Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 121
Tari’s command jinked rapidly between the floating Islands, sprinting for the point where they had spotted the unmistakable orange spurts of Dragon fire. The Green leader marshalled her force with the ease and urgency of long command, pointing out the forces attacking the cavern where they had left the fledglings, hatchlings and egg-clutches under guard. Where she indicated, Zip saw Jagok lizards, squat, powerful subdraconic beasts with armour tough enough to survive a direct blast of Dragon fire, and Heripedes, the centipede-like creatures which were Thoralian’s preferred weapon for penetrating cave-systems. Vicious carnivores with a particular fondness for Dragon eggs, they grew up to twenty-five feet in length and sported highly noxious paralytic or necrotic bites, depending on their subspecies. Charming, Ri’arion muttered.
This was all the briefing they had time for. The cavern-mouth was a mad scramble of beastly madness as Dragon tore into Dragon and dozens of Heripedes made merry. Zip saw nine Jagok lizards – the six-legged violet nasties down there – tearing into an adult Dragoness’ abdomen as she blocked the cavern entrance with her bulk. The Heripedes poured over her like torrents of molten metal, their flexible segments allowing them ease of movement over almost any terrain, including Dragon scales.
There’s a gap above her, Zip pulsed to the monk. Heripedes inside already.
Do it, Ri’arion approved.
ATTACK! The Azure Dragoness launched herself into a wing-straining sprint, using the shaped aerodynamic shielding they had perfected beneath the Clouds to help adjust her path between the Islands into screamingly tight turns and powerful acceleration. She easily outstripped the startled Dragons of Tari’s command.
Ri’arion melded neatly with her mind. They pinpointed the narrowness of the cave entrance. He took four running steps over her shoulder and leaped into her upraised paw as Zuziana approached the narrow but tall cave-mouth. Leaving the battle in the gully leading to the cave for the other Dragons to deal with, Zip tucked in her wings and half-rolled to whip through the remaining space above the Dragoness, taking four Heripedes with her on the nose of her shaped shield. She body-slammed them into the side-wall with a borrowed flick of monk-mind power before Dragoness and Rider burst into the main cavern, a long, sandy space surmounted by many stalactites and downward-hanging crystalline formations.
The Azure had eyes only for the scrimmage on the cavern floor. Fledglings wrestling with Heripedes. Tiny hatchlings mewling in pain. Four adult Dragons brawling near the entrance. Jewel-like Dragon eggs cracked open, their egglings spilled out and partly eaten …
Thinking to see crimson, Zuziana found her vision sheeting white-blue. Her breast stung as though she had swallowed a bushel of spears. Even as she obeyed Ri’arion’s instinct to fling him at one of the enemy adult males, her Blue Dragon power surged so violently out of her throat, Zip thought at first she had turned her stomach inside-out. Lightning coursed out of her throat in a single, endless blast, dividing at the speed of thought as each jagged branch unerringly picked out Heripedes and Jagok lizards and fried them in their own juices.
GRRRAAARRRGH! thundered the petite Remoyan Dragoness.
Spitting and sparking with power, the Azure became her own storm as Ri’arion dealt with a Grey-Green Dragoness and three Jagok lizards in double-quick time, his massive blade spinning and winking back the radiance of her lightning-strikes. Then the monk fell to levitating lizards and Heripedes in her direction, pitching them low and hard as if for catching practice. Zuziana’s Dragon-laugher belled over the fray, still notably soprano compared to the lower register of bigger Dragons, but no less appalling. She realised belatedly that Ri’arion had used their magical shield in a new way to magnify the punitive power of his blade; it sliced cleanly through Dragon scale armour and hacked chitinous chunks out of Heripedes at considerable magical cost, but great efficiency.
He expected a short battle, but her mind was still on the hunting Dragonwings.
With a united roar, Tari the Green’s Dragonwing descended without, snapping and snarling and blasting. Waves of suffocating heat rolled into the cavern. Ri’arion sprinted between the hatchlings, moving as fast as the Dragons themselves, tangling with three half-Heripedes as their mandibles continued to champ at victims despite lacking significant portions of their bodies.
The two defending Grey-Greens finished the last Dragon attacker inside the cave. They turned simultaneously to watch Ri’arion casting himself into Zip’s paw. He levitated three of the remaining Heripedes; Zip sautéed them with psychically-enhanced spears of lightning.
The Azure shook her muzzle violently. Cooked enemy didn’t smell half bad to a battle-maddened Dragoness.
What? gasped the defending Dragons, apparently twins. Who are you?
Enemy Dragonwings incoming, snarled Zuziana. Gather the hatchlings and eggs. Help me move the Dragoness at the entrance.
General Zuziana, Ri’arion teased as she fell to organising Dragons who were not hers to command. They obeyed with alacrity, perhaps recognising her authority or responding because she was a powerful Shapeshifter, he thought to her.
Shut the yapping and help! she shot back, all blaze and brimstone.
The monk decamped in a heartbeat, running amongst the clusters of eggs and bidding the living and able fledglings and hatchlings to take the undamaged eggs in paw. Zuziana meantime directed the bigger Dragons to help move the critically injured Dragoness, who had given her life to protect the eggs and younglings; bellows and gouts of fire still resounded sporadically outside near the cavern, but Tari alighted, her fire-eyes raging crimson at the carnage within the cavern.
Too many, she muttered. Thoralian’s Dragonwings will shred us if we try to escape with so many young and injured. I have failed … but we must try, or we are no Dragonkind.
I can see you safe, said the Azure Dragoness.
Suk’itarix the Green snarled furiously, How can I trust a Dragoness I met but a half-hour ago?
I am Brityx, said her shell-mother, her bulk obscuring the suns. I say her fires burn white. What is this idea, little one?
Zip grinned fiercely. I propose to snaffle you away below the Cloudlands, in the mouth of a Land Dragoness.
Chapter 20: Defiance
After his first interview with the Marshal, four servants dumped Ardan inside the harem’s doorway. The proud warrior of Ur-Naphtha tried to arrest his slide against a wall, but fell against an ornamental plinth. A priceless golden vase by a Fendoon Master toppled. “No!”
Lurax caught the vase, averting disaster. “It were bad?”
Ardan spat blood. “Piece of sweetbread.”
“Bane. Bane!” called the boy.
Shizina and four other small, dark women emerged from a nearby chamber to ogle at the source of the commotion, but they turned at once and disappeared, giggling – as usual. He tried not to blush. Shizina had loudly proclaimed her opinion of the contents of his briefs the previous evening, during dinner, and exactly what she would like to do with a muscled warrior. Grr. He was admittedly a head taller than any of these Herimor men or women, and probably twice their body weight, but that exacting commentary on all of his dimensions made him squirm like a rat trapped in a python’s grasp.
“I’ll walk,” said Ardan.
Lurax helped him stand; it took three tries just to find his feet. Ardan wobbled a few steps before Bane ran up and shoved his shoulder beneath the Western Isles warrior’s left armpit, saying, “Being a warrior mean acting more stubborn than a hunk of week-old flatbread?”
“Aye. Crust like granite.”
“Mistress didn’t like your answers?”
Ardan laughed painfully. “I think it was when I said I’d rather pillow-roll with a scabby windroc’s regurgitated breakfast –”
“Pillow-roll?” puzzled Lurax.
Bane translated, “Shim-shamming, like you refused us last time. That what you mean?”
“I don’t – curse it, I’d rather slit my own throat than do that with children!”
His horror only made the boys look downcast. In silence, they helped him to his pallet, where Ardan collapsed. Bane brought water to wash his blood-gummed mouth; Lurax fetched a cup of spiced hoosik-milk yoghurt from the cold store. Ardan had the impression a hoosik was some kind of hexapede related to the common goat. He swilled water and allowed the tart yoghurt to cool his throat.
Finally, he said, “I’m Ardan of Naphtha Cluster.”
The boys clasped forearms with him, although they clearly did not know what the gesture meant. Herimor culture – at least in the harem – appeared to major on different kisses upon the cheek, ears or shoulders, which was rather unfortunate, since even a casual kiss triggered his wards.
Tixi had found out his name, but only that much. She had demonstrated, at length and in sadistic detail, the ways in which the Lavanias collar could be used to torture a Shapeshifter Dragon.
More gently, Ardan said, “Mostly, in this Island-World, children are allowed to be children. At least, they should be. The stronger should protect the weaker, not take advantage. In my culture what passes in this harem would be beyond taboo. It’s unthinkable. What happened to you, Bane? Lurax? How did you enter the Marshal’s service?”
Bane said, “I was the spoils of war. Started here when I was five.” He laughed bitterly, Islands away in his memories. “I thought I was meant to sing nicely for the Marshal’s guests. Fool I was.”
Lurax added in his sweet, piping voice, “My family were in debt to a landowner. One day, a trader came by. He said, ‘A pretty price for a pretty boy.’ Took me to the back room to … to check the goods. My father told me not to cry. But I cried a lot … ’cause … and my father were ashamed. He beat me for making the trader drop his price.”
“I guess your body get used to it,” Bane reflected.
“Your soul don’t,” Lurax put in, rubbing his eyes fiercely with his knuckles. “Tears? As Bane says, tears are for fools.”
“You think boys like us got souls, warrior-man? After what we done?” Again, Ardan squirmed at the knowing sneer in Bane’s voice, an old man speaking from a child’s mouth. “In this House, we’re nought but toys and baubles. We sold to the spirits of volcanoes, man. We’ll burn forever.”
Ardan looked from Bane, all bitterness and fire, to the haunted depths of Lurax’s eyes, and he wondered what he would not do to rescue such as these.
“Take my hands,” Ardan said, reaching toward them. The boys flinched in concert. “See? You’re afraid I’ll drag you down right now. I can say what I like, right? Promise you the five Moons, and you still wouldn’t trust me after what you’ve been through. Never mind I couldn’t rise off my pallet lest you tied my nostril hairs to a passing meteorite.”
Silence trembled between them.
With a snort of laughter that sounded agonised, Bane touched Ardan’s hand with his. He seemed ready to bolt. After a moment, Lurax did the same.
Gazing at their linked hands, Ardan said, “We all have souls, but none of us is perfect. I wish I could teach you that there are different kinds of touch to what you have experienced, and regard that respects a person, even soul-deep. People can love each other without it being about shim-shamming, or abuse. Touch can be precious, true-fires loving and affirming. I know you don’t see that now, Bane, or you, Lurax, but you can learn another way. We can all learn. Dragons say it with different words, but they mean the same. Their young are precious, never to be ill-treated or molested.”
A flash of deep blue scales announced Sapphire’s arrival in his small chamber, barely large enough for a sleeping pallet and a rickety commode. Without pause, she curved down to land neatly beside Ardan, and laid her muzzle upon his chest with a contented sigh. Her eyes shuttered.
What did the dragonet mean by this? The boys were intrigued …
“Love is meant to be true-fires,” Ardan continued, finally, more intent upon impressing his views on his own heart than upon listening ears. “It nurtures and ennobles the spirit. As I said, we all fail to love rightly. But the point is …” Aranya’s smile, her sorrow, her futile horror played through his memory. Ardan whispered, “I will tell you how I have failed. The point is, when we set ourselves heart, soul and sinew to love, we become more. That is life’s greatest and worthiest labour.”
* * * *
I need ten volunteers to fly interference, snarled Tari. The rest, line up with me. Smaller hatchlings? Find yourself an adult partner. Fledglings, you will fly in compact formation. I don’t want heroes, I want you watching each other’s hides. Azure?
Aye, Marshal? said Zip, flaring her wings in surprise.
Lead out.
I’m … honoured.
Her expression said, ‘Shut the trap and fly,’ but the Green Dragoness inclined a wingtip. Then summon us unto battle, o lightning from clear skies!
Zip bellowed, Dragons, let’s burn the deeps!
She beat her wings with rapid quarter-strokes, launching out of the narrow gully. At once the Dragons following the Azure raised a great windstorm of wingbeats, rising into the air as they formed up around the fledglings. Those carrying hatchlings and eggs flew lower in the formation, as the traditional angle of Dragon attack was to dive from a height.
The compact Dragonwing broke out of cover from the side of the floating Island, diving in a low, shallow arc almost directly southward to give the illusion of fleeing for the next archipelago. Meantime, ten Dragons drove skyward to engage the Dragons wheeling above. The massive Dragonwing stalking from the suns-rise side reoriented immediately, keeping the jaws of their trap tight. Meantime, Ri’arion wasted no time, instructing the Grey-Green Dragons capable of shielding in the arts of filtering poisons. They would have to do their utmost until they reached the safety of Leandrial’s powerful shield.
Only one issue. Zip did not know where the Land Dragoness was. By shielded telepathy, she cried, Leandrial! We need you!
The ochre Cloudlands remained silent.
One hundred and eighty pursuing Dragons did not. The voice of their fury and battle-lust was as thunder shaking the Islands. Ignoring the frantic drumbeat of her Dragon-hearts, Zuziana slowed a little so that she did not pull too far ahead of her more heavily-laden charges.
She yelled with her utmost mental strength, LEANDRIAL!
Ri’arion did not even blink.
Discouraged, the Azure scanned the soon-to-be battlefield rapidly. Those Dragons were too close. Dragon-fire flared in the upper corner of her vision. Zip held course, weaving between the verdant Islands as Thoralian’s Dragonwings belled out their challenges. Grey-Greens lurched as an airstream buffeted them, but Tari’s command held true, flying three or four abreast as they poured between the Islands floating five miles above the Cloudlands like a dark, scaly river. There was no bad weather to provide cover. For the first time, Zuziana appreciated what it meant to be hunted by Dragons. Where could one hide? By all accounts, the Yellow-White Marshal had dispatched his Dragonwings far and wide in the preceding months, hunting … what? A wing-brother? Sign of pursuit from the North? The First Egg itself? Whatever the case, Thoralian’s forces had thrown the entire Northern Kahilate area, the surrounding Vassal States and most of the Southern Kahilate into chaos.
The executions of Humans, Dragons and Shapeshifters already numbered in the tens of thousands, Tari had informed them.
The encircling Dragons were less than half a mile distant. The small covering Dragonwing raced westward, trying to outrun four times their number of fire-belching Dragon-warriors.
She steadied a wingtip. Ready … dive!
Every Dragon in the command tossed their tails up and their muzzles down, and pumped their wings.
Dragonkind plummeted like rain between the great ruddy Island cliffs. Vegetation flashed by. Vines. Burrowing Dragons. Legion greyish ragions holding entire Islands aloft in their limpet-like paws. The Azure Dragoness risked a sideways glance. The chasing Dragons belatedly gave chase – would the gap be large enough? The Grey-Green Dragons surged, taking huge, sweeping strokes of their wings as they evidently realised the sprint was on. They were not quite fast enough, Ri’arion judged within her mind. The slower fledglings would be caught.
Wheeling, Zip said. Azure flashed beneath an Island, so close that she smelled the musty scent of the ragions. Her wingtips brushed their backs.
Stay the course! the monk cried to Tari, his hands clawed as he rose to his feet upon Zip’s back. My magic is ready. Steady, girl. Let’s wake these lizards to a volcanic Fra’aniorian morning!
Multiple billows of Dragon fire greeted the Azure Dragoness as she speared out of cover, one Dragoness assaulting thirty. Ri’arion muttered away like a demented man talking to his invisible friend, making sweeping motions of his hands.
Sensing the power coalescing around them, Zip hissed, Brace for backlash …
Oh, manky windrocs that won’t – I’ve a better idea, the monk chuckled unexpectedly. Watch this.
Sweeping up hundreds of ragions with the shaped shield he had intended to thrust at the incoming Dragonwing, Ri’arion set about firing the bulbous subdraconic creatures across the divide five at a time, then in tens as he found his rhythm, crying, Stick, my beauties! Stick!
The Azure goggled as the ragions, clearly confused by Ri’arion’s overriding mental command, frantically clasped whatever they could catch with their multitude of small, hook-like talons – wings, scales, toes, it did not seem to matter. They stuck like the finest glue – apparently, some subspecies boasted sizeable suckers on their bellies as well as talons, ensuring that they never fell off an Island once attached. The startled, be-suckered Grey-Greens swerved and bellowed and tangled with each other, raising a comical chorus of complaint – Zip occupied herself, however, with repaying lightning-strikes for fireballs with a quintet of enemy Dragons who managed to avoid the irate snarl. Several Dragons, swamped in ragions, floated helplessly up past the Islands, tearing off their own scales in an attempt to loosen the pests.
