Dragonsoul

Book 3 of Dragonfriend

By Marc Secchia

Copyright © 2016 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 © 2016 Joemel Requeza and Marc Secchia

Map by Joshua Smolders

Copyright © 2016 Marc Secchia & Joshua Smolders

smojos@gmail.com

Cover font design copyright © 2016 Victorine Lieske

www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com

Dedication

Love is a Dragonsoul’s white-fires, my shell-son,

No fire burns brighter; none purer,

For white-fires are everlastingly,

Quintessentially,

Draconic.

From A Dragon’s Word to his Shell-Son by Sapphurion of Gi’ishior

Map of the Lost Islands

Chapter 1: Awakening to Death

“SHE’S DYING.”

Grandion’s words were brittle, laced with dark-fires. They pierced Hualiama’s awareness like whetted scalpels. Grievous. Wounding. Shocking her toward full consciousness.

“You cannot restrain your daughter this way, Empress.” Sapphurion’s deeper, smokier tones, torrid with anger.

“That thing is not my daughter!” Azziala hissed.

Silence pooled about Lia, as thick as congealed blood.

Dying? Even her mother’s hatred paled in the light of the Tourmaline Dragon’s distress. How could she be dying? Last she remembered–mercy! A violent battle above the Dragon’s Bell, falling, burning in the crucible of Razzior’s incandescent Dragon fire … and then, a miracle of claw and scale. Or had she dreamed of a place to which a soul alone could travel?

The Empress of the Lost Islands snarled, “Even now, the lizard awakes. Remember our bargain, Grandion. Six days to report, one week to recover. The comet presages the rising of Dramagon’s Elect. This is the dawn of our long-overdue vengeance upon the Island-World!”

Footsteps tapped rapidly into the distance as the Empress departed.

Suddenly, huge nostrils snuffled at her neck. The startling delicacy of that touch raised the most incredible frissons of sensation throughout her body. Hualiama would have giggled, save that she felt utterly debilitated; as if a rolling Island had slowly pulverised the length of her spine. The battle must have just finished. Where was she? By the nearby, cave-contained echoes upon stone, she suspected Azziala’s lair at Chenak Island, the most westerly of the Lost Islands. How had she returned here? Her skull felt as if it were clamped around a granite boulder; every thought dragged through a wearisome quagmire of pain.

How does she resist so strongly? Grandion wondered in telepathic Dragonish. All those drugs, the battering of fifty Enchanters augmenting her mother’s powers, and Lia’s mind remained inviolable–yet they stole all of our secrets, shell-father. They ripped us apart like a Dragon stripping flesh from bone!

You must arise, o Princess of Fra’anior, said Sapphurion, nuzzling her flank. Quick-wings!

Grandion said, Princess? No longer.

A royal ward, aye. Far too much nuisance-value to be a real princess. As surely as the twin suns’ rising, her adoptive father King Chalcion would disown her for outright rebellion, not to mention breaking his ribs. He had vowed to renounce her often enough over the years. Now she had learned the identities of her true birth-father and birth-mother, each as hateful and power-hungry as the other, and she remembered Azziala slaying Ra’aba, the Roc, with her own hand. Then, the mystery shrouding Hualiama’s existence in the womb. A child, dead for two days, returned to life. Impossible.

Yet here she lay, her nostrils filled with the fusty odours of a well-used rug.

Hualiama, said the Dragon Elder, nudging her again. By my wings, Grandion, I’d give all the jewels of Gi’ishior for the healing powers of my Qualiana this hour. Take her quickly to the Land Dragon, shell-son. Secure the healing she needs.

So that Azziala might employ her powers in the annihilation of all who oppose her planned conquest? Yet the nuances of Grandion’s Dragonish betrayed his deep concern.

Focus on the mission, Sapphurion growled.

Aye. In her mind’s eye, Lia saw Grandion’s huge, spiky blue head nodding. My Dragonlove will find a way. That is her gifting. The one power even the Empress of the Dragon-Haters cannot possibly oppose.

Right then, Lia knew she could not have opposed pollen floating on a Fra’aniorian zephyr.

Unnh … Grandion?

Her drawn-out mental groan elicited bugles and exclamations of delight from the male Dragons, but she had never felt so peculiar. Her body felt unaccountably heavy, while her belly enlivened to a fizzing, effervescing sensation that made Lia imagine having swallowed a nest of vexed hornets. Grandion and Sapphurion’s fussing caused constellations of iridescent fire to explode behind her unyielding eyelids. Her spinal column, especially at its base near her tailbone, tingled with exotic fervour, giving rise to an incongruous compulsion to dance over thunderclouds and slide down rainbows singing at the top of her lungs.

Clearly, her brain had been pickled at length in a barrel of berry-wine.

Sapphurion urged, Dragon-swift now, shell-son. Snaffle the Dragonfriend into your paw. Wing away ere the Hater changes her mind.

Talon-tips prodded her belly. Another paw rolled her carefully onto her side. Draconic warmth. Soft, yet steely, Grandion’s well-known paw enfolded her limbs and ribs. The cinnamon-vanilla redolence of his hide tickled her nostrils with forbidden scents.

Mind her fragile wings, hissed the Tourmaline.

Wings? Lia chortled aloud. Silly Dragons. Her overlarge eyes fluttered open, strangely unfocussed, lighting upon a world swirling and cascading with white-fire filigrees. Astonishing. Oh, and a large blue nose hove into view, slap between her eyes–achoo!

As she sneezed, clouds of sulphurous white smoke spurted from her nostrils. Lia gasped, Oh no!

* * * *

It had not been a dream.

Clasped in the Tourmaline’s protective paw, the bewildered hatchling Dragoness was but an observer as Grandion charged up a short ramp, flitted between a massive set of sliding granite doors, and launched out over the void. Suns-beams caressed her flesh. They gilded the male Dragon’s gemstone beauty as his great body stretched out upon the breeze, blotting out the sky above, for Grandion measured over ninety feet from muzzle to tail-spike, and one hundred and ten feet across his fully extended wingtips. He powered upward into frigid skies the fathomless blue of a terrace lake seen by moonlight, swiftly surmounting the snow-rimed crown of Chenak Island. Lia’s vision wobbled violently before settling upon the twin suns dipping gingerly into the vast, burnt-umber Cloudlands ocean stretching West of the Lost Isles; at once, her secondary nictitating membranes flicked into place, filtering the powerful glare.

Her gaze dipped to goggle myopically at her unfamiliar body. Flying ralti sheep–well, not exactly a woolly bleater, not in a million Island-World dawns. She saw scales of a blue as fathomless as the colours crowning the evening sky. Four neat, reptilian limbs sprouted from her svelte torso. Five perfect little talons adorned each forepaw, slightly bigger on her hind feet. Three talons pointed forward, splayed more widely than a Human hand, while two opposing ‘thumbs’ completed a fantastically dextrous Dragon’s paw. Lia flicked her wings in mounting astonishment. She gaped at her flanks, as sleek as any rainbow trout.

Only under a Mystic Moon could this be real.

The Tourmaline Dragon’s fire-eyes lit upon her, and Hualiama quivered beneath the tenor of his regard. All twelve feet of her, right down to her … tail. What a wondrously weird notion.

Awake, o Dragonsong of my soul? inquired Grandion, ardently.

“I’m a Dragon? Still?”

His brow-ridges crinkled with amusement. Switching to Island Standard, he rumbled, “Most Dragonkind share a similar experience every morn, Hualiama. Aye, by my wings, you remain a Star Dragoness. Your dreams have taken wing. By Fra’anior’s breath alone! Never in the history of this Island-World has such a transformation clothed Human flesh in draconic splendour. You are–” his voice descended into a husky splutter “–indescribable. I … I understand at last. Our oaths, our fire-promises; all is made whole. The prophecy is fulfilled by such perfection, a Dragon’s hearts must out-soar the very stars.”

A million words could have been spoken. All that was perverse and forbidden about a liaison between a Human and a Dragon, all their suppressed feelings and uncertainty and terror, had perished in Razzior’s mighty fires, only to arise phoenix-like from the ashes, arrayed in a glorious newness of possibility. She was a mere hatchling in size, but fully Dragoness. Undeniably, wholly, the embodiment of a draconic fire-soul. Yet was this the whole story? The prophecy Grandion alluded to, which Amaryllion the Ancient Dragon had uttered, foresaw the advent of a third great race upon the stage of Island-World life. A third power would rise to balance that of Humankind and Dragonkind, ushering in a time of imbalance, and foreshadowing the overthrow of ancient powers. She was the harbinger of this age. Lia quashed her fears. Of this, she could not speak as yet. Let his joy shine unsullied.

Tentatively, she inquired, “Indescribable … in the best possible way?”

How he laughed! His guffaws propelled them toward the brightening stars in a series of great lurches, and when Lia managed to focus her eyes past his body to the open skies, she saw a marvellous sight, a brilliant comet blazing right across the midline of the Blue Moon, its major tail trailing more than halfway across the sky, while a second, smaller white tail spun off at a narrow angle. The comet of prophecy? It must be, this new portent.

As she gazed at the diamond-brilliant phenomenon, the cosmic white-fires shifted like sweeping veils to reveal a great white Dragon sleeping in the comet’s heart. Cold. Callous. Eloquent of all that was formidable and supremely dominant about the Ancient Dragonkind. So desperately soul-shadowing was that apparition, Lia gasped and squeezed her eyes shut. The Tourmaline immediately comforted her with a mellifluous word, saying:

A life birthed in fire,

Star Dragons sing starsong over her cradle.

She whispered, “The prophecy is coming to fruition.”

The Dragon made a low, agreeable hum. “Let us not speak of prophecies, my third heart. Let us simply be two Dragons, enjoying the freedom of the skies together.”

Two Dragons? Even those simple words triggered mystical white-fires which cascaded afresh across her vision, an insight into the fabled elemental fires of the draconic creation legend; the belief that all matter, in its most elemental form, was comprised of white-fires. White for order, truth, and love, for the most desirable manifestations of dragonhood. Dark-fires represented chaos, depression, and eternal obliteration, symbolic of all that Dragons feared most.

When she ventured another glance, she saw only a comet.

All mysticism and lore aside, Lia did not exactly feel stuffed to the eyeballs with the mischief of a frisky dragonet. She wanted to shift her position in Grandion’s right forepaw, but the slightest movement produced unbearable pain. Was this what he meant? Her wings felt weighed down with lead, and her hearts-beat was sluggish and laboured. Dragons were meant to be full of vim and fire and irascibility. It was all Lia could do to hold up her head.

“Grandion, why did you say I’m dying?”

His heavy sigh expelled many cubic feet of creamy, chthonic smoke from his nostrils, and caused him to bounce in the chill evening air. “Because two weeks have passed–”

“Two weeks? Two–eighteen days, Grandion? You jest …”

His reflexive growl simmered down. “Two weeks ago, the Empress of the Lost Islands laid all Dragons low. Last week she allowed Sapphurion and me to wake from the Command-hold. Since then, we have plumbed every ounce of lore and skill we possess to discern the cause of your illness and keep you alive, but to no avail. Your eye-fires grow dim. Your breath weakens. Your claws and hide are losing their natural sheen.”

“I … I don’t understand.”

“I drove a bargain with the Empress–a vile, soul-shadowing … necessity.” He spat a stream of fire from the corner of his mouth. “I speak of her, and of my fierce yet worthless pride. You crossed the Island-World for a blind Dragon! You, Dragonfriend, wooed and battled and tore a defeated Tourmaline from the place of uttermost null-fires, and gifted him life. How could my fires answer these deeds, I roared? How despicably did I treat you in return?”

His grieving thunder split the skies, rolling over the archway crowning the peak of Chenak Island. The Place of Reaving where Hualiama had suffered, frozen solid, and become blue-star, the embodiment of her name. Was that the moment Dragon fire had entered her soul?

Surely, she had lived with the fire since before her birth.

The White and Blue Moons, waxing to fullness, stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder in the darkling skies to shine their baleful gaze across the Lost Islands, which loomed above the pallid Cloudlands like linked bracelets, two loops of Islands joined by northern and southern ‘bridges’ across the Buffer Zone, that symbol of eternal enmity and the battleground between Human-controlled territory to the West and Dragon territory to the East. The Islands were geographically anomalous in many ways, but none more so than in terms of climate. The Human Isles were bitterly cold, caught in the frozen grip of an almost-permanent midwinter, while the Dragon Isles, despite their extreme northern latitude, remained balmy in comparison. Knowledge gleaned from the Dragon-Haters’ extraordinary mind-meld informed Lia that most crops were husbanded in sheltered valleys near thermal springs or vents, while most Human communities relied on artificially warmed underground strongholds for survival.

Bitterly, the Dragon hissed, “We were as Human babes in the Enchantress’ paw! Ralti sheep! The Empress snuffed us out, our fires, our life. You alone defied your mother, even drugged at twenty times the permitted dose, despite being beaten and tortured–your fires burned anyone who dared enter your mind, more draconic than the mightiest of the Dragonkind. Listen to my dark-fires jealousy, Hualiama! Listen!”

“I listen,” she growled back at once, stung beyond forbearance. “I hear Grandion the great-hearted–”

“Who is he?”

“The one for whom I burned!”

GRRROOOAARRR!! Yet the thunderous crack of his Storm-power betrayed deeper emotions–relief. Amazement. Delight that she suspected was centred upon the scrap of draconic life he clutched in his paw.

Infusing her voice with a snap of command, she said, “Situational assessment, Dragon? Brief me.”

He gave her a quirky look, mouth agape like a hound with its tongue lolling. “By the fiery pits of Fra’anior, this must be the smallest Dragon Elder I have ever beheld.”

“Don’t try my patience, Tourmaline!”

“Or you’ll break out in song and dance?”

“The deadly dancer?” She smiled wryly, agog at the unfamiliar sensation of lips stretching over a hundred needle-sharp fangs. “As a Dragon, that’ll all be different now.”

“You danced into my hearts, Human girl.”

Hualiama did not point out the obvious, but the slight hitch in Grandion’s breathing told her he had noticed his mistake. No, Human no longer. That truth had flown into the night. However, he was being awfully sweet. Was this a result of the liberation they had both craved for so long? Freedom at last to enjoy togetherness and romance, even if their time must be shadowed by an Island-shaking war to come. How could she stop her delightful birth-mother from abusing her daughter’s powers in conquest of the Island-World?

If daughter she was. Lia wished she understood. How could a person spring from a Human womb, yet experience lucid eggling-dreams? And oh, she remembered the impish blue-haired Hualiama she had discovered within her, who had promised that after a surprise, all would become clear. Fat, waddling chance of that, she snorted inwardly. Plenty of surprise. And all the clarity of a sultry volcanic thunderstorm rolling across the twenty-seven Islands of her native Fra’anior Cluster. Her eyes rested speculatively on the twin holes from which a Dragon’s breath of uttermost winter had emerged to bathe her bones in the Reaving. She had lost her necklace down there, the simple thong upon which she had threaded the White Dragoness’ scale. Mamafire. The eggling had called the White Dragoness, who had somehow enraged Fra’anior himself, Mamafire.

Eggling and mother-Dragon had protected each other, impossibly, across time and space. So little made sense. A dream, an echo of Amaryllion’s power within her? It must be.

Grandion said, No. I forbid you to seek that necklace. Far too dangerous an undertaking for a hatchling.

How did you know? Smoke boiled past her nose. Wow.

The direction of your gaze, he said.

That was the one token I possessed of my past, she replied, painfully aware of how much the nuances of her Dragonish revealed.

A token, he said. My duty is to protect your hatchling-life. Forgive me, but I cannot allow it.

Forgive? Allow? Hualiama’s head shook involuntarily, sparking spasms of pain in her torso. Could she so much as shake a wingtip? Perhaps Grandion was right. He was a changed Dragon, almost Human in the tenor of some of his emotions. What traditionalist firebrand of a Dragon, such as Razzior or Andarraz the Green, would ever apologise or ask forgiveness? It was simply … undraconic. Now her belly-fires churned alarmingly. Her Grandion was more. A thinking, compassionate Dragon. Insightful in his outlook and ways. He had never been willing to simply charge through life without reflecting upon his actions, though he had made mistakes and did not always apologise immediately, he always returned to those events, chewing them like a Dragon sharpening his fangs on a meaty bone.

Faintly, she said, “I’ve much head knowledge about Dragons, Grandion. Now I need to learn how to be one. Will you help me?”

“I’d be honoured,” replied the Tourmaline, with an aerial genuflection of his wings.

“I shall be a model student,” Lia joked, but the pain returned, sharper and more debilitating than before. “Aaaaah …”

How can I help, o firesong of my soul?

Speak. Distract me with stories. She must hold out. Siiyumiel had healed Grandion’s sight. Surely, he could heal a Dragoness of whatever strange malady had incapacitated her.

Shortly, Grandion said, “Following the battle at the Dragon’s Bell, Azziala returned to her fortress to recoup. Many Dragonships were lost in the battle and many of her Dragon Enchanters were slain, including a number of powerful Councillors–you do understand that she sees your accomplishments and rebellion as further proof of your fitness to rule at her right hand?”

Lia did not. Reflection gave way to pain spreading through her limbs, as thick and slow as treacle, cloying and clinging to every newfound pathway of her being. She was a Star Dragoness. Supposedly. She had touched Sapphurion with white-fire power and restored his life. Yet she could not heal herself? She must struggle. Summon the power. Fight …

“You alone resisted the Command-hold,” the Tourmaline continued. “They could not apply the magic successfully. The Empress set to work upon you with fifty Enchanters, and with torture and drugs meant to break your mental resistance, but in a week, all they achieved was to fly headlong against the adamantine fortress of your mind. They lost a further eleven of their strongest and fittest to your fires. Now, Sapphurion and I are commanded to find healing for you. The Empress threatens to use your kin and the lives of all Dragons against you, should you deviate from her plans.”

She gasped, “Dying is not an option?”

“Our fates depend on your continued health,” Grandion confirmed.

“Affurion?”

“The Lost Islands Dragons remain at large. Azziala seems content to make her preparations. But many Dragonkind have been sacrificed to raise up new Councillors and to clothe her Dragonships.”

Her eyes no longer responded. “Elki? Sao … oh Grandion, I burn …”

An eruption of agony knotted her limbs and wings. Hualiama faded as if she had fallen into the Cloudlands. Darkness conquered her heart, soul and mind.

* * * *

She walked amidst stars. So dark was the night, its blackness seemed cut of velveteen cloth. Whereas before, the stars had dazzled, now they appeared diminished, bowed over a hexagonal colonnade of milky white marble … she knew. She ran, holding nothing back. Above, the stars bowed over a wide bed covered in pristine white linens, stooping to chime elegiac starsong over the girl slumbering there.

“No!” Lia sprinted up the white marble steps to the bedside. “Oh no, Human girl …”

She lay so still. A wealth of wavy white-blonde hair tumbled over the pillows, lacklustre, blending in to the sheets. Her skin was snow rather than her native Fra’aniorian tan.

“What have I done? Wake up. Oh mercy, wake up. Please, my darling petal. Wake.”

At one level, Hualiama’s mind whirled between amazement at calling herself ‘Human girl’, and the incongruity of her identical twin inhabiting her dreams once more. She touched her own blue tresses, thinking, ‘This is me? Who am I?’ But far more urgent was the realisation that the bones of the sleeper’s knuckles, where her hand lay carelessly outflung upon the linens, pressed against her pale, almost translucent flesh like jagged peaks seeking to worm their way through the thinnest of parchment; that her exposed left cheekbone described a sepulchral slash above the hollow of her cheek. She had aged forty years, appearing … withered. Just the husk, the sweet youth of twenty-one summers, burned away.

Lia bit her knuckles. “Oh, petal. Help me understand. Why are you–we–dying? What did I do wrong? All I ever wanted was the chance to spread my wings.” A sob shook her frame. “Please. Don’t fly to the fires, not yet. We must be together. That’s our destiny, don’t you see?”

She stroked the other girl’s fingers, feeling the skin crinkle like aged scrolleaf. Bending, she tested the girl’s breath against her cheek. Aye. Still alive, but her flame guttered. She murmured encouragement, but her other-self was too deeply unconscious to respond. Was her soul divided? Damaged? Cleft in twain, as the balladeers might enrobe this ruin in verse? How was it that she saw herself, and spoke to herself, in this manner? Pensively, she tried to summon magic to ease the girl’s pain, and it seemed for a moment that the other-self’s breathing eased. Then, the sleeper rolled over and fixed her empty eye-sockets upward.

“You stole my life!” rasped blonde-Hualiama.

Lia screamed, then screamed again as the face crumbled. Black fires spurted between the cracks riven in her flesh. As the prone body exploded in flame, a great wind rose to blast heat into blue-haired Hualiama’s face. She stumbled backward and tumbled into space, before striking her head sharply against the bottom step.

Faster than thought, she was gone.

Chapter 2: Dying to be Reborn

HUALIAMA SNAPPED BACK into her Star Dragoness’ body with a visceral wrench. Gaaaaarrgggh! Her smoke–only smoke, not Dragon fire–slipped between Grandion’s curled talons, and whipped away on the breeze.

“Awake, my beauty?”

She coughed agonisingly. “Just about.”

“My lecturing proved a slumberous song most irresistible?”

His lip curled upward, exactly like a Human’s smile bar the glimmering of a few dozen fangs in that mighty maw. Dawn’s beneficent glow marred his physical beauty in no imaginable facet. In fact, the gleam of his scales was positively migraine-inducing, trapping the suns’ rays like ten thousand living prisms and reflect them back in uncountable hues of his signature tourmaline blue, a lighter lake-blue than his shell-father’s sapphire, and the daylight sky compared to Hualiama’s midnight-blue colouration with its dusting of white. She bit back a growl of discontent. Captivity had agreed with Grandion. He had no right to ponce about in ruddy draconic splendour while she resembled a tattered, moth-eaten old rug!

“I’m moulting,” she blurted out.

“A poor sign,” he sighed, gently stroking her spine-spikes with the tip of one talon. Lia almost leaped out of her new hide. Heavens that tickled, in a way that made her fires blush. “You’ll moult more freely when you see who’s waiting for us.”

“We’re already there?” The tiny Dragoness peered about curiously, wishing to shake herself free of that awful dream, but she knew any shaking would introduce excruciating pain to her joints. “Grandion, this doesn’t look right. There’s the Bell, what’s left of it, but why are there mountains–oh.”

He chuckled indulgently. Siiyumiel awaits.

Her mistake. This was the right place. Grandion must have flown rapidly, right through the night, winging her across the breadth of the Lost Islands. Now they descended rapidly toward the Dragon’s Bell from a height she estimated at two miles above what navigators called ‘Island-level’, which in the Lost Islands was two and a quarter miles above the Cloudlands, while at her native Fra’anior, the greatest volcano in the known world, the sheer cliffs surmounted a full league in height. The bell-Island still bore the scars of the ferocious five-way battle two weeks before. The Lost Islands Dragons. Sapphurion’s forces from the Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior. The Dragon rebels under Andarraz and Razzior. Azziala’s Dragon-Haters. Grandion and his Dragon Rider, the crux of it all. Hated and hunted in equal measure. Its crown and flanks were scorched in many places, and the Bell itself–Lia hung her head–had partially slumped toward the ground, melted by a Star Dragoness’ fire.

But the breath-stealing wonder was the Land Dragon lying asleep a quarter-league northwest of the Dragon’s Bell, dwarfing the Island.

At rest, Siiyumiel seemed a monster washed ashore by some unimaginable Cloudlands tide. He was roughly oval in shape, no less than a mile wide at his girth and three times that in length. Hualiama did not want to imagine how deep beneath the toxic billows his body might extend. Seven neat, regular rows of light brown peaks arrayed his stellated carapace, which struck her as solid rock rather than Dragon hide, from the smaller two hundred foot peaks around his periphery, to the towering thousand-foot summits in the centre of his back. A girl could hike amongst those mountains. His head lay hidden within his foreparts; yet even from this distance, she sensed the mighty furnaces of his magic.

Siiyumiel was the Guardian of Wisdom of the Shell-Clan Land Dragons, according to legend, the mightiest of the Land Dragon Clans North of the Rift. Aware her jaw was dangling, catching insects, Hualiama shut her mouth slowly.

The Island sleeps, she murmured, utterly failing to eliminate a plethora of contextual awe-indicators from her mental voice. How can any living creature be that gigantic, Grandion?

Perhaps the friend of an Ancient Dragon might instruct a lowly Lesser Dragon in such mysteries? he sniped.

If size counts, I am the lesser Dragon. The Tourmaline snorted an amused fireball at this sally. Emboldened, Lia added, But in sheer, wing-shivering awe, I am the greater. We promised to return. This feels right, Grandion.

You’re trembling, little one, he trilled. Strength to your forepaws. Allow me to ease your pain, with your permission.

Again, an implicit apology. Lia had a crazed urge to shout, ‘Who stole my Dragon?’ But perhaps the witticism was better left unspoken. Dragons tended to misinterpret Human humour, in her experience, leading to unpredictable results.

She observed in mounting surprise as Grandion revisited a mental technique she had employed on him, soothing her pain by taking it upon himself. Blues were the most natural and adept draconic magic-users, but he made what she had sweated over appear, well, as easy as a Dragon shooting the breeze. Moreover, Lia sensed a deep intertwining of their powers, an augmentation and harmony founded in soul-togetherness, as perplexing as it was profound. Philosophical outpourings sufficient to overflow terrace lakes had been written by Human and Dragon sages regarding the advantageous qualities of marriage or long-term liaison between their respective kinds, and the draconic ascending fire-promises touched upon this notion, but nothing she could recall spoke to the unambiguous amplification of magical powers.

Had Grandion noticed? Here was a mystery to bedazzle her fading soul.

Thank you, my … uh, Dragonlove? Sorry, I’m not so good at endearments as yet. I’ll practice.

His eye-fires whirled with passion and amusement as he gazed down at her. A Dragoness must to grow into her paws, we say.

Her fey spirit had always kept a touch apart from him, she realised, a safe distance in a sense abetted by the forbidden nature of their liaison. Now she was a Star Dragoness. Her last excuse had been burned away … and it scared and thrilled her, beyond measure, to taste this new dawn in her life.

Grandion said, “Now, I will summon the Great One. Affurion’s kin know of our arrival, but have chosen not to display their wings. And I have no doubt Azziala tests the breezes, wishing to discern if she is able to Command these Land Dragons. Her allowing us freedom–if freedom it is–cannot be without purpose. Agreed?”

“Agreed!”

Yet her double eyelids seemed too heavy to resist, shuttering of their own accord as Grandion’s swoop pressed her stomach–stomachs, to be accurate–against her spine, and her Dragon senses fed back the minutiae of increasing pressure and temperature. The wind’s passage over her tongue stupefied her brain with the knowledge of thousands of distinct tangs and odours and pollens and grit and gases. Awesomeness. Rolling over her in tingling waves, vital and alive, yet even the sparkling of her senses could not disguise the diminished awareness they beat against.

Grandion’s voice rang out over the Cloudlands:

Arise, o brother of the deeps,

Siiyumiel-ap-Yanûk-bar-Shûgan,

Hearken to our call!

The beast drowsed. Yet as the Tourmaline Dragon called out a second time, Lia sensed a prodigious stirring of magic, and then a series of deafening reports KRA-KRA-KRACK!! fired against her ears in a barrage of thunder. As before, his foreparts split open to reveal the dark purple inner parts of the Land Dragon, then his scaly grey-blue head pushed out from a gap between the tipped-over mountains, revealing no less than seven great, flaming eyes arranged at even intervals around the circumference of his skull. Perfect panoramic vision, her inner engineer noted. That would be a trick, although with her Dragoness’ eyes positioned either side of her skull, her extended range of vision was giving her a decent headache. The folds of Dragon hide smoothed out with a great rustling sound as Siiyumiel’s neck extended as if fitted with invisible rollers, and the corners of his mouth, located two hundred and fifty feet either side of the awestruck Dragoness, curved upward in what was clearly a draconic smile.

Creatures of the heights! he boomed.

Although he remembered to modulate his voice, the force of his outcry still slugged Grandion a goodly hundred feet sideways in the air. The Lesser Dragon corrected with a low growl, his right wingtip brushing the Island as he angled for a landing beside the Bell.

As the obligatory exchange of formal draconic greetings proceeded, Siiyumiel’s vast jaw ground to a halt a few tens of feet shy of Grandion and Hualiama, shaking the Island beneath their paws. So, the she-Dragon is revealed, he said, even more gently. She is born, the daughter of star-fire!

Marvellous, redolent magic washed over her.

I-I thank you, Siiyumiel, she whispered. How did you know? How did you see before any other Dragon?

Foresight is a product of my Balance-power, he rumbled. Just as my Sight bade me tarry to witness the birth of the Star Dragoness for whom our Island-World has groaned many a season, and as I now see you, struck low … it is the song of my thread in the Balance of the Harmonies to restore you to full health. Only–he paused with the delicacy of a living behemoth–I must confess, I know not how, exactly.

If you do not know, o Guardian of Wisdom, what hope have we? Grandion put in.

Alastior. Thou quick-winged Son of Truth.

Hualiama did not grasp the reference, but her companion bowed his muzzle to the ground. May my hearts ever burn bright with received honour. Now, Hualiama …

I know. Thou art hasty, creature of the upper air, Siiyumiel chuckled, but I understand. You arrived barely in time, for her soul prepares for its eternal flight. Approach, little one, that I might touch thee with my paw.

Hualiama froze, then blurted out in an unfortunate squeak, Uh … gently?

No mind. The Land Dragon’s carapace dipped slightly to the South, and after a surprisingly long pause, an Island-slapper of paw appeared, tipped by a trio of blunt, metallic claws each three times longer than Grandion’s wingspan, she estimated. Whereas Grandion could encompass her curled-up Dragoness’ body in one paw, this paw could have comfortably curled around the entire Dragon’s Bell Island. Soft apricot colours infused Siiyumiel’s eye-fires as he inclined his head and tilted his talons, clearly puzzling over how to touch a hatchling-sized Dragoness without splattering her upon the rock, improbably reminding her of how the Palace servants used to deal with the seasonal invasion of charflies, which hatched as larvae in the lava flows around Fra’anior.

Soon, they settled upon an awkward arrangement. Siiyumiel rested his paw upon its side, making a sloped roof over the two Lesser Dragons, while a clearly protective Grandion stooped beneath to press Lia against the Land Dragon’s warm, pliant hide.

Siiyumiel’s eyes flicked from fiery to opaque as a membrane slid over them, then the foremost eye, the largest one in the centre of his forehead, brightened until it blazed white, shooting a powerful, heated beam of light upon Hualiama. Having expected to be flattened by some titanic magic, she was more than startled to see her Dragonflesh grow transparent beneath this transcendent gaze, and while she had the impression of being examined to the depth of her elemental nature, Siiyumiel did not otherwise move, gesture or apparently even draw breath for the next hour.

She itched. Fretted. Took a snap at Grandion’s lower lip when he ordered her to keep still. Of course, he lauded this behaviour as perfectly draconic.

Lia decided that if this continued, he’d earn himself a rash of bites and bruises!

But eventually, Siiyumiel vented an almighty, HMM!!

By my wings! Grandion snorted, digging his talons into the bedrock to prevent them from being blown away by a gust of richly spiced wind.

I find no defect in her draconic–

The Tourmaline roared, Defect? This Dragoness has no defect!

Patience, Alastior. Siiyumiel seemed amused, yet his tone communicated anxiety. The imperative to act with haste, which is anathema to bottom-dwellers, remains. The tracery of draconic pathways of fire and magic, and the aura-effects of her soul-fires, reveal no immediate physical malady one may treat by means of the physical sciences. So we will move at once to the greater and more mystical dominion of Harmony.

Harmony? snorted Grandion.

Lia, by contrast, was all curiosity and openness to experimentation. Harmony? Teach me, Siiyumiel.

Knowledge must wait upon life, he reproved. I will teach thee the meditations to bring yourself into a state of Balance. Concentrate on my song, o Star Dragoness, and focus your mind upon my words. Will yourself into a state of wholeness–no, high-dweller, it is not that easy! Grandion flicked his wings in annoyance as Siiyumiel chopped off his protest at the knees. Were this enigma so straightforward, would we not this moment be taking our ease over a tasty philosophical conundrum, or learning a Star Dragoness’ insights into Harmony?

But I know nothing. I need your teaching, Siiyumiel! Lia blurted out.

For the first time, the great, dignified Land Dragon seemed floored. Well, perhaps he already walked upon the floor of the world, Lia did not know. But his great jaw sagged and he produced an undignified mental splutter.

Then, Siiyumiel thundered, Who is thy shell-mother, little one?

One mother is called Azziala, the woman you saw. The other, I dream–

Two mothers? The monstrous forepaw withdrew to deliver a vigorous scratching to his lower neck, shaking their Island once more. Hualiama imagined she was standing on the deck of a Dragonship juddering in the breeze. Siiyumiel growled, Duality. A fascinating Harmonic nuance.

Annoyingly–of course–he refused to explain more. The light of his central eye shone, the paw returned, and the Dragon set about hypnotising her, as best she could tell. The Shell-Clan Dragon had her work through a series of increasingly bizarre visualisation exercises aimed at reintroducing Harmony to her being, while he sang a deep, intensely moving Dragonsong in words neither Grandion nor Hualiama understood. The wash of magic was gorgeous and compelling. Hualiama wished for health and wholeness and concord and the rising of her Dragon fires. Nothing happened. She imagined true flame and summoned white-fires to her aid. Failure. By their seventh attempt, she was humming along with Siiyumiel and wishing that by some miracle, she could dance. That would surely winkle out whatever strange malaise had infected her, wouldn’t it?

Sooner than seemed possible, noon arrived and Grandion brought her fresh kill, a giant rock hyrax.

Raw, bloody meat. Yum. Apparently irresistible to a hatchling, though her Human turned up her pert nose in disgust.

Over lunch, she explained the mystery of her existence, about her Human mother and her eggling-dreams and the soul-wrenching desire she had always experienced, to learn to fly. Siiyumiel suggested her new draconic manifestation was clear proof that she had always somehow been a Dragonish fire-spirit incarnated in Human flesh, impossibly, but the vibrant crimson swirls of colour which entered his eyes proclaimed his consternation. But as she spoke again of Amaryllion’s inexplicable gifts, the fifty foot wide eyes beaming down upon them cleared to a purer, almost translucent flame of a kind Hualiama had never seen before, emanating a magical or visual Dragonsong that electrified every bone in her body.

I begin to grasp a vision, said Siiyumiel.

Lia sniffed, How does any Dragon grasp the definitively ungraspable, Siiyumiel?

Lia! Manners, Grandion warned.

We were all hatchlings once, o Alastior, said the great Land Dragon, his lips curling left and right in a return of that smile which from their perspective, spanned three quarters of the horizon. Patience. I must reflect deeply and rapidly upon this matter.

And with that, his eyes shuttered and Siiyumiel appeared to fall fast asleep!

* * * *

Hualiama had never been much enamoured of the discipline of patience, as the monks of her monastery knew all too well. But now, tolerance was enforced. Ill health was a pitiless taskmaster. Nothing in her broad experience of magic could have prepared her for this sense of powerlessness. Inanition. The knowledge that all of her resources, all of her stubbornness, her heritage and gifting, had come to nought. All she had was the vague intuition that her life should not end so–and the wisdom of a Land Dragon.

Grandion snugged her in his paw and curled his body around them both, creating a warm, safe space. Her body felt glued to the ground, incapable of ever rising again.

As sleep claimed her, she heard the Tourmaline Dragon whisper, I couldn’t stand to lose you, Blue-star.

She dreamed of flying through the cosmos.

When Lia awoke, she found Siiyumiel watching her through the tiny space created by the bent of Grandion’s wrist, the sheltering curve of his shoulder, and the edge of the Tourmaline Dragon’s overarching wing; the Land Dragon’s expression, unfathomable.

Without a word of preamble, he said, “Hualiama Blue-star, the power of Balance or Harmony is, in essence, the power of seeing what truly is. We must see the true nature of the Island-World. No matter how it presents itself, it is this power of inner sight or as we say in Dragonish, true-seeing or even white-fire wielding, that underpins and informs our discernment of Harmony. I’d posit that without truth, Harmony cannot exist.”

Switching to Dragonish, he continued, We Land-Dragons call this body of lore ‘the Balance of the Harmonies’. We believe that all matter, all existence, and all spirit-forms of creatures both corporeal and incorporeal, exist in an enormous, yet delicate, Universe-spanning state of interdependence. All life is a function of Harmony. Chaos is disharmony. Events are stanzas and melodies in the song of Balance, and they can tip the Balance unexpectedly. Consider the departure of your friend Amaryllion Fireborn, or the imminent advent of Numistar Winterborn, the Ancient Dragoness, according to the sign ablaze in the heavens.

Whaaa … Grandion wheezed.

Equally staggered, Lia gasped, The comet is … it is an Ancient … no!

She had seen Numistar at the time of her Reaving. How could she have known? She had thought that but a hallucination, a product of Azziala’s magic and the deathly cold of Reaving wreaking havoc with her mind! Even Grandion had imagined fighting Numistar’s storm en route to the Lost Islands, she gleaned from his mind now. Coincidence? Let a hatchling’s wings shiver …

Let no falsehood blacken your tongue, Star Dragoness! Siiyumiel ticked her off.

At once, the Tourmaline Dragon’s paws enfolded her. Gently, Siiyumiel! You underestimate your strength.

Interpretation of visions is a shell-mother’s vegetable-pulp to her hatchlings, complained the Land Dragon, but regret-indicators moderated his tone. Hualiama. Tell Grandion what you sensed.

“I–I thought it was just a feeling. A fleeting fear.”

“And now?”

Angered by Siiyumiel’s challenge, Hualiama tried to struggle to her paws, but collapsed with a groan. “I sensed Numistar Winterborn travels within that comet–if not her body, then her spirit.” Shielding her with his paw, Grandion exhaled a stream of fire. “Aye, Grandion. I dismissed it as … as hatchling- nightmares. Silly fears. Siiyumiel, this cannot be. The Ancient Dragons departed this Island-World aeons ago. Amaryllion was the last.”

The Land Dragon said, “Yet one has evidently betrayed the Onyx Dragon’s purpose. You yourself told me, stars will plummet from the sky.”

Every scale of her hide cried out at once. Lia gritted her fangs, drawing a quiet word of support from the Tourmaline, even as his belly-fires reached a pitch that vibrated throughout his body.

“You thought the prophecy related to you,” Siiyumiel observed, in the quietest whisper he had yet essayed. “Not all is your fault, little Blue-star, nor is draconic hubris inexcusable. Some events are beyond even a Star Dragoness’ ambit. Aye, Numistar’s star shall fall upon this Island-World. You saw beyond what is apparent to the naked eye, quarrying the truth from a comet’s heart–and thus, I deduce your innate potential to discern the Balance of the Harmonies.”

“Some Dragons would shiver, proclaiming our ruin,” Grandion said, “yet I say, they have not yet beheld the treasure I have held.”

“Grandion!”

“You growled, Hualiama?”

“My paws are only this big.” She held up a forepaw to illustrate.

“Your hands were far smaller, yet mighty were their deeds,” he countered.

Unfortunately, a hatchling-sized Dragoness’ growl wasn’t about to scare her eight-times-larger companion. Grandion’s chortling told her she was just being cute, which was possibly the best way under the twin suns to fire up her anger.

“If you two have finished mingling fires,” the Land Dragon said indulgently, “our task is to seek your personal harmony, Hualiama. Do you remember when we first met and you saw my inner fire-form bowing to you?”

“No,” said Grandion.

“Yes,” said Lia.

Siiyumiel said, “I’ve baffled you by overcomplicating the issue. I want you to seek your true form. Seek with the utmost strength of your hearts, Hualiama. Scour all that you know of your past and all that you are, as you summon this inner magic. Then, show us that truth.”

“Her true form is this Dragoness,” stated the Tourmaline.

Lia nodded slowly. “My spiritual form?”

“Aye,” rumbled Siiyumiel. “Gird up your courage. May you dive as deep as a Land Dragon.”

With this peculiar blessing, the Shell-Clan Dragon began his particular, multi-harmonic humming again. Hualiama wanted to protest. Had he snoozed an entire afternoon away to offer her such a simplistic solution? Had they not tried and failed? Was she not weary of the search for her origins, and truth be told, afraid of what more she might discover? She had searched and found Ra’aba, then Azziala. Who could know which of them had abused the other? Both were insatiably evil and selfish to the core; both had hated her with a consuming passion. Still, Siiyumiel had touched upon and clarified a conviction hitherto unvoiced in her conscious mind. Her life’s vision must not be to become what they were not. She must find Hualiama. The real Hualiama, whoever or whatever that was.

Child of the Dragon. Child of ruzal?

She had been the beneficiary of much love, too. Undeniably. Flicker, Amaryllion, Queen Shyana, Elki, Sapphurion and Qualiana, and of course, Grandion. Yet one person had always stood out as the oddity. Her other-self. The dream-twin with blue hair … or was she now the dream? Which of them controlled this life she lived?

The voice from her nightmare grated in her mind, ‘You stole my life!’

Had this Dragoness somehow stolen a Human’s life, becoming a ghastly mirror-image of the relationship between her father and Razzior the Orange Dragon? Horrific.

Never! she groaned.

With that, Hualiama summoned her deepest reserves of determination, the same willpower which had catapulted her across the Island-World in search of Grandion. Whispers of white-fire spread along the magical pathways of her draconic being. She was no life-stealer. Never would she conquer another being; she and Grandion had both learned that lesson, and lived with their regrets to this very day. Fire shone from her paws, scales and muzzle, wreathing her being with power, even as a star wrapped itself in its train of bedazzling majesty.

Grandion’s horrified shout broke briefly into her awareness. Hualiama! Don’t fly to the fires!

I fly to thee, she sang.

Blue-star must dance with Blue-star. They must embrace, and be one.

As the Land Dragon’s song swelled, the face of her Dragonlove receded behind veils of white-fires, shimmering as though seen through great heat. Help me, Grandion. Help me understand … to be …

Be what? Though he groaned, the Tourmaline Dragon poured the strength of his magic into her, helping Lia reach beyond what she was able in her weakened condition. He gave unstintingly, yet not without reserve, questions and uncertainty underlying a shining desire to be what she needed, no more and no less, and not to impose his ideas and will upon her as he had before. This was the meaning of fire-promises, she realised. The form of words was merely an indicator of the intense intimacy of sharing the fires of united souls, yet this fusion was in no way automatic. It was learned.

If she stole life, she must return life.

She must die to be reborn.

I waited for you. Be free, Hualiama.

She did not know who it was that spoke. It seemed two voices spoke at once, and with that, a newfound, fragile expression of magic flowered inside of her. Unfolding. Swathing some aspects of her nature as warm cloths swaddle a newborn infant. Unfurling other parts as a bud unfurls its petals to greet the suns’ warm kiss.

Grandion voiced a bugle of enormous surprise and grief.

Lia blinked. What? She felt most peculiar, as though her soul had once more traversed the Island-World and her poor, abused flesh had been forced to rush and stretch in unexpected ways to catch up.

The she looked down at herself, and screamed!

* * * *

When Hualiama screamed, all three of Grandion’s Dragon hearts leaped into the throes of a volcanic rage. Wrenching. Pounding. Drenching his wings and limbs with molten-fire rain. Should she not be pleased? No. She was horrified. Guilty delight at her response rose in his craw, rapidly engulfed by an inner flood of tangled, uncontrollable emotions.

Human again! How could this be?

Siiyumiel had betrayed them in the worst possible way.

Yet the enormous Shell-Clan Dragon appeared content. “This problem, I can treat,” he said. “Grant me a moment.”

“You stole my Dragon!” she wailed. “You … stole …”

Crimson splattered her lips as the girl collapsed against his paw. Grandion lowered Hualiama carefully to the ground. She looked ghastly, grey of complexion rather than the pink he remembered, and so emaciated, her skin was but brittle cloth drawn over skeletal bones. She was malnourished, he realised. Not just hungry, but wasted; lingering upon the cusp of death. This was the problem? This putrefying thing had been hiding within her draconic flesh, corrupting, even poisoning the Star Dragoness?

She rasped horribly, “How, Siiyumiel …”

“After minutely analysing the molecular structures of your being, I shall project and synthesize the exact micro-nutrient requirements to support a course of magical healing,” he replied, clearly misunderstanding her question.

“My Dragoness is gone!”

“Hush,” urged the Tourmaline. “Save your strength.”

“No, Grandion … how? Why? It cannot be. I’m sorry, I’ve failed you …”

Her whisper tore from a ravaged throat, no less wing-shivering than had she bellowed directly into his ear-canals. Grandion had no answers. For a few, glorious hours, she had been his. The very melody of his soul, unfettered, flyaway, yet so fleeting. Hope had made its habitation in his third heart. He wanted to bugle his grief and loss until the Dragon’s Bell rang for it, but he withheld for one simple reason. If Hualiama lived, all was not lost. Could her fire-soul be redeemed from this husk of Human flesh?

Grandion said, “Siiyumiel, we must–”

“Patience!” snapped the Land Dragon.

And with that, he released the floodgates of his magic. What had been before was a zephyr; now came the storm, yet so narrowly focussed upon Hualiama, Grandion felt the powerful wash as a play of colours teasing his senses, together with the tell-tale, scale-prickling side effects of intoxicating magic. The girl’s bare limbs twitched against the ground, but her sigh was the first truly peaceful sound the Tourmaline had heard cross her lips in more than a week.

“Now divide this, and feed it to her. Slowly. It is potent.”

Grandion’s paw snapped up to catch Siiyumiel’s offering as it rocketed forth from his mouth. Kinetic magic? Either way, he was not about to be struck down a second time! But a glob of a black, tar-like substance slapped into his palm and stuck there. He sniffed it curiously. Disgusting. Like one of those Human herbal concoctions they swore healed all ills. Moving with cautious haste, he slipped a digit beneath the girl’s neck to tilt her head, then with the smallest talon of his left forepaw, scooped up Siiyumiel’s medicine and brought it to her mouth. So delicate. So baby-birdlike in comparison to his maw. Grandion halved the amount, and then touched her lips with his claw-tip.

“Open.”

Her depthless eyes flicked open. “Qualiana?”

Grandion’s thought-memories filled with melancholy orange fire. Shell-mother! Oh, the loss … Lia must be hallucinating. “Eat.” A moist pink tongue licked once, twice.

“Ugh … foul.”

“The best medicine always is,” he said, with forced cheer.

The blue eyes lidded. Did she sleep? Grandion’s focus-magnification highlighted the moisture brimming beneath her eyelids. No. This was not slumber. In a moment, the pearlescent liquid touched her pretty eyelashes–he bridled at this suggestion of illicit Humanlove emanating from his third heart–and a glistening teardrop tiptoed the length of three filaments and spilled down her cheek. The capillaries just beneath her skin appeared slightly flushed, indicating heightened emotion. Yet at another level, he marvelled, focussing even more narrowly upon the teardrop, down to the microscopic level. Aye, did he not detect tiny whorls of flame-magic embedded in that moisture? Aye! Her unique magic lived!

Humans saw tears as precious. Joyful, grieving, they cried at the oddest times. The Tourmaline shuddered beneath the force of a talon-curling urge to seize anyone or any creature who dared to make this girl cry, rend them limb from limb, and char the remains until they blew away as ash over the Cloudlands. Siiyumiel first. How dare he wrest Hualiama’s future from her grasp and toss it into the nearest volcano?

“Eat, Lia.”

She ate slowly, not without struggle, making hatchling-like mewling noises of distress every time he bade her swallow. Yet even as his thoughts darkened toward the Land Dragon, Grandion’s senses thrilled to the enlivening of Hualiama’s flesh. Her heartbeat deepened and strengthened beat by beat. Fine, fiery colour crept across her hollow stomach, expanding toward her throat and limbs, while a tiny frisson began in the atrophied muscles–a sensation Grandion knew twice over from personal experience–as Siiyumiel’s potent brew percolated into her system. Toward midnight, the Land Dragon produced another, smaller glob of ultra-concentrated nutrients.

Bid her eat this. Then, she must sleep, said Siiyumiel. All true healing requires sleep.

Grandion said, What of her Dragoness?

Do her soul-fires not burn within?

You know what I mean, o brother of the deeps. Yet … pride speaks. I am not unthankful. Hualiama and I would express due gratitude, Siiyumiel. Gratitude that transcends description.

The Land Dragon performed an obeisance with his eye-fires. May my service be acceptable, mighty Tourmaline. It is not without purpose, for the future of my own kind, I must secure also. I prophesy a crucial role in the future of our deep-dwelling kind–for both of you.

Grandion stiffened in surprise. White-fires truth?

I wish that true-fires would burn between us, wing-brother. Forever.

Rising slowly from his cramped position guarding Hualiama, the Tourmaline Dragon considered these words, and tasted their fiery goodness in his third heart. She will succour your kind, too? Then let us be wing-brothers, indeed. I am honoured to bind my wings to our oath.

I burn in reflected honour, o mighty Tourmaline. I, too, bind my fires to this oath. Now, I must assume the role of teacher. I wish to teach you several deeper uses of the art of filtering, at the auditory, psychic, physical and emotional levels. I believe this knowledge will be your strong right paw against the depredations of Azziala, the so-called Empress of the Lost Islands.

As the Dragons of Fra’anior say, even after a thousand years, a volcano shall explode in reply.

The Land Dragon’s laughter was a rumbustious shaking of Grandion’s every fibre. Aye, but let us not wait a thousand years. A day or two shall suffice. Even a bottom-dweller must learn to value clarity over obfuscation.

The Tourmaline grinned back, disguising the nausea that racked his stomachs as he considered Hualiama’s fate. Siiyumiel thought a day or two would reveal a new truth? Never had he so feared to summon the white-fires of hope to his third heart. Instead, he jested, Thus, you shall obviate obfuscation.

Siiyumiel roared, Then let us to the meeting of fierce and fiery minds!

Chapter 3: Siiyumiel’s Balance

WAKING, SHE KNEW the balm of her Dragon’s embrace. Stirring, she knew the loss of her wings. Rising, she knew the pain of rebirth. Nothing worked as it should. Everything hurt with a freshness and piquancy that brought tears to her eyes, but the Princess of Fra’anior refused to give those tears credence. End the war. Find her Dragoness. Escape from her mother–these were her priorities. She stood, despite her legs wobbling like tender reeds.

“Glance at me in a way I don’t like, and I swear I’ll slap you to the Rim-Wall Mountains!” she greeted Grandion, grimly cheerful.

All her Dragon could do was choke on his own smoke.

Planting her hands on her gaunt hips, she faced seven ranks of mountains and shouted, “Siiyumiel, mighty Lord of Wisdom and assorted whatnot, I demand answers!”

Well. Not a decent shout, but it woke the Land Dragon from his undeserved slumber.

“Don’t hold me, Grandion.” Lia bent over, trying to catch her breath. Ooh, life was a pain. Literally. “Alright, Dragon, just this once, I’ll accept your help. Don’t get used to it.”

Three hundred feet offshore, Siiyumiel cracked open his main eye, revealing a narrow strip of glittering fire. “Is the Dragonfriend always this spirited?”

Lia eyed him as menacingly as a half-dead invalid could manage. “I count an Ancient Dragon amongst my friends. Yet, I must thank you …”

“You’re a great deal smaller than some of the parasites that plague Land Dragons.” Siiyumiel appeared to stretch, for though he barely moved, Lia felt and heard a series of massive cracks and groans emanate from his body. After several minutes, the noise settled and so did the Island beneath her bare feet. The great eye and its neighbours cracked further open, swirling in complex patterns of inner fire, agitated.

Hualiama abandoned the remonstrations she had been planning to unleash. “I sense your conflicted feelings, o mighty Siiyumiel,” she called. “Speak to me.”

Speak to her grief. Speak to the searing betrayal writ upon her heart. Lia wanted to scream, to rail, to cast herself off the Island rather than endure … what, humble humanity? Ungrateful for the very blood that pulsed in her arteries? O desolate girl! Yet could these Dragons not understand that to touch glory, then be robbed, was a fate infinitely crueller than to merely observe from the fringes, excluded by her very nature from ever participating?

Grandion did. Every scale on his body proclaimed his outrage.

Turning to her, the Tourmaline spat into his palm and held it out, cupped. “Drink first.”

“Your spit?”

“Water, from my water stomach.”

Hualiama shot Siiyumiel a glance meant to convey that her demand would be forgotten at his peril. Fine. The contents of a Blue Dragon’s water stomach, used to fuel their ice and Storm attacks, was supposed to be pure and sweet, according to the scrolls. Dragons did not apparently produce saliva in the same way as Humans. To the Dragonkind, spit was Acid, the mainstay of a Green Dragon’s offensive weaponry. His water should therefore be completely potable.

Dipping her hand into the liquid, she took a cautious taste. “Sulphurous, yet satisfying,” she said. “Not quite scale mites, but it’ll do.”

Grandion’s ire rose immediately. “Are you not hungry? Shall I cook you a portion of leftover–”

“Yum, raw hyrax!” she snarled. “Er … on the other paw, I’ll have my portion cooked, please.” Lia smothered a treacherous giggle. What? Where had that growl sprung from, and what was this unfamiliar gladdening of salivary glands as she considered raw meat?

Rather ponderously, Siiyumiel said, “This re-clothing in Human epithelium was not a result I computed, Hualiama. I am–” he struggled mightily, before resorting to lifting his head and thundering to the skies “–remorseful! I thought what I had observed was the inclosing of your Star Dragoness, so vital to the future of our Island-World, into the casement of Human bone and flesh. That she was merely hidden. Yet I detect no physical or magical signature of the Star Dragoness in the immediate vicinity. Your being evinces Balance. Your Dragoness demonstrated the same Balance. It is … inconceivable.”

Almost, she teased him. The Land Dragon sounded so mournful.

“We Shell-Clan thrive on logic. We calculate to astonishing degrees of accuracy the probable flow of events, or in your case, the precise antidote to your famishment and the multiplicity of delicately balanced parameters which had to be understood in order to provide the optimal solution for both healing and re-nourishment of your being–do you understand?”

Grandion said, “I understand that Lia loves to flout draconic logic at every opportunity. Chargrilled steak of hyrax, o Princess?”

“I’ll chargrill your ruddy rump, you oversized male chauvinist gecko!”

“I meant it positively.”

“Islands’ sakes, Grandion, that must be why I’m dancing over meadows of fireflowers singing my favourite excerpts from the Flame Cycle!”

Both of her draconic companions flicked their nictitating membranes, indicating surprise.

Lia added, “I know. Dragons seldom understand sarcasm. Consider it a verbal fireball and you’ll have the right idea.”

Punctuating his riposte with a rude wing-tap on the crown of her head, Grandion said to the Land Dragon, “Human females are like volcanoes. They usually require a proper little eruption before simmering down.”

She gave him the arms-folded, foot-tapping benefit of her filthiest glower. Perhaps the dearth of so much as a stitch of clothing spoiled the effect, although the Princess tried to ignore that inconvenient fact. Grandion bared his fangs lazily in response.

“We might consider recreating the conditions of her ascension to the draconic sphere,” mused Siiyumiel, clearly preoccupied with weightier deliberations. Odd, how his speech meandered between formal draconic metre, sprinkled with thees and thous, and the more intimate metre used in familiar settings.

“Aye, the fire of fifty hostile Dragons and a small lava pit ought to suffice,” suggested the Tourmaline.

“Grandion!”

Was he just pleased by her recovery, that she was coming in for the full wing-tugging benefit of his sense of humour?

“I forget for how many years I’ve been meaning to roast that cute rump of yours,” he added.

“Cute?” Her eyebrows crawled toward her hairline.

His inner fires performed an impressive draconic blush. “Hatchling-cute,” he amended hastily. “Titchy-size-cute.”

Ugh. She was not fooled, not even slightly. So the male Dragon was still possessed of that wicked propensity to admire her scale-less Human limbs and eye-filaments and globs of mammary tissue upon her–unholy windroc droppings! Lia pulled herself up with a mental start. Where were these peculiar thoughts coming from? She crossed her arms self-consciously and sank down in his paw. Not comfortable!

Was Dragon fire really the answer?

Lia said, “Siiyumiel, show me what you saw. Please.”

* * * *

Between them, Grandion and Siiyumiel worked out a way of using the Blue Dragon’s projection magic in concert with the Land Dragon’s eidetic memory to replay the exact moment of Lia’s transformation, as they had come to call it, in excruciatingly slow motion, on a panel of frozen air between them. Over and over, they examined that Dragon’s whisker of time in which the Star Dragoness appeared to blur away as if eaten from the inside by white-fires, only for the form of a Human to coalesce simultaneously in that very space the Dragoness had vacated.

A quarter-ton of Dragon replaced by a tiddly few sackweight of tasty Human Princess, Grandion opined. That was the physical conundrum. Simply put, something could not arise from nothing, nor could a mass of Dragonflesh instantaneously vanish into thin air. The sums did not add up. This was impossible by any known law of physics, metaphysics and Dragon science–which Grandion and Siiyumiel discussed at vast length. Certainly an education for the subject of their vigorous debate, but the matter proved ultimately to be a fruitless pursuit of the ungraspable.

Hualiama drank and ate, and tried to focus on her recovery.

Then, as the afternoon heat baked her white-blonde head into a fine muddle, they all three settled down for a snooze–Siiyumiel massively indolent, Grandion resplendent in his gemstone raiment and Hualiama, as charmingly nude as a freshly peeled tinker-banana. She covered herself modestly with her hair, which struck her as fuller and longer than she remembered. Waist length. Knotted like a crimson-crested weaver’s nest. Because naturally, she admonished her thoughts with boundless vexation, a girl should be paying attention to the state of her hair when she was embroiled in a battle for her life with enemy Dragons and evil Enchantresses who marched off to perpetrate genocide, while on the side, she sought to rid the Island-World of Shinzen’s inbred Giants and the scourge of ruzal still buried within her flesh!

Ha. If she curled up, the royal locks made a serviceable blanket. Utility over beauty. Her sister Fyria had always managed enough preening and primping for ten princesses, anyway.

She’d set about slapping the Islands into shape … later.

Besides, she needed to have words with blue-haired Lia about ruzal. If this was some trick of Dramagon-spawned filth–mercy, would the ruzal find a way to live on without her?

First, she should yank a Dragoness’ tail. Lia dozed, and slipped away to the dream-world.

* * * *

“You! Human girl! Get your rascally parakeet-cheeks over here. I’ve a few fireballs to shoot at you …”

Other-Hualiama stood beside one of the marble pillars, gazing out at the endless ribbons of stars. She wore an impeccable white Fra’aniorian lace gown with a train a mere four feet long, above which her tumbling, deep blue tresses made a second train. Without turning, she said, “I’m so glad you came to visit. Feeling better?”

“Better enough to be furious with you! How dare you steal my Dragoness? Feckless Human, I’ll burn your toes to a cinder for–”

“You’re our Human.” To her embarrassment, Human-Lia produced a squeak of outrage. “We must be feeling better to be this angry. Have I done wrong?”

“Where’s my Dragoness?”

“Right here.”

She stumbled up the steps. “You’re infuriating!”

“Quite possibly the most infuriating person we know?” asked the girl, turning to smile mysteriously over her shoulder. “Come look at the stars, Human girl. I double-dragonet dare you.”

“And a sackful of manky multiplying maggots to you!”

To me? To you? Oh, what was the use? Hualiama padded over to her twin, noticing en route that her present Human guise also wore an identical gown hand-crafted in the finest Fra’aniorian tradition, only hers was a deep blue, the better to set off her pale hair and deep blue eyes. Right. Swallow the impatience. Then wring answers out of the girl-creature’s neck like a washer-woman wringing out her linens.

Shoulder to shoulder, they stood and gazed at the splendour of stars.

After a long silence, blonde-Lia said, “Your surprise certainly was inspiring. We were a Star Dragoness, at least for a few days.”

“We are a Star Dragoness.”

“Our mother being?”

“Istariela, mate of Fra’anior. I think.”

“Whaaa … whaaaat? I think I need to sit down!”

Instead, their hands sought each other unconsciously. Intertwined. Laced together, as they always had been. Or was that a hand and a paw?

Blue-haired Hualiama said, “Since you woke me, I’ve been thinking a great deal. I’m sorry to have caused you so much grief. But we are inseparable, don’t you see? Two sides of one coin. We are one fire inhabiting one heart, despite how we appear in this place.”

“You saved my life. You sought me across the Island-World.” Gazing deep into her alter-ego’s eyes, blonde-Lia said, “I remember being in a dark, terrifying place, and then there was light, and white-fires, and comfort. I had died, but my spirit had not yet flown. We sang together as one restored from death to life. And from that day I knew eggling-dreams, and carried you here.” Taking the girl’s other hand, Human-Lia placed it upon her heart. “Here.”

“I can never thank you enough.”

“I am honoured to have carried you these many leagues and years, Star Dragoness. But now you must fly. The fate of this Island-World lies in your paw.”

The other sighed. “I’m not sure you understand.”

“I understand I’m denying a Star Dragoness her destiny. Stifling, repressing–”

“No!”

To her shock, blue-haired Hualiama began to cry! Lia held off stiffly for a moment, before enfolding the other girl in her arms. “You’re right. I haven’t the first understanding.”

“You think I’m an invader … a parasite …”

“No!” This time, blonde-Lia felt tears start in her eyes. “I didn’t mean … I’m so grateful for this life, it aches like knots in my bones … if I can help … help in any way …”

“Your courage succoured an eggling and our mother from the wrath of the Onyx Dragon–even now, mighty Fra’anior seeks us. Yet, not out of animosity, I sense, though his motives are unclear–”

“Impossible. This would have been long before I knew you, before you entered my life–is that what you’re saying?”

“Is time a road?”

The classically inscrutable reply. Never had other-Hualiama seemed more draconic. Yet when she looked deeply into the other’s gaze, Human-Lia found no subterfuge or deceit. This was the truth, as she grasped it. Somehow, she shared life-space with a Star Dragoness, the incarnation of Blue-star, the Hualiama of draconic legend. Somehow, they had contrived to help each other elude death’s claw. But was it not time to …

“Separate?” they whispered simultaneously.

Only when they both shuddered did Lia realise a grievous thought had been given voice.

“Is that what we want?” rasped Dragon-Lia.

Human-Lia shouted, “No! Yes … no, I don’t know. No. Is it even possible? Must I not grant a Dragoness the life she deserves? Even if I must maim my own heart in the doing?”

In reply, her mirror-image sang:

Before the dawn, before the spark,

Took fire upon the wings of life,

Two mothers lived, two spirits grieved, and touched,

Eternity.

And in eternity did mingle two sparks,

And become one flame.

Thus prophesied, thrice born, lived twice,

Amaryllion’s gift: true oneness.

Beautiful, and bewildering, of course. Human-Lia said, “I … I hate trying to wrangle meaning out of the depths of obscure lyrical prophecies! You’re saying we have two mothers, that much is clear. But we are one. Inseparable–in eternity did mingle two sparks?”

The Dragoness-image, or whatever the girl was, turned away, but Lia refused to relinquish her hold on those precious fingers.

“Look. I’m earning myself a fine migraine trying to understand this.” Gracious, she was a stubborn creature! Blonde-Lia smiled grimly. So this was what it was like to deal with herself? “You woke up, having been bound for twenty-one years. Yet I’ve always known I had flame within me, have always yearned for it, danced toward the flame … I knew, Hualiama. But who’s the real Hualiama? Is there such a person? Am I, or are we, some kind of Dragon-Human hybrid? A freak? Stop shaking your head! I must know!”

“I wish I knew,” mumbled blue-hair. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re a Dragon! You aren’t sorry!”

“I’m Hualiama, and I am the most wretched of creatures–I weep terrace lakes for all the anguish I’ve caused–”

“Be still!” Lia drew a deep breath, before she reeled the other girl back into her arms, despite her resistance. Blue-hair refused to look at her. “Wow. Snap of the old royal command there.” Now she was babbling like a dragonet. “First, if I must drill it into that hard-as-Dragon-scales head of ours to make you understand, I will–I do not want to be rid of you. Ever. Not on this Island, not on the next, nor on any Island of life to come! Secondly, what has been cannot be changed. Besides, I–you–are me. We are me. We are–I love you. That sounds lame and so clichéd it’s about to curl up in shame and crawl off under a rock somewhere, I know, but I do.”

And she had the kind of pronoun confusion that would have driven her royal tutor into snarling apoplexy. But she simply did not possess the language to describe this riddle. You? Us? Multi-layered me? Me squared? Divisible yet indivisible?

Other-Lia turned and pressed her head against her shoulder as though she wished to burrow back inside the shell. They held each other, trembling with desperation.

“Look, can’t we try to work this craziness out?”

“Without being immolated in fire, as you were suggesting earlier? Human girl, what if this means you can never have yon toothsome Tourmaline? And he is ultra-toothsome. I’ve peeked–hope you don’t mind.”

“Ouch. You had to bring that up, didn’t you?” Lia stared over her twin’s bowed head to the stars; were they as faraway as the edge of the Universe, or merely the boundary of her sanity? “I don’t see how I can ever, er, have him, as you put it. Ironic. If we separate, I’m Human and it’s forbidden. Stay together and we’re something … else. Other. Not quite Dragonkind. Either way, we’re the only–”

“–mixed up, crazy–”

“–half Human, half Dragon–”

Dragon-girl corrected, “Fully Human, fully Dragon, summing up to–”

“Two hundred percent mischief?”

Pushing apart enough to catch the spark in each other’s eyes, they began to chuckle. Five seconds later, they were laughing so helplessly, they had to lean against each other to keep standing. Finally, their stomachs hurt too much to continue.

Hualiama tucked a few white strands away from her twin’s mouth, and gently thumbed away the tears. “So, Human girl, what do you suggest we do now?”

“I suggest we let her out.”

“Who?”

Human-Lia loosed a wicked, Dragoness-worthy chortle.

“Tell me!”

“Don’t hatchlings need to play?”

* * * *

With Hualiama fast asleep, Grandion embarked on a swift hunt to clear the dark-fires of defeat and dejection from his mind. His fire-stomach felt grimy, as if crammed with ash. The consequences were clear. To roost-love a Human would be to live as a pariah amongst the Dragonkind. Right-minded Dragons would embark upon honour-quest after honour-quest to rid the Island-World of their odious presence. Had he already written this fate for himself? Aye, perhaps, but he refused to drag the Princess of Fra’anior down with him. She was regarded as striking amongst her kind. Should she choose a mate, what right-minded Human male would refuse?

Better he terminate this liaison now. Today.

No. Sapphurion would counsel patience. As he stalked a sleek young bushbuck on the Island one over from the Dragon’s Bell, Grandion tried to force that forbearance to infuse him from wingtip to tail-spike. Follow in his shell-father’s ways? How young Grandion, with his head stuffed full of fire, would have ground that notion between his fangs!

Snick! He beheaded the buck with the razor-sharp point of his fore-talon. Clean kill. Instantly, he clamped his lips to the severed neck and gulped down the warm, spurting blood.

‘A carnivore gratefully accepts the gift of life,’ was the ancient teaching. How much more he appreciated that saying now that he knew the bloodletting practices of the Dragon-Haters! Disgusting, binding the Dragon’s magic into the blood before harvesting and drinking it. Azziala and her cronies had been on a drinking binge since the battle, building and honing their powers to a new pitch of perfection–perhaps intending to bind the Land Dragons to their cause. Cunning. What creature, or Island, could stand against?

He knew one, born of star fire. Perhaps that was his preordained role–the trusty companion. Grandion gnashed his fangs in impotent fury, before snatching up the bushbuck’s remains with fang and claw, and wheeling back to where he had left the royal ward resting in the shadow of a boulder.

What did the ascending fire-oaths mean if they could never be consummated?

But the wink of suns-light off blue scales resting in the lee of that boulder made the Tourmaline spill the hunter’s spoils from his sagging jaw. By Great Dragon’s seven thundering heads! Long seconds of frozen indecision saw the carcass lodge way down the cliff, a half-mile above the Cloudlands.

Then, he dived for the Star Dragoness with a triumphant bugle, Thou!

Perhaps Hualiama misunderstood his intent and the speed of his approach, for at the very last instant, she flashed into a sidestep like dark water flowing across the ground. Grandion braked sharply, then landed with a show of control and approached her with a swagger, displaying every inch of muscle and scale to its maximum potential.

She purred, Mmm, sulphurous greetings, o chunky monster.

You reverted? he blurted out. How?

How fast her eye-fires whirled, her three hearts racing hatchling-speed at the sight of a majestic Tourmaline! With a coquettish tilt of her head, she said, I spoke to myself and returned as me. I’m awfully hungry, Grandion. Sorry. Were you bringing a meal?

I failed to observe the transformation, Siiyumiel put in, unusually blunt for a bottom-dweller.

This wasn’t the work of your Balance power? Grandion clarified.

No. It was an unconscious change, perhaps transpiring without forewarning, said Siiyumiel.

Fixing the mite with narrowed gaze, the Tourmaline growled, I am not fond of trickery, Hualiama. Give me your word this is neither an illusion, nor a projection, nor some power of ruzal? Consciously gentling his tone, he added, I know you understand the gravity of this issue.

Share fresh kill with me, Grandion?

She deflected the question. What was Lia hiding? Yet also, the tone of her response took him right back to the roost, to his shell-mother’s care for a Human mite. Could Qualiana, with her peerless command of the healing and nurturing arts, have somehow anticipated this change of fires at the deepest level of her unconscious mind? Immediately, the Tourmaline tipped precipitously off the cliff’s edge and dived a near-vertical mile in search of the mislaid snack. A bushbuck was a mere morsel for a fully-grown Dragon, but it should sate a hatchling’s voracious appetite for half a day, at least. Bizarrely, he plunged between the Shell-Clan Dragon’s carapace and the Island, almost as if he traversed a ravine.

Furling his wings instinctively to avoid an outcropping, Grandion snatched the bushbuck’s remains out of the shallow crevice where it had lodged and swung upward once more.

That sound. Unfamiliar Dragons!

At once, his belly-fires roared into life. He had been remiss, leaving her in a Land Dragon’s care. What did Siiyumiel know of aerial combat? Where had these hostiles been hiding? Priming his fires, his ice and his shielding, Grandion hurtled upward with his fullest power, silent and deadly intent.

* * * *

Hualiama startled out of her reverie as a shadow flitted over her resting-place. Dragon attack! Instinct alone flung her beneath the swing of Siiyumiel’s flashing paw. Fluttering wings! Smack! A familiar roaring brought the Dragon’s Bell to resounding life as a Brown Dragon tangled sharply with two other Dragonkind–feral? Lia peered out from beneath the unexpected dungeon-bars effect of Siiyumiel’s talons closing over her, not to grasp, but to protect. Her flanks heaved with panicked gasps. Grunts! A volley of Grunts smashed into the Land Dragon’s paw and the nearby rocky ledge with stunning disregard for life or limb.

SIIYUMIEL! roared the Land Dragon, an almighty challenge.

Magic thrummed in Lia’s ears. Pressures seesawed between painful extremes, causing a scream to rip from her throat. Rays of intense light speared out of the Land Dragon’s mighty eyes, striking with pinpoint accuracy to smash a trio of Grunts against the mountainside; next, they sheared the wings off two Blue Overminds attacking a Brown she belatedly recognised as Affurion, leader of the Lost Islands Dragons. Half an eye-blink later, Grandion corkscrewed upward into the fray, spraying a jagged sweep of ice from his throat. A cloud of grey Swarm Dragons with their curiously underslung jaws received the full brunt of his ire. She saw all with incredible clarity. Here, the reflexive strike of Affurion’s talons to finish the one lone Swarm which had escaped the lashing ice-storm. As Grandion expectorated a fireball, a visible bulge travelled the length of his throat, making the scales glow from beneath like ingots warmed in a furnace. Instantly, a firestorm laced with lightning engulfed his target, a Blue Overmind.

If this was a battle-group of Lost Islands Dragons … Hualiama focussed on her vibrating toes. Aye, the underground attack of burrowing Anubam! Again her reactions were liquid lightning, framed in a secondary layer of conscious battle-thought, as Dragons called it, which separated draconic reactions from a Human’s blind mental shortcuts. She rode the rising rock. Lia twisted aside as cracks gaped beneath her paws, poised upon an explosion that formed almost calmly around her body, then sank her talons into the shoulders of a Brown Anubam emerging beneath her and snaked her head around to savage his muzzle. Her fangs were too tiny to make much of an impact, so she substituted ferocity and an attack aimed at his left eye as the Brown bugled his pain, taking her for a wild but brief impromptu ride across the battleground. She tasted rich, golden Dragon blood an instant before Affurion dropped his considerable tonnage upon the Brown’s spine and snapped it.

A rising howl warned them both. Grunt!

Affurion’s paw scooped her out of the way, flinging her off the Island. With a startled screech, Hualiama flapped her wings and managed an awkward fly-glide that arced over the crown of Siiyumiel’s head and terminated in a skidding, spark-producing landing on the nape of his neck. Wham! She fetched up against the lip of his carapace in a tangle of wings and paws.

Oh no. Grandion and Affurion were facing off over the Dragon’s Bell, raging at each other!

Her Dragoness bounded up to her paws as if electrified by one of Grandion’s lightning attacks. Charging back over the top of Siiyumiel’s head, Hualiama launched into the air … and discovered she was not much of a flier. Not yet. With a howl, she tumbled past the Land Dragon’s row of eyes and plummeted down past his body. She caught flashes of pink evening sky. Rock rushing toward her. Tourmaline scales zipped through the air above. Brown? Were they fighting? Lia fluttered frantically, bravely, and suddenly found herself the filling inside a smashed-together combination of Grandion, Affurion, and another of Siiyumiel’s paws.

“Oof! Rotten windroc droppings,” she cried.

Grandion snarled, By the First Egg, what did you think you were doing?

“It’s a battle!”

And she’s a fiery-of-spirit Dragoness, said Affurion, with an indulgent grin Hualiama summarily placed on her ‘most want to bite’ list. Courage, little one. The battle’s over. Rogue Dragons from our group, I’m afraid. But we routed those craven sheep, didn’t we, wing-brother?

Grandion returned a brotherly mock-bite against Affurion’s neck. Strength to your paw, mighty Affurion.

Male Dragons. Posturing and congratulating each other. Preening and boasting. Was there need to add to their already overblown egos? While they swapped further compliments, she turned upon Siiyumiel’s paw and gazed up into his lava-lake eyes.

Speak, o Star Dragoness.

She realised he spoke directly to her with the aid of shielded telepathy. According to the lore she knew, this channel of communication was almost impossible to eavesdrop upon. At the speed of thought, their conversation proceeded.

Is this Balance, Siiyumiel? I sense it is, but I know so little.

Somehow, each manifestation of Hualiama, he said, stressing her name with an ancient-prophetic indicator, appears to be perfectly Balanced in its own right. Even the Ancient Red scientist-mage, Dramagon, failed to achieve this result despite thousands of seasons of experimentation.

Am I–

No, you are not Dramagon’s experiment. In all I perceive and conclude from what you have shared, this is not the Dragonsong of his fire-soul, Hualiama. Nor are you Amaryllion’s creation. You are a vessel, a miracle, and the bearer of prophecy’s seeds. What is given, is that the flowering-in-beauty of your life will influence our Island-World profoundly. Therefore, the performance of your life’s task must accord with your third heart’s fires.

She chewed this over in her mind, adding it to a conviction already established within her hearts. Then a Star Dragoness must learn to weave Balance, justice and truth. She must listen as much to the groaning of volcanoes as to the song of the stars–will you teach me how to listen, Siiyumiel? My paws are surely too tiny for this great a task.

Search your hearts. What will you accomplish first?

A personal quest. I must find the white scale, my shell-mother’s scale. It will serve as a lodestone, a reminder to always seek the higher path.

The Land Dragon asked, Does this mean you’ve learned your heritage?

Aye. I am the daughter of Ra’aba and Azziala, and the shell-daughter of Istariela by–I believe–Fra’anior himself.

Did she believe? As the Land Dragon’s inner fires and eye-fires erupted in response to her assertion, Lia swallowed a lump in her throat as black and cutting as a shard of granite. Truly? With his fabled powers, surely the Onyx himself had purposed this, or at least foreseen that his progeny should remain in the Island-World beyond his departure. Why hunt Istariela, then? Was it the White Dragoness’ egglings who represented the betrayal she remembered him roaring about, or another matter entirely, something beyond her ken? And might she not one day find her egg-siblings, should that grace be granted her?

Was Fra’anior friend or foe?

Before she knew it, Hualiama had assembled all of these thoughts and all she knew of her heritage, and conveyed an infinitesimally brief yet world-shaking package of information to the great Wisdom of the Shell-Clan.

His entire body, miles long and deep, quivered as though she had picked up an Island and slapped him across the nose with it.

Only, where was his nose?

The budding Dragoness was still mired in this enormously important contemplation when Siiyumiel suddenly folded himself up in reverse. The eyes shuttered. With a deep groan and a shudder, his body began to sail backward from the Island. His head withdrew into its protective armour. At once, Grandion scooped her up in his right paw and made an agile leap to the Dragon’s Bell Island, almost landing on Affurion’s tail.

Sinking with surprising rapidity into the Cloudlands, Siiyumiel called, This changes the Balance of the Harmonies, Hualiama. I must retire to consider your revelations.

Siiyumiel, I–

I will find you, Star Dragoness.

Hualiama stared after the receding mountain peaks of Siiyumiel’s shell. Why did she sense she had just stumbled over her own paws?

Chapter 4: Sarzun Dragonhold

THAT EVENING, AFFURION flew with Grandion and Hualiama to Sarzun Dragonhold, the ancient roost of the Lost Islands Dragons. Thick cloudbanks marched overhead in ranks as regimented as sullen soldiers wearing dark grey uniforms, but although heat built upon heat and thunder fulminated all about, no rain appeared to be in the offing. When she realised where they were headed, Lia began to protest, but Affurion laughingly assured her that Azziala knew everything there was to know about the Stronghold already. Besides, anything truly important would be hidden long before she arrived.

Grr! Grandion caught her about the waist before she launched herself more than ten feet off his paw in a spitting, snarling mini-rage.

Dragon emotions, he chuckled.

Oh. Mercy, Grandion … is it always like this?

Like rivers of fire coursing along your nerves? Aye, Dragoness. But you learn control, and how to channel the rage into great battle-magic.

In your extensive experience of being a Dragoness? she teased.

Affurion snorted with laughter, momentarily turning the Tourmaline Dragon into a flying mass of knotted muscle and thundering fires. Without delay, the slim, double-winged Brown pointed with his left foreclaw. Behold, Sarzun Dragonhold.

They swept toward a trio of mile-wide crater-lakes crowning a lush Island, their rims curiously smooth and regular, as though formed by a planned geological process. Such was the power of the Ancient Dragons. Lia imagined there must be fine hunting amongst the bristly, dark green coniferous forests bearding the rugged slopes and shadowed ravines. Her stomach gurgled and clenched at once. Her new Dragon eyes picked out deposits of olivine, jade and chalcedony stone upon those igneous slopes, and the scales along her spine prickled as she became cognisant of an unfamiliar magic pervading the very air.

Aye, said Affurion, observing her reaction. This Island benefits from a natural shielding magic, which is the primary reason Dragons made their home here. None can approach with impunity; certainly, none possessing the subterfuge of the Dragon-Haters.

The Star Dragoness replied, It is almost as if the two halves of the Lost Islands were created to exist in eternal opposition.

The Brown Dragon dipped his wingtips in respect. A claw-tip touch upon what many Dragonkind suspect, Hualiama. We know not why we were created thus.

As huge and pockmarked as an ancient boulder, the Yellow Moon rolled across the sky above the Lost Islands, passing by so closely, she imagined a paw could reach out and scratch its dusty, citrine-yellow surface. Beyond the aspect of its western curvature, Hualiama saw the great comet stretching across the sky, its coma hidden behind the Yellow Moon, so that the two separate tails appeared to stream away like a child’s white ribbons trailing across the deepening indigo of the evening sky. What would become of the Island-World if the notoriously malevolent Numistar returned to rule and reign?

Her gaze swung dizzily to the craters, zooming in to discover streams of Dragonkind issuing from the honeycomb rim walls, which rose a good thousand feet above the slowly-roiling turquoise lakes, then her vision panned out again to spy many more thousands of Dragons, mostly Swarm, rising to orient upon the visitors with clear intent.

Steady your eye muscles, Grandion advised. For now, choose a single focal point until you learn fine control of your magnification. I will also teach you the magical enhancement of Dragon sight. That’s a higher Blue skill.

Clearly, the Tourmaline intended to revel in the role of teacher.

It was hard not to feel chary and skittish given his sheer physical presence; more so the possessive clasp of his paw and the surging of eye-fires each time Grandion regarded her. Lia had to remind herself she was twenty-one years old, no mere stripling, and certainly not an ordinary Dragon hatchling. Life’s experience had scarred and moulded her.

The power of Dragon sight was hers.

Lia said, Grandion, please show me how to work this magnification. What are your Dragon-kin doing, Affurion?

Waiting upon a Star Dragoness, said Affurion.

Oh. Her wings flicked anxiously. Lia stilled herself with an angry growl. Great Islands, there was just so much of her now, yet she measured only twelve feet from muzzle to tail-spike. What would it be to meet her father in this guise? Mercy, would he ever dare to raise a hand to her again? More likely, he’d fix a price on her lizard-head and point the Royal Guards at her scaly hide.

“Grandion, how do you know I’m a Star Dragoness? If they’re so rare, how do the Dragonkind recognise one?”

“Noble Sapphurion identified your qualities.” Grrr … she warned. “Your skill with Balance magic proclaims your heritage. Mighty Siiyumiel knows the same–do not allow doubt’s dark-fires to shade the clear light of your inner presence, Hualiama.”

Did she scent another draconic half-answer? “Aren’t Star Dragons meant to be white, like my shell-mother?”

Grandion tipped his wings to catch a warm breeze, speeding them toward the faraway Dragonhold. With a droll, negating gesture of his free forepaw, he snorted, “Aren’t hatchlings meant to accept the wisdom of their elders? Why no, she wishes to dance. This Tourmaline would never constrain that dance, for one might as well seek to enchain the beauty of starlight itself.”

Stunning. She wheezed aloud at the piercing clarity of his insight, her little hearts suddenly pulsing in her throat, chest and stomach with a single, startled drumbeat. A promise to treasure. Aye, she must discern Fra’anior’s intent. To earn the lifelong enmity of an Ancient Dragon was no laughing matter.

Shadowed of soul, she turned her attention to their destination.

Sarzun Dragonhold slowly rose from the softly layered mists above the Cloudlands, a long, many-humped slab of black granite that brooded over its surrounds like a beast lying in wait for an unwary traveller. Lying in the north-western quadrant of Dragon Territory, it was still a number of hundred leagues from the Buffer Zone that separated Dragon lands from Human, warm from frozen. Sarzun lay on the rim of a vast, mostly extinct under-Cloudlands volcano, although there were several active vents on the southern and south-eastern aspect, called Jandibor and Qualizar, apparently named for famous leaders of the Lost Islands Dragonkind.

The Island was more extensive than it first appeared, its upper parts robed in dense coniferous forests that housed myriad subspecies of draconic life, according to Azziala’s intelligence. These were sub-intelligent Dragon species; as they departed the Dragon’s Bell, Affurion had pronounced them worse than feral Dragons, and the forests of the Lost Islands as the deadliest realm in the Island-World, after the inside of an angry Dragon’s gullet. Many were powerful ground-burrowers, similar to the Anubam, but other Dragonkind grew rooted in place or in cracks and crevices, apparently belonging more to the plant kingdom than the animal. Another entire class were Dramagon’s prototype Grunts–massively armoured, massively powerful six- or eight-legged Dragon species Affurion called ‘Dracopods’ or more fondly, Dozers, as they were renowned as much for their ability to doze in the suns-shine as for their love of rampaging through the forest, apparently taking exception to anything that dared to stand in their way–rock, tree or cliff, it mattered not. Then came the exotics–climbers, slingers, insectoid Dragonkind, lake-dwellers, bat-like cave Dragons, and many more.

Quite the menagerie compared to Fra’anior’s population of Lesser Dragons and dragonets.

Obeying Grandion’s steady instruction, Lia focussed on the hundreds of Grunts lining the rims of the central caldera. Deep red in colouration, they appeared to absorb the suns’ lowering rays and reflect them from their metallic Dragon hides, which hung off their jowls and bellies in great folds of flexible metal. These Dragons, the Tynukam, ate rich metallic ores to supplement their diet. Judging by their size and squat, powerful stances, Lia realised they could not fly far. That was why Overminds like Affurion were required to wield Grunts in battle, hefting these poor fliers with their fabled Kinetic power and propelling them at the enemy to strike like living fire-bombs.

Perhaps her devastating white-fire attack on Razzior and his renegades made her a Star Dragoness? Still, eyeing the thousands of Swarm and the seventy or eighty Overminds gathering above the Dragonhold, Lia felt an out-and-out fraud. Princess? Fraud! Truth be told, she was an adopted foundling. Dragon? Fraud also … maybe. She shrank into Grandion’s paw. No …

Ugh. Suddenly, a thought sprang fully-formed into her mind. Say she was half-Dragoness, or wholly so–surely that meant she already possessed all the resources to be a Dragon?

Why should a Dragoness be uncomfortable in her own hide?

Hsst. Blue-eyed monster? Wake up.

To experience the waking of another consciousness within her consciousness, and to know it was also her–aye, that was upside-down rainbows beaming over the Island of her life.

Hmm? Says the other blue-eyed monster?

Human-Lia said, I wanted to ask if you wouldn’t mind handling this part for us? Actually, the whole Dragon … thing. It’s yours, really.

There was a silence so prolonged, she wondered if she had caused herself grievous insult. Then, the inner voice said, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to–

Be a parasite? How can you be, if we are one? Uh–sorry. That came out badly. Aye, she knew better. They both knew. This is my final decision, Dragon-brain. Take it, or take it.

Soft, relieved laughter filled her mind. Your negotiation doesn’t leave even a hatchling wiggle-room, does it? Then we understand ourselves. Let our entwined life be our strength. I will look after us–

I know that. You’ve done so since before I was born.

It needs saying. And, oath-making. Therefore, I swear this upon the fires of our soul.

Souls, she wanted to say. Yet that would be a lie. This I also swear upon our soul’s life.

An everlasting perturbation unsettled her twofold soul, yet Hualiama found herself in a place of inner tranquillity. Was this Siiyumiel’s Balance? Draconic awareness pervaded her mind, yet she was both part of that fabric, and the fabric itself. The music and the notes, inseparable. There was neither a sense of oppression nor loss, yet a paw had grasped the helm of her life, just as Lia had often piloted her solo Dragonship around the Fra’anior Cluster.

She was Dragonkind.

* * * *

Grandion peered at the mite clasped in his paw. With a droll whirl of his eye-fires, he inquired, Afeared of a royal occasion, Princess? For though Dragons have no kings and queens, a Star Dragoness is royalty indeed. Will you not grant Affurion’s kin the honour–his voice cracked. What is it?

As if she had shed one skin for another, Hualiama unfolded herself from that quailing position, stretched in a delightful rippling of midnight-blue scales from muzzle to paws, and assumed a confident stance upon his paw. Grandion sneezed a fireball of delight. Her strength-from-weakness power, the hallmark of her feminine mystique! Every fire in his body thunder-sighed at once as Hualiama examined the Tourmaline with unaccustomed boldness, gazing into his eyes as if beholding the mesmeric intensity of a Dragon’s gaze for the first time. Grandion shivered. Who was she, who clasped his third heart in her tiny paws and whispered her soul-fires therein?

In a soft purr, she said, May I ride upon your shoulder, mighty Tourmaline?

Grandion’s throat thickened; beside him, Affurion gave a gruff roar of approbation. Worthily spoken, little one! And he invited her to spring upon his wrist, and raised her to Grandion’s right shoulder, saying, Receive the honour due a Star Dragoness.

She replied, Only when our work is accomplished, noble Affurion, will there be occasion for praises.

Affurion lowered his muzzle with studied dignity. A draconic word.

As the two large male Dragons swept toward the great congregation of the Lost Islands Dragonkind, Grandion’s gaze swept over the many thousands of pairs of fire-eyes silhouetted against the deepening evening, drawing closer and closer, until at a moment when they were barely a mile offshore, the waiting Dragons drew breath and roared in a single voice, DRAGONS, UNITED!!

Hualiama’s talons dug into his scales, but she did not falter.

AFFURION! thundered the Brown, a great laugh of welcome. Come, wing-brother. Will you honour our tradition?

Grandion’s entire length tightened with the ingathering of his Storm-power. When he announced himself, it was with a peal of real thunder that shook the air for miles about. GRANDION!

On his shoulder, Lia shook her muzzle. Poser. Trying to deafen me?

Affurion chuckled, Prodigious do the Dragons of Fra’anior grow, o Grandion. Now, mighty Hualiama?

How on the Islands was she supposed to step into his paws? No Dragon hatchling possessed a battle-roar to speak of. Yet even above the wry snicker that informed him she perfectly understood the incongruity of this request, the Tourmaline sensed magic drawing together within her being, a magic that chased a great thrill of recognition along his wings like a delicate tracery of fire. She sucked in an everlasting breath and then held it, vibrating slightly with the deep concentration she brought to bear on her magic-weaving.

For a moment, nothing happened. Grandion’s hearts accelerated. Strength–

Thank you, Grandion.

Regret-tones betrayed her true feelings. She was not strong. She had just recovered from a terrible experience. He must teach her how to understand, measure and control the magical potentials within her being. Even Dragon magic required time to recover and concentrate within the organs; as she grew, that window would reduce. He must not assist too much.

The white highlights and edgings of her deep blue scales began to glow as though traced by the very white-fires he had seen through her eyes. The intensity of light emanating from within escalated rapidly, turning virtually impenetrable Dragon hide translucent, as if the tiny Dragoness possessed magical pathways unknown to other Dragons. The little chin lifted, an oh-so-Hualiama gesture, to view the massed congregation with her customary forthrightness.

His wingbeat almost seized up. Star-power! He saw glorious starlight, now so brilliant that his secondary membranes shuttered instinctively, filtering the blue-tinted dazzle atop his shoulder. Dragon royalty, resplendent!

And her song soughed over the Dragons, soft and compelling, declaring her name thrice:

Hualiama, Hualiama,

Hoo-ah-lee-yah-ma.

Each repetition waxed more lyrical than the last, until every Dragon’s fire thrilled within him or her, and with one accord, ten thousand throats opened to echo the five syllables of her name in pure Dracotonic harmony. Lia’s wings spread, joyously trembling, to salute their response, and then as the Lost Islands Dragonkind continued to hum those five notes, her descant soared over all, wild and exhilarating and free. Grandion could not understand what magic allowed her to project her voice so effortlessly, but thrice over, the number of oath-significance in draconic numerology, she sang her name again, before changing her words for the final three repetitions:

I will serve thee, I will serve thee,

I will serve thee all my life.

What a pledge! Grandion sang with the others as his tiny passenger unabashedly electrified the entire draconic population of the Lost Islands. The Tourmaline wanted to laugh, but he dared not. Oh, Lia! A Dragon might traipse around the Island-World in her slipstream merely to see what sleight-of-paw miracle she would conceive of next.

Yet the voice that replied almost smashed him from the sky:

SO ENTER THY ACCEPTABLE SERVICE, NOBLE STAR DRAGONESS!

* * * *

When the voice of the very Islands shook her marrow, Hualiama’s paws clenched so hard on Grandion’s shoulder, her leg and shoulder muscles cramped up. So enter thy acceptable service, noble Star Dragoness!

She could not allay the fear that stabbed so deep, the shards of courage shattered and the willpower that absconded with her tongue and reason. Such authority; so familiar! It shocked her memories into startled focus. His was the manifold presence which had terrified an eggling; he was the Island-spanning storm which had sought her White Dragoness mother across the many leagues, hunting her, crying ‘traitor!’

The voice said, Do I know thee, Dragoness? Doth my soul thrill to the verimost song of thy fires?

Yet now his thunder seemed unaccountably gentle, a yearning of infernos rather than the fury of imminent destruction. Could she risk … Numistar returns, she said. Deflection. Classic Dragon logic. Her star rises.

Aye, little flame, Numistar betrayed her brethren most sorely, came the reply. The sevenfold thunder, though infused with fury, conveyed notes of concern for a hatchling. Unmistakably, she spoke to the fabled Black Dragon. How? Even his Dragonish was like imbibing the richest of berry-wine, subtle and aged, rife with complexities beyond her comprehension.

Still thy fears and align thy thoughts to mine, little mouse, he said. I know thy defiance in hiding my Istariela was enacted for pure-fires love; aye, I perceive thou art that eggling-spirit with whom I spoke, years of thy time ago. I know thee. As surely as she loved thee, Istariela used thee to fly to a hiding place beyond even an Ancient Dragon’s ken. She veiled the knowledge of her eggs from me, concealed her brooding and hatching and mothering–

And this is why, great Fra’anior, you pursued her with raging Storm and–Hualiama bit her tongue painfully.

Nay … he laughed curtly. White-fires truth? Partly, little Dragon-spirit. Aye. The restless raging of his fires, expressed beneath that all-conquering presence, quietened into a new Dragonsong. I grieve the forever-separation from mine kin. But there are greater dangers; the Nurguz who seek the ultimate destruction of the Dragonkind and the destructive warring of our own kind, and for these reasons, I and mine kin were forced to depart. Thus we sought to protect thee, and all Dragonkind. Yet now, thou alone must remain to oppose the advent of Numistar’s fervid fire-spirit.

Fra’anior, I–

SHOW ME WHO YOU ARE!

Without, she became aware of the touch of Grandion’s paw; of his soft, soothing interrogative. Yet within, her thoughts were fixed upon Fra’anior, the great seven-headed Dragon of Onyx. How could she be speaking to a legend? Where did he live; somewhere beyond the Island-World, yet clearly able to influence events and oaths … and he recognised her spirit, even though he did not acknowledge the truth as yet. Even Fra’anior did not see or know all, a realisation that provided perverse comfort.

I am Blue-star, she said, using the ancient Dragonish form of her name.

Formidable, thou art.

I am called the Child of the Dragon, and the Dragonfriend.

Thou art Dragonkind, yet more, the song of fire-beauty inimitable. How is this possible?

She said, In my flesh, I carry the final gift of Amaryllion Fireborn to the nations before he departed for the eternal fires. Yet, I have never met my shell-mother, save in my eggling-dreams.

Softer still, Fra’anior soothed, Strength to your paw, little star. I would know thy Dragonsong. I … must. Wilt thou honour this desire of mine third heart?

Honour him? After a moment’s renewed tongue-chewing, Hualiama said, Seek the truth within your hearts, great Fra’anior. You yourself said, do you not know me? For I am she who was born twice, the daughter of a White Dragoness.

Thou art Istariela’s … progeny? By whom?

What? How could he not know? Jealousy-disbelief indicators shaded his speech. Yet there was in her hearts a song that knew no words, a rising tide of emotion mingled with inexpressibly sweet harmonies of fate and love and tragedy and hope, that caused her to splutter, I-I suspect … I-I fear and I tremble–

Me?

Could she stagger the greatest of all Dragons? So done.

ME? Thou … from a world-shaking roar to a ravaged whisper, his telepathic voice switched in an instant’s penetrating insight. It is not possible. The final battle with Dramagon twisted mine flesh, injured me in ways beyond redemption. I could never sire another hatchling … could I?

Hualiama had the sense of huge heads shaking and snaking about in such a welter of disbelief, his long necks tangled themselves up in a fine knot.

It is not … real, he gasped. It cannot be, my soul, my song in thee, yet I sense … I recognise thee and the dark-fires of regret shadow mine soul, for how cruelly I mistreated thee before … and what is this hope, this cherished-love that binds my hearts, oh my wings, have I woken to a living dream of joy inexpressible in all the tongues of Dragons and Men? It cannot be! Is it truly thee, thou who art the offspring of Istariela’s fire-life?

Denials, great Fra’anior? she returned pertly, yet with a mental obeisance of awe, mingled incongruously with the merriment of respite. Truth told. Now, the courage to wag her mental tongue? You might as well slap your muzzle with your paw and see what is realer than this.

At last, his answering laughter poured over her and through Hualiama like torrential rain. She was a tiny echo of his fire-life. She was birthed of his spirit, bearer of the unmistakable imprint passed from shell-father to shell-daughter.

I have a beautiful hatchling! SHE IS BORN!!

At the zenith of his triumph and prodigious delight, Fra’anior’s voice cut off as though a moon had eclipsed the suns. Hualiama became aware of a new presence, gazing toward her with the eyes of inner sight, and a voice as cold and deathly as the depths of a never-ending winter sneered:

So, Numistar’s adversary is revealed. She is Hualiama, spawn of the not-barren Fra’anior!

N-No! She must hide, avert, shield her identity!

NUMISTAR RISES! roared the comet. SHE SHALL AVENGE! AND SHE SHALL REIGN FOREVER!!

* * * *

“All was glorious, until you fainted like a stunned deer,” said Grandion, sounding decidedly muzzle-out-of-joint. “You demanded too much of yourself. You are a hatchling with a hatchling’s resources and command of magic. When will you learn, Hualiama? When will you–oh, I breathe smoke into the wind!”

He had no inkling of all that had passed between her and Fra’anior?

“I’m listening with all six ear-canals, Grandion,” she protested, trying to rise. No single limb obeyed. Evidently, Dragons experienced adrenalin-fuelled stress as well; having encountered Fra’anior, she felt as if half her brain had combusted and the remainder was obscured by smoke.

“Down! Lie still!”

She lay beside the lake in the three-quarters circle created by Grandion’s flank, neck and tail, facing West, to a realm where the last traces of the suns-set laced the clouds with rose and fire. The lake-surface gleamed like the flanks of a brass cauldron sat beside an open forge. At least a hundred Dragons eavesdropped openly on their conversation, while the majority of those gathered on perches, inside tunnel-mouths and alongside the lake for an evening bath, play or courtship, inclined their fire-eyes to the unique pair lying on a black volcanic beach beside the lake.

“I humbly obey your commands, mighty Tourmaline,” Lia said, attempting a flirtatious flare of her fire-eyes.

“Plainly, that’ll be the day the suns fly backward around the moons!” he raged, losing his temper to the tune of an impressive fireball launched over the crater lake.

Mercy. Perhaps more cheek was needed? “You bellowed, my lord Dragon?”

GNNAAARRRRGGGH!

“Allow me, noble Grandion,” said a familiar voice.

“Elki!” Hualiama screeched, springing to her feet, only to stumble and fall flat over Grandion’s hind paw. Elegant. “Elki, is that–oh.” Lia meant to throw herself into his arms as she always used to. As a Dragoness, she summarily flattened the Prince of Fra’anior. Awkwardly, she squirmed off her brother’s chest. “Sorry.”

He made a song and a dance of patting himself down and checking all limbs were intact. “Alright, get over here, beastly sister.” A waggle of his eyebrows accompanied the word ‘beastly’.

For that, she stood–delicately–on his breastbone. “Very funny, Elki.”

“Glad as always to see your devastatingly handsome brother? First Human ever to set foot in Sarzun Dragonhold, let me tell you.” He strained, but failed to budge her paw so much as a half-inch.

“Inspiring application of the natural charm there, Elki.”

“I’d appreciate a touch less sarcasm, Short Shrift. So? Suitably surprised?”

“Bowled over.”

“That’s me,” he grinned. “Islands’ sakes, will you get off–better. What brings your inexpressibly wonderful brother here, you were about to ask?” Elki dusted off his reinforced leather jerkin. “Came to warn you. Your blood-mother neglected to inform you of the penalty if you fly more than twenty-five leagues offshore of the Lost Islands.”

“What, mother dearest doesn’t want to lose her lizard-daughter just yet?”

Grandion made a welcoming gesture with his forepaw. “What penalty, o Prince?”

“Azziala’s Dragon Enchanters perfected a subliminal, geographically bound Command last week. Fly one inch outside the demarcated boundaries, and your hearts will arrest instantly. Mizuki’s, too.” The Tourmaline Dragon bared every fang in his jaw. “Aye. Rather less charmingly, the Empress took the trouble to demonstrate on a sick Red.”

Ugh. Her mother. Hualiama scowled at no Dragon in particular. “So you’re playing messenger boy?”

“I didn’t fancy the alternative.”

“Wise. I’m grateful, too.” She glanced around quickly. “Where’s Mizuki? And Saori?”

“Mizuki–” Elki covered his mouth with a furtive gesture “–is over there. Preening for you-know-who. And my other deadly darling is back at Chenak Stronghold. Hostage. In case I work out how to restart Mizuki’s hearts before we perish in the Cloudlands, perchance. Your mother does enjoy dominating every detail of her disloyal vassals’ lives.”

Brother and sister chuckled darkly, like evil twins contemplating a bloody rebellion.

Chapter 5: The Blooding

AFFURION HAD BEEN behaving as if he was oblivious to the Copper Dragoness’ presence as he spoke to a group of grizzled Dragon Elders, but Hualiama had to stifle a chuckle as he broke away from them and sashayed along the shoreline toward their group. Oh, aye? That proud arch of the neck, the flexion of his powerful thigh-muscles, and the bared talons tearing up rock and sand with unnecessary force? He was twice the fraud she could ever be.

Nearing them, Affurion called, “Noble Star Dragoness, is this Prince Elka’anor of Fra’anior?”

“My brother, the Prince–we call him Elki for short,” said Lia, with an uncoordinated sweep of her left wingtip. “Elki, it’s my pleasure to introduce the mighty Affurion, leader of the Lost Islands Dragons.”

“May the most sulphurous blessings of the Great Dragon abide with you and your kin, noble Affurion,” said Elki, with a very proper Fra’aniorian bow–five hand-twirls each accompanied by a complex dance-step. Mercy, when had that sweetmeat-stealing scamp turned into a diplomat? “I am Elka’anor, Prince of Fra’anior, and I am honoured beyond words to be the Dragon Rider of Mizuki, the Copper Dragoness.”

“Aye, I had the honour to meet Mizuki as an ally in battle,” said Affurion, who knew exactly who the Copper was, but was playing his part to the hilt. Lia felt her fires roll in her belly like a Human rolling her eyes. “She is indeed magnificent.”

Said at a tone and volume guaranteed to carry to the attentive ears of a certain Dragoness. Naturally.

Affurion continued, “You must tell me more about this Dragon-Rider partnership, o Prince. For it is only for the Star Dragoness’ sake that we allowed a Human foot to tread within the portals of Sarzun Dragonhold. This bond-magic intrigues me.” The Prince bowed in assent. “But now, as you appear recovered after bringing the sacred gift of starlight into our presence, o Star Dragoness, I wish to formally invite you to the ceremony of First Blooding. Although we Lost Islands Dragonkind have a few customs peculiar to our realm, it is not dissimilar to the celebration granted to all Dragon hatchlings after the first week of their life. Yours has been delayed, but I would request the honour of proposing that the Blooding be performed here, at this ancient seat of draconic authority, and that your prime benefactors, in the absence of your true shell-father, shall be the Tourmaline Dragon and the Prince.”

Hualiama looked to Grandion, intrigued. Many scrolls of Dragon lore she had read hinted at this ceremony, but mention was always accompanied by a moniker or margin note that the ceremony was secret and of obscure origins, an oral tradition never handed down in written form.

The Tourmaline voiced a weighty rumble, made by deliberately stoking his belly-fires while leaving them trapped behind the powerful sphincter muscles controlling his fire-stomach. Common life, common blood, common fires. Aye. A pleasingly draconic proposal.

Affurion turned to Elki. I honour-much, said the Prince, in his broken Dragonish.

Lia lowered her muzzle. It shall be as you wish, noble Affurion.

At once the stalwart Brown, half again as long as Grandion but much leaner and more snake-like in the torso, flared his double wings and pointed his muzzle to the sky, trumpeting, ARISE TO THE BLOODING!

His evocative bugling pierced the early evening with the sweet, clarion note of a trumpet. At once, a group of fledgling Overminds burst out of a nearby roost-cave, laughing and exclaiming with excitement. A posse of several dozen stolid Grunts shambled down to the lake shore, accompanying an Elder who stood head and shoulders above the rest. He was a Dragon of such great age, his eye-fires appeared rheumy and dim, and he leaned heavily on the shoulder of a young helper with the stump of one amputated wing. Lia saw family groups gathering in the mouths of caves, from the largest grey Grunts to tiny Swarm hatchlings, barely a foot long but already filled with the energy of sackfuls of mosquitoes. The pinpricks of eyes drew together, the massing of incandescent orbs driving back the darkness until the vast caldera assumed the function of a natural amphitheatre, a strange realm gleaming between the vaulting, velvety sky, the jutting fire-lit cliffs, and the still, still lake below.

Upon the tranquil waters, Lia saw the reflection of stars and blazing Dragon eyes commingled, as if to depict a portent of her life, although its exact meaning eluded her.

Shell-daughter of Istariela and Fra’anior. White and Black. As Elki would say, roaring rajals! Every hair on her Human’s neck stood to attention like a solider on the parade-ground … and that was a peculiar notion for a Dragon, akin to the scale-tingling wonder that made her shiver now. How did one ever grow into paws such as those that shaped the Island-World?

Not by fretting herself silly over the unattainable.

Rising, Hualiama indulged in a prolonged and delicious stretch of her spine. Fantastic! No wonder felines liked to test their litheness. She paced several impatient circles as Affurion waited for the arthritic Grunt to settle himself nearby, a mere thirty feet from Lia’s position near Grandion’s flank, while Mizuki threaded her way forward before settling on her belly beside Elki.

The Prince whispered, “Can’t help but think there’s ten thousand Dragons out there examining my edible properties, Mizuki.”

“We don’t eat intelligent creatures,” said Mizuki.

“That’s supposed to comfort me?”

“Depends if you’re intelligent or not. Are you?”

The Prince slammed his elbow into the Dragoness’ side, and then performed a silent, wincing dance, clutching his bruised limb. Dragon and Rider were clearly communicating excellently. Now, if Affurion burned for Mizuki, what of Affurion and Saori? Could they be a match? Enter Hualiama from left-stage, the wizened, toothless old matchmaker? She had to laugh at her pretensions.

Affurion raised his sleek muzzle to the sky, his ruff of skull-spikes very modest compared to Grandion’s thicket, and Lia noticed that he sported at least double the number of fangs of the more familiar Western Dragons, a double-row of slim white swords only a foot long–only? Only powerful enough to snap a ralti sheep in half in a single bite! With a visible throbbing of the throat, created by the upper palette vibrating to produce a Dragon’s highest song-notes, Affurion carolled in the Dragonish high-poetic style:

Many the burning ages, amidst the furnace of fire-life nascent,

Of soul-life transcendent, did the ancient Dragon-Spirits,

Upon the winds of cosmic fate, cast their kin to wander,

Even as the starry wanderer does cross our skies this night.

Grandion slipped a rapid thought into Hualiama’s mind, Dragons love to change the words every time, apropos to the occasion. That is why this ceremony will never be written down in the annals of our lore.

Ah. So it was a test of poetic skill as well as memory? Intriguing. Yet she glanced to the comet, blazing noticeably closer overhead. What a mighty comet must have brought the Dragonkind hence, the marvellous First Eggs hid within its belly like a Dragoness pregnant with a joyous abundance of her brood-to-be. Yet Istariela had somehow contrived to steal seed from Fra’anior, and this inference shocked her. Why would the noble Istariela, celebrated of ballad and lore, act like a common thief? Then she had chosen not to share the miracle with Fra’anior, her soul-mate, but rather, to hide her pregnancy from him? Bizarre. Was she entirely whole in mind? Or had she turned to evil?

She had a shell-brother and a shell-sister somewhere in the vastness of the Island-World. One day, she would seek those eggs. Another promise, gladly given.

Yet Affurion moved on, steadily recounting the histories in epic metre of elevated Dragonish, how the great egg-bearing comet had smashed into the world, and how the fires of that unimaginable conflagration shaped the mighty, uncrossable Rim-Wall Mountains and carved out the Cloudlands oceans wherein Land Dragons frolicked in realms as immense as the skies above. From amidst the ashes of destruction rose the Ancient Dragons, born of those star-travelling eggs. Fra’anior, firstborn of the Dragonkind, shaped the Islands with his deft paw and set the habitation of Lesser Dragons and Humans upon the heights, miles above the permanent layer of toxic clouds.

Then, the Brown leader’s tale took an unfamiliar twist.

Following a destructive war between the shell-brothers Dramagon and Fra’anior, Dramagon the Red fled eastward to carve out new lands for himself, far from the great Onyx Dragon’s dominion. Affurion related how Dramagon, having betrayed and sorely injured his older shell-brother in that terrible battle, had stolen a number of Islands and sailed them across the Cloudlands ocean toward the eastern stars. Archaeological evidence and fossilised plant matter suggested that the Lost Islands had once enjoyed a much warmer climate. The Dragon lore recounted how Dramagon had established his domain in the far South-East, near the fortress Shinzen had claimed for his own. But the interference of one experiment with another had led the mighty, misguided Dragon scientist to establish an ‘isolation laboratory’ where he intended to perfect the variants of Humankind and Dragonkind he had conceived of and bred, where the two main races might by centuries-long conflict sharpen each other into the tools he desired. Therefore, he caused the Lost Islands to migrate northward into the frozen latitudes they now occupied, and divided Humankind from Dragonkind by the stroke of his paw, creating the Buffer Zone. Dramagon struck record of this laboratory from memory and lore. Thus, the Lost Islands came to be.

While the elderly Grunt now raised his voice in recounting the genealogies of the Lost Island Dragons, Hualiama contemplated discussing this mystery with Siiyumiel. Surely, he must know the truth of ‘sailing’ Islands? The obvious possibility was that Dramagon had carried the Islands in his paw, or raised them as Fra’anior had been able–but that was not the inference of this retelling.

Her eyes were just beginning to shutter as the Grunt droned on interminably, when Affurion commanded every Dragon’s attention with another of his haunting bugles.

He announced, Two weeks ago, a different starry wanderer was conceived of battle-song, born amidst the fiery rage of fifty wicked Dragons of the West. We of the Lost Isles are honoured above all Dragonkind to witness the birth of a Star Dragoness, she who is spirit-sealed in the likeness of the fabled White Dragoness, Istariela. Moreover, she is Hualiama, named for the promise-star of the ascending fire-promises of the Dragonkind, the star whose light dances beneath the twin suns as they rise above the Eastern Rim Wall. If you search the skies, my kin, with all the strength and cunning of your paw and wing, heart and soul, you might one glorious morn sight Blue-star.

Yet this evening, Hualiama walks among us, a draconic fire-soul incarnate, wreathed in the veriest beauty of wing and scale, who breathes fire like any of us, yet hers are the purest white-fires of starlight. This I declare and aver, for I witnessed with mine own eyes the utter destruction this budding Star Dragoness wreaked upon the enemies of true-fires.

Lia bowed her muzzle shyly as a number of nearby hatchlings and fledglings purred audibly. Now a promise-star? Let it be! However, to be cast as the destroyer made her clench her paws angrily.

Affurion announced, The first Blooding signifies family, and this is the Blooding of heart. Prince Elka’anor, we ask you to represent Hualiama’s family.

A young Dragoness approached Elki bearing raw heart-meat in her paw; she appeared even more nervous than the Human. Elki scooped up a bloody handful.

Feed your sister, said the Brown. Yum. Human-brain was retching in a corner, but her Dragon had no problem with the bite of diced-up heart her brother presented her. A Dragon’s strength flows from the heart. Each time you eat, hatchling, may you be nourished by the heart of your prey. May a hatchling remember and honour the heart that once beat with animal life.

Hualiama bowed her head, and dined fastidiously from Elki’s hand.

Now, more Dragons began to line up on the shore–Grandion first, then the elderly Grunt and Mizuki, followed by several hatchlings not a month or two older than Lia.

Blood, Affurion continued. Blood is the carrier of life, the physical mystery which enables the existence of a soul in flesh, nourishing living creatures with its constant flow. Let a hatchling remember and honour the blood she drinks, and be nourished in soul as much as in flesh, by this life-giving liquid.

She drank from the Tourmaline Dragon’s cupped paw, acutely conscious of his proud, adoring gaze.

Gristle. Even the less tasty parts perform a function. May a hatchling be reminded that all Dragonkind were created with a purpose, from the least to the greatest, from the ugliest to the most beautiful. Gems may be hid within dross. May a hatchling eat gristle and be nourished, just as all Dragonkind nourish the magical life of the Island-World.

She ate.

Joints, Affurion continued. Joints remind us that no life is able to successfully exist in isolation. Just as the organism depends upon joints and ligaments for locomotion, so let a hatchling be reminded of the great network of life surrounding her, and may she be nourished, strengthened and protected by this life-affirming truth.

She crunched down a mound of knucklebones.

So the blessings and admonitions continued, some simple, some profound. Meat. Muscle. Intestines–oh, how fondly she remembered Flicker’s delight in slurping down intestines! Bone. Brains, for the seventh sense of prescience. Tongue. Hide. Blood vessels. Stomach. The liver, symbolically linking the filtering of blood to the way a Dragon’s perception filtered the world’s reality and presented it to the senses. Kidneys. Nothing was forgotten, no part left unexplained, until the night was far advanced and Hualiama’s belly swelled like a firm little barrel, squeezing her ribcage from the inside.

The ceremony of Blooding culminated with a final blessing from Affurion, Grandion and the Grunt Elder, who went by the name of Tome. They cried in concert:

Blood of our blood, bone of our bone,

May your life be nourished, its destiny known,

For in the great congregation of Dragons, when new flame is born,

All Dragonkind raise the joyous anthem …

Every Dragon in the congregation joined them in a thundering finale:

She lives! She breathes!

Blessed eggling, born to fly,

SHE IS BORN!

Utterly sated, Hualiama slept.

* * * *

Come the dawn, the Tourmaline woke her with a gentle paw. “Wake up. Time to hunt, my beauty.”

“Uh … what? I’m not hungry.”

Affurion chuckled, “Come. Let her scent prey, my hatchlings. Then a Star Dragoness shall hunt, and dance, and fly!”

A shrill meeeh-hehh galvanised every muscle in her body. A buck! Drool!

Fiery draconic chuckles surrounded her as a sly paw snatched the offering from beneath her muzzle before Hualiama could snatch it with her talons. She sprang to her paws as though stung by a wasp. A group of perhaps three or four dozen hatchlings surrounded her or waited nearby, Dragons less than three years old, some already as much as forty feet in length. In their midst stood a dainty eastern four-horn buck, wide-eyed and trembling … Lia lunged instinctively, and came up with a pawful of fresh air.

Rending the beach sand with her talons, she rounded upon the Brown Elder. Dragons did not pout. They smoked. “What is this, noble Affurion?”

“A game. Your first hunt.”

“This looks more like a game of ‘bait the clumsy newborn’.”

“You must catch the buck,” he explained. “It is the job of your peers to draw you out, to teach you the speed and stealth and cunning a Dragoness requires in the hunt.”

Hualiama had a bad feeling this would mirror her basic training in the monastery, where she had spent weeks having the stuffing knocked out of her by a bevy of handsome young warriors. Nevertheless, if this was the game they meant to play … she eyed the tan buck with interest. Tasty. An Eastern variety of bush-springer, if she did not miss her mark. They could jump like grasshoppers, dodge on a brass dral and the hunters she knew swore they could smell an incoming arrow before it left the bow.

The hatchlings spread out, forming a loose ring around her, with a few in the middle to apparently encourage proceedings, or get in the way, or–right. How hard could this be?

Thump. She ate sand.

Whack. She ran into the flank of a grey Grunt hatchling.

Slap. A paw knocked her spinning.

A quarter-hour of fruitless chasing later, one pint-sized Dragoness was hot, bothered and decidedly irritable, besides not having come within ten feet of her alleged breakfast. Panting heavily, she surveyed the scene. Grandion’s smirk. Affurion’s encouraging nod. The hatchlings huddled together, plotting their next subterfuge. Her ire boiled, making her feel fevered and languid–clearly, not recovered yet from her ordeal. No. She was not graceless Hualiama any longer. She had defeated Ra’aba, the finest swordsman of Fra’anior Cluster, in single combat. She was a dancer, not a flat-pawed toddler-equivalent. She had a twenty-one year old brain in a hatchling’s body.

She must finish this quickly.

Help me, Human-Lia, she said to herself.

A dancer’s awareness soaked into her limbs. She tested the balance of her body, the play of her incredible Dragon musculature and reflexes. This was a body honed for hunting, for combat, for graceful flight, and she had never appreciated these facts as much as at this moment, for she had been too preoccupied with comparing her new Dragon-self to her more familiar Human form. Grandion had already spoken of knowing the potentials of her body–but there was a difference between knowing and knowing. Her strength had always been grounded in the intuitive realm, and in her ability to couple an engineer’s delight in detail and innovation with reliance on her instincts.

She crouched. Coiled like an angry cobra, hissing, Alright, Dragons, let’s play.

Hualiama shot across the ground. A dance-step took her around the Grunt’s shoulder and beneath a twenty-foot Overmind’s belly. He blinked as she blurred past. Leap! Twist! Her opening gambit brought her within a foot of the terrified buck before her teacher-tormentors snatched it away.

Whirling with a balancing flick of her wings, Hualiama stormed into the midst of the hatchlings, forcing them to toss the buck out of her path. A small Red caught the creature deftly before releasing it toward the outer circle. She sprinted across the ground, all four legs pumping in concert, but the buck escaped once more, with the help of two hatchlings who cut her off. A twelve-foot youngster would never be as strong and fast as her older peers. Still, she could be smarter. She could take advantage of a dancer’s fluid economy and precision.

Aye, she could dance.

Deep breath. Defy the pain. Go! Lia spun between three hatchlings as though they stood still. She rippled over a sweeping wing-stroke, burst through a group of Green Swarm without so much as brushing a single wingtip or paw, and used a Blue Overmind’s lashing tail-slam to slingshot her toward the buck. Stretch out a paw and–what? The buck flew!

She yelled, Affurion!

Fly, little one. Fly!

Cheat! Rage fuelled her skyward spring. Her wings pumped as she chased the flying animal between the rising hatchlings, her dance instantly transformed into aerial ballet, instilled with the beauty she had always strived for, the wonder of rising so lightly, not even gravity could constrain her soaring.

They could not touch her.

With a deft, dragonet-worthy spiralling somersault, Hualiama snagged the buck even as Affurion tried to slip it by her once more. Her landing was a hard thrust of the forepaw, breaking the animal’s neck instantly–the cleanest of kills. Then the Dragoness sank her fangs into the jugular, and tasted the rich, metallic tang of fresh kill-meat in her throat, and she remembered the Blooding and all she had learned. May she be nourished, and grow in all the lessons this new draconic life would teach her.

* * * *

Two further days they tarried with the Lost Islands Dragons, who poured into Hualiama every iota of lore and experience they possessed, until her head felt ready to burst like an overripe prekki-fruit, and she dreamed of the secret Dragon library beneath Ha’athior Island, where scroll-Dragons rose up to flay her hide as the Dragon-Haters did in order to armour their Dragonships.

On the afternoon of the fifth day, with Hualiama feeling much stronger, she and Grandion, together with Elki and Mizuki, made ready to depart Sarzun Dragonhold. Grandion did not want to test Azziala’s deadline of six days, and since there had been no sign of Siiyumiel’s return, there was no reason to tarry.

“You will fly the first two hours, minimum,” growled the Tourmaline. “By my wings, would you look at those ralti sheep goggling at your brother?”

All those Dragons ablaze with fury would be more accurate, Hualiama thought. No Dragon enjoyed the sight of a Human riding Dragonback in the apparently dominant position–even if it was the only sensible place for a Human Rider, it still rankled. Elki had explained the oath-bond, yet the idea was still clearly as curious as a purple-spotted windroc to these Dragons. Partnership with a Human? All they knew was centuries-old enmity.

“Two hours?” She flexed her wings enthusiastically.

“No less. And you will demonstrate perfect flying form, or the severest of punishments shall befall you.”

“Blast her with fireballs!” called Elki.

Mizuki extended her wings, rotating them to stretch and warm up the vital, highly flexible shoulder joint, where the primary wing-bones inserted into the socket, anchored by iron-hard ligaments and the huge flight-muscles of the pectoral and shoulder area. She added, “Bite her tail!”

“Haunches,” said her brother.

“Elki!” Hualiama shrilled, blushing up a petite firestorm.

“Right–concentrate on the angles and making smooth strokes. Don’t rush the wingbeat,” said Grandion, so dourly she knew immediately he was disguising his discomfiture.

“Wait!” Lia bounded over to Affurion, who was preoccupied with making the proverbial fisherman’s knot of not ogling Mizuki as she flexed in the bright suns-shine. “Affurion, I mean, noble Brown–”

Blue-star?

She paused, recalling how Dragons parted. I thank you for the gift of the Blooding, and all the knowledge you shared with me. May our claws, united, ever rend the enemy.

His brow-ridges crinkled, indicating pleasure. May it be so, noble Star Dragoness, o pride of Fra’anior.

Thank you, wing-elder.

He lowered his muzzle with care, rubbing each side in turn against her muzzle, near the eyes. May you fly forever strong and true, wing-daughter.

They had not spoken of strategy, but Lia realised it must be in the forefront of his mind. She said, We will find a way, Affurion. Numistar Winterborn’s arrival will change the Balance. Times both troubling and glorious lie ahead. She paused. This was her voice, but where had those words sprung from? May white-fires safeguard your hearts.

Then she turned to Grandion. The Tourmaline gave a small nod.

Let’s burn the heavens! she cried, springing skyward.

By accident, her parting wing-stroke clipped the tip of Affurion’s nose, causing her to gust upward on the wings of a startled, fiery sneeze.

* * * *

“That was extremely rude,” Grandion reproved once they were out of earshot.

Hualiama pumped her wings hard to keep up. “I wasn’t intending to wing-slap a Dragon Elder. Islands’ sakes, can we slow down?”

“We’re already wallowing in the air.”

This earned the Tourmaline a belch of smoke that immediately whipped back over Hualiama’s eyes, making her blink and lose her form. “Faugh. Do I smell like that? Right … how’s this, Grandion?”

“Do you call that, ‘the flight of the drunken windroc’?” Elki called across from Mizuki’s back.

Grandion growled, “Keep your uneducated opinions to yourself, Human Prince! Mizuki. How shall we set about modifying this flapping mess?”

“Control of the wing-struts to cup them on the downward stroke, would be a good start,” she mused. “A narrower angle on the upstroke, Hualiama. You need to lessen the resistance, while actually providing uplift as you sweep the wing forward. You’re what Humans call an engineer, aren’t you? Like a Dragon scientist? Then observe the Tourmaline and simply copy what you see.”

Ooh. So simple. Dragonflight was supposed to be natural for Dragons, wasn’t it? Lords of the air, masters of the gulfs between Islands. A touch of instant mastery would be perfect. She sighed.

Accordingly, Grandion slowed his wingbeat, demonstrating the right form. “Good, Lia. Just at the nadir of the down-and-back movement, most Dragons rotate the shoulder and secondary wing-joint like this. No, more rotation. Don’t forget to splay the struts near your wingtip. You’re very ragged–better. Now you look like a Dragoness.”

This earned him a smirk-cross-pout. “Really, Grandion? What clued you in first–the wings?”

“All hatchlings are surly rascals,” he opined, chuckling agreeably. “The fine muscular control will improve with experience.”

A Dragon’s wing was furnished with literally thousands of ancillary muscles, mainly lining the primary wing-bones and wing-struts, allowing for superb control of the leathery, membranous surface. That level of control, however, sent masses of feedback to her brain, which struggled to process the flood of information. Fix the form of her wingtips, and the central struts sagged. Focus on one wing, and the other dragged. Where she floundered, the other two Dragons pulled ahead as smoothly as Helyon silk, adding tens of feet to their lead with every wingbeat. However, when she focussed on Grandion, Hualiama discovered an entirely unexpected benefit of their oath-connection. Because he was thinking about the mechanics of flying, that knowledge lay right on the surface of his mind, but so too each sensation. She spied on his mastery of the wind’s flow over his body, from his wingtips right down to the action of slitting his nostrils to reduce air friction. The exact coordination of the muscles. The perfect streamlined position for the body. Sneakily, she lifted that knowledge from his brain, and imbibed it like a dragonet diving into a cold waterfall on a sultry Fra’aniorian day.

This was the goal. This was synchronicity … abruptly, Hualiama felt that visceral ‘click’ she sometimes enjoyed when perfecting a dance-move. Every component part merged into an anonymous aggregate, rather than the muscles fighting each other for dominance and wings flapping in hopelessly opposed orientations. Wow! She slid through the air like a river trout swimming upstream. Not labouring–revelling. Laughter burbled in her throat as wind-song tickled her Dragon senses unbearably. She stretched. Accelerated! The thrill!

“Whooo … wheeee!” she yelled, blazing past Grandion before her left wing folded beneath an unexpected change in air pressure.

“Hualiama!” Elki yelled happily.

No mind. Lia turned an incipient stall into a barrel-roll and managed to glide smoothly onto the horizontal once more. “Smoking volcanoes! Grandion, did you see that? Did you?”

He performed a florid aerial bow. “Astounding.”

Mizuki just shook her muzzle. “How does she do it? One moment, an impressive imitation of a flying ralti sheep, the next, she’s flying like a Dragoness of ten years’ experience.”

Hualiama snarled at the sheep-reference.

Grandion laughed openly at Mizuki’s puzzlement. “It’s a Hualiama talent.”

Mmm. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, the handsomest Dragon in the entire Island-World.

Without the stress and confusion of labouring over all the technicalities, Hualiama found herself liberated to enjoy the fulfilment of a dream she had treasured all her life–the dream of flying. Oh, it was glorious. Beyond glorious. Her every Dragon sense lit up as though the suns shone within, their smiles chasing along the myriad magical pathways of her being, and the joy that welled from that gossamer tracery of liquid fire could not have been withheld, not even in the darkest season of her life. She spiralled away from the larger Dragons, her throat vibrating with notes of joy, her jubilant wingbeat bouncing her about like a dragonfly flitting over a lake, now carolling a Dragonsong of her hearts’ deepest magic, now throwing her head back to laugh or cry, she knew not which, nor did it matter.

She was flying! A Human girl, flying!

Nothing in her life could compare to this. Shackles, shattered. The simple, life-changing power of freedom. The beauty of airy spaces yielding to the supple play of her wings upon the warm breeze.

From pure, exuberant joy flowed dance; Hualiama began to vocalise the Soul Dance movement from the most famous dance-opera of all, known to both the Dragons and the Humans of Fra’anior–the Flame Cycle. She turned to perform a conductor’s introduction for Grandion, Mizuki and Elki, demanding their participation, before she danced ahead of them and around them until the day was old and her strength was spent, and Grandion directed their small Dragonwing to an Island at the very edge of the Buffer Zone, where a Dragon could look across the divide and see the dark, jagged rampart supporting the Human-controlled Islands.

Too wing-weary to move, the hatchling curled up, and fell asleep almost before her muzzle touched the ground.

Her dreams winged amongst the stars.

Chapter 6: Daughter of Rebellion

THE PRINCE OF Fra’anior was not the lightest of sleepers. Ordinarily, Grandion too would have closed an ear-canal or three, but they slept adjacent to enemy territory. So the Tourmaline dozed with one eye slit-open in the manner of the Dragonkind, his hearing alert, and his magical awareness primed to detect any unusual sound or hint of danger on the breeze. For his part, the Prince snored indelicately.

Even so, the Dragon almost missed the moment she changed.

Magic, so delicate and fragile it blew across his scales like spiderweb dreams, brought a faint stirring to his consciousness. It was the change of pressure that triggered alarm. The Dragoness had vanished. Hualiama had returned, enfleshed in her customary Human form. Five feet tall. Slim and supple, yet possessing a notable muscularity that reminded him of nothing more than a Dragoness. Grandion stifled a groan, as did the girl. She sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. How could she change again? His right forepaw curled silently into a fist. Traitor! Fickle female–yet, a Dragon’s judgement must not burn hastily. Patently, she had no control of the magic.

He must not be a fool. To seat a Dragon Rider seemed somehow tolerable in the eyes of the Dragonkind, akin to a moons-madness or eccentricity. To claim Humanlove, as he had bellowed at the Dragon’s Bell–that was a Dragon of another colour, a deadlier beast altogether.

So Grandion watched covertly as the Human girl rose into the dawn’s beneficent glow, her pale hair wreathing her body in an astonishing mass. She was thin, he fretted–too thin? Her scapulae protruded like wings budding beneath the skin. Perhaps Humans must also eat like Dragon hatchlings, enjoying the fat as much as the meat? All that plant matter they consumed could not be healthy.

She padded over to her brother, and frightened him into a witless, gibbering dragonet-hatchling.

“Lia? You’re … you? You’re you!”

“Aye,” she said. Her doleful whisper revealed much to a Dragon’s perception. “Will you be a dear brother and surrender your shirt?”

“Cloak? No, the shirt. Shirt’s better, even if it’s ripped, and a bit smelly. Mind, you’ll still look like the dawn over Fra’anior. This–oh, Lia, dear one, I’m so torn up inside for you. Does Grandion know?”

The white-fire head nodded once. “Aye.”

“And he–”

“He’s being noble-Grandion; treating me like a diamond, Elki. I’ve … Islands’ sakes, every time I start thinking about …” Her hand rose, wiping what had to be tears from her cheeks. The eavesdropping Dragon’s third heart turned to ice. “He’s so beautiful. So … I’m over the Islands for him, Elki. Hopelessly, forever, over the Islands. He’s changed, somehow, through all of this. He’s thoughtful and kind, tender and true, fierce and loyal–if anything, I love him more, every day and every moon.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” her brother lied, with a quiet chuckle.

“Aye, the very suns dawn in his eyes–all of that nonsense the balladeers spout–that’s me.”

The Prince helped her button up the shirt, before drawing her into his arms. “Silly waif. You need some serious fattening up. What happened? You’re healing properly? Promise?”

“Aye. Not dying anymore. Mostly.”

With a soft execration, he rubbed his eyes fiercely. “You’re far too stubborn for that … aren’t you, sister-petal? Priceless, infernal girl. Dragonship-wrecked your brother’s heart, you did.”

Did they not know both Dragons must be listening? So isolated they seemed, this brother and sister, perhaps feeling they stood alone against the world. Dragon Rider. Dragoness. His seventh sense tingled with foreboding. Giants of history-to-be, this pair. Did they hearken to destiny’s summons, as he did?

Her voice was muffled against the Prince’s shoulder, never sounding smaller, nor more lost. “We can’t be together. We just can’t, Elki.”

“You can’t control … this?” he asked.

“No. And even if I could, word would get out. One change at the wrong moment–”

“Hold on. You’re saying this isn’t a projection? Not a trick, like you said Grandion–”

“No. It appears to be a complete transformation. My Dragoness vanishes, magically. So does my Human, in the reverse process. Where could we live, brother, that we wouldn’t be ostracised by Human and Dragon alike? Where my freakish, accursed magic wouldn’t doom my Dragonlove? How could I live never knowing when a war-hammer would slam down upon our lives? How?”

“Shh.”

She quivered as if consumed with grief; then Hualiama vented a low, bitter laugh. Straightening, she called, “Alright, Grandion and Mizuki. Please don’t pretend not to be listening, whilst I blab all my secrets … oh.”

The Copper Dragoness clasped Lia’s slight frame in her forepaws. “You will find a way. This oath-bound love cannot be denied.”

The moisture in her eyes winked like starlight as Lia’s regard shifted; Grandion stilled, awed by the power of that gaze. “I–I guess you know now, Grandion.” She sniffed once, hugely. “Therefore, I must tell you, though it kills me to say–”

“No!”

She flinched as if his desperate cry were the slap of a draconic paw. “Grandion, we cannot–”

He groaned, “No … please!”

The Tourmaline hated the sound of his pleading. Hot shame swelled his gorge; swallowing hard, he turned his shoulder as if with the bulk of his body, he could deflect the coming storm. Those words must be spoken; their hearts, broken.

Instead, he heard a light footstep beside his shoulder. A hand touched his neck, stretched up and found the smaller, more sensitive scales beside his left eye. Febrile. Delicate. Trembling at the draconic emotions raging within her tiny breast. For the longest time she simply stood with him, the connection communicating more than the strongest Dragon’s hearts could bear.

Then she whispered, “I will never regret knowing you, Grandion.”

Even the most roseate dawn must weep.

* * * *

The heir to the throne of the Lost Islands rode Dragonback into Azziala’s stronghold, as she had done once before. What ignorant fools they had been, thinking to raid the Dragon-Haters’ lands on their own, seeking the Scroll of Binding. The Empress would not be fooled–she could lift the information directly from their minds, and any possible subterfuge would be doomed. Azziala held every advantage. The only weapon available to Hualiama was the unadorned truth. What would her mother believe? Azziala was a subtle, calculating creature. She would try to winkle out and understand every nuance and angle before drawing her own conclusions, yet this mystery concerned the deepest of Dragon lore, and extended beyond that, perhaps. Therein lay a chance. If doubt crept in. Error. If the formidable mental machine of the Enchanters could be misdirected …

When they arrived, the Empress was not present. Lia learned from the mental network that Azziala had flown to Burak Island on a tour of inspection, checking the readiness of her armies.

Wooden-faced, she allowed Grandion to be led down to the Dragon holding pens. She did not watch him leave, but turned to the Prince. “Where to?”

Elki rubbed his hands briskly. “What do Haters do for fun?”

As Lia and Elki walked along a gantry above the Dragonship bays, they collected a discreet escort of Royal Elites, the highly-trained core of Azziala’s forces. No doubt, the Enchanters would be lurking.

Even for that reason alone, she decided that fomenting trouble was in order. The Dragon-Haters must not be allowed free rein. Arguably, there was good reason to allow Azziala’s and Shinzen’s forces to smash into each other–only, the Kingdom of Kaolili stood between, and the result would not be ugly. It would be genocide.

And a hatchling must defy Numistar? Even Fra’anior had the grace to sound uncertain on that score.

Azziala’s war preparations proceeded with frightening zeal. The Dragonship bays where Mizuki and Grandion had landed were full to bursting with new Dragonships armoured with Dragon hide. Blue-clad engineers screamed orders as they swarmed over the vessels. Pipes hissed. Hammers clanged sharply as a nearby group of blacksmiths forged parts in an open-mouthed furnace, supplemented by a trio of Dragon Enchanters. The Enchanters wore the characteristic sweeping robes of terrace-lake blue and tall, mushroom-shaped hats, while the blacksmiths and other workers wore azure skullcaps, bright blue leather trousers and sturdy boots. Hualiama wondered how they tolerated the cold, going bare-chested even in the chill of the caves, which was barely alleviated by the intensity of that roaring furnace. Intriguingly, the Enchanters and Smiths worked together on shaping the metal, using magic to speed the heating, cooling and hardening processes. Accelerated engineering, she thought. This was how Azziala could build a mighty army in a short space of time. However, the Empress had concealed her true strength from her daughter. What other secrets would she have withheld?

“We’ve been assigned chambers together in the same sub-cavern set as the Empress,” said Elki, leading the way. “All of our movements are monitored. You’re sharing with Saori.” Lia raised an eyebrow. “Aye, certain matters of propriety must be observed. Our union is not yet sanctioned by the Protocols. So I am assigned an adjoining chamber.”

“With visiting rights?”

Elki turned fireflower-red. “Apparently so.”

Well, that was an Island too far. Lia coloured. “Ah, do you know what became of my blades?”

“Your Nuyallith swords? In our room. Saori has been keeping them polished in the hope, she says, that you might yet dismember your mother.”

“Delicate creature, isn’t she?”

Elki bowed, chortling, “I sure picked the prize prekki-fruit, didn’t I? This way to the lifts.”

“I think she picked the prize,” said Lia.

After seeing the state of the war preparations, there was little levity in her tone. Even so, Elki snagged her with one arm and squeezed her shoulders. “You’re the best sister in the Island-World.”

A smile tugged the corners of her mouth. As far as brothers went, wasn’t he almost tolerable? Occasionally?

As the lift-cage rattled twenty-two floors upward through the vastness of Azziala’s underground fortress, and the temperature rose a few notches, Elki explained how he and his contingent of fledgling Dragon Riders had run into Sapphurion and his forces in the Eastern Isles. After tangling briefly with the Warlord Shinzen’s outriders, the Dragon Elders of Gi’ishior had declared their intent to chase down Grandion–why exactly, Elki could not say, but the prime suspect was, once again, the Scroll of Binding. The Dragonkind feared that power more than anything else. Sapphurion had divided his force, leaving one third of the Dragons–those unable to sustain a long enough flight to reach the Lost Islands–to ally with the Eastern Dragons and the Kingdom of Kaolili, while he led the rest on an epic northward flight, which had ended in treachery, disaster and defeat at the Dragon’s Bell.

“After which I, unsurprisingly, had to go chase down my reprobate baby sister once more,” Elki concluded.

She punched his arm.

“Wow, I appreciate the rescue, o mighty Prince of Fra’anior,” he added, patting himself on the back.

“If you say so yourself,” said Lia.

“You are the very twin suns warming my life, precious sister.”

“Brother, what do you want?”

Mercy, it was good to have Elki’s company, she realised. Even if they were dangling halfway down the proverbial volcanic fumarole on the end of a fraying rope, he still managed to find a touch of humour to lighten her mood. That in turn clarified her thoughts, turning them to healthier, more productive paths.

A swish of blades through the air greeted their entrance into the spacious chamber assigned to the runaway royals of Fra’anior. Saori paused in a ferocious, snarling pose, arrested by Elki’s soft whistle. Evidently, the sight of a perspiration-streaked warrior-woman wearing little more than a loincloth and indecently brief upper-body armour was somewhat distracting to her brother. Perish the thought. And Saori’s form was a swordswoman’s perfection; tall, lissom and strong, unlike the diminutive Princess who was not even slightly jealous.

Lia punched her brother’s arm again. “You were saying?”

“Ouch. Stop bruising the royal personage.”

“Hualiama!” Saori yelled, breaking her pose to throw herself into a very un-Eastern hug. “Elki, you found her!”

“My awesomeness is catching,” he said, modestly.

“Stand still!” Saori snapped. Elki yelped as Saori’s sword-point menaced his nose. “Don’t move a muscle.”

He squeaked, “Just my throat? To scream in unabashed terror?”

Unexpectedly, the Eastern Isles warrior smiled at Hualiama. “Watch this. I’ve been working very hard on my cultural adaptation skills.” Holding the trembling Prince ransom by dint of pressing the flat of her sword against his neck, Saori rose onto her bare toes and, with a gasp at her own daring, kissed him smack on the lips. “See what I did? In public, too!”

“My sister is not the public,” Elki protested, rather weakly.

Saori growled, “Give me due credit.”

“Right now, I’ll give you anything you desire. Fancy a nice little Island-Kingdom? Twenty-seven Islands and an oversized volcano, all for you?”

Lia chuckled, “This cultural adaptation must be so challenging for you, Saori.”

Just then, Yinzi, Hualiama’s old midwife, appeared from an inner chamber. One look, a glad cry, and Lia found herself the recipient of a second hug, an enormous embrace from an enormous woman. “So glad you’re back. And well! Just look at the colour in these cheeks! No longer a lizard.” She pinched both of Lia’s cheeks as if she were a child being shown off to a long-absent relative, and then more pensively, touched her forehead with the tips of three fingers of her right hand. “May Dramagon’s light pervade your life, burning away the falsehoods of those lizards.”

Hualiama bit her lip so hard, she tasted blood.

“Saori.” Yinzi spun her about. “We do not kiss a Prince in such a disgraceful state. You reek. Into the bath with you, this instant. You too, chicklet. Go cleanse your body of the sulphurous stench of those vile reptiles.”

Imagine her Dragoness dunking Saori in the bathtub? Hualiama had to stifle a giggle as a naughty mental image intruded. Anyways, it would be a good chance to catch up with her prickly friend and to share the news.

With a longing glance at the pair of Nuyallith blades displayed on the stone wall opposite the entryway, Lia ducked into the bath chamber. Some of the Lost Islands technology was perfectly civilised, and hot baths were more a necessity than an option in this frigid climate. The brass bathtub was the variety where a person sat upright on a step, immersed up to the neck in warm water. Judging by the enticing aromas, they also provided a decent line in bath soaps and fine oils.

Even renegade Dragon-channelling Princesses could appreciate a touch of luxury.

With a sly poke aimed at Saori’s ribs, she said, “So, stinker, have you seen one of these before? This is called a bathtub, and if you want to impress a Prince …”

* * * *

Two nights later, with her mother en route home from Erak Island, the most northerly of the Human cluster, Hualiama snapped into her Dragoness form mid-combat with Saori. The blunted practice blade whanged off her nose-scales.

“Ancestors!” yelled Saori, scrambling backward.

Roar! Lash out! At the very last second, Lia pulled her instinctive talon-strike with a cry of dismay. “Saori … I’m so sorry. Oh, roaring–”

“Get away from me!”

“I’m sorry!” The Eastern warrior wore two neat claw-lines on her right bicep. Bright blood welled up. “Stupid fulminating rascally Dragon reactions. Elki! Elki, can you help?”

“Sure, I’ll boot your scaly backside for daring to lay a claw on my Saori,” he growled. Not joking.

Clutching the wound to stop the blood flow, Saori said, “Do you think combat’s the key, Lia? You were engrossed in your Nuyallith forms. Something about that triggered the Dragoness–maybe you just have to want her enough, and she appears?”

Hualiama settled her wings with an agitated ruffle. “You don’t hate me?”

“No. Just a fright.” Saori ran her free hand through her short, dark bristles. Her slanted almond eyes crinkled into a smile as she reached out to remove Lia’s shredded undershirt from her skull-spikes. Her transformation had managed to fling her leggings all the way to the fireplace.

“Don’t,” said Lia, bracing herself.

“You’re beautiful and cutesy, but decidedly lethal,” said the girl.

Cutesy? Her talons clenched, but the desire to yield to the anger and rip something to shreds was not insurmountable. However, her belly region heated up noticeably and smoke poured from her nostrils. Hualiama trembled as she fought to master her surging Dragon emotions.

That was the exact moment Yinzi bustled into the room, and screamed.

What she saw writ in Yinzi’s expression, broke her resolve. Blood sapped from the old midwife’s cheeks as if stolen by claws of ice. Betrayal. Horror. In a flash, Lia whipped through the doorway, rebounded off the far wall of the corridor, and fled.

* * * *

Reason returned as Hualiama scaled an air vent toward the open air. She paused, clinging on with her talons punched into the natural cracks in the vertical tunnel, deliberately slowing her breathing. Frigid air streamed over her body, down into the fortress. Odd. Surely the reverse flow would make more sense? Her nostrils tingled at the cold; at the unfamiliar smells of damp and tangy minerals and musty pollens flowing from above.

A frozen world, yet still that liberty beckoned. Did the Dragon Enchanters not consider the air vents a possible vector of attack? They appeared undefended. That said, this thousand-foot vertical tunnel was barely large enough for a Dragon hatchling, but it would be no trouble for smaller Swarm Dragons.

She knew where she must go. The Place of Reaving.

Sorry, Grandion.

She could not sense his mind. Had the Haters applied a Command-hold once more?

Rapidly, Hualiama scaled the remaining length of grey granite tunnel, emerging into a blizzard. The weather stunned her. She had never seen snow whipping in so fast, it flew sideways in great, stinging flurries. How could she survive in this? She must find shelter–no, that was silly Human-thinking. Was she not a walking furnace? Her skin a natural coat of armour? Laughing at the sizzle of snowflakes striking her eyeballs, Lia cast about in the night. Flying might be dangerous until she became stronger, but perhaps that would develop as her Human recovered–she had improved enough to fight for ten minutes at a time with Saori, but her muscles were still woefully bereft of their full strength. Was the vigour of her two forms linked somehow? Health-wise, that was certainly the case …

Setting her muzzle toward higher ground, Hualiama pressed herself into a run. She must train this Dragon-form as much as she had ever honed her Human body in the rigours of dance and the martial arts.

Battered by the storm winds, the Dragoness fought her way up the mountain above Azziala’s fortress to the Place of Reaving, where her Dragon-spirit had safeguarded her life, and she had seen the star Hualiama at dawn. How could a frozen body have seen a star? Mystery. She was disillusioned with mysteries. No. Tonight, she had one simple goal. Retrieve her shell-mother’s scale.

Child of the Dragon. Daughter of Rebellion. Those must be her titles.

Peering over the edge of the hole, Hualiama was once again struck by a faint yet richly complex aroma she recalled from Ha’athior Island. Dragon-smell. Somehow, notes of cinnamon and vanilla overlaid a slightly sulphurous, smoky odour, yet the bouquet presented to her senses was far more. She struggled to quantify her intuition. Could the physical sense of smell function as a gateway to some higher form of discernment, the notes of which caused hordes of colourful, monad-like impressions to swarm across her senses as though the very act of perception were a harbinger of consciousness itself? Intriguing. She breathed as deep as she dared. Perhaps some form of low-dwelling Dragonkind lived in the subterranean realms, patiently gnawing at the roots of Azziala’s realm?

Briefly, Lia considered kicking over the hateful archway where the Enchanters chained their victims, there where the gap between the two imaginary nostrils narrowed, but still the person dangled over an unknowable drop. Grandion might rip that archway off the mountain, but this hatchling was in no shape to attempt the same.

Cold air drifted upward into her face, but not the deathly blast she had endured. Had that been later, during the night? Did she risk being deep-frozen if she …

Hualiama, lest you forget, we’re a Dragoness, her other-voice chided. Let’s take our courage in our paws. The end will be worth it.

The Star Dragoness chuckled softly. Thank you, Humanlove.

Traumatised silence.

If we cannot learn to love ourselves …

The girl spluttered, I … oh, mercy, how can we say this? Can we? I’m … speechless. I sense truth. And I know I must not act out of fear. But I can’t, I just … can’t. Yet.

Hualiama spread her wings, drifting downward into the dark. Very well, what will you call me? I don’t wish to be labelled other-anything, anymore.

The Human girl said, Right. Sorry if I hurt you–us.

How strange, to feel herself pondering away, almost as if a second brain were spatially superimposed on the first.

Dearest scale-brain? Lia teased herself.

Well, you are my very dear Dragon.

Possessive. And cheeky. Who’s ten times your size, I ask you? Besides owning the wings?

My soul, magnified. O wingéd jewel of–

Stop, Dragon-Lia cut in uneasily. That’s just embarrassing.

Therefore, I shall call you Dragonsoul. My Dragonsoul.

Joy incarnate.

* * * *

Literally aglow with elation, the Star Dragoness tucked up her wings, experimenting with the speed of descent. Her Human had just turned a Dragoness’ insides into a mixture of sloshing nausea cut through by red-hot lava. Was she supposed to be able to knock herself out of the sky like that? Roaring rajals! Also, slightly creepy. Like this place.

She must be far below the level of the Human fortress by now, but the aperture showed no signs of changing, or opening out into caves, or doing anything she had imagined. What did strike her, was that the walls were growing less rocky and more organic in nature–shifting toward rock-infused flesh? Strange veins of bluish, bioluminescent material appeared to snake through the substrate, but when she touched them with a curious paw, they felt no different from frozen rock. Most peculiar.

As she descended, the pressure increased noticeably. Grandion had taught her that Blue Dragons could work out their altitude to within ten to fifteen feet of accuracy by closely observing changes in air pressure. What she was most concerned about was the effort of flying all the way back up again. Lia hovered briefly. Continue, or return?

Without the slightest warning, the air suddenly sucked away beneath her wings.

Panic! Lia tried to flare her wings to slow herself, but the downward gale was far too powerful, buffeting her wings until she feared she’d tear a muscle or a few wing struts. She plummeted. The walls rushed by, faster and faster, the bright vein-like features leaving streaks on her retinae. What had Grandion taught her? Recalling his instruction, she shifted her primary wing-bones, the equivalent of the Human elbow or secondary wing-joint, outward while keeping the more delicate ‘wrists’ or tertiary wing-joints, tucked firmly against her sides. She flattened her body and forced herself into a more horizontal orientation, increasing the wind resistance. Surely, a body could fall only so fast? Aye, her engineer wailed, but that was somewhat in excess of one hundred and twenty miles per hour. A collision at that speed would be fatal.

Oh no. The passage divided at last!

Hualiama had no choice in the matter. With a roar that reminded her of an almighty inhalation, the tempest sucked her away into the rightward passage and she glanced off the wall, thankfully at an acute angle. Thump! She spun helplessly. Instinct made her tuck into a ball–any flailing, and she’d break a limb or wing instantly. Whack! Her left shoulder took the brunt of the blow, but again the angle saved her a worse injury. Lia tumbled tail over muzzle, or whatever the Dragonish saying was, skidding along and yelping in concert with the increasingly frequent, bruising impacts as the passage opened up at the same time as flattening out.

She spied a gorge ahead. Screeeech! Her talons made a sound like chalk drawn across slate as she employed twenty talons and even her tail-spikes to slow herself down, but she could find no purchase on the super-hard, seamless stone. With an unhappy wail, Lia slewed about as she approached the edge of the gorge; the freezing wind howled over the lip, growing perversely stronger as it tugged at her wings and curled treacherously beneath her body, prying her grip loose.

“No! You … will … not!”

Her soft hatchling talons bent beneath the force of terror. The cliff-edge appeared to be lined with large teeth, or at least, protrusions, perhaps twenty feet long, and dangling from the very end of one of those, Lia spotted something she had never expected to see again–her old necklace, apparently frozen to a knob of ice. She could not have aimed more exactly for the spot had she spent months practising, for she slid along that frozen spur, tail and muzzle drooping either side as she scrabbled for grip. The gusts kept knocking her about. Finally, with a desperate wrench, Lia twisted her long, serpentine neck backward over her shoulder, and tried to sink her fangs into the rock.

She slipped, and the wind died as suddenly as it had risen.

The Star Dragoness dangled by her teeth, with a certain paucity of elegance and sophistication, above a huge gorge filled with a strange purple carpet at its base, along which moved a steady procession of the most enormous plants she had ever seen, neatly segmented as though chopped purposely into three hundred foot lengths. Great leaping Islands! What was this place? Her eyes slowly twizzled upward. The vaulting roof of the cavern was ribbed like the supports of the ballroom of Fra’anior’s Palace, each support picked out by a violet colour, while the main surface was a pinkish grey which faded into the violet where each section intersected. The gorge was a good quarter-mile in length–no, not a gorge, but rather a roughly oval aperture below which the carpet rippled along with peristaltic regularity, transferring … food … along a tongue? Into a gullet?

Lia stiffened. No!

Yet she had seen the inside of Amaryllion’s mouth. This was larger still, but she could guess roughly that she hung somewhere at the back of a monstrous throat, where the nostril-openings connected with the start of the larynx–if only she could believe her instinct. Despite the blasting cold, she felt and smelled a hint of warmth from the purple tongue. This was a living creature, surviving somehow in temperatures that must be unimaginably inimical to life as she understood it–and even as this thought formed, so Hualiama became aware of the pulse of magic surrounding her. She sensed the signature of draconic life, as slow-moving as basal rock itself, indeed so sluggish that she had entirely failed to identify its true nature during her ride down–Lia snorted with laughter between her clenched fangs.

She had slid down its nostril.

Chapter 7: Deeper

ALRIGHT, TINY BRAIN, picture this. A Land Dragon as large as an Island. No, it was the Island. This was a beast of such imagination-sizzling magnitude, it stood on the base of the Cloudlands and breathed clean air from the world leagues above. It ate chunks of plant matter each three or more times the size of Sapphurion. The Land Dragon had to be thousands or even tens of thousands of years old, and its brain apparently worked so slowly, that she might have to wait days for a thought to form. The whistling wind was its breath, and her Reaving had been the product of the Dragon’s night-long exhalation.

“Excuse me as my head implodes!” she gasped.

In the ultimate irony, Azziala and her Dragon-Haters lived Dragonback. They had burrowed into a Dragon’s shell.

She knew another fact. Affurion’s tale was true. These Islands had not sailed. They had walked. Even more bizarrely, the Fra’aniorian saying, ‘Great leaping Islands’ held more than a grain of truth. How many other Humans unwittingly lived atop Dragons? Long may their Islands sleep!

Treacherous, disbelieving giggles forced their way out of her throat, beating back the fear.

Now, she sensed the warmth of her breath melting her perch, enough to loosen the White Dragoness’ scale and to warm the peculiar, egg-shaped protuberance which must have snagged there months or years before.

Her inner voice snorted, Right, Dragoness! We’ve claws and wings. How’s about doing something sensible with them?

Like squishing cheeky Humans?

With an ungainly scrabble, Hualiama clambered atop her perch and reached for her treasure. Naturally, her brain was still flitting about like an excitable dragonet. Wondering, why the relatively brief inrush of breath?

Never wake a sleeping Dragon, the Human-presence teased.

Dragon-Lia huffed, You’re such an annoyingly right straw-head!

I’m the brains, you’re just hot air and magic.

Grr!

No mind. Her forepaw seized the prize. A weak tingle against her hide. Had Lia not been engaged in trying to understand her environment with all of her Dragon senses, she might have missed it. Magic. Her eyes widened. Very, very gently, she blew warm air over the protuberance. As the casement of ice melted and dripped away into the void, she sighed. An egg. Aye, a dragonet’s egg. Just a tad larger than Humanlove might easily cup in her hand; an oval of pearlescent white, unlike the multi-coloured, jewel-like dragonet eggs of Fra’anior. The egg felt frozen solid, but had she sensed a flicker of flame within? Glancing about, clasping her perch three-pawed while her right forepaw held the white scale and worried at the egg, trying to loosen it, Lia saw a few mounds of what might be other eggs scattered about the huge cavern, all rimed by frost. Yet, this one felt special.

Beware a change in the wind, her scales informed her.

A hoarse ‘GGHHAAAA!’ booming through the cavern rattled her fangs and almost shook her loose from her perch. Puffy cream clouds boiled across the purple tongue, seeming to move sluggishly at first, but that was only a trick of enormous scale and perspective. Hualiama thought she had been cold before, but the chill that diffused over her body now was more than the absence of heat. It was a piercing frost that blighted her bones, stealing heat from her body like a thief running rampant in the night. This was the cold which had Reaved her. It was the memory of a nightmare that woke one sweat-soaked in a haunted room, so terrified that even a scream would not form in the throat. A sharp whistling sound began deep within the stony halls of the creature’s body. A blast must come.

Attack! Chip-chip-chip with the claws! Lia frantically worked at summoning her inner flame, despairing that she had only a hatchling’s fires to work with. The clouds bulged grotesquely toward her as if bent on surging out of that throat to utterly consume a feckless, trespassing Dragoness. Concentrating furiously, desperately, she produced a tiny flare of white-fires. Grab! She palmed the slippery egg ineptly, given her inexperience with paws. It squeezed between her talons like a lump of wet soap.

“No!”

Flaring her wings, Lia leaped and executed a catch quicker than the thought which had launched her downward. Before she could start to address the snarky sense of ‘congratulations, what a clever little Dragoness we are’ deep in her mind, the wind thumped her like a fist to the belly. She snapped her wings shut. Too slow. Pain stabbed into her left secondary wing-joint as the bone smacked against one of those protuberances, but the hurt was rapidly numbed by the cold lifting her toward the cavern’s roof. Before the mist closed overhead, she spied the long, narrowing trumpet-shape of the nostril, and Dragon reactions took over. Flick the wings. A hummingbird-like flutter corrected her flight and speared her body into the opening, mere inches from braining herself on one of those protruding ribs, perhaps the palette of the Land Dragon’s throat.

The cold! So intense, she could feel the blood vessels congealing in her wings; surrounding her like a dense blanket, suffocating her ability to resist, to break free. Hualiama fought with all of her strength. Growling, groaning, her willpower tearing from her muscles the power she demanded to rise above those billows, the rush intensifying as the vertical tunnel narrowed …

Fires, Dragoness! Ride our fires!

How? She did not care to insult her ridiculous Human side, but the question was the snap of a Dragon’s jaws.

Must I show you, you poor lamb? Apparently, Humanlove had no such qualms.

GRR!

Remember how Ra’aba cut us? How he laughed, yet that memory ultimately fired us to our victory? How the blades danced, wreathed in the flame of Dragon fire forged metal?

She remembered Azziala’s hate. Razzior’s attempt to murder her. The inferno of a feral Dragon’s attack. Her belly ignited as if she had tossed oil into a bonfire.

Brutal, molten passion coursed through the veins and arteries of her Dragon form, pooling in the three distinct locations of her hearts, the upper throat, the chest and deep in her belly, before radiating toward her extremities. The already-frozen wing membranes thawed, stinging her sensitive nerve endings into renewed life. Hiss! To her surprise, she noticed moisture steaming off her body. The pain invigorated, driving the Star Dragoness into a searing vertical ascent. Grandion’s voice played in her mind, correcting her posture and wing-form, until she rocketed up the narrowing nostril barely ten feet ahead of the surging cold front.

Endlessly she struggled, her ears creaking and popping as what she realised had been a potentially dangerous pressure, lessened. She drove her wings to their maximum, until the wingtips met beneath her lower tail. Stretching out, she became as sleek and compact as a falcon plummeting toward its prey.

Pinpricks of light above! The aperture leaped toward her, magnified. Starlight–had the storm already passed over?

With one final surge and a bugle of triumph, Hualiama shot out of the Land Dragon’s nostril like a crossbow bolt sprung from a highly tensioned bowstring. She raced for the open skies, seeing clouds billowing out of at least ten similar orifices on this side of the Island alone. How many nostrils? How many mouths might it take to feed such a behemoth?

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Dragonship! Back-winging frantically, Hualiama slapped obliquely into the underside of a Dragonship’s air-sack.

“Dragon, obey!”

Blackness streaked her vision, but the laugh that raged out of her throat, stunned her. FOOLS! I AM HUALIAMA!

* * * *

“Dragon, obey!” yelled the Enchanters, a clear edge of panic infecting their voices.

“No. Not today.”

Instinct made her lash out with a psychic blast; the female Enchanters screamed and one fainted. Lia spiralled past the Dragonship’s nose, hunting a familiar presence.

DRAGON, OBEY!

Azziala’s power was monstrous, seizing her as if her head had been wedged in a vice and a sadistic torturer slowly ratcheted up the pressure. Yet the steely core of her psyche would not yield. The terrible grip could not find purchase.

“Mother.”

DRAGON, OBEY!

Despite an instant migraine that sheeted darkness over her vision, Hualiama found a way to raise her left forepaw in a cheeky salute to the crysglass window behind which her mother’s blue-in-blue eyes burned, baleful. She said, Make me.

The Empress made a cutting gesture with her hand. Her lips moved. “It’s Hualiama.” She added, in her mind, Delighted to see you returned to full health, Hualiama.

Only her mother could make a welcome sound like an invitation to the gallows.

Delighted in equal measure, mother.

Azziala beckoned. Come. We need to have another time of mother-daughter bonding. Share with me all the intelligence you gathered from Sarzun Dragonhold. I sense you have much to relate.

Hualiama jutted out her chin.

Obey, or I will flay your precious Tourmaline and turn his hide into a rug for my throne-room.

For a long, long moment, fire-eyes burned into blue. This was the issue. As long as Azziala held hostages and Hualiama was unwilling to let her loved ones die, what could she do? Which would she choose when the stakes became higher? When the fate of Kaolili Kingdom’s innocents must be weighed against the destruction of Grandion, Sapphurion and all the Dragons, and the eventual enslavement of all Humankind? Evil must not win the day.

Then again, she was not the one whose kingdom ambitions rested upon the backs of the very beasts she sought to destroy. After glancing up at Numistar’s comet, burning ever closer and brighter, Hualiama made her decision.

Time to ally herself with the Empress. The Balance must be shaken.

* * * *

Part of her wanted to spring upon the odious woman who had despised the babe in her womb, celebrated her apparent death, and taken the first opportunity to bargain her life away to Ianthine, the mad Maroon Dragoness. Dragon-Lia pictured quarrying out her mother’s intestines and throwing them to the windrocs. Human-Lia quietly reminded her that the Empress had her magic defences on hair-trigger alert, and one of those constructs was an escape via teleportation. No, Azziala did not trust her daughter. That made the feeling entirely mutual.

All this, she hid beneath her finest psychic shielding, enhanced with Juyhallith mental techniques. No doubt Azziala could read her far better than she cared to admit. The Star Dragoness prowled around the navigation cabin with every ounce of menace she possessed, making the quintet of Azziala’s stooges draw back in alarm.

Humansoul reminded her that a Dragoness must play a deeper game. She thanked her inner presence.

The Empress leaned across the Navigator’s table, wetting her golden lips with the tip of her tongue. “Aye, I had sensed the strangeness of that comet, but you claim it’s an Ancient Dragon?”

“The spirit of an Ancient Dragon. Just as the spirit of a Dragon possessed my Human body, and manifests itself from time to time, as you see. That is what Siiyumiel taught me.”

Within, Lia apologised to herself for the lie.

The Empress raised one bony forefinger, and thrust it across the highly polished jalkwood surface as if she wished to ram her hatred right through the Star Dragoness’ hearts. “Draconic subterfuge. When you show me how you change back into a Human body, I will see the truth in your eyes. I will read your mendacities like an open scroll.”

Hualiama knew she must not rage like this, her thoughts rendered ungovernable by the toxic brew of loathing and desire for revenge coalescing in her Dragon-hearts. The Dragoness yielded to her Human mind, yet still, the transformation shocked her. The scale and the egg dropped, but she caught them with extraordinary reaction-speed, despite the unexpected switch to Human digits and limbs. It worked? Panting with a rush of adrenaline, Hualiama faced her mother, tangentially noting the tenderness of her left elbow. Did injuries also replicate between her two forms?

Azziala leaped out of her chair with a volley of wild curses.

This uncontrolled form-shifting magic was bound to cause problems. Lia smiled grimly, pushing a few blonde strands away from her face. “Aye, mother. I can’t control the beast. But I am Hualiama, and I need you to understand the threat facing us all.”

Dragon Enchanters poured into the room, shouting their Command-holds and falling over each other in their anxiety, but Hualiama whisked forth the benefits of a royal upbringing. Drawing herself up to every inch of her five-foot stature, as if she were clothed in magnificent royal robes rather than her natural state, and with attitude sufficient to stun a Dragon, Lia snapped, “You! Give me your cloak this instant.”

The pasty-faced man dropped his cloak into her hand.

She drew the cloak over her shoulders and clasped the front shut. “Alright, fix your eyes back in their sockets. Anyways, most of you Councillors have seen me naked before.”

“Where’s the Dragoness, mighty Empress?” stammered the foremost woman. Although she was young, her hair was already turning iron-grey–a side-effect of the consumption of Dragon blood and the magic it contained.

“Gurzia, this is my daughter, Hualiama. The one who killed your mother.”

Azziala appeared to derive vicious pleasure from making this statement. The young woman’s face remained golden, but her fists clenched white-knuckled at her sides. Lia nodded at the woman, regretful. “Shazziya was your mother?”

The Empress said, “The eyes, daughter. Always examine the eyes. By the Protocols!” She clapped her hands sharply. “Since we’re all present, let us convene.”

Gurzia’s hatred was a palpable force; the tall, strong woman seemed on the point of leaping at Lia to strangle her, when Azziala called together the circle of Councillors. They held hands to facilitate the linkage of minds through physical contact, but this time there was no inclusion of Hualiama–a clear signal. No trust. Thirteen pairs of identical blue eyes had barely blinked when her Council of Twelve, and the Empress herself, turned to Lia, who was the shortest by a head apart from her mother. Yet she felt the proverbial Dragon in the room–or a wart, or something equally delightful. The massed eyes judged. Pared back the flesh to find secrets near the bone.

“You fear Numistar Winterborn, therefore you wish to forge an alliance of convenience,” said Azziala. “Yet we discern that the greater fear is the loss of your usefulness to the Empress, linked to the fear that your status atop the draconic hierarchy will end with Numistar’s advent. That, it will.”

To these charges, she had no answers.

“To you, uniqueness has always served as a source of strength and pride. Pride shall be your downfall. Possessed by a Dragon, there is no place in this Island-World where you shall not be hated.” Her mother spoke without inflection, but Hualiama could taste the underlying relish and imagine a dagger twisting between her ribs. “Therefore, the sooner you learn the Protocols of Hate, the stronger you will become.”

“I’ll never be like you.”

Her mother spoke in the same monotone, as if Lia had not responded. “I’ve a job for you in our newfound alliance. You will assume responsibility for readying my Dragon army, minus my Dragon Enchanters, whom I shall require should negotiations with Numistar fail. You will accelerate the schedule of bloodletting and be responsible for choosing those lizards which will die. Your preparations will be perfect, and the Dragons’ obedience, faultless.”

Hualiama eyed her mother with a mixture of caution and shock. “You’re releasing the Dragons?”

Roaring rajals, the woman was devious! The position was lower than any other of her Councillors, but above all the Dragons–above Sapphurion, even. An invidious role, despised by all.

“You will discover, my daughter, that my Enchanters have made significant progress in the construction of subliminal Commands using the knowledge you passed on to Ianthine, and by extension, to us. You would not believe the devious ways in which magic can be inserted into the draconic mind. I will leave you to discover the exact constructs and forfeits for yourself.”

Lia hissed between her teeth.

“Aye, this should provide ample reason for the Dragons to hate you even more than they already do. Thus, you shall walk in the Protocols of Hate, and your soul shall be forged anew.”

* * * *

Grandion whirled toward his shell-father, raging, You cannot support me! You’d lose the respect, the leadership of all the Dragonkind! I cannot roost-love a Human!

Grandion, oh, shell-son …

The Tourmaline gashed the cavern-floor with his talons, circling the walls of the circular granite chamber with the fury of a caged Dragon–for caged they were. The door of this cell was twenty feet thick. That was no match for an enraged Blue, but his shell-father refused to be goaded. Rightly so. Grandion wished for a pinch of the patience his father displayed.

We raised her. We know her, Grandion–you have known Hualiama since your hatchling paws cracked the shell. We all loved a Human babe with true-fires love. There is nothing perverse in caring for the innocent, even a child of another species. Who wanted her? We did. Who nurtured her life? We did. Is life not a treasure beyond–

I will not make you a traitor to the Dragonkind!

Shell-son, I am already convicted under the rune of our law. For three and a half years, Qualiana and I concealed a Human child within the Halls of Gi’ishior itself.

A minor infraction! Grandion gnashed his fangs against his father’s hulking shoulder, but both Dragons knew the true target of his wrath. My third heart is torn, shell-father. Speak truth’s fires! This liaison, this treachery of my hearts, it is perverse, undraconic, unthinkable! How, what … what have I done, to love a Human?

You opened your third heart to the song of her fire-soul.

GNNAARRR-NNOOOOO!!

The Tourmaline’s thunder crashed in the enclosed space, shaking dust and pebbles from the cavern roof. His hearts raced as if he tore through the middle of a Dragon-battle, pulsing so fast, the crimson of battle-rage sheeted over his vision. Wrong! Deviant! Forbidden! Words of accusation crashed through his mind. The girl, who had sung to him in a cave beneath the holy Island. Her outrageous courage in succouring a crazed, blind Dragon from Shinzen’s lair. Standing up to Razzior. Wishing to lay down her life for the Dragons, yet even that fate had been denied her. Hualiama was, in every way, beyond extraordinary, beyond admiration … yet she was Human. Maybe. Human and Dragon. A wing-shiveringly exquisite hatchling. He simply could not erase her from his hearts. She was more than written there. The Dragonsong called Hualiama lived within him.

Do not be hasty, shell-son, Sapphurion advised, rubbing his muzzle against Grandion’s flank. I sense a greater purpose at work here, greater than you or I see or understand. Do you wish to lose her?

He groaned, Nooo … oh, no, I could not live …

Look at me. Shell-son–

No!

LOOK AT ME!

Grandion’s head jerked up. By his wings! He had never heard Sapphurion rage like this, grief and power and majesty exploding in his breath, commanding the respect Grandion knew was due to his draconic sire. Shell-father?

In the ancient metre, Sapphurion declaimed:

Fire-promises belong to the Dragonkind, given aeons ago,

The assurance of souls united, the soul-seal eternal,

Given and received. Thus, Hualiama is Dragonkind,

She cannot be other.

The voice of Ancient Amaryllion crooned over her existence,

Speaking white-fires immortal, elemental of creation, the breath of life itself,

She cannot be other.

A Star Dragoness journeyed from realms beyond knowing,

To grace our Island-World with wing and word and star-fire,

She cannot be other.

How could one immutable truth coexist with another immutable truth, yet the two be mutually exclusive? Her existence was physically, spiritually, existentially impossible–except for another immutable fact.

Hualiama lived.

Proof, complete with hands and paws and laughter, that … his quick ears caught the beat of a familiar tread, ever so lightly shivering through the basal rock to his awareness. He had been yearning for her. As if spirited forth, Hualiama came.

She is something new, Grandion said.

The tread faltered. Lia called, Grandion? What does that mean?

We need a new word for a new kind of Dragon, said the Tourmaline, more firmly. She withstood the lava-attack of an Orange Elder, and the hottest fires of four dozen Dragons besides. What Dragon could claim such a feat?

Without, Hualiama must have worked the entry mechanism, because the doorway began to grind open on its rollers, shifting toward Grandion’s left paw. There in the gap, he saw Hualiama smiling, wearing a blue woollen dress which fit her like Dragon hide, Prince Elki leading an orrican by a rope, and Saori standing legs akimbo, as if ready to spring into battle at the drop of the proverbial feather. Behind them came Mizuki, filling the lantern-lit corridor with her dusky copper beauty.

Lia bowed extravagantly, half a dozen Fra’aniorian twirls and a dance-step to boot. “Share fresh kill with us, noble Dragons?”

“When you’ve finished your peculiar cultural dance,” said Saori.

Grandion’s eyes flicked from Hualiama to Mizuki, remembering how the Human girl had unsubtly tried to point him in the Copper Dragoness’ direction. At least she’s a real Dragoness.

A thought filled with dark-fires.

* * * *

Lia apprehended the Tourmaline’s disloyalty with a sensation like a dagger to the gut, yet she appreciated the dark-fires of draconic sadness that accompanied his regard of Mizuki. It took all of her courage to smile in greeting, to wave Elki into the cave with the placid orrican, apparently oblivious to its imminent fate. The orrican was a dark, shaggy heap of bovine ugliness, renowned for the strong flavour of its meat and for its stupidity–exceeding that of the ubiquitous ralti sheep, a most impressive feat. It also provided many essentials for the Dragon-Haters, including food, hide, leather, bags made from the stomach cavity and even glue from its melted-down hooves and horns.

She said, “Grandion?”

“We discussed your nature,” he explained. “There’s a need for a new word to describe what type of Dragoness you are.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” said Elki.

“Shall we share a meal first?” suggested Sapphurion, his attention clearly focused on the jovial and very enthusiastic workings of his stomach.

Hualiama scowled at her brother. “What exactly is easy about me, Elki?”

The Prince rubbed his hands with glee. “Well, if I may elucidate–”

“Eruption incoming.”

“–you are a delightfully intricate paragon of feminine sophistication, by a million leagues, far too confounding for us poor, simple males to ever wrap our bedazzled brains about,” Elki opined, drawing open laughter from Grandion and Saori. “Your nature, however, is simple.”

She folded her arms, wishing her deepening scowl could have been accompanied by a handy fireball to appraise her unbelievably irritating brother of how unbelievably irritating he was being. “You have it all worked out?”

“I have it all worked out,” he confirmed, airily.

“Elki, honestly, you drive me up the Island cliff and back down again!”

He said, “I’m with Sapphurion. Let’s eat.”

Deftly, Sapphurion slit the orrican’s throat, gripping the beast with his left forepaw so that its death throes would not endanger the Humans; the right, he cupped to catch the spurting blood. Drink and be nourished, and grow in wisdom, my Dragon-kin, he said.

Next Hualiama knew, she was pushing past Grandion, shouting, I want some! Bring that paw down to … huh?

Huh? Grandion agreed.

Drink. Sapphurion tilted his paw.

Reason had just begun to intrude when the tang of fresh blood struck Lia’s nostrils. She heard herself make a noise she had never made before, a cross between a snarl and a desperate mewl. Then she was leaping and grabbing at Sapphurion’s paw, licking, slurping … and at the same time, distantly, utterly disgusted at her behaviour.

Dragonsoul! Control yourself.

Uh … sorry.

Had Grandion spoken? Or her? Unsure of anything now but her hot, raw humiliation, Hualiama retreated, fighting for control. She did not want to look at Saori or Elki. She could not. But that meat … oh, great Islands! Never had her body so craved bloody cuts of veal, she was actually drooling. She backhanded her mouth and groaned softly, curling up, “Oh no.”

Elki’s hands raised her gently. “It’s alright. This is your Dragon’s emotions mixed in with yours, see? You are both Dragon and Human at the same time.”

She whispered, “Elki, I’m in no state to debate philosophy with you. I need meat. I need …” A claw-tip offered her a bite. Raw, but that was best. Lia ate greedily. “More?”

She ate this offering more politely, resisting the urge to bolt the meat. Grandion’s fire flared as he barbecued the next portion; the sound of sizzling fat almost set her off again. Elki did not seem to mind. He had his belt dagger out, and set to carving bite-sized portions for her, blowing on them and then popping them into her mouth as quickly as she could eat, as if she were a baby bird. Sapphurion offered Mizuki a choice slab of haunch, while the Tourmaline appeared content, like Saori, to hang back and wait for the others.

Eating like a Dragon hatchling. Was this to be her new life?

The Prince said, “Right, simplifying this matter to terms even those whose function merely serves to prettify our company–yie!”

Mizuki tickled his neck with her left fore-talon. “Explain this Human term, ‘prettify’? Does it equate to, ‘I want to die?’ ”

“It does rhyme nicely,” said Saori, trying to look vapid.

“I’m told that the heat from all those volcanoes around Fra’anior has deleterious effects on the Human brain,” Sapphurion put in, unexpectedly.

“It’s a stretch to imagine this talking monkey has a brain,” suggested the Copper.

Twining his arms across his chest, Elki ignored his Dragoness pointedly. “Here we go. Hualiama has the power of Shifting. As in, she Shifts between her Human and Dragon forms. Unlike the mythical Dragon power of Projection, which we all know is entirely impossible–” Grandion coughed discreetly “–this is a Shift of physical states or shapes, which meantime remain linked at the level of the spirit or the soul. This is why she evinces draconic behaviour even while in Human form. There is but one soul.”

Grandion’s jaw hung slightly askew as he stared at the Prince.

Hualiama said, “Alright, genius, so where’s my Dragoness right now? In my pocket?”

“Perhaps so, but at that size, she’d be incredibly dense,” Saori put in.

Lia’s fists clenched. “Dense?”

The Prince explained smoothly, “No, dear sister, it is clear from the symptoms of starvation that your Human form existed in a real, physical sense, and was wasting away to nothingness, while your Dragoness’ form languished under the Command-hold. Again, you’re eating like a hatchling. The physical forms are more than allied.” Elki interlaced his fingers. “Not like this, although that is one idea. No, you Shift between planes of existence. When you’re here, you’re also there, so to speak. Human and Dragoness exist synchronously in time, in space and in spirit, even though only one form or aspect of your nature reveals itself at a given moment. When you Shift here, the physical form manifests accordingly.”

Now, Hualiama found herself imitating her Dragon. Her lower jaw sagged like a broken hinge.

How could Elki not know about her inner space where Human and Dragoness met, and yet put words to what she had not even begun to understand?

Colouring under the silent scrutiny of the small company, Human and Dragon alike, Prince Elki said, “So I, uh, came up with a word. I hope you’ll like it. Because I want you to know that your existence is neither a lie nor a fraud. I’ve known you for all of my eighteen years, and I can vouch for the fact that you, Hualiama, are the most truly authentic person I know. You dance through life, just yourself. No façade, no deception, just pure Hualiama.”

She sniffed, “You’re … trying to make me cry?” Lia grabbed his hand before he could look too shamefaced. “No, Elki. You’re extraordinary. Have you been secretly glugging the juice of the prekki-wisdom tree?”

He laughed softly at the reference to a ballad they both remembered from their childhood. “So that’s why I stowed away on your Dragonship. I’ve always wondered.”

“You didn’t tell me that detail!” Saori said crossly.

“Saved Lia’s life,” said Elki, returning to his natural diffidence, “ran into Mizuki who shredded a few windrocs who were bothering us, and of course, I discovered you, o Saori, fetchingly occupying a sack.”

“A sack?” the three Dragons chorused.

“Ouch! Long story,” said the Prince, rubbing his arm where Saori had punched him. “Best decision of my life, truth be told, pinching you from Qilong, Dread Pirate-Lord of a thousand Isles, scourge of the Western–”

“As I recall, Saori nabbed you,” Hualiama corrected.

“I’ve always thought silence a marvellous virtue in sisters.” Elki winked at Lia. “Anyways, before I get distracted with embellishing tales of my indubitable magnificence, shall I tell you the word?”

“Yes!” This time, a chorus of five.

“It has a certain, charming simplicity–”

“Such as, I’ll bite you if you don’t speak quickly?” Mizuki interrupted, flexing her talons near his throat.

“Shapeshifter.”

An awesome silence billowed around them, like waves of Cloudland stirred by a rampaging storm of Land Dragons.

“You are a Shapeshifter Dragoness. The third race.”

Chapter 8: Third Race

QUESTIONS SWARMED THROUGH her mind like an infestation of fire-ants. How did it work? Could she simply summon her Dragoness from this ‘other’ place? Her Human body ached in every place her impromptu ride up and down a Land Dragon’s nostril had bruised and battered her Dragoness-body. If she ever became pregnant, would she have babies or eggs? Or–boggle the mind–would they be both? How could one woman become the progenitor of an entire race? Yet more curiously, Hualiama knew peace. Somehow, her rapscallion brother had plucked a jewel out of pure dross, stitched together a masterpiece from a tailor’s offcuts. The word, the whole idea, simply fit.

Shapeshifter. They tossed it around for a few minutes with mounting excitement, before Hualiama briefed them on her new status in Azziala’s realm. Naturally, His Insightful Highness had a few things to share on this score too.

He said, “Fantastic news, Lia. You’ll soon engineer a solution to the bloodletting problem. Obviously, the Enchanters couldn’t give a brass dral for any Dragon’s health. They’re after the hides anyway. We’ll help you figure out how to keep our Dragons alive, meantime we turn your particular skills on this Command-hold magic. I fancy fomenting a little mutiny …”

Sapphurion rested his huge blue paw on the Prince’s shoulders. “That’s the spirit, youngling.”

Oh aye, they would discover in a week or so the secret which had eluded a hundred generations of Lost Islands Dragons? Lia fumed inwardly. What further encouragement did Elki need? Yet he had just whisked the proverbial purple dragonet out of the bag, with an insight which arguably held the key to her entire existence and future. Chewing rotten tinker bananas, Lia? Rather than fussing about her brother earning rightful acclaim for his contributions, perhaps it was time to dust off that girl who loved engineering solutions … if she didn’t tinker Grandion’s head off his shoulders first!

“We’ll need to count and survey the Dragon populations of Azziala’s fortresses,” she said. “I’ll discuss their needs with the Councillors and Dragonship Engineering. Then, we’ll work out a schedule and a methodology to ensure the weaker or sicker Dragons are able to return to good health. Sapphurion, do you know how quickly Dragons regenerate their blood supply?”

“No, Dragonfriend. But we will learn. I’ll search out capable Dragons to be your right paws in each of the Dragon-Hater fortresses.”

“Good. I’ll need research teams, too. Can you rustle up a few scholarly Dragons?”

Sapphurion assented, while Grandion put in, “Siiyumiel taught me a range of techniques which may prove useful.”

Really? When, Grandion? Lia asked.

While you slept, Siiyumiel expounded much Dragon lore to my attentive ears.

Full of surprises, aren’t you, my Tourmaline?

Grandion rumbled contentedly.

Unaware of this exchange, Saori warned meantime, “Within minutes, Azziala will know what we’ve discussed here.”

Lia said, “Aye. She knows the Dragons will try to escape. In fact, she’s expecting it and sees it as another test–don’t you, mother?” Her bold sally produced no reply.

“What was that?” said Mizuki.

“A tremor? I felt it, too,” said Grandion. “Different to volcanic activity.”

“It’s the Land Dragons.” That stunned her companions! Lia said, “I mean, this entire Island is a Dragon.”

All three Dragons ruffled their wings in shock, but it was Grandion who growled, “Lia, are you certain you’ve returned in your right mind?” When she fixed her most mysterious smile–indeed, her most draconic smile–upon him, it produced a second, more agitated ruffle. “Returned from where, is the question! What trouble have you caused this time, o Dragon-Shaker?”

His clever play on words changed the meaning of the word ‘Dragonfriend’ into a positive yet surprising influence, one that shook a Dragon for good.

“I woke the Island,” she said diffidently. “And, I returned with these.”

Grandion frowned as she produced the dragonet egg from her pocket, then hissed between his fangs as she drew the scale-necklace from beneath her clothes. “You disobeyed my orders, Lia! You went … exploring.”

“Orders?” Sapphurion queried. “Is that the nature of your relationship, shell-son?”

“I misspoke. Mis-thought, too, it appears,” snarled the Tourmaline. “I sought to protect the Dragonfriend; she cared not for my sheltering wing and my forethought for a hatchling’s needs and abilities.”

She had hurt him! Hualiama stood abruptly; Grandion recoiled, but the small chamber gave him no space to retreat further. Nevertheless, he would not bow the proud arch of his neck to approach or nuzzle her, as he ordinarily might have.

Standing on her tiptoes, Lia could reach his chin at her fullest stretch. Stroking the tough scales that lined the point of his jaw, she said, “You were right about the danger, Grandion, although it was not as we had imagined. The freezing weather of these Isles is the breath of mighty beasts, drawn from a place of terrible cold beneath the Cloudlands. May I share my thought-memories with you? And will you accept my regret–”

“Why? Why do you make this so difficult, Dragonfriend?”

She sighed.

The Tourmaline’s stiffness resembled a petrified tree. “I understand the need for connection with your shell-mother. I also see one may command the wind, yet it blows as it wishes.”

“Grandion, I am not ungovernable. I know I treasure silly things. This scale means the world to me. I picked up the egg because I felt drawn to it. You see, I oftentimes don’t even understand these consuming passions–oh?”

He did not bend, but instead, offered his paw, palm upraised. Ceremoniously, he said, “Will my Dragon Rider ascend?”

“Dragon?”

Instead of answering her query, he lifted her until they could see eye-to-eye. What she saw there, stung and thrilled her in equal measure. Understanding. Respect. More than a touch of frustration. If fire could ever claim gentleness, that was the tenor of how he burned for her. Much was clouded, as though he harboured an Island’s weight of doubts–rightly so. Yet as he searched her eyes, perhaps seeking the flame within, she realised that the Dragon was emoting his reiteration of the oath-promises, so freely and innocently given years before, which had shaped both of their lives ever since, and the Island-World around them.

Then, he said, I trust thee, Hualiama.

I honour thee, Grandion. Not the oaths. Him. Giving her Dragon the chance to take that first backward step, with integrity.

Thou, he whispered. She winced. He must release her and grieve, but he refused.

Unwillingly, helplessly, she replied, Thou.

* * * *

When a Dragon wished to ponder a scientific problem or a thorny philosophical issue, it was common practice to take to the heights, and from a commanding position to gaze over the Island-World, seeking to draw such inspiration from natural harmony and beauty as would raise the fire-soul to a state similar to the Human concepts of meditation or holy contemplation. Dragon lore called this practice far-seeing. Most especially, Dragons who undertook the sacred fire-quest, often wandering for seasons and even years, would employ far-seeing in an attempt to discern the flight and purpose of their lives. Similarly Master Jo’el, the monk and her mentor, had often stressed the need to draw aside and ground the soul amidst the great mysteries of a grain of sand, an ant, or the vastness of the Universe beyond the Island-World and its five moons.

Thus, when she scaled an unknown peak above the caldera of her Island home in her dream, Hualiama expected to meet her Dragoness-self in that dream-chamber amidst the stars. Dragonsoul was her muse, her counterpart, her source of surprises aplenty.

She did not expect to meet Fra’anior.

Turning from an extended contemplation of the eastern horizon, she saw him there, coiled amidst the Islands, the enormity of his being filling the eighteen league-wide caldera as though it were built to serve as his roost, and the gaps between the rim-Islands had been fashioned to provide comfortable hollows in which to rest his heads. Five heads slumbered, but two were awake, towering above her with their characteristic mantling of storm-clouds, as though the Ancient Dragon wore for his robe the might of Nature herself. Fra’anior was called the Great Onyx, the gleam of gemstone black his armour. Each scale was as broad as the beam of a Dragonship, and his presence was so fearsomely dark and brooding and awesome, that it seemed there should be no need for night to shroud this corner of the Island-World. Matchless in power, cried the ballads, the fearsome enslaver of Humankind. Where he moved, all must tremble.

Hualiama inclined her head respectfully, did not bend the knee. Were this her shell-father, by some miracle, such a genuflection would be strange and inappropriate.

Four great eyes burned upon her, effortlessly defining the ineffable majesty of the Dragonkind. Lia’s stomach churned. Dragon fear. Rightly so.

At last, in a voice like thundering waters, he announced, “I sense the spirit of one I know, but not the bodily form. I am not accustomed to being deceived. Tell me, art thou Hualiama?”

A startling echo of Grandion’s response. Furthermore, the breeze blew a blue strand of hair across her eyes. Her gut performed an unhappy dance. She was Dragon-girl? He was not the only one who was confused. And so, beginning with a desperate quaver in her voice but growing in confidence, Lia declared her name and lineage, and showed Fra’anior the shell she wore about her neck.

“Shapeshifter?” he growled at last. “Equally a servant of Dragon and Human natures? This was never the plan for the paramount power of the Lesser Dragonkind.”

“Did Istariela do wrong, o great Fra’anior?” Lia inquired.

“I should have apprehended this cunning design of the Star Dragoness earlier,” said the Onyx Dragon. “This she concealed even from mine seventh sense, such was the traitoress Istariela’s power over the Balance. The purity of a Dragon’s soul-fire was never meant to be adulterated. Even Dramagon dared not cross to an Island of such perversity, though he many times prowled about its shores. Tell me, little one, is this Amaryllion’s paw at work? Is he a traitor, too?”

How hateful his language! Dismay ate at her gut as if she had been forced to swallow acid. Was she, a creature of unknowable perversity, to be rejected by another parent? Six parents was a wealth by any measure. Two adoptive, one dead, one fled, one as evil a woman who had ever lived, one existing beyond the Island-World but apparently, she disgusted him.

All that Hualiama touched, crumbled into dust and blew into the Cloudlands.

Yet his mood seemed fickle, sliding from a visible boiling of the storm about his heads one instant, to open curiosity the next. He said, “Tell me of Hualiama’s doings, little hatchling. Why dost thou carry an egg? Explain this bequest of Amaryllion’s, which was just now foremost in thine mind?”

She sensed coercion present, but either Fra’anior withheld or his power was so subtle, she could not detect its workings upon her mind, for Lia slowly began to converse with him, and soon found herself speaking with unaccustomed freedom and boldness. Let a shell-father know his shell-daughter. Please, let him see her worth, let him value and not despise the unforeseen fruit of his body.

So she spoke of that fleeting sense of connection with the dragonet’s cold, cold egg, and all she had shared with Grandion, Mizuki, Sapphurion, Elki and Saori of her healing at Siiyumiel’s paw. She described her five-day-old campaign to revive all of the Dragons, of her recalculation of the bloodletting schedule and her experiments with Dragon nutrition to try to stem the steady flow of deaths related to their mistreatment at the hand of Azziala’s Dragon-Haters. Fra’anior hissed when she described how some of the Dragons she had despatched to hunt to provide a more varied diet had attempted to escape, only to perish in the Cloudlands. She digressed into describing the fledgling attempts by Elki and Saori to develop a Dragon Rider lore and code of conduct, and how Fumiko’s husband, the blacksmith Tadao, sought to revive the ancient art of forging weaponry and Dragon battle-armour in Dragon fires. The great, flaming eyes watching her blinked in concert when Hualiama granted Fra’anior a taste of the Dragon-Rider oath-magic, which she believed was Amaryllion’s true gift breathed into her flesh.

When questioned, she related her eggling-dreams of Istariela and the prophecy of the Child of the Dragon. This turned his rumbling down a notch, mellowing the mighty Onyx’s belly-fires into the purring of the largest rajal in existence, a sound that rose and fell in conjunction with the soughing of her soul. Yet when she shared the secret of how the eggling-spirit had travelled across the Island-World in search of a ruined, stillborn Human babe, she felt the resultant quivering of his great body through her bare feet, and saw the Island-sized heads shaking in consternation.

“This is a newfound magic and most perilous indeed,” said the Ancient Dragon. “The ways of magic are elusive and fresh, even as the song of life endlessly renews, adapts and struggles with its internal imperative to master its environment and challenges. One is ever the student, never magic’s absolute master. Learn this lesson well, little one.”

“I hear you, Great One.”

The great eyes regarded her with fierce, humbling pride. “A Dragon’s heritage is not merely physical or generational, as with Human procreation. There is also spiritual heritage, by which we believe certain fire-spirits can be regenerated or even re-embodied in the draconic young, passing a magical or gifted heritage between unrelated Dragons. Yet this is not entirely what Istariela has achieved … I don’t think.” The admission of self-doubt caused huge fires to pour out of his nostrils, but he directed the conflagration away from her frail Human body. Nonetheless, the blasting heat sucked Lia’s lungs dry. “This must remain between us–our secret, Blue-star.”

“How greatly mine hearts yearn to truly know thee, to be with thee, and to clasp thine beauty in mine paw. Yet the price would be prohibitive. And there are battles here, battles to be fought which are beyond thine ken and relate to the Ancient Dragon-Spirits–for this reason, I cannot always be with thee. But I will be with thee in spirit, and I foresee … a knowing grips my bones …”

The wash of his indrawn breath slammed her to her knees.

MOTHER TO MYRIAD, THOU SHALT BE!

From her knees, his roar knocked her flat on her back in an ungainly tangle. She groaned, Whaaa … For white-fires billowed through her being, the visionary power briefly imperious, then gone. She wondered if Fra’anior spoke a prophecy, or spoke the prophetic into being, such was his power.

Peace, little one, he said apologetically. This power of prophetic utterance grips me most sorely. These are words which just now came to me through mine seventh-sense contemplation of thy existence. Thou shalt be mother to myriad, for I see a mighty host gathered before my foresight, shining and beautiful, fey and proud, warring and living and loving and dying as ever did the Humankind and the Lesser Dragons, the fruit of mine labours.

He broke off abruptly, as if biting the words short.

In the sudden absence of his words, her shaking was visceral, her tears, a Cloudlands-bound waterfall. I’m not so much the motherly sort, Great One, she stammered.

The course of life waits upon its right seasons, he replied.

All she knew was that war and destruction would precede any hoped-for future, even that prophesied by an Ancient Dragon. His febrile gaze acknowledged this truth.

Fra’anior said, Yet, this Word must be accompanied by a great caution. I sense a taint within thee, the spirit-life of my old foe, Dramagon. Not inborn, but resident. I must warn thee never to have hatchlings until that taint is expurgated from your being, Hualiama. It would … I fear the worst. I will watch, and help, and meditate upon how to deny the ruzal any further purchase on thy life, for it is a magic most foul and perverse.

If good and evil exist in eternal Balance, o Fra’anior, can this purpose ever be accomplished?

His laughter was thunder. It was delight. It caused the Islands to dance upon their foundations. As her dream faded, she heard him say, Thusly might thou mantle thyself in the dance of wisdom, o foundling-treasure of mine third heart.

* * * *

From the mysteries of the Universe, to death. Large-scale destruction. On the ninth and final day of the week after she willingly entered the Empress’ service, the Star Dragoness walked the halls of Dardak Tertiary, one of three fortresses on Dardak Island, with Grandion and Sapphurion. Released from the Command-hold, the Dragons had revolted. Over a hundred slain. Another two hundred were maimed beyond hope of healing, their injuries inflicted by Enchanter-prepared Dragons which, they recognised now, had been cunningly seeded amongst the ranks. At the first sign of rebellion, the Dragons had fallen upon each other and torn each other and their comrades apart.

No Dragon-Hater had lifted so much as a finger in defence. There was no need.

Golden blood had congealed on the walls and the bodies piled at the base of a central volcanic pipe–if volcanic it was, Hualiama thought–by groups of Dragon labourers. Here, Sapphurion paused before the huge mound of broken, bitten, torn Dragon bodies, his muzzle bowed and his eye-fires a deathly shade of orangey-black. He said, Fools! To squander all life and magic …

They disobeyed orders, Grandion said. The hides should have been flayed, and the blood collected.

Sapphurion growled, Come, Hualiama. We must deal with this.

As the Island shook beneath their paws, Sapphurion threw her a significant glance. Her network of Dragon leaders had been tracking the underground activity of tremors, and the data showed clear signs of increase across the Cluster. The Land Dragons stirred.

Together, with Grandion trailing a wing-length behind, the Dragon Elder and the hatchling winged upward to the pipe’s open exit, to where the Lost Islands Dragons waited. The leader of this group, Jyrandia, was a powerful Blue Overmind, one hundred and forty-two years old. She had been severely weakened by bloodletting, but was now slowly improving under Lia’s regimen of staggered blood collection every fourth day, supplemented by improved diet and vigorous daily exercise. Amusingly, Grandion reported that a number of the Dragonkind had taken to calling her ‘Hatchling Elder-Paws’ in private. She’d work them even harder in that case, Lia grumbled!

As they emerged into the luminous late evening, Lia imagined there must be a rare five-Moon conjunction, but this was not the case. The light was the comet, bending its blazing trail toward the heart of the Lost Islands–aimed at the Buffer Zone, Yul’xi the Red Overmind scientist had calculated, way to the West of the open-topped mountain where the Dragons had gathered in the natural amphitheatre formed by the mouth of the pipe they had ascended, comprised of an olivine and grey dacite superstrate, as recorded in the Haters’ geological knowledge-archive. Yet her eyes were for the assembled Dragonkind. They numbered perhaps four hundred, a cross-section of the different Lost Island subspecies. Her scales thrilled to an underlying tension in the air, a hint of danger that Grandion and Sapphurion clearly picked up on, because the tempo of their inner fires amplified noticeably.

Jyrandia inclined a wingtip. Fiery greetings, noble Dragons. Come, stand in the assembly.

A space had been left just slightly upslope from the Blue Overmind–a neat illustration of draconic hierarchy, in which the more powerful always took the higher ground.

Sapphurion subtly guided Hualiama toward the highest point, a jutting rock. Yet when he stood at her right flank and Grandion to her left, they overshadowed her. Clever. Thus, they augmented her authority without assuming primacy in the hierarchy.

We grieve, Jyrandia began, Dragon-direct. Yet, many of our number question this policy of obedience to the Dragon-Haters. It is dishonourable. Dragons should die in battle.

As did those below? Sapphurion interjected.

Aye! A number of Dragons snarled, none more so than a sixty-foot Red Overmind standing just a few paces downslope, his muzzle positioned lower than Jyrandia’s by the barest width of a scale. Ah, Lia thought. His animosity burned intensely.

The Red snapped, They died in glorious battle, not the cold-hearted cowardice of a Dragoness who serves the Empress heart, wing and paw!

Sapphurion bared his fangs. What is your name, youngling?

CHAKUR!

The brazen battle-challenge did not faze Sapphurion, veteran of many a draconic council. He said, I am Sapphurion the Blue, Dragon Elder of Fra’anior, leader of all Dragons beyond these Isles, north of the Rift. This is my shell-son, Grandion, and this is–

The traitor! Chakur almost howled.

The Tourmaline Dragon’s talons tore rock from the slope, but Sapphurion’s upraised wing stilled his incipient charge. Your fires burn brightly for the fallen, Chakur. You accord them great honour.

A diplomatic answer, but Chakur would not hear it and Lia suspected that Sapphurion knew this too. Her hearts-beat trebled, causing the blood to sing in her ears and pound in her throat. Battle-readiness. Furious cascades of magic tumbled within her body, strangely concentrated in her additional Dragon stomachs and organs, feelings for which she had as yet, no name.

She is a traitor to all Dragonkind. I claim battle-right!

Again, Sapphurion chose to reply quietly, but with a clear edge of inner steel. And what say the Elders amongst your number?

We are divided, Jyrandia said, the weariness in her voice communicating much.

Raising his voice, Grandion declared, Dragons! Wing-brothers and wing-sisters! The time for battle is soon coming. Yet what will it avail the Dragonkind, should the battle be won and the yoke of the Dragon-Haters remain unbroken? The hunter’s paw must know cunning. Let stealth veil his wings. We are weakened, aye, but our spirits remain unbowed.

Empty words! Chakur thundered, along with many of his brethren.

There is no glory in being slain by hidden magic! Grandion roared back, easily amplifying his voice above the others with a touch of Storm-power. You dishonour the spirits of those past, leaving their bodies to rot so that the quotas remain unfulfilled and more Dragonkind must die!

Quotas? The Star Dragoness would have us fawn and crawl upon our bellies! I claim battle-right–against her!

Chakur goaded the Tourmaline into expelling an enormous, raging fireball. He cried, Battle against a hatchling? You’re the coward here, Chakur!

It’s only first blood, like the blood she demands of us, said the other, a devious curl of crimson entering his fire-eyes.

Null-fire son of a scabrous windroc, sneered Grandion, whose diplomatic skills had not yet developed beyond the ‘needs polishing’ stage. Chakur coiled, smoking at the jowls.

Arguments between Dragons were usually highly charged affairs. Stuff bellies full of fire, equip each Dragon with talons and fangs and a temperature of rage directly linked to their inner furnaces, and there could only be one outcome. Any macho posturing was the briefest of preludes to an all-claws-in brawl. Thus it was now. Chakur’s thigh-muscles had barely straightened when Grandion, on equally high alert, blurred into motion. The powerful Tourmaline seized the incoming Red in a headlock with both forepaws and, whirling with the momentum, body-slammed him almost atop an elderly Grunt who sidestepped by the proverbial rajal’s whisker rather than provide Chakur a soft landing. The Red Overmind bounced off the rock. The Grunt kicked him in the jowls for good measure–clearly, no devotee of Chakur’s.

Meantime, ten Dragons piled into Grandion with a chorus of savage growls. To her surprise, Hualiama found herself deeply mired in the fray, champing on a Brown Anubam’s lower lip while the Brown tried to secure a mouthful of Grandion’s left wing. The Anubam smashed her away with a cuff of his oversized forepaw. Lia saw stars.

Next she knew, lightning flashed near Grandion and Sapphurion bellowed, SAPPHURION! Two Dragons who had not even joined the fray, dropped in their tracks as though poleaxed.

No …

First blood! shouted Chakur, spearing toward Hualiama out of a tangle of paws and wings, his mighty jaw agape.

She roared back, I accept!

The Red, and twenty Dragons behind him, suddenly faced a storm wind that blasted them back across the volcanic pipe. Grandion! Sapphurion! The powerful Blues had joined forces, and the windstorm they generated was enough to make Lia spring desperately into a small crack, lest she be swept away to Kaolili.

All of the watching Dragons bellowed as one. Then, silence fell as though commanded by the strike of Fra’anior’s paw.

Jyrandia growled, And another two fall. When will this madness end, Chakur?

He spat golden blood. When I have satisfaction. The Star Dragoness accepted my challenge. Let it be first blood.

Hualiama, no! Grandion gasped.

I … uh, did agree. A moment’s battle-madness …

The Tourmaline stared at her for a second, aghast. Lia, Chakur means his first bite to be a killing bite. You do understand, don’t you?

Beyond Grandion, Chakur was laughing. You accepted, so-called Star Dragoness. Or are you such a coward, you’d have this Blue thug fight for you? A pox on your sire, and a greater pox upon the blighted womb that whelped your miserable egg!

Instantly, Hualiama saw crimson. She launched past Grandion so fast, the Tourmaline missed his reflexive attempt to catch her, and she slammed into the mountain of Dragonflesh that was Chakur before he managed to wipe the nasty smirk off his lips. Only a slight jerk of his head saved his left eye. She knew she could do little to damage him, so she struck for the most vulnerable part she knew. But her hatchling claws skidded off his scale-armour a mere half-inch from the orb of the eye, unfortunately, drawing no blood.

With a terrible roar, Chakur flung her off; Hualiama fluttered her wings to absorb the momentum, then closed again with the Red Overmind. He allowed her to attack almost unopposed, waiting for the moment to bite or stun her with a paw-strike. Hualiama tried for his wings, but Chakur was too quick and compact, defending with psychic strikes and shielding as much as with superior body-position. She was a gnat fighting a boulder. Lia tried to find fire, but her hatchling-level ability only produced a brief sputter that made the Red chuckle horribly; then, an unseen boulder smashed against her right shoulder and neck. Kinetic attack! Stunned, Lia dropped in a heap. Somewhere nearby, Grandion’s panicked bugle cut through the roaring in her ears.

Dragonsoul? You have to wake up! Up! Oh, unholy …

Jaws descended toward her Dragoness’ head, agape. There was no escape, for the Red Overmind filled her vision, and his forepaws were cupped about her body, denying any possible avenue of escape–bar one. Into his mouth.

Human-Lia triggered the jump.

* * * *

HUALIAMA!

Terror caused all three of Grandion’s hearts to contract agonisingly as the dark blue tail vanished inside the Red Overmind’s champing maw. Chakur’s jawbones worked as he tried to use his tongue to manoeuvre the Star Dragoness into position for a fatal bite.

Suddenly, as clear as a Dragon’s bugle, a feminine voice cried, I taste first blood!

She’d cut that worm’s tongue! Of course! Grandion’s jaw, and those of all the Dragons he spied in the corners of his vision, sagged in smoke-wreathed shock. What a gambit! Sheer, bloody-beautiful, draconic genius!

Chakur did not agree. Now die, traitoress!

Tipping back his head, he tossed Hualiama headfirst down his gullet, expanding his neck like the egg-eating serpents of Franxx to achieve the unlikely feat of swallowing another Dragon. The Tourmaline hardly felt himself move before he fell upon Chakur, flipping him like a hapless ralti sheep onto his back. Grandion roared incoherently, trying to throttle the Red to prevent Hualiama from sliding down into the powerful acids of the food stomach, aware at some level, that this was an inconceivable act of cannibalism, punishable by death under draconic law.

He pinned Chakur in an instant, but the ralti-stupid, bloated-looking shock that overtook the Red Overmind’s eyes arrested the Tourmaline’s attack momentarily. Magic. Grandion sensed the gathering of power as pure and concentrated as the heart of the twin suns, and instinct caused him to twitch his head aside.

Hualiama’s white-hot flame did not so much roar out of Chakur’s flank as whisper, but it cut with the searing, ice-flame clarity of starlight. Broadening, it beamed across the lip of the pipe, by some bizarre coincidence, lighting exactly and only on the two Blue Overminds who had fallen to the curse of the subliminal Command-hold. They vaporised, along with a hundred-foot trench of rock behind them. Swarm Dragons standing less than a foot outside the light’s ambit, survived unscathed.

Then, the little Dragoness clambered out of the hole she had perfectly carved into the Dragon’s side, as if she were crawling out of her princess-bed, or whatever Humans did–Grandion realised he had not the first clue about Human beds, but what did that matter?

Laughing with sweet relief, he reached for the Star Dragoness.

Whirling beyond the tips of his grasping talons, Hualiama sprang aloft to cuff the stunned Red on the left shoulder. Didn’t you hear me call first blood, Chakur?

Thus, she succoured his life, by offering the path of honourable submission. The Red Overmind staggered to one knee, dropped his muzzle and spread his wings in a posture of abject surrender. O peerless Star Dragoness, my life is yours to command.

She said, Rise, o Chakur, and fly with me. We have dead Dragons to honour.

Such regal grace, tempered by the power of mercy. Grandion’s hearts burst into a wild, thrilling Dragonsong. Hualiama!

Chapter 9: The Islands Shall Quake

FIVE HOURS AFTER the swift, horrifying battle against Chakur the Red, Hualiama awoke with a Dragon-sense. Numistar’s bleak presence approached.

She knew that the comet’s perigee was not due for another three days, according to the Dragons’ best calculations. Yet her entire being thrummed with an undeniable sense of foreboding. Stepping cat-pawed to Grandion’s side, she batted his muzzle with her paw. Arise, o Tourmaline.

His eye cracked open, as did Sapphurion’s just beyond him. Grandion said, What? And more tersely, immediately, What ails you, Dragonfriend?

She cried, To the surface!

Being Dragons, they did not waste sulphurous respiration on the niceties of debate. Grandion and Sapphurion burst of their narrow cave, one of the Dragon pens located high up in the underground fortress of Dardak Tertiary, home to over six thousand Humans and three thousand eight hundred Dragonkind, and charged off down the tunnels. Despite her smaller size granting her a manoeuvring advantage, Hualiama was hard-put to keep up with the male Dragons as they raced along the neat grid of granite tunnels, carved wider here to allow the Dragonkind easy access.

In less than a minute they charged past the startled and smokily disgruntled watch-Dragons, through a double row of massive containing doors, now left permanently open, and burst out into the tranquil night. Grandion’s talons threw up sparks as he skidded to a halt. Had she been a foot taller, Hualiama would have fetched up with a nose-to-scales view of his left haunch. Dodge! Duck! Dragon reactions rocketed her across the talon-scored flagstones of a flat portico area, and onto the open terrace space atop Dardak’s tallest mountain, six thousand two hundred feet tall.

All was brilliant. Only the steaming panting of three Dragons standing in mute awe beside a low, mortar-packed retaining wall broke the silence of deepest night–a night vanquished by the retina-searing brilliance of the comet hurtling through the atmosphere toward the Lost Islands. A huge, fiery gas corona streamed away from what Lia realised must be thousands or even millions of tons of burning rock, throwing a white tail so far beyond the moons, it brushed the stars like a feathery white ribbon. Dragon astronomers taught that the complex orbits of the five moons protected the Island-World from most of the dangerous cosmic debris, as evidenced by the heavily pockmarked face of the Yellow Moon. How had Numistar avoided a fiery impact against a moon? Her comet had visibly altered direction, Lia concluded, skirting Yellow as it speared down from high above the north-eastern horizon.

Perhaps the creepiest aspect was the contrast between the knowledge of an unimaginable impact just moments away, and the utter silence that enveloped the Dragons.

“Shouldn’t we warn someone?” Lia asked, in a small voice.

Sapphurion’s shrug betrayed his despair. “What would it avail?” But he turned to the watch-Dragons. Warn our kin, and the Haters. Warn them, too.

So still and clear was the night, Hualiama’s Dragon sight could easily make out the massif of Chenak, lying a few points west of south from Dadak, and across the Cluster, Irak and its neighbouring Islands, and even Burak’s white-tipped peaks cresting the horizon, one hundred and sixty-one leagues to the southeast. Northeast lay the terraced Island of Erak, its treble layers of gleaming lakes maintained just above freezing-point by no less than ninety-four hot springs. She had her draconic hunters working on fishing the lakes for grayling, whitefish and striped trout up there, as the rich fish oils appeared to work wonders for Dragons weakened by long captivity. Vitamins. Minerals. Hmm. If only she had access to Siiyumiel’s capabilities, she could fatten up these Dragons no end.

That baleful light hung almost motionless in the sky, an illusion since the comet had to be travelling at a tremendous speed, yet from their perspective it seemed only to swell slightly as it approached.

“It’s not one piece,” said Sapphurion, lifting his paw to point.

Grandion said:

A multitude of stars plummet …

Hualiama’s wings quivered reflexively. Sapphurion’s observation was accurate. If she focussed carefully, filtering her eyesight with her responsive nictitating membranes, she could make out at least seven separate nuclei within the comet, one much larger than the others.

Sapphurion said, “Dragonkind see in a far wider spectrum than Humans, Lia. Again, we Blues are the masters of this skill. Remind me to teach you the theory. It’s likely this ability will only manifest as you enter your fledgling years, but there are few rules where cheekily delightful Star Dragonesses are concerned.”

The hulking Blue was twenty-five feet tall at the shoulder, one of the mightiest Dragons she knew, but even his voice betrayed a noticeable tremor as he spoke. Hualiama almost mentioned how sweet he was, even as he disguised undraconic fear behind a jest, but most Dragons would read insult into such a remark. Proud creatures. Often unbending, as she had once thought of Sapphurion–yet he and Qualiana had taken an unprecedented risk in bringing a Human babe into their roost, and caring for her.

Impulsively, she said, Whatever happens, Sapphurion, you will always be my roost-father.

Such a purring vibrated from his chest! For a moment, the dark-fires of anxiety cleared from his eyes, and the great Elder lifted his wing to snug her beneath as a fowl might gather a chick to her warm breast. There they stood, flank to flank, watching the comet quicken across the sky.

Grandion chuckled, Roost-father isn’t even a Dragonish word. But it’s perfect.

The light waxed brighter, accelerating as it dove. Hualiama knew that no power in the Island-World could prevent what was to come. Numistar Winterborn, with monstrous guile and foresight, must have planned for this day thousands of years ago. She had concealed her intent from Fra’anior himself, taking herself into exile with the greatest of all Dragons, before marooning him somewhere in the beyond. Vile. Shrewd. Draconic to the core. These unsuspecting, innocent Land Dragons that awaited her impact–poor Islands!

It’s so quiet, Grandion breathed.

Aye, I believe that means the comet would be travelling faster than the speed of sound, which is–Lia calculated rapidly–approximately two hundred and twenty leagues per hour. A shade above.

Grr, he growled, without menace.

She eyed him archly from beneath his father’s wing. Surely my mighty teacher is well-versed in the sciences?

Grr!

Out of the mouths of babes and hatchlings–

GRR!

Imitating a piping Human child’s voice, Lia said, “I’m not scared of you, Gwandi, you big, bad Dwagon.”

HA-HA-HA! he snorted. “Careful I do not dangle you by your tail and paddle your rascally behind.”

Nervy joking must give way to wing-shivering awe. Faster and faster the comet streaked downward, burning through the atmosphere. No need for magnification now. The white corona flared and fizzed as the nuclei began to break up further, as far as Hualiama could tell, and though she exerted her best efforts, she could not detect any trace of Numistar within. Magic, aye. Magic that she … saw? Detected? Exactly how, she was rather less certain. A Balance-sense?

The comet would not fall into the Buffer Zone, as predicted, but rather closer to the centre of the western Cluster-Islands. Lia ascertained that main nucleus within was smaller than she had imagined, perhaps no more than a quarter-mile across. Still, that mass represented a quantity of velocity-energy that would detonate like the infamous hydrogen experiments of a Dragon scholar called Sartorax, a minion of Dramagon’s who had famously blown a hole in the side of the Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior, vaporising himself along with a few laboratories and, the histories recorded somewhat randomly, a collection of unusual animal-horns from around the Island-World. Why would a historian bother to record that detail?

She heard Dragons pouring out onto the balcony behind her, but Lia had eyes only for the comet. Now, bathing the Island-massifs in its blinding glow, the true speed of approach became apparent, the explosive mix of rock, ice and gases stretching out like a single, vastly elongated star. She braced her paws. Closer. A whistling sound climbed the register, rising within seconds to a piercing pitch–brace! Down. Down, impossibly rapid. The comet slammed into … nothingness. Hualiama gasped as the blazing mass shot into the Cloudlands like a crossbow bolt fired point-blank into a deer’s flank.

Blink. Gone.

KRRAAABOOMM!! A sound-wave rolled belatedly across the Islands, crushing her against Sapphurion’s side and causing the watching Dragonkind to cry out in alarm. The Cloudlands lapped and rippled outward from the point of impact, then sloshed back together as if a vast stone had been tossed into a lake.

Suddenly, seconds later, the entire Island shuddered and tipped like a Dragonship catching a breeze. This caused a much louder outcry, a scrabbling of claws and the cross snapping of Dragons thrown against each other as the perturbation rippled outward. Sapphurion and Grandion dug in, for the entire Island swayed side-to-side. On the heels of the first, a second, far louder detonation conducted through their paws and hearing from far beneath the Cloudlands. Even the Tourmaline Dragon was struck to his knees; he shook his head drunkenly, which was exactly how Lia felt. Not even Dragon ear-canal muscles could have protected her from that terrible, echoing explosion. Gazing about rapidly, unsteady upon her paws, she saw Chenak and Irak swaying like trees lashed by a storm. Secondary and tertiary explosions continued to shake the Lost Islands, but the greatest shock was visible at Erak. A weird, fizzing sensation crawled beneath her scales. What? No!

Hualiama pointed northeast, wheezing, “Great Islands. Grandion, no …”

Erak cracked into three distinct segments. Great sheets of white water cascaded briefly down its flanks as the peaks began to sink into the Cloudlands. Sluggishly. Hideously. A few Dragons fluttered bravely off the sinking peaks and issued from the exposed caves, but not many. A flotilla of nine Dragonships broke away, her amazing Dragon sight furnishing her the detail of people dangling from ropes; light blue robes fluttered briefly as several Dragon Enchanters lost their grip and fell into the Cloudlands.

“That’s twenty-four thousand people! Oh, stop it, please … someone!”

Her plaintive wail vanished over the deeps. No Dragon could speak; Sapphurion put his paw over her back, and held Lia gently as the aftershocks continued. Erak dipped into the Cloudlands in terrifying silence, as if its knees had been cut from beneath it–and perhaps they had, though Hualiama had no concept of what manner of legs it might take to support an Island’s mass.

In a matter of little over three minutes after that initial impact, the last peak of Erak Island bowed away beneath the Cloudlands. Erased, forever.

Meantime, as Dardak Island’s rocking began to settle, a deep, animalistic groan resounded through the rock beneath their feet, clearly the cry of a beast in pain, confused and angry. So low was the sound, it was almost subliminal, felt as much as heard. Out between the Islands, the Cloudlands air slopped about like soup in a bowl. Hualiama stared. Was that a glow emanating from below? Aye, a whitish-red glow lit the clouds from beneath. Had the comet penetrated the very crust of the world, reaching to the fabled fires within? Had it given birth to a new volcano?

Dragons gathered to their left and right, watching in awed silence. Chakur. Jyrandia. A grizzled Grunt Elder, Tobak–he could have been the shell-brother of Tome, who had honoured her at Sarzun Dragonhold. The groaning resounded again, sounding more like speech, this time. Lia’s talons gashed the stone, disquieted.

Tobak grated, We’re moving.

Moving? Lia echoed.

Every Dragon looked around in surprise, as if they expected the stones to be marching off to the horizon in pairs.

Look. His massive, gnarled grey paw swept above her head. There’s an eddy in the Cloudlands, directly alongside our Island. As yet tiny, but detectable. You can just about see Irak and Burak beginning to change orientation, see? Irak turns. Burak sails westward.

She had to squint and screw up her brow-ridges to eventually grasp what the Grunt Elder had so effortlessly detected. Imagination? No, the Islands really were moving, at approximately the speed of a feral land-snail. Perhaps a quarter-mile an hour, her inner engineer asserted. Dragoness-Lia sent Humansoul a mental salute. Clever, for a dancing dragonet.

Pompous paw-prancer, came the response. How’s about we ring in a few orders?

By my fires, uh … such as?

Human-Lia snorted, My, don’t we need to grow into our mischief-stirring paws? However, this is serious, Dragonsoul. You saw Erak die; we should prepare every Island for evacuation. Snip-snap, girlie. Get talking.

Girlie? You’ll pay for that!

Her stomach clenched. Humansoul was right. Not just light on her feet, was she? Slipping out from beneath Sapphurion’s wing, Hualiama took a four-pawed stance that she knew had to look less than impressive in a twelve-foot hatchling. Yet the Tourmaline Dragon observed her mien, and immediately alerted the other Dragons with a commanding word. In three seconds, a hundred pairs of fire-eyes gazed down at her.

“Right,” said Lia, in a grief-ravaged growl. “We’ve work to do, Dragons. Jyrandia, I need your fastest fliers to wing to every stronghold and warn them to prepare for potential evacuation. We do not want to lose thousands more Dragons and Humans. Use Empress Azziala’s name if necessary. Get it done. Grandion, go do the same for Affurion and his kin. We’ll pay through the nose for flying out there again, but you’re the only Dragon I know who can be certain that there is no lingering Command-hold lurking in his mind.”

“How do you know that?” he asked.

“Oath-magic links us.”

Grandion blinked slowly. “How do you propose–”

“No time. Snap to it, Dragons! The day of Imbalance grows no younger.”

As Jyrandia reeled off her orders, pair by pair, Dragons fanned out across a vivid display of aurora brightening the East. For a mere second, Hualiama’s gaze lingered on the streamers and curtains of light appearing to play overhead, beauty to make her throat ache–or was it the anguish of sensing the heart-crushing outcry of thousands of departed souls, a chill of Disharmony? Her paws felt numb, her hearts-beat laboured and purposeless. Grandion spoke to her, but Lia barely heard. Where was her spark of courage now?

“Come, Hualiama, we must fly to Chenak and brief the Empress,” said Sapphurion, sternly but not without kindness.

She said, woodenly, “Aye, noble Sapphurion. Grandion, fly strong and true.”

“Aye, Dragoness. May you soar to the stars.”

How did Dragons weep? How did any soul weep for the fate of her world?

* * * *

Hualiama winged aloft, knowing not glorious flight, but a sapping sense of enervation and defeat. Defeat? Before the battle had even commenced? She beat her wings furiously, until even Sapphurion had to stretch his sinews to catch up with her, as if she were fleeing the scene of Numistar’s homecoming. What form would the Ancient Dragoness take? At three-quarters of a mile in length, Amaryllion had been regarded as undersized, a mere waif. Hualiama could relate. The under-Cloudlands glow had already spread many leagues beyond the Lost Islands, the clouds churning slowly, as if ancient talons stirred a gruesome potion, preparing to rain destruction upon all creatures of the Island-World.

The Blue Elder gave her time and space, winging silently upon her right flank. She saw his great jaw set; his eyes dark and brooding, betraying the savage bent of his thoughts.

Slowly, dawn spread her wings across the eastern horizon, flooding the skies with streaks of crimson, like the magnificent volcanic dawns of Fra’anior Cluster. Hualiama realised that a great quantity of dust and underworld gases must have been thrown up into the atmosphere by that explosion, for she tasted a strange rankness in the air, and she had sneezed grit out of her nostrils a dozen times already. The sensitive leading edges of her wings felt abraded.

Without preamble, Sapphurion said, If your shell-mother was Istariela, o Blue-star …

Her wingbeat stalled and snarled. He knew! And her reaction betrayed her as surely as a spoken word. Great leaping Islands …

He growled, You do not wish Grandion to know? I noticed you elided this information during our briefing several days ago, when you returned to Chenak. Is it not of the first importance? She hung her head, feeling very much the youngling beneath his censure. Yet, the seeking of your shell-mother’s scale reveals your third heart, Hualiama. Is this matter not so grave, so intense and intimate, that to speak thereof resembles a form of sacrilege? And immodesty far exceeding ordinary draconic hubris?

I have spoken with the Onyx, o Sapphurion, she said, touched by how well he knew her.

Aye, I am the illicit shell-daughter of a towering draconic legend. Right. How well he touched her discomfort, her shame, her disinclination to accept that heritage.

He nodded. Your life’s flight begins to take shape. Was Fra’anior not said to be infertile?

Istariela found a way. He was halfway into an acknowledging tilt of his wingtips, when Lia added, Without the Great Dragon’s foreknowledge, or blessing.

Sapphurion expelled a monstrous belch of flame. What? Explain!

Her blue muzzle shook slowly, side to side, and the Elder knew what she did. There could be no understanding Istariela’s motives if the White Dragoness chose to withhold the truth. This must be the scandal the lore-scrolls failed to pinpoint. For this reason, Onyx and White had fought, and for her transgression, Istariela had been banished to a place beyond knowing. Hualiama grasped one more truth–one known also to Fra’anior. She was complicit in hiding her shell-mother. As an eggling she had somehow, through time and space, transferred to Istariela the power to elude the Onyx Dragon’s grasp. Now, there was no way to bring her back. Perhaps it was Istariela who had banished herself for fear of Fra’anior’s wrath? Her shell-father grieved that loss. All his terrible majesty poured into the pain of betrayal, expressed in storms and fire which had frightened an eggling-spirit into giving Istariela the White exactly what she needed … why? The question haunted her. Why?

The Sapphire Dragon’s regard seared the air between them, his brain behind that gaze clearly raging like a bonfire, the thoughts sparking and boiling and coalescing within. He said, I foresee this will become the crucial question of your life, Star Dragoness. The crux, upon which all will rise or fall. The heritage of Star Dragons has been cast into disrepute. You are the kinship-redeemer, the source, the weight of Fra’anior’s paw upon our Island-World. You are restoration; never more truly, the promise-star.

She fluttered along gamely, feeling ralti-stunned by the force of his words. It was too much, too grave and threatening and fragile, to grasp at once.

Finally, Lia said, Sapphurion, I will need your help in one matter.

Star Dragoness?

There is a soul-shadowing darkness upon my life, the heritage of ruzal. I cannot allow this spirit of Dramagon purchase upon my life, Sapphurion, for I am damaged and unstable, the product and focus of forces too great for any Dragoness to hold safely in her paw.

Now it was he whose wings drooped, dispirited. I understand.

Do you, o roost-father?

You wish to cast off the Tourmaline, or at least, to distance yourself from him. I am not without sympathy. It is not pride, but fear and the spectre of events past, that causes this word to be spoken. Grandion … my shell-son may not readily understand. He will not give up.

He would not understand at all. Hualiama whispered, Aye.

Yet I must counsel you with a word, if you will allow. Noting her slight nod, he said, A Dragoness must choose if she would fly alone, or together with wing-brothers and wing-sisters. Remember, o Dragoness; remember and honour those who would fly this course with you.

Just as solemnly as he, she said, I promise to heed this word, roost-father.

Unexpectedly, he reached out and tipped her spine-spikes with a playful push of his right wingtip. Besides, I don’t see us giving you any choice in the matter. Respectfully. So you’re welcome to crisp that in your little fire-stomach, Dragoness!

She laughed so hard, Sapphurion had to rescue her from an ignominious fall from the sky.

* * * *

Four hours later, Hualiama stood before the Council of Haters in her raiment of Dragon scales, having strips torn off of her by her visibly infuriated mother. “You issued orders in my name?”

“Aye, mother.”

“Prepare for evacuation. Pack essential belongings. Ready the Dragonships?” Azziala’s voice grew shriller with each phrase.

“Aye.”

“You created chaos! All my systems, my careful plans–”

“Perhaps you feel you can afford to lose another twenty-four thousand?”

“You sent an envoy to Affurion!”

“The worst form of treason, helping my own kind–” Azziala screamed a curse, but Lia forged on. “Odd as it may appear to you, mother, these are also my people and I acted to protect them. Did I do wrong?”

One of her new Councillors had the temerity to make an assenting noise. Azziala’s staff, a heavy replica of the previous one she had smashed at her first meeting with Hualiama, blurred as she moved with infeasible speed. The heavy gemstone-tipped top end smacked into the woman’s temple with a sickening, audible crack of bone. She slumped.

Gurzia knelt quickly, checking the pulse. “Dead.”

“I despise insolence,” Azziala said, without inflection. “Promote Payturki of Irak at once. Hualiama.”

“Mother.”

Nothing like a murder to ground her mother’s mental state. Immediately upon braining one of her cohorts, the Empress exuded calm and control, acting as if nothing untoward had taken place. It took every ounce of Hualiama’s willpower not to glance at the fresh corpse or run screaming from the room.

Unholy windrocs, the woman was monstrous!

“Upon your lizard’s return, you will blood him triple the normal amount and bring the offering to me. That is the punishment I decree.” Lia tried to disguise her reaction. Triple! That would cripple the strongest Dragon. “What you fail to understand, daughter, is that this lizard will betray, overpower and use you even as I was betrayed and used by your father. That is the nature of lizards. Worse, you are a freak. Dragons value the purity of their precious soul-fires above all else. Serve the lizards as you wish, it will avail you nothing. Eventually, he will turn on you. He must. It is inevitable.”

Again, that peculiar, twisted tone of caring. This was a mother who thought of Reaving as a love-gift to her daughter. Lia lifted her chin. “He will not.”

“Tell me, Hualiama, how do lizards understand honour?”

Blood roared dizzily in her ears, filling her body with unbearable heat. She could not answer.

“Rule of law, right of paw,” Azziala recited. “He is no Dragon, who does not uphold the law. By your very existence, unless you defeat the possessing spirit, you will doom his. Grandion must destroy the freak, or himself suffer the fate of right of paw. The scales of draconic justice are clear.”

How had the Empress come to understand draconic law so well? Did she make a closer study of the Dragonkind than she dared to admit, seeking out any and all weak points in their society as much as their psyche? Once more, Azziala’s acuity reigned supreme. Slowly, she hemmed Lia in, closing the jaws of her trap.

The Empress urged, “Just let me in, Hualiama. I will cleanse your soul of the lizard, of ruzal, of all that besets your life. No? How very strong-willed you must think you are.”

She forced herself not to divulge how deeply her mother’s words distressed her. “We must plan for Numistar.”

Turning to her Councillors, Azziala said, “Once more, my daughter’s intelligence and insight has proved its worth. We have learned we dwell atop the backs of the accursed lizards. This is an examination. A Reaving of our collective will. Dramagon’s purposes must be known. Therefore, gather my Dragon Enchanters from every Isle and fortress, every one that can be spared. It is time to put our Controls to the test, to harness these Land Dragons to our cause. Two days.”

Hualiama could not resist. “Far quicker if you flew Dragonback.”

The golden eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you’d prefer to blood your brother instead?”

Chapter 10: Sailing the Deeps

A DAY LATER, Human-Lia stood atop the still-frozen heights of Chenak Island, waiting for the Dragon. Her Dragon. Dreading what must be said. She was not too preoccupied to take note of the minutest changes in her surrounds, as if her inner Dragoness sharpened her senses even further than normal–she noted the slightly elevated temperature of the Land Dragon’s breath, and the increased frequency of its exhalations, close to one every two hours, now. The redolence of cinnamon-vanilla magic had increased exponentially. Puffy clouds of condensation poured from each of the Land Dragon’s nostrils, forty-five in all, scattered all across Chenak Island. Formerly Chenak, she should say. The great Island-beast must have its own name–which probably took a week to utter in grinding rock-speak, she imagined.

Behind, behaving exactly like a flotilla of Dragonships, came the rest of the Lost Islands, clustered together as though by family group or affiliation. Burak Island had split into five separate beasts, and after a manoeuvre of disquieting facility, lay clustered together just ten leagues East of her position now, sailing along on a roughly parallel course of five compass points West of due South. Further back, obscured by a band of bad weather, the rest of the Islands had only just begun their glacially slow migration–hopefully, including Sarzun Dragonhold. She would not know until Grandion returned.

Of more apposite concern was the fact that the whitish disturbance in the Cloudlands had spread beyond their present position. Lia could not imagine what changes might be taking place down there, but whatever was brewing in the cauldron of the deeps, it could not be good news.

The wind from the North was a bitter bully, cutting effortlessly through her thick woollen dress, woollen undergarments and even thicker, fur-lined leather jacket, gloves, scarf and the strange hats these Lost Islanders wore outdoors, with their side-flaps tied by thongs beneath her chin. Well, she appreciated the protection for her pointy ears. She could feel neither fingers nor toes, nor ears nor her nose. Charming location. Give her a nice volcano to sit upon any day.

Actually, volcano-sitting was technically possible for a Dragoness. Wow. She giggled with peculiar solemnity.

The black, heavy cloudbank blanketing the northern horizon remained impenetrable to Human vision. No surprises there. A certain Tourmaline Dragon stubbornly refused to make his grand appearance. With a burdened sigh, Lia retraced her steps via the elevator shaft to her chambers, outfitted for Lost Islands royalty. Shutting the door, she padded over to the fireplace–one of few allowable luxuries–added three dark jalkwood logs, and poked the coals rather listlessly until they deigned to display a few sparks of life. She kicked off her heavy, fur-lined orrican hide boots and used one bare toe to nudge the rush basket containing her white dragonet’s egg closer to the warmth. If it was a dragonet, and not some other base form of Dragonkind concocted by Dramagon’s obscene experiments …

Stinking windrocs! In a brief but satisfying fit of petulance, she divested the rest of her cold-weather clothing and flung the items in various directions around the room. Yinzi would grumble at the mess. Ha. Lia slipped into soft, fresh undergarments of a cotton-like cloth made from huzik plant-fibres, and a white linen smock such as those worn by Lost Islands girls, only, the ‘standard’ size reached to her knees. Decent. The material was rather sheer, but since the undergarments resembled the grandmother-issue coverall variety of ladies’ attire, Hualiama chortled to herself, she might just take the risk. Even Eastern Isles warriors managed to manufacture more comely undergarments–but they also did not go ripping them to shreds when their Human form morphed into a Dragoness.

Long habit made Lia set her Nuyallith blades close at hand, before she returned to contemplating the egg. Was it snug enough? The right temperature? Sapphurion said that Dragon eggs incubated at precisely seventy-three degrees, a temperature the brooding mother Dragon maintained by heating her body as she curled around her eggs. Dragonets were different, however. Perhaps she should sit on the egg? Brood over and sing to it, as her shell-mother had sung over Lia’s egg?

Very softly, Hualiama sang the opening lines of one of her favourite ballads:

Alas for the fair peaks, my love, my fierce love,

Alas for the scorching winds, which stole thee away …

That melancholy song had been one of Flicker’s favourites, she remembered. It spoke of the abiding love of a Dragon and Dragoness separated by many long leagues, as she and Grandion had been unwittingly separated, and as death now separated her from her dearest and truest friend. Oh, Flicker! What she would not give to feel his hot little paw wind its way around her neck one more time, or the nip of his fangs as he threatened her earlobe with a fate most horrific. Straw-head. That was his preferred insult. Snarky little pest. He had made up a whole library of insults especially for her–but Flicker had given his life to protect her from Ra’aba, valiant to the tragic end.

A tear plinked down on the egg with a curiously musical sound.

Crossly, Hualiama reached out to wipe the shell dry with her fingertips. “Ouch! What?”

She sucked her right forefinger by instinct, then checked the tip. Cut? Pinprick? No. She glanced sidelong at the egg, smooth and innocent and … oh. Alive? Was there hint of flame which spoke to the flame within her?

Charily, she reached out. Sulphurous greetings, little one. Nothing. Still, the tough, jewel-like surface felt chill, as if the heat of the fire were not quite the right sort of heat or … Hualiama slipped her hands tenderly around the egg and cupped it to her cheek, then into the crook of her neck, as Qualiana had once cradled the life of a Human babe.

“Not much of a mother, am I, if I don’t know the simplest things …”

Body heat. Contact. Queen Shyana taught classes for expectant Fra’aniorian mothers, and one of her mantras was the need for connection between mother and baby from the time of conception onward. Babies heard, sensed and responded far earlier than mothers imagined, she said. Babies thrived on contact, preferably skin to skin, and interaction with parents, carers and siblings. Did Hualiama not know this truth for herself, her earliest Human memories being the haunting echoes of hatred, death, and a flight across the Island-World in a mad Dragoness’ paw, which had nigh killed her?

The egg seemed dormant now, but Lia knew what she had felt–just the briefest flicker, as if a candle guttered in a strong breeze.

Sparks must be fanned into life. Fires, stoked.

Hualiama sang:

Gliding, soaring, dipping over the brow of the Island-World,

Suns in our faces, wind buoying our wings …

Weeping quietly over the egg, holding it against the pulse of her neck, she curled into a foetal position on the rug. Willing the flame to return, to flicker into life. Should her warmth drive away the freeze of a thousand years? Impossible. Yet she crooned:

Freedom to roam as widely as our hearts desire.

Moon-riding, windroc-hiding, tickling the clouds with our toes …

She did not know how long she lay there, communing with the egg by the fireside, when she sensed movement, perhaps the furtive scuff of a foot upon the thick, brown orrican-fur carpet.

Snatch up a blade! Leap, whirl … what?

Her hands stayed the blow, juddering with the force of her shock.

Transported through time, six years funnelled into the space between heartbeats. Before her, his hands carefully held apart to indicate a lack of threat, stood a young man clad in the purple of the Fra’aniorian Royal Guard. A decidedly leopard young man. Her sword-point would not stop quivering. Lia began to lift a hand self-consciously to her hair, but the limb refused to obey. For what arrested her was neither his uniform nor the powerful, muscled frame with its trim waist set off by broad shoulders, nor the flip of jet-black hair that softened a noble brow. It was his eyes, crinkled up by his smile, which etched familiar striations in the young man’s cheeks and around his mouth as if he was much accustomed to smiling, particularly at weak-kneed royal wards.

Blue eyes. Eyes of inhuman, sparkling gemstone hue. Tourmaline blue.

“G-G-G …” Hualiama spluttered. Ugh. She was not a blushing sixteen anymore! “Get out! I mean, what are you doing here? Stinking windroc eggs! Are you … Grandion?”

The smile only broadened. Great Islands, he was tall, and how dare he appear so perfect and ultra-leopard and toy with her heart like this? Despicable Dragon!

She heard Flicker’s voice echo in her memory, his dying words. Silly, beautiful fire-eyes. Choose the Dragon. He’s a rascal, but a noble one. Noble? She’d have his ruddy noble head with one swish of her blade! That, or she would be obliged to kiss him. Immediately. And evermore.

The blade moved, but Lia halted the forward thrust an inch from his neck. “How real is this projection, Grandion?”

“Ah … real enough to bleed,” he said, his smirk slipping toward alarm. “Probably real enough to die.”

“Where are you, right now?”

“Mostly here, but my residual consciousness remains with my Dragon body at Sarzun Dragonhold. I’m stuck behind the storm.” She growled ominously. How formidable must he be to project over so many leagues? “A storm of volcanic particles, toxic gases, strange winds and powerful magic, Lia. We Dragons have never seen anything like it.”

Briefly, an image of a downward-pointing whirlwind slipped into her mind. Rocks and ash roared around in a circle, together with a bluish glow of electrical discharge or magic, funnelling down into the Cloudlands.

“Numistar’s work,” said Human-Grandion, unnecessarily. “Affurion ordered all Dragons to take shelter and wait out the storm. I will return as soon as I am able. And, may I note how divine you look, o Princess?”

“No, you may not!”

“The facts are incontrovertible.”

“Roaring rajals, you rock-headed, insensitive … splodge of windroc spit!” The man flickered noticeably as the Dragon’s control slipped beneath the heat of her ire. “This is not real! How dare you sashay in here all inhumanly fit and gorgeous and oh-so-kissable, and be a construct of your benightedly sneaky Projection magic–don’t you see? I want you; I need you so desperately and I can’t have you and this does not help! Neither on this Island, nor any Island of the future!”

Hualiama lowered the sword before she yielded to the temptation to carve her feelings into his flesh. On second thoughts, she put the weapon down on a plain table, which held a clay water jug and a small basket of bread. Safer.

“Hualiama.” The gravel, the hurt in his voice!

“Grandion, stop.”

“Lia, my nature is to burn truly, to burn so brightly that only truth can remain in that crucible.” He stepped toward her; she retreated behind the low table, crossing her arms as if to ward off the ardent Dragon’s regard. “I am fire, Hualiama. I blaze, but I will never consume you. I promise, upon my wings, that I will never hurt you again.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

The tourmaline eyes pleaded, a blue so intense, Lia gasped and floundered as if she were drowning. He said, “Did we not breathe soul-fire together?”

“Stop! Please, Grandion. You are a Dragon and right now, I am Human and this … this … it freaks me out, it’s so wrong and perverse, seeing you in the guise of a man … ugh!” Hualiama squeezed her eyes shut, fighting for control, holding the dragonet’s egg against her stomach. “I cannot destroy your honour, for that would drag you to destruction. I’m no good for you, Grandion.”

“Good?” He stopped just beside the table, close enough to touch, the chiselled fingers held out as he pleaded, “You’re more than good for me. You’re my fire-life, the song of my wings, the breath–”

“I’m a freak! A ruzal-tainted freak!”

She wept a storm, more than startled to hear a crackle and smell a faint tang of ozone in the room. Had she done this?

Grandion responded at once by singing, very softly, How do you love the fire?

Yet she had not become the fire, as they had sung together. She had become one-of-a-kind, the loneliest of all creatures. She had tempted this beautiful Dragon into transgressing the deepest mores of his kind; now, he acted unrepentant. Worse, her treacherous heart–he was not attractive! No! He was thirty-plus tons of magical lizard, so love could never factor in the equation … oh, the damage she had wrought! Why would her traitorous heart not listen? The pain, stabbing through her abdomen in a ghastly echo of Ra’aba’s wounding attack …

Ever so tenderly, his left hand caressed her cheek, fingered the strands of her long hair and then thumbed away the tears collecting in the corner of her eye. Hualiama could not trust herself to look at him. Love an image? Tempting. Just pretend all was well. If the physiological processes which had formed the warm hand, the caring touch, and the timbre of his voice could be so perfect, what did the metaphysical side matter? Except for that flicker. And the thousand details she knew she would soon regret, like the burning temperature of his skin and the unnatural light in the eyes and his scent, unmistakably draconic. That hint of cinnamon was a dousing of cold reality. Still Dragonkind. Still forbidden.

Grandion said, “If this is painful to you, Hualiama, then know that my pain is as real as yours. Yet no matter how much you fear our oaths, you cannot hide from them.”

Had he conferred with Sapphurion? Had the older Dragon betrayed her confidence?

He added, “I believe in the power of oath-magic. Not blindly, but with dark-fires and trembling–even I, a mighty Dragon.”

Unable to hold back any longer, Hualiama lifted her gaze to search his eyes. The magic was crystal-clear, but the host of feelings she saw seething there, far less so. Panic thrashed her heart. Had she succeeded in driving him away? Truly? No! Come back, my Dragon! Come back!

He said, “These oaths will bring us together again, without a shadow of dark-fire doubt. Yet the time of that flight lies, as yet, at an unseen juncture of our lives. So, I am not returning to you. Not yet.”

She bit her tongue rather than cry, ‘No!’ More separation? Could she bear to live?

Lacing his fingers into hers, Grandion the man drew her irresistibly to her feet. “Aye, I am Dragonkind, as patient as the seasons are long. I never forget a promise. I bid you watch the skies for sign of a Tourmaline Dragon, Hualiama of Fra’anior, Shapeshifter Princess.”

“Grandion!” Her fingers clutched his, painfully tight. “Where are you going?”

For a moment, his free hand stroked the fingers of her left hand, still cradling the dragonet’s egg, as if seeking to imprint upon her heart a message of caring, of faith that the flame could still burn in the most adverse of circumstances. Then he slipped that hand behind the nape of her neck–a touch awkwardly, as though he had once observed the gesture but did not quite know how to reproduce it–and his heated lips pressed against the blonde crown of her head. Again, the muscles did not move as required for a proper kiss. Grr. She should teach him … if she succumbed to the sweetest burning …

“Tickles,” he guffawed, rubbing his lips. “After an unspecified number of days I intend to spend with Affurion’s kin, working on a few ideas and passing on some teaching, I will depart on a personal mission which I am confident will be of infinitely greater value to you than a return to Chenak, which places me at risk of being used as a pawn to secure your good behaviour.”

“You’re downright infuriating,” she congratulated him.

“I certainly hope so,” he agreed, beginning to fade. “Besides, this should free you–”

“Grandion!”

“Magic … interference …”

His image wavered, before solidifying again. Hualiama took that moment to throw her arms around his waist, pressing her cheek to his stalwart, uniformed chest. Oh. Three hearts? Evidently, the Dragon’s anatomical knowledge needed a touch of adjustment. The real danger lay in her visceral response to his entrancing beauty.

She said, “Be careful out there.”

“I will never stop–”

Hualiama stumbled forward into nothingness. A sharp cry escaped her lips, quickly crushed between her teeth. Aye, well done, Island girl. She had chased away her Dragon. Provisionally. Whereupon he had turned around and unveiled a plan which must have been brewing in his devious lizard-mind all along. She had earned herself a draconic stalker. Marvellous. And a Cloudlands ocean of heartache, a new source of worry, and another cup of her dear mother’s bile …

What would he never stop? Loving her?

Raising the egg to the firelight, she saluted the absent Tourmaline Dragon drolly. “Shall you and I watch the skies, o most noble and puissant egg? That’s the problem with Dragons, and Human Princesses, for that matter. We’re both as stubborn as the foundations of our Islands are deep.”

The memory of Flicker’s dry laughter made her smile.

Straw-head.

* * * *

The following afternoon, Hualiama stood on the forward gantry of her mother’s Dragonship, watching the last stragglers of Azziala’s forces gathering around Chenak. The weather ahead was glorious. The weather aft, diabolical. Lia had seen Fra’aniorian thunderstorms aplenty. The huge, open caldera generated unique forms of weather worthy of celebration by the balladeers, such as ball lightning, wind-shear so powerful it tore Dragonships in half, and localised ‘liquid ice’ updrafts which had several times snatched unwary Dragons into the skies, immobilised them in icy tombs, and hours later dashed the hapless creatures to the ground in a shattering explosion.

The sky behind, for want of a better word, looked hungry. Clouds of a night-dark, filthy green hue appeared to boil up out of the Cloudlands over a storm-front thirty leagues wide and four high, a rampart so great, Sapphurion said, that no Dragon could fly over it. A number of previously Human-controlled Islands, which had been observed to be on the move, now lay behind that barrier, along with all of the Dragon Territory. The previous evening, Azziala had ordered Lia to despatch a Dragon team to investigate. Five Dragons had tried to fly around the storm, vanished, and so far had not reappeared.

The storm-front kept pace–exact pace–with their progress, which had accelerated to an estimated two and a half leagues per hour. At this rate they should cover the fourteen hundred leagues to Kerdani City in a matter of seventeen further days’ travel.

“What’s this nonsense? Blue hair?” Azziala said coldly, flipping Hualiama’s braid over her shoulder.

“Whaaa–”

“Even more freakish than usual, daughter. Now we’re playing with hair dye?”

Dragonsoul, you are in so much trouble!

Not my doing. Dragon-Lia sounded three-quarters asleep. How was that possible? Souls slept? She could tell that other-Lia slept in whatever realm or plane of existence she inhabited now?

Human-Lia settled for a shrug. “Only so much fun you Dragon-Haters have in the evenings.”

The Empress vented a snort of pure disgust. “Frivolous child! Ready your Dragons. I want our utmost resources available when we take control of this beast.”

“They are not used to operating in a mental network–”

“Then my lizard-daughter had best work on convincing them, hadn’t she? Where’s that vile Tourmaline of yours, the one who’s always panting around your skirts?”

“He took off, mother,” Lia said honestly.

“Ha. I knew it.”

Hualiama tried to school her expression into that of a demure, dutiful daughter, although the idea itched like a rough monkish shirt. “Aye.”

Azziala said, “Ready the Dragons!”

Ready, Sapphurion?

Sapphurion, leading a team of fifteen Blues and Mizuki in addition, each in turn responsible for a hundred further Dragons, nodded from his position near the Place of Reaving on the peak of Chenak Island. Ready.

Using her tightest telepathic shielding, Lia added, If you happened to accidentally knock that archway over, noble Sapphurion, I wouldn’t be ungrateful.

The crimson of battle-fury shaded Sapphurion’s reply. Let no enemy stand!

“Ready,” said Hualiama.

Abruptly more awake, her inner Dragoness whispered, You focus on not getting our brain fried. I’ll work on keeping Human-mother out. Did you not perceive her plan?

Ah … no, she admitted.

Thankfully, we’ve a few tricks up our sleeve–see? Pretty mental shields.

Human-Lia’s mind spun. What? Girl-Dragon, that’s awesome … what is it?

Naturally, I am awesomeness with wings.

Ugh. Some aspects of being a Dragon were not so desirable. Excessive smugness and boasting probably topped her list.

An amused thought entered her head that actually, the shield-schematic she perceived was a result of Grandion’s work with Siiyumiel, a multi-layered or multi-phasic shielding methodology. As she examined and began to grasp how the magical constructs interrelated and buttressed each other, her inner engineer was turning mental cartwheels, making Dragonsoul wriggle–as best she could describe the sensation–with satisfaction. Filters. Deflectors. Lockdown protocols. Something called flash-armour. The nuances of environment-detection which triggered different responses or phases, from mental attack to physical jeopardy. Human-Lia frowned. She was unconvinced, particularly regarding the layered responses to the Command-hold which attempted to isolate the basal physiological and emotional processes from the higher mental functions. Efficiencies could be gained. Aye. Given opportunity …

Siiyumiel had taught her that a Star Dragoness had a skill aside from all of Grandion’s fantastically complex machinations, called a psychic bastion or bastion-ward, and this was the innate power which had rendered her mind impervious to Azziala and her Haters while Hualiama had lain unconscious. Moreover, the psychic bastion actually absorbed magical power directed at it and reflected that power back at an attacker in the form of a highly focussed psychic blast. That was the fate of half of Azziala’s previous Council members. Dragons’ talons! Her Star Dragoness could do all this?

We need to study this together, Dragonsoul, she told herself.

What, you think you can better centuries of draconic scientific development?

Hualiama bit her lip. I wasn’t trying to start an argument with myself, so you can just tone it down in there!

Great. Her schizophrenia was evolving nicely. And her sneaky Dragoness had turned her hair blue. Or did that mean she was Dragoness-Lia? The Dragoness having supplanted her Human form … oh, honestly. Had the eggling-spirit not protected the Human babe since before she was born? Survival first, another nasty little thought intruded–for what was the alternative? Death. Thereafter, Human-Lia had ignored–or suppressed–the Dragoness for two decades. Who owed whom in this scenario?

And then, she had no more time for thought.

She stood beneath a waterfall. Magic pounded through her, such a draw that she crashed to her knees, clutching the metal safety rail instinctively.

DRAGON, OBEY!

The monstrous Command, the concerted effort of eight thousand Dragon-Haters supplemented by close to one thousand seven hundred Dragonkind, rolled across the deeps like subterranean thunder. To a beast, the Lesser Dragons recoiled as though struck by an earthquake. Hualiama sensed fully a third of her Dragon array fall away instantly, overcome by the backlash even though the Command was not directed at them. She fed back through the link, through Sapphurion and his Blues, lifting up the Dragons with a warm touch. Be strong. Direct your thoughts here, to the white-fires … unexpectedly, she stood amongst a vast congregation of glittering Dragon minds, as though a constellation of stars had gathered about the Star Dragoness.

Gravely, she bowed. She had no need to imagine the dark blue wings that spread in honour, the muzzle that bowed in a gesture of the deepest respect. I will serve thee. Arise and burn, my brethren.

The minds rallied beneath her direction. The ranks reformed, the links between them swelling with strength, glowing with re-established power. Fed through Hualiama, the Empress’ power swelled to incandescent enormity, as if the woman herself grew to a giant’s stature.

Lining the gantries of five hundred Dragonships, which were gathered so thickly in the skies above Chenak that a preternatural twilight enshrouded the peaks, the blue-clad Dragon-Haters bent their collective will, together with Azziala, to the subjugation of a mighty draconic mind. Lia had suggested her mother should experiment upon a smaller foe, but that clearly offended the Empress. Chenak’s Land Dragon was twenty times the size of any of Burak’s five, a hoary beast with a mind as strong as mountains.

Under the unbearable strain of mental attack, the creature bellowed her challenge, YIISURIEL-AP-YURON!!

A Land Dragoness, Lia realised, reeling beneath the minutes-long roaring of her draconic name, the syllables crashing over the massed Dragon Enchanters like tidal waves of Cloudlands darkness. Angered, Yiisuriel sought to simply drown out Azziala’s forces. Several dozen Dragon Enchanters pitched overboard from their vessels, overwhelmed by the clash of powers; a lucky half-dozen fell upon the narrow sacks of the Dragonships flying beneath them, but the balance fell hundreds of feet to their deaths. Many others slumped upon the gantries, insensible.

To me! Azziala’s mental grip held them; simultaneously, she demanded more of Hualiama. More power, daughter. Rouse those lousy, lazy lizards! I need MORE!

Her mind was afire. She gripped the guardrail so hard, Lia felt the metal bend. Monstrous, her strength. Draconic. Yet she must not reveal her Dragoness-presence … metallic-tasting blood streamed from the inside of her bitten cheek, yet Hualiama felt her knees lock. She rose. Somewhere near at hand, her Dragoness lifted her, supplementing her strength where Human flesh must fail.

Her mother’s determination would allow no reverse. Azziala was a creature forged of matter beyond flesh, adamantine and unbending, even as the titanic force she wielded met its match in the Land Dragon beneath them. For her part, Lia still supplied the collective magic of over twelve hundred Dragonkind. Fighting another Dragon. How could this end well?

Wrong! Traitor! Yet, she must not waver.

Hualiama straightened her shoulders. Courage, Human girl! For the freedom of the Dragons, one must fall. Here, mother. Take it all.

As she quarried deep, a picture of a lens suddenly entered her mind. Starlight could not exist in isolation. Dragons said that starlight sprang from the hottest, most unadulterated fires of all, the luminous hearts of stars. Only because of that unimaginable inner furnace, could starlight ever shine forth.

Her power shifted the draconic magic into focus. Modulating the quantitative draw, Hualiama shone as never before. Try this, mother.

Her Dragoness echoed, Be incinerated …

Yeeeessss! cried Azziala, raising her fists to the sky. Oh yes, Hualiama! I knew you would see the Way!

Yiisuriel quailed. Her song guttered, all effort now given over to shoring up her failing defences. The Empress bore down with an ugly, triumphant cry.

That was when instinct swung Hualiama about so sharply, she wrenched her neck. A disturbance in the Cloudlands. A swelling of clouds. Two leagues off, closing fast. The awareness of a huge, familiar magic, and titanic, lashing surge of Dragonsong that washed her vision with crimson. She froze. At that speed, that momentum … the Land Dragon’s mountainous shell surged upward, forging directly toward her position, roughly six hundred feet above the centre of Chenak Island, a stone’s throw East of the Place of Reaving.

A new, monumental battle-challenge split the late afternoon like an echo of the comet’s explosion.

SIIYUMIEL!!

Chapter 11: Of Pests and Miracles

SQUALLY WINDS SCUDDED ahead of Siiyumiel’s charge, buffeting the Dragonship fleet. The two hundred-foot balloons swayed violently, cutting across each other’s paths and snarling hawsers and crumpling navigation cabins. Navigators shouted contradictory orders as the four manual propulsion teams of each Dragonship set to working the turbines. Five men per group each grabbed spokes of the wheel-drives, which were horizontal, spoked wheels seven feet in diameter, mounted in the belly of each vessel. Driven by teams of drive-labourers in perpetual revolutions, they provided the main propulsion–unlike Lia’s hot-air-powered solo Dragonship. The cumbersome airships rose and sank and shuddered as the relentless wind bullied and beat them away from Chenak.

The Dragons’ mental co-operation disintegrated in a heartbeat as the Dragonkind bolted instinctively for the skies, intent on saving their own hides–save Sapphurion. He rallied the Fra’aniorian Dragons with a series of sharp commands and led them skyward.

Hualiama found herself stranded on the bow of her Dragonship as it slewed slowly, too slowly, onto a more southerly bearing. Siiyumiel’s passage cleft the dirty grey Cloudlands, his progress somehow both stately and unbelievably rapid. His course bent, tracking the Dragonships. No, her Dragonship. His head breached the open air, this time not extended far from his open shell, but his seven blazing white eyes were no less striking. Two miles. One. Relentlessly, he surged from the deeps as though drawn by hawsers flung around unimaginable pulleys attached to the Yellow Moon, higher and higher, driving an oblique course across the nose of his fellow Land Dragon.

DRAGON, OBEY! roared Azziala.

Siiyumiel responded with a screech of Disharmony that nearly lifted Lia’s head off her shoulders. She and every soul on her Dragonship crumpled to their knees, clutching their ears in agony. Through tears, she saw his white eye-beam strike out. Vessels exploded, sliced apart as if by perfect, surgical knife-strokes.

Torched by a brief touch of Siiyumiel’s light, the Dragonship cabin behind her back exploded in a ball of flame, blowing Lia off the gantry.

KEEERRUMMP! The Land Dragon collided with Chenak. Brutal as that collision was, Siiyumiel’s momentum carried him up and over the Island’s flat nose. As he ground and smashed boulders the size of houses beneath his body, four or five monstrous paws lashed out, corralling vessels and Dragons with indiscriminate abandon, yet Hualiama could not help but conclude that he had one purpose, and one purpose only–to show a Star Dragoness what it was to be a mosquito swatted against a wall. That image beat against her consciousness with alien insistence. Dash the traitor against the Island. Splatter her brains with his paw.

Above her tumbling body, Siiyumiel’s onrushing mountains eclipsed the suns. Here he came. Falling. Chasing her toward the Cloudlands.

Hualiama cried out inwardly, Oh Dragon, please–

Always. Be me.

For the first time, Hualiama triggered the Shift-magic deliberately. Desperation wrung the needed power from her body. Infolding, her humanity was sucked away somehow into or through a rippling convergence with the simultaneous unfolding of her Dragon-self. Whomp. Air displaced softly around her, as if disquieted by her sudden bulk. Lia made frantic grabs for her precious items–the egg, worn in a small sling-bag beneath her tunic top, her Nuyallith blades and, oh! With the new, elongated thong she had thoughtfully tied to the white scale, the necklace fit her Dragoness’ slender neck perfectly. She had just begun to congratulate herself when a spar of debris pierced her right flank. Pain! She barrel-rolled and ricocheted first against the edge of Siiyumiel’s descending paw, and then off a rocky Island outcropping. Thump. Crash. She somersaulted away, somehow airborne again, inanely preoccupied with trying to decide if she still possessed all of her teeth. Fangs. She would feel these bruises, alright.

DRAGON, YOU WILL DIE!

Azziala’s voice rose once more above the battle.

No! Lia glanced about frantically. Sapphurion, Mizuki–where was the Copper Dragoness in this delightful windroc’s breakfast?

Her three hearts clenched horrendously inside her neck, chest and stomach as the Empress’ vile magic lashed out, ruzal-like in its twisting of reality, corrupting all that was hale and sound into the antithesis of what should be. Siiyumiel voiced a ghastly, animalistic groan on the vocal, mental, emotional and subliminal levels, freezing the golden blood in her arteries. Injured, even such a beast as he! Never had Lia known power to compare to what her mother wielded. Only … had she learned it from ruzal? From Lia herself?

Momentarily, the Star Dragoness fluttered free, trying to collect her senses.

Caught you! Mizuki cried, with a snatch of her paw followed at the speed of thought by, Oh, unholy–

THUD!

Two Dragonesses and two Dragon Riders thumped into the relatively soft, flexible Dragon hide just where Siiyumiel’s neck exited the lip of his carapace. Hualiama tried to scramble to her paws, but the corkscrewing momentum of Siiyumiel’s fall pinned her in place. His neck twisted as it withdrew, trapping her left hind leg in the thick folds of his skin.

Mizuki! she wailed.

Quickly, to me! cried the Copper Dragoness, but her abortive leap only slammed her against the lip of Siiyumiel’s carapace. She rebounded with a snarl.

The din sounded as if two mountains had engaged in a bout of fisticuffs. Yiisuriel dipped beneath Siiyumiel’s great weight, rolling his body off the front of her Island–her nose, perhaps, although where exactly that started or ended was anyone’s guess. Try as she might, Hualiama could not break free of her Dragon hide prison. Mizuki pulled desperately at her shoulders, but had to dodge away as her wings came in danger of being similarly trapped.

“Get out, Lia!” yelled Saori. “Get out!”

Elki just looked green.

Siiyumiel’s gnarled, thick neck obscured the sky. Rock spun past them. Now, the bulge of his retreating head pulled them inward, the body parts folding back together like a perfectly-fitting jigsaw, blotting out the blurred scenery as the Land Dragon took action to protect himself. Hualiama screamed and struggled wildly. No help. The folds of tough Dragon hide had engulfed her entire hindquarters and were slowly but surely crushing her ribs–or would have, save that Mizuki thrust her own, much larger leg alongside Lia’s torso to be similarly trapped, securing space to breathe. Just.

Four or five times, massive impacts shook Siiyumiel’s body. Then there was eerie, unending silence. Falling into nothingness.

Prince Elki squeaked, “Oh, windroc poo. I think we’ve gone and fallen into the Cloudlands.”

* * * *

Affurion the Brown came to stand alongside Grandion the Tourmaline. So melancholy, wing-brother?

Grandion lifted his clenched right paw, staring at the space left where his talons curled back to the palm. Would you believe, Affurion, that I held a star, and let her escape? Such a fool has never lived, or flown, or crawled beneath the Islands upon his belly like a worm. I am a craven … WORM!

His thundering echoed around the caverns where the Lost Islands Dragonkind roosted, protected from the powerful, poisonous storms without. Many growled or snorted fire in response; a number of hatchlings chirped in alarm at the raw hearts-fire exposed by that cry, and dived beneath their shell-mothers’ wings.

Shaking, the Tourmaline added a very undraconic, SORRY!

After a moment, he felt Affurion’s paw rest heavily upon his shoulder. Odd thing about stars, he said. They cannot shine when caged in a paw, or when enchained by an Empress’ lust for power.

Grandion snapped reflexively, nicking four scales off the Brown Elder’s shoulder. The Brown simply accepted the angry display as just and due.

The Tourmaline snarled, Are you saying I smothered her? Possession is a Dragon’s right–

Possession? The Brown considered this word. What should a Dragon possess? How, moreover, ought a Dragon to possess his beloved? Does he seize and dominate, or enjoy and keep?

You’re playing with words!

How does a Dragon embrace a fire-soul, o Tourmaline?

GRRRR!!

By what might or right may a Dragon entrap a living flame in his right paw?

Philosophy!

Affurion only chuckled smokily. Ah, wing-brother, would you explain to this ill-informed Dragon, when does a Dragoness burn brightest? Some of us lack the courage of three hearts. They have not so much as fired a promise-oath across their beloved’s flanks.

He spoke of Mizuki. Suddenly, Grandion felt ashamed of his intransigence. He felt equally irritated at this response. He was becoming positively Human in gentleness–despicable! Wing-brother, would that I could be your strong right paw in this matter, he said. Know only that my third heart is promised to another. Some Dragonesses respond to the subtle play of fires upon the desirous orb–he broke off, laughing aloud. Ah, mighty Affurion, how I stumble into thy trap!

Raising his left paw beneath Grandion’s neck, Affurion rubbed necks with him, as if they were roost-brothers and not Dragons who had barely known each other for a month. He whispered, Aye, so you released a star. Shall the dawn skies not extol her advent, which outshines even the twin suns in the nascent radiance of her presence?

You’re a warrior-poet.

Aye, a poet. But a warrior? The Copper is a warrior wing-born. I lead so many, my fires shadowed with portents of struggles and winging to the eternal fires to come …

Grandion held the Brown fiercely. Does a Dragon juggle destiny, or does destiny juggle the Dragon?

What? Is this Fra’aniorian wisdom?

Is a leader’s work to burn and fall like a comet, or to hold a course unswerving, with the strength of volcanoes?

By way of reply, Affurion bit the Tourmaline’s skull-spikes. You are not to twist my philosophy against me. Let no dark-fires possess your hearts, noble Tourmaline. Your destiny is to perform your task nobly and well. Should the Great Dragon roar for us, Hualiama will return to you, shining her unique light upon the matched flight of your wings over the Islands. And her forever-love will be your possession, even as it possesses you.

Such words should make a Dragon lose track of his own wings and paws.

From the fullness of his third heart, Grandion responded, Equally, let no dark-fires possess your hearts, noble Brown. Your destiny is to lead these Dragons ably and well. Should the Great Dragon roar for us, you will secure a new roost for the Lost Islands Dragonkind, far from the depredations of these children of Dramagon’s spirit. You are not fated to struggle forever.

Formally, they genuflected wingtips toward each other, then with identical smoky chuckles, returned to the business of teaching the Dragons the secrets of Siiyumiel’s resistance against the Command-hold magic.

Still later, as he prepared to launch out on his long flight down to Kaolili and the fledgling Dragon Rider group, the Tourmaline caught himself staring at his empty paw. Aye, he had much work to do. What he longed for most, however, was to cup scales of the deepest blue there in his palm, and to know that he and the Star Dragoness could envisage a future together.

As surely as he lived and breathed, he would find a way. May it be.

* * * *

In the impenetrable darkness, Mizuki’s fire-eyes burned like lamps. “Can you breathe, little one?”

Lia was growing heartily tired of the moniker ‘little’. Fair enough, the Copper Dragoness was at least six or seven times her size. Did these Dragons have to relish the term quite so blatantly? She said, “Enough to complain at your knee digging into my ribs. But I can’t move an inch.”

“Good Dragoness. Make sure you squash my sister properly,” Elki advised.

“Why did you come after me?” Hualiama growled.

“Oh, I must have missed the moment her Highness forbade us to rescue her,” sniped her brother. “As in, this clever Dragoness I know was about ten inches or so from braining herself on a rock.”

“Oh. Thanks, Elki.”

He waved an arm languidly. “All known forms of worship gladly accepted.”

Saori had already unbuckled her seatbelt-arrangement and walked down Mizuki’s flank, because they appeared to be lying at a thirty-degree angle, Siiyumiel’s tumbling fall having unaccountably smoothed out. Thankfully, his shell’s seal gave the impression of perfect closure. Her sensitive Dragon’s nose detected a rank, noxious whiff in the air, however, and she knew they would soon be breathing poisons.

“Mizuki. Are you any good at semipermeable shields?”

“Better than your Grandion.”

Lia felt her eyes flare–a very peculiar sensation. She snarled, “You had better–”

“Lia!” yelled Saori, smacking her shoulder for emphasis. “You girls can fight and bite later. Mizuki, please put the pride aside and help her. All of us. Lia can explain, but I think the pressure’s going to kill us first, followed shortly by contagion–”

“Or if His Islandic Majesty decides to scratch the fleas on his neck, we’re also dead,” Elki put in, correctly but rather unhelpfully. “I do believe we’re doomed.”

Saori whirled on him, fists balled. “I did not promise my life to a soggy blanket! If you think, o Prince of Fra’anior …. mmm–stop that!” Her attempted slap caught the pointy tip of his left ear, making Elki yelp. “Kisses do not solve the Island-World’s problems, contrary to your very peculiar beliefs!”

“Sure go a long way, don’t they, sister dearest?”

“What? How am I part of this lovers’ tiff?”

The Prince said, “Hualiama once kissed a monk–at considerable length, I’m led to believe.”

Saori’s face was a twisting picture of amazement, loathing and curiosity. Hualiama’s entire body boiled with her blushing. She faltered, “I … uh, Elki! We had to escape a Dragon. Anyway, Saori, I only managed to convince that monk to take his vows. Must have been a terrific kiss.”

Poor girl. Had Lia slapped her cheek with a rainbow trout from the famous terrace lakes of Helyon Island, Saori would have been no less taken aback.

Elki, never one to be put down for long, added, “Saori, I gladly promise to teach you all you could ever want to know about kissing. Later. When we escape. Mizuki–”

“Working on it, my Rider.” Star Dragoness–

I’ll follow your lead. Shall we construct overlapping, augmented shields?

Aye. Like this. Good. You need to filter both tangible particles and the more insidious gases. More restrictive is better. Here are the constructs …

Hualiama felt an odd popping sensation in her ear canals as the pressure equalised, and her careful shield bubbled into Mizuki’s. She and Grandion had been working on this technique, but her practical experience was very limited. The magical constructs Mizuki presented to their shared mind-space were fascinating, at first resembling intricate threads of white, glowing string, but as she looked more closely at each individual filament, the constructs magnified into multi-stranded threads of draconic rune-language, of which she knew only the barest smattering. She could try to grasp the whole, but the detail, the fiendishly byzantine product of thousands of years of draconic shield-research … Lia bit her tongue in concentration. Right. Keep it simple. Following the Copper Dragoness’ lead, she pushed the pneumatic shield outward, helping to develop and sustain a porous membrane that filtered the air as it passed through. Almost immediately, her nostrils flared in appreciation. Sweet.

No, Hualiama, you’re filtering the oxygen. Let these particles through, scented like … aye, think of the fireflowers of your native Fra’anior. Magic has its own scent. It’s often that magic-aroma that’ll help you perceive the right properties. Much better. On to the pressure shield. Usually, we use this for high flying, not for low, so we’ll invert the constructs. Let me teach you how.

After ten minutes spent constructing a secondary shield-layer, Lia said, “Mizuki, if Lesser Dragons can shield like this, why do they never fly beneath the Cloudlands?”

“Because shields are imperfect,” replied the Copper. “Toxic magic still leaks through, as well as physical poisons, and because … I don’t know. Only Land Dragons have what it takes to survive down here. This is their realm, in which we are intruders.”

Worriedly, Lia said, “Can we help Siiyumiel? He feels hurt.”

“Because there are predators unknown to your kind,” rumbled Siiyumiel, weakly. One of his eyes snapped open, flooding the interior of his carapace with unexpected light. “And why would you help me, traitoress? To succour your contemptible existence?”

“To ensure that light lives to Balance darkness,” she replied. Oh. Esoteric, but logical.

You talk like a monk, Human-Lia snorted, deep inside. Dragon-Lia turned up her nose at the incorrigible mite.

When Siiyumiel did not reply immediately, the Dragoness looked around. Apart from being stuck like ticks in the ruff of an animal’s neck, she and Mizuki appeared to be safe from any pressing danger. No pun intended. The Land Dragon’s folding carapace had trapped them in a cavern perhaps one third of a mile wide, at least on this side of his neck, a space easily large enough for Mizuki to fly about inside, never mind a hatchling-sized Star Dragoness. A maroon field of folded Dragon hide surrounded them, the skin knobbly and tough, like a tortoise’s hide but far thicker. Hualiama wondered where his paws were–inside this cavern, or elsewhere on his body? Where the folding, protective covers fitted together, she saw that the seal was fortified by a second layer of thick, rubbery brown hide that appeared slightly moist, as if designed to be glued together. How, then, did a Shell-Clan Dragon breathe?

“I appear to have developed an unexpected infestation,” said Siiyumiel, with forced joviality. Lia did not want to admit it, but he sounded dreadful. His eye somehow managed to communicate a faint smile. “What do you call your parasites? Scale mites?”

“Three fleas and a louse,” said Elki, earning himself identical snarls from the three females. “Siiyumiel, could you kindly bend your neck the other way? I mean, I fully understand anyone who wants to flatten my intransigent little scale-mite, I mean, sister …”

“She’s your sister?” Groaning softly, Siiyumiel shifted his neck. As the folds loosened, Hualiama and Mizuki wriggled free.

“What happened, mighty Siiyumiel?” asked the Prince.

“Damaged … secondary heart-nodes … cluster,” he gasped. “Can’t heal myself … no strength. Find other Shell-Clan. So far. Dying, dragging you to death …”

“No,” said Elki. “Show us where to go. We’ll get in there and help you.”

“Get in where?” Mizuki and Saori blurted out.

The Prince waved his hands vaguely. “Wherever we need to be. Near his hearts. Clobber them into motion. Stop the bleeding–right. It’s a stupid idea, isn’t it?”

“Insane,” murmured the Copper, her eyes riotously agleam.

“Insanely brilliant,” said Saori, apparently entertaining a scandalous inclination to undergo another round of cultural training with her Prince’s lips. “Lia saved Sapphurion. Siiyumiel, open your mouth and show us which way to go.”

Hualiama clicked her dangling jaw shut. Great Islands, were they seriously intending to execute this crazy plan? Right. Siiyumiel was so mind-bogglingly humungous, they could probably walk down his throat into his stomach or swim down an artery. And then? She had no idea how to use her healing power, if she actually had any.

Simple. A matter of Balance, Siiyumiel’s thought entered her mind.

Simple? For a Land Dragon, maybe.

This way, little fleas.

Lia said, Ooh, I’m so going to swat–uh, never mind, Siiyumiel. Physically infeasible.

In a moment, Mizuki had picked up Elki and Saori, and Hualiama leaped onto the Copper Dragoness’ back to make the business of maintaining the shield easier. Gracious heavens, she was still holding her blades and the egg. She passed them to Elki for safekeeping. Then, Mizuki flew into Siiyumiel’s mouth and down the violet tunnel of his oesophagus, four hundred feet wide. Flew! Lia shook her head in disbelief. Under which moon would anyone ever believe this story? At another level, she felt Mizuki adjusting the pressure shield and she increased her contribution accordingly, sensing the enormity of the air density building without. What happened to air down here? Was it still air, or more like swimming through liquid?

One league under the Cloudlands, Siiyumiel murmured. I’ve fallen into the middle deeps … into my egg … his voice faltered. Was he delirious?

Elki said, “Quickly, down into the–what did you say? Tertiary food-stomach?”

“Quaternary chamber, tertiary food-stomach,” Lia corrected, pointing with her foreclaw. “Fly down that tunnel, Mizuki. Quick-wings.”

Flipping over Dragonship-sized clumps of plant matter, Mizuki shot into the acidic domain of the tertiary stomach. Glistening bands of flexible tissue stretched across a cavernous chamber comprised of many ventricles, most stuffed with half-digested khaki and brown vegetable matter that resembled tree-sized leaves. The sharp tang of powerful draconic stomach acids hung heavy in the air. Stomach muscles the size of fully grown trees slowly churned and kneaded the mixture, making flying a treacherous affair even for a Dragoness of Mizuki’s flying prowess. Following Siiyumiel’s increasingly feeble directions, Hualiama directed Mizuki between the bands, deeper into the stomach. The Copper hissed unhappily as acid dripped onto her tail and lower back; Lia realised they had neglected to shield her lower body.

Mizuki pushed on to the place indicated. Here, they heard a rushing sound behind the stomach lining, a major artery leading to the damaged heart-nodes.

“Quick. Make the cut,” said Saori.

Lia cried, “Wait–”

KERAACK!

Mizuki snatched her paw back. “By my wings! Some form of lightning I’ve never encountered.”

Elki cried, “Your talon! It’s melted!”

I warned you … Siiyumiel sighed. Lia stared! Nothing broke Dragons’ talons. Ever. Innate magic. Can’t …

Can, said Lia. “Saori. Give me one of my Nuyallith blades.”

“It’ll melt the metal,” protested the Eastern Isles warrior.

“That’s why I don’t plan to use the actual metal,” said Lia. Elki began to protest, but Saori elbowed him in the ribs. “I managed this once …”

Gripping the blade awkwardly in her right paw, Hualiama summoned her memories. Shut the eyes. Lift the knowledge of Nuyallith from its resting-place and weave it with the magic of dance …

Mizuki whispered, “Whatever is the mad Dragoness doing?”

Dancing. Shutting out the whispers, Lia extended her wings. Beyond awesome. What girl had ever dreamed of dancing the Soul Dance with the fluidity of a Dragon’s wings to enwrap her dance, to spin her endlessly in the air without ever needing to touch down? Yearning burned in her breast. The draw of the flame which had always characterised her deepest linkage with dance, the irresistible candle to a Human moth fluttering about that flame.

The flame is me. Who had spoken–Humansoul, or Dragonsoul? I am a living flame.

Spinning in the air, Lia released the inner burning. Fire washed her vision. It crackled over her wings and shot from her talon tips, passing dangerously close to her brother’s upturned face, but he did not flinch. He smiled, gesturing in a wide, crescent-moon shape with his arm. She understood. Tightening her focus, Hualiama directed the flame along her forepaw and into the red Nuyallith blade, which ignited eagerly. Tapered flame shot four feet from its tip, so hot, it appeared white-blue. Lia flipped her wings. The flame-blade bit deep, hissing and spitting. Though Siiyumiel’s strange, electric-like discharge sprang across the gap to her paw, she would not relent. She must do this.

My turn, said Mizuki, as Lia finished her cut. Thrusting her talons into the gap left by the cut, she peeled back the deadly stomach lining, five feet thick, to reveal another layer of soft tissue beyond, thin enough that they could see the arterial blood running golden behind it. A three-quarters-full blood vessel?

“Make the cut at the top,” said Elki.

“But the artery won’t close itself,” said Lia. “Siiyumiel said the stomach would heal instantly, but he needs his magic for an artery.”

“We’ll stitch it with strips of cloth, or something,” said Elki. “You take Saori, swim down to those hearts. We’ll follow. Quickly, Lia.”

Squeezing between the artery and another, whitish layer of tissue or membrane just above it, Lia wielded her sword a second time, then allowed the fire to gutter. She was smoking. Her right paw was a throbbing mess.

“Go!” The Prince booted her in the rump.

Dragon-Lia needed no second invitation–neither to pay the Prince back later, nor to leap inside. Siiyumiel had said his blood was safe to swim in, and the flow was fifteen feet deep. But he had not mentioned its scalding temperature. Catching Saori before she burned herself, Lia turned and plunged into the semidarkness. The golden blood swooshed along, so rich and dense that Lia felt as if she were swimming in soup, but it was relatively easy to keep her head above the surface. That was, until the artery bent and she tumbled over the edge of a waterfall.

“Your–glub! Shield, you–glug!” yelled her friend.

“Saori!” She dived.

Clutching Saori to her breast with a half-sob of relief, Hualiama pushed out a shield-bubble. So close was the fit, it cleaned Saori almost completely before pressing outward, surrounding them with a slightly shimmering bubble of air. They bobbled and bumped along the artery, riding the slow, surging swells as they travelled the half-mile deeper into Siiyumiel’s body to where the secondary heart-nodes were clustered. Further arteries joined from the sides or ran parallel, until the world filled with the rushing of blood and the glorious, dizzying scent of Dragon blood.

Ventricle-pumps ahead, Siiyumiel’s voice intruded. Time to cut out.

Peering ahead, Hualiama spied the problem. The great, magic-powered muscles lay silent. Twisted. Blackened and atrophied, where they should have shone with health and power. The entire area had become grotesquely swollen as blood rushed together, but could not leave fast enough due to the lack of muscular action.

The rush of blood sucked the Dragoness and the warrior through a rent and dumped them both at the edge of a walled cavity, just outside the heart-nodes, which were linked like beads on a string.

Saori said, “Alright, Star Dragoness. Unpack whatever you did for Sapphurion, and save this Land Dragon.”

Chapter 12: Surgical Precision

STANDING KNEE-DEEP in golden Dragon blood, Hualiama tried to recall what had happened, that fateful day the white-fires flowered out of her, delicate and uncontainable, falling upon the attacking Dragons with the outrageous fatality of starlight kisses. Amidst that obliteration, Sapphurion had not merely survived. He had been healed. Snatched from the portals of the Dragons’ sacred eternal fires and returned to fiery life, hale and well.

One issue. She had absolutely no idea, under the heavens or on any known Island, how she had achieved that stellar result.

Oh, and she had a matter of minutes to scrag several cubic miles of Land Dragon by the carapace and haul him back from the same fate, before they dropped to the bottom of the Cloudlands. How did she keep landing herself in these impossible situations?

Easily, teased Humanlove. By being ourselves.

You … go carol to the dawn or something! Dragon-Lia snarled. I’m trying to work here.

No. Learn to dance.

Honestly, you ridiculous little–uh, genius. I understand. And … I apologise.

Her Human did not gloat. Hurry, Dragon … love. Dragonlove.

The first time. The Dragoness wanted to fly around the Blue Moon, screaming her joy to every star that would listen. But she must work fast.

For the Human girl meant, think, but don’t overthink. Dance. A certain Dragoness was tying her paws in knots trying to engineer a rational solution, when she needed to rely on instinct. Dance. Even if the stakes were life and death, dance. Perhaps, afforded time later, she might work out what she did to Shapeshift or heal or summon Star Dragoness power. But this was the moment to dive right into the core of her abilities, of who she was, and simply give the power room to flower.

And now she was thinking in rhyming verse? Hualiama clacked her fangs together in annoyance.

The Dragoness curved her long neck, made a flutter step, an elegant arch of her wings. Feel the flow. Be the flow. Trust that the magic would do what she did not understand. Saori had found a lump or a bone to stand upon, lifting her out of the hot lake of blood. The girl’s face glowed. No, it was white fire that guttered the instant Lia brought it to the forefront of her mind, but sprang up again the moment she pretended not to notice. Grr. Yet when she tripped closer to examine the results of her mother’s handiwork, there was Imbalance. She was its polar opposite, light in the darkness. Giving up the dance, Hualiama pressed her cheek against the wall of Siiyumiel’s heart.

My heart for yours. Let there be–

–Balance, echoed Siiyumiel, opening the pathways of his being. Guiding and welcoming her.

Siiyumiel’s flesh glowed with a new inner radiance where she touched him, a perfect portal made of the first muscle of this heart-node. Though she saw change and wholeness, the tissues remained dormant. Then, Lia sensed Mizuki sailing down the artery, just a few feet shy of that muscle.

Mizuki! Lightning attack!

BOOM! The Copper Dragoness’ instinctive response jolted the thick ring of muscle so hard, the force punched Hualiama ten feet backward. A quiver!

WHOMP! WHOMP! The first segment of muscle contracted sharply, but arrhythmically.

“Hualiama!” The artery wall muffled Elki’s voice. “Hold off just a–”

The change spread like fire devouring a load of kindling. Upward. Outward. Rippling colours. The muscle fibres and tissues returned to a healthy blue-and-green tapestry, shot with gold as the six-inch-thick capillaries and ancillary vessels refilled with fresh Dragon blood. Health bloomed. Connective tissues far thicker than any Dragonship hawser thrummed with renewed resilience. The entire area trembled beneath her paws, raising sloshing amplitude waves across the lake of Dragon blood.

“–we’re still in–hoooolleeee–”

His scream was lost behind a wall of sphincter muscles as an entire heart-node abruptly fired, settling into a fierce rhythm. The hissing and rushing of blood doubled in volume. Hualiama began to understand what the nodes were for–essentially, sequential bands of magic-powered, muscular pressure pumps that fed the heart ventricles with untold lakes-full of blood at high pressure. She stumbled sideways, trying to reach Mizuki and Elki, but they kept being pushed along, squeezed, squirted and generally pummelled from every direction as they passed along the node-tubes and shot into the small mountain that was the Dragon’s throbbing secondary heart.

Unfortunately–or happily, depending on one’s perspective–her hopping and scrabbling about and quick flight up a swollen ventricle between sheets of supporting connective tissue which sifted colour like a chameleon’s hide beneath her startled gaze, only appeared to spread the goodness. Infectious goodness.

Suddenly, Hualiama spun in the air. “The–” Her Nuyallith blade spun end-over-end through the gloom toward her nose. “Whaa!”

Her paw snapped out and collected the point of the blade neatly through the webbing between her fore-talon and second talon. Excellent reactions.

“Go get them!” yelled Saori.

Most certainly. Only, she was not entirely sure how she’d find her charming brother and his deadly sidekick in the maelstrom of blood-flow developing inside that throbbing heart. Extracting the sword with a wince, she flew upward again, tracing the senses and the flow, aware that the Land Dragon’s tremendous size might just prove decisive if only they could survive the pressure and heat; conscious also of magic draining rapidly from her body as the healing proceeded unabated, not requiring her attention any more.

Over here! Mizuki’s mental shout made her spin and dive to her starboard flank. Steely grey talons pierced the blue heart muscle. Help!

Flipping the blade in her paw, Hualiama made a deep cut. Mizuki’s fisted paw immediately punched out, driving a wriggling, gold-painted Prince of Fra’anior into the open, along with a spray of blood that almost choked Lia. Nevertheless, she seized Elki by the scruff of the neck–a cat pouncing on an oversized rat–and swung him off his feet.

Save him, Mizuki hissed, before the torrent tore her away.

Lia stared at the muscle, already knitting together beneath her disbelieving gaze. If Siiyumiel had this kind of natural healing ability …

“Mizuki!” yelled Elki, distraught.

I’ll help her, came Siiyumiel’s voice, stronger now. Down this way, Dragoness. We must act before the heart reaches full function.

What, this waterfall had not reached its crashing crescendo?

Dumping Elki unceremoniously near Saori, Hualiama darted away again, sensing Siiyumiel’s power now flooding through her. What was it about healing, that it was most difficult to perform on oneself? No mind. Lia upended herself and shot into a narrow, dark space that led beneath the heart, a mountain of muscle at over a thousand feet wide and perhaps five hundred tall. Still not healed, here. The muscle and tissues appeared blackened and wasted, as though shrivelled by a nearby fire. Azziala’s handiwork. Stretching her wings, Hualiama raced toward the goal Siiyumiel showed her, the exit-point of several major arteries where Mizuki might be able to find grip and squeeze through the thinner, less active arterial walls.

Make the cut!

Sii … Siiyumiel! she gasped. What if she cut too much? She could barely hear herself think amidst the rising din.

Out of time. The tiny Dragoness flipped beneath the artery, driving the blade into the wall as she used the momentum of her flight to make a twenty-foot slice. Blood fountained out, then abruptly slowed as a golden Dragoness plugged in the hole. Lia cut again, obliquely, widening the gap so that Mizuki, panting and wild-eyed, could squeeze through. The instant her tail was out, though, she turned and helped Lia shoulder the large flap back into place, straining against the rapidly increasing flow.

Healing magic flared white-hot, making both Dragonesses jerk back in surprise.

Mizuki smiled at the Star Dragoness. Your nose is smoking.

You’ve changed colour.

Not bad for a Dragoness who only found her wings last week. Mizuki walloped her on the shoulder. Right. How do we escape from a Land Dragon’s body cavity two leagues beneath the Cloudlands?

Simple, said Lia. We dance.

* * * *

Fifty miles southeast of Sarzun Dragonhold and seven miles above the Cloudlands, Grandion turned to scan the vista. Hualiama? Had he sensed her presence across the leagues, a faint tinkling of starlight-laughter on the edge of his consciousness?

The emptiness mocked his yearning.

Taking advantage of a brief break in the unnatural weather, the Tourmaline had shot away from the Dragonhold, low and keen, braving the buffeting of frigid winds and the oily, lung-clogging particles filling the air. He coughed again, hawked and spat out a greyish glob the size of Hualiama’s head. Mucous protected his lung-membranes, but he would not have managed to fly much longer through that muck. Passing between the neat ranks of migrating Land Dragons, he wondered how they kept to such an even depth. Could it be that these Island-Dragons did not actually crawl on a substrate, but sailed like the Humans’ boats on Gi’ishior’s terrace lakes? If he watched the peaks sailing along from this distance, they did appear to bob along very slowly, as they trod or swam their stately course.

Chenak led out, followed by a flotilla of fifty-two smaller beasts. Then came the deathly, grey-black storm, hanging over the other Land Dragons like a burial shroud. Or a parasitic spirit–his scales tingled with foreboding as the ancient lore came to mind. Null-fire fool! Only in legend could a creature infiltrate and possess a Dragon.

The roiling storm spread over an area of perhaps a hundred square leagues, self-contained, clearly artificial, as if the Cloudlands boiled upward. Lightning played constantly among the greasy black thunderheads. By its behaviour, the storm was clearly following or linked to the Land Dragons. Even through that magical shroud, Grandion and Affurion had detected a great disturbance late the previous afternoon, a faint shock conducted through the Island beneath their paws.

Something had happened–to the Star Dragoness, his seventh sense whispered.

What thought he to gain, hanging here like a slack-jawed, feral beast? He must fly the long leagues to the Kingdom of Kaolili, and hope there was no residual Command-hold inside of him, ready to strike him down at a predetermined moment or location. Grimly, the Tourmaline scanned the skies, broadening the spectrum of his eyesight to the infra-red range to detect the changes of temperature caused by weather fronts or winds, or better still, a Dragons’ Highway. Aye! Delight surged in his chest. Three leagues higher, near the practical limit of draconic high-altitude flying, he detected a good strong breeze–not a Highway, but a steady aid to a Dragon in need.

His wings beat, a forceful surge. His challenge rang out: BLUE-STAR!

With a faint harrumph of surprise, the Tourmaline Dragon powered toward the open skies.

* * * *

“Elki, I–what?” Hualiama shivered.

“Aye, what is the word. And how. When, why and ‘what on the Islands’ also come to mind,” said her brother, at the peak of his chirpy, most exasperating form.

Blue-star! Grandion? So far away–what was he up to? “Brother darling, where did you leave your Dragon Riders, and Naoko’s people?”

“Darling?” His eyebrows waggled like dancing caterpillars. “I put them in charge of the Kingdom of Kaolili. On the way, we also met a chap commanding his army of airships–what was his name? Smarmy little fellow.”

“Commander Hiro?” Oh, she remembered him!

“Hiro, aye–do I detect a certain animosity? Lia smothered her snarl. Hiro, who had priced her hair and a few other matters inside his perverted mind? Slime! “I thought the Riders would best serve by joining forces with Kaolili, rather than being overrun by the Warlord’s superior numbers. Why do you ask?”

She shook her head slowly. “Grandion. I think he’s headed South. Fast.”

“Makes sense,” Saori nodded. “He, of all the Dragons, enjoys some freedom.”

“Off on another of his noble causes,” said Lia, wondering where the Tourmaline drew the line between being noble and being rebellious–a question she might ask herself!

Elki sneaked in a quick kiss. Saori pushed him off. “Honestly, can’t a girl get a moment’s peace?”

“Not when she’s so volcanically gorgeous,” he replied, with his most charming, Prince of the Realm shall sweep Lovely Maiden off her feet, smile.

Hualiama rolled her eyes. The Dragonesses had returned from death-defying surgery upon a Land Dragon’s secondary heart to find the warrior and her Prince locked in passionate embrace. Mizuki evidently found the whole idea of kissing quite revolting.

Elki protested, “I need tall tales to tell the children, one day. Boys, I kissed your mother inside a Land Dragon’s heart cavity.”

“You’re despicable!” Saori said hotly, accepting Hualiama’s blade and sheathing it at her right hip.

“I can but try.”

Actually, Siiyumiel said to Lia, and whispered softly in her mind.

“Oh. Oh!” The Star Dragoness eyed Saori speculatively. “Oooooh.”

Elki folded his arms across his chest. “Could we try words of greater than one syllable, and a modicum of intelligence? I know I’m the pretty one and you’re the brains, dear sister–ouch!”

Lia swatted him aside with her paw. “Saori, can I have a little listen?” Without waiting for a word of reply, she positioned her left central ear-canal against the Eastern Isles warrior’s muscular abdomen. “Hmm. Oh, aye.”

“Right, weird Dragoness,” Saori complained, squirming away and taking refuge near the Prince. “What are you two up to? Mizuki? Is this some weird Dragon … thing?”

Mizuki’s belly-fires trumpeted her rage. “I am neither weird nor a thing! Hatchling! Explain your behaviour.”

“Your Dragon Rider has been a naughty boy.”

Mizuki looked at Elki, who glanced at Saori, then furrowed his brow at his sister. “Are we five years old? Naughty?”

“Not that kind of naughty. Naughty-naughty.”

Elki’s face screwed up in a dozen different expressions as he tried to puzzle this through, but it was Saori who gasped first. Her hand flew to her mouth. Blushing rather violently, right up to the hairline of her short-cropped hair, she mouthed, ‘Truly?’

The Dragoness nodded, almost bursting into laughter as Human-Lia capered around in her mind, screaming something incoherently joyous. “It’s faint, but definitely there.”

Elki was still wandering around an entirely different Island. “What? What’s there? Where?”

“Impossible!” Saori burst out. “I was … oh no. My mother’s never going to forgive me. It can’t happen like this, Lia. It’s just not … possible.”

“I’m afraid it is, and it has,” Hualiama said softly. Why so distressed? Shouldn’t Saori be delighted? They had made promises and were clearly hopelessly rainbows-over-the-Islands for each other.

“It is, was and ever shall be?” Elki shouted, losing his composure. The Copper Dragoness’ acoustic shield dampened his shout, but it was also the only way they could hear each other above the cannonade of heart-nodes firing sequentially. “You females–what?”

Winding her arms around his neck, Saori kissed the tall Prince even more firmly than the first time. “Shut the trap.”

“Mmm–s’good, but I’m still … mmm … fuddle-brained.”

Mizuki had been frowning up a thundercloud, but she finally caught on too, and a great, hot burst of laughter gusted over the pair of Humans. “In Human culture, isn’t it appropriate to congratulate the expecting couple?”

“Expecting? What are we ex … pec … t-t-t … no. Yes? No. Can’t be!”

Mizuki’s paw whipped out. “Careful.”

Elki wobbled on his decidedly unsteady knees. “That kind of naughty? Great Islands!” Suddenly, with a hair-raising shriek, he seized Saori’s hands and set off on a wild, capering, heel-tapping dance. How he laughed! Spinning her around, he planted a smacker of a kiss on her cheek, crowing, “Yes, yes, YES!”

Suddenly, he paused mid-step. “Definitely fuddle-brained.”

Saori smiled tremulously as he wiped tears off her cheeks. “Pleased, Elki?”

“Totally, undeniably, quadruple-rainbows-over-Islands, dancing like a mad dragonet … I shall, of course, assume full responsibility,” he said, switching from spluttering delight to solemnity in a millisecond. “Fully fifty percent. Sixty, with negotiation. Because you were also a tad naughty, you wonderful temptress. And my willpower happens to be non-existent when it comes to all things Saori. But I’m one hundred and fifty percent over all Five moons! And a million stars! Isn’t this fantastic–Lia, you’re serious, right? No joke?”

Hualiama shook her head. “Siiyumiel noticed first.”

Elki scratched his neat beard with a worried air. “The mother. That’s a problem, Saori. Do you think I could speak to your mother, say from a hundred feet distant–two hundred–strapped to Mizuki’s back in case I need a quick getaway? While Grandion sits on her chest so that she can’t get to me to–” he made a cutting gesture at his neck. “I mean, compared to the Empress–with due respect, Lia–it’s kittens and rajals.”

Siiyumiel rumbled, “We should start purging poisons immediately lest the foetus be endangered. Come. We’ll consult with my Shell-Clan brethren. Put up your shields, little ones.”

“Could we work out how to stop infesting your body, Siiyumiel?” said Hualiama. “Perhaps the digestive tract?”

“We’re planning to be excreted as Land Dragon faeces?” Elki snorted. “I do have standards, sister!”

Lia pretended to fan her nose. “I definitely caught a whiff of your standards.”

* * * *

Five hundred and fifty leagues south of the wandering Lost Islands, the following morning, Grandion rested briefly on the wing as he scanned the outlying Islands of the Kingdom of Kaolili. An obscure branch of Dragon lore suggested that Kaolili had once been Fra’anior’s garden, before war between the Ancient Dragons had broken the famously verdant Islands into individual pieces, scattering them across the thousands of leagues that constituted the greatest Archipelago North of the Rift. Certainly the scenery was a soul’s balm, although a Dragon might have preferred a few towering cliffs or a handy volcanic lake in which to ease his aching muscles. He powered on, thinking over Hualiama’s idea of a penetrative shield. A Shapeshifter Dragoness could not possibly settle for a traditional viewpoint on draconic techniques honed over thousands of seasons, could she? Shields for defence. That was the mantra.

Unfortunately, it was also wrong-pawed. Or rather, just one paw where a Dragon needed four. Protection, counteroffensive measures, the inclusion or exclusion dichotomy–she had thoughts about that too, citing ‘leakage’ of magical signatures–and all-out offence, Lia’s latest innovation. She could not resist engineering everything, including his flight instruction, which she had admittedly received with fiery joy. Draconic magic, especially that of Dragons in the Blue and Grey spectra, was proven to aid flight dynamics. Indeed, many famous Dragon scholars believed that without magic, Dragon flight was flat-out impossible. Toss a cheeky Star Dragoness at the problem, however, and she was designing shields to shape airflow over a Dragon’s already streamlined body–and he had just attested her theories, measuring his physical and magical output over the course of this journey. Eighteen hours. Five hundred and fifty leagues. Even allowing for the wind’s assistance for ten of those hours, he should not feel this fresh. With a flick of her diminutive wing, she had just conjured–he calculated his reserves rapidly–a seventeen percent improvement in a Dragon’s long-distance flying stamina!

You’re a beautiful flier, she had said, with a flash of those depthless blue eyes in which his soul had swum seemingly for eternity. But your stalwart chest does generate considerable wind resistance, Grandion–ha ha! Stop your ridiculous preening, you ego-mad Dragon.

Stalwart? Naturally! His low growl billowed smoke over the Human girl.

If you can pay attention to more than the beauty of your scales, I’ve an idea. Let’s take Siiyumiel’s layering technique and create a penetrative shield around a pneumatic inner layer, like this. This will effectively direct the airstream away from the more resistant parts of your physique.

Grr, he said, flexing his pectorals.

Playfully, she threw up an arm to shield her eyes. Oh, Grandion, oh, the dazzle! I’m positively woozy …

He could not stop thinking about the Star Dragoness. If only a Tourmaline had her facility with engineering solutions. Not even Hualiama could un-engineer the juxtaposition of her Human and Dragon parts. His mind kept generating and discarding scenarios in which they winged into the suns-set together. Hiding. Taking a disguise. Living in the remote Western Isles. Bribing the Dragonkind to look to another Isle. Placing a Command-hold on local Dragons. Fleeing from Island to Island all their lives … where was the joy in any of that? She was right–burn it in the hottest of volcanic hells! Why could she not settle for simply being a Dragoness?

Simply, Grandion? He snorted a fine fireball away to his port flank. Since when was that girl, that Dragoness, ever simply anything?

And that, as the draconic poetess Suphiara the Green would style the matter, was the shimmer of her wings carving across a five-moon conjunction. Grandion’s right forepaw mirrored the clenching of his third heart. Reject a Tourmaline, would she? That only made her a hundred times more desirable. He would woo and win her, or he was no Dragon.

Fuelled by his anger, Grandion did a little carving across the moons of his own. What was she doing, anyhow? Sitting on a Land Dragon’s back drinking some vile Human brew with her mother the Empress of Dragon-Haters, while he burned the heavens in service to the Dragonkind?

Ah. He spotted a patrolling Dragon. So, the third of the Dragon force from Gi’ishior which had been left behind at the Kingdom of Kaolili, under the command of the highly-respected, wily Red Elder, Zulior, the shell-brother of Grandion’s mother Qualiana, were as well-organised as he expected. Although, that young Green was not paying attention.

Lessons needed to be delivered by claw and fang. Grandion checked the optical elements of his shielding. By his wings, that stupid ralti sheep would never know what had struck him.

The Tourmaline hunted.

* * * *

At that very moment, Hualiama, Saori, Elki and Mizuki were reclining in the relative luxury of a dormant digestive incinerator chamber, upon thrones comprised of mounds of grey soot. Lia had just woken from the sleep of a hatchling so weary, her very marrow groaned for relief. This was the Land Dragons’ equivalent of burning the rubbish, Elki joked. The chamber was circular, roughly two hundred feet in diameter, with a single, narrow outlet only a Human could have squeezed into. Siiyumiel had explained that Shell-Clan Land Dragons had two main digestive modes, normal and blast-ejection, which served dual purposes–additional jet propulsion vented from special spiracles on the base of the carapace, enabling faster travel, and a deadly form of defence when an enemy or parasite attacked from an unexpected quarter.

Naturally, the Prince descended into hysterics for an hour at the idea of rocket propulsion by excrement, until even the dignified Land Dragon lost any semblance of composure and nearly split their eardrums with booming bellows of displeasure.

Now, the mighty Land Dragon met with his Clan of five dozen members in the Barrens, as the vast territory bordered by Herliss, Gemalka and Pla’arna to the West, the Rim-Wall Mountains in the North and the Lost Islands in the East was called. The Humans and Lesser Dragons looked on with the benefit of the images Siiyumiel projected into their minds. He did not appear to see colour, nor were outward structures necessarily the most evident feature of what his form of harmonic sight presented back to the watchers. However, the images portrayed in thousands of shades of grey were superbly detailed. Lia easily made out a ravine above which the Land Dragons collected, swimming through the ultra-dense air like a group of turtles suspended in a lake. The ravine was a mere sixty leagues wide and eight deep, according to Siiyumiel’s waveform measurements, bounded either side by precipitous mountains four and a half leagues tall.

Pickle her mind and serve it as a side-dish to a feast!

However, there was little life. Here in the North, the preferred feeding grounds were located around the roots of the Islands, particularly Immadia and Herliss, in Immadior’s Sea, south of Immadia, and in the far northeast, near the Rim-Wall, where mineral-rich thermal upwellings led to an explosion of plant life over vast areas. This meeting-ground, however, enjoyed the services of an easterly current from Immadior’s Sea, which regularly delivered Island-sized rafts of allegedly delicious plant matter to the ever-hungry Shell-Clan.

The Land Dragons sang draconic telepathy to each other across the deeps. Tiiyusiel, a female barely a third of Siiyumiel’s size, had brought intelligence from the Lost Islands, whom they called the Air-Breather Clan. In Siiyumiel’s sight, her form was a gleaming lacework of draconic magic and fires, bordered by a darker, shadowy outline just barely recognisable as Shell-Clan. Although the Dragons were curious to meet and speak to Siiyumiel’s passengers, there appeared to be protocol to follow; all deferred to Janiisiel, a visibly grizzled male of a mere seven hundred and fourteen ‘circuits of the Island-World about its suns’, as he summarised the intelligence he had received just hours before by what he called longwave-speech from the Hura Shell-Clan, three thousand leagues to the South.

Three thousand? Imagine the ease of communication around the Isles if Humans could somehow learn to replicate that! Engineer-Lia charged off in design-mode.

A group of mixed Stellates, Deep-Dwellers and Mountain-Runners attacked the Hura Clan, said Janiisiel. They appeared feral, or under the control of a single governing Dragon, although none was identified among their number. Having murdered seventeen Hura and carried off eight, they retreated into the Trench of Maa-Ak-Uura, and have not been detected since.

Above the others’ wailing, Siiyumiel thundered, GREAT IS THE GRIEF OF THE SHELL-CLAN!

The four tiny observers shuddered at the Dragons’ unbridled mourning.

The Land Dragons threw questions about–why would historically inimical Clans co-operate in this way? Had the Stellates not resettled in Herimor two hundred and ten orbits before, crossing the Rift? They debated the ‘feral’ observation and the kidnapping of Shell-Clan. This was undraconic behaviour. What was their purpose? But Hualiama was drawn to Janiisiel, to a shadowing of doubt concealed in his mind. Was he withholding information?

Withdrawing her attention from the debate, Hualiama shielded her thoughts and sent to the elderly Land Dragon, O great one, may I respectfully query–when the purpose of these wicked Dragonkind was mentioned, I saw dark-fires wreathe one particular thought.

After a long pause, Janiisiel replied, You see much, for a miniscule high-dweller.

I sense doubt over crucial intelligence, she said, Dragon-direct but infusing her words with the strongest context-indicators of respect and deference she could fashion.

Aye. His angry rumble rippled out of his mind in suffocating waves. I fear I misheard. Only because of your heritage, and the understanding I sense of Balance in your mind, do I confess: age dulls my senses. I did not detect all the longwave-speech I should have in my function as Clan Speaker.

Siiyumiel growled, Hualiama, who are you speaking to? Cease this disrespectful behaviour at once!

Ignoring his interference, Lia said, O Janiisiel, would you allow my white-fires to touch your thought-memories? Siiyumiel taught me the re-harmonising of scattered memories when we sought clues to my past. My white-fires seem particularly proficient at this task.

Hualiama! Siiyumiel snarled.

But the great Clan-Speaker drifted closer to the Wisdom of the Shell-Clan, breaking out of his position in the sphere formed by the close-packed Land Dragons as they deliberated. Janiisiel said, The Star Dragoness brings wisdom. I must confer with her.

Siiyumiel managed to turn his silence into an eloquent ode to indignation.

The older Dragon said, Will you tell us how you became host to two Lesser Dragons and two Humans, o Siiyumiel, before you judge my need? Lia winced. Yet in this, I sense Balance. Whatever transpired, you have performed a remarkable service by bringing these kindred souls into the Conclave of the Shell-Clan. And verily have they restored your health.

With that, the older Dragon bowed his inner fires to the younger.

For all their ponderous majesty, Hualiama realised, the mightiest of Dragons were fire-souls like any other, achingly beautiful in their revealed selves. This was the way of seeing truth Siiyumiel had tried to explain to her, where the veil of the physical seemed as gossamer brushed by a breeze, and the world beyond the Island-World drew close enough to touch. For a moment as fleeting as a dragonet’s wingbeat, a glimpse of the glorious unknown might intrude, profound, spine-tingling and magical.

Without knowing what she did or why, she leaped to her paws and sang:

Wingéd soul did bow to wingéd soul,

And the deepest of Deeps did tremble,

Evermore.

Chapter 13: Stinking Liars

TWO MINUTES LATER, Hualiama clenched her paws and lost her rag spectacularly, courtesy of Dragon-furnace emotions. She yelled, Next time you lose seventy three point six–whatever percentage that was–of your circulatory and heart function, Siiyumiel, will you kindly crack open your brainless beak and tell someone?

One million, four hundred and nineteen thousand tonnes of Land Dragon hung his head glumly. As you wish, Star Dragoness.

And you, Janiisiel! Pride wings no Dragon to the eternal fires–uh, not that you have actual wings. Suddenly Hualiama floundered, realising that she was screaming her lungs out at a pair of Dragons rather fuller of life’s experience than her, either of whom could squash her like a flea. Uh, and I don’t wish you’d fly … walk … to the fires, anytime in the next thousand years …

With a bow to Siiyumiel’s Clan, watching in their shared mental space, Mizuki said smoothly, What the Star Dragoness means is, she is honoured to join her fires to those of the noble Shell-Clan in the eternal dance of the Dragonkind. We Lesser Dragons and Humans would receive your wisdom, mighty Janiisiel.

In that blackened, sooty chamber, dimly lit by the ever-present luminescent quality of Siiyumiel’s innards, the foursome glanced at each other pensively. The Land Dragon had been translating simultaneously into Island Standard for the Humans and Upper Dragonish, as he called their language, for Mizuki and Hualiama. The Shell-Clan used at least two other dialects of Dragonish for communication, the longwave-speech for vast distances, and their own dialect of Dragonish that shaded utterance with echoes of harmony and song, product of their Balance-magic.

To their surprise, however, Janiisiel bade Tiiyusiel speak first. The issues are connected, I believe. Tiiyusiel, share with your kin.

The mighty comet brought a new power smashing down amongst our Air-Breather brethren, said the youngster. I did investigate, by the light of mine eyes and every finesse of my mental processes, to discern this was a spirit of draconic power like unto the Ancient Powers, and concluded–she conveyed a vast, detailed set of mental notes, investigations, impressions, hypotheses tested and discarded in a single breath, giving Lia an instant headache–it seeks physical form. The Air-Breathers were not suitable for this Power’s purpose, so the female Dragon-spirit sought another manifestation. Oddly, that form comprised a life of many thousands of fragments, each smaller than these tiny fires you host, Siiyumiel, appearing to my questing senses like this–

Dragonets! Hualiama blurted out. I apologise–

Speak, Janiisiel commanded her.

Well, time to shake the paws of the earth-shakers. Recently, I spoke to Fra’anior the Onyx–

Pandemonium! Siiyumiel and Janiisiel bellowed until their kin settled, but in that brief time, Lia learned her claim was blasphemy to the Land Dragons’ beliefs. Evidently, she had better not admit the greater, as yet unproven scandal–that she might be his illicit shell-daughter! Instead, she said:

Fra’anior spoke to my spirit in a portent-filled dream. Dire and dreadful in the panoply of his majesty, was the great Onyx. That quote from the ballads generated a mere dozen or so Island-quivering growls, but their temperature simmered down noticeably. I believe by my seventh sense, he wished to warn us of the return of Numistar Winterborn from the place of exile. And this is what I saw within the comet.

In shocking contrast, utter stillness greeted the image she passed through Siiyumiel’s mind to the watching Shell-Dragons. A stillness of paw and awe, he fed back to her. They acknowledged the validity of her inner sight; the awful portent of that vision.

But Tiiyusiel blurted out excitedly, This harmonises with what I found! The precise notes of chill flesh and vast, ancient soul-fires …

She hesitated as Janiisiel’s regard snapped toward her, but he only said, May our Shell-Clan fledglings imitate the courage of the four voyagers amongst us.

Slowly and thoughtfully, Hualiama summarised for them, drawing on information and nuances fed to her by formidable draconic minds. Numistar’s spirit had travelled in the comet, but it lacked physical substance. Therefore, she had landed amongst the Air-Breathers, seeking perhaps to possess and use their bodies, but had deemed them unsuitable. Now, she must be hatching the frozen dragonet eggs–Lia bade Saori show the Shell-Clan the egg she held–and inhabiting each, she assumed, with a fragment of her soul-fire. A hive-creature, Saori put in, similar to the wasps of her native Eastern Isles. A hive-consciousness, Elki mused. All the pieces would be linked, as if one mind inhabited many bodies. What, then, was the connection with this mismatched group of Land Dragons in the South?

Janiisiel said, The Numistar of legend is not a creature renowned for her mercy. Her malice was once contained by Fra’anior, Amaryllion, Dramagon and their kin. Numistar will move against any and all powers that oppose her absolute dominion. That includes the Empress of the Lost Islands, the Warlord Shinzen, the Clans of Land Dragons, the high-dwelling Dragonkind, and a Star Dragoness. She will destroy each and every one, or bend their power to her use.

Lia fought an urge to burrow beneath the nearest handy Island and hide there for eternity. Nausea coiled in the pit of her stomach.

For Land Dragons, this group displayed unusual haste–perhaps an indicator of the degree of their agitation. Toss a comet into their realm together with an Ancient Dragon’s spirit, she supposed, and they had every right to be disturbed. Yet this news of Janiisiel’s also troubled her. The elderly Dragon described again the report received from the southern Clan, slowly reproducing each of the pictograms or ‘thought-runes’ gleaned from the marauders and reassembled with Lia’s help, repeatedly remarking how esoteric a form of Dragonish communication this was. The monks used to play a similar rune-game, she remembered. The trick was to disguise a concept or message within a pictogram that looked like a valid rune, but was not. Master Jo’el had been gifted with a draconic subtlety in his gameplay; the acknowledged rune-master, committed to bamboozling his peers and a certain female apprentice monk on a weekly basis.

“Definitely a search or a quest,” said Elki, picking out the second rune in the sequence. Lia found his mental activity fuzzy, but understandable.

Here, the comet? Siiyumiel suggested.

With a tail of great age, added Janiisiel. This comet, or the first comet to impact our Island-World?

The Land Dragons generally agreed this could not be determined. There was a suggestion of abduction, of the use of force; another rune which appeared to be a play on Hualiama’s name, blue-star, but it was changed to ‘white-star’ while preserving the suggestion of the star that appeared at dawn, beneath the rising of the twin suns. Her response felt as if every scale on her body tried to crawl off in a different direction at once.

This one is power, said Mizuki. Great … transforming, or corrupting, power. See?

Much discussion and speculation ensued, but they made little more progress. The Shell-Clan moved on to debating the southward migration of many Land Dragons, including the displaced Lost Islands. Strangely, many Clans had begun to journey toward Herimor over the past six seasons, all of them citing changes in the Balance of Harmonies, or a sense of ‘calling’ that could not be ignored. Already, great swathes of the North were depleted, growing wild and unkempt in the absence of the prodigious appetites of the Land Dragons.

“All paths point to Herimor,” said Elki. “What can this mean?”

“That there is a prize in Herimor, something dear to Land Dragons or crucial to their fate,” said Saori. “Look. This rune is not a sign of questing, it is a warding. Those strange Land Dragons you mentioned are a scouting group. Perhaps they divined Numistar’s advent, and came to investigate whatever threat she poses to their treasure, or plans …”

Siiyumiel puzzled, “What treasure do you imagine, little one? Unlike your high-dwelling comrades, we are not the type of Dragonkind to be seduced by pretty baubles and shiny booty.”

Well, neither was Lia infected with the urge to hoard gold–so far. Dragon lore and Human ballads alike expended countless reams of scrolleaf on the matter of mean, greedy Dragons brooding over their sparkly treasures, rearranging and enumerating them endlessly. Oh. Rearranging? Hualiama glanced at Elki, wondering if he was thinking the same … his eyebrows peaked. “Aye, sister. An idea?”

She said, “Siiyumiel, can you rearrange those runes in your mind, working through possible configurations that would fit them into place like a jigsaw puzzle?” He growled an interrogative. Her voice sharpened against her will. “Put that monstrous brain of yours into gear, and work out all possible layouts of those runes that could spell out a different message.”

Tiiyusiel’s eager voice intruded, Can we play, Star Dragoness?

All Dragons can play, Lia returned, smiling mentally at the young Land Dragon’s enthusiasm.

The Shell-Clan set to with a will, breaking up into family groupings as a rising chorus of chatter and even laughter–the laughter of Islands, it seemed–rose around them, conducted through Siiyumiel’s carapace to listening ears. Hualiama ran through Siiyumiel’s instructions again, and touched a paw to each of her companions, trying to minimise the impact of the ambient poisons on their bodies. She wished she knew better how to help them.

We must take you aloft soon, said Siiyumiel, echoing her suspicions. Until you learn better shielding or more powerful healing, little one, you cannot survive here in the realm of Land Dragons.

However, when four hours had passed with no further discoveries, they took their leave of the Shell-Clan and Siiyumiel swam toward the surface of the Cloudlands. En route, he told them, “We will gather the intelligence of allied Land Dragon Clans and try to formulate strategies to combat the Empress and Numistar. There is a real danger they will form an alliance, or one or both will join this Shinzen creature. Evil is abroad, my friends. When the roar of battle resounds across the deeps, will you join us?”

“You have my word,” said Lia.

And mine, Mizuki added, with a fierce growl.

Elki and Saori added their word, and that of the Dragon Riders.

“Now, you should prepare to cut into my digestive tract,” said Siiyumiel.

“Oh no,” groaned the Prince of Fra’anior.

“Oh yes,” said Lia.

“I just want to make it clear as crysglass, sister, that I did not sign up for this particular duty when I joined your crazy expedition,” Elki complained. “You’ve pulled a few madcap stunts in your time, but this takes the purple spotted rajal.”

“Oh, brother. Your attitude stinks.”

The tall Prince kicked up a cloud of soot with a moody growl. “You know, I wish you could turn into a Human right now so you can appreciate this experience properly.”

Aww, said Dragon-Lia to herself. Is my lovely Human feeling left out of this adventure? I’d gladly let you boss this part.

Ah … no thank you.

Say, ‘Hello, Island-World’. Whoops!

With a sound like tinkling bells in her ears and a distinct whiff of cinnamon-vanilla magic, Human-Lia popped into being, yelling, “You feckless, heartless, nonsensical glob of Dragon-snot!”

“Wow, it worked,” said Elki, sounding more amazed than pleased, which was the only thing that saved him a thorough pasting at that point. “What’s with the snot, sister?”

Dragons do not have snot, Dragoness-Lia pointed out, smugly. They have ear-wax and scale-mites–

Just you wait, trickster. Revenge will be sweet.

Lia began to hold out her right hand, then switched. Freaking windrocs! The right was scalded, throbbing away, and bled from a neat hole through the webbing between her forefinger and second finger. Exact replication of wounds. Final proof her forms were physically linked–should she be comforted, or concerned? A shame clothing did not survive her transformations …

Her brother unbuttoned his brown leather flying jacket, then removed his tan linen undershirt and handed it to her with an exaggerated sigh. “Nasty habit you’re developing here, sister, constantly pinching my clothing.”

“Is this an official complaint, Your Highness?”

“Easy, rajal. Let me help you,” he replied, seeing her cradling the right hand.

Saori slipped the sword-belt around Lia’s waist and settled the Nuyallith blades in their sheaths. “Next time, Elki, she can have my tunic top.” He pretended to start panting heavily, but the warrior added, “I’d wager Elki would wade knee-deep through any sewer in the Island-World for that–wouldn’t you, my brave, handsome Prince?”

Elki bowed elaborately. “I hereby dedicate the utmost reek of my odious presence to thee, and thee alone, o Saori.”

* * * *

When he was particularly annoyed, Zulior the Red famously had a penchant for spitting lava. Grandion had always wondered if his shell-uncle’s mannerism was deliberate or uncontrolled. Right now, his roar splattered the Tourmaline with a healthy slug of red-hot lava, but Grandion merely blinked away the droplets aimed at his left eye and ignored the sizzling against his scales.

I will tolerate no argument to the contrary, youngling! Am I heard?

Loud and fiery, noble shell-uncle, Grandion conceded.

Your report is both troubling and joyous, said Zulior, spreading his wing over his nephew’s shoulders in a brotherly-mentoring fashion. He had taken Grandion’s personal report separately from that delivered to the five wing-leaders of his forces. Besides, this is for me. My gifting is logistics and organisation, not thrashing other Dragons in battle–unlike you, Tourmaline. Your gifting is the flow of battle-song, the rousing of Dragon fires, the combat-vision that sees beyond the clash of fang and paw. They listen to me–but they battle-love you.

Draconic laughter gurgled over the battlements above Kerdani City’s gates. Zulior was a mountainous Red, one of the few Dragons to match Sapphurion in size and strength. Zulior stood no less than twenty-four feet tall at the shoulder, and though his hundred-and-twelve foot length was fourteen feet shy of Sapphurion’s enormity, he outweighed the Blue Elder by five tonnes, all of it muscle. Logistics? Grandion sniffed forlornly, wishing he could have the Red fly at his shoulder. His uncle had not phrased a request. He would support Grandion, offer wisdom and strategy … but he could not divide his attention between leading at the battlefront and organisation when war approached on four potential vectors–Shinzen’s forces, Azziala, Numistar, and the as-yet-unknown quantity represented by Siiyumiel and his kin. That would be, in a word, fatal.

Grandion eyeballed a troop of Kaolili citizen militia trotting purposefully out of the gate; they seemed motivated to put significant distance between themselves and the watching Dragons. He smiled toothily to ensure they moved even faster.

That said, these Humans were so organised and disciplined, it practically made the eyes water. Did none of these Easterners possess a mind of their own? For they all looked alike, behaved alike and worked alike. Out on the plains, below the low mound on which the city walls stood, a second battlement rose with impressive speed. The lines of fortifications were drawn with precision to a fraction of an inch. Even the slaves digging foundations or the labourers carrying bricks worked in exacting rhythm, singing in their musical Eastern dialect, five hundred spades hurling dirt into the air at exactly the same moment or laying bricks with exacting click-clack rhythms. Crazy. Poor creatures. To say nothing of their obsession with bathing! Their midday break consisted of half a cup of some tasteless, starchy grains and a communal bathing ritual using buckets and wooden scoops to toss water over each other.

Good workers, Grandion harrumphed, before turning to his shell-uncle. Right. We’ve a week, maximum, to slap these Dragons into Command-hold-resisting war machines. Arrange to bring me all the Blues, first.

That’s easy, said Zulior. There’s only four, including you.

The Tourmaline scratched his chin. The rest having flown with Sapphurion, rebelled at the Bell … aye. Fourteen slain. Fine. Bring me the best of the other colours–and those Dragon Riders. I will train them also.

That will be tricky, since our Dragons and theirs have had a few … disagreements.

Shinzen’s advance had been halted four hundred and eighty leagues from the Kingdom’s capital by Fra’aniorian Dragons working in cooperation with Commander Hiro and the Dragonship fleet, but the latest intelligence revealed a significant build-up of the Warlord’s forces in that area. He was securing his supply lines and consolidating his position, which boded ill for Kaolili. An estimated eight hundred Giants were now deployed on the ground, with more arriving daily from the South as his extermination policy bore its dreadful fruit and increasing numbers of troops were released to join the battle-front.

The Tourmaline Dragon’s gaze turned to the tent-camp situated on the plains West of the city. Refugees poured in daily, bringing gruesome tales of destruction, cannibalism and woe. The Warlord’s Giants were not fussy about their diet, preferring meat which could be easily caught. His paws curled in disgust. Eat another intelligent creature? Barbaric. Prey on Human hatchlings and young? His fangs ground viciously as battle-rage sheeted over his vision, washing the white tent-city, already holding forty thousand souls, with a portentous veil of crimson. And he had squabbling Dragons and Dragon Riders to contend with?

GRRR!

Grandion curled his lip. Oh, do they? He rolled his shoulders happily and checked the sharpness of his fore-talons. Wing me to the offenders, o Zulior, and I shall instil the required discipline.

Youngsters, snorted his uncle.

Your problem is that you possess too much pomp and gravitas, Grandion needled, sounding so much like Hualiama that he almost choked on his own mirthful smoke–or was it the spirit of Flicker, that cheeky dragonet, which indwelled him now? I’m the wild shell-child, the bane of my parents’ existence, remember?

And how! Zulior agreed, feelingly.

The Tourmaline threw a comradely mock-punch at his shell-uncle’s ribs. Tell you what. I’ll beat the living pith out of them; you patch them up afterward. Deal?

Always told Sapphurion you were nothing but a lava-thug. I’ll wager that Star Dragoness will make a real Dragon out of you yet.

Grandion thundered, GRRROOOAARRR!!

The massive Red’s lips curled away to expose his fangs. Good, I was hoping you’d say exactly that.

* * * *

Three Humans lined up atop Siiyumiel’s open final-stage food processing region, equivalent to the Human large intestine, struggling not to gag, throw up, or faint–or all three at once. Huge muscles slowly rolled beneath their feet in peristaltic waves, passing the final by-products of the Land Dragon’s waste along for disposal. Excellent fertiliser, Siiyumiel had joked, describing how the action of Land Dragons fed, churned up and renewed the ecosystem beneath the Cloudlands.

He had failed to capture the nostril-cauterising reek of his ultra-concentrated faeces.

Clutching his chest, Elki wheezed, “Tell me again why we can’t create a shield-bubble down there?”

“Natural defences,” said Hualiama, eyeing the sludgy brown-black river her sword-cut had opened. “At least Siiyumiel’s backside-equivalent is above the toxic gas layer, he assures us.” She pictured a mallard tipping up to feed from the bottom of a pond, its rear end wriggling above the water.

“Defences? Against what?” asked the Prince.

Siiyumiel rumbled, “Imagine a Borer two hundred feet long, with mandibles and mouth-hooks thicker than your legs, forcing its way up your–”

“Stop!” yelled Elki, turning a colour that resembled a mouldy white sheet, if that were possible. Whatever was left in his stomach bolted for freedom. Dropping into the wide rent, it briefly sizzled like meat cooking over a fire, before vanishing. “Curse it … I don’t have words.” He wiped his mouth, and pleaded, “Make this quick, Siiyumiel, please. Of all the places in this Island-World I’d least like to die …”

“How hot is the liquid?” asked Saori.

“Fifty-eight degrees centigrade, the coolest I could manage,” said Siiyumiel. “Otherwise the consistency would become so thick …”

The Prince waved a hand feebly. “Mizuki. Kill me now.”

“Tempting,” she purred.

Hualiama said, “This will burn, but not too much–if we’re quick. Once we’re in, hold your breath. We’ll flow through to the terminal holding chamber in five seconds. Then, it should be approximately twelve seconds between Siiyumiel initiating the suction-ejecta pump mechanism to us being blasted out–”

“In a Human bombardment?” asked Elki.

Lia wagged a finger at him. “Try not to make wasteful jokes.”

“Just passing through,” said Elki.

“Brother, your sense of humour is completely constipated.”

He shot back, “Imagine squeezing Mizuki out? Now that’s a whopper.”

Lia laughed openly at Saori’s agonised expression. She could well imagine Eastern culture did not lend itself to gutter humour. She said, “Whatever you do, Saori, hold your nose and try not to swallow any. Mizuki?”

“Ready to fly,” she growled.

“Alright!” cried the Prince. “One Land Dragon healed. Time to flush ourselves down a living drainpipe.”

As Mizuki clasped them in her paws, Saori was grumbling, ‘Not alright. Not alright on any Island in this world.’ She had no choice in the matter. The Copper’s left forepaw squeezed her against Elki, while Human-Lia had a solo ride in her right forepaw. Mizuki lowered herself headfirst into the alimentary canal, just above a sluggish flow of foetid, slowly bubbling waste. The Land Dragon’s digestive system was efficient, but the enormous quantities of nutrients required to sustain him meant that inevitably, some portion must be unusable, and the normal bodily functioning of his organs also generated mineral deposits and by-products of magical processes. Pinching one’s nose was no help whatsoever. The stench gaily grabbed the throat with claws of fire and acid. Elki started coughing and hacking violently, but then he clasped his mouth with his left hand and nodded to the Copper Dragoness.

She leaped charily. Plop.

Lia counted in her mind, One … two …

At first it seemed she had only stepped into scalding mud, for Mizuki tried to keep her Human cargo above the surface for as long as possible. The flow pulled them along relentlessly. Then the muscles kicked in. Squeezing like a monstrous Dragon’s paw … three … four … a wave of burning sludge buried Hualiama momentarily. They rushed through a tunnel barely wide enough for Mizuki, splashing, slopping … five … as she gasped a final breath, something rancid burning her tongue. Lia’s surprised cough bubbled through the slop in front of her face. Clamp the jaw shut! Gripping the dragonet’s egg inside Elki’s shirt as best she could, Lia felt the mixture churn beneath Mizuki’s abdomen. GLU-GLU-GLUUU … under they went! Sucked away like leaves bobbing helplessly in a Cloudlands-bound torrent, the foursome disappeared in a whirlpool of broiling, loose faeces.

Siiyumiel had liquefied the mixture as best he could to aid the cooling process. Nevertheless, pain washed over Lia’s body; the heat, more scalding than the hottest bath she had ever taken. Like a feral Dragon’s fire, she thought, recalling the time Grandion had burned her. Her eyes felt as if they were melting in their sockets. Every inch of skin screamed and her lungs were afire, but Lia knew she must hang on.

… ten, eleven … the pressure ratcheted up to unbearable levels. She became aware of a low rumbling and shaking, as if they approached a waterfall. All she knew was the clasp of Mizuki’s paw and the mental roaring of the Copper Dragoness as she fought to keep her precious cargo safe.

Thirteen. She had to breathe! Breathe! The darkness lurked behind her eyes, sucking away her consciousness …

… fifteen, sixteen … the great muscles clenched. Rippled. Bore down like a woman’s womb in the final throes of labour.

Hualiama braced herself.

PSSSSSHH-BOOOMM!!

Mizuki and her three Humans blasted out of the Dragon’s downward-pointing defecator tube in a spray of sludge so fine and dark, it appeared to be raining droplets of night. The Copper Dragoness shook herself with the enthusiasm of a wet dog, rattling Lia’s teeth and wrenching her neck, but the worst of the sticky slush sloughed off her scales and wings. Suddenly there was a gust of fresh air in her nostrils and Lia instinctively tried to breathe, only to inhale a less-than-savoury load of Siiyumiel’s waste.

She coughed helplessly, along with Saori and Elki. Even Mizuki flew poorly from beneath Siiyumiel’s sky-occluding backside, convulsing as she fought to clear her nose and lungs. Eventually, a fireball smashed simultaneously out of her nostrils and mouth, burning out the muck. Lia only wished.

The Copper soared upward upon outspread wings, breaking free of the searing rain.

Thank you, Siiyumiel! Mizuki bugled.

Aye, thank you! Hualiama called. Let us know when you find the key to that message.

I WILL ARISE! Siiyumiel thundered. Let me touch you before you depart, little ones. It is the least gift I can give my surgically precise saviours. Neither of the twin suns has ever beheld such a mighty deed!

“No, because we were stuck up–” Elki chuckled as Saori slapped a grimy hand over his mouth. He managed to wriggle free briefly to deadpan “–where the suns never dared–”

She caught him again. This time, there was no escape.

* * * *

Facing the Dragons of Gi’ishior and the Eastern Dragon Riders of Naoko’s tribe, Grandion sneered, Any more complainers? Come on, you sons of worms, I’ll take you on five at a time! Seven! Ten–no takers?

A chorus of pitiful groans rose around the parade ground the Tourmaline Dragon now owned. Bar two, he also owned every Dragon within it, including several Dragons artfully draped over a few nearby buildings. Oops, slip of the old paw there, as Hualiama would have said.

Strutting over to a pile of four mostly comatose Reds, he thundered, What say you, Dragonkind?

We submit, came another weak groan.

Grandion’s gaze flicked hummingbird-quick to his shell-uncle, standing six hundred feet away across the parade ground. Zulior’s expression was perfectly stern, but a tightly-controlled hoot of laughter came to his nephew’s awareness. Twenty-eight? That’s a record for you, isn’t it?

Indeed. Job done, I’d say.

Turning in the opposite direction, Grandion inclined his wingtips with the utmost respect to Yukari. Beside the gigantic Aquamarine Dragoness, Akemi surveyed the scene with a characteristic scowl and arms folded across her chest. Twelve of her new Dragon force and sixteen stalwarts of Gi’ishior had just been thrashed at Dragon fisticuffs by a single beast.

Yukari snorted, Oh, nobly done, youngling. Nobly done indeed. A mighty display of male draconic hormones. Now a harder task–to render them conscious again.

Grandion tried to disguise his smirk with a half-bow of the muzzle, but he knew that blind Dragoness or not, Yukari could read him like an open scroll. Her budding use of Akemi’s sight only made her the more dangerous. Releasing a controlled portion of his magic, Grandion summoned all the water in the air around him, from the ground and from the clouds above. Good. His water stomach swelled with a fresh load, already cooling rapidly. A touch of care, lest he freeze these feckless fools who had dared to disdain his command.

Extending his throat, the Tourmaline exercised his water stomach muscles and sprayed a fine, freezing rain over the nearby group of Reds. Wake up. Time for training.

* * * *

After three hours of flying back toward the Lost Islands, now visible on a storm-mantled horizon, Mizuki twizzled her neck to gaze at her three Riders. “If the Dragon-Haters indeed perfected this geographically circumscribed Command-hold, shouldn’t I be dead fifty leagues back?”

Hualiama snarled, “Aye!”

“The Empress of Liars,” said Saori, feelingly.

“Most intriguing,” said Elki, making a tent of his fingers while trying to look inscrutable. “Hualiama, I’ve never pictured you as a brunette. This is novel.”

“Why, my fine Dragon Rider, this is merely the latest fashion trend–heavenly fragrances pasted to mortal flesh.”

Lia smiled over her shoulder at her dung-encrusted brother, feeling the gunge stuck to her cheeks crack audibly as it dried in the cool breeze generated by Mizuki’s flight. They all resembled brown-black mud statues of indeterminable but emphatically swampy origin, plastered from head to toe in the stringy, tenacious by-product of a vegetal diet. That breeze tore away the worst of the stench before it could permanently cauterise the nostrils–mercifully.

“O Princess, thy perfume doth stink most magnificently!” opined the Prince.

“Art thou Prince Feculence Dung-Blot the Niffy, hailing from the Isle of All Pong?” Lia inquired.

“Ordure! Ordure in my court!” cried Elki, imitating their father King Chalcion’s most pompous tones with great relish.

While brother and sister fell about laughing, Saori folded her arms and rolled her eyes extravagantly. “You two are quite mad. How is this acceptable behaviour for royals, may I ask–Elki! I am not a straitlaced Easterner! You’re the one with the ridiculously conservative traditions, with headscarves and fifty-three types of bows for every occasion–”

Lia needled, “I’m convinced he’s the one who was adopted–”

“Me, adopted?”

“From a troop of monkeys!”

An hour later, when they were all dry, crusty and starting to itch intolerably, Mizuki sang out sight of the Land Dragons upon the horizon.

Hualiama gazed over the khaki fields of Cloudlands to Chenak Island, literally steaming along as its breath frosted at far more regular intervals than she had expected. How fast were they moving now? Three and a half to four leagues per hour? Almost certainly, the Dragon Enchanters had taken control of the Land Dragons and were working them as hard as physically possible. Yet behind, that ever-present localised storm still stuck to the Islands like a wasps’ nest to a stick, its colour noticeably whiter than the black-green band of clouds building on the horizon behind them.

She pointed. “With luck, a friendly rainstorm to soak us to the skin.”

Her brother prodded her firmly in the ribs. “But is it the type of luck that blindly befalls one, or the luck created by Her Most Starry Highness, Burner of Heavens and Bringer of the Mystical Star-Fires to the Presence of Humble Peasants–urk?”

Saori pressed her belt-knife firmly against the Prince’s neck.

“I meant me. I was talking about me,” he gabbled.

“Vain popinjay,” sneered the Eastern Isles warrior, clearly still irked by the ‘straitlaced’ comment. “Some weak-willed females might even consider you handsome. I will decide after you lean back here and give me a kiss. If it isn’t a complete Island-shaker, I shall be most disappointed.”

“A popinjay is a type of Fra’aniorian songbird, might I point out,” Elki said. “And, in my culture, ‘shaking the Island’ is a euphemism for what landed you up with a wriggling dragonet in the tum.”

“A what?” Saori blurted out. Her golden Eastern skin-tones blossomed into a fine suns-set colour, those few parts visible beneath her brown mask.

Hualiama closed her ears to the smooching couple and turned to scan the horizon ahead one more time. If only she could enjoy that with her beloved … but hers was a different fate. Leaning closer to Mizuki, she said, So, Copper Dragoness, I’ve heard there’s a Dragon-power which can tell truth from a lie?

If there is, I don’t know it, said the Dragoness.

Liar.

Prove it, Shapeshifter girl. Is your existence not a veiled truth?

Clenching her fists, Lia beat them against the spine-spike immediately ahead of her and then wrung her injured right hand. Mizuki might as well have voiced her true-fires thought. Was not Hualiama’s very existence, at its core, a lie?

Chapter 14: Enchaining Dragons

ELKI CAUGHT LIA’S arm on her way out of their chamber. “Need a shirt, sis?”

She ensured his left shin understood how solidly Dragon-Hater cobblers fashioned their wares. Her boots were definitely the type made to last fifty years and were only ever likely to win a prize in a beetle-stomping contest. “I’m decent. Livid enough I’m worried this egg will hatch from the heat of my anger, but decent.”

“Stay strong, sister.” Elki was becoming quite the hugger. She peered up at her tall brother, who managed to look faintly smug, as ever. He asked, “Bandages?”

Lia held up her right hand. “Won’t win me an ounce of sympathy with my devious mother, but aye–proof. Physical linkage, existential headache. It’s a Shapeshifter’s life.”

“Actually, it’s dead funky,” he said, shooing her along with his hands. Her Dragoness took a mental snap at his fingers, drawing a chuckle from Human-Lia. “Cheered on by your inner Dragoness? You are a weird one. Go create mayhem. Go on. Channel that dragonet of yours. Better still, stick him in the egg.”

“Elki, you definitely are an egg-head.”

Brothers. Honestly, his brain had exactly three settings–sleep, silly and Saori. She could not wait for him to attempt a traditional Fra’aniorian bride-kidnapping on his beloved. Unmissable entertainment. Actually, Hualiama would likely be the one to organise the event. And to convince the hot-headed warrior not to destroy Elki at the time–perhaps delayed destruction was the best she could hope for? More of a conundrum than planning how to neutralise various armies all targeting Kaolili, and the impossibility of escape from her mad mother.

The hobnailed boots tapped down the corridor to her mother’s door. Lia steeled herself.

At that very instant, she heard, Hualiama, OBEY.

An immense weight settled upon her mind. Lia’s feet jerked forward, slamming her face-first into the wooden door without recourse to use her arms to prevent the collision. “Ouch!”

Ruddy … OUT! Her mind flared; Azziala performed the mental equivalent of a duck and a dive, but not before Hualiama’s natural bastion performed its purpose. She heard a wild yell from within the room and scuffling noises. Ha. Felt that, mother? At least she had command of her own limbs once more. Lia touched a finger to her nose and drew it away daubed with blood.

Pressing open the door, Lia saw the Empress rearranging herself on her customary throne, located at the far end of an oval chamber she used for less formal activities, such as delivering briefings and planning with her Council. A smudge of crimson on the flare of her left nostril proclaimed that she had suffered a similar injury to her daughter. Azziala drank deeply from a goblet of Dragon blood, before fixing her eyes upon Lia over the rim.

“You should tie your hair back, daughter. It’s immodest,” she grated.

Lia had not suffered Saori’s irritated, jerky efforts with the brush for a quarter-hour after a much-needed scrub and disinfection–her third consecutive bath since returning from the depths of Siiyumiel’s bowels–for the Eastern warrior to attempt braiding her waist-length hair. White-blonde to the Haters’ habitual brown and black. She was certain she still smelled faintly rank. Nevertheless, as she approached the golden throne-seat, carved with runes of power and the supposed image of Dramagon on the tall backrest, which towered eight feet above Azziala’s petite frame, she made sure to sway her hair a little–saying without words, ‘I am unbound, as free as the Dragons of the air.’

“I have reviewed your report,” Azziala said severely. “I am most gratified by your attempts to bring a further potential ally, or source of power, into our ambit.”

Lia’s jaw barely avoided a nasty collision with the rush-covered floor. What? She studied her mother warily. The hands lay upon her thighs, resting lightly upon the blue Helyon silk dress she wore. Azziala was further covered from shoulder to elbow by a dark-blue, orrican wool cloak against the cold of her underground lair. Neat boots shod her small feet. The jewel-tipped, golden rod of office rested against her right hip, whilst at her throat, she wore a white jewel Hualiama did not recognise, although she readily identified the mineral as horiatite, the magical stone from Ha’athior Island. The jewel was massive, as large as Lia’s splayed fingers, a seven-pointed central star surrounded by stylised runes, many of which she did not recognise. Power over … abyss … eternity–that much she could read. She committed the text to memory nevertheless.

The Empress leaned forward, her golden face set in planes as hard as a granite statue. “Assess for us the threat from the South.”

“If Numistar seeks this unknown treasure and the Land Dragons are concerned enough to launch an expedition across the Rift–which is apparently far less uncrossable than legend would have it, for the Dragonkind at least–then we can conclude it must be an artefact or secret of great power,” Hualiama said. “Numistar’s true motivation is unknown. We must exercise extreme caution where she is concerned. Any development, any stirring amongst the dragonets, must be treated as an emergency. Less so the far South. We can wait for the Land Dragons to decode the message or for fresh intelligence. Meantime, we must prepare for Kaolili.”

“The Kingdom does not concern me. The false disciples of Dramagon are our initial target. However, should Kaolili not provide the utmost cooperation …”

She made a cutting gesture at her neck.

Aware of minds snooping around hers, Lia said flatly, “I’ve met the King. He’s a shrewd man, a calculator of odds like you. His honour will not allow your forces unopposed access to his Kingdom’s airspace or resources.”

“That’s unfortunate,” said Azziala.

Her mother’s new Councillors did not have the gumption to interfere, as did the old. Hualiama glanced around her as the Empress’ glacial pronouncement made more than a couple of her inner circle quake visibly. Gurzia. Pure hatred. The Councillor to her right, a tall, heavyset woman with what appeared to be a permanent scowl graven upon her features, which still showed a hint of the natural pink skin-tone beneath, must be the new recruit. Payturki of Irak. In addition to the usual heavy blue robes, she wore a sky-blue wimple over her greying hair as if to underscore her devotion and piety.

Odd. Did she feel a vibration from the dragonet’s egg?

“So, daughter, an artefact of great power?” At last, Azziala cracked a smile–literally, for her strange skin folded upon unnatural, geometric lines. “Such as the Scroll of Binding?”

Hualiama kept still. The egg jiggled again. No. Not now, little one.

“You don’t think you could be Numistar’s target, do you? Considering Istariela’s special relationship with Fra’anior the Onyx–” her lips twisted the words until they suggested the utterly abhorrent “–I wonder that a Dragoness of similar powers might not be her goal. Or a useful tool.”

Wetting her lips, Lia replied, “What could I offer Numistar that she doesn’t possess already? Not that I would. I–”

Azziala’s face twisted so sharply, Hualiama wondered if the ghastly twin was about to make an appearance. “The unstoppable power of ruzal. Conveniently suppressed in that cranium of yours. Putting together what we learned from the Maroon lizard, we Councillors conclude that ruzal is a magic most intimately related to Dramagon’s signature talents–and therefore, it is of great value to us. Infinitely greater value than, say, your continued health or life.”

Through blood-bitten lips, she replied, “Dear mother, how very charming you are.”

The Empress regally ignored the bait. “I considered Reaving you again, but that is against our Protocols and oddly, I find the Place of Reaving was destroyed during the lizard’s unsuccessful attack. Strange.”

“I wished it gone,” Lia laughed hollowly. “I didn’t expect the ever-noble Sapphurion to listen to me.”

Azziala said, “I think you lack the proper motivation, Hualiama.”

“I think you’re taking over the Dragonkind again.”

“The larger ones, yes. And a few to bargain with, such as Sapphurion and what’s-her-name, the Copper lizard?”

Lia forced her expression to remain neutral, but her voice constricted as she traded verbal punches with her mother. “Because your geographically bound Command-hold never existed?”

“Fool. Of course not.” Azziala snapped her fingers. “Other structures do work, however, which you would do well to beware of. A ban and a bane upon infighting. Death upon treachery. Debilitating pain sufficient to stop a Dragon’s heart. But I didn’t summon you here to talk about petty distractions, Hualiama. I want to taste your devotion to the cause. I need you to convince that lizard-spirit which possesses you, to give up its secrets.”

“She’s incorrigible.” Ha, take that, Dragonsoul.

She sensed her Dragoness close at hand, listening with a stillness that in turn, brought sombre overtones to Human-Lia’s thoughts. What had Dragonsoul … did she have a premonition?

“You will therefore assign ten Dragons apiece to investigate each of these Land Dragons’ nostrils and to destroy any dragonet eggs or hatchlings they might find. Further, you will choose fifty Dragons each day to investigate that storm.”

Hualiama gasped, but not for the reason Azziala thought. The egg tapped sharply against her sternum. Would it crack soon? Yet she knew Azziala’s decree would spell death-sentence for many Dragonkind. She dropped her gaze. Choose? Who could make such a choice? How could a commander send troops into battle knowing many would die; how could they live with their conscience thereafter?

“Perhaps the deaths of fifty Command-held Dragons a day will convince you to more assiduously seek a way to share the ruzal magic with a wider audience? A righteous, deserving Human audience?”

How could she circumvent this order? Or turn it to the Dragons’ advantage? But Lia had barely half a second to think furiously before Azziala continued:

“And as for thinking you may hatch a dragonet’s egg–that is odious, daughter, and it will not happen in my stronghold.”

Lia froze, sensing the unveiling of a vindictive purpose in her mother.

DRAGON, DIE!

* * * *

Sobbing, cradling the egg to her bosom, Hualiama fled her mother’s presence. Begging … don’t die, little one. Don’t … but the fragile flame was gone. Snuffed out.

Azziala’s sick gratification! The pinch of her monstrous fingers upon the candlewick of a life!

Rough laughter chased her down the corridor, beating her ears like feral windrocs, abruptly cut off by the door slamming shut behind her. She burst into her room. Lia stumbled over the threshold, her bad hand stuck in her clothing as she tried to extract the egg from its pouch. Elki’s attempted catch turned into a despairing lurch. She crashed upon his outflung left leg, curling instinctively around the egg, the protective mother-Dragoness.

“Lia, what–”

“No, no, she can’t … she killed him! Just like that, oh, Elki …”

Crimson was the colour of hate, the crimson of blood, thundering in her ears and pumping wildly in her heart. How dare she? How dare her mother–

“I heard. It’s alright.”

“No it isn’t, you stupid–don’t you see! He’s dead!” Lia held out the egg, pleading, “Bring him … bring him back …” Who was she even asking?

Just so, she had lost Flicker.

Catapulted back in time, a scene flashed into Lia’s mind. Lamentation. A grief so deep, her life’s-Island felt quarried out from the inside, the remaining structure too fragile to endure. Her apprehension not only of Amaryllion’s sorrow, but of the Ancient Dragon somehow communing with the remnant of Flicker’s fire-soul before it flew to the eternal fires. When it flew? Before? It was not too late!

Hope was a crossbow bolt, a shaft of burning, consuming ecstasy fired through her heart.

For the sake of thy spirit, Amaryllion … a deep, rattling groan shook Hualiama as white-fires cascaded through her body. All was washed in white. She saw into the egg. She traced the expiring flicker of life, the merest wisp of smoke. Her Dragon-form whispered the truth that where there was smoke, there was fire … and within her being, another gift trembled on the cusp of incarnation. Willing. Tremulous, yet ready to soar.

Fire rose, lambent–the fire of a dragonet’s spirit once breathed into her being. Thick beads of sweat pearled on Hualiama’s brow, soaking her clothing; made the Prince somewhere, far away yet holding her person affectionately, exclaim in shock. Elki’s idea. Genius. A chance for wholeness–not that tragedy could ever be expunged, but perhaps there was an opportunity, a second beginning, that might by some miracle beyond her limited understanding redeem the past.

In the maelstrom of power, she knew tranquillity. Lia whispered, You taught me that death is only a new beginning–Bezaldior!

The world shifted.

Perhaps in the place where pure and noble desire met desperation, where the will knew no other way save incoherent, desperate, soul-excoriating hope, the numinous might be compelled to pierce the present reality–or was the truth that those white-fires were always present, and a person simply lived among them, unaware?

Lovingly, she breathed fire over the egg. Let it be.

Elki yelped, slapping at his smouldering trousers, but Hualiama merely lifted the precious egg away from him, into the air, and exhaled again. A veil of shimmering fire expelled, impossibly, from her Human lungs, as if the air was transubstantiated into fire in the very act of breathing. Yet this was not physical breath, but rather, an expression of the outpouring of her spirit.

A dragonet danced fleetingly in the fire, so rapidly present and gone that all she saw was the afterimage upon her retinae, and then … a quiver!

“Mercy!” Lia almost fumbled the slick ovoid.

Kneeling now, cupping the jewel-like egg in her palms, Lia felt a distinct tapping against her palms. Her tears fell like sultry rain, unstoppable. Just beyond the rocking egg, Elki’s eyes were as round as wine goblets, brimming over with wonder. “Did you just … did you?” he whispered.

“I think I did. Well, not consciously.”

“Aye, I know,” he breathed. “You performed a Hualiama dance-step. One small step for Hualiama, and the world sang, ‘O death, thou art not welcome here’. Not this day.”

He quoted from the Lay of Rolodia, a ballad based on tragic events two hundred years before … yet her mind had no space for contemplation, for the egg wriggled as if to communicate delight. Then the tapping began again, becoming sharper and more insistent by the moment. Lia encouraged the eggling in Dragonish, speaking tenderly over it, promising warmth and welcome and love.

Tap-tap-tap. What a travesty to crack such a beautiful egg, with its pearlescent outer shell that trapped and refracted prisms of light … scratch-scratch … yet was not birth a kind of wrenching, a breaking free of the sheltering womb or eggshell, a portrait of life’s struggle for survival from the first? So it was for the eggling. For long minutes, as Hualiama wondered how her mother could not possibly have detected the magic unleashed nearby, the eggling tapped and scratched and scrabbled inside the egg with its tiny claws, and then before her astonished eyes … crack. A chink opened. No, a fissure. The white point of a nose peeked out as if to scent the world for the very first time, a delicate bud no larger than her thumb, crowned by a sharp, tooth-like bone that Hualiama realised was used for breaking open the shell. It withdrew, then attacked the eggshell once more as she sang mellifluously:

He breathes! He burns!

The Dragonsong of living fire,

Blessed eggling, born to fly.

The tiny creature stilled as if to listen to the notes of her song, then trilled inquisitively, Eep?

Suddenly, there was a flurry of movement within the shell. Lia did not know what to do. Cradle it? Put it down somewhere? Wipe her wet eyes? Fearful of dropping her rather lively burden, she drew it toward her lap. Elki’s eyes had become no narrower; was that a suspicious hint of moisture trapped in the whiskers of his left cheek? He mouthed, ‘Priceless.’

Indeed. What price, a life? A small, contrary part of Lia which had protested the breathing out of her spirit, suddenly expanded with realisation. She had not lost anything. Nor had she given up, or sacrificed part of her fire-soul. Instead, miraculously, she had multiplied Flicker’s gift into this living soul.

Chip-chip … crack! With a sharp report, the eggshell suddenly split in two, and there, in her palms, lay a perfect little dragonet curled up nose to tail, as white as snow with the daintiest pink trim around his talons and muzzle, the undersides of the wings, and the pinprick-small scales around his flaming eyes, which were no bigger than the fingernail of her smallest finger. Stretching luxuriously, the dragonet uncurled to a surprising length, at least seven inches from muzzle to tail-tip; exquisite in every detail, down to a decidedly rotund little pot-belly. Her eyes drank deep of his beauty. Breath-stealing. Humbling. Was this an echo of how mothers felt when they beheld their newborn for the first time?

The little male cocked his head sideways, exactly as Flicker used to, to examine her person. Eep?

“Wow!” said Elki.

Startled, the dragonet sprang to Lia’s shoulder, his claws pricking painfully as he managed to entangle himself in her hair. Easy, little one. She raised her hand; the dragonet squeaked, Eep! She laughed softly. No biting. I’m a friend.

The little creature hissed and warning-nipped at her knuckles.

The Prince laughed again. “Why, Hualiama, I do believe you’ve become a mother. Congratulations.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “Aye, I laid an egg. Well done, me.”

An inrush of breath clued her in to the fact that Saori was lying abed, well hidden by a pile of pungent orrican furs these Lost Islanders swore were better than blankets. Her almond eyes were aglow, the smile curving her lips, as unconstrained as Lia had ever seen of her.

“That was beautiful,” Saori said, perhaps referring also to the life stirring within her womb. “What was that many-coloured flame? Did you just soul-transfer to a dragonet?”

“Mercy, I suppose … I did?” said Lia, as darkness swirled around the edges of her vision. The last she remembered was the sensation of falling toward her brother’s lap.

* * * *

“You slept for three days,” Saori growled. “Your dragonet’s been an absolute pest, refusing to leave your side–save to eat the eggshell. Is that normal behaviour?”

Eep! Eep! Eep!

A white rocket shot into the furs piled upon her chest. Alright, little one. Alright. I’m awake. Rescuing the frantic dragonet from his misdirected flight, Lia brought him to her lips and dropped a kiss on top of his head, which had a prickly ruff with skull-spikes just half an inch long, and points as sharp as daggers.

Frreep! protested the dragonet, expelling a tiny curl of smoke.

“He doesn’t like kisses,” Saori observed.

“He’ll soon learn–like someone else I know.” Lia brought the dragonet to her neck, where he snuggled against her pulse.

“Break another of your fingers?” the warrior returned, but without the slightest trace of heat, apart from the traces of pink that infused her cheeks. “What’ll you call him? Why did you sleep so long? Overuse of magic?”

“Aye,” growled Elki, who also coloured as Lia’s gaze lit on him sewing one of Saori’s tops with a fish-bone needle. Domesticated, her brother. “How much magic does Shapeshifting require? And healing? How are you feeling, Lia? You looked awfully pale and worn that day you passed out. Poor, fainting little Princess.”

The growl that emerged from beneath the blankets was a thousand leagues from proper Princess-behaviour.

“Never mind, my little lambkin, big brother saved you from scraping your exceedingly lovely nose on that nasty, cold floor.”

“Elki!” Saori and Hualiama snapped in concert.

Nonetheless, Saori leaned over Lia to feel her forehead. “Hmm. Definitely Dragoness-temperature.”

“Whaaa … fine, you two pranksters,” Lia huffed, struggling to rise from her pillow. Still so enervated? “Missed me, perchance? Let’s see–aye, that magic sapped far more from me than I expected. My Dragoness is probably due to make an appearance, just as soon as I can figure out how to pay her back for making me swim through a lake of Land Dragon poo. I’m feeling well rested, thank you, and may I remind you that I am far more snappish than your average royal? As for a name, I haven’t decided yet. It feels wrong to call him Flicker.”

Erreeep, said the dragonet.

Saori said, “I think he disagrees.”

“Oh, we’re all experts on dragonet hatchlings, are we?” Lia fumed. Eep-eep! “What does he want now?”

“Food, probably,” said Elki. “I’d want food, if I’d eaten a bellyful of eggshell. I’ve always wondered why there’s so little dragonet-shell to be found around Fra’anior. Now we know.”

Hatchlings eat shell to aid bone growth and scale-hardening, said Dragoness-Lia.

Thanks. Lia repeated this for her brother and Saori.

“I’ll fetch food and water,” Elki volunteered.

“For five,” Saori pointed out.

Hualiama tickled the dragonet’s tiny white spine-spikes with her forefinger; he took a playful nip at her hand, then with a joyous trill, burrowed beneath the pillow-roll. A slight quivering there and a querulous chirp betrayed expectation. “He wants to play,” she laughed, prodding the pillow-roll. Eep-eep-eep! The dragonet batted her fingers, claws sheathed. “Come here, you bundle of mischief. Let’s see if we can raise a growl out of you, you big, bad dragonet.”

Soul-transfer?

What was the gift Amaryllion had bestowed upon her, that day he breathed the fire of an Ancient Dragon into a Human girl? She could not keep this gift to herself. She must learn what it meant; how to find ways to pass it on to others, for that was what she sensed Amaryllion had purposed. The gift was for many.

A smile touched her lips. An Ancient Dragon’s instruction-manual to mystical gifts might have proven handy, rather than navigating as if on a starless, moonless night. Aye, but she sensed she was beginning to grasp the Balance represented by a tiny dragonet’s new life. It inspired a girl to dance.

Flinging aside her bedcovers, Hualiama stretched her limbs. Aye, life was a dance.

Dance was laughter.

Laughter could drive away her fears, for a time.

* * * *

Your life is a Dragonsong of dance, shell-daughter.

Hualiama startled so hard, she leaped out of her Dragon-hide–and then back into it. Manifestly, her Shapeshifter magic wavered away from her Human form and back to scale and hide, leaving her shaken. She whirled. Fra’anior!

Island-flipping, sneaky-pawed monster! How did an Ancient Dragon of his size sneak up on anyone? Was this a waking dream? Disconcerted, she could not summon so much as a puff of irritated breath.

The great Onyx regarded her with the quadruple grandeur of four heads jutting out of his habitual thunderstorm, eight massive draconic orbs roiling with fire and spitting lightning, and his own personal thunderstorm prowling and growling about his long necks. He had the awe and reverence part polished to a gemstone gleam, Dragoness-Lia decided, having to stiffen every joint to keep from quailing. He who overshadowed Islands must have grown accustomed to intimidating–well, the rest of creation, more or less. But then even Fra’anior’s heads, in concert, did a double-take. His eye-fires flared in surprise.

We are honoured, shell-father, said Human-Lia, slipping her hand into her Dragoness’ paw. Again, she found herself on that mountaintop above Fra’anior, but her instinct refused to accept that she dreamed. We dance to try to build an understanding of Harmony, as best we can.

We? Two of thee? Fra’anior’s mouths dribbled streams of fire.

Aye, this is my pet Human, said the Star Dragoness, but her voice cracked on the word ‘pet’, spoiling her cheeky statement.

Human-Lia just laughed merrily. Ah, mighty Fra’anior, meet my Dragonsoul. She’s pure mischief, but such a delight, I’m grateful … to her–she gulped–for my life.

Fra’anior just stood there, leaking multiple waterfalls of liquid orange flame. Then he shook himself from heads to faraway, unseen tail, she presumed. One soul? Human, or Dragon? One of the heads descended precipitately to examine her, so closely that Hualiama felt the heat of his burning eye. Mighty magic swirled within, reaming her through and through. Then he snorted, Only one fire-soul; thou hast but one. ‘Oh, thou two-tailed Dragon, how thou lashest thy foes!’

Lia smiled at the quotation from the Saga of Magioral Forlar, a famous Green Dragon of yore. I have but one tail, mighty Fra’anior, said her Dragoness–

–But what a tale it is, Human-Lia put in.

And that tale I will extract from thy sassy hide, the Onyx thundered in response, but he moderated his tone immediately. Fear not, little mouse. I am merely unaccustomed to … to having a shell-daughter. Listen. Long have I meditated upon the conundrum of this Empress’ Command-magic. There is a power which was known to my Istariela–while she sojourned amidst mine beloved Islands …

Hualiama would not have believed it, but as Fra’anior’s voice thickened, she realised what she should always have known–he had feelings. Powerful, raging feelings. His third heart, if he had but three, could be wounded. It had been.

He said, It is called the Word of Command. I believe Azziala, she who thou called the mother of thy Human form, uses a debased form of this magic. To combat it, thou must summon the ruzal–

No! No, please …

Aye, o fire of mine eye. A perilous path indeed.

Both of her forms shook their heads, taking in each other’s dread. “No, Fra’anior,” said Human-Lia, placing her slim hand upon her Dragoness’ shoulder. “Say it cannot be.”

The Ancient Dragon replied, Command magic is unique among the disciplines. It must be verbalised. Once spoken, the effect is immutable–it cannot be un-spoken. Natural magic may combat it or resist over time, but as I just saw in thy thought-memories, when that woman spoke the death of thy dragonet, the foul deed was thus instantly accomplished. I thought no power in the Island-World could oppose death–save thine, it seems, though thou must understand how fragile a work was wrought, was it but yesterday in thy time?

Aye. Yesterday evening. But noble Fra’anior, noble shell–Human-Lia’s telepathy stalled. He was too mighty! How could she claim even a fraction of his power, to be cut of such a draconic tapestry? I-I am … afraid. It is too much. Life and death, the mingling of fires and hosting of a soul within me …

To her embarrassment, Lia felt tears pricking her eyes. Her Dragoness stroked her back and shoulders with a warm paw. Peace, Humansoul. We will find a way.

She asked her Dragoness, And safeguard this power from Numistar, Shinzen and Azziala?

The hatchling clicked her talons. Simple–not so, mighty Fra’anior?

Not so, he replied, frowning ponderously. Clearly, her sarcasm washed past him; the tenor of his gaze communicated preoccupation, even dismay. Azziala’s form of this magic operates simultaneously upon the physical and the magi-physical planes of existence. They perform poorly on Humankind, but deathly-well upon the Dragonkind.

If what he said contained so much as a grain of truth, how could she have resisted her mother? Astonishing.

Carefully but firmly, the Star Dragoness said, The purity of white-fires must overrule.

Thou art stout-hearted, mine shell-daughter. Yet I fear this view may be mistaken. For the greater good, thou should ready thyself to unleash the ruzal even should it injure thee.

Dragon-Lia shuddered in concert with her Human girl. Must I suffer in my flesh that the enchained might know freedom?

The great muzzle lowered slowly, past the mountain, until a mighty ruff of skull-spikes soared forest-like above her awed gaze. Her eyes rose and rose. ‘Dragon kebabs!’ her mind wailed in a welter of strange echoes-within-echoes. Fra’anior was insanely huge. He was a beast for whom the honorific ‘mighty Dragon’ had surely been coined, yet failed miserably to capture the skull-bruising, brain-frazzling immensity of his presence. For an instant she was that eggling, terrified and alone, before the girl pressed her shoulder beneath her Dragon-neck, and lifted both hands to clasp her neck just behind the skull-spikes.

Fear not, they said to each other.

Fra’anior’s voice issued from well beneath Lia’s paws and feet, and also from his other heads, until his speech resembled storms thundering and fulminating between themselves. Courage, my shell-daughter. I shall instruct thee in the powers and perils of Command-magic. Yet hear me well. There is a greater danger called upon the one who speaks such magic, and this is the battle I fight for thee. Each time thou speakest mine younger shell-brother’s secret name, hast thou not heard? Or apprehended the ambit of this utterance? Tell me, how far does Amaryllion’s secret name resound?

Far, Hualiama said, with dawning realisation. Far beyond this world–doesn’t it, o Fra’anior?

Far and wide, indeed, he agreed. Once more, the head rose, until Hualiama faced what appeared to be a wall of fire–his eye, roiling like a volcano’s restless belly, with colours for which she had no names, as they presented themselves in dancing flame before her magical senses. See? Your world, your existence, is but one of many possible manifestations of life. In some planes of existence there live creatures of vile appetites, utterly unimaginable to thy kind … and they seek power, Hualiama. They hunger for what is thy possession. Numistar is one such creature, but many more incline greedy and insatiable eyes to the beauteous font of thy white-fire magic.

Blonde-Lia whispered, Must we refrain from using his name-power?

I will protect thee in the realms beyond thine ken; this is mine task, a high calling. All I ask of thee is to use these powers wisely and well.

And my task, mighty Fra’anior?

To deny Numistar Winterborn access to the last First Egg of the Ancient Dragons.

Chapter 15: Alastior!

SEVEN STRAIGHT DAYS and nights, Grandion and his Dragon-forces bloodied their claws in battle, before Kaolili’s lines broke.

Two armies brawled over a line of Islands stretching forty leagues from southwest to northeast, numbering one hundred and ten major landmasses, and innumerable smaller rocks and outcroppings which made the pale lime Cloudlands in these parts resemble a shallow, treacherous terrace lake. This area was called the Shintori Archipelago, or more fondly by the soldiers–at first, before they came to curse its rockiness–the Rock-Garden of the East. Following predictable Eastern mentality, five hexagonal forts of identical design guarded the archipelago at meticulously planned intervals, each dark granite-block massif constructed atop an artificial hill of similar standing, some two hundred feet above the otherwise flat, boulder-strewn Islands. Mohili wheat was the main crop of this region; it grew wild, sprouting in five-foot, lime-green streamers from every possible crack and crevice and beneath every black granite boulder, apparently requiring neither encouragement nor active cultivation.

The weather had been fine, but this day had dawned grey and squally. Capricious winds yammered around the second-from-southernmost outpost, where Grandion commanded his battle-wing against Shinzen’s Giants and their supporting Eastern Dragons, over one hundred in number. Giants charged over the sodden ground, attacking the fortress with roughly-hewn scaling ladders and grappling hooks, while groups of their brethren provided cover via a steady pelting of boulders and their newest discovery, crossbow bolts pillaged from the downed Dragonships of Commander Hiro’s fleet.

Seven days of gruelling battle. Giants popping up like weeds amidst the tangled sarsens. The ever-present danger of shield failure, and the piercing magic he could not make muzzle or tail of–Grandion himself wore a four-foot, broken-off length of wood in his left upper thigh, and another bolt had breached his shield to puncture his lower left flank.

Already, he had lost thirty percent of his force to Shinzen’s Giants, his Dragons and Dragon Riders unable eventually to avoid the flurries of war crossbow bolts and magic-flung boulders in the heat of battle. No shield resisted this giant-magic sufficiently. Shinzen himself had vanished like Dragon flame snuffed out between clenched fangs.

Hualiama would have worked out this conundrum. GRRR!

Greens! Grandion ordered. Another pass.

Immediately, sixteen Greens formed up one hundred feet beneath him in a wide, double-V formation designed to facilitate a concentrated field of Dragon fire and acid spit. The Tourmaline led a sweep from the North, intending to clear that flank and give the defenders respite. Below, nigh two hundred Giants laboured like agitated ants to build a stone ramp leading to the fortress walls.

Go!

The Dragons wheeled and dived. Immediately, a flurry of boulders hurtled aloft, but with Grandion’s support, the Greens survived the backlash thanks to their primitive shields. Acid sprayed over the Giants, each Dragon instinctively picking a target or group of targets. Psst! Psst! The Greens shaped the acid-shots with their tongues and fangs. The attackers danced and dodged; flesh and rock boiled where the powerful acids struck. Grandion shot bolts of ice, keeping the covering Giant-mages hopping, spoiling their aim. Aye! One through the neck! Another, impaled through the abdomen by an eight-foot shard! His fires surged. Battle! Blood! Death dealt by his paw!

Yet Giants swarmed unceasing, ever more aggressive with their return fire. Bolts! The Tourmaline tilted his shields to deflect, but even so, young Tarbuzi to his port flank and his shell-father, Yenuko, took shots that snapped wing-struts. The Giants had become smarter still, baiting the crossbow bolts with wire hooks and the foul poisons they secreted from special glands in the pockets of their cheeks. To his starboard side, the wily Ryuki flipped between four converging bolts before snapping out with her paws, decapitating three Giants in an intricate manoeuvre. Defenders on the wall, too weary to cheer, raised hands in salute as the Dragonwing shot by overhead.

Suddenly–’Ware above! Grandion jinked upward, hurling himself bodily into the path of an ambush by seven enemy Reds. Two he scragged by the scruff of the neck and slammed together with his Tourmaline strength, snapping wings and bones. His muzzle snapped sideways, clashing fangs with a smaller Red. Grandion’s ice-slurry snuffed out the female’s fireball; he did not miss with an icicle-attack that ripped into the roof of her mouth.

Yenuko flipped past Grandion’s instinctive wing-tuck; the powerful Green hammered into his opponent, kicking open a quintet of bloody, golden trenches in his flank.

Roar! Snap! Thunder! The Tourmaline Dragon broke free with a triumphant, bugling challenge that rallied the Greens and the covering Reds higher up. Battle! Again, he drove upward, slicing into a secondary force of a dozen Dragons sidling in from the South and soon broke free from the melee, leaving a trail of destruction strewn along his flight path.

Powerful, praiseworthy deeds of paw and fang!

Grandion. Grandion!

His head snapped about. A hulking Blue–Raiden? Why have you abandoned–

We’ve been overrun. Came to warn you.

Raiden looked awful–he was blood-splattered, wearing a dozen fresh wounds. Fully a third of his right wing hung in tatters. Fumiko, on his back, raised her Eastern recurve bow in a weary salute. “Grandion.”

Grandion said, “Where’s Vinzuki?”

“My mate’s fighting rear-guard,” Raiden called. “Shinzen attacked. Five hundred Giants. Dragons you’ve never seen before. Orange … with two green heads each.”

“How long do we have?” Grandion snapped.

“A quarter-hour,” Fumiko and her Dragon responded simultaneously.

The Tourmaline grimaced, but his heated reply was forestalled by a peculiar break in the weather. Coincidence? Grandion shivered delicately as the storm clouds drifted apart in concert with his scrutiny of the final fortress; indeed, all along the line, the weather-front showed signs of breaking up. His gaze, however, was fixed at maximum magnification upon that fifth and final fortress. Sickly green mists drifted over the scene–poison gas, his initial analysis suggested. Seventeen Kaolili Dragonships beat away at a full retreat, while more slowly to their rear, the Warlord Shinzen’s bulky transport-Dragons flapped ponderously beneath the weight of six Giants each, transferring them to the next Island.

His hearts lurched with an injection of battle-hormones. Two miles above, a vast, dense mass of orange scales rippled across the sky like a many-legged, green-spotted centipede, chasing a battle-group of Dragon Riders and Western Dragons led by Akemi upon Yukari. The Oranges were so many and flying in such a tight formation, Grandion saw not a hint of sky between their ranks.

Yukari was about to be overhauled.

“What happened?” he grated. Dragons! To me!

Swiftly, Raiden described the attack. Oranges had bombed the fortress with poison-gas fireballs. Those defenders who were struck directly died agonisingly, their liquefied flesh bubbling through their armour; those indirectly affected were incapacitated by violent vomiting followed by paralysis. The Giants, apparently unaffected, had ravaged the remnant of the defenders within minutes. Skyward, Shinzen’s Orange Dragons attacked with unconventional ropes–like spiderweb, Fumiko put in. The burning ropes and gluey webs entangled Dragons, forcing them to land; direct poison-gas strikes on heads and muzzles had blinded or paralysed other Western Dragons. Those that landed, the Giants tore apart.

“We must help Yukari,” Grandion decided aloud.

Fumiko, dark and lithe upon Raiden’s back, waved her bow and uttered an Eastern word the Tourmaline did not recognise, but the tone was unmistakable. He whirled to follow her gesture. Null-fire worms! he swore feelingly.

Orange-and-Greens. A second Dragonwing numbering four hundred plus Dragonkind beat toward the Shintori Archipelago from the Southeast, less than two hours distant and closing fast.

Calculation was unnecessary. His small battle-groups could not oppose these numbers, not separately and probably not together either. Grandion bawled, Yushimo! Sound the retreat below. Subayi–the Northern fortresses. Vathi, brief Commander Hiro–he won’t enjoy retreating. Convince him.

Raiden said, What about Yukari?

The Tourmaline Dragon swung about again, eying Shinzen’s advance. Raiden was right. His duty was to his Elder. Sweeping his right wingtip forward until it pointed directly at the foe, Grandion roared, DRAGONS! ATTACK!

* * * *

Dragons, attack! But not blindly; not without forethought. As he led thirty-two Dragons in a southward sprint to relieve Yukari, Grandion grilled Raiden and Fumiko on the tactics of these new Dragons. Lizard-Dragons, Raiden sniffed. Their bites were also poisonous, in a way the Blue had never seen before–they appeared to inject a necrotizing toxin from a pair of long, tubular fangs in the upper jaw, which ate through flesh and muscle like a Dragon supping on a delicious haunch of deer. Grandion hated to admit it, but closing with these Dragons in traditional forms of battle was probably … unwise. His scales itched.

Blue-star, what would you do? he inquired of the oath-magic within, dark-fires despairing.

Penetrative shielding.

The thought formed so clearly, with a hint of well-remembered laughter, that Grandion’s wingbeat snarled up. What? Hualiama? Where are you?

Silence. But the nuances of that thought were unmistakably external. Lacerate-those-enemy-worms? That was not a concept shaped by Tourmaline neurons. By his wings, if the Blue-star was with him … Grandion lifted his muzzle to see Fumiko and Raiden staring at him with identically quizzical expressions.

Raiden said, “Do you often talk yourself into a stall, mighty wing-brother?”

Grr! He must save his strength, and mute his draconic belly-fury for the moment. Grandion assessed his group, questioning them with telepathic fleetness. Shield-skills. Higher magical functions. Magical reserves. He had three Greens, two Reds and Raiden the Blue, who might be capable of producing and sustaining such an elegant yet power-draining shield construct. He thought-projected the required forms with them. The rest? A feint. He shared and refined the strategy with his battle-group as they winged along at over thirty leagues per hour.

This is undraconic, said Raiden.

It will take mighty courage and firmness of paw, Grandion snarled back. Aye, there’s nothing noble about this type of warfare–save that for the ballads and praise-songs. This is survival.

The other Blue nodded slowly. Songs are sung only by survivors.

Closer. An orange-scaled tide about to swallow Yukari’s Dragonwing. The two-headed Oranges were gnarly monsters, clearly based on some lizard-like ancestry, in all likelihood Dramagon-spawned crossbreeds. One hundred and twenty foot wingspan. Eastern double-wing anatomical structure, four in all, as if the wings had been duplicated by some process beyond Grandion’s ken. Their scales were rough, spike-edged platters with no pretence of aerodynamic slickness, and the two heads of each beast, from midway up the long, sinuous necks were a brilliant lime-green colour, a poisonous hue.

Closer still, Grandion could make out the curved fangs of their smiles. They must think his battle-group feral, thirty-two taking on over five hundred, by his estimate.

Ready … he called. Shields solidified around him. Courage, Dragon-kin. Trust in the magic.

Like stars, said that inner inkling–not even a voice. Not a telepathic call. Something deeper still, a means of communication outside of all Dragon lore, the Tourmaline suspected.

He flashed the construct to his fellow-Dragons. Fall upon the enemy like fatal talons of starlight!

Raiden understood. BLUE-STAR!! was his battle-challenge, immediately echoed by every Dragon in Grandion’s Dragonwing as they speared toward Yukari’s force. The air, cool. The rush, thrilling. Three hearts pounded inside his throat like a troop of maddened Human log-drummers. Grandion’s paws tightened into fists. Hualiama had better be right about her penetrative shields, or this would be the shortest, most idiotic frontal assault in history.

The Orange Dragonwing loomed before them in a wall of living Dragonflesh, struck agleam by the twin suns’ peering through the clouds. The forces flashed toward each other at a combined speed of over sixty leagues per hour. The Tourmaline sent Yukari a tightly-focussed thought–Stay your course! Above, his diversionary teams split off at angles, thundering challenges and insults at the massed Oranges. Fireballs seared the sky. Acid sprayed from the Greens, coupled with a boiling-glue attack from the solitary Grey in Grandion’s force, the fierce and striking Dragoness Makani. The trailing Dragoness of Yukari’s group bugled in dismay as a set of fangs clamped into her tail. She and her Dragon Rider vanished into the oncoming wall of orange scales as though swallowed up, never to be seen again.

The Oranges’ eyes ignited with fury and wonder, clearly unable to accept the vector of attack. Necks writhed in confusion; the realisation that the impending collision would kill those Dragonkind foolish enough to sustain such an impact head-on. Even Yukari’s wingbeat stuttered.

SPLIT! Grandion roared. Every muscle in his body tensed. NOW!!

Shimmering wings of shield-magic sprang from his body, bending backward slightly at the tips due to the momentum of his flight. Five shining blades like the arms of a five-pointed star, they were, fronted by a single spike that extended fifty feet ahead of his muzzle. White-fire power rippled into being as Grandion shot by above Yukari’s back, so close that his trailing shields-arms came within a foot of brushing her upward wing-stroke.

For a millisecond, he was a living star.

SHOOP! SHOOP-SHOOP! Each Dragon he pierced was a sharp tug against his mind, the strain on his magic, unprecedented. SHOOP-SHOOP-SHOOP! He sliced through wings and tails and necks like a Dragon clamping his fangs into the tender underparts of his prey. Grandion sensed the Orange Dragonwing folding around each point of entry as the cutting edges of Hualiama’s unique shield-magic exacted a dreadful toll, yet the effect was a kind of friction, making him feel as if he swam through mud. A Green and two Reds of his force fell away, stunned and overwhelmed. He must help! Stalling deliberately, Grandion turned to the aid of Raiden and the others. As he corkscrewed through the fray, the impacts came faster and faster, battering his mind and strength. Paws and jaws swung toward him. In response, he barrel-rolled rapidly, creating a vortex of destruction that washed a world of tough Orange Dragon bodies with golden blood; body parts exploded around him, a welter of injuries so horrific, even Grandion’s mighty hearts baulked.

His magic stuttered. A dismembered head struck him in the chest, the piercing fangs automatically pumping venom into the muscle near his first heart. More bites, upon the wings, tail and paws.

Pain seared above the adrenaline-rush of battle. He sensed a magical poison mutilating his body even as he had torn into the enemy Dragons. The taint spread insidiously.

Darkness gathered in his fires, around his eyes, his wings folding like the weakest of hatchlings.

Hualiama …

* * * *

One moment Hualiama was eating lunch, the next, she found herself lying face down in a bowl of thin, unappetising vegetable soup, which smelled strongly of orrican fat.

“Uh … what?”

Elki hooted, “Lia! Did you just fall asleep mid-sentence?”

“I–did you hear … something?” she stammered, pawing at her face ineffectually. “Grandion?”

Her adorable brother reached out to pluck a stringy green vegetable from her hair. He popped it into his mouth. “Nope. But this is tasty. Missing your flame, your muse, that blue-scaled prowler of stormy skies?”

Lia flicked another unidentifiable chunk of vegetable at him. “Funny.”

“Not as hilarious as planting our oh-so-cutesy royal nose in a bowl of nasty soup,” he suggested, but then sighed and stirred his own bowl as if wishing to stir Shinzen’s intestines with a red-hot poker. “No progress on releasing Mizuki?”

Across the table in their quarters, Saori laid her hand warningly on the Prince’s arm. “Don’t add to the pressure your sister’s already under. Please. The Empress wants access to her head. Learn to think like a warrior, Elki. Our job is to keep that head intact. Nothing more.”

He said, “Stop imagining your spoon is a sword, Saori, and my sister might actually relax.”

“Um. I’m not hungry anyway.” Saori pushed her bowl away moodily. “I hate the waiting. No sign of dragonets. No Numistar. No word from the Land Dragons, Affurion’s Dragons or any other kind of Dragon. Just blood, blood and more blood. Your pet’s cute, though.”

Hualiama stroked the dragonet sleeping on her lap. “Saori, you’re besotted.”

With an angry shriek, the Eastern Isles warrior leaped to her feet, jolting the table. Lia caught her own bowl, but Saori’s abandoned portion flipped end over end, drenching both the dragonet and the lap holding him.

Eep! Eep! cried the dragonet, leaping into the air.

Stupid Human! Hualiama flung the bowl back at Saori, striking her on the shoulder.

The warrior flushed with anger. “Now, listen here–”

Eee … the dragonet screamed at such a pitch, Lia clapped her hands over her ears. Rigid, he dropped almost to the table, before catching himself with a last-instant wing-flip.

“Oof!” Lia coughed as a white mite thumped into her stomach. “Claws in, you little …” To her shock, the dragonet ripped open a button of her blue dress and dived beneath the fabric, as if he wished to return to the inside of his egg!

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Elki, pointing at the quivering lump beneath the dress. “And, why’s your hair just turned blue, out of the blue, so to speak?”

“Roaring rajals!” Lia pulled a blue hank over her shoulder, shocked out of her draconic fury. “Right, weird magic …”

Focussing within, she asked, Dragonsoul, what’re you doing?

The dragonet’s terrified. What did you–

“Numistar!” Lia cried.

Hualiama bolted for the door, leaving Saori and Elki in her wake. Flinging herself into the tunnels, she retraced the route that she had taken as a Dragoness to view the comet’s onset. Short legs and a recovering body she might have, but the heart of a Dragoness beat in her chest. She heard two pairs of running feet fading behind her as she sprinted along, one hand cradling the dragonet against her body, the other arm pumping with all of her strength.

As she ran, thoughts galloped through her mind as though pounded into being by her boot-shod feet slapping against the smooth, stone-carved tunnel floor. Seven days. Six forays so far. Not a single dragonet’s egg had been found deep within the Land Dragon, Yiisuriel, but only four of sixty exploring Dragons had returned alive. Lia wondered if fifty-six frozen carcasses now lined the inside of the Land Dragon’s nostrils. Or had a greater danger emerged from the deeps?

Through the fabric of the mental network, a voice boomed, DRAGONS, ARISE!

Azziala. She must have sensed a change in the magic, a flicker in the endless rhythms of a Land Dragon’s life-magic, which had slowly begun to permeate Lia’s awareness. Perhaps she and her mother had more in common than Lia imagined–o hateful thought!

Bursting onto the outside portico, she looked immediately to the Place of Reaving, the nearest nostril. The midday suns highlighted movement, a flutter of almost-translucent wings. Two. Five more. Foot-long dragonets began to pour out of the nostril as if a cave mouth exhaled bats, only these were draconic creatures that resembled the larger Lesser Dragons in every significant detail. All over the Land Dragon, and those further afield, white dragonets began to rise over the Lost Islands like a mist. Tens of thousands. Millions.

Mercy.

At another level, Hualiama was aware of the Dragon-Haters’ mental network buzzing and heaving. Lesser Dragons burst out of every stronghold to fall upon the dragonets tooth and claw, but there were so many, it was as if they flailed at passing clouds. Fire flared. Low rumbles resounded from the fireballs launched nearby; from afar, orange flares billowed ahead of the hunting Dragons. After several minutes of unopposed slaughter, Azziala herself emerged aboard her Dragonship to survey the scene, and her Commands began to ring out, echoed by every Dragon Enchanter and more faintly, by those manning the Dragonships on Islands further afield. Dragon, die. Dragon, die. Dragon … almost, it seemed that white snow drifted to the ground, but this was bodies; living fire-souls snuffed out.

An icy wind played about the peaks of the migrating Land Dragons.

Upon that wind drifted a presence colder than the farthest reaches of space. Legion dragonets stirred. Hualiama clutched her own hatchling instinctively. Be strong, Flicker.

Oh. It slipped out.

A shrill chittering rose from the dragonets nearest Hualiama. Their reddish, albino eyes flared with an unnatural radiance. As one, the tiny creatures turned to maul their attackers. Snarls of fighting Dragonkind developed as if by magic. Stunning savagery. Animal tearing into animal. Behind her, Elki gasped. Screams resounded from the nearby Dragonships cresting the peak of Chenak before Azziala reorganised her draconic defence, flinging Sapphurion and his kin into the fray.

“Mizuki!” Elki shouted, fixated on the Copper as she whistled past Azziala’s flagship. Her Shivers power literally tore swathes of dragonets apart.

Despite the efforts of the enthralled Lesser Dragons, who numbered in the thousands, the dragonets were innumerable, swooping and diving over the peaks in thick clouds, like the worst imaginable swarms of summer pests–only, these pests came furnished with lightning reflexes and razor-sharp talons and fangs. The fighting was thickest around Azziala. Lia sensed the Empress drawing deep of her thralls, causing Dragons and Enchanters alike to wilt as she plundered them for resources. Lia ducked instinctively as a mass of several hundred dragonets whooshed by not ten feet overhead, but they seemed intent on mobbing Azziala; just forty feet off the bow of her Dragonship, Sapphurion fired fireballs so fast, his concussive strikes sounded like a throbbing drumbeat.

It twisted Lia’s gut to see the respected Dragon Elder reduced to a mindless thug in Azziala’s service.

Be free.

She bit her lip. Hide it! Yet even amidst the chaos of battle, she sensed her mother’s hateful regard–the inner twin–responding to the presence of ruzal. Azziala noted the dark, delicate spiderweb of power that instantly disintegrated her Command-hold over Sapphurion.

The great Blue whirled so fast his form was but a blur; he attacked Azziala with every power at his command. Perhaps a tail-strike? Lia was unsighted for a second, but the lightning-shot fireball that enveloped the Empress’ Dragonship was certainly his signature strike, followed a millisecond later by a swift paw-swipe that shattered the gantry where she had been standing.

Azziala blinked into being right next to Hualiama. “Cunning, my daughter. I do appreciate a little attempted assassination to keep your mother alert.”

Lia opened and shut her mouth without being able to utter a sound.

“Watch this.” DRAGON, SEIZURE!

“No!”

Two hundred feet away, Sapphurion jerked as though punched in the head. Lia saw the magic bloom. Saw the Empress’ diabolical construct burst every blood vessel in his brain. And she could not stop it, for she seemed trapped inside a chamber, an echoing space within which all her magic turned upon itself. Azziala’s revenge.

Nooooo!

All her screaming was inside her own head. Then, another voice intruded, anguished and irresistible. Hualiama!

Her knees crumpled.

* * * *

A Dragon knew weakness, but his Dragoness had the baffling power to turn weakness inside-out. He knew failure, but she knew worse. All paled before the knowledge of his shell-father’s passing on to the eternal fires. Hers was a Dragonsong of feral, desolate grief, tearing through his hearts and his soul like the thundering torrent of a Cloudlands-bound waterfall: I killed Sapphurion!

Her thought-memories played her false. With tender strength, Grandion pacified, No, you did not. Sapphurion made the choice to attack. It was his decision.

She keened, inconsolable, No, it was me, I did it, I made him, oh Grandion …

How did they even speak across the many leagues? The Tourmaline shifted restlessly, feeling as though he slept and must somehow awaken. Thou–

No! Don’t mock, not now …

I need thee, he communicated, soul-to-soul. Unwilling, we did this before. Now I invite thee within. Help me, thou–

I-I cannot, please! How can you trust me? How?

With my verimost soul, thou who art my soul-strength, my Dragonsong … he had to do this. To honour Sapphurion’s legacy, the shell-son had to live, to avenge. This is my sacred duty. Help me!

To his shock, Grandion realised that he had drawn Hualiama in. No longer was he the conqueror. He had yielded to Blue-star, and all was light, and the beauteous melody of her presence.

White-fires.

* * * *

Hualiama entered a familiar place. Once, she and Grandion had wrestled and each had tried to dominate the other. Now she knew this was a sacred place, the habitation of another soul. She must tread with holy awe, not in the ignorance and anger of before.

Oddly, Dragoness-Lia chuckled to herself, she had accused Grandion of knowing how to be a Dragoness. It was true. He also had inhabited her mind. Virile potentials surrounded her, shot through with the heady scents and cinnamon-magic tastes of a male Dragon, yet his being was fouled with a brand of magic she knew all too well–Dramagon’s signature ruzal, which had corrupted him like a magical canker. She apprehended his pure, overriding need for vengeance. That was the way of Dragons. Yet the dead could never avenge. She sensed his deep injuries, his inanition.

With quiet expectation, she sang:

How do you love the starlight?

It winks in your eye, and sparks off your scales,

It leaps o’er the Islands, straight to your hearts,

And lives within, ever burning.

A true balladeer might have honed her words, but it was a specific mood the Star Dragoness sought to create. Balance. Rightness. Why it was so much easier for an outsider to perform this task in a body not her own, remained a mystery to her. Gradually, as the white-fires whispered along the pathways of his being, reversing the foul handiwork of necrotic ruzal-toxins, Hualiama became aware of many enemies surrounding her Dragon, and the sensation of other Dragonkind holding him airborne so that they could take turns to sink their poisoned fangs into his wings, tail and even his lips.

Friendly bunch of wing-brothers, weren’t they?

Hualiama smiled bleakly. So these worms and cretins thought they could bully her Dragonlove, did they? What beast in the Island-World was more vicious than a Dragoness spited?

Yet it should be done … properly. Examining Grandion’s shield-constructs with the rapidity of thought, Lia identified four errors perpetrated by her own misunderstandings of Siiyumiel’s teachings, and corrected those. Ugh. What else had she missed? Separately, she marvelled at the melding of powers flowing through their oath-connection, wishing to grasp its essential workings, yet time and perhaps distance mitigated. Not now. She lacked strength. She must stir his Tourmaline powers while leaving him a gift.

A womanly touch.

* * * *

A Dragon’s keening must turn to battle-rage. In the instant before conscious thought intruded, Grandion triggered his shields and attacked.

GRRAA–by his wings, he was hale. Entirely–shock! Wonder! He was full, as the Humans of Gi’ishior would say, of pep and vim. The Tourmaline surged toward the magic-signature of Yukari, revelling in the sensation of his wings cleaving cleanly through the press. Sparkling blue mini-dragonets of magic whirled before his astonished eyes. Again, the magical output was prohibitive, but his peculiar shield-armour sparked a new dragonet every time an enemy Dragon touched him, even along his penetrative blades. On impact, those dragonets vaporised limbs and wings and fangs; they even chased away into the fray to detonate against unsuspecting enemy Dragons!

What was this? Blue-star’s gift of holy retribution!

Grandion’s delighted, vicious, mournful laughter shook the ranks of enemy Dragons. Shell-father! Be avenged! His paws and tail struck in concert, even though there was little need. Grandion carved a path of vengeance and the reflected-glory of his noble shell-father’s passing to the eternal fires–may his flame burn forever! Never had he fought like this. Dragons swarmed him like a mantling of thick lava, the mass of Oranges drawn to mindlessly attack the pure light shining in their midst; in the eye of the Dragon, all Grandion saw was a whirl of ruinous splendour. Battle-mirth filled his hearts, yet it was in no way animalistic or feral. It was righteous. His paw knew no rest; his zeal for the fight, no stanching. Mighty was his crusading Dragonsong.

With an almighty thunderclap, Grandion released his Storm-power, howling, SAPPHURION! Beloved shell-father thou wert!

A thousand star-like dragonets painted the world in shades of intermingled blue and white, the sign of a Star Dragoness.

Oh, Hualiama! She had succoured him once more, by the decisive fate-painting of her paw …

Grandion exploded out of the mass of Oranges, right on Yukari’s tail-spike, just behind the Dragonwing which fled the advance of Shinzen’s force. Dragons rained from the sky before the eruption of his power. He whirled in the face of hundreds of enemy beasts, the mystical imperative contained in his being so potent, he feared that to release it might rip out his breastbone. Yet nothing in the Island-World could have denied him now.

Grandion’s throat swelled prodigiously. I AM–ALASTIOR!!

Chapter 16: Ancient Powers

STOOPING OVER HUALIAMA on the portico above her Chenak Island stronghold, Azziala’s head snapped about so sharply, she immediately clutched her neck in pain. “What was that?”

“I see Tourmaline strength ripping apart a Dragonwing of hundreds, mother,” Hualiama said dreamily. “Mighty is he, whose thunderous refrain blunted the muzzles of his foes, scattering them to the seven winds …”

Alastior! The world reverberated as though a mighty draconic paw had struck a gong hidden at the root of the Islands. A delicious shiver trembled her every scintilla, body and soul.

The Empress’ hands fisted on Lia’s collar. “What the volcanic hells is wrong with you, daughter?”

“Wrong?”

“Feckless child, you stir these ancient powers …”

Azziala indicated the sky with a lift of her chin, where the draconic brawl had been replaced with streamers of white dragonets pouring into the unnatural storm, which lay directly north of the fifty or so Land Dragons which transported a nation of Dragon-Haters toward their common enemy–Shinzen. The dragonets fluttered toward a gap in the angry black ramparts of cloud, which for the first time, opened like a fantastical land appearing at the end of a dark canyon, the sunlit, Dragon-borne peaks of Affurion’s realm. A sky-window full of tiny specks proclaimed that the Lost Islands Dragons, too, had risen to oppose Numistar Winterborn. Dragonets fell in their thousands, but millions escaped, winging swiftly into that dark maw between before diving into–Lia squinted and rubbed her eyes–what appeared to be a green, glowing whirlpool in the Cloudlands!

What magic brewed in the depths? Hualiama sensed it as she had once felt the enmity of Razzior the Orange, as if a Dragon’s talon trailed along her spine, teasing the prey before a swift thrust ended it all.

A few stragglers fluttered away from Chenak, pursued relentlessly by the Land Dragons and Dragonships of Azziala’s command. Across the sailing Islands, the wanton carnage spoke mutely of the clash of Dragonkind. Hundreds of larger Dragons’ corpses lay amidst the white fields of dragonets, from Yellow hatchlings to the oldest Browns, driven forth to battle by the Dragon-Haters’ ruthless commands. The mental network responded already, calling forth Enchanters to blood and flay the slain Dragons for their Dragon hides.

Hualiama pressed her fingers to her temples. Oh, Sapphurion! How still he lay, golden blood leaking from the major arteries feeding his fire-eyes. How noble, even in death.

Let me out.

Oh no. Mercy, Dragonsoul, please …

Let me out! We must honour him.

No. Azziala–you must lie low, Dragoness. Muting the inner snarling, Hualiama pushed to her feet. With her back held so straight her old royal tutor would have choked on his favourite berry-wine, the Princess of Fra’anior processed away from her mother.

“Lia!” She made no answer. “Hualiama, come here!”

“I’ve a Dragon to honour.”

“You will listen–”

“Numistar seeks a First Egg of the Ancient Dragons, mother. Think upon that.”

Hualiama threw the words carelessly over her shoulder as she walked toward the end of the portico area, yet what she caught out of the corner of her eye made her blench. That usually impassive, golden face twisted into a terrible yet utterly soundless scream. The twin! Yet self-loathing made Lia turn away. Another secret babbled to the world. Or would it force her mother’s hand, introducing yet another complication to an absurd snarl of powers?

Already the past receded, immutable.

Azziala did not interrupt again as Lia hiked quickly up to where Sapphurion had fallen. She slowed, having to wipe her eyes twice to be able to see the way. Silly, lovely Humansoul, said the Dragoness within her, tenderly. Lia wept harder. He was our first father, our roost-father, wasn’t he?

I … aye. He snatched a stinking, sodden Human babe from Ianthine’s paw and brought her to a safe harbour.

He loved us, Dragon-Lia agreed. It wasn’t our fault he chose that instant to attack. Listen. Mother’s leaving. We mustn’t leave Sapphurion.

Why?

They’ll take his hide. He deserves better.

Fury clenched her fists; she wished she could punch the tears away. If only we had Dragon fires. We could give him a proper send-off.

We have fires. Warmth clasped her heart, like an inner draconic paw cupping a Human heartbeat. Whisper-soft, a cherishing gesture. Star fires. Wouldn’t that be–

–a perfect, honouring–

–Dragonsong of true-fires love for one who loved us? Human-Lia finished. Aye, Dragoness. But let’s not destroy our clothes for once. Give me a moment and I’ll welcome … us.

Soft, melodious laughter faded in her ears. Humansoul, you’re the best friend a girl-Dragon could ask for.

As Hualiama rapidly divested her outer garments, she moved behind the cover of a few low, cold-blasted bushes. Was Azziala truly gone? She had a nasty habit of spying on her daughter’s doings, continually hunting for the keys to her ruzal.

Dragonsoul, I’m glad a smidgen of my awesomeness is rubbing off on you. She pictured Elki. Even if you insist on changing my hair-colour unexpectedly.

Shall we try scales next time?

Mercy, the Dragoness didn’t mean that, did she? Could a Shapeshifter become stuck in a partial transformation? Uncomfortable at best. Deadly at worst. Herein lay an unknowable danger, one that made skin and scale crawl identically.

Deliberately pushing that fear aside, Lia stripped off the last of her underwear. Well. You’d better hope we don’t turn into a pink-skinned, blonde-haired Dragoness. Come on. Snip snap.

So much death. She knew Dragonsoul was only trying to alleviate the acid anguish lodged deep in her soul; they both recognised the grief-indicators underlying their apparently light-hearted exchange. No, there was no light here. Only the absence of fire, of warmth, of the irreplaceable magic that underpinned draconic life. She had failed Sapphurion. No Dragon was meant to live forever, outside of the eternal fires, yet she could not help but feel a demeaning sense of wastefulness in the manner of his death.

Roost-father. Lia bowed to Sapphurion. Nothing fancy, not an elaborate Fra’aniorian genuflection. Respect. Deep reverence, even, for a Dragon who had been in so many senses, a giant in her life. Mentor. Protector. Wholly accepting of a creature of another species.

Then, she invited her Dragoness to emerge. It took some minutes to trigger the shift, a process she so imperfectly understood. Enwrapping. Inwardly dissolving. Unfurling to occupy a greater physical volume than before, every tracery and iota of her being faithfully replicated, yet somehow transformed in the most intimate detail–mysteriously, other.

One could but marvel.

The Star Dragoness inclined her muzzle gracefully and raised her wings in salute, a curious mixture of the draconic and a Human ballet-step, her sorrow unabated by her Shapeshifted form. Now, Dragon fires streamed within her body, not within her belly as expected, but all throughout her body in red-hot silken filaments, from her muzzle to her tail, and right out to her wingtips–the paean of her melancholy.

“Step aside, Dragoness, before we blood you too!”

Hualiama whirled. Dragon Enchanters! A trio of men wearing the usual mushroom-shaped blue hats and ornate, deep blue robes faced her, scowling. By the insignia on their cloak-pins these were Enchanters from Burak, a stronghold of lesser status in Azziala’s realm.

The tallest of the trio stepped forward officiously. “You heard us. Clear off, lizard.”

Clear off? Lia snarled, “Lay one finger on this Dragon, and you’ll regret it.”

“Do you dare defy the Empress?”

Enchanters, obey … Hualiama snapped her jaw shut. No! Having released the ruzal once, it slithered out all too eagerly, despite her mental lockdown. Unholy windrocs! It subverted her magic that easily? What if it took over entirely, subordinating her Star Dragoness powers to its wicked will?

Return to your quarters. No. She sighed. Nothing for it. Secretly move among the Dragonkind, removing the additional bindings placed within their minds, making every effort to ensure you are not caught. You will forget you even had this conversation or received these orders. Go.

The trio of Dragon-Haters ambled off, ignoring her and Sapphurion.

Mercy, ruzal was this easy to use? Or did it seek to use her? A Star Dragoness must not yield to darkness. Stuffing the hateful magic back into its imaginary cave as far and deep as she could, she visualised her white-fires instead. Even if a hatchling had no flame to breathe, she must find a way to honour Sapphurion. As always, her emotional state affected the responsiveness and intensity of her magic; barely a thought triggered that familiar tightening sensation in her belly. Her vision bleached to ashen, almost blinding shades of white, as if she stood upon the threshold of a star. Glancing to her paws and wings, she discovered she blazed star-bright.

Best honour mighty Sapphurion before we’re drained and unable, Dragonsoul, her Human advised very quietly.

We will.

How did one push light about? Sheer, bloody-minded draconic willpower? No. It had to be cajoled. Whispered. Coaxed into being. Hualiama leaped nervously as a bush right in front of her nose exploded into flame. A living lake of radiance lapped over Sapphurion’s body, finding there an unexpected, still-latent magical potential and rousing it into flame, just as Amaryllion Fireborn had done for himself, she recalled belatedly. The core of Sapphurion’s body heated up like a furnace. Hotter still. Dragon hide could withstand temperatures of several thousand degrees, allowing them to bathe comfortably in all save the hottest of lava, but she instilled the heat of incandescent starlight in his flesh.

As much as she shone, she mourned.

Hualiama wished she had words to sing over him, to speed his soul upon its eternal flight. Was it as Dragons believed, that from the flame, the fire-spirits of the ancestors gazed down upon the living, judging their deeds? May even the spirits know his greatness.

Raising her muzzle to the skies, she sounded a single note of exquisite clarity, so high up the vocal range that Human hearing could not apprehend it. Every Dragon for leagues about inclined his or her ear to that ultrasonic cry and raised their own bugles of grief-knowledge. Lia sang in honour of the Blue Dragon Elder:

Sapphurion was he, the shining jewel of Fra’anior,

The very orb of the Great Dragon’s eye,

Who this day blazes among the eternal fires,

His deeds shall be sung forever!

Great-paw! Strong-wing! Wisdom of the Isles was he,

Shell-father, roost-mate of Qualiana, venerated by all,

He is: Sapphurion the Jewel-Hearted, a treasure like rainbow-song …

Who is no more, but burns, eternal.

To her amazement, as she sang, a new purpose entered her magic, weaving through the white-hot, metallic powder rendered by the consuming fires. Slowly, in the crucible, those carbonised particles drew together as if animated by a will of their own, fusing in intolerable brightness into a new form of crystalline beauty, until all that was left upon a circle of melted rock in the place where the great Dragon had fallen, was a gemstone. A sapphire.

For a moment, all Lia could do was stare at the gem, as her body shuddered uncontrollably, racked by the aftereffects of such a tremendous output of magic. Mercy. What was this?

The deep blue gemstone was circular and faceted like an ordinary gem, but fashioned in the likeness of a Dragon sleeping curled up, muzzle-to-tail. Imprinted in the crystal lattices were sparks of a lighter, diamond-like hue, that shifted as she moved gravely toward the stone, picking out details of the Dragon’s appearance–scale-patterns, fangs, talons, as if the gemstone represented in some indefinable way, the very life and form of a Dragon. She half-expected it to uncurl and wing away.

Her paws clasped the stone, as large as her Human’s torso, to her breast. The Star Dragoness returned to retrieve her effects and walked soft-pawed back to her quarters, joined by Elki and Saori at either flank.

They did not speak.

* * * *

Shinzen’s forces poured up from the South, rolling over the Kingdom of Kaolili in a wave of death and destruction. He commanded tens of thousands of Dragonkind, they learned, drawn from a secret network of breeding chambers riddling the southern tip of the Eastern Archipelago. The Giant Warlord had emptied those chambers in their entirety, and abandoned his old home to gather the dust of aeons. Massive Dragonwings of identical Oranges torched Island after Island, methodically. The Orange horde bracketed the Archipelago from East to West, sweeping the ground with rolling firestorms of Dragon fire and poison, leaving no stone uncharred, no settlement intact..

All Grandion and his vastly outnumbered forces could do was to bloody the nose of the beast, and that they did. Endlessly. Ruthlessly. Perfecting the killing stroke.

Smoke billowed over the East, ever-laden with the sweetish smell of scorched flesh and the distinctive, bready char of mohili wheat. The Humans fled in every conceivable vessel at their disposal; Commander Hiro plying his fleet of Dragonships–bolstered by every cargo vessel and merchant ship and single-handed Dragonship owned by the nobility–twenty-seven hours per day to carry refugees back toward the capital city, but it was never enough.

The Tourmaline and Yukari and Zulior led their Dragonwings in endless raids against the powerful Oranges, cycling back to Kerdani City to rest as the battlefront swept northward toward the huge, flat Island that housed the largest city among the Human population of the Island-World. Kerdani was now fortified by seven concentric layers of battlements and moats constructed and strengthened with the able help of many Brown Dragons, and manned by King Taisho’s troops.

Often, his restless eyes searched the horizon. Where was Hualiama? When would her star rise?

* * * *

“I’m flying out this evening,” said Hualiama.

Elki nodded, hiding his evident concern behind an affected yawn. “Azziala wishes an alliance with Siiyumiel? Logical. Any alliance at all …”

“You travel with Mizuki, too?”

“Right away. Bringing the fireflower of accord to Affurion.”

Indicating the north-lying Islands, the Prince said formally, “The storm has broken, sucked down into the Cloudlands. What brews below none may know, sister, but you will furnish intelligence to the Empress regarding goings-on beneath the Cloudlands and seek formal alliance with the Land Dragons. Saori and I will seek accord with the Dragonkind, or at the very least, a truce for our mutual benefit. This is unprecedented in Lost Isles history. The Empress made clear the displeasure of her Council at this unilateral action on her part. I cannot imagine such a truce will be honoured–but we must try.”

“We must try.”

Disregarding his stiffness, Hualiama drew her brother into an embrace. “Mizuki remains under a Command-hold. Be careful.”

Suddenly, he hugged her back fiercely. “You always dreamed of Dragons, Lia. Always. When you were small–I remember the day, it was after your formal adoption, when Queen Shyana first brought you from the city-house to live at the Palace. You were just a snotty-nosed little mite of five summers–”

“Elki!”

“Well, close to the truth. You used to speak to the dragonets, Lia, while you fed them in your room. We thought you were crazy.” Lia laughed as he pretended to stroke his beard in puzzlement. “Now I realise you were just talking Dragonish. And you sang all over the Palace–how you sang! You see, even at that age, you already knew the words to the Flame Cycle and Saggaz Thunderdoom, all the draconic ballads. Every word, every note. You told me Qualiana taught you to sing.”

“Qualiana?”

“Aye. It just sprang into my mind … today. Because of Sapphurion’s passing.”

“Elki, how come you remember these things? I’m three years older than you, as best we know.”

To her surprise, her dapper brother blushed rather violently. “I was, sort of … besotted. Aye, that’s the word. Besotted … with you.”

“E-Elki!” She snorted a puff of smoke.

“Faugh! I’ll admit, in all that Dragon-nonsense, I never imagined the scary, scaly, sulphur-breathing variety of sister.”

“Scary? Explain yourself, scoundrel.”

Saori approached behind the Prince of Fra’anior, carrying warm jackets for flying, and their weapons. A quizzical smile curved her lips as she saw them talking earnestly together.

The Prince said, “When I was six and you were nine, I had a proper fight with King Chalcion. I announced in the middle of a royal dinner to four hundred guests that you were my true love, and I intended to marry you, adoption or no adoption.” Elki touched his left eye. “This scar is what he left me. To this day, I’ve had slightly blurred vision in this eye. Headaches, too.”

“Because of me?”

Saori gripped his arm with the air of a Dragoness entertaining a buck to dinner. “You fell in love with your older sister?”

Elki spluttered, “Adopted older sister. I was as hopelessly and innocently infatuated as only a six year-old boy … uh, completely spoiled me for, ah–” the warrior’s eyebrows peaked “–well, I’ve grasped the error of my ways. It’s taken me years to get over being jilted … first for a monk, then for a Dragon.”

“The hallmark of a desperate woman,” Saori suggested, in a tone of saccharine acidity.

Dragonsoul! Human-Lia snapped. Are you going to let her speak–

“Don’t you insult my Human like that,” growled the Star Dragoness, just as acidly as Saori. “She’s too polite to spell out how she truly feels. I’d skip words and move straight to skinning your prissy Eastern behind–”

“Ladies!” Elki pushed between them. “No fighting, biting or skinning of Humans allowed. I love you both in significantly different ways. Mostly appropriate ways. Except regarding a certain Eastern enchantress. I keep having these wicked, wicked thoughts–mmm–I’m such a bad … ouch! You bit my lip!”

“I know,” said Saori. “Hualiama, sorry. I’m just jealous; strict Eastern honour-code, you know. Like wearing a rope jacket. We’re a funny, traditional society, much like you Fra’aniorians.”

“I see.”

Parallels between Fra’anior and the East? Lia tried for a bland response, and almost succeeded. She was nothing like Saori!

Elki checked his lower lip for blood, but unfortunately for the sulk he was contemplating, there was no permanent injury. He settled for making a mumbling diatribe about all the strong women in his life, those who enjoyed swords just a little too much, those who had talons like swords, and those who indeed chose between swords and talons at inopportune moments.

That was when an earthquake struck the Island.

* * * *

Hualiama was in the air before her mind properly registered what she had felt. An impact. A massive force or collision, yet when she looked, the Air-Breathers seemed unmoved. No. Chenak dipped! As she slowed her racing skyward, feeling slightly foolish, she scanned the Islands with her Dragon senses alert. What was this? The quintet of Land Dragons, once called Burak Island, split apart as though fleeing … she could not say from what, but that was how their behaviour struck her. One Dragon slewed sideways as though it had run aground somewhere far beneath the Cloudlands. Another shuddered side-to-side as though repeatedly pummelled by an unseen enemy, before suddenly losing three miles of above-clouds height in a precipitous swoop. Lia bit her tongue between her fangs, but the Land Dragon appeared to make a partial recovery.

Now, listening, she became aware of a muffled, faraway draconic bellowing, and again, as she attuned her senses in the ways Siiyumiel had taught her, the faint tang of Dragon battle-magic teased her awareness, leaving a rank metal aftertaste on her tongue despite her not physically having tasted anything. An under-Cloudlands battle? Or the still-absent Numistar at work?

Hualiama knew she must act.

Fluttering short ways offshore from Yiisuriel’s upper flanks, she allowed her wings to fold to a compact minimum and dived for the Cloudlands. One mile. Two. The pressure and ambient temperature increased noticeably as she dropped. She perceived an easterly breeze of perhaps two leagues per hour. The rank stench of orrican faeces washed from what must be a lower outlet pipe of Azziala’s fortress. What an instrument her Dragon’s body represented!

Temperature inversions and the insulating effect of miles of super-dense air kept most Land Dragon magic from detection by the high-dwelling Lesser Dragons, she had learned. So when Hualiama, after several minutes’ descent made her call, she gave her shout every ounce of power she possessed.

Siiyumiel, I need to speak with you!

Hualiama. Report.

Ugh. Not the reply she desired. I’m investigating, mother. Land Dragon battle down below.

Numistar?

She’s the prime suspect.

Lia’s eyes lit on a disturbance in the Cloudlands along Yiisuriel’s flank. Oh? Was Siiyumiel trying to sneak up on her?

First, a forked tongue emerged, comfortably large enough for five of Grandion to sleep upon side to side. Then came a flat, spatulate head, the exact colour and texture of mouldy mohili bread. The Land Dragon surged upward with apparent ease, its massive, hooked claws digging tens of feet into the naked rock with every running step. The tiny Dragoness almost laughed as the lizard-like Land Dragon oriented his single huge eye upon her–an ambush! Who did this ground-grubber think he was? Without wings? By a peculiar trick of perspective, the beast seemed to swell as he charged up into the clear air; Lia belatedly began to realise just how monstrous this type of Land Dragon was. Every step covered hundreds of feet. His tail and hindquarters emerged from the clouds after a staggeringly long interval.

Engineer-Lia tried to classify him according to what she had learned from the Shell-Clan. Water-Runner? Murk-Runner? All of the four-legged Land Dragons were called ‘Runners’ because they used their legs and tails as primary propulsion, unlike those that swam, floated, had tentacles or thousands of insectoid legs, or used gas or water propulsion systems for locomotion.

She was still busy classifying, when the Land Dragon flicked his single eye and smashed her out of the sky with a cannonade of Harmonic magic.

Lights exploded behind Lia’s eyes. Reeling as though she had run headlong into a boulder, she tumbled toward the Cloudlands, dimly aware of the Runner-Dragon making a magnificent, salmon-like leap in her direction. His leap covered the better part of a mile; she could not have flown out from beneath him without some form of teleportation. A heroic blunder.

Darkness swallowed her as though a Dragon had taken a bite out of the twin suns. A hard, sticky surface slapped into her belly and legs. She screamed! No! She could not lift her wings. She was stuck to the Dragon’s tongue like a fly trapped in amber. But her captor had barely begun to retract his glue-covered tongue when a second beam of light speared at a low angle over the Cloudlands, instantly separating tongue and Star Dragoness from the flabbergasted creature that sought to dunk her into his realm. Steam exploded around Lia as the light vaporised Dragon-flesh. Bellowing incoherently, the Land Dragon watched his severed tongue part directions with his mouth. His paw grabbed the end of his tongue just as evening-darkened clouds closed overhead.

She had not taken a breath! Frantically, Lia slapped up a pneumatic shield. She could not bubble it around her entire body; something in the glue-trap prevented her from separating her body from the adhesive layer, as she intended.

Stupid, blighted worm! she snapped, angrier at her own stupidity than the attacking Land Dragon.

Great. Her head sat in a bubble, which was all the clean air she had managed to trap in her panicked state. Right. She should initiate the particle and gas filtering, and try not to think about the poisons already leaching into her body, or the powerful alkaline adhesive scouring her sensitive wings.

SIIYUMIEL!!

His voice alone could smash these Air-Breathers about. Despite her head-bubble, Lia felt both deafened and bruised by the impact of the Shell-Clan Dragon’s challenge. She heard other voices rise about her, unseen in the opaque upper layers of Cloudlands gases. Different tribes? Rapidly, she tried to separate out the contrasting accent-indicators of their speech. Shell-Clan she knew. There were at least a dozen in the vicinity.

Lia heard:

Bring the Air-Breathers down!

Cut the gas ventricles and drown the high-dwellers in the Cloudlands.

–I’m hurt!

Shell-Clan four leagues off, closing fast. Drive them off, brethren! Steady in the ranks.

–Too large … urgh! That was a fatality. Lia winced.

Ha ha! Pathetic Welkin-Runners. What under the five moons were Welkin-Runners? Made a nice smear on the rocks back there.

Alarm! Alarm!

Who was attacking whom? Was another Clan attacking the mobile Lost Islands in order to bring down Azziala and Affurion, at Numistar’s command? With Siiyumiel and his allies defending or attacking? Were any of the Land Dragons allied with Numistar?

More importantly, who would come out owning the severed tongue?

Hey. Wings-without-brains. Know anything about star-fire?

She was so going to swat Humansoul one of these days. Did she always have to be right? The Dragoness snickered, Alright, keep your clothes on.

Pointedly ignoring the sneaking suggestion that her Human form was faultless, perfect and implausibly astute, Lia worked on summoning her special fire. In a moment, she burned herself clean off the slab of tongue, inhaling a goodly lungful of greasy white smoke before she worked out how her shield was not correctly filtering smoke particles. Mizuki had taught her to restrict more vectors of contamination rather than less; it did not help to forget a whole class of filter-constructs, however!

Inexperience would kill her in this environment.

Smoothing out her descent, the twelve-foot Star Dragoness plunged out of the murky upper layer into a realm where everything was poised to kill her.

Chapter 17: Carnivorous Intelligence

FOLLOWING A DARK-FIRES depressing council of war with King Taisho and his ministers that evening, the Tourmaline Dragon chose to walk through the torch-lit streets of Kaolili town rather than fly the half-mile to the feeding troughs and temporary roosts set up for the Dragons in an old set of grain warehouses. The mood was sombre. Neat houses had been boarded up. Families hid in the poorer sections of town, in the catacombs and storage chambers beneath the city. Green-uniformed squads of soldiers were stationed at every intersection. Hastily-constructed stone walls blockaded roads against incursion by ground troops. Had these people seen Warlord Shinzen’s Giants in action, they would not have bothered.

They had nowhere left to run. Responsibility for these creatures weighed on Grandion’s shoulders. In his rebellious youth, he would have decried feeling in any way answerable to Humans. Once, he had even clasped a Human child in his paw, intending to murder her to seal his loyalty to Razzior. The dread in her eyes had spoken to his third heart … and he had baulked. Regret coupled with joy as this memory faded in his mind. That day had been the germ of his transformation since; of becoming the Dragon he had always wanted to be.

Oddly, a few people reached out toward him in passing, or made signs he understood as inviting blessing from a Dragon. To these he nodded regally, saying, ‘Strength to you.’ What else could he say? He had no magic formulae to prevent war, and the destruction to come.

Two days. Two daybreaks, and orange wings would fire the dawn skies over Kerdani.

He had to admit, these Humans were better organised and braver than he had expected. There were no signs of looting. The soldiers exuded an air of watchfulness, of steely purpose. There was no panic as stores were set away underground and doors barricaded.

Danger. His battle-senses pricked up. That precise footstep behind him, repeated. The faint rustle of cloth against stone. A Human was … stalking him?

He almost laughed aloud. Idiot! Did they know nothing of Dragons?

More warily, he walked on, causing these tiny, dark-haired Humans to press against the buildings either side of the road to avoid being trampled underfoot–at least, that was what they must fear. Unlike the Dragonfriend, Grandion could not shrink his size to cause them less concern. He was bigger than any of their houses, hulking over the blacksmiths’ forges he passed now, thirty-one shops working overtime to produce weapons and armour for the war effort. The heat of those open, roaring forges made him pause for a moment, groaning and flexing his weary spine as he imagined bathing in a Fra’aniorian volcano. Oh, for fierce heat to caress his aching bones! Yet his pause was not without purpose. The cloth-shod feet paused too, the very absence of sound pinpointing their position amongst the local pattern his senses had identified. There. Deep shadows between two forges to his starboard flank hid a lean-to half-filled with forge materials, discarded tools by the metallic smell. Aye, he scented metals and young-boy sweat, but not fear-sweat.

Intrigued, the Dragon paused to scratch a non-existent itch. The Jade Moon glinted between the moving cloudbanks, briefly glinting off a pair of watchful, slit eyes before they shuttered as if sensitive to the touch of that light. The boy knew magic–whether he understood his power or not.

His paw snapped out.

Empty air. Feet tapping a crazy getaway down that narrow alleyway.

Not wishing to destroy any buildings, Grandion hopped over the forges, cutting off the anticipated line of retreat. The boy was sharp. He had doubled back, crawled into a narrow gutter, but the pounding of his heart gave away his position. Still no real fear. Who was this boy, who faced a hunting Dragon without fear? A fool, or a warrior born?

The Tourmaline, however, could not reach him without tearing down a few walls. Time for a change of tack.

“Be welcome to exit the shadows, boy.” The soft breathing hitched slightly. “I would gladly converse with thee–but now, I am hungry and weary beyond measure. I tarry this night at the old warehouses over on nineteenth street. Come ask for me, and we shall talk. The pass-phrase is, ‘No gem is Tourmaline, but living fire is he’. Understood?”

Silence greeted this arbitrary pass-phrase. This time, Grandion let a grin touch his lips. If this boy had a quarter of the spirit he suspected in him, let him come. The Dragons set no guards, for they had no need.

The Tourmaline extended a talon and pointed it directly at the boy’s hiding-place. “Come, or I swear I shall hunt thee through this city myself.”

Then, he blinked. The boy was gone.

* * * *

Hualiama’s wings strained to slice through the thick, viscous atmosphere above what struck her as a gloomy crysglass terrarium populated by monsters, not one of which was less than a hundred times her size. The mutilated, screaming Land Dragon tumbled away into their midst. Below, the abyssal demesne seemed endless, fading into the distance far more quickly than in the clear air above–but that near horizon was more than enough for her to see dozens of Shell-Clan approaching at speeds she could scarcely credit, their limbs tucked up beneath the vast oval carapaces, their heads barely peeking out of their slit foreparts. Trios of forward-facing white eyes blazed like lamps in the void.

Nearer her were the Runners, the individuals varying between a quarter-mile to half a mile in length, she estimated. They evidently struggled in the upper altitudes where she flew; most swam about lower down, as best she could see in the murk, or clung to the Air-Breathers with their four paws in squat stances that reminded her of nothing more than black-banded geckoes, which grew up to ten inches long, waltzing up the walls of the Fra’aniorian Palace. And occasionally, she remembered with a smile, they might by ‘accident’ land on her sister Fyria’s bed. Fun! Swirling quickly in the treacly air, she saw that the Lost Islands were tall, pyramid-shaped creatures, so enormous that their underparts vanished into the gloom more than a league below. Hundreds of tentacles and mandibles depended from multiple mouths which started approximately a mile lower down their bodies; otherwise, they possessed no form of physical defence apart from their gigantic size. Hundreds of Welkin-Runners swarmed around the bases of the nearest Air-Breathers, apparently chopping or cutting at something.

Inconceivably, Siiyumiel had revealed that the Air-Breathers floated. Lia refused to accept that as fact. Yet if the Welkin-Runners caused enough damage, what would happen to the Lost Islands’ peoples and Dragons in the world above?

Hualiama! Siiyumiel’s bugle resounded in her ear-canals, angry and distressed.

That scale-mite is the Blue-star?

Lia whirled. Nearby, dangling from Yiisuriel by their talon-tips, several chunky Welkin-Runners had turned avaricious, green-streaked eye-fires upon her. One sneered, Flaytox-ap-Urax I am, little one. Welcome to the realm where big Dragons play.

His ‘welcome’ came coloured with fatality-markers. Without further warning, powerful beams of light-magic pummelled her. Lia was saved only by the fact that three Runners attacked simultaneously, their beams causing unintentional amplitude interference. Nevertheless, she felt as if she had stepped beneath a roaring and frothing waterfall of pastel radiance. The Dragoness lurched away, frantically trying to concoct a reflective layer to add to her shielding.

Wham! The Harmonic-light assault redoubled. How could light have weight, how could it batter and confuse and hurt like this? She was a mosquito in a storm.

Other Welkin-Runners approached, she judged by their hunting calls. All wanted the glory of bringing home the prize–her. Why? The Dragoness hunkered down, working with scattershot haste to modify the essential shield-properties Siiyumiel and Grandion had painstakingly taught her. A Runner sprang for her with a swipe of his huge forepaws, but the one called Flaytox reached out, sank his talons into his fellow-Dragon’s hips and yanked him backward. Using Yiisuriel’s flank to brace his forequarters, Flaytox proceeded to back-kick the surprised beast so hard with the heel of his left hind foot, that the wash of that monstrous impact rattled Lia’s fangs even thousands of feet away. Golden blood spurted; the flaccid Welkin-Runner fell away into the void, unconscious.

Would he bounce? Or would the increasingly dense air eventually slow his fall enough to save him? Yet already, she saw shoals of smaller piscine predators closing in, descending from the ceiling of opaque clouds above her head. Most visitors to this realm must be eaten before they ever struck the clear blue middle layers, which Siiyumiel had called the ‘air-ocean’, a strangely evocative, ancient word.

Further beams speared past her from the incoming Shell-Clan, cuffing Flaytox about the jowls as brutally as he had just defeated his foe.

Swim! Dodge! Hualiama stretched her wings to try to reach Siiyumiel and his kin, but a corralling swipe of Flaytox’s paws headed her off. Besides, there had to be a thousand of the fish-like predators out there now, perhaps attracted by the scent of blood.

Suddenly, an indescribably chill presence blazed from between the Air-Breathers. Ah, Hualiama. She could not see the creature, but Numistar’s complex form of communication instantly distinguished her even from the Land Dragons. An unexpected boon. Come, little one. Bring me your gifts.

Mercy–no …

Hualiama fought back, but an unknowable compulsion had seized her body. Worse, she could not even twitch her wings–a frigid air-current played over the sensitive membranes, wafting her forth with ghastly, terrifying ease. In moments, she drifted out of Flaytox’s glowering ambit, pulled along in a north-easterly curve around the equivalent of Yiisuriel’s rump.

As scornful and chilling as the wintry blast of her name, Numistar added, Ruzal and star-fire shall win me access to the ultimate prize–the First Egg you graciously exposed to my knowledge, and the unimaginable, uncontainable powers of the star-travelling Dragon Spirits shall reside in my paw! Mine alone!

Why had she never considered the power contained in those First Eggs, which must have sustained draconic fire-life across the leagues between the stars, cocooning and nurturing and perhaps even shielding those proto-spirits from the depredations of time itself? What could Numistar do with such a font of magic? She shuddered to imagine. Resist! Whatever Numistar wanted of her, Hualiama would resist to her very last breath, and beyond.

Come, whelp of Fra’anior. The Ancient Dragoness twisted the words like wind-blasted ice shards. Why you? Merely, that your powers hold the key to the treasury of my future.

N-No, Lia stammered. Never!

You will serve me hearts, soul and wings. The voice became dulcet, utterly beguiling. All I need is the glamour of my irresistible presence. Once you gaze into my eyes, I will possess your soul forever.

As Numistar Winterborn ground home her hegemony over the helpless Star Dragoness, the scene beyond Yiisuriel, between the migrating Air-Breathers, slowly unfolded before Hualiama’s gaze. Entrapped or not, her jaw dropped. She screamed a long, thin wail of horror.

Noooooo!

* * * *

Sated by a meal of very fine royal bark-deer, Grandion settled back into his nook and eyed the cavern, chock-full of sleeping Dragons. Ha. By his wings, if that boy could sneak in here, he deserved more than to live, he deserved one of–what were those ridiculous toys Humans handed out–aye, a medal. Most probably, he was a thief and that was the last Grandion would ever see of him.

He sealed the matter with a derisive puff of smoke.

Now for his favourite recreation, stalking the Star Dragoness from afar. Humans thought males hunting females was–well, risqué at best, from what he understood, and abhorrent at worst. Peculiar creatures, Humans. They did the opposite of what they preached. Just consider how Saori had hunted and captured the Dragonfriend’s brother! It just went to prove that Humans could, on occasion, behave in civilised and positively draconic ways. Even a proud Tourmaline might not have balked at a little hunting, a clash or two of the fangs, with an eager Star Dragoness, rather than having to suffer this infernal, coy hiding game! Of course, what Dragoness would refuse to flip a provocative wingtip in front of a gleaming-of scale, handsome male’s muzzle?

Especially a rare Tourmaline!

Grandion heaved a ninety-foot sigh, settling his muzzle upon a bed of fragrant straw the Humans had provided, clearly thinking of Dragons as some kind of pack-animal that needed a soft bed. Stone was fine. Gold and gems, better. He had quashed the vocal protests of some of his troops. Accept the gift for what it was. Try not to think of how the dust would aggravate the scale-mites.

By the First Egg, when it mattered, Hualiama had come to him and saved his hide. That sealed the matter. Games? This Dragon would not give up. Flirtation? Aye, he would give more! Suppressing her feelings? He would surface them like a hot oil treatment brought out the underlying beauty of a Dragon’s scales! He was a proud Dragon, the shell-son of a legendary warrior and leader, whose paws … trod amongst the eternal fires.

Oh, father! How the mighty had been slain by that Dragon-Hater filth!

After a very long time, Grandion deliberately shuttered his eyes. Let his hearts find the right winds; noble winds, that might honour the heritage of his shell-father and all his draconic ancestors. Let him fly to Hualiama. To the stars.

* * * *

The girl sang:

Softly gild the night with stars,

Gently burning swells the dawn,

In twin-suns splendour shimmer the skies …

Hualiama’s eyes lit upon her Dragon-form approaching, upon the blue-haired girl padding as always from an invisible portal into this shared soul-realm, to the open, colonnaded bedchamber. Her voice cracked slightly in surprise.

The Dragoness responded with an improvised echo:

Day and night, white and black,

Are both not lit by stars?

Duality, dichotomy, two who are one,

Inseparable …

When her twin’s song faded amongst the colonnades, Human-Lia reached out and took her hand. “Come. Sit with me a while. Be welcome. Let us talk of duality and dichotomy.”

“The bastion-ward?” smiled the other girl.

“Sit!”

Blue-hair considered this command, head askance. “I can see why Fra’anior had so much trouble with Humans. Demanding creatures, aren’t they?” Nevertheless, she perched on the white linens beside her Humansoul, and her deep blue eyes crinkled. “Been engineering a little magic? We saved our Grandion’s life, although he was suitably surprised at the womanly touch we gifted him.”

“Smoking macho lizard!” Lia said feelingly.

“Mmm, and how!” agreed Dragonsoul, with a rather different emphasis. “Sorry. Feels peculiar, doesn’t it? Don’t go all coy on us; we know how we feel about him, don’t we?” She coaxed, “Don’t we?”

“That’s your Island.”

“Our Island. Nice blush, by my wings.”

“Oh, you’re incorrigible.” Human-Lia looked away to the brilliant, ever-night tapestry of stars. “Look. Azziala uses magic which is cousin to the Word of Command. It makes no sense. That first time after the battle at the Dragon’s Bell, she vanquished us–utterly. We were gone, unconscious for two weeks. Yet during that time and afterward, we were able to resist our Human-mother. Even better, Siiyumiel comes up with a clever phrase, this psychic bastion-ward fiddle-faddle mystical malarkey.”

Those distinctly blue eyebrows quirked upward in concert with her twin-smile. “Say that again?”

“Where was that ward when Grandion … dominated us? When Azziala–what? You brought the dragonet? How’s that even poss–oh! Soul-connection, oath-magic, something? Right?”

“Admirable scientific precision there,” teased her twin, chuckling as the dragonet poked his muzzle out of her lacy, trailing sleeve. A tiny tongue tasted the air, before his fire-eyes lit upon Lia.

Eep! He shot over to her, but almost as quickly stalled mid-air as he did a double-take. Eep-oh-what?

You’re starting to talk, little F–uh, little one? Blonde-Lia chuckled as the white mite made a sober examination of her tumbling locks. To her twin, she said, “Is it my imagination, or has our hair grown a few inches every time we meet here?”

“I hadn’t noticed. The so-called ‘hair thing’ is … novel, for a Dragoness.”

“Now who’s being imprecise? Stand up, Dragonsoul. Turn around.”

Ignoring the dragonet, who was still fixated by her tresses, Human-Lia ran her fingers through the wealth of deep blue possessed by her twin. “Below our backside, now. Have you seen? Do you think Grandion fancies these … uh, haunches?”

“Mine, aye,” said the Dragoness, archly. “Yours, less so–I hope. I mean … unholy windrocs! That came out badly.”

“I understand.”

Awkward. The blue-haired twin stepped away, clearly fighting shame. Hualiama stroked the dragonet’s teensy, perfect spine-spikes. Great leaping Islands, how beautiful was he? Alright, Lia. Admit it. Part of her was jealous of Dragonsoul. She could have the Tourmaline. A Human could never dream … but there were many types of love, Amaryllion Fireborn had taught her. None were profane, he claimed. The truth was, some forms which were not pure-fires-love were indeed profane, but equally there were many Islands a soul could find in love. It did not need to be … mated-love. Her mind supplied the Dragonish where she recoiled from the Human idea.

She would excise the profane; find an honourable path. Nothing less would be true to her nature and principles.

You really are obsessed with my hair, aren’t you? she said to the dragonet.

Straw-head, he chirped.

Hualiama slipped off the bed to land with a bump on her tailbone. “Ouch! You said–did you?” Cupping that scrap of fire-life in her palms, she stared into his fire-eyes, her own eyes suddenly brimming, her heart leaping with insane hope. “What did you just say?”

Eep?

Say that again. Holding up a handful of hair, she said, What is this?

Straw-head.

Flicker! Hualiama clapped her free hand to her mouth to forestall her yelp. Instead, a huge volley of sobs burst out, hand or no hand. You’re Flicker, reincarnated … how?

Earnestly, the dragonet shot a string of hatchling-babble at her, but ended with a very clear, querulous, Straw-head?

Mercy, you are … he cocked his head aside exactly as Flicker used to, with a sage air.

All that was Hualiama quaked in awe.

Gently, she pressed a miracle into the hollow of her neck, murmuring his name over and over. Blue-hair came to sit with her, holding her Human form, reaching over her shoulder to stroke the crooning, purring dragonet with a wondering finger. He arched his neck in pleasure, and mock-nibbled at her earlobe and her twin’s fingertips.

In all the Island-World, in a place beyond the world, there were two girls and a dragonet called Flicker, and their joy.

After a time that touched eternity, Human-Lia asked, “I don’t suppose you have any answers regarding the psychic bastion?”

“No, but we could ask him,” whispered Dragonsoul.

“Flicker? He’s only a baby.”

“No, him.”

Pushing aside her tumbled hair, Hualiama recoiled at the sight of Fra’anior bending his burning eye upon the colonnade. What struck her most forcibly was the tenor of his nearest fire-eye, a deep, rich apricot in the main with streamers of indigo, gold and dozens of colours swirling through the vast, torrid surface of that orb; his manner bespeaking love as vast and abiding as the mightiest reaches of the Island-World.

In a voice like many flutes produced by the upper draconic palette, Fra’anior said, “A beautiful family reunion. What happiness is mine! Never would I have thought this possible; not I, nor any of the Ancient Dragonkind. Perhaps Dramagon imagined such a goal as the pinnacle of his work, whereby he might live immortal. While we Ancient Dragons live long, it is not our physical forms which burn eternally in the great fires of the Dragonkind. Yet Amaryllion Fireborn birthed a purpose in thee, Hualiama, and thou hast brought it to fruition–indeed, to rebirth.”

“Yet I must counsel thee with words of warning.” His voice deepened. “When Numistar and Azziala and Shinzen, and indeed, the remnant of ruzal within thee, apprehend this power thou hast demonstrated, my shell-daughter–such a power even I, Fra’anior the Onyx, never wielded by all the might of my magic–they will conclude that the pursuit of the First Egg is but dross in comparison with what is the possession of thy right paw.”

“Has not Numistar Winterborn achieved the same?” countered Hualiama’s Dragoness-form.

“No. She imprints and possesses, subjugating flesh by her power. But the original genetic weakness of aging holds true, even given a perfect imprint. Flesh will fail. No matter how many times she renews her herd of thralls, Numistar knows in the deepest coldness of her soul that what she holds in containment will age, and die.”

“And how exactly are different?” inquired Human-Lia.

Again, his fires muted with apparent concern. “Shell-daughter, you literally absorbed a fire-soul into your soul, nurtured it, and returned it to enfleshed life. True-fires be spoken, you contain within your mortal flesh a second-soul-aspect, able to coexist in oneness and peaceably–for the most part–” his eye-fires danced with a teasing air “–and manifest at will, which is a skill you are learning. Thus, you traverse the boundary of flesh and spirit and return, whole and beautiful. So very … beautiful.”

His tremendous belly-fires roared and wept like a rainstorm, proclaiming the depth of his feelings.

“I … I grow maudlin and foolish,” Fra’anior muttered, sounding trenchant yet unrepentant. “Time marches to its own drumbeat. Hear mine conjecture. Dragon-powers exist in latent forms, especially the higher magical powers which usually manifest after the fledgling years. Likely, this bastion-ward ability lay present but dormant in thy psyche until the trauma of thy birth in fire. It revealed the second true-facet of thy nature, and Balance was restored to thine being. With Balance came the knowledge of joint physical needs. Aside, I must adjure thee to experiment with Shapeshifting regularly–at least once or twice each week–to ensure that both forms are physically nurtured. Thou hast made much progress in the emotional and spiritual reams, as is evidenced by this place, representative of thy soul-life. Now, ensure also the physical manifestation is appropriately cultivated.”

One Hualiama or the other made to reply, but Fra’anior added quickly, “Moving on. I posit the bastion, duly awakened, did flourish in thy being–growing stronger and more well-formed, especially as Azziala unwittingly abetted the process by providing conditions of considerable duress. Thou knowest, the spoken Command still impacts thy physical flesh. Unfortunately, that appears to be an unavoidable consequence. The Empress surely knows this, and schemes to employ this knowledge against thee at an opportune moment.”

“Mercy,” said Human-Lia, succinctly.

“Makes sense,” agreed the Dragoness, gravely. “We thank thee for thy counsel, mighty shell-father.”

Fra’anior’s great eye twinkled–literally, with cascades of white, inner sparks. “A duty most congenial, and an honour to this old fire-breather.”

“Ha, formalities and nonsense,” snorted the Human girl. “Just call him ‘Dad’.”

“Dad?” squeaked blue-haired Lia.

“Dad?” bellowed Fra’anior, amused to the tune of a huge, instantaneous thunderstorm.

Then, the two girls inclined their heads simultaneously. “I think we’re in trouble. Grandion …”

Darkness swallowed the scene. Screaming, they pitched into a depthless void.

* * * *

When his eyes opened, it was to light upon a charnel-house. For a gut-twisting, stunned second, Grandion could but stare. One thought dominated his mind. Cannibals!

Taboo. This was taboo …

Where was he? Underwater? A dozen Land Dragons–they must be, these creatures were too outsized to be anything else–lay near the base of underwater mountains, tethered there by tentacles or hawsers, and though the scene should be dark, it was lit by some kind of bioluminescence in the environment coupled with wide strips and dots of a brilliantly luminous material on the flanks of the mountains. The light was plentiful, allowing the Dragon to perfectly apprehend a scene out of the darkest nightmares of his kind. The Land Dragons had been trapped and flayed. Millions of white dragonets swarmed over and inside of the bodies, feeding voraciously. In the distance, two or three such scenes were repeated. So much golden Dragon blood ran from the partially-consumed carcasses that it cascaded in curiously sluggish rivers down the dark slopes, feeding an enormous, pulsating host of predators and scavengers that had gathered to partake of the bounty–only, they dared not approach the white dragonets.

Grandion understood why.

Those were not natural Dragonkind. The foot-long dragonets ate with one purpose, with one motion, with one mind. The super-mind controlling this uncountable mass of smaller fire-souls pervaded the entire area with a bitter, physical aura of a kind he had never before apprehended. Yet he knew. This was Numistar Winterborn. Crushingly enormous. The arctic breath of snows was her signature, which the Tourmaline Dragon had only ever experienced in the height of storms over the Island-World, yet this felt colder. More profound–a spiritual cold, he sensed. Her spirit was replicated in each of these dragonets, individually tiny, yet in their millions, attaining to the magnitude of an Ancient Dragon.

At last, he understood where this realm was. This was where Hualiama found herself–yet what was she doing here?

Can’t escape. Grandion …

She needed him! He spared no thought for gloating. A pure, draconic fury burned in his breast as Grandion apprehended the peril of her situation. Somehow, when they needed each other most, the oath-connection came into its own. They became more. Across the leagues, they melded in ways that made a Dragon’s heart-fires swoop and swoon. Yet what could he do?

I am here, Dragonfriend.

A stout declaration. Her delighted gasp was practically the only movement she was capable of, for the air surrounding her–he snorted in surprise as her underdeveloped hatchling Dragon-senses delivered their payload of data and impressions to his watching mind–was as still and inflexible as glass. Numistar! What power was this, that she could command the very flows of the air?

Obeying his instinct, Grandion reached within Hualiama for the knowledge he needed of this realm. No, the avaricious paw would not reach further, to that … Onyx power … within her? He reeled. She had travelled beneath the Cloudlands! She had healed Siiyumiel. His muzzle shook side-to-side in a very Human-like gesture of awe. This girl–this Dragoness! He could not keep track of her doings. But she did not appreciate the level of toxins present in her system, many operating in the magic plane, in ways he had never imagined. She could not endure much more.

The Tourmaline had great strength, but Numistar’s might was that of an Ancient Dragon. No strength of his paw could tear her loose.

Siiyumiel! he cried. Shine your light …

Given the Shell-Clan Elder’s angle of approach, the light-of-Dragonsong that reached his senses was only the periphery of the main beam. Not enough! The equation was simple. Siiyumiel’s Balance-magic did nothing whatsoever to weaken Numistar’s hold on Hualiama. Grandion wanted to grit his teeth, but even that was a struggle. Quick-wings. He racked his brains for a solution. Something to make Numistar flinch. They must force her to withdraw, for he sensed, more a seventh-sense intuition than any concrete insight, that her power was neither fully developed nor perfectly coherent as yet. When it was …

Hualiama, can you conceive of a strategy, a vector?

Vector? his hostess wheezed. Vector … means light. Grandion projected puzzlement. Prism.

Aye! A prismatic effect should modify the light’s course–but how?

Swiftly pouncing upon the hypothetical constructs flickering through her exhausted mind, Grandion struggled to make sense of what he knew was at best an esoteric branch of shield-physics. What use had prisms when no standard draconic attack used light? He remembered Sapphurion teaching him unusual magnification techniques, but a certain fledgling Tourmaline had been too preoccupied to listen to his shell-father. Yet he and Hualiama drew together, pooling their knowledge, and with his strength, they modified her shields fundamentally.

As he faded, drawn back to his sleeping body, Grandion cried, Siiyumiel, we need your light!

Chapter 18: Treble Ambush

THE TOURMALINE DRAGON’S awareness hurtled back into his body so precipitously, his paw twitched and jumped three feet. It brushed Human-flesh. The boy twitched. Too late. He wriggled, but his strength was far too tiny to shift Grandion’s grasp.

“I see a mouse trapped in mine paw,” said the Tourmaline, cracking open an eye. “How did you enter this place?”

“On my two feet,” hissed the boy.

“Sneaking past one hundred Dragons?”

“They were sleeping.”

Grandion stared into the stormy grey eyes, taking in their air of defiance, the hunted, ragamuffin air of the boy he had trapped. He remembered this boy. Dragons seldom forgot. He said, “I see a warrior fallen on hard times.”

“A warrior?” spat the boy. “Do you know who I am; what I have become?”

“What do you seek here, Jinichi?”

The boy jumped as Grandion plucked his name out of the halls of his memory, from his search for the lost Scroll of Binding. He remembered unblinking grey eyes watching the Tourmaline Dragon over a campfire as he made inquiries of their Council of Elders. His people were the Nikuko, a feared and hated warrior-caste with legendary magical powers, at least in the legends of the East. The Dragon still remembered those eyes. They had made his scales itch.

Now, the youngster of perhaps fifteen summers had to iron a tremor out of his voice. In his clipped Eastern dialect, he said, “I am Jinichi. Informally, I am known as Jin. I am the last of my people.”

“You seek revenge.”

“Aye. No. I seek … the impossible.”

“Sneaking through a cave filled with Dragons is technically impossible,” the Tourmaline pointed out, striving to identify the exact nuances in the boy’s manner. “But you have magic.”

“Don’t say that!” he yelped, waving his free arm. The other was trapped by Grandion’s curled talons. By his scales, the wretch stank! Had he been bathing in some foul Human midden? He wore his hair long, apparently to disguise the layered tattoos on his cheeks and neck.

“I am Dragonkind. I speak the truth as I perceive it. Why are you here?”

“I cannot say.”

Grandion had no need to simulate anger. The blazing of his eyes was clearly reflected upon the boy’s golden Eastern skin, and in the dark pupils of his eyes. “For a sneaking wretch, you’re remarkably untalkative this evening,” he said, dourly. “You reek. But your manners stink far worse. A warrior without honour counts a dog as his superior.”

Although he used an Eastern saying he had learned from scroll-lore at Gi’ishior, the impact of his words was far deeper than he could have imagined. The boy blanched to the colour of draconic white-fires, then screamed incoherently at the Dragon. Before he could think further upon the matter, Grandion stretched out his paw and dunked the lad in the nearest water-trough.

Just washing this stinking Human, he announced.

He lifted Jin out. The boy started screaming again. Splash.

I’m hazing him for bad behaviour, Grandion added, drawing a few sniggers from the Dragons resting nearby. The boy gurgled and kicked; the Dragon held him under. Hopefully not too long. Dragons could hold their breath for over fifteen minutes. How many for Humans–perhaps five?

Well, his struggles weakened all too soon. The limbs convulsed. The Dragon hauled him out. Oh. A slap of the paw between the shoulder blades, and Jin vomited water. “Can’t swim?” Grandion inquired, unkindly.

Hualiama would have slapped him; called him a mean and nasty beast. One hundred fangs gleamed in his jaw. He should not disprove her words.

The boy tried to roll away, his body somehow clinging to the shadows, but a snick of talons arrested that idea. Pressing one talon against that reed-thin neck, the Dragon rested a paw upon his captive. This boy was far too good at sneaking about. He needed to understand this peculiar brand of magic, and the inexplicable draw he felt toward the youngster. Half-drowning him, whilst providing a moment’s entertainment, was probably not the answer. Why not … Hualiama’s Way?

Grr. That Dragoness was burrowing under his scales and into his hearts.

Leaning in close, Grandion said, “Jinichi of Roninida Island, do you wish to become a Dragon Rider?”

For the first time, he read fear in those clear grey eyes. “No–” the Dragon let his talon press just a little against the voice-box, not enough to draw blood “–yes! Yes, but I can’t! I dream of Dragons–curse it! Don’t you understand, Dragon? I have lost my tribe, my sword and my honour. I’m nothing. Nothing! Worse than a dog. I’ve lived like a sewer rat on these streets, stealing mohili bread to live.”

“Then we are alike.”

Jin could only stare at the Dragon. His throat worked, but no words emerged.

“I dishonoured my people. My entire race. When I first met you, I was a disgraced Dragon honour-bound to an impossible quest. A dog, not a Dragon. Yet I have learned that honour bestowed by others is worthless. What truly matters is the honour of deeds of word and paw, and the pure-fires of a true heart. Can you live with the man you see in the mirror, Jin? You need to ask him these questions. You are Nikuko. You have powers. You dream great dreams. I say you are Jin–Jin the Apprentice. Do we understand each other?”

Very slowly, the throat bobbed again. “Aye.”

“Good. Then first, you need to learn about the Dragonkind. You’ll find a scrubbing-brush against that far wall. I’m itchy.”

Jin dared to waggle an eyebrow. “Itchy?”

“All over,” Grandion clarified. “After that, there’s a hundred other Dragons in here who’ll need cleaning, scrubbing and polishing. When you’re done, I expect you to be able to recite their names, colours, lineage, history and powers. I will question you. Any mistakes …” He hooked a talon toward the water bucket. “Understood?”

“Draconic notions of honour are … peculiar,” ventured the teenager.

The Tourmaline sheathed his talons with a studied air. “Boy, nothing makes a Dragon more irritable than itchy scales. Learn fast.”

* * * *

Hualiama floated in tantalising light, yet her awareness was dim. Dulled by exhaustion. The force surrounding her body varied as she flexed her wings; she existed upon borrowed strength.

Numistar. Aye. She must fight Numistar, but she was so weak. Shifting restlessly, Hualiama again felt the distant draw weaken and change, then strengthen once more. So leaden of wing. Neck lolling. Oh. What was that bellowing?

Fight! Orient ten degrees starboard and forty-eight vertical!

Uhh … Siiyumiel?

With a wriggle, Lia oriented herself in what she thought might be the right direction. Someone who was used to walking with two feet on the Island was accordingly not accustomed to three-dimensional spatial navigation, but she had plenty of experience piloting Dragonships. Two further corrections, and suddenly she sensed the flow of magic intersecting her position escalate, as though an earthquake had cracked open a terrace lake. Suddenly her wings, freed from external governance, could flex. Siiyumiel immediately shot through further detailed instructions, directing the Star Dragoness into the middle of his highly focussed beam which speared in from over four miles distant.

Dazzled, she used her secondary optic membranes to filter the light. Now she saw Siiyumiel’s beam streaming from the northwest, somehow bending around her body as though the light-magic had taken fright. It shot off between the Air-Breathers at a bearing of five compass degrees south of east, with a sharp downward angle. Dragonets skittered away from that powerful blast, much as she realised Land Dragons used their Harmonic light to frighten away predators. Lesser Dragons had no such skills. Dark shapes circled her with predacious tenacity. By the quality of the ambient light, she realised that night must have fallen in the world above.

Where the refracted beam fell, angling around the flank of an Air-Breather, Numistar’s power was weakened enough for many dragonets to fall, especially those struck by the centre of the beam; the predators noticed this too, closing in with sharp thrusts of wings and fins. Smoke boiled from the area of impact. The faint, soprano shrieks of dragonets fell upon her ears.

She shifted, feeling the peculiar shield ripple with her movement–who had built this unfamiliar construct? Of course. Grandion’s doing. Thank you, my Dragon.

As best she could calculate, Hualiama played the beam across the nearest clusters of dragonets feeding on … oh! Oh, stinking windrocs, what was the Ancient Dragon thinking? Simple. No different to Azziala blooding Dragons, only this was more direct. What was the largest source of meat under the Cloudlands? Clearly, Numistar Winterborn needed to grow her strength. That was her exact plan. Siiyumiel’s light injured Numistar, but there were so many clusters of dragonets, Hualiama realised she was only clashing with a small percentage of Numistar’s totality. How did one fight myriad?

A wounded Dragoness would lash out.

Hualiama turned at once and fled, forging through the viscid air toward Siiyumiel. She should feel no shame, in this deadly environment, in sheltering behind the biggest, baddest behemoth she could find. Behind her, Numistar raised a monstrous, pain-crazed bellow.

BLUE-STAR! YOU WILL BE MINE!

She fled faster.

For long minutes, her scalp behind her skull-spikes crawled with the expectation that Numistar would seize her by the wingtips and drag her off to that ghastly feeding ground. Yet Siiyumiel rallied his kin. Multiple attacks, though smaller and weaker than the mighty Elder’s efforts, radiated between the bulk of the Air-Breathers like beams of the brightest lamps Hualiama had ever seen, cleansing some of the nearer carcasses of predators and dragonets alike. The approaching Shell-Clan came under attack from their kin, the Welkin-Runners, who launched off the Islands to latch onto their larger brethren. They attacked the heads and under the carapaces where the Shell-Clan’s limbs attached to the body–groins and armpits, in a manner of speaking–with huge, punishing blows of their talons. Siiyumiel’s Clan remained in compact formation, helping each other peel off the attackers, crushing them between their monstrous bodies or scorching Dragon hide with directed blasts of their Harmonic magic.

Power against agility, Hualiama realised. The Shell-Clan were all power grounded in the mountainous strength of living, breathing furnaces; the Welkin-Runners, fast and brutal, their thuggish individuality giving way under sustained attack to an instinct for self-preservation. They fought in fluid groups, trying to swarm the Shell-Clan by sheer weight of numbers and drag them to the flanks of the Air-Breathers or down to a more solid-appearing substrate miles below, where dozens more Runners waited.

Siiyumiel’s light-beam abruptly cut off, leaving her without night-vision and alone. Dark shadows descended immediately. These were a class of under-Cloudlands predator scavengers called Borers, vastly elongated reptilian creatures that drilled their way into a weakened Land Dragon’s flesh. If successful, they laid their eggs within, and ate them from the inside out over a period of years. They had ten fin-like wings protruding from the upper body, a further ten on the midsection, and a large thicket of motile fins on their tail ends.

Hualiama had half a second to think her shields might hold, when she learned how deadly these creatures were. Drrr! A drill-like appendage blasted through with a type of high-frequency, cutting Harmonic magic. She snapped her wing aside in the nick of time. Freaking feral windrocs! Drrr! She dodged again, shoring up her shields frantically but losing a two-foot diameter patch of scales on her left upper flank. Pain and panic accelerated every system, every impression, every reaction of her Dragon body as she raced through the press, before stalling amidst an overwhelming thicket of Borer bodies. She punched and pushed blindly but only ran headfirst into enemy after enemy, tearing herself free each time, desperate, unnerved.

Drrr! Her nose shook briefly; a reflexive lick of her tongue brought her the taste of her own blood.

Away, sweet Dragoness, cried Humansoul, earning herself the umpteenth slap of their brief partnership in Shapeshifter life. Come on. One of us, five thousand of them. Perfect odds.

Indeed, if I had any magic left! snarled the Star Dragoness. Yet tranquillity pooled within her breast …

Please use our gorgeous wings together with our brains.

Hualiama snapped something she had definitely not learned in the royal halls of Fra’anior. That Human! Snarky and right, the most annoying possible combination.

This exchange occupied a conversational space as brief as thought. Her Human’s intervention brought clarity. Swirling away between the thrashing bodies, the tiny Dragoness pretended she was playing at her first hunt with the Dragon hatchlings and fledglings of Sarzun Dragonhold. She danced. Numbers worked against the enemy unless they worked as a team; these Borers were anything but. Frustrated, they tore and drilled chunks out of each other. The spurting blood maddened them further. Lia dug into a torso with her talons for a brief ride, only to discover that these creatures were able to twist themselves into knots. She barely escaped a chomping mouth with the end of her tail.

Then, Siiyumiel’s unique magic swept the area nearby. Bodies blasted apart, swirling in clouds of vaporised, stinking flesh. With a dragonet-worthy flip of her wings, Hualiama arrowed for the open space. She barrel-rolled over an incoming attacker, stall-and-dipped beneath three converging bodies, and danced away from the grasping mouths and wings, into the open.

The Land Dragon bathed her in polychromatic glory. Strength.

Light and Harmony chased the weariness out of her limbs. Her body buzzed in surprise, in gratitude, as Siiyumiel’s healing power washed over her. She lowered her muzzle. Awe-respect.

Tiiyusiel, take the Star Dragoness aloft. We will speak, little one, but your task now lies ahead. The roots of Kaolili begin but ninety leagues from this place, where the deep-bottoms rise. Soon, the Air-Breathers will truly walk.

She snickered involuntarily as Siiyumiel revealed what he thought of her original idea that these living Islands walked on the underbelly of the world. The Cloudlands were so much deeper than she had imagined. Six, eight leagues deep in many places. Deeper still were the trenches that reached the very molten core of the world, and the apparently bottomless Rift which separated the North and Herimor. The relentless, massive pressures of those depths would eventually overwhelm even a Land Dragon; they supported entirely novel forms of life, mysterious even to the Shell-Clan.

Light-beams played around her now in glorious display, as though stars danced with swords in the gloom beneath the Cloudlands, cutting and clashing, etching and burning.

The Shell-Clan swept in, bold but beleaguered, cutting across the westerly flank of the Lost Islands as they pounded the Welkin-Runners with synchronised discharges of their eye-magic. Hualiama could not keep track; the strobe lightning confused her senses, but she oriented on the signature of Tiiyusiel’s magic and followed that to a meeting with the young Shell-Clan Dragoness. Blasts of green-tinged light from the Welkin-Runners tossed her about like a flea cast adrift in an ocean of dark and light, but she fought through nevertheless.

As she finally shut her eyes against the piercing light-shocks, Hualiama managed to make an understated landing near Tiiyusiel–actually, right against the eyelid of her primary eye.

Light-blink-light!

So intense was the blaze behind her, Hualiama’s wings became almost transparent. She darted aside, gripping lightly with her talons, before Tiiyusiel had even formed the thought that resting in the eye of her light-cannon was not the wisest choice for a Lesser Dragon.

Boom! Boom! The Land Dragoness lurched. Her detour, Lia apprehended, had taken her out of the pack and into danger. Four Runners clung to her carapace, pressing her down with their combined weight, while one quarried at the exposed skin of her nape. Tiiyusiel groaned, trying to fly a steady course.

Fly? Swim? Float? Lia cried, Strength, Tiiyusiel! Let me help …

The incredulous Land Dragoness had neither choice nor warning as a touch of Hualiama modified her shields.

KAAAABOOOM! The entire underworld shook as Tiiyusiel’s Harmonic blast shifted into her shields and then flashed outward. The four grappling Runners exploded into thousands of charred chunks of Dragonflesh. Two miles away, the wash staggered Siiyumiel and kin, but more so their attackers. Talons unclenched. Mouths gaped in shock. A few of Siiyumiel’s command bellowed in anger at Lia’s interference, but most seized the opportunity to land unopposed blows and scrape clean their fellows’ carapaces.

Poor Tiiyusiel responded as if Hualiama had slapped her across the muzzle with an Island, but Siiyumiel was already beaming in his healing power.

Sorry, I didn’t mean–Lia coughed, and vomited weakly.

No, it was bravely done. A tad clumsy on the execution, said Tiiyusiel, her voice shaking palpably. Human-Lia rolled her eyes somewhere inside the Dragoness. Inelegant Lia. The tale of her life. Watch this. If a Land Dragon should pinpoint-direct such Harmonic magic through the shield-construct–

No, you need a more precise delivery mechanism, something like this, said the Star Dragoness, with an inner nod at her Human engineer …

Excellent, Tiiyusiel agreed. All-round protection! Noble Siiyumiel–

Already processing the idea, my shell-kin, he agreed, with a flare of excitement-indicators. Take our friend up-world quickly. Hurry. Truly, her deeds proclaim her the Dragonfriend.

Lia was uncertain as to what her blunder had achieved, but the Land Dragons seemed inordinately energised. Tiiyusiel soared away immediately, the furnace-engines of her magic providing lift and thrust. She swam into the dark upper cloud layer. The battle vanished from Hualiama’s sight, but not from her mind. The flashes and detonations of magic continued as the Shell-Clan pressed home their assault. Had they come to save her?

Not you alone, said Tiiyusiel. But you provided impetus for our assault. Numistar Winterborn gathers to herself an army of Land Dragons. We are uncertain as to her intent.

Quickly, Hualiama described the existence of an unhatched First Egg, the vital information the Land Dragons had sought and failed to identify before. As she spoke she realised aloud that Numistar must know something of its location–why else would she require Land Dragons, if the First Egg were somehow accessible from the above-Cloudlands world? The mismatched group of Land Dragons which had travelled North from Herimor must have been seeking the unmatched power of the First Egg, but they too could not know its location–or did they? Did they seek to learn Numistar Winterborn’s intent and oppose her, or was their motivation more sinister yet?

She and Tiiyusiel agreed that the truth of that matter remained unknown.

From her side, Tiiyusiel confirmed the Shell-Clan’s reading of the Balance, that there were too many powers gathered now in one corner of the Island-World for there not to be an explosion of war. Already, war raged in the under-Cloudlands realms. Now, Tiiyusiel showed her the thought-memories of the Shell-Clan responsible for gathering intelligence from the South. Warlord Shinzen’s bulky Dragons served as rapid transport for his Giants, Island-to-Island. Seen from a low angle, the Giants overran and torched a Human village, followed by celebrations and the nauseating images of pairs of Giants spit-roasting bodies in the flames–she promptly threw up again. Yet the memories rushed on; Tiiyusiel’s attempt to be responsive to her shock, she suspected. From below, she watched a gigantic Dragon-battle rolling over a cluster of Islands, even catching a glimpse of Grandion storming mightily through the fray, flexing his Tourmaline muscles to smash the two-headed Oranges out of his path with electrifying disdain.

Grandion battled a force hundreds of times greater than the Dragonwings he appeared to command–that too, was a revelation. Lia shook her muzzle, filled with disbelief. Even if they allied with all the Lost Islands Dragons, the magnitude of these forces–mercy.

Half an hour later, Tiiyusiel breached the Cloudlands and surged into a realm of clean, scudding winds; several leagues to the East, a localised rainstorm broke over Yiisuriel’s dark peaks, sending great white torrents of water cascading down her flanks. After taking her leave, Hualiama launched into the teeth of the wind and beat her way to a Dragonship landing bay. Dispirited, agitated and sick to her stomach, Hualiama trudged up to her quarters.

There, a white firebolt greeted her with aerial cartwheels of delight. Straw-head!

She had to laugh.

* * * *

Hualiama retired that evening following another delightful interrogation-session with Azziala and her Councillors, which lasted five hours and left her with a headache better suited to a creature of Siiyumiel’s size than a small Dragoness. To her surprise, her Dragon form decided she had endured quite enough for one day and would prefer a disembodied head to one that threatened to drop off of its own accord. The transition seemed especially arduous; a deep inner wrenching, yet the relief to appear in Human form had never been sweeter. Her blinding migraine vanished as if tossed into the nearest volcano.

Dragonsoul, that was bad.

Doubly rubbish as a Dragoness, aren’t I? Stupid decision landed us in the Cloudlands. We were rescued by Grandion and the Land Dragons; sent back upstairs with my tail between my legs, only to enjoy a beating from our mother. Fabulous day.

Human-Lia checked on Flicker, who slept pressed up against the fire-grating, snoring with a sound like a contented feline’s purr. She placed another log on the small fire. Which of us tattled about a First Egg to the mother-monster, simultaneously revealing its presence to Numistar?

Who gets the prize for the lengthiest rash of poor decisions?

Ugh. Get some rest, Dragoness-friend. Lia sighed moodily. Despite being exhausted, she also felt too keyed-up to rest. Off to bed. What further mischief can I cause there?

The Star Dragoness’ guffaws faded inwardly. Hualiama grimaced. Sorry, Fra’anior, but for once she hoped to rest undisturbed. If only she had not chased Grandion away. Yet she had resources in this place, as evidenced by Elki’s ungentle snoring next door. The problem was that with so many conflicting forces swirling about her, she had absolutely no idea what to do next. Every action she contemplated seemed fraught with a million calamitous consequences; the potential for levelling Islands or annihilating entire populations. Therefore she did nothing. Where was her vaunted courage? Fled beyond the moons?

She knew she must rise to dance, but instead felt muzzled, subdued, even paralysed.

Blades. The Nuyallith forms were a kind of dance, highly prescribed yet flowing, as if freedom could only exist or flourish within the tightest of bounds. Hualiama turned to contemplate the blades, laid at her bedside by Saori–who was herself, the very definition of warrior-discipline. Some might call her predictable. Others, deadly. Within her forms, Hualiama had learned, Saori was almost unbeatable. But create a form which was slightly unusual or illogical, and her Eastern sensibilities began to fray at the edges.

Stepping lightly across the room, she touched the well-worn hilts. Saori knew a secret. How many hours had she not spent learning it for herself?

Dance began with form. Expression sprang from knowledge. Even Siiyumiel’s notions of Balance and Harmony did not spring so much from a mystical connection with the Island-World, as from a profound understanding of its fundamental science. Of course, Land Dragons possessed brains the size of small Islands to contain and process the storehouses of knowledge gleaned from their extraordinary awareness of the natural world. The Dragonfriend, rather less so–but she had been a monk.

Granted, Lia might have moved the brothers more to frowning, eye-rolling and the odd impious thought than to scaling the spiritual heights in meditation!

Her fingers curled upon the leather-bound metal tangs. Blue blade in the left. Red in the right. Each dark length of metal was superbly balanced, inscribed with a neat line of runes down the centre channel, and more beneath the handgrip, she believed. Forged of meteorite ore in a furnace supplied by Dragon fire, the three-foot blades were both lighter and stronger than anything else in her experience, but held an incomparable edge and were undeniably magical. The blades slipped free in a faint whisper of metal that made her Dragon senses tingle. Barefoot, clad only in a thigh-length white under-shift and a waterfall of pale blonde hair, Hualiama crouched slightly into the ready position. The dry voice of Master Khoyal played in her memory, summoning the first of the Nuyallith forms. Water blocking light. Heron-strikes. Breaking the hammer. She spun into a whirlwind attack. The angry cat. Each form of defence or attack had a name, a form, often a flow of linked techniques.

Even her fierce concentration must give way to instinct. Faster and faster, Lia whirled around her room, carving the air with increasing abandon. Released into dance. Even while drawing inward, her awareness expanded. Each flashing orbit of a blade, though finely controlled, sang of ruinous, explosive potential concealed within beauty’s course, imploring her for release–yet her soul could not allow release. Not now.

She heard a light footstep outside her door. A rustling.

Lia stilled instantly. The blades hung loosely at her sides. What? Her nostrils flared, taking in the faint redolence of Dragon magic coupled with a rank taint, one she did not recognise–

BOOM!

A brown fist flattened the door. She caught a glimpse of glistening grey-brown scales slithering aside from her doorway–an Anubam? No time. Dragonets poured through the doorway in a living wave. White wings, two feet in wingspan. Pinkish eyes, fixed on her with a oneness of purpose she had never observed in dragonets before. They did not attack immediately, but surrounded her with slow menace, so closely linked, they all breathed and blinked at exactly the same intervals. Freaky!

Bring me the Star Dragoness.

Numistar! It could be no other. Hualiama had but a fragment of time to ponder how the dragonets’ draconic minds seemed muted, almost inaccessible to her magic, when Azziala’s mental voice boomed:

AMBUSH! DRAGONS, OBEY!

Muscular spasms immediately claimed a dozen or more dragonets, but their fellows turned, squeaking, ‘Release. Release.’ Several dragonets returned to their previous posture, but most did not. Wild, brief scraps developed before the overtaken animals were slain without a hint of remorse. Line of sight, Lia remembered. The Haters required visuals to enact their Command magic. How did Azziala do it? She clutched her blades, breathing evenly, watching the single-minded organism watching her. Was this assassination? Or a kidnap attempt?

The dragonets sprang! Hualiama had no chance, no room to move aside. Instead, the blades flashed around her person in the wings-of-iron defensive technique, shearing their way through dozens of the creatures. Flicker! She heard his cry over near the fireplace; immediately, she carved through a swirling mass of bodies, her head jerking as small, strong paws seized her hair and clothing, her arms and ankles; her rising Dragoness-magic shoving them away briefly, but she had so little to give … the blades sang faster through the air as the agile white dragonets attacked not with fire, but with clouds of icy white breath that chilled her skin and rimed her nostrils …

DRAGONS, OBEY! The massive wash of Azziala’s blanket-Command darkened Lia’s vision. Dizzied, she crashed to her knees. Blood spurted from her nostrils. Dragon-thunder in the corridor! Her mind seemed trapped down a dark tunnel, her need clamouring within, the ruzal uncoiling hungrily in response as tens and then hundreds of paws seized her besieged body and raised her into the air.

Dragon, please!

We … can’t, oh Humansoul …

She couldn’t Shapeshift? She lacked the strength? Mercy, if the Empress would simply release–dimly, she heard the chants of Dragon Enchanters in the corridor without, suddenly cut off. Too many dragonets. They were accustomed to picking individual targets; only Azziala’s extreme brand of power allowed her to attempt otherwise. Through the mental network, she heard cursing as her mother tried to teleport into the chamber, only to be denied by Blue Dragon shielding; by Dragons stolen from Affurion’s forces. Numistar had to be imitating Azziala! The adjoining door burst open to admit Saori, screaming and brandishing her daggers, and Elki running in holding a blanket–what? Deeper in the fortress, more screams. Minds winked out of the mental network. Many minds. Images of thousands of dragonets pouring through the sleeping levels, slaying indiscriminately, flashed into her awareness. She was cold, so cold; Numistar’s power exerted through the dragonets stifled her ability to respond except in her mind. Azziala countered with monstrous fury expressed in psychic blasts that struck down dragonets by the hundreds and many of her Enchanters too.

Hualiama twisted and bucked, fighting tooth and nail. Her forehead slammed against the doorjamb!

Elki, blood streaking his cheeks, dived for her with the blanket outstretched. “Lia! Wrap up!”

Wrap up? She almost laughed, before the blanket smothered her and the stone floor rose to smash into her left hip, elbow and shoulder. Drat, her bother weighed a ton! He was somewhere on top of her, thumping and kicking dragonets through the thick blanket–and bruising his outraged sister’s jaw–but the jolt somehow helped her to focus.

Azziala bellowed, DRAGONS, DIE!

Her heart almost seized up. Flicker! Please … sweating, screaming, fading, she knew only the warmth of her Dragoness bracing her within.

BRING ME HUALIAMA! Now the Ancient Dragon’s mental roar overwhelmed the Dragon-Haters’ shared mental space. BRING HER!

Grief, between her mother and Numistar, there was no room to think. Paws seized the blanket, jerking her about; Lia’s head popped out. At least two hundred dragonets seethed over her prone body. Elki gripped a dragonet by the tail, employing the hapless, shrieking creature like a swatter to smack his opponents left and right. Flicker fought and bit his way over her stomach, defending her with ferocity disproportionate to his size. Drat the pests, they had tied her up! To her astonishment, Hualiama discovered that the dragonets had managed to truss her inside the blanket using a pair of Elki’s trousers for her torso and Saori’s underwear for her ankles!

Up and away! squealed the dragonets, heaving in concert.

She scooted helplessly out of the doorway and down the stone corridor, dragged feet-first by fifty members of Numistar’s new body. Saori raced after, managing to flow like quicksilver between the attacking dragonets while simultaneously dicing them up with her sword. Dragon attack! The Eastern Isles warrior rolled smoothly, dodging a Brown Overmind who sprang past Lia, destroying a section of the wall of the chamber next to Elki’s room. What? Where had that beast–oh!

“Affurion, help!” yelled Hualiama.

Her head and accordingly her view, rattled with every bounce along the rough corridor floor as the dragonets charged onward. She saw the huge Brown fold himself double in the narrow corridor. His crimson eyes lit upon her, before his flame-filled mouth gaped open.

Oh no!

Chapter 19: Land, Ho!

GRRAAARRRGGH! A FIREBALL blossomed behind the sprinting Saori, silhouetting her slender, sword-waving form against a background of roiling orange flame. The warrior dropped flat on her face; exactly the right reaction, because the fireball sizzled less than half a foot over her back and pounded into Hualiama’s upraised, blanket-wrapped legs, cleaning every dragonet off her body save Flicker, who had somehow flattened himself over her mouth and face–protectively.

Was Affurion enthralled? Azziala’s stooge?

Enwrapped in smouldering cloth, Hualiama had no time to think of anything but figuring out how to breathe around Flicker’s unmentionables. Alright, he had saved her face from a roasting. Clever dragonet. Now he leaped into her chest, hissing at the Brown Overmind, who charged directly at them, not holding back an ounce of his strength. Fangs! Blazing eyes! Terror shredded her belly as Affurion’s thundering paws shook the corridor. Thirty tonnes of enraged, jaw-champing, fire-sizzling male Dragon stampeded toward the royal ward of Fra’anior. Trussed as neatly as a Crescent Islands porker to a spit, it was all she could do to try to squirm aside. She managed a half-roll before Affurion’s talons scraped the stone beneath her body, flipped her roughly into his palm, and imprisoned her torso.

Dragonfriend! he panted. Away with thee!

Away? What the volcanic hells are you playing at, Affurion?

“Yaah!” shrieked Saori.

Get off my tail, you madwoman! howled Affurion. Lia was being pounded up and down with his every running step, but suddenly she scented clean air. His wings snapped wide. They were airborne. The back of her head clipped the low retaining wall of the porch as the Brown Overmind dipped rapidly over the edge, clearly aiming to avoid any line-of-sight attacks. She cried out, but the damage appeared to be superficial.

DRAGON, OB–the cry of three Dragon Enchanters manning a Dragonship directly ahead of them cut off abruptly as a speeding Grunt transformed the bow end of their vessel into a crumpled mess of struts, fabric and shattered crysglass. Hualiama flinched. Not pretty.

We learned from Siiyumiel and Grandion how to detect their special optical shielding, said Affurion, baring his fangs at the destruction. And how to improve our own.

Behind, from the rapidly receding Chenak Stronghold, clouds of white dragonets fluttered swiftly out of the nostrils, attacking Dragonships and Lost Islands Dragons with indiscriminate abandon. Numistar had sought her, Hualiama realised. That was the goal of the attack. The Winterborn and the Empress continued to trade pleasantries, shaking the Air-Breathers and every living soul borne upon their backs, while Affurion accelerated rapidly away to the South. Untouched. Unconstrained.

“What are you doing with me, Affurion?” Hualiama demanded.

“Lia!” Saori shouted from way behind.

“By my wings, are you still there, you pest?” snapped the Brown, bending his neck to regard his tail with consternation.

So she was. Saori clung to his tail just above the final tail-spike with the air of a thousand year-old lichen attached to her favourite boulder. The prospect of flying several miles above the Cloudlands on the tail of a peeved Brown Dragon clearly did not faze her in the slightest. The girl waved her sword threateningly. “Nobody steals my friends, understood, Affurion?”

His eyes blazed, but to Lia’s surprise, he grunted, “Very well, warrior-girl. Come up here and cut your friend free.”

A whiplash flick of his tail shot Saori through the air above them. With a wicked chuckle, Affurion flexed his wings and surged after the screaming warrior, before catching her nonchalantly in his free forepaw. Being a male Dragon, this performance came complete with a variety of triumphant, muscular contortions and a bugle of self-congratulation. Reversing her sword, Saori stabbed him between the knuckles in the very same movement that he used to catch her!

Hualiama felt the jolt of pain surge through Affurion’s body, but a second surprise piled hard on the heels of the first. The Eastern Isles warrior and the huge Dragon eyeballed each other. Flame met fury. Dragon fire met Human determination. The air crackled audibly as the Brown Overmind bent his blazing eye upon Saori, but she did not move a muscle, apparently mesmerised or terrified, Lia did not know which. Twenty or more shallow breaths later, she saw the Dragon’s eye-fires mellow through orange and apricot colours to a beautiful, clear yellow, the very palest hint of yellow, and the ensorcelled girl gasped, her hand relinquishing the sword to fly to her throat. She swallowed audibly.

Thou … his voice husky with emotion, Affurion could barely splutter a word.

Saori giggled like a girl ten years her junior, “A-A-Affurion?”

The Dragon growled, “What trickery is this? A glamour of Herimor? She–Dragonfriend! Explain at once, before I … before I–” he choked out “–release me at once!”

“Nobody’s holding you, mighty Affurion,” said Hualiama. Ha. The Dragon Rider magic had the Brown in its sights, and though he looked as comfortable as a shorn rajal, Affurion would soon learn he had no choice in the matter. “Saori, help out here, would you? Why are you taking us South?”

This question swung Affurion’s wings onto an easier bearing. He said, “I promised the Tourmaline I would act when I saw fit to drag you forth from your mother’s roost. Perceiving Numistar’s cowardly attack, we seized the opportunity. And, removing you from the Lost Islands increases our chances of survival, o Star Dragoness.”

He had the grace to state the last with a few token regret-indicators in his sub-vocal Dragonish that accompanied the Island-Standard delivery.

“I understand,” said Lia, tersely. The avaricious eyes of Azziala and Numistar would be drawn to Kaolili, for that must be his intent, rather than to the Lost Islands Dragonkind.

“Do you?”

Did she understand who was the prey in this game of Dragons? “Well, I appreciate you weren’t about to pause to ask the Winterborn or the mad Dragon-Haters for permission. That would have been marginally less fatal than your fireball.”

“Hmm!” he rumbled forcefully. “Perfect shot. Roasted toe of Human Princess aside, I achieved my exact goal.”

Hualiama and Saori both laughed at his droll humour, although the Eastern Isles warrior still sounded rather more breathless than the situation warranted. Now, the Dragon transferred his cargo into one paw so that Saori could exercise her carving skills on the blanket. In a moment, the charred cloth dropped away to reveal a Princess clad only in a scanty, mid-thigh under-shift, and a face that contorted as she checked her smoke-blackened toes. Aye, ten. Mostly unharmed. She touched her left eye gingerly. Swelling up like a ripe prekki-fruit.

Saori sneered, “I see we are dressed for the occasion as always, Hualiama.”

Lia bristled. Call her a tramp without saying the word, would she? “Grow your hair, Saori, I dare you.”

“Down, little rajal.”

Claws extended, Lia leaped at her friend and took a snap at her throat! She pulled back in embarrassment. “Uh … sorry. Dragoness.”

Affurion peered curiously at her. “The other manifestation of your fire-soul can–”

“–transform your hair colour?” said Saori, wonderingly. “Look. Amazing.”

“Oh mercy, not again.” The hank of hair Saori produced was a striking mixture of white-blonde and deep blue tresses. Setting aside her Nuyallith blades with a glum air, Hualiama perched her rump on the Brown Overmind’s inner left knuckle. “Alright. I can’t fix my weirdness. But as for you, girl, I’m afraid you have a major fixation on Affurion here.”

Saori’s face moved through a fine spectrum of apoplectic rainbow colours. Ha! Sweet revenge.

“Fixation in a magical sense,” Lia clarified. “Oath-fixation.”

“If I understand your obtuse logic, then may I categorically state that I am not the type of Dragon to desire a Dragon Rider,” Affurion snorted crisply.

“Nor am I fixated on a Dragon, unlike you!” muttered Saori. “Though I’ll grant, you appear to have reason. Bizarre, but definitely reason. When I first saw you making moon-eyes over that Tourmaline Dragon, I thought you were the most disgusting, immoral piece of filth I had ever–”

“Stop! Islands’ sakes, Saori.” Lia fanned her cheeks unhappily. “I’m not exactly comfortable with the outcome, alright? I’d enjoy being reminded of who’s the freak around here just a little less often. Can we agree to stuff your war-hammer honesty down your fumarole? Now. I’m not sure either of you can deny this Dragon-Rider linkage, once it’s present. But you can try.”

Affurion and Saori snarled almost identically at her.

The Princess of Fra’anior made a typically Fra’aniorian shrug, twirling both hands to emphasize her frustration. “Very well, stubbornness rules the day. Whichever of you chooses to see sense, write me a scroll, will you?”

* * * *

“Land, ho!” Saori sang out, pointing ahead.

Still visibly, smokily miffed, the Dragon muttered, “Told you an hour ago.”

Affurion sounded as though he had swallowed a bushel of crossbow quarrels. His plan, which had drawn protests from both Saori and Hualiama, involved dropping the Princess off with the first friendly Dragon or Dragonship they spied, and then beating his wings back to the Lost Islands as quickly as possible. Saori would return to take care of Prince Elki, who by virtue of being Mizuki’s Dragon Rider, ranked somewhere rather higher in the Brown’s draconic reckoning than either girl he now carried–with patent prickliness–between the spine-spikes above his shoulders.

Being a Dragon, the extent of dissent he tolerated was a Dragon’s whisker above zero.

Lia promptly demanded a return to his paw, curled up, and took a nap.

She awoke from an eggling-dream of her White Dragoness shell-mother to hear a ding-ding-ding nearby. Oh. Dragonship. Qilong’s Dragonship! Well, here was a surprise worthy of the name. The navigation bells jingled cheerfully as the Steersman brought the Dragonship onto a new heading and Qilong, he of the purple shirt and violently clashing suns-orange trousers, strutted out of the navigation cabin and took his habitual legs-akimbo stance on the forward starboard gantry.

“I am Qilong, dread pirate-lord of forty-three Islands!” he yelled.

Well. No change there.

His eyes lit upon Saori, seated far above Hualiama’s position in Affurion’s left forepaw. The Prince of Kaolili described a sumptuous bow. “Ah, she who was once my bride-to-be, how many moons is it since I had thee ensacked in my cabin, awaiting my majestic ravishment?”

“Ensacked, my lord Qilong?” Saori had to be chewing on her own liver up there, judging by her tone. Lia was certain ‘ensacked’ was not even a word.

“For I, the mighty Qilong, dread scourge of fifty-eight Islands, do declare–”

“We brought you a present, o most puissant Qilong!” the Eastern Isles warrior interrupted. “Behold!”

Puffing out his chest, Qilong examined Affurion’s length and quite clearly came up with nothing at all. He called up, “Thou art a gift most kingly. What fair wind brings thee to mine dining-table, o most ravishing maiden?”

What is this peculiar little fellow doing? Affurion asked privately, with great amazement. Is this a Human courtship ritual?

Lia chuckled, In a manner of speaking. Watch.

Standing up in Affurion’s paw, she waved to attract the crew’s attention. Ah, there was Genzo, the First Mate who was the brains of the operation, and the mountainous Steersman Sumio, who had to be part Eastern Giant, or she was a pink-spotted rajal.

Closer, Affurion.

Affurion had to furl his wing carefully to avoid buffeting the Dragonship. He extended his forepaw, granting Lia a first-hand viewpoint to appreciate the exact pallor of Qilong’s terror as it dawned on the dread pirate-lord exactly what, or who, Saori intended her present to be. With a long, piercing wail that would have been the envy of any vapid court maiden the Island-World over, Qilong bolted down the gantry, threw open the nearest cabin door, and pitched headlong inside, with a huge clash and clatter of what sounded like body armour.

Impressive, said the Brown Overmind, meaning it.

A further scream sounded from within that room. “Spider!” squealed the redoubtable Qilong, emerging to fling a very substantial, very hairy specimen of the Eastern bird-eating spider into the Cloudlands. The door immediately slammed shut behind him once more. Lia was not quite certain, but she thought she heard sobbing and gnashing of teeth in there.

Genzo’s smile conveyed the full magnificence of the gap between his front teeth. “Ah, my little quadruple overlapping rainbow of joy has appeared at last.”

Sumio rumbled, “He’s been smoking tekiweed.”

Whatever tekiweed was. Probably the contents of Commander Hiro’s favourite pipe, too. With a swish of her indecorously short shift, Hualiama paraded across Affurion’s talons and alighted on the Dragonship’s gantry. Genzo’s leer suggested he had just ogled the Isle of Paradise, but when he made to embrace her, Sumio stepped forward with startling swiftness for such a huge man and slammed a meaty fist upon the precise crown of the First Mate’s head. Lia remembered that manoeuvre rather too well. Genzo’s cheek struck the metal gantry with a fleshy slap.

Sumio executed an abbreviated Eastern bow, which was all the bending his enormous belly allowed. “He’ll thank me when he wakes.”

Affurion said, “Brief them thoroughly, Princess. Although, judging by recent events, I believe there’s one surprise you might want to consider not giving the noble Prince of Kaolili. The sight of you might just slay him.”

“Already slain,” came from behind the door.

Thus Lia returned to the territory of Northern Kaolili, boarding Qilong’s Dragonship with a suitable episode of drama and mischief-making. How long it seemed since she had essayed a one-woman assault on what she had taken for a pirate vessel, only to discover a new friend inside a sack, following which her own brother had attempted to offer his chained-up sister to the pirate-lord!

* * * *

Grandion extended the smallest talon of his left paw. “Last one.”

“Aye, mighty Dragon.” Jin wielded his metal file manfully, despite his bruised, blistered hands and evident fatigue.

“Then scare yourself up a decent meal, and work on putting meat on those bones,” the Tourmaline advised. “If I’m to swat you, I require something substantial to hit.”

“Aye, mighty Dragon.”

Grr … the boy never stopped. Grandion had never seen anyone, Human or Dragon, work like him–apart from Hualiama when she was in one of her moods that swung from immense discipline to self-punishment. Stoke his fires, he missed that girl. That Dragoness. His other forepaw clenched painfully, the sheathed talons bending with the force of his passion. He would have Hualiama for his own! Nobly and rightly, he would find a way to woo that incomparable Dragoness to his paw, his hunt, his roost! But how? How could he beat his brain into white-fire paths, not the madness and folly of Humanlove?

Forcing his attention back to the boy, he said, “So, Jin, I’m about to travel South again. Just one hundred leagues to the battle-front. I trust you’ve considered the strategy problem I set you yesterday?”

He bit his lip, sharpening Grandion’s talon with sure strokes of the file. “Aye, mighty Dragon.”

When no reply was immediately forthcoming, the Tourmaline hissed, “Whenever you’re ready.”

“Aye, mighty Dragon.”

“Find another answer before I sit on you!”

“Aye, mighty … Tourmaline.”

Grandion mock-snapped at him, while secretly turning third-heart-backflips at the boy’s spirit. Aye, if any Human after the Star Dragoness should rightly have been born a Dragon, it was Jinichi. Fire. It burned within him, a heart of fire. “Speak.”

“It strikes me that the problem is collateral damage, mighty Tourmaline,” he ventured.

“Elucidate.”

Jin shrugged. “Bluntly speaking, Dragons tend to tear each other to shreds. In any given encounter so much damage is done that the victorious Dragon must almost certainly retire afterward. To counter this issue, you require ranged weaponry, Dragon body-armour and more co-operative battle tactics. Many Lesser dragons might never learn to co-operate, but your Riders will.”

A true word. Grandion allowed warmth to enter his voice. “Aye, Jin. How would you convince Dragons to wear armour?”

“Is history not written by the winner?”

“Indeed. And what manner of ranged weaponry do you recommend?”

Reversing the file with the hand-speed of a born swordsman, the boy sketched rapidly on a flat patch of dust beside Grandion’s paw. “Perhaps, an adaptation of current technology. Imagine harness-mounted war crossbow emplacements carried Dragonback? Two, or even four emplacements on a bigger Dragon’s back. You said projectile weapons are the hardest for non-Blues to shield against.” His voice warmed as the sketch took shape. “Archers. They take shots as the Dragon closes with or breaks away from his enemy, when he is rendered vulnerable by a mighty strike. Dragon lances. Imagine the penetrative power of a thirty-foot metal lance driven by a Dragon’s explosive thrust!”

Then he coloured, perhaps realising he had spoken more in one breath than he had ever spoken to the Tourmaline Dragon before.

Grandion had a vision of this boy talking engineering and design with Hualiama in a cosy roost, just the two of them together, and he cricked his neck with a jerk of dismay. Green fires sizzled in his eyes, their colour clearly communicated to his Dragon senses. No! How could he allow her to be with another … how could he forbid it?

Mighty were his paws, yet they could never be mighty enough to hold his beloved Dragonfriend–Hualiama!

Roughly, he gathered his paws beneath him, forcing the boy to scramble aside. “I need to go!”

The Tourmaline charged out of the warehouse, uncaring of which Dragons his tail or wings struck on the way out. With a mournful bugle, he launched for the skies.

Battle! He must douse his sorrows in the ordeal of battle!

* * * *

Hualiama primped, Princess-style. She chuckled at herself in the small brass mirror in the shower-chamber of Qilong’s personal quarters. Nice black eye, girl. And enough cuts on her face alone to make one imagine she had mistakenly ambushed a thicket of rambling rose. A bucket-and-scoop bath in a small wooden tub proved an unexpected luxury. Prince Qilong had offered her the use of his grooming tools, oils, perfumes, scrubs, soaps, hair combs and trimmers, and a plethora of other items she honestly had no clue how to use, nor did she even recognise. He and her sister Fyria would have bonded like Dragons and lava. Fyria had a whole room in her chambers set aside for beautifying herself, not to mention eleven different maids.

Poor Qilong. He was mortified he could not offer her the finest silks of Helyon for her raiment. She had suggested she did not expect to find silks on a Dragonship of war, and she was much more comfortable in a shirt and trousers, o gracious Prince. He looked offended. She apologised. He apologised more.

She was just not used to the type of man who kept twenty-three freshly prepared, scented hair-oils on his dresser.

And you can stop sniggering right now, Dragonsoul! she added privately.

What? Poor, titchy Human, have you no conception of how much Dragons enjoy bathing, oiling, scrubbing and beautifying their scales, wishing merely to outshine a glorious twin-suns dawn?

Oh. I forgot.

Laughter diminished within her, as if her Dragoness drifted off to sleep. Enjoy your dinner with Prince Qilong, Humanlove.

She did exactly that. Bemused, Lia eyed the Prince across the dining table, an hour later, after the third course of a feast of spicy Eastern magnificence. Aye, it had taken the entire first course to reassure him that death in boiling lava, lightning strikes from her hands, decapitation or rooting around his innards with the point of a red-hot poker were not foremost on her mind. The Prince of Kaolili appeared to be plagued by a basketful of phobias. But once they fell to discussing the war and strategy and the merits of the very fine wines he served, not berry-wines as enjoyed in Fra’anior, but a type of sweet Eastern fruit called subigrai, Qilong revealed a first-rate mind and a bone-dry sense of humour that had her chuckling multiple times. Her enjoyment infected him with confidence. No more declarations of mastery of many Islands. Making strong headway on his fourth glass of the heady wine, he had turned into a loquacious storyteller, regaling her with tales of a misspent, bizarre youth, his misadventures flinging him from fumarole to volcano as his bewildered parents tried and failed to understand him in any detail whatsoever.

For her part, Hualiama teased the Prince about secretly being Fra’aniorian, desiring to kidnap a bride for himself.

The spectre of war remained ever present, however, so that when Emburifor the Red arrived to convey her to Kerdani City, the congenial dinner ended quickly. Qilong promised to closely consider her advice to retreat from the northern front and allow Azziala and Numistar easy access to Shinzen; the difficult part, they agreed, would be protecting Kaolili’s citizens.

Parting upon the forward gantry as the suns-shine of early evening bronzed the Eastern Archipelago’s garden-like Islands, he bowed stiffly from the waist. “Fly safely to Kaolili, o Princess. Will you promise to brief my father as to the evils that beset us? And aid us with every power you possess?”

From Emburifor’s palm, she bowed with equal formality. “It is my duty. I truly believe, Prince Qilong, that the Lost Islands will bypass the sparsely populated North and proceed straight to Kerdani City itself. I promise to do all in my power to aid your Kingdom.”

The barefoot Princess sallies forth, murmured her Dragoness.

Don’t make me blush. Besides, he has no clue about our powers.

Better that way.

Emburifor said, “I shall convey Affurion’s intelligence to the Dragons under the Tourmaline’s command.”

Interesting. What had Affurion wanted to convey to Grandion? Hualiama glanced briefly up at the Red, but he did not otherwise acknowledge her presence.

With mighty strokes of his eighty-foot wingspan, the stolid Red rose into the deepening evening. All that Lia knew of him was that he was a Dragon born and raised upon Gi’ishior. Emburifor seemed incurious about his passenger, giving monosyllabic answers to her questions, even in Dragonish. The scaly, silent type. So she gazed out to the West, thinking upon the almost-mythical Islands out there in the vast Cloudlands ocean, places with exotic names like Helyon, the Fingers of Ferial and faraway Immadia, famed as much for its mountainous beauty as, scholars fell over themselves to agree, the surpassing beauty of its women. Trust the fusty, male-dominated world of academia to agree on that essential fact! The Kingdom of Immadia was said to be the northernmost habitable Island of all, and to be guarded by legion Ice-Dragons and powerful Human enchantresses. She snorted quietly to herself. Aye, and the people probably piloted their Dragonships around the twin suns and rode Land Dragons for sport!

Southward they drove at a rapid twenty-eight leagues per hour, given the urgency of their errand and the benefit of a strong tailwind which whipped in from several points West of North. Hualiama gathered her borrowed cloak around her body, and put up the hood to mute the worst of the blast. Island after Island rolled by beneath them, verdant with mohili wheat and often dotted with wild cattle. Such a green, temperate land. She spied tranquil lakes and waterways from the air, glistening like beads of furnace-heated metal as the suns set, while flocks of white doves, narrow-banded egrets and broadwing charmers regularly fled the Dragon’s low-flying passage. Several times, she heard the haunting song of the Eastern balladeer nightingale, according to Elki, the finest songbird in the Island-World.

She sang several of her favourite ballads. To her amazement, Emburifor joined in enthusiastically and very skilfully indeed, but when she complimented him on his musicianship, he snorted and fell silent at once.

Carried swift and sure across the leagues in Emburifor’s strong paw, they passed the fourteen hours of night in this season and at the limit of the Red’s endurance, approached the heavily guarded and patrolled metropolis of Kerdani.

To the Palace, Dragonfriend? Emburifor asked.

Nay, to the Dragons’ roost, for my Grandion should be there, Hualiama replied. Thank you for your mighty efforts, Emburifor. You burned the leagues with honour.

The Red swooped soft-winged over the perfect grid streets and rows of ornate, identical houses, before banking sharply to come to a landing in the wide cobblestone courtyard between rows of towering, stone-walled storehouses. Dawn’s false blush had just touched the sky. Hualiama alighted stiffly. Three hundred and thirty leagues in a night. Awesome flying.

Emburifor’s paw rested briefly upon her shoulder, staggering her. Strength to your paw, noble Dragonfriend, he said. Grandion roosts yonder, with a strange boy as his servant.

A servant? Not like the Tourmaline at all.

The Red ambled off at once, clearly seeking a meal and rest. Lia peered after him for a moment. All that gruff standoffishness, then a warm parting? Peculiar.

After inquiring for directions from a snappish Green, Hualiama quickly moved between the resting Dragons to the rear of a huge, open room that smelled indelicately of tired, injured Dragons. Many were openly aggravated at the sight or scent of a Human; she kept her eyes fixed just ahead of her toes and moved on swiftly. Why? Did they not know who she was? Or did they resent a Dragon Rider? Next time, a grand entrance as a Star–

“Oof!”

“No Humans allowed! What’re you doing–”

Hualiama gave the teenager attempting to place her in a stranglehold from behind exactly one second to spit out his challenge before she revived a wrestling manoeuvre Hallon and Rallon had taught her, at her considerable cost, on the hot arena sands of the monastery training ground. Despite that he was half a head taller than her and several sackweight heavier, she made him eat dust. He groaned, but she had a Dragon’s grip on the nerve-centres of his neck and left shoulder. Stubborn brat! She quelled his squirming with an agonising pinch of the nerve.

“Right,” she hissed, more Dragoness than Human in the heat of her anger. “Who might you be? Grandion’s servant?”

“I am no-one’s servant–aah!”

“Shut the fumarole. Where’s the Dragon now?”

“Flown south–creeping maggots, will you get off me, man?”

“That’s lady, in case you missed it.” He made another groan, patently dismayed. “And no, not until you apologise for your cowardly attack.”

“Never … gnarrrrr … alright, alright! I surrender. Only because you’re a so-called lady.”

For that, she gave his nose an extra grind in the dirt before releasing her hold. The teenager, more a young man in her estimation, rolled over, but was not foolish enough to test her reflexes a second time. His shadowed grey eyes regarded her warily. Magically.

What? Mentally reeling, slamming up barriers on every front, Lia essayed her most fatuous smile. “Islands’ greetings. They sent me from the North with intelligence for Grandion,” she babbled. This was the Tourmaline’s alleged servant? A boy with secrets? “Is there another Dragon I can report to? When will Grandion be back?”

Her fists clenched. Wretched Tourmaline, had he not spoken of her to this boy? Was he a replacement Dragon Rider for Grandion? So help her, she’d make Tourmaline toast-bread out of that Dragon! She would etch her name in star-fire on both of his flanks and ride him roughshod through Fra’anior’s royal place, singing the Flame Cycle at the top of her lungs!

Meantime, she pasted a smile in place, borrowed Fyria’s exasperating habit of batting her eyelashes, and placing her hand on the young man’s arm, cooed, “Ooh, are you a warrior? So … muscly.”

“Jin,” he spluttered, turning scarlet.

“Oh, Jin. What a fine name.” She squeezed his arm again, while occupying her seething imagination with the pleasing image of grinding Grandion’s guts through a meat-mincer. “So, Jin, who can I deliver my message to?

It took him seven tries to form a coherent word after that. Lia counted.

After all, she was a Dragoness.

Chapter 20: Oaths that Bind

GRANDION GATHERED HIS Dragonwing for another pass. “Yukari, Akemi, cover us from above.” Dragoness and Rider nodded. “We should have relief from Kerdani by midday.”

Rolling her fire-eyes, Makani the Grey snarled, “A Dragonwing of the limping and wounded, mighty Grandion?”

Raiden snarled, “Some of us are still fighting!”

A low rumbling from Yukari’s chest brought their attention to the largest Dragoness, the battered, blind Aquamarine, who fought courtesy of her Rider Akemi’s sight. “We honour you, Raiden and Fumiko, Vinzuki and Tadao–all Dragons gathered here,” she said. “Our work is to purchase time. For I sense a change in the breezes of the Island-World. Strange alliances will be forged. Mighty deeds wrought. I see … I see a girl with blue and white hair–why does she sorrow?”

“That’s Hualiama,” the Tourmaline Dragon blurted out.

“The originator of your starlight-assault-shield?” said Yukari. Surprise caused her to switch to Dragonish mid-sentence.

She’s … creative, Grandion protested.

Several of the Dragons laughed at the befuddled-wonder nuances in his speech, but Yukari said privately to him, I told you she was a Dragoness, didn’t I?

He replied, Seventh sense. Wing-shivering!

Truth be told, youngling, I was just being contrary, obeying the fates in ways I scarcely understood. A star? My seventh sense saw no such end. Perhaps in order to resolve this conflict which drives you so bitterly, you need to discover your inner creativity, the antithesis of logical, draconic-brained solution-making.

Grandion bowed his muzzle. Aye, mighty Aquamarine.

As always, his conversations with the venerable Dragoness came laced with white-fires truth, the searing power of her seventh-sense-insight humbling his lesser perception. With every fibre and fire of his being, he desired to be like her, formidable in wisdom, yet curiously humble in her ways. Certainly, she had been irascible and provoking that day he and Hualiama encountered her in her magical pool, but Yukari had also been immediately accepting of his feelings–most of his feelings–for Hualiama, deriding his use of Projection-magic while accepting his soul-deep yearnings. The Dragoness had seen the glorious flight of the future when all Grandion had seen was pain and defeat.

Yukari said, “One more open-clawed talon-strike to the muzzle of the beast. Then, our noble leader will return to Kerdani.” His fires raged! “Aye. A Balance changes. A shift must come. We will continue the battle here. Grandion, o son of my fires, o quick-winged flame of truth, now is the hour to rouse your might and expend your righteous fury upon the adversaries of true-fires!”

The Aquamarine Dragoness’ challenge fired his wrath and passion like nothing before. His scales thrilled! The song of his fires whitened to blinding beauty! Suddenly, the tiredness of days and weeks sloughed off him like lava running off a Dragon’s back as he rose from the magma, glowing like the heart of a furnace, and he drew a breath of the Island-World’s air and magic unlike any that had ever filled his lungs before. Grandion saw realisation burning in the eyes of the Dragons ranged before him–Vinzuki and Raiden, Makani, Ryuki the Red and Tarbuzi and Yenuko, the Eastern Greens, many Dragons and two dozen Dragon-Rider pairs, down to the youngest, Kimiko, a girl of Naoko’s tribe of but fourteen summers, and her Green fledgling, Chamako. Now they would fly. Fight. Smash the enemy from the skies!

Sensing Grandion’s fierce gaze, Kimiko raised her Haozi hunting-bow aloft and yelled, “Dragons and Riders, let us burn the heavens together!”

Hualiama’s salute! If it were possible, his inner infernos burned even higher. So searing was his inner flame that Grandion saw smoke rising from his own paws. He must expend it!

Staggered, the Tourmaline whirled, and beat his wings. Follow me!

In his ear-canals was the whistling of wind as Grandion accelerated toward the battle-front just three leagues distant, where Commander Hiro’s Dragonship fleet had come under heavy attack from a Dragonwing of no less than two thousand double-headed Orange Dragons; but in his hearts, all this Dragon knew was the pure, thrilling battle-song of white-fires. In that instant, he knew what compelled Hualiama to dance from fate to fate. Elemental force. The overwhelming desire to respond to the song raging in his hearts. The awareness of a Dragonish nature perfectly designed for the joy of soaring and battling and loving in the airy spaces.

Immense skyward acceleration catapulted him far ahead of his fellows. Grandion rose higher and higher from his already great altitude of three leagues above the Cloudlands. The thinness of air screamed in his lungs. The Dragonships were dots beleaguered by a cloud of orange. Four hundred air vessels, holding off the green-headed Dragons with catapults, crossbows and arrows, their armour smoking as it came under sustained fire. The Oranges were not using their poison gas because the prevailing wind blew against them. Wind …

Furling his wings, Grandion dove. He plummeted like a falcon hunting its prey. Faster! He stretched out his body and trimmed his wings for the ultimate slipstreaming, using Hualiama’s clever shields to shear through the frigid air of the heights. Five miles distant. Four. The wind in his ears built to a shriek as the Tourmaline considered the wind, the storming, blustering, restless winds of his Island-World, and funnelled those winds toward his plummeting body. Storm raged! In his mind, a tiny girl with fluttering white-blonde hair leaped into a treble spin before landing with butterfly grace, her bare right leg extended in sinuous, muscular perfection, and Grandion channelled that knowledge back into his attack. Corkscrew, the Humans called it. A sustained barrel-roll that would concentrate the winds about his rotating body, his draconic magic reaching far and wide to muster the forces of Nature to his beck and call … he spun! Again! A growl of thunder; the sense of clouds gathering both in his wake and before him, as though conjured into being as the skies conjured carrion-birds at the advent of battle.

Below his position, the Orange Dragons reacted. He had taught them the meaning of hatred and fear; he had vented his Tourmaline-fuelled spleen upon them. They drew together, rising in a knot as if linked into a single organism, forming shields, and readying wings and belly-fires.

Cloud-blackened sky and fertile green Islands switched places as he twirled toward the Orange Dragonwing, the fires and potentials tightening his belly into an unbearable knot. Closing in. Three miles. Two. The Oranges spread out like a field of ralti sheep exposed to the wingéd hunter.

Did Hualiama not love the ballad of Saggaz Thunderdoom? The words raced through his mind:

Bestriding boiling thunderheads, the Thunderdoom arose,

His roar a trump of thunder,

Like wingéd lightning his mighty paw,

Struck the skies asunder!

So the magic rose in him, the Blue Dragon power of Storm, and his throat enlarged with the voice of his thunder, and all four paws clenched as though to mimic the action of drawing his storm together, and Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon thrummed in every bone and muscle and sinew.

He had never known speed like this. A dark windstorm to wreathe his wings. Lightning playing from wingtip to tail, from his paws to the clouds, lighting his storm tunnel from within. Flash! Flash! Grandion had a millisecond to consider the unexpected benefit of his having outpaced his fellow-Dragons, that the extreme angle of his attack would take him beyond the Dragonships, so that his Storm would fall primarily upon the enemy Dragons. Cutting shields! An infusion of her Star-power!

Well within that final mile now, his challenge belled out: ALASTIOR!!

He smote them with the paw of the Thunderdoom.

* * * *

Mid-sentence, Zulior snapped out his paw as Hualiama folded softly over his talons. She clutched her heart. “Oh, I feel … alright?”

The stalwart Red touched her solicitously. “Strength to thee, Dragonfriend.” So huge was his paw, his talons covered her back from neck to knees, but Lia appreciated the outpouring of his healing strength. “I have not Qualiana’s gifting in the healing arts, but there are talon-times and knuckles-of-the-fist times, are there not?”

She chuckled weakly at his rough jest, a transliteration of a draconic saying. Blunt instrument or not, she tingled from head to toe. “I thank thee, mighty Zulior. Roost-uncle.”

His delighted bugle rang out over the courtyard, causing many Dragons to lift their heads in surprise. “How you do redefine the nature of familial relationships, Dragonfriend!” he boomed. “So, Grandion borrowed your power through the oath-connection you were telling me about?”

“He did, I think.” Hualiama frowned, pushing off his paw with a self-conscious flexion of her arms. “Is he in trouble, Zulior? Should we fly to him?”

He snuffled once in her direction, his foot-wide nostrils flaring, as if to ascertain that all was well with her. Gruffly, he said, “I have not the Aquamarine’s facility in the higher arts, but I believe you would know if Grandion were injured or worse, Hualiama. This oath-power is a strange, binding magic. Who knows the purposes of the Great Onyx in blessing the speaking of such an oath as shared between you and the Tourmaline?”

Who knew indeed? She rubbed her chest thoughtfully, wishing strength to Grandion’s paw, wherever he was. Pensively, she pushed back her hood and shook her hair free, as if intent on shaking free the remaining cobwebs in her head.

“Perhaps I should transform in secret, and try to heal some of these Dragons?”

“Perhaps we should brief the King?” Zulior countered, lifting his massive chin to point behind her.

Hualiama turned to spy the King of Kaolili marching briskly into the courtyard, flanked by his retinue of Councillors. Great. She had wobbly knees, an icky stomach and a mortifying memory of her previous interview with the King, clad only in her bath towel. One better, this time. She wore a grubby pirate’s cloak, a man’s shirt and Dragon-Hater coverall underwear, but still had bare feet–an insult in Eastern culture.

Straight back and shoulders, o Princess of the Overlarge Volcano, her Dragoness teased.

That’s the perfect compass-point, Dragonlove.

Hualiama straightened her back, squared her shoulders and essayed a commanding tilt of her chin. Princess-presence, personified. Halfway through these adjustments, an invisible fist socked her mind into the following week.

Her knees hinged and Hualiama remembered nothing more.

* * * *

The advent of the Tourmaline Dragon’s Storm-blast made the massed Dragonwing of Oranges unfurl and peel apart like the petals of a large flower.

With the peal of his thunder,

He smote them asunder!

A tinkle of feminine laughter. Poetry etched upon his awareness, as clear-cut as the edges of his talons. The Blue-star rode with him! Grandion’s hearts sang! He existed between the complex beats of his pounding hearts, the moment of striking the Orange Dragons magnified into excruciating leisureliness in his acuity, so that his mind had time to resound with each individual note of his fury, and every sensation and scent and assessment of the situation arrived individually, to be tasted and savoured and acted upon. A fist of black-edged clouds crumpled a Dragon’s wing. Forked lightning blasted about him in uncountable multiple strikes, literally detonating three heads before his marvelling gaze. The leading edge of his shield pierced bodies like a living sword, an invisible talon-stroke worthy of an Ancient Dragon.

WHAA-BOOM!! The impact rattled him to the marrow, a thunderclap that flung the Dragons apart for a thousand feet in every direction, smashing ribs and dislocating shoulders and snapping tails.

Darkness engulfed him; a Dragon blinked in memory of his first sight after breaking the eggshell. He saw paws, wings and whole Dragons raining from the smoke-streaked sky all about, and a hole ripped through the Orange formation that perfectly framed the bulk of Yukari, rushing to his aid. Grandion shook himself slowly. What had happened? He smelled ozone. Lightning still played between numbers of the green-headed Dragonkind, dazing them; the balance of his Dragonwing struck almost unopposed, tearing further, smaller holes in the formation. Yukari’s attack was especially powerful, a chain of lightning that crackled through her foes quicker even than a Dragon’s eye could follow, striking seven beasts out of the sky.

Yukari raced past him. A respectable blow, youngster.

Her strength touched him briefly, shocking the Tourmaline out of his dazed contemplation.

He had unwittingly raided Hualiama’s power, he realised. What damage would such a draw have wreaked upon her Human form, or done to a hatchling? He called for her within, but heard no reply.

Were these his wings? He could barely feel them. Nor could he hear the sounds of battle, as he expected. When he flew, he felt like a wineskin sloshing about with water.

The Aquamarine cried, Raiden, Vinzuki, protect the Tourmaline!

With that, the green-headed ones rushed inward, bellowing their hatred of the Tourmaline and all that he stood for.

* * * *

Hualiama awoke snorting at a pungent scent. However, that was immediately followed by a sip of fresh water offered from a golden chalice, and a gentle waft of large feather fans to stir the air about her aching head. Sweet. Her nose wrinkled. She lay upon a luxurious pallet, her weary brow supported by cushions of Helyon silk, while four slaves held an awning overhead to shield her from the hardly ferocious morning suns, and two servant girls fanned her with very large feathers of a bird whose magnificent plumage had unfortunately been plundered to supply her royal comfort.

Her eye further fell upon the King of Kaolili taking his ease upon a throne nearby, enjoying a similar standard of treatment as he spoke earnestly with Zulior the Red.

She grated, “Why do I lie thus when the world is at war?”

However, standing up was more than she could manage. Lia settled back on her pillows and accepted an Eastern candy-gum from a golden platter. Actually, life could be worse. She could be Grandion, pouring out heart and lifeblood for a foreign kingdom.

Across the courtyard, Jin’s gaze prickled. Hualiama raised her chin. Deal with you later, young man. To his credit, he did look as if he had swallowed a mouthful of raw windroc egg.

Zulior said, A modicum of respect for a King, Star Dragoness!

Aye, noble Dragon.

Not for nothing had she been raised the daughter of royalty in one of the noblest and most ancient Human courts in the Island-World. Hualiama raided her unique royal bag of manners, gumption and public show. Asking a servant to help her sit up, she greeted the King cordially. If he was surprised at her appearance, his expressionless Eastern face did not show it. His greeting, however, betrayed an underlying satisfaction which she took to mean calculation, perhaps a bride for Qilong, or leverage to gain a goal she could guess at–safety for his kingdom. Could she keep the secret of her Shapeshifting out of his devious grasp?

Inside, her Dragoness looked on with alert interest, for which Lia was grateful.

With the niceties dealt with, she set about describing to the King the dangers posed by Numistar, the Land Dragons and Azziala. A lump shifted beneath her clothing. Flicker! How long had he slept? Why was he waking only now, and how had he survived her ridiculous fainting antics?

He should be a good conversation-starter.

Reaching down her top, Hualiama extracted the startled dragonet by his tail. “Behold!”

* * * *

Following a three-hour cross-examination by the King’s Councillors, Hualiama sulked off to a quiet corner behind a stack of rainwater barrels and transformed into her Star Dragoness. She flexed her claws. Human-Lia might have exercised polite restraint, but her Dragoness was a different gemstone-cut. Hiding her clothing and weapons, she took Flicker upon her shoulder and snuck off in search of mischief.

Well, injured Dragons.

While her Human sweated pure lava dealing with Grandion and a King’s demands, her Dragoness had apparently been resting and recovering her magic. Now there was an unanticipated benefit of being a Shapeshifter!

The infirmary warehouse was a hotbed of irascible Dragons. Scaly beasts made poor patients. Several Reds near the entrance were bellowing for Sunfyora, a pale Yellow Dragoness–no, her colour must be Citrine-Blue, Lia decided–working on an Eastern Green with a clearly snapped wing primary, over on the far side of the huge open area of hard-packed sand. When she stepped over to the Reds to ask about the Healer-Dragon, they quietened immediately with that draconic fondness for hatchlings that Hualiama had always noticed and appreciated. Dragons loved younglings. At once the fire-eyes mellowed to apricot, and the nearest Red, an eighty-foot bruiser with four missing fangs in his upper left jaw and a hole the size of a cart in his lower left flank, nuzzled her encouragingly.

Sulphurous strength to thee, thou radiance of the skies, he rumbled, in a voice like a proximate earthquake. Ask after Sunfyora, the Citrine-Blue yonder. Art thou a student?

Of life, aye. Of many things. Aye, noble Red, I wish to learn the healing arts, she replied, truthfully. She had learned a great deal of theory from Siiyumiel, but the practice applied to the real hurts and appalling injuries she saw about her, was another Island entirely.

I shall take thee hence, youngling, the Red offered immediately.

I thank thee, noble …

Burliki the Red, of Fraxx, he declaimed, striking the obligatory draconic ‘admire-my-muscles’ pose.

No older male would importune a hatchling for her name. This was standard Dragon culture. They wound between many Dragons who wore terrible injuries–amputated limbs, torn wings, fang-pocked hides and missing eyes, not to mention burn wounds and a number of Dragons that appeared to have been poisoned, who writhed about in terrible pain–and approached Sunfyora. She was a pretty, slender Eastern Dragon built along the lines of Mizuki–much leaner than the Western Dragonkind of Fra’anior, with a less pronounced neck-ruff and a leaner frame overall. Though she was sixty feet long, she stood only twelve feet tall at the shoulder, Lia estimated, and her harried manner bespoke too many hours spent treating too many Dragons.

Sunfyora, your student, Burliki said.

At last. Hold this wing while I pull the bone straight.

Right. I can’t reach, noble Sunfyora, Hualiama said diffidently, earning herself a doting purr from Burliki and several other Dragons nearby, who were also waiting for treatment.

Sunfyora barely glanced sideways. Those null-fire idiots! I asked for an experienced healer-Dragon, not some hatchling still yolk-slick around the skull-spikes. Make yourself useful, youngling. Your skills?

Lia asked, Skills?

Training! Where were you trained? Sunfyora examined the splintered primary closely, her secondary membranes blinking in a way Lia had never observed before. Or were those tertiary membranes, or some property of a draconic eye unique to the Citrine-Blue? While I twist the bone back into alignment–are you listening, hatchling? Can you not follow the simplest instructions? On my word!

Gripping the Green’s shoulder joint with one paw pressed flat against the hide and the other positioned near the secondary wing joint, Sunfyora flexed her muscles, pulling outward while twisting an eighth of an inch at a time. Concentrating deeply, Hualiama followed her instructions, settling the bone splinters back as exactingly as possible. The Citrine-Blue applied her magic along the bone; after a few minutes Lia unobtrusively joined in, first observing how the expert healer worked, before supplying her own sense of Balance. White-fires flowered delicately along the three-foot break site. The long bone splinters shifted slightly before drawing together as if welcoming wholeness. The Star Dragoness reached out to prod a recalcitrant splinter back into place before the flesh sealed over the bone. Good as new. Drawn on, she worked on the main arteries that ran along a pronounced groove on the inside of the bone, restoring full flow, and soothed the bruising and nerve damage. The Green’s wing trembled as the arteries and capillaries feeding the sensitive surface visibly swelled and stiffened. He flexed the outer third with a gasp of amazement.

Hualiama lifted her muzzle. Oh. How was that–

Sunfyora stared at her as if she had seen a two-headed rajal stroll into the room and start dancing the Flame Cycle. She said, Who did you say you were, little one?

Uh, is it good? The wing, noble Dragon?

The Green lifted his wing gingerly, then waggled it with growing confidence. By the First Egg … impossible! Look, wing-brothers!

The Citrine-Blue snapped, Don’t you try flying just yet! A day’s rest at least–I think. No, go outside and test it, carefully. Hatchling. Over here. Show me what you can do with these poisoned bite-wounds.

Re-grafting puncture wounds was more complicated. Hualiama made an attempt under Sunfyora’s direction, but the complexities of the draconic dermal and subcutaneous tissues defeated her at first. Draconic hide boasted no less than three distinct layers of hide-armour, all fed by complex nerve, vascular and magical systems, which the healer-Dragoness saw with what she called Deep Sight, a Dragon-power Hualiama had never heard of. Coupled with her own emergent understanding of Balance, they steadily rebuilt a Red Dragon’s horrible neck-wounds from the inside out.

You have power, hatchling! Sunfyora muttered at one point.

Power, perhaps, but a lack of knowledge and experience in how to apply it, the Star Dragoness said ruefully.

Straw-head, Flicker murmured into one of her ear-canals.

The Citrine-Blue snorted happily, bathing Hualiama’s shoulder in a friendly curl of fire. No hatching grows into their paws in a day. Now, let’s send this fine Red on his way. Two days, and that new skin will harden into full armour. Ready for another problem? Burliki has severe intestinal and skin damage–

I’m Hualiama, Lia blurted out.

Sunfyora made a pleased ruffle of her double-wings. I guessed. The mighty Tourmaline spoke of the birth-in-fire of a Star Dragoness. We all expected you to be–she coughed a delicate smoke-ring–bigger.

From her other side, the chunky muscle-mountain that was Burliki wafted scented fire over them both, tingling Lia’s highly sensitive nostrils with notes of anise, tarragon, a host of tangy metallic scents beyond her ken and a rich floral bouquet unexpectedly similar to the fireflower perfume of the Fra’anior Cluster. Sunfyora nudged him slyly and suggested that neither she nor the Star Dragoness spoke Franxxian Aroma-Dialect, and could he desist from wafting over her patients? Another intriguing nuance of draconic life she had not encountered in her travels through scroll-lore. Observing their interaction, Lia concluded that despite her protestations, the resulting acceleration of hearts-beats and burbling of belly-fires implied that those scents had the desired effect on Sunfyora.

An hour later, Burliki was the proud owner of a shiny new patch of Dragon hide larger and wider than Dragoness-Lia was tall.

“We could do with combining these techniques with Human medical science,” Lia mused aside to Sunfyora. “Stitching intestines beforehand would have shaved half of the time off of what we just achieved. Teach me more, please, noble Dragoness.”

The Citrine-Blue made a smoky humph that implied Star Dragoness magic was somewhat unique. “If you learned to draw upon the injured Dragon’s resources, that would conserve your strength.”

“We did well,” Lia protested.

Mud-for-brains, Flicker muttered in his sleep. Hualiama considered the patch of warmth sleeping beneath her skull-spikes, in the hollow between the skull-plate that anchored the spikes and her neck itself. Flicker reincarnate. The second Flicker. How poignant her memories. She could not stand to lose him again.

“We’ve two hundred and seventy-six patients left,” countered the other Dragoness.

Lia showed her a few needle-sharp hatchling fangs.

“Point taken.” Sunfyora gave her a playful wing-slap. “Let’s get to work, student!”

* * * *

Four hours after midnight, Grandion spied the relief spearing through a cloudbank and frowned. How had Zulior conjured up such a miraculous number of Dragons? By the pale, beautiful light of a full Blue moon, his magnified sight picked out the individuals in that group, whereupon his hearts quickened to the tune of a fine, smoky snort of wonderment. By the First Egg of all Dragons! There came Burliki, flying with relative ease, and had not Tenzu of Tyrodia’s right wing been shredded so severely, the Brown had been forced to walk the last four leagues back to Kerdani? Yet he soared aloft, favouring the right only marginally.

Grandion led his paw-weary, battered Dragonwing on an intercept course. Ten more Dragons appeared from the clouds. Two dozen!

Raiden growled, “What is this, o Tourmaline?”

Fumiko, who had been dozing in her seat between his spine-spikes, straightened up with a bark of laughter. “I know, Grandion–don’t you?” His scales prickled in anticipation. “Don’t you Dragons scent these things with your sixth or seventh sense?”

No seventh sense was needed. Grandion could smell those little laughing paws from a hundred leagues off. A resounding chuckle vibrated deep in his chest, a near-subsonic rumble. Where she was concerned, just listen to the logical fallacies in his thinking. Laughing paws? O Dragon of muddled fires! He bugled quietly, “Hualiama.”

“Oh, how romantic!” the blacksmith Tadao sighed, drawing an amused glance from his warrior-wife Fumiko.

Here was another masterpiece of her paw. A family of Dragons and Dragon Riders, the mated pairs of Vinzuki and Raiden oath-linked with Fumiko and Tadao.

Grandion pumped his aching wings, sweeping his battle-scarred body up to the incoming Dragonwing. Romantic? She refused his advances! He must woo her, entice her, with the uttermost draconic cunning, or his ascending fire-oaths meant nothing.

Yet if Blue-star had rebelled against her mother’s dominion, that too was a sign and a portent. He lauded the decision. Shinzen’s Giants and Dragonwings closed in from the southwest, south and east. The huge Island that housed the Human capital city lay but fifty leagues ahead. If she had reached the capital, that meant the Lost Islands could not be far behind–a pawful of days at most.

The battle must draw together at Kerdani.

Chapter 21: Rainbows over Islands

HUALIAMA SLEPT FLANK-TO-FLANK with Sunfyora in the Dragon fashion, her paws twitching lightly, now and again, as she dozed restlessly. Eggling-dreams beset her. Chaotic, filled with desperate liaisons with her White Dragoness mother and Fra’anior’s thundering and endless fleeing from the wild storms of the Ancient Dragon’s presence. Again and again, she tumbled away over the Islands of the world, seeking her soul’s rest, her home, unable to find what she desired most … and she whimpered and cried out, and Sunfyora comforted her with a motherly paw and a warm word.

At last came a time when she fell deeply asleep, and found herself in what she had come to think of as her soul-space, the home she and her Human shared.

“Humansoul?” she called, padding up the steps to the bed–which held a scaly intruder!

A Dragon! A wing, a girl slumbering between paws as white as anemone petals … Numistar! Oh mercy, it could not be! Her paws froze with shock, her mind charged up the steps and pounced on that Dragoness in a terrible, rending battle-fury, but her body refused to obey.

“Numistar! Get away from her!”

“Numistar?” said the White Dragoness, in tones so ineffably sweet and melancholy, Hualiama’s fires sorrowed and swooped toward darkness. “Do you know me so little?”

“I-I … Istariela! Shell-mother!”

She bounded up those steps in a flash and crashed into the beautiful arch of her mother’s neck, the diamond-frosted scales, the scent she had so long imagined filling her nostrils with cascades of hope and sorrow and ecstasy. Hualiama cried, Tell me you’re real! Is this real? Shell-mother?

May she crawl back inside the eggshell; may she re-enter her mother’s womb!

Istariela’s paw clasped her close, desperate, tender, trembling. A wordless crooning rose from her throat, before she choked it off, saying, As real as my spirit-presence embodied across the leagues, my darling shell-daughter, my song, my third-heart. How I have longed for this day.

So you are present? In this Island-World?

Hualiama … her head jerked; her paw clenched painfully tight. He hunts. Please, let this be … let it suffice. How I wish I could be closer, yet–

Yet I am to endure the terrible choices of two exiled, absentee parents?

Human arms wound around her neck. The girl touched her Dragoness’ cheek, her eyes brimming with more understanding and grief than either soul could bear. She, of all people, knew first-hand the pain of separation and loss. Then the Human girl had learned the shattering truth of her parentage; despite that, Humansoul was still generous with her love. The Dragoness sighed up a gust that shivered every scale on her body.

Human-Lia said, “We know, don’t we? We honour our legacy, being shell-daughter to the most legendary Dragon-pair in history, yet what heartache they chose …”

“Fate’s choice?” echoed the Star Dragoness, with a bittersweet chuckle. “Do we choose a fate, or does fate choose for us?”

Istariela’s face was a picture of puzzlement, even suspicion. “There’s two Hualiamas? Explain your … ah, self? Selves?”

“We believe we may be the third race,” Dragon-Lia began, only to be halted in her tracks by a screech.

“That prophecy is about you?” the White Dragoness gasped. “Already I have seen its portents, but concluded that the ‘third race’ was Dramagon’s creation, or an event heralded by the comet of Numistar Winterborn. I don’t know if you understand, that though I see that your bodies appear separately in this place, they are not truly separate. I see oneness. More than cohesion, more than unity. You … and you … are linked–why? One soul-presence blurred, like two flowers sharing a single stem–”

“We can help a bit,” Human-Lia said, “but there’s much to learn. My brother Elki described our state, our abilities, as Shapeshifting. We are one soul manifest in two likenesses, perhaps as you might imagine the two sides of one coin. Our physical forms coincide–in oneness, inseparable, except in this place. It appears that injury to one form reflects in the other. Though I don’t know how a wing-injury might reflect on our Human form, for example. These forms must recharge differently. The Human can starve if only the Dragoness manifests for a period of time–I need to test the parameters–but the Dragon magic can replenish while the Dragoness is … elsewhere. And it does seem that we may be a Star Dragoness, although we aren’t sure–”

Istariela growled, “You are a Star Dragoness, and my progeny!”

Both forms of Hualiama bowed simultaneously, making Istariela’s beautiful brow-ridges wrinkle in consternation.

She whispered, “So close it is, I almost grasp a prophetic truth …”

Her eyes lidded, then opened upon pure white flame. In a great voice, the White Dragoness recited:

Could it be that from tragedy,

Beauty might rise,

In form unbeknown to me?

Let it be. Let it be! LET IT BE!

Thunder without storm rolled across the starlit skies, shaking Hualiama in ways and depths she could not begin to articulate. Once more, the treble power of oath-making! Thrice spoken, once ordained, Fra’anior the Onyx had taught her, stressing great caution in the making of such oaths.

A sulphurous wind wafted into the chamber.

Now Istariela quaked from muzzle to wingtip. What have I done? I have summoned him–you cannot trust Fra’anior, my precious ones! Never!

She winked out of existence, making both Hualiamas stumble forward in surprise. In almost the same instant, a titanic voice smote her world:

ISTARIELA! TRAITORESS!

Lia knew she had to wake. She had to flee Fra’anior, for if she were caught with the White Dragoness, he would punish her, too … away. Away, Hualiama!

And she was gone.

* * * *

Grandion prowled into the infirmary building, ninety feet of predatory silence. Shielded. Pad-footed. Even his breathing stilled, and he banked his belly-fires despite their agitated churning at the prospect of meeting Hualiama once more. Last time he had Projected himself into her presence, she had rejected his advances–rightly, he had concluded, but her refusal still rankled.

Rock-headed, wilful, exasperating … female!

Who was the more infuriating, her Human or her Dragoness? Dealing with one female was more than enough for most Dragons, but two? Insanity.

There she was, scales agleam with inner radiance as though she dreamed amidst starry realms, casting a pool of light where she lay alongside Sunfyora. Without so much as disturbing a blade of straw on the floor, Grandion slipped over to her flank, imagining how she would react. A shriek? A bugle of delight? A coy whirl of her half-lidded fire-eyes to regard his massively impressive masculine poise, before a demure dip of her gaze?

Closer. A wingtip-touch separated them now.

The Star Dragoness’ eyes flicked open, perfectly focussed on him. The most sulphurous greetings of the Great Dragon to thee, noble Tourmaline.

As if he had never left.

The Tourmaline’s fires thundered up into his throat; he immediately swallowed them back down again, lest he engulf a hatchling in the inferno of his mortification and annoyance. The result was that he stood flat-pawed and gaping like the most idiotic of feral Dragons, while Hualiama stretched as the dawn spreading its artful wings across the sky, and smiled a smile that obliterated any control he might have imagined exerting over his knees, or any other bodily movement. Overbalancing, he pitched forward on his nose.

Oh, you’re injured, she cried. Where does it hurt, my beloved?

Beloved? Nowhere so injured as in his third heart.

Her reaction was dismay. Grandion heard himself mutter an inanity about torn wings as the Star Dragoness immediately fell to fussing over him, checking his various wounds; while her tiny hearts pounded away at hummingbird-speed, as if she swirled through the midst of an aerial battle, betraying her agitation with every pulse. Emotion clogged his throat and crammed into his mind. Relief. Sorrow. Transcendent love mingled with undraconic fear. For he knew that all the might, magic and power of a Tourmaline Dragon lay defenceless before what he felt for her, the starlight of his nocturnal skies.

How he thrilled to the caress of her magic upon his hypersensitive wing-membranes, a sensation at once soothing and enflaming, and the affectionate touch of tiny paws setting straight wing struts and arranging membranes to be healed; he heard within her resonant harmonic magic a deeper, more enchanting Dragonsong than anything he had ever imagined, a song of restoration and mending and passion which beguiled his hearts until his breast hurt with the very fullness of the sum of the Island-World’s wonder. Even breathing seemed superfluous. Exaltation! Stupefying, wing-shivering glory!

Her breathing came faster and faster, gasping, wheezing, her touch ever more frantic and fleeting. ‘Soul-connection!’ he wanted to cry. ‘Love overwhelms all with billows of fragrant fire!’

No … she panted. I cannot, I must not … oh, Grandion!

She flashed away from him, incredibly fleet of paw and wing. Panicked. Wild-eyed. Her sinuous form streaked a zigzag course between the tall, thickset beams which supported the ceiling, carved of the trunks of jinsumo trees, and darted toward the wide-flung doorway before Grandion was able to do more than shift a paw.

Hualiama! He lurched after her, running, dodging with Dragon-reflexes so that neither tail nor wingtip touched a sleeping Dragon in passing, but his greater bulk counted against him. Grandion was five seconds behind the fleeing hatchling as she passed the warehouse exit, seventy feet wide and thirty tall. The moment he charged through the doors, he coiled his massive thighs and sprang for the skies, clearing the buildings before taking his first downward stroke. Whap! Dust exploded across the courtyard. Whap-whap-whap! Rapid, circumscribed flutter-strokes fuelled his monstrous acceleration as the Tourmaline Dragon streaked toward the dawn’s first blush. Aided by the gleam of a three-quarters Yellow Moon dominating the eastern horizon, he cast about, first low and then high. Vanished? Impossible–no, there! A hint of disturbance as she nipped through a puffy, low-lying cloud. The hunter in him roused. Dragon senses reached out. His nostrils flared wide, drinking in the scents of daybreak, including faint traces of her unique, complex Dragoness-scent, marking a trail that to his heightened perception described an artist’s skyward-pointing brush-stroke.

Upward! His entire body flexed, raising howls of protest from his tired, overworked muscles. But he was Tourmaline. He hunted for joy. Storm winds filled his wings as his magic and strength catapulted the Dragon toward the upper curvature of the Yellow Moon.

Hualiama!

Tiny wings fluttered like a blue moth amidst the dusky clouds.

Hualiama, my third heart, come to me. Be with me.

She strained harder, somehow managing to maintain her lead. Pride in her Dragoness-strength caused a delighted bugle to vent from his throat.

Grandion swept through the sparse altostratus cloud layers and vaulted into the endless airy dome above. He had miscalculated the hour. It was a few minutes after dawn, but the rising suns were eclipsed by the Yellow Moon, streaming out from behind it in great, thick spikes of golden light, as though the skull-ruff of a golden Sun-Dragon rose to salute the heavens. Beauty to enflame a Dragon’s hearts forever.

That light reached across the world as his chase lengthened and the suns rose, until her hatchling-proportioned strength began to fail, as it surely must.

Then he called to her in silken tones, soothing her overwrought state, although he sensed the near-feral response of earlier had long since abated. Could he conclude that she was Dragoness enough to desire and invite his chasing? Surely too simplistic an answer.

Ah, by his wings! Now let the supreme draconic wiles of a Tourmaline Dragon dazzle his oath-partner!

With a confident laugh, Grandion reached for the Dragoness.

* * * *

Undone by a word, ambushed by her emotions, Hualiama saw no path but to flee. She had no choice. Once that millisecond decision had been taken, she was at the mercy of draconic reactions and battle-readiness and, if she were honest, plain and simple fear. She flew as if she could slough off that angst like a butterfly breaking free of its chrysalis. She flew even when the panic abated and she knew Grandion chased her, because her humiliation would not allow otherwise.

Please catch me. Please leave me alone. Her thoughts swung between two diametrically opposed Islands. Where would she fly? She did not care. Out here she might play in golden suns-beams and sport with the dawn, sensing from far off the gazes of the watch-Dragons upon her, but not giving a rotten prekki-fruit peel for their regard.

So when Grandion’s laughter reverberated against her belly, she voiced an involuntary squeak of dismay, Dragon!

Aye, Dragon, he laughed, touching her right wingtip with his left. He rolled smoothly beneath her, before popping up on her port flank with a discomfiting grin. Wingtips!

This time, his touch deliberately rocked her in the air.

Grandion! What are you doing?

Ugh, squeak-monster, her Human complained within. Can we act our age, please?

What do you mean? He’s the one chasing me.

Humansoul managed to project a mental image of folding her arms across her chest, accompanied by an infuriating smirk. Let me draw the runes for you, wing-sister. One fine morning over the Islands, a gorgeous chunk of male Dragonhood spies a pretty Dragoness. He’s brewing molten lava for her. The thought of him makes her fly like a drunken windroc …

What? You pesky little–

But the Dragoness’ furious response was forestalled as Grandion whooshed beneath her, turned an aerial somersault-and-a-half almost in front of her muzzle, and tapped her wingtips somehow from above, upside-down in the air. Wingtips. Don’t you know the game?

The Star Dragoness gulped, No … will you teach me?

Her Human almost split her sides laughing. Now who’s flirting?

What are you doing, Tourmaline? The Dragoness scowled mutinously at the insouciant male Dragon, who flipped her left wingtip again before she could snatch it back. Stop that at once.

Make me.

Honestly. Fires back of the fangs, smoke, the conceited posturing of a strapping young Dragon. Ooh. Irresistible. Dragon-Lia struggled to keep a level flight, and failed. Human-Lia could not stop chortling. The Dragoness decided she would slap that irksome Human girl so hard–Grandion!

Now he was flying backward through the air, his forearms folded across his chest, while from the crook of his left elbow, he waggled a talon at her in an extraordinarily faithful mimicry of her royal tutor back at Fra’anior. He boomed, “Now, Princess, you shall recite the lay of the major Islands from West to East, not missing a single one, or we shall be at our lessons all day.”

Her jaw dropped. Had he spied on her? When?

Breaking that Human pose, he flowed like a river of gemstone-blue scales about her bedazzled, irresolute flight-path. Wingtips. Wingtips. Everywhere she turned, Grandion was there. Dizzying. Maddening. Resplendent of scale. The fire-scent of his presence, deliciously overwhelming. Wingtips. Come on, Hualiama. You ask what we’re doing? We’re dancing. This is how Dragons dance.

Dancing? Of course.

Memories of courtship-rituals filtered slowly into her mind as she whirled around and around, both unwilling and unable to abscond from the adoring ambit of her Dragon. Dancing aloft. Shooting the fragrant breezes above the Islands with her beloved. The ages-old ceremonies that preceded the breathing of ascending fire-promises between male Dragon and female, which they had already begun. One was even her namesake, Blue-star.

Was love not a dance? When knowledge and purpose and tenacity failed her, where had she always turned? Dance. Yet now another craved to join her. He wanted to be her focal point, her flame, her muse. There was much that was not possible between them, which might never become possible, and would undoubtedly be consumed in days to come by the violent paroxysms of war. Yet the moment presented itself to her. All that was required, was to take destiny into her paws, and dance.

Stilling herself in the air, Hualiama lifted her muzzle imperiously. Alastior, I affirm that I am Blue-star, shell-daughter of Istariela and Fra’anior the Onyx, and I would have this dance with thee.

It was not a request.

* * * *

Dragon and Dragoness danced a stately prelude. Wingtips patting. Necks entwining. Fire-eyes fixed upon each other in the slow, spiralling ascent of matched flight.

It was Hualiama who wriggled free first, with a bright shout of laughter and a cheeky dart aimed at his left wingtip. She slapped it with her tail before spinning away. A coy wing-flip shot her past Grandion’s nose, which she managed to tap on the way past with her fore-talon, the rascally mite! Then she was somersaulting, diving, pirouetting and jiving to the beat of their Dragonsong, her bright laughter washing over him like the suns-shine. He matched her every manoeuvre, a larger, more dignified counterpoint to the irrepressible celebrations of his tiny companion.

Linking paws and wingtips, they tumbled carelessly through the air, carolling wildly, whispering sweetly, the songs of linked-love, bonded-love, air-under-wings-love, which Lia’s Dragoness remembered from memories passed down from her mother.

They danced far above the city, alone and undisturbed, following only the melody of unfettered hearts. As they circled ever closer, Grandion began to breathe his fire, creating great billows for her to laugh and sport and play within, diving through the flame or batting it mischievously with her wings, until it seemed she existed solely because of the scent-closeness of him, and the wonder of white-fires began to sheet over her vision, and a new magic flowered in her heart. She could not yet give of her belly-fires, but there was more to a Star Dragoness than he or she imagined. Hualiama drew to herself and into herself the warmth and essence of the rich golden suns-beams, feeding deeply on the primal life granted by warmth and light, and radiated back her love for the Tourmaline Dragon, whose gaze across the intimate space of their dance was fixed upon her, ever burning.

Faster. Closer. Sweeter burned their ardour, the commingling of draconic fire-life now endless, an eternal ring of fire. They flew through realms of golden fire, and that fire was each other.

This was why she had blown apart a mountain for him. This was the memory of the first time she had seen Grandion break free of the dark lake by the monastery, sleek and monstrous and beautiful, and the marvellous lightness of her first flight upon his back. This was the reason a fey Human girl had dared to sing for a Dragon. For it was right. It was right and true, and sparked concentric circles of white-fires which raced toward the curvature of the far horizons, leaving in their wake vast, circular rainbows of white and blue gleaming upon the clouds–incredible, unfathomable magic.

Thus a Star Dragoness danced with her Tourmaline, and the rainbows over the Islands were love.

* * * *

Jinichi held out his palm. “It rained some kind of incense. All over the Island. Smell this. The apothecaries are already devising perfumes and draconic love-potions and selling them for sacks full of gold drals.”

“Oh,” said Grandion.

“It’s disgusting!” snorted the teenager.

“It’s magic,” said Hualiama, nuzzling Grandion as best she could. If only she could grow up faster! She might romance him as high as two feet above his knee.

Jin spat, “You two. You could’ve told me. Rainbows. Dancing. And what, by the point of my sword, happened to the girl? Where’s the Princess?”

“You don’t have a sword,” Grandion pointed out. “You’re a scale-scrubber. Junior rank.”

Hualiama put in, “Grandion, why do you have a warrior and prospective Dragon Rider scrubbing scales and carrying water?”

“And sweeping the sleeping quarters,” the Tourmaline clarified.

Jin began, “I–”

“We should find him a Dragon,” said Lia.

“Do you think?” Grandion scratched his chin, pretending to consider this idea. “Would this miserable waif perhaps be raised out of a state of ruinous ignorance by being assigned to one particular Dragon?”

“Now listen–”

“I’m hungry, ragamuffin,” announced the Tourmaline. “Scuttle off to the pens and fetch me the biggest ralti sheep you can find, whilst we converse about important matters–such as your future.”

“I am right here!” Jin almost screamed.

Grandion looked amazed. “Still? Run along, boy. My beloved could eat just about anything right now. Except you, because I can smell your armpits from the next Island. You shouldn’t forget to bathe at the end of a day’s work slaving in service of the Dragonkind.”

Poor boy. He spluttered and snorted in a fist-clenched fury. Hualiama helped by sneaking up behind him and slipping a paw over his mouth. “Shut the muzzle. Grandion’s a rotten tease. But we should find the right Dragon or Dragoness for you. I sense the magical imperative; I sense you know this too. Is there a particular Dragon you feel drawn to?”

Over her paw, Jin’s eyes grew wild with emotions she did not understand.

“Or is there more? We should talk, but not now. Zulior is about to sound the alarm.” Glancing sidelong at Grandion, Hualiama said, “Will you bear this apprentice Dragon Rider upon your back, noble Tourmaline?”

He growled, “There is but one for me–”

“Train him,” she interrupted. Handle our secrets with care, Dragon.

His belly-fires raged. How dare you lecture me about secrets, o daughter of Onyx. Why do I sense, Hualiama, after all that I have done and suffered for thee, that you are still unprepared to trust me?

She gaped at him, speechless.

Above the city, Zulior the Red bugled the rallying-cry. Dragons, arise! To me!

Grandion deliberately turned his flank to her, a posture of rejection. “Come, Jinichi. Let’s get you to the weapons-master. Today, you’ll fly with me.”

From dancing among suns-beams to the misery of isolation. Hualiama winged heavily to a sky riven with the smoke of Dragons, above the dark slate roofs of Kerdani, nestled amongst low green hills, and looked to the horizon. Darkness. A storm? The southern horizon was the same slate-grey colour as the town below, strangely speckled with orange and green, as if the clouds had been infected with an unimaginable fungal contagion. Dragons, Lia realised. Her eyes focussed carefully. There was more. Dark columns of ant-like men crawled along the ground, shepherded by many more of Shinzen’s Dragons. Even at a distance of over fourteen leagues, her Dragon sight picked out the glinting of metal armour, the spears and pikes rising above the thickly-packed, marching Giants. An invasion force.

Riding between her skull-spikes, Flicker shuddered slightly. Bad Humans?

Aye, and bad Dragons, Lia replied.

Flicker help straw-head, he piped, bravely.

She laughed softly. That you shall, my brave flame-heart.

Come to me. Zulior’s command interrupted her dismayed, wing-frozen response to the sight of full-blown invasion. Obeying his orders, Hualiama flew up to land upon his shoulder. He said gruffly, You and Grandion picked your morning to dance the first level of fire-promises, didn’t you?

She hung her head.

It was inspiring, he added, unexpectedly. Did Sapphurion and Qualiana’s spirits not dance with thee, amongst those rainbows above the Islands? Thy power hath beautified the dawn as I have never heard, or seen or envisioned, in all my years of draconic fire-life. We Dragons were honoured to be spectators to the first promise of your union, Star Dragoness.

Yet she had hurt Grandion. And must continue to, until the fates were known. Who could she trust with the secrets of her lineage and powers, if not the Tourmaline Dragon?

Numistar knew. Stirring upon his shoulder, she checked the northern horizon. Empty.

I meant that you must save your strength, Hualiama, Zulior added, with an emotional timbre of fatherly-concern. Be not ashamed to be who you are.

She snorted smoke, moved and delighted. He could not know how profound such an idea might prove, for to accept all that she was–she might more easily move the suns backward around the Island-World. Kindness and fiery directness wrapped into one statement. Drolly, she said, Truly, shell-uncle?

Be not ashamed, he repeated. In this fire-life a Dragoness must strive, above all else, to be true of heart and paw. That way, we can stand against the day of evil, and even when all flesh and blood and bone and magic should fail, we may yet stand.

Words to seal within her hearts forever.

Flashes of fire lit the South as Burliki led his Dragonwing on raid after raid, cutting into the belly of Shinzen’s forces; undeterred, the mighty army rolled on. Above the city, Dragons gathered to Zulior. At the western periphery, activity had exploded across the Dragonship fleet as the soldiers checked the vessels, securing armour and loading crossbow bolts and shrapnel, stoking the wood-fired engines and causing the airships to strain against their mooring hawsers. Soldiers dashed along the defensive ramparts and walls, taking their assigned positions.

Hualiama knew that King Taisho had placed ten divisions of his army in the far South to oppose the landing. If they were to survive an encounter with Shinzen’s Giants, they would need the support of Dragons from the air. That was Zulior’s strategy, long since worked out with the King.

The ground troops will not reach the city until the day after tomorrow, the Red briefed his Dragons. Chamuko, check the North. We expect invasion imminently.

The veteran Yellow growled, Aye.

We’ll need every Dragon we have. In four hours, I’ll expect your Dragonwing to return South to blood their fangs in battle.

By my wings! snarled the Yellow, with bloodthirsty enthusiasm.

Zulior did not waste further breath with pretty speeches and niceties. Bellowing, For the Great Onyx, for Fra’anior! he pounded the air with his wingbeats, and the Dragonwing formed up behind him, a dense wedge three hundred strong. It was some minutes before Hualiama spotted Grandion rising behind them, with Jin upon his back. Was she jealous? Madly! With him came twenty Dragons and Riders, the balance of the force drawn from Naoko’s warriors.

Fourteen leagues was a small distance for Dragons. Zulior set a rapid twenty league per hour pace, enough to put strain on wings and ligaments while balancing the need to conserve strength. She caught Grandion having a quiet word with the Red, demanding that he take care of the Star Dragoness. With a low chuckle, Zulior praised his shell-nephew’s envious heart.

The low-lying band of squally weather had hid the true mass of Shinzen’s Dragonwings. Hualiama’s hearts sank even as she responded to Zulior’s request to help the Blues shield half of their Dragonwing, which would attack low while Grandion’s command would strike higher up, providing necessary aerial cover. Zulior the Red ordered optical shielding. No warning for the Giants. Hualiama sensed several thoughts in the Red’s mind, disquiet at taking a hatchling into battle, concern for the ‘fire-asset’ who was a Star Dragoness, and the desire to have her learn, to see, to bring her unique abilities into the battle. Ah, so he did have reason for separating her from Grandion. A leader with an eye fixed upon the future. She should have guessed.

Closer they swooped. The front of Orange-Green Dragons was a mile high and ten miles wide, uncountable numbers. More slunk upon the ground. Transport Dragons swung up to the Island, dropping off their loads of Giants, male and female who formed into battalions one hundred strong. As if they were not already powerful enough, these Giants wore heavy metal breastplates, shoulder plates and arm guards, and greaves upon their calves. Their feet were shod with leather sandals, and each Giant wore a skullcap with an additional nose guard and flap of chain metal that protected the back and sides of the neck. Their spears were twelve feet tall and as thick as sapling trees, and their black war-hammers sported heads the size of Human-Lia’s torso. Strapped to their left forearms, each Giant carried a convex shield nine feet tall by three and a half wide, emblazoned with the symbol of a Red Dragon rampant upon a field of gold.

Each Giant looked absolutely identical in stature and demeanour. They marched in ranks ten deep, the beat of their exacting tread audible from a mile distant.

Hualiama sensed magical potentials rising all around her now. Fire for the Reds. Lava for the Yellows and Oranges. Ropes of poison-like jungle vines writhing in the bellies of Green Dragons. Electricity and Storm in the Blues. A darker, earthier scent about the magic of the Brown Dragons, and here, the unique signature of the Grey Dragoness called Makani.

In their midst stood a Star Dragoness who understood why she had to play a secondary role, and hated it. If she was to win this war, to contribute with her rare powers, why had the fates seen fit to make her but a hatchling? So that she might dazzle them with her cuteness? Bat her fire eyes and mesmerise Shinzen’s horde into casting themselves into the Cloudlands? She gritted her fangs. Ha!

Zulior picked his target, a column of Giants five hundred strong. He swept his wings forward. Leave none alive! Strike, my Dragon-kin! Attack speed. Wait for my mark–they arrowed toward the Giants at a blistering pace, all but invisible. ZULIOR!!

A staggering wave of flame, acid and lava seared the dawn.

Chapter 22: The Siege of Kerdani

CRASHING! THUNDERING! ROARING! Dragon fire engulfed the Giants, sweeping onward to smash into the Orange Dragons just behind them. Hualiama found herself roaring right along with them, as though a single, primal beast voiced its animosity from many throats. Yet many Giants leaped or sprinted out of the conflagration, apparently resistant to fire even though their shields and armour glowed red-hot. Others lay unconscious, smouldering where they had fallen. A flurry of rocks and javelins soared up from a second column of Giants just ahead; Oranges sprang skyward, orienting on the marauding Dragonwing.

A shattering roar! Grandion’s Storm pounded the converging Oranges half a mile overhead, smashing Dragons into each other as a funnel churned through their formation. Her Reds and Oranges drew breath.

Lia leaped in mentally. Pure-fires, my Dragon-kin.

Her intervention was imperfect, a surprise, too esoteric for some of the Dragons to understand. But many responded, internalising the touch of white-fires she brought to their magic, and the resultant second wave of fire that swamped the marching Giants was laced with lightning-like streaks of white, far hotter than before. This time, screams and a loud sizzling of flesh rose from the burning column as the Giants broke ranks in many places. Inhuman torches charged out of the conflagration before collapsing. The answering barrage of rocks was ragged; the Browns now charged in, flipping large boulders to crush stricken Giants beneath. Seconds. That was all it took to devastate the column, wiping hundreds of lives off their Island.

FOR THE ONYX! Burliki bellowed, sweeping by overhead from an angle Hualiama had not even seen. Suddenly, the battle closed in from all sides. The Giants rallied, pounding the pillaging Dragonwing with boulders they tore from the ground with their magic; some even leaped tens of feet into the air, swinging their hammers with devastating effect to break ribs and wing-bones. The huge men behaved as if impervious to pain. Zulior jinked through the field of fire, picking off a Giant with a molten boulder that visibly caved in his skull, before rallying his Dragons with another cry.

Danger! Oranges closed in thickly, trying to overwhelm and snarl the advance. Grandion and two Blues flashed by not ten feet from her position, spraying shards of ice from their gaping mouths. Hualiama flinched beneath the assault, digging deep to keep the shields intact. Even so, they lost two Reds as a volley of javelins pierced the shield, pinning them three or four times each in the chest and belly.

Bolster that shield! Zulior snarled.

Unfair. Impossible. Yet she must try. The power required to shield so many … her strength would fail within seconds. What could a Star Dragoness do in this situation, when Dragons fell all around her, snarling with the incoming Oranges now, fighting tooth and nail, claw and fang? As injuries mounted with inconceivable speed?

At this rate, they would not last the morning.

Grandion tore through the fray, mixing Storm with Ice and Lia’s penetrative shielding, fighting with the strength of ten, driving green-headed enemies before him like a herder forcing ralti sheep to hurry across his pasture. No wonder the Dragons followed him. Awesome Tourmaline! Yet he was unique. Few Dragons could match his achievements. And when the enemy numbered thirty for every one of their allied force, and those numbers were not diminishing in the slightest, they’d need the strength of Fra’anior himself to bloody Shinzen’s nose.

Fra’anior, Flicker whispered in her mind.

Green heads continued to pour forth from the approaching storm, as though spitting forth from a vast dark maw. Suddenly, the Star Dragoness saw all with extraordinary clarity. With three Dragons commanding Dragonwings, Burliki seemed to think the plan was to attack, not to disengage and find relief for his exhausted force. He swirled back into the thick of the enemy, taking his Dragons and Riders with him, sustaining terrible losses. That note in his thunder! Had he gone feral? Scroll-lore claimed that was always a danger for Dragons consumed by battle-rage. Now she knew the legend for truth.

Quick as lightning she tried to touch his mind, but recoiled at his crimson rage. Grandion and Zulior, seeing their kin in trouble, closed in from above and below. The Oranges poured over and around like a Cloudlands-bound river swollen by torrential rains. Surrounding them. Trapping them, penning them for the slaughter.

She had so little magic. Hualiama had expended it dancing with Grandion that morning. Fool! Igniting the Islands with rainbows of romance … still, as Dragons said, ‘How beautiful over the Islands are the wings of love.’ Perhaps he thought her a beautiful fool.

Fra’anior, Flicker insisted. All Dragons … straw-head.

The Dragoness blocked him out. How could she change the Balance? How–

Human-Lia’s voice, however, could not be denied. She called urgently, Listen! Flicker means, every Lesser Dragon ever born carries the essence of Fra’anior within them.

The Dragoness gave a mental shrug. Huh?

Your shell-father, fire-wings. Show them your father. Rouse them–

Of course!

Dragons ripped into each other in the terrible press. Each two-headed individual of Shinzen’s group possessed a crucial advantage in one-on-one combat. Lia caught a glimpse of Tadao being hounded off his Dragoness’ back by a snapping head. He dropped into the fray, but Raiden snatched him up mid-air with a reflexive back-footed swipe.

Deep breath. Summoning her memories of the one they called the Great Dragon, the Onyx of the Ages and father of the Dragonkind, the Star Dragoness thrust his presence into every friendly mind she could reach. Channelling his multiple-throated fury, she roared:

Awaken thy ardent hearts, thou my kin, and smite thine foes with the wrath of ancient thunder breaking the Islands asunder! Thou art imbued with mine magic, and with the zeal of myriad mighty Dragons! Strike! Rend the adversary, thou Dragon-pride of Fra’anior’s right paw!

Perhaps pretending to be a veritable Dragon-God was less than honest, even if she could claim to be his shell-daughter. But the rage she provoked was not. The Dragons’ snarls deepened to an impossible, almost subsonic level, unnerving both her and their enemies, viscerally. Muscles clenched and jaws champed. And the magic! Every ounce of marrow in her bones froze. She had created belief, but could not herself believe what rose in these Dragons. Strength of Onyx. Somehow the sound, the mood and the magic passing between her friendly Dragons created a collective force beyond anything she had imagined or intended, where they not only drew on each other’s powers, but together, possessed the strength of paws that raised the very Islands.

Suddenly, the space into which the Dragons had been forced became a killing field. Snarling like fiends, they rounded on Shinzen’s Dragons. Rending. Maiming. Tearing off limbs and biting through necks. Hualiama saw Burliki plucking an Orange Dragon’s wings off its back with his bare paws. She wanted to vomit.

What had she done?

She cried, Grandion, take them out!

The Tourmaline heard. Leading the way with mighty blows of his paws, he punched, kicked and tore a path to clear air, quickly followed by the Dragon Riders and then the insanely strong Dragons of Zulior’s force. Grandion immediately turned to defend the stragglers, the injured Dragons, cleaning Vinzuki’s back of three Oranges and slamming himself bodily back into the trap’s jaws to pull Raiden loose from a snarl of gnashing fangs by main force. Then he flipped on a wingtip and streaked though the final gap, causing the Orange Dragons to close ranks over nothing but air filled with droplets of golden Dragon blood.

Despite that he had ten thousand enemy Dragons at his back–or perhaps because of it–Grandion winged toward Hualiama with a discernible swagger. She had to shush her inner Human, who evidently thought his pretension hilarious.

He reached out to caress her muzzle with his right wingtip. Quite the clearest image of Fra’anior a Dragon ever did see. Smart thinking, Blue-star.

It was Flicker’s idea.

Eep! he squeaked happily. Awe-eep? Aw-ship?

Awesome, Grandion advised rather solemnly, touching the dragonet with the same wingtip. Not just a pretty little dragonet, then? Say, ‘I’m awesome.’ The Tourmaline bowed his muzzle with exaggerated regard. You saved our fire-lives, noble ally.

So puffed up with pride was he, Flicker could not even voice his customary ‘Eep!’

The noble Lesser Dragons fled the enemy lines with alacrity. Looking back, Hualiama saw that the Orange Dragon advance had stopped. Odd. That many Dragons, what were they waiting for? The keys to the city gates? Shinzen’s Dragonwing hovered as though waiting for an as-yet-undetected signal. Within minutes, they were swallowed up by the storm.

* * * *

“You just can’t resist meddling, can you?” Grandion said, bracing Hualiama’s upper legs and torso with his palm halfway up Raiden’s flank as she struggled with a leather strap. She set her feet either side of the eight-inch buckle and heaved a third time. “Another Hualiama engineering feat.”

Vinzuki snorted, “The day I wear a harness like that is the day I fly over the twin suns bleating like a ralti sheep.”

“Got it!” Hualiama finished threading the belt, and paused to wipe her forehead. “And I said to myself, the day I let a male paw my backside–and look at me now.”

Grandion and Vinzuki both laughed smokily.

Raiden said, “Yours isn’t scaly enough by half, by my wings! Now this …”

Vinzuki nipped his shoulder fondly as Raiden swatted her haunches a punishing blow. She purred, “Paw away, o thou passion of mine third heart.”

“Now she’s a warrior-poet?” asked Fumiko, taking pains to appear amazed.

“Take notes, my fierce wife,” said Tadao, from up above. “How’s this catapult emplacement, Hualiama? Jin and I have affixed and tightened the ratchet straps as you instructed.”

Fumiko folded her arms in unconscious imitation of Vinzuki’s pose. “Huh.”

Poor Jin. He was trying to be Eastern-inscrutable and failing miserably. Hualiama only had to glance in his direction for him to start blushing. What did he think about a girl teasing her Dragon? She should desist. Or she should tell him. Many of the Dragon Riders already knew, or had worked it out. How long could this secret truly remain with her and Grandion?

“Ready the Dragonwing!” Grandion commanded. “Vinzuki, Raiden, you have your orders.”

Raiden, heavily armoured and carrying four catapult emplacements upon his back, nodded gravely. “No rolling. Keep those poor Humans on my back. They’ll be affixed with safety ropes. Two men to each emplacement, a loader and a weapons master.”

Hualiama knew the plan. She had worked out Jin’s idea with the teenager, turning concept into reality–jury-rigged reality, but that was her specialty. Raiden the Blue would be hunting Giants. Fire only tickled them. A six-foot metal crossbow bolt through the gullet tended to demand a better level of attention. Add a touch of Eastern poison, proven to work on the Giant-kind … she scaled the belt to the top of Raiden’s back. Decision time. Trust, that was all she knew. She must offer trust.

“Jin. A word.”

“About the emplacements? They’ll turn through two hundred and seventy degrees, and sixty vertically or horizontally,” he said, waggling one bearing-mounted crossbow to demonstrate.

She leaned close to him, hearing his heartbeat leap. “Jin. You’re right about me. I am the Dragoness–the Star Dragoness. We are one and the same.”

“You’re magical? A trick of Dragon magic?”

Sweet boy. He sounded mortified. She said, “No, I was born a Human, but also a Dragon. I’m a Dragon Shapeshifter, Jin. The first and only of my kind.” His grey eyes clouded over with shock. Lia said, gently, “I’m a woman with a woman’s feelings. I’m also a Dragoness, the small blue one you met the other day. I can be either Human or Dragoness when I wish. If you like, I’ll show you my Shapeshifter–”

“No,” he gasped. “That’s wicked. Just … impossible, I mean.”

He meant exactly that. Repugnant. Unthinkable. Hualiama began to touch his arm sympathetically, but Jin shrank back. Harshly, she said, “I won’t apologise for who I am.”

The troubled eyes flicked to Grandion. “He’s mine–he was … I’ve work to do. See you aloft, Princess.”

Grandion was his? The yearning in the boy’s heart, the way the Tourmaline had taken him under his wing–he had assumed he was to become Grandion’s Dragon Rider. Then a girl had interfered. She had stabbed him in the heart, and ripped his dreams from his eyes and trampled them underfoot. For the first time, Hualiama felt ashamed of her powers.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last, to his back.

Jin’s spine stiffened.

* * * *

Seated once more upon Grandion’s back, Hualiama glanced across at Jin. He had returned her gaze just once, his expression unreadable from that distance, but she felt his magic burning. Mercy, what that boy had inside of him she just did not know, but it was not comfortable.

Raiden rose heavily, weighed down by eight catapult engineers, Fumiko and Jin, who would provide cover for the engineers with his powerful Haozi war bow and, judging by his preparations, more than a few esoteric weapons. Grandion had informed her that Jin came from a warrior people, the Nikuko, much like Saori’s people but more secretive, oppressed and misunderstood. Her heart softened toward him. He would come to understand, in time, how it must be between her and the Tourmaline. Meantime, she would keep a weather-eye out for a Dragon or Dragoness for him.

Shall we fight linked? Grandion’s thoughts intruded.

I’d like that, she replied, knowing what he meant. Together, they were powerful. In part this was a draconic challenge. Try to be rid of me, his undertones snarled. Just you dare break your oath, Dragonfriend!

They rose into the still night air. In the two days following his Dragons being bested in battle at the South of Kaolili Island, Warlord Shinzen had committed his forces on land–his entire force. The patrols had confirmed it; the leagues south of the city were crawling with Orange Dragons and Giants. Not a single uninjured individual remained on the Islands further afield.

Zulior had snarled, “Either Shinzen’s stupid, or he knows something we don’t. I scent the latter. Find out what it is!”

That very afternoon, the long-distance patrols had spotted the Lost Islands one hundred and fifty leagues offshore of Kaolili Island itself, drifting along slowly. They saw no signs of life, but signs of a great battle were rife. Clouds of scavengers could be seen from leagues off. Thinking upon this, Hualiama balled her fists. Elki. Saori. Affurion and Mizuki, and all the Dragonkind … what had happened? Why had they not sent word?

For her part, Hualiama wore Eastern warrior armour designed for women. Pliable, tacky-soled leather boots gave her good grip on Grandion’s scales. Her greaves concealed four throwing daggers at each calf. Her knees and lower thighs were bare, the upper part protected by a blue split skirt made from pleated armour, with further under-armour fitted to her hips and thighs, all belted tightly at her trim waist. The belt would ordinarily hold scabbards, but for her, held a further brace of curved hunting daggers and the first of several quivers full of short Eastern arrows. For her Nuyallith swords, the King had ordered shoulder-scabbards found and custom-fit to a sleeveless leather-backed, banded plate-metal corselet that made her look like a miniature Grunt wearing its silver-red armour.

According to the armourer, it was very important that her outfit look meticulously fitted and match her ‘mystical pond’ eyes. At which, Hualiama rolled said ponds and buckled the forearm guards in place, similar to the wristlets her friend Inniora had once fashioned for her. She balked at the helm. The field of vision was far too restrictive. In an aerial battle, that would be a deadly restriction. Instead, she braided her long hair, which had returned to fully blonde, and tied and clipped it firmly in place behind her neck, where it could not interfere with her sword draw.

In moments, the Dragons rose above the warehouses and sideslipped on a brisk north-easterly breeze, keeping low, fully shielded. The night was fully dark due to low cloud cover remaining after the squally storms of the last two days, but Hualiama found her vision brightened noticeably after she connected with Grandion. Wow.

He said, Mind-meld. We work together so naturally.

An emotional sledgehammer. Dragons could be so direct at times; at others, they could be enamoured with subtlety to the point of obfuscation.

Lia wondered if a Human Dragon Rider could take advantage of other facets of a Dragon’s battle-awareness, such as sighting, taking reaction shots or avoiding debris. Grandion thought so. She touched her bow; checked the four extra quivers of arrows arranged around a seat. A saddle arrangement would be so much simpler, if only Dragons would shelve their pride but for a moment …

Feints and covers. Take the starboard and port, high-left, high-right, the Tourmaline ordered, peeling off his covering Dragonwings efficiently. Check all shields.

His wing-commanders reported back in turn.

They rose over the shallowly-sloping rooftops. No need for angles to shed snow here, for the weather was almost never severe in Kaolili. Lia gazed out over the more industrial and mercantile zones to the inner wall. Pray it held against Giants who could leap twenty and more vertical feet in a single bound. Beyond the thick inner defensive curtain wall, over three hundred years old, was a newly built range of outer fortifications designed to hold Shinzen’s ground troops at abeyance. The great Brown Dragon-fashioned ramparts stood eighty feet tall, crowned with further defensive towers and battlements forty feet thick. Sharpened stakes lined the base of the wall above a moat a further thirty feet deep and sixty feet wide. Would it be enough?

We’ll make for Shinzen’s tent, Grandion said quietly to his small command. They numbered just four Dragons–Grandion, Makani, Raiden and Vinzuki.

That wasn’t the plan, Raiden observed. Zulior should be informed. By my belly-fires, you never actually agreed, did you? Cunning.

The Tourmaline snorted immodestly, Aye. We must test this new form of warfare, but the chance to strike that worm Shinzen should not be missed.

Hualiama shook her head. Dragons!

La-La?

She patted the dragonet seated on her lap. Not upset with you, my friend. Eyes and claws sharp.

Suddenly, her head popped up. Jin. Staring at Makani, a dull light burning in his eyes. What the volcanic hells was that countenance? She had better watch the boy. The roots of his Island ran deep.

The foursome whipped rapidly over the outer rampart and over the moat, turning sharply onto a bearing three points south of east. The watch-fires approached already. Soft wings, said Grandion. The green pavilion tent. Quarter-mile. Raiden?

The hulking Blue swept into the lead, shadowed by Grandion directly overhead. Silence enveloped the Dragonwing as they glided over the enemy camp, barely disturbing the flames.

I will prove you are not the aberration you think you are, Grandion said abruptly.

Lia’s concentration shattered. What?

I will prove to you we are meant to be together. That you are mine.

Possessive beast! The word slipped out. Hualiama bit her tongue mentally. Sorry. But how, by all the stars above, Grandion, do you intend–

The more you try to deny me, the brighter I will burn for thee, he declared. I have no doubt. I will be yours and you will be mine, as oath-bound fire-soul lovers, Hualiama. We are destined to be together.

Then decry this fate, o Tourmaline! Deny it! I will not separate my forms. I cannot. Tears pricked her eyelids warmly, but she blinked them away. Not now. Not when she needed to be vigilant. We made oaths. But my Dragoness and I, we are one. Kill one, you kill both. Suppress one and she will die. What is done cannot be undone.

And should not be, he shot back.

Hualiama looked down in surprise. She was certain they were rushing through the air, but in the intensity of their conversation, the world’s doings slowed to a crawl. She saw a rat peering up at them, its paw frozen in the act of raising a small, gristly bone to its gaping mouth.

What do you mean? Don’t you experience self-doubt, Dragon? Is everything so straightforward to you, every problem solvable?

No.

Then speak. What will you do, Grandion?

I … I don’t know! But I know I love you, Blue-star, as the stars love the–

Love is not enough. She sucked in a sharp, shuddering breath of realisation. It’s the brutal, unadorned truth, Grandion, my sweet, sweet darling. I cannot be other.

No! he groaned, the communication between them private, tense, throbbing with grief and anger, hurt and shattered hope. At the speed of thought, their conversation raced onward. The rat was only starting to register surprise.

Isn’t that the draconic way? To speak true-fires as we see it?

It is … the great Dragon gulped. His mind worked so furiously, an image of waterfalls of mental fires played within her mind. I can … I will find a way, impossible as it seems.

Do not speak to me of ways. My father Ra’aba found such a way with Razzior, and it was a perversion, Grandion. Such evil. And I fear I am similar.

The Tourmaline seemed to want to shake her; what lay deep within him could not find expression. He struggled, fought, kicked at the goads and failed to articulate the great waves of emotion crashing through his breast. At length, he snapped:

Never. Not that. If you truly are the shell-daughter of Istariela and Fra’anior, then there must be a way, a power–

This is not about powers, my third heart! Her cry cut him short, cut him to the quick. This is about souls, about the elemental mysteries of life itself–

You transferred a soul into a dragonet.

We cannot be together, Grandion. I cannot be that person, bargaining with souls, shaping life–no person should be. I am so sorry I never told you about Fra’anior, but it was too immense, too crushing; a heritage far more than I could face, to learn that after all this … I still cannot have my parents. Only your shell-parents were true.

I AM TRUE! He thundered mentally, then stilled just as quickly. I was not, before, but now I am. White-fires of truth wreathed his words. Lia knew a mighty declaration was coming; her entire being froze somewhere between wonder and outright horror as he said, very slowly, This I swear upon my honour and fire-life as a Dragon, Hualiama–

–Nooooooooo! Grandion!

He paused. What do you think I’m going to say?

Hualiama threw up her hands mentally, and then on second thoughts, swatted his inward grin with a psychic paw sized to please her shell-father. Something as reckless and wholly impracticable as this Dragoness-girl I know?

Exactly. Whiter burned his fires, until in her mind, Grandion’s presence shone as brightly as her own star-fires. Pure belief, without a trace of a shadow. For if I love thee greatly enough, o song of my third heart; if I love thee more greatly and widely and deeply and intimately than a Dragon has ever loved his beloved, then I swear I shall change my fires and magic for thy sake, o Hualiama of Fra’anior. A third time I swear, that if truly I do love thee, I shall become as thou art. I shall become Human.

Almost it leaped off her tongue to scorn his draconic pride, when a familiar perturbation shook the inmost fabric of her world.

A vow. Thrice spoken, once ordained.

Aloud, she whispered, Oh beautiful Tourmaline, who is all of mine heart, what mighty deed hast thou wrought?

I have wrought love.

* * * *

The Tourmaline Dragon emerged from his inner dialogue with Hualiama, cleansed. Renewed. The world burned in shades of splendour so inexpressible, his hearts wept.

Hualiama! His was the Dragonsong of love.

And though the world’s rushing intruded upon his senses, he knew only an abiding sense within his deepest fires that he could only describe as consecration. At last, after so many disasters, a Tourmaline Dragon had spoken a true word and the voices of the ancient Dragon Spirits had honoured him. What did it mean? Must he divest his Dragon hide for Human flesh? He knew not, but he trembled. Destiny engulfed his fire-life and the feeling was so unadulterated, so exquisite, that all else paled into insignificance. Arise, o Grandion! Arise to love a living star!

The Dragon shadowed Raiden closely as the Blue oriented on Shinzen’s towering pavilion, watching the quadruple catapult-strike rip through the tent’s walls and through the inner chamber, and he saw … nothing. The Warlord was not present. Of course.

Alert! Sound the alarm!

Grandion’s mental bellow was directed tightly enough at Zulior, Raiden, Vinzuki and Makani that no other Dragon heard; at once, the Red Elder changed his course to angle directly skyward, casting about with sight and magic and every Dragon sense at his disposal to sniff out the danger.

He snarled down at Raiden, We complete the experiment, but watch the skies.

On Raiden’s back, the crossbow engineers reloaded proficiently. Jin snapped, “Targets, Grandion?”

“Fire at will!”

Some unseen, unheard signal passed through the camp. Giants scrambled out of their tents, fully armed and ready for battle. What was this, Grandion wondered? Had they stumbled across a secret night-time assault?

Thwack! Thwack! The first two crossbows fired true, pinning a pair of Giants squarely through their torsos. The third missed, but Jin did not miss his shot, feathering an arrow perfectly through the slit in the visor of a Giant who flashed by beneath them. The fourth crossbow bolt sprang aflame. So, the oil and spark-stone trick had worked. The Dragon’s eyes followed the bolt’s path into a pile of supplies.

Barrels … KAAABOOOMM!

The Dragons rocked violently as a mini-volcano of oil barrels exploded in sheets of flame a hundred feet high. Strengthen shields, he ordered, knowing the light would reveal their presence. No time for optics. They had to find out what mischief Shinzen was fomenting.

Hualiama’s bowstring sang. Another Giant dropped in his tracks. Others sprang aloft, taking wild swipes at the Dragons passing overhead. Raiden took several blows to his shield but held firm, his paws snapping out to decapitate one luckless Giant who jumped better than his fellows.

“Catapults take too long to reload,” Lia muttered.

“Fifty Dragons-worth?” Grandion inquired.

“Hmm. And how many tens of thousands of those green-headed lizards?”

They shared toothy grins, briefly. Grandion spitted a Giant on his talons and cleaned his paw with distaste. “Tough as Dragons, aren’t they? Dramagon must have mixed in qualities drawn from the Dragonkind.”

Below, Raiden’s catapult engineers rapidly worked the winches, tensioning their weapons. The loader dropped in a bolt as soon as the tough cord was fully tensioned, settling it in a groove running the length of the weapon. ‘Clear,’ each man called as the loading completed. Their fellows took aim, fingers curled on a trigger just beneath the weapon as they sighted along the shaft. Then came a sharp twang followed by whap! as the bolt crashed home, hopefully accompanied by a yell of pain.

“There!” cried Grandion, echoing Zulior’s cry, far above.

Hualiama saw a dark river of Giants pouring toward the moat on the city’s western periphery. Orange Dragons flew ahead of them, but rather than attacking the defenders on the wall, they began to cast themselves bodily into the moat! Quickly, a pile of bodies built up. The Tourmaline snarled something acerbic beneath his breath as the living bridge grew before their disbelieving eyes. Lia rubbed her eyes. Why not just airdrop Giants into the city? What was this?

Lia said, “My guess is this is punishment for failing to kill us in the South. The Warlord is stamping his authority.”

The pile was ten feet above the waterline and growing. Dark specks flew over the ramparts as the defenders threw down oil barrels, then came a massive explosion as Ryuki the Red did what his colour loved most. On his back, the Human girl gasped softly.

“This is war,” growled the Tourmaline. “But those are not Dragons. They are worms. Come. Fly with me.”

Shinzen had clearly decided the Dragons’ entire role in his initial attack would be to pave the way for his Giants to assault the city. And Humans called the Dragonkind arrogant?

Orange Dragons continued to fling themselves on the burning pile, coming under withering fire from the battlements. The bodies slid about, slick with water and boiling juices, but the sheer mass and weight anchored Shinzen’s bridge within the moat, and bodies continued to pile against the wall, quickly covering the spikes and reaching upward. In the background, the Giants waited in a single dark mass, several thousand individuals in number.

“Shinzen!” Hualiama cried, pointing.

There he was. Head and shoulders taller than his kin. His black scale armour made him look like an upright-walking Dragon. A leather belt over a foot wide girdled his midsection, holding a pair of massive hammers. Upon his head, a silver helm crowned the dark, flowing hair, overshadowing a furrowed brow that was as craggy as it was brutishly majestic. Grandion’s right paw fisted. Hualiama had cast herself into that Giant’s paw to rescue her Dragon.

Shinzen’s hands rose. He flung them outward, smashing two Western Dragons out of the sky. Where they landed, the Giants descended like an oily river, their hammers rising and falling in a dreadful rhythm.

He’s mine, snarled the Tourmaline. The siege of Kerdani has begun.

Flexing his talons, he summoned Hualiama to the battle.

Chapter 23: Giant Rage

RAIDEN FLOWED BELOW Hualiama and Grandion, his Riders picking targets with ease. Crossbow bolts smashed into the unmoving press of Giants, gathered before the eighty-foot ramparts with chilling immobility. Hualiama saw several bolts penetrate two Giants, pinning them together. Mere flea bites on the body of the beast. Her vision, sharpened by Dragon sight, focussed narrowly on Shinzen. He had dangled her from his paw. She had danced for him; tried to assassinate him. Why was he here, if not seeking the power secreted within her being by Ianthine, the mad Maroon Dragoness?

Once, she had absconded from Shinzen’s lair aboard a blind, captivity-weakened Dragon. Now she rode a fit, battle-hungry beast against the Warlord. Potentials surged within Grandion’s breast. Storm. Ice. Lightning.

White-fire lightning, she said, touching his powers. Melding with him. Giving her strength to the Dragon, curiously, for how could a Human be the more powerful creature? Yet she was starlight enwrapped around a core of Onyx. He was the readiness of paw and scale, the hair-trigger reflexes, the sculpting of ice and lightning in flawless tourmaline gemstone.

Grandion swooped, steadying, feinting for the right flank of Shinzen’s forces. The Warlord ignored the Dragon’s subterfuge, sprinting toward them. Lia suspected they had one strike.

She shouted, Alastior, arise!

The Tourmaline stiffened. Shinzen thundered on, raising his hammers.

GRRRAAANDION!!

The Dragon’s challenge deafened her. His muzzle snapped sideways. A shaped bolt of lightning-chased ice rocketed out of his throat, centred on Shinzen’s torso. Simultaneously, oily black fire spat from the Giant’s hammers. Lia had a second to think that the Giant wielded a variant of ruzal; that there would be negation or cancellation. Instead, magic detonated between them. A giant paw slapped Grandion sideways. Shinzen flew backward, literally flew, having sprouted eight-foot shards of ice in his belly and left shoulder.

Lia saw and comprehended in slow, unfurling snippets of awareness. Grandion’s mind winked out, unconscious. Shinzen slammed into a squad of his Giants, knocking over two dozen. The explosion catapulted her helplessly off Grandion’s back before the Dragon crash-landed; she saw the flash of an armoured belly and then keerump! She bounced off a Giant, perhaps a scout, who had been crouching ahead of the main force. She found her knees, shaking her head. The Giant’s face was bellowing, but she could not hear so much as a whisper. He raised his hammer. Boom! The shock conducted through her feet. Lia forward-rolled under the rotating, flaccid body of the Tourmaline Dragon as he bounced over her and slammed into the Giant, breaking his neck with a terrible crunch of bones.

Good. That left her standing next to an unconscious Dragon, facing a few thousand peeved Giants. And Shinzen. The black eyes gleamed like obsidian as he considered the girl straightening up, her hands loose, not immediately leaping to her swords.

Then he rose with massive, deliberate menace, wiping crimson off his mouth.

No Giant moved. Shinzen hefted a war-hammer in his left hand, then pointed it at her. Dragon fire slammed down not ten feet behind him. A crossbow quarrel pinned a nine-foot thug to his left, and the Warlord did not twitch an eyebrow.

“You have my ruzal, girl.”

The ears were working again. She said, “Come and fetch it.”

Oh, Humansoul, the Dragoness groaned inside of her. Baiting the Giant?

How’s about we help each other?

To the Giants either side of him, Shinzen growled, “Slay the lizard. Leave the girl for me.”

He flexed those gigantic shoulders, before plucking a shard of ice out of his stomach. He tossed the bloodied chunk aside. Reaching up with his left hand, Shinzen yanked the piece out of his shoulder; it had pierced him clean through the torso below the collarbone, but that seemed little bother.

Whirling the hammer from hand to hand, Shinzen stalked her. He said, “I’ve heard that Numistar Winterborn seeks a Princess of Fra’anior. Could it be she seeks my prize? Or could the answer be more … starry?”

Hualiama breathed deeply, centring her mind on the Nuyallith forms, trying to keep somehow between the ranks of advancing Giants, Shinzen, and Grandion. What did he know? Did news travel this fast amongst the evildoers of the Island-World?

Wake up, Dragon! Wake …

Acid! Crossbow bolts! The Giants leaped forward as Dragons attacked from above; Hualiama ducked at the passing swish of Makani’s claws as the Grey wheeled overhead, collected five blows from leaping Giants before her boiling-glue attack splashed over them. Giant-flesh melted like water where her glue struck and stuck.

Hualiama’s hands rose. Fra’anior, if ever I needed your strength, NOW!

Shinzen’s power slammed outward from his hammer. She met a moving wall of air and fire with the twin blades crossed in front of her face, the iron-hands technique cleaving the force as his dark fire passed either side of her body. Hualiama drew the blades apart, calling upon her Dragonsoul’s fire to imbue all she had learned from Master Khoyal.

Then she darted sideways, engaging the Giants closing in on Grandion’s prone form.

Fire flowed along her arms and hands in living rivers, turning red and blue as it passed along her blades. Hualiama whirled into the advance. Her blades streaked the night with colours as she tore into the Giants nearest Grandion, by sheer desperation forcing them back, by the power of blades slicing through flesh and armour with predatory abandon. She danced lightly beneath flying hammers and leaped up onto Grandion’s nose before diving off again to break apart a knot of Giants aiming for his head.

Roaring, “She’s mine!” Shinzen waded through his own men, flailing with his hammer.

The air froze around Hualiama. She shattered that hold with a laugh, the ruzal joining in gleefully, conflicting, pulling her defences apart as it slithered between her and the knowledge of Nuyallith, corrupting the forms.

The Warlord pounced! Hualiama rolled aside, her now-dark left sword skittering off his leg armour. Raiden and Vinzuki hovered directly overhead, braving the danger of leaping Giants as their Riders and crossbow-men made their shots count.

Again, Lia dodged the crushing hammer. One direct hit and he’d break her arms like twigs. She danced in and out, striking so fast that she opened a flurry of cuts in Shinzen’s legs, arms and back, but he too was faster than any mortal man, stronger of body and mind, and deadlier by far. His hammer-strikes arrived faster and faster, chasing her around Grandion’s head. Shinzen guffawed at her increasingly frantic efforts to protect both herself and her Dragon. He palmed the second hammer and attacked at double the speed.

“What? Protecting the lizard?” he sneered, smacking Grandion a glancing blow on the brow-ridge.

Slamming, crushing, his hammers fell upon Grandion’s muzzle like rain, the sounds a dire drumbeat on her consciousness. Chips of white fang-enamel sprayed out of the Dragon’s mouth. Hualiama flung herself at the Warlord. The blazing blades skidded off his magical armour, sliced into his belly, his right knee. Shinzen roared! Then, with a thrust faster than a cobra’s strike, she pierced his left wrist, causing his nerveless fingers to release the hammer. The blade stuck between his bones. Lia refused to release her weapon. The Warlord roared with mad laughter, twisting his hand slowly, forcing her to her knees. Then he twisted rapidly in the opposite direction. Lia sprang upward in anticipation; even as she rotated upside-down vertically before his face, she jerked her knee forward to smash his nose. The nose-cartilage popped with a fleshy snick!

She landed lithely, still clutching her sword. The blade burned in his flesh, but far darker burned the eyes of the Giant above her. His right hand shot down to trap her fingers against the hilt. With the right blade, she pierced his armour above the heart and drove as deep as her reach allowed, just four or five inches, before the Giant’s huge left boot kicked her legs out from underneath her.

“Diseased whelp of a windroc!” Shinzen roared, stamping with his boots, putting all the monstrous weight of his body behind each kick.

“I made you prettier!” she retorted, twisting the blade in his chest.

Her Dragoness crowed evilly within her. Nice one, Humansoul. Now give him my fire!

Shinzen’s boots crushed her calves, her thighs, her hips and stomach as he trampled her like a feral Dragon venting his spleen on his prey.

Then, white-fires drove upward from the pit of her stomach and raced along her arms in a flash, gleefully driving into his flesh. Shinzen thundered in pain! His entire body convulsed with muscular spasms as what appeared to be an electrical discharge played havoc with his nerves.

Suddenly, a great roar rose from a thousand throats. “To the walls! To the walls!”

Without warning, a Dragon’s tail lashed down and smashed Shinzen away, up into the air. He fell into the seething mass of Giants. The noise was indescribable. Bellowing. War-cries. Dragons thundering overhead. Hualiama could not hear herself think. Tottering on her bruised, battered limbs, she collapsed in an attempt to retrieve her red sword. She waved the blue blade aimlessly at Giants as they charged by, but they seemed to have no care for her or her Dragon. All were consumed with the need to assault the walls.

Hualiama staggered back to Grandion. Wake up. Oh my beauty, rise … his hearts beat. He would recover consciousness, but his lips and muzzle were split in four places. No immediate danger.

“Ho! Princess! Grab on!” A rope-ladder slapped the ground nearby.

Escape? She glanced up, seeing Commander Hiro’s flagship floating a hundred feet above. Well, she could not do better for Grandion just now, and with Raiden and Vinzuki making to land nearby, they would see to his safety.

She must conserve her strength, her magic.

Come to me when you awake, she told Grandion, even though he could not hear. Through the oath-connection, he would find her.

Sheathing her swords on her back, Hualiama leaped for the rope ladder. Her left arm could barely lift above shoulder level, the shoulder having taken a heavy blow from Shinzen, so she climbed using her right hand and the crook of her left arm to hang on. Her legs felt like putty. She’d wear bruises for weeks, she realised. The soldiers above heaved on the rope ladder, pulling her quickly to safety as the tide of Giants surged toward the great rampart not three hundred feet distant. Black figures swarmed over the pile of Dragon bodies, leaping for the top of the battlements. Numerous armoured bodies already clung to the wall like flies, using their strange affinity with rock to simply stick to the surface and crawl up on all fours. Lia groaned. How could they fight enemies who simply walked over walls?

ZULIOR! ZULIOR! Bawling a wild, trumpeting challenge, the Red streaked through the fray, through the drifting smoke of torches and Dragon fire, like the clean sweep of a blade. His Dragonwing bathed the lower wall in fire, while smaller, more agile Dragons higher up targeted the Giants already atop the ramparts. They plucked individuals from the wall and hurled them to their deaths from heights of hundreds of feet.

Hands grabbed her armour, heaving her over the forward gantry.

“Welcome aboard my vessel, Princess of Fra’anior,” said Hiro, with his peculiar, twisted smile.

Lia bowed curtly. “Let’s see to the defences, Commander.”

“Aye.” He nodded slightly.

What? She heard a soft footstep. Lia began to whirl, but the strike to her skull was calculated and precise. She pitched forward into darkness.

* * * *

Grandion woke with a spine-wrenching start. “Hualiama!”

“Easy, wing-brother,” said Raiden. “You took a beastly blow to the head–”

“Shinzen? Lia?”

Vinzuki, fierce as ever, cried, “We must blood them on the rampart! Crush their craven bodies! Shinzen assaults the walls, noble Grandion. Already, the first line of defence is overrun.”

Lia? Blue-star, where are you? He could neither feel her, nor sense her presence–where was she? In trouble?

Jin said, “The Princess went with Commander Hiro, noble–”

“Hiro?”

Grandion could only gasp a word of soul-shadowing horror. That weaselling, perverted caricature of a man with his lusts and plans and inner sickness … he was twisted! Hualiama!

“Aye, she’s aboard Commander Hiro’s Dragonship,” confirmed the young warrior. “She’ll be safe there.”

“Safe?” With a roar, Grandion lurched to his paws, but the balance of his inner ear-canals was all wrong. He pitched over on his side immediately, wrenching his outthrust right wing. He bellowed in helpless, furious rage. Hualiama! BLUE-STAR! Hear me!

“What’s the matter with him?” Jin asked.

“Vinzuki, Raiden! Leave me. Find her. Go to that Dragonship. Rip it apart if you must …” The Tourmaline heaved for breath, feeling in his chest a sensation that to a Dragon was foreign–panic so deep, he could barely fill his lungs. “This is what he’s like.”

A picture. Fumiko immediately screamed, raising her Haozi recurve bow. She must have caught the image too. She shouted, “Fly, Dragons! Fly!”

Raging as much with the force of the Tourmaline’s emotions as with their own sense of moral outrage, the mated pair of Red and Green Dragons took to the air, beating dust around the grounded Tourmaline’s head.

Grandion tried to spread his wings again. Hopeless. No Dragon could fly like this. Could he fight Giants? Surely! But the greater danger was to Hualiama, he sensed, and if he could not reach her …

With all his heart, he keened, Hualiama!

* * * *

Hualiama! The cry echoed in her mind. She started. There was a naked man in her room, his back turned to her. He stretched, limbering up for–oh, mercy. Her upraised hands jerked against ropes. She rather suspected his intended sport involved a Princess of Fra’anior, her arms lashed above her head and her feet apart to the corners of the bed.

Her Human’s scream was muffled by a gag.

The Dragoness within regarded this reaction with amazement, cutting off the scream in an instant. Humansoul and Dragonsoul regarded each other with consternation.

What, this doesn’t bother you? gasped Human-Lia.

What, this bothers you? scoffed the Dragoness.

The man turned, holding a small, sharp dagger in each hand of curious design, similar to the fish-filleting blades from Rolodia Island. “So, Princess, it’s just you and me. I’ve waited for this day, knowing it must surely come. The day I draw the magical power of innocence from your maiden body and attain immortality!”

Perhaps her Dragoness did not fear this man, but the Human part of her was definitely underwhelmed by her situation. Hiro’s torso and limbs were a mass of scars. Below the neck, there was no inch of flesh upon him which had not been repeatedly mutilated. Now, judging by the way he ran his thumbs over the razor-sharp edges of his blades, he intended to extend that obsession to her. And become immortal? He must live on the Island of insanity.

Alright. She tested the ropes without hope. These Easterners knew far too much about knots. So, Dragoness, what’s the cunning plan? Me being fresh out of magic?

Hiro’s features twisted again in unnatural, opposing directions as he climbed up onto the bed. “Scream, girl. I wanted to hear you scream as I slowly flay your beautiful skin.”

Dragonsoul! she howled, aghast.

Hiro cocked his head in puzzlement, as if he had heard her telepathic scream.

Summon me with all our strength. I can’t just take–I need you!

Yesterday already!

Hualiama had desisted because she knew there were ropes and surely, a transformation would place her draconic limbs in jeopardy? White sheeted over her vision. Terror. Fury. A Dragoness scorned! Her Dragon-form blasted into being. Snap! Crack! The ropes pinged loose as her polymorphic limbs manifested within the bonds and swelled to a thickness that could not be contained by the knots. Lia’s forelimbs broke free. A Dragon’s anatomy meant that her legs could not be splayed as they had been, so her transformation simply tore the lower end of the bed apart.

Hiro froze, a fatuous grin half-twisting his lips as he took in the creature he had meant to assault.

Saccharine-sweet, the Dragoness said, “Shall I disrobe for you, Hiro?”

He stabbed reflexively with his daggers.

She lashed out with hooked talons, and tore out his throat.

A moment later, she kicked down Hiro’s cabin door. The gore-splattered Dragoness punched her way through the Commander’s soldiers and leaped over the gantry. Her wings snapped open.

“Commander. Commander!” she heard behind her.

These soldiers had knowingly abetted their Commander’s madness. The Human within blanched in horror and squeezed her eyes shut, but to a Dragoness, the need for dark-fires retribution burned in her hearts, overpowering all else. She roared at the shrinking-lily girl within. Mercy? Burn that in a volcano! A Star Dragoness must protect the innocents, the lives Hiro and his ilk would in the future scar and bury in the fire of their madness. This was Balance, too.

Spying Raiden incoming, she shouted a curt word to him.

Fire blossomed in the night.

* * * *

She wanted to seek the Tourmaline. Instead, to her shock, the Dragoness found herself back in her starry meeting-place with blonde-Lia. The girl sat upon the bed, holding her knees tucked up to her chest, rocking. Her hair tumbled about her and spread over her back, shoulders and arms like the foamy billows of a waterfall, never more beautiful. Aching a Dragoness’ hearts.

“Humansoul?”

The girl wept.

The Star Dragoness said, “Hualiama, we are one. We need to know that sometimes, justice is best served quick and ugly. And if you need me to be the paw of justice, then let it be so.”

She wept harder.

Lia had never understood her other-soul less. What was this Human response, this power that Grandion sometimes extolled–what did he call it? Strength-from-grief? All she saw was a shrivelling coward unable to make tough decisions, unwilling to give an evil man the end he desperately deserved. Yet this girl had stood against Ra’aba and Azziala and King Chalcion, and against Razzior and Shinzen and more, with audacity the Dragoness could not fathom. How could courage be built on air? How, when war engulfed the Islands and despair rose like the smoke of charred hopes and prayers to the uncaring heavens, could this orphan discover the gift of dance?

Inconceivable.

She had joined her fire-soul to enigma.

She moved to the girl’s side. Perhaps Humanlove felt the same. Perhaps she loathed the Dragon within.

Blue-haired Lia whispered, “Do you hate me, petal?”

Petal. Endearments, when out in the Island-World, Giants overran a city and the Tourmaline wandered, lost and lonely?

Human-Lia gasped between her sobs, “You despise me, Dragonsoul. All creatures despise me already. Yet from you, this hurts most. I can’t stand it. I’d rather die.”

“Despise you? Liar!” The Dragoness fought back her fire. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Don’t you see that I love you? I love us! And if that man would maim and violate my very self, our precious soul, do you see that I could not stand it either? I’d rather die than let him touch a single hair upon our head. I’d die for you, Humansoul!”

Eyes of fathomless blue. Magnified by tears. Hualiama stared at her Human self, willing her, by some miracle that involved every fibre of her body, to understand. Her hearts felt wrung out, beleaguered, yet somehow a nucleus of hope remained. Her Human did not speak.

“I am fire,” the Dragoness blurted out. “Forgive me if sometimes, the fire must burn!”

She fled.

Yet the girl’s cry chased her into the night. Thou, my Dragonsoul. Thou …

* * * *

The Star Dragoness stalked the shadows, searching for her Tourmaline. Searching for relief. Thousands of Giants swarmed over the outer defences, relentlessly slaying the men of Kaolili, and no heroics of Dragon or Dragon Rider could stay their blood-madness. They kept rising from the ashes of injury and destruction and flinging themselves on, and on, and on, stopping only when their legs collapsed or a decapitating talon-stroke flung a head to the ground, or a crossbow-bolt passed through the heart. Smoke poured heavenward as fires razed the battlements. The defenders rallied in tight, well-disciplined units, requiring four or five soldiers to bring down a single, isolated Giant.

Nowhere was the Tourmaline Dragon to be found. Hualiama fought until her wings could barely hold her aloft, mourning the loss of Dragons like Ryuki and Yenuko, stalwarts of the Eastern Dragonkind, and five more of her Riders and their Dragons. She fought with touches of star-fire and rallying-cries to the Dragonkind, reorganising and revitalising the defence where only chaos remained. She led Raiden and Vinzuki in quartering the city, ensuring no Giants penetrated the inner curtain wall to fall upon the populace. Not yet. Not on her watch.

So passed the night in deeds of paw and fang too numerous to recount, and when the dawn broke bloody over a city as besieged as her hearts, she saw Shinzen standing legs akimbo upon the eastern rampart, above the fray, shaking his enormous fists at the sky. “Let my Dragons arise!”

The cry rippled between the waiting Orange Dragons like wildfire. Teased and tantalised all night by the clash of battle and the screams of the wounded and dying, and by the smell of charred flesh carried upon the breeze, the two-headed Dragons were more than ready to take wing against the enemy. And so it seemed to the despairing Star Dragoness that a second dawn rose to replace the first, a dawn of wings that stirred the air like a storm and scaly orange bodies that covered the firmament in a living, flowing carpet of resplendent, fiery beauty, as over thirty thousand enemy Dragons took to the skies.

Giants poured out of the broken fortifications. Still so many!

She gathered a Dragonwing to her side, forced at last by tiredness to ride upon Burliki’s right shoulder. They were pitifully few, gathered like funeral-watchers to witness a storm that would fall upon the city and wipe it from the map. Nigh a million souls thronged the streets, the majority refugees from the Islands already torched by Shinzen’s forces.

Hualiama.

A gravelly voice made her whirl with a squeal of delight. Grandion!

There he was. Blackened with soot, bloodied of paw and muzzle, yet still proud of bearing as he winged up behind Burliki, flanked by Raiden and Vinzuki. There was nothing for it. Her wings fluttered frantically, shooting her over to the Tourmaline; he caught her soft-pawed, then held her to his muzzle. They rubbed against each other’s sensitive scales near the eye.

“Troublesome mite,” he growled throatily.

“My jewel did wander, but he came home,” she replied, failing to remember where the quote came from.

“Quite a few, aren’t there?” he suggested, thumbing a talon at the enemy.

The tiny Dragoness laughed, “Sheep in a pen, my Tourmaline. Shall we shear them?”

Their laughter mingled, sad and fey, as the press of Orange Dragons thickened, rising skyward as if a storm-front effortlessly darkened the sky.

Grandion touched her spine-spikes fondly. “We’d need a bigger marvel than me turning Human. Ridiculous notion! Giving up my wings …” Fire leaked between his fangs. He said, “Yet why such a wing-shiver, little one? I’ll still be–”

“Land Dragons!” Hualiama swivelled her neck, scanning the northern horizon.

She glanced to the buildings below. They had begun to shiver much as she had just shivered, yet she saw nothing on the horizon as yet. What was this? Abruptly a familiar, silvery blur caught her eye. Grunts! The formation of Orange Dragons imploded in numerous locations as a staggered wave of Grunts smashed into bone and wing, spreading devastation.

My, what a beautiful morning! sang Affurion. Dragons, attack!

All three hearts leaped into her throat as in the best tradition of the Lost Islands Dragonkind, legions of Dragons appeared from nowhere, from behind shields honed by generations of fighting the Dragon-Haters. The humming Swarm. The cunning Overminds. The powerful Browns, called the Anubam. And waves of heavy Grunts, rocket-propelled into battle by the Overminds among them.

Affurion! Hualiama’s shriek split the morning, making every Dragon nearby wince and smile simultaneously.

Oh, he looked as pleased as a Dragon with new wings. Need a paw, Blue-star? I’ve a few thousand for you. You need to go head off those Land Dragons before they crush the city.

What?

They’re the bad sort. Some kind of Runner?

Welkin-Runners? Lia gasped.

Aye. But Siiyumiel also sent reinforcements, since we asked. Mist-Runners. Look to the West.

Mercy. Thunder upon the hills. The water remaining in the moat danced a crazy, rippling dance. Trees swayed. Fumiko was shouting something about warning the denizens of the city. Hualiama knew there was no point. None whatsoever. For she saw a posse of Land Dragons come charging over the lush green hills of Kaolili. They were the four-legged lizard-like Runners, standing no less than four hundred feet tall at the shoulder and measuring a third to a half of a mile in length; some individuals were brawnier still. In the morning suns-shine their turquoise, luminescent hides gleamed with spectacular displays of flashing lights. Lia was astonished they could run in the thin air, but perhaps that aided these Welkin-Runners. Turquoise blue, hence the name. Sky-Runners. Odd how dwellers above the Cloudlands thought of everything below the Islands as abyssal, hellish depths. Truly, the Land Dragons dwelled in their own sky.

Now a second round of thunder intersected the first as a further battle-group of Land Dragons poured over the hills from the West; flatter, sleeker, darker individuals sporting poisonous yellow stripes. Their talons were razor-sharp, curved blades that cut tens of feet deep into the sod with every step, propelling them in a curiously tiptoe running orientation.

Hualiama rounded on Affurion. “I’m supposed to head them off?”

“Aye. They all want you, Star Dragoness. Go play the tease.”

Infuriated beyond words, she looked to Grandion for a sign that he understood and would back her up as she told the Brown Overmind exactly which sewer he could shove his insinuations into, but reeled in shock as the Tourmaline touched wingtips with Affurion in a brotherly-regard gesture. What the volcanic hells? Traitor! She’d swim him backwards through the lava-lakes of Fra’anior! She would not turn him into a Human, she’d turn him into a lesser spiny toad, the one with the pink blotches on its warty back! Following which she’d fricassee said toad on a roaring pyre, taking care to stand upwind from the noxious fumes. Of course, of all the betrayals in her life, this hardly rated a mention.

Therefore, when one day she took him home, she would give this pet Dragon some serious house-training. With this agreeable thought, she abandoned his paw for the open air–not without a pert parting waggle of her wingtips. Catch me if you can, my handsome Tourmaline.

His eye-fires brightened appreciably.

Distracting Grandion was like tossing sweetmeat for dragonets. Those Land Dragons? She had seen what their eye-cannons could do. Now she intended to make herself entirely the wrong kind of target. But for the sake of Kaolili …

She flashed across the dawn at top speed, stretching out her body for maximum streamlining. She flew directly North. As she raced along, she gathered her mental strength. Human-Lia would have to help with this one. Those Land Dragons needed to hear a few things.

Hey, you slugs! What? The Dragoness could not believe what had just emerged from her mouth. Aye, you slithering, slimy bottom-feeders, you excrement of Borers, you sluggish hangers-on at the base of the food-chain! I am Hualiama, the Star Dragoness! Here I am, null-fire slugs! Do you not seek me?

Her Dragoness was unimpressed by the insults. Where was the eloquence, the sophistication? But the Welkin-Runners apparently heard enough. With a series of dull roars, they shifted direction to pursue the Star Dragoness, clipping the northern edge of the city as they stampeded by. Lia would not have wanted to be a citizen on those streets seeing Land Dragons bearing down on her city, ten times the height of any building. Razed. Only rubble remained of that eighth of a mile; the destruction wrought in mere seconds. How fast were they? Breath exploded from her lungs as she dashed a short ways West, leading the Land Dragons into each other’s path. Grief, those running steps covered hundreds of feet every second, certainly faster than a fluttering hatchling!

Light sizzled around her. Lia shielded, attempting to create a mirror effect. Pathetic. Worse than useless. The weight of the light-beams, even glancing blows, knocked her out of the sky. Grandion swooped for her in a series of sharp, spiralling loops, trying to anticipate where the light-beams would strike. Multiple images of herself suddenly peeled away from their converging forms, confusing the Land Dragons temporarily.

Grandion panted, Projection tricks. Occasionally useful. He snatched her out of the air. Light washed over them, slapping Grandion’s tail skyward. He grunted at the pain of impact but held firm. As his tail swung up, the Tourmaline instinctively dived downward, taking them out of the light-beam. Hualiama smelled a sharp tang of burned cinnamon. His scales were smoking!

No time for that. Go low, she cried from his paw.

He understood. Tourmaline flashed earthward, drawing the Land Dragons’ attacks with his sharp movement, while Lia focussed on their shielding. Aye! Siiyumiel had taught her how to bend light. What if she just bent it … a little more?

This was where the mathematics of oath-magic defied reason. One plus one had many answers, all of them greater than two. Her mischievous inner engineer was flipping backward somersaults.

As Grandion dived, Hualiama’s magic fused with his shield, turning the Tourmaline Dragon into the living gemstone for which his colour was named. Unfortunately, her initial effort refracted a light-beam to vaporise a hundred-foot section of the city wall. Oops. But she learned from that mistake. Two or three refractive points were needed, shaped as bands in the optical shield, as best she could implement her theories in a scale-frying, avalanche-approaching hurry. Fail, and they would be incinerated in the heat turning her world into a yellow-white furnace oven, for at least four beams had converged on them. Adjust! Wrench the shield into shape and …

KAAABOOOM!

Unholy windroc entrails, you bellicose beauty, did you see that Land Dragon fly? Grandion screamed happily.

No, she was fixated by the sight of a severed leg tumbling past them, the bone dangling from its end thicker than the waistlines of three Sapphurions rolled together. The Tourmaline supplied a celebratory mental image. Lia could not look. They had harmonised five separate beams and blasted them back through the chest of a Welkin-Runner, blowing the male Land Dragon apart like hydrogen-bearing rock tossed into a bonfire–one of Elki’s early scientific experiments, as she recalled. His eyebrows had taken months to regrow.

Spitting light in all directions, Grandion jinked and dodged, whirled and fluttered through the stampeding herd, dodging the monstrous paws as they thundered down all around, kicking up a blinding spray of dust and dirt. The tracking beams cut through the murk, homing in unerringly on the fast-flying pair, only to be refracted back as fast as they arrived. All was reaction-speed. The Tourmaline Dragon sliced across knees, dodged steely talons and dived beneath bellies, spitting blades of light in all directions. The Welkin-Runner charge snarled up as the great beasts slewed into each other, but their pained bellowing was nothing compared to the impact of the Mist-Runners storming headlong into the fray. Skull met skull and paw clashed with paw in a series of shocks that shook Kaolili Island to its roots. The monstrous bodies tangled in an incredible snarl of snapping teeth and swingeing talon-blows as the Land Dragons assaulted each other with vitriol born of centuries of enmity.

“Duck!” Hualiama yelled.

Grandion balled himself about her as they stuck between two veritable mountainsides of Dragonflesh, but thankfully the crush was too fleeting to break bones. The Tourmaline raced away with a bellow of effort, finally making it to clear air. He beat skyward with an audible whoosh of air from the lungs, a draconic sigh of relief.

“Well, that’ll crush every crop for leagues about,” said Grandion, making to dust his paws in satisfaction before remembering he held someone in his paws.

“Decent flying, Dragon,” Hualiama complimented him.

“Decent?”

Evidently, not enough of a compliment. Lia was too weary to summon up an ode to his gallantry. Instead, she said, “As in, flying that decently should be declared illegal on ten thousand Islands. Now come on, Dragon. The real battle lies yonder.”

Chapter 24: Annihilation

GRANDION POWERED SKYWARD on the wings of a back-pawed Human-style semi-compliment, he told Lia, earning a fine burble of laughter followed by a demand to be released from his paw. He rolled his fire-eyes. Incurable wisp of a girl. He had it on good authority that the Humans of Sylakia and Jeradia loved to gamble, but what sane creature in the Island-World would want to gamble against his Hualiama? She played ridiculous odds and won. Routinely. What power was that? Providence? Or the Onyx connection she claimed, a notion so scandalous it bordered on blasphemy?

The Dragoness sprang lithely from his paw to his shoulder now, riding the wind of their passage imperfectly so that her tail slapped his left eye on the way past. The Tourmaline scanned the battle-front of Orange Dragons, which, though pockmarked like a pumice boulder by the systematic pounding delivered by the Grunts, still stretched across the horizon in numbers uncountable. Where was his cunning new wing-brother, Affurion?

“I sense the Empress,” said Lia.

“Affurion said the Haters had not left the Lost Islands when he redeployed all of his kin onshore,” Grandion responded.

“He’s wrong.”

Grandion swallowed his annoyance. Hatchlings should not come furnished with twenty-one year old intellects. It was wrong on so many levels, it made him imagine one of their milk-suckling, helpless babes standing up in its cradle to spout the wisdom of the great draconic scholars. He hissed, “Then find her.”

“We’ve a bigger problem, Grandion. Numistar’s on the move. That’s her.” He flexed his neck to check the hand-sized black cloud on the horizon, before turning a querying whirl of the eye-fires upon the Star Dragoness. She hissed, “Can we work on the trust? That’s her! We’d better warn King Taisho to batten down his Dragonships. Moor them, preferably undercover. Get the citizens off the streets.”

“Cripple his fleet? What will Commander Hiro say?”

“Hiro’s dead.”

“You–”

“He’s dead. Ask Raiden.”

By his belly-fires! Tasting the nuances of her speech, he knew she had killed the Commander. No question. But what was Raiden’s part? Burning the evidence? Whatever the case … he said feelingly, “Dragons never spit out the bones!”

Eyes shuttered, the Dragoness scented the wind. All her mien was otherworldly to him, for a breath, she seemed to travel beyond, to the realm of white-fires. Her wings vibrated uncannily before resettling at her sides.

Her eye-orbs had turned white. Pure white, as if no flame existed in them at all.

Grandion shivered in his turn. “What do you see?”

“Ice.”

* * * *

As the spectre of war and death stalked the Isles, Hualiama had learned, time sometimes fled and sometimes passed with excruciating slowness, as though seeking to indelibly imprint upon the observant mind the full compass and exacting detail of every horror. To dwell upon these images was numbness and grief. To ignore them was inhuman. Yet could the mind ever comprehend slaloming in desperate flight between paws that stamped tracks sixteen feet deep into the sod with every footstep, or a rolling maul between lizards that dwarfed the very city over which they fought? Could she grasp the numbers ranged against Kaolili?

The Tourmaline Dragon, being a logic-driven male of his kind, compartmentalised neatly. He worked with Zulior to despatch messenger-Dragons to all points of the compass, each command efficient and succinct. A stream of information fed King Taisho and his defenders. They organised Dragonwings and sent cover for Prince Qilong, sweeping into the city now with his airborne troops from the North, ahead of that ink-blot cloud growing on the horizon. The others thought little of her assertion that Numistar Winterborn’s cold invaded from the North, but a bitter wind had sprung up, and Grandion and Zulior issued orders as though her seventh-sense inkling were incontrovertible fact. They conferred with Affurion and made adjustments to best support his forces, and ordered Dragonwings–or ‘Dragondigs’ as the Anubam flippantly called themselves–of Brown Dragons underground to seek out any and all Giants and to engage them in teams of seven to ten Dragons strong.

No prisoners, Affurion warned. Work together and our kind will survive.

Hualiama considered this. Rightly, Affurion seemed concerned for the survival of his diminished nation of unique Dragonkind, the Indubam, Tynukam, Dramubam and Anubam. There had been further running battles against Numistar, Azziala and the Land Dragons all the way down the Eastern Archipelago to Kaolili and many, many losses, including over a dozen of the smaller Air-Breathers. The Brown Overmind had made the momentous decision to abandon their ancient Dragonholds for the uncertain lands of Kaolili, and had already opened negotiations with King Taisho for a more permanent solution.

Suddenly, Lia’s four paws clenched as one, scrabbling for grip on Grandion’s scales. Siiyumiel?

Siiyumiel? Great one?

Faraway, his voice resonated in her mind. The Lesser Dragons fled our approach. We destroyed many of your enemy as they traversed the Cloudlands, Blue-star. But we are few and distant, unable to ascend the Island to the place where you battle. Numistar comes, little one. Be alert.

Thank you, Siiyumiel.

I’ve designed a special attack. Can you rise and allow us to focus our Harmonic magic on you? Gather it, like this–plans and calculations and esoteric draconic scientific concepts cascaded through her mind–but this atmosphere of yours is weak. You may need to come closer, at least a league from your current position.

Placing her slap in the middle of thousands of Orange Dragons. Excellent notion.

What will this magic do?

Deliver a knockout blow to Lesser Dragons.

We need any advantage our paws can scrape up, Grandion interrupted. We’ll do it.

Moments later, the orders rushed out. Blues to support Grandion and Hualiama, led by Akemi and Yukari the Aquamarine. They settled on a small force, just a dozen Dragons and four Riders. Lia worked through the shields with them, watching from the corner of her eye the Orange advance slowly–so very slowly–winging toward the city of Kerdani. Why so slow? Her eyes traversed the terrain, from the Land Dragon battle raging to the West to the Giants reforming in their dense ranks, yet fewer in number by far. Why? Where was Shinzen hiding? Again, she tested the wind. Where was that dark, oily magic, that remnant of ruzal-like darkness she recognised from before … if the Oranges avoided the city …

“Affurion. Beneath the city. Shinzen’s attacking from beneath, I’m almost certain of it. We must protect the King. That’s why his Oranges–”

“The King allows no Dragon within five hundred feet of his palace,” Affurion put in.

“Then find a way,” Lia suggested heatedly.

Meantime, the Tourmaline shook his muzzle. “Too many threats.”

Impulsively, the Dragoness sprang over Grandion’s thicket of skull-spikes to the slight indentation between his brow-ridges, poked her head over the side, and eyeballed him from a distance of four inches, so close she felt the heat of his fire-eye upon hers. “Must I teach thee to dance?”

His laughter belled out. “Nay!”

“Then let us burn the heavens, Dragons!”

Burn, they did. As Affurion whirled away, bellowing his orders, Grandion gathered the small Dragonwing with a commanding sweep of his right wing. A single shield enveloped them, produced and sustained with the help of the Blues, Yukari’s strength dominating the group. They winged out at a rapid clip, Hualiama orienting on the faraway Shell-Clan, just barely visible over the curvature of the Island’s shore twenty-two leagues distant. She exchanged data rapidly with the Shell-Clan Elder. Battle statistics. Progress. Her intuitions, which Siiyumiel immediately reflected in support. Aye, a good reading of the Balance. She must listen more closely to her instincts.

Oddly, Yukari’s battle-laughter was the only sound their group made as they sliced smoothly into the ranks of Orange Dragons, the blade-like shields piercing and hacking and maiming without the group suffering a single substantive injury in return. They blasted through waves of Dragon fire, poison gas and even acid spit, the multiplicity of shield-strands ramming it all aside.

Lia stiffened. That mental signature–Dragons, OBEY!

Gasp! Wheeze! Here came the Dragon-Hater Dragonships and–her eyes bulged involuntarily–Azziala aboard Mizuki with Saori and Elki in attendance! Her mother was riding a Dragon? The entire Island-World stood upon its head and waggled its tongue rudely.

Roaring rajals, they were the Empress’ insurance! She commanded her own Dragonwing this time, all Dragons of Gi’ishior that Lia recognised, each bearing one of her Councillors.

Even from that distance, the Empress’ eyes appeared to contain an especial glow destined for Hualiama alone. Islands’ greetings, daughter, she thought. Pleased to see your dear mother?

No. What the hells–are you a Dragon Rider now?

The woman laughed coldly, throwing back her white-haired head. Just half a league off and closing in on the eastern flank of the mass of Orange Dragons, her expression was visible to a Dragoness’ sight at maximum magnification.

Your idea, Hualiama. We’re here to help, of course. Then you’ll come home to Mommy. Because you’ve been a very, very disobedient girl.

Ugh! The way she spoke, Lia knew she meant, ‘Come grovelling or I will blast Saori and Elki into mindless, gibbering idiots and use Mizuki’s hide to clothe my next Dragonship.’

The Dragon-Haters, true to their word, plowed into that flank with a vengeance. Her mother played the odds. She expected to come out on the winning side, with Hualiama tamed and in hand. That meant destroying the threat posed by Shinzen, calculating that the Dragons must surely expend their strength upon each other before she stepped into the victor’s position–and all this, before Numistar arrived!

Quietly, Grandion said via private telepathy to her, If that’s the Hater, offer an alliance. It’s the only way any of us will survive this.

An alliance with the unholy?

He mentally spread his paws. Lia followed through, though she knew already that Azziala would expect this move. Necessity commanded their response. Her mother was not grateful. The Empress commanded their support. Support she would have, just as soon as a Star Dragoness could conjure up a minor miracle, for the green-headed Dragonkind responded to Azziala’s presence as though she had provoked them to life, at last. Lia felt the commands flowing through the great mass of Dragons. Attack the intruders. Drive them off. Gas them.

Grandion drove onward, but at a cost. Their small Dragonwing was suffering now, taking a pounding from the Oranges all about. She returned her focus to the problem of Shinzen’s whereabouts. She said to Grandion, Hope you’ve got a plan for us regarding Shinzen.

Just nearby, the Tourmaline’s mind was calculating too. He said, Strike until our force abates, then we’ll pull a switch. I’ll have Makani and Jin take you down while I pretend you’re still here.

Down? Where?

To the Palace. We know Shinzen. He’ll find a way in. You’re the only one who can stop him in your Human form–Shapeshifter advantage.

Hualiama shifted worriedly. Won’t he be expecting exactly this?

I’ll shadow you with Yukari’s help. Any trouble, we’ll tear that Palace apart to extract you.

Alive? Now that would be a miracle. Unable to think of a better plan, the Star Dragoness called out to Siiyumiel, Ready, noble Elder.

Savage laughter boomed in her mind. Do you think so, little one? Do you indeed?

* * * *

Harmonic power washed over her like an everlasting crescendo of sound, a symphony that swelled with the triumphal notes of horns, the sweet wail of pipes and flutes that reached ultrasonic notes and the melody of a thousand stringed instruments. Hualiama bathed in the converging offerings of nineteen Shell-Clan, in a place of music so wondrous, so savage and overwhelming, that she lost all track of who she was and what she meant to do. Staggered. Spun away upon billows of crashing glory.

Somewhere, a tiny voice was shouting for her. Hualiama. Hualiama!

Over twenty leagues from the source, the power of their Harmonic magic was still enough to overwhelm her utterly. Singing. Dancing. Weeping terrace-lakes for the Island-World she loved …

Hualiama. Come back.

She tumbled and played in an ocean of sound. What else mattered?

ALASTIOR!!

Shaken! Lia crash-landed mentally and picked herself up in almost the same quarter-note, painfully aware of her mistake. The shield was broken. Grandion fought like a beast, a vicious light in his eyes. Yukari snapped with her mighty jaws, taking a knot of three Dragon-heads at once and crushing them with a single bite. She had allowed this! Her, and her absurd notions of dance–no, that was the very point, the way the Harmonic magic flowed into her now, as though she were the focal point of a spiritual world that drew an endless, almighty breath. The dance was a physical expression of the Harmony of her being, of the way she perceived her world. Essential. Formative. Soul-song. She lifted her voice to croon:

A twirl of wings did greet the suns,

Frolicking, prancing, gambolling amidst motes,

Of life’s streaming gold.

* * * *

Her song was barely a murmur expressed via the musical capabilities of a Dragoness’ throat, but it turned every Dragon’s head for hundreds of feet about. Mesmerising. As enthralling as the colours of dawn, the little Star Dragoness floated slightly apart from her Dragonwing, and Grandion saw in her fire-eyes and spilling from her scales a radiance of unearthly allure, as if her song spoke in all the colours of rainbows, with the warmth of eternal fires and the chiming notes of his own soul.

All that was right and wholesome and pure dwelled within her paw; yet purity possessed a terrible power. This hymn of Harmony demanded that all sing its song. It reamed evil, for there was no place for Disharmony within its dominion, no compromise, no leniency.

Hualiama gestured. The Harmonic magic gushed out, and she knocked Dragons from the sky.

Despite his hopes, there was nothing pretty or easy about what the Shell-Clan Elder had suggested she should do. The power demanded was extreme, the labour and concentration required, more so. The Orange Dragons resisted with the collective fury of the Dragonkind, swarming about the invading Dragonwing with vicious snarls, resisting the punishing force of the Harmonic magic to the last. Drinking deep of the oath-connection between her and the Tourmaline, Lia shone upon the enemy, rebuking, chastising, whipping the Dragons until their fires snuffed out and they fell in twos and threes, then tens … minutes crawled by, then hours. Everywhere they turned, there were more Dragons. The battle roiled and raged, the thunderous mental commands of the Dragon-Haters growing ever more distant as Oranges mobbed the Dragonships, driving them away to the southwest. Enchanters smashed down on the fields in a rain of blue robes. Shreds of Dragonships drifted down to cover their bodies. Dragons fought each other to the death; the carnage, unlike anything Grandion had ever beheld.

Hualiama held her part powerfully, seemingly indefatigable.

The last quintet of Mist-Runners, victorious at last, crushed hundreds of fallen Orange Dragons as they slowly limped back to the edge of the Island, twenty leagues distant, and clambered back down to the deathly realm that, conversely, supported their life.

Grandion fought with Yukari. The elderly Dragoness was neither as quick as she had been in her prime, nor was her vision as channelled through Akemi perfect, but what she saw, she killed. Together, they rallied their Dragonwing and kept the Star Dragoness in their midst, safe to continue destroying the enemy. Slowly, the Orange horde drove his Dragonwing backward, away from the Haters and toward the city, until at last even the magical fonts of the Shell-Clan must have been exhausted, for the magic guttered and with it, Hualiama’s strength failed at last.

The suns were high in the sky, but on the point of being overtaken by the oily-dark storm Hualiama had observed. They had been fighting for five hours.

Yukari said, It is time, Tourmaline. Execute the plan.

You sensed–Grandion lowered his eyes to the city. In the square courtyard of a house close to the Palace, he saw a dozen Giant raiders boiling out of the ground, closely pursued by a battle-group of Affurion’s Anubam. They fought in a tight snarl, crushing houses as the tiny figures of dark-haired Easterners fled the scene. Makani! Call the Dragon Riders, Yukari. I must prepare …

The Dragons retreated toward Affurion’s forces now. They hovered over the city against a gloomy backdrop of oleaginous cloud, beating back the fringe of the Orange Dragonwing. Grandion eyed the weather suspiciously, tasting notes of tingling magic and premonition upon his tongue, meantime conversing rapidly with Hualiama. She would have to transform into her Human guise to penetrate the Palace, he told her, using Jin’s expertise and local knowledge–the boy knew far more than Grandion wanted to question him upon. But he was loyal, and that counted for much in the Tourmaline’s estimation. Makani would shadow them with the fabled hunting skills of a Grey Dragoness and Grandion would remain in close contact via their mental link.

Good hunting, said the Tourmaline, sharing strength with her.

* * * *

Hunting? Her wings were ready to drop off with exhaustion. The Grey Dragoness slipped swiftly out of the fray and down to the city, where Dragon Riders patrolled to prevent random Orange Dragons from fire-bombing the populace. The streets were still not empty. Hualiama had expected King Taisho to exert better control over his people.

Down in the barracks, she disappeared to find her clothing and weapons. Transforming into her Human form was a desperate struggle that again, proclaimed how diminished her magical resources were. A prickle on her neck? She whirled, but saw no-one. Fuming, almost certain someone had been spying on her, Lia donned her armour and sheathed her weapons.

She stalked back to the barracks, but Jin was exactly where she had left him, speaking with Makani in low tones.

In that Eastern fashion Lia had observed, the teenager refused to meet her eyes, appearing to focus on the region of her chest instead. Hualiama came within an inch of hitting him. Great leaping Islands, her draconic emotions were just so volatile–not that her Human had been anything less than volatile, she reminded herself with a deep chuckle that evidently startled Jinichi.

They prowled the streets of Kerdani City beneath thunderous skies.

He moved beautifully. Hualiama had never thought that about a Human before, far less a man. Ra’aba had possessed a rajal-like grace of movement, but Jin’s hunting style was like a shadow moving beneath a leaf. Magical? A flash of his eyes to check her location, and she knew that for a truth. What a burden to be the last of his people; in some ways, similar to her. One of a kind. So with sympathy and grim purpose united in her heart, she tracked the lithe youth through the back streets of Kerdani, coming by shadowed alleyways and unexpected shortcuts to a back wall of the Palace grounds. A thirteen-foot grey brick wall greeted them.

The first droplet of rain struck the back of her neck. A chill wind ruffled the trees behind that wall, as though clawed fingers ran through hair preparatory to sinking their razor-sharp points into the skull beneath.

Jin took a running start, two steps up the brickwork surface, and wriggled onto the top with the ease of a dragonet. He whispered, “Need a hand?”

Hualiama took a similar run-up, stepped lightly against the wall, and caught the top with her fingertips. A wriggle and a heave later, she sat beside him. “I’m fine.”

He somersaulted out over a backing ditch filled with sharp stakes. Lia did the same, landed and forward-rolled. She came smoothly to her feet and darted after Jin as he scooted through the thick foliage behind the Palace’s attractive ornamental gardens. Every bush and tree had been shaped by hand, creating a fantastical landscape of the creatures of the Island-World. They padded past a couple of soldiers, coming at last to a small metal grating set in the ground.

“Aeration for the storage chambers,” he said, not even breathing hard. “You’ve trained at espionage?”

“I was a warrior-monk,” she said.

Jin picked at a scab on his chin in consternation. “What kind of a Princess are you?”

“That answer would probably shake you out of your boots; besides, I haven’t entirely worked it out myself. Care to open the grating, or shall I?”

A hailstone plinked off the grating. Two more.

The teenager knelt, pretending to work with a tool, but Hualiama felt his magic reach out in the same breath and turn the simple lock. Click. Fraudster.

They worked together to lift the heavy, rusted metal grating and set it aside. Then, the heavens split apart at the glacial roaring of Numistar Winterborn, and she hurled the fury of her retribution down upon the Island of Kaolili. Ice. Ice as thick and heavy as stone, smashed into the city with a thundering that drowned out all else. Lia and Jin bolted down the hole like a pair of scared rabbits. Lia dropped in feet-first, but Jin followed with a headfirst dive, landing right on top of her. They clashed heads sharply.

“Idiot!” snarled Lia.

“Move, you stupid vixen!”

“There’s another grating. Just a–mercy!”

Jin’s body jerked as ice pounded the ground outside and shot into the hole in a spray of needle-sharp fragments, slicing open Lia’s cheek and nose. Jin fared worse. Bracing herself amidst the flying shards and aware of the teenager cursing in her left ear, she booted the grating. Twice. It broke free with a horrendous clatter that was thankfully drowned out by the storm’s full-throated roaring outside. In a trice, the two Humans wriggled through the gap and dropped a short distance into a chamber three-quarters filled with sacks of grain.

They took stock. Lia dabbed her nose. “Won’t improve my looks. Can I help there, Jin? Defending yourself with your backside?”

“Get your freaking hands off me!” he snarled. Crimson spread visibly down his leg.

“Touchy. But your foot’s bleeding badly.”

“I’ll live.”

“And Shinzen will rue the day. Now shut your stupid fumarole, boy.” Lia ran her hands over his foot. “It’s a deep cut. It’ll hurt, but this is the real problem.” Without warning, she reached for his thigh, her hand a blur of speed. She yanked a dagger of ice out of his thigh and slapped her palm over the spot. “Pierced your artery. You were bleeding to death.”

“What have you–” His anger subsided in a gurgle of amazement. When she lifted her hand, the bright flow of blood had already subsided to a trickle.

“You’ll live to insult a few more women,” Lia growled.

Jin dropped his burning gaze, seething with emotions she could guess at. She bound his thigh with a length of cloth the teenager cut from his own shirt. At length, he grunted, “We’ve Giants to worry about.”

With one last, incredulous glance at the size of the chunks of ice shattering inside that short, curved aeration vent, Hualiama followed the sulky youngster into the darkness beneath Kaolili’s royal palace. He was right. She could practically smell Giant in here, that dank, oily power of Shinzen’s which so closely mirrored the ruzal still lurking within her.

Lia rubbed her breastbone dejectedly. How would she ever be rid of this curse?

* * * *

The Tourmaline Dragon blinked as he saw the storm turn to pursue the Dragon-Haters. Great, writhing black thunderheads filled the sky, speckled with white in the upper reaches where Numistar’s dragonets appeared to be riding the powerful updrafts. Her voice was the booming of thunder, a cacophony of hatred and ruin, and her presence created chill so deep, it froze the golden Dragon blood in his arteries and hearts. He knew they had miscalculated terribly.

Get down! he screamed. Affurion, the Browns–dig us shelter! Now!

At once the proximate Lost Islands battle-group turned on a brass dral and dived, from the slowest Grunt to the fastest Swarm Dragon. Affurion bellowed at the stragglers, a triplet of Overminds still wheeling over the North quarter of the city, engaged with several dozen Orange Dragons. Anubam reared up in dozens of locations across the city, flicking paving stones and even houses off their heads and backs as they stared upward in patent astonishment.

Grandion’s eyes were for the North. Those stupid Dragons, those people and soldiers still wandering around on the streets … in a Storm-amplified voice, he rattled the shingles and shutters of the city for a half-mile about. “Danger! Take cover! Take cover!”

He had never seen a storm like it. Oily darkness like staring down the open maw of the largest Dragon in existence. Palpable malice. A load of ice in those upper altitudes that he could only marvel at. The wind was a frigid whip, knocking the smaller Dragons about as they descended; Affurion roared his orders, but his voice was drowned out by sharp clattering that began to the North of Kerdani City. Hailstones. Not pretty, round hailstones. These were chunks of ice larger than a Human’s head. Smashing. Exploding on impact. In the blink of his eye, the northernmost battle-group of Dragons vanished into a pounding storm-front that from this distance resembled an iron curtain, only the Tourmaline knew better. That was death, even for Dragons.

Down! he bellowed, slapping Yukari across the muzzle with a wingtip in his desperation. Get underground, Dragons!

The Anubam below quarried into the ground like the maddened caveworms Grandion had once encountered in the Western Isles. Dragons darted under cover as the hailstorm intensified, driving across the city faster than a man could run. Affurion ordered the Grunts to be the last under cover–they, of all the Dragonkind, would be the most likely to take the brunt of that storm and survive.

As Grandion paused to allow other Dragons to scuttle into the hastily-dug tunnels, he had a moment to glance toward the already-obscured Palace, to hope that Hualiama had made it indoors in time. He would not be able to keep his promise to help her if she encountered Shinzen now. By his wings, he had never been more thankful that the Dragon-Haters had been driven off, at least for the time being. If the Ancient Dragoness would kindly chase down and destroy that Dragon-Hater fleet and the Empress of all Haters in the doing, so much the better for everyone.

Aloft, the voice of Numistar Winterborn roared and raged, sparking thousands of bolts of lightning that hammered into the already besieged city, smashing tiles, caving in roofs and battering down doors. Any resulting fires were instantly buried under untold sackweight of ice. Her Storm swept across the city unheeding of any life in its path.

Affurion grabbed his wing. Hide!

Like worms, the mighty Lesser Dragons cowered beneath the earth and hoped that the Ancient Dragoness’ ire would leave them unscathed.

Chapter 25: Mother of all Battles

JIN RAN LIGHTLY upstairs, balanced on the balls of his feet. Reaching an unsuspecting guard, he chopped the base of the man’s neck with a hard-edged hand. The man slumped; Jin caught the body and eased the unconscious fellow to the ground.

Hualiama zipped by him, taking the stairs three at a time. Giants! She smelled their earthy scent. The tingle of magic was there in her nostrils, causing strange lights to flare behind her eyes. She slipped behind a large column opposite the entrance to the King’s Hall, where they expected to find King Taisho. Though she moulded to the shadows, her young accomplice seemed born to them. He flattened himself momentarily beside her, before pointing to a secondary column and motioning upwards.

Not the direct approach. Good. Too dangerous.

Jin pressed a short length of treated rope into her hands. “Know how to use this?”

“Ladies first,” she said, indicating he should proceed.

He did not enjoy that! Lia reminded herself that she had not the first idea what notions of honour his Nikuko warrior-caste might entertain. This was evidently a grave insult. No mind. She took the sting off her words by beating him to the column.

Casting the rope around the foot-wide grey stone column, she wrapped the free ends several times about her wrists, before tugging sharply to check her grip was secure. Then she walked upward, gripping onto the column with her knees and the inward-turned soles of her boots, making an inchworm motion. Good speed? Jin clucked at her from below, suggesting she should hurry up. Hualiama froze as a Kaolili Guardsman paraded by in full view. If she smelled Giants, why were these soldiers completely oblivious? Or was that another Shinzen trick?

Continuing up the twenty-foot column, Lia reached the base of a tertiary-level walkway around the King’s Hall. Reaching up, she gripped one of the ornamental railing supports and swung herself neatly up onto the walkway. She crouched, checking both ways. The boots of patrolling soldiers disappeared around a corner not ten feet away. Perfect. Now–oh, Jin was already with her. He dropped even more lightly than her, scanning the area.

He pointed two fingers at an archway. Go.

They flashed across the space, again hugging the shadows as they peered inside. Soldier. Hualiama stole forward, elbowing Jin in the process, and did the necessary.

The young warrior let out a hiss of annoyance. “He was mine.”

Lia just held a finger out and mouthed, ‘No talking.’

And now a sulk. Great. Had she been this awful when she was fifteen, traipsing around the Islands with a Tourmaline Dragon and–where on the Islands was Flicker? Grief, she needed to start looking after that dragonet properly.

No time. For Shinzen’s voice boomed within the King’s Hall, demanding outright surrender.

Lia peeked over the hip-high balcony. King Taisho stood before his plain, tall-backed throne on a small dais at the head of the hall, flanked by the bevy of Councillors that kept his elbows warm. His face was expressionless yet somehow severe at the same time. Facing him was Shinzen, fronting a wedge of ten Giant soldiers, while further Giant-magi patrolled the smaller functionaries’ doorways and the main entrance of the hall, throwing up the magical barrier which Hualiama had detected earlier. She felt its subtle draw. Everything was normal. Nothing to report here.

The hall’s roof was cracked in dozens of places, but held firm against the weight of ice. She realised that the hall could not be at the uppermost level of the Palace. If she was not mistaken, several rooms must have collapsed above, but not enough to break the strongly buttressed hall except in one corner, where some masonry had fallen onto the highly polished, green marble floor.

Jin rotated smoothly through an overarm throw!

Too horrified to stop him, Lia could only watch as his small throwing dagger arced toward the nape of Shinzen’s neck–poisoned, obviously–but the Warlord simply reached up a hand as if preparing to scratch an itch, and trapped the blade in the palm of his hand, careless of any cut.

He said to the King, “Giants are immune to poison. Men, fetch me that fool.”

Taisho had not budged. Hualiama squinted around the ornate hall one more time. Gold trim. Wonderful paintings and hangings. A thousand places an assassin could hide. Something struck her as odd down there, but she did not have time to work it out. If Shinzen appeared that confident, then he was the only threat she should care about.

Giants sprang toward her from the ground level. Lia ducked out of the balcony and sprinted, soft-footed upon the carpet, back toward the head of the hall. Take the last balcony. Ignore the Eastern soldiers just starting to point at her as she sprinted forty steps along the walkway to the final, curtained archway. She forward-rolled beneath a speculative spear-thrust, kicked off the soldier’s boots and vanished between the curtains before the reflexive swing of a short sword trimmed her long braid and her neck with it. She leaped forward deftly, touched down on the balustrade, and somersaulted through the air, crossing twenty feet as she dropped against a tapestry. Clutching her blue blade above her head with both hands, she ripped a neat line down a priceless heirloom as she descended with the gracefulness of an acrobat lowered by a rope, just to the right of the King of Kaolili.

Well. For once, a landing that went to plan.

Lia drew her second sword.

Shinzen, peering over the King’s head even though the monarch stood upon his dais, grunted, “Princess, you just keep turning up like the proverbial bad dral. Do you want to warm my bed this badly?”

“The warming will be done by your blood after I gut you like the brainless ape you are,” she retorted. “Give it up, Shinzen. My Dragons have the Palace surrounded.”

“You’re a terrible liar, Princess. This whole little charade had your name on it from the beginning. Give me my ruzal and we can all go home.”

From the corner of her eye, Hualiama watched Jin shimmying down from the same balcony she had vacated as though he possessed a gecko’s sense of balance. Magic. She would have that boy’s guts … he was a fraction of a step ahead of several Giants. They stopped as Shinzen raised his arm lazily.

“Come, girl. You and me. Single combat. Winner gets the power.”

Still that odd, uneasy feeling! Lia wet her lips, trying to keep the conversation flowing while poking around the hall with her mind. The Giants’ magic interfered, however. “Ruzal is not so easily given, Shinzen.”

“No. Nor is it adequate explanation for why the greatest powers of this age congregate where you walk, Princess.”

Warlord Shinzen had no interest in playing the yokel this day. His speech was lucid, the hatred seething in his dark eyes, plain for all to see. The hammers lifted from his belt to be hefted in meaty paws the size of Hualiama’s head. He gestured curtly for King Taisho and his group to step aside.

The King said, “I will not be bullied in my own hall, Shinzen. You and your kind are an abomination, a curse upon–argh!”

Invisible magic shovelled the men aside, piling the King and his Councillors in an ungainly heap beside the dais. “I do not waste breath on lesser men,” Shinzen rumbled, his eyes filling with an unholy light. “We are alike, Princess, whether you like it or not. Your power sings to mine. They long to join … to feel our kinship.”

On the haft of his huge hammer, his fingers fluttered in a curiously girlish gesture, and Hualiama felt a stirring in her breast. Ruzal. The blood drained from her cheeks, only to pulsate like gelid sap deep in her belly. A hungry awakening, as though the spirit of Dramagon stirred in recognition of his children. Shinzen’s whole concentration was on her now, his pupils dilated, the already defined veins on his neck and massively muscled arms throbbing manifestly, horribly, in time with the sensations invading her breast. His lips twisted into a bestial grin.

She would not give the ruzal to a creature like Shinzen, no matter the cost. Never.

“Aye, Princess. Rightly you say, this power is not easily given. It must be taken, stolen from the last dying gasp of breath crossing your pretty lips.” Now the full madness of his laughter crashed over her, knocking her backward against the tapestry and sending Jin stumbling involuntarily off the dais, his hands clapped to his ears in agony. Shinzen bellowed, “Dramagon’s power persists in death. It revels in death. It demands death!”

The hammers whirled from wide on either flank. Lia barely leaped backward in time, her slightly trailing left foot catching a glancing blow on the arch that threw her off balance. She flutter-stepped on the sweeping arc of Shinzen’s left arm as the heavy hammers crossed, then executed a twisting sideways double-spin that aligned with the direction she was falling. Collapsing her knees to take the shock, she rolled smoothly into a warrior’s ready position. The Giant chased after with a shattering roar. She had to leap again. Shinzen’s power lashed out immediately, pummelling her body backward. Lia skidded down the long marble floor, gasping for breath.

The Warlord pursued her more deliberately now, the hammers punching in a one-two motion that pummelled her into a forced retreat down the hall, jerking her about as though she were a straw puppet used for warriors to pound until their arms tired of the training. Yet she had strength. Her Dragoness voiced an approving roar as Lia braced beneath the onslaught. Her boots gripped the floor. Her fingers flexed on the sword hilts.

I am Balance. She centred herself.

I am the wind. She bent away from Shinzen’s blows, allowing them to pass over her.

I will face the day of reckoning with courage. With a shout, Hualiama sprang to meet the Giant.

In. Out. The swords hacked into Shinzen as though he were a block of granite. Shinzen executed his scissors-tactic once more, but Lia spun around the horizontal axis of her body, holding the swords almost flat against her frame to avoid the converging hafts of his hammers, before flicking the blades at the end, with an abrupt twist. One blade bit into his left wrist, the other severed the forefinger of his right hand.

Even as Shinzen stared stupidly at the stump, Lia was rising into a leaping pirouette, whipping her swords around with the centrifugal force of her rotating body. Snick! Snick! The Warlord roared and swung as the blades slashed across his left ear and cheek, but she was a wisp, a Dragoness dancing through battle with that incredible, all-embracing awareness, that decelerated perception that allowed her a split-second’s extra time to anticipate moves as rapid as Shinzen’s. For this, she had eaten arena sand over and over again. She had taken beatings in training from masters and students alike and had risen to her feet, bruised and humiliated, to carry on. Even though she wore the welts and contusions of the Giant’s recent beating, she knew deep in the molten-fire core of her being that she could never allow a creature like Shinzen to prevail. His path was to consume, to dominate, to kill. Her way was to shine where nothing but darkness seemed able to exist.

At last, she grasped something of her purpose. A convergence between the tidal forces pulling her life in so many impossible directions.

Hualiama bent her back like a supple reed, allowing a hammer-blow to fizz past her chin, before slashing deeply with the blades once more. The Nuyallith forms rose in her mind, hypnotically implanted by the monk Ja’al. Knowledge injected itself directly into her muscles. The cobra-thrust up into his left armpit. The double-windroc technique spiralling into the whirlwind attack, piercing Shinzen’s armour in dozens of places, but as yet, she was unable to land a crippling blow.

Blood splattered off the Giant, but he kept right on coming at her, bellowing like a bull. Hualiama folded softly around a blow meant to crush her ribs, riding the head of his left-hand hammer in a half-circle before falling away. She tumbled head-over-heels, then reversed direction to meet his lumbering charge and for the first time, caused Shinzen to trip over his own hammer. Nigh ten feet of Giant measured his length in the King’s Hall, shaking the paintings and tapestries on the walls.

The Warlord rebounded with another brutish roar. His answering blow, even though she leaped and twisted away, flung her spinning through the air. Land. Twist again. Hualiama groaned at a glancing blow to her left shoulder, but wriggled away through his legs, hacking at his ankles on the way past, but the iron-like thews resisted being hamstrung. O mosquito, bite harder! Lia scrambled away to collect her thoughts for a vital half-second.

She was the child of the Dragon, the great Onyx Dragon, and that heritage could not be denied. Four of Jin’s daggers whirred into the Giant’s back as Hualiama’s dancing turned a charging Shinzen this way and that, always cutting, always flitting away like a butterfly before he could land a decisive blow.

Fire rose within her, shining and uninhibited and thrilling, fuelling the extraordinary height of her leaps as she performed the aerial splits right over the Warlord’s head. Her downward strikes chipped bone off his skull, opening fleshy gashes ten inches long. Maddened with pain, the Giant flung a hammer at her. It caught the inside of her right knee, a perfect, laming blow. She collapsed with a sharp cry, rolling away to the dais as he dogged her retreat. Jin! He was right behind her, trying to help her rise!

Now she had to protect the boy.

The Giant kicked her backward against Jin, brutally. Sharp pain stabbed into her left side. The ribs! He kicked again and again, battering her upraised legs, seeking to debilitate. Toying with her. Waiting for the moment of fatal vulnerability, when he could look into her eyes and see the dying terror he so craved.

Never!

Humansoul! cried her Dragoness.

A picture. A desperate gambit. With a pointless war-cry, Hualiama threw her battered body at Shinzen as his boot swung in again. She collapsed against his shin. No need to pretend hurt. Blood dribbled from her mouth as she groaned loudly and long. The Warlord kicked her off with a curse; he thrust her body against Jin in order to create the space needed to swing his hammer.

Dragonsoul, give me strength …

“Curse you, Dragonfriend!” roared the Giant.

Shinzen loomed over her, every muscle in his neck and shoulders standing out in rigid relief as he twirled the hammer into a massive, two-handed overhead wallop. Sliding forward abruptly on her knees, inside the arc of his blow, Hualiama whipped up her blades in the breaking-the-hammer defensive technique. They sliced exactly into the joints of Shinzen’s descending wrists. With a flaring of light, they sheared right through both wrists simultaneously. The power of his blow caused the Giant to dismember himself.

Behind her, Jin cried out as the flying hammer-head audibly cracked bone.

Lia ignored him, for the Warlord had dropped to his knees. His eyes bulged grotesquely as he took in the blood spurting from his severed wrists. Hot droplets splattered her armour, her neck and right cheek. Jerking forward with a wrist-reversal to flip the cutting edges to the outside, Hualiama thrust her blades upward into the base of Shinzen’s neck, grating against his backbone. She ripped outward with every last ounce of her Dragon-fuelled strength, tearing through muscle and tissue and the great carotid arteries feeding the brain.

Even so, the Giant did not die easily.

He slumped forward, knocking her once more against Jin. Shinzen’s head thumped into her lap. He tried to speak, but could only make a ghastly whistling sound from the ruin of his throat. His chest heaved. Unable to draw breath. Staring in disbelief, yet moisture leaked from the corner of his eye, a tiny echo of the crimson pulsing in ghastly waves from his gaping throat. Did he know regret? Then, very slowly, his eyes rolled up to white and his body gave a single, parting shudder. His spirit was gone.

Silence struck the hall so deeply, it roared in her ears.

Hualiama hesitated, but then reached over and pressed the Giant’s eyelids closed with her fingertips, saying, “May you sleep in death as you never rested in life, and the evil you represented, die with you.”

The Dragonsong of death filled her being. Elegiac.

Her head lifted. The Giants stationed around the King’s Hall stood petrified with disbelief, but King Taisho moved toward her, nodding sagely. “You have served my kingdom above and beyond a duty of honour, Princess Hualiama.”

He nodded again …

A hand slipped around her head to press something against her nose. Her ears caught a tiny tinkling of glass. A smell of bitter anise ambushed her, a pungent taint that she drew into her lungs in a half-breath before her mind registered–‘danger!’

“Jin?” she gasped, her blades tumbling from nerveless fingers.

Paralysing cold spread through every muscle in her body. With a soft exhale, Lia slumped like Shinzen before her. Any power of movement or feeling belonged to a stranger. The boy kicked himself out from beneath her, letting her head crack against the marble floor, but there was no pain, only numbness. Poisoned! Jinichi stood briefly in the frozen ambit of her vision, his lips compressed into a thin line as he regarded her with an expression somewhere between grief and hatred.

“Begone, Nikuko,” said the King, harshly. “You’ve served your purpose here.”

The teenager regarded the King darkly. “My reward?”

“All that you are due will be given you,” Taisho said evenly. “All the peoples of Kaolili will thank you when we forge our new alliance. Behold.”

Hualiama lacked the power to turn, but the sound of that first footfall was a death-knell to her hopes. Azziala! Low laughter beat against her ears. “Aye, the boy has served our purposes well, o King. And you have delivered your part of the bargain. My fugitive daughter. What was the poison you used, boy?”

She felt nauseated. Betrayed by the King she had trusted and served. Betrayed by a jealous boy. Her heartbeat crashed louder and louder, as if war-drums swelled with their dreadful beat, until all the world collapsed around her.

“Ordibathik serum,” he said, a word which meant nothing to Hualiama, nor evidently, to her mother either.

“Which is?” Azziala grated.

Jin’s voice shook slightly as he replied, “A compound particular to my peoples’ apothecaries. A paralytic nerve agent with additional magic-dampening properties. The Princess will be unable to use any of her powers for a period of time dependant on her resistance.”

No magic? Aye, her Dragoness seemed dormant, her open connection with Grandion, blunted. Even her telepathic Dragonish was unavailable, somehow dampened and locked away by the serum. Magical poison? Hualiama had never imagined such an attack, especially not from Jin, whom Grandion trusted implicitly. This was the wrongness which had struck her about the King’s Hall. Even the Giants had not known that Azziala lurked in anticipation of executing her masterstroke.

She was undone.

The footsteps approached steadily. Azziala said, “Now, we wait. With Shinzen’s forces neutralised as Affurion and his lizards chase them to the death, we will require the Tourmaline’s presence here in order to force the Princess to obey. Meantime, Numistar Winterborn chases my phantom fleet to the South. By the time she realises her mistake, we will have possession of the ruzal and you and I, dear Taisho, will secure our places as leaders of a new world order. You will have the East, and I will command the rest of the Island-World.”

The familiarity in her mother’s voice sickened her. So this was King Taisho’s plan to save his kingdom? A betrayal–did Jin know how he had been used? He must, although the boy gave no indication, for as he moved out of her line of sight, his face was an unreadable mask. Traitor! Now she knew who had spied on her at the barracks, Jin and his virtuoso sneaking ability, leering at her nude, transformed body. What lies had Taisho fed him? Had he even known about the Empress?

All too soon, the storm’s distant thundering abated as Numistar raced southward, hunting Azziala’s fleet. Those who would be sacrificed for the greater cause. And Grandion came.

She still sensed that much. As always, the oath-connection operated at a level deeper than or different to ordinary magic. She could not say how she knew it, but she detected his approach before the Empress did, and though every fibre of her being wailed and warned, she could not prevent his seeking her, for the Dragon was frantic with need. Lia heard Azziala’s Dragon Enchanters readying themselves. Dozens of voices. Perhaps the greater part of the Dragon-Hater forces.

And here she lay like a beached trout. Powerless. But her will was indomitable, she assured herself. A psychic bastion-ward could never be breached.

Oh my Dragoness, what will we do now?

She was silent.

Grandion burst into the hall, bugling his fury, and lasted two seconds. Hundreds of Dragon-Haters piled in to subjugate the Tourmaline; despite his powerful protections, without the support they had always drawn from each other, he was unable to withstand their prodigious attack.

Azziala raised her arms, drinking in their power. DRAGON, OBEY!

With a groan, Grandion settled nearby. Her Dragon! Oh Grandion, shell-son of Sapphurion, how low thou art fallen! And now, the susurrus of blood in her ears was all the lament she could sing for him. Noble Tourmaline. Faithful to the girl who had spurned him.

Again the tapping boots, circling her prone body. Hualiama lay where she had fallen, in a sticky puddle of Shinzen’s blood, unable to lift a finger.

Azziala said, “I have observed much about you, my daughter. I know that ruzal cannot be stolen from you. It must be given willingly. And I understand that despite your avowed affection for this lizard, you would regard withholding the power of ruzal from those you see as evil, as a higher imperative even than suffering the sight of his death–and I can make that death the most terrible, lingering event, unimaginable to you. Misguided as you are, you have inherited your mother’s flair for intractability and wilfulness.”

She could not focus her eyes, but Hualiama saw the golden form of her mother leaning into her field of vision from her right side.

In a strange voice, Azziala cried, “I Reaved thee, my flesh and blood, with the Reaving of love, and thou hast despised thy inheritance. I succoured thee to the place of thy birth, and thou hast denied thy inheritance. In all thy dealings, thou hast played me false, Hualiama. And so I conclude, that a foul spirit hath inhabited thy very soul, and by this spirit thou my true and beloved daughter, hath been brought to the place of mockery and wrongdoing.”

She could not break in. Azziala could never break in …

“Thou art two, not one, lizard-soul and Human-soul ensconced in one flesh. Truly it was that day, you did not die. Hualiama, your soul was stolen away by Ianthine the Insane, the first and last lizard I ever made the mistake of trusting. She took an unborn infant to her laboratory, and there, by the power of her ruzal, she fused Human life with the draconic and birthed the monstrosity that you are!”

Her shriek could only make Hualiama jump inwardly. No! This was a crazy, twisted misinterpretation of those events. The eggling spirit had danced with her, had it not? She had sought Hualiama across the many leagues, across the Island-World … and they had connected in a place of dying need and in love. That was the truth. Incontrovertible truth.

“And now, it is my duty–for the sake of the goodness of this world–to correct this foul perversion which is meet in your flesh.” She paused to breathe raggedly through her nostrils. “Hualiama, as your loving mother, it is my duty to Reave the Dragon-spirit out of thee. I will rend thy being in twain. And when you are released from the demonic spirit, you will at last be free, and mother and daughter can be together forever. It is our destiny.”

Demonic? Draconic? Lia’s mind spun. She had once heard that most ancient language from a monk. What was his name? He had recounted to her the ancient belief that angels were spirits of pure fire, and that Dragons were the embodiment of those spirits.

‘Girl, you must be an angel.’ Tears leaked unheeded down her cheeks as she recalled that conversation with the kindly old archivist monk. Had his words been prophetic?

Equally, she knew that angelic spirits had their opposite. Ancient spirits of pure darkness, of evil. Demons. Some scroll-lore posited that various forms of insanity proved the case for possession by these spirits–how else could a man gain strength enough to lift and throw a boulder larger than he was tall, or to wrench a house off its foundations? So old was this language, it had been rarely used for the last thousand years.

Would that she could quiz Fra’anior about this ancient lore …

Azziala seemed to view her unbidden tears as evidence of defeat. Leaning closer, until Lia could see the exact gleam in her eyes, she said softly, “We cannot touch you from without, Hualiama. We both know that. Still, even the most impregnable fortress can be betrayed from within–historically, that is the most successful and efficient tactic in warfare. I know about your psychic bastion-ward. I have examined all of the protections the profane lizard-spirit placed around your being. You think you’re invulnerable. But I say there is a way in. A way through the heart.”

With that, she glanced at Grandion. “I’ll have the Dragon attack you through your precious oath-connection. Do you think you can withstand that, Hualiama? Your very love for this beast will be your downfall.”

Hualiama’s soul cried out in mortal terror.

* * * *

An eternity later, Azziala continued to attack Hualiama with all the force of Tourmaline-founded power. Lia screamed for the umpteenth time. Her world was pain. Everything was pain. Such agony wracked her being that it seemed even the paralysis must be overwhelmed, for she was slowly, inevitably being forced apart by a sensation like a burning wedge being driven into her mind by a gargantuan hammer, her inmost being fraying and tearing as the Empress tried to cleave Dragon from Human. Her form wavered, flickering back and forth between a sickening multiplicity of phases, growing and shrinking bizarrely as the Shapeshifter magic struggled against the forces applied via the oath-connection. Droplets of golden Dragon blood as well as crimson Human blood squeezed from her brow. Her bones morphed and changed, stretching her flesh into strange new shapes before snapping back to normality.

The Empress would not relent. Hualiama would not relent. The sensation was deeper than thought, deeper even than pain, an excruciation of her living soul. Lia considered death. It had never struck her as nearer or sweeter; as a respite from hate and hurting, loneliness and despair.

She screamed again as the wedge drove deeper. Had she not been paralysed, she would have long since bitten off her tongue, Lia realised. She had relented once and given in to the ruzal, only to hear her mother crow in delight and seize the offering for herself. No. She must never, never give her mother what her ambitions demanded–neither in life, nor in death.

The Dragoness writhed in as much distress as her, and Lia could not stop it. She watched the destruction of her own self, the spiralling into madness, and she knew she could not hold out much longer. Her mind would snap.

And Grandion? Would he know? Twice, the Dragon had roared and apparently tried to fight back, but the Haters reinstated their Command-holds and Azziala’s torture continued.

Could a Word of Command divide the indivisible?

At some point as she floated in a burning river of suffering, she remembered King Taisho commenting that Jin had fled, that he would despatch his spies to track down the youth and finish him. So much for his reward. A dagger between the ribs would be his just portion. Just moments later, Prince Qilong arrived to demand to know the source of all the commotion. He departed speaking no word of response to his father’s low dismissal. Worthless popinjay.

Now she floated on that volcanic river once more, no longer aware of where or who she was. Dragoness and Human seemed committed to a macabre dance of tearing apart and coalescing and shifting, all the while being immolated in the dark furnace of Azziala’s imperative, but she knew her two forms would suffer worse than death for each other. No matter the force or cost, they always came back together. Perhaps the Empress sought to defy a fundamental law of the universe such as gravity or entropy or eternity; again and again, Lia reached for her Star-power or white-fire or anything that she could possibly imagine to fling back at her mother, save the dreadful, abstruse temptation of ruzal, that ultimate repudiation of all that was wholesome and beautiful about magic and draconic fire-life. Yet there was no power here. No possibility. Only the endless, macabre dance of anguish.

The sound she heard was the breaking of her soul.

No! What? A vast draconic bellow–the roof came crashing down!

“Numistar!” someone shouted.

Chapter 26: Awesome-Pants

HALF OF THE King’s Hall lay in ruins. Inanely, Hualiama thought it a boon that Shinzen’s body had not been desecrated, crushed by falling masonry. Another part of her brutalised mind observed a grey wing rapidly passing over the brand-new hole. What the–ice pelted in, exploding with sharp reports on the green marble flooring. Azziala shook her fists at the sky, yelling her Commands, but there was nothing up there, just bleak, towering cloudscapes and icy rain blasting into the hall.

A mighty clap of Dragon-thunder shook the Palace.

“The Ancient Dragon! Get the King to safety!” Qilong made himself heard, although in a reedy, pathetic whine. “You! Watch the Princess! O Empress, help us, please. We’re getting slaughtered out there.”

Azziala cast Lia a longing glance, then turned on her heel. “Fetch me a Dragon. Numistar must have detected our subterfuge. Princeling, that girl’s your responsibility. Get her somewhere safe. Do you think you can possibly guard a paralysed prisoner?”

“As you command, mistress,” said Qilong, quavering of voice.

The hall resembled a chaotic battlefield, strewn with ice and bodies, Giant and Human. From the sounds Lia heard, Azziala and King Taisho rushed out together. A detachment of the King’s Guard stood over her, sharing uncertain glances, those she could see. But now, the dread pirate-lord of a variable number of Islands plucked her out of the pool of blood with nary a squeamish squeal, and surprising ease, crying, “Follow me, men.”

They marched through an endless set of corridors, passing from opulence to a clearly more functional part of the Palace. Lia’s head lolled against Qilong’s garishly green-striped uniform jacket or alternately, flopped against his forearm.

“Waaarrrggh?” Lia asked.

Shouting! Lurching! A roar! Suddenly Qilong was running. Lia caught a glimpse of Makani to the rear, casually gluing a cohort of royal soldiers to a stone ceiling. Mercy. Sumio’s bald pate gleamed briefly in lamplight. The man darted off and she heard a horrible gurgle as he did something unmentionable to an unseen assailant. Then Flicker dived into her unresponsive, unfeeling arms and tried to burrow beneath her neck-armour, crooning and flicking her face with his hot forked tongue.

Jin cried, “Where to?”

What on the Islands was happening? Lia’s battered mind could not string events and impressions into a coherent sequence.

“Follow me, men,” cried Prince Qilong. He did not do well with variety in his stock lines, but Hualiama’s dulled ears caught the sounds of a growing number of boots in the corridor as they raced along, now a whiff of herbs, perhaps a storage room, now mohili grain, now a dank, dimly-lit section of underground tunnel, clearly little-used.

She almost giggled. Qilong planned to rescue her?

What of Grandion? They’d left him behind! No! “Ulllmaarrrggh,” she protested.

Qilong spared a moment to pat her cheek absently. “Don’t you worry, little Princess. We’re taking you somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from that freakish rajal you call a mother.”

“Lurgle praaaarrrgh?” That was all she could gurgle. Little Princess? Insufferable … saviour! Lia tried a grin, but that slack-jawed effort clearly only managed to frighten him.

“I’ll explain everything, I swear,” he gasped. “Save your strength.”

Right he was. She had never felt quite so much like a sack of skin in which the bones had been shaken up and left in odd orientations. Her eyes rolled about without any control whatsoever. Jin, that traitor, ran alongside Qilong as though it were the most natural place in the world. She had to force herself to remain conscious. She faded into and out of darkness, her physical body somehow disconnected from her mind. That was a stranger’s body, a body aching in every muscle and ligament, and deeper yet. A body only beginning to scream about violation, anguish, ruin …

Fighting! Weapons crashed and clanged somewhere; there came a crescendo of shouting and Prince Qilong lowered his head to bull through a crowd of battling men. Qilong? Power, focus, man of action–Qilong? Lia caught glimpses of the pirate-lord’s crew dealing with Royal Guards with commendable competence before Makani shot past in a gust of cinnamon-scented wind and did what Dragonesses did best. Blood and gore, and indeed entire body parts, dripped from the tunnel’s walls and ceiling.

“Alright. Sack.”

“Grragurrr!” Lia howled. No chance. Into a burlap sack she tipped. Onions. The sack reeked of rotten onion peel.

Then there was more bouncing and jouncing and at least four kicks and cuffs that she counted, along with a slew of uncouth banter about the sack’s contents and what might be done therewith, before she heard the unmistakable creaking of a Dragonship’s hawsers and boots banging urgently on metal gantries. The two-timing sneak! Treacherous rajal! Having given up on Saori, Prince Qilong had seized the chance during the mother of all battles to snitch a new bride and abscond to the furthermost Isles of his benighted kingdom!

The number of names she called him in her mind. Did he not care for the destruction of Kaolili? For the fact that the Empress of the Lost Isles was about to seat herself upon the throne of the East, upon his father’s throne? What by all the volcanic hells of Fra’anior itself did Qilong think he was doing? Because when she woke, and her Dragoness woke with her, she would give that quisling Prince far more than rotten onions to deal with!

As a tide of exhaustion caught up with her, Lia noticed that evening had already fallen. She heard the leathery snap of sails being deployed, the chanting of men on the back-breakers as they worked the manual turbines, and a heading of Yorbik being announced by the Steersman.

Yorbik? Ridiculous. That was way, way across the Cloudlands …

* * * *

The Tourmaline Dragon surfaced from a sleep filled with dark-fire nightmares in which he repeatedly burned Hualiama until a face of charcoal screamed at him from his sleep. He woke, bellowing, GNNAAARRGGHH!

Wing-brother! Be silent. Good, you’re awake.

Grandion gathered his thoughts from the farthest reaches of the Islands. H … Huuuu ….

Good news. She’s gone with Prince Qilong. A paw checked his eyelids. Grandion blinked in pain as light stabbed in. The Empress makes plans to depart the East for Gi’ishior.

Qi-uunnnh?

The Brown Overmind checked his eyes again. What was the null-fires idiot doing? Why could Grandion not rise and greet the dawn as any Dragon worth his wings ought to?

He blasted his brain into order. Wha … what is this? Where? Her?

Rapidly, Affurion said, Four days have passed.

Four! It could not be. The Tourmaline’s thoughts scattered in undraconic, dark-fires dread, unable to accept this information. No. What could the Empress have done in four days?

Azziala used your oath-connection to torture Hualiama, but in a surprise manoeuvre, Makani broke into the Palace that evening, pretending to be Numistar, the Brown explained. In the confusion, Prince Qilong absconded with the Blue-star and the boy called Jin. The Grey Dragoness travelled with them. By fast Dragonship, they made for Yorbik Free Federation.

Impossible! snarled Grandion.

It wasn’t our plan, said the Brown. As best we’ve pieced together the evidence, this crazy scheme was initiated by her dragonet.

Flicker? The dragonet? At last, the Tourmaline dragged his eyes open and tried to focus on his wing-brother. Impossible. That feral-brained little whippersnapper … what happened after that?

Affurion performed a wing-shrug. Briefly, Numistar did return to engage Azziala, but they appeared to reach some agreement before the Winterborn chased off West in pursuit of Qilong’s Dragonship. Then, Azziala gathered her people and began to transfer them back to the Air-Breathers.

Grandion’s brows furrowed. By the First Egg, Affurion–four days? FOUR? Please assure me that you jest.

The Empress drove you both to the brink of fire-extinction, wing-brother. Healing has been difficult, but Sunfyora performed a miracle of fire-stoking to bring you thus far.

No … she’s been gone … Makani’s with … and Jin? That’s good, isn’t it?

Affurion shook his muzzle. Jin was the betrayer, noble Grandion. Word is that Hualiama slew Shinzen with her own hand, before the boy poisoned her with a special compound which his Nikuko tribe–

NO! Grandion tried to surge to his paws and fell back, panting heavily. No. I trusted him–I let him … help me, Affurion. I must go to her. I cannot allow … never again. Never!

The Brown stilled him with a wingtip-touch upon his muzzle, firm yet sympathetic. You’ve just recovered from the Command-hold, as has Mizuki. Elki and Saori have been working with the Dragonkind to design a strategy to combat Azziala. Rumour is that she seeks the First Egg in the Natal Cave of Fra’anior Cluster. Do you know of such a legend, noble Grandion? Could this be true?

No, he said, bewildered. I don’t know. The Cave’s been empty for as long as Dragons have lived at Gi’ishior. Does she seek to rule all Dragonkind, Affurion? Does she?

That is the knowledge we must seek. Meantime, gather your strength. You will fly to the rescue of your promise-beloved. We will make that happen. By my wings, we will!

His fires wept. Once more, the foundling star had been torn from his paw. This time the fault lay squarely upon his shoulders. The Dragon-Haters had found a way to assail and injure Hualiama through the deepest oaths that bound a Dragon to a Dragoness, through Grandion’s own third-heart fire-promises. When it counted most, his paw had not been strong enough.

He did not deserve to love a star.

* * * *

Hualiama awoke aboard Qilong’s Dragonship minus fetters, minus sack and in full possession of all of her clothing and weapons. Confused, she stared about the cabin. There was a pleasant taste in her mouth and her stomach was neither gnawing through her backbone, nor was her throat even dry.

However, every inch of her body felt like a bone which had been chewed over by rabid hounds.

She checked the cabin again. Aye, these were Qilong’s personal quarters. No, there was no sign of the self-styled terror of the Isles. Aye, her paired swords lay close at hand, and a white dragonet, the delight of her soul, snoozed upon her pillow-roll. No, the sack lay neatly folded at her bedside as if to proclaim its lack of complicity in any crime whatsoever. She sniffed the air. Someone had set a brazier smoking, supplied with incense and medicinal herbs upon fresh coals, if she did not miss her mark. Her brow furrowed. Right, she had found a rat–someone had removed her clothing, bandaged her in various places beneath, and then returned everything to normal.

A light snore sounded from the foot of the bed.

Roaring rajals! If that was Qilong, she was about to frighten him out of every remaining year of his life. Taking a light grip of one of the swords, Hualiama crept down the bed with difficulty. She peeked.

No, it was one of those perky Kaolili slave-girls whose ministrations Grandion had enjoyed rather more freely than a reptile ought to. The girl was pretty and petite, with long, jet-black hair framing an oval face of elfin beauty. Her full lips curved upward as she slept. A contented slave? Hmm. The slave-girl slept beneath a thin, lime-green cotton sheet, and her pillow-roll was a kind Lia had never seen before, a carved block of jinsumo wood. Islands’ sakes, how could that piece of furniture enable comfortable sleep?

Lia settled back, swallowing down bile. She had to admit, she felt far worse than she had initially thought. Wounded. Fuzzy. Beaten. Further trying to identify the unfamiliar scents upon the night air, brought her no further illumination. She had no idea where she was, only that the Prince himself had whisked her away from his father’s kingdom to Dragons only knew where, and she had better …

“Mercy! Don’t do that.”

“I apologise, Mistress. I heard your breathing change,” said the girl, kneeling beside the foot of the bed.

“Uh … call me Lia. Please.” While she bade her heart resettle in her chest.

“That would be most improper.”

“What’s your name?”

“To address me by name would dishonour your great reputation, Mistress. I would be most honoured if you’d call me Thirteenth Slave.”

Before she could stop herself, Lia made a disgusted noise. The girl immediately looked crestfallen. Oh, mercy. How to rescue this? Serenity writ upon that lovely face could not disguise her response. Carefully, Lia said, “On my home Island of Fra’anior, I grew up in a great and noble house where we hold to many traditions, much like the royal houses of the East. Some you would find familiar, and some, most peculiar. For example, regard this dragonet. We sing with dragonets.”

Only a slight quiver of the left eyebrow betrayed the girl’s surprise.

“Our men kidnap their brides and carry them off in their Dragonships, and even Princesses are expected to train at weapons-craft and to become powerful warriors. I am a Dragonship engineer and pilot, as well as a warrior-monk, and a singer and dancer. In our culture, we know each person’s given name, which we believe shows respect for the individual. So I would know every member of our royal household, down to the lowliest kitchen boy. We are also very careful with titles. Moreover, we employ a great variety of formal and informal bows to indicate, without naming the person’s title, that we know who they are and the precise nature of their relative standing to ourselves in our culture, along with nuances for time of day, the formality of the occasion, and so on. In our love of nuance, our cultures are alike.”

Quietly, the girl interjected, “My given name is Isiki.”

“Was I that obvious?”

“The Mistress is always right,” the girl returned, with perfect composure. “May I bring you something for your comfort, Mistress? I am instructed to supply your every need.”

“What I need most is information. Where am I? What is my situation here?”

“Prince Qilong asked to be informed as soon as you wake. I am assigned to be your handmaiden. I am to assure you that you are safe, cared for and far from those who would threaten your life.”

Well. Lia knew of one pressing need that could not wait. But she had to rely on Isiki’s help to cross the narrow gap between the bed and the garderobe, and to suffer the embarrassment of having her clothing loosened so that she could relieve herself–uncovering bruises and bandages fit to supply a war-infirmary. Ugh. How weak? And how long had her Dragoness–mercy!

Dragoness? Dragonsoul, are you–

Humanlove! Oh, blessed be the wings that bore you hence! I was so worried, almost beside myself … Lia smiled as a warm sensation filled her heart. Ah, an invisible inner hug. Now there was medicine for the soul! Don’t you ever leave me like that again. Wasn’t your fault, of course. You’ve been unconscious for four days.

“Four days!” Hualiama gasped.

“Mistress?”

“How long have I been unconscious? Where are we?”

Moments later, she was shaking her head in disbelief. Four days out into the Cloudlands? At least–she checked herself rapidly–her bones felt as if they had generally returned to their rightful locations, even if every joint ached and every muscle felt like a cloth wrung out by a washer-woman’s strong hands. And she still had possession of the accursed ruzal. Lia exited the garderobe and shuffled to the bed like a woman seventy years her senior.

Moons and stars, what was Qilong’s strategy in this? “Girl–uh, Thirteenth Slave–please make me comfortable. Fetch food and water, and inform the mighty Prince I am ready to receive him at his convenience.”

Aye, I’m about ready to receive him too, growled the Dragoness, showing her mental picture of talons exiting their sheaths.

Exactly.

Lia caught an odd sidelong glance from Isiki. Surely the girl had not heard? Had she spoken Dragonish aloud? Add this peculiarity to Jin’s abilities and her neck was itching as if her Dragoness had a severe case of scale-rot. Something very peculiar was afoot in the Island-World. Hualiama meant to find out what it was.

“Is that boy Jin aboard this Dragonship?” she inquired, with honeyed menace.

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Could you make arrangements for him to be hurled overboard, forthwith?”

Isiki bowed fluidly in the Eastern fashion. “I shall confirm your orders with the Prince at once, Mistress.”

Ooh. Good answer. Hualiama cracked all of her knuckles one by one, despite that they were hurt and grossly swollen, sending the girl scurrying out of the cabin in response. Jin had better have a story fit to out-con the cleverest con-artist in history, or he would be the unwilling beneficiary of flying lessons in the vicinity of the nearest cloud.

* * * *

When Qilong was done grovelling and explaining–a great deal more of the former than the latter–Isiki cracked open the door to permit the sweat-soaked Prince to exit, and Jin, equally pasty of complexion, to enter. Hualiama would have preferred a moment to herself to compose and calm her thoughts. Four days out of Kaolili, sailing a brisk following breeze which had forced the fleeing vessel onto a heading just three compass points shy of fully northwest–that put them on a direct course for the famed silk-producing Island of Helyon. Not massive Yorbik. Not unless they wanted to fly directly into Numistar’s tender clutches.

The Prince’s plan had been straightforward. Remove one Star Dragoness from the Eastern Archipelago in the hope that would ensure his nation’s survival. Admirably simple. Lia would have called his scheme naïve, save that it appeared Qilong had made exactly the right call. It was Numistar’s winds that chased them across the vast Cloudlands ocean between Kaolili and the central Islands, a distance that no Dragon would dream of covering in solo flight–except with the support of a Dragonship, and that was the Grey Dragoness Makani’s idea. She slept up top at irregular intervals, shadowing the Dragonship every hour she did not rest.

What would Azziala make of this? Lia had no idea on the Island or off of it. But with neither the ruzal nor a First Egg likely to be gained in the East, Hualiama concluded that the Dragon-Haters would either completely abandon their plans for Kaolili, or set up a base of operations in the East while they scoured the Island-World for rumour of the First Egg. She doubted the Empress would chase her problematical daughter across the leagues. Not now. She knew that Lia must inevitably come for her, and she held the Tourmaline, Elki and Saori hostage.

Now, she studied Jin as he stood framed in the doorway, his left arm encased in a sling.

Must she find mercy for the traitor-turned-rescuer? He had fled the Palace only as far as the barracks, where he had spoken to Flicker and Makani, and conceived the plan which had brought her this far, almost a thousand leagues from Kerdani City.

“Kill me,” he blurted out. “Kill me, great lady. The dishonour is too great. I shamed my people, my sword and all of the Dragonkind. I cannot live with this shame.”

“Jin–”

“Kill me!” His scream echoed in the room, startling Flicker into wakefulness. Lia soothed the dragonet with a touch. “Tell me you hate me, tell me you will cross my unworthy neck with your swords …”

Her fingers tightened on the hilts of her Nuyallith blades, but she did not bare so much as a quarter-inch of metal from the scabbards. The temptation was agonising. He had cost her victory, her Dragon and her health. He had cost her hours of the most insufferable torture her ingenious mother could devise, delivered via the very mechanism that breathed life between her and Grandion. She had almost lost her mind and her soul to this boy, and what she saw in his eyes, made her want to spit.

Remorse.

Hualiama had always thought herself a merciful soul. Yet she realised she had secretly hoped Jin might be defiant, that she could summon her Dragoness and execute him in an act of clean, conscienceless vengeance. Remorse removed that power. It removed any possible peace of mind over the deed. It invited mercy, and this was one of the hardest decisions she had ever had to face.

For the longest time, she had no answer.

Eventually, the silence forced her hand. Lia croaked, “Why?”

He tottered forward to the bedside, crashed to his knees. “Slay me, Princess. I’m begging you–”

“First, I need to know why. Why did you do it, Jin?”

Because they had convinced him that Hualiama was an inhuman monster, a Western enchantress possessed by a Dragoness. He had seen her change with his own eyes, he admitted. He had believed the lie that she had come to Kaolili to instigate a draconic uprising against the Humankind, aiming to drive Man off the Eastern Islands forever–just as his own people had been wiped out five years before, not by Giants as he had been told, but in truth by King Taisho’s own forces.

“King Taisho promised not to hurt you,” he said, sobbing brokenly at this point in his meandering tale. “But then he handed you over to the Empress, and she … and when I saw you shattered, there on the floor, lying in the pool of blood of the very monster you had slain in service of my kingdom, and still they betrayed you … I could not understand.”

What Lia could not understand, was the intensity of the connection she felt with this treacherous, tortured soul. She would never have made such a decision. He had. Yet what burned in her heart when she considered him? Nothing she had ever felt before. A sulphurous mystery.

He explained earnestly, “I saw her try to force the Dragon-spirit out, but it was not as they said. Spirits do not amalgamate with a living soul. They dominate and subjugate. Under such terrible coercion, any ordinary possessing spirit would have fled the mortal coil, leaving the subordinate creature to perish. My people know these things. Our lore is much concerned with the spirits–I could tell you many legends, Princess. Many. That day, four days ago, I saw something different. I saw one soul, one spirit, inseparable. I realised she was trying to rend a soul asunder, and that is a deed fouler than any under the twin suns. It was an abomination!”

He made to spit superstitiously, but discovered Isiki’s foot just nearby, and desisted. “Knowing my blunder and my dishonour, I set out to correct it before I killed myself. And I will do it. If you refuse to strike off my dishonoured head, Princess, I shall fall upon my own blade–”

“No!”

Jin’s hand held steady beside his lower belly. “This dagger is poisoned. You cannot stop me in time. Neither you, nor your slave-girl.”

Lia said, “Isiki, step away from Jin.” The girl obeyed, flushing at the public use of her name. “Jin, no.”

“I am honour-bound–”

“No, please.” He glanced up through his lashes. In a voice roughed by need and incipient horror, Lia grated, “I beg of you–”

“No!” His hand quavered in horror, but refrained somehow from piercing the flesh. “You cannot beg. That is … unfair …”

She said softly, “I am begging you. Jin, I’m not very familiar with honour-cultures. Let me tell you my history. Once, I was adopted. Someone took a chance on me and adopted me; it just so happened, that my adoptive parents were King Chalcion and Queen Shyana of Fra’anior. So I’m a princess, but in a sense, not royalty. Before that time, I was raised by Dragons. And from times earlier than I can remember, I yearned for flame. I yearned for an inner fire that burned within me whenever I felt angry or sad, or particularly happy, such as when I dance … this flame lived within me, and I did not know what it was.”

His eyes burned, a shade of lambent grey that made her think of lanterns. Though she did not hear the words, she saw him mouth, ‘I know.’

“Now I know that I am a real Dragoness, as much as I am a real Human. I have just told Qilong the same. I am a Shapeshifter Dragoness, Jin, and I know what it is to be alone, and to be the only one of my kind. Jin, look at me.”

He kept his eyes fixed upon the blade, yet his entire body shook like a reed in a flooding river as emotions coursed through him.

“Look into my eyes, or I’ll turn you into a dragonet.”

Flicker murmured in protest. Throughout this exchange, he had been watching them both very closely. Making his decision, he hopped onto Lia’s lip, and nuzzled her arm with a satisfied purr. Good.

More than good. I need to thank you properly later, you awesome dragonet.

Jin fought it, but a tight, sad smile had a grip upon his lips. So rife with storms were his eyes, Lia caught her breath. She was no mind-reader, but as best she could tell, sincerity shone in the tenor of magic she detected there. Agitation and anxiety mingled with white-fires truth.

She said, “I won’t pretend I haven’t been hurt by your betrayal, Jin. I won’t pretend there isn’t part of me that does want to wring your scrawny little neck, before dissecting your entrails minutely and scattering them for the windrocs. There’s two parts of me; I’m not sure my Dragoness feels the same way, entirely.”

She does, Flicker informed her, interrupting the Dragoness within. Dragoness-Lia had not stopped growling since Jin dared to enter the cabin.

“I’ll talk to her,” Lia temporised. “Now, I’m begging you because death … death is the easy way out.”

Jin and Isiki jumped identically, then glanced at each other with expressions that queried exactly which Isle of madness the foreigner on the bed currently inhabited.

“Aye, the easy path,” she said grimly, certain of her ground. “I am not enamoured with easy, cheap paths to honour, for they are fleeting and soon forgotten. Jin, I beg you to make the hard choice. Stay the course. Perhaps one day you might learn another kind of honour, one that involves much struggle and sacrifice, perhaps a notion of honour somewhat sullied and frayed around the edges, but infinitely the more precious for that it was dearly purchased.”

Besides, pouring out his life now would be a tragedy. A waste of potential. Lia still wanted to find a Dragon for him, but this was not the moment.

“Will you think upon my proposal, at least?” she pressed.

Still, the dagger did not move. She beseeched him with her eyes. The boy still seemed to be fighting the call of his heritage. Lia observed how skittish he and Isiki behaved around each other; how acutely aware each was of the other, despite their inability to even share a glance. Frozen teenagers. She wanted to hoot with laughter, but refrained. Oho!

She said, deliberately addressing the air between the pair, “Besides, we Fra’aniorians say that honour is like a woman, Jinichi. She is whimsical and multifaceted, possessing an enormous capacity to amaze. If you truly desire her, you must pursue her with all of your heart, soul and mind.”

Well, that was a free paraphrasing of the ballads, but close enough.

Rising, Jin bowed until he folded almost double. “Your wisdom is my anchor, o Princess.”

Then, he fled.

* * * *

Endless Cloudlands tan dappled with umber rolled to the horizon. Beyond the compass of Human vision, the Star Dragoness saw the very slight discolouration of bluish smoke which indicated Human habitation. Helyon. Prince Qilong wanted to put down to re-provision there, but the storm which had pursued them for two further days since her reawakening, had other ideas. It had taken a day’s pause, perhaps for Numistar’s white dragonets to feed in the realms below the clouds, before racing after the fleeing Dragonship with renewed vigour.

Gale-force winds whistled through the rigging. The side-sails that gave a Dragonship its name and characteristic Dragon-like appearance had been storm-lashed, triple-strong, to the supporting spars, and the broad, white silk sails crackled and snapped with the action of the wind. The ropes thrummed and sang as if strummed by a whimsical lute-player. No chance to turn for Yorbik, Hualiama judged, given the wind sweeping relentlessly from a point East of South. Qilong was a capable pilot. Yet where did this mean Numistar Winterborn wished to drive them? Beyond Helyon and into the vast, uninhabited expanse called Immadior’s Sea, which ended at the fabled Isle of Immadia? Behind, a broad storm-front swept across the Cloudlands as if a vast animal churned and chewed up the toxic expanse, regurgitating greasy, polluted black clouds into the atmosphere above.

Landing in winds this strong would be tricky verging on suicidal. Flying aloft beside Makani, Hualiama found herself bounced about and buffeted by the changeable, icy breeze. As a result, her Dragoness felt as ornery as a feral rajal stung by a hunter’s arrow.

Yet to be flying, albeit stiffly, was a wonder. She had always read Dragons healed quickly. This was craziness. The ribs, just a faint twinge. Most of her bruises were yellowing up nicely. To think that two days ago she had been unable to rise from bed unaided …

Flicker, bravely fluttering alongside her, suddenly babbled, Ship stop-no? No. Danger. Dragons get water and nibbles, good yes, yes, very yes?

Uh–right. Lia checked with Makani, who waved an agreeable wing-tip circle. Do you mean, we should fly ahead to secure supplies without the Dragonship actually making a landing? Numistar would punish anyone who took us in, that’s for certain.

The tiny white muzzle peeped, Eep-aye. Clever Lia. Wrong place stop. Smell wrong.

Huh, said Makani. We should teach the dragonet to speak less nonsense. He does, however, advance a sound idea. Our destiny lies far beyond Helyon, I sense.

What Lia say? Flicker is awesome-pants?

Laughing merrily, Lia asked, Where did you pick up that phrase, Flicker?

Qilong teach me Human-speak.

Makani snorted a great puff of smoke-laughter. Qilong? Of course, he primps and poses like the most narcissistic of male Dragons.

“Awesome-pants,” the dragonet chirped clearly. “I am awesome-pants.”

Chapter 27: The Reach of a Dragon’s Wings

AFTER FLYING SEVERAL hours with Grandion and Mizuki, Affurion saluted them with a wing-dip. “May you fly beyond the five moons, Dragons and Riders,” he said formally. “We will track the Haters on their way West, with Siiyumiel’s help. May we meet in a place of white-fire suns.”

“Fly strong and true, noble Dragon,” Grandion returned.

Saori lifted her hand as if wanting to speak, but swallowed instead and turned to check the straps binding her seat between Grandion’s spine-spikes. The Tourmaline sighed. Wing-brother?

We should not separate a woman with child from her man, he said stiffly.

Grandion snapped, I’ve never met such an obstinate, prideful granite-head! He meant regarding the Copper Dragoness, too; all three Dragons knew it.

Then let me be obstinate and focus on rescuing my kind and bringing them to a safe Dragonhold. Nevertheless, Affurion added aloud, “Elki, much remains that could be spoken between us. Promise me you will keep Saori and your unborn child safe until we fly together again?”

Elki nodded. “I promise, mighty Affurion.”

“I will … hold you all in my third heart,” he growled gruffly. “All of you.”

“All that is Copper shall sing at the advent of thy wings against the fragrant skies,” said Mizuki, choosing a famous epic poem, but personalising it in a way the Brown Overmind could not possible misunderstand.

Blushing up an enormous belly-fire storm, Affurion turned and blazed away to the South.

Grandion shook his muzzle. “Ha.”

Mizuki and Saori sniffed with equal perplexity. “Ha.”

“I fear that to explain would be largely redundant,” said Elki, patting Mizuki’s powerful shoulder, “therefore I shall contribute a fine, ringing ‘ha!’ to the conversation.”

They all looked at each other, and laughed.

And so the northwest shore of Kaolili Island vanished into the distant horizon that morning, as the Dragons drove into the bright blue beyond at a steady eighteen leagues per hour–double a Dragon’s ordinary long-distance flying speed, but they had one large advantage forging through the Cloudlands two leagues beneath their position. Her spiked shell cleft the grey-green cloudscapes with enviable ease, her mighty bulk driving through the thick air and leaving a long trail of slightly sparkling disturbance behind her, the magic-enhanced output of her rearward-facing blast-ejectors. In other words, Elki took pains to inform them, Shell-Clan Land Dragons were the mightiest poo-powered predators of all.

Tiiyusiel. Rather than suffering a slow Dragonship escort across the long leagues to Helyon Island–Hualiama had been spotted four hundred leagues shy of Helyon by a small Saga-Runner, the previous evening–they had a frisky, enthusiastic youngster. Siiyumiel’s talon-stroke of genius.

The Dragoness’ stellated carapace slowly dipped beneath the clouds. I shall rise at dawn, my friends. Travel fast, for I forge forth to tame the mighty Sû-tar-Ingrar Current.

At dawn! the Tourmaline called back.

Aye, if Lesser Dragons had a handy moving Island to land upon and rest, they could envisage a crossing that was out of reach of even a Dragon’s wings. Perhaps they could catch up with the much slower Dragonship bearing Qilong and Hualiama.

Grandion scanned the horizon all that long, golden afternoon as the Dragons winged northward, following the helpful airstreams swirling in the wake of Numistar’s forty league-wide storm. The suns vanished for a long period behind the waxing Yellow Moon, but toward evening, reappeared beneath Yellow’s underbelly, casting vast golden fingers of light across their path, a quality of light comparable in many ways to the unique volcanic suns-sets of the Fra’anior Cluster. So viscous and gilded was the sunlight, the Tourmaline Dragon pictured himself swimming in a terrace lake of pure, liquid gold, and so his hearts’ hope swelled into his throat and he sang in slow, worshipful Dragonsong:

Oh for wings to bear my soul,

Beyond the cloudscapes of my dreams,

Escaping the mortal coil that binds a being,

Into flesh and blood and bone.

Beyond this present world,

Into eternity.

Mizuki made a harmonising bugle of approval, but Prince Elka’anor called over, “Is it common for snappish, hundred-foot armoured fortresses to be moved to feats of epic poetry, o mighty Tourmaline?”

Grandion found his laughter sounded decidedly sheepish. Grr! Embarrassed, he spluttered droplets of fire from his jaw as he growled, “It is common in Dragons who have spent time around your sister. That was her composition.”

“I thought I detected a special whiff of sisterly mischief,” the Prince said jovially.

“There’s more mischief afoot,” said Saori. “We’re swapping, Elki. Mizuki and I want to have a girl talk. Privately.”

“What, out here?” Elki sounded aggrieved. He waved his hands, indicating the pristine expanse of cobalt-tinged Cloudlands all around them. “There’s nothing but … nothing. Hundreds and thousands of leagues of nothing.”

“Including that tiny bit of nothingness between his ears,” Saori put in, drawing monstrous chuckles from their mounts. Elki did not appreciate this in the slightest. He sulked out of Mizuki’s helping paw and mooched dramatically up the curve of Grandion’s shoulder to his spine-spikes.

Saori blew kisses at him, standing boldly upright atop the Copper Dragoness’ left shoulder.

“The more beautiful they are, the more fickle,” sniffed the Prince.

Mizuki whirled her fire-eyes at him. “I greet thee most sulphurously, handsome Human.”

Elki’s knees caved in. He sat down with a bump. “How do women do that?”

“What is ‘girl talk’?” asked Grandion, as Mizuki wheeled away, cutting through the suns-beams with a simple flexion of her widespread wings. “A peculiar Human custom?”

“No. It’s when girls get together and braid their hair and talk about boys–I think? Uh, not that Mizuki probably braids anything … except the limbs of her victims. Actually, I’ve no idea. Girls are a mystery. Wouldn’t you say, Dragon?”

“Dragonesses are a mystery. Girls are–”

“Worse?” Elki suggested mournfully.

Softly, their laughter fell upon the evening’s endless silence and vanished from existence. Grandion winged on steadily, checking his speed. Good. Out here, a Dragon’s senses could begin to trick him; the unbroken emptiness, to play with the mind and will. But his hearts burned with unquenchable longing. This Tourmaline would neither be distracted nor dismayed, nor turn an inch aside from his course. This time, he would cross the Island-World for his beloved Dragoness and no power, draconic or magical or Human, would stanch his tenacious fires, nor mute his thunder.

He had been lucid for some moments of Hualiama’s torture. A pox, a mighty curse upon that Hater’s head! May the claw of the Great Dragon strike her very existence from the face of the Island-World! Would that his fires had been snuffed out, than see his beloved suffer like that ever again. Did she know he had fought the Haters with every ounce of his magic, and beyond magic and willpower and knowledge, even? That he had fought like a dull, unthinking beast focussed only on her need? That he had seen, heard and experienced much of her suffering, for Azziala had callously left those channels open rather than entirely subjugating his mind as before? Before that, he had seen her thought-memories and knew she had triumphed over Warlord Shinzen. And then a curious gesture, a Hualiama gesture … which moved his heart inasmuch as he failed to understand her ways.

He said, “What does it mean when a Human shuts a dead person’s eyes?”

“Who did that?” Elki asked in surprise. “That’s not an Eastern custom.”

“Your sister, after she defeated Shinzen,” said Grandion. “The Giant had fallen, strangely, with his head on her lap. She reached out and drew his eyes shut, saying, ‘May you sleep in death as you never rested in life, and the evil you represented, die with you.’ She was …”

The Dragon could not find words. Elki supplied, “Kind?”

“Aye, kind. Why? The enemy deserved to be burned in flame, to be gutted and flayed–she killed him horribly. She cut off both of his hands and then opened his throat. Any Dragon would be proud.”

“Oh well, that makes it all better,” Elki said sarcastically.

Grandion blinked his secondary eye-membranes, certain he was being insulted but not understanding how or why.

The Prince said, “Sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Grandion, there are behaviours we would say are quintessentially Human, that define our humanity. We do not desecrate the bodies of the dead. That’s a custom in the Western Isles. There are those who would argue that makes Western Islanders barbarians–dancing over the bodies of the enemy, eating their brains, mutilating their corpses, staking them upside-down to be eaten by ants–suchlike. I digress. Some believe we should not invite the vengeance of the spirits, for in a sense, they fear the dead or the wrath of their ancestors.”

“This is far from Lia’s conduct,” the Tourmaline said heavily.

“No, you’re right. She was showing compassion–”

“To the dead?”

“Even to the dead. Magnanimity in victory.”

“Weakness!”

Elki shook his head. “No, the opposite–strength. She showed respect for the deceased even when he deserved none. Don’t you see? This is moral backbone; transcending the baser nature, the animal … within.”

Incensed, Grandion began to take a backward snap at the Dragon Rider, then halted the gesture with a shudder. Was this what Humans thought? That Dragons were just the thinnest layer of intelligence masking feral, vicious fiends? That they were animals acting upon bestial instincts? Now he could not even clash his fangs at the Prince lest he substantiate that very accusation! Grr!

The Prince cried, “Hear me! We are all animals in some sense, Grandion. I can speak for my species. For certain, Human behaviour is sometimes worse even than what we see in the animal realm. Did you not witness the behaviour of Shinzen and Azziala, and even the craven King Taisho? But if we can set the animal aside to act with intelligence and integrity and honour, even when it hurts most–that is the mark of true character. That is what I’ve learned from you, and from Hualiama.”

And just so, the fires of his understanding flared like molten silver, so pure and sweet and true, Grandion could scarcely gasp a breath.

“That is why I stowed away on my sister’s Dragonship and followed her around the Island-World,” added the Prince. “What about you, Grandion? Why do you fly to her?”

* * * *

As Helyon Island loomed on the horizon, Hualiama and Makani commenced the replenishment runs, sparking a monstrous, flashing lightning-display from the storm behind. Numistar raged. Her thunder growled and crashed without pause along the entirety of her storm-front. The winds rose to a whistling shriek, bending the low fenturi trees whose broad, sheltering leaves and ovoid purple fruit-clusters supported untold millions of the famous Helyon silk-spinners, a type of fruitarian spider unique to the Helyon cluster.

Helyon was a narrow Island lying low in the Cloudlands, entirely devoid of natural features that might break the force of Numistar’s breath. Its lovingly tended gardens rolled and tumbled through a series of pretty scooped-out dells, tracing the watercourses that criss-crossed the Island like an elegant Fra’aniorian lacework, its clear gemstone-green waters fringed by the thick burgundy shrubbery of fenturi trees. Most of the people appeared to live in small, grass-roofed lodge huts barely taller than the gnarled trees that supplied their livelihood, and as Hualiama swept low over their plantations bearing five one hundred sackweight bags of imported mohili wheat sold for a price that had turned Prince Qilong’s face grey, she saw small, pale faces upraised in wonder or fright.

For the first trip, she and Makani battled the rising wind; Hualiama almost standing still in the air at times before the larger, more powerful young adult Dragoness, despite being heavily loaded with ten half-ton water barrels, reached out and literally dragged her aboard the Dragonship.

No shame in being a hatchling, growled the Grey.

Right. How far do you think Numistar will drive us? Hualiama asked as Qilong’s crew fell to unloading the Dragons. Each man wore a safety rope. Isiki and Jin were in the thick of things, wrestling one of the man-sized sacks of mohili wheat between them.

Jin, Qilong and I discussed this question last night, said the Grey. Are you aware of the Ice-Dragons of the North, Dragons that hail from Islands far beyond Immadia?

Er … I thought they were legend? And there was nothing beyond Immadia? Hualiama flipped away from the gantry, following Makani as they shot back to the town–more a hamlet with a very large Dragonship landing field and cargo operation beside it–to fetch more supplies. Fruit and unfamiliar northern vegetables, this time, along with a load of firewood to supply heat to the Dragonship’s floatation chambers. Just a girl from a hot volcano thousands of leagues to the South, here.

Makani bared her fangs in a savage grin. Take pride, hatchling. You’re a girl-Dragon! We’re the fiercest, most beautiful creatures in the Island-World!

We are, she agreed, with a certain lack of enthusiasm. Boasting. It made her scales itch.

As they loaded up, the Grey Dragoness said, Our legends tell tales of a clan of Lesser Dragons from the North, whose scales are ice and whose claws spark the mighty lightning-storms of the North. Where they fly, eerie lights called aurora play in the sky above the vaulting, snow-bound peaks of Immadia. Their name is peculiar to the ear …

Chrysolitic Dragons, Lia remembered. Chrysolite is an icy, whitish-green mineral, a type of metal silicate, if I recall rightly.

Though what would a Chrysolitic Dragon look like? The scrolls were rather less clear on that point. A whitish, pale green Dragon-colour? And oddly, her mind dredged up a reference to ‘Dragons that looked like windrocs’. Feathered Dragonkind? Surely not.

With a toss of her dagger-sharp skull-spikes that had the dock labourers falling over each other to vacate the immediate area, the seventy-foot Dragoness snarled, The far North is the ancestral seat of Numistar Winterborn, is it not? Numistar drives us hence. She wishes to go home, for there she might derive the power spoken of in her name, the power of deepest winter. You and I both hail from Fra’anior Cluster, with its eternal volcanic summers. We cannot imagine the power of winter. We have never known such a cold, beside which even the frosts of the Lost Islands must epitomise the balmiest springtide day. Does the Saga of the Winterborn not inform us:

Born of the atramentous void between the stars,

Numistar’s breath doth frost the heavens,

In ice-spangled streamers of death?

How Dragons adored a poetic turn of phrase.

Would Helyon’s Island-gardens survive Numistar’s breath? Hualiama feared to entertain the question. For if they stopped, or wherever they tarried, they would invite the Ancient Dragoness to smite that nation with the very streamers of death her saga pictured so graphically.

Would a Star Dragoness invite death to cross the threshold of Immadia?

* * * *

That day, as the Lesser Dragons rested upon her shell from dawn to noon, Tiiyusiel divulged news that the Prince’s Dragonship had whistled past Helyon Island in the grips of a terrible windstorm and sailed directly on into Immadior’s Sea. Again, Hualiama had been spotted with the Grey Dragoness Makani, before the Land Dragon patrols had been forced to dive deep to avoid a massive weather-disturbance beneath the Cloudlands. They had barely escaped with their lives.

Grandion prodded Prince Elki with his foreclaw. “We’ve gained a third of a day.”

“Unnh … how does a five-foot mischief beat a ten-foot Giant in single combat?” grumbled the Prince.

A five-foot mischief? Perfect. He filed that in a Dragon’s infallible recall for future use. Grandion said, “How does a word from her lips realign the very stars?”

“I know this game,” Elki mumbled, rubbing his eyes blearily. “Did I oversleep? Does my breath smell? How does a whisper of feminine guile wind a ninety-foot Tourmaline Dragon about her littlest finger?”

“How does word of the East write its soul-bonds upon a faithful Prince’s heart?” Mizuki put in, with a fond clack of her fangs in Elki’s direction.

“Apparently, with the proximate gleam of her beguiling eye. My girl, however–”

“Saori’s sleeping,” the Dragoness advised. “She’s pregnant. The scrolls say Human females sleep extra during early pregnancy.”

“What, are you to be our midwife too, now?” the Prince complained.

Grandion snorted with laughter. “I suggest you grow used to the idea of being a father soon, o Prince of Fra’anior. The patter of bare feet shall soon enter your roost. Great happiness will be yours.”

“How do you know?”

The tenor of the Prince’s question caught the Tourmaline flat-pawed. He revisited his assertion, tasting it, checking the resonances so fleetingly present beneath his speech. Was this another moment in which his magic subconsciously drew on their oath-connection, drawing into his fire-soul a hint of the knowledge of Balance? Did he prophesy?

Beneath his paws, Tiiyusiel rumbled contentedly, “He speaks with the assurance of Balance.”

Elki stared wildly around him. “What? Happiness? When we’re chasing a vengeful Ancient Dragoness to her lair, there’s war beneath the Cloudlands, and the Empress of Haters is off to make merry mayhem at my home Cluster? Are you quite mad–happiness?”

When none of the Dragons answered immediately, he added, “Grandion, I’ve a poser for you. Tell me about my sister–tell me about when you knew her. Before she came to the Royal Court of Fra’anior, I understand there may have been a more-than-illegal patter of bare feet in your roost. How was that for a Tourmaline hatching? What was Hualiama like?”

He sighed. “It was complex. I was a jealous little beast. But let me tell you of Hualiama. She spoke Dragonish before she ever spoke a word of Human, Elki. She lapped it up like her mother’s milk–not that she ever … well, perhaps the happier memories. Her bare feet did not patter so much as whisper around our roost, for from the moment she could pull herself up with Qualiana’s talon or against Sapphurion’s resting-couch, she was destined to dance. My shell-mother would sing for her and she would dance, at first just a step or two before she’d wobble and fall over, laughing breathlessly; then two or three steps, and then a babyish twirl … I remember it well. There were times it seemed to me that smoke indwelled her eyes and shadows beset her soul, for night after night, she would wake screaming from her hatchling-nightmares. I understand that now, for Azziala planned to murder her in the womb. Egglings sense these things. And then there was Ianthine and the battle with my shell-mother for her possession. All of this must colour a person’s perception of life, o Prince. Perhaps this is why the Blue-star’s feet are ever restless. She is always dancing, running, fleeing the nightmares of the past.”

The Dragon startled. He had ruminated aloud and gained new insight. Peculiar. The lore-scrolls said Human females were exceptionally adept at this skill, tweeting their thoughts like parakeets, but gaining insight and understanding in the doing.

To his further surprise, Grandion felt the Prince, unbuckled from his seat, walk boldly down over his skull-ruff and onto the ridge between his eyes. There the Prince knelt and put his arms as far around the Dragon’s muzzle as he could reach. He whispered into an ear-canal. “Then you must show my sister the place called home, Grandion. Can you do that for me? Will you?”

A second time in twenty-seven hours, the power of speech was struck from the Dragon’s mouth. He had no reply. Who was this Prince, that he could speak thus to a mighty Dragon of Fra’anior?

Oh for wings to bear my soul …

What barrier did a few thousand leagues present to the wings of his soul? Calling urgently to Mizuki, the Tourmaline Dragon launched skyward with the Human still clinging to his nose. To his everlasting shock, the Prince was laughing uproariously.

Madman.

* * * *

Oh for wings to bear my soul …

So she had sung, and she had grown wings.

Let my soul take wing upon dawn’s twin fires …

So she had yearned, and her soul had winged to worlds beyond her imagination.

Mamafire!

So an eggling had cried, and the White Dragoness had responded, placing her shell-daughter at the centre of the enmity between her and the great Onyx, Fra’anior. How she longed to reconcile them, to find where her shell-mother had fled and to understand the reasons behind that apparently self-imposed exile. Why did Fra’anior hate her so? How could such a love, celebrated of ballad and fable, have descended into the pit of hatred?

Now she sat with Flicker and reminded him of the ballads he had loved, and to her wonder and delight, he remembered them well. He sang his old descants flawlessly. Lia embarrassed herself by weeping up quite the terrace lake. The dragonet touched her cheeks in wonder, delicate of paw, and his tiny eyes turned a deep, rich orange colour at the emotions her smoky soprano stoked in his breast. The little creature lapped up the tears with his tiny, flicking tongue, snorting at the saltiness. Then Flicker decided that nipping her left ear was his new favourite game.

Her song ended in a yelp of pain. I’m not meat! Your fangs are far too sharp.

Straw-head.

Go chew on a knuckle-bone, you–oh, whatever. Shall we raid the kitchen?

Smile cook meat?

Aye, I’ll bat my eyelashes at the cook and secure you his tastiest treats, Hualiama growled, trying to decide which part of the rascally parakeet who considered her left shoulder his personal perch, to chargrill first.

Flicker returned to investigating her earlobe. My straw-head.

He knew he was irresistible. Grr.

Having secured a tender strip of venison haunch for the voracious dragonet, Hualiama wandered up the starboard gantry, picking up her shadow on the way. Isiki treated her assignment with life-and-death seriousness at all times. In the main crew cabin, she heard the men training at wrestling, judging by the grunts, shouts and thumps shaking the Dragonship. Maybe Sumio was walloping them five at a time. Most of the men were afeared of taking her on, or perhaps Prince Qilong issued further orders regarding the royal personage. Lia whirled suddenly.

“Isiki, how are your hand-to-hand combat skills?”

“I’m competent, Mistress,” she said, lowering her gaze. “But I am ordered–”

“To help the Princess take gentle and appropriate exercise.” Indeed, Lia knew she would have to ease into further exercise or training. She still hurt in far too many places and had attempted to hide how much replenishing the Dragonship had taken out of her. “Agreed?”

“I could not stop you, could I, Mistress?”

That demure murmur was the most ridiculous cover-up she had ever heard. Nevertheless, Lia said, “Of course not. I’d chew you up like this venison I’m feeding Flicker here.”

This time, she watched attentively for Isiki’s reaction. Easterners were very guarded emotionally, but there were signs to be read, especially if she focussed on channelling her Dragoness’ senses through the narrower, more limited ambit of Human perception. A leap of the pulse. A slight whitening of her tan knuckles. Indeed! Her challenge had struck home, and Lia was perversely pleased. Indeed, she was feeling decidedly cantankerous, seeing as her ear was being chewed up like an old bone and her Shinzen-provided bruises painted her skin in a variety of purples and yellows that made her look like a surreal suns-set splashed on canvas by a deranged artistic genius.

Perhaps she should confirm her suspicions. Lia said, “Isiki, is it my imagination, or are these bruises and wounds healing faster than normal?”

The slave-girl, just an inch taller than Hualiama, considered her for a moment with those dark, almond-shaped Eastern eyes. “The truth is, Mistress, that your notions of normal should be adjusted for life as a Shapeshifter Dragoness. Have you studied the matter at all?”

Now bluntness bordering on insult, disguised in her polite, lilting Eastern speech-patterns? Lia ventured, “Isiki, can you read and write?”

Again, a frisson of anger. “I am educated, Mistress.”

“Sorry. Didn’t want to assume. Hidden depths to your Island, you devious little dragonet.” After a confused moment, Isiki essayed a tiny smile of understanding. “Will you help me document … things?”

“Things. Of course, Mistress.”

“Shapeshifter issues. Like how often I can safely transform. Linkage between the forms. Aspects of magic affecting one manifestation or another, new Dragon-Rider lore, battle techniques, shared mental techniques where one enhances the other–I suspect you’ve a secret scholar hiding behind that Eastern reticence, haven’t you? And will you teach Flicker to read?”

Now, Isiki’s hands trembled noticeably as they approached Jin on the bow gantry, leaning against the railing and staring moodily over a spreading disturbance beneath the Cloudlands. Without turning, he said, “There’s a legend of a volcano out here somewhere in Immadior’s Sea, Princess–a volcano raised by Immadior the White. She was the shell-sister of Numistar, as good as the Winterborn was evil, even though the two could easily have been mistaken for twins. Well, Makani tells me Dragons usually come in triplets. What a brood that must have been!”

Lia nodded. “I know the legend, Jin. They say that the middle of Immadior’s Sea is the place farthest from an Island-shore anywhere in the Island-World. The deepest, loneliest stretch of Cloudlands of all.”

“Before this journey, I’d never been more than an hour offshore of an Island,” he said. “Ordinary sailing, Prince Qilong informs me, should take us from Helyon to Immadia Island via Pla’arna and Gemalka in a matter of sixteen days.”

“Sixteen?” Over her hand, which muffled her gasp, Isiki’s eyes had flown wide.

Jin gazed earnestly past Hualiama to Isiki. “I’ll protect you ladies–uh …”

His Eastern tan could not hide that blush, nor did Lia miss Isiki’s instant colouration on her other side. Grief, maybe she should just pop the teenagers in a room together? Then again, she was not much used to playing the matronly chaperone. Nor did she intend to start. Ever.

Lia inclined her head. “We are grateful you chose to journey with us, noble warrior.”

“Noble?” Bitterness turned his voice to acid.

Hauling out her inner Princess, Lia dusted her off and sallied into battle, royally. In a voice of honeyed iron, she said, “Nikuko warrior, the Island-World away from the Eastern Archipelago is wide and its peoples many. Nobody knows your heritage. To them you will be a mysterious Eastern warrior. They will judge you by your deeds. Therefore, I adjure you to teach them what it means to be Nikuko. What matters is right here.” She thumped his chest with her forefinger as though wishing to implant the truth by dagger-strike if necessary. “Right in here, you carry the seeds of–”

His fists clenched on the metal safety-railing. “I have no sword.”

“I will give you a sword.”

“I have no honour!”

Honestly? The only person who could claim that honour, was himself!

At which, Princess and Dragoness switched places in a flash and Lia saw crimson. “Aye, what you do possess in abundance is the obstinacy of an entire flock of ralti sheep!” she roared. “If a Princess of Fra’anior who just happens to be a Star Dragoness and the shell-daughter of Istariela, her fabled, gloriously starry self, cannot give you a ruddy sword and the opportunity to go recover your benighted, longsuffering honour, then tell me, Jin: who in the entire Island-World can perform this miracle, you bleating, null-brained excuse for a smokeless volcano?”

A long, painfully tongue-tied moment of shock faded into Jinichi’s unexpected smile. He guffawed just once, as though an unknowable burden had been torn from his chest, and then he turned to face Lia, and bowed very deeply, holding the pose until she scrambled to match his bow with one of her own.

“As the Star Dragoness has decreed,” Jin said softly, “so let it be.”

And then he entirely spoiled the gravity of the moment by inquiring, “How exactly does a smokeless volcano go about bleating?”

Chapter 28: Immadior’s Roost

“WE PLAN TO change direction?”

Grandion scratched his chin unhappily. Walking about a living Island talking to the ground beneath his paws certainly brought out the worst in his scale-mites, but this was a Dragon of a different colour. Tiiyusiel surged through the billowing Cloudlands, the choppiness of the air in this region of converging currents forcing the Lesser Dragons to shield themselves and their Riders from upwellings of brown-tinged toxic gases. Nothing about Tiiyusiel’s carapace, save the regularity of her budding mountains, indicated that they stood atop a Dragon. How was it that there had been so little commerce and interaction between the Dragons of the heights and the Deep-dwellers over the centuries? They each lived as if the other kind did not exist.

The Land Dragoness repeated, “I spoke to Siiyumiel last night by longwave-speech. Reception was imperfect but we were able to exchange essential information. The group of Land Dragons–Stellates, Deep-Dwellers and Mountain-Runners, together with the kidnapped Hura Shell-Clan–emerged from the Trench of Maa-Ak-Uura near the Island-mass you high-dwellers call the Fingers of Ferial and travelled on into the Sea on a north-westerly bearing.”

“Immadior’s Sea?” asked Saori. “Siiyumiel is concerned for your safety. Why?”

“Safety is my Shell-Clan Elder’s duty.”

The Eastern warrior paused to take a sip from her water gourd. “Of course. I meant, what is the danger to a mighty Land Dragoness?”

Tiiyusiel said, “We speculate. It is unprecedented for ancient foes to cooperate in this way. We Land Dragons are not famed for peaceful co-operation, unlike the Gi’ishior-centred command of the high-dwelling Dragonkind.”

“Speculation?” Saori pressed.

Grandion smiled appreciatively at the Eastern warrior. Dragon-direct.

“We surmise that a great common cause has united these disparate clans,” Tiiyusiel said, not without a deep vibration caused by the roaring of her inner furnaces. “Or … they are mad. It is not easily understood. There are tones to the communication we’ve overhead, which lead us to theorise about some hitherto undetected form of … of mental imbalance. Which is more than unusual in Dragons so closely attuned to Balance and Harmony. It is–”

“Unthinkable,” Saori said quietly. “Against your fires, or however you Dragons might put it. Minds in harmony self-regulate, right? The presence of other Clan-members helps this process.”

The Land Dragoness gasped, “You understand?”

Saori rubbed her perfectly flat stomach. “I suppose I’m moved to think differently about life these days.”

“She’s referring to her baby,” Mizuki clarified for Tiiyusiel’s sake.

“Our baby,” Elki corrected. Then he paused as if struck by a Dragon’s paw. “Our … oh. We’re having a baby! Great leaping Islands, we’re …”

The Prince fainted with spectacular abandon.

* * * *

The long leagues. The gulf. The Cloud-ocean, the far song, the moon-drowning chasm and the never-ending horizon. The balladeers had coined many names for the emptiness between the Islands. No words that Hualiama could ink, could perfectly capture the soul-quivering, monotonous, illuminating vastness of the spaces between the Islands. Distances so enormous that no technology of Man or Dragon had ever served to accurately measure their extent. Dragonship Steersmen talked about days and weeks of travel. Three days here. Six there. Immadia was so far North that few scholars or balladeers had ever laid eyes upon its rugged mountains, yet many had written odes in celebration of its beauty. Even Helyon silk was costly in part due to the transportation cost, and that Isle stood only partway to Immadia.

Hualiama found it inspirational.

What if the Islands could be brought closer? By Dragon Riders or by better Dragonship technology? The problem was the age-old issue of fuel for fires. Fires to heat air, fuel to propel a vessel. The best fuels were dense, long-burning ooliti wood or various oils, but both sources were costly and prohibitively heavy. Oils were extracted by labour-intensive pressing processes and ooliti wood was primarily found in the far South. Again, transportation was an issue. Hualiama had no doubt turbine design, streamlining, improved heat retention and better sail technology could refine a Dragonship’s performance, and she sketched out or recorded a slew of ideas for all of those, drawing Jin into her musings, but the fundamental limitation of fuel remained. Perhaps steam-driven engines would be more powerful? But that would require stores of water. Another weight.

Ugh. She rubbed her temples, peering at Jin, seated to her right at the writing desk and Isiki opposite him. Both dark heads bent assiduously to their work. Maybe she could design a love-powered Dragonship? Every other ballad suggested love was the most potent force under the twin suns. Or, she studied Flicker, who was making an intent examination of the runes Isiki scribed with her quill pen on a scrolleaf, could she design a dragonet-powered engine? They had inexhaustible fonts of energy, apparently. Strap a hundred dragonets to a large wheel and they’d propel a Dragonship hundreds of leagues … and shred her afterward.

Peculiar, how Numistar appeared unable or unwilling to corner the fleeing Dragonship and drown it in the Cloudlands. Had all the battles with the Haters, Affurion’s Dragons, Shinzen’s forces and the Shell-Clan depleted the Ancient Dragoness’ resources so severely that she now lacked the strength to land a killing blow? More likely, the Winterborn tarried for some reason that escaped them as yet.

Aye, a mere fifty-league-wide localised storm that appeared to reach deep into the Cloudlands? Lack of strength? Silly Human, her Dragoness would say. Now, if she could hitch up a Dragoness and create some kind of Dragonship star-drive …

I would chop your insolent bones into inch-sized pieces and mount your head on my wall, suggested her Dragoness, neither asleep nor hibernating as Human-Lia had assumed.

“Fire,” said Flicker, reading in his babyish voice. “Ship … ship–”

“Shapeshifter,” Isiki encouraged. “Say, ‘Shapeshifter.’ ”

“Straw-head?”

“That’s hair,” said the slave-girl. “Shapeshifter hair.”

Lia blurted out, “That what? What dragonet-scrawl are you writing over there?”

“I’m writing about physical changes in the Shapeshifter race,” Isiki said. “For example, the shift in your natural eye-colour from smoky green to blue. You mentioned accelerated hair growth. Have you noted any other changes? Excess body hair?”

“No!”

Isiki chewed her quill pen, then pointed. “Those can’t be normal.”

“These? My br–you flaming wretch!” Lia pulled her hands back under the table again, but the damage was done. Poor Jinichi looked as if he was about to combust. “I am petite, but …” She indicated Jin and mouthed, ‘Shut your fumarole!’

Flicker looked on with a gleam in his eye that Hualiama did not trust one iota. Did he remember a particular conversation …

“Big,” he piped, as clear as a tiny bell.

“Flicker, I swear–”

“Big fruit!” he squeaked, darting for the ceiling. Lia lunged for him, tipping a table full of ink-pots and quill pens and spare scrolleaf onto Jin’s lap. The teenager produced an unhappy gurgle of shock-cross-mortification.

“You’re a dead dragonet!”

He somersaulted past her outstretched hands with ridiculous agility, chanting, “Big fruit, big fruit, Lia’s got big …”

Lia charged around the cabin in hot pursuit, yelling, “Pest! Flying cockroach! Mosquito! So help me I’ll spit you for a kebab, you–stop! Stop!”

Her outthrust right fist punched a head-sized hole in the cabin’s rear wall. BOOM! The flame generated by her fist shot across the next cabin, where Prince Qilong and his jolly crew sat at dinner, blowing a hole through Sumio’s upraised wine-goblet and knocking a spicy leg of fowl, which Qilong was evidently using to illustrate a conversational point, clean out of his fingers. The morsel splashed down with a sizzle in a bowl of berry-wine beside the petrified royal’s left elbow.

To a man, the crew stared through the splintered hole at the very red-faced Princess in the other cabin.

At the top of her lungs, she yelled, “Do I have big fruit? Do I? I ask you!”

“Of course, Princess. Most assuredly you do,” Qilong spluttered in a placatory tone, no less baffled than the rest of his crew.

“Men!” Lia struck a note that made the crystal decanters on their table sing. She smashed the toe of her boot through another section of the wood panelling for good measure, and stormed out onto the gantry to cool off.

Apparently there were explanations inside the cabin–Sumio’s low rumble carried in the cool evening air–and then, howls of laughter. Cackles. Hoots. She could not stand it. Lia shuddered, knowing that if she unleashed her Dragoness, there would only be a puff of smoke left in the sky to show for a Dragonship full of people she was coming to regard as friends. Aye, it was funny, but also maddening. She knew what she must do. Marching to the stern end, past the main double-turbines to port and starboard, she set about yanking off her clothing. Wrecking yet another outfit would surely crown what had to be the most humiliating evening of–well, recently. Too many to count.

“Mistress?”

“Thirteenth … Isiki? Hold these, please.”

“At once, Mistress. Will you be flying?”

“Aye, Shapeshifting has a way of destroying clothes. Note that down, would you?” Hualiama bit her tongue. “Sorry.”

“No need to apologise to a mere slave.”

“Isiki, one more humble this, meek that and mincing-me gibberish and I’ll have my Dragoness slap some sense into–you! Islands’ sakes!” The Prince stood on the gantry like a stunned ralti sheep. Lia had never been more thankful to be holding her clothing in front of her body. His bulging eyes …

Let me at that skanky mouse! roared her Dragoness.

Human-Lia snapped, “You had better get inside, o Prince, before I do something I’ll very much regret!”

Wailing, “I humbly apologise!” Qilong beat a full retreat, complete with a dive back inside his cabin.

Her hands shook uncontrollably as Hualiama shovelled her clothing into Isiki’s arms. “Forgive me. I have to fly.”

Flexing her knees, the Princess of Fra’anior performed a perfect backward dive off the Dragonship’s stern gantry.

Let me out! You–it’s my turn. I deal with situations like this!

Lia gritted her teeth painfully, feeling the air rushing over her body and the sensation of her stomach cramming into her throat. Dragoness, you kill in situations like this.

The Star Dragoness vented a word better suited to a Sylakian dock-worker than a royal. But she knew. The Human girl knew she knew. So as the girl plummeted like a falling star, as the Grey Dragoness flying above the Dragonship began to react, there was an inner clenching of fangs to match her physical form. The wind whipped her long hair against her taut back as Hualiama dived headfirst from the Dragonship’s altitude of a league and a half above the Cloudlands, the clouds below like a silvery-blue carpet gleaming beneath the fulvous eye of the full Blue Moon.

Hualiama!

Her head whipped about, buffeted by the rising wind. Shell mother?

Briefly, silhouetted against the stars as she narrowed her eyes against the frigid, rushing wind, she saw an image of the White Dragoness, Istariela. She was a petite, eye-catching Dragoness of a mere fifty feet in length, with an understated ruff of skull-spikes and a compact musculature optimised for speed rather than power.

She cried, Shell-daughter, you must find the Chrysolitic Dragons before Numistar does!

Istariela blinked out of existence before Hualiama could formulate the first of her many questions. Great. Mother-mysterious, how charily thou dost avoid thy daughter. Nothing about her upbringing had been normal, so why should she wish for normality now?

Suddenly, Lia realised that the foot of Numistar’s storm was sweeping toward her position far faster than she had imagined. Dragoness!

Wham! The growth-shock punished her stomach muscles. That transformation had been so much on the cusp that it exploded outward, thumping her innards as if her skin were a drum. Hualiama gasped at the change of pressure and sensation, then her wings snapped out and she shot forward as though unleashed from a war crossbow. A tearing pain gripped her shoulders momentarily as she adjusted to the strain. Unlike her Human, her Dragon-form’s stomach had no trouble adjusting to high-speed manoeuvers, however. Laughter burbled from her mouth as the hatchling accelerated, outpacing Numistar’s storm.

Mamafire! Look at me!

When the Grey Dragoness eventually caught up with the fast-flying hatchling, she asked, Who were you talking to out here?

I imagined I saw my shell-mother, Lia said, feeling her fires darken with loss.

But Makani, falling into flying formation with her said, A great volcano lies ahead. It must be Immadior’s Roost. While we fly ahead, tell me about your shell-mother. Who was she, little one? I heard you grew up in Sapphurion’s roost. What was the great Elder like, Hualiama? What was the flight of his wisdom?

Hualiama squinted. That bump? That’s Immadior’s Roost?

Even Star Dragonesses must learn the ways of the world’s winds, said the Grey Dragoness with a wing-shiver of appreciation. Will you be offended if I suggest a few improvements to your flying technique?

For an eternity of about a quarter-second, Lia assured her.

* * * *

Eternity was slightly longer than a quarter-second. Makani was a patient and clever teacher, making her try different postures, wing-orientations, flares of the wing-struts and concentrate on different muscle-groups until suddenly, the whole came together unexpectedly and she slipped through the air with noticeably greater ease than before.

Beautiful, Makani exclaimed, shivering her wings a second time.

This feels fantastic, Lia admitted.

Great. We’ve a few hours yet until we reach your grossly misnamed bump. Has the story about your shell-mother brewed long enough in your fire-stomach, little one?

Lia told her tale as they flew northward.

Seen in the light of the rising suns, the ‘bump’ was a volcano that rivalled Fra’anior Cluster in sheer, horizon-dwarfing magnitude, Hualiama observed, a mountain with a base over forty leagues wide rising at a shallow angle to a ferociously smoking peak situated perhaps two miles above the Cloudlands. Great rich rivers of lava ran like orange veins down its flanks in at least a dozen locations. The boulder-strewn slopes were desolate and fire-blackened, smoking with the volcano’s inner heat. A pall of smoke and noxious gases drifted eastward across the scene, and heat shimmered ferociously in the air above. Even as Lia watched, glowing lava burst out of the central caldera and slopped over the rim in a fresh wave of destruction.

Volcanic hells, whispered the Star Dragoness.

Dying.

What was that? Her muzzle jerked, seeking.

Dy …

The Grey Dragoness advised, Caution, little one. I scent Dragonkind. Yet what manner of Dragonkind, I cannot say. There is magic present …

Magic of great deeps, Lia responded softly, tasting the nuances upon her tongue. Primitive and wild magic. Come, Makani. We must heed the call.

With clear reluctance, the Grey Dragoness followed Lia toward the great volcanic cone. It had none of Fra’anior’s stark majesty, with league-tall granite cliffs topped by verdant bursts of tropical vegetation, but in its own way, the uncompromising presence of the mountain spoke its own brooding Dragonsong of rising from the deepest roots of the Island-World, strong-shouldered and unbowed, year after year after year building its base above the Cloudlands. Lia followed her instinct around the western edge, skirting the worst of the sulphurous gases and blasting lava, which as she rose over the rim-wall, popped and fizzed and sheeted upward in great curtains. This volcano was more than active. It was young and fierce and deadly.

Makani said, Do not fear unnecessarily, Hualiama. Lesser Dragons can survive lava for periods of time if we are not buried beneath it.

There would be no landing for the Dragonship here, Hualiama knew, inclining a wingtip to show the Grey she had heard. Qilong should steer clear.

Her wings flexed softly amidst the heat-shimmer and turbulent, heated winds. A mile across the open, glowing orange caldera filled with magma, a lightning storm played in the clear air, its colours flashing from turquoise to purple to searing yellow. Her own scales glimmered with the play of magic in the air, causing odd, frightening sensations to course along her spine-spikes. Again her muzzle snapped about, following a Dragon-sense to a sense of large bodies shifting behind a veil of smoke, but the impression was too fleeting to quantify.

Strength to your paw, little one.

Dying …

On this western periphery many of the lava flows had cooled, or perhaps there had been a single explosion that dumped a layer of rock and pumice atop the lava lake, carving out a fantastical landscape of impossible rock formations; tall columns and waves and spirals of gleaming mineral deposits. In places, geysers must have erupted and the water boiled away, leaving a green, salty rime upon the stone. The stench was overpowering, catching in her throat and irritating her nostrils and eyelids.

She jinked, following the faint call through a maze of archways and lava-carved gullies into a cathedral of stone, glistening silica and quartzite deposits laced with darker igneous rock and gemstone deposits.

Lia said, We should take some of this to … watch out!

A loop of lava rose and fell from a hole in the floor. A loop? Surely not. The blazing orange rock lifted again and Hualiama knew her mistake. That fifty-foot thick loop was no rock. It was a Dragon’s body, formed of molten magma–yet oddly, darkened and cracked crazily in many places as though its fire had guttered.

Dying, help … me …

Quick, we must help, cried Lia, clipping her wings sharply as she reached out.

Don’t touch it! Makani roared.

KAABOOOM!!

Rock splattered across the cave and the Star Dragoness with that explosion; yet she cupped her wings and swerved, ricocheting off a column with no more than a bruise to her dignity and a growl of annoyance.

Roaring rajals, what form of magic was that? she spluttered.

The Grey Dragoness tried to herd her away with her wings. A dangerous one! I warned you!

Dragon? Dragon, can you hear us?

Makani snarled and snapped at the hatchling, driving her backward, but the orange lava surged again. Suddenly, an unmistakably draconic head heaved up from the hole and flopped onto the rock alongside. Well, it was Dragon-shaped, but Hualiama could not make out much more of this Dragon-like creature. Scales? No, a body of lava apparently held together by magic. Eyes? Aye, eye-like depressions appeared in the lava where eyes ought to be–ovoid eyes larger than the Star Dragoness in their longest dimension–and a sensation similar to the Land Dragons’ Harmonic magic passed over her body in a fiery frisson. Lia gasped as her wings burst into flame!

Makani! Makani …

The creature blinked. The fire snuffed out.

The lava-Dragon radiated heat like a furnace. Lia hid behind a column before flitting forward again, dodging Makani’s exasperated grab for her tail. Dragon, can you understand us? Can I help you?

Help? Little one of great power … I am dying here in this tidal pool, isolated from the goodness my kind require.

The voice was faint and exhausted, yet lilting in a way that spoke to Hualiama of fires rising and falling and glowing rivers flowing as brightly as the heart of the suns themselves. Its Dragonish, though couched in this peculiar accent of fire-notes, was also clear and understandable.

What’s your name? Don’t look at me! Lia ducked away again, her tail and hindquarters smoking, too hot to touch. The Dragon made a strange, crackling sound she did not understand. That’s your name?

Help …

Charily, watchful for another glance from the lava-Dragon, she reached out with the same power she had applied to Siiyumiel’s heart. Furnace temperatures blasted through her body, but this time she was more prepared, radiating it away rapidly with an application of the shielding she had developed to redirect Siiyumiel’s light-cannon. Makani yelped and flinched away as Hualiama blazed; the Star Dragoness focused on applying her magic in new ways, in strange and unfamiliar pathways as she sought to detect and learn the Balance of this unimaginable creature. Magma Dragon, she learned. Its body was primarily comprised of molten metals fused into structures and organs which bore little resemblance to her own, but the mind was what drew her, shining and potent, yet diminished by what she sensed was starvation.

Alright, noble Crackle–she dubbed him laughingly–let’s see if we can warm you up.

White-fires gushed out of her into the lava-Dragon, sparking a tremor that shook his body and raced out in the caldera. Crackle’s doleful bellow was matched by other, far greater voices resounding from the lava lake without. Hualiama realised that she had not delicately brought Balance into being. She had pounded him with the magical equivalent of a Balance-earthquake. Headache. Agony. Then, fiery relief.

Cut him a path to the caldera, Makani! Hualiama cried.

A booming chorus of draconic voices shook the cavern; she heard lava slopping about, splashing upon the rocks, now leaking through the ceiling above them. A shadow fell over the cave’s entrance, making Crackle’s colour suddenly appear brilliant, devoid of the dark patches she had seen before. Had she done enough? Lia hoped so.

The Grey Dragoness stalked forward, apparently uncaring of the lava-Dragon’s gaze. Stand firm.

A dark fireball rocketed out of her mouth. BOOM! Lia staggered. BOOM-BOOM! Makani’s head snaked about, firing precision shots at points she envisaged, perhaps fault lines in the rocks.

KKRRAAACK! A brief avalanche; a monstrous wave of heat rushed over her!

Crackle? He was gone. Or was he?

A sensation like an earthquake conducted through the rock to Lia’s paws. Quicker than thought, she slapped a shield around Makani. No time for big-Dragon little-Dragon politicking. They needed to escape. Now. Follow me, Makani!

They darted upward toward a narrow chasm. The Grey fired another one of her dark, explosive shots and then slammed her body into the hole, tearing the rock asunder with the strength of her shoulders and forearms. With a low, wicked laugh, the Star Dragoness modified her shield. Blades of light pierced the paradoxical gloom as a wave of radiant lava rushed toward them, the fury of hundreds of lava-Dragons carried upon its curling brow, the power of their combined gazes smiting the two flying Dragons and turning their shield into a blazing comet.

Roaring, straining, fighting, the Blue and the Grey shot into the peak of the curving cliff of lava overhead and punctured it like a living spear of white, exploding through the far side in a triumphant shower of molten rock. Higher they rose. Higher and higher, tearing free of those vicious gazes.

Hualiama began to laugh in relief, but then Crackle’s voice came to her via shielded telepathy, slicing through her mirth. He cried, Drawn from the deeps of the world, from the eternal fire-melting-core, was I, blasted by the rising fires into a realm of cold, uncaring winds. Crusted and broken was I. Grieved and starving was I. Cool and darkened was I. Then you came, Star Dragoness. Then you came, and a Lesser Dragon lifted up one of the Magma-kind and restored his fires. She was the white-fires of his draconic life, the Dragonsong of blaze and surging-oceanic-billows of thousands of degrees of ardour.

Poetic, but she understood his fires. Lia bowed inwardly to Crackle’s mental presence, barely discernible amidst the raging of his kin. I am honoured to serve, noble Magma Dragon.

Ask me a boon, Star Dragoness, and I shall give two.

I seek a First Egg of the Ancient Dragons, she blurted out. Do you know where it is?

It is said great powers hide in the roots of the Island-World. I know not, but I know where I would look. A deep-dwelling Dragonkind inhabit the deepest cracks leading to the innermost fires of our world, who for aeons have claimed possession of a great treasure–the greatest treasure, they call it. Yet of late, for a thousand years of your short-lived time, there has been rumour of a strange stirring amongst these Dragonkind, tales of hauntings and mind-freeze and new ambitions. I would seek word of your First Egg amongst the S’gulzzi, little one. That heat and pressure of those places, fifteen leagues below your freezing world, in the abyss just North of this place, are intolerable to your kind and mine, but perhaps starlight can imagine a way.

I … thank you, Crackle. S’gulzzi? What under the Islands was a S’gulzzi, a name expressed with a sibilant hiss made deep in the throat?

Crackle? His laughter crackled around in her mind, making Lia momentarily see fires leap across her vision. Your curious inner radiance-reflections amuse me, little one. Here. Name yourself and I shall name myself. Then, a parting boon, a life-debt expiated.

I am Hualiama, Blue-star! To her surprise, the speaking of her name resounded as if struck from a gong. Was that her true name, or secret draconic name?

And I am–Incendior! His secret name. Yet she had no time to think. The Dragon added, Think upon the rock that explodes. Fuel–

And his voice vanished in the turmoil of Magma Dragons rampaging through their lava lake home, fulminating at the escape of intruders.

Fly, Hualiama, fly! Makani’s cry stung her from contemplation into motion.

Behind them, the volcano blasted lava thousands of feet into the sky. Lia knew she was bound to receive a verbal talon in the neck from the Grey Dragoness after they out-flew the range of flying debris. Why was it that her first instinct was to fly into trouble, rather than away from it? What would happen to those Magma Dragons inside an exploding volcano–had her actions triggered an eruption?

And could she conclude that for reasons of Balance, she had somehow been destined to rescue that Magma Dragon? Mercy.

Yet his surprising response had condensed certain valuable information for her. She had learned things, neither of which made much sense as yet. The S’gulzzi. A type of exploding rock for fuel. What had Crackle meant? Lia wished she had Siiyumiel to ask, but he was over a thousand leagues away with the Air-Breathers, she assumed. Moreover, the subject of the First Egg was not one to be broadcasting around the world beneath the Cloudlands.

As they reached clearer air, Hualiama searched for Qilong’s Dragonship. Her marrow froze.

Chapter 29: Mountainous Landings

IN THE SOMNOLENT light of a noon interrupted by the Yellow Moon’s imposing bulk, Grandion gave the undeserving Islands of Pla’arna Cluster a lengthy, contemptuous glare, before aiming his furrowed brow at the western horizon. If only a Dragon could leap over Islands as effortlessly as rainbows arched through stormy skies. His mien suddenly mellowed. Drawing the breeze so deep into his lungs that he practically felt his tail swell with the air intake, Grandion reached out with his senses, calling, Hualiama?

A hint of volcanic dust. A trickle of starlight laughter. The unaccountable urge, despite his wing-drooping exhaustion, to dance. Aye, it was enough.

“We will rest here,” he decided.

Her lack of argument betrayed the Copper Dragoness’ fatigue.

Tiiyusiel, from a mile beneath the clouds, called, We can press on. I will swim.

You’re running out of ejecta, the Tourmaline pointed out. Four and a half days of travel at top speed–even a Land Dragoness must rest. And if we rest, you will travel far faster.

Very well, I concur. Suns-set?

She did not protest? Startled, Grandion calculated briefly. Two hours after.

Aye, said the Land Dragon.

Tiiyusiel sounded, making for the fertile substrate one to two leagues beneath the Cloudlands.

They winged onward for two further hours, nearing the first of Pla’arna’s rugged Isles, which stood a mere mile and a half above the dark-spotted Cloudlands in this place, which slowly boiled from beneath under the force of an upwelling current Tiiyusiel had noted. The Isles were dark-fanged, weathered spits often rising in multiple spires from a single base just barely visible in the first layer of toxic cloud, giving the Islands the appearance of many draconic paws holding talons aloft. A few of the Human-inhabited Islands were connected by rope bridges, but the majority were inhabited by a clannish group of Lesser Dragons notorious for their hoarding of diamonds and their rough dealings with any marauding Dragons they suspected of stealing their treasures–make that any foreign Dragon in the Island-World, give or take.

“Reception committee,” said Elki, softly. “Hostile?”

“Undoubtedly,” said Grandion.

“What will you do?” Mizuki asked curiously.

“I don’t know about your customs in the East, but they’re likely to insult us and then challenge me as the largest male to single combat. I will reciprocate, thrash a few of them, and make my demands.”

Indeed. The Dragonwing of twenty strapping males slighted Grandion and his entire lineage, disparaged Gi’ishior, goggled at the sight of Humans flying Dragonback, and made a variety of boorish and graphic propositions to Mizuki for good measure.

Grandion sighed. Alright, you lousy sons of flatworms, he snarled. Choose your three strongest Dragons and I will pound them back into the filth from which they were spawned.

Three? Yuhurak, the beefy Brown who was the leader of their Cluster, thundered in amazement. You want–

The Tourmaline flexed his shoulders and twizzled his neck meaningfully. Alright, if you insist. Choose five of your pathetic, scale-rotted, hideously deformed runts. All at once, on that Island over there.

Five? Yuhurak had clearly inherited size in place of brains. At once? I accept! We will have the pretty Dragoness for our roost when we win, and the Humans for slaves. What are your conditions, you spavined son of a–

Shut your cracked fangs, you diseased whelp of a blind windroc, Grandion interrupted cordially. My conditions are, that upon my inevitable trouncing of your five biggest bleating sheep, I shall require you to gift me twenty sacks of your finest diamonds, and then you will fly every able-bodied Dragon of your entire Cluster up to Immadia at top speed to engage in glorious battle with Numistar Winterborn, the Ancient Dragoness. Forthwith.

Yuhurak gasped something like ‘awkhak’!

Mizuki grinned admiringly at her wing-companion. By my wings, Tourmaline!

Elki kicked his Dragoness surreptitiously. “He’s taken. Don’t you start any family feuds, Copper!”

Meantime, Grandion took great pains to study his talons indifferently. Didn’t see that broadside coming, did you, Yuhurak?

The Brown could not refuse and still call himself a Dragon.

Come on. Over to the Island, Grandion snorted, flexing his mountainous shoulders one more time for emphasis, making the striations stand out seven inches deep. Remind me what names you called my shell-father, and I’ll carve them on your sorry hide.

* * * *

For eight hundred leagues and the better part of three days, Numistar threw dragonets and lightning at Qilong’s Dragonship without thought or intelligence, just a blind, flailing attempt to knock them out of the sky. Blue and Grey defended the airship with shields as long as their strength held out, then the crew took up with nets, spears, crossbows and swords. The Winterborn threw her main strength at them. Gale force winds. Hail. Sheets of ice. Chain and ball lightning. The storm raged endlessly, sometimes growing dark tentacles or whirlwinds out of the Cloudlands that rushed at the dirigible until Hualiama and Makani combined to knock the attack off course, sometimes darting in guileful winds that buffeted the Dragonship in an attempt to overstrain the sails or break the spars. The crew worked shifts on the back-breakers twenty-seven hours a day to keep the Dragonship a rajal’s whisker ahead of the storm.

Hualiama was so worn out, she could barely see straight. Yet, she and the Grey Dragoness worked well together. The Grey had enormous endurance and no small cunning, able to judge exactly when shields could be dropped or a few minutes of rest risked, and between her, Jin and Isiki, they formed a deviously draconic triumvirate that kept thinking up new ways to surprise Numistar. They hitched Makani to a harness and had her tow the Dragonship to a high altitude, escaping the storm for a few hours so that essential repairs could be made in relative safety. They developed the idea of magical storage to ‘catch’ Numistar’s lightning attacks, only to return them with interest when the flurries of dragonets came in, thousands strong. Lia wondered–was this the behaviour of a rational mind? Dozens of times a day, they might have been overwhelmed if the attack had been pressed or another angle sought. The assault always fizzled. Why?

Yet Numistar was slowly, relentlessly pounding them into incapacity. They lost eight men to dragonets and three to lightning, but somehow won through to the third morning away from Immadior’s Roost, when Makani wearily raised the shout, “Immadia! I see the Enchanted Isle!”

Lia’s Dragoness-hearts pounded in her chest. “Immadia!”

Every eye on the Dragonship gazed North. Immaculate white peaks vaulted toward the first blush of dawn. The Island stood in stark, isolated splendour like a dark jewel wearing a crown of brilliant white, surrounded by a mirror-calm lake of ultramarine Cloudlands, quite the most unique colour Hualiama had ever seen. Upon the flanks of those mountains she saw bands of dark green, virgin coniferous forests, and above the immense, half-league-tall cliffs, the Island’s three layers of terraced lakes reflected back the effulgence of dawn. A verdant green plain faced the travellers, snaking back into five precipitous valleys nestled between the snowbound, Dragon’s-fang peaks.

Qilong whispered, “They call Immadia the jewel of the North.”

“Well is she named,” Jin replied, rubbing his eyes with his left hand. Never one for sentimentality, the statement surprised Hualiama. Then she noticed the very tip of the little finger of his right hand resting against Isiki’s fingers on the railing. Rascal.

“Bah, it pales in the light of Fra’anior’s magnificence,” Makani snorted. Then the Dragoness snorted again as she, and everyone present, realised how unconvinced she sounded.

Hualiama turned slowly in the air, hovering above the nose of the Dragonship, which was crowded with men. Silent. Hopeful. This was the Island of salvation. This was the northernmost Island in the world, beyond which, it was said, only ice and winter had reign. The Isle of magic, of enchantresses whose legendary beauty outshone the very dawn. The chill morning air had a nip to it that Hualiama had only ever experienced at the Place of Reaving, for the breath frosted before her mouth and those of the Humans as they goggled at this vision.

The North. She was more spectacular than their wildest imaginings.

Lia quoted from The Saga of Tanugar:

When Fra’anior did raise the Islands,

He did fashion Immadia to be their crowning glory,

And placed upon his Isle a people tall and most fair,

As fair as the breath of a dew-spangled morning.

Then, drawn by a mysterious power beyond her ken, she turned slowly to her right wing, and saw beyond the sweeping darkness of Numistar’s storm, a mighty Dragonwing approaching at a distance of eight or nine leagues. She blinked, looked thrice, but the Dragonwing remained stubbornly real, flying a steady course for Immadia above a disturbance in the Cloudlands that she recognised as the wake of a fast-moving Land Dragon. Far in the lead of the Dragonwing, she saw an unmistakable flash of tourmaline blue and thrilled to the power of wings that strained to sprint toward her with an indefatigable wingbeat. How his hearts must be celebrating, leaping about like crazed dragonets–just like her own, the blood fizzing and roaring in his ear-canals as he took in the sight that greeted him!

Who could keep silent at such a moment? Thou … ALASTIOR!

At first note of her overjoyed scream, the storm vented a peal of world-shaking rage and surged toward them.

Darkness lifted out of the Cloudlands upon the skirts of that storm as Numistar Winterborn roused to rage, and with rage came the clarity Hualiama had expected all this while, all the long leagues from Kerdani City to Immadia. The clouds boiled, rising miles into the sky before her aghast eyes, expanding with the windstorm feeding them beneath, and in the deathly cold of that elevation, the Ancient Dragoness prepared her ice. Her malice sharpened palpably, expressed in a plunging of temperatures which her soaring dragonets greeted with a chittering chorus of glee. A white mist steamed from the storm’s maw, a cold so deep it bit like a ravening Dragon.

Numistar boomed, Now, shell-daughter of Fra’anior, behold the face of your doom!

Daughter of whom? Makani almost fell out of the sky.

GNNAAARRRR!! the storm growled. Monstrous. Driven. Rushing forward in a great, rolling wave of blackness and poisons churned up from the deeps.

“Get to the turbines!” Hualiama bellowed. “Makani, the Dragonship!”

Grandion was not close enough. He would arrive soon, but the murky curtains drawing around them and sweeping across the skies above like a funeral shroud, would not wait. She could not stop shaking. He had come for her. He had chased her halfway around the Island-World!

No time for a harness. The Grey Dragoness sank twenty talons into the Dragonship’s air-sack and threw her weight forward, beating her wings with all of her might. As if dragging a boulder, the powerful Dragoness hauled Prince Qilong’s brave crew away toward Immadia while the men, with curt cries and orders, organised themselves. The storm chased after.

Fourteen leagues. The treacherously beautiful, snowy slopes beckoned, the small town beyond nuzzling their skirts like a hatchling Dragoness seeking comfort from her shell-mother’s fires. Still the clouds billowed upward, reaching fantastic heights, as though the Winterborn built for herself a fortress of blizzard and lightning. The storm fulminated, spitting dense flights of dragonets that appeared briefly from the clouds only to be swallowed up again, driving the hapless Dragonship before it like a ralti sheep being driven to the slaughter. Numistar’s displeasure was a constant, low roll of thunder that bespoke malevolence born of the most ancient of days, a hatred which had carried her across the long, dark leagues contained in the heart of a comet. They were riders of the storm. A speck facing a world in turmoil. Grandion’s Dragonwing vanished behind the tempest. Closer. The clouds accelerated with an awful, mesmerising majesty; unstoppable.

“Get me up there! Up there!” Jin’s screaming finally penetrated Lia’s horror.

Wailing, What the hells have I done? the hatchling swooped, plucking up the teenager by his shirt-back and trousers. She dumped him on Makani’s back.

“Me too! Me too!” screamed Isiki.

Grief, that girl was waving a Haozi war-bow as if she knew how to use the weapon. Lia had learned Isiki was a terrifically skilled open-hand combatant; they had taught each other and Jin many tricks from their respective styles. Go! Her Dragon paws and strength could carry a Human without any trouble. In a moment, she had Isiki seated behind Jin on the Grey’s back.

The slave-girl carried Lia’s swords at her belt. She patted the hilts. “For you, Mistress, should you need them.”

Jin passed her short length of rope. “Tie yourself on.”

The slave-girl’s hand shook. Hualiama could not tell if she was terrified or elated not to be rejected by the warrior. “I will. Jin, to ride with you–”

He croaked, “I don’t want to lose you, Isiki. Ever.”

Precious!

Isiki’s eyes welled with tears not caused by the vicious cold streaming from the storm-front, less than a mile distant now and closing fast. “Oh, Jin …”

“I love you!” Jin almost lost his seat as the wind cuffed Makani cruelly, beating her wings against the Dragonship. With a groan, the Dragoness righted them, but the port storm-sail ripped with a sharp crack!

The slave-girl had a grip of his left arm. “But how, Jin? You’re a free man. I’m a slave.”

Hualiama kicked Jin in the hip to right him. “Get up there. Makani, is this–”

“I want the oath.”

Lia stared at the Dragoness. Events were moving too fast. “You what? But you said–” The Grey’s answering stare was wild, proud, incontestable. “Alright. Jin?”

His suddenly pale face dipped, once. “Not without her. Will your magic find her, too?”

Isiki? She had no idea, but Hualiama was fresh out of desire to meddle with the destinies of others. They were bound to crash-land on the peaks West of Immadia City, and the villagers and people of this Island were about to awake to a shock both rude and utterly devastating. Judging by the hair-raising tone of Numistar Winterborn’s vengeful howling, she intended to blast those mountains right off Immadia’s back. These Humans would be chaff in her storm; detritus to blow about as she wished.

At last. She could release into the storm a token of her defiance. Let Numistar know this: Hualiama of Fra’anior, the mightiest almost-royal trouble-stirrer in the Island-World, intended to build a band of Dragon Riders to be reckoned with. More than a token. A force. A new power. A way of life, a philosophy, that would fly directly in the teeth of the grasping, rapacious evildoers of her world. She would seek out Riders. Men and women of character, like Jin and Isiki–not only the noble or those society regarded as worthy. Dragon Riding was for all.

With a fierce, defiant smile, Hualiama summoned the inner dancing of a dragonet. She roused the gift which lived in her custody, which had been yearning, she realised, to be shared with these precious souls. Jin the dishonoured, last of his people. Isiki the slave-girl, the lowliest of her society. And Makani, a rare colour of Dragoness, unique among the Dragons of Gi’ishior.

Her secondary eyelids blinked rapidly. White-fires flared everywhere, as if always present, even in the wings of the storm now outpacing the Dragonship to the East and West. Even Numistar was born of these same fires, subject to the essential forces that sustained her universe. The magic poured forth from her mind and Hualiama danced through the air above the trio, laughing with soft delight and relief. Ah yes, she should never have denied what she had always know. Jin had the fire. Isiki had the heart and will, unbowed by her life of servitude. What would the making of new Dragon Riders release in them?

“Fire-souls must unite,” she cried. “Repeat this oath after me: ‘May we burn the heavens together, as Dragon and Rider.’ Makani?”

“May we burn the heavens …” Pure white light flared behind the Grey’s fire-eyes. The Dragoness gasped, “May we burn, and burn, and burn, as a Dragoness and her Riders!”

Jin and Isiki echoed her words, that same pure light flaming within their souls, for it seemed a Star Dragoness saw through the veil of their flesh to another dominion within, a place where oaths were spoken and the purposes of hearts gleamed in crystal-lattice clarity, and magic reigned supreme.

“Lots of burning,” Jin spluttered at length, unable to tear his eyes off Makani.

Isiki wound her arms around his neck from behind, around the Grey Dragoness’ spine-spike, and passionately kissed whatever she could reach, which happened to be Jin’s left ear and neck. He twisted his head and snatched a return kiss full on her nose.

The young man gulped, “Oops.”

The slave’s eyes widened. “Oh no, this is forbidden. Isn’t it? Jin, I’m–”

“You’re beautiful. Kiss me,” he said, aiming properly this time.

The Grey Dragoness spared a moment for laughter. “Now we are family. My strength is yours and yours is mine. I feel it already.”

Hualiama shook her muzzle. Just like teenagers to sit there smacking lips on the back of a Grey Dragoness as if the storm of the ages was not about to fall upon their heads. Perhaps she should remind them? Bah. Let them enjoy a forbidden kiss. She would figure out the mess later–if there was a later.

Her scales prickled, lift like a hound’s hackles along her back before refusing to resettle. Makani, shields!

Now!

The Grey Dragoness’ cry preceded a titanic lightning-bolt aimed at the Dragonship’s stern. KAAABOOM! The vessel slewed, knocking every man on the gantries to their knees. Smoking ruin. Shouts as the crew raced to put out the fires. Lia’s shield expanded around the airship. KAAABOOM! Another bolt. A rising hum, the awareness of electrical potentials thick in the air. The clouds pulsated, forming into dark, claw-like appendages that reached toward the fleeing Dragonship, still scudding on the wind toward Immadia, just two miles away now … BOOM! BOOM! Concussive blasts of lightning shocked them from all sides as Numistar set to with earnest. Not for her the subtle approach. Hualiama felt every one of the blows against her mind, greater and greater, until she had to squeeze down and think about nothing else. Makani was there too, supporting, and to a lesser extent the minds of Jin and Isiki, linked through the Grey Dragoness. But they were not Grandion, and both Hualiama and Makani were ragged from days of fighting Numistar’s unrelenting attacks.

BOOM! The port sail ripped away. KAAABOOM! Spars splintered from the starboard.

Hold her! Makani shouted.

Mountains loomed. Too low. If they struck the forests at this speed, they would be shredded. Up! Hualiama shouted. Get us up!

“Men inside! Brace!” roared Jin, in a voice that Hualiama had never heard him use before, and she suspected the teenager had not thought himself capable of. “We’re going to crash!”

With a rising hum, the storm struck again. BOOM! One of the port-side turbines exploded.

Numistar had the strength of an Ancient Dragoness. How could Hualiama deny her? Yet she knew she had souls on board that must be brought to a safe landing, so she dug deeper than ever before. Tourmaline, Onyx, White … could she find a colour of strength to see them safe to Immadia? The Dragonship slewed under the hammer-blows of lightning and the terrible press of the wind, heading directly toward the retaining wall of the second layer of terrace lakes. One man was wailing hysterically, several others praying, their voices drowned out by each explosion, only to rise again.

KAAABOOM! Lia fell against the air sack, setting it alight with the power coursing through her body. Grandion? Grandion, are you there? Her body convulsed as another round of lightning, four consecutive bolts, pounded the shield she had drawn around their airship. It flickered, losing shape in concert with her fading consciousness. Dragon blood leaked from her mouth onto her paws.

She saw Fra’anior through pain-wracked eyes. I’m in you, Hualiama, he whispered. You are the unique intersection of colours, exactly as you imagine; yet I say, you are more.

As Numistar pressed her assault, Hualiama suffered each and every blow; but she had survived worse. She had survived the insane strength of her mother’s hatred. She had refuted her father’s ambitions. She was a new alloy of Human and Dragon; all that was strong of both, multiplied. Human stubbornness. The will to survive, to overcome, and never to give because the core of her light was love. Draconic strength. The fire-soul which burned eternal, unquenchable. Humansoul. Dragonsoul.

She was Onyx and White, and the Tourmaline of oath-magic. Together, those colours made a deep, matchless blue. The blue of a Star Dragoness.

The terrace-lake wall loomed dead ahead, a quarter-mile tall. They could not avoid it. Behind, she heard Numistar give a low growl of malicious satisfaction. Forked lightning crackled almost constantly between the storm, the Dragonship and the land, creating a crazy filigree exactly like the white-fires which inhabited the world beyond the world; the unknowable beyond Lia had once unwittingly wished for. Closer. Three hundred feet. Two hundred.

Storm rose in her belly. “BRACE!”

Hualiama sprang to her paws, riding the nose of Prince Qilong’s Dragonship as they speared forward. Shaping her shields. Honing her mind to a dagger’s pinpoint precision and sharpness. She would have one chance at this incision. Just one.

Built by the Ancient Dragons to contain the precious rainfall that sheeted off the tall Islands in great torrents to feed the Cloudlands below, terrace lakes were a crucial aspect of Island life and often supported large populations of freshwater fish and water birds. Their buttressed walls were hundreds of feet thick, built to dam up vast bodies of water and sealed by magic.

Her penetrative psychic shield pierced one such wall. It sheared through the great stone wall like a spear-thrust piercing a man’s belly. Slowly. So very slowly, Lia knew she saw in conscious battle-thought. Makani’s beating wings bore them onward, traced in great, vastly extended sheets of fire augmented by Numistar’s lightning fed through their shield, so that she appeared to be a firebird, flying through stone that exploded upward, downward and to either flank in fountains hundreds of feet long. Then came the torrent. Shock. Massive pressure. Blue water sheeting over their shield as the Dragonship slowed, contained in a bubble of air, and then laboriously, impelled by the Dragoness’ magical wings, forged onward and upward. A lake trout peered curiously at Lia as it sailed by on the rapidly increasing torrent. Makani groaned, grinding her fangs terribly; Hualiama was her foundation, Onyx unbreakable.

They breached from the shattered lake like a leviathan throwing back its head in mammoth sport, sheeting water from their back, and accelerated upward into the storm winds once more.

How dare you defy me! Numistar shall avenge! the Ancient Dragoness thundered. SHE SHALL REIGN!

Not as long as I live! Hualiama shouted back, feeling like a mosquito taking umbrage at a cyclonic storm.

The voice of the Ancient Dragoness’ storm raised waves on the terrace lake as its waters cascaded through the breach torn by the Dragonship. Taste my wrath, shell-daughter of Fra’anior!

Not today, Numistar! Not an overly imaginative response, but Hualiama cared less. Her will was adamantine; her hearts pounding with fresh purpose. Her claws clenched the deflating sack as she turned to confront the Dragoness, looking past Makani. Hot words rose with her gleaming, darkly majestic fires. Strike me, o pernicious daughter of darkness. Strike and hold nothing back! For I am my shell-father’s right paw of justice, and my shell-mother’s heart of starlight.

DIE! DIE! DIE!

With each cry, Numistar Winterborn threw a more powerful barrage of lightning at the Dragonship. The terrace lake exploded upward in geysers of steam. The forest behind caught fire. The sack smoked from a dozen fires, but by some miracle continued to hold together. Lia grimly reflected back the power of lightning, hoping the crazy undirected bolts would cause some damage, any damage at all, to the rampaging Ancient Dragoness.

Still they rose, scraping over the retaining wall of the uppermost lake level and slaloming toward the next band of forest. A powerful updraft caught them, shaking the Dragonship and tearing cracks in the cabin walls as conflicting winds twisted the vessel. Ice shattered upon the shield. The roar of her new attack drowned out even the storm’s thunder as hailstones over two feet in diameter pelted the shield over the Dragonship, but Hualiama and Makani denied even this. Melded. Locked together. Screaming with a supreme effort, they brought the Dragonship up over the rising forests and on to the fields of eternal snow beyond.

Her voice quaked the Island. YOU WILL PERISH!

So saying, the storm stooped in concert with her voice, its hurricane-force winds knocking the Dragonship tumbling end over end. The snow changed places with the sky. Lightning crashed all around them. Relentless. Overpowering the Dragoness’ strength. Driving them toward darkness. At the last instant, Hualiama abandoned shielding the vessel and enwrapped every living soul aboard in light. Love could bring them to Immadia, whole.

KAAABOOM! The Dragonship exploded in a fireball of destruction.

* * * *

Hualiama stirred, thinking, ‘I’ve snow up my nose.’

What she had was a dragonet on her nose. What was Flicker doing here?

Numistar! Great Islands! She squirmed to her paws. All around her, across a landing area strewn with smoking debris, dazed Easterners slowly pulled themselves out of the wreckage. Genzo, grinning. Sumio, rubbing his bald pate. Qilong, somehow managing to look dapper despite his trousers smouldering in three separate places. Makani? Where was the Grey–there! She rolled over painfully, unclenching her forepaws to release Jin and Isiki separately. Lia sagged with relief. All accounted for.

Then she heard a new note on the wind. Chittering. Screeching. The fluttering of hundreds of thousands of wings. White dragonets poured down from the black clouds, their tiny pink eyes blazing with unnatural hatred.

Numistar meant to finish them off.

Chapter 30: The Snows of Immadia

HUALIAMA WADED THROUGH the knee-deep, powdery white snow. “To arms! To arms, men! Stand together!”

“Impossible odds,” moaned Qilong. Lia was just about to blast him, when he whipped out his curved Eastern sword and yelled, “To me! We are men of Kaolili! We are not beaten yet!”

Had the mountains turned into Land Dragons and slunk off into the Cloudlands, Hualiama would have been no less surprised. Who was this man? He wore Qilong’s clothing, but his bloodied face was screwed up in a determined snarl, and something in that expression captured his men’s hearts as surely as a Dragon clasped prey in its talons–intense, almost savage.

The Prince raged, “We will die with honour! Make every blow count, men! Numistar lives in each dragonet, so kill them all!”

That was it. Qilong had touched and named what she had intuited; Numistar was weaker than before. She was mighty, but her numbers had been whittled away by constant warfare. Every kill reduced her power a little more. They had to hold out. If Grandion and his Dragonwing could reach them through the storm, they might stand some chance against the Ancient Dragoness–the chance of a gnat lost in the Cloudlands.

Already, the first dragonets spiralled down toward her. Mere feet away. Hualiama leaped into the air, followed a half-second later by Makani, hastily settling her two Riders on her shoulders. She pushed her punishing, reflective shield outward. Numistar! You repulsive maggot, was that the last whimper of your puny wrath?

Go Dragonsoul! We are together! her Human shouted within.

KAAABOOM!

Lightning blasted once more, but Hualiama reflected it back outward with an infusion of starlight, all around her. Dragonets combusted mid-air. A ring of smoke briefly puffed upward, the remnant of thousands, before whipping away on the breeze. A dense wave of dragonets smashed into the pair of Dragons, then immediately into the crew. Bodies. Teeth. Talons everywhere, little muzzles spitting words of killing and maiming and ravening. Four men fell at once, clawing helplessly at their faces; Hualiama found herself forced backward under great duress. She shoved back, infusing her shield with starlight power. So little left. Petals floated on the breeze, blowing up a dragonet every time they touched one. The sweetish stench of burning flesh galvanised the nostrils of every Dragon, amplifying their battle-rage.

The battle raged back and forth. Makani fell under a squirming pile. Lia blasted her loose with a despairing surge of magic. The Dragons landed beside the crew, curving about them to protect them with their bodies, forming a half-moon shelter within which the men could draw close and protect each other against the storm of white bodies that raged over them like a blizzard. Lia saw even Flicker giving of his strength, breaking up attacks upon Qilong and Isiki as the slave-girl loosed a flurry of arrows from the top of Makani’s back. The Grey Dragoness fired glob after glob of superheated glue, taking out tens of dragonets at a time. Yet they had come so thickly upon the beleaguered crew, the morning darkened toward a preternatural twilight. Jin tacked Isiki about the waist and slid down the curve of Makani’s flank with her, landing lightly beside Qilong in the thick snow.

“To me! Defend the Dragons!” Qilong shrieked. His left eye had been clawed out, but he still fought like a madman. “Together, men! Drive them back!”

Ice pelted down. Careless of her own body spread out in its multiplicity of untold thousands, Numistar hurled hailstones at the group; Lia threw up a shield again, and within a matter of minutes, found her group buried beneath a dome of thick ice, which solidified over her shield.

An abeyance? Aye. She dropped her magical defences warily.

“Nice!” Jin clapped her on the shoulder as Hualiama whirled, searching for enemies. A few men duelled briefly with dragonets, slaying them.

“Wasn’t my doing,” she panted. “Makani, you–”

“Fine,” groaned the Dragoness.

“Where are you wounded, you lying beast?”

The Grey stared at Lia. “Another time, I’d have your wings for the insult, hatchling.” With a snap of her jaw, she sliced in half a dragonet which had been aiming to ambush Isiki. “Alright. I can’t fly. They damaged my nerve bundles on the left side, secondary wing-joint.”

“I can try to–”

“See to Qilong.”

The Prince flapped a hand in Lia’s general direction. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve always wanted a properly piratical eye-patch.”

In the gloom of their icy prison, his face was drawn. Lia asked, “Are you in pain?”

“As if a blacksmith poked his forge-irons into my eye,” Qilong replied.

Lia touched him, then Makani for good measure. That was it. Were her magic a dishrag, it had just been wrung dry. And ten thousand claws scrabbled at their icy prison from the outside. Any Island-shaking ideas, Star Dragoness?

ALASTIOR!!

Well, that sufficed to shake her Island! Her Tourmaline certainly knew how to make an entrance. Hualiama ducked reflexively as the orange of raging Dragon fire lit up the ice from the outside. Orange prisms. The colour of her ardour. Forbidden no longer. Yet impossible, most certainly–which made her treacherous heart dance like a dragonet practising her aerial cartwheels on a blustery day. He was Grandion. He was Tourmaline. Her heart would acknowledge no other.

She cast a wild look in Makani’s direction.

Go to him, urged the Grey. And she added, You’re glowing white.

The dragonets had quarried a hole through the eastern side already. They were no match for the scale-bright, sizzling joy of a Star Dragoness.

Lia burst out into a whiteout, but she had no need for eyesight. Her heart followed that oath-connection right to the source. Scales of tourmaline blue winked at her through the massive press of dragonet bodies. She cried, Thou, my heart-jewel!

Thou, the starlight Dragonsong of eternity … his soft bugle was wholly at odds with the open-taloned waving of his forepaws as he liberally sieved dragonets out of the air. The Dragonwing comes! I found thee an army!

All in a day’s awesomeness, eh?

I outpaced them all, o stolen Princess. He cleared the air around her so that Lia could briefly catch a glimpse of his bloodied smile. Your brother flies hence, leading many Dragons of Pla’arna, Gemalka and Herliss. An army of crusty malcontents ripe for the seductive, overpowering paw of a Star Dragoness.

Despite fighting for her life in the midst of a raging Dragon-battle, Lia blushed. Grandion!

How many leagues did I wait for thee to speak my name thus?

Far, far too many. Lia fought close to the towering Tourmaline, wary of his scything paws but grateful for the sheltering presence, for the linkage with him that promised the restoration of her magic through the mighty fonts of his resources. They patrolled the area over her ice-dome, but the dragonets tore at it relentlessly, exposing first Makani’s back and shoulders, then the heads of Qilong and his crew. The frigid wind howled over the site, hampering the white dragonets more than the partially protected men, rising to an ululating pitch of outright frenzy as the battle momentarily stalled with neither side making much progress.

Then, Dragon-thunder rolled over the site. Flame speared through the darkness as Northern Dragonwing tore wide rents in Numistar’s dragonet-body, only for the white dragonets to swirl together again in their limitless numbers. They swarmed the much larger Lesser Dragons with sharp cries, cutting lips and wing membranes with their razor-sharp talons and aiming particularly for the vulnerable eyes. Lia saw many Dragons curling flame out of the sides of their mouths to protect their eyes–perhaps a planned tactic? She swirled upward with Grandion, slashing instinctively with her paws. Here and there, she saw light flaring–Tiiyusiel’s eye-cannon piercing the storm from just offshore of Immadia.

Whomp! Whomp! Mizuki’s signature attack! Golden blood rained from above together with ice and sleet as the Copper Dragoness pounded the dragonets with her Shivers power, at last drawing a great bellow of pain from Numistar.

Yet the strength of an Ancient Dragoness held more than firm. She was born of old, a Dragon of powers forged in an age when the mightiest of the Dragonkind roamed the Island-World, crafting and warring and loving, and developing the great traditions of draconic science in an attempt to recover what had been lost in their great journey from the stars. Numistar also had thousands of years of cunning to draw upon, the experience of many conflicts and a lifetime of hatred and scheming against Fra’anior and his allies. Dragons snarled and fell as the dragonets shredded wings and damaged eyes. Phenomenal, multi-forked torrents of lightning blasted ceaselessly from above, knocking the less powerful Dragons to the ground where they were set upon by champing hordes of dragonets. Open wounds provided instant routes into Dragons’ bodies. Hualiama saw dragonets crawling into empty eye-sockets and tearing mouthfuls out of still-waggling tongues. Ravenous. Cruel. Inexorable. How could she stop this? How to prevail against insurmountable odds, where the very elements of darkness took form to rend and destroy?

Hers was a quest for light beneath a storm-riven sky.

Lia rode with Grandion, striking with her paws and burgeoning magical resources where possible, but their Dragon force was being pounded on all fronts by the weather; that weather was an overwhelming blend of Numistar’s whiteness comprised of ice, wind-blasted snow, lightning and dragonets, not to mention the scything wind. Grandion retreated toward Makani’s position, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Mizuki as Hualiama supplied waves of white-fires to keep their wings clean of dragonets. Yet they flailed against unending legions.

HUALIAMA! Numistar’s mountainous fury slammed her into Grandion’s flank. She fell half-stunned to the ground, landing in a steaming heap nearby Jin and Isiki. The slave-girl immediately bent over her, slapping Lia’s cheek as if she were a Human.

“Here. Take these.”

Lia stared stupidly at her Nuyallith blades. “I’m a Dragon.”

Isiki pressed the blades on her. “You said these made flame. You can’t breathe fire. We need any advantage we can imagine.”

Above and around her, Numistar raged. This was her home territory. The temperature, dropping precipitately. She felt Dragons falling to the ground as shocks through her paws. Lia growled, “Dragons don’t fight with swords.” Swatting a dragonet away from her face, she stared at the slave-girl. “We’re getting slaughtered out there and you’re–”

“His idea.” The Eastern Islander held out her hand, palm-up. Flicker stood there, looking as pleased as a newly minted brass dral. “Flicker said you defeated someone called Roraba? Did he mean the Warlord Shinzen?”

Flicker squeaked, “Lia no fight. Dance.”

Hualiama’s eyes widened. Ra’aba! He remembered the confrontation which had ended in his death!

Clearly she appeared completely witless, for the dragonet added, “Flicker say stupid straw-head too much fight. She dance. Flicker awesome-pants?”

“If we win this battle, you can call yourself anything you like!” Snatching up the blades, the Star Dragoness planted a kiss Dragon-swift on Isiki’s cheek. “Take care of Jin, you mischief-maker.” Then she bowed formally to Flicker. “May I have this dance, o dragonet-lord of awesomeness?”

He really was awesome. Qilong was just a pretender.

* * * *

The Nuyallith blades appeared undersized even in the paws of a hatchling Star Dragoness, but their power was not. Forged of meteorite metal in a furnace heated by Dragon fire and imbued with magic, they were the finest tools of a forgotten generation–but only tools, unless coupled with the knowledge of the disciplines of Nuyallith. Suddenly, Hualiama found a decision crystallising in her mind. This knowledge should not die with her. One day, she would return to her monastery and gift the Nuyallith lore to the people to whom it belonged. Her monk-brothers. They were the perfect custodians of this knowledge.

Her hearts swelled with Dragonsong. There, in the roaring crucible of life-and-death combat, Hualiama raised her voice and began to sing the soul-dance from the Flame Cycle. Sumio and Genzo gaped at her as if she had gaily twirled off the cliff-edge of insanity. But Grandion knew. His contribution was voiced at first in hoarse bursts from a throat roughened by too much fire-breathing, but he kept time and his volume swelled with an infusion of Storm power. Mizuki did not know the words but she hummed loudly as she stormed past, puffing her Shivers briefly above Hualiama’s head to clear her a path into the white-upon-white mayhem. Elki waved his sword in a riotous salute-come-defensive stroke and then, catching wind of her song, warmed up his well-trained baritone. Flicker launched into an intricate harmonic descant, while the Harmonic magic of the Land Dragon’s increasingly sporadic light-shots created a percussive, counterpoint drumbeat that introduced the element of the unexpected to her dance.

Inspiring! Their chorus of approbation fired her Dragon hearts.

Yet her Dragoness still knew nothing about the forms and ways of Nuyallith magic. For that, she needed her paramount weapon. Humansoul. We need you. Can you teach a Dragoness how to dance?

An inner smile sparked white-fires that lit up her third heart with a palpable whoosh! The Dragoness was quite certain her every scale was aglow, making her blend in perfectly with the screaming snow and thronging dragonets.

Then, that determined voice which always glinted with hints of paranormal potential, said, Teach us to dance? Dragonsoul, I’m honoured, but this knowledge already lives within us. It is ours.

Then lead. Our paws yield the floor, Humanlove. Show us the way.

She saw a vision of starlight falling upon an endless onyx ocean.

Bugling her Dragonsong, the Star Dragoness launched into the fray. The blades ignited in her forepaws as power channelled through her body, forming a nimbus of blue-white flame about her wrists and digits before flowing down the blades and blazing outward to a distance of ten feet in sharply defined, blue-hot cutting edges. Yet always before her was Flicker, drawing her into the dance, into the place where instinct supplanted physical function and all was subsumed to the song underpinning the languid-seeming movements of her limbs and wings and body, but in reality she knew that the movements were as rapid as a Dragon’s reactions.

Dance, my Dragonsoul! Now, DANCE!

Flicker before her. A girl twirling within. Nothing else mattered.

The Nuyallith blades whirled about her spinning body in a coruscating, flaming form of destructive shield-armour. Hualiama pressed deeper into the storm, inviting Numistar Winterborn to assail her, to throw thousands of dragonets and titanic bolts of lightning at the star rising within the storms of the Ancient Dragoness’ being. Each dragonet was a pinprick of light, as though the swords flailed through a amphitheatre filled with shining fire-souls, and they yielded to the darting blades as if they were moths drawn to a pyretic, lethal end. Flaring. Briefly incandescent, then gone.

She had no awareness of time passing, just the dragonet-dance of Flicker before her and the destruction falling from bodies blown into mortal dust before her blades. Her Dragoness laughed viciously. This was her role. Perfect, draconic ruin. Tasting of the golden rain of dragonet blood, the sharp metallic tang, the tingling of dying magic. She was the scorching blade slicing into Numistar’s belly, provoking bellows of pain as her dance broadened, becoming wilder, stronger, more and more savage in keeping with the aeons-old savagery of the beast she assaulted. That tinge of wrongness within her? Crushed. That knowledge of grief swelling in a weak Human breast? Denied. This was justice. This was the madness of battle-joy, the Dragonsong of the righteous avenger. This was …

Horrific, sobbed Humansoul.

Before the feral Dragoness could do more than snarl her frustration, Flicker chimed in, Hualiama give second life. Life, not slaughter. Flicker weep Human tears.

At the crux of her immolating fury, Dragonsoul perceived a new reality: the power of mercy. It was, in its own way, a sword greater and more penetrating than any other, for it divided an immortal soul, cleaving good and evil, changing the very face of destiny. She turned her genocidal fury inward. Transformed it. All her magic, her grief, her raging thirst for revenge, she channelled into a single, despairing cry:

BEZALDIOR!! BE FREE!

* * * *

Istariela and Fra’anior eyed each other across an unknowable divide of time and space, yet the greater gulf was the grief that divided their lives, hearts and souls. The grief of an Ancient Dragon was abyssal, expressed in depths so profound they seemed to plumb eternity. The grief of a star was a place where even the purest light was traced with shadow, for to behold it was to feel every shadow of one’s own heart, and to weep.

Humansoul and Dragonsoul stood hand in hand between the columns at the very edge of their realm, gazing at their shell-parents.

Will you reconcile for our sakes? the Dragoness asked softly.

Will you declare peace, and give reborn love a chance? asked Human-Lia.

Their questions fell upon silence.

Endless silence.

So much was spoken in that silence, the very farthest reaches of space whispered their names.

It was the Great Onyx who broke first. With a sob, he cried, For thy sakes, Hualiama, all love is possible. Yet mine third heart mourns, inconsolable. I … I cannot bear this fate!

And with that, the Onyx Dragon fled.

The White Dragoness whispered, All that is fair of dark and light do meet in thee, beloved shell-daughter. In time, I promise, you will come to understand my misfortune.

With a wild, inchoate cry, Istariela fled.

* * * *

Blue-star drifted over the battlefield. A few stray snowflakes drifted down from a clearing sky; the first blue, a brilliant, eggshell blue, peeked between the disintegrating cloudbanks as though fearful of gazing upon a scene of such carnage. The suns, partially concealed beyond the full Blue Moon, flung quadruple overlapping rainbows amidst the clouds. Beauty to herald the vanquishing of evil. Too much to bear, her shell-father had said? He spoke truth. Heart-lacerating truth. For her hearts wept sorrow upon sorrow for the pain, the misery, the anguish etched upon the visages of those mercifully beyond pain. Dragon bodies and dragonets were strewn across the snowy slope over an area exceeding a square mile. So heavy her wings. So grievous the price of victory.

Her head turned, listening to the parting whisper of Numistar Winterborn’s presence upon the breeze, leaching away into the ground and the Cloudlands far below Immadia Island.

Nay, I am not defeated, Blue-star. You’ve merely released me to take on a new, more powerful manifestation–that which I secreted in the North aeons before your time. My master-plan reaches its pinnacle.

Return to these Isles, Winterborn, and I will strike you down once more. I will end your existence.

Mocking laughter faded into the distance. Beware the Ice-Raptors, o child of Onyx. Beware the curse of Numistar upon thee and thy kin!

What a cruel shiver gripped her wings! But the Tourmaline came to her, gentle of paw, and drew her into a simple embrace, muzzle against muzzle. Thou, the star watching over our Isles. Ruefully, he added, Numistar hasn’t perished?

Lia gulped, We only won a skirmish. Only … a skirmish. Curse this fate, Grandion …

He held her close, so close, and with such kindness, her resolve almost shattered. Hualiama gazed past his flank, unseeing. To have fought so hard, for so long, only for Numistar’s spirit to have evaporated like mists over the caldera!

No, she would never curse fate. She would embrace it; in time, teach it to dance. Hualiama’s dance.

Grandion said, Will you come and help me tend the wounded? They are very many.

Lia sighed. Did service never end? I will do what I can.

You can do much, said Grandion, and the tenor of his response made her look up. Dragonets. Thousands of dragonets watched her, foremost among their number, Flicker. She shook at first in remembrance of their claws and fangs, but their behaviour was not the same as before.

Numistar’s dominating power had vanished.

Flicker said, Lia healed us. She gave fire-life.

Lia, Lia, Leee-yaaa … sighed the dragonets, crowding forward. They came to touch her, first in ones and then rapidly in threes and fives, on her spine-spikes and muzzle and paws and tail, on her wings and ear-canals and belly and chin. Each touch lifted her, a tiny spark of strength. Some said, We give. We give.

Of course. To dragonets, this was not worship. This was their expression of thanks for new life, a communal giving. No single dragonet of the eight or ten thousand left, those she had released with her final Command that broke Numistar’s power, demurred. They filled her with new strength. The strength of many.

So she must respond. Lia inclined her muzzle in obeisance. This Star Dragoness thanks the mighty white dragonet-kind for their answering gift of life. May it nourish many, as the dragonet-kind themselves are nourished.

Dipping her left wingtip, the Star Dragoness spiralled down to the battlefield and found her first patient, a wounded dragonet. Why not? She bathed the female in starlight.

Who was next?

* * * *

“Dragonships incoming,” Prince Qilong said to Elki, as the two men watched Hualiama carefully pressing the skin on Isiki’s cheek together. Three neat, parallel talon-cuts had gouged her to the bone, thankfully missing the right eye. Lia’s magic flared along the cuts, sealing the wound. The Prince’s eyes dipped. Qilong hissed, “By my ancestors’ beards!”

Lia glanced up sharply.

Jin’s hand jumped away from Isiki’s. The young warrior, patched to within an inch of his life and still being bandaged by Elki with strips of cloth recovered from the wreckage, flushed brightly.

The Star Dragoness rapped, “Prince Qilong, may I speak as Fra’anior to Kaolili?”

“Aye!” he spat. “Never, in all my years–what shamelessness is this? A Nikuko warrior and a slave-girl?”

“Fra’anior wishes to make a purchase from the Kingdom of Kaolili.”

“A purchase? This is hardly the hour–oh.”

“I’m afraid I rather skipped over protocol by investing your Thirteenth Slave as a Dragon Rider. On behalf of all Fra’anior, I hereby offer public apology for my hasty, thoughtless actions.” Grandion snorted forcefully, blowing all of the Humans’ hair about. Lia added, “I am lamentably unversed in the civil traditions of Kaolili.”

Qilong bowed, declaring sagely, “On behalf of my kingdom, I, Prince Qilong, the masterful pirate-lord of seventy-three Islands, do accept your gracious apology, o Serpentine Potentate of the Smoking Cluster.”

Elki’s sudden fit of coughing sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Had he pinched that phrase from her cheeky-as-a-parakeet brother? Forcibly straightening her lips, Lia responded, “By way of recompense, I therefore propose to relieve the Kingdom of Kaolili of the worthless wretch’s services, this impertinent and disrespectful Thirteenth Slave.” A seething Isiki made to protest, but the Star Dragoness hissed her into silence. “What is the going price for such a lazy, unhelpful girl?”

Most of the Eastern faces around them registered surprise or amusement. Qilong said gravely, “In light of Kaolili’s recently compromised finances, I propose the treasury-draining sum of … thirteen brass drals.”

“I’ll offer no less than ten,” Lia said promptly.

“Seven.”

“Three well-used brass drals, and that is my final price.”

Isiki had to cover her mouth to muffle her laughter; her almond eyes sparkled over the edge of her hand.

“One brass dral rusted beneath a barrel for a hundred years, and the spit on my hand to seal the bargain!” Qilong finished grandly, shooting a fine gobbet onto his palm. He held out his hand. The Dragoness shook gravely.

“This is how they do business in Fra’anior?” Saori asked in amazement. “What on the Islands was that, Hualiama? Do you propose to let her … and him, just–”

“Absolutely not. Get to work, slave,” said Lia, finally losing her unequal battle against a smile. “You belong to Fra’anior now. I will not have slave-girls kissing warriors in my kingdom. It is simply not done.” Isiki glanced uncertainly at her from beneath her lashes. “However, since we stand upon Immadian soil and you happen to be a new Dragon Rider–no, belay that. To work! See to your Dragoness.”

Elki began to protest, “But Lia, the Kingdom doesn’t keep s–”

“Shut the fumarole!” Lia barked, cuffing her brother a fine blow on the left shoulder.

The crew spread out, retrieving pieces of their cargo and personal effects that stuck out of the ice here and there, including weapons, supplies and Qilong’s bed, which of all items aboard, had miraculously survived the explosion and crash landing perfectly intact. Meantime, a small flotilla of Dragonships approached from the direction of Immadia city, a-bristle with weaponry and hostile intent. The Northern Dragons gathered about their fallen in groups of five or six and immolated the bodies in fire, each time singing a brief Dragonsong that sped the fire-soul on its journey to the eternal flame.

To Hualiama’s surprise, the Northern Dragons appeared philosophical about the great numbers of dead. Mizuki explained how Grandion had tricked them into battle, but the general tone bespoke honour or even celebration of lives lost in glorious combat. Several Reds composed odes of praise for their kin. There was no remonstration with Grandion. To face an Ancient Dragoness in battle would be the boast that sustained many of these Dragons until they too passed on to the fires.

Grandion brought Yuhurak the Brown to Hualiama, who was taking a third look at Makani’s nerve-damaged wing. “Noble Yuhurak suggests we appoint a Human to negotiate with the Immadians.”

“What about Elki or Qilong?” she asked.

“Immadia is a matriarchy,” Yuhurak explained. “They also have a long and complicated history with the Northern Dragonkind. Currently, Dragons are forbidden from landing on Immadia’s shores.”

Prince Elka’anor cast a roving eye over a battlefield still littered with over two hundred Lesser Dragons, almost half ground-bound until their wings healed enough to fly, and the thousands of dragonets gathered around Flicker, who appeared to be holding court. “You don’t suppose they’d accept a minor error? A few apologies, a sackful or two of diamonds, and we all part as best friends?”

Yuhurak was the first Dragon Lia had met who laughed openly at Human sarcasm. “Aye, Prince of Fra’anior. But while the smashed terrace lake, the ruin of their seasonal crops and the landing of a few hundred Dragons may escape notice, this invasion by a duo of misplaced Fra’aniorian royals most certainly will not.”

“No?” asked Elki, amazed.

“No.”

“What about him?” Elki stabbed a finger in Qilong’s direction.

The Prince puffed out his chest. “I’m invading, too.”

Saori put in, “Are you honestly not sending in a Dragonwing? Grandion, you lead the negotiations. Swat a few of their Dragonships, flex your muscles …”

Lia winked at Grandion. “Say, Tourmaline, how do Dragons spell ‘negotiate?’ ”

Grr-grrrr, he purred, while blatantly casting about for a witty reply. “With the three essential ‘B’s’ of course–bite, burn and bury.”

“Enough said. Slave. Where might I find my clothing?”

Isiki pointed to a charred metal frame which had once belonged to a barrel. “I’m afraid I put your personal effects in there for safekeeping, Mistress.”

She voiced a low cry of regret, but her brother patted his tattered pockets. “Scale of White Dragoness and jewel of Sapphurion all intact. Fear not. Thy noble brother hath not neglected to succour his beloved sister’s essential treasures amidst this minor outbreak of violence.”

“All the way from the Lost Islands? You’re magnificent, Elki!” she enthused.

“Undeniably.”

Isiki put in diffidently, “I do have a suggestion, Mistress.”

“Aye?”

“You can wear my slave-girl’s tunic. It’s decent.”

Elki, Saori and Qilong hooted with laughter. Lia shrugged. Fine. She had briefed the King of Kaolili clad only in a bath towel. Why not meet a few warrior-royals dressed as a slave-girl? At least she proposed to wear actual clothes this time.

Your diplomatic skills are also in dire need of embellishment, Humansoul told her.

Chapter 31: A Royal Mess

THE IMMADIANS APPROACHED without haste, checking the situation with the calm of veteran soldiers. Their uniforms bore no special insignia, but royal purple featured strongly on belt inlays and scabbards, cloak fringes and armoured headgear. How did they produce that exact colour–was it amethyst, Lia wondered? Striking. She noted the innovative design of their Dragonships–much larger than any she had seen before, beautifully streamlined and armoured with flexible, lacquered layers of what appeared to be wood–and the grim intent of the male and female soldiers clustered around the double war-crossbow emplacements. They were unusually tall. Some individuals had to top seven feet, she estimated, and they were all well-proportioned, with the muscular bearing and alertness of professional soldiers. Swords were the weapon of choice, unlike the war-hammers more common South of the Spits, which separated the far North from the middle-upper latitudes of the Island-World.

With the same calm, one of the Dragonships sideslipped away from the fleet and lowered a hundred feet. A rope ladder unfurled toward a relatively unscathed patch of snow; a screen of warriors rapidly deployed, then two women descended in their midst. Royals, by their bearing. The foremost was a head and a half taller than Lia, a woman who looked as though she wrestled rajals in her spare time. The second vanished behind the first. Just Lia’s size and as slight as a reed, yet she too moved with palpable authority …

“Who’s in charge of this mess–this invasion?”

The tall woman removed her helm as she spoke, shaking loose her long, ice-blonde hair. She was striking. Icy blue eyes. High cheekbones. A mouth set not in hatred, but not in welcome either. Even her brusque, military delivery lilted with half a dozen vowel sounds unfamiliar to the ear, so evocative and lyrical … almost like Dragonsong.

Stunned, Lia struggled to summon a coherent word.

“You, Dragon. You are not of the North,” said the commanding woman. “Are you the Tourmaline of Gi’ishior? The famously rebellious shell-son of Sapphurion?”

“Sapphurion has passed on to the fires,” Grandion growled. “Aye, I am Grandion of–”

The woman said, “What do I care for Sapphurion? You invaded Immadia’s shores. Wrecked our crops. Dumped five feet of snow all over our city. Now I see our second terrace lake lies empty and my people face a winter of starvation. What have you to say for yourself, fire-breather, before I fill your hide with holes and bury you beneath the snows of Immadia?”

Hualiama felt the wild note of his fires vibrate the air between them. That callous mention of Sapphurion had touched a nerve. She thought to him, Grandion, stand down. Let me deal with this. Aloud, she said, “I am the Princess Hualiama of Fra’anior–”

The cold blue eyes appraised her. “You? Dressed like a street urchin?”

GNNNARRR!!

“Grandion!” Lia warned.

“Aye, muzzle the animal,” laughed one of the soldiers.

The very Island seemed to gasp with the same horror that froze her feet to the spot.

He sprang! So fast was the coil-and-launch response of a Dragon, the soldiers guarding their leader did not even have time to gasp. Lia slammed up a hard projectile-shield, causing the enraged Tourmaline to skid off thin air a mere foot above the Immadian royal’s head and slew into the dangling rope ladder. The Dragonship lurched as the ladder tore free.

Catapults twanged, but the Dragon was far too fast. He had already sprung up beneath the Dragonship, curving his neck to deliver a huge fireball, when Lia reflexively slapped a shield around him. GRAAARRRGGH! Thunder, muffled. Still, the air shook. Soldiers beneath him clapped their hands to their ears in pain.

Grandion. Listen! She inverted the shield, but he tore it apart like aged scrolleaf. Feral? No time. Drawing on the Dragon’s own power, Lia smacked a second shield across his nose. Full opacity. Now he was ninety feet of implacable fury wearing an impenetrable helmet. Grandion. I’m going to make you land. Don’t, please don’t fight me. I need you now more than ever.

She drew his pain into herself.

The way Hualiama arched her back and roared at his agony made the Immadians scatter, drawing their weapons with oaths and curses; bells clanged on the Dragonships as the crossbow engineers worked frantically to reorient their weapons. Mercy! Grandion reached through her and with a cunning cast of his Storm-power, managed to whisk the soldier who had spoken unwisely up into the air and over to his paw. The Princess whirled to track the movement. Not fast enough.

It was all unravelling. The script she had developed in her head for meeting the famously proud Immadians was a scrolleaf in tatters.

If he could snatch her powers …

As the catapults groaned and men bellowed, at least fifty Dragons took to the air, orienting on the Immadian force. Hualiama swiped Grandion’s thunder right out of his throat and bellowed at both vocal and magical levels:

“STOP! Dragons, stand down. Hold your fire!”

She marched smartly over to Grandion; in truth, not having anything as exacting as an actual plan in her mind. Dragons, enough battle for one day. The Winterborn remains at large. Let us reserve our fire for evil, not for allies. And to the Tourmaline, she said, I know your pain, noble Dragon, but we need these Immadians. You’re much too grown-up a Dragon to be playing with toys. Let the poor man go.

Her wry humour punctured his dark-fires madness. Slowly, the Dragon’s quivering stance eased. His fires settled to a dull roar. Unclenching his fist, he released the soldier, who tottered two steps and fell on his rump, but before anyone could develop further foolish ideas, Hualiama rushed over to him and took the young man by the hand.

“What’s your name?”

Her smile appeared to freeze his blood. Eventually, he spluttered, “You command Dragons? Uh … I’m Jemzal, your … uh …”

“Just Hualiama. Now, who are your leaders?”

“Their Highnesses.” He coloured under her scrutiny. Inside, Dragonsoul was having a very annoying fit of the fiery giggles at the expression plastered on the befuddled young man’s face. He whispered, “You have pointy ears? Uh, sorry! So sorry. These are Queen Imaytha and Princess Shayitha. Sorry.”

Lia drew the man to his feet–leaping Islands, he was a young mountain! A boy by the fuzz on his chin, yet a boy who stood six feet eight inches in his boots. “Come. I would like you to meet my Dragon and best friend, Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon, of Gi’ishior. Dragons are fierce and proud creatures, Jemzal, but they respond very well to compliments. Try one.”

“You’re the girl who … rides … him? We heard, from the traders.”

“Aye?” Lia said blandly. All the way up in Immadia? Their story had travelled.

“The tales are true? Humans commanding–” Grandion’s growl made him modify his sudden volubility very hastily indeed “–cooperating with Dragons? Riding them? How does that work, uh, great lady? How do you address him? O magnificent … uh …”

“Noble Dragon will suffice,” said Grandion, holding out his paw. “My response was forged in the fires of grief. I will not attack again.”

“That’s Dragonish for, ‘I’m sorry I attacked you,’ ” Lia translated, bringing Jemzal’s hand up to press against Grandion’s paw. “And, ‘magnificent Dragon’ will do very nicely. For you are magnificent indeed, my fiery wingéd dawn burning over the East.”

The Tourmaline began to croon, then cut off the sound with an annoyed hiccough of acrid smoke. Jemzal seemed to want to laugh, but terror had stolen his tongue.

Pitching her voice with the skill of a trained singer, Hualiama said, “We are very sorry for this royal mess. As I said, I am Princess Hualiama of Fra’anior. I am Grandion’s Dragon Rider. This is the Copper Dragoness Mizuki. Her Riders are Prince Elki, my brother, and Saori of the Eastern Isles. This is Prince Qilong, heir to the throne of Kaolili and his brave Dragonship crew. And here is the Grey Dragoness Makani and her two Riders, Jin and Isiki. Our issue is with Numistar Winterborn, the Ancient Dragoness who devastated your land, and we will do everything in our power to restore the damage. We are a very long way from home and we seek allies, not conflict. We also seek knowledge of Chrysolitic Dragons.”

The tall Immadian raised her hand in a curt gesture. “Stand down! We will talk, Hualiama of Fra’anior, while you keep your Dragons out of our city. That is not negotiable.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to retort, ‘Then we can’t talk.’ But her inner Dragoness was clearly in a snarky, triumphant mood, interrupting her thoughts to chortle, We really are an all-the-Island-or-none-at-all kind of girl, aren’t we?

Honestly, Dragoness, you sound like a three-B’s kind of negotiator too.

Learn to save a few surprises for later, Humansoul. It’s more fun that way.

Like you waited two decades to ambush me?

Now you’re learning–street urchin.

You’ve a brain full of cracked eggshell, you deluded excuse for an overgrown dragonfly.

I’ll be taking a rest from my monumental labours, now. Dragonsoul yawned ostentatiously. You go figure out how to clean up the mess we created. A royal mess, indeed.

That Dragoness! She was a hoot. Pop you up on the ornament-shelf, dust you off when needed?

Dragonsoul pretended to snore. Ostentatiously.

The Human executed a fancy Fra’aniorian genuflection. “Agreed, o Queen Imaytha.”

Placing her hands on her hips, the tall warrior laughed. “Oh no, I’m Shayitha, Princess of Immadia. This is Queen Imaytha, my sister.”

The diminutive woman stepped around her sister, doffing her helm. “Islands’ greetings, travellers.”

Hualiama stared.

Behind her, Prince Qilong made a sound like a mewling kitten. “Oh, goddess.”

The Queen of Immadia effortlessly defined the word ‘beautiful’. Beauty so flawless, it was ethereal; almost otherworldly. Like her countrymen, she had skin of the finest alabaster, but her hair was an impossible golden-orange in colour, as if fire framed her face and tumbled down her back. Her eyes were the famous amethyst of the House of Immadia. To behold her was to wonder if such beauty could even exist in mortal flesh. Gentle and graceful as a bubbling brook she might seem, but Lia saw something more.

Magic. The legendary Immadian Enchantress lived, and breathed.

In the Queen’s mesmerising eyes, recognition flickered. Understanding. A sense of knowing one another, as if kindred spirits had journeyed afar and been reunited.

“She’s moon-song over the deeps,” Qilong whispered.

Queen Imaytha moved forward as if trapped in a dream of her own, her demeanour provoking a scowl on her much taller sister’s face. Drawing close, she reached out and took Hualiama’s hands in her own. The Immadian trembled, the depths of her emotions, unfathomable. Then, she seemed to melt, for she drew Lia into a warm, heartfelt embrace which she held so long, the Fra’aniorian began to wonder if something were horribly amiss.

Tears wet her shoulder!

The Queen drew back slightly, not relinquishing her hold on Lia’s arms. They were of a height, their eyes exactly level, but Imaytha seemed in danger of falling over at a breath of wind, so slight and delicate was she.

In her chiming voice, she said, “You shall be honoured guests, for truly I proclaim, Immadia is home and hearth to your soul, o Princess of Fra’anior. Share life with us.”

“Imaytha!” her sister remonstrated.

“Oh, slay me for but a smile,” Qilong continued to embarrass himself in drivelling worship.

“Shayitha, you do not understand what I sense.” The amethyst eyes seemed to look far beyond the world, perhaps into the future. “Fra’anior brings a gift of new fires to our land. We must receive her with all honour.”

* * * *

The following day, Immadia paid its traders in the currency of pure white diamonds of Pla’arna, and all available trader and military Dragonships travelled southeast in search of supplies to sustain the people through the coming winter. Grandion and Yuhurak the Brown flew down to the second terrace layer to assess the damage to the retaining wall, which was severe. There could be no recovering the lost water, but the coming winter would refill the lake if the wall could be repaired. They set five Browns to the restoration work, with a further twenty Reds and Greens in support, carrying boulders to the site. Other Dragons flew Immadian soldiers to the outlying villages to survey the storm damage. Numistar’s storm had crushed many huts or staved in roofs; all needed urgent repair before the real snows arrived. Immadia City was in better shape, for the sturdier stone buildings had withstood even a very heavy snowfall and punishing quantities of hail. The building site of their new fortress, however, a castle atop a hill overlooking the small city, had taken a severe battering from the lightning.

From the rooftop balcony of the palace, the fur-draped Fra’aniorian gazed over the city as its lamps winked in the early evening dark, and shivered. Bitter, bitter cold. A thick blanket of snow. What a peculiar, exotic place! The people rode flightless birds called terhals through the streets; the mountains shadowed all, but with a presence more motherly than ominous. Somewhere amongst the snowbound peaks, Flicker was helping the dragonets establish colonies. Like it or not, Immadia had acquired a population of white dragonets.

Mercy. Mercy had allowed Numistar to escape–perhaps. Could she have done differently?

No, Humanlove. We are who we are. Her Dragoness wriggled sleepily. Besides, two evils don’t cancel out to make a good.

But how can we find these Chrysolitic Dragons, o my soul? These Immadians don’t even know what lies fifty leagues beyond their northern shore. A border of mist, storm and legend, they say. No sane pilot would travel there.

Now we’re sane? How you insult us!

Human-Lia laughed. The Immadians certainly were touchy and traditionalist, but not in a bad way, she sensed. Besides, insanity was to contemplate taking a Dragonship to that eerie northern border when she could take her Dragon instead. She said, Ice-Dragons haven’t been seen for two hundred years. Life in the North is hard. Harder than my home Cluster, by far.

We’ve landed amongst friends, Humansoul. And remember, the Winterborn mentioned Ice-Raptors. Not Dragons.

The curse of Numistar. Thanks for the reminder.

Vanished Dragons. Ice-Raptors were apparently a fireside tale for scaring little children … yet she knew she would travel beyond that border, beyond its eternal, cloying mists. Numistar must be defeated. Then, the long journey South to confront her mother; to oppose whatever mischief she intended for the Dragons of Gi’ishior.

Hearing a footstep behind her, Hualiama turned, expecting Queen Imaytha. “Jin!”

He was wild, shambling, his dark shoulder-length hair mussed as though he had just woken from a sleep spent wrestling a thousand dragonets. His face twisted strangely as he regarded her.

“Jin?”

“I … I … what’s happening to me?”

“What do you–mercy!”

The teenager held his hand outstretched. There, in the palm between them, a flame burned. It did not wink out or sear his skin, but appeared to rise and fall slightly in rhythm with his breathing. His grey eyes pleaded with Lia; in the semidarkness, they burned with a distinct inner light.

He cried, “It’s always been … the flame. It calls. Burns. Fills my dreams. And when my people died, I was the one, the only one, to escape. Do you understand?”

She shook her head mutely.

“It carried me through the battle. There’s something wrong–a curse upon my life.”

“No, Jin. It’s right.”

“No! You’ve made it worse.” A blade winked in his hand. A dagger, curved and deadly. “The trouble began when I met you.”

Hualiama extended her hands, her Dragoness poised within. “Jin, put the knife down. Listen to me.”

“No! You stole my Dragon, gave me another–how can you love a Dragon, woman? You’re sick!”

“I am a Dragon.”

Why this? Why now? Hualiama did not understand the forces driving this young man. How had his troubles ever begun with her? That was an excuse. A convenient lie. For all she knew, he had murdered his own people–no. Now it was her leaping to crazy conclusions. She clenched her fists. Only one living soul had ever been infected with fire like this, and she had her Dragonsoul to show for it. This boy was Human. A tortured, hurting soul, frightened of the fire within.

Frightened of the fire … his own fire.

Every hair on her arms stood to attention as the unthinkable truth crashed down on her. Impossible. Wild optimism. Fear. The knowledge that she need not be alone. The necessary abdication of pride in the perception of her own uniqueness. Aye, she was unique, but only in that she carried the parting gift of Amaryllion Fireborn to her Island-World.

For was that not his Dragon-Name? Fireborn.

This fate had been written in the stars since long before her eggling-spirit twirled in its first dance of life.

With an inchoate scream, Jin rushed at her, the blade held high.

Hualiama opened her mouth and breathed forth her fire-soul, directly into his face. Thou shalt be reborn of fire and spirit, Jinichi of the Nikuko. I adopt thee. I name thee Jin the Dragon.

The teenager crashed to his knees. Eyes bulging. Helpless. Overcome. The blade spun into the darkness, plinking off an unseen stone planter. He clawed momentarily at his throat as if burned, but he was mistaken. This was a type of fire that penetrated deeper, eternal and ever-burning, embracing the very soul. Then Jin exhaled in wonder, and Hualiama breathed in a curl of cinnamon-vanilla scent.

There in his inmost being stood a soul-tracery etched in the whitest of fires, nascent of wing and paw, a living flame.

Shapeshifter.

The End of Book 3

Hualiama’s story continues in Dragonstar, coming in 2017.

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. Every review matters and I read them all!

Where you can find me:

Newsletter signup

Amazon Author Page * Goodreads * Facebook

Twitter: @marcauthor

Email: marcsecchia@gmail.com

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!

In chronological order (Island-World timeline):

Dragonfriend series: Dragonfriend, Dragonlove and Dragonsoul

Shapeshifter Dragon Legends series: The Pygmy Dragon and The Onyx Dragon

Shapeshifter Dragons series: Aranya, Shadow Dragon and Song of the Storm Dragon is planned for 2016

Standalone Book: Dragon Thief

The Equinox Cycle: (Young Adult and older readers)

Trapped in a car wreck, crushed by a train. In seconds, Zaranna’s world is torn apart and she must start life anew, as a survivor. A double amputee. Yet why does this promising equestrienne remember a flash of sulphurous fire, and a crimson paw hurling her mother’s car onto the train tracks? Why does a tide of beguiling butterflies flood her increasingly chaotic dreams?

As Zaranna Inglewood adjusts to life minus legs, plus gorgeous Alex, the paramedic who cut her body from the wreckage, she learns the terror of being hunted. Relentless and inimical, the enemy lures her to a world where dreams shape reality. Equinox. A world of equinoctial storms; lashed by titanic forces of magic, dominated by the Pegasi and their centuries-old enmity with Human Wizards and the Dragons. This is a world where a girl can Dream her destiny. Where her soul can fly, or be chained forever.

She is Zaranna, the Horse Dreamer. Survivor. Fighter. A girl who doesn’t need legs to kick an evil fate in the teeth. All she needs is courage–the courage to Dream.

The Horse Dreamer (Equinox Cycle Book 1)

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

Shioni of Sheba Box Set – Books 1-5

Epic fantasy (New Adult and Adult readers) Epic length tales of unique worlds and powers.

Feynard

The Legend of El Shashi

Table of Contents

Dragonsoul

Dedication

Map of the Lost Islands

Chapter 1: Awakening to Death

Chapter 2: Dying to be Reborn

Chapter 3: Siiyumiel’s Balance

Chapter 4: Sarzun Dragonhold

Chapter 5: The Blooding

Chapter 6: Daughter of Rebellion

Chapter 7: Deeper

Chapter 8: Third Race

Chapter 9: The Islands Shall Quake

Chapter 10: Sailing the Deeps

Chapter 11: Of Pests and Miracles

Chapter 12: Surgical Precision

Chapter 13: Stinking Liars

Chapter 14: Enchaining Dragons

Chapter 15: Alastior!

Chapter 16: Ancient Powers

Chapter 17: Carnivorous Intelligence

Chapter 18: Treble Ambush

Chapter 19: Land, Ho!

Chapter 20: Oaths that Bind

Chapter 21: Rainbows over Islands

Chapter 22: The Siege of Kerdani

Chapter 23: Giant Rage

Chapter 24: Annihilation

Chapter 25: Mother of all Battles

Chapter 26: Awesome-Pants

Chapter 27: The Reach of a Dragon’s Wings

Chapter 28: Immadior’s Roost

Chapter 29: Mountainous Landings

Chapter 30: The Snows of Immadia

Chapter 31: A Royal Mess

About the Author