Last Dragon 7: The Fire Ascending

by Chris d'Lacey

  “Babby, I reckun.”

  “You reckun?”

  “Ain’t sure.”

  “Well, izzit or ain’t it?”

  “Babby, all right — but old, not babbylike.”

  “Can’t ’appen, you loaf.”

  “Can, sez I.”

  “Show me.” She wobbled a scrawny hand. “Griss wud see this babby, she wud.”

  Stygg opened the shawl.

  The old woman leaned farther out of the window. Her nose was as hooked as a raven’s beak. The nostrils twitched. The eye shrank back. “That be a babby wi’ a curse yon its ’ead.”

  “Cursed? How be?”

  “Witched by a sibyl. Be a wrong ’un, for sure. Lookee at them rynkles. T’ain’t natrul, izzit?”

  “She ’ad it, tho’.” Stygg pointed at Grella. “’Er. The Taan gurl. Weren’t no sibyl anyways near. ’Eld it, she did. Tight, like her own. Sang to it. Pretty. She weren’t frit.”

  “Din say I wuz frit. Din say I wuz frighted, jus’ that it’s wrong. That rynkler ain’t no use to no eremitt. Throw it to the dogs, the accursed thing.”

  Stygg’s sighs became a grunt. He bent down to do the deed.

  At that point, Grella raised her head. “Stop.” She sounded wuzzy, still suffering from whatever had been on the dart.

  “Put a chain on that,” said Griss. “Lay it in the barn. It cun side with the pig.”

  “Ain’t chaining it. Wants it for a wife, I does.”

  “WIFE! What Taan’s gonna whisper in your thick lugs? Chain it. Look at them long white legs. You don’t put no chain on them they be off thru the trees like a scoldy rabbit. Don’t wannit runnin’ away now, do we? It cun work, it can. It cun cook. It cun clean. It cun prob’ly skin a rat, cun this pretty catch.”

  “My baby,” said Grella. “Don’t hurt my baby….”

  Griss replied with a soggy sniff. “You won’t be needin’ that babby no more. The dogs,” she said to Stygg. “Or the mud pools. Go.”

  “No!” Grella scrabbled to her knees. The dart dropped from her neck. She gripped Stygg’s legs.

  “Strike it down!” his foul mother squawked.

  Stygg was in two minds about that. But he gave in to his ma and swiped his fist across Grella’s face. She fell sideways, dribbling blood from her mouth. I thought I heard one of her cheekbones crack.

  Despite the hum of pain, she raised herself again. “If you take her you might as well kill me now. I’ll do nothing for you. I’d rather starve myself than stir a pot for you.”

  “Idle, wicked talk,” squeaked Griss. “I’ll be ’aving the meat off yer bones fer that. An’ yer pretty Taan hair.” She ran a hand over her repulsive head. A spider that had made its web behind an earlobe scuttled away and hid itself inside the ear. Griss pointed to the baby. “Be rid of it, Stygg.”

  But Stygg was undecided again. “What’s a babby eat?”

  Griss shook the lantern, sending a flare of light into the trees. “What? What blether you sayin’ to me now?”

  “Scraps, ain’t it? Leftovers is all.”

  “Milk,” said Grella, holding her face. “The child needs milk. You’ve got a goat. I can smell it. I’ll milk it myself. I’ll work. I promise. I’ll do what you ask if you spare the baby. I’ll sew for you as well.”

  “Sew?” said Stygg. “What need ’ave we of —”

  “Hold your fat tongue,” Griss said to her son. “’Splain yerself, gurl. And makee quick.”

  “I’m Taan,” said Grella. “I can sew things for you. Dresses. Tapestries. Things you can trade.”

  I looked at Griss. The crone was licking her blistered lips.

  “I got ’oles,” said Stygg, pulling at his rags.

  “Give me a needle, I’ll make you a robe.”

  A wide smile spread across his goofy face. “What sez you, Ma?”

  “I sez you’re a love-struck eremitt loaf. All right, be giving her the babby — then chain her.”

  They put her, as Griss had suggested, with their pig — or what was left of the wretched beast; it had festering welts where its ears should have been and hobbled around on three good legs. Stygg hammered a link around Grella’s ankle and chained her to a post beside the animal’s trough. He soon saw the error in this. When I returned, a day had gone by and he was drenching Grella with buckets of water to clean off the pig dirt she’d trailed into the shack. He moved her instead to a barn infested with scabby mice and insects which liked to suck blood from her flesh. (I spent my next few visits in the guise of a spider, eating as many of those parasites as I could.) Over several days, I saw her make a crib in a log pile for the baby. She herself slept on rough sacks on the floor.

  I watched Stygg construct another chain. Not as stout as the first, but long enough to let Grella move around the shack or reach the well from where they drew water. They put her to work from the moment they had her. Scrubbing in the mornings, cooking in the afternoons. Stews. Always stews. Usually mice from the barn. Topped and tailed and boiled in their skins. They made her catch woodlice and sprinkle them into the stewing pot, whole. If Stygg caught a pigeon or a squirrel in the woods she would be told to stuff it with spiders, for flavor. (Several times I had to hide my host away to avoid ending up in the pot myself.) Now and then Stygg slayed an elderly villhund. If Grella was lucky they would throw her a bone. Otherwise, she ate the same slop she made for them. And in case she ever thought of poisoning them, with fungus or some deadly leaf or thorn, they would always make sure she ate a bowlful first — then give some of the juice to Gwilanna. At every tasting, the sibyl cried. No matter how hard Grella blew on the juice, it always scalded the baby’s lips. It was a wonder the wrinkled child survived.

  In the evenings, they made Grella sew. For this, she needed basic materials. Griss sent her son on a mission. I did not follow him through the Is, but three days later he returned to the shack with a bundle of spoils. Across the floor he spilled tapestry cloths, needles, wool. I saw Grella blanch. She knew, as I did, what had happened. Stygg had crossed the border and raided a krofft. Taan blood was still drying on his hunting knife.

  With a heavy heart, Grella set to work. Her only comfort, besides Gwilanna, was the tapestries she now began to make. She drew pictures of that last day on Mount Kasgerden. The glory of Galen. The darkling in flame. Her captors were awed, their greed ignited. From what I overheard of their eager conversations, they knew that a dragon had died on the mountain. And here was the story recorded on cloth. Ignoring their disinclination to trade, Griss bustled Stygg out with Grella’s first tapestry, telling him she wanted a brush for it at least. Stygg did better than that. He brought back a brush and a mirror, too. Griss rejoiced. She ordered Stygg to hold Grella in a chair. Then she took a rusted, sickle-shaped knife and cut off Grella’s long fair hair. From it she made a wig of sorts, which she plastered to her head with a thin layer of goat dung. She hung the mirror from a tree and went out six or seven times a day to admire her grisly reflection. I watched her from the body of a sparrow and encouraged the bird to sit above the mirror and loose its waste products over the glass. None of this bothered Griss. The repulsive old crone just wallowed in her newfound vanity and “wealth,” and ordered Grella to produce more tapestries.

  Grella stayed calm and worked steadily, sometimes taking a cycle of the moon to complete one piece. Sheer tiredness prevented her from working for long (many times I would come to the barn and find her asleep with a cloth in her hands, the mice nibbling at the edges of it). She was also aware that every time her supplies ran out, someone else in Taan could be murdered by Stygg. I watched her scratch marks on the wall of the barn to keep a tally of all Stygg’s raids. If any chance of revenge presented itself, his punishment was sure to be multiply unpleasant. Daily, Griss screamed at her to speed things up. The incoming trickle of knickknacks and treats was becoming a way of life for the crone. Grella stuck to her rigid pace and was rash enough at times to argue with Griss that quality, not quantity, would reap the best rewards; it usu
ally brought her a slap across the face. Or a kick in the ribs. Or a lash from a cane. It was all I could do not to call down a dragon and burn this foul place out of existence. I hated seeing Grella suffer like this. But I obeyed Joseph Henry and did not get involved — though I was once, unwittingly, almost the cause of both our deaths.

  One night, when the fire stars brought me to the barn, I immediately sensed that something wasn’t right. I commingled with my favorite host, the squirrel (it tended to wait for me now), but its limbs felt stiff and its auma strange. I looked up at Grella from the floor of the barn. “Ah, there you are,” she said. “I’ve something to show you.” She lifted Gwilanna and pulled out a tapestry she was keeping hidden. She turned it around and pointed to the picture. “Look, that’s you. My only friend.” It was a portrait of the squirrel eating a nut. The tail and the body were already sewn in. She was starting to work on the arch of the eye.

  A fever raged in my head. I began to shake. The squirrel’s teeth chattered. The space between me and the tapestry image began to melt into a murky gel. “What’s the matter?” said Grella, puzzled and disturbed in equal measure. At that moment, the firebird, Aurielle, rushed into my mind. Grella must not complete this image, she said. Or you will stay in the timeline in the form of the squirrel. This was the price I had paid for repeatedly using the same host animal: Grella had grown familiar with it. She had pulled me too far into her consciousness. I was in danger of changing her timepoints.

  At that moment, Stygg wandered into the barn. “Squir’l,” he muttered, and picked up a lump of rotting wood. With a thwack that made the barn walls rattle, he brought the wood down and tried to squash me flat. Splinters flew in all directions, even into Gwilanna’s crib. I was lucky to escape unharmed. Stygg was groggy and his aim was poor. I avoided the hit and found enough energy to skitter away and hide in the damp straw among the mice. But I knew I could never take a risk like that again. When he hauled Grella off to do Griss’s bidding, I went to the tapestry and pulled every thread of gray I could find, gradually working the whole squirrel free.

  When Grella returned and saw the piece ruined she fell to her knees, broke down, and cried. Griss beat her in the morning for being late and for damaging a precious cloth (in my haste I had made a hole in it). She told Grella this was her final warning. One more slip and the babby died. Maybe the ungrateful mother, too. Once again, Grella swallowed her pride. She offered an apology. This would not happen again. She lifted her head and saw me from the corner of her cherry-black eye. That was a terrible moment. After four months in captivity she was barely recognizable as the girl I’d met in Taan. They had beaten the beauty out of her and she looked no better than Griss at her worst. Why? her face asked me. Why did you do that?

  There was still a thread of gray wool caught between my claws. At the risk of threatening the timeline again I sent her a signal I hoped would be of comfort. I lifted a paw and held it as near to my heart as I could. Grella’s gaze narrowed. She made a fist of one hand and touched it to her breast. I let the squirrel chirrup quietly. She blinked in confusion and cried a little more. Perhaps she thought her wits had deserted her. For how, even in a time of dragons, could a squirrel have known the age-old salute of Taan …?

  “You were lucky,” said Joseph, when I reappeared on the librarium window. So much time had passed in Nomaad; in Co:pern:ica, we’d barely paused to breathe.

  I looked at the stars. There was more of Grella’s story to see.

  “Did I do too much, showing her the greeting?”

  A daisy appeared in his hands. He caressed each petal with the back of his finger, making them lift and slightly change color. “She will believe for a while that magicks were at work. Then she will begin to question her sanity. Then she will tell herself a squirrel is a squirrel and that squirrels have a habit of holding one paw in a certain fashion. You did no harm. But there will come a moment when your limits will be tested. And then, Agawin, what will be, will be.”

  I resolved to be stronger. I would not tease Grella with hope again. “Tell me this: Why doesn’t Gwilanna age?”

  To my surprise he said, “She does. She is. There are just no physical signs of it. She’s aging rapidly — and growing, too. Far quicker than a normal child.”

  “Because of the unicorn auma she was born with?”

  “Yes. She is fully aware of her development, but she cannot break the curse Hilde put on her.”

  “Hilde did this? To her own child? Why?” If memory served me correctly, Gwilanna blamed Voss for her wrinkled skin.

  Joseph looped his hair behind his ear on one side, reminding me a little of his sister, Lucy. “If you were to visit the timepoints of Hilde you would see that Hilde tried to prevent Gwilanna being born. Too late she realized that Voss had poisoned her with darkened auma and that she, the mother, would perish giving birth. If Grella had heard the sibyl’s curse she might not have rescued Gwilanna from the cave. Hilde condemned the child to grow old in a sack of wrinkled baby skin, until someone showed her she was beautiful.”

  But who would do that? The child was as ugly as a common wart. “How did she become an adult?”

  “The fire stars will show you. And there is something you’ve missed.”

  I turned to look at him.

  He threw the daisy into the timeline and an image of Grella appeared before us. She was bending over Gwilanna’s crib, making baby talk and waggling a raggedy doll. She had made the doll from sackcloth stuffed with straw and dressed it in a Taan-style robe. Gwilanna gurgled happily and reached for the toy. Grella had given it a beautiful face and attached red strands of wool for the hair. “This is your kachina, your spirit doll,” said Grella. “It will guard your auma and be your guide. Are you going to say hello? Hello, Gwilanna.” She waved the doll’s arm. “When you’re old enough we’ll give her a real Taan name.”

  “Guh …,” said the baby, taking the toy and shaking it as if she might bring it to life.

  “Yes,” said Grella. “Guh, like a dragon …”

  The sound of Stygg clomping out of the shack stopped her happy chatter dead. She snatched the doll back and pushed it under a pillow she had made from a hollowed log. She looked anxiously over her shoulder. Her eyelids were puffy and purple-colored. Sores had formed in patches on her scalp where her hair had been continually severed. A red split that refused to heal marked where Stygg had broken her cheek.

  The image faded away.

  “You must prepare yourself for greater horrors,” said Joseph, noticing a tear rolling out of my eye.

  “Why did you show me this?”

  “For the doll.”

  “What of it?”

  “It’s important,” he said. “There is more you should know. You remember Rune?”

  Grella’s noble father.

  “Four times she took a baby to the border to show to him.”

  To prove the child was normal or face his wrath. I remembered Gwilanna telling me about it. “She made an arrangement with a woman from Horste and showed Rune that child in place of the sibyl.”

  “Yes,” he said. “She was afraid that Rune would kill Gwilanna because the baby was wrinkled and refused to grow. It was not long after their fourth meeting when Stygg ran across her near Yolen’s grave. Remember this as you progress through the Is.” He moved his hands and Grella’s stars sparkled in front of me again.

  Once more, I went back as the squirrel.

  Grella did as she’d promised. She grew less rebellious and settled into her servile role. She did not argue with Griss anymore or complain about the baby’s lips being scalded. She cooked. She skivvied. She mended cloth. More than once she had to fend off Stygg’s attentions — which was easy, given that his mother was near. On the surface, she seemed to accept her confinement, and I feared she had conceded all hope of escape. Then, one night, she began to sing Gwilanna a brand-new lullaby. It told of a hero come to slay an ogre: a toothless beast with very little hair. I soon realized the ogre was Griss and the hero
could only be Rune, Grella’s father. It occurred to me then, as it must have done to her, that her promise to show her baby to the Taan would be broken — which meant Rune would be forced to come looking for her. I noticed her scratching fresh marks on the barn, marks recording the quarters of the moon. She was counting down the time to the next winterfold and the anniversary of their regular meetings. But Rune’s chances of finding her in Nomaad were slim. It was untamed country with no set paths. Grella, however, had an answer to this. It lay, of course, in her needle and thread. With the tools of the Taan tribe at her disposal she had seen an opening that avarice had blinded her captors to. A picture could be more than a thing to look at. It might conceal a message. Or a signature.

  Or a map.

  I watched her carefully. The eremitts did not. Grella noted where the sun rose in the mornings and where it came to rest at night. She counted the trees and studied every possible curve of the land. She mentally copied down the layout of the stars. She picked out where the villhund barked and in which direction the spring birds flew. She studied the shack from every angle. The days grew shorter. The nights blew cold. Winterfold approached the land again.

  And Grella’s tapestries began to change.

  They moved away from dragons to more “homely” scenes. Woodland animals. General landscapes. She even drew an image of Stygg chopping wood. Griss complained at length about this. Who would want to trade a tapestry of Stygg?! she demanded. Or a river running through an empty field? Or the shack poking through a thicket of trees? Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Each picture cost the girl another wallop. Grella accepted it all. She simply replied that in her experience people liked views of things they could relate to, not necessarily things they’d never seen. Who among the Nomaads didn’t chop wood?

  To the eremitt’s surprise, the pictures did trade. Stygg exchanged the river for a pair of old boots and brought home a saddlecloth in place of the shack. The chopping scene, however, he saved for himself. He told his mother he’d traded it for apples, but the truth was he’d actually stolen the fruit. Later, he went to the barn and shyly revealed the tapestry to Grella. To his dismay, she was angry with him.