Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 130
Unseasonable weather, grumbled the all-female Dragonwing, casting Aranya dark-fires glances.
Late that morning as they took a short rest inside yet another tangled, flying jungle, Gang sneaked up behind Aranya and hissed, Song of the Storm Dragon!
She whirled in a jumble of wings and limbs. Gang! Don’t do that.
Almost scared you into your Human hide, did I?
Go pester Huaricithe. You seem to have a fiery spot for her.
Aye, he growled. You know what, Scrap? I’ve an unaccustomed itch in my – he pointed to a spot that made her fires blush. I haven’t had feeling down there in fifty years. And, my hide seems to be changing. The footprint of each scar is reducing in size, their colour –
What? Oh, Gang, that’s wonderful news!
Gaah, she could barely convince herself, let alone a hyper-aware Herimor Dragon. They all seemed to live and breathe this crazy form of subterfuge they called ‘glamour’. As far as she could tell, they were all born lie-detectors and wrapped themselves in endless onion-like layers of mental shielding meant to keep prying thoughts out of minds. All of that duplicity demanded a great deal of magic and effort.
Ever since I tasted a strange teardrop on the breeze, he snorted. Do you know of a Dragon power that produces tears, Scrapling?
Aranya aimed a fond bite as high up his left thigh as she could reach. I know only that you grow weepy in your senescence. Oh, Gang, you’re as transparent as that pool over there.
And you, my charming little fabricator, could not tell a convincing lie given a hundred years’ training and all the glamour in Herimor, he growled back. Come on. When will you transform for us? I know you can. You smell like Huari and those other Shifters. You reek of Shapeshifter –
TO BATTLE! Huaricithe roared.
Freaking feral windrocs, why had she never considered that Shapeshifters might smell a certain way? Enraged beyond reason, and missing her friends like a hole in her Dragon hearts, Aranya belatedly launched out after the rest of the Dragonwing. A Dragon fell right past her. Not one of their own. The Amethyst Dragoness shot through the foliage out into the open, above the small, nameless cluster of Islands, and gasped.
Fiery red drakes occluded the stormy skies. Counting was pointless. Low, underslung jaws furnished with hooked fangs and bloodshot eyes surrounded them; an overwhelming force. Thoralian must have been breeding again. Their chittering surrounded her like a million insects singing at once, filling the noon skies with an eerie buzzing sound as the drakes clumped together and wheeled into the attack, dive-bombing the much larger Dragons. Wings torn! Eyes ripped from their sockets. Drakes hung off lips and wings, mobbing the much larger Lesser Dragons. In return, mighty jaws champed the smaller, twenty-foot Dragonkind in half and fireballs seared the air, chargrilling their victims. Drakes rained from the skies. Dragons perished. Aranya saw Gangurtharr barrelling into a thick knot of drakes overwhelming a Green Dragoness, and followed.
Useless destruction. If Thoralian had his way, he would destroy every Dragon in the Island-World. In their madness, these drakes even attacked the ragions clamped to the undersides of Islands. Anything that moved.
Her sorrow was her Storm.
Here, the battle raged between pockets of storm-clouds. Aranya knew that this Storm was something linked once more with her emotions, with the burdens that weighed her hearts so heavily, or even with her concern over the fate of her Island-World. These were her creatures. As a Star Dragoness, she was sworn to set this Imbalance to rights.
Suddenly, her scales crawled as if seeking to lift off her back. Ardan. She felt … Ardan! That profound linkage stirred just slightly, so very faraway, in her breast …
Galvanised, Aranya reached for her power. If there was a Storm Dragon, perhaps his legendary power lived in his progeny; if there was a song to be sung, then she must be the singer.
In your honour, grandsire.
She genuflected deeply. Then, the Amethyst Dragoness acquiesced at last. Aranya sang to her Storm. Lightning gathered upon her paws. It sparked in great torrents from the gathered clouds, and played over her scales in crazed, jagged patterns. Come to me, she sang. I shall discharge you in the cause of justice.
Power sizzled across her scales. More, she crooned. Join my fires, my song, my life …
Grief-song. Power-song. Dragonsong!
Coiling lightning about her talons, the Amethyst Dragoness launched into the battle with a melancholy ballad rising upon her lips – one of Hualiama’s favourites, she had read in her Aunt’s writings. It seemed appropriate, the legend of Saggaz Thunderdoom:
Bestriding boiling thunderheads, the Thunderdoom arose,
His roar a trump of thunder,
Like wingéd lightning his mighty paw,
Struck the skies asunder!
And as she sang, she fell upon the drakes and their commanding Shapeshifters like the Thunderdoom of old, flinging lightning across the divide from her talons, aiming her wingtips and muzzle at Shifters, and even striking with mighty bolts shot from her tail. She burned. She blazed. Aranya could not have described the fires that devoured her soul at that moment, only that they were white, excruciatingly white, so beautiful that they consumed, uplifted and inspired all at once, and in that whiteness was a well of truth by which she must fly all the days of the life given to her under the twin suns.
The battle was her song. Wild Dragonsong swelled in her mind, until the swirling of body and tangling of claws became as nothing before the mighty power of her song, and she drew from the surrounding Storm-power all that was to be drawn, and depleted herself in almighty vengeance. She saw Thoralian. She saw him everywhere, in the claws, the fangs and in the faces of their enemies – his foul imprint lived in their souls, and she knew she must expunge every last taint.
Corkscrewing pugnaciously past Gangurtharr, the Star Dragoness cleaned his back and shoulders of drakes with thirteen precision blasts in the space of a quarter-second, leaving the startled Dragon gaping amidst a cloud of drifting grey ash. She whirled into the midst of Huaricithe’s beleaguered command, disappearing for a moment behind the huge, closely-packed Dragonesses.
Hsst! Hsst! Ka-ka-ka-kraaack! This was the seductive voice of her amethyst-tinged lightning. Strike after strike raged from her claws, racing through the narrowest gaps and around wings and between startled, tucked-up legs, as though the Dragonesses themselves flew within a storm, only that storm was the fledgling in their midst; they bugled in shock and amazement as the enemy imploded, burned, shot away on the wings of a sharp puff of Storm-wind.
Having cleared the nearby skies, Aranya swirled away. Retribution-sorrow! Rage! She roared, KNOW THE TASTE OF FRA’ANIOR’S WRATH, THORALIAN!
Three Yellow Shapeshifters broke for cover. Aranya raced after. Lightning thundered between the Islands. Only one disembodied head fell into the void of the Cloudlands below.
The Amethyst Dragoness, burning so heatedly that the air itself seemed to flee from her presence, swooped beneath the Island-Cluster, gathering her wrath for the drakes massed beyond. Where was Thoralian? Where was he? She sensed his presence, somewhere. Somehow. He was here in Wyldaroon, and she burned suns-bright against him … for he had broken her. Marked her. Tortured her with all the vicious pleasure of an insatiably evil Dragon.
Together with thirty Dragonesses of Huaricithe’s Dragonwing, the Star Dragoness fell upon a pack of five hundred vicious drakes, raging, burning, weeping, knowing now her own inanition, the expenditure of battle-effort from wasted lungs, that she could not breathe yet had no need to, for the starlight was her life and her song, the elemental power of her heritage.
Aranya’s wings folded.
Drakes mobbed her, shocked into a feral rage, but her Dragon-kin blasted through with a massive volley of fireballs, acid spit and Huaricithe’s own blue-chased fireballs … and a Dragon’s paws gripped her falling, flaccid body, hissing with shock at the extreme heat radiating from her white-hot scales, shifting to clasp just with the talons so that his Dragon-scales would not melt. Gangurtharr bore her aloft, already bugling the victory.
The Amethyst slumped in his paws. Job … done, Gang? Did we do the job?
Thou art the Assassin, he replied.
For long moments, cool winds soughed across her scales, slowly relieving the awful heat and reviving her senses. Aranya felt a trickle of magic slowly returning to her spent being. She heaved and rasped for breath. Thanks … rescue.
Softly now, Scrap, he whispered, and there was a light in his eyes Aranya did not understand. Bearing her up tenderly, the massive Dragon brought her to the place where Huaricithe had re-gathered her Dragonwing.
Aranya smiled tiredly. Good battle, mighty Dragon-kin!
They stared at her, fixed of eye and motionless of wing. Several Dragons even dribbled fire between their fangs. A bunch of hapless ralti sheep, she thought uncharitably. Or, was there something else? No-one seemed to be talking or boasting, and where were the celebrations due a notable victory?
What’s the matter? We won, didn’t we?
Gang breathed, Did you know your scales are white, Scrap? Pure white?
Whaaaaat … Aranya stared at her paws; her wings. As white as Immadia’s freshly-fallen snows. Betrayed! Oh, Gangurtharr …
He bowed his muzzle. Art thou Aranya, pluckéd from the starry host?
Huaricithe extended her wings in the most formal of genuflections. Star Dragoness.
Following her example, all of the Dragonesses of her Dragonwing lowered their muzzles and made humble obeisance, whispering, Star Dragoness. Star Dragoness. We worship thee. We worship, we worship …
Aranya gasped, You wor – what? You can’t do that! No!
Only the wind answered her plaintive cry.
Chapter 26: Thoralian’s Bequest
IN TWO Further days of rapid travel, Leandrial led her group to Entorixthu’s Cleft. Here, the Mesas had been deeply split, giving rise to a dark cleft flanked by two even darker pillars at the entrance, black metallic statues depicting two heads of Fra’anior himself. Those forbidding statues stood a mere five times taller than Leandrial was long, thought Zip, hovering on the wing as she eyed the Land Dragoness judiciously. Sure, she filled a low mountaintop as few Dragons might. But those peaks ahead – they would test Land Dragons’ capabilities to the limit.
Ri’arion, naturally, was swapping notes with Leandrial. “You say the pass is eleven miles high?”
“More, depending on the snow and ice,” she replied.
“That’s high, even for a Lesser Dragon,” he noted. “Not much of a pass, is it? Better than crossing the real highlands on either side, suppose.”
“A mere fifteen to eighteen miles tall, according to my trigonometric calculations,” agreed the Welkin-Runner. “Alright, how shall we organise ourselves, monk?”
Ri’arion said, “Bigger Runners at the front, you in the middle, Leandrial, and the rest close behind. I’ve worked the shield-constructs as best I can, given our differing levels of ability. The Blast-Runners will stick close to their ‘buddy’ Welkin-Runners. Halfway up the pass or so, we’ll have them settle inside mouths because of their lack of resistance to extreme cold. The Lesser Dragons will scout to try to keep the Ice-Runners at bay.”
“They’re hardly Runners,” complained one of the younger Welkin-Runners, Jelladrial by name. Their group had now swelled to include eleven of Leandrial’s kin, as they had found a few more individuals taking refuge in the Sea of Dragons’ Tears.
“Sub-intelligent Dragonkind,” the monk agreed smoothly. “Pack hunters that delight in warmly welcoming visitors to the Mesas, by all accounts.”
“Furry Dragons? Ugh,” sniffed another Welkin-Runner.
“No point in jawing the day away here,” Zuziana said wanly, willing her stomach to stay firmly in place. “We’ve plenty of daylight hours left. No rest for depraved, Princess-despoiling recalcitrant excuses for religious men.”
Ri’arion kicked her shoulder, chuckling, “In my defence –”
“Defence? I don’t believe I’ve made that particular allowance in your case. I like to keep my husbands on a short chain.”
“Husbands, plural? I’m no schizophrenic Shapeshifter – realising suddenly that I have two wives, one scaly and cuddly, and the other a petite thorn bush.”
Chuckling with her monk, the Azure Dragoness winged toward the great, weather-beaten statues guarding Entorixthu’s Cleft. Certainly, she had a new appreciation for Aranya’s healthy fear of the Great Onyx. Imagine having a clutch of those heads champing at your tail-end all night?
A chill breeze tugged at her wing membranes, a harbinger of things to come. This was undoubtedly a job for an Immadian, not a girl from tropical Remoy. Zip silently beseeched Fra’anior to return Aranya to them. And when he did, she would so take the Amethyst to task for daring to slingshot them out of the Rift-Storm! Whatever had she been thinking – self-sacrifice? By the Black One’s own belly-fires, that best friend of hers needed some common pragmatism thoroughly beaten into her armour-plated skull!
She knew just the girl to do that, too.
The Welkin-Runners emerged from the cream-fluff Cloudlands in a dense, damp-slick wedge. The lowering suns brought out the vibrant blues of their scales as never before. Gigantic chameleons, she thought. Leandrial was more than twice the size of any of her kin, a giant among giants, and the Blast-Runners clustered above her neck seemed little more than tiny children clutching their mother’s ruff. Two eggs had hatched inside of Leandrial’s mouth the previous evening, sparking joyous Dragonsong amongst Tari’s Dragonwing, who were resting until they entered the Cleft itself. Zip had held one of the wobbly hatchlings in her paws, and wondered how her triplets might come out – Human or scaly? Was there a rule for Shapeshifters?
Triplets? Leaping Islands crowned by dancing rainbows, in triplicate!
The Land Dragons rapidly sloughed off the last of the Cloudlands as they ascended a hidden slope protruding from Entorixthu’s Cleft like a long tongue, the result of centuries of erosion. A surprisingly turquoise river filled much of the mile-wide gap between the statues, with white floes moving briskly in the slurry of its evidently chill flow. That was no barrier to the Welkin-Runners. They surged upslope gusting steaming puffs of air over their labouring bodies. With a combined mental touch, Ri’arion and Leandrial checked their pressure-increasing, osmotic and cold-reflective shield-layers and helped several of the younger Land Dragons make adjustments. Then, they poured up the long, winding cleft into the heart of the Mesas.
The route wound gently into a broad, temperate valley lined with forests of a local gum tree, with distinctly blue, teardrop-shaped leaves; these covered the valley’s slopes alongside the river in a dense, hundred-foot forest canopy. A menthol-like tang came to Zuziana’s nostrils. She inhaled appreciatively. For this part, the Land Dragons elected to swim-wade upriver. After all, the deep flow barely covered their bellies. Several hours later, the valley opened into ostensibly uninhabited riverine pastureland, where the wavy bluegrass was a summery azure with white tufts backed by faraway ranks of jutting mauve and grey mountains, capped with white snowfall. The size and quantity of the animal droppings led Zuziana to wonder where all the denizens had vanished to.
They aimed for a second set of black statues, easily visible over the flat blue grassland from a distance of over a hundred miles, and by nightfall, passed onward into the mountains proper. Leandrial called a mid-evening rest as, having climbed a steep slope to a height of perhaps four miles above the Cloudlands, the mountains revealed … aye, more mountains, and more beyond, until the serried ranks of purple and white peaks seemed to touch the sky itself. The Land Dragons performed health checks, indulged in a little forest-crushing wrestling match, and Leandrial let her coterie of fledglings and hatchlings out of her mouth to play and feed in the icy night air.
An hour later, taskmaster-Ri’arion called the Dragons to order.
Zip tried very hard not to giggle at the prospect of a dashing six-foot-plus Human calling their monstrous Land Dragon companions to heel. Most would not even have noticed had they trodden upon him by accident.
Now, the trail climbed relentlessly, forcing the heavy Land Dragons to push themselves hard. To the Lesser Dragons the air became bitingly cold and thin as they climbed; far worse for Land Dragons, accustomed to the great air pressures and comfortable warmth of their middle and middle-lower layers. They huffed and panted as they walked over the permafrost, pressing into a steadily worsening breeze that swept down from the heights, bringing a tang of moisture and new smells – draconic smells.
Leandrial said, “They’re waiting for us up ahead.”
“Couldn’t be Thoralian’s handiwork, could it?” asked Ri’arion.
They had earlier discussed intelligence detected from a patrol of Gem-Runners that suggested one of the Thoralians might already be in Wyldaroon, recruiting Gladiator Dragons for his armies.
Leandrial shook her muzzle resolutely. “Seems unlikely. But we must be alert. He might well have forces watching the mountains. He seems to have covered most of Herimor with his spies and patrols. Good thinking to lay a false trail yesterday.”
The monk pointed with his chin. “Do you smell a storm?”
“Perhaps beyond the pass,” she rumbled, testing her eye-beam with a brief shot into the sky. “Onward and upward, my friends.”
Crossing a ridge, they descended for an hour before traversing a flat, isolated plain. Dense, low-hanging cloudbanks obscured the farther peaks. Leandrial oriented them on a third set of statues and they walked doggedly into the first flurries of snow. The ground was ice and red stone, unrelieved by any green, growing thing. Shortly, the Blast-Runners made their retreat into warm and welcoming mouths, and the group pushed up another climb into the teeth of a freshening gale as the weather closed in. Tari the Red passed overhead, calling a warning.
