“Razzior!”
G
RANDION BRIDLED AT
the Human’s commands. “Aye, Razzior,” he growled. “We need to move. Sing out the route, Rider.” He promptly chipped a fang on the wall. “Lia!”
“Give me a chance!”
Little Dragoness. She could snarl with the best of them. A shame he could snap her in half with a flick of his smallest talon. Fire bubbled in his arteries. Ah, the long-dormant thrill of magic! Grandion sensed his inner potentials adjusting, the storehouses of Dragon fire and ice and lightning swelling with new life, the feedback from his remaining senses suddenly so sweet and fruitful, he swayed dizzily and thumped his head again.
Tiny feet pattered up his back. Hualiama slipped into her customary position between the spine-spikes above his shoulders. She said,
I know thy zeal, thou, the kingly splendour of the twin suns
.
Thou, the hallowed essence of my soul-fires,
he crooned involuntarily, startled into a response that revealed the secrets of his third heart.
Grandion stumped forward, testing the air with his nose and Dragon-senses. He had burned this place out. Nothing lived. If he were true to his fires, the Tourmaline Dragon would have to admit he was afraid of venturing out into the world, blind. He had enjoyed a protected existence in the Dragon-bone cage–enjoyed? Burn that notion and crush the cinders beneath his paw! He growled unhappily.
A foot tapped his shoulder.
Be strong, Dragon. We’ll get you out of here. Three hundred feet, then a turn.
Hualiama’s thoughts increased in pace and quality as she directed him down the long, snaking main tunnel of the lair. Now he could be grateful for the stream of her thoughts, which he had more than once characterised as monkey-chatter. As if the girl had opened a spigot, Grandion began to comprehend her spatial awareness–so different to that of a Dragon–which allowed him to adjust to the tunnel’s twists and even the occasional lowering of the roof. His throat warmed with fire. This could work.
Catapult dead ahead!
The Tourmaline responded, springing sideways.
Oof–shards take it!
His shoulder took the brunt of an unseen blow. He heard his Rider’s teeth snap together at the impact. But the shot missed.
Fireball–no, ten feet left. Two squads of soldiers incoming.
Ten feet left? Grandion adjusted the stream of fire with his tongue, making it billow wider and flatter as Lia’s instructions flowed unabated. Screams of pain and panic assured him of his success. Ha. See if a blind Dragon couldn’t fight!
Charge! Get moving, you blue lump! Not up–Islands’ sakes, Grandion, there’s a roof … hard left … we’ll bulldoze a catapult emplacement in two … one … jump right!
A quarrel glanced off his flank.
Darn it I can’t see everything … forward a touch left faster no slower–fireball!
Flame and smoke detonated ahead of him, filling Grandion’s nostrils with the delicious scents of battle. Beautiful! His pulse surged. The Dragonsong of combat swelled his hearts with its treacherously addictive payload. His Rider shouted at him to slow down. Her directions became increasingly desperate as the Dragon, overflowing with exultation, the scent of freedom and three years of cage-aged rage, charged instinctively into the fray. She was a mosquito upon his back. Words beat without meaning inside his ear-canals.
Grandion’s jaw gaped.
GGRRRAAARRGGGH!
For the first time in years, his Dragon-roar had a real crack of thunder to it. His stomach contracted with pleasure. Aye. Ice and wind, snow and hail, and storm power. He was Dragonkind!
* * * *
Hualiama gave up trying to bridle Grandion, and settled for funnelling his rage while keeping the stone-headed lizard from braining himself, or her. There was something so visceral about sitting atop a stampeding Dragon–minus any useful weapon whatsoever–that she began to laugh. Lunacy! Spine-tingling madness!
Suddenly, she caught sight of thick stone doors ahead. They inched shut under the efforts of a sweating troop of Shinzen’s soldiers, who viewed the Dragon’s approach with the terror of men trapped in the path of an avalanche. Beyond them, she saw through the narrowing crack, a phalanx of armoured Human giants. Nine, ten feet tall. Four feet wide. Massively armoured, they crouched behind a wall of interlocked shields. The doors were twenty feet apart and closing steadily.
Rouse my powers!
Grandion’s voice boomed in her mind.
I smell open air!
Rouse his powers? The Tourmaline was asking for help? Astonishing. Perhaps he was a changed Dragon after all. Raising her voice in a turbulent, compelling chant, Lia began to declaim a passage from
Saggaz Thunderdoom,
a famous Sapphire Dragon who dominated many of the vocal sagas:
Bestriding boiling thunderheads, the Thunderdoom arose,
His roar a trump of thunder,
Like wingéd lightning his mighty paw,
Struck the skies asunder!
Beneath her, the Tourmaline Dragon’s belly boiled–literally, Lia imagined, for the powers churning beneath her thighs sounded like a vast pot left to boil over, bubbling and hissing and steaming as its contents sizzled upon the coals. So much potential! No wonder the Blue colours were regarded as the mightiest of draconic magic-users.
With a thought, Lia pointed Grandion at the doors.
Take the shot, my beauty!
The Dragon’s flanks rippled. His throat convulsed and his muzzle shot forward, elongating his throat into the barrel of a weapon. Light streaked her vision, not a fireball as she had expected, but ball-lightning, which roiled through the air with a hungry crackle before detonating against the left door. Cacophony! Destruction! Lia’s head rang. Her own magic resonated in response, as if her body were a gong pealing the knell of Grandion’s assault.
Brace for impact!
Lia yelled. A massively muscled Tourmaline shoulder shattered the weakened door. They barrelled through the wreckage, the smoke and the crazily crackling leftover energies, kicking charred bodies left and right as the Dragon thundered into the huge cavern beyond.
Dragons!
Grandion roared.
That’s Shinzen! Razzior! And–unh!
Lia’s hand flew to her face. Blood spurted between her fingers. Had she broken her nose on Grandion’s spine-spike?
Grandion?
Can’t move.
At the same time, Shinzen waved a hand languidly. “Islands’ greetings!” he boomed.
Grandion had stopped as though he had run into a wall–Shinzen’s magic? The air around her was too still. The Fra’aniorian Islander sensed her Dragon fighting back, magic for magic, but three cage-bound years had weakened him severely. Could he even fly? The Warlord had not moved from his relaxed stance on a small dais–as if he needed the additional height–set two hundred feet to the right of the doors. Lia saw at least a dozen Dragons inside the cave; she picked out Razzior by his sheer bulk and the ghastly scar on his face.
Shinzen said, “Razzior, the scrawny beast is all yours. My part of the bargain.”
Razzior’s fangs gleamed in a twisted smile, again, so similar to Ra’aba … “Aye, a good bargain, Shinzen.”
Good bargain? What in a volcanic hell?
Compared to Razzior, Grandion resembled a scrawny adolescent. The Tourmaline had been starved in captivity. Beyond Razzior, her frantically swivelling gaze was drawn to a Dragoness who could only be Cerissae–the distinctive yellow dagger-patterns on her fantastically pointed scales, and the additional rows of spikes on her muzzle, skull, spine, tail and even her wing-struts, matched Grandion’s description exactly. She cast an avaricious glance at Lia’s mount, but the murder which gleamed in her torrid gaze was reserved for the girl upon his back. Grandion quivered as he counteracted Shinzen’s magic. Two huge men standing behind Shinzen began to chant softly, and Hualiama felt the magic intensify, as if the very air had turned into chains to hold a Dragon fast.
The Orange Dragon’s flaming eye rose to fix upon Hualiama. He grunted in recognition. “Lia. We meet again.”
“You know the wench?” Shinzen asked.
“Nasty piece of windroc bait,” growled Razzior. “That’s Hualiama, Princess of Fra’anior. We’ve run into each other, aye, several times.”
“To your detriment, Razzior,” Lia called. “I defeated–”
“Shut the trap.” Magic seized her jaw. Shinzen’s eyes glittered at the now-silenced Human Princess. “A princess, you say? Have you any use for a Dragon-riding princess?”
The Dragon turned his regard upon Shinzen. An understanding seemed to pass between them. “A deal-sweetener? Use her as you wish, Shinzen,” rasped Razzior. “Abuse her. Only, watch out for her magic.”
Lia fought Shinzen’s power furiously. The touch of it left a rancid taste upon her tongue, a hint of
ruzal
, but it was subtly different. She was not about to sweeten anything for anybody. Pillows of air gathered beneath her legs. Suddenly, she wafted off Grandion’s back and over the phalanx of giants, flying toward Shinzen. The giant loomed larger and larger–freaking Islands, what a rajal of a man! His magic brought her to a halt at arms-length, holding her aloft with dreadful ease. How could she fight this? The black-in-black eyes bored into Lia’s mind, rummaging, defiling.
“Oh, precious!” Shinzen threw back his head with a roar. “She’s untouched.”
“All the better to enjoy,” Razzior chuckled horribly.
That was it. The backdrop of Dragons and Humans alike chortling at her humiliation, brought a spark of inspiration to Lia’s misery. If she possessed Grandion’s power … impulsively, she reached for the Dragon, and dove
into
him. He had what she needed. She dove deep.
* * * *
The girl-Dragon flexed her back-muscles. Ah. For the first time in her life, she commanded another being. Unfamiliar scents crowded into her nostrils–the metallic stench of the giants, the sulphur-and-musk reek of aggressive male Dragons and the clean, intoxicating scent of freedom. Her belly seethed with potentials she could barely imagine. From the four-pawed, falling-on-her-nose stance of her new body, to the pain of the quarrel buried in her shoulder joint, to the scintillating colours which bewildered her Human consciousness, all was alien and exhilarating and
wrong
. She trespassed on the province of Dragons.
So, Grandion, shall we twine necks again?
Cerissae crooned. Memories–wholly unwanted memories–battered her mind. Dragon emotions tumbled over her like a Cloudlands-bound stream surging from a league-tall clifftop to dash its fury upon the uncaring rocks below. Molten heat rose in rivers from her lower belly to surge through the massive portals of her hearts. Soughing. Hissing. Piercing her awareness, priming her muscles for action.
How could she control this? She barely raised her head above the flood, gasping for breath, before she sank again.
The Dragoness called,
Don’t you remember what we shared, Grandion?
Lia hated the Dragoness. Was this how Cerissae had deceived Grandion, her shifting mind-magic coiling about his consciousness with serpentine glee … only now, she dealt with an irritable, panicked, possessive Dragon Rider!
You filthy, stinking whelp of a cliff-goat!
Lia snarled. Cerissae recoiled, her bared talons involuntarily shrieking across the stone.
Sneaking weasel, slink back to your burrow!
The Amber-Red Dragoness had a foolish, flaccid sag to her lip as she stared at Grandion.
Lia chuckled,
Island drop on your head, you bloated maggot?
Cerissae flinched.
With a fierce mental pinch, the Princess reminded herself that all she sought was the Dragon’s freedom. The temptation stunned her. How could evil be so captivating? Barriers she had thought inviolable, the very values and pillars of her life, could crumble in an instant. As she wavered, Grandion’s consciousness roared back into the breach. An avalanche buried her.
* * * *
Grandion blinked. Vision! Shapes and shadows and tints washed into his mind, stimulating long-forgotten centres of sight. Oh, this was a taste of glory, filtered through a Human’s pitiful senses.
Behind him, Razzior rumbled, “So, Shinzen. We’ve a deal. Lead me to the caves of your giants, and my Dragons and I shall rouse the rest. Soon, you’ll have your army.”
“Your Dragonwings approach?”
“It takes time, Shinzen.” Razzior’s irritation boiled between his fangs in clouds of smoke. Shinzen appeared unmoved. “Fifty Dragons fly from Rolodia. Sixty roost at Helyon. At Haozi, we number but thirty-one, while over a hundred allied Dragons keep Sapphurion and his toadies busy around Fra’anior.”
Grandion’s mind quested through the unfamiliar, muddy backwaters of a Human’s psyche. By his mother’s egg, this was how they stood, unbalanced on two spindly legs? His body felt so light, he feared that the merest breath of wind might send it sailing away over the Island-World. A single heart fluttered like a panicked terhal, a flightless bird he had hunted for several times on the most northerly Isles around Pla’arna Cluster.
Just let Shinzen take this new Dragon-beast to his pillow-roll.