Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Read online

  Aranya staggered. It was all she could do to remain standing. Just as when she had attempted to heal her dead mother, using the power drained her of strength. From the corner of her eye she noticed how the King glanced at her. He knew. She raised her definite chin and kept her gaze to the fore.

  Ignathion’s eyes narrowed as he tilted his head to survey the wreckage. He could not have seen the fire rocket upward, Aranya told herself. It had been invisible. She wanted to vomit. So many men, dead …

  “Huh,” snorted Ignathion. “Some pipe-smoking fool got too near the hydrogen.” His flint-grey gaze returned to Aranya. “Take the hostage away. Beran, let’s go broach the best of your beer kegs while we sign the terms of your surrender. I will depart for Sylakia before suns-set. The Supreme Commander of the Island-World will want to know of his latest triumph.” His massive chest swelled as his fist crashed against his breastplate. “All glory to Sylakia!”

  “GLORY TO SYLAKIA!” roared his soldiers.

  * * * *

  Aside from the manacles sheathing her wrists and ankles, the Sylakians treated Aranya courteously. The War-Hammer’s Dragonship was brought low enough for her to board without need to climb a rope ladder. Neither the straight blade at her left hip, nor her Immadian forked daggers were taken from her immediately–perhaps this was the Sylakian honour-code she had learned about? More likely, they thought a woman little use with a blade against the brace of burly Sylakian Crimson Hammers who guarded her with the alert ease of veteran warriors. Aranya scowled. Even unchained, she would not have fought them. She had given her word.

  Besides, she had the almighty mother of all headaches.

  She perched on the chair provided for her in a tiny, bare cabin, and waited. Shortly, a servitor appeared to offer her refreshment. Aranya chose a prekki-fruit juice. The juice would hopefully sate her raging hunger, and its tart sweetness would clear her head. She gazed out of the single porthole above the bunk and watched the suns migrate westward. Aranya willed herself not to show any outward sign of weakness. She desperately wanted to cry.

  Much later, an elderly Immadian maidservant called Beri appeared to inform her that she had been assigned to see to Aranya’s comfort during the fifteen-day journey to Sylakia Island. Aranya knew Beri mostly by her reputation of unshakeable honesty and integrity. She brought aboard several trunks of clothing, and a leather carrying-case containing Aranya’s precious brushes, pencils and painting tools.

  “Couldn’t bring your paints, Princess,” Beri apologised.

  “I could kiss you, Beri.”

  “Most improper,” huffed the servant, but a pinch of rose entered her wrinkled cheeks.

  As the twin suns lowered in the sky, glorious and golden, and Aranya yearned to scream just to break the boredom, commands suddenly began to be barked outside of the Dragonship. Moments later, she heard a man declare that the First War-Hammer was aboard.

  “Cast off,” came the shout. “Up anchor. Start the turbines.”

  At once, the door of the small metal furnace squeaked open. Aranya knew the process. She had flown numerous times by Dragonship. When she was younger, she had pestered her father to explain everything to her. The stoker would throw chunks of crushed meriatite into the furnace, neither too much nor too quickly. The rock then melted and ran off into a secondary chamber, dumping the red-hot element into an acid bath. This reaction produced the hydrogen which was essential to fuelling a Dragonship, used both for flotation in the air and for propelling the great turbines which drove the dirigible forward. If meriatite was in short supply, which was often, ten warriors at a time could be assigned to manually drive the turbines, usually by pedalling a contraption fondly called the back-breaker, housed in the warriors’ common area.

  A loud knock made Aranya jerk against her chains. A warrior entered and bowed curtly. He said, “War-Hammer’s orders, Princess of Immadia. You may observe the departure from the aft gantry.”

  “I am … grateful.”

  Her guards directed her astern. Opening a small, lightweight door, they squeezed out onto the aft gantry, a little behind and below the six turbines which drove the Dragonship. Aranya noticed they took a firm grip of her manacled wrists. Her wry smile was met with firm headshakes. No jumping allowed.

  The ground receded in that silence which had always surprised her about Dragonships. No, there were tiny noises–the groan of the hydrogen-sack bulging against its containing netting, the creak of stays taking up the strain, the puffing of the furnace and a squeal of protest as the stabilising wings, which gave the dirigibles their fanciful name, extended. The wings were adjusted to catch the breeze more than to stabilise the Dragonship. How ironic, Aranya thought, that in a Sylakian culture which apparently hated and despised Dragons so greatly that their mere mention was tantamount to courting death, that the main means of transport between the Islands should be called Dragonships.

  Steadily, Immadia Island revealed itself to her. Grey slate-tiled roofs huddled four-square around the traditional central courtyard of its houses. The bright awnings of the marketplace beckoned her notice, and then the handsome towers and turrets of the castle which had always been her home. Her eyes traced the crenellated battlements and mobile catapult emplacements with a defiant, possessive hunger. She would return. This was not forever-farewell.

  Aranya caught sight of King Beran and Queen Silha, each holding one of her twin infant brothers, standing atop Izariela’s Tower. Symbolic. Her heart lurched in her chest as they raised their arms, palms upturned to the sky, in a gesture of sending-in-love. She would have replied, but could not raise her chained arms.

  A mistiness fogged her vision. Aranya blinked until it receded.

  The Dragonship rose more quickly now, gaining purchase on the breeze, the land unfurling beneath her as her family shrank into dots on a faraway castle. The snow-crowned mountains flanking the city formed a spectacular, gleaming rampart to a land tan in the cold season, broken by the white dots of the giant ralti sheep searching for a nibble of anaemic brown grass, before the brief spring rains brought green to every field and rocky crevice. At the edge of the Island were the ubiquitous terraced lakes, buttressed by great seamless stone walls built by the ancients to capture the inadequate rainfall of these harsh lands. Immadia had three levels of terrace lakes. Other Islands had many more.

  Below the terrace lakes, washing up against the sheer cliffs half a league tall–but perhaps far taller, for no-one knew how deep the Cloudlands truly extended–were the ever-present, never-ending cloudscapes of noxious gases that stretched to the horizon and beyond, white and grey and turquoise in places, an ever-changing tapestry which hid what many Islanders believed to be a land of demons and monsters, or a bottomless pit of hell. Oh, there were stories about the monsters that crawled up out of the Cloudlands, many stories, but the truth was that no-one knew, for nothing and no-one could survive the poisons in that atmosphere.

  The Dragonship’s bow pointed almost directly eastward, bound for the Island cluster of Gemalka, famed for its garnet and diamond mines, and for the delectable rainbow trout found in its terrace lakes. They traversed the shadow of Immadia Island, grown many leagues long at this hour of the evening.

  But Aranya kept her gaze fixed on Immadia Island until her home was just a speck on the horizon; until the Cloudlands swallowed the setting suns and her guards, shivering, bade her to return to the cabin’s warmth.

  Aranya’s body was not cold. But her heart was ice.

  Chapter 2: The Windroc

  At the precise strike of the last hour of the afternoon, measured by the hourglass on the wall, on the eve of their third day out of Immadia, the Sylakian servitor delivered the First War-Hammer’s third invitation to dinner with his customary ramrod-formal efficiency. Beri, answering the door for the third time, replied that the Princess politely declined due to ill health.

  The man, unable to resist a smirk, added, “The War-Hammer wishes to convey to the daughter of the honoured King Beran that he command
s her attendance by the hour of suns-set.”

  Beri nodded. “The Princess will attend.”

  The servitor withdrew with the slightest of bows.

  Aranya flung her wooden goblet against the wall of her tiny cabin, wishing it were made of fine crystal rather than exquisitely carved wood. It bounced straight back at her and cannoned off her cheek.

  She touched her bruised cheekbone. “Ouch! He commands? Filthy Sylakian barbarian, threatening me–and how dare you accept–”

  “Huh,” Beri sniffed. “I changed your wet-cloths when you were a child, girl. Don’t you cheek me. He’ll drag you up there with or without your precious dignity. Thrice refused? An insult. He’s a proud man; as proud as your stubborn stick of a father. You were sick the first evening, granted. And abed yesterday morning. But just now? That was pure spite and beneath the woman you are. Don’t make me do that again.”

  Aranya threw aside the fine-spun ralti-wool bedcovers and surged to her feet. But her anger only made pain flower behind her temples. She sat back with a groan.

  “Princess? Aranya?”

  “Beri–oh, ralti droppings, you’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Aye, I’m right.” But Beri tempered her growl with a smile that wrinkled her cheeks all the way up to her eyes. “He willingly exchanged your weapons for an easing of your chains. That’s not the conduct of a Sylakian brute.”

  Aranya eyed her elderly maidservant, feeling six rather than sixteen, vexed at being put in her place. Beri had ever been one to speak her mind, but her wisdom was said to be as wide as the Cloudlands and sharper than an Immadian forked dagger. She had served four generations of the Immadian royal family. Her father had chosen well. Would they allow her to keep Beri in Sylakia, in her exile? How much did Beri know about her?

  “Beri, how should I conduct myself with this man Ignathion? What would you advise?”

  “That you wear something more appropriate than a sleeping-shift,” she replied tartly. “Hurry up and change, girl.”

  Hurriedly sponged down with a cloth dipped in a basin of cool water, changed, perfumed and attired in her Helyon silk dress, Aranya inspected her appearance in the tiny mirror Beri had smuggled in with her effects. The matching violet headscarf accentuated the amethyst depths of her eyes–anxious eyes, she thought, wishing she appeared more confident and in control of her circumstances, not bullied about by … now there was a fair-day joke worthy of any jester. Confident? In control of what, exactly? This wind that buffeted her as though her life were chaff blown off at the tossing of the harvest, the unwanted husks of a realm that did not need a Princess in the succession?

  Hostage-taking was a ridiculous formality.

  She touched her new bruise. Hollow cheekbones, Beri had just been complaining. She had eaten little since leaving Immadia’s shores. The prospect of dinner made her stomach growl like a starving mountain lynx. The Sylakians apparently kept cats far larger than the Immadian lynx, cats called rajals …

  “Hustle now.” Beri spun her toward the door, breaking the drift of her thoughts. “Enough primping–not that you ever primp. Don’t keep Ignathion waiting.”

  Her dour-as-mud captors fell in with her, one before and one behind, to conduct the Princess of Immadia to the Dragonship’s beautifully-appointed forward cabin–the navigation room. The door stood ajar. Through it she saw the First War-Hammer of Sylakia, conqueror of her homeland, standing with his hands clasped behind his back, staring with a brooding mien out of the floor-to-ceiling crysglass windows over an Island she realised belatedly must be Gemalka. His stature was so imposing, his short-cropped hair nearly brushed the ceiling.

  Aranya’s throat bobbed. Straightening her back, she crept in, soft-footed on the thick pile rug. As he did not turn immediately, she stole several glances about Ignathion’s quarters. Her gaze took in the navigational charts and instruments, the ruler-neat stacks of logbooks and almanacs so necessary to navigating correctly and reading the air-currents and weather, the moon-charts detailing every aspect of the complex interactions of the five moons, and a further library of hand-bound books on the shelf opposite. She realised that if all this belonged to him, Ignathion must be a well-educated and intelligent man. A well-educated brute. Her eyes tripped over to the table, set for two, appreciating the artistic perfection of a spray of white wildflowers gracing each setting. White for friendship, she noted. How unexpected. Plates of the finest, most delicate porcelain, fluted glasses of workmanship her father’s table would have been proud of–the artist in her perceived the tiniest details.

  The warriors withdrew. To her further surprise, Aranya heard their footsteps recede down the narrow corridor which led aft. Not protecting their commander? Or did he need no protection from the likes of her?

  “Aranya, Princess of Immadia,” he rumbled, turning. His movements were lithe for a huge man, but circumscribed as though he were constantly aware of his great size.

  Aranya’s right hand extended automatically. Placing his left palm beneath her proffered hand, Ignathion raised it aloft, blew once upon her fingers to signify no ill intent on his part, made a circle of peace with his right forefinger twice before his grave, bearded face, and then he kissed the precise centre of her palm, between her life-lines, thrice.

  Above his scarred cheekbones, mutilated in the manner of Sylakia’s warrior elite with the hard-earned symbol of the windroc, Ignathion’s eyes were as grey as a storm brewing over the Cloudlands.

  He said, “It accords me great pleasure to finally make acquaintance with the daughter of my most honoured and greatest opponent, King Beran.”

  Arching her eyebrows ever so slightly, Aranya replied, “First War-Hammer, I am honoured by your invitation even in this time of grief and loss for the Kingdom of Immadia.”

  “Even so,” he said. With perfect courtesy, he seated her himself. “Call me Ignathion, please.”

  “And for me, Aranya will suffice.”

  Aranya had been trained in the minutiae of courtesies and courtly behaviour common to the Island-World, and spent time in several other Courts and Governing Houses, so she read the signals easily–and was thus disconcerted. Why treat her as an equal? Why show such honour and respect to one younger than him in years; moreover, to his captive, soon to be mouldering in the infamous Tower of Sylakia, the comfortable prison palace where Sylakia incarcerated its political hostages? A fair number of hostages, she understood, given their rash of recent successful conquests. Why was King Beran his ‘most honoured’ opponent? Surely, Immadia Island was as the miserable dust crushed beneath his conquering boots? Although, she smiled to herself, King Beran had led Ignathion a merry chase for twelve summers and caused untold vexation to the Sylakian Supreme Commander, Thoralian.

  Ha! Her Dad might be honourable, but he was also wily. So was his daughter.

  So she schooled her features, and fenced and probed and circled Ignathion’s polite questions throughout the first five courses of a superb dinner, which she partook of heartily, until he laid down his eating-tine and cutter, smiled broadly at her across the table, and said, “You, Aranya, remind me most forcibly of a woman I once courted. In those days I was but a lowly Third War-Hammer, commanding a scant three Dragonships and a Hammer of two hundred warriors. This young beauty was the toast of a faraway Island realm, courted by kings and princes and the nobles of a rising power called Sylakia, which comprised but six Islands at the time. She would have enjoyed the rainbow trout, as you. Another helping?”

  Aranya, startled to find her plate empty, accepted with a nod. Ignathion served her deftly. Leaning back in his seat with that infuriating, even smug, smile creasing his features, he added, “This beauty hailed from Fra’anior. Perhaps you knew her?”

  Aranya’s tine slipped and she shot a chunk of the buttered, herb-encrusted fish onto the pristine tablecloth.

  “We had become close,” he said, rescuing the fugitive piece of fish and setting it aside, “when a wily cliff fox filched the incomparable Izariela of Fra’anior f
rom beneath all of our noses and whisked her off to his Northern stronghold. It was an enormous scandal; perhaps the only disreputable act Beran has ever perpetrated–a daring kidnapping from within a guarded fortress, an open invitation to war with Fra’anior and a lunatic getaway evading the Dragonships of twenty Islands–all for a love which burned brighter than a Dragonship’s furnace. Aranya, your father is a rogue and a pirate.”

  For the first time in four days, a genuine smile curved her lips.

  Ignathion aimed his tine across the table at her. “There. That’s the smile I remember. But it pains me to see King Beran brought to heel, Aranya. Twelve years! No other Island lasted even two summers campaigning against me, but–he’s an old cliff fox, that man. A slippery trout with the highest integrity and the battle instincts of a Dragon. He was only brought down because Rolodia betrayed him–you didn’t know?”

  Aranya shook her head. Her thoughts were still reeling at hearing her father being compared to a trout, a cliff fox and a Dragon in the same breath. Betrayed? By his oldest friend, the King of Rolodia Island? How that must have crushed him.

  “I was deeply troubled to learn of your mother’s death, Aranya.”

  “She was poisoned.”

  “I know. I make it my business to understand my foes. I know how beards come to be singed. Tapestries, too.”

  This time, Aranya had to lay her wrist on the table to quell her hand’s shaking. Burn him beneath the Cloudlands, was there nothing this beast did not know about her? She felt sick. He knew! He knew something, or suspected it at the very least. Why was he toying with her–threatening? Bribing? Turning her into a hare trapped by the neck in his hunter’s snare, gaining her life in the bargain? Why? What could he possibly want of his captive? She dropped her gaze, hoping that her sudden terror had not shown too starkly.

  Ignathion stirred restlessly as the servitor appeared with the dishes for the sixth course, a mildly curried breast of fowl served on a bed of saffron rice. The aroma of curry made her mouth water.