Dragon Thief (34 page)

“Wrestle the python? That little garter snake, eh, Zinjana?” called another of the women, whose one-eyed glare was a gut-slugging ode to hideousness. Kal knew he should not stare, but she looked as though she had been gnawed on at length by a rajal and afterward, been stitched together by a troop of monkeys.

Zinjana, the one built like a Jeradian gladiator, chortled, “Oh, Sundyni, I mistook it for a bit of string dangling there.”

Kal buttoned his trousers sulkily. What was it with women and insulting his manly jewels? They did not seem dissatisfying to a Shapeshifter Dragoness. Quite the contrary. But he glanced quickly at the empty skies before hitching his thumbs in his trouser pockets and giving the woman a flat, unfriendly stare. He was confident, right? These dark-skinned warriors only wanted a bit of sport before moving on. The object would be to provide that entertainment without losing any vital body parts, or by doing something Tazithiel might take exception to later.

One of the women, a fifty-something warrior with iron-grey hair who carried herself like a woman twenty years her junior, stepped forward. Like the others, she wore brief Western Isles body armour, a skirt that masqueraded more as a loincloth than clothing and was indecent on any one of a thousand Islands, and an array of weapons from an oversized scimitar upon her back, to a hunting bow and a brace of curved, serrated daggers adorning her right hip. She wore metal bracers upon her wrists, ankles and neck, and her hair was braided close to the scalp and reached halfway down her back. The braids were decorated with what Kal fervently hoped was not Human bones. Above her ritually scarred cheekbones, black eyes returned his glare without compromise.

“I am Kellira, Warlord of Yanga Island. Why are you intruding here, Dragon Rider, and where is your beast?”

Kal offered a truncated Fra’aniorian half-bow. “I am Kallion of Fra’anior, Rider of Tazithiel. She’s about. Probably watching us right now.” He hoped. Fervently.

“Last I saw the beast, it was leagues south of here,” said Kellira. “Their kind aren’t welcome around here. We’ve got us a Dragon problem. A big one.”

Sundyni spat, in her flat Western Isles tones, “Dragon’s got a cave down below an’ keeps raiding our flocks. Last week he killed a warrior and burned two huts. Third time this year.”

“Feral?” asked Kal.

Kellira said, “Here’s my bargain, Rider Kallion. You get rid of that Dragon and we’ll let you keep your life.”

“I suppose I can ask her–”

“Ask? That’s not our way.” The Warlord raised a chorus of ‘aye’s’ from her warriors. “We know how you volcano-Islanders treat your women–kidnapping ’em, chaining ’em and keeping ’em as slaves.”

“Five hundred years ago, maybe,” Kal protested.

“Well, we reckon you got some payback coming, you filthy Dragon’s paw-licker.”

“Reckon you can capture me?” Kal mimicked her posture and tone, legs akimbo. He couldn’t toy with the handle of his dagger, but he could do a fierce glare. He just had to picture Tazithiel in one of her lightning-spitting moods. “I tell you what, Warlord Kellira. If your troop of piddling little washer-women can manage to catch me, I will gladly deal with your Dragon problem and give you a thousand gold drals to boot.”

Kal snapped his head out of the way of an arrow intended for the point of his nose.

“Very well,” Kellira growled, visibly disappointed that the arrow had missed. “Zinjana, fetch him.”

Crude wagers flew thick and fast between the women. Evidently, his chances were reckoned to be slim.

Zinjana approached him with a half-smile playing about her thick lips. She grabbed fresh air. Frowned. Grabbed a pawful more of the cleanest air in the Island-World. Kal had played this game more times than he could count during his early training as a thief. Training for agility. He goaded her with a few hearty laughs; hands curved like meat-hooks, Zinjana charged. Whirling, the thief seized her arm and propelled her high over his shoulder. The warrior emptied half of the pool with her splash.

“I believe I win that round,” said Kal.

Kellira cursed Zinjana roundly. “Sundyni! Be a good huntress and fetch me that stick of a foreigner.”

Sundyni cracked her knuckles gleefully. “My pleasure, Chief. You know how I got my scars, Kallion? Wrestling rajals. Lots of them.”

“You’re not very good at your job, are you?” Kal observed.

Before he could blink, a blade whistled toward his face. Kal dodged, rolled, leaped back with his abdominals sucked in to prevent being gutted like a hapless sheep. Islands’ sakes, this one was fast. No mind. He had a few Pygmy tricks up his sleeve. Riika had been an excellent teacher of hand-to-hand combat. Kal had quickly learned to counter her techniques or be crippled. Fascinating, the circumstances in which the Human spirit could find inspiration to excel.

Judging his moment, Kal pummelled the nerve-centres of her shoulders, and then finished Sundyni with a curt chop to the neck. He dusted his hands. “Two down. You swallowed a wasp over there, Warlord Kellira?”

The Warlord had turned a quite magnificent shade of prekki fruit purple. “Kyrinda!”

Another, younger warrior stepped forward, this one almost a head taller than Kal and built like a Dragonship, sweeping of curvature and magnificent in the beam. Her forearms were thicker than his waist and her legs, mobile tree-trunks. That was one titanic slab of womanhood, he thought, assessing this threat with an assured smirk. She was so well-built he doubted she could put two hands simultaneously to a scimitar’s hilt. A nimble thief would lead this so-called warrior about like a hound on a leash.

Kal bowed. “At last, a real woman.”

That was his mistake. The instant his line of sight lowered, Kyrinda reached into her hair and her hand snapped forward. Two darts missed, but the third scratched a line across his left bicep. Kal wobbled like a sot drowning in his tankard. Huh? His knees lived on another Island. He had begun to raise a hand in protest when a mountainous bosom slapped his left cheek, followed by the balance of an avalanche of flesh. Then, she simply sat on him.

“Gnaaarrrgh,” Kal groaned.

“That’s how it’s done.” Kyrinda slapped his backside heartily. “Nice and firm! Mind, I don’t think you’d last five minutes on my pillow-roll.”

The warrior-women hooted with laughter, making a range of suggestions that might have turned Kal’s face crimson with embarrassment had it not already abandoned crimson in favour of a desperate purple.

Kyrinda twisted his arm behind his back with worrisome ease. “Submit?”

Kal stared at the line of bushes opposite, across the pool. Just behind them stood the outline of a Shapeshifter Dragoness–at least, her Human form. Was this the optical shield Tazithiel had hinted at yesterday, or was he simply imagining her in terror of being rolled out for bread-dough beneath this wrestling prodigy? He could not penetrate the Dragoness’ disguise if that was truly her. With blackness closing in courtesy of his tortured lungs and no help apparently forthcoming from his darling little fire-starter, Kal had no choice.

A touch of Shadow later, and he wriggled free from the region of an oversized female backside. The temptation was irresistible. Kal swatted that behind with a mighty swing of his flat hand.
Smack!
“Nice and plump! Mind, I don’t think you’d last five minutes on my pillow-roll.”

As Kyrinda rose with a squeal of fury, Kal applied his boot heartily to the same location, propelling her headfirst into the pond. “I do believe–”

A scimitar whistled past his nose. Kellira stormed, “You cheated. You used magic.”

Kal shrugged. “The rules did not forbid magic.”

The warrior troop encircled him. Enough. Kal vanished.

“Freaking Shapeshifter!” Sundyni shouted.

“No, a very dangerous Enchanter.” Kellira narrowed her eyes. “Spread out. We need him to yoke the Dragon to our purposes.” Stooping, the Warlord scooped up a handful of dirt and tossed it around her in a shallow arc. “There! He’s hiding right in front of us.”

Three scimitars parted his nose, neck and navel. Thankfully, Kal sensed only a slight tugging as the blades swished through his incorporeal form. Drat. How long could he maintain the Shadow? Not forever. He ran toward the pool. A posse of women oriented on the very slight disturbance his body made in passing through the water. Had he emerged from the Shadow just then, he would have been wearing four daggers and a battle-axe between his shoulder blades before he left the water.

Kal bounded onward, shouting,
Tazithiel! Any time now, please.

Just before the bushes, he turned to shout, “Watch out, the Dragon is right–”

Vanish! Kellira’s scimitar cartwheeled through his torso and lopped the top off one of the bushes before clanging against the stone beyond. Freaking feral windrocs! Where was that miserable reptile? Oh no … as the scantily clad warriors charged through the water toward him, Kal had a moment to be mesmerised by the image of a pack of female rajals hunting down a petrified deer.

“Ladies,” purred Tazithiel, shimmering into being right behind them.

“Feral Dragon!” howled Zinjana. Eight scimitars, three spears and a flurry of daggers bounced off Tazithiel’s scales.

The Indigo Dragoness just smiled. That alone was sufficient to herd a dozen tough warriors together beneath the waterfall, trapping them inside the natural curvature of the ridge from which the water had carved its plunge-pool.

Returned to his normal form, Kal growled, “About ruddy time, Dragoness.”

Tazithiel’s grin only widened. She gave it the works–simmering fires on her tongue, sulphurous smoke, even a dainty touch of lightning. Very artistic. “Oh, I was just admiring how a man handles negotiations with a troop of superb Western Isles warriors. Kyrinda, was it? I believe my incompetent Dragon Rider owes you a thousand gold drals.”

The woman’s face broke into a bemused smile. “I think I’d settle for not being eaten, mighty Dragoness.”

Kal edged behind Tazithiel. He had no desire to be ironed out like new scrolleaf.

“I think you frightened him.” The women laughed collectively, but sounded like a wing of nervous dragonets. The Indigo Dragoness purred, “We’d be glad to look into your Dragon problem, Warlord Kellira. Do you know his or her name?”

Kellira said cautiously, “He seems very elderly, but no less dangerous for it. We were told he might be called Sha’anior?”

Tazithiel gasped a curl of fire.

“Who’s that?” asked Kal.

“One of my shell-brothers,” Tazithiel breathed. “Aranya said he had been lost long ago. Where would we find this Dragon, Kellira?”

Sundyni fixed them with a twisted smile. “Easy. Down the hole.”

T
He Dragoness spiralled
down the hole with rather more enthusiasm than her Rider. Bait a feral Dragon? He would rather subject himself to Kyrinda’s tender yet undoubtedly overwhelming mercies, or hunt rajals with a dagger clasped between his toes.

Of course, the heinous girl-fiend would not listen to a word of refusal on his part.

Not for the first time, Kal mentally pelted the monks with heaps of rotten prekki fruit. Why had Master Ja’amba ever allowed him to liberate a Dragonship? If he survived the end of the world, he intended to have a far-reaching conversation with the monk about the nature of destiny.

Below, where the funnel-like hole opened out above ochre-tinged Cloudlands, Tazithiel and Kal found an abandoned Human hideout secreted within a deep horizontal crack, exactly as the Warlord had described. Tazithiel winged to a neat landing on the ledge, having no need to duck her head as the crack was over fifty feet tall at this point.

“Do you think he’ll be in those caves, behind the boulders?” asked Kal. Warm, arid winds blew across the ledge, ruffling the thief’s hair as he descended from Tazithiel’s shoulder. “You’re quite certain about this?”

“Take a sniff,” said the Indigo Dragoness, nosing him forward with her muzzle and a cheeky puff of flame.

“No lizard-breath!” cried Kal, afraid his trousers would start smouldering. He gagged as the first whiff of the caves blistered his nostrils. “Putrid rajal halitosis, what on the Islands is that?”

“Feral Dragon.”

The odour of Dragon roosts often hinted at cinnamon spice, coupled with an inevitable smoky tickle and acrid sulphur. Tazithiel’s natural scent was more sophisticated, putting Kal in mind of water-lilies and aromatic jasmine, although the scent of magic had its way of defying casual classification. Annoy her, however, and all thought of lilies or fragrant spices flew out of the window. Well, Tazithiel’s fire had hint of Helyon incense about it, although the charred victims of her fireballs probably did not pause to appreciate such a delicate distinction.

This Dragon’s lair smelled like the towering bone pile of a Yorbik Island slaughterhouse Kal once had the misfortune to visit, trussed hand and foot. His captors had hoped–in vain, happily–that the carrion-eaters would do away with him. Kal wished one could stop breathing for a period of time, although this smell struck him as powerful enough to eat his flesh like the cannibal slugs for which the Western Isles were notorious.

Readying her magic, Tazithiel followed a trail of filth into the darkness. Kal stuck so close, he trod on her tail. The Dragoness’ stomach gurgled greedily. Again?

Sha’anior?
Tazithiel called.
Remember your name, Sha’anior.

Remember who you are, Sha’anior,
Kal echoed.

A low, vicious snarl shook the caverns.

This feral-Dragon cocktail really does work, doesn’t it, Tazithiel?
Kal asked.

Every time,
she lied cheerfully.

This hideout had been vacated hundreds of years before. Signs of neglect were everywhere, from rotting doors to the droppings of rodents and caveworms, one of the burrowing nuisances of these parts. They were attracted by food, but were only dangerous if a person stood in their path. By the light of Tazithiel’s eyes, Dragon and Rider padded down a long, gloomy corridor past what must have been storage chambers or living quarters, and on to what Kal recognised as an old-style forge. The Dragon’s tracks were a week old but clear enough, the paw-prints double the Indigo Dragoness’ size.

Sha’anior? Come and speak to us,
Tazithiel called.

Suddenly, a Dragon slammed against the entryway to the forge, roaring, fangs chomping. Kal lost a year of his life at the shock. Flame gushed over Tazithiel’s shield. As she tried to soothe the old Orange Dragon, he became madder and madder, smashing himself repeatedly against the doorway but unable to fit through. Kal peeked out from behind Tazithiel’s bulk. Clearly Aranya’s clever ‘anti-feralising’ magic, to translate the concept directly from Dragonish, was not working on this beast. Aranya had informed them that it did not work in four percent of cases.

Then he struck his own forehead. Of course that Orange could not fit! He was a Shapeshifter.

Before he knew it, Kal rushed out from behind Tazithiel’s rump, shouting, “Transform, Sha’anior. Transform!”

Flame exploded around them, driving the Indigo Dragoness back three steps.

Kal shielded his face.
Sha’anior, I command you. Transform!

Suddenly, a frail, battered old man ran at them, shrieking … and stopped. Bewildered. He glanced at his hands, and then at Tazithiel, who shuffled her paws uneasily.

“Sha’anior?” asked Kal. “Do you remember your name? Do you–”

“Shut up, whippersnapper,” he barked. “Who is this Dragoness? Why does her Dragonsong whisper songs I have not heard in over two hundred summers? Why am I naked?”

“You were feral,” said Kal.

The Indigo Dragoness seemed mute. But the rail-thin old codger suddenly fell to his knees and touched his forehead to the ground.
Tazithiel, my lost shell-sister. Welcome home.

* * * *

The better part of two hours later, Tazithiel landed outside of Kellira’s village, a mile south of the great sinkhole. She carefully wafted Sha’anior to the ground.
I wish I could transform, Kal.

It would be unwise,
he said.
We must ask for food and treatment for Sha’anior.

Kal looked over the village. Three dozen huts stood clustered upon a hillside overlooking the unbroken vistas to the West. A wooden stockade surrounded the village, which was neatly built and boasted large vegetable gardens and rude wicker flower-baskets outside of the ornate conical stick-and-mud huts. Each hut was painted with pigment-based paints in a variety of earthen colours and patterns. Evidently, these villagers took pride in their simple homes.

Kal called, “Kellira? We have tamed the Dragon.”

Tazithiel’s fangs clicked sharply next to his ear. “Don’t insult your elders and betters, Rider Kal.”

Kellira’s head and shoulders appeared above the stockade. “Him? He’s just a raggedy old man.” An impossibly vicious snarl emerged from Sha’anior’s throat, while his eyes blazed yellow with magic. “Ah, Shapeshifter? Is he safe?”

Kal began to snort before Tazi stopped him with a tickle of Kinetic power. He sneezed violently.

“We promise not to harm you,” rumbled the Dragoness.

Much apologising, corralling of screaming children and two hours of deep, rapid conversation with Kellira later, Kal found himself writing a scroll addressed to the Academy mentioning minor matters such as the finding of Aranya’s feral shell-son and a thousand drals-worth of gold bullion to be dispatched by Dragonship to a lonely village at the edge of the world, along with supplies, equipment and anything else he and Kellira had been able to dream up. These people had nothing, not even proper ploughs to break the stony ground, or hardship- and disease-resistant mohili wheat or rice varieties with which to improve their harvest. He added a personal message for Riika.

Kal signed with a flourish and handed the scroll to Kellira. “As long as you promise to share the bounty with all the villages under your jurisdiction, o Warlord.”

She gripped his forearm fiercely. “I don’t pretend to understand, Rider Kal …”

He said, “Understand this. I’m filthy rich and I hate to see gold gathering dust when people are struggling to survive. That Dragoness is the daughter of Aranya of Immadia, who I’ve no doubt, will want to come here to visit her shell-son. Your people will need to get used to the presence of Dragons.”

Just outside the stockade, Tazithiel was helping ten children swing off a rope clasped in her paw.

Kellira said, “Being feral was cruel to that old man.”

“Aye.”

“I don’t understand how you look upon the Dragoness. Were I not mistaken, I’d say you’re a man in love.”

“I am. My beloved is bigger than Kyrinda.”

A meaty hand walloped Kal on the back. “Kyrinda is deeply disappointed, Rider Kal. But I do understand. She’s a Dragon Shapeshifter, isn’t she? Just like her famous mother. Don’t you know the legend, Kellira?”

Kal grinned up at the massive Western Isles warrior. “You know, Kyrinda, I once met a man who I believe might be a match for you.”

“A match? For me?” Kyrinda’s laughter boomed over the huts.

“Aye. He’s a Master of Hammers, a warrior like you. Kellira, hand me that scroll. I need to add a note at the bottom.” Kal bent to his work. “Can you send message hawks from here? I forgot to ask.”

“There’s a town on the far side of Yanga,” said Kellira, peering over Kal’s shoulder.

“What’s that say, Rider?” Kyrinda asked suspiciously.

“I’m inviting Master Jandubior to lead the expedition here. One evening as we enjoyed a cold beer, the good Master confessed he would only ever fall in love with a woman who could beat him in arm-wrestling. Now, I’ve had a little wrestle with you–”

“And lost pitifully,” Tazithiel called over the stockade.

“Ignore the quarrelsome quadruped. I’ve written a challenge on your behalf. Sign or make your mark here by your name, Kyrinda–thank you. Personally, I think he’s in trouble.”

“But, is he big?” Kellira interrupted.

Kyrinda echoed, “Aye. How big is this Jandubior?”

“Big?” Kal stood, measuring his six feet and five inches against Kyrinda, who looked down at him with amusement. “He’d top you by a good foot. Jandubior’s a Jeradian giant, built like one of their mountains. But I reckon you might shade him in the muscle department.”

Kyrinda belted him again. “Great! So glad you came to our Island to be sat on, Rider Kal.”

“Always a pleasure.” Kal staggered off to his next assignment, wondering if she had just broken his ribs.

* * * *

Come evening, the villagers gathered around a jasmine-scented bonfire built outside the stockade. More accurately, Tazithiel gathered around half the fire and the entire village, around the rest. They ate roasted python and a grey oryx which the Indigo Dragoness had snapped up two leagues from the village. She had already eaten two herself, she admitted.

Sha’anior, patched up, clothed and fed to bursting, sat alongside the elderly village healer, Jinkyna. Kal narrowed his eyes. They seemed rather cosy, the two oldest members of the congregation.

Kellira raised her wooden tankard of rough root beer. “To the West!”

“Aye, the West!” roared her people.

“May you find what you seek, Dragon and Rider. Now, Sha’anior.” Kellira slapped his knee jovially. “Give of your lore and wisdom to help these travellers as they rise with the dawn winds.”

In the firelight, Sha’anior’s eyes appeared unmistakably draconic, as yellow as the flame reflected within. He stroked his raggedy beard, joshing, “Bah. I don’t know any stories.”

Jinkyna pressed a tankard into his hand. “Wet your throat, old man. Let this earthy goodness fire the tinderbox of your memory.”

The Shapeshifter Dragon said, “Who would like a short story?” The children hooted and snapped their fingers in joy.

Kellira called, “Silence!”

Pitching his voice to the audience with the skill of an experienced storyteller, Sha’anior began, “In times before Human memory, before a Human foot ever trod these Isles, it is said that the Ancient Dragons used to travel from Fra’anior to the far West, and that they held there communion with creatures stranger than any legend–Water Dragons.”

His audience hushed, down to the smallest child. “Aye, we know of Ancient Dragons, those creatures larger than Islands, birthed in the sacred fires of Fra’anior’s Natal Cave. Dragons that voyaged in storms; Dragons who lived in the molten lava of those primal volcanoes that housed the first of the Dragonkind. Magma Dragons, there were, and Storm-Riders, and Dragons of ice and snow. Amongst the famous Ancient Dragon clan we know and name Fra’anior the Black, Dramagon the Red, Numistar the White, and the last Ancient Dragon, Amaryllion Fireborn. Legends tell us friends, that when these great Dragons of yore travelled from Fra’anior, they did not fly over the Islands they had made, nor did they burrow beneath our Island-World’s roots, but rather, the Dragons simply bade the Islands step aside. The very Western Isles bowed and parted at their command as a crowd parts for a Queen in the panoply of her majesty, and thus the Ancient Dragons sailed through to the West.”

Against his back, Kal felt Tazithiel’s belly-fires rising and falling to the rhythm of Sha’anior’s tale.

“I have heard tell, my friends, that the reason for the West’s great emptiness is that the Ancient Dragons used those numberless leagues for their playground. As we play games of sticks and stones, and make our strategies and wars across the playing-board, so the Ancient Dragons played with moving Islands.”

“Land Dragons?” a young boy piped up.

“My son, do you know of Westurdion?”

The little boy with his huge dark eyes shook his head and ducked back into his father’s arms, but a chorus of ‘aye’s’ and ‘well said’ rose around the fire.