Forelegs flailing to defend its head from the water dragon’s tearing claws, the cloud dragon ripped with its hind legs, opening great gouges in the jade-green scales of its foe’s belly. The water dragon lashed back with its tail. Throwing a muscular coil around the white dragon’s own tail, it hollowed its back, wrenching those vicious hind claws away from its wounded underside. Writhing upwards, it bound itself so close that the white dragon had no room to claw at it again. With a single powerful beat of its wings, the green dragon forced the two of them out over the surface of the lake. Then it folded its mighty wings closed with a snap that whipped smoky spray from the water.
The white dragon flapped hysterically, but with holes gaping in its wing, it couldn’t escape the dead weight of the water dragon pulling it down. It released its killing bite, head straining upwards. The green dragon thrust down with its head, brownish blood muddy on its emerald scales, dark tongue questing for the waters below. With the cloud dragon still caught in the coils of its tail, it fell into the lake. Both creatures vanished into the depths, trails of purple and muddy green blood blurring the crystal purity of the water.
Not so strong, your little effort.’ Azazir drew a deep, satisfied breath. The shining pallor of fish scales gleamed beneath his skin and green light shone in his eyes.
The battling dragons erupted on to the surface of the lake in a blaze of sapphire and emerald light. They reared up, batting their wings for balance, each ripping away scales from the other with foreclaws and teeth. The cloud dragon was hissing, the water dragon’s cry a resonant moan that sent a shiver down Velindre’s spine.
She watched, tears filling her eyes, as the two creatures’ struggles grew weaker, blows landing without strength, evasions becoming clumsy and useless. Finally the cloud dragon collapsed backwards, head drifting on the subsiding ripples. Its motionless wings spread outstretched on the water and its tail dangled away into the depths. The water dragon fell forward on to its enemy’s body, claws scraping ineffectually. It gaped, stretching its sinuous head forward to rip at the cloud dragon’s throat, but this last effort was beyond it. It collapsed, tongue lolling over its teeth.
Velindre watched, tears falling unheeded down her cheeks, as the creature she had woven with her magic dissolved. The wings blurred to mist, sapphire bones momentarily revealed like a spread of fingers before they vanished. The long, lithe body turned to grey fog tainted with the dusky purple of a storm cloud. The head was the last to fade, the remaining azure eye now dull and lifeless, turned to Velindre in mute reproach. She shivered as it disappeared.
‘Draw the magic to you, don’t let it blow away on the wind,’ Azazir rasped.
Velindre watched the green dragon fading, its wounds widening, cutting the creature into butchered remnants that drifted apart on the water, mercifully growing fainter, with scales, claws and teeth the last to disappear. She saw Azazir transmuted to a hollow semblance of man once again, filled with green-hued water, emerald madness in his eyes.
Now do you understand?’ He turned to her, eerie intensity lighting his face. Now will you stay?’
‘Yes, I understand,’ she said tersely. ‘I understand why Otrick so rarely summoned a dragon. I understand why he kept such magic to himself. He would never create such a creature so lightly, to see it fade and die so soon, still less to watch it killed like that.’ Revulsion choked her.
‘So you understand nothing,’ Azazir said with contempt. ‘You had better leave.’
‘Gladly,’ snapped Velindre, but not in my underclothes, thank you all the same.’ Cutting violently through the confusion of magic that now permeated the lake, she searched the barren rock of the bottom. She brought all her scattered belongings to land at her feet in a flash of sapphire light.
‘Better hurry,’ warned Azazir as he rubbed his hands together. His fingers were flowing through each other as the dry mud beneath his feet turned liquid once more. The dry rocks began to shine in the sunlight as they were coated with cold moisture.
Velindre looked up to see that the sky was still unclouded and snapped her fingers to summon a flame of pure fire. It burned elemental red, hanging in the air, and she set her clothes drifting around it, steam rising from the sodden cloth. She pulled on her damp boots, stamping as her stockings rumpled uncomfortably beneath her heels. Finding a silver-backed brush in her sodden bundle, she dragged the bristles angrily through her protesting hair.
‘What are the differences between a true dragon and simulacrum?’ she demanded. ‘What else do I need to know?’
‘What else?’ Azazir’s voice rippled with the myriad streams now cascading down the sides of the valley. ‘Why should there be anything else?’
‘Because there always is,’ Velindre said grimly, subduing her imperfectly brushed locks in a tight plait. ‘Especially with wizards. You said there was a void at the heart of a simulacrum. What is there within a true dragon?’
‘I wondered if you’d remember to ask about that.’ Azazir’s laughter was like a winter brook tripping over stones. ‘Maybe you might be Otrick’s equal, one day.’
‘Well?’ demanded Velindre.
‘A true water dragon has a heart of emerald.’ Azazir looked out at the lake and excited ripples raced towards him. ‘Ruby for a fire dragon, sapphire for one living among the clouds. Amber for a dragon born of the earth, for some reason. That’s the other thing the hunters were ready to risk their lives for, to cut out a dragon’s heart. There are no purer gemstones.’
‘They killed them for jewels?’ Velindre was astounded.
‘So, will you be trying this again?’ Azazir looked at her, his head on one side, expression—as far as it could be seen—contemplative. ‘Or will you just run back to Hadrumal, tail between your legs, too frightened to admit where you’ve been?’
‘Otrick would summon a dragon in times of direst need,’ Velindre said carefully, noting that she was now standing in mud up to her ankles. ‘I imagine I would do the same, if I could see no other way of saving myself or some vital situation.’
‘Be careful where you work such magic,’ warned Azazir softly. ‘The dragon will go hunting out of blind hunger, not realising what scant time it has to live its borrowed life. It won’t only hunt meat. It senses the void at its heart, even if it doesn’t understand it. It’ll seek gems to fill that emptiness and it will rip apart a building if it gets so much as a sniff of a diamond ring.’
What happens if it finds them?’ Velindre wrenched her ill-fitting skirt over her head before fighting her way into her bodice, now shrunken in oddly inconvenient places.
‘I imagine it’ll win a true life for itself,’ mused Azazir as he gazed out over his lake, which was starting to glow green once more. ‘Then you would have a lot of explaining to do in Hadrumal.’
Velindre gathered up everything else she cared to salvage inside her blanket and tied it into an awkward load. ‘I’ll bear that in mind.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I don’t suppose anyone will come here again, not from Hadrumal, but if they do, there’s no need to say I was here .
Azazir ignored her, walking away. Angered, Velindre reached out to hold him back but her fingers simply rippled through his arm. He gave no sign he had even noticed, first striding, then running towards the lake. He dived into the crystal waters and vanished in a flash of emerald radiance.
Velindre looked up to see the roiling grey clouds that had capped the valley before returning in full force.
She closed her eyes and sighed. Where should she go: to Hadrumal or Relshaz? She had this secret now and there was no unlearning it. Was it a secret she wanted to share? What would Dev, of all unreliable, untrustworthy people, do with such knowledge? But these wild wizards had the lore, if one of them could forge a dragon to plunder the Aldabreshin islands. Could she bring herself to hand such dangerous power to Dev, so that he could raise a dragon of his own to rip the interloper to pieces? How long could it be before the Archmage got wind of this dragon loose in the Archipelago? Wouldn’t it be better to be in Hadrumal when that happened and be on hand to present the assembled worthies of the Council with a solution? Necessity would force Planir to overlook her visit to Azazir. Let them deny her the rank of Cloud