The Onyx Dragon (17 page)

Pip rubbed her eyes tiredly, and wobbled into Silver’s paw.
Catch me.

Islands’ greetings, gorgeous.
He puffed a smoke-heart at her. With practice, his skills appeared to be improving.
So, who’s our little friend? She doesn’t trust me.

She’s afraid of Dragons. Wouldn’t you be after this morning?

Oyda popped up to tickle the girl beneath the chin. “She’s adorable, isn’t she, Silver? Her name’s Tik–at least, that’s the pronounceable bit. Sorry, Pip. You’ve been outbid in the cuteness stakes.”

“Huh. You aren’t so far off being cute yourself.” Pip wrinkled her nose at Oyda. “What’re you, five foot nothing?”

Jerrion limped over, nursing a burned calf muscle and an impressive bruise that ran the length of his right arm. “Say, is this the short peoples’ club? Can I join?”

Well, that deserved her best Dragoness-grin. Pip said, “Silver, would you chop off this man’s legs, please?”

* * * *

Battered and bruised, the Academy Dragonwing limped off that afternoon, making it as far as the base of Sylakia’s central mountain range. Several icerocs, close cousins of windrocs who lived on the frozen peaks, came to investigate. This time there was no fooling around with shield-testing. Only cinders fell from the sky once Tazzaral and Emblazon finished with them.

Come evening, even Hunagu joined the group near the campfire. To everyone’s surprise, he shared several Oraial Ape legends his mother had passed down to him. The translation stretched Pip’s linguistic abilities to the limit.

The conclusion of the third legend had Nak scratching his beard and Kaiatha riffling the pages of her father’s diary with excitement. “No. It can’t be. He didn’t know Ape, did he, Pip?”

“Page forty-eight,” she said.

“Ugh, honestly!” Kaia punched Pip’s shoulder, then immediately apologised.

Pip gasped, “It didn’t hurt. It didn’t–look, Silver!” She tugged at her tunic top to expose her shoulder. “Look, everyone.”

“Mmm,” Nak drawled. “You wouldn’t mind slipping out of that garment completely, would–ouch!”

“Oops.” Shimmerith’s fangs gleamed in the firelight. “
Slip
of the old talon there, my Rider. Oyda, don’t you need to distract Nak from looking at other females?”

Oyda’s cheeks developed more than a hint of colour. “Um.”

“Ay. I need distraction,” Nak waved his hands excitedly, “because I’ve just had a brilliant idea. Modestly meant, of course, but it is quite brilliant. Almost as brilliant as a certain Dragoness I could name.”

Shimmerith curled her paw about her Rider and pretended to stroke his beard with her fore-talon. “Hmm. Let me just think. Ay, more compliments will do nicely.”

A ripple of laughter ran around the fire.

Yet little mirth underlay their banter. Somehow, the battle had served to knit the group more closely, thoughts turning from training to war, from the matter of putting past ghosts to rest to the reality of an elderly Night-Red Dragoness amongst their number. An early afternoon squall had left the air fresh and chill. Now, bands of stars peeped between the cloud-battalions still parading across the velvet skies in close formation. To the West, Sylakia’s jagged peaks were lit golden white by the massive Yellow Moon sinking into the far eastern horizon, its pocked and scarred surface clearly visible as it covered more than sixty percent of the horizon.

Kaiatha said, “Here. Look, Ape-steps. Pip remembered perfectly. Thank you, Hunagu.”

“Pleasure mine,” he rumbled. “Steps–er, Pip? Help?”

“The Ape Steps are a series of … low-lying Islands between the major Crescent Islands,” she translated for her Ape friend. “Hunagu says they are sometimes covered by the tide–the Cloudlands, I think he means. Is that even possible, Hunagu?”

He thumped his chest, creating a hollow booming sound. “Ape-wisdom mighty-mighty wisdom!”

Cinti said, “Ay, Ape-wisdom is mighty. The five moons exert tidal forces on the Cloudlands–and on the flying Islands of Herimor, which is how we know of this. I’m sure it’s quite possible, under the right conditions, for the Cloudlands to slop about like blood in a Dragon’s feeding-bowl.”

“Ew, please,” Kaiatha protested. “Well, there appear to be some references here to Islets and counts in Ancient Southern–Pip, can you read this?”

Pip waved the book away. “I can read the runes, but I don’t understand their meaning.
Ta’tik, ya’ûk, malikíkò …
”

Tik held up three fingers with the middle one crooked downward. “
Malikíkò.
”

“What?”

The child sat up straighter in Arosia’s arms, saying in Ancient Southern, “Play finger-game?
Ya’ûk.
” She held her little fists side-by-side, the smallest finger of each hand extended. “
Ch-û-íeí.
” Now she made a complex shape, perhaps a bat, Pip thought. “Play game?”

Pip smiled joyously. “Teach me. Teach big persons? Tik many-wrinkled clever old teacher.”

A peal of childish delight greeted her assertion.

* * * *

Emblazon assigned Pip and Silver the fourth watch, from the eighth hour of night until dawn. “No soaring aloft,” he warned. “The Sylakian Dragons want as little overt interference as possible. Pick a spot upslope where you’ll have an uninterrupted view. And try to keep warm.”

“All I want is my balmy jungle,” said Silver, imitating Pip’s accent ineptly.

She made sure to kick her Dragon multiple times on the way up his rear left knee to his back.

Mid-amble to his habitual sleeping-place at Oyda’s side, the Amber Dragon paused to glance over his shoulder, and said,
They happen to be the only truly Dragonesque jungles in this Island-World, young Silver. You fire-breathers of Herimor should know to listen to the lay of the Islands. Is it not said that Pygmies are the favoured friends of Dragons, the original worshippers of the Ancient Powers? Fra’anior called the Pygmies ‘the people of his right paw’.

Pip made the mental equivalent of dropping her jaw in astonishment.

Ay,
said the Amber.
It just came to me, from one of the oldest legends of our kind. Begs the question, doesn’t it?

Er … what question, mighty Emblazon?
Pip inquired.

Were Dragons ever meant to rule the high places of this Island-World, masters of all, enslaving the other races? Particularly Humankind? Or was Fra’anior’s original conception a fierier, more beautiful plan altogether?

He gave the word ‘fierier’ context-associations of draconic true-fires, white colours, and unexpectedly, an image of multiple overlapping rainbows gilding a storm’s aftermath. Pip had the impression the Dragon meant to blow her boots off. Had she been wearing boots, mission accomplished.

Truly, Emblazon?
He stiffened, every inch of his hundred feet bespeaking affront.
Sorry, I meant, thank you, mighty Emblazon, for … uh, sharing your wisdom.

He settled down with an irritable huff of breath that almost snuffed out the dying fire.

Great. Touchy Dragon-pride!

Silver winged a little ways upslope as ordered, picking a spot in the lee of a jutting boulder which afforded protection from a chill night-breeze sweeping down from the nearby peaks. Mountains. Mostly outside a Pygmy’s experience, unless one correctly counted every Island as a mountain risen from the Cloudlands. The Yellow moon waxed immense over the wooded hills of Sylakia, its deeply cratered surface scored by several low-lying bands of dark clouds. Pip wondered telepathically if the Yellow Moon somehow protected the Island-World from being impacted by comets the likes of which had smashed a home for Humans, Dragons and Shapeshifters into the flank of a virgin planet. What an explosion that must have been!

Above her position, Silver took a typically draconic stance atop his chosen boulder, four-pawed and muscular, sniffing the air with predacious concentration. But after a moment he inclined his attention to her ideas, noting,
Ay, Pip. Dragon scientists have long examined our crowded night skies and formulated such theories. In Herimor, we say Yellow is a mighty, battle-scarred Dragon. So to ‘be yellow-winged’ or ‘yellow-clawed’ is a high compliment.

The very opposite of the Human notion of cowardice.

Pip squinted.
Silver, is that a Dragonwing crossing the Yellow moon? Look, just beneath the third band of clouds.

To her, those faraway specks looked smaller than migrating sand-swallows, as dust blowing across Yellow’s broad face, but Silver’s vision magnified the image until Pip saw in his mind, a pair of Reds shepherding a hatchling toward Archion. Flying raggedly–why?

Barely had this realisation sparked between Dragon and Rider, when Pip saw a shadow descend from the clouds. Horror crammed into her throat. She could neither breathe nor cry out, for even across that enormous distance, Silver’s Dragon-sight furnished her the perfect, repulsive detail of the Shadow-creature seeming to pulsate softly as it enveloped the Dragon family like folds of black silk, veiling their draconic fires. So gentle. So ruinous. And her soul knew desolation as those fires snuffed out. The specks tumbled lifeless from beneath the shadow.

No! Oh mercy, stop it, oh Silver please–STOP!

Her gorge surged. Pip vomited so violently, she felt as though a Dragon had kicked her in the stomach.

Her Command-magic dissipated somewhere out there in the beyond. The Shadow-creature drifted westward, making what Pip knew to be an incredible speed. Unaffected. Had she hoped it would be? Pip wiped her mouth, scanning the western horizon in futile fury. Nearby, the camp was abuzz following her mental shout, but she knew there was nothing they could do. Nothing. What if the Word of Command did not work on that otherworldly creature?

Silver poured down to her, smoking at the jaw, trembling palpably as he clasped her fervently to his lower chest.
We will find a way, Pip. We will!

Ay, Silver.

Or die trying.

D
AWN RAISED MORE
than a few groans amongst the battle-weary Dragonwing. Shimmerith winged down from her watch-post, having elected to spell Pip and Silver when the Sapphire claimed she could not sleep any longer. Given magical healing, Nak’s black eye and bruised cheekbone had progressed into a rather spectacular purple-and-yellow map of Sylakia, Oyda suggested slyly. Pip complained to Silver that she was supposed to have learned something about the Balance of the Harmonies, not to have magic sashay unnoticed into her flesh and start changing things, even if it was for the better. Moreover, what of Leandrial’s assertion concerning Shurgal’s rediscovery of an ancient, twisted form of magic? She remembered not a jot of the knowledge with which the Land Dragon had summarily knocked her out for three days.

A bird chirruped spiritedly near her ear. Pip flicked a pebble at it.

“Leaping Islands, your Dragoness must be making a reappearance soon,” said Arosia, emerging from an apparent place of hibernation between Chymasion’s forepaws. “Leave the poor, innocent animals alone, Pip.”

“Ay, pick on your Dragon instead,” suggested Chymasion.

“Hmm. Safer, do you think?” Pip mused.

“I’m listening,” said Silver, without opening his eyes. “And if you intend to keep all of your fingers and toes intact, the answer’s a negative multiplied by twenty.”

Nak sang out, “Everyone’s grumpy this morning, but I’m not–can I tell you why?”

“I’d rather rearrange your teeth with my war-hammer,” grumbled Jerrion. “You snored all night, Rider Nak.”

“Except for when Shimmerith poked him,” said Oyda.

“I miss Maylin and Emmaraz already,” said Kaiatha. “Arosia, I’ll braid your hair if you braid mine?”

Nak prodded Jerrion with his toe. “That’s the hair-braiding club and no, you can’t join unless your leg hairs are long enough to braid. Oh, would you look at this …” The Jeradian growled as Nak swiftly plucked a few leg hairs by the roots.

Well, there was a note on which to start the morning.

The Riders rapidly broke camp while the Dragons hunted up a quick pre-flight snack–a brace of wild ralti sheep, which stood seven feet tall at the shoulder and weighed fifteen times more than a grown man, and a tender young spiral-horn buck which was apparently a trophy for the ‘grand old Dragoness’–Cinti managed to glower and slaver simultaneously at this dubious accolade. The bounty vanished in less than five minutes.

Kaiatha primly ordered Tazzaral to wash his gore-splattered lips and claws before she would mount up, than you very much, Dragon! He consented with a parting snap of the fangs that came within a whisker of snatching her headscarf off her head.

Thereafter, the Dragons sprang aloft, beating hard to clear the ground. The first suns-beams reached past the easterly peaks to warm Riders and Dragons alike, but Pip, thinking upon the fate of that Dragon family, did not stop shivering for a long time. The morning’s easy-paced flying took them up a snowbound valley into the heart of the Sylakian mountains. They saw many icerocs wheeling amidst the peaks, but none were foolhardy enough to approach the compact Dragonwing. As they ascended, Cint’ixt’ix and Silver exchanged stories. Pip listened quietly, awed by the Dragoness’ long life and many experiences–of all the things she had never expected, having a hundred and seventy-six year-old potential mother-in-law, or shell-mother by oath-fires as the Dragons put it, had to take the proverbial purple rajal. She had been a Shapeshifter of a colour she described as ‘aged bronze’ until the Marshal’s power had altered her to Night-Red.

After cresting the highest pass, Pip gazed out over a huge, winter-bound desert stretching to the horizon, mostly snow interspersed with strips of striated grey basalt and isolated patches of blasted-looking, stunted bushes. No single green, living thing gladdened the eye.

Volcanic hells had nothing on this. “Silver, can you warm up our shield a little more?”

“One steamy jungle, as ordered.”

She sighed as warmth bathed her numb fingers and toes. How had a Pygmy child ever survived the Sylakian winters? Only with an Ape’s help. Tik stirred sleepily in the folds of Pip’s travel cloak, but opted only to crack open one eye to confirm Pip’s continued presence. The winsome mite had eaten for a whole tribe of Pygmies last night. A familiar feeling, Pip recalled, cuddling her charge a little closer. And now they were taking her into a warzone.

The desert crossing was mercifully swift, bringing the low eastern shore of Sylakia into view within two hours’ flying. Two positions ahead of Silver in the habitual streamlined V formation, Emblazon inclined his wingtip to veer onto a more southerly heading, aiming for Sylakia’s farthest tip, the south-eastern peninsula fondly called ‘the Outstretched Talon’ by the Dragonkind. His wing-brothers and sisters followed in perfect accord. From there it would be a short haul to flat, unremarkable Telstroy, which lay but a Dragon’s pounce from the Crescent Isles.

Home. Did she even know what that word meant?

They bored into a biting headwind which swept in from leaden skies, promising snow before the morning was out, Nak avowed. Pip decided she would be an ice-statue long before then. Three hours’ steady labour in worsening weather saw the Dragonwing reach Sylakia’s south-easternmost isthmus. Here Emblazon took them a half-league offshore, appearing to be searching for some landmark. At last, he vented a snort of satisfaction that puffed a cloud of condensation around his muzzle, and bent his course toward a slanting crack in the mile-and-a-half cliff. Shimmerith pointed out an ancient Sylakian fortress standing atop that bleak headland, barely visible beneath grey sweeping cloud-curtains spitting flecks of white at the travellers. Freezing weather-dandruff, Duri muttered. Even he sported a blue nose.

Pip could not imagine a more forsaken location in all the Island-World. By some quirk of geography or atmospheric conditions, Sylakia appeared to suffer far colder conditions than the Crescent Islands situated just a few hundred leagues south. Why? Yet the crack reached further back into the forbidding granite massif than had been evident to the naked eye. It quickly turned into a passageway that led to a sheltered grotto, open to the sky far above, but warmed from beneath by a trio of scalding hot springs that fed numerous interlinked pools. Out there, the day had turned from freezing to a full-blown blizzard. But the sifting snow melted long before it reached the grotto’s base.

Pip grinned as nearly every member of the group sighed in anticipation. No freezing wind? Steaming hot water? Were they still on Sylakia?

Nak said feelingly, “Emblazon, you are the most magnificent beast ever to fly beneath the five moons.”

“I know,” the Amber Dragon agreed, as shameless as a courting parakeet. He carefully unwrapped Hunagu from the cargo net. As the Ape shambled off shedding puddles of snow-melt, the Dragon regarded him with carnivorous curiosity. Pip restrained the urge to slap him with the nearest handy Island. Grr.

“Oyda and I have booked the far pool,” Nak added. “The rest of you, sort yourselves out.”

“Ay, o fearless leader?” said Pip.

“Oh, alright. Girls over there, boys over there. Snip snap. I’ve things to do and stunningly attractive Dragon Riders to woo.”

“And the Dragons?” Kaia asked.

“Honestly, if Tazz and Jyoss need privacy to nuzzle, there’s another cavern and more hot springs right through that archway,” said Nak, growing peevish. “No, Silver, you will not ‘protect’ Pip. Go with the men, or transform and go with the men, I don’t care which.”

Silver growled, “What about Emblazon?”

With withering disgust, the Amber Dragon snarled, “Unlike you, I do not find Human hide in the least attractive. You Shapeshifters are the wind over another Island. Go with the males, youngling, and not another word will I hear. Chymasion, I don’t care what you say about magical sight. You see far too much anyway. No doubt you can see through rock, never mind clothing.”

“Hmm, haven’t tried,” said Chymasion. Pip was almost certain he was lying.

Ten minutes later, Pip found herself unthawing in neck-deep, slightly alkaline water with three Dragonesses effectively blocking any view the males might have enjoyed. Tik slipped underwater like a little river-otter, perfectly at home in water as most Pygmy children were.

“You can see why Fra’anior Cluster is so much more appealing than Sylakia,” Kaiatha said. “Wouldn’t you agree, Arosia? Duri and I should raise our children–”

“On the rim of the largest active volcano in the Island-World? Comforting,” said Arosia.

Kaiatha chuckled, “Ay, I’ll go with the volcano any day. What’ll happen to Emmaraz and Maylin, Shimmerith?”

“You saw them leave by Dragon-stretcher, little one,” said Shimmerith. She stretched as lazily as a cat catching the suns’ heat on hot bricks. “They’ll be flown straight to Sylakia Town. There’s a secret Dragon roost somewhere nearby, I believe–that’s the first place Kassik intends to search–from which those Blues appeared. Once Emmaraz’s shoulder is stabilised and Maylin’s bleeding has stopped, they’ve promised to provide a Dragonship to fly them down the Spine to Jeradia. It’s an ugly wound, but with Chymasion’s help I’ve already rebuilt the basic structure of the critical flight-joint. Poor function in that joint would cripple a Dragon permanently.” The Dragoness sighed. “Too many ifs–if the bones knit properly, if the ligaments repair themselves, if the shattered main wing-bone can regenerate internally, if the blood vessels are not restricted …”

“You accomplished a noble work, o Shimmerith,” said Jyoss. “Now, will you teach us the additional magic-dampening shield constructs we’ll need in the Crescent?”

“I can help,” said Cinti. “Herimor magic is all about concealment and subterfuge. Can someone lend me clothes?”

“I thought it was all about subterfuge?” Kaia suggested coyly.

The Dragoness chuckled, “You and my Human manifestation should be of a size, little one. May I borrow a few items, if you brought spare? I haven’t been Human in so long.” At Pip’s soft interrogative sound, she clarified, “The Marshal’s magic corrupts draconic flesh and scale. Some Shapeshifters find they’re unable to return to Human form, others that there is no need. A Human form does require regular maintenance and feeding, just as a Shapeshifter must regularly feed her Dragoness or she might sicken and die.”

“What if she was poisoned?” Pip asked.

Cinti’s eye-fires mellowed to a vibrant orange colour. “Some Shifter poisons only dampen or block the second-soul magic, Pip, but most will do permanent damage unless you have a particularly strong innate healing power. We will only know when you transform.”

Balance. She must summon Balance. Drifting in the hot water, Pip began to recall Leandrial’s teachings–something had indeed arrived in that titanic psychic blast–and began to unpick what she could. So much was alien, a song of magic beyond her ken, but it was the overall pattern she strove to perceive, the true weft and weave of a Shifter’s flesh and soul, and the composition or recomposition of her person. It was too mystical to frame with words. Much of a Shapeshifter Dragoness’ existence seemed a mystery cased within a conundrum, as Master Kassik had put it, quoting from the ancient ballads of Hualiama Dragonfriend. Yet perhaps Chymasion’s power of seeing the exquisite inner magic of all material substance could help.

Chymasion? Silver? Can you help me see and identify–

Ay,
responded the Dragons, already attuned to the needs communicated by the rich nuances of her Dragonish.

The Island-World’s night skies revealed never-ending filigrees of stars, the vast yet delicate dance of suns and moons and worlds like hers. Seeing into a person’s flesh was akin to diving into a well of endless depth and complexity, where thousands of miniscule systems interacted in a perpetual dance of such beauty it caused her soul to inhale sharply, then to exhale in endless, infinitesimal realisation. This was Pip. Spirit and substance. Chemical and eternal.

This place,
said Silver, showing her.
See the wrongness, then transform it in your mind into conditions under which only truth may exist–the not-yet truth, the truth which will become.

Pip saw within herself the wound created by Telisia’s arrow as it penetrated her shoulder. She saw pain radiating from the puncture-point, and decay, as if the physical wound were the mastermind behind a cancerous irruption of her flesh. Travelling deeper, she saw the distortion of fundamental pathways and balances. Deeper still, Pip came upon a realm she did not understand, perhaps in the same way as an Island’s shore demarcated the boundary between Island and Cloudlands ocean, so this unknowable border traced the conjoining of flesh and spirit. Or did she misunderstand? In life, were the two not always one?

And if she observed with the most sensitive tools of Chymasion’s unique magic and employed Silver’s intrinsic connection with the pathways of that most mysterious of monads, the mind, could she envisage a shining Dragonsoul, a tantalising hint of her other-self? As Silver said, imagination must become reality. She must claim her future. Will the Balance into being …

“Glub,” Pip spluttered, coughing up a lungful of tangy, mineral-rich water.

“Fallen asleep there, Pip?” asked Jyoss, cupping her paw to help her stay afloat. Silver’s shell-mother sternly growled at him to stay put.

She began to laugh, then coughed and hiccoughed simultaneously, and had to submit to the indignity of having her back swatted by a Dragoness until the spluttering abated.