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Rascally Highness trimmed the sails to catch the wind as she swung the dirigible’s nose to point southeast. Usually, she would follow the semicircle of rim-Islands down to Ha’athior, because the caldera’s rising vapours could be unpredictable. She judged the breeze steady enough to mitigate the danger of a shortcut. She perched on the pilot’s stool, clicked the gearstick a notch to engage the stern propeller, and began to pedal.
    A hot, sticky Fra’aniorian night enfolded her.

Chapter 3: Crystal Lair
     
    O ver a league beneath Lia’s Dragonship, the caldera’s lava lakes cast a ruddy glow upon the fat underbelly of the dirigible balloon. Miles-tall cliffs festooned with dense tropical vegetation and trailing vines dropped from the Islands into the caldera, before the heat and poisonous gases strangled any plant life except for lichens. Dragonets, birds, monkeys and other flying and burrowing rodents and insects inhabited the cliffs in their millions. Half a mile offshore the silence was profound, a brooding presence in its own right, a beast of mystery and magic.
    Softly, she sang to herself to while away the hours.
    Gi’ishior seemed busier than usual. By the light of the Jade, Mystic and Blue moons, Lia tallied at least ten Dragons patrolling the skies above the tall, slender volcanic cone said to house the Halls of the Dragons, and a steady stream of Dragonkind arriving and departing on mysterious errands. What was a Dragon city like, she wondered? How did Dragon mothers chastise their hatchlings? Did Dragon parents ever abandon their eggs, as she had been abandoned?
    As Lia turned southward, again maintaining a good separation from the Islands in order to trim the distance she needed to fly, she clambered aloft to unfurl the spinnaker, a big-bellied triangular sail which billowed to fullness as it caught the breeze. The masts creaked as the dirigible leaned over, gathering speed. Such strange names for sails–jibs, topgallants, even a moonraker. She had found the idea of a spinnaker in an ancient, crumbling scroll in her father’s archives, and copied it, adding a few ‘Lia’ touches. How well that described the melody of her life! Could she never be satisfied with things as they were?
    As Ha’athior loomed before her after seven hours’ sailing, a Yellow Dragoness suddenly rose from the darkness to fix Lia with a scorching gaze. She was as sleek as a trout, with coppery overtones on her upper body fading into a pale eggshell yellow in the underparts.
    “Hualiama,” she growled. “Mighty Sapphurion said you’d be quick to trespass.”
    Lia raised her chin, disguising her anxiety behind a thin-lipped smile. “I’m not trespassing, o mighty Dragon. The air is free for Dragon and Human alike.”
    This comment provoked a fifteen-foot plume of flame that passed dangerously close to her Dragonship’s nose. “As cheeky as my hatchlings! Know this, little Human–we Dragons are watching. Always watching.”
    “I was just–” the Dragoness wheeled away. Lia sighed, “I’m just parking at the warrior monastery offshore of Ha’athior. Thereafter …”
    Aggravated but unsurprised that the story of her intrusion on the hallowed Dragon Isle had spread amongst the Dragons, Hualiama set her course to skirt Ha’athior Island’s northern shore. Passing through the gigantic cleft between Ha’athior and Janbiss Island to the north, the Dragonship left the caldera in its wake as it sailed out across the crimson-tinged Cloudlands, that bottomless realm of poisonous clouds that lapped around the base of the volcano, a league and a quarter beneath her current altitude. Lia trimmed the sails, swooping toward a tiny, obscure volcano just offshore of the holy Island.
    Here, she had lived. Trained. Studied. Learned to dance with weapons. Collected more bruises than a girl should have in a lifetime. And–if she were allowed to confess–charmed the beards off more than a few of the warrior-monks.
    An unexpected