Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (20 page)

“Clean first, soak later,” said Zip, starting to
brush her nose. Aranya sneezed.

Ten pairs of willing hands made
easy work of the scrubbing. Before she knew it, one of the children slid down her flank into the pool. She had thought her scales too sharp, but that was only in the opposite direction, up toward her spine. Sliding down seemed to be no problem, given the way the scales overlapped. Zip instantly lost most of her workers to this new game. Aranya adjusted her haunches so that the children could launch themselves properly into the pool.

This was fun. She could almost forget about Yolathion’s hunt this way. How strange it must be to
share four mothers and have seventeen siblings–so different to the way she had grown up.

“Zip,” she
asked, “which one is your–um–birth mother?” There was a brief, startled silence that informed Aranya she had just opened her maw and inserted a Dragon-sized foot in it. “Oh, ralti sheep droppings, sorry …”

“No, don’t worry,” said Zuziana, with a nervous laugh. “The Remoyan way is to share
unreservedly. Only my mothers know, and they would never say. It’s considered bad luck to ask that question.”

Aranya grimaced, showing off her fangs. “I’ll un-ask it, then. And extra sheep droppings on the bad luck.”

“Well, you probably need to ask yourself if you’re willing to become one of two consorts–you know, if matters ever progress with leopard-man.”

“Ah, but he’s Jeradian, not Sylakian,” said Aranya, feeling very clever.

“Same tradition.”

“Oh.”
She did not fancy that idea. “Maybe not–but Zip, how does it work?”

Zip
snickered, “You mean, do they all share a bed? Oh, the adorable innocence of Immadia.”

Aranya was grateful for her scales to hide her furious b
lushing. “What about you, Zuziana?” she asked, tentatively.

“Oh, I’m just your traditional Remoyan girl
–I’m working on refusing the headscarf, expanding my criminal record and keeping a pet Dragon.” Dragon-Aranya had a very un-Dragon-like fit of the giggles at this. Zip scrubbed her flank with a hard-bristled brush. “No mildewed Dragons on my watch. This doesn’t hurt?”

“Actually, harder is nicer.”

“By the Islands,” said the sister Aranya now recognised as Graziala, “if we scrub her much more she’s going to shine like the stars above.”

“She’s vain enough already without your compliments,” Zip advised.

Aranya felt so lazy she did not bother to snap at Zip. “Can my slaves not forget to scrub beneath my armpits?”

“Slaves?” Zip smacked her with a brush, but succeeded only in breaking the handle.

Dragon-Aranya’s laugher rollicked around the bath chamber.

* * * *

Two days later, two young Remoyan noblewomen set out by pony carriage for the King’s winter residence, several leagues outside of Remoy’s main city. Aranya had never seen a pony before. They seemed most useful. Immadia used dog sleds in the winter. Stolid water buffalo ploughed the fields or drew carts. Wealthy Immadians rode tall, flightless birds called terhals around the city. Remoy seemed like another Island-World.

Two of Zuziana’s brothers
, Yuka and Tarka, travelled with them as the traditional escort. Although they were a year apart, they were as alike as blades of grass. Small, dark and even quicker with smiles than they were with their words, they made Aranya wish she had brothers–grown brothers–to tease her and try to charm her friends.

These Remoyans were never short on words.

Right now, Yuka and Tarka were commenting on Zuziana’s failure to beat Aranya at staves.

“I’d have given fifty
gold drals to see you tearing into the Princess of Immadia like that,” said Yuka.

“One hundred for breaking an ironwood staff,” said Tarka, waggling an eyebrow at Aranya. “I’ve a thing for powerful women. Aye. Leopardess, says I.”

“May I remind you she killed a windroc with her daggers?” asked Zip. “I think she’d slice you up for those spicy deer kebabs you enjoy so much, Tarka, and use your bones to pick the bits out of her Dragon teeth.”

Deer? Aranya had thought she was full, but the thought popped into her mind that her Dragon form needed to be fed. When she looked down, her hand was clawed on the seat of the carriage. She uncurled her fingers and tried to think of something other than claws sinking into red, dripping meat.

The pony carriage, drawn by six neat, pretty ponies, seated two comfortably beside the driver, with room for six passengers on the backward- and forward-facing box seats within. The driver and his boy sat above, while a footman occupied a metal footplate at the rear. It was a carriage made for luxury rather than speed. But it was lightly built, so that the ponies had no trouble setting a pace that crossed Remoy’s beautiful landscape with rumbling haste. Aranya would far rather have been flying.

King Lorman’s winter residence was built above a secret set of caves–much like Immadia’s arrangement–which concealed
Remoy’s treasures from the Sylakian conquerors. Lorman said they would find Dragon saddles and scrolls of Dragon lore there. She wondered what a proper Dragon saddle was like.

Aranya was daydreaming about flying home to Immadia when the driver’s hand pounded on the roof of the carriage. “Sylakians on the road
,” he cried.

“Oh, mercy,” said Zip, pushing her head out of the curtained window. “It’s Yolathion … they’re flagging us down
.”

Panic fluttered in her breast. Aranya wailed, “What do we do? What–”

Yuka grabbed her hand. “Quickly. Up with you two.”

Zuziana and Aranya stood. Tarka, the older brother, rooted around behind the seat for a moment before unclipping something. The entire seat cover shifted to reveal a dark space beneath.

“There’s only room for one, Zip. You go. I’ll fly, or something.”

“No, you
,” Zuziana argued. “I can be my sister. Inside, Aranya. Keep quiet.”

Aranya clambered
into the hollow seat and folded her long limbs within. It was a tight squeeze. Zip smiled at her as her brothers pushed the seat cover back into place. Darkness clasped her like a shadow determined to rise up against the object it mirrored.

Shortly, the carriage pulled up. She heard indistinct voices. An injured man? A Dragonship accident? The carriage rocked. She heard, ‘Lay him here.’ Yolathion’s deep voice approached, saying something about returning to the Dragonships. They had a physician there. The seat creaked. The driver called to the ponies and the carriage lurched into motion again.

The low thrumming of the wheels made it hard to make out the conversation. She caught, ‘Graziala,’ and ‘War-Hammer’. Aranya wished she could employ her Dragon hearing. Actually, she had been successful at that once before–not very well, but somehow her unseen Dragon form sharpened her hearing if she concentrated very hard. That also gave her a headache. But for some reason, perhaps the irony of the situation as she lay inches from Yolathion’s backside, or her concern about Zip, made it difficult for her this time. She scowled in the darkness.

Suddenly, Yolathion’s voice came int
o focus. He was right above her!

“–security risk to Sylakia,” she heard. “A Drag
on flew right over Sylakia Town.”

Yuka or Tarka, she could not tell which, said, “So my lost sister knew this enchantress of Immadia? Was she as beautiful as they say?”

“Fairer than the dawn was she, that Fra’aniorian beauty,” said Yolathion, quoting a poem Aranya had once found amongst her mother’s memorabilia.

“Beautiful, then?” said Zip.

“Incomparable Immadia,” he whispered, so softly the others might not hear him, Aranya thought. Her heart shot into her throat faster than a Dragon swooping across Iridith’s waxing immensity. “Aye, Princess Graziala, you are a fair flower, yet Aranya had beauty to bewitch a man’s heart right out of his chest.”

A few words, and her would-be killer could reduce her to a quivering, burning wreck. Her hiding-hole was growing so hot she feared he should soon find his seat rather uncomfortable.

“Tell me, Sylakian,” said one of the brothers, “where is the honour in serving a man like Garthion?”

A tense silence fell on the company within the carriage. Aranya held her breath
. Yuka. Or Tarka. What an idiot!

“Watch your tongue, pup
,” Yolathion exploded. “You presume to lecture on subjects of which you know not the first lesson. I was born a warrior–not in the tradition of Sylakia, but under the Jeradian honour-code, as my father before me. Heed now this lesson, Remoyan, for I shall speak but once, and it shall be as though this conversation never happened. I used to think honour synonymous with duty. But now I see there is duty without honour, and actions once taken, must haunt a man forever. Since my youth my record shows I have served Sylakia without blemish. Yet my duty lies in serving the Butcher of Jeradia, who executed half an Island’s population for a perceived insult. Where is the honour in that, you ask? I used to think I saw honour in battles and accomplishments and medals. But now I see those are the honours of men, which are as dust. The honour of the heart is another matter entirely. The day my hand cast Immadia off the Last Walk, that same woman to whom my father owes his life, I made a choice. I chose duty over honour. I hurled my honour down into the Cloudlands along with her. It was neither right, nor just. I see her face in my dreams, her eyes haunt me …”

The carriage thrummed over the track. Aranya wished she could burst out of hiding and throw her arms about Yolathion. His misery could be abated in a breath.

He added, “And now I must track down this ravaging beast, this Dragon, and rid the Island-World of its menace forever. Can my honour thus be succoured? I fear not. Yet I vow that I will bring this beast to the battle. I will slay it with my own hand. It is my duty.”

Aranya
knew that she could never tell him who she was. What now, Princess of Immadia? What now?

Despair choked her heart.

A
fter dropping off
the Sylakian contingent and their injured comrade at the base they had established in a vast meadow several leagues east of Remoy’s capital, Aranya, Zuziana and her two brothers travelled on to the King’s winter residence. They made a pensive company.

Yuka and Tarka showed them the secret entrance to the caverns, where Aranya and Zuziana wandered through halls filled with the treasures of Remoy, until they came to the Dragon room. Here they found Dragon harnesses and saddles–double and triple leather saddles, Dragon armour
of remarkable workmanship, cargo harnesses, even gigantic lances that could be fixed to a Dragon’s sides, but none of it fit. As Zuziana put it, with her customary delicacy:

“Are you a miniature Dragon, Aranya? Everything here is twice your size.”

The brothers’ faces were a picture. “She’s
small
for a Dragon?”

“A s
ort of immature half-grown baby Dragon,” said Zuziana.

“Sort of–what?” Aranya was c
aught between a laugh, a scowl and trying to find a smart comeback. She failed on all three counts.

“Oh, Aranya
,” Zip exclaimed. “This is so disappointing. I’ve got ideas, new ideas–but we can’t use any of this equipment.”

“How’s about
the lore scrolls?” asked Tarka.

Aranya imagine
d running into a feral Dragon who could fit into one of these harnesses, and decided it wasn’t worth scaring herself ralti-stupid for the second time that day. “Let’s take the scrolls upstairs,” she said. “I don’t really want to sit in a damp cave reading scrolls.”

So they lugged several trunks of scrolls up to the drawing room, where Aranya found another surprise waiting for her. She turned questioningly to Zuziana.

“I had the servants bring out my mother’s painting things,” said Zip. “I thought it might help for you to unwind a little while we’re out here.”

“Zip–you’re the best.”

“I’m glad you worked that out.” Zip tempered her joke with a silly waggle of her tongue.

It was just the medicine she needed after a rotten day, Aranya thought. She did not want to think another moment about Yolathion and his vow to kill her a second time, nor his angry threat to bring the Sylakian hammer down on Remoy–or Immadia, for that matter, if he learned her true identity. Just look at
Zip, settled on a couch beneath a warm ralti-wool throw, devouring scroll after scroll. She thought about painting her mother. She settled on a rajal.

But her hand kept aching to paint a tall, dark Jeradian warrior.

To distract herself, Aranya said, “Zip? Something’s been bothering me about the birth-mother question I fluffed so royally, a few days back.”

“Hmm?” Zip dragged her eyes off the scroll she was devouring. “Royal … fluffiness? What did you say?”

“Zip, surely everybody knows which of your mothers was pregnant, when? It must be perfectly obvious which child belongs to whom.”

Zuziana waggled her eyebrows
separately. “Ah, you’re forgetting just one tiny detail.”

“What?”

“The power of the Human mind.”

“Are Remoyans so–” Aranya coughed to cover her floundering.

“Stupid? Allow me to educate you, Princess fluff-brain. Imagine a society in which everyone is expected not to remember those details. People may know, but they never say. Most, in fact, genuinely do forget because they train themselves to forget. The fact of pregnancy is barely acknowledged.”

“You don’t celebrate it?”

“The practice is to hide it for as long as possible. Remoyan infants are tiny. When it becomes too obvious, all the wives go into seclusion together. Often, even the husbands won’t know which wife was pregnant.” She winked at Aranya. “Joint seclusion by the wives keeps the birth rate down.”

And her friend laughed merrily as Aranya’s jaw dropped.

In the early hours of morning, having forewarned Zuziana, Aranya went hunting. But she did not go where she had promised. Instead, having dined on two small and tasty deer, she winged through the misty night to the Sylakian encampment, and landed on a nearby hill.

A ground mist wreathed the hovering Dragonships, making them resemble great humpbacked animals emerging from the Cloudlands. Aranya’s brows drew into a frown and her fangs gleamed momentarily in a grimace of annoyance. A dozen? No, sixteen Dragonships. Yolathion had lied. Why? Her Dragon eyes surveyed the campsite. Some men slept
on the ground, but it seemed that most slept aboard the Dragonships. Her sharp gaze picked out a Dragonship which flew the symbol of a leaping rajal. She remembered that from Ignathion’s vessel. Was the First War-Hammer here? Or was it a family symbol?

The aft sentry was
asleep!

Through slit amethyst eyes, Dragon-Aranya considered this. Zuziana had just earlier read to her from a scroll that the Dragonish idea of honour was to warn one’s enemy before destroying them, to demonstrate power over a life without taking it. Sh
e had an idea–a bold, dangerous and entirely off-the-Island idea. But it was irresistible.

On stealthy wings, Aranya took to the air behind the hill and circled the Sylakian encampment. Her neck writhed as she spied out the sentries from a safe distance. They were all ground-watching.

The drifting veils of mist shrouded her form as Aranya banked into a smooth, silent glide across the backs of the Dragonships. Imagine not watching the sky? These Sylakians had a thing or two to learn about Dragon Shapeshifters. Fifty feet from Yolathion’s vessel, she slowed, judging her speed carefully. Ten feet shy of the Dragonship, she transformed.

A Human plopped down softly on the hydrogen sack. Ruing her pale Northern skin as it gleamed in the misty half-light, Aranya contro
lled the sound of her breathing. She clambered carefully along the netting, down and beneath the hydrogen sack, and alighted cat-footed on the gantry. She relieved the sleeping sentry of his war hammer and thumped him with calculated force on the head. He slumped a little further. A headache was his just reward for sleeping on duty. She eased the aft access door open. Now, if she knew the layout of a Dragonship, Yolathion’s quarters should be the cabin just aft of the forward navigation room.

Fool. She should turn around and leave right now
.

Instead, she padded down the corridor.

A hand grasped her arm. “Well, my pretty petal?”

Aranya swallowed her terror. She tried for a breathy voice, which was no trouble given the state of her shock, and stammered, “I’m s-supposed t-to surprise the War-Hammer. Which one is h-he?”

“A surprise from the boys?” The Sylakian pulled her against him. “Lost your clothing somewhere, my pretty? You look a keeper. Maybe I’ll just have you for myself.”

She swung the war hammer in a short but brutal arc. The man staggered backward. She whacked him again
; he went down. “Grab a Dragon’s backside, will you?” Aranya laughed to herself as she checked the man. Good, he was unconscious. Maybe being nude after a transformation was not such a bad thing. It definitely distracted the warriors.

Aranya
sneaked along to Yolathion’s cabin and gingerly worked the door handle. Hearing nothing but the sound of a man’s slow breathing, she stole into the room, soundless upon her bare feet.

Third War-Hammer Yolathion lay on his bunk, his left arm trailing nearly to the floor and his long legs hanging off the end. Aranya had barely fit on her Dragonship bunk; Yolathion had no chance unless he folded himself up double, she told herself uncharitably. But he did look very sweet, asleep. His jaw lost its hard edge and became more boyish. The ralti-wool blanket covered him only partway up his stomach
. What she could see of his body in the dim light had all the lean muscularity of a young warrior whose life was war and training for war.

He had lifted her so easily to cast her off the cliff.
Well, her Dragon form could just as easily toss him into a salad, neatly sliced up for a dinner’s side-dish. Aranya cautioned herself, irritably, that curling up next to the War-Hammer was a temptation too far.

Instead, she checked his desk. Good. Spa
re message scrolls, a quill pen and ink. Aranya unfurled a scroll and rapidly drew a Dragon’s clawed foot on it–deliberately untidy, so that he would not link it with her artwork. Beneath it she scrawled, ‘Remember Jeradia.’ There, that was obtuse enough. Her eye fell on another scroll on his desk. Leaning close in the dim light, she scanned it rapidly. Several lines in particular sprang out at her:
The hawks are nearly trained in our new tactics and should be with you within one month. We will also send crossbows and nets.
New tactics? Nets? That did not bode well for a runaway Dragon.

She checked the scroll’s date.
Two weeks ago! Oh, roaring rajals …

Aranya placed her scroll delicately
behind his neck. She hesitated. Why not? Aranya dropped the merest whisper of a kiss on his cheek. She inhaled the scent of him with her Dragon senses come alive. Leopard, oh yes. A smart move? No. She breathed, “Let our battle commence, Third War-Hammer Yolathion of Jeradia. I shall not be merciful again.”

Aranya retreated to the doorway, watching him with bated breath, but Yolathion did not stir.

She retraced her steps past her first victim, but paused next to the furnace-room door. Nak had said something about chewing meriatite. All was quiet. She filched a small sack of the precious rock from beside the furnace. A gentle press upon the aft door opened it. Good, the gantries were clear. She monkey-climbed the webbing until she stood atop the Dragonship’s sack, balanced on the rope netting. Aranya transformed, before deliberately walking half the length of the Dragonship, puncturing the multi-compartmented hydrogen sacks in dozens of places. “Four sets of claws to your little hammer, Yolathion,” she muttered. “And don’t forget the fangs.”

S
he spread her wings and ghosted off the top of the Dragonship as it began to sag toward the ground. Aranya landed atop a hill a respectable distance from the Sylakian encampment, where she hunkered down to watch the fun.

It did not take long. Shouts arose; alarms bugled
and the Sylakians came rushing out of tent and Dragonship to behold the Third War-Hammer’s vessel as it folded up on the ground. Aranya tuned in with her ears. Ah, the sweet sounds of cracking crysglass and hissing hydrogen, followed by Yolathion’s enraged bellowing as he crawled out from beneath the wreckage, brandishing a scroll–most likely hers. The drifting mist obscured her view for a few minutes, so Aranya had to be content with listening to his interrogation of the two unfortunate sentries. She was certain their headaches would not be improved by having their commanding officer screaming in their faces.

But then one warrior said the girl he had seen had a ‘Northern’ look about her. That was when Aranya lost her taste for the entertainment on offer.

* * * *

For three days,
Zip and Aranya devoured scroll upon scroll of Dragon lore. Tarka and Yuka soon declared their boredom and disappeared on day-long hunting trips in the estate grounds.

Many of the records were only of passing interest, but among them were gems of knowledge that
the friends set aside to pore over and discuss. Aranya was particularly fascinated to read about Dragon stomachs, which amused Zip endlessly. Some types of Dragons had up to five stomachs. One was always for food. Blue Dragons kept a stomach for water, which they super-heated behind a system of pressure valves before firing the steam out so fast that it could strip flesh from bone in seconds. Other Dragons, primarily the Red colours, usually had one or more stomachs for fire. Some added a stomach for rock and shot white-hot lava at their enemies. The Green Dragon family added stomachs for noxious gases and poison; the Greys had a stomach for boiling glue, which they combined with poison to form a particularly nasty attack. Other attacks were more obviously magical, such as type of Dragon attack called ‘Shivers’, an invisible form of Dragon fire which turned stone to dust.

Zuziana read a whole chest-full of scrolls on Dragon tactics against Dragonships and crossbow or catapult emplacements. “Count the shots,” she read to Aranya. “A single war crossbow takes thirty to forty seconds to reload. That’s the window of opportunity. But beware multiple Dragonships timing their shots, or holding one crossbow shot in reserve against an attack.”

They read legends and histories about Dragons great and grim; those who had partnered with Humans, those who had always kept aloof, and those who had started the Second Great Dragonwar, rising up against Humanity in an attempt to wipe them off the Islands. They read about Dragons called the Ancient Powers, who were said to cause storms and hail, earthquakes and windstorms. Their breath was believed to give rise to the Cloudlands. The legends drew a clear distinction between the Ancient Powers and the Lesser Dragons, those that Aranya assumed were her peers.

Aranya lifted her eyes from her scroll, having mentally added lightning to the list of possible Dragon attacks. “Zip, it’s all nice theory–you know, spitting f
ire, fireballs, streams of fire and invisible fire and all that, but they don’t say anything about no-fire Dragons.”