Dragonfriend (45 page)

Half of the page was scorched, charred holes riddling the parchment as if worms had attacked a leaf. Flicker flinched at the shock and disappointment writ on her pallid face. He thought she might be sick.

He said,
Tuck it away for later, fire-eyes. We’ve your family to save.

Not straw-head?
Wretchedly, fingers trembling, she folded the parchment and secured it inside her belt pouch.

Never again,
said Flicker. But he felt the sting of having failed Lia. He must gather his courage, for to have her look so defeated again on his account would surely extinguish a dragonet’s fires.

They penetrated deeper into the strange Human warren. Flicker did not understand this Human desire to delve into the bowels of the Island to retrieve metals and stones of dubious value. Lesser Dragons loved treasure, but what would a dragonet want with cold stones which could never warm a warren? Give him twenty warren-mates any day.

They passed several guard posts by the expedient of sticking to the shadows and once, crawling beneath an iron gateway which could shut to seal off the inner part of the mine from the outer world, he presumed, but there was gap enough beneath it for an audacious dragonet and his petite Human companion. Hualiama had to remove her Nuyallith blades to fit through. Soon, the darkness assumed a ruddy glow, and they came to the edge of an enormous shaft riven into the living rock. Four square cages hung from thick chains, driven by winches and spindle-wheels the size of Dragons. Two counterbalanced pairs, Lia whispered to him. One cage travelled up while its running-mate travelled down.

The din was louder and closer. Furnaces roaring. Metal clanging. Shouts and curses, the crack of a whip. Heat shimmered down there, rising past their faces as though the shaft were a living volcano.

As they crouched behind a great wooden box filled with mining tools, examining the guarded cages, Lia said,
They must keep the slaves on this level. Look. Locked dungeon doors. Four levels, maybe more. How many slaves do they have working here?

A huge gong crashed somewhere below.

“Change of shift,” said one of the purple-clad soldiers. “Let’s get those slaves up here.”

Can we wait here?
Lia asked.

Grandion will attack in less than an hour,
Flicker reminded her.
Finding your family is of the utmost importance. I haven’t seen any other Dragons down here, though, so we might stand a chance.

Down we go,
said the Human girl.

Wait, here comes our chance.

Three men approached along a side passage, hauling a cart of what appeared to be water rations. They paused next to Lia’s hiding-place to have a short but rancorous argument with the guards at the transportation platforms. Unknown to them, they picked up two infiltrators in that short space of time. The cart rumbled forward and clanged onto the metal. With a deafening squeal of the winches, the platform began its slow descent, a thousand feet or more, into the caverns below.

The men stood about and griped about their lives in the mines, the toes of their steel-shod boots just inches from Hualiama’s nose beneath the cart, braced between the axles. Her eyes seemed preternaturally agleam in the gloom, Flicker thought. Just how much magic inhabited his lovely straw-head? No, not straw-head! When the dragonets sang this tale in the histories, she would be Lia Fire-Eyes, friend of Dragons.

They swung through the roof of a monstrous cavern lit by bulbous smelting pots and tens of roaring, open furnaces. Hundreds of men and women laboured down here.

Flicker bellied to the edge to look down.
Another shaft like this one leads further down,
he told Lia.
Heaps of Humans coming up. They look exhausted.

The dragonet crept back to Hualiama, feeling cowed. He heard more commands being shouted. Whips seared the air with cruel cracks. Ore thundered into tumbling or stirring machines incomprehensible to a dragonet. The miserable cries of Humans in pain darkened his fires, while clouds of steam and smoke created a pall over the scene.

Strength to you, noble dragonet,
Hualiama sent into his mind, accompanied by a picture of a dragonet wreathed in white fire, a golden circlet upon his head.

His fires sizzled. Lia knew him so well!

As the cage descended and the other rose to the top of the second shaft, fifty feet away, Hualiama and Flicker had a clear view of many pale, soot-blackened faces staring unseeing at the cavern. The Human girl stiffened with a soft cry. “Mother …”

“And how are we today, your kingship?” A soldier called, not unkindly, his voice carrying to where the pair hid. “Come on, the day’s work is done. Time to rest and sup. There’s more on the morrow.”

At least he’s not a beast,
said Lia.
I see Shyana and Fyria, and Ari, but where are Father and Elki? And Kalli, my oldest brother?

The slaves began to file out of the other cage, waiting their turn for the cage Hualiama and Flicker had taken down. Bracing her hands and feet across the gap between the cart’s axles, with Flicker gripping the wood with his talons, Lia clung on like a swamp leech as they bounced off roughly. A boulder smacked the Human girl’s rump as the cart jounced, scraping her loose. She yelped. Then, as the heavily-loaded cart rumbled forward, the royal ward tumbled out helplessly, snarling herself amongst the feet of the men pushing from behind.

There was a taut, shocked silence. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at the commotion.

“You!” shouted a man, grabbing Lia by her collar.

Flicker bit him in the calf muscle.

* * * *

Hualiama heaved free of the men with a flash of her throwing daggers, one in either hand. With a flip of a blade, she downed one of a trio of soldiers standing alongside the slaves. The second received a knife in the belly. Then, soldiers closed in from everywhere. Lia immediately drew the much longer Nuyallith blades and began her dance, springing lithely upon her first foe using the pouncing rajal technique, slitting his throat before he had time to raise his weapon; now spinning into a powerful, sideways double cut which gutted two soldiers, soaring above a wild cut to slash a man’s face on the way past. Thrust! Slide! She weaved among the flying blades. The dragonet screamed before her, firing tiny fireballs, so that it seemed that a single fire-spitting, blade-wielding creature of an impossible number of arms, legs and wings tore into Ra’aba’s soldiers.

Suddenly, Lia arrived at Queen Shyana’s toes.

“Mother,” she exclaimed softly, gripping the Queen’s arm.

The tall, graceful Queen of Fra’anior had never seemed more shocked. “Lia? My girl–it’s really you?”

“I came for you, mother!” Hualiama hugged her fiercely. “Now, grab a sword and help me.”

“What?” The Queen smiled uncertainly, ambushed by hope. “You brought Dragonships? Troops? You’re alive? My darling petal–warrior? What’s this outfit you’re wearing?”

“Mom! Explanations later!” Stooping, Hualiama robbed a fallen soldier of his sword and lobbed it to Ari. “Are you with me, brother?”

There was Elki–oh, great Islands! Shouting, “Every man grab a weapon!” her scamp of a brother grabbed Lia about the waist and planted a swift kiss on her cheek.

More soldiers charged them from the direction of the forges. Lia exchanged weapons with lightning speed. An arrow leaped to her bowstring.
Zip!
A man in that dozen-strong formation fell.

“For the King!” someone shouted.

“Sound the alarm!”

Hualiama drew and fired as fast as she could, downing four men before they fell upon the slaves, who had begun to scatter in search of weapons and soldiers to kill. A huge brawl developed as the slaves mobbed the soldiers, beating them down by sheer numbers. Pity those men.

“Fright at night!” said Elki, sword in hand. “Where’d you spring from, sister?”

“Get them on the platform and get moving!” she rapped at him. “If they close the gates up top, we’re finished. Where’s father?”

“Over there.” He pointed at the melee. “We’re all here except Kalli, who’s sick upstairs. Oh wow, would you look at Mom?”

Gentle, artistic Queen Shyana put her foot to a soldier’s belly to pull her blade free. Shouting orders, she herded slaves toward the platform.

“Arrows!” cried Lia, yanking Elki down.

Flicker took care of the archer, ripping out his throat with his claws. The dragonet fought like a swarm of maddened hornets. Anyone wearing a purple uniform seemed to be fair game. Hualiama helped Flicker with a stream of arrows, but he was causing enough trouble all on his own. Chuckling, she turned away, and rammed her head into her father’s breastbone.

“Lia.” King Chalcion’s eyes were as hollow as the cough that rattled his chest. “How come you’re alive?”

“That’s a story!” She threw her arms around him; the King patted her shoulder absently. “Briefly, we’re starting a rebellion to take back the Onyx Throne. With a little help.”

“But Ra’aba has Dragons.”

Exile had been unkind to her father, Lia thought. He looked little better than an ambulatory corpse. Perhaps the poisons of the deep mines did that to a person. She shoved the King toward the platform. “Will you get the family together, father?”

Was that thunder? Lia’s head snapped about. Queen Shyana bundled people onto the swaying platform, slapping shoulders and shoving anyone not moving fast enough for her liking. Aye, Dragon thunder without a doubt. Grandion had come, and not a moment too soon, because she heard an answering challenge reverberating somewhere in the depths of the caverns. It sounded large and decidedly unimpressed.

“La-La!” A muscular pair of arms picked her up off the ground.

“Little brother,” she smiled at her dark-haired brother. At just nine years old, her brother Fa’arrion or Ari for short–whom her father called ‘the simpleton’–was already four inches taller than her and twice her weight. “It’s me.”

“La-La die?”

“La-La is definitely alive. Now get on that platform before I put you over my knee.”

“’Oke?” He seemed confused.

“Just a joke,” Lia agreed. “Help Mom, Ari. Get this platform moving.”

Ari ran to apply his muscle to the levers. The winches groaned and began to rotate.

Lia scanned the cavern. Where was that Dragon? They would be meat on a mobile grill-rack if a Dragon caught them before they reached the top.

Elki screamed at her, “Lia! Come on!”

Taking five running steps, Lia launched into a vertical leap for the rising platform. Leaning dangerously over the side-rail, her brother caught her wrist. She swung on board. Arrows pinged the underside of their platform, but there were still slaves down below battling with the soldiers, some of whom appeared to have switched sides. Hualiama wished she could go back for them, but the King and her family came first.

Flicker, will you fly ahead and see if you can delay the gates from being shut?

“Is that a dragonet?” asked Elki, peering upward.

“Aye. All the way from … uh, Fra’anior,” she said. Flying ralti sheep, she needed to start watching her tongue. Lia made a curtailed courtly bow. “Islands’ greetings, Prince of Fra’anior.”

“You silly girl!” he laughed, throwing his arm around her shoulders. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. A month or two back, Ra’aba visited and took great pleasure in recounting for us how he threw you off his Dragonship. Now you pop up here like the proverbial white rajal kitten, all fluff and vicious claws, and decide to mount a rescue?”

She chuckled at his turn of phrase. “I didn’t like being dead, Elki. Flying like a wasp up Ra’aba’s left nostril seemed to offer better entertainment. Watch out!”

Everyone ducked reflexively as a body came hurtling down from above, narrowly missing the platform. Lia gazed upward. Just a few hundred feet left. They might just make it. Then, the unmistakable clang of a heavy gate sounded from above. She had barely begun to exclaim in frustration when from below, a monstrous growl shook the platform and its chains.

A stalwart, hundred-foot Green Dragon pursued them up the mine shaft.

Hualiama slung the Haozi hunting bow off her shoulder. Perhaps she could strike an eye or a nostril before that Green Dragon caught them–or worse, melted them in a puddle of acid. The distinct crack of Grandion’s lightning attack lit the tunnel way overhead, above the winches. Lia gasped as her head turned reflexively toward the sound. Two more Greens! How were they ever going to escape this Dragon trap? Two above, one below … no time for inane thoughts. Drawing the bow to her limit, Lia aimed downward, past the massive chains, to ping the Green Dragon’s nose with an arrow. It ricocheted off his armoured scales. She immediately sent another arrow after the first, but he crisped it with a fireball that rushed toward them, but was already expiring by the time it struck the platform.

“Come to Gaffazor, little Humans!” roared the Green.

Hualiama called, “Ready to jump, everyone? Get under cover–any cover you can.”

The cage bumped to a halt. Lia saw the gates, closed. There was Flicker, scratching at the face of a soldier behind the bars, another lining up a bowshot at her friend. So many! They had sealed off the exit, just as she had feared. Arrows spat toward them. Leaping over the railing, Lia fired a reflex shot at the man threatening Flicker, catching him in the upper thigh.

“Go! Take cover!”

The Humans surged off the platform, led by Queen Shyana and Elki. “Down this corridor,” shouted the Queen.

Hualiama knelt behind the large toolbox, and set herself the task of picking off soldiers behind the gate. Meanwhile, a group of forty or fifty people scrambled down the corridor, spilling into the slaves’ living quarters. What now? Dragons growled and clashed in the shaft, the cough of their fireballs like hollow thunder. The Greens made a different, wetter sound. Acid spit?

Grandion thundered,
DIE, GREEN SLUG!

That was her Dragon!

Aware of a lunatic grin curving her lips, Lia drove the soldiers back with a flurry of arrows. Right behind her, Gaffazor’s claws gripped the edge of the shaft, forcing her to leap aside or face being crushed between talon and stone.