The Onyx Dragon (26 page)

Before such a prodigious appetite, all must be consumed.

Pip watched helplessly, her magic spent, as Jyoss gave one final shudder. Now Tazzaral shuddered too, reduced in seconds to a lifeless, hollow husk of the magnificent Dragonsoul he had been. His nobility, shattered. Her friends were falling, failing, spinning downward with their Riders still strapped into their saddles, the grief and horror crushing her fiery spirit to ashes as she saw the reality of death engulf her friends, and she could do nothing.

She was more powerless than she had ever been in that cage.

So they died.

The Shadow seemed to consider and dismiss Pip, beginning to ripple and swell with new strength born of its engorgement on draconic life. Then she sensed another Dragon’s approach. A Dragoness. She was an effulgent yellow, like topaz infused with Dragon fire, bugling in distress, flying raggedly yet keeping ahead of others because of strength born in insane desperation. Pip screamed at them to stay away. As the new Dragoness surged toward Pip, the Shadow-creature paused in renewed anticipation. All was reaction, not thought. Pip swooped and swung her fisted paw. One sharp, skull-rattling blow stunned the Dragoness. She tumbled from the sky and Pip with her, a close spiral of flashing wings.

The oppressive chill lifted. Pip realised that the Shadow had vanished.

Here came Emblazon, making a sound Pip had never heard from a Dragon before, a sound like a cat’s mewling, his distress cutting bone-deep. Swooping, he scooped Tazzaral into his paws. Shimmerith flashed by, angling for Jyoss and Durithion, while Cinti leaped free and transformed in a burst of magic, furling her wings to dive toward Pip. In a hasty flap of wings Pip caught her quarry and tried to back-wing, slowing her descent enough for Cinti to catch them both in her capable paws. The Pygmy Dragoness untangled herself from the stranger–from Dragoness-Kaiatha!

Pip’s jaw sagged inelegantly.

No time!
Cinti gasped.
Silver, help! Chymasion, go to Shimmerith–

They’re gone,
Shimmerith moaned.
Tazzaral and Jyoss have winged to the eternal fires.

The Sapphire Dragoness wailed a keening note of distress, but Emblazon called,
Be still, beloved, lest we bring the enemy upon us. Already, they must have heard and seen …

Pip could not bear it. Springing free of Cinti’s paw, the tiny Onyx Dragoness winged to Jyoss. She knew the truth, but it stuck in her craw, raw and offensive and wounding. Jyoss was gone. Duri dangled from the saddle straps like a limp dishrag. Not dead. Her sharp Dragon-hearing identified his pulse, weak and rapid, but in Jyoss there was … nothing. Within Tazzaral’s flesh there was only silence, an unthinkable, echoing absence of any magic.

Such dark-fires! Grief roared over her being like the tumbling tumult of a storm, as voracious as the Shadow Dragon in its feeding frenzy. Why had it not taken her? Ignored her? There must be a reason.

I am ashamed. I blunted our attack,
Shimmerith said.

No, I’m to blame,
said Emblazon.
I tangled with your wings, so desperate was I …

They winged beneath the great boughs that spread over them like arms seeking to give comfort, to the cavern where the others waited–Nak and Oyda, Arosia, Jerrion and the Pygmy warriors.

Pip said,
No, it was I. My Word of Command washed over the beast …

You cannot blame yourself, little one,
said Emblazon.
We should not have let Tazz and Jyoss patrol, we should have been faster–we have failed our kin, Pip. We have all failed, and our fierce, great-hearted companions have passed on to the fires, may they burn eternal!

His gentleness stirred both comfort and anguish in her three Dragon hearts. Passed on to the fires? Or quenched, forever? If only she knew for certain. How could Fra’anior have abandoned his Island-World, the creation of his own paw, to suffer the predation of such a demon-creature? His were the greatest pair of shoulders. Perhaps pairs of shoulders; she had not rightly seen. Ay, blame the greatest. That way, so-called lesser creatures could obviate their own responsibility and ignore the consequences of their own choices and actions.

Somewhere, Pip imagined she heard those great black throats roaring in terrible, shattering anguish.

* * * *

Perversely, the following day dawned bright and cheerful.

Human-Pip turned over, and saw Kaiatha, also returned to her Human form, sitting staring at her–no, through her, unseeing. The left side of her jaw sported a spectacular bruise, Pip’s handiwork. Her eyes were haunted forest pools.

Her friend’s lips barely moved. “When you became a Dragoness, Pip, was it terrifying?”

“Ay.” Pip shivered, remembering the circumstances, the devastating imperative to save herself and Oyda before they both crashed into the mountainside, then waking as a Dragoness … “Kaia, how’s Duri?”

“Not good. Shimmerith suspects some kind of mental breakdown. He’s unresponsive. Alive, but no-one’s inside. Maybe the Shadow Dragon sucked him out, too.”

“Mercy.”

Or the oath-bond between Dragon and Rider had ensured his fate. Yet if there was life, was there not hope?

Only tears moved on Kaiatha’s face, streaming unheeded down her cheeks. “Pip, I feel … I feel so … how can I live when all is lost?”

Bleakly, Pip replied, “I imagine you must feel as if your heart has been torn from your chest and thrown to the windrocs.”

Kaiatha breathed. “Ay. All I see is shades of guilt. How can I be a Dragon when they do not live?” She indicated Tazzaral and Jyoss, lying so still near the cave entrance. To look was to know the reality of death. All muscle tone was absent. Their fires, extinguished. Flanks, unstirred with the breath of life. “And I’m afraid, Pip. So afraid. Duri will hate me. He’ll–”

“He’ll learn to love you and value you even more than we do,” Pip said firmly. No time for her own grief. Not now, when her friend needed her. “What colour did they decide you are, Kaiatha?”

“Topaz-Navy,” she sniffed. “I guess that makes me about as odd as you?”

“Odder,” said Pip, giving her a quirky grin.

Kaiatha laughed mirthlessly. “It’s ridiculous. How am I even supposed to eat, Pip? I despise meat.”

“Um, good question. Listen, Emblazon’s calling us for the final rites.”

“I heard.”

“Oh. You speak Dragonish? I’d forgotten.”

Suddenly, Kaiatha was the one hugging her. “Strangely, this Dragoness does speak Dragonish. Come. He also wants us to transform–oh, why are we telling each other what we can both hear?”

The Shapeshifters all transformed. Emblazon directed proceedings, singing fire-songs, blessings and praise-songs of mighty deeds over the fallen Dragons. Then he bade the Humans and Pygmies stand as far back as possible. Upon his command, the Dragons directed streams of fire at the corpses of Tazzaral and Jyoss. Emblazon spoke an ancient formula of soul-flight over them. The fires crackled suns-hot, consuming flesh and hide no longer protected by Dragon magic, until all that remained were two Dragon skeletons lying side by side, for all the world as though they had fallen asleep together and been overtaken by some unspeakable calamity. Copper bones lay beside the pink, the colours of an Island-World suns-set.

Then, Emblazon said heavily, “From death to life. We are reminded even at this hour of dark-fires, that life stirs amidst us. Dragoness Kaiatha, would you step forward, please?”

The Fra’aniorian Islander, normally so graceful and composed, stumbled over her paws, but Shimmerith steadied her with a motherly paw-touch.

Emblazon bugled, “We sing the eggling-celebration!”

Together, the Dragons sang:

She is born, fire of fire,

Blessed eggling, heart of living Dragon flame,

Born to fly!

Kaiatha was all draconic elegance, the sleek lines of a Dragoness enhanced by a neat, pretty ruff of skull spikes. Her hide was as glossy as snakeskin, displaying the rare quality and colouration of topaz gemstone, the scales picked out with patterns and highlights of deep blue. Every detail was exquisite. Neat, midnight-blue talons showed unsheathed as she had not yet learned to control the muscles. Muscular yet slender limbs. Lustrous wings half-unfurled, the struts, arteries and primary wing bones all picked out in her signature blue.

Pip felt slightly vindicated in that Kaiatha’s Dragoness was only a little larger than hers, perhaps twenty-two feet from muzzle to tail-tip. Of course, Kaiatha would probably grow to four times that size. What hope for a Pygmy Dragon?

Kaiatha blinked uncertainly at them as the Dragonsong faded, and all became still. Wondrously, sorrowfully still.

“I’m still Kaiatha,” she blurted out suddenly. “Don’t think this changes anything.”

Shimmerith chuckled musically. “No, little one, it doesn’t change anything. It changes everything.”

I
n a voice
roughened by grief and a poor few hours’ sleep, quickly snatched toward morning, Nak said, “Listen, everyone. Time to fly to the Ape Steps. Full shielding, my beauty. Oyda, let’s get Durithion strapped in. Gently, mind. Kaiatha, you’re with Oyda. Take your Human form, please. We’ve enough hatchlings in this group already.”

Chymasion and Pip growled identically, then looked at each other and chuckled hollowly.

“Mount up! Let’s shoot the winds!”

They retraced their route away from Marshal Re’akka’s Island to a point twenty leagues north, where the Crescent Islands inhabited by Pip’s tribe loomed out of the Cloudlands. Silver and Shimmerith shielded the compact, deadly intent Dragonwing as they negotiated the distance in a brief hour’s flying. Pip would not have wanted to be an enemy Dragon crossing their flight path this morning. No mercy would have been granted.

Calling over to Hunagu, who by now seemed to have grown entirely comfortable flying in a net dangling from Emblazon or Kassik’s paw, Pip asked in Ape, “Hunagu smell Ape Steps?”

The Oraial’s eyes gleamed darkly at her. “Thought Pip never ask. Mighty-mighty Dragoness no need Ape?”

“Humble Pip need good-good friend. No other nose powerful like Hunagu’s nose.”

Hunagu chortled happily, his good mood restored. “Hunagu show stinky Dragons how to hunt. Dragons not know jungle.”

“Good-good,” agreed Pip.

She had identified a point approximately midway down the flank of her Island as the likely start of the Ape Steps. No’otha’s information suggested a cave. Accordingly, the Pygmy hunters and Dragons divided their numbers between the two northern ‘toes’ of the Island, some concentrating on the more easterly peninsula, others on the westerly. Hunagu, after a few sage-looking sniffs of the air, chose the easterly side for his search, at a point that would have been the webbing between a Dragon’s two rearward-pointing talons. They spread out, combing the area assiduously.

The terrain was rugged, not conducive to traversal or easy searching. Not only were the cliffs near-vertical in the main, there were also many overhangs and places where boulders had tumbled down from above, perhaps dislodged by the area’s general instability, and become wedged and ingrown amongst the thick covering of vines. Caves were few and deeply hidden. After a few fruitless hours Pip caught Emblazon displaying a fit of pique, tearing several great paws-full of vines off the cliff. Ay. She felt the same–the pressure as yet another Assassin Dragonwing passed over the Islands nine leagues distant. The frustration. The grief, so fresh and caustic.

At midday they gathered beneath the jungle boughs a mile higher up the Island for a drink of water, food and a chance to compare notes. Here, the vegetation flowed over the Island’s edge a mere four hundred feet past the cliffs, the massive boughs overhanging the area in a floral waterfall to a half-mile beneath their location, the vines a half-mile further yet.

Nak sketched out a new search plan; Hunagu gave the idea an unenthusiastic snort.

“Ape nose find,” the Oraial said in Island Standard.

Emblazon flexed his claws as though he would dearly have liked to test them on Hunagu’s flesh, but desisted for Pip’s sake.

“Let’s also work backward,” Arosia suggested. “Why not have Chymasion and I fly out to the volcano and–”

“Because we like you alive, that’s why!” snapped Nak.

“With Shimmerith and you for protection, Nak,” said Oyda, smiling at him.

Arosia drew herself up to her full height, almost a head taller than Nak. “With your permission, Rider Nak, my Dragon and I will do our duty. Stand aside, please.”

“Even the hatchlings have fangs,” Nak grumbled, appearing not in the least put out. “I hope that green lump of a Dragon-jewel knows what a treasure he’s found in you, o most slender of Sylakian sprites. So, we’re to check for an under-Cloudlands ridge, right?”

The teenager bowed in acceptance of Nak’s kiss upon her knuckles, murmuring, “Oh, Rider Nak, you always have the
best
ideas.”

With that, Oyda promptly applied her boot to Nak’s backside. “I’ll have less simpering over pretty girls who evidently know how to handle menfolk, and more application of the grey matter to the problem at hand, Rider Nak. How are you going to use Chymasion to see what cannot be seen beneath the clouds?”

He barely hesitated. “We’ll drop rocks and the Jade genius will hear or see the echoes.”

Pip shook her head in amazement. Good old Nak. Never short of a word, and ay, there was a sharp mind hidden somewhere beneath the parakeet-like layer of feathers. As Arosia turned to mount Chymasion, she heard Nak mutter, “But she does look amazing in Dragon Rider trousers. Mercy, those legs!”

Oyda booted him again. “Volcanoes have nothing on my wrath, Nak!”

Toward mid-afternoon, their efforts finally bore fruit. The foursome returned from the direction of the volcano, having rapidly plotted a zigzag under-Cloudlands course leading, unexpectedly, around to the westerly flank of the volcano. At one point they had even identified a boulder lying just beneath the drifting clouds. The area was certainly shallow enough. Pip still wondered how they were supposed to walk or travel beneath the Cloudlands and not turn purple before falling over dead–minor details. Deal with those later. Reversing their ridge-plotting back to the Island brought them to an unexpected site, approximately one-eighth of a mile along the easterly ‘finger’, close to the Island’s main body.

Quickly, the Dragons shuttled the hunters over the divide, Hunagu leading the charge. He pressed his nose in amongst boulders and vines. “Not here. Not here.”

“Lower,” Chymasion called. “There’s a looser area a hundred feet below your position.”

Emblazon immediately transferred the Oraial Ape, then snatched him away as his weight caused an entire section of loose shale to slip several feet.

Hunagu ordered, “On Dragon paw. Find place.”

Now an Ape was issuing orders to a Dragon? And the Island-World stood on its head. Pip did not trust herself to utter a word. Instead, she watched, heart in throat, as Emblazon hovered close to the cliff with remarkable skill, sweeping Hunagu about with steady movements of his paw. Fifty feet this way, fifty that. Lower. Lower again.

“Here.”

Leaping off the Amber Dragon’s paw in a welter of excitement, the Ape began to scrabble at the spot like a hound quarrying a patch of soil in search of a tasty bone. Emblazon again had to rescue him as dozens of boulders, some larger than the Ape himself, suddenly tumbled from above.

I’ll dig,
growled Emblazon.

Cinti said,
I’ve abilities in the Brown spectrum. Allow me, Emblazon. Please hold me; I’ll try to shore up the face as I dig.

Pip did not understand the issue until she observed how much power Cinti had to expend to force her way into the treacherous slope. Her magic allowed her to carve out rock as though it were soft Jeradian cheese, but the entire slope above was unstable. She worked on fashioning a foundation and bracing beams of fused rocks, slowly squeezing them together with her talons while Emblazon held her against the mountainside, his wings sweeping steadily to keep them both aloft.

An hour passed. Two. Cinti was head and shoulders inside the mountainside now, the work slowing as she depleted her stores of magic. She cried,
Yes!
Muffled, but exultant.

“What do we have?” asked Pip.

Cinti shuffled backward, fairly trembling with fatigue.
A crack leading downward. Air flow. Steps.

Pip raised her muzzle. “Elder No’otha? Father?”

She landed neatly at the dark hole to allow her father to alight, resisting the urge to investigate first, and helped No’otha leap across from Emblazon’s paw. The two Pygmy men advanced briefly, before retreating again.

“Bad air,” said Pip’s father.

“Bad magic,” said No’otha.

The passage Cinti’s tunnel intersected was very narrow, barely a fit for a slender Pygmy. For once, Pip realised, she would be grateful for her tiny size. Oyda would also fit, but Kaiatha? They had planned for her to bring the diary and her magic.

The Pygmies organised themselves rapidly. With Dragons available to convey people between Islands, there was no delay in fetching the supplies No’otha ordered. While Fiò’tí built a neat fire from dry twigs and lengths of dead vine twenty feet inside the passage, the other warriors worked with the Dragons to disguise the cave entrance. Silver and Cinti returned with bundles of several types of herbs in paw, and the awed-looking young Seer.

Meantime, Pip talked softly with Hunagu. The time she dreaded had come, she realised, and her heart would rather bolt and hide in the jungle far, far away than face this reality. Pip embraced her friend, burying her face in his fur. His scent was so familiar. It spoke to her of icy Sylakian nights endured in their rude shelter, of play-wrestling and grubbing in the dirt for food, deep friendship, and much besides.

She said in Ape, “How Pip thank Hunagu enough?”

“Silly-silly girl,” he said, stroking her curls with his huge paw. “Pip Hunagu’s friend. Mighty-heart Ape, friend never forget. Pip take Hunagu to home. Her word good-good word. Always good.”

“Hunagu has mighty-mighty heart. Always go with Pip. Always.”

“Always,” he said, thumping his chest.

After that, Oyda and Emblazon flew away with Hunagu, a forlorn Chymasion trailing in their wake to help with shielding. Pip watched until the Dragons were only a speck in the distance.

No’otha and the Seer prepared cleansing smoke and magic, which the steady inrush of wind bore within the mountain. They spoke appeasements to the ancient spirits and wove their Pygmy magic, preparing the way. Quite the fuss, Pip decided, but with a queer journey across the vines fresh in her mind, she declined to comment. Instead, she spoke at length with Nak, Arosia, Kaiatha, Silver and Cinti about what her strange power might be that allowed her Human form to react and run faster than a Dragon, and the possible challenges they might encounter down beneath the Cloudlands. Soon, the Pygmies declared their work done. The way was open.

Pip’s father gripped her shoulder firmly. “Pip will succeed. I feel it in my liver.”

She gripped his forearm equally firmly. “My father is my heart-stone.”

Could ever a million stars inhabit a smile, his was so.

* * * *

They filed down the stairs within the crack seemingly forever, first Oyda, then Silver, Pip and Kaiatha bringing up the rear. Arosia suffered from claustrophobia, so she was excluded from the party. Each person held a light prepared by Silver and Shimmerith, an ancient but well-understood trick by which Dragons bundled an electrical charge inside a special type of shield which only functioned in sizes smaller than a Human fist. The result was a neat, bright, not hot and usefully, rather sticky bulb imaginatively called a Dragon light. Pip stuck hers to Silver’s back. What a useful idea. Only, these Dragon-lights demanded an inordinate amount of magic to produce and lasted only eight hours or so.

According to No’otha and Hunagu, some Ape Steps ran above ground, and some were tunnels below ground, which cleared up Pip’s undeclared confusion. She had imagined having to wait days for the right moon before being able to make a crossing–that was certainly the way with most Ape Steps, but not this one. Her tiny size made her a perfect fit, whereas Silver kept having to cant his shoulders to squeeze through the tighter spots. Kaiatha kept up a steady stream of, ‘ouch,’ ‘Islands’ sakes’ and ‘build this roof lower, why don’t you?’ in her ear. No Oraial could have managed. Did that mean this tunnel was a Pygmy secret?

“Where’s Yaethi when you need her?” Pip commented.

“How many steps? Aren’t we under the Island already?” asked Silver.

“What about Yaethi, Pip?” asked Kaiatha. “She’s not the adventurous sort, unless you’re talking about adventuring through some exciting scroll-lore.”

The Pygmy said, “The airflow mechanism. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“If you say so. I’d settle for a little engineering to ensure anyone taller than the average grasshopper could fit through here.”

At last, the tunnel broadened and flattened out. Kaiatha made certain to sigh with relief at least ten times as she stood upright for the first time in an hour. Pip eased her aching thighs and calves. Silver was right. How many steps? Were they beneath the Cloudlands already?

After a quick consultation of the diary, Silver led off, extending his Dragon magic ahead of them to check the passageway. Shortly, they paused at a cave-in that partially blocked the tunnel. There must have been another entrance, Kaiatha observed, as they scrambled through the gap. One large enough for Apes.

“Quick march,” said Oyda.

Silver said, “Why? I might miss something.”

Oyda hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “Or I’ll have the Pygmy twist your arm.”

“I submit already!”

Silver peeked over his shoulder; Pip stuck out her tongue. “I’d never treat my boyfriend like that.” Various rude noises greeted this fib. She added, “He’s such a delicate little Dragon. Wouldn’t want him to snap a toenail.”