throw any lurking Dragonkind off the scent. Suspecting that Tytiana was being held underground in a slaver lair or cavern, the better to restrict the chance of any Dragon detecting her, the black-clad Specialists carried a startling array of equipment along with them.
They followed the bent of Jakani’s fires. Island-hopping in long, gliding bounds. Scaling cliffs with special attachments to their boots and lightweight picks in hand. Leaping across the fantastically broken terrain, they traversed jagged, sloping bands of rock suggesting a long-ago blast which had frozen midway, leaving these steeply angled black volcanic edges frozen in time. Now and again, Flicker would prod the egg with a soft request, and Jakani’s white fires exhaled each time.
Shalanya’s eyes were as round as fenturi fruit. When he inquired, she said, “I believe those are your soul-fires, Jakani. The essence of what makes you a Dragon. I’m not sure anyone has ever seen them before, nor am I comfortable with the metaphysical implications of what that egg is doing. It means –” she sighed dramatically “– that the bond between you and Tytiana is real and true, and deeper-founded than you perhaps imagine, like Aranya’s famous soul connection with the Shadow Dragon.”