Dragon Thief (19 page)

After scaling and swimming two further layers of wide, mirror-calm terrace lakes, Kal and Riika plunged into the swamp beyond, fondly nicknamed ‘the Sludge’ by the locals. The early afternoon suns-shine vanished behind a veil of dank cloud, and the insects descended in their battalions to make Kal’s life a misery. Kal hated swamps with a passion that bordered on mania. They were always crawling with two of his least favourite classes of creatures–snakes and biting insects. Riika, cute Pygmy jungle-warrior that she was, did not suffer a single bite. She found endless diversion in teaching him the names of all the crawling, buzzing, hopping bugs that homed in on Kal’s evidently toothsome flesh, and her trills and clicks in melodious Ancient Southern were accompanied by a steady chorus of slaps and curses on his part.

“Che’ûka’xí,” she trilled. “Blue-shimmering trapper dragonfly.”

Swat!

“Toò’tàk. Borer beetle.”

Whack!

“S’x’xitoé. Ten-legged long-haired khaki caterpillar. Lays its eggs beneath your skin.”

“Ouch!”
Slap!
“Darn it, isn’t four feet eight inches of sweet Pygmy flesh at all appealing to these bugs?”

“Apparently not. Watch out!” A hummingbird-swift strike of her sword later, Riika held up her decapitated catch. “Yu’uàoe’tíl–the deadly purple-banded swamp cobra. Super-tasty. I think reptiles must like you even more than the insects, Kal.”

“You cut out that waggling eyebrow at once, you incorrigible cutthroat.”

“Did I mention an indigent Indigo? No, not I.”

“Bah.”
Thwack!
“Here’s a present for you–cha’a’aúta
,
was it? Some shimmering dragonfly thing?”

Riika plucked the hand-sized insect from his palm and popped it in her mouth. Chewing happily, she smiled, “Great! I haven’t had one of these since I was a child. Thanks, Kal. Your pronunciation was fairly acceptable, as well. You named it a giant farting warthog.”

With a sterling combination of Riika’s jungle craft and Kal’s blundering about being eaten alive, they managed to traverse the twelve-league swamp in a tidy two and a half days. That evening, they camped beneath a cluster of fruit-laden prekki trees at the base of the Jeradian mountains and burned bunches of happy, thriving leeches off their ankles with hot coals.

Riika hissed as another leech fell away. “So, you’re leaving me again, Kal?”

“Riika,” he sighed. “Look, they’re expecting me. Us. I want to penetrate their stronghold, get to Tazithiel, and try to arrange a place at the Academy for you. The problem, the sulphur-stinking fire-breathing permanently irritable of disposition problem, as always, is the Dragons.”

“Right. I’ll file my fingernails while you ply your craft. Is that it, Kal? Is that what my skills mean to you?”

“Will you let me finish?” Flesh sizzled as Kal attacked another finger-sized leech on the back of her ankle. “Firstly, I happen to care if my daughter becomes a Dragon’s snack. Secondly, I suspect I have a brand of magic which helps me sneak past Dragons. You don’t. Thirdly, I’ve saved an even more dangerous mission for you. One that may rescue all of our hides, especially Tazithiel’s. It most certainly does not imply sitting on your brains watching the mists roll by.”

“Oh?” Her elfin face screwed up into a cross between a glower and lively curiosity.

“Aye. You will travel to Mejia and find out who by all the volcanic hells that Rider of Endurion’s is, and what powers he possesses. You saw what he did to Tazithiel. What Dragon power is that? Not Kinetic, or if it is, Tazi’s power is infantile in comparison. Endurion’s all muscle and grunt, a green-scaled brute. His Rider is lethal; probably controls the Dragon, is my suspicion. And you will do your utmost not to get yourself killed. It’s as risky as baiting rajals, Razorblades.”

“Back to basics.” Riika’s smile in her childlike face was a thing of frightening savagery. Dragons could not smile better, not with fire licking between a hundred fangs. “You want to use that information to bargain with her pious purple majesty.”

“Great Islands, am I that transparent?”

She twirled their snake-on-a-spit expertly, making sure the meat cooked evenly. “I like being called your daughter.” Suddenly, moisture sheeted her eyes as she stared into the flames. “I’ll undertake this mission on one condition.”

“Aye?”

“I get to call you d … duh … d-d …” Riika spluttered to a halt, her chest heaving with suppressed vehemence.

Kal patted her knee fondly. “I know, Razorblades. I know.”

She grated, “Dad!”

He inhaled sharply.

Riika’s eyes were bright with wonder. “D-D-Dad! I can say it. Dad! Dad!”

A sweeter word the Island-World had never known.

* * * *

Jos was a town of ten thousand citizens and considerably more unofficial residents contained within three concentric defensive ring-walls, the tallest being the one that protected the rich district and the palace buildings from the riffraff without. Kal accordingly introduced Riika to a lesser-known route frequented by those wishing to avoid the town guard’s zealous notice.

“Dragons above?” Kal growled to his petite companion as they walked through the mile-long, dripping tunnel. “This Queen’s arm reaches far.”

Riika shrugged. “So a perfect picture of you is on another wanted scroll. What’s new?”

“It’s a perfect picture.”

“Not unhandsome,” she suggested. “The eye-patch, fake beard and limp should see you through. Nice swamp-stink, too.”

At a seedy but safe inn Kal knew, he ordered a room and a hot bath for them both.

“How’re you paying for this?” asked the Pygmy girl.

Kal bounced a fat, jingling purse in his hand. “It dropped off his belt.”

“A certain Dragoness might be interested to know how your standards are slipping, Sticky-Fingers. But I fear there will be more slippage required in order to execute your cunning plan.”

“I have a room for you and your
daughter
,” said the innkeeper, leaning over his counter to leer at Riika’s torso in a way that made Kal contemplate a murder involving meat-hooks, maggots and a week’s worth of screaming. “It’s comfortable and–
urk!
”

Riika held her swords behind the giant Jeradian’s neck, slightly crossed so that she could pull him down to her level. For a seven-foot-plus Jeradian, that involved a great deal of bending. Softly, she said, “I hope you aren’t suggesting I am anything but his legal ward, innkeeper, because I am this man’s daughter and eleven summers old. You know the law.”

“Never dreamed otherwise, lady,” the man babbled.

She held him with her gaze for almost a full minute more before releasing the sweat-beaded, trembling innkeeper. The twin blades zinged back into their sheaths.

Kal compressed his lips into a straight line. Riika in action! No wonder she had been such an effective assassin; her apparent youth and innocence combined with her unusual, striking beauty must have opened many a door. Of course, over the age of twelve Jeradian law was much more permissive, as their free society allowed a man or woman to have two consorts at a time, who were often changed according to a regular schedule. The crime the innkeeper had insinuated carried the punishment of the summary application of a war-hammer to a criminal’s head until, to quote, ‘a soup of brains spilled forth.’ Amiable warrior-folk, these Jeradians.

She took his arm deliberately. “Come on, Dad, into the bath with you. I can barely stand the stench of your wasting disease. Can you smell his rotting flesh, innkeeper?”

The man vanished behind the counter, making gagging noises.

Kal waited until they were out of sight upstairs to swat her backside. “You impertinent, crafty little minx!”

Riika marched down the corridor ahead of him, waggling her hips tartly. “Don’t touch. That’s a deadly man-slaying weapon, right there.”

He pinched his nose delicately, making certain she knew his opinion of her weapon. Chuckling like a pair of maniacal parakeets, they slipped into their room to bathe and lay their illicit plans.

* * * *

Ah, the simple things of life. Kal and Riika stocked up on provisions with the help of a special shop whose owner, a Jeradian giantess who stood half a foot taller and six inches wider than Kal himself, had known him since he had been a ‘snotty-nosed street beggar.’ Arrayed with everything from a selection of poisons to new hair-oil which furnished her black curls the gloss of a raven’s wing, Riika boarded a Dragonship for Mejia, leaving Kal to catch up with old friends.

“King Ta’armion!” the fat merchant squealed. “How did you get in here?”

“Silenced the hounds, hopped over the wall, put your already sleeping guardsmen further abed, picked your ridiculously crude window locks and disabled the poison-gas traps, which are an especial hazard to your children. I then took a route to your bedroom which I shall not reveal for professional reasons.” Kal smiled at the woman lying beneath her husband, pasty-faced with fear. “Fear not, o jewel of Jeradia’s crown. Lady Hiru-Vunya, is it? Your husband has done no wrong and shall not be judged this day. We did business together in the past.”

Kal jerked his gaze away from the noblewoman’s shapely bosom. Drat. Old habits.

“A vial of Helyon’s Heaven for your enchanting wife, Tarralion. Please accept this as a gesture of goodwill and my congratulations upon completing twenty-five years together this season past.” Some Jeradians being more honourable than others, in Kal’s jaded opinion. “May I apologise for interrupting what was clearly a most congenial interlude?”

“Helyon’s Heaven?” The merchant was still in squeaky mode. “But that costs–”

“He accepts,” said his wife, brusquely. “Tarralion, up with you. I believe this gentleman wishes to increase our wealth.”

“I do,” said Kal, with a bow so brief it made his Fra’aniorian heritage scream in outrage. “One hundred gold drals on my personal guarantee and your full, discreet support, Tarralion.”

“Two hundred.”

“Split the difference?”

“I’m negotiating blind, Ta’armion. What do you want?”

“Tarralion, take that handsome rogue out of our bedroom,” complained his wife, “and you, Ta’armion, if that’s your name, we’ll see the colour of your hundred drals on my husband’s palm or there’s no deal, and fifty more on completion.”

Smart woman. Kal said, “All I need is a Dragonship crew, a young ralti sheep and a windroc in a cage. Oh, and you’re going to fly the Dragonship high over hostile Dragon territory. Simple.”

“Not me,” smiled the merchant, patently slavering over the drals already. “But I know just the man.”

“OUT!” screeched his wife.

Gazing deep into the noblewoman’s eyes, the thief tested that most raffish grin he reserved for occasions such as this. In a gravelly voice suggestive of nefarious deeds of the night, he said, “You must love your husband greatly, Lady Hiru-Vunya. But for me, it has been the highest privilege.”

A startled glance at his wife’s dreamy half-smile caused Tarralion to leap off the bed as if Kal had indeed tickled his ribs with a poisoned dagger. He howled, “You bastard–OUT!”

Ah. He still had the basics.

T
WO DAYS LATER,
with a swift raid on the Governor of Jos’ menagerie completed, a Dragonship and crew secured, a cargo hastily assembled and certain sheepish preparations made, Kallion set off to test his wits against the foremost bastion of the Dragonkind in the southwest quarter of the Island-World. Tarralion had been as good as his word. Now it was up to the King of Thieves.

Swiftly, the Dragonship rose into the red-streaked dawn skies above Jos, bringing the famously rugged, trackless mountain ranges of central Jeradia into view. Beyond these cloud-piercing peaks, in the north-western corner of Jeradia Island, lay the most famous Dragon Rider Academy of all, founded by Hualiama Dragonfriend and once home to the legendary Pygmy Dragon. More recently the volcano had become the stronghold of Aranya the Star Dragoness, Queen of Immadia, when she was not fighting and warring around the Island-World, trying to keep Humans and Dragons from tearing each other’s throats out, and Shapeshifters from being persecuted by both.

Aye. The Academy, according to his sources, was arguably the most closely-guarded patch of land in the Island-World. No expense had been spared in constructing its defences, all Dragonship traffic was strictly monitored, and it housed a huge Dragon roost boasting closer to four hundred Dragons than Aranya’s claim of one hundred. Twenty-nine hours a day, multiple Dragonwings patrolled the skies above the volcano and scoured the territory for leagues about.

Oh well. They had not met the King of Thieves.

The King had recently bearded the Empress of Dragons, however–as bearded as the most beautiful woman in the Island-World could possibly be. The ballads compared Aranya to a perfect suns-rise striking the famed snow-capped mountains of Immadia. What woman living could be more beautiful than his Tazithiel? Silently, Kal beseeched the Dragons of yore for her recovery.

He unfurled a small, coded message-scroll, received that morning by messenger hawk from Mejia Island. Riika had arrived safely and had engaged a business associate of Kal’s. She would keep him informed. She signed off with a tiny drawing of a dragonfly. Subtle. Kal scratched his insect bites reflexively. Dad and daughter. Why did that idea sit about as comfortably as a monkish round of self-flagellation? Not because of her heritage. No, it was the responsibility. He had always shirked duty with the circumspection of a Dragonship Steersman skirting a feral Dragon. Now, a three-letter word–dad–hung about his life like a priceless manacle willingly applied.

They flew day-long to the western tip of Jeradia, high on a bulge near the top of the Island, from which Dragonships regularly made the long run over Yaya Loop to Xinidia Island. From there, it was a relatively short hop to his native Fra’anior. Having overnighted and whiled the morning away in trading, the Dragonship Captain raised the anchor in the late afternoon and adjusted their heading to a few compass points east of north, a course which would, coincidentally, take them directly over the Academy. Air traffic had to pass a minimum of two miles overhead. That posed a huge challenge for Kal’s intended method of infiltration.

Kal joined the crew as they slaughtered the sheep in the cargo hold. The caged windroc went mad at the smell of fresh blood, so he fed it drugged meat. Half an hour later the huge male bird was asleep, snoring stertorously. Kal rigged his insurance to the bird’s underbelly with great care, and then instructed the crew in how to wire its claws to the sheep’s corpse. He gagged at the slit in the sheep’s stomach; an image of Endurion slicing Tazi’s belly open played in his memory. Stinking windroc droppings! Concentrate!

Issuing his final instructions, Kal crawled inside the sheep’s stomach cavity and waited for the men to sew it up.

Three hours later, a finger tapped the sheep’s belly. “Ready?”

“Aye.”

“Got two dozen windrocs up there making a mess of the air sack. Dragon Riders have checked us and left, but Captain says the patrols are keeping the old fire-eye on us. You certain about this, man?”

“Aye. Proceed as planned.”

Aye, he would just commit suicide. Fantastic.

Shortly, he heard the cargo bay door swing open. Hoarse shrieks sounded outside the airship, along with the steady throbbing of the turbines and the shouts of archers defending the airship against its aerial attackers. Attracted by the sheep’s intestines, Kal thought. At least windrocs could be trusted to act in character. That was less than he could say for Queen Aranya.

With fresh air blasting into the cargo hold, his windroc stirred. He heard its wings, easily twenty feet in wingspan, scraping the cargo hold walls.

“Go!” shouted a man.

A bucket-load of intestines dropped off the rear gantry. Where fresh intestines went, so did windrocs. His conveyance lurched and suddenly, he turned upside-down. Out! Now he was committed to an act of utter foolishness.

Delicately, Kal poked a hole in the sheep’s skin with his dagger. The night was fully dark. Perfect. Just one moon aloft, if he judged correctly.

If he could pull this off, that would be a trick.

The windroc struggled mightily beneath the combined load of a grown man and a smallish ralti sheep, which was still large enough to hold Kal’s six feet and five inches frame in its abdominal cavity. He could have held a dinner-party for ten inside Tazithiel’s stomach. These quarters put his head between his knees.

Strike! Kal winced as a foot-long beak opened a hole near his foot. Smoking volcanoes, he had not thought the other windrocs would attack the sheep so quickly … oh, the little details that killed. His ride accelerated, plummeting through the air toward the lip of the volcano where it would fight over its meal. That was no good. Kal needed to hit that nice green lake in the centre of the volcano, which from two and a half miles up looked smaller than a brass dral and just as hard. The sheep shook and lurched violently as both corpse and windroc came under sustained attack. Kal tugged his wires. Excellent. The windroc reacted to a pricking in its right flank by swerving left. And now he could not see a thing.

Kal screamed as an unseen beak speared his right buttock. A storm of wind and pain blasted his senses. The ground was far, yet it rushed upward with frightening speed. He caught glimpses of a lake and a tall, deep caldera criss-crossed with open volcanic vents and circling Dragons; now a huge, rambling building of more stories than he could count, which had to be the school … another attack! Kal yanked his arm away from a marauding beak. Windrocs screamed all around him, probably a mob falling through the sky, he imagined, tearing strips off the sheep’s carcass all the while. What would the Dragons make of this–end it all in a huge fireball? Or would draconic disdain for windrocs win the day?

Tug the cords. Adjust. Lake, or rocky shore? Roaring rajals, now the windroc swung toward the school building. He was above the rooftops! Kal worked his crude controls manfully. He was blind again … excellent, back above the lake. Now to trigger the irrevocable insurance. A spring-loaded, poisoned dart plunged deep into the windroc’s belly. The bird shrieked wildly.

The fall seemed endless. Kal could not have guessed how long it took, but it seemed an hour or more before he saw green water rushing up toward him, slightly aglow, and he realised with a shock that he was plummeting directly toward a clump of half-submerged obsidian boulders. Stupid feather-brain! Kal hurled his weight sideways. Deep breath!

BLAM!

The sheep ricocheted off a boulder. Kal held his breath by sheer, bloody-minded will alone as a second impact came hard on the heels of the first. Warm water flooded his sinking prison. Unholy … his wrist was broken, clearly. A bump against his knee. At the bottom already? Rapidly, he sawed the sheep open, remembering to make jagged cuts to ensure that the sheep’s death did not look too artificial. Dratted windroc! Somehow, the water had revived it and the massive bird thrashed about, drowning.

A battering and some swift dagger-work later, he killed the bird. Remove the wires? No, he needed two hands for that task and his breath was running dangerously short. He reached for the straw in his belt. Crushed, of course.

That odd underwater radiance allowed him to find the boulders, however. Kal swam one-handed toward them, his lungs screaming for air, the blackness starting to crowd in. He popped the remaining inches of straw in his mouth and cautiously moved upward, holding himself below the surface with one foot hooked beneath the boulder. Unholy Dragon-talons, had he landed in this little water? Pop the straw above the surface. Breathe delicately. Do not disturb anything. After five minutes of recovering his breath and assessing the situation, Kal swam back to the flaccid windroc and weighed it down with a couple of rocks, those he could manage to move one-handed. Back to the boulder. More precious air.

Right. Time to earn his keep as a pernicious prowler.

Using the glossy black boulders for cover, hugging the shadows with body and soul, Kal raised his head above the surface.

No Dragons. His feet did a silent, watery dance. Freaking thieving genius!

Now, all he had to do was sneak away from several hundred Dragon roosts guarded by Dragonesses zealous to ensure no-one pinched their eggs or hatchlings, cover a quarter-mile of open ground to the buildings and find the Dragon infirmary where, he trusted, he would locate one delectable Shapeshifter Dragoness.

Kal spied on the Dragon roosts. Most of the Dragonkind appeared to have settled down for the night, but there was a constant toing and froing of fire-eyes up there on the cliffs of what had to be a daughter volcano within this single huge caldera. The Academy buildings climbed the rim wall to his right, a dizzying jumble of balconies and alcoves and interconnecting annexes which had more floors than seemed feasible–his hawk-swift estimate suggested two hundred levels, perhaps more. Quite the location. At least ten Dragons roosted on the school buildings, as best he could tell from the odd crack of orangey-yellow light spilling from draconic eyes.

A few men and women he assumed were Dragon Riders returned to their roosts, following a path along the lake shore some fifty yards distant. All appeared to be wearing similar dark grey cloaks with a silver buckle or brooch at the right shoulder. Kal eyed them speculatively.

Soon, a gentleman of excellent potential appeared. Alone, weaving along the lake shore, the drunk Dragon Rider slipped into knee-deep water. Kal moved over purposefully, as if he intended to help the man. Congratulations. This fellow was the lucky winner of his ‘become the victim’ contest.

“Fine night, isn’t it, friend?” He clapped the fellow on the shoulder, unclipping the buckle with a deft tweak of thumb and forefinger. “Easy, the path’s this way. Had a few too many to go swimming, haven’t you?”

“Thanks,” slurred the fellow.

“You alright to get back?”

“I’ll call my Yenisia if I need her. Perfect Green … so beautiful.”

“Pleasant dreams,” said Kal, giving him a friendly shove in the right direction.

Nice cloak. A touch short. Time to fool these Dragons in inimitable Kallion style. Affecting a slight swagger, the scurviest brigand of the Isles marched up the path as if he belonged. Indeed, he did. He was a Dragon Rider as much as any other in this caldera. The only difference was the price on his head and the messy pancake Queen Aranya would make of his life when she employed his tenderised cadaver for a doormat.

Kal walked up-slope from the lake, crossing a footbridge over an open lava flow, striving for that purposeful yet relaxed walk which proclaimed his familiarity with this place. The path wound between several open lava pits, probably used by Dragons for bathing, before climbing quickly to a wide, manicured sword-grass field that stretched up to the Academy buildings. Great Islands, how many thousands of students and staff did they house here? The place was a miniature city.

Stretching his long legs did not settle him. Kal felt preternaturally on edge, alert to the night’s slightest sound, to any shift in the breeze or hint of danger. Several times, he sensed the touch of a draconic gaze. Keep calm. Blend, merge, be normal. Ignore the pain of his broken wrist and his throbbing backside. He put his hood up as he had seen several of the other Riders do.

When he heard voices, Kal did not hesitate. Prepare a story. A swift subterfuge, for as he approached the edge of the field and a staircase leading upward to the buildings towering thousands of feet above him, Kal heard familiar tones. His heart sank. Jisellia!

Oh … he could use this. Judge her position. Rounding a corner, Kal increased his speed and deliberately collided with the young Dragon Rider.

“Great Islands, oh–Jisellia! Oh, forgive me, I never expected to find you here!” Falling to one knee, Kal seized her hand and began to kiss her knuckles most fervently, hiding his face effectively in the process. Jisellia squealed as the kissing raged unabated and more than a few chuckles began to rise from the group. Kal murmured, “Forgive me, sweet one, I should never have left you. You were kind, oh so kind and gracious, and I treated you with the most shameful disrespect and ingratitude.”

Poor Jisellia gasped and blushed, and then flushed so powerfully, he sensed the heat right down in her fingertips. “Kal … uh, Kalzion! Why, you smarmy toad, you two-timing, double-crossing son of a mangy goat …”

“I cast my worthless self upon your mercy!” Kal cried, drowning out her risible insults, yet at the same time, never more thankful for her quick thinking. “I abase myself, o sweet blossom, o crowning glory of Mejia Isle. But my consort was so jealous of your beauty, bitterly gnashing her teeth and weeping day and night–”