“There are two parts to the Dragon’s Net,” Jewel said. “The ouroboros, and the cauldron. The ouroboros—the snake eating its tail, originally, the dragon eating its tail. The ring of torches atop the mountain will trap the spirit of the dragon, catch it in a loop.
“I thought we could use that to take control of the dragon. The so-called Dragon’s Noose. It works on drakes, after all. But if you don’t let it hatch—if you prevent it from incarnating, force the spirit to circle endlessly in the Net, it builds up mana until the egg explodes.”
“If the detonation was great enough, it would evacuate the air,” I said. “Kill any flames before they started. Hopefully, leaving enough liquid fire to be harvested from the crater—but there’s no way you could count on that. No way to be sure it wouldn’t burn off or boil off—”
“Or simply drain away,” Jewel said. “Either way, it creates a huge blast of mana—a blast that kills the dragon, but feeds back along the threads of the infinity lens. Mana that transmutes the matter in the cauldron, leaving the Elixir of Cintamani, a form of liquid fire.”
“Whether she lives or dies, you get your liquid fire,” I said bitterly. “You can’t lose.”
“I already think I have,” she said, staring at my fist. “You’re going to try to free her, aren’t you? You’ll fail, and wreck the spell—or succeed, and wreck the world. Either way, the liquid fire will be wasted. You’re a bigger fool than I thought you were, Dakota—”
“Than you thought I was?” I stared down at her sadly. “The loser here, clearly, is me.”
She hissed. “I didn’t mean that—”
“Yes you did, and yes I did. I’ve already lost you,” I said. “Now I’m about to lose the dragon too. Ordinarily, I’d be on your side here, protecting the world, but I feel more kinship than that. I’m more than just the herald, aren’t I. I’ve got the spirit of this thing living on my skin—”
“Maybe,” Jewel said hesitantly. “You’re resonant with it, sure, but no one can tell. Hatchings don’t happen often enough for us to know for sure. You have a second copy of the dragon spirit flying around you. For all we know, that’s it. I don’t really know—”
“You don’t really know, yet dragged me out here as your fallback plan. You really want to play that game?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. She just glared up at me, jutting her lip. “Jewel, do you know what you call me when you think I’m not looking?”
She looked at me, baffled, and I pinched the back of one hand, flipped the hand over and waggled two fingers over it, and then held both hands parallel. Her eyes went wide as I said, “Skin-dance-agent. Skindancer.”
“You can read sign language,” she said, eyes wide. “How—”
“Of course I know ASL! My mother was deaf!” I said, and Jewel flinched. “I should have seen it. You never asked about me, my family, my history—never even gave me a chance to sign to Molokii, just insulated him away from me in your private little bubble where you thought you could talk about me without overhearing. You assumed I was a mark from the beginning!”
Jewel’s eyes were still wide. “What . . . what did you overhear?”
“Nothing much,” I said. “You were too good for that. But you know what Molokii called me, always, since he never realized I could understand him?” I raised my right hand, thumb to my chin, then let both hands out, wriggling like flame as I mimed blowing. “Mother of the dragon.”
Jewel’s eyes widened further. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “He meant . . . he meant your tattoo—”
I shook my head, cupping an eye and touching my hand, then running my fingers over my arms before making the flame motion again—art-body-dragon. “That’s dragon tattoo,” I said, then twirled my hands in the sign for wear. “And this would be dragon wearer—”
“Damn it!” Jewel said, shying away from me.
“But the real key is, you’re upset,” I said, reaching out again, planting her hands back on her head. “You knew it from the beginning, but hid it. It’s important knowledge. Knowing I’m the bearer means something. I can do something with that knowledge to stop this.”
I stared up at the hillside, at the ring of torches at the limit of my vision.
“And I know exactly what to do. Sorry, Jewel,” I said—and punched her in the face.
“Ow!” she said, head bouncing back, holding her nose. “What was that for?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding up my hand. “I was trying to knock you out—”
“Well, thath didn’t do it,” she said, raising her other hand. “Shit, nothe bleeding—”
“Sorry!” I said, making a fist. “I don’t have a lot of practice knocking people out—”
“Wellth, don’th do it agianth,” she said, raising her hand to fend me off. “Jerthk—”
“I am sorry,” I said, seizing her shoulder, spinning her about and rolling her into my arms in a headlock. She reached for my hands, but I was already applying a sleeper hold—and that was something I could do reliably. “I am so sorry, but I can’t trust you not to try to stop me.”
Jewel’s hands gripped at my fist, then sagged. She was faking, of course, but I just shifted my grip. In seconds, her whole body went slack in my hands, and I lowered her to the ground. Grimacing, I pinched her nipple, hard, and when she didn’t cry out, I knew she was out.
“Sleep tight, Jewel,” I said. “It will all be over in a minute.”
———
Then I stepped over her, through the line of torches . . . and climbed toward the crater.
60. The Sacrifice
Rough volcanic cinder crumbled away beneath the shoes I’d stolen from Yolanda. At the base of the slope, the friable rock had sifted down to a rough red gravel that, during the fight, had scraped my soles and palms raw and left my knees bleeding. Now, at least, I could walk.
But as I climbed the rumbling slopes of Pu’u o Maui, following the line of torches of the infinity lens toward the smoking summit, I no longer faced volcanic gravel. Stones the size of my fist tumbled past—sharp, ruddy Swiss-cheese fragments, rattling down into the dark.
The more I climbed, the more winded I became—it was definitely the altitude. I’d felt a touch of it back at Iloa’s, but this was higher, and colder, and now that I’d peeled off as much of the latex as I quickly could, the thin air was chilling my skin as well as starving my lungs.
But I couldn’t stop. I was driven on by the desire to stop Jewel and to save Pele. To save this thing on my back—at least, if I was right about what was on my back, and Arcturus wasn’t right that it was feeding my intentions back onto themselves until I’d driven myself insane.
I stumbled. “Fuck,” I said, wincing as a rock ground into my already wounded hand. I raised my head to see a spray of what looked like eagle feathers around one of the torch totems. Palm leaves were woven into it, and herbs I didn’t know wound round it twice, like a caduceus.
I got to my feet, glaring at the beaded threads and ribbons that connected the torches of the infinity lens like an endless velvet rope. I tested the threads. I was tempted to cut them, but I knew too much mana was flowing. The magic could leap through the air to close the circuit.
Halfway up, the spiral of torches now far below me looked small and nonthreatening, as innocent-looking as an aerial shot of a luau. The torches above me looked like a ring of lights around an event. Even if some park ranger saw this driving by, or someone spotted this from the air, by the time anyone realized what this string of torches was, it would be far too late.
My skin was burning now, my body twitching every time my Dragon tattoo tried to come to life. It was still bound by the tattered latex, but tearing at it, still inhibited by the henna, but short circuiting it, its tattooed claws seeming to cut me as it struggled. It was stronger than I.
A
rcturus was wrong—I had caught something in the four elements of my Dragon, some quintessence of the Dragon’s spirit, growing ever since that fateful day when I faced down the vamps and activated the pieces of my tattoo before it was completely assembled.
Something tickled the back of my neck. From some unseen source, I felt renewed strength. I climbed on, letting rock fall away behind me, making better time as the slope evened out. As I neared the summit, I saw out of the corner of my eye an old familiar friend.
My original Dragon flew through the air beside me, grown vaporous and huge, stretching its mana thin in favor of size. Vast and sinuous, it played up its Chinese roots now more than its Western heritage, snaking around the top of the crater in an ever-growing circle.
My new Dragon half-tore her way out of the latex on my back as I crested the ridge, writhing and screaming. I could feel her claws raking me, feel burns where mana she tried to release was short-circuited by the henna. Then I spasmed in pain, nearly losing my footing.
On my belly, a peeling patch of latex started to smoke, and I doubled over, beating it out, scraping more of the dried sticky goo off me, keeping my fingers raking despite the pain until the line of henna paste was scraped off in my fingernails. The henna had left a stain on my skin, but it didn’t conduct as well as real tattoo pigment, and the magical circuit was broken.
I must hatch. Let me free! I must hatch. Let me fly!
My new Dragon struggled to tear her wings loose, struggling to get free, struggling to get to the egg—struggling to trap herself. The line of torches was adorned with feathers and leaves and sigils of gold, so inviting to the spirit—but on the ground beneath it was something sinister.
It was hard to see the whole design, but I could guess the black sooted lines of runes stretching out over the summit were a pentagram. The infinity lens’s final ring of torches arced just inside its inner pentagon, with more runic circles inside and outside it.
My new Dragon flapped her wings, desperate to free herself, and I saw how the hatching would have worked if the fireweavers hadn’t interfered. Sooner or later, the spirit trapped in my Dragon would have grown strong enough to fly free, coming here to land in the egg.
But this structure was an attractive nuisance, a magical trap, luring the dragon’s spirit out before it was ready, trapping it before it could hatch. I considered destroying the torches, but the pattern was too huge. I could work for hours and not make a dent, and I had just minutes.
I staggered forward, wondering if I could make it to my destination before the Dragon tore herself free, but the closer I got, the more frantic she became, desperate to free herself, desperate to merge with the projected emanations of the egg.
I had to get her inside that circle, directly atop the egg. If I let her free before then, she’d be swept up into the infinity lens, become twisted into an ouroboros, and build up mana until the egg blew apart and tore her spirit to pieces.
But the circle had absorbed the egg’s emanations and amplified them, causing a superstimulus response like the human response to sugar or a cat’s response to catnip—if I crossed the line, the Dragon would try to free herself. She would have to.
Trying to save her would make her kill herself.
Then my old Dragon snaked down out of the sky, cutting me off. I glimpsed a glowing eye as it rippled past, then it picked up more speed as it slid toward the line of torches. Was I wrong? Was this the real spirit of the Dragon? No—but the infinity lens still caught it.
The old Dragon screamed as the magic whipped it round, faster and faster, forcing the tattoo projectia to bite its own tail. The smell of burning skin burnt my nose, but the lens was not powering up—because this was not the real spirit of the dragon.
Where a real dragon’s spirit was a generator, turning matter into magic, building power up almost forever, my original dragon tattoo had a finite amount of liquid fire from the original ink . . . and the infinity lens was draining that dry, tearing the tattoo to pieces.
But as the lens flickered and the tattoo twisted, my new Dragon relaxed on my back. The old Dragon was close enough—it could fill the real spirit’s role in the circuit, freeing the spirit from its pull, if only for a moment. My old tattoo was sacrificing itself for my new one.
I imagined my old Dragon saying “go” but it didn’t—it just screamed. I felt the wings of the new Dragon merge with my back, felt her settle, then I ran. My knee pounded, my stomach burned, my whole body was on fire, but before I knew it, I was through the barrier.
Magic assaulted me, a thousand blinding pinpricks, like I’d run through the hot, sparking column of smoke of a burning campfire. I fell forward on my face and hands with a rough cry, yelping further as rough cinder tore up the insides of my arms.
I struggled to stand as I slid down into the pit, coughing as actual hot smoke filled my lungs. That’s right—Pu’u o Maui was one of the volcanic vents that had reawakened with the stirrings of the dragon’s spirit, and hot gas and ash steamed out of the caldera below.
Coughing, slipping, bleeding, I slid down toward the rising smoke and fire on a small avalanche of red crackling gravel. Unable to stop myself, I flopped onto the cascading rock, crying out as sharp edges stabbed at my belly, throwing my arms wide despite the scrapes and pain. Slowly, I slid to a halt, bloody and in agony, just yards from the hot center of the crater, mercilessly pummeled by rocks the size of oranges still tumbling down around me.
I raised my face and winced. Heat was rising in shimmering waves, hot miasma rising off a red glowing circle in the crater’s floor. In terror, I scrambled back, thinking it was lava—but the circle had a slight bulge, and as it brightened from red to gold, I realized what it was.
It was the top of the dragon’s egg.
Red cinder rocks tumbled away from the dome as it slowly rose. The glowing bulge was so gently sloped that the whole egg must have been unimaginably huge, but still, the dome rose, near pure gold now, veined with dark red, shoving the surface of the crater away.
Mana streamed off the egg in a slow-motion aurora. With my new eyes, I could pick out individual streamers of power, roiling with the most intense colors of magic I’d ever seen. The Dragon on my back surged and swelled to life, seeming to bulge outward, like a backpack.
Heat stung my face. I struggled to get to my feet as the new dragon tattoo tore free from my back, half manifested, half pinned by henna and latex. Magic limbs and coiling tails flopped around me, and I kicked and stumbled, frantic. I had to stay in the caldera to let the spirit of the dragon incarnate, but I had to get away from that red-hot egg, or I’d be burned alive—
A massive glowing claw slammed down on my arm.
I crouched there, arm pinned in agony against the hot rock, as my new Dragon unpeeled herself from my back by magic. What had been writ upon two square meters of skin now reared ten meters into the air on a flood of mana, trumpeting her new life in a ghostly cry.
———
Then the Dragon leaned her head forward and was sucked into the egg without a sound.
61. A Fearful Sound
I huddled there for a moment, drawing in my arms, watching mana shimmer into the egg, seeing my own tattoo merge with the red-cracked gold surface until it all but disappeared. Was it gone forever, or would my tattoo always exist as a mark on Pele’s spirit?
Then I thought of Krakatoa. Of all the people who had died because wizards interfered with a dragon hatching—and the egg had exploded. Who knew what all this muddle of magic—firecap ink, a dragon tattoo, the Dragon’s Noose—had done to the dragon’s spirit?
I put my burnt, shaking hands together and prayed. Prayed the egg would not explode, prayed the dragon would hatch safely, prayed if the dragon did hatch, it wouldn’t turn on the human race. Prayed that no one would die, and that everything would be all right.
The ground shook. The
egg shuddered. Light began pouring out of its golden, domed surface, dark only at those strange red cracks which seemed to suck in the light. Then the rounded surface of the egg heaved upward, discharging a spray of cinder around me.
A sound like a crack of thunder—or a cracking egg—ripped the air.
I stood, turned, and ran. Ran up the slope. Scrambled up the gravel. Grappled with the rock as I fell and crawled and scrambled and ran again, coconut-sized cinders tumbling around me, parts of the hillside sliding so fast it seemed like I was running in place.
The egg shuddered again, throwing a wave of rock up the slope toward me. Somehow, I kept my feet under me and the sliding rock under my feet and kept running, finding sure footing at last, pounding to the top of the slope in an agony of pain and burns and blood.
Before me, the ouroboros of my old Dragon whirled in a maelstrom of tattoo magic, spinning so fast the torches no longer burned with chemical flames, but were rainbow sparklers of purely magical fire. The shield shimmered before me, a wall of magic waters.
It had burned me, but I’d gone through it before. I didn’t stop now.
The magical maelstrom caught me and spun me about, spinning me round and round, but my momentum kept me going, tumbling me out of the circle, throwing me sprawling onto my back as the chasm behind me erupted in a blast of magical flame.
On some level, at the back of my mind, I expected to see the head of Pele rise from the crater, to see a fiery creature rise from the pit like a wyrmic phoenix. But what flew up from the crater made more sense: fragments of egg, glowing white hot, on a shell of burning yolk.
The yolk splashed against the inside of the magic barrier, infusing the infinity lens with a titanic amount of living mana. The egg fragments flew on, sailing out across the valley, lighting the whole of Haleakala crater end to end with golden fragments of the sun.
Liquid Fire Page 44