Rosa leaned forward and glanced at the page. “With a load of smudges?”
Strømberg laughed politely. “I agree at first glance it does appear quite
indecipherable. But this is a book, remember. These marks are a language. Almost certainly an ancient language. Long forgotten by us. Probably never used by us.”
“Who’s the author?” Rosa asked. Without waiting for permission she closed the book and looked at the cover. “There’s nothing on it.”
Strømberg turned it over. “You read this book from right to left.”
And there, in what she’d once heard Mr Henry describe as ‘gothic script’, Rosa saw a title. “
The Book of Ag…a…
,”
“Agawin,” Thorren Strømberg said.
Agawin. Rosa repeated it to herself. The name had an interesting chime. “Who’s he?”
“I’m hoping you and David will find
out.”
She looked worriedly at the boy. His condition hadn’t changed. “How?”
“Through your work, that’s all. Through patience, diligence – and faith. I don’t believe it was coincidence that brought you two together or that made you discover the location of this book or that made the firebirds point you in the direction of dragons. I think they want answers just as much as we do. I want you to change your intention, Rosa. From now on, when you’re putting the books into order, ask the librarium for something else besides. Ask for guidance about this author and for the means to translate this
text.”
Rosa blew a short breath.
No pressure
,
she thought. “What language is it? Do you
know?”
Strømberg bobbed his head. “Well, it only ever appears in other books about dragons. So… Charles, do you want to tell her?”
Mr Henry cleared his throat. “Webelieve it’s evidence of their existence, Rosa. We don’t know, of course, how thecreatures would describe it, but we like tocall it ‘dragontongue’.”
20
At the same time that the rain had begun tofall on Rosa outside the Bushley Librarium, it was falling on Eliza in the Dead Lands, too. It was the final irony,she thought. Abandoned, lost, endangeredby
memories
(if Aunt Gwyneth was to bebelieved), and now getting soaked aswell. The only thing that seemed to makesense to her was the piece of clay in herhands. As the rain came down anddroplets ran off its smooth grey surface, Eliza let her fingers instinctively work it,using what she needed of the rain to helpher. Slowly, an object came together inher hands, though it seemed to possess nouseful shape. It wasn’t even circular,
more… What was the word she’d heard Harlan use to describe graf:ical data of unequal distribution? Lop-sided. That was it. The thing was lop-sided. Fatter, more globular, at one end than the other. Imbalanced, but somehow perfect for it. And once she’d settled on the basic shape, it seemed right to her to want to make dents, or
pits
, all over its surface, until each pit had a smooth finish she could only describe as… She squeezed her eyes shut. Her equilibrium rocked. Her fainfree mind was working so fast that her head literally shook as she tried to identify the unfamiliar images flashing through it. All around her she could feel the Dead Lands responding, pulling at her senses, wanting what she knew. Her thumb passed over the object again, re-examining its
textured surface. And suddenly it came to her. The word she was seeking. Planished. The surface of the object was
planished
.
At that moment, something began to happen with the rain. Suddenly, it wasn’t just falling any more, but sweeping across her from any number of different angles. It was bulging and swirling and slapping at her sides as if she had somehow offended
the clouds and they were bent on driving her away from underneath them. Each fresh eddy was accompanied by a terrifying sizzling noise and an unmistakeable flare of heat. The effect
was so pronounced that as the pressure of air around her body increased it soon became clear that it was not really water striking Eliza’s arms as she raised them, but vaporised water. Steam.
Amazingly, she felt no pain. Onlyterror. As she began to look about her, notfor rabbits and ducks upon the surface ofthe land, but for something
large
in thehowling skies, she noticed a monsterbanking through the storm. Monster. Aword most Co:pern:icans had longforgotten. But there it was, in a muddlingvaporous form. A creature so hideouslybeautiful that its improbable existencewould have torn apart the mind of anyonewho looked upon it unprepared – unlessthey already had a memory of the beast. Somewhere in Eliza Merriman’s
consciousness she was able to put a name to the wraith.
Dragon
. She was seeing a
dragon.
And not just one.
The ghostly images of a dozen or more
crossed each other time after time. Now and then, she would catch a glimpse of an eye. Jewel-like. Complex. All-knowing. Magnificent. Wings shaped like the edges of holly leaves, so dark that they tented out the light as they approached. Tails, supple and immensely strong; a single flick would have the creatures swapping direction or rolling on their backs at any moment. Claws like the talons of firebirds, but ten times, twenty times, bigger than them and with danger oozing from every tip. Fire that exploded a million raindrops and caused the air around them to bend to its will.
Dragons
.
Eliza stumbled back and forth, trying tomake sense of it. There was no time to
think if they might be attacking her or how
she might defend herself or where she might
go
. All she could do was experience them. On and on and on they came. Swooping, glaring, showing off their power. Until, in time, the bizarre thought struck her that the real enigma here
was
she
, and not them. At that point some unforeseen confidence rose inside her and she reached up her hands and cried, “I AM ELIZA!”
Immediately, the creatures ceased their strafing. The rain settled back into vertical patterns and the dragons hovered in a dome-shaped arrangement around her.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” she called out. She swept around, staring at these ghosts in turn, until one of them put itself forth as a leader.
It was smaller than the rest, and there
was something about its slimly-built frame that made Eliza shudder to her core. Its
body was more like the size of a man’s. Less scaly. Definitely boned (there was next to no covering at the ribs). But the notion of a man with the face of a dragon and the wings of a bird (a gigantic bird), was not something her auma could cope with. She looked away rather than look it in the eye.
Eliza, hold up your hands
, it said.
The voice was in her head. A growling, primitive sound that reminded her of the roar that David had made during his dream.
Shaking wildly, she turned and faced the thing. “What are you?” she whispered.
The eyes, she could swear, despite their strange triangular slant, were those of a
man.
Your hands
, it said again.
And so Eliza raised her hands in theshape of a cup. Only then did it occur toher that the object she had moulded wasstill within them. A burst of white lightsuddenly engulfed it. The shockwavetravelled through Eliza’s arms and onwardto every extremity of her body. Her kneesbuckled and her breath expired. For ablink of time her constructed heart
stopped. She collapsed unconscious, onto the Dead Lands. The object she had made from clay rolled from her hands.
When the firebirds found her, she was stillin a heap. Six of them came. Three weredispatched into the skies above to eitherkeep watch or trace down elements of the
ethereal activity that had drawn them to this place. One, a green and orange beauty not unlike Runcey, attended to Eliza’s auma and general body warmth. The red bird responsible for the attack on David stood guard.
The last to arrive was the cream-
coloured bird with the apricot tufts that had visited the daisy fields outside the librarium. Like before, it occupied itself just strolling around investigating the scene. At one point, it hopped onto Eliza’s shoulder and was immediately shooed off by its red companion. Despite the difference of opinion, there was an element of good fortune about this dismissal. For when the cream bird landed on the earth again, it stumbled across a jewel every bit as impressive as
the flame it had found embedded in a teardrop outside the eyrie. And it was not just its eye ridges it lifted when it saw it. Every feather on its body stood on end. It let out such a startled
rrrh
! that the red
firebird gave an irritated squawk and poddled over to see what all the fuss was about.
The two birds gulped and looked at one another. There in the dying grass was something never before seen outside the eyries.
An egg.
21
Two days after his chat with Rosa, Thorren Strømberg arrived at the Ragnar Institute to meet Harlan Merriman and
Bernard Brotherton. He was immediatelyescorted to a secluded ground floorlaboratory and into a square, windowlessroom. In the centre of the room was a
piece of apparatus that resembled a large horseshoe (although horses were long extinct, the symbol associated with them was not; a common irony on Co:pern:ica). The apparatus was serviced on either side by two dormant com:puters. In front of the ‘shoe’, as Bernard called it, was a dark observation screen. It was behind here that Thorren Strømberg was directed
while Brotherton set about priming the
device.
“So innocuous a set-up,” the counsellor said. A number of lights flickered on around the shoe, coating the ceiling in a warm blue haze.
Harlan nodded. “Less than fourdec:ades ago, the equipment you see herewould have taken up the entire Institute,and more. Developments in moleculartech:nology have enabled us to not onlyreduce the size of the hardware, but vastlyincrease the speed of our research. Thisinoffensive piece of kit is close to creatingdark matter. One day, in this very room,we will make – and analyse – the glue thatbinds our universe together.”
“And today?”
“Today we find out what tore it apart,
briefly, in your clinic.”
Strømberg gazed through his reflection on the screen. The blue lights were now chasing each other round the shoe and a thin, distinct hum had risen from it. “Do you have clearance for this, Harlan?”
The Professor turned his gaze to a screen at his right, adjusting the position of a cross-hair marker. “It’s my job to investigate spatial enigmas.”
“That’s not what I asked. Is it safe?”
Harlan Merriman pushed his tonguebetween his lips. “Since I last spoke toyou, Bernard has run over a thousandsimulations. The rifts produced by themhave all been stable. The only means ofactivating a rift is by direct physicalintervention.”
“Stepping through?”
Harlan smiled. “Don’t worry, Counsellor. This is just a test. Intransference terms, it couldn’t tele:portyour outgoing breath, let alone your stride. Bernard, how’re we doing?”
Brotherton walked across in front of thedevice and made a final check on the
second console. White coat. Balding head. Drainpipe trousers. The caricature of a scientist, Strømberg thought. “Another minit,” the tech:nician said.
Harlan primed his com:puter. “How’s David?” he asked, flicking switches. “You said you were going to visit him soon.”
“I did,” Counsellor Strømberg replied. Keeping his auma even he said, “He was sleeping soundly all the time I was there.”
“No more dreams?”
“Apparently not.”
Harlan nodded silently.
“You look disappointed.”
Harlan shook his head. “I can’t helpthinking that if David was able to accesshis dreams, there wouldn’t be a need forwhat we’re doing here.”
“Are you having second thoughts aboutthe procedure? It’s not too late to abandonthis.”
“This is science,” Harlan replied. “As long as we have a need for answers, there will always be a need for procedures, Thorren.”
Bernard joined them at the observationarea. “All set,” he said, with a nervousbreath.
Harlan laced his fingers together andstretched them. “Well, gentlemen. Let’ssee if we can find out what bothered my
son. Ready?”
Strømberg and Brotherton nodded.
“Then behold the universe in
microcosm.”
And he lowered his hand towards the
controls.
In that same time frame, in the Dead Lands, Aunt Gwyneth had returned to finda trail of stones where Eliza had been,each of them dropped ten paces apart. Thetrail stretched over the nearest rise. Andeven when the Aunt had crested that, thestones continued well into the distance. Far ahead, but still within walking range,the old woman could see a small and