The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal

by Chris D'Lacey

  Kailar rose up, showing his claws.

  The mammoth blew a great puff of air from its lungs.

  “Kailar, no!” barked Ingavar. But the fighting bear was already loping forward. Avrel saw the ghost clouds jar toward him as if to form a barrier or mouthpiece of contempt.

  The bear swept through them like a great white arrow.

  Avrel felt his chest muscles tighten. This was ill-matched. The mammoth might have peaceful intentions, but it was enormous. If the creature were to raise even half of Kailar’s inbred aggression, it might skewer him before he struck a single blow. But Kailar seemed, to the Teller, possessed. There was a redness in his eyes. An unexplained fury. He was roaring forward as if the risk of a gory death were of little or no concern to him.

  There was a thump and a clash of bodies. Kailar’s head went back and his shoulders went upward. The ice juddered as he crashed down onto his back, held there briefly with his four paws kicking and his head thrashing wildly from side to side. But to Avrel’s astonishment, his companion had not been crushed by the mammoth. He was in the grip of Ingavar. The bears struggled and separated and came together once more in a frightening knot of muscle and fur, this time on hind legs locked at the shoulder.

  “What do you see?” Ingavar was growling, his eyes held to Kailar’s in a haze of sweat.

  Kailar wrestled and pushed, snarling with a savagery that Avrel had only ever witnessed in animals caught in hunting traps.

  “What do you see?!” Ingavar roared again.

  “Black bear,” Kailar panted, saliva frothing up between his teeth.

  Avrel looked again at the mammoth. It was standing there, bemused, shimmering slightly, as though it was about to disappear into the mist. But it was still a mammoth, the creature from the time of the Premen race. How could Kailar have mistaken it for anything else?

  “Look at me,” said Ingavar, shaking Kailar violently, cuffing him until their heads were level. Then, from the blue eyes there shone a white light, directly into the fighting bear’s eyes. Kailar cried out and fell away heavily. His head slapped the ice and bounced back once. His left paw, his fighting paw, twitched for several seconds, but his eyes remained open, staring at everything and nothing, at ice.

  Avrel ran to him, even though it meant abandoning the eye of Gawain. “Is he dead?” he panted. He put his head down and listened for telltale wisps of air. To his relief, a faint gurgle left Kailar’s nostrils.

  Suddenly, Ingavar turned his head and roared with the force of nine blizzards at Gwilanna. She had fluttered down and settled on the stone dragon eye and would have been blown away like tumbleweed if she had not stretched her wings and taken flight.

  “I was protecting it!” she squawked. “What’s the matter with you? There are demons at work here. Can’t you feel it, shaman?”

  “What does she mean?” asked Avrel, still standing over Kailar. There was a ripple in the fighting bear’s shoulder. He was waking.

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Gwilanna snorted. She banked steeply upward then allowed herself to drop hard and fast toward the mammoth. Avrel gasped as he realized she wasn’t going to stop. He gasped again as she passed right through the creature’s body and emerged on the other side with a triumphant caark. “It’s a projection,” she said. “A cleverly made thought-form. That can only mean that the Fain are among us.”

  “I saw lights,” Avrel said, turning to Ingavar. “They struck Kailar just before …”

  “I know,” said Ingavar. “He was attacked by the Ix. They can sense any ripple in the fabric of the universe and probe it in an instant. Kailar’s mind was in the easiest state to accept them. They were testing him. They made him see what he most feared. A shadow bear. A nightmare from the den. I’ve closed the ripple, all the way to its source. But the Ix will be curious. They will try to trace it.”

  Gwilanna fluttered down again, this time to land on Avrel’s back. “Are you saying you know where this apparition came from?”

  Ingavar nodded. He sat down and lowered his head into his chest. As he closed his blue eyes, the sky spirits joined in a circle above him. Then, with one enormous breath, he drew the wind down and around him like a blanket. His pelt flattened and his shape transfigured. When the atmosphere had settled and the ice had ceased to thrum, David Rain was in furs before them again. “The mammoth is a gift from my daughter,” he said.

  Gwilanna clicked her beak. “You? You’ve got a child?” Her squawk of incredulity made Avrel shudder.

  David crouched down and stroked Kailar’s ear. “Her name is Alexa. You should be proud of her, Gwilanna. She’s from the line of Gwendolen.”

  The raven tore a loose feather off her wing. “Not by that hotheaded dark-haired girl?”

  “Zanna is an excellent mother,” said David. He stood up and patted Avrel’s neck. The Teller, still uncomfortable with the man-bear transformation, snorted once and stood his ground like a faithful dog. “And Alexa is a remarkable child. The kind you’ve been looking for all your life. She has dragons in her auma and the skills of a Pri:magon priestess at her fingertips. But she’s young and she doesn’t know what she’s doing.”

  “Then when we are done here I will train her for you.”

  Gwilanna spoke these words with the cunning of a witch, but David responded with the smile of a seer. “She needs you now. She may be in danger. That’s why I have to send you back.”

  Gwilanna looked greedily at the eye of Gawain. “But I’m needed here, as a guide. As —”

  “The spell will be broken. You’ll be Premen again,” said David, with unswerving authority in his voice. “Prepare yourself. The move will be sudden and nauseating.”

  “No!” Gwilanna flapped. “I’m not going back. I was with Gawain when he flew these skies. I have a right to the dragon. He’s mine to protect. I’m staying here to see you open the eye. Someone has to monitor what you do. This pair of tubby low-lives is far too trusting.”

  “You’ll guard Alexa with your life,” threatened David, glancing sideways at Kailar as the bear began the groggy climb back to his feet. “If anything happens to her, I’ll put you in front of this ‘low-life’ son of Ragnar one last time.” He raised his hand as if to cast a spell.

  “Wait! Why me? Why can’t you go back?”

  David looked at the mammoth, which was now no more than fading gray patches in the crisscrossing wind. “Alexa is aware of my presence in the North, but only in the way that a dragon child dreams it. If I returned to the Crescent, she would do everything in her power to keep me there. I can’t risk the heartache that would bring. My destiny is here, with these bears, with this ice.”

  “We had a deal,” Gwilanna reminded him sharply. “You promised to explain to me how you came to be here.”

  “I told you, I never really left,” said David. “I was at the Tooth of Ragnar when the island came down. It was me who destroyed the Ix:risor. But in the process, the man you knew as David Rain was speared through the heart by a shard of ice.”

  “And?” she said, half guessing, half fearing what was coming next.

  “The fire of the dragon flowed into him,” muttered Avrel, remembering what he had witnessed at Thoran’s side.

  “No!” said Gwilanna, with such severity that Avrel gave a gruff, spontaneous bark of warning. “You can’t be one with the auma of Gawain. It’s not possible. It’s … How?”

  David took a step nearer to her, saying, “When my spirit was released, it looked for the light. Where else would it go but to the fire star, Gwilanna? In the extreme G’ravity field, my auma commingled with the auma of Ingavar and we were both joined to the dragon Gawain. We passed into Ki:mera, the Fain dimension, together. And as you know, many wonders are possible there.”

  Gwilanna moved her head from side to side like a metronome, as if trying to shake a small pea out of her ear. “But, you’d be … revered,” she said, as though she’d like to spit a feather. “The Fain would look upon you as …” But here her frustration reele
d out of control and she beat her wings in a frenzied dance. “Caark! Why you? What’s so special about you? A useless boy and a waddling lump of fur?”

  “Time to go,” David said. “Guard my daughter well.”

  “No!” she squawked. And she flew with great speed to the eye of Gawain, trying to speak an incantation into the stone. Suddenly, a light began to circle around it. For a moment she scraped her claws in triumph, thinking she’d restored her ability for magicks. But when she looked back at David, the spell was there to read upon his lips. She felt the suck of time and screamed a long and exasperated Nooooooooo, which was partly to do with her dismissal from the ice and partly to do with the last thing she had witnessed. For in that instant of removal she, like Kailar, had seen her worst fears — in David’s face. There was man and there was polar bear in his features. But there was something else, too. Something she had desired for herself for centuries.

  The look of the dragon.

  He had scalene eyes.

  25

  CHASING LUCY

  Okay, what the heck just happened?” said Tam. He stepped warily onto the first row of cobbles, his astonished gaze switching between Gwendolen (who was still on the fence post), a stunned-looking Zanna, and a single green dandelion leaf, which was falling to the ground like an alien snowflake.

  “It was a shift,” Zanna muttered, her coattails flaring as she spun around looking for reference points. “This has got to be some sort of time corridor.”

  “Oh, right, so as well as keeping dragons, you timetravel as well?”

  Hrrr, replied Gwendolen, raising her wings in distress.

  Zanna sent her a calming call. “Lucy’s dragon thinks it might have been a trap.”

  Tam’s grin fell apart. “She was abducted? Who by?”

  “I don’t know,” Zanna said, fury burning through the dampness in her eyes. “And I don’t have time to discuss it with you. Why don’t you just leave us alone, Tam? Go back to your fancy apartment and write your exposé of David if you must. One of the people I’m closest to has just disappeared, and I don’t think I really care about you or your magazine anymore.”

  “I want to help,” he said. His eyes softened. A wisp of snowflakes patterned his shoulders. “Seriously.”

  Zanna flipped her phone open and quickly keyed in a speed-dial number. “You’ve done enough damage.”

  “I brought her here, Zanna.”

  “Exactly. Just go.”

  He sighed, ran a hand through his unwashed hair, and looked at length down the alleyway again. Gwendolen was hovering at ground level now, on the exact spot where the rift had opened. She seemed to be trying to take some kind of reading, but her movements were impossible for the human eye to follow. She just kept popping up here and there like random pixels on a computer screen. After a few seconds, Tam gave up watching her and said, “Tell me what you’re going to do.”

  Zanna’s eyes met his in a gesture of impatience. “Take advice — from an expert. Hi, Liz, it’s — Oh, Lexie, this is Mommy. No, sweetie. No. I’ll be … very late tonight. Did you? Oh, that’s nice. Well, I’m sure if Daddy could have seen your picture of Bronson he’d have liked it. Yes. Give the phone to Aunty Liz now, will you …? She’s where? Mr. Bacon’s? Oh. All right, is Unky Arthur at home? Good. Take the phone upstairs to him, please. Yes, then you can have an ice pop if you like. They’re in the bottom drawer of the freezer. Be careful, it’s cold. Ask Gwillan to help you. What? No, Lucy’s not here. She’s gone to visit a friend. She might be away for a little while. Just go to Arthur now, darling, OK?” She clamped her hand across the phone.

  Tam said, “Who’s Bronson?”

  “Her toy mammoth,” Zanna said. “This is a private call — if you don’t mind.”

  “She draws stuff for David?”

  “No, Tam, she just draws. Now — Arthur? Hi, it’s me. Yeah, I’m still in Blackburn. No, there’s been an incident — Lucy’s disappeared.”

  She proceeded to tell him what she’d seen.

  Arthur asked at length about the squirrel.

  “It was just a squirrel,” she said, sounding mildly irritated. “She chased it, and poof. You know what she’s like about Ringtails and Birchwoods.”

  “That rodent wasn’t right,” said Tam.

  Zanna twisted on her heel. “Arthur, wait a second.” She put the phone on mute. “Are you still here?”

  “Some kind of light came out of her cell. It made a squirrel from the falling snow. If it was a trap, that squirrel was the bait.” He added as she frowned, “It’s the truth, Zanna.” He nodded at the phone. “See what your ‘expert’ makes of that.”

  Her fingers tightened into her palm. She relayed the information back to Arthur.

  After a short pause Arthur said, “Does Lucy have images of squirrels on her phone?”

  “Dozens,” said Zanna. “She’s always taking snaps of them — in the library gardens, mostly.”

  She heard him take a long breath through his nose. Usually a pronouncement of wisdom would follow. This time, it was fear. “Zanna, you must leave there. You are in great danger.”

  “But Lucy’s gone,” she repeated. “I can’t pretend it didn’t happen. I can’t leave her, Arthur. She’s a pain in the backside, but she’s still … Lucy.”

  “There is nothing to be done,” he said. “Come back to the Crescent.”

  Her fingers, china-blue with cold, squeezed tightly around the phone. “No. What is this place? Why did David use it as his home address? There is no home here. It doesn’t exist.”

  “I’ve told you before, existence is merely …”

  “Don’t get cryptic with me,” Zanna cut in, biting down on a wave of anger. “You wrote about this. Did you bring it into being?”

  “When I wrote about David at the folly,” he said, “I was guided by the auma of Gawain, through his claw. There are forces at work here that are almost impossible to comprehend. I believe we’re caught up in something far greater than our own domestic troubles. Come back to the Crescent. We need to talk this through.”

  “There’s no time,” she said, pulling a braid from her hair. “Lucy’s been taken and I intend to go after her.”

  “What?” exclaimed Tam.

  Shut up, she mouthed at him. “Arthur, tell me how to open this rift.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I think you can. Gwilanna always knew how to move through time. I’m a sibyl; you’re a physicist. There are forces in the universe that work for us as well. While we’re wasting time chatting, Lucy’s life could be at stake. Now, tell me what to do.”

  There was another short pause. Then, in a voice close to freezing, Arthur said, “What became of the isoscele, Zanna?”

  In the shadows of her mind, a well of fear sprang up. The isoscele? Why would he ask about that? “I’ve told you before. It was lost in the Arctic. What’s this got to do with rescuing Lucy?”

  “What you’re planning is ill-advised,” he said. “Even if the rift could be opened from this side, there is no guarantee of a linear transfer. You might end up in a dimension of the universe you can’t get back from —”

  “Ask him which dimension David came from,” whispered Tam, leaning in close enough to overhear — and be elbowed firmly in the ribs for his trouble.

  “If we had that piece of Gawain,” said Arthur, “it might be possible to draw Lucy back merely by committing the dragon’s blood to paper …”

  A snowflake landed on Zanna’s cheek. The dash of cold was the catalyst that made her shudder. She looked briefly at Tam. His eyes were still raising the question that was falling off her lips in silent words … Which dimension did David come from? Was he nothing more than … an entity, then? A being, a life force drawn through time?

  She felt faint. Tam put out a hand and steadied her. He heard Arthur say, “Where is the isoscele hidden?”

  She pushed Tam away and snapped back at Arthur, “Tell me how to open this rift or I swear I’ll take Alexa out of the C
rescent and none of you will ever see her again.”

  “Alexa may be the key,” he said. “I’ve meditated on this at great length, Zanna — about how Gawain’s claw came to be in the folly. I don’t think it was mere serendipity that I found it. I think your daughter was involved.”

  “I’m not interested,” she snapped. “Five seconds or I end this call. I’m not joking, Arthur. I want that information.” She glanced at Tam again, who nodded supportively.

  “Very well,” Arthur said, straining at the edges of despair and reluctance. “Did Gwendolen go through the time slip with Lucy?”

  “No. She’s here. Worried, like me.”

  “Then give her Lucy’s phone. Ask her to try to commingle with it.”

  Zanna’s blood ran cold. “Are you saying that Lucy was taken by the Fain?”

  “What you’ve described has all the elements of their methods, though why they have targeted Lucy’s phone is a mystery.”

  “Why are they even back?” Zanna said. “I thought David …” But her throat swelled and she couldn’t go on with that. She gathered herself again and said, “What then, if Gwendolen makes the link?”

  “She will need to trace the precise coordinates of the rift. The points will be etheric, not numerical. Gwendolen will have to feel them in her mind, then dream them consistently and purely to project them. If she succeeds, you will see a shimmer at the place where Lucy disappeared. But to open the rift for long enough to allow you through, you will need to find a power source that Gwendolen can use to magnify her thoughts. A car battery might be enough.”

  “I’m on it,” said Zanna.

  “Wait,” Arthur said. “Please think about this. If you go, you might never see Alexa again.”

  A tear ran freely down Zanna’s cheek. “Bye,” she said, and cut the call. She clicked her fingers. In an instant, Gwendolen was on her shoulder. “You got jumper cables?” she asked a startled Tam.

  “Um, yeah. In the trunk.”

  “Get them, and Lucy’s phone. Oh, and pop your hood.”