David replied, “They are my helpers.” He turned to his left where a mound of ice leveled off at waist height. He set the dragons down there.
“Are they spirits?”
“Sometimes,” David said, running his hand down Gadzooks’s spine. The writing dragon was shaking with emotion. His oval eyes had widened to a pumpkin shape. While David spoke to him calmly in dragontongue, G’reth was excitedly studying the bears. A sea of dark noses and sedentary eyes. All of them held by the song on the wind. The wishing dragon raised his paws to the universe and the spirits sang to him, inviting him in. Gollygosh, meanwhile, was switching his gaze between the eye of Gawain and the eye of the bear that seemed to be protecting it. He blew a smoke ring. It made the bear squint. Golly waved. The bear did not wave back. The healing dragon swished his tail and took a large step nearer to safety, to David. And Groyne sat patiently, soaking up the vastness. As companion once to the shaman, Bergstrom, he was no stranger to this icy wilderness.
With one enormous rattle, Gadzooks settled his scales. He looked warily at Avrel, and decided he preferred to fix his gaze on David. Why are you here? he hurred. It was a question loaded with loss.
David took a moment, then answered softly, “Because I can’t be at home.”
But there is danger there, the dragon said urgently.
David opened his hand. He invited Gadzooks to flutter up onto it. “Tell me,” he said.
The Lucy was taken.
David’s gaze fell away into the middle distance, a difficult space between caring and heroism. “Tell me all of it,” he said, and closed his eyes.
In a physical sense, what happened next did not happen at all, but for the first time in five years the writing dragon sensed his pencil moving. Words tore across the pages of his pad. The whole story of Lucy and Tam’s disappearance. Blackburn. The cell phone. The squirrel. The time rift. All that he knew. All that he had heard from Gretel and Liz and the listening dragon. When it was done, David’s eyes flashed open. Avrel noted the anger there. The man-bear seemed to utter a slight roar, but it was just a word spoken with guttural intent. “G’reth?”
The wishing dragon turned.
“Can you form a wide link with a listening dragon?”
G’reth tapped his paws together and nodded. The one in the kitchen?
“No. Remember Grace?”
Gadzooks rocked back. He remembered Grace. The beautiful listener that David’s first girlfriend Sophie had taken with her to Africa. Everyone remembered Grace.
G’reth raised an eye ridge.
“Send a signal. Make the contact as quickly as you can. Tell me the moment you reach her. Kailar?”
The fighting bear gave a sleepy grunt.
“Break the bag and push the eye of Gawain into the open.”
Kailar, never one to be rushed out of tiredness, stood up slowly, his face almost hidden behind his great puffs of breath. “What will happen to the pack?” he asked.
“They will be unified,” David said, looking deep into the fighting bear’s eyes. “Every son and daughter of the Nine.” He opened his jaw and made the barking sound that was used among bears as a mark of sincerity.
Kailar raised his fighting paw. “For Ragnar,” he roared, pitching his voice as distantly as he could. He raked his claws into the tough kelp strands and tore them open. Then, using both paws together like a plow, he pushed the eye forward. When he backed away, a ring of sparkling green light was encircling the stone.
The spirits’ song became a single “Ommmmm.”
David turned to the Teller of Ways. “Avrel, your time has come.”
Avrel gulped and stared at the pack. Old stragglers, yearlings, mothers with cubs, not to mention hundreds of belligerent males. All waiting. Looking. Looking to him. “What am I to Tell them?”
“Everything,” said David. “Open your mouth, the words will be there.”
“But … how will they hear me? Most are too far away.” From where Avrel was standing the ice curved away in all directions. He could see many bears, but the farthest were little more than a blur.
“Use the fire,” said David. “Reach out with it. All you have to do is believe it is possible.”
Avrel rolled his shoulders. This was a scene he had dreamed of all his life. Yet, now that it had come, he felt strangely disappointed. Perhaps it was the setting? In his memories he had seen great council meetings, where the first nine ruling bears had sat upon pillars of smoking ice, talking of territories and packs and the law. Then there was the Tooth of Ragnar, of course, that most symbolic of islands, with all its mythologies and dramas and wars. And the sacred glacier that men called Hella, where, it was whispered, Thoran could take any form he chose and had often walked and breathed like a man. Here, there was nothing but a faint green light swimming gaily underneath the surface. Not even a lofty ridge to climb. Nothing grand to mark the place where the ice had begun. Avrel sat down and shuffled his paws. The green dragon light flowed eagerly around them. He extended his claws, letting them find their way into the light. Suddenly, he felt a great surge of inspiration and his thoughts went shooting back to the beginning. Memories of Thoran. Guinevere. Ragnar. All history, there in a breath. He invited the dragon to rise up and take it. And like a glacier making waves as it crashed into the ocean, fire lines streamed away in every direction. They passed swiftly under the first rows of bears, lighting their eyes in dots of green, until all that could be seen was a sea of sparks and all that could be heard was an omnipresent breath of unity and understanding.
There the North paused, as if time itself had frozen.
Avrel and the bears and the spirits were stilled.
This was the End of Days.
At that moment, G’reth gave a gentle hrrr to indicate that he and Grace were connected.
Surprisingly, David was slow to respond. He dropped to one knee and touched the ice. A shadow danced up and connected with his hand. “Alexa?” he whispered. For a moment, he had heard her call to him in fear. For a moment, he had sensed a great swell of darkness. For a moment, the harmonic that was holding the bears had altered its frequency and almost broken.
For a moment.
Then the moment was gone.
David raised himself again. There was frost on his eyebrows, ice in his heart. He called G’reth closer and put out his thumbs. “I’m going to make a wish. When it begins, use the network you’ve created to scan the Earth for any trail of auma seeking out the eye.”
G’reth nodded and raised his paws. David rested his thumbs inside them. The nightfire Avrel loved to watch fractured into ribbons and spread itself freely to every horizon, washing the sky in a halcyon shade of blue. The ice swayed gently. The wind that constantly brushed across its surface settled for a moment and all was calm. The air played host to David’s wish. “Gaia,” he whispered, “your servants are gathered. Listen to their heart song. Give it your blessing. I wish you to show them your light.”
And it was done.
G’reth shuddered and pulled away.
Gollygosh immediately put out a paw and steadied himself against Gadzooks. The green light that had clustered around the eye of Gawain was now flowing through the hump they were sitting on, too. It was seeking a connection.
Seeking them.
In the dome of the sky the nightfire pulsed, through gradients of blue and pink and violet. The dragonlight called. Gollygosh was the first to answer. He fluttered down and landed on the petrified eye, just beneath the curve of the lower lid. He put down his toolbox. The flaps opened right away and the usual asterisk of light leaped out. He raised an eye ridge at the tool that settled in his hand. It looked very similar to the screwdriver used by the time-traveling hero of the dragons’ favorite television program. But it was not that at all. It was a piece of narwhal bone, much like the piece that Groyne could morph into. Groyne, who all this time had been watching patiently, suddenly found his auma very animated indeed. His ears pinged and his tail stood out like a spike. David touch
ed him and whispered to Gollygosh to wait.
G’reth was twitching wildly, as if trying to shake a snowflake out of his ear. Something was probing the link, he said. It felt like …
David took hold of the wishing paws again. He read the signal in a moment and closed G’reth (and Grace) down in a calming trance. “Farlowe,” he whispered and closed his eyes, almost as if he was chastising himself for his own stupidity. “Be ready,” he said to Groyne. “We’re about to travel.” He nodded at Gollygosh to proceed.
The healer ran the narwhal bone around the eye. As it moved across the ancient crusted stone, the gray color softened and the noble green of the olden dragons began to seep into the thick monolayer of rigid scales, lifting them into their familiar pattern. At the same time, the crown of four flared spikes that formed the flap of the primary lid swelled bulbously at the temple side. The small thumb of flesh at the front of the socket soon followed suit. Saline, trapped in the eye’s tender sclera, leeched and flowed away in a capillary action to moisturize the stiffened lower tissues. The eye itself rolled beneath its membranous cover. Yellow lichens slithered off its tented ridge. Then, beginning with the most acute angle of the scalene, the secondary lid slid back and the whole eye blinked. For the first time in centuries, Gawain looked at the polar sky.
Gollygosh felt a sucking motion. Fearing for his tail, he flew away immediately to stand by Gadzooks.
Then from the eye there poured a great light, not upward, but radially in every direction. It happened at the speed that only light can travel. It surrounded Gadzooks in a strange two-dimensional plane, as though he were standing at the center of a plate that had negligible thickness. With it came a silence that seemed to bind him to the very center of the universe, as though he were a star in the eye of Godith. Infinity and the present became one to him then, for it seemed that he was all there was. That all life had been obliterated in one flash. Later he would learn that this was not the case, and that the well of all creation was merely waiting for him to play his part in David’s wish. He felt for his pencil. He touched it to his pad. He doodled a moment. The white light pulsed. Then it came. Inspiration. In its purest form. And he wrote down a name. And somehow the name was written across the light. And the name in the light was this:
G’Oreal
Liz stood up with her hands bunched together across her mouth. “Oh, thank goodness,” she whispered, almost too relieved to find the strength to move at first. She said a small prayer, then went hurrying down the garden to greet her daughter.
Lucy stepped silently off the swing.
Alexa did not go hurrying down the garden. She was watching Bonnington. The cat had risen high on his feet and was hissing. His ears were pressed back. His spine was arched. A pair of saber teeth was jutting from his mouth.
“Aunty?” Lexie said.
Too far away to hear, too lost in joy, Liz outstretched her arms to gather Lucy in.
Bonnington’s tail whisked back and forth.
Something thumped the window in the Dragon’s Den. Alexa looked up. Liz’s faithful house dragon, Gwillan, was flapping frantically, steaming up the glass with his urgent hurrs.
“Aunty!” Alexa shouted this time.
Bonnington let out a threatening growl.
Alexa started to run. Liz had her back to her, embracing her daughter. Lucy’s arms slid around her mother’s waist. She turned her right hand with the skill of a conjurer. The twisted point of a black knife appeared. Lucy aimed its tip at the strip of pale skin between Liz’s waistband and her riding-up sweater. Then she scratched a line from one kidney to the other. Blood trickled like a waveform out of the cut. Liz’s head went back with a jerk. She caught her breath once, then fell in a graceless heap on the patio.
Lucy stepped over her to face Alexa.
The child skidded to a halt. She threw a shocked look at Liz, a bewildered one at Lucy. She wrapped one foot behind her ankle. “You’re not Lucy,” she said.
The Ix:risor controlling Lucy swept her forward to snatch Alexa by the wrist. It bared the child’s palm as if it were squeezing a bloated glove. Alexa cried out to Bonnington. But the cat was on his side, aiming rabbit kicks at his thrashing head, as though he were fighting a demon in his ear.
“The feline cannot help you,” the risor said. “When I increase the neural suffusion, it and the Fain inside it will die.” It raised Lucy’s head. “Do you hear that?” The mantra in the Crescent was coming from all directions now, over the gardens as well as the house. “Your father has placed a beacon in the north. He is calling out to humans all over this planet, making them commingle with the auma of the dragon. Listen.” It tightened its grip upon Alexa’s arm, until she was almost dangling like a doll. The mantra became a single hum. Lucy’s lips moved again. “They are together. Any moment now, your father will open the dragon’s eye and release The Fire Eternal. From the collective mind of your race will come a desire, an optimistic plea for the future of this rock. It will succeed — if nothing stops it.” The Ix twisted the skin until Alexa squealed. “Call to your father. When he hears you, his control will be broken. When you die, his sadness will multiply in the human collective — and we will turn their fear into fire for the Darkling.” Lucy’s arm muscles jerked to the risor’s command. She raised the knife. “Call!”
“Dad-dy!” cried Alexa.
But “Daddy” didn’t answer. With a rush of air so swift that Lucy had no time at all to react, two ravens attacked her. One bird clattered straight into her knife hand, knocking the obsidian into a flower bed. The other sank its claws into the back of her neck. What was human in Lucy gave a cry of pain and she let Alexa go. Without warning, Lucy’s knees gave way and she collapsed.
The Ix left her in a moment and chased into Gwilanna. Squawking wildly, the raven plunged to the lawn, knocking over plant pots as it tumbled backward like a crazy black mop head.
“Lexie! It’s Mommy! Hide!” caarked Zanna, swooping past on her way to aid the sibyl.
But the child had other ideas. She dropped to her knees and tore the twist of hairs from around Lucy’s neck. The red of Lucy’s ancestor; the white of the ice bear. She ran with it to Bonnington.
Gwilanna, meanwhile, was about to have her life saved by Gwendolen. On their arrival in the garden the little IT dragon had been desperate to fly to Lucy, but under Zanna’s command she had reluctantly stayed clear and perched herself on a solar-powered garden light. When Gwilanna came rolling toward her, however, she guessed what was happening and knew that the sibyl faced certain death unless the assassin inside her could be distracted. Gwendolen used her initiative. It was a simple matter to rip open the solar panel on the light, absorb its minimal energy, and glow like a Christmas fairy. The result was immediate. The Ix stalled, changed course, and came for her instead. She braced herself. Many times she had heard G’reth describe the commingling feeling. So the instant she felt her ear tips tingle, she switched into her solid form. It was a clever move. It confused the Ix and held it up a moment — long enough to bring it out of Gwilanna, into the open, into the invisible.
“Keep flying, girl!” Gwilanna screamed at Zanna. “It has less chance of commingling if you’re traveling at high speed.”
“Baby! Run away!” Zanna called again. Why was Alexa hovering over Bonnington?
Suddenly, all became clear. The cat quadrupled in size and for a second Zanna thought she saw him change into a polar bear — a polar bear? — before he settled for his favorite form, a sleek black panther. With a roar that almost blew the garden fence down, he leaped forward, flashing his paws. He landed with his claws out, shredding the lawn, then changed direction with the speed of a flea and shadowboxed the air several times again.
“He can’t see it!” caarked Gwilanna, whooshing past Zanna. “Make it visible to him. Create a spell, girl!”
What happened next was textbook sibyl. Zanna caarked several times and every petal on the rose they had planted for David fluttered off the bush and latched itself to the Ix
. Alexa screamed when she saw its form revealed. To her it was a humanoid fiend, with a head like a blunted dragon’s snout, two enormous tails, and dinosaur spines running down its back.
To Bonnington it was a two-horned mutant, somewhere between a dog and a hog. In an instant, he modified his vibrational energy to match that of the Ix, then with one pounce he took it down. His claws flashed again. Yellow petals scattered. One by one they came spinning back to earth. The last of them fell and the creature was gone.
Lucy stirred. Her vision swam, but her heart filled with hope as she recognized the garden. She saw two ravens on the lawn. They were being shielded by a rose-petaled panther. She listened for the hum in her ear. It wasn’t there. Then Alexa entered the picture. She was picking up the hem of her dress and sobbing as if she would never stop. “Lexie?” Lucy muttered, trying to reach out to her.
Gwendolen flew across the garden then and landed beside her mistress’s hand. It was she who made Lucy turn her head the other way.
“Mom?”
Liz’s body was still on the patio, as gray as the flagstones being wetted by the rain.
At its most basic, the presence of the Ix was a low-level form of mind control, like the feeling of knowing you were inside a dream, but not being able to break the trance. And yet, when the beings invaded Tam Farrell, there was a corner of his mind that he felt had the power to resist or fight back, as though he had some kind of filter there. He saw little in the brethren to indicate the same. Dark marbles planted in a flesh-colored landscape was the best that could be said of their gawky eyes. The only explanation he had for it was Zanna. That portion of his chest where she had cast her spell had not stopped burning since he’d come through the rift. The mark of Oomara. The sign of the bear. Nothing else set him apart from the monks. A blessing and a curse in equal measure, she had said. He just prayed it would be a blessing to Lucy. A violet star had glinted at the back of her eye when he had pressed her hand to his heart in the tower. This might be important. A way to defeat them. The gesture had registered, of that he was certain. But had she been able to act upon it?
The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal Page 23