Dragonlove (22 page)

“Assassin!” bellowed another voice.

Shinzen began to heave himself off his divan. Halting in the final, dramatic pose, Hualiama’s intertwined hands lowered to point directly at the Warlord. Lightning flashed across the space between them, detonating among the pillow-rolls and cushions he used for comfort. Shinzen roared as fire enveloped his massive frame.

Wood spun end-over-end toward her. Pain exploded between her temples.

* * * *

The Tourmaline Dragon flared his nostrils, drawing in the scents of the world outside his cage. Why did he scent ozone, when he tasted no incipient storm-moisture on the breeze? What did all the shouting in the depths of the Warlord’s fortress signify? The urgent thudding of booted feet and the rattling of gates and armour? The Dragon took it in uneasily. Great events were afoot.

Could it be the girl?

Later, he heard footsteps approaching the tiny, impossible-to-leave door of his cage. He heard four Human heartbeats, one much lighter and quicker than the others. He smelled the greasy oils adorning freshly repaired chain armour, and heard the clink of weapons. A low muttering, ‘Hurry with the lock.’ Grandion sniffed in disdain. Periodically, Shinzen’s warriors tested him with a warrior or two, and several times, they had provided him with female slaves he assumed had been disobedient in some way. Shunned by the Dragon, the females had all chosen to risk the uncertain destination of the small stream that flowed through the cage. The foul, mammal-sweaty warriors had departed the same way, either clawed, flattened or burned to death.

Was this their idea of feeding a Dragon? He abhorred the taste of Human flesh.

Grandion had not fed in a month. He dreamed of meat, any meat, great slabs of flesh dripping with blood, of the joy of sinking his fangs into a hapless ralti sheep and bolting great, slippery hunks down his throat, of lapping up deliciously iron-rich blood with his tongue, swollen rivers of blood …

This was another Human. He must be strong.

The Human stood near the entrance, its heart tripping along as if to cry, ‘I’m here.’ Its breathing sounded strangely muffled, but it smelled female. Unmistakably female.

Pacing toward the creature, Grandion hissed,
Hualiama?

No reply.

If it is you, speak to me.
The creature made muffled noises of distress, but as it moved, his ear-canals detached a soft
clink.
Metal. Stupid Humans. A female warrior–of course. He was wise to their tricks.

Grandion spat a low, vicious chuckle. He spoke mentally,
So, little Human. Come to test your courage against a Dragon?

The petrified Human could not speak. A whiff of mammalian terror-sweat tickled his nostrils most agreeably. Ah. Fear. Acrid fear. His stomachs began to boil with fiery contempt. No, this meant joyous battle. Her weapons against his talons. The Tourmaline Dragon’s hearts accelerated, priming his muscles for action. Ever since he had detected Lia’s magic, he had begun to exercise again, as much as he was able in the restrictive below-ground space. Although he was half-starved, Grandion incongruously felt fresher than at any time in the last several years. The missing element was his magic. Still, talon and fang would suffice for this trifling task.

He would teach this pathetic Human what it meant to bait a Dragon.

* * * *

As the door clanged shut behind her, Hualiama halted, afraid to run headlong into an obstacle.

The leather hood snugged down to her neck rendered sight useless, and breathing next to useless. Her hands had been twisted up between her shoulder blades, courtesy of her dancer’s flexibility, and lashed in place with what seemed cord sufficient to furnish a Dragonship. Her hands were therefore useless. But that had not been enough for the Warlord. Before his men affixed the hood, Shinzen had taken manifest delight in checking the ridiculous gag which corked her mouth more effectively than a skein of wine readied for transport, firmly buckled beneath her chin and in three places behind her head. That rendered her mouth … useless. She could shout about as loudly as a mewling kitten.

All this for someone they planned to turn into a Dragon’s snack? Lia would not have wasted the equipment, even if it did honour the Dragon-spirits in some inexplicable way. No single Human warrior on foot could dream of defeating a Dragon, could they? Except one who wielded Nuyallith blades. But she was weaponless, and trussed like a ralti sheep ready for the spit. She could trust the Dragon to light up the barbecue. As the great beast moved, Lia sensed the vibration through her soft slippers, and heard the metallic brushing of Dragon scales against stone. The tiny bit of air leaking up to her straining nostrils brought her the powerful, pungent odour of an adult male Dragon–charred cinnamon and sulphur, and an exotic spiciness that made her head reel.

Lia called in her mind,
G-G-Grandion? Is that you?

Silence.

Dragonish was the only language which would communicate to the beast. Lia pleaded,
Speak to me, o Dragon. Please. I’m Hualiama, called the Dragonfriend.

A laugh of booming malevolence turned her bones to water. Oh, mercy, mercy, a thousand times mercy … this was no Grandion. He would never have laughed like that. Despair choked her more effectively than the glob of mouldy material they had packed into her mouth. Draconic smell-memory was like a Human memory of pictures, he had taught her. Dragons could remember particular smells–their shell-mother, the scent of their mate–for decades. If this Dragon knew her, he would know her scent.

Yet how could the Dragon think she came to fight him in this ridiculous state? She was no threat. He must be blind.

Dragons did not forget. Was this Grandion, or not?

“Hmm-mmm!” she called.

A sharp rustling warned her. Lia sprinted to her left, dodging the Dragon’s opening pounce. Who cared for the darkness? Her head slammed into a wall, and that was how the Dragon came to miss his follow-up swipe. The ground shook as the Dragon pounded by.

A pause. They both listened for each other.

Ah … Bezaldior? Bezaldior!

Nothing. Not a whisper of magic, nor even an echo of a whisper. The Dragon’s belly-fires growled with subliminal, unending intimidation. Hualiama tried to extend her senses. She sidled along the wall, on tiptoe and breathless, trying not to deal herself another bruising encounter with an unseen obstacle. Perhaps if she neither drew breath nor allowed her heart to beat, the Dragon would not be able to track her–no, he still had his nostrils. What chance did she have of avoiding the Island-World’s apex predator in his own lair?

Run!

A Dragon’s paw slapped her, flipping Lia effortlessly off her feet. She tried to land and roll, but the Dragon was upon her in a flash. A massive weight settled upon her stomach and legs.

“Mmm!” Lia screamed into the gag.

* * * *

By his wings, the way the little thing wriggled beneath his paw! The flutter of her heart! The trembling of her limbs! The muted snuffling of her breath–it all reminded Grandion so forcibly of prey in the instant before he gutted a creature, that his mind blanked in a pre-gustatory welter of ecstasy. Food! Oh, just a morsel … the sweet burst of bodily fluids upon his tongue, followed by the muscular palpitations of his long throat as fresh kill slid down into his food stomach …

Saliva splattered over his talons and doused her torso.

Smell the food. Another whiff to savour … oh, she was glorious! An aroma as complex and beguiling as a Dragoness’ filtered into his astounded nostrils. No Human, slave or warrior, had ever blasted his olfactory nerves to cinders like this.

His prey struggled so deliciously, so defenceless beneath his controlling paw, that a wave of heated pride surged through the Tourmaline Dragon. He was mighty. He was also starving. His stomach had shrivelled to the size of a large nut. It had long since given up screaming at him to be filled. No more scruples about cannibalism of his fellow intelligent creatures. He had to survive. Survival demanded sacrifice–this Human to his appetite, and his ethics to grim reality.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he rumbled.

Raising the morsel to his lips, Grandion drew breath to chargrill his meal.

* * * *

Her mouth was stuffed with so much material, Lia knew the Dragon could not understand a word she spoke. Trapped beneath his paw, so much larger than Grandion’s had ever been, she knew only endless cloudscapes of desolation. It ended here for a Princess of Fra’anior. She had gambled and lost. This feral beast intended to eat her, for as he raised her in his fisted paw, she knew she would feel the Dragon’s fangs next. She could practically taste his hunger, the helpless quivering of a Dragon who had already entered the portals of starvation.

Her magic was dormant. Her Dragonish would not communicate. Was this a key property of a prison capable of holding a Dragon?

Then, he voiced an undraconic apology.

Hualiama almost swooned as the Dragon’s voice resonated, it seemed, within the very marrow of her being. Grandion! Her heart skyrocketed upon wings of peerless tourmaline, swooping and playing with him among the Islands. The darkness beneath the leather hood exploded like the birth of constellations in a moonless night.

As the Dragon drew breath, Hualiama’s spirit drank its fill from the wells of her exultation, summoning his secret Dragon-name from the treasuries of her soul.

Uncontainable, his name rang forth,
Alastior!

G
RANDION SWALLOWED HIS
flame with a gulp of the most arresting astonishment his Dragon brain had ever known. All three hearts raced off in different directions, competing and contradictory, howling in celebration all at once. A newfound, ravenous hunger raged through the Dragon–a beast of passion, unchained. The yowling of his stomach beat against his consciousness without meaning. He breathed in again, dying for the scent of her, desperate to draw into his fire-soul the inmost essence of the creature, the wonder, the girl he cradled in his paw. It seemed his entire being was aflame. Body, soul, he could not separate it. Understanding blossomed within him, as though the world were a flower unfurled before his gaze, unguarded to its vulnerable core.

His throat thickened, while his chest swelled prodigiously. Taking a mighty, four-pawed stance, the Tourmaline Dragon released what he intended to be a Dragon-challenge, only it was a deeper, sweeter, more sonorous sound than he had ever imagined, a song of her name:

HUUUAAALLLIIIAAAMAA!

* * * *

In such beauty, a soul could only dance. No chains, physical or spiritual, could have denied the response of Hualiama’s soul to the wrathful, mournful, mind-blowing cry of the Dragon. She sang in her heart:

AAALLAAASSTIIIOOORRR!

Their cries mingled at a level beneath conscious thought, perhaps the magic of their oaths once made to each other, or a deeper, more fundamental form of communication still. Lia knew the softness of his paw and the wash of the Dragon’s breath. She knew the fire of his breath as though it were scribed in tongues of fire inside her eyelids. Her spirit mingled with his, communed with his, indwelled him even as he indwelled her.

For a breath within a breath, all was glorious. Lia became the fire she had always desired. She was light and song, a dancing wisp. Freedom’s sweetness honeyed her tongue. Then, darkness rose to eclipse that glorious expansion of her consciousness. Hualiama shuddered at the power of an inner command.

Let it be bound.

The
ruzal
within her had spoken, and tainted the sweetness irretrievably.

She wept.

* * * *

Grandion wondered at the stifled, snuffling sounds Hualiama began to make. Was she crying? Struggling for breath? Dying?

Frantic now, his claws clamped on her head, trying to peel off the covering she wore. Stinking animal hide. Ropes. By touch he identified what had eluded his understanding–she was a prisoner of these Dragon Keepers. Lia’s pained mumblings informed him what a poor job he was doing with his clumsy talons. He was fearful of harming her, for she seemed much smaller than he recalled. Fool Dragon. It was he who had grown. Six years. Where had she tarried for six years? What would she make of a blind, defenceless Dragon?

Before he knew it, Grandion set Lia down and retreated, shaking his head. If this was the Grandion of captivity, he was caged more surely than he had imagined. His fury raged against this Dragon. Where was his courage? Flown to the five moons? Lia made a soft interrogative noise. When he did not respond immediately, her query escalated into a mewl of distress so akin to a hatchling’s wail of terror, that Grandion charged toward the sound before he considered the wisdom of tossing his tonnage blindly about the cavern.

Thump. Yelp. Growl in dismay. Growl for real as he felt an accurate kick on the tendon just below the wrist bone of his left forepaw. Pain lanced up his limb. Suddenly, the Tourmaline Dragon found himself guffawing. Had he been in any doubt, that kick confirmed it.

“Feisty as ever,” he rumbled, righting her with an awkward touch.

Mumbling something acerbic, Lia felt her way along his paw to his talons. “Hmm-mmm.”

“What is it?” Grandion unsheathed a claw.

By trial and error, they worked out a system of communication which involved many questions on his part and a great deal of mumbling and a few more kicks on hers. Soon, Grandion was holding his foreclaw firm while Hualiama bobbed up and down, sawing at the ropes binding her wrists. Ten minutes later, a series of muffled whoops announced her success, followed by the groans of returning circulation. Lia unbuckled the hood and flung it away angrily, judging by the sounds he understood.

A Human could be muzzled into silence. No Dragon would bind his own kind like this. In his third heart, as he listened to Hualiama fighting to free herself, Grandion bled for her. Yet, he cautioned himself, the power of the Scroll of Binding which they had sworn to find, was a similar, magical binding of Dragons. Leather or magic were only two ways of silencing freedom. There were cultural practices and power mongering, he reflected, and law and taboo, injustice and murder. So many ways freedom could be stolen. It was not so easily built or attained.

Taking his talon in her hands, Lia guided his claw-tip alongside her head, beneath one final, stubborn strap. “Hmm!”

He twisted, snapping the buckle with a tinny plink. Hualiama coughed, spat and laughed softly at something a blind Dragon could not see.

And then her hand warmed his muzzle. Aloud, in Dragonish, she said,
Thou, my soul … united at last.

Thou, the myriad harmonies of my Dragonsong.
Grandion’s paw curled hesitantly about her shoulders and back. Lia laid her head upon his foreclaw, and her long hair caressed the sensitive hide of his digits.

Tranquillity.

* * * *

Hualiama marched along the length of Grandion’s body, measuring him with her stride. “Tail straight, you trickster. Wow. Thirty-one paces. Ninety feet, give or take.”

“Seventy, with your stride,” he teased.

She patted his tail, affecting lisping baby-talk. “Who’s a big grown-up Dragon, then?”

Through a smoky growl, Grandion grumbled, “You’ve no idea how close I came to eating you.”

“I’d only stick in your craw and give you indigestion.”

“I was this close.” He illustrated with his talons. “I’ve never eaten a person. But I’m … famished. Captivity makes a Dragon crazy. I’m not a cannibal, neither of Dragons nor of Humans. But your scent–I don’t understand. You’ve changed.”

Hualiama did not follow his logic. “Same girl,” she said. “Freshly washed, too. A girl ought to look her best for her Dragon.”

But Grandion’s sigh only puffed smoke. In fact, Lia had concluded after a judicious examination of her Dragon, everything about him seemed subdued. His scales, lustreless. Fangs, yellower than she remembered. His hide sported many patches of scale-rot, and places where the mites infested him so thickly, they bulged beneath the scales like clusters of dark purple maggots. But his eyes–oh, his poor, milky eyes. What had become of the fires which had so charmed and captivated her? This beast was larger by half again than the Tourmaline Dragon of six years ago. The immensity of his presence made her tongue stick gracelessly in her mouth. His spine-spikes towered at least fifteen feet above her head. Lia shied from imagining how many tonnes of fire-filled, draconic muscle were trapped in the same small space as her.

Wetting her lips, she said, “Grandion, I know you despise apologies–”

“You’ve no cause to apologise!” he growled.

“But I do.” Islands’ sakes, would her voice not stop wobbling like a teenager giddy on berry wine? This was Grandion. She knew him. He was older, aye, and different, but still Grandion. “I would’ve come after you, had Amaryllion not stopped me. It hurts up here in my throat, Grandion, to think upon it. The Ancient Dragon has passed on to the eternal fires. Would you hear my tale?”

“If you wish.”

He had no better response after all she had suffered for him? Hualiama was certain the sparks of her anger spat against his scales, but the Dragon seemed so dispirited and soul-lost … she would bring him back. Rescue her Dragon. Because if there was one quality she possessed in Island-sized portions, it was stubbornness. Oh, aye. She could out-stubborn any Dragon, any day of the week. But first, in truly draconic style, she should shoot a verbal fireball across his bow–just to set expectations.

Grandion.
His eyebrow-ridges twitched. In tones of saccharine steel, she said,
I flew a thousand leagues to make you mine. Mine alone. And I will have no other.

I’m broken, imprisoned and blind,
he muttered.

You are my Dragon!
Besides the oath-swapping business, which I do not regret for an instant longer than the flip of a dragonfly’s wing,
I happen to care about you. Don’t think you can be rid of me so easily.

Grandion only hung his head. Hualiama stood, hands on hips, and fixed him with a glare fit to curdle milk. He could not see, but his Dragon senses would detect her elevated heart-rate and the irritable rasp of her breath.

Struck by a wild idea, she began to laugh. “Grandion, are scale mites edible?”

“I believe so,” he said doubtfully. “You aren’t suggesting–”

“I ate maggots for you, Dragon. The least you can do is listen politely while I harvest dinner from the region of your rump.”

At last, Hualiama heard the crashing disapproval of a proud young Dragon. His spirit was not completely broken. Did she dare to hope? Might a Human girl still occupy a place in his third heart? There must be something to the song of their names, and his breath which had fired her senses. She was so confused. What darkness had emerged to steal that joy?

Ruzal
. Ianthine’s claw-mark upon her life.

* * * *

A cage of rust-red Dragon bones formed the arched walls and ceiling, joining together overhead in a hole large enough to accommodate a petite Human. The floor was hard flagstones cemented over more Dragon bones. And those bones, secured with massive brackets and hawsers of metal, also bound and subdued their magic–Grandion told her of the stench of ancient magic imbuing that metal, which Hualiama struggled to identify for herself. They had briefly broken through, however, when she cried Grandion’s secret name. Did that mean the cage’s magic could be overwhelmed?

The Tourmaline Dragon lay unspeaking, curled up in the shadows at the edge of their circular chamber. Lia learned to use the White Dragoness’ scale to easily carve away great scoops of scale mites, and in the fading light of evening, she cleansed his lower left flank as best she was able. He stoically accepted the paltry offerings she placed upon his tongue.

Wishing to enliven the taciturn Dragon, Hualiama began to tell him what had passed in the six years since they parted ways at Ha’athior Island. She asked, “What do you think of that, Grandion?”

He said heavily, “Amaryllion made you forget? We must bow to the Ancient Dragon’s wisdom in this–much as it dampens my fires to reflect upon how his decision changed you. The gift of Dragon fire is unprecedented. You see it personified, as though the dragonet lives within you?” Unexpectedly, he added, “I miss Flicker. His was a cheerful fire, a soul whose brightness could chase away even the shadows of a place like this.”

“Aye,” said Lia, her thoughts darkened, but for a different reason. Grandion’s thought processes seemed sluggish and unclear. Had the cage stolen that, too?

Returning to her tale, she related her confrontation with the Dragon Elders at Gi’ishior. He chuckled gruffly at her impressions of the volcano, and much more loudly as she related how she had blasted the Dragons with Amaryllion’s name-power. Grandion called her a ‘proper little Dragoness’ and seemed inordinately proud of her actions. When she told of her sojourn with Sapphurion and Qualiana, he rubbed his muzzle with his paw in a draconic gesture betraying his swelling emotions, and his wings flicked and rippled restively.

Lia said, “It was precious to hear from your shell-parents about my early years at Gi’ishior. But I’m sorry I stole their love from you, Grandion.”

“Stole?” he snorted hot air past her legs. In Dragonish, he added,
Bitter, these scale mites. As bitter as my hearts back then. I had no right to feel so darkly-jealous. My shell-mother counselled me otherwise, but I was too full of the roaring of my own fires to listen to her–or to any Dragon. They tried, Hualiama. But I had a skull of diamond and thoughts darker than a moonless night. I was a cruel little beast.

Hualiama reflected upon this.
I hardly remember that, Grandion. I do remember playing with you, and–
she coloured unexpectedly, hoping he could not sense the heat upon her skin–
I remember playing at tickle-fights over the couches, and you tossing me into the air and catching me in your paws. You were neither cruel nor unkind.

Despite my worst efforts, I remember that time as being often filled with bright-fires and goodness,
the Dragon admitted.
You are goodness.

Uh … right. You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I did to my father.

Speaking of King Chalcion brought fresh pain to her breast. Images assaulted her, of past beatings and hours spent in agony on the punishment board, of being locked in a weapons-room and having her legs beaten with rods until she could no longer walk, and the finality of her victory over her adoptive father. Hollow, and bitterer than a haribol fruit. Could she be glad of it? Rationalise her actions as necessary and even commendable? At least she had earned Chalcion’s respect. She was safe. And maybe next time, she’d bring home a Dragon to make her point.