Dragonsoul Read online

  Dragonsoul

  Book 3 of Dragonfriend

  By Marc Secchia

  Copyright © 2016 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

  Cover art copyright © 2016 Joemel Requeza and Marc Secchia

  Map by Joshua Smolders

  Copyright © 2016 Marc Secchia & Joshua Smolders

  [email protected]

  Cover font design copyright © 2016 Victorine Lieske

  www.bluevalleyauthorservices.com

  Dedication

  Love is a Dragonsoul’s white-fires, my shell-son,

  No fire burns brighter; none purer,

  For white-fires are everlastingly,

  Quintessentially,

  Draconic.

  From A Dragon’s Word to his Shell-Son by Sapphurion of Gi’ishior

  Map of the Lost Islands

  Chapter 1: Awakening to Death

  “SHe’s DYINg.”

  Grandion’s words were brittle, laced with dark-fires. They pierced Hualiama’s awareness like whetted scalpels. Grievous. Wounding. Shocking her toward full consciousness.

  “You cannot restrain your daughter this way, Empress.” Sapphurion’s deeper, smokier tones, torrid with anger.

  “That thing is not my daughter!” Azziala hissed.

  Silence pooled about Lia, as thick as congealed blood.

  Dying? Even her mother’s hatred paled in the light of the Tourmaline Dragon’s distress. How could she be dying? Last she remembered–mercy! A violent battle above the Dragon’s Bell, falling, burning in the crucible of Razzior’s incandescent Dragon fire … and then, a miracle of claw and scale. Or had she dreamed of a place to which a soul alone could travel?

  The Empress of the Lost Islands snarled, “Even now, the lizard awakes. Remember our bargain, Grandion. Six days to report, one week to recover. The comet presages the rising of Dramagon’s Elect. This is the dawn of our long-overdue vengeance upon the Island-World!”

  Footsteps tapped rapidly into the distance as the Empress departed.

  Suddenly, huge nostrils snuffled at her neck. The startling delicacy of that touch raised the most incredible frissons of sensation throughout her body. Hualiama would have giggled, save that she felt utterly debilitated; as if a rolling Island had slowly pulverised the length of her spine. The battle must have just finished. Where was she? By the nearby, cave-contained echoes upon stone, she suspected Azziala’s lair at Chenak Island, the most westerly of the Lost Islands. How had she returned here? Her skull felt as if it were clamped around a granite boulder; every thought dragged through a wearisome quagmire of pain.

  How does she resist so strongly? Grandion wondered in telepathic Dragonish. All those drugs, the battering of fifty Enchanters augmenting her mother’s powers, and Lia’s mind remained inviolable–yet they stole all of our secrets, shell-father. They ripped us apart like a Dragon stripping flesh from bone!

  You must arise, o Princess of Fra’anior, said Sapphurion, nuzzling her flank. Quick-wings!

  Grandion said, Princess? No longer.

  A royal ward, aye. Far too much nuisance-value to be a real princess. As surely as the twin suns’ rising, her adoptive father King Chalcion would disown her for outright rebellion, not to mention breaking his ribs. He had vowed to renounce her often enough over the years. Now she had learned the identities of her true birth-father and birth-mother, each as hateful and power-hungry as the other, and she remembered Azziala slaying Ra’aba, the Roc, with her own hand. Then, the mystery shrouding Hualiama’s existence in the womb. A child, dead for two days, returned to life. Impossible.

  Yet here she lay, her nostrils filled with the fusty odours of a well-used rug.

  Hualiama, said the Dragon Elder, nudging her again. By my wings, Grandion, I’d give all the jewels of Gi’ishior for the healing powers of my Qualiana this hour. Take her quickly to the Land Dragon, shell-son. Secure the healing she needs.

  So that Azziala might employ her powers in the annihilation of all who oppose her planned conquest? Yet the nuances of Grandion’s Dragonish betrayed his deep concern.

  Focus on the mission, Sapphurion growled.

  Aye. In her mind’s eye, Lia saw Grandion’s huge, spiky blue head nodding. My Dragonlove will find a way. That is her gifting. The one power even the Empress of the Dragon-Haters cannot possibly oppose.

  Right then, Lia knew she could not have opposed pollen floating on a Fra’aniorian zephyr.

  Unnh … Grandion?

  Her drawn-out mental groan elicited bugles and exclamations of delight from the male Dragons, but she had never felt so peculiar. Her body felt unaccountably heavy, while her belly enlivened to a fizzing, effervescing sensation that made Lia imagine having swallowed a nest of vexed hornets. Grandion and Sapphurion’s fussing caused constellations of iridescent fire to explode behind her unyielding eyelids. Her spinal column, especially at its base near her tailbone, tingled with exotic fervour, giving rise to an incongruous compulsion to dance over thunderclouds and slide down rainbows singing at the top of her lungs.

  Clearly, her brain had been pickled at length in a barrel of berry-wine.

  Sapphurion urged, Dragon-swift now, shell-son. Snaffle the Dragonfriend into your paw. Wing away ere the Hater changes her mind.

  Talon-tips prodded her belly. Another paw rolled her carefully onto her side. Draconic warmth. Soft, yet steely, Grandion’s well-known paw enfolded her limbs and ribs. The cinnamon-vanilla redolence of his hide tickled her nostrils with forbidden scents.

  Mind her fragile wings, hissed the Tourmaline.

  Wings? Lia chortled aloud. Silly Dragons. Her overlarge eyes fluttered open, strangely unfocussed, lighting upon a world swirling and cascading with white-fire filigrees. Astonishing. Oh, and a large blue nose hove into view, slap between her eyes–achoo!

  As she sneezed, clouds of sulphurous white smoke spurted from her nostrils. Lia gasped, Oh no!

  * * * *

  It had not been a dream.

  Clasped in the Tourmaline’s protective paw, the bewildered hatchling Dragoness was but an observer as Grandion charged up a short ramp, flitted between a massive set of sliding granite doors, and launched out over the void. Suns-beams caressed her flesh. They gilded the male Dragon’s gemstone beauty as his great body stretched out upon the breeze, blotting out the sky above, for Grandion measured over ninety feet from muzzle to tail-spike, and one hundred and ten feet across his fully extended wingtips. He powered upward into frigid skies the fathomless blue of a terrace lake seen by moonlight, swiftly surmounting the snow-rimed crown of Chenak Island. Lia’s vision wobbled violently before settling upon the twin suns dipping gingerly into the vast, burnt-umber Cloudlands ocean stretching West of the Lost Isles; at once, her secondary nictitating membranes flicked into place, filtering the powerful glare.

  Her gaze dipped to goggle myopically at her unfamiliar body. Flying ralti sheep–well, not exactly a woolly bleater, not in a million Island-World dawns. She saw scales of a blue as fathomless as the colours crowning the evening sky. Four neat, reptilian limbs sprouted from her svelte torso. Five perfect little talons adorned each forepaw, slightly bigger on her hind feet. Three talons pointed forward, splayed more widely than a Human hand, while two opposing ‘thumbs’ completed a fantastically dextrous Dragon’s paw. Lia flicked her wings in mounting astonishment. She gaped at her flanks, as sleek as any rainbow trout.

  Only under a Mystic Moon could this be real.

  The Tourmaline Dragon’s fire-eyes lit upon her, and Hualiama quivered beneath the tenor of his regard. All t
welve feet of her, right down to her … tail. What a wondrously weird notion.

  Awake, o Dragonsong of my soul? inquired Grandion, ardently.

  “I’m a Dragon? Still?”

  His brow-ridges crinkled with amusement. Switching to Island Standard, he rumbled, “Most Dragonkind share a similar experience every morn, Hualiama. Aye, by my wings, you remain a Star Dragoness. Your dreams have taken wing. By Fra’anior’s breath alone! Never in the history of this Island-World has such a transformation clothed Human flesh in draconic splendour. You are–” his voice descended into a husky splutter “–indescribable. I … I understand at last. Our oaths, our fire-promises; all is made whole. The prophecy is fulfilled by such perfection, a Dragon’s hearts must out-soar the very stars.”

  A million words could have been spoken. All that was perverse and forbidden about a liaison between a Human and a Dragon, all their suppressed feelings and uncertainty and terror, had perished in Razzior’s mighty fires, only to arise phoenix-like from the ashes, arrayed in a glorious newness of possibility. She was a mere hatchling in size, but fully Dragoness. Undeniably, wholly, the embodiment of a draconic fire-soul. Yet was this the whole story? The prophecy Grandion alluded to, which Amaryllion the Ancient Dragon had uttered, foresaw the advent of a third great race upon the stage of Island-World life. A third power would rise to balance that of Humankind and Dragonkind, ushering in a time of imbalance, and foreshadowing the overthrow of ancient powers. She was the harbinger of this age. Lia quashed her fears. Of this, she could not speak as yet. Let his joy shine unsullied.

  Tentatively, she inquired, “Indescribable … in the best possible way?”

  How he laughed! His guffaws propelled them toward the brightening stars in a series of great lurches, and when Lia managed to focus her eyes past his body to the open skies, she saw a marvellous sight, a brilliant comet blazing right across the midline of the Blue Moon, its major tail trailing more than halfway across the sky, while a second, smaller white tail spun off at a narrow angle. The comet of prophecy? It must be, this new portent.

  As she gazed at the diamond-brilliant phenomenon, the cosmic white-fires shifted like sweeping veils to reveal a great white Dragon sleeping in the comet’s heart. Cold. Callous. Eloquent of all that was formidable and supremely dominant about the Ancient Dragonkind. So desperately soul-shadowing was that apparition, Lia gasped and squeezed her eyes shut. The Tourmaline immediately comforted her with a mellifluous word, saying:

  A life birthed in fire,

  Star Dragons sing starsong over her cradle.

  She whispered, “The prophecy is coming to fruition.”

  The Dragon made a low, agreeable hum. “Let us not speak of prophecies, my third heart. Let us simply be two Dragons, enjoying the freedom of the skies together.”

  Two Dragons? Even those simple words triggered mystical white-fires which cascaded afresh across her vision, an insight into the fabled elemental fires of the draconic creation legend; the belief that all matter, in its most elemental form, was comprised of white-fires. White for order, truth, and love, for the most desirable manifestations of dragonhood. Dark-fires represented chaos, depression, and eternal obliteration, symbolic of all that Dragons feared most.

  When she ventured another glance, she saw only a comet.

  All mysticism and lore aside, Lia did not exactly feel stuffed to the eyeballs with the mischief of a frisky dragonet. She wanted to shift her position in Grandion’s right forepaw, but the slightest movement produced unbearable pain. Was this what he meant? Her wings felt weighed down with lead, and her hearts-beat was sluggish and laboured. Dragons were meant to be full of vim and fire and irascibility. It was all Lia could do to hold up her head.

  “Grandion, why did you say I’m dying?”

  His heavy sigh expelled many cubic feet of creamy, chthonic smoke from his nostrils, and caused him to bounce in the chill evening air. “Because two weeks have passed–”

  “Two weeks? Two–eighteen days, Grandion? You jest …”

  His reflexive growl simmered down. “Two weeks ago, the Empress of the Lost Islands laid all Dragons low. Last week she allowed Sapphurion and me to wake from the Command-hold. Since then, we have plumbed every ounce of lore and skill we possess to discern the cause of your illness and keep you alive, but to no avail. Your eye-fires grow dim. Your breath weakens. Your claws and hide are losing their natural sheen.”

  “I … I don’t understand.”

  “I drove a bargain with the Empress–a vile, soul-shadowing … necessity.” He spat a stream of fire from the corner of his mouth. “I speak of her, and of my fierce yet worthless pride. You crossed the Island-World for a blind Dragon! You, Dragonfriend, wooed and battled and tore a defeated Tourmaline from the place of uttermost null-fires, and gifted him life. How could my fires answer these deeds, I roared? How despicably did I treat you in return?”

  His grieving thunder split the skies, rolling over the archway crowning the peak of Chenak Island. The Place of Reaving where Hualiama had suffered, frozen solid, and become blue-star, the embodiment of her name. Was that the moment Dragon fire had entered her soul?

  Surely, she had lived with the fire since before her birth.

  The White and Blue Moons, waxing to fullness, stood almost shoulder-to-shoulder in the darkling skies to shine their baleful gaze across the Lost Islands, which loomed above the pallid Cloudlands like linked bracelets, two loops of Islands joined by northern and southern ‘bridges’ across the Buffer Zone, that symbol of eternal enmity and the battleground between Human-controlled territory to the West and Dragon territory to the East. The Islands were geographically anomalous in many ways, but none more so than in terms of climate. The Human Isles were bitterly cold, caught in the frozen grip of an almost-permanent midwinter, while the Dragon Isles, despite their extreme northern latitude, remained balmy in comparison. Knowledge gleaned from the Dragon-Haters’ extraordinary mind-meld informed Lia that most crops were husbanded in sheltered valleys near thermal springs or vents, while most Human communities relied on artificially warmed underground strongholds for survival.

  Bitterly, the Dragon hissed, “We were as Human babes in the Enchantress’ paw! Ralti sheep! The Empress snuffed us out, our fires, our life. You alone defied your mother, even drugged at twenty times the permitted dose, despite being beaten and tortured–your fires burned anyone who dared enter your mind, more draconic than the mightiest of the Dragonkind. Listen to my dark-fires jealousy, Hualiama! Listen!”

  “I listen,” she growled back at once, stung beyond forbearance. “I hear Grandion the great-hearted–”

  “Who is he?”

  “The one for whom I burned!”

  GRRROOOAARRR!! Yet the thunderous crack of his Storm-power betrayed deeper emotions–relief. Amazement. Delight that she suspected was centred upon the scrap of draconic life he clutched in his paw.

  Infusing her voice with a snap of command, she said, “Situational assessment, Dragon? Brief me.”

  He gave her a quirky look, mouth agape like a hound with its tongue lolling. “By the fiery pits of Fra’anior, this must be the smallest Dragon Elder I have ever beheld.”

  “Don’t try my patience, Tourmaline!”

  “Or you’ll break out in song and dance?”

  “The deadly dancer?” She smiled wryly, agog at the unfamiliar sensation of lips stretching over a hundred needle-sharp fangs. “As a Dragon, that’ll all be different now.”

  “You danced into my hearts, Human girl.”

  Hualiama did not point out the obvious, but the slight hitch in Grandion’s breathing told her he had noticed his mistake. No, Human no longer. That truth had flown into the night. However, he was being awfully sweet. Was this a result of the liberation they had both craved for so long? Freedom at last to enjoy togetherness and romance, even if their time must be shadowed by an Island-shaking war to come. How could she stop her delightful birth-mother from abusing her daughter’s powers in conquest of the Island-World?r />
  If daughter she was. Lia wished she understood. How could a person spring from a Human womb, yet experience lucid eggling-dreams? And oh, she remembered the impish blue-haired Hualiama she had discovered within her, who had promised that after a surprise, all would become clear. Fat, waddling chance of that, she snorted inwardly. Plenty of surprise. And all the clarity of a sultry volcanic thunderstorm rolling across the twenty-seven Islands of her native Fra’anior Cluster. Her eyes rested speculatively on the twin holes from which a Dragon’s breath of uttermost winter had emerged to bathe her bones in the Reaving. She had lost her necklace down there, the simple thong upon which she had threaded the White Dragoness’ scale. Mamafire. The eggling had called the White Dragoness, who had somehow enraged Fra’anior himself, Mamafire.

  Eggling and mother-Dragon had protected each other, impossibly, across time and space. So little made sense. A dream, an echo of Amaryllion’s power within her? It must be.

  Grandion said, No. I forbid you to seek that necklace. Far too dangerous an undertaking for a hatchling.

  How did you know? Smoke boiled past her nose. Wow.

  The direction of your gaze, he said.

  That was the one token I possessed of my past, she replied, painfully aware of how much the nuances of her Dragonish revealed.

  A token, he said. My duty is to protect your hatchling-life. Forgive me, but I cannot allow it.

  Forgive? Allow? Hualiama’s head shook involuntarily, sparking spasms of pain in her torso. Could she so much as shake a wingtip? Perhaps Grandion was right. He was a changed Dragon, almost Human in the tenor of some of his emotions. What traditionalist firebrand of a Dragon, such as Razzior or Andarraz the Green, would ever apologise or ask forgiveness? It was simply … undraconic. Now her belly-fires churned alarmingly. Her Grandion was more. A thinking, compassionate Dragon. Insightful in his outlook and ways. He had never been willing to simply charge through life without reflecting upon his actions, though he had made mistakes and did not always apologise immediately, he always returned to those events, chewing them like a Dragon sharpening his fangs on a meaty bone.