A hot, sticky Fra’aniorian night enfolded her.
O
ver a league
beneath Lia’s Dragonship, the caldera’s lava lakes cast a ruddy glow upon the fat underbelly of the dirigible balloon. Miles-tall cliffs festooned with dense tropical vegetation and trailing vines dropped from the Islands into the caldera, before the heat and poisonous gases strangled any plant life except for lichens. Dragonets, birds, monkeys and other flying and burrowing rodents and insects inhabited the cliffs in their millions. Half a mile offshore the silence was profound, a brooding presence in its own right, a beast of mystery and magic.
Softly, she sang to herself to while away the hours.
Gi’ishior seemed busier than usual. By the light of the Jade, Mystic and Blue moons, Lia tallied at least ten Dragons patrolling the skies above the tall, slender volcanic cone said to house the Halls of the Dragons, and a steady stream of Dragonkind arriving and departing on mysterious errands. What was a Dragon city like, she wondered? How did Dragon mothers chastise their hatchlings? Did Dragon parents ever abandon their eggs, as she had been abandoned?
As Lia turned southward, again maintaining a good separation from the Islands in order to trim the distance she needed to fly, she clambered aloft to unfurl the spinnaker, a big-bellied triangular sail which billowed to fullness as it caught the breeze. The masts creaked as the dirigible leaned over, gathering speed. Such strange names for sails–jibs, topgallants, even a moonraker. She had found the idea of a spinnaker in an ancient, crumbling scroll in her father’s archives, and copied it, adding a few ‘Lia’ touches. How well that described the melody of her life! Could she never be satisfied with things as they were?
As Ha’athior loomed before her after seven hours’ sailing, a Yellow Dragoness suddenly rose from the darkness to fix Lia with a scorching gaze. She was as sleek as a trout, with coppery overtones on her upper body fading into a pale eggshell yellow in the underparts.
“Hualiama,” she growled. “Mighty Sapphurion said you’d be quick to trespass.”
Lia raised her chin, disguising her anxiety behind a thin-lipped smile. “I’m not trespassing, o mighty Dragon. The air is free for Dragon and Human alike.”
This comment provoked a fifteen-foot plume of flame that passed dangerously close to her Dragonship’s nose. “As cheeky as my hatchlings! Know this, little Human–we Dragons are watching. Always watching.”
“I was just–” the Dragoness wheeled away. Lia sighed, “I’m just
parking
at the warrior monastery offshore of Ha’athior. Thereafter …”
Aggravated but unsurprised that the story of her intrusion on the hallowed Dragon Isle had spread amongst the Dragons, Hualiama set her course to skirt Ha’athior Island’s northern shore. Passing through the gigantic cleft between Ha’athior and Janbiss Island to the north, the Dragonship left the caldera in its wake as it sailed out across the crimson-tinged Cloudlands, that bottomless realm of poisonous clouds that lapped around the base of the volcano, a league and a quarter beneath her current altitude. Lia trimmed the sails, swooping toward a tiny, obscure volcano just offshore of the holy Island.
Here, she had lived. Trained. Studied. Learned to dance with weapons. Collected more bruises than a girl should have in a lifetime. And–if she were allowed to confess–charmed the beards off more than a few of the warrior-monks.
An unexpected freshening of the breeze slewed the Dragonship about, making Lia leap to the controls. She dropped the spinnaker and raised two stormsails aloft to improve stability, before reefing in the side-sails to further reduce her speed. A touch of the controls cut off the flow of hot air to the balloon. Soon, the Dragonship began to lose altitude.
Lia coasted in over the volcano’s rim, the bottom of her basket trailing barely a dozen feet above the rock. She crossed a small crater lake, glistening in the moons-light, and downed anchor beside the dark temple of the Great Dragon–a building so ancient, not even the Dragons knew who had built it.
A monk materialised out of the darkness, calling softly, “Hualiama!”
Ja’al! Lia’s heart lurched into her throat.
He said, “The most sulphurous greetings of the Great Dragon to you.”
“And may his everlasting fires burn within you, Master Ja’al.”
The young monk’s teeth glinted briefly at their formality. Sweet Ja’al, still so volcanically handsome–and still so committed to his monkish vows. They had kissed, once. Had he forgotten that day? Judging by the pinch of rose enflaming his cheeks, perhaps not. She must bind her treacherous heart for his sake. Lia forbade her lips to curve upward, and failed. Ja’al’s colour deepened.
The monk cleared his throat awkwardly. “We heard the King forbade you to train here, Lia. Therefore, you should not–”
“I’m not.”
“Now that I recall, I saw a dragonet fly by. I shall moor this stray Dragonship beneath the trees.”
“Thank you, Ja’al.”
Only the simplest of words could be risked, or her heart would tear loose of her ribcage and pounce upon the monk, a beast of passion unchained. Her lower lip quivered.
With a soft word of thanks, Hualiama wrenched herself away and loped into the night.
Briefly, her path led past the monastery building, gutted by the Dragon attack which had led to her friend Inniora’s kidnapping, but now rebuilt. The no-longer-secret stairway lay concealed in the crack between a huge boulder and a gnarled, ancient prekki tree. Within, the darkness was pure sable. Lia felt for the steps. Right. Hustle, girl! Down forever, until she felt dizzy. Dash away the tears. No time for regrets. Twisting through the tunnel below to the lower slopes of the volcano. Here, an ancient prekki-fruit tree leaned over the gap between the Islands, just a hundred feet wide but two miles deep. A blood-red lava flow glowed down there.
Six years ago, she had found her way across this divide with the help of a braided vine. Now, a knotted rope hung from a branch seventy feet above her head. Lia untied it from an iron ring set in the prekki tree’s trunk, and ran the makeshift cord through her fingers.
Beyond this point, she would earn a swift flight from a great height, or an even swifter claw through the chest.
Breathe out. Grit the teeth. Oh–last-second check for lurking Dragons. Lia could not see any, but since Dragons could see a hundred times better than Humans, especially in the dark, that meant little. Seven stutter-steps launched her into the air. She flew, briefly weightless before the rope’s pendulum swing rushed her to the far side. She landed catlike on a flat rock. Hold still.
Hualiama half-expected the Island to transform into the fabled Black Dragon himself and with a shiver, fling an irreverent Human mite into the abyss. Instead, she remembered why she had come. A quiver nearly did unbalance her.
Why did Amaryllion have to die?
She tied the rope to the base of a gnarled purple-currant bush. Hopefully, any prowling Dragons would think it was just a trailing vine.
Ahead of her lay a challenging climb, and a race against the coming dawn.
An hour of scaling the vertical cliffs brought Hualiama to a cave, where she rested briefly, panting, checking her fingers, battered and torn by the sharp-edged volcanic rocks. Climbing gloves would have served her well. Ha’athior’s shadow stretched almost to the western horizon as the twin suns rose behind the main volcano. She had made it by a Dragon’s whisker. Not that Dragons had whiskers–people said the most ridiculous things.
Lia scrambled to her feet.
A warm, well-remembered breeze caressed her cheek, redolent of Dragon-scent–a complex aroma of cinnamon, burnt umber and magic tingling at her senses like an almost-heard, faraway starsong. With it came memories, rustling through her mind with a crackling like dry leaves. A friend long departed. A phantom prickle of claws on her shoulder, a warm dragonet curling himself about her neck. ‘Straw-head,’ he used to whisper. Dear Flicker. Surely, his death had purchased her life, and restored the King to his Onyx Throne.
Oh, this place was shadowed with memories, the requiem of a weeping heart-wound.
Lia felt her way into the tunnels behind the cave. Now all she needed to do was remember the path through Ha’athior’s underground maze, and try not to fall over any of the myriad drop-offs. Flicker, with his typically blunt honesty, had been fond of calling her ‘slow-slug’, too.
Ha. A dragonet need not fear falling.
For her, falling from a height was a recurring nightmare.
Hualiama’s soft footsteps echoed loudly in the stillness. She jogged where she remembered the way was safe and smooth. The caves and tunnels were warm and never without light, just faint hints of radiance at first, growing into patches of crystalline splendour as she penetrated the Island more deeply. She could see how the numinous quality of this light might suggest sacredness to the Dragonkind.
She came to a dark, faceted wall, and turned along it. Lia steadied herself with her left hand, and then on an impulse, pressed her ear against the wall to listen. A steady, complex drumbeat came to her hearing, a draconic warmth of flesh and life.
Amaryllion.
Oh, Dragonfriend … why speak thee to mine underbelly?
Great Islands, that deep voice quivered her surrounds as if the volcano shook its skirts preparatory to erupting. Lia realised what had confused her. This part of the tunnels had always been fully dark. Now the crystals irradiated his scales. Each was as wide and tall as her outstretched arms.
She laughed,
Because I’m as silly as a dragonet.
After a long pause, his answering laughter beat against her senses, but it sounded frail and faraway, as though his Dragon-spirit had already begun its journey into eternity.
Lia, precious one. Thou hast always brought light to mine darkness. Come to me.
She ran, but it was another ten minutes through the tunnels before she finally broke out into the cave into which she had once chased Flicker, and found herself in the awesome presence of an Ancient Dragon. Then, all had been pitch-dark save for his burning gaze. Now, she threw up an arm to shade her eyes.
Lia gasped.
She stood on a rocky outcropping which brought her to the level of Amaryllion’s gigantic eye, which stood twice her height–an eye she knew well, but she had never fully appreciated the mountain of Dragon-flesh which contained it. The ageless Dragon appeared to lie in an ancient underground stream-bed or gully, his muzzle mostly below her feet, his neck-ruff and skull-spikes looming two hundred feet above her head. Inanely, she realised she could comfortably walk upright into any of his three ear-canals on the near side of his head. Mighty Sapphurion was smaller than a dragonet compared to this beast.
The curve of his orb seethed with Dragon fire, but the luminescent white streamers of fire today seemed darkened and diminished to Hualiama, foreshadowing his demise. Nevertheless, the power of Amaryllion’s gaze made the Human’s entire body tingle, as though she stood upon a mountaintop caressed by an unseen breeze. Lia clenched her teeth to still their chattering. Visions and impressions of a life aeons long cascaded through her mind. Dragons raised Islands from the abyss, building nests and terrace lakes. A terrible war engulfed her, pitching the Dragons above the Cloudlands against the Land Dragons below … abruptly, the torrent ceased. A touch to her nose brought her forefinger away daubed with blood.
I’ve caused thee suffering, little one. That was not mine intention … now, as the time approaches, the visions beset me.
Must you die, Amaryllion?
Oh, Dragonfriend, grieve not for me.
His magic soothed her anguish.
Even for the most ancient of lizards, a time must come to join our spirits to the great dance of eternal fire.
Switching to her tongue, Island Standard, the great Dragon said, “Tell me, little mouse, what remembrance hast thou of the Dragon Grandion?”
Grandion? He touched her pain so unerringly. “We journeyed together. He saved Fra’anior …”
“How exactly did a Human and a Dragon journey together?”
Lia’s brow creased in puzzlement. “I don’t remember. By Dragonship, I think, and I remember meeting a Maroon Dragoness who told me Ra’aba was my real father …” Her voice trailed off as Amaryllion’s eye suffused with a dull, reddish flame signifying inner pain. “O Amaryllion, what is it? Have I neglected you so sorely?”
“Nay, Hualiama. It is I who have wronged thee.”
“You … did? How?”
“I caused thee to forget–wrongly, and too much, believing I should thus best protect thee. With thy permission, might I restore thee to thy right mind?”
Doubt shadowed Lia’s thoughts. What had she forgotten? She knew there were blemishes upon her memory, as if she saw indistinctly through patches of fog, but she had always put that down to the trauma of the events surrounding Captain Ra’aba’s attempt to murder her, and her eventual triumph over the pretender to restore King Chalcion to the Onyx Throne.
If she agreed, what terrible secrets might be revealed? But Lia knew she must trust the Ancient Dragon, for that, too, was a price friendship should always be willing to pay.
At her pensive nod, draconic power smote Hualiama to her knees. A white-golden light expanded within her mind, driving away the shadows and the mists, a song of magic awakening what had long slumbered beneath a touch she now recognised as the signature of Amaryllion’s mind. The world blazed, set afire by his magic. Memories danced amidst the flames. Lurid. Searing. A deluge of bittersweet moments, unfolding the enormity of her loss.