Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) (6 page)

“Anyone here?” called a voice from the doorway to Aranya’s chamber.

Beri moved faster than Aranya could credit, for an old woman. Slamming the bathroom door behind her, she confronted the girl–the same wretch from several days before, Aranya realised, peeking through the hole she had made in the door. She quickly moved back out of sight.

“You dare return?”

“I-I’m sorry, I knocked. But the snake … it wasn’t me,” the girl stammered. “You have to believe me. I would never … please. I don’t know what happened.”

Aranya’s fingers moved rapidly upon her hair,
reworking the customary braid. She pulled the mass of tresses over her shoulder and worked down toward her waist, drawing together the many-coloured strands of her hair. There was some unintelligible conversation out there, before she heard Beri growl:

“I can speak for myself, but not for the Princess of Immadia.”

“I have to be her guide. I’m assigned.”

The girl made it sound like a life-or-death matter. Aranya frowned, slipping in her pins with practised skill. So, she thought one little justification would make up for a slew of insults, did she? That girl had
the manners of a mountain goat.

Shortly, having covered her hair, she emerged from the bathroom.

Beri said, “Aranya, I would like to introduce you to Zuziana, Princess of Remoy.”

“My friends call me Zip. Short for Zuziana, Princess. Get it? People seem to think it’s cute. Then again, when you’re my height and not some giant like you, every guy thinks you’re just so cute–it’s maddening.”

Aranya moved forward to touch fingertips with her, thinking: Oh no. She hated people who had no idea what was going to spill out of their mouths before it did. She had beaten a Princess of another Island–wherever Remoy was–with a stick. She had thought her a servant. Another day her temper might have started a war, had Remoy and Immadia not both been brought under Sylakian rule. And–Zip? Who chose a nickname like that?

Princess Zuziana had offered not a word of apology.

Very well, she was about to learn just how frosty the tips of the Immadian mountains could be.

* * * *

The Tower of Sylakia was a mausoleum. The dull, dusty corridors echoed with years of neglect. Only two levels were inhabited–one by the exiles, and the other by the servants and guards. The outside was little better. Most of the open space around the building was paved in a grey granite stone that quickly became treacherous as the cold season made its storms felt. The landing field, the only green space, was often cordoned off so that the exiles could not approach the arriving and departing supply vessels. The Sylakian guards had no sense of humour. Apparently a posting to the Tower was considered a kind of punishment–at best.

The whole operation was run with clockwork precision by Third War-Hammer Nelthion, Ignathion’s ‘trusted man’, who had lost an eye and the better part of his right leg in an unfortunate Dragonship collision right above Sylakia itself
, years before.

Aranya
came to love watching the rajals stalking about in their wide moat. Each evening, they gathered beneath the Last Walk, pacing, rumbling and growling, as they waited for hunks of meat to be thrown down to them. Often their roaring would split the night; the great males, standing shoulder-high to her, she estimated, would ruff up their black manes and indulge in contests of ear-splitting volume. She decided to paint a rajal just as soon as she finished the final touches to her gift for Ignathion.

Once,
Aranya dared to set foot upon the Last Walk. She tiptoed over the stone bridge to the edge of the battlements, and peered down. The Cloudlands were so far below it was hard to see any detail–much farther than at Immadia, she realised. The jutting peninsula of rock that housed the Tower split off from the main Island far, far below, but from where she stood, it was a straight drop into the Cloudlands. It turned her stomach to think of the prisoners who must have been forced to step off the edge.

Out over the void, a three-moon conjunction cast a partial eclipse of the twin suns upon the slowly roiling clouds. She wondered what effect the five moons must have–pulling the poisonous vapours this way and that, as the scholars claimed, or affecting peoples’ behaviour as the mystics would have it. The Cloudlands changed colour and character with the hues radiating f
rom above.

Silently, she recited:

Iridith the Yellow, a very rotund fellow,

Jade the Green, who likes to go unseen,

A hint of White to light the night, Nightship she is called,

Consort to the great avenging Dragon, deathly Blue,

Last the Mystic, the mysterious changer of hue.

Then a soldier came to shout at her. She was not allowed on the Last Walk. After that, a warrior was
permanently stationed there.

She had a nightmare about leaping off the
Last Walk.

Aranya knew that she needed to make friends, or face a lonely exile. There were only so many days she could spend painting before she went mad. Beri was fine company, but Aranya longed to connect with her fellow-exiles, many of whom were her own age or a little older.

But she soon discovered why so few returned her overtures.

T
he exiles were
divided into three groups. Two older men, hailing from two of the Twenty-Seven Sisters, had been in exile for over a decade. They were hermits. Aranya saw one of them, once, passing by in a corridor. Then there was the wealthy group, the sons and daughters of privilege, who ordered hundred summer-old vintages by the Dragonship-full and threw extravagant parties in their rooms. Several had live-in mistresses. Aranya might have won a kind of acceptance among them because of her looks–that much was lewdly made clear to her, early on. She declined with thinly-veiled disgust. The last group hailed from a couple of dozen Islands scattered to the four points of the compass, from dark warlike Westerners to herself, a pale Northerner, to the small, lithe denizens of the southern Islands, like the Princess of Remoy.

Aranya developed a feud with Zuziana. Matters only progressed downhill after their disastrous first meeting. She did not want to feud, but soon realised that many of the petty squabbles or liaisons between the exiles developed
out of boredom. Zip turned the core of the third group against her, leaving Aranya to find company among misfits like herself.

Brooding over this, she stoked
her inner fires. Aranya took out her anger in paintings of rajals and Cloudland storms and a wild, fire-breathing Dragon, which, Beri declared, was so realistic that the canvas practically smoked at the edges.

It was also illegal.

A month after her arrival, on a day of rainfall so heavy she could hear the thundering torrents even within the Tower of Sylakia, Beri brought her to Nelthion’s office. Between its great racks of scrolls and musty logbooks and purchasing records, his desk was spotlessly clean. Nelthion rose on his crutch, greeting her cordially.

“I ha
ve a favour to ask,” she said, after exchanging greetings with him. “I’ve made a gift for the First War-Hammer Ignathion. Could you arrange to have it sent to him?”

“A painting?” asked Nelthion. “I heard you’ve been busy. May I see it?”

Aranya unwrapped the heavy sacking, uncovering a fine cheesecloth bag within. She loosened the drawstring, pushed back the cloth and tilted the framed painting toward the lamps in Nelthion’s office.

He stared at it for so long that Aranya began to wonder if she had committed an unforgivable breach of protocol.

“Well,” he said, finally. “I will comply, on one condition. Two conditions.”

Beri said, “Nelthion, you promised.”

“Don’t start with me, woman,” he growled. “By the five moons, you’ve turned me into a greybeard overnight. Two conditions, Princess. One, you paint me a teensy something to brighten this office. Two–my brother owns an art gallery in Sylakia Town. Would you be willing to have him display a few of your works, if there are others?”

“Great mounds,” said Beri.

Aranya shot her a withering glare. “This is my finest, Nelthion.”

“I’m no judge of art,” he said. “But my brother is. This would sell for
a princely sum, I daresay. As you may know, your home Island Immadia suffers under the tax burden levied on Sylakia’s newest demesne. We like to make Islands pay for their wars. Your King Beran was a legend, Princess. I believe he turned the word ‘Immadia’ into a swear word in the Commander’s presence.”

With a swift sideways glance, Aranya caught the slightest of smirks on Beri’s face as the maidservant straightened her lips.

Ha! A plan unmasked!

“So I’ll contribute a hailstone in a thunderstorm to Immadia’s aid?”

“Do you see any other of my merry inmates doing as much?” asked Nelthion, his voice dripping with disapproval. “This came from Immadia today.”

Aranya accepted the message scroll. “Nelthion–how can I ever thank you?”

“That space between the shelves. Fill it with a windroc. And keep your maidservant from turning me into a greybeard.”

She laughed.

On the way back, Aranya said to Beri, “You’re in trouble, you despicable plotter.”

“Even a woman of eighty-one summers has her wiles, Princess. Why don’t you join the others for dinner? It’ll be served very soon.”

The exiles were in the habit of gathering for their evening meal in the great dining hall on the servants’ level, even though they occupied but a fraction of the space. Coming from Nelthion’s office, Aranya found herself entering through a side entrance rather than the grand main doorway, three times her height and wide enough to accommodate ten of her side by side.

The group was smaller than usual. Another drunken party among the wealthy set, she assumed. Even amidst royalty and rulers, snobbery
existed. She felt no vindication that none of these had been invited either.

Her approach was obscured by the towering marble columns lining either side of the vaulted hall, so Aranya had time to appreciate that Zuziana was holding court amongst the girls, while a group of Princes and two sons of Western Island War-Chiefs, who she was learning to know by name, occupied a table nearby. Not one of them was taller than her.

“–only three dresses,” she heard.

“Wait
,” cried Zuziana. “Listen to this: which colour shall I wear today–the purple, the purple, or the purple? Oh, the one that flatters my eyes.”

The girls’ laughter echoed around the hall.

“I heard she’s an artist.”

“Oh, come now, how artistic do you think someone with her taste in dresses can be? She only knows one colour–purple.
How many of us can afford our own maidservant?”

Aranya flushed to the roots of her hair. So this was why the others avoided her! Drawing herself up, she marched out from between the columns, making straight for the group.

Every lamp and candle in the room flared.

Affecting a silly, long-legged walk, the Princess of Remoy marched toward Aranya. She looked up, and stopped as though she had slammed into a wall. “Aranya!”

“Zuziana. Trying on a pair of shoes you’ll never fill?”

The Remoyan developed high spots of colour on her cheeks. Nevertheless, she s
aid with saccharine spite, “I’m doing the stork-walk. We’ve named it after you.”

“We? You’re the one making a fool of herself.”

“Says the graceless yokel from Immadia?” Aranya had to pause to swallow down the fire, but Zuziana could not have known that. She took advantage of Aranya’s silence to add, “It must be unbearable for you that with two new brothers, you’ve lost the throne. Did you bring one dagger for each of them?”

Now the flames
roared into life. Murder her brothers? “Says the little grey sparrow from a kingdom renowned only for the size of its families and the number of royal bastards?”

Ouch! Aranya had not meant to let that insult slip out, but weeks of sniggers and whispering had turned into a deep rot within her. She recognised that now, too late.

The colour drained out of Zuziana’s face. She spluttered, “Y-You take that back!”

“I don’t think so. You’ve been after me since I arrived. It’s time everyone in this room recognised what a poisonous little viper you are.”

Zuziana’s knuckles clenched white on the hilt of her sword. She said, dangerously, “Says she who paints Dragons?”

She
had sneaked into her chambers! Aranya did not know how Zip had managed that, but that was an Island too far, as the saying went. “Dragon
ships
,” she corrected, icily. “What do they teach you in Remoy? And, if you draw that sword, I’ll put one of these forked daggers in your forked tongue faster than I slew that windroc on the journey here.”

“There’s another nasty little lie from the Princess of liars.”

But Zip, who had begun to draw her weapon, stopped the motion with an effort. Aranya saw the guards around the room taking an interest in their altercation.

“I don’t lie.”

“Only with the First War-Hammer, I hear,” spat the Remoyan. “Fifteen days aboard his Dragonship. Now you’re painting him little love-pictures.”

“It’s the truth. Find out for yourself.” Fight the fire, keep it down. Only words, Aranya. Only words. She said, “
What do you know about love? All you do is bleat about Barulak of Geban.” She bleated, exactly like a ralti sheep, “Ba-a-aa-rulak. I love you, Ba-a-aa-rulak. You don’t even dare talk to him. You’re a coward.”

Over at the Princes’ table Barulak and his fellows burst into nervous laughter.

“No Princess of Remoy is a coward.”

“Fine. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Aranya strode over toward Barulak, who stopped rocking on his chair and began to look rather alarmed. As she approached him, Aranya slowed, intentionally making her hips sway and pasting a seductive smile on her lips. Before he could move, she slipped onto his lap and twined her arms behind his neck.

“Hi, handsome Princes. Having a good time?”

“Now we are,” said Hamarath, the dark, muscular Warlord from the Ur-Yagga Island cluster, who had a love-affair with his mirror, everyone said. “How’re you doing, beautiful?”

“Fiery,” said Aranya, which was rather closer to the truth than she would have
cared to admit. “I brought you a present all the way from Remoy, Barulak. Let’s Zip those lips.”

S
he kissed him on his mouth. Thoroughly.

Zuziana gave a small shriek of dismay. Barulak’s hands flapped helplessly. Hamarath whistled.
The lamps in the room flared once more.

That was as much as she could stand–either of the kiss, or of her own ugly behaviour. Aranya released Barulak so suddenly that his chair toppled backward. He sprawled on the floor.

Her face utterly devoid of colour, the Princess of Remoy stormed toward her.

“You and I will finish this,” she hissed. “Tomorrow, the
hour before dawn. I’ll find you.”

“A duel?”

Old-fashioned, but Remoy was renowned for its adherence to the old ways.

“Quivering in your pretty slippers, Princess? Should’ve thought of that before you called me a bastard.”

* * * *

Aranya awoke long before the appointed
hour, before the pied warblers nesting outside her window stirred to chirp their greetings to the dawn. She could easily imagine a hundred ways yesterday’s confrontation with Zuziana could have gone better–starting with one hot-tempered Immadian not launching that Dragonship in the first place. Zip was irritating, granted. And spiteful. But was it worth a duel?

As the long-awaited tap sounded upon her door, Aranya crept out into the corridor.

Zuziana thrust a staff into her hand. “Follow me.”

Twin shadows ghosted through the Tower of Sylakia, avoiding the places they knew were guarded. One shadow was a head taller than the other, but they moved with equal stealth. Aranya silently thanked her father’s foresight in providing her training that might be regarded as somewhat unusual for Princesses of other Islands. No ‘she’s only a girl’ for him. Strategies of war,
weapons training, code breaking and even lock-picking had featured in her past.

Ever the cunning cliff
fox, King Beran.

She glanced at the staff. Ironwood? S
he had read about ironwood. Thin but heavy, the staff would easily break bones or skulls. Zuziana probably did not want to kill her–but the lesson she intended would be bruising at best.

Zip led her down six levels to the unus
ed basement level of the Tower. She paused to light two torches. “You go that way.”

As they lit the lamps
situated in sconces around the perimeter of the circular chamber, Aranya realised that she was in an underground arena. Ten levels of terraced seating led to a sandy centre below. The fighting area was cordoned off with ropes.

“You prepared this yesterday?”

Zip glared at her. “No vipers, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”

“I wasn’t insinuating–”

“Like your ‘size of their families’ comment? So I have sixteen brothers and sisters. I can see what you’re thinking–by the Cloudlands, she must have drawn the very
shortest
straw to be chosen as the worthless exile out of that lot.”

“Zip, I’m sorry–”

“Oh, shut your yapping muzzle, you mongrel! I’m through with words. I’m here to fight.”

Aranya bit her lip. She had to go through with this.

Silently, the two girls shucked their warm outer robes and stepped onto the cool, fire-lit sand. Zuziana, like her, had chosen a close fitting under-tunic and knee-length under-shorts, allowing a freedom of movement the traditional long dress for Island women would only obstruct.

Zip
twirled the staff above her head, limbering up her back and shoulders. “Ready?”

Aranya stretched her back. Her crysglass cuts from the battle with the windroc had healed well, but still
felt a little stiff, especially in the mornings. Beri said there was hardly a scar to be seen. She wondered if that was another effect of her healing power–perhaps when she poured strength into Beri after the snakebite? Another weirdness. She sighed inwardly.