Elki said, “And what about–”
“Aye,” Lia nodded, wishing her face would betray less of her discomfiture. “There is also mated love, by which they mean sexual love. That’s the part which, for obvious reasons, can never be. Then, in a further nuance, Dragons have an idea of ‘roost love’ which I believe means Dragons which roost together, but not as mates.”
Her brother’s grey-eyed gaze crinkled at its edges as he regarded her fondly, yet with shadows behind his eyes which made her squirm. “And where in this glittering galaxy of draconic love does my sister stand?”
“Confused?”
At that, the spell of their intense conversation broke. Elki laughed so hard that tears splashed down his cheeks, while Hualiama had to sit on a nearby boulder or risk rolling on the grass, gasping helplessly. After a while, her brother sauntered over and perched on the boulder beside her. His fingers touched her back lightly.
“Ra’aba sure cut you, didn’t he?”
“Aye. And Grandion burned me when he was feral–I told you that, didn’t I?” A soul-lost shiver gripped her as Lia gazed out toward the eastern horizon, where a Dragonwing of seven Reds was just visible, flying in a northerly direction, perhaps to one of the smaller Islands above Sylakia, or up to the Spits. “Those who play with Dragons will get burned … of course it is forbidden and impossible and probably a reasonable definition of insanity, and I–and Grandion–would incur the wrath of every Dragon and Human in the Island-World were it true–”
“Probably shake a few starchy old Islands right off their roots,” he put in.
“Aye. But Elki, for three years, Qualiana and Sapphurion were mother and father to me. Larger parents than most, but unfailing in their love for a wisp of humanity. Dragons are complex, beautiful and vastly different to us, but they are also emotional and intelligent creatures, and I believe they have souls just as Humans have souls. Well, theirs are fire-souls–never mind.” Lia waved that away. “The question I keep coming back to is, ‘What if it was romantic love?’ What’s so wicked about love?”
“What indeed, sister?”
Only a million things, she wanted to wail. Why did she have to be the first?
Elki draped his arm over her shoulders. “So, which martial discipline are you planning to use to destroy me today?”
Hualiama jabbed her elbow into his ribs. “Dance.”
“Dance?”
“Aye, you lumbering ralti sheep. Every self-respecting Prince of Fra’anior must learn to dance.”
As must Lia. She must dance upon the storm-tides of fate, and never let them roll her under. For she could not survive that. No one could.
* * * *
From the fabled arch of Archion to Sylakia Island was a dispiriting five-day battle into the teeth of an unseasonable series of squalls. Brother and sister took turns spelling each other on the pedals. Lia had to make more running repairs than she cared to count. It was a sorry, battered Dragonship crew that spotted the black-edged massif of Sylakia Island looming out of the Cloudlands, crowned by further menacing bands of dark clouds, early on the sixth morning out of Archion.
“We came within a rajal’s whisker of missing Sylakia entirely,” Lia said, gritting her teeth as she adjusted their course. “We’ll have to tack all the way to the north of the Island at this rate. Pesky storm winds.”
Elki said, “No rest for wicked, would-be Dragon Riders, eh?”
“I’m too spent to beat you up right now, dear brother.”
“Here’s a novel idea–don’t.” But her wiry brother set to the rigging with a will, hardly needing instruction after two and a half weeks aloft. “How’s this trim on the boom?” he asked.
“Perfect. Lash those stays and trim those bushy whiskers, you scurvy brigand, or your back will feel the bite of the triple-stranded flogger!”
“Aye, Captain!” he growled fearsomely, playing his part.
Lia pressed the rudder with both feet, forcing the Dragonship into a closer reach against the wind. It shuddered before picking up speed, scudding north-westward with renewed impetus. “Amazing how close you can haul an airship with the right rigging,” she commented.
Elki rubbed his chin unhappily. “I could pass for a barbarous Sylakian. Oh, for a warm inn at Sylakia Town, a square meal and the company of copious comely wenches.” He winked at his sister. “Present company excepted.”
“There will be no carousing on this journey, o Prince of the realm.”
“Bah. Stick to flying the Dragonship, short shrift.”
Their journey up the huge Island did however resemble an inebriated man’s walk, for they proceeded in a series of league-long zigzags, sweeping from the western shore of Sylakia Island to the central mountains and back again, each time gaining a number of miles of northward progress. But after a few hours, the wind began to gutter and swirl, forcing Hualiama to play the controls with a harpist’s skill. Blue skies and a steady following breeze would have been her choice portents for this journey.
“More wood, servant.” A wind as fickle as her wry chuckle gusted them sideways toward the peaks.
Elki fed the stove, stiffening as he peered ahead. “Are those windrocs, Lia? Icerocs, I mean?”
“Icerocs? Any less dangerous than–”
“No. A white version of our favourite oversized avian,” her brother informed her. “Just as large, just as feral. Lia, these boys aren’t here to play Staves. Where’s your hunting bow?”
“Shall I shoot?”
“Shall I request a better vote of confidence?” Hualiama’s tongue-waggling did nought but exercise a few muscles, for her brother was sensibly hastening to the weapons. He slung the quiver on his back and lifted the bow grimly. “I take it that changing course isn’t an option?”
“We’re flying sideways as it is,” Lia admitted, eyeing the trio of huge, white-feathered predators looming off the starboard bow with trepidation. “I’ll try for lift.” She tweaked the turbines and adjusted the sails, while feeding the stove again. More power for the turbines.
But the icerocs closed in inexorably, having no trouble overhauling their dirigible airship. Fifteen to eighteen feet in wingspan, they were furnished with a classic hooked beak and talons capable of rending a fully-grown ralti sheep limb from limb. This, coupled with a vicious temperament prone to attacking anything that moved in their territory, meant that windrocs or icerocs were regarded as the most feared enemy of Dragonship captains the Island-World over.
Elki flexed the Haozi hunting bow, but withheld his shot. “Want to see the red rims of their eyes,” he explained. “You downed icerocs before?”
“A few. A head shot will do it, or the heart. Aim lower than you’d expect, about a foot in front of the armpit.”
“The things my little big sister knows.”
Hualiama booted him in the backside. “Mom’s relying on me to keep you in line. Oh, and we’ve another four icerocs incoming. Best stop parading your dubious wit and limber up the bow.”
With a series of assertive screeches, the advance trio of icerocs whirled into the attack–perhaps seeking to secure their meal before their fellows arrived? First bird gets the entrails? Suddenly, the Dragonship shook as it came under attack. With a shout, Elki earned his first strike, but it was into an iceroc’s belly, not a fatal shot. Leaning out, he scored a fortunate head-strike with his second arrow.
“Ha!” he yelled, dancing happily.
Springing out of the pilot’s seat, Hualiama struck out with an instinctive thrust past her brother’s head. The iceroc which had attempted to ambush him, reared back with a deafening shriek. It clutched at the basket, pecking Elki’s shoulder. Lia’s blade speared into its throat. Whirling tightly on her heel, she used the centrifugal force to snap out a second strike, chopping halfway through the bird’s neck before the blade crunched against bone. The iceroc writhed. Lia almost lost her grip on the blade as it jerked away, fighting free of the rigging cords and tearing one of their sails on the way.
“Pay attention!” she hissed.
Elki clutched his shoulder, having turned pallid, but then he seemed to rally his courage. He muttered, “Just a scratch. I’m fine.”
“Here they come!”
Manoeuvring the Dragonship would be useless, Lia realised. She would do better to attack any bird that intended to breakfast on her brother. A second bow would have been perfect. Instead, they had to stand by helplessly as the Dragonship shuddered beneath repeated talon-strikes. Soon, the feral birds decided that shredding the rigging offered no sustenance, and began to focus on the basket.
“Makes me feel we’re lunch, packed in a basket,” her brother muttered.
That comment deserved a blast, but Lia spent her anger on an iceroc instead. She came within a rajal’s whisker of losing her fingers to a blindingly quick snap of its beak. Elki yelled triumphantly as he placed an arrow down the bird’s throat, and then spun to fire a speculative shot at a bird tearing at the basket on the opposite side. They staggered beneath the force of the attack.
Suddenly, a high-pitched whistling sound entered Hualiama’s awareness. What was that? Her head swivelled. The sound escalated rapidly, drowning out even the icerocs’ shrieks.
Boom!
One of the birds exploded–literally, dousing the two Humans in a spray of feathers and blood. A millisecond thereafter, a second iceroc off the starboard bow screeched in fear before–
thud!
A Dragoness snatched the bird out of the air as she hurtled past so narrowly, her half-furled wingtip brushed the starboard boom alongside the balloon.
“What?” Elki whirled. “Oh, freaking Islands–”
Hualiama flung out an arm. “Dragoness!”
The Dragoness flexed her wings with astonishing agility. Turning on a brass dral, she hurtled back up toward the dirigible, scattering the icerocs with a challenge that was not the booming voice of the Dragons Hualiama knew, but more like a trumpet-blast, at once sonorous and terrifying. The Dragoness was an extraordinary colour, scales of liquid bronze trimmed in deep red, and as sleek as a terrace lake trout. She struck out with claw and fang, driving the remaining icerocs off with a fearful flurry of blows. Those that fought, died.
“You had to ask for one, didn’t you?” Lia snapped.
“M-m-mercy!” quavered Elki.
Then, the Dragoness approached the airship, cleaning iceroc bones out of her fangs with a casual twist of her needle-sharp talons.
“Sulphurous greetings, o most noble Dragoness,” Lia called. “We’re indebted to you for your aid.”
For several endless seconds, the Dragoness’ gaze scorched the air between them. “You’re the one they call the Dragonfriend?” Lia nodded mutely. The Dragoness’ jaw cracked open in an unsettling smile. Her fangs were just as needle-thin as her talons. “A favourable coincidence. The Dragonfriend has a considerable reputation in the East, on my home Island of Tsugai, which lies a few wingbeats north of Jaoli.”
“All good, I hope,” Elki whispered.
The Dragoness’ smile broadened as she clearly overheard his words. “This must be your brother?”
Elki and Lia bowed in concert. She said, “Noble Dragoness, may I introduce Elka’anor, Prince of Fra’anior?”
The Dragoness inclined her head. A fey light gleamed in her eye, which Lia did not trust one iota. “I’m Mizuki the Copper Dragoness. I hope we meet again, o Prince. You seem a handsome specimen for one of your kind.”
To Lia’s astonishment, grass-green swirls denoting avariciousness entered the Dragoness’ eye-fires. What on the Islands? Even worse, her brave brother mumbled something unintelligible and collapsed at her feet in a dead faint! Great. This encounter was proceeding well.
Mizuki cooed,
Was it something I said? A few bones stuck between my fangs?
Your mighty presence overcame him,
Hualiama answered automatically in Dragonish, before clapping her hand over her mouth. Mercy!
Fear not, Dragonfriend,
said the Dragoness, appearing maddeningly pleased with herself.
You fly east? Would you seek a particular Dragon? We heard … rumours. And I hear your little heart quivering like prey beneath my paw. ‘Never trust a Dragon,’ isn’t that the Human saying?
Aye. Ah, my brother recovers.
A few moments later, a second Human head peered over the basket’s edge. The Dragoness’ muzzle turned coyly askance. “A touch of the suns, noble Prince?”
“Nay, for thy brilliance hath singed the very suns’ rays,” replied Elki, boldly borrowing a line from an ancient ballad.
Hualiama wanted to dance for joy! Elki! A fiery snort of pleasure blasted out of the Dragoness’ nostrils, burning a foot-wide hole in the basket. “Sorry,” she said, covering her fangs with her forepaw in a very Human-like gesture–and coquettishly whirled her eye-fires over her paw at Elki! Her poor brother. He clutched the basket’s edge as though his knees had come unhinged.
“I may be seeking a particular Dragon,” Lia said, tersely. “Do you know of him?”
“He came to the East on an honour-quest,” said Mizuki, returning the same paucity of trust she received.
“Whereas your quest is a quest of sacred fire?” Lia guessed.
“Aye, Dragonfriend. Your knowledge of Dragon lore is, as they say, peerless among your kind. Know that we Dragons of the East do not hold to, nor approve of, all of the traditions of the Island-Cluster from which you hail.”