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  Faintly, she said, “I’ve much head knowledge about Dragons, Grandion. Now I need to learn how to be one. Will you help me?”

  “I’d be honoured,” replied the Tourmaline, with an aerial genuflection of his wings.

  “I shall be a model student,” Lia joked, but the pain returned, sharper and more debilitating than before. “Aaaaah …”

  How can I help, o firesong of my soul?

  Speak. Distract me with stories. She must hold out. Siiyumiel had healed Grandion’s sight. Surely, he could heal a Dragoness of whatever strange malady had incapacitated her.

  Shortly, Grandion said, “Following the battle at the Dragon’s Bell, Azziala returned to her fortress to recoup. Many Dragonships were lost in the battle and many of her Dragon Enchanters were slain, including a number of powerful Councillors–you do understand that she sees your accomplishments and rebellion as further proof of your fitness to rule at her right hand?”

  Lia did not. Reflection gave way to pain spreading through her limbs, as thick and slow as treacle, cloying and clinging to every newfound pathway of her being. She was a Star Dragoness. Supposedly. She had touched Sapphurion with white-fire power and restored his life. Yet she could not heal herself? She must struggle. Summon the power. Fight …

  “You alone resisted the Command-hold,” the Tourmaline continued. “They could not apply the magic successfully. The Empress set to work upon you with fifty Enchanters, and with torture and drugs meant to break your mental resistance, but in a week, all they achieved was to fly headlong against the adamantine fortress of your mind. They lost a further eleven of their strongest and fittest to your fires. Now, Sapphurion and I are commanded to find healing for you. The Empress threatens to use your kin and the lives of all Dragons against you, should you deviate from her plans.”

  She gasped, “Dying is not an option?”

  “Our fates depend on your continued health,” Grandion confirmed.

  “Affurion?”

  “The Lost Islands Dragons remain at large. Azziala seems content to make her preparations. But many Dragonkind have been sacrificed to raise up new Councillors and to clothe her Dragonships.”

  Her eyes no longer responded. “Elki? Sao … oh Grandion, I burn …”

  An eruption of agony knotted her limbs and wings. Hualiama faded as if she had fallen into the Cloudlands. Darkness conquered her heart, soul and mind.

  * * * *

  She walked amidst stars. So dark was the night, its blackness seemed cut of velveteen cloth. Whereas before, the stars had dazzled, now they appeared diminished, bowed over a hexagonal colonnade of milky white marble … she knew. She ran, holding nothing back. Above, the stars bowed over a wide bed covered in pristine white linens, stooping to chime elegiac starsong over the girl slumbering there.

  “No!” Lia sprinted up the white marble steps to the bedside. “Oh no, Human girl …”

  She lay so still. A wealth of wavy white-blonde hair tumbled over the pillows, lacklustre, blending in to the sheets. Her skin was snow rather than her native Fra’aniorian tan.

  “What have I done? Wake up. Oh mercy, wake up. Please, my darling petal. Wake.”

  At one level, Hualiama’s mind whirled between amazement at calling herself ‘Human girl’, and the incongruity of her identical twin inhabiting her dreams once more. She touched her own blue tresses, thinking, ‘This is me? Who am I?’ But far more urgent was the realisation that the bones of the sleeper’s knuckles, where her hand lay carelessly outflung upon the linens, pressed against her pale, almost translucent flesh like jagged peaks seeking to worm their way through the thinnest of parchment; that her exposed left cheekbone described a sepulchral slash above the hollow of her cheek. She had aged forty years, appearing … withered. Just the husk, the sweet youth of twenty-one summers, burned away.

  Lia bit her knuckles. “Oh, petal. Help me understand. Why are you–we–dying? What did I do wrong? All I ever wanted was the chance to spread my wings.” A sob shook her frame. “Please. Don’t fly to the fires, not yet. We must be together. That’s our destiny, don’t you see?”

  She stroked the other girl’s fingers, feeling the skin crinkle like aged scrolleaf. Bending, she tested the girl’s breath against her cheek. Aye. Still alive, but her flame guttered. She murmured encouragement, but her other-self was too deeply unconscious to respond. Was her soul divided? Damaged? Cleft in twain, as the balladeers might enrobe this ruin in verse? How was it that she saw herself, and spoke to herself, in this manner? Pensively, she tried to summon magic to ease the girl’s pain, and it seemed for a moment that the other-self’s breathing eased. Then, the sleeper rolled over and fixed her empty eye-sockets upward.

  “You stole my life!” rasped blonde-Hualiama.

  Lia screamed, then screamed again as the face crumbled. Black fires spurted between the cracks riven in her flesh. As the prone body exploded in flame, a great wind rose to blast heat into blue-haired Hualiama’s face. She stumbled backward and tumbled into space, before striking her head sharply against the bottom step.

  Faster than thought, she was gone.

  Chapter 2: Dying to be Reborn

  Hualiama snapped back into her Star Dragoness’ body with a visceral wrench. Gaaaaarrgggh! Her smoke–only smoke, not Dragon fire–slipped between Grandion’s curled talons, and whipped away on the breeze.

  “Awake, my beauty?”

  She coughed agonisingly. “Just about.”

  “My lecturing proved a slumberous song most irresistible?”

  His lip curled upward, exactly like a Human’s smile bar the glimmering of a few dozen fangs in that mighty maw. Dawn’s beneficent glow marred his physical beauty in no imaginable facet. In fact, the gleam of his scales was positively migraine-inducing, trapping the suns’ rays like ten thousand living prisms and reflect them back in uncountable hues of his signature tourmaline blue, a lighter lake-blue than his shell-father’s sapphire, and the daylight sky compared to Hualiama’s midnight-blue colouration with its dusting of white. She bit back a growl of discontent. Captivity had agreed with Grandion. He had no right to ponce about in ruddy draconic splendour while she resembled a tattered, moth-eaten old rug!

  “I’m moulting,” she blurted out.

  “A poor sign,” he sighed, gently stroking her spine-spikes with the tip of one talon. Lia almost leaped out of her new hide. Heavens that tickled, in a way that made her fires blush. “You’ll moult more freely when you see who’s waiting for us.”

  “We’re already there?” The tiny Dragoness peered about curiously, wishing to shake herself free of that awful dream, but she knew any shaking would introduce excruciating pain to her joints. “Grandion, this doesn’t look right. There’s the Bell, what’s left of it, but why are there mountains–oh.”

  He chuckled indulgently. Siiyumiel awaits.

  Her mistake. This was the right place. Grandion must have flown rapidly, right through the night, winging her across the breadth of the Lost Islands. Now they descended rapidly toward the Dragon’s Bell from a height she estimated at two miles above what navigators called ‘Island-level’, which in the Lost Islands was two and a quarter miles above the Cloudlands, while at her native Fra’anior, the greatest volcano in the known world, the sheer cliffs surmounted a full league in height. The bell-Island still bore the scars of the ferocious five-way battle two weeks before. The Lost Islands Dragons. Sapphurion’s forces from the Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior. The Dragon rebels under Andarraz and Razzior. Azziala’s Dragon-Haters. Grandion and his Dragon Rider, the crux of it all. Hated and hunted in equal measure. Its crown and flanks were scorched in many places, and the Bell itself–Lia hung her head–had partially slumped toward the ground, melted by a Star Dragoness’ fire.

  But the breath-stealing wonder was the Land Dragon lying asleep a quarter-league northwest of the Dragon’s Bell, dwarfing the Island.

  At rest, Siiyumiel seemed a monster washed ashore by some unimaginable Cloudlands tide. He was roughly oval in shape,
no less than a mile wide at his girth and three times that in length. Hualiama did not want to imagine how deep beneath the toxic billows his body might extend. Seven neat, regular rows of light brown peaks arrayed his stellated carapace, which struck her as solid rock rather than Dragon hide, from the smaller two hundred foot peaks around his periphery, to the towering thousand-foot summits in the centre of his back. A girl could hike amongst those mountains. His head lay hidden within his foreparts; yet even from this distance, she sensed the mighty furnaces of his magic.

  Siiyumiel was the Guardian of Wisdom of the Shell-Clan Land Dragons, according to legend, the mightiest of the Land Dragon Clans North of the Rift. Aware her jaw was dangling, catching insects, Hualiama shut her mouth slowly.

  The Island sleeps, she murmured, utterly failing to eliminate a plethora of contextual awe-indicators from her mental voice. How can any living creature be that gigantic, Grandion?

  Perhaps the friend of an Ancient Dragon might instruct a lowly Lesser Dragon in such mysteries? he sniped.

  If size counts, I am the lesser Dragon. The Tourmaline snorted an amused fireball at this sally. Emboldened, Lia added, But in sheer, wing-shivering awe, I am the greater. We promised to return. This feels right, Grandion.

  You’re trembling, little one, he trilled. Strength to your forepaws. Allow me to ease your pain, with your permission.

  Again, an implicit apology. Lia had a crazed urge to shout, ‘Who stole my Dragon?’ But perhaps the witticism was better left unspoken. Dragons tended to misinterpret Human humour, in her experience, leading to unpredictable results.

  She observed in mounting surprise as Grandion revisited a mental technique she had employed on him, soothing her pain by taking it upon himself. Blues were the most natural and adept draconic magic-users, but he made what she had sweated over appear, well, as easy as a Dragon shooting the breeze. Moreover, Lia sensed a deep intertwining of their powers, an augmentation and harmony founded in soul-togetherness, as perplexing as it was profound. Philosophical outpourings sufficient to overflow terrace lakes had been written by Human and Dragon sages regarding the advantageous qualities of marriage or long-term liaison between their respective kinds, and the draconic ascending fire-promises touched upon this notion, but nothing she could recall spoke to the unambiguous amplification of magical powers.

  Had Grandion noticed? Here was a mystery to bedazzle her fading soul.

  Thank you, my … uh, Dragonlove? Sorry, I’m not so good at endearments as yet. I’ll practice.

  His eye-fires whirled with passion and amusement as he gazed down at her. A Dragoness must to grow into her paws, we say.

  Her fey spirit had always kept a touch apart from him, she realised, a safe distance in a sense abetted by the forbidden nature of their liaison. Now she was a Star Dragoness. Her last excuse had been burned away … and it scared and thrilled her, beyond measure, to taste this new dawn in her life.

  Grandion said, “Now, I will summon the Great One. Affurion’s kin know of our arrival, but have chosen not to display their wings. And I have no doubt Azziala tests the breezes, wishing to discern if she is able to Command these Land Dragons. Her allowing us freedom–if freedom it is–cannot be without purpose. Agreed?”

  “Agreed!”

  Yet her double eyelids seemed too heavy to resist, shuttering of their own accord as Grandion’s swoop pressed her stomach–stomachs, to be accurate–against her spine, and her Dragon senses fed back the minutiae of increasing pressure and temperature. The wind’s passage over her tongue stupefied her brain with the knowledge of thousands of distinct tangs and odours and pollens and grit and gases. Awesomeness. Rolling over her in tingling waves, vital and alive, yet even the sparkling of her senses could not disguise the diminished awareness they beat against.

  Grandion’s voice rang out over the Cloudlands:

  Arise, o brother of the deeps,

  Siiyumiel-ap-Yanûk-bar-Shûgan,

  Hearken to our call!

  The beast drowsed. Yet as the Tourmaline Dragon called out a second time, Lia sensed a prodigious stirring of magic, and then a series of deafening reports KRA-KRA-KRACK!! fired against her ears in a barrage of thunder. As before, his foreparts split open to reveal the dark purple inner parts of the Land Dragon, then his scaly grey-blue head pushed out from a gap between the tipped-over mountains, revealing no less than seven great, flaming eyes arranged at even intervals around the circumference of his skull. Perfect panoramic vision, her inner engineer noted. That would be a trick, although with her Dragoness’ eyes positioned either side of her skull, her extended range of vision was giving her a decent headache. The folds of Dragon hide smoothed out with a great rustling sound as Siiyumiel’s neck extended as if fitted with invisible rollers, and the corners of his mouth, located two hundred and fifty feet either side of the awestruck Dragoness, curved upward in what was clearly a draconic smile.

  Creatures of the heights! he boomed.

  Although he remembered to modulate his voice, the force of his outcry still slugged Grandion a goodly hundred feet sideways in the air. The Lesser Dragon corrected with a low growl, his right wingtip brushing the Island as he angled for a landing beside the Bell.

  As the obligatory exchange of formal draconic greetings proceeded, Siiyumiel’s vast jaw ground to a halt a few tens of feet shy of Grandion and Hualiama, shaking the Island beneath their paws. So, the she-Dragon is revealed, he said, even more gently. She is born, the daughter of star-fire!

  Marvellous, redolent magic washed over her.

  I-I thank you, Siiyumiel, she whispered. How did you know? How did you see before any other Dragon?

  Foresight is a product of my Balance-power, he rumbled. Just as my Sight bade me tarry to witness the birth of the Star Dragoness for whom our Island-World has groaned many a season, and as I now see you, struck low … it is the song of my thread in the Balance of the Harmonies to restore you to full health. Only–he paused with the delicacy of a living behemoth–I must confess, I know not how, exactly.

  If you do not know, o Guardian of Wisdom, what hope have we? Grandion put in.

  Alastior. Thou quick-winged Son of Truth.

  Hualiama did not grasp the reference, but her companion bowed his muzzle to the ground. May my hearts ever burn bright with received honour. Now, Hualiama …

  I know. Thou art hasty, creature of the upper air, Siiyumiel chuckled, but I understand. You arrived barely in time, for her soul prepares for its eternal flight. Approach, little one, that I might touch thee with my paw.

  Hualiama froze, then blurted out in an unfortunate squeak, Uh … gently?

  No mind. The Land Dragon’s carapace dipped slightly to the South, and after a surprisingly long pause, an Island-slapper of paw appeared, tipped by a trio of blunt, metallic claws each three times longer than Grandion’s wingspan, she estimated. Whereas Grandion could encompass her curled-up Dragoness’ body in one paw, this paw could have comfortably curled around the entire Dragon’s Bell Island. Soft apricot colours infused Siiyumiel’s eye-fires as he inclined his head and tilted his talons, clearly puzzling over how to touch a hatchling-sized Dragoness without splattering her upon the rock, improbably reminding her of how the Palace servants used to deal with the seasonal invasion of charflies, which hatched as larvae in the lava flows around Fra’anior.

  Soon, they settled upon an awkward arrangement. Siiyumiel rested his paw upon its side, making a sloped roof over the two Lesser Dragons, while a clearly protective Grandion stooped beneath to press Lia against the Land Dragon’s warm, pliant hide.

  Siiyumiel’s eyes flicked from fiery to opaque as a membrane slid over them, then the foremost eye, the largest one in the centre of his forehead, brightened until it blazed white, shooting a powerful, heated beam of light upon Hualiama. Having expected to be flattened by some titanic magic, she was more than startled to see her Dragonflesh grow transparent beneath this transcendent gaze, and while she had the impression of being examined to the depth of her elemental nat
ure, Siiyumiel did not otherwise move, gesture or apparently even draw breath for the next hour.

  She itched. Fretted. Took a snap at Grandion’s lower lip when he ordered her to keep still. Of course, he lauded this behaviour as perfectly draconic.

  Lia decided that if this continued, he’d earn himself a rash of bites and bruises!

  But eventually, Siiyumiel vented an almighty, HMM!!

  By my wings! Grandion snorted, digging his talons into the bedrock to prevent them from being blown away by a gust of richly spiced wind.

  I find no defect in her draconic–

  The Tourmaline roared, Defect? This Dragoness has no defect!

  Patience, Alastior. Siiyumiel seemed amused, yet his tone communicated anxiety. The imperative to act with haste, which is anathema to bottom-dwellers, remains. The tracery of draconic pathways of fire and magic, and the aura-effects of her soul-fires, reveal no immediate physical malady one may treat by means of the physical sciences. So we will move at once to the greater and more mystical dominion of Harmony.

  Harmony? snorted Grandion.

  Lia, by contrast, was all curiosity and openness to experimentation. Harmony? Teach me, Siiyumiel.

  Knowledge must wait upon life, he reproved. I will teach thee the meditations to bring yourself into a state of Balance. Concentrate on my song, o Star Dragoness, and focus your mind upon my words. Will yourself into a state of wholeness–no, high-dweller, it is not that easy! Grandion flicked his wings in annoyance as Siiyumiel chopped off his protest at the knees. Were this enigma so straightforward, would we not this moment be taking our ease over a tasty philosophical conundrum, or learning a Star Dragoness’ insights into Harmony?

  But I know nothing. I need your teaching, Siiyumiel! Lia blurted out.