of looking backward while flying forwards, the better to grin at his captive. “Look, your King’s in trouble. Why don’t I set you down somewhere and go make a nuisance of myself?”
“Are there more Dragons coming?”
“Watch the skies, Dragon Rider,” he said, banking sharply. “Do me a favour. You need to distract Ra’aba for as long as possible. Can you do that?”
Hualiama knew what Flicker might suggest. She settled for wrinkling her nose at Grandion, her heart ululating its happiness within her mind. “I succeeded in distracting you, didn’t I?”
“Aye, most certainly,” he said, with great dignity but a detectable hiccup in his flight pattern. “They are some ways behind.”
“Great! Throw me at that tree, would you?”
Chapter 30: The Onyx Throne
HUALIAMA COULD HAVE burst into joyful song until Grandion said, “Don’t forget, the Dragons will not interfere until there is cause.”
Which meant, Grandion too. He would deal with Yulgaz and his minions, if he could. The rest was up to Lia and her allies.
Now that palace rooftop looked like the loneliest place in the Island-World.
“They’re destroying the town! How does that square with your policy of non-interference?” she complained.
Understanding struck. Lia had no need of Grandion’s dismayed growl to confirm her suspicions. Those Humans down there simply did not matter, not in draconic reckoning. All that mattered were Ra’aba’s recalcitrant Dragons and his rebellion against Sapphurion and the Dragon Elders. If a few Humans were trampled in the bargain, what of it? Humans were the lice in the armpit of the world, as Grandion had once told her.
Heartsore, sickened, Hualiama had no words.
Then, she indeed watched the skies and saw a Dragonwing breaking out of the clouds above Fra’anior. Greens. Uncountable Greens, like a flight of dragonets, only these were larger and angrier beasts by far. Sixty? Seventy? She could not count through the tears blurring her eyes. Dragon-thunder rolled before the Dragonwing as though a Cloudlands storm had voiced the sum of all its thunder at once. Massive wings churned the air. Talons curled beneath the incalculable tonnage of serpentine bodies cleaving their path to Lia’s Island home.
G-G-Grandion? Hushed. Overawed. This was the end of Fra’anior … they would tear the Island apart and every Human on it.
Be strong and unafraid, treasured Rider. Relief is at hand.
Lia gasped, How can we stand against so many? And she felt ashamed at her first thought–that Grandion had betrayed her.
I believe Ra’aba is the key. And I know who must confront him. She’s the bravest Human I know; she will find a way.
Hualiama gave the Tourmaline Dragon a dejected smile. Right.
Six Green Dragons dwarfed the Receiving Balcony atop the palace, guarding Ra’aba. Lia remembered hiding up there as a child to spy on her father’s meetings with the Dragons. The black paving stones were scarred by Dragons’ talons. The balance of the flat roof area was gardens with some surprisingly large trees. She had been told the intent was to keep the palace building cool in hot season. Now, Ra’aba used the Receiving Balcony as a command-post to instruct his Dragons. Even as they swooped down, Hualiama saw a Green leave and another arriving to take its place. Grandion released her into the crown of a tree, rushed on, and tackled the Green Dragon with an ugly snarl and a welcoming bite to his left wing.
Not for the first time, Lia crashed to a halt amidst leaves and branches. She clambered down the prekki fruit tree’s gnarled trunk. By this time, the Tourmaline Dragon was already rising toward the Green Dragonwing, one Dragon facing dozens. A strange power gathered within Grandion even as she watched. Dark clouds coalesced around her Dragon’s body, and lightning flashed between the clouds and his gemstone scales. This was the harbinger of the fabled Blue Dragon power of storm winds and ice, she realised, Dragon lore she had only ever read about in the scrolls.
The twin suns, which dragonets believed were the eyes of the Great Dragon, flamed over the horizon, casting thick golden beams of light to gild the clouds and the Dragons in gloriously golden haloes, belying the destruction to come.
Hualiama focussed on Ra’aba. Her father.
Wait, straw-head.
Air puffed around her ears as Flicker landed on her shoulder. “Talk Island Standard,” she admonished him. No point in being killed for the wrong reasons, when she was doing such a fine job of trying to be killed for all sorts of other reasons.
“How are you planning to stop Ra’aba?”
“Attack,” Hualiama said grimly.
The dragonet said, “Try to use