Dragon Thief (38 page)

And stopped.

Er … is that it?
Kal’s question echoed in a gap a couple of feet wider than his outstretched arms. He looked up and down. It stretched as far as the eye could see, impossibly deep. Perhaps the gap reached right through the mountain?
Open. OPEN!

Nothing.

Nice work, Kal.
Tazithiel managed not to sound too sarcastic.

Aye, Fra’anior himself might be able to stick one claw in there. Two, at a push.

They took turns in shouting various commands, feeling as futile as a pair of flies batting their heads against a vast, opaque crysglass pane. Eventually, Kal was forced to admit that their ballad was not improving much. Even a Dragon hatchling could not fly down that gap.

Kal said,
So, can a superior being see any light beyond the mountain?

Dragons could not physically squint, but Tazithiel made a fair impression of squinting into the darkness. Meantime, waiting interminably for her response, Kal wriggled in his seat and eventually looked around idly.

Kal? Did you just skip a heartbeat?

Tazi … turn around.

She whirled. An immobility of tingling scales and prickling neck-hairs seized both Rider and Dragon. For they saw a flotilla of Islands come sailing from the South, perhaps two dozen strong, their bare, damp mountain peaks appearing to dip into the Cloudlands and emerge again in a stately rhythm not unlike a slow walk. Way in the distance, another Island-flotilla crested the Cloudlands.

The place where Dragons slumbered.

Ambling along as though they owned all the time in the world, the Islands drifted into position, the first set about eight or ten miles from the Rim-Wall, while others ambled further afield. They clumped together in pairs and triplets, as if forming family groups. Some individual Islands were as large as two or three miles across, some groups as many as eight strong. As they slowly formed a line stretching away beyond the horizon, the Island-creatures appeared to move higher and higher–perhaps climbing a ridge hidden beneath the Cloudlands–until they exposed a couple of miles of what appeared to be ordinary rock to the world of suns-shine and clear air.

Now, that’s magic,
Kal breathed.

They’re Dragons,
said Tazi.
Very slow moving, slow thinking Dragons. They speak a dialect of Dragonish I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. Are those nostrils on their backs? Or ravines? Anyways, I think we’ve found our Island-bridge. I’ll bet your entire hoard to a rajal’s breakfast that in a few days, we’ll find a neat line of new Islands stretching all the way to the Western Isles.

Kal gawked unseeing at the horizon, for suddenly, clouds passed across his eyes.

The Dragoness said,
And I know Riika will be the first to wrangle Aranya into crossing that Island-bridge to reach us, Kal. I know it as surely as the suns know to rise every morning.

He hugged the spine spike in front of him.
I’m convinced I’ve identified your one and only colour, Dragoness.

Oh?

Aye. It’s called indigocredible.

Really? Well, I think you’re a particular shade of shadawesome.

Kal made a face.
Ugh, enough mushy-this and sappy-that. We’ve work to do, Indigo-eyes. Because I am not having your mother-monster turn up here to burn my ears with all she thinks about an eight-foot gap to nothingness. Not on my Island. Not today!

Aye. Dragons are not exactly renowned for their meek acceptance of failure.
Tazithiel spat like a Green Dragoness in her fury.
I want to solve this mystery as much as you do, Kal. Pull out that scroll. Start reading. I’ll fly to the top and see if I can find those runes again–what’s that?

The Indigo swivelled again in the air, searching for the source of what Kal readily identified as a low vibration emanating from the cliffs. Ha! Celebration time! Now they would see the truth of the world beyond the Rim-Wall. Could the great cliffs, these unimaginable gates to another realm, be drawing back at last? Then he detected a high-pitched hissing, like high-pressure steam escaping from a meriatite furnace engine. Whatever it was, that sound was fast approaching. Kal tensed. The Indigo Dragoness back-winged steadily, facing the danger like a good Dragon; reflexes primed, muscles quivering with readiness and shield strong.

A series of muffled booms resounded beneath the Cloudlands. Dragon and Rider jerked in surprise. Danger from below?

Water exploded from the gap as if all the spigots of the heavens had been turned on at once. It jetted hundreds of feet outward before curving into a magnificent, miles-high waterfall. Tazithiel tumbled away from the blast, the power of that hydrant too much even for a Dragoness to combat. Laughing, she swung around and burst back through the waterfall, shouting,
Taste it, Kal! This water’s salty!

So it was. Kal shook his head in disbelief, the more so since he discovered a sleek, three-foot fish wriggling in his lap. Before he could corral his catch, the unfamiliar fish wriggled like slick soap through his grip and tumbled away, flipping and flopping, into the Cloudlands.

Kal kept expecting the flow to ease, to dry up, but it showed no signs of abating. What if the water level out there was higher than any of the Islands of his world? Surround them in water, he realised, and they truly would be Islands–like those tiny pocks of land in Remoy’s famous wealth of terrace lakes, so beloved of the water birds and thieves who might choose to construct a hideout there. Then he laughed. The volume of water required to fill this giant crater must be incalculable. Even with this volume of salty water falling from the heavens, it could never make so much as a puddle in the bottom of the Cloudlands. Not in a thousand years.

According to Aranya, the Cloudlands boasted abysses so deep, a bottom had never been found despite Land Dragon explorations to depths of over six leagues, the practical limit even for the greatest of four-legged beasts. In other places, the world’s core fires broached the surface, such as at Fra’anior Cluster, where the caldera eighteen leagues in diameter oozed lava, continually building its foundations atop the roots of the world.

Kal said,
Bah. Hope the scroll survived your impromptu swim, Dragoness.

Tazithiel wheeled away from the plunging water, chuckling,
Well, we wrote one more stanza of our ballad, did we not?

Aye. Dragon and Rider broke out the soapstone, and enjoyed the biggest bath in recorded history.

They chuckled all the way up into the heavens.

* * * *

Three beautiful evenings later, a despondent Dragon and her Rider camped beside the nostril of a sleeping Land Dragon. At least, they hoped the creature slept.

“Can I say something?” Kal inquired.

Tazithiel wagged a talon in the affirmative.

Kal voiced a full-throated Jeradian battle cry. He shook his fists at the heavens, growling until the veins popped out in his forehead. He hurled a few imaginary Ancient Dragons into the bottomless Cloudlands. He shadow-boxed Fra’anior in the jaw. He beat the ground with his heels in a tantrum worthy of ten toddlers and finished up by shredding an invisible scroll and disgustedly tossing the bits to the winds.

“All done?” the Indigo Dragoness inquired solicitously.

“Actually, I do feel better. Right. So we know the waterfall goes all the way to the top of that golden black section, six leagues or so above the Cloudlands. Apparently this part of the Rim-Wall is metallic but made of a substance harder than a Dragon’s talons can penetrate–perhaps a door, but we can’t be sure. There’s no end to the water so far. The runes vanished, most helpfully, and we cannot find a single clue in the scroll. How’s my summary?”

“Not quite miserable failure, but–”

“So close it’s indistinguishable from the same?”

“Exactly.”

Kal kicked at the Land Dragon, though he knew it for a futile gesture. “With due respect, beast, you sit here for the reason that greater and better minds can fly to Fra’anior’s Way and discover what we could not. Which I am
not
bitter about.”

Tazi clasped his shoulders with her paw. “Here’s the plan, Kal. I spend all night discombobulating you here, on a Land Dragon’s back. Tomorrow, wearing incredibly silly smiles, we return the green dragonets to their home. Then we fly back down the Island-bridge and find out how Riika’s doing. Your head says she’s fine, but your heart weeps clots of blood.”

Kal gaped like a slack-mouthed Yorbik drudge.

“Aye. Either I’m getting to know you better, or I’m starting to read your mind.”

He folded his arms sullenly. “Right.”

“I know, I’m so thrilled! It’s like sucking on a sewer.”

H
aving returned the
green dragonets to their home warren in a day-long flight and having shamelessly metagrobolised the local fauna in an unspecified number of locations en route, when Tazithiel was not chomping said local fauna, Rider and Dragoness soared away two points east of southeast, aiming to intersect the Island-bridge midway between the Rim-Wall and the Western Isles. Kal had to work hard not to imagine a pair of whipped curs slinking home, tails tucked firmly between their legs.

Appropriately, the weather was dismal. A storm swept in from the northwest and tossed heaps of sleet–derisively, it seemed–atop the most isolated pair of heads in the Island-World, before meandering on over the horizon. The winds jostled Tazithiel along at a fine pace. The faster to meet a never-ending chorus of mockery, Kal muttered. Perfect.

After two days on the wing, Kal and Tazithiel approached the Island-Bridge in the hour after midnight, landed rapidly atop a league-long Land Dragon’s back, and made a camp of sorts beside a nostril which had to measure a quarter-mile from end to end. Kal leaned over the abyss, and breathed in that particular cinnamon-like scent of magic. Aye, Dragon.

Bah.

A perfect suns-rise worked an artistic masterpiece over the eastern horizon.

Double-bah with oodles of supercilious dragonets ladled on top.

Kal, awake with the dawn, cast a disparaging glance at the Rim-Wall massif. Not so freaking large now, was it? His follow-up glance was so rapid, he pulled a neck muscle.

“Palatial parakeets!” he shrilled.

“What, your neck wasn’t stiff as a Dragonship’s spar already?” Tazithiel commented, with glacial sympathy.

“No, no … it’s the mother-ship. I mean, your mother. Back there.” On the western horizon and growing smaller by the second, was an unmistakable purple blob. Kal probed, “I, the superior being, saw her first. What about Riika? Can you see–”

“Can’t tell at this distance, even with my superior eyesight.” Tazithiel’s eyes coloured distinctly green; draconic jealousy, Kal had learned. But before he could blink, their colour modulated to the yellow-white of a bonfire’s heart. “Let’s sneak up on her, Kal. You game?”

“How exactly do you plan to sneak up on the sneakiest, most powerful–”

Tazithiel made a flat gesture with her paw. “Whizz …
boom!
”

The King of Thieves offered his most sinister sneer.

He loved sneaking. Add an agreeable enchantress and his rapture swelled a hundredfold. Dragon and Rider put the finishing touches on the most complex shielding they knew, including optical, auditory and magical suppression elements, as well as the precisely buttressed, sweptback contouring capable of transforming an ordinary Dragon Rider team into a living projectile.

Then, they hunted.

The rush! The thrill! Wild, disturbing laughter resounded in his heart as they closed in on the Amethyst Dragoness at over twenty times her speed. The energy output was crazy. He could practically watch Tazithiel wolfing down her stores of magic.

Tightly, Tazi said,
Saddlebags, Kal. She must have a Rider. Can’t see the mite. Can you?

Probably lost in the motherly spike-forest up top,
Kal muttered.
Please, please let it be …

At the very last instant, Aranya apparently sensed something, for she began to twist in the air, taking evasive action.
WHAM!
Tazithiel and Kal slammed past fifty feet overhead, pounding the Immadian Queen into a helpless, wing-tangling tailspin.

Oh yes!
Kal guffawed.
She’s awake now.

I saw Riika.

Travelling at over a thousand feet per second, Kal and the Indigo Express–he gleefully coined a new name for his supersonic ride, making the Dragoness laugh abrasively–shot miles beyond Aranya before Tazithiel, bleeding off the speed at a ridiculous rate, seized Kal with her Kinetic power and executed a turn that made the air howl in protest.

She lanced eastward, sucking in a huge breath.
TAZITHIEL!

ARANYA!
came the response, a thunderclap of wild Storm power. The nearby Land Dragons shifted uneasily, making a few Islands bob about before Kal’s startled gaze.

A tiny, dark figure danced like a frantic dragonet upon Aranya’s back.

Suddenly, as if alert to the danger posed by the combined speed of their approach, the two Dragonesses pulled up in the air. Kal cried, “Get her over here. Riika. I want to … I need …”

Riika was already running. Her legs scissored madly in nothingness as Tazi picked her up and wafted her across the divide; Kal punched his buckles furiously before remembering he could slip free at any time. He bounded to his feet, only to be bowled over by a Pygmy thunderbolt.

“Dad!”

Her arms were so strong. Her cheeks, gleaming with health. “Crazy girl, I missed you. Couldn’t ruddy well sleep a wink. You good?” Kal knew a fool’s smile was plastered on his face, but what did he care? “How are you? Returned to full nuisance value?”

“I’m great, Sticky-Fingers. How’s thievery? Busy?”

“Ah, a job’s a job. Let me look at you. Come on. What’s a-chatter in your jungle, Razorblades?”

She threw back her head in glee at his mangling of a Pygmy saying. “Master Jandubior sends his personal thanks. Dropped him off the other day. It was love at first clash, I believe.”

Aranya put in, “The whole Island rocked on its foundations.”

“I say, o Queen.” Kal waggled an eyebrow; the Dragoness’ belly-fires rumbled audibly as she realised the vulgar implications of her statement. “You shameful tease, Razorblades, don’t yank my hawser. Or should I say, mighty Dragon Rider?”

“Mighty Dragon. I’m just a Rider. I’m alright, Dad. Totally okay.”

“
Alright?
Totally okay? That is not–details!” he screeched. “I need details.”

“You know, there’s a species of monkey in the Crescent Islands called the howler monkey–ah. Less chit-chat, more truth?” Kal unclenched his fingers from an indelicate grip of his daughter’s neck. “Aranya’s Dragon Tears neutralised the poison. I don’t need the antidote anymore. Cyanorion and Aranya agree my heart’s growing stronger each day and I have loads of magic fizzing in my blood and I feel pretty weird, but alive is a nice sort of weird, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely.”

Wrapping his arms about Riika, Kal lifted her off her feet and held her. Just held her. Speech was superfluous. Perhaps it always had been, and a garrulous thief should draw a lesson from that.

Over his shoulder, Riika said, “So, Tazzer. You rustled up a few Land Dragons and opened the way to the West?”

The Indigo Dragoness cleared her throat with an embarrassed fireball. “I believe our mission is best described as, ‘tantalisingly close, but an abject failure.’ ”

Aranya said, “I hope to help, shell-daughter. Come. Let’s fly together and you can tell us the tale of your deeds. You made it in one unbroken flight? I must admit, I’m even glad to see Kal alive. I’m sure we’ll see these Land Dragons breathing pink rainbows, next.”

“What happened to your wing?” asked Kal.

The Queen Dragoness flared her wing slightly, showing broken wing-struts depending from her primary wing bone on the right outer quarter of her wing. “Explain your boisterous behaviour, young man.”

“Uh–sorry, mother Dragon.”

Pointing to her mouth with her foreclaw, Aranya said, “Just remember, Kal, this fang has your name on it. Do we understand each other?”

Kal turned an innocent smile on the Amethyst Dragoness. “O Queen, purely in the vein of idle speculation and in the absence of any sinister intent whatsoever, may I ask, has anyone ever stolen a fang from a living Dragon’s mouth?”

GRRR!
“We are not scribing that codicil in history, Kal. Not as long as I live to fly.”

* * * *

As they travelled westward at a steady thirty to forty leagues an hour, given Aranya’s ability to whistle up a following gale and Tazithiel and Kal’s ability to shield both Dragons in ways that had the Amethyst Dragoness shaking her head in disbelief, Aranya took her shell-daughter under her great wing. Kal watched them together, by turns moved, bemused and finally concerned. Aranya spoke non-stop during the daylight hours, recounting vast swathes of history, legends and stories from her past, and teaching them such Dragon lore as Kal imagined had never known the stroke of a pen or the custody of a scroll. In the evenings Aranya communed privately with Tazithiel or Riika, and even with Kal himself, sharing about the Shadow Dragon with great warmth and enthusiasm.

After giving Aranya and Riika a tour of the waterfall, the foursome repaired to the nearest Land Dragon to talk strategy. Aranya and Tazithiel transformed into Human form, dressed and joined Kal and Riika for an evening repast. Kal watched in awe as Tazithiel steadily demolished an entire saddlebag of supplies.

He joked, “No wonder no-one keeps Dragons for pets. They eat everything in sight.”

Tazithiel leaned over and nipped his shoulder playfully. “Mmm, tasty Human. Can’t blame me for wanting flame-grilled man-steaks.”

“I don’t think being the main item on your menu is a sound basis for our relationship,” Kal protested, edging away from the slavering Shapeshifter. Realistic, he could handle. Tazithiel’s predatory side made his skin crawl.

“Kal, you’re always on the menu.”

Flipping flying felons! Kal handed over his sweetbread roll, affecting a hangdog expression that made everyone laugh.

That evening, the foursome chatted and laughed until their sides hurt. Kal and Riika spoke at great length and swapped stories, while later, Aranya and her shell-daughter retreated to a private world. When Kal wrapped himself in a warm cloak to sleep, Tazi and Aranya were still nattering away. They spoke as the Blue moon rose into the southern skies, and communed amidst intermingled rainbows of light as Yellow began its stately traverse toward morning.

Kal awoke to find Tazithiel rooting about in the saddlebags again.

“Still hungry, girl?” he asked.

Tazithiel’s smile was an ode to feminine ambiguity. “I am eating for four, Kal.”

Kal processed this statement in his sleepy brain, and drew a blank. “Try the other one. I think we’ve a few tinker bananas left. No meat.”

Riika said, “Aranya, whatever’s the matter with your eyes?”

The Amethyst Shapeshifter gazed at them with eyes turned a curious white-silver colour, as though her eye-sockets had filled with stars. Her smile was sweet yet melancholy, conveying the cares of the Island-World. Kal felt his chest close, the pounding of his heartbeat a private drumroll in his ears. Riika queried Aranya, but he knew.

Then, it dawned on the teenager. “No.” She bit her fist. “No, Aranya …”

“Aye. It is time.”

For a moment she was Aranya of Immadia, the majestic Queen of Dragons, her height and otherworldly beauty marking her for a Shapeshifter of unmatched power and grace. Then she bent to enfold the tiny girl in her arms, transformed into mother and friend. They held each other with the fierceness of wild creatures and love as tender as the dawn flushing the eastern skies. Riika wept in huge, violent gasps that shook her cruelly; Aranya murmured to her, but her words carried to Kal, just a few feet away.

“You are gold,” said the Queen. “Never forget it. You are dark jungle gold. Your spirit will never be tamed, my precious Rider. Your boldness has been the cause of great joy for me, and I cannot wait to see what is to come.”

“That’s why you can’t go!” Riika sobbed.

“Hush, my petal. Star Dragons never die, not as you and I understand death. I will always watch over you. Watch for me, for I will send my strength to you. Dear one, it is my time and nothing can change that.”

Riika only held her tighter, mewling little hurt-animal cries and denials into Aranya’s chest.

Aranya wept, her tears falling freely upon Riika’s head. “Precious, precious Riika. You are a symbol of restoration. I sense a fierce power within you, a power akin to the twin suns shining in all their glory, and wisdom beyond your years. You will need all this and more if you are to attain your destiny. Remember the suns. They are your heritage and your purpose.”

Now, the Queen raised her arm and beckoned. “Kallion, my true son.”

Her affection broke him. He stumbled in to embrace them both, begging Aranya to stay, telling her that she must for Tazithiel’s sake, for they had known each other for far too short a time. Yet the arm that held him burned against his skin, and he knew that the fires rose in her. The white-fires of creation. The fires of her true nature.

Aranya said, “To me, you are the Shadow Dragon reborn. Ardan was my true Island, the strength to which I always returned. I see his integrity and nobility in you, Kal. Truly, you will need this Pygmy’s wisdom in order to love my fierce shell-daughter, for to love a Star Dragoness requires a heart as large as the Island-World, and strength to match. I believe you are that man. Shadow cannot exist without light. And light shines most brightly in the darkness. Already, you are inseparable. May you grow together into true oneness.”