Read The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal Online
Authors: Chris d’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (24 page)
“I had to dilute it. A pure droplet of ichor would probably have killed her.”
“Will she live?” asked Arthur.
Gwilanna rested her hand on Liz’s back. “Yes …”
“… But?” said Zanna, sensing one coming.
Gwilanna stood up. She looked at the sky as if she really ought to be somewhere else. “Where is Gretel? This wound will need a poultice.”
Right on cue there was a crash of glass, and a hole appeared in the window of the Dragon’s Den. A jam jar full of pebbles exploded on the patio and through the escape hole it had made came Gretel. She landed in the center of Liz’s back with the disgruntled air of a surgeon who’d been left out of a vital operation — which of course she had.
We were locked in,
she hurred, frowning at Lucy.
Lucy
started to explain that she wasn’t in control of herself at the time, then changed her mind and focused on her mom instead.
“Prepare herbs,” said Gwilanna. “Sorrel and fennel, with a measure of thyme. I will assist.”
Zanna grabbed her arm. “Not so fast. What were you going to say about Liz?”
Gwilanna looked down. Something softened in the hard lines of her face. “The dragon’s blood will do
enough to revive her …”
“But?”
repeated Lucy.
Gwilanna looked away.
“What have you done?” Zanna said, and took her by the throat.
“I’ve saved her life!” screamed the sibyl. “I’ve done what you asked. The dragon’s blood will bring her back. But it might not be enough to save the child she’s carrying….”
The Darkling was still at the center of the circle. Though heavily disoriented, Tam struggled
to his feet and began to stagger toward the creature. It had to be destroyed, of that he was certain, even if it was imperfect. Ten
yards from it he dropped to his knees to lift a large stone from the sodden grass. Snow was falling all around. Yet none seemed to be settling on him. He raised the stone two-handed, well above his head. The creature’s black eyes fell under its shadow. Using every
last ounce of strength in his body, Tam cried out and brought the stone down — only to see it bounce off the plinth where the Darkling had been. The creature had gone.
“What?” he gasped, and collapsed against the plinth.
Suddenly, he was aware of a presence and rolled over to see a kind of shadow figure stumbling toward him. It was mid-height and slender, with scarecrow fingers and coiled body
scales. Its head was being swiftly
eroded
by the snow. He shielded his face and tried to kick away, but the creature was only there for an instant. Then the gathering of snowflakes dispersed in the wind. When Tam focused his eyesight again, they had gone.
Puzzled, he pushed back the cowl of his habit, glad of the drizzling rain on his face. Between the stones, he could see the monks beginning
to rise. In a human way. Not controlled by anything alien. Relieved, he stretched his arms so that his hands might feel the comfort of the rain. As he did, two final snowflakes fell. One on his left palm, one on his right.
And then a voice like a wind from another world said, “This is my gift to you. Use it wisely.”
Tam looked at his hands. The two flakes were dissolving under his skin.
Both
were in the shape of polar bears.
There was an Inuit prophecy that Zanna remembered from her time in the Arctic. The old shaman, Taliriktug, had once confided to her, “One day the ice will burn.” When she had asked him what he meant by this, the old man had said, “You are Qannialaaq, which means ‘falling snow.’ When the snow falls, you will know what things mean.”
Snow was falling gently in
the Crescent. The mantra had ceased. The crowds were disbanding. Arthur had carried Liz upstairs, with the dragons and Lucy and Alexa all helping. Leaving Gretel busy making a poultice, Zanna went back outside to stand by Gwilanna. The old woman was cradling Bonnington and staring long at the open sky. She looked ridiculous in her sealskin furs, but this was not the moment for wisecracks about it.
Zanna gave a quiet report. “Liz is comfortable. I want to thank you for saving her — and to apologize for attacking you.”
Gwilanna’s eyes moved in small, shrewd circles.
“This pregnancy —?”
“It’s a natural-born. They are of no interest to me.”
“I was a natural; I still have magicks.”
“Without me, you would be nothing.”
“Then teach me. This time I’m willing to learn. You thought me worthy
enough to give me the mark. You must have some hope for me?”
“Hmph!”
replied the sibyl, and threw Bonnington
down. He landed mesmerized but completely unhurt. He washed himself once and strolled away.
“You have to guide me, Gwilanna. I want to help Liz deliver this child. You know hospitals are impossible for her. Promise me you’ll stay with us, at least till we know the fate of the child.”
“It’s a boy,” Gwilanna muttered, as though the words pained her.
Zanna nodded to herself. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
Gwilanna turned her gaze to the north. “They can be troublesome, especially if they’re given too much power….”
Zanna walked down the garden a pace. There was one green leaf on a branch of the rosebush. One leaf. One symbol of hope. “Can I ask you something? Lucy tried to track
down David’s parents. He gave a home address that was nothing but a time rift. What does that mean? Is he real? Is he human?”
Gwilanna snorted inwardly. “Sometimes,” she said, in a voice that suggested she would say nothing more.
Now it was Zanna’s turn to find solace in the gray expanse of sky. “Lucy just turned on the TV. Apparently, there’s some kind of mist in the Arctic, covering the entire
ice cap. Alexa says it looks like the ice is on fire.” Expecting a comment, she paused a moment. Gwilanna stared silently ahead. “There are reports coming in from all over the world of people assembling like they did in the Crescent. The scientists are saying it’s a kind of mass hysteria.”
“Scientists,” sneered Gwilanna. “What would they know?”
She was about to turn away when Zanna stopped her
and showed her the obsidian knife. “How do I dispose of this?”
“Throw it in the garbage,” Gwilanna said tiredly.
“It’s not dangerous?”
“Only if you’re foolish enough to fall on its point. Its poison was discharged into Elizabeth.”
“Where would Lucy get this? It’s beautifully made. And quite brilliant the way the light reflects inside it.” She held up the knife and twisted it. A
spot of light,
no larger than a grain of sand, tumbled in a figure eight at its center. “That’s incredible,” she said. “If this didn’t have such a stigma attached to it, I’d sell it in my shop. People would pay a fortune for it.”
Gwilanna poked her face forward and seemed now to show a much greater interest. “Perhaps I should take it after all,” she said. “There may be some residual —”
“Um, no. Nice try.”
Zanna snatched it away. “This is going straight into the trash.”
“No, wait!” cried Gwilanna.
But the lid went up and the knife was dropped.
The sibyl winced as she heard a breakage.
Zanna dropped the lid again and rubbed her hands. “Promise me you’ll stay till Liz is safe.”
Gwilanna considered it. “Are there mushrooms in your fridge?”
“Sometimes,” said Zanna, with a less-than-smug grin.
And she turned away and walked back into the kitchen.
Gwilanna gave a humph and glanced at Bonnington,
who was sitting, appropriately, on a stone mushroom. “Well, cat, shall we look?”
Bonnington twitched his nose.
Gwilanna checked the house for prying eyes. Then she opened the trash.
The knife lay in three clean pieces at the bottom. The twisted tip had broken in two, but the thicker body
part was still intact. Gwilanna took it out and turned it gently. “Well, well,” she whispered, “how did
you
get there?” The dot of light was still present.
She drew the isoscele of Gawain from a pouch in her furs. Hmm. All in all, not a bad day’s work. What was that ridiculous human saying?
It’s an ill wind…?
She looked at the sky again as if she owned it. Perhaps she did? For now she possessed
two of the most powerful weapons in the known universe: the blood of a dragon and … no, not the obsidian knife, but what was trapped inside the knife.
The tiniest spark of pure dark fire.
S
uzanna Martindale had been a mother for the best part of five years. For much of that time, she had often felt like an understudy to Elizabeth Pennykettle, whom she considered to be just about the perfect parent. She had learned a great deal from Liz, not just about motherhood, but the complete dynamics of running a home and family. In the days following the events in the garden,
her apprenticeship was put to the test.
With Liz very ill and likely to be bed-bound for several weeks, Zanna was catapulted into a matriarchal role. She accepted it without complaint or fuss. She hired help in the shop (even employing Henry for two afternoons a week) and stepped full-time into Liz’s shoes. It wasn’t easy. Alexa and the dragons were no
trouble at all, and Arthur, although he
complained deeply at first, was soon persuaded to go back to the university and do what he did well: teach and earn a living. Bonnington was Bonnington: happy with a bowl of Chunky Chunks and a tickle behind his ever-changing ears. Even Gwilanna wasn’t overly disruptive. She would sweep in and out to great thespian effect, shouting bossy orders (usually to Gretel) and demanding to be waited on, hand,
foot, and feather (she still had a black one riding in her hair). Alexa, who found her “aunt” quite fascinating, often trailed in her wake, running errands, and even started up a mushroom colony for her. All of this Zanna managed to tolerate benignly without falling into a single face-off. And though it was obvious to anyone above the age of five that Gwilanna was milking the gravity of the situation,
no one could deny that she had saved Liz’s life. Liz’s scar was healing well, and Gawain’s auma, through controlled applications of his blood, was gradually overpowering the poisonous obsidian. One had to be grateful to the sibyl for that. It wasn’t easy to live with
the obnoxious old witch, but Zanna could have no grounds for putting her out on the street.
On that score, however, there was an
extraordinary twist. Henry Bacon, like so many others in the Crescent, had been held in a trance when the omnipresent mantra had drawn the world together in semi-conscious prayer. This explained why he had not gone charging out with a stick to defend his piece of land when the crowds had appeared by his garden gate (though he’d since inquired, with no success, if the local government would compensate
him for the loss of his herbaceous border). But when “the gathering,” as the media were labeling it, was over, he was over within the hour. He and “Gwyneth” (the name Gwilanna adopted when forced to interact with “primitive human society”), seemed to “click.” Not even her furs or the waxy smell of raven feathers could put Henry off. After just one cup of Earl Grey tea and an impenetrable discussion
of the health-giving properties of shiitake mushrooms and other spore-bearing fruiting bodies, he invited her to stay in the guest room at his house. Gwilanna, having
nowhere else to go, accepted. Zanna’s jaw dropped. She tried to find a reason to object, but had none. She just prayed that the sibyl would not turn Henry’s guest room into a cave the way she had when she’d lived at number 42, once.
Gwilanna, crashing at Henry’s pad: It was far too freaky to think about, but it did at least keep the sibyl out of the way.
And that was important, because of Lucy. After the general domestic workload — the laundry, the cooking, the ironing, the paperwork — Lucy was Zanna’s greatest challenge. The girl had gone into a shell so deep that she might have been lost for good were it not for the tide
of her mother’s breathing. She wouldn’t talk about what had happened in the garden and refused to do anything around the house unless it was directly helpful to her mom. She sat with Liz all day, every day, sometimes neglecting her personal hygiene, usually dozing off in mid-to-late evening and sleeping overnight in the chair beside the bed. She was becoming a hindrance, especially to Gwilanna,
who had twice been on the brink of zapping the girl with magicks for
getting in the way when she was checking Liz’s progress. Zanna would not allow that. But on those nights when she came to drape a blanket over Lucy and settle the girl’s hands and place a kiss on her forehead, she would stand a moment over her, wondering what to do. It was a delicate matter, one she wished she didn’t need to
address. But in the end, the problem resolved itself.
For the first days of her illness, Liz had been fed on herbal infusions prescribed by Gwilanna and wafted into her nostrils by Gretel. Though her eyes had blinked open several times (a dreadful sight to witness, for the whites were the grayest shades of death), she had still been far too tired to speak. But as the herbs began their work and
Gretel’s soothing dragonsong stirred her, she began to have more prolonged wakeful periods, usually early-to mid-afternoon. During one of those times, she asked about Gwillan.
Zanna was there. Waiting. Ready.
“Where is he? I haven’t seen him,” Liz said.
Zanna picked up her hand. “He cried his fire tear,” she said. And there it was, done. Evenly and swiftly,
the way Arthur had counseled her.
No stalling. No sorrys. The hard plain truth. “He saw your body on the patio and thought you were dead.”
Liz’s face began to drift into agonized despair.
Lucy covered her mouth and ran from the room.
“I should go to her,” said Zanna. A tear carved her cheek. She raised Liz’s hand and held it to her lips. “He’s in the den, by Guinevere. I’m so, so sorry.”
It was horrible, but it was a breakthrough
of sorts.
Lucy had not gone far. Her run had come to a halt in a fetal position at the bottom of the stairs. Zanna sat her upright and cradled her closely, using every healing technique she’d ever learned. The girl was crying hysterically.
“Why? Why did you have to
tell her
?”
