Shadow Dragon (23 page)

Sobbing in great, wretched gasps, Aranya wrenched herself loose. Indignation mottled Beran’s visage. Sharp inhalations, all around her; a rising babble of voices.

“No!”

A peal of thunder rattled the building.

“NO!”

She tore at her hair, hating the magic, hating herself, hating everything she had become.

“No, please … I can’t stand it anymore!”

The tempest erupted, unleashed at last. Nothing remained whole. Aranya raised her voice in a wild, piteous howl, “Noooooo!”

In her place stood an Amethyst Dragon. The priceless dress, ruined. Her thunder beat the walls from within, cracking candle chandeliers, overturning tables and sweeping servants and guests backward in a blast of wind. The howl of her disgrace made them clap their hands over their ears.

Then, with a snap of her powerful thigh muscles, the daughter of the storm launched herself skyward. A blue fireball blasted though crysglass and stone.

Aranya fled into the night, into the storm.

* * * *

The gale-force winds tossed her higher and higher, bearing her aloft upon tempestuous squalls, driving the Amethyst Dragon away from Jos City. Lightning played between the distended, dark cloud-canyons, a league tall and more. Driving rain splatted against her scales, drowning the Dragon tears spilling down her cheeks. She lost herself in flight.

Dawn was a greyer shade of night. With it, crowding through the breach in her sanity, came visions of the Ancient Dragons. All around her, vast reptilian forms slithered and roared and built and loved and warred. The world was young. Its Islands were the canvas of her memory, painting pictures of lifetimes long vanished, of volcanoes shaping the world and blackening the skies with an endless rain of ash, of chasms at the roots of Islands belching their poisons across thousands of leagues to form the Cloudlands. Land Dragons twined about Islands, crushing them with their coils. Their battles were the earthquakes that cracked the basal rock. Humans clung to a pitiful existence amidst the chaos, ever-fearful of the marauding draconic hordes, until some Dragons took them to be slaves, and taught them language and geography, astronomy and the arts, and the Humans made themselves useful, and industrious, and eventually, indispensable.

Aranya shivered as war enveloped the world, Human against Dragon, and the Dragon-kind between themselves.

Many scenes flashed before her eyes, too fast to comprehend. There came a hunter, a being of otherworldly magic, devouring Dragons with an appetite that could never be quenched, but grew the more it fed. The Amethyst Dragon fled from it in a blind, screaming terror. She saw Dragons rise against the beast–Onyx and Silver, Amber and Sapphire, the colours of the legends Nak and Oyda had told. They were consumed in the blink of an eye as the disembodied head of a Land Dragon bellowed its rage across an empty Island, crying,
Traitor! Foul traitor!

And it swallowed the Island, and her, in its mouth.

Darkness prevailed upon the Island-World.

Next she knew, Aranya was scudding along just above the Cloudlands on the wings of an everlasting windstorm, surrounded by clouds so thick and black that her mind served them up as Fra’anior’s heads, snapping at her tail. Panicked wingbeats drove her into the teeth of the storm. Hurricane gusts tossed her about like a toy, battering, blustering, howling across her sensitive scales and drilling into her brain until Aranya clapped her paws over her ear canals, desperate to shut out the barrage. Percussive crashes of thunder became hundred-foot Sylakian war hammers endlessly pounding her body. She rode the cleansing lightning, drawing the tang of ozone deep into her lungs. Aranya spread her wings to embrace the blast, shooting through the Ancient Dragons’ storehouses of hail and winter’s ice, the realms of Blue Dragon powers.

Higher and higher she soared, miles and leagues high, until it seemed improbable that the storm should still cover the Island-World. The air grew thin and deadly cold. The stars gleamed in a moonless void unimaginably far away, yet their silvery song washed over her scales with a magic all of its own. Had night fallen already? Where had the daytime fled? Her lungs laboured, while her hearts throbbed so rapidly that the rushing of blood became a waterfall in her ears. The Amethyst Dragon observed the storm’s beauty from above, the thousand-league bands of clouds spiralling shell-like around a central, clear space, and she tried to imagine what might live in its heart.

But the storm drew her as an umbilical cord feeds a baby.
The storm approaches to embrace the daughter of the storm.
Aranya swooped, obeying a call she barely perceived. Now, she would truly ride the winds. Her velocity became immense, the utmost a Dragon could achieve or endure. The storm raced along with her. She became one with the tempest. When the clouds enveloped her body, they brought a coolness to her fevered state, and a sense of homecoming.

Yet within her darkness was a thread, a tiny beacon of magic that drew her to a place where she had once sojourned.
Come to me, darling Aranya,
said her mother’s voice.

Mother?
A Star Dragon winged alongside her, a shining star misplaced in the world, riding the hurricane winds with impossible serenity.

Follow me, precious daughter. I will lead you home.

Mother, wait for me.
Aranya sped up, but the Star Dragon began to pull away.
Mother, please!

Desperation caused her to accelerate now to such a velocity, she created her own shockwave before her. Aranya’s Dragon powers sang an enthralling, excruciating song. She seared the night, blasting thunderheads aside to her left and right, diving through the turmoil as though she had always belonged in its chaotic embrace. Yet Izariela led her on, through the blinding curtains of rain and shrieking winds. Splitting the storm with the ease of a thunderbolt flung to earth, Aranya flung herself down upon the Island she sought.

Transform, Aranya. Go home.

Izariela faded.
Mother! Mother!
She reached out, but touched nothing. Human-Aranya wept, stumbling barefoot through the night, letting the unfamiliar foliage slap her body, unheeding.

“Home,” she moaned. The volcanic rock cut the soft undersides of her feet. “Home.”

Sodden, she tramped along an animal-trail to a village perched upon the rim of a vast cliff of trailing, luxuriant vegetation. She knew this place. Her dull gaze took in the small, neat cottages lashed by the terrible winds, the fallen trees, the shingles blown off rooftops to litter the gardens. She knew … that house. Her footsteps led her home.

A fist, rattling the door.

A bolt squeaked; light fell upon her face. The woman standing within gaped at her. “Lyriela? What are you doing outside, child?”

Lyriela peered past the woman’s shoulder. ‘Aranya’, she mouthed, her face lighting up.

The soundless word released something in her. “Aranya,” she said, as though discovering her name for the first time. She stumbled inside. The young woman’s embrace was shockingly warm against her ice-cold skin.

Aranya threw herself upon Lyriela’s shoulder, and wept.

* * * *

The smell of redbush tea brewing in a kettle roused her. It transported her instantly to a small hut in a dell on the edge of Sylakia Island, the place where she had first learned about her Dragon powers. By the sound of the unique dawn chorus, a combination of myriad bird-calls mingled with the intricate, trilling songs of dragonets, she knew she had come to a familiar place–Fra’anior.

“Tea, petal? And a nibble for breakfast?”

Aranya’s mouth popped open. “Oyda?”

“Aye, I’ll have a nibble of thee, my fireflower petal,” said Nak, from the couch opposite. “Only, would you allow the blanket to slip to the floor? Just for the tiniest second? I imagine you are delightfully naked beneath it.”

“Nak! What are you … what? I mean, what?”

“Ah, my devilish handsomeness can still reduce Princesses to spluttering incoherence,” he declared. “Lyriela is also quite smitten with me, I assure you.”

“Not half as smitten as you are with yourself,” said Oyda, tartly. “Make yourself useful, husband. Stir the fire. Beastly weather, Aranya. Quite the hundred-year storm you appeared in. Petal–that’s you, Lyriela–will you lend Aranya a few items of clothing?”

“No need,” Nak put in.

“Have a bread roll,” said Oyda, tossing one accurately across the room. It bounced off Nak’s head.

Aranya wanted to laugh, but the ache in her soul was too severe. She was so happy to see Nak and Oyda, albeit far from Sylakia and in tumultuous circumstances, that she could not help the tears trickling down her cheeks. Everything would be alright. Oyda’s homespun magic would heal her hurts, and she could tap Nak’s wisdom, too–if she could just wrap her brain around the incongruity of finding them here, on Ha’athior Island.

Nak turned to look past the couch Aranya lay on. “Lyriela says–” he frowned. “Well, she says she must play for you, o precious Immadia. She says … no, Lyriela, that’s impossible. Nonsense, petal.”

“Another bread roll?” said Oyda. Nak ducked. “Aranya, Lyriela says that you and the storm are … connected. Magically.” Aranya rose on her elbow to stare at her relative, she who could be her twin save for the violet eyes and the lack of multi-coloured hair, with astonishment. “She says that if you calm down, the storm will dissipate.”

“If I calm down?” A flare in the hearth fire betrayed her feelings. Aranya sighed. “Lyriela, if you had any idea of the size of that storm …” She thought of poor Jia-Llonya, ensnared by a Dragoness’ magic. “I’ll try. I’ll try anything.”

It was surely impossible that one unusual girl should be the epicentre of a thousand-league storm, Aranya thought. So was being thrown off a cliff and learning to fly. And pulling off a twenty-eighth hour rescue of Immadia. Surely, the Black Dragon’s ‘daughter of the storm’ was not meant as a literal appellation?

But the winds outside shrieked at a pitch she had never heard before. The shutters vibrated as though seized and rattled by an earthquake.

Lyriela made an interrogative gesture.

“I would be honoured,” Aranya smiled.

Lyriela, with that wonderful grace Fra’aniorian women seemed to possess as their birthright, glided over to the corner which housed her tall, intricately carved harp. This was not the instrument she had carried to their meeting with the Nameless Man. It stood six feet tall.

She bowed slightly and laid her fingers to the strings. Glissades of music and magic filled the small house, driving away the sounds of rain drumming on the roof and the wind attacking the shutters. Aranya sagged on the couch as though struck by an invisible fist. The music conjured visions in her mind. She saw a vast volcano inside which Dragons danced to the music of Dragonsong. Amongst the multitude, at the heart of the celebration, was a tiny, gleaming Onyx Dragoness, hardly more than a hatchling, who carolled her joy to the heavens. The other Dragons sang their harmonies from a near-subsonic throbbing deep within the male Dragons’ chests, to the trilling song of fledglings and the clarion purity of the Dragoness’ voices. And the visions moved to her mother, Izariela, and her star-crossed love for a rakish young Beran, and from there to the lives of other Dragons she did not recognise.

The music drew her to a place of quiet contemplation, and instilled all with peace. Lyriela’s offering opened new vistas to her. It soothed her fears, enwrapped her in wonder, and pierced the bloated ulcer of hatred which had grown within her soul.

It made the world anew.

“W
HAT’S thE MATTER
with that stupid Prince Ta’armion?” Aranya griped. “I’ve a good mind to kidnap him myself.”

“Petal, calm yourself. You’ll bring another storm down on us.” Oyda was right, as usual. Aranya forced herself to relax beneath the ministrations of Lyriela brushing out her hair. “Nak and I abandoned Sylakia just after you winged north to save Immadia, and that’s all we have to say on the subject. We came to Fra’anior. Much more congenial than Thoralian’s back yard, wouldn’t you say?”

“Aye, and these Fra’aniorian women … goddesses, one and all,” said Nak, evidently not as asleep as his snoring a moment before suggested.

Oyda said, “We came to dig into the records. Lyriela is your cousin, Aranya. Your mother had a twin brother called Ja’arrion, a Green Shapeshifter Dragon of reputedly exceptional power. He married Va’assia, a Red Shapeshifter from the neighbouring Island of Ya’arriol.”

“And Izariela–”

“Well, that’s a mystery, Aranya. We couldn’t unearth a single record or memory of the twins’ mother or father.”

“Oh, what a shame.” Aranya regarded Lyriela in the mirror. “Islands’ greetings, beloved cousin.” The image made a fluid Fra’aniorian half-bow. “So, our heritage is unknown? The powers that pass through a family of Shapeshifters–”

“Aye,” said Nak. “As you know, we can trace powers through the generations. That’s why record-keeping became such an obsession amongst Shapeshifters. Izariela’s Star Dragon powers point to an extraordinary heritage. But Thoralian put a stop to that, the poxy son of a windroc. He murdered Ja’arrion and Va’assia–”

“We don’t know that for certain,” Oyda put in.

“He murdered them.”

“They disappeared.”

Aranya quelled the squabble with a hiss. She said, “Do you remember our grandparents, Lyriela?”

“I was very young,” Nak translated.

And then a piece of the puzzle fell into place for Aranya. If Shapeshifter families worked as Nak and Oyda’s research suggested …
Lyriela, do you understand Dragonish?

A gulp as the violet eyes flew wide. Her cousin’s throat worked.
A-A-A,
she stammered, not even words, but the mind-communication possible between Dragons. She wrung her hands, trapped between terror and wonder.
A … aaaooo …

Oyda flung her arms around the girl. “Petal, softly now.”
Petal, don’t cry. Think your words.

With a clatter, Nak’s stool toppled in one direction and his canes went spinning in another. An impromptu Nak jig spun him around the room, as he giggled, snorted and crowed, “I found me a Dragon! Well, you did, Aranya. We found a Dragon.”

Aranya sprang off her own chair.
Lyri … oh, Lyriela! I can’t believe it.
She hugged the girl so hard, Lyriela’s ribs creaked.

Poor cousin. She really had no chance, not with two Shapeshifters for parents and a Star Dragon for an aunt. Poor Prince Ta’armion. Her wicked chuckle startled everyone. He was about to marry a Shapeshifter Dragon. That would certainly spice up his life in the future. And she’d have another Dragon ally, bringing the total to four. Four Dragons to stand against the seemingly inexhaustible hordes of Thoralian’s family.

Oyda said,
I wonder what colour you’ll be, petal?

Violet for the eyes,
said Nak, sounding assured of his ground.
Violet is my favourite Dragon colour–next to amethyst, of course. And the sapphire of my darling Shimmerith. You’ve quite the knack for discovering Dragons, Aranya. Or making them, I hear. I think it’s time you told us a story.

Every detail,
said Oyda.
I want to know why you arrived here in such a state. Who did this to you?

Aranya groaned. In front of Nak? She’d never live this down.

* * * *

Zuziana mopped Ri’arion’s brow with a cool cloth. The monk moaned and strained against his bindings, while the Dragonship likewise groaned and creaked as it sought to make headway against the high winds which had beset their long south-westerly passage to Remia Island. The Steersman complained bitterly that they should turn aside for Horness Cluster and take shelter, but Zip could not abide even an hour’s delay. Fra’anior beckoned. It tugged her heart along as though she were chained to a Dragonship driving ahead at its fullest speed.

Aranya. Something was amiss, and Zuziana was desperate.

The sickly-sweet odour of infection filled the cabin. Despite their best efforts to treat Ri’arion’s wounds, the deep perforation in his shoulder had become inflamed. That, plus the raving delirium of a powerful magician, was not a combination anyone felt safe with. It baffled her how the Nameless Man could not simply just snap his fingers and heal himself. Some magic was like that. Several of her Dragon powers seemed inborn, but others needed to be learned, observed in others, or required some unfathomable signal or crisis before they surfaced.

Or, a thief could steal them. She winced.

“Princess Zuziana of Remoy, exile, escapee, thief and Dragoness,” Zip whispered. “Dragon Rider. Aranya’s friend. A sizeable blue wasp lodged up Sylakia’s left nostril.”

As the word ‘wasp’ left her lips, Ri’arion gripped her arm with feverish strength.

“You were inside me,” he moaned. “You saw; you took.”

“And I love you. I’m so sorry, Ri’arion.”

For the first time in days, the depthless sapphire eyes cracked open. “You did right,” he breathed, forcing the words out of an unwilling throat. “It is I who failed you.”

“You didn’t fail–”

“I was a fool. Forgetting that pain would be transmitted through the mind-meld.” His grip hurt her arm, but Zip did not pull away. “Seeking to control a Dragon.”

“It was a brilliant idea.”

A glistening teardrop squeezed out of the corner of his eye. Zip covered her mouth with her hand to stifle an appalled sob. Ri’arion had never displayed such weakness before. He was a monk, the Nameless Man, the very paragon of discipline and wisdom.

His chest rose and fell. Infection scribed its insidious woes upon his flesh.

He whispered, “You are passion, dawn’s breath upon the world. I am cogitation. As the orbits of the moons are circumscribed, so am I.”

Zip bent over him, stroking his cheek, hurting for him. “Hush your poetry, silly man. If you think I’m leaving you, you’ve monkey intestines for brains. We’ll work this out. And you will get better.”

“Aye?”

“Aye. And when you’re better, you won’t spout so much beautiful nonsense.” His laughter turned into a pained wheeze. She said, “We’ll defeat Thoralian. You and I will get married. We’ll have ten children. All of them immoderately magical.”

“Children by magic?” His eyes gleamed too brightly. Sweat beaded his brow. “Now who’s moons-mad? If you’ve been turned into a Shapeshifter by Dragon tears, do you think your children will inherit your powers? Oh, by the great Dragon, I ache …”

The Princess of Remoy snapped her fingers at him. “Will you switch that brain of yours to healing? You never stop, even when you’re doing a passable imitation of dying.”

“If you’ll explain to me the mystery of Shapeshifter heritage …”

“I promise I’ll think about it.” Zip laid a finger upon his lips. “You need to heal.”

“Where are we?”

“Making good headway toward Remia.”

He said, “Do you think our meld is doomed to failure, Princess?”

“Be still. Or would you argue with a Dragoness?” She replaced her finger with a kiss, which he returned feebly. “Ha. You are not as ill as you pretend. Ri’arion, can I share my fears about Aranya with you? And you’ll tell me if I’m leaping off Islands?”

His eyes shuttered. “I’m listening.”

Two breaths later, a soft snore informed her of exactly how well he was listening.

Zuziana wished she could fly ahead to Fra’anior, but her place was here, with her monk. “Oh, Aranya,” she whispered. “You will be careful, won’t you?”

* * * *

Nak prodded Aranya in the ribs with his cane. He seemed far from astonished by her story; tickled, surely, but also sympathetic. He said, “Was she a good kisser, at least?”

“Nak!” cried Oyda.

Aranya wished she could have melted through the floor rather than share that detail. “I had my fingers wrapped around her throat, but she thought I meant to kiss … it confused me. Jia didn’t deserve–I wouldn’t ever–Islands’ sakes, what do you expect me to say?”

“Petal, you might not know, but in some segments of Jeradian society it is quite common to kiss on the lips in greeting. Even the men do it,” said Oyda.

Nak complained, “Aranya made it sound so much more interesting than that.”

A storm-powered roar shook Lyriela’s cottage. Aranya leaped at the old Dragon Rider, her hands clawed, but even as she sprang off her seat, rational thought intruded and she skidded to a halt, slamming her shins into the couch next to him. Aranya groaned, pressing her fingers against her temples.

One more bit of Dragon fire and she was going to explode!

“Sorry. Sorry, everyone. I’m alright.”

She was not–Aranya knew it, and now they all knew, too. She dropped back into her seat, hugged her knees and rocked back and forth. Nothing made sense any more. Her emotions could not find a single Island to rest upon for more than a minute, and while struggling to maintain her integrity, all she had achieved was to heap another disgrace upon herself, this one hugely public. Beran would be mortified by her behaviour. She had gaily dragged Immadia’s reputation through a swamp. She could not even cry about it. Her tears had run dry.

Nak said, gently, “Dragons are fiercely jealous creatures, Aranya, and that girl stole Yolathion from you. I don’t blame you in the slightest.” His eyes took on a misty glaze. “Though, I would have loved to have been there …”

Oyda’s hand clipped his head. “You old degenerate. Her poor father, what he must have thought.”

“Ha, Immadian prudery,” said Nak. “In Remoy, they have the right idea. Besides, I have always admired Aranya’s morals. Nothing has changed–apart from this wild urge I have to thrash that Shadow Dragon within an inch of his life. Blasted Dragon magic upsetting my best girl …”

His wife gaped at the old Dragon Rider.

“I can still surprise thee after fifteen decades of marriage?”

“Aye, that you can,” said Oyda.

“I could still say something wildly inappropriate,” Nak offered, flashing his lustful-old-man smile at Aranya. “Should I clasp thee in mine arms, incomparable Immadia, I would kiss thy blushes most tenderly, and teach thee such things–”

Oyda scolded, “Nak, enough.”

Aranya blushed on cue. “Nak–yes, you’re still the Island-World’s greatest charmer.”

“I am, aren’t I?”

Then she offered him a wicked smile of her own. Patting her knee, she said, “Come perch upon a Dragoness’ knee, my friend, and I shall nibble thy head off thy neck.”

Nak waved his cane rather wildly in her direction. “Desist, thou wicked beast!” He said, “On a more serious note, how many times did you tremble the Islands with that man–Dragon, I mean?”

Aranya thought she was done blushing, but now her cheeks heated up so ferociously she thought she smelled smoke. Ardan and his mysterious, beautiful eyes; that wicked, wicked rajal of a man! And dear, gallant old Nak neither blamed her nor criticised her actions. She wished she could articulate how grateful she was for his acceptance, even if she felt even more muddled as a result.

Magical Dragon fire indeed.
Thou, my soul’s fire, its madness, its uncontainable Dragonsong …

She protested, “What does it matter?”

“The Dragon lore surrounding numbers is quite astonishing,” said the old Dragon Rider.

Oyda met her raised eyebrow with a nod. “It’s a serious question, Aranya.”

“Um … seven, Ardan said.”

“Louder. My aged ears fail me.” One more wisecrack and Nak would seal his doom, her scowl told him. Nak’s face wrinkled up in a smile that reached his hairline. “I’m a much better kisser than that Jeradian girl, aren’t I, petal? Admit it.”

“She’s the one who … oh, stop! It was barely a peck.”

Oyda said, “Seven, Aranya? That’s a magical number. At least, our Dragons were always nattering on like parakeets about numerology and the properties of the number seven, most especially.”

Seven signifies the sevenfold power of a vow,
said Lyriela.

Aranya screamed, and then clapped her hands over her mouth, filled with chaotic laughter.
Lyri, you spoke! Er, in thought. How is it you speak Dragonish so well?

I feel born to it.
Lyriela shrugged; tears glistened on the tips of her eyelashes.
My mind awoke.
She spoke with the care of one who had never been able to speak, and was assembling sentences in her mind before speaking them.

Taking her cousin’s hands in hers, Aranya said,
Lyriela, you’re a treasure. Are you aware this means you’ll transform into a Dragon, probably soon? Are you scared?