Shadow Dragon (25 page)

“That’s right, petal,” said Oyda.

Unimpressed by this cloud of bewilderment, Aranya narrowed her eyes. Her friends had never acted senile before, despite their age. Was this a ploy? A shading of the truth for the good of an Immadian Princess? Perhaps she should seek a more sinister explanation …

Nak said, “Another time, I remember–this incident happened here at Fra’anior. The Silver Dragon attacked Pip in the Natal Cave. Tied her up. She snapped the ropes, broke out of there, and attacked that Dragon. Hit him like a thunderbolt out of the blue.”

“I thought she loved the Silver–”

“Love came later. After she smashed the living pith out of him.” Nak grinned at Oyda. “Do you remember the Land Dragon she summoned?”

Aranya sat up straighter, beginning to feel rather annoyed and jealous as her friends extolled the Pygmy Dragon’s powers to the heavens. “She
summoned
a Land Dragon?”

“You really are full of stupid questions, aren’t you?” Nak laughed at his own joke. “Her name was Leandrial.”

“Who, Pip?”

“Great Islands, no, my ralti-sheep aunt who runs around bleating at the moons!” Nak glared at Lyriela, who was overcome with fit of the giggles in the face of his wrath. “Just wait until you’re married, o heavenly Ha’athior. We’ll make your Prince blush like the dawn, you and–”

Oyda barked, “Nak! Don’t get distracted.”

Nak said, “Pip was attacked by half a dozen Night-Red Dragons. They tried to drag her down into the Cloudlands, when along comes this Land Dragon just running up the side of the Island holding Pip on her paw, as cool as a fish in a terrace lake. And Pip turns around and talks to–shut your mouth, petal. You’re catching flies. The Land Dragon was called Leandrial. That creature had claws sixty feet long, and a throat as could swallow a fully-grown Dragon without its wings touching the sides.”

Aranya tried to imagine this monster, and failed miserably. “But Nak, what became of this omnipotent Pygmy Dragon? Where did she go? And all the other Dragons, for that matter?”

Nak shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember?”

How had they not remembered something so fundamental? Granted it was over a hundred years before, but still! Aranya chewed her lip, unable to deny the suspicion that something was amiss. And she did not want to shout at Nak and Oyda again. They deserved better.

“Pip vanished?”

Nak nodded. “There was a great battle at Jeradia. I remember that. The Marshal’s Island was there, hanging in the sky–I just don’t remember how it ended. How did it end, Oyda?”

“Well, she defeated the Marshal, of course,” said Oyda.

Aranya insisted, “But you didn’t
see
it, did you?”

“No, not exactly,” puzzled Nak. “I remember hiding from the Dragon of Shadow here, at Fra’anior, in the Natal Cave. We spent months in that cave, climbing the cliffs in search of food and forbidding our Dragons to fly anywhere.”

His answer was the proverbial fracture in the terrace lake wall. The Immadian Princess made a very passable impression of a Dragon as she roared, “So you jump from a non-existent school, amidst the most important battle of your lives–and you can’t even be certain of that–to hiding in a cave in Fra’anior, and you don’t remember a blasted thing? The world changes under your noses, the Dragons all disappear, and you don’t even notice? Ridiculous! I can’t believe what I’m hearing from you two!”

Nak rubbed his ears. “No need to shout, I’m not decrepit yet.”

Aranya smacked her hand to her forehead. “She did something to you. That little Onyx vixen … she
made
you forget.”

“Oh no, not my sweet little Pip,” said Nak. “She’d never have dared to do that.”

“She chased you away. The Pygmy Dragon needed you to survive, to remember … why? Why, Oyda?”

Oyda hung her head. “Petal, I am so ashamed, I want to cry. Knowing how important these questions are to you–ouch! Mind the old bones, you wretched girl.” Aranya hugged her a little less fiercely. Oyda patted her back. “You’re like my own daughter, Aranya and I’d never hide something like this from you. Look. Nak and I are hopelessly confused. We’ll put our forgetful old heads together and try to agree on the real story. Meantime, you need to relax.”

“That’s the last thing I want to do, Oyda. Fra’anior has me hunting an Onyx Dragon who’s been dead a hundred and fifty years. How does that make even a grain of sense?”

“Shut the trap, petal,” said Oyda, with a sweet but commanding smile. “I’ve just the job for an Amethyst Dragon.”

“I don’t want–”

“Shut it!”

Aranya laughed, but made a silencing motion in front of her lips.

Oyda nodded. “That’s better, petal. Now, while I talk to Nak and dress Lyriela in something suitably gorgeous, you will go fetch that worthless Prince Ta’armion. Don’t you take no for an answer. I’m sure you can be very persuasive.”

“Grab him by the seat of his fancy trousers, if necessary,” Nak chimed in.

Lyriela laughed soundlessly behind her hand, her eyes a-dance.

“Direct him to bring Dragonships, chains and whatever effects his ridiculous tradition demands. It’s time for a right royal kidnapping.”

A
Ranya lauNched Herself
off the lip of Fra’anior’s volcanic rim wall, the place where legend told that the world began in the explosion of a vast meteor. Ha’athior Island, one of twenty-seven major Islands located around the caldera, lay above the Natal Cave itself, the magical resting-place of the fabled First Eggs of the Dragons.

She had to remain concealed. How many Sylakian spies still lurked about Fra’anior? Ignathion had shared that the Sylakians had stripped Fra’anior’s garrison bare to supplement the effort at Jeradia–but still, a Dragon could cause Prince Ta’armion a great deal of trouble.

Excellent. Aranya grinned rather grimly.

Angling her wings, she plunged toward the vapours concealing the caldera floor. A league below the Islands, she should be invisible to Human sight–but what if there was another Dragon? She scanned the cloud-mottled skies, the Islands, the swirling mists. Nothing. Only dragonets. Curious to see the Natal Cave close up, Aranya hugged the cliff face, but was soon forced to take a more considered approach due to the sheer number of dragonets and birds flitting in and out of the lush, trailing vegetation.

A mile and a half lower down, the vegetation gave way to the relentless assault of the volcanic heat from lava-filled cracks on the caldera floor. Aranya skirted a huge overhang. Wow! She levelled out, slowing down as she gaped at the cave mouth, an immense bite into the roots of Ha’athior Island. The magic emanating from the Natal Cave’s dark mouth made her scales creep. A long white tongue of Dragon bones descended from its mouth to the volcano floor. Aranya decided she’d explore it another time, perhaps after Lyriela’s wedding. But as she surveyed the bones, a bugle of wonderment sounded from her throat. Not all were white–some were turquoise with sparkling, jewelled veins, others, a deep, ruby-red colour. She winged over the spinal column of some beast whose unending, serpentine ribcage towered two hundred feet over her head. Feeling skittish, and thinking herself foolish to be so, she whipped through the open mouth of a skeletal head, dodging fangs the size of the marble columns in Jeradia’s great hall.

Unbelievable!

If Pip’s Land Dragon had been this size … Aranya was a gnat in comparison to these monsters.

Gritting her fangs, Aranya accelerated away across the cracked volcanic landscape. She had a Prince to hunt.

Not long after noon, as the twin suns broke through the clouds to intensify Fra’anior’s already sultry heat, the Amethyst Dragon ghosted in on muffled wings to land behind a small orchard inside the palace grounds. She transformed. Picking up a bag of clothing Oyda had tied to her forepaw, she dressed rapidly and wound a lavender-coloured headscarf around her unruly locks. She disliked lavender, but that was the colour of Lyriela’s spare dress.

Aranya crept between the close-packed flara-fruit trees, having to pick her footing amongst a thick layer of fallen fruit–probably knocked down by her storm. Good. Prince Ta’armion was training at swordplay with a man who moved with a dragonet’s grace and a cobra’s speed. She had better not surprise him, or she’d be wearing his sword Dragon-swift.

Stepping out of the thicket, Aranya called, “Prince Ta’armion, a word.”

A crossbow bolt buzzed past her left ear.

She hit the ground with a thump. Some kidnapping this was. She needed to work on her style–next time, a snatch and grab, or better still, chasing the Prince around his field, firing fireballs to keep him hopping? She grinned, but held very still as a sword-point scratched her ear.

The man said, “What do you want with the Prince, girl?”

“Lyriela?” said the Prince. “Let her up, man.” His smiling advance turned into a confused stumble. “Lyriela, this is unexpected–you aren’t–Aranya! By the Great Dragon himself, am I glad to see you.”

“I’m grateful it is not drugged and clad as a slave-girl, this time,” she returned, letting more than a hint of acid enter her voice.

Unfortunately, this comment produced a misty-eyed look as the Prince summoned up an evidently pleasing mental image of the outfit his agent had chosen to best showcase her attributes on that occasion. Her glower made the Prince adjust his grin hastily.

“The royal hospitality has improved since that unfortunate incident,” said he, sketching a preposterously elaborate Fra’aniorian bow. “Put the sword down, Ga’artior. It’s no use anyway. She’s a Dragoness.”

Ga’artior sniffed, “She’s safe, my Lord Prince?”

“Not in the slightest,” said Ta’armion, cheerfully. “Aranya is the Princess of Immadia, a Shapeshifter Dragon and an ally of Fra’anior. I do hope that you’re planning to invade, Princess? I’ve so been looking forward to an Immadian invasion.”

The Dragoness in her had decided she’d threaten to eat him. Instead, Aranya found a smile creeping about her lips. He was just so adorable and enthusiastic. He’d drive her up the proverbial Island cliff, but he was perfect for Lyriela, her gentle, soon-to-be-Dragoness cousin. Well, she had not flown across the caldera to make Prince Ta’armion’s life any less lively.

“Prince Ta’armion, I have come on account of my cousin,” she said, giving him her sweetest smile. “You will kidnap her today, or I will personally hang you by your bootlaces from the nearest passing cloud. Do we understand each other?”

Ga’artior’s sword swished toward her. Ta’armion parried it with a flick of his blade. Aranya did not flinch. She raised an eyebrow at the Prince.

Abruptly, an enormous grin creased his cheeks. “Aye! By a thousand Islands, Aranya. I’ m so excited. It was the Sylakians, we couldn’t risk … Ga’artior. Operation violet dragonet. On my order, go.”

The swordsman loped off without a backward glance.

“Violet dragonet?” said Aranya.

“I’ve been planning this for far too long.”

Within the hour, a flotilla of three Dragonships was making headway southwest, across to Ha’athior Island. An Amethyst Dragon soared above, chafing at the slow speed of the Dragonships, although they were burning plenty of meriatite on the Prince’s orders. The Prince rode Dragonback, while his father, King Cha’arlla, occupied the royal Dragonship. At the Palace, preparations for a lavish wedding were well underway.

Ta’armion leaned over Aranya’s neck “Have I told you how excited I am?”

“Only fifty-three times,” she said.

The Dragonships were stuffed to the exhaust pipes with Fra’aniorian dignitaries and elders keen to observe that their precious traditions were not flouted in the smallest detail. They sipped expensive wines from fluted crystal glasses and regaled each other with improbable tales of the kidnappings they had attended, or perpetrated. It was all highly dramatic, with much swooning and fanning of faces and strident exclamations of gladness. Aranya wanted to roll her eyes and fall about laughing. Instead, she bore the Prince with what she hoped was suitably regal wingbeats across to Ha’athior.

“And did I say, we’ll be married on the seventh day after the kidnapping? That’s the tradition. It’ll give King Beran plenty of time to arrive.”

“Forty-one times on that one,” said Aranya.

Arriving at Lyriela’s small village, wreathed in the golden suns-beams of late afternoon, the Amethyst Dragon took up her position, idling on the thermals nearby. Soldiers tossed anchors from the Dragonships. Ta’armion’s men rushed down the rope ladders to surround the quiet little village perched on the edge of the cliff.

“Right, Aranya,” said Ta’armion. “Let’s wake up the villagers.”

The Amethyst Dragon said, “Cover your ears, my Prince.”

Grinning, Aranya raised her muzzle to the sky and unleashed a booming challenge. Birds for half a mile about fled in a squawking panic. The dragonets retreated warily, but soon peeked their blue, red and yellow muzzles out of the foliage to goggle at the resplendent Amethyst Dragon. Aranya put down outside Lyriela’s house and discreetly helped the Prince alight from his unaccustomed perch.

Ta’armion, garbed in so much royal finery he was red-faced and sweating rivers, immediately charged up to the front door and flattened it with a violent kick and a fine, ringing yell. Of course, Nak had loosened the hinges beforehand. Nobody would want to humiliate the Prince with a locked and barred door, would they? He barged inside.

There came a scream from within, banging, the clattering of pots, and shouts of, “Desist, thou fiend!” “Take that, and that!” “Unhand the lady, thou scoundrel!”

Aranya disguised her laughter with a fiery snort.

Eventually, Ta’armion was apparently tossed out of a window, breaking one of the shutters on his way to a muddy landing in the vegetable patch. This was also tradition. Brandishing his sword, loudly declaring his love for the lady, he leaped back into the fray–through the same window. When the furore subsided, he emerged dragging a wailing, struggling Lyriela by her chained hands to her not very terrible fate. Nak tottered out of the doorway, dishevelled and shirt torn, begging the wicked Prince to relinquish his precious ‘granddaughter’.

Ta’armion produced a very fine rendition of a piratical laugh–probably playing a part from one of the Fra’aniorian ballads. “Nay, old man,” he declaimed. “I shall despatch my Dragonships to fetch thee to the nuptials.”

Nak begged his friends, his neighbours, even Ta’armion’s men, to come to his aid. But eventually Lyriela was bundled onto a Dragonship and the entire party decamped to Fra’anior, with much backslapping for the Prince and endless rounds of handshakes. There, at the royal palace, he summarily locked Lyriela in a tower room. Guards–a dozen men in formal dress uniform–were posted outside the door. Aranya landed on the flat roof, transformed, and entered Lyriela’s chambers through an unlocked trapdoor.

You were magnificent,
laughed Lyriela, taking Aranya’s hands and gaily spinning her around the room.

Aren’t you meant to be weeping?

Don’t be silly. That’s your job, day after tomorrow.

Aranya asked,
Is that part of the nuptials?

The second day,
Lyriela explained.
Tomorrow is day one, for seclusion and spiritual enlightenment. I spend all day praying for deliverance from my dreadful fate–stop giggling, would you? The second day is your part. You interrupt the nuptial promises to beg the Prince upon his honour to release this innocent young maiden from the said dreadful fate.

Oh, perfectly dreadful,
said Aranya.

You have lines to learn,
said Lyriela, dancing like a dragonet from sheer happiness.
And you can spend all day teaching me about Dragons. I just hope I don’t turn into one too soon.

How am I supposed to cry on demand?

Lyriela laughed her soundless laugh.
Onions, Princess of Immadia. Onions.

* * * *

Two days later, at the appointed hour, Aranya scurried into the throne room, crying, “Stop! I demand that you desist, o wicked abuser of the royal position and powers!”

Dressed in a traditional Fra’aniorian lace gown with its ten-foot train, hurrying was not an easy option. Aranya just prayed she would not trip or worse, step on the hem of the priceless dress, hand-sewn by twenty women over a period of three months, and rip it to pieces. Discreetly, she raised her left hand to her nose and took a whiff of red onion, the likes of which Immadia had never seen. Her eyes began to water at once.

“Alas, my poor cousin Lyriela,” she wailed, sweeping down the aisle obligingly formed by the Prince’s guests at the nuptials. Oniony tears streaked her cheeks. “How this Cloudlands pirate hath mistreated thee–most sorely, I own. Oh most noble of Princes, I beg thee, spare my gentle, innocent cousin this dreadful fate.”

“I shall not,” said Prince Ta’armion, pitching his trained singer’s voice to carry throughout the hall. “I claim this demure maiden–” he jerked Lyriela’s chains, “–for my future wife!”

“Sir, I beg thee,” said Aranya, casting herself at his feet to clutch his boots. “Lyriela is but a poor village girl, lately turned seventeen summers. She knows not the ways of men.”

“Cease thy weeping and wailing, woman, lest I chain thee, too, and give thee to my aged uncle.”

Aranya had to resort to the onion to keep from howling with glee as a hunchbacked old man shuffled out of the crowd of Fra’aniorian nobility. “I shall claim this young beauty for my own, my Prince,” he croaked.

The crowd roared its approval. “To the uncle with her, Prince!”

These Fra’aniorians. To think that this was her heritage; that the young King of Immadia had snaffled Izariela–also a Dragoness–from these very Islands and whisked her away to Immadia. How remarkable the parallels between their lives.

Thinking about her parents led Aranya to fluff her lines, albeit with great force. She threatened to claw the Prince’s eyes out. He took it perfectly in his stride.

Two of his soldiers drew Aranya aside while Lyriela, chained under such a heap of metal she would surely not have been able to run more than a foot in any direction without falling over, was led though her vows by Prince Ta’armion. She wept and trembled and managed to look convincingly distressed by the whole process. Regular whiffs of the onion, concealed beneath a ridiculously flowery table-cloth of a handkerchief, kept Aranya’s tears flowing.

Her mind wandered as Ta’armion and Lyriela stood for the three hours it took for every guest to file past them, kneel, kiss Lyriela’s right hand seven times, and proclaim Fra’anior’s manifold blessings upon the forthcoming union. Could she help the sickly jealousy clenching her stomach as she considered her cousin, marrying the man she loved? Not even the power of ancient soul-fire magic had turned Ardan to her. The winds of fate continued to sweep her from the volcanic mountain peaks of hope to the fiery calderas of despair–and, Islands’ sakes, what could Kylara possibly offer him that Aranya could not? She had offered her very soul! Not good enough, obviously. Was she too Northern? Too skinny for Ardan’s taste? Too haughty? Did Princess-Dragons not merit love in times of war?