Dragon Thief

By Marc Secchia

Copyright © 2015 Marc Secchia

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

www.marcsecchia.com

Cover art copyright © 2015 Marc Secchia & Joemel Requeza

Cover font design by Victorine Lieske

www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com

Dedication

O thief in the night,

Drawn into the burning, draconic light,

Stolen,

For life.

Table of Contents

Dragon Thief

Dedication

Table of Contents

Island-World Map

Chapter 1: Dragon Gold

Chapter 2: All that Glitters

Chapter 3: Draconic

Chapter 4: Flyaway

Chapter 5: Call of the South

Chapter 6: Rogues Need Wings

Chapter 7: The Drunken Dragon

Chapter 8: Heritage

Chapter 9: Trysting-Place

Chapter 10: Kings and Queens

Chapter 11: The Island-Desert

Chapter 12: Huntress

Chapter 13: Shifty Shifter

Chapter 14: Business as Unusual

Chapter 15: Counterstrike

Chapter 16: Ripped Asunder

Chapter 17: Back to Basics

Chapter 18: Dragon Foolery

Chapter 19: Old Eggs

Chapter 20: Thief at School

Chapter 21: Second Chances

Chapter 22: Masterful

Chapter 23: Shell-Mothers

Chapter 24: Felonious Fickleness

Chapter 25: Storm Training

Chapter 26: All in a Day’s Burglary

Chapter 27: Magic Unfurled

Chapter 28: Race to the Death

Chapter 29: Revenge Served Fiery

Chapter 30: Big Dragons don’t Cry

Chapter 31: Westward, Ho!

Chapter 32: Shenanigans

Chapter 33: Dragons of the West

Chapter 34: Emptiness

Chapter 35: Slumbering Dragons

Chapter 36: Thusly Written

Chapter 37: Into the Gap

Chapter 38: And the Stars Danced

Chapter 39: Gold Dragon

Appendix

About the Author

Island-World Map

Chapter 1: Dragon Gold

KAL THE THIEF regarded the treasure hoard, head askance. One problem with this picture.

Mounds of lustrous Dragon gold, aye. Jewels fit to furnish any kingdom he cared to name, aye. Several kingdoms, in fact. As a man who boasted a certain amount of experience in such matters–his long fingers becoming inordinately sticky around gemstones and sundry valuables, for instance, those kept by kings in supposedly impregnable vaults–he was qualified to know. Kal assessed this haul as a career criminal’s dream. He need never steal again. Sadly, Kal was also wanted on a sizeable selection of major Islands in connection with being the type of man to possess such knowledge.

That, and there might have been several incidents related to the type of problem which confronted him now. Perhaps. He could not rightly say.

Kal tugged fiercely on his beard. Much more fiercely, and he’d uproot his facial hair like a fowl plucked for the spit. “Windroc gizzards,” he whispered, almost inaudibly. His eyes roamed the cavern. He saw no Dragon, which had to be positive news. The less positive news was the girl.

A most agreeably nude girl slept on the pile of gold nearest his right hand, so serene. She had the longest eyelashes he had ever seen.

That was not the problem, either.

Kal was an unusual man for one in his line of business, to wit, reapportioning the Island-World’s wealth in ways which might be alleged to benefit his sole proprietorship of all things shiny and precious. He was tall and rangy, with jet black hair tending toward a hint of grizzle, and a tanned face with, nowadays, more than a hint of grizzle. His voice was gruff, and foremost among his weapons when it came to talking himself out of situations which had become rather stickier than his admittedly sticky fingers could handle. Explorer, buccaneer, inveterate wealth adjuster, risk taker, rescuer of maidens in distress and those in not quite so much distress, and indeed, compulsive dabbler with the comely owners of the carefully selected jewellery and fine art which graced his private collection, located on a conveniently anonymous Island in the dense, expansive Southern Archipelago.

Dabbling had been in scant supply recently. A mildly pressing concern, but that could wait.

This Dragon’s lair had been ten years in the finding. Kal had persevered longer than most people would consider prudent or even sane, teasing fact from legend, and clues from ancient scrolls he had discovered in a little-used library on Ya’arriol Island–a library little frequented because it was guarded by a tribe of fanatical, Dragon-worshipping warrior monks, who also happened to possess a disturbing flair for magic. As a result, he now knew more about the Path of the Dragon Warrior than was healthy for a professional of his ilk. Two years had passed in punishment for his transgression. Jailed over a pile of dusty scroll lore? Bah.

But Kal had reaped certain benefits. One, he was superbly fit as a result of a diet of daily forced labour and meals restricted to fruits, vegetables and grain. Two, he had picked up a smattering of Dragonish, just enough to be dangerous. Three, he had discovered a magical legacy of his own–Ha’athiorian grandmother, was the story. On Kal’s fifth birthingday, the plague snatched his mother. His father was apparently a merchant–make that smuggler–from the Fingers of Ferial, who perished beneath the claws of a feral Dragon a year and a day after his mother’s death. Clearly, Kal was his father’s son in his predilection for objectionable occupations, and his mother’s likeness in height and beauty. Meant with all modesty, of course. He also took after his maternal ancestors in magic. Lighting a fire with a snap of one’s fingers had to be an improvement over fighting with spark-stones.

Kal rolled his shoulders silently. One should not allow a tragic past to shadow the present.

The monks had kindly allowed him to borrow a solo Dragonship and sail off into another enchanted suns-set of Fra’anior’s almighty volcano, which rose out of the deathly Cloudlands like a wart on a toad’s slimy backside–aye. Perhaps a man ought to deal in truths. He had stolen a Dragonship, supplies and coin. Then, a stormy evening concealed his departure from the breathtaking, league-tall volcanic ramparts of Ya’arriol Island, just a few hours shy of Fra’anior’s main volcano. Four days later, while fleeing from a cannibal tribe of Yaya Loop, one legend that evidently contained a grain more truth than he fancied, Kal happened upon a scrap of scrolleaf tucked into the Dragonship stove’s supply of ooliti wood.

‘May the sulphurous blessings of the Great Black Dragon, Fra’anior, supply you with all strength, o Kallion, my son,’ the note had said, inked in Master Ja’amba’s careful runic script. ‘Seize your destiny!’

Roaring rajals! He had no idea what the old monk–bless his bald, tattooed pate–purposed by this cryptic message.

A further three months’ journeying and scouring the Cloudlands had brought him to this improbable scrap of rock. First, he had sailed down to Jeradia. He traversed the Spine Islands to Sylakia where an affluent merchant had unwittingly parted with two sacks of jewels to fund this madcap venture, while the honour of his frolicsome daughter–well, besmirched was a crude word. Kal smirked at a chest containing a king’s ransom in rubies. ‘Delicately plucked’ had a certain ring, didn’t it? Sadly interrupted mid-frolic, Kal had been hounded off Sylakia Island, bolting southeast over Telstroy to vanish in the Crescent’s steamy jungles. That merchant had been persistent, and the four Dragonships-worth of pesky bounty hunters he had despatched to bother Kal, even more so. Having shaken the bounty hunters off into the jungles by dint of regrettable use of force, Kal had taken in the sights all the way south to Remoy–now, a man could consider settling there. They took four wives! A most refined custom, and a sign of an enlightened society, he felt. Except, he was far more the frolicking than the settling sort.

Taking off from Remoy Island, Kal had sailed East into the great unknown, the uninhabited Southern Sea that some said led to the Eastern Archipelago’s tail end–or not. The maps were less than clear on that point, being disturbingly blank and expansively so.

Bar this unmarked spit of rock. After a week aloft spent quartering the endless reaches of the Cloudlands below the Islands, he had discovered this ancient Dragon-roost. Mooring his solo Dragonship in a rocky cleft, Kal tarried a further two weeks, fully expecting the Dragon to emerge. Nothing. However, a single, fresh paw-print outside the cave stood as a stark reminder to an overconfident opportunist of the risks he essayed as he crept inside. The paw-print was taller than his six feet and five inches. Considerably taller.

Presently, that particular paw-print lay several thousand feet behind his back. Kal did not fancy his chances of outrunning a Dragon, although a fireball warming one’s rump was said to exert miraculous powers of endeavour.

His gaze tripped back to the girl, moth to her candle. She was long and lean, all statuesque sinuosity a balladeer could praise the day long. No waif, this one. Also an endearing trait, aside from her alluring pose and the fact that she evidently considered actual clothing far too conservative for her taste. Volcanic, he told himself in Dragonish. This time, he did not whisper. He spoke a thought in his mind, for Dragonish could be spoken verbally or telepathically. Her hair was a mass of dark swirls, gleaming blue-black in the cave’s dim light, which emanated from four braziers perched at intervals between scattered piles of jewels and gold drals and treasure chests and silver armour–enough light to ascertain that this cave was a dead end, and the fetching fireflower was its only inhabitant. Unforeseen. Yet … troubling. Any of this would have been fine, even gladdening, on an ordinary day.

The problem lay in the way she was sleeping.

Aye, some subtle quality of her posture alerted Kal’s squirming gut that what he had walked into was not only a sticky mess, but sticky in the sense of, his bones might end up sticking out of his skin and the sticky bits would be his blood and entrails and so forth.

Was she a Dragon, disguised? A phantasm of draconic magic? For surely, no mortal woman could own such perfection. Being a man of avowed expertise in this field of study, he should know.

Kal appraised the young beauty, which was no hardship. He saw nothing obvious to back up his theory. She did not transform into an aged hag on examination. Far from it. Nor did she develop scales and a severe case of fiery halitosis. And those improbably shapely eyelashes … Kal. Concentrate. He chewed his lip as if it were a strip of rubbery, overcooked trout. No. Could the dilemma, the almost-magical chill misting his neck-flesh with a touch like whetted steel, be encapsulated in how her hand curled carelessly around a ruby-encrusted princess’ tiara, or the way those lithe legs scissored into cascades of gold coins as though she owned them for a blanket?

She was definitely a woman in the most refined, curvilinear sense of the word. Kal briefly considered sprinting out of the cave, screaming like a demented windroc all the way, and tossing himself off the cliffs to his certain doom in the perpetual cloudscapes half a league beneath the Island. How many steps would he succeed in taking along that path–three? Four?

Also, she was not really sleeping. Kal sighed.

Only her chest stirred, a poem to rondure. Could he talk the fiendish owner of that sublime pulchritude out of supping on his entrails? He was rather attached to what usually resided inside of his hide.

Kal sighed again. Louder.

Within, he cursed the fates, the Islands, each of the five moons and the greed which had spurred a humble sailor like him to fly to this dismal spit of rock. Dismal, save for this lethal beauty. She was worth every one of the remaining seconds of his rapidly expiring mortal existence.

He shuffled his boots pointedly, but did not budge an inch toward freedom.

The girl’s eyes snapped open.

Kal very nearly blurted out a regrettable word. Her eyes were depthless, far older than her body appeared, wells of an exotic blue so lambent, they shone like veiled lanterns in the semidarkness.

“Islands’ greetings on this fine morn,” she said.

Kal wanted to protest that it was not morning. It was the middle of the night, aptly named the thieves’ hour. He wanted to say that as the girl sat up, sending runnels of gold drals tinkling about her feet, that she was as stunning as a jet-black rajal caught in the instant of pouncing on her prey. She was utterly unselfconscious of her nudity. Utterly sure of herself. And that was how he was utterly certain he was about to become Kallion, recently deceased.

What the girl’s connection to the Dragon might be, he was less certain. But in his profession, any obsessive purloiner wishing to preserve his hide for longer than a gnat’s sneeze soon learned to heed his danger sense. Right now, a strident voice in Kal’s head squealed, ‘Danger! Danger! Danger!’ but his feet seemed to be immobilised by ten-tonne shackles.

His inability to form a coherent word amused the girl. Melodiously, with unshuttered humour, she inquired, “Well? To what do I owe the pleasure, stranger? I hope you weren’t planning to steal this treasure?”

“Steal?” He managed to sound offended, even if it was at an embarrassingly shrill pitch. “I’m no thief.”

“Out for a morning stroll, perchance?”

Kal swallowed. Her smile seemed to sprout fangs; although he was convinced this was the overtime workings of his sweaty and feverish imagination, it was a compelling impression.

“The air being fresher out here, five hundred leagues from the nearest habitation of Human or Dragon, than in most other corners of our beautiful Island-World?” She nibbled a strand of her blue-black hair, playing the coquette. “Where are your manners, good thief?”

In an attempt to disguise the horror burrowing beneath his hide like the frenzied efforts of a thousand cockroaches, Kal swept into a Fra’aniorian courtly bow, which was an extravagant production worthy of a troop of professional stage actors trained to perform for royalty. “Kallion the adventurer at your service, mighty … uh, lady … I hail from Fra’anior Cluster where … they call me Kal for short …”

Her smile only multiplied his stupefaction until she rescued him with a murmur, “Oh, Fra’anior? Life on the rim of an active volcano must be very exciting.”

“Exciting,” he repeated, sounding as thick as the plank he called an instrument of speech. Kal! Where was his golden tongue? “And … diverting.”

“Diverting?”

“Extremely diverting,” said Kal, reddening as honesty–blast it into a Cloudlands volcano–took control of his flapping tongue and the direction of his gaze simultaneously.

Her brow furrowed. “And you, Kal of Fra’anior, are the kind of man to be diverted two thousand leagues from home in search of–”

“Beauty!” he yelped. “Beauty which outshines the matchless suns-rise gleam upon Rolodia Island’s renowned terrace lakes.”

Better. Maybe he was not a babbling dragonet after all.

“Oh.” The girl preened, stretching for the cavern’s roof in a manner that put his shirt in danger of bursting into flame, and said, “I do hope you weren’t planning a spot of plundering and pillaging, Kal, because I’m very attached to my treasure.”

‘My?’ his mind wailed. Never had two letters served to so terrify a man. Kal spluttered, “Not treasure, oh no. Can’t stand gold, it’s so cold and heavy–”

“But you are a thief.”

“Only where women’s hearts are concerned,” he sallied, with a mischievous quirk of his lips. Better still. Familiar territory.

“You fearful rogue, how I tremble,” said the beauty, placing a hand upon her breast. Her lips curved, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “You have me at a disadvantage.”

“Aye?” He tried not to sound too hopeful, and failed.

“You seem nervous about admitting to your profession, master thief,” she said. “Relax. I don’t bite.”

Kal could only produce a strangled gurgle of dissent. She was a tease. That comment might have been funny in another context–perhaps with her being deftly disadvantaged in the setting of a four-poster bed furnished with Helyon silk sheets, a perfumed brazier, low lighting and a goblet or two of the finest Jeradian wine–but she was a tease and a liar. He shook his head involuntarily.

“You disagree?” Again, a feline purr. The girl spread her hands, causing a herd of sinful thoughts to stampede through his imagination. “Kal. You’re sweet, but a terrible liar. Come, you scoundrel of a thousand Isles. Steal my heart, if you dare.”

“How do you deduce my scoundrel-ness?” he temporised. Blast. That was not even a word.

The exotic enchantress put a finger to her lips. Heavens above and Islands below, she could set any self-respecting volcano alight! Beauty to snare; arch glances to skewer his heart with ardour. How did the beast imitate a Human being so flawlessly? She cooed, “There’s the matter of one and a half sacks of jewels secreted in your Dragonship on the far side of this Island, o Kal. There’s the jewelled sceptre of Cherlar which mysteriously disappeared one misty morning, amongst, I believe, an array of other inexplicable … disappearances, shall we call them? And we would be remiss not to factor in your reputation, which rather precedes one who dared to raid the very Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior. That was impressive. Reckless and ill-judged, of course, but undeniably impressive. And when we consider your extensive hoard down south–”

Kal gasped, “Who the hells are you?”

Rising, the girl pointed at him, eyes ablaze. “You are a liar and a thief, Kallion of Fra’anior.”

A cold as frosty as an Immadian midwinter seeped from the pit of his stomach, casing his limbs in a heartbeat. Kal choked on bile, hearing a wailing in his ears as if storm winds keened over barren rock.

“I don’t like liars, not even the most handsomely packaged ones.”

What could he say? All his life, Kal had drifted through a world of lies and half-truths, subterfuge and misdirection, hiding his tracks and his trade with an obsessiveness bordering on paranoia. Now … her? He refused to die like this!

Not without a kiss, at least. That should roust his doom from its hiding place.

“I-I d-did not lie about stealing hearts,” he faltered. He had to drop his gaze, for the girl’s eyes minded him of staring into the heart of a bonfire. He feared to combust. “Besides, the disadvantage is mine.”

“Oh?”

“Nameless hearts are hardly worth stealing.”

“Hardly worth–” her roar echoed in the chamber. He had no need to look to feel the heat of her glare. She hissed, “You brave little burglar. Very well. I should inform you that you speak with Tazithiel. I prefer to be addressed as Tazi. Tell me, how does a man go about stealing that which can never be stolen?”

Please, let the heavens open and smile upon the grave he was cheerfully excavating for his soon-to-be flaccid, truncated corpse. Forcing gravel into his voice, Kal said, “Tazi. Tazithiel. Thou art the twin suns’ radiance descended from heaven itself to illuminate my worthless existence in splendour.”

“If you think a few lines of bad poetry will–”

Kal was already in motion, striking with the speed and precision of a cobra. His lips clamped over hers. Softness. Fire. Heat detonating with unbearable sweetness between their bodies.

Growling, “Kiss me, thou beauty,” Kal kissed Tazithiel as though she were the last woman in the Island-World, his salvation and his muse, his passion and his heartsong. He kissed her as the stars kiss a velvet night sky. He kissed the girl as if he recognised this was the last act he would perform upon the Isles of the living, which it likely was.

For he kissed a Dragoness.

Chapter 2: All that Glitters

THE IMPACT OF Tazi’s clenched fist against his upper lip brought Kal’s dreamy kiss to an abrupt halt. He flew backward over a treasure chest, flipped head over heels in an ungainly somersault, and landed with a thump on his rump wearing a king’s coronation crown with a certain rakish flair, he decided, over his left eye. Great Islands, the woman had a punch like the recoil of a Dragonship’s war crossbows. He dabbed his lip in approbation. Split like a ripe prekki fruit.

She was so sexy, it hurt.

As for the girl-possibly-Dragoness, she immediately covered the essentials with her hands, but that gesture, happily, left much exposed to Kal’s admiration. Shock slackened her lips, which moved as though echoes of their kiss–a veritable Island-trembler of a kiss–still played havoc with her constitution. Pools of hungry fire, her eyes drew him in as though she reeled in a Dragonship by its anchor-hawsers.

Kal cleared his throat. He had no idea what had just happened, or how much time had passed, but he knew he would die a man who had just supped upon the mythical Isle of Paradise.

He whispered, “That would be how to steal your heart. No lies.”

“But you are a fortune hunter.”

Tazi coloured as her words emerged low and husky.

Kal knew he must not smirk. Ha. Old lava-lips had struck; now he must talk his way out of this fine fettle. Assuming an air of injured dignity, he said, “You presume I am some common cutpurse or marketplace idler. You presume motive, where none exists. You cannot know my heart. For all you know, Tazi, I was passing on the wings of a Cloudlands storm.”

“So, it says nothing that you staked out my cave for two weeks? I fail to accept your logic.”

“You’re the liar here.”

“Me?” Suddenly, peril stalked the air. Kal knew he had erred. Never call a Dragon a liar, was the saying. Worse, never spite a Dragoness.

Now his lips seemed as parched as the shores of a lava lake. Not as pleasing an image as before. “I meant, o Tazithiel, that you aren’t what you seem.” To the arch of a questioning eyebrow, which rivalled the nearby eyelashes for allure, he said, “You haven’t appeared in your true form.”

“True form? I am truly a woman, as you see.”

“Only a woman?”

“Only? Not enough woman for you?” Tazi’s spine stiffened. “Did you kiss a dream, o scourge of the infirm and elderly, o plague of the Isles? Your hands seemed quite certain of what they held.”

Well, if she wanted to play games, and he was trapped in a cavern with a sultry image of arguably the deadliest creature in the Island-World, which skulked somewhere as yet undetected–Kal knew he must play for his life.

He drawled, “Do you have any idea how challenging it is to hold an intelligent conversation with a paragon of nubile womanhood clad solely in the splendour of her own skin? You women are always bleating on about how men should love you for your personalities and your inner qualities, rather than panting about your skirts like hounds on the scent–and here you are, stark naked, cavorting about a cavern with a total stranger. For shame, say I.”

“I do not cavort.”

Kal stroked his beard, pretending sage thought. “Not that we are strangers, exactly, after that kiss.”

He expected her to blush like the suns-set. Instead, he startled as Tazi levitated two rubies and a flower-shaped, emerald encrusted bowl, placing them in strategic locations. The fist-sized rubies were insufficient to conceal her voluptuous charms, and the upturned emerald bowl concealing her loins only conjured up an image that made him squirm like a self-conscious teenager.

Unholy, smoking volcanoes!

“Safer?” she smirked, seeming to read his mind.

“A most fetching choice of outfit.” Kal bowed elaborately. “I cannot imagine what I might have found so diverting, earlier. With that, my lady Tazithiel, I shall bid thee fare–”

“You shall not.”

Was that a crackle of real fire in her voice? Whether a trick of tone or a curl of magic, it stopped his intended retreat more surely than a man ramming his head against a boulder, full sprint.

Kal sighed. Again. “Because I stole your heart?”

“Because you called me a liar.”

“Very well. I shall place said heart here, in my pouch, for safekeeping.” Kal pretended to fumble with his belt-pouch while his mind raced at the speed of a swooping hawk. How to not end up a Dragon’s dish? “I regret to inform you, but you did lie when you told me you don’t bite. No Dragoness worth her wings can make that statement.”

“Now who’s making assumptions about intention, never mind my fundamental nature?”

Kal tried to decide if the motes dancing in her eyes were amusement, desire, or a prelude to a feast. Lightly grilled Kallion-kebabs served on a bed of saffron-and-herb rice, anyone? He said, “Truth, Tazithiel. Cold, hard reality. The power of your punch is an ode to inhuman strength, and your fiery eyes make the truth a dead certainty.”

She glared at him, her lips compressed into a hard line. “Have you ever considered why it is called a dead certainty, Kal?”

He shrugged, a poor disguise for dread churning his intestines into an eel-pit. “The same reason Dragonship Steersmen spit upon navigation by dead reckoning. Reckon wrong, and you’re dead.”

“Suspecting I’m a Dragoness, you stroll gaily into my lair? I call that dead reckoning.”

Kal riposted, “Private viewings are more my style. Not for thievery, lest you be tempted to cast further aspersions upon my character, which have wounded me most sorely, might I point out, but for the purposes of purely aesthetic appreciation. I like what you’ve done with the place.” Switching deftly to Dragonish, he added, A spectacular Dragon hoard.

Aye, little Human.

Kal was just about to shout, ‘Proof!’ when her lips quirked into a ravishing, genuine smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. Flying ralti sheep! She already knew. Of course, he had whispered in Dragonish when he first spied her. Fool. Trust a Dragoness to sniff out his secrets. He glanced about surreptitiously. So, where was the beast? Where did it lie in wait, while playing the tease in a pretty Human likeness? This semblance of a girl was an extraordinary feat of magic–tactile, motile and altogether compelling. But Kallion was not fooled, oh no. Never fooled.

Tazi smiled, “So, Kal of allegedly intelligent conversation, meagre linguistic prowess and imperfect theft of hearts–tell me, what did you first notice when you stole into this cavern?”

He affected a casual shrug. “Gold. Gems. Great heaps of heartless bullion which can never fire a man’s heart as powerfully as kissing a Dragoness.”

“Ooh. You’re so smooth,” she hissed, clenching her fists at her sides. Mercy, her conversational shifts made him feel as if he was walking a tightrope, blindfolded, over a chasm filled with raging battalions of Dragons locked in mortal combat. “And then, Kal? When did you decide to despoil a defenceless maiden?”

“Actually, I didn’t.” He was probably more surprised by this admission than Tazithiel. He must be suffering a fever–no. Nor were his suppurating remains pushing up fireflowers in a graveyard. Aye! He had not plotted the slightest whisper of despoliation, at least, not until the incident with the flower-shaped emerald had plunged his thoughts into the proverbial mire. He pursed his lips against an incipient confession.

A growl throbbed deep in her throat, discharging a cold trickle of sweat down his neck.

Kal said, “I could add a swift despoliation to my list of urgent–no? Despoiling’s a nasty business anyways. So last-century.” He was babbling; they both knew it. “Of course I noticed your state of undress. After all, that’s what you wished me to notice, so aye, you win on that count, by an Island, by ten thousand leagues, by any measure that exists under the twin suns, you win. But Tazithiel, the first detail that struck me was your eyelashes. You have truly wondrous eyelashes.”

Her expression seemed frozen between disbelief and stupefaction. “My eyelashes?”

A touch mournfully, given as he was about to have his head garnished and served up on a golden platter, Kal added, “Unquestionably, your eyelashes frame the greatest treasure in this cavern.”

The rubies and the emerald wobbled precipitously, but Kal did not shirk from meeting her effulgent gaze with all the honesty he could muster. It was the truth–the naked truth, pun intended. Perhaps it was the first unadorned truth he had offered Tazi in their entire conversation.

“Now, that’s a heart-stealer,” she whispered.

“Soo …”

“I fear you leave me no choice,” the girl cut in. Without warning, every button of his loose-weave linen shirt popped open. The fabric began to wind its way, snakelike, off his shoulders.

“Freaking fireballs!” Kal exclaimed, failing to capture the errant garment. It flapped away across the cavern, ghostlike.

“I find myself in the mood for a little despoliation of my own.”

Somehow, the word ‘despoil’ had instantly mutated into his new favourite expletive. Kal made a despairing grab for his belt, complete with sword, daggers, and a few other implements unruly rummagers rather enjoy having about their persons, but her magic hindered him. The belt landed several feet away, neatly looped over the pommel of a magnificent blade. His weapons scattered upon unseen winds. Next, his bootlaces began to writhe with, in his opinion, completely unnecessary urgency. No amount of splaying his toes or kicking his legs rescued his footwear from a fate similar to the belt.

“I … I don’t fancy being helplessly violated by a fire-breathing monster!” he gasped.

“But you look so tasty. Just an appetiser–”

“Great Islands, stop!” His yelp did nothing whatsoever to halt the earthward slide of his trousers. Coyly, the girl levitated a four-foot silver sceptre crowned with the largest sapphire Kal had ever seen, and positioned it so as to preserve his blushes. He could not withhold a sarcastic, “Why, how complimentary.”

“Truly, the crown jewels,” she quipped, making short shrift of his underwear. “Isn’t this much fairer?”

“Fair?” he squeaked. “I’m captive to a despot with fifty invisible hands. On which Island might this be fair, pray tell?”

With a devious and utterly ravishing smile, the enchantress approached him, eyeing up the sceptre in a manner capable of making metal and stone blush, never mind the man it concealed. Tazi drawled, “I’ve decided to keep you for a bit, Kal. Hope you don’t mind. We Dragons do like to play.”

Dragon? Oh no … “I–I’m too o-old for you!”

Old? Ralti-stupid idiot! When had age ever been an issue? Well, even an affluence regulation expert had his morals, and boundaries he would never cross. Kal took a certain pride in never having despoiled a woman in his life–despite the fact that unannounced appraisers of royal personal effects must perforce have some familiarity with ropes and the temptations posed by damsels in perilous situations. On numerous occasions, such quivering temptations had been delicately incited to his point of view … only, he preferred his temptations minus the claws and fangs. He had not seen this woman’s draconic finery, but his imagination served up detail copious enough to bead his brow with blood-like sweat. Further, Kal much preferred the other party being the victim, not he. The situation struck him as a form of warped poetic justice. Aye, he had trespassed. Aye, Tazithiel was as seductive as a devouring flame. He could not dream of a more agreeable way to die.

She scared the living pith out of him.

“Kal, Kal, Kal,” the Dragoness’ image wagged a finger beneath his nose. “How old do you think I am?”

“Er, eighteen?”

“Double that,” she mocked gently, bunting her hips against the sceptre. Kal could never have admitted, not even to his own mother, what he thought just then.

“Impossible.”

“We live long. And I say to you that he who would play with fire … must declare his age.” She modified the common saying unexpectedly.

“Forty-four, with a definite wish for many more summers of life,” Kal stated. “May I suggest a bargain, lady?”

“No.” Ebon rivers of hair reached for him, caressing his forearms. That much magic, and her effortless control of it, was freakier than skulking around a haunted tomb on a tempestuous night. The darkness gathering around Tazithiel’s head, linking them, made her pyretic eyes blaze the more brilliantly, until Kal feared he would have suns-spots permanently scarred on his retinae. But he could not look away.

She said, “Dragonesses don’t strike bargains. You walked in willingly. You’re my prey, now.”

Kal shoved aside the babbling of his mind–much of it couched in unrepeatable swear words–to focus on the present, an impossibility when fire filled him up to his throat, and the very air seemed to tremble with the turmoil of his commingled passion and terror. How the hells could he feel this way when the main dish on the menu was evidently freshly ripped-off leg of Kal?

“A request!” he gasped.

“Make it quick,” Tazithiel murmured.

Indicating the sceptre, he ventured, “I do feel that your expectations of me might be somewhat … overstated.”

For a second, her jaw hinged open and Kal pictured fangs sinking into the pulse pounding in his neck. Then, rich laughter washed over him. Torrents of laughter. Gales of mirth, pummelling and compounding his confusion and misery–the vicious man-eater! He stiffened in outrage. Was it not beyond spite to taunt a meal like this? Tazithiel laughed so hard, she clutched her abdomen as tears splashed her cheeks.

Kal was violently unimpressed. He shouted, “What in a Cloudlands hell do you mean, woman? What’s so funny?”

“Kal,” she tried to speak, but hiccoughed. “Kal … sweet little man.”

His teeth ground together audibly.

“You don’t have much experience of Dragonesses, do you?”

“Obviously not.” He produced a creditable snort of discontent. “My bones would look rather more chewed upon, were that the case, and my remains would’ve long since been scattered from here to Immadia Island. Mercy–”

“Mercy?” As though he had slapped her with a battle-axe, which was not far from his thoughts just then, the girl’s face changed again. Challenging. Callous, even. “It’s dangerous to beg mercy of a Dragoness.”

He bawled, “Are you mad? Stop it! Just flash your ugly fangs and eat me already!”

Her eyes dimmed. “Eat you?”

Suddenly, he wished never to have uttered those words. A travesty, dulling the fires of this incomparable woman. He muttered, “Spit-roast Kal, done to perfection. That’s the point, isn’t it? Cloth would only stick in your fangs and spoil the meal.”

“Oh!” Her hand flew to her throat. “Oh! That’s … oh. Revolting. No.”

He could not make sense of the expressions darting across her mobile face. Suddenly, the spark reappeared; momentarily vibrant, stealing his thoughts away to pyretic desire. Tazi essayed a tremulous smile, allaying the storm of his fears.

Kal wagged an eyebrow, the limit of his daring. “Not so?”

She said, “Never so. Kal, you’re a sick windroc if you thought … listen, you parakeet-brained … you lovely Human. I’m a Shapeshifter. This is my natural form as inasmuch as I am a Dragoness.”

She was a shape-changing enchantress? Slap him over the head with a windroc!

Well, being slapped over the head by the Island-World’s premier avian predator, a hook-beaked, ferocious monster of a bird at over eighteen feet in wingspan, might stagger him rather less than he was staggered already. Perhaps a gentle slap to wake him from this daydream?

What dropped from his numb tongue was, “I kissed a lizard?”

“That’s highly insulting in draconic circles, Kal,” Tazi said reproachfully. “No, you did not kiss a lizard. You kissed the Human manifestation of a Shapeshifter Dragoness. Ah … Human-me. The non-reptilian … Islands’ sakes, it’s difficult to explain.”

With that, his confusion finally evaporated. This woman was no image; no trick of faultless enchantment. She was a Shapeshifter, one of the rare ‘third race’ oft maligned in ballads and histories. No wonder her kiss had felt so perfect, defeating his intent to unmask the Dragoness’ subterfuge; no surprise that she possessed freaky lakes-full of power and confidence. A tall, strong man had never presented the slightest physical threat to an unarmed, unclad woman. Still, there was no evidence of any Dragoness, but he sensed, he imagined …

Her hand braved the divide to touch his cheek, a fingertip touch that burned as though she had branded him. Kal forced himself not to flinch; it was the girl who shuddered instead. “I don’t eat people. Never. You’ve a soul; perhaps even a claim to a grain of intelligence.”

Kal snorted.

“Don’t you desire my Human form?”

“Evidently, eminently and everlastingly,” he shot back.

Roaring rajals, and he meant that too. Had he lost his mind? Kal had never committed to a thing–well, bar a pilfering project or three–in his four decades of life. He was hypnotised. Blinded. Sailing gaily off the Isle of sanity.

What did he care about that, when the girl had eyelashes so long, they would whisper butterfly-kisses against his cheek … thundering Cloudlands storms! He must be delusional. Could he think of nothing but eyelashes? Meantime, the mysterious beauty searched his face by touch, sight and even an odd itching that he took to signify magic.

Carefully, Kal said, “This … uh, most fetching manifestation of your … uh, indisputable draconic magnificence … does not wish to perform said despoliation? Actually, it’s the other thing, I mean, person–Dragoness–that I sort of hold a few concerns about. Minor concerns.” He illustrated with his fingers. “You know, such as what I’d look like flattened beneath your paw, Tazi, or dangling like a cane-rat between your bedazzling fangs. Naturally, such trivialities are hardly worth the breath–”

“You can meet my Dragoness another day.”

Kal tried for a winning grin. “Have you heard about the tenth day of the week? It’s called ‘never-ever-day’.”

I like you, little Human.

Creepy! That voice made his skin feel like a pair of boots he had once owned, which had shrunk a few sizes during his two-week traipse through a swamp in the Ur-Malka Cluster. His mission had ultimately been successful, but he never wanted to see another leech as long as he lived. That infestation of his unmentionables … Kal shuddered.

Tazi said, “See? My Dragoness likes you too.”

See? He was talking to a schizophrenic madwoman who made an art form of strange voices.

The moment swelled to awkward proportions–rather akin to an invisible Dragoness shouldering its way into their conversation, Kal imagined. He could envisage only one way he might escape being barbecued like a wild pig, and that involved … getting involved. Entangled. With a Shapeshifter Dragoness.

The Island-World was awash with peculiar forms of insanity; right now, most of them belonged to an errant outlaw.

“Very well,” he said, feeling heat steal up his neck to reignite his cheeks, “what exactly did a dazzling Dragoness wish to do with my … sceptre?”

A wicked giggle and a renewed yearning of her dark locks constituted his reward. Tazi said, “I rather hoped you might return to feeling diverted.” The rubies clinked upon the floor. The emerald wafted away to a nearby treasure pile.

Kal’s heartbeat pounded fit to burst his eardrums. “Desperately diverted. Utterly defenceless.”

“Might there be another kiss involved?”

He considered this, head askance. “Though my upper lip throbs, your request strikes me as far from odious.”

Tazi’s eyebrows arched at his choice of words. “Perhaps after said kiss, Kal, you might be persuaded to wield your sceptre in a truly kingly conquest?”

“Triggering a welter of looting, destruction and general mayhem?”

“Spoken like a true romantic.”

Kal decided that this feeling of reckless abandon to a fate which had seized him in its claws and winged off across the Island-World, could not be entirely bad. Fatal, most certainly. But he would leap into his grave smiling. He said, “So, I take it you approve of mayhem and destruction, o beauty of ten thousand Isles?”

“What a foolish question to ask a Dragoness,” Tazithiel gurgled happily.

Kal drew her into his arms. “Then I am a fool for thee.”

Chapter 3: Draconic

WHEN KAL’S EYES unshuttered, it was to light upon a sight that made him scream. It was not a nice scream. Not a yelp of happy surprise. It was not a lingering, despairing shriek, such as a criminal might make if he was kicked off a league-tall cliff to fall to his death in the Cloudlands, which Kal had once observed in Sylakia. Barbarians, those Sylakians. No, it was a chopped-off scream that scored furrows inside his throat with the gusto of a ravenous Dragon gutting a ralti sheep.

It was the kind of scream that ended in a heartfelt expletive.

Kal was not the swearing sort. He despised men who felt every second word needed to express the filth of their thoughts. In his line of work, he often rubbed shoulders with such men. However, there were times in one’s life when an expletive seemed justified. Indeed, it was arguably the most honest response he knew to the close regard of a fiery eyeball the size of his head, and the fact that the eyeball’s owner had him clasped in her paw, with the air of a feline toying with a luckless rodent.

“Best of the evening to you, Kal,” purred the Dragoness.

“I-I-Islands’–unholy windroc droppings!” he spluttered. “You are a d-d … a delight to the eye.”

Meantime, his brain imitated a maddened gerbil trapped in a cage, babbling, ‘Aye, but she’s freaking enormous, you ralti-stupid idiot! A smoking-at-the-nostrils, gleaming of fang, scale-armoured lizard–or haven’t you noticed?’ Not one inch of her was less than mind-bendingly draconic. Predatory. Deadly in the way a finely-crafted sword was deadly, or a volcano spat molten rock, or a wildfire consumed everything in its path. She was, in a word, awesome. Roar-some. Fulsomely fire-some … and he was a gabbling, purple-headed parakeet.

He wheezed, “You’re Tazithiel? Also? Partly?”

“Indeed.”

“Where are you hiding the … uh, rest? Of you?”

“Elsewhere. It’s Shapeshifter magic. I can switch between my Human and Dragon forms at will.”

Magic? Oh, that explained everything and nothing all at once. Aggrieved, Kal tried to recall if Tazithiel had appeared by magic, sleeping on her pile of treasure, or if she had merely blinded his normally acute larcenous alertness with her irresistible charms. Besides, the other manifestation of her being was so much more … well, less … but infinitely more appealing, in a way that only the sight of a hundred fangs gleaming in a recently bedded woman’s jaw could make him feel. He could only hope his endeavours had been up to the mark.

Kal said, “I despoiled a Dragoness? I never imagined such a phrase might be spoken …”

His voice trailed off. What now? Kal had no experience of draconic expressions, but he could have sworn he saw sadness enter her eyes in the form of swirls of shadowy fire. A quiver shook her paw, which rested like a hot blanket upon his chest, as if a painful memory had punctured her playful mood.

She raised her paw. “Go.”

“What?”

“Go. I’m letting you go.”

Words stuck in his craw. What of all they had shared? The haze of wonder which had permeated their time together, the warm satiation which filled his body now? Might he joke that the king’s sceptre lay bowed? Blunted beyond repair? He did not want to leave. Some unfortunate royal’s diadem was imprinted in his left buttock as though he had sat upon a porcupine, but otherwise, he was quite content to stay put. Too terrified to move, truth be told.

As he hesitated, the Dragoness said, “My draconic finery has struck mortal fear into your impoverished soul. Now’s the time, little man, you run down that tunnel as fast as your legs can carry you, fire up your Dragonship, and never return.”

Kal searched her fiery gaze. He looked over the parts of the Dragoness he could see. Most Dragons were one colour. Tazithiel, from what he could tell, was a sapphire tending to indigo in the upper parts–definitely indigo in the detail of her wing-struts, wing bones, spine spikes and skull spikes–but that colouration was broken with complex patterns of grass-green, gold and even white. He was lost over the Cloudlands on this one. Kal could not believe he was about to refuse a creature that could clearly swallow three of him with a single snap of her mighty jaw. How could this end well?

Nevertheless, he had declared himself a fool for her, so he might as well act in character.

He inquired, “Have I displeased you, Tazi?”

Smoke curled out of her vast nostrils.

“Did I offend you at the first despoliation, o Dragoness, or the fifth?” He meant to make light of matters, but his joke fell as flat as a drunk stumbling out of a tavern. Islands’ sakes, he was struggling to remember the day’s doings, which was desperately unjust. A haze of lust was simply an inadequate description, in his opinion, when she had stood all the volcanoes of his existence upside-down, and the five moons had apparently inflicted him with their madness at once.

For a seasoned felon, he was starting to have a disturbing love-affair with the notions of truth and honesty. Much more of this and he’d break out in a rash.

A thicket of fangs menaced his nose. “Go, before I kill you.”

Kal folded his arms. “No.”

“NO?”

Ignoring the ringing in his ears, and the despairing wail of common sense, logic and reason taking a running leap off the cliff-tops of sanity, Kal reiterated, “No.”

“HOW DARE YOU REFUSE ME?”

A fireball blasted over the treasure, blackening the cavern wall opposite.

His fatalistic bent clearly had not departed; or, more accurately, his mind had probably snapped under the strain of Dragon fear. “Magnificent lady,” he opined, “and you are magnificent, as I believe my rubbish poetry earlier fell woefully short of extolling with the slightest skill or adequacy, I must, most regretfully at this point in our budding relationship, make a small confession.”

She snarled, “Confess to what? Insufferable verbosity? For I assure you, I can cure that ailment with the swipe of my smallest talon.”

Kal decided he preferred abbreviated words to an abbreviated neck. He rapidly modified a sentence liberally smothered in verbal petals, and rattled instead, “Severe stubbornness issues. It’s a terrible affliction. Quite incurable.”

And he placed his arms behind his head, stretched out, and pretended to relax while her Dragon-thunder shook dust and stones from the cavern roof, and Tazi rearranged her hoard with the violent thrashings of her tail. Finally, she bellowed, “Get out of my sight, you intolerable man!” Smoky, sulphurous breath blasted into his face. Kal screwed his eyes shut, partly at the blast, and partly because soiling his trousers in terror was not an accolade any man of his years wished to earn.

Only the massive, beastly panting of her lungs filled the silence. Even that sound was ridiculously humungous, like forge-bellows working overtime.

“Well?” Her growl shook him from head to toe.

Kal muttered, “I’ve considered your proposal. Same answer.”

“No?”

“Simple little word, isn’t it? Spelled ‘N-O’.”

“Take what you wish of my hoard and begone with you, pesky Human!”

“Treasure bores me.”

The Dragoness growled, “You’ll be singing a different tune when I dangle you by your scrawny ankles from the nearest cloud.”

Although, the dread of dangling by his fingertips over a pit filled with deadly cobras, as a small mistake in the Palace of the Royal Optinate Meraxil the Magnificent, Despot of Da’ooba Island–his true name, and hardly the least of the little braggart’s titles–had led him to experience, could not hold a candle to this girl’s power over him. Nor could the snarls of the ten wild rajals protecting King Terman of Telstroy’s treasure cavern begin to match hers for ferocity.

What a woman!

Overloaded, his sense of terror had evidently become numbed into insensibility, or had fled to the same place where he had mislaid all reason and the common sense possessed of any self-respecting mosquito.

Scrambling to his feet, Kal reached impetuously–and unsteadily, given his state of enervation after the days’ exuberant deeds–for her eye. Tazithiel jerked back, making him dance about like a child being teased by a taller bully. Finally, he folded his arms. “Fine. I can’t reach. Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m clearly not the only inhabitant of this cavern with stubbornness issues?”

“Because then you’ll be out of my sight?” inquired the Dragoness.

“You’ve exposed my cunning plot,” Kal admitted, unrepentant. “Right, Dragoness. You will explain to me why you first lead a man on, and then–oh.”

He knew. It was not a question he would wish to put to any woman, especially not a seventy-foot scorcher filled with Dragon-fire and other unmentionable, nasty bits of magic, who could undress a man with her mind–what a horrible idea. A pox on that, it was an excellent notion. What man had not dreamed of possessing such a power? Kal cudgelled his brain for an exit from the verbal snare he had built for himself, and failed. She had been the one with no experience, in her Human form. He knew that beyond doubt, and could not square it up with her behaviour. Tazithiel had behaved as one trying to prove something, either to herself, or to another. Why? There could be only one answer.

With unaccustomed gentleness, Kal asked, “Who hurt you, Tazithiel?”

His quiet question broke her. A cry rose from her throat, as evocative as a wind keening through the rough-bitten caverns of the Western Isles, where he had once raided a warlord’s treasure trove for scrolls of forgotten Dragon-lore. The sound was so elegiac, so multi-harmonic and hair-raising, that tears streamed uncontrollably from his eyes.

After a long pause, he added, “Tell me who he was, and I shall slay him.”

The Dragoness laughed roughly, her paw bruising his ribs before releasing him from what Kal took for a draconic hug. “You see much, for a thief.”

“I haven’t seen much, not in my life,” he replied, bitterly. “Have you paused to ask why I refuse, consigning my person to mortal peril?” She shook her huge muzzle. “Were you to inquire, I would say this: Jewels and gold I have possessed aplenty, but I found they cannot satisfy. Pleasure have I sought, and enjoyed with the fruits of my labours, but pleasure is fleeting. My life booms with the emptiness of a drum, when I longed to be the drummer, to play a tune that might last longer than the beat of sound upon an ear.”

“So an afternoon’s recreation turns you into a philosopher?”

Kal voiced a growl of his own. “Yesterday’s me would have fled up that tunnel and never looked back. What the volcanic hells did you do to me, woman? Dragoness? If this is a spell, can you erase it and let me be Kal again, the ne’er-may care wind that blows where he pleases, and leaves no mark?”

The huge eyes studied Kal, filled with flame that mingled and swirled restlessly, like smoke curling from a fire. “It’s no magic of my making–word of a Dragoness.”

Vertigo threatened, but Kal locked his knees. What an unmitigated disaster this trip had turned out to be. He had found his treasure, aye. That treasure had promptly turned around and seized him. Furthermore, it had grown skull spikes and fearsome talons, and a beastly temper to match. Now, his spinning head was starting to consider doing things with this treasure that no honest–there was that despicable word again–spendthrift should ever open his mind to. He should flee. Wriggle. Weasel. Take back control.

Instead, Kal said, “I find myself treading unfamiliar territory, Tazi.”

“Aye, me too.”

“You can’t trust me. I don’t trust me.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath, appalled by the power of the truths tripping from his tongue. These things he had never admitted, not even to himself. “I’m not a good man; never have been.”

“Good? Did I ask for good? Did I seduce a monk?”

“Let’s be clear,” Kal countered, bold as brass, “that I, wielder of the most magnificent sceptre in Human history, am the one who seduced you, o fearsomely fair fire-maiden. I stole your heart and wreaked the aforementioned plunder–”

“On the contrary, you dunderheaded upright-walking naked ape, it is I who ravished you with the fiery passion of my mightiest enchantments.” Her paw clasped him again, massively powerful, and her eye-fires shifted to a gentler apricot colour. “Rogue or none, you did not run. Kal, I’ve never told anyone else, but I feel I must tell you. I’ve lived here alone, these nine summers. I came here because no other Dragon would dare to make this crossing. I came to be alone.”

“Aye. I did wonder.”

She said, “I was born a Dragoness on Mejia Island, south of Jeradia. In my sixteenth summer, I discovered I was a Shapeshifter. I concealed the ability at first. But eventually, I felt I could keep my secret no longer. I had to entrust it to someone. I told my shell-parents.”

Tazithiel’s breathing deepened; flame licked around her jowls, several feet above his head. Then, the Dragoness inclined her head to meet his gaze with a wounded mien. “There are some Dragons on Mejia who hold to the old ways. They believe that Shapeshifters are an aberration. Aberrations must be corrected, or killed. So my father handed me over to Endurion, a Dragon Elder, for correction. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He whispered, “I can’t imagine. I don’t want to.”

“I was a forty-foot juvenile. Endurion was a hundred-and-ten foot adult Green. He ‘corrected’ me at great length, Kal. He enjoyed doing it.” The second expletive of his evening burned the thief’s lips. “My kin on Mejia refused me magical healing. Usually, with Shapeshifters, injuries sustained in one form reflect accurately on the other. Thankfully, I’m a little special. Though as a Dragoness I am too damaged to achieve what we did today, as a Human female, it is still feasible. As proven.”

Kal groaned, “I hurt you? Tazi, I’m so–”

“No. My fires weep at your tenderness. While I lay in wait with the intent of killing you, slowly, with the most lingering and unspeakable tortures a deeply lonely, scorned Dragoness could devise–that was when you stole my heart.”

* * * *

Three evenings later, Kal sat at his ease on a rough slab of granite jutting over the westward-facing suns-set Cloudlands, bare feet dangling over the edge. Idly, he strummed a battered old hand-harp which travelled everywhere with him. The drop from his toes to the Cloudlands was a half-league of sheer, unrelenting grey-black cliffs, pocked with tenacious tufts of tan, windswept vegetation. The cloudscape blanketed the world to the horizon in every direction, unbroken, unrelenting. What wonders lived beneath the clouds, only one person living had ever seen–Aranya, Dragon-Queen of Immadia, the legendary woman who broke the Sylakian Empire’s back and succoured the Lesser Dragons from extinction.

Ancient Dragons had raised the Isles from the toxic Cloudlands, and set their habitation upon them. He could believe that. Surely no natural process could raise miles-tall spires of rock out of nothingness? He could also believe Humans had once been the slaves of Dragons–those creatures of unrivalled power and majesty, who roamed the cloud-oceans at whim and roosted upon the high places of the Island-World, who under no circumstances played at the pillow-rolls with men of his deceitful character.

Should he be a poet? He strummed a plaintive chord. The rhyme of his life might be:

Silver and gold were my bread and water,

These were the treasures I sought-o!

Nothing else mattered, nothing else gleamed,

Cold useless things, these my heart reamed,

Yet I dreamed …

Kal’s senses had always been attuned to his surroundings. Other thieves laughed when he waxed wistful about the lure of the long leagues, or spoke of capricious winds in his face and the twin suns hot upon his brow, or yearned for those unbroken silences found in the gulfs between the Isles. Perhaps it was only those yawning gaps which kept men from being at each other’s throats more often.

His lip curled. Men were useless, vain creatures. Sometimes he could not bear their company. Was he born to wander forever, a restless, roaming breeze that served only to stir leaves before it hurried on? Sometimes he could bear nothing else. He threw himself at relationships, at social settings, with alarming abandon. Dissatisfaction gnawed termite-like at the roots of his soul.

A man should not establish his soul upon rottenness.

Kal sensed her approach. Tazithiel brushed not a grain of sand with her foot. She walked, he had slyly observed, upon a miniscule bed of air–a thief’s dream of utter silence. Ceaseless power. It flowed through her veins like the finest ale, golden and alluring. She moved, in his mind’s eye, with the sleek grace of the greatest of cats, called rajals, only a Dragoness was a creature more magnificent by far.

The Indigo Shapeshifter came to stand beside him, her right hand resting lightly upon his nape. The breeze stirred her night-blue tresses, the colour of an evening sky just before the suns give up their last toehold upon the day, surrendering to the darkness. The waning suns writ golden sonnets upon the flawless planes of her face, the sculpted cheekbones and generous lips, a dusting of freckles upon her straight nose, down to the lissom heron’s-neck bent of her right leg, which touched his shoulder.

Kal stirred restlessly. He grew faint with soppiness in his dotage. What manner of thoughts were these?

Tazithiel said, “I keep expecting to wake and find you gone, Kal.”

“I only come out here to play.”

“And to seek answers?”

Already, she read him like an open scroll. Another alarming aspect of her nature. Aye, he had contemplated taking flight–a ridiculous notion, given her draconic power. Torn as he was, Kal found himself tarrying. Tazi had that effect upon every scintilla of his universe. She enthralled without trying; burned without ceasing. Enthralling.

He said, “Sometimes, answers are only plucked from perfect stillness.”

“My contemplative monk,” she chuckled sweetly. “Shall I bring our meal out here?”

Reaching for her hand, Kal rested his fingers lightly in hers. “I apologise. I’m not much used to the company of others. I’ve been a solitary animal, Tazi. If I am any judge, trust must be difficult for you–as difficult as it is for me.”

Her nod exposed to Kal the pensive curve of her lip, and an underlying tautness in her jaw.

“I remain here, with you,” he said.

She nodded. “Aye.”

“Besides, would I sail a league before a Dragoness came roaring out to drag me back to her Human’s lair and perform acts of unspeakable hedonism upon my grateful person?”

“I’d let you go.”

Kal drew breath sharply. “Don’t say that.”

“You’re meant to be an immoral, grasping thief, you silly man.”

“Ooh,” he growled playfully, laying a hand upon her thigh, “I’m incurably immoral, especially around flagrantly unclad maidens. Now fetch my meal, o shameless perfection, before I succumb to my baser cravings and perform some intentional grasping to boot.”

With a bright trill of laughter, Tazithiel danced out of his reach. “You need to eat before you faint–again. Don’t move.”

Over a simple meal of nuts, green tinker banana and flame-roasted rock hyrax–eaten from plates of solid gold–and cool cave water sipped from the finest jewelled crystal goblets of her Dragon hoard, Tazi said, “I was thinking about the dreams you shared with me.”

“And here I prided myself on driving all rational thought out of your mind,” suggested Kal, in his deepest wastrel-of-the-bedchamber voice.

“That was earlier.” She beamed at his glowing pleasure. Kal, grinning like a fatuous courtier, failed to imagine what he would not do for that smile. “Now, I demand intelligent conversation, if that is possible for a Human male.” He quickly rearranged his features into an ugly leer, while Tazi ticked off on her fingers, “See the world. Gather knowledge. Attempt the impossible. Do something actually worthwhile with your miserably kleptomaniacal existence.”

“Roaring rajals, that was just loose talk. I have not admitted a single dishonest, light-fingered tendency. So there. Toast that on the point of your fifty-third fang, Dragoness.”

“You stole my heart, beautiful thief.”

“Fie, dangle me from the gallows, woman.”

“Easily arranged.” Tazithiel’s grim statement caused Kal’s hand to fly involuntarily to his neck before he took in the amusement sparking from her eyes.

He grumbled, “Nor do I faint.”

“No, you only screamed–like a girl.”

Kal yawned exaggeratedly. “Can we move on? This conversation bores me.”

“You’ve the attention span of a newborn gnat,” said she, with a flash of her indigo eyes. Kal was quite convinced that one day, Dragoness-Tazi would leap at him from those eyes and then he really would faint. “So, referencing the ‘what shall I do with my life’ moment of soul-searching you briefly had between bouts of energetic diversion with yours truly, o Kallion, what are your thoughts now?”

“I’m not the lightweight you take me for,” said Kal, aggrieved at the tenor of her question, “with due respect to the muscled tonnage of your Dragoness-self.”

“And?”

He squirmed and prevaricated, but Kal could not deny the undisguised hope that fired his reply. “Have you ever dreamed of crossing the Rim-Wall Mountains, Shapeshifter-lady?”

To his delight, her jaw popped open and Tazi came within a millisecond of spitting out her mouthful of nuts. “What?”

“You heard me. I dream of scaling or finding a way through the uncrossable, insurmountable, twenty-five league tall Rim-Wall Mountains which surround our Island-World, and discovering what lies on the far side. Can we be alone in this world, Tazi? Why did the Ancient Dragons confine Dragonkind and Humankind alike in a bowl half-filled with toxic soup, in which we cling like flies to our rocky perches and wage war upon each other? Why deny us the rest of the world?”

The girl continued to stare.

“You’re fishing for flies, beautiful one,” he said, chucking her chin with his forefinger.

Tazi’s teeth clicked together, nipping his skin. Kal snatched back his hand. Great Islands, she was fast! She demanded, “How did you know? Did you look?”

“Er … look? At what? Your unspeakably enticing bosom?” He pretended drooling confusion.

“You are incredible.”

Kal switched at once to outrageous preening, making it perfectly clear what he hoped she meant. “How astutely you determine the truth.”

“No! Come!” Seizing his hand, Tazi leaped to her feet, making Kal dump his goblet of water in the lap of his trousers. As he clucked in annoyance, she cried, “Here. Look. Before I brought you the meal, look at what I wrote on this rock. This is my answer.”

Kal read. Read again. Aye, he could read, nine days of any given week, but he was having difficulty processing the implications of this conundrum. She had written a poem on a flat quartz boulder, in flowing runic script, with the use of a stick of charcoal:

To Jeradia shall I fly, with my sweet thief,

A map I require to stimulate belief,

For to fly beyond an impassable mountain-wall,

For to return, victorious, if at all.

Chapter 4: Flyaway

KAL EYED THE armoured wall of Tazithiel’s flank apprehensively. Unbelievable. What female in her right mind would simply purr when he blurted out, ‘Great Islands, woman, your backside is the size of an Island’? Memorable line, that. Eloquent. And how she loved it!

He leaned back, shielding his eyes from the twin suns’ glare. “You expect me to climb to which mountaintop?”

“My shoulders.”

“And to impale a rather delicate part of my anatomy upon which spine spike, exactly?”

A rumbling began deep in her belly, a forge blazing behind closed doors. She said, “You will be seated between my spikes in a comfortable Dragon Rider saddle.”

“Wearing this outlandish suit of armour.”

“Kal.”

“I’ll probably fall and crack my skull on–”

“Kal!”

“Somehow, I imagined myself piloting my trusty Dragonship, pillowing my head upon your luscious hillocks–”

GGRRRAAARRGGGH! Tazi thundered. As the echoes faded and Kal made a show of popping his ringing ears, she growled, Do I or do I not make myself clear, little Human?

“Abundantly.”

“I find your lack of trust in a Dragoness … disturbing.”

Not half as disturbing as Kal found trying to measure up to his Shapeshifter girlfriend, who was so mind-bogglingly humungous, his eyes began to water in disbelief before they had traipsed halfway to her hind legs. Kal cracked what he liked to call his signature grin. Aping a thick Sylakian accent, he drawled, “Island boy, I like my women big. Real big. I mean, seriously heee-yooooge.” Tazi’s muzzle jerked in surprise. “I swoon to think I mistook her snoring last night for an earthquake. I like it when her haunches obscure the Yellow Moon, and her dulcet tones would flatten the average Sylakian fortress. Boy, I fancy my woman so big, when I hear her booming tread a-coming from the next Island, I get the shivers and the quivers right up to my withers.”

“You are a buffoon!” she guffawed.

“Word to the wise. Don’t encourage me.” He bowed floridly. “I missed my true vocation–”

“What, court jester?”

“Wordsmith, if you please. Occasional comedian. Conversational harpist.”

“And what, by my wings, is a conversational harpist?”

Kal shrugged briefly. “Who knows? It sounds good.”

Fixing him with the mesmerising gleam of her eye, Tazithiel rumbled, “You will sit on my back or I will sit on you. Your choice, clever thief.”

“I’d prefer it if you sat on my … er, I sense the hour is not ripe for a wisecrack?”

Tazi’s foreclaw, the size and sharpness of a decent sword alongside his neck, slid smoothly back into its sheath. “How frightfully perceptive you are, Kal, for a man.”

“It’s a point of pride. Tazi, are you a mind-reader? I’ve heard Blues can do that.”

The Dragoness blinked. “A falling-star-swift change of subject–oh, you must mean our strangely coinciding desires to attempt an impossible journey?” He nodded. “No. Not that I know of. Don’t shake your head, you grubby excuse for a Sylakian sweet-tuber farmer. Had I been able to read your mind, I would’ve tossed you off the Island before you ever set foot in my lair.”

“Forsooth, woman!”

“Who says ‘forsooth’ in this day and age? And will you stop worrying at that scab on your lip? It’s healing nicely.”

Kal pouted. “It itches.”

Puckering her lips, the Dragoness swung her muzzle toward him. Even though her jaw touched the ground, her nostrils reached the level of his chest, and the tiny spikes adorning the top of her muzzle topped his shoulders. She blew a flame-ring toward him. “Kiss better?”

The scurvy scavenger fended her off with a yelp. “I am not kissing that fire-hose! Show off. Flaunting your fires so brazenly.”

“I’m a Dragoness. Shocking, isn’t it?”

“My exceptional powers of intuition have indeed ascertained this fact. And, toss me off the Isle without forethought? I’m hurt. Cut to the quick.”

“Oh, you poor man. Are you not a profligate philanderer and a worthless thief?” There was far too much of his life’s story encapsulated in that sentence for Kal’s liking. He was just beginning to complain when Tazithiel clapped his left shoulder with her paw, summarily flattening him. “Step into my golden boudoir, o most talented tearaway, and finish explaining that trick you were trying to teach me before.”

“I thought we succeeded?”

At least fifty gleaming fangs framed the Dragoness’ smile as she released her wheezing captive. “Oh? I must’ve slept through that unconvincing, lackadaisical excuse for a pillow-rolling.”

Brushing off her paw, Kal stalked off in high dudgeon, yelling for the rocks and birds to hear, “Fickle woman! Feckless Shapeshifter! Despicable Dragoness–whatever you are!”

* * * *

Since both parties became hopelessly distracted in the course of making apologies thereafter, Kal and Tazi delayed setting off until the following morning. Dawn found a certain malefactor taking his leisure upon the same barren outcropping above the Dragoness’ lair, waiting for the fussy fire-breather to gobble down her fiftieth rock hyrax, besides the four banded rock-deer she had swallowed whole, three fat adders that Kal was overjoyed to see disappear down her gullet–he hated snakes–and all the baskets-full of eggs he had collected for her the previous evening, making his already aching back–well, ache more.

“I do admire a girl with a healthy appetite,” Kal sniped.

“I need to keep my strength up in order to lug you and your extra padding between Islands.”

“Worn you out, have I, Dragoness?”

Tazithiel regarded him coldly, jaundiced of eye and clenched of talon. “Do you know why Dragons enjoy men in armour? We like the extra crunch.”

Kal groaned, “Ooh, it’s too early for jokes like that.”

“Moreover, the metal is good for our scales.”

“Please. Save your feeble attempts at scaring me for someone who cares.” Swaggering around her enormous right forepaw, Kal kicked Tazi’s ankle. He bit back a grunt of pain as he almost broke a toe. Bad idea. “Ho, mighty fortress. How may I scale thee?”

Tazithiel vented a fiery snort of amusement. “Teach a thief how to climb? I think not.”

“Told you, I’m not a thief. I’m a security arrangements penetration tester, hired by kings and nobles the world over for my legendary expertise.”

“Let me guess,” the Dragoness snarled. “Do I detect a tasteless quip forthcoming, such as, ‘and I certainly penetrated your arrangements, lady?’ ”

Exactly. More elegantly put, of course, but she was on the right Island. Judging by her thunderhead expression, Kal decided, the better part of dignity might be to start climbing. Fast.

He did enjoy a good stint of scaling fifteen-foot castle walls by hand, or prancing about on rooftops, but this beast would overshadow the average inn. How did she even fly? Magic? A creature of her bulk should just plummet into the Cloudlands, well, like a seventy-foot boulder.

Maybe he should turn his thoughts to less troubling paths.

He had never ascended a living wall so stuffed with draconic muscle and fire that a little of both practically leaked out of her ears. For that matter, where were her ears? He glanced curiously over the jagged ruff of skull spikes to her reptilian muzzle. Tazi’s multi-coloured scales were smooth and surprisingly warm to the touch, layered over each other like the excellent tiled roofs of Sylakia Town, which he could navigate like the palm of his own hand. Kal learned to the tune of a sliced thumb, however, that the downward-pointing scales were fearfully sharp. A neat row of spine spikes adorned her back, running from her tail all the way to her neck, but unusually for a Dragon–so she said–she had two parallel rows of smaller spikes offset by about three feet either side of her spine.

Kal strode up her back, fourteen long-legged paces, to the place where she had settled the Dragon Rider saddle and equipment salvaged from her hoard. Actually–Kal grinned–he had two saddles of his own back home, several Dragon lances, and a set of golden armour far finer than the more functional, well-used kit he wore now.

Kinetic magic, the same Dragon-power which had divested him of his trousers with such facility, had enabled Tazithiel to position his seat and saddlebags perfectly, and to fasten the saddle girth without the use of any hands whatsoever. All was arranged. Food supplies, several handy sacks of coin and gemstones, even a formidable -looking Dragon war-bow complete with four-foot arrows. They’d pack a punch. What did Tazi expect to encounter out there? Other Dragons? Feral ones? He shivered. He was not a brave man–not if bravery entailed charging into hopelessly one-sided battles brandishing a sword or war-hammer. Kal would rather calculate the odds, and win on his terms. It was a trait which had kept him alive when many of his fellow professionals already owned their personal patch of fireflowers in a nameless Island graveyard.

Then what was he doing standing on a Dragoness’ back?

“Fishing for trout, noble Rider?”

Noble Rider? Well! Kal squared his shoulders, blithely ignoring the snide look the Dragoness cast him. Now, her head snaked back to take a proper look. She said, “Don’t forget, I can reach you back there to snap your head off should you misbehave.”

“Oh, no misbehaving, not me, noble sky-beast,” he retorted. “Obedience and deference to authority are–”

“Glaringly absent in your psychological makeup and upbringing?” she cut in, punctuating her words with puffs of smoke. “Strap in, little man, unless you’d like to play with me in the air?”

He pursed his lips. “If you’re suggesting finding sundry wicked uses for your levitation powers, aye. But somehow I fear there might be a little too much tumbling and screaming involved for my taste. Feeling a touch squeamish this fine morning. A few tummy-wobbles and suchlike. Nothing a healthy whiff of fresh air shouldn’t cure.”

“If you wobble anywhere near my scales, I’ll teach you the true meaning of Dragon fear.”

Roaring rajals. Dragon-Tazi certainly knew how to intimidate. Kal sat down with a bump on the finely-crafted, moulded leather saddle perched between her spine spikes, and secured the leather thigh and waist straps. Great. Now he was firmly fastened to the spit. All she needed to provide was a blaze. Not a problem for most women, let alone a cantankerous Dragoness.

Kal clutched his seat as Tazithiel stepped forward. “Ready, thief?”

“No.”

His mount lurched, approaching the cliff’s edge. Beneath her forepaws, the granite cliff sheared away in a single, seamless drop to the Cloudlands two and a half miles below. The place had an awfully final, edge-of-eternity look about it. In a breathless instant, he developed a healthy respect for people of faith and prayer, such as the monks of Ya’arriol Island, although why he trusted an insanely magical flying reptile less than a Dragonship built of wood, metal and cloth, he could not fathom.

They planned to fly southwest to the Southern Archipelago, nicknamed the underbelly of the Island-World for the sprawling curve–a thin-lipped smile, Kal had always imagined–the countless Islands described right across the world to the Western Isles, thousands of leagues distant. On the way, they would pass Yin’toria Island, heart of his business ventures and home to a special someone he could not wait to introduce Tazi to–if only he could devise a plan whereby they might not murder each other at first sight.

Before the famously harsh Western Isles loomed the mountainous fastness of Jeradia, their eventual destination. On the Isle’s northern flank stood the famed Dragon Rider Academy, where Tazithiel hoped to find information that should help them in their madcap quest.

His lips quirked. Plenty of opportunity for dalliance along the way.

With a leathery rustling, the Dragoness spread her wings. Kal’s smile vanished like smoke in a storm. He squeezed his eyes shut, offering up a heartfelt plea as Tazithiel hurled them into the abyss, and his stomach made a many-clawed assault upon his throat.

Wind pummelled his eyelids. It tousled his hair and played with his clothing in a reminder of Tazi’s startling ability to divest a man of his coverings with unseemly efficiency, overriding any protests to the contrary. Overriding. He scowled. An apt word to describe a Dragon’s power of persuasion. The notion of being subjugated by any person–or creature–made a certain scoundrel’s legs itch to be fleeing over the Islands with the alacrity of a cliff-goat attacked by a hive full of black flame-wasps. No. A beatific expression replaced the frown. Truth be told, he was a man ruled by passions that blazed like the belly-fires boiling audibly within the Dragoness, enamoured with an indigo-eyed enchantress who had the most alluring eyelashes …

“Kal?” She interrupted his reverie. “How does it feel to fly Dragonback?”

“Stomach-wrenchingly wonderful.”

“And the view?”

“Spectacular.”

Sulphurous smoke puffed into his face. “The insides of your eyelids must be marvellous indeed.”

“Sherwibble,” said he, cracking open his left eye.

A fiery orb greeted him, filling his field of vision with the knowledge of a Dragoness’ irritation. “Where’s the trust, Kal?”

“If man were meant to fly, we’d have wings. Look, don’t fulminate your furnaces at me, lady. My head trusts you to keep us aloft. But I’m pretty sure we abandoned my stomach back there on the cliff.”

A cliff which had receded with frightening speed into the distance, while the untameable reaches of the Cloudlands engulfed a Dragon and her Rider, an endless realm of death awaiting the slightest mistake. Yet her wings cut the winds with supple simplicity, and her long body undulated to the rhythm of her surprisingly slow wingbeats. Kal’s heart rode high in his throat. From afar, he had many times admired the serpentine grace of Dragons winging across the five moons. This was … he had no words. Well, true to character, perhaps a few words. Breathless. Humbled. He felt intoxicated, high on the fumes of life itself. Also, slightly aggrieved. Dragons could shoot the winds like this whenever they wished? Unfair!

“You’d rather be aboard your Dragonship, right?”

“Wrong.” Kal’s grin was only semi-functional, but the iron in his voice pleased him. “Flying with you is an unforgettable shade of miraculous.”

She spoke no word in response, but the tenor of her long, ululating trill lifted every hair on his arms and prickled the back of his neck. Until this moment, Kal realised, he had considered her to be beastly, an animal. But he realised now that her soul was also attuned to wonder. It made her comprehensible. Sentient. Not so much the bright-eyed beast.

For a time, it seemed her song became the wings that floated them above the Cloudlands.

At length, Kal wriggled uncomfortably. “Tazithiel, I’ve a question about Shapeshifters.” For questions could supplant this treacherous feeling welling in his breast, an emotion he feared more than any other …

“A question about kissing lizards?”

Kal planted a loud smacker on the spine spike directly ahead of his saddle, which stood half a foot taller than his eye-level. “One kiss duly delivered. May I ask, Tazi, how do you do the changing thing?”

“My transformation? I think, therefore I am.”

He sniffed, “Ancient existential philosophy is a poor substitute for solid science. Tazi, where’s your Human right now? Because–”

“Shapeshifter magic is inherently transformative.” Tazi swivelled her neck to scan the horizon. “My joke has substance, Kal. I am one soul which exists in two forms, or two manifestations, if you prefer the Dragonish technical term. We believe there’s another plane of existence, a spiritual plane, which houses our non-manifest being. For Shapeshifters, the draconic fire-soul and the Human soul are intertwined, two but one. We exist simultaneously, intermingled.”

“So could I speak to Human-Tazithiel right now?”

“I am here.”

“And Dragoness-Tazi?”

I also am here. Her Dragonish filled his mind with colours and nuances of dizzying complexity. Why are you frowning like that, Kal? Should the wind change …

“Tazi, I sense both of you.”

A glitch in the Dragoness’ wingbeat betrayed her surprise. Her muzzle tilted, bringing an interrogative arch of her brow-ridge to his notice.

“When I wandered into your lair with all the gumption and flair of a flummoxed ralti sheep, I knew there was a Dragon present–aye, snort fire! I know I was confused, thinking you were some kind of magical likeness or enchantment, but when I kissed you–”

“Which confused you even more.”

“Thoroughly addled my wits,” he admitted, eliciting a rumbling laugh from his magical sky-quadruped.

“You kept calling me ‘Dragoness’,” she said. “I could not understand how you intuitively grasped my nature. We Shapeshifters are not exactly common about the Isles, and we keep a low profile. Did my distraction not work?”

“Oh, that bit worked perfectly.”

The Dragoness showed him the fire roiling on her tongue. “The stench of your lewd thoughts burns my nostrils, scoundrel. But Kal, how did you know?”

Time for a knowing wink. “Magic.”

“Magic? No magic in the history of this Island-World has ever been able to detect a Shapeshifter’s presence from either their Dragon or Human forms.”

“With one exception–the magic of Hualiama Dragonfriend.”

A monstrous fireball split the morning sky, expiring just above the curve of the Yellow moon, looming over two-thirds of the western horizon. Kal clutched his saddle, white-knuckled, half-expecting Tazi’s head to snake back over her shoulder and shorten him by a rather essential part of his anatomy.

She panted, “How under the twin suns did you come by such knowledge? Kallion, this is deep Dragon lore; a Shapeshifter secret. Swear you will never repeat it! Swear!”

Despite the flames boiling above his head as she hissed at him, Kal broke out in a cold sweat. Stiffly, he said, “There’s no need for intimidation, Dragoness. I wish for truth between us. I learned this when I lived with the monks of Ya’arriol Island for two years.”

“See, I knew you were a monk.”

However, there was scant levity in her tone. Kal knew he had overstepped an invisible line, boasting to a quick-tempered Dragoness. Fool. They had made no promises to each other. With a thought, she could loosen his saddle and drop him into the Cloudlands, where his bones would rot in oblivion for all eternity.

“I took no vows,” he muttered. “I was searching their library for knowledge of your Dragon roost, Tazithiel, when the monks captured me.”

“You learned Dragonish from the monks?” she growled. “I wondered at your accent. A touch barbaric, but linguistically accomplished.”

Compliment or condescension? He could not tell. Kal settled for a flat, “Aye.”

“Tell me what you know of Shapeshifters.”

“The scrolls call Hualiama the mother of all Shapeshifters, and the first Dragon Rider. She broke the ancient taboo of Humans riding Dragonback. Some academics accuse the Ancient Dragon Dramagon of designing or breeding Shapeshifters, but the lore of the Dragon the monks worship–the Black Dragon Fra’anior himself–” Tazithiel’s shiver communicated to him through his seat “–clearly labels the Dragonfriend as the progenitor of your kind. Apparently there’s a trio of lost scrolls which recount her tale.”

“The Dragonfriend Saga.” Her whisper was reverence itself.

“Aye. Those scrolls must tell a tale indeed. A Human woman who called Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon, her Dragonlove?” Kal shook his head slowly. “I can only imagine that notion flying like a lead balloon among the Dragonkind. What singular courage she must have exhibited. Tazi, what colour are you? Tourmaline? Could you be Hualiama’s descendent?”

“I’m Indigo, mostly.” Her voice was faraway, her mind engaged in contemplations Kal could only guess at. “Could you ever call someone your Dragonlove, Kal? Could you?” Tazi’s muzzle jerked away. “Don’t answer. Sorry I asked.”

Kal let out the breath her question had trapped in his throat. He uncurled his clenched fingers from the saddle straps.

“Heritage among Shapeshifters is peculiar, Kal. We do not always trace our roots by direct lineage, for there is also a spiritual heritage–why I should reveal such mysteries to a man of your ilk, I cannot fathom.”

Distinctly, he heard her fangs grinding together. True. Painful truth, surprisingly. He would not trust himself with such secrets; secrets which could be sold for a king’s ransom. But if the reinvented Kal wished to place his mark upon the Island-World, upon history even–should such hubris not earn him a speedy talon through the neck–then he must evince more than a thief’s sense of integrity.

“Tazi–” he winced as his voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s “–you doubtless sensed, even smelled, my reaction to your question. I will say this. Love is fragile, precious beyond any treasure of this world. It … takes time.” Suddenly, his throat was thick with unspoken emotions. “What this man knows is the first blush of infatuation. He would not know this madness from true love if it captured him, despoiled him and turned all the Islands of his world into butterflies that winged their way around the twin suns in eternally fluttering rainbows.”

The Dragoness’ chuckle shook him so hard, Kal was thankful for the saddle straps. He asked, “Are you tempted to eat me, now?”

“Too amazed for that.”

“Of course. I am simply, jaw-droppingly amazing.”

His preening triggered another draconic chuckle, complete with fire, billowing smoke and a choking puff of sulphur. “What you are is the vainest parakeet I’ve ever met.”

“It’s a defence mechanism.” Kal snapped his mouth shut. What by the volcanic hells of Fra’anior–the largest active volcano in the Island-World at eighteen leagues in diameter–was he thinking, giving a Dragoness his inmost confidences? Quickly, he said, “Oh, so what shall I make of all that posing on the clifftop back there?”

“Pre-flight checks.”

Her tone suggested he had better not pursue the matter. Kal, being Kal, settled unerringly upon the diametric opposite. “Pre-flight muscular posing and checking the exact striations of your massive flight muscles in the full gleam of dawn’s pure light?” Her growling gathered the volume and menace of an approaching avalanche. “I mean, I can understand stretching your wings to loosen the joints and ligaments. But tilting them to maximise the gleam off the surface in order to dazzle your Human companion–”

“Kal!”

“You examined the sharpness of your talons because–”

“We might encounter enemies.”

“And that remarkable session of spine-stretching–” he imitated her morning limbering up, with slightly exaggerated sound effects “–whilst fishing for compliments with a coy inclination of your head and whirling fire-eyes?”

“Kal!”

“Oh roar my name once more, thou glorious breath of dawn’s fires.”

“Shut the dragonet-babble, you vacuous vagabond.”

“You love my poetry. Really. It’s alarming how I can turn a woman’s heart into prekki fruit mush with nought but a casual turn of phrase.”

Tazithiel crisped a few passing insects with the force of her derision.

Leaning forward in the saddle, he whispered, “Now, why don’t you show me what a Dragoness can do, Tazi? Can you soar over those quadruple overlapping rainbows up there?”

The Indigo Dragoness’ challenge shook the cool, still morning. I shall rend the light with my claws! I am Tazithiel!

Tazithiel surged skyward, once again leaving Kal’s stomach miles in her wake.

Chapter 5: Call of the South

A DAY ALOFT was enough to convince the most cynical sifter of swag that flying Dragonback was an experience which stirred the secret places of his soul. Between bouts of awe and curiosity, Kal spent an agreeable clutch of hours envisioning the citadels and fortresses he could plunder with the help of a Shapeshifter Dragoness. He drew blissful thought-pictures regarding the potential uses of her magical powers. Ah, how swiftly he could loot a treasure-chamber if he could just levitate the gold and jewels right out of it! Kal sighed. Soldiers? A puff of Dragon-fire would roast them in their tin-pot armour. Moats, sixty-foot walls and defending armies? Trifles.

Of course, as a recently reformed rogue he was not truly intent on carrying out these undeniably sheep-brained plans. Instant holiness accompanied his Shapeshifter-like transformation, didn’t it? Aye. The only holey-ness was that inherent in his logic.

His lips curved lazily. The acquisitive nature of Dragons was legendary. Attempt the impossible? Blow that off the nearest cliff. They could be rich! Sadly, this notion no longer warmed the innards of his cold, gluttonous heart. Kal rubbed his chest, reflecting that if he could have carved a window to check the supposed seat of his emotions–another nonsense for the superstitious masses–he would have discovered a tiny curl of Dragon-flame within.

He dabbed his left eye furtively. Bah! Dratted filthy convulsions of the heart, now he shed a tear?

“Weeping at the glorious suns-set, my gentle muse?” inquired the Dragoness.

Kal champed a curse to nothingness between his teeth. Could he keep no secrets around this woman? Straightening his back, he scrutinised the western horizon with monkish zeal. Glorious? Here, one hundred and fifty leagues southwest of Tazithiel’s lair, there was neither Island nor moon to break the perfection of a copper-orange firestorm radiating from the setting suns as the twin orbs drank deep of the horizon. His gaze returned to Tazithiel, whose scales, wing-edges and struts, and every spine spike upon her back, glowed as though burnished in a furnace’s heart. Dragon royalty, resplendent!

Contrarily, he grunted, “It’s sort of nice out here, isn’t it?”

“NICE?”

Trust a Dragoness to deafen him. Kal aimed a sly wink at her tail, before turning to confront Tazi’s gape-jawed bemusement. He said, “You, may I be so bold as to suggest, are very nice.”

Had his words been a juicy spiral-horn buck, the Shapeshifter Dragoness would have rended them neck to crop and bolted her meal in an instant. Dragon-thunderous, she growled, “You’re trying to rile me.” He waggled an eyebrow. “What if you succeed, Kal?”

Kal spread his arms. “I embrace the Island-World as a Dragoness’ wings embrace the darkling fires of the twin sun-Dragons.”

Tazi’s eye-fires seethed at his statement, yellows and oranges chasing each other with mesmerising abandon. “I earn myself more poetic gibberish? I suspect too much time spent dusting off scrolls among the monks, Kallion.”

“Truth be told, it was convict labour, mostly. But the monks were generous. I think they were trying to reform me, the pride of doddering old rajals.” A curt laugh escaped his lips as he pictured companies of white-haired monks stretching in the suns like the huge black felines of his native Fra’anior and the Western Isles, purring and snarling through their warrior-forms. “They burrowed beneath my skin, Tazi. Their love, I mean–it was as if this boy, who had never known his parents, landed among a hundred fathers and two hundred faithful brothers. Odd. I never considered …”

Indeed, a host of impressions clicked together into new patterns in his mind. “That’s weird. I was the only labourer in the monastery. Breaking rocks. Daily hard labour coupled with nightly education–Islands’ sakes! Tazi, how did you know me? My name; my deeds?”

“You’re a marked man among the Dragonkind, Kal.”

“A marked–oh no. Get me out of here! Let me go, you wicked, wicked colossus!”

“Where will you run, Kal? Down my tail?” Her eye-fires brightened with what he had begun to recognise as draconic amusement.

Kal panted and cursed unhappily, then execrated his own curses. He slapped the saddle furiously. Trapped! “Fine. You’ve captured me. Congratulations, Tazithiel.”

And who was the Islands’ biggest fool?

“You could hardly imagine your deeds would go unnoticed, Kal. Not only did you spit upon the paws of all Dragonkind by burgling the hallowed Dragon-Halls of Gi’ishior–”

“Successfully,” he put in.

“–but I believe you may have raided a few other Dragon roosts before that, and helped yourself to a plethora of invaluable artefacts from Immadia in the North to Mejia in the South. I don’t know all the details, Kal, but I know enough. The word spread among the Dragonkind, oh, perhaps ten years ago. At the time, they placed a price upon your worthless head. Three thousand gold drals. Perhaps more by now, given you’ve been as slippery as a terrace-lake trout.”

“Three thousand?” Kal did not know whether to be impressed, dumbfounded or just plain confused. A ridiculous fortune! That bounty would exhaust a king’s treasury. Or enrich a kingdom.

“We Dragons don’t know where your hoard is–yet, Kallion. But we’ll find it. No place in the Island-World is hidden from the eyes of the Dragonkind.”

Kal’s mind raced, awash with sick fury mingled with no small measure of appreciation. He must be a hundred leagues from the nearest bolt-hole, perched like a prize ralti sheep atop a hostile Dragoness, for pity’s sake, who had played him with the skill and finesse a master villain named Kallion of Fra’anior prided himself upon. Cunning beast! So brilliantly, brutally guileful! His hand clenched upon the Dragon war-bow, then relaxed. No. He could never hurt her. Neither in thought, nor in deed. Tazithiel was merely following the instinct, the orders of her kind. What to do? How to escape this fine clod of windroc-excrement he had gaily leaped into with both booted feet?

“I’m not giving you the location of my hoard,” he snapped. “You can wrap my guts around your talons if you wish, dangle me from clouds, or slow-roast me in your most torrid Dragon fires–”

“So there is a hoard? And you are a thief?”

How could she have lied? Was everything she had told him, even that terrible story about her ‘correction’, a lie? He could not believe it. He was enough of a con-artist to smell a lie four Islands away. He must change tack. Probe until he understood …

“Fie, I confess nothing, you wretched reptile. What would you do with another Dragon hoard, or three thousand ruddy gold drals, anyway? Warm them with your belly-fires? Tazithiel, there’s more to life than the pursuit of worthless riches!”

“Are you quite certain you’re a criminal?” she jibed.

“No I am bloody well not. I don’t recognise this nonsense vomiting from my mouth,” Kal griped. Oh, he was bitter. Soul-lost. The foundations of his existence had been annihilated. Who was he? He folded his arms across his chest. “You can slowly discombobulate my brains in the perfumed sweetness of your boudoir, you maddening Shapeshifter Dragoness … enchantress … ruddy beautiful woman–oh, volcanic hells how I ache to kiss you–and you will not wrest another secret from me. Not one. My lips are sealed. Permanently.”

The great body quaked beneath him. Gusts of belly-laughter shook the golden air. She was laughing at him? As the man on her back howled at her mockery, the Dragoness laughed so hard her wingbeat stuttered. She could barely fly, jerking with every fiery hiccough that erupted out her long throat. She kept gasping, ‘Your face! Oh, Kal, your face!’ and collapsing in merriment once more.

Kal maintained a mutinous silence of pursed lips and dark thoughts.

Finally, she said, “I certainly hope your lips aren’t sealed.”

He studied the horizon, the world-spanning canvas of luminous colours backlighting her draconic smile. Bah. Snarky shape-changing seductress. Custodian of his heart. Even on the road to Kal’s personal inferno, she tantalised him.

“If you’d like, we can practise further discombobulations when we reach the Southern Archipelago tomorrow,” the Dragoness offered.

Kal sniffed. Not tempting. Not in the slightest.

“Dear Kal. Dear, sweet Kal. Kallion, o my Kallion, lover of all things bullion …”

Now a ditty? He ironed a smile off his lips.

“There. That’s better, my handsome hunk of humanity.”

Whatever game she was playing, he was having none of it. “Dragoness, you’ve had your fun. When are you going to collect your bounty? Heavens above and Islands below, was three thousand stinking drals worth what we shared? Was I just entertainment; a draconic toy? You callous, conniving piece of–”

She drowned him out effortlessly. “Kal! Haven’t you heard about the tenth day of the week?”

He opened his jaw, and closed it. He opened his jaw, and fished for flies. Kal even caught one. Spitting out a bitter scrap of insect life, he said, “I … er … um, what? Oh, freaking windrocs, you don’t mean–you do. Do you?”

“Never-ever day.”

Her wings cupped the air, tilting to drive them forward once more. Steadily, Tazithiel gained height as she waited for Kal to gather his thoughts from wherever they had scattered across the Cloudlands. His frozen despair thawed beneath the twin-suns’ brilliance of hope. She knew him. Knew his scurrilous reputation, yet she refused the Island-sinking price upon his head and everlasting honour among her kind?

“You stole my joke,” he croaked. “Why?”

“I believe you, Kal. I believe in you.”

“Terrible idea,” he grumbled. Great, now she was laughing at him again. “Tazi, look, no amount of heart-stealing could–you’re an intelligent woman. Highly intelligent. You can’t–”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I can or can’t do.” With a touch of magic, she corralled a fireball just inches from his nose and sucked it back into her mouth. “Sorry. I know this is all backward. Firstly, while my fires pulse green at the thought of three thousand gold drals, I have absolutely no intention of collecting so much as a rat’s dinner in exchange for your empty head. Zero. Secondly, I do believe in you. Ridiculous and ill-advised by any measure under the twin suns, but there it is. Thirdly, I possess emotional intelligence and cold-hearted reason enough to know what I’m doing, and I say the rest of the Dragonkind can just sizzle in their own acid spit for all I care. Fourthly, I’m curious about what exactly you stole to justify such an outrageous bounty. Fifthly–”

“Wow,” he breathed. “Wow, wow … and here I thought it was all about my peerless prowess on the pillow-roll.”

“You’re sweet, but unquestionably deluded,” she grinned. “Kal, remember that note from Master Ja’amba you told me about? ‘Seize your destiny.’ What do you think he meant?”

Kal shrugged helplessly. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would the monks imprison me for years and then practically gift me a Dragonship and the freedom of the Isles? They must have known my intentions. And no, I’m quite certain they didn’t believe in me. Wise men, those monks. Wiser than Dragons.”

“It all smacks of a positively draconian plan, doesn’t it?”

“Draconic? Draconian? No.” He gave in to the urge to scratch furiously at his chin. Relief always made him itch, along with the sneaking suspicion that matters might just go awry once more. “No. Tazi, that’s–no. Too many coincidences. So, promise me you don’t want that reward. Nor my hoard? You don’t want to pop a talon through my chest as a handy service to all Dragonkind?”

“Word of a Dragon on the first two, and no promises on the third,” she returned, arrow-swift.

“Ah … I’ll take what I can. Word of a … uh, my solemn oath as patently not offered earlier, never to reveal your Shapeshifter secrets. Or any other secrets, for that matter.”

“Thank you, Kal.” The Dragoness pointed a claw at the horizon. “See that dark smudge? That’s bad weather incoming, by my wings.”

He saw nothing. “Hmm. But you can outfly a mere storm, can’t you?”

“Aye.”

Kal rediscovered his cocky grin. Indeed, his entire body buzzed with release. Never had a woman confounded him as Tazi did. Rotten, shameless tease, and as stubborn as an Island’s foundations. He would have to watch this one closely. Very closely indeed.

He said, “So do enlighten me, Shapeshifter Dragoness, as to your intentions regarding this gratefully alive man seated upon your shoulders?”

“Immediately upon arrival in the Southern Archipelago,” she returned slyly, “I intend to transform, and then set about thoroughly discombobulating, addling and befuddling your dubious wits until you don’t know your Islands from your Cloudlands.”

If he grinned any wider, Kal thought, his cheeks would crack like aged porcelain.

Waving his arms, he cried, “Then let us burn the heavens, o Tazithiel, as Dragon and Rider!”

… as Rider and Dragon! she echoed.

BOOM! A strange quake struck Kal’s spirit. The deepening suns-set blinked into darkness.

Why was he falling?

* * * *

“Unnh …” Kal stirred. He felt as though his head had been placed on a blacksmith’s anvil and pounded into several new shapes.

Awake, o sleeper? Tazithiel’s Dragon-voice boomed in his mind.

Kal flapped his arms unhappily, the more so as the wind cuffed them playfully side to side. Stop shouting, it hurts.

I’m whispering. Buckle up, Kal. I mean, buckle up more. It’s about to get rough.

With that, he sensed her Kinetic power release him. Muscles twinged in his lower back as Kal straightened up. The White and Yellow moons behind his shoulders illuminated a cloud-rampart ahead, facing them like a monstrous battlement erected to deny any westward passage. Great Islands! He rubbed his arms, seeking insight into a premonition that made him shiver not only physically, but in ways he did not understand. The storm’s skirts were black; uncompromising shadows far deeper than the moons-lit night. His eyes crawled upward in disbelief, tracing the bulging thunderheads that from his perspective, appeared to swell to the very stars, overshadowing Dragon and Rider. The storm-massif’s headwinds grew chillier by the second.

“Put on your jacket. What’s the matter, Kal?”

Bah. Mothered by a Dragoness? Shrugging into his fur-lined leather jacket, so essential for flight at the altitudes even a Dragonship could attain, never mind a Dragon’s untouchable capabilities, Kal rapidly fastened the toggles and snugged the thick collar beneath his chin. He donned a fur-lined, conical Jeradian Dragonship Steersman’s cap and wriggled his fingers into thick sheepskin gloves. Better. Now he was a fully clothed icicle.

Tazi prodded, “Will you stop being a man and use actual words? I can’t read your mind.”

“What happened when I blacked out?”

“Why did you make the Dragon Rider oath?” Her annoyance carried to him as a wave of heat whipped back from her muzzle on the wind.

“I read it in a scroll, once. It just … it felt good and true. Did I hear right; you echoed me? I didn’t realise oaths had magical power.”

“You didn’t think an oath–” the Indigo Dragoness modulated her simultaneous vocal and mental roaring as her Rider clapped his hands to his head “–Kal, oaths are dangerous. Especially when you blurt one out without prior consideration.”

“I meant it.”

“Says the man who spills ten thousand words for a brass dral?”

He gritted his teeth. “I stand by every flaming word of my oath, Dragoness. Do you?”

Tazithiel gnashed her much more impressive set of dental weaponry. “While I’m sure this oath will return to bite me like the clash of an Ancient Dragon’s jaws, I spoke truly–Rider Kal.”

Oath-bound to a Dragoness? His week was not flying high. No, it was accurately emulating a stricken Dragonship plummeting into the lethal Cloudlands. Bah.

Kal muttered, “Anything you can do for this headache?”

“I can’t heal you. I’ve many powers in the Red and Blue Dragon spectrums, but no healing.”

“Tazi, I didn’t intend to knock us from the sky. Vows in my life have been few; usually unworthy ones.” And they had never shivered Islands …

“You’ll have to work harder than that to down a Dragoness.”

A sinking sensation developed in the pit of Kal’s stomach. With her fierce Dragon pride, Tazi was not about to enjoy his next statement. But one must never feed a Dragon milk, as the Isles saying went. He said, “Tazi, I believe we should consider turning around.”

The expected fireball did not blister his nose. Instead, she hissed, “Explain your lack of trust, Kal. You and your vast experience of flying Dragonback, and your astounding expertise in the magical enhancement of draconic flight aerodynamics–”

“This is not a trust issue!”

She snorted, “Then exactly what flavour of windroc droppings is it, little Human? Explain yourself in words of one syllable so that even a stupid animal can understand.”

Kal slammed his hands against the saddle, mouthing a word better suited to the dregs of the Sylakian brothel business. Confounded mud-grubbing pile of old lizard bones! Aye, she was a Dragoness, never more alien to his understanding. He had handled Tazi about as well as a thief who volunteered to be locked away in a local jail and left to rot. Still, no amount of kicking his deserving backside would undo the damage. Her poisonous expression demanded answers.

“Look, you’re neither stupid nor an animal. I’ve a feeling, a fatuous feeling or premonition–” his voice grew smaller the higher her lip curled in scorn “–that flying into this storm’s a bad idea. Alright? I’m the one with the stupid feelings. That’s all it was. Fear, premonition, I don’t know.”

“You disrespect me.”

Tazithiel said no more, but Kal sensed the outrage pouring into every wingbeat as the winds freshened and the first hint of moisture tickled his nostrils. How could he explain what he himself did not understand? Most females in the Island-World, Dragon and Human alike, would rightly laugh his supposed powers of intuition into the proverbial Cloudlands soup. Yet instinct had always underpinned his pilfering prowess. He saw traps–poisoned arrows, trip wires, hidden switches and false floors–where others did not. He sensed when eyes were watching, and when attention wandered. He had sneaked beneath the noses of dozens of guard-Dragons and not been summarily incinerated.

Touchy Dragoness. So distinct from Human-Tazithiel. Pondering this connection turned his headache into a throbbing Crescent Isles log drum.

So, what magic had his involuntary oath triggered? It was Hualiama Dragonfriend who had conceived the Dragon Rider oath, he recalled learning. Once made, the oath bound Dragon and Rider in ways he could barely imagine. Many Dragon Riders apparently spoke fluent Dragonish and even acquired a smattering of draconic magic. Whatever they had unleashed, it had caused an unseen, Island-sized Dragon’s paw to smash an Indigo Dragoness right in the pearly fangs. Thank the heavens Tazithiel had recovered more quickly than him.

Now, an impulsive oath shackled him to this beast. How bad, or how foolish, would this prove?

Romancing a Shapeshifter was definitely wine of an unexpected vintage. Kal stifled a wry laugh, but the jerk in Tazi’s wingbeat told him her superior Dragon hearing had picked up the perceived insult. A menacing growl rose from his mount as Tazi plunged headlong into the storm-front.

Dragon and Rider spent the balance of the night, already far advanced, driving deep into a never-ending, unyielding world of wind, cloud and hail. At first, Kal thought Tazi’s flight-strengthening Kinetic power would see them through, but the storm perversely intensified as the Indigo Dragoness began to show signs of strain. He dared not interfere. Gritting her fangs and blowing hard, she climbed steadily into a gap between the boiling thunderheads. The swirling gale seemed bent on attack from every conceivable direction, making Kal’s stomach-gyrations resemble dragonets frisking about on his native Fra’anior Island. They flew high, but the storm rose still higher, and not a prickle of starlight could be seen through the murky billows racing overhead.

Lightning! Kal ducked as jagged after-images played across his retinae. That had surely struck …

“Struck my left wing, Kal,” Tazi said. And she wasn’t a mind-reader? “You’re safe.”

“Safe? How?”

“I’m shielding you.”

Trust. The word lingered unspoken, but was clearly communicated by her tone. Lightly, Kal said, “I meant, how does it work? I once saw lightning fry a rajal mid-leap on the western fringe of Jeradia Island. That was a big cat, and it was dead before it hit the ground.”

The Dragoness grunted, “Three things, Kal. My shielding keeps you alive, my body has special tissues which act as conduits for electricity, and my tail is a discharge point.”

“So you’re one giant–”

“–lightning conductor,” she agreed. The thief noted the underlying stresses in her voice, but made no comment. After all, what experience did he have of Dragon flight? He felt sore, humiliated and keen to see the Dragoness return to her Human guise. “You Humans borrowed the idea for your fortresses, especially in the South and around Fra’anior, where there are many electrical storms.”

“So you’ve a hot tail now?” he joked.

“Ew. Save your lewd jokes for my Human form.”

Kal’s jaw worked. Perhaps he ought to divide his feelings into two neat camps. For the Dragoness, fear and awe. But for Human-Tazithiel, his attraction came tempered with a healthy dose of respect. Never in his life had he tiptoed around a more volatile fumarole.

He said, “That’s amazing. And you’re Blue spectrum, so lightning attacks are in your blood.”

“Aye.”

“May I pose another question?”

KAL! Heavens above and Islands below, will you just let me fly? I can’t concentrate with your constant yammering.

Sorry.

He glowered at the darkness. Whose fault was it he had embraced a creature of living flame?

Chapter 6: Rogues Need Wings

FOR KAL, BEING forced to keep silent was tantamount to rolling about in a patch of invisible prickle-bushes. He squirmed mentally, watching for the first sign of dawn’s light, for surcease from the storm’s mauling. Escape? Awkward. Help? Impossible. Change her mind? As futile as pounding an Island with a war-hammer. Trust must flow both ways. His life hung in the balance, in the storm.

With the dawn came a deluge of sleeting rain, more ice than water. Already deafened, sodden and chilled to the marrow, Kal threw his futile hopes to the winds. Of course he could be colder. He could have icicles dangling from his nose and the numbness in his fingers and toes might perversely develop into dull knives burrowing beneath his skin. Beneath him, Tazi laboured. How she strove! Again and again, the glacial winds blasted them backward, until Kal began to imagine Tazithiel flew yet remained stationary in the air. Wriggling and heaving, the Indigo Dragoness cracked off the ice collecting on her wings and along her spine; he realised her fires must be dampened, for why would the ice not simply melt away? Or had her shielding failed? Using a long, heavy arrow, he chipped off the ice he could reach.

Hours passed before insight sparked in Kal’s mind. Once again, the Dragoness sought to prove herself. This was beyond stubbornness. Beyond madness. This was a profound, ulcerated kind of pain which could only exist in a person’s heart, a pain no years of solitude had stanched. It was rooted not only in what she had suffered, he imagined, but also in the betrayal of her shell-parents, and perhaps exacerbated by the advent of a thief upon the stage of her life.

Never had Kal watched another suffer like this. Especially not someone he cared for. It threw the hollowness of his life into sharp relief. Her breath rasped as his did in the gasping thinness of high altitude flight. Her wingbeat slowed. Through his thighs, Kal felt the juddering in her muscles as Tazithiel tore from herself by sheer, bloody-minded strength of draconic will alone, the power to keep aloft.

What could he do? What could a mere Human help a mighty Indigo Dragoness best this storm?

Gazing at an ocean of black thunderheads seething around them, Kal remembered Master Ja’amba speaking of the Ancient Dragon, Fra’anior. ‘Speak his name with reverence, my son,’ the aged monk had warned. ‘For the seven-headed Black Dragon appears in the storm-clouds of his majesty, his voices roaring as thunder piled upon thunder, shaking the foundations of our Island-World. I sense the disbelief in your heart, young Kallion. The well of your spirit has run dry. Yet all must learn that the powers which govern our existence are mightier than we can imagine; aye, well must we learn, lest we be humbled and cast down.’

Thunder pummelled them incessantly, a brutal shaking of the shattered Dragoness. Lightning flashed constantly, crazed suns-bright bolts seared upon what seemed to be a cavern of malevolence which surrounded the twosome, as if the maw of the Great Dragon himself had engulfed the frailty of their souls.

Words rose within him. Strange, crazy words, coupled with emotions Kal could not name. In his mind’s eye he saw his brother monks standing in a wedge formation facing the suns-set, the thick, golden beams burnished their heads and bare bodies until two hundred ascetics turned into bronze statues. A humming rose, a paean of praise to the great Black Dragon, Fra’anior. And in the shadows, a watching thief felt the Island-World draw inward, stifling any sound, stealing the breath from his lungs, as though a presence of monstrous, unseen power pressed down upon his existence and the humming could not penetrate a syrupy thickness in the burning air …

Spit us out, Fra’anior, Kal begged. We are not worthy.

Tazithiel’s head jerked, bringing her wide, pain-dulled left eye to bear upon him. What did you say?

Kal’s jaw almost struck his knees.

A canyon opened before them, cut deep through the clouds and lambent with suns-shine reflected off the obsidian edges of the storm-billows. Awestruck, Dragon and Rider gazed at the blue horizon. A way. Salvation. Hope shining through a sea of despair.

The Shapeshifter Dragoness whispered, What the hells did you just instigate, Kal?

I-I-I …

This is power beyond measure!

Kal could only rub his eyes. It wasn’t me, Tazi. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t me.

An Ancient Dragon irrupted the Island-World on the request of a felon? Hardly. Yet Kal froze the word ‘coincidence’ upon his tongue. That would be a temptation too far.

At length, the Dragoness muttered, You are a strange, strange man. She winged heavily along the cloud-canyon. Still the wind opposed them, yet the scent of hope was as heady perfume to their nostrils. A glowing late afternoon greeted the pair as the suns dipped behind the Yellow moon’s cratered bulk, a partial eclipse which occurred almost weekly. Wherever rain seeped from the heavy clouds, the suns created a masterful display of intersecting rainbows, so many that the vista reminded Kal of the myriad swarming butterflies of Fra’anior.

Easing his back, Kal said, “Any sight of land?”

“None.” Tazithiel eased into a long, slow glide, trying to conserve her strength. “We’ll make it, Kal. Don’t give up yet.”

Who was she trying to fool? Confronted by a hulking dozen guards in the strong-room of Tylis Indigabar, a wealthy warlord of Gatix Island in the Western Isles, Kal had told himself exactly the same. He had escaped a lynching that day only because one fool had blundered over the spring-trigger of a stake-filled pit, tumbling nine of his comrades to a miserable doom. The screams and confusion had provided cover enough to secure his escape.

Kal said, “You don’t need to prove your strength to me, Tazi.”

“No. Only to me.”

The Indigo Dragoness picked up her wingbeat.

Despite his best intentions, Kal dozed off shortly after nightfall, with no land yet in sight. He awoke to find himself dangling sideways half a mile above the Cloudlands.

“Sorry,” Tazi gasped, righting them with a groan. Her left wing folded immediately. She blurted out a word in Dragonish Kal had never heard, producing an impression of sizzling acid in his mind. “Oh, Kal, I’m sorry. Should have listened …”

“What’s wrong, Tazi? Can I help?” His voice sounded as though he spoke underwater, resounding against a pressure in his ears.

“You could sprout wings and flap along.”

“The only thing I flap is my lips, Tazi–constantly.”

She coughed out a laugh. “Pride aside, it’s bad. I’m about to fall out of the air. Nine years on a rock … not exactly flying fit. Thought I’d make it, but that storm … too powerful. How’s about you whistle up another miracle?”

“Fresh out of miracles, girl. Don’t give up. Humour my questions for a moment. What’s the precise issue?”

Between gasps of pain, Tazithiel explained that only the most powerful Dragons could fly more than two days on the wing. This was the seventh hour of night; their fifty-fifth hour on the wing, Kal calculated, just three hours short of two full days. From the stars, the Dragoness estimated their position as one hundred and forty leagues from the nearest land. A fit Dragon’s long-distance flying speed was approximately eight to ten leagues per hour, leaving at best a further half-day’s flying before they reached the nearest Island. She had exhausted her magic fighting the storm; it would replenish only with adequate rest, so her Kinetic power could no longer ease the slackening in her flight. Her body was wrung out, literally. A Dragon’s body cannibalised itself in long-distance passages, burning reserves including muscle mass and even parts of the internal organs to fuel the massive physical needs of Dragon flight. She would already have consumed over a third of her body mass, she estimated.

Kal blinked the tiredness out of his eyes, processing this deluge of information as rapidly as he was able. “All good,” he said. “Now, a non-flier’s question. Why can’t you keep flapping? Pain? Cramp? Or no energy?”

Tazi growled, “All three.”

“Would my mass provide sufficient nutrition to keep you–”

“Kal, I’m not a cannibal–Dragon fire take it!” Momentarily, fury boosted her wingbeat. “Why aren’t you blaming me? You should curse a granite-headed, arrogant Dragoness as she deserves. Kal, don’t you understand that my overweening pride is about to land us in the Cloudlands, and there’s nothing we can do about it?”

“Honestly, what would blaming you achieve?” Kal punched his own knee in frustration. “Look. I’ve a paltry few supplies. Eat these. It’s fruit, mostly. Try to gain some height. Then glide whilst replenishing your magic. We look out for windrocs to hunt–”

“Nothing else flies out here, Kal.”

“You open that jaw before I climb up there and open it myself!”

“Great Islands, I thought I was the one with prekki mush for brains.” But Tazithiel snapped up every flying fruit–some flung harder than was strictly justified–and his full waterskin as well. Swallowing immediately, she said, “And we gain a quarter-hour of life. What now, Kal?”

Finally, a grin cracked his grim expression. “We steal another fifteen minutes. Then another. I stand accused of being a thief, remember? Trust me.”

At first he thought she winced, but a soft keening sound, a hint of lamenting music Kal assumed must be Dragonsong, broke past her lips. The entire seventy-foot length of the Shapeshifter Dragoness shuddered into a stall. Cramp. Agony that curved her spine and momentarily snuffed out her eye-fires, before a curl of fire reignited within those alien orbs. Kal’s stomach lurched into his throat. He began to cry out, but Tazithiel forced her trembling, drooping wings outward, resuming a weak glide toward the pristine white Cloudlands.

Dragonish rasped in his mind, Kal, give me whatever you have. Now. However irrational it is, I hear your thoughts zinging about like a thousand wasps …

Push your pain at me, he ordered.

What?

The monks used to do … crazy things. Tell you another time. Push past the pain barrier, Tazithiel. Use me as a focus. In your mind, push the toxic pain out of yourself and into me.

Tazithiel wailed, I can’t! If I succeed, I’ll kill you.

DO IT! To their mutual surprise, Kal summoned a decent roar–perhaps as much as a Dragon hatchling might have managed.

No, no, no …

Burn it out, Tazithiel. Here, I open myself.

The monks had often spoken of opening themselves to the song of the Great Dragon, Fra’anior. Kal had always thought it a frivolous exercise, a discipline too esoteric for a man who preferred to admire religion from a safe distance. Yet he had seen a monk in training pierced clean through the torso with a sword. The man had not even blinked. How Kal wished he had heeded their instruction, now. Desperation was hardly a substitute for technique or knowledge, but it would have to suffice.

The Cloudlands drew closer. Kal scented gases on the breeze, a dank, acrid odour that minded him of rotting flesh. “Come on, Tazi. Use me to expiate your pain.” How could he trigger her understanding? “It’s like cleansing with Dragon fire. Picture Dragon fire sweeping–”

Kal’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. Fire! In the space between heartbeats, the alien fire of a Dragon’s pain seared his being. He jerked violently upon the saddle, his boots drumming an involuntary tattoo against her back.

She sobbed, “No! Kal! No, I can’t do this to you.”

“Again! More …”

Sacrifice. He sank his teeth into the arm of his jacket to prevent them cracking. Kal knew only a volcano of fire, the inferno of her pain convulsing his body, and the dim knowledge that somehow, the idea of her being a lightning-rod had mutated into his crazy notion of burning off her pain, that somehow even the toxins inhibiting her flight could be cheated, rerouted, and a small victory stolen from the jaws of death.

A burden shared was a burden halved, Fra’aniorian Islanders opined. As the Dragoness’ wingbeat steadied, Kal’s laughter burst past his clenched teeth. No miracles needed here, unless old-fashioned skulduggery counted! What would the monks say to his theology?

Leaning forward, he slapped Tazithiel on her ironclad left shoulder. “Strength to you, noble Dragoness. Ready for more?”

She bugled mellifluously, stretching for the night sky.

* * * *

Tazithiel’s landing at the boggy edge of a lake near a small town threw up a wall of water and mud as she skidded along on her belly, plowing a furrow several thousand feet long through bands of reeds. Rotten tree-stumps exploded at the force of her impact. Clouds of blue-banded mallards, lesser herons and black-billed charger storks fluttered about in a honking panic as the Dragoness thundered by. Rank mud cascaded over her back, splattering the vocally unhappy Rider until he resembled a stinking mud-statue.

Wham! She struck something hard. Kal cracked his forehead on the spine spike ahead of him. His fingers came away bright with blood.

“Shake a tree and see a Dragoness fall out,” he muttered. “Stylish, Tazi.”

She did not budge.

Kal prodded her. “Arise, o sleeper! We’re alive.”

Reeking of mud and sweat, but o-so-joyously alive. Tired fingers fought the thigh and waist buckles until Kal freed himself. He gazed past her bent neck–freaking feral windrocs, she hadn’t broken her neck on that boulder, had she? No, a faint rumbling of belly-fires and the slow, rhythmic expansion and contraction of her lean flanks assured him that the Indigo Dragoness lived–sore and soiled, but two wings and four legs appeared to be intact. Mostly. He was surprised so rough a landing had not shaken every scale off her body.

The way she lay plastered against a towering sandstone boulder at the edge of the lake, however–the only boulder in sight–brought a sympathetic chuckle to his lips. Inelegant. Should he dare that word to her face? He’d probably lose a limb.

In a broad Telstroy Island accent, Kal murmured, “Y’know, old girl, one day we’ll laugh about that flight. You did good. Real good.”

With that, he untied their travel packs and tossed them down to a dry spot on a nearby grassy bank. Slipping down Tazi’s flank to a waist-deep landing in the rich, loamy muck, Kal loosened the saddle girth. After a dint of heaving and a welter of good-natured insults, he managed to draw the long strap that fastened around her mighty chest, out from beneath her body. Obeying the infallible instincts of a lifelong offender, he cast about for any spectators, before secreting their valuables and his Dragon Rider armour beneath a bed of rotten leaves in a hollow tree trunk. He retained a quintet of matched rubies for himself. Well, for supplies. Some instincts being nobler than others.

A low hump of wooded terrain hid the town from his view, but Kal estimated they were less than half a mile from the outer defensive wall. At the woodland’s edge, a melodious tinkling drew a brook to his notice. Ah. Before he scoured the town for likely victims–er, procured supplies–he should clean up and wash his clothing. No point in sneaking about if people could smell him coming from the next village.

He hurt. Everywhere.

Kal was snoozing blissfully in the sultry late afternoon sun, an hour later, when a breath of scorching air wafted across his bare torso.

“Where’s my food?” rumbled the Dragoness.

“Not me!” he yelped.

“Noooo … indeed not,” drawled Tazi, looking him over with an expression that made Kal uncertain whether she viewed him as meat upon a rack of bones, or harboured appetites of a less carnivorous nature.

“Talk about saving libidinous intentions for your Human form!” he protested, feeling his ears heat up to a fine scarlet. “Dragoness–look, you gave me the shivers. What do you need? Wait here while I raid the town on your behalf.”

“You shall go shopping like a gentleman.”

“Did you just swear at me?” Kal wagged his finger beneath her nose. “Naughty, naughty. Meat, I assume?”

“Beer,” said Tazi. “The thickest, most energy-rich beer you can find. Followed by a substantial course of meat.”

“How much beer, exactly?”

Her eye brightened as Kal returned the favour of looking her over. “A keg. No, a barrel.”

“A whole barrel of beer? Won’t you get drunk?”

“Dragons metabolise nutrients far faster and more efficiently than Humans, Kal. I’ll be fine. Beer is the quickest way to help me recover. It’s delicious, nutritious and rehydrating.”

Metabolise? Kal had never heard that word before. It had to be a Dragonish scientific term, he decided, mulling over her request. Beer? Dragons appreciated beer? Immediately, his dithering provoked a low growl of discontent from Tazithiel.

“Kal, you’ve done so much …” She gulped. What were those emotions coursing across her eyes? Melancholy? Fear? “I need food, fast. May I press you?”

“Consider me oppressed,” he said, and bit his lip.

“Consider my body depressed, but the rest of me, uplifted.” A handful of fangs flashed in a weak smile. “Kal, you dirty old thief. You stole our lives back.”

Kal paused in the act of pulling on his trousers. “I shall prize your accolade forever. And later, I shall indeed prove in copious detail, when you find that poor girl your Dragoness has mislaid somewhere between your roost and the Southern Archipelago … jumping Jeradians!” He dodged a playful curl of flame she fired at his knees. “On my way, post haste!”

Chapter 7: The Drunken Dragon

THE CARTER PAUSED to mop his forehead. “Where did you say you left your girlfriend, stranger?”

“My girl-fiend? Down there,” Kal waved expansively.

The carter grunted, clearly missing Kal’s excellent pun by the width of an Island. “I see no-one.”

“She’s hard to miss. Let me take it from here.”

“An entire barrel of beer?” The man squinted around the picturesque lake, which reflected the surrounding, rolling wooded hills common to the Archipelago’s northern reaches.

“My business is my business,” Kal pointed out, in as friendly a tone as the business end of a petulant wasp. “You’ve been paid. Handsomely.”

“I don’t have to like it, stranger.”

How to get rid of this fool? And where did one hide a svelte yet multi-tonne Dragoness who had to stand almost three times his height at the shoulder? Finally, the carter and his two burly assistants, clearly of greater brawn and lesser intelligence than the average barn door, hefted the oaken barrel to the rear of the cart, tipped it over with a flurry of grunts and curses, and rolled it down a plank to the ground. Kal had to execute a hasty dance-step to keep his boot from being crushed.

“All downhill from here, stranger,” said the carter. A meaty, gloved hand slapped his back so hard, Kal almost pitched over the barrel. “Three hundred tankards of my best black lightning. Go wild. Much as you can out here, anyways.”

Mocking laughter stung his ears as Kal set his back to the barrel and heaved it downslope, angrily trying to shut them out; to calculate what damage a barrel of potent root beer might wreak upon Tazithiel’s physiology. If he was nine sackweight–and there were one hundred sackweight to the old-fashioned Fra’aniorian tonne–how heavy was she in comparison? A hundred times heavier? Two hundred? For Kal knew black lightning had a jolt like a Dragonship war crossbow. One tankard was enough to sink a grown man beneath the table.

These Southerners loved their golden ales and rich beers, preferably brewed so strong that it flowed begrudgingly from the tankard, a treacly meal. Nutritious indeed. The men grew as barrel-chested as their beer barrels, bandy-legged man-mountains Kal would not have enjoyed meeting in battle.

Off with you!

The chabbik lizards harnessed to the beer-cart, bound for the town’s market, bolted.

Tazithiel? Kal chortled in delight, torn between casting about for his favourite Shapeshifter and the amusement of watching the thickset men lumbering after their cart as it slewed crazily down the track leading to the main road to town. Some said chabbik lizards were distant relatives of Dragons. With a half-dozen powerful lizards yoked pair by pair to the cart, they could certainly kick up the dust when they chose to.

The barrel! With a yelp, Kal bounded after the runaway beer.

* * * *

Five minutes later, Tazithiel burped happily, “Frothy!”

Kal could not believe his eyes. She had glugged the lot. Leave him a drop? Fat, ralti sheep-sized chance! Tossing the empty barrel aside, the muddied Dragoness blinked slowly. Her eyes already showed signs of returning to their usual fiery brilliance, but her head swayed alarmingly.

“Tazithiel?”

“Shwash good,” she slurred. “Gosh any more, you shecksy shtallion my funny Kallion?”

Oh no. Hic! Warm droplets of root beer splattered his cheek, while the reek of rancid alcohol almost choked him. Was the beer spoiled? How fast had three hundred tankards of alcohol pickled her system?

“Wheresh my meat?”

“Listen here–” Kal ducked a clumsy swipe of her paw. “Tazi! Islands’ sakes.”

“Islandsh shakes!” Hic! Her hiccough was so powerful, it knocked her six feet backward. “I’ll Islandsh shakes you, little moush. Sheep! Meat!”

Mouse? Aye! Kallion scampered back like the mouse he was in comparison to the Dragoness. “Listen to me, you great galumphing beast. You’re in no condition to go anywhere. Stay put. I’ll go fetch meat, alright?”

She tried three times to follow him, but in the end, Kal convinced Tazithiel to wait while he walked up to the farmer’s market in town to purchase enough meat to satisfy a starving Dragoness. All in a day’s work for a pad-footed skulker with an avowed preference for gloomy places. Being called sexy was a welcome fillip, but what on the Islands was a ‘stallion’? Had he heard right?

Stalking up the narrow track, Kal crested the hill to spy a road snaking away through the trees to a small town, fortified with earthen banks and low battlements, half a mile distant. Excellent. He would not even have to break a sweat. The independent resource acquisition specialist assessed his readiness for the mission. Plain mercenary’s sword at his belt, check. Hair brushed down to cover his distinctive, pointed Fra’aniorian ears, check. And he had teased Tazi about her pre-flight grooming. Bow-legged swagger in keeping with local habits, check. A professional like him had many items to conceal–daggers and throwing knives, coin, gems, poison, garrotte, climbing grapnel, lock picks … he checked everything rapidly but meticulously.

Aha. To his left, through a gap in the trees, Kal spied a farmer leading a brace of ralti sheep to market. Taller than a man but utterly docile, ralti sheep were legendary for being as dense as a hunk of rockwood but far tastier. He trotted ahead, aiming to catch the man before town. A swift swindle with his fake rubies would soon divest that man of–ouch! An image of a booming, fire-breathing Dragoness appeared in his mind, sharpening her talons upon his mendacious corpse. Freaking feral Dragons! Now she was his conscience? Could a man not enjoy a moment’s fun?

Alright, he’d pay with real coin. Disappointing. Aye, but he’d extract his satisfaction from Human-Tazi’s hide later. Kal rubbed his hands with glee.

Kal was a few hundred feet shy of the farmer as he approached the town gate, when the flock of ralti sheep–prime specimens which ought to sate even a Dragoness’ capacious paunch–began to bleat piteously, yanking at their halters and upsetting a vegetable cart.

“Hie!” yelled the man. “Settle down, you!”

The sheep bucked. The gate guards cursed the farmer. A crate of quails burst open in an explosion of feathers. But Kal’s laughter stopped in his throat as faint screams on the road behind him carried to his ears. He whirled. Horror clenched his stomach. Oh, raging plague-pox!

“Kal! Wait for me, Kal!”

The picture froze in his mind. Staggering down the road at a dangerous clip, clearly as drunk as a weasel half-drowned in ale, came his many-hued girl-fiend in all her be-muddied glory, scattering carts and flocks and families to the winds.

Kal wanted to fall about laughing. He wanted to whimper. What he did was charge toward the rampaging Dragoness, screaming, “Clear the road! Get off the road!” Thankfully, Tazithiel slewed off the cobblestones at that point, narrowly missing two families perched on their classic Southern chabbik-carts with their tall, ironbound wheels and driver’s box standing proud at the front. She seemed unable to coordinate her wings to actually fly. Kal was amazed the Indigo Dragoness could run at all. Had she gone feral? He would not know the signs, but he knew the lore. There were plenty of feral Dragons around Fra’anior, but the other Dragons protected Humans from the wild Dragonkind. Mostly. The results were not pretty when they failed.

“Kal!” Tazi spotted him, tried to wave a paw, and succeeded only in flattening a small stand of purple robber-berry bushes. Now she had smears of opalescent, violet juice across her muzzle and chest. She roared, “Wheresh my shmeat?”

She blasted out a fireball, probably meant for him, but she managed to miss Kal by at least two hundred feet. Nevertheless, his feet owned a brand of wisdom which had apparently become confused en route to the region above his shoulders. He skidded to a halt, and reversed course with the alacrity of a frightened hare.

A dozen steps later, untold tonnes of Shapeshifter Dragoness shook the ground right behind him. A massive paw scooped Kal up. Great Islands, an hour ago she had been flat on her belly! Hic! He bounced; Tazi caught him clumsily.

He shouted, “Don’t Dragons know the meaning of, ‘stay put’?”

The Indigo Dragoness tried to angle for the ralti sheep, but her sense of balance failed at the crucial instant, sending them hurtling into a stand of split-birch trees. Kal spat twigs and bitter berries out of his mouth.

Before he could blink, the Dragoness paused, took aim and pitched him at the nearest sheep, ordering, “Fessh it for me!”

Kal landed with the speed of a swooping falcon and the grace of a wet blanket. Thump! He clutched several handfuls of wool. The terrified sheep leaped at least three feet into the air, bleating to the world its knowledge of impending doom, before kicking up a storm of grass as it sprinted off. Bellowing nonsensical insults in Dragonish, Tazi pounded after. Kal found himself seated backward on the sheep, perfectly positioned to appreciate the Dragoness’ fury as her meal refused to stand still for the slaughter. Nor did Kal want to be still. He wanted to be far, far out of sight of the annoyed Shapeshifter, and was therefore thrilled that the sheep appeared to have attained a peak of velocity previously undiscovered by any four-footed, bleating denizen of the Islands.

Wild shouts alerted him. Kal glanced over his shoulder to see his woolly ride barrelling through the gates, right over an idiotic guard who had thought to stop the giant runaway sheep by holding out his hands. Shade. Suns-light. Clinging on for dear life, Kal rode his newest woolly friend into the busy town, racing between the log-cabin buildings so beloved of the South, bowling over dogs and poultry and shoppers with gay abandon.

Then, Tazithiel soared over the town’s gateposts. Horror clutched his chest with the force of a Dragon’s paw.

Her soaring lasted no longer than it took Kal to discover his breathing difficulties. Almost gracefully, her wings folded in two opposing directions and the seventy-foot Shapeshifter Dragoness corkscrewed onto the gable of a tailor’s establishment, rattled loose a roof-full of grey slate tiles, and employed the blacksmith’s shop next door to break her fall.

She vanished behind a corner, leaving Kal with an impression of splintered logs and fire billowing from a smashed furnace.

Please, let her be knocked unconscious. May a meteor lance from a clear sky to pound her proud head into submission. A furious roar rolled across the town as if thunder had struck at ground level, rattling windows, panicking the populace, and spurring the hapless bleater into one final spurt of effort. Kal, sheep-rider extraordinaire, burst upon the teeming marketplace.

Boom!

Tazithiel thundered around the corner, demolishing a business with her shoulder. A flick of her tail, and two houses on the opposite side of the road imploded. Lowering her jaw, the Indigo Dragoness sounded her battle-challenge.

GRRRAAAAARRRGGGHHH!

Kal’s best efforts had drawn a few peoples’ attention. Tazithiel levelled half of the stalls in the marketplace with the violence of her roar. Wood folded like age-thinned scrolleaf. Awnings, clothing and spices exploded into the air as though propelled by a flame set to the hydrogen sack of a Dragonship. Mid-bound, the gust caught Kal’s sheep and dumped it headfirst into the well beside a tavern, which until the instant of Tazithiel’s arrival, had been bustling with conversation and laughter.

The patrons froze. Kal found himself seated upon the sheep’s half-exposed, twitching rump, an idiot king surveying his subjects.

“Where ish he?” thundered the Dragoness, scanning the marketplace blearily. Hic! She stumbled several steps sideways, crushing a stall or three.

Kal picked his moment. He dived off the sheep, rolled smoothly to his feet and ducked behind the nearest table. Three startled faces–the beer-seller from before and his two drudges–gaped at him in amazement. Kal was not immune to temptation. Quite the opposite.

“Behold, my girlfriend,” he declaimed, “drunk as a sot on your beer–”

“Flee!” shouted the man.

His shout set off a stampede. Every citizen bar Kal seemed to know exactly what to do. In two breaths flat, he was the only person left in the entire outside courtyard of the tavern. There he knelt, impersonating a hapless prisoner bound for decapitation. The Indigo Dragoness’ gaze sought him out unerringly.

“Kashlion, my shnuggly-wuggly dearesht,” she burbled, for good measure, pointing him out with her foreclaw, “come to Ta … Taz … Tata.”

The thief’s nerve cracked. This much fiery affection beggared both belief and his desire for continued good health. He charged for the tavern door, but found the interior jammed with people. Lowering his head, Kal tried to imitate a tick burrowing into a warm armpit.

Two pairs of meaty hands seized his upper arms, and pitched Kal straight back outside. He bounced down a short flight of steps, tucking in his head to avoid injury. Injury came looking for him, however, in the form of an infuriated, alcohol-fuelled fireball, courtesy of his favourite Dragoness. Duck! Kal tipped a table with his foot. Flame shot past his upturned nose to engulf the tavern’s front porch. Saved by the table. He edged away from the blazing wood.

Crysglass cracked sharply. Kal realised the tavern’s patrons must be bailing out as fast as humanly possible. Wise move, because the Dragoness charged straight past him, shoved her muzzle through the doorway and flexed her shoulders to rip the entire roof off the building.

“Wheresh he? Where–ooh, I shmell beer.” Out back, the screaming and panicking continued. Tazithiel growled, “Sherve me a barrel of your besht, barman. I’m thirshty.”

Seen past Tazi’s knee, the barman measured his length in a dead faint.

“Tazi! Tazithiel, come on!”

Great. Guzzling noises emanated from inside the building. More beer? Kal rolled his eyes. As if the benighted beast would listen to him now! Pity the man who met her with a Dragon-sized hangover in the morning. Old-Kal would have made himself scarcer than pollen on a breeze. New-Kal, risen from the ashes of those dubious materials, had to try. He drew a long, calming breath. Right.

Just then, Kal spied the tavern’s sign dangling above Tazithiel’s spine spikes. The Drunken Dragon. Life could not possibly be that ironic, could it?

“Hey, you–that your Dragon?”

“Aye. And I–”

Kal never finished his sentence. He never saw what hit him, either.

* * * *

Waking in a jail cell was the most excellent homecoming in recent memory. Kal felt rested, rat-infested and ready to foment mischief. Bump on the head? So what. He’d suffered worse. He felt eyes boring into his back. Kicking his feet to scare off the vermin, he rolled over and sat up. A hulking, scarred Western Isles warrior crouched on the far side of his cell, picking at his fingernails with the point of the most ridiculous weapon Kal had ever seen–a four-foot scimitar decorated with notched, barbed edges that screamed, ‘this is a weapon of incalculably massive evil!’ To complete the picture of thuggish glory, the warrior had one eye, the grand sum of two teeth populated his sneering mouth, and three fingers of his left hand were missing.

“Islands’ greetings to you,” Kal offered. Very polite.

In a voice that was the stuff of granite mountains and dizzying abysses, the dark-skinned warrior returned, “Move an inch and I’ll spit you like a wild pig, boy.”

Spit him on that scimitar? No problem. Call him boy? Kal mentally reserved space in the nearest volcano for the dim-witted swine. By the angle of the light leaching into one tiny window overhead, the hour was mid-morning and the day, dull and overcast. High time for Tazithiel to be slinking in with profuse apologies for her behaviour.

“So, everything quiet in town?”

“Seeing as ya gone destroyed half of it, aye,” rumbled the thug.

Kal nodded. “I regret that most sorely, my friend. The Dragoness was drunk. I tried to stop her.” The scarred face did not move a muscle. “Now, I’ve a delightful little proposal for you …”

The confidence trickster slipped into familiar tales of riches exceeding the fabled Dragon-hoards of Gi’ishior, with which it might be alleged he had certain personal experience, but the stone-face warrior opposite seemed unmoved by his word-weaving. Mid-sentence, the scimitar pricked his neck.

“Tell you what, stranger.” His gruff Western Isles accent was as thick as the fingers holding that blade, Kal noted. “I’d prefer the bounty on your head.”

Evidently, his fame preceded him. Stretching with leonine pleasure, Kal inquired innocently, “Bounty? What bounty?”

The mug-ugly warrior showed every inch of his decaying gums in a broad smile. “Three thousand gold drals for a thief from Fra’anior.” Darn. Not as witless as hoped for. The blade moved to Kal’s left ear; flipped up the hair. “You’ve odd ears, stranger. Ya want to know what I think? I think this town’s set to be rich.”

Dignify the accusation? Bah! Curse those Dragons, making his life a misery. Suddenly, the jealous protectiveness of a Dragoness seemed more a boon than a bane, and oddly, he found himself longing for the clasp of a huge blue paw. The thought made his skin crawl.

“They want you alive.”

So that the Dragon Elders could torture him properly? Posse of rock-chewing worms!

“That restriction’s a pity.” The warrior resumed worrying at his fingernails, a devious smile playing about his lips. “Mind you, a person can live without fingers or toes. Or limbs, I hear.” Kal sucked in a breath. “Ears, eyes, nose … none of those keep ya alive, do they, stranger?”

He howled in his mind, Tazithiel!

Outwardly, Kal kept his cool. “What happened to the beast?” he asked, as if inquiring after a lost pet.

“Dragon hunters chained the beast down, they did. Got him tied so tight he can’t lift a claw.”

“Her,” Kal said automatically. “She’s a girl–a Dragoness.”

The huge man hawked and spat on the ground beside Kal’s foot. “You sick in the head, stranger?”

Exactly. He touched upon Kal’s own fears. Romance a beast? Even if she appeared in Human form, that was an Isle too far for many people.

“I am a Dragon Rider and she’s my Dragon.” Before he could process the heat this statement sparked in his breast, Kal added, “And when Tazithiel wakes up, she’s going to level this town to find me.”

The big ruffian threw back his head and laughed, but a rising roar outside cut him off with the facility of a scimitar-stroke applied to the knees.

Thunder! The walls and floor shook as though one of the mythical Land Dragons had taken to beating the Island like a drum. Springing for the window, Kal peeked out just in time to be dazzled by a series of lightning strikes from the low clouds. Explosions resounded from what he assumed was the general direction of the marketplace, followed by flames that quickly rose above the town’s roofline.

“I think she’s feeling irritable,” said Kal, conversationally. Boiling storm clouds; a vortex developing over the town? Unholy, freaking Dragon-bones! “Probably a beastly hangover.”

The Western Isles warrior interrupted his personal grooming activities to stare unashamedly out of the window. He whispered, “But the chains, I saw those chains!”

Now was not the moment to describe Tazithiel’s boot-unlacing, trouser-divesting powers, Kal resolved. The man already thought him a pervert. Instead, his heart sickened with worry over the townspeople. The innocents. And although Dragons were meant to be arrogant monsters who would level a town without the slightest regret–revelling in the destruction, most probably–he wondered that any intelligent creature could take life so callously. Or was he just naïve?

Evil existed.

Was she evil, or was this the fundamental nature of the Dragonkind?

Nevertheless, the storm above town appeared to be linked to the Indigo Dragoness’ ire. Kal could not watch. He of a thief’s heart, who had many times slipped a blade into a warm body or garotted an unwary guard, now quaked as justice came home to roost? What right had he to judge? His idea of moral navigation was a Dragonship long since lost over the Cloudlands.

What to do? Reaching out with his mind, Kal shouted, Tazithiel! Stop! I’m present and well. Let’s just get out of here, please …

Over the crackling of flames and the thin, faraway shouts, Dragon-Tazi’s battle-thunder rose, wild with pain. Kal found himself gripping the bars, screaming in sympathy, and to his surprise threw off the huge Western Isles warrior as though he were a child.

I COME, MY RIDER!

Never had thunder resounded so sweetly in his mind. Kal staggered, holding himself upright only by dint of his grip on the bars. A dirty, draconic body sprang aloft. Lightning played about her slim, serpentine length, blasting off the dried mud, and through the gaps and streaks now visible on her hide, Kal noted how Tazithiel shone with an unearthly light. Freaking windrocs! No ballad or lore-scroll had ever extolled a Dragon-power to rival this.

Pinpricks incinerated before they reached her hide. Arrows? Crossbow bolts? He could not tell, but Kal shivered as her gaze seemed to leap to his across the thousands of feet that separated them. She knew precisely where he was.

Wings pumping, the Indigo Dragoness lanced beneath the brooding clouds, a bright comet-trail streaking across his vision. Captivated, Kal yet had the presence of mind to wave the warrior back. Her wings flared. Shadow occluded his window. Dust blasted into his face as Tazithiel landed, her posture majestic even though her musculature appeared diminished, her many-fanged smile never sweeter nor more predatory. Golden Dragon blood seeped down her muzzle. Wounded!

“Kal. Stand back.”

He jerked backward as two talons slipped through the window. As sharp as curved grey swords, they gripped the wall. Those blocks of dressed stone had to weigh upward of a tonne, but Tazithiel, with a sharp hiss to accompany the flexion of her muscles, tore one free. A Dragoness’ paw reached inside to provide an easy exit for an agile thief.

“Mine,” she growled, drawing him out upon her wrist.

“Verily, you are mine.”

Heated draconic laughter shook the jail. “Verily? You scholarly reprobate.”

The Indigo Shifter’s massive thighs coiled like springs. Blasting sixty feet aloft in a single bound, Tazithiel beat her wings to propel them into the clouds.

Chapter 8: Heritage

THAT EVENING, FIFTY leagues distant on a new Island-Cluster, Kal and Tazi lay hand-in-hand, stargazing beneath a two-moon night. Blue and Jade sliced thin, crescent slivers of colour into the eastern horizon, casting little light to impede their view of a night sky so brilliant, it seemed to explode with stars.

Having coyly transformed behind a boulder, to Kal’s piqued amusement, Tazithiel dressed in a simple, white cotton inkaliar dress, a garment of her native Mejia Island, before foraging for dinner. She prepared a meal of spiced grilled duck, with a side of wild vegetables seasoned with yaffar-seed and tarragon. Rather domesticated, for a Dragoness. Kal smacked his lips approvingly, and cleaned the small pot with a chunk of sweetbread.

Their entwined fingers were the only place their bodies touched. Touch was a kind of magic, the thief thought, for a soul should perish for lack of this simplest of actions. Perhaps this was what he had unknowingly sought in the many flirtations and liaisons of his life.

All meaningless, in comparison.

“The Sorrowful Servant,” said Tazi, naming a constellation.

“The Dragon Rampant.”

“One for you, Kal–The Feckless Felon.”

“You made that one up!”

“Who pulled who out of jail this morning, may I ask?” His hiss did not cow her in the slightest. “Dawn over Rolodia.”

“Where?”

With her bandaged hand, she pointed low across his body. “There. On the horizon.”

“Didn’t know you could see it from this far south,” Kal said, wondering at the heat-trail her arm created upon his skin, detectable even through his linen shirt.

Odd, how Human-Tazi reflected the damage done to her Dragoness. A six-foot crossbow bolt had pierced the webbing of her right paw. Another had deflected off the bone of her nose. He had cleaned and dressed the wounds for her with neat daubs of antiseptic turbic-gum. Now she had a splodge of green on her nose, but at least the bleeding had stopped.

Tazithiel sighed. “Kal, did you ever look at the stars, and wonder …” Here it came, he thought. Why, since time immemorial, had the stars always inspired Humankind to philosophical endeavours? “Have you ever wondered if you came from the stars?”

That sucked the wind from his sails.

“I don’t know why it is, but I’ve always dreamed … I’m just weird. Have you–”

“No,” he replied, with the utmost intelligence, insight and sensitivity, “and aye, you are weird.”

“Kal!” she squeaked, and then lowered her voice to a throaty chuckle that traced every nerve in his body with Dragon fire. Rising to her elbow, the enchantress gazed down at him with a sparkle in her eyes Kal could not fathom. Just a hint of her Shapeshifter nature lurked within those eye-jewels; perhaps in the colour, matching the indigo blues of her Dragoness, or in the play of magic which tantalised his senses. To search her gaze was to know a connectedness so deep and intimate, he felt as if he had been punched in the gut without any physical contact.

Her lips twitched; the merest whisper of a smile. “I love it when you look at me like that, as if you see into me, Kal.”

Winner! “Actually,” he cleared his throat, “I was trying to decide whether you might enjoy one of my sanity-stealing kisses, or whether you were having a womanly moment, offering the briefest intimation of your feminine mysteries to this humble–”

“I was having a womanly moment.”

“Alright. Therefore, I shall merely dust your lips with the starlight of my kiss–” the kiss he essayed being rather more ordinary than his poetry “–and now, I shall attend your verbal jewels with bated breath.”

Tazithiel pretended outrage, but her hair betrayed her true feelings as the long locks wended their way over his arms and chest, caressing his neck and wrists. Kal tried not to shiver; he laughed uneasily in the face of her chiming laughter.

“Can’t keep my hair off you,” she said. “Fine. I shall now demonstrate the effects of an air kiss upon the male of the species.”

“Air kiss?”

“Shh. Pay attention.”

First, a ravishing smile. Second, her breath warmed his cheek, fragrant and exotic, as though she had chewed dorlis-flower perfume. Then, with the utmost guile, Tazithiel lowered her lips toward his. Dreamily. Enticing him with the magic of her presence. Struggling manfully, Kal managed to maintain his self-control for all of a handful of heartbeats–which thumped the insides of his ears, whomp whomp whomp, with deafening softness. He tried to kiss her.

Dragon-swift, she withdrew. “Wait.”

“Oh, come on!”

“You’ve all the restraint of a feral Dragon crazed by fresh blood.”

“I am the very paragon of respectability. And don’t you use your magic on me. It’s deceitful, that’s what it is.”

“Oh no.” She approached him again, predacious, alluring, maddening. “No magic here. I’m all about feminine mystery.”

“And about as subtle as a twenty-tonne drunken Dragoness.”

For that affront, she strung out her ‘lesson’ until Kal was seriously contemplating whacking her over the head and dragging her off to a handy cave, while his innards resembled a desperate, quivering lump of prekki fruit mush. Then, she changed the subject.

Truly a womanly moment.

“I don’t much resemble either of my shell-parents, Kal. It has always bothered me.” Tazithiel tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear with a self-conscious gesture. “Shapeshifters are odd creatures. We can arise spontaneously in a lineage, particularly around Isles of magical significance.”

“Such as Fra’anior?”

Kal wondered how this revelation linked to her starry dreams.

“Aye. Neither of my shell-parents are Shapeshifters. But they are … ordinary. They’re Dragons of pure soul-fires for the most part–” she ignored his choked cough of outrage “–but my shell-mother’s a Red and my shell-father styles himself an Aqua Blue, although there’s only the merest hint of Blue in his greenness. Neither lineage boasts a single Dragon of my unusual colouration and aspect. Kal, I do love my shell-parents, despite everything. If you knew them, you’d understand–”

“How colossally bigoted and heartless they were?”

Crack! Tazithiel withdrew her hand; her eyes, huge with hurt and fright.

Kal touched his cheek, dazedly wishing back his words. “Islands’ sakes! Sorry. Tazi, I …”

The white of her long dress disappeared into the night.

Flutter. Gone.

* * * *

“Kal, you’ve a reasonable command of Island Standard, haven’t you?”

“Aye.”

“So if I used the words ‘skewer’, ‘peel’ and ‘bake to a crisp’ in the same sentence, you’d probably understand what I mean?”

“Haven’t a clue!”

Human-Tazi would have placed her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed as rage tinted her cheeks. The Indigo Dragoness crisped the goat-meat stuck between her fangs with a sizzling fireball. It missed the thief by a rajal’s whisker.

Kal, as a result rather whiter than his standard golden-tan Fra’aniorian complexion, straightened up. He patted his face.

“Oh, Kal!” Her paw flew to her mouth in a typically Human reaction. “Your beard …”

“Er, no damage done. Nothing permanent. Look, Tazi, please transform. I want to apologise properly.”

A second fireball, mercifully wider of his person than the first, erupted from the Shapeshifter Dragoness. “You unbelievable, two-legged numbwit! Which part of ‘now’s not the right time’ do you fail to grasp?”

Then, with a rush of that infolding-before-flowering magic Kal wished with every fibre of his being he could understand, she transformed from her Dragoness into Human-Tazi. Tonnes of Dragonflesh vanished into nothingness. In her place stood an enchantress whose volcanic nudity … Kal hoped he was not leering like a courtier drunk on berry wine.

Vibrant of face and voice, Human-Tazithiel said, “I’d prefer a female-style apology. Feelings before action. Being a typical male, you–”

“Go for action first, while my emotions trail behind, snarled up in a hopeless tangle?” Kal grinned, knowing that a man with half a beard had to look ludicrous. He gestured at her state of undress. “That is both spectacularly unhelpful and … spectacular.”

Three days of wrangling and defiant silences as they fled westward ahead of pockets of Dragonships and Dragons scouring the Isles for a certain crook with a king’s ransom on his head–how that alliance had come about was a conundrum indeed–had left both Kal and Tazi emotionally wrung out. One more flustered dive for a bolt-hole, Kal decided, and the Shapeshifter would transform into a rabbit. Tazithiel needed time and plenty of food to recover from their epic crossing. But there had been no chance. No respite.

In these parts, thousands of low, forested Islands mounded out of the Cloudlands like a scattering of furry hats afloat on a vast, opaque lake. The hot season suns baked the malachite-green coniferous forests ferociously, seventeen hours a day, and the activity of millions of sap-drinking drill-birds spread both birdsong about the Islands and the sweet, sticky scent of thousands of types of pine. Legions of fat worker bees raided the dense pockets of wildflowers nestled beneath the trees, giving rise to the moniker for this region–the Garden of the South. Tazithiel had quite another reason for liking this region–jambiss buck, the frenzy-inducing pinnacle of a carnivore’s gustatory dreams. She only ate two of the man-tall antelope. Daily.

The Dragoness appeared to be developing a discernible wobble in the belly region.

“I can do words first,” Kal said. “Tazithiel, I’m sorry for–mmm.”

“Words shmurds,” she murmured into the crook of his neck, having relinquished his lips. “Here’s my deal. Take it or leave it.”

“Take it.” Kal fitted his hands to her slender waist. “The only question is where, when, how and for how long?”

“That’s four questions, you conversational harpist.” How she remembered his every word, and oftentimes turned them against him! “You’ve been pinging looks about like angry hornets. Here’s my offer. I will now proceed to discombobulate your brains until they dribble out of your ears, following which, you will tell me exactly what’s bothering you. Promise?”

Either Tazithiel had miraculous powers of persuasion, Kal decided, or he had a spine as supple as a terrace lake trout. Willpower? Bah. This Dragoness owned him for a slave. The worrying part? Kal did not want to escape, nor express so much as a contrary thought. One smile, one flash of those indigo eyes, and he was lost. Yet, if she found out his other identity … and every westward league brought them closer to the hour when he must decide. Trust her and risk losing her–could he face that? Kal did not know any more. The old tenets of his life had been uprooted, perhaps forever.

Easier to put it off.

“I promise,” he said, hoping Tazi ascribed the quaver in his voice to her feminine charms.

Later, Tazithiel curled up against him, her toes practically cooking in the small fire they had built to warm the old Dragon-roost they had found. A soft, white-sand floor sloped up to a ledge where generations of Dragons must have roosted, judging from the claw-marks scored into the stone. The entrance lay behind a barrier of towering jinsumo trees, oddly transplanted from their native East. Their thick sprays of blossoms lent the hot season night an intense fragrance.

“I apologise for what I said about your shell-parents.” Kal sighed, staring into the flames. “Parents are a touchy topic for me. So is magic. As for your suspicions about what I wrought to aid us through the storm, Tazi–I’ve been tetchy about many things.”

“Thank you, Kal.”

“I thought Dragons despised apologies.”

“Some do. But I’m an enlightened Shapeshifter. I know a few things about being an upright-walking mammal.” Her chuckle was a many-faceted outlet for her feelings–irony, apology and hope, he thought. “You’re either a great enchanter of Fra’anior, or something wacky is going on.”

“Wacky? As in, a Shapeshifter Dragoness whacked me over the head and–”

“Regretting your choice to stay?”

“Never.” Kal winced, stroking the backs of her fingers, which rested upon his chest. “A spot of candour on my part. I have regretted this liaison a few times, Tazi.”

“The drunken Dragoness?”

“Aye.”

“Feisty, fire-breathing, flying girl-fiend?”

“Now, just a minute–”

Tazithiel’s fingernails pricked his skin. “Dragons have excellent hearing, Kal. You’re lucky you’re such a funny man.”

“I plan to filch all your scales and sell them on street corners for trinkets, making myself implausibly wealthy in the process.”

Her magical hair rippled against him as if he wore a warm blanket. If he had discovered anything about Shapeshifters, it was that they both loved warmth and radiated heat at a phenomenal rate. Her appetite matched his, and he was no picky eater. Six feet tall and as sinewy as a champion Jeradian warrior, she was, yet Tazi remained pleasing in all the right proportions. Delightful distraction! Distraction being an occupational hazard around this woman, apparently.

Kal whispered, as if he feared the words should explode on his tongue, “It’s the beastliness, Tazi. That’s the problem–my problem. I can’t … reconcile it.”

She made a cutting gesture with her hand that passed right through the flames. “Eliminate one Dragoness and all is well?”

Kal kissed the top of her head.

“It’s a point of sharp debate,” Tazi said. “We’re the third race. Everyone knows there are Humans and Dragons, but the mysterious Shapeshifters are the stuff of fear and legend. Some say Shapeshifters are truly Dragon and truly Human, the twofold expression of one soul possessing both draconic and Human elements. Others say we are inhuman. Being the third race, being draconic, we are inherently and by definition, inhuman.”

Kal detained a teardrop with his fingertip. “You experience Human emotions.”

“Very … Human.” Her shoulders shook; silent, wracking sobs.

Such soul-shadowed grief! He did not understand. Held close to his right eye for examination, her tear glistened with an inner light. Kal tilted his finger slightly. Motes swam within the droplet, miniature silver Dragons swimming in an inner world, swirling, mesmerising … salt! On his tongue, salt, and a peculiar tingling. Kal blinked and swallowed. What? How long had he … where was he? Tazithiel had grown still in his arms, her sobbing spent. Odd. He felt as if an invisible Dragon had just bitten a chunk of time out of his life.

I hated Human-Tazi, said the Dragoness. Kal scrambled mentally to switch to Dragonish. I blamed her for what happened. She demeaned my mighty draconic spirit, this inferior being, this abhorrent incarnation of my fire-soul. Yet now I wish I did not stand in your way, Kallion of Fra’anior.

“If one is to soul-love a being,” he replied, troubled, “how can it be right to soul-love only one expression of that being? Surely partiality is wrong?”

Is duality wrong?

Kal puzzled over her question. “Human beings exist as layer upon layer, and what we are able to present to the outside world or even in intimate moments, is never every facet of our beings. Is this hypocrisy? Living a lie?”

By way of answer, Tazithiel raised his fingers to her lips. Softness upon skin. Something deep within Kal stirred; a visceral sigh. “You argue with the cunning of Fra’anior himself.”

“No, I just don’t understand. Do you, Tazi? Having lived alone for nine years …”

Insolent Human! her Dragoness growled. Simultaneously, Human-Tazi said, “You’re right. I hid; shut everything out. I’m convinced I misconstrue many aspects of my nature, or remain ignorant of my capabilities. I’ve never been trained in Blue magic, for example. How wonderful it would be to find fellow-Shapeshifters at the Academy. I could learn so much!”

Kal scratched his beard as a rash of thoughts cascaded through his mind. “But how does it work, Tazi? Shapeshifters can be either Dragon or Human, right? So they can reproduce with either species?”

“Or another Shapeshifter.”

“Um. So imagine you and I get in … uh, in the family way.” Tazi’s dry chuckle caused him to flush rather violently. “Do we have Human babies, or cute little Shapeshifters with oodles of lovely locks?”

“Perhaps a matched trio of sleek little hatchlings, who are especially cute when they burp fire in your face?”

“What happens to a babe in the womb if you transform, Tazi? Does the baby transform simultaneously? And Dragons brood over their eggs–does that mean you have Dragonesses brooding over Human children, or Human mothers carrying clutches of huge Dragon eggs in their shawls? Can you picture it? ‘My, what a pretty egg you have. How you ever gave birth to a four-foot, seven sackweight egg is beyond me.’ ”

Kal’s voice rose as his imagination swept him along; those indigo eyes effervesced with amusement, only encouraging his efforts. “So when they’re born, do these children become Shapeshifters right away, or does that magic come later? ‘Here’s your little Human teacher. Don’t burn him, alright, my fireflower?’ ‘No fireballs in the lounge, son! And no transforming in your bedroom, you’ll wreck the house.’ And how exactly would I discipline a child who’s twenty times my size? Or one who ties me up with her magical hair?”

“I believe the power manifests at the time of puberty,” she put in, laughing. “But I’m not sure that’s the rule, Kal. And, may I note, you’re weirdly obsessed with my hair.”

“Personally, I blame the eyelashes.”

“Do I have too much hair?”

“Furry all over,” Kal lied cheerfully, eliciting further merriment. “Confession time. I’d gladly ransack entire kingdoms for hair like yours. But one flutter of your eyelashes … ah, Tazithiel, my Tazithiel, how I swoon!”

“Like an insipid milkmaid.”

“Vile insults!” cried Kal. Then, with a mock-growl, he lowered her to the sand. “We’ve a few hours before midnight, Tazi, for me to become further acquainted with your eyelashes. Let us waste not a moment.”

* * * *

Ten minutes after midnight, a previously Indigo Dragoness emerged from a tar-pit, unrecognisable. “How’s this, Kal?”

He pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger. “No fireballs or you’ll turn yourself into a living torch, o piceous paragon of four-pawed pulchritude.”

“Pack the dictionary away and climb aboard, Rider.”

“I was going to use ‘nigritude’ but couldn’t articulate the alliteration appropriately.”

Rolling her fire-eyes to the heavens at his wink, Tazi whisked him aboard with a touch of her magic. “Perfect service. You don’t even have to dirty your boots.”

“Gratefully accepted, milady.” Kal sketched the briefest of Fra’aniorian bows, which still entailed six distinct hand-twirls. “You are darkness incarnate. Now throw off this swarm of pesky gnats. Let us burn the heavens–”

“No magic, Kal!” Tazi’s flanks heaved as she scanned the far horizons. “I see at least five Dragons patrolling up there; let stealth be our watchword. Shield’s up … ready?”

“They can detect magic?”

Nodding, Tazithiel flared her wings and dropped the cliff-edge to the accompaniment of Kal’s soft whoop. In seconds, wind crowded into his mouth and nostrils. His eyes watered. Kal used her spine spike to shield his face as they dove, hugging the cliff-face for additional cover. Down. Miles down, an almost vertical plunge, although the Dragoness twitched or flexed her wings every few seconds to whisk them safely past another rocky outcropping or overhanging tree that Kal missed in the dark. Trust, aye. Trust the pilot. This for a man who had always trusted his own instincts, and no other?

The Dragoness had attempted to explain the power of Dragon sight to him. The ability to see over many leagues. To magnify vision like an Immadian telescope, an instrument favoured by Dragonship Steersmen the Island-World over. To focus upon and discern details at enormous distances and levels of clarity. Dragons used additional spectra of vision and magical powers to further enhance their senses–no wonder the Dragonkind made such awesome predators. Kal could only shake his head. How had these creatures failed to utterly dominate the Island-World?

Down they plummeted, until the pressure made Kal’s ears squeak and tepid, fusty air filtered through Tazithiel’s shield into his nostrils. The Cloudlands rushed toward him, moons-lit billows of deceitful beauty carpeting the base of the world; death’s own realm. Not too low, he wanted to advise, but the wind’s rush was too powerful.

I know, Tazi said.

Her telepathic speech carried as clear as a bell to his mind. Had he spoken aloud?

Dragonish had never come more naturally, now that Kal spoke daily with a Dragoness. He replied, Arise, o Tazithiel! To the far horizons, and beyond!

With a rippling cry, Tazithiel flared her wings, dropping Kal’s stomach from his throat into his lower pelvic region. Wind whistled across wing-membranes as the Indigo Dragoness screamed into her turn. His knuckles turned white on the saddle horn. Wretched attention-seeker! Well, who had inspired whom?

The black-as-pitch Dragoness streaked away across the Cloudlands, a dark shadow enfolded by a darker night.

Chapter 9: Trysting-Place

THEY SPED DIRECTLY southward in a single, day-long sprint. Fifteen leagues per hour. Three hundred and seventy-four leagues, midnight to midnight, following a line of tall, conical Islands–always five to the cluster, appearing as regularly on the horizon as though they had been planted to plan by a mighty draconic paw–before taking a day’s rest in a dell Tazithiel knew on an uninhabited Islet. The space was tiny, barely large enough for a tarred, dirt-splattered Dragoness. Kal wondered aloud how she would clean the tar and bug-splatter off her hide. By way of answer, Tazi transformed upon a rocky patch nearby. Instantly, the dirt dropped to the ground, leaving a black, Dragon-shaped patch where she had stood.

“Perfect,” she said, giggling merrily at Kal’s expression. “I’ll fire it before we leave.”

Kal stalked over. Sweeping Tazithiel off her feet, he diverted her with a passionate kiss before casually dropping her in an ice-cold pool beneath a waterfall at the dell’s eastern side. Tazi shouted at the cold; Kal purchased his comeuppance by falling about laughing. A whiff and a waft of Kinetic energy later and he was equally soaked and shivering.

The following day, they bent their course south-westward, putting the dust of the long leagues between them and the chase.

For Kal, their journey was characterised by Dragon-mirth bubbling over Islands. He remembered the stops as a series of Island-shivering discombobulations; when he mentioned this mid-flight to Tazithiel late one golden afternoon, she laughed so hysterically she had to put down or fall from the sky. She took him windroc-hunting to sharpen his skills with the Dragon war-bow. Kal had always been an indifferent archer, but under Tazi’s tutelage–the prospect of ‘rewards’ endowing his efforts with unmatched enterprise–he progressed rapidly, and after seven days of training was able to put two in three arrows within a couple of feet of where he wanted them. The Dragoness amused him by chasing after his less successful efforts, retrieving all but a couple of arrows.

One sweltering evening after a week and a day’s westward travel across the Southern Archipelago, Kal and Tazi hunted for a roost for the night. Here, the Isles seemed blighted–suns-scorched brown vegetation hung over Island-ramparts hollowed and tunnelled out like Merxian cheese.

“We should reach my base tomorrow,” said Kal. “It’s right on the periphery of the Island-Desert.”

Tazithiel nodded. “I’ve flown over it. A thousand leagues of uninhabited Islands. Legend tells how the Ancient Dragons laid waste to these Islands during the first great Dragonwar in order to destroy the power of Dramagon’s legions of Anubam, the burrowing Dragons he created in his infamous laboratories. Now, since the time of Queen Aranya’s victory over the Sylakians at Yorbik, it has become a nesting-place for the drakes. Every so often, the Dragons of Mejia join the majestic legions of Jeradia and Gi’ishior, as many Dragonkind as wish to blood themselves in the glory of battle, to exterminate as many drakes as possible.”

Instead of rolling his eyes at her naked bloodlust, Kal thumped her shoulder with his fist. “You’ll eat those drakes for breakfast, won’t you, my beauty?”

“Have you ever seen a drake, Kal?”

“Er … from a distance.” He had never crossed the Island-Desert, preferring the safer route via the Spine Islands and Jeradia, or at worst, the long crossing via the Dragon stronghold of Meldior, a large, isolated Island-Cluster in the Middle Sea’s southern reaches, an otherwise uninhabited stretch of Cloudlands reaching from Remoy in the East to Elidia in the West, famed for its spectacular lightning storms.

Tazithiel turned a burning eye upon him. “Do you think I have you practising archery for fun, Kal?”

“No, for the opportunity to grab your naked–”

“Kal!”

“Before I fondle your–ahem.” The Dragoness’ warning growl simmered as he paused. Rapid change of tack, for it was best to keep her guessing. Kal grinned. “So, I thought the Anubam were legend? As in, back in the days of Hualiama Dragonfriend?”

“A thousand years before her time, Kal. Dramagon was the sort of Ancient Dragon who breakfasted on world domination and supped on the annihilation of his enemies–which happened to be every other Dragon and Human in the Island-World. Give or take.” Her eyes whirled with white-fires in their depths, hypnotic. “He used burrowing Dragons to root out his enemies and destroy their roosts and Islands from beneath. But the Anubam are no legend. Fly into the desert, and you will know it for yourself.”

“Alright, so why haven’t they re-invaded all these nice Islands they turned into honeycomb out here?”

“Magic,” intoned Tazithiel.

“Oh, come on! They’ve been munched!”

“This magic is profound and mysterious, far too lofty for a mere Human to comprehend.”

“Tazi!” What mood was this? Sarcasm and humour mixed with completely fake draconic arrogance? Kal loved it.

Meantime, she added, “Clearly, our ongoing association has reduced your intelligence to the level of the common mauve snail of Fra’anior. Perhaps a period of abstinence might restore you to sound mind?”

“Abstinence? Great Islands, woman, the profanities that emerge from your mouth!”

“Your friend Fra’anior, whom you invoked to calm the storm–”

Kal clucked his tongue unhappily, peering at the wall of foliage passing by on their right flank as Tazithiel skirted another Island. No landing places. A sheer cliff four miles tall, riddled with holes, and so overgrown that Tazi would have to burn her way in, he imagined. “I’m sure that was just coincidence.”

“Hmm.” Her rumble vibrated every bone in his body. “Fra’anior created the magic that restricts the Anubam to this day. Now, prove this alleged acumen of yours. What startling insights might I gain from the mind of my Rider?”

“On the subject of Shapeshifter heritage,” Kal replied, “I think I understand why Dragons dislike Shifters–”

“Because they can’t detect us? Because we’re a threat, and Dragons are nothing if not territorial?”

What Dragons did was to turn every discussion into an argument, Kal thought sourly. Just listen to the challenge in her tone! “The Shifter Wars began sixty-four years ago, and lasted a decade,” he said, silencing the Dragoness. “Queen Aranya had been accorded the title of Empress of Dragons, a title she never wanted and openly despised. Nevertheless, a rift developed between the Dragons of Gi’ishior and a rival Dragon Council headquartered at the Fingers of Ferial. Those Dragons first exterminated the Humans of Ferial in a month-long massacre, and then turned their attention to the Shapeshifter families of Helyon, Gemalka, Jendor and Herliss, and finally Immadia itself.”

“At great cost, Aranya and her kin triumphed,” Tazithiel noted.

“Aye. The Kingdom of Immadia has been but a shadow of its former glory, since, and the Dragon Riders seem a spent force.”

The Dragoness bared her fangs at the Island wilderness as they passed between two great cliffs into the centre of an Island-Cluster. “Why the history lesson, Kal?”

“From what you’ve told me, and judging from the histories I’ve read, Tazithiel, it seems that Shapeshifters will never understand why the Lesser Dragons hate them with such unquenchable fires.”

“How arrogant are you?” A massive fireball roared out of her throat.

Immediately, Tazi hurled ice at the fire she had just ignited on an Island’s flank. Three or four rounds of ice later, she succeeded in snuffing out the conflagration. Panting, smoking at the nostrils, she fought to regain her composure. Meantime, the Rider on her back sat as though turned to stone. Great. Why ask for his thoughts if she was simply going to toss fireballs about in annoyance?

Tazithiel grumbled, “Ruddy Dragon emotions. Trust me, it’s a different storm every minute. Speak, Kal.”

“Speak.” He imitated her draconic growl. “So, Dragons are creatures of fire, the embodiment of the draconic fire-soul–the Dragonsoul. They are the magical, powerful once-masters of the Island-World. Then we have Humans, the usurping hordes, perhaps created by Dragons but most certainly slaves of Dragons for many generations. Most Dragons look down upon Humans as some form of fast-breeding, swarming lowlifes, of lesser capability, intelligence and achievement. Pests, in short.”

Tazithiel blew smoke over her shoulder. “Aye, I definitely know a prime example of pesky humanity.”

Kal sniffed at her jibe, saying, “Then, we introduce Shapeshifters. Dragon fire-soul plus. Or is that minus? Don’t give a traditional Dragon the two manifestations of one soul argument. Dragonsoul mixed with Human-soul? Bah. You’ve just polluted a beautiful, pure fire-soul. So at best this Human sidekick is something akin to a nasty disease. And how can a Dragonsoul possibly manifest in Human form? It’d burn up. So our friendly traditional Dragons say that to be a true, genuine Dragon, you have to be exclusively Dragon. Isn’t that so?”

Her nodding bobbed him up and down. “Don’t mince your words, Kal.”

“Sorry. It gets worse. So, according to our previous discussion, in the case of two Dragons having a Shapeshifter offspring, the hatchling starts as a lovely Dragon that develops a Human taint, and not just a harmless wart either, it’s seen more as a cancer or a disfigurement. Jumping the other way, two Humans have a Shapeshifter offspring–the child grows up fully Human until one day, wham! Dragon. Where did their Dragonsoul exist meantime? Arrayed in Human flesh? Unthinkable. Perverse, even. And when they die, does their Human-soul join the eternal fires of the Dragonkind? How?”

Tazithiel’s body had grown rigid as he spoke, her wingbeat leaden.

“First, we’ve the possibility that a Human can manipulate or dominate a Dragon. Second, that a fire-spirit can exist in the most demeaning of flesh. Third, the sacred eternal fires are contaminated by impure, undraconic spirits. Shapeshifters can achieve all this, undetected. Religiously, philosophically, existentially–it’s a mess.”

As though speaking to himself, Kal added quietly, “I truly hope I’m wrong, Tazithiel. But I believe the fundamental question is not one of manifestations. It is the state, or fate, of a Shapeshifter’s very soul.”

The Indigo Dragoness became still. Dangerously still. Suddenly, Kal sensed the world rushing toward him. He threw up his hands in defence, but there was no impact.

GGRRRAAARRGGGH!

A crack of real thunder echoed between the Isles, supplemented by a massive, five-times-forked bolt of lightning which stabbed outward from Tazithiel’s body to explode against the Islands around and ahead of them. Kal twisted in his saddle. Strange. Did he detect the sharp tang of a storm despite a clear sky? On cue, a powerful gust of wind kicked up, scudding them forward at a noticeably sharper velocity. Before his startled eyes, heavy clouds began to draw together low around the Islands, dark billows shrouding the dry flanks of the Isles as if cloaks drew shut about the throats of performers about to stage a storming routine.

Then, he put Tazithiel’s tale of her past together with what he had said. Brutal. Unsavoury. Utterly unacceptable–who was the beast now, Kal?

Yet his soft apologies seemed to rebound off her armoured hide. Tazithiel was gone. In her place was a feral Dragoness, chased by a storm.

* * * *

Home was a cluster of Islets twenty-five strong, inhabited by a clannish tribe of Southerners who called themselves ‘the Undone’, although what they had done or undone in their past history, Kal had never worked out. They were an odd bunch of misfits collected from around the Island-World, which suited him perfectly. The Islands resembled a bundle of rough-hewn quills jutting from the flank of a beast called the Cloudlands, connected at their tops by such a motley collection of rope bridges, Kal imagined ten spiderwebs had been smashed together and the result deemed acceptable. With one voice, the Islanders of this Cluster resolved never to name their home anything at all. An excellent arrangement for one who prized anonymity as he did.

In the dead of night, he directed a docile Indigo Dragoness to a landing on the northernmost-but-one Island, amidst driving rain and powerful winds. He demanded she transform, before helping a pale, trembling woman across a swaying rope bridge to his nondescript basalt-and-granite stonework cottage with green shutters set at the northern tip of a rambling village of forty-three other mismatched cottages and cabins. No one building matched the others in style or colour, stone or wood. But the result was startlingly harmonious, if only for the reason that the mind boggled so severely it began to hallucinate that there must, somehow, be an order to matters.

Kal dropped their saddlebags in the hallway and whisked Tazithiel into a cosy bed draped in Helyon silk hangings and the finest sheets sourced from–he grinned at the memory–a rather irate nobleman’s love-nest, before Kal had whisked his highly-paid courtesan off on a two-week romp around the Northern Islands. He dried the Indigo Shapeshifter off and drew the covers up to her chin. A squeeze of her fingers indicated her gratitude.

Had she known his thoughts, a punch would have been a more apt response.

After returning with their Dragon Rider saddle and tack, Kal quickly checked that certain other security measures were all in order. Then he shucked his wet clothing, stretched out alongside Tazi and fell sound asleep in the act of settling his head on the pillow-roll.

Most jewellery acquisition consultants were light sleepers for good reason. Alertness was proof against daggers in the night, poison, unhealthy brushes with righteous lawmakers and citizens, and the attentions of fellow professionals who were understandably bilious over one’s inimitable exploits. Therefore, when Kal awoke to the scent of Jeradian spiced tea brewing upon his compact outside oven, and cool emptiness beside him, he was more than startled. He leaped out of bed, dagger in hand, as though he had discovered himself cuddled up to a cobra. Kal settled himself with a low laugh.

Only Tazi.

Through the triangular crysglass panes of his bedroom window, Kal spied Tazithiel lying in his favourite hammock, stretched between two flame-trees imported from Fra’anior. She had moved it outward! She swung above a three-mile drop … no danger for a Shapeshifter, right? He exhaled. Dear sweet Islands, this relationship truly threatened to reconstruct the innards of his skull. Tucked up to the chin beneath his patterned Remoyan throw, Tazi gazed out over the umber-burnished Cloudlands with a melancholy air. Self-loathing pierced Kal’s gut. Yesterday, he had opened his tactless tripe-trap and spewed hate all over her. Put himself in the Dragons’ boots–paws–indeed! Who under the suns did he think he was?

A sneak, that’s what.

Barefoot, he tiptoed outside. The air had that breathtaking storm’s-aftermath freshness about it, the boundless vistas as clear as the finest crystal. Dawn, as yet a rubescent glow upon the eastern horizon, would ignite the colours of this morning. A fitting backdrop for her blazing beauty. Kal framed the image in his memory, for fate smiled upon the man who treasured this woman. Fate? Fortune favoured the uneaten! One fine morn, Kallion of Fra’anior had journeyed abroad to seek a Dragon’s treasure. He had his plans, his maps, his hopes and avaricious dreams, and self-confidence sufficient to sink whole Dragonships. He had not planned upon meeting his match.

Most especially, he had not planned for any treasure to steal him.

Kal ghosted to the cliff’s edge. He said, “Islands’ greetings on this fine morn.”

She jerked so hard, the hammock tipped. Kal shot out one long arm to steady her, but the distance was a few inches too far. Next moment, he found himself dangling above the abyss, feet scrabbling for purchase, the fire-trees creaking at his additional weight.

Archly, Tazithiel inquired, “How do you sneak up on a Dragoness, Kal?”

“Tazi, please …”

“No wings, no magic?” She tempered her teasing by supporting his feet upon a bed of air; Kal gulped down a lump the size of a Dragon’s knuckle. “How’s about a kiss for your favourite enchantress?”

Kal could see windrocs circling a mile or two below his toes, no doubt praying as overlarge carnivorous avians might for fresh meat to fall from the sky. “Right now, you can have anything you want. While I’m sure you’ve prepared an extensive list, may I assure you I am usually found to be more coherent when firmly stood upon–thank you.”

Levitating herself from the hammock, Tazithiel glided toward him before dropping suddenly, making the wind billow the material of her long white inkaliar up above her waist. “Oops.”

“Forgive me, I just had a lustful contemplation,” Kal grinned, stealing her into his arms. “You’re a wicked little Shapeshifter, aren’t you?”

Her body became as rigid as a moored Dragonship’s hawser.

“Unholy suffering volcanoes!” he groaned. “Oh, hand me a rock that I might personally brain myself.” Half a thought later, a fine specimen of a sandstone boulder floated into his field of vision. “That was figurative language, woman! Mmm … language that appreciates a woman’s figure–figurative. Alright. Sadly unfunny.”

“Tea?”

“Excellent idea. Settle my nerves.”

His girl busied herself with the metal kettle, while Kal watched with the covetous attention of a pickpocket eyeing up a fine ruby ring adorning a noblewoman’s finger. A bloom of colour in her cheek disclosed her awareness of his scrutiny. Kneeling before the tray, arranged with delicate Jeradian crysglass tea-saucers, honey, a tea-strainer and a posy of wildflowers, Tazithiel began to perform the tea ceremony with such grace, she robbed his throat of any capacity of speech.

Kal knelt opposite. Human-Tazi kept her gaze downcast, appearing so much the youthful blossom that Kal took six looks at her where before, one might have sufficed. Demure? A Dragoness? Like a blossom in all her muscled, lethal tonnage? Her arm bent with the grace of a heron’s wing to pour the tea from an exact height, frothing, into the saucers. The herbs within uncurled, releasing sweet aromas to enliven his senses, while his eyes traversed the slender length of her limbs to the ruched neckline of her traditional outfit, perfectly modest, the immaculate white material setting off the creamy russet tones of her skin and the midnight-blue wealth of her hair, curled upon the upturned soles of her feet.

She said, “When I first learned to be Human, my challenge was to perform this tea ceremony.”

“Isn’t this a Jeradian custom?”

“Aye. I flew abroad to take instruction there, rather than risk the Dragons at Mejia. By minute observation, I copied my peers. How they walked. Spoke. Dressed. Ate. Flirted.” She suited actions to words, a coy dart of her eyes beneath those alluring lashes. “I see now that to be Human is so much more than all those things. My heart-language burns Dragonish. Humanity is a second skin, a foreign language, a culture in which one might make one’s home, but it always feels slightly alien. Wherein, then, is the true humanity of a Shapeshifter to be found?”

Setting the small tray aside, Tazithiel shifted her weight forward until her knees touched his. Lifting a tea-saucer, she balanced the shallow bowl upon the spayed fingertips of her left hand. In a delicate dance, Kal imitated her movement, raising his saucer until their wrists touched. Simultaneously, they bent forward from the waist, until each ceramic rim touched the other’s lips.

“We share life,” she said.

“We share home and hearth,” he replied.

Kal sipped cautiously three times, following the ceremonial forms. Seen through the steam coiling upward from his bowl, Tazi’s eyes appeared huge and brimming with magical potentials, but he no longer read the cold terror of death in those lustrous depths. When had this come to be?

“We share hope,” Kal said, taking his turn to lead.

“We share joys and fears.” Her lips quirked upward. “We need not drink ourselves into a stupor and raze towns out of fear.”

Understanding swelled in his breast, hot and taut. She feared him? Nay, she feared what she felt for him … this was more storms-over-the-Cloudlands than he had ever imagined, a deep-seated, dangerous liaison. Had she not avowed she was simply snaffling up a plaything? When had ‘play’ mutated to ‘play upon the harp-strings of my soul’? And why was she pinching his love of poetic metre and language? The better to wind a jaded transgressor about her smallest talon? Yet her honesty was a fragrant breeze over his Islands, an expanding of consciousness, a stirring and yearning of inner places Kal had long thought defunct.

She added, “We need not dread the vulnerability stemming from hearts, once ironbound and secreted in some nameless crypt for eternity, being retrieved and exposed to the light. Nor need we tremble as the unattainable is delicately revealed. Yet this treasure is fey–”

He put in, “That which is other is equally to be treasured.”

Tazi’s hand shook, almost spilling her tea. A teardrop glistened upon her curling lashes. She breathed, “Truly?”

“A vile pox upon the tongue that spoke otherwise,” Kal growled, pointing the thumb of blame firmly at himself. “Certainly, both hearts know fear, or, if I may be so bold, the five hearts we own between us–two Human, three draconic. But fear will not fly a Dragoness and her Rider beyond the Rim-Wall, Tazithiel. Fear will stifle, cast down and destroy. Fear will not win us so much as a footnote in history.”

“You vain parakeet.” Her soft laughter–relieved, marvelling, ringing with nascent hope–ruffled his tea in a tiny echo of the storm-surge she had created in his life. “You want a whole scroll to yourself.”

“I’m offended. An entire library, if you please. For us, to share.”

Her smile seemed to radiate from the fires of her inner being.

After a long silence, he said, “The tea grows cold. Come, let us drink the third libation, o twofold manifestation of one unforgettable soul, after which I must perforce steal your beauty away from dawn’s jealous gaze. I’ve something to show you this morning, unrelated to the natural glories of our Island-World. Something important.”

Chapter 10: Kings and Queens

FIFTEEN DEADLY TRAPS, four complex doors boasting multiple locks and tricks of their own, designed by a master locksmith with intimate knowledge of the inner workings of such mechanisms–to wit, one Kallion–two thousand steps and the better part of an hour later, Kal paused before a set of double jalkwood doors, ten times his height and thirty feet wide. His secret lay within touching distance. Probably, her Dragoness-senses could already smell what lay ahead.

Tazithiel, blindfolded but still smiling, squeezed his arm. “Have we arrived?”

“We have. Did you know the tea ceremony is traditionally performed by a Jeradian consort for her intended?”

Did she know that the prospect of taking an Indigo Dragoness beyond those doors shrivelled his living pith with terror? The phenomenon of Dragon-lust for gold and precious items of all kinds was well documented. This was the pinnacle of his life’s work, a realm no other living person, to his best knowledge, had ever set foot within.

“Your breathing and heart-rate have accelerated, Kal. Why’s that? Are you thinking about consorting with me?”

“Unlike the insouciantly polygamous, vow-shirking Jeradians,” Kal replied, with a snort meant to convey that he had been the diametric opposite of those savages for at least the last two weeks of his life, “would I have thee to consort, I would choose and be beholden to thee alone, for all the days I am given beneath the twin suns. I am a traditional man, Tazithiel. I would have vows with thee, or nought.”

“Traditional?” Evidently, his lapse into old-fashioned Northern-Isles wedding language amused her greatly. “You aren’t a traditional Fra’aniorian bride-kidnapper?”

With piratical mien, he growled, “Tremble, o maiden most fair, for this blindfold is but the beginning of my nefarious plans for thee!”

Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle gasps of laughter. “Oh, Kal!”

“Binding a Dragoness being a pursuit about as fruitful as farming on Fra’anior’s caldera floor,” he pontificated, “I must therefore resort to subterfuge.”

“In which case, I accept your proposal.”

“Ah …” Kal spluttered, losing his line of thought. “What?”

“To marry you.”

The noise that emerged from his throat was a cross between the squeal of a cane-rat trapped beneath a rajal’s claws, and a blocked drainpipe emptying.

Tazithiel began to laugh, but Kal thought he detected an underlying edge of disappointment. She chortled, “Kal, I can almost hear the blood deserting your face!”

“It’s not like that.”

But his intended piratical kiss of Tazithiel turned into a softer and altogether more apologetic affair, before he whisked the cloth away. She blinked. Blinked again. Her gaze travelled the height and width of the doors, taking in the exquisite, charred and Dragon-claw-carved frescoes that covered the towering jalkwood panels from floor to ceiling. He held up a lantern.

“Kal?”

Despite all her power and magic, Tazithiel trembled.

He pressed the doors; they swung silently open on massive ball joints Kal had restored with his own labour. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

A four-hundred-foot gallery opened before them, lit from above by chandeliers of living crystal, the walls lined to a height of thirty feet with rare and priceless artworks from around the Island-World. The temperature was always perfect in these caves, never too dry, never too humid. Kal had no idea how old many of the paintings were, but he had worked zealously to extend the collection. As if trapped in a dream, the barefoot Indigo Dragoness drifted down the centre of the gallery toward the glow emanating from a much larger cavern beyond. Kal followed, hands clasped behind his back to keep them from shaking. Here it came. The moment of truth.

Tazithiel stepped out upon a balcony above his treasure chamber, a vaulting, perfectly circular cavern Kal had measured at eight hundred and ten feet in diameter. The majority was covered in golden hills and valleys. Coin slopes. Pyramids of treasure chests. Weapons and armour, trinkets and baubles. Priceless tapestries hung from a wide balcony that completely encircled the cave. Numerous further galleries and chambers opened off the main cavern. All was lit by crystal light streaming from above.

“The ruby room.” Kal pointed to a reddish glow nearby. “Emeralds through that door. Diamonds. Different shades of garnet and tourmaline jewels. A lore-library, which alone occupies fifteen smaller caverns and tunnels. That room holds over a thousand crowns, coronets and tiaras, all labelled in runic script. Quite the collection.”

The Dragoness’ knees crumpled.

He caught her arm reflexively. “Easy!”

She wheezed, “Kal … the magic in here … I don’t understand. It’s singing to me.”

That was not at all the reaction he had expected. Swiftly, Kal scooped Tazi up, and strode into the tunnel leading to his bedchamber.

She murmured against his chest, “Oh Kal, this … you never told me, you dirty old liar. How dare you! This treasure–it’s a Dragon hoard beyond imagination!”

“I know,” said Kal, modestly.

“Where did you … how did you acquire all this wealth?”

“Told you, I’m a procurement specialist and you, o sentient jewel, are undoubtedly my finest acquisition.”

Her voice rose an octave as they entered the bedchamber. “Acquisition? Where exactly do you intend to deposit your acquisition amidst this ridiculous fortune?” Kal tilted an eyebrow at the oversized, silk-bedecked royal bed. “Oh–don’t answer that question. Oh Kal, this is a-a-a …”

“A Dragoness’ chamber. Her roost.”

“No. No … oh, Kal …”

He was rather enjoying the way she kept gasping ‘oh Kal’. It had firmly put him in the mood for mussing the bedcovers with a draconically delectable damsel, when Tazithiel tore free from his arms and whirled. Kal reflexively ducked a Dragon-swift slap.

She snapped, “Will you stand still?”

“What in the name of–what’ve I done?”

You deserve a slap from my Dragoness!

He was about to protest when the volatile Shapeshifter seized him by the hand. “Look, this bowl is where she used to sleep. And see here, Kal, a diamond-encrusted geode for sharpening her talons. She used to scratch her scales here, on this column. Do I smell a lava bath?”

The slap? Apparently forgotten. Now she flitted about the chamber like an excitable dragonet eager to show off her aerial dancing skills.

Kal pointed. “Through that archway. Complete with an icy waterfall and a secondary bath with warm running water. All Dragon-sized. Oof!”

Her power biffed him in the stomach and hurled him through the air to a crash-landing on the bed he had been eyeing wistfully just a moment before. Her face was dark, as though thunderheads of draconic Storm powers swelled within her.

Tazithiel stalked him, shouting and spitting sparks, “You stole this from the Dragons? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

Not a clue–well, apart from the general redistribution of Dragon gold to his hoard, which the clawed, toothy kind tended to view in a dim light. She had no right to be so riled, in Kal’s bewildered opinion. Power crackled off her body as the Shapeshifter Dragoness raged across the chamber, her hair writhing like a nest of angry serpents, sharp jolts of lightning leaping from her exposed skin to scorch the floor, walls and bed-hangings. Kal thought he saw the image of her Dragon moving with her, flickering in and out at the edge of reality as if she struggled to deny the Indigo Dragoness egress. Finally, Tazithiel stopped and pointed dramatically at the bed.

You!

Her scream knocked Kal, half-upright, flat on his back. Light blasted from her body. With that, her dress turned into carbonised dust as if it had been run through a Dragonship’s engines and ejected from the exhaust. Tazithiel glanced down at herself, and then at Kal. Dignity? What dignity? He arranged his face into an expression which he hoped resembled injured nobility.

Roaring rajals, was she not magnificent?

“Well, that’s convenient–for you,” said Human-Tazi, leaping smoothly atop Kal. She sat on his stomach. Hard. He rather hoped now was not the moment her Dragoness would choose to make an appearance. That would squeeze Kal out like spicy Jeradian pancake batter beneath a rolling-pin.

“Now, dear Kal. Will you explain your profession one more time?”

Kal tried to meet her gaze, but his eyes seemed weighted down rather severely. “I don’t understand. What’s so special about this Dragon hoard?”

“You don’t know who this hoard belonged to?” she cooed, playing with his collar in a manner that minded him how quickly her talons could rearrange his windpipe, if desired.

“I didn’t exactly steal an Island and float it down south complete with gold, Dragon baths and hot running water courtesy of Dragon technology,” Kal huffed. “Perhaps we can dispense with the localised electrical storms and swap some actual information to help this poor, diverted soul heave his mind out of the proverbial Sylakian sewer?”

“You filthy crook,” she grinned, twitching her torso from side to side. “No monk, eh? You certainly aren’t!”

Kal grinned back. “Aye.”

“You unscrupulous, pilfering, snake-tongued old fraud!”

He stretched lazily. “Ah, scurrilous compliments.”

“You’re not some common, out-of-the-barrel thief, are you? You’re absolutely prolific.”

“All the women say that on my pillow-roll.”

Abruptly, Tazithiel’s hair closed like a curtain over her body. Windroc droppings! He had been enjoying the view.

She growled, “All the women? All?”

Kal saw that Dragoness wavering behind Tazi’s shoulder again. Scowling, apparently aware of their interaction. No better way to ensure his best behaviour, he thought sourly. He groused, “Explain yourself in words of one syllable so that even a stupid Human can understand.”

Tazi bit her lip. “Ouch. I guess I deserved that.”

Folding her arms, she shifted to the side of the bed, turning her back to him. He wanted to speak, to apologise, but the words stuck in his throat.

“Kal, did you not read the lettering above the doorway of this chamber?”

“It’s written in Ancient Dragonish code-runes,” he said, supplying the Dragonish word where no Island Standard equivalent existed. “How do you expect me to read that?”

She replied, This chamber belonged to Istariela, the Star Dragoness. This is the fabled Star-Hoard, Kal, the one place Istariela was famously able to hide from Fra’anior’s wrath when she tarried to serve the Lesser Dragons, rather than travelling with the Ancient Dragons to the star-beyond when they abandoned our Island-World. Legend states that Istariela betrayed Fra’anior, although no-one has ever worked out how or why. This is a secret … I can’t describe its greatness or importance, Kal, and you just … you just live here as if you’re a fatuous little boy playing with his shiny toys! Three thousand drals? No wonder you spit upon such a pittance.

I care for the place, he choked out. I’ve never betrayed this secret to anyone.

Except me.

Oh, and what was that you said about trust?

They traded verbal punches. Kal hated it. A pox on this treasure! Why had he let gold come between them? The Dragoness wavered, there in the aether, and then snapped into existence with a soft whomp of displaced air. Tazithiel hulked over him, menace writ in the tension of every muscle fibre and the shifting of her tonnage upon her paws.

She snarled, “So you invite a Dragoness into your hoard, Kal? Do you know what I could do to you? Maybe I’ll just take it all!”

“Freaking feral Dragoness!” he shouted, throwing his hurt into her face. “I trusted you. I trusted … go roast your gigantic, gluttonous rump in that lava pool for all I care!”

To his shock, she did.

* * * *

While bathing, Kal glanced in a mirror and chuckled at his poor, mistreated beard, which resembled a mange-ridden sheep’s pelt after Tazithiel had flame-trimmed it. He decided to go clean-shaven for the first time in many a year. He dressed in soft rajal-leather trousers of the finest tailoring, tooled leather boots and a loose cotton shirt in the Fra’aniorian style. Over this, he drew on a king’s cloak, a favourite crown from his collection and the jewelled chest-piece of a Western Isles chieftain. A touch of Roymerian nard, by the sackweight worth a merchant’s living wage for a year, completed his preparations.

By the gentle lapping of molten rock, he deduced the Indigo Dragoness was still bathing. Good. He walked down to his clothing rooms, home to the wardrobes of many a princess or queen, thinking to select a dress for Tazithiel. He debated–what would she find attractive? Not a Fra’aniorian bridal gown, oh no. He developed breathing difficulties at the thought. It must draw attention to her eyes and hair, of course. Ah yes, a maiden’s presentation-gown from Franxx.

Her eyebrows would twitch at this one, surely.

Selecting a bottle of the finest vintage Fra’aniorian berry wine from his extensive cellar, Kal returned via his jewellery-grotto. What item of magnificent gem-art could he bestow upon the Shapeshifter, which would not be instantly outshone? He began to scratch his now-absent beard. Hmm. There was a habit in need of breaking.

Perfect! Kal chuckled in delight. Simple. Unusual–unique, even. A family heirloom he had caused to be misplaced in Immadia many, many moons ago.

Whistling a jaunty tune, he returned to the bedchamber.

Ambushed!

When his heart had been restored to its proper place in his chest, and Human-Tazi had finished smothering his mouth, chin and cheeks in kisses–being unequivocally delighted with the new, smoother Kal–she stepped back.

“Presents for me, King Kal? You’re too kind.”

“You shall be my Queen,” said he, pulling out a showstopper of a complete Fra’aniorian bow, which took three full minutes and fair dint of exercise to complete. “First, we must gild the finest flower of Mejia.”

Tazithiel turned the garment over in her hands. “Er, which is the side which is mostly missing–the back or the front?”

“Oh for the silver tongue of a bard when I need one.” Kal’s droll expression ignited a flood of rose in her cheeks. “I couldn’t guarantee your safety either way. That’s right, now try the mirror. It’s big enough for your Dragoness.” She turned and twirled, showing him the daringly backless design. “Breathtaking,” he approved, triggering a few stray sparks that leaped from the small of her back to his possessive hand. “Now, I’ve a special gift for you. Close your eyes. Hold out your hand.”

“What is it?” she asked, turning the item over in her fingers. “A scale–Kal, are you having me on?”

“You may open your eyes.”

“It’s a White Dragoness’ scale,” he explained, watching her reaction closely, the better to enjoy her delight. “I’m told it once belonged to a Star Dragoness–”

With a shriek, Tazithiel dropped the hand-sized scale and attached necklace at her feet as though she had palmed a cobra. She stared at the gift in horror, her hands shaking violently. “Kal, I saw … I saw–how could you do this to me?”

“Uh–”

“I can’t wear it! Oh, you foolish, foolish man! Oh, great Islands, Kal …” Tazi’s hands covered her mouth, her eyes above them, wide with raw horror. “That’s the three thousand. Right there, that’s the price on your head.”

“What? Impossible, Tazi. It’s a Dragoness’ scale, no more, no less.”

“Where did you get it, Kal? Another fortuitous find? You were just strolling about a remote corner of the Island-World when a bit of treasure fell miraculously into your pocket?”

For the first time in his life, Kal considered his profession, and felt dirty.

“It was a dare,” he explained, unwillingly. He crouched to pick up the scale and its simple golden necklace, sized for a slender female neck. “A down payment on my Thieves’ Guild membership at Erigar Island. I so desperately wanted to be accepted in their world, Tazi. I was a boy of fourteen summers. I had no idea what I was doing. They convinced me I needed something big; I knew the tales about the riches of the Dragon-Queen of Immadia. So I went and stole something of hers. It wasn’t heroic or daring or even terribly difficult, just a distinctive piece which I found lying openly on her dresser. I’d heard a ballad tell of its existence. The scale of a Star Dragoness.”

More gently, Tazithiel said, “That scale would be the prize possession of Aranya of Immadia, Kal, she who is arguably the most powerful Dragoness who ever lived. She has moved Islands to find it again. Whole Islands–you’ve no idea how badly she wants it back.”

Her gaze was level. No levity. No threat. Yet Kal felt cornered. His world had closed in; suddenly actions had consequences, and upon the vines of his choices, strange and troubling fruit had begun to sprout. He wanted to say this was Tazithiel’s fault, but the Kal of any smidgen of honesty knew better. Privately, he tossed honour, truth and the justice his past deeds deserved, into the nearest volcano. Was he not Kal, the walls of whose world were made to be scaled, fortresses infiltrated and maidens … he glanced guiltily at Tazithiel. Robbed! He’d always considered a conscience to be akin to fungus, germinating in weakness and nasty at the edges. Herein lay an entirely novel peril, but it was the endpoint of a thread Kal recognised, belatedly, had come to be woven within the tapestry of his life over the last decade or so. Bah.

“At risk of being accused of swearing at you again,” Tazi added, “I’d urge you to consider returning the scale to its rightful owner.”

He grunted, “I’ll think about it.”

“There are few things I’d beg of you, Kal.”

The fragility inherent in her statement rattled him. She meant for both their sakes, he realised. Should a Dragon be caught shielding this secret, it would fly with the grace of a lead-filled Dragonship. But how would anyone ever know, or work out, who had possession of some special Dragon’s scale? And how could a single scale be so ruddy important?

His fingers curled around the metallic scrap. Kal pocketed it.

* * * *

That day, they were King and Queen together.

Kal and Tazi explored Istariela’s hoard. Thoughts of the Star Dragoness’ sad fate at her beloved’s claw gave way to merriment as they sampled his collection of the finest wines and brandies money could buy–or not–sourced from the private vaults of those Kal loudly disparaged as ‘popinjays, fools and warts upon an Island’s backside’. They competed to see who could dress in the most foppish costumes, the most opulent silks, velveteen and Fra’aniorian lace; they tried on crowns and diadems, rolled down slopes of gold drals and rooted about in random treasure chests, hooting and exclaiming over their discoveries, and retired at intervals to play with the bed hangings and waggling sceptres and suchlike.

Her laughter was Dragonwine to his soul. A small part of Kal did wonder why the Dragoness’ revelry appeared quite so frenzied, but this day was about casting their cares aside. Assaulting uncrossable mountains could wait. Sampling another vintage? Much more appealing.

Having slept a slumber of excess and decadence, Kal stirred with great care come morning, and heard a peculiar vibration in his lair–a deep, heavy purring sound. He rubbed his temples, unable to decide whether this was his hangover or the Island about to fall upon his head, and stumbled off to make his ablutions. On second thoughts, that icy waterfall in the Star Dragoness’ bath chamber was just the rajal’s shirt. The water would pound cold reality into his pebble-stuffed cranium. Wash these mawkish morals down the nearest drain. He should make plans with this Dragoness. See the world’s treasures from close up. Mmm.

Kal emerged from the waterfall. Louder. That dratted humming; it set his teeth on edge. The whole cavern complex vibrated as indignantly as a beehive kicked down a hill.

Rescuing his trousers from a place of abandonment upon a bedpost, Kal dressed and set off to investigate, which took him all of a few seconds. Tazithiel? In all her draconic finery, his sweet Dragoness lolled upon the gold in the central chamber, humming to herself. The chamber hummed back, only at a considerably greater volume and discernible menace. Well. A most fetching image of their first meeting popped into Kal’s mind–only, he did not fancy the glint in her Dragon’s eye. Nor the tenor of the chamber’s response.

“Finest of the morning to you, o noble Indigo Dragoness!” he sang out, setting his foot upon the steps descending to the treasure-floor.

With an ugly growl, Tazithiel slipped through the gold like a terrace-lake trout sporting in churning water–surely, a feat of physical impossibility, yet she dove beneath the surface, rippling toward him, before breaching in a shower of coins, baskets and bullion-bars. Kal staggered as a suit of golden armour bounced off his shoulder.

Get away from my treasure, little Human!

Kal stared. Green flame in her eyes? No hint of recognition–was she feral? Tazithiel?

Out, you miniscule pest! Mine!

Her muzzle swung about, not the blindingly quick snap of Dragon reactions, but hellishly fast anyways. Kal twisted and leaped in one fluid motion, avoiding her sweeping burst of flame at the expense of a scorched shoulder. He ducked behind a twenty-foot golden statue.

What by Fra’anior’s roots is wrong with you, you gigantic smoking lizard? Kal shouted. Stop it!

Her paw curled about the statue. Tazi stalked him, spreading her wing on one flank to cut off his escape, and her paw on the other. You despoiled me.

You were a willing part–yie! Kal sprang aside and managed to ride a jewelled breastplate twenty feet down into a golden dell amidst the treasure. The Indigo Dragoness slithered after, her eye-fires blazing an unholy, unnerving shade of green. And enthusiastic! Taaaazzzzzziiiii …

Wailing was no help. Running for his life–eminently more advisable. Kal kicked showers of golden drals into the Dragoness’ maw as he zigzagged up a slope, pumping his arms, before diving down the other side with the poise of a swooping falcon. He would outrun this Dragoness if it was the last …

His belt snagged on a three-quarters-buried Dragon lance.

“Help!”

The Dragoness snaffled him up with the dexterity of a cutpurse relieving a merchant’s belt of its load. She snarled, Help is far, far away, you wriggling louse. Now I will–

As she spoke, the Dragoness’ lungs filled with an inrushing of wind. Kal dangled from her paw rather more like a bedraggled rat than he cared to admit. With a massive grinding sound, the wall opposite cracked open. Even Kal sensed the cave’s magic now, rapidly escalating from sweet harmonies to a storm-dangerous shriek. Tazithiel, maddened beyond reason, did not appear to sense the changes in their environment.

Her fire jetted forth.

White fire, burning through his pocket faster than the eye could follow, smashed into the space between Kal and the Indigo Dragoness. He clutched his hip instinctively. Saw a light blaze so brightly, it highlighted every bone in his hand.

KAAARRAAAABOOOOM!

Kal and his superheated girlfriend parted ways with a devastating explosion–Kal to smash against a pile of gold plates, Tazithiel to be ejected from the chamber through the unfeasibly small crack in the wall opposite. What–the air had undulated around her and … he groaned, shifting his battered body. Nothing broken, maybe. Ding! A golden platter chimed cheerfully as it bounced off his skull.

Now that was magic! Dazed, Kal’s gaze dropped to his smoking vitals. Oh, freaking fireballs! He treated the material of his trousers to a frantic flurry of slaps, putting out a small blaze. There was charred, oozing skin, but oddly, he felt no pain.

Tazi? Through the four-foot gap in the chamber wall, he saw the Dragoness cartwheeling away through the sky in a flurry of limbs and wings, out of his line of sight.

“Tazithiel–no!”

Chapter 11: The Island-Desert

KAL LIMPED UP to the surface and over to Mistress Chema’agion’s triangular log cabin to request treatment. She was a short woman but as broad in the beam as a Dragonship, and more direct than a quarrel. Called ‘Chemi’ for short, she hailed from Seg, northwest of Sylakia Island.

She greeted him at the door with a scowl and a sniff of disdain for his condition, given her extensive experience with Kal’s wounds in times past. “Here comes trouble. What you want, boy?”

“Mistress Chemi.” Kal bowed deeply. “How’s your family? Your husband? Your–”

“Yardi! Clear the dining-room table!” she yelled in a voice like a Sylakian Captain of the Hammers. “Got us a patient.”

Chemi had four teenage daughters and one son, and a husband who was famously spear-thin. They made a most unusual couple–her husband Taggion was a gangly Northerner, as pale as parchment, while Chemi was as round and brown as a nut. Kal had known them since their oldest was swaddled as a babe.

Kal eyed the horizon once more before ducking inside to a chorus of giggles. Tazithiel, thank the heavens and all five moons, was still making angry circuits of the Island-Cluster, hopefully working off a severe case of Dragon greed and her deep contrition at having injured her cherished Rider’s sceptre and adjacent parts. Or was it the scale which had burned him, while somehow protecting him from the Dragoness’ fire?

Yardi, at fourteen the third in line and boldest of her sisters, greeted him sweetly, “Islands’ greetings, Kal.” This with such a fluttering of eyelashes, Kal wondered that they did not snap off. “Mom, do we need to remove his trousers for treatment?”

“Get on that table, boy!” Chemi’s brown eyes flashed at her daughters. She bawled, “You girls got chores, or what?”

Kal rather suspected their chores would centre on the kitchen. Perhaps he ought to have worn a shirt. Then again, he was so sore, the added attention was surely no hardship.

Chemi growled, “You jump in a campfire, boy? What you done to your manlies?” The giggling! Chemi yelled at her daughters again; four brunette heads vanished behind a doorpost, but Kal could hear them tittering away back there. “Lie down. Don’t want none of your complaining. Always turning up at my door like a dirty brass dral with some hole or other in your hide. You bleeding clumsy for a grown man. Ha’aruka! Boy, where you gone hiding? Get me a bucket of fresh water–snippety-quick!”

“Yes, Mom.”

The door banged. Silence. Kal hissed as Chemi touched the blistered skin on his shoulder. “No charcoal in here. No cloth, neither. What kind of burn you got, boy?”

“Dragon fire,” said Kal.

At the same time, Ha’aruka came sprinting back inside, pallid and trembling. “Mom, there’s a-a-a …”

“Speak up! For a boy of fifteen summers you gone lost your tongue?”

Tazithiel strolled through the open doorway. Not Dragon-Tazi, but her Shifted form. She wore not a stitch of clothing. Kal reddened. Ha’aruka looked as though he had swallowed a bonfire. Dragonesses! Roaring rajals, did they have to flaunt themselves?

Then again, her flaunt-ability, if that was a word, was completely off the scale.

Without missing a beat, Mistress Chemi flipped a cloth over her son’s head and thrust him out of the room. The boy vented a low groan of frustration. Kal sympathised, oh aye! Meantime, the Mistress drew herself up to her full height, which was not saying a great deal, but her expression said far more. Kal beamed. Right, this should be fun, Mistress Chemi giving a Shapeshifter Dragoness the full brunt of one of her infamous broadsides.

Chemi scooted out a chair. “You with this worthless reprobate, great lady?”

Great lady? Kal almost choked in outrage.

Tazithiel seated herself as if this were the most perfectly natural behaviour in the world. From behind the doorway, he heard someone sigh, “Did summer just sit down in our kitchen?” and another, shyer voice, “She’s so beautiful.”

Wretched exhibitionist!

“He can be rather trying,” said Tazi, with a twinkle of her eye meant for Kal and his hyrax-bemused-by-a-cobra grin.

“You far too good for him, girl. Sweet young petal like you, it’s beyond my powers of reason what you see in that washed-up old geezer.”

Kal had begun to gasp in protest when the nude menace opposite somehow sabotaged his air supply with her Kinetic power, turning the word into a pained wheeze. “Geeeeee …” he whistled. He resorted to hand-signals to express his infuriation.

“Speechless, I see?” Chemi snorted. “Fine quality in a man, says I. Just you treat this woman princess-like, Kal, or I swear … I’ll have none of your cavorting and frolicking about like you done with those other poor petals–girls! Close your ears!” Kal hissed as she applied salve to his shoulder. “You been teaching my girls nothing good about men, you disgraceful lout. Ha’aruka, get your head back in that room this instant!”

“I’m reformed, I swear!”

Chemi smiled sweetly. “He reforms them two at a time.”

“Two?” Kal found his volume.

“Maybe I’m exaggerating a touch. Sure seems like it, though.”

“I’ve my methods for keeping him in line,” Tazithiel smiled, acting so innocent, Kal could gladly have throttled her. He wanted to yell something about Dragon fire, claws, talons, underhanded magical jurisdiction over his trousers, and …

“You two staying for dinner? Of course you are,” said Mistress Chemi, neatly slamming the door on any protest. “Great lady, you borrow yourself a dress. Mind you, I’m not putting my salve anywhere near his manlies. Might catch myself something ghastly.”

Tazi drawled, “I’m sure it won’t inconvenience me.”

“Here.” Chemi tossed the pot of salve to Tazi, who caught it deftly. “You won’t need much. Not for his manlies, anyways.” Howls of mirth erupted from the next room.

“Evidently not,” smirked the Dragoness.

Kal shouted, “Great Islands! Is there no justice in this world?”

* * * *

“Is my little Kally-wally comfortable?”

He was not, but Kal was not about to dignify Tazithiel’s barbs with a response.

Kal stared at the ninety-foot breadth of her wings, cupping and shifting huge volumes of air. He rode Dragonback as had many famous Riders before him, only their purpose was noble and their cause just–at least, those who followed the values of Hualiama, long-ago Princess of Fra’anior. She had established the Dragon Rider Academies to train peacekeepers and law-givers. Peacekeeping was a foolish notion. Land oneself slap in the middle of every manner of conflict? Unhealthy, unwise and naïve. Further, many Dragon Riders were as crooked as the infamous broken-trees of Ur-Naphtha Cluster in the West. Noble? Well, Tazithiel was nobleness incarnate, and that was one aspect of the gulf between their natures.

She said, “And his eensy-weensy manlies?”

“Hurting like a freaking–” Kal skipped a swear word. What was the point in moral superiority if he still thought the word? “Just hurting.”

“I’m sorry I burned you,” said Dragoness-Tazi. He was not convinced by her fiery contrition. “More herbs?”

“Kallion of the kingly sceptre has downed enough herbs to turn some of these Islands green,” he replied, gesturing at the tan barrenness far below. “How does anything live out here, Tazi?”

“Life is more tenacious than you might suppose.”

He wondered if she was talking about her experiences. “Let’s try not to tangle with any drakes, alright? I’m feeling sensitive.”

Tazithiel guffawed, “The best part was when Mistress Chemi started describing in detail how to apply the ointment, Kal. You could’ve carved holes through Islands with your expression!”

“Bah. Self-restraint. Who ever invented such a ralti-stupid idea?”

Chortling away with a volley of flame-hiccoughs, the Dragoness said, “Your favourite monks, no doubt. Kal, you can feel sensitive for a few days yet. We’re less than a day from your hoard and I, for one, appreciate how difficult it is to leave all that avarice behind.”

Tazithiel had acted subdued since her display of draconic lust which had come within inches of turning one purportedly rehabilitated thief into a Dragon’s breakfast. They discussed the protections Istariela must have placed upon her hoard, but reached no conclusions. Tazi knew of no Dragon magic which could thread a Dragoness of her size through the proverbial hole in the needle, nor one which responded to draconic avarice.

“Greed is the face of ugliness,” he said. “I should know.”

She winced palpably.

He worried about what they flew toward. His hoard had been one matter. Another, quite different concern lay ahead at Yin’toria Island. He should drop by. In his line of business, it paid to keep the staff hopping. Aye. A devious smile played about his lips. A Dragoness might provide just the medicine they needed, if she did not slay him first. Hopefully, her many-clawed tyrannical majesty would major on the playing and pay less attention to the slaying.

She said, “Most of the drakes prefer the western periphery of the Island-Desert anyways. In this season, we should find a few other Dragon Riders strutting about, notching up kills. Hopefully friendly. No way under the suns the search could have spread this far, this quickly.”

“I prefer to leave hunt-and-kill operations to those patently designed from the ground up for such pursuits,” Kal replied. Now optimism? In his view, pessimism paved the road to a long life.

“So, my dear sweetmeat formerly called Kal, am I to understand you subscribe to the theory that the Lesser Dragons were designed by Fra’anior and his ilk?”

“You’re a Shapeshifter,” he said, alert to the threat implied in her words. “That’s different.”

“Hmm?” She blew a smoke ring over him.

“Your impeccably sinuous draconic physique is an ode so sweet–” Kal coughed unhappily as the happy little smoke-rings turned into acrid billows. “Smoking out this hard-working artist while he’s composing poetic praises to the glories of your every scale is hardly an appropriate expression of gratitude, Tazithiel. Consider yourself told off.”

“Methinks he avoideth the question.”

“Methinks mine masculine mystery must mercifully remain mute.”

Thus they passed the hours of flight in banter and companionable silences, as the tireless wingbeat of an Indigo Dragoness propelled them ever westward, day by day, across the breadth of an Island-Desert matched in size only by the Cloudlands oceans themselves. Still, Kal would have preferred to imagine that life thrived beneath that toxic cloud-layer and not all was a pernicious wasteland. In the above-cloud world, the stultifying heat was barely relieved by the cooling effect of Dragon flight. No water. No terrace lakes, which ringed many Islands further north. There was no relieving greenery, only the cloudless, baking days and suffocating nights, and countless tan and brown Islands scattered across equally tan Cloudlands. The wind-borne dust swept off the Islands created setting suns so huge and ethereal, the twin orbs rivalled the Yellow moon for size.

The sense of desolation multiplied the deeper Dragon and Rider penetrated the trackless wilderness of the South. Kal could imagine the conflict which must have taken place here; battles which had toppled Islands upon each other or split them asunder. Some areas were merely piles of rock sticking a few hundred feet above the restless Cloudlands, as if the corrosive clouds sought to drag the shattered remnants to their final doom. In other regions he saw vaulting, undercut rock formations carved and smoothed as though eroded by long-desiccated rivers, through which strange and fey winds blew, making Tazithiel as skittish as a kitten playing on hot flagstones. Already tan of skin, Kal shucked his shirt and grew as bronzed as the statues in one of his display chambers.

In the evenings, they made camp in a hollow or nook sheltered from the incessant wind. More often than not, the Shapeshifter transformed into her Human form. Perhaps she guessed at Kal’s wariness of her Dragon-manifestation, he thought. Freaky how she could just appear out of thin air. What a refined filcher wouldn’t give for that power!

One such evening, ten days after they had left Kal’s lair, Tazi impishly curled her fingers around his biceps, carving his skin with pretend-talons. “Mmm, I could snack on this.”

“Given recent experience, I’m not entirely partial to becoming your snack. Watch out!”

She glanced casually at a deadly copper cobra, spitted perfectly through the skull by Kal’s throwing-knife. “Fine strike, Rider Kal.”

“Fresh snake for dinner? I’ll collect the wood.”

“You’re injured.” Tazi pursed her lips as she regarded Kal’s new, rather less charred trousers. “We need to safeguard the royal sceptre.”

“Well!” Kal hitched his fingers in his belt while puffing out his chest. “Just wait until I deploy the royal sceptre on you, Tazi. I’ll make you–”

“Only when it stops … oozing.”

“Tazithiel!” Kal turned purple, white–he did not know. “You’re disgusting! I’d appreciate a touch of sympathy from she who … oh. Welcome to my embrace, thou comeliest of Isles maidens.”

Pressing the supple length of her body against his and gazing upward through her eyelashes, the Shapeshifter murmured, “I’m most indescribably remorseful about the suppurating, pustulent, unsightly burns covering your epic manly parts, dearest Kal. If I could, I’d wave my fingers and–”

Epic? Ignoring the superfluous verbiage, she was a heavenly being descended to the Isles! And if she was teasing, he’d slap her down to the status of a bottom-feeding carp.

Quickly, he said, “Kiss it all better?”

“In your nasty dreams, you depraved troublemaker. No, I was just wondering … no.”

Kal searched her eyes, dizzied by the marvellous fate which bound him to this incomparable woman. Surely, he dreamed. Surely, she could not desire the likes of … him?

A smile curved Tazithiel’s lips. “I saw fresh rockfall today.”

“Huh?” He managed a highly intelligent bleat.

“Tomorrow, we’re going Anubam-hunting. You need to see a burrowing Dragon, Kal. It’s a unique experience in this Island-World.”

“What does that have to do with a perfect volcanic suns-set over Fra’anior, which fires the skies forge-red, and bathes the world in beams of ruddy light so thick a man should wish to stroke them?”

She produced a pout of quivering magnificence. “Hunting? Tomorrow?”

“As you wish, o monumental sky-princess.”

“Kal, my Human form prefers rather less of the superlative size comparisons.” Kal set about kissing her pout back into the shape of a smile. “Ooh, stop … you pirate … no, I was thinking … or not thinking, you wretchedly … metagrobolising man …”

Aye, may she gasp! Kal admired his handiwork. He really was a great kisser.

“You! I’ll smack that little-boy smirk right off your face,” she huffed. Her cheeks flamed; heat radiated from her body. “You just filched an important thought right out of my–”

“Kinetic powers for healing,” Kal prompted, although he was not sure why.

Her eyes lit up. “Yes. Yes! You’re a mind-reading genius!” Well, this conversation was definitely heading in the right direction. Not only the fulsome compliments, but Kal loved it when Tazi frolicked about in happiness, for with a pinch of luck such behaviour might extend to the pillow-roll. “Although how exactly, escapes me. This isn’t the first time either.”

“You still aren’t making sense, woman.”

“Oh, I am.” Tazi fixed a ravishing smile upon him. “I’m going to think that infection right out of your nether regions.”

Instinctively, Kal covered the suddenly tingling essentials with his hands. “You are not starting some crazy experiment on my … no! Not there!”

“Poor Kal, I can hear your friends snickering already. This gorgeous Shapeshifter enchantress is begging you to drop your trousers and you’re running away in fear?”

“It’s the Island of wisdom!”

* * * *

After a few false starts, Tazithiel succeeded in improving matters below the belt, so to speak. Kal lost his precious dignity and by morning, gained a visible improvement to the burn which stretched from his right hip, three quarters of the way across his abdomen. The White Dragoness’ scale had protected him from a fate most horrific. He noted Tazithiel’s pensive glance when she spotted him storing the trinket in his belt-pouch.

That morning they flew low, hunting Anubam.

Burrowing Dragons. Kal knew a few legends. Tazithiel seemed confident, but she was a seventy-foot flying fortress. The Human on her back was decidedly more squishable. Kal had a healthy respect for anything that could quarry holes the size of what he saw in these Islands.

The Dragoness flitted from Island to Island, hunting for fresh Anubam-sign. She found a newly excavated ten-foot hole in the flank of a vast horizontal column. “Tiny,” she sneered. “No fun here.” Kal eyed the dark tunnel-mouth as they passed by. He was quite certain he saw burning eyes blink shut in the darkness, as if the creature within sensed his gaze. “Miniscule.” The Indigo Dragoness swished by another tunnel marked by a fresh landslide within which Kal spied numerous gemstones. Hmm. What did these Anubam eat, anyways? Could they be drawn out into the open?

Kal rooted though the saddlebags while Tazithiel imitated a dragonfly, darting from tunnel-mouth to tunnel-mouth. “This seems a busy Island,” she muttered. “I wonder where the mother of all Anubam might be?”

An affinity for gemstones had always fizzed in his blood. Kal extracted a fist-sized cluster of horiatite, the signature crystal of Ha’athior Island in his native Fra’anior Cluster, once a sacred Island of the Dragonkind but now inhabited by Humans. According to the Dragon lore the monks had taught him, an Ancient Dragon had once lived in the bowels of Ha’athior, a Dragon befriended by a Human girl. The mind boggled. Tazithiel was intimidating enough. Here, the Ancient Powers had toppled whole Islands and devastated them by the thousand.

If the time of the Ancient Dragons had passed, he wondered, how was it he had spoken to Fra’anior so clearly? What magic was that? For he sensed the Great Black Dragon was alive–somewhere, somehow. Imagine a titan like Fra’anior returning to the Island-World? He must dwarf the Islands.

Heavens above and Islands below, now he was worrying about mythical seven-headed tyrants from a past steeped in the blood and misery of Human slavery? Better to welcome a cataclysm that would swallow the entire Island-World into its fiery maw.

Kal raised the gemstone. Come and get it …

The Indigo Dragoness flinched as though he had pierced her belly with a twenty-foot Dragon lance. Kal–honestly, will you never learn? No Dragon’s stupid enough to be listening.

Bah. Fra’anior had calmed the storm on his request. Apparently. Perfectly true if a certain master battlement-dancer also had an ego as big and menacing as Tazi’s Shapeshifted Dragoness. That said, he had just developed an itching sensation on the nape of his neck, as though said Dragoness were drawing delicate circles on his skin with her daintiest talon. Kal scanned their surrounds. All was quiet. Caves and tunnels raddled the Islands as though they had been afflicted by some strange, wasting disease, and many Islands were merely mounded heaps of rock. Undermined and collapsed? Then where were the miners?

Tazithiel winged down a mile-long sandstone canyon which wriggled between two malformed, slumped-over Islands, just piles of stone fringed with withered brown bushes. Kal wriggled as though he had fire-ants in his trousers, which was a once-experienced, never to be repeated incident in his chequered past. A cunning trap in a vault on Seg Island, as he recalled–Kal’s dancing skills had attracted much ribald comment from the four female guards who turned up to apprehend the trespasser. Kal related the anecdote to the tune of chuckles from his mount.

Tazi inquired–how had he escaped? Kal suffered a coughing-fit.

“Let me guess,” the Dragoness growled, suddenly turning into a fire-stuffed hazard to all intelligent life, or at least to buccaneers with skills in more than lock-picking, “you seduced one of the guards, borrowed her keys and escaped in the dead of night, leaving her heartbroken and destitute and the vault, ransacked?”

Kal muttered, “Not destitute, anyways. I left her a diamond.”

“Oh, a diamond?”

“She was … sweet.”

“Sweet?” Tazithiel launched a fireball down a tunnel to their left. “That’s what you have to say?”

“Look! Something moved over there!”

“Coward,” the Indigo Dragoness snarled over her shoulder. “Don’t think you can avoid my wrath, o Kallion of Shrinking-Lily Island.”

Her heat was the stuff of riled belly-fires. But suddenly, the temperature in the canyon seemed to skyrocket. Tazithiel, unleashing one final fireball down the maw of a huge cavern bitten out of a sharp corner just ahead, stiffened perceptibly. Her wingbeat developed a hitch; their senses attuned as Dragon and Rider searched the menacing, bare rock-faces and yawning tunnel entrances which hemmed them in. Too close. Too restrictive. If it were possible for stillness to grow even stiller, they knew it for a fact. A stillness of oppressive disquiet, the only question not if, but when danger would avalanche over them.

Kal froze. His cry stuck in his craw for an endless moment. “Down, Tazi! Down!”

Chapter 12: Huntress

KINETIC DRAGON-POWER knocked them five Dragon-lengths downward. From their right flank, a sweeping section of stone exploded slowly, almost lazily, from the canyon wall as hundreds of brown, writhing bodies swam through the basal rock, not just creating an avalanche, but spraying Dragon-sized boulders hundreds of feet through the air with the force of their irruption. Razor-sharp pellets sprayed Kal’s side and left leg as he attempted to dodge, but of course found himself strapped in the saddle as he ought to be. Tazithiel performed evasive manoeuvres with a violent corkscrewing motion. Snap! Kal slewed onto her flank, saved by one remaining thigh-strap. The others had been severed by a peppering of dagger-sharp rock fragments.

The Indigo Dragoness unleashed a battle-challenge, dodging boulders at a terrific speed, before throwing up a shield. Brief, incomplete respite. Boulders rained down, battering the Dragoness and numbing Kal’s elbow.

More Anubam burst forth! The burrowing Dragons were brown or tan in colour with stubby legs and vestigial wings, strangely elongated creatures that suggested a blend of Dragon and snake. Rock shattered with sharp reports, while a guttural groaning resounded between the overarching walls, shaking Dragon and Rider bodily. Each Anubam’s roar was a strange series of guttural barks, so low they were almost subliminal, as though each creature possessed the capability to trigger an earthquake by the power of its voice alone.

“Suffering hells!” Kal swore. “Brace, Tazi!”

GRRRRAAAA … BOOM!

The Indigo Dragoness flapped wildly, but the mouth that burst out of the Island-wall ahead of them was three times wider than her wingspan, lined with granite-block teeth. The breath of its throat scorched Kal, even though he was fortunate to be dangling on the far side of his Dragoness. Lightning burst from Tazithiel’s mouth and claw-tips as she executed a desperate swerve to avoid the scooping bite of that orifice. Flap! Flap!

Kal screamed, “Go, Tazi! Away!”

The sky above vanished as a ridged cavern engulfed the foolhardy duo. The Dragoness’ roar turned into a wail as the Anubam’s jaw clamped down on her midsection. Crazy lights played across Kal’s vision. A shield? Was she holding a rock-chewing monster’s mouth open with her Kinetic power?

“Kal … get out!” Tazi groaned.

“I’m not leaving you!”

“Listen, you stubborn–gaaaaaaaaahhh!”

Listen? She spoke to the wrong man. Finding a sword in his hand, Kal slashed through the final thigh-strap. He slid down Tazi’s flank as those table-sized teeth ground against her backbone, yet somehow the Dragoness found the strength to withstand. Kal bounced on the Anubam’s rubbery lip just beyond what he realised was a triple row of the flat, spatulate teeth.

“Out! Jump!”

“I’m not jumping–” Kal reversed his sword “–into a canyon filled with–” he stabbed downward with all his strength “–flying worms!”

Nothing happened. Could he even hurt an animal this size? Yet Kal knew there must be a nerve buried somewhere beneath a lip as thick as a solo Dragonship’s air-sack. Another cry of pain from Tazi decided him. Stab! Hack! Twist and wrench! Kal set to work with the zest of a demented butcher. No beast was taking his girl!

“Accursed spawn of Dramagon!” he shrieked. Enough!

Kal had in his mind a pleasing picture of a seven-headed Ancient Dragon turning this monster into a whopping Dragon-kebab. Unfortunately, that did not transpire. But he struck gold, so to speak–perhaps the very nerve he had wished for. With a shattering roar, the beast spat Tazithiel a thousand yards across the canyon. The row of close-fitting teeth, taller than his shoulder, spared Kal the brunt of the superheated blast, so he had time both to appreciate the fact that his already grizzled hair developed an instant layer of extra frazzle and that his Dragoness struck the far wall so hard, she bounced. Roaring rajals!

Smaller burrowing Dragons, ‘small’ denoting sizes upward of two hundred feet in length, it seemed, lunged out of the wall near Tazi. She batted them away with wild sprays of ice and lightning. Somehow the Indigo Dragoness managed to swim through a veritable terrace lake of lunging teeth, writhing bodies and waterfalls of boulders. Anubam separated from their native rock and fell screaming into the canyon. The Cloudlands would reap a harvest of death this day.

The mouth holding Kal began to grind shut. He did not pause to think. With a despairing cry, the thief enacted his best impression of a windroc as he hurled himself into space.

Sadly, his tribute to windrocs failed, for Kal demonstrated all the flying prowess of a brim-full wineskin. Plummeting, he wailed, Taaaazzziiiiiii!

Oddly, against the rushing canyon walls, the boulders in his vicinity seemed to hover in the air. Were they falling at the same speed? Part of Kal’s mind insisted on debating the physics of this experience while the rest of him was bizarrely preoccupied with wondering how large a splodge of crimson a Human body would make on the rocks far below.

The incoming Dragoness described a blur of rainbow-coloured Dragon scales upon his vision. She outstripped the largest Anubam by a few wing-lengths as she roared down through the debris, carving a path with such speed that a bow-wave of debris preceded her. The monstrous, dun-coloured Anubam thundered after, its squat legs somehow gripping the rock with the ease of a gecko running across a ceiling. Boulders disappeared into a white-hot furnace visible deep in its gaping throat. Great Islands! That was their magic? Boulder-pulverising breath?

Tazi had to summon the mother of all Anubam, didn’t she?

Got you!

With a triumphant bellow, the Indigo Dragoness’ magic snagged his falling body, bouncing Kal heavily off a boulder before plastering him against her belly. The impact knocked the air clean out of his lungs. He did not care. Rough handling? Infinitely better than having his grin rearranged at the bottom of the canyon, wherever that was.

“Hold on!” yelled Tazithiel, swerving so forcefully that blackness washed over Kal’s vision.

Kal rattled about as boulders ricocheted off her flank. The monster Anubam lunged! But her speed was too great, throwing off the great lizard’s attempted interception.

Missed, you great worm! Tazithiel crowed.

The Anubam curled into a ring, unreasonably flexible for such a monster, and hastened their departure with a roasting blast from its throat, melting boulders into slag and superheated vapour before Kal’s startled gaze. Tazi jinked rapidly, weaving a safe course through the boulders and the freakishly large ‘baby’ Anubam which charged out of their caverns and tunnels in a bid to hack off pieces of prey. Hot air punched their bodies cruelly as the massed ranks of Anubam grumbled their fury in low, Island-shaking chorus.

The Indigo Dragoness did not hold back. Ignominiously, Dragon and Rider fled the scene of their defeat.

* * * *

“Nice bruises,” Kal complimented Tazithiel. Her entire abdomen was ringed with one great bruise, while she sported a decent stippling of other contusions on her arms, shoulders and left cheek.

“You’re not so pretty yourself,” she replied.

“Nothing new there.”

“The only change being the degree of ugliness?” she needled.

Kal held up Chemi’s pot of ‘magic ointment’ she had insisted accompany them on their travels. “However, I know exactly how to make you purr.”

Human-Tazi smiled wanly at his joke. “We were pretty stupid today, weren’t we, Kal? Me with firing fireballs into Anubam caves and you with waving that crystal around. Let’s not do that again, shall we?”

“Being alive does rather compensate for a multiplicity of mutual idiocy,” he noted. “Now, what does ‘metagrobolising’ mean?”

“You just can’t stand not knowing, can you?”

“Listen here, I’m threatening to do diabolical things to you with this pot of ointment. Last chance.”

Tazithiel laughed. “Diabolical, Kal? Do your worst!”

They rested from mid-afternoon until dawn the following morning in a shallow cave on an Island apparently not infested by Anubam, although that did not stop Kal from waking at every noise, until the cruel, heartless girl-fiend, returned to her Dragoness-form, placed her paw atop his head and chest to force him into stillness. To his surprise, Kal slept very well after that, and woke up aching in only two dozen places or so.

Tazi woke, and groaned. She stretched her wings gingerly, and groaned louder. She stood, and shook the cavern with a groan of prodigious conception.

“I’m sorry you’re feeling so sore after all your exertions yesterday, Tazithiel,” said Kal, with withering insincerity. “Do you think you’ll be able to fly? Or shall I take over?”

“You’re a great flier, Kal. I loved all the arm-waving and the screaming. Very theatrical.”

“Who pulled his best girl from between a malodorous monster’s teeth, may I ask?”

The Indigo Dragoness pursed her lips. “A kiss for my brave champion.”

Kal, turning away in mock-horror, was more than startled to receive a firm bunt in the backside. “Fie, woman, I’m not kissing your scaly rump in return! Help me mount up. This valiant warrior who rode his Dragoness into battle yesterday has many aches and pains, the least of which–”

“The aches and pains of a man over forty summers in age,” suggested the Dragoness. “Though, you do know about the Dragon Rider effect, don’t you?”

“Might you be referring to my vastly augmented prowess on the pillow-roll? My ears ring with your repeated attestations.”

“No, you buffoon. Not everything in this world relates to that peculiar mushroom inside your trousers. I mean that Dragon Riders live longer lives than ordinary men and women.”

“They do?” Kal scaled her flank with the ease of a man half his–well, with ease. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“So I become more youthful? Is that why you look barely old enough to … uh, hold … um … will you stop doing that thing with your eyes?”

Tazithiel whirled her eye-fires again. “Don’t inflict your dirty fantasies on me, old man. We Dragons call this ‘making moon-eyes.’ ”

“I can’t think when you do that.”

“Evidently.” The Dragoness seemed as pleased as a young woman whose smile had just caused her admirer to walk straight into a doorpost. “No, Dragon Riders age more slowly, it seems. I’ve heard of Riders reaching two hundred summers, although most die younger–in battle.”

Kal sighed. Of course there would be a fly in this particular ointment. Not a large fly, given as he intended to avoid conflict wherever possible–and he was certain he was developing a generalised yet severe allergy to fireballs, champing fangs and flashing talons–but a fly nonetheless. Deftly, he fastened temporary ropes around his upper thighs and waist, securing himself to the Dragon Rider saddle and the spine spike behind him.

“Ready to see some drakes today?” asked Tazithiel.

Bah. Could he not just go rob a nice vault in peace? At least conventional treasure-troves did not bite or try to scramble his brains with hypnotic eye-fires and inarguably alluring eyelashes.

Two days, fifty-eight drake sightings–Kal insisted on keeping count–and two hundred and thirty leagues of flying later, the Indigo Dragoness finally spotted a Dragonwing of Dragon Riders. Kal counted half a dozen pairs silhouetted against a rose-pink dawn sky, besieged by innumerable, smaller flying Dragons. Drakes. He had better not make the mistake of naming them Dragons!

“They’re clearing out a nest of drakes,” Tazithiel hissed. “Shoddily.”

The dynamic of her wingbeat changed. Her belly-fires soughed eagerly. A hotter, more acrid smoke wafted to Kal’s nostrils. The Indigo Dragoness was primed for action. The man aboard, somewhat less so.

“Tazi, can we talk before we go charging in?”

“Talk? Why of course, Kal. Our fellow Dragons and Dragon Riders are being eaten alive. What would you like to talk about? Don’t forget your helmet.”

Kal limbered up his Dragon war-bow. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps his initiation to Dragon-battle was best enacted in a desperate arena where his fellow-Riders were being shredded by shoals of vicious, snapping enemies; receiving the long end of the noose, as thieves might jest. Rather morose, thieves, as a rule fond of fireflower humour suited to wild nights spent mooching in graveyards.

Meantime, Tazithiel accelerated to attack velocity as she swooped down upon a melee which did not become the slightest bit more attractive, the more detail Kal made out. The drakes struck him as the hired thugs of the Dragon world–all intimidating spiked armour, mean underslung jaws and the need to hunt in packs to down a single victim. Nasty customers. They behaved like schools of fish he had seen in terrace lakes, only these thirty-foot snapping monsters were vicious and armed to the teeth, and their fighting strategy appeared to major on eating opponents alive.

The group of Dragon Riders was only six strong, while at least four dozen drakes mobbed them. Why had they allowed themselves to become so outnumbered, he wondered?

“Oh–that Red, I know him!” Tazithiel bugled. “That’s Jalfyrion, from Mejia. Mmm, he’s found himself a female Dragon Rider.”

The powerful rust-red Dragon crushed a drake with his jaws; the two halves waggled either size of his muzzle for a few seconds as he had a good chew before spitting out the remains.

“Charming,” said Kal.

Thundering her battle-challenge, Tazithiel joined the fray with powerful lightning-strikes that slew two drakes on her first pass. Kal had never experienced a fight like this. Upside-down, sideways, jerking and jinking, slipping through the scrimmage with the speed and guile of a Dragoness … firing arrow after arrow to a chorus of encouragement from Tazithiel, screaming in joy as one struck a drake in the eye … laughing in concert with the Dragoness’ cruel battle-joy as she broke a drake’s neck with a snap of her powerful jaws and gasping in awe as she encased a trio of the lethal lizards in ice, sending them to a smashing death on the Island far below.

Green Islands. As they wheeled into clear air, enjoying a momentary breather, Kal had a second or two to consider their surrounds. The landscape had changed dramatically over the last day to verdant Islands broken by deep ravines and caves–perfect hiding and breeding grounds for drakes, Tazi had suggested. An army could hide in this region which comprised over five hundred rugged Islands clustered together in a shape oddly reminiscent of a Dragon’s outstretched wing, seen from high up.

Clutching his bow, Kal attempted to sight his shots despite Tazithiel’s unpredictable flight patterns. She lurched, dropping to crush a drake in her talons, while simultaneously yelling, Kal, fire! Kal could not believe it. Smoothly, as though he had plotted a line with great forethought, his arrow shot fifty yards across open air and plugged to the fletching in a drake’s eye. He could do that? For a few seconds, he seemed to exist in another world. Three arrows. Three kills. Who was this Kal, Dragon Rider, blood hazing over his vision as they swung through the heat of battle? Tazithiel lashed out with her ice and lightning, driving the drakes away from a beleaguered pair of Dragons and their Riders, who quickly regrouped.

Kal blinked. One, two … hold on. Where was Jalfyrion, Tazi’s stocky friend?

There. Two ravines over, he saw drakes dive-bombing what had to be a Dragon, although their quarry was hidden by the terrain.

Tazi! Jalfyrion needs our help!

Jalfyrion! Bellowing wildly, Tazithiel swept over on a burst of her power, overshooting the conflict. She doubled back on a brass dral. The Indigo Dragoness’ body rocked as she smashed half a dozen drakes away with powerful strikes of her tail and claws, while she dealt death with another lightning-strike. Jalfyrion was dangerously near the treeline, the subject of an ugly brawl. He had two drakes dangling off his upper lip, while another blunted its fangs on the armoured torso of his petite Rider. Several more hung off his right wing, dragging him toward a densely forested ravine. Kal slammed a four-foot arrow through a drake’s skull. Nice!

Come here! Pick on someone your size, Kal shouted.

He sensed a ferocious flash of amusement from his Dragoness. Me? Or you?

Kal could not believe his strength. Maybe it was battle-rage. In practice, he had only been able to draw the powerful bow to a three-quarters position. Now he had the string past his ear. Twang! A puff of dust rose from one of the dull red drakes savaging Jalfyrion’s wing-struts. Load. Draw, aim … he and Tazithiel struck the same drake simultaneously.

She bugled, We need to get that one on his back, Kal!

She meant the drake chewing the Rider. Kal’s arrow punched home in its flank but appeared to make little impression. He could not risk a head-shot. Must not.

The female Dragon Rider flopped about beneath the drake’s attack; she stabbed with her sword, albeit weakly. Jisellia! the Red Dragon bugled in distress. He tried to snake his head back to bite the drake, but could not reach. Jisellia! No!

Can’t risk lightning, Tazi panted. Claws?

Kal burst out, Don’t!

What?

You’ll tear that Rider in half. Kal sensed the Indigo Dragoness had intended to land on Jalfyrion’s back to attack the drake, but that would also crash-land the Red in the trees. Throw me.

Tazi hesitated. Kal gave her no choice. Cutting his ropes, he bounded to his feet, took four deft, running steps across his Dragoness’ shoulder and leaped into space.

Kallion! He had never heard Tazi shriek in pure panic. Catch on–stupid!

Kal ran on air. Perfectly. It was like running on crysglass, a hundred feet over to Jalfyrion’s wing. Idiot. He still clutched his bow! To do what–tap the drake’s head, crying, ‘Eat me please?’ At a dead sprint, Kal fired his ready arrow blank into the drake’s flank, just behind his foreleg where he understood the second heart to be. He cast the bow aside and palmed his poisoned daggers, one in each hand.

Dodge! He barely heard Tazi, but he felt the strike of her power that lifted him, corkscrewing through the air, above a drake’s compact but deadly fireball. He had not seen … yet still the monk-trained saboteur in Kal judged the angles and found them acceptable. With a terrible cry, he flared his limbs to untuck from a rapid forward somersault, landing astraddle the drake’s neck. In a seamless concert, Kal reached forward to drive both daggers deep into the drake’s burning red eyes.

Die!

Great Islands, he was actually starting to enjoy this Dragon Rider-warrior lark. Madman.

Greenish-golden blood spurted over his hands, blistering the exposed skin. Kal scrambled for his footing as the drake suddenly slumped sideways, its jaws parting to release the woman, Jisellia. Her green eyes bulged in a purpling face–she had no air! Dying? Gripping a saddle strap one-handed, Kal quickly checked for injuries, finding nothing too serious apart from cuts to her neck and cheek. Astonishing.

He hissed, “What’s the matter?”

She made a wheezing noise.

Wham! The Indigo Dragoness punched the air above them, removing two marauding drakes that shrieked their strange, grating cries at her before she hurled them against a rocky outcropping on the ravine wall. Tazi kicked the drakes in tandem with the exposed talons of her hind paws, shredding their flanks so deeply Kal caught a glimpse of one drake’s spine.

“Hold on!” Jalfyrion howled. His body lurched as the Red launched a huge fireball into the forest–no, something like a fireball, only it detonated on impact, clearing a swathe of trees and brush. He landed heavily in the gap, absorbing the shock with his knees and thighs, but Kal still jerked forward, clashing heads with Jisellia.

With a snarl of indignation, the Red snatched up the last drake dangling off his lip and body-slammed it against the ground, before stepping deliberately on the creature’s neck with his forepaw. Crack. One less drake.

“Jisellia!” Kal slapped her face gently. “Speak to me.”

“… heeee-theee …”

“Roaring–you can’t breathe?”

Her head flopped against his chest. Kal glanced upward, searching for Tazithiel. She was doing a dint of unmentionable quarrying about in the innards of yet another drake, several hundred feet overhead. Pushing Jisellia backward, he found her breastplate had been flattened by the drake’s bite, compressing and perhaps breaking her ribs or sternum. Get her out! He felt for the ties at her sides–windroc droppings, what was this design? Metal hinges and catches rather than traditional leather thongs? The catches were twisted beyond repair. Jisellia made another horrid rattling noise. Slipping …

Ignoring Jalfyrion’s panicked roaring in his ear, Kal unsnapped her saddle harness and swung the tiny woman into his arms. “Catch us, Red.”

A rapid paw-ride later, they were on the ground. Kal scrabbled at the locks; broke a dagger on them. Tazithiel landed and shouldered Jalfyrion aside for a view as Kal bent over the Rider, working feverishly at the suffocating armour.

Tazi! Paw–now! For once, the Dragoness obeyed instantly. Kal guided her grip. When I give the word, squeeze like this. He made a pinching motion with his fingers. Not too hard or you’ll crush her like an eggshell. I’m going to pop it out.

The Red cried, Be strong, Jisellia!

Pressure, Tazi. Placing his hand flat on the Rider’s stomach, Kal forced his arm up beneath her armour. He pressed outward with all his strength. More. The Dragoness bore down.

With a sweet ping, the dent corrected itself and Jisellia heaved, gulping a huge, relieving breath, then another. Kal withdrew his hand. Well, she was sweetly built. He had never handled a woman’s chest for a better reason, he supposed, trying not to feel a traitor to Tazi.

“Here. Let me help you with that.” Kal unbuckled the chin-strap of her helm. Masses of curly brown hair sprang free. He checked her head for injuries, but the cuts he had spied on her cheek appeared to be superficial.

“Wet cloth,” said Tazi, using her power to offer one to Kal.

The Dragoness had already raided their saddlebags, he realised. “Thanks. Your neck’s bleeding quite nicely, girl. Hold still.”

For a long moment the Dragon Rider just lay on her back, her chest rising and falling as a normal colour flooded her cheeks. Beneath the blood and grime of battle she was winsome, he noticed, concentrating on stanching the flow of blood from a deep cut on her neck. She had a definite chin, and an impish nose and green eyes that danced with mischief in the corner of his vision. She was young, maybe Tazi’s apparent age. How long had these two been Dragon and Rider?

He met the Rider’s grateful gaze, just inches separating their faces. “I’m Kal. My Dragoness is called Tazithiel. I think you’re going to be alright.”

“Thank you, Kal, and you, mighty Tazithiel. I’m Jisellia. My beautiful living-flame creature is called Jalfyrion. Your help was timely indeed.”

“It was noth–”

Kal yelped as she kissed him full on the lips!

Chapter 13: Shifty Shifter

THERE WAS NOTHING of the Island-trembling he had experienced with Tazithiel, but Kal was so nonplussed and his hands so preoccupied with pressing the deep cut on her neck closed, that when Jisellia’s hand snaked around to snare him for a kiss, he simply froze. Bad idea. Very bad. For the kiss was rather more involved than a mere social peck. He began to reciprocate automatically, then jerked back. Windroc gizzards!

“Thank you very much,” she murmured.

Kal could only think of Tazithiel’s fiery breath sizzling his neck-hairs. “Uh–what was that?”

“In my culture, that’s a kiss of gratitude.”

“In mine, that’s more of an invitation to the pillow-roll,” he spluttered.

Still clasping his neck, she chuckled, “You’re audacious, Rider Kal, but I’m agreeable. I’m sure our Dragons wouldn’t mind.”

“What?” Kal tweaked a neck muscle with the speed of his guilty sidelong glance. Tazithiel and Jalfyrion both glared at the Humans, their eyes ablaze with emotions which had to centre upon cold-blooded murder. He was quite certain someone would mind. Very much. Very, terminally … much. But what of Jalfyrion’s reaction?

Could he reveal Tazi’s Shapeshifter nature? One more matter they should have discussed beforehand. He said, “I apologise, Jisellia, but I’m with someone else.”

“With me,” growled Tazi, her tone suggesting she intended to establish how slowly she could screw Kal’s head off his shoulders. “He’s with me.”

“Oh, good,” Jisellia agreed brightly, missing the point by a goodly hundred leagues or so. “I’m with Jalfyrion, too, and I’m not swapping him for any Dragon in the whole Island-World. He’s mine.”

As Jisellia gabbled away, Jalfyrion turned to regard Tazithiel with a transparently macho flexion–an impressive display of popping, ripping, hulking Dragon-musculature, Kal had to grant, feeling his insides ignite into red-hot coals of hatred. The Red was comparable to Tazithiel in length and height but had to weigh half as much as her again, a thickset block of dark-red Dragonflesh beside the Indigo Dragoness’ slender grace. By the sounds of things, she was not immune to whatever passed for attraction between the Dragonkind. Tazi’s belly-fires suddenly modulated to a wholly different tone, but Kal wondered suddenly if she felt not simply bashful, but terribly afraid of a male Dragon? He had to intervene.

In telepathic Dragonish, Kal snapped, Don’t you make moon-eyes at my girl. Yet when he looked at Jalfyrion, it was to see a strange image of a young, broad-shouldered man peering uncertainly at him. He was a Shapeshifter, too!

Jalfyrion said, Does he know your nature, noble summer-sister Tazithiel?

Aye, said Tazi. He’s my man.

I shall correct my Rider’s behaviour. And … mine.

What’s a summer-sister? Kal asked.

We were hatchlings born the same summer upon Mejia, Kal, the Red explained. How is it you speak such excellent Dragonish? My Rider has not yet awoken to mind-speech. You have grown into a Dragoness most magnificent, o breath of my younger days.

Suddenly, Kal knew there must have been attraction between them in the past. Smoking volcanoes! Did this situation grow any more complex? He would not stand for any male Dragons sniffing around his Tazithiel!

Peace, noble Rider, said Tazi, apparently amused by his quivering outrage. I thank you for seeking to safeguard my secret. You may tell her.

“Were you just talking with the Dragons?” asked Jisellia, struggling to one elbow. “Have you been a Rider long? What’s wrong, Kal?”

“Two glorious weeks.” The Indigo Dragoness bristled visibly at his tone. “And it has been wonderful. Astonishing.”

Kal wrestled his scattershot thoughts into something resembling order. If Jisellia did not know about Shifters, it stood to reason her Dragon had not told her–or did not know himself. Fat ruddy hormonal male Dragon chance of that! He was in hiding. Keeping secrets from his Rider.

“Kal?” Jisellia repeated.

“Jisellia, thou most dainty damson-flower of Mejia Island, this Rider is grateful to have assisted in succouring your precious life this day,” Kal said, with his infallible rakish grin. He was not certain, but he thought Tazithiel gave the faintest of snorts as the young Rider’s mouth popped open. “Thou art a jewel of incalculable price; thy kisses as rainbows tenderly encircling the heart of a man–”

Tazithiel rolled her eyes at Jalfyrion. Shall I swat this shameless braggart, most noble of Reds, or would you prefer to do the honours?

Hastily, Kal adjusted his tack. “Jisellia, Tazithiel is my Dragoness, but she is also my girl. She is a Shapeshifter Dragoness, and a fearsomely beautiful one at that.”

“She’s a … oh. Truly? They’re very rare.”

“Also, she’s the insanely jealous type,” Kal advised. “You’ve no idea …”

Tazithiel scratched her chin with one long, razor-sharp talon, making her meaning as blatant as a Dragonship poised to drop upon his head.

Kal saved his verbal daggers for the Red Dragon. Directly, he said, “Jisellia, I don’t know how rare Shapeshifter Dragons are. Coming from Fra’anior, I’ve always imagined you might bump into one on the next Island.”

The Red kept perfectly still, but Kal saw the talons of his forepaw clench the ground. Oho. Melt that in your furnace, Jalfyrion!

* * * *

Leaving Jisellia in Kal’s care, the two Dragons took to the skies to see if they could help the other Dragon Riders. Trust, Tazithiel’s look warned Kal. He glared the same message at her.

Kal fully expected Jisellia to ask about Shapeshifters. Instead, she smiled, “Was it a good kiss, at least? Seeing as it’s the only kiss we’ll ever share?”

“I rather doubt I’ll be exploring the inside of your armour again,” he retorted. “Whatever are you wearing, Islands’ sakes? Any trouble with that and you’d need a blacksmith to cut it off you.”

“Protection against rogues.”

“Bah. It’s not as if you’re wearing armoured trousers, is it? You shouldn’t encourage roving Fra’aniorian pirates. We’re renowned for walloping impressionable young Dragon Riders over the earhole and dragging them off to our lairs in chains.”

Jisellia hissed as he cleaned a four-inch cut on her lower leg. “On my native Garamoy, a tiny Island a couple of hours west of Remoy, it’s the women who do the walloping.”

“Aye? You nearly got me walloped by my Dragoness’ paw, that’s what.”

“Honestly, you let her treat you like this?”

Kal bit back a scathing remark about young women who threw opinions about with the abandon of a volcano spewing pumice. Tazithiel did not browbeat him. He hated that there was an iota of Jisellia’s criticism that resonated within Kal the free, master of his own winds and destiny.

The calloused fingers of a swordswoman and warrior stroked his arm. “Kal, are you quite sure you don’t want to–”

“Great Islands, no!” He snatched his arm away as though burned. “Toss it in a Cloudlands volcano, woman, don’t you know a thing about Dragons? Even if we aren’t caught, she’ll smell your scent on me and know by my breathing and heart-rate and sweat and the Warlord of Ur-Yagga only knows what else that I’ve played her false!”

Her eyes dropped as though he had wounded her spirit.

Kal shook his head. Manipulative little cliff-fox! How dare she? “Look, Jisellia, I’ve never been a good man. I’ve blown over the Isles in a whirlwind of lies, greed and conceit, but I’m trying to do right now, contrary as it runs to every grain of my being. I am for Tazithiel and she is for me. End of Island.”

Jisellia’s glance beneath her eyelashes informed Kal that she was far from giving up; that she found his passionate declaration for Tazithiel attractive; a challenge, even. His hands shook. Suffering volcanic hells, she had a vulnerable edge to her personality that practically begged for a strong man’s protection, and she was far from unattractive. Now, his mind slithered in a mire of useless, unwanted speculations. Fidelity no longer seemed the noble path. Faithfulness was a shackle for his emotions and actions, all because of this vixen he had pulled from a drake’s maw. His jaw ground furiously. Well was it said that every man harboured a personal Dragon, the tormentor, the root of his weakness.

The Shapeshifter Dragoness had also unearthed a Kal he had only known in isolated flashes in his life. Kal the not-despoiler, who tied his victims gently. Kal the reluctant judge, deeming one man worthy of the poisoned dagger and another, merely a weighted cosh to the skull. Kal, who oftentimes had shared his ill-gotten loot with random beggars and starving street children. The man who longed to sever the sordid roots of his business ventures.

Aye. Tazi was his bright-fire, his muse.

That was a thought to lighten the dreariest day. Kallion the drake-slayer, rescuer of an exceedingly grateful damsel, had at last taken his place upon the great stage of Island-World life. His eyes returned to Jisellia, appraising. Now, about that shifty Shifter Jalfyrion …

* * * *

By evening, Kal was prepared to slit his own throat and hurl himself off the benighted stage of Island-World life, or fly into the suns-set to live as a hermit for a few decades.

The group of Dragon Riders were new graduates from the same Academy he and Tazithiel had picked as the best place to seek lore about the Rim-Wall Mountains. Happily, they were not hunting reprobates of dubious past. But they were youthful. Brash. Strutting in their fancy new armour, which Kal had helped Jisellia out of before it killed her. He had never met such a wet-behind-the-flapping-ears, immature, flamboyant bunch of marsh toads with less sense between them than the average purple parakeet! Worse, their posse of Red and Green Dragons. If one more lava-stuffed lizard whirled his fire-eyes at Tazithiel–who was the most resplendent Dragon of this company by the proverbial league and a half, evidently–then he was seriously going to stuff an arrow sideways up their collective left nostrils.

Just look at Jalfyrion cosying up to his girl now! Girl, as in a massively sleek, scaly sky-monster? Apparently that was the Dragon way of being sociable, practically sitting on top of each other, while the Humans gathered around a roaring fire to swap boasts about their drake-hunting prowess, their gross ineptitude already forgotten.

He felt the touch of Jisellia’s gaze. Again.

Enough. “You!” Springing to his feet, Kal marched over to the massive Red Dragon. “You and I need to talk, Dragon. Now.”

The Red blinked lazily. “I was enjoying the fire and the chatter.”

Tazithiel cracked open one eye as if she were a serpent sleeping in the suns. Kal shivered at the reptilian imagery, for he loathed snakes with a positively draconic antipathy. “Kal. We were just swapping stories of our hatchling days.”

“Aye.” I was listening, Tazithiel. I’m always listening.

Fine. Her lip curled into a half-snarl at his mental tone. Go be two grumpy males together.

“Jalfyrion, you can bring your personal fires along,” said Kal, deeply sarcastic. “I want to talk to you in private. It’ll be quick and painless, I promise.”

Kal led the Red Dragon away from the fire. When they were far enough to defeat even a Dragoness’ hearing or lip-reading, he hoped, he turned to Jalfyrion. “I know what you’re hiding.”

The Red smirked. With a hundred fangs gleaming in a jaw apparently built for bulldozing flocks of ralti sheep down his capacious gullet, his smirk was truly impressive. “Brave Human. Moved from insinuations to direct accusations?”

“Fine, I’ll say it. You’re a Shapeshifter.”

“Your Tazithiel is a Shapeshifter. My dark-fires burn at her travails, Rider Kal.” The Red lowered his muzzle. Suddenly there was an awareness of connection, heat, the knowledge of an alien mind somehow attuned to his. Brotherhood? With a Dragon? Kal felt faint. “The Green Endurion is a blight upon the Dragonkind of Mejia. He was once a Dragon Elder, but now skulks about his black-rock fortress, disgraced and dishonoured. I will not trouble your ears with that shameful tale, but suffice to say, your Tazithiel is but one victim of his dark-fires. His … how do you say it in Island Standard?”

“Evil?”

“Aye. A small word for great wickedness. He’s adherent of Dramagon’s philosophies–well do you shiver, little Human.”

Kal could not speak. Suddenly his annoyance over Jisellia seemed but a petty grievance; his planned exposure of Jalfyrion, the small-minded and self-serving upshot of craven jealousy.

“My wings quiver most agreeably at your liaison, Rider Kal. You’re a brave and noble soul–” Kal cringed “–and I imagine my summer-sister is, in her Human manifestation, regarded as striking of form and flight among your kind?”

“Uh–very.”

They both chuckled at Kal’s gruff, revealing response.

Jalfyrion’s eye-fires whirled with good humour. “Now, how many fireballs did you wish to hurl at me, Dragon Rider?”

Kal modified what he had been about to say. “This morning, when Jisellia kissed me, I saw something in your expression which matched that of my Tazithiel. Something I did not expect to see in a Dragon. So I looked deeper.”

“And what did you see?” Jalfyrion spoke evenly, but the quickening tempo and volume of his belly-fires divulged his disquiet.

Tazi had been trying to teach him Dragon politeness. Though it itched like a prickle-bush shoved up his shirt, he said, “Mighty Jalfyrion, I’ve a secret I would share with you. Will you promise never to reveal it to another?”

“I so swear, upon my mother’s egg,” he said gravely.

The Dragon’s expression communicated that he was humouring the Human. Kal said, “My heritage is of Ha’athior Island in the Fra’anior Cluster. I’ve magic of my own.” Such as the ability to sneak undetected beneath the noses of Dragons? Kal hesitated at this insight. Really? Was this what had made him such an effective sneak thief? “One of my powers is most unusual. I can detect Shapeshifters.”

Jalfyrion growled, “Impossible.”

“Let’s see.” Kal concentrated until specks of light began to dance across his vision. “Your Human is about five feet nine inches tall, and broad through the shoulder. He has wavy, shoulder-length black hair. He has a … it’s a birthmark, I think, here on his left cheek. Resembles a splash of paint. And here, in the hollow of his clavicle, a sickle-shaped scar.”

The Dragon made a convulsive grab for Kal, before stopping the motion. By the First Egg what is this–it’s a trick!

No. I’m afraid not.

This Dragon power does not exist.

It took all of his courage to stand his ground in the face of the Dragon’s rumbling outrage. Kal sensed Tazi’s eyes upon them. Do I lie, Jalfyrion? Do not deflect the question. I know what you are, and I know how you feel about Jisellia. Will you hide this from her forever? What happens when she finds out? Or will you stand to lose your beloved to another, less scrupulous Human?

She is not my–Jalfyrion clashed his fangs mere inches from Kal’s nose. This time, he did stumble backward; Tazithiel bellowed, scrambling to her paws. The Red called, Stop. Tazithiel, your Rider is fine, he’s in no danger from me.

No danger? Right.

Tazithiel blazed, Kal? Is Jalfyrion harassing you?

Kal stared up into the Red’s eyes. We’re just having a manly disagreement. I’m about to punch his fires right through his unmentionables.

Jalfyrion roared with laughter. Coming from a Dragon, that triggered a ten-foot wide fireball which started a forest fire directly behind Kal.

Men–Dragons. Honestly! Tazithiel snuffed out the fire by disdainfully squirting a load of ice-slushy water over it. The temptation to do the same to Kal and Jalfyrion must have been almost impossible to resist.

How little she knows, Kal whispered, with a sardonic curl of his lip meant for the Red.

Jalfyrion spoke directly into Kal’s mind. Jisellia is my beloved, which is more than you claim for Tazithiel, Rider Kal. So here’s a meaty chunk of advice from me–keep your stinking hands off my Rider, or I shall see how well you fly attached to one of my fireballs. Do I make myself clear?

Abundantly.

I shall consider your wise words, noble Kal. Abruptly, his eye-fires darkened. The stigma associated with Shapeshifter powers is greater than you imagine. Protect her, Kal. Wherever you fly, even if you visit our Academy–protect your Dragoness, for I sense you’re a man who knows what dangers may hide in shadows.

Kal nodded, suppressing an instinctive shudder. And here’s a blazing volcano of advice from me, mighty Jalfyrion. Keep your stinking paws off my Dragoness, or I shall shackle your gonads to a passing comet and see how well you fly. Do I make myself clear?

After a startled hiatus, the Red Dragon’s laughter belled into the night. Then, he thrust out his paw. I believe Humans seal a bargain like this.

Kal shook his talon manfully.

With comradely chuckles, the mismatched twosome walked back to camp.

Chapter 14: Business as Unusual

“WHAT DID YOU say to Jalfyrion? Why were you laughing?” snarled the Indigo Dragoness, three days later, during their approach to Yin’toria Island. Peeved was not the word. She was practically shedding scales in the welter of her fury.

“What’s the meaning of ‘metagrobolise’?”

Tazithiel’s enraged bellow made the clouds above them shiver.

Clearly, his Dragoness needed a nettle up her–ahem. He kept slipping back into unreformed Kal-character. He coughed delicately. “You just can’t stand not knowing, can you?”

“I’m in a bad mood, Kal, which you are doing your notable best to aggravate. Whatever this detour to Yin’toria is, it had better be good.”

“Very good,” said Kal, not convincing either of them. The Indigo Dragoness had been keen to forge on to Jeradia in the company of their fellow Dragons and Riders, while Kal would rather have embraced a plague-carrying rat while begging it to give him the worst case of boils in the history of the Island-World.

Tazithiel made an evident effort to calm herself. “So, you have business on Yin’toria?”

“I own a business on Yin’toria–several businesses. In fact, it’s my Island.”

“Your adopted home Island?”

Kal essayed a grin which emerged decidedly queasy and did not improve thereafter. “I sort of own it. The whole Island … ah, and the Cluster. Twenty-four Islands in all.”

“Busy,” said Tazi, looking ahead with the superior power of her Dragon sight. “Industrial. How many of these people work for your business, Kal?”

“All of them, more or less. Not the children, of course. They go to school.” He mopped his brow. Good. They were starting to broach a subject over which he had lost sleep ever since he met her. No turning back now, Kal! “On the first four Islands you’ll see terrace lakes under construction. We’re borrowing that idea from the North, seeing as rainfall’s been unreliable for the last few years. We’re experimenting with a new method of terracing farmland as well, to ensure precious nutrients aren’t lost to the Cloudlands-bound rivers. The Dragon Elders of Gi’ishior gave us permission to start a new colony of dragonets down here, given their recent overcrowding issues at Fra’anior.”

“I see,” rumbled Tazithiel.

He continued to expound on the notable sights as they swept in to land at the largest town, laughably named Gluetap for its past dominance of the glue-tree industry. Having directed Tazithiel to transform behind the relative privacy of a flotilla of Dragonships and stored their supplies with the harbourmaster, Kal linked arms with the tall beauty and strolled into town. He tried not to swagger. Great Islands, he tried. But with Tazithiel effortlessly turning grown men into doddering null-brains on every street corner, could he not be forgiven a drop of gloating?

“It’s very clean and orderly,” she said. “But nobody seems to know the owner of this place.”

“Do you think I prefer celebrity?”

“No. If I know you at all, I know you prefer sable cloaks, squally nights and ducking into treasuries to avoid the rain.”

“Thanks.”

Kal walked up to a nondescript building and gave a password at a door which appeared to enjoy little use. Behind stood an unsmiling Green Dragon, who largely filled the building. Tazi’s eyes widened.

“Islands’ greetings, sir.” The security monster appraised Tazithiel shrewdly. “A guest?”

“A private guest,” Kal confirmed.

“Proceed.”

Ducking beneath the Dragon’s stomach, Kal led his companion down a short flight of stairs which opened on an underground platform. A metal cage on a rail awaited them. Kal seated Tazi courteously on one of the passenger seats and pressed a button. With a hiss of steam, they shot off into the darkness.

“Mining operations?” Tazi asked, when after several minutes they whizzed through a towering cavern and an auditory assault on the senses.

“A rich lode of gold in this one,” said Kal.

“And you have a Dragon guarding the entrance?”

“Tends to deter tourists,” he quipped. “Right. We’ll disembark here, Tazi, and take the lift.”

“I could’ve flown here.”

“Too much attention and too dangerous for you,” Kal replied crisply. “I couldn’t think of any way of alerting our defences to the arrival of a friendly Dragoness. This route is more … efficient. I’ll clear Her Indisputable Magnificence the Indigo Dragoness with the command team upon arrival.”

Her expression openly wondered what type of business he was running. Kal kept a straight face and covertly dried his palms on his trousers.

Ten minutes of steam-powered elevator travel later, Kal and Tazi stepped out onto a busy platform on the edge of a small, dormant volcanic caldera. Flowers and blossoms abounded. Dragonets and colourful tropical birds played amongst the dense, tumbling foliage, or dived into the still, clear lake at the base of the caldera, seven hundred feet below the platform. Dozens of uniformed men and women hurried about, intent on their work, although on a second, almost identical platform above, a class of girls each stood behind an easel, painting the picturesque scene.

Stepping up to the crysglass railing, Tazithiel murmured, “It’s beautiful, Kal. And those doors are all …”

“Departments,” said Kal. “Industry headquarters and suchlike. Tarbak, the busy dragonet catches the dragonfly.”

“Ah, very good, King Ta’armion. At ease, gentlemen.”

Pointedly ignoring the squad of heavily armed soldiers–and two Dragons, again–which had taken a keen interest in their arrival, Tazithiel said, “King?”

Kal bowed. “It’s a joke based on my other identity. The one I’ve been planning to tell you about, but hadn’t found a way to … express, as yet. This is what I’ve been waiting to show you.”

“The real King Ta’armion is probably scaring worms out of his grave right now,” she noted, with a too-bright smile. Kal feared that behind the smile, her brain was sizzling, trying to process the scene. “Carry on, Kallion.”

Ooh, there it was. A verbal fireball across the bow.

“We’ll go up to my office,” said Kal.

“You? Sitting in an office?” Tazithiel took possession of his arm with a pincer-grip of her fingers. Great Islands, she was strong! “Somehow, I can’t picture this, Kal.”

“It’s not exactly well-used. My trusted staff are used to–let’s call them long absences, shall we? The whole operation is designed to run without yours truly at the helm, because yours truly happens to be adventurous and unreliable in equal measure. Also, I’m not much of a businessman.”

One perfect eyebrow crawled toward her coiffed locks. Bah. Advantages of Kinetic power, Kal thought. He looked and probably smelled as if had been travelling non-stop for weeks, fighting drakes and sleeping near his Dragon’s paws. In contrast, Tazithiel had a perfect petal kissed by the dew of dawn freshness about her. No point in being sour. Taking her arm genially, Kal led the Shapeshifter up several flights of stairs to the place he liked to call his eyrie–a crysglass-lined office right near the top, with an uninterrupted view of the caldera.

How would Tazi respond? The knot in his stomach wound tighter.

Would his other conundrum be lying in wait?

The knot developed teeth and a bad attitude.

Around him, a small buzz of people materialised as if drawn by magic. Kal introduced them patiently, and asked for all issues and paperwork and discussion to be brought to him after lunch.

“Finally,” said Tazi, as the doors to his office slid shut. “Now, explanation or annihilation. Make your choice, Human.”

Kal made a shushing gesture with his hand, peering within. Plush carpeting deadened any sound. Priceless artworks adorned the non-glass walls, while hand-carved wooden furniture, statues and pot-plants divided the room into several sections, which included a receiving balcony, a cushion-bowl and several pedestals for draconic visitors. Quiet? Too quiet. The person he expected to find within was about as predictable as a wounded rajal, with a temper to match.

Cat-footed, he crept into the room.

Kal? A touch of Tazi’s mind.

Don’t worry. This is our tradition. I won’t be a moment.

Fine. I’ll save destroying you for when you’ve finished having your traditional fun.

Abruptly, Kal dived to his left, narrowly avoiding a dagger which whistled past his left ear and buried itself, quivering, in the trunk of a clay-pot tree, imaginatively named for its sour fruit which closely resembled dangling clay pots. He hurled a dagger in return. Low, female laughter tickled his neck. Kal yelped and pretended to fumble a dive; he came up with his sword pressed against a girl’s bare abdomen, while her curved dagger imperilled his right eye.

“You’re dead,” he said.

“You’re deader,” replied the girl.

Grinning, Kal pretended to wipe sweat off his brow. “I’ll have to let you get closer next time, Riika. Rigging that dagger to a bowstring was smart, but not smart enough. I saw the wire.”

“Bah. You dived right into my trap.”

“Come on, I’ve someone special for you to meet–Tazithiel. Tazi, this is … uh, Riika.”

Tazi’s eyes crawled up and down the girl’s figure, commenting abundantly without need to say a word. Riika wore two short swords crossed on her back, multiple pairs of daggers and throwing knives at her hips, and leather trousers so tight Kal suspected he could see the outline of the brand on her right hip. Brief, Western-Isles upper-body armour covered her breasts but left a sprung-steel abdomen bare. Riika, part-Helyon Islander and part-Pygmy, barely measured up to Kal’s upper bicep.

The tall Shapeshifter seemed most put out, especially when Riika ignored her outstretched hand.

Kal pressed Tazi’s hand down. “In her former profession, that’s a deadly insult.”

“Former?” Tazithiel matched Riika’s defiant glare with a scowl of her own. “Why didn’t she attack me?”

“I pick my battles,” said the girl, with a flash of those black eyes. Her dark curly hair, as always, was drawn up behind her head and tied off with razor-ribbons invented by the famous Balthion of Sylakia, and framed a face of haunting black eyes and delicate features. “You’re a thousand times deadlier than softy slow-pants over here. You’ve got Shapeshifter written all over you. And before you ask, where I come from, it pays to know your clients. Can’t imagine sticking a knife into a Dragoness would be received kindly.”

“Clients? What are you, a professional bed-warmer?”

“Former assassin,” Kal put in.

“What are you–the current bed-warmer?” the girl returned rudely.

To Kal’s surprise, this only brought a smile to Tazithiel’s face–the smile of a Dragoness sizing up her prey. “Seems to be a great deal of reforming going on around here,” she snapped. “Former this, previous that. What is she to you exactly, Kal? Before I start gnawing on both your heads?”

Her spectral Dragoness shimmered into being around Human-Tazi, mirroring a temper evidently approaching boiling-point.

“After I failed to eliminate him, as he never fails to remind me, he rescued me from slavery,” said the girl.

“Bravo,” said Tazi. “And he’s been reforming you ever since?”

Riika chuckled, but her voice was as dead as her eyes. “I started killing on commission when I was eight, lady. I’m fourteen now. That man you’re threatening is the closest person I’ve known to a parent and he’s been nothing but good to me. So you can go stuff your arrogant Dragon fires right up your–”

“Riika!” Kal barked.

The girl stormed, “Listen, purple-eyes, and listen good. Around here, you earn respect. Same goes for your Dragoness. You and I both know Shapeshifter poisons are to be had for the right coin.”

Tazithiel made a soft explosion of breath.

“Great Islands, Riika–both of you! Stop it!”

“He’s a wastrel and a womaniser. Clean your fangs with his guts if he gives you any trouble,” said Riika, stepping away abruptly. “Watch your back, Sticky-Fingers. This one’s deadly.”

“Later, Razorblades.” Kal turned to Tazi. “She’s a daughter to me. And, I think she likes you. Isn’t this perfect?”

Poor woman, she could only track Riika’s departure with her eyes, unspeaking.

“If I framed your face, I could sell it for an artwork called ‘The Astonished’,” he chuckled. “Aye, I’m a poor surrogate parent. I’m working on the taste in clothing business, but you know teenage girls. Just won’t listen. Do you think you could work on changing her mind?”

“I think I could go to work on you! What–Kal, what is all this? Are you Kal or are you–”

“I’m Kal,” he said. “Come sit on my lap and I’ll spin you a tale, o Tazithiel. Or–excellent intimidation in the growl there–I could give you the short and sharp version. Aye. Excellent idea. Ready?”

Grrrrrr …

“Very well. Welcome to the realm of King Ta’armion the entrepreneur, multi-Island industrialist, Dragonship builder, trader … well, we’ll be here a while if we go through all that. Here’s a riddle for you. Who is the king who is not a king, except in the world below?”

Tazithiel did perch on his lap, but only in order to bring her fist into closer proximity with his jaw, Kal suspected. “The king who is not … why, that’s the King of Thieves, of c … of c-c …”

“May I clarify, at this juncture, that most of the legends about me are wholly unfounded?” said Kal.

“You’re … that king? ‘An eye in every household, a stronghold on every Island, the terror of the night is he’–that King Ta’armion? He of untold legions of thieves? Fabulous wealth–well, that bit’s true. He who brutally slew every contender to his underworld throne in such a welter of bloodletting–you monster, don’t you nod! Don’t–Kal!”

“I told you I’m not a good man,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. Why had he let himself become entangled with this woman? To know the pain and fear he knew now?

“To think I let you …” Tazithiel fell silent.

“I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to explain. Words are …” he waved a hand, trying to indicate that describing Riika was impossible to someone who had not met her, never mind his past.

“I didn’t trust you, to be fair. What’s all this business, this industry, then?”

“The road to reform.”

“If those legends are so inaccurate, Kal–”

He snapped, “The Guild gave me a drug called hendyne-ichor, Tazi. A little courage for the mission, they said. It turns men into cold, killing automatons, and bullies into monsters. I didn’t care who the hells I hurt or killed. I haven’t forgotten what I did–and I knew what I was doing, alright? Freaking feral windrocs, I enjoyed putting all those people ten feet under a carpet of fireflowers!”

Kal’s panting filled the silence between them. He saw her horror; it cut him so deep, so physically, that he thought his body would start weeping blood.

“How many women have you seduced?”

He bobbed his right shoulder, blazing inwardly. In the light of what he had told her, what she knew of his reputation, this was her main concern? “Tazi, do you really want an answer–”

“What’s the longest relationship you’ve ever had?

“Well, years–that is, occasional recreational visits over a lengthy period of time.” Her expression reminded him acutely of the proximity of her fingers to the arteries in his neck. “Uh, in a single stretch? Ours has to be a close contender.”

Drawing back, Tazithiel slapped his cheek with a resounding smack. “That’s for all the women of this Island-World.” Kal had barely begun to recover when she whacked him on the backhand, less forcefully. “That’s for entertaining that little minx, Jisellia.”

“I did not ask for–ouch!”

“That’s for not mentioning Riika. Typical male, communicating like your average tight-lipped lump of rockwood.”

Kal felt his smarting ear. He grumbled, “Disgraceful Dragoness.”

He sincerely hoped she did not decide to punish him for being the King of Thieves. That would not come with friendly bites and bruises; rather, a slow, deliberate claw sawing at his spinal column. Yet, even as he contemplated his fate, a brilliant, febrile smile curved her lips in a way that made Kal’s heart lurch so forcefully, it practically leaped out of his throat and ran off around the volcano, screaming.

She said, “And this–this is from me.”

When Kal surfaced, sans sanity, a few minutes later, the Shapeshifter Dragoness said sweetly, “Because I adore kings.”

“Oh?”

Matters were looking up. Heating up, too.

She bit his lip again. “However, liars displease me greatly.” Nibbling down to his chin, she added, “Seducing Dragonesses is foremost on my list of life-terminating offences.”

“Ouch! Islands’ sakes, will you sheathe the fangs? That hurt.”

Tazi breathed, “Mmm, o Kallion, my despicable Kallion. You’ve irretrievably corrupted me in favour of tall, dark, felonious men. I find your change of heart most … invigorating.”

“Do you know you’re not making a straw’s weight of sense, woman?”

“As for your tasteless jokes about sceptres …”

“Obviously, I was telling the truth all along. I’ll just have to convince you about that. Robustly.”

When his entire senior staff entered the conference room connected to Kal’s office an hour later and looked upward, it was to discover Shapeshifter and Dragon Rider passionately engaged in what could by no stretch of the imagination be termed polite recreational co-flying.

Perhaps introducing them to the Dragoness could wait for the morrow.

* * * *

The cynical part of him had long ago worked out that his staff kept certain issues on hand specifically for the infrequent occasions the boss might deign to show up. Showing up thirty feet above the mahogany conference table in all his masculine glory? He would never live this down.

Kal strummed his harp pensively. When he heard Tazithiel and Riika had been seen doing womanly things together, it had taken all his willpower neither to snoop nor interfere. When an Indigo Dragoness had raced for the skies with a girl on her back, he had been amazed, terrified and jealous enough to spit like a tayabak lizard. Maudlin old fool. Bah. The real fun was watching the sparks fly as those two had a run at each other.

If they didn’t kill each other first, they might even become friends.

His simple, private balcony atop the volcano had panoramic views of a suns-set which would make a poet swoon and tumble to his death over the edge. As was his habit, Kal sat on the low wall with his feet dangling over a two thousand foot drop, facing west.

He bent to his instrument. Softly, he sang an old monkish lay called Fra’anior Rising:

Above the Isles a storm of Dragons,

Darkened my world,

Above the clouds the wingéd ones,

Roused the tempest, a peal of thunder crying,

O Lord of Dragons, arise! Arise!

An approving clicking of fingers greeted the final, rising high note. With a start, Kal turned. He had been so absorbed … his hands flailed. A touch of magic, however, restored harp to hand and rump to solid ground. Crossly, he willed his heartbeat to settle. He failed miserably.

“Didn’t know I could do that,” Tazithiel teased.

She wore a simple, long dress of sky-blue Helyon silk and elegant, jewelled heels in a design Kal had never seen before. Probably the latest fashion, lost on a man who had spent two and a half years abroad, mostly in a monkish prison. She needed no additional height, but his instant estimate settled upon three and a half inches. Her unbound hair tumbled down her back, glossy black with strong tints of sapphire blue. A lifetime’s habit of attention to detail brought to his notice a quarter-inch of toe belonging to a person hiding behind his Dragoness.

Stepping aside, Tazithiel performed a passable Fra’aniorian introductory hand-twirl. “Behold.”

Kal did. He beheld, and came within a rajal’s whisker of losing his seat a second time. He beheld, and gasped a lungful of the Island-World’s sweetest air. Riika!

His ward wore an ornate, high-collared Eastern tunic dress in a deep ochre colour that set off her dark, tumbling ringlets and creamy brown skin-tones perfectly. Her already high cheekbones, bespeaking her Helyon heritage, had been subtly enhanced with a dusting of pearlescent ochre makeup. Stunning! Kal felt a silly smile curve his lips, but he cared less than a pinch of dust for that. An artfully worked spray of crimson fireflowers adorned her hair. And then, flouting tradition in the most Riika of ways, the dress hung to mid-thigh, barely. The way she balanced on her unaccustomed tall platform heels, laced up her calves, reminded him of an awkward baby heron. Lissom. Delightful. Womanly in ways he had never perceived.

“Riika?” he croaked.

Colour, already present, flooded her cheeks. “Like, Sticky-Fingers?”

“Smitten.”

Kal wandered over in a daze. He had never seen her without weapons. Of course, she could kill in dozens of different ways with her hands, feet, knees and elbows … he looked over the trembling young woman. When had he ever seen her so nervous? So vulnerable, so needing an indication of his approval? A bane upon the fate that would spell her death! And he had been absent for over two years of what she had left. Sick despair gouged his heart as if Anubam claws scourged the living pith from within.

Stretching onto her tiptoes, Riika kissed his cheek. “Tears, you old sap?”

“Pesky gnats!” Kal wiped his eye. “I’ll be strapped over a barrel and floated down a Cloudlands-bound river before I let you out of the house dressed like this, young lady!”

Riika smiled radiantly. “Oh?”

“Kal.” Tazithiel had that feminine skill of investing an entire conversation in one word.

With a wicked grin, he said, “Any chance I can ditch that vexatious Shapeshifter Dragoness for you, o breathtaking splendour of the Isles?”

Growl! Blush! Kal crinkled his eyes at Riika and Tazi, letting them see and feel his pride and pleasure. Then, he seated them at the dining-table and served dinner–a selection of Fra’aniorian sweetmeats and fruity bites in crisp pastry, washed down with an absurdly mellow berry wine borrowed with mild prejudice from the royal household of Fra’anior, some years back.

“No wine for you, impudent sprite,” he snorted when Riika reached out.

“Then none for you either, you ghastly child-abandoning degenerate,” she returned sweetly, but with a glint in her eye which hinted that serrated daggers would accompany a wrong reply.

“Bah. Do you need any weapons bar your viper’s tongue?”

Across from Kal, Tazithiel blatantly flirted with her eyes. “Go on, handsome. She’s fourteen.”

“Double-bah served on the point of a poisoned quarrel!” he groused. “Outnumbered, disarmed, and outshone by however many million leagues it is to our twin suns. Half a glass, you little whippersnapper, and I’ll have a grateful ‘thank you’ or it’s straight to bed with no dinner.”

Riika bobbed her head and said diffidently, “I’m nothing if not obedient, Kal. Thank you.”

He almost choked on his wine.

“So, we’ve a proposal for you,” said Tazithiel.

“Tell me, o sweet muse, how did you convince my inexplicably respectful and compliant ward to change her ways?”

“She took me flying! It was magical!” Riika’s eyes danced.

“Do not concern yourself, you suspicious old codger,” Tazi asserted. Kal kicked her ankle ungently. “I most certainly did not pretend to drop her a couple of times, nor did I toss her in the air and shoot practice fireballs at her diminutive rump. We took a stately circuit of the Isles–”

“She did loops and barrel-rolls and cloud-hopping!”

Kal wished his eyes could roast holes in Tazithiel’s head–not for want of trying!

“It was perfectly safe.” Assertive, but a lie worthy of the name.

A firm glare passed between the two women. Bizarrely, they appeared almost the same age. “Safe?” snorted Riika. “I thought ‘safe’ was a four-letter word in Dragonish–wouldn’t you agree, Kal?”

He said, “Along with nice, easy, weak, tame …”

Riika added, “Soft, slow, ugly, meek, mild, cold …”

The Shapeshifter blew a little flame ring over the table decorations. “Look. I’ve been practising.”

“I imported those roses from Mejia at great expense, you wretch!”

Tazithiel flicked her hair out of her deep blue eyes and fixed her gaze on Kal. “I propose we take Riika to Jeradia and enrol her in the Dragon Rider Academy.”

Never was less a proposal and more a command spoken in the Island-World, Kal reflected sourly, disguising his feelings behind a deliberate sip of berry-wine. What an Island-quaking idea! However, too much could go wrong, for despite their earlier jokes, Riika was as safe as a pool of lava. She might murder a hapless student who looked at her the wrong way. She would probably thrash every weapons-master they had. His grin faded behind a choked-up feeling that climbed past his throat to prick his eyes. The girl he had left behind had flowered into a young woman. He had missed it, ralti-stupid fool that he was, chasing monkish lore around the Islands.

She was dying.

She might find happiness, however fleeting. Worse, a boy–whom Kal would interrogate with the implements of a thousand torture-chambers! Maybe, and he should know, just maybe this would be the Dragonride of her life. Aye. The choice was simple.

Tazi said, “Kal, why the hungry-rajal smile?”

He answered Riika’s shining, hopeful scrutiny, “Feral Dragons could not convince me to leave you behind again. So you have my ‘aye,’ and gladly do I give it.”

She was around the table, just a flash upon his blurry eyesight, and in his arms before he could say a word more. Kal gasped as a fierce hug made his ribs creak.

Riika yelled, “You’re the best, the best, the very best … ever!”

Curious how one forgot how young she really was. How she could not speak the word ‘father’ because of her past. How behind her Dragon-hide of an exterior, her heart had learned to soften, for someone had taken a chance. Broken her out of slavery. Esteemed her.

“There will be rules, Razorblades. Conditions. You will obey them to the letter. For example, no slaughtering of hapless students.”

“Rules for schmools,” she punned, rather poorly. “Kal … I … oh, windroc droppings!”

She laid her head upon his shoulder, and wept.

Chapter 15: Counterstrike

FROM THE SOUTHERN Archipelago, the Indigo Dragoness and her two Riders swept in a steady curve that bent ever northward. Four days out of Yin’toria, at a Dragon’s flying speed, they settled in for the long crossing to Elidia Island, just northeast of Mejia. Old haunts for the Dragoness. Tazi spoke barely a word in all this time. The weather retained the perfect southern balm of the late hot season, bar a squall that engulfed them midway during the crossing, dumped a load of hail on the intrepid threesome, and whistled on. None of the previous storm’s madness, Kal thought. Why had that tempest seemed so preternaturally bent upon their destruction?

As a starry night mantled the Island-World and Tazithiel flew into the heart of the huge Yellow moon, covering fully a third of the sky, Riika fell asleep in Kal’s arms.

The Dragoness spoke. “Riika said you would tell me her story.”

He had been expecting this. Without preamble, Kal replied, “Riika was the offspring of a Pygmy girl chained by traders for entertainment aboard their Dragonship. The pregnant girl somehow escaped and found her way back to her village in the Crescent Isles. She was treated like dirt and died in childbirth. The babe survived, but as you see, she has mixed-race features. At her first birthday, the Pygmies threw her to the spirits to see if she would survive. Apparently a Dragon found her and brought her back to the village–so they kept her alive to honour the Dragon, but as the unwanted bastard of a white-skinned barbarian, they pushed her harder than any other young warrior in that village. They threw her into the forefront of every battle, thinking she’d die, which would have been convenient. But she survived.”

Tazithiel’s fires boiled madly, but she did not speak.

“When she was six, Riika’s father came back for her–we don’t know how he found out, but we know why. He took her and eventually sold her to the Assassins Guild at Franxx, but not before he had abused her in the foulest ways imaginable. Pygmies are natural-born warriors; sackweight for sackweight, the best fighters in this Island-World. Trained brutally and tortured, Riika was a valuable commodity and probably made her father’s fortune.” Kal made to spit, but did not want to soil Tazi’s back, small as the gesture might be. “The Assassins secured their prize by further torturing her, inducting her in their most diabolical secrets, and then drugging her with yi’tx’txi’taxnayt’x–” he pronounced the clicks carefully “–a poison which originated in Dramagon’s laboratories, I believe. Dragons are familiar with its use.”

“She takes a grain of antidote every second day, or the poison attacks the nervous system, causing unspeakable pain. The body will convulse so violently, the victim usually breaks their own spine. They say the pain is worse than death.”

“Four years ago, a business rival contracted Riika to assassinate me. She was already developing her legend with the Guild. But Riika failed her mark–for I have unexpected talents of my own. See this scar?” He indicated his neck, knowing the Dragoness would have no trouble seeing the puckered three-inch scar in the dark. “She came that close. The kid’s talented, given as she was only ten at the time. I was fortunate. We made a bargain. I took her in. I inquired at the Guild of Assassins for her treatment.”

“They surrendered this information freely?”

Kal knew his smile was a thing of malign cruelty. “I can be very persuasive when pushed. I felt … motivated. And let’s just leave it there, shall we?”

Tazithiel’s rumble held a dispirited note. “So you keep Riika supplied with antidote?”

“Aye. Problem is, there’s no known antidote for yi’tx’txi’taxnayt’x. What she takes only delays the inevitable.” Kal stared off into the darkness, wishing … “She’s got a few years left–two or three at most.”

The Dragoness’ rage and grief lit up miles of sky with a titanic lightning bolt.

Kal smelled the sharp tang of ozone, a smell he associated with storms. His fists clenched painfully. Oh, to have Tazithiel’s power unleashed upon the Guild of Assassins!

He said, “Riika’s brave, but she doesn’t talk about her past. This is why I couldn’t leave her. Do you understand?”

“Aye. We grew us a teenager overnight. Life isn’t all petals, is it?”

Kal said, “You seem to have worked wonders already. She respects you.”

“Dragon fires, Kal, let’s pick the humiliated hermit for a role model.”

“On the other hand, I thought you displayed astonishing trouser-divesting skills, Tazi. That’s the hallmark of a desperate yet admirable woman.”

“Dream on.”

He laughed curtly. “Let’s concentrate on figuring out how to ensure the school survives Riika, alright? How many hours should I lecture her about the need to respect her teachers? What rules should I set?”

“Rules? For teenage girl-assassins? Kal, Kal, Kal.”

“Fine.” Kal poured syrup into his voice. “Listen to how reformed and humble I am. O Indigo Dragoness, I entreat you to instruct me in where I’m going wrong with the female of the species.”

She chortled, “Ten thousand years, Kal, and you still wouldn’t have a clue.”

* * * *

On the way to Elidia Island, Kal succeeded in convincing Riika that she might be able to shake hands or accept a traditional kiss upon the palm, given as not everyone in the Island-World was potentially planning to kill her. The rest of his rulemaking fared less well.

Kal congratulated himself on his stellar parenting skills.

Elidia and Mejia Islands had always struck him as having an unfinished quality, as if a juvenile Ancient Dragon had smashed together a pawful of proto-Islands like blobs of clay and then plopped the result on top of a handy foundation rising out of the Cloudlands. They had none of Fra’anior’s majestic league-tall cliffs, nor its austere, brooding volcanic majesty–in his geologically astute and wholly impartial opinion. What they possessed in abundance was range upon range of lumpen mountains, with one unique feature which had always intrigued Kal. The mountains rose from below. Same parts of these two Islands and their small outlier Islands were so unstable, neither Dragon, Human nor beast chose to live there. A farmer could lose half a field overnight as it swelled, cracked and tumbled over the edge of a cliff. Kal had seen mountains popping up before his disbelieving eyes.

“These Islands breed peculiar people,” Kal said to Tazithiel, expounding on his observations. “They are resilient, yet so fatalistic. I mean, they even build their huts without foundations so that an entire village can up and move at the proverbial flip of a dragonet’s tail.”

“But they do breed spectacular Dragons.” Tazi winked at him over her shoulder.

Riika made a gagging noise. “Will you two quit flirting? It’s weird, alright? I’m bored. When are we going to be there?”

“I’m not the local ox-cart,” growled the Dragoness. “We’ll get there when I decide.”

With exaggerated amazement, Riika cried, “Great Islands, the cart speaks!”

Over Kal’s hoots of laughter, Tazi snorted, “This cart bites, little girl. Now, who’s for a bath in hot springs and the luxury of long, soft grass to sleep upon?”

“Me,” said Kal, managing to turn the word into a vulgar proposition.

“I’m fourteen! I don’t need to hear these things!”

Sometimes, Riika still wanted to be the child she had never been. Kal wondered how greatly the loss of childhood innocence affected a person. His story had been one of falling in with the wrong friends and learning a new trade. The loss of innocence had quickly followed at some point between his eighth and ninth summers. Riika’s young life had been marred by a different scale of brutality altogether.

“Say, Tazithiel, riddle me this,” said Kal. “I’ve noticed that upon transformation, your dirt falls off but the Dragon scale-mites remain. Does that mean the mites transform with you? Remember, you said that Shapeshifter babies transform within the womb?”

Riika punched Kal’s knee playfully. “What’s the grin for?”

“I propose an experiment. Let’s say Dragoness-Tazi on the off-chance happened to swallow an insolent half-Helyon half-Pygmy urchin into her food stomach, and then transformed. What would happen to the little ragamuffin? Shall we find out?”

“For that insult, I challenge you to a duel, Sticky-Fingers.”

“You’re on, Razorblades. I’ll even let you choose your weapons.”

“Let me guess–her tongue?” Tazi put in.

The young assassin smiled the smile Kal had dubbed ‘the poisoned blade’, and rolled her eyes at the Dragoness. “You wait your turn. Dragons, I tell you. Always so pushy.”

“For that insult, you two can clear the feral windrocs away from our bathtub.”

Kal said, “But one fireball, my darling Dragoness …”

Tazithiel yawned hugely. “I’m so tired after all this flying, lugging two identically lippy specimens of Humanis Aggravatus–” she lapsed into mock-Dragonish scientific language “–between the Isles. Couldn’t summon so much as a spark. Nor lift a talon. I’m feeling so–what was that four-letter word you used the other day? Weak? My wings are drooping. My spine aches. My–”

“We get the point!” Kal limbered up his war bow. “Come on, Razorblades. Let’s teach this puny, limp, prim–help me here, I’m running out of words–Dragoness a thing or three about shooting down windrocs.”

Tazithiel drawled, “Just remember, miss one and it’ll have your hand for breakfast. Tell you what–I’ll keep score. I can manage that.”

Suddenly, Kal’s throat felt as dry as the desert they had just flown over.

Feral windrocs were akin to Dragons in their wild, uncontrolled aggression. Kal had many times encountered feral windrocs on his travels across the Island-World. They would attack without provocation. A few pecks of a tasteless air balloon usually convinced them dinner was not on the menu and they would start fighting each other, which was apparently fun and far more rewarding. Occasionally a windroc would not give up. Kal’s preferred method was to waste a poisoned throwing knife on the persistent ones.

Shooting a bird with a twenty-foot wingspan was not usually the problem. Doing enough damage to dissuade them was. Most times, an arrow in the gut merely served to annoy an already belligerent animal.

Seeing their hated enemy gliding in toward a sizzling lava-pool, which Kal fervently hoped was not Tazi’s notion of a warm bath, the windrocs rose in a cawing, squabbling mass and employed the only reasonable strategy. They attacked the Indigo Dragoness.

Kal scored with his first shot, which was hardly a miracle given how the huge, brown-and-cream birds were bunched together. “Ha!” he yelled. “Beat that!”

“I will,” said Riika, raising her much more compact Pygmy bow. Her little shaft zipped through the air. With a soft whomp, pieces of windroc splattered the raucous flock of birds.

“What the hells was that?” Kal shrilled.

“Experimental arrows. My design.” Riika downed another bird in an explosion of feathers. “The blasting gel’s still far too unstable for commercial use, but I have the research division working on the problem.”

“You have my researchers doing what? Riika!”

“While you were off gallivanting around the Islands, I was sadly neglected and bored. I sort of borrowed a few of your scientists and engineers for my pet projects.”

Kal swore luridly. By complete fluke, the arrow he released in anger speared two windrocs through the head, threading them like meat kebabs on a single arrow-shaft. “By the beard of the Great Dragon himself!” he crowed. “Did you see my shot?”

“Incoming!” yelled Riika. Twisting in her seat, she pinned a windroc angling for Kal’s cranium. Crump! Feathers, blood and a meaty slab of bird smacked him in the back of the head.

That served to focus the mind.

Kal and his ward traded each other shot for shot and insult for insult, while the Indigo Dragoness glided in to her landing without so much as bloodying a claw. Riika’s exploding arrowheads were more than effective when she landed a shot, but Kal intended to haul the snarky virtuoso inventor over the coals for storing unstable chemical compounds in the quiver right next to his knee. Not that her wise old guardian was without a few tricks of his own, Kal smirked. His marks developed an odd hitch in their wings and a glazed look in the eye before tumbling out of the sky, paralysed.

Two could cheat at this game.

Landing right in the lava with a showy flare of her multi-segmented wings, Tazithiel wriggled her tremendous rump down into the molten rock. She sighed, “Much better.”

“What was the score?” asked Riika excitedly, pulling a length of windroc intestines out of her hair.

“Eight to you, eight and a half to Kal.”

“Yes!” Kal danced an outrageous jig on his saddle as Riika let out a loud groan. “And you can just suck on windroc eggs–”

“But I’m subtracting one because you let a windroc bite my wingtip, Kal.”

“Naaaaah! Suck on a luminous flesh-eating slug, old man!”

“Unfair! I demand a recount. And can we get out of the lava, please? Boiling.”

Riika simpered, “Who’s a sore loser, then?”

“Pick your weapons, my fledgling apprentice, and I shall beat a lesson in black and blue upon your worthless hide!”

With blunted training blades, Kal and Riika clashed with a combined speed and ferocity that had the dell ringing and the Indigo Dragoness looking on with bemusement. Riika dented her adopted father’s skull with a flurry of blows, fighting two-handed. Kal returned the compliment with a crushing blow to her knee. The girl crumpled, only to fold up as if she were a contortionist. Riika slithered out from beneath his pounce to deliver a flurry of cobra-swift strikes to his kidneys. Kal lamed her left arm with a pressure-point strike and cursed unhappily as Riika kissed his lip with her boot-heel. Ten minutes of all-in combat later, they spun apart, laughing.

“I just healed up!” Kal dabbed his mouth.

Riika gave up her proud stance to bend over, panting. “You’re like a strip of goat sinew. You just get tougher with age.”

“Monk training,” said Kal.

“I went easy out of respect for an old man.”

Rajals take it, the truth stank, but it remained no less the truth. Riika had grown stronger and faster than he could have imagined. This only proved Riika had a soft heart beneath all that bristling Dragon-armour. Bah.

Kal said, “I practically changed your wet-cloths and wiped your snotty toddler nose mid-combat, Razorblades.”

“I’ll have to–” she coughed so violently that Kal moved over, putting his arm around her shoulders. His eyes flicked to her hand. Blood? She quickly clenched her fist and hid it behind her back; casually done, but he knew …

“Alright, Razorblades?”

“I missed our fun little sparring sessions, alright? Satisfied?” Riika straightened her back. “Dragoness! Where’s that hot spring you promised us, or are you too busy baking the reptilian brains over there?”

Tazithiel squirmed to her paws with a hiss of exasperation, sheeting lava off her flanks and spine spikes. “You two finished throwing four-letter words at each other? ‘Love you.’ ‘Love you too.’ ‘Love it when you break my ribs.’ ‘Oof, I really felt the love that time.’ ” She chuckled as her Human companions stiffened identically, her eye-fires swirling with bright yellow streaks of humour. “Aye, I used the L-word and it’s the truth, Dragon’s honour. And you both can just use that to whet your blades.”

Riika’s lips twitched, as did Kal’s. They shared a sheepish glance.

Kal said, “Never thought anything could sneak up on a pad-foot of my extravagant talents.”

“I should’ve killed you right the first time.” Riika grinned impishly, but a shadow of pain flitted across her eyes. “I sure messed up, didn’t I, Kal?”

He saw crimson seep from the corner of her mouth and it nigh destroyed him.

“Aye, Razorblades, you stink in so many ways, I simply can’t keep track anymore,” said Kal. “Let’s start by tossing you into that hot spring.”

* * * *

Elidia to Jos, the capital city of the Island of Jeradia, was a half-day’s Dragonflight under ideal conditions. Unfortunately, this late in the season, Jeradia had its own particular blight in the form of cool air that swept in from the Southwest and blanketed the Island in the most impenetrable, soupy fogs known to the Island-World; fogs so thick and hearty, Kal imagined his lungs clogging up with lumps of soupy air. Of course, mists and malefactors were the most excellent of friends, and not friends of the shake-hands variety, either. More like intimate bedfellows. Kal had accordingly spent many an hour cheerfully skulking about Jos during a youth which had included absolutely none of the finest education money could buy, no Island home for longer than a season or two at a time, nor any regular supply of actual food. Hunger focussed the senses. Starvation turned the mind into a dagger. Jos had been his training ground and his first stint in prison, aged seven.

Halfway to Jeradia, the mists closed in.

Ordinarily Kal would be piloting his trusty Dragonship, now abandoned halfway around the world. Tazithiel’s navigational instruments ranged from a homing sense, similar to messenger hawks, to directional senses, scent and even what she called the ‘song of the stars’. Riika had giggled at that one, provoking a minor bonfire from their mount, a prolonged case of the fiery sulks and dire imprecations about draping a certain impertinent waif’s guts all over the mountain peaks of northern Jeradia.

Kal unbuckled to stretch his legs. “Long legs and Dragons,” he groused. “You need to grow into your Rider, mighty Tazithiel.”

“What, wear myself in like a pair of old boots?”

Trust the Dragoness to conjure up exactly the wrong image.

“Like form-hugging leather trousers,” Riika put in. “You have to wear them in for a perfect fit.”

Tazi snarled, “I’d rather gnaw off my own tail than wear a flagrant, immodest scrap of animal hide like you.”

Kal had a most gratifying image of Human-Tazi in the backless Franxxian gown floating about in his memory. Oh, aye. Modest indeed. He was not about to call a Dragoness a hypocrite to her face, however, not when she was out-grumping a seventy-foot freshwater crab. Odd. What had riled her so?

Riika, however, did not know the meaning of the words ‘back down’. Widening her eyes as the Dragoness glared back at her Riders, she said, “A Dragoness in leather trousers? Wow, Tazi, I bet you’d turn heads so fast, there’d be a rash of male Dragons flying into mountainsides. Thump! Thump-thump … ooh, great Islands, you can’t wear that in public!”

“I have my own gleaming hide and I’ll thank you to remember–Kal? What is it?”

Kal sat. His hand stole to his Dragon war-bow. “I’ve the oddest feeling …”

“A feeling?” Riika snickered.

“He has them,” said the Indigo Dragoness, but Kal perceived a subliminal disturbance as she extended her senses into the surrounding mists. Fruitless, he thought. They could barely see the end of Tazithiel’s muzzle, never mind Jeradia’s sixty-league, mountain-capped bulk somewhere ahead. He rather wished Riika had not joked about flying into a mountainside.

Silence. Abiding quietness, the inkling that the Dragoness hung suspended in an endless dreamscape of mists. Lost. Soul-lost … Kal’s mind wandered, unexpectedly, to Tazithiel’s awful tale of how her shell-parents had sold her out to Endurion. He tensed. There, as clear as a cloudless morning in his mind, was an image of a massive, battle-scarred Green Dragon Kal knew for a fact he had never seen before. A devious smile twisted the Dragon’s ruined lower lip. Great walls of olive-coloured Dragon hide glistened as though wet with mucus or slime. Was he picking up images from the Indigo Dragoness’ mind? Was that even possible?

Danger!

His throat constricted. No word would emerge, so he thought, Tazi. Shields up!

She said, Kal, is this another of your prem–

TYRANTOR! ZUDANI! AZZARON! INFERNION!

At first, Kal thought he had seen orange lightning flash in the mist. Multiple Dragon-challenges deafened him, followed by a terrible combined impact that hurled Tazithiel sideways through the air. Heat! Burning! Wings flashed in the gloom. He shook his head; Riika lolled half-senseless between the spine spikes just ahead of him in their double Dragon Rider saddle, blood streaming from a cut above her left eye. The Indigo Dragoness flapped weakly, struggling to overcome the effects of that first devastating fusillade.

“Tazi–brace!” Mid-yell, Kal saw a Dragonwing of Reds plummeting from above. A hoary bonfire-red male thundered into Tazithiel’s shield from above. Despite her magical protection, the impact was an earthquake. Kal understood the transfer of inertial energies. Being battered by a quintet of unfriendly Red Dragons queuing up to hurl their tonnage at her shield was another matter entirely. Two further Reds crashed against thin air, yet the shockwave transferred to Tazithiel’s body or mind in ways Kal did not understand. The Dragons scrabbled at the shield with their talons and fangs as Tazithiel’s power denied them a taste of her blood.

ZUDANI! bellowed a hundred-foot female Red, firing a molten rock fireball at Tazi’s right flank.

INFERNION! resounded from above as another massively muscled male smashed into her tail-region, knocking the smaller Dragoness spinning despite her shield.

The naked savagery! Stunning. Kal ducked reflexively as another fireball roared over their shield. Then, he knew white-hot anger. Tazithiel might not be able to counterstrike, given the pounding they were taking, but he could. Reaching forward, he plucked an arrow from Riika’s quiver. Time to see if these Dragons enjoyed a taste of explosive gel.

Kal lifted his bow. Great Islands! Another Red lined them up, growling his name–Azzaron–as he surged toward Tazithiel’s belly, expelling such a gout of flame that the world turned to yellows and oranges. Kal felt as though the Red had tossed them inside a furnace. Yet, as he tightened his muscles in anticipation of the impact, the Indigo Dragoness rolled sluggishly to present a smaller target. He raised the Dragon war-bow, riding the rotation of her body, and …

AZZARON! Red Dragonflesh smashed into their shield, the impact made with the Red’s thick tail, Tazithiel slewing with the shock as the action seemed to slow in Kal’s mind … a half-breath to steady himself, fingers plucking the bowstring … the arrow darting a mere twenty feet across the divide to vanish, somehow, inside the Red’s skull. Down an earhole? Kal had no idea what had happened, but the Red stiffened as though poleaxed. His wings folded. The eye-fires snapped to darkness, as though an inner candle had been snuffed out. The Dragon fell into the gloom and vanished.

Where was the Green he had pictured? Kal screamed, Shake a wing, Tazithiel!

Shake a wing? It was more the tone than the idiotic content of his scream that energized the Indigo Dragoness. As another Dragon hurtled out of the gloom, a giant Blue, Tazithiel punched herself sideways with her Kinetic power. Kal’s arrow shot missed by the proverbial Island league, but so did the Blue. He collided with a Red Dragon below Tazithiel, setting off a chorus of snarling and snapping as the two Dragons inflicted their annoyance on each other.

Nice moves, girl! Kal shouted.

I am not a girl! Incensed, the Indigo Dragoness vented her fury on the next Red to approach as the enemy Dragons circled in the gloom, drawing closer, their mouths filled with roiling fire and their eyes burning a yellow mixed with streaks of crimson, indicating battle-rage, Tazithiel had taught him. Lightning sparked along the entire surface of the Red’s left wing, burning holes faster than the eye could follow.

You lie, Shifter scum!

This new voice silenced the others instantly. A flying citadel of a Green Dragon emerged slowly from the mists, massive, arrogant and commanding. Kal vented an involuntary curse. The Rider on his back suited the Dragon, a giant rajal of a man–probably Jeradian, Kal thought, eyeing the crimson cloak and black armour, emblazoned with the image of a crimson war-hammer, with disdain. Evil men always lacked imagination in clothing. Black and red. Useless decorative ‘dark master’ spikes on his shoulders, gauntlets and knees. A ridiculously oversized war-hammer hung from his belt. He wore a metal faceplate crafted to resemble a snarling rajal. And the boots? Evil, shiny black–what else?

Kal could not tell if it was the Green Dragon or the man who had spoken, preoccupied as he was with babbling in his mind to drown out a rising chorus of terror. He knew that Dragon. He had just seen the beast in his mind. Tazithiel knew the Dragon, too. Her body was rigid with horror.

The Green Dragon spoke, his voice a low, malevolent hiss. Aye, you tainted spawn of Dramagon, how well I remember your mewling cries when I corrected you; the scent of your terror and the way you trembled beneath my paw, as helpless as a newborn hatchling!

The Dragoness made a choking sound.

The Green thundered, I AM ENDURION!

Chapter 16: Ripped Asunder

KAL EXPECTED THE Green Dragon to attack on the wings of his ringing battle-challenge. Instead, the man on his back twisted in his seat as though someone behind him had rapped his metal helm with a hammer, while Endurion hovered, putting on his best ugly-menacing face.

What was that? The man’s eerie, hollow voice made every Dragon present, shiver. Quick, Endurion. I sense a disturbance in the aether. Dragons. Bring her to me.

Was that creature sitting atop Endurion even Human? Kal felt as though his armour had shrunk right along with his courage. Empty eyes. Yet they seemed to pierce a man. As the malevolent twosome withdrew into the fog, other Dragons encircled Tazithiel. There had to be at least a dozen beasts shifting in and out of the mists. First the burning fire-eyes, like lanterns on a foggy night, then the muzzle and the muscle-dense shoulders, followed by the great length of the Dragon. No other Riders.

Kal willed strength into the Indigo Dragoness. Courage, Tazithiel. Let’s fly this coop.

With a haunting cry, Tazithiel bolted for the heights. Dragons! She slalomed desperately around a trio of beastly Reds, a matched set of brothers who rained fire on the passing Dragoness. The Indigo cried out as an unseen power buffeted them, stalling her flight.

The Blue! She folded her wings and plummeted, leading the way with a titanic blast of lightning that seared right through the torso of a Red Dragon who had been following in her wake.

“Mistake!” Kal howled as Tazithiel collided with the Red, unable to swerve in time at that velocity. He loosed his arrows, a despairing child tossing straws at giants. “Come on, Riika. Wake up!”

“Ah … Islands’ sakes, what hit me?” The girl raised her bow shakily. “Alright. Alright, you slugs!”

Her small cry was lost in the thundering as Dragons closed in from all sides. Kal saw flashes of red and sheets of fire. Green Dragon spit sizzled past Tazi’s muzzle. The Dragoness screamed as claws raked her flanks, the shield failing under the terrible, repeated attacks. She squeezed away between two Reds as they savaged her wings, tearing great strips of membrane away from the wing struts and bones. Somehow, with a boost from Kal, the Dragoness reformed their shield. Sulphur and smoke burned his eyes, but he saw Riika’s arrow ricochet off a Green Dragon’s talon to blast a hole in an incoming Red’s neck … Tazi twisted away from another pounding attack, kicking wildly with her hind claws … they fought with the strength of ten, but the odds were stacked against them.

KAABOOOM! Sound punched his ears, a greater explosion than any so far. Strobe lightning lit the mists to their left flank. Kal glimpsed a vast wing in the gloom; talons like Dragon-lances shredding a Red Dragon with unbelievable ease.

Reflexively, Kal placed an arrow in the eye of a Blue Dragon champing at their shield.

GRRROOOAARRRGGHH!

A titanic Dragon-challenge broke like proximate thunder over the combat zone, sweeping five Reds away in a helpless, tumbling mass. So massive was the reverberation that many of the attacking Dragonwing froze, even in the midst of their battle-madness. Kal clapped his hands to his ears. Impossible. No Dragon was that huge.

Tazi echoed, “What the–”

Riika made a wordless squeak, pointing ahead at what they all saw. A purple Dragon’s paw slipped out of the fog, fisted around the head of one of the Reds–entirely engulfing his skull, spine spikes and all–and clenched, brutally. As the Red slumped, dead, the Indigo Dragoness gasped a fireball of disbelief. A tail snapped forth, as long and massive as any single one of the adult males and females attacking them, crushing a Blue Dragon as though a mountainside had taken wing and dropped upon the hapless creature. Ten-foot talons hissed toward a Grey Dragoness, amputating her right wing with a single blow.

Riika shrieked, “Go, Tazzer! It’s friendly!”

Friendly? Kal could not even swear, he was so stupefied. The shadow of that beast’s muzzle darkened the clouds!

The Indigo Dragoness took off as though she had been shot from a Dragonship war crossbow, but not before they witnessed yet another devastating broadside from the purple monster. Lightning! Crack-hssssss-crack! White-hot chain lightning leaped hungrily between the members of Endurion’s Dragonwing, downing four Reds in a single, concerted strike. Three dropped at once, their Dragon hides smoking from multiple rents; one simply exploded. Tazi panted something about the sheer beauty of that Dragon power. Her own, smaller lightning forked out of her throat, momentarily stunning a Green hovering in their path.

Tazi limped through the air, trying to pick up speed.

The drifting clouds parted for a second, revealing another half-dozen Reds and Greens ranged across their path. Riika groaned. Endurion and his Rider had been taking no chances.

Kal said, “Tazi–”

She gritted her fangs audibly. “No way am I giving up now.”

“You’re hurt–bleeding,” Riika said.

“I’m getting my Riders safely to Jeradia if it kills me!”

Go burn the heavens, little one, a disembodied voice rumbled behind them. Tazi leaped as though it had set her tail on fire. Fly to the Dragon Rider Academy, and safety. I must find this Enchanter.

With that, a salvo of tiny fireballs streaked past, narrowly missing Tazithiel’s wings as they homed in on the waiting Dragonwing. Multiple detonations blasted the Dragonwing to the four corners of the sky. The Indigo Dragoness swept through the veil of smoke and plunged into the cloudbank beyond.

“What in the hells was that thing?” Kal muttered.

“Dragoness, by her voice,” said Tazi.

“Dragons don’t grow that large–tell me they don’t, Tazi.”

Riika chuckled, “You scared of our little Tazzer, Kal?”

“I am neither Tazzer, nor am I little!” Pride infused the Dragoness’ wingbeats with strength.

“Only in comparison to the purple prowler out there,” snorted the irrepressible teenager. “She was beautiful–did you see the colour of her scales? Deep purple, like … gemstones.”

“Amethyst gems,” said Kal, feeling himself eminently well qualified to judge such matters, though he was unimpressed with the tenor of Riika’s admiration. “I don’t want to tangle with that freak again. Did you see it crush the Red? I mean, she squeezed its brains out like a rotten prekki fruit!”

“Charming image, Kal,” said Riika.

“Who was she?” Tazithiel puzzled. “I’ve never heard of a Dragoness of such stature that grown Dragons appear as a clutch of hatchlings before her.”

“Oh, suffering volcanic hells!” Kal exclaimed. “Gemstone? Amethyst? That had to be Aranya, Queen of Immadia.”

A reverential silence enveloped the threesome.

“Isn’t she dead?” asked the Dragoness.

“She’d be over three hundred years old.” Kal nodded excitedly. “Amethyst scales. Lightning and Storm powers, and did you see her fireballs? Miniature blue. That’s Aranya’s signature attack, isn’t it, the one the ballads–”

The thief gagged on his words.

Islands greetings, little Tazithiel, said Endurion.

The Green Dragon flanked them, barely a hundred feet off their starboard bow, his dark green scales glistening and steaming as though he generated a mist of his own. The Rider did not speak, but Kal felt his power, as dark and slick as old Dragonship turbine oil.

Filth! Tazithiel snarled.

Your Rider spoke truly, the Green continued. That was indeed Aranya, bane of the Dragonkind, corrupted Shifter filth just like you. With her skulking about I haven’t the time to wreak a leisurely revenge upon you, little Dragoness. But I shall enjoy watching you die. Prepare her for the opening, Rider.

The Indigo Dragoness’ defiant roar stuck in her throat. Suddenly, they were flies trapped in amber. The Rider’s eyes blazed beneath that black helm, and his power seized the Dragoness like an unknowable number of vice-grips, utterly inescapable. Kal could not even move his jaw. He could not swallow. All he knew was power pressing down upon them with the immovable strength of Islands.

The Green Dragon reached along his flank and drew out a weapon Kal had noticed before, a Dragon lance. No, this was a sword–a twenty-foot, glossy black blade with a hilt large enough for a Dragon to grip.

Handling the blade fondly, Endurion said, I call this the Dragon slayer.

The same irresistible force tipped Tazithiel into a vertical position, exposing her armoured but softer belly to the Green Dragon. Her limbs drew apart. Tazi’s wings remained outspread as though she were an insect pinned to a board, and though Kal heard her mind wailing in desperation, fighting Endurion and his Rider with near-insane strength born of mortal fear, she made no impression whatsoever upon his grip.

Causally, the Green Dragon lunged through the air. Deliberately. Holding the sword at the level of his chest, he plunged the weapon into Tazithiel’s lower belly. Her body tried to convulse, but the Rider’s power prevented her.

White pain washed over Kal’s vision. Tazithiel!

Sinking the talons of three paws into her torso and flanks to provide leverage, Endurion ripped the blade upward with a heave of his right forepaw, opening a thirty-foot gash in her belly. I’ve gutted deer with more effort than this, he sneered. Kal saw the perverse pleasure coiling in his dark eye-fires. Now, you shall die.

With that, he withdrew the blade before plunging it deep inside her chest cavity, exercising every ounce of his monstrous strength.

Intestines spilled out of the tear. Kal saw them dangling below her legs. Golden Dragon blood gushed forth in fountains. Her body, released at last, seemed to fold in the middle as Tazi clutched the terrible wound with her paws.

Speared through the third heart, chortled the hollow voice. Perfect execution, mighty Endurion. Best of luck reaching Jeradia, Dragoness.

They cast Tazithiel adrift, her eye-fires already fading.

* * * *

The Indigo Dragoness forced herself to fly.

There followed the longest hour of Kal’s life. Draconic triple-heart cardiovascular systems were incredibly resilient, allowing a Dragon to survive even a punctured heart–at least, for a couple of hours, until the blood loss became too severe and the Dragon went into shock. With every laboured, agonising wingbeat, blood pumped out of her stomach. Breath whistled from a punctured lung. Her intestines hung from the wound in grey-blue loops.

Then, they abruptly emerged into a patch of suns-shine between two fog-banks. Ahead stood the Island-massif of Jeradia, its jagged mountaintops shining resplendent against a backdrop of dark grey cloud. Three ominous layers–Cloudlands, fog and clouds above. Four distinct rainbows blazed against the dark backdrop, multiple overlapping arcs that mingled playfully in a glorious display of colour. Beauty to belie the terrible fate of those who would fly beneath their multihued archways to salvation at Jeradia, thought Kal, judging their position. Leagues away. Two hours minimum. Tazithiel was already too low. Too weak.

“Kal?” she whispered. “Need another … miracle.”

“Tazi, save your strength. Jeradia’s in sight.”

“It’s so dark, Kal. Is it night?”

Ahead of him, Riika dashed away tears. Kal said, “Jeradia’s just up ahead. Just a few more minutes and we’ll land, Tazi. You can do it.”

“You stealing … minutes again? Thief.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“First time you’ve admitted that,” she gasped. “Kal … no, don’t hush me. Listen.” She pumped her wings twice, before groaning and compelling her wings outward, into the gliding position. “It’s been a good Dragonride, hasn’t–”

“Tazi, no. You’ll make it. You will.” She shook her muzzle. “Burn it in a Cloudlands volcano, I’ll summon Fra’anior right here, right now. I’ll conjure up skyhooks to sweep you over to Jeradia! We’ll survive, Tazithiel.”

Golden droplets of the Indigo Dragoness’ drifted over the Cloudlands. Windrocs gathered in the distance, sensing the Dragoness’ distress, Kal realised.

Tazi said, “You always … liar … stole my hearts …”

“No, Tazi.”

“Will you remember a Dragoness who loved you, Kal? Will you?”

Kal bowed over her back. You’re the thief, sweet Tazithiel. I l-l … a pox on my stupid plank of a tongue! You are not dying! Not now. Don’t leave me, Tazi. I couldn’t bear it.

Thou, precious proprietor of my heart.

She whispered the language of lovers; old, poetic Dragonish, communicating such intimacies, it stole the very breath from his lungs. His heart welled up.

Thou art … he clapped his hand to his head. The heart! Of course! Tazithiel, I must get to your heart.

Inside my … Kal, if you fall …

“If I don’t? Riika. Raid that saddlebag. I need rope. Now.”

Riika’s expression conveyed utter devastation, but her slim brown hands raced to the saddlebag beside her left thigh. She sniffed hugely. “What’re you up to, Sticky-Fingers?”

“Heart-stealing. Tie it for me, Razorblades?”

They walked carefully back to the midpoint of her spine, where Riika rapidly fashioned a bowline knot around a spine spike and drew it taut. Kal gripped the rope. “Whatever you do, keep her awake and flying. Compliments, insults, stories …”

Her black eyes had never seemed more shadowed, not even at their first meeting, when she had tried to aerate his windpipe with the help of a dagger. Riika said, “Whatever it takes. Aye.”

Kal’s heart seemed lodged behind his tongue, as if he had swallowed a fruit far too large for his throat. That girl. Courageous to the core. Then, he rappelled down Tazi’s flank and saw the open lips of her wound, more than five times his length, a clean slice through layers of Dragon hide, muscle and sinew, exposing her entire abdominal cavity. Golden Dragon blood poured from the end nearest her muzzle, while her thick intestines swayed in the wind. Kal swung back and forth several times, building up momentum.

Crazy man. Her power touched him; wafted him into a roasting cavern.

Tazi, save your power. Get higher, girl. Please.

Thou, my Kal.

Where’s your third heart, Tazi?

Forward. Above the food-stomach, ten feet …

Kal had expected darkness. But her insides were luminous rather than disgusting, the unfamiliar organs and blood vessels and electrical and magical conduits and tissues each having their own delicate traceries, starlight dusted upon living flesh.

Even thy insides bespeak beauty, o Tazithiel, my star.

Poet. Her laughter, laced with pain, enwrapped him with warmth.

Kal shifted deeper into the oven-warm space, sweating freely. He clambered over a huge, soft sack–the stomach? Thankfully not her fire-stomach. He would have burned his boots to cinders. All the while, scalding Dragon blood sheeted over him, splashing dizzying tastes upon his tongue, its aroma as complex and redolent as the fragrance of life itself. Her blood gleamed as if seeking to paint her organs with the gold-leaf tracery favoured by Eastern palace architects. Everything moved. Pulsed. Kal followed the sound of her hearts’ booming beat into a narrow space above her stomach, squeezing his frame over a blistering mound of something–shock! He shouted in pain. Flying ralti sheep, was that her lightning power? He burrowed past, trying to curve his body away from danger but still earning himself a powerful jolt that left a black hole above his right kneecap.

There. Kal saw an armoured cage of bone-like substance sporting a two-foot crack from which blood jetted with each slow pulsation of her heart. The third, most mystical of Dragon hearts and the avowed seat of emotions, which harboured a Dragon’s fire-soul.

He could not plug that hole with his hands, nor could Kal struggle out of his shirt in such a close space. Chuckling an ode to muffled despair, he thrust his fist deep into the gap, struggling to stanch the leakage. Untold litres of blood squirted against his neck and chin, running away past his legs.

Fire! With a curse, he snatched his hand back. Unhurt? In the dim light, he could see no burn-marks. Yet it had scorched … convulsively, Kal shoved his hand through the armour plates and touched the pliant muscle of the Dragoness’ heart beyond. Pain! He bit his lip. Hold! Hold against the fire. For he must cover as much of the wound as possible. He squeezed the slit edges together. A scream bubbled in his throat, but Kal forced through the pain and the extreme heat sapping his strength. He held firm and prayed, though he might more comfortably have closed his fist around an ember in the heart of a bonfire.

Faraway, Tazithiel spoke to him, but the pain was too great. Kal searched deeper than ever before. He did not deserve anything, but she did. She deserved life. Justice. To fly against Endurion and destroy him. To laugh at the fates which had scarred her so terribly. He leaned his head against her heart-armour, surrounded by a Dragon’s fading magic, and for an endless time, fought to seal the gap. He wrestled with the fates for her life. He begged with words he did not even understand, for a miracle which he could not expect and a future yet to be imagined.

Her mental voice had vanished. Any moment, Kal expected to smell the dank Cloudlands closing over his worthless head; then, the agony of slow suffocation and poisoning would commence. Outside, he heard Riika shouting at the Indigo Dragoness, over and over, her words only audible in staccato bursts fired into the increasing gaps between each heartbeat.

Kal forced his hand deeper. Had he any magic to speak of, let it now be made manifest.

An interminable time later, Tazithiel’s body jerked. A series of increasingly powerful blows struck her body from without, crashing him about like dried beans inside a Sylakian rattle-drum. More Dragons? He could not believe it. But swiftly there came a final, almighty impact and the violent rasping of hide against stone.

They must have landed. Only, were they above the Cloudlands? Or below?

Chapter 17: Back to Basics

HESITANTLY, KAL WITHDREW his hand from Tazithiel’s heart, fully expecting blood to burst out. There was a trickle, but thankfully no further golden jets. He must have swallowed a fair few mouthfuls. Groaning, he began to slither backward the way he had come, listening intently to her heartbeat. Slower still. Though they had landed, Tazithiel’s ordeal was far from over.

Slithering over her food stomach–quite certain that he trod upon the horns of the luckless spiral-horn buck she had guzzled back at Elidia Island–Kal landed about where he thought he should find the slit in her stomach. No light.

“Riika? Tazi?” he called. Tazi?

Nothing.

Finally, a glimmer of daylight! Kal had a full-blown brawl with her stomach lining before managing to wriggle out. “Riika?” He wiped his eyes. “Are you alright?”

Riika stood pressed up against Tazithiel’s slowly-rising flank, about as pale a shade of brown as was physically possible for a Pygmy. Wordlessly, she indicated the sky.

Every drop of sweat froze upon his body.

With a rush of wind, the Amethyst Dragoness landed, generating a minor earthquake. Boulders bounded down the cliff from above. Dust blasted outward. By the set of her jaw, she looked aggravated. More than aggravated. Blood seeped from a gash in her muzzle and her gemstone scales were blackened in numerous places. Worse, she was every bit as large as Kal had suspected, which was to say, she dwarfed Tazithiel, who in turn dwarfed the two Humans suddenly standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside her. Her Dragon-smile revealed fangs an inch or two taller than Kal himself. Her jaws could have snapped Tazithiel in half. Comfortably. She seemed almost as wide as Tazithiel was long; all the sleek, sinuous grace of the Dragonkind accompanying an awesome, mesmerising presence.

Dragon monstrosity! Her size was too freakish even for the ballads. Her steps quaked the ground as she approached.

Kal whispered, “Roaring rajals, now there’s a slab of draconic majesty.”

Riika elbowed him viciously.

The Amethyst Dragoness’ muzzle swung down. One talon rose, shaking slightly, to point at Kal. She rumbled, “I know you, thief. Get away from that Dragoness!”

“Ah, your noblest draconic–”

Kal never finished his sentence. A swipe of her paw flicked him up into the air, wailing, over two hundred feet to a landing in a patch of jiista-berry bushes. He lay stunned for a moment, and then scrambled to his feet.

“Tazi!” he cried. “Help her–Tazi, I’m here!”

The Amethyst Dragoness’ muzzle jerked away from a contemplation of the half-Pygmy girl’s snackish merits. Before Kal’s horrified eyes, fire blossomed behind her spear-like fangs. He wanted to run, but his legs refused to obey any rational command. Her fireball would toast him before he could blink. Besides, there was nowhere to run. Two Dragonesses and two Humans fairly filled the small ledge on the side of Jeradia Island Tazithiel had chosen for her landing–a swathe of broken trees and bushes before the actual ledge attested to that.

Riika shouted, “You leave him alone!”

The Dragoness swallowed back her fire with an effort. “What, little one? Who are you?”

“I–I am R-R-R …”

“Peace. I am Aranya of Immadia. My quarrel is not with you.” The Dragoness engulfed Tazithiel with her right paw. Strength, noble Dragoness. You fought well this day. Even from his distance, Kal sensed the outpouring of her magic. “Now, I will take this Dragoness to the Academy for healing. Stand aside.”

“Not without me!” Suddenly Kal was on his feet, running. “Please … oh please help her, o great Queen.”

“Silence, villain!”

Fire blasted the ground at his feet; Kal dived, but not quickly enough to prevent his trouser leg from being singed. “I’m her Rider–please, her heart, you have to help her!”

Aranya snarled, “I am! I’m taking her away from you, foul bandit! You’re no Dragon Rider. I know who you are and I will take pleasure in blasting your pestilent presence off the face of this Island-World!”

“Stop!”

Once again, Riika’s scream appeared to arrest the Amethyst Dragoness in her tracks. Shaking her head in apparent confusion, she growled, “What, little one? Why do you torment me, o voice of my past?”

Riika stammered, “Great lady–Dragoness–Kal is not what he seems. Were you to know his story–”

“I would slay him as he deserves!”

“Please, take us with you. Tazithiel needs him and he saved my life. I beg you, noble Dragoness, for my sake if for nothing else.”

Her enormous fire-eyes burned darkly upon Riika and Kal for a long, long moment before new, whiter fires engulfed the darkness. “A boon, little one? For the sake of your ancestors and for the sake of your young life, I shall desist. Bargain?”

“Done and bargained for.”

Kal, just rounding Tazithiel’s head, saw Riika’s trembling hand rise to touch Aranya’s foreclaw. He yelped, “Never bargain with a Dragon!”

“Insect!” Aranya’s forepaw pounded a dent three feet deep in the soil and rock just in front of Kal. “Consider this my gift to you–your life. But you had better run far, little thief, for I, Aranya of Immadia declare this: you are my enemy and no Island is large enough, or far enough, nor is any cave deep enough, to shield you from my wrath.”

Argue with the Empress of all Dragons? Kal fell to his knees, watching helplessly as the Amethyst Dragoness scooped Tazithiel into her paws, cradling her as easily as a mother clasping her babe.

“You stay away,” Aranya hissed, flaring her wings.

“You can’t make me.”

“What?”

Riika squealed and tried to come between them, but Kal was too mad to care about his life. “You can’t take her. She’s my Dragoness. She needs me.”

Massive, fiery laughter shook the cliffs of Jeradia. “She needs you like she needs a case of the scale-rot. Try to stop me, little man.”

“I’ll burgle your precious Academy to get her!”

“A volcano guarded by a hundred Dragons and five thousand crack troops? That’ll be the day I vow to kiss your thieving backside. Fool. You were dead from the day you stole from me. You’d do better to start running.”

Spreading her wings, Aranya tipped off the ledge. Shaking his fist at her tail, Kal screamed, “You’d better guard that Academy well, lady! No stuck-up Dragon Queen is going to stop me!”

Laughter, wild and fey and sad, accompanied the Dragon-Queen’s departure.

Placing her hand on Kal’s arm, Riika said, “You should choose your enemies more wisely, Kal.”

He could not help himself. Kal covered his face and wept as he had never wept in his life.

* * * *

“Kal.”

He ignored the small hand that shook his shoulder.

“Kal, please.”

“She’s gone, Riika. Can’t you see that? How by any miracle under the twin suns are they going to heal that … mutilation? My Tazithiel, o my Tazithiel.”

“Aranya’s supposed to have healing powers,” Riika said patiently. “Can you help me? I think my shoulder’s dislocated.”

Kal rocked back and forth. “Leave me the hells alone.”

Riika began to turn away. Something blurred into his vision; pain exploded in his face. “Get up.”

“Freaking feral Dragons, that’s my lip–again!” She had kicked him, not as hard as Riika was certainly capable of. “Can you dratted women just leave my lip alone?”

She held out her arm–the good one. “Get up.” Kal scowled at her from where he had fallen. He did not appreciate her tight little smile one iota. Riika said, “You know, I’ve always considered Tabax of Telstroy a better sneak-thief than you.”

He favoured this with a noise that was extremely uncouth in over a hundred Island-cultures.

“As for Cliff-Fox Kazakka, I don’t know how you ever overthrew a villain of such extraordinary talent. Why, his solution to the Warlord of Ur-Garraba’s fortress was so novel–”

Kal interrupted, “An army of plague rats? Unstylish amateur.”

“Gaharag the Ghastly–”

“Snot-tossing son of a goat.”

“Dare I mention your illustrious predecessor, Laxurta–”

“Illustrious? He accidentally dropped a poisoned dagger on his own foot, the feckless fool. That’s one story they told you wrong–although I do prefer the version in which … ooh, you think you’re so clever, little Miss Manipulate-your-Islands!”

Kal leaped smoothly to his feet, making Riika scramble to avoid a not unintentional head-butt. He wagged his finger beneath her nose. “There will be due reprisal for the split lip, starting with setting your shoulder right.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less of the King of Thieves. So, Kal, what you planning to do now? Ouch!” Riika rotated her shoulder gingerly. “That’s much better, you bully.”

He surveyed their pitiful supplies–essentially, what they had on their persons since Aranya had flown off with the rest. He looked at his blood-soaked clothing and Riika’s drawn but determined face. Aye. She was right to kick him out of his funk. They needed a plan.

Kal was a master architect of grand schemes. What they needed now was concision. Precision. A swift decision. After that he would take that aerial arsonist of an amethyst animal and make a precise … incision. Self-hatred speared into his gut. Mercy, shut the blathering trap and get on with the job, fool!

He said, “We’re going back to basics. You and I will scale this cliff, however many miles it is to the terrace lakes, and slop through the swamps up to Jos. On the way we’ll figure out how to burgle a famously impregnable Academy guarded by a hundred Dragons, who are now helpfully forewarned and on high alert. Having rubbed their noses in the proverbial heap of windroc droppings, I intend to thoroughly spank the Queen of Immadia’s royal rump for stealing my girl. After that, I’ll skin that Green Dragon and his Rider alive and feed them to the windrocs. How’s my plan?”

“Eminently workable,” Riika lied with a blamelessly straight face.

Kal quirked an eyebrow at her.

“However, you are rightly notorious for possessing the most devious and despicable criminal mind in the Island-World, bar none.”

He beamed. “Did I make it clear what a perfectly splendid girl you are?”

Riika beamed right back. “Then will you please haul my perfect splendour up that cliff, because I can’t possibly climb with a recently dislocated shoulder?”

“Argh! You really are a woman, aren’t you?”

“And I get to call you a girl if you can’t manage to carry me up one little cliff.”

* * * *

One little cliff. Two and a half mostly vertical miles of unrelenting grey massif, tangled with vines, overhanging trees and prickly jiista-berry bushes. Climbing with scorched hands and trembling muscles, and a small but significant additional weight, Kal endured. He set manageable goals. The next bush. Circumvent this overhang. Do not slip and fall a vertical mile, which could be awkward. Meantime, he congratulated Riika on bringing Tazithiel to a safe landing. He berated her for not making it half a league higher and fifteen leagues inland, preferably just outside the city of Jos. Preferably in a perfumed boudoir with hot baths, fancy floral arrangements and a professional harpist on call? No mind. He was terribly sore about Aranya’s pinching his harp, however. Utterly inexcusable.

One and a half days later, Kal and Riika crested the cliff in suns-shine so perfect it seemed the deadly mists had been but a dream, only to face a three hundred foot terrace lake wall. Riika slipped off his back to examine the smooth, almost seamless barrier built of monolithic grey granite blocks. “So, teach me about scaling such ramparts, o master of infiltration.”

“Two words, my callow apprentice. Climbing spikes.”

Kal raided his belt for his trusty spikes and strapped them to his wrists with leather thongs, then affixed similar spikes to the toes of his boots. Riika shook her head. “The things you keep in dark and nameless places.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, young lady. On board. Now.”

Riika made a face. “You’re unstoppable.”

Kal chinked his fingers into the first hold. “I prefer the sound of ‘resolute’.”

“I prefer the sound of my boot striking your lip.”

He hauled the chatty parakeet up the wall with flexion after flexion of his strong arms, teaching her how to negotiate the smooth sections and traverse horizontally where needed to find a viable path. Despite his fitness, Kal was blowing like a corpulent ralti sheep by the time he reached the top.

“Only half a mile of lake,” Riika said brightly. “Will you swim me across? She’s worth it, Kal, I promise.”

“Aye? But I have serious reservations about you, Razorblades.”

A short walk along the top of the thick terrace lake wall, built in ancient times of stone so closely fitted that mortar was not required, brought them to an overspill gate. The mechanism appeared to have been rusted shut for centuries, but they found a good quantity of driftwood trapped there.

“Great!” Kal smirked, with the same false brightness that Riika had displayed a moment before. “I’ll take a kip while you paddle, agreed?”

After scaling and swimming two further layers of wide, mirror-calm terrace lakes, Kal and Riika plunged into the swamp beyond, fondly nicknamed ‘the Sludge’ by the locals. The early afternoon suns-shine vanished behind a veil of dank cloud, and the insects descended in their battalions to make Kal’s life a misery. Kal hated swamps with a passion that bordered on mania. They were always crawling with two of his least favourite classes of creatures–snakes and biting insects. Riika, cute Pygmy jungle-warrior that she was, did not suffer a single bite. She found endless diversion in teaching him the names of all the crawling, buzzing, hopping bugs that homed in on Kal’s evidently toothsome flesh, and her trills and clicks in melodious Ancient Southern were accompanied by a steady chorus of slaps and curses on his part.

“Che’ûka’xí,” she trilled. “Blue-shimmering trapper dragonfly.”

Swat!

“Toò’tàk. Borer beetle.”

Whack!

“S’x’xitoé. Ten-legged long-haired khaki caterpillar. Lays its eggs beneath your skin.”

“Ouch!” Slap! “Darn it, isn’t four feet eight inches of sweet Pygmy flesh at all appealing to these bugs?”

“Apparently not. Watch out!” A hummingbird-swift strike of her sword later, Riika held up her decapitated catch. “Yu’uàoe’tíl–the deadly purple-banded swamp cobra. Super-tasty. I think reptiles must like you even more than the insects, Kal.”

“You cut out that waggling eyebrow at once, you incorrigible cutthroat.”

“Did I mention an indigent Indigo? No, not I.”

“Bah.” Thwack! “Here’s a present for you–cha’a’aúta, was it? Some shimmering dragonfly thing?”

Riika plucked the hand-sized insect from his palm and popped it in her mouth. Chewing happily, she smiled, “Great! I haven’t had one of these since I was a child. Thanks, Kal. Your pronunciation was fairly acceptable, as well. You named it a giant farting warthog.”

With a sterling combination of Riika’s jungle craft and Kal’s blundering about being eaten alive, they managed to traverse the twelve-league swamp in a tidy two and a half days. That evening, they camped beneath a cluster of fruit-laden prekki trees at the base of the Jeradian mountains and burned bunches of happy, thriving leeches off their ankles with hot coals.

Riika hissed as another leech fell away. “So, you’re leaving me again, Kal?”

“Riika,” he sighed. “Look, they’re expecting me. Us. I want to penetrate their stronghold, get to Tazithiel, and try to arrange a place at the Academy for you. The problem, the sulphur-stinking fire-breathing permanently irritable of disposition problem, as always, is the Dragons.”

“Right. I’ll file my fingernails while you ply your craft. Is that it, Kal? Is that what my skills mean to you?”

“Will you let me finish?” Flesh sizzled as Kal attacked another finger-sized leech on the back of her ankle. “Firstly, I happen to care if my daughter becomes a Dragon’s snack. Secondly, I suspect I have a brand of magic which helps me sneak past Dragons. You don’t. Thirdly, I’ve saved an even more dangerous mission for you. One that may rescue all of our hides, especially Tazithiel’s. It most certainly does not imply sitting on your brains watching the mists roll by.”

“Oh?” Her elfin face screwed up into a cross between a glower and lively curiosity.

“Aye. You will travel to Mejia and find out who by all the volcanic hells that Rider of Endurion’s is, and what powers he possesses. You saw what he did to Tazithiel. What Dragon power is that? Not Kinetic, or if it is, Tazi’s power is infantile in comparison. Endurion’s all muscle and grunt, a green-scaled brute. His Rider is lethal; probably controls the Dragon, is my suspicion. And you will do your utmost not to get yourself killed. It’s as risky as baiting rajals, Razorblades.”

“Back to basics.” Riika’s smile in her childlike face was a thing of frightening savagery. Dragons could not smile better, not with fire licking between a hundred fangs. “You want to use that information to bargain with her pious purple majesty.”

“Great Islands, am I that transparent?”

She twirled their snake-on-a-spit expertly, making sure the meat cooked evenly. “I like being called your daughter.” Suddenly, moisture sheeted her eyes as she stared into the flames. “I’ll undertake this mission on one condition.”

“Aye?”

“I get to call you d … duh … d-d …” Riika spluttered to a halt, her chest heaving with suppressed vehemence.

Kal patted her knee fondly. “I know, Razorblades. I know.”

She grated, “Dad!”

He inhaled sharply.

Riika’s eyes were bright with wonder. “D-D-Dad! I can say it. Dad! Dad!”

A sweeter word the Island-World had never known.

* * * *

Jos was a town of ten thousand citizens and considerably more unofficial residents contained within three concentric defensive ring-walls, the tallest being the one that protected the rich district and the palace buildings from the riffraff without. Kal accordingly introduced Riika to a lesser-known route frequented by those wishing to avoid the town guard’s zealous notice.

“Dragons above?” Kal growled to his petite companion as they walked through the mile-long, dripping tunnel. “This Queen’s arm reaches far.”

Riika shrugged. “So a perfect picture of you is on another wanted scroll. What’s new?”

“It’s a perfect picture.”

“Not unhandsome,” she suggested. “The eye-patch, fake beard and limp should see you through. Nice swamp-stink, too.”

At a seedy but safe inn Kal knew, he ordered a room and a hot bath for them both.

“How’re you paying for this?” asked the Pygmy girl.

Kal bounced a fat, jingling purse in his hand. “It dropped off his belt.”

“A certain Dragoness might be interested to know how your standards are slipping, Sticky-Fingers. But I fear there will be more slippage required in order to execute your cunning plan.”

“I have a room for you and your daughter,” said the innkeeper, leaning over his counter to leer at Riika’s torso in a way that made Kal contemplate a murder involving meat-hooks, maggots and a week’s worth of screaming. “It’s comfortable and–urk!”

Riika held her swords behind the giant Jeradian’s neck, slightly crossed so that she could pull him down to her level. For a seven-foot-plus Jeradian, that involved a great deal of bending. Softly, she said, “I hope you aren’t suggesting I am anything but his legal ward, innkeeper, because I am this man’s daughter and eleven summers old. You know the law.”

“Never dreamed otherwise, lady,” the man babbled.

She held him with her gaze for almost a full minute more before releasing the sweat-beaded, trembling innkeeper. The twin blades zinged back into their sheaths.

Kal compressed his lips into a straight line. Riika in action! No wonder she had been such an effective assassin; her apparent youth and innocence combined with her unusual, striking beauty must have opened many a door. Of course, over the age of twelve Jeradian law was much more permissive, as their free society allowed a man or woman to have two consorts at a time, who were often changed according to a regular schedule. The crime the innkeeper had insinuated carried the punishment of the summary application of a war-hammer to a criminal’s head until, to quote, ‘a soup of brains spilled forth.’ Amiable warrior-folk, these Jeradians.

She took his arm deliberately. “Come on, Dad, into the bath with you. I can barely stand the stench of your wasting disease. Can you smell his rotting flesh, innkeeper?”

The man vanished behind the counter, making gagging noises.

Kal waited until they were out of sight upstairs to swat her backside. “You impertinent, crafty little minx!”

Riika marched down the corridor ahead of him, waggling her hips tartly. “Don’t touch. That’s a deadly man-slaying weapon, right there.”

He pinched his nose delicately, making certain she knew his opinion of her weapon. Chuckling like a pair of maniacal parakeets, they slipped into their room to bathe and lay their illicit plans.

* * * *

Ah, the simple things of life. Kal and Riika stocked up on provisions with the help of a special shop whose owner, a Jeradian giantess who stood half a foot taller and six inches wider than Kal himself, had known him since he had been a ‘snotty-nosed street beggar.’ Arrayed with everything from a selection of poisons to new hair-oil which furnished her black curls the gloss of a raven’s wing, Riika boarded a Dragonship for Mejia, leaving Kal to catch up with old friends.

“King Ta’armion!” the fat merchant squealed. “How did you get in here?”

“Silenced the hounds, hopped over the wall, put your already sleeping guardsmen further abed, picked your ridiculously crude window locks and disabled the poison-gas traps, which are an especial hazard to your children. I then took a route to your bedroom which I shall not reveal for professional reasons.” Kal smiled at the woman lying beneath her husband, pasty-faced with fear. “Fear not, o jewel of Jeradia’s crown. Lady Hiru-Vunya, is it? Your husband has done no wrong and shall not be judged this day. We did business together in the past.”

Kal jerked his gaze away from the noblewoman’s shapely bosom. Drat. Old habits.

“A vial of Helyon’s Heaven for your enchanting wife, Tarralion. Please accept this as a gesture of goodwill and my congratulations upon completing twenty-five years together this season past.” Some Jeradians being more honourable than others, in Kal’s jaded opinion. “May I apologise for interrupting what was clearly a most congenial interlude?”

“Helyon’s Heaven?” The merchant was still in squeaky mode. “But that costs–”

“He accepts,” said his wife, brusquely. “Tarralion, up with you. I believe this gentleman wishes to increase our wealth.”

“I do,” said Kal, with a bow so brief it made his Fra’aniorian heritage scream in outrage. “One hundred gold drals on my personal guarantee and your full, discreet support, Tarralion.”

“Two hundred.”

“Split the difference?”

“I’m negotiating blind, Ta’armion. What do you want?”

“Tarralion, take that handsome rogue out of our bedroom,” complained his wife, “and you, Ta’armion, if that’s your name, we’ll see the colour of your hundred drals on my husband’s palm or there’s no deal, and fifty more on completion.”

Smart woman. Kal said, “All I need is a Dragonship crew, a young ralti sheep and a windroc in a cage. Oh, and you’re going to fly the Dragonship high over hostile Dragon territory. Simple.”

“Not me,” smiled the merchant, patently slavering over the drals already. “But I know just the man.”

“OUT!” screeched his wife.

Gazing deep into the noblewoman’s eyes, the thief tested that most raffish grin he reserved for occasions such as this. In a gravelly voice suggestive of nefarious deeds of the night, he said, “You must love your husband greatly, Lady Hiru-Vunya. But for me, it has been the highest privilege.”

A startled glance at his wife’s dreamy half-smile caused Tarralion to leap off the bed as if Kal had indeed tickled his ribs with a poisoned dagger. He howled, “You bastard–OUT!”

Ah. He still had the basics.

Chapter 18: Dragon Foolery

TWO DAYS LATER, with a swift raid on the Governor of Jos’ menagerie completed, a Dragonship and crew secured, a cargo hastily assembled and certain sheepish preparations made, Kallion set off to test his wits against the foremost bastion of the Dragonkind in the southwest quarter of the Island-World. Tarralion had been as good as his word. Now it was up to the King of Thieves.

Swiftly, the Dragonship rose into the red-streaked dawn skies above Jos, bringing the famously rugged, trackless mountain ranges of central Jeradia into view. Beyond these cloud-piercing peaks, in the north-western corner of Jeradia Island, lay the most famous Dragon Rider Academy of all, founded by Hualiama Dragonfriend and once home to the legendary Pygmy Dragon. More recently the volcano had become the stronghold of Aranya the Star Dragoness, Queen of Immadia, when she was not fighting and warring around the Island-World, trying to keep Humans and Dragons from tearing each other’s throats out, and Shapeshifters from being persecuted by both.

Aye. The Academy, according to his sources, was arguably the most closely-guarded patch of land in the Island-World. No expense had been spared in constructing its defences, all Dragonship traffic was strictly monitored, and it housed a huge Dragon roost boasting closer to four hundred Dragons than Aranya’s claim of one hundred. Twenty-nine hours a day, multiple Dragonwings patrolled the skies above the volcano and scoured the territory for leagues about.

Oh well. They had not met the King of Thieves.

The King had recently bearded the Empress of Dragons, however–as bearded as the most beautiful woman in the Island-World could possibly be. The ballads compared Aranya to a perfect suns-rise striking the famed snow-capped mountains of Immadia. What woman living could be more beautiful than his Tazithiel? Silently, Kal beseeched the Dragons of yore for her recovery.

He unfurled a small, coded message-scroll, received that morning by messenger hawk from Mejia Island. Riika had arrived safely and had engaged a business associate of Kal’s. She would keep him informed. She signed off with a tiny drawing of a dragonfly. Subtle. Kal scratched his insect bites reflexively. Dad and daughter. Why did that idea sit about as comfortably as a monkish round of self-flagellation? Not because of her heritage. No, it was the responsibility. He had always shirked duty with the circumspection of a Dragonship Steersman skirting a feral Dragon. Now, a three-letter word–dad–hung about his life like a priceless manacle willingly applied.

They flew day-long to the western tip of Jeradia, high on a bulge near the top of the Island, from which Dragonships regularly made the long run over Yaya Loop to Xinidia Island. From there, it was a relatively short hop to his native Fra’anior. Having overnighted and whiled the morning away in trading, the Dragonship Captain raised the anchor in the late afternoon and adjusted their heading to a few compass points east of north, a course which would, coincidentally, take them directly over the Academy. Air traffic had to pass a minimum of two miles overhead. That posed a huge challenge for Kal’s intended method of infiltration.

Kal joined the crew as they slaughtered the sheep in the cargo hold. The caged windroc went mad at the smell of fresh blood, so he fed it drugged meat. Half an hour later the huge male bird was asleep, snoring stertorously. Kal rigged his insurance to the bird’s underbelly with great care, and then instructed the crew in how to wire its claws to the sheep’s corpse. He gagged at the slit in the sheep’s stomach; an image of Endurion slicing Tazi’s belly open played in his memory. Stinking windroc droppings! Concentrate!

Issuing his final instructions, Kal crawled inside the sheep’s stomach cavity and waited for the men to sew it up.

Three hours later, a finger tapped the sheep’s belly. “Ready?”

“Aye.”

“Got two dozen windrocs up there making a mess of the air sack. Dragon Riders have checked us and left, but Captain says the patrols are keeping the old fire-eye on us. You certain about this, man?”

“Aye. Proceed as planned.”

Aye, he would just commit suicide. Fantastic.

Shortly, he heard the cargo bay door swing open. Hoarse shrieks sounded outside the airship, along with the steady throbbing of the turbines and the shouts of archers defending the airship against its aerial attackers. Attracted by the sheep’s intestines, Kal thought. At least windrocs could be trusted to act in character. That was less than he could say for Queen Aranya.

With fresh air blasting into the cargo hold, his windroc stirred. He heard its wings, easily twenty feet in wingspan, scraping the cargo hold walls.

“Go!” shouted a man.

A bucket-load of intestines dropped off the rear gantry. Where fresh intestines went, so did windrocs. His conveyance lurched and suddenly, he turned upside-down. Out! Now he was committed to an act of utter foolishness.

Delicately, Kal poked a hole in the sheep’s skin with his dagger. The night was fully dark. Perfect. Just one moon aloft, if he judged correctly.

If he could pull this off, that would be a trick.

The windroc struggled mightily beneath the combined load of a grown man and a smallish ralti sheep, which was still large enough to hold Kal’s six feet and five inches frame in its abdominal cavity. He could have held a dinner-party for ten inside Tazithiel’s stomach. These quarters put his head between his knees.

Strike! Kal winced as a foot-long beak opened a hole near his foot. Smoking volcanoes, he had not thought the other windrocs would attack the sheep so quickly … oh, the little details that killed. His ride accelerated, plummeting through the air toward the lip of the volcano where it would fight over its meal. That was no good. Kal needed to hit that nice green lake in the centre of the volcano, which from two and a half miles up looked smaller than a brass dral and just as hard. The sheep shook and lurched violently as both corpse and windroc came under sustained attack. Kal tugged his wires. Excellent. The windroc reacted to a pricking in its right flank by swerving left. And now he could not see a thing.

Kal screamed as an unseen beak speared his right buttock. A storm of wind and pain blasted his senses. The ground was far, yet it rushed upward with frightening speed. He caught glimpses of a lake and a tall, deep caldera criss-crossed with open volcanic vents and circling Dragons; now a huge, rambling building of more stories than he could count, which had to be the school … another attack! Kal yanked his arm away from a marauding beak. Windrocs screamed all around him, probably a mob falling through the sky, he imagined, tearing strips off the sheep’s carcass all the while. What would the Dragons make of this–end it all in a huge fireball? Or would draconic disdain for windrocs win the day?

Tug the cords. Adjust. Lake, or rocky shore? Roaring rajals, now the windroc swung toward the school building. He was above the rooftops! Kal worked his crude controls manfully. He was blind again … excellent, back above the lake. Now to trigger the irrevocable insurance. A spring-loaded, poisoned dart plunged deep into the windroc’s belly. The bird shrieked wildly.

The fall seemed endless. Kal could not have guessed how long it took, but it seemed an hour or more before he saw green water rushing up toward him, slightly aglow, and he realised with a shock that he was plummeting directly toward a clump of half-submerged obsidian boulders. Stupid feather-brain! Kal hurled his weight sideways. Deep breath!

BLAM!

The sheep ricocheted off a boulder. Kal held his breath by sheer, bloody-minded will alone as a second impact came hard on the heels of the first. Warm water flooded his sinking prison. Unholy … his wrist was broken, clearly. A bump against his knee. At the bottom already? Rapidly, he sawed the sheep open, remembering to make jagged cuts to ensure that the sheep’s death did not look too artificial. Dratted windroc! Somehow, the water had revived it and the massive bird thrashed about, drowning.

A battering and some swift dagger-work later, he killed the bird. Remove the wires? No, he needed two hands for that task and his breath was running dangerously short. He reached for the straw in his belt. Crushed, of course.

That odd underwater radiance allowed him to find the boulders, however. Kal swam one-handed toward them, his lungs screaming for air, the blackness starting to crowd in. He popped the remaining inches of straw in his mouth and cautiously moved upward, holding himself below the surface with one foot hooked beneath the boulder. Unholy Dragon-talons, had he landed in this little water? Pop the straw above the surface. Breathe delicately. Do not disturb anything. After five minutes of recovering his breath and assessing the situation, Kal swam back to the flaccid windroc and weighed it down with a couple of rocks, those he could manage to move one-handed. Back to the boulder. More precious air.

Right. Time to earn his keep as a pernicious prowler.

Using the glossy black boulders for cover, hugging the shadows with body and soul, Kal raised his head above the surface.

No Dragons. His feet did a silent, watery dance. Freaking thieving genius!

Now, all he had to do was sneak away from several hundred Dragon roosts guarded by Dragonesses zealous to ensure no-one pinched their eggs or hatchlings, cover a quarter-mile of open ground to the buildings and find the Dragon infirmary where, he trusted, he would locate one delectable Shapeshifter Dragoness.

Kal spied on the Dragon roosts. Most of the Dragonkind appeared to have settled down for the night, but there was a constant toing and froing of fire-eyes up there on the cliffs of what had to be a daughter volcano within this single huge caldera. The Academy buildings climbed the rim wall to his right, a dizzying jumble of balconies and alcoves and interconnecting annexes which had more floors than seemed feasible–his hawk-swift estimate suggested two hundred levels, perhaps more. Quite the location. At least ten Dragons roosted on the school buildings, as best he could tell from the odd crack of orangey-yellow light spilling from draconic eyes.

A few men and women he assumed were Dragon Riders returned to their roosts, following a path along the lake shore some fifty yards distant. All appeared to be wearing similar dark grey cloaks with a silver buckle or brooch at the right shoulder. Kal eyed them speculatively.

Soon, a gentleman of excellent potential appeared. Alone, weaving along the lake shore, the drunk Dragon Rider slipped into knee-deep water. Kal moved over purposefully, as if he intended to help the man. Congratulations. This fellow was the lucky winner of his ‘become the victim’ contest.

“Fine night, isn’t it, friend?” He clapped the fellow on the shoulder, unclipping the buckle with a deft tweak of thumb and forefinger. “Easy, the path’s this way. Had a few too many to go swimming, haven’t you?”

“Thanks,” slurred the fellow.

“You alright to get back?”

“I’ll call my Yenisia if I need her. Perfect Green … so beautiful.”

“Pleasant dreams,” said Kal, giving him a friendly shove in the right direction.

Nice cloak. A touch short. Time to fool these Dragons in inimitable Kallion style. Affecting a slight swagger, the scurviest brigand of the Isles marched up the path as if he belonged. Indeed, he did. He was a Dragon Rider as much as any other in this caldera. The only difference was the price on his head and the messy pancake Queen Aranya would make of his life when she employed his tenderised cadaver for a doormat.

Kal walked up-slope from the lake, crossing a footbridge over an open lava flow, striving for that purposeful yet relaxed walk which proclaimed his familiarity with this place. The path wound between several open lava pits, probably used by Dragons for bathing, before climbing quickly to a wide, manicured sword-grass field that stretched up to the Academy buildings. Great Islands, how many thousands of students and staff did they house here? The place was a miniature city.

Stretching his long legs did not settle him. Kal felt preternaturally on edge, alert to the night’s slightest sound, to any shift in the breeze or hint of danger. Several times, he sensed the touch of a draconic gaze. Keep calm. Blend, merge, be normal. Ignore the pain of his broken wrist and his throbbing backside. He put his hood up as he had seen several of the other Riders do.

When he heard voices, Kal did not hesitate. Prepare a story. A swift subterfuge, for as he approached the edge of the field and a staircase leading upward to the buildings towering thousands of feet above him, Kal heard familiar tones. His heart sank. Jisellia!

Oh … he could use this. Judge her position. Rounding a corner, Kal increased his speed and deliberately collided with the young Dragon Rider.

“Great Islands, oh–Jisellia! Oh, forgive me, I never expected to find you here!” Falling to one knee, Kal seized her hand and began to kiss her knuckles most fervently, hiding his face effectively in the process. Jisellia squealed as the kissing raged unabated and more than a few chuckles began to rise from the group. Kal murmured, “Forgive me, sweet one, I should never have left you. You were kind, oh so kind and gracious, and I treated you with the most shameful disrespect and ingratitude.”

Poor Jisellia gasped and blushed, and then flushed so powerfully, he sensed the heat right down in her fingertips. “Kal … uh, Kalzion! Why, you smarmy toad, you two-timing, double-crossing son of a mangy goat …”

“I cast my worthless self upon your mercy!” Kal cried, drowning out her risible insults, yet at the same time, never more thankful for her quick thinking. “I abase myself, o sweet blossom, o crowning glory of Mejia Isle. But my consort was so jealous of your beauty, bitterly gnashing her teeth and weeping day and night–”

“I’ll have words with you, Kalzion! Come here!” Kal bit back an urge to kiss her properly. What a girl! She dragged him off a ways, growling, “You grubby Sylakian farmer! How dare you … Kal, what the hells are you doing here? They’ll kill you. Every student and Dragon Rider has seen your picture–the Queen literally spat lightning when she briefed the Riders. The order is to kill you on sight.”

Bah. That Aranya couldn’t find ice in the middle of a hailstorm! Who did she think she was dealing with, some peasant dunce turned pickpocket who constantly tripped over his own feet?

“How’s Tazithiel?”

“Your Indigo? Rumour has it she’s not yet woken up. Never seen an injury like it, they say. The Queen herself has been healing her. Tazithiel needs you. Of course, that’s why you’re here.”

“Aye. I could not leave my Dragoness.”

Jisellia said, “How can I help?”

Kal kissed her cheek, decorously but gratefully. “Jisellia, words fail me. You’re amazing. Tell me where I can find the infirmary, and direct me to Queen Aranya’s chambers. I need to set right a misunderstanding.”

He lied, but Jisellia did not know it. Kal listened closely as she gave instructions, holding her hand in the manner of old friends. He did not miss the special gleam in her eye. Kal mentally added Jalfyrion to his list of wrongs to right, after he extracted his own neck from the noose.

When Jisellia had given him the information he required, Kal melted into the night.

* * * *

Wrath drove him to Aranya first. What hope for Tazithiel, if he died? Kal knew his motives were selfish, but the fire that drove him seemed born of a soul he had never before discovered. Righteous fury, his old Master Ja’amba would have said. Kal shuddered, clinging to an ivy-clad wall ten stories above a small enclosed garden. Purity was not in his makeup. His soul was tainted forever. Yet could this Kal, this freebooter who wished for liberation from past misdeeds, carry through what he intended? Only when he saw her, would he know.

Kal wreathed himself in his old friend called shadow.

Using a climbing hook tied to his left forearm to make up for the loss of his hand’s use, he scaled the wall steadily.

Up to the mosaic crysglass windows. Kal peered within, seeing only darkness, but what he sought could not be seen with the naked eye. He obeyed a slight prickling on the nape of his neck. Not this one. Swiftly, he tried four windows. Here. This one was unguarded. With great care, Kal picked the window-lock and spent a good ten minutes examining the frame before easing it open with even greater caution. A mere change of air pressure could wake a sleeper. The faint susurrus of Aranya’s breath sounded right. Working his shoulders through the narrow frame, Kal scanned the floor. Cunning. A magical trap worthy of the name lay just below the window, exactly where an intrepid intruder’s feet might land. Easing his body to the left, Kal landed soundlessly in his tacky climbing slippers, right behind the drapes.

A further twenty minutes saw him ghost across the outer chamber, a study, toward the inner chamber. An open scroll upon her desk outlined the terms of her death-warrant. Slay on sight, indeed! Who by the sulphurous, ever-burning pits of Fra’anior itself did this woman think she was? The most powerful Enchantress in history?

Aye, so she was. Star Dragoness. Queen. Destroyer of the Sylakian Empire. Saviour of the Dragons. Aranya of Immadia owned not just a legend, but a personal library of legends. Kal palmed his dagger. Here came the test.

A delicate tracery of magic enshrouded her inner bedchamber. Aranya took no chances. Every inch of wall, floor, ceiling and doorway was guarded by faintly shimmering wards; if he looked closely, they appeared to be runes of starlight inscribed in long, intertwined sentences upon thin air. Poised like a spiral-horn deer sensing a hunter, Kal hesitated. No. Tazithiel needed him alive. Should he proceed with slaying the Queen, would it change his fate?

But Kal had not survived forty-four years of skulduggery and delinquency by playing the shrinking violet. In his world, there was always a way out, a miniscule chance which had to be grasped with perfect timing; the space between actions and consequences which, when navigated with finesse, yielded unexpected results.

Reaching out, he stroked a line of runes with his fingertip, breathing in Dragonish, We’re friends, you and I. I’m but a breeze passing through. Nothing to fear here if you will bend.

Not so much the words, but the attitude, the mental space he carved for himself. The runes yielded to his presence but did not set any alarm bells jangling.

Again he caressed the air. Dance with me, my magical friends.

Kal parted her protections like a shroud and passed through into the inner gloom.

Approaching Aranya’s bedside, Kal moved like a zephyr soughing over a mirror-calm lake, the barest hint of a ripple of existence. This was his skill. His power.

The woman lay sleeping with her face turned away from him, her Shapeshifter hair blanketing her pillow-roll and torso in all its extraordinary, multihued glory, exactly as the fables told–tresses of black and auburn, blue and white, ochre and saffron, and many hues besides. She was not a three hundred year-old hag. Oh no. In form Aranya was a slender woman, perhaps mid-twenties in appearance, but the hand upon her pillow-roll betrayed the slightest tracery of age. Impossible! She seemed no older than Tazithiel. Shapeshifters and Dragon Riders lived long, but this … he shook his head. Well, her legend ended here. If he could move. If only his hand would rise, but it seemed to be clamped against his side by a force more mystical than magical.

Kal knew he must not kill her.

Faint-hearted fool! Was he not the King of Thieves? A man never before moved by beauty or legend, who held nothing sacred beneath the twin suns?

His pulse crashed in his throat. Ears buzzing, every fibre of his being groaning with the exertion, he raised the dagger. Aranya rolled over, murmuring, “Mother? Is that you?”

No! Kal inhaled … a faint, aghast wheeze of breath. Scandal!

Her eyes flicked open. Luminous with power, jewel-like and oh-so-familiar, yet she did not appear to behold the would-be murderer looming over her bed. The thief held his breath, poised, immobile.

The Shapeshifter Dragoness’ eyes shuttered. She settled against the pillow-roll, smiling in her sleep. “Oh, Izariela, how I long to be with you.”

This changed everything. He had to move. Get out of this room, before he screamed and railed against the absurdity of fate. Tazithiel, oh Tazithiel! How could he explain? Only a lifetime’s experience drove him past the paralysing shock to action. He summoned the will to direct his hand to place the dagger, point facing away from the Dragoness, next to her pillow-roll.

A simple message: I chose to let you live.

Kal retreated through the curtain of magic, trembling with adrenaline and despair. Tazi needed him more than ever, now.

The foundations of her world were about to be annihilated.

And the crowning insult? He could never have her.

Chapter 19: Old Eggs

KAL DID NOT recall descending from Aranya’s window, nor finding his way to the infirmary. Low lamplight glowed warmly against a vaulting cavern roof, showing him an open infirmary some one thousand feet wide and twice that depth. There were many bowl-shaped beds for Dragons and their Riders, only a few occupied, and a more traditional section for Humans over against the wall to his left hand. The scent of acrid, tangy medicinal herbs filled his nostrils. But Kal had eyes for one Dragoness alone. Tazithiel!

She breathed.

A perfunctory check of his surrounds revealed no medical personnel present. Kal ran despite the jolting pain in his wrist. Tazi, oh, Tazithiel, I’ve come! It’s me, Kal. Darling Dragoness, dear one …

The Indigo Dragoness reclined on her left side in one of the open Dragon bowls. Someone had made her comfortable upon heaps of ralti furs, even mounding them carefully beneath her neck. Kal observed that the stitching along her belly had been recently removed; the wound was clean and neatly closed, and there was almost no sign or smell of infection. He knew Dragons healed rapidly, but this was astonishing. Her flank rose and fell evenly, but as he watched, her right forepaw clenched and she whimpered, perhaps caught in the throes of a dream.

“Are you Tazithiel’s Rider?” The Dragon’s fantastically deep voice behind his shoulder made Kal leap like a frightened hare and lose a good few years of his life. “I sense you are.”

A hoary old Blue Dragon loomed over him, blind in both eyes. Kal began to stammer a reply, but the Blue only chuckled in a slow, easy manner, “You’ve made your oaths?”

“Aye.”

“Then leave me to deal with the Queen’s rash orders, youngling. Besides, I like to make up my mind about people in my own good time. Go to your Dragoness. She’s been pining for you.”

Kal stared. The Dragon’s accent was Eastern, and he had four wings rather than the usual two. “Go to her? How?”

“My name is Yozora,” said the Dragon. “I am the healer here, and in my infirmary, even Queens must bide their turn. You will first whisper in Tazithiel’s ear and then make yourself snug in her paw. A Dragon’s palm is more sensitive than you may think. A gentle stroking motion here–” he indicated with his talon “–will communicate via the magical pathways of her being. Don’t dawdle, youngling. Even I grow antiquated waiting for you.”

“I … don’t know where her ears are.”

“Ignorance admitted opens the mind to understanding,” said Yozora, seeming pleased by this confession. “Those three holes on the side of her head are the ear canals.” Kal stood on his tiptoes to bring his mouth close to one of the fist-sized earholes. “Tell her everything is well. The balance of the harmonies in your lives is restored; together, you will arise as a fresh flame awakens from the kindling.”

Kal decided he liked the philosophical old Dragon, although he doubted his ability to deal with the Queen of Arrogance. He did not understand how Yozora had sneaked up on him, but perhaps blind Dragons saw more than he supposed. After whispering all sorts of prekki-mush nonsense into the Indigo Dragoness’ ear for a few minutes, Kal made himself comfortable in her paw as Yozora had suggested. A shudder passed through the great draconic body. Her talons curved about his frame, and it seemed to him that something within Tazithiel relaxed, for her breathing seemed less laboured and her heartbeat stronger than before.

Yozora growled, “Budge an inch from that Dragoness’ side, Rider Kal, and I will do to you far worse than Queen Aranya promised, word of a Dragon. If you need anything, ask.”

An abeyance, at least until the morning, when Aranya’s fury would bring the cavern down. To Kal’s surprise, cradled in Tazithiel’s warm paw, sleep stole him away faster than any master pickpocket had ever filched a wallet.

* * * *

“Kal.”

“Shapely … shapely-Shifter,” Kal mumbled, enjoying a most gratifying dream. “Kiss …”

Soft lips turned his insides to liquid fire.

“Great Islands, that’s so good … great Islands!” Kal sat bolt-upright. “Great joyful dancing Islands, where did you spring from? Tazi! Lie down!”

“I am lying down.”

A most agreeably nude girl lay on the pile of furs nearest his right hand, so serene. She had the longest eyelashes he had ever seen. His heart lurched so hard, he feared permanent damage had been done. All that remained of her wound was a puckered red scar running from her lower stomach up toward her heart. She looked pale and shaky, but he had to confess, alive was a beautiful state of being.

Kal buried his head against her shoulder, shaken by the storms ravaging his soul.

She held him. “It’s alright, Kal. I’ll be fine. Oh, what happened to your wrist?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s broken, you silly man.”

“As if that matters! How are you–why–what–are you?”

Her smile warmed all the Islands of his world. “You brazen reprobate. Must I wear a shirt before a coherent word will fall from your lips? Yozora came by this morning. I was awake … just watching you sleep. I thought I dreamed, but you’re here.”

He gripped her fingers, fierce yet fragile of mien. All he trusted himself to say was, “Aye.”

“He laid down the law,” Tazi added. “Apparently, a Shapeshifter must receive treatment in both forms before she can be fully healed. So I had to transform. Doctor’s orders.”

“Can I get you anything? Do anything? How’s the stomach? And your heart? What about–”

“You can get that bone set.” Yozora. A moment, please.

Tazithiel nodded off while Kal was having his wrist splinted and the windroc peck in his buttock cleaned up and stitched by an older nurse who clearly hailed from the humourless school of patient persecution. A medical student appeared to spread a blanket over the Shapeshifter and to giggle, pink-cheeked, at the location of Kal’s wound.

“Blasted windroc mistook my buttock for a hunk of meat,” Kal commented to the student. “I must look tasty. Do you think I look tasty, nurse?”

The walking battle-axe, a matron not shy of sixty summers and evidently more than accustomed to dealing with Dragon Riders, snapped, “About as tasty as a goat’s hairy behind, boy! Now lay down with your Dragoness before I lay you out with my fist, hear me?”

The dark Western Isles fist that waved beneath his nose looked well-used. Besides, the matron’s biceps were thicker than his thighs. Kal subsided meekly. “Aye, matron.”

“What? You calling me old?”

He could not let that pass. “Thou, o dusky Western Isles beauty?”

The matron clipped her gawping student efficiently over the earhole. “Ignore his honeyed lies, girl. And you, I’ll have none of your drivel and windroc-jabber. For shame, a grizzle-bearded old vagabond like you hooking up with that sweet fireflower blossom?”

Kal tried his signature grin.

The matron flounced off with a toss of her long, intricately braided black hair. “And keep your grubby paws off my students, hear?”

Just then, Kal heard thunder outside the cavern. Odd. Usually his weather-nose would inform him of approaching storms. He pulled up his trousers, trying to decide if it was worth risking the Matron’s wrath just to tease this student. Then he saw who was storming toward him, face set like the thunder without, and Kal managed to pinch the wrong part of his anatomy quite neatly as he fumbled to look at least partly decent for the Queen of Immadia.

“You!” Aranya’s voice shook the cavern. “Did I or did I not order you to stay away from that Dragoness?”

Tazithiel stirred; Kal knelt at once by her side, while from the back where the stores were kept, Yozora bugled, “Silence! Who dares disturb my patients?”

If ever he had seen a storm in motion, Aranya was that storm as she crossed the cavern with a snap of wind and a growl of thunder attending her queenly train. She wore a modern Fra’aniorian lace gown in Immadian violet, with an intricately-worked lace bodice depicting dragonets dancing over a volcanic lake, set off by a darker under-shift, with a train of just three feet. A plain golden circlet adorned her brow. Her hulking Dragoness prowled behind, the ghostly Shifter-Dragon’s emotions reflecting and amplifying those of the Human woman. But Kal had neither risked his neck nor his precious, throbbing buttock to be stomped upon, bullied or chargrilled by a stray royal lightning bolt.

Drawing himself up, he said, “Before you keep your vow by kissing my thieving backside, o Queen, I need to draw your attention to a bigger problem.”

Aranya snapped, “I saved that Dragoness’ life!”

Peaceably, Yozora put in, “Actually, his was the magical signature I found inside Tazithiel’s heart. He healed her first.”

“I did?”

The Queen did not even blink. “Nonsense, he’s a filthy thief and the leader of an outlaw rabble. I have not placed a price on his head and signed a death warrant to see my orders flouted, Yozora. I want him tossed out of my Academy, preferably into the nearest volcano. Now.”

Aranya spat sparks, but Kal did admire a beautiful woman in a towering passion. He could stir them up, couldn’t he? He began to speak, but the aged Blue cut him off effortlessly. “He and the Indigo Dragoness are oath-bound. I say he stays for her healing. Look into the Dragoness, milady, and know it for yourself.”

Aranya’s eyes dipped. Kal had no need of the tremor of her hands, nor her soft gasp to betray the moment of recognition, for the peal of thunder that shook the school had to wake every man, woman and child for miles around. Tazithiel’s eyes snapped open. Focussed on Aranya’s face. The thief caught his breath. In a second, there came a second crash of thunder, a smaller daughter-echo of the first.

A silence developed which was so deep and powerful, it was as if a Dragon had taken them each by the throat and squeezed with its paws. Mirror-souls, mirror-persons. They were unquestionably of the same lineage, for Kal perceived Aranya and Tazithiel as identical twins in feature and form, the only differences being the hair and eyes, and Tazi’s dusky skin-tone to Aranya’s much paler Northern looks. Indigo eyes locked with amethyst. Tazithiel’s distinctly night-blue locks, identical in abundance and the exact same volume of wave and curl, matched Aranya’s multi-coloured Shapeshifter heritage. Otherwise? Not even a master gemstone assessor could tell these two jewels apart. Kal found the effect disconcerting.

Tazithiel’s fingers rose, wondering, to touch Aranya’s cheek. “How?”

The Immadian was humbled. Broken. Tears welled and spilled. “I never imagined my lost egg would come home,” Aranya whispered.

Yozora said, “This is what your Balance power suspected, great lady. The harmonies between your magic and hers now blaze before me. Shell-mother to shell-daughter. Tazithiel is your kin, the offspring of your loins.”

Deep puzzlement creased Tazi’s brow. “I don’t understand. Kal … oh Kal, what does this mean?”

He cleared his throat. “I rather suspect you’re a long-lost Princess of Immadia, Tazithiel. You do look weirdly alike, almost royal sisters. I imagine that your Mejian shell-parents always knew you were not their egg, or someone switched … eggs? Is that possible?”

“Aye, your heritage is of Immadia,” said the Queen.

The Indigo Dragoness’ knuckles whitened against her blanket. “And you signed a death warrant for my Rider–did I hear right, mother, if a creature like you may be called ‘mother’?” Yozora tried to hush her, to calm her down, but Kal could have told the Blue he might better have tried to bottle a Cloudlands tempest. Tazi snarled, “How exactly does a Dragoness lose an egg? Just what kind of a mother are you, mighty Star Dragoness?”

Aranya choked out, “One who has laid fourteen children untimely in the grave, child, and seen many more pass on. A mother soul-shadowed by grief.”

“And you lost me?” Tazi coughed, choked and clutched her stomach with a low groan. Sweat broke out on her forehead; Kal tried to hold her, but she shoved him aside with strength born of fury. “Answer … how could you not have known?”

“I remember that day.” The Queen’s whisper was a desert of desolation surrounding a green oasis of hope. “One hundred and twelve years, three months and four days ago it was. In Herimor. I know not how your egg came to join us north of the Rift, shell-daughter. I was gravid with my seventh clutch of nine. A double-clutch.”

“How many children do you have, lady?” Kal blurted out.

Muted now, Aranya’s tones took on the lilt of her native Immadia. “Thirty-six, I thought–but now I know the number for thirty-seven. Thirty-six have passed on to the eternal fires; one was lost, but now she is found. There is a beast of Herimor they call the guzzar-guzzak, which translates as–”

“The egg thief.” Tazithiel turned her head away.

“It’s a type of Dragon which possesses a magic ancient even among the Dragonkind, a magic of shadow and deception, as is so much of Herimor’s magic and heritage. It’s odd.” She smiled, but there was such a well of sorrow in her expression, Kal feared he might drown. As he encircled Tazithiel with his arms, she shook as though a hammer had tapped a knell upon her spirit. Aranya said, “If you cast your mind back to your eggling-dreams, Tazithiel, you’ll probably remember that moment. I was never certain about the number of eggs in my clutch. Dragonesses lay three eggs in a clutch, you see. A double-clutch is highly unusual. Seven? Unheard-of … yet it must have been.”

The Indigo Dragoness seemed frozen. Kal could not imagine what she was thinking.

“At the time, I was struck down by a magical Shapeshifter illness. That is when the creature discovered me. I was never certain what I dreamed in my fever-dreams, for I sensed an unborn eggling cry out to me, just once. Then it vanished.”

Aranya touched her sleeve to her eyes. “My late husband, the Shadow Dragon, thought me mad. He was too old to join me, but I searched fruitlessly for seven years.”

“So, I get to call you old woman?” Kal touched Tazi’s cheek tenderly.

“Don’t! Don’t believe her lies, Kal!” Tazithiel cried. Aranya twitched as though struck across the face. “She abandoned me. As if a Star Dragoness couldn’t find her own egg!”

The Immadian Queen began to say, “Star Dragon eggs have a way of–”

Tazithiel screamed a word in Dragonish; a word that burned Kal’s mind with dark fires, bitter on the tongue and bitterer on the soul. He had never heard a Human throat utter such a sound, for all intents and purposes, a death-rattle.

“Tazi!” Kal clutched her close.

Her chest heaved as though she intended to vomit. Instead, Tazithiel shrieked, You’re no mother of mine! Get out of my sight! OUT!

The blast of her Storm power knocked Aranya off her feet, but Kal suspected she had chosen to accept the blow as a kind of penance. Tazithiel began to scream again, but a bloody froth blew off her lips. Yozora, swooping with startling speed for a venerable Dragon, laid his paw across her back as his power poured forth. Tazi slumped in his arms, unconscious.

Kal stared at Aranya. The woman looked haunted, as though that scream had ripped her soul from her body and tossed it into the Cloudlands. She scrambled to her feet, turned and fled.

He thought to feel vicious satisfaction. Instead, there was only grief.

* * * *

The following day, he and Aranya met briefly at the entrance of the infirmary.

“How is Tazithiel?” asked the Queen, as grey as the cloudy skies. For the first time, she threatened to look her age, Kal thought uncharitably.

“Better. Yozora’s pretty upset, though. He says you had no right–”

“I have every right!”

“Do you?”

Aranya’s hands clenched at her sides. Her definite chin lifted, so much a mirror of Tazithiel’s mannerism, Kal wanted to laugh. Stubborn as Island-foundations, the pair of them. “I will not rescind my death warrant. Step outside this cavern, and I will have you executed.”

“I spared your life, in case you hadn’t noticed,” said Kal.

“Couldn’t find the courage?” Aranya jeered. If only she knew, but he could not say it. She already thought the worst of him. “I spared yours, which makes us even. You don’t want me as an enemy, Kallion of Fra’anior. I remember that boy from Immadia. You stole something indescribably precious to me and by all reports, you have not been a good man for a single day since. Quite the opposite.”

Kal bristled, “Who appointed you Justice of the Island-World and arbiter of good and evil? Besides, if I want to leave this cavern, I will. A hundred Dragons including you and all your Star magic couldn’t stop me, as already proven.”

“You … Gi’ishior?” she gasped.

A smirk played about his lips. “I decline to answer your baseless accusations, o Queen.”

“I will not stand for these insults!” Lightning haloed her hands; but Aranya did not strike. “For my daughter’s sake alone, Kal, I will swallow your disrespect. You have her ear. You will convince Tazithiel that she requires training–with me. Or that filthy Green will have his filthy way with her again, and there’ll be nothing I can do to stop him.”

His blood boiled. Insults, aye. But the mention of Endurion made all manner of murderous, vengeful feelings swamp his rational mind. Words spilled out. “I’ve been the one training your daughter. And, I’m pleased to report, she is truly talented on the pillow-roll. An exceptional student.”

Freaking windrocs! That came out so obnoxious, he impressed even himself.

The colour of Aranya’s rage threatened to overwhelm the rather fetching shade of her amethyst-coloured Helyon silk dress.

But he did need information. “Sorry,” he growled. “I’m just riled. Look, lady, can we reset this whole business? I do respect who you are but I don’t know you, and you don’t know me.”

The amethyst eyes bored into his. Beauty, power, majesty–Aranya really was all the legends said she was, Kal decided. He began to feel a feather-touch upon his mind, but it seemed the Immadian Enchantress withdrew. Perhaps she knew the temptation of power. She must know it better than any person alive; the restraint of that power, he could also respect.

“I will offer you a boon,” he said. “A peace offering.”

“In exchange for what?”

Kal swallowed as new-model Kal’s mind served up an option the King of Thieves would have laughed off the Island in an instant. Curse this conscience that kept intruding at the most inopportune moments! He wrestled with the idea, beat it with a mental stick and booted it brutishly in the tender parts where such ideas deserved to be booted. Bah! The notion only surged to the fore, tenfold stronger.

“Goodwill,” he gritted between clenched teeth.

“Done and bargained for,” rapped the Queen. With her ability to mask her emotions, Kal decided, she could make a master card-player. “What do you offer?”

He hauled a Fra’aniorian bow out of the threadbare closet of those manners he reserved for moments of genuine emotion. On second thoughts, he sank to one knee and bowed his head. “O great Queen, I offer you the scale of a White Dragoness.”

Aranya’s expression registered only disdain, but her hand shook so hard she could barely accept the gift. With a nod, she withdrew.

Following after the Queen with his eyes, Kal believed she was crying.

Chapter 20: Thief at School

TRY AS HE might, Kal could not shake the spectre of an Amethyst Dragoness who had shouldered her way between him and Tazithiel. Shell-mother and daughter passed terse messages to each other through Kal or by messenger monkey until Tazi ordered him not to leave her side again. Kal felt like a sliver of meat mashed between a huge slice of sweetbread on the one side and a titanic one on the other. Despite the fact that Aranya’s Dragoness was three hundred and forty feet long and could peer into the twelfth story of an Academy building without trying, Tazithiel stymied her mother’s every action or overture. How alike they were in verve, obduracy and beauty!

The feud developed with the speed of a Dragon hatchling learning to fly. The mere mention of Immadia became enough to tip Tazithiel into a towering rage. She chafed at the speed of her healing. She suffered Aranya to apply her healing power, only to find snide ways of snubbing her mother every time the Queen attended her bedside.

Kal wore as thin as an aged scrolleaf.

Thus, it came as a huge relief to him to receive a message hawk from Riika nine days after he had burgled the Academy and apparently enflamed every Dragon within a hundred leagues as the story of his daring stunt leaked out, triggered by a Dragoness fishing the stinking, bloating corpse of a ralti sheep out of an ostensibly sacred lake. Kal shrugged. “Oops.” Aranya, who had come by one evening to lay the charge, stalked out of the infirmary, ripped her priceless dress to shreds as she transformed, and lit the entire league-wide caldera with a fireball that had to rival an erupting volcano.

Kal yelled something snarky about her still owing him a butt-kissing; Tazithiel laughed so hard that Yozora had to come and administer painkilling herbs and magic.

Aranya’s Dragon-rage was a phenomenon of majestic intimidation.

“Back before you know it,” said Kal, patting Dragon-Tazithiel next to her eye. “Rest up while I go smuggle my daughter into this den of fiery conceit.”

“I am rested.”

Knowing better, he still had to try. “Tazi–”

Low, volatile fires rumbled in her belly. Finally. He had not heard that healthy sound since Endurion had struck her down. Yet Kal knew her anger burned against him, never far from the surface, for Tazi knew he meant to mention Aranya one more time. Never had he imagined that discovering her true mother would affect the Indigo Dragoness in this way.

He waved casually. “May you drool over naked thieves dancing through your dreams to filch your incomparable scales, thereby furnishing a new industry in jewellery-making.”

Tazi pushed him along with a waft of hot hair. “Fly strong and true, my Rider.”

Kal flew as far as the entrance to the Dragonship landing field, where a smirking soldier informed him that a certain Kallion of Fra’anior was banned from leaving the volcano. Queen’s orders. Oh, and she was away for a week. Kal flung a stone at an unsuspecting purple-banded parakeet on his way back, and felt a crass fool for doing so. The bird was only singing. What he needed was a bigger bird.

His gaze veered to the smaller trio of volcanoes–smaller being relative, since their peaks had to be at least a mile tall–with alert interest. Aye. A bigger bird.

Late that evening, a troupe of sweating labourers lugged a cart full of ralti furs, which by marvellous coincidence just happened to be destined for Jalfyrion’s roost, all the way from the complex of storage caverns beneath the Academy buildings, across the field, down the winding path, past the green lake and four thousand feet up the mountainside. Kal rode inside like the King he was. He liked this method of stealing about. Much better than actual exertion. And so he passed once more beneath hundreds of unsuspecting draconic noses.

“Sheepskins?” Jisellia sounded puzzled. “Jalfyrion’s sleeping–I guess he placed the order.”

“You did. Says so on this scroll,” said a male voice, the one who had griped his way up the mountain with a never-ending, never-repeating stream of invective. Kal thought he had heard every colourful curse known to a Jeradian, including all its surrounding Islets. He had thought wrong.

Jisellia said, “Park your cart. I’ll deal with it.”

“Sign here, lady.”

Quill scratched on scrolleaf; the men departed.

Silence. Hmm. Kal contemplated wriggling out from beneath the load, but he needed to be certain those men had truly left. Perhaps a nice nap was in order. He could sneak up on Jisellia at his leisure.

That was when a Dragon’s paw tipped out the cart, dumping Kal on his head.

“Aha!” shouted the Rider. “Caught.”

“Ouch. What way is this to greet a friend?” he complained.

Jalfyrion’s expression suggested he had discovered a rat hiding in his bed. “You’re like a curl of sulphurous smoke, impossible to grasp in one’s paw! We Dragonkind plan to teach you a long overdue lesson.”

“If you Dragons weren’t all sleeping with your fire-eyes open–yie!” The clash of fangs almost trimmed his stubble.

Jisellia leaped between them. “Stop!”

The Red Dragon snarled, “By the First Egg, he dares insult the Dragonkind.”

Perhaps insolence was not the most advantageous way to ask for help. Bowing very deeply, Kal gripped his dignity by the scruff of the neck and essayed, “My esteem for the Dragonkind grows hourly in this place, o formidable Red Dragon. The wiles of a master peculator with four decades of experience have barely sufficed to succour my insignificant Human presence from the raging splendour of all the fire-souls which surround me.”

“He vexes and flatters in the same breath,” Jalfyrion purred.

Jisellia rolled her eyes. “What maverick nonsense are you intent on perpetrating in our roost, Kal?”

He glanced about the Dragon roost, curious to see how Dragons lived with their Riders. Vaulting, curtained crysglass panels framed the entryway, which led to a spacious chamber built to house a Dragon. Jalfyrion evidently slept in the outer chamber, from which position he could best protect his Rider, Kal noted. Several other chambers led off the main living space, some sized for a Dragon, some for a Rider.

Jisellia, with a coy bow, said, “Ablutions through there. That’s our cooking alcove in the back, complete with cold storage to keep large quantities of meat fresh. When I’m not sleeping in here, beside Jalfyrion’s neck, I have a private chamber through those hangings.”

“I love your paintings,” said Kal, admiring several sprawling works. The detail was exquisite; the Dragons so lifelike they almost flew off the canvas. “Who’s the artist?”

“Your nemesis.”

“Uh–Aranya?”

Jalfyrion growled, “Most of us address the Amethyst Queen with a modicum of respect, Rider Kal. What do you seek here? State your purpose without fancy words.”

“I ask your aid to help me fetch my daughter Riika from Jos, to bring her back to the Academy.”

“A daughter, Kal?” Jisellia turned to her Dragon. “What say you, Jalfyrion?”

After his opening mini-lecture, Kal expected an even fierier response from the Red. Instead, he fixed his burning gaze upon Kal. “This strikes me as a worthy pursuit. Illegal, but completely worthy.”

Jisellia’s annoyance evaporated; she bounced on her toes, saying, “I fear you may just have spoiled our boredom, Kal, with a nefarious yet irresistible proposal. Consider us your students. How do you propose to fly out beneath the eyes of all those Dragons out there?”

“Saddle baggage.”

* * * *

“You are nothing if not old baggage, Dad,” said Riika, once she had dispensed with the embarrassing business of being hugged. “And you smell like a sack of mouldy old boots.”

Grimy but happy-looking, Riika met them as arranged at the Dragonship port outside of Jos. Kal scratched his beard with unwarranted vigour. When he was young, any old field passed for a Dragonship port. Now there were gantries and assigned landing bays, a busy cargo operation and even an area cordoned off for Dragons–fireballs and hydrogen dirigibles tending to mix with unhappy results for anyone stuck within the blast-radius. Kal’s businesses had recently hired several unfussy Dragons to act as fast couriers between Islands, a highly profitable side-line.

Bah. Who cared for drals? He had a daughter.

“Dad!” A Pygmy-sharp elbow bruised his ribs. “I’ll teach a windroc to peck that silly smile.”

“Jalfyrion, Jisellia, may I introduce my daughter Riika. I can’t stand the little harridan, but I suppose I have to do my duty.”

The Red Dragon blinked, clearly misinterpreting a Human’s sarcasm, but Jisellia laughed brightly, “She does look like you. It’s the air of incessant mischief and the diamond spear of a chin, methinks.”

Kal and Riika both growled, “Hey!”

“Unexpected depths to your Island, Kal,” said his fellow-Rider, touching his arm familiarly. He distinctly heard Jalfyrion’s belly-furnace protest the action. “Alright, Jalfyrion? A haunch of meat or a drink before we go re-burgle the Academy?”

Kal suspected the Red Dragon would rather tear a strip off his Rider. Bah. That was Jalfyrion’s fault, and the Dragon could just stew in his own juices for all Kal cared.

Riika said, “I’ve sourced information, none of it promising. I take it you haven’t resolved anything at the Academy?”

“Not a whole lot, no,” Kal admitted. “Tazi hates Aranya, the arrogant Amethyst still wants to run her foreclaw through my chest, all of the Academy Dragons loathe my guts and it appears that our Indigo Dragoness is a lost Princess of Immadia who also happens to be Aranya’s shell-daughter. How am I doing thus far?”

He collapsed in stitches of laughter at Riika’s expression.

* * * *

Fed and watered, Jalfyrion hurled himself at the bright afternoon sky as though he personally wished to assault the moons and smash them between the Islands. Kal marvelled at the differences between Dragons. Jalfyrion was all muscle and power, beating the air with every wing-stroke as if it had caused him grave affront. Tazithiel was hot quicksilver flowing over diamond edges. She had power. Aye, there was a truth, yet she possessed a fiery sinuosity of flight-expression that to his mind, elevated her above any other Dragon he had seen fly. Old-Kal used to despise comparisons. He drove himself beyond the Islands to prove he was not as other thieves, perhaps afeared of being thought common. He was cleverer. Bolder. More brutal.

Now, he learned from comparisons. Seeing Tazithiel alongside her mother allowed him to glimpse a vision of what she might become. Pride, passion and power. It killed him to see pain and bitterness consuming her life, for as she healed in body, the wounds of her soul seemed only to fester.

Riika’s journey to Mejia had been difficult, but successful in part. She reported that Endurion led a group of Dragons based at a huge, ancient roost upon an Island-spit half a league off the mainland. They were avowed adherents of draconistic philosophy, which in its simplest expression asserted the innate superiority of Dragons over Humans. They followed the old traditions, including the oppression of a Human slave population, regular sport in the form of razing Human villages and slaying unwary travellers, and disrupting Mejia’s trade with other Islands. But their entertainment of choice consisted of preying upon Shapeshifters. They had honed their killings to a terrible pitch of efficiency, as Tazithiel knew all too well.

“Assassins!” spat the Red Dragon. “They model themselves upon the Dragon Assassins of yore!”

Endurion’s Rider remained a mystery, therefore–both his origins and the fact that these Dragons appeared to follow his lead unquestioningly. “Word is he’s an Enchanter or Shapeshifter from the East,” Riika explained. “He’s called Talon. Theories about his true power or nature abound. But I discovered several fascinating snippets of information. One, Talon has mind-powers, as we know, but this power manifests in a peculiar way. He appears to have uncovered an ancient scroll of powerful magic called Ernulla-kul-Exarkin. Does that mean anything to you, noble Jalfyrion?”

He shook his muzzle. “Sounds like Old Dragonish to my ear, little one, and I am no scholar. I’d hazard a guess from the word-root that it has to do with hands or paws. How did you get someone to reveal this?”

“I … encouraged his free speech.”

Kal winced; Riika, peeking out of her saddlebag beside Jisellia’s left thigh, made an apologetic clucking sound with her tongue. “Sorry, Dad. But I judged it important.”

Jisellia’s white-knuckled grip on her saddle horn suggested she did not want to know. Kal did. She meant torture. The Guild of Assassins were renowned for their ability to turn the unwilling into loquacious informants.

He said, “I trust your judgement, Razorblades. What did you uncover that justified this action?”

Jalfyrion snorted an approving fireball at an inoffensive passing cloud. “Is the suppression of Shapeshifters not reason enough?”

Kal kicked the Dragon surreptitiously through his saddlebag, located to Jisellia’s right side.

Riika said, “The scroll describes a power of many hands or many minds, which somehow allows Talon to manipulate the physical realm in unprecedented ways. So as we saw with Tazithiel, he was able to seize the Dragoness in many places at once, almost as if he controlled the air around her, opening her up for the killing blow. Similarly, Talon controls the insides of Dragons’ minds. That’s what this man said. He controls them at a level deeper than conscious thought–including their Dragon Riders, who are of course slaves to the Dragons they serve.”

“Is this Talon slave or master?” Jisellia asked wisely.

Riika shook her head. “I’d guess master, from what I learned.”

“So, do we just pinch the scroll of whatever and thus solve the Talon problem?” Kal mused.

“Dad …” Her smile accused him of naïveté. “Perhaps. Apparently, Talon has not yet mastered this power. My informant thinks he’ll be unstoppable when he does. The final piece of intelligence was that Endurion and Talon are in the process of developing a super-weapon and are planning a devastating attack on the Academy. We have to warn them.”

Jalfyrion said, “When? When will this attack be?”

Riika added, “He seemed unsure whether they meant to simply destroy the capability of the Dragon Riders or to capture the Queen of Dragons and seize her Star Dragon powers for their own purposes.”

“Spreading rainbows of cheer and joy across the Islands,” Kal chirped. Dragonish joy involving the simple pleasures, such as the annihilation of all Humankind, and establishing a new age of Dragons led by similarly-minded draconic tyrants.

“When?” snapped Jalfyrion, rather less focussed than Kal on the return of Humans to the slavery of a thousand years before.

Riika’s squirming reached a new pitch. “The last word I heard was, ‘Next–’ and then my knife sort of, well … slipped. Before he finished.”

“Next week? Next month? Next season?” thundered the Red Dragon.

“I’m sorry! I failed, alright?”

“Sorry is not good enough!” The Red’s displeasure deafened them all.

“Jalfyrion’s right,” Jisellia said tightly. “But to seek more also would’ve been foolish. We must impart this information carefully and quickly. You cannot be the source, Kal. You’re not trusted.”

“But you and Jalfyrion have helped a renegade,” Kal returned.

“I will take responsibility.” Riika’s tone allowed no argument. “For reasons best known to her, Queen Aranya seems to trust me. I must finish my mission even if all I earn is wrath and disgrace.” She peered at Kal over Jisellia’s legs. “Now, I believe you have earned your bragging rights. How, by the heavens above and the Islands below, did you pull the proverbial sheepskin over all those Dragons’ eyes?”

Kal straightened his back. “I refuse to share trade secrets with the uninitiated.”

Jisellia said, “Jalfyrion, my beauty, I do believe it’s time for someone’s impromptu flying lesson.”

“My pleasure, noble Rider.”

“Bragging? A gigantic dollop, served without delay,” Kal shot back, pretending to quail in dread. “So, this idea of sheer, Island-shivering magnificence stemmed from the fortuitous conjunction of my towering burglarising genius and a ralti sheep fated to fly …”

* * * *

Laying low in their saddlebags, Kal and Riika returned to the Dragon Rider Academy in the early evening, having traversed the length of Jeradia’s exhibition of mountainous natural beauty in the mere matter of four hours, Dragon-speed. Ensconced in a thick blanket of sheepskin–literally, for Jisellia returned the old ralti furs in exchange for the new–they enjoyed an effortless ride down to the stores, free of charge and prying Dragon eyes. His honesty-and-truthfulness rash was definitely starting to subside, Kal thought happily, skipping through a few hallways to purloin a school application form from a locked storeroom to which he most certainly did not own any key. He locked the door afterward, of course. Politeness was surely the backbone of any enlightened society.

Following that, Kal took Riika via the kitchens to charm his favourite twin Jeradian serving-girls, buxom wenches with dimpled smiles ready for a hardened miscreant, into providing them a tasty dinner of roast buck, sweet tubers and vegetables. He ordered a twenty-sackweight haunch of ralti sheep for a ravenous, recovering Dragoness.

They ducked through an off-limits corridor, snuck along a secret route Kal was convinced the school administration knew nothing of, and exited behind a shelf stacked twenty feet high with Dragon bandages in the back of the infirmary.

As Kal and Riika approached her bed, Dragoness-Tazithiel glanced up, fire-eyes agleam with delight. “Well, if it isn’t the proverbial pair of bad brass drals. How do you do it, Kal?”

He made a lewd gesture at his side, hidden from Riika, but hurt his recovering wrist in the process. “With remarkable flair and immodest Islands-full of skill.”

Riika punched his shoulder anyway. “Save it for the pillow-roll, Sticky-Fingers.”

Reaching out, Tazithiel snaffled the Pygmy girl into her paw for a Dragon hug, which involved the miraculous transformation of a nut-brown Pygmy into a straining, groaning impression of a purple prekki fruit. “Hey, Razorblades. The old man treating you alright?”

“No, he stuffed me into a saddlebag,” Riika returned pertly.

“I suppose you do come conveniently packaged for ease of transport,” the Dragoness grinned.

“Shut it, fang-face! And I was just about to say something nice about scaly princesses. How is royalty treating you, o newly promoted scion of Immadia?” Aside, Riika added, “How was that, Kal? I practised for hours.”

Kal said, “Royally pontificating.”

Tazithiel snorted, “I never asked to be tarred with that brush. Does my mother have to feature in every conversation? Honestly, it’s enough to turn one’s stomach. Besides, I’m an ordinary princess enamoured with a magnificent, mighty and marvellous king.”

“Of thieves,” Riika put in.

“Of adjectives,” said Kal, thinking this distinction far more important.

Later, when Riika had recounted her tale and they had discussed the matter of Talon’s powers to death and beyond, the girl curled up in Tazi’s right paw and promptly fell asleep. Kal spread a blanket up to her neck, touching her cheek gently. Hollow. Riika’s skin stretched like delicate silk over the loom of her bones. He must go to Aranya and beg her to pour out her healing power.

When he observed Tazithiel watching, he grunted, “Aye. Soft as duck-down, eh?”

“Why are men always embarrassed about showing tenderness? Kal, you’re a wonderful parent. Heart firmly on the right Island.”

“We can’t chase our dreams to the Rim-Wall Mountains, Tazi. Not now.”

“I know.”

Kal pressed his forehead against her upraised left paw, wishing for fire and strength to fill him. How could the daughter of the Empress of Dragons profess to be enamoured with a common crook? “I’m sorry. I’ve always laughed at death, Tazi. Cheated it. Connived, scraped, escaped. Yet this is not an arrow in the darkness. I’d liken this to grey swamp waters creeping slowly, insidiously, toward snuffing out her life, and there’s nothing you or I can do about it. Nothing.”

Tazithiel bowed her muzzle, curving her paw to press his body against the smaller scales of her neck. “We’ll do what we can. Speak to Yozora. You will consult the Amethyst Dragoness. We will tap the knowledge of the Dragonkind and consult the lore-library here …”

“While I’m trapped in this infirmary, forced to skulk about a school, Islands’ sakes!”

“No. No more skulking. Well, only when necessary.” Way down in her great body, fiery laughter chuckled like a boiling spring tumbling over boulders. Tazi said, “May I make a proposal?”

“Propose away.”

“Move in with me, Kal.” He made a favourable sound. “Let’s have our own roost. A family roost, with Riika, at least for this time. If you’re agreeable, I’ll ask for one.”

“Mmm. Private space with thee, which is not in the midst of a busy infirmary? Tough choice.”

Tazi flexed her talons against his back. “Choose well, or it shall go ill with thee, my little larcenist–how was my evil-Dragoness voice, Kal?”

“You’ll never make a con-artist,” he said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Listen. ‘Come to my roost, pretty girl.’ That’s how it’s done.”

“Ooh, you made my fires shiver!” she laughed. “Now, who do we speak to?”

Kal drew himself up. “My dear Dragoness, o sweet and innocent walking brazier of my heart, please leave the doing to the experts.” Over her rumbling laughter, he explained, “Why ask, say I, when a roost is ours for the taking? I shall make all the arrangements. Watch and learn.”

“You’ve corrupted the school administration already?”

Affecting an air of mystery, Kal declaimed, “When you have a messaging system driven by monkeys, what do you get? Monkey business.”

Chapter 21: Second Chances

STALKING INTO THE infirmary, Riika uttered an obscenity that made Human-Tazi’s eyebrows crawl and Kal yelp, “Riika! Do you even know what you’re saying?”

She began to gesticulate before the movement collapsed in sheepish realisation. “Not really, Dad. But Kal–”

“But nothing. Bad, bad word. No.”

“They won’t listen! And they won’t take my application.”

When Riika had finished ranting, which involved a good ten minutes of shouting, flinging tears of exasperation in all directions, storming around Tazi and Kal like a thundercloud hitched to a spinning-wheel, making Yozora hiss in annoyance and several patients on the far side of the infirmary bury their heads under their blankets for a modicum of peace, Kal held up his hands. “Right. Leave it with me, Riika.”

“I hate it when you take charge, Dad! I can do this!”

“Listen, Razorblades, I am most unequivocally not taking charge–more precisely, I am taking charge of giving you a chance. Taking that chance will be up to you.”

Riika’s eyes were huge, black pools, sodden and enervated from all her emotions. She coughed; licked blood off her lips. “Alright. But I do the talking.”

Kal enthused, “Done and bargained for, and a fine deal it is! We need to check your dosage. While I’m away making a few arrangements, will you go speak to Yozora? Did you fill in the application scroll?” Her curls bobbed in the affirmative. “Excellent. Apparently the Queen of all creation has departed on a critical mission, but when she returns I suggest you go bat your pretty eyes at her and beg her to find whatever miraculous healing powers the ballads–enough already. Back in an hour.”

Precisely an hour later, according to the graduated hourglass on the infirmary wall, which was turned once a day at noon and poured black volcanic sand from one bulb to the other with a gentle hiss that Tazithiel claimed kept her Dragoness awake at night, Kal stole back into the infirmary through an alternative secret entrance. Tazithiel and Riika awaited him near the stores, looking in the wrong direction. The thief snickered softly. Amateurs.

The image of an Indigo Dragoness whirled, followed by her Human manifestation. Kinetic power seized Kal and dragged him toward the two white-clad women, but for the first time, he resisted with his own magic. Kal slipped through her grasp.

A second later, he was picking a startled Shapeshifter off the floor.

“What did you just do?” she demanded.

“Dropped a beautiful woman on her exquisite behind,” said Kal, partly occupied with dusting off said derriere with more than due care, and partly wondering what on the Islands he had just managed to pull off. Dodging her Kinetic power by slipping through another … realm? What power was this?

He looked them over. Riika and Tazithiel wore full-length, matching white Mejian inkaliar dresses, belted at the waist, with cork platform sandals and white water-lilies in their hair.

His girls, outshining the very stars.

“Come. You look perfect.” More than perfect, but he did not trust himself to say more. “Let’s hustle.”

“Hustle?” Tazithiel slipped her arm into his. “When’s Riika’s entry interview?”

“A slot has unexpectedly opened up with Master X’atior, head of the Academy, who has final word on all admissions. We have twenty minutes.”

The Shapeshifter did not hide her sarcasm. “Remarkable.”

“Twenty minutes?” yelped Riika. “I’m not ready!”

“Kal, do you plan to walk through the heart of the Academy in broad daylight?”

“Watch and learn.” Kal bowed, and had his hairstyle rearranged by Tazithiel’s roar of frustration. He straightened up. “Good. Now they definitely know we’re coming. Let’s move.”

Leading the group via yet another secret tunnel, Kal exited at the third level of storage in a wine cellar which he had already taken the liberty of sampling. From there they took a spiral staircase up into the Masters’ and Journeymen’s kitchens, which served the teaching staff, and tiptoed along a gantry above a cavern filled with terrace lake-sized oil vats and thence to the foundries and smithies that produced the Academy’s Dragon armour and weaponry. By the time Kal had been cheerfully greeted by name for the eighth time or patted on the shoulder, Tazithiel wore a windroc’s scowl. Popularity. How could he help it? They borrowed a messenger-monkey staircase to shortcut the students’ main dining hall, which was watched by soldiers, and trotted thirty-two stories upward to the next major level of the Academy buildings.

“Place is a warren,” said Kal. “Usefully, they keep comprehensive schematics in the Master Architect’s office.”

“Oh, is that so?” Tazithiel’s tone suggested fireballs simmering in her gullet.

At the end of a further interminable staircase frequented by the albino messenger monkeys which conveyed messages or carried out small errands around the sprawling Academy, Kal halted his charges and slipped two concealed blowpipes out of his left sleeve. “The main administration building lies just ahead–patience, Indigo-eyes. Answers come to those who wait.”

“Indigo-eyes? Is that my new nickname?”

“Riika, I trust the use of this weapon is familiar to you?”

Riika accepted a blowpipe from Kal with a gleeful hug. “A Pygmy blowpipe? Kal, you’re the best dad ever!”

He smirked at Tazi over Riika’s shoulder. “Watch and–”

“Lose a limb to an irate Dragoness?”

“Ah … step lively now,” said Kal, triggering a lever that opened a section of wall behind a tapestry.

Popping his head out, the irrepressible saboteur took aim with his weapon. Pfft! Pfft!

With that, he walked right up to the pair of hulking Jeradian guards stationed at an inner entryway to the towering red sandstone building. Both men stood half a foot taller than him, and bore war-hammers that looked useful for demolishing buildings. Kal danced a vulgar jig beneath their noses. “I believe we may proceed.”

The Dragoness stared at the glassy-eyed pair.

He said, “Do hurry, o clawed sweetness. We’ve less than a minute. Don’t want to be late.”

“How did you …”

Tazithiel scurried after Kal and Riika, shaking her head in bemusement. By the third set of guards, she had worked it out. Poisoned thorns. “It’s a unique type of thorn which grows only in the Crescent Islands,” Kal explained. “The innate poison will paralyse a giant Jeradian warrior, as noted, for approximately one minute, following which they resume normal function as if nothing happened. They don’t remember anything bar what seems to be an insect-bite.”

Riika exclaimed, “What I could not have done with this as an assassin! Never thought of it.”

“Which makes me the wise mentor and you the naïve youth,” Kal suggested, earning himself a look that suggested retribution would crush his miserable life like an Island dropped from the sky. “Right, this way to Master X’atior’s office.”

Four soldiers guarded the massive jalkwood doors at the entryway to the Master’s office complex, which housed a dozen administrative scribes and no less than seven full-time assistants led by the formidable Mistress Harrion, a Sylakian warrior built in the solid-as-a-Dragoness mode, and as officious as a cartload of sharpened quills. Shapeshifter, Kal noted. And less than pleased to spy Riika in her office, once the guards’ attention had been diverted.

“You’ve the nerve to return?” she greeted the half-Pygmy girl.

Riika bobbed her head and said sweetly, “I brought my parent and my sponsor as requested, Mistress Harrion. My sponsor is Tazithiel the Indigo Dragoness, Princess of Immadia, and this is Kal, my legal guardian.”

What about Kallion the Magnificent, King of Criminals? But Kal, watching the Mistress closely, was less than impressed with what he observed. Why the poorly-concealed aversion to a Pygmy girl, unless it had to do with his status in the school? Riika had only mentioned that the woman had rejected her application, not why.

“You’re too young for this school, child. And how did you get him up here, past the guards?”

Riika’s fingers twitched as though she wished to apply red-hot daggers to Mistress Harrion’s eyeballs. “I am of age. We have an appointment with the Master.”

“So I see. You’re one minute late.” Kal almost laughed in her face. Was that her best? “The Master is expecting you.”

Making no effort to hide her contempt, the Mistress indicated the way.

Master X’atior was a very large Fra’aniorian man who gave the appearance of becoming jolly with a flagon of wine just a little too often, but Kal noted the stillness of his hands, the stark emptiness of his wide desk and the depth of his gaze. Aye, magic. A Brown Dragon Shapeshifter shimmered briefly beneath his notice, as though woken by Kal’s scrutiny, and when he perceived the other occupant of the office, who thought herself hidden by magic, he nodded despite a spurt of adrenaline-laced fear. This was right. Right for Riika, at least.

After introductions, the Master bade them take seats in the semicircle of carved hardwood chairs facing his desk, which was fifteen feet wide and so highly polished, Kal saw a nick on the Master’s chin reflected there. Riika sat in the middle seat, her legs unable to quite touch the floor. Massive crysglass windows behind X’atior framed a panoramic view of the caldera, resplendent in the full late-morning suns-shine. The two-mile sheer cliffs opposite gleamed with lodes of minerals threading the rock and exposed blood-red crystal formations, several of which stood on display around his tastefully decorated office. Master X’atior clearly had as much an eye for luxury as he had for his guests, whom he scrutinised with shrewd, draconic care.

The Master spread the scroll of application before him. Ominously.

“An unusual document,” he said. “Ignoring the fact that applications should be closed for this year, I see we have a most uncommon candidate before us, intriguingly, sponsored by the Queen’s own daughter. And the father is my fellow-Islander, one Kallion of Fra’anior, of whom scant record is to be found in our very extensive archives. A man under death-warrant, who nonetheless breezed past my security as though it did not exist.”

Kal drawled, “Your so-called security, sadly, is pervious to a blindfolded toddler wandering about aimlessly wailing for his mother.”

X’atior’s knuckles whitened against the edge of his desk. He did not appear capable of any answer that would not involve seeing how far he could hurl someone’s head across the caldera.

“I could offer my services as a security consultant.”

“More an insecurity consultant,” noted the Master, making Kal laugh in startled concert. “Or a security insult-ant. I will consider your proposal, o Kallion of mysterious past, for I sense your enmity would be detrimental to our Academy, but your skills put to right use might benefit us all. Curiously, I appear to have approved the assignment of a family roost to you in a most favourable location. I also approved a rash of lavish interior decoration works, with the highest priority. Apparently, I am exceedingly generous.”

Tazithiel’s left eye twitched, but Kal sensed her Dragoness’ underlying laughter.

He said, “Thank you, Master X’atior. We do not wish to take up valuable space in the infirmary. Your understanding of our situation is greatly appreciated.”

“But this interview is not about you, Kal,” the Master riposted. Ooh, a worthy opponent. Delight very nearly made Kal wriggle on his seat like a schoolboy being taken to task for playing truant. “Riika. I have read your application with interest. Why did you have to come here in person to deliver it?”

“Because the woman out there refused me,” Riika said. “I thought this school provided people like me with a chance, and a chance is all I ask.”

“Mistress Harrion refused your application? On what grounds?”

“She made it clear that my application was unwelcome. I am not too young, Master. I’m fourteen, although I look ten. I’ve skills and qualities–”

X’atior’s eyes had a curious blend of hardness and sympathy about them. “What did she say, exactly? My motto is honesty, Riika.”

“She said, ‘Get the hells out of my office, you little brown turd.’ ”

“Riika!” Kal gasped. Just outside the door, something crashed to the floor. Crysglass.

“Sorry, Dad, I–Aranya!”

The door slammed so hard behind the Amethyst Shapeshifter that a painting fell off the wall, cracking the frame. It sounded as if a muffled war had just broken out in the next room. A very one-sided war.

Leaning across his desk, Master X’atior said, “I am sorry you had to endure that, Riika. But I can disclose this–the last time a person of your heritage sat opposite a Master in this office, she did this school enormous and lasting honour. Now, let’s leave my ancestor to chastise that bigot. Always did loathe the woman. Tell me about Riika. What will this scrap of scrolleaf not tell me about this potential student?”

The girl stared into his benevolent yet astute eyes, and said, “I am the kind of person, Master, who will sail alone into enemy territory to secure intelligence regarding Talon and the Green Dragon Elder, Endurion. Intelligence which your Academy administration also refused to accept.”

Kal clenched his right fist, the only outward sign of the Dragon-fiery pride burning within him. Riika! He dared a glance over that curly mop at Tazithiel, who allowed the corner of her mouth to quirk upward in response.

Grand-shell-mother, X’atior called in telepathic Dragonish, we have a situation. Attend.

I burned a few things out here, said Aranya.

Never was Dragon fire better employed. Returning to Island Standard, X’atior said to Riika, “Just a moment while my ancestor finishes putting out a few fires. Tazithiel and I are relatives, see? I’m the seventh generation descendant of a woman who looks young enough to be my daughter. Keeping the Academy’s leadership tradition alive, I am also a Brown Dragon Shapeshifter and you, young lady, should’ve come to us Dragons with this information.”

“You Dragons seem to have problems with selective amounts of ear wax,” said Riika.

Kal sucked in his breath, but Tazi added, “At least, my mother has been making herself utterly unapproachable. She’s a nuisance.”

“She’s passionate about her family,” X’atior blazed.

“That I am,” said Aranya, re-entering the office. Her formal slippers smoked upon X’atior’s extremely expensive, tan pile carpet. “And I’m fiercely protective of my shell-daughter.”

Kal fielded her comment with a cool, “You don’t say.”

The Indigo Dragoness was less cool. “You can just grit your fangs and put up, mother, because I am not letting that man go! If you envisage any kind of relationship with me–honestly! Can we please just interview Riika? And stop complicating her life with stupid family shenanigans?”

Riika jutted out her chin in a way that Kal knew meant trouble. She stormed, “Well, I’m fierce and protective too! And I have to tolerate you adults and your insane games! While my dad’s off chasing the woman he loves by burgling an Academy stuffed full of supposedly friendly Dragons, noble defenders of the free Islands and all that windroc tripe, I’m having to stalk Dragon Riders with the power of Ernulla-kul-Exarkin!”

Aranya was in front of Riika in a flash, gripping the chair’s armrests so hard, the wood groaned in protest. “Say that again?”

In terse sentences, the Pygmy girl retold her story for the third time. Kal found the process fascinating, for the Human mind usually modified, misremembered and interpreted details, but Riika’s recall was word-for-word what it had been before.

Aranya and X’atior shared grave glances. “I assure you, we will act on this information,” said the Queen. “Riika, I thank you for your service to the Dragonkind and to every soul present in this Academy. You do us honour.”

Kal nodded slowly. Despite his antipathy, he found Aranya had awesome presence and true majesty when she chose to exhibit it. When had she become so bitter? So … desperate?

Riika bowed. “Thank you, o Queen.”

The Master narrowed his eyes. “So, back to our interview. Finally. Anything else I should know about you, Riika? A guild affiliation which may thwart entry to the Academy, perhaps?”

“What guild?” Aranya demanded.

“The Guild of Assassins,” said Riika, in a small voice.

“What the hells–”

“Grandmother!” X’atior silenced the Queen. “This is my interview and my student. I’ll thank you to let me do my job.”

Riika’s jaw worked. “I’m a retired member of the Guild of Assassins. I have the brand to prove it.”

There was a silence of speechless revulsion. Although Master X’atior and Queen Aranya schooled their expressions with identical skill, the girl had to feel like a snake in clothing.

Kal reached out to squeeze her shoulder gently. “She does not practise any more, but the Guild’s long shadow stretches over the Islands of her life.”

“No, no,” said Riika. “I have not killed anyone since … oh no.” Tremors shook her body, lending her appearance an aspect which combined the fragility of a fresh bud with whetted steel. “Since five days ago. But I won’t kill any students, I promise, Master. Dad has been very hard on me. Laid down the law. I’m really trying to reform myself. I promise.”

Aranya’s snort conveyed what she thought of Kal’s relationship with the law.

“Master, what you need to know is that even if you give me a chance, I’m unlikely to survive my time here at the Academy. The Guild ensures compliance with a long-acting poison. There’s no antidote.”

“Yi’tx’txi’taxnayt’x?” asked Aranya.

“Aye.”

“Oh, Riika!” The Queen stooped low, her long hair flowing over them both like a multi-hued waterfall. “You speak of death so … so … let me touch you. Please.”

“Don’t you touch our Riika!” snapped Tazithiel.

“You’d withhold healing?”

“I’d withhold your interference in our family! We’ve enough troubles already, thanks to you!”

Aranya raised a perfect eyebrow at Tazi. “You know my terms, shell-daughter.”

“Terms?” Kal inquired.

Bitterly, Tazithiel said, “In exchange for annulling the death-warrant on your life, Kal, I have to agree to let her train me.”

“She’s bargaining with my life?”

Her face set like stone, the Immadian Queen said, “I’m used to getting what I want, Kal. You could try a grain of honesty. Tell me, what species of two-legged snake has ensnared my daughter with his oh-so-charming ways?”

Before he could react, Tazi sprang out of her seat, fists clenched, her Dragoness suddenly looming malevolent in the aether, although none of the others appeared to notice. “You’re the most hateful mother ever! How did you manage to raise a single hatchling?”

“We accept your terms,” said Kal, desperate to broker peace. That much fire? Tazi was on the edge … “Not for the sake of my life, but for hers.”

Aranya’s hand-gesture brushed him off.

“Enough!” With a scream, Tazithiel sprang at her mother’s throat.

Aranya and Tazithiel tumbled over the desk and through a low stone planter just beyond it. Boom! The seventy-foot Indigo Dragoness materialised with a concussion of displaced air, followed a fraction of a second later by the gigantic Amethyst Dragoness. Keraaaack! The crysglass panels shattered as Aranya’s torso, hindquarters and tail blasted through the windows onto the wide balcony beyond, spraying shards of glass hundreds of feet across the caldera. The two Dragonesses ripped into each other with the ferocity of feral beasts, snapping and snarling in a fury Kal could only imagine existed between mortal enemies–or mother and daughter. X’atior threw himself aside as Tazi’s tail lashed his desk into a polished pile of kindling. A scything paw swatted Kal against the office wall behind him. Wheezing, he clutched his chest.

Aranya, five times larger than Tazithiel, nonetheless streamed blood from a bite on her muzzle. She drove the smaller Dragoness inside the office with a series of stunning blows of her paws, before flipping her onto her back. Lightning blinded everyone, but somehow the bolt missed and expired in the open air. The Amethyst Dragoness’ huge paws forced Tazithiel’s head backward, exerting her monstrous strength to expose her shell-daughter’s vulnerable neck. Fangs flashed …

“Stop!”

Kal had not seen her move, but suddenly Riika was there, so much in the thick of the fight that she stood in the ‘V’ of Aranya’s jaw as it gaped against Tazithiel’s neck, four feet and eight inches of taut muscle straining to prevent the largest Dragoness in existence from executing a killing bite. For a startling sliver of time, it appeared that a Pygmy girl held a hundred tonnes of Dragonflesh apart by the sheer strength of her tiny arms.

Mother and daughter froze, panting. Kal decided the word ‘freeze’ was ridiculous when applied to Dragons, being nothing less than ambulatory volcanoes.

Gripping one of Aranya’s fangs in her hands and kicking Tazithiel in the eye with one small foot, Riika shouted, “Now will you two just hold off expressing your lethal love for each other, long enough to listen? This is my interview! Mine! Tazi, remove your talons from your mother’s ear canals! Aranya, you may kiss her neck, but we do not bite in this family, understood?”

“She attacked me,” Aranya grumbled, but relaxed her jaw.

“Honestly, you Shapeshifters! Do you resolve all disputes with claw and fang?” Riika aimed a madcap grin at Master X’atior. “Apparently, I also possess skills in Dragon-wrangling. Can we add that to my application?”

GGRRRAAARRGGGH!

Amethyst and Indigo roared identically. But Aranya plucked Riika away from her jaw in a nick of time as she reduced X’atior’s carpet to a smouldering ruin, while Tazithiel’s effort incinerated the Master’s priceless collection of botanical marvels from around the Island-World. Riika was far from cowed; Kal was in awe. Great Islands, what had he set off now? Give her a chance? That pocket Dragoness had the very Empress of Dragons by the scruff of her spine spikes!

“How’s about I set the terms?” Riika suggested, diamond-hard of expression and tone. Of course, she did not wait for even the most perfunctory of nods from Kal and X’atior. “I need my dad alive, Aranya. So you will annul that ridiculous warrant. He has already returned your scale–”

“My grandmother’s scale–that’s Istariela, the Star Dragoness,” Aranya put in.

“Shut the fumarole, lizard-breath!” The Amethyst Dragoness’ paw trembled as though she fought an urge to crush the half-Pygmy teenager as if she were a mosquito, but Riika stormed on, “Secondly, you will retract that preposterous reward. In exchange, Kal, you will kindly fund the refurbishment of our roost.”

“Aye? I agree.”

“To the tune of ten thousand gold drals.”

“What? Rip my heart out and–”

“Shut the trap, Dad. With respect, you have the means. And you told me the Academy needs the money.”

“You looked into my books?” yelped X’atior.

Aranya rasped, “He’s how rich? That’s more than the entire Kingdom of Immadia–”

Kal scowled up a thunderstorm. “With due respect, Master X’atior, you run this place like a free Sylakian brothel. You’re an academic, not a businessman. And you put my daughter down, Dragoness. I don’t like her dangling up there. I refuse to pay up without bringing in some real–”

“Details, details,” sniffed the irrepressible Pygmy girl, turning the full power of her dubious charms on Tazithiel. “You, Indigo-eyes, will cease your sulking and go suck on the big Dragoness’ brains until they hurt. We need to find a way to strap Endurion and his Rider to a handy Island and toss them into the Cloudlands.”

Had her shell-mother’s burning eye not been fixed upon her, Kal suspected his Shapeshifter Dragoness might just have pruned a few of Riika’s toes for her insults. As it was, she growled with simmering menace, “Very well, little one.”

“Is she always like this?” Master X’atior complained, evidently having second thoughts about his prospective student.

“Short life. Big plans,” said Riika. “Master, I’ve made all the arrangements. Now, I would like my chance. What say you?”

Kal put in, “Right now, I strongly advise everyone to run for the hills.”

To his surprise, Master X’atior bowed deeply to Riika, with multiple Fra’aniorian hand-twirls of the highest respect. “We would be honoured to knock a few rough edges off a juvenile Dragon-wrangler, student Riika. Welcome to Dragon Rider Academy.”

Chapter 22: Masterful

NOTHING, OF COURSE, was straightforward about inserting a former assassin into a school system. Truth be told, Kal remained terrified. But with Riika skipping down the path from their roost and Tazithiel smiling and radiant upon his arm, he could not exactly complain. Not officially, anyhow. He glared daggers at Riika’s choice of outfit for her testing with the Masters. Those trousers! Heavens, he was tempted to take his own daggers to the material just to stop her from wearing them. That body armour! Indecent. That walk! So full of spunk, he wanted to run down the mountain ahead of her, whooping and hollering with gladness.

Today was Riika’s testing with the Weapons Masters, intended to assess her skills and place her in the correct training groups.

Kal stretched his long legs to catch up. “Now, Riika, no lethal techniques, alright? Give your Masters due respect, don’t just wade in there with your typical brash aggression. They might surprise you.”

She said, “They might, Dad. And if they do, they’ll have my respect.”

“Those are your blunted training blades?”

“Sized, checked and balanced by the Head Armourer himself–honestly, you were there. I have my arrows, throwing knives and a lightweight hammer for pint-sized parakeets, according to that Armourer–where did you say he was from?”

“Remoy,” said Kal.

“He has three wives and fourteen children,” said Riika.

Kal favoured this with a grunt. One Shapeshifter Dragoness was quite enough trouble for any man, he fancied.

They walked across the huge field to a sandy training ring where generations of students had been beaten bloody by their Masters and Journeymen, moulding them into that elite fighting force called the Dragon Riders of Jeradia. Kal checked surreptitiously for bleached bones and bloodstains. Bah. All clean. But here came Master X’atior himself, and Aranya approached in the company of a Jeradian who could only be the Master of Hammers, because he had to be eight feet tall if he was an inch, and was built like a cross between a muscular blacksmith and a hulking Red Dragon. Great Islands, he’d chew Riika up for breakfast!

Taking place on a rest day from the school’s usual programme, Riika’s testing had drawn a crowd, ranging from Dragon Riders clad in black leather flying jackets, idling about on the sunny terraces, to a contingent of kitchen staff who had never obeyed Aranya’s orders. The fulsome Jeradian twins were present, tossing their blonde locks about and eyeing up the Dragon Riders as though picking the tastiest steaks from a rack of meat. They waved at Riika, hollering, “Kick those rajals in the teeth, girl! Make us proud!”

Tazi took his arm again. “I’m determined to be cheerful today. No fighting with my mother. She’s actually a brilliant teacher, Kal.”

“Hence the bruises?”

“I love it when you get all protective of your Dragoness.” Tazi swung him into a brief but passionate kiss, at least partly aimed at Aranya, Kal felt, but he refused to let an audience stop him from doing what he did best. Between Kal’s lips, the Shapeshifter growled, “Riika, no killing the Masters, alright?”

Riika stuck out her tongue. “Lighten up.”

Kal cast his eye over the warriors. Muscles popped, leather squeaked, armour gleamed and heavens above, whatever was the Mistress of Knives not wearing? Mmm, he could picture Tazi in that scanty wisp of Helyon silk … “Ouch!”

“Eyeballs back in their sockets before I hack them off their stalks,” murmured the Dragoness, all sweetness and fire.

“Just picturing you in silken undress,” Kal confessed, not entirely truthfully.

Obsidian sand glinted against a background of low terraces, then he saw verdant fields and beyond, the rambling brick buildings of the Academy climbing the dark volcanic cliffs for at least three-quarters of a mile of vertical height, yet still a mile and a quarter of rock separated the buildings from the volcanic rim outlined like a jawbone packed with jagged teeth against the cloudless welkin. Such would be the Rim-Wall Mountains, Kal imagined, only they soared thirty-five times higher, according to the legends. His Indigo had not flown since Endurion had opened her belly. How would they ever hope to scale those peaks?

The crowd’s murmuring quietened as a dozen-strong Dragonwing emerged from the slim roost-cone and winged across the open field at a terrific speed, led by Jisellia upon her Jalfyrion. Hot oil baths, Tazithiel explained as Kal openly wondered at their gleaming splendour. He recognised many of the group they had encountered at the edge of the Island-Desert, hunting drakes. Supporters? He certainly hoped so!

Master X’atior, in Human guise, paused mid-gesture to watch the incoming Dragons. “The Dragonkind honour you, Riika.”

She gulped visibly and tightened her razor-ribbons holding tumbling black curls away from her face and eyes. Next to the Master, she seemed but a slim reed. Her armour consisted of forearm guards that left the arm bare from elbow to shoulder, Western Isles upper-body armour sized for a child, and greaves of an unfamiliar design. Two mid-length training swords crossed in a double-sheath upon her back. A quintet of throwing knives adorned the belt of her tight, flexible trousers. Kal knew she kept knives concealed in her armour–none of them poisoned, he hoped. He had forgotten to check.

As the Dragons back-winged to land nearby, raising a brief storm of dust, Tazi pulled him up to a seat. “Come on. You’re more nervous than she is.”

As if the crowd were not enough, now they had a dozen Dragons blocking out the light! Yet, Riika could be an odd combination of introvert and crowd-pleaser, as though public life were a skin she donned for chosen occasions.

Master X’atior introduced the opening combat, swords with Master Haxu, a dapper Eastern nobleman who moved like a hunting rajal and was dressed entirely in black silk. He wielded a traditional Eastern Archipelago kuhiko sword, a three-foot, slightly curved blade with a tang suitable for either a single or double-handed grip. A Kaolili round shield adorned his left forearm, a weapon in its own right with sharpened edges–hopefully, a blunted training version.

Great Islands! Master Haxu barely waited for X’atior’s brief speech to end before launching himself across the arena in an all-out assault! The crowd gasped. Kal gripped the edge of his terrace seat as Riika whispered away from the attack. The Dragons towering above the seated Humans stopped their chatting and preening to watch with blazing orange eyes, evidently engrossed in the clash and flow of battle. A minute of furious energy later, Haxu had yet to touch the girl, making the battle an oddly silent affair, just hisses of concentrated breath and the patter of feet against hard-packed sand. Then, touch her he did. Sweeping forth like a tide of dark oil, Master Haxu executed a blindingly fast series of blows that ended with Riika on the ground, clutching her ankle.

“First blood to Master Haxu,” intoned X’atior.

“Riika, stop toying with him and fight!” yelled Aranya.

Everyone stared. Several of the Dragons snorted with laughter. A student toying with a Master of Swords? The rose-cheeked Queen vaulting off of her seat? Aranya sat down with a puff of dust.

Metal scraped against sword-sheaths. Riika crossed her swords in front of her heart and bowed to the Master. She changed, making Kal blink in surprise. There was that curious Pygmy sprung-steel quality that infused her physique, as though her muscle was somehow more Dragon than Human, her core strength incomparable in the Island-World. Pygmy? Or Riika? She stalked the Master as if she had become a sylvan huntress, at once beguiling and deadly, and from the way the Master tensed, Kal knew he sensed the transformation in his opponent.

Silence gripped the arena. Tazithiel gripped his arm so hard, she stopped the blood.

Watch this, said Kal.

With a sharp scream, Riika fell upon the Master and mauled him. Simply mauled him. All Kal could see was flying ribbons, the brown blur of her arms somehow carried above the iron foundation of her stance, and Haxu’s incredulous grimace as the shield went spinning one way and his sword another. The crossed blades touched either side of his neck, the ‘killing’ scissors-blow at once serenely beautiful and pulled enough to only bruise the skin, and not break his vertebrae.

Master Haxu wrung his fingers, and then pulled himself into a painful-looking formal bow. “Seventeen bloods to the student. She is a master.”

He limped off the sand to the sound of cheering, finger-clicking and approving rumbles from the Dragons.

Schooling the disbelief from his expression, X’atior announced, “Jandubior, Master of Hammers!”

Beside him, Tazithiel caught her breath. “Oh, my … I can’t watch this one.”

Jandubior was a true Jeradian giant. Hefting his war-hammer as if it were a straw or toy, the eight-foot giant took his massive stance upon the arena floor. He did not lumber. His ease of movement was like a mountain dancing, at once inexorable and unexpected. Kal clenched his jaw. Riika barely measured up to the giant’s belt-buckle!

No mind, for the half-Pygmy was already in motion and Kal could not pause even to blink. They clashed in a blur. Crack! Riika spun twenty feet backward and slammed down on her face, eating sand. The Master switched his hammer to his left hand, cradling his right. Broken fingers? Roaring rajals, had he kneed her in the chest? Or chin? And how had she struck his hand? Kal had not even seen the blow.

Riika picked herself up groggily, spitting blood. Split lip–Kal knew exactly how she felt. But there was more blood than there should have been. Then, to the accompaniment of swelling roars from the Dragons, the former assassin rounded on Master Jandubior. She shot across the sand as though launched from a war catapult. As his front foot planted forward, anchoring a scything blow that promised to launch her to the next Island, Riika leaped to meet him. Kal, half-rising from his seat, felt Tazithiel crush his fingers in anticipation. He saw what she perceived. A bird’s peck of a footstep upon the whirling hammer-head, then a toe touched down upon the haft. Riika’s momentum carried her onto Jandubior’s massive thigh, the flexion of her legs bringing her into perfect balance despite the force of her impact. As his torso twisted, the girl stutter-stepped up his lower back to his shoulders with the deftness of a Pygmy warrior scaling a vine-covered tree, and the suppleness of an acrobat. Poised atop his lumpen shoulders as the Master completed his stroke and began to recover his balance, the girl whirled, raising her dinky war-hammer until it winked in the suns-light.

Riika rapped the giant’s skull with the skill and power of a tent-maker driving home a stake. Ding! The hammer pealed a bell-like note.

Jandubior’s eyes rolled up. He toppled like a felled tree.

The artistry of her conquest left the audience stunned. Riika rode the giant into the dirt. She began to strike a victorious-hunter pose upon his back before evidently thinking the better of a prideful display. She offered the Master her hand. He was clearly in no shape to accept it. Master X’atior gestured for the stretcher-bearers to move the fallen Master.

Pandemonium! Dragons bugled and roared at the skies, none louder than Jalfyrion. The Humans shouted excitedly, ‘Did you see that?’ ‘She just … wow!’ ‘I wouldn’t want to wake with his headache.’

Meantime, X’atior had four students heaving an archery target into the training arena. Riika, flushed and chattering happily, returned to Kal and Tazithiel to retrieve her Pygmy bow and a quiver of arrows.

“That was inspirational,” said Kal.

“You were awesome,” Tazi agreed. She received a quick nod of appreciation from Riika.

A few yards away, Aranya clapped her knees slowly, eyes bright with unshed tears. Kal eyed her curiously. What was it about the half-Pygmy warrior that moved the Empress of Dragons so?

“Ready!” called Master X’atior.

Observing his ward closely, Kal saw her fingers select a particular arrow from the quiver.

“Oh no,” he gasped, torn between horror and hilarity. Watching Riika was akin to watching an avalanche sweeping down an Island cliff. Inevitable destruction. Irresistible theatre.

Riika whirled, drew and fired in one fluid motion.

Forty paces away, the target exploded in a fountain of wood, straw and canvas. KABOOM!

“Dragon’s eye,” crowed Riika, surveying the obliteration with evident zest.

“You! What the volcanic hells was that?” Master X’atior had lost the entire Island now. His Dragon’s jaw, wavering behind him, sagged rather appropriately to his knees.

“I’m sure my dad won’t mind paying for a new target,” said the half-Pygmy. “That was an exploding arrow. My invention.”

X’atior eyed the scroll in his hand, palpably ignoring Aranya, who was clutching her stomach as she cried with laughter on the steps nearby. “Ahem. That’ll be a pass on the archery. Zaethiell, Mistress of Knives! Teach this insolent scholar a lesson, would you?”

The beautiful woman–a Helyon Islander, Kal thought–practically poured from her seat onto the arena floor. No, she had Fra’aniorian ears! Watching her familiar style as she set herself, Kal realised that she must be one of the rare, famous warriors from Ya’arriol Island, where he too had spent two years under magical lock and key. Ya’arriol Islanders were said to be the greatest hand-to-hand fighters north of the Rift. Kal had never beaten one of the monks in a fair fight, and he was no slouch in the martial arts. This woman moved as though she owned the arena’s very air.

The lesson she delivered was as much about grace as it was about concentration. Her defence seemed languid, yet she had a world of time to nullify any attack. In quick succession, she scored five strikes against Riika, drawing blood twice despite the fact that they fought with blunted training daggers. Behind him, people were laying bets as to whether Riika would even land a blow. Evidently Mistress Zaethiell owned a formidable reputation.

“Summon your inner rajal, Riika!” someone yelled.

“Come on!”

On the far side of the arena, Master Haxu was shouting for Zaethiell. Kal turned to the Dragon Rider behind him. “Ten drals says Riika wins the next point.”

“Twenty,” said the man.

“Done and bargained for.”

Intently, the combatants circled each other, testing, feinting, clashing and breaking apart just as quickly. Zaethiell’s longer reach kept Riika at a distance, preventing her from landing a blow. Yet Riika had the persistence of the jungle-born. Deflecting a stunning triple-strike with her wristlets, she dove in and was rebuffed. Kal saw her lick blood off her lips again. Was this a result of the additional exertion? She appeared to be tiring. Just a ploy? Not her style.

Kal wished with all his jaded, blackened heart, he could assume her pain and illness upon himself as he had once shouldered Tazithiel’s burden to keep them flying through the storm.

She did it again. Riika changed.

Barely had his thought formed, when Kal sensed a flow toward the Pygmy girl of an indefinable nature, as if his own shade had touched her being to infuse Riika not with strength, but with the capability to reach within and find a new expression of her true self. Kal’s senses came alive to an outpouring of her spirit, the suggestion of an inner jungle cat. Raising her daggers, Riika’s feet tore the sand as she charged Zaethiell. Elegant defence was no match for the fury that swamped the Mistress. Parry! Parry! Feint and strike! Adjusting faster than the eye could follow, Riika moved adjacent to the Mistress’ outthrust arm and delivered a spinning kick to the side of her chest.

So brutal was the blow, it lifted Zaethiell bodily and hurled her ten feet across the arena. She crashed against Kal’s knees.

Riika was on her in a flash, slashing with the knife and ripping with clawed fingernails, snarling like a starving Dragoness bolting a juicy haunch of meat. Even when her knife went spinning, Riika continued to attack with unrestrained fury. Pure, animalistic instinct drove her toward the kill, before the Indigo Shapeshifter thrust them apart with a burst of her Kinetic power. Riika shimmered against that shield, almost breaking through in a welter of madness, before the light of sanity suddenly returned to her eyes. She crashed to her knees.

“Well, that was unexpected,” whispered the Mistress of Knives. “What power do you call that, girl?”

“I-I-I … don’t know what came over me.”

Beside him, Tazithiel wiped a splash of blood from her nose. “Clearly, Pygmies have magic.”

Master X’atior strode over to Riika to place his hand upon her shoulder. “Rest. The testing is over. Dragons, will you aid me with a verdict? That finale was too quick for me to follow.”

The Dragons had a brief and rancorous conference before Jalfyrion growled, “We can score the combat with and without knives, as is your custom, but I believe the student may have broken the rules.”

Riika laughed curtly. “I confess, I bit you twice and threw a head-butt, Mistress. My apologies. I was … feral, I guess.”

“Apologies?” Zaethiell dabbed at her eyebrow, bleeding freely over her left eye and down her bruised cheekbone. “It’s been years since I enjoyed such a fine match. I’d be honoured to offer you a rematch any time, or just to spar with you, student Riika. Such ferocity!”

Jalfyrion rumbled, “In the matter of armed combat, Riika scored clean nine strikes to Zaethiell’s fifteen. Zaethiell therefore wins at knives. I’m afraid that under these insane rules only Humans could devise, biting disqualifies the student from unarmed combat, despite that she prevailed twenty-nine strikes to four.”

Evidently, the Dragons found the idea of not biting uproarious. Even Tazithiel chuckled and shook her head in disbelief.

The stout Master X’atior seized Riika’s hand for the traditional kiss, blowing once upon her knuckles, circling his free hand twice in front of his face, and kissing her palm three times. “For the first time in Academy history, a student has won her Testing against the Masters.”

“Bah!” called Master Jandubior, recovering at the arena’s edge. “Test her some more!”

Kal yelled across the sand, “After you, I insist!”

Over the hubbub of laughter, X’atior bellowed, “Arise, student Riika, and claim your victory!”

Smiling shyly in the face of a tremendous roar of acclaim, Riika rose to take her bows to the traditional eight compass points. It was on the fifth bow that Kal saw pain’s shadow wing across her face. Clutching her chest, Riika collapsed.

Chapter 23: Shell-Mothers

“WE SHOULD BE with Riika,” Dragoness-Tazi grumbled.

“Yozora wants her to have breathing space,” said Kal. “One more time on the shield, Tazi, then I’m ready to pack it in. That Queen just dragged my brain backward through a patch of jiista-berry bushes.”

I wish …

Wish what? Kal focussed on adding his power to the mental net the Indigo Dragoness had built, striving to achieve the meld Aranya had described to them. A shield built by two minds became more than the sum of both.

Tazithiel circled the volcano gingerly, half a mile above the rim.

This is not going to sound pretty, Kal. I wish she’d dote upon me as she does over that Pygmy girl. The Dragoness snarled in frustration as their joint effort collapsed. I know, Riika’s ill. I’m recovering. We train together for hours every day, but all Aranya does is push, push, push. Endurance. Dragon powers. Read these fifty scrolls. Next she’ll have me doing mental gymnastics while I dodge fireballs flying upside-down with my eyes shut.

Kal said, Anyone would think she’s fond of you.

Anyone would think my shell-mother chooses odd ways to show her regard. But Tazithiel spread her wings, gliding down over the school. Having you up here learning with me has been invaluable, Kal. We’re growing closer as Dragon and Rider. Complex shields might defeat us, and I still can’t fly for more than half an hour at a time, but I do feel much more … honed. A unit. I’m starting to know myself and my capabilities. You, too.

Aye. You’re doing better with your shell-mother every day, Tazi.

Really, Kal? Do you think? I’ve been trying so hard, especially to respect her efforts for Riika. There hardly seems an hour she isn’t in the infirmary.

Kal shivered as the memory of Aranya springing down to the arena floor played through his mind. Her despair. The outpouring of her power; the convulsions her magic sparked in his daughter as the Queen stanched the inner bleeding. Later, Yozora reported a tear in Riika’s coronary artery. Seconds more, and she would have bled to death on the sand.

He said, Aranya told me she had found something special to show us when we returned from training today.

Why didn’t you tell me? Folding her wings, the Indigo Dragoness threw safety and healing to the winds. Stupid man!

Slow down, Tazi. You’ll hurt yourself.

Of course, he was talking to twenty-odd tonnes of flying granite-for-brains. All of these Dragons seemed as stubborn as cinderblocks and as docile as the innards of meriatite furnace engines. Consequently, Kal had despatched agents of his own to spy on the Queen’s spies as they investigated Endurion and Talon’s roost, plans and powers. He had to see the job done right. The King of Thieves had also put the boot into the Academy’s security arrangements, not without the need for the Amethyst Dragoness to throw the not inconsiderable weight of her authority behind his plans. Kal preferred to run a tight Dragonship–with a couple of mouse-holes left for personal breathing space. It was amazing what his vigorous onslaught had turned up.

A posse of his most fearsome warriors would arrive by Dragonship from Yin’toria within the week. Warriors to put the fear of volcanic hells beneath this Academy. Warriors led by the redoubtable Kahuni-tor Ral’tuxi, an arthritic seventy year-old spinster from the outlying Isles of Rolodia. The thwack of her cane had been known to reduce the most cynical men to weeping lumps of prekki fruit mush, and the stroke of her quill-pen to obliterate edifices built over the course of decades. Aye. Kal’s grin widened. Accountants. There was no force to match their primal fury.

The flare of great, multi-jointed wings brushed the rock face above the infirmary cave as Tazithiel braked for her landing. She groaned. Kal growled an unsympathetic word and made to dismount, only to be forced to dance an inelegant sailor’s jig on her back as the Dragoness immediately whirled and ducked inside the infirmary. Thankfully, a grab for her row of secondary spine spikes saved his blushes. Tazi stalked over to Riika’s pallet, bugling softly with pleasure to see the half-Pygmy sitting propped up against her pillows, smiling wanly.

“Did you see this slop Yozora feeds me?” she greeted them.

“Jeradian porridge,” said Aranya, returned to her Human form, seated on a low stool beside Riika’s bedside. “Hearty and nutritious, youngling. Eat up.”

Riika sniped, “It’s so green I feel I may as well go graze outside.”

“Healing herbs.” The Queen’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “When they start impersonating angry kittens, you know they’re getting well.”

Kal dropped onto Tazithiel’s left elbow and somersaulted deftly to the ground. “Applause?”

Everyone ignored him. Bah.

The girl said, “Dad, I woke up this morning missing three days of my life, to find the Queen of Ages drooling on my pillow. The shock. Unspeakable.”

Aranya hissed, “I do not–”

“Wet patch.” Riika pointed. The Queen’s eyes bulged. “So, how’s the training going? Aranya has been struggling to fully express what dismal students you two are.” Dragon-Tazi sat with a thump that shook the infirmary, clearly fighting back an urge to belt a few manners into an incorrigible teenager. “We lost a Dragon and a Rider to Talon yesterday.”

“Who?” Tazi and Kal chorused.

The Queen said, “Evanion was the Rider, and his Red Dragoness, Khellzira of Gemalka.”

“Khellzira was a Shapeshifter; both were your descendants,” said Kal, earning himself a shocked glance from Aranya. “I’m sorry.”

Woodenly, Aranya said, “They were supposed to stay away from Endurion’s roost. Evidently, there’s a magical shield or warning system around their Island. Khellzira and Evanion came too close and set off some kind of alarm. Next they knew, Endurion and Talon appeared and Khellzira just fell out of the sky. It felt like a ‘squeeze’, one of the other Riders said. Probably stopped Khellzira’s hearts. Talon let the others go.”

“It’s a warning,” said Kal. “He’s toying with us. We have to get that scroll. And, before you forbid us, lady–”

“She won’t,” Riika interrupted.

“I won’t?” Lightning crackled between the Immadian Queen’s palms. She snuffed it out with a sigh. “If you weren’t so ill, little one, I’d turn you over my knee and tan your backside for being cheeky enough both to be right, and for saying so to my face. Listen. Yozora and I put you in an induced coma for three days, hoping to work on your poisoning–but it is not something we have ever encountered before and thus far, it has proven to be beyond our powers to correct. Let me explain. Kal, would you uncover that picture and hold it up?”

Picking up the two-by-two foot picture, Kal began to unlace the canvas covering.

Aranya said, “The original artwork hangs in the Great Hall of Immadia. I had this copy brought from Gi’ishior. Look closely. Do you recognise this young lady?”

As a group, jaws dropped. Riika whispered, “It’s me, isn’t it?”

“Not quite,” Kal mused. “My guess would centre upon a famous graduate of this Academy.”

“Bravo, Kal,” Aranya smiled. “This is Pip’úrth’l-iòlall-Yò’oótha.”

The Pygmy girl’s eyes grew round. “Roaring rajals, Aranya, you speak Ancient Southern just like a Pygmy. That’s her battle name, if I guess correctly? But the picture …”

“I painted this portrait over two hundred years ago.” The Queen’s eyes grew distant, as if memory had overtaken the present. “Pip was my friend. The Pygmy Dragon, they called her. Astonishing likeness, isn’t it, Riika? That’s why I find you so … every time I see you, I feel as though I have travelled back in time. You’ve Shapeshifter magic in your bloodline. Masses of it. Pip and Silver, your ancestors, were both incredibly powerful Shapeshifters. Pip had extraordinary strength, unmatched courage, and the rarest of Dragon powers, the Word of Command. Silver was a Herimor Shapeshifter gifted with mental powers such as I have never encountered, before or since. Dragon powers are inherited down the generations, sometimes fading or becoming latent, sometimes resurfacing unexpectedly.”

“But Riika isn’t a spontaneous Shapeshifter,” Kal pointed out.

“Which brings us to yi’tx’txi’taxnayt’x,” agreed the Queen. “Of the little we do know about this toxin, we understand it has a threefold action, poisoning the physical, magical and spiritual aspects of the victim. Many Shapeshifter poisons act similarly; this one was Dramagon’s own special concoction, his ‘crowning achievement’, to quote the scrolls. Who knows what he purposed thereby? I was once poisoned, and it removed my ability to shift into Dragon form for some time. Yozora and I agree Riika has magic. You Shifted, Riika, and aye, I do mean similarly to how a Dragon Shapeshifter transforms.”

Riika’s voice was a tiny whisper, “I don’t understand.”

“You summoned your latent powers. Either they were always latent, or the poison made them so.”

“She’s a Shapeshifter, shell-mother?” asked Tazithiel.

“No. At least, Yozora and I don’t think so. What do you think, Kal?”

He sighed. Why not expose another of his secrets? If it helped Riika, or helped save lives, would this not constitute a new-Kal noble deed? “I have not seen any Shapeshifter manifestation in Riika,” he admitted. “Just before she demolished the Mistress of Knives, I did see an image of a black jungle cat, perhaps a Crescent Isles jungle panther, I believe. Riika–”

“Pictured a cat, and became it,” the girl breathed. “Physically? I really, truly don’t understand any of this, Aranya. Help me.”

“Peace, little one. Yozora and I theorise that this is a mental power, such as what your ancestor Silver displayed. Kal, will you please finish?”

“I detect Shapeshifters,” he said. “I see them magically, similarly to how I see constructs of magic.”

Suddenly, heat radiated from Aranya. Though the Queen did not move a muscle, Kal sensed deadly peril thick in the air. She pressed, “And?”

“Kal?” Tazithiel’s paw clamped down on his shoulder. “Calm down.”

“This is not easy. The Queen hates me already and I fear to set my neck upon her personal chopping block.”

The Indigo Dragoness loomed over her mother, menacing. “Aranya, you will–”

“I can’t believe I’m about to say this.” Aranya groaned softly, wringing her hands. “Fine. Setting aside the morals and values of a lifetime, Kal, I give you my word as a Star Dragoness. You have immunity for whatever you are about to confess in your twisting, sweating, helpless panic over there.”

Only Tazithiel’s paw prevented Kal from leaping at the Amethyst Shapeshifter and throwing his life away in the process. Terrible, reckless heat filled him up to his throat. “Fine, o Queen. First, I have the power to sneak past any Dragon as though I am merely a shadow. I only identified it recently, but I evidently used this power to stroll unscathed past all the Dragons of Gi’ishior.”

Behind her, the image of Aranya’s Dragoness sprang into snarling being.

“Second, I can see Shapeshifters. Don’t ask me how, but I can see your Dragoness behind you right now, and I know your transformation is close. Tazithiel told me Shapeshifter manifestations exist in another plane of reality. Setting aside hundreds of years of philosophical debate, I see your Dragon-existence right there behind you. Heights of emotion improve this ability. For example, see that Rider on the third bed over? She’s a Green Dragon Shapeshifter.”

“Very good,” said Aranya, disguising her disquiet with a slim, elegant hand stroking her chin. “An impossible Dragon power roars to life in the form of a disreputable Fra’aniorian. Why should we be at all concerned?”

Kal clenched his fists. His heart pounded in his throat like a blacksmith’s forge at full blast. “Third, I am who your spies will report tomorrow they suspect I am. You’ll never find any proof bar my word, o Queen, but I have been royalty in my own right, in my own realm. I am, or was, the man known as King Ta’armion, the considerably less upright and ignoble borrower of his royal name and title. I am the King of Thieves. Retired.”

Tazithiel groaned, “Oh, Kal. Did you have to?”

Aranya seemed on the verge of an explosion. Whatever emotions raged inside of her, igniting those amethyst eyes, she seemed incapable of speech. Iron will and perhaps the strength of her vow saved him, but Kal knew that their mortal enmity was assured. For three hundred years, this woman had carried the torch of peace, justice and honour throughout the Island-World. He was her diametric opposite. O twisted fate! The irony of his relationship with Tazithiel only took on new dimensions every time he thought about it.

To his amazement, however, the Indigo Dragoness spoke for him. Clasping him in her paw, she said, “When Kal came to steal my treasure, mother, he never expected to steal a Dragoness’ heart. I never expected to steal him, but I did. And though I have learned much of his past deeds, I have never been more certain that Kal had begun to find the Isle of redemption long before my Dragon fire ever warmed his thieving rump. Consider what he achieved with Riika. She tried to assassinate him; Kal turned her into his daughter. Today, we learned she has a beautiful heritage. This would have been impossible without Kal. He has even promised to finance your Academy from the proceeds of his legitimate businesses.”

Colouring, Kal growled, “We can ponder my misdeeds later. My concern is for Riika. What can be done for her, o Queen? Can you not heal her with your power?”

The amethyst eyes measured him for so long, Kal feared his heart would disintegrate under the strain. Slowly, the Queen said, “Dragon Rider oaths can do strange things to people, Kallion.”

He grinned weakly at Tazi. “I knew I should’ve despoiled you properly when we first met, Dragoness. It would’ve saved a great deal of bother.”

Her belly fires purred with an intoxicating brew of draconic appetites. “There are so many ways I can persuade you to behave, Kal.”

Sticking her fingers in her ears, Riika shouted, “La la la! La la la!”

They all laughed. Aranya bowed to her daughter. “I see the issue of a King of Thieves is in good paws. Riika, the poison has acted upon you for years, corrupting and reshaping and perhaps even enhancing your powers in ways that frankly, Yozora and I don’t understand. Your strength of will can summon forth inhuman strength and speed, as we saw, but there is a cost to that demand–the strain on your already failing body. I hoped that as a Star Dragoness, I could act to restore the balance of your being, but it seems that this poison has changed you in fundamental ways, and what remains is in balance, but a balance which will surely destroy you. You are unique.”

“Dear petal, Human life can only stretch so far. This poisonous power wears you thin.” Aranya caught up the small, slim brown hands, and stroked the girl’s fingers pensively. “An odd feature of Star Dragon powers is that they can come upon us for a time, as if given for a particular purpose, and having served that purpose, they depart forever. I once had such a power which I believe could have saved you. It is called Dragon Tears. I used it to save my friend Zuziana, who became deathly ill. It saved her life, but turned her into a Shapeshifter. An Azure Dragoness.”

A profound stillness settled upon the group.

The Immadian Queen said, “All the greatness and power and knowledge of this Queen of Dragons is dust. And it breaks my heart, for I have forgotten how to cry. If I could, little one, I would weep such tears over you as I once wept over a lost egg …”

Tearing herself away from Riika’s bedside, Aranya fled.

* * * *

From that day on, Riika’s recovery proceeded from strength to strength. Soon, she returned to her classes and intimidating her weapons-masters. Kal and Tazithiel divided their time between intense training and plumbing the depths of Dragon lore in the Academy’s great library. They worked alongside teams of Dragon and Human scholars investigating Shapeshifter poisons, Talon’s probable powers, and less urgently, the possibility of a passage through the Rim-Wall Mountains to the world beyond. Each day, the Indigo Dragoness flew further and higher, her vigour returning from a trickle to a flood under the tutelage of her shell-mother.

As for Mejia and the South, there was only silence. Nothing moved.

Yet, Tazithiel seemed despondent. Kal could not understand. Truly, the nature of Dragons might be a mystery, but greater still were the mysteries of women.

He turned his conniving mind to the matter of Endurion. That Green must be the source of her burdens. It could not be Aranya. Mother and daughter seemed to have given up on gnawing at each other’s throats, or perhaps they were both simply exhausted from training eighteen hours a day. What drove them? What drove Aranya? Love? Regret? The desire to make up for lost time? If these things, why not express the tenderness for Tazithiel that he was convinced hid somewhere beneath that Sovereign-of-the-World awesome exterior? All he knew was that the colour seemed to have leached out of his Indigo Dragoness’ world, leaving a grey hollowness no mischief of his could alleviate.

This golden evening over the green lake below the Dragon Roosts, precisely one month after Kal had burgled the Academy, seemed designed to lure a thief’s heart back to its old ways. He bent over his harp, strumming away moodily. Ordinarily, he would have sampled the varied delights of the Academy’s student and teacher population. Kallion the Conqueror could have plied his trade freely. What kind of man was he to consider himself oath-bound?

A bevy of cheery giggles made him startle. Three female third-year students, who had recently bonded with their Dragons to become fledgling Dragon Riders, waved as they sauntered by on their way to training at the Fledgling School. “Hey, Kal.” “Ho, mighty Dragon Rider.” “Save a few strings for me, will you?”

Kal’s fingers formed a few chords automatically and he ad-libbed, to the tune of a popular ballad:

Three Dragon Riders came strolling by,

Strolling by, strolling by,

Three beauties they came strolling by,

Bye bye, my heart shall die …

Aye, it would have been easy to shuck fidelity’s noose. But could he live with himself after? His eyes followed the students past, but his thoughts dwelled upon Tazithiel’s hair, and the sway of her hips. Intoxicating was a word which often sprang to mind. Had she bound him with her magic, as she was doubtless capable of, so subtly that a man might not even notice?

Kal’s gaze lifted from a pert student behind to the sight of Riika and Aranya approaching along the lake shore. Unholy windroc droppings. Had they seen? He must look a fool.

But Riika and Aranya were deep in conversation.

He played, and by the bye their footsteps paused beside the boulder he had chosen, jutting over the wind-still waters, a little off the beaten track.

“Tazithiel needs you,” said Aranya, without preamble.

“Aye? What happened?”

“She and I were up in the roost, talking about the world beneath the Cloudlands,” Riika said, “when Aranya arrived to bring me a scroll. She became all strange. Cold. Then she just freaked on us.”

Aranya clarified, “She kicked us out. No explanation, just screaming, lightning playing about her body and her hair writhing as though she had lost all control. She went feral, Kal. As we seemed to be the cause, I judged it best for us to leave and fetch you.”

“She kicked you both out? What was in the scroll?”

“It’s the Onyx Dragoness’ memoirs, a long scroll called The Pygmy Dragon,” said Aranya. “I thought it would help Riika understand herself. But it seemed to tip Tazithiel over the edge. Just a scroll. I wish I knew my shell-daughter better. We’ve both lost so much.”

He scrambled off the boulder. “I’ll try to help. Ride up?”

“I fear that riding me is the last action you should take right now, Kal. You’d better run.”

“That old man? He’ll never make it up the mountain,” Riika jeered.

Kal showed the little guttersnipe a clean pair of heels.

Chapter 24: Felonious Fickleness

POUNDING UP THE mountain toward the lower Dragon roosts, Kal did not pause to take in the sights. He lowered his head and ran. Suddenly, air whooshed above his body. Huge red claws scooped him into the air.

Kal twisted against that iron grip to look up. Jalfyrion?

Aye. Sensed the commotion; here to help.

As the Dragon flew, Jisellia and Jalfyrion’s roost was only a quarter-mile from where Tazithiel and Kal had made their home, but by foot it was a strenuous half-hour’s hike. Facing southwest, Kal’s roost netted the best of the evening light until the twin suns disappeared behind the volcanic rim, which would be in less than an hour. The Red’s wings creaked as he poured on the power, before braking effortlessly and adjusting to land Kal with supreme skill on the ledge outside their roost, meant for just this purpose.

Jalfyrion fixed him with a burning draconic eye. Need anything, you come see me, Rider Kal. Understood?

Aye. But his thoughts were already behind the curved crysglass windows that flooded Tazithiel’s Dragoness-bedchamber with suns-light.

The Dragon dropped off the ledge. Shake a wing, brother.

Kal dashed through the short, curved entryway that led into the semi-circular main chamber. As with many Dragon Roosts, the outer chamber doubled as a reception area and bedchamber for the Dragon, with a separate, Human-sized inner bedchamber for the Rider. This roost had a pretty natural grotto at the back with a rock pool for bathing. Beautiful crystal and quartzite formations peeped through the walls, also forming a pedestal for a Dragoness to perch upon when entertaining guests. Kal had begun to select artworks for the walls and had ordered gauzy Helyon silk hangings for the curved windows that looked out over the caldera.

Here he found Tazithiel, illuminated in a pool of light streaming through the windows, surrounded by hacked-off hanks of hair, beating her forehead slowly and methodically against the gold-veined pink pedestal. Clutching a dagger. Panting. Crying in bursts of eerie, keening sobs that raised every hair on the back of his neck. Great Islands! Had she lost her mind? Shock froze his feet. That was the whimper of a wounded animal.

“Tazithiel?” He moved, but Kal could not feel his feet. Dropping to his knees beside her, amidst the mess of blood and hair, he spoke softly, “Tazi? What’s wrong?”

Her hands scrabbled fitfully at her hair. So distressed was she, Kal saw, she had not managed to do a thorough job of decimating her locks. Her hands shook as she tried to saw ineffectually with the dagger. “I hate myself.” Thump. “Hate myself.” Thump. “It hurts, hurts so bad, I can’t stand it anymore …” Thump. “Take it away.” Thump. “Hate, hate, hate …”

“Here, precious one. Put that down.”

Kal discovered he still held his harp. He set the instrument aside and called gently to her, soothing. She stiffened, but seemed to allow him to comfort her. With many affectionate words, Kal drew the woman into his embrace, dabbing her blood-streaked face with his sleeve, wiping her tears with his thumbs. Never had the blue of her eyes seemed so deep, almost bottomless, as though windows opened upon terrace-lakes of grief. Never had Kal beheld a Human soul so wrung out, so desolate.

She had cut her scalp with the blade, and beaten her forehead open against the stone.

He worked the dagger out of her listless fingers. “Suffering hells, Tazi, what’s going on? Are you alright?”

“Alright?” She threw him off. “Alright? Oh, I’m just fine, Kal. Can’t you see?”

Kal opted to stay where he had fallen. Her mood was too fragile for him to loom over her. “Tell me what’s ailing you. What was in that scroll?”

“Scroll? In a scroll? You ralti-stupid man, do you not know me at all? I hate myself! I hate this.”

“Us? What we have?”

The Shapeshifter stared at him as though Kal had slithered out of a hole beneath a rock. Her fists clenched. “Me. I can’t do this anymore.”

“What has Aranya done or said this time?”

“Apart from abandoning her egg?” Tazithiel knelt opposite, her hair falling over her face in thick, tangled strands, yet through the veil Kal could see just a hint of her face, and her expression terrified him. “Kal, you just don’t see, do you? You’re a fool. You live everything on the surface, a pond-skater skimming over the surface of real life. Try to see me, Kal. The real me, whatever the hells that means. I’m so cursed ugly. I hate myself. What I am. I can’t live like this, trapped between you all.”

“Ugly?” Four letters, the word struck him more forcefully than the most violent profanity. “How can you even say that? It’s wrong! You have everything here, Tazithiel. The chance to have a relationship with your mother. A man who wants you, who wants to be with you–”

“Who couldn’t recognise a feeling if it pecked holes in his skull! Freaking … man! When will you realise this isn’t all about you?”

Hissing, Tazithiel flung the harp at him. Kal raised his forearm automatically. The instrument struck the stone edge of the Dragoness’ bowl-shaped bed and cracked with a sigh of strings. He stared at the destruction, shocked.

Tazithiel whispered, “If your mother was the poxy Empress of all Dragons, you might understand, Kal.”

“This is about Aranya? Roaring rajals, Tazi, at least you have a mother. Aye, she’s the most freaking famous creature that ever lived and I understand that comes with enormous pressure–”

The Indigo Dragoness stared at her hands. “I’m not good enough. She wants a Star Dragoness for a daughter and she thinks I’m her long-lost heir, only I don’t have the power. I don’t want it. I don’t want to end up like her!”

Finally, the pieces began to click together in Kal’s mind. “Aye. Saving our lives was unlovely of her, wasn’t it? Aranya might seem a fearsome beast, but she’s also a lonely old woman. Can you imagine all the generations which have passed her by? Watching as one by one, her children and grandchildren have passed on to the eternal fires? One by one, her friends died. She has outlived them all–can you imagine what a curse that longevity is, Tazi?”

Screaming incoherently, the Shapeshifter sprang upon him. Punching. Kicking. The bloodied fabric of her white dress flapped in his face, but Kal allowed her assault to continue. He received her blows, only moving his body to minimise the damage, and as she fought, she screamed how she could not believe he was defending that woman, her awful shell-mother, who had despised and rejected her from birth. The Dragoness who had lost her egg.

She subsided against him.

“Tazi?” His voice cracked. “Woman, what’s at the root of all this? You’re acting weird. Freakish.”

Tenderly, he stroked her hair. Crooned to her. She snuffled against his shoulder. Kal knew the violence was not done. It lurked just beneath the surface of her being, as if her Dragoness were on the cusp of bursting into being and burning the roost down.

“I don’t understand why–I see your hurt. Truly, I do. But what I don’t understand is, why now? You’re getting to know your mother. You’ve been so understanding, despite all that ruddy draconic arrogance on her part. And now some story about the Pygmy Dragon has upset you? Help me understand, my precious petal. Help me.”

“She hates me,” Tazi moaned. Sucked in a breath. “She’d rather have you and that little brown girl.”

Kal did not know whether he had jumped into a volcano or a field of ice. It felt like both at once. “Little brown girl? Little brown–what the hells, Tazi!”

“She’s stealing my own mother from me!”

Curse it to the bottomless Cloudlands, this was what ailed her? Pure, stinking jealousy? And who was brown anyways–Tazithiel herself was the product of a pale Northerner and a dark Western Isles Shapeshifter. No, this was nothing but a raw, repulsive expression of her inner anguish.

But he could not allow Riika to be spoken of like this. It burned him to the core. Kal blazed, “At least Riika faces life head-on. She didn’t spend nine years hiding like a coward!”

“You bastard!”

He barely knew what hit him. Suddenly Tazithiel was upon him with dagger and fist, beating him out of the roost, shrieking like a feral windroc, “Get out! Get the hells out of my life! You step over that threshold again, word of a Dragon, you’re a dead man!”

* * * *

Somehow, Kal found himself in the kitchens after dark, having his cuts treated by the twins. Someone pressed a tumbler of violently alcoholic, rough Mejian brandy into his hand, “Drink this. We need to stitch these cuts.”

“Rough day, Rider?”

“You don’t know the half of it, Yenshi.”

“I’m Fenshi.”

Yenshi and Fenshi. What kind of parents chose such names for their children? They were sweet. Not a whole brain between them, but the twins were known to be inseparable and they had cared for each other ever since their parents died of the coughing-plague.

Fenshi unbuttoned his shirt and peeled the material away from a deep puncture wound in his right flank. “You fighting with Dragons again, Rider Kal?”

“Story of my life.” Kal downed the brandy in a single, huge gulp. “Another.” He quaffed that one too.

“Must be a story,” said Yenshi. “You slow down, soldier.”

“I need to forget–forget I ever met her.”

“Oh, it’s girl trouble. I knew it,” said one of the Jeradian girls. Kal hissed as she cleaned out his stab-wound with a caustic solution. “Dragons, they’re trouble. Shapeshifters, even worse. Double trouble. Come on, we need to get you someplace away from the food before you bleed all over it.”

Kal stumbled down a hallway. Suffering hells, that brandy almost had him off his feet. The twins helped him to a dimly lit room. Warm hands tended his scrapes and bruises. There was perfume in his nostrils and an ample bosom to pillow his head upon. Kal drank again. His trousers had come unbuttoned and a blonde head bobbed down near his feet, working his boots loose.

Yenshi’s eyes seemed full of lamplight. She said, “Ooh, Fenshi, you were right. He is built like a Dragon.” The sisters laughed.

Kal stirred uneasily. “This is wrong. I need–”

“You need to forget.” There was warmth and the softness of bare skin against his body, and a voice teasing, “Tell us all about this problem with Tazithiel, big man.”

“We’ll help you forget,” said the other blonde twin, kissing his neck hungrily. “Tell us everything, Rider Kal. We’d be so very, very grateful.”

* * * *

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Open up, or I’ll break this door down!”

Kal stirred, his brain an alcoholic fug, the pounding making him wince at every blow. “What?”

He heard voices raised in argument. Threats. The nearby growl of a Dragon. In seconds, Kal minus any form of clothing whatsoever, found himself shivering in the corridor outside the twins’ room. Feeling a handy wall at his shoulder, he made to slump.

Whack. “Get moving, Kal.”

“Jisellia?” He giggled, “By the lakes of Rolodia, you look beautiful this evening.”

“Shut up before I have Jalfyrion stand on you.” Shoving her shoulder beneath Kal’s armpit, the petite Dragon Rider dragged him down a corridor, muttering, “Idiot. Fungus-brain. Dried out lump of swamp scum. Dolt. Jerk. Dimwit. Dock labourer. Parakeet.”

Kal did not appreciate having a dictionary full of insults flung at him.

“He stinks,” Jalfyrion rumbled. “How drunk is he?”

“About the Human limit. Much more than this and he’d be unconscious.”

“Not drunk. Perfectly frisky.”

A huge red paw stopped the breath in his chest. “Let’s fly, Rider.”

Kal soared through the cool, dark night, the wind slowly stripping away his bewilderment to replace it with the type of clarity that underlay a headache so beastly, he imagined Jalfyrion had tied his head to a string and was kicking it about for fun. As they approached Jisellia and Jalfyrion’s roost, Kal opened his mouth to speak. Instead, the remains of his overindulgence chose to hurl themselves toward freedom. He heard a faint yell of outrage from below.

Jalfyrion landed, thumped inside the roost and threw Kal at a floor cushion, growling, “Do you want to get yourself killed? Dragon Riders don’t behave like that. You made an oath.”

“Not to carouse with twins? I didn’t hear myself say that.”

“Oh, now she’s only your Dragoness? Hold me back, Jisellia, or I’ll murder that little toad and keep murdering him until …”

Jisellia folded her arms. “Permission granted.”

“I don’t need mothering,” the thief scowled. “Tazi kicked me out. I was sulking.”

Jalfyrion’s Dragon thunder rattled not only his roost, but half the mountain, it seemed. Kal clapped his hands to his temples.

Jisellia seethed, “I’ll toss your ungrateful carcass over the edge. Kal, Jalfyrion found you and came to get me. The least you can do is express your thanks for the rescue of your worthless hide. What kind of a man are you? One tiff with your Indigo Shapeshifter and you go find solace with two strumpets from the kitchens?”

“Active solace; repeated acts of mollification,” Kal smirked.

“Ugh! You’re repulsive.”

Perhaps he ought to attempt an explanation, or at least a few lies. “We talked, first. I drank too much Mejian brandy, but they were just asking so many questions, all about Tazithiel and me and–”

FREAKING IDIOT! Jalfyrion had no Storm power, but his thunder knocked Kal sprawling. The Dragon shouted, “I must go warn them. Jisellia, keep this benighted fool right where you can see him. Don’t let him out that door.”

With that, the stolid Red scrambled out of his roost, striking the doorpost so forcefully in his haste that dust poured from the ceiling.

Kal tried a suave dusting-off of his trousers, but it took him four attempts to find his own legs, whereupon he remembered the absence of said trousers. “So, Jisellia. It’s just the two of us.”

“Aye, one drunken null-brain and one Dragon Rider,” she said, indicating the wide arched doorway to her inner bedchamber. “Kal, go sleep it off. Take the bed. I’ll sleep next to Jalfyrion and we can talk in the morning.”

“Only if you join me.” Kal winked at the pretty Rider.

“Haven’t you had enough for one day?”

Kal summoned up his failsafe grin, indicating where she ought to be checking for the answer to her question.

Jisellia gasped and studied her toes, blushing up a firestorm. “Evidently not.”

He sauntered closer, driven by forces he recognised, but seemed unable to withhold, especially with a few too many drinks under his belt. Kal reached out. “Come, my fireflower petal. Let us test the softness of your bed together.”

The girl moved toward him, eyes demurely downcast. Kal chuckled. Oh, aye. He was beyond awesome.

Then, her fist blurred upward from the level of her belt as the petite warrior put the full force of her body into a swingeing uppercut. The last Kal knew was a blossoming of astonishment as a small fist kissed the point of his jaw perfectly.

* * * *

The danger-instinct of a hardboiled heckler of all types of laws, rules and governmental systems woke Kal instantly, but sadly, delayed perhaps twenty seconds too long before pricking him like the point of a Dragon’s battle-sharpened talon. He roused in a sweet, curtained four-poster bed with rose-coloured curtains. There were roses hand-stitched on the covers and roses on the bedside table. The walls were painted in a shade of rose and aye, the room smelled of roses–what else?

Less rosy was the fact that an Indigo Dragoness had discovered him, a flagrantly unclad thorn, lying smack in the middle of a lady’s rose-filled boudoir. Dragoness-Tazi seemed vexed. Kal could not imagine why.

“Tazithiel! Stop!” cried Jisellia, charging into the room. “This is not what you think.”

“No?” Her tone conveyed so much honey, Kal knew she meant to drown him in it. “This isn’t what exactly, Rider Jisellia?”

Well, he was rather saluting the morning. Kal drew up a pink, fluffy cushion lest the lady-folk be distracted by his masculine attributes. “Uh …”

“One wrong word, Kal, and I’ll burn this roost down!”

“I can explain!” cried Jisellia. Helpfully, she wore nothing more than a light pink towel. She must have been bathing when Tazithiel muscled her way in.

“No, I can,” said Kal.

The Dragoness fairly trembled with the effort of holding back her fire. “Don’t try to weasel your way out of this one, Kal.”

He said, “I did absolutely nothing with J–”

Tazi interrupted, “To think I came to apologise. What a ralti-brained laughingstock I am.”

“But I didn’t–”

“What has Aranya driven us to, Kal?”

“Well, I–”

“Let’s leave this Academy. Today.”

“Islands’ sakes, Dragoness! Can I finish a sentence? Just one?”

As Kal took a deep breath, marshalling his thoughts, Jalfyrion poked his muzzle through Jisellia’s doorway, making Tazithiel scuttle sideways in surprise. Despite two Dragons fire-breathing in an enclosed space, Kal had to smooth the chills on his arms.

The Red growled, “Aye, what did you do with my Rider?”

Oh to be two years old and be allowed to throw a proper tantrum. Kal only wished. With the utmost clarity, he enunciated, “Nothing. I did nothing at all with Jisellia. Do we all understand the meaning of the word ‘nothing’? I did not touch her, breathe on her or mishandle her person in any way. I know this looks bad. Mostly it’s down to three tankards of Mejian brandy and some woeful judgement on my part, alright?”

“He did nothing with me,” Jisellia confirmed. Kal decided he would be grateful for all eternity she did not mention what he had done and with whom.

The Indigo Dragoness’ belly-fires made the room sound like the innards of a Dragonship furnace engine. “One of you is lying. I opt for the woman. You’ve been making moon-eyes at my Kal since we first met.”

“Tazi, she’s with him. Suffering volcanoes!”

Kal’s lunge was a fraction of a second too slow. The incensed Dragoness snapped Jisellia up in her paw; Kal bounced off her rock-hard knuckles. “One false twitch of a wingtip, Jalfyrion, and I’ll pulp this Human between my talons.” The Red growled horribly in his throat. Tazi shook her prey. “The truth. Now!”

The thief said, “Tazi, I’m the one you want to punish here; I’m the unfaithful bastard. Let Jisellia go, and deal with me. Please. Red, do something. Convince her.”

Tazithiel bore down with the strength of a Dragon. Jisellia screamed.

Striking Tazi on the paw, Kal shouted in Dragonish, It’s not me she wants, Tazi, it’s him!

You miserable cretin, he’s a Dragon. She wants you.

Jisellia was turning alarming colours as Tazithiel stopped her breath. Kal pleaded, Jalfyrion, please, put us out of this misery. Show her.

The huge Red Dragon shuffled his paws, trapped.

Suddenly, the Indigo paused. Her fire-eyes whirled at Kal. Show her what? You males were colluding before. I hate it when you keep secrets, Kal. Poor Jisellia gasped a relieving breath, her colour pinking up nicely. “We women would appreciate a few explanations. Kal’s naked in your roost, but he smells of other women and not you, Jisellia. I realise that now. Why are you protecting him, and Kal is protecting … Jalfyrion?”

The Red Dragon shot Kal a desperate look; far too much revealed. Jisellia’s eyes, peeking over the top of Tazi’s paw, communicated a million unspeakable questions. With a sigh, he backed out of the doorway he could not fit through. Air imploded, rattling the crysglass windows.

A footstep.

A man stood framed in the doorway.

Dragoness and Dragon Rider shared identical expressions of shock. For one, Kal thought sourly, Jalfyrion was naked. Of course. Shapeshifter transformations never worked well with clothing. Worse, he was truly a man built in the mould of a Dragon. Jalfyrion’s Human-form was short but muscled like a champion wrestler, his shoulders resembling packets of boulders rolling beneath skin so lean, every vein and striation stood out as if etched by a master sculptor. His eyes blazed yellow, filled with draconic power.

He said, “I’m a Shapeshifter. I am Jalfyrion.”

Kal was not jealous. Freaking feral windrocs, he could chew that man’s liver out and feed it to the buzzards! Abandoning his pillow, he strolled over and clasped the Shapeshifter’s forearm in the way of Southern Isles men. “Welcome to the Human world, Jalfyrion.”

Tazithiel purred at Jisellia, “Well? Toothsome enough for you?”

“He’s beautiful!” she gasped. Covering her mouth with her hands, she tottered out of the Dragoness’ grasp. “Oh, my … two naked chunks of manhood in my room? Am I dreaming? You. Out!” Kal happily obliged. “You! On my bed, snip snap! Quick wings.”

“Uh …” Jalfyrion blushed with all the heat and fire of a Dragon.

Jisellia tapped her foot dangerously. “Think I’m letting you escape after this? You’re my prey, now. I’ll give you a count of three, Jalfyrion, before I start doing things to you that will make even our Kal sprint out of this cavern, squealing in embarrassment.”

With a grin, Kal used his grip on Jalfyrion’s arm to propel the man toward his Human-love. “Submit to your fate, Jalfyrion. I assure you it won’t be half as awful as you think.”

The Dragon Rider’s quivering finger indicated the door.

Kal snapped, “Tazi! Move your gorgeous scales. I have some grovelling of my own to do. And, oddly, Jalfyrion has just given me an idea of how to burgle Endurion’s fortress.”

Jisellia and Jalfyrion did not appear to be listening. Strange, that.

He shook his head. Youngsters. They probably wouldn’t leave their cavern for a week. Then again, with the right sort of apology, might Tazithiel demand the same of him? Maybe. When she finished sharpening his femurs for toothpicks.

Chapter 25: Storm Training

TAZITHIEL WHISTLED BETWEEN the peaks, delivering powerful, concentrated fireballs left and right, targeting dead tree-trunks placed in the form of crosses along a dry canyon-bed.

“Left!” cried Kal, picking off a target she had missed. His four-foot Dragon arrow thumped into the target just half a foot below a perfect centre.

“Shot! Darn it. Above, Kal!”

He twisted in the saddle and pinned a tumbling windroc carcass meant to represent an attack while Tazithiel took out a boulder shot at them by a lurking Brown Dragon. Her instinctive lightning-bolt provoked a bellow of rage from somewhere amidst the rocks.

Kal roared with laughter. “Got him, my beauty!”

The final run down the obstacle course demanded Tazithiel’s utmost concentration. Fire and arrows rained down upon them and molten boulders sizzled through the sky as ten Dragons attacked in concert. The Indigo jinked, clipping an outcropping and snapping a wing-strut in the process. Kal bolstered and adjusted their shield, deflecting three accurate boulders and a Red Dragon’s lava-attack with an economy of effort. Great Islands, Aranya’s techniques and teachings actually worked. Storm winds roared from the Dragoness’ throat, sweeping aside four nets and the empty shell of a Dragonship. She broke up a formation of five lurking Reds before they could block the way.

“Right. Here comes the big one.”

“I love the way you talk about your mother!”

Hooting hysterically, Dragon and Rider slewed around a corner and stretched for the prize, a white-painted boulder set upon a mountaintop, guarded by a monstrous Amethyst Dragoness. Tazithiel dodged a blue-hot fireball and then bugled in shock as white-fires eclipsed the sky, shutting out everything. Roaring rajals, that Aranya had a surprise up every sleeve–er, under every scale? By instinct alone, Tazi avoided two more of Aranya’s miniature fireballs, but one shot a hole through her right wing.

Kal knew he had messed up the shield. Again. No mind. Picture the goal, Tazi. Like this.

Get it blind? she snarled, snaking unseeing through a field of white. The Indigo neutralised an incoming fireball with a counter-strike of magic-encased ice, creating an explosion that punched them sideways in the air. Her wingbeat stuttered; Kal tried to reach in to neutralise the pain, but the Dragoness was too battle-mad to sense his offer of help.

TAZITHIEL! Her challenge shook the nearby peaks, a thunderclap.

Watch for the ambush. I sense her. Use my power, Tazi.

She accelerated so fast Kal imagined the Dragoness had stood on his chest. Massive purple talons scythed the air a foot beneath Tazi’s belly as she reacted with Dragon-speed, adjusting so rapidly that they performed an aerial somersault right over her shell-mother’s mountainous spine spikes and, clutching the boulder, shot gratefully away.

Aranya’s exasperated thunder chased them into the evening sky.

Rising with powerful thrusts of her wings, the Amethyst Dragoness joined her shell-daughter aloft. Alright, students and Riders. Let’s wrap it up for today.

Watching the fire-blackened Dragons limping upward, their Riders shaking their heads and checking equipment and injuries, Kal had to admit that Aranya did not shirk when it came to injecting realism into their lessons. Aye, her voice intruded in his mind. Keeps you youngsters alive. Fascinating use of Shadow power, Kal.

Shadow?

Later, Rider.

It was two weeks since Tazithiel and Kal’s reconciliation, and the Indigo Dragoness was battling her way to fighting fitness. The Indigo put on a brave face, he thought, but Kal sensed tenderness as every wingbeat stretched her abdomen. Aye. Not fully healed yet.

The Amethyst Dragoness called the forty-strong Dragonwing together to discuss the successes and failures of the exercise, which had taken place in a mountainous badlands region a couple of leagues from the Academy volcano. The mixed group of new graduates and experienced Dragon Rider teams was battered, bruised and blowing heavily, but Kal saw smiles and enjoyed the rough jests the bolder Dragons and Riders tossed at each other as Aranya outlined the salient highlights or deficiencies of their various performances.

After the debriefing, the return journey took the Dragonwing over ranks of shattered, coniferous peaks and jagged, shadowed ravines.

Truly, Dragon country, said Tazithiel, reading his thoughts.

Aranya just told me I used Shadow power. I’ve never heard of it before.

Your sneak-about power has a name? Tazithiel chuckled mentally. I thought the only Dragon who ever boasted that power was the Shadow Dragon, Aranya’s husband. But he was a unique Dragon, able to penetrate any shield, fortress or barrier. They say he flew below-ground like an Anubam, only he disturbed nothing in passing. Strange coincidence, isn’t it?

Kal always appreciated how with Dragonish, it was possible to say one thing and mean completely the opposite, or to add a million nuances such as questioning one’s own statement, humour, irony, accusation, or referencing the different colours of fire and Dragon-scale, each of which conveyed their own sea of complexity. To ‘strange coincidence’ Tazithiel had added a genealogical interrogative, a ring of truth-in-harmony-with-being and a spritely hint of laughter to lift his spirits.

Strange indeed, he replied, just about inserting a suggestion that they should investigate.

One more unanswerable question for our scholars, Tazi said. I wonder what Riika has prepared for dinner?

Prepare to be spoiled, said Kal.

Being Riika, she kicked Tazi and Kal out of their own kitchen and slammed the door, but the smells around the roost were enough to make a man slaver, let alone a Dragoness. “What’re we eating?” Kal called through the door.

Riika belted out a lively ballad, rather tunelessly.

“Off to the shower with you,” said Human-Tazi, slipping into a silk bathrobe. “No smoky half-fried Riders at my dinner table, thank you very much.”

“I’ll soap your back,” Kal offered.

“Oh?” An indigo eye winked coyly at him. “Though, the object of your attentions cannot possibly be my back. You, Kallion, remain an incurable liar.”

“Your back is a wonderland of beauty, o Princess of the pulsating engines of my life.”

“I’m about to punish you for ever looking at another woman, never mind two kitchen strumpets. Drunk or not, Kal–”

“Aye. I spited you. No words will ever convey the depths of my regret. I don’t deserve you, Tazithiel.”

So many layers to this woman. For a second, Kal saw smoke curl between her lips. Then, the seductress rematerialized with Shapeshifter-like facility. “You’ve learned another Dragon power, Kal. Sincerity. I find a sincere man … irresistible.” Seizing his belt with her hair, she dragged him off to the shower room, cooing, “What you deserve is a tyrannical temptress in your bathtub. You can start apologising at the top and work your way down. Slowly.”

After that, a certain amount of washing did occur, although randomly and with a severe lack of concentration. Dressed in their formal finery, arm in arm, the thief who stole a Dragoness and the Dragoness who stole a thief approached their dinner table, positioned beside the roost’s crysglass windows to catch the best light. The table was set to a jungle theme, with plates artistically designed to resemble rajals’ heads, windroc-feather napkins and a bottle of the finest Crescent Isles wine, produced according to a secret Pygmy recipe, cooling in a laver shaped like a Dragon’s roaring mouth.

Riika sashayed in with the first course, clad only in a loincloth and an artfully draped panther-skin; barefoot, wearing jungle flowers in her hair. “A starter of ring-sliced Crescent Isles flame-fruit accompanied by a trio of wild water-cow cheeses and spicy mohili crackers,” she announced.

Kal clicked his fingers in the Fra’aniorian fashion. “You continue to astonish, o jungle maiden.”

“I’m taking classes,” she smiled.

There followed a five-course meal full of non-stop hilarity and tasty dishes as the threesome dissected Kal’s newly-formulated plan to penetrate Endurion’s citadel and steal the all-important Scroll of Many Hands, as the scholars had now accurately identified it. The lore within remained a mystery, however. All they knew was that to wait for Talon to master his power would be suicidal at best.

“Aranya’s intelligence missed the fact that parts of the citadel are built to deny Dragons entry,” Kal revealed. “The shield is the first layer of protection, clearly triggered by Dragon magic. Then there’s a layer of traps surrounding the inner fortress, but beyond that, an area tunnelled into a type of living rock, the legend says, which cannot be penetrated even by Brown Dragon powers. The tunnels are too small for Dragons. That, my friends, is where Talon will be hiding his treasures. He stations a Dragon at every entrance and has a hundred troops guarding his inner sanctum, day and night. Within, all is unknown. We will need to tread delicately. As delicately as the Queenly Shapeshifter skulking outside our roost.”

Tazi and Riika startled.

Setting down his fluted crystal goblet, Kal rose and called clearly, “Queen Aranya. Do join us, if you would.” Very softly, he added, “Aranya’s not the only one who can lay a trap.”

Riika giggled. Tazithiel looked as though she had swallowed a wasp.

Stepping through the doorway, the Immadian Queen greeted them regally. “I’m sorry to disturb, but I believe you’ll need my help with your plan.”

Tazi snapped, “Because we’re incapable of thinking for ourselves? Or do you want to take over?”

“Neither, shell-daughter. I want to be of help.”

“Oh, I’ll believe that when–what’s that?”

Riika held out a prekki fruit. “Pray stuff this fruit in your gob, noble Dragoness.”

“I … you … what?” spluttered Tazi.

The half-Pygmy scowled impishly. “I’ve heard and seen quite enough. You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves. And I refuse to be the grounds for your constant quarrelling.”

“Who told you that nonsense?” cried Tazi.

Riika’s smile was a brittle lament. “I’m no fool, Indigo-eyes. Don’t treat me so. Nor you, Aranya. I won’t be here forever to compete over, and when I’m gone, you two need to be mother and daughter.”

Silence. Kal wiped his eyes. Mother and daughter hung their heads identically.

The girl said, “I’ve been reading the lore about my people compiled by Balthion of Sylakia and Pip, the Pygmy Dragon. Among Pygmies, when relationships break down, they have a special ceremony they use to foster reconciliation. Please indulge me. Because this hurts. Love can hurt, and I’ve precious little time to do what I can–aye, I’m laying the guilt on thick. Forgive me.”

The two tall Immadians bent over Riika, and held her close. Muffled voices promised, “We will.” “We’ll do better.”

Removing her loincloth, Riika said, “Sorry I hadn’t thought to arrange a better symbol. This is a … cord of binding. The translation suffers, I’m afraid. Hear me now. Pygmy lore teaches that the heart is a treacherous beast. By binding wrist to wrist, and pulse to pulse, we bind life together as it ought to be bound.”

So saying, she tied Aranya’s left wrist to Tazithiel’s right.

“The heart is fey and prone to relapse. So we bind two hearts together for a period of time, to allow the connection time to develop. A week is usually the minimum.”

“A week?” the Queen gasped.

Tazithiel sniffled and accepted a cloth napkin from Kal to wipe her nose. “You can’t even manage a week with me, shell-mother?”

Sternly, Riika said, “This symbol is not to be removed save perhaps for dressing. Not for the toilet, not for sleeping, and definitely not for eating. In fact, for this week neither of you is allowed to feed or drink by yourself. You must each serve the other.”

The Shapeshifter Dragonesses eyed each other uncertainly.

“I suggest we deny them daggers, or this might not end well,” Kal suggested, torn between laughter and horror. Did Riika know what manner of fuse she had just lit?

Standing between the two women, each a head and a half taller than her, the Pygmy laid her hands upon their bowed wrists, dipping her own head until her dark curls cascaded over their arms. She murmured in Ancient Southern, the language of Pygmies. Seven times, as she spoke, she plucked the binding cloth. Kal watched Tazithiel and Aranya, neither of whom seemed to know where to look. At length, Riika kissed the cloth with great tenderness. “There. It is done.”

“What was the last part, Riika?” asked Tazi.

Aranya said, “It was a blessing, but the forms were so ancient I didn’t understand most of it.”

“It’s based on the blessing Pygmy mothers speak over the umbilical cord,” said Riika. “Because life flows from mother to child via the umbilical cord, my people treat it as sacred. Often, they will preserve the placenta and cord and carry them together with the baby for the first month of life. The cord is only severed after that month, when the attachment is accomplished. The binding ceremony symbolises the original connection between mother and child, teaching us how life flows through relationship. Should that cord be severed, we believe it must be restored by returning to the original font, the life-giving connection within the womb.”

Suddenly, she seemed to morph from ancient Pygmy wise-woman into an awkward teenager. “That is … uh, at least … what the scrolls say.”

Tazithiel and Aranya stared at their linked wrists as though Riika had confined them in a prison of terrifying, Island-shivering consequence. Kal had imagined Dragons could never be enchained. Now he conceded his error. Past grief could enslave a soul as surely as the measures Riika had taken in the hope of winning their freedom. A phrase from the Pygmy Dragon scroll played through his mind, ‘The courage of the smallest.’ Aye. In the greatest adversity, Riika’s courage shone brightest, almost too dazzling to bear.

He clapped her on the shoulder. “I can completely believe you have Dragon in your ancestry, Razorblades. Look, you made the two most powerful Dragonesses in the Island-World weep.”

“I feel ridiculous. Don’t know where that came from.”

Kal folded his girl into his arms. “A straight arrow shot from the heart.”

* * * *

“Look, I don’t understand what the blindfold is for,” Kal griped, for the two thousandth time. “Aye, today’s the day your umbilical torture is due to be removed, I know that.”

“Patience, o wise mentor,” Riika intoned. “Today is all about surprises.”

“And how’s Tazithiel supposed to be training for our difficult and dangerous mission when her Dragoness hasn’t flown for a week?”

“Tazithiel is fine.”

Someone blew on his neck. Kal yelped.

Sneaking, floaty, Kinetic-powered prankster. Tazi was borrowing far too much from his scrolleaves for Kal’s comfort. The fact that he had accomplished all of his audacious thieving triumphs with his two feet placed firmly on the ground obviously placed him in a class of his own. Old-Kal would have gnawed off a limb for the chance to possess Tazi’s levitation or shielding capabilities. His own magic was perfectly modest in comparison.

“Can I look yet?”

“Wait.” The Shapeshifter’s voice drew away. “Right, Riika. Now.”

“I can’t reach.” The girl could make a sentence sulk so powerfully the words dragged their lips on the ground.

Kal wrenched off the blindfold. Speech deserted him. Reason fled the Island. Lust–that stayed for the party. Amazement, disbelief and a great deal of heat churned about in his head, making his expression their personal playground.

Tazithiel twirled shyly in the suns-beam she had chosen to best highlight her outfit. “Well?”

Aye, and this woman had vowed she would rather gnaw off her own tail than wear exactly what she wore now? Kal was certain they were meant to be armoured trousers, but the impression of black paint kept muddling his mind. Great Islands, the material fit like her Dragoness’ own hide! His gaze rose to her bare, muscled stomach above the weapons-belt. Kal sternly forbade himself from expiring in ecstasy over the perfection of her belly-button in that trim waistline, even if a fading scar intersected it, a visible reminder of Endurion’s abhorrence.

Furthermore, Tazithiel wore midriff-baring Western Isles body armour, which served the dual function of protecting her torso and enhancing her physique into an ode to the most volcanic feminine curves he had ever beheld in his misspent lifetime, which had included a great deal of beholding and associated misspending. The hilt of a three-foot kuhiko sword protruded above her right shoulder. Her hair flowed as a night-blue river down her back, tied back with blue razor ribbons which matched her eyes. She had even enhanced her eyes with indigo war-paint.

Kal gestured and said, “Hooooo …”

He coughed; tried again. “Faaaa-warble …”

“I fear we may have succeeded in turning him into a gibbering idiot,” Riika said drily.

“But … the animal hide and tail-chewing bit …”

If Tazithiel kept smiling at him like that, he was definitely never going to string together an intelligent sentence again. He could not peel his eyes off her thighs.

The half-Pygmy said, “It’s silk, not leather. The Dragon scientists here have perfected a sevenfold silk mesh-material reinforced with metal strands which is lightweight and pliable, as you see, yet as effective as light armour. The production process involves a great deal of magical trickery.”

“Magical.” Kal was still trying to work out how it was physically possible for any woman to have legs as long and alluring as Tazithiel’s.

“Riika helped them perfect the production process this week,” Tazi explained. “It’s … mmm!”

Kal kissed her zestfully, while thoroughly checking the fit of her trousers with his hands.

“Kal, stop it.”

He kissed and explored a little more. Great leaping Islands! This was sin incarnate.

“Kal, your daughter’s present–Kallion! Control yourself.”

“Quite impossible.”

“Kal–Kal! Hands off before I surgically remove them.”

“Mmm, I like ultra-sexy Tazithiel,” he growled. “What need hast thou of sword and spear, o dancing fire of the dawn?”

“Honestly, Sticky-Fingers, you’re just embarrassing,” Riika huffed, appearing even more steamed than the Indigo Shapeshifter. “Now, Tazi can change into this outfit inside seven seconds. She showed me.”

Kal fixed his most wicked Cloudlands-pirate grin upon them. “Can I see?”

“No, but you can get dressed,” said the Shapeshifter, whose face seemed to be exploring the colours between rosy and crimson. “We’re going tonight. Briefing five minutes ago.”

“Tonight? But my plan was–”

Riika rapped, “It’s still your plan, ego-man. But the spies spotted movement down past Mejia. We go tonight, and we go in fast and hard. Aranya’s already briefing the Dragons and Riders. Tazzer?”

“Turn around, Razorblades.”

Kal had an inkling of what was coming, but it appeared that the saucy sorceress had fine-tuned the art of magical dressing, for his clothing practically exploded off his body. In a wink, his appreciation of her outfit jutted in the breeze.

“Ooh,” said Tazi, with a growl of her own. She tugged him close with a wicked whip-curl of magic. “A shame we’re off to war, Kal, or I’d–”

“Putrid windroc droppings! Slug vomit! Rajal poo!” yelled Riika, storming out of the roost with her hands firmly clapped over her ears.

“A hip kiss for you,” she smiled. “Closely related to the art of the air kiss I once demonstrated. Do you remember?” She twitched her hips suggestively. “How’s this?”

“You’re a profoundly immoral princess,” he spluttered.

“I am? Watch this. Time to get dressed, Kal.”

She conjured up an outfit so fast Kal collected friction burns under his arms. Grumbling about unrelieved urges, he retrieved his essential weaponry and toolkits, which he had checked and rechecked five times in three days. Then, Tazithiel whisked him down the mountain with a touch of levitation and a cheeky upending of the Pygmy girl on the way, which Riika protested vociferously.

The Shapeshifter levitated them all the way to the base of the roost mountain, and inside a series of vaulting caverns Kal had noticed before. In short order, he heard the hubbub of many Dragons and Riders.

Over fifty Dragons and thirty Dragon Riders crammed into what was usually a huge cavern, but Aranya alone made the space feel cramped, for the Amethyst Dragoness was a mountain in her own right. She sat squarely in a large lava pool beneath the tallest part of the cavern roof, Kal noticed, every inch the Queen Dragoness holding court before a Dragonwing of fledglings–only, these were fully-grown Dragons. She made them look like dragonets.

Flanked by two exotic beauties, Kal decided he made an impression worthy of the King of Thieves on arrival. Jalfyrion, to his right, let out an involuntary burp of fire as Tazithiel sashayed past him. Jisellia chuckled and flipped Kal a mock-salute. Oh, she knew about this and he did not?

He dreamed up a punishment involving forced nude dancing atop a table decorated with Immadian forked daggers.

“So, that’s all settled,” said Aranya. “Two groups, one to scour Jeradia for threats to the Academy and one to strike south. By dawn, I intend to be in Mejia.” That distance overnight was impossible–wasn’t it? Kal firmed his lips. “At Mejia, the group will split. One Dragonwing will run decoy against Endurion’s forces while the second, a select group of Tazithiel, Riika and Kal, will penetrate the magical shield, secure the Scroll and rejoin the Dragonwing. Any questions?”

“Aye,” rumbled a rugged young Blue, Cyanorion. “How do we trust the author of this plan? You issued a death warrant against him just weeks ago, o Queen.”

“Kal.” Aranya crooked a claw.

“Aye, o Queen?”

“I once challenged this man to burgle our Academy,” said Aranya, watching as Kal approached charily. “Despite the highest alertness of our patrolling Dragonwings, he danced beneath our noses, penetrating even my own bedchamber, whereupon he spared my life. He is also the only Human ever to successfully penetrate the Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior. Kal saved my shell-daughter’s life when Endurion attacked her, and took the Dragon Rider oath.”

Kal glanced uncertainly back at Tazithiel. How wise was it to reveal this to all these Dragons?

“Kallion, would you demonstrate your Shadow power to these Dragons?”

Whispers of Dragonish surrounded him. Amazed. Perplexed. How could this be? No Shadow power had stalked the Islands since the days of the Shadow Dragon. Kal was a Human.

“Ah …”

Tazithiel’s voice entered his mind. Please, Kal. Trust me, even if you trust no other. Aranya has a surprise for you.

Bah. Like the size of the claw that would pierce his chest, or the temperature of that lava once the Dragons forced him to take swimming lessons? Sweat beaded his brow. Nevertheless, he focussed using the techniques Aranya had been teaching him. Shadow, his cloak. Shadow-friend. The veil of his reality.

Dragon-thunder! Dragon curses and exclamations of disbelief!

SILENCE! Aranya’s roar engulfed them all. Kal blinked back from his world of Shadow. “Aye, my Dragon-kin, you see rightly. Kal displays the power of my own Ardan. According to the secret records Dragons keep of Ha’athior, which is Kal’s home Island, this man is Kallion, son of Ga’achion, son of Taynurion, son of Immudior, shell-son of Zenziel the Grey Dragoness and Ardan, the Shadow Dragon. He’s a direct descendant of the Shadow Dragon–as proven.”

Kal opened and closed his mouth. Tazi stood beside him, her firm grip preventing him from stumbling away from the drumbeat of the Amethyst Dragoness’ declaration. Ardan? Who had cheated on the Empress of Dragons? And a man called Kallion was descended from the legendary Shadow Dragon … great freaky, flipped upside-down, flying Islands!

Ardan and Zenziel cohabited as feral Dragons after the battle of Archion Island, Tazi said briefly, using the private Dragonish Yozora the Blue had taught them in the infirmary. In the feral state, what Dragons do is forgiven. It is one of the few sins a Dragon will readily forgive.

I … unholy sulphurous fumaroles, woman, how long have you known?

Since this morning. Tazi squeezed his arm. You always claimed you were legendary–o great-great-grandson of the Shadow Dragon.

Kal brightened. Was it not fated in the stars? Aye. I shall call myself the King of Shadows, and–yie!

He yelped as Aranya trapped him in her mammoth paw. A Dragon-swift rearrangement of his situation later, Kal found himself helplessly bent over the second knuckle of her paw, pinned in place by her first talon behind his neck and her third behind his knees. A man might thus snap a twig.

“My Dragon-kin,” Aranya intoned, raising him a good forty feet into the air so that every Dragon and Rider could appreciate his ignominious position, “even a Star Dragoness must keep her word, and aye, a Queen of Immadia too. I vowed that if this man burgled our Academy, that would be the day I kissed his filthy, thieving backside.”

The thief uttered a crass rejoinder which was amply drowned out by the fire-spitting disbelief of the Dragonkind present.

“Therefore I, Aranya of Immadia, declare that I was mistaken to set a price upon this man’s head, and a death warrant upon his life. And today, you are all my witnesses as I keep my vow.”

Mmmmweeeehh!

An enormous, blisteringly hot pair of lips kissed Kal right on his upraised posterior.

After laughter both fiery and Human had subsided, Aranya inquired archly, “Are we clear, Kallion of Fra’anior?”

Blast the little mosquito, his daughter was down there splitting her sides laughing. She had known all about this humiliation! And arranged it? That Riika. Just wait, he’d twist her guts into bowstrings!

Muffled in Aranya’s paw, he called, “Could you not have done this in your Human form, o Queen?”

“I think not!” Tazithiel barked.

Jisellia whispered in Jalfyrion’s ear; the Red growled, “The man burgled our Academy not once but twice, o Queen.”

Kal howled, “Great Islands, will this never end?”

Mmmmweeeehh!

Chapter 26: All in a Day’s Burglary

STORM WINDS. ARANYA’S answer to the required speed of their flight was to raise a storm which swept in from the North within the hour after the briefing finished, and snatched the Dragonwing away southward with whistling winds, sharp bursts of hail and the all-important benefit of cloud cover. Quietly, Kal triple-checked his and Tazithiel’s equipment. Riika checked her arrows, throwing knives and flechettes. It was sobering to see how professionally a young teenager handled her equipment. She slipped so easily into her assassin persona. As easily as a certain thief.

Aranya’s instructions had spread a network of Dragons not only south across Jeradia, as Kal had thought to do, but to every point of the compass. A Blue Dragon accompanied each force to employ their superior magic skills in the search. No chances. She included sweeps around Jeradia’s lower cliffs in case the enemy tried to sneak around the Island massif’s skirts to attack from an unexpected quarter.

Ahead and all around Tazithiel in the sky, the massive, rain-slick bodies of Dragons drove southward. Each Dragon stretched to their utmost, their paws tucked up beneath their bodies to ensure optimal streamlining. Many of Aranya’s force carried Riders, ranging from new graduates such as Jisellia and Jalfyrion, to a hoary old Green with a hundred and fifty year-old Rider aboard. Kal wondered who had the more dangerous assignment–bait Talon, or raid his bedchamber? Endurion and Talon had avoided Aranya the previous time, but only because of Endurion’s focus on exacting his revenge on Tazithiel.

As they rocketed out into a space above the clouds after several hours’ flight, briefly overflying the driving storm, the Yellow and White moons’ radiance gleamed upon the Dragonwing’s scales, turning them into effulgent jewels.

Damping, Aranya commanded.

Tazithiel’s magic spread around them like a rippling of invisible waters, joining two other Blues and Aranya’s shielding magic. Kal shook his head. The subject of shielding was enough to fill a lore-library in its own right. All he knew was that flying Dragons left a detectable signature, a magical equivalent of the aurora which had so entranced a boy in Immadia. This type of shield would damp that signature and attempt to trick any Dragons who happened to be looking at the moons at that particular moment, as a thirty-strong Dragonwing raced through the night.

And we’re past Jeradia already, said a young, powerful Blue Dragon, who winged to Tazithiel’s starboard flank, repeating this statement in Island Standard for the Dragon Riders.

Riika waved at the Blue. “Thanks, noble Cyanorion. All directions gratefully accepted.”

“All cheeky Pygmies instantly barbecued,” he retorted.

“Just remember, I tear into Master-steaks for breakfast. Snarky Dragons are hardly a challenge.”

“Little one, you aren’t even worth the trouble of snacking upon. You’d only sour a Dragon’s stomach.”

“Whereupon I’d stroll out on your tongue, cool as a jungle spring.”

Cyanorion clipped his wings to shift over to Aranya’s flank, discussing something with her in a low voice.

Tazithiel rumbled, “Riika, were you flirting with that Dragon?”

“He’s a Shapeshifter,” said the girl, squirming in her temporary saddle. “It’s all perfectly above the Island.”

“A rather dashing Shapeshifter, from what I hear,” the Dragoness needled. “Kal, I smell sulphurous gases on the breeze–must be the teenager brewing trouble.”

“That’s normal Pygmy body odour for you,” he agreed, joining in the fun.

“Bah. Typical backstabbing thief,” she groused.

Four and a half hours later, as the Dragonwing neared Elidia Island, having sustained a jaw-dropping average speed of thirty-seven leagues per hour according to Cyanorion’s calculations, Tazithiel peeled away from the others to circle westward, while Aranya’s force angled off first to attack a series of enemy supply farms and warehouses on Elidia’s western flank, before moving on to the citadel at Mejia itself. The timing would be crucial to ensure the success of Kal’s plan.

Go burn the heavens, Dragon and Riders, Aranya’s soft exhortation followed those of the other Dragons as they parted ways.

She had no need to spell out the dangers. Her briefing had covered those succinctly. Every Dragon knew that if they encountered Talon, many would fall.

Flying at a more sedate ten leagues per hour, Tazithiel slipped away with her own mist puffing about them, generated by the extreme cold of her ice stomach. That was a new skill which she had not yet mastered, Kal thought, shifting uneasily as his legs and thighs started to numb at the chill emanating from her scales. What if they left a vapour trail? Would Talon detect that?

An hour before dawn, Tazi, Kal and Riika were in position four leagues southwest of Mejia Island. Tazithiel pointed out Endurion’s citadel. “That rock.”

Nothing special. A square, artificial-looking summit perhaps a quarter-mile tall surmounted a ragged, rocky base that must split off from the Mejian mainland somewhere beneath the Cloudlands. Kal saw a couple of lights twinkling up top–watch-fires and sentries, the Indigo Dragoness said. Higher up, four Red Dragons circled endlessly, while other eye-fires burned at the base of what Kal took to be the fortress itself.

“Time,” said Tazi, having examined the stars.

“Break out the gliders,” said Kal.

He and Riika raided their saddlebags. Within ten minutes, they had assembled three Western Isles gliders and laid out Tazithiel’s clothing and equipment on her shoulder. Kal and Riika took turns helping each other strap on the lightweight frames, which supported silk wings twelve feet wide and terminated in foot-operated flaps that provided basic control in the air. Western Isles warriors used these to glide between their Islands. Great warriors, but too suicidal for Kal’s liking.

Black hoods. Gloves. Blacking around the exposed eyes. Tacky, soft-soled climbing slippers that most house-breakers stored beneath their beds for reassurance. He checked every detail.

“Ready, Dragoness?” Kal patted her shoulder.

“Aye. You go.”

Kal wondered what manner of courage it took for a master of aerial flight to entrust their fate to a flimsy tubular metal frame and a few scraps of black silk. Tazi had her Kinetic power. She could always Shapeshift back into her Dragoness manifestation, he knew, but once they were inside the shield, she would need to remain Human if at all possible. In seconds, he had his answer. Tazithiel transformed. The idea was to dress and arm herself before strapping into the glider as quickly as possible, but her yelp and a scattershot grappling of magic betrayed a panic Kal would never have credited the Dragoness.

She tumbled inelegantly.

Tazithiel! Kal tipped his glider and chased her. Calm. I am your Island; cling to me. Clothes first. Now weapons …

Recovering, the Indigo Shifter straightened her glider, and made a few last-minute adjustments to the razor ribbons in her hair. Bit a hole in my lip. Kal, what was that?

It’s called being Human, he smiled. Most Humans don’t fly terribly well.

Almost failed and we’re not even close.

“Time for my Sylakian farmer to make an appearance,” said Kal, angling his glider toward the faraway dark rock. Smacking his lips lasciviously, he joked, “Girl, your trousers are so smoking hot, you’ll march down the ranks knocking ‘em left and right with every swish of those hips. And, my sweet, sweet petal, don’t you dare bend over! Because I’m not killing no men discovered in the act of worshipping your sweet rondures.”

“As Kal butchers Island Standard to invent a language of his own,” Tazithiel chuckled. “I intend to employ my ‘rondures’–a word basic to every farmer’s vocabulary–to perpetrate acts of devastation and anarchy inside that fortress.”

“Bah, Dad, you’ll just talk them to death,” Riika quipped.

Three black-clad Humans speared through the deepest night, peering ahead as the dark fortress seemed to grow against the opaque Cloudlands, casting a long shadow by the light of the crescent Blue moon. Beneath the clouds, he saw the orange glow of lava vents and the drifting smoke of fumaroles, causing the cloud cover to bubble or creating patches of choking steam. That was the source of the sulphur and acrid smoke that tickled his nostrils, even at this distance. Dragons had always been attracted to symbols of natural power–volcanoes and cliffs and mountaintops–and often loved to play in storm winds or toss lightning bolts about.

Kal said, “Evil Dragon citadel type four.”

Riika and Tazithiel shot him identical glances of befuddlement.

“Form the stack as we practised,” Kal ordered. “Tazithiel, you’re up top where I can’t be distracted by said rondures. Riika–”

“Already here, Sticky-Fingers.” Dropping her hands from the wing-handles, Riika clasped his waist. “Don’t take this as a sign of affection.”

“Ready,” said Tazi, clasping Riika in turn.

Kal had control of the stack, the physical contact allowing them to merge their shield much more effectively. The Indigo Shapeshifter cocooned them in an invisibility and magical damping shield. Kal latched on and injected his Shadow power, changing the shield’s nature fundamentally. From the perspective of those Dragons lurking near the fortress, three gliding Humans vanished from existence.

He dipped the glider stack slightly, increasing their horizontal speed.

A league from the fortress, as the spies had reported, a slight tingling signalled the magical outer shell of Endurion’s defences–not a shield, Kal realised. An alarm system. Tendrils of magic whispered against his senses, a world of white-fire filaments that denoted a pure core of Dragon magic. The Shadow-cloaked trio ghosted through with less presence than a passing breeze. The waiting Dragons showed no sign of alarm.

Soon enough.

The citadel walls were famously unclimbable. Legend told how they were forged of Brown Dragon magic and fire, but Kal had a solution for this too. Closer. Any second now … dong! Dong! Dong! The warning gong sounded within the fortress. Exactly on time. Dragon fire flared high overhead, perhaps a league or more, as Aranya’s force made its first incisive engagement. Those sentries up there would not know what had hit them.

Silent now, he made a fist and swept it upward. The three separated, Kal swooping swiftly for a narrow window on the fortress wall, four hundred feet above ground level, while Tazi and Riika raised their wings, braking slightly. Judge the angles. Flow with the breeze. Check for Dragons, but they had all responded to the attacks from the North and above. Kal flicked his feet, snapping the glider upward. He snatched at the barred window. Perfect strike. Shrugging out of his harness, Kal rapidly folded the glider into a single, narrow apparatus eight feet tall. A whisper of air heralded Riika’s arrival. She clutched his belt, landing with the deftness of a spider on the vertical surface. Slipping a vial of powerful Green Dragon acid from his belt, Kal set to work on the bars.

Watch out! Tazithiel yelped involuntarily in Dragonish. He heard a sharp cracking sound.

Shock clamped Kal’s fingers in place, which was for the better as a dead Red Dragon tumbled past, deflected by Tazithiel’s magic, he realised belatedly. Where was the Shifter–there!

Shrugging out of her broken glider, Tazi lurched toward them and clutched Riika’s legs gratefully. By my wings, that was too close.

Kal wrenched a bar loose and placed it carefully on the windowsill. One more. Then, wiping clean the acid with a rag–or anyone climbing within would find a few holes in their hide–he tossed the steaming cloth away. It would disintegrate before it ever reached the rock or Cloudlands below. He pointed at Riika. Silently, they changed places as Kal clung to that final bar. The Pygmy scaled his shoulders deftly and vanished inside. Then Tazi. Now Kal, the largest of the three, scraped his shoulders as he wriggled snakelike through the four-foot deep gap and into the storage room beyond.

“Injuries?”

“Lump on my head,” said Human-Tazi. “Earn your keep, noble thief.”

“No drooling back there as you admire my haunches in my new silk trousers,” he whispered, moving to the door to pick the lock.

The thief, the Dragoness and the assassin sneaked deeper into the granite fortress.

* * * *

Kal led his small team confidently past five squads of Mejian heavy infantry, stationed at various armouries and levels, before they came to the type of obstacle that always made infiltrators roll their eyes and sigh like Sylakian ladies of the night. Squeaky metal gates. Bane of his life. Beyond the grating, fifty feet ahead, a squad of Mejian soldiers stood looking in the opposite direction. Good. The gate in that grating, however, was not good.

He signalled to Riika, ‘Come. You take two.’ Nodding, Riika padded up to the gate beside him. Flick. Flick-flick. Thud.

The soldiers collapsed in a clatter of weaponry that could likely be heard on the next Island, never mind within the fortress. Kal picked the lock within two breaths and eased the gate open, raising a rusty shriek of protest. Bah. No way to do this one without raising some kind of alarm. They rushed down a wide stone staircase. Riika vaulted over the banister and disappeared. Two thuds proclaimed downed soldiers. Tazi cocked an eyebrow at Kal.

He shrugged. “She’s young.”

The threesome rushed down four further levels, falling upon a squad of soldiers at the base of the stairwell. A flurry of darts and daggers ensued. Tazi ran her sword through one fellow who tried to raise the alarm. She scowled, “Leave a few for me.”

“Come on, Razorblades. The great hall your victim described is a bit of a run down this corridor.”

“Don’t slow me down, old man.”

They jogged, but only to minimise the noise of feet traversing dark granite stone. Kal kept imagining what would happen, out there, when Aranya ran into Endurion and Talon. Oddly, he thought he heard the booming sounds of Dragon attacks on the citadel itself. What did that portend? Distracted, Kal slowed a step or two as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing. That was when the Indigo Shapeshifter slammed into an invisible barrier. She recoiled, holding her nose; Riika sprinted on, entering the gloomy portico of the great hall. The doors slammed in the Pygmy girl’s face. A half-dozen huge Jeradian warriors, armed with war-hammers and encased in full plate armour, stepped out of the shadows.

“You lost, little girl?” snarled the squad leader.

Kal skidded to a halt, torn between finding out what was wrong with Tazi and helping Riika.

The half-Pygmy stood calmly in their midst. Taut as a wire, yet apparently unconcerned. “No. Are you dead yet?”

The men drew a collective breath, perhaps at her defiance, perhaps trying to work out if they were dealing with a child or a fearless warrior. The squad leader smirked. “No, but you–”

Riika’s hands blurred. Two of the men clutched their faces, pinned in the eyes by her flechettes. Barely had their bodies begun to jerk from the effects of her favourite neurotoxin, when Riika struck with another throwing dagger and rolled, taking her beyond the vicious swing of a war-hammer, which sparked off the stones beside her departing feet. Her forward roll brought her smoothly to her feet beside a thick marble column. Riika stepped up and flipped backward, over the heads of the converging warriors, and backstabbed them simultaneously with remarkable precision.

She spun to take on the last warrior, but he was preoccupied with trying to gargle Kal’s throwing dagger.

The girl glared at him. “Don’t spoil my fun, Dad.”

“Spare one for a tired old thief?”

Riika bent to retrieve her weapons. “What’s keeping the Dragoness? Nerves?”

“Magical barrier,” said Kal, examining the problem. He had a horrid feeling that somewhere, unheard or undetected, alarms were ringing within Endurion’s fortress. But where were the Green Dragon and his cohorts? Why did he sense their plan unravelling? “Come, Tazi. Princesses enter this way.”

She blew him a kiss in passing. “You do know that your ability to breeze through impenetrable barriers is freaky, don’t you?”

Kal’s right hand became very disobedient at that point. Tazi jumped.

Riika hissed, “Dad. Mind on the raid, please?”

“Did I or did I not warn you both about those trousers?”

“You’re such a fusty Fra’aniorian fusspot,” Tazi snickered.

Examining the closed doors, Kal found nothing to suggest a magical trap, but his danger sense had woken up properly now. After crossing the hall, they would soon arrive at the sharp end of matters, what was effectively the guardhouse to Talon’s inner chambers, which were carved into solid rock and allegedly Dragon-proof. Bah. A handy little Anubam swarm would reduce this dreary dump to rubble within minutes. Talon’s home had all the hallmarks of ‘evil lair’ stamped upon it–featureless granite walls, heavily armed soldiers parading about uselessly everywhere, doors of impractical thickness, torches in blackened sconces and a perfectly jovial miasma of oppression and suffering. Kal expected to wander into fully-equipped torture chambers at any moment, where the Master and his Dragons probably enjoyed socialising with their slaves, or to find lamps made of Human skulls.

What they found on the far side of those doors was a vast, silent hall. Ominously silent.

Kal realised that the fortress’ foundations had purposely included this original cavern. The floor area was a vast, perfectly even lake of flagstones large enough to hold the annual ball of all Dragons. Huge supporting columns supported a sea of gantries and galleries above. Fifty Dragons could be hiding up there and he would never know, except for his special sense which had watched over his mischief-making on many an occasion.

He touched his companions. “Hold hands.”

“What, Kal?”

“Nothing yet, Tazi. Just a sense there’s danger … ahead. Through or inside that hall.”

“Switch to Dragoness?”

“Keep her in reserve. Your Human’s scary enough.” For that, she nearly crushed his fingers. Not wise, since they’d need his sticky digits before this lark was finished. Kal said, “Focus on the prize.”

He was not yet skilled enough to extend the Shadow power to all three without physical touch, so Kal had the singular experience of sneaking across that vast space holding hands with two pretty girls. Ah well, all in a day’s burglary. As they settled into a rapid series of movements that kept the threesome darting from shadow to shadow, Kal kept scanning their surrounds. No traps, yet. No Dragons lurking, yet. Minutes passed and they were not halfway. No …

Dong! Dong! Dong!

Kal winced as faint shouts carried from somewhere above. “Lockdown! It’s a lockdown!”

“Run?” asked Riika.

“Don’t run,” Kal snapped. “See this mosaic of flagstones? Traps. Walk where I walk.”

Doors boomed. With a jingling of armour and a thumping tread, dozens of Mejian heavy infantry marched into the chamber. “Scour the place. They might be hidden by magic,” a voice echoed off the stone surfaces, carrying imperfectly to his ears. “A Shifter triggered the alarm.”

Kal peered at Tazi, who grimaced. He said, “Hasten with precision.”

The path zigzagged and backtracked through a field of spike-traps which had probably just been armed. After that, Kal had them skirt a hidden pit. All the while, the infantry moved closer, spreading out as they came forward in a line, sweeping ahead of them with eight-foot pikes like blind men walking through town. Riika’s foot scuffed the floor.

“This way, men. Flush them out.”

As agreed, Tazi would not use magic unless it became absolutely essential, but they were rapidly running out of options. Kal doubted they could take on this many soldiers.

Suddenly, what he had dreaded came to pass. A soldier pointed. “There, Captain. I see Shapeshifter eyes.”

Her beautiful indigo eyes blazed with magic. Someone out there was skilled enough to see them, despite the shield, or perhaps his concentration had wavered for a vital second. Seventy feet more and they’d move beyond the final pit, Kal realised. The infantry had spread out, knowing exactly where they must tread. Time to change the odds.

Many Dragon traps reacted to the presence of magic, which he and Tazi knew all too well from her experience in Kal’s roost. This was a branch of magic Kal had thankfully only ever encountered in Aranya’s bedchamber. At Gi’ishior, he had been fortunate. Now, he became aware of a network of sensors somewhere above in the dim, overarching reaches of the cavern. He must protect Tazithiel from whatever nasty surprises Talon might have prepared for unwanted draconic visitors.

Tazi, no magic and no transformations. Hear me?

Aye.

Kal swept the two women up in his arms. Dance with me, ladies.

The Indigo Dragoness closed her eyes. Clutching them close, he pranced over a complex series of traps, approaching the line of soldiers at breakneck speed. Kal alone was no problem. Kal with lives he felt responsible for, being the criminally superior member of the trio, was another matter. No mind. Tazithiel would slay them with a well-turned swivel of her hips. That was as certain as the twin suns rising in the morning.

That gave him an idea. Kal whispered in Dragonish to Tazi, who responded that hairy chauvinist pigs called Kal deserved to be barbecued at leisure in oodles of Dragon fire. Then she sighed and acquiesced.

An Indigo Shapeshifter in Human form materialised in front of a startled squad of massively armoured Mejian soldiers.

Putting her hands up to her hair and surreptitiously loosening her razor ribbons in the process, Tazithiel stretched voluptuously. “Islands’ greetings, boys.” She stepped forward like a female rajal approaching her mate. “Who wants to play with me?”

Roaring rajals, he had to get her to use that line on the pillow-roll. Maybe when she had forgiven him for his antics with the twins. That accusation sparked in her eyes daily.

To a man, the soldiers developed foolish grins and arrested mental processes.

Kal and Riika used that frozen moment to spin out from behind the seductive man-mesmeriser. Knives and flechettes blurred through the air. Tazithiel struck out with her razor ribbons, slicing one soldier’s neck through the gap between his helmet and his shoulder-plates, but she lost the other ribbon as quick reflexes caught the snapping whip-tip on a forearm guard. The soldier yanked her forward, wrapped his arm about her waist, and died with a poisoned Pygmy dart protruding from his windpipe.

“Hands off the royal personage,” Tazithiel sniffed in disdain.

Shouts erupted in the hall as Kal, Riika and Tazi sprinted through the gap they had created, briefly outdistancing the much heavier infantry. Kal skipped happily over a shower of pikes and spears. Ah, nothing like a well-timed escape from a squad of soldiers to fire the blood. Ahead, Riika flashed to her left, appearing to the naked eye to bounce off an intercepting quintet of warriors. Three Mejians fell, but the girl spun away with cuts on her flank and forehead.

“The door!” Kal swerved, hurdling a spinning hammer.

They ran, seeing knots of infantry closing in from all quarters. Riika spun to deliver a volley of throwing knives that decimated those soldiers eager enough to outpace their fellows. Kal slapped aside a spear meant for Tazithiel’s head and slammed into the huge jalkwood doors. Locked and barred. Of course.

“We’ve got your back.” Riika’s bowstring twanged.

Two women against heavy infantry? They had seconds before those men formed ranks, ducked behind their shields and mowed down the company like a farmer scything down mohili wheat. Kal plied his lock picks with urgency. Thankfully, Talon had poor taste in hardware. Kal could have picked this one with a couple of stiff nostril hairs. He glanced over his shoulder. Two or three dozen rugged infantry had locked their tall, straight-edged shields in dense formation. A thicket of pikes menaced the raiders.

Riika surveyed the odds with a grim smile playing about her lips. “I’ve a special treat for you boys.”

“Me too,” said Kal, using his full height to hurl a brace of daggers over the top edges of their shield-rims. When would armourers learn that to protect the face was to live?

The Pygmy bow twanged. Riika’s arrow exploded against a soldier’s foot, blowing his lower limb to pieces and severely injuring two men standing just behind. “Nasty,” said Kal, unstopping his gourd of Green Dragon acid. He hated to feel overcrowded.

Perhaps these big men could learn to dance? He flicked the gourd deftly, a trick he had learned from a fellow-thief in Franxx. Well, the fellow had been rather overcompetitive. Kal still had the acid scars on his left shoulder. By way of thanks for the lesson, Kal had introduced the thief’s neck to the blunt edge of a bedframe. Unhurriedly.

Under cover of some cowardly screaming, Kal quickly pushed Tazithiel at the door, since in her anger, she had draconic strength. “Open it.” He taunted the dancing soldiers, dodging stabbing pike-points and making as much of a nuisance of himself as possible.

“Bunch of shrinking petals,” he sneered. “Skanky sons of windrocs! Why, my grandmother fights better than you.” Actually, his grandmother might have been a Shifter. He beat down a pike and neatly lopped off the hand that grasped it. “Hands off, you bad lad–ha ha. That was wicked.”

Kal grimaced as a leaf-shaped spear jabbed into his left flank. Whirling low, he lashed out at any feet he could reach with his blade. “Teach you lot to dance,” he grinned, frog-hopping over a pike-point seeking to drill a hole in his kneecap. He struck a lewd pose. “Come and get–urk!”

An unmistakably hot hand scragged him by the collar and hauled him ignominiously through the doorway.

Riika slammed the door shut on Kal’s foot and dropped the crossbeam. “Bolts, Sticky-Fingers. Great job on the dance lesson there.”

Utter silence from their companion alerted them. Whirling, Kal found himself nose to nose with a huge Green Dragon who regarded them with an unblinking, dusky orange gaze. His heart felt as though it punched his throat from the inside. Endurion? No, this beast was more thickset and a subtly different colour, a dusting of blue in the upper parts, but predominantly what Kal might have termed swamp-algae green.

Tazithiel clutched his arm. She looked as pale as windroc-down; Kal had no need of her inhale or the trembling of her bloodless lips to guess who confronted them.

The Dragon’s lips parted in a slow, ugly leer. “So, shell-daughter. We meet again.”

Chapter 27: Magic Unfurled

RIIKA JEERED, “OVER here, you egg-stealing excuse for a mangy green cliff goat.”

The Green Dragon lunged reflexively, but Riika was quicker still. Kal saw only a dark blur as he and Tazithiel bounded over the Dragon’s lashing tail. The Green first dented the solid stonework with his cranium, then took two futile nips at the dancing Pygmy girl. She stuck out her tongue and waggled it insolently.

GRR-HSSS! Acid spurted from the Dragon’s jaw.

“It’s Falkurion, my shell-father,” Tazi hissed. “I had no idea–Riika!”

The Green followed Riika’s tight somersault with a snap of his jaws, all four paws leaving the ground with the effort, but a slap of Tazithiel’s Kinetic magic lifted the girl over the Dragon’s billowing fire. Riika cried out as she landed smack on his nose, almost straddling Falkurion’s deadly nostrils. The Dragon flicked his head, flinging the tiny Pygmy high into the air. She vanished amongst the columns and overarching buttresses of what must have been an old mine, Kal surmised, judging from the huge cast-iron ore vats dangling from chains and hawsers affixed to the ceiling, and a pile of what appeared to be roughly-refined gold piled up against one wall. To the Dragon’s evident surprise, Riika did not return. He stared stupidly up into the shadows.

Falkurion growled, “Come out where I can maul you, little girl.”

Not the sharpest talon on the paw, clearly.

Wisely, Riika made no further wisecracks. Kal knew she had bought them time. Brave. Yet in this chamber, there was precious little cover. Somewhere just off this room, they should find Talon’s inner lair and the all-important scroll. Just the small matter of dealing with a hundred-foot, hoary Green Dragon with slimy scale-armour so thick it crackled as he shifted his attention to Tazithiel.

Kal blinked. Tazi was nude. Why? She stood very straight, confronting the Dragon. “I’m not yours, Falkurion, and never was. Tell me, where did you find my egg?”

“In a trash heap,” he sneered. “We took you in, hatchling. Oddest egg I ever saw, but my Zynvaria did like to collect oddities. She’s dead, now. Talon killed her.” As he spoke, the Green shifted closer, deadly intent. Tazithiel quivered slightly, but not in fear. Readiness. “So, I don’t suppose you’ve come to join the emergence of a true draconic empire?”

“No. Where’s Endurion?” she asked.

“Endurion?” The Green pretended to think. “You’re not telling me you want to be corrected again, are you, little one? He’s long–”

Storm thundered out of Tazithiel. KAAABOOM! Her transformation knocked Kal sprawling. Falkurion tried to weather the blast, but the Storm winds hammered him against one of the columns. Then the Indigo Dragoness was upon him, snarling as Kal had never heard her snarl before, biting and clawing and crackling with lightning–over and over, she attacked, but the wily Green seemed to gather himself nonetheless. Tazi’s lightning sizzled against that strange, protective slime coating on his scales, and the thickness of his armour protected the larger Dragon against most of her bites. Suddenly, the coiled-up green body snapped forward. Falkurion bulldozed Tazithiel with his greater tonnage, upending the Dragoness and squashing her beneath him. For his troubles, the Green received a pawful of talons in the gut as Tazi drew blood. Flesh sizzled inside Falkurion’s throat as the Indigo finally directed a bolt of lightning where it would truly hurt, straight down his gullet.

Poxy Shifter! roared her erstwhile shell-parent. Betrayer of all true Dragons!

You betrayed me! Screaming with rage, Tazithiel hoisted the Green Dragon aloft with her Kinetic power and hurled him across the room. Rock exploded from the point of impact. Her onslaught was a blur of draconic savagery, mauling her father’s muzzle, burning him with a sustained bust of lightning that finally seemed to quarry through his armour. Falkurion bellowed in rage, slapping her fifty feet backward with a monstrous cuff of his right forepaw.

Tazi’s claws sparked on the stone floor as she skidded to a halt. She hissed, I am the daughter of Aranya the Star Dragoness, and you are a dead Dragon, Falkurion. Commit your fire-soul to the eternal flames, before I extinguish it.

Big words for a little Dragoness. I’ve known you since you cracked the shell. You’ve no Star power. Never had.

Shaking, the Indigo snarled, You know nothing!

Oh, but I do look forward to correcting your foul aberration myself. Talon has shown me the way.

Falkurion spit out a monstrous, roiling ball of acid spit, Dragon glue and fire. But Tazithiel threw up a fifty-foot wall of ice, which exploded into steam as their Dragon powers collided. Suddenly she speared through the steam from an unexpected direction, blasting the Green with Storm to lift his torso, before firing a twenty-foot spear of ice accurately into the wound in his belly, in almost an exact replica of what Endurion had done to her. Falkurion unleashed an ululating bugle of pain.

Kal, dodging a river of spitting acid which fizzed rapidly through the solid stone floor, did not at first realise what she had done. But the Green Dragon’s hind paws folded beneath him, suddenly powerless. Great Islands! She had severed his spinal cord.

Even Tazithiel seemed taken aback. The wildness in her eyes faded as she regarded the stricken Green. “Why, Falkurion? Why?”

The Green Dragon’s thick throat worked. “Because you’re Shifter … scum,” he gasped. Golden blood bubbled from his mouth. “Talon will destroy you.”

“Talon’s a mere Human. He’s nothing,” Tazithiel goaded him–deliberately, Kal hoped.

“She’s more Dragon than you’ll ever be. Flown … North.” Kal cursed, drawing a low chuckle from Falkurion. “Stupid. You fell into her trap. You’ll never find–”

A huge metal vat tumbled from above, and clanged Falkurion directly atop his skull. The Dragon collapsed, unconscious.

RIIKA! The Indigo Dragoness’ rage shook the room.

“Riika! What the sulphurous hells of a Dragon’s fire-stomach was that?” Kal blazed. “We needed that information.”

“I’m such a fool.” Riika crouched on the buttress where she must have been hiding, hoping for a chance to help Tazithiel. “Sorry, I … the rope–”

“Get down here.” The Indigo Dragoness’ claws clenched as though she dearly wished them to be kneading the Pygmy’s bones around inside the sack of her skin. She would kill Riika!

Transform!

Kal’s shout seemed to trigger the Shapeshifter’s transformation from without. How odd. Briefly, the memory of pleading with Fra’anior in the storm came to his mind, for the power he unleashed was of that magnitude; the stuff of quaking Island-foundations and shimmering stars of magic exploding behind his eyes. A Black Dragon roared between his ears.

Human-Tazi bellowed at Riika, before pulling up with a start of surprise. “What did you just do to me, Kal?”

“Stopped you from barbecuing a friend. Riika, stop playing up there and come down.”

“I’ll need help.”

Tazithiel tossed her dark locks imperiously, so exactly resembling the Queen of Immadia in that instant that Kal simply stared. Heavens above and Islands below, one could not inherit gestures and mannerisms, surely?

In seconds, the Pygmy girl faced the Shapeshifter, dangling upside-down in the air, arms folded. “I said how sorry I was, Tazi. Misjudged the state of that rope with a display of ineptitude that would have entire villages of my jungle-vine-loving ancestors digging up their own bones in humiliation.”

Now Riika sounded like him. Kal said, “Let’s go scroll-hunting, ladies. Tazithiel, would you be a dear little Princess and put on some clothes?” She growled at him, still half-Dragoness in outlook, clearly. “Well done for fighting your ghosts. Proud of you.”

Tazithiel shot him a look of fuming incredulity.

Endurion and Talon, a woman–surprise, surprise–were gone. They had to leave the fortress, fast. Kal considered sending Tazi and Riika to warn Aranya, but decided against that move. Only once they had their sticky paws on the scroll would the Academy’s safety be ensured.

But he spent the better part of half an hour creeping along a maze of narrow tunnels, mapping them out and disabling or dismantling traps. Someone clearly hated company. There were any number of dead ends which juxtaposed the words ‘dead’ and ‘end’ perfectly in the fiendish conception of their traps. But he was the master, the King of Thieves. Whoever had designed this delicate spider’s web of trickery deserved his respect, but they were not in his Island’s league.

He despatched Riika to stand guard.

Eventually, having plied his trade with effective zeal, Kal descended a short set of stairs and found himself in Talon’s bedchamber, lit, but by no light source he could see. Unadorned. Almost … monkish. Interesting connection, if his instincts served him well. A painting of the great Black Dragon, Fra’anior, hung upon the wall–one of Aranya’s works, he noted, and most likely the original of a copy he had stolen twelve years before, much to his annoyance. The seven-headed Ancient Dragon thundered toward an Island on the wings of a storm, his gargantuan bulk overshadowing the Island massif, never mind the specks of Dragons depicted fleeing his wrath.

And there, concealed behind five layers of spells, on a plinth to the left of the bed, lay a large scroll peeking out of an ornate scroll-case. The Scroll of Many Hands.

Kal regarded it with the respect of a man eyeballing a live cobra. He called mentally. Tazithiel. I’m in.

Coming. She stepped inside the chamber. It’s magical. Safe to proceed?

Absolutely not.

He continued to examine the set piece, unable to shake the inkling that something was wrong. Poison on the casing? Trap on the floor? Pressure-plate on the plinth itself? Nothing. Eventually Kal moved forward, holding his breath. He waved the magic apart, delicately.

Weak, faraway draconic laughter resounded in their minds. Kal heard a sharp crack followed by a low, ominous grating sound. Falkurion whispered, I see you looking at a false scroll, you fools. Talon never lets the scroll out of her sight. Suffer and die, Shifter scum.

A series of booming crashes shook the room. The light flicked out; suddenly, all was muffled. Falkurion’s voice disappeared. Had he dropped part of the fortress on himself?

“Riika! No!”

“Kal, calm down. I sense her. She’s hurt, but alive.”

“And we’re buried alive.”

“We’ll think of an escape plan, or Aranya’s Brown Dragons will dig us out. Oh–now what?”

“Suffering volcanoes, wasn’t it enough to be buried?”

Sure enough, the gurgle they had both heard developed into a hissing rush. Kal gasped as ice-cold water jetted into his face. Talon’s plan was to make sure to finish the job. Buried and drowned.

* * * *

Kal knew bitterness like rotting haribol fruit stuck in his throat. Tazithiel’s hand slipped into his; her protection enveloped them both. “Falkurion must have been watching with a Dragon’s Eye,” she whispered. “Some think it’s a mythical Dragon power, but it’s real.”

“The simple things.” Kal sighed. “A false scroll. We should’ve known. Our forces came through against the citadel. Endurion and Talon were never here.”

“They lured Aranya away.”

He reached out, cupped her cheek. “In the darkness, your Indigo-eyes shine like beacons of hope. Don’t believe that Dragon. He was never your shell-father.”

Her shield kept the water at bay, but already they bobbed against the ceiling as the chamber filled up rapidly. Caterpillars in a cocoon. Kal knew he had to think, to reason a way out, before they ran out of oxygen. But there was something in her trembling, in the mysterious depths of her eyes, that arrested him.

Kal said, “Many dangers, many lies. First, this Talon woman has a secret way to change Shapeshifters–did I hear right? A power that can corrupt a Shifted manifestation, or corrupt it in the action of Shapeshifting?” Tazithiel shook her head in speechless horror. “Second, Falkurion lied about your Star powers.”

She shook her head violently. “Kal, I know you love me and especially my trousers, but in this, you are deluded.”

“I do, by the stars–”

“Kal.”

“Wait, let me speak.”

“Kal, I don’t possess an ounce of Star power.”

“L-o-v-e … you.” His gasped spelling caressed her soul-lost cry, rocketing her out of the depths of hopelessness. “Love,” he repeated, rolling the word on his tongue with increasing confidence. Never had her eyes radiated her heart’s response so clearly. “Love, love, love … aye! I love you, Tazithiel, Indigo Shapeshifter, Princess of Immadia, and I will shout it until the stars above shake so forcefully, they rain stardust upon us! Or at least, I’ll shout it until I crack this watery tomb.”

Tazithiel seemed frozen, but her hair took matters into its own strands. Reaching across the foot or so that separated them in their bubble of air, her tresses enfolded him tenderly, and then she drew close to kiss him, weeping or laughing, he knew not which, as though he were an indescribable treasure her Dragoness-heart would cherish until the end of time. Kal held his slender, powerful Dragoness in intimate embrace, closing his senses to thought or deed, to burden or need, revelling in the smoky scent of her and in the moulding of her febrile, fire-filled body against his, but mostly, in her Dragonsong which suddenly seemed to be humming through his very soul.

His eyelids failed to shutter her light.

Aye? A creature of light perpetrated unutterable pleasures upon the pulse at the base of his neck. An elemental perturbation shook his being in response. Rational thought danced away through billows of white wildfire, but Kal did have to chuckle when Tazithiel murmured:

“I know someone who would be extolling his powers of seduction to the heavens, about now. Aye, Kal, you are mine, and I will so prove upon your appreciative person.”

Entertaining as that sounded, the fate of thousands did rather rest upon their shoulders. By her light, he checked their wounds. Both of them were only mildly chewed-up, it seemed. Time to break the news.

“Tazithiel, you’re glowing.”

“I find uninhibited Tazithiel-worship from my Human slave, while flattering, a touch bizarre.”

“Listen, glow-monster–can you stop kissing my ear for a second? Can’t think.” Seizing her hand, he raised it between them. “Look at yourself. I only know of two types of beings that shine like stars. One’s an angel, and those are so ancient, they predate the Lesser Dragons of this world. The other happens to be less mythical, but no less magnificent.”

Realisation introduced a swirl of white draconic flame to the depths of Tazithiel’s eyes.

“You glowed before,” he said, squeezing her hand gently. “Dearest Dragonlove, you glowed the day you tried to flatten that town to locate a jailed miscreant.”

The effulgence upon her skin faded abruptly, allowing the cold darkness to shroud them. Tazi said, “Dragonlove? Kal, do you mean that? I might have some inkling of Star power in moments of high emotion, but I certainly haven’t been able to summon the power–well, it’s a complex set of interdependent powers, Aranya says. However, I do know how we’re going to escape.”

Kal felt his eyes crinkle with his smile. “What I know is that love is the ultimate thief.”

“How’s that?”

“It steals us away to what we ought to be.”

Kissing his cheek as though she wished to imprint her joy upon his heart, Tazithiel said, “I hereby appoint you philosopher-in-chief of this woman’s soul. Kal … I …”

“Speechless, obviously,” he boasted.

“Therefore, my sagacious malcontent, you shall whisk us forth with your Shadow power.”

“Uh … water? Stuck underneath mountain? Running out of air?”

Tazi bleated briefly to underscore his ralti-brained response, and said, “Aranya of Immadia was describing Shadow power to you on the way down to Mejia. It does not merely modify perception, remember? It modifies corporeality. When you deploy Shadow, you are actually not present in the material realm, which is why the Dragons could not detect you.”

“That’s immaterial.” Kal laughed at his own pun. “You’re saying I can walk through walls.”

“Why, a miracle. The Human is teachable after all.”

“Why, she’s a beauty with actual brains.” Kal tweaked her breast suggestively.

Quick as a snapping rajal, Tazi slapped his hand away and did a little grabbing of her own. Kal yelped. “Watch out, thief, or I’ll bite off your brains.”

Joshing aside, the thief turned to the walls with disbelief sparring with the need swelling in his heart. The bubble Tazi had created for them was already growing stuffy. When he hesitated, the Indigo Dragoness began to list a few of the ways she might reward his success. It was neither astounding nor unpredictable how a man might be encouraged, Kal concluded. Only, what if he failed in the middle of a large boulder? Entombed would not begin to describe their fate. Instant fossilization was written in the blossoms, as the fatalistic Sylakians would say.

He had to try.

* * * *

Gasping, sweating, covered in grit and grime and panting as though he had run ten laps around a large Island, Kal emerged from the middle of a tumbled column, facing the gasping, grimy, panting disbelief of a Pygmy warrior.

“Kal?” Riika rubbed blood and dirt out of her eyes. “Must’ve hit my head harder than I thought.”

“It’s me.”

“Dad!” A small, hard shoulder almost broke his grip on Tazi’s hand as Riika leaped in for a hug.

Once again, Kal had danced across the tightrope, and reached the far side intact.

“Easy, rajal. We didn’t get the scroll, but we did find ourselves a Star Dragoness, we think, and I discovered some fancy moves for me, thanks to said Dragoness’ insights.”

Kal drew his beloved carefully out of the solid rock, meantime giving his slack-jawed daughter a madcap grin. “Razorblades, you alright?”

“Broke two fingers and two toes–what’re the chances? And I’ve a nice lump on the crown of the hardest cranium in the Island-World, according to your fond slurs.”

Besides which, she looked as if she had been wrestling Dragons. Not too far off the mark. Riika was too proud to say so, of course. Kal checked furtively for Falkurion, but the Green Dragon was truly dead this time. He lay crushed beneath an enormous, rectangular stone block.

He said, “I’m fine too, thank you for asking.”

Riika snorted, but Kal could tell she was happy. Well, he hoped so.

He struck a victorious pose. And then ten more poses, accompanied by silly dancing, fist-pumping and a few moves that polite company would have found highly objectionable, all the while shouting, “Yes! I am the indisputable definition of volcanic, freakish awesomeness! I am the most magnificent thief ever to walk these Islands. I am Kallion the Invisible, unfathomable and invincible; tremble, ye ladies, for I shall stalk thee tonight.”

“Anyone would suppose he’s pleased,” Tazithiel noted dryly.

Riika rolled her eyes. “Hopeless.”

Chapter 28: Race to the Death

IF STORM WINDS had blown them south to Mejia, a Cloudlands hurricane blew the Dragonwing back toward the Academy. Four Dragons and two Riders had fallen. Aranya left behind two Brown Dragons with a cover of four Reds and an injured Blue to complete the work of razing Endurion’s fortress. Never mind not leaving one stone atop another. Aranya’s orders were to tip the entire monstrosity into the Cloudlands.

Now, a Dragonwing nineteen strong raced to beat Talon to her goal. For many of these Dragons and their Riders, it was likely a race to an imminent death.

Aranya had touched Riika with her healing power. “No more magic for you, young rapscallion. Please.”

“But what if I have to fight Talon?”

“Leave that to me.” Aranya’s expression suggested that she might more easily convince the moons to reverse their orbital paths. “We need time to figure out your illness.”

There was, in the long leagues, the space to think and reflect as one gazed over the spectacular natural beauty of the Island-World, at the Islands rising like primeval beasts from the everlasting realms of the noxious Cloudlands, below which plants grew leagues wide, the air was as thick as a hearty Jeradian porridge, the predators came in varieties as strange as their under-clouds realm and Land Dragons grew to the size of Islands–at least in Herimor, south of the Rift. Sometimes, Kal longed to peel back the clouds and peer at the world below. What a remarkable experience that would be.

Dragons were the original denizens of the Island-World. The cataclysmic arrival of the original comet, bearing the fabled First Eggs of the Dragons, created a world-shattering explosion, throwing up the Rim-Wall Mountains and carving out the great bowl-shaped depression that housed the Islands. Fra’anior was the first Ancient Dragon to hatch, the fabled seven-headed progenitor of the Dragonkind. He and his kin raised the Islands and, if legend spoke true, created the Lesser Dragons and Humans.

Looking around him now, at the Dragons and Riders burning the heavens together, it seemed to Kal there must be ways for Humans and Dragons to coexist in peace, even in mutually beneficial partnership. Yet Dragons were proud, and the history of Humankind’s slavery to the Dragonkind such an apparently insoluble ocean of bad blood between the two races, that the rise of a creature like Talon was no surprise. Even less of a surprise, those Humans who covertly or openly worked toward the destruction of all Dragonkind and Shapeshifters. ‘More Dragon than you’ll ever be’? What had Falkurion meant? Surely, not the old draconic antipathy for Shapeshifters–his words had been so oddly inflected.

Kal suspected that Talon’s nature was more mysterious than any of them supposed. And, as he peered ahead, he began to sense something else.

“Tazi? Is Aranya planning to stop at Jos?”

“A rapid refuelling stop,” Aranya called over. Dragon hearing. Kal pasted a smile beneath his furrowed brow, making the Amethyst Dragoness snort with laughter. “The Dragons will bolt a sheep or ten, you Humans can stretch your legs and we’ll try to formulate a defence plan.”

“O Queen, we may not have time for that.”

Aranya inquired, “Kal?”

With a stutter-flutter of her wings that communicated droll humour, Tazithiel explained, “It’s the infamous Kallion itch, shell-mother. He has these feelings and intuitions.”

“A man? Feelings?” The Queen showed off her personal cavern filled with Dragon fangs.

“And I have it on good authority that the Blue Moon is made of Jeradian cheese,” Kal growled. “Aye, o Queen. If we live through this, Tazithiel and I have agreed to pass a small secret on to you.”

“You’re pregnant?”

Had he not been belted into a double Dragon Rider saddle pilfered from Endurion’s extensive armouries at that point, Kal would have tumbled off the Dragoness’ back, which was easily as wide as a king’s banqueting table.

“M-m-mother!” Tazithiel spluttered fire between her fangs.

Aranya laughed happily. “I’m waiting for news. Now, what’s this little secret?”

“Have you learned nothing in three hundred years of life?” Riika interrupted, evidently not as fast asleep as her fake snoring a minute before had suggested. “That’s why it’s called a secret.”

“Ah, the sweet innocence of youth,” said Aranya.

“Want to be my new sparring partner at school, o Queen? I seem to be running short.”

“Is that a threat, o pestiferous Pyg-monster? I think you need a vigorous spanking, which your sensitive father over there is clearly too unmanly to deliver.”

They had the oddest relationship. More than three hundred years of life’s experience separated them, but Riika seemed to bring out a younger, more carefree Aranya. Perhaps she evoked happy memories of times with the Pygmy Dragon, for the sassier Riika acted, the greater the Amethyst Dragoness’ delight appeared to wax. This clearly nonplussed more than a few of their draconic escorts.

Quietly, Kal said, “I hope there is nothing to this feeling, o Queen. For I fear that not all is well at Jos.”

“You sense a disturbance in the Balance?”

“I sense trouble,” he said bluntly. “Trust me, Aranya, I’m only alive today for the very reason that I possess an itchy nose.”

The Queen of Immadia poured like silk through the air for a long, long moment, the fluidity of her Dragonflight causing Kal’s breath to snag in his throat. Aranya’s beauty was suns upon gemstone scales, the rainbow play of light through the almost-translucent wing membranes, the majestic power of the Dragonkind magnified to an unimaginable degree. The air itself seemed to make obeisance, and the twin suns to greet her as the third member of their triplet.

And his Tazithiel matched her shell-mother for brilliance.

Softly, for Tazi alone, he said, Tazithiel, did you ever look at the stars, and wonder …

It’s broad daylight … oh. Kal, you remember a girl’s silly dreams?

Silly? Some relative of the lesser blue-spotted grasshopper, who happens to be seated upon your back, was heard to mutter the word ‘weird’ in response to what was clearly a prophetic utterance on your part.

If I had a clue how to summon my alleged Star power–you can’t steal that knowledge out of my subconscious, can you, Kal? Walk through walls, walk through brains?

I hope I respect you better than that, he said stiffly.

As Aranya led the Dragonwing in a long, swift swoop from the great heights of a league above the Islands, they broke through a thin layer of ice-crystal cloud and the Dragons, who had been debating how best to nullify Talon’s powers, fell silent.

Smoke blanketed the region of Jos Town.

Tazithiel said, “It’s as if a farmer ploughed his field, Kal. The city is destroyed.”

Long minutes passed as Jeradia grew rapidly in their sights, the Dragons achieving velocities of over thirty leagues per hour. At this speed the air crowded into Kal’s lungs and made his eyes water. He wished for the secondary nictitating membranes of a Dragon to protect his eyeballs, but Tazithiel, like many of the other Dragons, formed a small shield about her Riders to protect them. Another Aranya trick. Properly shaped and applied, the intrinsic magic of Dragon flight could be extended to reduce wind resistance, allowing Dragons to increase their range up to fifty percent, and flying speeds by up to a third. Much depended on the Dragon or Dragoness’ innate abilities and magical control. Aranya, Jalfyrion and Cyanorion shadowed Tazithiel at the Dragonwing’s spearhead, while a cluster of Reds, Greens and Browns had fallen leagues behind.

Calling out in telepathic Dragonish, Kal said, The enemy has departed, noble Dragons. We must fly on.

We should help these people, said Jalfyrion.

What caused such destruction? Surely not Brown Dragons? Cyanorion asked, fury and despair lending his words a wildfire curl of flame in Kal’s mind.

No. Cyanorion, an oddly gentle, scholarly Dragon–as far as Dragons could ever be accused of gentleness–was right. The town seemed to have been attacked from beneath by explosions of rock, giving it the air of a smashed anthill. Buildings slumped into holes. Smoke rose from too many fires to count. Bodies lay scattered in the streets; people wandered the rubble dazedly, searching for loved ones. The destruction was total, and recent.

Anubam. Kal beat his thigh in fury. Of course. There, in the centre of town, was an unmistakable, yawning black tunnel leading into the earth. This was why Aranya’s forces had not detected Talon. She had travelled underground–clearly controlling the Anubam, having stolen one or more of the creatures from the Ancient Dragon’s corral in the Island-Desert. They had blasted up from the depths and, as Tazithiel had pointed out, ploughed a town of thousands back into the earth it had risen from. Blasts of Dragon fire and acid had immolated any structure left standing.

A volcanic eruption could not have been more devastating. He swallowed back bile. This was why Humans feared Dragons.

They slowed as several Dragons met them above Jos. Kal recognised them as Academy Dragons, the sorry, battered remnant of the Dragonwing Aranya had asked to scour southern Jeradia for sign of Talon’s advance.

He said, Aranya, this is the work of Anubam, impossible as it seems. Talon travels underground.

What? The Amethyst fixed her enormous eyes upon him, her eye-fires burning so darkly, Kal felt her pain and fury lash his soul.

Suddenly, a shining presence eased his pain. Kal’s right, noble shell-mother, Tazithiel agreed. We saw Anubam-sign when passing through the Island-Desert. We must question these Dragons with all speed, call in our forces and sprint to the Academy. That is Talon’s next target.

Aranya inclined her muzzle. Thank you, Kal.

Raising her voice, the Queen called, “Dragons. Riders. Ten minutes on the ground. Take what you require from that flock of ralti sheep. Tazithiel and I will debrief these Dragons. Focus on how we will defeat Endurion and Talon. We’ll strategize on the wing.”

The Dragons’ report confirmed Kal’s worst fears. Talon and Endurion had attacked at dawn from the hole in the centre of town, the very hour Kal, Riika and Tazithiel had penetrated the fortress. After four hours of relentless butchery, the Lesser Dragons and four huge Anubam had disappeared as quickly as they had arrived. Kal looked to the suns and calculated Talon’s force was now five hours ahead. Disaster. Worse than disaster. He did not need to see Jisellia’s distraught reaction, or hear Cyanorion’s muted, elegiac Dragonsong to know what they all dreaded. Yet, how fast could an Anubam swim through rock? What had they seen in the desert?

Observing all the long faces and muted belly-fires about him, Kal knew he must speak. Even if he lied, these Dragons and Riders must have hope.

He grabbed Riika’s arm. With an overabundance of volume and cheer, he cried, “Tell me, Razorblades, how many Pygmies does it take to slay an Anubam?”

His variation on a common joke made her double-take. Then she grinned fiercely at the listening Dragons. “Just one.”

“One village?”

“No. One Pygmy, one tiny cut at a time.”

Jalfyrion snorted with laughter. “Aye, ‘tis the death of a million cuts.”

Riika slapped the Red Dragon on his flank. “How many cuts are you going to take, Red? Tell you what, I’ll leave you as many as a dozen.”

The Red’s brow-ridges drew down in fury, but then understanding ignited his eye-fires with swirls of blazing yellow. Dragon-kin, listen. JALFYRION! His impressive challenge belled over the broken town.

TAZITHIEL! Although the Indigo Dragoness aimed her thunder at the sky, she still managed to send a couple of the younger Dragons into a wing-fluttering panic.

With a prodigious fountain of fire also aimed aloft, Cyanorion belted out, ANUBAM-STEAKS!

Fiery laughter, wild and ruthless and fey, erupted from the massed Dragons. Suddenly, belly-fires rumbled and fulminated. Fire backlit their fangs as inner infernos surged into throats. Their belligerent mood infected the Dragon Riders. Weapons winked in the afternoon suns-light. Fingers checked saddle girths and Dragon war bows. Chatter rose.

Tazithiel clasped Kal’s shoulders with her paw. “Noble Rider.”

Aye, gleaming fire-eyes or none, she should know better than to trust a worthless thief. What right had he to ride with these men and women who had worked, fought and lived for the chance to become Dragon Riders? Kal concealed his unease with a rakish smile. Opposite, Aranya inclined her head in a draconic bow. He could barely meet her gaze. Noble bucket of windroc vomit, he was. Bah. Where was his courage, his indomitable spirit? Kal knew fear. Squeamish, gut-clenching, sweat-inducing fear. Did none of these feel as he did? Did they not know many would die?

Every instinct developed over three and a half decades of survival urged him to flee in the opposite direction, but for one thing. Talon would not stop at Jos, nor at the Academy. She would scatter bodies like chaff upon the winds. Even now, the stench of charred flesh choked his nostrils. This was not war, not the death of soldiers killed in glorious battle. This was wrong. Butchery.

And if Aranya or Tazithiel could snatch victory out of these ashes, then they were greater miracle-workers than a despairing soul who had stolen life from the fangs of a Cloudlands-spanning storm.

Was it fated that a thief should Ride a Star Dragoness? Kal did not know what to believe any more. New-Kal had thrown himself toward the fangs of a Dragoness. New-Kal neither turned his back, nor stood idly by. This Kal prepared his own noose for the gallows–but oddly, the thought cheered him. If needs be, he would go down lying and scheming, biting and stealing. He was not a nice man. He liked to threaten life’s neck with a handy garrotte and throttle it into giving him what he wanted. Somewhere there would be a key. Who better-placed to find it than a thief?

The Indigo Dragoness regarded him strangely as Kal vented a fiendish chuckle. “What, Kal?”

“I’ve an idea,” he said.

* * * *

Flying in a V formation spearheaded by Aranya herself, the Dragonwing hurtled northward shortly thereafter, riding the wings of a storm that blotted the remains of Jos city from sight, and extinguished the last of the fires which had ripped through so many of the wooden buildings. As they flew, Aranya outlined her strategy. Kal slumped in his seat. Honestly? Why not have the Dragons tie rocks to their own tails and dump themselves into the Cloudlands?

“Talon and Endurion are creatures like any other,” she argued. “They grow tired and have a limited capacity for magic. We must ensure that they use up their resources. Then even this Talon must fail. Our plan has to be a massed, sustained attack, but delivered in a Dragon-cunning way.”

Aranya certainly had thought through what she proposed. Kal had only one minor quibble. Her claver plan was doomed to failure. What kept his lips firmly clamped shut, was that he had no better ideas, save one.

Playing with shadows.

Kal voiced his idea reluctantly.

Riika threatened him with her dagger. “No, Dad.”

Aranya gasped, “No!”

Tazithiel hiccoughed a fireball that passed perilously close to Cyanorion’s wingtip. “Absolutely not, Kal!”

Mutinously, Kal said, “Look, we have to separate Endurion and Talon. There’s something weirdly symbiotic about their relationship, about the way they draw strength from each other. Disparage my intuition all you want, but that control she has over the physical realm … it’s similar to Tazithiel’s Kinetic magic, only augmented and distorted. Imagine having someone seize every bone in your body and twist it different ways at once? That’s her power. Many hands.”

“Look, we don’t doubt your courage–”

Aranya collected a filthy stare Kal used to spend long hours practising in a mirror. “But you don’t trust me. Forgiveness, aye. Trust? I know I haven’t earned any.”

“Kal, don’t say that,” Tazi protested.

“You can mistrust my presence at your Academy, precious Queen, and doubt what my warrior-accountants will do to the place. That’s fine. I’ll admit I’m a wanted man on four hundred and sixteen Islands–at least, those I know of. My heart may be irretrievably tarred, but it’s the genuine article and it burns with real fire. Right in here.” Kal thumped his chest. “I close my eyes and see the charred skeletons of children back in Jos. Don’t you?”

His cry was plaintive and raw, like the call of a hunting falcon.

“We all do,” the Amethyst Dragoness rumbled, the dark-fires of grief shadowing her eyes. “Some of us have seen more destruction over more years than you can imagine, Kal. True courage is not blind. True courage knows the blackest nadir of despair, spreads its wings, and flies once more to the heavens to take up the fight. Again, and again, and again. The Dragon-phoenix takes form amidst what seems to be only dead ashes. That is what meeting you has reminded me, Kallion of Fra’anior.”

The Dragoness’ reaming gaze measured him, flicking to Riika and Tazithiel and back. “When a soul transcends the spectres of past and present, and the fear of an uncertain future, that is when its true nobility may be measured. Do not doubt that the moment we feel most broken is the moment when we can be our strongest.”

Aranya raised a talon to point at him. “Keep that idea in reserve, Kal. Find another way. For I sense the key lies with you.”

Give the thief the keys to the kingdom? Wise move, o Queen.

* * * *

Never had Dragons burned the skies as brightly as that day. They flew so high and fast, their wings left a puffy white jet stream of ice particles in their wake. The afternoon suns blazed through their trail, casting haloes and rainbows of luminous colours. Tazithiel, Aranya and powerful Cyanorion took turns to raise the Storm winds that drove the Dragons across the leagues of Jeradia’s mountainous interior with a speed that felt at once exhilarating and far too slow. Talon and Endurion seemed to have dropped off the edge of the Island, for all they saw of the adversary.

The Amethyst Dragoness, flying overhead to supply her strength to a slipstreaming shield over the entire Dragonwing, said to Tazithiel and Kal, “I sense her. Talon. It is odd, for in the great harmonic song of the world as seen by Star Dragons, this seems more like a void, as if I know her by the absence of harmony. And that is impossible, for be they good or evil, every creature of this Island-World will create their own song of magic. This is your heritage, my shell-daughter, the heritage of one born of the stars, and her Rider, who is every bit as essential to her labours as the canvas, paints and brush are essential to the creation of a masterpiece.”

Kal said, “Dramagon’s heritage was an absence of harmony.”

The Indigo Dragoness grumbled, “Now you’re a font of Star Dragon lore, Kal?”

“No,” said Aranya. “He quotes from the works of Hualiama Dragonfriend. She battled the accursed spawn of Dramagon, that Ancient Dragon and shell-brother of Fra’anior, whose shadow and dark-fires shroud the Islands even to this day. His hallmark was the corruption of magic. No creature better understood how to take what was good and pure, and pervert it to the works of darkness.”

“A being of pure evil?” Tazi asked.

“I don’t believe so.” Aranya projected a mental picture of the seven-headed Black Dragon. “Fra’anior spoke of Dramagon with great sadness and regret. At first it was the rivalry of shell-siblings, each endowed with unimaginable power, high intelligence and ambition. As they flew their separate Dragonflights over thousands of years, their rivalry grew bitter and malign. Even Fra’anior admits he did evil in the pursuit of what he conceived as good, and having inflicted enormous pain and suffering upon the Island-World, he chose to remove the Ancient Dragons to another time and place, to allow the lesser races of Humans and Dragons to flourish apart from the Ancient Dragons’ destructive warring.”

Kal began to formulate a question in his mind, but Queen Aranya answered it before he spoke. “Aye, Kal. There are creatures which parasitize magic. Creatures of Herimor such as the Theadurial, who enslave the Land Dragons beneath the Cloudlands, and the Shadow Beast, the creature which attacked and massacred the Lesser Dragons of this world at the time of the Pygmy Dragon.”

“We must consider how starlight can combine with shadow,” Tazithiel put in unexpectedly.

Riika chuckled, “You sound like Dad.”

The Indigo Dragoness snorted, “You chattering parakeet, what do you know of these lofty matters? Please, enlighten us.”

Far from being cowed by a Dragon’s withering sarcasm, the half-Pygmy teenager replied, “I know that shadow cannot exist without light. And light shines most brightly in the darkness.”

From her words rippled a silence at once as powerful as thunder, and as redolent of hope as dawn’s light dappling upon a tranquil terrace lake. This was great and inexplicable magic, like the binding oath Kal and Tazithiel had once spoken, which knocked them from the sky. And it seemed to Kal that seven great heads bowed in approbation.

Every Dragon and Rider in their company stared at Riika. She coloured, but that definite little chin did not budge a hairsbreadth.

Aranya’s eye-fires brightened until it seemed that stars blazed within her skull. She bugled softly, “This day, even the hatchlings sing a Dragonsong of hope.”

Chapter 29: Revenge Served Fiery

KAL WONDERED HOW simple words could sucker-punch reality right beneath the sternum. What manner of magic was this? Amongst all the libraries of lore written about Dragon powers and transformative Shapeshifter magic, this matter of world-shifting oaths and truths to give the suns pause in their stately course through the skies struck him as a glaring omission. He glared. The omission did not improve. So Kal did the only sensible thing.

He dreamed nefarious, thieving daydreams.

As the Academy volcano crested the northern horizon, Kal’s scheming mind gnawed at the question of how he could wrest this power to his advantage. For it seemed to him that the form of an utterance must matter far less than the intention of the heart that spoke it, and that intention must rise from a person’s soul as adamantine purpose, refined in the crucible of great need. If oath-power acted upon the physical realm, how much more must such a potential act upon the emotional, spiritual and magical realms? And if he thus could influence the realms of material and immaterial existence, could he not by dreaming greatly cause some impossible cosmic alignment to transpire, stealing as it were from a fate written in the stars, a new, most singular outcome?

Who would have presumed to steal a Star Dragoness’ heart? Only a crazy dreamer.

They needed to reach the Academy before Talon. They must. They needed to be there an hour ago. They needed not just a pretty rainbow slipstream. They needed to truly burn the skies. Surely, any Star Dragoness worthy of the name could become a falling star?

Before he knew it, Kal muttered the Dragon Rider oath, Let us burn the heavens together … his voice choked off as the Shadow power pictured in his mind morphed into a new, cunning design. What if he modified her shield to create a leading vacuum, shaping the flow of Shadow-stolen volumes of air and depositing them behind her tail? Blasting them backward? Kal wrestled with the output, narrowing it down to the equivalent of a turbine engine’s exhaust.

Without warning, they shot ahead as though fired from a Dragonship’s war crossbow.

The Indigo Dragoness gasped, Kal?

Suffering lava lakes … shields, Tazi!

The Dragoness’ body stretched out beneath the force of her sustained acceleration, as lustrous and sleek as one of Riika’s flechettes, and her wings drew backward almost to her sides, yet they fluttered in the tiniest wingbeats Kal had ever seen a Dragon make, so rapidly that her wingtips became a blur, almost invisible. He could not tell whether his Shadow magic propelled them from behind or sucked them into a vortex, but where he expected to hear the wind howling, instead, Tazithiel’s shielding was so flawless that a hallowed silence descended upon the world about. There was the awareness of inconceivable velocity but scarcely any accompanying sound or vibration. Even the sensation of being crushed against her spine spike faded. He heard Riika’s bubbling laughter and the tiny popping of vertebrae in his neck as Kal swivelled to view the Dragonwing left literally in their dust, the Amethyst Dragoness’ jaw sagging in decidedly un-queenly perplexity–no, not dust, but haloed in a perfect white corona of what his startled mind identified as draconic white-fires, the magical fires of the original creation within which Dragons believed, all creatures and all reality existed.

Tazithiel blazed a comet-trail across the sky. Faster. Faster!

Kal popped his ears frantically as the pressure escalated. He saw Riika yawning repeatedly, doing the same. Tazithiel whipped past an Academy patrol so fast it appeared as if the Dragons were flying backward. The Indigo Dragoness yelled at them as she hurtled past, but before Kal could see if they had responded or not, Tazithiel was already a mile away and still gathering speed. Glancing back, he saw the Dragons buffeted so severely by her shockwave that two male Reds collided mid-air, an unthinkable insult in draconic circles.

BOOM!

The mountains of Jeradia resounded to the sonic boom of a Dragoness streaking for the Academy volcano.

Leaning forward in his saddle, Kal whooped, “This is incredible, Tazithiel!”

“This is madness,” she yelled back.

“A good sort of madness,” Riika put in. “My only question is, how do we stop?”

The Shapeshifter gasped, “That concussion we heard was us accelerating to a speed faster than sound. I’ve read the Dragon research. Sometimes a meteorite will travel so fast that people or Dragons hear an explosion.”

Kal eyed the looming volcano, rubbing his eyes in disbelief. If they struck it at this speed, that would make a pretty smear on the rocks. “How fast, exactly?”

“Something in excess of two hundred and twenty leagues per hour.”

“What?”

Tazithiel hooted with laughter. “Aye, Kal. You’re to blame. If I could sustain this magical output–which is a huge drain–we’d fly from here to Immadia within a day. Easily.”

“What?”

“Could we try an intelligent question?” Riika goaded.

“What? Right, Tazi. We need to sound the alarm. Thunder away.”

“Poor Kal,” continued the irrepressibly mouthy girl seated ahead of him on Tazithiel’s back. “Don’t you understand what flying faster than the speed of sound means?”

Between gritted teeth, Kal mangled a sentence involving an apology and simultaneous throttling and defenestration, whichever worked quicker. The Indigo Dragoness roared up to the Academy volcano at the same terrifying speed, before relaxing her wings and extending the shield, generating instant wind resistance. Kal and Riika both protested as the deceleration mashed their noses against her spine spikes, but Tazithiel ignored them, opting to bugle the alarm instead.

“All clear down below,” she panted, between bouts of producing an unbelievable din.

“No sign of Talon?” asked Kal.

“Another ralti-stupid question, Dad?”

He swatted Riika’s head from behind. “No smart comments from you, young lady.”

Tazi said, “Not yet. Why aren’t they responding?”

Kal peered across the volcano. “They are, it just takes time to mobilise that many Humans and Dragons.”

Hovering a few hundred feet above the Academy’s topmost buildings, the Indigo Dragoness and her two Riders surveyed the scene as Master X’atior’s readiness drills swung into operation. Minutes began to tick by. Kal sweated impatiently. Nurseries emptied as Dragonesses herded neat clusters of hatchlings aloft, while others transported nets bulging with child-sized Dragons’ eggs. The smaller fledglings formed a Dragonwing which winged eastward under the watchful supervision of a dozen adult Dragons. At the speed of telepathic Dragon speech, Tazithiel kept up a running briefing of every Dragon who approached them for information. Many were the gnashing fangs that greeted news of an imminent attack.

Dragonwings of Riders and Dragons gathered aloft, taking up defensive positions, while the Human staff and students assembled beside the main hall and began to file away section by section, through the secret caves and tunnels which would eventually lead out into the maze of ravines and forests outside the volcano. Kal only prayed the Anubam would not choose that route for their assault.

Suddenly, the afternoon seemed unbearably hot. Kal fidgeted. How could one fight Anubam? How could they neutralise or destroy Endurion or Talon? Perhaps Aranya’s strategy was sound. Over two hundred Dragons joined together above the slate tiles of the Academy buildings and the Dragon roosts a quarter of a mile beyond, until the afternoon’s partial eclipse of the suns behind the Yellow Moon took on an ominous, shadowed aspect, and the lava runs criss-crossing the active parts of the volcano glowed like bloodied cracks in the skin of a slumbering beast. His eyes kept leaping to the South. That speck of Amethyst was fifteen minutes away. Ten. Making her utmost speed.

Out of time.

Aranya and her Dragonwing were still leagues distant when Kal saw the wide field fronting the Academy buildings begin to judder. The careful exodus turned into a stampede.

Riika palmed her bow. “A dozen explosive arrows left, Dad. You want a couple?”

“Aye.”

“Make them count, Sticky-Fingers.”

“Like a pack of tiny but toxic Pygmy warriors,” he agreed, accepting four arrows. “Keep sharp, girls, and we’ll get through this.”

“By my wings, you’re the worst liar that ever lived,” snorted Tazithiel. “Here’s the plan, Kal. Let these other Dragons deal with whatever’s down there. We deal with Talon, no other. Understood?” But she softened her words with an oddly Human-sounding laugh. “If you’re planning to target any other aspects of reality and rob them blind, you scurvy, apostate son of a kleptomaniacal spider-monkey, then don’t wait for my permission. Endurion certainly won’t.”

Kal laughed, “Great Islands, how many hours did it take you to figure out that insult?”

“Been polishing it for weeks.”

In ominous silence, half of the field dropped away into a black void.

The thief patted his Dragoness fondly. “Today, we win back your honour, Tazithiel.”

With a round of battle challenges that resounded in a single, continuous peal of thunder, the earth spewed Dragons.

* * * *

Talon was one for the grand gesture. Kal added this to the picture forming in his mind. Megalomaniac? Probably. Despot? Doubtless. But this assault was not being made without purpose and structure. The hole was seven hundred feet wide. Tens of Dragons at a time erupted from the hole, shielded by Blues emerging at planned intervals. The Academy Dragons’ opening salvoes expired against strong shields, save for a trio of Green Academy shell-sisters who, by some mysterious sleight-of-paw, managed to slip a volley of rajal-sized acid spit-balls into the enemy ranks. Four opposing Red Dragons fell, squirming and screaming, back toward the hole from which they had emerged. But they never passed ground level.

With a volcano-shuddering roar, a great Anubam thundered up from the depths, engulfing the four Reds in its vast maw. Kal made a much smaller swallow of his own. If that feral freak was not related to the Anubam he and Tazithiel had scared up in the Island-Desert, then he was the son of a spider-monkey. At once, fifty Academy Dragons took up the challenge, bombarding the monstrous burrower with a range of Dragon powers–molten rock, Dragon fire, acid spit, boiling glue, shaped lightning bolts and shards of ice the size of trees. The Anubam twisted and collapsed in a landslide of flesh, venting a scream that chilled Kal to the bone. Its breath, able to pulverise rock, did the same to any Dragon who strayed into its path.

Kal saw an elderly Red Dragon lashing an enemy Green with tendrils of fire which appeared to erupt from his talon-tips. Dragon clashed with Dragon, chest against chest and fangs grinding against fang. Their growls and roars made the entire amphitheatre of the volcano vibrate to the spine-tingling tumult of the melee. Beneath him, Tazithiel trembled with readiness to join in. The battle began to drift apart. Meantime, the Academy Dragons worked in teams, making significant headway even though they were outnumbered two to one. More Academy Dragons slipped low across the remains of the field, trying to ambush the attackers from beneath.

Suddenly, Kal sensed the presence he had feared.

Endurion rose from the pit.

The Green Dragon wore a second hide of black, segmented Dragon armour in a style Kal had never seen before–not that he was an expert in Dragon armour. It gave him the air of a Western Isles millipede, a carnivorous pest which grew up to three feet long. But the Rider on his back mesmerised Kal. Set aside her standard ‘evil overlord’ attire–black velvet cloak, crimson armour and gauntlets with matching black trim, crimson helm and snarling-rajal faceplate, her malevolently stylish outfit finished with the customary gleaming black boots–that woman was a freak. A giantess. Kal had always thought Dragon Riders looked improbably diminutive perched atop their hundred-foot lizards. That mutant, or whatever she was, fit. She was taller than him, sitting down.

How had Talon grown so large since last he shivered at the sight of her?

Kal groaned as his stomach seemed to bounce off the underside of his throat. The Indigo Dragoness plummeted, furling her wings, corkscrewing through the thick of the battle. Kal and Riika both yelled as dozens of massive draconic bodies surged toward them and a Green Dragon’s fangs clipped off a few stray hairs near Riika’s left earhole, but Tazi’s phenomenal Dragon-reactions sped them through unscathed, save for shaving off a few years of a thief’s piddling life and a fireball that set Tazithiel’s tail aglow.

“Arrows!” Riika screamed.

Oh. He was meant to be part of this cheerfully explosive little family. Kal whipped out his Dragon war bow. He growled, “Right, Endurion. Time to suck up a dose of death.”

The Pygmy chortled, “Sticky-Fingers, you desperately need help with your lines.”

Tazithiel sucked in a huge, everlasting breath. Kal sensed the potentials building within her. Lightning attack. Compressed somehow within the organ misnamed a stomach, which Blues used to generate their electrical attacks, the power sizzled at a staggering pitch of fury. Aye, scorned women were weapons of unknown destructive potential. A scorned Dragoness? Kal wanted to duck or hide his face from the coming destruction, but in truth, he was having far too much fun.

Talon’s eyes rose. Casually, she swatted ten Academy Dragons out of her presence, sending them hurtling into the buildings a thousand yards away. She jolted the fallen Anubam into a thundering rage, forcing the beast to head groggily for the Dragons’ roost mountain. Tazithiel adjusted, closing the gap with Talon and Endurion with dizzying speed. Then, as the Dragoness’ jaw gaped open to launch her attack, as Kal began to see in strangely jerky segments of time, Talon gestured at the incoming Indigo Dragoness.

Shadow!

Monstrous power washed over them. Through them. Kal and Riika’s shots twanged off their bows and the arrows emerged from nothingness, detonating in concert against Endurion’s magical shield. The Indigo Dragoness’ lightning attack, a streak of bluish light across Kal’s retinae, struck the exact point of the arrows’ explosion and lanced straight through, blasting a cart-sized crater in Endurion’s flank and throwing the Green Dragon hundreds of feet across the pit to splatter a pile of boulders on the edge.

Roaring her mightiest battle-challenge yet, Tazithiel stormed toward Endurion.

“Anubam!” Riika shouted.

The Indigo socked herself with her own Kinetic power, tumbling high over the deadly breath of another burrowing beast as it crawled up into the golden afternoon light. Below, Talon and Endurion stirred, badly injured and smoking from various mentionable and unmentionable orifices, yet clearly still alive. What the hells? Kal’s eyes bulged. He blurted out an unfortunate word.

Riika gasped, “Stinking monkey bait, did she …”

“Aye.” Endurion’s wounds drew closed as though his flesh had sprouted a thousand worms that crawled across the bloodied wreckage, sheathing what should have been a fatal wound in new hide and muscle. Even the armour regrew over Talon’s charred thigh. Kal croaked, “We may have succeeded in annoying her. Just about.”

“Then we need to annoy her a little more.” The Indigo Dragoness cried, “Dragon-kin! Join me and slay the enemy!”

She too could work on her rhetoric, but a dozen Dragons and Riders champed at Tazithiel’s tail as she banked and dived. A rain of fireballs and Dragon acid bombarded Talon and Endurion, but incredibly, they shook off a barrage that turned the rock for a hundred feet all around them into a lake of glowing slag. The pair took to the air, flying unsteadily but implacably toward the battle above. Talon raised her fist. Tazithiel’s Kinetic power battered the Rider repeatedly, clearly disturbing whatever she had been intending. Still, Talon managed to down two of the Academy Dragons. The Indigo Dragoness increased the pace and power of her attacks, driving the pair toward the Academy buildings where many Humans manned the defences–war crossbows and catapults scattered in strategic locations around and atop the buildings. Many were of the new type, Kal saw, steam-powered multiple-loading crossbows that fired up to a dozen ten-foot metal quarrels at a time.

Hopefully they knew friend from foe.

Talon and her forces came under a withering barrage, but they drew together and began to fight back. Every time Talon landed a successful blow, a Dragon fell, its eye-fires snuffed out. In the thick of the battle, as Tazithiel rallied the Academy Dragons with fierce cries and the compelling force of her rage, Kal saw Jisellia and Jalfyrion grappling with a massive enemy Blue Dragon, an aerial bastion of magical power. Even old Yozora surged into the fray. Blind? That Dragon could fly! Kal saw him snag a hulking Green at high speed with his talons and make a slingshot around its neck, snapping the vertebrae instantly.

Talon straightened. Took in the scene. With a devious smile playing about her exposed lips, she gestured to the Anubam. Destroy these pathetic Human nests, my Dragon-kin.

Three Anubam swam through the Academy buildings, bringing them down in a rain of bricks and tiles and timber.

Cyanorion! Thundering his challenge, the stalwart Blue collided with Endurion’s shield at a fantastic speed, rattling Dragon and Rider. Cyanorion spun away, dazed. Jalfyrion headed off a marauding Yellow Dragon with a cunning spin that allowed Jisellia to drive her mounted Dragon lance into the Yellow’s left eye. A terrible screech cut across the din.

ARANYA! The massive Amethyst shot volley after volley of violet fireballs so rapidly she appeared to hose the enemy Dragons with a river of fire. Kal saw several enemy Dragons literally sliced in half as shield and Dragon imploded simultaneously. He took the opportunity in the chaos to land a few shots of his own, picking off a startled enemy Green as it flashed into his line of sight. Flesh and flame spurted from its shattered eye.

“Nice shot,” Tazithiel snarled. “Shall we help my shell-mother?”

Aranya was doing something fantastic with ten coruscating lightning bolts that crackled against Endurion’s shield from every direction, both freezing Dragon and Rider in place and trying by main force to shatter their defence. Yet, incredibly, they endured. Talon struck Aranya with her invisible power, shuddering the huge Dragoness. Again. At the third almighty blow, the Star Dragoness appeared to wilt.

“Get them!” Kal roared.

Tazi poured all of her strength into a lightning attack, but Endurion simply shook her off, raking her left flank with a blow that came perilously close to slicing off Kal’s foot.

“How the blazes does she do that?” snarled the Indigo Dragoness.

“It’s as if she gets stronger the more she’s attacked,” Kal mused. “Is Aranya alright?”

“She’s back.”

Back hardly covered it. Blazing like a sun in its glory, the Amethyst-turned-White Dragoness speared into the enemy with such power, Kal could not even watch. The resulting concussion shook every Dragon present. When the smoke and blaze cleared, Talon and Endurion drifted a ways off, watching with identically sly smiles. Kal could not believe what he was seeing. Teleportation? Absorption of another Dragon’s powers? For as Aranya tried to lash out again, her fire stuttered. The black-cloaked figure made a grand gesture, slamming the mighty Amethyst Dragoness into a spinning dive toward the green lake beneath the Dragon roosts.

The Amethyst Dragoness landed heavily between the lake and the field, folding up as though her body had grown too weighty for her wings to support.

“So, Aranya!” Talon’s booming cut effortlessly across the roar of battle. “How does it feel to be defeated? My Anubam will flatten this little hovel you’ve chosen for your fortress, and my Dragonwings will hunt down and destroy every single one of those pathetic hatchlings that fled my presence.”

Talon waved her hands, appearing to grow stronger and more confident by the second. Dragons began to rain from the skies, friend and foe alike. “You and your precious Riders can never stand against the power of true Dragons. Long years have I waited to wreak my vengeance on this wretched den of Human-lovers and sycophants. And this scroll, the precious Scroll of Ernulla-kul-Exarkin, gives me the means to destroy you.” She waved a very large, intricately-tied scroll to all quarters, as if asserting her right to rule. “Today, there will be no weeping and gnashing of fangs, for I shall silence them all!”

Aranya said, “You …”

“You don’t even remember who I am.” Landing a few hundred feet from the felled Amethyst Dragoness, Endurion and Talon stalked her. There was no questioning who was mistress now.

Jalfyrion and Cyanorion formed a small Dragonwing with Tazithiel, staring at the scene with growing horror as Endurion strutted and Talon postured, spewing vitriol about her time at the Academy and how she had been banished by Aranya herself. Talon roared, “Now you respect me. You only respect my power when you’re brought to your knees. See, o false Queen? I have come to take my revenge, and I’ll have it served fiery, in the inimitable style of the true Dragonkind.”

Her outstretched hand appeared to grip the enormous Amethyst Dragoness as Tazithiel had once been held helpless. The woman’s massive, gauntleted fist clenched slowly, with relish, raising such a cry from Aranya as Kal had never heard a Dragon utter. Golden Dragon blood flooded from her mouth.

“Yes, heal yourself, you pathetic purple slug. Heal yourself so I can do this again! And again!”

“Let them go!” screamed Aranya. “Deal with me!”

Talon’s hand unclenched, releasing the stricken Dragoness. “Aye, well do you wonder what power this is, o Aranya, which can destroy even a Star Dragoness. I have the power of Ernulla-kul-Exarkin, granted me by Dramagon himself, that most ancient of Dragons and the wisest of all. And with it, I am destined to restore the Dragonkind to their rightful place of dominion over this Island-World, heralding a bright new age!”

That fist-pumping, wild cry was enough to decide Kal about Talon’s state of mind. She was as cracked as an Island spilt asunder by an earthquake. The tone of voice, her gestures, the spittle spewing unheeded down her chin … and just look at how Endurion’s facial expressions mirrored hers! What did that mean? Were they bonded like fraternal twins sprung from a single womb?

Dominating the scene now, Talon’s Dragons raised a chorus of snarling, thundering approval. She looked up, smiling. “Ah, isn’t the voice of this world’s new draconic tyrants a song so beautiful, it outshines the very stars?”

The Queen declared, “You’ll never win, Talon–or should I call you Rhadhuri of Rolodia, the banished murderer of students?”

“I needed their blood. Their power.”

Talon’s laughter crackled over the massed Dragons, seeming to infect them with her madness, at least from what Kal deduced of the tenor of their eye-fires. She controlled these Dragonkind? Did the scroll grant that ability? Perhaps the scroll was the true target.

Aranya seemed unfazed. “I have powers you cannot begin to imagine.”

And as they exchanged insults, Kal shivered with the realisation that somehow, Aranya’s words were meant for him. How did he know? Only by a peculiar itch in his mind. They had to do something crazy. Something akin to his original idea of isolating Talon. Separate her from Endurion and they might stand a chance.

“Riika,” he whispered, echoing the words in his mind for the benefit of Cyanorion, Jalfyrion, Tazithiel and Yozora, who had now joined them. “Go to Jalfyrion. I’ve an idea.”

“I’ll take her,” said Cyanorion, unexpectedly.

“Before you complain, Razorblades, I need you lot down with Aranya, healing her. I’ll need the best ruddy backup money can’t buy, alright? And I can’t tell you what I intend because I suspect Talon or Endurion reads minds.”

“What the hells?” snapped Jalfyrion. “Trust you? We all know–”

“Shut the fangs before you start bleating like a sheep,” Yozora cut off the larger Red effortlessly. “Only a thief can snatch victory from the jaws of that beast.”

Kal was grateful Yozora or Tazithiel could not read his thoughts just then. Fancy a Dragon calling a Human a beast? No, she was not Human. She was some kind of Shapeshifter. She had to be. Tazithiel’s supposed shell-father had revealed that little gem. Talon was not quite the true Dragonkind she wished to be, was she?

With that, Tazithiel flicked Riika over to Cyanorion’s paw. “Fly strong and true, little one.” Now, you two-timing son of a slug, what Dragon powers shall we summon to defeat these imposters?

We’re going to pelt them with a few stones, said Kal.

Chapter 30: Big Dragons don’t Cry

WITH A HANDY touch of Storm amplification courtesy of the most gorgeous Shapeshifter in existence–with due respect, Tazithiel just shaded her mother and the thought of any kind of liaison with a woman of over three hundred summers’ age made him imagine gagging on a mouthful of worms freshly scraped from a grave–Kal delivered an eloquent soliloquy, indeed, a poetic masterpiece majoring on Endurion’s extraordinary resemblance to a regurgitated glob of snot swilling about on the surface of a foetid swamp. Tazithiel landed safely between Talon and Aranya.

Job done? Liar. Islands’ sakes, but the familiarity of lying through his pearly white teeth was a great comfort to a man of his severe moral ambivalence.

We need a stony battleground, he breathed to Tazithiel, as intimately as he could manage. And we need to get close to Endurion. Challenge him.

I’ve been waiting for this.

By this time, Kal’s far-reaching slurs had the Green Dragon foaming at the mouth. When Tazithiel bellowed her challenge, demanding an all-claws-in duel, the Dragon patently could not believe his good fortune. He practically begged Talon for the opportunity.

She bowed magnanimously atop Endurion’s shoulders, so huge that she overshadowed his spine spikes. “Why not, noble Endurion? You’ve earned your fun. I’ll enjoy seeing you crush this blue worm once more, as long as you ‘correct’ her publicly this time, for all to enjoy.”

And this was the so-called solidarity of women?

Provoked beyond tolerance, Tazithiel tore into the Green in a spectacular frenzy of claws and lightning. Kal knew that lightning would gain her little purchase, but there was no taming the beast beneath him–or was there? As he caught flashes of Talon’s laughing face opposite, his anger mushroomed. Clearly, she thought him no threat at all. A Rider along for the ride. Kal tried to plant a cheeky arrow right in the middle of her gaping mouth, but she swatted it aside with contemptuous ease. Bah. What was the point? Better to concentrate on Endurion’s demise.

This time, Tazithiel gave better than she received. She fought as a Dragoness in a primal fury. Kal could not imagine what she had been through, for her rage to burn at a pitch greater than any volcanic hell. But when Talon subtly restrained the Indigo Dragoness to furnish Endurion with an opening to shred a twenty-foot portion of her left wing, Kal’s blood boiled with positively draconic wrath. Right. Enough was most certainly enough.

Tightening his mental communication as best he could, Kal whispered, Let him roll you and when you do, grab a boulder in each forepaw. Nice, big ones.

What? I won’t be able to fight.

Just do it.

Tazithiel proceeded to cuff Endurion so venomously, Kal saw stars on the Dragon’s behalf. She pretended to slip. Endurion roared, rushing in for the same manoeuvre he had tried before. In the flip of a wingtip, he trapped Tazithiel beneath his huge paws. She squirmed, preventing her Rider from being crushed beneath her back. The Green Dragon’s fangs gaped. “Prepare to taste my majesty, Shapeshifter filth!”

Kal …

Second and third hearts! Hit them!

The Indigo struck instantaneously with her forepaws. Each held a boulder wider than Kal was tall. As she struck, Kal triggered his Shadow power. Her paws passed cleanly within the Dragon’s torso. In perfect concert with his next command, she released the boulders.

Her paws emerged empty. Kal sighed. Nice gamble, thief.

Endurion halted as though he had flown into a mountainside. A perplexed, emphatically sheepish look entered his eyes. “Rhadhuri? I …” He crumpled.

Talon gasped, “What? Shell-brother–what the hells did you do to him?”

Kal said, “I’m afraid your brother’s feeling a bit stoned.”

Oh, the joy of a spiteful pun! Malicious pleasure flooded his heart, tinged with grief. Aye, the killing did not much please him, even if no creature had ever deserved it more than Endurion. He should not feel guilty. Yet the pleading look Endurion cast him did tug for an instant at one stray heartstring. Kal snapped it callously.

For once, the powerful figure upon Endurion’s back seemed confounded. Her screams split the golden afternoon sky, increasingly desperate, as she hurled her power into her shell-brother, but this was an obstruction not even Shadow power could have resolved. Kal knew that. Granite irretrievably entombed the flesh of two of Endurion’s three hearts. His hearts would be as stone-cold in death as ever they had been in life.

Talon reached into the Green Dragon and tried to rip the boulders free.

She screamed at the horror she produced. Two huge, bloody boulders trailing veins and bone and gobbets of flesh crashed down beside Endurion’s lifeless carcass.

Kal said, “If he wasn’t dead before, lady, he certainly is now.”

The look that Talon turned upon him was unalloyed hatred. Snapping her saddle straps like wet scrolleaf, the giantess leaped to the ground. With each step, her body appeared to swell. Her armour groaned and snapped as Dragon hide encased her still-Human limbs and torso. In seconds, a giant half-Dragon half-Human monstrosity confronted them. Her hide was lava orange and her eyes, filled with crimson Dragon fire.

Rhadhuri bellowed, “Look at what Dramagon’s power made me! I can shift into any form I please. Tremble before my might, all who hear.”

Out on the remains of the field, Kal saw a smattering of the downed Dragons stirring, recovering their strength. Many must have sustained terrible internal injuries. Closer, he could see broken limbs and wings. Beyond them, the Anubam tore heedlessly through the Academy buildings, destroying any structure that stood or any Human who had foolishly remained behind. He risked a glance at Aranya. Aye, Yozora and Cyanorion were there, together with Riika, flanking the mighty Amethyst Dragoness. Cyanorion essayed a tiny nod. Ready.

Striking a powerful stance, Talon addressed the Queen of Immadia, still waving the three-foot roll of scrolleaf about as though it were a baton of command, “So, this is your shell-daughter? How precious. She can watch you die like the cowardly cur you are.” Seizing Aranya, Talon shook her as a rajal might shake a hapless deer. She twisted the Dragoness’ wings until the Dragon-Queen groaned, almost a draconic sob. “Does it hurt, you pitiful excuse for a Dragon? You’re not worthy of the name, and the eternal fires will never accept your tainted fire-soul!”

Kal racked his brain for a solution. Shadow and light, the gap between light and shadow …

“Or perhaps, the reverse would be more satisfying.”

The many-handed power seized Kal and Tazithiel in its relentless grasp. He wanted to invoke his power, to enfold them in Shadow so that they could escape, but even his thoughts seemed imprisoned by Talon’s mental hold. He strained to reach the Dragoness, but failed. He could not think in Dragonish.

From the corner of his frozen vision, Kal saw a dark distortion pass by. Riika! Moving at an inhuman speed, the Pygmy warrior assaulted Talon. Throwing daggers sprouted in her eyes and throat. A silver blur sawed at the giantess’ ankle as if a demented woodpecker had sped up its work a hundredfold, hacking through the scale-armour and into underlying bone. Talon plucked out the daggers and healed herself. Poisoned flechettes thudded into her back. Ten. Twenty times. Talon lashed out, but the girl moved so fast, she was less than a blur now. Riika materialised next to Kal, on Tazithiel’s back.

“Hey Sticky-Fingers. Borrow these?”

He wanted to speak, but the sight of her bleeding gums arrested him. Blood leaked from her fingernails. It trailed from the corners of her eyes in a ghastly parody of tears. With a tiny, knowing smile, Riika absconded with the last of the explosive arrows.

Riika knew what she was doing. Dying to save her family. Dying for love.

Kal would have wept, save Talon’s grip prevented even the upwelling of his emotions.

The Pygmy girl popped up on the far side of Talon. “Surprise!”

Boom!

She popped up in another place. “I love my family, ugly-face.” Boom!

And again, as Talon flailed in the wrong direction. Boom! Bits of flesh fountained from a hole in the giantess’ abdomen.

The grip on Kal slackened almost imperceptibly. Never had he felt more powerless as his daughter exhausted the last of her health to purchase time. And he could think of nothing. Nothing at all. Talon had apparently taken Aranya’s best shots and turned them back on the Star Dragoness. Then again, his joke about Pygmies and one cut at a time was playing out before his disbelieving eyes. Talon could not heal herself fast enough. She could not catch the Pygmy as Riika attacked her with the zest and persistence of a mosquito seeking sweet flesh in a darkened room.

Dragon powers would not prevail. A thief must steal what hid in shadow and bring it into the light. But just as light alone stood no chance against whatever legacy Dramagon had gifted Rhadhuri, so too a disciple of shadow could not hope to defeat such power.

With a triumphant screech, Talon slapped Riika a hundred yards past Aranya and her retinue. Almost simultaneously, the Amethyst Dragoness reared and lunged, a blue-white conflagration bursting from her throat to wash over the freakish Shapeshifter. Aranya had withheld for Riika’s sake. A deafening thunderclap rolled over him as their powers clashed. Smoke, ozone and reeking sulphur choked his lungs.

Talon’s hold slipped.

In that fraction of a second, Kal bolted for a refuge. Tazithiel’s mind.

Here, he sought the light.

Time blossomed before him. Kal swam in an ocean of strange beauties and stranger tides, in the alien yet familiar surroundings of the mind of the woman he had come to adore. Here were many secrets; great chests and treasuries of the powers and potentials gifted by her heritage, yet they were locked and bound by dark, smoking chains. A many-headed beast guarded her treasures, a Dragon of pain and suffering, strengthened by years of self-loathing and despair.

Before he could blink, the Dragon savaged him. You have no right!

Kal threw back his head in agony. But that was nothing compared to the torture of his spirit. He wanted to take the pain as he had before. But this was different. Unimaginably different. This pain had festered and grown malignant, and its touch burned like dark fire.

He challenged the monster, I may not have the right, but my need is unequalled.

No. A soft hand slipped into his. Kal did not know whether he felt or imagined that touch, but he did know the presence of an achingly gentle spirit, with a heart of fire and spirit of diamond, at once untainted and indestructible. Tazithiel said, I thank you, Kal, but this beast is mine to devour.

Perhaps not as gentle as he imagined!

Tazi nodded at the chests. Make yourself useful, thief, and crack a few of those open for us.

Permission deprives stealing of all its fun, Tazithiel.

I suspect your amorality is equal to the task.

* * * *

The man of Shadow pressed down through the iron-hard flight muscles of his Dragoness’ back. All the Island-World lay frozen at Talon’s command, the Dragons scattered across the field as though they were flies trapped in amber, awaiting the passing of aeons. For him, those aeons moved like the silence between heartbeats. In the spaces, in the silence, he discovered his power just as the Amethyst Dragoness had suggested he might.

Monks and Star Dragons. They saw the world with different eyes.

Kal drifted down Tazithiel’s gullet to the source of her new fires. Star power, she called it. The unique, elemental capability of a Star Dragoness, which the shell-daughter of Aranya had known only for the briefest of moments in her life. Shadow hands passed through that organ, examining the microscopic magical imperatives which held her powers captive. Oh, Talon was cunning. The fine control of her Dragon powers, to allow the hearts to beat while subduing the primal magic of a Dragon–that skill could only be the product of centuries of study and experimentation, the kind of time a malign Ancient Dragon had enjoyed. He would not have believed it, had Kal not threaded Dramagon’s constructs between his own shadow-fingers. Incredible science. Dazzling complexity.

Perhaps he should be more thankful for possessing the most dexterous, most fearsomely sticky fingers in history.

How far a scurrilous thief had come from that Dragon roost, from a bungled burglary to a seat upon a Star Dragoness. Life had become laughter over the Islands, the newness of a storm’s aftermath, the prismatic light refracting the suns’ brilliance in fused arcs of crystal-clear radiance. How quickly that first flush of happiness had been stolen by the circumstances of Riika’s infirmity and the horrors of war. How he wished for a return to those blithe days–no. Shadow-Kal firmed his jaw. Steal from a thief?

Certain laws of the Island-World ought to remain immutable He could ensure that.

Just … steal something back. Redeem the balance.

Kal reached out to wreak a thief’s most elegant work. Released, the fires intensified to a white so brilliant, he could no longer sense his own shadow. He panicked, fled and arrested the movement within the breadth of a single thought. Aye, Riika had not mentioned this danger in her pretty speech. How was it that she could be so young yet so infernally wise?

He traced and liberated the paths the Indigo Dragoness’ fires should take, the unfamiliar and exotic internal tissues and organs, the multifarious and ever-changing magical pathways of her being, and after what seemed like an age, emerged from her throat in his Shadow-form. Kal glanced about. He saw Talon’s power fused with Aranya’s amidst a stunning firestorm, subverting the very living structures of her magic. He saw Jalfyrion’s fireball lapping slowly between his fangs. Yozora bounded toward Riika, his leap moving with glacial slowness. Even a dragonfly buzzed past Tazithiel’s right eye, trapped in a wink of glittering insectoid beauty.

Great Islands, he was a prodigy, a man of such immense talents …

Normalcy crashed back into being. Dragon thunder! Belching, battling fires! The wails of the wounded. Aranya’s entire length lit from within, as if the twin suns inhabited her flesh. That instant of elevated consciousness evaporated.

He heard waterfalls of fire gushing within Tazithiel.

“Great Islands!” Kal bounded away like a frightened hare before belatedly realising that nothing could touch him, only, he had a Star-powered fireball breathing down his neck and the effect of the purest of light on a nasty scrap of shadow might, well, be nasty.

Being the genius he was, he sprinted directly at Talon. Halfway there, he realised that was a terrible idea. Absolutely terrible. Because the attacks of at least ten different Dragons were converging on precisely the same target, and the clever survivalist was about to pitch himself right into the middle of what promised to be an acidic pickling process followed by being boiled in molten lava and vaporised by Star fire. Dead, deader, deadest?

The shadow fled the light, rather than following it. Kal remembered thinking something about how backward this was, when he ripped a neat, Kal-shaped hole in Talon’s shield and bounced off a fearsomely large, armoured female leg.

Bounced? His Shadow bounced?

The white-fires which had slipped through in his wake–no, harboured briefly inside his body–sizzled past him and amputated Talon’s left leg below the knee.

Kal coughed, winded, and wavered back into physical being. Talon snatched at him; punched him back outside her shield. Shadow! He nosedived for the safety of nonexistence as draconic fires billowed around him, white and turquoise and crimson and peach traceries creating swirling collages upon his febrile awareness. Still, he did not combust, although Kal realised his real body would sport some wonderful blisters afterward, if he survived.

At last, an idea dawned. He understood his role. Deliberately, Kal stepped into the dazzling stream of Tazithiel’s Star fire, and allowed it to wash him back toward the falling Shapeshifter. He parted Talon’s shield delicately. Now, all he had to do was open his soul and let pure starlight pass right through him, erasing all that was shadow.

Why should shadow fear the light?

White fire blossomed, the poetry of first creation playing through his insubstantial flesh. Starlight, incongruously melodic and as complex as a living organism, lashed through him, bathing the draconic figure with tongues of silvery fire. At first Talon’s hide seemed to behave like ore tossed into a furnace, resistant despite being bathed in heat so punishing, it burned the near-invisible blue of a star’s core flame. Each individual scale developed a halo of starlight, an illusion of beauty incorruptible.

Her outflung left arm swung the Scroll of Ernulla-kul-Exarkin in a protective sweep, as if mere scrolleaf might deny the torrid heat of a star’s heart. Kal gasped soundlessly. Did Talon trust its magic? He knew there was a chance. Had he not played sleight of hand with fate all his life? A one-sided coin could not exist; fate was as deceitful as the universe was old.

Kal feared the coin’s second side. He leaped for the scroll.

The illusion shattered. One microsecond Rhadhuri existed; the next, every particle of flesh, blood and bone vaporised in the crucible of Star fire. Only a chimera lingered, imprinted upon reality, a haze briefly glued together by some residue of her innate magic.

Talon’s shadow blew away into oblivion. The Shadow-man fell endlessly into light.

* * * *

Kal awoke feeling as queer as a purple-spotted rajal visiting the Islands from the Blue moon.

He blinked. Someone slapped his cheek urgently. Queasiness stirred the emptiness in his stomach into a fine kettle of sweet tuber stew. Another slap? What an aggrieving way to treat a wounded hero. After all, he had–Riika! Kal sat up so fast, he pulled a muscle in his back and bumped heads with Tazithiel, returned to her Human manifestation.

His senses acted like a Dragonship juddering in a storm. Blotting out the headache rampaging behind his temples with draconic glee, Kal blurted, “Where’s Talon? How’s everyone? Did we win? I need to see Riika.”

“Over there.” Tazi gestured, smiling balm upon his soul.

In the gathering darkness, Aranya, Cyanorion and Jalfyrion stooped over Riika’s prone body. Aranya sported dozens of open, weeping wounds and parts of her wing membranes were more shreds than whole flesh. Cyanorion looked as though he had lost a squabble with a volcano. Jalfyrion appeared to have been squeezed through a Dragonship’s turbines, while Jisellia had fared little better. Yozora? He lay beside Aranya, appearing to sleep peacefully. But his flanks were not rising or falling. Beyond the mountains of Dragonflesh looming over his daughter, Dragons dotted the field.

Kal took all this in, yet starsong lingered in his mind. Had he been cleansed of all Shadow? The price of victory? For the first time since meeting Tazithiel, he could not sense his magic. The loss …

The Indigo Shapeshifter said, “Thanks to you, Kal, we won. The Star fire passed through you to consume Talon. Now, go to Riika. There’s little time. left”

Feet. Now. He glared at the offending appendages, trying to convince them by force of fury that they belonged to him and not another Island leagues away. Kal struggled to stand, collapsed twice as his left knee refused to cooperate, and staggered to Riika’s side with the help of Tazithiel’s arm. The Pygmy girl lay utterly still, greyish of pallor, and it seemed to him that her flesh already grew cold. Death’s claw, they said. He had seen it many times before.

He whispered, “Aranya? How is she?”

The Amethyst Dragoness’ eye-fires were dark with grief. “If only I could cry. If only … why can I not weep? Have I grown too cynical, the Dragoness I vowed I would never be?”

“It’s not your fault,” Cyanorion soothed. “All our draconic wisdom has been stymied by the nature of this strange poison. Truly, Dramagon’s design is a thing of hateful brilliance. Kal, Aranya and I hold her life in the cusp of our paws. She breathes only because of my help.”

“She gave too much.” Kal lurched to his knees, kissed her pale brow. Watched the breath soughing over her bloodless lips. Odd, he could see breath? “She sacrificed herself knowing … why? Damn this fate; curse the Guild of Assassins! Why the hells was this demanded of her? Could the fates not see fit to take me?”

Aranya said, “She gave of freewill and love. We honour her sacrifice.”

“Her courage bought life for us all,” Tazithiel said. “Remember it well, Kal.”

He did. His rockwood brain had been too slow to find the solution, so Riika had felt compelled to surrender her life.

Kal wept softly, helplessly, stroking her cheek with his own, praying that his tears could succour her, that his strength could bring healing. What could he do that Aranya, Cyanorion and Yozora could not? He sensed a corruption. It was not magical, for that he might have been able to combat. His Shadow power eluded or negated magic. This was written in tissue and bone, and her candle had burned one last time, too brightly and too long.

“Riika, oh, Riika,” he moaned. Fra’anior, can you not see this and intervene? She is like you, o mighty Black Dragon, her greatness neither bounded by form nor flaw. Can you not show us the way?

Silence.

A strange, brooding silence rang in his ears like faraway bells, as though destiny itself waited for the faintest breath to tip one way or another.

Kal said, “Razorblades, can you hear me?”

“Aye.” A zephyr of breath against his ear. “Dad. No crying.”

“Aranya, listen!” Kal looked up excitedly. “Look, I know big Dragons don’t cry, but when I tell you this … I know the location of your mother’s roost! The Star-Hoard, the roosting-place of Istariela the Star Dragoness!”

He stared up at the Amethyst Dragoness, but her eye did not brim with moisture. “Istariela was my grandmother, Kal. I’m grateful. All the Dragonkind thank you.”

Could fiery eyes ever tear up?

“Kal.”

“Love you, Razorblades. You take it easy.”

Riika hissed, “Up.” He began to protest. “Help me.” Doubtfully, Kal helped her sit up. She gasped, “Bring … Aranya.”

Her breath caught in her throat with a ghastly rattle. Cyanorion quickly adjusted his magic, but a trickle of red crept over her lower lip.

“I’m here, little one,” Aranya soothed. “Rest. All will be well.”

Riika tried to raise her arm. Kal helped her, until a tiny brown hand touched Aranya’s monstrous muzzle, near her eye. “B–” Her chest heaved. “B–uhh.”

The Amethyst Dragoness’ eye, three feet across, churned with apricot, purple and white flame, generating a soft effulgence that bathed the girl’s body in balmy light. “Peace, Riika. Don’t speak.”

“Burn!” Riika coughed terribly. Sweat beaded her forehead; Kal feared she would never speak again, when she rallied, rasping, “Burn … aiee!”

Cyanorion said, “What? Did she say burn? Burn what, little one?”

“Will you … burn heavens? Aranyi?”

Kal froze, but this was no chill of terror. This was the thrill of a glorious unfolding in that mysterious, instinctual connection which had always existed between a young girl and the aged Queen of Dragons, an oath hardly spoken but never more fully meant, and by the abrupt inrush of the Dragoness’ breath, he knew the girl had spoken true. Aranya shivered just once; the world, it seemed, shivered with her, as a magical Dragonsong raced from them away over the far horizons and returned in a blaze of splendour.

Holiness. Kal knew elation, a sense of rightness in his soul, as he formed a bridge between Dragon and Human, over hundreds of years … yet what mattered was the sacred union of two souls, trembling upon the cusp of acceptance.

He knew the answer before the Dragon Queen spoke, because her hearts had already spoken for her.

Aranya whispered, “I would be profoundly honoured.”

Riika collapsed against Kal’s shoulder, her arm limp. But there, coalescing in that great eye, he saw the fabled magic of the Amethyst Dragoness. Wars had been fought over this power; a simple, pearlescent teardrop the size of a man’s fist. Quickly raising the half-Pygmy’s arm, Kal turned her hand over and helped her cup her palm to receive the Dragon’s Tear. It glowed like the renowned mother-of-pearl of Rolodia’s terrace lake clams, squeezing forth gently to envelop Riika’s hand and his in warmth.

“Unbelievable,” Jisellia whispered.

The viscous liquid gathered itself before flowing purposefully down to Riika’s elbow, as if possessed of sentience and knowledge of the half-Pygmy’s need. Quickly, it travelled the distance to her shoulder before pausing in apparent confusion.

Kal directed Riika’s hand to dip her fingers into the tear before touching them to her slightly parted lips. He whispered, In here.

As if galvanised, the huge teardrop raced up over the curve of her neck and dived inside her mouth. Every last drop disappeared within. Dragon and Human alike caught their breath.

For long minutes, nothing seemed to change. Riika’s breath continued to rasp in her chest. Then, a delicate tracery of light blossomed beneath her skin, commencing with the pulse at her throat before spreading down into her limbs as though every blood vessel, down to the tiniest capillary, had become a pathway for liquid starlight.

“And so, it begins,” said Aranya.

Chapter 31: Westward, Ho!

ARANYA PINNED KAL against the wall of the temporary infirmary by dint of employing a ten-foot talon to entrap his neck. “You’re being a pest. As usual.”

Kal pushed back, but could not budge her claw an inch.

Looking on in amusement, Tazithiel called, “Beat him up, shell-mother. It’ll save me a cartload of trouble later.”

He rasped, “Great Islands, of all the ballads that star a ghastly mother-in-law, this has to be the worst by a thousand leagues. Your legends, o Queen have a feisty princess chewing up Sylakians for breakfast and kicking hairy War-Hammer butts all over town, and I’ll tell you what–nothing’s changed in three hundred years!”

Aranya’s grin displayed fangs sufficient to furnish a decent-sized jail with bars for all its cells.

“Tell you something else, lady. You don’t scare me. And I can escape whenever I like.”

“No Shadow.” The Amethyst Dragoness wagged another ridiculously enormous talon at him. “Recovery first. I’ll answer your questions, Kal. Aye, the magic is working and yours will too, if you give it time! Aye, Riika is breathing steadily on her own. Cyanorion is being very attentive.”

Kal mentally added Cyanorion to his list of Dragons who required a vigorous thrashing. Attentive to his daughter? Paws off, beast!

“Now I know I’ve been busy, but I would have you listen with both ears for a change. All the signs point to Riika’s recovery, although when, or what the magic will do to her, we don’t and won’t know until she wakes up. That could be as long as a month from now. It requires time. My friend Zuziana was deathly ill with the jungle plague. The magic took over two weeks to work in her. Riika has been damaged by a magical poison over a course of years. This is unknown territory.”

“That’s my exact concern,” Kal pointed out.

“I forbid interference!” Aranya’s eyes blazed lava-orange and white. “Furthermore, pinching valuable oxygen around your convalescing daughter is unhelpful. This pestering of the healers has to stop. You can pester Tazithiel instead. She actually likes you.”

Kal favoured her joke with a thin smile. “Alright. So you’d rather Tazithiel and I abide by an incomprehensible mystical scroll which actually never had anything to do with Talon’s powers, and fly to the Rim-Wall Mountains for the summer solstice at which time a mysterious potential called the real power of Ernulla-kul-Exarkin might just be available to be utilised in unspecified ways to an unspecified end called ‘the opening of the suns’? Shooting us like happy comets twenty-five leagues into the atmosphere and safely down the far side? And I cannot just walk through the mountains because–”

“According to Dragon lore, they’re laced with a radioactive ore called meriatonium, a derivative of meriatite, which has rather unpleasant consequences for creatures of magic. Aye, I know its existence has never been proven. But the substance is documented in Fra’anior’s works. I do not wish you to become a living experiment–tempting as it might sound.”

“I truly appreciate the sentiment, o fiery mother-Dragoness.”

“And I wish to rebuild my Academy in my way without your incessant monkeying about.”

“It’s going well,” Kal admitted. “I never knew Dragons were such fine labourers.”

Kal rather enjoyed vexing the Queen of Immadia. Those Dragon emotions flared every time. On cue, fire leaked between Aranya’s fangs as she snarled, “Labourers? You obnoxious excuse for a rabid, two-legged ape–”

“Mother.” Tazithiel shouldered her way between them, despite the disparity in their sizes. “You should know by now that Kal never listens with anything bar the withered contents of his trousers. Allow me to convince this insignificant Human. Watch and learn.”

Folding his arms, Kal snorted, “Just you try … oh. No, don’t do that. Not the moon-eyes!”

The Indigo Dragoness snickered.

He covered his eyes with his hands, but Tazithiel only purred against his neck, “I’ll let you do anything you like with me, Kal. And I do mean anything.”

“Aargh! You’re scalding my neck, you venomous beast.”

“I hate to interfere, shell-daughter,” Aranya put in, “but I do believe the desired effect may be achieved thus: Kal, Tazithiel says she’ll go without you.”

“Over my worm-ridden, putrefying corpse she won’t!”

“Perfect,” said Aranya. “I’ll leave you two firebirds to discuss this matter in private. And Kal–I am not the slightest bit interested in the details of ‘anything’. Period, underscored with a very large, steely grey talon. Understood?”

Kal bowed floridly. “And the part of the wicked beast-in-law was played by a monstrous Amethyst–”

GGRRRAAARRGGGH!

If Dragons could not have the last word, they deafened everyone within a mile and took the last word anyway.

* * * *

There was a great deal of anything before Kal allowed himself to be persuaded. He attributed this partly to his reluctance to leave Riika in her never-waking coma, and partly to the happy fact that Human-Tazi’s idea of ‘anything’ was rather closer to epic poetry than a brief couplet–if he could be forgiven a groan-worthy pun. The Indigo Dragoness stocked up on food, eating fit for three Dragonesses. She flew rapid exercise laps around the volcano, weighed down with a chunky boulder in each paw, until she was satisfied she was in tip-top condition. Cyanorion and Aranya checked her over twice, declaring themselves content. The Star Dragoness and her shell-daughter spoke until late each evening, exploring lore and techniques for extending Dragon flight.

“I flew for forty-three hours and it nearly killed me,” Human-Aranya told them, one balmy volcanic evening six days after the battle, as they sat talking in Kal and Tazithiel’s roost, and sipping a very fine vintage from Remoy Island. “Oyda told me that her Emblazon, a powerful Amber Dragon, once managed two and a half days on the wing. That stands as a record. We estimate you’ll need four to five days to reach the Rim-Wall Mountains.”

Tazithiel nodded grimly. “I know.”

“There’s no Dragons’ Highway out there to help, according to the scrolls.”

Kal grasped the calculations. He and Tazithiel had pored over them enough times. Two thousand one hundred and fifty-one leagues of unbroken Cloudlands lay between the westernmost of the Western Isles and the Rim-Wall Mountains, according to Ancient Dragon lore and measurements. To cross that distance in five days would require the Indigo Dragoness to sustain an average speed of fourteen point eight three leagues per hour. A target of four days raised that average to a jaw-dropping eighteen and a half leagues per hour. Under ordinary conditions, Dragons could sustain speeds of eight to ten leagues per hour for a day to a day and a half. If they survived, this crossing would be the inspiration for a thousand ballads. If not? Their demise in the Cloudlands would not leave so much as a splash.

The Immadian Queen added, “Yet the Scroll of Many Hands is intriguing. Almost as intriguing as Kal’s ability to shield a material object while in his Shadow-form–which is what you achieved when Tazithiel’s fire vaporised Talon, Kal.”

Leaping upon a dismembered hand still grimly clutching its prize had to be a high point of his career. Kal pictured a circle of friends guffawing at his description of the moment. But the scroll had been an utter disappointment–esoteric, opaque and apparently mostly of scholarly interest, it shed no light whatsoever on Dramagon’s bequest to Rhadhuri, his most ardent disciple. Finding where her former student had discovered her powers presented Aranya with a fresh headache of a size worthy of a Dragon-leviathan.

Kal said, “Oddly, I didn’t see her Shapeshifted form, either Dragon or Human. It was as if Talon existed in both forms at once.”

“She blocked Kal’s Shadow-form,” Tazi added.

Aranya shook her muzzle slowly. “I wish I understood what it meant. Just when you think you understand something of magic, it Shapeshifts from a lemur to a rajal.”

“Tell me, why ‘Aranyi’?” asked Kal, changing the subject.

“According to Immadian tradition, that’s the intimate form of my name,” Aranya explained. “Riika is obviously a fine student of Island-World cultures.”

He added, “Great Islands, can you imagine how insufferable she’ll be when she wakes up? Aranya, have you designed this new Academy to be Pygmy-proof? I hope so.”

“No, only thief-proof.”

Kal mourned, “Truly they say that royals live in another Island-World.” Mother and daughter regarded him with identically imperious scowls. “So, Aranya, tell me what’s so vitally important about this mission that you two have been conniving like thieves–exceptionally handsome thieves, might I add–in dark and dingy corners, and having a rash of oh-so-darling mother-daughter Star Dragoness bonding sessions?”

“Refrain from befouling the universe’s unfathomable mysteries with thy crass, roguish tongue,” Tazithiel declaimed, with a girlish giggle.

Aranya flicked her remarkable multi-coloured locks with an air of faint despair. “I thought I’d never say this, but you two do suit each other. Kal, rightly you ask: ‘Why this mission? Why now?’ Defeating Rhadhuri, my murderous former student, was a truly worthy feat and spared this world countless sorrows, but I believe that a greater calling lies ahead. Kal, you have Master Ja’amba’s blessing–a most unusual blessing. You hear from the great Black Dragon himself, whose claw has clearly reached out to touch your life. Both of you dreamed independently of crossing the Rim-Wall Mountains. And there is your extraordinary liaison. Kal, I call you the King of Thieves because your touch is golden. The lives you have touched … I don’t pretend to understand your transformation, but ever since you declared yourself a fool for love’s sake, that foolery has set your destiny dancing and spinning amongst the stars.”

Kal gripped his wine glass so hard that the crysglass stem snapped between his fingers. He set the parts down with a rueful grin.

The Queen continued, “I won’t bore you with the obscure Star Dragon lore. Kal, my seventh sense tells me that I will not remain much longer in this Island-World, but when I depart for the eternal fires, you need to know that I will always remain with you and Tazithiel. A Star Dragon’s heritage passes from shell-mother to shell-daughter in a similar way to that in which you sense Fra’anior’s presence is still somehow involved with the doings of this world. I will continue to smile upon you, as I do now. I will care for Riika, Kal. Trust me.”

“You know the time of your parting?” Tazithiel clutched her mother’s fingers.

“I sense its nearness, precious eggling of my heart.” Aranya’s smile melted with tenderness. “The only thing which makes this in any way palatable, Tazithiel, is that I know we shall continue to speak from beyond what you see as the end, but is truly only another beginning.”

Kal asked, “Who named you, Tazi?”

“Dragons are born knowing their true names,” said Aranya. “Tazithiel would have named herself. My mother, Izariela, said she met me while I was still in the womb.”

“Just as Kal was born knowing his true vocation.”

He shot the Indigo a glare of filthy magnificence.

“Kal, Tazi, I sense momentous events in the making. A vortex of destiny accompanies your deeds–as Dragon and Rider, I mean, and as soul-bonded lovers. I believe, as the Scroll says, that you are destined to raise the Island-bridge and open a way to the West, and that when you do, this Island-World will settle upon new foundations. Better foundations. We can speculate about the meaning of the prophecies in that scroll until the stars grow old. We can dream of the far side of the mountains and what we may find there. Some say the mountains protect us from the evils or poisons of the world beyond. I believe the mountains circumscribed our world-within-a-world until the balance of the harmonies reached maturity, but the time has come when the brave and the bold must venture into that great unknown. I urge you, please, leave in time for the summer solstice. Leave tomorrow.”

“Westward, ho!” cried Kal, making his companions startle. Over their chuckles, he said, “One of the stanzas in the scroll says that–westward, ho!”

Aranya said, “I have a copy ready for you to take on your voyage to the new world. Ready, Kal? Ready, Tazithiel?”

Suddenly the occasion assumed unexpected gravity. The Rider and his Dragoness bowed formally to the Empress of Dragons, saying, “We’re ready.”

Aranya raised her glass. “Westward, ho!”

* * * *

Before dawn the following morning, Kal and Tazithiel rose and dressed–Kal in his travelling clothes and Tazithiel in her draconic finery. She slipped an ultra-lightweight saddle onto her back, and added the already-packed saddlebags, again, made from the lightest and strongest Dragon-prepared silk to transport their carefully-selected and weighed supplies. For weapons, Kal had chosen Immadian forked daggers–a gift from Aranya–and his Dragon war bow.

Walking around to Tazithiel’s muzzle, Kal pressed his forehead against her cheek and simply stood, quiescent, for a long moment.

“Kal, are you praying?”

“I just thought if the monks can do it, especially given I’m so terrified I’m in danger of dampening my trousers, that a quick unburdening of the soul might not go amiss.”

Tazithiel laughed, whisking him up onto her back. “Hidden depths to your Island, Kal.”

“Hidden depths, secret Dragon hoards and extravagant piles of treasure,” he corrected. Ever so humbly.

“Snooty man. Buckled up? I’m hungry.”

“Again? We can hunt in the Western Isles. Let’s go burn … uh, that is, let’s go quietly and not wake everyone up with our impractical profligacy in the magical realms.”

Walking sinuously through their short hallway to the roost’s front ledge, Tazithiel said, “I can see that the flight won’t lack for–huh?”

Kal had been looking to the skies to see when they could expect first light. His eyes dropped; shock knotted his gut into a fine tangle. “What in the name of …”

Fire-eyes. The entire slope of the mountain below their roost was carpeted in the fire-eyes of Dragons, from the greatest to the smallest, and below, by the pinpoint brilliance of a White moon, he saw thousands of people gathered around the gleaming green lake. Upon the Rim-Wall itself, draconic sentinels perched at intervals, brooding over the scene.

“So much for a quiet exit, my beauty. Did you know about this?”

Tazi bugled softly, “No.”

Launching from the mountaintop above, the unmistakably vast shadow of the Amethyst Dragoness occluded the stars. “Friends of all races!” she boomed. Her amplified voice rolled over the volcano like breaking thunder. “We gather this morning to thank a Dragon Rider team for saving us from the paw of the aggressor, Rhadhuri of Remoy, and her minions and monsters. Rhadhuri was once a student of this Academy. She was dismissed for multiple murders in which she sought to steal magical powers from Humans, Shifters and Dragons alike–she had no scruples, and no limits to her ambition. She broke ancient magical taboos to raise the Anubam against us; through your courage, those monsters have now been destroyed.”

“I grieve to inform you that as of this morning, the death toll now stands at one thousand, two hundred and sixty-four, including Dragons, Shapeshifters and Humans. Many were children and hatchlings, dear to our hearts.”

Kal sucked in his lip. So many!

“Fifty-two persons are still missing. Seventy-eight Dragons of Rhadhuri’s force recanted their oaths to her, oaths extracted under duress and psychic torture. They have joined us. We welcome them as our own.”

Circling slowly overhead, the Amethyst Dragoness cried, “The death toll would have been much greater had it not been for the courage of one Dragoness and her Rider! You know of whom I speak!”

A wave of sound rolled across the volcano to assault Kal’s ears, the cries of Humans mingled with the carolling joy of the Dragons. Tazi stood tall and proud; Kal came within a rajal’s whisker of invoking his Shadow power to hide his burning face from public view. Bah! He hated being picked out. Public scrutiny made his neck itch as if he were allergic to the fibres of a hangman’s noose.

Again, the Dragoness’ thunder pitched her voice across the miles of the Academy volcano. “Tazithiel and Kal fought with great courage to penetrate and destroy Talon’s lair. Having learned of her perfidious plan, as we strained wing and muscle to race back to the Academy, these two blew the Island-World’s mightiest Dragons into the dust as they flew faster than any Dragon has ever before to reach us and warn us to start the evacuation. Ten minutes later, and the deaths would have numbered tens of thousands. On behalf of every soul present, I, Aranya of Immadia, thank you for our lives, Dragon and Rider.”

Under cover of the roaring, Kal muttered, “Great Islands, can we leave already?”

Bowing regally, the Indigo Dragoness said, “Where’s my pompous little poser, then? Smile nicely for your admirers, Kal.”

“Bah.” He smiled and flapped a hand briefly. “There. Happy?”

“Ecstatic.”

Tazithiel slipped into the air with that nonchalant ease of the Dragonkind that had always screamed to a ground-dweller, ‘Master of the air!’ Born to fly. Born to race and aspirate words etched in fire. As she winged languidly toward her mother, the Amethyst Dragoness summoned even greater volume, if such a feat were physically possible.

“Now Kal and Tazithiel fly to the West, to realms never before explored by the Dragonkind! They travel to the Rim-Wall Mountains in search of a way through to the world beyond. We wish them fair winds and clear skies!”

Her voice shook the volcano with the power of an earthquake. The sentinel Dragons took off, quickly orienting themselves to form a guard of honour, their scales glimmering red and orange, yellow and green, blue and grey in the faint moonlight. The Dragons cleared their throats. Obeying an instinct Kal could not understand, every single Dragon in that volcano roared with a single voice, while hundreds of fireballs razed the skies, enflaming the watching draconic and Human faces. Aranya produced a spectacular fireball of her own, which exploded high above in a shower of glittering blue sparks.

“That’s our cue,” said Tazithiel, pumping her wings.

“Wretched wench, you tear my stomach apart every time you do that,” Kal gasped. The Dragoness seemed to enjoy accelerating so powerfully that her Rider developed an old hound’s sagging jowls at the gravitational forces she generated.

The Indigo Dragoness shot him a glint of wicked orange eyeball over her shoulder. “Why don’t you give us a proper send-off, Rider Kal? Something memorable?”

From below, Aranya’s shout chased them, Go burn the heavens together, Dragon and Rider!

Aranya was in danger of tearing down her under-construction buildings with her thundering, Kal thought smugly. But her declaration filled him with fire. Mischievous, dancing fire. He held off a moment, concerned for all the hatchlings down there. Well, wouldn’t it take them a few minutes to quicken to top speed? Tazi could rest in the Western Isles before they leaped into the great, wild beyond.

What harm in perpetrating a little friendly mayhem?

With a wild yell, he slapped Tazithiel’s shoulder as hard as he was able. Go blast the heavens, Dragoness!

His girl blew past the honour guard like a burning boulder jetted out of a volcano, climbing at a phenomenal pace into the early morning sky. Kal wanted to whoop to incite her to greater speed, but the howling windstorm stuffed the words back down his throat. She was heading in the wrong direction, east … no, the crafty Indigo Dragoness described a wide arc against the blushing dawn and rocketed back toward the open peak with a trumpet-call of infectious joy barrelling from her throat and thankfully, a touch of protection for her Rider. In Dragonish, Kal set about listing every complimentary adjective he could dredge up, finding that their utterance was akin to feeding the Indigo Dragoness’ fires.

Compliments, insults–Dragons could never guzzle enough of them.

But she needed to speed up. Kal opened the spigots of his strange power. What a quickening, making the acceleration sit upon his chest like a giant Jeradian warrior! Now he could not have moved had he wanted to. The world turned deathly shades of grey, blurring into the corners of his vision as Kal struggled to maintain his concentration. Roaring rajals! How did she keep flying under this strain?

Right above the Academy, Tazithiel attained supersonic speed.

BOOM!

Well, that rattled their gizzards, Kal thought in satisfaction. At the same screaming velocity, Tazithiel aimed her muzzle at the stars still speckling the north-western horizon.

Westward, ho!

Chapter 32: Shenanigans

DAWN CHASED DRAGON and Rider across the sky with torrents of fire. It burnished the empty Cloudlands as though a forge door stood open in the East, casting ruddy beams across the endless, gently billowing cloudscapes. Toxic beauty. Ever-changing, multi-coloured, like the gleaming scales of a polychromatic Dragoness that stormed above them; for the first time, Kal drew the comparison between Aranya’s rainbow Shapeshifter hair and Tazithiel’s scales. As Tazithiel sang out her first sighting of Ur-Malka Cluster on the horizon, the first of many ‘Ur’s’ of the sprawling Western Isles, Kal examined his Dragoness as his basic Dragon Rider training had taught him.

Not that he was much of a Rider, nor had he been much enamoured of learning theory together with a gaggle of giggling preteens. The Dragoness, having been thoroughly scrubbed in a strange machine consisting of huge, bristling rollers–while Tazithiel purred under its ministrations Kal had gleefully pictured shunting one of those rollers down Endurion’s miserable gullet and doing a dint of hearty scouring of his own–had been oiled and then buffed to an exuberant shine. All about reducing wind resistance.

However, was she tiring? It was hard to tell, but if he listened carefully, Kal thought he detected a lowering in the overall tenor of Tazithiel’s belly-fires, and the crazy-hummingbird fluttering of her wings had a slightly ragged edge.

Tazithiel, how’s my best Dragoness-girl doing?

This is crazy fun, but I do need to slow down. She eased into a narrow gliding configuration; the wind still whistled over her scales, however. Aranya coached me in the art of monitoring my magical output–forty-nine factors in all. Despite your help, whatever your Shadow power’s doing to abduct the air ahead and shovel it behind me … aren’t you tired, too?

Not too tired to abduct my favourite Indigo Island-shaker and whisk her away to a cosy roost sized for two.

Kal. Seriously.

Seriously? I feel like a Dragoness is grinding my temples between her paws. Now, you’re not shaping your shield properly. Your bullet-form has slipped, Tazithiel, and the orientation of your wings is canted several degrees to the vertical.

Fussy fusspot, she growled, making the adjustments.

Concentrate, o aerial goddess.

If some pillow-god wasn’t bent on constantly distracting me, I might fly better.

If he could have died just then, Kal would have entered eternity with a smile so broad it cramped the muscles in his cheeks. And he would have looked peculiar for the rest of time.

Two hours later, they reached the teeming mass of Islands that was Ur-Malka Cluster. “Three hundred and eighty-seven leagues in two and a half hours,” Kal crowed. “Travelling seven leagues per hour, a fast Dragonship would take fifty-five hours to make this same crossing.”

“Aye, and I’m puffed.”

“What you are is the sleekest, most gorgeous flying machine that ever raced across the face of the suns.”

“I’ll thank you not to slaver over me like men slaver over fine engineering.”

“Mmm.” Kal considered this, to a hiccough of amusement from his mount. “Aye, I can definitely see myself drooling over your fine, oiled chassis.”

“Pervert.”

“And as for the lovingly-crafted details of your peerless undercarriage–”

“Kallion, you’ll make these Islands blush!”

“I simply must undertake a meticulous appraisal of your inmost workings.”

“You are an irredeemably depraved manikin. And before you entertain any ideas, I must not Shift forms too often, Kal.”

“For the Shapeshifter transformation process consumes large amounts of magic,” said Kal, in a lilting Immadian accent. “And do not be confused by your passion for that deplorable delinquent from Fra’anior, my darling fireflower petal. For all women secretly yearn to be clasped in the arms of a tall, dark and ineffably handsome villain.”

“Hardly!”

“Did I, Aranya of Immadia, not show you the way by falling madly over-the-Islands for a dusky Western Isles Shapeshifter?”

“Ardan of Ur-Naphtha was an honourable warrior.”

“Not entirely, from what the legends hint about their first encounter. Have you asked Aranya about your father?”

Tazithiel clamped her fangs shut, but her belly-fires blushed up a telling storm.

Far below, numerous Isles spread to the horizon. These wild, jumbled landscapes and stubby, roughly-formed Islands hosted some of the most dangerous wildlife in the Island-World, including the formidable warrior-tribes of the West. They were famously factious, wrestled rajals for amusement and were especially fond of feasts involving enemies’ brains served chargrilled with seventeen herbs and spices, Kal understood, on a bed of wild saffron rice. Furthermore, slow-roasted leg of foreigner was a local delicacy. Of course, all foreigners also counted as enemies. That rather put the brains at risk as well.

Aranya had spoken fondly of Ardan. Gigantic, scarified Western Isles pugilists must make good Dragons, Kal decided. Although, that canvas of the Shadow Dragon he had seen in Aranya’s quarters did rather paint him as a beast wider in the shoulder than the average mountain.

Perhaps he would sleep between Tazithiel’s paws this night. No, a fearless Dragon Rider might sleep right beneath her paw. Perhaps even inside her mouth?

Perfect.

* * * *

For Kal, after their rocketing start, the following two and a half days passed like a slow, impossible-to-scratch itch. Dragon and Rider headed for Yanga Island, five points north of west, where the ballads alleged Aranya had discovered the Shadow Dragon. Yanga was the westernmost known landmass, and the place from which Kal and Tazithiel intended to launch their assault on the great emptiness that stretched to the end of the Island-World. Not that Kal believed in omens. Not so much as a jot.

Rather than isolated, large Island-masses, these territories consisted of many hundreds of smaller Islands and Islets, often so packed together they appeared to rub shoulders with comradely goodwill. The Western Isles warrior-peoples had developed gliders and the stomach-churning habit of hurtling from cliff to cliff three miles above the Cloudlands. Clearly, fear of death was of little concern. In comparison, riding Dragonback was as safe as sitting in a cart snacking on a ripe green tinker banana–apart from the fact that his conveyance grew increasingly grizzly and snappish the further west they flew, unlike a cart or a glider.

Then again, Kal’s itch would not settle either. To assuage their minds over the impending leap into madness, he spent several hours reading aloud through the Scroll of Many Hands, and regaled the Indigo Dragoness with colourful tales from his past.

Judging by the Cloudlands shadows cast by the Islands of Ur-Yagga Cluster, Kal realised his suspicion had been correct. The entire Island massif lay canted upon a slope, rising steadily to the westernmost escarpment. Ur-Yagga was craggier and harsher than he had dared imagine, a place of dizzying contrasts, ravines etched against impossible drops, vegetation clinging by miraculous, rooted power even beneath overhangs, and many arches and steepling towers of stone sculpted by aeons of harsh winds and inclement weather.

Kal startled when Tazithiel spoke. She had been so withdrawn. “Do you see what I see, Kal?” Her foreclaw traversed the Cluster ahead of them. “That’s the Dragon’s hind leg–there, follow those Islands with your eyes. Now, the wings, flaring northeast by southwest. And that Island must be Yanga. The Dragon’s forepaw.”

He fidgeted against the light saddle. “Suffering volcanic lava-spit, Tazithiel, do you have to put the freakish trembles into my stomach like that?”

Kal eyed the recumbent Island-Dragon with great unease. Tazi was right. Yanga looked exactly like a Dragon’s paw, its talons the roughhewn, deeply divided isthmuses that ended in a sharply-delineated line, as though the claws had been hacked off by some unimaginable sword-stroke or Ancient Dragon battle at the dawn of time.

“I only do it to hear you concoct another Kallion cauldron of linguistic licentiousness.”

“A what?”

“A brain-frazzling twist of phraseology.”

“A how much? Will you stop embezzling my abilities, woman–Dragoness?”

“Forsooth, thou rapscallion.”

Kal rolled his eyes, knowing she could sense it if not hear the fluid swizzling about in his eye-sockets. “I fear you’ve been bitten by a silly-bug. Find us a place to rest, o startlingly imposing paragon of inter-Isles haulage.”

“I know just the place,” she winked back over her shoulder at him, twenty tonnes of draconic immodesty.

She did. Kal’s jaw hung open and remained so as the Indigo Dragoness speared through the early afternoon sky to a landing on the southern aspect of the largest sinkhole Kal had ever seen–only, he soon realised, this was no sinkhole. It was a hole of unmistakably draconic origin quarried right through the base of the Island, revealing that they stood upon a gigantic overhang perhaps a half-mile thick. Some beast capable of carving a hole over two thousand feet wide had happily chewed its way right through the bedrock. Kal decided he would rather not exchange pleasantries with said beast. They would be more akin to un-pleasantries, and terminally brief.

Wishing for a pair of wings as he peered over the edge, Kal said, “I see trees growing down there. It’s so lush! At least five streams tinkling down from the top. Now, I also know this place, from the scrolls at least. It’s where Aranya met Ardan, right?”

She made a noncommittal rumbling sound deep in her chest.

“Everything suitably fiery on the inside, Tazithiel?”

“Hungry.”

Kal frowned. Aye, his sizzling princess could eat for Immadia. She had already devoured two wild ralti sheep and four small antelope since leaving the Academy. Still, she did not waddle. Tazi seemed sleeker than ever, even a touch on the lean side for a Dragoness.

She sighed. “I’m a lost egg, Kal, just searching for my roots. I don’t expect to find anything Island-shivering here, but it means something to see this place. Do you understand?”

“Aye.”

“Truly?”

“I know what it means to touch something–anything, no matter how trivial–of a parent you barely remember.”

Wafting Kal down from her back, Tazithiel clasped him momentarily in her paw. “Thank you, Kal. Would you mind if I left to hunt? I’ll bring you something tasty.”

“I’ll make camp in that little ravine back there, next to the waterfall.” He shrugged, and turned a quirky grin on the Indigo Dragoness. “Take as long as you need, my bright flame. I’ll wash off the travel stink and the bug-splatter. Make myself suitable for an Immadian Princess.”

Her eyes held a tracery of shadows, despite their constant flame. “You know how uncomfortable I am with that title.”

And she hurled herself off the cliff-edge with a sound like wind keening across forsaken Islands.

Hours passed in solitary pursuits. Kal carved himself a small reed flute and, sitting right on the edge of that great hole, played for a long while, mingling his melancholy tootling with the sound of the wind sporting amidst the rocks. While he played, he remembered the boy he had so fleetingly been, before life stole his childhood and forged a care-me-less thief and a brutish bandit, and later, a suave King of Thieves. Now he was Kal the influential Dragon Rider, noble as a steaming clod of windroc droppings.

Bah.

Kal strolled back to the ravine and stripped down. He stank in more ways than he had ever accused Riika of stinking. As he stood thigh deep in a small plunge-pool beneath an overhang, playing dance-with-the-droplets with a waterfall barely worth the word ‘trickle’, he tried to summon anger at Aranya for forcing him to leave his ailing daughter behind and embark upon a madcap quest to satisfy a Star Dragoness’ existential itch. He could not. In his heart, he knew how badly he had misjudged her. Aranya had more than proven that the same love which had driven her across the Island-World to save her beloved Immadia from annihilation at the hand of the Sylakian Emperor, Thoralian, nigh three hundred years before, still burned fierce and proud in her chest. All Kal had seen was arrogance.

Ralti-stupid fool.

Kal returned from a place of unseeing abnegation to feast his eyes upon the unexpected pleasure of his ablutions being appreciated by a dozen-strong troop of fetchingly unclad Western-Isles warrior maidens.

Double-bah. Should he not admit his heart had just climbed his throat like a hasty dragonet tearing up a vine, claws bared, and the warriors were somewhat clad, and clearly discontented to stumble upon a handsome exemplar of muscular thief-hood standing stark naked beneath a waterfall?

Life could not all be roses, could it?

One of the women, a scarred brute with a blacksmith’s biceps, who stood at least half a head taller than Kal and probably outweighed him by ten sackweight, all of it muscle, gestured curtly with her scimitar. “Out.”

Kal’s feet decided obedience was better than pomposity.

“Cover the snake.”

Where on the Islands was a nice chunk of jealous Dragoness when he needed one? Tazithiel?

Silence.

Kal wondered how one charmed warriors such as these. Stooping for his trousers, he said, “I shall wrestle the python back into his lair, ladies, if it pleases you.”

“Wrestle the python? That little garter snake, eh, Zinjana?” called another of the women, whose one-eyed glare was a gut-slugging ode to hideousness. Kal knew he should not stare, but she looked as though she had been gnawed on at length by a rajal and afterward, been stitched together by a troop of monkeys.

Zinjana, the one built like a Jeradian gladiator, chortled, “Oh, Sundyni, I mistook it for a bit of string dangling there.”

Kal buttoned his trousers sulkily. What was it with women and insulting his manly jewels? They did not seem dissatisfying to a Shapeshifter Dragoness. Quite the contrary. But he glanced quickly at the empty skies before hitching his thumbs in his trouser pockets and giving the woman a flat, unfriendly stare. He was confident, right? These dark-skinned warriors only wanted a bit of sport before moving on. The object would be to provide that entertainment without losing any vital body parts, or by doing something Tazithiel might take exception to later.

One of the women, a fifty-something warrior with iron-grey hair who carried herself like a woman twenty years her junior, stepped forward. Like the others, she wore brief Western Isles body armour, a skirt that masqueraded more as a loincloth than clothing and was indecent on any one of a thousand Islands, and an array of weapons from an oversized scimitar upon her back, to a hunting bow and a brace of curved, serrated daggers adorning her right hip. She wore metal bracers upon her wrists, ankles and neck, and her hair was braided close to the scalp and reached halfway down her back. The braids were decorated with what Kal fervently hoped was not Human bones. Above her ritually scarred cheekbones, black eyes returned his glare without compromise.

“I am Kellira, Warlord of Yanga Island. Why are you intruding here, Dragon Rider, and where is your beast?”

Kal offered a truncated Fra’aniorian half-bow. “I am Kallion of Fra’anior, Rider of Tazithiel. She’s about. Probably watching us right now.” He hoped. Fervently.

“Last I saw the beast, it was leagues south of here,” said Kellira. “Their kind aren’t welcome around here. We’ve got us a Dragon problem. A big one.”

Sundyni spat, in her flat Western Isles tones, “Dragon’s got a cave down below an’ keeps raiding our flocks. Last week he killed a warrior and burned two huts. Third time this year.”

“Feral?” asked Kal.

Kellira said, “Here’s my bargain, Rider Kallion. You get rid of that Dragon and we’ll let you keep your life.”

“I suppose I can ask her–”

“Ask? That’s not our way.” The Warlord raised a chorus of ‘aye’s’ from her warriors. “We know how you volcano-Islanders treat your women–kidnapping ’em, chaining ’em and keeping ’em as slaves.”

“Five hundred years ago, maybe,” Kal protested.

“Well, we reckon you got some payback coming, you filthy Dragon’s paw-licker.”

“Reckon you can capture me?” Kal mimicked her posture and tone, legs akimbo. He couldn’t toy with the handle of his dagger, but he could do a fierce glare. He just had to picture Tazithiel in one of her lightning-spitting moods. “I tell you what, Warlord Kellira. If your troop of piddling little washer-women can manage to catch me, I will gladly deal with your Dragon problem and give you a thousand gold drals to boot.”

Kal snapped his head out of the way of an arrow intended for the point of his nose.

“Very well,” Kellira growled, visibly disappointed that the arrow had missed. “Zinjana, fetch him.”

Crude wagers flew thick and fast between the women. Evidently, his chances were reckoned to be slim.

Zinjana approached him with a half-smile playing about her thick lips. She grabbed fresh air. Frowned. Grabbed a pawful more of the cleanest air in the Island-World. Kal had played this game more times than he could count during his early training as a thief. Training for agility. He goaded her with a few hearty laughs; hands curved like meat-hooks, Zinjana charged. Whirling, the thief seized her arm and propelled her high over his shoulder. The warrior emptied half of the pool with her splash.

“I believe I win that round,” said Kal.

Kellira cursed Zinjana roundly. “Sundyni! Be a good huntress and fetch me that stick of a foreigner.”

Sundyni cracked her knuckles gleefully. “My pleasure, Chief. You know how I got my scars, Kallion? Wrestling rajals. Lots of them.”

“You’re not very good at your job, are you?” Kal observed.

Before he could blink, a blade whistled toward his face. Kal dodged, rolled, leaped back with his abdominals sucked in to prevent being gutted like a hapless sheep. Islands’ sakes, this one was fast. No mind. He had a few Pygmy tricks up his sleeve. Riika had been an excellent teacher of hand-to-hand combat. Kal had quickly learned to counter her techniques or be crippled. Fascinating, the circumstances in which the Human spirit could find inspiration to excel.

Judging his moment, Kal pummelled the nerve-centres of her shoulders, and then finished Sundyni with a curt chop to the neck. He dusted his hands. “Two down. You swallowed a wasp over there, Warlord Kellira?”

The Warlord had turned a quite magnificent shade of prekki fruit purple. “Kyrinda!”

Another, younger warrior stepped forward, this one almost a head taller than Kal and built like a Dragonship, sweeping of curvature and magnificent in the beam. Her forearms were thicker than his waist and her legs, mobile tree-trunks. That was one titanic slab of womanhood, he thought, assessing this threat with an assured smirk. She was so well-built he doubted she could put two hands simultaneously to a scimitar’s hilt. A nimble thief would lead this so-called warrior about like a hound on a leash.

Kal bowed. “At last, a real woman.”

That was his mistake. The instant his line of sight lowered, Kyrinda reached into her hair and her hand snapped forward. Two darts missed, but the third scratched a line across his left bicep. Kal wobbled like a sot drowning in his tankard. Huh? His knees lived on another Island. He had begun to raise a hand in protest when a mountainous bosom slapped his left cheek, followed by the balance of an avalanche of flesh. Then, she simply sat on him.

“Gnaaarrrgh,” Kal groaned.

“That’s how it’s done.” Kyrinda slapped his backside heartily. “Nice and firm! Mind, I don’t think you’d last five minutes on my pillow-roll.”

The warrior-women hooted with laughter, making a range of suggestions that might have turned Kal’s face crimson with embarrassment had it not already abandoned crimson in favour of a desperate purple.

Kyrinda twisted his arm behind his back with worrisome ease. “Submit?”

Kal stared at the line of bushes opposite, across the pool. Just behind them stood the outline of a Shapeshifter Dragoness–at least, her Human form. Was this the optical shield Tazithiel had hinted at yesterday, or was he simply imagining her in terror of being rolled out for bread-dough beneath this wrestling prodigy? He could not penetrate the Dragoness’ disguise if that was truly her. With blackness closing in courtesy of his tortured lungs and no help apparently forthcoming from his darling little fire-starter, Kal had no choice.

A touch of Shadow later, and he wriggled free from the region of an oversized female backside. The temptation was irresistible. Kal swatted that behind with a mighty swing of his flat hand. Smack! “Nice and plump! Mind, I don’t think you’d last five minutes on my pillow-roll.”

As Kyrinda rose with a squeal of fury, Kal applied his boot heartily to the same location, propelling her headfirst into the pond. “I do believe–”

A scimitar whistled past his nose. Kellira stormed, “You cheated. You used magic.”

Kal shrugged. “The rules did not forbid magic.”

The warrior troop encircled him. Enough. Kal vanished.

“Freaking Shapeshifter!” Sundyni shouted.

“No, a very dangerous Enchanter.” Kellira narrowed her eyes. “Spread out. We need him to yoke the Dragon to our purposes.” Stooping, the Warlord scooped up a handful of dirt and tossed it around her in a shallow arc. “There! He’s hiding right in front of us.”

Three scimitars parted his nose, neck and navel. Thankfully, Kal sensed only a slight tugging as the blades swished through his incorporeal form. Drat. How long could he maintain the Shadow? Not forever. He ran toward the pool. A posse of women oriented on the very slight disturbance his body made in passing through the water. Had he emerged from the Shadow just then, he would have been wearing four daggers and a battle-axe between his shoulder blades before he left the water.

Kal bounded onward, shouting, Tazithiel! Any time now, please.

Just before the bushes, he turned to shout, “Watch out, the Dragon is right–”

Vanish! Kellira’s scimitar cartwheeled through his torso and lopped the top off one of the bushes before clanging against the stone beyond. Freaking feral windrocs! Where was that miserable reptile? Oh no … as the scantily clad warriors charged through the water toward him, Kal had a moment to be mesmerised by the image of a pack of female rajals hunting down a petrified deer.

“Ladies,” purred Tazithiel, shimmering into being right behind them.

“Feral Dragon!” howled Zinjana. Eight scimitars, three spears and a flurry of daggers bounced off Tazithiel’s scales.

The Indigo Dragoness just smiled. That alone was sufficient to herd a dozen tough warriors together beneath the waterfall, trapping them inside the natural curvature of the ridge from which the water had carved its plunge-pool.

Returned to his normal form, Kal growled, “About ruddy time, Dragoness.”

Tazithiel’s grin only widened. She gave it the works–simmering fires on her tongue, sulphurous smoke, even a dainty touch of lightning. Very artistic. “Oh, I was just admiring how a man handles negotiations with a troop of superb Western Isles warriors. Kyrinda, was it? I believe my incompetent Dragon Rider owes you a thousand gold drals.”

The woman’s face broke into a bemused smile. “I think I’d settle for not being eaten, mighty Dragoness.”

Kal edged behind Tazithiel. He had no desire to be ironed out like new scrolleaf.

“I think you frightened him.” The women laughed collectively, but sounded like a wing of nervous dragonets. The Indigo Dragoness purred, “We’d be glad to look into your Dragon problem, Warlord Kellira. Do you know his or her name?”

Kellira said cautiously, “He seems very elderly, but no less dangerous for it. We were told he might be called Sha’anior?”

Tazithiel gasped a curl of fire.

“Who’s that?” asked Kal.

“One of my shell-brothers,” Tazithiel breathed. “Aranya said he had been lost long ago. Where would we find this Dragon, Kellira?”

Sundyni fixed them with a twisted smile. “Easy. Down the hole.”

Chapter 33: Dragons of the West

THE DRAGONESS SPIRALLED down the hole with rather more enthusiasm than her Rider. Bait a feral Dragon? He would rather subject himself to Kyrinda’s tender yet undoubtedly overwhelming mercies, or hunt rajals with a dagger clasped between his toes.

Of course, the heinous girl-fiend would not listen to a word of refusal on his part.

Not for the first time, Kal mentally pelted the monks with heaps of rotten prekki fruit. Why had Master Ja’amba ever allowed him to liberate a Dragonship? If he survived the end of the world, he intended to have a far-reaching conversation with the monk about the nature of destiny.

Below, where the funnel-like hole opened out above ochre-tinged Cloudlands, Tazithiel and Kal found an abandoned Human hideout secreted within a deep horizontal crack, exactly as the Warlord had described. Tazithiel winged to a neat landing on the ledge, having no need to duck her head as the crack was over fifty feet tall at this point.

“Do you think he’ll be in those caves, behind the boulders?” asked Kal. Warm, arid winds blew across the ledge, ruffling the thief’s hair as he descended from Tazithiel’s shoulder. “You’re quite certain about this?”

“Take a sniff,” said the Indigo Dragoness, nosing him forward with her muzzle and a cheeky puff of flame.

“No lizard-breath!” cried Kal, afraid his trousers would start smouldering. He gagged as the first whiff of the caves blistered his nostrils. “Putrid rajal halitosis, what on the Islands is that?”

“Feral Dragon.”

The odour of Dragon roosts often hinted at cinnamon spice, coupled with an inevitable smoky tickle and acrid sulphur. Tazithiel’s natural scent was more sophisticated, putting Kal in mind of water-lilies and aromatic jasmine, although the scent of magic had its way of defying casual classification. Annoy her, however, and all thought of lilies or fragrant spices flew out of the window. Well, Tazithiel’s fire had hint of Helyon incense about it, although the charred victims of her fireballs probably did not pause to appreciate such a delicate distinction.

This Dragon’s lair smelled like the towering bone pile of a Yorbik Island slaughterhouse Kal once had the misfortune to visit, trussed hand and foot. His captors had hoped–in vain, happily–that the carrion-eaters would do away with him. Kal wished one could stop breathing for a period of time, although this smell struck him as powerful enough to eat his flesh like the cannibal slugs for which the Western Isles were notorious.

Readying her magic, Tazithiel followed a trail of filth into the darkness. Kal stuck so close, he trod on her tail. The Dragoness’ stomach gurgled greedily. Again?

Sha’anior? Tazithiel called. Remember your name, Sha’anior.

Remember who you are, Sha’anior, Kal echoed.

A low, vicious snarl shook the caverns.

This feral-Dragon cocktail really does work, doesn’t it, Tazithiel? Kal asked.

Every time, she lied cheerfully.

This hideout had been vacated hundreds of years before. Signs of neglect were everywhere, from rotting doors to the droppings of rodents and caveworms, one of the burrowing nuisances of these parts. They were attracted by food, but were only dangerous if a person stood in their path. By the light of Tazithiel’s eyes, Dragon and Rider padded down a long, gloomy corridor past what must have been storage chambers or living quarters, and on to what Kal recognised as an old-style forge. The Dragon’s tracks were a week old but clear enough, the paw-prints double the Indigo Dragoness’ size.

Sha’anior? Come and speak to us, Tazithiel called.

Suddenly, a Dragon slammed against the entryway to the forge, roaring, fangs chomping. Kal lost a year of his life at the shock. Flame gushed over Tazithiel’s shield. As she tried to soothe the old Orange Dragon, he became madder and madder, smashing himself repeatedly against the doorway but unable to fit through. Kal peeked out from behind Tazithiel’s bulk. Clearly Aranya’s clever ‘anti-feralising’ magic, to translate the concept directly from Dragonish, was not working on this beast. Aranya had informed them that it did not work in four percent of cases.

Then he struck his own forehead. Of course that Orange could not fit! He was a Shapeshifter.

Before he knew it, Kal rushed out from behind Tazithiel’s rump, shouting, “Transform, Sha’anior. Transform!”

Flame exploded around them, driving the Indigo Dragoness back three steps.

Kal shielded his face. Sha’anior, I command you. Transform!

Suddenly, a frail, battered old man ran at them, shrieking … and stopped. Bewildered. He glanced at his hands, and then at Tazithiel, who shuffled her paws uneasily.

“Sha’anior?” asked Kal. “Do you remember your name? Do you–”

“Shut up, whippersnapper,” he barked. “Who is this Dragoness? Why does her Dragonsong whisper songs I have not heard in over two hundred summers? Why am I naked?”

“You were feral,” said Kal.

The Indigo Dragoness seemed mute. But the rail-thin old codger suddenly fell to his knees and touched his forehead to the ground. Tazithiel, my lost shell-sister. Welcome home.

* * * *

The better part of two hours later, Tazithiel landed outside of Kellira’s village, a mile south of the great sinkhole. She carefully wafted Sha’anior to the ground. I wish I could transform, Kal.

It would be unwise, he said. We must ask for food and treatment for Sha’anior.

Kal looked over the village. Three dozen huts stood clustered upon a hillside overlooking the unbroken vistas to the West. A wooden stockade surrounded the village, which was neatly built and boasted large vegetable gardens and rude wicker flower-baskets outside of the ornate conical stick-and-mud huts. Each hut was painted with pigment-based paints in a variety of earthen colours and patterns. Evidently, these villagers took pride in their simple homes.

Kal called, “Kellira? We have tamed the Dragon.”

Tazithiel’s fangs clicked sharply next to his ear. “Don’t insult your elders and betters, Rider Kal.”

Kellira’s head and shoulders appeared above the stockade. “Him? He’s just a raggedy old man.” An impossibly vicious snarl emerged from Sha’anior’s throat, while his eyes blazed yellow with magic. “Ah, Shapeshifter? Is he safe?”

Kal began to snort before Tazi stopped him with a tickle of Kinetic power. He sneezed violently.

“We promise not to harm you,” rumbled the Dragoness.

Much apologising, corralling of screaming children and two hours of deep, rapid conversation with Kellira later, Kal found himself writing a scroll addressed to the Academy mentioning minor matters such as the finding of Aranya’s feral shell-son and a thousand drals-worth of gold bullion to be dispatched by Dragonship to a lonely village at the edge of the world, along with supplies, equipment and anything else he and Kellira had been able to dream up. These people had nothing, not even proper ploughs to break the stony ground, or hardship- and disease-resistant mohili wheat or rice varieties with which to improve their harvest. He added a personal message for Riika.

Kal signed with a flourish and handed the scroll to Kellira. “As long as you promise to share the bounty with all the villages under your jurisdiction, o Warlord.”

She gripped his forearm fiercely. “I don’t pretend to understand, Rider Kal …”

He said, “Understand this. I’m filthy rich and I hate to see gold gathering dust when people are struggling to survive. That Dragoness is the daughter of Aranya of Immadia, who I’ve no doubt, will want to come here to visit her shell-son. Your people will need to get used to the presence of Dragons.”

Just outside the stockade, Tazithiel was helping ten children swing off a rope clasped in her paw.

Kellira said, “Being feral was cruel to that old man.”

“Aye.”

“I don’t understand how you look upon the Dragoness. Were I not mistaken, I’d say you’re a man in love.”

“I am. My beloved is bigger than Kyrinda.”

A meaty hand walloped Kal on the back. “Kyrinda is deeply disappointed, Rider Kal. But I do understand. She’s a Dragon Shapeshifter, isn’t she? Just like her famous mother. Don’t you know the legend, Kellira?”

Kal grinned up at the massive Western Isles warrior. “You know, Kyrinda, I once met a man who I believe might be a match for you.”

“A match? For me?” Kyrinda’s laughter boomed over the huts.

“Aye. He’s a Master of Hammers, a warrior like you. Kellira, hand me that scroll. I need to add a note at the bottom.” Kal bent to his work. “Can you send message hawks from here? I forgot to ask.”

“There’s a town on the far side of Yanga,” said Kellira, peering over Kal’s shoulder.

“What’s that say, Rider?” Kyrinda asked suspiciously.

“I’m inviting Master Jandubior to lead the expedition here. One evening as we enjoyed a cold beer, the good Master confessed he would only ever fall in love with a woman who could beat him in arm-wrestling. Now, I’ve had a little wrestle with you–”

“And lost pitifully,” Tazithiel called over the stockade.

“Ignore the quarrelsome quadruped. I’ve written a challenge on your behalf. Sign or make your mark here by your name, Kyrinda–thank you. Personally, I think he’s in trouble.”

“But, is he big?” Kellira interrupted.

Kyrinda echoed, “Aye. How big is this Jandubior?”

“Big?” Kal stood, measuring his six feet and five inches against Kyrinda, who looked down at him with amusement. “He’d top you by a good foot. Jandubior’s a Jeradian giant, built like one of their mountains. But I reckon you might shade him in the muscle department.”

Kyrinda belted him again. “Great! So glad you came to our Island to be sat on, Rider Kal.”

“Always a pleasure.” Kal staggered off to his next assignment, wondering if she had just broken his ribs.

* * * *

Come evening, the villagers gathered around a jasmine-scented bonfire built outside the stockade. More accurately, Tazithiel gathered around half the fire and the entire village, around the rest. They ate roasted python and a grey oryx which the Indigo Dragoness had snapped up two leagues from the village. She had already eaten two herself, she admitted.

Sha’anior, patched up, clothed and fed to bursting, sat alongside the elderly village healer, Jinkyna. Kal narrowed his eyes. They seemed rather cosy, the two oldest members of the congregation.

Kellira raised her wooden tankard of rough root beer. “To the West!”

“Aye, the West!” roared her people.

“May you find what you seek, Dragon and Rider. Now, Sha’anior.” Kellira slapped his knee jovially. “Give of your lore and wisdom to help these travellers as they rise with the dawn winds.”

In the firelight, Sha’anior’s eyes appeared unmistakably draconic, as yellow as the flame reflected within. He stroked his raggedy beard, joshing, “Bah. I don’t know any stories.”

Jinkyna pressed a tankard into his hand. “Wet your throat, old man. Let this earthy goodness fire the tinderbox of your memory.”

The Shapeshifter Dragon said, “Who would like a short story?” The children hooted and snapped their fingers in joy.

Kellira called, “Silence!”

Pitching his voice to the audience with the skill of an experienced storyteller, Sha’anior began, “In times before Human memory, before a Human foot ever trod these Isles, it is said that the Ancient Dragons used to travel from Fra’anior to the far West, and that they held there communion with creatures stranger than any legend–Water Dragons.”

His audience hushed, down to the smallest child. “Aye, we know of Ancient Dragons, those creatures larger than Islands, birthed in the sacred fires of Fra’anior’s Natal Cave. Dragons that voyaged in storms; Dragons who lived in the molten lava of those primal volcanoes that housed the first of the Dragonkind. Magma Dragons, there were, and Storm-Riders, and Dragons of ice and snow. Amongst the famous Ancient Dragon clan we know and name Fra’anior the Black, Dramagon the Red, Numistar the White, and the last Ancient Dragon, Amaryllion Fireborn. Legends tell us friends, that when these great Dragons of yore travelled from Fra’anior, they did not fly over the Islands they had made, nor did they burrow beneath our Island-World’s roots, but rather, the Dragons simply bade the Islands step aside. The very Western Isles bowed and parted at their command as a crowd parts for a Queen in the panoply of her majesty, and thus the Ancient Dragons sailed through to the West.”

Against his back, Kal felt Tazithiel’s belly-fires rising and falling to the rhythm of Sha’anior’s tale.

“I have heard tell, my friends, that the reason for the West’s great emptiness is that the Ancient Dragons used those numberless leagues for their playground. As we play games of sticks and stones, and make our strategies and wars across the playing-board, so the Ancient Dragons played with moving Islands.”

“Land Dragons?” a young boy piped up.

“My son, do you know of Westurdion?”

The little boy with his huge dark eyes shook his head and ducked back into his father’s arms, but a chorus of ‘aye’s’ and ‘well said’ rose around the fire.

Sha’anior continued, “Some say the Land Dragons are gigantic lizards over a mile long, which dwell in a realm of darkness at the bottom of the Cloudlands. So huge are they, a Land Dragon could rest this entire village upon his paw.” Now there was a rush of children for adults’ arms. “Others say they are like Siiyumiel, who appeared to Hualiama Dragonfriend as a kind of turtle, only he was so huge, he bore seven mountains upon his back. Still others say that the Islands themselves were once Dragons, which only sleep beneath us as we dwell upon the upper reaches of their backs, and that if you knew their names, you could speak to an Island and it would speak back in the language of earthquakes and shattering rock.”

“And then–” he paused dramatically “–there are Dragons like Westurdion.”

The silence he evoked seemed to crackle in concert with the bonfire.

“Imagine a Dragon whose head rested in Herimor, beyond the Rift, and whose tail curled about the frozen wastes of the North. His spine spikes are the Islands of the Western Isles, uncountable thousands of Islands arrayed upon his back, and when Fra’anior the Black used to approach, he would say, ‘Brother, stretch your back for us,’ and Westurdion would stir from his aeons-long slumber, and stretch mightily, and behold, his brother Ancient Dragons would crawl over his back to the far side. Now, younglings, you must never make Westurdion laugh, for he would shake us all off his back like fleas off a ralti sheep!”

Kal had the impression that Sha’anior rather enjoyed the chorus of squeals his dire imprecation evoked.

But now, the white-haired old-timer turned his gaze upon Kal and Tazithiel, and the Rider felt the Dragoness stiffen. “I once heard a tale from an aged Dragon. I may be a touch senile, but he was truly a cracked water jug. He told me of the Water Dragons. When the Ancient Dragons first flew to the West to play in the vastness between the Western Isles and the Rim-Wall Mountains, they heard a strange song. It was music like Dragonsong, only it seemed to arise from beyond the mountains. It was beautiful music, evocative and magical, and the Ancient Dragons searched long and hard for its source. Fra’anior himself was entranced, but it was his brother Amaryllion who saw visions of strange Dragons in the mists beyond the mountains, Dragons who moved and swam in vast lakes of water they called oceans, but they were not Dragons as we know them, for they had fins for swimming and flippers rather than wings. Amaryllion said they were Dragonkind, only Dragons trapped in an unnatural form. Water Dragons.”

“And the Water Dragons warned Amaryllion not to open the Rim-Wall Mountains until the time when the Dragons could be united once more, and the Water Dragons would be restored to their true form and beauty. So if you fly near the Rim-Wall Mountains today, you might hear the sad song of Water Dragons as they lament for their release, and find in the eerie mists of that place, visions of a new Dragonkind and a new magic we know nothing about. The magic of song.”

A chorus of whistles and knee-slapping greeted the conclusion of Sha’anior’s tale. There was more tale-telling around the fire that night, but his words remained with Kal, as though the old Orange Shapeshifter had etched them upon his mind, and he knew Tazithiel felt the same way. Was this wisdom? If the Ancient Dragons had feared to venture beyond the Rim-Wall Mountains, what right had he and Tazithiel to dare what they had not?

As the fire died to embers and Kellira’s people slipped away to their huts, Sha’anior came over to sit with him and the Indigo Dragoness.

He said, “It is hard to believe you are my shell-sister, Tazithiel, yet the Dragonsong of your soul-fires does not lie. My seventh sense is particularly well developed in the art of insight. It always has been. Not foresight, mind you,” he chuckled softly, “or I might have fled when I sensed you coming.”

“I made that mistake,” said Kal, winking at Tazi. “I tried to burgle her roost and look where it landed me.”

Unexpectedly, Sha’anior pressed himself against Tazithiel’s muzzle. Her paw rose to clasp his back. “Forgive the intimacy. Forgive us, for never finding you. There are times in our lives when we cannot understand fate. We can only scream and curse uselessly, and learn to live with the result. Tazithiel, it is clear to me that my early intuition of your uniqueness as an eggling was well founded. You are indeed a Star Dragoness, party to all that your heritage brings. There have been but four Star Dragonesses since the time of the Ancient Dragons–Istariela, Izariela, Aranya and now you. Our mother must be so proud.”

“We’ve had our disagreements,” Tazi said stiffly.

“We’re a fierce and proud family,” he said.

Brother and sister chuckled together. Kal was amazed at the disparity in ages, but then, Star Dragon eggs did not conform to the usual rules. Nobody seemed to know what had befallen her egg, but Tazithiel had been born one hundred and sixty-seven years after her six egg-siblings, of whom only one still lived–Sha’anior.

“I was supposed to offer advice, not timeworn legends,” the Orange Shapeshifter added. “I felt the stories important, but there is one more thing to share from my heart to yours. This is for both Dragon and Rider. I don’t know if you know, but each Dragon is born with a secret name. Aranya may know how you find out what it is, but I for one have never been clear how some Dragons know their secret name and others don’t. But what I mean to say is, somehow, I sense that the power of draconic names is wrapped up in this mystery you mentioned, the mystery of the opening of the suns. Must you overfly the Rim-Wall itself? I fear that may be impossible. Is there a secret passage through? More likely. But I have confidence in my shell-mother’s judgement. If she believes the time for this crazy expedition is now, then we can only trust and propel ourselves into the unknown.”

Clasping Kal’s arm, he drew the thief close. “Hasten back. I’m not going anywhere. I demand to know the truth about the Water Dragons. And when I look at you, I sense that the power of destiny throbs in your veins. Both of you.”

“Thanks,” Kal mumbled.

“To burn the heavens is not just a casual phrase. It was given, historically, to bind Humans and Dragons with a new magic that superseded old taboos against contact and cooperation between our kinds. This oath was first spoken by Hualiama and Grandion. I believe it was given that we might overcome ancient prejudices and pain; that we might be more and become more than anyone had ever imagined. As creatures who live beneath the suns, we believe the heavens are immutable. Yet the idea of burning reminds us that they are mutable, and that even for the stars, a time of change must come, be that today, or aeons from today.”

“We burn, because the fires of our souls know no other way.” Sha’anior held them both fiercely. “Go burn the heavens, Dragon and Rider! And remember those stories. I’ll be waiting.”

* * * *

As dawn broke over the Islands, the Indigo Dragoness spread her wings upon a warm wind the Islanders called the mistanyar, and soared into the golden suns-beams radiating from the East. At this time of year, warm winds blew off the Cloudlands, warming the cliffs as vast thermals before cycling back to the West between the height of one and two miles above the Island. Tazithiel claimed to have slept like an eggling in the shell. Kal, rather less so. He had a rajal-fierce headache and little enthusiasm for the prospect of spending an unbroken four or five days on the wing.

Finding the winds exactly at the height Sha’anior had noted, Tazithiel spread her wings and headed out over the Island’s shadow, a leagues-long darkness reaching over the Cloudlands. They swapped terse sentences. Fine weather. No sign of storms. Greyish-blue Cloudlands below. Good help from the breeze. Running through the checklist of wing and tail positions, streamlining, shield integrity and shape, magic levels …

There was only so much checking one could do.

Slowly, Yanga Island retreated toward the horizon, along with the other visible Islands. Beneath lay a vast emptiness, unchanging and unmoving. To Kal, it appeared as though Dragon and Rider hung suspended in a void, making no progress at all.

Come the half-morning mark, as the suns beat relentlessly from a cloudless sky, Tazithiel said, “Kal, will you just speak to me? Or sing? It’s too quiet.”

She knew trepidation. At least his Dragoness admitted fear. The Rider’s job was clear–distract and calm his mount. According to the lore, even worrying would chew up precious reserves she required for flying.

He said, “Riika and I were playing with the mathematics of figuring out from how far away we could see the Rim-Wall Mountains. It all rather depends on the quality of the air and the way light moves through the atmosphere, but if we were flying two leagues above the Cloudlands, and we know the mountains are around twenty-five leagues high, then we calculated a Dragon could see them from just under twelve hundred leagues away. The curiosity is that most of the formulae in the scrolls appear to rely on the curvature of a world which is much smaller than ours. Riika was wondering where those values came from, and if this strange miscalculation demonstrates unquestionably, as the adraconistic scholars claim, that both Dragons and Humans originated on another world.”

“How much smaller?” Tazithiel inquired.

“Four point two zero nine times, approximately,” said Kal.

“Approximately?”

“I’m terribly sorry to tax your inferior animalistic unintelligence with these weighty considerations,” Kal teased.

“I said talk, not insult,” returned the Dragoness.

“Very well. Secondly, I wish to point out that your assumption of the exact speed at which we create our sonic boom, does depend on our height above Island-level. More accurately, Dragon scholars have concluded that it depends on the temperature of the air at a particular height.”

“Are you trying to prove you can hold a serious conversation?”

Kal sniffed, “Ungrateful troglodyte. Shall I sing, rather?”

Without waiting for a reply, he launched into a raucous and eye-wateringly explicit ballad about a lusty thief who accosted a Dragoness in her lair. Clearly, the sleepless hours had been gainfully employed. Tazithiel laughed until hiccoughs set in.

After that fine entertainment, Kal settled down for a well-deserved snooze.

Most Dragonback travel had a particular rhythm–the ascent toward the upper clouds, the long leagues of flapping wings and silence, the gliding down to a chosen landing place. This was different. Uninterrupted flying. The discipline of ceaseless voyaging; times in which even a Dragon must rest upon the wing. Kal had never been a man short of a word. But even he could not fill twenty-nine hours a day with non-stop amusement. Then he remembered something Master Ja’amba had taught him. He laughed, making his Dragoness startle.

“What?” she demanded.

He said, “Tazi, I was just thinking about how bitterly I used to complain about the monks’ silences. They might not speak a word in a whole week.”

“Your incomprehensible point being?”

“That Master Ja’amba used to stress how true friendship is built as much upon the silences as upon conversation. Out here, we have nothing but silence. Endless silence.” He gestured toward the western horizon, where the suns had just dipped behind the Yellow moon, painting the early evening heavens with sweeping sun-strokes of red-golden fire. “Yet the rhythm of our lives flows through the silences, unspeaking, intertwined, ceaselessly forging newness. Now I understand what he meant. As living creatures, even when we think we are stationary, just being, we are still moving and growing and thinking and loving …”

The Dragoness said, “You’re describing the state of being truly alive, Kal.”

“And each wingbeat brings our dream closer.”

After that, even the stillness seemed full of promise.

Chapter 34: Emptiness

OVERNIGHT, INCLEMENT WEATHER closed in. Tazithiel chose to overfly the storm. This time it was possible, despite the glacial temperatures. Kal contributed to their two-layer shield, the outer shaped to provide the most optimal aerodynamic performance that centuries of Dragon science could devise, the inner to provide a bubble of warmth and enriched oxygen, keeping him alive at altitudes which would have killed an unprotected man within minutes.

During the second day aloft, Kal read and re-read the scroll until he felt cross-eyed, and Tazithiel definitely was cross, accusing him of ignoring her. Toward evening, they ran through Aranya’s lists of assessments.

“We’ll have to slow down a touch,” Kal concluded. “The conservation ratio is not leaning in our favour.”

“It’s this headwind–well, that’s generous. Head-breeze.” The Dragoness turned the word into a sarcastic snarl. “It has sapped that fourteen percent you calculated. Still, we won’t need to start gliding and muscle regeneration until tomorrow afternoon.”

“I wish I could do more of the work.”

“You’re already contributing seventy percent of our total shield strength.”

“Hmm. Shame I can’t Shadow the wind resistance factor away altogether,” Kal mused. “No sight of the mountains?”

“The horizon is a mathematically flat line.”

“Actually, it’s slightly curved.”

The Indigo Dragoness indicated her opinion of this with a puff of smoke. “Stinking windroc eggs, see those copper tones just above the Cloudlands? We’ve another squall incoming. We don’t need this, Kal.”

They certainly didn’t. The squall arrived at midnight and blustered until dawn, leaving Tazithiel and Kal furious and frustrated. They both knew how close to the edge of the Island they were taking this venture. After working through their assessments at first light, Dragon and Rider arrived at the same unattractive conclusion.

“Regenerative gliding,” said Kal, scratching his head despondently. “Over half a day earlier than planned, Tazi, and it’ll slow us down still further. We can’t glide using Shadow power, can we?”

“My magic doesn’t regenerate while we do that, remember? We tested it. Three times.” The Dragoness glanced over her shoulder; Kal saw the gentle, apricot tones of love shading her eye-fires. “However, it’d gain us pure distance. Let’s keep that one on our Island, alright? One more time over the shield constructs. Double-check everything.”

“Thank you for being the strong one, Tazi.”

She snorted, “Don’t think I’d ever be mad enough to try this without you, Kal. This is the start of day three. Today we hit the unknown, flying longer than any Dragon ever has.”

The challenge was, the demands of long-distance flight took their inevitable toll on a Dragon’s resources and physical body. Muscle cramps. Body mass depletion. A slowing down of excretory functions, leading to a build-up of toxins in the body. Any possible niggle in the mobile wing-joints became exacerbated by over-use. A Dragon’s natural ability to heal herself reduced as key resources became depleted, to say nothing of her vital magic. The Indigo Dragoness’ had to be husbanded with the greatest care.

Yet, Tazithiel and Kal boasted a unique combination of skills to increase her range in the air. They started with taking gliding breaks of fifteen minutes for every hour, allowing the Dragoness’ magic to regenerate and the body to deal with its aches and pains. Kal shouldered an increasing load despite his blooming headache and exhaustion. Tazithiel took little nibbles from her Kinetic power, keeping the altitude loss of gliding to a minimum, which in turn decreased the energy output required to regain vital height.

The Western Cloudlands remained indifferent to the efforts of a Dragon Rider team attempting to conquer its staggering magnitude. They crawled like a pair of ants across an unbroken and unending carpet of greyish white, three leagues below their altitude.

An hour before noon, Tazithiel crowed, “Finally! Mountains, Kal. You can see the Rim-Wall peeking over the horizon.”

Kal read the relief in her voice. At noon, as closely as he could judge, he raised an imaginary trumpet to his lips and blew her a fanfare. Releasing his saddle straps, Kal danced down toward Tazi’s tail, eliciting a weary chortle from his mount. “Halfway!” he announced from the region of her hindquarters, with great pomposity.

“Let the struggles commence,” Tazi quipped.

Right. An afternoon of silly ballads and Kal’s herculean efforts at producing the most tasteless epic poetry imaginable kept them on course, but by evening Tazithiel was flagging by every conceivable measure. The mountains had grown a hand’s-breadth above the horizon. They spent the night alternately cloaked in Shadow and gliding, and by morning, had added another hand to that faraway heap of rock.

Kal knew the apparent nearness of the mountains for a terrible deception. He knew it in his head, but his heart and his reason refused to accept the truth. Those peaks had to be close, surely? They were like an Island seen upon the horizon, just hours away, were they not?

The mountains must grow to fill the sky.

Beneath him, the Indigo Dragoness nodded. Aye, so you know this illusion too, Kal?

He had not meant to reveal his misgivings. My Indigo heart, I cannot help but question Aranya’s faith in us, and Sha’anior’s. Whatever they knew, I do not feel the same. To doubt is Human.

That proverb fails to acknowledge that self-doubt is common to all intelligent creatures. Tazithiel’s delivery was light humour over undertones of rue. Meld with me, Kal.

Meld?

Perhaps in closeness, we can find renewed strength.

Kal and Tazithiel had practised the mind-meld, never coming close to what Aranya had described as its possibilities. Perhaps, as they were older than most new Dragon-Rider pairs, their mental pathways came encrusted with age and experience? Well, one of them was certainly crusty, but he could choose to set that aside. He could choose vulnerability.

As she touched his mind, Kal sang:

I love thee as the stars love their place in the night,

I love thee as a Dragon takes his joy in flight,

I love thee as an Island’s roots love the deeps of the world,

I love thee, oh, how I love thee.

His song entered her consciousness and expanded within her body. Kal followed its course with his mind, amazed. Could he expect the liberation of another of her treasure-stores? Instead, the song returned to him, amplified and altered by her essence, and flooded into his soul.

Kal sat up as though prodded in the back by a firm finger.

The sense of connection with the Indigo Dragoness was so immediate, he imagined he heard the slight snick of tumblers falling into place as the inner workings of a lock aligned themselves to his knowing touch. Oneness. Wholeness. An expanding of his senses in dazzling ways; a knowledge of pain and exhaustion, of depletion of resources, and a rushing sensation between them that he did not understand, but concluded had to be a kind of rebalancing. Their potentials mingled. He felt her body buzz as the heat of her inner fires seethed through her muscles, refreshing the enervated fibres and infusing them with strength. Aye, he knew she had discovered new inner strengths, as had he.

All was white. Flame filled his mind, the touch of a fire-soul. This was what it meant to be Dragonkind? This was the substance of her?

Tazithiel surged upward, as if their elated, commingled laughter lent a Dragoness new wings. She said, You just can’t help stealing possibility from the ashes of despair, can you, Kal?

He feared to drown in the knowledge of love. Too much! Yet he must not tear away. He must not fail his Dragoness, for together, in the union of souls, they became so much more.

Rejoicing in unspeaking communion, Dragon and Rider rushed across the leagues, and so passed the afternoon and much of the night, even as they dozed and quietude settled over their bond, they remained linked and so nourished each other. Come the dawn of their fourth day since leaving the Western Isles, the Rim-Wall had begun to noticeably overtake the open skies. Kal scanned the breadth of the mountains, as wide as the horizon itself, and saw not a single gap or blemish.

That afternoon, the suns set early behind the sky-scraping peaks, and the long shadows raced over the Cloudlands as though seeking to drive away any invaders. How he wished there might be a surprise, a miracle, to break the monotony–perhaps a rare and elusive Land Dragon, as Aranya had seen on her famous flight to Immadia, or even the tiniest spit of rock upon which a Dragoness might roost. He wished for birds or even a stray insect. Tazithiel could have harvested those. But if they had crossed the Island-Desert, then this was the nothing-desert. Uncrossable. The place of desolation, upon which their physical bodies and mental resources might be stretched out like victims on a torturer’s rack, and slowly, inexorably, be torn asunder.

Tazithiel whimpered. Kal realised he must have dropped off. He was so exhausted he could have slept for a week, but he knew from the sound she made that her discomfort was severe.

Kal, cramp.

Can you glide? Can I help?

I’ve nothing left, Kal. I’ve struggled with cramps off and on all day, but this one–left frontal flight muscle–just refuses to let go. I can’t breathe.

Rapidly, they ran through their assessments. “We need to fly lower,” Kal suggested. “Denser, better-oxygenated air should provide better fuel for you, even if it slows us down a touch. Eat this last sackweight of dried meat. Then I can ditch the saddlebags.”

“Make your ablutions,” Tazithiel added. “That’ll take a few wisps of wheat off my back too.”

Kal did not mention that he had been drinking only water for two days, saving all the food supplies for her. “You just want me to take my trousers off again.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Can you kinetically sieve salt particles out of the air, Tazithiel?”

The Dragoness jolted in surprise. “Where did that idea come from?”

“Something Cyanorion observed about the way a Dragon’s body craves salt after long distance flight.”

“I … I can wrest a thimbleful from your clothes. Ooh, and I can do this.”

“Tazithiel!” Kal blushed up a blaze. “Now is hardly the time … get your powers out of my trousers … that tickles, you wretch.”

The Dragoness chuckled, “Look at all this salt I found on your body. Salty sweat, see?”

Kal made a noise like a windroc gargling bones. “You’re revolting. I can’t believe I fancy someone who’s prepared to magically raid my sweaty underwear for salt and then eat it.”

“Somebody once told me how much he liked to stay alive. Be glad I’m not nibbling off non-essential body parts for extra fuel.”

“They’re all essential!”

“Peace, o man that squeaketh like a mouse.”

“If you’re feeling this frisky, o enchanted flying furnace, then you can ruddy well keep flying.” Kal flung the meat into her jaw; Tazithiel snapped it up with ease and an especial whirl of her fire-eyes for him. The thief grinned. “Do I conclude that your Human manifestation is chafing at five days of enforced abstinence? Oh, Tazithiel!”

“You debauched mind-guzzling vampiric spirit,” she murmured fondly.

Together, they worked for hours with her Kinetic powers until Tazithiel had a breakthrough idea, combining her ultra-sensitive Dragon olfactory senses with her sight, which spanned many more spectra than Kal had ever imagined, to isolate salt particles in the air. Once she had harvested and eaten the equivalent of a sackweight of salt, the cramps began to abate and the Dragoness was able to fly with less discomfort. By this time, nightfall had long passed and the Rim-Wall Mountains stood silhouetted against a midnight sky, luminous beneath the spill of Blue and Yellow moonlight. Hauntingly beautiful, Kal thought, twisting his neck in a doomed attempt to see the peaks. No wonder the Ancients had imagined Water Dragons out here.

Tazithiel and Kal laboured mightily until the suns’ new rising embossed the vaulting cliffs in copper and amber hues, and Dragon and Rider fell once more into an awed silence.

“I don’t feel so bad about the failure of our shielding, having seen this,” said Kal. “How could any mountain possibly be so tall? We’re like a pair of bugs trying to climb an Island cliff.”

“Aye. Time to glide, right?”

“Right. Half an hour, this time. Let’s hope an inkling of magic returns.”

They were both shattered. Rider and Dragon had hoped they might reach the Rim-Wall by this time, but four full days had passed on the wing, and the mountains seemed no closer, only impossibly larger. A narrow band of greenery traced the base, followed by a stripe of white that filled Kal with hope. At least there was water out here. He sniffed keenly. No moisture; no hint of what had to be vegetation. Above the frost or snow, the barren cliffs rose until they transcended the bounds of belief and vanished into the blue sky above. What creature could possibly overfly that?

Tazithiel said, “I can extract water from the air when my magic returns. Excretory factors have improved a touch, but frankly, it’s little help when my wings are about to fall off.”

“Great.” Kal rested his head against her spine spike. Let us burn the heavens together as Dragon and Rider! His shout did nothing, bar raise a slight prickle on the nape of his neck. Where was the oath-power when they needed it most?

“Kal, we won’t make it, will we? We’ve done our best. Once again, this Dragoness isn’t strong enough.”

Tazithiel did not say so, but she meant they were about to die.

He licked his parched lips. He would give all the jewels in his misbegotten kingdom for a sip of water. They had not done their assessment this morning, because there was nothing left to assess. Only … heart. The will to live. His Dragoness lacked even the strength to turn her head to look at him. Might he insult Tazithiel to stoke her fires? Or was there not a better way? His mind felt burdened by the unattainable length of such a flight; his spirit, crushed by the majestic vistas that scorned the mightiest efforts of flesh and bone. But the way of the heart was often founded upon unreason. That was its peculiar beauty and its shame.

Unclipping his buckles, Kal moved hand-over-hand down her neck. He climbed through Tazithiel’s thicket of skull spikes and onto her head.

“Kal? What are you doing?”

He knelt above her brow-ridges, on the smaller but no less multi-coloured scales, marvelling at the perfect patina they made for the extraordinary creature within.

“Kal, you’ll unbalance me.”

“I started that when we first met,” he whispered, right into one of her ear-canals.

Tazi’s wings flared in surprise. She groaned as the movement aggravated her longsuffering muscles. “Off, you buffoon.”

Lying down on her head, he reached his long arms toward her eyes. Of course, he could not reach. He shuffled forward until his forehead pressed against the bridge of her muzzle. Closer. “Shut your eyes, o lily of Mejia.”

She began to protest, but acceded with a sigh.

Kal said, “There are dreams which we have as adults, and as children, wilder, more beautiful and unrestrained dreams. But I wish to tell you about another sort of dream, Tazithiel. The kind of dream we don’t allow ourselves because it is too agonising, or too glorious, to contemplate. We deny dreams of the impossible. We learn to quash them before they form, as a storm crushes a bud before it may dream of becoming a flower. Like my dreams for Riika. I cannot bear to hope for fear that hope will play me false. I love that we dreamed this dream together before we truly knew each other. And even now, I realise I have only known you for weeks, barely a season of this world, never mind a lifetime. I wish to spend many of life’s seasons with you, Tazithiel.”

“And I with you.”

“Eyes closed?” he asked. “Right. Picture this. If our souls despair and cannot dream any longer, then we must allow others to dream for us. I have allowed Aranya to dream for me. I see Riika running toward me, laughing.”

“She’ll be flying Dragonback.”

“Shh. I see hatchlings clamouring around your skirts, at least a dozen beautiful little Shapeshifter hatchlings.”

“Three dozen,” said Tazithiel, contentedly. “I’ve my mother’s paws to grow into, after all.”

“Three …” Kal wheezed like an asthmatic grandfather. “Fine. For you, three dozen. Half of them will be girls with the most perfect eyelashes in the Island-World, and the other half will be rascally, thieving boys with holes in their trouser knees.”

“I see you have it all worked out.”

“Trust me.” Kal chuckled dryly, and the more so as she laughed in concert with him. “Did I just say that? I see us soaring up to those mountains … soaring, aye!”

“Kallion, even more than usual, you’re not making a grain of sense.”

“Magical–I know–supersonic–arc–to the heavens, oath!” he spluttered. “Great Islands, Tazithiel, do you know what this means?”

“Oddly, I haven’t a clue.”

“Well, you know how your mother became betrothed to the Shadow Dragon, don’t you? No? Great Islands, woman–no time for that. They exchanged an ancient and secret oath which is made between Dragons. Now, I’m not Dragonkind, but I did sort of read a prohibited scroll while I lived among the monks, which happened to say something very interesting and applicable.”

Tazithiel gritted her fangs, working to still her body’s trembling. Since the previous nightfall, uncontrollable tremors had begun to shake her body. Now, they came every few minutes. He knew she barely had the strength to keep her wings outstretched and glide. And a glide would take them straight to the bottom, hundreds of leagues shy of the Rim-Wall.

“Tazi, would it be utterly offensive to you, religiously, philosophically or just as a member of the Dragonkind, if we tried to replicate the draconic fire-promises together?”

“Probably, it should be.”

Her shrug drew a deep groan from the Dragoness; her wings lost their form, but Tazithiel forced the joints to flex one more time. Her glide stabilised, but they were now less than a mile above the Cloudlands. He saw a carpet of gold-flecked cloud, as though they burned within, and a constant stirring that minded him of volcanic activity. If only one of those peaks would peek above the clouds! They could rest and complete their journey. But that was not to be.

Kal said, “It’s useless anyways. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“Me neither. Mejian Dragons only teach the lore about the fire-promises when the time is right, not when you’re barely a fledgling.”

“Yet it is said that Hualiama and Grandion exchanged fire-promises in their hearts without even knowing the formal phrases in old Dragonish.”

The Indigo Dragoness said, It’ll be something about a Dragon’s fire-soul. Something like, thou, the fires beneath my wings.

Thou, my soul’s Dragonsong.

Thou, my heart-stealing vagabond.

They tried for a while longer without any success. The mountains grew taller, and the Cloudlands closer.

“I guess we can’t force it, Tazi.”

Fra’anior, Great Black Dragon, help us in our hour of need, Tazithiel prayed.

Aye, Fra’anior, why don’t you lend us one of your seven brains to reason a way out of this disaster? Kal thought sarcastically. Besides, the Black Dragon was hardly the arbiter of fate. Did he determine who lived and who died? Was Fra’anior a god, or merely an oversized lump of Dragonflesh?

Nay, I am no god, said a faraway, sevenfold voice. Merely a help to my progeny. You must bring the Shadow and the Light together, little one.

“Shadow and light,” said the Indigo Dragoness. “I heard a voice–was that you, Kal?”

“No, I think it was Fra’anior.”

“Now you’re also hallucinating. Very good, Kal. Shadow and … Kal, do you think you could climb inside my brain?”

What? Crazy, marvellous, unthinkable! “No. Too dangerous. I don’t have the strength, Tazithiel. If I fail, we’re dead.”

“If we don’t shield within two minutes, we’ll suffocate to death. I can smell the toxins.”

The Dragoness tried to flap her wings; she managed two beats before collapsing as if drowning in a river of pain. They plummeted.

“Hold your breath, Tazi!”

With a madcap grin that vanished mid-air, Kal bolted for cover inside her skull. The place where shadow and light might meet, and be one. Had Fra’anior truly spoken, and spoken truly? In his spent state, he had no way of knowing. How could he be thinking in the absence of a physical brain to process thoughts? Extreme fatigue played tricks on the mind, conjuring vivid fantasies to drive one to madness.

Suddenly, a being of pure white flame greeted him. You said you thought of me as an angel, Kal. I’m no angel, but I wonder if you see me like this? For I see you as … this.

He was a dark man clad in shadowy robes, yet there was no hint of evil in his aspect. Rather, he saw the darkness of night skies, the substrata in which stars lived and breathed, not a darkness of absence, but of enormous, fundamental presence. This man exhibited dignity. Authority. A strength born of the dark-fires of creation, which from eternity to eternity, balanced the white-fires the Dragonkind upheld as the highest expression of creation.

Kal wept at this revelation. Not physical tears, but spiritual. The Princess of Light raised her glowing hands and touched his cheeks. Thy tears are the water of life to my soul, o Kal.

He reached out for her burning tears. And these waters of thy soul are the fires of my life, o Tazithiel.

They drank. The fires of eternity imbibed with them, and exploded in song so thrilling, Kal came to believe in the very magic Sha’anior had described. Water Dragons. Were they nearby, raising their voices in haunting, indescribably complex harmonies that teased the very fringes of his awareness? As his soul rocked upon an ocean of song, he questioned how it could be that Sha’anior or Aranya could enjoy insight into the future. Yet, they had no time for such meditations and delusions. They had the imperative of poisonous clouds which had closed over the Indigo Dragoness’ head minutes before.

Mentally, he performed an effusive Fra’aniorian bow to the creature from which Fra’anior Cluster took its name. I am grateful, Great One.

Then, he turned to his Star Dragoness. Stars are born to shine, Tazithiel. I will help you to be that star. This is my solemn oath.

The light smiled. To you alone shall this star fly, Kal, for you are my dark heavens. This I swear.

Power suffused them. In that instant, the Cloudlands split asunder as a shooting star launched itself toward the heavens from whence it came.

Chapter 35: Slumbering Dragons

A FEW MOMENTS into their flight, Kal realised that the ending would not be as glorious as the conception. Tazithiel’s flight path soared in a wide arc, yearning first for the Jade moon which appeared to perch atop the Rim-Wall peaks, but steadily levelling out as their last gasp of magic hurled them across the skies. No sonic boom. Just wind tearing across Tazithiel’s scales and the juddering of her wings as she wrestled unimaginable forces to regulate her aerodynamic shape. He hoped a Dragon’s wings could not tear off. That would be ugly.

After cresting the peak, Tazithiel controlled her glide as best she could, essaying the occasional flurry of wingbeats to keep them on track.

Pretty rough, she apologised. Can you keep to Shadow, Kal?

Just about. Glad you didn’t leave me behind there.

The Dragoness coughed out a weary laugh. Not even slightly tempted. Not when it would be much more fun to splatter ourselves against those mountains. Here, Kal. I’ll show you what I see.

Mountains this size did not rush up on one. Instead, they loomed by steady degrees, cutting off half of the Island-World world with their vast stature. The greatest cliffs of all. No mere Island could begin to compare, for the Rim-Wall stood twenty-five times taller than his native Fra’anior. His brain knew the numbers; his response was numbness. Disbelief. Looking ahead, Tazithiel’s Dragon sight picked out for him rivers and vertical forests of emerald and lilac and orange hues, and the colourful specks of many birds playing amidst the dense foliage. The hunting would be good here.

Oh, are those dragonets? Green dragonets? she cried.

Kal could not tell. But he smelled warm, rank vegetation. Richness. Fertility. Somehow, he had feared this place would be as grim and bitter as the forbidding peaks above. Aye, the Cloudlands lapped right up to the base of these cliffs, and neither he nor Tazithiel detected any discernible pattern or break in the spectacular fountains of crimson-and-gold foliage in this area, but there must be something. Some clue.

Yet they had to endure six more hours of stiff, excruciating gliding before finally approaching solid ground.

“No place to land,” panted Tazithiel.

“Just pick an overhanging tree,” Kal advised, unable to keep from sounding like a child drooling over a handful of sweets. “They’re big enough for Dragons. And I expect a landing that will sound good in the ballads, alright? No crashing and bashing.”

Tazithiel told him pithily where he could shove his benighted ballads.

After that, the Dragoness executed a pinpoint-perfect landing on the horizontal trunk of a tree broad enough to house a banquet for hundreds. The wallop of her tonnage shook the flame-hued foliage violently, but the roots did not tear loose from the cliff face.

Kal decided that the matter of Tazithiel fainting five seconds thereafter would be conveniently overlooked in the annals of history. He refused to spoil their inevitable glory. After all, they had conquered the unconquerable, and their boasting rights would be unequalled. He would brag up a storm, but he did need to educate Tazi in the finer points of the fabulist’s art. She really was much too modest for a doyenne of draconic delights.

Bah. Enough self-congratulations to make a man nauseous. He had work to do.

* * * *

Descending the recumbent Dragoness’ hind leg via a swift shimmy down the curvature of her rump, Kal hopped onto the tree-trunk. That was his mistake. The noble Dragon Rider sprawled on his knees, imitating a monkey drunk on fermented prekki fruit. This, the ballads would also gloss over.

When his knees returned to good behaviour, Kal walked along the massively gnarled trunk, which had foot-deep cracks in the bark perfectly suited to twisting an ankle. To reach solid ground he had to clamber over a clump of roots as fat as Aranya’s Dragon-thighs–he filed that line away for ribbing the slender Queen of Immadia at a later, unspecified date–and alighted on a narrow ledge. He knelt and applied his lips to a hitherto innocent patch of stone.

“Thank you.”

Right. Food, drink and a hundred years of sleep.

Humming happily to himself, Kal turned and bumped into the largest rodent he had ever laid eyes upon. “Gaah!” he shrieked. The stubby-tailed monster seemed rather less bothered by him than Kal was by a light brown, hyrax-like beast large enough to brush past his thigh. It ambled off a little ways to snack on a patch of flame-red bushes.

Lunch.

Kal palmed a dagger and stalked his harmless, tame prey.

A leap and a slash later, and the squeamish business was done. Kal was just about to climb off its back when a substantial weight slapped down atop his shoulders. He writhed and slashed with strength born of terror. Hiss! Kal, thankfully, did not freeze. With another scream that would have served a vapid maiden most proudly, he stabbed the reptile squarely in the top of the skull. Ha! He had destroyed a python that put the sizeable denizens of his home Island rather in the shade.

“Mighty hunter Kal,” he muttered drolly. “Apparently, the ballads will suffer a tad more elision concerning the screaming incident.” Squirming out from beneath the phenomenally heavy snake, Kal shooed a curious dragonet away. “Paws off, you flying rat.”

The jade-green dragonet chirped, What manner of animal are you?

Its accent was dreadful and its tones snootier than snoot itself, but Kal caught the gist of the sentence. What? You speak?

Naturally I have the power of speech, for I am the superior being. Give me food, lowlife.

With a snort of laughter, Kal carved off a sizeable chunk of python. All yours, your majesty.

Snatching the offering off the palm of Kal’s hand, the dragonet zipped away into the undergrowth.

Oho. Was that the sound of water? He stumbled off to refresh himself, returned, and found three green dragonets squabbling over his dinner. Oh no you don’t, Kal shouted, flapping his arms. A few insults and some high-speed negotiation later–given as they all possessed razor-sharp talons and the will to use employ them to a Human’s detriment–Kal found himself three python steaks the lesser man.

He glared at Tazithiel. You. Princess sulphur-burps. Wake up. You’re losing your lunch.

The Indigo Dragoness sighed and imitated a sleeping jewel.

Sawing off a five-foot length of python, Kal heaved it over his shoulder and staggered up to the tree trunk. He rolled the hunk of succulent snake meat over the top of the roots and kicked it down toward Tazithiel’s nose. “Lunchtime!”

The Dragoness did not so much as bat an eyelid.

Kal prodded her lip with his toe and declaimed in his courtliest tenor voice, “Arise, thou sonnet of the dawn.”

The sonnet purred in her sleep.

With a dint of further butchery, Kal sawed off yet another steak and, manfully heaving her lip open, stuffed it between her fangs. The instant blood touched her tongue … growl! Snap!

“Down, girl,” he yelped.

She snarled, “Give me more.”

“Seeing as you ask so nicely, I’ll just go chase those dragonets away.”

Following the direction of his finger with her gaze, Tazithiel’s brow drew down. PESTS! Bellowing in bloodthirsty outrage, the genteel Immadian Princess leaped over to the ledge and took absolute, tyrannical possession of the spoils. Throwing back her head, she bolted the entire rodent in one gulp, and started on the python just as greedily. Suddenly, mid-chomp, she paused and eyed Kal uncertainly.

He bowed. “I provide nothing but the finest dinner table for her royal majesty.”

“Kal … I know how this must look.” Slicing off a chunk of meat, she speared it on the point of her talon and grilled it carefully with her flame. “Peace offering?”

“Honestly? I’d rather have fire-and-brimstone Tazithiel.”

“Shouldn’t take long with some meat inside my abused insides. Kal, we did it!”

“Aye, we did.” Her gleeful jig brought a tired half-smile to his lips. “Can you blow on this? Too hot. One hundred and twenty-six hours aloft, my beauty. Can’t say I had much to do with the flying. You were awesome.”

“Only, when I fell, you bore me up on wings of shadow.”

Bah. Emotional fiddle-faddle. Kal desperately wanted to cry. Instead, before the dragonets returned, Dragon and Rider fell into the dreamless slumber of those who were in equal measure speechlessly grateful, and as worn-out as old shoe-leather.

* * * *

Situated at the base of the Rim-Wall Mountains, the cliffs received a whisker more than a half-day’s suns-light, making the afternoon a twilight time, and nightfall far earlier than Kal had ever experienced. They woke around dinner time to bathe, drink and consume another of the tame rodents which literally wandered over Tazithiel’s paw. The Dragoness was so amazed she almost allowed the creature to escape, but her stomach’s paroxysms won the day.

Dancing dragonets, not ten minutes passed and she was off to hunt again!

Six days remained until the solstice. For five of those days, Tazithiel and Kal scoured the cliffs for every hour given under the moons or the twin suns, north and south, high and low, and found enormous quantities of nothing. Well, they found sprawling empires of unfamiliar but spectacular foliage, including a range of purples that would have had the Immadian royal house dancing in rapturous approval, but the search proved utterly, frustratingly, fruitless. Truth be told, they were not certain what they sought, only that should there be a westward passage, an ‘opening of the suns’, it should be obvious and Dragon-sized, if not Ancient Dragon- immense. There were more dragonets than the entire known population of the Island-World and plenty of prey which had clearly never known the fang or arrow of a hunter, and innumerable species of unfamiliar birds, rodents and snakes, but no help and no clues.

Tazithiel ate like a starving rajal, packing on the muscle mass she had burned during their marathon flight. Kal imagined he could see her shoulders bulging and flanks filling out before his eyes.

The evening before the solstice, Kal plopped himself down beside a small fire he had built mostly for boredom’s sake, and sulked over the scroll of Ernulla-kul-Exarkin. Many hands. Why not many paws? Why not a leagues-long arrow pointing at the spot, marked with fluorescent Dragonship paint, screaming, ‘Look here, o intrepid explorer’?

A Human finger curled around the scroll. “I’m bored, Kal.”

If he were honest, which was as likely as the suns moving backward in the sky, Kal would have admitted he was in a mood as sour as a sackweight of haribol fruit dipped in vinegar. “Hmm?” He read further.

“Distract me?”

He made a noncommittal noise.

Tazithiel moved around to blow in his ear. Her hair caressed his arms. “I’m very distractible right now, Kal. I’m frantic for your kisses. And I’m wearing only the thinnest of night air.”

Great Islands, his body knew to be distracted even if his mind was floating somewhere in orbit with the five moons. If he could just tease the meaning out of this stupid, meaningless prophetic drivel! Find a key, a clue, a penetrable point …

A pouty lip brushed his cheek. “Fine. I’ll show you the power of no hands, you cold, slithering reptile!”

That was his last rational thought for a long while, because the Indigo Shapeshifter did indeed proceed to seduce him with no hands, which she kept folded across her chest, resorting instead to the impassioned caresses of many strands of hair. Suddenly, amidst a great deal of random sparking, an idea of subtle genius flashed into his feverish brain.

Kal cried, “That’s it!”

“This?”

Nefarious enchantress. He forgot all about ‘it’ until the night was old.

Human-Tazi slept upon his arm, her body curved against his as she had once lain lithe upon her Dragon hoard. He regarded his beloved fireflower Dragoness tenderly, tracing the White moonlight’s ethereal kisses upon her long, shuttered eyelashes, which delicately overlaid patterns he had never quite noticed beneath her skin, a delicate tracery of–star trails? Runic writing? Surely not. Kal wanted to shift closer to examine this phenomenon, but felt chary about waking her. After her unstinting efforts, the Shapeshifter more than deserved her rest. He, on the other hand, had discovered one of her hidden secrets by the light of the White moon, which would wax to its miniscule but star-like maximum tomorrow evening, on the night of the solstice.

Kal’s heart leaped into his throat and began a wild war-dance.

Reaching out with his free hand, he snagged the scroll and held it up to the moonlight. Thank the Islands he had surreptitiously substituted the original for the copy before setting out. On the back he found nothing. Trying to see through it, he saw nothing. But on the front in the margin, Kal found a brief phrase inked in the faintest possible script, which he eventually made out to read:

Speak to the White moon,

Of the seventh rune.

The seventh rune? Dragons regarded seven as a mystical number. Something about the seventh rune … he quickly scanned the text. Pick out the seventh rune. No, perhaps the rune commencing each seventh line. Backwards? Nothing made sense. Being a thief, he had a certain facility with encoded messages and inks which only appeared under the right type of light or chemical treatment–those techniques were as old as the Islands in a world where messages, especially those sent by message hawk, necessarily passed through many hands.

There it was again. Many hands!

“What’re you doing?” Tazithiel murmured.

He read across to the seventh rune. “Tazi, what does this rune here mean? This starburst with wavy lines above and below?”

“Silly man, can’t you sleep?”

Kal kissed her forehead. “One little favour. Please. I can’t stop thinking.”

Cracking open one gleaming indigo pool of magic, Tazithiel focussed on the scroll. “It’s a mystic symbol, Kal, called cipher in ancient Dragonish. The rune of mystery.”

“Mystery and shadow …”

“Sleep. Before I kick you right up your solstice.”

What if he touched the scroll with his Shadow power? Kal froze. “Squeaky little rajals! Tazithiel!”

“Hold it still, genius.”

Now she was fully awake. Tazithiel slapped her restless hair down. The White moonlight seemed to waver as it passed through the translucent scroll, touching a few scattered runes which it picked out in silver. Metallic ink which did not respond to his Shadow power? Kal shadow-scratched his invisible beard.

Tazithiel read slowly:

A passage ne’er trod by Dragon’s paw,

A mark above an ancient door,

A thief to steal its secret lore.

A power of many hands, eighty-four,

Shall she not sing, o Dragoness of yore?

Raise the Island-bridge! Make way for the suns!

Her voice shook as much as Kal’s hands as she read the runes again, pausing in fearful contemplation at the words ‘thief’ and ‘Dragoness’.

“L-Look,” Kal stammered, “The rune for ‘Dragoness’ has its own special colour, apart from all the others. It’s very old, but I’d swear there’s a hint of indigo pigment mixed into the ink.”

“Aye.”

For a long moment they lay still, so shocked, the only sound or movement between them was the identical pounding of heartbeats, for the night had grown stifling and Kal felt as though he could not draw enough breath into his lungs.

“Kal, this is a joke. Someone who knows us, it has to be … doesn’t it? This must be Aranya’s handiwork. The indigo couldn’t possibly refer to me.”

Clasping her hands, Kal grated, “You are special, Tazithiel, and worthy. That’s no accident of birth, I assure you. It is who you are. Do not let Endurion’s legacy speak beyond the grave. You are so much more than that.”

“Harsh.”

“I’m sorry. I spoke ill.”

Suddenly, her distant expression cleared and she bit his shoulder with mock-playfulness. “You should learn never to apologise to a Dragoness, Kal, especially when you’re right. So, genius, where’s this door to the West?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” he admitted. “I thought we’d ask directions from the Dragonkind who live here.”

“From dragonets?”

Kal found a tiny green dragonet who repeated the stock lines about superior beings. Clearly, these creatures were very set on defining their place in the world. While Kal inquired about their Dragonish wisdom, Tazithiel threatened to turn the mite into jewellery. That sparked a squeak of terror and an instant dive into the foliage from their little helper.

Wow, you’re a help, Kal groused.

Superior flying monkeys! snorted Tazithiel. You’ll have no help from their kind. Come on. I’ll transform and we’ll take another look.

Two minutes later, as Dragon and Rider prepared to depart, a flight of dragonets came bursting out of the foliage beneath a fallen tree-trunk that hung thousands of feet down the near-vertical cliff. Pests! Insulters! Low-lives! they chattered angrily. Inferior nonsensical intruders.

I’ll nonsensical you, you cloud of buzzing mosquitoes, snarled Dragoness-Tazi.

Suddenly, the whirling ranks opened and a large green dragonet faced them. She was at least five feet from muzzle-tip to tail, and seven feet in wingspan. Her muzzle was whitened with age, but her flame-eyes seemed shrewd and alive with intelligence. She looked Kal over disdainfully, and Tazithiel with evident animosity.

The dragonet said, I am Tenzor, warren-mother of the hatchling you threatened. What is this beast, a jumbo dragonet?

Tazithiel hissed, I am a mighty Dragon!

Evidently, great size does not imply great intelligence, the warren-mother hissed back. You’re one of the legendary Lesser Dragons? Why indeed are you called ‘lesser’, if we are not superior?

The Indigo Dragoness choked with rage.

Oh, I see a contraption upon your back. You’re nothing more than this two-legged creature’s beast of burden.

Kal leaped! With a desperate waft of his hand, he turned his Dragoness into Shadow a split second before her fireball incinerated them all. Beast of burden, aye, he panted. A hundred pairs of angry dragonet eyes burned at him. And you are all incredibly … superior. Of course. We–that is, my feckless companion and I–have travelled many thousands of leagues from the lands of the East to seek the unequalled wisdom of the great oracle Tenzor. We humbly beg your aid.

At that moment, Tazithiel discovered that her shadow-form could drift away from his hand. Re-appearing, she growled, I am so going to bite your head off, Kal …

Dodging her unamused snap, Kal wrapped the Dragoness once more in his Shadow power, securing her in place this time. I will handle this mighty dray beast, he declared. And, taking a deep breath, the thief turned his skills at verbal embroidery to the business of stitching them a way out of the mess Tazithiel had created.

After half an hour of non-stop gabbling, he had the dragonets convinced that the stars shone merely for the chance to gleam off their inexpressibly superior hides, that their mission was vital to the continued existence of all Dragonkind and that nothing in creation could possibly compare to the superb wisdom of the celebrated Tenzor, who he reduced to a purring lump of draconic putty in his very clever, manipulative hands. Meantime, he wondered when Tazithiel made Kallion-soup of his discourteous person, what exact flavour of dead she might aim for.

At last, Tenzor drew herself up with a flick of her wings and a haughty twitch of her tail. Certainly, we dragonets know precisely what you lesser ones seek, she declared. Our communal mind-histories speak of an area of mountains the Ancient Ones marked with the sweep of their mighty talons. It lies two moons’ travel south of here.

Beyond the Rift–uh, the place of unending storms?

No. Kal heaved a sigh of relief. Tenzor added, We call it the place where Dragons slumber.

* * * *

With twenty yapping dragonets and an insufferably patronising warren-mother in tow, Dragon and Rider flew southward. The green dragonets were slow, garrulous and wont to linger at every other warren to exchange pleasantries. By dawn they had covered little more than twenty leagues. Kal had reached a sizzling level of exasperation; Tazithiel was evidently happily engaged in building her list of ways to cook Dragon Rider potage.

O mighty warren-mother, he inquired, how far have we travelled?

One day of one moon, she cooed back. I have asked many times, but the place you seek always lies beyond.

Kal stiffened. Aha. So she knew less than she claimed? Time for a brainwave. Mighty warren mother, my companion and I wish to propose a way in which you and your warren-mates might travel in extreme comfort while we undertake our quest. Are you prepared to travel far?

Of course. You cannot possibly succeed without our aid.

Kal rolled his eyes at Tazithiel, who made a flicking motion of one talon against another. Bah. That was probably the Indigo Dragoness dismissing a Human several leagues from her presence with a swat of her mighty forepaw.

My beast of burden shall convey us all. Privately, he said to Tazithiel, Fifty leagues minimum, then stop to check. Alright? They don’t seem to understand the concepts of today, or leagues, or urgency …

Tazithiel showed him a fireball roiling ready on her tongue. I’m thinking that an aeon or two of your miserable servitude might placate me, Kal. However, if only to attain our goal, I shall bear the indignity. To the dragonets, she said, Take positions between my spine spikes, noble kin.

Truly, a beast of burden.

Chapter 36: Thusly Written

BY NOON, EVEN the incorrigible dragonets had wilted like flowers in Fra’anior’s dry season. They had travelled an estimated three hundred leagues southward in the blazing suns-shine, stopping seven times to make inquiries. Beyond, always beyond.

At their eighth stop Kal accompanied Tenzor to her meeting with a yellow warren-mother, who was evidently as much enamoured with Tenzor’s great age as she was with creatively insulting the first Human she had ever met. Eventually, after interminable pleasantries and inquiries after the health of one’s internecine web of relatives using a plethora of Dragonish terms Kal could not even pretend to understand, there came the inevitable pronouncement. Beyond.

Kal breathed stertorously. He privately listed the advantages and disadvantages of six different ways of strangulating dragonets, before saying, My means of transportation grows weary. Pray tell, what are the signs of the place where the Dragons slumber?

Why the cliffs of golden black, of course, replied the yellow warren-mother.

Golden black! Golden … flying ralti sheep!

Fumbling with the scroll, Kal ignored the two warren-mothers casually discussing what form of insanity inhabited this slug-brained wingless monkey-creature. Wasn’t there a reference … aye! Aloud, he declaimed:

Beneath the solstice suns,

Upon cliffs of golden black,

It shall be found thusly written,

‘Fra’anior’s Way.’

How far is it? he yelled. Er, that is–

The yellow warren-mother’s eye-fires whirled with apparent pleasure. See? It became excited upon plumbing the matchless communal wisdom of the yellow dragonet-kind, my kin-sister. We are the superior colour.

The greens looked as though they had been collectively force-fed toxic slugs.

With studied calm, Kal inquired, How far to these cliffs of golden black, o highborn warren-mother?

Half a moon, came the reply, barely comprehensible amidst a surfeit of preening and puffed-up aerial acrobatics by all the yellows.

Right, greens! Kal called. Let’s make haste.

Cue one almighty squabble. Yellow clashed with green. Dragonets dived and clawed and shrilled their little challenges. The Human folded his arms. Great. More time lost.

Kal, Tazithiel called. I fear we must leave the mighty dragonets to discuss which is the superior colour.

Snatching her Rider off the cliff’s edge with an invisible whiplash of Kinetic power, Tazithiel performed a spectacular backflip into space. He wailed, Tazitheeeee … yell!

Bah. Draconian show-off. Kal folded his arms and tried to act casual about flying two hundred feet behind his Dragoness over a three-mile drop into the khaki green Cloudlands. The Indigo turned and spotted his smirk. Her brow drew down. Ten seconds later, Kal found himself bridging the gap between her fangs with his hands and feet, hanging upside-down just above her forked tongue.

Now was no time for courage. He cried, “Aye, you are the superior beast!”

“I didn’t hear that.”

Sulphurous smoke billowed around him. “You’re the superior beast! Tazithiel!”

“Oh, you think so? Thanks, Kal.” The Dragoness deposited him in the Dragon Rider saddle with solicitous care. “So what’s the plan, o superior man? I can easily call you the superior man, because there isn’t another within two thousand leagues.”

Kal tightened his straps. “Southward ho!”

“I know that. But doesn’t the line ‘beneath the solstice suns’ mean that we need to arrive before the suns disappear behind those mountains? As in, we’ve less than an hour?”

He mouthed a terse expression of fury.

“Let’s go supersonic.”

“Faster than ever?” Kal waved his hands, snapping, “We’ve been foolish. Angle away from the Rim-Wall, Tazithiel. Keep a balance between seeing as far as possible and staying parallel. If you see cliffs of golden black, sing out like you’ve never sung before.”

“Right. Slap me with your power, Rider.”

TAZITHIEL! Her Dragon-challenge bellowed over the Cloudlands.

Kal slapped her with his utmost strength. Oh, he had been meaning to do so since before he could remember. He slapped her so hard in the withers, Tazi’s tail struck her stomach between her legs. For that, he paid with acceleration so powerful that he blacked out for a few seconds.

Kal came to. Tazithiel’s wings were invisible save for the parts nearest her body where the motion was minimised. Air howled over their shield, but the shape had perfect aerodynamic integrity. Reaching out with his Shadow power, he began to experiment with turning the air touching their shield, into Shadow. The power of the Indigo Dragoness’ flight seemed to crack the noon skies asunder.

Tazithiel laughed softly, deep in her throat. Clearly, we are the superior creatures. Look, Kal. You can already spy a change.

Kal looked ahead, for he could not otherwise make sense of the racing images. To look sideways was to see a blur. Soon, he observed that what he had taken for a shadow was indeed a darkening of the Cloudlands. Fifty leagues later, the clouds had turned a sooty black. Kal realised there was no more greenery or any other plant life on the cliffs. On and on they raced, making a speed he did not dare to calculate.

Here it comes, called Tazithiel, adjusting their flight path. They soared upward, gathering height and a little more distance. The character of the mighty Rim-Wall cliffs changed completely, as if a gigantic paw had painted the rocks with an almighty black brush. It’s the cliffs of golden black, Kal. Look. Look!

I see, he laughed.

The dragonets had landed on the Isle of truth. The cliffs were a strange colour; his mind could not ascertain what shade exactly, a metallic black that gleamed like gold? The colour defied classification, glimmering evasively through a thousand median shades. This had to the largest deposit of metal ore in the world, only he had no idea what type. Meriatonium, perhaps?

Tazithiel, it’s not dangerous, is it? As in, radioactive dangerous?

I don’t detect anything–save magic. More magic than I’ve ever felt before.

Kal craned his neck. Some five or six leagues above the Cloudlands, the golden black wall appeared to blend back into ordinary grey rock. Below, the sheer metal surface continued straight down into the black clouds. Only the Ancient Dragons could have constructed an edifice like this. It had to be hundreds of leagues wide. But where was it ‘thusly written’?

Tazi … slow down. Where are the suns? How many minutes?

Ten, perhaps.

Do you see writing anywhere?

Kal, I think the golden black section ends near the limit of my sight. Suddenly, she braked hard, slewing violently in the air, crying, There! That’s it!

Kinetic power alone kept Kal upright as the Dragoness made a royal mess of her turn, tumbling head-over-heels before executing a desperate wriggle to right them. Kal peered behind as they overshot the mark by several leagues.

Hold on! Tazithiel screamed into a turn and suddenly they were racing back the way they came like a falcon screaming down on a hare. Still with us, Kal?

The important bits, anyway. Kal touched his ears. The extreme pressure fluctuations must have popped his eardrums. Please speak telepathically. I’ve damaged my ears. Oh my … that’s the cipher, right?

Dragon and Rider gasped as a vast rune flared into being in the dark cliff right ahead. Flames licked across its length, somehow burnished or reflected by the suns, Kal could not tell which. The upper wavy line solidified, then the suns-beams glyph, and below that, a second wavy line. Now, the tops of new runes flashed to life.

Fra’anior’s Way. Tazithiel turned her muzzle as she read, for despite their five miles or so distance from the cliffs, each separate rune was at least a mile across.

Kal realised what was happening. The first of the twin suns had begun to pass over the peaks. In that moment, the scant minutes that marked the suns’ passing over at the time of solstice, this writing appeared upon the cliffs. This was mighty Ancient Dragon magic at work.

Look below the runes, the Dragoness cried. Those are–yes, they are! Paw-prints!

Eighty-four paws, I reckon, said Kal, rubbing his eyes.

Paws the size of Islands. Ridiculous. Humbling. As the suns’ last light washed down the cliff, he startled. Great Islands, Tazi, the top’s fading already. Go!

Go what? Nonetheless, the Indigo Dragoness took off again.

I don’t know–hit the paw-prints! Do something. Use your Kinetic power. Roaring rajals, they’re disappearing so fast. What stupid magic is this anyways? Sorry if that offends you, Fra’anior! But you don’t make this easy.

Can’t … I’m trying …

It was too vast. Too much even for a Star Dragoness. Tazithiel slumped, gasping for breath.

Listen, Indigo-eyes, if that prophecy really knew about the two of us, and eighty-four is a product of twelve sevens … what is the Dragon power that sings?

Starsong. But I’ve never …

Tried? Kal laughed. Alright, Tazi. Put this in your mind. Prepare to unleash your Kinetic, Storm and Star Dragoness powers on every seventh paw-print. Can you do that? I will boost you just like I do when we’re doing our clever supersonic malarkey. Quickly!

Roaring a challenge that set the strange metallic mountains ringing, Tazithiel charged toward the sheer cliff at a speed rooted in madness.

The suns sailed onward. Already the cipher was in shadow, and the words ‘Fra’anior’s Way’ were almost unreadable. Kal wondered inanely how many paws Fra’anior might have. Four? Twelve? Or did that number represent three Ancient Dragons–Fra’anior, Amaryllion and Numistar? Worse, Dramagon?

If they succeeded, the Island-World might be changed forever.

Wait, my beauty. Wait for it …

Their minds joined, drinking deep of each other’s powers. Kal sensed within his mind an inferno of draconic joy, the knowledge that she was uniquely made for this; that together, they boasted powers that unique amongst the Dragon-Rider teams of history. Tazithiel’s concentration narrowed. There. That one. The pattern, completed. Every seventh paw-print blazed in her perception.

Such a surfeit of power drew together in his breast, Kal felt as though he had swallowed half of the world. Perhaps it was the innate magic of this place. Convulsively, he blasted his own shadowy fires into the hallways of Tazithiel’s being. She allowed the Shadow to infuse her own offerings at the speed of thought, before unleashing it all in a simultaneous twelvefold blast.

They expected an explosion.

The tempest flashed across the miles and struck truly, shaking the Rim-Wall Mountains as though Fra’anior himself had struck a powerful note upon a gong a hundred leagues wide and ten leagues tall. The sound seemed unending. No amount of holding one’s ears or squeezing the muscles of one’s ear-canals made any difference. The sound ripped through them. The Indigo Dragoness shuddered with the force that slowed her charge; when Kal opened his eyes, the Dragoness hovered but a nose-length from the sheer wall of otherworldly golden black. The magical forces were palpable, skewing and confusing their senses.

Then, silence reigned supreme.

Stretching out a trembling foreclaw, Tazithiel touched the mountain. Aren’t you supposed to do something?

KAARRAAABOOOOMM! A concussive force beat and bruised their ears.

Earthquake? Away, Tazi, away …

She flicked her wings, but despite a groaning rumble that perturbed the mountain from the skies above to the Cloudlands below, no boulders fell, no lightning frazzled Dragon and Rider for their temerity and no mysterious power swatted them like an Ancient Dragon might swat a mosquito. Neither did anything remotely beneficial appear to occur. The Island-World did not end–a decent result, in a thief’s respectful opinion.

Kal looked at Tazithiel, who considered him with equal perplexity.

I suppose we could lay claim to the biggest anti-climax in history, Kal said doubtfully. Though, I’m not convinced the balladeers would make a queen’s jewellery from this result.

We failed, Kal. We did everything we could.

Everything? Well, we didn’t understand half of what we’ve done … it isn’t something irrational, is it? Such as, OPEN!

Superior being or not, Kal’s mouth hung open in perfectly idiotic amazement as his shout caused a low rumble to emanate from within the mountain. The golden magic rippled outward from a point opposite his dangling jaw. And with a KERRAAACK! that shook him like a toddler shaking a gourd-rattle, the Rim-Wall split along a hitherto unseen seam.

And stopped.

Er … is that it? Kal’s question echoed in a gap a couple of feet wider than his outstretched arms. He looked up and down. It stretched as far as the eye could see, impossibly deep. Perhaps the gap reached right through the mountain? Open. OPEN!

Nothing.

Nice work, Kal. Tazithiel managed not to sound too sarcastic.

Aye, Fra’anior himself might be able to stick one claw in there. Two, at a push.

They took turns in shouting various commands, feeling as futile as a pair of flies batting their heads against a vast, opaque crysglass pane. Eventually, Kal was forced to admit that their ballad was not improving much. Even a Dragon hatchling could not fly down that gap.

Kal said, So, can a superior being see any light beyond the mountain?

Dragons could not physically squint, but Tazithiel made a fair impression of squinting into the darkness. Meantime, waiting interminably for her response, Kal wriggled in his seat and eventually looked around idly.

Kal? Did you just skip a heartbeat?

Tazi … turn around.

She whirled. An immobility of tingling scales and prickling neck-hairs seized both Rider and Dragon. For they saw a flotilla of Islands come sailing from the South, perhaps two dozen strong, their bare, damp mountain peaks appearing to dip into the Cloudlands and emerge again in a stately rhythm not unlike a slow walk. Way in the distance, another Island-flotilla crested the Cloudlands.

The place where Dragons slumbered.

Ambling along as though they owned all the time in the world, the Islands drifted into position, the first set about eight or ten miles from the Rim-Wall, while others ambled further afield. They clumped together in pairs and triplets, as if forming family groups. Some individual Islands were as large as two or three miles across, some groups as many as eight strong. As they slowly formed a line stretching away beyond the horizon, the Island-creatures appeared to move higher and higher–perhaps climbing a ridge hidden beneath the Cloudlands–until they exposed a couple of miles of what appeared to be ordinary rock to the world of suns-shine and clear air.

Now, that’s magic, Kal breathed.

They’re Dragons, said Tazi. Very slow moving, slow thinking Dragons. They speak a dialect of Dragonish I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. Are those nostrils on their backs? Or ravines? Anyways, I think we’ve found our Island-bridge. I’ll bet your entire hoard to a rajal’s breakfast that in a few days, we’ll find a neat line of new Islands stretching all the way to the Western Isles.

Kal gawked unseeing at the horizon, for suddenly, clouds passed across his eyes.

The Dragoness said, And I know Riika will be the first to wrangle Aranya into crossing that Island-bridge to reach us, Kal. I know it as surely as the suns know to rise every morning.

He hugged the spine spike in front of him. I’m convinced I’ve identified your one and only colour, Dragoness.

Oh?

Aye. It’s called indigocredible.

Really? Well, I think you’re a particular shade of shadawesome.

Kal made a face. Ugh, enough mushy-this and sappy-that. We’ve work to do, Indigo-eyes. Because I am not having your mother-monster turn up here to burn my ears with all she thinks about an eight-foot gap to nothingness. Not on my Island. Not today!

Aye. Dragons are not exactly renowned for their meek acceptance of failure. Tazithiel spat like a Green Dragoness in her fury. I want to solve this mystery as much as you do, Kal. Pull out that scroll. Start reading. I’ll fly to the top and see if I can find those runes again–what’s that?

The Indigo swivelled again in the air, searching for the source of what Kal readily identified as a low vibration emanating from the cliffs. Ha! Celebration time! Now they would see the truth of the world beyond the Rim-Wall. Could the great cliffs, these unimaginable gates to another realm, be drawing back at last? Then he detected a high-pitched hissing, like high-pressure steam escaping from a meriatite furnace engine. Whatever it was, that sound was fast approaching. Kal tensed. The Indigo Dragoness back-winged steadily, facing the danger like a good Dragon; reflexes primed, muscles quivering with readiness and shield strong.

A series of muffled booms resounded beneath the Cloudlands. Dragon and Rider jerked in surprise. Danger from below?

Water exploded from the gap as if all the spigots of the heavens had been turned on at once. It jetted hundreds of feet outward before curving into a magnificent, miles-high waterfall. Tazithiel tumbled away from the blast, the power of that hydrant too much even for a Dragoness to combat. Laughing, she swung around and burst back through the waterfall, shouting, Taste it, Kal! This water’s salty!

So it was. Kal shook his head in disbelief, the more so since he discovered a sleek, three-foot fish wriggling in his lap. Before he could corral his catch, the unfamiliar fish wriggled like slick soap through his grip and tumbled away, flipping and flopping, into the Cloudlands.

Kal kept expecting the flow to ease, to dry up, but it showed no signs of abating. What if the water level out there was higher than any of the Islands of his world? Surround them in water, he realised, and they truly would be Islands–like those tiny pocks of land in Remoy’s famous wealth of terrace lakes, so beloved of the water birds and thieves who might choose to construct a hideout there. Then he laughed. The volume of water required to fill this giant crater must be incalculable. Even with this volume of salty water falling from the heavens, it could never make so much as a puddle in the bottom of the Cloudlands. Not in a thousand years.

According to Aranya, the Cloudlands boasted abysses so deep, a bottom had never been found despite Land Dragon explorations to depths of over six leagues, the practical limit even for the greatest of four-legged beasts. In other places, the world’s core fires broached the surface, such as at Fra’anior Cluster, where the caldera eighteen leagues in diameter oozed lava, continually building its foundations atop the roots of the world.

Kal said, Bah. Hope the scroll survived your impromptu swim, Dragoness.

Tazithiel wheeled away from the plunging water, chuckling, Well, we wrote one more stanza of our ballad, did we not?

Aye. Dragon and Rider broke out the soapstone, and enjoyed the biggest bath in recorded history.

They chuckled all the way up into the heavens.

* * * *

Three beautiful evenings later, a despondent Dragon and her Rider camped beside the nostril of a sleeping Land Dragon. At least, they hoped the creature slept.

“Can I say something?” Kal inquired.

Tazithiel wagged a talon in the affirmative.

Kal voiced a full-throated Jeradian battle cry. He shook his fists at the heavens, growling until the veins popped out in his forehead. He hurled a few imaginary Ancient Dragons into the bottomless Cloudlands. He shadow-boxed Fra’anior in the jaw. He beat the ground with his heels in a tantrum worthy of ten toddlers and finished up by shredding an invisible scroll and disgustedly tossing the bits to the winds.

“All done?” the Indigo Dragoness inquired solicitously.

“Actually, I do feel better. Right. So we know the waterfall goes all the way to the top of that golden black section, six leagues or so above the Cloudlands. Apparently this part of the Rim-Wall is metallic but made of a substance harder than a Dragon’s talons can penetrate–perhaps a door, but we can’t be sure. There’s no end to the water so far. The runes vanished, most helpfully, and we cannot find a single clue in the scroll. How’s my summary?”

“Not quite miserable failure, but–”

“So close it’s indistinguishable from the same?”

“Exactly.”

Kal kicked at the Land Dragon, though he knew it for a futile gesture. “With due respect, beast, you sit here for the reason that greater and better minds can fly to Fra’anior’s Way and discover what we could not. Which I am not bitter about.”

Tazi clasped his shoulders with her paw. “Here’s the plan, Kal. I spend all night discombobulating you here, on a Land Dragon’s back. Tomorrow, wearing incredibly silly smiles, we return the green dragonets to their home. Then we fly back down the Island-bridge and find out how Riika’s doing. Your head says she’s fine, but your heart weeps clots of blood.”

Kal gaped like a slack-mouthed Yorbik drudge.

“Aye. Either I’m getting to know you better, or I’m starting to read your mind.”

He folded his arms sullenly. “Right.”

“I know, I’m so thrilled! It’s like sucking on a sewer.”

Chapter 37: Into the Gap

HAVING RETURNED THE green dragonets to their home warren in a day-long flight and having shamelessly metagrobolised the local fauna in an unspecified number of locations en route, when Tazithiel was not chomping said local fauna, Rider and Dragoness soared away two points east of southeast, aiming to intersect the Island-bridge midway between the Rim-Wall and the Western Isles. Kal had to work hard not to imagine a pair of whipped curs slinking home, tails tucked firmly between their legs.

Appropriately, the weather was dismal. A storm swept in from the northwest and tossed heaps of sleet–derisively, it seemed–atop the most isolated pair of heads in the Island-World, before meandering on over the horizon. The winds jostled Tazithiel along at a fine pace. The faster to meet a never-ending chorus of mockery, Kal muttered. Perfect.

After two days on the wing, Kal and Tazithiel approached the Island-Bridge in the hour after midnight, landed rapidly atop a league-long Land Dragon’s back, and made a camp of sorts beside a nostril which had to measure a quarter-mile from end to end. Kal leaned over the abyss, and breathed in that particular cinnamon-like scent of magic. Aye, Dragon.

Bah.

A perfect suns-rise worked an artistic masterpiece over the eastern horizon.

Double-bah with oodles of supercilious dragonets ladled on top.

Kal, awake with the dawn, cast a disparaging glance at the Rim-Wall massif. Not so freaking large now, was it? His follow-up glance was so rapid, he pulled a neck muscle.

“Palatial parakeets!” he shrilled.

“What, your neck wasn’t stiff as a Dragonship’s spar already?” Tazithiel commented, with glacial sympathy.

“No, no … it’s the mother-ship. I mean, your mother. Back there.” On the western horizon and growing smaller by the second, was an unmistakable purple blob. Kal probed, “I, the superior being, saw her first. What about Riika? Can you see–”

“Can’t tell at this distance, even with my superior eyesight.” Tazithiel’s eyes coloured distinctly green; draconic jealousy, Kal had learned. But before he could blink, their colour modulated to the yellow-white of a bonfire’s heart. “Let’s sneak up on her, Kal. You game?”

“How exactly do you plan to sneak up on the sneakiest, most powerful–”

Tazithiel made a flat gesture with her paw. “Whizz … boom!”

The King of Thieves offered his most sinister sneer.

He loved sneaking. Add an agreeable enchantress and his rapture swelled a hundredfold. Dragon and Rider put the finishing touches on the most complex shielding they knew, including optical, auditory and magical suppression elements, as well as the precisely buttressed, sweptback contouring capable of transforming an ordinary Dragon Rider team into a living projectile.

Then, they hunted.

The rush! The thrill! Wild, disturbing laughter resounded in his heart as they closed in on the Amethyst Dragoness at over twenty times her speed. The energy output was crazy. He could practically watch Tazithiel wolfing down her stores of magic.

Tightly, Tazi said, Saddlebags, Kal. She must have a Rider. Can’t see the mite. Can you?

Probably lost in the motherly spike-forest up top, Kal muttered. Please, please let it be …

At the very last instant, Aranya apparently sensed something, for she began to twist in the air, taking evasive action. WHAM! Tazithiel and Kal slammed past fifty feet overhead, pounding the Immadian Queen into a helpless, wing-tangling tailspin.

Oh yes! Kal guffawed. She’s awake now.

I saw Riika.

Travelling at over a thousand feet per second, Kal and the Indigo Express–he gleefully coined a new name for his supersonic ride, making the Dragoness laugh abrasively–shot miles beyond Aranya before Tazithiel, bleeding off the speed at a ridiculous rate, seized Kal with her Kinetic power and executed a turn that made the air howl in protest.

She lanced eastward, sucking in a huge breath. TAZITHIEL!

ARANYA! came the response, a thunderclap of wild Storm power. The nearby Land Dragons shifted uneasily, making a few Islands bob about before Kal’s startled gaze.

A tiny, dark figure danced like a frantic dragonet upon Aranya’s back.

Suddenly, as if alert to the danger posed by the combined speed of their approach, the two Dragonesses pulled up in the air. Kal cried, “Get her over here. Riika. I want to … I need …”

Riika was already running. Her legs scissored madly in nothingness as Tazi picked her up and wafted her across the divide; Kal punched his buckles furiously before remembering he could slip free at any time. He bounded to his feet, only to be bowled over by a Pygmy thunderbolt.

“Dad!”

Her arms were so strong. Her cheeks, gleaming with health. “Crazy girl, I missed you. Couldn’t ruddy well sleep a wink. You good?” Kal knew a fool’s smile was plastered on his face, but what did he care? “How are you? Returned to full nuisance value?”

“I’m great, Sticky-Fingers. How’s thievery? Busy?”

“Ah, a job’s a job. Let me look at you. Come on. What’s a-chatter in your jungle, Razorblades?”

She threw back her head in glee at his mangling of a Pygmy saying. “Master Jandubior sends his personal thanks. Dropped him off the other day. It was love at first clash, I believe.”

Aranya put in, “The whole Island rocked on its foundations.”

“I say, o Queen.” Kal waggled an eyebrow; the Dragoness’ belly-fires rumbled audibly as she realised the vulgar implications of her statement. “You shameful tease, Razorblades, don’t yank my hawser. Or should I say, mighty Dragon Rider?”

“Mighty Dragon. I’m just a Rider. I’m alright, Dad. Totally okay.”

“Alright? Totally okay? That is not–details!” he screeched. “I need details.”

“You know, there’s a species of monkey in the Crescent Islands called the howler monkey–ah. Less chit-chat, more truth?” Kal unclenched his fingers from an indelicate grip of his daughter’s neck. “Aranya’s Dragon Tears neutralised the poison. I don’t need the antidote anymore. Cyanorion and Aranya agree my heart’s growing stronger each day and I have loads of magic fizzing in my blood and I feel pretty weird, but alive is a nice sort of weird, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

Wrapping his arms about Riika, Kal lifted her off her feet and held her. Just held her. Speech was superfluous. Perhaps it always had been, and a garrulous thief should draw a lesson from that.

Over his shoulder, Riika said, “So, Tazzer. You rustled up a few Land Dragons and opened the way to the West?”

The Indigo Dragoness cleared her throat with an embarrassed fireball. “I believe our mission is best described as, ‘tantalisingly close, but an abject failure.’ ”

Aranya said, “I hope to help, shell-daughter. Come. Let’s fly together and you can tell us the tale of your deeds. You made it in one unbroken flight? I must admit, I’m even glad to see Kal alive. I’m sure we’ll see these Land Dragons breathing pink rainbows, next.”

“What happened to your wing?” asked Kal.

The Queen Dragoness flared her wing slightly, showing broken wing-struts depending from her primary wing bone on the right outer quarter of her wing. “Explain your boisterous behaviour, young man.”

“Uh–sorry, mother Dragon.”

Pointing to her mouth with her foreclaw, Aranya said, “Just remember, Kal, this fang has your name on it. Do we understand each other?”

Kal turned an innocent smile on the Amethyst Dragoness. “O Queen, purely in the vein of idle speculation and in the absence of any sinister intent whatsoever, may I ask, has anyone ever stolen a fang from a living Dragon’s mouth?”

GRRR! “We are not scribing that codicil in history, Kal. Not as long as I live to fly.”

* * * *

As they travelled westward at a steady thirty to forty leagues an hour, given Aranya’s ability to whistle up a following gale and Tazithiel and Kal’s ability to shield both Dragons in ways that had the Amethyst Dragoness shaking her head in disbelief, Aranya took her shell-daughter under her great wing. Kal watched them together, by turns moved, bemused and finally concerned. Aranya spoke non-stop during the daylight hours, recounting vast swathes of history, legends and stories from her past, and teaching them such Dragon lore as Kal imagined had never known the stroke of a pen or the custody of a scroll. In the evenings Aranya communed privately with Tazithiel or Riika, and even with Kal himself, sharing about the Shadow Dragon with great warmth and enthusiasm.

After giving Aranya and Riika a tour of the waterfall, the foursome repaired to the nearest Land Dragon to talk strategy. Aranya and Tazithiel transformed into Human form, dressed and joined Kal and Riika for an evening repast. Kal watched in awe as Tazithiel steadily demolished an entire saddlebag of supplies.

He joked, “No wonder no-one keeps Dragons for pets. They eat everything in sight.”

Tazithiel leaned over and nipped his shoulder playfully. “Mmm, tasty Human. Can’t blame me for wanting flame-grilled man-steaks.”

“I don’t think being the main item on your menu is a sound basis for our relationship,” Kal protested, edging away from the slavering Shapeshifter. Realistic, he could handle. Tazithiel’s predatory side made his skin crawl.

“Kal, you’re always on the menu.”

Flipping flying felons! Kal handed over his sweetbread roll, affecting a hangdog expression that made everyone laugh.

That evening, the foursome chatted and laughed until their sides hurt. Kal and Riika spoke at great length and swapped stories, while later, Aranya and her shell-daughter retreated to a private world. When Kal wrapped himself in a warm cloak to sleep, Tazi and Aranya were still nattering away. They spoke as the Blue moon rose into the southern skies, and communed amidst intermingled rainbows of light as Yellow began its stately traverse toward morning.

Kal awoke to find Tazithiel rooting about in the saddlebags again.

“Still hungry, girl?” he asked.

Tazithiel’s smile was an ode to feminine ambiguity. “I am eating for four, Kal.”

Kal processed this statement in his sleepy brain, and drew a blank. “Try the other one. I think we’ve a few tinker bananas left. No meat.”

Riika said, “Aranya, whatever’s the matter with your eyes?”

The Amethyst Shapeshifter gazed at them with eyes turned a curious white-silver colour, as though her eye-sockets had filled with stars. Her smile was sweet yet melancholy, conveying the cares of the Island-World. Kal felt his chest close, the pounding of his heartbeat a private drumroll in his ears. Riika queried Aranya, but he knew.

Then, it dawned on the teenager. “No.” She bit her fist. “No, Aranya …”

“Aye. It is time.”

For a moment she was Aranya of Immadia, the majestic Queen of Dragons, her height and otherworldly beauty marking her for a Shapeshifter of unmatched power and grace. Then she bent to enfold the tiny girl in her arms, transformed into mother and friend. They held each other with the fierceness of wild creatures and love as tender as the dawn flushing the eastern skies. Riika wept in huge, violent gasps that shook her cruelly; Aranya murmured to her, but her words carried to Kal, just a few feet away.

“You are gold,” said the Queen. “Never forget it. You are dark jungle gold. Your spirit will never be tamed, my precious Rider. Your boldness has been the cause of great joy for me, and I cannot wait to see what is to come.”

“That’s why you can’t go!” Riika sobbed.

“Hush, my petal. Star Dragons never die, not as you and I understand death. I will always watch over you. Watch for me, for I will send my strength to you. Dear one, it is my time and nothing can change that.”

Riika only held her tighter, mewling little hurt-animal cries and denials into Aranya’s chest.

Aranya wept, her tears falling freely upon Riika’s head. “Precious, precious Riika. You are a symbol of restoration. I sense a fierce power within you, a power akin to the twin suns shining in all their glory, and wisdom beyond your years. You will need all this and more if you are to attain your destiny. Remember the suns. They are your heritage and your purpose.”

Now, the Queen raised her arm and beckoned. “Kallion, my true son.”

Her affection broke him. He stumbled in to embrace them both, begging Aranya to stay, telling her that she must for Tazithiel’s sake, for they had known each other for far too short a time. Yet the arm that held him burned against his skin, and he knew that the fires rose in her. The white-fires of creation. The fires of her true nature.

Aranya said, “To me, you are the Shadow Dragon reborn. Ardan was my true Island, the strength to which I always returned. I see his integrity and nobility in you, Kal. Truly, you will need this Pygmy’s wisdom in order to love my fierce shell-daughter, for to love a Star Dragoness requires a heart as large as the Island-World, and strength to match. I believe you are that man. Shadow cannot exist without light. And light shines most brightly in the darkness. Already, you are inseparable. May you grow together into true oneness.”

Now Tazithiel joined them, unspeaking, for Kal realised mother and daughter had already said their farewells. For the longest time, four sets of arms held on, desperate to deny what must be. Some might think them a mismatched family, Kal knew. Some must hate such powers. He did not know how Aranya could choose this moment to depart, but perhaps even she must at last bow to the dictates of destiny.

The Star Dragoness’ mantle would pass to Tazithiel, the egg for whom Aranya had tarried over a hundred years.

“I will always be with you,” Aranya repeated, her voice choked, yet strangely exultant. “Now, I must join those who shone before me. I must go home.”

She slipped away from her family as white-fires flared in her limbs. The exquisite Fra’aniorian gown she wore burst into flame, but the Queen was beyond withholding her fires now. She transformed. An Amethyst Dragoness loomed before them, her eyes ablaze with starlight, her body growing whiter and fierier by the moment.

“May I request company on my final flight?” she rumbled.

Tazithiel bowed. “Of course, mother.”

“Aranya, please!” Riika cried.

Even as her inmost fires roared, lambent, Aranya still spared concern for the half-Pygmy girl. She said, “It has been the highest honour, Rider Riika. Will you not burn the heavens with me? And know that I will always smile upon you from above?”

They rose on dawn’s wings, upon the radiant fires that each day beamed life upon the Island-World, and winged toward the dazzling eastward-facing cliffs of golden black, from which a waterfall touching twenty-one miles high poured rainbow-hued streamers of salt water down into the Cloudlands.

A league from the incandescent cliffs, Aranya said, “Know that my heart is filled with love’s fires for each of you. Until the stars sing, my friends, will you sing for me?”

Kal, Riika and Tazithiel gulped.

For a second Aranya of Immadia hovered in place, a White Dragoness with just a hint left now of her famous gemstone scales, the greatest Dragoness of her age. Then, starlight flared, nigh blinding the threesome. A streak of white fire arrowed toward the centre of the gap in the black cliff, three leagues above the Cloudlands.

Tazithiel sang of the first starlight that pierced the darkness, singing with clarion sweetness in a variant of Dragonish language Kal did not recognise, for its words were droplets of star fire and its notes a glissade of starlight dappling upon still lakes, incendiary and thrilling, ethereal and devoted. After a moment, song rose in Kal’s breast. He added sonorous notes of grief to shade and provide depth to the Indigo Dragoness’ song. Riika joined them a heartbeat later, singing in Ancient Southern, words and bird-trills and clicks that imbued their song with the gladness of green and living things, the teeming life of the Crescent Isles jungles of her first home.

Whiteness plunged into the waterfall. Vanished? Kal held his breath. No. Suddenly, the waterfall was ablaze, lit from within by intense, radiant beams of white-fire.

Quietly, mind to mind, Kal asked, What’s she doing?

Tazithiel said, The Dragoness of yore outshines the very suns!

Aye. For the longest time, Aranya has been mother to our Island-World. Keeping it for the next generation. Sacrificing all, especially her own life. She loved like no other before her.

She loves still, said the Dragoness. Watch …

Above! Riika cried.

Kal startled. His daughter had just spoken Dragonish? Riika, standing between the spine spikes just ahead of him on Tazithiel’s back, seemed transfixed by the light streaming through the waterfall. Mesmerising, aye. But Kal himself stood up now, staring, for expectation stroked his spine with a rajal’s paw of wonder, at once delicate and terrifying.

NOW! Magic erupted. It punched the breath out of Kal. He thought he saw a single, luminous beam of white strike Riika’s countenance.

Aranya had spoken?

The cliffs began to draw apart, northward and southward. Faster and faster. The waterfall’s roar swelled, becoming deafening, growing greater and greater in flow and volume until the mind failed to grasp the sheer scale of the spectacle. Thunder shook the Rim-Wall Mountains. Water erupted from the gap, spraying leagues wide and deep, falling from a height of miles overhead, but this was no rain.

Shield! Kal bellowed.

A lake dropped upon their heads. An ocean, blinding, relentlessly pummelling the Dragoness and her Riders. He triggered his Shadow power, but Tazithiel cried, Riika! Oh Kal, she’s gone!

Gone? Swept away. How had they failed to keep her within their shield?

Thoughts arrowed between Dragon and Rider. Down. Dive to seek Riika. They plummeted into a screaming drop, tumbling with the water, searching with every sense alive. The din made shouting useless so they called out in telepathic Dragonish, finding it almost impossible to hear even their own thoughts. The world was water, cool and salty, a Cloudlands-bound torrent, and Kal knew what they wanted would feel like a boulder within that flow, a hardness of Human substance, so he flung out his Shadow power without stinting, chopping great swathes through the deluge.

There! Saw something … Tazithiel lurched.

Vanished again. A voice screaming above the thunder. Did he imagine something fey, screaming words which made no sense? The touch of a terrified mind?

Faster, Tazi–down! Use all your strength! No ….

She sobbed, I can’t fight this, Kal. It’s too powerful.

Why the hells do you have to fight everything, Dragoness? In his excitement and terror, Kal’s words were a barely-coherent howl. Flow. Swim in the stream. This is nothing but thick air.

Kal meant to thump sense into the frightened Dragoness, but through their bond, he detected the exact moment when his words translated into the spark that fired her belly-furnaces, stabilising her wings and reigniting her strength. Tazithiel swam like a fish. Vertically, downward. Incredulous mirth spilled from her lips. Now the secondary nictitating membranes swept her eyes clear, and her voice firmed.

Do that Shadow-sweep again, my Rider-heart. Open this little puddle for us.

Her fire spurred him to greater effort than ever before. Shadow power surged from Kal with torrential force, blowing through the magic-tinged waters in an explosion of his own making.

Yes! There she is!

That’s not my Riika, Kal blurted. That’s … that’s a …

Water descended again as his power stuttered. Before the Indigo Dragoness could do more than begin a furious scream, Kal hurled himself outward again.

Tazithiel swept across the flood, stretching out, missing her grab as the flood pounded her tail downward, but nothing in the Island-World could have prevented Kal from taking his chance. For the second time in two days, Riika bowled him over. Kinetic power snatched them onto Tazi’s upper left flank.

Kal gripped his daughter as though her life depended on it, and his too. Pain slashed his side.

Great Islands, Razorblades! he yelled. Pack the razorblades away!

Dad?

Aye, you gorgeous–

What happened, Dad? Why am I–

Dragoness. You’re a beautiful Dragoness.

Chapter 38: And the Stars Danced

GOLDEN SCALES, TRIMMED with obsidian flares and borders. Kal held a Dragon hatchling, gaping at her with such a surge of wonder and pride that his heart threatened to explode. Her colour was impossible–a rich molten gold was the best he could describe it, with flashes of pure black edging each perfect scale, and the same black tracing the details of her talons, wing primaries and struts, her teeny skull spikes and ear canals. A Gold Dragoness. Riika in her Dragon manifestation measured ten feet long from muzzle-tip to tail, and was already heavier than an adult man. Her physique was compact, iron-hard muscle beneath surprisingly supple Dragon hide. And her eye-fires! Golden fire, a colour not one of the Academy Dragons had ever boasted.

Riika cleared her throat with an involuntary burp of fire. Dad?

Aye, daughter?

Stop staring. It’s embarrassing.

Kal roared with delight. Pure Riika. Enough snarkiness to sink a Dragonship. You haven’t seen yourself, have you? Take a look at your paws.

Of course I have … uh, paws? Alright, this is bizarre.

Rule number one of Dragonhood, said Kal. Even when you can fly rings around me, you still have to obey your father or I will paddle your backside.

Tazithiel, peering over her shoulder with eyes never more a-whirl with excitement, said, Rule number two. Big Dragons swat cheeky little Dragons. Now sit tight, you two. We’ve an escape to pull off.

Riika tried to pout, but discovered that pouting over fangs was not straightforward. She settled for a cute little growl, which evidently did not impress the growler either. Fine. Are you two going to act like overprotective mother ducks, or what?

Or what, said Kal, at exactly the same instant as Tazi snarled, Call me a duck? You just earned your first smack, hatchling.

As the deluge continued to drench their shield, hammering Kal, Tazithiel and Riika steadily Cloudlands-ward, Kal settled into his saddle and drew the Dragoness onto his lap. He would not be able to hold her thus for long, he reminded himself, for baby Dragons grew at a ferocious rate. He worked with the Indigo Dragoness to re-establish their shield, shaping it to better defeat the pounding waters.

Spitting fire between her fangs with the effort, Tazithiel upended herself and strained against the flow.

Riika stared at her tail. Kal would have stared too. Imagine having a tail? Dad, what am I? Dragons don’t come covered in gold, do they?

Tazithiel growled, I’ve never seen or heard of a colour like yours. But you’re definitely a Dragoness. Everything about your form and magic, your command of Dragonish and the tenor of your fires proclaims this: you are Dragonkind.

A Shapeshifter, like you?

Aye, little one.

Kal said, As Aranya predicted, Tazi, she’s a unique Dragon-beauty. Riika, you’re a new kind of Dragoness for a new world, and I for one cannot wait to discover what Dragon powers you will command. Now come, Indigo-eyes. Let’s shake a wing for your mother’s home-leaving.

Gently, Kal augmented his Dragoness’ flight with his rare power. They sliced through the falling water as a Dragon’s talon slicing through fresh ralti meat, striving to return to the suns-shine.

* * * *

One second, water roared and frothed against their shield. The next, the Indigo Dragoness shot into the crystal-clear early morning, and the trio found themselves rising above a waterfall of inconceivable extent and volume. Kal stared over what had been a vast lake hidden behind a pair of doors at least twenty miles tall and perhaps ten miles thick; still the cliff-doors withdrew, widening the waterfall and deepening its voice. He clearly saw a deep blue sky through the Rim-Wall. The subterranean waters gleamed with the radiance of a starry being hovering beneath an immense archway of stone, midway between the old world and the new.

Fra’anior’s Way stood open.

Solemnly, the star bowed, as if inviting Kal, Riika and Tazithiel to explore the tunnel. He watched the waters slowly receding. There, at the limit of his vision, he saw another barrier slowly, evenly sliding downward, tracking the waters with a margin of a quarter-mile or so–protecting whatever lay beyond, he assumed, from the flood which thundered into the Cloudlands on this side.

A silvery voice chimed, Today a Sun Dragoness is born, first of her kind. Welcome to the Island-World, Riika. The stars sing with you. She is born!

Rising, Riika genuflected gravely. Kal grabbed her tail to prevent her from pitching onto her nose.

Until we meet again, my beloved ones. Farewell.

Tazithiel and Kal bowed with the deepest respect.

Kal said, Go burn the heavens, Star Dragoness.

Goodbye, mother. Tazi began to drop her head, but a movement of that blazing point of light stopped her.

I will miss you in body, daughter. But my spirit will remain with you.

The light sped away beneath the Rim-Wall Mountains, making for the world beyond at a terrific, ever-increasing velocity. As she moved, Aranya lit the underside of the mountain with the brilliance of pure starlight. She whizzed into the open and then curved upward, vanishing from sight behind the peaks.

Kal sighed. That’s it, then.

The Indigo Dragoness chuckled sadly. Kal, when will you learn that with Dragons, it is never quite over? Be patient. Look up.

Less than a minute later, a dazzling star soared over the summit of the Rim-Wall, streaking toward the East with a long comet-trail of white, as though Aranya still wore one of her favourite Fra’aniorian lace gowns with their unfeasibly long trains. Kal’s head twizzled as she passed overhead. Great Islands, how fast was she flying? And it seemed to him, as Tazithiel turned so that they could follow Aranya’s flight without breaking their necks, that silvery laughter drifted down from the heavens like the warmest of rain, and that while there might be a shade of sorrow at her departure, what the Star Dragoness knew most of all was the overwhelming joy of a homecoming.

Eastward she soared, far beyond the farthest boundaries of the Island-World, angling for a star Kal saw twinkling just between the twin suns and the horizon, a blue star of particular clarity and brilliance.

The stars joined. Separated. They danced for joy.

“What?” Kal breathed.

Tazithiel said, “That’s Hualiama. I believe her name means ‘blue-star’. Aranya is with her family at last.”

“But …” Kal wanted to say it was impossible. There were stars all dancing along the horizon, dark and light, white and blue … those were her family? Was the Shadow Dragon, his illustrious ancestor, up there too?

Suddenly, the stars appeared to wink as one. Instantly, threads of light speared back toward the watching trio, as thin and strong as spider-silk, haloing the two Dragonesses in cobalt and amethyst fire, respectively, and Kal in a third thread of shadow which had incongruously taken form and dark radiance, defying any physical laws he could imagine.

May the blessings of the Dragonkind blaze upon you and your kin all your days, said a chorus of voices.

Fire flooded his soul, darkly resplendent.

Tazithiel glanced at him with a smile that said, ‘What did you expect when you joined a family of Dragons, Kal?’ He would gladly have slapped her, but for the tongues of amethyst fire eddying in her fire-eyes. Was this a passing on of the flame, according to the Dragon lore he knew?

He said, “Does this make you the reigning Queen of Immadia, Tazi?”

She coughed a fireball of shock.

Kal grinned broadly. Ah, he still had the touch.

The beams of light faded as quickly as they had shone. Beneath the twin suns Kal observed a new cluster of stars, brilliant enough to shine despite the full flood of daylight–that would have the Dragon astronomers scratching their scaly chins!

Tazithiel said, “I believe they’re waiting for us.”

“Waiting?” Kal echoed.

“You brainless Human,” growled Riika, and then clamped her jaw shut with a horrified squeak. Did I just say that? Sorry, Dad. Uh … I meant to say, of course they’re waiting for us to fly through to the new world.

“I understand, Riika.” Kal patted her head fondly; he almost lost a finger for his trouble.

Riika spat a word he had definitely not taught her.

The Indigo Dragoness said, Watch out for your Dragon feelings and reactions, youngling. Think upon your nickname. You’re sharper than a razor now, faster than a flitting dragonfly, and everything will feel as though it is driven by wildfires.

Too freaking right, muttered Riika.

And if you’re going to knead my lap like a kitten, can you at least keep your talons sheathed? Kal inquired. I’d rather not juggle a basketful of knives in that exact spot.

I know how to hold a thief ransom, Tazithiel suggested snidely.

Kal decided to field-test the Indigo Dragoness’ remarks. Without warning, he bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Westward, ho!”

Tazithiel jerked as though stung. Riika sprang fifty feet off Kal’s lap in a single bound, before discovering that hatchlings of her size needed to learn how to fly. The Indigo netted her with a burst of Kinetic power.

Seconds later, two Dragonesses blasted Kal with the full fury of their indignation.

Kal Shadowed, and laughed until his invisible sides ached.

* * * *

The outpouring of water continued unabated even though the level appeared to be dropping steadily. The Rim-Wall reservoir had been so mind-bendingly enormous that it took time to empty, while the flow created a roiling disturbance in the Cloudlands for leagues beyond the mountains. Kal wondered how long it would take for weather patterns to change. How many cubic leagues of water had already drenched the abyssal depths? Perhaps there were Land Dragons below, laughing and sporting in a new lake.

Tazithiel gathered herself and winged toward the gap in the mountain. Fra’anior’s Way was definitely large enough for an Ancient Dragon, Kal supposed, trying to measure what he saw with some modicum of objectivity. What he now recognised as doors rather than a cliff-face had drawn back to their full extent, opening a gap of easily one hundred leagues across, if not one hundred and fifty. The far boundaries were indistinct, hidden behind swirling veils of mist. Tazithiel had estimated the original crack as six leagues tall, not counting whatever portion might still be concealed beneath the Cloudlands. And the depth? The tunnel carved through the entire Rim-Wall, as far as the horizon. But the dark tunnel tantalised and deceived his mind. Several hundred leagues, he guessed, perhaps as many as four hundred, for the air was amazingly clear, not cluttered with smoke and volcanic ash as Fra’anior’s air was year-round.

As the Indigo Dragoness entered the mountain charily, Kal saw that more amazingly still, the water reservoir had been housed in a chamber several times taller than its outer doors. Somewhere up above, sheets of great radiant crystals hung like the finest chandeliers of a King’s ballroom, lighting parts of the cavern but leaving others in deep shadow. Several miles within, the waterfall’s great thundering began to grow muffled; Riika’s eyes glowed in the gloom, creating a fiery pool of light around her and Kal.

Nervously, the half-Pygmy Shapeshifter said, “Tazi, you spoke all night with Aranya. Did she give you a special task? Further vital information, not limited to, ‘You’re an ingot-sized excuse for a Dragon who will laze in the suns to gain unspecified but undeniably mighty suns-powers?’ ”

“You’ve also been picking verbal leaves out of Kal’s scrolleaf,” Tazithiel needled. “She did make one minor suggestion, namely, rolling back the Cloudlands to expose the world beneath and solving the riddle of its toxicity.”

“Oh, only that trifle?” sniped Kal. “Today, we dispatch a Star Dragoness to the skies and discover a new world. Tomorrow, we shall solve the ills of the old one. What shall we do next week, my pair of darling fire-hoses? Paint the Islands purple and cause it to rain monkeys from clear skies?”

“Someone’s not taking this very seriously.”

Kal growled, “Riika, someone chafes at being handed a few Islands’ worth of troubles. It’s unfair.”

Tazi began, “Now, Kal–”

“No, Tazi! Aranya lumps this on your shoulders and then soars off to her twinkling glory in the skies above? How is that fair or right? Tell me.”

“She did put it differently to what you seem to think, Kal.”

“Oh? She added an offhand ‘please’ at the end?”

The Dragoness said, “No, she called it the redemption of the Ancient Dragons’ original creation.”

Kal’s jaw popped open. “What?”

“And before you break out in a rash at my use of monkish language, the paramount task of Star Dragons in this Island-World is, literally, to keep or restore the Balance of the Harmonies. Aranya said that the Cloudlands were the greatest imbalance in this Island-World, and while I respect my dear departed shell-mother, I cannot help but wonder that if the most powerful Dragoness in history could not solve this trifle, as you term it, how in the hells she expects us to accomplish what she could not?”

Her words emerged amidst spurts of fire. Suddenly, Kal realised that the Indigo Dragoness was as outraged–perhaps as an expression of her grief–as he was.

“Even the Ancient Dragons did not solve this travesty!” Tazithiel snarled. “Or, they allowed it. How does that square with your precious fantasies that Fra’anior, the great black majesty himself, the possessor of the greatest overload of brain matter in history with no less than seven heads to argue with each other, allowed this world to become so polluted that nothing from above can pass below? That everything dies down there, even the lichens? How is this right, Kal? And now I’m responsible?”

GGRRRAAARRGGGH!

Kal held Riika close, even though she struggled with fright, panting and mewling in distress, and her finger-long talons bloodied his knees.

Tazithiel whispered, “I’m so sorry, little one. I forget how new all this is for you. Come. Let’s think about the new world. Kal, I need to burn off some of this anger. It’s not right that we treat Aranya’s memory this way, especially not today. She did not make the world we live in.”

“Aye.” Kal nodded. “Ready, Riika? Let’s burn through these mountains, Dragons!”

* * * *

The better part of two hours later, Tazithiel pulled out her air-brakes and coasted toward the second great barrier holding back the waters ahead. Kal had ceased to wonder by this point if the new world held anything but blue skies, for the Indigo Dragoness displayed a most peculiar mood. She declined to soar upward for a peek, preferring to stick to a height a couple of wingspans above the slowly receding waters. Kal refused to beg and Tazithiel appeared to have more than a few feelings to work out of her system. Better that she did, therefore, without his interference.

“Four hundred and ten leagues through the mountains, by my reckoning,” said the Dragoness.

Riika pretended to snore.

“The barrier’s still dropping,” Kal observed. “I wonder what it is holding back, or why all the water is supposed to head in our direction? Maybe we’re supposed to cleanse the Cloudlands so that all the nice fresh fish that actually survive the fall, don’t get poisoned instead?”

“Or, so that the nice Water Dragons can have a nice new terrace lake to swim in,” suggested the Sun Dragoness.

“There will not be any problems, naturally, in introducing a hitherto unknown Dragon species to the Dragons of our Island-World, because Dragons always coexist in blissful harmony,” Kal added.

Tazithiel flicked her wings to take them atop the barrier, sliding through the air as smoothly as Helyon silk. Kal frowned. Dratted Ancient Dragon mountain-tossers, still ten miles or more to go. Could they not imagine building a door of less than blisteringly humungous proportions? Of course not. That would simply not suit their overinflated sense of grandeur. Then again, Fra’anior probably had scale mites the size of Humans. Perhaps Humankind had started out as scale mites on the backside of the largest Dragon in existence, sheltering beneath his armour for thousands of years …

Irreverence and flippancy were hardly the way to be approaching a new world, Kal castigated himself. Where was the sense of holy awe that Aranya’s departure had sparked in his breast?

Waiting for that first glimpse.

Waiting for the skies to open up and meet the … oh, great Islands! Kal’s hand flew to his throat. Had the skies turned upside-down, their reflection bluer than the welkin above? No. Tranquil waters stretched as far as the eye could see, lapping from the Rim-Wall itself past pearly chains of Islands in the middle distance to a horizon as boundless as he had ever known, only unlike the Cloudlands, this panorama screamed of an abundance of life and splendour, a whole new realm of beauty.

The Indigo Dragoness alighted on the edge of the doorway as if afraid to proceed. Kal knew how she felt. The picture was such a breathtaking masterpiece, he feared their presence might blight the canvas. Who painted in colours such as these? What glorious palette had been spilled upon that dusting of green Islands, the variegated turquoise waters, the clouds of myriad white birds he saw traversing the endless blue? A tang of salt teased his nostrils. A fresh breeze ruffled his hair. The poet in him could have expired in ecstasy.

Kal knew a few legends, a few words which defied etymology, for they seemed to lack any clear origin. He whispered, “Ocean.”

“What?” Tazi whispered back.

“Ocean. This is the ocean, Tazi. Endless … waters.”

“Listen,” Riika breathed. “Can you hear that? It sounds like Dragonsong. Something is singing out there, without words …”

Kal listened with his entire being. She was right. Now and again, just upon the edge of his senses, he heard a hint of evocative song, ululating and wailing, sometimes whistling or even clicking. Was this the song of the ocean? Or the song of the Water Dragons?

“This would be a wonderful place to make a fresh start with our children,” said the Indigo Shapeshifter. “What do you think, Kal?”

“When we have them, aye.”

“In about fourteen months or so. A little less, now.”

He opened and shut his jaw without a coherent word or otherwise escaping his lips.

“I did say I was eating for four, Kal.”

“Four?” he rasped. “Me, you, Riika and Aranya, right? That’s what you meant.”

“Dad. Indigo-eyes meant nothing of the sort. You’re going to be a father. Snap to it. Actually, you’ve a few months to get used to the idea.”

“A father again?” Kal squeezed Riika with his arms until the Dragoness wheezed and wriggled in annoyance. “I’ve enough trouble with the one who’s sitting on me. Four–that’s too many. Tazi, how? I mean … how?”

The Dragoness laughed contentedly. “Kal, you daft rogue, I think you know exactly how. Shapeshifter Dragons have three babies, or eggs, at once. You know that. I didn’t know we had succeeded, but Aranya told me last night and showed me how to find their flame-souls inside my body. I’m pregnant with triplets and you had better start liking the idea, or so help me–”

“YES!” With an enormous whoop, Kal spilled Riika off his lap.

“Dad, Islands’ sakes!”

He shouted, “Yes, yes … oh yes! You beautiful woman, I didn’t think you could–but I hoped, oh aye, I hoped to the heavens. And prayed, even. The monks taught me that. You definitely have been eating for four. And I made sure you had every chance, because we were so busy–”

“Dad!” Riika tried her roar, but it was miniscule.

“I mean, we were perpetrating all sorts of roost-love mischief, as the Dragons say, especially when you–”

“Dad, honestly. Can we celebrate without the sordid details? Aren’t you happy?”

“Happy?” Amazement made his voice squeak like a rusty hinge. “I could fly down over those Islands myself. I could run loops around the moons. Am I happy? You puerile pipsqueak, you golden lump of draconic detritus, of course I’m happy! Why would I be otherwise?”

Riika said, “Because the Kal who rescued me would’ve made himself scarcer than a Gold Dragoness at such news.”

Tazithiel loosed a thunderclap of such rage, it blasted them five hundred feet backward.

Chapter 39: Gold Dragon

HOLDING KAL ALOFT in her paw, the Indigo Dragoness unleashed a storm of wrath. Every phrase she spoke roared over the new world like the booming of thunder. “If you run away now, Kal, I swear there will be no place under the suns which will safeguard your miserable life, for I will hunt you down like the wretched cur you are. I will destroy you, trample you and cast your stinking carcass into the nethermost reaches of the Cloudlands. I will–”

“Tazi, listen,” he protested.

“I knew this would happen.” Another fireball passed a foot over his head. “Entangled with a smooth-talking thief, oh, bitter, bitter day! I’ve been such a ralti-brained dupe.”

“Tazi–”

“Silence! Detestable Human!”

Kal resorted to sign language. Not me, he signed, and pointed firmly at Riika. Her idea. Hers!

“What? Begging for your insignificant life?” sneered the Dragoness. Evidently, his command of sign language was second to none.

Employing his Shadow power, Kal slipped out of her grasp and wafted down to the ground. Tazithiel, infuriated beyond reason, sprayed molten fire hundreds of feet in every direction.

Kal sidestepped. Reappeared. “I’m not running!”

GRRAAAAARRRGGGH! A fireball incinerated every scrap of air for a hundred yards behind his belly, but not an invisible instigator.

He slipped into the physical realm again. “I’m sticking with you!”

RAAARRRROOOOAAR! She deep-fried a few more undetectable thieves.

“It was Riika’s idea!” Kal yelled from Tazithiel’s other flank.

The Indigo Dragoness whirled, slashing the air with her tail. FIEND! COME OUT WHERE I CAN SEE YOU! Had Kal stayed put, he would have been pulped and then sautéed with emphatically prejudicial results.

As Kal tiptoed around behind the Dragoness, Tazithiel continued to elucidate, “I’ll grill you slowly, you heartless bandit. I’ll fricassee your intestines with Mejian spices, following which I’ll bake your brains at ten thousand degrees and use the char to flavour my meals for the next hundred years.”

While he appreciated his girl-fiend’s enthusiasm for cookery, he would rather she did not hone her skills on his blameless person.

At the verbal equivalent of supersonic flight, Kal shouted, Tazithiel, stop!

To his eternal surprise, she did.

Magic? No mind. Hurry on! “Beloved, Riika was testing me, as is her right. We three know what it means to have lost our parents. I refuse to abandon my children. Our children. If you hurled me into the middle of that ocean, I would swim for all the years it took me to return to your side. And if you kicked me into the deepest reaches of the cosmos, as you’ve undoubtedly been tempted to on numerous occasions, I would return as a shooting star to your side. For I guarantee you this, Indigo Dragoness, that having purloined your heart, as you are my solemn witnesses, I swear I have absolutely no intention of returning it to you this side of the eternal fires of the Dragonkind! And you can just swill that in your fire-stomach and smoke it!”

Tazithiel glanced at Riika, who shrugged, but a treacherous hiccough of laughter shook her tiny frame. Both Dragonesses burst into howls of laughter, the more so as Kal demanded to know exactly what was so comical about his declaration of love.

Eventually, Tazithiel managed, “Beloved Kal, you stole a Dragoness’ heart. You are second to none–truly, the King of Thieves.”

After the obligatory minute of preening, Kal said, “So riddle me this, Tazithiel. When this barrier drops down to the level of the ocean here, and the salty waters continue to flood our Island-World through this tunnel, will they eventually drown our Islands?”

“I was wondering the same,” said Riika.

Tazi said, “While I believe we should return to the Academy to inform the Dragonkind of Aranya’s departure–not death–I refuse to return without exploring a little, first. Who knows what we might find out here? As you rightly point out, once this channel opens fully, much will be swept through in a great wave. I don’t believe there’s any chance of us draining their ocean, but we should check. At the very least, if we find any intelligent beasts down there, we ought to warn them.”

“Have we created a natural disaster?” Kal prodded.

“We will simply take a pressure measurement down at ocean level and compare it to that of our own Islands,” said the Indigo Dragoness, narrowing her eyes in contemplation. “I suspect we’ll find this ocean’s level is just a touch higher than our Cloudlands.”

“And how do you propose to take such measurements without instruments?”

Tazithiel’s lip curled in draconic rejection of his sarcasm. “Why, I am the instrument, Kal. My clever mother taught me how to compare pressures using my draconic senses. Consequently, I am the superior creature.”

Kal performed a veritable feast of a Fra’aniorian bow. “Yet I purloined your most precious treasure. Therefore I–”

“Oh, go stuff it in a furnace engine,” snorted the Sun Dragoness, surrounding her own head in smoke with the force of her exclamation. She sneezed herself backward ten feet. “Great Islands, this Dragon form takes getting used to, doesn’t it, Tazi?”

“It was the other way for me, stumbling over a pair of strange, galumphing Human feet,” Tazithiel reminded her.

Riika said, “Those creatures out there should worry about us mighty Dragons.”

The Indigo Dragoness, towering over the mite with a motherly gleam in her eye, said, “Aye, they should worry. We’ll be keeping you firmly at home until you learn to behave, won’t we, Kal?”

“Aye.”

Ignoring Riika’s heated protests, he walked back to the edge of the golden black barrier. Kal gazed out over the new world with eyes zealous for the possibilities. Suns-shine. Glistening ocean. All was glorious, but he could not shake the feeling that something was watching.

Reveal yourself, he whispered. I know you’re there. We’re friendly and we’d love to meet you.

Tazithiel snickered, Kal, you null-wit. As if talking to a mythical Black Dragon wasn’t enough, now you’re …

Mute with awe, Kal simply pointed.

Forty or fifty miles from their position, a monstrous darkness shadowed the serene ocean. The waters seethed briefly before parting over the bulk of the creature surfacing from the deeps. All they saw of it was the head, Kal thought, but that was enough, for it dwarfed the Islands between them as if a mountain had broached the tranquil waters. In the flank of that dark mountain he saw a single great eye, apparently lidless, of a piercing, pellucid azure that even across the distance, struck him speechless with its intelligence and great age.

He had the impression of being weighed on enormous, unfathomable scales.

Beside and behind him, Kal sensed Tazithiel and Riika standing a-tremble, transfixed by the terrible majesty of that gaze.

An alien song washed over them, outlandish and untamed and poignant, a song that hearkened to a lifetime spent gliding through the endless blue, of migrations spanning tens of thousands of leagues and faraway underwater palaces filled with secret treasures, of the restless ebbing and flowing of the tides, and an existence nourished by the surging, life-giving currents. Then the song changed to a stormier cry, a warning; a declaration of turbulent, motherly love that spanned the oceans and protected its own. Kal did not know if the creature was warning them off or warning its own kind from exploring the passageway which would one day lead to the Cloudlands.

Then, the creature began to sound with a stately surge of its giant body, mile after mile of black, glistening flesh mounding out of the briny depths to occlude the horizon beyond. Briefly, they glimpsed a colossal flipper eddying the water near one of the Islands. After an interminable time, the waters closed and the creature vanished in the same manner as it had appeared.

“Water Dragon,” Kal gasped.

Tazithiel shook her muzzle slowly. “It’s as big as the ballads suggest the Ancient Dragons ever were, Kal. The queen of this ocean.”

“Yet not unfriendly,” he said. “Not convinced, but not unwelcoming either.”

The Sun Dragoness stood four-pawed on the ledge, surveying the waters with unexpected vigilance. She said, “Aye, it was a Water Dragon. And I am destined to meet that creature, one day.”

Riika made an interrogative trill of Dragonsong. Her melodious vocalisation seemed to carry an inordinate distance across the restless waters.

Kal listened for a reply. Soon, he smiled.

The End

Thus the worlds of IsleSong and Dragon were joined,

Water and Cloud became one.

Appendix

About the Speed of Sound

The speed of sound is not a constant, but depends on the temperature at a particular altitude. For ease of calculation, Dragon Thief uses the Wikipedia reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound) of dry air at 20 Celsius:

Speed of sound = 768 mph = 222.61 leagues per hour

To view a table of the effects of altitude/temperature on the speed of sound, please see for example Fighter-planes.com (http://www.fighter-planes.com/jetmach1.htm).

Dragonflight Record Breakers

2151 leagues. 126 hours aloft, or 4 days and 13 hours of unbroken flight. This is the record the Indigo Dragoness and her Rider set en route to the Rim-Wall Mountains. Kal and Tazithiel disregard boundaries that for centuries the Dragonkind have regarded as inviolable, by employing a combination of Kal’s Shadow power and magical resources, and Tazithiel’s unique ability to enhance her flight with aerodynamic shielding and Kinetic power.

Typically, Dragons are capable of flying 6–8 leagues per hour over long distances (174–232 leagues per day), sustaining flights of between one and two days for the strongest Dragons. These speeds can be considerably enhanced by use of upper atmospheric jet streams called Dragons’ Highways. Especially in combat situations, Dragons can accelerate to speeds of over 40 leagues per hour (138 mph / 222 km/h). The gravitational forces generated by their manoeuvring are comparable to those experienced by fighter pilots.

Early on Dragon scientists identified a natural kinetic damping mechanism which allows Dragons to defy natural laws of momentum as they hurl their tonnage about in joyous Dragonflight, and current theories point to this mechanism extending to the linked Dragon Rider during combat, which explains why Riders rarely black out during combat flight, except for reasons of direct physical impact. However this remains unproven as Dragons and Riders are usually more preoccupied with avoiding fireballs and acid spit than measuring blood flow during battle.

Kal and Tazithiel achieve supersonic Dragonflight for the first time in history. The key is Kal’s ability to charge an already perfectly-shaped shield with Shadow power, reducing wind resistance and drag to almost zero, and the Indigo Shapeshifter’s musculature, which produces hummingbird-like wing speeds, although she keeps the flight surface extremely small to achieve this effect.

Dragon and Rider cannot sustain the extreme magical output required to break Mach 1 (the speed of sound) for much over one hour at a time.

Distance, World Size and Sight Considerations

1 league = 5.556 kilometres = 3.45 miles

How far can the Human eye see under ideal conditions? With his scientific approach to marathon Dragonflight, Kal works out that the scholarly equations for calculating sight distances rely on inaccurate data; he theorises, perhaps originating on a smaller world. He calculates that the ‘other world’ must be 4.209 times smaller than his world–in other words, the Island-World is much larger and therefore flatter in curvature.

The Human eye’s visual acuity is indeed astonishing. The stars are millions of light-years away, yet we see them. The problem always relates to what we’re looking at–how large or bright it is, from where it is seen in relation to ground level, and the atmospheric conditions under which the phenomenon is observed. Larking about on Dragonback, a Human can safely ascend to heights of 1.75 leagues (6.04 miles / 32000 feet) above Cloudlands level. With a Blue Dragon shield protecting the Rider with warm, oxygenated air, an intrepid Dragon Rider may brave higher altitudes. The extraordinarily clear atmosphere of the West, the 25 league height (86.25 miles) of the Rim-Wall Mountains and the Island-World’s very large size allows Kal and Tazithiel to see the mountains from over 1200 leagues (4140 miles) distant, given perfect viewing conditions and an extremely large target object.

In volcanic areas such as Kal’s native Fra’anior, the constant venting of particles and gases leads to diminished sight distances, but accordingly more beautiful suns-rises and suns-sets as light is reflected and refracted by the airborne particulate matter.

Island-World Timeline

The ending of Dragon Thief brings the reader to the point where the worlds of Dragons, for millennia circumscribed by the uncrossable Rim-Wall Mountains and the oceanic world of IsleSong (The IsleSong series begins with The Girl who Sang with Whales) intersect.

In IsleSong, Zhialeiana is a young Island girl gifted the ability to sing the songs of sea-creatures. Powerful Bard-Navigators sing to the great Whales, magically binding them to protect their ships during their dangerous crossings between the Atolls and Islands of the World-Sea. But the great Whales harbour unimagined secrets, and what of the Sea-Dragons which maraud unchecked? What is their origin?

311 years before the events of Dragon Thief, the Princess of Immadia’s world-shaping exploits are recounted in the Shapeshifter Dragons series (Aranya and Shadow Dragon, part three forthcoming). Aranya’s courage and irrepressible fire pit her against Thoralian, Emperor of Sylakia and conqueror of the Island-World north of the Rift.

152 years before Aranya, the Pygmy Dragon rocked the world with her extraordinary heritage and powers as she battled the all-conquering Marshal of Herimor and his legions of Dragon Assassins, confronting a peril which threatened to extinguish all Dragon life in the Island-World. This two-book series concludes with The Onyx Dragon, coming in 2016.

Still deeper in history, just a legend by the time of Kal and Tazithiel, is the tale of the first Dragon Rider, Hualiama Dragonfriend. Born in an era when Humans have barely shaken off draconic rule, Hualiama is a woman whose fierce love and bravery will set her against every taboo and law of Humankind and Dragonkind. For when a woman loves a Dragon, that love will change the world. This series consists of three volumes–Dragonfriend, Dragonlove and Dragonsoul (coming in 2016).

About the Author

www.marcsecchia.com

Marc is the bestselling author of over a dozen fantasy books. Born in South Africa, he lives and works in Ethiopia with his wife and 4 children, 2 dogs, a rabbit, and a variable number of marabou storks that roost on the acacia trees out back. On a good night you can also hear hyenas prowling along the back fence.

When he’s not writing about Africa or dragons, Marc can be found travelling to remote locations. He thinks there’s nothing better than standing on a mountaintop wondering what lies over the next horizon.

If you enjoyed this story, please consider leaving a review on Amazon.com, or reading one of my other works. Every review matters and I read them all!

Where you can find me:

Amazon Author Page

Goodreads

Twitter: @marcauthor

Facebook

Email: marcsecchia@gmail.com

Website: www.marcsecchia.com (sign up for my newsletter here)

Other Books by Marc Secchia

Shapeshifter Dragons: (Young Adult and older readers) Three allied series of bestselling Dragon adventures. Prepare to wing away to a unique world of mighty Dragons and volcanic Islands above the deadly Cloudlands!

Shapeshifter Dragons series: Aranya, Shadow Dragon and Part 3 is planned.

Shapeshifter Dragon Legends series: The Pygmy Dragon and The Onyx Dragon (coming in 2016)

Dragonfriend series: Dragonfriend, Dragonlove and Dragonsoul (coming in 2016)

The IsleSong series: (Young Adult and older readers) A story for anyone who loves the ocean and its whales, salt water in their hair, and the gentle rasp of beach sand between their bare toes. This story will transport you to a beautiful, unspoiled ocean world where people have to rely on Whales to travel between the islands. A world where danger can, and does, lurk beneath any wave.

The Girl who Sang with Whales (IsleSong Book 1)

The Shioni of Sheba series: (Middle Grades and older readers) Unique African historical fantasy adventures set among the myths and legends of ancient Ethiopia.

Shioni of Sheba #1: The Enchanted Castle

Shioni of Sheba #2: The King's Horse

Shioni of Sheba #3: The Mad Giant

Shioni of Sheba #4: The Sacred Lake

Shioni of Sheba #5: The Fiuri Realms

Epic fantasy (New Adult and Adult readers) Epic length tales of unique worlds and powers.

Feynard

The Legend of El Shashi

Table of Contents

Dragon Thief

Dedication

Table of Contents

Island-World Map

Chapter 1: Dragon Gold

Chapter 2: All that Glitters

Chapter 3: Draconic

Chapter 4: Flyaway

Chapter 5: Call of the South

Chapter 6: Rogues Need Wings

Chapter 7: The Drunken Dragon

Chapter 8: Heritage

Chapter 9: Trysting-Place

Chapter 10: Kings and Queens

Chapter 11: The Island-Desert

Chapter 12: Huntress

Chapter 13: Shifty Shifter

Chapter 14: Business as Unusual

Chapter 15: Counterstrike

Chapter 16: Ripped Asunder

Chapter 17: Back to Basics

Chapter 18: Dragon Foolery

Chapter 19: Old Eggs

Chapter 20: Thief at School

Chapter 21: Second Chances

Chapter 22: Masterful

Chapter 23: Shell-Mothers

Chapter 24: Felonious Fickleness

Chapter 25: Storm Training

Chapter 26: All in a Day’s Burglary

Chapter 27: Magic Unfurled

Chapter 28: Race to the Death

Chapter 29: Revenge Served Fiery

Chapter 30: Big Dragons don’t Cry

Chapter 31: Westward, Ho!

Chapter 32: Shenanigans

Chapter 33: Dragons of the West

Chapter 34: Emptiness

Chapter 35: Slumbering Dragons

Chapter 36: Thusly Written

Chapter 37: Into the Gap

Chapter 38: And the Stars Danced

Chapter 39: Gold Dragon

Appendix

About the Author