Dragonlove by Marc Secchia Page A

Elders treated with those lying fleas just last week, Emburion returned. I say we frighten it off. What say you, Hazzalion?
    The third voice, beneath her Dragonship, spat, A Princess? We cannot spurn Sapphurion’s word, no matter how horribly it itches our scales. However, I anticipate the Elder will lick this vermin’s entrails off his talons.
    Charming image. Hualiama had expected as much, but as the Isles saying went, the rajal’s proof was in the sharpness of his fangs. She clamped down on a creeping sense of terror and locked her knowledge of the Dragonish language behind walls of mental granite. She must not even think in Dragonish, Master Ga’athar had cautioned.
    “We will conduct you to the landing place, Princess,” rumbled Emburion. “Stray a wing’s-breadth from the appointed path, and I will take pleasure in charcoaling your meatless rack of bones.”
    Lia bowed elaborately. “I shall so endeavour, o lava-scaled lord of draconic magnificence–” she managed to deliver her effusive compliment without a hint of irony “–but what Human Dragonship can imitate the aerial prowess of the Dragonkind in anything but name?”
    The Orange Dragon’s belly-fires rumbled his pleasure.
    And so Lia piloted the solo Dragonship around the volcano’s eastern flank, closely shadowed by the trio of suddenly voluble Dragons, who occupied themselves with competing to invent the best insults in Dragonish, blithely unaware that the Human girl understood every word.
    A semi-circular terrace lake hugged the volcano’s base from the western edge of the Island all the way around to the north, gleaming like liquid bronze in the late afternoon suns-light. As they skirted the precipitous avocado-coloured slopes, Lia saw a dozen Dragon sentries perched on the rim wall, beside those patrolling the skies above. Unease trickled like icy water down her spine.
    With hands deft on the rigging and controls as the Dragonship bucked disobediently in the whimsical breeze, Lia brought her vessel sweeping down toward the lake. She skimmed over the surface into the mouth of an immense cavern–a tunnel, she realised–which penetrated the volcano’s heart. Pristine waters lapped against obsidian shores, set afire by thick streamers of light radiating from above. A huge shadow rippled beneath the Dragonship, making Lia startle. She gasped as a Green Dragoness surged out of the water ahead of them, her ninety-foot wings sheeting great veils of water, clenching a gigantic carp she had between her fangs. The fish had to be twenty feet in length, a meal worthy even of a Dragon.
    “Giant whiskered carp,” said Emburion, his dragon-smile displaying a row of surprisingly yellow fangs, as though his mouth were filled with wax candles. As the tunnel opened into the caldera, he added, “Welcome to the Halls of the Dragons, o Princess of Fra’anior.”
    Hualiama inhaled sharply. “Oh, Emburion! It’s amazing.”
    The Dragon waved a wingtip lackadaisically, clearly relishing the opportunity to play tour-guide to an enthusiastic audience. “The garnet, tourmaline and quartzite crystal formations on the volcano’s walls augment the natural suns-light, giving our Halls an unparalleled ambience. To your left paw, observe our Dragon hatcheries–heavily guarded, of course. That Amber Dragoness is training her week-old hatchlings in the basics of flight. Over there, in the open lava pits, we Dragons bathe and treat our wounds. Above the lake are the honeycomb caves we’ve built over thousands of years to house the greatest concentration of our kind in the Island-World.”
    “What’s that?” Lia pointed up to the rim.
    “That’s a group of Dragon scientists making observations of the cosmos through a celestial star-gazer, a scientific instrument constructed from a unique combination of physical parts and magic.”
    A telescope? Lia had never imagined such a telescope, twice the length of an adult Dragon and easily fifteen feet in diameter, if her