Chapter 16 - Kidnapping

HuAliama HAD NOT anticipated the onset of crippling Dragon-fear. She had been so elated, so soaring over the Islands at Grandion’s recovery and his unexpectedly thrilling voice, that she had not stopped to consider his true nature. Now, dread brought a Northern winter to her heart. This Dragon had burned her. He was powerful, alien, a creature born of fire. As the twosome returned to the monastery, she fretted herself into a fearsome knot of anxiety. How could she ever trust a Dragon?

They emerged as the surreal light of a four-moon conjunction broke out from behind a cloud-bank to bathe the scene in eerie moonlight.

Flicker said, “I can see why Humans never made good slaves.”

Lia patted him absently.

“Humans are cheeky, lippy, stubborn flouters of every law under the known–what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

The dragonet yelled, “Two Red Dragons, incoming!”

Hualiama barely glanced at the sky before she broke into a sprint. There was no mistaking the intent of those Dragons as they swooped from a height of several thousand feet above the monastery; their outstretched talons, the angle of their descent, the fire just beginning to glow behind their bared fangs–unmistakable.

“Attack! Dragon attack!” she screamed.

A group of monks who had been meditating on the open balcony at the front of the building, scattered like a flock of fowl ambushed by a rajal. Hualiama followed them indoors at a sprint.

Master Jo’el’s hand clapped down on her shoulder. “Down to your cave. Now!”

“What?”

“They’re after you.”

“Master, I want to fight.”

“Now’s not the time, Lia. Go! Ja’al–you know the drill.”

Jo’el whirled, barking orders. The monks appeared to be prepared for this type of attack. Hualiama had never before appreciated why the upper levels of the building were left unoccupied–now she knew, and while she did not appreciate Ja’al thrusting her toward the secret stairway which would lead to her cave, she understood the necessity. They slipped behind a statue of a warrior-monk, triggered the door and dashed within.

“Hurry,” Ja’al urged.

From above, a low whistling sound suddenly rose to a shriek. KAAAABOOM! The monastery shuddered on its foundations. Fireballs, most likely, or the more powerful Red attack in which the Dragon first chewed up rocks, reduced them to molten slag in one of its special stomachs, and then expectorated the molten rock mingled with Dragon fire as a stream of fluid lava. The Red Dragons’ challenges rolled like thunder over the lake.

The narrowness of the spiral staircase forced them to proceed carefully. Lia held the railing lightly, her superior agility allowing her to outstrip the much bigger monk. Flicker, having flown ahead, reappeared in a rush. “Battle, below.”

Lia stopped. “Oh no.”

Betrayed! Her mind raced. Many of the monks must know about the secret caves, or have knowledge of her presence. Ra’aba had visited the monastery. Was this attack his doing?

“Blades, Lia,” Ja’al ordered grimly. “Let me past. Cover your face.”

Mercy. Master Khoyal, in his thoroughness, had anticipated even this. She pulled an Eastern Isles-style face veil over her nose and mouth, clipping it to the hood of the new outfit Inniora had designed for her–an outfit intended to conceal the identity of a certain royal ward, while including her modifications for weaponry and concealed items.

Whipping out her twin Nuyallith blades, Lia shadowed Ja’al down the remaining steps.

Metal clashed upon metal. She heard Inniora’s battle cry. Chaotic shouts and orders beat against her ears, while Lia was certain the low growl of a Dragon throbbed somewhere nearby.

“Great Islands!” Ja’al surged forward, snarling, “Hua’gon, you traitor!”

Lia darted behind him, sliding her blades across the face of a man Ja’al ignored in his maddened bid to reach his brother. They burst into a cavern filled with brawling soldiers and monks. At least five soldiers, wearing shiny body armour which bore an unfamiliar motif of the twin suns setting over an Island, had Inniora surrounded. Judging from the two bodies lying by her feet, they had developed an instantaneous respect for her skills with that huge blade she wielded.

Her Nuyallith forms came so naturally. Burned in her brain months before, they flowed through her veins like smelted ore. Three men faced her. Lia performed the whirlwind technique, generating tremendous centrifugal force in her opening parries to open up her opponents’ defence, before flicking her blades outward in rapid succession. Two men fell. The third thrust at her. A breaking the hammer skill flowed from her body before she knew it–a powerful downward parry from her right hand, driving his blade into the sand and causing him to stagger forward a step, juxtaposed with her left hand extending in a rapid cross-cut. The man sliced his own throat open on the rising blade.

Master Khoyal fired his throwing knives into a knot of soldiers. Then the Master crumpled, a surprised expression crossing his face; a soldier stepped out from behind him, wiping his dagger on his leg.

There were so many men between her and Inniora, Lia had no chance to help her friend. They tossed a net over Inniora’s shoulders, and then beat her down with clubs and sword-pommels, crying, “Get the Princess!” The tall girl collapsed under a heap of bodies.

The soldiers drew back rapidly in tight, well-disciplined formation, hauling their struggling, spitting captive along in their midst. Monks flung themselves at the soldiers, flying from above or clashing with the soldiers, in some cases striking so hard that their swords shattered on impact. Two, three more soldiers went down, one due to Flicker clawing out his left eye, but the formation shifted to close the gaps. They retreated steadily, resiliently, keeping their shields high and their swords ready, through the shattered secret doors leading from the section of caverns used by Inniora and Lia, into the hanger which housed the monastery’s Dragonships. Out there, fires burned fiercely where the vessels had been moored. Through the billowing smoke, Lia saw that the invaders had a Dragonship–and another Red Dragon to protect it.

Upon the port gantry–Ra’aba! Calmly, he watched the battle, a smile playing upon his lips.

Traitor! His men had taken the wrong girl, unless they assumed it was her sister Fyria living in the monastery. Someone had betrayed them. Lia was not glad; instead, a Dragon’s claw of white-hot fury speared into her belly. When he found out, Ra’aba would slay Inniora.

His calmness intimidated Hualiama. A bloody clash boiled right ahead of him, and the Roc’s expression did not change. A decision crystallised in her mind. Much as she hated the man, Inniora came first. Crossing the Nuyallith blades in the first or ‘rest’ position, Hualiama ran lightly through the smoke, dancing, dodging the unexpected spray of arrows from a half-dozen archers ranged on the starboard gantry. Ahead of her, two monks fell to the archers. She saw all with a disconcerting clarity. The Red Dragon drew breath to shoot Dragon fire at the monks. Ja’al bounded over a low sword-stroke, slamming his knee into his brother’s chest. Five bald-headed, baton-wielding monks crashed into Ra’aba’s soldiers in a wedge formation, ripping shields aside, breaking jaws and arms. More monks poured downstairs into the cavern, responding to whatever strategy Master Jo’el had decreed above.

Lia knew that the Master dealt with a diversion. This was the real attack.

With a puff of his cheeks, the Red Dragon expelled a stream of fire. Lia somersaulted over the path of the sweeping flames, tucking her body tight to increase her rotational speed. Landing lightly on her toes, she burst into a second leap, higher even than the first. Her swords sliced in tandem, distracting her intended victims while failing to kill them, as Lia described an arc over the heads of Ra’aba’s troops. She landed nimbly on Inniora’s stomach. Flick. Flick. Her blades sang, separating the soldiers’ fingers from their hands and the net from her friend’s body.

Clubs beat against her speedy defence, snarling her swords; a flurry of blows that ended with her being kicked brutally in the stomach. Her abdominals, hardened by exercise, absorbed the blow, but the powerful kick booted her ten feet out of the formation. At their leader’s command, the soldiers closed ranks again.

Distinctly, she heard Ra’aba command, “Red! Kill that monk. The little one.”

Rounding the retreating soldiers, who still maintained their grip on Inniora, the Red Dragon charged.

Blood pounded in her head, each beat a slow hammer-blow against her consciousness. The Dragon’s vicious bite seemed to slow, to proceed along a predetermined path, while Hualiama became the breeze blowing before his attack, shifting capriciously, impossible to pin down. Snap! The Dragon’s jaws clicked on thin air. Snap! The departing threads of her sleeve tickled his nostrils. Roar! Snap! Not even the reaction speed of an exasperated Dragon could catch up with her.

Hualiama whirled, rolling beneath the Red Dragon’s neck, her blades scoring twin slashes on the slightly softer underside of his throat. Really? These Nuyallith blades could cut Dragon armour?

GRRAAAAAGGGHHH!

The Red Dragon’s thunder blasted against her back as Lia fled, barely half a step ahead of the flame spurting from his nostrils. A burning Dragonship superstructure filled her vision. Soaring heron, she thought, leaping eagerly toward it. Flex the knees, soft to land. Hualiama rebounded off a leaning stanchion with a backflip that took her up onto the Dragon’s neck. Full extension of the arm. Her blade slashed his left eye.

Now, the Dragon’s thunder of before was as a zephyr. The crazed, half-blind Red Dragon thrashed in agony, spraying steaming, golden Dragon blood across the cavern, crashing through a pile of burning supplies, flattening the remains of a Dragonship. His bellows shook the cavern. Lia, flung aside as if she weighed no more than a kernel of mohili wheat, crash-landed on the sand. Groaning, she pushed to her feet. Where was Ra’aba? And Inniora–there, being loaded onto his vessel, which shifted as the turbines reversed it out of the cavern!

The stricken Red blasted past the Roc’s Dragonship and out into the night.

Hualiama scrambled to her feet, screaming incoherently. One more try. She could catch Ra’aba.

She pumped her arms, breaking into a lung-bursting sprint across the cavern from the point to which the Red Dragon had driven her. Her feet pounded the hard-packed sand. Suddenly, Ja’al was beside her, his jaw grimly clenched. They raced neck and neck for a few seconds before Lia began to outstrip him, her light frame filled with the memory of a Tourmaline Dragon’s fire, the swords beginning to gleam before her startled eyes as she closed the gap with the Dragonship. To her right came Flicker, screaming an incomprehensible but chilling challenge in Dragonish. The Dragonship gathered speed. Ra’aba’s brows rose as if he could not quite believe the prospect of their pursuit succeeding.

Ja’al hurled a throwing knife at Ra’aba. He flinched aside, his speed inhuman. The knife ricocheted off the crysglass panel behind him, striking one of his soldiers squarely between the shoulder blades. The man pitched off the side with a wail. Ra’aba’s eyes did not so much as flicker.

Hualiama was just twenty feet from the Dragonship when the Roc’s right hand rose from his side. Clawed. Outlined in orange fire.

Taking aim, Ra’aba hurled a fireball at them.

Hualiama began to duck, but Ja’al was faster. BOOM! The fireball detonated against the air right in front of their faces, flinging the trio backward. Ears ringing, head swimming, Lia staggered to her feet. Another fireball! Ja’al deflected it with a wave of his hand. The fireball detonated against an already gutted Dragonship. The gap was a hundred feet now, widening rapidly as Ra’aba’s Dragonship caught the breeze. That distance might as well have been a hundred leagues.

“Inniora!” Lia crashed to her knees.

Ra’aba’s smile widened. He threw them a mocking salute.

* * * *

Master Khoyal died. The Master of Arcane Arts, To’ibbik, perished, but he took one of the Red Dragons with him in an explosion that destroyed the northern quarter of the temple building. The monks were still pulling the dead and injured out of the rubble when Master Jo’el called together his Masters, together with Hualiama, Ja’al and Flicker.

Sober faces ringed the conference in the Chamber of Dragons, the same room where Ja’al had taken his vows so joyously, just months before.

“I’m going to kill Hua’gon!” Ja’al bellowed, storming into the room. “He brought Ra’aba down on us, the traitor!”

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Master Jo’el said, “Your brother is a minor issue. Now, Masters–”

“Leave him to me, uncle!”

“Silence!” bellowed Jo’el. It was the first time Hualiama had known him to lose his temper, and it silenced his nephew’s ranting. “Hear me speak!” Glaring at the wall, the tall monk collected his thoughts. “Ra’aba allies himself with a faction of the Dragons. Sapphurion’s kin would not move against us in this way. Therefore, we must conclude that these Dragons of Ra’aba’s are a threat to Gi’ishior. Dragonet, I have a dangerous mission for you.”

“Me?” squeaked Flicker. Then, his wings unfolded and with a showy bow, he declared, “Command me, o Master.”

No mirth stirred Lia’s lips at her friend’s posturing.

“We have no Dragonships left. Until our remaining two vessels return from Jeradia Island, we’ve no means of travel either,” said Master Jo’el. “Therefore, I charge you to bear a message to Sapphurion, the Dragon Elder. It is vital that you deliver our missive personally, Flicker, and convince Sapphurion that we require protection against Ra’aba. Draconic law is clear. Interference in Human affairs is tantamount to a declaration of war.”

Flicker nodded gravely. “You can rely on me, Master.”

Lia noted, “We should alert the monasteries on the way. There are at least five I can think of.”

“King Chalcion knows the location of our monasteries?” Master Jo’el gasped.

In a voice as bleak as a Cloudlands storm, she replied, “Don’t you trust me? Can you not distinguish between father and daughter?”

That was a sure way to lower a room’s temperature, Hualiama thought, meeting the Master’s stare with all the honesty she could muster. But he did not know her adoptive father as she did. King Chalcion was neither an easy man, nor a good father–she had earned bruises and contusions enough to prove that many times over in her lifetime.

He nodded curtly. “I trust you, Hualiama. Flicker will pass eight monasteries on the flight to Gi’ishior.” Turning to Master Ha’aggara, Jo’el said, “Compose message scrolls–small ones. One to request Sapphurion’s help without demanding it. He will know we refer to the law. The others to alert the monasteries.”

“Aye, Master Jo’el.” The young scholar bowed deeply, and departed at once.

Master Jo’el raised his hand. “Hualiama …”

She whispered, “I must go after Inniora. It’s my fault they took her, Master Jo’el.”

“You must rescue the Dragon.”

In a voice rife with bitterness, Lia muttered, “I’ve spent three months trying to work out how to move a mountain, Master. Should I move the mountain, I must bargain with Ianthine, a Maroon Dragoness who is a master of what Amaryllion calls a vile and twisted form of magic. And what part has the Tourmaline Dragon to play in this? He will thank us and fly away.”

Jo’el clapped his hands together. “By the Black Dragon’s own wings, who is Amaryllion?”

Lia bit her tongue. Oh no. Mercy … could she keep no secrets?

Tell him, little mouse. It is time.

The Master’s eyes flickered as though he, too, had heard the Ancient Dragon’s voice.

“Amaryllion lives beneath Ha’athior Island, Master,” said Hualiama, quavering of voice and heart. “He is the last of his kind, one of the Ancient Dragons.”

A bony finger stabbed toward her. “You know an Ancient Dragon?”

“He’s my friend.”

Master Jo’el’s expression seemed frozen somewhere between wanting to tell her off for a childish fantasy, and a compulsive desire to believe. The other Masters had no such reservations as they collected their respective jaws from somewhere in the region of the floor, amidst a chorus of undignified spluttering.

At length Jo’el asked, “Tell me, did this Ancient Dragon reveal anything more about the prophecy?”

Lia nodded. “He said, ‘The third great race of the Island-World will rise from the shadows. That is what Ra’aba fears.’”

If possible, their gathering grew even stiller as each person present tried to imagine what this statement might portend. The royal ward knew that every Master present wondered what manner of woman they had invited into their midst.

Hualiama answered their regard fire for fire. She refused to apologise for who she was. Let them splutter. Let Lia evince the courage of one who had befriended the mightiest of Dragons!

“Speak, Lia,” Jo’el commanded.

Lia held her audience spellbound as she recounted every detail of Amaryllion’s words. Mighty was the mental and physical beard-scratching of these monks, she thought with a smile. Even she sometimes felt as though she walked amidst dreams and visions.

After she had spoken, Master Jo’el noted, “I don’t believe a comet is due for another handful of years, Hualiama, but not all such portents are signalled. Our path is clear. You will ask the Tourmaline Dragon to find this Ianthine, and to return here once he learns the truth of your parentage. We will rally the monasteries and seek to alert Sapphurion. After that we find our King, and lay our plans to overthrow Ra’aba.” Unexpectedly, the dour monk chuckled, “What could be simpler?”

Flicker said, “A shame we can’t recruit a Brown Dragon to rescue Grandion, Lia–if one trapped him, surely another can blast him out?”

“No,” Lia said thoughtfully. “We need to secure the Dragon’s obligation to our cause. The scrolls of Dragon lore I read suggest that a life-debt holds great weight in Dragon society. That is, if he doesn’t consider it his duty to blast me for being on Ha’athior–oh. Blast … aye!”

Hualiama startled everyone, including herself, by leaping to her feet with a shout of triumph. Somewhat sheepishly, she found her seat again. Master Jo’el threw her a pointed look.

“Hydrogen bomb,” she blurted out.

“What’s the wretched girl talking about, Flicker?” Ja’al winked at the dragonet.

Flicker shrugged. “Been raiding the berry wine again, Hualiama?”

She knew he was referring to her flirtation with Grandion–the flirtation of a moth with a candle-flame. Green is the colour of jealousy, dragonet, she growled.

To the monks, Hualiama said, “I was thinking about how dangerously volatile hydrogen gas is.” Their blank looks only made her press on doggedly, “So, I thought … what if we made a long balloon and stuffed it down the tunnel, filled it with hydrogen, and then just blew the side off the mountain?”

“Brilliant!” crowed Ja’al.

Flicker beamed at her, showing every one of his tiny fangs. “You’re a genius, Lia. That Dragon had better have somewhere to take cover, though.”

“And you’d better have a very, very long fuse,” said Master Jo’el. “Or, run very fast.”

* * * *

“So, Human girl, let me understand the flight of your thoughts,” said Grandion, not long after the meeting concluded. “You propose to blow up this mountain with me still inside. If I survive, you want me speak to a mad Dragoness on your behalf, and find out the terrible secret of why you remember being raised by Dragons on Gi’ishior–a secret which might spell the end of all Dragons, if Ra’aba is right?”

“That’s about it,” said Lia, miserably. The incredulity in his voice was unmistakable. Mercy. Now she wished she had been less honest with him.

“In exchange for undertaking this crazy quest, you will rescue me?”

“Aye–no. I will rescue you anyway. After that, you have a free choice, Grandion.”

“Oh, a free choice? Your Highness is exceedingly kind.” His sarcasm stung, delivered with all the rich nuance of a Dragon’s vocal capability. “Perhaps you’re hoping the fabled draconic oath of obligation will force me to accede to your request? Did you read that in an old scroll somewhere?” Lia grimaced, about to reply, but Grandion cut in, “Girl, Dragons are creatures of high intelligence. I am not some stupid rock-dwelling lizard to be led about by the likes of you!”

His pronouncement came accompanied by a roar of fire which heated the rock she stood upon. Sweat pearled upon her brow. She must stink of fear; her courage, winged away to another Island.

Lia cried, “Grandion, you’re taking this entirely the wrong way.”

“Am I?”

“You could try trusting me! I’ve cared for you for three months!”

Ungrateful, despicable beast! She had to make him agree! Aye, her words had been less than eloquent. They had been desperate and broken–but surely, even this dim-witted lump of a Dragon could grasp the depths of her need? The sweep of events that drove her to stand upon a forbidden Island, that drove her to rise again and again above the murderous designs of Ra’aba and his minions? The grief of a family lost and now a friend kidnapped?

“Then why insult and threaten me, Human girl?” growled the Dragon, more puzzled than menacing. “You already hold my life in your paw. Do you not possess the power to leave me here?”

Heartache and loss abounded in her life, and now Lia faced more. The glut of her misery and woe would overspill a terrace lake. She who thought she knew Dragons … was a prize ralti sheep. Lia had misread Grandion and crash-landed the Dragonship of her hope on the rocks of his oh-so-Dragonish stubbornness and pride.

Naked despair thickened her voice as Hualiama replied, “If you knew me at all, Grandion, you’d understand that no power exists in this Island-World that could persuade me to abandon you to die beneath this mountain.”

Her words seeped away and returned to spark a roaring in her ears. Lia searched her deepest feelings. She saw ripples perturbing the magical veil of the Island-World, concentric circles diving inward and expanding outward simultaneously, their consequence, cataclysmic.

Even the silence held its breath.

She must speak her heart. Slowly, she added, “Grandion, you once spared my life. Therefore, I swear upon the sacred Spirits of the Ancient Dragons, and all that is dear to me, that I shall devote my life to succour yours, o mighty Tourmaline Dragon, and I promise to protect the Dragonkind against whatever terrible fate the future may hold.”

An overpowering stillness seemed to amplify around her oath, a power of truth she had never known existed. Though they existed as two separate beings, though the gulf between Human and Dragonish understanding was as measureless as the depths of the Rift storm, yet it seemed to Hualiama that a delicate yet unbreakable magical chain had come to link her heart to the Dragon’s third heart. When had that transpired? Sometime during her months of one-sided caring for Grandion? A shared fate which had drawn her to him before she ever knew his name? A destiny which lay together, beyond the Isles?

All she knew was that their hearts beat as one, and that the rhythm of that pulse was her life, throbbing out a miraculous, unstoppable torrent of magic, until her heart could bear no more …

The Dragon made a sound like a low, crooning sob, and when he spoke, it was with raw, quivering emotion. He declared, “Though it flies against every current of reason, I swear that I shall do everything in my power to aid and honour your oath, Hualiama of Fra’anior–out of my free will as a creature of flame and magic–for the gift of life must be honoured by all creatures under the twin suns, lest we fall into the Cloudlands and be lost forever.”

All the Island-World must marvel at these vows.

Magic swelled and undulated between them like the breath of a dawn wind misting the surface of a terrace lake. No breath would pass Hualiama’s throat. For a moment the veil of the unseen and unknowable seemed to draw aside, granting her a glimpse of the world-spanning ramifications of their simple words, a multi-dimensional tapestry of fate drawing together in a single time and place, lending now the infinite complexity of a universe of possibility. All would change. The Nameless Man’s cusp of history was already receding into the past, immutable.

Unthinking, in Dragonish, she whispered, I thank thee, noble Dragon.

My soul-song gladdens the very stars, gracious Hualiama.

And so, having secured Grandion’s agreement to hide as far up the narrowing crack as he possibly could, the place where he said a trickle of water entered his cave, Lia returned–nay, fled–to the monastery to prepare her hydrogen bomb. Ten monks had worked for hours on gluing together sacks ten feet long and seven feet tall, connecting them with long hoses of hollow chengis vine.

Master Jo’el showed her the fuse he had braided and prepared. “It needs another two hours to dry,” he explained. “You’ll have five minutes after you light this to get as far away from that cave as possible. Do you have the hydrogen still? Enough meriatite stone and acid? Bellows and a pump?”

“All is prepared, Master.”

“Ja’al will help you set up the still. I want no-one else setting foot on the Holy Isle, for if that Dragon should seek revenge, we must minimise our transgression.”

“Aye, Master.”

She dared not speak of what had transpired between her and the beast. It was too fresh, too fragile to risk, trembling like a baby bird within her breast.

“Three hours of darkness remain. By dawn, be undercover. The sacks will take hours to fill with that small still. Take heart. Perhaps tomorrow evening, or the day after, you shall be ready. Pray Ra’aba does not return before that hour to complete his evil labours.”

Working rapidly, Hualiama and Ja’al ferried the necessary equipment over to Ha’athior Island. She worried about Flicker. Gi’ishior was a huge flight for a dragonet. Though dragonets were quick, they did not enjoy the stamina of Lesser Dragons. Flicker had estimated it would take him two or three days to reach Gi’ishior. He would stop at the hidden monasteries to rest. With one eye glued to the skies for Dragon-sign, Ja’al and Lia lugged their equipment around the treacherous path to the avalanche site. They stuffed everything down the hole and dragged the huge bags of Dragonship material to their desired locations along the tunnel.

Ja’al peered over her shoulder. “So, this is a hydrogen still?”

Lia nodded, biting her tongue as she concentrated on assembling the parts. “I’ll rest the acid bulb on this little stove to warm it gently, which speeds the reaction. Then I’ll drop chunks of meriatite into the acid where they’ll bubble away, and in the time it takes to toss a few ralti sheep at the Jade moon–hydrogen gas. This valve controls the gas outlet into this bag here, and the foot-pump drives the gas into the pipes leading to the sacks. Clear?”

“You know what? You’re weird.”

“I’m what?”

“Weird. What kind of Princess knows how to patch Dragonships and assemble a hydrogen still?”

“I keep telling you, I’m a royal ward–an imposter. Not a real Princess at all.”

“Royalty is an accident of birth,” said Ja’al, unexpectedly dropping a kiss on her cheek. “Chalcion may be a brute of a father and a respectable King, but I can guarantee he has no clue what a treasure he has in you.”

And he departed, leaving Lia to smile in bemusement, touching her cheek with a fingertip.

“Sooooo,” crooned Grandion, drawing out the word suggestively.

“He’s a monk. A friend. More like a brother, really.”

She babbled with the skill of the most empty-headed parakeet! Lia knew that the Dragon would not believe a single word.

On cue, he added, “Indeed, and I can safely reveal that I’m an overgrown windroc in disguise.”

Hualiama stamped her foot with unconvincing outrage. “Grandion! Ja’al is sworn to the Great Dragon’s service with vows of chastity, fidelity and service–”

“So that was a perfectly chaste kiss?”

“Aye.”

“Then why’s your little heart beating so fast?”

From her reading about Dragons, Lia knew their senses were many times acuter than those of Humans. It beggared belief–he could hear her heartbeat from down there? “It’s irritation–with you,” she retorted, bending low to blow on her little stove. The heat felt about right. Now to add the meriatite …

“Hualiama, why did the monk call your father a brute?”

Flip that Dragon over an Island, now he was suddenly full of questions–and none of them easy ones.

Hualiama went very still, transported to another time and place. Her sister Fyria, sneering, ‘Father never wanted you, little Lia. That’s why he hates you. It was Mother who insisted on adopting you. None of us wanted you, but she made us.’

“Father has a punishment board in his office,” she said, in a dull, lifeless voice. She tested the release valve cautiously. Not enough pressure, yet, although the meriatite was bubbling merrily. “It’s a square of wood covered in sharpened dowels. When I have done wrong, which is often, the punishment is to kneel on that board, for hours. Or he beats me, and my mother. When he’s drunk–”

“You stand between him and your mother, wishing he would beat you, rather.”

At first, Hualiama thought he had read her deepest feelings, but then she realised Grandion must be talking about himself. Could it be that they shared this secret shame of a father both loved and feared, who demanded respect but often did not deserve it, who lashed out at the most unexpected moments to tear a family apart? Suddenly, he seemed not a vast, serpentine predator, but a friend with whom she could share confidences.

“I should’ve stood on him,” said Grandion.

“Aye? Yet I love him, Grandion. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”

“No,” returned the Dragon, his voice now as mellifluous as the tones of a Fra’aniorian pan-flute. “No, for love transcends woe. Sometimes it is pure, like the stars of a moonless night, and sometimes it is as clouded as a storm, but it is still love.”

Such were the storms that lashed her heart.

After a time, he added, “I’m sorry I made you cry.”

And now he heard the drip of her tears above the chuckle of the bubbling still? Hualiama sniffed hugely. Pestiferous, perceptive Dragon!

“How many hours until your bomb is ready?” asked Grandion.

“Too many.”

Below, talons clicked on stone as Grandion shifted restlessly. “You have told me stories, and sung me songs, Hualiama, but I regret I was a feral beast for much of that time, unthinking and unheeding. I would know the tale of your life. Would you tell me of the heart of a girl who scorns death to comfort a lost Dragon?”

Hope lodged in her breast, yet it was hope bound to a disconcerting knowledge. This Dragon would not kill her. Whatever magic had emerged to ensnare them, it was far more dangerous than that.