IN MUTE AMAZEMENT, Hualiama’s soul welled up. Tears streaked her cheeks, whipped away by the wind generated by Grandion’s passage. Dragon wings spread out to either side, supple upon the breeze, and the slow, powerful thrust of each wingbeat caused them to surge through the air. Lia marvelled at the purity of Dragon flight, unembellished and silent save for a slight, leathery creaking as his wing membranes flexed. Nothing in her experience of flying and piloting Dragonships had prepared her for this sensation. The Tourmaline Dragon propelled them along as if the air were a vast sheet of Helyon silk he simply slid along; not the boring action of a bulky dirigible balloon, but the sleek, streamlined flight of a supreme aerial predator.
Abruptly, Lia stretched out her arms as wide as she could reach. Throwing her head back, she began to laugh. At first, it was the staccato gasps of a pair of lungs which had forgotten how to breathe, but soon, her mirth swelled into a torrent of uninhibited, effervescent joy.
Grandion reacted as though stung. His neck twizzled around until he could stare at her with both eyes. “Are you laughing or crying?”
“Both!”
A low hiccough caused them to bounce in the air. Grandion began to laugh, too. “We’re crazy. Like a pair of dragonets drunk on fermented fruit.”
He felt the same way!
At last, her throat opened. Hualiama poured out in song the response of a soul taken flight. Her hymn drank deep of the magic which had restored the Tourmaline Dragon’s sanity, and rang forth with the beauty and majestic panoply of a Dragon’s passage across the Iridith’s broad, yellow face. Resounding from the dark cliffs of Ha’athior Island, which lay upon their starboard bow as they winged northward, her melody fell like sweet rain upon the Cloudlands misting Ha’athior’s shores, here backlit by a miles-wide orange lava flow. And it seemed to her, as Grandion swept a Human girl out into the moonlit night, that the stars themselves should answer in bell-like notes of rapturous approbation, and that having experienced this, nothing in the Island-World could ever amaze her again.
A sonorous bugle resounded from deep within Grandion’s chest, a sound that caused her to shiver pleasantly.
When she fell silent, the Tourmaline Dragon said, “Happy?”
“You’ve given me the greatest gift of my life, Grandion. Should I not exult?”
The Dragon rubbed his muzzle with his forepaw in a gesture Hualiama had learned signified deep Dragon emotion. He said, “And we Dragons take the power of flight for granted. Shame on us. I should deploy a little concealing magic, now that you’ve woken the entire Island.”
“Grandion?”
“Songbird of Fra’anior?”
“Do Dragons sing?”
He riposted, with a knife-edge ill-concealed in his tone, “Do Dragons rule the Island-World from shore to shore?”
“Except for the large majority of Islands which are ruled by Humans, aye,” she agreed. “You can have all the air; just leave us Humans the Islands.”
“You are exceedingly generous, your Highness,” he said, his displeasure crackling in an undertone of fiery reproof. “Though, I find your social and political education sadly lacking in foundation.”
“Don’t tell me you believe Dragons should rule by right.”
“By right of superior beauty, physical prowess, intelligence, scientific endeavour and achievement, breeding, and–”
“–modesty,” Lia snapped. “You’re awfully strong on modesty.”
Grandion coughed out an impressive plume of fire at her comment. Lia ducked, but the wind wafted the choking, sulphurous smoke into her face. As she coughed, he snarled, “Humans are nothing but the fleas infesting the armpit of this world.”
Fire roared over her vision. Rather than being cowed by his tone, Lia found herself snarling right back, “You’ve eaten so much monkey meat you’re starting to sound just like one!”
“Most Dragons would kill you for that insult!” he snarled.
“Well, it’s blindingly obvious good manners and charm didn’t land you up in that hole!”
GRRAAAAAGGGHHH!
A crack of thunder! Hualiama clapped her hands over her ears as Grandion roared so loudly, he almost stopped in the air with the effort. She distinctly heard boulders crashing down the nearby cliff, shaken loose. The Tourmaline Dragon flew straight for several moments, panting, while Lia clung to his back as though glued in place. Fantastic. He had spoiled her good mood with one thoughtless slur. Well, a slew of insults, truth be told.
Now her ride wanted to eat her.
At length, he commented, “You surprise me, Hualiama. You’re quite the little Dragoness.”
“I’m sorry, Grandion. I didn’t mean to–”
He cut in, “An apology? In my culture, that’s even worse than the preceding insults. It’s regarded as a sign of cowardice.”
“So, the flea must keep fighting?”
Just like that, the fire and stiffness in his manner vanished and Grandion began to chortle helplessly, shaking his head. “You are incredible. The nonsense that gushes from your mouth, mingled with the most sublime insights! Nay, I don’t want to fight with you, Hualiama. I don’t even know why I am wont to spoil your first flight with crass and worthless words.”
Lia pushed herself upright, peering past his spine spikes to catch a glimpse of his eye as he inclined his head. So, he could apologise but she could not? She smiled, “Thanks, Grandion.”
“Girl, in reply to your earlier accusation–I ended up in that hole because my shell-father ordered me to do something useful with my life, or never return home again.”
What could she say to such a bald statement? Even King Chalcion had not gone that far. No, she laughed hollowly. He preferred to keep her around so that he could beat her personally. Perhaps a cautious question or two could distract the Dragon from his unpredictable mood?
“Who are your parents, Grandion?”
But he shut his muzzle with a click of his fangs. “I will not speak of them.”
They flew north for several hours, each mired in their own thoughts, before Grandion curved his flight toward the northerly tip of Ha’athior Island and alighted in the mouth of a wide, shallow cave a mile beneath the top of the flat peninsula which formed part of Fra’anior volcano’s rim wall.
“Tired?” Lia asked quietly, as he walked beneath the overhang.
“Three months of inactivity doesn’t leave a Dragon flying-fit,” he admitted. “I need to rest. Of course, my superior Dragon physique will quickly adjust to the demands of flying–you’ll see. Meantime, how are you planning to descend the muscular mountain which is my overly conceited self?”
That was a curious form of apology, but it worked.
Hualiama surveyed the prospect of sliding down his shoulder from a height of fifteen feet, and shook her head. “I’d break an ankle … no, wait. I might try your hind leg. Bend your knee, please.”
Gingerly, she walked along the row of spine spikes, before sitting on her rump and making the slide down to the bulge of his upper thigh, and thence his knee. After that, it was still a respectable hop down onto the arch of his hind paw, and at last to the ground. Lia stretched, groaning.
Grandion furled his wings with an even bigger groan, before curling up abruptly, his head tucked back toward his tail. “Wake me if something exciting happens.”
Ten seconds later, Hualiama turned around to speak, and found the Dragon sound asleep!
Hands on hips, she waggled an eyebrow at her co-conspirator, feeling daring–as daring as a certain dragonet, in fact. She had flown Dragonback! Hualiama was a rider of Dragons. Her vision darkened. Lia leaned over, trying to find a way to draw breath despite the feeling of bands of iron clamped about her ribcage. What was this? Slowly, the attack eased. Mercy. It had been a busy night–was it really not yet dawn?
She had not eaten since Ra’aba’s assault on the monastery, she realised.
* * * *
Hualiama woke up with a horrid jolt. Dragon! No, he was neither trampling her, nor standing over the royal ward with a toothy grin, considering how exactly he might turn five feet of Human girl into a between-meals appetiser.
Tucking into a handful of nuts drawn from her pouch, Lia considered their mutual madness. Oaths made between Dragon and Human? Aye, for evidently, ralti sheep danced upon the Blue Moon! And what of this inexplicable magical imperative which seemed to have seized them both by the throat and winged them off to an uncertain destiny? Had Grandion noticed her accidental use of Dragonish? Which brought to at least three the number of reasons he should summarily execute her with a blast of Dragon fire. She peered at Grandion from the corner of her eye. No, he was neither a single inch smaller, nor any less … Dragon. Mercy. Double mercy with huge fire-breathing serpents on top!
There would be no escaping this cave without him.
Grandion nigh filled his half of the cave, a slumberous mound of Dragonflesh clothed in gemstone raiment fit for a king. She snuck a little closer to examine the detail of his scales, shaking her head. How could she describe such a blue? Pearlescent? Mesmeric? Each scale on his flanks was the size of her two hands placed side by side, reducing to tiny, thumbnail-sized scales around his eyes. Lia felt as though she were gazing into the inner part of a gemstone which had inexplicably assumed the structure and form of draconic scale armour. She had a sense of falling inward into a hypnotic, perilous crystalline world. One could lose oneself in such scrutiny.
Fascination and Dragon fear. Aye. So had it ever been between Dragons and Humans. So it was with her now.
Lia drank sparingly from a trickle of crystal-clear water at the rear of the cave before shucking her blades and her belt with all its supplies. She owed it to Master Khoyal, let his soul fly upon the eternal winds, to complete her training. She would first limber up with a dance before moving on to the many forms of Nuyallith burned into her mind. Some were inexplicable or mystical. Ja’al had not yet transferred ninety of the lessons, but Lia already felt like a walking library of lore–or an ambulatory headache.
Grandion stirred in the late afternoon, when the heat pressed down as if intent upon smothering the Islands in a thick, sweltering blanket. A storm brewed out there. The eighteen league wide caldera generated so much ambient heat that Fra’anior Cluster never grew cold, but the heat also caused massive thunderstorms to boil around the Islands year-round, with a particular concentration in the storm season–which would arrive within the month, she realised. Ra’aba had been on the throne far longer than anyone would ever have imagined.
“Doesn’t a Dragon usually fly much faster than we managed last night?” Lia inquired.
The tip of the Tourmaline Dragon’s tail twitched twice, an indicator of irritation. “That was for my benefit, Human girl. Muscles long dormant must be reawakened. Toxins build up in the muscle tissues and joints, while the smaller arteries feeding the wing surface begin to calcify. Even the heart muscles atrophy, because for a creature the size of a Dragon to fly requires an extraordinary output of energy, despite the efficiency of our triple-heart cardiovascular system. Furthermore, we have additional bodily organs which store energy and nutrients essential to flight, magic, brain function and so on–organs which Humans do not possess. These take time to replenish.”
“I’d love to learn all that you have to teach me,” she said.
“Thankfully, the body heals itself rapidly,” he said, less testily. “I need to hunt. What can I bring you–a spiral horn deer? Wild sheep?”
“I’d have a bit of anything. I’m starving.”
“No sneaking off while I’m gone.”
Snarky Dragon. But Lia burst out laughing when he strutted in to drop an entire haunch of ralti sheep at her feet, an hour later. He looked so pleased with himself. At her best guess, the slab of meat also weighed double her entire body mass.
“Hungry?” he sketched a graceful bow and lost his balance slightly. His muzzle butted her shoulder.
Lia staggered. “Oof, there’s no need to flatten me!”
Grandion held out an apologetic paw. “Paw up?”
Lia gripped his talon and bounded to her feet, making the Dragon startle and flare his wings. “I’ll cut a few steaks and wrap them in fli’iara leaves. I’ve two ripe landas gourds and I spotted a patch of jiista-berry bushes just by the cave entrance. A feast! Shall I make a fire?”
“Shall I roast your woefully undersized rump?” he exclaimed, demonstrating with a curl of fire over his lip what he meant. “You’re travelling with a Dragon.”
“Ooh, I forgot,” said Lia, her eyes dancing as she swept into a flowing Fra’aniorian bow. “Please cook my meat, kind sky-lizard, whilst I … have no clue what I can do for you. This is going to be a very one-sided relationship, Grandion, if I can’t do anything to serve you.”
“Who needs servants? I’m a modern Dragon. Watch.”
Grandion picked up the haunch and, shaping the fire with his blue forked tongue, began to bathe it in a hissing stream of flame. He even rolled the hunk of meat steadily with his talons, ensuring that it cooked evenly. Having fireproof knuckles certainly helped.
“Yum,” Lia said, looking on from a safe distance. “Smells delicious. What does, ‘I’m a modern Dragon’ mean?”
“Human servitude was a blot in draconic history, but don’t tell most of my race I said that,” he averred. “Your congenial companionship is enough.”
A slow and rather silly smile spread across Lia’s face, chasing her blush as it broadened. “But I want to help. Look, you’ve a thorn vine stuck beneath your wing, in your … ah, armpit. Wing-pit? Can I help with that?”
Grandion nodded, still doing his incongruous impression of a cook turning a spit.
“Are these so-called ‘modern Dragons’ domesticated? Tame?”
“Tame?” Fire thundered out of his long throat, reducing the boulders in front of him to molten slag and turning the sand to glass. The Dragon spluttered, “Tame? Look, now I’ve ruined your meal, you rude … you little …”
“I’m sure that charred mess is still pink on the inside,” she returned, with a pert waggle of her woefully undersized rump as she marched over to his flank. “Bring your wing down here. I’ve been meaning to slice you up with my dagger.”
GRRAAA-UH! Grandion caught himself halfway into whirling upon her, fangs agape. Hualiama dived aside with a yelp. So her bravado had lasted less than ten seconds. Great. Now she had a bruised elbow and a bucket load of sand down her top.
“Insulting a Dragon is dangerous,” he muttered, shuffling his paws and looking as sheepish as a sixty-five foot Dragon could possibly look–a less than apt description, Lia decided.
She willed her heart to stop bruising the inside of her chest. “Sorry–I mean, I’m not sorry, Grandion. See? I’ve learned something about Dragons already.”
“Given as you’ve a brain the size of a large nut, you do continue to surprise me,” he growled, without menace.
“Grandion!”
He offered her a quirky smile. “Eat up. We should be on the wing within an hour.”
A minor eclipse of the twin suns behind the Blue moon lent the late afternoon a sleepy, golden aspect as Grandion winged northward, caldera-side of Janbiss Island, home to a colony of Red Dragons. By evening they had passed Churgra and Sa’athior, both smaller Human-inhabited Islands. Grandion weaved back to the Cloudlands side of Frendior in search of a favourite roost, but they found it already occupied by a mated pair of Green Dragons, who seemed in no mood to be disturbed. However, Grandion’s magical disguise worked. The Green Dragons let them fly on with nary a flicker of their nictitating eye membranes.
The Tourmaline Dragon seemed in no great rush to reach Gi’ishior Island. Lia wondered why he was in such a bad odour with his fellow Dragons, but dared not ask, for his mood seemed to deteriorate the closer they flew to the Halls of the Dragons.
Come nightfall, Grandion settled on a ledge on the western flank of Frendior Island, a place strangely devoid of vegetation.
“There’s little water on this Island,” he said. “Have you ever flown north to Rolodia?”
“Once, when I was small,” she said.
“Aye? They have massive terrace lakes built by the Ancient Dragons, much larger than your home Island. It’s an Island with a beauty all of its own.”
“Could we fly that way, Grandion?” Lia asked.
He nodded, settling his paws beneath him while his long tail curled up past Lia toward his head. “That was my plan. There are a few rocks midway where we can roost. Perhaps you could procure a bow at Rolodia, which would be useful against windrocs and crested eagles in the Spits.”
“I forgot, but Ja’al did give me a bit of money. So, where will we find this Ianthine?”
“In the northern Spits, between Rolodia and Noxia Island. It’s a fractured wilderness of stone, full of rajals and pythons and windrocs, blasted by wind and storm. A dangerous place.”
“Dangerous for Humans, perhaps,” said Hualiama. “I ride a Tourmaline Dragon.”
Grandion’s head rose, his left eye widening as fire raced about beneath the clear surface. He breathed, “Dragon Rider.” What did he mean? Lia did not trust the glint in his eye, not one iota. “Don’t just stand there in the open, looking lost, Hualiama. Come under cover.”
Biting her lip, Lia stepped into the space he indicated between his left forepaw and his flank, and tried not to baulk when he arched his wing overhead. Great Islands, he was as hot as a meriatite furnace engine! His paw curved to create Lia a cosy nook in which to curl up, making her feel safe and protected–and overwhelmed. Unquestionably overwhelmed. His eye gleamed at her over the edge of his paw, fiery yet gentle, making Lia duck her head and pretend to be busy with her weapons and supplies. He could not have mistaken her response.
“There’s an old saying in Dragonish,” Grandion said. Envy the Dragon and his rider. Mighty are they in battle. “In Island Standard, that translates as–”
I know thy speech, Dragon.
There, better she aired that secret as she had decided beforehand. Lia knew she could never have kept it from Grandion for long, especially not once they found Flicker.
By the First Egg of all Dragons! The Tourmaline Dragon stared at her as though she had grown curly horns and capered in circles about him, bleating, ‘I’m a sheep! I’m a sheep!’ A gurgle of laughter shook every last scale on his body, while his talons clenched briefly before releasing her. Such is the enigma of a Human girl who rides with a Dragon. Of course, you spoke Dragonish before. I didn’t notice.
One more reason to kill me, isn’t it?
“Don’t be foolish. Plenty of Human slaves have learned to speak Dragonish over the centuries, Hualiama. What’s remarkable is how perfect your accent is.” Switching languages, Grandion demanded, Who taught you Dragonish? How many more secrets are you hiding?
Replying in Dragonish, Lia explained how Flicker had taught her to speak while they lived on Ha’athior Island. She must have learned Dragonish as a child on Gi’ishior, she added. I don’t know how long I spent on Gi’ishior before I was adopted. There are still some Humans living with the Dragons on Gi’ishior, aren’t there, Grandion? Do you think I might find my parents there?
Grandion was still staring at her, ten inches of fangs gleaming through the crack of his jaw. And your grammar–you speak as fluently as a Dragon, Hualiama. Exactly … like–he shook himself with the mien of a wet hound–have you always been good at languages?
Engineering, aye. Languages, no. Grandion, don’t stare at me like that. It’s … daunting.
His brow-ridge crinkled at her, giving his expression a droll aspect, while he snarled, I’d gladly eat you, little Human, but I suspect the sour aftertaste of your Cloudlands-dwarfing capacity for impudence and misbehaviour would only serve to frazzle my tongue.
What? A huge grin caught her unawares.
Lia, I’m sorry to say this, but I wouldn’t place much hope on your birthplace being Gi’ishior. Our Human community is small. To hide a pregnancy would be nigh impossible–and where would Ianthine fit into the puzzle, in that case?
Hualiama wished she had the courage to trust him with her dream of a tiny Lia running to the Red Dragoness Qualiana and her mate, Sapphurion. One phrase in particular stuck in her mind, ‘Where did that ruzal-breathing witch find her?’ Grandion was right. The mystery of her birth would not be solved at Gi’ishior. She could not disclose her dreams yet. They were woven inextricably into the fabric of her soul, precious chords of a yearning too delicate to risk breaking. And, people did not remember dreams from so young an age. Her mind must have concocted a sweet fantasy to cover for the grief and loss of that time. Inwardly, Lia wilted beneath a devastating burden of sorrow.
With his paw, Grandion gradually raised her chin, a gentler touch than she had imagined a Dragon could possibly achieve. Hualiama tried to resist, furious with herself for appearing so fragile before him. Could the past not be content to remain in the past? Must it always shadow her present? Her eyes slid aside from his burning gaze, coyly and not without anxiety. Should he choose force, how could she resist?
Let not the storm-Dragons of despair ravage thy spirit, he breathed. Magic lapped against her senses, bringing comfort.
I fear this journey. She gazed unseeing over the Cloudlands, a rippling ocean of cloud pinked by the setting suns. Grandion, I fear what we might discover. There’s a kind of peace in not knowing … if only one could ignore the pain.
The Dragon said, But you are not such a person, are you, Hualiama?
At last, her smoky eyes dared to meet his. No, I am not. The old saying pounded through her mind, ‘Never trust a Dragon.’ She must guard her heart.
Grandion added, I sense your strength, Hualiama, and this I promise: I shall stand beside you. Tomorrow we shall fly to the heavens, and find your dragonet. Pray our enemies do not spy us–Yulgaz the Brown and Razzior the Orange are their names, and many are their minions. Before darkness wreaths the Isles, would you help me by picking a load of flara-fruit? I sense there’s something nurturing in them that I require.
Hualiama sprang to her feet, absurdly grateful for a task to distract her from the intensity of that draconic gaze, and how Grandion seemed able to read her like an open scroll.
Whatever she had imagined of Dragons, this was different.
* * * *
At daybreak the following morning, Grandion powered up into the skies above Frendior Island with a new snap in his wings and a song of fire pulsing in his hearts, leaving Lia gasping and clutching at his spine spike in alarm. Whatever foresight had led her to lash a vine to the spine spike at her back and tie her belt to it, she was grateful. Perhaps a wasp had stung him in the tender underparts? It would have had to be a wasp with a sting the size of an armour-piercing drill–because this Dragon revelled in his flight. What a thrill! Revelation! Steadily, the Island-World spread out beneath them.
Unexpectedly, the Tourmaline Dragon began to play. Whipping around a white cotton puff of cumulus cloud, he dived suddenly, making his Rider whoop in surprise, before he jinked left and right and then whizzed vertically up through another cloud, bugling softly as they broke free of the grey once more. Now he spiralled in ever-tightening circles, taking care not to turn upside-down and unseat her, before he suddenly furled his wings.
Hualiama yelped as her stomach leaped into her throat. Grandion pulled out of his dive with liquid ease, screaming between battalions of clouds as though affrighted of touching them, left, right, a bounce! She laughed until she was breathless, and the Dragon too.
Now, he sauntered further aloft.
“And how is your second flight thus far?” Grandion inquired.
“Fantastic! Aren’t you supposed to be looking where you’re going?”
The Dragon chuckled, “O innocent maiden, whom I have snatched away to distant Isles, what might I crash into up here? A fast-flying ralti sheep?”
Lia quipped, “A bouncing Island?”
She meant it as a joke, but Grandion replied, “Apparently Herimor has floating Islands. No Dragon can sleep on the wing there!”
Higher and higher they rose, a mile, two, three. With the keen regard of a Dragonship pilot Hualiama noted a storm looming on the northern horizon, a characteristic band of coppery dark clouds promising a fine squall to come later that afternoon. She saw the whole of Fra’anior Cluster now, the Islands shrunk to a bracelet of green and black dots lost in an endless, lapping sea of Cloudlands, the habitat of Humanity almost impossible to pick out, apart from the green and red chequered cloth that described Fra’anior City’s famed gardens. Perhaps that dark speck just a hair taller than the rest of the city was the palace, where Ra’aba now ruled?
Seen from a distance of thirty or forty miles? Doubtful.
“Grandion, do I see the royal palace?”
He nodded. “Most impressive, Human girl. That is the palace indeed.”
Very condescending, Dragon! Perhaps it surprised him that she was able to feed herself or wipe her own nose.
“A Green Dragon rests atop the palace building,” he added, appearing to squint a little to focus on that faraway dot. “No, two. It appears your fears about Ra’aba are well founded, Human girl, unless that is a social visit.”
Copying his heavy sarcasm, Lia added, “Destruction of Human society being a Dragonish social pastime–for some.” Better she added that qualifier in haste! Quicker still, change tack before Grandion’s fire stomach did more than just growl at a thoughtless comment. She gabbled, “Grandion, you said many Humans had learned Dragonish. So doesn’t it stand to reason that Humans have been Dragon Riders before? History is a deep and broad terrace lake–”
“Not at all,” he said, now adjusting his flight path to aim them a few points east of northward, setting a direct course for Gi’ishior Island. “Saying that, I believe that you fail to appreciate the truly staggering proportions of draconic pomposity and arrogance.”
His chuckling eased her irritation at his attitude.
“Grandion, how high can a Dragon fly?”
“Best guess? Three or four leagues, Hualiama. In practice no Dragon flies that high because the air becomes bitterly cold, and altitude sickness can result.”
“Such as how I’m feeling a little breathless right now?”
“That’s probably awe at my flying prowess,” he claimed. “I’m surprised you aren’t breaking into song or washing my scales with your tears, Hualiama.”
“You think I’m weak, don’t you?”
He winged on in silence for many wingbeats, until Lia wondered if he would answer at all.
What she felt, was little. Everyone knew that the Island-World was vast, stretching measureless leagues from shore to shore. Immadia Island, the most northerly inhabited Island in the world, was said to lie over two thousand leagues from Fra’anior–although nobody knew for certain, because the instruments and techniques to measure such vast distances across the Cloudlands simply did not exist. The sheer scale of the tapestry unfurled below robbed her mind of comparisons, even of the capacity of speech. Grandion flew on, but the Island-World seemed to stand still. Fra’anior was the largest active volcano in the known world, yet even its bulk seemed insignificant, viewed from this height.
“I was the sole survivor of a clutch of three eggs,” he said, taking an unexpected tangent. “We are not certain if my brother and sister died of disease, or poisoning. After I broke the shell, my shell-mother fell into a deep sadness.”
The Dragon said, We call it a darkening of the fires, in Dragonish.
“Depression?” said Lia.
“That’s the word. For several years–my hatchling years–I saw little of her. But suddenly, one day, my shell-mother seemed happy. As I grew into a fledgling, which is a Dragon between two and five years of age, I learned that she had another hatchling, one upon whom she lavished all the love and affection I felt I lacked. Imagine my shock when I learned that my mother nurtured a Human child!”
Imagine the shock of the girl seated upon his back!
“You must never mention this secret to anyone, just as I will never knowingly reveal your grasp of Dragonish. Given your story, I assumed that child might be you, Hualiama, but I was mistaken.”
Lia, gripped so sharply by trepidation she was on the verge of vomiting, managed to gasp, “Oh?”
“Aye. That child had blue eyes, the depthless blue hue of a midnight sky. Yours are green–but a strange green, as if occluded by smoke.” Grandion cleared his throat, which in true Dragon style, meant producing a fireball. “That is aside. I was so jealous of that child, I could have killed her. I planned to, but my mother forbade me. Sick with jealousy, I held that tiny mite in my paws, and cooed and growled and played with her, and taught her the worst Dragonish words I knew.”
“A dark fire burned within my soul. Jealousy, but not of a keen draconic kind. Murder, revenge and hatred of what that girl represented, consumed me. I fell in with bad wing-mates, Dragons led by the Brown, Yulgaz, who is as eloquent the whelp of a snake as has ever cracked the shell. As soon as I could, I turned against my parents, shunning everything that they taught me, and everything they stood for. Soon, I graduated from burning a few scattered houses to fomenting widespread mayhem. But my final test to be fully accepted into their unholy alliance, was to murder a Human child.”
Lia bit her fist rather than cry out.
Suddenly, Grandion’s body stiffened. “That’s odd,” he said. “Would you look at those rajals down there? On the southern peninsula of Gi’ishior … rajals don’t usually hunt in groups, do they?”
“Small family groups, aye. How many do you see?”
“Seventeen.” Tucking in his wings while simultaneously quadrupling the tempo of his wingbeat, the Dragon accelerated.
Hualiama yelled over the whistling wind, “Where are you going? Grandion, speak to me!”
“They’re hunting a green dragonet,” he threw over his shoulder. “I think somebody’s tied his wings together and tossed him to the rajals.”