Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (28 page)

Despite the early
hour, the day was already muggy and the heat like a Dragon’s breath upon her cheek. Ta’armion passed Aranya a folding fan, beautifully decorated with tiny images of flying Dragons. “The volcano makes Fra’anior hotter than most Islands the year round,” he informed her.

“May I watch from the forward gantry?”

“What’s wrong with inside the navigation cabin?” he suggested, hopefully.

“No breeze.”

Aranya compared Ta’armion uncharitably to Yolathion in her mind. The difference between them might only be a couple of summers–and eight inches of height or so–but in maturity the gap was wider than the Islands spanned east to west. Yolathion was a warrior; a man of action. But she did approve of one thing, which was the Prince’s insistence on getting to know his bride-to-be, even if by that he meant, ‘manacled at my table’. She wondered …

“Ta’armion,” she said, watching preparations being made for unmooring the Dragonship, “have you ever considered
not
kidnapping your bride?”

He offered a wry smile. “That would flout
every tradition of our Islands, Princess Aranya. But you’re right. What if the girl turned out to be a Dragon, for example?” His hands closed white-knuckled on the railing, she noticed, as the Dragonship shifted restlessly with the breeze. “My father is headstrong. I am not the man he is.”

She glanced at Ta’armion, taken aback by his honesty. “I enjoyed your poetry last evening at dinner.”

He bowed at the compliment.

Ta’armion, like her, gazed about as the city revealed itself from their rising perch ahead of the royal Dragonship. Fra’anior was breathtaking. The city itself was construc
ted of gleaming onyx, malachite and blood-red garnet. Roof edges and garden paths and roads were trimmed in a white stone she did not recognise, perhaps quartz, she thought. Every last spare inch was taken up with gardens. The profusion of flowers, evocative on the breeze, almost overwhelmed the eye. Formal gardens crowned the flat rooftops, while immense, spreading broad-leafed trees provided shade. Birds twittered and cooed in the dense tropical foliage, bright of feather and beak, more varieties and species than she had ever seen in one place before. The tall, elegant Fra’aniorians strolled along beneath their colourful umbrellas, the women trailing five or more feet of train from their exquisite dresses, while the men wore sweeping cloaks and stylishly fitted clothes beneath. Refined, Aranya thought. No wonder her mother had always seemed so graceful.

“Ha’athior Island lies diagonally across the caldera to the southwest,” said Prince Ta’armion, pointing. “Alongside Ha’athior, you will see a new Island rising from the Cloudlands. A new volcano.”

“Is it always this hot?”

“The breath of the Great Dragon,” said the Prince.

“I’m grateful for this cool Fra’aniorian dress.”

“You look resplendent,” Ta’armion noted. Aranya murmured her thanks. “A true lady of Ha’athior, for you have–
as I believe you will see–much of the look of that Island about you.”

She twirled her umbrella thoughtfully in her fingers. “Ta’armion, is that the graveyard? It seems busy.”

“We bury our people each beneath a flame-tree, which symbolises a Dragon’s fire. Those, I believe, are the victims of Garthion’s visit here.” Aranya looked sharply at him. “You’ll see that the entire last row, where the people are standing, is freshly planted.”

Aranya gazed out over the graveyard, a vibrant bloom of orange and yellow flowers
upon its carefully pruned trees. A low, ravenous hiss of fire accompanied her exclamation, “That’s over forty people!”

“The hand of the conqueror failed to discriminate.” Ta’armion sighed bitterly
, his sensitive hands twisting on the guardrail as though he sought to bend the metal with his grief and fury. “He did not find what he sought. When he tired of chasing dragonets, Garthion hunted Islanders instead. You understand why I tell you this hard truth, as Fra’anior to Immadia. Those allied by marriage must be honest with each other.”

Quietly, Aranya told him about her time in the Tower of Sylakia. Ta’armion questioned her at some length about her and Zuziana’s campaign as Dragon and Rider, and told her
that the Sylakian Dragonships and forces had been withdrawn from Fra’anior to go and fight the Dragon–for the first time in years, only the Sylakian representative remained with a skeleton force. By his words and manner, Aranya deduced that there was little love for Sylakia around these Islands. His horror at Zuziana’s suffering was real; he wept at that point in her tale.

To her surprise,
as finished telling her story, the royal soldiers manning the Dragonship began to sing an ancient lay about a Dragon called Grandion and his Island love, Hua’liama. Their voices wreathed the Dragonship in haunting harmonies. She heard birds, somewhere in the trees not far below, pick up the tune and begin to trill it back to the soldiers, adding their own complexities and harmonies to the song rising about her. Aranya’s mouth hung open; for the first time, a candid grin lit Ta’armion’s features.

“If you have never been to your home,
Princess,” he said, “how can you know its wonders?”

He joined
in the chorus; Aranya stood spellbound. Ta’armion had a superb tenor–clearly well trained, but even so his voice was finer than any other aboard the vessel–and a range that climbed and climbed without losing an iota of its quality. He encouraged Aranya to join in the singing, which she did, although she found it intimidating to sing beside such a fine musician.

Halfway through the fourteen verses of the lay, Aranya realised that the Dragon Grandion was a Shapeshifter.

Ha’athior was four hours away by Dragonship, across the great caldera that smoked and smouldered constantly. Her Dragon hearts thrilled at the sight. Glowing rivers of lava crisscrossed the floor, far below, from which steam and gases rose in shifting veils, drifting and changing constantly. Pumice and lava blasted out of hidden volcanoes. The Islands stood on the rim, as if they comprised the black, roughly serrated turrets of a mighty fortress–many more than the seven inhabited Islands Aranya knew of. The rim was broken in several places, allowing the volcanic gases to mix with the Cloudlands clouds, creating a toxic brew.

“I was taught there are only seven inhabited Islands,” Aranya said.

The Prince chuckled. “A handy subterfuge, Princess. I would estimate twenty-three. There might be a few isolated warrior monasteries even we don’t know about. The monasteries are filled with men who follow the Path of the Dragon Warrior–the armed and unarmed martial arts for which Fra’anior is famed.”

“I’m surprised the Sylakians ever conquered these Islands.”

Again with refreshing honesty and a sparkle to his vivid blue eyes, Prince Ta’armion replied, “We’d like to think that their hold is tenuous at best. Or that they are caretakers of what was never, and will never, be theirs. They’re after the meriatite, of course. Sylakian prisoners are put to work in the lower mines here. Mostly they last a few months, maybe even a summer or two, before the gases kill them.”

Aranya ground her teeth audibly.

“Aye, I agree.” The Prince pointed. “Down there, do you see the white patch? Through the clouds–oh, it’s gone, now.”

“I saw,” she said. “What was it, Ta’armion?”

“It’s meant to be a Dragon gravesite, Aranya.” She gasped in amazement. “Truly so, Immadia. With a telescope, you can see the bones. Mighty ribcages the size of Dragonships.”

“Surely you jest–”

“Not so, Princess.” But her companion frowned. “Look to Ha’athior’s cone. Dragonets. Swarms of them.”

As the Dragonship pressed on, turbines humming, the dots resolved into swarms of tiny creatures
in every imaginable, gleaming colour, moving in ways birds never moved, swirling in the thermals around Ha’athior’s active volcanic cone. Aranya’s Dragon senses prickled.

“Ta’armion, are dragonets dangerous?”

“Not usually.” He frowned. “Although, they seem agitated today. I’ve never seen quite so many out at once.”

Aranya
considered at the swirling dragonets, coming closer and closer to the Dragonship. She made a decision. “Ta’armion, I’m not going crazy, alright–just trust me. Get me out of this dress, fast. I’m sensing danger.”

“
Because you don’t want to ruin a fine dress?”

“
Unlace it, now!” Aranya snarled, with more than a hint of fire crackling in her voice. The Prince leaped to obey.

The dragonets winged toward the Dragonship in a great swarm, all different colours–red, gr
een, orange, blue, black, white and yellow–perfect miniature dragons, she saw now, with claws and teeth and wings similar to her own. Ta’armion’s fingers worked with commendable speed. No silly panic this time. Aranya felt the bodice loosen. She shrugged out of the dress and pushed it down to her ankles. There would be no time to loosen the under-dress or the shift beneath that. But they were not worth the fortune the dress must command. She kicked off her slippers.

Aranya thumped Ta’armion on the shoulder. “Get inside. Your men, too.”

The dragonets screamed in chorus as they winged rapidly toward the Dragonship. They resembled a swarm of bats, only this swarm was a hundred times deadlier. She felt their rage, their hatred, the unthinking lust for revenge on the object filling their sky. Garthion. This was his work. Aranya shivered in her bones. He had hunted the dragonets; now the dragonets hunted people.

S
he meant to stake her life on an instinctive guess.

Ta’armion and his men watched from inside the crysglass of the navigation cabin. The Prince tapped on the window, gesturing for her to come inside to safety.

Instead, Aranya clambered over the guardrail. Now the men began to shout and bang the glass in panic. Dragonets whirred toward the Dragonship, baring their fangs, readying their talons. It was clear the hydrogen sack was about to be shredded by a thousand needle-sharp claws of these miniature Dragons. If she could harness dragonets to attack the Sylakians, that would be a trick.

Aranya leaped into space. She counted in her head:
one, two, Dragon!

Dragonets dive-bombed her in their hundreds. Perhaps they confused her with the Dragonship, she did not know. Aranya squeezed her eyes shut and blasted them with a roar. She roared again, bat
tering dragonets with her wings, driving them away from the Dragonship. Some responded by flaring their wings or breathing little gasps of fire at her, but most scattered with high-pitched cries of alarm.

Aranya circled the Dragonship, partly to test her damaged wing and partly to check that none of the dragonets had continued the attack.
Her wing did not hurt too badly. There was a definite tenderness in the joint, however. Such speed on the healing …. a large dragonet approached her–a red male. He seemed to be the biggest of them all at perhaps four feet in length and five feet in wingspan. His ruby eyes whirled gently as he examined her from different angles. Aranya had an impression of confusion, surprise and perhaps awe. The dragonet opened his mouth, complete with tiny fangs, and chirped:

Ancient one? Angry?

At least, that was what Aranya understood. Somehow she knew it was speaking a different language, one Human-Aranya did not speak, but Dragon-Aranya understood as easily as her stomach understood how to digest meat. That reminded her, she was hungry. Her Dragon form had not eaten while they flew on the Dragonship to Fra’anior–and, as Nak kept reminding her, she was a young, growing Dragon.

No, it’s just th
at you attacked our Dragonship.
Her Human mind thought, ‘Huh? That’s a language I’ve never spoken aloud before.’

Dragonship kill dragonet-kind
.

Um, Humans have different tr
ibes. The different tribes–

Tribes?
The dragonet made a neat circle around her muzzle as it said this, showing off.
Pretty scales, see?

Colours,
said Aranya, marvelling at how Dragonish was almost sung rather than spoken. All those different tonal levels, shades and nuances. Trying to keep track of the buzzing little dragonet was also a good way to put a knot in her neck.
Different colours and signs. Windroc sign is bad Humans. Fra’anior Dragon sign is good–purple Humans.

Now Aranya was getting confused. Her Dragon mind had her talking very simply to the dragonet, but her logical mind kept wanting to explain the detail.

Purple bad?

Purple good. Purple cloth good. H
umans live with dragonets good.

The dra
gonet appeared to accept this.
Pretty purple Dragon good? Mommy Dragon?

Uh …
Aranya was not ready to be mother to anything yet, least of all swarms of dragonets. But it seemed a good analogy.
Mommy Dragon is dragonet-friend. Tell other dragonets purple Humans good?

Purple good.

The red dragonet shot off to share the news with his fellows. Within seconds, there were dragonets whizzing in all directions in an explosion of colours and chatter, clearly communicating with each other in a state of high excitement. Aranya blinked. They were not as unintelligent as the Fra’aniorians assumed.