rebel, Hualiama thought. Once she defeated her nerves, she would have to ask him about his past. What had he done to bring the Orange and Brown Dragons down on his neck? Why was he prepared to go to such lengths to help her–merely for the sake of an oath, spoken in haste, or did a deviously Dragonish reason underpin his behaviour?
Her feet touched down on the Dragon’s neck.
“Can you manage?” inquired Grandion.
Lia smothered a nervous, high-pitched giggle. Control yourself, girl! “Well, since we have neither been struck by lightning from a clear night sky, nor been torn apart by the enraged Spirits of the Ancient Dragons … isn’t this the easy part?”
How exhilarating to be standing, literally, on a dream she had treasured since her childhood. Lia walked charily up Grandion’s colossal right shoulder, expecting her feet to sink into soft skin. No, these were the iron-hard muscles of a Dragon, swathed in virtually impenetrable Dragon scale armour. When he shifted edgily beneath her, the muscles rolled like animate boulders beneath his hide. Was he as nervous as she, despite his bravado? Snagging a spine spike with her hand, Lia thrust a leg over to the Dragon’s left shoulder and settled down. It was not an uncomfortable position, a kind of natural saddle between his spikes, but she knew that after an hour or two, her backside would be numb.
What should she do now? What did one say to a Dragon? What emerged from Lia’s mouth was, “I’d really need a saddle.”
Grandion stifled a roar with a snap of his fangs. “Don’t even think I’m some beast of burden! I knew at once you’d have the wrong idea.”
“I am honoured, Grandion,” Hualiama whispered. “Humbled. And, were I to dare a little honesty–” she chuckled hollowly “–you scare the living pith out of me. Just that teensy … thing. Soul-destroying terror and–”
“Very wise,” he said, bending his flexible neck to check her position. “Hold on and trust me to do the flying. Dragons are not for nought called the lords of the airy spaces.”
She hugged the spine spike ahead of her as Grandion tramped toward the volcano’s edge, her throat as dry as dust, her stomach already turning cartwheels. The Tourmaline Dragon paused above the abyss, seeming to gather his thoughts. Heat rolled up Lia’s body, despite the night’s coolness, bringing a roaring to her ears and an overpowering sense of dislocation. Her brain refused to process the idea that she was about to fly Dragonback. The Cloudlands lay two miles below, Islands’ sakes!
Deep in her mind, Amaryllion spoke, Fly strong and true, little mouse. She had a sneaking suspicion he was laughing at her.
Then, Grandion tipped forward.
Chapter 19: Dragonback
IN MUTE AMAZEMENT, Hualiama’s soul welled up. Tears streaked her cheeks, whipped away by the wind generated by Grandion’s passage. Dragon wings spread out to either side, supple upon the breeze, and the slow, powerful thrust of each wingbeat caused them to surge through the air. Lia marvelled at the purity of Dragon flight, unembellished and silent save for a slight, leathery creaking as his wing membranes flexed. Nothing in her experience of flying and piloting Dragonships had prepared her for this sensation. The Tourmaline Dragon propelled them along as if the air were a vast sheet of Helyon silk he simply slid along; not the boring action of a bulky dirigible balloon, but the sleek, streamlined flight of a supreme aerial predator.
Abruptly, Lia stretched out her arms as wide as she could reach. Throwing her head back, she began to laugh. At first, it was the staccato gasps of a pair of lungs which had forgotten how to breathe, but soon, her mirth swelled into a torrent of uninhibited, effervescent joy.
Grandion reacted as though stung. His neck twizzled around until he could stare at her with both eyes. “Are you laughing or crying?”
“Both!”
A low hiccough caused them to bounce in the air. Grandion began to laugh, too. “We’re crazy. Like a pair of dragonets drunk on fermented fruit.”
He felt the same way!
At last, her throat opened. Hualiama poured out in song the response of a soul taken flight. Her hymn drank deep of the magic which had restored the Tourmaline Dragon’s sanity, and rang forth with the beauty and majestic panoply of a Dragon’s passage across the Iridith’s broad, yellow face. Resounding from the dark cliffs of Ha’athior Island, which lay upon their starboard bow as they winged northward, her melody fell like sweet rain upon the Cloudlands misting Ha’athior’s