Lia almost fainted. Dragonchild? Even her thoughts gibbered, ‘W-W-What?’
But she sensed a greater magic nearby. Ja’al! His eyes rolled back in his head. In a mighty voice not his own, he roared, May the strength of the Ancient Dragons inhabit your paw! Alastior!
Magic thundered out of the young monk–neither seen nor physically felt, but a wash of the familiar white fire over Lia’s vision. She saw in dizzying array powers and thrones and fates and above it all, the blackest of thunderheads boiling over the horizon. Among the storm clouds loomed the multiple obsidian heads of the greatest Dragon of all, Fra’anior. Grandion groaned long and deep. The length of his body shuddered; a new fire entered his eyes, one Hualiama had never seen before–dark and light, intermingled, wreathed together in a complex helix pattern.
Ja’al screamed, and pitched forward.
Hualiama threw her legs beneath him without thinking. The monk’s head bounced on her thigh. Unseeing? Dead? The horror! Soft now, she bent over him, her hair sliding forward to whisper against his cheek.
“Ja’al? No, please don’t …” Nothing. No rise and fall of his chest. No pinch of colour in his cheek. “Spirits of the Ancient Dragons, have mercy!”
Master Jo’el stared at them. “No!”
Fires ancient and fateful immolated her soul. Lia’s little fists rose and pounded his chest with all of her strength. “You … can’t … die!”
He lay unmoving.
“No. Oh, Ja’al … n-n-no.” Weeping. Inconsolable. She bent over him as a tree would shade a still pond, searching for life. Mercy, oh please … just one sign.
As tenderly as the touch of dawn’s light, Lia brushed his cheek with her lips. “Ja’al, don’t leave us …”
A flicker beneath the skin of his neck caught her eye. His pulse!
Ja’al murmured, “Princess, I thought we agreed there would be no more kissing of monks?”
Chapter 28: False King
IN HIS DREAM, two days later, Flicker found himself peeling egg-head’s skull aside to get his nose into the tasty, nourishing brains. Ooh, that was the bit that he loved best. Brains. His talons curled with delight. Their sponginess was just so …
Flicker.
Oh no, not when he was having such a pleasant dream.
Flicker, wake up.
The dragonet mumbled, You kissed that monk again. Shame on you.
Flicker, so help me I will tan your hide for boot leather!
He cracked an eye open. Is it time?
Hualiama nodded. Time for their assault on the palace.
In the predawn darkness, she, Flicker and a fifty-strong team of monks skulked in the jiista-berry bushes not a hundred feet from an outer circle of purple-clad Royal Guards. Above them, the eastern side of the palace grounds sheared away in two hundred feet of black basalt cliffs into a tangled mess of brush and trees. Few knew that this area also concealed a secret entrance into the dungeons beneath the palace. Two days, Flicker thought. Just two days since they had landed at Ha’athior Island, and Master Jo’el had organised a full-scale assault on the palace–alias, Ra’aba’s stronghold. The Master was a smart man, as far as Humans went. But his Lia had dreamed up the tactical masterstroke. It served to show the benefits of a dragonet’s instruction.
He nibbled Lia’s earlobe contentedly.
Jo’el had already stripped the monasteries bare and had his monks infiltrate Fra’anior in preparation for an assault. Dragons had sacked two of the empty monasteries while the daring dragonet, the blue beast and his favourite fire-eyed Human girl, had baited Ianthine in her lair and sprung the King from his rock cage. Flicker had quickly labelled the King ‘hard-head’, because the only voice he listened to was his own. But that one called Elki, he had a dragonet’s keen sense of mischief.
Ra’aba had five hundred crack troops deployed around the palace building, as well as a further three thousand mercenaries from Yaya Loop stationed in the palace grounds. Cannibals. The dragonet shuddered. Fifteen Dragons–thirteen Greens and two Browns–formed part of Ra’aba’s personal guard. The numbers arrayed against them were less than encouraging, unless the King managed to rally his troops from the barracks just outside the city, and Grandion succeeded in whistling up substantial draconic support from a father who had, by all accounts, banished him from the Halls of the Dragons until he reformed his ways.
Lia grabbed Flicker’s muzzle and stared right into his eyes. Have you forgotten your part?
By the First Egg, Lia’s eyes blazed! Flicker felt his snarky response evaporate. No, he said, and fluttered aloft.
He scanned the scene. Atop the bluff, two sentries overlooked the