the Orange Dragon’s body language, tone of voice and even a peculiar aspect of his gaze, had reminded her of Ra’aba. Could a Dragon’s spirit or power subjugate a Human mind and inhabit a person’s living soul, making Ra’aba the mindless thrall of the Orange Dragon? She whispered, “A magic capable of binding minds.”
The Tourmaline Dragon almost tied his neck in a knot, until his nose bumped against her leg. “You speak of forbidden things,” he whispered. “Fearful powers.”
Laying her palm flat against Grandion’s nose, Lia said, “Permission for a titchy Human girl to scare a fire-breathing colossus?”
He blinked. “I’d claim with all my draconic arrogance that you can’t scare me, Hualiama, but I find entirely too many mysteries in your existence for that to resemble anything but a flight of foolishness. Speak.”
“Promise you won’t breathe fire?” She patted his nose; the dragonet helpfully tittered away as Grandion snorted uncomfortably. When he nodded, Lia summoned up Amaryllion’s words. “Brace yourself. ‘At that time, a giant comet shall streak across our skies and the balance of the Island-World shall be thrown into disarray. Old powers will fail, and a new race–the third great race of the Island-World–will rise from the shadows, a race born of magic’.”
Grandion could not have looked more stunned if she had slapped him in the muzzle with an entire Dragonship.
“Do you know of a third great race, Grandion? Do you–”
“This is deep Dragon lore, Hualiama!” he hissed, his eyes filling with ember-like orange fire in the semidarkness of a three-moons night. “How came you upon such dread knowledge?”
There were moments when Grandion seemed just like any good friend, and other times when he seemed as alien and terrible as the infamously wicked Dramagon, who legend named the father of all Red Dragons. Dramagon was said to have subjected his Human slaves to terrible experiments and torture. Hualiama was quite certain that the temptation to shorten her life at his claw-tip, quivered in his body in that instant. Pretending unconcern, she returned to working a particularly stubborn knot out of her hair, but was grateful when Flicker hopped into her lap.
The Tourmaline Dragon whispered, “By the First Eggs of the Ancient Dragons … you would fracture the very foundations of this Island with such thoughts!”
Pensively, Hualiama outlined Ra’aba’s words, that fateful evening when she had met the Nameless Man. “Ra’aba tried to murder me, or have me murdered,” she said. “He believed that would break the prophecy. Amaryllion also believes that the prophecy and I are somehow linked–and, I recall, that I might have been born somewhere in the East.”
“Not with those ears,” said Grandion. Abruptly, the tension seemed to drain from his body. “We Dragons say ‘but one egg is laid at a time’, by which we mean, events will befall us as they will. Let us focus on Ianthine and the dangers she represents. You mentioned before the need to learn Juyhallith, the way of the mind. As you know, we Blue Dragons are skilled in the ways of high magic, for example, the shield I built for you this afternoon to help you withstand the cold of our altitude, or the concealing magic to hide your presence–never mind, those matters have already passed beneath our wings. I know a few Juyhallith techniques and will teach you, if you wish.”
Hualiama swallowed. How could she trust a Dragon to meddle in her mind? “What must I do?”
“Describe at length how astonishingly handsome a dragonet I am,” Flicker put in.
Mustering her courage, Lia raised her chin to meet Grandion’s gaze without recourse to her natural diffidence. “Dragon?”
Grandion’s grin seemed especially draconic as he said, “You must make yourself vulnerable.”
* * * *
Over the following two days, Grandion and his companions winged northwest to Rolodia Island, enjoying a stiff following breeze. Hualiama trained at shielding her thoughts from casual ‘borrowing’, as the Tourmaline Dragon called it, while they approached the broad, shallow oval of Rolodia Island from the air. The locals liked to name the Isle the ‘Lake of Jade’, referring to the colour of the terrace lake waters which surrounded the entirety of the Island, four tiers in all, and the densely vegetated interior, which ranged from tall jungles to towering bamboo forests.
Grandion landed stealthily near Rolodia’s only town at the southerly tip of the Island in the early afternoon. Reasoning that either of her draconic companions would attract too much attention, Lia convinced them that she enter the town alone to purchase herself a bow and a