Dragonfriend Read online

  Dragonfriend

  Book 1 of Dragonfriend

  By Marc Secchia

  Copyright © 2015 Marc Secchia

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher and author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  www.marcsecchia.com

  ISBN: 978‐1‐78301‐693‐8

  Cover art copyright © 2015 Joemel Requeza

  Cover font design copyright © 2015 Victorine Lieske

  www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com

  Dedication

  May the ageless wisdom of an Ancient Dragon

  Transform your soul.

  May you fly as high as a mighty Dragon

  To all the Islands of your life.

  And may the matchless courage of a dragonet

  Fire your heart, forever.

  From Elegy by Hualiama of Fra’anior

  Table of Contents

  Dragonfriend

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Map of the Island-World

  Chapter 1: Flying

  Chapter 2: Flicker

  Chapter 3: Storm

  Chapter 4: Caves

  Chapter 5: A Dragonet’s Pet

  Chapter 6: Forging Friendship

  Chapter 7: Waterfalls of Dragons

  Chapter 8: Within Ha’athior

  Chapter 9: Charming Monks

  Chapter 10: Master Jo’el

  Chapter 11: Avalanche

  Chapter 12: Ya’arriol Burns

  Chapter 13: Prophecy

  Chapter 14: Into Hiding

  Chapter 15: Dragon Grave

  Chapter 16: Baiting a Dragon

  Chapter 17: Kidnapping

  Chapter 18: A Dragon’s Oath

  Chapter 19: Dragonback

  Chapter 20: Ambush

  Chapter 21: Rolodia

  Chapter 22: Maroon Madness

  Chapter 23: The Longest Flight

  Chapter 24: Searching

  Chapter 25: Ants and Slaves

  Chapter 26: The Slave Mines

  Chapter 27: The Flight Home

  Chapter 28: False King

  Chapter 29: Ra’aba

  Chapter 30: The Onyx Throne

  Chapter 31: Sacrifice

  Chapter 32: Asleep with Dragons

  About the Author

  Appendix

  Map of the Island-World

  Larger size available at www.marcsecchia.com

  Chapter 1: Flying

  Twisting free FROM her manacles, Lia surged to her feet. She rapidly gathered a six-foot length of chain between her hands.

  At her sudden movement, startled oaths burst from two young soldiers assigned to their cabin. Clad in the midnight-blue of Fra’anior’s Royal Guard, the soldiers watched over Lia and Fyria, her royal sister, as a Dragonship bore them into exile–likely, to a place of execution.

  “What’re you doing?” squeaked Fyria.

  “Escaping,” said Lia.

  Eyes bulging, the soldiers whipped out their swords. One snarled, “Not by the fires of this caldera, you aren’t!”

  “Here,” said the other, crooking his finger in a crude gesture. “Little girl want to play–urk!”

  Lia lashed out with the chain as he spoke. The metal links snaked around the man’s neck. She sprang sideways, up against the Dragonship’s cabin wall. Using her captive as a counterbalance, Lia stepped briefly along the lightweight wall to avoid the first soldier’s lunge, before dropping nimbly behind him. A swift kick of her slipper-clad foot propelled the man into the corner where her Royal Highness the Princess Fyria’aliola of Fra’anior–Fyria, for short–lay in chains.

  Planting both of her feet, Lia used her full weight to spin the chained soldier about. His forehead struck a metal stanchion with a meaty smack. The soldier slumped. Unholy windrocs, that crazy manoeuvre had worked? No time to exult.

  “Aye, I’m little,” she snapped, relieving the man of his sword. “Want to play some more?”

  “Mutiny!” yelled the first soldier. “Help!”

  Lia swayed away from his flickering blade. She pirouetted into her parry with the poise of a skilled dancer. A cut appeared on her arm as if by magic. She flung her elbow upward, catching the soldier in the throat. As he choked, Lia finished him with a sharp rap of her sword pommel to the base of his skull.

  The cabin door crashed open. Half a dozen soldiers boiled into the room, led by the hard-bitten Captain of the Royal Guard, Ra’aba. “You,” he growled. “Ever the troublemaker!”

  “Traitor!” Lia spat in return. She raised her blade.

  Captain Ra’aba, called ‘the Roc’ after the windroc, a ferocious avian predator with a wingspan of up to eighteen feet, stilled his men with a gesture. “Hualiama,” he said, his scarred face twisting into a grin as he mangled her full name with great force, “Little Lia. I trained you myself. How can you possibly hope to best me?”

  She said, “I can’t. But I will protect my family–”

  “Your family?” he snorted. “You’re a royal ward–about as much a Princess as I am.” When she only raised her elfin chin as if wishing to skewer him upon its point, he added, “Everyone knows you’re an unwanted, bastard whelp of a cliff-fox the Queen took pity on.”

  Hualiama flushed hotly. “At least I’m not a worm who betrayed the people who gave him everything. Go cast yourself into a Cloudlands volcano–”

  Ra’aba drew himself up with a sneer. “You forget you’re speaking to the future King of Fra’anior, girl. Now, kneel and swear fealty, or it is I who will be casting you off this Dragonship.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Oh, little Lia, who’d stop me? A Dragon?”

  Relish twisted his lips; the harshness of his scorn unnerved her. Little Lia. The nickname she hated more than any other.

  Staring up into his flat, fulvous eyes, Hualiama realised why she had never trusted this man. Her sword-point wavered; the Roc still had not drawn his weapon. She knew how fast he was with a sword. Ra’aba had never been beaten. If the legends spoke true, no weapon had ever touched him, neither in training nor in battle.

  “Last chance,” he said. His stance bespoke nothing but absolute command and confidence. Lia tried to summon her courage back up from her boots, as the Isles saying went. “Girl, you’re fifteen summers of age. You’re a foot shorter than I am, hopelessly clumsy with a blade, and if I’m not mistaken, today’s your birthday. Choose wisely. Choose life.”

  “Just as you’re promising life to my family?”

  “Banishment,” he shrugged. “Uncomfortable and permanent, aye, but hardly deadly. After all, which Fra’aniorian Islander would accept me if I had royal blood on my hands? King Chalcion will abdicate; I shall ascend the Onyx Throne in his stead.”

  He rolled his muscular shoulders, a silent threat. “Now, haven’t you fomented enough grief for one day, Hualiama? Join me, and I’ll promise you a place in my kingdom.”

  Her family! Her little brothers! She did not care greatly for haughty, vain Fyria, but she loved her brothers and her mother, Queen Shyana, to distraction. Just that morning, the Roc’s men had staged a bloody, well-planned revolt. Lia had killed two soldiers with her own hand while protecting Princess Fyria, only to wake on Ra’aba’s Dragonship with a lump on her head and no memory of the balance of the day. Judging by the low, ruddy rays beaming in through the porthole, evening approached.

  The Dragonship flew southwest, she calculated. Had they already crossed the rim of Fra’anior’s volcanic caldera? Would his threat land her on one of the rim-Islands, such as Ha’athior, or drop her into
the Cloudlands, the realm of deadly, opaque gases which lay more than a league below the Human-inhabited Islands of her home?

  She could not beat seven elite soldiers.

  Allowing her shoulders to slump and her lower lip to quiver, she said, “You win, Ra’aba.”

  He began to nod.

  With a snap of her wrist, Lia hurled the sword at him.

  Almost, the ploy succeeded. Had the Roc not been wearing metal wristlets, or had the blade struck his body armour slightly more squarely, Ra’aba would have been gutted like a ralti sheep prepared for a spit-roast. To her dismay, the blade deflected off his left wristlet, tearing a shallow gash in the armour above his hip. Blood welled up immediately, but not much.

  Go! Lia dived for the second soldier’s blade.

  Men piled on her. Grunting, wriggling, elbows and knees thrashing, drawing their curses as she jabbed a man in the eye … the soldiers subdued her, wrenching her arms behind her back, putting a dagger to her throat. A rough hand gripped her headscarf together with a handful of her pale hair, jerking her head upright, forcing her to meet the Roc’s gaze.

  Ra’aba glared at her, the set of his scarred mouth so draconic, that Hualiama pictured him changing into a Dragon and lunging at her, talons poised to rend her flesh. His fingers explored the cut at his side. Ra’aba wiped the blood across his mouth, sucking the crimson off his fingertips with cold deliberation. Murder blazed in his eyes.

  The Captain growled, “Fine. Let her go. Give the girl a weapon.”

  “My Lord Captain …”

  “Give her a cursed sword!”

  Hualiama shook off the hands holding her, tasting blood in her mouth, too. A sword hilt pressed into her fingers. Her heartbeat raced off over the Cloudlands. She confronted the man said to be the most dangerous swordsman in the kingdom. He was tall and heavily muscled, yet possessed of a lithe elegance of movement that had always struck Lia as improbably feline. The burns splashed across his left cheek, running from his eye down across the corner of his mouth, flamed reddish-purple beneath the inimical fires of his narrowed eyes. He meant to kill her.

  This was no way to spend a birthday. Mercy.

  As if echoing her thoughts aloud, Fyria whispered, “Mercy, Ra’aba. Please. She’s just a girl.”

  He snarled, “Nobody cuts the Roc and lives to tell the tale!”

  Captain Ra’aba’s attack jarred Lia so powerfully that her teeth clacked together. He was a supremely skilled swordsman, but he hacked at her in a demented fury, by sheer strength beating her backward across the cabin. Always, Hualiama felt graceless with a blade in hand. Jerking this way and that, she kept Ra’aba out with a flurry of desperate parries. Great Islands, how could any man be possessed of such demonic strength? The Roc pounded Lia to her knees.

  “Get up!” His finger crooked beneath her nose. “Fight me, you little dragonet. Fight!”

  When Lia rose, he smashed the blade out of her numb fingers.

  Fyria shrieked, drawing Ra’aba’s attention for a fraction of a second, allowing Lia to kick off the wall and upset his balance. As she darted past, the Captain swivelled and slashed at her unprotected back. The blade bit deep.

  Hualiama arched in agony, grabbing for the air, for a wall, for the mail shirt of a soldier who kept her upright with a rough thrust of his forearm. The soldier spun her about; Lia’s green eyes flicked to Ra’aba, who bowed slightly, his expression turned unaccountably gentle. Lia wondered if he had decided to end his lesson. Had his pride not been satisfied by that cruel cut? She felt nothing, as though the nerves had been amputated so suddenly, they had been unable to signal her brain. Then, the muscles of his jawline hardened. Lia stifled a sob. Warmth dripped down her back, each drop a wordless testimony to the gravity of her wound.

  “Pick up the sword, girl,” he ground out.

  Several soldiers sighed, but no-one lifted a finger to help her. Fyria’s sobs from the corner betrayed what they all knew. Stiffly, Lia retrieved the fallen sword. She wondered if Ra’aba’s stroke had chipped chunks of bone off her spine. Her flesh flapped loosely, slapping against her back with a wet, plopping sound. Now, the pain roared through her like a hunting Dragon bellowing his paralysing challenge. Whiteness crashed over her vision. Lia pressed against the wall to keep from falling. Stand. Lock the knees. Fight!

  She turned to face Ra’aba, despite the nadir of pain devastating her body. She raised her blade with a supreme effort. Lia hissed, “I’m ready.”

  The Roc nodded, raising his blade to his forehead in an ironic salute to her bravery. He said, “Perhaps it is better this way.”

  Lia stumbled into the attack, swinging her blade in looping blow, so sluggish that it seemed she fought underwater. Captain Ra’aba had no such difficulty. Sidestepping adroitly, he punched his left fist into her stomach.

  His hand clasped a dagger.

  The pain cut her in half. It felt as though her spine had been severed, for Lia lost all feeling in her legs. Only Captain Ra’aba’s iron grip held her upright, folded over the impaling blade. The sword clattered to the floor. Her lungs heaved for air. With each breath pain shot up her spine and tore into her skull like a blood-frenzied Dragon’s claws.

  “Foolish girl,” he said.

  She wheezed, “Why?”

  Ignoring her, Ra’aba nodded at two of his troops. “You two. Throw this piece of trash overboard.”

  His voice echoed as though he had shouted down a darkening tunnel. She had to move, to speak, but she was powerless. Lia knew she had to save her family. How odd, an inner voice said. Her life was not meant to end like this. As the Captain dragged her toward the doorway, spitting furiously at his unwilling soldiers, she met Fyria’s tear-filled eyes. The Princess must have thought being hauled out of the Palace in chains was the worst imaginable fate.

  A brutal education.

  Outside the cabin, the warm, fragrant winds of her beloved Fra’anior ruffled her hair. The Island-World seemed ablaze in fresh and miraculous colours, as though a Dragon’s breath infused all with mysterious wisps of white-golden fire, and in the slowing of time between her heartbeats, Hualiama understood not only that there was magic in the world, but that it pervaded everything she perceived, touched and smelled. The taste on her tongue was its fiery signature. She breathed, and an inrush of fire seared her spirit, yet conversely, brought an unexpected sense of serenity. The fire cleansed without consuming, a touch of love rather than torment. Was this a memory, or a fragment of insight garnered as her soul readied itself for an eternal flight?

  Inanely, Lia realised that the soldiers had torn her headscarf away. She was improperly dressed.

  The Roc lifted her five feet and two inches frame with ease. As he manhandled her toward the safety railing which lined the gantry beneath the Dragonship’s hundred-and-fifty-foot hydrogen balloon, Lia saw the unmistakable profile of Ha’athior Island’s double volcanic cone abaft their starboard beam. Ahead and several miles below lay a tiny side-volcano, nestled against its parent like a Dragon hatchling taking comfort against an enormous mother’s flank. After that? Crimson-tinged Cloudlands lapped unbroken from the Islands to the horizon’s skirts, a deathly carpet clothed in immeasurable, brooding majesty.

  Strange. She had always wanted to experience Dragon flight.

  The touch of cool metal against her back provoked a sudden, final outpouring of strength. Reaching behind her, Hualiama caught her long braid in her fingertips.

  “Any birthday wishes, little Lia?” chuckled Captain Ra’aba.

  “Rot in–” she inhaled sharply, choking on blood “–a Cloudlands hell.” Reaching up, Lia jabbed her three-inch long, razor-sharp hairpin into his windpipe, several inches below his left jawbone.

  He wheezed, “You …”

  As Ra’aba recoiled, the flailing of his arms tumbled her over the edge. Lia screamed endlessly as she fell through the ruddy beams of a perfect Fra’aniorian suns-set.

  Chapter 2: Flicker


  WHEN a Scream split the early evening sky, a dragonet lurking nearby almost spilled his mouthful of lemur intestines. What? He hated to be distracted from the spoils of his hunt. His green eyes narrowed against the glare of the sky-fires, the eyes of the Great Dragon which seared the world with their unrelenting gaze. One of those two-legged ground-creepers was trying to fly? Loops of grey intestines dangled either side of his jaw as he gaped at this spectacle. The creature thrashed its spindly, useless appendages as it plummeted from one of their fat flying balloons.

  How awkward and ungainly! Imagine trying to fly with no wings?

  A premonition prickled his scales. The dragonet’s mirthful gurgle snagged in his throat, replaced by a hissing stream of fire. Wrongness. The thin wail of the creature’s terror.

  Before he knew it, Flicker sprang off the obsidian boulder he had adopted as his table, knocking his favourite meal into a patch of nearby jiista-berry bushes. He flapped his wings madly, taking him over a rocky outcropping before a neat flip upended him. Tail jutting skyward, he chased the creature down the four-mile vertical cliff which demarcated the south-western periphery of Ha’athior Island. Faster! Pump the wings! In seconds he whipped by acres of lush overhanging trees, a dozen dark-mouthed caves and a flight of red dragonets practising their song-dance of praise to the Magma Dragon, which roared beneath the roots of their Island.

  At two and a half feet in wingspan, and just under two feet from muzzle to tail-spike, Flicker was no unusual size for a dragonet of his nine summers of age, but his smoky green colour was unique amongst his kin. His egg-mother certainly thought him very strange, especially how he studied the ways of the creatures above the cliffs. It’s dangerous for dragonets up there, she scolded him. The two-legs put dragonets in metal cages.

  What a horror!

  But the mighty Dragons of the mountain peaks sang to his spirit, and the doings of the two-legs were endlessly fascinating. How could such stupid, flightless creatures force metal and stone to bend to their will? They made absurd squiggles on animal-skin scrolls, and were so hopeless at hunting, they had to keep giant ralti sheep penned up next to their stone warrens. They travelled with their clumsy flying balloons and fought other Human warrens with metal sticks, instead of working together under a warren-mother’s wise guidance.