Shadow Dragon (10 page)

She heard the twang of a bowstring. An arrow lodged in the Dragon’s belly, but did not appear to do any damage. Deliberately, Harathion aimed a fireball at her father’s Dragonship.

You overgrown ape!
Aranya shouted. Harathion’s head jerked, making him miss the shot.

With a tail-whiplash of her own, Aranya nipped around Harathion using a backflip manoeuvre Sapphire was fond of. As a forty-foot Dragon, she was not nearly as agile in the air, but it took her outside his field of sight for a vital instant. Aranya’s forepaws smashed into the Green Dragon’s left wing, breaking flight struts and tearing through the membrane in numerous places. Harathion howled fit to split the skies. She was so intent on her attack, so awed at the taste of Dragon blood, that she did not see his lashing tail in time.

Pain burst into her chest. Coughing, choking and wheezing, Aranya saw black. A searing fire bit her shoulder; a sword-like claw embedded there. She ripped herself free by instinct, dropping fifty feet to avoid the disembowelling thrust of his massive hind claws.

“Aranya? Aranya?” cried Yolathion.

“I’m … fine.”

“You’re bleeding masses,” he said, adding a few colourful epithets aimed at the Green Dragon.

“Not as badly as him.”

Aranya had made an impressive mess of the middle of Harathion’s wing. But he still had enough wing surface left to keep aloft. Golden Dragon blood poured out of the major wing arteries. His long neck snaked as he oriented on them now, abandoning any pretence of struggling or age. Harathion drove forward with abundant power.

Chase this, you disgusting slob.
The Amethyst Dragon executed a rapid turn, avoiding his rush. But her pursuer cocked his head sideways and sprayed a fine green mist across her flight path. There was so much, she could not avoid it all.

“Poison!” shouted Yolathion.

Aranya writhed in an attempt to protect her Rider. Her hindquarters swished through the fine mist. Smoke rose from her scales as a horrific fizzing sound came to her ears. Acid! She had forgotten this most potent Green Dragon attack. How could she stop it? The scales bubbled as the powerful acid burned through to the sensitive nerves beneath. Aranya’s shriek of anguish drowned out the sounds of the battle.

Dimly, she heard Yolathion shouting, “Water. There, fly to the water!”

Aranya folded her wings and dived for the small lake, just a couple of hundred yards from the fortress walls. She landed hard, dashing water in all directions. The relief was instantaneous. Cool water washed over her burns. For a moment, she enjoyed the respite. Then, she summoned her courage and launched herself upward, sheeting water from her Dragon hide. The Green Dragon’s acid had set every nerve in her back and legs on fire. Aranya remembered what Nak had taught her. Use the pain. Flow with it. Use her hurts to sharpen the Dragon powers.

Strength flooded her muscles. Yolathion gasped as Aranya assaulted the skies. Perhaps he had thought her beaten. That too was fuel to her fires. Her three hearts pounded as a familiar potential gathered in her belly, a certain tightness that spoke of the power coalescing there, a thrumming in her ears that she suddenly realised was her body preparing for an attack–the sphincter muscles in her ear canals tightening to protect the highly sensitive Dragon eardrums.

“Shield your ears,” she threw over her shoulder.

Yolathion just stared at her foolishly.

Now she opened her mouth, careful to conceal the power she hid.
You flabby green slug,
Aranya called up to Harathion.
You fly like a colossal lump of snot!

The massive Green’s eyes bulged. As the smaller Amethyst Dragoness flew straight at him, she saw a secretive smile curve his lips. His cheeks flexed ever so slightly to expel a thin, almost invisible stream of acid.

Aranya’s storm-generated bellow struck him like a thunderclap, a wall of air that slapped the acid back in his face and shovelled it down his throat. Harathion’s wings quivered helplessly as the high winds thrust him backward. Aranya gathered her magic, drawing it together, concentrating the storm forces within her being. As his mouth gaped open to take his next breath, she fired a brilliant blue fireball straight down his gullet.

Thump.
A muffled explosion shuddered Harathion from muzzle to tail. For an unending, awful moment, as the Green Dragon kept flapping his wings, Aranya thought her plan had failed. Then a burst of sapphire fire lit his scales from beneath. An expression of faint amazement crooked his mouth.

Harathion dropped from the sky, dead.

* * * *

King Beran placed a small stool next to Aranya’s bunk and seated himself stiffly. “Getting too old for this battle nonsense,” he grunted.

“Dad, you’re only fifty-three summers–”

“And I feel about eighty after a night spent thumping Sylakians.” Beran eyed his daughter, lying on her stomach beneath a thin sheet. “Alright, Sparky?”

“Sore,” she admitted. “My healing power has eased the worst of the acid burns, but I still needed half a pot of numb-wort for the pain. The medic was decidedly grumpy.”

“By the mountains of Immadia, when that Green Dragon rose–”

“You thought, ‘My daughter’s going to have that flying ralti sheep for breakfast’, right?”

Beran’s eyes twinkled at her enthusiastic interjection. He said, “I discovered that fathers can fear for their Dragon-daughters. How did you defeat him? When you landed in the lake, I swear I had to fish my heart out of the Cloudlands. And then you rose glorious and compelling and I knew–I just
knew
–that you’d kill him. Foolish, aren’t I?”

Never foolish, she thought, letting her eyes communicate her pride and gratitude. She said, “How did you know, Dad?”

“Your spirit was greater than his.” Aranya shivered. After a long silence, he touched her chin. “You’re catching flies, Sparky. Come, teach me about fighting Dragons.”

“Well, I spoke to him in Dragonish. Harathion was evil, Dad. He said he was Thoralian’s great-uncle. When he laughed … well, he can’t possibly have been the one Fra’anior mentioned. I hope not. Harathion was so thickly armoured I couldn’t get a fireball through his hide, so I tried for the wings, but then he burned me with his acid. Yolathion did well, Dad. He ordered me to jump in the lake.”

“You burst his eardrums,” King Beran put in.

“Oh. I did warn him.” Remembering the look on Yolathion’s face afterward, Aranya bit her lip. “I scared the living pith out of him, Dad. Well–I remembered how the scrolls I read in Remoy said that Green Dragons were immune to their own acid. Did you notice how wet his skin appeared? Green Dragons secrete a highly alkaline mucus to protect themselves. First, I blew his acid back in his face. Of course he closed his eyes to protect his eyeballs. Then I waited for him to take his next breath.”

“And stuffed a fireball down his throat?”

“A storm or lightning fireball–a blue one, Dad. They’re more powerful than the yellow fireballs, which are pure Dragon fire.”

King Beran regarded her so gravely for so long that Aranya began to worry about what he was thinking. He said, “Sparky, you were awesome. Yolathion has to respect that.”

Was he also concerned that Yolathion did not respect her enough? This added weight to her worries. Her father might sometimes be as distant as an Island wrapped in clouds, but his insight was dagger-sharp–a little too sharp, she thought wryly. Pressing her lips into a thin line, Aranya ventured the question which had been burning in her heart for days.

“Dad, if Mom ever recovered–I mean, it’s impossible, but if she did, and there were two women living who you loved, what would you do?”

“Asking the easy questions, my daughter?” he chuckled.

“Always.”

“The hard truth is, I don’t love Silha the way I loved Izariela.” Beran heaved a sigh worthy of five men. “With your mother it was a soaring-over-the-Islands love. She was like you, all fire and passion, an artist, as beautiful as the dawn. After she died, I never thought I’d love again. You helped me.”

“I did?”

“You drew me out of the dark places with your tears and smiles, Aranyi, with your zest for life and endless questions and … love. Silha is a still pool. With her I find a place of rest and peace. It’s still a deep connection, but different–I’m older now. Maybe that’s it.”

He shifted on the stool, suddenly restless. “Can I venture an opinion on Yolathion?”

She nodded, robbed of words.

“Firstly, and I say this not just because I’m your Dad and irretrievably biased–” he paused to enjoy her quiet laughter “–but I want you to know, Aranya, and not only to know, but to grasp soul-deep, that Yolathion would be a fool to lose you. Islands’ sakes, it’s complicated. You’re a Princess, a criminal, a Shapeshifter Dragon and a woman on a mission to change the world. You have prodigious power. Your very existence is a web of mysteries we haven’t plumbed the half of.”

The Black Dragon might roar in her dreams, but her father’s words struck her with the force of a falling Island.

“If you were to ask me what I fear, then I would say I fear that Yolathion sees a rare beauty and a talented woman who would grace his arm, bear his children, and little more.” Beran essayed a brittle smile. “Would that he’d prove me wrong. The traditional Jeradian or Sylakian way, you see, is a matter of convenience. But there are Jeradians and Sylakians who have long and meaningful relationships indistinguishable from Immadian marriages. If your old father were allowed to offer any advice, he would say, be certain that Yolathion respects you for who you are and
all
that you are–Human and Dragon–before you commit to him.”

Aranya stared into space, mulling over his words. She pushed the words into Dragon-Aranya’s brain, too, wondering what that part of her thought. Her stillness deepened. Her Dragon senses stirred, identifying the tiniest hairs stuck to her pillow-roll, the multi-coloured strands of her strange tresses, turquoise and orange, black and blonde, white and pink, and she wondered how anyone could ever learn to love all the strands that went to make up Aranya.

Her sensitised ears caught a soft boot-step moving away from the door. Had someone been eavesdropping? Yolathion? Could he even hear through a closed door?

Beran squeezed her fingers. “You need to rest and recover. One more thing, Sparky.”

“Dad?”

“You’re young. Have fun. The fate of the Island-World does not rest upon your shoulders alone. When you and I are long dead, these Islands will still be standing, and Humans and Dragons will still be arguing and fighting wars. Guard your soul with every power at your command, but if you want to kiss Yolathion, then kiss him with all of your heart.”

A brilliant smile soared from her heart to her lips. “Dad, you’re amazing.”

“Stars are amazing. I’m just a Dragon’s father.”

* * * *

A league above the Dragonships, drifting through an immense stillness to the accompaniment of what she had come to think of as wind-song sighing across her scales, Aranya surveyed the Island-World. Ostensibly, she was looking for Dragons. Many Islands lay scattered beneath her. The further south and west they travelled, the richer and denser the vegetation, and the greener the Islands as a result. She imagined an enormous, world-spanning Dragon’s paw scattering these Islands hither and thither, perhaps a Dragoness, whispering, ‘I scatter these jewels across the crown of the world.’ Jewels? Or elongated crystalline teardrops, piercing the Cloudlands like the icicles that gathered on the eaves of Immadian houses in the winter?

Yolathion could not fly with her. His ears hurt too much.

The solitude sang to her soul. No wonder Izariela had loved to go to the top of her tower to watch dawn breaking over the Cloudlands. Aranya sighed with the heaviness of three laden Dragon-hearts. Those memories were so fragmentary, formed when she was so young, that it was hard to know for certain what was real and what she wanted to imagine was real. Izariela the Star Dragon. Izariela, King Beran’s wife. Izariela, the woman who must have flown in her Dragon form with Aranya in her womb.

How was that even possible? Where did the other form reside meantime, with another life beating within it? Did the baby transform at the same time as the mother? And, for that matter, could a Shapeshifter start life as a Human foetus or as a Dragon egg, or either of the two?

Her eye kept returning to Naphtha Cluster. Black, brooding rock, a blot amongst the otherwise emerald lilies adorning the Cloudlands, were those fatal clouds only a lake and the Islands leaves floating upon opaque waters. Where were the grasses and the fields, the tangled forests and the meadows? Why was that Island-Cluster different?

She could as well watch from a league forward of the Dragonships, or two, or ten. Aranya’s wingbeat quickened. She should spy on the Sylakian fortress beyond Naphtha Cluster. And beyond that? At last, the most westerly of the Western Isles. Yanga Island, west of which lay Cloudlands to the end of the world.

The name drew her eye every time she read the map. King Beran’s forces would not need to travel that far, she knew. After this fortress, they would start the eastward push to secure Jeradia and Fra’anior. Beran planned to skirt the Spits to their north-easterly side, making a strike for Yorbik Island and a reunion with Commander Darron, Zip and Ri’arion.