Dragonfriend (2 page)

She turned to face Ra’aba, despite the nadir of pain devastating her body. She raised her blade with a supreme effort. Lia hissed, “I’m ready.”

The Roc nodded, raising his blade to his forehead in an ironic salute to her bravery. He said, “Perhaps it is better this way.”

Lia stumbled into the attack, swinging her blade in looping blow, so sluggish that it seemed she fought underwater. Captain Ra’aba had no such difficulty. Sidestepping adroitly, he punched his left fist into her stomach.

His hand clasped a dagger.

The pain cut her in half. It felt as though her spine had been severed, for Lia lost all feeling in her legs. Only Captain Ra’aba’s iron grip held her upright, folded over the impaling blade. The sword clattered to the floor. Her lungs heaved for air. With each breath pain shot up her spine and tore into her skull like a blood-frenzied Dragon’s claws.

“Foolish girl,” he said.

She wheezed, “Why?”

Ignoring her, Ra’aba nodded at two of his troops. “You two. Throw this piece of trash overboard.”

His voice echoed as though he had shouted down a darkening tunnel. She had to move, to speak, but she was powerless. Lia knew she had to save her family. How odd, an inner voice said. Her life was not meant to end like this. As the Captain dragged her toward the doorway, spitting furiously at his unwilling soldiers, she met Fyria’s tear-filled eyes. The Princess must have thought being hauled out of the Palace in chains was the worst imaginable fate.

A brutal education.

Outside the cabin, the warm, fragrant winds of her beloved Fra’anior ruffled her hair. The Island-World seemed ablaze in fresh and miraculous colours, as though a Dragon’s breath infused all with mysterious wisps of white-golden fire, and in the slowing of time between her heartbeats, Hualiama understood not only that there was magic in the world, but that it pervaded everything she perceived, touched and smelled. The taste on her tongue was its fiery signature. She breathed, and an inrush of fire seared her spirit, yet conversely, brought an unexpected sense of serenity. The fire cleansed without consuming, a touch of love rather than torment. Was this a memory, or a fragment of insight garnered as her soul readied itself for an eternal flight?

Inanely, Lia realised that the soldiers had torn her headscarf away. She was improperly dressed.

The Roc lifted her five feet and two inches frame with ease. As he manhandled her toward the safety railing which lined the gantry beneath the Dragonship’s hundred-and-fifty-foot hydrogen balloon, Lia saw the unmistakable profile of Ha’athior Island’s double volcanic cone abaft their starboard beam. Ahead and several miles below lay a tiny side-volcano, nestled against its parent like a Dragon hatchling taking comfort against an enormous mother’s flank. After that? Crimson-tinged Cloudlands lapped unbroken from the Islands to the horizon’s skirts, a deathly carpet clothed in immeasurable, brooding majesty.

Strange. She had always wanted to experience Dragon flight.

The touch of cool metal against her back provoked a sudden, final outpouring of strength. Reaching behind her, Hualiama caught her long braid in her fingertips.

“Any birthday wishes, little Lia?” chuckled Captain Ra’aba.

“Rot in–” she inhaled sharply, choking on blood “–a Cloudlands hell.” Reaching up, Lia jabbed her three-inch long, razor-sharp hairpin into his windpipe, several inches below his left jawbone.

He wheezed, “You …”

As Ra’aba recoiled, the flailing of his arms tumbled her over the edge. Lia screamed endlessly as she fell through the ruddy beams of a perfect Fra’aniorian suns-set.

W
HEN a Scream
split the early evening sky, a dragonet lurking nearby almost spilled his mouthful of lemur intestines. What? He hated to be distracted from the spoils of his hunt. His green eyes narrowed against the glare of the sky-fires, the eyes of the Great Dragon which seared the world with their unrelenting gaze. One of those two-legged ground-creepers was trying to fly? Loops of grey intestines dangled either side of his jaw as he gaped at this spectacle. The creature thrashed its spindly, useless appendages as it plummeted from one of their fat flying balloons.

How awkward and ungainly! Imagine trying to fly with no wings?

A premonition prickled his scales. The dragonet’s mirthful gurgle snagged in his throat, replaced by a hissing stream of fire. Wrongness. The thin wail of the creature’s terror.

Before he knew it, Flicker sprang off the obsidian boulder he had adopted as his table, knocking his favourite meal into a patch of nearby jiista-berry bushes. He flapped his wings madly, taking him over a rocky outcropping before a neat flip upended him. Tail jutting skyward, he chased the creature down the four-mile vertical cliff which demarcated the south-western periphery of Ha’athior Island. Faster! Pump the wings! In seconds he whipped by acres of lush overhanging trees, a dozen dark-mouthed caves and a flight of red dragonets practising their song-dance of praise to the Magma Dragon, which roared beneath the roots of their Island.

At two and a half feet in wingspan, and just under two feet from muzzle to tail-spike, Flicker was no unusual size for a dragonet of his nine summers of age, but his smoky green colour was unique amongst his kin. His egg-mother certainly thought him very strange, especially how he studied the ways of the creatures above the cliffs.
It’s dangerous for dragonets up there,
she scolded him.
The two-legs put dragonets in metal cages.

What a horror!

But the mighty Dragons of the mountain peaks sang to his spirit, and the doings of the two-legs were endlessly fascinating. How could such stupid, flightless creatures force metal and stone to bend to their will? They made absurd squiggles on animal-skin scrolls, and were so hopeless at hunting, they had to keep giant ralti sheep penned up next to their stone warrens. They travelled with their clumsy flying balloons and fought other Human warrens with metal sticks, instead of working together under a warren-mother’s wise guidance.

Well, this one’s idiocy had to trump them all.

A strange-smelling red liquid splattered his face as he tucked his wings in to accelerate, just a few tens of feet away from the creature now as it tumbled into the void. Flicker gasped with the effort. If it could just slow a little, maybe extend that skin covering to make wings, the creature might slow its headlong fall. It made another screeching noise which set his fangs on edge.

Down, down it fell. The cliffs blurred past, the heat increasing by the second, the rocks and long, trailing vines flashing past his wingtips. Flicker inched closer, measuring the creature’s trajectory. It would strike near the base of the cliff, splattering its brains out on the slope before being picked over by windrocs and other aerial predators. Would its brains make a tasty meal?

Regardless, his seventh sense impelled the dragonet onward. He had to save this creature.

Reaching out with his paws, Flicker gripped the creature’s body covering and began to flap mightily. Great eternal fires, it flew like a rock! It did not even pretend to help. Obstinately, he struggled on, ignoring the pain in his wings and joints. If he could just change the angles enough, drag it a few more feet in the air … foliage slapped his cheek. More! With a scream of his own, the dragonet allowed his wings to cup the air, slowing them at the expense of a tearing sensation in his major flight muscles.

Whap!
They slammed into a leafy branch, bursting right through it in a spray of greenery. The creature hurtled through a patch of tangled vines, stripping them in an explosion of ripe fruit and a flurry of leaves. The resulting rotation almost flung him free, but Flicker was not done. He dug his claws into the creature’s soft flesh, and flared his wings again.

Another, sturdier branch smacked the creature in the side. Thankfully he missed that one, but lower down, there was a huge branch overhanging the red-hot lava flows a mile below. So low already! Right in the danger zone, beyond which even dragonets feared to venture. This was his last chance. Flap, flap and flap again! Wrench this lumpen creature by any means possible into the right trajectory, screaming, muscles burning, magic assisting …
thump!
They bounced. Rebounded twice more, and then lay swaying on a broken, leafy bed.

Flicker opened and closed his jaw.

I am awesome,
he told himself, and fainted.

* * * *

When he woke, a volcanic twilight enflamed his world in auburn and gold hues. Flicker began to stretch before stopping with a grimace. Unholy monkey droppings, what a bad idea. He eased his wings. No more flying for him, not for several days, he suspected.

Oh … the creature lay right next to him, face-up to the blushing skies, breathing shallowly. It had a green cloth covering on its body, and a large patch of crimson stained its stomach area. Was that its blood? He flinched. Grotesque! Not even a hint of gold, unlike the blood of Dragons.

Wake up, weird creature,
he chirped.

It did not move.

Flicker stretched out a paw curiously, hesitated, and then pricked its limb with his talon. How daring was he? The creature’s skin was so supple, it yielded immediately to his touch. More red welled up. He winced. What was the matter with its hide? It didn’t have hide? Now, what word had the scrolls used? Skin, yes. He rolled the unfamiliar word across his forked tongue. They had skin, not Dragon hide, a covering so smooth and colourless it reminded him of a newborn, blind rodent. His stomach-fires soughed uneasily. Its limbs were long but supported no wing struts or elastic membranes. How could it have hoped to fly?

Instinctively, his tongue flicked out to taste the creature’s blood, finding it rich and metallic, full of enigmatic undertones. Without warning, a vision struck him. A big creature beat this smaller one with a flat piece of metal. They exchanged meaningless sounds. The little one attacked, but it was not as powerful a beast as the one with the fungal growth on its face. The big one stuck a shard of metal into this one’s stomach.

Flicker’s throat swelled. Murder? A fight to the death?

Was this creature a female of their kind, rather than a handsome male like him?

By the fires of the Ancient Dragons, she had to be the ugliest female of a species he had ever encountered! Flicker shifted closer to examine her face, fascinated and repelled in equal measure. When she sighed and shifted, he shrank back, all three hearts tripping along, but then she made a purring sound like a sleeping dragonet. Well! What a foolish idea, sleeping outdoors at night. Perhaps she was as stupid as she was ugly? Just look at her flat, squashed muzzle, and her tiny nose. How could she scent food with that thing? Strange blades of grass sprouted from her head, grass as pale and golden as the wisps that grew lower down the cliffs, near the caldera, bleached by the heat and gases. Her paws had talons, but they were weak and clearly impractical for rending her prey.

The dragonet cocked his head to one side, his eyes roiling with Dragon fire.
Well, you’re not dead,
he said, speaking Dragonish telepathically.
Say, ‘thank you for rescuing me, Flicker.’

She snored.

He tried speaking aloud.
I do declare, you’re the bravest, most beautiful dragonet in this entire Island-Cluster, Flicker. I am eternally in your debt.

Drool slipped from the corner of her mouth; saliva laced with more of her freakish blood.

She was wounded, probably dying! Her body fluids oozed forth steadily–and he prattled on like an empty-headed parakeet about his looks? Abruptly, Flicker retreated, muttering,
I’ve done you wrong, strange creature.

That night, sore-pawed and even sorer of wing and muscle, he hunted up and down the cliffs for the herbs and roots he needed. Using several broad fli’iara leaves as his worktable, the dragonet shredded and prepared his materials, making a selection of poultices which he masticated carefully in his mouth, adding his highly antiseptic dragonet saliva to the mashing process, and no small dose of magic. The Ancient One had taught him well.

Only, would his medicines work on one of their kind?

Flicker eyed the branch judiciously. At least he had picked an excellent landing place. The branch jutted four hundred horizontal feet from the main Island, but had a soft, leafy crown which he had picked out perfectly. He blinked his double eye-membranes several times, showing his happiness. Even this clumsy female could not easily fall from their nest among the leaves, although he worried about windrocs, vultures and feral Dragons, to name just a few aerial predators.

His deft paws made short work of tearing her covering and pulling it aside, revealing a deep double puncture wound in her belly. Nasty. He drew out the shard of metal which had made the wound, before licking the site clean with care. The dragonet wrinkled his nose at the odour of her skin. She tasted salty. At least it was not a foul taste, but he decided he should wash out his mouth at the first opportunity. No telling what unmentionable diseases her kind might carry.

The dragonet stuffed the holes full of his most potent healing mixture. There, that should stop her leaking. Muttering fussily to himself, Flicker covered the wound’s open lips with another poultice, before checking the rest of her body for further wounds. She had an impressive collection.

Just let the Ancient One see him now!

Since no other creature was nearby to express due admiration, he congratulated himself,
Ha, I’ve saved the life of a two-legged straw-head, a mighty and worthy deed!

By the radiant light of the Yellow moon, Iridith, which covered half of the southern horizon, Flicker saw that the branches beneath her body were slick with blood. He sighed. What dragonet had a chance of lifting such a lump of flesh? How demeaning, now he had to crawl through the branches beneath her body to find where else she was wounded.

The gash on her back, however, made his fiery eyes darken with anger. See what that fungus-faced, mange-ridden rat had done! A flap of skin roughly the size of his right wing hung loose from her back, torn and dirty, already attracting flies. How did flies find an open wound so quickly? By the stench of her blood? If he did not treat this, she would be infested with maggots before the next Blue moon. Admittedly, maggots tasted much like lemur meat, they were just squishier. Yum.