survived bad wounds before. She must not give up. Never give in.
Weakness washed over her. The world turned white with magic, while Lia’s awestruck thoughts seemed to flow through prekki-fruit mush. Always in extremity. Why could she not see the Island-World like this, where she knew each stone and boulder had come from a unique place in the earth’s fiery heart, and had been shaped by the unimaginable forces of creative Dragon fire … she saw vast, coiling Dragons themselves the size of Islands, speaking words of power in a language long passed from living memory, raising mighty towers of stone from the seething magma pits inside which she glimpsed the fiery heart of her world.
Hualiama saw ant-like Humans labouring beside the Ancient Dragons. Never again would Humans be slaves, King Chalcion liked to declare. But there was more. Surely, this was not the only way? Surely, there was a pattern of being together as Dragon and Human that would bring honour to that mighty, many-headed one, whose gaze burned darkly over all, all-seeing and all-powerful, who knew the fate of a Human girl ere she plummeted from a Dragonship bound for the Cloudlands?
Lia collapsed and recovered many times before reaching the gap beneath the boulder. She heard a flutter of wings.
Flicker.
The dragonet squeaked in horror, Lia, what have you done?
* * * *
There were rents in her clothes through which Flicker saw raw, charred flesh, weeping with her red blood and another clear fluid, the stench of meat cooked as she liked it–yet, this was her flesh. His Lia, burned.
Stupid, stupid straw-head! No word of warning would she hear. Her green eyes locked on his, occluded with suffering, as if a dark, lashing storm had broken within her soul, dampening her fires; as though even the hope of life itself had succumbed to the pain.
Flicker, darling. Bring Ja’al.
Be strong, Lia, he cried. I’ll be back before you know it.
The dragonet’s flight-muscles burned as he shot over the volcanic rim. He crashed into the monks’ meeting, shrieking his need. Ja’al hurtled out as fast as Flicker had arrived. The monk charged down the stairs, three at a time, taking the rope swing Flicker fetched for him and flinging himself over the divide … his blue eyes overflowing as he saw the blackened, battered form of Hualiama pulling herself hand over hand across the rocks, along the dangerously narrow mouse trail on the cliff side.
“I’m here, Lia.” He choked down a sob. “Come, climb onto my back.”
“Oh, Ja’al …”
They struggled to raise her. Lia had no strength left in her arms, so Ja’al bound her wrists with his belt and pulled them around his neck. Lifting her body, he used his loincloth to create a sling that kept her in place, leaving his hands free to grasp bushes and roots as he negotiated the steep descent back to the tree.
By then, Master Jo’el was at the prekki tree with five more monks. Hallon and Rallon rigged a rope bridge to Ha’athior Island, and moved Hualiama across the gorge in an improvised sling.
Ja’al said, “Sapphurion will be here in a matter of hours.”
“We can’t tell the Dragons,” said Master Jo’el. “They’ll burn this place down if they hear we trespassed on their holy Isle.”
The young monk cradled Lia in his arms. “Careful with her,” Flicker growled at Ja’al. She was tiny compared to him, like a wren tucked into its nest.
“What about the Tourmaline Dragon?” asked Ja’al.
“Hualiama must decide,” said Master Jo’el. “He was feral?”
“Feral,” whispered Lia, groaning through gritted teeth. “Can you heal a feral Dragon?”
Ja’al cut in, “Toss that despicable Dragon in a Cloudlands volcano! Sapphurion’s mate is meant to have healing powers. Can we ask her to treat Lia?”
“It’d be dangerous,” his uncle pointed out. “What if Lia speaks Dragonish in her presence?”
“What if she dies? Look at these wounds, Master.”
Flicker nodded quietly as he followed the men back up the tunnel. If a Dragon had injured her, a Dragon should heal her, his seventh sense insisted. There was a certain rightness about the notion, a completion of a necessary fragment in the impossibly complex song of the Island-World, the great balance alluded to in Dragon lore. Land Dragons were masters of the balance. But they dwelled in the vastness of the cloud-oceans between the Islands, between Kaolili and the Lost Islands, he had read, that hotbed of Dragon-hating Human magicians who were said to possess a power called Dragons’ Bane, the ability to bind a Dragon to their