The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (20 page)

T
here was a tension in the air, a kind of resistance. The farther north they journeyed, the more Avrel felt it. Even the ice seemed to drag beneath his paws. It was solid here. No creaking suggestion of water. It made him nervous.

It made him think.

For several days now his mind had been questing, collecting memory fragments on his ancestor, Thoran, in an effort to place
in context the way the ice had formed. It was a critical moment in the history of the ice bears, and yet it was almost impossible to reach. The searches were tiring and mostly fruitless. Often, when he thought he was about to grasp a truth, it
would fade with the slightest lapse of concentration. It didn’t help that his interest kept drifting toward the woman. The woman who had been with Thoran
at the start. The woman who had held the tear of the dragon. Guinevere, that’s what Ingavar had called her. If he centered on that name he could picture her — just. She was tall, like the blue-eyed man Ingavar sometimes became. She had flowing red hair, bright green eyes, skin as pale as a seal pup’s pelt. Charms and amulets were cast around her neck. She carried no weapons. Her strengths were her
kindness and fearlessness of heart. What of
her,
this woman whom the bear had befriended? The raven had claimed she had drowned in these waters. But Avrel’s instincts favored the reverse. Guinevere had lived. He felt certain of that. But what had become of her? Where had she gone?

One morning, or night, it was impossible to tell, for there were very few breaks of genuine light, Ingavar came to
join him at rest. Avrel was watching the sky spirits playing. They were sliding down a ribbon of
green “nightfire,” which was the term his mother had sometimes used for the colors that formed in the arc of the sky.

The Nanukapik sat down beside his Teller. “Tell me a story, Avrel.”

The sky spirits instantly rushed toward them, settling in the air like a living cloud.

Avrel, who was lying in
the mouth of the wind, with one paw stretched and one tucked under his young chest, said, “Lord, what would you like me to Tell?”

“Whatever is in your mind,” said Ingavar.

Avrel middled his gaze. There was more than legends in his mind just then. He glanced across at Kailar. The fighting bear was battling with the early throes of sleep. Lately, his rests had been scrappy and erratic. In sleep,
the dragon’s eye spoke to him, he said. It made him see things, made him
fly,
high above the ice like a ghost in the wind. Now he had fallen into slumber again, covering his snout with an involuntary paw and snoring with an irritated, broken rumble. He looked
vulnerable. And he had lost condition. It was worrying, Avrel thought, but somehow touching.

“Our journey is almost at an end,” said Ingavar.

“We have reached the place?”

“We are very close.”

Avrel looked about him. “There are no marks.” Had the raven not reported lines of fire? A definite intersection where the tear had fallen?

“They will show themselves,” said Ingavar, “when you need to see them.” He folded a leg and laid himself down. The ice barely echoed to his weight as he dropped.

A spirit danced before them, a woman in skins.
Avrel looked up, wondering for a moment if it might be Guinevere, for her name was playing in the shell of his ear. His chin sagged when he realized it wasn’t her at all. His gaze turned inward and Ingavar followed it.

“Take away the wind and the night from your memories. Take away time. Tell me what you see.”

A vision. Avrel was almost left breathless by its swiftness. He saw the ice forming
like a morning sunrise, breaking on the crust of the ocean so quickly that it might have just surged to the surface from below. At its center was a great white fire. From the body of the fire stepped a perfect bear.

“I see Thoran,” said Avrel, his head clustered with images. “He is wandering, distressed. He is looking for something … for the woman, Guinevere.”

“I hear you,” said Ingavar, tipping
his snout. It was the tradition to acknowledge a Teller’s story this way.

“He has been walking for days,” the son of Lorel went on. “He was separated from her when the dragon’s tear was dropped.” He flinched as he saw it happening again, another flashback, another ice cap moment. So much beauty. So much light. “The sea was in torment. The spreading ice lifted her and carried her away. His heart
is in despair, for he knows she could be anywhere. He is lost and he cannot detect her scent. This landscape is strange to him, the open sky, the cold.
He feels blinded by the brightness and has nothing to guide him barring courage and hope. But he will not give up. He will not rest until he knows her fate. She was kind to him once. She … oh.”

Avrel jerked back suddenly. A twist of snowflakes
gathered on his head, making the mark of Oomara in his fur. “He sees her.” His slim jaws parted in wonder. “She is lying on a ridge, no higher than his chest. She is frozen to it.” He paused. “She is dead.”

Not dead,
said a wind from another world.

Avrel’s eyes snapped open. “What was that?”

Ingavar calmly raised his snout. He squinted at a snowflake on the tip of his nose.

“I heard a whisper,”
said Avrel. “It said she wasn’t dead.”

“Then pay heed and continue with your Telling,” said Ingavar, his voice low and rasping, but his coaxing gentle.

Avrel gave the sky a distrustful sweep before warily closing his eyes again. When he did, the story opened clearly in his mind as if Thoran and Guinevere were
right there in front of him. “Thoran has settled beside her,” he said. “He is anguished.
He does not know what to do. Time is passing in blizzards, in storms. The days layer up in drifts against his fur. His eyes are frosted, but he cannot sleep.

“One morning, there comes a steadiness, a calm. In the quiet, he tells himself he must move on. For what good would it do to laze here and die? He must explore this new white world. Claim it, for her. There must be meaning in this miracle
she helped to create.

“Suddenly, he hears the beat of a wing. In the sky, far above, too distant to identify, he notices a traveling speck, a bird. It means no harm but it makes him think of predators. What creatures, he wonders, might be roaming this place? He growls inwardly, desiring to protect her. Nothing must take her body. Nothing.

“He stands, stiff and weary, considering his choices.
Perhaps he could cover her? The soft ice blown into drifts by the wind is easy to scoop and pack into mounds. But how long would it last? How quickly could it be broken into? He snorts impatiently and thinks again.
He could eat her, leaving nothing but her cloth skins behind. But that alternative is just too repellent. So, in his mind, he looks to the ocean, gauging its swell as every ice bear
that ever comes after him will. If he sends her there, she will be lost to its secrets, but her auma will live with him forever.

“So he rises up and pounds his paws against the surface. Pounds till the shudders almost loosen his teeth. But the ice is thick. It will not break. Committing her to water will not be possible. Yet his efforts have brought about a physical change. Her arm has been dislodged
from the side of her body. Her frozen serenity has been disturbed. Thoran looks at the stiff, blue fingers. Are they reaching out to touch him one last time? He drops his nose to their tips and leaves it there a moment, making a thin warm wall of vapor. Then he licks the hand respectfully and tries to nudge it back against her side with his snout. It will not go. He tries again and hears
a frightening crack.

“He steps back, snuffling with hurt and confusion. What has he done? What has he done? All over her
body more cracks are appearing, running up her arms, spreading across her chest, crawling around her neck like the roots of a tree. He barks at the sky as if the spirits are to blame, then calls for their help, to
anything
that can help. But nothing comes. Nothing can stop
the erosion. Guinevere is falling apart before his eyes. Her skin, her hair, her clothing, her boots — disintegrate to pieces, there on the ridge. But then …”

“Then?” said Ingavar.

Avrel tilted his head. He kept his eyes closed, but it was clear from the twitching muscles in his face that his mind was astonished at what he was reporting. He continued in an awestruck whisper. “From the dust comes
a flake. A single white flake. Followed by another. And another. And another. A small blizzard is rising up from the remains. He is seeing her auma, turning to snow …”

Not snow,
said the voice on the wind. The sound whooshed through the tunnels of his ears. As it came to a peak, his mind opened like a shell and he saw … not snow, but small creatures with wings.

Avrel jumped and opened his eyes.
The present-day north came rushing back. But the setting had changed. Ingavar was no longer at his side, but sitting columnlike, just ahead. Kailar, now awake, was staring wild-eyed into the distance. Before Avrel could determine why, the ice around his feet began to glow a shade of green. And now, in whichever way he moved his head, he saw a line of coruscating green in the distance, like blood
trails lit with fire. And he knew what he was, and why he was. And he felt all history coming to a point. He was sitting on the place where dragon lines meet, over the channel to The Fire Eternal.

And when, at last, he did raise his head, this is what the Teller of Ways recorded: bears, young and old, approaching in their thousands.

Now he could understand Kailar’s anxiety.

The three of them
were surrounded.

T
he walls were circular and constructed of coarse gray stone. There were no windows and the air was dry with smoke. It was a tower room lit by rippling torches, which were set at angles, in iron frames, at equal heights. The monks had left her on a splintered wooden floor which creaked in several places as she rose. In the center of the floor was a polished brown boulder.
It was huge, like an outrageous cancer. How it had been carried there, Lucy could not guess. The top had been leveled off to make a table. On the table was a cluster of jagged black stones. They had a luster in the torchlight and looked like pieces of petrified licorice.

Sitting up, she called out, “Where am I? What do you want?”

The flame nearest to her danced hypnotically. There was no reply.

She stood up and tried the only door. It was locked, but she’d expected that. There was a keyhole, but nothing really visible through it. Shadows. Maybe a winding staircase.

“Please?” she called out. “Please, I’m cold.” She clamped her arms, but the chill was in her mind. She remembered the chapel. The monster. David. “Please,” she said again, and hunkered down.

Suddenly a voice said, “The creature
you saw is called a Darkling.”

Lucy squealed and jumped back to her feet. Brother Bernard, or what was left of the man, was standing on the far side of the table. Blood had crusted against his temple. His habit was torn. His eyes were black and largely inert.

“How did you get here?” Lucy hissed. Her gaze darted frantically all around. Had she missed an entrance? High up, perhaps? All she could
see was aged rafters.

The monk slid back his sleeves. “What do you know about obsidian, child?” He played his hands above the rocks on the table.

Nearest to Lucy was a spear-headed piece. She snatched it up, wielding it like a dagger. “I’ll use this stone, I will, if you don’t set me free.”

“Stone is a weak description,” he said. “Obsidian is a volcanic glass, made from fast-cooling molten
magma. During the Fain’s early breeding program, it was thought that dragons might be fashioned from it. The prototype bodies were aerodynamic but never flexible enough to sustain the desired range of movement. They fractured too easily, because of impurities in the chemical structure. And when it was discovered that the glass was incompatible with The Fire Eternal, it was put aside in favor of clay.
This island is a mine of the purest obsidian. From it you will make the Darkling you saw.”

“In your dreams,” said Lucy, and lunged at him.

But he was gone, like vapor, to reappear in an instant at the opposite side of the table.

“Your bravado is very ill-placed,” he said. “If you were human, I would kill you in an instant.”

“I
am
human.”

“You are not. You are a hybrid. An offspring of the
dragon Gawain and the woman Guinevere who partially commingled with him through his fire. You were birthed by an ancient means of parthenogenesis. Your kind self-replicate. You will introduce this quality into the Darkling. You may begin.”

Lucy hurled the stone at him. It struck his shoulder, making him wince. Worried, she took a pace back. “Why would I make anything for you? You’re not Bernard.
You’re
them
inside his body.”

The figure of Bernard turned toward the door. It opened and two more monks came in. They threw Tam Farrell into the room. His body, still clothed in its stolen sacking, fell heavily and he rolled awkwardly onto his back. Blood was spilling out of one nostril. Lucy ran to him and put her ear to his mouth. There was a faint warm breath.

Very faint.

“What have you
done to him?”

“He is nothing,” said the Ix. “Probing his mind reveals fragmented, inconsistent memories of dragons. But you, you have a
history
of dragons. With it comes a powerful ability to visualize. What you saw in the chapel was a projection of your fears. A waking nightmare. You will use this ability to construct the Darkling.”

“And if I don’t?”

“It would be a simple task for an Ix:risor
to enter your mind, make you see the worst means imaginable for this human’s death, and convert it into reality. If you want him to survive, you will make the creature.”

“No,” said Lucy, shaking with anger. “He’d rather die than see that evil thing flying.”

At that moment, Tam stirred and his eyes flickered open. He whispered Lucy’s name and accepted her hand as she slid it into his. He felt
cold, almost frozen, and very weak. “I’m sorry,” he said. “We should have run when we could.”

Lucy forced her gaze away. That was her fault, the chapel. They could have escaped. Guilt and indecision spiraled freely in her mind, followed by a flash of another nightmare: Tam’s body falling from the roof of the tower. That was them, playing with her mind again, she knew it. She cut the image off
and said to the Ix, “How do I know he isn’t a projection?”

But Tam himself answered the question for her. He grasped her hand and pressed it flatly to his heart. Their eyes met.
What?
she mouthed. He was trying to communicate something to her, without saying or thinking the words. He parted her fingers awkwardly with his, fitting them to the shape of the mark of Oomara. She gave a near-silent
gasp as her fingers tingled. He nodded once then passed out again. She thought she saw a flicker of relief in his face before his head came to rest on the boards once more.

“All right, I’ll make your creature,” she said, “but only if you set Tam free. He’s human. No threat to you. Send him back through the rift.”

The lifeless black eyes rolled toward Tam. “He is not strong. The atomic dissociation
will kill him. Is this what you desire?”

“No. Of course not!”

“Then he must be held.” The Ix picked up the rock that had bounced off his shoulder and placed it back on the table again. “Choose two pieces. Concentrate, as you would when making dragons from clay. The pieces will meld as you bring them together. Make the Darkling exactly as you saw it.”

Lucy stood up and studied the rocks. Obsidian.
She did know something about the stone. Zanna sold bracelets and necklaces from it, along with what she called some loose “conchoidal” fractures — broken pieces with highly polished curves. She wiped the sweat off her palms and said, “I don’t get this. Obsidian brings out the warrior spirit.” (Wow. Zanna would have praised her for that.) “It’s a grounding stone that helps you find the truth
inside yourself. It’s s’posed to drive away negative energy. So how does that work with your dark
thing?”

“Create,” said the Ix, refusing to answer. “Bring the stones together. Dream it.”

That was a dreadful moment for Lucy. “How do you know about
that
?”

“Build,” it said.

This time it was an order. She felt the hum rising and shied away. “All right. Don’t. No more nightmares.” One imagined
Darkling was quite enough.

She selected two pieces. They clacked sweetly as she knocked them together. It seemed incongruous to think that they could ever be joined, but as she closed her eyes and conjured up the Darkling, the stones softened into a flexible jelly and flowed around her hands like cold lava. It was difficult to work with, hard to contain, but in time she grew used to its unique
malleability and discovered, to her amazement, that shapes formed best when she drew her hands away a few inches from the surface and used her
thoughts
to make the mold. When she opened her eyes, she had constructed a foot.

“Excellent. Proceed with the rest,” said the Ix.

It took as long as it took. When it was done, the creature sat squat on the boulder like an old church gargoyle, hideously
perfect, about twice the size of a Pennykettle dragon.

Lucy stood back, clammy and cold. She was terrified of the beast, yet fascinated by its savage beauty. Every surface of it shone, even down to its studded tongue and the twisted horn that made the tip of its tail. Torchlight glinted off its blueberry eyes. It was exactly what she’d seen, but it wasn’t moving. It had no auma. No light inside.

“What now?” she asked.

The door opened again and in walked the bearded monk she’d seen in the chapel.

The Bernard figure said to him, “It is done.”

The bearded one stepped forward to inspect the Darkling. It rested a finger on one of the upright wings that sat out like a pair of unnatural shoulder blades. Lucy held her breath, thinking the Darkling would spring to life. It remained unchanged.
“What’s it for?”
she snapped at them. “What are you going to do with it?”

“It is a weapon against dragons.”

“There
are
no dragons! We don’t have them anymore.”

“The Fain you call ‘David’ will soon create a channel.”

David. Fain? Lucy felt as though her heart were a maypole, strings tearing it apart in all directions.

“Dragons will come to him,” the bearded Ix said.

“He’ll destroy you,” said
Lucy.

She felt the hum in her ear and wished she’d kept her mouth shut.

“What is this?” said the bearded one. He pointed to a single piece of obsidian.

“I didn’t need it,” Lucy said. “It was just … left over.”

The monk rolled it between his hands. It was roughly the shape of a small root vegetable, slightly swollen at one end and tapering to a sharp twisted spike at the
other. It could have
easily passed for a knife. He put the tip of it onto his tongue. For a moment, Lucy thought he was about to make a cut, but he pulled it away again and said to her, “Take it.”

Lucy shook her head indignantly. “Why?”

“In this form, it is poisonous to humans.”

She saw death in his eyes and took a pace back. “I did what you asked. Let me go. Let me go.” But, suddenly, the hum was overpowering
her again and she passed out with a stifled cry, falling in a half twist over Tam’s body.

The bearded Ix turned to Brother Bernard. “The dark energy in this sector of the universe is peaking. The Fain David is about to open the core. Modify the rift coordinates and send an Ix:risor back within the girl to your old brother, Vincent. The risor will ensure there are no interruptions.” He placed
his hand on the Darkling and stroked it. “We are ready,” he said.