The Onyx Dragon (13 page)

“I
saw
it,” said Pip.

Silver, Shimmerith and Kassik shared significant glances, but Nak brought the conversation’s tone down to his level with perfect comedic timing. “Ah, my incomparable Pygmy princess,” he declared, smacking his lips like a drunken lout, “were I to kiss you as you deserve, the very stars should swoon from the skies and be found ensconced in thy pyretic physique.”

Pip wrinkled her nose at him. “Thou art gracious but woefully misguided, o nefarious Nak.”

How glad she was to have discussed this problem with Kaiatha before bringing Emblazon and Oyda into her scheme. By shielded telepathy, she called to Emblazon,
To my aid, mighty Amber?
The Amber Dragon sneaked up behind Nak, astoundingly cat-footed for a beast of his tonnage. Predator. No other word served as well.

“Misguided?” Nak played to his audience. “Pray elucidate, thou dusky flame?”

“I’m just wondering which Dragon you’d choose to rebuke you first–Silver, Shimmerith or Emblazon?”

“Um,” said the Rider, making a show of scratching his beard.

Emblazon roared in his ear, “Jump!”

“Help!” Screeching in dismay, Nak bounded off like a frightened rock deer before realising that everyone was laughing at him. He dusted off his trousers and threw Pip a reproachful glare. “Where’s the dignity in this relationship, I ask you?”

Pip indicated herself. “Right here. Besides, my kisses are reserved for …” Blast it, now she stuttered to a halt and cast a sidelong glance at the Silver Dragon.

He wafted a flame-ring toward her, shaped as a wavering but recognisable heart. He bugled softly, “For thee, my flame-heart.”

Nearby, Casitha and Kaiatha raised whoops and cheers while Durithion clicked his fingers approvingly in the Sylakian fashion. Pip had to grin, albeit sheepishly. She had walked into a trap of her own making. Now she must pay the price in embarrassment.

Oyda beckoned Nak with her free hand. Garnishing her playful tone with fluttering eyelashes and a sassy pose, she cooed, “Oh Nak, I desire a strong man’s help with this crossbow bolt. Would you please assist me, o mighty, mighty Dragon Rider?”

Nak produced a fake swoon, staggering against Emblazon’s outstretched paw. “Ah, slain by thy beauty, winsome Yelegoy!”

Oyda’s cheeks developed matching spots of colour. “Nak. Get over here. Now!”

Pip approached Shimmerith to seek the Blue Dragon’s help. She had to find a way of healing her strange, Shapeshifter-connected wounds. Perhaps the image of becoming truly herself could be translated by a Dragon’s innate healing magic, for in the battle’s heat she had begun to sense an inner stirring she had thought forever lost beneath the Cloudlands.

Fire. Dragon fire.

F
OR tHE MIDAFTERNOON
briefing that same day following the pirates’ defeat, Master Balthion took over. “Using a Dragons’ Highway, we’ll depart this evening and aim to arrive in Sylakia before dawn tomorrow. We’ll be met outside Sylakia Town by agents sympathetic to our cause. I’ve already alerted them by message hawk.”

Clasping his hands behind the small of his back, the grizzled Master swivelled slowly, scrutinising each member of their group as if seeking to plumb their strengths and weaknesses. Pip knew that gaze well. A commander’s gaze. An academic’s keen intelligence. A swordsman’s understanding of combat. A fatherly softness as his eyes briefly touched upon Arosia and Chymasion.

He said, “With due respect, Chymasion, this crossing may prove to be beyond your capabilities at present due to the strength of the winds. We’ll plan accordingly. We will also hide Silver in his Shifted form for this leg. The Marshal’s agents may well be searching for a Dragon matching his unique description. At Sylakia we’ll split up as planned. Kassik, Casitha and I will slip into town to begin our investigations. Faranion and Barrion, you will accompany us. Jerrion, Pip is your responsibility. The rest will proceed under Nak and Emblazon’s command to the Crescent Isles.”

“Ay,” growled the Dragons, as if their response were orchestrated by a single, invisible paw.

“One small aside,” Balthion added. “For the zoo trip, Pip and Silver will require disguises. You’re about to become a happy little family. Nak and Oyda, congratulations on your incipient parenthood.”

“Phew.” Nak began to scratch himself vigorously with both hands, and not in socially acceptable places either. “You just set off all my allergies at once, Balthion.”

Duri grinned at Pip. “Hey, can I call you my titchy little sister?”

Maylin piped up, “Why don’t you make Jerrion and Oyda the parents, and Nak the boisterous little brat?”

“Hey!” Nak flicked a fish-head at the Eastern Islander, who caught it with a snap of her wrist and a smirk aimed to infuriate.

Balthion pretended to consider her proposal. “Hmm. Excellent strategic thinking there, Maylin. Emmaraz, you and Chymasion will be main watch on the zoo complex. Emblazon and Shimmerith are too recognisable. The other Dragons will wait in a wood a mile southwest of the zoo. Saddled. Ready to depart at the drop of a rajal’s hat.”

“Ah–are we sure this zoo visit is worth all the trouble?” asked Pip.

The Sylakian Master bowed formally to Emblazon. “Noble Amber. What is a Dragon’s foremost weapon in battle?”

“Heart,” he growled.

Shimmerith agreed, “Absolutely. We Dragons say the brighter the heart burns, the more powerfully a Dragon burns in battle. White-fires, battle-fires and heart-fires–in Dragonish, these words are all formed from the same root. My Emblazon is a great-hearted Dragon and that is his battle-secret, the true power behind the outward appearance and a battle-honed mind.”

Emblazon squeezed his mate’s paw with his own, much as Humans would hold hands. “Ay.”

Balthion said, “Therefore, Pip–”

“I understand, Master, and I thank you for this lesson.”

He dipped into a Sylakian quarter-bow. “Then I expect you to apply your understanding to the attainment of mastery, student Pip–and that goes for all you students, understood? Right. Questions, anyone?”

Arosia raised her hand hesitantly. “Father?”

“I suppose I have to, don’t I?” A wink softened his low growl. He indicated his cheek. “A kiss for your poor, bereft parent. Right here.”

Arosia leaped up with more than a shade of rose complimenting her glad cry. “Father!” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, and then added an impulsive hug.

Balthion held her close. “Permission granted. Hasten back, precious daughter.”

* * * *

The Dragons spiralled aloft upon thermals generated by the intense late afternoon suns-shine, soaring above the northern massif supporting the great natural arch. Archion’s splendour only increased the higher they rose. The multiple layers of terrace lakes, twenty-eight in all, gleamed like bands of molten silver. Above the lakes, the flat summit of the Island played host to four small Human villages, the total population of the Island being less than three hundred hardy souls. Neat triangular fields of crops abutted thick, dark green coniferous forests. Everywhere the eye fell, flotillas of multi-coloured specks affirmed the abundance of bird life. Pip spied a family of rajals slipping past a village. Apparently these people tamed the huge black cats. Mad!

“Beautiful, but you’d need earplugs to live here,” Nak said irreverently. Pip and Human-Silver rode Shimmerith together with Nak, for Emblazon expected to carry Chymasion partway.

“Oyda’s the one who needs earplugs. You snore,” said Pip.

“Bah. I am the epitome of flawless masculinity,” Nak boasted. “Islands’ sakes, are Balthion and Kaiatha puzzling over that diary again? Pretty girl, but ridiculously tenacious. Remind me to give Durithion some pointers about dealing with stubborn women.”

“Of course, Nak.”

“Meantime, Silver, haven’t you taken Pip up on her offer as yet?”

“Ah–what offer?” asked Silver.

“Kissing.” Nak winked over his shoulder. “My boy, you are surely not so dense as to have ignored such an opportunity? Whatever do they teach you over there in Herimor?”

“Courtesy and respect,” Silver snorted.

“Bah. Toss that in a Cloudlands volcano. Can’t you see she’s rainbows over the Islands for you, boy?”

“She is right here, sitting between you,” Pip interjected.

“Oh, great Islands,” Nak teased, “I must’ve
over
looked you there, Pip.”

Marvellous! Definitely a lick of ethereal flame as his short-person joke did not fail to irk. Pip said, “I hope fate sends you three little Naks to drive you up the proverbial Island cliff.”

“Three pretty little Oydas to cherish, cosset and protect from all those roguish Naks out there,” said the Rider, sounding so serious that Pip smothered a gasp. “Now, let us use our time wisely–see? Even the merest hint of parenthood has transformed me into an improbably responsible man.” That deserved a chuckle. “Let’s us four put our heads together and figure out how you trigger this Balance power which is supposed to heal a Shapeshifter’s hidden manifestation. Because that’s where the problem is. I’ve thought about it. Your Human flesh is fine. It’s your Dragoness who is suffering, Pipsqueak.”

Had Pip not been strapped in, she might have fallen right off Shimmerith’s back. Nak? How did he switch between the feckless villain and the noble Rider with such Island-shivering facility?

The Dragons ascended to a mile above Archion. Two. The fields diminished to a tiny tracery of fractured green crysglass. The lakes reduced to a series of gleaming concentric slivers, and the birds became a white mist over the Isle as they descended in their droves to roost for the night. Now Archion was but a broad oval besieged by leagues of ruddy Cloudlands, a stronghold of life holding firm against an ocean of death.

Shimmerith led the Dragons in forming semipermeable shields to protect their Riders with oxygen-rich air and warmth. Just in time. A frigid wind from the West ruffled her curls, a harbinger of worse to come. For as they continued to rise, the wind increased from a playful buffeting to an all-out gale which knocked the less experienced fledglings about as though an invisible Dragon cuffed their tails and hindquarters. All thought of lazing upon thermals fled. Bellowing encouragement to the fledglings, Emblazon turned his muzzle to the East and led his Dragonwing deeper into the chill airstream which would whisk them over to Sylakia Island.

They travelled a Dragons’ Highway, far transcending any Human habitation.

Overhead, the starry skies seemed to amplify the gaspingly low temperatures with icy cheer. Fair winds and clear skies for travellers, was the ancient saying. Pip wondered if this relentless, ice-breathing beast hounding their tails counted as fair winds. Crescent Jade had already surmounted the eastern horizon, just a compass-point or two north of their heading. The White Moon blazed balefully upon their tails with its usual pinpoint brilliance, reflected upon the Cloudlands beneath. Pip huddled in her jacket and tugged the furred collar tight about her neck. Brr! By morning, she would be a Pygmy icicle ready to shatter upon the famously unforgiving bulwark of Sylakia Island.

Alight, Shimmerith. I’m ready.

Good, Pip. I’m going to teach you a type of meditation–a technique of inner awareness–we Dragonkind call ‘knowing the cell-fires’. For through draconic medical science we can examine the composition of our bodies in the minutest detail, down to our inmost fires and component parts. Attend closely as I scribe these teachings upon your mind-fires.

Far into the night, she laboured with Silver and Shimmerith on her mental skills. Pip wrestled with Dragonish logic, so unfamiliar to one who had grown up in a jungle and a zoo. The breadth of Balthion and Arosia’s schooling followed by a few months’ education at the Dragon Rider Academy made but a small foundation for understanding the draconic half of her heritage, yet she was grateful. How could that cage-bound Pygmy girl have imagined riding Dragonback upon a windstorm, on a mission to change the Island-World as she knew it? How could the two Dragons claim to be learning from her questions?

Two hours before dawn, Shimmerith sang out sight of Sylakia. Pip realised she had not slept a wink. She could not tell if she felt refreshed or too keyed up to imagine sleep. She must build her barricades, bury the feelings deep. And let go? Could she ever follow Kassik’s heart-cleansing wisdom and consign that experience to the past?

Dark and forbidding, Sylakia loomed upon the eastern horizon. Sheer, league-tall cliffs bounded the Island on every visible quarter, laced with vegetation in some parts. From several leagues off, she made out multiple Cloudlands-bound waterfalls and the serrated interior mountains of Sylakia’s notorious wilderness regions. A huge Island in comparison to Archion, Sylakia stretched forty-one leagues from top to tail, as Nak put it, with a midsection twenty-eight leagues wide. Much was uninhabitable wilds, mountains and even a large desert on the eastern periphery. Sylakia Town itself perched upon the brink of a massive inlet that cut into the Island as though an Ancient Dragon had once sought to tear it asunder. The infamous Tower of Sylakia, an uninviting lump of a prison building, stood upon a separate tower of rock just off the northern peninsula, separated from the mainland by a few hundred feet and two vertical miles’ drop. Few prisoners escaped, she imagined, unless they could fly. Nak quietly pointed out a jutting walkway called the Last Walk, where Sylakia executed convicts by forcing them to cast themselves into the Cloudlands from the height of a league.

Silent-winged and cloaked by Shimmerith and Silver’s combined power, the Dragonwing circled the northern flank of town and headed slightly southward again, landing near a small, concealed juniper and prekki tree forest Balthion clearly knew well.

Here, supplies and disguises awaited. Kassik and Silver transformed into Human form. The Dragons tucked into a well-deserved meal of freshly slaughtered ralti sheep–slaughtered beforehand so that the sheep would not raise a ruckus when they smelled their doom landing nearby. The Riders unloaded, steaming of breath and rubbing their numb fingers in the nippy pre-dawn air.

Pip embraced Casitha. “I’ll see you back at the Academy, won’t I?”

“Hope so.”

“Otherwise I’ll just have to hunt you down.” Suddenly, she hugged Casitha so fiercely the girl gasped. “Be careful. Promise?”

Casitha looked oddly at her. “Of course, Pip.”

Pip disguised her disquiet beneath a fake shiver. “Mercy, it’s cold. Give me a steaming hot jungle any day.”

“You’ll find your family, Pip. For certain.”

Farewells were so awkward, especially when she wanted nothing more than to shout, ‘No! Turn back!’ Yet she knew that any hope must be pursued. If Dragons could hide somehow from the Shadow-beast, perhaps some Dragonkind could still be saved. Beside Chymasion’s jade flank, Balthion embraced Arosia, murmuring in her ear. What she would not have given for such a hug from her father. Would she remember her tribe? Would she even recognise her parents?

So far, they had seen no sign of Night-Red Dragons, which concerned Kassik, Balthion and Nak. Surely Sylakia must be a target for the Marshal, its power subdued if he intended to establish his regime North of the Rift? Yet all seemed quiet. The eight dark, four-square garrisons situated around Sylakia Town had raised no alarm as the Dragonwing ghosted by. Pip decided that itching had no value. Go to the zoo. Array herself in courage as a Dragon arrayed in gleaming black scales, ready for battle. Make the sacrifice she had to make for the sake of the future–everyone’s future.

“Your outfit, lady Pip,” Jerrion rumbled.

“What’s this?”

“A Sylakian peasant’s headscarf for children,” he said, perfectly straight of face. Pip was certain his eyes twinkled way up there, four feet above her head. He knelt suddenly. “Here. I’ll show you how to fasten it. Oh, this has a face-veil.”

Kaiatha said, “I think I’ll take over at this point, Jerrion.”

“Your dress,” said the Jeradian, handing her the rough garment. “Looks and smells well used, lady Dragoness.”