The Onyx Dragon (2 page)

They nodded with the shamefaced air of three boys caught pinching sweets from Mistress Mya’adara’s stores.

“Good. Here’s the plan.”

* * * *

After a swift detour via the soldiers’ barracks, Pip and her hulking escorts walked up to the dining hall, where the Academy’s students, Journeymen, Masters and Dragon Riders ate their meals. The concessions to wartime were clear. Garrulous students barged about, armed even at dinner time with an array of weapons from around the Island-World. The sixty-foot tall jalkwood doors were guarded by no less than four Dragons, including Tazzaral and Jyoss, Kaiatha’s and Durithion’s Dragons respectively. Jyoss, a rare Albino Dragoness, gave Pip a glint of a Dragon-smile–a hundred fangs and an especial whirl of her pink-flamed eyes. The burly Copper Dragon, Tazzaral, greeted her in thunderous tones that rattled the doors on their hinges.

Pip’s heart sank beneath the level of her slippers, if that were possible. Wonderful. Tazzaral’s never-failing sense of occasion. Why not announce her entrance to the entire hall? Maybe that was their plan. Pip gave Tazzaral a draconic smile of her own. In telepathic Dragonish, she inquired,
Kaiatha put you up to that blast of Dragon-thunder disguised as a greeting, Tazz?

His muzzle jerked guiltily.
As if. Sulphurous greetings, noble Onyx.

Hmm.
Attempt to mollify her, would he? She wished she could flounce off properly, but had to settle for the limping progress of the recently injured. Much less satisfying.

Even less satisfying, the chorus of snickers that rose from the First Year trestle tables, located nearest the dining hall’s doorway, as Pip made her entrance. Firming her elfin chin as if she wished to impale a host of errant students upon its spear-point, she cast about for Maylin, Yaethi and Kaiatha, her best friends in the Academy. There. Giggling like a trio of picayune parakeets. Maylin pasted on her best innocent expression. Twin blooms of colour in Yaethi’s Helyon-pale cheeks flagged her complicity in the scheme. As for gentle Kaiatha, she could not bear to look at Pip, pretending fascination with her plate of spicy Jeradian root vegetables. As they approached the table amidst a swelling tide of laughter, Pip raised her forefinger, giving Faranion a prearranged signal.

“Student Maylin!” the Jeradian Hammer boomed. “I hereby place you under arrest.”

Maylin screeched, “What?”

Pip could have paid half the jewels of Sylakia for that response.

“Forgery of important Academy documents,” Faranion blustered. “Impersonating the noble Master Kassik’s office. Blatant abuse of the messaging system. You will come with me.”

Her golden Eastern skin having bleached to a pasty shade of white, Maylin spluttered, “But it was an order …”

“Are you not aware this is wartime?” Plucking the hapless student out of her seat, Faranion clapped a pair of manacles upon her wrists with commendable efficiency. The Jeradians appeared to be enjoying their roles just a touch more than was strictly necessary. Pip smoothed a grin off her lips. Those doom-mongering windrocs could just take a hop into the nearest volcano.

“Now, listen here,” Yaethi began to protest.

Barrion clamped her good arm in his massive paw. “I’ve apprehended the accomplice, lady Pip.”

“Unhand me, you wretch!”

“Excellent,” said Pip, casting a steely glare around the First Year benches. Laughing from the other side of their mouths now, were they? Picturing an imperious Dragoness in her mind, she commanded, “Clap these miscreants in irons and haul them up to Master Kassik’s office.”

In short order, her band of merry mayhem reversed course, with Yaethi chained to Maylin via her good left wrist. Her right hand had been eaten by a Heripede during Telisia’s cowardly attack on the Academy. Kaiatha tripped along behind with an increasingly alarmed expression, but she dared a level of protest that could only be heard in the depths of a still cave on an uninhabited Island.

The squeak of a Dragon’s scales could have been heard in a hall holding hundreds.

A roar split the hush. “Pip!
Pip!
Yah
stop right there, yah package of beastly rapscallion-ness!”

Monkeys and tinker bananas, where had Mistress Mya’adara sprung from? Pip whirled on her heel to spy the famously stormy Western Isles warrior bearing down upon her with rather more than a hint of thunder in her expression.

“Don’t yah be vexing me like this!” roared the Mistress. “What mischief yah fomenting with mah best students? Ah’ll bend yah over mah knee like you was one of mah own, and that yah are, girl! Don’t yah be thinking you’re all big an’ Dragon-like now, yah still mah Pipsqueak until Ah say different. Right?”

To Pip’s amazement, Jerrion stood his ground before the Mistress’ wrath. Even Dragons thought twice about daring as much.

Mya’adara, who at six and a half feet of Western Isles warrior-brawn towered over most women, ran headlong into Jerrion’s chest and bounced off.
Bounced.
Pip stifled a laugh; by the rajal-fierce glint in the Mistress’ eye, her reaction had neither been missed nor appreciated.

“Just doing my duty, Mistress,” Jerrion rumbled politely, beginning to greet her in the Jeradian fashion by first blowing across her knuckles.

The Head of Students snatched her hand back. “Jerrion, I changed yah wet cloths when yah was a filthy, snivelling infant. Don’t yah backchat me. Ah’ll tan yah lower cheeks like Ah used to, Dragon-sized or none.”

Just then, a messenger-monkey scampered up to Pip, bobbed its head and presented her a scroll.

Faranion jostled past her to seize the scroll before she could touch it. “Stop. Scrolls can be poisoned.”

Pip gave a few blameless students to her left the benefit of her most venomous glare. Ha. To the monkey, she said in Ape, “Thank you.”

The monkey thumped its chest briefly. “Me perfect messenger. You monkey-girl.”

Controlling her exasperation with a hiss of breath between clenched teeth, Pip assigned the albino messenger-monkey second place on her menu.

“What does it say, o beefy captor?” Maylin inquired archly.

Faranion said, “Just, ‘Code brown.’ I assume that means something to you?”

The Eastern Islander smirked, “Code brown is what happens when you don’t wipe your–”

“Maylin!” snapped Yaethi. “Crudity is a sign of a lazy mind. Code brown means we drop everything and assemble in Master Kassik’s office. Snip snap, Dragoness. Undo these chains.”

Of course, the key Barrion had snatched from the barracks did not fit. After thirty seconds of everyone huffing and puffing and much clinking of chains and unsubtle complaints, punctuated by at least twenty hand-wringing apologies from Barrion, Jerrion took matters into his own hands, literally. He tucked Maylin beneath his left arm and Yaethi under his right and made to march off.

Pip decided she could grow rather fond of owning a trio of pet Jeradian warriors.

The Mistress swatted his behind as the giant departed. “Yah know, Jerri, yah still a nice boy under all that muscle.”

“The indignity!” huffed Maylin.

“Put me down, or I’ll make my Arrabon sit on you,” Yaethi threatened.

“Don’t muss Yaethi’s headscarf,” Kaiatha advised. “She bites worse than a Dragoness if you misplace a strand of hair.”

Glowering at her friend, Yaethi yelled, “Oh Durithion, my darling pet sweetmeat! Dearest little sugar-sap Kaiatha needs her daily kissy-cuddlies.”

The tall, graceful Fra’aniorian Islander blushed spectacularly as Durithion’s classmates raised a round of lip-smacking and hoots and rude clicks of their fingers to salute this sally. Duri hurriedly pushed aside his dinner and raced to catch up. Pip could practically see the steam rising from beneath his collar. Perfect. These shenanigans were improving by the second.

Pausing in the doorway, Jerrion bowed left and right. “Mighty Tazzaral. Noble Jyoss. Please take these miscreants in paw and fly them to Master Kassik’s office at once. We’ll catch up with you.”

“Ah, shall we summon Emmaraz and Arrabon?” asked Tazzaral, visibly alarmed at the state of his passengers.

Maylin tried to kick Pip. “Why don’t you explain Human humour to these Dragons, genius?”

“Human? She’s a Shapeshifter,” Yaethi corrected.

Pip rolled her eyes. “It’s a joke, Tazzaral.”

He growled, “Such as when you were dragged before the Dragon Elders in chains?”

“Ah–that was a serious misdemeanour,” Pip stammered. Mercy, had the new Dragons from Ya’arriol heard the story already? Perhaps they ought to be warned about the dangerous Pygmy Dragoness, who had punched a tooth clean out of Shimmerith’s jaw.

The Copper Dragon was just about to issue a ringing acceptance of the task, when Jyoss slipped past him, seized Pip and Kaiatha in her forepaws, and bugled softly,
Try to catch me, thou, my gleaming furnace-heart.

Tazz blinked.
Uh …

Jyoss flicked his nose pertly with her left wingtip.
Do I need to bite your neck to gain your attention?

NO!
A second round of Dragon-thunder shook the dining hall.

Pip chuckled,
Tazzaral, did we place an order for trumpets and indoor storms?

Engulfing Maylin and Yaethi in one paw and Durithion in the other, Tazzaral thumped after Jyoss, flapping his wings to prevent his tonnage from crushing the precious Human cargo in his forepaws. He growled,
Last one there snacks on the pesky–I mean, Pygmy.

With a rippling laugh, the Albino charged off the portico and launched into the evening sky.

* * * *

Crimson-tinged clouds mooched low over the Academy volcano. The league-wide caldera was still active in places, but with the gentle simmer of an aged volcano which had lost its youthful rip and rumble. Within the main crater, five minor cones housed a burgeoning Dragon population, while an estimated twenty thousand Human souls lived in the sprawling russet brickwork Academy buildings, or in the vast caverns beneath and behind the buildings. Pip wondered why the buildings had been constructed more upward than sideways. She fancied an Ancient Dragon had once tumbled a pawful of buildings down the sheer volcanic slope, giving rise to the dizzying pile of interconnected halls and walkways and turrets that comprised the famous Dragon Rider Academy.

Once, a loincloth-clad Pygmy girl had sneaked into these buildings and surprised Master Kassik. Pip grinned. Now, she even understood what these big people meant by the word ‘naked’. How far a jungle girl had come.

Yet her greatest dream had also been shattered upon these dark volcanic slopes. Stolen from her jungle home at a young age and caged in a Sylakian zoo with Oraial Apes and monkeys, Pip had dreamed of being Human. She wished to be like the people who had traipsed in their tens and hundreds past her window to gawk at a dirty little savage. Sylakian law labelled her an animal. Now she knew she was a Shapeshifter, capable of manifesting in her Onyx Dragoness or Pygmy forms at a thought. No, not even a Shapeshifter. A poison-crippled half-being.

Rising, only to fall. Was this to be her life’s song?

J
YOSS CLEAVED THE
warm volcanic air with silken wing-strokes, maintaining a Dragon’s-length lead on Tazzaral during the three-quarters of a mile ascent to the Master’s office. Pip saw from afar that the windows had been thrown wide open to the volcanic breezes, as if in anticipation of their arrival. The Dragoness’ paw clamped around her body was as warm as suns-baked sand, a hot shackle that encased her from chest to ankle. Perfectly safe. Perfectly deadly. Jyoss’ two backward-facing and three forward-facing digits formed a dextrous paw similar in some respects to a Human hand, with retractable claws neatly sheathed–but one flexion of her talons could pulp Pip’s torso like an overripe prekki fruit. Such was the strength of even a young Dragon.

Shortly, the Dragons back-winged to land neatly on the broad balcony outside Master Kassik’s office. Pip alighted on stones scored by generations of talons, and for several seconds, gazed over the volcano with its open, steaming lava pits wreathing the peaks and rim walls in ever-shifting gaseous veils, seeking to imprint the scene upon her heart. This was the place she called home. The Academy had become a bastion of hope for the Dragonkind with the defeat of the Marshal’s advance forces the week before. In trouncing the formidable Silver, Pip had won not only a victory, but a boyfriend. Ah, boy-Dragon. Boy monster–what should she call him? Villain, foul enemy and the throbbing log drum of her heart?

Monkey droppings, she was about as comfortable with her new relationship as she was with her habitual spot front and centre of the Master’s desk. The Brown Shapeshifter Dragon was not renowned for his kindly ways when he chewed out, shredded and pulverised errant students shuffling their bare toes on his rug. Pip and the spot of shame were well acquainted.

Thankfully, as they shambled within like a clanking flock of sheep, the quintet of students found the large office quite empty.

“You. Ay, you, your unroyal draconic feistiness.” Maylin made a mess of trying to hit Pip, and settled for bunting her hip-to-hip instead. “What’s with the chains? How did you–”

Pip tapped her nose knowingly.

Maylin made a disgusted noise, but Yaethi drowned her out with a bright laugh. “Another magnificent Maylin plan sinks into the Cloudlands. Quite the flair for execution, eh?”

While her friends bickered, Pip watched the courting Dragon couple sharing a private nuzzle on the balcony. Jyoss still had the slender, compact frame of a youngster, although at six years old she was well into her fledgling years. She was a delicate rose colour with a striking hot pink trim upon her spine-spikes, claws, wing struts, and exquisite detailing across her brow ridges and muzzle. Tazzaral, at sixty-six feet long from muzzle to tail-tip according to his latest measure, was thirteen feet longer than Jyoss, head and shoulders taller, and beginning to bulge at the seams with the imposing musculature of an adult male Dragon. His deep copper tones gleamed like a rack of kitchen pots buffed to a magnificent shine–Pip giggled at this mental image. When he moved, the hand-sized scales of his flanks and shoulders rippled like molten metal, as though the hardest known armour in the Island-World was as pliable as soft, oiled leather.

With a fond nip at the base of Jyoss’ modest ruff of skull spikes, each as long as Pip’s arm and as deadly as the fangs that briefly flashed against the Dragoness’ hide, Tazzaral whirled and appeared to pour himself off the edge of the balcony in a torrent of liquid scales and muscle. Truly? Pip blinked. A multi-tonne carnivore could glide with feline grace?

On the balcony, the Dragoness’ soft, flaming pink gaze turned to Pip as if Jyoss sensed her regard. In telepathic Dragonish, the Albino purred,
Just wait until your Silver’s soul-fires cascade over your Dragon-senses, little one. Then you’ll know the thrilling, consuming Dragonsong of soul-bonded love.

No warning. Just flame bursting through her body, shockingly ardent; a stabbing fear that she must surely be scalded, blood boiling in her veins, the skin blistering and curling like scrolleaf tossed into a hearth fire … someone clutched Pip as she cried out, and a touch upon her shoulder doused the flames with coolness.

“Easy, Pip,” said Kaiatha. “Yaethi, what’s the matter with her?”

Pip glared across Master Kassik’s monstrous mahogany desk at the Dragoness standing framed within the doorway. Jyoss seemed amused. Pip pictured the Land Dragon, Leandrial, swatting the Albino Dragoness with a paw the size of twenty Dragons. She smiled right back at Jyoss.

Orange flame curled between the Dragoness’ fangs.
I saw that image, Pip.

I … projected?

You’re more powerful than you think. Hush, Kassik the Brown approaches.

To her friends, Pip said, “I’m fine. Stop mothering me. Just a touch of inner flame, that’s all. Yaethi, did I feel–”

“Healing magic,” her friend replied, with uncharacteristic diffidence. “Did it work?”

“Ay.”

Pip had no opportunity to say more, for raised voices behind the inner door of Master Kassik’s chamber announced the Master’s arrival. He was snarling at someone. Several people, in fact. There had been an inter-dorm raid between the Third Year male students, attempted hijinks which ended in a brawl involving hundreds.

“–and don’t make me come down there in my Dragon form!” the Master roared, slamming the door. He rubbed his temples tiredly. “Heavens save those boys before I fricassee them in boiling lava!”

Then, at a tiny
clink
from Yaethi’s wrist cuff, his eyes snapped to the waiting group. Pip anticipated his reaction with a curl of dread coupled with fascination. Master Kassik stood as tall and straight as a spear; a veteran Jeradian warrior of enormous dignity. When he spoke, it was in deep, measured tones, every aspect of his manner and character conveying the assurance that his words stemmed from a man worth listening to. Pip knew that for a truth. Yet, beneath the considered exterior lay the heart and temper of a Brown Shapeshifter Dragon. A wince accompanied Pip’s realisation that her friends must think she had made it her personal mission to reveal the Master’s draconic heart.

Today, he appeared riled beyond anything Pip had seen before.

Kassik’s brow furrowed severely as he took in the chains. Maylin and Yaethi hung their heads identically, Duri shuffled his feet and Kaiatha looked as though she would rather leap off the balcony than face the Master’s wrath. A fiery glint entered his eyes, searing the air between them. His colour deepened. Red. Crimson. Purple. The throbbing of a ropy vein across his left temple entrapped Pip’s gaze. Her breath snagged painfully in her throat. Oh no. This would not be pretty.

Balling his fists, the Master clearly fought to corral his fury. He first looked away to Jyoss on the balcony, before dropping his gaze to Pip’s feet. There, he stopped. His lips moved–reading?

Convulsively, she tore her scrutiny from the Master to focus on the rug beneath her feet. It was new. Hand-stitched, with a message that read, ‘Pip’s Personal Place of Penance.’ She stared at it for endless seconds, uncomprehending. Then the soft gulp of Kaiatha’s horror–guilty horror–speared such fire into her gut, Pip imagined she had been struck again by Telisia’s paralysing poison. They had even smuggled an embroidered rug into the Master’s office as part of this prank? Rotten agitators! She trembled from head to toe, such a crimson rage washing over her vision that she knew it was wrong; no, not wrong, but a product of draconic emotions. She must withhold. Please …

Kassik’s laughter flayed her scattered emotions. Pip could not have been more shocked. Mouth agape, she gaily invited flies to investigate her tongue. His laughter was rough, offensive, frantic for release. A scream might have been less brutal. No one else laughed. Chuckling with forced jollity, the Master extracted the sorry tale from the embarrassed students. After that, he ushered them to the seats closest to the broad windows, plush couches arranged in an area that could comfortably seat forty persons.

Come inside, Jyoss,
he invited the Dragoness.
I suspect that balcony is about to become mighty busy.

Turning to Pip, Kaiatha, Durithion, Maylin and Yaethi, he added curtly, “You youngsters remind me that to face the grimmest of circumstances with laughter, is a gift.”

“How so, Master?” asked Yaethi.

He said, “If you have paid any attention at all in your History classes, you will know that this Academy was founded by none other than Hualiama Dragonfriend and her Tourmaline Dragon, Grandion. You know its official tenets–to foster good relations between Dragons, Shapeshifters and Humans, to train Dragon Riders, and to become a focal point for the lore and practice of Dragon Riding that would lead to peace across the Islands. The Dragon Riders were never meant to function as a weapon. Instead, this place served as a beacon of hope. When the Dragons withdrew to Gi’ishior, the Academy reached out. In times of strife, we act as mediators and peacekeepers. When the Great Plagues swept over the Islands seven decades ago, the Dragons and Riders transported medicines and medical personnel between Islands and strictly enforced the quarantine, sparing countless thousands of lives.”

“We Shapeshifters are Hualiama’s legacy, Pip,” he said, pinning her with a smile that somehow conveyed the impression of a Dragon’s fang-filled grin, “or at least–Yaethi? A question?”

The Helyon Islander straightened her back even more than usual. “How can there be so many Shapeshifters all over the Island-World, Master? And spontaneous occurrences, moreover, such as our Pip,? They cannot surely be the progeny of one woman?”

“The poor, overworked wretch,” Maylin put in.

Kaiatha said primly, “I’ll thank you to speak respectfully of the legends, Maylin.”

“But a most insightful question,” said Master Kassik, unexpectedly animated. “And that is exactly why we are about to jump into the proverbial Dragon’s jaws, and travel to the Crescent Islands to find out about the ultra-secretive Order of Onyx. The lore-scrolls fail to answer this point. We suspect redaction.”

“First code brown, now red action?” asked Pip.

Yaethi clucked her tongue in annoyance. “
Redaction.
It’s one word. As in, something has been cut out. Edited. Deliberately removed.”

“For example, ‘Pip redacted the truth’,” Maylin suggested.

“Shall my Dragoness redact half of your brain?” Pip inquired sweetly.

“There’s a functional half?” Yaethi teased, earning herself a malign growl from her friend. “Ah … and I’m chained to the beast. So, Master, why the alert?”

He said, “I’m considering a new Academy policy whereby we chain the most troublesome students together. Permanently. Now, to business. To war.” Making his habitual ‘thinking tent’ of his fingertips, as Pip had dubbed the gesture, Kassik said, “What the histories will not tell you, is that the Academies have a further purpose–that of refuge. Many times over the years, we have found ourselves sheltering … unexpected treasures.”

Pip ducked her head, feeling her ears heat up into red flags as Kaiatha patted her knee gently. Right. Why not just call her a savage? Yet that was not what she had heard in the Master’s voice. Far from it. No, that was cage thinking, an echo of years spent behind bars. Islands’ sakes, would she even remember the great jungles of her birthplace?

“Master, if we fly via Sylakia–” Pip gulped back a lump the size and consistency of a lump of razor-edged obsidian “–would you support me … I want to go back to the zoo. I fear I must.”

“Ay.”

“Must?” Maylin and Yaethi protested in concert.

“Ay,” Duri echoed the Master. “Such a place has power beyond bars and mortar. It shadows the very soul.”

“Pip has no protection under Sylakian law,” Yaethi said.

Duri snapped, “She’ll have our protection!” He blushed as Kaiatha regarded him with undisguised admiration. “What? I’m only saying what we’re all thinking, right?”

“Mmm. I like this man.” Kaiatha curled her fingers around his left bicep, and though she kissed him decorously upon the cheek, what she managed to communicate made Durithion blush up a Fra’aniorian suns-set.

Pip whispered, “I have to. Also, we should try to find my tribe. Master Balthion is convinced my Pygmy battle name–” she pointed to the symbols in blue runic script which ran the length of her outer left calf, trilling “–Pip’úrth’l-iòlall-Yò’oótha, has some special, mystical meaning that will be revealed in the Ceremony of Second Naming. I’m not sixteen yet, but maybe we can convince them. The revelation of my true name will, as a matter of course, unearth an astonishing magical power which will topple Marshal Re’akka’s Island into the Cloudlands abyss and swat the Shadow Dragon back to whatever existential hell spawned it in the first instance. And life will become rainbows over Islands.”

Maylin looked scandalised at the bite of Pip’s sarcasm, but Kaiatha said, “Ay, that’s the Island of truth.”

“I agree. Waiting here at the Academy will win us nothing,” Master Kassik said. “We can best protect our refuge from outside the walls of this volcano. Here come our friends. Let’s wait. I’ll start the briefing once we’re all assembled.”

Pip sat cross-legged on her couch, there being no point in pretending her tiny legs could reach the floor. She turned to gaze past Kaiatha. Beyond the balcony’s edge, from the lush cliffs of the Dragons’ Roost Mountain, winged a group of Dragons that fairly took her breath away–Oyda riding her Emblazon, a young, powerful Amber Dragon, the mighty Red leader of Dragons, Blazon, shell-father of Emblazon, and Nak aboard his beautiful Blue Dragoness Shimmerith, who possessed grace unequalled amongst the Dragonkind.