Shadow Dragon (15 page)

She hit him, punching blindly, a flurry of blows too weak to truly hurt. “A plague on you and your powers!” she panted, spitting and snarling as he trapped her hands in his powerful grasp. He held her so tenderly, it made her even madder. “You seduced me. I hate you! I hate me …”

“You said you were untouched. You said no–several times.” His jaw muscles clenched. “I feel horrible, Aranya.”

She didn’t remember telling him that. Bitter tears tracked down her cheeks.

The dark-skinned warrior held her kindly as a volley of sobs raged out of her, born in a sure knowledge of what she had done. She had
revelled
in tossing her innocence into a Cloudlands volcano. Never could she go back from this moment. All the waiting for marriage she had prided herself upon and judged Yolathion for, all her precious, prideful morals, had been thrown away–forever.

Why? How could she ever tell her father?

Suddenly, her fury roared back in full flood. “Let me go. Let me go, I said!”

Ardan drew back at her vehemence, yet he refused to release Aranya from his strong arms. She writhed in his grasp, shouting wordlessly, awash in such a welter of Dragon fire that he had to avert his face from the heat rising dangerously between them. She wanted to burn him! No, she’d burn him with love … oh, what did she want?

Aranya hissed in pain, realising that she was scraping her acid burns against the rough rock beneath her back.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No. It’s from a battle.”

Her scabs had been rubbed raw. Aranya pushed the pain to the back of her mind as she concentrated on his face. Words. Words could serve to keep the madness at bay. Briefly, she told him how she had defeated Harathion, while touching her back gingerly with one hand. Plenty of sand and grit lodged in those wounds now. Whose fault was that?

He replied, “You offer a convincing tale, Aranya of–”

“You
still
don’t believe … what about all this? The hair, the fire … Ardan, listen to me. You’re a Dragon. I’ve come to rescue you. This is no dream!”

His eyes told her that he thought her simple, a bit touched in the head. “Of course I believe you,” he said. “I wake up naked in a cave next to an enchantress who spins a web of seduction so profound, it must be that I dream. Back in my real life, I belong to a woman called Kylara.”

Aranya gasped, “The Warlord Kylara? Oh, heavens above and Islands below, can this day get any worse? I’ve stolen you from Kylara?”

“Not quite,” he soothed. “I was her slave.” And he told her how he had woken beneath the prekki tree, and what had transpired there. By the end Aranya was chuckling, but her laughter had a hysterical undertone.

“I think she’ll sharpen her scimitar on my head after this,” she said.

“If we tell her.”

Aranya ignored the invitation to lie. “And you don’t find it strange she didn’t split your skull open like a rotten prekki fruit?” She reached up to trace the scar with her forefinger.

A quirk of his lips into a smile distracted her. She deposited a kiss on that smile, making it curve wider. The black eyes crinkled at her. ‘Perfect,’ they told her, wordlessly. ‘You’re beautiful.’

“It is odd,” he said aloud, making her blink.

Aranya asked, “How can a dream be this vivid?”

“By a thousand Islands and more, this is the best dream I’ve ever enjoyed!” he enthused, confirming his lack of regret. Aranya’s mouth popped open. “You are the most amazing, talented, responsive and utterly glorious figment of my imagination I have ever had the delight–”

Smack!

Ardan’s entire body shook with laughter at her impotent fury. “Beauty, leave me be. I ache! I could not manage another uncovering of the pillow-roll if you promised me all the meriatite in the Island-World. The answer is simple. I dream. You do not exist.”

“Let me tell you your dream,” she retorted, sinking her teeth into the hand that now cupped her cheek with aching tenderness, two parts affection and one part apology.

“Ouch, you little cobra!”

Aranya snarled, “You wake in a cave. Suddenly, two strange, ape-like creatures appear. You crush one with your paw. The other turns into an Amethyst Dragon, a Dragon with scales the colour of my eyes. You stalk her. Then, you pounce. She crashes into a column. You trap her beneath your claws, grasping her neck here, and her wing–”

The warrior managed to turn commendably pale, given his dark skin. “You inhabit my dreams, enchantress?”

“Maybe I should just hand you over to this Kylara,” Aranya blazed back, “because I
am
a Dragon and you clearly have the thickest skull in the Island-World!”

B
etween them, DESPITE
Aranya’s wobbly legs and aching back, they managed to shift Yolathion out of the cavern and onto the ledge without jolting his broken leg too badly.

As he beheld her in the suns-light for the first time, the dark Western Isles warrior seemed to grow hopelessly diverted in his task. The black eyes burned her up so hungrily, Aranya knew that the Dragon in him was alive and well. She shivered delicately. Mercy, how he stoked her fires! Poor Yolathion, big as he was, was a slender boy in comparison to this thickset warrior–so unlike the type of man she was usually drawn to, at once masculine and powerful, yet capable of a draconic grace of movement.

Ardan smiled at her as if he discerned her inmost desires. Perhaps he could, if the fire burned true. When she pointedly suggested he find Yolathion’s spare trousers in their saddlebags and a dress for her, Ardan chuckled and attempted a mischievous pinch at her backside.

On second thoughts, she did not need to dress if she was clothed in her Dragon hide.

He turned, and recoiled. Dragon-Aranya glowered at him. Just let him think about seducing the Princess of Immadia now!

“Ah,” he grinned faintly. “Reality bites, I see.”

To his credit, despite his heart thumping so frantically that she could have heard it fifty feet away, Ardan looked the Amethyst Dragoness over from top to toe. Her scales tingled at his awed expression. Magic? Or longing?

As he stepped toward the saddlebags, Ardan tripped over his own feet and landed awkwardly on his shoulder. “Islands’ sakes, you wretch!”

Laughter bubbled within her, but with the heat of boiling lava. “Oh, how the mighty Western Isles warrior has fallen.”

“Fallen for you, you gorgeous … creature.”

“
Creature?
”

But as he pressed upward with a simple flexion of those stalwart arms, a shadow crossed his eyes. “Sorry.” He turned to pull on the trousers.

Aranya snapped her fangs together right behind his neck.

“
Yee
–stop that!” he yelped.

Great burning Dragon fires, she had nearly bitten his head off! Oh no. Aranya retreated, shaking her head. Islands’ sakes, she had to control herself, to distract him … how?

She said, “Teach you to turn your back on a Dragoness.”

“I’m not afraid–”Ardan’s voice cracked, making them share an uneasy laugh.

Having Dragon paws on the job helped them straighten out Yolathion’s leg. Having Ardan tell her five times not to rip his leg right off earned him a testy growl and a snap toward his shaven pate. The warrior flinched, but after that, he did an excellent job of splinting the tall Jeradian’s leg to the haft of his war hammer. He looked on curiously as Aranya drew deep of her healing magic for Yolathion. The Jeradian warrior sank into an easier sleep thereafter. Ardan allowed her to rest her paw upon him, too; he shivered as the healing power flowed deep and strong.

The cool, fragrant evening winds, touched with the freshness of the storm’s aftermath, played about them as Aranya talked Ardan through how to buckle on her Dragon Rider saddle and fix her saddlebags in place between her spine spikes. The twin suns gleamed like two enormous copper coins near the horizon, sandwiched between the glossy Cloudlands and a bank of deep-bellied clouds that promised further storm winds and rain.

Aranya stared at the looming cloud-ramparts, chilled by a different sense of connection–between an Amethyst Dragon and the storm. Undetected by any sense save instinct, the storm asserted its lambent power and her magic responded, soughing softly within her. Chilling. She was one with the storm. It teased her power–or drew from it? Feeding on the chaos within her? She clenched her fangs in trepidation. The Black Dragon always appeared from among billowing thunderheads …

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s a storm coming.”

Such an inanity, a burial shroud for the truth.

Ardan said, “We should find Kylara. They’ve a good bone-setter at their hideout, a man called Garg. I don’t need to tell you it’ll be dangerous.”

“She’s the jealous type?”

“Typically her enemies don’t stay alive long enough to find out,” he replied. “She and I aren’t on the best of speaking terms. But if the Immadian Fox empowered you to negotiate–”

“What did you just call my father?”

“His Western Isles name. The Immadian Fox. He is your father, right?” Ten feet of flames shooting from her nostrils made him duck. “I guess so. Aranya, sorry. My head’s not right yet.”

“Too much Dragon fire?”

“Aye,” he smiled, yet a quaver in his voice betrayed the torrent of his feelings, “Although I feel this incredible depth of connection with you, I want to say this–please don’t misunderstand, Aranya. It’s very important that I have your honest answer.”

She lowered her eyes to meet his. That sense of soul-deep union jolted her once more. Was it the Dragon fire they had breathed together? How was it possible that she could fall for someone so fast and so completely? Or was she mixing lust with love? She needed space to know. Space from his beautiful dark eyes. Even the guilt, which should be gnawing at her soul, felt remote and trivial. This had to be a temporary madness. But she remained unconvinced, for his gruff Western Isles voice, with its blunted consonants, felt at once like the voice of a complete stranger and the song that trembled her Island.

Ardan sighed. Again, the black eyes veiled a world of emotion she could only guess at.

He said, “Today was otherworldly. I think your magic … well, magic, ruled us and we had no choice. It was beyond Human capacity or experience.” His hands balled into fists, before he extended his fingers to touch her cheekbone below her left eye. He replaced his hand with his forehead, groaning against her scales, “But I think I love Kylara. Maybe. It’s complicated. Do you hate me for saying this? I couldn’t bear it if … you hate me already, don’t you?”

After all they had shared, he dared to speak about loving another? Aranya’s claws clenched so hard, she splintered the slab of flint stone she was standing on.

He drew back, clearly trying to master his fear. She eyed her talons. They could so easily end his life, just a Dragon-swift slash–and she would be robbed of the gift he had entrusted to her.
Thou, my soul’s eternal …
what moved him to jilt her in such a mercenary way, now? Guilt? A desire to punish an Immadian enchantress? How could she even think about her honour, about how she deserved to be treated, after today?

Sadness and empathy pooled darkly within her. Aranya felt dislocated and abandoned, yet her training in courtly ways forced her to say, “I understand.”

“Do you? I don’t want to tell Kylara or Yolathion, Aranya. You’re a special, magical woman.”

“I hear a Dragon-sized ‘but’ about to appear.”

“Would it be weird to admit that I find your Dragon butt improbably attractive?”

“See, you are a Dragon.” Aranya looked down at her paws, pleased and enraged in equal measure. What a stupid, insensitive joke! “Ardan, I do understand. And I thank you for being … gentle, my first time.”

Let that guilt stick in his craw forever!

Well, insofar as two magic-crazed people could be gentle. Aranya gazed at the dark warrior’s wounds. So much dried blood. The entire front of his body was crusted in scabs, as though he had been whipped.

Softly, he jibed, “The first time, or the seventh?”

“You were counting?” Aranya’s belly fires fulminated within her; the embarrassment, volcanic. “Ridiculous man. Then may I ask you a question, with the same requirement for honesty?”

Ardan squeaked as she caught him up in the cage of her claws, hoisting him off the ground. Fixing him with her gaze, she said, “If I asked you right now–if I begged and pleaded with you–to forget Kylara, and be mine and mine alone in all the Island-World, would you say ‘aye’?”

* * * *

Ardan did not struggle in Aranya’s grasp, although his every Human instinct screamed at him to flee. The mesmeric gaze of a Dragoness held him fast, and he was not entirely convinced of the sanity ruling that gaze, from the way she had lunged at him just before to the detectable quivering in her muscles now. One twitch, and he was a dead man.

But her question pounded on his eardrums and resounded in his heart.

“Aye,” he whispered. “I could never resist you.”

“Because I’m a Dragoness?”

He spoke the truth before he could think the better of it. “Because of what fills my heart, Aranya, and how I feel about you.”

She chuckled melodiously. “That’s all I needed to know.”

“You’re such a woman, asking that question,” he said, ducking a scorching snort in response. “Can the glance of my eye captivate thee, o warrior of the Western Isles? Aye, a thousand times and more–but Aranya, I hardly know you. I fear I’ve shamefully mistreated you.”

“And I you, Ardan.”

“I’m a better man than … this.” How could he make her understand that for him, she was not just a pretty face, but a soul behind that face? A person, not a nameless object of Dragonish desire? Aye, there had been the fire they breathed together, but still …

“I am satisfied,” said she, making to set him down. “I will not ask. Are all Western Isles warriors as honourable as you, Ardan?”

“Honourable?”

A twist of the verbal knife!

Her response clamped his chest as though he was trapped in a blacksmith’s vice. A deadly, ten-inch talon slid right up to the soft skin of his throat. Ardan gasped and held very, very still as Aranya evidently struggled to subdue her anger. The pressure suddenly eased; her claws retracted catlike into their sheaths.

Vulnerability shadowing her eyes as she said, “Oh, I fought you off tooth and claw, didn’t I?”

The Amethyst Dragon set him down with a wistful, distant air. Ardan searched for a way past the lump of unknowable emotions snarled in his throat, past the dislocation of realising that this fiery beast gleaming before him was indeed the girl he had pillowed upon his arm, who had transported his soul to places beyond imagination. What could he say? That for him, she had painted his world in a blaze of new colours? That he yearned to unsay his words about Kylara?

“Ardan, I’ve never done anything like–”

He said, “Hush now, sweet Dragoness. I cannot speak for others, only for myself. Here is my offer. None may know what the future holds, so I beg you, save your question.” Clenching his right fist upon his heart, he added, “I promise to answer you as honestly on that day as I have this evening, here on this cliff, at the very edge of the Island-World. May the twin suns bear witness to my words.”

The great jewel-eyes widened. “Did you hear that?”

“I … did.”

The trumpets of heaven? The song of the moons? Whatever it was, that mysterious burst of threnody, half-heard and half-sensed, vanished as quickly as it had risen to their awareness. Something out there had heard that vow. And the fabric of the world had changed.

All glistened with newness.

Together, standing shoulder to shoulder, Ardan and Aranya scanned the never-ending expanse of the Cloudlands. He wondered if the Dragoness longed to fly. Now he grasped that what he had known before was as dust; that real magic lived and breathed in the Island-World, and that he was not mad after all. Could it be, could he believe was a
Dragon
, like this resplendent creature beside him?

Ardan’s knees buckled. But the Amethyst Dragon’s fore-talon steadied him. Of all people in the Island-World, Aranya must understand how he felt.

She said, “Let’s get my Rider in the saddle.”

And then she spoiled it by referring to her Rider. Ardan bit down on an unexpected, bilious surge of jealousy.

Together, they worked out a way of lifting Yolathion into the saddle, laying him face-down over the worn leather seat and buckling a strap about his waist. For good measure, Ardan tied his ankles with an extra hank of rope to spare him the inevitable buffeting. Then he mounted up as directed, one spine-spike behind the Jeradian warrior.

“I’ll show you to Kylara’s hideout,” he said.

Aranya’s head turned completely about to check his seat. “Hold onto the saddle straps ahead of you, Ardan. Don’t let go. I’ll fly carefully. And whatever you do, don’t transform when you feel me take off, because I couldn’t hold your weight in the air.”

“I’m that big an … um?”

“Dragon? Yes. More than twice my size.” His eyes betrayed wonder. She sniped, “And six times my haunches. You’re built like a flying boulder.”

“Do I detect a hint of jealousy, Aranya?”

“Jealousy? Ha!”

The Dragoness leaped through the plume of her fire, off the edge of the cliff.

Great Islands! He was flying! Ardan howled for four thousand feet before he managed to clamp his jaw shut. A warrior should display courage. A warrior should not be zipping along, Dragonback, a league above the Cloudlands. With a shudder, he flung his fear into the abyss. The great flight muscles rippled in the body beneath him; supple Dragon wings buoyed her upon the breeze. Aranya was so large he was amazed she could stay aloft–but fly she did, more gracefully than he could ever dream of, he knew, sliding through the air with the ease of a sleek trout slipping upstream. This girl was more than beautiful. She was magical. Lethal, a predator from the ground up. And he had tamed her?