Chapter 1 1 - Ya'arriol Burns

In full battle array, the four Dragonships from the monastery swooped down on Ya’arriol Island. Two Dragonships flying the standard of a black war hammer lay moored near the southernmost tip of the Island, while a third vessel hovered overhead, providing cover to fighters on the ground. Smoke billowed from a nearby village.

“Pirates,” spat Ja’al. He stood alongside Master Jo’el at the crysglass window, ahead of Hualiama but to the left, keeping clear of her line of sight.

“Get us right over that hovering Dragonship, Lia,” directed Master Jo’el. “Ram their balloon, if you can.”

Hualiama eyed the spar projecting above their heads, anchored somewhere above the navigation cabin. “And if they pack fire-arrows?”

“Our outer layer is hot air. Only the inner sacks are hydrogen,” said the Master. “Besides, we plan to distract them by shooting a few warriors in their direction.”

Shooting warriors? Her eyebrows arched. Great Islands! She had never heard of such a tactic before. She had the bruises to prove what these monks were capable of in training. Now she would see the famous warrior-monks of Fra’anior in action.

“Don’t be afraid, we’ll take good care of our little Princess,” said Ja’al, patting her on the arm.

Lia snapped her teeth at his fingers exactly as Flicker might have done.

“Ramming speed,” said Master Jo’el.

She called down the tube at her right side, “Ramming speed!”

The engines’ pulse picked up as the engineers opened the furnace engine’s valves. The monks working the manual drives doubled their speed. Hualiama concentrated on their target. No telling what the pilot might do when he realised that they intended to ram him. The standard defensive manoeuvre was to present the stern crossbows for several shots at the opponent’s navigation cabin, before making an emergency dive or ascent.

Closer. Outside, on the gantries flanking the navigation cabin, she saw groups of monks tensioning the crossbows–two traditional crossbows, which fired quarrels six feet long, and two elastic catapult contraptions which she had never seen before.

Lia pursed her lips as the other pilot held his nerve, and his position.

“Fight well for the Dragon,” said Ja’al, ducking out of the cabin.

Ahead, on the southern ledge where four Human villages were located, Lia saw smoke pouring up from the houses and what she took for a glint of weaponry. The villagers were not giving up without a fight. She wondered if the local monastery had dispatched their monks to assist.

The flanking Dragonships drove forward in a tight wedge formation, angling for the thickest of the fighting.

A catapult twanged. With a scream, “For the Dragon!” Ja’al shot across the divide between the Dragonships. Arrows homed in on his flying form, but abruptly skittered away as if frightened. Another handy trick. That monk was far too talented for his own good.

Hualiama’s vessel rocked slightly as the crossbows fired simultaneously with the enemy vessel’s weapons. She dipped the Dragonship’s nose to the port side, causing one bolt to skitter off the armoured crysglass. The other penetrated but Lia was already ducking smoothly, driven by an instinct which hardly seemed her own. The crossbow quarrel plugged into the wall behind her right shoulder–too close for comfort.

Ja’al jinked mid-air before alighting nimbly on the gantry beside the enemy’s starboard crossbow. His swords flickered. One pirate fell immediately, but his three fellows laid into the monk with a vengeance. Ja’al’s tall form seemed to drift like smoke between their sword-strokes, driving two of the pirates into each other’s arms while the monk delivered a crushing kick to the last man’s sternum, smashing him overboard to a fatal fall. Mercy.

As Lia grimly maintained her collision course, she assessed the orientation of the enemy vessel’s adjustable turbines. This pilot would drop, she was convinced of it. Two more monks shot across the gap, while crossbow quarrels and arrows were fired back in reply. Crysglass shattered to Hualiama’s left, showering her with fragments. She clutched the controls even as she ducked, holding their course steady. Lia reassured Flicker with a touch of her mind as he moaned, dreaming. Port and starboard, monks fell lightly through the air. Most did not possess Ja’al’s power, rappelling with incredible rapidity down ropes. Others simply flung themselves to the winds, creating a deadly rain of monks wielding staves tipped with wicked, eight-inch blades either end, or the more traditional, slightly curved sword called nazatha, which meant ‘the warrior’s arm’.

Hualiama’s hand punched the controls a fraction of a second behind the other pilot’s move. A feint! She adjusted instantly, bringing their lance back onto its deadly course. The Dragonships were so close, she clearly saw the enemy navigator sweating behind his own crysglass windows as he threw himself on the emergency gas release. Their balloon sagged. Too late.

Yelling, “Brace!” into her command tubes, Lia brought the nose down in one fell swoop.

She had never rammed another Dragonship before. Legs flexed, expecting the collision, Hualiama was startled when it began with a dull pop–PAH! A teeth-gritting squeal followed. The ramming spar punctured the enemy’s balloon, stringing the two dirigibles together like gourds on a single branch. Then, the reinforced nose of their Dragonship impacted the enemy’s navigation cabin.

KEERAACK!

The shock smacked her face against the throttle.

“Ralti sheep droppings!” Blood trickled down the bridge of her nose, but she caught Flicker before he fell.

“Take us down gently,” ordered Master Jo’el. “Leave the dragonet here. Put your hood up and follow Hallon and Rallon into the villages.”

“And you, Master–”

“I’m off to capture a Dragonship,” he said, diving headlong through their shattered window into the cabin opposite. The Master rolled smoothly to his feet, a baton sprouting in either hand as though summoned by magic. Four swordsmen surged toward him. A whirlwind of robes and flying batons enveloped the cabin. By the time Lia had placed Flicker on the floor, the pirates were all either unconscious or dead, and Master Jo’el was kicking down the door into the main body of the Dragonship, beyond.

“Right. Do it all on your own.” Hualiama wrestled with the controls, snorting, “Typical man.”

A deep voice tickled her neck. “Aye?”

Hallon, or Rallon–she could never tell them apart. Ja’al had a trick, however. He said Rallon had a tiny scar on his right cheek. This must be Hallon.

“Aye,” she said, biting her lip. Lia’s hands raced over the controls. Back-thrust to counter the weight dragging them into a stall. A touch of the ailerons to stabilise the linked vessels. “A little more power, engineer boys,” she called down the tube. Something snappy and rude floated back to her ear. She growled, “Is there a problem?”

“Aye, Captain!”

“What?”

“Ah … no, Captain!”

The beat of the engines increased as the men stoked the fires. Hands racing over the controls to steady their steep descent, Hualiama looked down and saw a tidy cottage dead ahead, surrounded by clumps of men and women locked in close combat. Slam the throttle! Spin the wheel! Slewing the Dragonship violently, Lia scraped over the grey shale roof and brought them to a spine-jarring landing on the path beside the house. The Dragonship’s superstructure groaned, but held together.

Lia said, “By the fires of–”

“Swords!” chorused Hallon and Rallon.

Her hand paused in the motion of wiping sweat off her brow. Right. Evidently, no-one had the time or the inclination to admire her wonderful landing. Drawing her nazatha, Lia sprinted to catch up with the giant twins.

Outside, chaos engulfed her. Men bellowing. Metal screeching against metal. The wails of the wounded. The low, uncanny chanting of the monks, ‘For the Dragon. For the Dragon,’ somehow droning through the general mayhem, as the unarmoured monks swarmed the battlefield, making her imagine a cloud of lethal butterflies fluttering over dark vegetation.

Nausea seared her throat. Lia gulped. This was no training field. Blood splattered the dark volcanic stone walls of the nearby cottages, typical Fra’aniorian stone dwellings with shuttered windows and neat gardens laid out front and back, abutting towering walls of volcanic vegetation a hundred feet tall. Here, she saw a man fall from a monk’s blade, the metal slick with blood. There, two bodies lay draped across a fallen basket of prekki-fruit. And children, slain! Beneath a bush, she saw a pair of tiny bodies bearing axe-wounds to their torsos, mercifully beyond any pain, now.

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A red haze descended upon her vision. She knew a Dragon’s rage as if she were with the Tourmaline Dragon, even within him, knowing the potential blazing in her fire-stomach and the power of the Island-World’s premier predator at her fingertips, wild and feral, uncontainable. Suddenly, she had no need of Hallon’s hand to pull her forward. The twins gasped as Lia spun past them into the thick of a knot of bearded pirates, who wore the crimson headband that seemed to mark their sorry crew.

Slash. Parry. Slide beneath a wild overhand blow, rising in a fluid motion with her sword outthrust to spear the man in the armpit, where his armour left him vulnerable. Thunder into a clutch of three pirates trying to kick their way through the door of one of the cottages. Knocked over. Lia rebounded a fraction of a second ahead of Rallon, grateful for his shattering kick to the knee of an assailant as she slid her blade past his tall oval shield to pierce the base of the man’s throat.

A near-perfect cut skidded off another pirate’s forearm before penetrating the leather fold of his elbow armour. His sword dropped from nerveless fingers. “For the Dragon!” spat from her lips. From the corner of her eye, she saw one of the twins finishing the man with a mighty, cleaving blow.

Lia sprinted down a pathway between dense, towering jiista-berry bushes to ambush half a dozen pirates as they tried to reform ranks. Her roar was so mighty she tasted blood on her lips from a throat ravaged by a sound no Human throat should ever have made. The men froze. Hualiama tore into them with a pure, draconic wrath she could neither deny nor command. Rallon and Hallon hurled themselves into the fray; a violent clash of swords ensued. The nazatha blurred in front of Lia’s face as her training kicked in. At some level, she recognised that if she simply reacted, letting her instincts carry her through, she could fight better than ever before. Her clumsiness returned with that thought, however. Stumbling, Lia took a stab-wound to her right bicep.

Hallon grabbed her shoulder. “Easy, rajal!” He smashed a pirate’s jaw with his elbow. “Keep your focus. Channel the rage.”

“Got that out of our system?” rumbled Rallon, casually cleaning his blade on a fallen pirate’s tunic top.

“I … I …” Their enemies lay scattered around the small clearing, unmoving. Lia’s eyelashes dipped, but she was unable to keep from scanning the carnage all about her. Her gorge surged.

“Smell this.”

Something acrid exploded up her nose. “Hal–roaring rajals!”

However, the urge to retch had vanished. At Hallon’s solicitous touch upon her shoulder, Lia spluttered, “I’m fine now–great Islands! I know him! That man.”

“This one?” Hallon prodded a pirate with his toe.

“Aye. Except, he’s no pirate–he’s a member of the King’s personal guard.” Rallon and Hallon exchanged troubled glances. Scratching her false beard, Lia said, “He might have fled … which seems unlikely. No. Ra’aba’s men are attacking these villagers under the guise of being pirates!”

Rallon began, “Why would they–”

Hallon punched his brother affectionately on the shoulder–a punch which would have felled little Lia without a doubt. “Why do you think, pumice brain? They’re far too disciplined to be pirates. Just look at this shiny new armour, the way they fight in ranks …”

“We need to tell Master Jo’el,” said Rallon.

“After we drive them away from the village. Follow me!” cried Lia.

“Typical woman!” she heard floating from behind as they pounded down the trail to the next brace of houses. “Never content just to follow.”

“Hallon!” she snapped.

“I’m Rallon.”

“No, you’re not. Come on, they’re firing that house!”

* * * *

In the evening after the battle, a group of monks escorted their much slighter companion to a village on the eastern shore of Ya’arriol Island, which overlooked Fra’anior. The largest known volcano in the Island-World, Fra’anior dominated the eastern horizon, sixty miles wide and four miles tall–at least, that was the portion visible above the Cloudlands. The mountain’s roots had to be much deeper and wider still. It was Lia’s favourite view, and she paused to drink it in until Master Jo’el discreetly touched her arm.

Hualiama did not need to duck beneath the lintel of Ja’al’s parents’ house, but everyone else did. Master Jo’el bent almost double. The giant twins fared little better, while Ja’al courteously indicated that Hualiama should precede him.

She entered a low-beamed dining room, simply furnished with a carved wooden table and chairs. A delighted squeal announced Ja’al’s mother–clearly–flinging herself across the room at her son. He tucked her beneath his chin, reddening as he spied Lia’s smile. His father, an older, no less handsome version of Ja’al, rose from the kitchen table where he had been honing nicks out of his sword. The weapon looked as battered as he did. Ja’al’s father sported a fine black eye and limped as he moved to greet them.

“Master Jo’el,” he said, gathering the tall Master into a very un-Fra’aniorian hug. “You saved us from being slaughtered like sheep, today.”

“Master Ga’athar.” Over the shorter man’s shoulder, Jo’el’s eyes twinkled. “Sister.”

A wide grin ambushed Hualiama as the Master gathered Ja’al’s mother into his embrace. Beside Jo’el his sister looked tiny, but she had the same beak-like nose and piercing eyes, her expression quite at odds with the homely apron protecting her fine, sapphire-coloured traditional lace dress. The smell in the cottage made her mouth water. Yum! Mohili-wheat sweetbread a-bake, was it? Lia had seen her among the villagers helping set everything to rights after the battle. By evening, Ja’al’s mother must have found time to return to her housework.

They had worked all day. Hualiama exhaled. So many graves. Such wanton destruction.

Several younger faces peered shyly around a curtain at the back of the room, before ducking back with muffled giggles.

“It was the Great Dragon’s timing,” averred Ja’al, following his nose toward the oven.

Dusting her hands on her apron, his mother said, “Paws off the sweetbread, you thieving dragonet! Have you forgotten your manners, being surrounded by men all day long? Kindly introduce your companions, young man, before I introduce my rolling-pin to your left ear.”

Lia chuckled at Ja’al’s pained expression. Oh, what part of the Island-World would she not have given for a reprimand from her own mother …

Sweeping into an elaborate bow that showed everyone a trio of red-crusted cuts above his right ear, Ja’al said, “Followers of the Path of the Dragon Warrior, I am honoured to present my parents, Master Ga’athar and Mistress Yualiana. My father is the leader of this Island. Father, Mother, may I present our esteemed Master Jo’el, the monks Hallon and Rallon, and–”

“Shut the door, Hallon,” said Master Jo’el.

As the door creaked shut, Ga’athar addressed Hualiama with a jovial smile, “It seems our monks grow younger by the year. Was this your first battle, boy?”

“My first, aye,” she said, quietly.

Yualiana’s eyes narrowed as she turned from Lia to Master Jo’el. “Aye, a petite and very pretty monk, brother–oh! Heavens above and Islands below … it can’t be, we heard … no, no …”

“She looks better without the beard,” said Ja’al.

“Aye?”

One word from Yualiana, and her son began to steam around the ears. He sat down at the table with a thump, finding some fascinating detail on the opposite wall to engage his attention.

Next, Yualiana glared at her brother. “You great ralti sheep, our house is in such a state and you, you bring home …”

Fancy, for once, even Master Jo’el seemed flustered. He joined Ja’al at the table, while Hualiama looked on with astonishment. Someone could do that to Master Jo’el?

“Lia,” said the Princess.

With a preposterously fancy bow, such as Hualiama had not even seen the most fawning of courtiers possess the coordination to produce, Ga’athar said, “By all accounts, you gave a fine account of yourself in the battle today, your–”

“Just Lia, please.”

“I saw her leading Hallon and Rallon a merry dance,” said Master Jo’el. Shuffling their feet, the giant twins found their seats with alacrity. “You may remove your hood, Lia.”

Yualiana took Lia’s hand to kiss her knuckles. “Our household is deeply honoured. King Chalcion never made occasion to visit the Nameless Man. I assume that is why we are graced with the presence of–”

“A royal ward,” said Hualiama, with a brittle smile. “In reality, I’m as ordinary as … ah, without offence, I mean, anyone else. The monks have certainly thrashed me enough times …”

‘Ordinary?’ Ja’al inquired with his eyes, causing her sentence to trail off into silence. “Father, shall I see if the Nameless Man will receive Hualiama?”

Ga’athar nodded; Ja’al disappeared behind the curtain. Hualiama heard him dispensing fond kisses to his siblings, before a door creaked and all went quiet. Ja’al’s father said, “Princess, your intelligence was accurate. About an hour ago, several captives we interrogated confessed to being Ra’aba’s men. This was clearly Ra’aba’s plot all along–to force us to commit our warriors in the fight against the Dragons, or to destroy us.”

“Aye,” said Master Jo’el, making a tent of his long fingers, a habit of his. “He’s without conscience. Ra’aba has also demanded our warriors join his forces.”

“There’s open war?” asked Hualiama.

“Aye,” grunted Ga’athar, “but not here, not yet. Over in the East, the Kingdom of Kaolili fights Dragons constantly. A month ago, Lyrx’s main city was attacked and sacked–by renegade Dragons, we’re told. That’s over five thousand people! Six months ago, Telstroy Island fared little better. Half of their main town was reduced to cinders. Sapphurion–”

“The Dragon Elder, the leader of all Dragons,” Master Jo’el explained.

“Aye, Sapphurion would have us believe he’s fighting these renegade Dragons and protecting us. And just this last week, news reached us of four villages just south of Gi’ishior, plundered and set ablaze by an entire Dragonwing of feral Dragons.” Ga’athar’s hands twisted into fists. “It was an annihilation. Pure, wilful murder. Just as would have transpired here, at the hand of our own people, Princess, had you not intervened.”

Lia shifted uncomfortably on her seat. The false beard itched mightily, but Master Jo’el had commanded her to keep it in place. She muttered, “Master Jo’el leads the monks, not me.”

Jo’el’s lean hand rose to indicate the curtain.

“Oh.”

Her soft gasp preceded her as she brushed past the densely-worked lace hanging. As Lia passed into the small, dim room beyond, she heard Yualiana say, rather acidly, “A girl at the monastery, brother? How’s that been?”

“Educational,” said Jo’el, dryly.

“I’d wager on that!” his sister snorted.

“She’s an extraordinary young lady. Quite remarkable.”

Lia’s ears burned at the Master’s praise.

Ja’al clasped her fingers. “This way.”

Her eyes had no chance to adjust to the dimness before he swept her through a well-hidden doorway into a completely blackened room. Hualiama sensed the presence of men with weapons. Then, a metal door scraped open and bright candlelight dazzled her eyes.

The room was bare, save for a green rush pallet in the centre, and a flat floor cushion off to one side. Lia’s eyes moved first to the cushion, where a girl of about her own age knelt beside a half-size harp, her curly dark hair spilling from beneath a modest white headscarf. However, that girl was not the source of power in the room. A stillness pervaded the place, as deep as the Cloudlands, and perhaps as perilous. Hualiama saw a small boy seated cross-legged on the pallet, who could be no older than seven or eight summers of age. His arms protruded like sticks from the depths of a sleeveless robe of midnight blue, his head balanced like a small blue egg atop an impossibly frail neck, and his eyes appeared overlarge in a sepulchral face–the eyes, she saw, of a Dragon.

Yellow. Flaming. Drawing her irresistibly into the ambit of his power.

A joke about the ‘nameless boy’ had been poised upon the tip of her tongue. Instead, Lia stumbled to her knees and bowed her head.

“Child of Fra’anior,” said the Nameless Man, in a little-boy voice that belied the gravity of his position, “the Great Dragon apprised me of your coming. Long have I awaited our meeting.”

Unbidden, an image of Amaryllion’s monstrous orb filled her mind.

The boy intoned, “No, one greater than he. Sit, and take tea with me, Hualiama. For we are kindred creatures, you and I, the foci of fates thrust upon us. We feel the fire of the Great Dragon. We blaze. We burn. History itself trembles on the cusp of a new era. You and I are its ushers.”

Lia shuddered.