There's a dragon watching me when I wake up

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. They came to fight the Death Lord, creatures of molten fur and metal, gold and solid against the shadows of death.

I’d seen them in visions, elongated necks and golden scales, back winging like eagles as they shot fire and ice at the invader. The sky had been full of them, a flock of black dragons under the Death Lord’s command, dive bombing the Nayndarin troops and dodging the attacks of silver and gold chimera and the stream of pure force from the Battlemaster’s sword.

It’s a picture of an apocalypse, terrifying, world shattering and sixty years ago. The war is over, the Death Lord has been driven into exile, the Battlemaster has been invested as Lord of Meldin. There are no reasons for a dragon to be watching me.

Indoors.

Eating an ice-cream.

I watch this mythical creature—the unnatural union of hunting-cat and lizard: all silver-black scales and deadly menace—scoop out a mouthful of berry-red cream with an elongated tongue that is slowly turning pink.

It’s about then I wonder if I am going insane.

‘You’re awake.’ The dragon tilts her head and considers me out of one black eye. She has a face shaped like a gemstone coated in silver, with delicate nostrils and laid-back ears. ‘I should tell Dad. He wanted to know when you woke up.’

‘Wait a minute,’ there’s a scratch to my voice that sounds like screaming but at least I can talk. ‘Where am I?’

‘Yarum.’

That means I was right that I’d come to the city. But what happened then?

‘Middle Yarum to be precise,’ she continues, in a tone that goes through my ears like wolf-song. ‘In the fences’ district, where all the best stolen property comes to be valued. It’s a very respectable part of the city.’

‘Stolen property is respectable?’

‘Only the best stolen property,’ she corrects me. ‘Like jewels or silk or Nayndarin artefacts. But not chickens. I’m not allowed to snarf chickens,’ her tongue shoots out to scoop up more ice-cream. ‘Unfortunately.’

‘That’s nice,’ I manage, before a logical explanation occurs to me. ‘Am I hallucinating?’ I ask the air.

‘You could be,’ replies the dragon. She gestures to the orange smoke that’s following my breath. ‘Dad’s got you hooked up to some heavy drugs. For the pain, you know.’

That would be the headache I can feel lurking under my brain and the sense that I’m not all here. ‘What drugs?’

She lifts delicate black shoulders in a shrug. Despite wings and arms moving simultaneously it’s a curiously human gesture. ‘Dunno,’ she says. ‘If he’s been working with Tamar, they could be anything. Uncle Tamar has the best drugs.’ Her tongue shoots out to scoop up more of what I am beginning to think is an illegal substance. ‘It would be interesting if you were hallucinating. What do you see?’

‘You,’ I answer without thinking. ‘I see a small silver-black dragon, just over two sl or sword-lengths long, not counting your tail, with ridges running up your spine and neck and an eagle’s wingspan coiled beneath your shoulders. Sitting, poised like a hunting-cat on a reyset-blue couch and eating roseberry ice-cream out of a cup made from lizard’s-eye. And while I remember sword lengths as a measure how do I know the correct name for light blue? Or that the pink ice-cream she’s eating is made from red and purple brambles known as roseberries? That’s heraldic knowledge and I don’t remember learning heraldry. But I don’t remember a lot of things.

And I doubt the obvious explanation is the right one. ‘I’m not hallucinating,’ I ask the dragon, ‘am I?’

‘Not unless we both are.’ She examines her reflection in a silver mirror, her diamond-shaped face reflecting light off the polished glass as she licks a piece of roseberry off her nose. ‘Yarum-ice doesn’t make you hallucinate,’ she gives the empty cup a regretful glance. ‘At least not much.’

I was right to think that ice-cream was illegal.

‘I should get Dad if you’re properly awake.’

‘Wait.’ I hear my voice break like shells underfoot as she moves. ‘Tell me who you are.’ And who your father is. And how much danger I’m in. ‘We haven’t met before, have we?’

‘Not while you were conscious.’ She places the cup on a table and presents a five-fingered paw. ‘I’m Elouise Taleri. Dad says we’re cousins.’

My fingers shake when I hold them out. Taleri is the family that birthed both the Death Lord and the gold dragon who defeated him, and it’s not reassuring to be related to them. My cousin has a child’s hand, apart from the claws, about half the size of mine and soft to the touch. There’s a smear of roseberry ice-cream across her thumb and I’d like to believe this is all a dream.

‘I really need to get Dad.’ She catches my eye: black gaze on green, and when I blink, the dragon is gone. A young girl: dark-brown hair, copper-bright skin and the dragon’s obsidian eyes, is standing by the door. ‘You don’t look good.’

‘I don’t feel good.’ I blink again but it’s still a girl who stands by the door, with an embroidered petticoat and a rich red tunic and roseberry ice-cream smeared around her mouth. ‘Can you get my father too?’

She turns to look at me, her head twisting round on her neck in a way that isn’t quite human. He’s not here, Uriel.’

‘What do you mean, not here?’ I ask, as the puzzle of my dragon/girl/cousin gives way to a familiar panic. Has my father abandoned me again? I'd survived without him for my first seventeen years, but that was on a world I knew. Despite the calm induced by whatever drugs I’m on, I can hear my voice shaking. ‘Didn't he bring me here?'

‘He dumped you on the doorstep,’ the dragon-child says, which sounds all too believable. ‘But we’ll look after you.’

‘Will you?’ That will make a change from the last place my father dumped me. And how do I know which side you’re on? ‘Why should I believe that? You could be working for Lord Vaelen.’ My throat dries as I remember my father’s rage at his enemy’s investiture. ‘Dad hates him.’

‘They hate each other.’ Her hands move like a dragon’s paws, creating figures from a puppet play. ‘Arch enemies,’ she says with a smile. ‘Locked together in endless strife.’

I think about some of the things I’ve seen Dad do and the legends of the power an invested Lord Vaelen can command, and I don’t return her grin. Yarum lives in the shadow of castle Vaelen, which means my father’s ‘arch enemy’ is less than an hour’s ride away.

I batter away the nose piece that is guiding tangerine smoke across my face and try to focus. ‘Is that why you have me on drugs and helpless and what’s’—my voice breaks into a cut-off scream as pain cuts my head like a Darazine knife and my fingers scramble for the drug-targeting device.

‘You shouldn’t take it off.’ Ice-cream smeared hands place the tiny dot back on my nose and the smoke resumes its flow across my breath. ‘We’ll look after you and even a Nayndarin healer can’t take this type of pain.’

‘Nayndarin don’t have healers,’ I say, wanting to believe her and frightened to trust anyone in this world my father claimed was my own. ‘They have medics. And I’m not going to a medic. I’m fine.’

Her brow ripples like a dragon’s scales at my lie, and I see her head tilt to study the black-laced cobwebs around my head. They’re the dirty colour of swamp-water and the last time I saw them I was dying.

‘That’s interesting,’ she says, as the world spins around me. ‘I’ve never seen anyone make colours like that before.’

‘Colours?’ It’s an effort to open my eyes. ‘I don’t see any colours.’

‘I do. It’s my gift. No one else can do it,’ she adds, smug as only a child can be. ‘You’ve got black. And white. Not mingled at all, just twisting together in a spiral pattern.’

‘Black and white aren’t colours,’ I say, as the pain continues to build.

‘None of them are colours,’ she answers. ‘They’re curses, or forces or fate. Colours are just how I see them.’ Her head tilts upward, presumably to watch the show. ‘What do you see?’

‘Death.’ I watch spider webs grow as the black and white pattern spins out my consciousness. ‘I’m the Death Lord’s daughter and I see death.’