Aranya (Shapeshifter Dragons) Read Online Free Page A

and probed and circled Ignathion’s polite questions throughout the first five courses of a superb dinner, which she partook of heartily, until he laid down his eating-tine and cutter, smiled broadly at her across the table, and said, “You, Aranya, remind me most forcibly of a woman I once courted. In those days I was but a lowly Third War-Hammer, commanding a scant three Dragonships and a Hammer of two hundred warriors. This young beauty was the toast of a faraway Island realm, courted by kings and princes and the nobles of a rising power called Sylakia, which comprised but six Islands at the time. She would have enjoyed the rainbow trout, as you. Another helping?”
    Aranya, startled to find her plate empty, accepted with a nod. Ignathion served her deftly . Leaning back in his seat with that infuriating, even smug, smile creasing his features, he added, “This beauty hailed from Fra’anior. Perhaps you knew her?”
    Aranya’s tine slipped and she shot a chunk of the buttered, herb-encrusted fish onto the pristine tablecloth.
    “We had become close,” he said, rescuing the fugitive piece of fish and setting it aside, “when a wily cliff fox filched the incomparable Izariela of Fra’anior from beneath all of our noses and whisked her off to his Northern stronghold. It was an enormous scandal; perhaps the only disreputable act Beran has ever perpetrated–a daring kidnapping from within a guarded fortress, an open invitation to war with Fra’anior and a lunatic getaway evading the Dragonships of twenty Islands–all for a love which burned brighter than a Dragonship’s furnace. Aranya, your father is a rogue and a pirate.”
    For the first time in four days, a genuine smile curved her lips.
    Ignathion aimed his tine across the table at her. “There. That’s the smile I remember. But it pains me to see King Beran brought to heel, Aranya. Twelve years! No other Island lasted even two summers campaigning against me, but–he’s an old cliff fox, that man. A slippery trout with the highest integrity and the battle instincts of a Dragon. He was only brought down because Rolodia betrayed him–you didn’t know?”
    Aranya shook her head. Her thoughts were still reeling at hearing her father bei ng compared to a trout, a cliff fox and a Dragon in the same breath. Betrayed? By his oldest friend, the King of Rolodia Island? How that must have crushed him.
    “I was deeply troubled to learn of your mother’s death, Aranya.”
    “She was poisoned.”
    “I know. I make it my business to understand my foes. I know how beards come to be singed. Tapestries, too.”
    This time, Aranya had to lay her wrist on the table to quell her hand’s shaking. Burn him beneath the Cloudlands, was there nothing this beast did not know about her? She felt sick. He knew! He knew something, or suspected it at the very least . Why was he toying with her–threatening? Bribing? Turning her into a hare trapped by the neck in his hunter’s snare, gaining her life in the bargain? Why? What could he possibly want of his captive? She dropped her gaze, hoping that her sudden terror had not shown too starkly.
    Ignathion stirred restlessly as the servitor appeared with the dishes for the sixth course, a mildly curried breast of fowl served on a bed of saffron rice. The aroma of curry made her mouth water.
    When the servant had departed, Ignathion served her once more and refilled her crystal goblet with thick, purple prekki-juice.
    The silence between them stretched unbearably thin.
    Desperate to throw Ignathion off the scent, Aranya said, “Do you know why my mother was murdered, First War-Hammer? Was it a Sylakian plot?”
    “No ,” he snarled. “Don’t you dare accuse me–” Ignathion pulled up with an effort. His white-knuckled grip on his tine relaxed. “Very well, I earned that rebuke. Aranya, your mother was a rare woman. Poison is the hallmark of Herimor–and a few other Islands I could name, admittedly. What I meant to convey is