Dragon Thief (35 page)

Sha’anior continued, “Some say the Land Dragons are gigantic lizards over a mile long, which dwell in a realm of darkness at the bottom of the Cloudlands. So huge are they, a Land Dragon could rest this entire village upon his paw.” Now there was a rush of children for adults’ arms. “Others say they are like Siiyumiel, who appeared to Hualiama Dragonfriend as a kind of turtle, only he was so huge, he bore seven mountains upon his back. Still others say that the Islands themselves were once Dragons, which only sleep beneath us as we dwell upon the upper reaches of their backs, and that if you knew their names, you could speak to an Island and it would speak back in the language of earthquakes and shattering rock.”

“And then–” he paused dramatically “–there are Dragons like Westurdion.”

The silence he evoked seemed to crackle in concert with the bonfire.

“Imagine a Dragon whose head rested in Herimor, beyond the Rift, and whose tail curled about the frozen wastes of the North. His spine spikes are the Islands of the Western Isles, uncountable thousands of Islands arrayed upon his back, and when Fra’anior the Black used to approach, he would say, ‘Brother, stretch your back for us,’ and Westurdion would stir from his aeons-long slumber, and stretch mightily, and behold, his brother Ancient Dragons would crawl over his back to the far side. Now, younglings, you must never make Westurdion laugh, for he would shake us all off his back like fleas off a ralti sheep!”

Kal had the impression that Sha’anior rather enjoyed the chorus of squeals his dire imprecation evoked.

But now, the white-haired old-timer turned his gaze upon Kal and Tazithiel, and the Rider felt the Dragoness stiffen. “I once heard a tale from an aged Dragon. I may be a touch senile, but he was truly a cracked water jug. He told me of the Water Dragons. When the Ancient Dragons first flew to the West to play in the vastness between the Western Isles and the Rim-Wall Mountains, they heard a strange song. It was music like Dragonsong, only it seemed to arise from beyond the mountains. It was beautiful music, evocative and magical, and the Ancient Dragons searched long and hard for its source. Fra’anior himself was entranced, but it was his brother Amaryllion who saw visions of strange Dragons in the mists beyond the mountains, Dragons who moved and swam in vast lakes of water they called oceans, but they were not Dragons as we know them, for they had fins for swimming and flippers rather than wings. Amaryllion said they were Dragonkind, only Dragons trapped in an unnatural form. Water Dragons.”

“And the Water Dragons warned Amaryllion not to open the Rim-Wall Mountains until the time when the Dragons could be united once more, and the Water Dragons would be restored to their true form and beauty. So if you fly near the Rim-Wall Mountains today, you might hear the sad song of Water Dragons as they lament for their release, and find in the eerie mists of that place, visions of a new Dragonkind and a new magic we know nothing about. The magic of song.”

A chorus of whistles and knee-slapping greeted the conclusion of Sha’anior’s tale. There was more tale-telling around the fire that night, but his words remained with Kal, as though the old Orange Shapeshifter had etched them upon his mind, and he knew Tazithiel felt the same way. Was this wisdom? If the Ancient Dragons had feared to venture beyond the Rim-Wall Mountains, what right had he and Tazithiel to dare what they had not?

As the fire died to embers and Kellira’s people slipped away to their huts, Sha’anior came over to sit with him and the Indigo Dragoness.

He said, “It is hard to believe you are my shell-sister, Tazithiel, yet the Dragonsong of your soul-fires does not lie. My seventh sense is particularly well developed in the art of insight. It always has been. Not foresight, mind you,” he chuckled softly, “or I might have fled when I sensed you coming.”

“I made that mistake,” said Kal, winking at Tazi. “I tried to burgle her roost and look where it landed me.”

Unexpectedly, Sha’anior pressed himself against Tazithiel’s muzzle. Her paw rose to clasp his back. “Forgive the intimacy. Forgive us, for never finding you. There are times in our lives when we cannot understand fate. We can only scream and curse uselessly, and learn to live with the result. Tazithiel, it is clear to me that my early intuition of your uniqueness as an eggling was well founded. You are indeed a Star Dragoness, party to all that your heritage brings. There have been but four Star Dragonesses since the time of the Ancient Dragons–Istariela, Izariela, Aranya and now you. Our mother must be so proud.”

“We’ve had our disagreements,” Tazi said stiffly.

“We’re a fierce and proud family,” he said.

Brother and sister chuckled together. Kal was amazed at the disparity in ages, but then, Star Dragon eggs did not conform to the usual rules. Nobody seemed to know what had befallen her egg, but Tazithiel had been born one hundred and sixty-seven years after her six egg-siblings, of whom only one still lived–Sha’anior.

“I was supposed to offer advice, not timeworn legends,” the Orange Shapeshifter added. “I felt the stories important, but there is one more thing to share from my heart to yours. This is for both Dragon and Rider. I don’t know if you know, but each Dragon is born with a secret name. Aranya may know how you find out what it is, but I for one have never been clear how some Dragons know their secret name and others don’t. But what I mean to say is, somehow, I sense that the power of draconic names is wrapped up in this mystery you mentioned, the mystery of the opening of the suns. Must you overfly the Rim-Wall itself? I fear that may be impossible. Is there a secret passage through? More likely. But I have confidence in my shell-mother’s judgement. If she believes the time for this crazy expedition is now, then we can only trust and propel ourselves into the unknown.”

Clasping Kal’s arm, he drew the thief close. “Hasten back. I’m not going anywhere. I demand to know the truth about the Water Dragons. And when I look at you, I sense that the power of destiny throbs in your veins. Both of you.”

“Thanks,” Kal mumbled.

“To burn the heavens is not just a casual phrase. It was given, historically, to bind Humans and Dragons with a new magic that superseded old taboos against contact and cooperation between our kinds. This oath was first spoken by Hualiama and Grandion. I believe it was given that we might overcome ancient prejudices and pain; that we might be more and become more than anyone had ever imagined. As creatures who live beneath the suns, we believe the heavens are immutable. Yet the idea of burning reminds us that they are mutable, and that even for the stars, a time of change must come, be that today, or aeons from today.”

“We burn, because the fires of our souls know no other way.” Sha’anior held them both fiercely. “Go burn the heavens, Dragon and Rider! And remember those stories. I’ll be waiting.”

* * * *

As dawn broke over the Islands, the Indigo Dragoness spread her wings upon a warm wind the Islanders called the
mistanyar
, and soared into the golden suns-beams radiating from the East. At this time of year, warm winds blew off the Cloudlands, warming the cliffs as vast thermals before cycling back to the West between the height of one and two miles above the Island. Tazithiel claimed to have slept like an eggling in the shell. Kal, rather less so. He had a rajal-fierce headache and little enthusiasm for the prospect of spending an unbroken four or five days on the wing.

Finding the winds exactly at the height Sha’anior had noted, Tazithiel spread her wings and headed out over the Island’s shadow, a leagues-long darkness reaching over the Cloudlands. They swapped terse sentences. Fine weather. No sign of storms. Greyish-blue Cloudlands below. Good help from the breeze. Running through the checklist of wing and tail positions, streamlining, shield integrity and shape, magic levels …

There was only so much checking one could do.

Slowly, Yanga Island retreated toward the horizon, along with the other visible Islands. Beneath lay a vast emptiness, unchanging and unmoving. To Kal, it appeared as though Dragon and Rider hung suspended in a void, making no progress at all.

Come the half-morning mark, as the suns beat relentlessly from a cloudless sky, Tazithiel said, “Kal, will you just speak to me? Or sing? It’s too quiet.”

She knew trepidation. At least his Dragoness admitted fear. The Rider’s job was clear–distract and calm his mount. According to the lore, even worrying would chew up precious reserves she required for flying.

He said, “Riika and I were playing with the mathematics of figuring out from how far away we could see the Rim-Wall Mountains. It all rather depends on the quality of the air and the way light moves through the atmosphere, but if we were flying two leagues above the Cloudlands, and we know the mountains are around twenty-five leagues high, then we calculated a Dragon could see them from just under twelve hundred leagues away. The curiosity is that most of the formulae in the scrolls appear to rely on the curvature of a world which is much smaller than ours. Riika was wondering where those values came from, and if this strange miscalculation demonstrates unquestionably, as the adraconistic scholars claim, that both Dragons and Humans originated on another world.”

“How much smaller?” Tazithiel inquired.

“Four point two zero nine times, approximately,” said Kal.

“Approximately?”

“I’m terribly sorry to tax your inferior animalistic unintelligence with these weighty considerations,” Kal teased.

“I said talk, not insult,” returned the Dragoness.

“Very well. Secondly, I wish to point out that your assumption of the exact speed at which we create our sonic boom, does depend on our height above Island-level. More accurately, Dragon scholars have concluded that it depends on the temperature of the air at a particular height.”

“Are you trying to prove you can hold a serious conversation?”

Kal sniffed, “Ungrateful troglodyte. Shall I sing, rather?”

Without waiting for a reply, he launched into a raucous and eye-wateringly explicit ballad about a lusty thief who accosted a Dragoness in her lair. Clearly, the sleepless hours had been gainfully employed. Tazithiel laughed until hiccoughs set in.

After that fine entertainment, Kal settled down for a well-deserved snooze.

Most Dragonback travel had a particular rhythm–the ascent toward the upper clouds, the long leagues of flapping wings and silence, the gliding down to a chosen landing place. This was different. Uninterrupted flying. The discipline of ceaseless voyaging; times in which even a Dragon must rest upon the wing. Kal had never been a man short of a word. But even he could not fill twenty-nine hours a day with non-stop amusement. Then he remembered something Master Ja’amba had taught him. He laughed, making his Dragoness startle.

“What?” she demanded.

He said, “Tazi, I was just thinking about how bitterly I used to complain about the monks’ silences. They might not speak a word in a whole week.”

“Your incomprehensible point being?”

“That Master Ja’amba used to stress how true friendship is built as much upon the silences as upon conversation. Out here, we have nothing but silence. Endless silence.” He gestured toward the western horizon, where the suns had just dipped behind the Yellow moon, painting the early evening heavens with sweeping sun-strokes of red-golden fire. “Yet the rhythm of our lives flows through the silences, unspeaking, intertwined, ceaselessly forging newness. Now I understand what he meant. As living creatures, even when we think we are stationary, just
being
, we are still moving and growing and thinking and loving …”

The Dragoness said, “You’re describing the state of being truly alive, Kal.”

“And each wingbeat brings our dream closer.”

After that, even the stillness seemed full of promise.

O
VERNIGHT, INCLEMENT WEATHER
closed in. Tazithiel chose to overfly the storm. This time it was possible, despite the glacial temperatures. Kal contributed to their two-layer shield, the outer shaped to provide the most optimal aerodynamic performance that centuries of Dragon science could devise, the inner to provide a bubble of warmth and enriched oxygen, keeping him alive at altitudes which would have killed an unprotected man within minutes.

During the second day aloft, Kal read and re-read the scroll until he felt cross-eyed, and Tazithiel definitely was cross, accusing him of ignoring her. Toward evening, they ran through Aranya’s lists of assessments.

“We’ll have to slow down a touch,” Kal concluded. “The conservation ratio is not leaning in our favour.”

“It’s this headwind–well, that’s generous. Head-breeze.” The Dragoness turned the word into a sarcastic snarl. “It has sapped that fourteen percent you calculated. Still, we won’t need to start gliding and muscle regeneration until tomorrow afternoon.”

“I wish I could do more of the work.”

“You’re already contributing seventy percent of our total shield strength.”

“Hmm. Shame I can’t Shadow the wind resistance factor away altogether,” Kal mused. “No sight of the mountains?”

“The horizon is a mathematically flat line.”

“Actually, it’s slightly curved.”

The Indigo Dragoness indicated her opinion of this with a puff of smoke. “Stinking windroc eggs, see those copper tones just above the Cloudlands? We’ve another squall incoming. We don’t need this, Kal.”

They certainly didn’t. The squall arrived at midnight and blustered until dawn, leaving Tazithiel and Kal furious and frustrated. They both knew how close to the edge of the Island they were taking this venture. After working through their assessments at first light, Dragon and Rider arrived at the same unattractive conclusion.

“Regenerative gliding,” said Kal, scratching his head despondently. “Over half a day earlier than planned, Tazi, and it’ll slow us down still further. We can’t glide using Shadow power, can we?”

“My magic doesn’t regenerate while we do that, remember? We tested it. Three times.” The Dragoness glanced over her shoulder; Kal saw the gentle, apricot tones of love shading her eye-fires. “However, it’d gain us pure distance. Let’s keep that one on our Island, alright? One more time over the shield constructs. Double-check everything.”

“Thank you for being the strong one, Tazi.”

She snorted, “Don’t think I’d ever be mad enough to try this without you, Kal. This is the start of day three. Today we hit the unknown, flying longer than any Dragon ever has.”

The challenge was, the demands of long-distance flight took their inevitable toll on a Dragon’s resources and physical body. Muscle cramps. Body mass depletion. A slowing down of excretory functions, leading to a build-up of toxins in the body. Any possible niggle in the mobile wing-joints became exacerbated by over-use. A Dragon’s natural ability to heal herself reduced as key resources became depleted, to say nothing of her vital magic. The Indigo Dragoness’ had to be husbanded with the greatest care.

Yet, Tazithiel and Kal boasted a unique combination of skills to increase her range in the air. They started with taking gliding breaks of fifteen minutes for every hour, allowing the Dragoness’ magic to regenerate and the body to deal with its aches and pains. Kal shouldered an increasing load despite his blooming headache and exhaustion. Tazithiel took little nibbles from her Kinetic power, keeping the altitude loss of gliding to a minimum, which in turn decreased the energy output required to regain vital height.

The Western Cloudlands remained indifferent to the efforts of a Dragon Rider team attempting to conquer its staggering magnitude. They crawled like a pair of ants across an unbroken and unending carpet of greyish white, three leagues below their altitude.

An hour before noon, Tazithiel crowed, “Finally! Mountains, Kal. You can see the Rim-Wall peeking over the horizon.”

Kal read the relief in her voice. At noon, as closely as he could judge, he raised an imaginary trumpet to his lips and blew her a fanfare. Releasing his saddle straps, Kal danced down toward Tazi’s tail, eliciting a weary chortle from his mount. “Halfway!” he announced from the region of her hindquarters, with great pomposity.

“Let the struggles commence,” Tazi quipped.

Right. An afternoon of silly ballads and Kal’s herculean efforts at producing the most tasteless epic poetry imaginable kept them on course, but by evening Tazithiel was flagging by every conceivable measure. The mountains had grown a hand’s-breadth above the horizon. They spent the night alternately cloaked in Shadow and gliding, and by morning, had added another hand to that faraway heap of rock.

Kal knew the apparent nearness of the mountains for a terrible deception. He knew it in his head, but his heart and his reason refused to accept the truth. Those peaks had to be close, surely? They were like an Island seen upon the horizon, just hours away, were they not?

The mountains must grow to fill the sky.

Beneath him, the Indigo Dragoness nodded.
Aye, so you know this illusion too, Kal?

He had not meant to reveal his misgivings.
My
Indigo heart, I cannot help but question Aranya’s faith in us, and Sha’anior’s. Whatever they knew, I do not feel the same. To doubt is Human.

That proverb fails to acknowledge that self-doubt is common to all intelligent creatures.
Tazithiel’s delivery was light humour over undertones of rue.
Meld with me, Kal.

Meld?

Perhaps in closeness, we can find renewed strength.

Kal and Tazithiel had practised the mind-meld, never coming close to what Aranya had described as its possibilities. Perhaps, as they were older than most new Dragon-Rider pairs, their mental pathways came encrusted with age and experience? Well, one of them was certainly crusty, but he could choose to set that aside. He could choose vulnerability.

As she touched his mind, Kal sang:

I love thee as the stars love their place in the night,

I love thee as a Dragon takes his joy in flight,

I love thee as an Island’s roots love the deeps of the world,

I love thee, oh, how I love thee.

His song entered her consciousness and expanded within her body. Kal followed its course with his mind, amazed. Could he expect the liberation of another of her treasure-stores? Instead, the song returned to him, amplified and altered by her essence, and flooded into his soul.

Kal sat up as though prodded in the back by a firm finger.

The sense of connection with the Indigo Dragoness was so immediate, he imagined he heard the slight snick of tumblers falling into place as the inner workings of a lock aligned themselves to his knowing touch. Oneness. Wholeness. An expanding of his senses in dazzling ways; a knowledge of pain and exhaustion, of depletion of resources, and a rushing sensation between them that he did not understand, but concluded had to be a kind of rebalancing. Their potentials mingled. He felt her body buzz as the heat of her inner fires seethed through her muscles, refreshing the enervated fibres and infusing them with strength. Aye, he knew she had discovered new inner strengths, as had he.

All was white. Flame filled his mind, the touch of a fire-soul. This was what it meant to be Dragonkind? This was the substance of
her?

Tazithiel surged upward, as if their elated, commingled laughter lent a Dragoness new wings. She said,
You just can’t help stealing possibility from the ashes of despair, can you, Kal?

He feared to drown in the knowledge of love. Too much! Yet he must not tear away. He must not fail his Dragoness, for together, in the union of souls, they became so much more.

Rejoicing in unspeaking communion, Dragon and Rider rushed across the leagues, and so passed the afternoon and much of the night, even as they dozed and quietude settled over their bond, they remained linked and so nourished each other. Come the dawn of their fourth day since leaving the Western Isles, the Rim-Wall had begun to noticeably overtake the open skies. Kal scanned the breadth of the mountains, as wide as the horizon itself, and saw not a single gap or blemish.

That afternoon, the suns set early behind the sky-scraping peaks, and the long shadows raced over the Cloudlands as though seeking to drive away any invaders. How he wished there might be a surprise, a miracle, to break the monotony–perhaps a rare and elusive Land Dragon, as Aranya had seen on her famous flight to Immadia, or even the tiniest spit of rock upon which a Dragoness might roost. He wished for birds or even a stray insect. Tazithiel could have harvested those. But if they had crossed the Island-Desert, then this was the nothing-desert. Uncrossable. The place of desolation, upon which their physical bodies and mental resources might be stretched out like victims on a torturer’s rack, and slowly, inexorably, be torn asunder.

Tazithiel whimpered. Kal realised he must have dropped off. He was so exhausted he could have slept for a week, but he knew from the sound she made that her discomfort was severe.

Kal, cramp.

Can you glide? Can I help?

I’ve nothing left, Kal. I’ve struggled with cramps off and on all day, but this one–left frontal flight muscle–just refuses to let go. I can’t breathe.

Rapidly, they ran through their assessments. “We need to fly lower,” Kal suggested. “Denser, better-oxygenated air should provide better fuel for you, even if it slows us down a touch. Eat this last sackweight of dried meat. Then I can ditch the saddlebags.”

“Make your ablutions,” Tazithiel added. “That’ll take a few wisps of wheat off my back too.”

Kal did not mention that he had been drinking only water for two days, saving all the food supplies for her. “You just want me to take my trousers off again.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Can you kinetically sieve salt particles out of the air, Tazithiel?”

The Dragoness jolted in surprise. “Where did that idea come from?”

“Something Cyanorion observed about the way a Dragon’s body craves salt after long distance flight.”

“I … I can wrest a thimbleful from your clothes. Ooh, and I can do this.”

“Tazithiel!”
Kal blushed up a blaze. “Now is hardly the time … get your powers out of my trousers … that tickles, you wretch.”

The Dragoness chuckled, “Look at all this salt I found on your body. Salty sweat, see?”

Kal made a noise like a windroc gargling bones. “You’re revolting. I can’t believe I fancy someone who’s prepared to magically raid my sweaty underwear for salt and then eat it.”

“Somebody once told me how much he liked to stay alive. Be glad I’m not nibbling off non-essential body parts for extra fuel.”

“They’re all essential!”

“Peace, o man that squeaketh like a mouse.”

“If you’re feeling this frisky, o enchanted flying furnace, then you can ruddy well keep flying.” Kal flung the meat into her jaw; Tazithiel snapped it up with ease and an especial whirl of her fire-eyes for him. The thief grinned. “Do I conclude that your Human manifestation is chafing at five days of enforced abstinence? Oh, Tazithiel!”

“You debauched mind-guzzling vampiric spirit,” she murmured fondly.

Together, they worked for hours with her Kinetic powers until Tazithiel had a breakthrough idea, combining her ultra-sensitive Dragon olfactory senses with her sight, which spanned many more spectra than Kal had ever imagined, to isolate salt particles in the air. Once she had harvested and eaten the equivalent of a sackweight of salt, the cramps began to abate and the Dragoness was able to fly with less discomfort. By this time, nightfall had long passed and the Rim-Wall Mountains stood silhouetted against a midnight sky, luminous beneath the spill of Blue and Yellow moonlight. Hauntingly beautiful, Kal thought, twisting his neck in a doomed attempt to see the peaks. No wonder the Ancients had imagined Water Dragons out here.

Tazithiel and Kal laboured mightily until the suns’ new rising embossed the vaulting cliffs in copper and amber hues, and Dragon and Rider fell once more into an awed silence.

“I don’t feel so bad about the failure of our shielding, having seen this,” said Kal. “How could any mountain possibly be so tall? We’re like a pair of bugs trying to climb an Island cliff.”

“Aye. Time to glide, right?”

“Right. Half an hour, this time. Let’s hope an inkling of magic returns.”

They were both shattered. Rider and Dragon had hoped they might reach the Rim-Wall by this time, but four full days had passed on the wing, and the mountains seemed no closer, only impossibly larger. A narrow band of greenery traced the base, followed by a stripe of white that filled Kal with hope. At least there was water out here. He sniffed keenly. No moisture; no hint of what had to be vegetation. Above the frost or snow, the barren cliffs rose until they transcended the bounds of belief and vanished into the blue sky above. What creature could possibly overfly that?

Tazithiel said, “I can extract water from the air when my magic returns. Excretory factors have improved a touch, but frankly, it’s little help when my wings are about to fall off.”