Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Read Free Page A

which drove the dirigible forward. If meriatite was in short supply, which was often, ten warriors at a time could be assigned to manually drive the turbines, usually by pedalling a contraption fondly called the back-breaker, housed in the warriors’ common area.
    A loud knock made Aranya jerk against her chains. A warrior entered and bowed curtly. He said, “War-Hammer’s orders, Princess of Immadia. You may observe the departure from the aft gantry.”
    “I am … grateful.”
    Her guards directed her astern. Opening a small, lightweight door, they squeezed out onto the aft gantry, a little behind and below the six turbines which drove the Dragonship. Aranya noticed they took a firm grip of her manacled wrists. Her wry smile was met with firm headshakes. No jumping allowed.
    The ground receded in that silence which had always surprised her about Dragonships. No, there were tiny noises–the groan of the hydrogen-sack bulging against its containing netting, the creak of stays taking up the strain, the puffing of the furnace and a squeal of protest as the stabilising wings, which gave the dirigibles their fanciful name, extended. The wings were adjusted to catch the breeze more than to stabilise the Dragonship. How ironic, Aranya thought, that in a Sylakian culture which apparently hated and despised Dragons so greatly that their mere mention was tantamount to courting death, that the main means of transport between the Islands should be called Dragonships.
    Steadily, Immadia Island revealed itself to her. Grey slate-tiled roofs huddled four-square around the traditional central courtyard of its houses. The bright awnings of the marketplace beckoned her notice, and then the handsome towers and turrets of the castle which had always been her home. Her eyes traced the crenellated battlements and mobile catapult emplacements with a defiant, possessive hunger. She would return. This was not forever-farewell.
    Aranya caught sight of King Beran and Queen Silha, each holding one of her twin infant brothers, standing atop Izariela’s Tower. Symbolic. Her heart lurched in her chest as they raised their arms, palms upturned to the sky, in a gesture of sending-in-love. She would have replied, but could not raise her chained arms.
    A mistiness fogged her vision. Aranya blinked until it receded.
    The Dragonship rose more quickly now, gaining purchase on the breeze, the land unfurling beneath her as her family shrank into dots on a faraway castle. The snow-crowned mountains flanking the city formed a spectacular, gleaming rampart to a land tan in the cold season, broken by the white dots of the giant ralti sheep searching for a nibble of anaemic brown grass, before the brief spring rains brought green to every field and rocky crevice. At the edge of the Island were the ubiquitous terraced lakes, buttressed by great seamless stone walls built by the ancients to capture the inadequate rainfall of these harsh lands. Immadia had three levels of terrace lakes. Other Islands had many more.
    Below the terrace lakes, washing up against the sheer cliffs half a league tall–but perhaps far taller, for no-one knew how deep the Cloudlands truly extended–were the ever-present, never-ending cloudscapes of noxious gases that stretched to the horizon and beyond, white and grey and turquoise in places, an ever-changing tapestry which hid what many Islanders believed to be a land of demons and monsters, or a bottomless pit of hell. Oh, there were stories about the monsters that crawled up out of the Cloudlands, many stories, but the truth was that no-one knew, for nothing and no-one could survive the poisons in that atmosphere.
    The Dragonship ’s bow pointed almost directly eastward, bound for the Island cluster of Gemalka, famed for its garnet and diamond mines, and for the delectable rainbow trout found in its terrace lakes. They traversed the shadow of Immadia Island, grown many leagues long at this hour of the evening.
    But Aranya kept her gaze