The Onyx Dragon (32 page)

“Ay. Should one not appreciate beauty, Pip? Why should a father be labelled evil for seeking to protect his own family?” This was a side of the Marshal she had not imagined, much less seen. “We each seek to protect our own, do we not? We just see the matter differently. You act to protect your loved ones, and I do the same.”

He drew Silver to him, the first physical gesture she had seen him make toward his son. “Is this boy not my own flesh and blood? Should a father not correct his son and train him in the ways of right thinking?”

This, to him, was
love?
O twisted, tainted obsession!

“By owning his mind?” Even to her own ears, Pip’s response sounded feeble.

Silver said, “Owning? How mistaken you are, Pygmy girl. We labour together for the same goal–the elevation of Shapeshifters to their true status in this Island-World. We rain death upon the enemies of true-fires–the Dragons, Humans and Shifters so deluded by Fra’anior and his schemes. All he has worked in your life is a deception, Pip. This is your chance. Join us. Choose life.”

Pip wept for him, but showed no outward sign of her weakness. Nothing about these Herimor Shapeshifters was as it seemed. All was quicksand. Could he have lived a lie toward her, executing a devious plan which had led to her inevitable capture? Oh, Silver!

No torture of theirs had hurt like this, a thick acid despair pouring down her throat and spreading through her limbs, setting her being afire, pouring dark-fires in a deluge through her soul.

She had loved him, unrequited. And Silver Dragon had ripped her heart clean out of her chest.

Never had she felt so
little
.

* * * *

Silver watched every detail of his shell-father summoning the Shadow. How could the beast be banished, not merely contained? For that was the construct Re’akka produced. He employed a branch of magic in which Silver had no capability, to be sure, but Silver grasped the gist of what was being done. A summoning and a binding. No more. The Marshal’s command of the beast must be tenuous indeed.

Then what reason could the Shadow have to obey? Did such a creature possess intelligence enough to know design, purpose and strategy?

He was out of time. “It comes,” said his father.

Silver had somehow hoped that by remaining in their Human manifestations, Shapeshifters could elude the beast’s notice. The first hint of its approach kicked that notion off the proverbial Island. As a Dragon, he knew what it meant to be the hunter. The apex predator of his environment. In Herimor, plenty of magi-physical creatures parasitized Dragons or even, by working together, could destroy a Dragon. But this creature hungered in ways foreign to his understanding. His perception insisted on a tenebrous presence in the physical realm, yet the shadowy aura felt substantial, its emotions alien yet palpable. His Dragon’s spirit quailed. The magic within him, all his careful layers of subterfuge, began to waver as the coldness of dark-fires seeped inward unhindered. A deathly chill pervaded his soul.

Ignoring the Marshal, the shadow angled for Pip.

“Back!” Re’akka reacted, pushing outward with that strange magic.

Folds within folds of oily shadow responded as though struck, scrunching up before rippling forward with renewed purpose, like reams of black Helyon silk floating in water, cloying and clinging to the entities it preyed upon. The Marshal shouted again, holding the creature at bay with an enormous outpouring of magic–yet was it truly held? Silver narrowed his eyes. He could not understand how the
urzul
affected it, or what aspect of the creature even existed as he understood existence, to be impacted by their magic. Pip’s Word had failed. How could the Marshal claim …

Pip screamed a thin, piercing scream. The thing had touched her! A slender tendril licked briefly at her face before Re’akka hurled his utmost power at the creature, which lapped it up, yet appeared to experience pain as a result. He sensed that pain incited the creature, being somehow a desirable feeling. Then, the thing spoke.

Its voice was not a voice as such, more a flurry of monad-like impressions which splattered against his awareness, trailing linking indicators he did not understand. Ay, there was thought, and intelligence of a kind. To place trust in some form of control of this beast was madness.

There was more wrestling, a power-match between Re’akka and the creature. The Marshal wanted it to break down Pip’s mental shield. Yet it seemed to balk. All the while the wash of its power sucked at him, confusing his thoughts and stealing his magic. Perilous. Silver heard himself gasp as if from a distance. He fell to his knees.

Then, the Shadow reached out and struck Pip deeply, sucking gluttonously at her life.

* * * *

Dark lightning speared through her body. Pip arched against the manacles, knowing such agony, it seemed to her that the Marshal’s Kinetic power had stolen even the ability to scream, that she was locked away behind a wall of silence that could never articulate how the beast savaged her … the craving of the Shadow was so overpowering, its magic-song irresistible, yet she would not yield that core of herself she so prized. She fled inward to a place beyond where she had ever ventured before, a place of soul-shattering desperation, where the spirit could only cry out in wordless anguish for some sign of hope, some spark …

Dear one.

Pip turned, staring at the girl.
Uh … where am I? Where’s the beast?

Savaging emptiness.
The girl was robed all in blazing white, as though she wore starlight for clothing. Pip had an impression she was pretty, although it was hard to see anything beyond the purity of her blue-in-blue gaze, and the staggering gentleness it communicated.
Dance with me.

Am I mad? Dreaming?

We can call it that if you’d like.
The girl’s laughter was music, and balm, and the inexpressible melody of joy. Pip’s feet twitched helplessly. She twirled into the dance. There was no pain. No weakness. None of the weariness, the transience, her Human-self suffered as a result of her torture.

For a timeless space, they communed exuberantly.

Pip cried for happiness. Yet the world waited for a rebirth from the pangs of war … she said,
I must understand. Who are you? What am I doing here? Did Fra’anior send you? Because I c-cannot … must not leave …

The girl bent to her, touching her cheeks with her thumbs, loving the tears away.
How precious are the tears of your suffering, cherished child. I grieve for this pain and suffering. You do not understand yet, but you will. And then you will laugh. You will laugh as the starlight.

Starlight?
Pip was already fading, feeling the pull of her mortal flesh.

Her sweet voice echoed over an impossible distance.
A Pygmy’s laughter is of the stars, but her strength is Onyx.

How many strange entities’ child could she be?

Pip pressed into her own flesh, knowing she came home, yet aware of a sense of having journeyed, as if her body was unprepared for her spirit’s arrival. Strength. Strength of Onyx. Could the girl have meant Fra’anior’s heritage flowed in her veins? This was the source of her great strength?

If she could, just once, channel the strength of an Ancient Dragon, that would be a miracle to shake this Marshal right off his floating Island.

Her chest heaved as though she drew the first breath of her life. Pip croaked,
Fra’anior …

Re’akka laughed cruelly. “Fra’anior? Do you think that traitor will stoop to help some worthless piece of jungle trash? Come, beast! Tear the knowledge out of her!”

Again, the dark lightning burned her mind. Pip stared up into the animate darkness, aware of the beast’s swirling, alien feelings, of concepts crystallising as she rearranged those impressions in her own mind and reached an intuitive answer. She knew. The creature knew she knew. A great, echoing darkness seemed to slam down around her.

The Shadow Dragon only tolerated the Marshal for one reason: they shared the same goal, that of finding the Ancient Dragons. For Re’akka, that was his Dragonflight to immortality. For the Shadow, the Ancient Dragons were its ultimate enemy, their destruction the sole reason for its existence. And a Pygmy girl was the gateway to both of their dreams. She served no other utility beyond providing access to the greatest Dragon powers either via the First Egg, or via her connection with the Black Dragon. Both creatures had somehow recognised that unique connection in her spirit.

Now she knew the magnitude of her blunder, placing herself in their power.

She had gambled away the fate of the Ancient Dragons.

The Marshal screamed, “How dare you give away our secrets?”

He lashed out with the
urzul
-magic, with strength born of insane fury. Gone, any artifice. He sucked deep of the First Egg’s power, blasting the Shadow Dragon with so much hatred that just for a moment, somehow, it seemed the creature might not weather the storm. It wilted. The floating folds pulsed with an oozing, ugly expression of hunger.

Re’akka growled, “Ay, serve me, and you will feed well!”

Driven by a storm of self-loathing at her failure, Pip reached inward with every power at her disposal, with yearning and pleading and a dearth of real hope, for the umbilical cord which she had sensed a lifetime ago, there upon the Crescent Islands. She begged for the chance to save her friends. She ached for her Island-World, lashed by the twofold scourge of the Marshal and his Shadow Dragon. All else faded into insignificance. What future could there possibly be if she failed?

Yet not her alone. She was no longer alone. She had Shimmerith and Nak, Oyda and Emblazon, Maylin and Yaethi and Dragoness-Kaiatha, Arrabon and Emmaraz, crazy old Zardon and Cinti and Arosia and Chymasion, poor, broken Durithion, Masters Balthion and Kassik and let her not forget Casitha and Mya’adara, Adak and Elder No’otha and her parents. She had a whole Pygmy tribe to call her own … so many. She had just not seen it before.

They were her true strength, the chorus who had unfailingly cheered her on.

Pip felt her body swell against the manacles. There was a Cloudlands ocean of strength in her now, pouring and crackling and raging, uncontainable.

Drawing a mighty breath, she roared,
FOR THE ONYX!!

A
STUNNING DRAGON-CHALLENGE
ripped from the Pygmy girl’s throat, tossing the Marshal and the linked Shadow creature across the small clearing. Silver whirled in time to see Pip bend and snap metal shackles a foot thick, designed as fetters for fully-grown Dragons, with an almighty flexion of her arms. Reaching down, she ripped the matching restraints off her feet. Her eyes were a dark storm, shooting sparks of what appeared to be black lightning as she faced him, her face a rictus of rage, evidently more than prepared to rip his head–or that of his Dragon–right off his shoulders.

Pygmy power!

The Shadow shot over toward her with that incredible defiance of natural law, but Zardon transformed with a
crack
of wind and threw himself between them, shouting, “Go, Pip! Don’t think of me!”

The Marshal transformed into his monstrous, wintry White Dragon form. Silver followed suit at the speed of Dragon reactions. No Shapeshifter would want to wear their Human guise in the face of two angry Dragons–no, three, for faster than an eye-blink Pip wore her Onyx Dragoness hide, too.

“Go!” Zardon thundered.

With one last, stricken glance at the old Night-Red, she vanished.
Vanished.

Pip reappeared two hundred feet away, accelerating at a phenomenal pace. The Marshal whipped forth his Kinetic power in a welter of thundering rage, but Zardon somehow tore himself free of the Shadow Dragon to kick the Marshal squarely in the jaw. With his strength, that was a brutal strike, but Re’akka shook it off with a coarse laugh. Ice crackled from his talon-tips; Zardon ducked behind a shield, but then the Shadow fell upon him, and the fire in his eyes
changed.

Silver tore his eyes off the fray just in time to see the Pygmy Dragon flicker again, evading the Marshal’s Kinetic reach and the ice spraying ceaselessly from his broad-based attack. She disappeared for one second, two, three. Where was she? A flutter of dark wings against the night. Thousands of feet traversed already, her wingbeat betraying extreme pain, yet the Onyx flew fast and free. There would be no stopping her now.

Silver wanted to scream in delight, but the supreme discipline drilled into him by years of battling for survival in a Herimor Dragon nursery carried him through. He turned to his father.

“Leash the beast, before it destroys us all.”

Shaking his head, panting as if he’d flown a hundred leagues at top speed, Re’akka stared into the distance, searching for the Dragoness.

Silver roared,
Shell-father!

The beast was finished with Zardon. Pulsating with that ghastly satisfaction, yet not entirely satiated. The Marshal gestured curtly, pushing
urzul
at the beast. “Hunt, my beauty. The night is yours.”

Would it not hunt Pip? Silver shuddered.

Then, for the first time in his life, he had an intimation of what Leandrial had called Balance. He knew she would find a way. Out there in the Middle Sea, the distances were so vast that a Dragon could fly in any direction and not find land for six days’ flight–impossible, for most Dragonkind could not fly much longer than a day without rest, while the strongest Dragons could only manage two. Bruised. Bloodied. But never beaten. She’d foment a little trouble and greet him at the Academy … with a fireball between the fangs. Silver winced. Or just bat those depthless eyes to charm a passing comet and use her talons to hitch a ride.

He blew smoke between his teeth. That girl claimed to have excised the word ‘impossible’ from her vocabulary. Who wouldn’t believe her?

Fly to the moons, Pygmy girl! Fly beyond!

* * * *

Pip powered ahead into the never-dark Island-World night beneath the light of four moons, shielding and winging westward upon the tattered remnants of her strength. She expected any second to feel the Marshal’s Kinetic power seize her tail-spikes and drag her bodily back to Eridoon Island. Twice, she had invoked Kassik’s forbidden power and felt the sky shift; now, she glanced over her shoulder for signs of pursuit. Mercy. Was that the Shadow …

Was that a heart-shaped puff of smoke?

Her wingbeat stuttered as Pip stared backward, rubbing her eyes with both forepaws as if the action could supply further clarity to the finest eyesight in the Island-World. All she saw on that faraway mountaintop was white and silver standing alongside each other. No, Silver was airborne. She searched the darkness beneath the Jade and White Moons in a convulsive sweep, but saw no sign of the Shadow Dragon. Just dark shapes, Night-Reds, flitting out of the hole in the Island. Orienting on her. And there, a shadow darker than the night descended to pick off a straggler. The other Dragons formed up as if nothing amiss had occurred, straightaway surging into the chase in a single great, roaring crescent, spearheaded by the characteristic, slender young adult who had been her boyfriend.

Silver led the pursuit. Her hope was rainbows over Islands; it was a four-mile plunge into toxic death. She could not bear to dwell on it.

Pip waggled her wingtips in what she hoped was a flirtatious gesture, not just an ungainly hop through an air pocket, and roared,
PIP!
Their answering challenge was a storm front’s ominous low grumbling, hers a sharp crack as if an Island had split down the middle.

To a Dragon they were larger and more powerful, beasts of greater stamina by far. In a flying marathon they would overhaul her without a doubt–at least, that was what Imogiel and Emblazon had taught her. Pip eyed her dark wing-surfaces flexing and gleaming beneath the lambent moons, mentally pulling out several scrolls for review. Eidetic memory was useful to a point. Perfect recall did not, however, imply understanding, account for experience or guarantee any form of mastery. Also, the five scrolls she had studied did not agree on every point. Toss that in a pile of ralti droppings. Instead, she pictured Emblazon flying, the stunning rhythm of his flight muscles, the long, sweeping strokes that maximised his acceleration-to-effort ratio, the precise cant of his wings at every point during the wingbeat action and the streamlining of his body. He was the finest flier she knew. He had muscles popping out of his ear-canals, however. She chuckled tiredly. Most other Lesser Dragons had to make do with less.

Onyx poured across the broad, pocked face of the Yellow Moon, one with the warm, redolent breezes of the night. Disregarding the pain of flight, she wondered about that girl enwrapped in light, how it had felt to leave her body for a moment and travel amongst the stars, thwarting the Shadow’s succubus touch. Ay, it was intelligent, and its purpose clear. A shiver travelled outward along her wing-bones to the very tips. Such sensitivity in her Dragon senses. They saw the world painted in fresh Dragon-fire, and beyond the world. Beyond, to memories and visions not her own; beyond, to pierce the white-fire veil and enter the wonder there, and to ache upon one’s return for heavenly visions she hardly understood, but was profoundly grateful for.

Thank you, laughing star.

Once, a mighty Dragon of lustrous black like polished onyx stone–that blackness which always seemed to hint at an inner life of stardust–had forged across these endless Cloudlands oceans, and made his home here, and his seven throats had roared and bugled as he sported in the unknowable deeps and set his home upon the heights raised by his mighty paws. Yet he had spoken kindly to a Pygmy girl, and given of his almighty strength for the struggle.

Thank you, Onyx father.

Pip.
A mighty voice resounded beneath the moons, so powerfully that the very air seemed to quiver and cry out beneath her wings, and her every scale prickled in thrilling realisation.

Fra’anior?

Your strength is your own, little one.

Black storm clouds billowed in a mighty canyon between the worlds. Fra’anior’s voice triggered the embodiment of a waking vision, until storm and lightning filled the Island-World from horizon to horizon, yet Pip still saw the moons and Cloudlands faintly through it. The mightiest of Dragons loomed amidst the mountainous shoulders of his storm, darkly awesome. Seven sleek draconic heads set upon long necks writhed and lashed each other as if possessed of idiosyncratic, conflicting purposes. She wondered if Fra’anior held arguments or debates with himself. Which head determined the final purpose of this great creature?

The force of his regard split the atmosphere with lightning, yet though she scented fire and ozone and sulphur and burned cinnamon, that terrible majesty did not roar forth to consume the Pygmy Dragoness. She bowed deeply, unable to face fourteen lakes of draconic fire-eyes that seemed to sear her soul to embers within the white-fires of her flesh.

Look at me,
he said, commanding yet gentle.

Could a storm claim gentleness? Pip raised her eyes with a steadiness she felt in no iota of her being. She need not have feared. Wonder and reverence saturated her being, yet some quality of the Ancient Dragon’s gaze communicated deep, unequivocal esteem. Her inner fires wept for joy.

Fra’anior said,
How can I help you understand? Think of your inborn strength as an echo–but what a mighty echo! All that you are, your gifts and powers, your character and will, Pip, these are your own. I would never usurp those things or twist them to my purposes. You are my spirit-child, a bond in which we share much. I desire good things for you.

Then why leave?
Her gulp made her flight bob unsteadily.
Sorry. I’m often impertinent.

Why leave? Because we saw our warring would destroy the world we made, and cast the heights of its beauty into the bottom of the Cloudlands. We Ancient Dragons hoped to hide you from our primeval enemy–we call it the anti-Dragon, the Shadow. Its species is called ‘Nurguz’. We wrought a mighty work of magic, my shell-kin and I, to forge our passage to what you think of as the beyond. Another world, another time, another dimension. And now my shell-brother Dramagon refuses to cooperate, and Numistar wilfully corrupted her magic, and the possibility of return is lost forever.

I’m sorry you’re lonely there, Fra’anior.

There was a silence so far-reaching, Pip feared she had offended the great creature. Ralti-stupid tongue! All she could do was beat her wings and watch the seething storm, waiting. The Middle Sea would accept her demise. Did she fear to sink to her death? Truly, she did not. Not while her triple hearts beat as one. But then the knowledge of his presence grew thickly around her–or some aspect of his presence, she realised. Did the spirit move through dimensions of existence unknown to the conscious mind and to mortal flesh?

He laughed. He laughed so loudly and long, Pip feared the world’s floor should split asunder and volcanoes rise with new Islands heaped upon their backs. He laughed with such longing and delight, she could not help but laugh with him, like the tiny peeping of a finch in a dark storm’s tumult.

She chortled,
I’m sorry, Great One. I do say the silliest, most impolite things. It’s just that the words are there on my tongue and they pop out and then I sound insolent and brash, your majesty, when I don’t mean to be.

The obstreperous little troublemaker.
His amusement washed over her in waves.
That you may foment more, much more! That you may scoff at the schemes of this worm from Herimor, who dares defy the power of Onyx! That you may grow into the full power of your tripartite heritage, Pip–how I long for the dawn of that day.

Tripartite? Human, Pygmy and Onyx Dragoness?

Not quite.

Then what do you mean, o Fra’anior?

To utter the prophetic prematurely is to alter the course of fate,
he replied.
Pip, I must restrain myself and allow you to work out your destiny for yourself. Otherwise, I foresee a far worse fate ahead. That is a hard truth, one I wish I did not grasp. It means I sound intransigent, unhelpful and uncaring.

You are none of those! You’re sweet, and … oh.
A fiery draconic blush rippled through her body.

And you’re fiercely beautiful, and your audacity warms my hearts. Fly true, Pip. Fly like Onyx.

Fra’anior I …
He was gone. Pip said to the silence,
I’ll never betray you.

It was already dawn, somehow, the night having fled upon wings like Dragons. As dawn’s blush spread across the eastern horizon, interrupted by the Jade Moon casting its million-league shadow across her path, Pip realised she was indeed flying like Onyx. Like a stone.

For her strength and magic were spent, and the Cloudlands beckoned, already sweeping by beneath her belly.

* * * *

Silver led his Dragonwing throughout the night, pacing them to ensure a safe return, knowing even a Pygmy Dragoness’ endurance must soon give out. Her stamina had been broken in the torture-chamber, her body bruised and her mind traumatised. Yet what power had infused her as she ripped those manacles apart like a Dragon tearing through wet scrolleaf? And when had she learned to control a teleport? And how had Zardon torn free of the Marshal’s mind-altering
urzul
, pouring out his life that Pip might fly free?

In the silent heart of his inmost shielding, Silver saluted the old Shapeshifter. He was nobility personified, his demise a wing-shivering lesson to a young Silver Dragon.