The Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Ascending (35 page)

When I looked again the cat wasn’t there.

Nor the screen.

Annoyed, I went in search of thefirebirds and quickly found myself in Elizabeth’s room, though how I’d got there I couldn’t say. I seemed to be floatingaround the pod. I had no memory of theroom I’d come from or of the layout of therooms nearby. Time was all the whilepassing, I thought, but all I ever had wasthe feeling of ‘now’.

Elizabeth was sitting on a cushion onthe floor, facing the sculpture, six feetaway. She had her legs crossed over, theway I’d seen Arthur Merriman meditate. Her thumbs were making a circle with herfingers. Her eyes were closed, but sheknew I was there.

“Ssssh,” she said gently. “Don’t speak, Agawin. Not while the birds are busy.”

I saw then how the magick happened. She was picturing the carving in her head. And through some means of interspecies telepathy, three birds were using short bursts of fire to melt away the ice that wasn’t needed. They were working on the base of it, creating what looked like a sleeping dog. Though it was large for a dog. A bear, perhaps.

Elizabeth shook her shoulders and let

out a single puff of air.

The birds stopped working and came to

hover in a line in front of her.

“Thank you,” she said.

Rrrh
, they went, and zipped out of the

room.

She extended a flappy hand sideways to

me.

“You okay, Grandma?” She looked a

little tired.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m very happy here. But I can only concentrate for so long. Then the tiredness comes and they make me stop.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who makes you stop?”

She smiled and tugged at the ends of my fingers. “Are you having a good day?”

I wasn’t really sure. What made a good day, here? “Grandma, can I ask you something?”

“Anything you like.”

And it should have been about the cat or

the screen, but I heard myself saying,

“Where are…the others?”

“Others?” she said.

“I can’t remember their names, but I

know there were others.” I was sure I’d

shared this pod with
 
someone
 
.

She looked at me kindly. The green in her left eye grew a little brighter. “The others will come for you when they’re ready. I think they’ve sent you here because they know you’ll be safe.”

Or they’d made a terrible mistake. If Gwilanna was coming, I must be on my guard. I had to
 
warn
 
someone…  Henry? Joseph?
 
Joseph Henry
 
. Yes, that was it. That was the name. But how?

I was almost punching the air with mythoughts  when  an  idea   struck  me. “Grandma, is the listener still in the

kitchen?”

“Probably,” she said. “Why do you

want to know?”

“Just…y’know, curious.”

She looked past me to the door. A grey- haired cat had just strolled in, different from the one with the damaged ear. It had a black patch of fur across one eye and walked with a slight, left-sided limp. It padded straight past me and curled into her lap, miaowing as she smoothed her hand along its back. “It’s all right, Arthur, I’m with you,” she whispered. And she hummed a gentle lullaby to it. And the walls of the pod responded to the sound and began to glow with life-sized scenes.

I saw a beautiful red-haired girl, singing along while she tended her goats.

Then the same girl on a mountain top, asudden explosion of light in her hands. And again on the back of a huge brownbear, emptying that same light into anocean. Then there was ice as far as I could

see and as many white bears as the ice could hold. All of them squinted proudly at Elizabeth. They planted their claws and held their heads high, but in their hearts I knew they were bowing to her.

A single drop of water ran down the ice sculpture and dripped with a fiery plink onto the table.

And I wanted to cry and cry and cry.

“Grandma, what does this
 
mean
?” Ibegged.

She stroked Arthur’s head and finished

her song. “Isn’t it time you were in bed,

Agawin?”

And placing a soft kiss on my head, shecarried Arthur out of the room.

5. Darkling Island

They landed, not on the island itself, buton the curved strip of rocks that joined itto the mainland, only visible when the tidewas low. Some levelling had been doneon the upper surface to make a viablebreakwater. “The Bridge of Souls, howappropriate,”   David   muttered.   “Youremember the legend, don’t you, Tam?” He was being held by Tam while the boatwas moored. He nodded back towards the

land. “Gwilanna stands on the shore and

creates a wave that carries Thoran and

Guinevere out to sea. The rest is… frozen

in the Earth’s
 
proper
 
history, not in this

sordid sidestep in time.”

The darkling commander looked at himoddly, the growths on his templesstraining like warts. He attempted theclosest thing to a frown. “You talk toomuch.” He bundled David off the boat,onto steps hewn out of the rocks. Everyone was riddled with dark grey weed andthe   slime   from   another   marine

‘experiment’. Behind him, through the rain, David heard Rosa shouting, ‘Get your hands off me, you ugly excuse for a human being!’

“She’s going to give you trouble, that one,” he said.

Tam hauled him up the steps and onto the bridge. “The Pri:magon will deal with her. Walk.”

A powerful thump in the centre of his

back persuaded David to do just that. As he stumbled forward he let his gaze pan across the island. He had seen it before, in its appropriate timeline, locked in ice, mostly blanketed in snow. A place for bears to winter their young. They called it ‘The Tooth of Ragnar’, because its famous tip hooked over like a canine. It was as sacred to the bears as it was to the people who inhabited the north. The legendary resting place of the last known dragon, Gawain.

A plume of fire suddenly erupted fromthe peak. It boxed with the low cloudhanging overhead, then scrolled into anorange ball and fizzled away. The greysea arched its back. David looked to the

northern shore. The swirling patterns of

water   there   confirmed   his   worst

suspicions.

They had Gawain and they were using him, somehow, to draw out Gaia.

They were working on the Earth’s magnetic core.

“How are your hands, Tam?”

“Shut up,” he growled. “Or you’ll die drinking salt.”

“I doubt that,” David said, with confidence. “The Pri:magon wouldn’t like to lose me, would she?”

The darkling man nearest them began to cough. The heat falling back towards the water was bringing down a filmy cloak of ash. The man cursed and spat a lump of phlegm onto the stone. Dotted throughout his murky saliva were small dull spots of

yellow sulphur.

“So… hands. How are they?” David repeated. “Not the reptilian skin, of course; the chemistry of the inversion doesn’t really interest me.” Or does it? he wondered, glancing at those spots of sulphur again. Maybe there was a weakness there. He could hear more

coughing further back along the bridge.

“It’s what’s under the skin that matters.”

“What are you talking about?” Tam snarled, betraying a hint of his onceScottish accent.

David stopped abruptly. They bumpedtogether, eye to alien eye. “Under theskin,” he said again quietly, looking asdeep into Tam as he could. “We wereallies once, Tam and Ingavar. I gave you a

gift to help you kill darklings. All you

have to do is look for it.”

With a rasp of steel, Tam brought out aknife. It was pressing at the border of David’s neck when Lucy bellowed, “Stand down! Now!”

Tam growled, showing his changingteeth. The enamel, David noticed, wasalready breaking up, splitting into thefamiliar darkling ‘needles’.

“Now!” Lucy barked.

Tam stood aside, kicking a dead fishback into the sea. The tide had droppedthem all along the bridge. One or two menwere scooping them up, eating the headsand throwing the rest back. Ravens,likewise, were dropping like stones,helping to clear the path ahead.

“That must hurt – being told what to do,” David said. He ran a hand inside his collar, relieved, perhaps, that Tam had not cut him. “Then again, she was always feisty. It’s the dragon in her. She’ll never be entirely rid of it—agh!”

Lucy’s fist came up and struck across his cheek, almost rearranging his top row of teeth. “One more word from you and I’ll kill you myself.”

David straightened up and looked her in the eye. A trail of blood was running down his cheek. A gift from the calluses spread across her knuckles. “Gwendolen sends her love,” he ventured.

And thankfully she didn’t kill him. She made a muted gesture at Tam, and David was made to start walking again.

At the junction between the bridge andthe island, a wooden ramp had been laidto even out the final part of the join. Thedrumbeat of approaching men broughtothers running from the bluffs and cragslike ants spilling from a hole in theground. Still the rain came sweepingdown. The darklings seemed oblivious toit and lined the rocks to watch and sneer,clinging to the wetted surfaces likelizards. An unsettled rumble from the

belly of the island signalled another belch of fire. Nearly all the darklings coughed. Several of them turned and spat at the mountain. David, wondering how Rosa was coping, tried to look over his shoulder for her. Another whack to the

back of his head kept him focused on the

path in front. They were heading for an opening where the slope was less steep. Until then it had been hidden from view by fallen rocks and the angle of approach. Tam went in first, dipping his head, even though the space was high enough for him. Two of the party grabbed David’s arms. They flung him through the hole but didn’t follow. Shortly afterwards Rosa was hustled in as well, followed by Lucy, pushing all the way.

Lucy strolled on ahead. “Pri:magon, we have them. They were in the woodland, where you predicted.”

Tam grabbed Rosa and hauled her into line beside David. He shoved them

forward as one.

To David’s surprise, they had entered a

hollow. It obeyed the shape of the island so well he wondered if the layers of granite and earth had been plastered onto a conical bubble. For once, there was an element of colour present. The ragged walls of the chamber were glowing amber, reflecting a pool of clinkery lava swirling in a crater at the centre of the void. David glanced upwards, wondering at first how the heat and fumes were being channelled away from the island floor. Then he realised this was no ordinary fire. There was an element of natural magma present, but it was heavily mixed with dragon auma. A violent
 
blup!
 
made Rosa squeal. She gripped his arm and said, “We’ve got to get out of here. If that explodes, we’ll all be dead!”

“Clearly, you know nothing about dragons,”  said  a  voice. As  if  to demonstrate that, the pool was sucked loudly into the crater. A second later, a column of air and gas was ejected towards the dome of the island. It ignited before it hit the open air and swirled around the walls of a manmade caldera

before escaping into the sky. The interior rock face shook like a tissue. Already, cracks were beginning to show.

A figure moved through the shadows. A woman, dressed in a floor-length gown, pinched at the waist by a knotted cord. She had long wild hair and her feet were bare.

Tam and Lucy knelt to her, bowing their

heads.

David said, “Rosa’s right, Gwilanna.

The island is unstable. It
 
will
 
be destroyed

if you—”

The woman began to laugh. “Oh, David. Has it been that long?”

She stepped forward into the light.

And David saw her altered face, but the bangles gave her away to him first.

Rosa gasped and covered her mouth.

A darkling clone was standing before them.

Not Gwilanna at all.

Zanna.

6. Ganzfeld

I didn’t go to bed. I didn’t feel tired. Iwent chasing out of Elizabeth’s room,thinking I would run downstairs to thekitchen. I wanted to speak to the listeningdragon.

But as soon as I emerged, I realised Ihadn’t seen a stair since I’d been here. I

looked left and right. There wasn’t even a door. Then I heard a gentle muffled sound and saw the brown tabby cat in the floor space ahead of me, the one with the damaged ear. It was sitting down, scratching its collar with a paw. “You must know the way to the kitchen,” I said.

It looked up and frowned, the way cats

do.

“Bowl,” I suggested. “Food.”