The Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Ascending (25 page)

as pale pink silk.

I was five years old, almost six. A

sweet little girl in a plain white dress. I had Zanna’s dark hair and David’s blue

eyes. Neither of my parents were ever aware that I had once been Agawin or that my life had been saved by firebirds. The boy that had been the seer’s apprentice had disappeared out of the Isenfier timeline, just as Gwilanna had correctly suggested. Now I was Alexa Martindale. And though just a child in mannerisms and speech, I had developed wings and the power of flight. I could speak (and think) in fluent dragontongue. I knew the enchantments of time.

And yet, as I thought about Joseph’squestion, I couldn’t work out at first whathad happened. I blinked and had a memoryof a battlefield, where I was kneeling,

holding   Gadzooks.   Then   the   first significant timepoint came to me. “I was at Scuffenbury Hill,” I muttered.

“And before that, Wayward Crescent,” he said. He moved his hand as if parting a mist.

Straight away, my mind began to fillwith scenes from my five years growingup in the Crescent, sharing a house withthe Pennykettle family and their clutch ofamazing dragons. The kitchen table where I’d sat and drawn pictures of a mammoth. Bonnington, the cat, eating food from hisbowl. The listening dragon who’d sat onthe fridge. The ‘fairy’ door in the gardenrockery. I remembered how the house hadbeen swollen with grief, because Davidhad disappeared in the Arctic, allegedly

killed by the Ix assassin Gwilanna had openly crowed about. And as I sped through the years I remembered his return, until I finally arrived at the sequence of events that had led us to the battle at

Scuffenbury Hill. I remembered a trace ofdark fire, trapped in a misshaped block ofobsidian. And how the obsidian had

broken open and the fire had escaped and gone into Elizabeth Pennykettle’s body. And how we feared for her life and that of

the unborn child she was carrying. This child. Joseph Henry. My kin.

“Shall I tell you something about that?”

I sent him an inquisitive look. He could read my mind; he was simply being polite.

“I am responsible for what happened to my mother.”

“I don’t understand. What did you do?” “I drew the dark fire into her. I felt its

presence in the room as soon as the obsidian was broken. I drew it to my mother because I knew the only chance of transforming its evil was through the auma of Gawain. I had to leave her body to enable that to happen. I left her, Agawin. I went into the shell of the house dragon, Gwillan, and stole powers from the other Pennykettle dragons. I left my beautiful mother unguarded and went to fight darklings at Scuffenbury Hill, believing I was doing the Earth a service. But David could have handled the conflict with ease.

I was vain, boisterous. I wanted a fight. But I should have been in the Crescent

protecting her. And now… ”

“What?” I asked. “What happened to Liz?” And Arthur, her partner, for that matter.

He lifted his face. Tears were filminghis sparkling eyes. “Just tell me your sideof the story,” he said. “I can visitanywhere in anywhen, but if I try to go tooclose to my mother’s time points I am tiedto her auma and the events become fuzzy. Ineed to know what happened just beforeyou flew to the hill with Gadzooks.”

So I concentrated for him and it quicklycame back to me. “I was outside, in thegarden  with  Bonnington.   We   werewatching a squirrel playing on therockery. All of a sudden it faded fromview.”

“Like an untended construct.”

Yes. Like a construct. I realised then

that the squirrel was false. “At the same time, one of the dragons came out. I don’t remember which. It said Agatha Bacon had come to the house and that Zanna had

left to join David at Scuffenbury.”

Agatha Bacon was the sister of our neighbour. A trusted friend. A good sibyl.

“I ran into the house and went upstairs to Elizabeth’s room. There was blood.

Your mother was on the bed, injured. Agatha wasn’t there, but Gwilanna was. She lay dead on the floor. There were twosmall dragons on the dressing table. Theywere anxious to tell me what theyknew… ” I shuddered as their terrified

voices came back to me.

“Continue,” said Joseph. “Gwilanna

arrived in the guise of Agatha Bacon and tricked Zanna into leaving the house. What happened then?”

“Gwilanna believed you were still in your mother’s body. She tried to deliver you. The dark fire escaped. The dragons said Gwilanna died of fear.”

“And the fire?”

“It found a portal through the dressing

table mirror. I summoned Gadzooks and

followed it to Scuffenbury. When I arrived, the darkness had infected a unicorn, which had plunged itself into the fire eternal and tainted it to produce an Ix Shadow. The Shadow turned on us as

soon as we landed. But Gadzooks was

quick. He wrote the ancient mark on his notepad. The enchantment favoured by

unicorns.”

“‘Sometimes’,” said Joseph.

“Yes. When the Shadow struck his

pencil it could not cope with the infinite ambiguities suggested by the word. So time was suspended and a call for help was sent across the universe… ”

“And picked up here, in Co:pern:ica.”

Yes. By David and Rosa. My earliest memories were all coming back.

Now my mind began to puddle with dozens   of  questions.   I   had   never understood the mirror world, Co:pern:ica. Why it was created. How it linked to Earth. The ‘alternative’ templates – like Rosa, for instance.

Joseph, hearing my turmoil, said, “It was a project, Agawin. A failed attempt

by the Fain to imagineer a paradise for humans to migrate to, whilst leaving the Ix in isolation. One day, you will understand it fully.”

“How did David and Rosa cross the

nexus?” I knew Rosa had her unicorn, but the enchantments of time would limit her

movements to those lines common to

Co:pern:ica. “How did they come to

Earth?”

“I created a fire star for them. It was

impressive. A beautiful ocean of fire. They couldn’t really miss it. They had to step through.”

“You wanted them on Earth?”

He pressed his fingertips togetherlightly, making a rainbow of colour arcover them. “Let’s go back to Scuffenbury

Hill – and Gadzooks.”

I sighed, thinking he had drifted off thesubject.

He hadn’t.

“There was more to his mark than you might have realised. One of the powers I stole from the dragons was Groyne’s ability to move through time. As you know, he transforms into a tornaq, marked by  the   unicorn   symbol   you   saw. Gadzooks’ cry for help was also a coded instruction to the universe to free Groyne from the Scuffenbury timepoint. In other words,   freeing
 
me
. I’ve been working with the timeline ever since, finding a way to resolve all this.”

“Then it was
 
you
 
who allowed Hilde to

have the tornaq?”

“And me who brought David and Rosa to Earth. And teamed them up with Gretel. I had to put her somewhere in the timeline to make her think she was being useful. She would have caused a dreadful

nuisance otherwise. What’s the matter, Agawin? Why are you scowling?”

“You moved the tornaq out of my grasp when I was fighting Gwilanna,” I said. I remembered the shadowy boy on the ice, and also seer Brunne’s words in Taan:

The tornaq is not the sibyl’s to command.

It will leave her when its work is done
 
.

“I know you’re a little… upset,” he said. “But if you had taken the tornaq then it would have ruined or delayed the course of  events.   Trust  me,  Agawin.   It’s complicated. I can see resolutions that you

can’t.”

Trust him?
 
A little
 
upset
? I was deeplyincensed. “You allowed Gwilanna to

throw me off a cliff! And you changed me into this.” I looked down at my body.

“Don’t you like being Alexa? You never did answer.”

And I couldn’t find the words to answer

it now.

“The trouble is,” he said, before I could snap, “everyone has the annoying habit of using their… free will to get involved. David would have tried to cross the nexus

without my assistance before very long. He had good cause, once Gwilanna had possession of the dragon’s claw.”

“I don’t understand that,” I said. “Gwilanna was dead when I saw her in

the Crescent.”

“On Earth, but not here. Not on

Co:pern:ica.”

“Did her mirror form hear Gadzooks’

beacon?”

He shook his head. “When Gadzooks

suspended the timepoint, pressure was exerted on the membrane of space between Earth and Co:pern:ica. A small Ix:Cluster managed to break through it. They invaded a firebird, turning it black. The bird found and stole a claw of

Gawain that had been hidden on this

world long ago by the Fain. When the firebird and Aunt Gwyneth commingled

”

—

“Aunt Gwyneth?”

“That was the name of Gwilanna’s

alternate. When they joined minds, the Ix learned what the Aunt knew about

Co:pern:ica, and Gwyneth learned abouther counterpart on Earth. She took theclaw and drew upon its powers oftransformation to write herself back into

existence on Earth.”

In the sky behind him, I saw an image ofa woman’s hand writing words of smoke:

I, Gwyneth, sometimes known as Gwilanna, live.

“The universe has been in turmoil ever

since,” said Joseph, “ever since these

words were committed to the Is.”

I recalled my discussion with Davidand Rosa in the woodlands of Iunavik.

“This is why my tapestry differed so much from David’s drawing. There would have

been changes all along the timeline.”

“Yes,” he said. “There are few things more powerful than a claw of a dragon, especially one illumined by twelve fire tears.”

I closed my eyes and tried to take in theenormity of Gwilanna’s deceit. It wasimpossible, even for a mind like mine. “Why am I here and not on thebattlefield?”

He laced his fingers and thought aboutthis. “I wanted to protect you from what isto come. Please don’t fight it, Agawin. Icreated a paradox and took you from Scuffenbury. It’s not stable. We don’t havelong.”

“What is to come, Joseph?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“What about the others? What happens to them? Zanna, Lucy, Tam Farrell. All of those caught in the darkness of the Shadow.”

“Nothing, until I give Gadzooks the signal to let go.”

“Are you going to?”

“You want to stop Gwilanna, don’t you?”

There was a flutter of wings and Gideon landed on a lectern near the

window.

“I promised David on the life of my seer that I would stop Gwilanna doing more harm.”

“I know. I’ve visited the timepoint. I heard you.” And just for a moment he seemed to take on the appearance of

Yolen.

He saw my frail eyes puffing withsadness and softened his features back to

David’s. “Would you like to see your seeragain? We still have long enough to visithis timepoints. It’s all recorded here.” Heswept a hand backwards. Behind him,through the open window, the sky filled upwith millions of fire stars.

I shook my head. What was done with

Yolen was done. I believed Gwilanna’s

version of events, but I did have doubts that the sibyl had been brought to the sea with Grella or that Grella had died a

natural death. And I was still perplexed by Gwilanna’s   claims   to   have   ‘made’

Guinevere.

“I can show you what happened,”

Joseph said quickly, reading my mindagain.

“You seem eager for me to know.”

He shrugged, but I was sure he wantedme to see it. “It will help you understand Gwilanna better. She was a baby,remember, in Grella’s time. It’s apowerful story, Agawin. But I warn you,it’s not pretty.”

“Grella suffered?”

He nodded.

Now I
 
did
 
want to know. “How can I

see it?”

He opened his hands. The centres of hispalms were as violet as his eyes. “We areat the heart of the Is. We can Travel

anywhere in anywhen. Touching the appropriate fire stars will take you into

Grella’s timepoints. But first, you need toknow more.”

“About what?”

“About everything. Earth will be your

world   –   once   we’ve   dealt   with