Dragon Thief (25 page)

Colouring, Kal growled, “We can ponder my misdeeds later. My concern is for Riika. What can be done for her, o Queen? Can you not heal her with your power?”

The amethyst eyes measured him for so long, Kal feared his heart would disintegrate under the strain. Slowly, the Queen said, “Dragon Rider oaths can do strange things to people, Kallion.”

He grinned weakly at Tazi. “I knew I should’ve despoiled you properly when we first met, Dragoness. It would’ve saved a great deal of bother.”

Her belly fires purred with an intoxicating brew of draconic appetites. “There are
so
many ways I can persuade you to behave, Kal.”

Sticking her fingers in her ears, Riika shouted, “La la la! La la la!”

They all laughed. Aranya bowed to her daughter. “I see the issue of a King of Thieves is in good paws. Riika, the poison has acted upon you for years, corrupting and reshaping and perhaps even enhancing your powers in ways that frankly, Yozora and I don’t understand. Your strength of will can summon forth inhuman strength and speed, as we saw, but there is a cost to that demand–the strain on your already failing body. I hoped that as a Star Dragoness, I could act to restore the balance of your being, but it seems that this poison has changed you in fundamental ways, and what remains is in balance, but a balance which will surely destroy you. You are unique.”

“Dear petal, Human life can only stretch so far. This poisonous power wears you thin.” Aranya caught up the small, slim brown hands, and stroked the girl’s fingers pensively. “An odd feature of Star Dragon powers is that they can come upon us for a time, as if given for a particular purpose, and having served that purpose, they depart forever. I once had such a power which I believe could have saved you. It is called Dragon Tears. I used it to save my friend Zuziana, who became deathly ill. It saved her life, but turned her into a Shapeshifter. An Azure Dragoness.”

A profound stillness settled upon the group.

The Immadian Queen said, “All the greatness and power and knowledge of this Queen of Dragons is dust. And it breaks my heart, for I have forgotten how to cry. If I could, little one, I would weep such tears over you as I once wept over a lost egg …”

Tearing herself away from Riika’s bedside, Aranya fled.

* * * *

From that day on, Riika’s recovery proceeded from strength to strength. Soon, she returned to her classes and intimidating her weapons-masters. Kal and Tazithiel divided their time between intense training and plumbing the depths of Dragon lore in the Academy’s great library. They worked alongside teams of Dragon and Human scholars investigating Shapeshifter poisons, Talon’s probable powers, and less urgently, the possibility of a passage through the Rim-Wall Mountains to the world beyond. Each day, the Indigo Dragoness flew further and higher, her vigour returning from a trickle to a flood under the tutelage of her shell-mother.

As for Mejia and the South, there was only silence. Nothing moved.

Yet, Tazithiel seemed despondent. Kal could not understand. Truly, the nature of Dragons might be a mystery, but greater still were the mysteries of women.

He turned his conniving mind to the matter of Endurion. That Green must be the source of her burdens. It could not be Aranya. Mother and daughter seemed to have given up on gnawing at each other’s throats, or perhaps they were both simply exhausted from training eighteen hours a day. What drove them? What drove Aranya? Love? Regret? The desire to make up for lost time? If these things, why not express the tenderness for Tazithiel that he was convinced hid somewhere beneath that Sovereign-of-the-World awesome exterior? All he knew was that the colour seemed to have leached out of his Indigo Dragoness’ world, leaving a grey hollowness no mischief of his could alleviate.

This golden evening over the green lake below the Dragon Roosts, precisely one month after Kal had burgled the Academy, seemed designed to lure a thief’s heart back to its old ways. He bent over his harp, strumming away moodily. Ordinarily, he would have sampled the varied delights of the Academy’s student and teacher population. Kallion the Conqueror could have plied his trade freely. What kind of man was he to consider himself oath-bound?

A bevy of cheery giggles made him startle. Three female third-year students, who had recently bonded with their Dragons to become fledgling Dragon Riders, waved as they sauntered by on their way to training at the Fledgling School. “Hey, Kal.” “Ho, mighty Dragon Rider.” “Save a few strings for me, will you?”

Kal’s fingers formed a few chords automatically and he ad-libbed, to the tune of a popular ballad:

Three Dragon Riders came strolling by,

Strolling by, strolling by,

Three beauties they came strolling by,

Bye bye, my heart shall die …

Aye, it would have been easy to shuck fidelity’s noose. But could he live with himself after? His eyes followed the students past, but his thoughts dwelled upon Tazithiel’s hair, and the sway of her hips. Intoxicating was a word which often sprang to mind. Had she bound him with her magic, as she was doubtless capable of, so subtly that a man might not even notice?

Kal’s gaze lifted from a pert student behind to the sight of Riika and Aranya approaching along the lake shore. Unholy windroc droppings. Had they seen? He must look a fool.

But Riika and Aranya were deep in conversation.

He played, and by the bye their footsteps paused beside the boulder he had chosen, jutting over the wind-still waters, a little off the beaten track.

“Tazithiel needs you,” said Aranya, without preamble.

“Aye? What happened?”

“She and I were up in the roost, talking about the world beneath the Cloudlands,” Riika said, “when Aranya arrived to bring me a scroll. She became all strange. Cold. Then she just freaked on us.”

Aranya clarified, “She kicked us out. No explanation, just screaming, lightning playing about her body and her hair writhing as though she had lost all control. She went feral, Kal. As we seemed to be the cause, I judged it best for us to leave and fetch you.”

“She kicked you
both
out? What was in the scroll?”

“It’s the Onyx Dragoness’ memoirs, a long scroll called
The Pygmy Dragon
,” said Aranya. “I thought it would help Riika understand herself. But it seemed to tip Tazithiel over the edge. Just a scroll. I wish I knew my shell-daughter better. We’ve both lost so much.”

He scrambled off the boulder. “I’ll try to help. Ride up?”

“I fear that riding me is the last action you should take right now, Kal. You’d better run.”

“That old man? He’ll never make it up the mountain,” Riika jeered.

Kal showed the little guttersnipe a clean pair of heels.

P
OUNDING UP THE
mountain toward the lower Dragon roosts, Kal did not pause to take in the sights. He lowered his head and ran. Suddenly, air whooshed above his body. Huge red claws scooped him into the air.

Kal twisted against that iron grip to look up.
Jalfyrion?

Aye. Sensed the commotion; here to help.

As the Dragon flew, Jisellia and Jalfyrion’s roost was only a quarter-mile from where Tazithiel and Kal had made their home, but by foot it was a strenuous half-hour’s hike. Facing southwest, Kal’s roost netted the best of the evening light until the twin suns disappeared behind the volcanic rim, which would be in less than an hour. The Red’s wings creaked as he poured on the power, before braking effortlessly and adjusting to land Kal with supreme skill on the ledge outside their roost, meant for just this purpose.

Jalfyrion fixed him with a burning draconic eye.
Need anything, you come see me, Rider Kal. Understood?

Aye.
But his thoughts were already behind the curved crysglass windows that flooded Tazithiel’s Dragoness-bedchamber with suns-light.

The Dragon dropped off the ledge.
Shake a wing, brother.

Kal dashed through the short, curved entryway that led into the semi-circular main chamber. As with many Dragon Roosts, the outer chamber doubled as a reception area and bedchamber for the Dragon, with a separate, Human-sized inner bedchamber for the Rider. This roost had a pretty natural grotto at the back with a rock pool for bathing. Beautiful crystal and quartzite formations peeped through the walls, also forming a pedestal for a Dragoness to perch upon when entertaining guests. Kal had begun to select artworks for the walls and had ordered gauzy Helyon silk hangings for the curved windows that looked out over the caldera.

Here he found Tazithiel, illuminated in a pool of light streaming through the windows, surrounded by hacked-off hanks of hair, beating her forehead slowly and methodically against the gold-veined pink pedestal. Clutching a dagger. Panting. Crying in bursts of eerie, keening sobs that raised every hair on the back of his neck. Great Islands! Had she lost her mind? Shock froze his feet. That was the whimper of a wounded animal.

“Tazithiel?” He moved, but Kal could not feel his feet. Dropping to his knees beside her, amidst the mess of blood and hair, he spoke softly, “Tazi? What’s wrong?”

Her hands scrabbled fitfully at her hair. So distressed was she, Kal saw, she had not managed to do a thorough job of decimating her locks. Her hands shook as she tried to saw ineffectually with the dagger. “I hate myself.”
Thump.
“Hate myself.”
Thump.
“It hurts, hurts so bad, I can’t stand it anymore …”
Thump.
“Take it away.”
Thump.
“Hate, hate, hate …”

“Here, precious one. Put that down.”

Kal discovered he still held his harp. He set the instrument aside and called gently to her, soothing. She stiffened, but seemed to allow him to comfort her. With many affectionate words, Kal drew the woman into his embrace, dabbing her blood-streaked face with his sleeve, wiping her tears with his thumbs. Never had the blue of her eyes seemed so deep, almost bottomless, as though windows opened upon terrace-lakes of grief. Never had Kal beheld a Human soul so wrung out, so desolate.

She had cut her scalp with the blade, and beaten her forehead open against the stone.

He worked the dagger out of her listless fingers. “Suffering hells, Tazi, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“Alright?” She threw him off. “
Alright?
Oh, I’m just fine, Kal. Can’t you see?”

Kal opted to stay where he had fallen. Her mood was too fragile for him to loom over her. “Tell me what’s ailing you. What was in that scroll?”

“Scroll? In a scroll? You ralti-stupid man, do you not know me at all? I hate myself! I hate
this
.”

“Us? What we have?”

The Shapeshifter stared at him as though Kal had slithered out of a hole beneath a rock. Her fists clenched. “Me. I can’t do this anymore.”

“What has Aranya done or said this time?”

“Apart from abandoning her egg?” Tazithiel knelt opposite, her hair falling over her face in thick, tangled strands, yet through the veil Kal could see just a hint of her face, and her expression terrified him. “Kal, you just don’t see, do you? You’re a fool. You live everything on the surface, a pond-skater skimming over the surface of real life. Try to see me, Kal. The real me, whatever the hells that means. I’m so cursed ugly. I hate myself. What I am. I can’t live like this, trapped between you all.”

“Ugly?” Four letters, the word struck him more forcefully than the most violent profanity. “How can you even say that? It’s wrong! You have everything here, Tazithiel. The chance to have a relationship with your mother. A man who wants you, who wants to be with you–”

“Who couldn’t recognise a feeling if it pecked holes in his skull! Freaking … man! When will you realise this isn’t all about you?”

Hissing, Tazithiel flung the harp at him. Kal raised his forearm automatically. The instrument struck the stone edge of the Dragoness’ bowl-shaped bed and cracked with a sigh of strings. He stared at the destruction, shocked.

Tazithiel whispered, “If your mother was the poxy Empress of all Dragons, you might understand, Kal.”

“This is about Aranya? Roaring rajals, Tazi, at least you have a mother. Aye, she’s the most freaking famous creature that ever lived and I understand that comes with enormous pressure–”

The Indigo Dragoness stared at her hands. “I’m not good enough. She wants a Star Dragoness for a daughter and she thinks I’m her long-lost heir, only I don’t have the power. I don’t want it. I don’t want to end up like her!”

Finally, the pieces began to click together in Kal’s mind. “Aye. Saving our lives was unlovely of her, wasn’t it? Aranya might seem a fearsome beast, but she’s also a lonely old woman. Can you imagine all the generations which have passed her by? Watching as one by one, her children and grandchildren have passed on to the eternal fires? One by one, her friends died. She has outlived them all–can you imagine what a curse that longevity is, Tazi?”

Screaming incoherently, the Shapeshifter sprang upon him. Punching. Kicking. The bloodied fabric of her white dress flapped in his face, but Kal allowed her assault to continue. He received her blows, only moving his body to minimise the damage, and as she fought, she screamed how she could not believe he was defending that woman, her awful shell-mother, who had despised and rejected her from birth. The Dragoness who had lost her egg.

She subsided against him.

“Tazi?” His voice cracked. “Woman, what’s at the root of all this? You’re acting weird. Freakish.”

Tenderly, he stroked her hair. Crooned to her. She snuffled against his shoulder. Kal knew the violence was not done. It lurked just beneath the surface of her being, as if her Dragoness were on the cusp of bursting into being and burning the roost down.

“I don’t understand why–I see your hurt. Truly, I do. But what I don’t understand is, why now? You’re getting to know your mother. You’ve been so understanding, despite all that ruddy draconic arrogance on her part. And now some story about the Pygmy Dragon has upset you? Help me understand, my precious petal. Help me.”

“She hates me,” Tazi moaned. Sucked in a breath. “She’d rather have you and that little brown girl.”

Kal did not know whether he had jumped into a volcano or a field of ice. It felt like both at once. “Little
brown
girl? Little brown–what the hells, Tazi!”

“She’s stealing my own mother from me!”

Curse it to the bottomless Cloudlands, this was what ailed her? Pure, stinking jealousy? And who was brown anyways–Tazithiel herself was the product of a pale Northerner and a dark Western Isles Shapeshifter. No, this was nothing but a raw, repulsive expression of her inner anguish.

But he could not allow Riika to be spoken of like this. It burned him to the core. Kal blazed, “At least Riika faces life head-on. She didn’t spend nine years hiding like a coward!”

“You bastard!”

He barely knew what hit him. Suddenly Tazithiel was upon him with dagger and fist, beating him out of the roost, shrieking like a feral windroc, “Get out! Get the hells out of my life! You step over that threshold again, word of a Dragon, you’re a dead man!”

* * * *

Somehow, Kal found himself in the kitchens after dark, having his cuts treated by the twins. Someone pressed a tumbler of violently alcoholic, rough Mejian brandy into his hand, “Drink this. We need to stitch these cuts.”

“Rough day, Rider?”

“You don’t know the half of it, Yenshi.”

“I’m Fenshi.”

Yenshi and Fenshi. What kind of parents chose such names for their children? They were sweet. Not a whole brain between them, but the twins were known to be inseparable and they had cared for each other ever since their parents died of the coughing-plague.

Fenshi unbuttoned his shirt and peeled the material away from a deep puncture wound in his right flank. “You fighting with Dragons again, Rider Kal?”

“Story of my life.” Kal downed the brandy in a single, huge gulp. “Another.” He quaffed that one too.

“Must be a story,” said Yenshi. “You slow down, soldier.”

“I need to forget–forget I ever met her.”

“Oh, it’s girl trouble. I knew it,” said one of the Jeradian girls. Kal hissed as she cleaned out his stab-wound with a caustic solution. “Dragons, they’re trouble. Shapeshifters, even worse. Double trouble. Come on, we need to get you someplace away from the food before you bleed all over it.”

Kal stumbled down a hallway. Suffering hells, that brandy almost had him off his feet. The twins helped him to a dimly lit room. Warm hands tended his scrapes and bruises. There was perfume in his nostrils and an ample bosom to pillow his head upon. Kal drank again. His trousers had come unbuttoned and a blonde head bobbed down near his feet, working his boots loose.

Yenshi’s eyes seemed full of lamplight. She said, “Ooh, Fenshi, you were right. He is built like a Dragon.” The sisters laughed.

Kal stirred uneasily. “This is wrong. I need–”

“You need to forget.” There was warmth and the softness of bare skin against his body, and a voice teasing, “Tell us all about this problem with Tazithiel, big man.”

“We’ll help you forget,” said the other blonde twin, kissing his neck hungrily. “Tell us everything, Rider Kal. We’d be so very, very grateful.”

* * * *

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Open up, or I’ll break this door down!”

Kal stirred, his brain an alcoholic fug, the pounding making him wince at every blow. “What?”

He heard voices raised in argument. Threats. The nearby growl of a Dragon. In seconds, Kal minus any form of clothing whatsoever, found himself shivering in the corridor outside the twins’ room. Feeling a handy wall at his shoulder, he made to slump.

Whack.
“Get moving, Kal.”

“Jisellia?” He giggled, “By the lakes of Rolodia, you look beautiful this evening.”

“Shut up before I have Jalfyrion stand on you.” Shoving her shoulder beneath Kal’s armpit, the petite Dragon Rider dragged him down a corridor, muttering, “Idiot. Fungus-brain. Dried out lump of swamp scum. Dolt. Jerk. Dimwit. Dock labourer. Parakeet.”

Kal did not appreciate having a dictionary full of insults flung at him.

“He stinks,” Jalfyrion rumbled. “How drunk is he?”

“About the Human limit. Much more than this and he’d be unconscious.”

“Not drunk. Perfectly frisky.”

A huge red paw stopped the breath in his chest. “Let’s fly, Rider.”

Kal soared through the cool, dark night, the wind slowly stripping away his bewilderment to replace it with the type of clarity that underlay a headache so beastly, he imagined Jalfyrion had tied his head to a string and was kicking it about for fun. As they approached Jisellia and Jalfyrion’s roost, Kal opened his mouth to speak. Instead, the remains of his overindulgence chose to hurl themselves toward freedom. He heard a faint yell of outrage from below.

Jalfyrion landed, thumped inside the roost and threw Kal at a floor cushion, growling, “Do you want to get yourself killed? Dragon Riders don’t behave like that. You made an oath.”

“Not to carouse with twins? I didn’t hear myself say that.”

“Oh, now she’s only your Dragoness? Hold me back, Jisellia, or I’ll murder that little toad and keep murdering him until …”

Jisellia folded her arms. “Permission granted.”

“I don’t need mothering,” the thief scowled. “Tazi kicked me out. I was sulking.”

Jalfyrion’s Dragon thunder rattled not only his roost, but half the mountain, it seemed. Kal clapped his hands to his temples.

Jisellia seethed, “I’ll toss your ungrateful carcass over the edge. Kal, Jalfyrion found you and came to get me. The least you can do is express your thanks for the rescue of your worthless hide. What kind of a man are you? One tiff with your Indigo Shapeshifter and you go find solace with two strumpets from the kitchens?”