Dragonfriend (17 page)

He made to pick out a chord, when the entire apprentice class yelled, “Stand up!”

“Oh, aye, up on this bench,” he said.

Lia bit the inside of her cheek as she took Ja’al’s hand to climb up onto the bench. He had elegant hands, which seemed to betray the gentility of his heart, and her disloyal fingers lingered on his before she allowed her hand to drop.

With a flash of those depthless eyes, Ja’al said, “And …”

“We can’t see her!”

“Aren’t they so mean?” he whispered to Lia, under cover of the laughter filling their great underground hall. “Up on the table with you.”

Oh, she was definitely going to have Amaryllion visit! Cheeks burning fit to combust, Lia stepped up onto the long trestle table. There was worse to come.

Their final dare was to kiss Master Jo’el on the cheek.

O
N the evening
of her rest day, four weeks later, Lia sat on the highest point of the volcano’s rim wall, resting her back against a boulder. To her left hand, the still crater-lake collected the last ruddy fires of suns-set, as darkly mysterious as Ja’al’s eyes, yet gilded with strands of twin-suns fire. Dragonets dive-bombed the waters in search of fish. Close at hand, she saw a mother dragonet teaching three hatchlings the basics of flight, angling her wings in an instructional manner. To her right hand, the tangled green wall of Ha’athior Island, four miles from its base to the cooler heights up top, curved away northward until it grew misted with distance and height. She could never tire of this view.

Moodily, she wondered which females Flicker was chasing this time.

She was stuck in a volcano stuffed to the rim with gorgeous, fit young monks, all of whom intended to make vows to the Great Dragon. Picking up a small stone, Lia lobbed it crossly into the lake. Celibacy. What was the point, as Flicker had inquired, a trifle archly? She admired their religion. They were so dedicated and frugal, and yet in an indefinable way, full of life and Dragon fire. She could not spoil that. Not even if she knew that her great Dragon, Amaryllion, wanted no worship.

Her Ancient Dragon? My, how the idea tickled her tongue. His counsel that morning had been to be patient, to bide her time and learn from the monks. Ha. He obviously had neither seen her daily humiliation in the arena, nor fathomed the storms in her heart whenever she dared to consider her family’s fate.

A soft footfall made Lia startle. “Ja’al.”

Gathering his robe about him, the young monk sat down on the boulder beside her, almost but not quite touching her arm. “Islands’ greetings, Princess,” he said, drolly. “To which Islands do thy thoughts soar?”

Lia kept her eyes downcast. “Tomorrow’s expedition.”

“Ah. We go to find the Nameless Man. If you’re wondering, Master Jo’el has assigned you the twin slabs of granite as bodyguards.”

“Not you?”

“Why, am I nicer than them?”

He said it lightly, but tension roiled beneath his words. “It hurts my neck to look up at Hallon and Rallon,” she returned, aware of a similar undercurrent in her tone. “Do I understand that you hail from Ya’arriol Island?”

“Aye. Hua’gon and I come from a family of ten brothers. He’s the oldest, and I am five years younger, the fourth in our clan. You’ll get to meet them all.”

“Oh.”

Somehow, Lia had imagined that Ja’al would be an orphan, like her. Had he entered the Great Dragon’s service out of choice rather than necessity? So yawned the gap between their lives. The gentle excitement in his voice told her that Ja’al had a family who loved him, and parents who had not dumped him on Gi’ishior for Dragon-fodder. He had no appreciation of how deep her soul-scars reached–and better he did not, Lia told herself. She could never wish this on anyone else.

“I see you’re wearing a Dragon’s scale,” said Ja’al.

Lia chuckled, “It’s a White Dragoness’ scale. It took me two months to figure out how to bore a hole through it.” At his upraised eyebrow, she explained, “Master To’ibbik showed me how to build a diamond-tipped bore. That’s the only way to penetrate a Dragon’s scale without enormous force, and it still took three hours of drilling. Now I have a unique necklace.”

“As if you need outward adornment,” he remarked. “It suits you.” Lia failed to deny a blush from sizzling upward from the region of her belly, but he did not appear to notice. “Lia, where do you go on these days off?”

“I wish I could say,” she retorted, rather less apologetically than she had intended.

Her companion sighed. “I have to admit, it’s weird having a girl in the monastery. I don’t know what I expected–a spoiled brat, perhaps–”

“What?”

“Easy, dragonet!” he placated her. “Perhaps, a Princess who had no idea what it might be like to blister her hands from hard work, or take a blow to the ribs and get up again. Great Islands, was I wrong. Just when I think I’ve understood something about you, Lia, I discover there’s another layer beneath a layer.”

“I’m not deliberately hiding–”

“No. But you do have secrets. Your ability to speak Dragonish, for example.”

Lia opened and closed her mouth like a trout sieving water for food. The deep blue of his eyes captivated her, causing her to shiver despite the warmth of the breeze. How had he guessed?

Ja’al said, “Lia, there’s something came to tell you. Please don’t hate me.”

“I wouldn’t.” Hualiama bit her lip, wondering at the melancholy undertone in his words. If he was building up to a confession of love–was this not a strange approach? Yet he had sought a time for them to be alone together.

“Lia …” he groaned softly, sounding so anguished that the wound in her stomach twinged. “Lia, when we return from Ya’arriol Island, I will be taking my vows.”

At once, she replied, “That’s fantastic, Ja’al. I’m so pleased for you.”

Her lie sounded so pathetic, she was surprised he did not snort his contempt.

Instead, with sober mien, the monk noted, “I respect you too much for there to be secrets between us, Lia, and I hope that you respect me equally. You see, when you say you dream of Dragons–let me put it this way–my powers give me insight into your feelings. You struggle to conceal your heart for my sake. It is so very principled of you, I want to weep–for I am irrevocably committed to the Great Dragon’s service.”

Fragile her hopes, and so easily shattered. Lia stared at her toes, fighting a tearful fury that threatened to completely unravel her. Ja’al–toss him into a Cloudlands volcano! His hand rested upon her arm, briefly, a touch that made her tingle as though an electrical storm brewed around her. Life’s tempests. Here came yet another, roaring over her in full spate. Loneliness. Fear for her family. Jealousy, truth be told, that Ja’al should choose his vows over her. Was she forever fated to be little Lia, her Island passed over by all?

Bleakly, she said, “Some secrets are not given to us to reveal, Ja’al.”

“Aye. But to some, it is given to love.”

Love? Now, of all times, he dared …
that
word? She erupted, “You try to keep loving when life drags your heart through lava flows and tosses it off the Island!”

“Lia–”

“Don’t Lia me!” she snapped. “Don’t you see how hard I’ve tried, Ja’al? Islands’ sakes, you infuriate me like nothing I’ve ever … I do respect you. Admire you, even. I’ll tell you a secret, and may Fra’anior himself have mercy upon my soul–I don’t just dream about Dragons. I dream about flying with them. I dream of falling over the Islands in love with a Dragon!”

She sought to shock the young monk, yet all she saw in the deep blue pools of his eyes was acceptance, and it shivered the foundations of her Island. How dare he understand? How dare he be so cursed noble, standing immovable upon the peak of his religion, yet be exquisitely attuned to her feelings and needs?

Molten fury, mingled with shame, spat out of her. “Go on, say it! I’m depraved. I’m a wicked, wicked … aberration. I deserve to burn in the nearest volcano!”

“Shh.”

“So help me, I will bite those fingers!” Lia snarled around his hand, spitting with rage at being hushed like a child.

“Listen. Listen to me! Mercy, you and your passions, you’re such a little Dragoness!” Only Ja’al’s wry smile kept her from blowing her top again. “Tell me, where’s the sin in great love?”

Hualiama wrinkled her nose at him. “Must I teach you the tenets of your faith, monk?”

“Lia, my faith isn’t unshakable.”

The words he left unspoken, hurt more than he could possibly know. Ja’al meant it kindly and without rancour, but the vulnerability in his manner trumpeted his true, conflicted feelings. She was the nexus. The cause and the pain. How could she drag him away from the very faith that defined his life? She should rather leap off Ha’athior’s cliffs!

Suddenly, a decision crystallised in her mind. Should Amaryllion allow it, she would take Ja’al to meet the Ancient Dragon. He deserved no less.

Unsteadily, desperate to conceal her distress, Hualiama said, “As you are so committed to your vows, Ja’al, perhaps I might help you to develop your faith.”

“Oh? How is that?”

“I shall wake you in the mornings with sweet flirtation, make shameless moon-eyes at you every hour of every day, and attempt in every possible way–”

“I surrender already!” His exaggerated shout of horror drew a hoot of genuine laughter from her. “Oh, thou shameless Princess, what faith shall I learn by my inevitable capitulation to your charms? Nay, not the pout! I can’t stand the pout.”

“Then I must depart the monastery.”

“I forbid that.”

“Really?” Lia waggled an eyebrow at him. “Your name is Master Jo’el?”

Ja’al folded his arms, his eyes dancing. “Any other options?”

“I shall issue a royal decree that you are to wear your shirt at all times, for no chaste and incorruptible monk should have a right to flaunt such a magnificent set of pectorals.”

She had thought Ja’al could not be embarrassed. Flaming of cheek, he toppled her with a playful shove. “You are impossible–great Islands!”

A Dragon shot by overhead. He was so close, the down-stroke of the Dragon’s wingtip struck Ja’al atop his shaven head. Barely had the young monk tumbled across Lia’s body–protecting her–when another two Dragons raced by in hot pursuit, the shockwave of their passage punching her eardrums.

The first Dragon, a sixty-five foot juvenile, flared his wings as he dodged the aggressors’ fireballs. Recognition struck Hualiama like an Island-avalanche loosed by an earthquake; her pulse pounded inside her ears with deafening hammer blows. That young Dragon was a vibrant gemstone colour, the very Tourmaline Dragon she had dreamed about!

Horror piqued her gorge. She knew what was to come.

The foremost pursuer wheeled with breathtaking agility to strike the youngster with his talons. Lia choked. Oh mercy, her soul should perish … it was the huge Orange Dragon who had attacked her, the one whose scarred muzzle reminded her so lucidly of Ra’aba! She would never forget him. The second aggressor, raking the Tourmaline Dragon’s wings with his talons, was an even more massive Brown. The battling reptiles clashed with monstrous power, snarling and biting each other, fangs agape. Fireballs seared the evening sky. Ja’al and Lia ducked involuntarily as the ferocious melee abruptly swept back toward their position. Despite lying beside a boulder, their exposed location was perilous. Molten fire splashed the ground not ten feet away, so close that the heat sucked their lungs dry. Bushes crisped instantly.

Dragon thunder rolled over the chasm between the Islands. Battling two Dragons half again his size and weight–hundred-foot monsters–the Tourmaline Dragon was being chewed up, despite his most valiant efforts. Lia found herself unable to tear her eyes from the aerial combatants. So powerful! So majestic! How could a smaller Dragon even hold those two at bay? The juvenile fought with the strength of ten, punching with his claws and biting and shaking the larger Dragons off time and time again … but he was tiring. He suffered a vicious bite to the base of his tail, and now another that wrenched his wing, slewing him in the air.

In the space between heartbeats, Lia’s breath sucked into a new, cavernous space. A soul-shift caught her unawares. Suddenly, she knew pain and gasping breaths and the prodigious boiling of Dragon passions in her breast. Blood-thirst! Battle-rage! The inrush of senses so sensitive and all-consuming that her little Human heart feared to burst. A veil slipped over her eyes. Lia saw the world in enchanted freshness, a hiatus of time as
she
became
he
, and her Dragon’s neck snaked about with great cunning, spraying fire into the Brown’s face. Enjoying a surfeit of time, she flipped about in the air to strike the Orange Dragon a talon-blow that opened a ten-foot gash on his neck. Her challenge boomed off the cliff-side. She mauled the Brown’s neck and hindquarters with claws that suddenly became
his
again and she yelped, ejected by an eruption of draconic rage.

How dare you?
The Tourmaline’s suns-white fury lashed her mind. All was fire. All was incandescent agony … the connection chopped off as the Brown Dragon thundered back into the fray, striking such a devastating blow with his left forepaw that the young Tourmaline shuddered from muzzle to tail. He sagged in the air before catching himself no more than a decent spear-cast from Hualiama’s position. The breeze generated by his wing-strokes ruffled her hair.

“No,” Lia moaned. “Don’t kill me …” Him? Did she mean him? Confusion and disbelief surge as a dark tide through her mind, underpinning a rising song of grief at the Dragon’s impending doom.

The Orange Dragon’s flame spurted out, lava-like. It stuck to the blue scales, burning the Dragon terribly, a scream of anguish cutting her soul to ribbons … the Tourmaline broke away with a supreme outpouring of strength, flying raggedly … he shot into a cavern in the lower mountainside of Ha’athior Island, and vanished in the blink of an eye.

The Orange Dragon thundered,
Bring it down, Yulgaz. Bury him.

Aghast, Hualiama became an unwilling spectator to the enactment of her dream. Her scalp crawled; so surreal the moment, she knew it would be seared on her memory forever.