by Jan Siegel
“We can’t leave you—”
“The Gift will protect me,” Fern prevaricated, pushing them toward the car. “Bradachin?”
“Aye?”
“Take care of them. And thanks.”
“Aye.”
She stepped back into the road, pouring the last of her power in a flood tide through her body. She was suddenly aware of her physical being as a mass of living cells, pulsing, growing, of the torrent of her blood, the piston thump of her heart. She breathed, and the night flowed into her like an elixir. Behind her Will, Gaynor, and Bradachin stood beside the car. Will had taken the keys and unlocked, but by some unspoken concensus none of them made any move to get in. Bradachin held his spear at the ready, the butt end resting lightly on the ground. Twenty yards away, beyond the gate, they saw Dr. Laye appear. In Azmodel he had seemed to be made of shadow, but now he shone with a dim phosphorescence, as if the wereglow that filled his eyes with the invasion of Azmordis had infected skin, hair, even clothing. Fern thought he did not walk but glided over the ground. He passed through the gate and moved out into the middle of the road. “Did you think the boundary would hold me?” he said, and Gaynor started, for though he spoke very softly the sound seemed to come from close by. “Fool! This is not the gate through which you can escape me. You have been very clever, Fernanda, too clever for your own good. To steal power from an immortal to grab at my spirit like a pickpocket—that is blasphemy, and blasphemy merits the ultimate punishment. You have thrown away all your choices, all your chances. You—and your companions are doomed.”
Bradachin readied his spear, but Fern did not answer. Her earlier impatience had gone. Her heartbeat sounded like a great drum in the stillness of the night.
“How did it feel,” taunted Azmordis, “to taste—just for a few seconds—the power that might have been yours all your life? Was it not sweet, to ride the darkness, to touch godhood? Then die regretting, and may your bitterness endure even beyond the world!”
“I have no regrets,” said Fern, and her voice was clear and cold against his giant whisper.
“You will!” he retorted, and now his words were loud with the anticipation of triumph. “Did you imagine the morlochs were my only servants? Run, Fernanda, ere I call on one who is not bound in Azmodel—one against whom your feeble Gift is meaningless. Run while you can!”
He lifted his hand, and from his mouth came a noise that no human throat should be able to achieve, the bellow of tearing rock, of wounded earth. Power stabbed from his fingers and lanced toward the house, searing through the solid stonework, splitting it from gable to cellar. Windows shattered, floors crumbled, foundations groaned. Chimneys teetered and fell. As if in slow motion the two halves of the building pulled apart; floorboards, furniture, vases, paintings crashed into the new-made chasm. A pale glimmer of dust rose into the dark. “The time has come!” said Jerrold Laye. “Arise, Tenegrys! Arise, and come to me!”
A red light sprang from the depths of the house, showing the raw edges of torn plaster and paneling, the black gape of exposed rooms. At its source, Fern thought she could see a minute dart of flame.
Will said to Gaynor: “Get in the car.”
She opened the door but stayed where she was, held by a fascination beyond fear, unable to wrench her gaze from the Hall.
Stubbornly, knowing it would be futile, Bradachin hefted the spear.
And then the dragon came.
It burst from its prison like an erupting volcano, rearing skyward on the jet thrust of its own rage—no longer the snake-slender creature Fern had seen in the spellfire but a titan among reptiles. It rose twice as high as the house—three times—four—shaking huge chunks of debris from its sides as if they were crumbs. Vast umbrella pinions opened out, fanning the flames exploring the lower stories into a conflagration; the uncoiling of its whiplash tail flattened the residual walls in its swath. On the giant S-bend of throat and belly, chinks of heat flickered between the scales like the fire cracks in a lava flow. It was greater and more terrible than anything they had imagined, yet an awe filled them that was stronger than terror, so that for a moment even Gaynor felt that such a sight surpassed all self-concern, erasing the prospect of imminent death. This was the epitome of dream and nightmare, of aspiration and fantasy, and it was there, it was real—its fury made the air throb—and the beauty and the dread and the splendor of it engulfed their hearts. It threw back its head and roared with the exultation of sudden freedom, belching a fire column that reached the underside of the lowest cloud and sent a hundred tentacles of flame coruscating across the canopy. Then it was airborne, its wingbeats quickening to a gale that drove blazing embers like leaves. In the garden, pieces of topiary ignited and misshapen shadows fled along the broken paths, trailing sparks. The dragon swooped low over the hillside, landing by the gate, a snap of its jaws mashing the iron fretwork like a bundle of twigs. Will drew his knife—a pointless reflex and Bradachin poised his spear for the throw. Fern did not move.
The flamelight played over Dr. Laye, emphasizing his corpse color so he resembled Death himself, stalking the brimstone pits of Hell. “Tenegrys!” he ordered, and in his voice were two voices, echo within echo, invader and invaded, “here is meat for you, after your long fasting! These are my enemies: I give them to you. Hunt and feed!”
The dragon arched its spine, the great head swung around. Fern stood right in its path, silhouetted against the glare. She looked very small and helpless, clutching her bag. (Will thought in sudden pain: How like a girl… His Fern, who had never been like other girls.) One hand slipped under the flap, seized a hunk of stem and hair…
The dragon lunged—
—and stopped, halfway to the kill, abruptly immobilized, suspended in midspring on the tremor of its wings.
“Look well, Tenegrys!” Fern cried, lifting the fruit of the Tree as high as she could. “Behold the head of Ruvindra Laï!”
Bradachin lowered his spear, but his grip did not slacken. Will and Gaynor stared in incredulous horror at the object Fern held, at its stunted gorge and tangle of hair…
Dr. Laye was motionless, momentarily dumbfounded. “It’s an illusion,” he croaked. “Fakery a charlatan’s trick … Take her! I command you!”
But the dragon stooped until its muzzle was on a level with the head, and the forked tongue extruded, investigating remembered features. Fern sensed the ebbing of its rage, touched a void of old sorrow, and long loneliness. “You have grown great, Angharial,” said the head—and to Will and Gaynor, looking for the speaker, realization was perhaps more shocking than the advent of the dragon. “I can call you little crocodile no longer. Indeed you are the Infernest, like your father, Pharaizon, lord of dragonkind.” The rumble in the monster’s throat was almost a purr. “I betrayed you,” Ruvindra continued, and his voice was double-edged. “Before you were born, I enslaved you to Azmordis, the ancient Spirit who slew me in reward. But I kept faith with you in death, as I could not in life. Take heed! The one who seeks to command you now—to control you—is altogether faithless. That same Spirit has his soul in its claws—his very words are not his own.”
“Lies!” shrieked Dr. Laye. “That thing is a cheat—a chimera it is the girl talking! Kill her! Kill her now!”
Clouds moved across the dragon’s eyes; doubt struggled with comprehension in the primitive simplicities of its brain. Fern felt its thought as something huge and tangible, an elemental intelligence all passion and hunger.
“He will use you,” Ruvindra persisted, “and ultimately destroy you. He lusts for the Stone splinter that lies beneath your heart, last relic of a power he cannot hold. She whom he would have you kill is the witch-maiden whose art brought me here, even from beyond the world—from the Eternal Tree where I hung in purgatory with other such fruit. I would have you befriend her, Angharial, as she has befriended me. Will you do this?”
“She is no charmer!” raged Dr. Laye. “Don’t you see? She is using that grotesque puppet to turn you against me—”
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He stretched out his arm, impossibly far, snatching at the head with distended fingers—but the dragon wheeled, snake swift for all its size, and a hissing javelin of flame barred his way.
“Azmordis reveals himself!” said Ruvindra. “Has any normal man such a reach?”
Tenegrys swung back toward him: gaze met gaze.
The charmer said softly: “Trust me, Angharial—if you can. I returned only for that.”
At the periphery of her vision Fern saw Dr. Laye move—not a natural movement but a sudden spasm, jerking at his body. His eyes widened—and widened—the lids peeled back from bulging eyeballs; his teeth rattled; foam bubbled from the corner of his mouth. He seemed to be trying to speak, to plead, but the only sounds that escaped from his contorted throat were shapeless and unintelligible. His joints twisted until the ligaments snapped; at one point his head appeared to be wrenched around until it was all but back to front… And behind him, his shadow rose upward, expanding and thickening, a separate entity, darker than the darkness against which it stood. The flamelight could not touch it; it extended a monstrous hand
But the dragon bellowed, and a tongue of fire seared its very core, blasting it into tiny darknesses that fled away over hill and hollow to re-form on some other horizon, in some other place, and only the man remained, crawling on crippled limbs, whimpering. For an instant, a heartbeat, Fern saw into the dregs of his soul, deprived of dreams, of certainty, of power, a shrunken, cowering thing. He whispered: “Mercy! I beg you… All I wanted was the dragon—to rule it, to be one with it, like my ancestors long ago…”
“Be merciful,” said Ruvindra.
The flame that hit Jerrold Laye must have been hotter than the surface of the sun. In a millisecond he was gone, reduced to a puff of ash, a smear on the road…
Gaynor murmured: “Dear God.”
“It is well,” said Ruvindra.
Fern’s arm was beginning to tremble from the strain of holding him aloft, but she dared not relax. The dragon’s maw was very near: she could see the wisps of smoke threading between its teeth, the blackened chasm of its nostril. Its breath smelled like an infernal ventilator and the heat of it was beginning to shrivel her cheek.
“And now,” said the head, “I, too, have need of your mercy. I am trapped in this—vessel—this unholy apple—until it perishes. Only then may I pass Death’s portal. Set me free.”
The dragon made a strange noise somewhere between a snarl and a yammer.
“I do not command you,” Ruvindra said. “Neither I nor any man has that right. Give me a quick road to eternity, or let me rot.” Tenegrys dropped its head in submission: its grief and anguish invaded the mind of every watcher, eclipsing lesser emotion. The dragon could not weep, but Gaynor, forgetful of danger, felt the tears start in her eyes. “It is well,” repeated the dragon charmer. “Afterward, if you will, give your allegiance to the witch, in gratitude for us both. And when I am indeed no more, remember that I loved thee, and I did not fail thee in the end.”
The great head descended still lower, the double-pronged tongue flickered out as in a kiss. The last words were spoken so quietly that only Fern could hear them. “Farewell, Fernanda Morcadis. If I had a heart, it would go with thee.” And then came a single shaft of concentrated flame—Fern felt her arm scorched, though somehow the skin was unmarked and the black fruit was consumed, and all that remained was a lock of hair, clasped in her hand.
She stood silent, so full of loss that she was oblivious to exhaustion and peril, to the proximity of the dragon, to the others waiting beside the car. It seemed to her that the night grew still in that moment, and the wind held its breath, the clouds halted in their pathways through the upper air, the stars froze. But it was only her fancy. Her right hand fell to her side. She looked up, and saw the dragon’s jaws barely a yard away, still slightly parted, and a red glimmer of flame receding down the tunnel of its throat. She knew she should be afraid, but she had no emotion left. The dragon watched her with eyes like globes of blood.
And then she realized that the last move was for her. She held out the lock of hair. “I will keep this,” she said, “as a—as a token, a pledge between us. Now go …” She bit her lip at the phrase: it was as if she were driving it away. “Go where you will, Angharial Tenegrys. Fly free. Find the mountains at the edge of being the deserted kingdoms of the otherworld. There is no place for you here. They say you are the last of the dragons, but… who knows? I wish you well. Fly free!”
There was a pause that seemed to Will and Gaynor to stretch out indefinitely. Then the dragon rose, and the tempest of its wings warped hedge and tree, and sent the flames streaming through the burning house so they flew like banners in the night. Higher it soared and higher, and the clouds whirled into a vortex around it, and its fires were drawn up into a spinning funnel of cumulus, and the dragon followed. For one instant more they saw it, far above the cloud cover, a star among stars; then it twinkled, faded, and was lost to view. The bonfire of Drakemyre Hall burned on merrily; below, the hillside was dark and empty.
Epilogue
Morgus
The morning was far advanced when they finally returned to Dale House. Will drove; Fern curled up on the backseat with Lougarry, barely able to sit up unaided, let alone stand. They stopped at a vet’s surgery that Will knew of on the way and the she-wolf’s leg was set and splinted, though they had some trouble persuading the vet that an overnight stay was undesirable.
“What breed of dog is she?” he asked with burgeoning suspicion.
“Mongrel,” suggested Gaynor.
“Cousin to White Fang,” said Will.
Fern had stayed in the car, sleeping.
As they drove, there was little conversation: they were all tired and overburdened with their own thoughts. Tomorrow would be time enough to talk things through.
Dawn had come and gone behind a bank of cloud, but when they crossed the high moor the sun broke cover, illuminating the green of spring on plateau and in hollow As they drew up in front of the house, its dour façade looked mellowed and welcoming to their eyes; Bradachin vanished, and Robin and Abby rushed out to meet them, and Mrs. Wicklow stood in the doorway, and on the slope beyond Ragginbone watched and waited, patient as a stone. It’s over, thought Gaynor, and thought became a murmur, uttered under her breath, as she walked beside Will carrying his sister into the hall.
“No,” muttered Fern, and her eyes half-opened, gleaming blearily through her lashes. “It has begun.”
Two days later, when they had talked themselves out when Will had claimed his stolen knife as a personal bequest from the dragon charmer, and Robin and Abby were puzzling over the explanations they had been offered—when Lougarry was hobbling from room to room snarling soundlessly at Yoda—when the faint and far-off moan of the bagpipes enlivened the slumbering house—Gaynor rose before the others and tapped on Fern’s bedroom door.
She went in without waiting for an answer. Fern rolled over, brushing aside the clinging strands of sleep. “Gaynor,” she said. And then: “You’re going.”
It was not a question.
“What about you and Will?”
Gaynor did not ask her how she knew “That’s why I’m going. I’ve ordered a taxi. Would you say good-bye to him for me?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It has to be.” She sat down on the bed, twisting and untwisting the long tendrils of her hair. “He’s too young.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I mean, too young for commitment. He likes me, but he doesn’t love me—not yet, not enough, maybe not ever. He’s got—oh, so many fields to play, so many wild oats to sow. And he’s your brother. I couldn’t bear for it to happen, and then to go wrong. Not when we’ve all been through so much, grown so close…”
“Coward,” said Fern.
“Yes,” said Gaynor.
Presently the taxi came. She kissed her friend, and went downstairs and out of the door, closing it softly behind he
r, and got in the car and was driven away, up over the moors into the April morning.
I burn, I burn.
The fire is within me and without … it eats into a thousand years of flesh, seeking my very core. The pain is beyond bearing. Hearing, sight, smell are all destroyed—I crawl toward the water, guided by some faculty beyond the senses. Every inch is an increase of agony. And then I reach the river the River of Death, of healing, of renewal, the river where the gods plunged the Cauldron of Rebirth to be cooled after its forging, in an age before recorded history, before it was stolen and broken and abused. They say something of its power still flows in the ancient stream. The cold swallows me, quenching flame, freezing me to the heart. My blackened skin hardens to a chrysalis in which all that remains of my swollen body coils like a blind white larva in a red pulp of blood. The chrysalis fastens itself to the rock beneath the surface: inside, I am nourished by the old spell, the maggot spell, the spell of all naked, wormlike creatures who must turn to stone ere they can be transformed and hatch anew. Here in the dark I can feel my substance changing, growing, unfolding into pale soft limbs and wisps of swimming hair The shell that protects me is sealed and set hard, stronger than obsidian. I am warm and moist in my strange new womb, a thing half-embryo, half-adult, carrying memory, knowledge, power in the nucleus of my being. I can feel my toes sprouting, the uncurling of my fingers… Above me the Styx flows on untroubled.
When I am full-made, the chrysalis will float to the surface, and crack, and I shall rise like a new Aphrodite from the leaden waves…
Glossary
Names
Angharial (Ang-har-ee-al) A pet name for the young Tenegrys, its origins are obscure, but there may be some connection with gharial, a type of small, very slender crocodile.