Master Alathion stood Pip in a corner of his office. “Wait here. Master Kassik is an extremely busy man.”
Pip knew how to wait. She had waited seven years to escape, only to be kidnapped by a Dragon. But now, she found herself hopping from one foot to the other. Alathion’s desk, front and centre in his plush office, was the biggest, shiniest, most impressive piece of furniture she had ever seen. Hunagu could have sat behind it with ease. To the left of the door stood two rows of three further, much more modest desks. Each had a block of wood with the word ‘scribe’ on it, not the person’s name. Each desk was covered in scrolls and journals and piles of files, and was occupied by a harried-looking man or woman.
They ignored her.
Strutting sparrow-like from desk to desk, Alathion barked non-stop at his scribes. ‘Haven’t you signed the contract? What’s keeping you?’ ‘Where are my supplies?’ ‘The roof of block nineteen. Is it finished yet?’ His gold-ringed finger tapped a journal. ‘This mentoring schedule is all wrong. How many times do I have to tell you, the third year students …’
After an hour or so of this, Pip began to wonder if she had been forgotten.
Her eyes crawled up the walls. Paintings. Certificates and honours. Clearly, the Master was extremely well qualified for his job and needed everyone to know, in large gold letters, that he had been the best student in his year. The carpet tickling her toes was very fine, and smelled like the ball of white ralti wool Balthion had once shown her during a lesson. Through another impressive wooden door, which stood a little ajar, she could see through into what had to be a huge office. A carved wooden rajal in the corner stood taller than her, life-size.
Pip stiffened. Someone was in there. She could feel him. She knew it was Master Kassik.
Now, here was a dilemma. How did she know who was in the next room? Why that tell-tale shiver of awareness? How long was she prepared to wait for Master Alathion, who had looked at her as he might have looked at the sole of his boot to see what unpleasant insect he had squashed in passing? He pored over a scroll, oblivious.
Her heart skipped into her throat as Pip stole through the door, jungle-silent.
Tiny bare feet padded across the thick rugs lining the office floor. Pip blinked at the bright light streaming in through the curved, floor-to-ceiling crysglass windows which ran the length of a long, wood-panelled room. Oddly, she smelled wood polish mingled with a more pungent aroma of wet earth. Then she realised that the office was divided by two curved stone planters, which were filled with vegetation so familiar to her that tears sprang to her eyes. Jungle vines! A pot-bellied piper tree with its distinctive, flame-orange gourds! Carved animals clustered in the corners, making the entire room resemble a jungle scene.
Beside the window, legs akimbo and arms clasped behind his back, stood a green-robed giant of a man, gazing out over the volcanic view his office commanded. So tall was he and so still his stance, Pip mistook him at first for a dark statue. The incredibly detailed profusion of silver brocade on his robe accentuated that impression, as well as the tall, formal Jeradian falki headgear, an ornate crown-like cap that added a further half-foot to his already commanding stature.
Her creeping forward was arrested by the movement of his arm, rising to shade his eyes as he squinted at something she could not see. Pip suppressed an urge to sneak up on him and yell ‘boo!’ Now that she was this close to Master Kassik, she did not know what to say or do. She waited.
Beside the spotless, modest desk located next to one of the planters, Kassik’s office was filled with curios from around the Island-World. She saw beautiful clay pots decorated with beads and shells, a display of at least a hundred different types of daggers, and metal and bamboo flutes in styles for which she had no names. The walls were hung with paintings; one, a painting of a Brown Dragon, filled a twenty-foot span and was so realistic it seemed to leap out of the wall at her. Pip gasped slightly.
The man whirled. His hand dropped to his dagger as he scanned the room with the alert eyes of an experienced warrior. Pip saw it all–the moment of recognition, an intruder identified, the immediate scan of his surroundings to see if any other enemy lurked nearby. When she made no threatening move, his shoulders dropped slightly, but his hand did not drop from his dagger.
“Master Kassik?” At his slight nod, Pip bowed in the manner of Pygmies. “I am Pip.”
“I’m Kassik.”
Calmly, the Master’s deep-set hazel eyes assessed her. She had the impression that he missed little. In fact, a slight tingling of her skin informed her that his examination involved more than just his eyes. Pip did not avoid his gaze. Great Islands, he was tall! Kassik’s face was lined like old leather beneath a fringe of pure white hair which curled beneath the falki, but despite his apparent age, his shoulders were square and his back held perfectly straight, giving him an air of enormous dignity.
If semi-naked Pygmies sneaked into his office every day, he did not show it.
The silence stretched. Pip wondered if this was some kind of test. Had she been foolish, creeping into his office? Had Zardon truly sensed something of worth in a Pygmy girl he snatched from a zoo?
A smile broke across Master Kassik’s face like the suns burning through a cloudbank. “Well, Pip. I sense you are not a casual visitor. Do you have a message for me? Come, sit.”
At his gesture, Pip moved down a couple of steps to a set of comfortable couches. She scrambled up into one, her cheeks reddening as she realised how small she must seem to Master Kassik. He, dropping his heavy cloak over the back of a chair and placing his falki on a free seat, seated himself opposite her. His hazel eyes concentrated on her with disturbing power.
She said, “I was sent to you by Zardon the Red Dragon, Master.”
“Ah, how is the old fire-tosser?”
Pip did not know what to make of the glint her comment sparked in the Master’s eye. Haltingly, she began to tell him a little of her journey. But her tale soon ground to a halt beneath the intensity of his gaze.
“How is Zardon, Pip? The truth, if you will.”
Kassik spoke mildly, but Pip knew he had sensed her covering up for Zardon’s fragmented state of mind. She squirmed as she recounted the Red Dragon’s visions. Abruptly, she began to shiver; a creeping sense of horror settled in her bones. But he seemed intrigued enough to ask several detailed questions. Just then, Alathion burst in, all a-bother.
“You little rat …” he began to snarl at Pip. “Master. I am sorry for the disturbance. She sneaked in behind my back.”
“No mind, Master Alathion,” said Kassik. “Do please send a monkey for Mistress Mya’adara. I believe we may have ourselves a new first year student, here.” Alathion stiffened as though he was about to say something malicious, but Master Kassik added, “And, could you arrange a meal? Pip has travelled far. Fruit, Pip? A little cold meat?”
Before she could speak, Pip’s stomach spoke up for her. She blushed. “Thank you, Master.”
“Alathion?” he said.
“At once, Master,” said Alathion. He withdrew, shutting the door behind him.
Kassik formed a tent of his long fingers. His gaze returned to that unnerving intensity, before which she feared her inmost secrets would be laid bare. “So, permit me to ask you the question I ask all prospective students, Pip. Out there in the Island-World, fifteen thousand youngsters apply to this Academy every year. Of those, we select between one and two thousand students to start our first year. By the second year, we shall have whittled the class down to the best one hundred. What makes you think, Pip, that you deserve to study at the Academy? And what would you make of this opportunity, should I offer it to you?”
“Oh, I don’t deserve it, Master,” Pip replied at once, before trying to corral her errant thoughts. “I–well, Zardon seemed to think I was worth kidnapping. He said I had done magic.”
“Ay? What about you, Pip?”
Trapped beneath his fierce gaze, Pip felt compelled to offer what was hidden in her heart. She said, “Master, I grew up in the jungle. I lived seven summers in a Sylakian zoo.” Kassik made a tiny but audible intake of breath at this, but did not interrupt. “Zardon stole me from my cage and dropped me here without much explanation. In truth, I can offer you little, but I do know you would be offering me the world … freedom …”
Pip choked up. She wiped her eyes, feeling littler and more foolish by the moment, and stumbled on, “And education. A new life. Master Kassik, I’m not ungrateful. I don’t know about your other students, but I do know that no-one would appreciate it more, nor work harder to earn your trust, than I would.”
“Freedom. A new life.” He sighed very deeply, but suddenly, he sat back and smiled as though she had delivered the most joyous news. “Ideas of humble yet supreme power. Very good. We shall eat, and wait upon Mistress Mya’adara, and then you shall tell us all about this Pygmy girl from the Crescent Islands. Who is Pip? Why do you speak with such a musical accent? What are your skills? Have you any education at all, having lived in a zoo? I want to know everything.”
Pip bowed her head. She had expected to feel intimidated by Master Kassik. Instead, she felt a warm welcome, and perhaps, a kindred spirit.
Mistress Mya’adara was a Western Isles warrior from the Naphtha Cluster. She seemed as wide as she was tall, and her sleeveless tunic revealed tattooed arms so muscular they could have furnished a rajal without dishonour. Although she overshadowed Pip like a giant jungle tree, she had an easy smile and an irresistible way of getting exactly what she wanted. Pip noted the huge scimitar belted at her waist. The Head of First Year Students seemed more than capable of using it to carve up Dragons–or errant students.
With dizzying speed, she showed Pip the first year classrooms, the practice field and the vaulting dining hall, where all the students, Journeymen, Mentors and Masters habitually took meals together. Dinner was not yet ready, so they whipped down eleven levels and across five buildings to the infirmary, where Mya’adara had her apartments and the first year dormitory complex was located. Pip liked the vine-covered buildings at once. There was more vegetation than stone, it seemed. This tour was accompanied by a barrage of information.
“Ah have trunkfuls of clothes mah girls have grown out of, Pip,” she explained, in her broad Western Isles brogue. “When they was six summahs old, but no matter, no mind. Yah a Pygmy. Yah just made the way yah are. Like me.” She flexed her biceps.
Pip said, “Do you eat whole melons for breakfast, Mistress?”
Mya’adara laughed heartily, clapping her on the shoulder. Pip stumbled. “Sorry. Good joke! Did yah shrink in the wash?”
“I can do anything a big person can,” Pip replied, with a forced chuckle. Her accent was funny. ‘Shreenk.’ ‘Yah’ for you. But she had a sweet, wholesome way about her.
“I know yah can.” Mya’adara’s eyes, however, appraised her with intensity similar to Master Kassik’s. Pip hoped she was not thinking how small she was compared to the other students. “Yah got lakes full of fish to catch up on, Pip. Yah ready? First year class has already been cut down by a third. Yah join late, yah collect their jealousy, girl. Yah have to catch up on all yah academic subjects and weapons before the examinations. Four weeks, yah got. Shall I speak to Master Shambithion about a deferral?”
“I don’t want any special treatment,” said Pip.
“Ah can imagine not.”
Pip knew the Mistress had seen right through her bravado.
A half-hour of vigorous rooting about in Mistress Mya’adara’s storage room secured Pip clothes enough to furnish half a village of Pygmies, and shoes. She eyed the shoes distrustfully. Wouldn’t they make her feet stink? But Mya’adara was very firm about the need for clothing. ‘This isn’t a jungle, Pip. Yah dress decent.’
She lugged a canvas holdall down to the infirmary, a vast cavern beneath the student dormitory buildings. A blast of hot air snatched Pip’s breath away as she entered. The cave was gigantic, easily large enough for a Dragon to fly right in through the entrance which yawned away to her left. In places, pretty red crystals peeked through the rock, and it was brightly lit by the same lamps she had seen in the stairway. Her nostrils tingled at the tang of smoke and the sweet aroma of many medicinal herbs; a healing smell. Pip liked the place at once.
“It’s set up for Dragons and their Riders,” said the Mistress, leading her down a few steps to the cavern floor. “Beds and roosts together. Yah wouldn’t believe the fuss, if yah separate Dragon from Rider. Such a whining and complaining! Over there’s Cardiata, the Yellow fledgling. Broke her right primary wing bone in aerial combat training last week. Shimmerith, who belongs with Nak–that wastrel snoring up a storm in bay four–she has a fungal infection of the bowel. Painful. And this magnificent creature is mah Rajion.”
Rajion curved his neck to eyeball Pip. He was a vast Red Dragon of a magnificent crimson hue, with lower jaw fangs which curled up past his upper gums, giving him a permanently smiling expression–the type of smile a Dragon offered its prey before eating it, Pip thought with a shudder. Rajion was missing most of his left hind leg, and the outer third of his left wing.
She bowed courteously, and a little shyly, to Rajion.
“Injured in the war,” Mya’adara explained, following Pip’s thoughts perfectly.
Shimmerith stirred restlessly in her sleep. She was a beautiful, slender Dragon, a pale gemstone blue with sapphire flashes on her scales and spines, giving her the appearance of having been painted by an artist.
“Shimmerith’s beautiful.”
“Ay, and she deserves better than a worthless layabout for a Rider.”
Pip thought it best to keep silent. Mya’adara sounded positively wrathful.
“Oh, Casitha works here? Casitha!”
The woman looked up with a bright smile from the dressing she was changing on a Red Dragon fledgling’s eye. “No, everyone makes that mistake. I’m Oyda. Healer. Emblazon’s Rider. Mya’adara’s chief lackey and bandage-changer.”
“Bah,” snorted Mya’adara.
Pip grinned at Oyda’s insouciant tone as they walked over to the bowl-shaped bay where the small Red Dragon–all thirty-five feet of him, she estimated–was settled on a comfortable pile of ralti sheep furs. For a famous Dragon Rider, Oyda seemed easy-going and affable. “Honoured to meet you, Rider Oyda. I’m Pip. Lately from Sylakia Island.”
“Sylakia? Don’t they keep Pygmies as pets?” As Pip sucked in her lower lip, Oyda added, “Idiots and barbarians, keeping slaves. Are you joining the first year?”
“So I’m told.”
Oyda’s striking brown eyes, flecked with green and gold towards their centres, twinkled at her. “Good. A Pygmy warrior in that class should shake things up. Anyone who gives you a rough time, you send them straight to me. I’ll serve them to Emblazon for breakfast.”
“Not if I catch them first,” growled Rajion, right behind Pip’s shoulder. She flinched. “How’s his eye, Oyda? Shall I heal Tarragon again?”
Healing powers? Master Balthion had not mentioned that. Pip watched Rajion work his magic with all of her senses alert. Yes, definitely that odd tingling–it had to be magic.
Later, Mya’adara showed her the first year dormitories. Her assigned bunk was in a long room which housed forty-eight students in twelve double bunks, with spaces in between for desks. She deposited her new canvas holdall and her rajal skin in the indicated place, before joining the other students in the main dining hall. Dinner was held late–a Jeradian custom, Mya’adara said. Darkness had fallen, but the hall’s lights blazed cheerfully over the bustling trestle tables and long wooden benches of the dining hall.
Hundreds of pairs of eyes, it seemed, noted her entrance through the immense jalkwood doors, which stood at least twenty times her height–perhaps tall and wide enough to accommodate a Dragon, she realised. She hoped all these big people did not think she was just a child. The huge Western Isles woman led her along to a rowdy section.
“The first years,” said Mya’adara. “Hundreds of the rascals. Now, where’s yah dorm leader–yah Mentor? Hailia, she’s called.”
“Pip!” A glad cry came from nearby. “Great Islands, guys, its Pip.”
A table bounced as Durithion practically threw himself off his seat and dashed between the benches toward her.
“Duri?” she gasped. He thumped into her and gave her a huge hug.
“Yah know this scoundrel?” Mya’adara scowled at Duri. “Hands off the female students, young man, before Ah remove them permanently.”
“She’s … oh, I know Pip from home,” Duri spluttered, his ears heating up until they resembled red flags either side of his head. He dropped the hug as though he had been burned. “Oh, Pip … how, I mean what … this is incredible. It is you, right?”
Pip’s own ears burned as the boys at Duri’s table whistled and hooted at them. “Yes, Duri.”
“You have to meet all of my friends.”
He dragged her over to his table, rattling on about his father studying her and how incredible it was to have her at the Academy and throwing thirty names at her in rapid succession.
But then, from nearby, a voice cut clearly through the hubbub, “Oh, great Islands, it’s the monkey from the zoo. Hello, monkey.”
Cruel laughter rose from the table behind her.
Pip whirled, clenching her fists in rage. She knew that voice. She could never forget it. Telisia!
“Girls, this is Pip,” Telisia drawled. “My father studied her at the Sylakian zoo. She lived there with the monkeys. Apparently, she even speaks monkey.”
“T-T-Telisia!” Durithion stammered, advancing on her.
“How did you get here, Pip?” asked Telisia, playing to her audience. “Did the zookeepers let you out?”
“Actually, I flew Dragonback.”
“Dragonback? Why, you little liar, you–”
Pip ground out, “I’ll just go tell Zardon the Red Dragon you called him a liar, shall I?”
For a moment, Telisia’s mouth worked but no sound came out.
The boy next to her chipped in, “Are you threatening my girlfriend, you undersized rat?”
Durithion shouted, “You take that back, Prince Ulldari!”
Suddenly, Mistress Mya’adara stood between all the heated stares. “I trust yah second years are giving our newest student a warm welcome? Telisia?”
“I was just surprised to see Pip, that’s all,” said Telisia, her tone making it very clear that the surprise was not a pleasant one. “Welcome to Dragon Rider Academy, Pip of the Pygmies.”
Pip summoned a deadly-sweet smile. “Thank you, Telisia.”
Kneeling, Mistress Mya’adara measured the new student carefully with a knotted string. “Three feet … ten, no, eleven inches. Hold still, Pip.”
“At least four feet, please,” said Pip.
Maylin, a slant-eyed Eastern Islander first year from her dormitory, patted her on top of her head. The Pygmy girl could gladly have bitten that condescending hand. “No tiptoes, Pip. You don’t want to rile the Mistress. She bites.”
“She hits,” said Mya’adara, clipping the back of Maylin’s head efficiently. “Ah’ll have those feet flat on mah floor, yah overgrown jungle imp.”
Sighing, Pip subsided.
“You’re running out of knots down there, Mistress,” said Maylin. When she received no reply, she added, “How tall are you, Mistress Mya’adara? Six mountains and how many peaks?”
“Six feet and six,” she replied. “Stop stirring trouble, Maylin, or Ah’ll have yah mending every pair of trousers in mah school.”
“Trouble? Me?” Maylin winked at Pip.
“Yah not just the trouble, yah the sauce on top of the trouble,” said the Mistress, biting her tongue as she concentrated. “Not quite the big four, Pip. Sorry. Three feet, eleven and one-half inches, yah are.”
“The simply enormous four,” chortled Maylin. This time, Pip did hit her, a punch on the arm which seemed to function as a general sort of greeting between the first years.
“Ouch, you pocket rajal,” said Maylin, rubbing her arm. “Where’d you learn to hit like that?”
“Wrestling Oraial Apes,” said Pip.
“Mercy.”
“Yah don’t argue with Pygmy warriors, or Western Isles warriors, for that matter,” said Mya’adara, marking down Pip’s details on her records scroll. “Right. We need yah weight, girl.”
“One titchy bag of flour,” said Maylin.
Pip thumped her other arm before Maylin could dodge. “That’s two bags, you short-changing little cheat.”
Maylin grinned, “Ooh, fun with a pun. Two bags of mischief, Mistress.”
“Ah’m having second thoughts about asking yah to help Pip find her way around the Academy,” said the Mistress. “That smacks of giving two monkeys the key to a storeroom full of sweets. Stand still, Pip. Hmm. Seven sackweight and three grains. Need to feed yah up, poor mite.”
To her surprise, Pip found an arm about her shoulder. “If you’re finished, Mistress,” said Maylin, “we intend to take a careful and very polite tour of all the best sights of the Academy.”
“Bah,” said Mya’adara. “And Ah come from a purple Island orbiting the Jade moon. Off with yah scamps. Shoo!”