E
mERGING from the
hidden stairwell behind the prekki-fruit tree just after dawn the morning following Amaryllion’s passing on, Hualiama ran headlong into the bare, muscular chest of Rallon, who cried, “It’s her!”
“Detain the miscreant. Master Ja’al will see her at once,” ordered Hallon, his twin brother. The bearded monks seized her, one to either arm.
Great Islands, did these monks never wear more than a loincloth? With her newfound clarity of recollection, Lia remembered how she had first met the twins. She could not ignore the opportunity to foment mischief. She drawled, “Well, boys, and what of your vows?”
“Our vows?” rumbled Rallon, staring down at her from his gigantic six feet and seven inches stature. “What do you mean, scrap?”
“Firstly, you lay hands on the royal ward, part-time Princess of the realm. Secondly, I’m a female. You are monks, sworn to chastity, fidelity, and service to the Great Dragon. Thirdly–”
“What of it?” growled Hallon, his Dragon’s-paw grip on her upper arm swinging her off the ground in concert with his twin. “Enough of this nonsensical dragonet-chatter.”
“If you don’t put me down, I’ll make you blush.”
“Blush?” chorused the giant twins.
“Like simpering Fra’aniorian maidens on their first appearance in Court,” Lia clarified.
“Bah,” snorted Rallon. “Just you try.”
“Bah,” Hallon imitated his brother. “We’ve learned a great deal about you since the day you first pulled the proverbial ralti wool over our–” his voice rose an octave “–what’re you doing?”
“Ooh, you’re so
muscly
,” Hualiama cooed. “I was just playing.”
“Stop that!”
She curled her fingers around his muscular bicep. “But it’s just so … yummy.”
Rallon laughed uproariously as his brother’s ears heated up to a fine, flaming pink. He said, “We should unhand the Princess at once.”
“Indeed,” said Hualiama, whirling upon Rallon with a gleam in her eye that caused the monk to backpedal, but not fast enough. Laying her hand flat against his stomach, she teased, “My, what girl would not want to hike over boulders like these?”
Rallon’s blush emulated the roseate dawn breaking over the monastery. Even Lia gasped at her own impudence. Truth from a dragonet’s mouth, was the Isles saying.
“Apprentice Hualiama!”
She jumped, and then clucked crossly. “Ja’al! Don’t sneak–”
“Aggravating my monks again, I see?” he cut in, grinning broadly. “Just like the Lia of old.”
Had she forgotten more than she imagined? Hualiama’s light-hearted mood–a fleeting distraction from the soul-ache over the loss of a dear friend, she realised now–faded into puzzlement. Should she take this for a flash of insight, or merely a chance comment? Either way, this new grief had punctured her heart like a single, clean thrust of a whetted blade.
Turning to the twins, Ja’al rapped, “Don’t you have duties?” They rushed away. The monk-leader’s voice softened. “Are you alright, Lia? We heard a commotion …”
“Amaryllion died.”
She would not cry. Lia defied her tears, but though she lowered her eyes, the gentleness she sensed in Ja’al’s regard introduced an uncontrollable tremor to her lower lip. The warmth of his arms encircling her shoulders made the sobs tear loose from a place so deep, they seemed to gash open fresh wounds on their way out. Suddenly, she was a Cloudlands squall breaking above an Island. Ja’al could only pat her back and murmur soft words that reverberated against her cheek, nestled into his chest.
“Islands’ sakes!” she sniffled, drawing back at last. “I’m a royal mess.”
“Never.”
Hualiama made to find a scrap of cloth to wipe her face, when she was arrested by Ja’al’s strong, lean fingers pinching her chin between thumb and forefinger and raising her head. He considered her so long and so searchingly, that Lia feared she might succumb to another madcap desire to kiss the monk. Oh, great Islands! Why did Ja’al have to be so volcanically gorgeous, and so forbidden by vow and by faith?
Aye, the day Grandion battled Razzior the Orange Dragon and Yulgaz the Brown, and had been buried in a cave beneath a landslide for his trouble–the pain of that memory seared her afresh. To evade the Dragons’ scrutiny, Ja’al had kissed her with devastating sweetness and passion, and then promptly turned about-face and declared he was therefore convinced he must take his vows! Callous fiend. Rotten, uncaring, inviolable monk-monster–she chastised herself. He was a good man.
Thus, their paths had diverged. Ja’al had pursued his faith, and Hualiama found the Tourmaline Dragon beneath the mountain, only to be burned by him in his unthinking, feral state.
Still, Ja’al’s fingers gripped her chin.
“What?” she protested. “What have I done?”
“You’ve changed.” He shook his head slowly. “You’ve … there’s something about your eyes. I can’t fathom it. Something’s changed.”
“I’ve grown shorter?”
“No. You’re … back.”
“Back?” she echoed, not understanding. “Back how? From where?”
Slowly, as if voicing an understanding only just percolating into his mind, Ja’al said, “Your soul has journeyed afar. You’ve only just returned. I thought it grief, Hualiama, a natural reaction to discovering who your father was and taking back the Onyx Throne at his expense, and then Grandion’s departure … you shocked the living pith out of me, you know.” His finger wagged before her eyes, but Lia was so captivated by his words, she did not even blink. “Fine. I confess, I was jealous. You were so obsessed with that dratted reptile, so cutesy-sweet with him–”
Hualiama asked, “Ja’al, have I neglected you?”
“Nay. But–I do feel as though I have stepped back six years in time. Amaryllion did something to you. And now you’ve remembered everything, correct?”
Wordless, Hualiama nodded. She had forgotten the power of his insight. As he peered at her, cocking his head slightly this way and that, Lia mentally traced a fingertip along the stubble of his firm jawline–Islands’ sakes! Had she no self-control around this man?
Ja’al’s thoughts were on another Island. He cried, “The spark is back! The flame! And, I do declare, your eyes have changed. Less smoky green. More, as Flicker would’ve said, a handsome blue like mine.” Lia chuckled quietly even in the depths of her amazement, but Ja’al rushed on, “I see Dragon fire! I see power and the Nuyallith forms swarming in your head and I know you’ve decided to go find Grandion and oh, Lia! I just can’t find words … I’m fizzing with excitement. You’re back!”
“No over-excited kisses from you, Mister Monk,” she deadpanned.
“Lia! Of course not.” Had a dragonet bitten her normally stoic friend, she wondered? Normally she was the effusive one. “Maybe a windroc’s peck.” Dropping her chin, he gripped her fingers instead and placed a feather-light kiss on her left cheek. “Impish Princess, do you not see? This is the trigger. The prophecy must come to fruition and you–I sense it so clearly–are about to turn our Island-World on its head once more.”
“Riding Dragonback was not enough?” she protested.
“Not half the nuisance I know you’re capable of perpetrating,” said he, with a broad smile to take the sting off his provocation. “Now, snip snap, quick wings. Before Hualiama thinks about travelling anywhere in this Island-World, we must hasten to Ya’arriol Island to consult with my mother.”
“Big tough Master Ja’ally needs his mommy?”
She could have sold Ja’al’s expression for half of the jewels in her kingdom. He huffed, “How such a Dragon’s tonnage of vexation ever came to be distilled in such a tiny frame, Lia, I cannot fathom!”
She dipped into a Fra’aniorian courtly bow, complete with the obligatory hand-twirls. “I humbly obey your commands,
Master
Ja’al.”
“This way to your Dragonship, your royal tininess,” he retorted, seeming rather steamed beneath the collar–not that monks seemed to regard clothing as much more than a frivolous affectation. “And you’ll tell me what happened?”
Hualiama nodded, the rush of reckless abandon giving way to trepidation. The habits of six years would not be easy to slough off. “I will,” she agreed. “But can we use the travel-time to Ya’arriol for you to transfer knowledge of all of the remaining Nuyallith forms to me? I suspect I’ll have need of them.”
Ja’al’s brows arched toward the crown of his shaven, tattooed head. “All ninety?”
“All of them,” Lia said firmly. That was an invitation to an Island-thumping migraine, and they both knew it.
She helped Ja’al drag her solo Dragonship out from under the cover of a grove of massive giant fig trees. At over one hundred and fifty feet tall, they easily sheltered her small Dragonship. Hallon and Rallon came to lend a hand.
Once Ja’al had finished instructing the twins, he made a face at Lia. “Only now, running this monastery, have I truly come to appreciate Master Jo’el’s attention to detail.”
“All monks on board. This Dragonship is leaving,” said Lia, stoking the stove’s fire.
She could not have sworn to it, but it did appear that both Hallon and Rallon were still blushing.
Ja’al leaped in lithely. “Right, short shrift, time to open that devious dragonet’s brain of yours. Let’s fill it with something substantial, for a change. Don’t forget to set your controls.”
Egg-head,
she said in Dragonish.
“I know what you said!”
Ooh, been learning Dragonish, Mister Clever Monk?
Ja’al grimaced. “No, but I do know when my hawser is being tugged.”
The Dragonship rose silently into the gleaming dawn skies above the volcano on a westerly heading, making for Ya’arriol Island, already visible in the distance. Another volcanic Fra’aniorian dawn, Hualiama thought, savouring the subtle tints of the Cloudlands and the luminous quality of the light beyond the long shadow cast by Ha’athior Island. The world seemed pregnant with opportunity.
“Right,” she said. “Our heading’s fixed and the oven’s warm. I’ll pedal whilst you fry my brain. Agreed?”
Ja’al loomed over her with a discomfiting sneer. He cracked his knuckles deliberately, making her exclaim in annoyance. “Shall I tidy up a bit whilst I’m in there?”
“Sure. And while you’re at it, will you just rustle up a vision of my destiny and tell me exactly where to find my mother?”
“Deal.” Ja’al’s long, sensitive fingers touched her temples. “First one.”
For the three hours it took them to fly to Ya’arriol, Ja’al poured into his subject all the remaining Nuyallith lore he had ‘harvested’–to use his descriptor, which made Hualiama squirm–from Master Khoyal before his death. Overhead, the rigging creaked under the variable pressure of a capricious breeze. The hawsers rasped against their pulleys and blocks, and the sails flapped lazily. The stove, which fed the turbines and hot air sacks, crackled cheerfully as Ja’al flicked in chunks of pre-cut, dense jalkwood at intervals between ladling dollops of knowledge into her aching brain. Lia fidgeted and sweated, fighting a migraine that seized her head like a ralti sheep squeezed by a marauding Dragon’s talons.
Ja’al paused to mop his brow. “A touch more northerly please, Steersman. Are you alright, Lia?”
“Surviving. Don’t spare the meriatite, Master Jo’el.”
“Not Jo’el,” he smiled. His uncle, Master Jo’el, had perished in the battle for the Kingdom of Fra’anior, six years before. Ra’aba had much to answer for.
Ra’aba, her father. He might be her blood-father, but he meant nothing more. Lia sucked in her cheeks, scowling at the rigging. Traitor, usurper, evil magician, despoiler of women and would-be murderer of his daughter. Charming! How could her mother match up to the Roc? Somehow, the stinging in her bones suggested, her mother Azziala would do all that, and more. Azziala had journeyed from the Eastern Isles to the Halls of the Dragons. At Gi’ishior Ra’aba had forced himself upon her. A child resulted, whom Azziala immediately abandoned to the Dragoness Ianthine’s tender mercies. How often had Lia not dreamed of wonderful parents, only to have the truth of her origins strike her with the force of an Isles earthquake?
Was the inner force which impelled her to seek her destiny, at least in part a desire to atone for her parents’ misdeeds? And what of the strange connection between Ra’aba and Razzior, the Orange Dragon who had tried to burn her?
Hualiama stiffened as a torrent of knowledge thundered anew into the bowl of her skull, despite Ja’al’s avowed attempt at gentleness. Too much! Muscles rigid, burning, a soundless scream rising from the marrow of her soul … she spiralled into darkness.
“The spirit of Nuyallith is dance,” she heard Master Khoyal’s ancestor instructing him, many, many summers before Lia ever opened her eyes to the Island-World. “And what is dance, but the purest expression in physical movement of the spirit of a person? Therefore, the spirit must be trained as much as the body requires training–even more so than the physical flesh, truth be told. Just as we feed the body and care for its needs, so we must provide the spirit with the nutrients it requires.”
“What do you mean, great-grandfather?” The voice in her memory was a boy’s tenor, not the aged rasp Hualiama had known.
“A person could spend a lifetime filling the Cloudlands from shore to shore with scrolls upon the subject, Khoyal. Simply put, to meditate and act upon principles such as truth, integrity, beauty, justice and holiness, is to feed the spirit with goodness. The spirit of a person is like fire. Starve a fire of fuel, and it will gutter and die. Feed the fires, boy. Always feed the fires, and be hungry for more.”