The Pygmy Dragon (33 page)

Growing up, he had always thought his father was Marshal Re’akka. Re’akka was a White Shapeshifter, a Dragon with a particularly powerful hailstorm attack, aside from storm powers, winter’s ice and a strange power Silver called ‘cold fireballs’. But he was ambitious, cruel and cunning. Silver had grown up in a nursery with umpteen other brother and sister Shapeshifters. Deaths were not uncommon. They were encouraged. Only the strongest came out alive, and Silver was not the biggest, only the most cunning. He had been the sole survivor of a nursery battle to the death.

“But when I entered the Marshal’s service–for he never suffered to be called father,” he said, “I discovered there were ten other secret nurseries in operation. I was not special.”

Pip said, softly, “But you served him.”

“With honour,” said Silver. “I would have given my left wing for a kind word from him, Pip. He demanded that kind of loyalty. A twisted kind of love.”

Re’akka had, through assassination, alliance and attack, built himself into one of the most powerful Marshals in all Herimor. Then he became obsessed with finding a First Egg, believing that it would grant him and his lineage the ultimate power. He spent years and thousands of bars of gold trying to find an Egg. His interests suffered. He survived eight assassination attempts. The Marshal’s enemies gathered with the enthusiasm of windrocs mobbing a dying animal.

At the time Silver emerged from his nursery, Marshal Re’akka’s territory was invaded by the rival forces of Marshal X’arth, who put his armies, strongholds and Dragons to fire and the sword. They retreated to Re’akka’s great stronghold at the Island of Eridoon.

“Then, I don’t know what happened, exactly,” Silver admitted. “Re’abba never told me more than just enough. I recognise that now. Suddenly, overnight, the Marshal’s magical power multiplied. I don’t know which came first–the First Egg, the Dragon of Shadow, or the plan to invade the Islands north of the Rift and establish a new territory ruled by our family.”

“So, genocide was the acceptable strategy?”

Pip winced as her words emerged with a deep undercurrent of malice. Mercy, could she not just have told him what Leandrial had revealed? But she realised that she was not yet prepared to share that knowledge with Silver. The issue of trust was so complex, so fragile.

But Silver only bowed his head, seeming not to know her fragmented thoughts. “He made it seem glorious and right. I was not aware at first of the Shadow Dragon’s appetite for the magical life-force of Dragons. The Marshal defeated X’arth’s forces, and from among them, recruited many Dragons. They emerged from the depths of Eridoon changed. Night-Red, deadly, unswervingly loyal to the Marshal. Six armies gathered against us, vowing to cast Marshal Re’akka into exile. He took the Island-World in his paw, tearing Eridoon Island off its foundations, and levitating it across the Rift.”

“You speak as a victim of forces outside of your control.”

His smile assured her he knew her question was meant as a test. Pip was grateful for her dark skin to hide the heat which entered her cheeks. Flying ralti sheep, this supposed interrogation was turning against her; his smile, making her insides resemble pulped tinker-banana. Treacherous thoughts of flying exultant, twisting loops in the sky together with a Silver Dragon filled her mind … he had to be manipulating her. It was his gift.

The dungeon seemed to hem her in. Pip wanted nothing more than to flee. Waterfalls roared behind her ears, her Human and Dragon emotions churned into a fearful, frothing mess.

“Certainly,” he said. “In part, it was like a glamour of concealment, so beloved in Herimor. I do feel I have begun to wake from a sleep; that I’ve been sleeping all my life. But Pip … I would not deceive you. I knew what I was doing. I loved to command others, twisting their minds, doing exactly what you accused me of doing to Shimmerith and her hatchlings. I revelled in my service, in being the favourite, in being loved by helpless minions, in being the one certain to earn a place in my father’s third heart.”

“You also say that?”

“The third heart? Ay.” She sensed his mesmerising gaze upon her person. She begged inwardly, ‘don’t, oh please, don’t say it …’ He said, “Pip, you’re a dark thunderbolt. Three days of sitting in this stupid dungeon and I’m still no closer to working out what you did to me. I detest what I have been. I hate myself. And I’ve no idea who or what I am any more.”

“You didn’t order the attack on the dormitories?”

“No.”

She whispered, “How can I ever trust you, Silver?”

“You can’t.”

The new voice startled them both. They turned to see Telisia standing in the entryway of his Shapeshifter cell, holding a tray of food.

“Telisia,” said Pip, through clenched teeth. How much had she heard? “What are you doing here?”

“Bringing the traitor a meal,” she said, lifting the tray.

There was a soft
tzoing!
Something punched Pip in her ribs just beside her left breast. Clutching the spot instinctively, she brought her fingers away wet with blood. A crossbow bolt, she realised. Oyda’s body armour had saved her life. The flexible, light metal chain had turned the bolt aside from a deadly connection with her heart. In the cell Silver rose to his feet, shouting.

Telisia dropped the tray. Beneath it, she had concealed a half-size crossbow, which she centred on Silver’s torso. “I suppose it’s too much to ask you just to drop dead, traitor?” she snarled. A second bolt punched him in the gut. Silver folded up as though he had been gutted by a sword.

Pip’s limbs seemed to have turned to lead. As Telisia swung back toward her, already reloading the weapon, she slipped a forked dagger from her belt and flipped it, instinctively, at the girl. Telisia parried it with her cloaked arm, a dull thud informing Pip that she wore some kind of armour. The Pygmy warrior lunged across the cell, striking with the second dagger. Grunting, Telisia parried once, twice. Pip stabbed her right thigh deeply, just below the hip.

Telisia’s armoured forearm smashed into the side of her head.

Pip spun into the bars. So strong. Again, like Prince Ulldari … maybe she had even recruited the prince. “You’re the assassin,” she gasped. “You let the Heripedes into the girls’ dormitory.”

“A job the Marshal couldn’t trust that idiot Silver to do,” said Telisia. Ignoring the dagger sticking out of her thigh as though she felt no pain, her fingers worked the mechanism of her small double crossbow. “Of course I did. But you didn’t die, Pygmy Dragon.” To Silver, she said, “You fool. He never was your father, nor is he mine. He just used you. Serving with honour.” She spat in his direction. “I bring you the Marshal’s final, gilded greetings.”

She needed to get up. Dizzily, Pip pushed to her knees. Why was she so weak? There was something terrible radiating from the wound in her breast, growing shards of ice deep into her body.

Telisia’s face was serene as she regarded them both, her beautiful brown eyes, coolly assessing the situation. Her boot swung and kicked Pip back against the bars. “Does it hurt, Pygmy scum? To be slaughtered like the animal you are?” She kicked her again for good measure. “All that pathetic pretending to be Human, that can stop right now. You’ll never be one of us. Never.”

“Wait,” Silver called. “Telisia, please …”

“Please, nothing. You’re done. The Marshal never wants to see your worthless hide again.”

She levelled the crossbow at Pip, bracing the weapon on her left forearm.

“Yah!” she shouted, striking with the razor ribbons.

A streak of fire scorched her ribs, in almost exactly the same spot as before. Telisia shouted as the turquoise ribbon sliced deeply into her fingers. The second ribbon dagger whispered against her neck, wrapping around it in a flash. Pip yanked hard. But Telisia stumbled forward, lessening the tension on the deadly ribbon. That simple movement saved her neck. Pip tried to roll to force the cutting edge to bite, but she was up against the bars.

Slowly, the crossbow came into focus again.

One bolt was still loaded.

Telisia’s bloodied finger tightened on the trigger. “Go burn in a Cloudlands volcano, Pip.”

The bolt caught her beneath the right collarbone, half an inch aside from the shoulder strap of her body armour, piercing her so powerfully she distinctly felt the bolt’s metal point chip the rock beneath her body.

There was a rumbling nearby. The soldiers were trying to collapse the tunnel.

“Later,” said Telisia. A small hawk occupied the space where she had stood. The ribbon dagger slipped to the ground, useless. Her empty clothes slumped to the ground. The bird darted up the passageway and out of sight.

“Pip!” Silver shouted brokenly, clutching her between the bars. “Pip, I can save you.”

“She shot me.”

“Pip, release me. Just say the word. I can help.”

“No … trust ….”

P
ygmy warriors danced
in her memory. She battled the Silver Dragon from the fastness of her jungle home, tearing his hide and scooping out his eyeballs with her talons. He reincarnated. Every time she turned, every time she defeated him or impaled him on her monstrous Pygmy spears cunningly hidden amongst the trees, he simply rose again as though reborn from the toxic mists of the Cloudlands. He burned her body with his fire. Someone helped her, soothing, mopping her brow with cool, clear water which ran into her eyes.

Suddenly, she saw herself swimming in a terrace lake. Zardon was there.
Little monkey,
he jeered.
Little black monkey.

His face mutated to the mocking features of Prince Ulldari. Pip screamed at him, but all that emerged from her mouth was monkey-chatter.

She jerked awake with a horrible lurch, a moment when the spirit feels like a hooked fish being yanked out of the water by a fisherman to lie gasping, dying, beneath the twin suns.

“Silver, no …”

Silver? She sensed his presence nearby. But she could not see. Cloth, on her face. Herbs. Bitter smells. She must be in the infirmary. Pip tried to raise her arm to move the blindfold, but subsided with a groan.

A Dragon’s paw plucked the cloth clear, delicately.

Silver! Great Islands, no! What was he doing … had he captured … escaped … where was she?

Pip moaned.

“Softly, little one,” said Silver. In the cavern’s dim light, his scales were luminous, shedding a faint effulgence of their own. It must be late, she realised, hearing the sounds of others sleeping nearby. An Orange Dragon across the way was snoring up a volcano.

“Peace. Lie still, you stubborn girl. Still!” His paw trapped her against the pallet. “It’s alright. Everything is fine. You’re alive.”

She knew her eyes were huge with fright beneath his paw, but she could not help it. Her magic was dormant. Vanished. There was no Word to be shaped by her lips. She felt as if her third Dragon-heart had been surgically removed.

Her throat worked painfully. “I’m your captive. Again.”

“If I may quote someone I know,”
he grinned, “this is becoming quite the habit with you.”
His tone was playful, his paw, resting ever so lightly on her chest. “Before you ask, you are clothed, this time.”

Pip glanced down. Silver raised his paw to let her see the bandages swathing her upper body, from her lower ribs, over her breasts to her shoulders. She thought she detected Oyda’s hand in the neatness of the work. A blanket covered her waist and legs.

All was perfectly decent, yet she blushed. “Clothed?”

“Seeing as your nude behind is apparently a weapon of Dragonish destruction.”

Pip could not believe what she had just heard. She began to laugh, but pain flared in her body. She sank back in a sweat. Gentle magic rippling out of him palliated the pain. At his low offer, she accepted several sips of water–brought to her lips by a touch of magic from a jug standing on a low table at her bedside. Silver occupied the entire space to her right side, sixty feet of Dragon lying so near at hand, she could feel heat radiating from his body. She remembered Rajion telling her how Dragons believed in the healing power of touch; conversely, that a hatchling would pine and die for the lack of loving touch. Perhaps Silver’s nursery upbringing had been like that.

“I’m getting rather tired of lying about in this infirmary,” she said, desperately trying to discipline her thoughts into making sense. “Look at these scars you left me, you beast. Why are you free? Shouldn’t you be buried four hundred feet deep under solid rock?”

“You set me free. Don’t you remember Telisia?”

“I …” Great Islands, she had made a mess this time. Kassik would peel her hide for a rug to decorate his office. Silver must have taken over the Academy. And she had let him loose. That was the only explanation. But how could she … she could not tell him about the hollow inside her breast, could she? She could not even transform. She had to stall. “What happened, Silver?”

He trapped her lightly with his paw once more, apparently enjoying her helpless state, the flutter of a panicked heart against his paw.

Silver said, “We’ve worked it all out. You and I are going to fly to the Crescent Islands and find out what your Pygmy battle-name means. Also, there’s knowledge buried there, knowledge of–”

“You’re not using my Word of Command, Silver. I defy you.”

“The Order of Onyx,” he said, acting as if she had not spoken. “That’s the knowledge we seek, what we learned from Fra’anior. They are the guardians of the Word of Command. We need to find them, Pip, to stand any chance at all in the coming war. The Marshal is many times more powerful than–”

She spat, “I said, I defy you! You and your schemes and your power-lust …”

The Silver Dragon huffed a longsuffering sigh, directly in her face. Pip closed her eyes, feeling sick. Let him menace her with his fangs. She had to work out how Silver had wormed his way into everyone’s good graces. Recover her magic. Then, kill him. He was obviously far too powerful and devious to be trusted.

Her enemy’s thoughts, though, were not just on a different trail. They might as well have been tramping through the jungles of a different Island altogether. He said, “We will Ride together, Pip, you and I. You’d honour me greatly in this. What do you say?”

Honour him? As his slave, his little Pygmy puppet? Pip laughed in his face. “You must be ralti-stupid if you think I’m riding you anywhere.”

Silver seemed most put out. Fire flared from his nostrils, but he snuffed the flames with his free paw before they could harm her. “You stubborn–”

“Oh, now it’s my fault?”

“Your skull’s harder than the foundations of the Island-World. Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve been saying?”

Pip’s head was all a-whirl. For a moment, his muzzle blurred above her. She squeezed her eyes shut. Had she heard a giggle somewhere? A tiny shuffle of feet? No.

She demanded, “Tell me what happened.”

“Or, perhaps there’s a block of granite on those shoulders.” Pip scowled to show him she did not appreciate his facility with comparisons. “Look, after Telisia finished using you for target practice, you set me free with one of your Words. I saved your life. I pulled out the arrows and treated the poisons. I dug the two of us out of that dungeon and brought you here, where you have been sleeping and recovering for five days.”

“Five days?” Pip’s eyes widened. Five days for Silver to work his dastardly schemes. Five days for him to ruin everything, to spread his rot at the very core of their Academy.

“I’d hazard a guess that you’ll be feeling very odd, right now,” he continued. “You were poisoned with one of the so-called Shapeshifter poisons. It’s a big family of over a thousand subtle, magical poisons designed to do all kinds of nasty things to Shapeshifters and Dragons. Rather popular in Herimor, unfortunately, but I do have a certain amount of experience with assassination by poison. Your Dragon-form is … ah, well, think of it as paralysed. My assessment is that it could be as long as a month before you recover. That’s why you have to Ride me. Do you understand?”

She had lost her Dragon? That was all she heard. Telisia might just as well have gutted her like a Dragon disembowelling a spiral-horn deer. Mutely, Pip shook her head. Her left eye leaked one silent, treacherous tear. It had been a good Dragonride. But it was over.

Beside her, the Silver Dragon grew visibly frustrated. His claws briefly unsheathed either side of her body, before slipping back again with a stertorous grunt of effort. His belly fires made the low, almost subsonic growl of their presence known.

Pip rubbed her eyes. “I’m injured and hurting, Silver. If you think I’m going to drive some kind of bargain with you in this state …”

“You asked how you can ever trust me,” he said. His eyes softened, pleading with her. Pip gritted her teeth. Traitor. Scheming son of a slug. “Master Kassik knows all about this plan. In fact, he suggested it. But, to ensure my cooperation, Master Ga’am has implanted two trigger words in my mind. One will render me unconscious. The other will kill. You may ask him for those two words.”

Insane! Troubled, Pip asked, “Silver, who knows this?”

“Ga’am and Kassik. And you, if you wish.”

“I don’t.” Pip snapped her mouth shut after her words. She searched his eyes, the hints of darkness and danger mingled with the brighter, more beautiful silver. What was he thinking? What if the Marshal captured Kassik or Master Ga’am? Or was Silver lying to her? Much more plaintively, she added, “I don’t understand. Why are you telling me all this? Why place yourself in such danger? If the Marshal ever learns those words–”

“Then I’m as good as dead, anyway. I am already.”

Two Islands of thought warred in her head, and Pip could not decide between them. One insisted that Silver had to be playing her for a fool. Everything he had said up to this point, in the cell and now in the infirmary, had been calculated to toy with her emotions. Even Telisia could be in his thrall. The situation, calculated to drive her to free him as only she could, to place her once more beneath his paw. The second Island was that of hope. What if he was a changed Shapeshifter? What if the remorse he had spoken of, was real? What if he felt the same way as she did, deep in his soul?

“Pip, be my Rider,” he begged. “Let us burn the heavens together.”

“No. I don’t know. I don’t know what to think, Silver!”

“I can help you. I can allay your inmost fears.”

Despair twisted a cold blade into her heart. “You took control of my mind while I was unconscious. You rummaged through my thoughts.”

“Dear sweet Islands, then how would it be possible that you’d still be so bloody stubborn!” he roared, losing his temper with an impressively volcanic string of fireballs that raced out of the open cavern mouth. Pip blinked to clear her vision. “All I was going to say is that as a Shapeshifter, you are
fully
Human and
fully
Dragon! You fear you aren’t Human, Pip, and that you’ve had to give up your dream of being Human, but in reality you have the best of both worlds. That’s your deepest fear, you impossible, you … you pint-sized bundle of vexation. Believe me, if I had any control of your thorn-bush of a mind, you’d be polishing my scales right now. I’ve fought you. I’ve battled your mind. Only I know how ridiculously and unrelentingly Human you are!”

Pip gaped at him.

Silver glared back, his fangs champing just inches from her face as he roared, “I’m a proud Dragon! Must I ask thrice? Will you, or will you not, do me the honour of being my Rider?”

Panting after his outburst, he fixed her with his burning silver gaze. His claws curled spasmodically around her ribcage. Any moment now they would clench, and finish her.

“Yah get yah fat stinking paws off mah sweet Pipsqueak,” said Mistress Mya’adara, appearing right at her bedside.

With a shimmer of the air, Master Kassik appeared beside her. He said, “Silver, take your paws out of your mouth before you hurt yourself. I thought you said you could handle this?”

“Idiot,” said Yaethi.

“Prize idiot,” said Kaiatha.

“Biggest idiot within a hundred leagues,” added Maylin, never to be outdone. “How do you spell ‘romance’, you blundering lump of … urgh! Whatever you are.”

The Pygmy girl sank back on her pillow-roll and wondered if the Island-World had just flipped upside-down. Nothing made sense any more. Nothing. Was this some bizarre dream or delusion she was having? Where had they all come from?

Silver shared his raging temper with them all. Spluttering fire from his nostrils, he said, “Well, then you handle that … stupid Pygmy … that Dragoness is not for handling, I tell you! She’s intolerable and headstrong. I will not have it.”

There was a brief, frosty silence. The Silver Dragon stamped off a few paces.

Pip glanced about the half-circle of her friends suddenly gathered to her bedside. Oyda, Nak and Casitha were all present. Nak and Shimmerith … oh, her last hatchling would surely have cracked the shell by now? Why had they been lying in wait for her at this hour? Her brow furrowed. Despite having slept for five days, her senses were suddenly alert, and a hyper-sensitised clarity pervaded her thoughts. They wouldn’t be present and acting like this, unless …

Nak said, “Still, Silver, wouldn’t you agree that she has the cutest bottom in the–ouch!”

Oyda’s slap echoed in the infirmary cavern.

“Very well, only the second-cutest … I’m not supposed to look? Fie, woman, why don’t you just gouge out my eyeballs and roast them on sticks?”

“Rider Nak,” said Mya’adara, fingering her scimitar purposefully.

“Quiet, all of you,” said Pip. It was not a Word of Command, but it silenced them nonetheless. There was a sweet roaring in her ears, an expanding mindfulness of an Island-shivering decision–indeed, what she had known since she first beheld the Silver Dragon in the Natal Cave. “Help me up, Casitha, Oyda.”

“Not yet,” said Oyda, with an apologetic pat of her shoulder. “Sorry.”

Pip called, “Silver, will you come here, please?”