had taken pleasure in dealing her that cut. She shuddered at the memory of his perverse delight as he drove the dagger deep; the hatred as he twisted the blade, soul-destroying. Lia had known Ra’aba since her girlhood. What drove him to wrest the kingdom from her father? To attempt her murder? What despicable passions had he concealed behind a dutiful nod, or a half-smile as he watched a child dancing for her parents?
She felt dirty. Lia desperately wanted to vomit out the memory of him, to purge Ra’aba from her body and from her mind.
Feet entered the periphery of her vision. Master Joel gathered her shaking hands in his own. “No, Lia,” he said, quietly. “It is we who have failed you.”
“Nay, Master I …”
“Aye. In your suffering, I sense the fires of the Great Dragon himself. We have not seen you for who you truly are. We must pledge ourselves to do more. Need we move the Islands to find a way, we shall.”
He meant this? Through veils of blurry tears, Lia saw a raw, fatherly vulnerability writ on the tall monk’s face–an expression she would have given the Island-World to have seen, just once, from King Chalcion.
Master Jo’el said, “Your probation is over, Hualiama. For the first time in our history, we followers of the Path of the Dragon Warrior accept a female student as Apprentice.”
A dignified ripple of applause travelled around the arena, broken by Lia’s shriek of delight.
* * * *
Flicker attended the soft sigh of Hualiama’s breathing. Behind her shuttered eyelids, her eyes darted about as though running for their lives. Where did she go in her shell-dreams? Even the smallest hatchling did not dream as she did. “Let’s fly together,” she mumbled, and rolled over. “Uh … fire, not the fire …”
If ever a person yearned to shed her skin and don Dragon-hide, it was his straw-head. Even Amaryllion’s two-thousand-year reserves of patience had cracked slightly at her obsession with all things Dragon. Lia. Flicker’s eyes streamed with inner fire as he regarded the Human girl. If he had a shred of Dragon sense, then he knew that this one was destined for great deeds–despite the fact that she was woefully Human, and not even as capable as a dragonet. Poor creature. This process they called training was really just an excuse to thrash young Humans until they displayed some strength. Why would their elders do this? Flying training was best done with love, not by beating hatchlings with sticks. Worse, their declarations that they actually enjoyed it!
When the tall one who resembled a reed had shouted at her, Flicker had been on the cusp of attacking them when Lia exploded like a proper Dragoness and displayed her scars for all the bald, tattooed men, and they had suddenly made friends and there was a cheering ceremony that made his scales itch. There was no understanding the madness of these Humans.
Could it be some kind of disease? Hopefully, nothing infectious.
Flicker scratched his chin. Would he develop fungus, too, if he kept learning from these Humans? No dragonet would take him for a mate if he had facial fungus! And as for these Human males who chose not to take mates, how insane was that? Surely, they all saw how perfect his Lia was? Indeed, she had created endless waves among them, like smoke billowing into a wasps’ nest.
Now, his sensitive ears detected a noise in the corridor outside her room. Here came the younger, less fungus-faced ones. Ha. More moons-madness. Fascinating.
The door creaked open. Eight young monks filed into the room, their eyes gleaming in the semidarkness as they surrounded their intended victim, fast asleep on her pallet. The one called Ja’al, who Lia liked to show her teeth to, motioned him to move aside.
“Don’t you dare hurt her,” Flicker growled, baring his fangs.
“We won’t.”
One of the others counted silently on his fingers, One, two … three.
Flicking the thin covering off the sleeping girl, the apprentices pounced. A strong hand muffled her shrieks as they hastily bundled Lia into a sack. She kicked and thrashed, trying to bite the hand that muffled her cries. Flicker almost assailed them. She was terrified! Lia managed to elbow one of them in the jaw, but the young man only laughed, and with at least six bodies holding her down, Lia had no chance.
“Shut the trap,” hissed Ja’al, tying the sack shut. “This is a friendly kidnapping.”
The sack shifted. A muffled voice emerged, “Uh, Ja’al? Is that