dark hair spilling from beneath a modest white headscarf. However, that girl was not the source of power in the room. A stillness pervaded the place, as deep as the Cloudlands, and perhaps as perilous. Hualiama saw a small boy seated cross-legged on the pallet, who could be no older than seven or eight summers of age. His arms protruded like sticks from the depths of a sleeveless robe of midnight blue, his head balanced like a small blue egg atop an impossibly frail neck, and his eyes appeared overlarge in a sepulchral face–the eyes, she saw, of a Dragon.
Yellow. Flaming. Drawing her irresistibly into the ambit of his power.
A joke about the ‘nameless boy’ had been poised upon the tip of her tongue. Instead, Lia stumbled to her knees and bowed her head.
“Child of Fra’anior,” said the Nameless Man, in a little-boy voice that belied the gravity of his position, “the Great Dragon apprised me of your coming. Long have I awaited our meeting.”
Unbidden, an image of Amaryllion’s monstrous orb filled her mind.
The boy intoned, “No, one greater than he. Sit, and take tea with me, Hualiama. For we are kindred creatures, you and I, the foci of fates thrust upon us. We feel the fire of the Great Dragon. We blaze. We burn. History itself trembles on the cusp of a new era. You and I are its ushers.”
Lia shuddered.
Chapter 13: Prophecy
HUALIAMA AND THE Nameless Man did not speak as one of Ja’al’s younger sisters brought them redbush tea sweetened with honey. The girl strummed the harp with tantalising skill. All the while, the Nameless Man’s smouldering yellow eyes measured her with a barely-veiled might not unlike what she had felt in the Ancient Dragon. Lia considered the childlike voice which wielded verbal blades, the simplicity of a boy’s words incising past and future with equal facility.
“Ask your questions,” said the Nameless Man.
“I have many,” Lia admitted. “Perhaps the most important is, how can I restore the King to the Onyx Throne?”
“Find him and defeat Ra’aba,” he replied at once.
Hualiama knew her inward scowl did not go unnoticed. “Nameless Man, you know what manner of man Ra’aba is–”
“I do.”
“Then you know I can never defeat him.”
“I repudiate that conclusion. Nevertheless, the future is clouded.” The Nameless Man reached out with his free hand, swirling the steam rising from his small cup of tea as though he could thus read the mysteries of the Island-World. “You’re a puzzling one, Hualiama. Hard to fathom. A soul shadowed by an evil so great–” His eyes flickered very rapidly, turning from yellow to pure white and back again “–I sense the touch of a foul, perverted magic … a past crime concealed, yet it will come to light. Were I a man, grown into my full strength, I could perhaps wrest these secrets from you. Your heart’s deepest desire is clear to me. You seek knowledge of your parents.”
“I do,” she repeated, feeling more and more the child before the penetrating gaze of a boy half her age.
“Discovering your heritage is paramount, child of the Dragon. Paramount.” His gaze drilled the word between her eyes. “A clue is revealed. Seek the Maroon Dragoness.”
“What? Sorry–would that be the Dragoness I dream about?”
“Tell me your dreams.”
Hualiama began, haltingly, to describe her dreams of a Dragoness singing over her clutch, when the Nameless Man interrupted, “Show me in your mind. Quickly.”
Why the rush? Images eddied through Lia’s mind as though his insistence had stirred up a flurry of leaves, flitting past the all-seeing yellow gaze. She became aware of his mental processes, of a mind so awash in power it seethed like a volcano, seeking to pare the truth from the bones of what she offered him–yet also, she sensed a vast frustration. Why was her future unclear? What prevented the Nameless Man from finding what he sought?
And now, his response communicated fear.
Words formed in her mind, similar to a Dragon or dragonet’s telepathic speech. There is a prophecy known to but a few Dragons, a prophecy concerning the unleashing of an aeons-old power upon the Island-World. Ask the Ancient Dragon if he can name it. Seek the Maroon Dragoness–perhaps she will know why you were brought up by Dragons. To stand a chance of defeating Ra’aba, you need to learn a technique rooted in the power of your dance.
Suddenly, the Nameless Man stood. “I must leave.”
“Wait!” she yelped. “What about the Tourmaline–”
“Follow your heart in that matter, Hualiama.” Old, melancholy, the boy’s eyes transfixed