Dragon Thief (17 page)

“Pick your weapons, my fledgling apprentice, and I shall beat a lesson in black and blue upon your worthless hide!”

With blunted training blades, Kal and Riika clashed with a combined speed and ferocity that had the dell ringing and the Indigo Dragoness looking on with bemusement. Riika dented her adopted father’s skull with a flurry of blows, fighting two-handed. Kal returned the compliment with a crushing blow to her knee. The girl crumpled, only to fold up as if she were a contortionist. Riika slithered out from beneath his pounce to deliver a flurry of cobra-swift strikes to his kidneys. Kal lamed her left arm with a pressure-point strike and cursed unhappily as Riika kissed his lip with her boot-heel. Ten minutes of all-in combat later, they spun apart, laughing.

“I just healed up!” Kal dabbed his mouth.

Riika gave up her proud stance to bend over, panting. “You’re like a strip of goat sinew. You just get tougher with age.”

“Monk training,” said Kal.

“I went easy out of respect for an old man.”

Rajals take it, the truth stank, but it remained no less the truth. Riika had grown stronger and faster than he could have imagined. This only proved Riika had a soft heart beneath all that bristling Dragon-armour. Bah.

Kal said, “I practically changed your wet-cloths and wiped your snotty toddler nose mid-combat, Razorblades.”

“I’ll have to–” she coughed so violently that Kal moved over, putting his arm around her shoulders. His eyes flicked to her hand. Blood? She quickly clenched her fist and hid it behind her back; casually done, but he knew …

“Alright, Razorblades?”

“I missed our fun little sparring sessions, alright? Satisfied?” Riika straightened her back. “Dragoness! Where’s that hot spring you promised us, or are you too busy baking the reptilian brains over there?”

Tazithiel squirmed to her paws with a hiss of exasperation, sheeting lava off her flanks and spine spikes. “You two finished throwing four-letter words at each other? ‘Love you.’ ‘Love you too.’ ‘Love it when you break my ribs.’ ‘Oof, I really felt the love that time.’ ” She chuckled as her Human companions stiffened identically, her eye-fires swirling with bright yellow streaks of humour. “Aye, I used the L-word and it’s the truth, Dragon’s honour. And you both can just use that to whet your blades.”

Riika’s lips twitched, as did Kal’s. They shared a sheepish glance.

Kal said, “Never thought
anything
could sneak up on a pad-foot of my extravagant talents.”

“I should’ve killed you right the first time.” Riika grinned impishly, but a shadow of pain flitted across her eyes. “I sure messed up, didn’t I, Kal?”

He saw crimson seep from the corner of her mouth and it nigh destroyed him.

“Aye, Razorblades, you stink in so many ways, I simply can’t keep track anymore,” said Kal. “Let’s start by tossing you into that hot spring.”

* * * *

Elidia to Jos, the capital city of the Island of Jeradia, was a half-day’s Dragonflight under ideal conditions. Unfortunately, this late in the season, Jeradia had its own particular blight in the form of cool air that swept in from the Southwest and blanketed the Island in the most impenetrable, soupy fogs known to the Island-World; fogs so thick and hearty, Kal imagined his lungs clogging up with lumps of soupy air. Of course, mists and malefactors were the most excellent of friends, and not friends of the shake-hands variety, either. More like intimate bedfellows. Kal had accordingly spent many an hour cheerfully skulking about Jos during a youth which had included absolutely none of the finest education money could buy, no Island home for longer than a season or two at a time, nor any regular supply of actual food. Hunger focussed the senses. Starvation turned the mind into a dagger. Jos had been his training ground and his first stint in prison, aged seven.

Halfway to Jeradia, the mists closed in.

Ordinarily Kal would be piloting his trusty Dragonship, now abandoned halfway around the world. Tazithiel’s navigational instruments ranged from a homing sense, similar to messenger hawks, to directional senses, scent and even what she called the ‘song of the stars’. Riika had giggled at that one, provoking a minor bonfire from their mount, a prolonged case of the fiery sulks and dire imprecations about draping a certain impertinent waif’s guts all over the mountain peaks of northern Jeradia.

Kal unbuckled to stretch his legs. “Long legs and Dragons,” he groused. “You need to grow into your Rider, mighty Tazithiel.”

“What, wear myself in like a pair of old boots?”

Trust the Dragoness to conjure up exactly the wrong image.

“Like form-hugging leather trousers,” Riika put in. “You have to wear them in for a perfect fit.”

Tazi snarled, “I’d rather gnaw off my own tail than wear a flagrant, immodest scrap of animal hide like you.”

Kal had a most gratifying image of Human-Tazi in the backless Franxxian gown floating about in his memory. Oh, aye. Modest indeed. He was not about to call a Dragoness a hypocrite to her face, however, not when she was out-grumping a seventy-foot freshwater crab. Odd. What had riled her so?

Riika, however, did not know the meaning of the words ‘back down’. Widening her eyes as the Dragoness glared back at her Riders, she said, “A Dragoness in leather trousers? Wow, Tazi, I bet you’d turn heads so fast, there’d be a rash of male Dragons flying into mountainsides. Thump! Thump-thump … ooh, great Islands, you can’t wear that in public!”

“I have my own gleaming hide and I’ll thank you to remember–Kal? What is it?”

Kal sat. His hand stole to his Dragon war-bow. “I’ve the oddest feeling …”

“A feeling?” Riika snickered.

“He has them,” said the Indigo Dragoness, but Kal perceived a subliminal disturbance as she extended her senses into the surrounding mists. Fruitless, he thought. They could barely see the end of Tazithiel’s muzzle, never mind Jeradia’s sixty-league, mountain-capped bulk somewhere ahead. He rather wished Riika had not joked about flying into a mountainside.

Silence. Abiding quietness, the inkling that the Dragoness hung suspended in an endless dreamscape of mists. Lost. Soul-lost … Kal’s mind wandered, unexpectedly, to Tazithiel’s awful tale of how her shell-parents had sold her out to Endurion. He tensed. There, as clear as a cloudless morning in his mind, was an image of a massive, battle-scarred Green Dragon Kal knew for a fact he had never seen before. A devious smile twisted the Dragon’s ruined lower lip. Great walls of olive-coloured Dragon hide glistened as though wet with mucus or slime. Was he picking up images from the Indigo Dragoness’ mind? Was that even possible?

Danger!

His throat constricted. No word would emerge, so he thought,
Tazi. Shields up!

She said,
Kal, is this another of your prem–

TYRANTOR! ZUDANI! AZZARON! INFERNION!

At first, Kal thought he had seen orange lightning flash in the mist. Multiple Dragon-challenges deafened him, followed by a terrible combined impact that hurled Tazithiel sideways through the air. Heat! Burning! Wings flashed in the gloom. He shook his head; Riika lolled half-senseless between the spine spikes just ahead of him in their double Dragon Rider saddle, blood streaming from a cut above her left eye. The Indigo Dragoness flapped weakly, struggling to overcome the effects of that first devastating fusillade.

“Tazi–brace!” Mid-yell, Kal saw a Dragonwing of Reds plummeting from above. A hoary bonfire-red male thundered into Tazithiel’s shield from above. Despite her magical protection, the impact was an earthquake. Kal understood the transfer of inertial energies. Being battered by a quintet of unfriendly Red Dragons queuing up to hurl their tonnage at her shield was another matter entirely. Two further Reds crashed against thin air, yet the shockwave transferred to Tazithiel’s body or mind in ways Kal did not understand. The Dragons scrabbled at the shield with their talons and fangs as Tazithiel’s power denied them a taste of her blood.

ZUDANI!
bellowed a hundred-foot female Red, firing a molten rock fireball at Tazi’s right flank.

INFERNION!
resounded from above as another massively muscled male smashed into her tail-region, knocking the smaller Dragoness spinning despite her shield.

The naked savagery! Stunning. Kal ducked reflexively as another fireball roared over their shield. Then, he knew white-hot anger. Tazithiel might not be able to counterstrike, given the pounding they were taking, but he could. Reaching forward, he plucked an arrow from Riika’s quiver. Time to see if these Dragons enjoyed a taste of explosive gel.

Kal lifted his bow. Great Islands! Another Red lined them up, growling his name–Azzaron–as he surged toward Tazithiel’s belly, expelling such a gout of flame that the world turned to yellows and oranges. Kal felt as though the Red had tossed them inside a furnace. Yet, as he tightened his muscles in anticipation of the impact, the Indigo Dragoness rolled sluggishly to present a smaller target. He raised the Dragon war-bow, riding the rotation of her body, and …

AZZARON!
Red Dragonflesh smashed into their shield, the impact made with the Red’s thick tail, Tazithiel slewing with the shock as the action seemed to slow in Kal’s mind … a half-breath to steady himself, fingers plucking the bowstring … the arrow darting a mere twenty feet across the divide to vanish, somehow, inside the Red’s skull. Down an earhole? Kal had no idea what had happened, but the Red stiffened as though poleaxed. His wings folded. The eye-fires snapped to darkness, as though an inner candle had been snuffed out. The Dragon fell into the gloom and vanished.

Where was the Green he had pictured? Kal screamed,
Shake a wing, Tazithiel!

Shake a wing? It was more the tone than the idiotic content of his scream that energized the Indigo Dragoness. As another Dragon hurtled out of the gloom, a giant Blue, Tazithiel punched herself sideways with her Kinetic power. Kal’s arrow shot missed by the proverbial Island league, but so did the Blue. He collided with a Red Dragon below Tazithiel, setting off a chorus of snarling and snapping as the two Dragons inflicted their annoyance on each other.

Nice moves, girl!
Kal shouted.

I am not a girl!
Incensed, the Indigo Dragoness vented her fury on the next Red to approach as the enemy Dragons circled in the gloom, drawing closer, their mouths filled with roiling fire and their eyes burning a yellow mixed with streaks of crimson, indicating battle-rage, Tazithiel had taught him. Lightning sparked along the entire surface of the Red’s left wing, burning holes faster than the eye could follow.

You lie, Shifter scum!

This new voice silenced the others instantly. A flying citadel of a Green Dragon emerged slowly from the mists, massive, arrogant and commanding. Kal vented an involuntary curse. The Rider on his back suited the Dragon, a giant rajal of a man–probably Jeradian, Kal thought, eyeing the crimson cloak and black armour, emblazoned with the image of a crimson war-hammer, with disdain. Evil men always lacked imagination in clothing. Black and red. Useless decorative ‘dark master’ spikes on his shoulders, gauntlets and knees. A ridiculously oversized war-hammer hung from his belt. He wore a metal faceplate crafted to resemble a snarling rajal. And the boots? Evil, shiny black–what else?

Kal could not tell if it was the Green Dragon or the man who had spoken, preoccupied as he was with babbling in his mind to drown out a rising chorus of terror. He knew that Dragon. He had just seen the beast in his mind. Tazithiel knew the Dragon, too. Her body was rigid with horror.

The Green Dragon spoke, his voice a low, malevolent hiss.
Aye, you tainted spawn of Dramagon, how well I remember your mewling cries when I corrected you; the scent of your terror and the way you trembled beneath my paw, as helpless as a newborn hatchling!

The Dragoness made a choking sound.

The Green thundered,
I AM ENDURION!

K
AL EXPECTED THE
Green Dragon to attack on the wings of his ringing battle-challenge. Instead, the man on his back twisted in his seat as though someone behind him had rapped his metal helm with a hammer, while Endurion hovered, putting on his best ugly-menacing face.

What was that?
The man’s eerie, hollow voice made every Dragon present, shiver.
Quick, Endurion. I sense a disturbance in the aether. Dragons. Bring her to me.

Was that creature sitting atop Endurion even Human? Kal felt as though his armour had shrunk right along with his courage. Empty eyes. Yet they seemed to pierce a man. As the malevolent twosome withdrew into the fog, other Dragons encircled Tazithiel. There had to be at least a dozen beasts shifting in and out of the mists. First the burning fire-eyes, like lanterns on a foggy night, then the muzzle and the muscle-dense shoulders, followed by the great length of the Dragon. No other Riders.

Kal willed strength into the Indigo Dragoness.
Courage, Tazithiel. Let’s fly this coop.

With a haunting cry, Tazithiel bolted for the heights. Dragons! She slalomed desperately around a trio of beastly Reds, a matched set of brothers who rained fire on the passing Dragoness. The Indigo cried out as an unseen power buffeted them, stalling her flight.

The Blue!
She folded her wings and plummeted, leading the way with a titanic blast of lightning that seared right through the torso of a Red Dragon who had been following in her wake.

“Mistake!” Kal howled as Tazithiel collided with the Red, unable to swerve in time at that velocity. He loosed his arrows, a despairing child tossing straws at giants. “Come on, Riika. Wake up!”

“Ah … Islands’ sakes, what hit me?” The girl raised her bow shakily. “Alright. Alright, you slugs!”

Her small cry was lost in the thundering as Dragons closed in from all sides. Kal saw flashes of red and sheets of fire. Green Dragon spit sizzled past Tazi’s muzzle. The Dragoness screamed as claws raked her flanks, the shield failing under the terrible, repeated attacks. She squeezed away between two Reds as they savaged her wings, tearing great strips of membrane away from the wing struts and bones. Somehow, with a boost from Kal, the Dragoness reformed their shield. Sulphur and smoke burned his eyes, but he saw Riika’s arrow ricochet off a Green Dragon’s talon to blast a hole in an incoming Red’s neck … Tazi twisted away from another pounding attack, kicking wildly with her hind claws … they fought with the strength of ten, but the odds were stacked against them.

KAABOOOM!
Sound punched his ears, a greater explosion than any so far. Strobe lightning lit the mists to their left flank. Kal glimpsed a vast wing in the gloom; talons like Dragon-lances shredding a Red Dragon with unbelievable ease.

Reflexively, Kal placed an arrow in the eye of a Blue Dragon champing at their shield.

GRRROOOAARRRGGHH!

A titanic Dragon-challenge broke like proximate thunder over the combat zone, sweeping five Reds away in a helpless, tumbling mass. So massive was the reverberation that many of the attacking Dragonwing froze, even in the midst of their battle-madness. Kal clapped his hands to his ears. Impossible. No Dragon was that huge.

Tazi echoed, “What the–”

Riika made a wordless squeak, pointing ahead at what they all saw. A purple Dragon’s paw slipped out of the fog, fisted around the head of one of the Reds–entirely engulfing his skull, spine spikes and all–and clenched, brutally. As the Red slumped, dead, the Indigo Dragoness gasped a fireball of disbelief. A tail snapped forth, as long and massive as any single one of the adult males and females attacking them, crushing a Blue Dragon as though a mountainside had taken wing and dropped upon the hapless creature. Ten-foot talons hissed toward a Grey Dragoness, amputating her right wing with a single blow.

Riika shrieked, “Go, Tazzer! It’s friendly!”

Friendly? Kal could not even swear, he was so stupefied. The shadow of that beast’s muzzle darkened the clouds!

The Indigo Dragoness took off as though she had been shot from a Dragonship war crossbow, but not before they witnessed yet another devastating broadside from the purple monster. Lightning!
Crack-hssssss-crack!
White-hot chain lightning leaped hungrily between the members of Endurion’s Dragonwing, downing four Reds in a single, concerted strike. Three dropped at once, their Dragon hides smoking from multiple rents; one simply exploded. Tazi panted something about the sheer beauty of that Dragon power. Her own, smaller lightning forked out of her throat, momentarily stunning a Green hovering in their path.

Tazi limped through the air, trying to pick up speed.

The drifting clouds parted for a second, revealing another half-dozen Reds and Greens ranged across their path. Riika groaned. Endurion and his Rider had been taking no chances.

Kal said, “Tazi–”

She gritted her fangs audibly. “No way am I giving up now.”

“You’re hurt–bleeding,” Riika said.

“I’m getting my Riders safely to Jeradia if it kills me!”

Go burn the heavens, little one,
a disembodied voice rumbled behind them. Tazi leaped as though it had set her tail on fire.
Fly to the Dragon Rider Academy, and safety. I must find this Enchanter.

With that, a salvo of tiny fireballs streaked past, narrowly missing Tazithiel’s wings as they homed in on the waiting Dragonwing. Multiple detonations blasted the Dragonwing to the four corners of the sky. The Indigo Dragoness swept through the veil of smoke and plunged into the cloudbank beyond.

“What in the hells was that thing?” Kal muttered.

“Dragoness, by her voice,” said Tazi.

“Dragons don’t grow that large–tell me they don’t, Tazi.”

Riika chuckled, “You scared of our little Tazzer, Kal?”

“I am neither Tazzer, nor am I little!” Pride infused the Dragoness’ wingbeats with strength.

“Only in comparison to the purple prowler out there,” snorted the irrepressible teenager. “She was
beautiful
–did you see the colour of her scales? Deep purple, like … gemstones.”

“Amethyst gems,” said Kal, feeling himself eminently well qualified to judge such matters, though he was unimpressed with the tenor of Riika’s admiration. “I don’t want to tangle with that freak again. Did you see it crush the Red? I mean, she squeezed its brains out like a rotten prekki fruit!”

“Charming image, Kal,” said Riika.

“Who was she?” Tazithiel puzzled. “I’ve never heard of a Dragoness of such stature that grown Dragons appear as a clutch of hatchlings before her.”

“Oh, suffering volcanic hells!” Kal exclaimed. “Gemstone? Amethyst? That had to be Aranya, Queen of Immadia.”

A reverential silence enveloped the threesome.

“Isn’t she dead?” asked the Dragoness.

“She’d be over three hundred years old.” Kal nodded excitedly. “Amethyst scales. Lightning and Storm powers, and did you see her fireballs? Miniature blue. That’s Aranya’s signature attack, isn’t it, the one the ballads–”

The thief gagged on his words.

Islands greetings, little Tazithiel,
said Endurion.

The Green Dragon flanked them, barely a hundred feet off their starboard bow, his dark green scales glistening and steaming as though he generated a mist of his own. The Rider did not speak, but Kal felt his power, as dark and slick as old Dragonship turbine oil.

Filth!
Tazithiel snarled.

Your Rider spoke truly,
the Green continued.
That was indeed Aranya, bane of the Dragonkind, corrupted Shifter filth just like you. With her skulking about I haven’t the time to wreak a leisurely revenge upon you, little Dragoness. But I shall enjoy watching you die. Prepare her for the opening, Rider.

The Indigo Dragoness’ defiant roar stuck in her throat. Suddenly, they were flies trapped in amber. The Rider’s eyes blazed beneath that black helm, and his power seized the Dragoness like an unknowable number of vice-grips, utterly inescapable. Kal could not even move his jaw. He could not swallow. All he knew was power pressing down upon them with the immovable strength of Islands.

The Green Dragon reached along his flank and drew out a weapon Kal had noticed before, a Dragon lance. No, this was a sword–a twenty-foot, glossy black blade with a hilt large enough for a Dragon to grip.

Handling the blade fondly, Endurion said,
I call this the Dragon slayer.

The same irresistible force tipped Tazithiel into a vertical position, exposing her armoured but softer belly to the Green Dragon. Her limbs drew apart. Tazi’s wings remained outspread as though she were an insect pinned to a board, and though Kal heard her mind wailing in desperation, fighting Endurion and his Rider with near-insane strength born of mortal fear, she made no impression whatsoever upon his grip.

Causally, the Green Dragon lunged through the air. Deliberately. Holding the sword at the level of his chest, he plunged the weapon into Tazithiel’s lower belly. Her body tried to convulse, but the Rider’s power prevented her.

White pain washed over Kal’s vision.
Tazithiel!

Sinking the talons of three paws into her torso and flanks to provide leverage, Endurion ripped the blade upward with a heave of his right forepaw, opening a thirty-foot gash in her belly.
I’ve gutted deer with more effort than this,
he sneered. Kal saw the perverse pleasure coiling in his dark eye-fires.
Now, you shall die.

With that, he withdrew the blade before plunging it deep inside her chest cavity, exercising every ounce of his monstrous strength.

Intestines spilled out of the tear. Kal saw them dangling below her legs. Golden Dragon blood gushed forth in fountains. Her body, released at last, seemed to fold in the middle as Tazi clutched the terrible wound with her paws.

Speared through the third heart,
chortled the hollow voice.
Perfect execution, mighty Endurion. Best of luck reaching Jeradia, Dragoness.

They cast Tazithiel adrift, her eye-fires already fading.

* * * *

The Indigo Dragoness forced herself to fly.

There followed the longest hour of Kal’s life. Draconic triple-heart cardiovascular systems were incredibly resilient, allowing a Dragon to survive even a punctured heart–at least, for a couple of hours, until the blood loss became too severe and the Dragon went into shock. With every laboured, agonising wingbeat, blood pumped out of her stomach. Breath whistled from a punctured lung. Her intestines hung from the wound in grey-blue loops.

Then, they abruptly emerged into a patch of suns-shine between two fog-banks. Ahead stood the Island-massif of Jeradia, its jagged mountaintops shining resplendent against a backdrop of dark grey cloud. Three ominous layers–Cloudlands, fog and clouds above. Four distinct rainbows blazed against the dark backdrop, multiple overlapping arcs that mingled playfully in a glorious display of colour. Beauty to belie the terrible fate of those who would fly beneath their multihued archways to salvation at Jeradia, thought Kal, judging their position. Leagues away. Two hours minimum. Tazithiel was already too low. Too weak.

“Kal?” she whispered. “Need another … miracle.”

“Tazi, save your strength. Jeradia’s in sight.”

“It’s so dark, Kal. Is it night?”

Ahead of him, Riika dashed away tears. Kal said, “Jeradia’s just up ahead. Just a few more minutes and we’ll land, Tazi. You can do it.”

“You stealing … minutes again? Thief.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“First time you’ve admitted that,” she gasped. “Kal … no, don’t hush me. Listen.” She pumped her wings twice, before groaning and compelling her wings outward, into the gliding position. “It’s been a good Dragonride, hasn’t–”

“Tazi, no. You’ll make it. You will.” She shook her muzzle. “Burn it in a Cloudlands volcano, I’ll summon Fra’anior right here, right now. I’ll conjure up skyhooks to sweep you over to Jeradia! We’ll survive, Tazithiel.”

Golden droplets of the Indigo Dragoness’ drifted over the Cloudlands. Windrocs gathered in the distance, sensing the Dragoness’ distress, Kal realised.

Tazi said, “You always … liar … stole my hearts …”

“No, Tazi.”

“Will you remember a Dragoness who loved you, Kal? Will you?”

Kal bowed over her back.
You’re the thief, sweet Tazithiel. I l-l … a pox on my stupid plank of a tongue! You are not dying! Not now. Don’t leave me, Tazi. I couldn’t bear it.

Thou, precious proprietor of my heart.

She whispered the language of lovers; old, poetic Dragonish, communicating such intimacies, it stole the very breath from his lungs. His heart welled up.

Thou art …
he clapped his hand to his head.
The heart! Of course! Tazithiel, I must get to your heart.

Inside my … Kal, if you fall …

“If I don’t? Riika. Raid that saddlebag. I need rope. Now.”

Riika’s expression conveyed utter devastation, but her slim brown hands raced to the saddlebag beside her left thigh. She sniffed hugely. “What’re you up to, Sticky-Fingers?”