Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (30 page)

With a soft susurration of footsteps the monks filed in and sat around the lowest two levels of seats. The Nameless Man directed Nak and Prince Ta’armion to be seated. Lyriela uncovered her instrument, a beautiful harp, and seated herself on the topmost level, on a low pedestal within an
otherwise empty alcove. The Nameless Man pointed to the arena floor.

Swallowing hard, Aranya walked down to the indicated spot. Did they scare seven summers-old children like this? She hated the testing already and it had not even started.

Ja’alion called, “Is the candidate ready?”

“I’m ready.”

Liar, Aranya told herself. All the watching eyes made her nervous. She wished she could have taken a sip of water beforehand.

The Nameless Man’s hands clapped together above his head.

An immense pressure squeezed her temples. Aranya cried out, falling to her knees on the soft sand. The sapphire dragonet screeched in anger and fled. Abruptly, fire erupted from her fingers and scorched the midday heat to light up one of the Dragon statues. It turned red.

“The gift of fire,” Ja’alion intoned.

The Nameless Man bowed slightly to his left hand. Aranya heard Lyriela’s fingers form an intricate glissade of sound that surrounded her with images of the green grasses of an Immadian meadow in the springtime. She saw her mother walking toward her, garbed in a beautiful Fra’aniorian gown, smiling. But as Izariela approached, her face began to change. Cracks appeared in her skin. Orange fires appeared in the cracks, similar to the fires of the caldera between Fra’anior’s Islands, and her skin dried out until it resembled lizard skin. Her face crumbled.

Aranya raised her
hands, splashed with tears. She ran to her mother’s side to heal her. Then Izariela was gone.

“The gift of healing,” said Ja’alion.

She glowered at the Nameless Man. How dare he summon up her mother?

Suddenly, Aranya’s ears buzzed. Her scalp crawled. Every hair on her head lifted as unnatural energies surged through her body. She fought a presence in her mind, screamed at it, ripped it loose and sent it spinning into the air. An arc of lightning burst across the arena. Every monk on that side ducked reflexively as the bolt hurtled into the statue above them, turning it blue.

“The gift of lightning.”

Now the green eyes bore down on her, pits of pitiless evil, eyes that reminded her of a foul swamp which housed a green Dragon. Surging toward her, the Dragon’s mouth opened to display a set of poisonous fangs. Aranya found herself tied
to a log, lying prone. She was helpless. The presence assaulted her mind once more; she denied it, although it was much harder this time. Blood seeped from her nostrils. She spat at the Nameless Man.

A gobbet of green poison splattered against a statue to her left. The statue instantly
became a vivid green, the colour of springtime sword grass.

“The gift of living things.”

Aranya heard a murmuring rise about her ears, but the Nameless Man pinned her with his eyes. He made a peremptory gesture and signed something at Ja’alion.

“The Nameless Man demands you allow him into your mind for the testing.”

“Well, I’m trying, but he’s hurting me.”

“The Nameless Man says he will not be denied.”

Suddenly, Aranya stood upon an isolated spit of rock above the Cloudlands. A horizon-spanning storm whistled toward her, great cumulonimbus clouds reaching to the heavens, dark and pregnant with a load of hail and wind and rain. Out of the storm came a Dragon, a mighty grey Dragon who menaced her as if he were a thunderhead full of snow and ice and wintery winds, and his breath was the storm that slammed into her frail Human body, sending it tumbling away into the clouds.

Her head slammed against the arena floor. The sand felt as hard as rock. Pain exploded behind her eyes; pain that surged out of her in a wave of sound, a titanic thunderclap amplified in the small space of the arena.
A Dragon statue opposite her quivered and turned black. Lightning crackled crazily from column to column above the alcoves. A chill wind whipped across the arena just once, blasting sand against the watchers to Aranya’s right as a grey Dragon statue came alive to its colour, too.

Ja’alion’s voice shook as he called, “And, the gift
s of ice and storm.”

The Nameless Man threw off his black robe and strode down to join her on the sand. He was sweating freely, Aranya saw
, runnels of sweat pouring down the slender column of his muscled torso. He raised his arms to the sky as if beseeching the spirit of the Great Dragon to imbue him with power–and her skin crawled as something entered him or emanated from him, a presence of immense, brooding power. It was neither good nor evil, but it was unstoppable, a gathering of elemental forces into the person of the Nameless Man.

His hands lowered to point at her.

Aranya quailed. This was leagues beyond anything she had endured so far. The force that bore down upon her could not be withstood by Human flesh. Through it she sensed the Nameless Man’s frustration. Never before had a candidate rebuffed him. The humiliation moved him beyond his testing to a vengeful fury, seeking to beat her down, launching the all-out assault of a warrior in the awesome peak of his power. He struck out. An unseen force smashed her across the arena. Before she could move he soared across the space between them and grasped her throat with his hand, crushing the breath out of her.

The world moved. Aranya saw
a storm, a dark, boiling maelstrom of clouds out of which the many-headed Black Dragon burst forth, writhing and thundering amidst blinding bolts of forked lightning. Its voice resounded across space and time:
Why do you not yield, little one?

She could speak to the Dragon of her dreams!
I’m hurting, o mighty Black Dragon–but there’s more, isn’t there?

More gifts?
The great mouths opened in laughter, but it was neither cruel nor mocking. The Black Dragon’s heads examined her from many angles, eyes of many colours stripping her defences bare. Yet though his power was utterly dominant, he did not dominate her. He withheld.
Perceptive, little one. It is not the Nameless Man’s place to usurp the dictates of time. Open your mouth and tell him Fra’anior named him at his birth, Ri’arion. Say, ‘Follow me’. He will understand.

Aranya felt herself fading.
Wait!
She cried,
You’ve always helped me–why? Are you not an Ancient One? Why am I important to you?

No Dragon should seek to grow larger than her wings,
he censured her.

No. I meant, how can I thank you?

Thank me?
She saw an image of herself, many times smaller than a dragonet, flying amidst the titanic black heads.
Little one, I like your spirit. Only promise to heed my call when it comes.

She had made a mistake, Aranya feared. She had offered unconditional service to this ancient being, who had evidently accepted. What his call might unleash in her life … she trembled. But she
mustered her courage.
Agreed, Fra’anior.

Abruptly, she found herself back on the black arena sands, having the life choked out of her. Aranya gasped a word of Dragonish power; a word unheard in the Island-World for hundreds or even thousands of summers. Had she been asked directly afterward, she would not have been able to repeat the word, for it fled her mind the instant it was spoken.

The Nameless Man flew off her as though she had shot him from a war crossbow. She stood, dusted off her Fra’aniorian gown, and strode across the arena sands toward the astonished monk. As she walked, her hands unlaced the back of the gown–she had the laces tied with a slip knot this time, in case she had to transform quickly. He raised his hands like blades, taking a warrior’s stance. His muscles trembled with readiness.

“You are not the Nameless Man,” she said, “for the Great Dragon Fra’anior named you at your birth. Your name is Ri’arion.”

No blow of hers could have struck him harder than those words. The monk’s façade crumbled. His body sagged as though bereft of the power to hold itself upright. She saw fear flash into his eyes, then anger, resignation and finally, wonder.

As though speech came to him with difficulty, he croaked, “I am Ri’arion. I am reborn.”

“HE IS BORN!” shouted the monks. “HE IS BORN!”

Ja’alion’s face lost its colour. He sat abruptly and buried his head in his hands. Aranya wondered if he feared
for his life; she sensed it keenly.

The man called Ri’arion cast himself at her feet. “What is my purpose?”

“Follow me.”

“I am reborn. I am named Ri’arion. I will follow you.”

Strangely, Aranya too felt reborn. Gazing around her, the world struck her as a different place to when she had stepped into the arena to face the Nameless Man. She could not say how or why.

Ri’arion looked to the sky. From every side, the monks watched him as though his merest word could jolt them into an explosion of activity. He said, “Brothers, we have angered the Great Dragon this day. I am no longer fit to be called the Nameless Man. A new Nameless Man must be chosen. I call upon our musician
s to soothe the Dragon. Is there one among us who will give a song-offering?”

“I will sing,” said Prince Ta’armion, rising
eagerly to his feet.

The monk turned to Aranya. “Would you honour the Great Dragon by revealing to us your true form? Many of my brothers have never seen the Dragon-kind, except for dragonets. Will you also summon the dragonets to celebrate with us?”

There was only silence inside the caldera. The twin suns blazed down, pressing their heat and light into the gathering. The day waited in serenity for what would come.

“I have one more gift,” Aranya said
, at last. She stepped out of her gown. “The gift of transformation.”

An Amethyst Dragon stood upon the black sands of Ha’athior Island. Her triumphant bugle thundered up the throat of the volcano, echoing around that immense natural chamber. To her surprise, many thousands of tiny voices responded. The dragonets came winging down from the clear skies in their myriads, a glorious riot of colours, flitting playfully about the watching Humans. Lyriela plucked a chord upon her harp, a harmonic minor of exquisite intricacy, which the dragonets picked up and began to hum
along to before branching out into a dozen harmonic lines. Lyriela’s head bowed over the instrument as though her soul were weeping the music she began to play, for her music moved the world in ways of which Aranya could barely grasp the beginning. Prince Ta’armion, standing beside the harpist as though they had played together a thousand times, raised his voice to the heavens in a lyrical torrent.

Every scale on Aranya’s body thrilled to the sound. And her fire
s danced within her.

R
i’arion stared unblinkingly
out of the Dragonship’s forward crysglass window during their approach to Fra’anior’s main Island. Aranya watched him covertly. Scary man. The monk never seemed to sleep. The sword which he carried strapped crosswise to his back had to be five feet long. He carried eighteen daggers. He practised chopping obsidian blocks to harden the edges of his hands. He said little, but clearly considered himself her slave.

Aranya did not want a slave.

She turned to Prince Ta’armion. “If you will ask Nak for advice, what do you expect? Besides, did I not hear you wonder if I’d been found in a Sylakian brothel?”

Ta’armion flushed a fine colour. “We kidnapped the wrong woman.”

“When my father hears about this–”

“My life won’t be worth a brass dral
,” he moaned. “King Beran, he who withstood the Sylakians for twelve summers, will–”

“Laugh his beard off
and demand an invite to the wedding,” said Aranya. Ta’armion really was too ridiculous, she thought. “What did Nak tell you?”

“I’d rather not repeat it in polite company,” said the Prince. “Aranya, what am I to do about your cousin? I can’t just kidnap her, can I? Look what a fine mess that turned out to be the last time. Ah, she’s a goddess. I’m in love. I’m besotted. Smitten, bitten …”

Aranya rolled her eyes inwardly. “Indeed. Ta’armion, here’s my advice. Firstly, kidnap her heart by wooing her. Sing to her, write her silly poetry, whatever you Fra’aniorians do. In a week or two the Prince might visit the village again to consult with the monks. Of course, the moment you start travelling regularly to Ha’athior, tongues will start wagging. You might invite her to perform in a concert, where she might meet your parents. That’s when you start getting devious. When you know she’s willing to be kidnapped, that’s when you–not some obnoxious, revolting slaver–go out there and kidnap her as though you are handling the most delicate flower in all creation and whisk her off to the royal palace. At every stage, you must treat her like the princess she’s about to become.”

“Oh! Oh, oh …” he sighed. “Do you think she likes me?”

“Ta’armion! I’ll toss you into the caldera myself if you ask that question one more time.”

Lyriela had asked exactly the same question, once Aranya figured out her signs. The wedding gong would sound for them, she had whispered back. Here she was, approaching her seventeenth summer of age, and she was acting like some nasty old matchmaker. She longed to fly away from it all.

A nip on her ear reminded her that Beauty was on her shoulder. She was another problem. How could Aranya carry off any kind of disguise with a dragonet perched upon her shoulder, a jewel of a creature that would not let her alone for a second? A picture popped into her head of Yolathion discovering a dragonet in his bed. She chuckled aloud.

“Plotting my demise?” asked the Prince.

“Ah, I’m working on my wicked-Dragon chuckle. How was that one?”

“Bad,” said Nak, suddenly startling awake from his snooze in the corner. “Aranya, I’ve a bad feeling we need to get back to Sylakia. Fast.”

“What?”

“I had a dream–look, petal, you might not believe this, but after a few years of being with Dragons, Dragon Riders start to pick up some of their magic, like something just absorbs right into–like I could absorb a kiss from thee, o jewel of Immadia’s crown.”

Aranya pecked his cheek.

“Don’t know how you put up with him,” muttered Ta’armion.

“Would you run away again if I did the same to you?”

The Prince made a very un-Princely face at her.

“I have procured thee a present for thy nuptial night, o jewel of Immadia,” Nak said, with so much glee that Aranya stared at him. “What, thou inquirest? Merely a copy of the outfit–barely an outfit–you wore to impress Prince Ta’armion when first he laid eyes upon your wholesome beauty.”

“N-Nak … Nak, I …
Nak!
”

“’Tis my name, o Princess of Perfection. Don’t mangle it so.”

“Oh, go bury your head in a volcano!”

“Aye,” sighed Nak. “It struck me as a fine idea at the time.”

“Nak, after a hundred and however many years, how do you still have no clue about women?”

Her fuming only made him laugh. “Aye, but I do know what turns a man’s head, petal. Would you look
at that sweet Island out there? There’s another kind of beauty. Bet you we’ve received a coded scroll from Nelthion telling us to hurry back. It’s a premonition, just like you Dragons have. Mine always make my teeth ache.”

“You just want to ride Dragonback, back to Sylakia–admit it,” said Aranya. “I’m glad the monks found that old training saddle that
fits me, but it’s only made for one Rider.”

Witho
ut turning, Ri’arion said, “I’ll give up my place to the old man.”

“He would sit on a thorn bush and call himself comfortable,” said Nak, deliberately loud enough for the monk to hear.

“My Rider is Zuziana,” Aranya said, crisply. “But Nak–we must heed your intuition. You could return separately, but if you felt able to make the flight, I would consider it a high privilege to carry you. ”

“Bah, make the flight? The brass-faced effrontery; you rascally pipsqueak of a Dragon.”

But Aranya saw him wipe his eye surreptitiously.

Fra’anior in the light of suns-set was even more
picturesque than when they had departed at dawn, if that were possible. Luminous sunbeams lent the Island and its town a golden serenity. Aranya allowed a heartfelt sigh to escape her lips. How was it that a place visited only once, so briefly, could immediately feel like home? Had she built up Fra’anior so much in her mind over the years … and the reality exceeded her expectations so spectacularly?

But
then her eye picked out the graveyard. The flame trees marking the graves glowed as though they were truly aflame. She remembered who had visited this paradise before her.

There was no message scroll awaiting them at the Palace, but Aranya made her apologies to the King anyway, saying that she would fly at first light. “If I am able,” she said, “I will return–for Immadia and Fra’anior should not be strangers.”
To Prince Ta’armion, she whispered, “I shall await word of a royal wedding in Fra’anior.”

Ri’arion helped her with preparations, packing provisions and checking the saddle straps for defects in the leather, for
the saddle had been stored in a dry cave for many years. They dined with the Fra’aniorian King and Queen, and Prince Ta’armion, before she retired to bed earlier than usual.

Aranya fell asleep worrying about her wing joint.

* * * *

She awoke before dawn
worrying she had not hunted recently as a Dragon. She found Ri’arion already awake, doing exercises in the private courtyard in the midst of the royal apartments. He greeted her with a nod, back to his taciturn self.

Aranya readied herself swiftly. Nak arose early
, too, still the alert Dragon Rider. The King had supplied him with a thick fur-lined robe, gloves, hat and boots for the journey. They walked silently to the private gardens behind the Palace, where Aranya transformed and Ri’arion loaded her up and fixed the saddle in place. Nak mounted carefully. Ri’arion tied the old man’s canes behind Aranya’s spine-spikes and settled himself in the second position, one spike behind Nak.

Prince Ta’armion said, “Farewell. May the sulphurous breath of the Great Dragon speed your flight.”

Nak saluted jauntily. He was so excited!

Aranya gazed
at the dawn. Beyond the eastern horizon lay Sylakia, where her Rider awaited her. Zuziana would be so disappointed to have missed out on Fra’anior, she thought. Her Dragon brows drew down. What was that–a flash of sapphire up there in the clouds? The dragonet?

Taking two steps forward, Aranya launched herself powerfully into the air. The additional weight was unexpected. Zip and Nak were similar in weight, but Ri’arion was a tall, muscular
warrior-monk. She pressed harder than she was used to in order to gain height. Why not raise another rumour, she thought? Her throat swelled as she bugled a greeting to the dawn, making birds across the city take off in panicked flocks.

The dragonet hurtled down to greet Aranya with ecstatic somersaults and little bursts of fire from her nostrils.

“Is your wing a little stiff?” asked Nak.

“Yes.” Aranya grinned back at him. “How
does it feel, Nak?”

“Blasted wind’s making my eyes tear up,” he said. “Aye, I lie. I thought I’d never fly again. This is a gift, petal. Just don’t scare our Ri’arion too much, alright?”

Seen over Nak’s shoulder, the monk’s smile was a thin grimace. “I’m fine.”

He was not. Aranya heard his heart
thumping away double-time. A naughty smile curled her lips back from her fangs. So the mighty Nameless Man had a weakness–why was she so pleased about that? She stretched out her neck and beat her wings in slow, deep strokes, accelerating as she took them up to meet the dawn. She looked back at the yawning caldera between Fra’anior’s Islands, already diminishing as they gained height, and told herself that a Dragon would fly the skies of these beautiful Islands once more–if only to assist in a little kidnapping, should the need arise. Even without that, Lyriela did not deserve to go through life without knowing her family. Maybe she’d like to see Immadia.

Aranya wondered
what rumours had reached Immadia. How soon would it be before the Island-World knew, as all of the Sylakian Hammers in Yolathion’s fleet knew, that the Dragon Shapeshifter was none other than the lost Princess of Immadia? What would the Supreme Commander’s response be? She pictured Dragonships bearing the sign of the screaming windroc spreading across Iridith’s broad face, with a violent shudder. Her little brothers … the baby, King Beran and Queen Silha … hammers rising and falling in a crushing rhythm, and blood, so much blood …

“Aranya?” said Nak. “What’s the matter
, my Dragon-heart?”

He was so perceptive. Nak must know Dragons extremely well for that note of warning and concern to shade his voice at once, Aranya realised.

“An ill feeling,” she replied.

“A Dragon must
hasten but husband her strength for the crossing,” he said, gently. “When last did you hunt?”

“I a
m hungry.”

“Aye. So, I will act as your Rider. I can feel by the cadence of your wing beats, Aranya, and by the sound
s of your belly, that you need to hunt. We must teach Zuziana these things. Xinidia Island is but ten leagues ahead. There we should hunt and rest a little, before undertaking the longer stretch to Erigar Island. That’s a Sylakian outpost, a place to be wary.”

“Nak, how many summers did you ride Shimmerith?”

The old man was silent for a very long time before he replied, “One hundred and forty-one summers, Aranya.”

“Dragon Riders live that long?”

“Aye. Longer, if their Dragon lives.”

Aranya swallowed a huge lump in her throat.
“Nak, would you be willing to tell me about Shimmerith? What was she like? Her personality? How did she fight? And speak to you? What you shared … Nak, you’ve so much experience. I’ve been a Dragon for just a few weeks. I need what’s inside your head. Can you just squeeze all of that wisdom into a prekki-fruit and give it to me to eat?”

“Aye,” said Nak. “Let me be alone with my thoughts until Xinidia Island, I beg you. After that, I will talk until the sheep stand up to sing to the moons.”

Aranya wanted to laugh, but could not–not when he sounded so melancholy. Instead, she summoned the dragonet to her and bade her curl up in her Rider’s lap. The little creature already showed signs of tiring.

The Great Dragon’s breath, unseasonably, came from the northwest, speeding their passage to Xinidia
, a hilly, boot-shaped Island not a quarter-league above the Cloudlands. There they rested and Aranya hunted, sharing a large wild deer with the dragonet, who ate delicately, but with a surprising appetite for such a tiny creature. After that she launched off a steep hillside, to Nak’s whoop of delight, bearing more southerly toward Erigar. True to his word, Nak talked non-stop all the way from Xinidia to Erigar, sharing with her as many stories and anecdotes and snippets of wisdom as she asked for, until her head felt so stuffed with wisdom that it might start leaking out of her ears. She ignored the times he called her Shimmerith; as his mind wandered from topic, Aranya would gently prompt him back on course.

The wind continued to assist, allowing her to rest from
time to time on the wing, but twilight was already well advanced before she spotted Erigar Island’s forested brow in the distance. She took them in for a careful approach and a concealed landing alongside a tall, coniferous forest.

After a dreamless sleep, Aranya woke before dawn and hunted a small hare in a nearby field for the dragonet, whose eyes whirled with delight at the offering. Aranya finished off the remains in a single bite.

That was when her ears caught a clink of metal on stone.