Last Dragon 7: The Fire Ascending

by Chris d'Lacey

  Instead, I saw a deranged black unicorn.

  “Get up,” said the rider.

  A blaze of sunlight at his back made him difficult to see. But I knew in my heart it was Voss.

  Still spluttering for breath, I staggered to my feet. Another rider was sitting on a horse beside the unicorn. He was overweight and stripped to the waist, despite the cold. He leaned sideways and spat at Eirik. A red stain was growing on the back of Eirik’s head.

  “Look well, boy, and learn,” Voss said coldly. “Red is always the color of treachery.” He glanced at the newly made stones, then the trees. “How did you pass through the forest unharmed?”

  I gulped, which only served to burn my throat.

  “Get the horse,” Voss muttered to the other man, giving me a precious moment to think. If I told Voss the truth he would know I’d been aided by a force like the Fain. And where had they gone? I wondered. Perhaps he suspected I was Premen already, but there was no harm trying to mislead him a little. “I used an enchantment.”

  He grunted with laughter. But there was just enough doubt in his shrinking eyes to make me believe he was ready to be fooled. He rolled a hand, inviting me to please explain. My answer, he warned, had better be good. My life depended on it.

  I slid my pack to the ground and opened it, keeping my hands in plain view. I drew out the tapestry Eleanor had given me. The one that Grella had labeled Gawaine. “The seer Brunne told me the skogkatts would fear this. When I showed it, they swore their allegiance to the dragon and guided me safely to the edge of the forest.” I displayed Gawaine across my chest.

  The unicorn immediately bucked, lifting Voss higher against the sun. He gripped the mane and violently pulled the thing under control. It sickened me to see a small amount of fluid oozing out of the stump of its horn. “How do you know this queen?” Voss growled. Like his mount, he was disturbed by the image.

  I remembered Eleanor, talking of her daughter. “It came to me in a dream,” I said.

  Another horse pulled up with a clatter of hooves. Astride it was the sibyl Hilde.

  “You know him?” said Voss, taking note of her squint.

  “The seer’s apprentice. He was at the river.”

  “The one you let journey with the tornaq?”

  “Yes.”

  Voss nodded and steadied his mount again. He reached into a saddlebag and pulled something out. “You drew this, boy?”

  I cupped my eyes. To my astonishment, it was the tapestry I’d started in Eleanor’s krofft. The writing dragon was there, at its center. But there was also a kneeling child with it now. A young girl I hadn’t drawn or even remembered. She was holding the dragon in the cup of her hands. Looking at her made me feel strangely dizzy. “Grella?” I muttered. Had she drawn herself into the picture as a child? Surely only she could have worked on the drawing?

  Voss gathered up the tapestry and put it away. “Bring him,” he said, and tugged on his reins.

  The overweight man trotted his horse forward. Before I could open my mouth again, he had struck my face with the back of his fist. The world turned black and I fell to my knees. All I could think about before I passed out was the lingering image of that innocent child.

  When I came to, my hands were tied tight behind my back and I was sitting up against a wall of rock. The air was so thin it hurt to breathe it. A few flakes of snow were clinging to my robe. My shoes had been removed and my feet and ankles were slightly blue, though not as cold as they might have been. Even here, at the very neck of Kasgerden, the rising heat of the Earth could be felt. Galen, it seemed, was still calling out, drawing Gaia’s auma to him. Meanwhile, the sun was setting to the west of the mountain, pulling shadows across the far fields of Taan. Only the wetlands around Lake Varlusshandaan were easily picked out of the dusky orange landscape. It would not be long now before the rising moon was reflected in their calm, flat surfaces. With the moon would come the dying of the dragon — and the challenge to it from Voss.

  He had camped on a ledge that was an overspill from a natural cave, a considerable height above the Skoga forest. From the position of the sun, I guessed it had taken half a day or more to reach it. If the ache in my back was to be believed, I had spent the entire journey slung across Eirik’s horse. I could barely straighten my head to look around. When I did, there was Voss, sitting on a fallen rock just in front of me. In the background were the horses and three other men, playing dice. The unicorn was lying down, trying to sleep. Grella was beside it, stroking its mane. She was unharmed but clearly frightened. Every part of her face was screaming at me, Idiot! What are you doing here? The sibyl Hilde was nowhere to be seen.

  “You must be hungry,” Voss said. He was eating the meat I’d taken from the krofft, hewing off chunks like a bear might do. Despite this brutish display, he did not strike me as an uncouth man. The manner in which he held himself, the way he turned the joint of meat between his hands, even the ring of gold in his ear, suggested that he hailed from a noble tribe. Unlike Egil and Eirik, he took care of his appearance. His fingernails were clean and so were his clothes. His beard was well tended and close to his skin. Like the rest of his hair it was fully black, a shade that had also seeped into his eyes. He wore a plain padded jerkin, narrowed at the waist by a sturdy belt. In his belt was the unicorn horn. Rune’s hunting knife was slid into the top of one boot.

  “You’ll forgive me,” he said, “for stealing your food, but you’ve brought about the deaths of two of my men and inconvenienced my quest somewhat. A share of your provisions is the least you owe me.” He spat a piece of gristle, which was picked up by a raven hopping around his feet. I watched the bird tear the gristle into strips. Every rip was echoed in the lining of my stomach. I had not eaten since leaving the krofft. “I should, of course, throw you off the cliff and be done.” He paused and waved the meat around. The raven’s keen eyes followed its arcs. “But you intrigue me, apprentice. I like a boy with spirit.” He reached into his jerkin and pulled out my tapestry. He spread it out on the ground and weighted the corners with four loose stones. “You’re going to tell me exactly what you saw with the tornaq. And I’d ask you not to dither. I still have a destiny to fulfil with the dragon.”

  I pitched a little and began to cough. A flare of pain all around my left cheekbone reminded me of the blow I’d taken. From the cave there came a high-pitched wail. A woman in pain. Voss ignored it, but took a little pity on me. “Give him water.”

  Grella looked toward the cave, then uncertainly at Voss.

  He ran his knuckles down the side of her face, pushing back her tumbling yellow hair. “When I give an order, you obey me, remember?”

  “Yes, Lord,” she said. She hurried to my side. The unicorn let out a quiet whinny.

  Grella took a water pouch from her belt and offered it up to my dry, cracked lips. “Don’t speak to me,” she whispered. “He’ll be watching for that.” I filled my mouth with the warlord’s water. Its coolness was a welcome relief for my throat.

  From the cave came another awful wail.

  Voss swung his body toward his men. “Gunn,” he barked. “Go and quieten the witch.”

  Gunn, the overweight thug who’d struck me, threw a wary look to the cave. “I ain’t good with nippers,” he said.

  Voss drew the unicorn horn.

  “All right,” Gunn said, clambering to his feet. For a man with several layers of fat, he could run like a startled rabbit when threatened.

  But even as Voss put the horn away, Gunn was back again, chased out of the cave by the sibyl’s screams.

  “It’s coming,” he said. “She wants you, Voss.”

  “I’m busy,” Voss growled.

  “Well, it ain’t a pretty sight.”

  “Nor are you,” Voss argued. “Now get back in there and stuff her mouth.”

  Gunn looked at his friends. They shrugged and went back to their dice.

  Voss turned toward me again.

  While their argument had been taking place, I ha
d managed a swift exchange with Grella:

  “What’s happening in the cave?”

  “Voss made a vile potion for Hilde — from the stem of the unicorn’s horn.”

  The oozing fluid. “He poisoned her?”

  “No. She’s birthing a child.”

  So Eirik had not been lying about that. “Why did Hilde take you?”

  “To calm the unicorn. When it passed through Taan it knew I was there and tried to leave Voss. Be quiet now. Drink.”

  “One last thing.”

  She frowned. Voss was about to turn.

  “Why did you draw the child on the tapestry?”

  Her face turned as pale as the falling snow. “I didn’t,” she whispered. “She appeared by herself.” She thrust the water pouch back to my lips.

  “Enough,” Voss barked.

  Grella, head bowed, pulled away.

  “Well, boy? What have you to say about this?” He jutted his chin at the tapestry.

  “I saw many things with the tornaq,” I said. I swallowed and added, “Too many to remember.”

  Voss sighed. He stroked his beard twice. “It’s a long drop, boy. You’ll have time to remember every crack in every rock if you don’t start talking.” He pointed the joint of meat at the image. “The dragon is writing. What did you see?”

  And suddenly, I knew a way to free my hands. “A symbol.”

  “A symbol?” He tilted his head.

  “I can’t describe it — but I could draw it for you.”

  He looked at me and chuckled, a clear indication that my plan was as plain as the night sky above. He pulled the hunting knife out of his boot and shaved off a sliver of meat from the joint. “If I have to ask you again, apprentice, I’ll cut off your toes and make you hobble to your death. What did you see the dragon writing?”

  I looked at Grella. Just tell him, she mouthed. But I didn’t need to. I happened to glance down at the tapestry just then. And there, very small, but also very clear on the dragon’s parchment, were the three curved lines that translated as sometimes. How they had appeared, I did not know. But Voss had followed my puzzled gaze and he could now see the lines for himself.

  He stood up, throwing the meat aside. The raven cocked its head in hope. It danced what it knew could be a ritual of death, then caarked once and stole the entire joint, dragging it away to a sheltered lip of rock. Voss put the knife away and drew the horn again. He pointed it squarely at me. Out of its tip came three dark lines of twisted light.

  The unicorn neighed, setting off the horses.

  The men stirred and began to call, “Voss, what’s ’appening?”

  I heard Grella scream, “No, leave him alone!”

  But by then the dark light had struck my forehead. I jerked and kicked as the shadow force the Fain had warned me about swarmed through my mind. I saw Voss’s mouth curl around the words, but the voice I heard came directly from the Ix.

  You will tell us what you know about Isenfier.

  They probed my memories and pulled out the image I had seen with the tornaq. I saw the dragon and I saw the child. She had wings on her back. A human girl with feathered wings. She was kneeling on grass. In a valley between hills. There were other humans with her. And dragons like Galen in the sky above.

  You will locate this timepoint, said the Ix.

  I screamed as darkness pressed upon my auma from a thousand different points of space.

  But just as quickly, I was free of it again. When I shook myself back to full alertness, Voss was staring at the peak of the mountain and his men were trying to control the horses and the unicorn was even more demented and the moon had risen and there were eagles in the sky and there was so much heat coming out of the rocks — and so much snow coming down the rock face.

  The first slide took Gunn’s friends over the cliff. It gathered them up like pieces of fluff and carried them into the empty sky. They made no sound as they fell. All that could be heard was a distant whump! as their bones smashed against their unmarked graves. Voss leaped back and turned the horn upon the next fall of snow. A bolt of the dark light struck it. The air filled with crystals of sparkling black ice. I lost sight of Voss, but saw an eagle swoop down and sink its talons into Gunn’s chubby face. He let out a shrill, gut-wrenching cry and turned a circle with the bird still fixed to his head. I didn’t see what became of him and I did not care to imagine. By then, Grella was at my side. She hastily untied my hands.

  “The cave!” she shouted. “It’s our only chance!”

  But as I got to my feet, a vast shadow appeared behind the crystal cloud. Every living thing present — me, Grella, Voss, the horses — must have thought we had breathed our last. Galen had come, with his wings spread wide, hovering in the way that Yolen had described to me in stories in the cave. He flipped his wings once and we were scattered like seeds to the back of the ledge. Through the swirling ice, I saw his jeweled eyes lock onto the unicorn. It was neighing at him with all its might.

  I heard Grella crying, “No, no!”

  But before I could wonder what she meant, Galen had brought his giant tail around and driven his triangular isoscele into the unicorn’s anguished heart. I had never seen a more appalling sight or heard such a brutal squelch. But as the unicorn buckled, its body turned white and its eyes shone blue. It collapsed onto its side and crumbled into ash. In death, Galen had given it peace.

  My thoughts immediately turned to Voss. I remembered Yolen saying, With the unicorn gone, his powers will be diminished. Yet Voss was showing no sign of fear. I was shielding Grella tight in my arms when I saw him approaching the lip of the cliff. Three eagles circled, wanting to attack. Galen snorted, keeping them back. This was going to be the dragon’s kill.

  Then Voss did a very strange thing. He raised his arms high above his head, holding the unicorn horn between them. I thought, Why would a man, even one controlled by the Ix, come this far and not attempt to fight the dragon? Right away I knew the answer. “He wants to die,” I muttered.

  “What?” said Grella, shaking in my arms.

  “Voss wants the dragon to kill him.”

  So that he could live again. But in what form?

  “Go to the cave,” I told her.

  “No, don’t leave me!”

  But I knew I had to.

  I tore myself away from her and ran toward Voss. What was I to do though? What was I to do? Any impact would take us both off the cliff. I could try to draw the hunting knife from his boot, but would I have the courage to plunge it into him? Thankfully, neither of these options arose. With a thunder of hooves a horse ran in front of me, blocking my approach. I looked into its eye and saw a sparkle of life that did not belong there. The Fain. So that’s where they had gone.

  We had to shelter from the Ix, they said, coming back to me, commingling all their intentions at once. Voss would have seen us in you with ease. You must leave and take Grella. Voss and Hilde have planned a great evil. We cannot defeat it. And the dragon has few reserves of fire.

  No. I slapped the horse and it moved away. “Voss!” My heart thumped with youthful defiance. My mouth filled with ice. My eye was on the dragon. I saw Galen in all his monstrous glory. Claws undressed. Nostrils flaring. Crescent fangs coated with sulfur and bile. The smell of him scoured the back of my throat. The heat of him stoked my fear — and my pride. What did it matter that his color was fading? That his scales were not shining green or bronze? Every muscle in his vast, incredible body was primed to wreak destruction on Voss. But he would not fight this villain alone. Or be tricked by any false sacrifice. I started to run for Voss again, but was thrown back by Galen’s deafening roar. There was heat in my ears, possibly some blood. My skull felt like the egg of a bird that had had its yolk blown out through a hole. The dragon had called and the Earth had answered. A giant crack had appeared in the ledge. It ran toward the cave and split the lintel of rock above it. The mountain shifted a little. Out of the fissure came a burst of flame.

  The Fire Eternal, the F
ain commingled. I did not recognize or know the term then, but I felt the reverence they gave to it. If we died here now, in the fire ascending from the core of this world, we would be taken into the arms of Gaia.

  But Gaia was not ready to take me that day.

  I saw the flames roll toward Voss. He must have been using a powerful enchantment to keep himself in front of Galen, for he was still positioned exactly as before, with his arms raised high, holding on to the horn. He seemed unaware of the approaching danger. Or maybe he was simply waiting for it. Without warning, he switched the horn to one hand and pointed it at the dragon’s breast. Finally, Galen responded with force. He closed one set of claws around Voss and popped him like a ripened berry. I turned my head as the pulp began to run. When I looked again, the claws were encased in fire. There was nothing to identify Voss the man, barring a glimpse of burning skull. But he had left a deadly thorn behind. With a squeal more akin to a rabbit than a dragon, Galen pulled back, drawing a trail of the Fire Eternal with him. In the flat of his foot was the unicorn horn.

  He is poisoned, said the Fain, and the Ix are within him.

  The dragon thrashed his tail and squealed again.

  The cave, said the Fain. Agawin, we must hide.

  No. I would not desert Galen now. I shook my head and ran to the cliff edge. “Galen! Galen! Look at me!” I roared. I had no idea what I was doing. I was just a boy who wanted to aid a dragon. A child befuddled by seers and tapestries and the beauty of a girl and the lure of a quest. Perhaps it had always been my destiny to stand on Kasgerden on the day that Galen died. Or perhaps I was just the lucky one. The voice that would carry his name into the future and one day illuminate the world about dragons. I called once more. Galen turned his head. A hideous and cruel metamorphosis had gripped him. His body was shrinking and turning black. Every crack of his bones put a twist in my gut. His striking face had contracted into ugliness. Where there had once been dignity was horror.