She unearthed a flat shell–no! Lia gasped and brushed the dirt off the Dragon’s scale. It was old, dusty and white. As white as the Dragoness in her vision.
Despite its evident age, the scale was still dagger-sharp. She cleaned it in the pool and dried the shard carefully on her brief skirt. Wow. Now the colour was pearlescent, more than merely white, like the inside of the shells she had once seen which came from the terrace lake on Gi’shior Island. Seeing how the light played upon a Dragoness’ scale, it was easy to believe in magic. It was less easy to understand how her dream could have been so accurate.
Magic? Of the two great races of the Island-World, Dragons had magic and Humans did not–apart from persistent rumours about the warrior-monks of her own Fra’anior Cluster, Hualiama reminded herself. Even King Chalcion had never succeeded in pinning down the truth about Human magic. Secret monasteries, even more secret practices. Even a King could not know all.
No, little Lia possessed no magic. What she did possess was a nose with an uncanny ability to sniff out trouble–oh, and the less helpful ability to land in that trouble right after she scented it! That was how she knew Flicker would embark on one of his midnight escapades later on that night. This time, she would follow him.
Meantime, she worried endlessly about why a Dragon should be hunting her. Surely Ra’aba was not working hand-in-glove with the Dragons? Surely, they had no interest in a royal ward apart from the sin of her trespass on their holy Isle? But she was unable to discount her intuition that the mighty Orange Dragon had been Ra’aba, or was, in some undreamed-of way, connected to him. What did she truly know of Dragons? The Dragonkind had a deep-seated aversion to meddling in the affairs of those they regarded as inferior creatures. Very occasionally, King Chalcion met with Dragon representatives on the Receiving Balcony atop the Palace. When she was younger, Lia had sometimes spied on them, but after she had been caught and chastised by Captain Ra’aba, Chalcion had put a stop to that.
She could not possibly be a threat to the Roc, could she? Heavens above and Islands below, she had no weapons, no magic, no allies, no means of transportation between the Islands …
Despite her best intentions, Lia fell asleep waiting for Flicker to depart. Her dreams filled with the Orange Dragon’s fire, which morphed unexpectedly into the yolk of an egg-sac surrounding her body, and then unexpectedly to the image of a mother Dragon crooning mellifluously over her clutch of eggs, telling the developing Dragons inside how much she loved them, even though they were not yet hatchlings. Even in her dream, she frowned. Dragons spoke without words?
This Dragoness was a blue so fathomless it was almost sable, not the white of Lia’s previous vision. As a hatchling, Hualiama broke free from the egg-shard, milky with albumen, feeling the clutch of a paw so massive it enfolded her body like a new womb. She ached beyond reason or understanding for that brooding, maternal presence.
Mother.
She never wanted to leave such a sweet dream.
However, people must awake as people, no matter what their hearts desired.
Stirring, Lia found Flicker gone. She thrust the dagger into her linger-vine belt, and tied on a small lemur-skin pouch of supplies. On an impulse, she added the White Dragoness’ scale to the contents of her pouch. Cheeky dragonet. Time for him to give up his secrets.
Given the glorious crystalline formations of the caves, no light was necessary to aid her exploration, although Lia knew she needed to take care. Flicker would not have left any trail, unless he landed for some reason. On and on she wandered, searching galleries and marking side-tunnels, expanding her knowledge of the vast underground network. These caves must honeycomb the entire underside of Ha’athior Island. What mysteries might be hidden here, she could hardly imagine, but when she stumbled upon one, it was an enormous surprise.
“A library?” Lia whispered.
The narrow tunnel she had taken opened abruptly onto a tall, circular chamber, lit from above by a spectacular, branched crystal formation, so that it was almost as bright as daylight. The walls were lined for thousands of feet up and down with scroll-racks–at least, as far as she could see, for what she had assumed was the floor, was only a platform beyond which she saw further ranks of scrolls