that a roar she knew? The voice of the great Blue Dragon?
Ianthine vented a terrible shriek that stabbed daggers of pain into her young eardrums. NO! NOOOOO!
Lia awoke in the aftermath of a soul-lost tremor, the kind of waking that always made her wonder if the breath she had just inhaled would be her last. A single thought shone above all others–she knew her mother’s name! Azziala …
Reflexively, Hualiama scratched her back. Her skin itched fiercely. A sharp prickling developed all over her legs and lower back.
Then, a thousand needles stabbed into her skin at once.
Chapter 25: Ants and Slaves
FLICKER SPAT OUT an eight-inch long, luminous orange lizard which he had been about to slurp down his gullet, and gaped at Lia in astonishment. Shards take it, was this some strange new Human dance? Straw-head writhed across the sand in a series of bizarre, juddering lurches, slapping herself frantically, shrieking as though she had tipped over the cliff edge of insanity. What entertainment! The reprieved lizard vanished beneath a rock.
Moreover, she did not stop. Lia fell to tearing off her coverings in the most amazing hurry. She literally tore the cloth, wrenching her arms out of her tunic top with what sounded suspiciously like curses–to his knowledge, his Lia never cursed. The dragonet flicked his wings in consternation as Hualiama’s leggings flew in one direction and the under-tunic in another, and then his belly fires rumbled as she shucked her underclothes too! That was an Island too far, as the saying went.
Glancing aside awkwardly, he saw the Tourmaline Dragon, forepaws planted shoulder-width apart on the rim of his lava bath, staring at straw-head with equal incomprehension. Lia charged into the pool, screeching like a starving Dragon hatchling, and thrashed about in the water with all the grace, he had to admit, of a fish speared on the point of a dragonet’s talon.
Whatever was the matter with her?
Grandion began to guffaw at her gyrations. Insensitive clod! Flicker’s anger burned at the Dragon.
Lia began to rise and then collapsed again with a yelp. Concerned, the dragonet darted over to the water’s edge. Perhaps she had gone feral? Ianthine had been most ungentle with his lovely girl. The knowledge that her own shell-father had tried to murder her could not be easy to live with.
Finally, Lia found her feet. She checked her body with her hands–searching for scale mites, perhaps? Not that Humans seemed to get those. Hualiama was careful with her hair, though, keeping it clean of pests and infestation. Dragon hide was so much easier to maintain, apart from the ever-tenacious scale mites. Flicker scratched his neck. Even the thought of them seemed to make him itch.
Grandion was still chortling so hard, he hiccoughed spurts of fire involuntarily between his fangs.
Lia whirled on her heel. “Grandion–ants! There were ants, you wretched, unfeeling reptile …”
“Fire ants?” asked the Tourmaline Dragon. “You slept on a nest of fire ants?”
“Stop laughing! It was painful. They bit me here, and here … oh.”
Lia stiffened.
Flicker’s eyes leaped to Grandion. The Dragon’s expression had changed. His laughter seized up in his throat. The Tourmaline Dragon gazed hungrily at the Human girl as though, having unexpectedly sighted the most tempting treasure hoard in existence, he had been overcome by what Dragons called the gold-fever. His talons clenched, splintering the rock he held. His jaw cracked open. Flicker smelled the hot, sulphurous burn of his breath from twenty feet away, and the tempo of his triple heartbeat was that of the height of battle.
Lia covered her nudity with her hands, stammering, “G-G-Grandion, d-don’t look at m-me … like that.”
“Like what?” purred the Dragon, yet it was far from a pleasant sound. Flicker was quite convinced his draconic companion was about to pounce on Lia and gobble her up.
* * * *
Hualiama had never seen such a hateful, predatory light in Grandion’s eye. The quivering of his muscles, coiled for action, speared dread into her stomach. What had she done? Was it the mere sight of her nudity, which–Islands’ sakes, he was a Dragon!
She ventured in reply, “Like you want to … devour me?”
Grandion slithered up out of his pool, sixty-five feet of sinuous muscle and draconic grace. Molten lava sheeted off his flanks. He stalked closer, fixated on Lia as she stood thigh-deep in the water, quite incapable of movement. In Human lore Dragons were synonymous with greed and savagery; their cunning and love of jewels and precious things, the fodder of legends and ballads. Grandion did not speak,