Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (23 page)

Dully, she pushed through the pain.
Her shoulder seemed alright, but only because that pain was drowned out by the agony of her throat. She must not let her Rider down. She must carry her to safety. Aranya flexed her muscles and flew by instinct alone, away from the Sylakians, weaving through the arrows and catapult fire with a dancer’s suppleness, until they left the noise and the flames far, far behind them. The smoke was still visible from leagues away.

“Aranya? Petal?” Zuziana sounded as though she were on the verge of tears.

Dragon-Aranya twisted her neck until she and Zip were eye to eye. She tried to open and close her mouth to show that she could not speak. She nodded; tried a wink or two.

Finally, Zip caught on. “You can’t speak? Why? Your throat?”

She nodded.

“The flame–you breathed flame, Aranya
. But you weren’t ready, were you?” Another nod. “Is it bad?” Aranya wondered how a Dragon shrugged their shoulders. She bounced Zip up and down. “Not too bad, you think? Alright, Aranya. I understand. We need a quiet spot; get some water down that throat of yours. I’ll take a look. But–what am I going to do? Talk to myself for a while? Don’t I do that enough already?”

Aranya wanted to laugh, but
it hurt. She settled for giving Zip a big, toothy Dragon grin.

W
hen Zuziana looked
down her friend’s throat, she hummed a little tune and said, “Try not to close your mouth, Aranya. Turn to the light. You don’t smell of sulphur or rancid meat or anything I might imagine on a Dragon’s breath. But you do have a bone stuck right here.”

She withdrew and tossed the sheep bone into a corner of the cave. Aranya tried not to notice the sigh of relief that accompanied her exit from the Dragon’s jaws.

They had stopped on a lonely, windswept cliff on the northern tip of Tyrodia. A perfect hiding place. A sandy, comfortable cave, impassable cliffs above and below, and a series of ledges teeming with small animal life and monkeys.

“It’s blistered. I mean, it’s one big blister down there, as far as I can see. I’m surprised you can even swallow water. Are you hungry?”

Aranya nodded. All that flying, two battles and then lying low for three days in a cave had combined to make her ravenous. Her stomach chose that moment to growl so loudly it echoed down the tunnels behind them.

“I’ll take that as an affirmative. I need to hunt. No, don’t you growl at me and block the doorway. I’ll be careful. Aranya!” Zip giggled as Aranya pushed her back from the cave entrance with her muzzle. “Don’t you bully me, you stubborn lump of Dragon flesh
. Yes, I know there are Dragonships crawling all over this Island like rats on a fresh carcass. Yes, if there’s one thing I can assure you, it is that Remoyan Princesses know how to hunt and we can sneak, too. We’re very … sneaky.”

W
ith that, she darted beneath Aranya’s neck.

Aranya lifted her paw
and flattened her friend–claws carefully held apart, lest she hurt Zip.

“Ouch! Get off me, you scaly ralti sheep, or I swear I’ll skin that pretty hide and hang it up for a hunting trophy!” When she relented, Zip said,
dusting off her armour with cheerful slaps, “You know, petal, we need to come up with a Dragon name for you. I can’t call forty feet of Amethyst Dragon–well, ‘petal’, can I? Aranya is your Human name. How do you fancy the ring of, ‘Knobbly-Kneed Goat Muncher’? Or something grander, like ‘Her Amethyst Majesty the Mighty Fireball Tosser’?”

This drew a laugh, which hurt.

“Look, the rest of you is getting better but I’m worried about your throat and I’m tired of talking to myself. Understood? I will be super, super-careful.”

Aranya raised her paw and gave her a woebegone look.

Zuziana unexpectedly flung her arms around Aranya’s neck. “You’re silly. You’re not having one of those Dragon foresights–no? Right. You breathed fire. Clever thing, you just wanted to show off by destroying six Dragonships at once. Well, if we can’t get you healed up, we need to go ask Nak. He’ll say, ‘Give us a peck on the cheek, thou lily of the pond.’ Oyda will say, ‘Concentrate, Nak.’ ‘Ah, but I dreamed of ten Immadian Princesses in my bed last night.’” She aped the little old man tottering about on his canes.

She had to let her friend go. It was that or keep laughing, which brought fresh
misery because of her throat. Who ever thought of a Dragon being injured producing her natural element, fire?

Zip should find something easily.

Aranya moved to the back of the cave, where a natural trickle had pooled enough to allow her to drink easily. The water was fresh and tangy with minerals, which her Dragon form appreciated. She saw a glint at the bottom of the pool. It winked at her. Curious, Aranya dipped her paw in up to the knee-joint and stirred the sediment. Gold coins. Lots of them, old gold drals, with the stamp of the Sylakian windroc on them. Beautiful, thick metal of high quality, she thought. This must have been a Dragon’s hoard. Her paw curled possessively over the drals. Stillness settled upon the cave as she regarded the hoard. It was so pretty. So golden. So–hers.

“Dinner time
.”

She whirled with fire buzzing in her belly and a strange roaring sound filling her ears. Aranya stared at the intruder, outlined at the cave entrance by the setting suns’ fiery exit from the day.
Her lips peeled back from her fangs. How dare that little creature come near her treasure?

“Aranya? Why–why are you glaring at me like that?”

She tore herself away from the pool and its treacherous allure with a sound that was half-gasp and half-sob. She backed away as far as she could, shuddering. How much time had passed? The shadows had grown deep. The cold jealousy that consumed; the greedy stirring of a heart ready to rend and destroy even those most precious to her to protect that cold, unfeeling metal … she flung herself to the ground and hid her head beneath her wing.

Zuziana marched over to the pool and looked in. She stood very still for a moment before her hand suddenly leaped to her mouth. “Oh, Aranya.”

She knew. Shame brought tears–thick Dragon tears–to her eyes. Suddenly Zip was there, crawling beneath her wing, kneeling beside her head. Her tiny fingers stroked Aranya’s muzzle, soothing. After a time of simply sitting with her and saying nothing, Zip’s hand rose to cup the teardrop brimming in the corner of her eye.

“Now this is a jewel more
precious than anything in the Island-World,” she said, gazing at the fluid yet crystalline substance. “The tears of a beautiful heart.”

She poked
the teardrop with her finger before tasting it with her tongue, much as a cat laps at milk. Her eyes widened. “Oh–wow. I see colours, Aranya, a constellation of colours surrounding me and … life, I imagine life, bursting … and happiness. Is this some kind of Dragon magic? Nak didn’t say anything about Dragon tears, did he? No, I didn’t think so.”

Zip rolled up her trouser leg and experimentally smeared
a small portion of the Dragon tears on the top couple of inches of her burn, which was healing well. The viscous liquid soaked in easily and left a pearlescent sheen on her skin. She raised an eyebrow at Aranya, who waggled her brow-ridges in approval. Zip treated the rest of her burn, but found half a handful still remained.

“Shall we try this on your blisters?”

Aranya opened her mouth and let Zip treat what she could reach. Her friend paused to collect the second teardrop from Aranya’s right eye. It was smaller than the first. When she was done tickling the back of Aranya’s throat, Zip licked the remaining residue off her hand.

“Yum. Aranya, I’m sure it can’t be bad for you. Oh … sensation
. That’s amazing!”

She was definitely uncertain about the wisdom of drinking Dragon tears. But Zip did not appear to be poisoned, or unhappy–rather, she was bouncing about as though she had eaten far too many honey cakes. Her vibrant blue eyes spark
led and danced as she poked fun at her friend. She was making so much noise that when Aranya heard a footstep outside the cavern, it was already too late.

A Sylakian warrior gaped at the scene. Aranya lunged at him. Bleating like a crazed sheep, the man raced up along the ledge with a Dragon hot on his trail. There was a Dragonship several hundred feet away, she saw, drifting
along on the breeze. But the aft war crossbow spat a quarrel at her. Aranya ducked; stone splintered against her flank. Reaching out, she swiped the man off the mountainside and sprang for the Dragonship.

Her ears warned her with a fraction of a second to spare. A second Dragonship, higher in the sky and closer to the cliff–deliberately hidden, she realised–had fired upon her. The shards of metal shot by the catapult stitched holes in her left wing as if by magic. Startled, Aranya hurtled directly into the side of the first Dragonship. Her neck snagged in t
he netting. Bellowing, tearing and clawing, Aranya ripped herself free. The archers on the gantry beneath her were shooting at point-blank range, but her Dragon hide was tougher than most arrows could penetrate. She lashed out with her tail, cracking the gantry and smashing a hole in the side of the Dragonship. Men tumbled into the sky. Deliberately, she reached out with her forepaws and ripped the hydrogen sack open.

The Dragonship above held its fire as she lashed the gantry again, knocking more warriors loose and bruising her tail. Aranya dropped free and wheeled beneath the Dragonship, counting the seconds before
that war crossbow could be reloaded. She had a better idea. Coming up beneath the crossbow platform, Aranya cleared it with a cunning swipe of her claws. Then she clambered up the side of the Dragonship and ripped another part of the sack open.

Segmented into six or more sacks, a Dragonship’s hydrogen load could survive a certain amount of damage. But not a measured attack by an intelligent Dragon. The vessel began to sink. Aranya timed her leap free, waiting until she was out of range of the Dragonship still lurking above. She swung wide in the air, checking their cave. She must fetch Zip.
At that instant, the Sylakian Hammers would see and cover the cave entrance with their deadly crossbows.

Oh no. Worse–there were more soldiers working their way along the ledge
.

Aranya made a split-second decision. She darted back toward the cave, furling her wings for a fast landing. She smacked into the rocks beside the entrance and scrambled inside. She groaned as the deep quarrel-wound on her shoulder opened again at the impact.

Zuziana was throwing their equipment into bags at a furious rate.

“Quick,” Aranya rasped. “Soldiers. Dragonship.”

Zuziana threw the bags on top of Aranya and buckled them fast. She tossed the saddle upward. An unladylike snarl followed as she missed the right position between the spines. Zip scrambled up again to put it right. She dropped with the leather strap in her hand, rapidly drew it tight beneath Aranya’s chest and fastened it through the buckle. The pitiful handful of left-over arrows received an unhappy sniff of discontent. After that, nothing of value was left in the cave, apart from the Dragon hoard. Aranya would have preferred to forget all about that. Even now she felt a pang of loss. And the pangs of hunger, which simply had to wait.

S
houts sounded outside the cave.

Zip climbed adroitly aboard her Dragon. “Go, Aranya. Go fast and swerve once you’re out.”

Taking a deep breath and bunching her muscles, Aranya launched herself out of the cave. She heard a thump and a low cry. By then she was airborne, rolling, watching the path of the inevitable shots descending and arcing her body to avoid them. She laughed. They had used up all their shots.

That was when she realised Zip was not on her back.

Her Rider staggered out of the cave, bleeding freely from a cut near her hairline. The Sylakian Hammers surged forward with cries of, “Catch her!”

Aranya cut back through the sky, crying, “Run, Zip! Run!”

It was terrifying not to be able to help. Aranya was too far away, the soldiers closing in, Zip looking this way and that, clearly dazed, before she broke into a stumbling run along the ledge, thankfully in the right direction. Aranya had to pull up sharply as another catapult shot hissed through the air toward her. Two catapults? Had they reloaded so quickly? She lost height. The Dragonship’s archers were trying to pick Zuziana off as she came into range. The Princess of Remoy was agile, weaving and bounding over rocks and bushes even at a full sprint. She began to pull away from the pursuing soldiers. But now another group of armoured Sylakian warriors appeared ahead of her, brandishing their hammers. She skidded on the ledge. Before anyone could react, she changed direction.

Screaming, “
Aaaraaanyaaaa!
” Zip threw herself off the cliff.

Aranya surged through the air with her utmost power. Zuziana fell ahead of her–gracefully, as though she were diving from a height into water–but the cliff was not vertical in this place. She fell toward the rocks. Aranya stretched out her neck as though that could make her fly faster. She seared through the cool twilight, faster than the shots that sought to track her. She could not reach her friend with her claws. The cliff was too close, the speed too much. Intuitively, she reached out with her wingtip, a dozen feet above the rocks
, to cushion Zip’s fall at the expense of a tearing pain in her wing joint.

Zuziana struck the rocks, but softly because of the
elastic wing membrane beneath her. She bounced toward Aranya. The Dragon wobbled in the air, juggling the Remoyan on the surface of her wing as she swung away from the cliff. She slowed, trying not to lose Zip. Her Rider had a one-handed grip on the leading edge of her wing. Aranya’s throat throbbed. All that shouting and bellowing had been unwise. A speculative shot zipped by nearby, but they were passing out of range.

After flying a little ways, Aranya relaxed into a glide. Her head snaked back to look at Zip, who offered her a
wan smile, even though her face was a mask of blood. She quipped, “Thanks for the rescue, o Mighty Bewinged Princess of the Air.” But she grasped her side with her hand. “Not sure about the ribs, though. Definitely a nice bruise.”

“You’re brave,” Aranya said, keeping to a whisper. Appallingly brave. “Want to get in
to the saddle?”

Zip eyed the Dragonship floating up near the edge of Tyrodia
Island. She seemed quite happy to remain exactly where she was. “They’ll be after us soon enough. Head out a point north of west, Aranya. There’s a tiny Island called Melkadia out there, a few leagues below Germodia. Hopefully they won’t know much about runaway Princesses.”