Dragon Thief (40 page)

Her words emerged amidst spurts of fire. Suddenly, Kal realised that the Indigo Dragoness was as outraged–perhaps as an expression of her grief–as he was.

“Even the Ancient Dragons did not solve this travesty!” Tazithiel snarled. “Or, they allowed it. How does that square with your precious fantasies that Fra’anior, the great black majesty himself, the possessor of the greatest overload of brain matter in history with no less than seven heads to argue with each other, allowed this world to become so
polluted
that nothing from above can pass below? That everything dies down there, even the lichens? How is this right, Kal? And now
I’m
responsible?”

GGRRRAAARRGGGH!

Kal held Riika close, even though she struggled with fright, panting and mewling in distress, and her finger-long talons bloodied his knees.

Tazithiel whispered, “I’m so sorry, little one. I forget how new all this is for you. Come. Let’s think about the new world. Kal, I need to burn off some of this anger. It’s not right that we treat Aranya’s memory this way, especially not today. She did not make the world we live in.”

“Aye.” Kal nodded. “Ready, Riika? Let’s burn through these mountains, Dragons!”

* * * *

The better part of two hours later, Tazithiel pulled out her air-brakes and coasted toward the second great barrier holding back the waters ahead. Kal had ceased to wonder by this point if the new world held anything but blue skies, for the Indigo Dragoness displayed a most peculiar mood. She declined to soar upward for a peek, preferring to stick to a height a couple of wingspans above the slowly receding waters. Kal refused to beg and Tazithiel appeared to have more than a few feelings to work out of her system. Better that she did, therefore, without his interference.

“Four hundred and ten leagues through the mountains, by my reckoning,” said the Dragoness.

Riika pretended to snore.

“The barrier’s still dropping,” Kal observed. “I wonder what it is holding back, or why all the water is supposed to head in our direction? Maybe we’re supposed to cleanse the Cloudlands so that all the nice fresh fish that actually survive the fall, don’t get poisoned instead?”

“Or, so that the nice Water Dragons can have a nice new terrace lake to swim in,” suggested the Sun Dragoness.

“There will not be any problems, naturally, in introducing a hitherto unknown Dragon species to the Dragons of our Island-World, because Dragons always coexist in blissful harmony,” Kal added.

Tazithiel flicked her wings to take them atop the barrier, sliding through the air as smoothly as Helyon silk. Kal frowned. Dratted Ancient Dragon mountain-tossers, still ten miles or more to go. Could they not imagine building a door of less than blisteringly humungous proportions? Of course not. That would simply not suit their overinflated sense of grandeur. Then again, Fra’anior probably had scale mites the size of Humans. Perhaps Humankind had started out as scale mites on the backside of the largest Dragon in existence, sheltering beneath his armour for thousands of years …

Irreverence and flippancy were hardly the way to be approaching a new world, Kal castigated himself. Where was the sense of holy awe that Aranya’s departure had sparked in his breast?

Waiting for that first glimpse.

Waiting for the skies to open up and meet the … oh, great Islands! Kal’s hand flew to his throat. Had the skies turned upside-down, their reflection bluer than the welkin above? No. Tranquil waters stretched as far as the eye could see, lapping from the Rim-Wall itself past pearly chains of Islands in the middle distance to a horizon as boundless as he had ever known, only unlike the Cloudlands, this panorama screamed of an abundance of life and splendour, a whole new realm of beauty.

The Indigo Dragoness alighted on the edge of the doorway as if afraid to proceed. Kal knew how she felt. The picture was such a breathtaking masterpiece, he feared their presence might blight the canvas. Who painted in colours such as these? What glorious palette had been spilled upon that dusting of green Islands, the variegated turquoise waters, the clouds of myriad white birds he saw traversing the endless blue? A tang of salt teased his nostrils. A fresh breeze ruffled his hair. The poet in him could have expired in ecstasy.

Kal knew a few legends, a few words which defied etymology, for they seemed to lack any clear origin. He whispered, “Ocean.”

“What?” Tazi whispered back.

“Ocean. This is the ocean, Tazi. Endless … waters.”

“Listen,” Riika breathed. “Can you hear that? It sounds like Dragonsong. Something is singing out there, without words …”

Kal listened with his entire being. She was right. Now and again, just upon the edge of his senses, he heard a hint of evocative song, ululating and wailing, sometimes whistling or even clicking. Was this the song of the ocean? Or the song of the Water Dragons?

“This would be a wonderful place to make a fresh start with our children,” said the Indigo Shapeshifter. “What do you think, Kal?”

“When we have them, aye.”

“In about fourteen months or so. A little less, now.”

He opened and shut his jaw without a coherent word or otherwise escaping his lips.

“I did say I was eating for four, Kal.”

“Four?” he rasped. “Me, you, Riika and Aranya, right? That’s what you meant.”

“Dad. Indigo-eyes meant nothing of the sort. You’re going to be a father. Snap to it. Actually, you’ve a few months to get used to the idea.”

“A father again?” Kal squeezed Riika with his arms until the Dragoness wheezed and wriggled in annoyance. “I’ve enough trouble with the one who’s sitting on me. Four–that’s too many. Tazi, how? I mean … how?”

The Dragoness laughed contentedly. “Kal, you daft rogue, I think you know exactly how. Shapeshifter Dragons have three babies, or eggs, at once. You know that. I didn’t know we had succeeded, but Aranya told me last night and showed me how to find their flame-souls inside my body. I’m pregnant with triplets and you had better start liking the idea, or so help me–”

“YES!” With an enormous whoop, Kal spilled Riika off his lap.

“Dad, Islands’ sakes!”

He shouted, “Yes, yes … oh yes! You beautiful woman, I didn’t think you could–but I hoped, oh aye, I hoped to the heavens. And prayed, even. The monks taught me that. You definitely have been eating for four. And I made sure you had every chance, because we were so busy–”

“Dad!” Riika tried her roar, but it was miniscule.

“I mean, we were perpetrating all sorts of roost-love mischief, as the Dragons say, especially when you–”

“Dad, honestly. Can we celebrate without the sordid details? Aren’t you happy?”

“Happy?” Amazement made his voice squeak like a rusty hinge. “I could fly down over those Islands myself. I could run loops around the moons. Am I happy? You puerile pipsqueak, you golden lump of draconic detritus, of course I’m happy! Why would I be otherwise?”

Riika said, “Because the Kal who rescued me would’ve made himself scarcer than a Gold Dragoness at such news.”

Tazithiel loosed a thunderclap of such rage, it blasted them five hundred feet backward.

H
OLDing KAL ALOFT
in her paw, the Indigo Dragoness unleashed a storm of wrath. Every phrase she spoke roared over the new world like the booming of thunder. “If you run away now, Kal, I swear there will be no place under the suns which will safeguard your miserable life, for I will hunt you down like the wretched cur you are. I will destroy you, trample you and cast your stinking carcass into the nethermost reaches of the Cloudlands. I will–”

“Tazi, listen,” he protested.

“I knew this would happen.” Another fireball passed a foot over his head. “Entangled with a smooth-talking thief, oh, bitter, bitter day! I’ve been such a ralti-brained dupe.”

“Tazi–”

“Silence! Detestable Human!”

Kal resorted to sign language. Not me, he signed, and pointed firmly at Riika. Her idea. Hers!

“What? Begging for your insignificant life?” sneered the Dragoness. Evidently, his command of sign language was second to none.

Employing his Shadow power, Kal slipped out of her grasp and wafted down to the ground. Tazithiel, infuriated beyond reason, sprayed molten fire hundreds of feet in every direction.

Kal sidestepped. Reappeared. “I’m not running!”

GRRAAAAARRRGGGH!
A fireball incinerated every scrap of air for a hundred yards behind his belly, but not an invisible instigator.

He slipped into the physical realm again. “I’m sticking with you!”

RAAARRRROOOOAAR!
She deep-fried a few more undetectable thieves.

“It was Riika’s idea!” Kal yelled from Tazithiel’s other flank.

The Indigo Dragoness whirled, slashing the air with her tail.
FIEND! COME OUT WHERE I CAN SEE YOU!
Had Kal stayed put, he would have been pulped and then sautéed with emphatically prejudicial results.

As Kal tiptoed around behind the Dragoness, Tazithiel continued to elucidate, “I’ll grill you slowly, you heartless bandit. I’ll fricassee your intestines with Mejian spices, following which I’ll bake your brains at ten thousand degrees and use the char to flavour my meals for the next hundred years.”

While he appreciated his girl-fiend’s enthusiasm for cookery, he would rather she did not hone her skills on his blameless person.

At the verbal equivalent of supersonic flight, Kal shouted,
Tazithiel, stop!

To his eternal surprise, she did.

Magic? No mind. Hurry on! “Beloved, Riika was testing me, as is her right. We three know what it means to have lost our parents. I refuse to abandon my children. Our children. If you hurled me into the middle of that ocean, I would swim for all the years it took me to return to your side. And if you kicked me into the deepest reaches of the cosmos, as you’ve undoubtedly been tempted to on numerous occasions, I would return as a shooting star to your side. For I guarantee you this, Indigo Dragoness, that having purloined your heart, as you are my solemn witnesses, I swear I have absolutely no intention of returning it to you this side of the eternal fires of the Dragonkind! And you can just swill that in your fire-stomach and smoke it!”

Tazithiel glanced at Riika, who shrugged, but a treacherous hiccough of laughter shook her tiny frame. Both Dragonesses burst into howls of laughter, the more so as Kal demanded to know exactly what was so comical about his declaration of love.

Eventually, Tazithiel managed, “Beloved Kal, you stole a Dragoness’ heart. You are second to none–truly, the King of Thieves.”

After the obligatory minute of preening, Kal said, “So riddle me this, Tazithiel. When this barrier drops down to the level of the ocean here, and the salty waters continue to flood our Island-World through this tunnel, will they eventually drown our Islands?”

“I was wondering the same,” said Riika.

Tazi said, “While I believe we should return to the Academy to inform the Dragonkind of Aranya’s departure–not death–I refuse to return without exploring a little, first. Who knows what we might find out here? As you rightly point out, once this channel opens fully, much will be swept through in a great wave. I don’t believe there’s any chance of us draining their ocean, but we should check. At the very least, if we find any intelligent beasts down there, we ought to warn them.”

“Have we created a natural disaster?” Kal prodded.

“We will simply take a pressure measurement down at ocean level and compare it to that of our own Islands,” said the Indigo Dragoness, narrowing her eyes in contemplation. “I suspect we’ll find this ocean’s level is just a touch higher than our Cloudlands.”

“And how do you propose to take such measurements without instruments?”

Tazithiel’s lip curled in draconic rejection of his sarcasm. “Why, I am the instrument, Kal. My clever mother taught me how to compare pressures using my draconic senses. Consequently, I am the superior creature.”

Kal performed a veritable feast of a Fra’aniorian bow. “Yet I purloined your most precious treasure. Therefore I–”

“Oh, go stuff it in a furnace engine,” snorted the Sun Dragoness, surrounding her own head in smoke with the force of her exclamation. She sneezed herself backward ten feet. “Great Islands, this Dragon form takes getting used to, doesn’t it, Tazi?”

“It was the other way for me, stumbling over a pair of strange, galumphing Human feet,” Tazithiel reminded her.

Riika said, “Those creatures out there should worry about us mighty Dragons.”

The Indigo Dragoness, towering over the mite with a motherly gleam in her eye, said, “Aye, they should worry. We’ll be keeping you firmly at home until you learn to behave, won’t we, Kal?”

“Aye.”

Ignoring Riika’s heated protests, he walked back to the edge of the golden black barrier. Kal gazed out over the new world with eyes zealous for the possibilities. Suns-shine. Glistening ocean. All was glorious, but he could not shake the feeling that something was watching.

Reveal yourself,
he whispered.
I know you’re there. We’re friendly and we’d love to meet you.

Tazithiel snickered,
Kal, you null-wit. As if talking to a mythical Black Dragon wasn’t enough, now you’re …

Mute with awe, Kal simply pointed.

Forty or fifty miles from their position, a monstrous darkness shadowed the serene ocean. The waters seethed briefly before parting over the bulk of the creature surfacing from the deeps. All they saw of it was the head, Kal thought, but that was enough, for it dwarfed the Islands between them as if a mountain had broached the tranquil waters. In the flank of that dark mountain he saw a single great eye, apparently lidless, of a piercing, pellucid azure that even across the distance, struck him speechless with its intelligence and great age.

He had the impression of being weighed on enormous, unfathomable scales.

Beside and behind him, Kal sensed Tazithiel and Riika standing a-tremble, transfixed by the terrible majesty of that gaze.

An alien song washed over them, outlandish and untamed and poignant, a song that hearkened to a lifetime spent gliding through the endless blue, of migrations spanning tens of thousands of leagues and faraway underwater palaces filled with secret treasures, of the restless ebbing and flowing of the tides, and an existence nourished by the surging, life-giving currents. Then the song changed to a stormier cry, a warning; a declaration of turbulent, motherly love that spanned the oceans and protected its own. Kal did not know if the creature was warning them off or warning its own kind from exploring the passageway which would one day lead to the Cloudlands.

Then, the creature began to sound with a stately surge of its giant body, mile after mile of black, glistening flesh mounding out of the briny depths to occlude the horizon beyond. Briefly, they glimpsed a colossal flipper eddying the water near one of the Islands. After an interminable time, the waters closed and the creature vanished in the same manner as it had appeared.

“Water Dragon,” Kal gasped.

Tazithiel shook her muzzle slowly. “It’s as big as the ballads suggest the Ancient Dragons ever were, Kal. The queen of this ocean.”

“Yet not unfriendly,” he said. “Not convinced, but not unwelcoming either.”

The Sun Dragoness stood four-pawed on the ledge, surveying the waters with unexpected vigilance. She said, “Aye, it was a Water Dragon. And I am destined to meet that creature, one day.”

Riika made an interrogative trill of Dragonsong. Her melodious vocalisation seemed to carry an inordinate distance across the restless waters.

Kal listened for a reply. Soon, he smiled.

The End

Thus the worlds of IsleSong and Dragon were joined,

Water and Cloud became one.