drilling going on,” he rumbled, showing Lia at least fifty fangs.
“No drilling here.” Aye, having a Dragon’s hot breath ruffling one’s hair did serve to stress a point, Hualiama thought. “Come on, Flicker. The day grows old.”
“Not as old as I feel,” said the dragonet, stirring with a groan.
“Teach you to chase minnows all afternoon!”
Flicker chuckled, “I like playing with my food.”
Nevertheless, the dragonet squirmed up onto his paws. He was now able to touch his injured hind paw to the ground, at least for short periods of time. Dragons healed at a phenomenal rate, Hualiama had observed. Just witness the wounds Grandion had taken before Yulgaz the Brown trapped him in that cave! His hide showed no trace of scarring. Was this the fabled Blue Dragon power of healing? Then again, the Red Dragoness Qualiana had healed her burns amazingly well.
From Rolodia Island it was a straight shot–using Flicker’s words–to the northern tip of the Spits, which lay south of a smaller Island called Noxia. Above the Spits were many other Islands Hualiama knew only from map and fable–Remia and Rorbis, the forested behemoth of Yorbik, the silk-producing Island of Helyon, the rugged beauty of faraway Immadia, and to the East, Herliss, Kaolili and the Lost Islands, where a war raged between Dragons and Humans. It was said that from the Lost Islands one could see the edge of the world. Now that would be a place to travel to, one day!
Riding Dragonback, all Hualiama needed to do was to sit tight and enjoy her companion’s freedom to roam the Island-World’s skies.
Remembering the blessing Ja’al had spoken, Lia leaned over Grandion as he spread his wings for take-off, and said, “Let us burn the heavens together, mighty Dragon.”
A shiver ran through Grandion’s muscles. Raising his head, the Tourmaline Dragon bugled his gladness until the dawn rang with a new splendour. The sound echoed from the gigantic terrace wall behind them, constructed of stones fitted together so perfectly and evenly that despite a lack of mortar not even water could escape between them, and echoed back over the lake as if an entire Dragonwing had raised their voices in exultation together with him.
He roared aloft, swinging eastward toward the Spits.
They flew until the day was old, beating steadily into a headwind which sapped even Grandion’s strength. A band of dusky cloud rose before them, topped with a strange, impenetrable haze, appearing to stir from within as though it were that very pot of soup Hualiama had accused Ra’aba of agitating. Later, she began to make out the landscape beneath the clouds. Spires of black and reddish rock, jumbled together, rose into the clouds as if they were the spines of the giant hedgehog she had once seen when visiting Sylakia Island. Some of the spines were cracked or leaned against each other beneath that frowning dark brow of cloud, lending the scene the appearance of an old man’s gap-toothed grimace filled with misshapen, blackened teeth. A rank smell drifted to their nostrils on the breeze, like water long grown stagnant, mingled with fresh windroc guano.
“Charming place,” said Flicker, evidently not as asleep as he appeared.
“Perfect for Ianthine,” said Grandion. “Help me search for a roost, dragonet. I can’t fly much further today.”
Looking at the twin suns lowering behind her shoulder, Hualiama realised they had been aloft for the better part of thirteen hours, as Grandion alternately rested on the wing or beat into the breeze. His wingbeat had slowed noticeably as he slackened, while the wind grew perversely stronger. His breathing came in rasps. Had his months of incarceration weakened him so severely?
“Through that gap looks a likely place,” said the dragonet. “Limber up your bow, Lia. I don’t trust those windrocs.”
She had been thinking exactly the same.
They rested well that night in a cave formed by a broken-off stone tower which had crashed down on a ledge, forming a natural shelter. Grandion ousted a family of black-headed, giant bearded goats–saving one for his dinner–and they were set.
Over the course of the following five days, the companions painstakingly combed the north-western corner of the Spits for any sign of a Maroon Dragoness, working their way toward the rising suns. Grandion battled turbulence unexpectedly blasting around corners or creating powerful wind-shear downdraughts, while the weather turned icy, a bitter, bone-biting cold hurled about on the blustering airstreams, until even Flicker began to look more blue than green. Lia expended her stock of arrows on downing feral windrocs which attacked Grandion at