Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (36 page)

“But as they rested and nested upon their towers of rock, those Dragon ancestors became restless and lazy. So they decided to make for themselves a race of slaves–”

“Humans?” interrupted Zip. “We were slaves?”

“Silence, slave,” said Aranya. “I quite like the idea–and I’m collecting, as you can see.”

“I don’t like this story anymore,” sulked the Princess of Remoy.

“Anyway,” said Ri’arion, “the
Dragons created the Human race and breathed life into their nostrils. They made many wonders besides, wonders now lost to the Island-World. They populated the Islands with creatures and plants, which the Dragons alone boasted skills to design. Their slaves laboured and sweated and built for the Dragons great palaces of stone and lakes in which to bathe, and caves to hold their clutches of Dragon eggs. They hunted for the Dragons and served them in every way. Thus was the world, for many thousands of summers.”

“But the Dragon-kind grew lazy and feckless
, pandering more and more to their baser desires, while their Human slaves became numerous and cunning. They chafed under the claw of the ruler.”

“Story’s getting better,” said Zip.

“What happened then?” asked Aranya.

“The legends differ,” said Ri’arion, shrugging apologetically. “
Some say that Humans rose up against the Ancient Dragons and cast them down in the First Great Dragonwar. The Dragons destroyed many Islands in retaliation, casting them beneath the Cloudlands and creating the Rift. Other legends hold that the Dragons fought each other first and slaughtered a great number of the Dragonish race. Weakened, they could no longer stand against the power of their former slaves. I have heard tales of Dragon gravesites on some Islands, which hold the bones of thousands of Dragons.”

“Like near Ha’athior? Prince Ta’armion showed me.”

“That is one such place,” said the monk.

“I forgot to take a look on the way back.”

“Creepy,” said Zip, with an exaggerated shiver. “Besides, you’re still not forgiven for moseying on over to Fra’anior without me and picking up a random monk.”

“Fine,” said Aranya. “If I want to poke around any gravesites, I’ll take you, Zip.”

“Yuck.”

The Dragon chuckled deep in her belly. “But Ri’arion, what
about the Shapeshifters? Where did they come from?”

“Some say from evil experiments by
the father of all Red Dragons, Dramagon, who mixed Humans and Dragons into new eggs,” said the monk. “Others say that the world-spanning fires of that first explosion released a great magic into the world, a magic which has been shaping and changing us ever since. They say it changed even the Dragons, making them Lesser Dragons, and changed some Humans into Shapeshifters. Undeniably, the Shapeshifters are a mystery–the third great race of our Island-World. Perhaps they have always been among us, since the beginning.”

“Perhaps Humans were trying to become Dragons, to subvert the Dragonish race?” Zip suggested.

Aranya put on her most sepulchral voice. “Perhaps one’s listening, even now.”

They all laughed. But inside, Aranya cringed. She did not want to be the result of evil experiments.
Later, in the Second Great Dragonwar, Humans had tried to drive the Dragons out completely. If the Sylakians had murdered her mother, who or what else had they destroyed in their quest to rid the world of all Dragons? But perhaps Dragons had been dying. Surely she wasn’t the last?

Zuziana and Ri’arion chatted the day away, swapping stories. Aranya flew on and on, long after her Riders fell asleep, until the night grew bearded with stars and only the Blue moon hung aloft, bending its baneful eye upon the Cloudlands,
painting the Island-World the cold colour of an Immadian winter sky. Her shoulders and joints ached; her muscles burned with unquenchable fire. She worked harder and harder to keep up her speed. In the early hours before dawn, her muscles began to cramp.

“Rock salt is what we have,” said Ri’arion, gazing gravely at her. “There’s
a bag of herbs Oyda gave us, some of which Zip has already used, and a little dried meat.”

“
What about your healing power?” asked Zip.

“I’ll just stop flying, then.”

“Don’t discount it.”

Aranya nodded. “Sorry, Zip. I’m struggling. I’ll have whatever there is, Ri’arion.
Could you help me keep up my wing beat, somehow? Sing me a song? Tell stories?”

“Bring your mouth over here,” Zip ordered.

Aranya nodded gratefully as Zuziana tipped the dried meat onto her tongue, dusted it with herbs and popped a handful of rock salt on top of the meal. Ri’arion searched their packs and handed Zip two half-full waterskins.

“We’ll do without,” he said.

Zip poured the water down Aranya’s gullet. Even that tiny offering seemed to go straight to her muscles, perking them up. The cramps subsided.

“That’s better, thank you. How are you, Zip?”

“Empty, but feeling the better for it,” said the Princess. “I think I’m over the embarrassment. I’ll teach you a song that all Remoyan children sing, Aranya. It teaches you the names of our eighteen terrace lakes and has a nice beat you can flap along to.”

“Oh yes, I’m the kind of girl to get in a flap.”

Zuziana favoured her weak joke with a decent belly-laugh.

The singing and joking buoyed her along until mid-morning. By then
, Aranya was in great pain. She rested on the wing, but even that taxed her muscles. Her great flight muscles banded like metal pincers around her ribcage, making every breath a rasping struggle. Her vision began to blur. Aranya focussed inwardly, tearing from her body the will to continue. One more hour, she kept saying to herself. One more. Her Riders felt as heavy as boulders strapped to her back. Her speed dropped. She could not bear the effort of even keeping to level flight, so the Cloudlands drew closer and closer. The muscles along her wings and flight struts felt as though they were burning with a fire of her own making.

Aranya imagined Garthion laughing at her, and pressed on. She pictured her family,
which helped her grit her fangs for a few more wing beats. She imagined the snow-capped mountains of Immadia rising on the horizon. Hope fortified her. But her mouth gaped open, her throat long since parched by the lack of moisture in her body. Nak had warned her that a juvenile Dragon’s body could not command the same resources as an adult Dragon. She had to find a way.

“There, that’s a volcano, isn’t it?” said Zip.

“Aranya?” asked Ri’arion.

“I … don’t see it.”

“Two points east of Iridith,” said the monk. “Definitely cone-shaped.”

Hope raced into her overtired muscles. For a few moments, adrenalin raced through her arteries; she climbed a few hundred feet, fixing her gaze on the horizon. Zuziana was right. A pimple on the ho
rizon resolved into a massively squat volcanic cone. Smoke billowed from its open throat. Crimson lava poured from open wounds on its flanks.

She had never seen a more wonderful sight.

Aranya groaned as the pain reasserted itself. She allowed the tiniest trickle of magic to soothe her muscles. She had to balance her reserves; to be certain she would have the strength to cover what she realised was still many leagues of flying. Distances over such a flat, featureless landscape were deceptive. It would be hours before she reached the volcano.

But
their goal was in sight.

A
ranya collapsed in
a wasteland of black, glassy volcanic rocks. Solid ground! Relief from flying. Her wings drooped; she pillowed her head on a hard place and just let the air whistle in and out of her lungs. Her whole body quivered. She had been aloft for forty-three hours.

Dimly, she sensed Ri’arion and Z
uziana unpacking their effects. Ri’arion’s footsteps faded, while Zip moved around to her head.

“You’re wonderful,” she said,
putting her arms around Aranya’s neck. “Still speaking to me? You need a drink. Head up, old girl–there’s a little spring just over here. Not too much at once or you’ll make yourself sick.”

Aranya
let the tiny Princess of Remoy guide her mouth to the spring. Water bubbled onto her tongue; warm, tangy liquid, full of bitter minerals, but she still thought it the sweetest water she had ever tasted. Sapphire jumped into the flow with a chirrup of delight and shook droplets off her wings, making them shimmer in the sunlight.

“We made it,” Aranya breathed. She shuddered. “Ooh–cramp.”

“Ease through the cramps,” said Zip, who had shouted herself hoarse encouraging Aranya over the final stretch into their landing on the volcano. “Remember how Nak taught us about Dragon physiology dealing differently with cramp and muscle fatigue? The body will take what it needs. Like a migrating bird, Dragons use up resources at the expense of body weight.”

“No jokes about my undeniably well-proportioned Dragon-behind?”

Zip grinned. “Can’t promise that. Hmm, taste this water. These minerals should help against the cramp. Hopefully Ri’arion can find us a bite to eat. Keep the saddle on?”

“I’m too tired to let you get to the girth strap. Leave it.”

“Petal, do you ever stop to think that what we’re doing is just crazy?” Zip waved her arms with so much energy Aranya wanted to bite her. “I mean, we used to be two mostly decorative, exiled Princesses in the Tower of Sylakia. Now I’m a Dragon Rider wandering about in ancient armour waving a Pygmy bow at random Dragonships, and you’re an Amethyst Dragon, for the Islands’ sake! Wings, fangs, shiny scales, the whole ralti sheep. Doesn’t it strike you as surreal? Like you’re stuck in a never-ending dream?”

“It does,” said Aranya. “And I don’t ever want it to end.”

Zip gave her a sidelong look laced with feelings the Dragon could partly guess at. “Aranya, I–I’ll be your Rider as long as you want. I made a promise. I’m not going to break it.”

“I hope I don’t
change into a Green Dragon.” She chuckled at the bemused expression on her friend’s face, slaking her thirst a little more before adding, “The Dragon with the gift of jealousy. Slimy green, poisonous fangs and a hindquarters the size of a small Island.”

“Oh, Aranya, you’re not like that!”

Aranya prodded her friend with her knuckle. “Honestly, Zip? He’s not going to whisk you away to a romantic little Island somewhere?”

Zip coughed, turning a delicate shade of pink. “You’re flying off to the
wrong Island already. He barely sneaked in a windroc’s peck on my cheek and–well, he held me over your side with a cold breeze whistling up my skirts while I voided my stomach over half the Cloudlands. Don’t you snort at me like that. He’s a monk. He said he doesn’t know how to relate to women.”

“Knows how to give a cuddle, though.”

Zuziana slapped her sharply on the neck. “Stop it. You’re embarrassing. Besides, if it came to that, I have to ask my father first–yes. Despite our sizeable families, there are morals in Remoy. I like him, alright? But I don’t know a whole lot about him except that he looks leopard in a loincloth.”

“
What about all the hours you’ve spent chatting Dragonback?”

“You’re not supposed to be
eavesdropping.”

Aranya showed all of her fangs in a grin. “Just remember, if he gives you any trouble
…”

“I’ve a Dragon in my pocket? That certainly beats any, ‘my brother’s bigger than your brother’–did you also say that when you were a child?”

“Not so much. My brothers are twins, all of two summers old by now. They won’t even remember me.”

“They’ll be taking rides on
their big sister’s back before you know it,” Zip said stoutly. “I hope your father’s half as nice as mine.”

This time, Aranya’s push made Zip trip over a rock and sit down in the spring. “Nicer
.”

“Bathing with our clothes on?” asked Ri’arion, appearing with an armful of speckled green eggs which he deposited next to Aranya. “Another Remoyan custom I’m not familiar with? Hunchbacked vulture eggs, I’m afraid. Vile-tasting
, but apparently they won’t kill you, according to Nak. Nourishing fare which I will skip, judging by the stench.”

Zuziana threw a handful of water at the monk. “The mean Dragon’s bullying me, Ri’arion.”

“Aye? Carry on, says I.”

Aranya scooped up
one of the foot-long eggs and popped it into her mouth. “Yuck. Thanks.”

“Just wait for the sulphurous Dragon farts those are going to brew up,” said Zip.

They all looked up as the ground beneath their feet shook. Up there, above the rim of the volcano, they saw billows of ash surging into the air. Aranya had taken care to land on the windward slope for exactly that reason. But the stench was still plentiful; volcanic gases escaping through vents and cracks in the slopes, which were dotted with low, hardy bushes at their level, and denser grasses and what appeared to be berry-bushes lower down toward the Cloudlands. The black rock was uncomfortably warm underfoot–at least, Aranya imagined it was so for Human feet–and there was no shade except in the lee of a few larger boulders.

“We should pack a few pumice stones,” said Zip. “Your little brothers could float them in the
ir bathtub.”

“You’re in charge of the saddle bags,” said Ri’arion.

“Always the quiet ones,” said Zip, casting him an amused look. “I thought you were a taciturn, no-social-skills type of monk–you know, I am a man, I am a rock, I do not speak except in grunts of grave authority.”

Ri’arion made a face as though he was sucking on rotten eggs.

Aranya sucked out part of an egg with a violent slurping sound and cracked the rest open for Sapphire. “Come on, stop admiring your scales and get some food, little one.”

Sa
pphire twirled into the air. She shot over Zuziana’s head and landed deftly next to the egg. Her pupils narrowed as she regarded Aranya with a coy tilt of her head.

Yes, you are beautiful.

“How do you talk like that, Aranya?” asked Zip. “Oh, Ri’arion, do we have to eat this?”

“That or dry rations, your highness.”

“Then let’s at least cook the egg. Make a fire, servant.”

Ri’arion picked up a twig and waved it at Aranya. “Make a fire, servant.”

“How’s about I toast you both and have you with my breakfast?” Aranya swallowed an egg whole. It was more palatable that way. “I could eat another ten of these.”

“I’ll cook and Ri’arion will hunt,” said Zuziana. “You rest, o scaly majesty of the windy places. You’ve done your work for the day, while the monk has only been sitting on his proverbial thinking lofty monkish thoughts.”

Picking up his cloak, the monk said, “Fine, next time you can fertilise the Cloudlands all on your own.”

“What’s the cloak for, Ri’arion?” asked Aranya.

“To carry a cargo large enough to satisfy a hungry Dragon’s appetite.”

“Fine. Carry on, servants, while I take my nap.”

To her surprise, Aranya fell asleep the moment her eyes closed. She stirred at the sound of Zuziana’s high-pitched giggling. At first she thought her Riders were–well, she was wrong. They were wrestling in hand-to-hand combat. The arteries around her eyes and muzzle definitely heated up at the thought. Yes, Dragons could blush.

As she watched, Ri’arion pinned the Princess with some kind of nasty headlock-combination-arm-lock and growled, “Fine, if you can’t take your training seriously, try
to escape from this one.”

“Oh, mercy, thou fiend,” Zip begged, and kissed him on the nose.

Ri’arion pretended to recoil. “Foul! Foul!”

Aranya blinked her optical membranes shut. Then she stirred, groaned
extra-loudly, and cracked open an eye. “What time is it?”

“Just after noon,” said Zip, dusting off her armour.

“Get off me, Princess,” said Ri’arion.

“You say, ‘Please arise, thou zephyr of the dawn,’” Zuziana corrected him. “I was just beating Ri’arion up, Aranya. He calls it unarmed combat training. See? He can’t move.”

“I only slept an hour?”

Zip said, “Probably the empty stomach. Would you like a couple more of the stinky carrion-eater eggs, Dragon?” She squealed as Ri’arion lifted her off of him with a simple flexion of his arms. “Bully. You’re strong.”

Aranya smiled at Zip’s blatant flirting.

She ate all eleven eggs Ri’arion had scavenged
. Then they rested through the heat of the afternoon. Her stomach did not appear at all bothered by eating that amount of rotten-smelling egg. Aranya stretched out her wings and let the suns’ warmth soothe her aches and pains, while providing Zuziana and Ri’arion shade which they dozed beneath until the twin suns began to lower toward the western horizon.

They rose, and made preparations to leave.

“What a beautiful spot,” said Aranya. “We could almost be the only people in the whole Island-World, here on the obsidian slopes of a volcano which could erupt any moment, watching the suns-set made gloriously fiery by the volcanic ash in the wind.”

“Soppy poetry,” Zip teased, whacking Aranya’s ribs with her elbow. “Eyeing up your next work of art?”

“Several. Zip, I do miss painting.”

Zip said, “What did you make of that creature we saw on the way
here?”

“
It was a Dragon,” said Ri’arion.

Aranya
said, “You think that thing was a Dragon?”

“What else would it be?
An Island grew legs and walked?” Ri’arion grinned as Zip pasted an idiotic expression on her lips. “It was a flightless Dragon. A Land Dragon–see, I remembered. On Ha’athior we tell stories about Dragons which dwell in the magma pits of active volcanoes, and other, even more massive Land Dragons which gnaw at the roots of the Islands. I had always thought them creatures of fable, until we passed over one.”

“That thing would’ve had you for breakfast, Aranya!”

“Thanks, Zip.”

Zu
ziana was right. That creature–that maybe-Dragon–looked big enough to snack on whole Islands. A cold shiver travelled along Aranya’s spine. Now there was a strangeness of her Dragon form. Shivers took a noticeable amount of time to travel from her brain to the end of her tail.

“Come,” she said. “If you’re done trying to scare me, we’ve a journey to continue and I for one would like to find Nak’s Dragon’s
Foot in the daylight. Iridith’s out early tonight. Later on there’ll be only the Mystic and Jade moons.”

“Just a few hundred leagues to go,” sang Zip, buckling their saddle bags in place. Aranya noticed a few chunks of pumice peeking out of the top of one.

“Say, Zip,” said the Dragon, “been to the toilet before we go?”

“Very funny, you overgrown lizard.”

Aranya climbed into the early evening sky. Truly spectacular, the artist in her thought, trying somehow to capture the precise quality of the light in her mind’s eye, the way the reds and pinks and furnace oranges blended together and reflected across the endless Cloudlands, the dust motes glowing like fireflies all around her. The edges of her wings were burnished by the sunlight, making her imagine she was a great ship sailing the air currents the way the Dragonships of old used to travel, much at the mercy of the winds, before the invention of the meriatite furnace engine.

Zip asked, “Aranya, would you take us over the volcano’s rim? Ri’arion’s been prattling on like a parakeet about his homeland. I’d like to see how this compares.”

“Alright.”

“Stay windward of the plume, however,” Ri’arion advised.

Fifteen hours to the Dragon’s Foot, Nak had estimated, followed by one final haul of twenty hours to Immadia. If they had been aiming for three days travel then they were behind schedule–except that he had promised they would find a Dragons’ Highway over the stretch to Immadia, if not before. A helping breeze would be very welcome. The evening air was as still as the inside of a dead-end cave.

Due to her earlier exhaustion, Aranya had not given much thought to how
colossal the Cloudlands volcano was. But as she rose over the rim, it was to gaze down into a seething caldera which could have swallowed an Island whole. She estimated the lava lake within to be over a league in diameter, heaving and seething and spitting gouts of molten rock into the evening sky. The lava was only a hundred feet or so below the rim. Even at their height, the radiant heat sucked the air out of their lungs.

“Phew, that’s roasting
,” said Zip, gaping unashamedly at the caldera.