Dragon Thief (5 page)

“If man were meant to fly, we’d have wings. Look, don’t fulminate your furnaces at me, lady. My head trusts you to keep us aloft. But I’m pretty sure we abandoned my stomach back there on the cliff.”

A cliff which had receded with frightening speed into the distance, while the untameable reaches of the Cloudlands engulfed a Dragon and her Rider, an endless realm of death awaiting the slightest mistake. Yet her wings cut the winds with supple simplicity, and her long body undulated to the rhythm of her surprisingly slow wingbeats. Kal’s heart rode high in his throat. From afar, he had many times admired the serpentine grace of Dragons winging across the five moons. This was … he had no words. Well, true to character, perhaps a few words. Breathless. Humbled. He felt intoxicated, high on the fumes of life itself. Also, slightly aggrieved. Dragons could shoot the winds like this whenever they wished? Unfair!

“You’d rather be aboard your Dragonship, right?”

“Wrong.” Kal’s grin was only semi-functional, but the iron in his voice pleased him. “Flying with you is an unforgettable shade of miraculous.”

She spoke no word in response, but the tenor of her long, ululating trill lifted every hair on his arms and prickled the back of his neck. Until this moment, Kal realised, he had considered her to be beastly, an animal. But he realised now that her soul was also attuned to wonder. It made her comprehensible. Sentient. Not so much the bright-eyed beast.

For a time, it seemed her song became the wings that floated them above the Cloudlands.

At length, Kal wriggled uncomfortably. “Tazithiel, I’ve a question about Shapeshifters.” For questions could supplant this treacherous feeling welling in his breast, an emotion he feared more than any other …

“A question about kissing lizards?”

Kal planted a loud smacker on the spine spike directly ahead of his saddle, which stood half a foot taller than his eye-level. “One kiss duly delivered. May I ask, Tazi, how do you do the changing thing?”

“My transformation? I think, therefore I am.”

He sniffed, “Ancient existential philosophy is a poor substitute for solid science. Tazi, where’s your Human right now? Because–”

“Shapeshifter magic is inherently transformative.” Tazi swivelled her neck to scan the horizon. “My joke has substance, Kal. I am one soul which exists in two forms, or two manifestations, if you prefer the Dragonish technical term. We believe there’s another plane of existence, a spiritual plane, which houses our non-manifest being. For Shapeshifters, the draconic fire-soul and the Human soul are intertwined, two but one. We exist simultaneously, intermingled.”

“So could I speak to Human-Tazithiel right now?”

“I am here.”

“And Dragoness-Tazi?”

I also am here.
Her Dragonish filled his mind with colours and nuances of dizzying complexity.
Why are you frowning like that, Kal? Should the wind change …

“Tazi, I sense both of you.”

A glitch in the Dragoness’ wingbeat betrayed her surprise. Her muzzle tilted, bringing an interrogative arch of her brow-ridge to his notice.

“When I wandered into your lair with all the gumption and flair of a flummoxed ralti sheep, I knew there was a Dragon present–aye, snort fire! I know I was confused, thinking you were some kind of magical likeness or enchantment, but when I kissed you–”

“Which confused you even more.”

“Thoroughly addled my wits,” he admitted, eliciting a rumbling laugh from his magical sky-quadruped.

“You kept calling me ‘Dragoness’,” she said. “I could not understand how you intuitively grasped my nature. We Shapeshifters are not exactly common about the Isles, and we keep a low profile. Did my distraction not work?”

“Oh, that bit worked perfectly.”

The Dragoness showed him the fire roiling on her tongue. “The stench of your lewd thoughts burns my nostrils, scoundrel. But Kal, how did you know?”

Time for a knowing wink. “Magic.”

“Magic? No magic in the history of this Island-World has ever been able to detect a Shapeshifter’s presence from either their Dragon or Human forms.”

“With one exception–the magic of Hualiama Dragonfriend.”

A monstrous fireball split the morning sky, expiring just above the curve of the Yellow moon, looming over two-thirds of the western horizon. Kal clutched his saddle, white-knuckled, half-expecting Tazi’s head to snake back over her shoulder and shorten him by a rather essential part of his anatomy.

She panted, “How under the twin suns did you come by such knowledge? Kallion, this is deep Dragon lore; a Shapeshifter secret. Swear you will never repeat it! Swear!”

Despite the flames boiling above his head as she hissed at him, Kal broke out in a cold sweat. Stiffly, he said, “There’s no need for intimidation, Dragoness. I wish for truth between us. I learned this when I lived with the monks of Ya’arriol Island for two years.”

“See, I knew you were a monk.”

However, there was scant levity in her tone. Kal knew he had overstepped an invisible line, boasting to a quick-tempered Dragoness. Fool. They had made no promises to each other. With a thought, she could loosen his saddle and drop him into the Cloudlands, where his bones would rot in oblivion for all eternity.

“I took no vows,” he muttered. “I was searching their library for knowledge of your Dragon roost, Tazithiel, when the monks captured me.”

“You learned Dragonish from the monks?” she growled. “I wondered at your accent. A touch barbaric, but linguistically accomplished.”

Compliment or condescension? He could not tell. Kal settled for a flat, “Aye.”

“Tell me what you know of Shapeshifters.”

“The scrolls call Hualiama the mother of all Shapeshifters, and the first Dragon Rider. She broke the ancient taboo of Humans riding Dragonback. Some academics accuse the Ancient Dragon Dramagon of designing or breeding Shapeshifters, but the lore of the Dragon the monks worship–the Black Dragon Fra’anior himself–” Tazithiel’s shiver communicated to him through his seat “–clearly labels the Dragonfriend as the progenitor of your kind. Apparently there’s a trio of lost scrolls which recount her tale.”

“The
Dragonfriend Saga.”
Her whisper was reverence itself.

“Aye. Those scrolls must tell a tale indeed. A Human woman who called Grandion the Tourmaline Dragon, her Dragonlove?” Kal shook his head slowly. “I can only imagine that notion flying like a lead balloon among the Dragonkind. What singular courage she must have exhibited. Tazi, what colour are you? Tourmaline? Could you be Hualiama’s descendent?”

“I’m Indigo, mostly.” Her voice was faraway, her mind engaged in contemplations Kal could only guess at. “Could you ever call someone your Dragonlove, Kal? Could you?” Tazi’s muzzle jerked away. “Don’t answer. Sorry I asked.”

Kal let out the breath her question had trapped in his throat. He uncurled his clenched fingers from the saddle straps.

“Heritage among Shapeshifters is peculiar, Kal. We do not always trace our roots by direct lineage, for there is also a spiritual heritage–why I should reveal such mysteries to a man of your ilk, I cannot fathom.”

Distinctly, he heard her fangs grinding together. True. Painful truth, surprisingly. He would not trust himself with such secrets; secrets which could be sold for a king’s ransom. But if the reinvented Kal wished to place his mark upon the Island-World, upon history even–should such hubris not earn him a speedy talon through the neck–then he must evince more than a thief’s sense of integrity.

“Tazi–” he winced as his voice cracked like an adolescent boy’s “–you doubtless sensed, even smelled, my reaction to your question. I will say this. Love is fragile, precious beyond any treasure of this world. It … takes time.” Suddenly, his throat was thick with unspoken emotions. “What this man knows is the first blush of infatuation. He would not know this madness from true love if it captured him, despoiled him and turned all the Islands of his world into butterflies that winged their way around the twin suns in eternally fluttering rainbows.”

The Dragoness’ chuckle shook him so hard, Kal was thankful for the saddle straps. He asked, “Are you tempted to eat me, now?”

“Too amazed for that.”

“Of course. I am simply, jaw-droppingly amazing.”

His preening triggered another draconic chuckle, complete with fire, billowing smoke and a choking puff of sulphur. “What you are is the vainest parakeet I’ve ever met.”

“It’s a defence mechanism.” Kal snapped his mouth shut. What by the volcanic hells of Fra’anior–the largest active volcano in the Island-World at eighteen leagues in diameter–was he thinking, giving a Dragoness his inmost confidences? Quickly, he said, “Oh, so what shall I make of all that posing on the clifftop back there?”

“Pre-flight checks.”

Her tone suggested he had better not pursue the matter. Kal, being Kal, settled unerringly upon the diametric opposite. “Pre-flight muscular posing and checking the exact striations of your massive flight muscles in the full gleam of dawn’s pure light?” Her growling gathered the volume and menace of an approaching avalanche. “I mean, I can understand stretching your wings to loosen the joints and ligaments. But tilting them to maximise the gleam off the surface in order to dazzle your Human companion–”

“Kal!”

“You examined the sharpness of your talons because–”

“We might encounter enemies.”

“And that remarkable session of spine-stretching–” he imitated her morning limbering up, with
slightly
exaggerated sound effects “–whilst fishing for compliments with a coy inclination of your head and whirling fire-eyes?”

“Kal!”

“Oh roar my name once more, thou glorious breath of dawn’s fires.”

“Shut the dragonet-babble, you vacuous vagabond.”

“You love my poetry. Really. It’s alarming how I can turn a woman’s heart into prekki fruit mush with nought but a casual turn of phrase.”

Tazithiel crisped a few passing insects with the force of her derision.

Leaning forward in the saddle, he whispered, “Now, why don’t you show me what a Dragoness can do, Tazi? Can you soar over those quadruple overlapping rainbows up there?”

The Indigo Dragoness’ challenge shook the cool, still morning.
I shall rend the light with my claws! I am Tazithiel!

Tazithiel surged skyward, once again leaving Kal’s stomach miles in her wake.

A
DAY ALOFT
was enough to convince the most cynical sifter of swag that flying Dragonback was an experience which stirred the secret places of his soul. Between bouts of awe and curiosity, Kal spent an agreeable clutch of hours envisioning the citadels and fortresses he could plunder with the help of a Shapeshifter Dragoness. He drew blissful thought-pictures regarding the potential uses of her magical powers. Ah, how swiftly he could loot a treasure-chamber if he could just levitate the gold and jewels right out of it! Kal sighed. Soldiers? A puff of Dragon-fire would roast them in their tin-pot armour. Moats, sixty-foot walls and defending armies? Trifles.

Of course, as a recently reformed rogue he was not truly intent on carrying out these undeniably sheep-brained plans. Instant holiness accompanied his Shapeshifter-like transformation, didn’t it? Aye. The only holey-ness was that inherent in his logic.

His lips curved lazily. The acquisitive nature of Dragons was legendary. Attempt the impossible? Blow that off the nearest cliff. They could be rich! Sadly, this notion no longer warmed the innards of his cold, gluttonous heart. Kal rubbed his chest, reflecting that if he could have carved a window to check the supposed seat of his emotions–another nonsense for the superstitious masses–he would have discovered a tiny curl of Dragon-flame within.

He dabbed his left eye furtively. Bah! Dratted filthy convulsions of the heart, now he shed a tear?

“Weeping at the glorious suns-set, my gentle muse?” inquired the Dragoness.

Kal champed a curse to nothingness between his teeth. Could he keep no secrets around this woman? Straightening his back, he scrutinised the western horizon with monkish zeal. Glorious? Here, one hundred and fifty leagues southwest of Tazithiel’s lair, there was neither Island nor moon to break the perfection of a copper-orange firestorm radiating from the setting suns as the twin orbs drank deep of the horizon. His gaze returned to Tazithiel, whose scales, wing-edges and struts, and every spine spike upon her back, glowed as though burnished in a furnace’s heart. Dragon royalty, resplendent!

Contrarily, he grunted, “It’s sort of nice out here, isn’t it?”

“NICE?”

Trust a Dragoness to deafen him. Kal aimed a sly wink at her tail, before turning to confront Tazi’s gape-jawed bemusement. He said, “You, may I be so bold as to suggest, are
very
nice.”

Had his words been a juicy spiral-horn buck, the Shapeshifter Dragoness would have rended them neck to crop and bolted her meal in an instant. Dragon-thunderous, she growled, “You’re trying to rile me.” He waggled an eyebrow. “What if you succeed, Kal?”

Kal spread his arms. “I embrace the Island-World as a Dragoness’ wings embrace the darkling fires of the twin sun-Dragons.”

Tazi’s eye-fires seethed at his statement, yellows and oranges chasing each other with mesmerising abandon. “I earn myself more poetic gibberish? I suspect too much time spent dusting off scrolls among the monks, Kallion.”

“Truth be told, it was convict labour, mostly. But the monks were generous. I think they were trying to reform me, the pride of doddering old rajals.” A curt laugh escaped his lips as he pictured companies of white-haired monks stretching in the suns like the huge black felines of his native Fra’anior and the Western Isles, purring and snarling through their warrior-forms. “They burrowed beneath my skin, Tazi. Their love, I mean–it was as if this boy, who had never known his parents, landed among a hundred fathers and two hundred faithful brothers. Odd. I never considered …”

Indeed, a host of impressions clicked together into new patterns in his mind. “That’s weird. I was the only labourer in the monastery. Breaking rocks. Daily hard labour coupled with nightly education–Islands’ sakes! Tazi, how did you know me? My name; my deeds?”

“You’re a marked man among the Dragonkind, Kal.”

“A marked–oh no. Get me out of here! Let me go, you wicked, wicked colossus!”

“Where will you run, Kal? Down my tail?” Her eye-fires brightened with what he had begun to recognise as draconic amusement.

Kal panted and cursed unhappily, then execrated his own curses. He slapped the saddle furiously. Trapped! “Fine. You’ve captured me. Congratulations, Tazithiel.”

And who was the Islands’ biggest fool?

“You could hardly imagine your deeds would go unnoticed, Kal. Not only did you spit upon the paws of all Dragonkind by burgling the hallowed Dragon-Halls of Gi’ishior–”

“Successfully,” he put in.

“–but I believe you may have raided a few other Dragon roosts before that, and helped yourself to a plethora of invaluable artefacts from Immadia in the North to Mejia in the South. I don’t know all the details, Kal, but I know enough. The word spread among the Dragonkind, oh, perhaps ten years ago. At the time, they placed a price upon your worthless head. Three thousand gold drals. Perhaps more by now, given you’ve been as slippery as a terrace-lake trout.”

“Three
thousand?
” Kal did not know whether to be impressed, dumbfounded or just plain confused. A ridiculous fortune! That bounty would exhaust a king’s treasury. Or enrich a kingdom.

“We Dragons don’t know where your hoard is–yet, Kallion. But we’ll find it. No place in the Island-World is hidden from the eyes of the Dragonkind.”

Kal’s mind raced, awash with sick fury mingled with no small measure of appreciation. He must be a hundred leagues from the nearest bolt-hole, perched like a prize ralti sheep atop a hostile Dragoness, for pity’s sake, who had played him with the skill and finesse a master villain named Kallion of Fra’anior prided himself upon. Cunning beast! So brilliantly, brutally guileful! His hand clenched upon the Dragon war-bow, then relaxed. No. He could never hurt her. Neither in thought, nor in deed. Tazithiel was merely following the instinct, the orders of her kind. What to do? How to escape this fine clod of windroc-excrement he had gaily leaped into with both booted feet?

“I’m not giving you the location of my hoard,” he snapped. “You can wrap my guts around your talons if you wish, dangle me from clouds, or slow-roast me in your most torrid Dragon fires–”

“So there
is
a hoard? And you are a thief?”

How could she have lied? Was everything she had told him, even that terrible story about her ‘correction’, a lie? He could not believe it. He was enough of a con-artist to smell a lie four Islands away. He must change tack. Probe until he understood …

“Fie, I confess nothing, you wretched reptile. What would you do with another Dragon hoard, or three thousand ruddy gold drals, anyway? Warm them with your belly-fires? Tazithiel, there’s more to life than the pursuit of worthless riches!”

“Are you quite certain you’re a criminal?” she jibed.

“No I am bloody well not. I don’t recognise this nonsense vomiting from my mouth,” Kal griped. Oh, he was bitter. Soul-lost. The foundations of his existence had been annihilated. Who was he? He folded his arms across his chest. “You can slowly discombobulate my brains in the perfumed sweetness of your boudoir, you maddening Shapeshifter Dragoness … enchantress … ruddy beautiful woman–oh, volcanic hells how I ache to kiss you–and you will not wrest another secret from me. Not one. My lips are sealed. Permanently.”

The great body quaked beneath him. Gusts of belly-laughter shook the golden air. She was laughing at him? As the man on her back howled at her mockery, the Dragoness laughed so hard her wingbeat stuttered. She could barely fly, jerking with every fiery hiccough that erupted out her long throat. She kept gasping, ‘Your face! Oh, Kal, your face!’ and collapsing in merriment once more.

Kal maintained a mutinous silence of pursed lips and dark thoughts.

Finally, she said, “I certainly hope your lips aren’t sealed.”

He studied the horizon, the world-spanning canvas of luminous colours backlighting her draconic smile. Bah. Snarky shape-changing seductress. Custodian of his heart. Even on the road to Kal’s personal inferno, she tantalised him.

“If you’d like, we can practise further discombobulations when we reach the Southern Archipelago tomorrow,” the Dragoness offered.

Kal sniffed. Not tempting. Not in the slightest.

“Dear Kal. Dear, sweet Kal. Kallion, o my Kallion, lover of all things bullion …”

Now a ditty? He ironed a smile off his lips.

“There. That’s better, my handsome hunk of humanity.”

Whatever game she was playing, he was having none of it. “Dragoness, you’ve had your fun. When are you going to collect your bounty? Heavens above and Islands below, was three thousand stinking drals worth what we shared? Was I just entertainment; a draconic toy? You callous, conniving piece of–”

She drowned him out effortlessly. “Kal! Haven’t you heard about the tenth day of the week?”

He opened his jaw, and closed it. He opened his jaw, and fished for flies. Kal even caught one. Spitting out a bitter scrap of insect life, he said, “I … er … um, what? Oh, freaking windrocs, you don’t mean–you do. Do you?”

“Never-ever day.”

Her wings cupped the air, tilting to drive them forward once more. Steadily, Tazithiel gained height as she waited for Kal to gather his thoughts from wherever they had scattered across the Cloudlands. His frozen despair thawed beneath the twin-suns’ brilliance of hope. She knew him. Knew his scurrilous reputation, yet she refused the Island-sinking price upon his head and everlasting honour among her kind?

“You stole my joke,” he croaked. “Why?”

“I believe you, Kal. I believe
in
you.”

“Terrible idea,” he grumbled. Great, now she was laughing at him again. “Tazi, look, no amount of heart-stealing could–you’re an intelligent woman. Highly intelligent. You can’t–”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I can or can’t do.” With a touch of magic, she corralled a fireball just inches from his nose and sucked it back into her mouth. “Sorry. I know this is all backward. Firstly, while my fires pulse green at the thought of three thousand gold drals, I have absolutely no intention of collecting so much as a rat’s dinner in exchange for your empty head. Zero. Secondly, I do believe in you. Ridiculous and ill-advised by any measure under the twin suns, but there it is. Thirdly, I possess emotional intelligence and cold-hearted reason enough to know what I’m doing, and I say the rest of the Dragonkind can just sizzle in their own acid spit for all I care. Fourthly, I’m curious about what exactly you stole to justify such an outrageous bounty. Fifthly–”

“Wow,” he breathed. “Wow, wow … and here I thought it was all about my peerless prowess on the pillow-roll.”

“You’re sweet, but unquestionably deluded,” she grinned. “Kal, remember that note from Master Ja’amba you told me about? ‘Seize your destiny.’ What do you think he meant?”

Kal shrugged helplessly. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would the monks imprison me for years and then practically gift me a Dragonship and the freedom of the Isles? They must have known my intentions. And no, I’m quite certain they
didn’t
believe in me. Wise men, those monks. Wiser than Dragons.”

“It all smacks of a positively draconian plan, doesn’t it?”

“Draconic? Draconian? No.” He gave in to the urge to scratch furiously at his chin. Relief always made him itch, along with the sneaking suspicion that matters might just go awry once more. “No. Tazi, that’s–no. Too many coincidences. So, promise me you don’t want that reward. Nor my hoard? You don’t want to pop a talon through my chest as a handy service to all Dragonkind?”

“Word of a Dragon on the first two, and no promises on the third,” she returned, arrow-swift.

“Ah … I’ll take what I can. Word of a … uh, my solemn oath as patently not offered earlier, never to reveal your Shapeshifter secrets. Or any other secrets, for that matter.”

“Thank you, Kal.” The Dragoness pointed a claw at the horizon. “See that dark smudge? That’s bad weather incoming, by my wings.”

He saw nothing. “Hmm. But you can outfly a mere storm, can’t you?”

“Aye.”

Kal rediscovered his cocky grin. Indeed, his entire body buzzed with release. Never had a woman confounded him as Tazi did. Rotten, shameless tease, and as stubborn as an Island’s foundations. He would have to watch this one closely. Very closely indeed.

He said, “So do enlighten me, Shapeshifter Dragoness, as to your intentions regarding this gratefully alive man seated upon your shoulders?”

“Immediately upon arrival in the Southern Archipelago,” she returned slyly, “I intend to transform, and then set about thoroughly discombobulating, addling and befuddling your dubious wits until you don’t know your Islands from your Cloudlands.”

If he grinned any wider, Kal thought, his cheeks would crack like aged porcelain.

Waving his arms, he cried, “Then let us burn the heavens, o Tazithiel, as Dragon and Rider!”

… as Rider and Dragon!
she echoed.

BOOM!
A strange quake struck Kal’s spirit. The deepening suns-set blinked into darkness.

Why was he falling?

* * * *

“Unnh …” Kal stirred. He felt as though his head had been placed on a blacksmith’s anvil and pounded into several new shapes.