Ember and the Ice Dragons

by Heather Fawcett

  When she came into view of the beach, she gasped. An enormous glittering shape lay there, scrabbling at the rocks. When it saw them, it let out a cry.

  The dragon was beautiful—willowy and elegant, with a long, curving neck topped with a head more pointed than the fire dragons’. Its silver-blue scales shone as if dusted with starlight. Even the hunters seemed momentarily awestruck.

  The dragon gave another cry, and tried again to hoist itself out of the shallow water. One of its wings bent at a strange angle. Tears stung Ember’s eyes as she watched the magnificent creature struggle against the tide.

  Before any of them could say a word, Prince Gideon stepped forward and raised his bow.

  The bow snapped.

  A scream rent the air. But it didn’t come from the dragon—it was Lady Tennenbaum, standing next to the prince. The enormous bow had burst spectacularly into shards, and a piece had flown free and struck Lady Tennenbaum in the head. She sagged against Sir Abraham, who let out a curse.

  “Your Highness!” one of the seconds exclaimed. Prince Gideon had fallen when the bow exploded. He stared at his hand—two of the fingers were bent strangely.

  “What happened?” Sir Abraham cried, cradling the unconscious Lady Tennenbaum in his arms. “Who is responsible for this?”

  No one answered. Ember looked at Moss, who was pale and grim. She knew her own face likely mirrored his. She hadn’t meant for the bow to hurt anyone. But now that it had, she couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry.

  Fly, she begged the wounded dragon silently. Please fly. If it could only escape before the other hunters recovered—

  Gideon drew himself shakily to his feet, cradling his injured hand. With his left, he unsheathed his sword.

  “Stand back,” he ordered his seconds.

  “Your Highness!” Sir Abraham’s eyes bulged. “You can’t possibly be—”

  “It’s injured,” Prince Gideon said. “It won’t put up a fight.”

  “Please, Your Highness, you can borrow my bow—”

  “I can’t draw a bow,” the prince snapped. His eyes were narrowed against the pain, his jaw clenched as he gripped his sword. “This . . . this is what my father would do.”

  He strode toward the beach.

  “No!” Ember cried. She started forward, but the prince’s second grabbed her arm, holding her back.

  “The prince knows what he’s doing,” the man said, though he sounded far from certain. “He’ll be all right, girl, don’t worry.”

  Ember wept as the prince drew closer to the dragon. After trying and failing to pull itself out of the waves, it lay half on its side, watching the prince with large, glowing eyes. The rocks were stained red.

  “Why isn’t it doing anything?” Ember said through her tears.

  “It’s hurt,” the man holding her said, though this was hardly an answer. Ice dragons could breathe clouds of frozen vapor, cold enough to kill any living thing in their path. Yet the dragon didn’t attempt to do so. It just lay there, its massive bulk dwarfing the prince. Was it too badly hurt? In the last seconds before it happened, the dragon closed its eyes.

  Ember couldn’t watch. She had fallen to the ground. She felt Moss’s arms go around her, and then for a time she was aware of nothing. But she surfaced again, and felt the cold ground, which mirrored the cold inside her. All she could think about were her birth parents. Was this how they had died, all alone, at the hands of some horrible prince? She hated Gideon, then, with all her heart—the hatred was like a furnace inside her, a dark flame that she didn’t think would ever go out.

  Twelve

  Through the Falcon’s Cage

  Fire dragons continue to grow for at least thirty years, and live to well over one hundred. A captive dragon in India lived to 151. The beasts’ longevity has no doubt given rise to the phrase, “As long as a dragon’s memory.”

  —TAKAGI’S COMPENDIUM OF EXOTIC CREATURES

  It was Sir Abraham who helped her to her feet and led her, clumsy and stumbling, back to camp. Lady Tennenbaum had recovered—Ember was dimly aware of her cooing and tsking over her. They seemed in agreement that Ember had fainted from fear for Prince Gideon’s life. How relieved she would be, the lady said, when the shock wore off and she realized that he had successfully slain the dragon! Ember ducked inside her tent without speaking a word, and was aware no more.

  She awoke properly some hours later, wrapped in blankets. Nisha and Moss were there, whispering, but Ember didn’t stir. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She had failed. True, they had saved the other dragons, for it was likely that more would have been killed if the hunters hadn’t been distracted. But that didn’t change the fact that a dragon had died. Oddly, though, her thoughts kept drifting from the dragon to Chesterfield. She wished she had never heard of the Winterglass Hunt, or Prince Gideon, or any of it. She missed home so much she felt it would choke her.

  It was her stomach that eventually forced her to move—it gave a mighty rumble, reminding her that she had missed breakfast and lunch. Grudgingly, Ember sat up.

  “You’re awake!” Nisha was at her side in an instant. “I’m so glad—we were worried! Are you all right?”

  Ember was silent, and for the first time, her honesty didn’t rise up inside her. Her honesty didn’t know the answer any more than she did.

  “That horrid Prince Gideon,” Nisha said. “I wish I had been there with you—but then, I’m glad I didn’t have to watch. Moss threw up. Do you want some hot chocolate?”

  Ember wanted to lie back down and close her eyes and have nothing more to do with any of them. But she couldn’t. She had failed the dragons once. She couldn’t fail again.

  She shook her head. “Where’s the prince?”

  “Off with his scouts and a few of the hunters. They don’t think the dragons will return here, so they’re going to try to track them south. The other hunters are preparing the dogsleds for an expedition.”

  Ember swallowed. “Then I have to go with them.”

  “We have to go with them.” Nisha grinned her warm grin. She took Ember’s hand. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  For a moment, Ember thought about telling Nisha everything, but fear stopped her. If Nisha knew what she was, would she still want to help her? Nisha wanted to protect the dragons, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid of them. Would she still see Ember as her friend? To her surprise, Ember found herself frightened at the thought of losing Nisha’s friendship. It would be too painful on top of everything else.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I just . . . want to be alone right now.”

  She went outside. It was late afternoon, and daylight had come and gone. Some yards away, hunters were clustered around the fire, while others seemed occupied with the dogsleds. The sky was mottled with clouds, which obscured most of the stars. A few snowflakes fell. They were gentle and soft, but a knife edge in the wind promised worse to come.

  Ember had forgotten to don her coat, but she didn’t feel like turning back now. She squeezed the pocket of her sweater and felt Montgomery’s reassuring outline. The fabric of the world must have ironed itself out by now. Even if it hadn’t, she didn’t care. She had never felt so alone in her life, and she needed her father, and home, even if just for a few moments.

  She made her way to the sleds, keeping to the shadows. The hunters paid her little notice anyway, and when one did glance her way, Ember made her expression dully curious, as if she had merely come to watch their preparations. Finally, she found what she was looking for.

  The Marquis de Montvert had brought one of his prize falcons with him—it sat in its large cage on his sled, shivering. Though the creature was native to the Arctic tundra, it seemed to be bested by the Antarctic chill, and Ember was sorry for it. When no one was watching, she lifted its cage from the sled and darted away, murmuring to it to keep silent. It did, its black eyes wide with uncertainty.

  Ember crept down to the shore and knelt behind a boulder. Here, with the st
ars hidden by the clouds, there was almost total dark, a towering, empty dark that Ember had never seen before, that was at once comforting and terrifying. Antarctica pressed against her back like a crouching monster.

  Ember lifted the falcon out of the cage. It whistled softly, its talons gripping her wrist. Then, suddenly realizing its freedom, the bird took off over the water—back toward the prince’s ship, which lurked somewhere in the mist, where the soft-hearted captain would scold it and spoil it with treats. Ember watched it go.

  There came a familiar squawk.

  Ember turned. A half-dozen Adélies clustered at the edge of the beach, waves lapping at their feet. Bold as anything, they strode up to Ember, eyeing the cage as if certain it was a tuna in disguise.

  “You again!” she exclaimed. One of the birds had very ruffled feathers—it was the one who had stolen her flagstone. “Did you follow me?”

  The bird gave her a cunning sideways stare. It honked as she scratched its head. She hoped the magic had worn off.

  “You stay here,” she warned the penguins, in case they got any ideas. But it is impossible to tell if a penguin is getting ideas, and in the end, she just had to hope they wouldn’t follow.

  She was certain that it was night in London—early evening, she estimated, so she wouldn’t pose a danger to anyone. That wasn’t what gave her pause. The knob on the birdcage door was small—much smaller than Montgomery, and Ember felt a tremor of doubt as she unscrewed it.

  “What do you think?” she murmured to the doorknob. They had patched things up since the incident with Puff, after Ember had spent three hours laboriously sanding and painting Montgomery’s injuries. The doorknob, though, would never return to its former mint condition, and it knew it. It had a glum, self-conscious air as Ember affixed it to the birdcage. To her surprise, Montgomery fit the cage door perfectly, though it did look rather silly there.

  “Sorry about this,” Ember murmured. The doorknob maintained a long-suffering silence.

  Holding her breath, Ember turned the knob to the right.

  The door swung open. Beyond it, Ember beheld not the wire bars of the back of the cage, nor the falcon’s perch, but the firelit wood and hangings of her father’s office. She drew in a sharp breath. Wonderingly, she turned the cage around. From the back, she saw only bars and the open cage door.

  Now for the tricky part. Ember knelt before the cage and squeezed her head in. The door should not have been wide enough for her shoulders, but then somehow it was, and she was pushing through. Once she had her arms in, Ember grabbed on to the edge of her father’s rug (a gift from a Moroccan sultan) and dragged herself forward like an ungainly seal onto dry land.

  As she did, she became aware of an odd sort of silence—not the silence of an empty room, but that of several people who had just drawn in a collective breath.

  Ember looked up. Her father sat at his desk, blinking, and in the chairs opposite were two of his students, a young man and woman whom Ember recognized vaguely. Their jaws hung open.

  “Er,” Lionel St. George said. “Well! I think that’s enough for today, Miss Montague, Mr. Basra. I trust you now have the information you need to complete your assignments?” He rose without waiting for a response. “Good! I’ll see you both in class tomorrow.”

  He held open his office door. His students bumped into their chairs as they made their way from the room, their eyes fixed on Ember. Lionel shut the door behind them.

  “Ember!” he exclaimed, rushing over to the door to the secondary hallway. He took her hands and pulled her into the office. As he did, Ember risked a glance behind her—instead of the secondary hallway, she saw the dark, snowy beach of Antarctica, the gawping penguins, a cage door attached to nothing, and her own legs, which seemed to hover in midair in a ghostly way. It was a disturbing sight, as it made no logical sense whatsoever, and she tried to forget it.

  She fell into her father’s arms, her tears starting almost immediately.

  “What’s happened, my dear?” he said. “Tell me everything.”

  Ember choked out the story of the hunt, and Prince Gideon and the dragon. When she spoke of Lord Norfell, her father went very still. But he said nothing until she was finished.

  “That’s quite a tale.” His voice was carefully even, but Ember could tell that underneath it, he was very angry—though not at her. Lionel St. George rarely became angry, though Ember had sometimes heard the other Magicians remark that, when he did, it was best to stay out of his way. “I’m very sorry you had to witness that. Still, you no doubt saved the lives of a great many dragons. I’m proud of you. You did the best you possibly could.”

  “But I—” Ember stopped. “‘Did’?”

  “There’s no question of you going back to Antarctica,” he said. “I feel—well, I feel absolutely dreadful for allowing you to go there in the first place. To think that I threw you into the path of that man Norfell . . .”

  Ember didn’t know what she had been expecting her father to say, but it hadn’t been this. She felt as if she were falling. “But I have to go back! I have to—”

  “I cannot allow that,” he said, and though he didn’t raise his voice, the words stopped her like a wall of stone. “I’m sorry, my dear.”

  He didn’t say a word about her sneaking away to join the hunt, but it hung in the air nevertheless. Ember lowered her head. A weight settled over her, terrible and cold. She looked back at the door, the dark beach where an empty cage sat. One of the penguins seemed to be pecking at it.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. She said it to the dragons as much as to her father.

  He let out a long sigh. For a moment, he looked older than his years. “I can’t be angry at you for doing what you thought was right,” he said. He went to the portal and knelt at the height of the birdcage. He reached an arm through, and when he withdrew it, he was holding Montgomery. He murmured in stormspeech, and then he closed the door to the secondary hallway. When he opened it again, Antarctica was gone.

  Ember couldn’t believe that she had left everything behind—not only the dragons, but Nisha and Moss. They would be so worried about her! “What will happen now?”

  “I’ll send your aunt a telegraph,” her father said. “It will reach her in a few days.”

  “Have you figured out how to fix the spell?” Ember said.

  His face fell. “No. But I believe I’m close. That dragon’s blood will be the breakthrough, I can feel it.”

  Ember thought of how many times she had heard him speak of breakthroughs, only to have them come to nothing. “But it’s summer. What if I catch fire again?”

  Her father’s brow furrowed. “Yes, I’m afraid we are substituting certain danger for probable danger. But we’ll work something out. The important thing is that you’re safe.”

  But you aren’t safe from me, Ember felt like saying. Nobody is. But she couldn’t, not with her father looking so grave.

  “Father,” Ember said, “if I don’t go back, and those dragons die, it will be my fault.”

  Her father stared at her. “How could you think such a thing? Of course it isn’t—”

  “Yes, it is.” The words burst out of her in a torrent. “It was my fault my parents died. And if I can save those ice dragons, and I don’t, their deaths will be my fault too.”

  Her father grew very still. When he spoke, it was slowly and deliberately. “Ember. Your parents’ deaths were not your fault.”

  “They died protecting me.” Her voice broke. “That makes it at least partly my fault.”

  “Ah, Ember.” Her father ran his hand through his hair. “It is the duty of every parent to die protecting their children, if it comes to that. I would do the same. There is much evil in this world, and you are not to blame if it crosses your path.” He let out a long breath. “Perhaps it’s time I gave you something. . . .”

  He paced over to his invisible desk. It was a little smaller than the visible one, shoved into a corner of the room beneath the best window.
There Lionel did his secret magical research that he didn’t want the nosy professors at Chesterfield to know about. He also kept a variety of mysterious trinkets and talismans from his travels in the drawers, which, in addition to being invisible, were locked.

  Lionel spoke a few words in stormspeech, and the desk flickered into view. It was piled with notebooks and papers covered in his elaborate, loopy writing, as well as several empty teacups that had no doubt been there for some time, given that the servants couldn’t see them. He unlocked the lowest drawer and removed something that flashed briefly in the light.

  “What is that?” Ember said. There was something familiar about that flash of light—

  Her father placed the object in her hand, covering it between their two palms. It was a pendant of some sort, affixed to a leather chain.

  “It was your mother’s,” he said quietly. He drew his hand back, and Ember gasped.

  She was holding a fire dragon’s heartscale—a complete one. It was roughly the shape of a teardrop, and fit perfectly in Ember’s palm. Veins of gold ran through it like rivers of molten light.

  “I found it when I found you, along with that bit of scale from your birth father,” Lionel said.

  Ember touched the ring she still wore. The ring was one thing—dragonglass was usually divided and sold in small pieces. An entire heartscale was almost unheard-of. She thought of Prince Gideon, who would no doubt be showing off the heartscale he had taken from the ice dragon. Her grip tightened.

  Her father kissed her forehead. “I was going to keep it safe for you until you were older. I intended to study it further—you see, there’s some sort of magic tangled in it, magic that doesn’t seem to be present in worked dragonglass. I suppose the hunters and jewelry makers don’t sense it—or if they do, they simply don’t care. But I think, in light of all that’s happened, it’s time I let you look after it.”

  Ember placed the heartscale around her neck—the chain was only a little long on her. She marveled at how it shone even in shadow. What she held was worth a fortune. Thinking that drew her mind back to the hunters.