Last Dragon 7: The Fire Ascending

by Chris d'Lacey

  But in his eye, there was still a measure of goodness. I saw his wretchedness and he saw mine. A small teardrop appeared on his lower lid. The final remnants of his spirit, his fire tear. As blackness flooded the soft tissue of his eyeball, he roared a last time and tossed his head. The auma of the dragon flew toward the mountain. It sparkled once and struck me in the eye.

  “Agh!” I fell back, covering my face.

  The Fain swarmed around Galen’s auma. For several moments the entities wrestled, leaving me shaking and jerking on the ground. The fire raged and the mountain moved. But in my head a strange calm began to settle. With it came a heightened power of awareness. A blossoming sense of universal truth. I sat up and looked at the enemy in the sky. I knew what it was. Antidragon. Darkling. A thing without conscience. Physical evil. Its transformation was now complete — apart from one thing.

  It did not have fire.

  I touched its auma wave and felt its frustration. Voss’s frustration. He had died and been born again with wings and needle teeth. Yet Galen had thwarted him, right at the last. Voss had not been able to trap the dragon’s tear and adapt it into what the new creature needed: dark fire.

  It turned on me and clicked its claws. Unafraid, I picked up the hunting knife, the only thing Voss had left behind. From the cleft in the rock the fire still gushed. I held the knife by the blade and plunged it in. When I withdrew, my arm was unaffected but the knife was a cross of fire. I saw the darkling hesitate. But down it came, an untamed ball of spitting hatred. I launched the knife and my aim was true. The creature veered, but not quickly enough. The knifepoint entered under one wing and the flames of Gaia engulfed the beast. The darkling skriked and turned onto its back, then exploded in a mass of burning flakes. Voss was gone. And so was Galen. I touched my heart and wept inside.

  I was twelve years old.

  I had seen a dragon die.

  But that was not the end of my adventures that day.

  As the fire receded into the mountain I heard a voice say, “Agawin, is it safe?”

  Through the smoke, I caught sight of Grella. She was just outside the cave mouth, holding a baby.

  “Where is Hilde?” I shot an anxious glance at the cave.

  Grella shook her head. “The flames … they took her.”

  Hilde gone, too. But not her child.

  An innocent, said the Fain.

  Despite Voss’s potion.

  “It’s a girl,” said Grella. And she was wrapped, of all things, in the tapestry of Gawaine. “I will care for her, Agawin, no matter what she is.”

  She will grow to be a sibyl, the Fain responded. Be wary of this child. You may meet her again.

  “And there was this.” Grella lobbed something small toward me.

  “The tornaq,” I muttered, catching it cleanly. I turned it in my hands. It wasn’t even scorched. And that was not all that had survived the fire. As I took a pace forward, my foot became caught in something on the ground. It was the tapestry Voss had laid before me. It, too, was undamaged, but the drawing had grown again. How is this happening? I asked the Fain.

  It is being imagineered, they said. We believe these are your memories — or future visions.

  I looked at the image. It was just what I’d seen when Voss had questioned me. A wide valley patrolled by natural dragons, the strange writing dragon, the young child holding it, two people behind them, two more in the distance — one carrying a katt, of all things. I looked at the man who was closest to the child. There was something about him that resonated powerfully with my auma. The dragon inside me was strongly drawn to him. And yet it was the child I was most intrigued by. Whenever I looked at her, my head began to spin and the tornaq began to feel strangely warm. “Sometimes …,” I whispered, looking at the symbol. And I thought I heard a child’s voice in my head, as if the girl on the tapestry was speaking for both of us. Sometimes we will be Agawin, she said. And sometimes we will be —

  “LOOK OUT!”

  I heard Grella scream and turned to look for danger. But I had turned the wrong way. What felt like a roaring bull rammed into me. It was Gunn — I could tell from his bare, bloodied chest. He clamped his arms and his foul sweat around me. His face was nothing but ripped flesh and holes. My feet left the ground. I dropped the tapestry. Even with my newly found powers of awareness I had no time to stifle the assault. Grella screamed again. A wail of pure terror. A sudden rush of cold air hollowed my cheeks. Over Gunn’s shoulder I saw Kasgerden’s peak in the sky. A beautiful point of ice and rock, steadily growing smaller and smaller.

  Gunn’s weight had carried us off the cliff.

  He howled like a madman and let me go. He went to meet ground he could barely see and I closed my eyes so I would not see. The sensation of falling was not unpleasant, like floating in a pool of salted water. Had it not been for Galen’s auma, that might have been the feeling I took to my grave.

  The tornaq, his spirit said. Use the tornaq.

  It was in my right hand and falling with me. Any moment now, we would hit the ground.

  I shook the tornaq.

  This time, I did not see visions. And I did hit the ground, though with barely enough force to flatten a daisy. When I opened my eyes I was in a green valley, in the shade of a tree. There was no sign of Kasgerden, and certainly no Gunn.

  My heart was warmed to hear the tinkle of bells. I sat up, shaking a leaf from my hair.

  “Hello. Where did you come from?”

  I whipped around, startled by the voice of a pretty young woman. She was older than me, probably by as many years again. “Where am I?” I asked.

  “Iunavik,” she said, as if I ought to know. She looked up at the tree, wondering, perhaps, if I’d been hiding there. If I had, I felt sure she would have forgiven me for it; she had such a pleasant and trusting nature. “Do you know anything about goats?” A dozen or more were grazing on the hill.

  “Yes,” I burbled.

  She smiled and said, “Then maybe you could help me. They need to be milked. I have to take milk to a woman in the caves.” She pointed to an elbow of pale gray rock, jutting out of the hillside farther up. “What’s your name?”

  “Agawin,” I told her.

  “I like that,” she said. She put out her hand and helped me up. She had stunning red hair and skogkatt eyes. “Welcome to Iunavik, Agawin. I’m Guinevere.”

  She sat down, cross-legged, beside a goat. She was dressed, like me, in a single garment — made, I thought, from hides, not flax. It was belted at the waist, though I couldn’t see a clasp. On the belt hung a couple of rabbit-fur pouches. Like any hill dweller, she traveled light. Her legs were bare, a little tanned by the sun. On her feet she wore ankle boots, also made of hide. Her arms, likewise, were naked to the shoulder, though the flesh above her elbow was caressed by her hair. I had never seen a girl quite like her before. And yet, in a strange way, I felt I knew her.

  She put a silver pail underneath her goat and started to collect its milk. “So, how did you get here? I thought I knew everyone in these hills.”

  We have moved through time and space, said the Fain, swarming into my consciousness again.

  I picked up a spare pail and took it to a tame-looking goat nearby. “I’m … a Traveler,” I said, opening my hand. There was the tornaq, resting on my palm. How could a simple piece of bone have brought me from Kasgerden to this hillside? I put it away in the pocket of my robe.

  “Have you come far?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Are you lost?”

  I was looking around, not really listening to her. To the west of the hill we were on, a long spine of mountains ran into the distance, none with a shape I remembered or recognized. And there was something else, too. On the horizon, a vast gray shimmer. “Is that … the sea?” I asked. I had heard about this endless stretch of water and always hoped I would visit it one day.

  Guinevere looked casually over her shoulder. “If that surprises you,” she said, “you really are a long,
long way from home. That’s the Great Sea of the North. My favorite place in the world. When I die, I want to float out there and let my spirit gaze at the stars.” She cleared her throat, making me look at her. “The milk?” she said, smiling.

  “Um. Sorry.” I sat down and put my hands to work. That was when I noticed a change in myself. My hands were larger and nowhere near as delicate.

  You have aged, said the Fain.

  “How much?” I said aloud.

  “Sorry?” said Guinevere, raising her head.

  “I … was … wondering how much milk you wanted.”

  She tilted her head and looked at me oddly. A warm breeze caught the sides of her hair and lifted it back, away from her face. “Till they’re done, of course. But don’t leave them sore. You do know how to milk a goat, don’t you?”

  I nodded like an oaf and looked down at the pail.

  By now, Galen’s auma was spreading through me, growing more active as it melded with my mind. I could sense my surroundings like I never had before. I was measuring distance in all directions, through lines in the Earth I never knew existed. I drew a mental image of Mount Kasgerden and was able to calculate how far we’d come. A whole landmass. Thirty days’ ride on horseback. Though why the tornaq had delivered me here was yet to become apparent. Just then, a small bird flew into the tree. My nostrils swelled and my ears moved back. I could smell the creature in every detail, from its waxy neck feathers to its stalky little legs. I could detect its movements from the heat trails it left. More importantly, when I pitched those senses farther afield I was able to register a human form. Higher up the hill, in a set of small interlocking caves, was the woman Guinevere had talked about.

  “She’s called Gwilanna.”

  My ears flexed again, making me wince. “Gwilanna?”

  “I thought I saw you looking. Up there. At the caves. You’ll meet her soon enough. She probably knows you’re here already.”

  “How?”

  “She’s a sibyl.”

  She saw my face change.

  “You’ve met one before?”

  “Briefly,” I said. “Are you an apprentice to her?”

  She moved the goat and whistled to another. The goat trotted forward. Guinevere began to milk her. “You speak as if you know about such things. Are you a seer’s boy? You dress like one.”

  Boy. So I was still not a man, despite the shift of time and the look of my hands. “I was on a quest. I had to leave my seer behind.” And what had become of Yolen? I wondered. Would he be looking for me now — or still?

  “And it brought you to Iunavik, this ‘quest’?” she said.

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I like stories, Agawin.” She flipped her hair and went back to her goat. But this time, instead of conversing with me, out of her mouth came a beautiful song. There were no words to it, just a spiraling melody that seemed to bend the hill flowers and charm every cloud in the sky to a stop. The dragon within me began to stir. But rather than rise up or twist my ears, all I felt was calm flowing through me. Before I knew it I was falling sideways. I slumped over, kicking the pail down the hill.

  I came to in Guinevere’s arms. She was carrying me, carrying me, toward the caves. “H-how are you doing this?” I asked. Though I was young, I had to be heavy. And she was so slight.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “When I ran to your aid I found you were no heavier to lift than a bird.”

  The dragon, said the Fain, sounding distant and wuzzy. Galen is able to suspend his mass.

  How?

  By commingling with the universal energy field. A procedure that enables him to step outside of time. We do not fully understand this yet.

  And neither did I, though it made me think of Brunne and the secret he was trying to reveal. “Where are you taking me?”

  “To Gwilanna. She heals all ills.”

  Be wary, said the Fain. Be wary of this sibyl.

  “What happened? Back there, on the hill?”

  “I was singing and you collapsed.”

  “Singing?”

  “Laaa … and then you fell over.”

  “Where are the goats?” I tried to look back for them.

  “In a pen. Don’t worry. They can’t stray or be taken.”

  “Pen?” I said. The hillside was broad and mostly grassy; I hadn’t seen any sign of an enclosure. But when I looked back I saw four square sides of fencing poles with the goat herd gathered inside them. “How did that get there?”

  “I made it,” she said, with a gentle shrug.

  I gave her a questioning look.

  “Don’t you imagineer, where you come from?”

  Before I had a chance to query that, she said, “Can you walk now?”

  I nodded and she set me down.

  “Promise me you won’t float away on the breeze?” She smiled and pointed to the caves. “This is it. We’re here.”

  We were standing in front of a rocky outcrop about halfway up the hill, facing into the valley. Apart from a ragged slit in the stone, barely wide enough for a goat to slip through, there was nothing to suggest that anyone lived here. “It’s bigger inside,” she said.

  As she made to go in, I held her arm. “Tell me about the pen. Are you saying you imagined it in your mind and it appeared exactly the way you saw it?”

  She nodded. “It’s not a difficult construct.”

  “The sibyl taught you this skill?”

  “Everything I know I learned from Gwilanna.”

  “How long have you served her?”

  She tossed her hair and looked toward the mountains. “She found me, abandoned, on the shores of the sea. I remember nothing before Gwilanna. She’s the closest thing I have to a mother. Come on.”

  We dipped our heads and squeezed inside. The entrance was tight, but within a few paces the rock had opened up into a natural void and I could move around freely without the pressure of stone against my chest. There was a slight smell of dung, as though something wild had sheltered here once. But the overwhelming odor was of charred wood and smoke. The only light was the daylight that followed us in and a faint amber glow from a passage to our left. From the back of my throat came a stream of clicks, too fine for Guinevere to hear but strong enough to bounce off the walls of the cave. They described in their echo every dent and swollen curve of our surroundings. At the same time, the muscles behind my eyes began to stretch as the dragon reworked their limited capabilities. Well before we had entered the final chamber, where the sibyl sat tending a modest fire, I could see the entire shape of her dwelling. Larger than mine in the hills beyond Horste. Strewn with furs and bones and pots, all containing seeds or dried-up plant life. And on a ledge hollowed out of the rock in front of her was a skull, sitting on a folded piece of cloth.

  “You’re late,” she said, without looking up. She was hunched over the fire with her back to us. I thought I saw a black-winged beetle crawling in the knots of her crusted hair. A stone cooking pot hung over the heat. Something like rabbit was stewing in it, casting its sickly-sweet scent around the walls.

  “I found a boy,” said Guinevere. “He needs your help.”

  The sibyl sat up, slow and straight.

  She knows you are Premen, the Fain said warily.

  Can she read the dragon?

  Too early to tell.

  She wagged a finger at a boulder by her right knee. “Let me see you, boy.”

  I looked at Guinevere, who gave a quick nod. I sat down. The sibyl slanted her gaze my way. She had a downturned mouth and shaded crescents underneath both eyes. Her cheeks resembled the skin of a plum that was just about ready to sag and wither. At first glance she appeared to be as old as the cave. Yet, in her eyes was the liveliness of youth. And though I had no memory of her faded face, strangely, like Guinevere, I felt I knew her.

  “What ails you, boy?”

  “He had a fainting sickness,” Guinevere said, perching on a rock at the sibyl’s other side.

  “I wasn’t
talking to you. Where’s my milk?”

  “I left it so I could bring him here. It’s safe. The bears won’t find it.”

  “Bears?” I sat up, mildly alarmed. If a bear had strayed toward Yolen’s cave, we would have been out with firesticks, scaring it.

  “From the woods, farther north. They snuffle around the cave mouth, foraging for scraps. They’re harmless as long as —”

  “Be quiet,” said Gwilanna. She turned to me again. “Give me your hand.”

  Show no aggression, the Fain advised. I could feel them keeping the dragon in check.

  I extended my arm. The sibyl took my wrist. Her touch was light, but as cold as death. Her fingernails curled like the toes of a bird, drawing the blood to the surface of my skin. “What were you doing when this sickness struck you?”

  “We were milking,” Guinevere put in again, “and I was singing him an old lullaby. The dragon song. The one you taught me. Maybe he just fell asleep?” Her green eyes shone. She put her hair behind her ears.

  Gwilanna tightened her grip on my arm. By now, the Fain had completely shut down, masking Galen’s presence. But I was sure the sibyl was searching for something she wouldn’t expect to find within a normal boy. “Where are you from?” she asked, barely parting her lips. She leaned forward, shaking dust from her clothes. She wasn’t dressed like a hill woman should be. Her garment was long and filthy and ragged, severed at the knee for ease of movement. But it wasn’t plain: There was stitching around the neck. It struck me that it could have been made in —

  “Answer me.” The sibyl’s hand burned against my skin.

  “Don’t hurt him,” said Guinevere. “What harm’s he done to us?”

  “I think I’ve Traveled far,” I told Gwilanna. “But … I’m not sure how I got here.” And perhaps because there was some truth in this statement the sibyl decided to let me go.

  “The boy is not ill; he’s hungry,” she said, throwing my hand back into my lap.

  “Can he share your stew?”

  “No, he cannot. I will prepare him an herbal broth. Go outside, girl. Pick some mushrooms. Do not dally or talk to bears.”