Grandion said, That deceitful, manipulative egg-eater played us false! Malice and untruth infest her hearts. Lia, she lied–Ianthine must have lied. There’s no way on this Island-World Ra’aba could be your father.
I need to wash myself. Lia stumbled over to the trickle of water. Suddenly, she plunged her head beneath the flow, yanking her clothes violently. I must wash. I’m dirty, dirty, so dirty …
You’ll freeze. Please. The Tourmaline Dragon tried to draw her gently away from the flow; Hualiama punched his talons with her fists, uselessly, screaming that he was hurting her, that she was in pain, that he should let her fling herself off the cliff … and suddenly shudders overtook her so violently that her teeth clacked together. Lia curled up into a ball, unable to weep for the horror that choked the very living pith out of her soul and poured it out in a stream of raw anguish.
This wound could never be stanched.
Somewhere in the distance, through a roaring in her ears, Lia heard Grandion continuing to insist that Ra’aba could not be her father. How could he be so adamant? Obstinate reptile! He had prekki-fruit mush for brains. She too was adamant–Ianthine had neither lied, nor had she stinted in taking vicious pleasure in her revelation.
Lia moaned, Amaryllion, why didn’t you warn me?
With the help of a stiff following breeze, Grandion flew until the night grew old and Noxia’s silhouette bulged out of the endless Cloudlands. He brought his charges to a safe landing in a remote dell beside a burbling stream. Even a Dragon must sleep for exhaustion, but he would not rest until Hualiama assured him rather fiercely, yet with an apologetic touch to his muzzle, that she was finished with reckless, suicidal thoughts. A certain stiffness seemed to leach out of his muscles as she spoke, leaving a weary Dragon to close his eyes, but not his ear-canals.
Hualiama felt hollowed out, a shell of one who had been Lia, royal ward of Fra’anior, Dragon Rider.
Her eyelids shuttered upon a familiar nightmare in which she fell eternally from the Dragonship, terrified, hopeless and alone. Waking when the morning was well advanced, biting her tongue to keep from sobbing, Lia washed in a streamlet behind a fallen log, not ten feet beyond Grandion’s flank as he slumbered in the hot suns. Though the water’s freshness helped clarify her fevered thoughts, Hualiama found herself scrubbing her skin compulsively with sand from the streambed, desperate for the pain of abrasion, as if that could possibly cleanse her of the past, of the need to know and remember what was branded on her heart forever.
She dropped her hand. No. Starting now, she would deny Ra’aba any dominion over her life.
Lia touched the White Dragoness’ scale, still dangling on its thread between her breasts, whispering, “When you abandoned your eggs to face the Black Dragon’s fury, you summoned another to care for them. And you protect me even now, through this.”
A symbol? It was just a Dragon scale.
Ianthine’s words played through her mind. Much was puzzling, but there were clues. Ianthine had clearly recognised her, either by sight or smell, or some other Dragon sense. Lia’s mother was a ‘trickster’–an old word for an enchantress–while the reference to a veil suggested an Eastern woman, one who hailed from the Kingdom of Kaolili. This concurred with Amaryllion’s conjecture about her birthplace. The Dragoness had first claimed to have eaten Hualiama’s mother, only to backtrack with some drivel about a twin. From what she recalled, it was unclear whether her mother was alive or not. Either way, she had given up her babe to Ianthine.
A child born of violation. She shuddered. Nothing spoke more truly to Ra’aba’s spirit than that statement. Could she envision it? An envoy had journeyed from the East to the Halls of the Dragons at Gi’ishior. Somehow, that woman had encountered Ra’aba, who had forced himself upon her. A child resulted. Perhaps she had tarried nine months, perhaps the woman had fled to her home, traumatised. In madness or in hatred of a babe she had never wanted, she had delivered the infant to the Maroon Dragoness. Why? For what purpose? How had a mere infant escaped that Dragoness’ clutches? And if she had dreamed accurately of being brought up by warm, caring Dragons, where did they fit in?
Lia felt as though she were stringing the beads of her life together. She had a string and a handful of beads, but