Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Read online

  When the servant had departed, Ignathion served her once more and refilled her crystal goblet with thick, purple prekki-juice.

  The silence between them stretched unbearably thin.

  Desperate to throw Ignathion off the scent, Aranya said, “Do you know why my mother was murdered, First War-Hammer? Was it a Sylakian plot?”

  “No,” he snarled. “Don’t you dare accuse me–” Ignathion pulled up with an effort. His white-knuckled grip on his tine relaxed. “Very well, I earned that rebuke. Aranya, your mother was a rare woman. Poison is the hallmark of Herimor–and a few other Islands I could name, admittedly. What I meant to convey is … by the Sign of Sylakia, this is hard to say. I spoke harshly to Beran in public so that all Sylakians would know that I treated even an old Prince-Apprentice friend no differently than any other of my foes.”

  Aranya narrowed her eyes. So, her father and Ignathion had once been Apprenticed to a foreign Court together? So many strands interwoven; so many lives. What game was Ignathion playing? What was he telling her, the threads half-hidden beneath their conversation? Was he implying that even though he had made such a spectacle of Beran, he felt differently in his heart?

  “Some Sylakians mistrust foreign Princesses, Aranya, and would see them sink into oblivion. Sylakians are a superstitious people. They mistrust foreigners, particularly those with unusual eyes.”

  Eyes? That tiny stress meant abilities, didn’t it? If this was meant as an offer of truce, or even a secret friendship for her parents’ sake, she dared not refuse–did she? Because he had articulated the alternative with perfect clarity. Exposure. A denouncement. A few well-placed words would cause one suspected enchantress’ head to permanently part ways with her shoulders.

  After wetting her parched throat, Aranya offered, “Trust is always a thorny issue, Ignathion. But I do approve of the flowers you chose for the table.”

  Ignathion raised his goblet. “Indeed. Your likeness to your mother is truly amazing, Aranya. Let us salute Izariela of Fra’anior’s memory … together.”

  Thus she took a perilous step into her future, Aranya reflected. She sipped her juice. The First War-Hammer would want something of her. He was not a frivolous man. Ignathion was a master of long-term strategy, her father had warned her. Did he truly hold her parents in high regard? Why did he hint at the difference between friendship and duty? A thought struck her: he already had the traditional two consorts. Sylakian custom allowed no more, so he should not be seeking her person. Might it be for one of his sons that he prepared this subtle snare about an exiled Princess? Her pulse leaped fitfully in her throat as Aranya considered the hegemony of this man over her life. But his sense of duty must surely direct him to deliver her safe to Sylakia. Therefore, why the veiled warnings? Were there other, subtler dangers skulking in Sylakia? Dangers particular to one with unusual eyes?

  She had much to ponder.

  Aranya smiled at him over the rim of her goblet, trying to ignore how masterfully he had played his courtly game. “Ignathion, when the First War-Hammer of Sylakia has conquered the whole world above the Cloudlands, where next does he cast his noble eye? Past the Rift?”

  “North of the Rift is but one quarter of the known world,” he said.

  “New territories; new conquests?”

  “Sometimes I wish for an end to all war. A bite more of the fowl?” A glimpse within the man, ever so swiftly cut off again. And a non-answer to Sylakia’s plans. Shrewd. “Permit me to share with you my memories of that Cloudlands pirate who presumes to call himself a king.”

  Aranya quirked an eyebrow at him. “Surprise me.”

  * * * *

  Overnight, the eighty remaining Dragonships of the Sylakian flotilla rode out a menacing storm, anchored by sturdy hawsers as close to the ground as was safe. Lightning was always a danger to dirigibles. But with very few metal parts exposed to the atmosphere, the main peril was usually wind. Wind-shear could tumble a hapless vessel deep into the Cloudlands, killing all on board within a few breaths. Rabid windrocs, too, were a nuisance, tearing holes in a Dragonship’s sack to release precious hydrogen. If a Dragonship was caught too far from safe harbour, or ran low on meriatite, a quick death was assured.

  Aranya slept poorly, chained to her bed beneath the unsleeping gaze of two warriors. Evidently, Ignathion’s trust did not extend far when they bobbed fifteen feet or so above Gemalka’s sturdy massif. She dreamed of finding her mother; of a dead Izariela sitting up, bloodied of skin, staring accusingly at her daughter. Come morning, Beri accepted the key and unlocked her charge.

  Not even an hour later, as she breakfasted upon fresh fruits and a Gemalkan sourdough roll, Aranya felt the Dragonship lurch into motion. Off on the long southward run to Sylakia, she thought, past many small Islands and large, all Sylakian territory. Leaning her nose against the porthole’s crysglass, Aranya noted several groups of dirigibles peeling away to the east and southeast. So the Sylakians were redistributing their forces? She glanced to the signal flags on their tall poles in the field receding below. Evidently, Ignathion intended to make the most of a brisk following breeze and the fifteen hours of daylight.

  Exile beckoned.

  Where had his other thirty-five Dragonships disappeared to? She pondered this as she dressed herself. Had they stayed behind on Immadia Island to ensure King Beran’s obedience? Or moved on to the far western Isles, a five-day crossing in the best weather?

  When she exited her cabin, the Sylakian warriors met her with manacles for her wrists and ankles. If she were a Dragon, she would gladly have bitten their heads off. She smiled at them as she imagined a Dragon might smile.

  The days of travel quickly fell into a pattern. Aranya whiled away most of her time in the navigation cabin, which she had mistaken for Ignathion’s quarters. She read through his entire collection of books while the War-Hammer busied himself with the thousand scrolls of command. She had thought it just a saying; now she saw the truth. Reading message scrolls and penning responses occupied many hours of his time. The War-Hammer sometimes vanished elsewhere on the Dragonship to confer with his Second- and Third-Hammers, making no apology for what was not meant for her ears. Equally, Aranya restrained herself from any impulse to snoop or pry. She suspected Ignathion would know or find out. He was remarkably perceptive to begin with. Though she saw her beloved forked daggers set aside on his shelf, she refrained from touching them.

  When Aranya asked her twentieth question about navigation, the War-Hammer displayed the first sign of irritation he had shown toward her. “You chatter like a parakeet,” he muttered, signing his name to a scroll with a fierce flourish. “Steersman! Fetch the steersman!”

  When the man arrived, Ignathion ordered him to instruct the Princess for as long as she desired.

  Ignathion dined with her every second evening. He treated her with unflagging courtesy. While Aranya waited patiently for his intentions to become clear, they never did. Instead, he complimented her on the questions she had asked the steersman.

  “Beran’s daughter through and through,” he opined, appearing oddly pleased.

  The fleet stopped often to exchange message scrolls with Sylakian garrisons and to take on small quantities of supplies; first at Helyon, the long, low island famed for its silks, at Ferial, merely a cluster of spires jutting out of the Cloudlands, producer of the best ropes and natural fibres, and later at Yorbik, the largest Island of all, measuring one hundred and nine leagues from its eastern to western tips, and thirty-one leagues in breadth. Aranya marvelled at the scale of its terrace lakes and the extent of its hardwood forests, the main source of Yorbik’s exports. Immadia was all sheer cliffs, but Yorbik’s gentle slopes merged deceptively into the Cloudlands’ eternal mists. The lower slopes were entirely devoid of greenery, as though an acid wash had stripped away any trace of plant life.

  Beyond Yorbik lay a gentle sprinkling of Island kingdoms, collectively named the Twenty-Seven Sisters, each lusher than the last. Flying vervet monkeys festooned th
e liana-traced sandstone cliffs in enormous numbers, feasting on the myriad rodents and insects which loved the rich hanging ferns and flower-dense foliage. Aranya had never seen a place as verdant as this. She spent ages gazing out of the crysglass forward window. From the air she spied giant ralti sheep of a size she could barely credit–shaggy ambulatory huts, these were.

  Would she ever see anything like this again?

  But all too soon the scenery changed again, as though a knife had sliced a jagged portion away from the soft greenery. The morning following their departure from the last of the Sisters, called Si’oon, their Dragonships moved into a forest of dark, ragged stone spires, locally called the Spits. The First War-Hammer ordered archers to be set on the gantries and above and around the dirigibles to guard against windrocs. The flotilla, now reduced to twenty-five Dragonships as smaller groups had steadily peeled away on their mysterious business, had to proceed slowly through the maze, for the towering Spits clustered together like the serrated edges of wicked Sylakian daggers, reaching heights dangerous for Dragonships due to the swirling, unpredictable air currents above.

  It should be four days’ travel through the Spits to Sylakia, Aranya told herself, watching a rock face roll by. How she’d love to paint this desolate place. What black-toothed spires these were, making her imagine the upturned fangs of a vast, ancient Dragon! Four days. Ignathion would deliver her to the infamous Tower. The inescapable Tower; the graveyard of Sylakia, she’d heard it called. It doubled as a place to execute Sylakia’s convicts. They were forced to leap off a jutting battlement called the Last Walk, falling to their deaths somewhere in the Cloudlands a league below. Four days.

  She had never been further from home. Already, she sensed the chains of exile binding her spirit, the hopelessness and despair that gnawed and the deep resignation that dulled her senses. Aranya resolved to fight. She would make of this what she could, or die trying.

  “Windroc!” shouted the watch. Aranya jumped.

  A massive bird rose before the War-Hammer’s Dragonship.

  Men bellowed. Boots pounded the gantries. Doors slammed; Aranya’s ear caught the groan of overstressed wood as the war crossbows were wound up to a fighting tension.

  The bird opened its cruel, hooked beak to scream at the Dragonship. Aranya’s heart stopped in her throat. Magnificent! She willed herself to take up the business of breathing again. Fully fifteen feet from wingtip to wingtip, with creamy plumage in the belly area rising to a dark brown in the flight primaries, the windroc screamed its defiance at a pitch that made the crysglass before her sing in response.

  Rising from his desk, the War-Hammer turned to watch from the window, too. “That’s a young one,” he noted. “He won’t bother us.”

  She barely heard him.

  To their right, a Dragonship came under attack from three windrocs. Their huge talons flashed in the sunlight, driving in at the archers as a spray of arrows rose from the beleaguered ship. The windrocs would circle above, out of range, before suddenly furling their wings and plummeting in toward the Dragonship at breathtaking speeds. The hydrogen sack bulged and rippled as a bird struck hard, slashing with its claws. A windroc nosedived past their window, speared through the heart by a javelin. Aranya saw an unfortunate archer, unseated from his position, tumbling through the sky–but before he fell far, windrocs converged upon him and tore the man limb from limb.

  “This won’t last,” Ignathion grunted, apparently unmoved by the soldier’s ghastly fate. “This isn’t the season. A taste of our arrows should soon scare them off.”

  Even as he spoke, Aranya saw the windrocs break off the attack on the other vessel. Other birds circled about ahead, but they appeared more cautious. Their own vessel jolted. Faint cries sounded from above. The crossbows twanged viciously.

  Ignathion glanced at the ceiling. “A hit upon us. Look, there he goes. Quarrel through the eye. That’s sharp shooting.”

  Aranya’s gaze followed the stricken windroc as it slewed away from their Dragonship. Its own fellows shadowed the bird with menacing intent.

  “Man overboard! Get him up! Get him up!”

  A man dangled from a safety rope right in front of their position, not ten feet ahead of the crysglass windows, right beneath Dragonship’s nose.

  “Ignathion, will they get him–”

  “Watch out!”

  The impact of the hard point of Ignathion’s shoulder cut off Aranya’s cry as he rammed her away from the window. She tripped over her manacles and went sprawling into an explosion of crysglass. Suddenly, there was a howl of wind. Shards tinkled around her; a flapping, shrieking, monstrous presence filled the cabin, scrabbling against the walls and smashing her down with the hard leading edge of its wing, rending the War-Hammer’s back with its talons, striking at his head with its beak, a windroc!

  Ignathion bellowed in pain. “Get out,” he shouted at Aranya.

  He drew his dagger and slashed blindly. Aranya cowered beside the door for a moment, shaking her head, before she realised that the bird, starting to fight its way free of the smashed window, intended to drag the War-Hammer along with it. Something within her snapped. A red haze descended upon her vision.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she stooped in and grabbed his boot. “Oh no, you don’t.”

  The bird hacked at Ignathion’s head, aiming for the eyes. The windroc was stuck against the bent struts of the crysglass window, shrieking its rage from a wickedly-hooked beak. Ignathion had both arms up, trying to protect his face. Aranya instinctively felt at her waist for her daggers. Nothing. She remembered. She fought across the cabin to the wall, howling at her encumbering chains. The shelf was empty. The floor! Aranya slapped her hand down on the daggers. Ignathion reversed his blade, trying to stab backward into the windroc’s body while it rattled him against the floor with its talons. The wings beat up a storm of message scrolls as the bird struggled to escape with its prey.

  Aranya raised her weapons. Time to make the beast pay. The fire seared through her, incandescent, a just anger, burning in her and through her in a wave that consumed all rational thought.

  She jerked across the short space separating her from the combatants, collected a blow in the teeth, and fell upon the windroc from behind, stabbing two-handed with demented passion, blow after blow, as deep as she could drive the slender blades into its body. Aranya gasped as the bird slammed her backward into the shattered crysglass panels. It pecked Ignathion’s head again. White bone flashed through the welling blood. A sound like a low, grating growl issued from her mouth as she flung the chain linking her wrists over the great feathery head and, twisting the forked daggers upward into the soft hollow of its throat beneath the great beak, stabbed with every ounce of her fury for the windroc’s brain.

  The bird slumped.

  The feathered torso collapsed, dragged backward and downward by Aranya’s weight dangling from its neck. Her lower legs snagged between the shattered edge of the crysglass pane and the windroc’s body. She tried desperately to hold her muscles rigid as she lay half-in and half-out of the window frame, but felt herself slipping. Daggers of glass ripped into her calves. The windroc’s claws seized up one final time and then released their hold on the First War-Hammer. Feathers and flesh avalanched over her and past her, a crushing weight, bending her backward over the edge.

  Slowly, the splayed wings gave up their fight against the dangling weight. They ripped free of the cabin. The dead windroc’s descent accelerated, lolling across her chest, a slow-motion cartwheel as she swung from her calves beneath the Dragonship’s ruined cabin. Her dress fluttered freely in the wind.

  With her wrists chained together, Aranya was unable to release her embrace around the windroc’s neck. An enormous weight yanked her arms downward. Her legs slipped free.

  She experienced an inexplicable sense of release.

  Now, she would fly.

  Chapter 3: The Tower of Sylakia

  Aranya dreamed the flying dream.

 
She had dreamed it ever since she was a child. She would be soaring over the Cloudlands, not far above the greenish, puffy cloud-tops. Endlessly flying–just that.

  On this occasion, Aranya dreamed many times in succession. She was aware of being fed, of an unfamiliar but gentle hand dressing wounds on her back, and a male voice saying, “She slept a whole day? No more serum.” She slept again. Now the Cloudlands of her dreams had new colours, azure and cobalt, gold and ochre, like the endlessly changing cloudscapes which had mesmerised her throughout the journey, rolling away beneath the Dragonship. She had never known the Cloudlands contained so many subtle tints.

  Aranya snapped awake to the smell of curried fowl tantalising her nostrils.

  “I’m hungry,” she announced.

  “Feeling better, Princess?” asked Beri.

  “I feel like I ran into a windroc.”

  “You did, you foolish girl. The physician’s here.”

  After speaking to the physician about the cuts on her back and legs, and having the wound-dressings changed, Aranya dozed off again. The medicine made her head feel foggy. But then she remembered the smell of curry. Her stomach growled insistently.

  “Beri?” she called.

  Beri leaned over her. “You’ve a visitor, Princess. Try to sit up.” Beri, with a wiry strength that belied her age, helped Aranya to sit up against the cabin bulkhead. She arranged a cushion behind Aranya’s back and fussed with the covers, drawing them up beneath her chin. “Dinner’s coming.”

  Aranya heard a murmuring of voices. The cabin door clicked shut.

  “You can’t tease me with that smell,” she called. “First War-Hammer? Is that you?” Her hand touched her hair, relieved to find it covered.

  “I was not made to juggle bowls on a tray,” rumbled Ignathion. “Beri!”

  Shortly, with a snort that apprised the War-Hammer of exactly who was boss in the Princess’ cabin, Beri had the tray neatly arranged on Aranya’s lap. Once more, she withdrew. Aranya could have sworn she detected a twinkle in her maidservant’s eyes.