Last Dragon 7: The Fire Ascending

by Chris d'Lacey

  “Gretel, behave yourself,” Elizabeth said. She stroked Gwillan’s back. He shivered and seemed relieved to be in her hands. “The answer is very simple, really. Once Ganzfeld had entered the energy field he could begin to make connections.”

  The listener was back on the screen again, but he was made up now from thousands of points of colored light. A swarm of neu:trinos were sparkling inside him, like a host of tiny fire stars. To my annoyance, the screen began to flicker and buzz. Broken lines of static crackled across it. A scratchy image of an old man burst into view. He was rocking in a chair, saying over and over, “Which has more auma, light or fire? Light or fire? Light or fire?”

  “C-connections?” I asked. My head was spinning.

  “To anyone, anywhere, anywhen,” said Elizabeth. “All he had to do was create an image of where he wanted to be or who he wanted to communicate with and the field responded. This is one of the enchantments of time.”

  “Light or fire?” the old man said.

  The image of Ganzfeld appeared again, but now he was beginning to dissolve into the field. Arcs of dotted lines, which I took to be thought waves, were shown streaming out of his head. Each neu:trino, said the tele:screen voice, carries a minute degree of energy. But scientists at the Merriman Institute believe that in sufficient quantity, and with sufficient intent, it is theoretically possible for a field of these particles to disrupt molecular structure in one of two ways. They might draw an object into their flow, for instance…. With a spectacular whoosh, Ganzfeld was sucked out of sight like a feather in a breeze…. Or, more amazingly, they might rearrange it. Now he was center screen again, and something odd was happening with his ears. They were feathering, turning into firebird tufts. The screen crackled. The old man appeared in close-up, leaning forward out of his chair. The voice of the narrator was now coming from his mouth. Could this explain the astonishing ability firebirds possess of passing through solid objects, as if they are moving faster than light and Traveling ahead of time itself …? Light or fire — which has more auma?

  “Fire!” I blurted at him. “Fire is the answer. The universe is made of fire!”

  On-screen, the old man silently rocked.

  My head began to thump. The dragons and Elizabeth were looking at me, waiting. I took a full breath and I said, boldly, “If I wanted to lead one bear to another, how would I use Ganz … the name to do it?”

  Elizabeth said, “Do you know the name of the bear you want to find?”

  “Ingavar.”

  We all heard a quiet snapping sound. Gadzooks had pressed so hard on his pad that the end of his pencil had broken off.

  Elizabeth stood up. She placed a kiss on Gwillan’s snout and snuggled him into a pocket of her smock. “Gwillan is going to stay with me. I must go to my room. My sculpture is almost ready.”

  “Please,” I begged her. “How do I find Ingavar?”

  She was drifting away, like Ganzfeld had. But I could hear her voice between the atoms. “Your intent has already been answered, Agawin. Everything you need is right before you.” The dragons blew smoke rings or twizzled their tails. “It takes a particularly powerful being to draw others across the energy field. Now that the dragons are here, maybe you should show them who you really are.”

  The Pennykettle kitchen appeared on the tele:screen. I recognized it right away, just as if a cloud had lifted from my memory. For the first time, the dragons were seeing it, too. They were shown in a group on the kitchen table, watching a young girl draw. She gave a satisfied hum and put down her crayon. “We need to send the polar bears here.” She pinned a finger to the center of her drawing. An island at the edge of a wild gray sea. Dark creatures peppered the sky around it. An image of the island filled the screen. We saw water crashing, heard darklings screeching, smelled sulfur in the spouts of fire from its peak.

  The dragons turned away from it and looked at me.

  Gone were my boyish hands. I could feel the soft fall of hair on my face, the reassuring tug of wings at my back.

  I was Alexa again and fully aware.

  “Time to go,” I said.

  Time to find Daddy.

  They hauled David outside and put him in the company of Voss’s men. His hands were tied and he was marched, sometimes dragged, to a high point of the island. He was thrown into a damp and narrow cleft, facing the cold, wind-roughened sea. The sides of the cleft were too sheer to climb, and any thoughts he had of leaping for water were dashed when he looked at the maze of rocks below. Open cells didn’t come much harsher than this. “What have you done with Rosa?” he demanded. But the men just beat him and kicked him and laughed.

  “You so much as pick your nose,” said one, “an’ the watcher’ll call down the fliers, you gottit?” He turned David around and untied his hands, then jabbed a finger at the glowering sky where several scrawny “fliers” were circling. Darklings, eager to drop down and feed. The men filed away, making jokes about “pickings.” A solitary raven was left to watch David’s position.

  “And if I want to tell Voss what he needs to know?”

  “You tell me,” said a voice. Lucy stepped into view.

  The last of the men nodded curtly at her, then scuttled away out of sight.

  Lucy perched on a rock, some ten or twelve paces away. Her amazing red hair was now ash-gray and black, tied in a bundle at the nape of her neck. She was wearing patchy remnants of human clothing, but the sleeves of her top had been torn away to reveal what looked like black tattoos all along the skin from her knuckles to her shoulder. David realized with some dismay that it was nothing more than the Shadow in her veins. “Sorry, don’t have much to offer you.” He gestured at his bleak surroundings. “Pretty chilly up here, too.” He pulled the lapels of his jacket together. She quickly dipped to her belt for a knife. He lowered his hands into plain view again. “Thought you might have put me in the cave, at least.”

  Her hand relaxed, but only to check the bowstring running across her chest. “Cave?”

  “You’ve been here before, in another time. You met a female polar bear in a cave. Gwilanna kept you there when she took you from the Crescent. When you were still a cute little girl. Remember that, Lucy, what it was to be cute?”

  “Save your breath, Fain. I care for nothing I knew before my inversion.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. He drew up his knees. “You just don’t know how to reach it yet. I can help you with that. It’s what your mother would have wanted.”

  “I have no mother, only the Shadow.”

  “The Shadow isn’t going to last.” He cast a wary eye at the darklings all the same. One of them had landed on a ledge above the cleft and was peering down at him, showing its teeth. A hiss from Lucy stopped it creeping any closer.

  “All I want from you is to know about the child.”

  “Oh, Alexa will come,” he said. “Though what she’ll find is open to debate.” The wall of rock behind David shuddered as Gawain resumed his “dig.” In its aftermath, a shower of cinders fell. David heard the darkling spitting out the sulfur, though none of it seemed to be affecting Lucy. “This folly with the core will blow the Earth apart. The Shadow won’t want to ‘mother’ you then. The Collective will desert you and simply move on, until it finds another life-form to terrorize. You really ought to think about that.”

  “The child,” she said. “You think about that.”

  But all he did was snap his fingers and say, “Do you want to play a game?” He gave her no chance to reply or refuse. “I say a word and you tell me the first thing that comes into your mind. Bacon.”

  “What?”

  “Bacon. Henry. Next-door neighbor. Drove you crazy for fifteen years. Clever man. Total curmudgeon, but heart very much in the right-shaped … place.” He made a poor drawing of a heart on his chest. “Bacon.”

  Lucy stared at him hard.

  “Okay. Not Henry, then.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “What about the library? The clock tower? The gardens? You must remember
the library gardens?”

  For the first time, she gave an encouraging jolt.

  “That’s it, the library gardens,” he said. And as the wind blew a shower of raindrops across them, he lowered his voice to a captivating whisper. “It was a blustery autumn morning in —”

  “Shut up,” she said, reaching for her bow. “Shut up or I’ll …”

  Suddenly, she dropped her gaze and looked down at the space in front of his feet. A small gray squirrel had materialized there. It sat up and chirruped, flagging a tail as delicate as a dandelion puff. It lifted a paw and twitched its whiskers. One of its eyes was matted and closed.

  The darkling on the ledge above David snarled.

  Lucy gave a violent shudder. A vein near her elbow began to pulse. One of the coils at her temples blanched. A thin film of moisture clouded her vision. The raven beside her paddled its feet as though it ought to be doing something about this. A gust of wind rippled its feathers, which persuaded it, finally, to tip its beak and squawk.

  “Conker …,” Lucy whispered, narrowing her gaze.

  “Just hold on to his memory,” said David. He maneuvered his feet, getting ready to stand.

  The shadow of a darkling swept across the cleft.

  In a flash, Lucy had an arrow in her bow. She tensed the string and trained the arrow at the squirrel’s heart. But with a sudden upward movement she changed her aim and the darkling fell with a thump to the ground, skewered on a shaft of wood and steel.

  The raven squawked and took to the air.

  David jumped up. “Great shot. Let’s —”

  “Don’t move.”

  Lucy already had a second arrow primed. The imagineered squirrel faded away. The arrowhead glinted at David’s chest.

  “Lucy, what are you doing? The bird will warn Voss. I need to find Rosa. We haven’t much time.”

  “I was told to guard you. That includes against darklings.”

  David stepped forward.

  She drew on the bow.

  “Lucy, listen to me, please. I can bring you back. I promise I can make you human again. The squirrel came from your head, not from mine.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “The Shadow is everything. We’re going to take the nexus and break into the core.”

  “No. Together you and I can stop this.”

  She shook her head. “I know a better way, David.” Her arrow flashed through the air and bedded itself into the hollow of his shoulder, knocking him onto one knee. He gripped the shaft and looked at her in horror.

  “You come to us,” she said.

  Although there was nothing much out at sea, it was not uncommon for a solitary darkling to fly across the water in search of something worthy of torment — a fish, perhaps, that the Shadow hadn’t reached. Or better still those galumphing brutes that gathered in piles on any shallow landmass. “Walruses,” men called them. They were always fun to bully.

  So it came to be that on the day that Lucy fired her arrow at David, one darkling was skimming the water when it noticed something extremely unusual.

  The waves had stopped rolling.

  There was surf and ripples, troughs and peaks, but it was all suspended. No movement.

  None.

  The darkling knew what it ought to do. It ought to hasten back to the island and report. But curiosity had gripped its shade. It wanted to investigate.

  And so it did.

  Slowing its wing-beats back to a glide, it tentatively touched down on the surface.

  The sea was absolutely still. Not a single bubble was rising. The darkling extended a claw and prodded the glassy cover. The sea responded with a satisfying ching, the chime fissuring out in several directions. The creature prodded harder. Ching, ching, ching. Ching, ching, ching, ching …

  Clink.

  The last noise was either an echo, or …

  The creature looked around.

  And then it saw the child.

  She was sitting on the water some wing-beats away. A human girl, untouched by the Shadow.

  The darkling sped toward her. As it circled her it saw she was not alone. A disgusting excuse for a dragon was standing in the cup of her outstretched hands. Its paws were huge and offensively green. Its oval-shaped eyes were tightly closed, suggesting it was deep in concentration.

  The darkling landed, using its retractory claws as anchors. It bared its teeth and tilted its horns.

  This, it thought, would not take long.

  Surprisingly, the girl showed no signs of fear. “Go to your master,” she said.

  This made the darkling chatter and scowl, for the child had spoken in perfect Ix.

  “Tell him that my wishing dragon has frozen the ocean and opened the way to Ki:mera. He’ll know what that means.”

  The darkling spat a glob of oily black phlegm. “Wat is yaar …?” Its ability with speech was confined to rasps; its vocabulary almost minimal.

  “I’m Alexa,” the girl said, tossing back her hair. “And this is G’reth. He grants wishes that benefit dragonkind and anyone who cares for dragons. He’s come to help me free Gawain. If I were you, I’d set off now, darkling.”

  The creature pulled back. Was this pathetic pink human speaking a threat? It flicked two poisonous stigs from its neck.

  “It’s going to get very cold,” said Alexa, “and very crowded very soon. Go to your master. Tell him he must free my father and let the dragon go.”

  A snowflake floated between them. The darkling tried to snatch it out of the air, but one blow from Alexa’s lips sent it dancing away to land well out of the creature’s sight. At the same time, the surface of the water groaned. The darkling lifted a leg. The sea had hardened further — and cooled.

  “That was the first one,” Alexa said.

  First one? First one what? The darkling snarled. It was tired of this. It splayed its claws and prepared to strike. But as it reared, something unexpected happened. The dragon in Alexa’s hands changed shape. Not by much, but enough to stall the darkling’s attack. The new dragon was even stranger than the first. It had a weapon of sorts, some kind of flattish object. The “weapon” was actually a book of instructions, wielded by a brave, if frightened, “guard” dragon. The darkling watched it flip through the pages, eventually stopping at the letter P. There was one instruction written there: Point.

  The dragon slammed the book shut … and pointed.

  The darkling turned around.

  Towering over it was a huge white bear. In the background, more and more flakes were falling. Everywhere they landed, more bears appeared.

  The darkling bared its teeth. Knowing no instinct other than conflict, it issued a threat which had scarcely grazed the back of its throat before the bear brought down a mighty paw and flattened it into a mess of ooze.

  “Hate those things,” the bear said gruffly.

  A younger bear, sleeker than the first, drew up. “We could have captured that and questioned it, Kailar.”

  “You talk too much already, Teller.” With a wallop, Kailar punched through the surface and washed his paw in the water beneath. “Which way to Ingavar, child?”

  Alexa looked down at her hands. Once again the dragon changed shape, into noticeably softer lines. “Have you found David’s auma, Gwendolen?”

  The dragon blew a smoke ring and watched it drift. She pointed toward the setting sun. Hrrr.

  Alexa nodded. “Go quickly, Avrel. Surround the island. Remember your training when the darklings attack. Don’t let them into your mind.”

  The Teller grunted. “Did the dragon say anything else?”

  “Nothing that concerns you,” Alexa said, though it was of deep concern to her. Now that they were settled in the crucial timepoint, Gwendolen and Ganzfeld were using the field to search for traces of recognizable auma. Gwendolen’s first report had been quick and heartfelt. They’re hurting Lucy.

  Avrel nodded and drifted away to join the pack.

  “Why?” asked Alexa, when he was out of earshot. “What ha
s Lucy done?”

  Again the dragon changed shape. This time Gadzooks appeared. He was shaking and sweat was pouring off his neck. His green scales were turning black near one shoulder.

  Alexa parted her hands. Gadzooks stayed on her left palm and Gretel materialized on her right.

  Hrrr! went the potions dragon.

  “Yes, they’ve infected him,” Alexa said.

  Gretel immediately reached for her flowers.

  “No,” said Alexa. “Let it build.”

  Hrrr? said Gretel. And watch Gadzooks invert?

  “It’s a form of dragonpox,” Alexa told her. “And what do we always do about that?”

  We call upon the auma of Gawain to transform it.

  “Mmm,” said the child. “And David will do that. But we need to find a way to spread it.” She closed her right hand and Gretel disappeared in a spark of light. Then, bringing Gadzooks up close to her face, she politely asked, “May I?”

  He gave her his pencil.

  “Don’t be frightened,” she said in a lullaby voice. “Joseph will be here soon.” And she wrote one word on Gadzooks’s notepad:

  kiss

  You liked me once, didn’t you?”

  Like David, Rosa was being held in a small indent on the high outer edges of the Tooth of Ragnar. More a scoop out of the scree than an actual cave, but slightly better protected from the wind and continuously warmed by the work of Gawain. She was comfortable enough, though fretfully aware of the setting sun, the dwindling curtain of light that measured the remaining hours of her life. She had to fill them somehow, and talk was cheap.

  “Is this what you do when you write your poems? Just stare at the sea until inspiration comes?” He had his back to her in a silhouetted A shape. He’d been looking at the ocean almost since they’d arrived, as if his previous life was rowing in on a boat. “‘I wandered lonely as a darkling.’ You might as well talk to me. I’m not gonna bite.”

  “Poems?” he said. He half-turned toward her. In profile, with the horns and coils concealed, he was deeply handsome. Almost human.

  Rosa shuddered — and not just because her head was throbbing, though it had been since he’d brought her here. A swarming spiral of intense pressure that seemed to be chasing the blood around her skull. “You were creative, weren’t you? The memories are patchy, but she liked that about you. The way you expressed yourself in verse. The way you read. The accent in your voice. She liked that a lot. Liked you a lot, really — until you betrayed her.”