Now she had to create the illusion of a dragon. She drew out a thread of blue-white magic to mark the long line of the creature’s back above the shoreline before her. Chilling the air, she studded its back with spines like icicles, rising from a ridge of thick scales grey as frost. Spreading her hands, she ended the tail in a heavy blunt spike and turned her attention to the arrow-shaped head, long, lean jaw white as the purest cloud, opening to reveal a mouth of blue shadow and an array of ice-white teeth cruel as a mountain winter.
‘Don’t stand there admiring it,’ scolded Azazir. ‘Give it some substance. Don’t stop gathering the magic’ Velindre struggled to maintain her grip on the pulsating mass of elemental energy. The column of azure light was rippling alarmingly, sapphire pulses shooting skyward. The dragon began to fade, barely sketched as it was. She bit her lip, tasting blood in her mouth as she fought for control over the fickle element.
Slowly, painstakingly, Velindre wove the magic together and strengthened her creation. She gave it long elegant limbs where sapphire light made bones and sinew and cloud clothed them in muscle and scale. She hammered out white armoured plates for its flanks before moulding smaller belly scales, opalescent as sunrise clouds. Mist coalesced into vast translucent wings shimmering with faint rainbow haze.
‘Very pretty,’ murmured Azazir with scant admiration. But can you make it fly?’
Sparing just enough attention to ensure that her carefully drawn creation did not fade, Velindre concentrated on gathering every scrap of elemental power that she could find between the uppermost skies and the valley she stood in. She felt herself suffused by possibilities, her hair spreading in a halo, her skin crawling with the touch of untamed energy. Focusing on the brilliant heart of the column of light, she forced the elemental might into the maelstrom of magic, confining the roiling power in an ever tighter circle. Some remote, dispassionate part of her mind wondered how many times she had told arrogant pupils never to summon more magic than would be released in their spell. How foolhardy was this? All the same, she concentrated every fibre of her being on winding the circle of power ever tighter, ever smaller. A pinpoint of sapphire light flared in its burning white heart.
‘That’s it!’ Azazir crowed. Now cut it loose, throw it to the dragon or we’ll both be dead!’
With a thrill of horror, Velindre realised that the sapphire spark was doubling in size with every beat of her heart. It was sucking the power out of the sky of its own volition. There was no way she could contain it. Distantly she recalled Otrick musing on just how the wizards of fearful mainland fable might have wrought their legendary destructions. Now she knew. If she didn’t confine that raw, burgeoning power within the simulacrum of the dragon, mages and non-mageborn alike all the way to Hadrumal would see just such a disaster unfold.
She hacked at the column of braided air with pure blue energy. In the instant before the sapphire spark could burst free to scour the valley even more bare than Azazir had made it, she thrust the elemental power into the motionless form of the dragon. The cerulean light vanished, recoiling in all directions, whipping back up to the highest reaches of the sky.
The dragon shivered and blurred, distorted as a distant mirage. Then azure fire kindled in its eyes and it yawned, long slatey-blue tongue tasting the air. It sprang upwards, spreading its great wings and flexing them, tail lashing wildly. Velindre caught her breath as it slipped down the sky, awkward and ungainly. Then she saw the creature catch the whisper of a breeze and seize it, curling the air to support itself with pure instinctive magic. The dragon soared high, graceful and beautiful. It looked from side to side, gathering the winds to itself until a nimbus of blue magelight surrounded it.
Velindre reached out to the aura and shivered. It was that pure, invigorating power that had seduced her in the heart of the storm, yet now it was something more, laced with the dragon’s uncomplicated delight in its union with the element that had borne it. She couldn’t help herself; she drew the magic to her, opening herself to it. The dragon’s head whipped around and it dived to land on the shoreline with a faint thud, talons gouging the dry mud. Cocking its head to one side, it glared at Velindre, hissing faintly. ‘Let it know you’re more powerful than it is,’ Azazir warned.
‘How?’ Velindre asked in a strangled whisper. Her knees felt like water. She licked her dry lips and her tongue found a raw edge on a chipped tooth; she’d clenched her jaw that hard. Close to, the beast was more tenifying than fascinating.
‘Think of it as an unruly apprentice.’ Azazir was callously amused.
Velindre locked gazes with the dragon. It took a stealthy pace towards her, mouth opening wider. Those teeth were incredible, like shards of indestructible ice. She flung an abrupt bolt of lightning just in front of the dragon, smudging its white purity with a shower of dust and stones. The creature retreated, head sinking low between its forefeet, icy spines flattened to its long neck. The light in its eyes faded a little and its long tail curled around its hind legs. Its long blue tongue flickered out to taste the ground where the lightning had landed and it extended a curious forefoot to the blasted hole. ‘Good,’ Azazir approved. Now—’ Whatever he might have said was lost in the water dragon’s emerald fury as it stormed up out of the lake. It ran across the surface of the water, shrieking a challenge that echoed around the barren valley. Unfurling its pale-green wings, it sprang into the air before it reached the shore and plunged down, vicious talons extended on all four feet.
The cloud dragon writhed out of the way barely in time. The water dragon lashed out with its spiked tail and caught the newcomer full in the side, ripping at its white scales. Purple blood oozed from the wound. The white dragon whipped its head around and fastened its teeth on the green dragon’s hindquarter, worrying at its leg. The water dragon screeched and extended its wings, flapping wildly and whipping up a cloud of dust as it fought to pull away. The cloud dragon held on until it was standing at full stretch on its hind legs, wings outspread to keep its own balance, still tearing at its rival’s flesh. Green-brown blood from the water dragon’s vicious wound stained the pristine whiteness of the cloud dragon’s face and neck.
The green dragon opened its mouth to breathe a torrent of burning spittle at its tormentor. The white dragon recoiled and released it, sinking back on to its hind legs, still ready to spring, its head weaving from side to side as it licked its bloodied teeth with its slatey-blue tongue. The water dragon wheeled in the air, holding its wounded leg tight to its long body, remaining clawed limbs still extended in warning. The white dragon darted up and this time the green dragon’s lurid breath caught its wing, searing the white membrane like acid. The cloud dragon shrieked in uncomprehending agony, tumbling through the air as it tried to escape the pain. The green dragon pursued it, wings pumping to rise above the shining white creature. Once it was above it, it tore at its white head and neck with its glaucous foreclaws, agate-spiked tail lashing at the wounded white wing. Now the cloud dragon’s head was soiled with its own purple blood, one eye torn to a blind, mined socket.
It rolled in the air, falling away, trying to escape. The green dragon shrieked its triumph and groped down with its unwounded hind leg, desperate to rip into the white dragon’s unprotected belly. Its exultation was cut short as the cloud dragon breathed a lacerating hail of icy blades straight in its face. The green dragon threw its head back and the cloud dragon shot upwards, jaws fastening on the water dragon’s throat.
Wings beating frantically, it forced the creature back, rising above it for the first time. Now the water dragon was on its back, the soft hide between belly and hindquarters exposed, only one clawed hind foot raking the air to defend its vitals. It tore frantically at the cloud dragon’s armoured neck and shoulders with its forefeet, claws skidding off the thick ridged scales.