Dragonlove (51 page)

“Some form of Ancient Dragonish. Who cares if we don’t understand it, as long as it works?”

Snarky Dragon. “You’re so sly. Stop yanking my hawser, Dragon.”

Grandion struck the bell and repeated the incantation twice more, while Lia covered her ears–uselessly–against the bone-tingling vibrations. They waited. The Human girl rubbed her neck and scanned the skies. Why had they seen no Dragons out here? Why did she sense unseen eyes, watching?

Placing a talon gently upon her shoulder, Grandion asked, “Do you remember dying?”

Hualiama shook her head, more of a shiver. “Not even Azziala’s weird twin-voice scared me as much as when she said, ‘I always wondered if that child died of a broken heart …’ Oh, Grandion. Dragon egglings know their shell-mother’s voice from so early on. I’m sure Human babies must be the same. They must know if they are loved or not, and if they’re despised with such a deep, malign hatred … Grandion, how can a spirit leave a body and return days later? Surely the body decays? Perishes? Am I a freak? Some wicked spirit occupying a Human shell not her own?”

“Never. Lia, don’t ever think that.” As she doubled up, wheezing at the pain in her chest, the Tourmaline Dragon clasped her with his paw as his father once had, his talons folded over her chest and thighs like a cage of silvery swords. “These are your fears speaking. Your purpose is to rise above a loathsome birthright, to be greater than those who would strike you down. You’ll forge a suns-fire destiny where others would only fall.”

The Dragon quivered with the emotions he poured into his words. Lia gripped one of his talons in both hands, grateful beyond words. When her chest closed, it felt as though she would never breathe again.

“Besides, how Azziala can deny you’re her daughter, resurrected or none, is beyond my mind-fires,” grumbled the Dragon. “What does heritage matter? Nothing.”

“Everything,” Hualiama countered, knowing draconic beliefs on the subject. “What’s the only hour a Dragon doesn’t spend debating genealogies?”

“The thirtieth.” He completed the ancient saying with a snort of fire, and followed in rhetorical cadence, “Is our fate determined before we break the shell, taught us by our shell-parents, or grasped when we reach an age of understanding our true fires?”

“Predestined to be creatures of choice? Marvellous conundrum.”

“Perfectly logical to a Dragon.”

And a perfectly oblique way of encouraging his companion, Hualiama realised, smiling warmly at him. “Then I’ll take the barest smidgen of the first, half of the second and all of the third, if you please.”

“Say, rebellious Rider of a rebellious Dragon?”

“Aye, Grandion?”

“Did I ever tell you that in the seventh of the ascending fire-promises, or the seventh-sense promise, we Dragons swear by the light of
Hualiama,
the blue star?” After a moment, he added, “I can’t see properly. Are you crying?”

“Happy,” she sniffed. “Isn’t that sacred lore?”

“Are you not the Dragonfriend?”

A silence of kindred spirits surrounded Dragon and Rider. Hualiama scanned the Cloudlands, working to shut out the inveigling voice that insisted, ‘Dragon, obey. You will love me, forever.’ Yet the morning shone bright and fair, and only the growing heat was their companion for nigh an hour.

The Cloudlands stirred. Rational thought fled. All Lia knew was stupefaction.

Three ranks of dark, wet mountain peaks broke through the clouds several leagues distant, sailing toward their position on an unmistakable bearing, as though one Island journeyed to meet another. Beside her, Grandion stood immobile, but she heard the accelerated pulse of his hearts, and his belly-fires, after initially falling mute, amplified to a steady roar. His claws gashed the rock. Like the most majestic Dragonship in existence, the creature surged up from the deeps, until fully seven rows of peaks became visible, crowning a turtle-like carapace Lia’s gibbering mind estimated to be a mile wide and the stars alone knew how long–several times that? The Land Dragon comfortably dwarfed the Isle they stood upon, slowing as its approach trembled the ground.

“I–I thought A-Amaryllion was huge,” Lia faltered.

“Courage, Dragonfriend. I never imagined a beast like this inhabited our Island-World.” The Dragon bowed his muzzle and lowered his outspread wings, a draconic obeisance. “How honoured we are.”

The Land Dragon ground to a halt perhaps half a mile offshore, the clouds eddying about its body, water and mud sheeting off the stellated carapace. Then, with a series of explosions that sounded like hydrogen detonating, the Dragon’s foreparts began to separate like a bud breaking into full flower, the mountains tipping precipitately left and right. An unmistakably draconic head slithered forth, with skin like wrinkled lizard-hide and dozens of nose and facial horns surrounding seven blazing yellow eyes placed around the head’s hemispherical crown, and a beaked canyon of a mouth which could have swallowed their Island with room to spare.

The head pushed forward until Hualiama feared they would be splattered against the mountainside like luckless bugs on a Dragonship’s crysglass windows.

Siiyumiel-ap-Yanûk-bar-Shûgan hearkens to thy summons, creatures of the heights.

Scalding, foetid air blasted over Grandion and Hualiama. The Land Dragon’s voice was massive beyond comprehension, gently modulated yet so potent with condensed magical energies that it knocked them tumbling, as helpless as newborn Dragon hatchlings. Groaning, the Tourmaline Dragon pushed back to his feet, bashing Lia to her knees. She raised a hand to her nose in a mirror-image of her Dragon’s motion. Both of them bled; one scarlet, one golden.

As quickly as the hurt had been caused, new magic pummelled them. Healing magic; a draconic apology. Now they were gasping, drowning, riding a torrent. The flow ceased abruptly. Lia flung out her hands to keep from pitching onto her face.

Shell-son of Sapphurion, noble-hearted son of flame, Alastior!

The voice was even further restrained, a dam-wall upon the point of breaking, vocalising its thoughts in packages that struck its listeners in great, heavy waves.

The Tourmaline bowed again, grace and fire united.
Siiyumiel, Blessed Lord of the Deeps, Guardian of Wisdom of the Shell-Clan. Thank you for aiding us in our hour of need.

Thou I know,
roared the great creature, inclining his head until four of his seven eyes burned upon them.
Thou art Dragonkind. Who is thy tiny companion? Bearer of ancient fires … ah. Much of thy nature is a paradox shrouded in time, little one. My fire-soul devotes itself to thee.

Hualiama rubbed her eyes as the magic within Siiyumiel performed a draconic genuflection, great fire-wings spreading white-fires to the northern and southern horizons in her inner sight. She realised she saw his true draconic form, his fire-form, so different from the ponderous bottom-dweller, as beautiful and enigmatic as Amaryllion Fireborn had been in life and death.

She muttered, “Grandion, what’s he doing? What’s going on?”

The Dragon shook his muzzle, clearly nonplussed.
Yukari said he’s the leader of the Shell-Clan Land Dragons, and the wisest Dragon loremaster in the Island-World.

After Amaryllion, surely?

Grandion hissed briefly at her, before addressing Siiyumiel,
My gracious companion is Hualiama, Princess of Fra’anior, daughter of the Human Empress of these Isles.

Ah.
The breeze generated by Siiyumiel’s exhalation continued for the full minute it took him to speak a single syllable. Could Dragons not simply say what they meant, rather than hinting at ten million enormously significant things they knew, but were never going to reveal? If there was any one trait of Amaryllion’s which had vexed her … Lia peered as much as she dared up into Siiyumiel’s swirling orange orbs, each a flattish oval one hundred and fifty feet wide and sixty tall, and tried not to imagine plunging into those fiery pits and burning forever. She sensed nothing malicious in his fire-eyes, but rather the gravitas of great age and authority, and an alien Dragonsong as thrilling and far beyond her understanding as the stars lay beyond the Island-World.

The Land Dragon said,
Speak thy need, Alastior.

Give him the recipe, Hualiama.

After explaining Grandion’s debility, Lia passed on the complex set of requirements Yukari had proposed. They waited. A quarter-hour later, the Land Dragon stirred.

I have analysed the molecular structure of this debility, little ones, and projected the effects of Yukari’s treatment with a ninety-eight point four two seven percentage accuracy. It is like this–
he showed them a vast canvas of computation, hypotheses, effects and outcomes, shaded with probability factors, magical constructs and instillations, and a dizzying breakdown of the recipe he would prepare–
ah, too much for your little minds? I shall summarise. The remedy will make you sick. Basic Dragon magic will fail you until the elements integrate fully into your physiological systems. Thereafter, you should experience a gradual return of your sight. I expect full healing within a … month, in your reckoning. I have begun to distil the necessary elements from my stores–from within my own body, little ones.

Hualiama smiled as the Land Dragon clarified her unspoken question.
How can we thank you enough, Siiyumiel?

Share with me the wisdom of Amaryllion,
Siiyumiel replied unexpectedly.

The Island-World had never seemed a stranger place than when a Land Dragon paused to afford a Human girl his regard. He listened with such vast, wholehearted attention, that his manner drew nuances and hitherto unrealised insights out of Hualiama. She spoke with greater fluidity than she might have thought possible, and after the briefest-seeming hour of her life, paused as Siiyumiel declared his work complete.

Suddenly, the head began to withdraw. The Fra’aniorian Islander sensed the solidifying of mental and magical barriers, while alarm or at least alertness ran high in the great beast.

She began to call,
O Land Dragon …

Take heed,
he interrupted.
Receive this gift, Tourmaline. I wish a modicum of repayment, simply this: bring the Human girl back to this place when you’ve dealt with your enemies.

Enemies?
Hualiama yelped. Where? Who had tracked them here? How?

Just then, a silvery ball the size of her head flashed past the corner of her eye. With a dull, fleshy thud, it struck Grandion flush in the side of the head, two feet aft of his left eye. The Tourmaline Dragon collapsed in a heap of claws, wings and limp Dragon flesh.

Having felled Grandion with his medication, the faint-hearted Land Dragon vanished as though he had used invisible hooks to tear up a carpet of Cloudlands and dived beneath it. Turning to scan the skies hastily, Lia spotted a blazing Orange Dragon spearheading a large Dragonwing, screaming in from the northwest.

Razzior!

* * * *

Her intuition had struck the right Island. Azziala’s intelligence had failed. Razzior had already reached the Lost Islands, perhaps days ahead of the remainder of his forces. “Get up, you stupid–” Kicking Grandion in the neck would do no good. Nor could her little arms shake his muzzle. But Lia had to try. As the Orange Dragon loomed larger and larger, she tried everything short of unleashing her
ruzal
power to force him to wake. Finally, she tried pushing into his unresponsive mind to stir him up.

Rise, o Dragon fires,
she sang softly, as close an imitation of Dragonsong as she could produce.
Sing, thou glory of the skies. Dance with me. Beloved …

Truly? When he did not return her love? Her conviction faded, but Hualiama saw herself reflected in his mind, as if a fiery angel took his soul’s paw and led him step by step from the darkness to dance in the light. The Tourmaline Dragon ruffled his wings as if dislocated from a deep sleep.

“Razzior’s coming. Hurry.” Hualiama glanced upward again. Why did she feel those Dragons were not the only disturbance in the air this morning?

The Dragon snuffled about, sneezing when he took a whiff of her legs. “Where’s my rock?”

“No. Grandion, it’ll make you sick.”

“Instantly? Nonsense.”

Lia had a sick intuition this was a mistake, but the seething response she detected in him, probably battle-readiness coupled with exasperation, left no room for negotiation. “Here.” She pushed the metal ball with her foot, but could not budge it. Roaring rajals, how many sackweight did it weigh?

“I refuse to wait upon blindness as our enemies approach,” he growled, unnecessarily.

Aye, he was lizard ten times more brainless than the average ralti sheep–but not half as stubborn as his Rider! Lia’s grin flashed briefly, grim and uncompromising. Let Razzior come. Grandion snaffled the metal ball with his fangs and tossed it down his gullet with a sharp grunt of effort. Perfect. So now her Dragon would fly like a windroc who had breakfasted on rocks. Stepping upon his paw, Hualiama accepted a boost up to Grandion’s shoulder, landing lightly on the balls of her feet.

“Strap in, my Rider. Stormy weather expected this morning.”

Lia’s senses attuned to the doings of the Dragon’s various stomachs and the organs which supplied his magical and physical Dragon powers. Aye, Grandion was brewing up a fine storm. The weather was clear, but had that oppressive stillness which often presaged bad weather. Where would their help come from? This morning’s storm would be that of a Rider and her Dragon battling for their lives.