Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 129
“Aranya isn’t a brawler,” he said eventually. “She’s a Princess of a faraway realm, not a fighter.”
“The message called her ‘the foulest pox-scarred Grey-Green fledgling you ever saw’,” said the Red. “Sound familiar? Cheekbone shows here. Scars all over the body.”
“Can’t be. Her colour isn’t –” Ardan pulled up, wishing he could have pulled out his tongue by the roots.
The Dragoness purred happily. “Oh? This Dragoness carries a glamour of concealment powerful enough to fool the wards of Montorix’s Pit? Or they know …” She flexed her talons purposely in front of Ardan’s eyes. “What is her true colour?”
He gritted his teeth.
“If you dislocate the jaw, you can slide your smallest talon right down the throat,” Tixi added. “It takes a very long time for a boy to die when impaled that way. Or, you can squeeze the skull in your paw until the eyeballs just –”
“Purple!” he gasped.
“Purple?” The light in her eyes continued to grow stranger and stranger, as if the colour bleached slowly to a ghastly, sallow grey. “What kind of purple, exactly?”
He felt sick. “Amethyst.”
“The prophesied Star Dragoness! She has come!” The Red Shapeshifter seemed enraptured by an all-consuming, private vision. In low, throbbing tones she said, “I knew I smelled fate’s paw upon him the day a Black Dragon fell into our midst; the day a star blazed her trail across the farthest reaches of Herimor. Now, he is the key. For legend teaches us that she who commands a Star Dragoness, commands the very soul of heaven’s riches and glory. Whipped, manipulated, cajoled, he will lead us to the star. But we must be cunning; oh-so-draconic in applying just the right leverage. Oaths, aye, oaths must be made. Fine oaths to bind even a Star Dragoness to us, for she is young. She can be turned if the price … the price is right, the price …”
As she hissed the word ‘price’ three times, her eye-fires fixed upon Ardan, shifting to an avaricious green. “Yeeeesssss … how will you help me find her, Ardan? How? I know you can. I have read the truth in your soul.”
How could Aranya have disguised herself as some kind of fighting Dragoness? That daughter of a royal house – how was it possible? Temptation warred with caution in his heart. Find the Princess, aye. But lead this Red Shapeshifter to her? The stakes were enormously high; one mistake could ruin them all.
“The Lavanias collar constrains me,” he said.
“Remove the collar, he says?” One huge, blood-red paw rose to worry at a loose scale on her jaw. “Oaths first, Black. You will serve me until I have the Star Dragoness in my paw – swear it!”
“I –”
“You will turn Aranya over to me. You will serve my purposes unswervingly until she is mine.”
“You will harm neither the boys nor the dragonet,” said Ardan. Sick? His stomach was tying itself in knots and trying to abscond through his bone-dry throat all at once. Yet via this accursed bargain, could he find freedom? Could he believe he was doing right by returning to the woman who spurned his oath, and rejected his love?
“You can be so amenable when threatened properly,” cooed the Red. “Agreed, Ardan?”
“I will not fight for Marshal Thoralian,” he added.
“Agreed. Now, swear!”
Ardan had to force iron into his reply, for the fear that clenched the innards of his torso and throat rivalled the grip of an angry Dragon’s paw. “I swear upon my fires as a Dragon that I will serve you, Yar’nax’tix the Red, until you have the Star Dragoness in your paw.”
“And I swear I will remove the collar, leave unharmed only those you have named, and release you from this oath the day the Star Dragoness is mine.”
He had never seen Tixi look so satisfied. Her talon slipped coolly up behind his neck, and released the collar with a curl of magic. She said, “On our fast-moving orbital cycle, my Islands already approach the Vassal States. I harbour only hatred for the old Marshal, you can be assured of that. Today we pack. By this evening, we will fly south for the Straits of Hordazar, and Wyldaroon. Meantime, you will tell me everything you know about Aranya.”
She dropped him abruptly; Ardan landed upon flexed arms and rolled smoothly to his feet. From the corner of his eye, he spied Sapphire peeking out from beneath his blanket. A tiny chirrup of telepathic Dragonish entered his mind, Ardan do good. Need Ari.
Great leaping Islands, did he ever …
The Red Dragoness added, sibilantly, “After being suppressed so long by a triple-strong Lavanias collar, Shapeshifter powers return very slowly – if at all.” Ardan gasped, remembering Aranya’s inanition following her period of captivity at Sylakia. His collar had been triple-strong. “Don’t think you’ll be flying away anytime soon, Black Dragon. You are still mine.”
Suddenly, a picture of Aranya entered his mind – eyes flashing with amethyst fire, her gorgeous locks yearning toward his hand, and that assured tilt of the chin that informed anyone who knew her, that this was no woman to be trifled with. Tixi had not the first conception, had she? Like any proud Western Isles woman, Aranya was a warrior in her own right; sharp of scimitar and sharper of deed. To Ardan, that strength was intoxicating.
Smiling as Aranya might, he raised his chin. “You are mistaken in one detail, Marshal. I am not Black. I am the Shadow Dragon, the shadow against which Aranya’s star blazes brightest. You would do well to remember that.”
The Red laughed arrogantly as she departed the harem, but it was poor cover for the disquiet betrayed by her belly-fires. Glamour or no glamour, he had shaken the Marshal to her core.
Retreating to his pallet, Ardan drew Sapphire into his arms. Hey, girl. Aranya’s … alive. There was the abandoned collar. He was unleashed. Hot emotions jammed in his throat. Would she understand, or would she feel betrayed once more?
Sapphire nibbled his earlobe. We find Ari? Good. Ardan marry?
Ardan bent forward, touching his forehead to the dragonet’s febrile scales. Two paws slipped around his neck in a perfectly Human-like hug. Suddenly ambushed by a wild, inexpressible hope, he began to weep as never before.
Aranya!
* * * *
Trying to compare Wyldaroon to anything she had seen before was a futile exercise. Aranya gave up almost as soon as she started. Every time she gazed at something, she saw another wonder. Colourful butterflies the size of dragonets drifted amongst lush, floating Islands which were linked together by a bewildering latticework of greenery – apparently originally draconic in nature, but quickly covered by creeping vines or curling branches. Some Islands caught waterfalls from those above, forming tiered cascades many Islands tall. The foliage was beyond lush. It exploded in every direction in daring sprays of flowers and hanging ferns thousands of feet long and waving, spiky-haired crowns of Islands. There were dragonets – forty different types she had counted so far, with quadruple wings, frills, long flattened bodies, or even something like sails … and creeping forest-Dragons, and tiny Dragonkind no longer than her Human’s finger, which drank nectar and pollinated flowers. Over to her left wing, she saw blue aquatic Dragons racing up a trio of waterfalls in great, joyous sprays. A pair of eyes each fifteen feet wide glared briefly at her from the underside of an Island, before withdrawing languidly.
She flew inside a three-dimensional jungle – how did one navigate this place? The Pygmy girl would have been blown right out of her little stockings. Or had she gone barefoot?
That inane speculation evaporated as they surmounted the Islands of this single Archipelago, one of thousands in Wyldaroon, and entered a realm of rainbows. Oh, and mountains! Aranya gazed at the rolling, white-capped mountain range spanning the horizon from North to South, seemingly close enough to touch, and batted away a treacherous notion that perhaps Immadia was not, after all, the most beautiful location in the Island-World. Nonsense.
She blinked. Ridiculously awesome mountains – four leagues tall? Five? More? Her Dragon sight abruptly zoomed in on what she had taken for a snow-avalanche, and she realised that was an avalanche of White Dragonkind – thousands strong, perhaps a herd on the move?
Before she knew it, a tear squeezed from her left eye and fell. Flying just beneath her, Gang’s tongue flicked in and out instinctively. Mmm? he puzzled, glancing at the clear sky. Magical raindrops?
Aranya winged along, the very paragon of innocence.
Unholy smoking volcanoes, what had she done now? What would her strange tear-magic do to a Dragon? Turn him into a Shapeshifter? Her hearts lurched painfully as a different thought intruded – his scars might be healed. And what of his old wounds that rendered him incapable of roosting with a female, just as the pox had similarly scarred her … there?
Let it be.
Every Dragoness – and the one male Dragon – in the Dragonwing shivered simultaneously and glanced about in evident puzzlement as the oath-magic teased their Dragon senses.
She projected the same surprise as everyone else.
She had to act normal. Aranya must be just one of fifty Dragonesses and two dozen Shapeshifters winging southward toward a similarly tangled group of Islands, this one garbed in vast blue flowers with deep orange hearts. She was the smallest by forty feet, aye, but she pretended the difference did not exist. Her eyes kept searching for the bases of Islands, for the normalcy of Cloudlands lapping around rocky shores, but that was absent. The suns-set colours embellishing the not-too-distant mountains and the vibrant sprays of rainbows adorning myriad waterfalls and drifting clouds of moisture almost undid her soul.
Breathing deep of the pollen-rich air, Aranya said, How does it feel to be out here at last, Gang?
Sacred, he replied.
So, the old fire-blower had a sweet streak? She knew that, of course. Just as she knew he had been watching her and filing away her every action and reaction in that cavernous mind of his. Gang’s suspicion was veiled with plenteous draconic subterfuge, but they had grown close in the past weeks and she, too, was aware of his signals. He might yet be her undoing. And how could she lie to these Dragons? She was the Island-World’s worst liar, bar none.
Therefore, she must not lie.
Late that evening, the Dragons rested in the bowels of a small Archipelago beyond the last of the Gladiator Pits, which occupied a lawless stretch of Archipelagos near the north-western corner of Wyldaroon. They ate, and Huaricithe questioned Aranya.
Half an hour later, the Navy-Blue Dragoness finally lost her temper. That was a long period for a Dragon, but her ensuing effort made the average erupting volcano look extinct. After ten minutes of venting her pique at considerable, creative and fiery length, when threats of a return to the Pits had been made and Aranya’s own fury had risen to a choking boil of its own, Gang stepped in.
He said, One question. One honest answer, Aranya. Can you manage that much?
Depends on the question, she hedged.
Ruddy fledgling doesn’t know her place! grumbled another Shapeshifter. No hint of glamour, expects us to understand her need for ruddy secrecy but not so much as half a scale’s hint as to why!
Strangest accent she has, grunted another. Can’t for my fire-life place it to any region I know.
Some few Dragons were amused, but the majority sided firmly with Marshal Huaricithe – a lynch-mob on paws, Aranya thought. Nonetheless, she had stuck to her line. Secrecy was vital. She could not say, not on pain of all the various torments Huaricithe had just recited.
She fears Thoralian, said Gang, over the rising hubbub.
That silenced the congregation. One, an older female Green called Itomiki, blurted out, Did the old Marshal hurt thee and thy family, little one?
Aye, Aranya growled, seizing a potential way out with relief. But I do not fear him.
No? pressed Gang.
No!
Looming over her, the hulking Gladiator pressed his muzzle right into her face and hissed cruelly, You slimy swamp-dwelling liar, you two-faced undraconic null-fires piddling little weasel – Aranya clamped her jaw shut as her fires surged uncontrollably – you grey-hearted salamander falsely clothed in Dragonskin, you calamitous coward whelped of deserters and runaways – she groaned in pain – you whelp of a diseased caveworm blighted amongst all creatures to a degree of hideousness –
HE DID THIS TO ME!!
Aranya clamped her jaw shut as thunder shook their Island. Huge thunder. Not just an angry-Aranya peal of thunder. Fra’anior’s voice.
Mercy!
Her thighs coiled faster than thought. Aranya sprang seventy feet in a single vertical bound, before her wings wrenched back toward her tail, stabbing pain into her shoulders. Behind her, the sheltered encampment exploded with shouts:
Catch her! Don’t let her escape! Burn the liar!
Fireballs, psychic strikes and even a sharp tugging at her wings, perhaps a Kinetic attack, staggered the young Dragoness as she accelerated away. Aranya slewed violently through a curtain of vegetation, spinning in two complete rotations before she oriented her wings and shot upward with Dragon-swift reactions. She jinked past hanging Islands, sliced through two cool waterfalls and hurtled upside-down through an equally startled flight of red dragonets, who squeaked in annoyance, only to flee as ten larger Dragons hurtled out of the gloom. Leaving a vocally unimpressed chorus eating her dust, Aranya flicked past a flotilla of the strange, bloated Dragons that held Islands upon their massed backs, and out into the open.
What she beheld knocked the fire and the stuffing right out of her.
A storm – an almighty storm!
Filling every horizon in a single, unbroken arc, massive shoulders of lightning-shot black cloud billowed beneath the lustre of a full Yellow Moon. An eruption, her panicked thoughts suggested. Then Aranya paused, her jaw dangling even further in an expression Zip called ‘catching windrocs as opposed to flies’. The lightning glinting behind those malevolent storm battlements was distinctly amethyst – undeniably anomalous and magical in origin, different in character to her shell-grandfather’s signature storm-mantling. The multi-branched, gorgeous amethyst lightning throwing itself across the leagues between the surging, sooty cloud-mountains made that much crystal clear.
The storm intensified as if charged by the electrified response of her speeding hearts-beat. No. This was not her signature, was it?
Aranya’s nostrils flared, taking in more than the storm’s scent. Hints of primal magic, operating at levels of existence she did not understand. Not malevolence so much as … Imbalance? A sense of release? Yet why the knowledge of connection, why this inkling that she could scent her own multifarious Amethyst Shapeshifter scent? Was this the same redolence she had detected in Izariela’s tomb?
Humansoul was dancing! Flying! That uninhibited Hualiama-esque flare and whirl of insubstantial limbs … Dragoness-Aranya glared at herself in perplexity. Lunatic.
Her Human’s laughter welled up like a spring of living water. We are two but one, Dragonsoul. Release your fears. What will be –
Will occur at the verimost talon-flick of a Star Dragoness? If only!
Humansoul’s merriment at her dry sarcasm was unbridled; a strange, fitting counterpoint to the storm’s ominous onset. Her inner voice seemed to fade into a faraway cry, Dance, o Amethyst … all we are asked to do in this life, is to dance …
Suddenly, the Star Dragoness became aware of Gang on her port side and Huaricithe to the starboard, scrutinising the storm with wary attention. Three necks twizzled identically, taking in the unnatural approach of those threatening storm-billows.
By shielded telepathy, Gang whispered to her, ’Tis the Song of the Storm Dragon.
Aranya nearly bit through her tongue. What?
An old legend of the Dragonfriend, the Grey-Green Dragon replied peaceably. A prophecy, indeed, attributed to her roost-mate-soul, Grandion. I know thy scent, Shapeshifter Scrap. I cannot prove anything as yet, but rest assured, I will plumb thy secrets, for I declare, as surely as the Island-World turns about the twin suns, Marshal Thoralian cannot be defeated by subterfuge and secrets kept in darkness, for those secrets will do nought but rend and destroy. All must be light, and white-fires light. Then truth will become our shield, our talon, and the paw of ultimate justice.
She caught herself jaw-dangling again. The soul-quaking power of his words!
Gangurtharr? A croak, nothing more.
He peered at her quizzically, smugly, draconic-mysteriously. Aye, Aranya of no past? Is it not every Dragon’s obligation to seek white-fires? Come. We must shelter from this storm.
With that, he winged away.
* * * *
From North and South came the drakes of Thoralian’s command, appearing from amidst the floating Islands as if a plague peeled off the ravaged backs of its victims. Shapeshifter Dragons flung the drakes into battle in their legions. Twice, Aranya thought she might have caught sight of a Yellow-White Dragon commanding the hordes, but amidst the torrential rain, the continuous hammering of storms and swirling clouds, it was impossible to tell for certain.
That first night, as the storm whipped their surrounds like the strokes of an almighty, many-stranded whip, Aranya feared the Islands must surely be flung back into the Cloudlands whence they came. Trees ripped free of their roots, leaves and whole branches whistled through the air, and stones pelted the sheltering Dragons, who hunkered down and spoke ominously about a type of storm called ‘hurricane’, unfamiliar to Aranya, which flung Archipelagos out of their customary paths, forming entirely new Island-patterns to bemuse and preoccupy the cartographers. Apparently, cartography in Herimor was a celebrated profession requiring a combination of artistry, prescience, magic and hard facts, mostly undertaken by a species called ‘Shurmbikals’, a humanoid reptile of uncertain origin and even more uncertain powers.
Come morning, there was a cheerful wake-up battle against three hundred fang-champing, battle-mad drakes. Aranya flew with Huari’s Dragonwing and fought with all her heart. The second day was a repeat of the first, only this one held two battles, larger than the first, as the powerful Navy-Blue fought to return her Dragonwing to her fortresses some six hundred leagues southwest of the Pits region. On the third day, further waves of titanic lightning-storms swept in, even more impressive than the first.
