Will she succeed? Who or what can stop her? Will Gadzooks’s message be picked up? And who is the young boy who has suddenly appeared in the tapestry? — and what hatches out in the aerie? It certainly doesn’t seem to be a firebird….
The seventh and last book in the series follows what happens when Gwilanna dramatically attempts to save herself by altering the Earth’s natural timeline. Her actions cause ripples back through history, enough to change history itself, including the legend of Gawain.
The Fire Ascending begins on Earth, in the era when the last twelve dragons decide to give up their conflict with humans and isolate themselves on mountaintops all around the world. One of them, Galen, comes to land in an area called Kasgerden. This is observed by a young goatherd called Agawin, who is apprentice to a seer named Yolen.
It is traditional that a pilgrimage takes place to honor and pay last respects to a dying dragon, in hope that sparks of its fire tear (known as fraas) may be spread around and bring benefit and healing to any who experience its energy. However, Agawin’s excitement at taking part in this event is disrupted by an unexpected commotion.
Those at the rear began crying out a warning. I looked back and saw people stumbling and falling, children being picked up and rushed aside. The ground rumbled to the sound of galloping hooves. Horses were upon us. Arriving at high speed. The crowd parted like a flock of startled birds and I saw an old man knocked brutally sideways by the leading horse. It was as black as the unlit cave, with a mane that flashed around its neck like a blaze. Its eyes were full of blood and anguish. In the center of its forehead, at the level of the eyes, I thought I saw a stump of twisted rock, rough hewn at its point and oozing a kind of syrupy fluid. But my gaze was mostly on the rider, not his mount. Astride the horse sat a thumping brute of a man, with hair as long as the children of Horste. The menace in his eyes was as dark as the fists that gripped the black reins. And though I had no reason then to be afraid of him, a fateful chill still entered my heart. For even I, a boy of twelve, could tell he was mesmerized by the prospect of the dragon. He was hunting more than fraas, I was sure.
The rider of the violated black unicorn turns out to be a man named Voss, who, with his men, mounts a further attack on the pilgrims. He wishes to kill Galen and take control of the whole area, although he himself is controlled by the Ix. In league with Hilde, the local sibyl, he uses the broken-off portion of the unicorn’s horn as a means of gaining and wielding power.
Agawin and Yolen are invited to take refuge with a local villager, Rune, and his family. Rune’s daughter, Grella, sees visions of dragons, and makes them into tapestries, at which she excels. When Agawin is invited to try his hand at starting a tapestry picture, he finds himself drawing a small dragon holding a notepad. He has no idea that this is Gadzooks or what the significance of his drawing might be. Meanwhile, the men of the village are invited to a meeting to decide what to do about Voss, and Agawin takes a walk. He stumbles across a tumbledown dwelling, wherein sits an old man. This is Brunne, a blind seer, who seems to recognize Agawin’s importance and tells the boy that he needs to know the secrets of time. Brunne is about to explain further when …
He swiftly raised a hand and some force pushed me back into the shadows of the krofft. He gave out a groaning sound like nothing I had heard from man or beast before — a rasp that rattled every bone in his chest, followed by a shudder that seemed to expel something more than air from his lungs. I gasped and covered my face. Whatever Brunne had concealed within his body was now in mine and sheltering there. The last thing I heard him say to me was this: “Keep Galen within your sight.”
Within seconds of this transfer, Brunne is murdered by one of Voss’s men, and the building is set alight. In the meantime, Agawin hurries back to Rune’s krofft. He finds the men drugged and learns that Grella has been taken by Hilde to Voss’s campsite on Mount Kasgerden. He follows, with the intention of rescuing Grella, but walks into a trap and is captured himself. Strangely, Voss is in possession of Agawin’s tapestry — which now has a young girl pictured in it, a figure that Agawin did not draw. It later transpires that the tapestry is being imagineered by Agawin’s own memories and future visions. But who is the child in the picture, and what is she trying to tell Agawin before he is sent hurtling off the mountain by one of Voss’s henchmen …? Amazingly, Agawin survives the fall and to his surprise reappears in a distant valley, in front of a striking young woman who introduces herself as none other than Guinevere — the girl who, in legend, will catch Gawain’s fire tear.
Guinevere takes Agawin back to the cave where she lives with a local sibyl — Gwilanna. Each is immediately suspicious of the other. Agawin learns that the sibyl was brought up by Grella (whom Gwilanna falsely believes to be her mother), but Gwilanna will not talk about her. Similarly, Gwilanna distrusts Agawin because Grella always told her he had died in his fall. During a tense dialogue, Guinevere rushes into the cave to say that an eagle has appeared carrying an egg between its claws. The eagle is Gideon, and the dragon, about to hatch, is none other than Gawain.
Once he is out of his egg, Gwilanna is not thrilled by the new arrival, even though he is the last-known dragon in the world.
Gawain threw out his wings and went hrrr! in her face.
A gobbet of spittle landed on her cheek and fizzed along one of her many wrinkles. “Little monster!” she squealed, pulling back. She rubbed her face dry and swept toward the cave. “Bring that inside. Put it by the fire. When the sun goes down it will need more warmth than you can give it.”
I looked down at Gawain. He was indeed shivering. But it would not be long before his scales began to show, before he would get the insulation he needed. Dragons grew fast, if I remembered Yolen’s teachings correctly. He might look surprisingly vulnerable now, covered in juvenile pimply skin, but in just a few days he would be battle-hardened. “Plated” was the term the old ones used.
So I did as Gwilanna instructed. I went inside and set him by the fire. Right away, he scented the stewing rabbit and leaped into the pot, devouring every chunk, using his tail to skewer pieces up. To Gwilanna’s annoyance, he lapped up all the juices as well. Then he licked his feet and isoscele clean and settled in the pot with his tail curled around him, unconcerned by the heat from the flames.
Gwilanna decides that Agawin and Guinevere must leave with the dragon because it would attract too much attention and bring danger to them all. She sends them to an island along the coast, where they believe Gawain will be protected by a nearby tribe called the Inook. Not long into their journey, however, they come upon two unusual riders, a man and a woman, dressed like no one they have ever met before. The woman is riding a white unicorn; the man, a horse. It soon becomes clear that Gawain recognizes the man, and he rushes out of hiding to greet him. After a tense encounter, the man identifies himself as none other than David Rain. His companion is Rosa, Zanna’s “alternate” from Co:pern:ica.
David reveals that they have stepped through a fire star on Co:pern:ica, in response to a distress call sent out by Gadzooks. They are here, he says, to seek out Gwilanna. When Guinevere asks why, David explains that in the future, Gwilanna has learned to Travel through time, creating havoc. He goes on to say that the fire star has brought them to early Earth so that they might discover how Gwilanna has gained this ability, and hence find a way to stop her. Agawin pledges his allegiance to the quest and swears he will do all he can to aid them. But Gwilanna, as always, proves to be a difficult and cunning adversary. Before long, she has concocted a plan to abduct Agawin and take him back to Mount Kasgerden. There, using one of Gawain’s claws, she rewrites the timeline in her own favor, and sends Agawin over the cliff edge again….
I fell and I fell, with no tornaq to protect me. But my life did not end at the foot of the mountain. It simply took a different course again. Gwilanna’s dishonest use of the claw had sent signals rippling through the fabric of the universe, signals that Traveled infinitely faster than a seer’s apprentice could ch
ance to fall. As the darkling rushed away from my sight, three other creatures filled the space around me. Firebirds. One green, one red, one a beautiful cream color with apricot flashes around her ear tufts. It was she who spoke to my consciousness saying, Agawin, we are monitors of time and the agents of Gideon. Do not be afraid. Joseph Henry is with you.
Joseph Henry? I asked. My voice had the texture of thickened mud.
But all the firebird said was this: You have been chosen for illumination. You will die and live again, through the auma of Gawain. All you have to do is give yourself up to it.
I do not want to die. Panic gripped my heart.
It is a change, she said. Simply a change.
I was floating now, less aware of my body. All around me, the tiniest stars were glittering. I felt that if I let my consciousness touch one, I would instantly pop into another life. What of Galen?
He will always be with you. In your new form, he will not hinder your progress.
What is the new form?
A hybrid of human, dragon, and Fain.
But that is what I am now.
This time, the energies will be fully commingled. You will go back, to observe Gwilanna. Joseph Henry himself has decreed this. You will be hidden from the sibyl — but always within her sight.
How? How is that possible?
Choose a [fire] star, the firebird said. There are many probabilities. Let your instinct guide you.
So I reached out in search of a different life. And in a timescale I could not measure or estimate, I found the star that was right for me, at a point on the timeline of huge significance, located at a place called Wayward Crescent. I chose, for my dominant form, to be human. And I chose to be born to a very special mother, one who had cause to be close to Gwilanna. The last thing I remembered before I touched my mother’s star was the memory of the child I had seen on the tapestry. And at last I understood her purpose and her words. Sometimes we will be Agawin, she had said….
From here begins the most unusual twist in the entire series. The fire star Agawin touches, the mother he chooses to be reborn to, is none other than Zanna. In his new life, far along the timeline, he becomes Alexa Martindale. Little wonder, then, that Alexa has always been thought of as “special”!
But what of the quest to stop Gwilanna?
Not surprisingly, the sibyl’s irresponsible meddling causes even more chaos. The timeline alters dramatically again. In this version of it, Voss survives and raises a darkling army. The battle at Scuffenbury Hill, suspended in time at the end of Dark Fire, begins again but swings in favor of the Ix. The Earth is gripped by the Ix “Shadow,” a negative force that sucks color out of vegetation and turns humans and animals alike into ugly “inversions” of themselves, lacking any soul or desire for independence.
The blue planet seems doomed.
But there is one character who is not at all fazed, for he has been carefully engineering some of this, knowing that sometimes the only way to prevent evil flourishing is to let it believe it has won. That character is Joseph Henry, Elizabeth Pennykettle’s unborn son. Joseph was at the battle of Scuffenbury Hill (in the guise of Gwillan, a Pennykettle dragon), but was cleverly released from it by Gadzooks when the battle was stopped. Free to roam the Universe thereafter, Joseph has studied every possible timeline and found the only course of events that assures victory for David. Not that it seems straightforward when he explains it to Alexa during a meeting in the librarium on Co:pern:ica.
“Isenfier is upon us,” said Joseph. “You must return to the Crescent, where you will be safe.” He stood up and made a firebird call. Gideon and the three that had saved me at Kasgerden came flying down from the upper floors.
“Joseph, wait. You never did tell me what happened to Elizabeth.”
“Just stay in the Crescent. For my sake now.”
“But I vowed to stop Gwilanna.”
“You can’t,” he said. “Only Gwilanna herself can do that.”
I spread my wings with a determined phut! “I have a duty to Galen and the last twelve dragons. Let me be Agawin. Let me fight.”
“What makes you think there will be a fight?”
No fight? “Then what is your plan?”
“Gwilanna has set the conditions for Isenfier. Everything now depends on her. We will give her what she craves and let the timeline adjust. It begins the second after she takes you from the woods.”
Back in the dawn of history. With Gawain.
“Your book will record it all,” he said. He nodded at the lectern where the book was waiting.
But my mind was still hovering firmly on Gwilanna. “Give her what she craves?”
He signaled to Gadzooks. The dragon lifted his pencil.
And as I felt the strange tug of the universe turning, I watched Joseph Henry fade away and commingle with the body of the firebird Gideon. “We need to give her what she’s always wanted, Agawin.” He spread his brown wings and snorted fire from his nostrils. “Illumination to a dragon.”
And that is exactly what happens. Gwilanna becomes illumined to Gawain himself. David and Rosa are captured by Voss’s army and brought before the “inverted” dragon. Who in this dreadful dark world can save them? Well, Joseph Henry and Alexa are far from defeated. Nor are the polar bears that disappeared at the end of Dark Fire. And there is one other group of characters that should never be underestimated by the most evil of warlords. Here are some clues to their identity: They’re green, spiky, made of clay, have large flat feet and trumpet-shaped nostrils, and usually announce themselves with a little hrrr….
This chapter has been a very swift run-through of some of the funny and some of the exciting story lines. As with all the other books in the series, there are many more plots that I have deliberately barely mentioned, or not even touched on, in The Fire Ascending. That leaves a lot for you to discover and to enjoy for yourself. Look out in particular for a gruesome story from Gwilanna’s childhood, the truth about Guinevere’s origins, and a rather unusual (to put it mildly!) finale….
In the Last Dragon Chronicles we meet, respectively, squirrels, polar bears, monks, alien thought-beings, darklings, firebirds, and skogkatts (not to mention a unicorn or two). If you like any or all of these, you’ll probably like these stories. And it might go without saying that these books are certainly for you if you can’t get enough of:
If you ask Chris what he believes the Last Dragon Chronicles is really about, he will not answer you with “squirrels,” “polar bears,” or even “dragons”; he will say “creativity.”
Like almost every other person alive, Chris questions who he is and where he fits in this world. Unlike most people, however, he explores this through the medium of writing, “trying characters and ideas on” to see if they have any resonance. Are they him?
Sometimes, we have conflicting parts of ourselves that want different things — one part wanting ice cream and another part wanting Jell-O for instance. As an author, Chris cannot only have both, but also feels no personal conflict about it, as his characters do the wanting for him. His characters are, in truth, facets of his own self, held up to the light for examination. Thus, in these books, Chris is actually exploring his own psyche.
Chris has found, like any other author, that in a story he can be whoever he wants, do whatever he wants, and go wherever he wants, with no boundaries and no limits. Another human being? An animal? A tree? A nail in a floorboard? No problem: Anything is possible. It is relatively easy for him to describe polar bears, for example, as he knows what they look like. But the trick to being a great writer is to go beyond that and “become” that bear. To describe its thoughts, feelings and actions from the inside, as it lives them itself.
This is what Chris likes to do; in fact, he claims that if he were to be an animal, a polar bear is exactly what he would choose to be. His love and respect for them is clear in the stories.
The creation of the character David Rain, who is based on Chris as a young man, allows Chris to take a
look at himself from a distance, and decide whether he likes what he sees. If not, it can all be changed.
David Rain … sometimes
Creating characters, in general, is a way to look at yourself, your life, your beliefs, your feelings, safely and without fear of being laughed at or ridiculed. After all, it’s not you, is it? For young people, it’s possible to test things out through someone you’ve created, before committing yourself to those things in real life. Not sure whether you’d enjoy being a doctor? Write about one, and see. Feeling awkward about talking to your mom about something? Try it out on paper first.
When he was a boy, Chris always dreamed of being a rock star, a professional soccer player, or an astronaut. Needless to say, none of those things happened — he didn’t want them enough. These days, he still likes to write songs but only watches soccer on TV (it requires less energy, he says). Taking a ride in the space shuttle remains a dream, but now, as a writer, he could easily experience any of those childhood fancies at the touch of a key.
David Rain starts out as a naïve, innocent young man, with a clean slate as far as his ideas about himself and his world are concerned. He has none, really. But over the course of a little more than six years, book-time, he goes on a staggering personal journey to become something beyond his wildest imaginings. Something he didn’t even know it was possible to be (read the books to find out exactly what). Through writing the Last Dragon Chronicles, Chris’s life, too, has changed and expanded, often beyond his own expectations. He’s very grateful to his alter ego, David Rain.
Since becoming a writer (of songs and stories) the one question Chris has wrangled with is this: Where does inspiration come from? The creation of Gadzooks as a character was meant to answer that. Gadzooks is the physical manifestation of the fire within, the creative force that resides within us all. Gadzooks represents that part of us that does have all the answers — if only we could access them. Zookie, as he is affectionately called, enables David to do just that. As long as he trusts his faithful dragon and the words he writes on his pad, all is well — eventually!
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