Icefire

by Chris D'Lacey

  Gretel, riding on Zanna’s shoulder, leaned away from Bergstrom’s stare.

  “Her name’s Gretel,” answered David, taking her down. “She was Gwilanna’s dragon. Now she’s with us.”

  Bergstrom studied her carefully a moment, then relaxed his gaze and beckoned them in. He led them down the corridors, into his room.

  Still cradling the baby, Zanna made for an armchair in a darkened corner. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered, pampering the creature with gentle flicks and strokes of her fingers. “I’m going to give you a name:

  Grockle.”

  “Grockle?” David curled his lip.

  “Listen,” she said, tickling the dragon under his jaws.

  Grraark … graark … grr-ockle, he coughed.

  Zanna smiled with delight at this. But amusing though it was to hear the dragon “speak,” the sound it was making didn’t seem natural. It reminded David of sandpaper rasping hard against wood. He turned to Dr. Bergstrom and asked, “Why is he making that grating noise?”

  Bergstrom, looking on, answered bleakly, “He’s trying to find his fire.”

  Graark! went Grockle, louder than before. David and the Pennykettle dragons jumped. But not a single whiff of smoke left the baby’s snout. He rocked back and forth in Zanna’s hands, blinked his amber eyes, and settled. Graark, he said, more quietly now. It was almost a question, a sad little whimper that Zanna interpreted without the need for dragontongue. “He doesn’t have any, does he?” She touched Grockle’s belly. It was cold, like stone. “He’s been born without fire.”

  “But he’s a dragon,” said David. “He must have fire.”

  Dr. Bergstrom shook his head. “A dragon is a servant of the Mother Earth, David. It’s not possible to produce a spark in them without the ability to call upon her fire. Elizabeth Pennykettle has that ability. Gwilanna, for all her powers, does not.”

  David crouched down and touched Grockle’s scales. They felt leathery and dull, unpleasantly clammy. “Then why bother trying? What was she hoping to achieve with him?”

  “And what’s going to happen to him?” Zanna added quickly, anxiety breaking through her confusion.

  On the desk, G’reth tightened his jaws and gulped.

  “Grockle is a kind of half-creature,” said Bergstrom. “If Gwilanna had successfully drained the auma from Elizabeth Pennykettle’s body into his, he would have grown to be a powerful beast, a fiend under her control.”

  “No,” said Zanna, not wanting to hear this. She drew back, holding Grockle to her breast. His soft black tongue, no wider than a strip of fettuccine, licked at the makeshift bandage on her arm.

  “Even then he would have been a shell, no more. To complete the task, she would have needed fire.”

  “That’s why she’s after the tear,” said David, suddenly working everything out. “She was going to use Grockle to intimidate the bears and make them give up Gawain’s fire.”

  “But why?” asked Zanna, calming Grockle down as he graarked and stretched his bronze-colored wings. He nipped at the hankie. She peeled it off. “What good would it do her to have a pet dragon?”

  “To answer that,” said Bergstrom, turning away, “you have to know something of Gwilanna’s history. In Guinevere’s time, she was the wisest, most powerful sibyl on earth. She had a reputation as a healer of ills, through the use of herbs and flower remedies.”

  Gretel lifted an eye ridge and sniffed.

  “Even though she was reclusive and kept her own counsel, Gwilanna was held in the highest regard by those who came to seek her advice. But there was always one issue that rankled the sibyl and set her apart from the elders of her tribe. She clashed so heatedly over this matter that in time she was cast out and almost put to death. The nature of the dispute might surprise you: She condemned them for their growing persecution of dragons.”

  “What?” David gave a snort of contempt.

  “It may be hard for you to grasp, but Gwilanna, like Guinevere, believed that the old world was better ruled by dragons than by men.”

  “I’m with her on that one,” said Zanna. “I think Grockle’s hungry. Can I feed him something?”

  Bergstrom spoke in dragontongue to Gretel, telling her to seek out fresh green leaves.

  Gretel zipped off toward a tall dracaena in a Japanese planter, appropriately decorated with sleeping dragons.

  David scratched his head, coughing away plaster dust as it fell. “So Lucy was right. The earth was ruled by dragons once?”

  “In the age before mankind, yes,” said Bergstrom. “It was men who hunted them to near extinction, until only twelve of the creatures survived. Those twelve, mighty and courageous as they were, opted not to pursue the fight and died in isolation in their chosen resting places around the globe. Gawain, as you know, came to the island that the bears now call the Tooth of Ragnar. Gwilanna was enraged by this turn of events, for it left no place for her kind in the world. So, mad or misguided, whichever you prefer, she desired to strike back and take the one thing no human — or sibyl — had ever possessed, the tear of a dying dragon.”

  David took a moment to think this through. “There’s something I’ve never understood about that: If Gwilanna wanted the tear so badly, why did she send Guinevere for it? Why not simply catch it herself?”

  “Afraid, if you ask me,” Zanna interjected, encouraging Grockle to perch on her arm. The dragon tilted his head and peered at her cuts. He grockled inquisitively and sniffed at the slow-congealing plasma. Zanna allowed him to lick the wounds clean, then raised his chin with the tip of her finger. His teeth, like a row of clean white bunting, stood out fiercely in his lower jaw. Fire or no fire, he could rip and tear. Who in their right mind would dare to beleaguer a dying dragon?

  “She’s right,” Bergstrom confirmed. “By the end of his life, Gawain had little trust of man; he would have turned any sibyl to dust in a breath. So Gwilanna sought another, safer route and found it in the shape of the virtuous Guinevere. When Guinevere came in search of advice, asking how she might save the dragon’s essence, Gwilanna seized her chance. Here was an unexpected gift — a girl willing to risk her life just to be with the dragon at his death. So she traded information about the tear for the seemingly worthless donation of a scale. What had she to lose? If the foolish girl died, what was it to her? She had gained a dragon’s scale, a rare prize in itself. But if the girl succeeded, then the tear was in her grasp. As you know, Guinevere succeeded in her quest, but nothing worked out the way either had imagined.”

  David looked up hopefully. “Do you know what happened — to Guinevere, I mean? I overheard Liz telling Lucy once that she was drowned trying to hide the tear. Is it true?”

  Bergstrom rolled his gaze to one side. He watched Gretel passing broken leaves to Zanna, who in turn offered them in pieces to Grockle. The little dragon clicked his teeth and exchanged them in his craw for tiny burps of air.

  “It’s warm in here,” Bergstrom said suddenly. “Why don’t you and I go for a walk?” There was a flicker of movement in his left hand. He was fingering the Inuit talisman, making the hand-carved figures dance.

  David glanced across at Zanna and realized that time, or the plane of existence they knew as reality, had somehow shifted. She and Gretel and the dragon called Grockle were in a small bubble of their own for the moment. He stood up cautiously. G’reth immediately flew to his shoulder, only to be told by Bergstrom to stay.

  Hrr-rr? the wishing dragon beseeched him.

  “Your work is done,” the bear man said. And he placed his thumbs into the wide dished paws until the dragon’s eyes grew dizzy with awe. G’reth fluttered like a blown seed back to the desk and sank down, puffing a wisp of smoke. Bergstrom took a jacket off the back of a chair. “Wear gloves, David. It’s cold out there.”

  “Where exactly are we going?”

  Bergstrom leveled his blue-eyed gaze. “Onto the ice,” he said.

  33

  THE FIRE THAT MELTS NO ICE

  Ice?�
�� David queried, as their shoes broke the edges of the snow on the common.

  Bergstrom punched the ends of his gloves together. He put his face to the sky and let his blond hair trail against his upturned collar. “We’ll go this way,” he said with a lilt of Norwegian, and began to cut a path across the widest, bleakest part of the grounds. They were well above sea level here, and the yellow pips of lamplight on the far horizon seemed to roll away with every crunching step. It was cold and another gray fog had fallen, freezing the uppermost deposits of snow and giving it the texture of cereal flakes. As he walked, David scuffed the grass underfoot and thought idly of tundra and caribou. He was wondering if this was what the north would be like when Bergstrom spoke again.

  “So, will I see you in Chamberlain, David?”

  David bit his lip and looked the other way. This was a loaded question, he thought. He hadn’t written the essay or shown any sign of doing so. Was Bergstrom trying to test his allegiance? “I have the money. And I think I’ve proved that dragons exist.”

  “Then you’ll come?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Then it’s settled.” Bergstrom smiled and held out a hand. David shook it and they walked on in silence for a while.

  But many questions were stacking up in David’s mind, and as they passed a small coppice of hawthorns he asked, “What’s going to happen to Grockle? Are you taking him to Chamberlain, too?”

  Bergstrom put his head back and listened to the wind. “You need not be concerned about Grockle. Why don’t we talk about the fire tear? You must have wondered many times how bears came to be the guardians of it?”

  Doubling his step to match the larger man’s stride, David admitted, “Yes. Once or twice.” It wasn’t meant to be a casual remark, but Bergstrom threw back his head and laughed, lobbing the repeats of his deep-throated hoots twenty or thirty yards across the common.

  Slightly unnerved, David turned and trudged backward for several paces. The fog had all but eclipsed the house and still they were drawing further away. “Are we going far? I’m worried about Zanna on her own in there. Liz warned us to watch for Gwilanna.”

  Bergstrom turned his head to the east. “Zanna is in no danger,” he said.

  David followed the look and for a heart-stopping moment thought he saw the curve of an animal’s back. A bear, perhaps? Were they being tracked? He rubbed his eyes and they swam with motes, but the only shapes he could piece together were trees.

  “How much has Elizabeth told you, David?”

  “About Gawain?”

  “Yes.”

  “No more than I told you in our tutorial — except that the tear was hidden by Guinevere, not taken inside her as I first thought.”

  Bergstrom nodded, warm air shooting out of his nostrils. “You put out a wish to the universe.”

  David winced and touched a glove to the center of his forehead. “I’m sorry. It’s caused a lot of trouble, I know.”

  “It has also made many good things possible. Even as we speak, the scale of Gawain is passing through worlds to the Tooth of Ragnar. In a short while, the dragon will be complete again. His spirit will rise from the ancient stone and the earth will breathe a little easier for it. This way, I think.”

  David veered away to his right, stumbling after Bergstrom like a small child in its father’s wake. “I don’t understand what you mean by that.”

  “You will when you know the secret of the tear.”

  “You’re going to tell me?” David held back, panting.

  Bergstrom came to a halt and turned. From his eyes came that customary domineering glare. But he was lifting his gaze beyond David as he said, “That is not for me alone to decide.”

  On impulse, David twisted around — and the sight he saw before him would change his life for ever.

  There were nine of them on pillars of ice, arranged in a gentle quarter moon, with the bear at the center on the largest pillar. He was perfect in every way. From pointed ear tips to ice-frayed pads, not a hair was out of place. And though his snout was high and his bearing proud, there was no real air of conceit about him. His dark brown eyes were so serene that any dread David felt was quickly put aside in favor of wonderment, reverence, and awe. Was this the animal they called Nanukapik? The bear tilted its head, as if David’s thoughts had been carried on the wind, creating the breeze that now blew crystals around its feet, rippling the fur by its great, hooked claws. David nodded. The bear nodded back, then swiveled its head to the bear at its left. This one was younger and slimmer than the others. David knew in an instant it had to be Lorel. The bear trod its paws and sat up a little straighter, as if it felt the need to prove that it was fierce and not just a simpleminded Teller of Ways. Then the Nanukapik turned the other way. The bear on his right side narrowed its eyes. Its snout was covered with fighting scars, and even from a distance David could see the hardened weals on its neck and shoulders where the skin had been permanently torn in combat, showing up the thick black blubber below. But it wasn’t the scars or the blemishes of war that froze the breath in David’s lungs. The ice bear snarled and rolled its lip, and though its teeth were broken and bloodied, only the upper canine was missing. That rested in David’s pocket.

  “Ragnar,” he whispered, and took out the tooth, offering it back on his shaking glove.

  The ice bear switched its gaze to Bergstrom.

  “The tooth is a gift to you, David. A symbol of everything these nine bears lived for. It will protect you against the likes of Gwilanna and guide you through the journeys ahead. But beware, like any blade, it cuts both ways. Speak any knowledge of the fire in its presence and the spirit of Ragnar will be at your shoulder. This is the price you pay for the wisdom Lorel is about to give you. Listen, now, to the Teller of Ways. He will speak to you in dragontongue and dreams.”

  Lorel leaped down off his pillar. The bear, though slim, was a powerful predator, and David instinctively dropped back a pace. But Lorel did no more than come around in front of him and sit on his haunches like a cream-colored cat. He widened his eyes and parted his jaws. David gasped and staggered back slightly as an image of the aged dragon Gawain ripped across his visual cortex. The beast was lying on a mountaintop with the pale moon rising to a crescent at his shoulder. Slowly he closed his spangled eye and a single tear ran loose on his snout, glistening at its center with a violet flame. A pair of hands reached out to catch it. They belonged to a beautiful red-haired girl.

  But from that moment on, everything shook. Guinevere screamed as the fire spread outward along her arms. She opened her hands and the tear fell again. And whether it was providence or prior calculation, the essence of the dragon dripped into the lumen of a hollowed-out bone and never did escape into the Mother Earth. Instantly, thunder broke. It could have been an act of planetary wrath or a terrible ritual of dragon death, but the earth tilted and the heavens split and the last true dragon began to set. It started at the very tip of his tail, with a grinding tone so sickly dire that the air all around seemed to moan with grief. Gawain was turning by pieces to stone, becoming one with the mountaintop and not the clay from which he was born. As the last of his rutted green scales turned to gray, the mountain cracked with a mournful wail and began to slide into the cold, dark ocean. Guinevere ran for her life, carrying the vessel close to her breast. She ran for the place called the Bridge of Souls, that bony strip of land that connected the island to the ancient continent. On the final descent, where the ground leveled out, she was met by the sibyl Gwilanna.

  “No,” said David, shaking his head, for he could picture the greed in Gwilanna’s eyes and knew she had not come to offer assistance.

  The husky voice of Lorel entered his mind. “Dream,” he said in broken dragontongue. “Look again. Sibyl is not alone.”

  At Gwilanna’s side stood a mesmerized child. Her hair was long and thick and wild. Gwilanna stroked it with the back of her fingers. “My dear, you have done well,” she said.

  “Stone,” wailed Guinevere, lurc
hing forward, her red hair following the tracks of her tears. “You tricked me! How can he ever be at rest?”

  “Give me the tear,” the sibyl crowed. “I will see to it that dragonkind is not forgotten.”

  Guinevere looked at the frightened girl. Was this the daughter Gwilanna had promised? Raised from clay and hair and scale? She shook her head.

  “We had a trade!” screamed the sibyl as the Bridge of Souls heaved into the air, bent upward by the ruinous collapse of the island. “A child from the fire! The child for the tear!”

  “They’ve got to run,” breathed David, grinding his teeth. On the ocean, a tidal wave was growing. If the jaws of the earth did not take Guinevere, the waters of the world would sweep her away.

  Lorel, the Teller, spoke once more. “See. Beyond.” He squinted into the middle distance.

  In the space behind Gwilanna, a bear was loping along the bridge. His ragged and partially wet fur was a rich brown color and his eyes seemed to sparkle out of his head. Amid the thunderous detonations of rocks in water, his approach had gone unnoticed by the sibyl.

  “He is Thoran,” said Lorel, gruff but clear. “She, red hair, saved him once. Took metal from his side. Gave berries. Healed.” He growled and showed his canine teeth.

  With a swipe so fast that David almost missed it, Thoran hooked his claws into the sibyl’s sackcloth and hurled her far out into the ocean. He immediately beckoned Guinevere to come. She ran to the child first and quickly hoisted her onto her hip.

  “We go,” said the bear, and turned to the mainland, only to see the far side of the link go crumbling into the rising water. In its wake, the great wave hit, breaking against the peak of the island and throwing wild plumes of foam across the bridge.

  “I carry. Take one. Come back,” said Thoran, and he hit the water with a mighty splash.

  “Her first,” Guinevere shouted and carried the child to a flat, safe rock from which she might be placed onto Thoran’s back. As the bear trod water, positioning himself, Guinevere knelt in front of her daughter. “You are Gwendolen,” she whispered, cupping the child’s face. “Remember that your father was the dragon, Gawain.” And she placed the girl’s fingers into the vessel so she might know her father’s auma. The child cried out and cleaved to her mother, but the bear was always calling them away. More waves! Big rocks! No time! We go! For there was danger everywhere, danger in the air. And how could they be certain that the sibyl was dead?