Dragon Thief (28 page)

He shrugged. “She’s young.”

The threesome rushed down four further levels, falling upon a squad of soldiers at the base of the stairwell. A flurry of darts and daggers ensued. Tazi ran her sword through one fellow who tried to raise the alarm. She scowled, “Leave a few for me.”

“Come on, Razorblades. The great hall your victim described is a bit of a run down this corridor.”

“Don’t slow me down, old man.”

They jogged, but only to minimise the noise of feet traversing dark granite stone. Kal kept imagining what would happen, out there, when Aranya ran into Endurion and Talon. Oddly, he thought he heard the booming sounds of Dragon attacks on the citadel itself. What did that portend? Distracted, Kal slowed a step or two as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. That was when the Indigo Shapeshifter slammed into an invisible barrier. She recoiled, holding her nose; Riika sprinted on, entering the gloomy portico of the great hall. The doors slammed in the Pygmy girl’s face. A half-dozen huge Jeradian warriors, armed with war-hammers and encased in full plate armour, stepped out of the shadows.

“You lost, little girl?” snarled the squad leader.

Kal skidded to a halt, torn between finding out what was wrong with Tazi and helping Riika.

The half-Pygmy stood calmly in their midst. Taut as a wire, yet apparently unconcerned. “No. Are you dead yet?”

The men drew a collective breath, perhaps at her defiance, perhaps trying to work out if they were dealing with a child or a fearless warrior. The squad leader smirked. “No, but you–”

Riika’s hands blurred. Two of the men clutched their faces, pinned in the eyes by her flechettes. Barely had their bodies begun to jerk from the effects of her favourite neurotoxin, when Riika struck with another throwing dagger and rolled, taking her beyond the vicious swing of a war-hammer, which sparked off the stones beside her departing feet. Her forward roll brought her smoothly to her feet beside a thick marble column. Riika stepped up and flipped backward, over the heads of the converging warriors, and backstabbed them simultaneously with remarkable precision.

She spun to take on the last warrior, but he was preoccupied with trying to gargle Kal’s throwing dagger.

The girl glared at him. “Don’t spoil my fun, Dad.”

“Spare one for a tired old thief?”

Riika bent to retrieve her weapons. “What’s keeping the Dragoness? Nerves?”

“Magical barrier,” said Kal, examining the problem. He had a horrid feeling that somewhere, unheard or undetected, alarms were ringing within Endurion’s fortress. But where were the Green Dragon and his cohorts? Why did he sense their plan unravelling? “Come, Tazi. Princesses enter this way.”

She blew him a kiss in passing. “You do know that your ability to breeze through impenetrable barriers is freaky, don’t you?”

Kal’s right hand became very disobedient at that point. Tazi jumped.

Riika hissed, “Dad. Mind on the raid, please?”

“Did I or did I not warn you both about those trousers?”

“You’re such a fusty Fra’aniorian fusspot,” Tazi snickered.

Examining the closed doors, Kal found nothing to suggest a magical trap, but his danger sense had woken up properly now. After crossing the hall, they would soon arrive at the sharp end of matters, what was effectively the guardhouse to Talon’s inner chambers, which were carved into solid rock and allegedly Dragon-proof. Bah. A handy little Anubam swarm would reduce this dreary dump to rubble within minutes. Talon’s home had all the hallmarks of ‘evil lair’ stamped upon it–featureless granite walls, heavily armed soldiers parading about uselessly everywhere, doors of impractical thickness, torches in blackened sconces and a perfectly jovial miasma of oppression and suffering. Kal expected to wander into fully-equipped torture chambers at any moment, where the Master and his Dragons probably enjoyed socialising with their slaves, or to find lamps made of Human skulls.

What they found on the far side of those doors was a vast, silent hall. Ominously silent.

Kal realised that the fortress’ foundations had purposely included this original cavern. The floor area was a vast, perfectly even lake of flagstones large enough to hold the annual ball of all Dragons. Huge supporting columns supported a sea of gantries and galleries above. Fifty Dragons could be hiding up there and he would never know, except for his special sense which had watched over his mischief-making on many an occasion.

He touched his companions. “Hold hands.”

“What, Kal?”

“Nothing yet, Tazi. Just a sense there’s danger … ahead. Through or inside that hall.”

“Switch to Dragoness?”

“Keep her in reserve. Your Human’s scary enough.” For that, she nearly crushed his fingers. Not wise, since they’d need his sticky digits before this lark was finished. Kal said, “Focus on the prize.”

He was not yet skilled enough to extend the Shadow power to all three without physical touch, so Kal had the singular experience of sneaking across that vast space holding hands with two pretty girls. Ah well, all in a day’s burglary. As they settled into a rapid series of movements that kept the threesome darting from shadow to shadow, Kal kept scanning their surrounds. No traps, yet. No Dragons lurking, yet. Minutes passed and they were not halfway. No …

Dong! Dong! Dong!

Kal winced as faint shouts carried from somewhere above. “Lockdown! It’s a lockdown!”

“Run?” asked Riika.

“Don’t run,” Kal snapped. “See this mosaic of flagstones? Traps. Walk where I walk.”

Doors boomed. With a jingling of armour and a thumping tread, dozens of Mejian heavy infantry marched into the chamber. “Scour the place. They might be hidden by magic,” a voice echoed off the stone surfaces, carrying imperfectly to his ears. “A Shifter triggered the alarm.”

Kal peered at Tazi, who grimaced. He said, “Hasten with precision.”

The path zigzagged and backtracked through a field of spike-traps which had probably just been armed. After that, Kal had them skirt a hidden pit. All the while, the infantry moved closer, spreading out as they came forward in a line, sweeping ahead of them with eight-foot pikes like blind men walking through town. Riika’s foot scuffed the floor.

“This way, men. Flush them out.”

As agreed, Tazi would not use magic unless it became absolutely essential, but they were rapidly running out of options. Kal doubted they could take on this many soldiers.

Suddenly, what he had dreaded came to pass. A soldier pointed. “There, Captain. I see Shapeshifter eyes.”

Her beautiful indigo eyes blazed with magic. Someone out there was skilled enough to see them, despite the shield, or perhaps his concentration had wavered for a vital second. Seventy feet more and they’d move beyond the final pit, Kal realised. The infantry had spread out, knowing exactly where they must tread. Time to change the odds.

Many Dragon traps reacted to the presence of magic, which he and Tazi knew all too well from her experience in Kal’s roost. This was a branch of magic Kal had thankfully only ever encountered in Aranya’s bedchamber. At Gi’ishior, he had been fortunate. Now, he became aware of a network of sensors somewhere above in the dim, overarching reaches of the cavern. He must protect Tazithiel from whatever nasty surprises Talon might have prepared for unwanted draconic visitors.

Tazi, no magic and no transformations. Hear me?

Aye.

Kal swept the two women up in his arms.
Dance with me, ladies.

The Indigo Dragoness closed her eyes. Clutching them close, he pranced over a complex series of traps, approaching the line of soldiers at breakneck speed. Kal alone was no problem. Kal with lives he felt responsible for, being the criminally superior member of the trio, was another matter. No mind. Tazithiel would slay them with a well-turned swivel of her hips. That was as certain as the twin suns rising in the morning.

That gave him an idea. Kal whispered in Dragonish to Tazi, who responded that hairy chauvinist pigs called Kal deserved to be barbecued at leisure in oodles of Dragon fire. Then she sighed and acquiesced.

An Indigo Shapeshifter in Human form materialised in front of a startled squad of massively armoured Mejian soldiers.

Putting her hands up to her hair and surreptitiously loosening her razor ribbons in the process, Tazithiel stretched voluptuously. “Islands’ greetings, boys.” She stepped forward like a female rajal approaching her mate. “Who wants to play with me?”

Roaring rajals, he had to get her to use that line on the pillow-roll. Maybe when she had forgiven him for his antics with the twins. That accusation sparked in her eyes daily.

To a man, the soldiers developed foolish grins and arrested mental processes.

Kal and Riika used that frozen moment to spin out from behind the seductive man-mesmeriser. Knives and flechettes blurred through the air. Tazithiel struck out with her razor ribbons, slicing one soldier’s neck through the gap between his helmet and his shoulder-plates, but she lost the other ribbon as quick reflexes caught the snapping whip-tip on a forearm guard. The soldier yanked her forward, wrapped his arm about her waist, and died with a poisoned Pygmy dart protruding from his windpipe.

“Hands off the royal personage,” Tazithiel sniffed in disdain.

Shouts erupted in the hall as Kal, Riika and Tazi sprinted through the gap they had created, briefly outdistancing the much heavier infantry. Kal skipped happily over a shower of pikes and spears. Ah, nothing like a well-timed escape from a squad of soldiers to fire the blood. Ahead, Riika flashed to her left, appearing to the naked eye to bounce off an intercepting quintet of warriors. Three Mejians fell, but the girl spun away with cuts on her flank and forehead.

“The door!” Kal swerved, hurdling a spinning hammer.

They ran, seeing knots of infantry closing in from all quarters. Riika spun to deliver a volley of throwing knives that decimated those soldiers eager enough to outpace their fellows. Kal slapped aside a spear meant for Tazithiel’s head and slammed into the huge jalkwood doors. Locked and barred. Of course.

“We’ve got your back.” Riika’s bowstring twanged.

Two women against heavy infantry? They had seconds before those men formed ranks, ducked behind their shields and mowed down the company like a farmer scything down mohili wheat. Kal plied his lock picks with urgency. Thankfully, Talon had poor taste in hardware. Kal could have picked this one with a couple of stiff nostril hairs. He glanced over his shoulder. Two or three dozen rugged infantry had locked their tall, straight-edged shields in dense formation. A thicket of pikes menaced the raiders.

Riika surveyed the odds with a grim smile playing about her lips. “I’ve a special treat for you boys.”

“Me too,” said Kal, using his full height to hurl a brace of daggers over the top edges of their shield-rims. When would armourers learn that to protect the face was to live?

The Pygmy bow twanged. Riika’s arrow exploded against a soldier’s foot, blowing his lower limb to pieces and severely injuring two men standing just behind. “Nasty,” said Kal, unstopping his gourd of Green Dragon acid. He hated to feel overcrowded.

Perhaps these big men could learn to dance? He flicked the gourd deftly, a trick he had learned from a fellow-thief in Franxx. Well, the fellow had been rather overcompetitive. Kal still had the acid scars on his left shoulder. By way of thanks for the lesson, Kal had introduced the thief’s neck to the blunt edge of a bedframe. Unhurriedly.

Under cover of some cowardly screaming, Kal quickly pushed Tazithiel at the door, since in her anger, she had draconic strength. “Open it.” He taunted the dancing soldiers, dodging stabbing pike-points and making as much of a nuisance of himself as possible.

“Bunch of shrinking petals,” he sneered. “Skanky sons of windrocs! Why, my grandmother fights better than you.” Actually, his grandmother might have been a Shifter. He beat down a pike and neatly lopped off the hand that grasped it. “Hands off, you bad lad–ha ha. That was wicked.”

Kal grimaced as a leaf-shaped spear jabbed into his left flank. Whirling low, he lashed out at any feet he could reach with his blade. “Teach you lot to dance,” he grinned, frog-hopping over a pike-point seeking to drill a hole in his kneecap. He struck a lewd pose. “Come and get–
urk!
”

An unmistakably hot hand scragged him by the collar and hauled him ignominiously through the doorway.

Riika slammed the door shut on Kal’s foot and dropped the crossbeam. “Bolts, Sticky-Fingers. Great job on the dance lesson there.”

Utter silence from their companion alerted them. Whirling, Kal found himself nose to nose with a huge Green Dragon who regarded them with an unblinking, dusky orange gaze. His heart felt as though it punched his throat from the inside. Endurion? No, this beast was more thickset and a subtly different colour, a dusting of blue in the upper parts, but predominantly what Kal might have termed swamp-algae green.

Tazithiel clutched his arm. She looked as pale as windroc-down; Kal had no need of her inhale or the trembling of her bloodless lips to guess who confronted them.

The Dragon’s lips parted in a slow, ugly leer. “So, shell-daughter. We meet again.”

R
IIKA jeered, “Over
here, you egg-stealing excuse for a mangy green cliff goat.”

The Green Dragon lunged reflexively, but Riika was quicker still. Kal saw only a dark blur as he and Tazithiel bounded over the Dragon’s lashing tail. The Green first dented the solid stonework with his cranium, then took two futile nips at the dancing Pygmy girl. She stuck out her tongue and waggled it insolently.

GRR-HSSS!
Acid spurted from the Dragon’s jaw.

“It’s Falkurion, my shell-father,” Tazi hissed. “I had no idea–Riika!”

The Green followed Riika’s tight somersault with a snap of his jaws, all four paws leaving the ground with the effort, but a slap of Tazithiel’s Kinetic magic lifted the girl over the Dragon’s billowing fire. Riika cried out as she landed smack on his nose, almost straddling Falkurion’s deadly nostrils. The Dragon flicked his head, flinging the tiny Pygmy high into the air. She vanished amongst the columns and overarching buttresses of what must have been an old mine, Kal surmised, judging from the huge cast-iron ore vats dangling from chains and hawsers affixed to the ceiling, and a pile of what appeared to be roughly-refined gold piled up against one wall. To the Dragon’s evident surprise, Riika did not return. He stared stupidly up into the shadows.

Falkurion growled, “Come out where I can maul you, little girl.”

Not the sharpest talon on the paw, clearly.

Wisely, Riika made no further wisecracks. Kal knew she had bought them time. Brave. Yet in this chamber, there was precious little cover. Somewhere just off this room, they should find Talon’s inner lair and the all-important scroll. Just the small matter of dealing with a hundred-foot, hoary Green Dragon with slimy scale-armour so thick it crackled as he shifted his attention to Tazithiel.

Kal blinked. Tazi was nude. Why? She stood very straight, confronting the Dragon. “I’m not yours, Falkurion, and never was. Tell me, where did you find my egg?”

“In a trash heap,” he sneered. “We took you in, hatchling. Oddest egg I ever saw, but my Zynvaria did like to collect oddities. She’s dead, now. Talon killed her.” As he spoke, the Green shifted closer, deadly intent. Tazithiel quivered slightly, but not in fear. Readiness. “So, I don’t suppose you’ve come to join the emergence of a true draconic empire?”

“No. Where’s Endurion?” she asked.

“Endurion?” The Green pretended to think. “You’re not telling me you want to be corrected again, are you, little one? He’s long–”

Storm thundered out of Tazithiel.
KAAABOOM!
Her transformation knocked Kal sprawling. Falkurion tried to weather the blast, but the Storm winds hammered him against one of the columns. Then the Indigo Dragoness was upon him, snarling as Kal had never heard her snarl before, biting and clawing and crackling with lightning–over and over, she attacked, but the wily Green seemed to gather himself nonetheless. Tazi’s lightning sizzled against that strange, protective slime coating on his scales, and the thickness of his armour protected the larger Dragon against most of her bites. Suddenly, the coiled-up green body snapped forward. Falkurion bulldozed Tazithiel with his greater tonnage, upending the Dragoness and squashing her beneath him. For his troubles, the Green received a pawful of talons in the gut as Tazi drew blood. Flesh sizzled inside Falkurion’s throat as the Indigo finally directed a bolt of lightning where it would truly hurt, straight down his gullet.

Poxy Shifter!
roared her erstwhile shell-parent.
Betrayer of all true Dragons!

You betrayed me!
Screaming with rage, Tazithiel hoisted the Green Dragon aloft with her Kinetic power and hurled him across the room. Rock exploded from the point of impact. Her onslaught was a blur of draconic savagery, mauling her father’s muzzle, burning him with a sustained bust of lightning that finally seemed to quarry through his armour. Falkurion bellowed in rage, slapping her fifty feet backward with a monstrous cuff of his right forepaw.

Tazi’s claws sparked on the stone floor as she skidded to a halt. She hissed,
I am the daughter of Aranya the Star Dragoness,
and you are a dead Dragon, Falkurion. Commit your fire-soul to the eternal flames, before I extinguish it.

Big words for a little Dragoness. I’ve known you since you cracked the shell. You’ve no Star power. Never had.

Shaking, the Indigo snarled,
You know nothing!

Oh, but I do look forward to correcting your foul aberration myself. Talon has shown me the way.

Falkurion spit out a monstrous, roiling ball of acid spit, Dragon glue and fire. But Tazithiel threw up a fifty-foot wall of ice, which exploded into steam as their Dragon powers collided. Suddenly she speared through the steam from an unexpected direction, blasting the Green with Storm to lift his torso, before firing a twenty-foot spear of ice accurately into the wound in his belly, in almost an exact replica of what Endurion had done to her. Falkurion unleashed an ululating bugle of pain.

Kal, dodging a river of spitting acid which fizzed rapidly through the solid stone floor, did not at first realise what she had done. But the Green Dragon’s hind paws folded beneath him, suddenly powerless. Great Islands! She had severed his spinal cord.

Even Tazithiel seemed taken aback. The wildness in her eyes faded as she regarded the stricken Green. “Why, Falkurion? Why?”

The Green Dragon’s thick throat worked. “Because you’re Shifter … scum,” he gasped. Golden blood bubbled from his mouth. “Talon will destroy you.”

“Talon’s a mere Human. He’s nothing,” Tazithiel goaded him–deliberately, Kal hoped.

“She’s more Dragon than you’ll ever be. Flown … North.” Kal cursed, drawing a low chuckle from Falkurion. “Stupid. You fell into her trap. You’ll never find–”

A huge metal vat tumbled from above, and clanged Falkurion directly atop his skull. The Dragon collapsed, unconscious.

RIIKA!
The Indigo Dragoness’ rage shook the room.

“Riika! What the sulphurous hells of a Dragon’s fire-stomach was that?” Kal blazed. “We needed that information.”

“I’m such a fool.” Riika crouched on the buttress where she must have been hiding, hoping for a chance to help Tazithiel. “Sorry, I … the rope–”

“Get down here.” The Indigo Dragoness’ claws clenched as though she dearly wished them to be kneading the Pygmy’s bones around inside the sack of her skin. She would kill Riika!

Transform!

Kal’s shout seemed to trigger the Shapeshifter’s transformation from without. How odd. Briefly, the memory of pleading with Fra’anior in the storm came to his mind, for the power he unleashed was of that magnitude; the stuff of quaking Island-foundations and shimmering stars of magic exploding behind his eyes. A Black Dragon roared between his ears.

Human-Tazi bellowed at Riika, before pulling up with a start of surprise. “What did you just do to me, Kal?”

“Stopped you from barbecuing a friend. Riika, stop playing up there and come down.”

“I’ll need help.”

Tazithiel tossed her dark locks imperiously, so exactly resembling the Queen of Immadia in that instant that Kal simply stared. Heavens above and Islands below, one could not inherit gestures and mannerisms, surely?

In seconds, the Pygmy girl faced the Shapeshifter, dangling upside-down in the air, arms folded. “I said how sorry I was, Tazi. Misjudged the state of that rope with a display of ineptitude that would have entire villages of my jungle-vine-loving ancestors digging up their own bones in humiliation.”

Now Riika sounded like him. Kal said, “Let’s go scroll-hunting, ladies. Tazithiel, would you be a dear little Princess and put on some clothes?” She growled at him, still half-Dragoness in outlook, clearly. “Well done for fighting your ghosts. Proud of you.”

Tazithiel shot him a look of fuming incredulity.

Endurion and Talon, a woman–surprise, surprise–were gone. They had to leave the fortress, fast. Kal considered sending Tazi and Riika to warn Aranya, but decided against that move. Only once they had their sticky paws on the scroll would the Academy’s safety be ensured.

But he spent the better part of half an hour creeping along a maze of narrow tunnels, mapping them out and disabling or dismantling traps. Someone clearly hated company. There were any number of dead ends which juxtaposed the words ‘dead’ and ‘end’ perfectly in the fiendish conception of their traps. But he was the master, the King of Thieves. Whoever had designed this delicate spider’s web of trickery deserved his respect, but they were not in his Island’s league.

He despatched Riika to stand guard.

Eventually, having plied his trade with effective zeal, Kal descended a short set of stairs and found himself in Talon’s bedchamber, lit, but by no light source he could see. Unadorned. Almost … monkish. Interesting connection, if his instincts served him well. A painting of the great Black Dragon, Fra’anior, hung upon the wall–one of Aranya’s works, he noted, and most likely the original of a copy he had stolen twelve years before, much to his annoyance. The seven-headed Ancient Dragon thundered toward an Island on the wings of a storm, his gargantuan bulk overshadowing the Island massif, never mind the specks of Dragons depicted fleeing his wrath.

And there, concealed behind five layers of spells, on a plinth to the left of the bed, lay a large scroll peeking out of an ornate scroll-case. The Scroll of Many Hands.

Kal regarded it with the respect of a man eyeballing a live cobra. He called mentally.
Tazithiel. I’m in.

Coming.
She stepped inside the chamber.
It’s magical. Safe to proceed?

Absolutely not.

He continued to examine the set piece, unable to shake the inkling that something was wrong. Poison on the casing? Trap on the floor? Pressure-plate on the plinth itself? Nothing. Eventually Kal moved forward, holding his breath. He waved the magic apart, delicately.

Weak, faraway draconic laughter resounded in their minds. Kal heard a sharp crack followed by a low, ominous grating sound. Falkurion whispered,
I see you looking at a false scroll, you fools. Talon never lets the scroll out of her sight. Suffer and die, Shifter scum.

A series of booming crashes shook the room. The light flicked out; suddenly, all was muffled. Falkurion’s voice disappeared. Had he dropped part of the fortress on himself?

“Riika! No!”

“Kal, calm down. I sense her. She’s hurt, but alive.”

“And we’re buried alive.”

“We’ll think of an escape plan, or Aranya’s Brown Dragons will dig us out. Oh–now what?”

“Suffering volcanoes, wasn’t it enough to be buried?”

Sure enough, the gurgle they had both heard developed into a hissing rush. Kal gasped as ice-cold water jetted into his face. Talon’s plan was to make sure to finish the job. Buried and drowned.

* * * *

Kal knew bitterness like rotting haribol fruit stuck in his throat. Tazithiel’s hand slipped into his; her protection enveloped them both. “Falkurion must have been watching with a Dragon’s Eye,” she whispered. “Some think it’s a mythical Dragon power, but it’s real.”

“The simple things.” Kal sighed. “A false scroll. We should’ve known. Our forces came through against the citadel. Endurion and Talon were never here.”

“They lured Aranya away.”

He reached out, cupped her cheek. “In the darkness, your Indigo-eyes shine like beacons of hope. Don’t believe that Dragon. He was never your shell-father.”

Her shield kept the water at bay, but already they bobbed against the ceiling as the chamber filled up rapidly. Caterpillars in a cocoon. Kal knew he had to think, to reason a way out, before they ran out of oxygen. But there was something in her trembling, in the mysterious depths of her eyes, that arrested him.

Kal said, “Many dangers, many lies. First, this Talon woman has a secret way to change Shapeshifters–did I hear right? A power that can corrupt a Shifted manifestation, or corrupt it in the action of Shapeshifting?” Tazithiel shook her head in speechless horror. “Second, Falkurion lied about your Star powers.”

She shook her head violently. “Kal, I know you love me and especially my trousers, but in this, you are deluded.”

“I do, by the stars–”

“Kal.”

“Wait, let me speak.”

“Kal, I don’t possess an ounce of Star power.”

“L-o-v-e … you.” His gasped spelling caressed her soul-lost cry, rocketing her out of the depths of hopelessness. “Love,” he repeated, rolling the word on his tongue with increasing confidence. Never had her eyes radiated her heart’s response so clearly. “Love, love, love … aye! I love you, Tazithiel, Indigo Shapeshifter, Princess of Immadia, and I will shout it until the stars above shake so forcefully, they rain stardust upon us! Or at least, I’ll shout it until I crack this watery tomb.”

Tazithiel seemed frozen, but her hair took matters into its own strands. Reaching across the foot or so that separated them in their bubble of air, her tresses enfolded him tenderly, and then she drew close to kiss him, weeping or laughing, he knew not which, as though he were an indescribable treasure her Dragoness-heart would cherish until the end of time. Kal held his slender, powerful Dragoness in intimate embrace, closing his senses to thought or deed, to burden or need, revelling in the smoky scent of her and in the moulding of her febrile, fire-filled body against his, but mostly, in her Dragonsong which suddenly seemed to be humming through his very soul.