The Onyx Dragon (21 page)

Pip flew for most of the day, grateful for each rest and feeling stronger by the hour. Tik kept casting the Onyx Dragoness reproachful looks.

They camped that evening on the bald crown of an Island deep in the Crescent. Chymasion and Jyoss hunted for wild pig, while Emblazon and Shimmerith plotted strategy with their Riders. Hunagu slipped away under the cover of the nearest bushes.

Pip moseyed over to Hunagu and crouched next to him. Speaking Ape, she asked, “How we find Hunagu Island?”

“Pip hear last Apes. No want stranger,” the Oraial griped.

“Hunagu scent family-tribe?”

“How Pip remember tribe-scent after seven years? Hope beat in Pip’s heart?”

“Big-big hope,” she admitted. “Find Pygmies, ask about runes on leg. Tik have no runes. How we find Tik home? Ask clever-clever Oraials?” She punched his arm slyly, given she could not reach his shoulder. “Hunagu smell like Dragon. Find beautiful mate.”

“Hunagu stink like Human.” He tried to punch her back, but Pip grabbed his fingers and pretended to wrestle with him as they always used to.

The Ape laughed, covering her head with his huge paw. “How Hunagu live without best-best friend? Pip forget?”

“Never.”

Pip stood on his crooked forearm in the gathering evening, grooming his neck ruff and flicking the ticks she found into the nearby bushes. Ay. She and Hunagu had been on a journey and come back changed. Were they too much changed? She had no answers.

* * * *

From bald-spot Island, as Nak cheerfully nicknamed the place, the search spread out, slowly drifting southward as they investigated and discarded possibilities. Three times, they shielded and hid amongst the Island canopies as fifty-strong Dragonwings of Night-Reds passed by high overhead, traveling northward up the Spine, but the Dragons did not pause even to glance about. They seemed mysteriously intent on whatever mission consumed their attention.

Pip was tremendously excited to find a Pygmy tribe just two days later, only to have invective screamed at her for being a strangely dressed interloper and no Pygmy at all.

Before dawn the following day, during their patrol, Jyoss and Duri spied Oraials crossing the vines between Islands four Islands away, swaying above the Cloudlands as they made the dangerous crossing despite a stiff breeze. Taking Hunagu in his paws, Emblazon flew ahead with Nak, Jerrion and Pip to land the Ape on the Island ahead of the tribe. Dragoness-Pip peered at the family making the crossing. Ay, did she detect something of a resemblance? For Hunagu, though he said nothing, took several deep whiffs of air and a quiver seemed to run through him.

“Pip change,” he said. “Come with?”

“I’ll watch from a suitable distance,” said Emblazon.

“I’ll peek through my fingers when you transform,” Nak added, grinning at her from atop the Amber Dragon’s mountainous shoulders.

Seated in the second Rider position on Emblazon’s harness, Jerrion took the smaller man’s neck in a playful headlock. “I’ll just twist his head off if he misbehaves, alright, Pip?”

“Emblazon, help,” Nak pretended to wail.

Ignoring the Rider’s travails with a pompous air, the Amber Dragon launched off the branch where he had deposited Pip and Hunagu. She transformed, dressed and armed herself rapidly with her Pygmy bow, quiver and long daggers, and followed the Ape as he lumbered beneath the damp jungle canopy. In seconds, they were swallowed up as though they had never been.

“Air smell home-home,” the Oraial hooted softly, making a mighty leap across to a new branch.

Seizing a trailing vine, Pip swung after him. How it all came rushing back! The smells, the gourds, even the insects that buzzed around them. She had names for each iridescent wood-boring beetle they saw embedded in the bark, and most of the colourful jungle parakeets, peripols, hoopoes and woodpeckers that flitted through the green, leafy hallways and tunnels that formed and changed before them as the Ape and the Pygmy warrior worked their way northward around the Island, travelling in silence for the most part, with the odd brief exchange to agree direction. Hunagu scared off a twenty-foot copper-backed python by hooting and beating a booming tattoo on his chest.

Well. Now the Oraial tribe would be alerted to their presence. Judging by his expression, Hunagu realised this, too. They travelled on for another quarter-mile or so, fording two streams in their deeply-cut gullies and cutting through a marshy area rife with reeds and sedge grasses that stood twice Pip’s height, but Hunagu had no problem seeing over their plumy white tips even when he travelled on all fours. Then suddenly, his thick, splayed fingers made a warning signal.

Pip halted.

Hunagu reared upright, his throat swelling thickly. A series of low, booming hoots resounded deep in his chest, declaring his name and lineage, Pip realised, although there was much of his hoot-speak she could not understand. Some monkeys spoke with whistles as well, adding further dimensions to their basic Ape language.

A decidedly querulous reply rumbled back from no more than fifty feet away.

Pip, knee deep in black swamp muck but at least able to enjoy the brunt of the early suns cutting beneath the jungle’s flanking boughs from the East to brighten the light green reeds and khaki sedge grasses, peered ahead through a natural break in the growth. At least seven scowling adult Oraials stood in a semicircle facing Hunagu. Only two had the thick white neck-ruffs that identified male Oraials, a rheumy-eyed male who stood a similar height to Hunagu, perhaps fourteen feet tall on his hind legs, but was even thicker through the torso and shoulder. The other was a young male, considerably smaller and slimmer than Hunagu.

“Father,” said Hunagu.

“Challenge-challenge?” thundered the old male.

“No challenge. Hunagu find own-tribe home-tribe,” he replied.

“Hunagu many-summers dead.”

Pip called, “Bad-bad big person steal Hunagu to Island far from suns. No good place for Oraial. Long-long suns pass. Hunagu grow mighty brave. Save two-leg peoples from evil stinging creatures. Ancient Ones bring Hunagu back to family.”

The reeds rippled as the alpha male forged toward them, the fighters of his family gathering into a dense wedge just behind. In a moment, a posse of black Oraial eyes faced Pip and Hunagu, their body language communicating suspicion and anger. She would not have wanted to encounter such a group in battle, despite the knowledge that a Dragoness lurked within easy call–her secret weapon. She imitated her Ape friend, lowering onto all fours with a respectfully downcast gaze.

“No challenge,” Hunagu repeated.

The male said, “Apes no fly. How fly from Island far from suns?”

Waving his thick arms, her friend explained, “Little Island-person ask Ancient Ones. Carry with rope. Many suns–twenty-five suns travel.”

One of the older females moved forward, sniffing at Pip’s neck with her huge nostrils delicately a-flare. “How speak Ape so good-good? Lost own-tribe home-tribe?”

Ay. Lost. Pip listened unobtrusively as Hunagu retold their story in great detail, even as the rains swept over her heart. A person could be lost yet home. Physically present, yet part of her heart soared with Silver, and her soul had yet to find its true home. Perhaps she was just the sum of the assorted parts of her history and heritage, experience and learning, scattered across the Isles. She could claim what was hers to claim. The rest? That she must fight for.

Pip did not know what was afoot in her heart, but she sensed a resettling of those parts into new patterns.

She startled. What was this? Hunagu’s father … a paw rested upon his son’s shoulder. Great, silent Ape-tears rolled down his dark cheeks! Hunagu gripped his father’s forearm, unspeaking.

Beautiful.

Surrounded by his kin, Hunagu renewed bonds devastated those seven seasons ago by the Sylakian slavers. There was fond back-slapping and soft hooting and communal grooming. Beautiful. Several female Apes came to check Pip’s hair. She hoped they would not find anything too serious amongst her unruly curls. The young male approached to sniff and greet her. Then, he slapped her back in the Ape fashion, summarily planting Pip’s face in the swamp.

Perhaps she should feel part of the tribe, now.

B
Y Early AFTERNOON,
the Dragonwing had gathered beneath the trees beside the swamp, meeting with the Apes in a most extraordinary conference. Eight Oraials. Five Dragons. Three Shapeshifters and six Humans. They shared intelligence, speculation and tales of Ape-lore for hour upon hour. The Apes, far from living in isolation on their Island homes, had extraordinary and far-reaching knowledge of their environment, shared and retold in oral form for hundreds of years. They knew the location of every Pygmy tribe within a hundred and fifty leagues. Pip learned of the jungle vine, a sharing of information by Oraial Apes every full cycle of the Jade Moon, when the Apes would gather late at night to boom information and stories across the great gulfs between the Islands, or to physically meet up with other tribes.

“It seems your people might live near the southern reach of their territory,” Nak mused.

“Can you ask them about the Islands we need to find?” Jerrion inquired.

Pip said, “I tried, but they’re not really visual thinkers. They think in scent-memories and oral lore. Hunagu’s father could recall at least eight sets of Ape Steps which might match what we’re searching for.”

“Would your friend be willing to accompany us further?”

“I guess that’s the only option. Hunagu?”

“Mighty Ape! Ancient Ones no-smell blind younglings!” he thundered in Ape-speak, thumping his chest until it resounded like a drum.

“He says yes,” Pip said wryly. No point in hurling dry tinder on already fiery tempers.

Emblazon rolled his eye-fires at the Apes. “Is that a precise translation, Pip?”

She kept a perfectly straight face. “He says the Dragonkind wouldn’t know exactly what smell they’d be searching for. I think we’ll need Hunagu’s guidance, mighty Emblazon.”

They passed the late afternoon training, discussing strategy and preparing suitable clothing for Pip, narrow strips of plain cloth she could turn into a loincloth and upper body coverings. She did not want to repeat her mistakes upon meeting that first Pygmy tribe. Yet would she be able to recognise her Island when the time came? She did not think so, but Hunagu seemed confident. Just another mystery, how Oraial Apes could pass on scent-markers and memories in the same way as Humans or Dragons might tell a story.

She fell asleep wondering if Human souls could develop a case of infectious starlight.

* * * *

At first light, the Dragonwing took to the skies. Jade. Night-Red. Silver. Sapphire and Amber. Onyx, Copper and Albino. Not one was less than a rare colour, perhaps the most unusual assortment of Dragons ever to grace a burning Island-World dawn.

The suns rose hot and heavy on their port flank as the Dragonwing forged forth several compass points east of south, making a steady nine to ten leagues per hour. Ahead, a storm front straddled the Crescent in ascending, mounded layers like a bulging pile of sackcloth bags, from the grey-blue skirts denoting rain to the pure white cumulous puffs tens of thousands of feet above. No overflying that, Emblazon noted. Within, there would be powerful updrafts and jagged hailstones, which could debilitate an unshielded Dragon. Better to fly beneath or take shelter. Yet the day’s warmth belied the storm. Sultry as the breath of an angry Dragon, heat shimmered over the serried Islands, a band perhaps forty leagues wide at this point, but endlessly long. Pip, Kaiatha and the Dragons luxuriated. Durithion, on the other hand, sweated and grumbled mightily.

At Shimmerith’s suggestion, Pip flew with Chymasion and worked with him on trying to see further, beyond the storm. They had to know the Marshal’s movements. Yet either the storm hampered their efforts, or Re’akka had the South sewn up tighter than the stitching on a Dragonship’s air sack. There were, to borrow a Nak turn of phrase, suspicious volumes of nothing to be found.

“Absence often speaks louder than presence,” the Dragon Rider continued to hold forth, distracting Pip from another attempt at boring Chymasion’s special sight through the storm.

GRRARRRRGGHH!
The Pygmy Dragoness ground her fangs impotently.

Rather than continue to tug her wingtips, however, Nak waxed unexpectedly poetic. He cried, “Thou piceous penumbra of draconic pulchritude, shalt thy shrewd feminine intellect not doubtless secure victory? Thou subtle ode to wingéd magnificence, thou ingenious igneous lizard …”

That snake-tongued son of a chattering monkey, he was at it again! Pip was just about to engage in a round of fire-spitting combined with the teeth-gritting when the words ‘penumbra’, feminine’ and ‘subtle’ seemed to leap out and strike her a triple blow between the eyes.

“Yes!” she shouted. “Brilliant, Nak!”

Nak startled, then began his preening routine. “My genius shines, of course,” he agreed, obviously having not the slightest clue what he was agreeing with.

With a clip of her wings, Pip whipped over and dropped a sooty kiss on the crown of Nak’s head, before spiralling back to Chymasion with a tight triple forward somersault that would have been the envy of any self-respecting dragonet. Ignoring Nak, who was busy extolling his towering virtuosity to everyone who might be listening–she suspected not many of their number–Pip called Silver over and was soon embroiled in deep discussion as to more cunning ways they might employ to detect what lay on the far side of that storm.

The hours fled. The Dragonwing put down and listened to the sounds of rain and high winds pounding the treetops far overhead, while they nestled between thousand year-old trees, warm and dry. Pip hunted for ochre clay to use for Pygmy war-paint.

As night drew on and the storm passed over, Pip dreamed restlessly of her village burning. Ever burning.

Before dawn she led Chymasion, Jyoss and Shimmerith aloft to see what they could make of Chymasion’s new skills, honed after long hours of discussion between the Dragons the night before. Shortly, seven magical probes departed, primed in slightly different ways to seek out that absence which might imply magical shielding, and return with information they could use.

Not a single probe returned.

“More sensitivity,” said Chymasion.

“There must be something we’re missing,” said Jyoss.

“One more construct,” said Shimmerith, holding it forth in her mind. “If there’s an unusual drain on the magic of these probes, they should return immediately. We have self-propulsion, detection and return systems working as best we can. But self-preservation is another imperative.”

Chymasion shuddered as he released his second wave of seven probes.

You’re draining yourself too severely, my precious flame-heart,
Shimmerith scolded.
Don’t place yourself in danger in this way. Here, let me touch you.

The others come,
said Jyoss.

Shortly, the Dragonwing formed up and moved on, steadily following the Isles’ curve south-eastward. After an hour, about the same length of time they had waited for the previous set of probes, three returned. Chymasion returned the information to Pip, who plotted three touchpoints on her mental map. If she performed a quick triangulation …

“The Well-Hole,” she said.

“Good,” rumbled Emblazon. “Nak’s nothing has likely been proven. The Marshal is no more than one hundred and fifty leagues from our position. Two hours more, and we should reach the area the Oraials suggested for our search. It’s becoming tight.”

The balance of the bright, sunny morning passed quickly. Pip recognised nothing, but Hunagu led the group quickly by smell to the first Island where they should find Pygmies–or at least, signs of recent habitation. The Pygmy tribes moved often, or at least hunted abroad, to avoid depleting one Island’s resources and to keep potential enemies guessing.

Three Islands. Five. They found a cunningly camouflaged but abandoned Pygmy village at the sixth, which showed no sign of ever having been burned. Dragon-Pip cast about but soon realised the village was not her own. It seemed too neat. Recently abandoned, perhaps, but everything had been removed to the last iota–gourds, tools, weapons, cooking pots, even the sacred images of ancestors. No, this struck her as a strategic withdrawal. No haste. Nothing dropped or forgotten. The ground swept clean of tracks, the huts deliberately left open …

They were going about this the wrong way.

Sending all the others except Chymasion away, Pip transformed from Dragoness to Human form. She dressed quickly, but not in her usual tunic top and calf-length trousers. She donned her home-made loincloth, fastening the daggers to her waist with a double loop of cord. Pip tied ragged strips of cloth across her chest and over her left shoulder, ostensibly to hold her quiver of arrows, but also to preserve a certain measure of modesty she no longer felt she could give up. Using the sticky ochre clay she had found and prepared the previous day, she painted her body, face and arms as best she remembered in the patterns of her tribe.

She made a face. Mercy, she felt naked–a word which did not even exist in Ancient Southern. She felt as if her uncovered backside was a flag waving in the breeze. Perfectly Pygmy-normal, she reminded herself. Overdressed, even.

Chymasion, we need to find their sacred cave. It’ll be here somewhere, near the village.

You need me to detect rock? Hard ground?

Please.

Pip felt magic pass over her as a tingle up her spine. The Jade Dragon slowly turned, scanning the undergrowth with his unique power. Meantime, she cast about for a trail leading from the village. There would be one, well-concealed as a matter of course.

As Silver had taught her, she focussed her Dragon awareness through her limited Human senses, slowly allowing herself to become one with her surroundings, mindful of every leaf brushing against its neighbour and earthworms squelching through the moist earth, the movements of jungle rodents and birds and insects, alert for any sign of disturbance, any hint which did not belong to the whole. She laughed softly, testing the air with her nose. Was that the faintest smell of wood smoke lingering on the breeze?

Chymasion, focus this way. Stay twenty feet behind me.

Pip pushed through the undergrowth. Mercy, a noose trap linked to a poisoned arrow. She ghosted past, sending a mental warning to her draconic guard. Here. The faintest of trails led her forward past a massively gnarled tree which grew almost horizontally up against a hidden hill, just a jumble of boulders covered in yellowing moss. The tree turned ninety degrees and reached for the skies. Behind was a narrow, dark crack.

Her heart crammed into her throat, throbbing like a frightened animal.

In Ancient Southern, Pip recited aloud, “O spirits, receive one of your own. Stay your curse till my purpose be known.”

Again she settled, letting the awareness of her surrounds imbue her consciousness. Ay. She moved her hands away from her weapons and held them up at shoulder level, fingers unclenched.

Loudly, she called, “A stranger seeks aid from your hearth.”

After a long, long moment, a Pygmy warrior appeared out of the dark, a poisoned arrow nocked and pointed unwaveringly at her belly. He was not the only one, Pip sensed. She did not know him. His tribal warrior-paint was a thick, pustulent green, limited to unfamiliar bands around his neck, biceps, upper thighs and ankles.

“Stranger you are,” said the man.

A warning. Pip kept her hands immobile, grateful now for Master Adak’s tutelage in the basics of inter-tribe relations. She ironed any hint of uncertainty out of her voice. “This stranger comes open-handed, in peace. I seek a boon. Knowledge of my tribe, for I have walked a lost path for seven summers of my life.”

“What of the Ancient Ones who stalk our jungle halls?”

“I will bid them leave.”

The dark eyes flashed at her. “You have this power?”

Pip nodded firmly. “I have this power.”

The man showed no outward sign of shock, but Pip’s Dragon-senses clearly identified his elevated heartbeat, and the nervousness of the warriors backing him up. They had thought to deal with an interloper from another tribe. Now, she claimed power over Dragons. To retreat and confer would be shameful. To reveal fear, even more shameful. Yet, she must not offer help, at least not directly. The next move was his.

The man’s jaw tightened. “What knowledge do you seek?”

She winced inwardly. The direct phrasing of his question betrayed weakness. She said, “In my eighth summer of life, the pale men-with-beards took me as a bond-slave to their faraway land. An Island of no jungles. A place so cold, rain sticks to the ground.” This was a gamble, an admission of vulnerability. That those events were past, was immaterial. To die in battle was glorious. To be captured? Dishonour. “Now, in my fifteenth summer, I have returned to find my tribe. But the Islands are many and their ways, the secret of gelid sap.”

“Few return from the monster’s belly,” said the warrior.

Pip indicated her leg. “I am Named. I am Pygmy. The fires of my jungle soul never die.”

“Ay. May the soul’s fires never die,” he responded appropriately. Odd how Pygmies talked about soul-fires, similarly to Dragons. “Name a warrior from your tribe. Quickly.”

“No’otha,” said Pip, not pausing to think.

“Ah.” Finally, the deadpan face split into a grin. Drawing his dagger, the man squatted and began to draw rapidly in the dirt. “Take the jungle ways five Islands directly south, then two eastward. Crossing the Ape’s way here, you will come to an Island shaped like forked stick.”