Dark Fire

by Chris D'Lacey

The girl skewed a hand across her forehead. “This is crazy,” she said. “I can’t leave now.” She switched her stressed gaze back to David.

  “Your mom will have all the protection I can give her,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do here, Lucy. Arthur’s right: Scuffenbury might hold the answers. Tam will look after you. He’ll make the arrangements.”

  Lucy twirled a nest of red hair in her hand. “Can I take Gwendolen?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You really think this will help Mom?”

  “It’s what she would have wanted for you,” David said carefully.

  “What will you tell her when she wakes?”

  “That you’re obeying your birthright.”

  That was enough to make Lucy squeeze herself into a private huddle. David made a move to comfort her, but she shook a hand in his face and stumbled away. Halfway up the stairs, he heard her burst into tears.

  When all was quiet again Arthur said, “That wasn’t easy for me, David. I assume you wanted my support for this venture. I’m placing a lot of trust in you.”

  David drifted back into the kitchen. “Tell me something,” he said, running a thumb inside Bonnington’s ear. “Do the others know you can see through his eyes?”

  Looking grim, in the manner of an exposed schoolboy, Arthur shook his head.

  “Then let it be our secret,” David said. He tilted up Bonnington’s chin. “I’m going to take my old room back. That’s as far away from Liz as I’ll be from now on.”

  Arthur nodded silently and walked out of the room.

  With a jarring note of dragontongue, David called for Groyne.

  The shape-shifter appeared on the table beside him.

  “I want all the house dragons on full alert — except Grace; she needs to rest. Tell them to report anything unusual, no matter how trivial, to me.”

  Hrrr, went Groyne, and dematerialized again.

  David picked up a modeling stick and twisted it through his restless fingers. Heck of an afternoon, he thought. Heck of a life.

  But unbeknownst to him, that life was about to get worse. For as Groyne reappeared in the Dragons’ Den and began to give the special dragons their orders, he glanced at the blanketed Grace and noticed she had gone into her solid state. Should he report it? No. Dragons often rested in semistasis. Besides, Grace was recuperating, wasn’t she?

  Later, however, like Golly with the hammer, Groyne would come to blame himself for much of what followed. For if the shape-shifting dragon had investigated closely, he would have seen there was something very wrong about Grace. She was standing on the workbench, partly in shadow. What Groyne had failed to see was on her unlit side, under the blanket. She was being touched by the isoscele of another dragon. Grace was solid for a reason, but it wasn’t for rest.

  Her auma was being drained through the tail of Gwillan.

  PART TWO

  SCUFFENBURY HILL

  24 THE ROAD TO SCUFFENBURY

  OK,” said Tam. “Tell me what I have to do to make this work.”

  Lucy threw him a moody glance.

  “We’ve been driving for an hour and you haven’t said a word.”

  “Wrong. I said ‘thank you’ for this.” She raised up a bottle of carbonated water, put the neck to her lips, and took a long swig.

  “I don’t think you’ll find ‘uh’ in the dictionary,” he corrected her. “Technically, it’s not an expression of gratitude, it’s a grunt.”

  “You’re the journalist,” she said.

  “Oh, is that what it is? You still don’t trust me because I tried to run a feature on David once?”

  “I’m cold,” she said, refusing to answer. She pulled her sweater sleeves over her palms. “Can’t we turn the heat up?”

  Tam turned the dial a little, flipping the vent settings so that warm air was blowing around her feet. To compensate, he opened the driver’s side window.

  “What’s the point of doing that?” she railed.

  “I feel more comfortable with a cool air flow.”

  “Yeah, well, I get hay fever. Hello?”

  “And I get headaches — and I’m driving,” he countered.

  She sighed, crossed her arms, and slumped to one side.

  He touched a button and narrowed the air gap at his window. “Haven’t changed much, have you?”

  “This is so boring,” Lucy said, not about to enter a discussion that might have any possibility of including the word “teenager.” Instead, she stared at the never-ending landscape of rural New England. The green rolling hills. The empty gray sky. It had been the same view for the last twenty minutes. And barely another vehicle had passed them.

  “It’s a military zone,” Tam said, beeping the GPS. “Some of it’s restricted. The military uses these fields for training exercises. Favorite place for UFO spotters as well.”

  Lucy capped her water and put it away. “Oh, that’s really comforting, thanks. So if I don’t get squashed by a tank or blasted by a missile there’s always the chance I’ll be abducted by aliens?”

  “As opposed to being abducted by a Scot in a Range Rover? What are the chances, eh?”

  She clamped her teeth together and grimaced.

  “Come on, talk to me,” he said, after a few more minutes of annoyed silence. “We need to trust each other, Lucy. If I’m going to take care of you, it would help me to know just what you’re thinking.”

  “Thought you could read my mind?” she sniffed, staring ahead at the unfolding road, a snide reference to the time when Gwendolen had “spiked” him with information about the Pennykettle family, to wake him from a mind-blanking spell that Zanna had cast.

  “Memories,” he said. “I’ve got nothing more than memories. I have a journalist’s intuition, but I’m not telepathic.”

  “Hmph,” she replied, and drew in her lips. “How did you do that thing with the horse?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Well, that’s thanks to David.”

  “Your pal.”

  “My … well, I don’t know what he is, really. After he came to my rescue on Farlowe, I just seemed to qualify as part of the …”

  “Clan?”

  “Team.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “I’d say so. I don’t have dragon auma running through my veins.”

  “You’ve got something,” she said, remembering Zanna’s description of the way he’d dispatched the raven on North Walk. “If you want me to trust you, you’d better talk.”

  The Range Rover flashed past a blue parking sign. Tam signaled and pulled over onto the shoulder. He yanked on the brake but left the engine running. “OK, you’ve had some experience with polar bears, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve talked to them,” she said, somewhat smugly.

  He turned his dark brown eyes on her.

  “You’re not a bear,” she said, with a condescending cluck. All the same, his gaze made her shudder.

  “Not the way David is — or can be,” he said. “But ever since I met him, I have been able to call upon the auma of two of them.” He turned up his palms.

  Lucy shriveled back slightly as their faces appeared like watery reflections under his skin.

  “This is Avrel, the Teller of Ways,” he said, flexing his left hand until the image rippled. “And this is Kailar, a fighting bear, on the right. He’s the one who doesn’t like ravens.”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose and gulped. “Next time I have a Halloween party, remind me to invite you.”

  He went back to the wheel, let the clutch in, and drove on. They had traveled half a mile before he asked, “Are you shocked?”

  She shook her head.

  He looked over, making her catch his gaze. Eventually, she spoke again. “If you’ve got a Teller’s auma inside you that means you’ve got the legends of the Arctic in your head.”

  “Pretty much. Why? Do you want to hear a story?”

  “Tell me about the last twelve dragons,” she said.

  “I can
do better than that.” Keeping a careful eye on the road, he reached over to the backseat, pulled a bag forward, and dropped it in her lap. “There’s a copy of the latest Endeavor in there. You’ll find a full translation of the writings Anders Bergstrom discovered on the Hella glacier in 1913.”

  Lucy rested her fingers on the bag as if she’d just found the Holy Grail. “I heard Mom and Arthur discussing this. She didn’t want to tell me. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “It’s history,” said Tam. “Your history. Open it.”

  Doing her best to remain poised, Lucy undid the buckles and drew out the magazine. On the cover was a stunning close-up of a dragon’s eye. “I’ve seen this before,” she said.

  “The cover image?”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt it. The artwork was commissioned entirely in-house.”

  Lucy moved her head from side to side. “Next time you come to our kitchen, look on the wall above the countertop. Alexa drew this. The same triangular-shaped eye, with three extensions like a comet’s tail at the back. Even the scales are the same shade of green, all arranged like overlapping roof slates. I’m telling you, Alexa drew this.”

  Tam shrugged. “Well, she is David’s kid. Go on, take a look. The whole edition is dedicated to the Hella findings. There are lots of maps and expedition pieces, plus digital reproductions of all of Bergstrom’s original photographs. The bit you’ll want is the center spread.”

  Lucy flipped to it. In a scripted font against a backdrop of stone, to give the impression that you were reading something off a cave wall, were two spreads of patchy writing.

  “There are two translations,” Tam informed her, pulling in to give a clanking farm vehicle room to roll past. “The one you’re looking at is based on the exact photographic evidence with no further interpretation from Steiner. It’s been laid out to match the way the original marks were burned into the stone. It’s quite difficult to make sense of because it’s not laid down in anything we’d recognize as a structured system. Steiner is confident it’s the work of one dragon, because the shapes and strengths of the inflections are consistent. He’s written a pretty dense article about how he thinks it should be read. He believes the dragons don’t read methodically left to right or top to bottom or even in a circular shape; he thinks they just take in the pattern as a whole. If you flip over a couple of pages you’ll find a more grammatical account, with Steiner’s continuity suggestions. Like most languages, dragontongue has a unique syntax. By the weekend, scholars all over the world are going to be putting their own twist on it, but the crucial elements are very clear: The dragons were threatened with extinction and they set out a plan to deal with their enemy. It’s powerful stuff. Take your time.”

  Lucy slanted her gaze downward. The first thing she noticed were some of the names: Galen, Gessine, Gyrrhon, G’larne — which was the first indication of authenticity for her. They all began with G. Anything like “Ember” or “Elrond the Red” would have seen the magazine flying straight out of the window. She took her time, as Tam had suggested, picking out phrases, reading snippets, digesting unusual sequences of words. Yet somehow, despite the need to know, her eyes kept jumping over the script without being able to settle, as if it required a special kind of concentration just to acknowledge the words were there. She thought about sharing the task with Gwendolen. But the little dragon was asleep in her bag and it would have been unfair to wake her.

  So Lucy changed her approach and searched for the one word she knew would be meaningful. When she found it, however, it tore a small strip of surprise from her heart. The name Gawaine leapt out several times, but the word always ended with an e, suggesting a feminine gender. Maybe it was the way the dragons spoke back then, like olde worlde Englishe when Shakespeare was alive? Gawain, female? That was silly. Impossible. She studied the context where his name occurred. The word “chosen” appeared and also “receiver.” In another, much denser section, she read “drinker of tears, gatherer of fire.” And suddenly it struck her what this meant. The other dragons, the remaining eleven of the “Wearle” (that word was evident throughout) had shed their tears through “the unnatural eye” (whatever that meant) and Gawain had … she drew back a little. Ingested them? If that was correct then Gawain would have had the auma of twelve fire tears sparking through his body, including his own. He’d be like a ticking bomb. With that thought in mind, she focused her attention on the one outstanding section where his name was mentioned, right at the very center of the script. The text here was dark and heavily compacted, but she read it three times just to be sure. And each time it made her cry a little more.

  She wasn’t aware as she closed the magazine that the car had rolled to a halt again.

  “Hey,” said Tam. He moved his hand across hers.

  For several seconds she could not speak. Only when she pulled away needing a tissue did she ask him, “What’s the matter? Why have we stopped?” They were in the middle of a much smaller road, on a slight downward incline, with a row of hedges and grassy shoulders to either side.

  He pointed up through her side of the windshield.

  Beyond the hedges was a whole ridge of hills, stretching away under a string of low cloud. One of them, Lucy noticed, looked out of place. It was bumpy. More like a wart than a part of the natural landscape.

  “That’s Glissington Tor,” said Tam.

  Lucy closed her hands around the tissue she was holding. From the way he’d spoken, she guessed this was only part one of the tour manifesto. She was right. As her eyes panned across to the opposite side of the road, Tam leaned well back in his seat. And there, through his window, she saw what they had come for.

  The flowing body of the Scuffenbury white horse.

  25 THE OLD GRAY DRAGON

  What now?” Lucy asked, as a few drops of light drizzle began to spot the windshield.

  Tam reached into his jacket and pulled out a business card. He flipped it toward her like a folded banknote. “I’ve booked us in here.”

  “The Old Gray Dragon?”

  “It’s a guesthouse,” he said. “Bed-and-breakfast. Right on the side of the Tor. It says in their blurb that on a still night you can hear the dragon snoring. I thought it might make you feel at home.” He paused, waiting for her to dip into her usual bag of cynicisms. Her fingers were stroking the picture of the dragon. “You OK, Lucy?”

  She put the magazine back into the bag. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Beeping the GPS, Tam took the Range Rover on. They swept along a twisting country lane, farther and farther into the hills. By now the odd cottage was beginning to appear. A mailbox fixed to a drystone wall. Tractors, off-road. Cows. A bicycle. The suggestion of life, albeit minimal. Then, as they crested a ragged stone bridge over a deeply bouldered stream, Glissington Tor was huge in front of them, just like a strange green bubble in the Earth.

  Tam dropped through the gears and powered the car up and around the bottom of the Tor. The steepness of the ascent was making Lucy dizzy and she was grateful when, after a couple of bends, Tam swung off onto an access road where a large Victorian redbrick house, half-hidden by its sloping garden and the retinal branches of a cadaverous tree, awaited them.

  “This is it,” he said, pulling up. He turned up his collar and quickly got out. Through her rain-spattered window Lucy could see a flight of rough, weed-ridden steps, climbing through what looked like the sort of garden where people grew their own vegetables or herbs. She spotted a cloche and that settled it for her: They had come to a hippie house. Its deep-set austere windows were just visible beyond the slope, the glass crisscrossed with strips of lead. Nothing about the place appealed to Lucy, until she caught sight of a smoky gray cat tucked up in a furry bundle on the steps. It turned its head and stared lazily at her, more concerned with soaking up the pillars of sunshine that the tree and the rain had not been able to block.

  Behind her, the rear door opened and Tam started pulling out their bags. “Lovely rainbow over the vale. You going to
sit there all day or what?”

  He slammed the door shut before she could answer.

  By way of reply she got out, marched around to the back of the vehicle, hoisted her travel bag onto her shoulder, stuck out her tongue at him, ignored the rainbow, and mounted the steps. As she reached the cat, she crouched down to stroke its dewy fur. It stared fixedly ahead, unfazed by the contact, as if it had known her all its life. But when Tam approached, the cat got up and quickly, but unfussily, disappeared behind a tent of beanpoles generously endowed with twining, heart-shaped scarlet runner leaves. Sounding a small note of triumph, Lucy walked on.

  They crossed a gravel pathway (where someone had left a wheelbarrow and some long-handled tools) into a short porch. The multipaneled guesthouse door was already half-open. Tam pressed the bell. After a few moments the door swung back and they were greeted by a short, carefully dressed woman who Lucy guessed was roughly the same age as her mom.

  “Mr. Farrell?” the woman asked, beaming through a pair of dark designer spectacles, whose top edges flared like the fins of a rocket.

  He let loose his killer smile. “Tam.”

  “Lovely. And this must be your niece?”

  “N —?” Lucy began. She let the word soften to “nice to meet you.” Niece was more acceptable than sister, she supposed, and certainly less open to question than “friend.”

  “My,” said the woman, “what lovely red hair you’ve got.”

  Lucy smiled aimlessly. She was used to being complimented about her hair. But for some reason — maybe because of the way this woman was staring so intently at her, making her feel like a museum exhibit — she was tempted to say, “All the better to clog up your vacuum with, Grandma.” (She didn’t, of course.)

  “I’m Hannah,” said the woman, as she invited them into a generous hallway with a stunning mosaic floor. “Two single rooms, for just the two nights, is it?”

  “If the rooms are available we may stay longer,” said Tam. “It rather depends how things pan out. I’m on a working vacation. Lucy’s come along to see the sights and generally explore the area with me. I’m a historical writer, researching a piece about dragons.”