The Onyx Dragon (30 page)

The tone was scathing.
Feral Red,
Silver grunted, maintaining his course.

The other returned a grunt of his own.
Still a few left, eh? Go get cleaned up. The Marshal doesn’t like stragglers. Feeds them to his little pet.

Silver bared his fangs and angled for the entrance to his old home.

Long habit almost made Silver choose the tunnel that led to the inner chambers, those inhabited by Marshal Re’akka’s shell-children. He stuttered at the last instant and chose another tunnel at random. He tried to fly nonchalantly, acting as if he belonged. He joined other Dragons in the waterfall-baths, so necessary in Herimor where the scale-rot and other Dragon diseases spread so quickly. Northern Dragons seemed so much more casual about cleanliness.

Fledgling, are you new around here?

Just finished in the chambers,
Silver lied glibly.
First patrol and picked up a wound. I’ll get better.

A couple of other Dragons peered at him through the waterfalls pouring from the cave’s roof. The others had already moved on to the feeding or sleeping areas. One said,
Go see the healers, youngling. Don’t want you spreading infections here.

Silver inclined his muzzle respectfully.
As you command, flight-leader.

Flight-leader?
The other laughed.
Trying to earn wingtip-favour, are you? Go cosy up to another Dragoness. You’re too scrawny for me.

Actually, heading to the healing pens was a smart idea. Silver silently thanked the Night-Red. Up there, it would be quieter and he could find a place to transform, steal a drudge’s outfit, try to find Pip … which would be difficult. He had no idea where the Marshal kept prisoners, especially ones as important as her.

Silver shook the water off his fake hide, and headed for the vertical tunnels which would take him up to the healer-Dragons. One paw before the next, Shapeshifter.

* * * *

Marshal Re’akka pushed away from his victim, sniffing the air with a distinctly draconic toss of his head. “Odd. I sense a presence …”

Pip groaned into her gag. She had been beaten and tormented, twisted and pummelled until every organ in her body felt as though it had been permanently rearranged, and she had long since given up the idea of remaining strong and silent. She had screamed until her throat was raw. She had wept, pleading without shame or dignity and voided her bowels uncontrollably. Then, cradling her head from behind with his long, spiderlike fingers, the Marshal had started on her mind.

She did not know how she had resisted him. The Marshal’s irritation had soon reached boiling point; she could still feel and hear the impact of his psychic hammer-blows in her memory.

To the watch-Dragon, he said, “Leave her shackled here but summon a healer. We’ll start again in the morning. I’ll have fresh ideas for you, girl. Your own mother calls you a demon-child. Maybe I’ll twist your ovaries so that you can never whelp any demon-spawn of your own.”

His vile threat rolled over her like distant fire. Struggling to focus her mind, Pip whispered in telepathic Dragonish,
You’re still … a sad … fool.

Re’akka stormed out.

That was her victory. A small payback to the torturer.

* * * *

For Pip, the days and hours began to blur together, demarcated by eating, sleeping, being tortured by the Marshal, and being healed by a procession of different Dragon Assassin healers so that she could be tortured all the more. Re’akka learned she did not fear to die. He learned she would not yield no matter how creatively he applied his powers. Each time he left, Re’akka returned fresh to the fray. Pip wondered if he used the First Egg to renew his strength. Eschewing physical torture, he concentrated on her mind, driving her to insane levels of agony as he applied force and guile to the Dragon egg she imagined her mind to be. Only the Dragon within could break the shell.

Each time he left, or just before he left, she would whisper in her mind,
You sad fool.
It became her mantra. Her pinpricks.

It struck Pip one such occasion, amidst the flames of burning as Re’akka assaulted her mind with his titanic strength, that if she could isolate part of her mind to resist him, then she could isolate the whole and not have her thought processes fogged by the chamber’s magic. And if his magic or the healer Dragons’ magic worked within the chamber, why should hers fizzle and fail? This conundrum she could not puzzle out. But as her mind cleared, the Pygmy girl began to observe the Marshal closely, and from observation she turned to active plotting, and from plotting to outright sabotage.

First, she fell back on her memories of her friends and reminded herself over and over again why she had chosen this course. Then she thought upon Silver, taking strength from the fact that he lived to oppose the Marshal, and he and the others would have returned to the Academy with the scrolls. Surely, they would describe a way to defeat the enemy? She reviewed her expanded knowledge of the Word of Command, finding the magical constructs frightening in scope yet limited in peculiar ways. It did not allow mind reading or mind control. According to the lore, that was a different branch of magic altogether, an ancient, forbidden lore called
ruzal.
So much for borrowing a few of the Marshal’s thoughts. Most of the Words operated on the physical world. Influence in the spiritual realms was limited, and in the magical, apparently illimitable. Use of a Word was fraught with danger, especially if the Word was turned on oneself, as she had done once already.

She always came back to one truth–her Word had not worked on the Shadow Dragon. The beast was apparently immune. It all hinged on the Marshal. He controlled the Shadow. He was the key.

Whipped on by the unrelenting stress and trauma, unforeseen thoughts or ideas surfaced in her mind, forcing Pip to reevaluate her experiences, to link them in new ways. As a healer worked on her one day, preparing her for the Marshal’s next bout of creativity, she recalled the laughter of starlight and allowed it to brighten places torn and abused by Re’akka’s ministrations.

Blue-star and Balance.

The healer-Dragon stared at her.
What did you just say? Where am I?

Pip eyed the huge female Night-Red with wary surprise. Habitually the healers stood just outside the small chamber, pushing their muzzle and right forepaw inside in order to touch Pip to work on her. There was something of Cinti about this Dragonsong, perhaps a common heritage? And a sweet, beautiful melody of Dragonsong began to pulse through Pip’s veins as her intuition roared forth like wildfire. Oh, mercy! Could this be done? A change of the Balance?

When she did not speak, the Dragoness peered at Pip as though seeing her for the first time.
I feel as if I have slept. Why do I dream of stars? Why am I healing you? Have you been tortured? By whom?

Her mouth having been left unfettered to receive food and water, Pip said in Dragonish,
Marshal Re’akka of Eridoon holds many Dragons captive here in his floating Island, noble Dragoness. You are his captive, tainted by a foul brand of magic. He has been torturing me for my knowledge of magic.

The Night-Red gasped,
I know … now I understand!

A roar echoed down the corridor. Pip said,
The Marshal comes! Quick–

The Dragoness shook her head.
I cannot live with this dishonour. Farewell, Human child who shone starlight into my fire-eyes.

She backed out, turned, and launched herself out of Pip’s sight with a resounding battle-challenge. There was a mighty shout, a ringing clash of metal and the sound of a huge body thudding to the ground. Boots tapped sharply, rushing closer. Running.

The Marshal burst in, cursing in his native Herimor dialect.

Pip began to laugh. Great, relieving, reckless heaves vibrated her body against the huge manacles. Oh, it hurt so badly to laugh, but it was good. So freeing!

“You!” Storming across the chamber, the Marshal lashed out, splitting her lip with his fist.

She laughed harder. Oh, blue-star, grant her the power to laugh forever!

“What the hells are you laughing at?” roared Re’akka, his face purpling with wrath. “I captured you. Tortured you! Look at your pathetic, battered little body, stretched out on this rack, stinking of your own faeces, bereft of magic and all your vaunted Onyx Dragon power. You are mine! I can do anything I like to you!”

Pip licked the blood trickling down her lip.

Composed now, she chuckled quietly, “You thought to break me, Marshal Re’akka. But I have broken you. You truly are a sad, sad fool.”

S
iLver Stood in
the Marshal’s bedchamber, watching the altercation in the dungeons with his ghastly pallor superimposed over the image in the mirror. All the blood had drained from his face; from his heart, even. Pip! Oh, Pip, standing up to his shell-father in a way Silver had never imagined!

It had been difficult to break into the routines of the drudges. Every movement of every day was orchestrated. No-one seemed to know anything about the underground layout of the Island, much less where his girlfriend might be held. Eventually, after a fruitless week wasted trying to drop his questions here and there, Silver determined a new course of action. He would find and confront his father directly. Winning his way to the bedchamber involved slaying and impersonating five different servants as he worked his way into the inner sanctum. Here, his father’s absence had rung loudly in the aether, but Silver had spied a magical mirror linked to a Dragon’s Eye elsewhere in the fortress. He had activated the mirror in time to see Re’akka thunder into the chamber and strike the Pygmy girl a fearsome blow.

Her poor, swollen mouth moved; the voice emerged tinny but clear enough to understand, “You thought to break me, Marshal Re’akka. But I have broken you. You truly are a sad, sad fool.”

Silver’s fingers twisted his cleaning cloth into knots. His jaw not only dropped, it practically bounced off the floor near his boots. Re’akka had underestimated her. So had he. Pip was not pushing up fireflowers or a mindless thrall of the Marshal’s. She was laughing at him.
Laughing.

Impossible!

Just then, a noise in the doorway alerted him. Silver whirled.

Islands’ greetings, Silver,
said the old Shapeshifter, Zardon, now Commander of the Dragon Assassins.
Your father has been waiting to speak with you.

He reacted as quickly as thought, but the tall, uniformed Shapeshifter only shook his head slightly. Silver’s mental attack sputtered and died. How? He had been prepared. Somehow, Re’akka had detected or anticipated his arrival.

Zardon stepped forward, nodding toward the mirror.
Young man, you’ve made a terrible miscalculation. You’ve given the Marshal the tools he requires to control her. May there be mercy for us all.

A slight hissing should have warned him moments before. Silver hurled himself across the chamber, but the mustard-coloured gas pouring from vents in the roof overwhelmed him. The last he remembered was slumping toward Zardon’s boots, before the roof of the Island-World seemed to cave in atop his head.

* * * *

A tall, heavyset woman of middle age came to bathe Pip, and dress her, and comb out her curls. She introduced herself as Chymis, shell-daughter of the Marshal. A Shapeshifter, Pip realised. Chymis escorted her, unfettered, to a magnificently appointed dining-chamber somewhere higher up in the fortress, where the walls were tastefully adorned with sprawling artworks, perhaps from Herimor. She gave Pip time to dawdle, eyeing the exotic paintings as she walked and Pip shuffled along, limping heavily and gasping with the effort. Her body barely seemed her own.

Like Pip, Chymis wore a floor-length formal gown of the deepest blue, closely fitted at the bodice and waist, her skirts swishing as her formal slippers whispered along the carpeted hallways. If Chymis disliked her, Pip could not tell. Herimor subterfuge. The art of masking motivations and intentions, Silver had called it. Her dress fit Pip’s almost four-foot frame perfectly, as if tailored to measure. Slippers had been found, again an impeccable fit for tiny feet. Chymis had even taken the time to apply a little makeup with her own hand, and to pin emeralds here and there in Pip’s hair. An emerald choker adorned her throat, just above the gown’s modest neckline.

This was another scheme of the Marshal’s. Pip knew enough to understand that this development boded ill for her. Something had changed, leading to Imbalance.

Having briefly gained the upper hand, the Pygmy girl found herself on the defensive.

Perhaps twenty-five or thirty men and women of varying ages stood to attention around the dining-chamber’s walls at precise intervals, as if assigned to pre-agreed stations. All were groomed and clad as if for the most royal of occasions. None spoke, but their eyes spoke for them. Hatred. Animosity. The fiery regard of Shapeshifters. Pip had never encountered quite so much latent draconic power gathered in a single room. Intoxicating. And eerie, making her hackles bristle. It was the bland sameness of their expressions, she realised. Most resembled Re’akka in form and features. The dynasty. The inner circle of his power. Chymis moved to join her family, leaving the Pygmy girl alone.

Pip noticed that the central wooden table, a highly polished oval of dark wood, was laid for dinner for just three persons. It could as well have been a king’s table, she imagined. Gold cutlery. Gold plates. High-backed chairs of flawless craftsmanship, apparently hand-carved. Place settings outlined with a bewildering array of three-tined forks, petite skewers, and dainty, long-handled spoons. Every detail was perfect, down to the flower arrangements standing around the circular, tapestry-screened walls, seven in all. Each tapestry depicted a story or scene drawn from Herimor’s history, she assumed. The artwork was fabulous, perhaps platinum, gold and silver thread.

Yet what was this banquet, a triumphal celebration?

A slight scuffing of boots behind one of the tapestries alerted her to movement. Whirling, Pip saw the Marshal emerge from a hidden doorway, his hand firmly placed upon the shoulder of one she had fervently hoped would be five hundred leagues away by now.

She whispered, “Silver. You didn’t.”

“I’m afraid I did.” And he raised his chin as if daring Pip to deny him his right, to misconstrue what his very presence here betrayed.

She could not. Marshal Re’akka’s wolfish grin spoke volumes, but her heart’s cry was no volcano of fury. It was elation. Ten thousand words could not have expressed his love more clearly; a romantic Dragonflight around the Yellow Moon would have paled in comparison. He had probably doomed himself, but she had never loved him more than at this moment. Sweet agony suffused her breast, despair mingled with exultation over the fate he had chosen. Silver! You chose me!

Re’akka could hardly disguise his glee. “I see you have feelings for my treacherous shell-son.”

“She will not hesitate to slay me,” Silver said. “She has tried twice already.”

Without making any reply, the Marshal seated himself first, indicating that Pip and Silver should take the other two seats. Silver held her chair for her. Pip glanced at him, trying not to blush as she had to scramble up into the seat. Grr. Short legs. Silver wore a golden Lavanias collar, a more complex affair than the one with which he had attempted to bind her. He looked well, unlike his girlfriend with her bruises and swollen lip.

“You’re looking at a poison-dart Lavanias collar,” said Re’akka. “One word from me, and the collar will inject him with a deadly Shapeshifter poison.”

Silver said, “But you left Pip unchained, shell-father. Are you not afraid she will speak a Word and doom our family?”

The Marshal chuckled curtly. “And unleash the Shadow, thus dooming the Island-World’s remaining Dragonkind?”

“Perhaps I am desperate enough to take my chances,” Pip snapped.

“Perhaps there is an auditory magical ward spoken over this Island, denying the only viable form of your foul magic,” said Re’akka. “Allow me to explain. Using your unique magical signature, provided by your old comrade Zardon, my family has spent the last few months preparing this Island to entrap you. We knew you for a risk-taker, a warrior, unlike your pathetic Academy friends. After all, it is only logical that I should hold the key to the Shadow. And I do. This I have already gleaned by eavesdropping on your thoughts via the oath-magic that binds you to my shell-son.”

Silver and Pip gasped as one.

“Ah, yes.” Re’akka waved grandly as a bevy of servants appeared, bringing the first course. “Please, help yourselves. After all, it’s the last meal Silver will enjoy in his … right mind. Tomorrow I shall assign the task of your interrogation to him. I’m quite convinced he’ll find it a tremendous pleasure.”

A glance at Silver assured her that he felt quite sick enough to retch all over the table. Pip locked gazes with the Marshal, feeling her black eyes flash with draconic fury. “And what makes you think he’ll succeed where you failed so miserably?”

The Marshal’s knuckles whitened on the handle of his long spoon as he served himself from a dish Pip could not even begin to recognise. “Oath-magic,” he spat. “The reason none of my progeny will ever become Dragon Riders. So much passes through the link. Zardon was the traitor you suspected, Pip–isn’t it ironic? I’ve already learned so much about you and your precious friends, the forms of your magic and even your so-called special relationship with the Black Dragon, Fra’anior. Derisible! You think I display hubris? You dream of spirit-descent from an Ancient Dragon! The sad fool beneath this Island is you, Pip. Where is your precious Fra’anior now? Fled this Island-World like the craven worm he is!”

“He had his reasons.”

Pip’s voice quavered. She tried to disguise her response by helping herself to a few little biscuits artistically piled with unfamiliar minced meat heavily garnished with spices, and a few sticks of a purple root vegetable that looked the least poisonous of the dishes on another platter.

“Try the chiyyifish, Pip,” said the Marshal, waving a servant in her direction. “The flavour is particularly exquisite, matured over the course of a month under exacting conditions.”

For a few minutes they ate in uncomfortable silence. The food was peculiar, but delicious in the main, although it hurt her abominably to chew. Pip waved away a fine Herimor vintage of hesk-wine, a luminous purple drink of which one sniff made her head spin, and requested water in its place.

“Traditionally, Herimor food is highly spiced in order to hide the presence of poisons,” said the Marshal, as if intent on making convivial conversation. “We become experts in different tastes. Unlike my dishonourable agent, that hapless turncoat Telisia–how easy it was to warp her mind–I have eschewed the slightest help from food, poisons, environmental agents or truth-eliciting or mind-altering drugs when it comes to your interrogation. These things are beneath me. But I will have no hesitation in using my shell-son as the gilded dagger of my right hand.”

She did not entirely understand his phrasing. Silver would commit dishonourable acts on behalf of the Marshal? This was acceptable? Instead, she said, “You sound bitter about the Ancient Dragons, Re’akka.”

“Bitter? They abandoned the Dragonkind.”

“But you’re a Shapeshifter, as am I. Our race is a relatively recent player on the Island-World’s stage, stemming from the heritage of Hualiama Dragonfriend,” said Pip, genuinely curious now. “How does this ancient history relate to Shifters?”

Silver said, “My father believes in the ancient seed theory. This hypothesis–”

“Fact!” snapped Re’akka, and every other person in the room save Pip or Silver.

The Marshal added, “Tell the histories truthfully, or be cursed, Silver!”

Did his hand quiver? Silver believed in that curse? Pip stared across the beautiful table as her boyfriend said, “The first denizens of this Island-World following the Ancient Dragons were Shapeshifters, seeded by Fra’anior and his kin. Fra’anior, however, was betrayed by Numistar the White and Dramagon the Red, his shell-kin, and the original magic of that seed corrupted by a great curse known as–the Division, I believe you’d say in Standard–which split that original pure race into Humans and Lesser Dragons, each in their own right far lesser beings than what had been before. Shapeshifter magic was twisted and oppressed.”

“Oppressed and downtrodden!” shouted the gathered Shapeshifters, making Pip startle and spill her drink.

Silver’s voice took on a singsong quality as he recited, “Great was the evil done that day, but greater still the evil to come. For Fra’anior and his ilk summoned the Shadow Dragons from a place far beyond the bounds of our Universe, and abandoned the Island-World to their depredations, intending to wipe out the ill-fated Lesser Dragons and the hidden Shapeshifters forever, paving the way for unopposed Human rule. It was the great Shapeshifters of the Herimor noble lines who learned to bind the forces of Shadow, and thus saved the Lesser Dragons from extinction. Now it is our noble task–”

“Our noble calling,” agreed thirty voices. This time, Pip kept her hands perfectly still.

“–to restore the original, perfect Balance by completing the great work begun by Hualiama, our beautiful shell-mother, who conceived of and inspired the resurgence of Shapeshifters all over the world, reuniting the debased Humans and Lesser Dragons into perfect Shapeshifters. We are the original creation, the true heirs of the Islands. We are destined to rule all.”

“WE WILL RULE!”

Well, that certainly rattled the cutlery. Pip said cautiously, “So, Shapeshifters have always existed? They were … hidden?”

“Suppressed,” snapped Re’akka.

“Alright, suppressed. And the Ancient Dragons failed to deal with these Shadow beasts?”

“No, they fled, yammering like kicked curs!”

“So how come you own a pet Shadow?” At last, she was learning a few things. Perhaps too late, but that remained to be seen.