Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 62
For safety’s sake, Aranya had requested that Kylara clear the entire ledge outside her hideout. But many eyes watched from just within the cave mouths, including Kylara herself. How could she not feel bitter toward the Warlord? But last night’s Rider-less flight to brief Beran’s troops about the success of her mission had given her the space she needed to clear her head – somewhat. Now the ache was only as if her heart had been quarried out by those flesh-eating slugs which had scourged Ardan.
Every time her eyes touched him, they leaped away again. Echoes of ardour! Yet, self-loathing and despair weighed heavily upon her spirit.
She expected the Dragonships to arrive any moment, now that the suns’ light touched the Cloudlands all the way to the horizon, and the Island’s long shadow had begun its retreat toward noon. Kylara’s people were supposed to be readying one hundred and forty warriors to depart the hideout and join King Beran’s forces. Instead, everyone watched the Dragon.
He was beyond awesome. Aranya freely admitted it.
He was also utterly fascinating. Ridiculous! She had no control whatsoever of her feelings any more. She, in her Human form, was ogling – unashamedly ogling – a Dragon’s musculature. The breadth of his chest, the tree-trunk legs, the gleam of his flanks, it all made her feel as giddy as a girl enjoying her first glass of berry wine.
The only saving grace was that most likely, no-one else watching thought the same. They probably also thought a Princess should set the moral standard and not toss her beliefs gaily into the Cloudlands with the first Dragon who – oh, great Islands, what now?
His throat worked. Ardan coughed. A ground-shaking rumble emanated from his stomach, followed by an ominous silence. The mouth clamped shut. Panic clouded his eyes. Her monstrous Dragon friend hiccoughed and belched so hard that he flew backward twenty feet. A bonfire of his own making enveloped his head. Suddenly, the Dragon was on his hind legs bolting for cover – the Human brain having taken over. But he had a long, thick neck and a tail to take care of, now, besides that he stood over sixty feet tall on his hind legs. Ardan smashed his skull on the overhang and flipped onto his back with a thud that shook boulders loose from the mountainside.
Aranya fell over, too, laughing so hard it hurt her stomach.
Ardan squirmed onto his feet with a bellow of rage. Aiming his muzzle at the laughter, he let rip with a fireball wider than a man’s outstretched arms.
When the smoke and flames cleared, an Amethyst Dragon fixed him with a fiercely rolling eye. “Alright, you great big ralti sheep. Do that to the enemy and you’ll be fine. I am not the enemy.”
“Hurt my throat,” said Ardan, managing to look contrite despite his epically massive stance. “Islands’ sakes, Aranya, how do you control yourself as a Dragon?”
Not easily when you’re crouching opposite such a toothsome beast … oh. Aranya inserted her tongue between her fangs and bit it. Of course Ardan, being a Dragon, could understand her telepathic Dragon-speech. His eyes narrowed, unimpressed rather than amused.
“You learn,” she gritted out. “Focus the fire, Ardan.”
“And think with my Dragon brain. Aye. You said. Perhaps I’d look less foolish, then.”
Aranya nodded. “I had a great teacher, Ardan. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.” She turned to crook a claw at Kylara. “Warlord, come here. Ardan – keep working at it.”
Kylara approached warily. “I’ll need another dress,” Aranya said. “Could you send someone?” Once this small task was put in process, she added, “Kylara, if you’re going to ride Ardan, you’ll need to – what?”
“Ride him? Like a pony?”
“Ride on his back. Be his Dragon Rider, I mean,” said Aranya. Right. Time to focus on practical matters. “I need to teach you about Dragons. Garg is already working with your leather-workers to make a saddle for him, based on the one I have. But there’s a great deal for the Dragon Rider to know. Most importantly, especially for your Dragon – for Ardan – you need to know that he can go mad or feral in battle, or if he’s simply angered enough.”
“As you just demonstrated.”
“Ably and foolishly,” agreed Aranya. “Have you asked him?”
“I – no.”
“It’s a little beyond your experience as a Warlord?”
Kylara shuffled her feet. “I treated him like an animal, Aranya. Now I find he’s a Dragon. Is a Warlord allowed to admit fear?”
“A wise man called Nak once taught me that only a fool feels no fear.”
“Here comes something for you.”
Once she had transformed and tugged the simple dress over her head, Aranya grasped Kylara by the hand and pulled her impetuously around to Ardan’s towering flank. He had to be eighteen feet tall at the shoulder, she estimated. He was beast, Human, Shapeshifter Dragon – and the mere glint of his scales … stop! She loved Yolathion. Loved? Did she truly mean ‘loved’?
“Aye?” rumbled Ardan. Unlike her, he had mastered Human speech at once.
Aranya shivered. She noticed that Kylara did, too, showing the Dragon-fear the scrolls spoke of. Even Human-Aranya felt it in her gut.
“Go on.” Aranya pressed the shorter girl forward.
Kylara said, “Dragon – er, Ardan, I’d consider it a great honour if you’d have me as your Dragon Rider.”
His lips curved into an intimidating Dragon-smile. “Aranya wants you to fight with me?”
“Aye, pick Sylakian bones from between your fangs, wipe the tears from your eyes, cosset you to sleep,” Kylara retorted.
Aranya chuckled. Despite her raging case of Dragon-jealousy, she was starting to quite like the fiery Warlord. Then she yelled, “Duck!” as Ardan’s shout of laughter came accompanied by a twenty-foot plume of fire.
“Sorry,” said the Dragon, trying a sketchy bow.
He thumped down on his nose.
Aranya remembered that feeling all too well. That great lump of Dragon-flesh had a few things to learn – and here came three Dragonships, flying the purple of Immadia. She remembered that one had already departed the previous evening to convey the news to her father.
Kylara marched over to the Dragon’s muzzle and put her boot on the edge of his lip, which was a fair stretch upward for her. “I have conquered a Dragon!” she yelled, punching the sky. Aranya’s jaw dropped open.
Then Kylara had to leap to save her skin one more time.
* * * *
The following morning, with Yolathion recovered enough to travel and all preparations completed, the Immadian Dragonships negotiated the amazing sinkhole and rose above Ur-Yagga. Most of Kylara’s women had never travelled by Dragonship. They lined the external gantries to watch as their home receded.
Ardan wondered if they realised what King Beran wanted to gift them – freedom from tyranny. Freedom from the empire which had razed his homeland.
They would fly over Naphtha Cluster on their route back east. His heart wept already.
There was Aranya, taking to the forward gantry, wearing just a cloak, her unbound hair swirling in the wind to wreathe her tall, slender figure in kaleidoscopic colours. Ardan chewed his lip as his eyes followed her involuntarily to the corner. She slipped out of sight. She said she was alright. But that perfect-Princess exterior could not disguise the fiery inner turmoil that his developing Dragon senses had picked up. He should know. It matched his feelings in every detail.
He jumped as a pair of arms encircled his waist. “Pretty, isn’t she?”
“Not like this ugly beast, you mean?”
“You … like her?”
“She says I’m an old fledgling. I was just wishing I could jump off a gantry so easily. But my Human brain is having none of it.”
Kylara rested her head against his shoulder. “You heard her story, Ardan. You know the intelligence we received. She and a Remoyan Princess smashed an entire Sylakian Dragonship command. Do you think she just woke up one morning and said, ‘Today I’m going to change the Island-World’?”
“Aye, I like her,” said Ardan, drawing Kylara into his embrace. “She’s brave, loyal and attractive – as far as a white slug goes. But I love a Western Isles warrior.”
Who had not breathed fire with him, nor exchanged words he recognised as vows. Thou, my soul’s eternal fire. Did his choice to pursue Kylara make him an oath-breaker? Or merely the Island-World’s greatest fool? Who was Ardan, Island-less warrior, Shapeshifter Dragon, and a man who dallied with innocent Princesses, if not a fool?
Perhaps a Dragon who had destroyed the Northern Dragonship fleet and killed Garthion was less innocent than he supposed. One thing was for certain, he liked the man he seemed to be around Aranya. Her fire filled his dreams.
“Mine were idiotic, jealous words,” said Kylara. Her eyes followed Aranya’s flight as she powered skyward ahead of the Dragonships, scouting. “I wish I were a Dragon. She’s … magnificent.”
“Would you settle for kissing a Dragon?”
“Sounds like a dangerous job for a Warlord.” After a short interlude, Kylara put her hands on his chest to press them apart. “Ardan, do you truly forgive me for how I mistreated you?”
“I could be persuaded.”
But even as he spoke, from above, Aranya’s Dragon-voice floated down to his awareness. I see Naphtha Cluster. I grieve with you, Ardan.
The playfulness in his spirit evaporated.
* * * *
A one-moon darkness mercifully shrouded Naphtha Cluster as the three Dragonships hurried to catch up with King Beran’s forces, who by agreement, were already taking up position to make the long crossing to Mejia Island, south of Jeradia. Many years before, Mejia had been an ally of Immadia. Beran expected a fond reunion there.
Unable to sleep because of nightmares about the Black Dragon, Aranya padded up to the forward navigation cabin in the early hours. She untied her headscarf and shook out her braids. Dragon-Aranya hated to feel restricted in any way, but Yolathion’s eyebrows crawled toward his hairline every time he saw her ‘naked’ – by which he meant wearing her hair unbound. Fussy, toothless old rajal, Aranya thought uncharitably. He acted so morose and jealous over the time she spent training and briefing Ardan. She wished she had the courage discuss these things with him, rather than acting like the sharp end of a crossbow bolt without rhyme or reason.
She soothed Sapphire with a touch. Don’t mind my moods, little one.
Ar-ar, chirped Sapphire, in the cute baby-dragonet voice she was developing. She curled her tail around Aranya’s neck and nibbled her earlobe, pouring forth a stream of Dragonish nonsense. The dragonet was growing in understanding, Aranya thought. She had clearly been displeased to be left behind when Aranya and Yolathion left to scout Yanga Island. How much could dragonets truly know? Nak had told her a legend about Hualiama and the dragonet Flicker, who had established a famous friendship after the dragonet saved her life. The tale was over five hundred years old and had at least seven distinct and conflicting versions Nak could recite. But those legends often contained more than a grain of truth, the old Dragon Rider had assured her.
The night was black and so still, it lured her toward the concave crysglass panels. Aranya shivered delicately, half-expecting to see Fra’anior’s gigantic, multi-headed form peering back at her from the depthless darkness. She stiffened, hugging herself. Fra’anior had commanded her to seek the Dragon of the Western Isles. Had he orchestrated the whole encounter?
Magic trickled into her awareness. Aranya whirled. “Who’s there … Ardan!”
“It’s me.”
“What’re you – why – you’re far too good at lurking in shadows. Stop it.”
He shifted toward her with draconic poise, saying nothing. The curve of his lips multiplied the tumult in her heart.
Aranya blurted out, “I dreamed of the Black Dragon.”
Inanities! A foil against the storm stirred by his appearance. Storms broke and crashed in her mind, mingled with a faraway roaring of the Black Dragon. In the faint moonlight, Ardan’s eyes were pools of night, with an evasive glint of magic in their depths.
He said, “I wasn’t dreaming of a Black Dragon.”
Aranya clutched at the frayed threads of her composure. Unsteadily, she said, “Maybe you’re a Dragon of Shadow. That’s right – not black, but shadow.”
“A Dragon of the absence of colour?” he frowned, joining her at the forward-facing crysglass window. “What are you trying to say, amethyst eyes? That I have no Dragon powers?”
Were words swords or scimitars, Aranya imagined, they would be sparring, circling, clashing over the truths that hung unspoken between them. She said, “Of course you have powers, Ardan. There’s your Dragon fire, at least, and much magic besides. And tell me, this strap you wear on your wrist – what is it? Because I’ve noticed it stays with you when you transform. That’s impossible.”
“Shadows must be cast by light,” he said.
A delicious warmth flared in her belly. Magic imbued his words with myriad shades of meaning. He was the shadow to her light? Shadow could be good? Aranya had been entirely unprepared for this response. Dreamily, she reached out to touch just the leather upon his wrist, not the skin. She dared not touch his skin. There was far too much magic coursing through her veins to take that risk.
I wear the ur-makka of a Western Isles warrior, he said, switching to Dragonish to answer her previous question. It names me threefold, for family, person and spirit, but symbolises much more. In Western Isles culture, each family name has a guardian spirit – it’s just a chip of wood encased in leather, Aranya, but –
He broke off at her low gasp. Her hair! What now? Aranya stumbled against the cool crysglass.
As he stretched out his hand toward her, automatically, Aranya’s multi-coloured tresses stirred again, yearning toward him, animated by the magic gently gleaming in every strand. Her hair had grown long during her political exile in the Tower of Sylakia, reaching to her waist, and was becoming almost impossible to wrangle into braids fit for hiding beneath a proper headscarf. The tugging sensation was surprisingly forceful. Aranya balked, fighting back as Ardan’s hand froze mid-gesture. Her hair strained sideways as though electrified.
“I’m not terribly intuitive, but I sense you might still desire me,” he smiled, pausing just inches from the waving tendrils.
Aranya tried to slap her errant hair down, but her struggles only served to encourage the magic. The Black Dragon’s roaring battered her mind – he wanted this, not her! She would keep her promise. She was Aranya, Princess of Immadia, not some puppet to an Ancient Dragon bully who wanted to tear her morals asunder. Had she not just shared an agreeable dinner with Yolathion in his cabin? Was he not her chosen one?
Sapphire launched off her shoulder, mewling in fright, her tiny claws pricking sharply through the thin fabric of her nightclothes. The dragonet perched on the back of King Beran’s desk chair.
You breathed the soul-fire! Fra’anior bellowed in her mind.
Aranya pressed her palms against her temples, as if that futile gesture would shut him out. No. You can’t make me.
Obey your destiny!
No!
But her shout of denial came out as an elongated, terrible rasp, a sound much closer to a Dragon’s roar than any Human throat should have been able to produce.
Ardan, clearly concerned for her state of mind, asked, “What’s the matter, Aranya? Who’re you talking to?”
But he could utter no more, because at that moment, Aranya’s hair brushed against his fingertips. A discharge of magic struck like lightning in the navigation cabin. Before she could stop it, her thick tresses wrapped around his hand. Her hair slithered up his arm to the elbow. Aranya stumbled into his ambit, drawn headfirst by an irresistible, painful tugging on her scalp.
“No, no,” she repeated, trying to ward him off with her hands, but her hair seethed and coiled around his shoulders and torso, crushing her against his chest. “No, I won’t … stop me, Ardan. Help me stop.”
Ardan’s fingers clasped the back of her neck. He said, ragged of breath, “Woman, you bring out the Dragon in me.”
There was a savage bent to his lips and a dangerous, fey light in his eyes. Aranya tried to bury her face against his shoulder, but the compulsion was visceral, and the magic flooding her being so sweetly intense, that resistance became a torment past bearing. Her chin tilted upward. Instead of meeting his ready lips, she inhaled the breath of his lungs in greedy gasps, perhaps seeking the soul-fire they had shared before.
Thunder! Storm clouds roiling without or within her being, she no longer knew which. Dragon fire flared about them. Aranya panted, “No, I promised. I will not!”
“To a Cloudlands volcano with those promises,” he hissed. “This is –”
“Ardan?” A sleepy voice echoed up the corridor.
Ardan and Aranya sprang apart as though a catapult mechanism had snapped when fully wound. Her fires around the room quenched instantly, but the pervading inner magic barely subsided, searing her body and spirit, throbbing with a tempo that echoed the vast, faraway storms of the endless Cloudlands.
Quick as lightning, Ardan whipped the ur-makka off his wrist and laid it on the table between them. He began to peel apart the thin layers of leather.
Kylara stood in the doorway, barefoot, yawning. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Aranya had a dream of the Black Dragon,” said Ardan, as if all was well. “She asked about the ur-makka – why it comes through transformations with me.”
“Among my people, the elders would tell you that the ur-makka is an extension of the spirit-world,” said Kylara, drawing close to him. Aranya’s fingers clawed at her sides. “They would say that name-runes like yours are given by the Ancient Dragons, Ardan.”
The Warlord’s dark gaze rested on Aranya, standing tongue-tied beside her father’s desk. Nothing was singed, not a paper curled into ash at its edges. Had she imagined it all? Her hair rippled once against her back, and then lay as tranquil as if to assert its innocence. She took a mental snap at Fra’anior. How dare he, Ancient or none, try to force her to submit to his bidding? What perverted power of magic was this, that it should drive her into another’s arms, against her will?
