Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (38 page)

Now the fun would begin, Aranya thought.

“Accept our surrender,” ordered Ri’arion.

“I
, Felial Feryan of Immadia, do hereby,” he coughed and shuffled his boots on the flagstones, “I don’t know what to say. I’ve only been a soldier for six weeks. I accept, if you are indeed surrendering. What happened to the beast?”

Ri’arion sounded as though he were swallowing
his laughter as he said to the earnest soldier, “How old are you, Felial?”

“Just
turned fifteen this summer, my lord.”

“Well, Felial, when your
commanding officer arrives, you will tell him how you bravely apprehended these three intruders and forced them to surrender. You may say we are Ri’arion of Ha’athior, and the Princesses Zuziana and Aranya, recently arrived in Immadia. You’ll be famous.”

Ri’arion helped the young man repeat their names.

Boots on the steps announced the arrival of a dozen more soldiers, who surrounded them with angry, confused cries and no small fuss. A sword-point jabbed Aranya in the back. Now a new voice joined in, the harsh rasp of a soldier Aranya recognised as Darron, Commander of the Castle–effectively, the commander of all Immadian forces. She had known him since she could remember. He was a tough veteran, a campaigner as wily as her father and renowned for his unbending fairness.

As he learned their names from Felial, the Commander’s voice rose in surprise. “Aranya, you say? She’s dead, boy. Passed away in the Tower of Sylakia, may her soul fly between the Islands.”

“S-Sir,” stammered the poor soldier.

“Well, Princess or no Princess, we must follow the King’s orders,” said Darron
, in his broad accent that turned every vowel sound into a separate adventure. “Manacle them hand and foot, men, but treat them with respect. Then we shall see the faces of these miscreants who dare to appear uninvited on the King’s battlements.”

“There was a Dragon, Commander,” said one of the other men.

“A Dragon?”

A clamour rose at once. “Aye
.” “We all seen it, sir.” “Great beast.” “Purple, it was.” “Landed right here on this tower, it did.”

“Silence!”

Cold metal closed around Aranya’s ankles and wrists. But metal shackles could not hold a Dragon. She had the impression Darron was about to chew his men over and spit them out. But instead, the Commander quietly asked who had seen a Dragon? Where had it vanished? What happened? He commanded Felial to tell his story again, sparing no detail. A pair of boots thudded across the stone toward the prone threesome.

T
hen a voice, which made Aranya’s heart wobble into her throat, said, “What is this, Commander? I receive incoherent reports of a Dragon landing on my castle, stones crashing down into my courtyard, and here I find intruders–three intruders–atop my tower? How did they penetrate our defences, Darron?”

“
I was just inquiring, Sire.”

“You, man,”
snapped King Beran. “Stand up.”

Ri’arion stood. There was a long silence, before Beran
breathed, “Do I know you?”

“I am Ri’arion of Ha’athior Island, o King,” said the monk
, so mildly that Aranya knew he was trying to keep a volatile situation calm. “When we met, I was a boy. You were just about to depart the Island of Fra’anior with Izariela, who you had placed in chains not dissimilar to these. Back then, I was the Nameless Man. Now I am named. I ask–”

“How did you get here?”

Beran’s fury and wonder were palpable. The monk said, “We flew Dragonback, King Beran.”

“I see no Dragon.”

“I am not lying, o King. Will you allow us to explain?”

Darron said, “
If there was a Dragon, one of you is a Shapeshifter. Which–”

“The Shapeshifters are all dead or departed,” said King Beran. “Or, one of these three made a hundred men see a Dragon.”

“There is a Dragon,” said Ri’arion, at exactly the same moment as Aranya said, “I’m the Dragon.”

“Don’t move
,” snarled Darron. “Swords to the ready, men. The one with no shoes spoke.”

Cold steel touched her neck.

Aranya, unable to contain her rising ire, snapped, “For the Islands’ sake! We’ve surrendered. What’s has become of Immadian honour? Spoiled into Sylakian chains and threats?”

“Strange times,” said King Beran
, by his tone, barely holding back his own fury. Father and daughter, Aranya thought, stifling a sudden, horrifying urge to start laughing. “Arise, woman, that I might know you.”

Her
heart faltered at the thought of what she was about to do to him. Lowering her head deliberately, Aranya tucked her feet beneath her and rose. Two soldiers shadowed her neck with their swords, reminding her in low voices not to make any false move. With a gasp, amethyst eyes lifted to meet her father’s piercing grey gaze.

A shock of recognition blazed between them.

“Dad. I’ve come home.”

The King made an inarticulate gargling sound. His eyes bulged. Her first thought was that she had killed him. Could she have broken the news more gently? For the King’s face had
blanched to the colour of new parchment. He had aged, too. King Beran’s beard was shot through with grey. He seemed smaller than the man she remembered. Tears welled up and tracked down Aranya’s cheeks. She wished he would say something. But how could he? He thought she was dead. For him, his dead daughter had just clambered out of a grave.

“
Father, I’m not dead. I’m Aranya, your daughter. The Sylakians didn’t kill me.”

Slowly, King Beran’s sword rose to point at her heart. He rasped, “
Speak, shade. Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?”

“I’m Aranya,” she repeated. “I’ve come home. Dad, we need to warn you–”

“How did you–you’re dead. Dead, my daughter’s dead …”

Aranya
desperately wanted to run into his arms, but the sword stood between them like an unanswerable accusation. She looked to Commander Darron, but he could only gape at her, his expression caught between a narrow-eyed suspicion and utter astonishment.

She said,
awkwardly, “Dad, this is Zuziana, Princess of Remoy. She’s a Dragon Rider. You may have heard that we caused the Sylakians some trouble down south around Remoy. I’m Aranya. You call me Sparky. Commander Darron has known me since I was a girl. I know most of the soldiers here, too. Shall I name them? Arad, I know. Rebor, too, and Gabor over there, who has ten children. Behind me stands your namesake Beran, called Beran Big-Foot as he has the largest boot size in all Immadia.”

Darron gave a gru
ff bark of laughter at this.

“Dad, l
ast we spoke was on this very battlement before I left for the Tower of Sylakia. You counselled me to find a nobler path.”

The King of Immadia
still made no response. Aranya’s heart broke for him. Until that moment, she had never understood how death could rob the living, but she saw it in him now.

She
urged, “Even if you can’t believe I’m alive, Dad, you need to know that there is a Sylakian fleet bearing down on Immadia Island as we speak, furnished with secret orders for the annihilation of the Kingdom. We’ve come to help, if we can.”

Suddenly,
her father tottered forward, his sword falling from nerveless fingers to clatter on the stone. He stopped right in front of Aranya, peering up at her. “You’re taller than that girl I remember,” he whispered. “Broader in the shoulder, leaner in the cheek and even more beautiful, were it possible.” Aranya’s lips tried to work into a tremulous smile. “But there’s something about you–a quality I remember in Izariela the day I kidnapped her and put her aboard my Dragonship, a look that says, ‘mere chains cannot hold me. I am here because of love.’ Is that true? Is it true, my Izariela? Have you returned? No, you aren’t her; but you look so alike. You’re my Aranya? I’m … confused.” He wrung his hands helplessly. “Help me.”

Commander Darron came
to stand alongside his King. His eyes welcomed Aranya; she saw recognition and joy in them as clearly as the early suns-shine warming her back. Beran’s expression was priceless; a dawning of hope where only pain and grief had existed before.

The silence was as long and deep as the warmth radiating into Aranya’s heart.

“How may I help, o King?” asked the Commander.

Beran choked out,
“Would you take these damnable chains off my daughter?”

“At once, o King. Keys! Fetch me the keys!”

King Beran did not wait. He threw himself against Aranya, making her stagger with the force of his hug. He clutched her desperately, a drowning man finding his salvation. And he cried and cried, together with her, tears of uncontainable happiness.

* * * *

An attempt at breakfast was interrupted by Beri arriving at the speed of a breaking thunderstorm, closely followed by Aranya’s brothers running ahead of a harried-looking nursemaid, shouting, ‘Rani! Rani!’ and holding up their arms to be scooped up and cuddled. They covered her cheeks with slobbery toddler kisses. Beri tossed dignity to the winds and kissed Aranya at least twenty times, before her eyes lit on Zuziana and she burst into a fresh round of weeping, holding the slight Princess so tightly that Zip coughed.

Commander Darron set up his command post in the next room. Officers and messengers dashed in and out, adding to the mayhem.
A teary-eyed Queen Silha appeared to show Aranya her week-old baby sister, Leanya.

“Was she late?”
asked Aranya.

“Almost three weeks,” said Silha. “The physician was very worried. But she’s here now
, safe and healthy. Heavens, that can’t be the Dragon everyone’s making such a fuss about?”

Sapphire flew several fast circles around the table.

Come to me, little one,
said Aranya.
Here. Nice sweetmeat.

To Silha, she said, “No, she’s a dragonet–you might think of her as a mini-Dragon. We call her Sapphire.
Beri, come sit with us. I missed you.”

“Huh,” snorted Beri. “Sitting at table with Princesses?
”

“I’ll make it a royal order if you don’t
obey, this instant,” said Aranya.

“And I’ll put you over my knee and paddle your behind, petal, as big as you are,” warned Beri. But she smiled
warmly, taking the seat between Aranya and Zuziana.

“Your family is every bit as crazy as mine,” said Zip, gesturing at the chaos. “Would you look at Ri’arion? He doesn’t know which way is up any more. Hold your sister, Aranya. Go on
. I’m desperate for a turn after you.”

Aranya shooed her brothers off her lap. “I can’t tell them apart any more
, Silha. May I?”

“Blue trousers is
Feran, green trousers is Tiran,” Silha said automatically, helping Aranya take her tiny sister in her arms.

Now, could she imagine being a Dragon and holding this little scrap of life in her paw? She stroked Leanya’s tiny, curled-up fist
, admiring her sleeping face. “So, we haven’t met,” she said. “I’m Aranya, your big sister. You’re not allowed to be scared of me, alright? You’re lovely. Actually, you’ll probably sleep through everything while these big people here get the fright of their lives.”

Across from her, Darron whispered in the King’s ear. He had not forgotten the Dragon, she knew. Her father nodded. He had kept looking at her as if he expected her to vanish with the morning mists, but now his expression
became grave.

Aranya reminded herself that she, too, had struggled to believe
at first. She must be gracious, whatever the cost.

“So, Sparky,” said King Beran, raising his voice above the hubbub. “Explain this Dragon
business. Are you telling me that creature gobbling up her fourth sweetmeat is the Dragon that had half my castle ducking for cover? Does it grow bigger, by magic?”

She
swallowed hard, hating to have to shock her father again. “Dad, do you remember the Dragonship that exploded, the day First War-Hammer Ignathion accepted Immadia’s surrender?”

“I do.”

“That was my doing.”

“Oh?” Her father’s
left eyebrow wagged sceptically.

Aranya pressed on, “
Zip told you how we caused the Sylakians endless trouble down in Remoy.”

“Quite the stir,” said Beran, jovially. “The rumours reached even to Immadia’s shores.
I sense a bit of the old cliff fox in you, Aranya. No disrespect to Remoy, of course. I just hadn’t pictured my daughter running around the Islands as a wanted criminal, blasting Dragonships into the Cloudlands.”

“Dad–we’re probably the reason Garthion’s on his way here now.”

“Look,” said King Beran, his voice gaining a steely edge, “the Supreme Commander has been searching for an excuse to destroy Immadia since forever. That’s why surrender was a smart tactical move, last time. I spent twelve summers irritating him like a wasp up his left nostril. We became suspicious when all communications were cut off a week back, Sparky. That was the reason for the alert; for the chains. But you haven’t clarified how exactly you arrived on my battlements. Do I sense a certain avoidance of the truth?”