Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 123
Fra’anior …
His was the final cry of a despairing, broken soul.
Open the fonts of thy power, o shell-son of mine spirit.
I cannot. He must be raving; over the cliff-edge of sanity. Father-mine, I cannot stand … let me die … please.
A keening sound of many throats raised in grief washed his awareness. This maggot torments without reason. You must teach her to fear and respect a child of my spirit – SHA’ALDIOR!
Ardan’s world resounded with the violent roaring of many throats. With a scream of metal, he ripped the deeply-embedded manacles out of the wall. All was dark, leaping flames of fire. Marshal Tixi’s face became a rictus of effort as she plundered the House wards for the strength to keep him from transforming. The collar’s furnace-heart pain battled with the black fire within him. Something had to give. Ardan tore a leg free. Then he ripped down the wall as he started for Marshal Tixi.
SNUFF HIM! she cried, herself turning white as she gave the last of her strength to bolster the House’s ancient magic.
All went mercifully dark, and fireless.
Chapter 21: A Star Descended
ARanya Smiled at her shell-mother. Why am I not breathing?
Izariela’s expression had never seemed more inscrutably draconic. The White Dragoness shrugged, drawing her wings up. Though she had no need of physical flight, her spirit-form still mimicked the right actions. Time passes strangely in a Shapeshifter’s soul.
We’re … inside my soul?
In a manner of speaking. We commune. All else is extraneous, as you say. Even breathing.
O mystical mother! Aranya chuckled softly, Or, actually being alive? I’ve heard it’s not the worst state of being. Oh mercy, no …
Her mother’s state was the worst. Trapped between life and death. Aranya hung her head, but Izariela chucked her beneath the chin with a fond talon-touch. No – oh, please don’t look so woebegone, Aranyi. You didn’t mean it that way. You’re alive, petal. Take it from someone who knows the difference. I’ve missed you so. I remember you as just a little girl with a crazy-beautiful wealth of hair. Now, you’re a grown-up Dragoness and you’d take my breath away – if I were actually breathing.
Over Izariela’s musical chuckle, Aranya growled, I’m half-grown, and ugly.
She did not mean to sour their time together. Pain lanced into her breast as Aranya thought upon the years they had lost, the march of time to her seventeenth year; her mother entrapped in that almost-tomb behind the royal palace of Immadia.
Yet her mother’s wings enfolded her tenderly. I believe you will overcome, Aranya, if you’re even half the Shapeshifter Dragoness I think you are. Remember all I have taught you.
I – I don’t remember. Have we talked? How long have I been here, mother?
Not long enough, Izariela sighed mightily. Aye, we’ve spoken all this while. Suddenly, Aranya knew suspicion. Her mother sneaked soft-pawed around fate, around that always-hinted-at ability of Hualiama or Fra’anior or Izariela to speak across time and space, thereby threatening the march of destiny. What exactly had the White Dragoness done?
Aye? Aranya purred back.
Izariela’s eye-fires mellowed into pearlescent beauty. Good, you understand.
I don’t, but I’m almost as stubborn as you, mother.
I love it when you jut out your chin like that, petal. You always did that, even as a girl. Izariela’s gaze was melancholy; so fond and profound that Aranya could hardly bear to face it. You’ve evidently inherited a double portion of stubbornness, both maternal and paternal. How is my Beran?
He’s … good. He married again, Mom. I’m sorry.
He couldn’t have known.
None of us knew. Silha’s a sweet petal, but it’s not the same as … as my real mother. Aranya ran her eyes one more time over the Dragoness, memorising every detail of her slender form and her perfect white scales. I gather sullen teenage Shapeshifters can be more than a little feisty.
I’ll remind you of that one day when you’ve a beautiful brood of your own, Izariela chuckled. Now, it is time for a Star Dragoness to descend from the heavens. It has been four weeks, Aranyi.
Four? But, Thoralian – but I – mother! Four! How could you?
Affecting unconcern, Izariela said, Don’t tell your grandsire, alright?
Don’t tell? Aranya gasped. Fra’anior would strip all the scales off her with his bellowing. Oh, she was so in for a sevenfold roasting this time …
I will be with you, Aranyi. You must grasp that conviction in all your hearts! Fly strong and true, my treasure. She began to fade. Aranya pressed her close, her head pillowed on her mother’s shoulder. You must fly for me, Aranyi. Fly for one who cannot.
Mom. MOM!
Her head rested on air. As her scream faded, Aranya felt gravity reassert its usual place in the Universe. With a surprised gurgle, she began to fall.
Sideways.
* * * *
Tixi and her Dragons took a week to re-establish the House wards, struggling and failing to keep Ardan unconscious all that while. Unfortunately for them, he continued to heal at Dragon-speed. Great weals adorned his wrists where he had broken the allegedly unbreakable manacles, but his injuries were nothing. Lurax, having suffered the Marshal’s abominable interrogation, lay abed on the cusp of death. He was tougher than Ardan could have hoped for, but infection raged unchecked in his body – and who valued the life of a slave-boy?
He swore revenge on his Dragon’s soul-fires.
The Marshal had not interrogated him since, but he daily felt her hatred as a physical force.
Legs splayed, right palm firm upon the ground and the left clenched behind the small of his back, Ardan ground his way through the fiftieth consecutive one-handed press-up with his left arm. Not bad. Ever since he had turned into a Dragon, at some point prior to his escape from the Sylakian genocide at Naphtha Cluster, his physical strength had been growing. And if he was ever to escape this place – and the diamond-trimmed, ornamental briefs that constituted his allowable day-clothing – he would need to be in top form. As usual, a dozen or so of the harem’s inhabitants lazed in the shade or beneath richly ornamented umbrellas nearby. Even in the early evening, the day’s heat was formidable, like a Western Isles hot season shoved inside a bread-oven for additional roasting power. The male consorts sipped iced fruit juices, while the female consorts occasionally roused themselves to a sultry waggle in their scanty finery and lashings of jewels, and made moon-eyes at him over the tops of their fans.
Predictably, giggles followed as he switched hands and set to work on the right.
‘One, two, three for Aranya. Four, five, six for her love,’ he counted silently. ‘Seven, eight … may I be faithful, even in my mind … nine, ten – ’
“Look. A shooting star,” said Shizina. “It’s … low.”
The note of alarm in her voice stopped Ardan in his tracks. He peered up past the indolent harem consorts, over the Island’s low, mounded green hills, to the skies beyond. Opaque skies. Storm. Where had those clouds suddenly appeared from, brooding and majestic in their serried ranks, like a dark army gathered to salute the pinpoint of brilliant light that hurtled from the storm’s heart? Curtains of sable swept aside to make obeisance to her, the star descending in the train of her majesty.
Mawkish fool. No way that was Aranya. It must be a meteorite … then why had his heart risen to strangle his throat? His pulse ran wild. He could not breathe. All his world was that star, and the hope it epitomised.
She blazed across the sky from the direction of the Rift. Low, as Shizina had said. Rocketing toward the Shadow Dragon as if expressly aimed at his inflamed forehead. Inanely, Ardan remembered Ri’arion explaining how if a shooting star came in at a shallow angle, it should either glance off the Island-World’s atmosphere like a river-stone skipped across the water, or burn up entirely. There was nothing about that approaching light that suggested a Dragoness, only the wild intuition of his heart. The rejoicing. The mad twitching of his toes.
Sapphire came to him, and he clutched the dragonet against his neck. Habit made him careful not to touch the Lavanias collar, but Sapphire could. He glanced at Bane. Rapt. And why ever not?
“It’s her,” he whispered to the dragonet.
“Ari?” squeaked Sapphire.
Immense speed. Eerie silence. The star drew a white streak across the sky, drawing closer at a velocity that beggared belief. Was it slowing? Trails of gossamer light seemed to hang off the star’s skirts, creating a shimmering silver-white veil that elongated before his astonished eyes.
As the apparition hurtled overhead, unknowable leagues above the Isle of his captivity, Ardan and everyone else watching, ducked reflexively and turned to watch it pass.
A high-pitched whistle followed, then the shockwave. KAABOOOMM!!
Pounded to his knees, he could not have heard a Dragon roar right in his earhole, but the Island swayed violently, knocking up against its neighbour as a tremor passed through the Archipelago. Rocks and ragions fluttered down into the Cloudlands, followed by fresh rivers as reservoirs within the dragonworm-honeycombed Islands cracked and spilled their contents. The shooting star vanished into the distance, below the horizon. Its echoes faded like choleric thunder, lingering far longer than the lustre of her presence.
Ardan found his feet. “Mercy. Was that you, Aranya?”
Then he saw a Red Shapeshifter Dragoness rising into the evening sky, her murderous gaze fixed upon him. He was deaf, but she had clearly overheard.
His brow drew down defiantly. Make of that what you wish, Marshal Tixi.
And tremble.
* * * *
Hold on, Star Dragoness. Keep your cool. Preserve your fires.
Strange, whispery voices surrounded her. Cajoling. Reassuring. Laughing in wild, stormy glissades of sound; caressing her scales with paws of wind.
Stay with us, Star Dragoness. Enjoying the ride?
Aranya tried to open her eyes, but immediately had to resort to squeezing her membranes shut and slitting her primary eyelids to combat the windstorm surrounding her. All was white. Gloriously white, in the way that starlight surpassed understanding, singing directly to her soul. Instinctively, she pressed up a tapered shield and was immediately rewarded by the sight of Islands swishing by. Whap. One Island. Whap, whap-whap. She blasted past them with outrageous abandon.
Another voice chimed in, Clouds are never rough, but she’s travelling too fast for one of her kind. Shake one of their hard little Islands, she will.
The Amethyst Dragoness gazed around her in wonder. Cloud-Dragons, she breathed. Are you –
Of course, sweet low-dweller, said one of the wispy clouds-with-wings, Dragons of the greatest heights are we, incarnate of the winds, blowing where we please. We call ourselves … how may we explain in your dialect? Perhaps, Wisp-Dragons. Wisps.
The Amethyst Dragoness had the barest impression of filmy wings, of insubstantial threads of draconic fire-life, incongruously, speaking to her with chiming clarity. They were as puffy as clouds, myriad lives sporting around her as she imagined Dragons might play together in a terrace lake, spinning and leaping and shooting through the waters. Their speech was as ephemeral as their chosen environment, like a high, tumultuous descant that added musical runs of notes to denote nuances of meaning she could only guess at. Nevertheless, she sensed that they intended to help her.
She began to say, Thank you …
Compress her velocity, my cloud-brethren, came a cry. Compress, shield, bring her down where the Star indicated. Shape her flight.
Aranya blew past many strange, floating Islands, seeing waterfalls tumbling into space off their edges and new forms of draconic life lurking in cave-mouths and lumbering Dragons transporting weapons and floating Human cities and once, on a rocky isthmus, a dark, upturned face – Ardan! She ripped past him so fast that she could not tell through the bright light, even with her Dragoness’ eyes, if it was truly him she had seen. All she saw was a group of Humans flattened in her wake and an angry-looking Red Dragoness, already a speck on the horizon.
She flashed past mountains, hurtling along a trajectory that would have been fatal had she so much as clipped a single peak, but she passed between them by a miracle of precision. Suddenly the Amethyst felt as if she had pitched headlong into a bale of cotton wool. Feathers. Wings brushing her face, bodies folding more softly than the down of the finest royal bed, all around her muzzle and wings, not hurting – assisting. Tearing when they needed to tear, only to reform and leap alongside her with joyful shouts and bugles. Hundreds. Thousands. Together, the Wisps cushioned her headlong rush, and that was for the best, for Aranya flew so low now, leaves whipped her body and Islands rocked in her supersonic wake.
WHAM-BLAM-BLAM! She and her muffling Wisps ripped a canyon of destruction through the forest atop a large Island.
BOOM! She skidded off the surface of a lake, blasting water hundreds of feet into the air.
The water crystallised around her body as a sheath of ice.
More, sang the Wisp-Dragons. Pile in thick, pile her high! More, my wing-brothers!
She felt as if she must suffocate beneath the manifold layers of their presence, but she did not. Where was the heat of her draconic life? She was still colder than ice, so cold, she sensed the air whipping over her left behind a trail of crystals … Aranya tried to gaze about her, but the ice was so dense she could not shift her head. What she saw was as through the thickest pane of crysglass, her gaze fixed upon a great building ahead of her, atop an Island. No, five rows of buildings as large as warehouses … the Amethyst wished to shut her eyes, but could not. They were forced open by the freeze.
The impact was indescribable. Shocking. Battering her body and mind as though Fra’anior himself punched her repeatedly across his caldera. The first building imploded, as did the second. The third closed around her slowly, the fourth collapsed upon her sliding course. Debris rained down, thick beams and stone walls trapping the Amethyst amidst a maze of ice, rubble and ruin.
An unknowable time later, Aranya found herself staring at her left forepaw, counting talons. Five perfect, steaming claws. A whole pawful.
We’ll leave you now, whispered the Wisps. You must change yourself, precious Star. Hide amongst these Dragons for a time. Veil your nature. Hear us? Hide!
Their commands washed upon ears that heeded, but did not understand. Aranya knew she had travelled from a place outside of experience or imagination. She was a star descended to the Island-World, beaten and bruised, and weaker than any hatchling, yet magical fire-life wuthered within her hearts and for that, her soul sang its thankfulness.
Debris avalanched to a standstill all around her. The Star Dragoness had come to rest within the caved-in shell of the fifth building. Nothing smelled familiar. Shards of ice surrounded her prone form, shattered by the impact. Smoke and steam drifted languidly over the scene. Her dulled senses took in splintered beams. A cart-wheel, slowly spinning on its axis. Mounds of rubble lit by flickering fires, juxtaposed with towering shards of ice. She had a narrow field of vision through the debris to an Island-forest that stood riven, as though a mad barber had shaved a path through its hair.
Aranya shuttered her eyes. Izariela, whatever this plan was, I salute thee. And we shall have words when you rise from your tomb – beautiful, aching words.
She wept without tears.
* * * *
Dragon voices roused the Dragon-Princess. Dragons! Petulant, hot-tempered words washed into her ear-canals, cursing the destruction, the fires, the wreckage of the barracks. The speaker was an Orange Dragon of a size that made her brow-ridges twitch, stumping around in the devastation with a furious curl of his lip and lava-like orange fires leaking constantly from his nostrils. Her own nostrils twitched, taking in hundreds of evocative odours. Tropical vegetation. Unfamiliar Dragon-scent. Sulphur. Unknown timbers. And her own scent, like pure starlight …
The Orange Dragon was a bruiser, scarred by many battles, missing much of his left mid-wing near the secondary wing-joint. His helpers were all … Grey-Green? Aranya stared through her narrow peephole. All of them? Weird.
Hide, the Wisps’ last words echoed in her mind. Hide amongst these Dragons for a time.
How was she supposed to hide? She was a unique colour.
Dimly, her mind creaked into motion, as if her body were waking from hibernation – which perhaps, it was. Pathways long unused groaned and tingled as novel sensations spread through her listless limbs and unfeeling wings. Colour? The Dragons were discussing the probable path of the meteorite, eyeing the rapidly melting ice and fires with patent amazement. Mercy, they were all … monsters. Bigger than Ardan, and she had thought him – Ardan!
The Orange Dragon’s muzzle jerked about. Over here! The rubble trembled and collapsed as his massive tonnage pounded toward her. He pounced two hundred feet. KABOOM! A beam dug painfully into her flank. Dig here! I hear hearts. Dig, you scale-less drago-malworms! Curse your sires, your dark fires, the blighted wombs that deformed your eggs …
Hide? When her every fibre screamed from the renewal of blood and fire-life?
Aranya tasted this idea, watching as Grey-Green paws scooped up rubble and tossed aside beams the size of trees. The Orange was certainly feared, his rough commands sparking instant obedience. But if she became just like one of the rest … aye. Magic swelled within her being. That, unlike the rest of her, seemed primed for use. Aranya concentrated on her strange, Chameleon-like power. She must be just like them. Sleeker, perhaps, but exactly the same colouration. Her scales tingled as the change rippled through her body – a shame she could not just Chameleon away her ugliness …
The rubble shifted. Steam hissed somewhere. Her body was rapidly heating toward its proper draconic temperature, now, melting the last of the ice rimed around her legs and wings.
With a heave, four Grey-Greens levered half a roof off of the no-longer-Amethyst Dragoness. The Orange loomed overhead, scowling fit to set her tail alight. He cursed luridly. Dragonish so rough it made her talons curl, beat upon her freshly opened ear-canals. Why, it’s the ugliest freaking piece of windroc-filth I ever did see. Ugh! He spat sideways, a glob of molten rock. Get over here, you spukkuri flatworm!
