The Onyx Dragon (7 page)

A sob tore free of her chest. Pip ducked her head, appalled at the storm his words evoked within her. Yet she heard from the region of Shimmerith’s saddle, Nak’s soft, fierce, ‘Hear, hear!’

The Brown Dragon drew close in the corner of her vision.

Here is another truth. Your humbleness is, contrariwise, your strength. Never lose sight of your origins, nor of the fundamental nature of your heart, Pip of the Pygmies, for power such as yours is a ravaging, seductive beast. And that beast knows no compassion.

Now he spoke less as a friend, and more as a Dragon Elder. Pip gulped. How could she hope to navigate the treacherous Islands of a life torn from the jungle and defiled by the zoo, redeemed by the kindness of Balthion and Arosia, and finally liberated by the paw of Zardon the Red? How could they hope to heal a part of her which apparently did not even exist in the physical realm? This Shapeshifter nature stretched her preconceptions about the world in many unexpected directions.

As Kassik, Silver and Shimmerith swept down on the Amber Dragon and his shell-son, Pip pondered her original confusion. “Silver, do you mean that the poison works on more than my flesh and blood?”

He nodded gravely. “Shapeshifter poisons are designed to disrupt, corrupt or destroy the different phases of your existence–your Dragon fires, your physical Dragon body, your Human form and spirit, and all the magic that binds it together–hence the technical term ‘multiphasic’. In my nursery, I once saw a poisoned Shifter try to transform. She turned into a half-baked mishmash of parts. Nasty.”

Pip and her mount shuddered simultaneously.

Meantime, Kassik marshalled his charges with a brisk series of commands. Chymasion landed on Emblazon’s lower back, moving as close to his spine-spikes as possible to try to minimise the imbalance his additional weight created. The hatchling slumped on the Amber Dragon’s broad back, looking utterly defeated. Meantime, the Jeradian trio transferred to Kassik’s saddle, increasing his load to five persons–Casitha, Balthion and the Jeradian giants. Shimmerith accepted Emblazon’s additional saddlebags and Dragon lances, while Silver carefully transferred a teary Arosia onto his shoulder. Pip unbuckled herself to give her friend a huge hug.

“Father will never let us fly now,” Arosia sobbed. “I feel so stupid.”

“Come on, you’ll be fine. Sit. I’m sure we can both fit on this saddle. And your dad looks worried, not cross.”

“He’s going to flay me like a prekki fruit and squeeze my innards for juice,” Arosia said.

“Don’t I know the feeling!”

* * * *

By the time the Spine Islands appeared on the evening horizon, even Emblazon had begun to wilt visibly. Oyda walked back to Chymasion and spoke with him, before mounting up and directing him to launch off his shell-father’s back. Arosia watched hollow-eyed.

Pip slapped her friend’s knee. “Cheer up.”

Arosia put her arms around Pip from behind. “Don’t be so determinedly positive when I’m having a full-blown moping session back here.”

“Chin up, Dragon Rider.”

“Chin up, heart down?”

“Tell you what. Until we reach the Spine, I’m going to test you on your Ancient Southern. Let’s see if we can turn you into a Pygmy. We’ll start by practicing the thirty-four chirps and twelve trills.”

“Because there’s a chirpy parakeet sitting in front of me?”

Pip watched Emmaraz and Tazzaral powering ahead to scout for a place to roost for the night. Security, water and game, in that order, Kassik instructed. From this perspective, her friends appeared to be flying toward a buried Dragon whose spine-spikes were the Islands, a curiously neat, geographically unique chain of uninhabited Islands demarcating the north-western border of the Middle Sea. The first three Islands in the row were active volcanoes, merrily smoking away like the furnace chimneys of a vast, hidden Dragonship, but Tazz and Emmaraz angled for the fourth, a hunchbacked beast of an Island which Pip recalled well. Hot springs, ample spiral-horn buck and a large windroc population awaited them. On cue, she saw flame blossom from the faraway Dragons–probably a few less feral windrocs in the Island-World as a result.

“Pip, will you stop wriggling? What’s bothering you?” Silver intruded on her thoughts.

“Me?”

“Ay you, twitchy-toes Pygmy-person. Do you think I’d be so rude to Arosia? Are you nervous? Jumpy? Fire-ants in your trousers?”

“No. I just … it’s a feeling. A jungle sense. Here, see what you make of this.”

Pip felt the light touch of Silver’s mind upon hers. After what he had done before, allowing him in demanded a deal of trust. She hoped her misgivings would not be too transparent.

At length, Silver said, “A jungle sense, indeed. You think we’re being watched? Tracked? By what? Or whom?”

“Silver, if I knew that …”

“Ay. And this is dissimilar to anything you’ve felt before. We should warn Master Kassik. He’s a believer in your jungle senses–as am I! Down, Dragoness. I didn’t deserve that kick. My third or fourth today, or I miss my count. Who’s carting who between the Islands, may I ask?”

“This morning I’m a mosquito, now you’re a flying cart?”

Arosia said, “Do all Dragons bicker with their Riders like this, Pip? Chymasion’s as sweet as sugar-bamboo sap and treats me as if I’m a fragile vial of blown glass. Jyoss and Tazz are too busy necking and wingtip-batting and all that Dragonish courtship nonsense to pay any attention to being cheeky to their Riders, and Maylin and Emmaraz seem to talk about nothing but battle. But, you two–sword and whetstone, hammer and anvil!”

“Magnificent Rider and adolescent cliff-lizard?” Pip suggested.

“Fireborn Prince of Herimor and scruffy scale-scrubber?” Silver returned with equal insincerity.

Arosia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, the names you two call each other. Oh, Master Kassik’s calling for the next lesson. Back to class.”

That evening, they pitched camp in the lee of a small lakeside cliff, upon a strip of black volcanic sand laced with chips of obsidian glass. Emblazon took Chymasion off to practise hunting, while Nak prepared a pot of spicy venison stew for the Human contingent, along with flatbread he baked on rocks heated with Dragon fire–Silver’s contribution to the meal. Shimmerith seated herself squarely in the middle of a steaming hot spring at the side of the lake with a groan of contentment, while Tazz and Jyoss took first watch, circling lazily a league overhead, almost invisible against the deepening evening sky. Kaiatha groaned in disgust when she sniffed the stew, and scavenged in the saddlebags for a meal of fruit and nuts instead.

After dinner Nak regaled the group with story after story laced with Dragon lore and legend, and to Casitha’s expert vocal and musical accompaniment on a hand-harp, sang them a number of epic ballads, including
Saggaz Thunderdoom, The Lay of the Ancient Dragons, Stars over Islands,
and
Numistar Winterborn.

“Ballads were the old way of learning,” Nak told them, enjoying a swig from a jar of Jeradian ale which had mysteriously found its way into his saddlebags. “Students sang the great histories of our peoples, Dragon and Human. Don’t tell Master Kassik, but I was a terrible student. Too easily distracted.” He winked at Oyda. “But when I learned the ballads, like you, Pip, I discovered I could recall my histories perfectly.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have a ballad of codebreaking handy, would you?” Kaiatha asked.

Balthion said, “Come. I’ll puzzle it out with you. Where’s Arosia?”

“Fires banked for the night,” said Pip, pointing across the fire. Arosia slept with her head pillowed on Chymasion’s left forepaw, while his muzzle and neck curved protectively around her body.

Balthion’s frown softened. “Ay. Jyoss, a little light, if you would?”

Pip was startled as Jyoss conjured a small, steady white light that hovered over the pair as they pored over Kaiatha’s father’s diary. She had never seen such a Dragon power. The Albino read over their shoulders, calmly interjecting a word here and a suggestion there. Oh, and Silver’s eye-fires had already stilled, indicating draconic sleep. Well, even Mistress Mya’adara could not complain if she curled up in her Dragon’s paw. Perfectly proper, according to big person culture. Funny how they cared more about outward appearances than for matters of the heart.

She smiled as she crawled into Silver’s grasp. She hardly thought of them as ‘big people’ anymore. Just people. That was enough.

Oh. Yaethi’s scroll lay completely forgotten in her luggage. Her boy-Dragon protested drowsily as she wriggled back out of his paw again. “Shh,” she soothed, stroking his muzzle beside the eye as she had seen the other Dragon Riders do. But most of them were not paired with Shifters. Somehow, that lent their relationship a different quality. “Rest, my beauty.”

Silver mumbled, “Pip, if you call my Human form ‘beauty’, I will never forgive you.”

“But your Dragon loves it, doesn’t he? Um, don’t you?” She giggled as his belly-fires roused a further few notches. “Indeed, my beautiful Silver?”

He grumbled something to do with using her as Pygmy-paste to flavour his next sweetbread.

Having handed the scroll to her vocally excited friends, the last Pip saw was three heads bowed together, two Human and one Dragon, focussing deeply on the problem at hand. Her focussing involved deep concentration on the insides of her eyelids. And that was no problem at all.

* * * *

The small Dragonwing passed three further days on the Spine, flitting from mountaintop to mountaintop, always battling the breeze. Each day, Chymasion flew a little further without stopping. No daylight hour passed that was not crammed with learning or training, nor an evening without Nak’s interpretation of ‘entertainment’. Pip came to wonder how she had ever mistaken the Dragon Rider for a skirt-chasing fool, for he never repeated a story or a ballad unless specifically asked, and almost every offering came stuffed to the wingtips with fascinating lore and history.

That fourth evening out of Jeradia, they stopped at a tall, unusually narrow dormant volcano, which boasted a perfect half-moon lake replete with a unique species of giant trout which had the Dragons alternatively slavering and fishing enthusiastically, and the Humans onshore badgering Nak to hurry up with the cooking.

“Perfect trout takes time,” he said, slowly rotating the spit-roast he had constructed from a Dragon lance broken in training, and a couple of driftwood branches. “Where’s Oyda?”

“Bathing with the ladies,” said Kassik the Brown, winking at Pip with one great, flaming eye.

“Bathing?”

Kassik said, “She’s with Casitha, Shimmerith, Kaiatha and Maylin, behind that stand of targan trees. I hear an awful lot of silliness. Should we send Pip to snatch their clothes?”

Nak’s eyes developed a glazed expression. “Oooooh …”

Pip chuckled behind her hand. Predictable. Where was Hunagu? Also down near the lake shore, stolidly stripping several bushes of their load of fireberries. The Oraial Ape seemed none the worse for the journey. They had spoken together for over an hour before dawn that morning.

Oh. Another tremor. She hoped the volcano was as dormant as Master Kassik had suggested. No-one else seemed at all bothered by a few pebbles bouncing on the beach. The caldera was a mere two and a half times Kassik’s wingspan in diameter, making the space rather cosy, given the size of its temporary visitors. Come morning, the Dragons would have to take off in careful sequence, she assumed. Emblazon had almost chopped off her spine-spikes for daring to touch his wingtips.

“Hey, girlfriend,” said Human-Silver, sauntering up to her.

He wore an open-necked, turquoise linen shirt, Dragon Rider trousers of a tough, dark grey leather, and soft buckskin half-boots. His silvery eyes gleamed at her beneath a flip of almost-white hair, set off by his high, angled cheekbones–so unlike those of any other person Pip had met at the Academy, bespeaking his Herimor heritage. And his smile had its own special magic, imprinting a suitably silvery image of itself deep inside her heart.

“Oh.
Oh,
” Pip faltered. “You’re very … Human. Handsome! I-I mean …”

Nak chuckled, “And our Pipsqueak is very tongue-tied. Nice work, Silver. It certainly takes something special to silence Pip like that.”

Pip turned her back on the Dragon Rider, blushing furiously. Wriggling marsh-rats, how could Silver undo her with just a greeting? She gazed across the small caldera, trying to fill her mind with thoughts other than the eye-catching, sinewy leanness of Silver’s frame, so unlike the heavily muscled Jeradian warriors working through their combat routines at the top of the glittering, pebbly beach. He would be too short and slight for most girls, but not for a Pygmy. Oh no indeed. And she knew him well enough to appreciate that his apparent slightness disguised muscle as wiry and well-sprung as a Dragon’s thighs, and physical strength to match. Naturally. He was not just leopard, as Jeradian girls apparently liked to say. He was scrummy Dragon.

Please let him not be eavesdropping on her thoughts. The blush roared back in full force.

Her eyes rose from the black waters rippling with the force of Emmaraz’s fishing exploits, to the sheer, vine-festooned cliffs overshadowing the travellers by three hundred feet or more. Hidden now amidst the foliage, thousands of blue-banded peripols and lesser green parakeets sang their final songs of the day. The last gasp of a fiery suns-set reflected off a low-lying band of clouds above the volcano, bathing the scene in an eerie crimson glow.