Aranya Treasury - The Complete Shapeshifter Dragons Series, page 66
“Right. We’re going to sneak.”
“Sneak?”
Ezziya’s astonishment brought a soft, dangerous chuckle to her lips. Aye, an Amethyst Dragon could sneak. “Hit that Dragonship to port.”
Two shots, and, KAARAABOOM!
Using the resulting fireball to mask her intent, Aranya whipped around the vessel shielding them from the Yellow Dragon, and then shrank into the cover it provided. Who was that Yellow – someone’s sweet old grandmother? Aranya gripped the starboard gantry, damping down the pain of her lava burns with a touch of healing magic. “Go, Ezziya. We’ll cover you. Cherya –”
“Got him.” Cherya’s arrow struck a Sylakian cleanly in the chest.
Ezziya leaped over to the gantry, drawing her scimitar. Archers whirled at the sound of her boots on the metal walkway, only to be confronted by a battle-hungry Western Isles warrior and a Dragon lurking behind. Slicing her way through, Ezziya took control of the catapult emplacement. The Yellow eyed her with lethal intent.
Over here, you bilious glob of ralti-sheep fat!
As Ezziya pawed at the controls, Aranya’s insult pricked the Dragoness as surely as if she had hooked a fish. Her neck curved to follow Aranya’s swaggering flight, exposing the underside of her neck. The engines howled. Ezziya’s hand slapped a lever.
From sixty feet out, the shot was almost impossible to miss. But the catapult was designed to spray the bolts slightly. Seven of the six-foot, barbed metal bolts sprouted in the Yellow Dragon’s neck. She choked immediately. Her eyes glazed over. But Aranya’s bugle of triumph was cut short by the faraway tinkling of crysglass. She jerked toward the sound.
“Father!”
Opposite, perfectly lined up for the shot, Beran’s flagship drifted on the fickle breeze. The forward crysglass windows were shattered. Several of the remaining bolts – oh no! Oh, Dad …
Wailing in abject misery, Aranya launched herself across that space. Every wingbeat demanded an impossible length of time. She reached out for a paw-hold, but here came the King, staggering, bleeding freely from his arm and head. Beran waved her off angrily. “Just glass cuts. Wretched Dragon-daughter.”
Aranya laughed with relief. “Dad, I –”
“Go do something useful, Sparky. Fetch Ignathion for me.”
A hundred Dragon fangs gleamed at him. “Sure, Dad. On a platter?”
“Shoo.”
Ignathion saw her coming. Aranya knew she should have concealed her intent, but she was so maddened – or frightened – by her father’s near escape, that she could hold nothing back. Storm powers boiled in her belly, demanding release. Aranya opened fire. White-hot fireballs burst out of her throat in rapid succession, four, five strikes, clearing a path into the heart of his fleet.
Cherya yelled as the series of explosions thumped them back and forth, but patted Aranya’s shoulder. “Something annoyed you, girl? Come on. Beran’s orders.”
She’d make a great Dragon Rider. Those words were pitched just right to refocus the Amethyst Dragon’s mind.
As the Amethyst Dragon swooped, Ignathion vanished inside his vessel. He thought to evade her? A maddened Dragoness? Dodging a hail of catapult-shot, Aranya twirled about to destroy the bow catapult emplacements with her tail. Then she swung down to the crysglass windows. Ignathion stood within, watching her alertly, war-hammer in hand. Aranya punched her forepaws through the crysglass. Reaching for the struts, she tore the windows asunder – just as a windroc had once attacked her and Ignathion, although she was the deadlier creature by far.
Aranya roared, “You’re mine!”
By way of answer, he hurled the war hammer at her. Dragon instincts sped her paw to swat the weapon aside.
Ignathion’s eyes widened. But he was an experienced warrior. Flinging himself through the doorway, he retreated into the interior of his vessel.
The Amethyst Dragon pushed her way within, mindful of Cherya on her back. But the Western Isles warrior had already unbuckled her saddle-straps. Leaping into the cabin, she drew her scimitar.
Aranya said, “Let’s go catch ourselves a War-Hammer.”
She punched the next interior wall. Unfortunately, this one was metal-reinforced and it drew an ugly growl of discontent from her as Aranya wrung her paw. A clutch of Sylakian Hammers raced into the room, but she swept them aside and shovelled them out of the open front of the cabin. They fell howling into space. She poked her head through the door. Ignathion’s hammer pounded her nose.
She could not reach him. But his follow-up blow brought his hammer into her reach. Aranya trapped it with her paw and drew a huge breath.
“No fireballs!” yelled Cherya.
Right. Stupid idea, right beneath the hydrogen sack. Ignathion fled down the corridor. Quicker than thought, Aranya transformed and ran after him.
He darted through a doorway into the common area of the Dragonship, where soldiers often had to manually work the turbines to save on expensive meriatite. Human-Aranya, hot on his tail, stormed into a room stuffed with massive Jeradian warriors. She skidded to a halt, pointed at him and demanded, “Surrender, Ignathion!”
A shocked silence alerted her to the fact that something was wrong. Rather – nakedly – wrong. Despite the situation, or perhaps because of it, Ignathion’s eyes twinkled at her. “Lost our clothes, Princess? Grab her, men.”
Eager hands seized the Princess of Immadia.
For a moment, all Aranya knew was heated embarrassment, being trapped in a cabin with two dozen burly Jeradian warriors, most of whom reacted as if they had never seen a naked woman before. Blood trickled from her nose – the result of Ignathion’s hammer-blow to her Dragon’s muzzle. Someone had a blacksmith’s grip upon her left thigh, but Ignathion’s disturbingly possessive glare made the hand surrender its grasp.
Islands’ sakes, she must have ralti sheep intestines for brains.
“First War-Hammer Ignathion,” she said formally. “This is hardly a fair fight.” His soldiers roared with laughter and called out ribald and creative suggestions as to how the Princess might entertain them. But she pitched her words through the hubbub, “You brought only two dozen men to subdue a Dragon?”
Several of the men swore. “She’s not …” “The Dragon?” “Get off the Island, you crazy wench!”
One of the giant Jeradian warriors, standing nearly seven feet tall, swung his war hammer at her head. “Then eat this, woman!”
Her transformation smashed warriors out of the way. Aranya suffered a heavy hammer-blow to her cheekbone. But she cuffed the Jeradian with her forepaw, hitting five of them in a single swipe. Her roar stunned them; storm power released in an indoor space.
“Hold!” shouted Ignathion. “Hold, Aranya.”
“I’ll rip their guts out!”
“Hold. Please, Aranya – for the sake of your mother.”
Unfair! The Amethyst Dragon roused her belly fires into a decent furnace-roar, glowering all the while at the Jeradians pressed up against the walls. Her burning Dragoness’ gaze dared any of them to make the first move. However, these men were wise – or just plain terrified. Not a boot stirred, no hand raised a weapon.
“For Izariela’s sake,” Ignathion soothed.
Aranya snarled, “Told you it wasn’t a fair fight. Any of you men want to play with me now?”
“We surrender.”
His quick interjection almost earned a sarcastic, ‘Oh, do you now?’ However, Aranya remembered how her father had always advised her to act with dignity, whether in victory or in defeat.
“You can surrender to King Beran, First War-Hammer. Fly with me.”
“Green flags,” Ignathion commanded one of his men.
“Aye, sir.”
It struck her halfway to Beran’s flagship, carrying his oldest enemy Dragonback. The battle had quietened as the forces on both sides recognised the green flags which fluttered above Ignathion’s flagship. Aranya narrowed her eyes at the man on her back.
He said, “I haven’t jumped the Island, Aranya.”
She responded with an ominous growl, formed deep in her chest. “First War-Hammer Ignathion. A question, if I may.”
“I am your captive, Princess.”
Again, that disturbing smile from the man who had loved and lost her mother. Aranya said, “I found your surrender a little … abrupt. Without implying any disrespect, Ignathion – did you fight as hard as you could, today?”
Her Dragon-direct question provoked a chuckle. “A wise commander respects the lives of his men, Aranya, even those foolish enough to handle a Dragoness ungently. By fighting on, what would I have gained? We laid our traps, but you evaded them all. Your victory is well deserved.”
And then he whispered, so softly that only a Dragon could have heard it, “And thus, we shall break the yoke of Sylakia without dishonour.”
Jeradia Island would be freed.
* * * *
It took two further days and five interventions from Aranya or Ardan to break the last of the Sylakian resistance in Jos, Jeradia’s capital city. The evening after they shattered the final pocket of resistance, the two Shapeshifters dined with Ignathion, Yolathion, King Beran and Kylara aboard the Immadian flagship. Aranya squirmed as Ignathion regaled them with the tale of a stark-naked Princess chasing him down, insisting he surrender. Yolathion and his father spent the evening glowering at each other. Kylara would not leave Ardan alone for a second.
When King Beran complimented her on the restraint she had shown during the battle, an insight suddenly crystallised in her mind. Yes, restraint. She had been suppressing every feeling, every thought, the guilt and betrayal, the secrets, the potency of her magic, Fra’anior’s harassment – all had been forced inward for weeks, a toxic brew simmering just beneath the level of conscious thought. Even now, no flame escaped her as it might have done before, when her feelings peaked within her. Aranya feared the storm raging beneath the barrier of her adamantine control. Did she seek to contain the uncontainable? She feared to look at Yolathion, Kylara or her father, because she knew what they would think of her behaviour. Ardan she had to avoid. His dark gaze scorched without stinting. She knew that the soul-fire magic had branded her forever.
Only, she had breathed it for him, too.
Now, she was exhausted from clutching all of the threads together while desperately trying to avoid breaking any. Excusing herself quietly, Aranya found her steps turning toward the outer gantries. She clambered aloft. Yolathion could not follow her here, yet, although he was starting to make good headway on his canes.
A dark, wild night enveloped her. She stood atop the Dragonship, near to where an Immadian soldier stood watch, feeling the wintry wind tugging at her long dress. No need for a robe. Aranya scorned the cold. She burned with everlasting, ever-renewing inner fires, fires that marked her a sorceress and a Shapeshifter. South and west, storm clouds blotted out half of the night sky. The same storm. It had followed her from the Western Isles to here. Always threatening, never breaking – a perfect mirror of the chaos consuming her every hour, waking or sleeping.
A perfect mirror.
Aranya knew she was damaged beyond redemption, a girl cast upon the winds of a consuming, all-pervading destiny. As if cognizant of her thoughts, lightning forked across the clouds in multiple places, too many to count, momentarily gilding the brooding mass of storm clouds. Aranya imagined that storm breaking upon the Island-World, tossing Islands to their doom, speaking with a voice of thunder like Fra’anior, the great Black Dragon.
Aranya!
At first she thought it her imagination, because the faraway lightning flared in concert with the three syllables of her name.
More softly, Aranya.
Fra’anior? Black Dragon?
What of your promise, little one? She shook her head, too afraid to voice her misgivings. He said, You’re reluctant to embrace the purpose for which I called you.
I found your Dragon of the Western Isles, didn’t I?
A weak protest, but true. How she detested his betrayal.
That you did. The absence of his usual roaring made his voice seem like a dry, rushing wind brushing against her mind. You breathed the soul-fire, little one. Deny this, the most ancient of Dragon secrets, at your peril. Consider yourself forewarned.
Forewarned? Aranya failed to suppress her rage.
The storm approaches to embrace the daughter of the storm, said the Black Dragon. There is one, the child of my spirit. Seek her with all of your heart. Seek the onyx.
Riddles! Aranya started, realising the voice of Fra’anior was gone. Had she screamed at him? Riddles, when her mother lay next to death. Hints, admonitions and threats, when the Island-World suffered beneath the Sylakian scourge. The Black Dragon clearly cared nothing for Human suffering.
One of the guards approached her. “Lady? You cried out …”
“I am well, thank you,” Aranya said, automatically. Was she? Holding conversations with Ancient Dragons?
“We’re taking the vessel down for mooring, lady. The storm’s coming.”
Aranya nodded, shivering. She was Fra’anior’s daughter of the storm, clearly. Why the lack of mind-shattering blustering this time, just a calm reprimand? Somehow, it chilled her even more than anything she had dreamed of him before. How could she trust that the voice was Fra’anior at all? Could it be Thoralian, seeking to undermine her sanity?
Abruptly, Aranya reached up to tear her headscarf free, careless of the hairpins tearing at her scalp. She hurled it at the storm-front. But the capricious wind caught the light Helyon silk and tossed it in the opposite direction.
The storm was nothing to do with her. Nothing!
Chapter 16: Dancing with Dragons
Yolathion flung aN emerald-green headscarf at Aranya in a peculiar echo of the storm’s action the night before. “You will wear a covering! It’s indecent.”
“My hair – the natural covering of my head – is indecent?”
“Great Islands, woman, don’t ever let me become a Dragon!”
Such venom. When had he become so bitter toward her? Aranya sighed, “Yoli, you don’t –”
“Never. Not as long as this Island-World stands, Aranya. What you did to Zuziana? Don’t you dare think I should be a Dragon, too.”
If she had ever wondered, his revulsion cast that idea off the Island to its doom.
The tall Jeradian loomed over her. In the corner of the mirror, Aranya saw her serving-girl cringe as though she expected fire to explode from the Dragoness’ mouth. Roaring rajals, why was she in such a surly mood? Tonight was the great banquet, all the glittering ones of Jeradia gathered to celebrate the freedom of their Island. And Yolathion had promised her a lovely surprise. She knew exactly who to blame.
“Yolathion, I’m sorry. It’s the Black Dragon making me cranky.”
“Ardan? What’s he done now?”
“Not Ardan, you silly – Fra’anior, the Dragon of my dreams.” Aranya slipped off her stool and inserted herself into Yolathion’s arms with a smile and a kiss to his neck, just above the dress-collar of his Jeradian officer’s uniform. “Don’t mind my moods, Yoli. Tonight, I am ready to celebrate with you.”
“Aye,” he grinned, throwing her a raffish salute. “The dress is a family heirloom. It’s stunning on you. My grandmother must have been very tall, too.”
The deep emerald dress was indeed beautiful, just more restrictive than Aranya was used to, a mass of long, multi-layered and gold-brocaded skirts. She hoped for a cool ballroom, because the heavy velveteen cloth was already making her feel overheated. High-collared and laced uncomfortably tight beneath the bosom, it forced her to breathe shallowly. To complete the ensemble, Aranya would wear five-inch Jeradian platform heels to bring her closer to Yolathion’s height.
A tremor shook her body. No – he couldn’t be planning to propose, could he? A special dress, both of their fathers being present, and a ballroom full of Jeradians ready to celebrate? Elation mingled with anxiety in her belly. She pressed her hands against her stomach. Did he still love her? Their relationship had been a stormy ride of late, and she had kept her secret with Ardan close to her bosom. Should she tell him first? Could she accept in good conscience?
It took every ounce of her will to smooth her voice into a murmur. “I’m looking forward to my surprise, Yolathion.”
“Excellent. See you in one hour.”
Aranya spent an hour being primped and perfumed, dreaming of a proposal from Yolathion, and so there was a lump in her throat and a spring in her step as she joined Yolathion, Ignathion and his two consorts in their formal pony-carriage. They jounced through the streets of Jos, a city constructed of ruddy volcanic stone with insets of shining black onyx, and wide boulevards lined with prekki-fruit trees.
“I wish this storm would break,” said Ignathion, eyeing the leaves blowing past the carriage. “Strange weather.”
“Aye,” said the consort to his left. “It’s just so humid. Better than Sylakia, though.”
Aranya wondered what it would be like to fly into a storm. She fanned herself with a jewelled hand-fan, probably another family heirloom. “How did you escape from Sylakia, lady?” she asked.
“Ignathion smuggled us out.”
“Oh, and I thought piracy was beneath a First War-Hammer,” said Aranya.
Ignathion grinned genially. “It’s not beneath King Beran, is it? It evidently runs in Immadia’s royal family – pirates, thieves and Dragons, you are.”
“You flatter me.”
Yolathion’s fingers tightened on her knee. Skirting an active volcano? Aye, but the Dragoness in her scorned her scruples.
The ball was to be held in the magnificently appointed great hall of the Jos Governor’s palace. A thousand guests had been invited, and at least as many servants waited upon them. There were formal introductions for King Beran and Princess Aranya of Immadia, ‘heroes and saviours’ according to the official script, and honours for Ignathion and Yolathion, who had apparently served Jeradia with distinction. Nobody mentioned that they had served on opposite sides of the conflict.
