Dragon Thief (6 page)

Awake, o sleeper?
Tazithiel’s Dragon-voice boomed in his mind.

Kal flapped his arms unhappily, the more so as the wind cuffed them playfully side to side.
Stop shouting, it hurts.

I’m whispering. Buckle up, Kal. I mean, buckle up more. It’s about to get rough.

With that, he sensed her Kinetic power release him. Muscles twinged in his lower back as Kal straightened up. The White and Yellow moons behind his shoulders illuminated a cloud-rampart ahead, facing them like a monstrous battlement erected to deny any westward passage. Great Islands! He rubbed his arms, seeking insight into a premonition that made him shiver not only physically, but in ways he did not understand. The storm’s skirts were black; uncompromising shadows far deeper than the moons-lit night. His eyes crawled upward in disbelief, tracing the bulging thunderheads that from his perspective, appeared to swell to the very stars, overshadowing Dragon and Rider. The storm-massif’s headwinds grew chillier by the second.

“Put on your jacket. What’s the matter, Kal?”

Bah. Mothered by a Dragoness? Shrugging into his fur-lined leather jacket, so essential for flight at the altitudes even a Dragonship could attain, never mind a Dragon’s untouchable capabilities, Kal rapidly fastened the toggles and snugged the thick collar beneath his chin. He donned a fur-lined, conical Jeradian Dragonship Steersman’s cap and wriggled his fingers into thick sheepskin gloves. Better. Now he was a fully clothed icicle.

Tazi prodded, “Will you stop being a man and use actual words? I can’t read your mind.”

“What happened when I blacked out?”

“Why did you make the Dragon Rider oath?” Her annoyance carried to him as a wave of heat whipped back from her muzzle on the wind.

“I read it in a scroll, once. It just … it felt good and true. Did I hear right; you echoed me? I didn’t realise oaths had magical power.”

“You didn’t think an oath–” the Indigo Dragoness modulated her simultaneous vocal and mental roaring as her Rider clapped his hands to his head “–Kal, oaths are dangerous. Especially when you blurt one out without prior consideration.”

“I meant it.”

“Says the man who spills ten thousand words for a brass dral?”

He gritted his teeth. “I stand by every flaming word of my oath, Dragoness. Do you?”

Tazithiel gnashed her much more impressive set of dental weaponry. “While I’m sure this oath will return to bite me like the clash of an Ancient Dragon’s jaws, I spoke truly–Rider Kal.”

Oath-bound to a Dragoness? His week was not flying high. No, it was accurately emulating a stricken Dragonship plummeting into the lethal Cloudlands. Bah.

Kal muttered, “Anything you can do for this headache?”

“I can’t heal you. I’ve many powers in the Red and Blue Dragon spectrums, but no healing.”

“Tazi, I didn’t intend to knock us from the sky. Vows in my life have been few; usually unworthy ones.” And they had never shivered Islands …

“You’ll have to work harder than that to down a Dragoness.”

A sinking sensation developed in the pit of Kal’s stomach. With her fierce Dragon pride, Tazi was not about to enjoy his next statement. But one must never feed a Dragon milk, as the Isles saying went. He said, “Tazi, I believe we should consider turning around.”

The expected fireball did not blister his nose. Instead, she hissed, “Explain your lack of trust, Kal. You and your
vast
experience of flying Dragonback, and your
astounding
expertise in the magical enhancement of draconic flight aerodynamics–”

“This is not a trust issue!”

She snorted, “Then exactly what flavour of windroc droppings is it, little Human? Explain yourself in words of one syllable so that even a stupid animal can understand.”

Kal slammed his hands against the saddle, mouthing a word better suited to the dregs of the Sylakian brothel business. Confounded mud-grubbing pile of old lizard bones! Aye, she was a Dragoness, never more alien to his understanding. He had handled Tazi about as well as a thief who volunteered to be locked away in a local jail and left to rot. Still, no amount of kicking his deserving backside would undo the damage. Her poisonous expression demanded answers.

“Look, you’re neither stupid nor an animal. I’ve a feeling, a fatuous feeling or premonition–” his voice grew smaller the higher her lip curled in scorn “–that flying into this storm’s a bad idea. Alright? I’m the one with the stupid feelings. That’s all it was. Fear, premonition, I don’t know.”

“You disrespect me.”

Tazithiel said no more, but Kal sensed the outrage pouring into every wingbeat as the winds freshened and the first hint of moisture tickled his nostrils. How could he explain what he himself did not understand? Most females in the Island-World, Dragon and Human alike, would rightly laugh his supposed powers of intuition into the proverbial Cloudlands soup. Yet instinct had always underpinned his pilfering prowess. He saw traps–poisoned arrows, trip wires, hidden switches and false floors–where others did not. He sensed when eyes were watching, and when attention wandered. He had sneaked beneath the noses of dozens of guard-Dragons and not been summarily incinerated.

Touchy Dragoness. So distinct from Human-Tazithiel. Pondering this connection turned his headache into a throbbing Crescent Isles log drum.

So, what magic had his involuntary oath triggered? It was Hualiama Dragonfriend who had conceived the Dragon Rider oath, he recalled learning. Once made, the oath bound Dragon and Rider in ways he could barely imagine. Many Dragon Riders apparently spoke fluent Dragonish and even acquired a smattering of draconic magic. Whatever they had unleashed, it had caused an unseen, Island-sized Dragon’s paw to smash an Indigo Dragoness right in the pearly fangs. Thank the heavens Tazithiel had recovered more quickly than him.

Now, an impulsive oath shackled him to this beast. How bad, or how foolish, would this prove?

Romancing a Shapeshifter was definitely wine of an unexpected vintage. Kal stifled a wry laugh, but the jerk in Tazi’s wingbeat told him her superior Dragon hearing had picked up the perceived insult. A menacing growl rose from his mount as Tazi plunged headlong into the storm-front.

Dragon and Rider spent the balance of the night, already far advanced, driving deep into a never-ending, unyielding world of wind, cloud and hail. At first, Kal thought Tazi’s flight-strengthening Kinetic power would see them through, but the storm perversely intensified as the Indigo Dragoness began to show signs of strain. He dared not interfere. Gritting her fangs and blowing hard, she climbed steadily into a gap between the boiling thunderheads. The swirling gale seemed bent on attack from every conceivable direction, making Kal’s stomach-gyrations resemble dragonets frisking about on his native Fra’anior Island. They flew high, but the storm rose still higher, and not a prickle of starlight could be seen through the murky billows racing overhead.

Lightning! Kal ducked as jagged after-images played across his retinae. That had surely struck …

“Struck my left wing, Kal,” Tazi said. And she wasn’t a mind-reader? “You’re safe.”

“Safe? How?”

“I’m shielding you.”

Trust. The word lingered unspoken, but was clearly communicated by her tone. Lightly, Kal said, “I meant, how does it work? I once saw lightning fry a rajal mid-leap on the western fringe of Jeradia Island. That was a big cat, and it was dead before it hit the ground.”

The Dragoness grunted, “Three things, Kal. My shielding keeps you alive, my body has special tissues which act as conduits for electricity, and my tail is a discharge point.”

“So you’re one giant–”

“–lightning conductor,” she agreed. The thief noted the underlying stresses in her voice, but made no comment. After all, what experience did he have of Dragon flight? He felt sore, humiliated and keen to see the Dragoness return to her Human guise. “You Humans borrowed the idea for your fortresses, especially in the South and around Fra’anior, where there are many electrical storms.”

“So you’ve a hot tail now?” he joked.

“Ew. Save your lewd jokes for my Human form.”

Kal’s jaw worked. Perhaps he ought to divide his feelings into two neat camps. For the Dragoness, fear and awe. But for Human-Tazithiel, his attraction came tempered with a healthy dose of respect. Never in his life had he tiptoed around a more volatile fumarole.

He said, “That’s amazing. And you’re Blue spectrum, so lightning attacks are in your blood.”

“Aye.”

“May I pose another question?”

KAL!
Heavens above and Islands below, will you just let me fly? I can’t concentrate with your constant yammering.

Sorry.

He glowered at the darkness. Whose fault was it he had embraced a creature of living flame?

F
OR KAL, BEING
forced to keep silent was tantamount to rolling about in a patch of invisible prickle-bushes. He squirmed mentally, watching for the first sign of dawn’s light, for surcease from the storm’s mauling. Escape? Awkward. Help? Impossible. Change her mind? As futile as pounding an Island with a war-hammer. Trust must flow both ways. His life hung in the balance, in the storm.

With the dawn came a deluge of sleeting rain, more ice than water. Already deafened, sodden and chilled to the marrow, Kal threw his futile hopes to the winds. Of course he could be colder. He could have icicles dangling from his nose and the numbness in his fingers and toes might perversely develop into dull knives burrowing beneath his skin. Beneath him, Tazi laboured. How she strove! Again and again, the glacial winds blasted them backward, until Kal began to imagine Tazithiel flew yet remained stationary in the air. Wriggling and heaving, the Indigo Dragoness cracked off the ice collecting on her wings and along her spine; he realised her fires must be dampened, for why would the ice not simply melt away? Or had her shielding failed? Using a long, heavy arrow, he chipped off the ice he could reach.

Hours passed before insight sparked in Kal’s mind. Once again, the Dragoness sought to prove herself. This was beyond stubbornness. Beyond madness. This was a profound, ulcerated kind of pain which could only exist in a person’s heart, a pain no years of solitude had stanched. It was rooted not only in what she had suffered, he imagined, but also in the betrayal of her shell-parents, and perhaps exacerbated by the advent of a thief upon the stage of her life.

Never had Kal watched another suffer like this. Especially not someone he cared for. It threw the hollowness of his life into sharp relief. Her breath rasped as his did in the gasping thinness of high altitude flight. Her wingbeat slowed. Through his thighs, Kal felt the juddering in her muscles as Tazithiel tore from herself by sheer, bloody-minded strength of draconic will alone, the power to keep aloft.

What could he do? What could a mere Human help a mighty Indigo Dragoness best this storm?

Gazing at an ocean of black thunderheads seething around them, Kal remembered Master Ja’amba speaking of the Ancient Dragon, Fra’anior. ‘Speak his name with reverence, my son,’ the aged monk had warned. ‘For the seven-headed Black Dragon appears in the storm-clouds of his majesty, his voices roaring as thunder piled upon thunder, shaking the foundations of our Island-World. I sense the disbelief in your heart, young Kallion. The well of your spirit has run dry. Yet all must learn that the powers which govern our existence are mightier than we can imagine; aye, well must we learn, lest we be humbled and cast down.’

Thunder pummelled them incessantly, a brutal shaking of the shattered Dragoness. Lightning flashed constantly, crazed suns-bright bolts seared upon what seemed to be a cavern of malevolence which surrounded the twosome, as if the maw of the Great Dragon himself had engulfed the frailty of their souls.

Words rose within him. Strange, crazy words, coupled with emotions Kal could not name. In his mind’s eye he saw his brother monks standing in a wedge formation facing the suns-set, the thick, golden beams burnished their heads and bare bodies until two hundred ascetics turned into bronze statues. A humming rose, a paean of praise to the great Black Dragon, Fra’anior. And in the shadows, a watching thief felt the Island-World draw inward, stifling any sound, stealing the breath from his lungs, as though a presence of monstrous, unseen power pressed down upon his existence and the humming could not penetrate a syrupy thickness in the burning air …

Spit us out, Fra’anior,
Kal begged.
We are not worthy.

Tazithiel’s head jerked, bringing her wide, pain-dulled left eye to bear upon him.
What did you say?

Kal’s jaw almost struck his knees.

A canyon opened before them, cut deep through the clouds and lambent with suns-shine reflected off the obsidian edges of the storm-billows. Awestruck, Dragon and Rider gazed at the blue horizon. A way. Salvation. Hope shining through a sea of despair.

The Shapeshifter Dragoness whispered,
What the hells did you just instigate, Kal?

I-I-I …

This is power beyond measure!

Kal could only rub his eyes.
It wasn’t me, Tazi. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t me.

An Ancient Dragon irrupted the Island-World on the request of a felon? Hardly. Yet Kal froze the word ‘coincidence’ upon his tongue. That would be a temptation too far.

At length, the Dragoness muttered,
You are a strange, strange man
. She winged heavily along the cloud-canyon. Still the wind opposed them, yet the scent of hope was as heady perfume to their nostrils. A glowing late afternoon greeted the pair as the suns dipped behind the Yellow moon’s cratered bulk, a partial eclipse which occurred almost weekly. Wherever rain seeped from the heavy clouds, the suns created a masterful display of intersecting rainbows, so many that the vista reminded Kal of the myriad swarming butterflies of Fra’anior.

Easing his back, Kal said, “Any sight of land?”

“None.” Tazithiel eased into a long, slow glide, trying to conserve her strength. “We’ll make it, Kal. Don’t give up yet.”

Who was she trying to fool? Confronted by a hulking dozen guards in the strong-room of Tylis Indigabar, a wealthy warlord of Gatix Island in the Western Isles, Kal had told himself exactly the same. He had escaped a lynching that day only because one fool had blundered over the spring-trigger of a stake-filled pit, tumbling nine of his comrades to a miserable doom. The screams and confusion had provided cover enough to secure his escape.

Kal said, “You don’t need to prove your strength to me, Tazi.”

“No. Only to me.”

The Indigo Dragoness picked up her wingbeat.

Despite his best intentions, Kal dozed off shortly after nightfall, with no land yet in sight. He awoke to find himself dangling sideways half a mile above the Cloudlands.

“Sorry,” Tazi gasped, righting them with a groan. Her left wing folded immediately. She blurted out a word in Dragonish Kal had never heard, producing an impression of sizzling acid in his mind. “Oh, Kal, I’m sorry. Should have listened …”

“What’s wrong, Tazi? Can I help?” His voice sounded as though he spoke underwater, resounding against a pressure in his ears.

“You could sprout wings and flap along.”

“The only thing I flap is my lips, Tazi–constantly.”

She coughed out a laugh. “Pride aside, it’s bad. I’m about to fall out of the air. Nine years on a rock … not exactly flying fit. Thought I’d make it, but that storm … too powerful. How’s about you whistle up another miracle?”

“Fresh out of miracles, girl. Don’t give up. Humour my questions for a moment. What’s the precise issue?”

Between gasps of pain, Tazithiel explained that only the most powerful Dragons could fly more than two days on the wing. This was the seventh hour of night; their fifty-fifth hour on the wing, Kal calculated, just three hours short of two full days. From the stars, the Dragoness estimated their position as one hundred and forty leagues from the nearest land. A fit Dragon’s long-distance flying speed was approximately eight to ten leagues per hour, leaving at best a further half-day’s flying before they reached the nearest Island. She had exhausted her magic fighting the storm; it would replenish only with adequate rest, so her Kinetic power could no longer ease the slackening in her flight. Her body was wrung out, literally. A Dragon’s body cannibalised itself in long-distance passages, burning reserves including muscle mass and even parts of the internal organs to fuel the massive physical needs of Dragon flight. She would already have consumed over a third of her body mass, she estimated.

Kal blinked the tiredness out of his eyes, processing this deluge of information as rapidly as he was able. “All good,” he said. “Now, a non-flier’s question. Why can’t you keep flapping? Pain? Cramp? Or no energy?”

Tazi growled, “All three.”

“Would my mass provide sufficient nutrition to keep you–”

“Kal, I’m not a cannibal–Dragon fire take it!” Momentarily, fury boosted her wingbeat. “Why aren’t you blaming me? You should curse a granite-headed, arrogant Dragoness as she deserves. Kal, don’t you understand that my overweening pride is about to land us in the Cloudlands, and there’s nothing we can do about it?”

“Honestly, what would blaming you achieve?” Kal punched his own knee in frustration. “Look. I’ve a paltry few supplies. Eat these. It’s fruit, mostly. Try to gain some height. Then glide whilst replenishing your magic. We look out for windrocs to hunt–”

“Nothing else flies out here, Kal.”

“You open that jaw before I climb up there and open it myself!”

“Great Islands, I thought I was the one with prekki mush for brains.” But Tazithiel snapped up every flying fruit–some flung harder than was strictly justified–and his full waterskin as well. Swallowing immediately, she said, “And we gain a quarter-hour of life. What now, Kal?”

Finally, a grin cracked his grim expression. “We steal another fifteen minutes. Then another. I stand accused of being a thief, remember? Trust me.”

At first he thought she winced, but a soft keening sound, a hint of lamenting music Kal assumed must be Dragonsong, broke past her lips. The entire seventy-foot length of the Shapeshifter Dragoness shuddered into a stall. Cramp. Agony that curved her spine and momentarily snuffed out her eye-fires, before a curl of fire reignited within those alien orbs. Kal’s stomach lurched into his throat. He began to cry out, but Tazithiel forced her trembling, drooping wings outward, resuming a weak glide toward the pristine white Cloudlands.

Dragonish rasped in his mind,
Kal, give me whatever you have. Now. However irrational it is, I hear your thoughts zinging about like a thousand wasps …

Push your pain at me,
he ordered.

What?

The monks used to do … crazy things. Tell you another time. Push past the pain barrier, Tazithiel. Use me as a focus. In your mind, push the toxic pain out of yourself and into me.

Tazithiel wailed,
I can’t! If I succeed, I’ll kill you.

DO IT!
To their mutual surprise, Kal summoned a decent roar–perhaps as much as a Dragon hatchling might have managed.

No, no, no …

Burn it out, Tazithiel. Here, I open myself.

The monks had often spoken of opening themselves to the song of the Great Dragon, Fra’anior. Kal had always thought it a frivolous exercise, a discipline too esoteric for a man who preferred to admire religion from a safe distance. Yet he had seen a monk in training pierced clean through the torso with a sword. The man had not even blinked. How Kal wished he had heeded their instruction, now. Desperation was hardly a substitute for technique or knowledge, but it would have to suffice.

The Cloudlands drew closer. Kal scented gases on the breeze, a dank, acrid odour that minded him of rotting flesh. “Come on, Tazi. Use me to expiate your pain.” How could he trigger her understanding? “It’s like cleansing with Dragon fire. Picture Dragon fire sweeping–”

Kal’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. Fire! In the space between heartbeats, the alien fire of a Dragon’s pain seared his being. He jerked violently upon the saddle, his boots drumming an involuntary tattoo against her back.

She sobbed, “No! Kal! No, I can’t do this to you.”

“Again! More …”

Sacrifice. He sank his teeth into the arm of his jacket to prevent them cracking. Kal knew only a volcano of fire, the inferno of her pain convulsing his body, and the dim knowledge that somehow, the idea of her being a lightning-rod had mutated into his crazy notion of burning off her pain, that somehow even the toxins inhibiting her flight could be cheated, rerouted, and a small victory stolen from the jaws of death.

A burden shared was a burden halved, Fra’aniorian Islanders opined. As the Dragoness’ wingbeat steadied, Kal’s laughter burst past his clenched teeth. No miracles needed here, unless old-fashioned skulduggery counted! What would the monks say to his theology?

Leaning forward, he slapped Tazithiel on her ironclad left shoulder. “Strength to you, noble Dragoness. Ready for more?”

She bugled mellifluously, stretching for the night sky.

* * * *

Tazithiel’s landing at the boggy edge of a lake near a small town threw up a wall of water and mud as she skidded along on her belly, plowing a furrow several thousand feet long through bands of reeds. Rotten tree-stumps exploded at the force of her impact. Clouds of blue-banded mallards, lesser herons and black-billed charger storks fluttered about in a honking panic as the Dragoness thundered by. Rank mud cascaded over her back, splattering the vocally unhappy Rider until he resembled a stinking mud-statue.

Wham!
She struck something hard. Kal cracked his forehead on the spine spike ahead of him. His fingers came away bright with blood.

“Shake a tree and see a Dragoness fall out,” he muttered. “Stylish, Tazi.”

She did not budge.

Kal prodded her. “Arise, o sleeper! We’re alive.”

Reeking of mud and sweat, but o-so-joyously alive. Tired fingers fought the thigh and waist buckles until Kal freed himself. He gazed past her bent neck–freaking feral windrocs, she hadn’t broken her neck on that boulder, had she? No, a faint rumbling of belly-fires and the slow, rhythmic expansion and contraction of her lean flanks assured him that the Indigo Dragoness lived–sore and soiled, but two wings and four legs appeared to be intact. Mostly. He was surprised so rough a landing had not shaken every scale off her body.