the warbling tenor of the middle throat, and a soft, flexible flap of the palette which a skilled Dragon could manipulate to produce notes of piercing clarity which rose to pitches inaudible to the Human ear. A symphony of sound poured from the Dragon’s throat, as though he were the singer and his instruments merged together. Such music no Human could ever produce. It was otherworldly, stirring a wild, inexpressible conflagration in Hualiama’s breast. Shucking her saddle straps–to Flicker’s gasp of dismay–Lia stepped out to dance upon the Tourmaline Dragon’s broad upper shoulder, as though he were the stage and the Island-World spread out before them, an audience of uncountable millions of souls.
The dragonet burst into a rapturous, trilling descant as he sprang into the air, surrounding Hualiama in a complex aerial dance. The sweeter her draconic companions sang, the higher she danced, careless of any consequence. All that was pain could be surrendered to the splendour of this endless moment. Three souls worshipped in ways common to their kind, yearning in their oneness for a greater, more exhilarating reality beyond the veil of world and flesh, a place where the song never ended.
Later, they soared over the deeps in profound silence.
The Dragon rose into the skies, his gemstone scales gilded by the sky-fires, which Flicker told them in dragonet mythology signified the eyes of the Great Dragon. Grandion laboured aloft until at a height of two and a half leagues he reached a Dragons’ Highway, a jet stream of such a wind as Hualiama had never imagined. Despite being protected by his magic, in which the Tourmaline Dragon cocooned Lia and Flicker from the effects of the extreme altitude, the wind snatched her breath away. It picked Grandion up and hurled him westward so that they soon left Noxia far in their wake, screamed over Remia Island and its smaller, outlying satellite Islands at a speed of over fifty leagues an hour, according to Flicker’s calculations, and then arrowed toward the pin-sharp peaks of Horness Cluster at the same breathtaking velocity. A Dragonship could manage just three to four leagues per hour, Lia discussed with the dragonet. He just chuckled, making his eyes whirl with fire to express how quaint he found her idea.
A tick or two shy of five hours later, they descended upon Horness Cluster like a bolt of blue lightning seeking to blast the Islands asunder.
Lia and Flicker slept curled up in the crook of Grandion’s paw, alongside his neck.
Chapter 24: Searching
THE CREAK OF a Dragonship’s rigging woke Flicker. Stirring, his eye-membranes blinked rapidly as he tried to process what he was seeing. His muzzle dropped open. Unholy monkey droppings!
The dragonet butted Lia’s cheek. Hss. Straw-head. Stop snoring. We’re in trouble.
Rock me in your paw, Mama. Hualiama chuckled in her sleep.
Flicker poked her with his talon. Up. Think of something, o she of miniscule brains. Grandion! Couldn’t you have warned us?
“Sir, it’s a Dragon.” A voice carried clearly on the breeze.
“Ready catapults! Back up, Steersman! Take no chances, men.”
Grandion said something low and rude under his breath as his belly fires growled mightily. I was sleeping too … shards take it! So many … Lia, do something. Quick.
Oh, so it’s up to me, you two pebble-brained reptiles? Lia’s mental tone brought an image of an irate wasp to Flicker’s mind.
Leaping to her feet, the Human girl quickly scanned their surroundings, realising what Flicker had already determined with his penetrating intellect. An army of Dragonships had drifted in from the north during the night, but she and Flicker had been fortuitously hidden behind Grandion’s bulk as the Human fleet approached.
Of course, being a straw-head Lia wandered right out into the open and stood staring up at the Dragonships, coming in low over the trees, just forty feet overhead. A rope ladder dangled from the nearest vessel. A young, dark-haired Human officer dangled fifteen feet above the ground on that ladder, caught in the act of descending to investigate. He, too, gaped with a most unbecoming, slack-jawed, typically Human expression at Lia.
“There’s a girl!” he exclaimed, making Hualiama sound like the most astonishing sight in the world.
Well, Flicker could relate to that. She was astonishing. Do your fluttering thing with your eyelashes, Lia, suggested the dragonet.
Lia looked fearfully at what had to be four Dragonships’ worth of war crossbows with their giant, metal-tipped quarrels all trained on Grandion, and another three dozen Dragonships drifting down the breeze toward them. At least a hundred fighting men clad in brown