was an awareness of breath wheezing in her lungs, of life’s fires spun in ethereal filaments about the chalice of her soul, of a thinness of spirit as though she had indeed been stretched across time and space. Lia bit back a groan. Aye, four limbs. A chest still whole, not quarried away by Dragon fire. She felt … normal.
Perhaps normal people did not need to pat themselves down as if they expected to find a few vital pieces missing. Sitting up, Hualiama pensively took in the silent, deserted caldera. Judging by the shadows, most of the day had passed. Had she imagined it?
“Right, dust the knees. Be off with you, Island girl.”
Before the Dragons found her. Before … she scanned the caldera floor. Lia bit her fist, stifling a cry. Bones. All that was left of Amaryllion, were bones as black as he had been in life. A ribcage she could have flown a full-sized Dragonship into with ease. A skull five hundred feet long. The paw upon which she had danced, lay beneath his chin as though the Dragon were only captivated by an unfathomable Ancient Dragon meditation. Gone. Finally … departed. And with him, the prodigious magic of his kind. What did he mean by passing his mantle on to a Human girl?
Could she believe that something of Amaryllion lived on in her, as he had intimated?
Farewell, Island-biter.
A bittersweet chuckle quivered her lips. He was no Land Dragon–just a titchy Ancient Dragon. Shaking her tender skull with care, Hualiama turned deliberately on her heel, and re-entered the Island.
Two hours’ steady hiking brought her to the place where Amaryllion had lain for so long. Stumbling across one of his scales, Lia decided to roll it up to the small stone pedestal where she and Flicker used to sit and converse with the Ancient Dragon. As she sweated and groaned over shifting the seven-foot diameter black platter of Dragon scale-armour up the slope, the wind lamented with desolate mien through the now-empty halls of Amaryllion’s abode. The hours she had spent in this cave! Learning, chatting, laughing, singing and being instructed in Dragon lore by Flicker and Amaryllion, Dragonkind’s diametric opposites in size yet kindred spirits in their love of legend and fable, and in their caring for a vulnerable Human waif.
All that was left was to cherish memories fled to the everlasting fires of the Dragonkind.
The crystals above lit the cave almost to a daylight brightness, brilliant and magical. She rubbed her arms. There was a special quality about Ha’athior, a sense of the nascent, as though anything imaginable could emerge from the chrysalis of possibility. What? Lia knew she would not seize her destiny by standing in this cave, yet she tarried.
She regarded her reflection in the polished, slightly glittering surface of the scale once she had set it against the pedestal. Serious greenish-blue eyes stared back at Lia from the pearlescent black surface, as though reflected upon a starry night sky. Shadowed, smoky eyes. Wells of mystery framed in an elfin face, the eyes a fraction larger than might be expected, giving her a waiflike appearance that earned itself a kick of her foot in the sand and a snort, “Islands’ sakes, girl, you fought Dragons! Rode Dragonback! What’s bitten you now?”
Was this the price of forgetting six years of her life?
She should not blame the Ancient Dragon. Aye, he had done wrong. But who knew if those powers that sought her, the prophetic, Dragonish powers, those fey and greedy watchers of whom Amaryllion had warned, might have located and destroyed a Human girl before she was prepared for whatever burden of fate the future held?
Zing! Her Nuyallith blades sprang free of their sheaths. She remembered! Forms and patterns of combat, grounded in dance, flowed like the wind caressing an Island’s curves. At the speed of thought, the matched blades cut through the air. Blades forged in Dragon fire, as supple as her limbs yet far stronger. Form upon form. All that she
Perhaps normal people did not need to pat themselves down as if they expected to find a few vital pieces missing. Sitting up, Hualiama pensively took in the silent, deserted caldera. Judging by the shadows, most of the day had passed. Had she imagined it?
“Right, dust the knees. Be off with you, Island girl.”
Before the Dragons found her. Before … she scanned the caldera floor. Lia bit her fist, stifling a cry. Bones. All that was left of Amaryllion, were bones as black as he had been in life. A ribcage she could have flown a full-sized Dragonship into with ease. A skull five hundred feet long. The paw upon which she had danced, lay beneath his chin as though the Dragon were only captivated by an unfathomable Ancient Dragon meditation. Gone. Finally … departed. And with him, the prodigious magic of his kind. What did he mean by passing his mantle on to a Human girl?
Could she believe that something of Amaryllion lived on in her, as he had intimated?
Farewell, Island-biter.
A bittersweet chuckle quivered her lips. He was no Land Dragon–just a titchy Ancient Dragon. Shaking her tender skull with care, Hualiama turned deliberately on her heel, and re-entered the Island.
Two hours’ steady hiking brought her to the place where Amaryllion had lain for so long. Stumbling across one of his scales, Lia decided to roll it up to the small stone pedestal where she and Flicker used to sit and converse with the Ancient Dragon. As she sweated and groaned over shifting the seven-foot diameter black platter of Dragon scale-armour up the slope, the wind lamented with desolate mien through the now-empty halls of Amaryllion’s abode. The hours she had spent in this cave! Learning, chatting, laughing, singing and being instructed in Dragon lore by Flicker and Amaryllion, Dragonkind’s diametric opposites in size yet kindred spirits in their love of legend and fable, and in their caring for a vulnerable Human waif.
All that was left was to cherish memories fled to the everlasting fires of the Dragonkind.
The crystals above lit the cave almost to a daylight brightness, brilliant and magical. She rubbed her arms. There was a special quality about Ha’athior, a sense of the nascent, as though anything imaginable could emerge from the chrysalis of possibility. What? Lia knew she would not seize her destiny by standing in this cave, yet she tarried.
She regarded her reflection in the polished, slightly glittering surface of the scale once she had set it against the pedestal. Serious greenish-blue eyes stared back at Lia from the pearlescent black surface, as though reflected upon a starry night sky. Shadowed, smoky eyes. Wells of mystery framed in an elfin face, the eyes a fraction larger than might be expected, giving her a waiflike appearance that earned itself a kick of her foot in the sand and a snort, “Islands’ sakes, girl, you fought Dragons! Rode Dragonback! What’s bitten you now?”
Was this the price of forgetting six years of her life?
She should not blame the Ancient Dragon. Aye, he had done wrong. But who knew if those powers that sought her, the prophetic, Dragonish powers, those fey and greedy watchers of whom Amaryllion had warned, might have located and destroyed a Human girl before she was prepared for whatever burden of fate the future held?
Zing! Her Nuyallith blades sprang free of their sheaths. She remembered! Forms and patterns of combat, grounded in dance, flowed like the wind caressing an Island’s curves. At the speed of thought, the matched blades cut through the air. Blades forged in Dragon fire, as supple as her limbs yet far stronger. Form upon form. All that she
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