Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 156
Here came Leandrial’s countdown. Five, four …
Ardan’s talons ripped into one of his opponents, crippling the Grey-Green’s left wing. The Dragoness fell away with a wild cry. He Shadowed immediately, and emerged to savage another Dragon with rending, crippling precision in the base of the next behind the skull spikes, killing him instantly.
… three, two …
Light-cannon strikes smashed into a quartet of enemy Dragons in Aranya’s path, whilst a stray kinetic blast reflected wildly off her rotating body, striking many Dragons in range. Aranya struck out and then barrel-rolled away from the fray, roaring, BEWARE ABOVE!
… one …
Every Dragon in Ardan’s command glanced skyward to check what new danger lurked in the heights.
Aranya’s Dragonwing heard the code phrase and broke away to the West, in the most unexpected direction, as Leandrial breached the Cloudlands from the mound she had discovered. The enemy Dragons glanced about in shock. It was unheard-of, even undraconic, to abandon a battle in this way – indeed, half a dozen Grey-Greens of Aranya’s command were still attacking, too far immersed in battle-rage to hear or respond to commands.
Over her shoulder, Aranya sneered, You are fool, a shadow of the Dragon you were.
Ardan was still peering after her in a welter of indignation when Leandrial’s upraised paw swept through a massive forehand swipe. The aged Land Dragoness swatted his Dragonwing like an aggrieved man flailing at a bloodsucking mosquito.
* * * *
“Relief from the Drake attacks is what we achieved,” said Zuziana, displeased by the severity creasing Ri’arion’s features. “I can tell what you’re thinking, dear husband. You’re thinking we’re frivolous and irresponsible for having fun during that big, serious battle out there. Do you think Aranya and I don’t know the meaning of war – and the cost? Have you not seen our scars?”
“Zuzi …” He gulped, hesitated, and then put his arms around Aranya’s shoulders anyway. “I get to worry. Don’t mistake my intent – I am he who dared to curse Garthion, and look at what that earned him.”
“Huh.”
“Besides, those are my kids in there, too. I worry! However, fear that if they take after you, they’ll be far too gorgeous. How will I ever beat off all the suitors?”
“You’re one insufferably handsome blackmailer.”
“Alright, I am concerned what our allies think about your … uh …”
“Improvising? Shadow-swatting? Inventing snarksome solutions to nettlesome problems? We operate best like this, you know – aye, look at me with just that glint in your eye, my sexy Nameless Man. I know we’re giving Yiisuriel a headache, and given she has a brain the size of a mountain, that’s a truly Dragonesque prospect.”
“Snarksome isn’t even a word,” the monk protested.
“I royally declare it exists in the Remoyan dictionary of Zip-isms.”
Laughing, Ri’arion helped himself to the bowl of cut fruit they were sharing for dinner. “You’re irresistible, do you know that?”
“Of course, I make an art of irresistibility – and that is indeed a word, husband dearest. Look it up if you’re in doubt.”
“This is where I do not miss the opportunity to flirt, right?”
Zip crowed, “He’s teachable! A fine quality in a husband, I do declare.”
Ri’arion’s eyebrows assaulted the domed expanse of his forehead. “Oh? Then know that I plan to look you up – and down – the moment you reappear. Repeatedly. I plan to examine and understand your every nuance in the utmost detail, Zuziana of Remoy, and if proposing that I riffle through every leaf of your scroll passes for a lewd proposition in your despicable little mind … let it be understood, that is precisely the innuendo I intend, not a jot more, and not a jot less.”
“Ooh,” Zip giggled, discovering that invisible people could still blush – invisibly. “Bet they never taught you such naughty language in monk-school, did they?”
“Not even close,” he confessed.
“Verily, I wish to smooch thee breathless, husband-mine,” she said. “Now, Aranya’s itching even worse than me. I haven’t let her out all day. She keeps gassing away in there like a misfiring meriatite furnace engine – Balance this, Harmonic starry-stuff that … you know what I mean.”
Ri’arion matched her wink for wink. “Oh, that I do, aye. Mystical murmurings make me muse mightily, saith the Immadian.”
“Now she’s just – ouch! She bit me!”
“Liar,” Aranya snorted.
He bowed formally to her, with a brief but elaborate series of Fra’aniorian hand-twirls. “A very good evening to thee, darling wife.”
* * * *
Aranya always seemed to find herself blushing when she swapped with Zuziana, which had become an established routine. It was tricky and unsatisfying to try to give both of them the awake time they required, as well as the requisite sleep, and she wondered if that was part of the reason her resources had become so drained. Aye, she partook of Aunt Hualiama’s special diet. Yuck. And the daily mental and physical exercises. Painful but necessary. Now, as she adjusted her face-veil in front of the mirror in her small, neat chambers, with the unfamiliar circular bed and thick orrican furs upon the floor, she took a moment to examine the flesh of her scarred cheek. Healing, definitely. Each day saw progress, minute yet discernible, as though the imperative to return to her previous form encountered some unknown form of resistance. It bore investigation.
At least her hair seemed to have survived the depredations of all the Dragon fire and ire that had been aimed in her direction over the last few months. The crazy colours showed no sign of settling into anything that suggested normality, she thought, rolling onyx, sapphire, white, auburn and golden threads between her fingers – and that was not the half of it. Tilting back her head, she combed out its near knee-length waves with a small magical routine she had been working on. Kinetic magic. Her command was unsure as yet, but it certainly made detangling knots a breeze for a girl with very long hair.
Sapphire? The dragonet peeped softly, then it felt as if a sleeper turned over and settled.
Did dragonets dream, too?
Clipping her face veil into place, she exited her chamber and walked steadily up through Yiisuriel’s levels, conscious of the Dragoness’ mind tracking her progress. Herimor was a haven of nasty bugs and creatures that specialised in assassinating Shapeshifters and Lesser Dragons. It was no secret that the Thoralians would dearly love to do away with a bothersome Star Dragoness, hence a veritable posse of bodyguards and the full-time tracking. Not that she had needed convincing. Five attempted Scorpiolute attacks had alternated with other, less conventional forms of assassination including three food poisoning attempts – those she knew of. But Aranya had only to think upon her mother’s fate to shiver and concede the point. The apprehension it would have cost her was not worth the price.
At length, her cushioned slipper-steps brought her to a surface door, the one that led to Yiisuriel’s main peak.
Aranya walked out into a cloudless late evening, enjoying a still-warm breeze upon her cheek that brought many unfamiliar, heavy scents and tangs to her attention. None of the crisp freshness of an Immadian night, where all sounds were dampened by a flawless blanket of snow. Here were the pungent scents of cedar and nakkiso-bush, the richness of rumis, chimlily and alangar pollens, and the metallic, musty scents of the ever-present ragions, the numberless protodraconic denizens of this realm that floated and linked the mighty rafts of Islands.
How she would have loved the leisure to study all the different, magical forms of life present in this realm. So many types and varieties of Dragonkind, not to mention the tumbling ribbons of flowers and the apparent ability of these Islands to produce their own water.
Sapphire had been laughably unimpressed to be confronted by some of the literally hundreds of dragonet varieties. Bah, overgrown butterflies, she had sneered. Pond-skater! That’s a waddling toad … and what do you even call the frilly nonsense on that one?
Pure elegance, Aranya teased.
The dragonet made sure the Princess’ left ear knew it was in mortal danger of being chewed off the side of her head. That was before she, too, had become a disembodied presence within Aranya’s soul.
She breathed deep of the night’s fragrance. Her throat felt so taut, her heart heavy and engorged with the foreboding which accompanied her thought from earlier that day: Everything I touch turns to dust. Had she meant that? Was it true? Had Fra’anior turned a deaf ear canal to her pleas, or did she no longer enjoy his favour?
The Great Onyx remained silent. So too, the stars and all about her.
What now? Even the wisps and mites of the Island-World shunned the marred star, one who must suffer to be the butt of Thoralian’s every joke. Even her saviour in his torture chambers, Jia-Llonya, had taken off with her ex-boyfriend – he too had been broken by this conflict, shattered and imperfectly healed, and it was all her fault.
With a low cry of anguish, she fell to her knees. O you ridiculous phantasm, why will you not answer me?
Star … oh, Star …
Chapter 8: Race to the Fires
Arrested in the act of shifting to relieve the pressure on the knurled lesions of her kneecaps, Aranya came within an inch of falling flat on her face. Only at the last second did her brain remember to fling out her arms. Skinned elbows. Perfect.
Sprawled on hands and knees, she cried, Uh –
Necromancer attack … help, she heard, in burry and distant tones. Dreaming? Was the female creature dreaming?
Where are you? Are the Thoralians attacking you?
Strange images stirred in her mind. A misshapen, monstrous creature hammering its way into an underground fortress not dissimilar to Marshal Huari’s home, which had also suffered Thoralian’s depredations. A bald-headed, granite block of a man with a fearfully intense gaze issuing commands to clusters of soldiers and Dragons. He wore enough armour to supply a Dragonship’s cladding, never mind an ordinary man. Spurts of Dragon battle. Drakes. Refugees teeming. A dark, damaged portal stuffed with debris. She saw all in flashes.
Whimpering, suffering, the terrors of memory like a fierce whirlpool sucking hungrily at her mind …
Aranya wrenched herself free with an effort. Where? I will come, but where are you?
She saw a scene of draconic life seething and spitting like a turbulent caldera about to erupt; again that dizzying sense of connection struck her, laced through with inchoate, paralysing fears.
Easy there, petal. Shh. Only, tell me where. I am ready.
Concepts spat into her mind far faster than before, a chaotic flood of overwhelming need. A blur of faces. Fears of Thoralian. Dark passages. A fantastical ruby-decorated hall. Kissing the fierce soldier, feeling his hands twined in her hair! Aranya coloured at the tenor of their passion. Oh! A predatory, prowling presence sniffing about the portals of a terrified mind. Darkness and dungeon-stench, the foetid odour of agony Aranya knew far, far too well. She clenched her fists painfully tight. Someone had tortured this poor girl! That faraway mind was spinning, pulsating, fragmenting at its edges, yet somehow the core was a cool, pulsing place of blue which flowed like liquid, yet was flame. Brilliant flame, like the magnesium flares she had sometimes seen Beran use to light a fortress for night-time attack. Eviscerating fear washed through her, causing the Immadian to break out in a cold sweat.
Darling … petal, calm yourself. Just tell me –
AFRAID! My powers … don’t come. You CAN’T HAVE ME!
Aranya moaned, pressing her fingertips to her temples. Was the Shifter insane, or simply crippled by fear? Either way, she herself feared to keep the connection, because what was brewing inside her – that creature – that Chaos Beast? She froze. No. It could not be. She had no idea what a Chaos Beast even was, but the words stuck in her mind with a particular clarity she had come to realise might very well represent her intuition, what Leandrial termed the Balance of the Harmonies.
Indeed, her Dragonsoul whispered cool healing within; becoming her bulwark against the rising tide of madness, calling to Zuziana, Ri’arion and Leandrial in the same breath.
Without knowing how she had come to fall, the Princess of Immadia found herself lying face-up beneath the stars, panting as though she had sprinted a mile. The power! The shocking ambit of fires at once so tempestuous and beautiful, her inmost being ached to know them with a need as ardent as it was perilous. She must go. The fates sang, or … lost for words to describe the sad-ecstatic-imperative clutching at her throat, Aranya could only groan and rasp for breath, her panicked gaze sweeping the starry expanse for inspiration.
Why could that faraway presence not simply articulate her location?
What do you see, petal? Tell me.
Islands! A fortress! Seething fire! Terror! A little girl wailing in the darkness for a father who never came. The fires, overwhelming – snap! Lash out! The creature’s essence seemed to fibrillate through an impossible series of Shapeshifter transformations, as if she were trapped between two opposing poles, the incredible velocity of variation setting up a harmonic note that pierced the listener through, inveigling her mind to a place of fires lethal to her kind … Aranya clutched at the notion that Yistarill must study this phenomenon, as she struggled to cling to her sanity.
The untameable power of this creature! Was this a trap?
Boots! screeched the fires.
Aranya tore free from the connection before it consumed her like a ravenous maw.
Licking her parched lips, she whispered, “Boots? Boots? By the mountains of Immadia, girl, you are – well!”
Aye, we’ve no idea who or what she is, do we? Dragonsoul said soberly.
No. She patted herself down. Everything still present. Mostly. Oh mercy, Dragonsoul, I’m so twisted up inside. What if this is a scheme of the Thoralians’ devising? What if – but she’s so … so …
Frightened, said her Dragoness. Like you, when the fires first struggled to break free – I’m sorry about that, Humansoul. It’s like a birthing. Withholding would have killed us both. I had to be free.
Free? Of what – my tyranny?
The Amethyst mentally gritted her fangs and spat half of a draconic execration. Oh, crack my fangs, that was a ghastly choice of words to describe what, for me, was like coming home to my own soul. I am nothing without you, dearest second-soul. Dead. Unburning. Non-existent. We are one. I am you and you are me. Yet even a child must be free of the womb, that’s how I meant it. Forgive me?
Aranya hugged that gleaming inner presence until even her Dragoness had to laugh. Understood?
Her other-voice purred, Aye. Clear as white fires.
What do we do now?
Gnarrr. We go sketch that place for Huari and Gang. Maybe that man-Dragon. Quite the beast, wasn’t he? Bigger than Gangurtharr or I miss my mark – surely, amongst those images must be a clue as to where our quarry is hiding. Then, we hunt her down. Today!
Aranya grinned fiercely. Sometimes, she just loved being a Dragoness.
* * * *
Ri’arion, Huari, Brityx and Gangurtharr gathered around a table to watch Aranya sketching rapidly, using a charcoal stick on new scrolleaf. Leandrial and Yiisuriel watched curiously through the mental network via Huari.
Everyone shook their heads as her friend’s deft fingers sketched out a toad-like monster with hammers for paws. “No. Not real. Nothing exists like that – not even in Wyldaroon.”
Aranya scowled at the leaf. “Alright. Here comes the fortress I saw.”
Two minutes later, Gang said, “Could be any of ten thousand around Wyldaroon. Nice rendering, though.”
“Nice? How’s about I ‘nice’ you for mincemeat?” suggested Huari.
“Fine, she’s a gifted artist. Happy?”
Gangurtharr’s smirk only broadened as his mate stroked his arm and said archly, “You’ll want to keep making me this happy, Dragon. Trust me.”
Uncharacteristically, Ri’arion quipped, “Better stop flirting, Marshal, before Gang’s armpits start smoking.”
Over the chuckles rising around the table, the Gladiator added testily, “It’s probably a Mercenary House, by the looks of it, and that vegetation Aranya’s just added does smack of the Fringe. I’d guess she’s pointing us at that place you mentioned before – who was that Marshal, again?”
“Chanbar. The Mistral Fires,” Huari put in. “Problem is, I don’t know their actual home location. Few do. It’s a point of pride with these Mercenary Houses to conceal themselves off the obvious Isle, so to speak, and to pop up from nowhere to do their dastardly work. The Fringe is thousands of leagues and millions of Islands. Perfect concealment for their ilk.”
“She did mention the Necromancer,” Zip noted.
“Aye, and we’ve no idea where this Azhukazi the Iolite Blue is,” Gang added, “but as far as reputations go, the words you are looking for are big, bad and brutal.”
“We’ve dealt with those three B’s before,” Ri’arion said evenly. “Sketch that warrior you mentioned, Aranya. The man-boulder in armour.”
The moment she outlined the breadth of the man’s shoulders, Huari and Gang chorused, “Azingloriax.”
“As in what?” asked Zip.
In her lecturing-the-youngster tone, Huari said, “Azingloriax. They’re a warrior tribe from Herimor, actually, famed for the size of their infantry soldiers – they’re the biggest and best, trained for the warrior life from birth. They come furnished with metal-infused skeletal structures, harder than normal skins, and the strength of a small Dragon. I’d guess the average Azingloriax warrior could heft armour in excess of fifty stone. That’s roughly seventy sackweight in your Northern measure.”
