The Last Dragon Chronicles: Fire World: Fire World (36 page)

Rosa threw him a sideways glance. “What’s she babbling about?”

“Release me and I’ll talk,” Aunt Gwyneth said. She clamped her mouth

shut and smirked.

David was having none of it. “Tell Runcey to guard her,” he said to Rosa. “Mum, Penny, come with me.”

But Rosa was having none of
 
that
. Slamming two hands against his chest she said, “Stop right there. You don’t just float off upstairs without explaining what happened just now. What are you? How did you morph into that… thing?”

“I don’t know,” David answered her plainly. “I was attacked; I responded. That’s all there is to it. I know as much

about that animal as you do at present. It’s been in my dreams since I was twelve years old.”

Picking at her nails Aunt Gwyneth said, “He’s out of control, Rosa. How long do you think it’s going to be before the

Higher step in to Re:move him for good?”

“Shut up,” Rosa growled.

The Aunt flared her nostrils. “I’llremember your insolence when I’m out ofhere, girl.”

“Look,” said Eliza, stepping in to makethe peace. She put herself between Rosaand her son. “Why don’t you two goupstairs and Penny and I will stay hereand… look after things?”

“No. I want to be with David,” Pennysaid. She ran up and grabbed her brother’shand.

“She can’t come with us,” Rosa said to David. “We can’t take a kid above Floor 42.”

David switched his gaze to Aurielle,who was hopping impatiently from foot tofoot. He said to Penny, “Have you brought

Alicia
 
with you?”

The girl heaved the story book out ofher pocket. “Can I swap it for another?”

Rosa said, bluntly, “The books belonghere.”

David glanced at the shelves all aroundthem. The librarium was whispering as itsometimes did. Outside, in the fields, thedaisy leaves were fluttering. “Actually, Ithink the building would like it if Pennyborrowed another book.”

“Yes!” went the girl.

Rosa threw up her hands. “This is crazy. We don’t know what we’ll find on the upper floors, David. She’s just going to be a burden to us.”

“I am n—” Penny was about to say, but her brother raised a hand to quieten her. “We’ll take her to the fiction department

and let her look round. What harm can that do? The danger’s passed. We’ll take Runcey with us. He can keep an eye on her.”

“It’s
 
Aleron
,” Rosa said, taut and grumpy. “I’ll be waiting on the stairs. If you’re not out in one minit, I’m going up without you.” She snapped a
 
rrrh!
 
at Aurielle and marched away. The creamcoloured firebird flapped out after her.

“Mum, you gonna be OK with her?” David nodded at Aunt Gwyneth. She had settled down on the floor of her prison and assumed a haughty, meditative pose. “Don’t believe a word she tells you. And under no circumstances let her out of that

cage. I’ll :com Counsellor Strømberg when we get back. He’ll know what to do.”

“You’ll regret this,” said the Aunt. She closed her eyes and went,
 
Ommmm
 
.

“I’ll be OK,” said Eliza. “Go and be nice to Rosa.”

Beckoning Aleron to join him, Daviddrew Penny away. But at the door to thestairs he stopped for a moment to pluck abook off one of the shelves. It had a thickred spine and a well-worn look, as if ithad been used many hundreds of times. Heopened it about a third of the way through,turned two pages then settled on one,carefully tracing his finger down it. At thepoint where his finger stopped moving, hefrowned.

“David? Is everything all right?” hismother asked.

(Aunt Gwyneth opened one eye.)

“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t sound

convinced. He pushed the book back, then guided Penny out.

Aunt Gwyneth opened both eyes and said, “Well, how pleasant to have some time to ourselves. What shall we do? Sing songs? Play a game?” She folded her hands into her lap and began to chant a rhyme that children were often taught: “
I fain, with my little brain, something beginning with…
 
”

“Aunt Gwyneth, I’m not in the mood for games,” Eliza said. She was staring at the shelf where David had checked the book.

The Aunt slid her gaze in that direction. “Stop prevaricating, girl. Go and take alook.”

“What at?”

Aunt Gwyneth sneezed. It sounded as if

a small bomb had suddenly gone off. “The

book, of course. It’s probably a reference volume, like all the others in this disgusting arena of floating dust. I’d say he was hoping to discover what your dragon was spelling out. The sculpture

was   trying  to   tell   him  something. Something that caused the Ix that took me hostage to break away and attempt to kill him. Aren’t you curious? You saw how troubled he was.”

Eliza squeezed her hands together. “If he’d wanted me to know, he’d have said something to me.”

“Pah! How weak and pathetic you’ve become. I had such hopes for you.”

“Aunt Gwyneth, let’s get one thing clear: if you try to turn my mind I’ll… imagineer a blanket over your cage.”

“Tch. So disrespectful, too.”

“Me?” Eliza turned to the captive and scowled. “You falsely banished my husband to the Dead Lands and abandoned me there without a shred of help – and given half a chance you’d destroy my son. I don’t think I owe you any respect.”

“I beg to differ,” Aunt Gwyneth snarled. “Open this cage at once.”

The command was persuasive. Very persuasive. A sign that the Aunt Su:perior might be regaining her powers. Eliza could feel herself wanting to reach forward. In the nick of time, she snatched her hand back. “No. You’re wicked.

You’re staying where you are. Don’t makeme put a cover over you.”

Aunt Gwyneth breathed in sharply. “How
 
dare
 
you treat me like this? You, of

all people.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

And then the Aunt did something completely out of keeping with one of her kind: she introduced a note of sorrow to

her voice. “I wasn’t going to tell you this. But as Strømberg will have me sent to the Dead Lands and we’ll never see each

other again after that, then you might as well know the truth. I was talking about the bond of family. You rage at me, throw taunts at me and all the while speak ill of me. If anyone is wicked, it is you, Eliza. I didn’t bring you up to lock me in a cage! Is this really any way to treat your
 
mother
?”

6

“My—? No!” Eliza stood up, wagging a finger. “No,” she said again, “that’s just plain ludicrous.”

“Is it?” said the Aunt. “You freely admit you know nothing of your life before Harlan Merriman – but I do. How many constructs have you met, Eliza, that can’t recall anything from their childhood? I closed you down and erased your memories for one reason only: you would have been de:constructed if the Higher had known what you were capable of.”

“Penny… ” Eliza felt her mouth growing dry.

“Quite. The ability to reproduce the way you did is indicative of your ancestry.

Your father was descended from Agawinhimself. He was taken from me and

removed by the Higher when he was no older than your son is now.”

“How did you meet him?”

“How   did
 
you
 
meet Harlan? These things just happen, girl. He was a man, tall and clever, with magick in his fain and… and wings on his back.”

Eliza drew closer to the bars. “
 
Wings?
”

“Don’t shout,” the Aunt said, shying away. “When you’re this size, the air pressure really isn’t comfortable.” She stood up and adjusted her clothing. “The wings were stubs. Never fully developed. But enough to set him apart from any other suitor – of which there were many, I might add.” She put a hand to her bun and fluffed it up. “I was quite something – when it

mattered. I’m glad to see you’ve inherited

my… splendour, though the hair is a little odd, it must be said.”

“I fail to see the likeness,” Eliza said sharply. She pulled back from the cage and went for a walk around the room. She took a book off a shelf and pushed it back again, as if she needed to exercise her arm. “If this is true, what became of him – my father?”

Aunt Gwyneth cracked her knuckles like a row of seed pods. “I don’t know,” she said (with a credible degree of regret in her voice). “I tried many times to discover that myself, before I was taken into Aunthood. After that, a certain bitterness entered my soul. Even you, his daughter, I had to denounce, though I couldn’t   bear   to   see   you   fully

de:constructed. My Aunt Su:perior took pity on me. She put your template into stasis until I was ready to accept you back. By then, you had no need to know your mother. So you were reintroduced as

an  orphaned  young  woman. And  I remained silent and merely observed you.”

Eliza touched the spine of a book, enjoying the curvature of it and the way the author’s name was faintly embedded in a deep shade of red two thirds of the way up. Books were beautiful, she thought, arranged like this. Like a kind of sleeping ornament. And despite her dismissive attitude when she had first come to the

librarium, she rather liked the deep, rich smell of them too. There was nothing quite like it on all Co:pern:ica. “How do I

know you’re not spinning me a tale so I’ll break that lock and let you out?”

“I would have thought the answer to that was obvious. It’s running around upstairs by now, looking for another book to read. Penny is only alive because I’m protecting her. Come to that, my dear, so are you.”

Eliza walked to a chair and slowly sat down. “Tell me about Agawin. Was he man or construct?”

“Try enigma,” said the Aunt, going on a little   walkabout   herself.   “Had   you continued your training you would have studied this myth in full.”

“Myth? He’s not real? But if he never existed, how could I be descended from him?”

“ O h ,
 
something
  
existed,”   Aunt Gwyneth said, trailing her fingers over the

bars of her cage. “There are documents, drawings, etchings in stone. Most of it cached with the Aunts, of course. There are rumours that artefacts exist in the Dead

Lands, particularly at a place called the Isle of Alavon, but none of it is conclusiveand his origins are merely speculative atbest. Some scholars have suggested hewas not of this world. That he travelled

across time and created Co:pern:ica to his own template: part man, part firebird, part fain. Others claim he was simply a man who found a way to look into the face of all creation and was driven insane by what he saw.”

“And what did he see?”

“Dragons,” said the Aunt, quite matterof-factly.

Eliza felt her heart stop beating for a

moment.

“You have something to say about this?”

“I saw dragons. I think I saw him, too – or the spirit of him. A flying man with sunken eyes. He, they, were there – in the Dead Lands.”

“They were not.”

“But… they led me to the cave.”

“They did not,” Aunt Gwyneth insisted. “Your need for survival led you to shelter. What you saw were projections, images pooled from the collective consciousness of the Co:pern:ican race. There’s a word for it, Eliza. It’s called ‘superstition’. It is natural for any living beings to question the origins of their existence. Over thousands of spins, our fain has been seeded by the romantic notion that Agawin

commanded a legion of dragons and used their power to create this world. The only reason the Aunts have not erased this myth is that it acts as a kind of comfort to us.

Everyone wants to believe in somethingthat will make their mundane lives morebearable and their inevitable death less…

final. The truth is, we do not know how we came to be. There is no proof of anything, although… ”

“What?” asked Eliza. She leaned forward, making her chair lift.

Aunt Gwyneth tapped her fingertips together. “The general concensus of Aunt opinion is that Agawin was merely a renegade ec:centric – the first, of course – able to imagineer well beyond the capabilities of other Co:pern:icans. The Grand Design was introduced because of

him, to prevent any sweeping acts of adverse creativity. In that sense, you and your remarkable son are perfect examples of his line. But if there is any substance at all to the more fanciful stories, we believe this building holds the key. It
 
is
 
a remarkable source of fain.”

“Which you tried to steal.”

“Conjecture,” snapped the Aunt. “I was searching for answers, nothing more. It was important to keep the project secret to maintain my credibility as an Aunt, particularly in front of counsellors like Strømberg. But I did it for one reason only – to monitor and protect your son, my grandson.”

Eliza relaxed her body shape a little, but hardened her green-eyed gaze. “What did you mean when you said you knew