The Onyx Dragon (43 page)

“Surrender, Re’akka,” she snarled. “This is your last and only chance for mercy.”

“Mercy?” he coughed.

“You are overmatched.”

“I am …
not!
”

The Marshal struck out in one final, convulsive assault. Pip shielded instantly, but was unprepared for Silver’s usurping her shield through their oath-bond. He inverted her shield, pushing it around the White Shapeshifter as his shell-father unleashed his most desperate attack, an unbridled, raging tornado of powers including cold-flame,
urzul,
Kinetic power, Shivers and a mind-destroying psychic blast. Re’akka gave every last drop of magic he possessed.

The shield turned it all back on him. Silver, Chymasion and Shimmerith held firm in concert, belatedly, Pip joined them, thrusting the Marshal flush against the First Egg as he was enveloped in a perfect storm of his own making.

HSSSS-KERRAAAACK!

Blue lightning flared within the shield. Pip did not recognise this power, perhaps the Egg protecting itself, perhaps a result of that furnace-melting of unique Dragon magic. Within, all went still. Tendrils of stinking white smoke drifted around the shield’s edges. Nothing more. When they lifted the shield, not even Dragon bones, one of the hardest known substances in the Island-World, were left. Just smoke, and a foul odour.

Was the Marshal truly dead? Slain by his most precious possession?

The realisation made her wings shiver convulsively. Gone.

Pip lifted her eyes to see Leandrial and Shurgal, still tussling mightily, drop over the edge of Jeradia Island three or four thousand feet away. By the looks of things, the Dragoness had the upper paw, so to speak. Her eyes widened. The Egg! Relieved of Shurgal’s weight, Eridoon Island wobbled slightly in the breeze, already starting to drift toward the volcano on a collision course, with the Egg still embedded in its side.

The Nurguz drifted toward her, pulsating horribly.

Pip froze.

T
He nurguz paused
to suck the life out of several Night-Red Dragons. Pip sensed it knew it had time, now; the leisure to feed. She and her Dragonwing had destroyed perhaps the only force capable of reining in this creature’s appetite. It cared neither for the Egg nor for Land Dragons, but only for the delicious food scattered about its immediate environment. The Nurguz’s siren-song whispered around and inside the Dragons, inviting them to its ghastly banquet. Glazed of eye, hundreds of Night-Reds and Academy Dragons drifted about, waiting their turn to be eaten.

Nak immediately yelled a horribly off-key song about–well, Pip could not repeat the words in polite company, for it concerned Dragon Riders’ toilet habits–but the shock value was enough. It took her mind off the Nurguz’s seductive song.

These were all the Dragons left North of the Rift. Pip had no idea of the situation in Herimor, but she knew one thing. This creature lived to feed. It lived on magic. There was nowhere in the entire Island-World a Dragon could hide from this scourge, for it burned darker and darker, feeding faster and faster …
apparently tied to its food source!
Its behaviour had changed … suddenly, bits and pieces of the puzzle fell into new patterns. The creature expected her to sacrifice the Ancient Dragons on the altar of her need, to save her own kind by opening the door to those great Dragons who assumed they were safe somewhere else in the cosmos. The Ancients had left a little Onyx Dragoness to deal with the menace which had forced them to sacrifice their own children. Just look at the Nurguz now. Feeding ten, twenty Dragons at a time.

Yet if she acted according to her instincts, who would know the fate of all these Dragons spread out around her, the several thousand confused Dragon Assassins and a thousand or more Academy defenders? And what of the Humans and younglings left in the Academy itself? Who would know the fate of an Island-World deprived of its most majestic and magical of denizens?

All these, she carried not upon her shoulders, but within her heart.

One last piece must be slotted into place.

Pip turned to Silver.
I need a favour, Silver. I need you to trust me and do exactly as I ask.

His flame-eyes took in her trembling. Questions swirled in his eyes and within his mind. Yet she could not speak, and she could not intimate that she had a plan, for she suspected that the Nurguz had long since learned to read the minds of Dragons, and to manipulate them just as it had manipulated Marshal Re’akka from the first.

What was its intent? Once, it had roamed abroad freely, acting to concentrate all draconic magic in one place. Right here–this had its plan all along. Now, the creature was growing and changing as it fed with uninhibited abandon. Perhaps the glut of food would allow it to transform, Shapeshifter-like, into a greater state of being, to ascend, or to lay eggs or bud or whatever it did to spawn its young?

She asked,
Do you trust me?

I must. After all I have done to you, Pip, apologies will never suffice.

Speaking rapidly to Silver via a private telepathic link, Pip outlined those elements of her plan she could. The other Dragons gathered around, some congratulating each other, but most wanted to ask Pip that most important question. How would they defeat the Nurguz?

Silver shook his head slightly. He knew she had withheld. He knew she understood his reticence; perhaps it was guilt that moved him to a display of unquestioning trust. The Silver Dragon winged over to Shimmerith and Nak, and Emblazon and Oyda.
Listen to me,
he said, and turned the full, hypnotic power of his mind upon them.

Pip conferred with the Dragon Elders, and with Yaethi and Arrabon, Arosia and Chymasion, meantime watching Shimmerith and Emblazon covertly. Shortly, they whizzed away to the Academy under Silver’s compulsion. Hopefully, if his mental trickery was worth its Island’s-weight, they would proceed straight to the library, to Yaethi’s private room where the scrolls of the Order of Onyx were locked away, and perform a swift and essential burglary.

She could not stop trembling. This was the only way. The only possibility she could think of, and it was utterly crazy. Unthinkable.

In the five minutes it took the two Dragons and their Riders to perform the task Silver had burned into their minds, the Nurguz murdered over a hundred fire-souls. It even had the Dragon Assassins lining up to be eaten. The Academy Dragons would be next, if it took a moment away from guzzling to understand that some Dragonkind were not as mesmerised as others. She saw Sapphire and Amber winging away to the North, making a tremendous speed, unnoticed by the increasing fractious group around her.

Please, may sweet Oyda and precious Nak be safe. Please let Shimmerith and Emblazon fly strong and true, far away on the winds to Fra’anior Cluster, where they must hide in the Natal Cave with the priceless scrolls until this creature passed from the Island-World.

A starvation diet was in order.

Pip lowered her head, beseeching Fra’anior and Hualiama and her Pygmy ancestors for the strength to accomplish what she must do next.

Chymasion. Silver. Kassik. Arrabon. Stand with me. Lend me your strength.

This was no request. It was an order from the smallest of Dragons, yet one who had chosen to carry the mantle of a Star Dragoness. It was not a Word of Command, but it might as well have been.

Summon your Blues and your Browns, your Reds and your Greens. We have work to do. Silver and Chymasion, assemble the Dragons’ minds and focus them on me. This will take all of our courage and strength.

And may there be life for all.

Strength swelled within her, brought into sharp focus by Chymasion. Pip quickly reviewed the Commands she would require, assembling them into intricate interdependent structures, choosing some, abandoning others, discarding entire trains of thought. The draconic magic brought her more minds to work with, an expanding of consciousness and capacity that Pip pushed to its fullest, drawing especially on Yaethi’s understanding of the numinous, Silver’s precise mental control and Kassik’s blunt practicality, for what she desired was delicate, unprecedented, rife with danger. One mistake could destroy them all.

The Nurguz fixed its eyeless regard upon her.

Pip grew, stilling the restless murmuring of lesser minds within her ambit of control. Ay, she could be this creature striding the Island-World, and all would be forced to bow before her, even as they bowed to her now. The power infusing her being was immense, an endless terrace lake of draconic potentials, all of it hers to command and control. So many minds. So much life, it fizzed through her veins like Dragonsong. She was uncontainable. Unstoppable. Nothing was beyond her now. She could reach to the stars or crack open the secrets of the Ancient Dragons; she could become one of them, a magical prodigy who crossed between worlds, commanding the respect and awe of all.

Who would dare to call her ‘little one’ ever again?

Once, she had been just like Tik … Pip stilled, picturing that precocious mite. Shame shadowed her mind. Distress and self-loathing. Was she mad, thinking to step into the Marshal’s paws?

Perhaps the very proof of her humanity, which she had prized since she could remember, was the temptation that inveigled her now. No, she was Pip. A bit wild at times, but that was just the jungle in her. A girl who stood just three feet, eleven and a half inches in her habitually bare feet, should not try to be any taller or smaller, greater or lesser, than she had been made to be. That she should hold the fate of thousands of souls in her paws humbled her. She must be faithful to the end, not shirking her duty, not taking what did not belong to her.

We’ll travel together,
she said softly, bathing all those waiting minds in love.

The Nurguz sensed her defiance. Her mischief-making. Its song rose in her mind. Blocking it out by reciting one of Nak’s less appropriate ballads under her breath–probably shocking some of these very proper Dragons right out of their scaly hides–Pip used her massed power to carve deep beneath the Academy volcano, excavating the entire area while sealing the volcanic base with cooling rock. Powerful strings of Words of Command rattled from her lips. All the while, the Nurguz tried to feed; Pip denied it, fighting to allow but a trickle from the massed minds, spreading out the demand. With great cunning, the Nurguz switched modes of attack multiple times, trying to break the security of their net. One Dragon fell, their light winking out. Another two. Pip forced herself to work faster.

She tried to think harmonic magic to block the creature, but it was too distracting. Finding latent Kinetic magic in Silver’s mind, she borrowed his power to split the First Egg out of the Island. Almost, she abandoned Eridoon, before remembering all the souls and Dragons who must still be inside. She floated the Egg next to the Island, moving both with excruciating slowness out over Jeradia’s cliffs, even though she supplied wind to try to speed the process.

Two more Dragons lost. Another cluster of three.

Sending her mind roaming far, Pip chased Shimmerith and Emblazon. She chased them on, enjoining,
Fly like the wind, my friends. Burn the heavens as living comets and return to me when the Balance has reached its fruition.

They raced onward, making over thirty leagues per hour toward Fra’anior Cluster, taking with them five precious scrolls to continue the Order of Onyx’s work. They would return. That was the Order’s very purpose, to protect such knowledge.

Goodbye, precious ones.

Now, having separated out the Egg, Pip exerted her massed power to levitate the entire volcano, just as Re’akka had raised his Island. The tremendous strain seemed to help the Dragons work together against the Nurguz; for four long minutes, then six, they denied it, and the creature slipped aside to consume another five Dragon Assassins. Ay, it lived to feed. Pip gritted her teeth.

Now to swallow an Island.

Her greatest mental construct yet shimmered into being, a latticework of power cocooning Eridoon, the volcano and the Egg. There was no way under the heavens she could have achieved this without Silver and Yaethi. Her hearts hammered as she dug deep of her own strength and abilities.
Her strength is Onyx.
That fabled strength elevated her now, raising thousands of Dragons up with her along with the air upon which they hovered with gentle, unmindful wing-strokes, as she shifted her entire burden out over the Cloudlands.

Leandrial!
Pip cried. There was no answer.

She had to continue, for the Nurguz pounded her Dragonwings with fresh zeal, siphoning off vast quantities of draconic magic. Pip struggled to hold it together, to control the outflows as the Shadow creature supped gleefully on the banquet held hapless before it by Pip’s power. The lattice wavered.

Leandrial, arise!

Still the Cloudlands gave no answer. They were half a mile offshore now. Had any single creature remained behind to watch, they would have seen a volcano sailing along on the breeze toward a floating Island. Beside the Island fluttered a small black Dragoness, shepherding an Ancient Dragon’s egg which was many times her size. Where the Academy had been, deeply gouged scars leaked streams of lava, as though Jeradia Island wept the blood of its heart.

The Nurguz pounced! With a scream, Pip staggered through the air. That cold! That reaming, terrible touch, the alien hungering sucking her dry … she wrenched away, for her need was greater, and her will stronger, and her desire for life, unquenchable.

INFOLD!

The volcano shimmered, then seemed to fold in on itself as it travelled through space, entering the most impermeable of substances–the skin of a Dragon’s egg. She screamed again, tearing from herself the strength to proceed to Eridoon Island.

INFOLD!

The Island and all its citizens shuddered at a Command that changed flesh to fire, and matter to white-fires. In the wink of an eye, it vanished as though it had never existed. All the Shadow creature supped upon now was air. It shifted with blinding speed, settling over Master Kassik and Chymasion. Frantic with need, it tried to drain them in one gulp.

Infold my beloved Silver,
she laughed, for a Pygmy’s laughter was of the stars.
All of us, together.
She gave of her own life to Kassik and Chymasion, before they slipped away into the Shadow forever.

Nothing remained for the Nurguz save an Onyx Dragoness still searching the Cloudlands as she allowed the First Egg to fall. Ensconced in the final bubble of her dimension-shifting magic, Pip fell alongside the Egg, for the infolding magic could only be created from within the field of magic, trapping the wielder inside their own creation. This was the ultimate danger in wielding the Word of Command, a warning spelled out forty-three times in the text she had memorised in the Pygmy cave. From this course of action, there could be no escape.

At last, an impossibility.

Infold me.

She heard the Nurguz scream at a register that lashed her soul with dark-fires. The scream communicated despair and loss, the final shriek of an otherworldly appetite that would never be sated again. Pip shone brightly now, too far beyond the material realm to be damaged. She fought to remain as her own magic enwrapped her in its white-fire folds, refusing to surrender to the decision that would isolate all she held dear from the physical world, secreting those treasures within the time-capsule of a star-travelling First Egg. There, they would await a day when another would summon them forth in perhaps the strangest draconic birth the Island-World would ever know.