Last Dragon 7: The Fire Ascending

by Chris d'Lacey

  If I’m going to die, let it be now, she thought.

  “Cover your mouth. The fumes are getting worse.” He tore a strip off his shirt and offered it to her. She almost fainted at this act of mild heroism. Had she really been this crazy about this man before the Ix had got to her? Then again, he was mouth-meltingly handsome.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, seeing her looking.

  “Me and you. Do we go out together?”

  “What?” he coughed. The thickness of the air was pressing on his lungs. “Do we what together?”

  She covered her mouth with his shirt piece. “Nothing.”

  “Come on.” He bundled her around and pulled her down the mountain, with nearly as much intolerance as her previous captor. Only this one, she would have stayed with forever.

  They reached sea level in minutes, met right away by four large bears.

  “Okay, this is scary….,” Lucy whispered, nudging right up to Tam’s shoulder.

  The leading bear rolled its lip back and growled.

  Tam showed it the images in his hands. “I need to speak with Avrel and Kailar.” No human present could have understood the grunt, but the bears around him did.

  The leading bear spoke quickly to the others. They parted to let Tam through, but escorted him closely as he marched across the scree. Lucy trotted on close behind, still with Tam’s shirt across her mouth.

  They found Avrel sitting on a patch of clear ground, his head low down in his bright white chest. He heard the crunch of pebbles and raised his gaze.

  Again Tam showed his palms. “Avrel. My name is Tam Farrell. I am a friend of Ingavar. He blessed me with your image.”

  “I know who you are,” said the Teller of Ways.

  “He’s in the heart of the island. I can take you to him.”

  Avrel nodded. A slight breeze picked at the fur around his ears.

  “Commander!” a distant voice called.

  Tam heard it and said, “These men you are guarding are no danger to you now. Something has reverted the Shadow in us. Let them take arms. They will help you fight Voss.”

  Avrel glanced at the men, the sleek lines of his jaw so sharp against the sky. “The fight is over,” he said.

  Tam peered across the sea. He could still see darklings wheeling in the sky, albeit some distance away. “Voss is dead?”

  Avrel shook his head. “His darklings have multiplied in number and the Shadow has absorbed enough of our auma to begin an inversion of our species. We cannot fight anymore.”

  Lucy prodded Tam’s shoulder. “What’s going on?”

  Avrel turned his brown-eyed gaze on her. “You must take the girl away. Any child of the dragon is bound to suffer.”

  “Hey, did he speak to me then?”

  “Why?” said Tam, ignoring her. “What’s happened?”

  “Voss was seen with the flying girl.”

  “Alexa’s out there?” Tam spoke this aloud.

  “Alexa?!” Lucy shoved Tam aside and put herself in front of Avrel. “Where? Where is A-lex-a? You-have-to-find-her.”

  Tam translated her outburst, adding, “You have to fight, Avrel. Ingavar will lead you, with Kailar at his side.”

  Avrel tipped his snout into the wind. “Look at the water, Tam Farrell.”

  Tam looked and saw the tide was rolling in. In his haste to bring Lucy down to the shore he hadn’t noticed that the sea was fluid again. His heart sank when he saw a wide slick of blood.

  “For us, the battle is done,” said Avrel. “Kailar is dead.”

  All David could do was stand and stare. It was her, from the beautiful hips to the snaking hair. With no ugly adornments from the Shadow. Human again. His Earth love.

  Zanna.

  She looked at the dragon, her bangles, her arm. Her fingers settled lightly over her scars. From that, she seemed to learn everything at once. “Oh my god …,” she whispered. “Rosa. Oh my god …”

  The first of the judders Tam and Lucy would feel on the slopes of the mountain happened at that point. Gawain flapped his wings and spiraled around the pool. A single point of flame went rocketing past him on its way to the dome of the island.

  “Something’s happening,” said Zanna. “Gwilanna’s reporting waves of energy emerging from the other side of the core.”

  “I have to go,” David muttered, shaking his head. “There are bears. They’ll be looking for me.” He backed away.

  “Wait,” she commanded. Her devastating green eyes pierced his heart. “You know that Rosa would want you here.”

  Now he could only hold his face. Steepling his fingers around his nose, he tried to staunch the threat of tears. “Can you feel her?”

  “Of course I can.” The words were softly spoken. Zanna placed her fingers in the scars again. They began to glow blue. “Your antidote’s working. It’s spreading through the matrix the Ix created to control the humans. Gwilanna was right. The energy from the paradox was enough to force the change. Rosa has saved a lot of lives. But it won’t revert any of the darklings — or Voss. He’s too far gone. Only a dragon could take him down.”

  “That’s why I need to go.”

  The island rumbled again. This time, David felt it in his gut.

  “No,” she said. Once more he paused. “When Gwilanna messed with the timeline she got the added bonus of screwing up your connection to Grockle. You can’t call him. You’re out of phase. I can give you some of your old strength back but it won’t protect you against Voss’s magicks.”

  “Then take down this barrier and give me Gawain.”

  The dragon was following this conversation like a confused but faithful dog.

  “I can’t. Voss set it. Only he would know the encryption.”

  David whirled away, driving a hand through his hair in frustration. “This is ridiculous. I can’t just hang around waiting for this lump of rock to explode.” As he spoke, shale was cracking off the walls. “There must be something I can do.”

  “There is. They were right about Alexa. She’s close.”

  “How close? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “But you can feel her?”

  “Yes. The dragons, too. The Pennykettle dragons. She must have moved them here, through time.”

  “What’s she doing? If you can sense her, Voss must be able to. She might as well have painted him a ‘look here’ sign.”

  Zanna nodded, grim faced. “I have a horrible feeling she intends exactly that.”

  David rubbed his fingers against his temples. “You said I could do something. What did you mean?”

  “Call them. Call the dragons here. Your links to them overrule Alexa’s. If we get them away from her, Voss might go off the scent — and we’ll have a chance of freeing Gawain.”

  David gave a hopeful nod. There were very few problems in the known universe that couldn’t be solved by Liz’s creations. So he closed his eyes and pictured Gadzooks. Straightaway, he saw the writing dragon in Alexa’s hands. Gadzooks felt the auma wave and sat bolt upright. He put away his pad.

  “Come on-n-n,” muttered David, “look this way.”

  Gadzooks frowned and turned his head.

  “Good boy. Come to Daddy….”

  The dragon blew a puff of smoke and shook his head. Hrrr.

  Typical, thought David. He concentrated on G’reth instead. To his surprise, he saw Gadzooks morph into the wisher. “She’s combined them,” he said. “How’s she done that?”

  “Stay focused,” said Zanna. “Just get them here.” She came to him and put her hand to his heart. “Gawain is the key. Concentrate.”

  There was a fizzle of light, and suddenly G’reth had materialized before them.

  For a third time, an ominous rumble shook the island. Gawain beat his wings and bellowed a warning. The lava pool opened in the shape of a crown and began to spit white-hot rocks into the air.

  “Quickly,” Zanna said, “before Alexa calls them back. We need to get Gwilanna out of
there.”

  “How? What should I do?”

  “What you always do when you want to crack a nut.”

  “Use a sledgehammer?”

  “No, you idiot. You ask Gollygosh.”

  The healing dragon. The moment David thought of him, he’d taken G’reth’s place. “There, look. What’s with the morphing thing?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zanna. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, this whole island is about to go up. Ask him what he can do about the force field.”

  David dented it so Gollygosh could see the problem.

  And the dragon did what he always did. He put down his toolbox. It opened and an asterisk of light zipped out. The toolbox closed. Gollygosh disappeared. But just when David was thinking they had failed, the asterisk exploded into a shape. And suddenly, the answer to their problem was obvious.

  Only one thing in the universe could pass through a construct. A firebird.

  Gideon had come.

  Tam Farrell burst in with Lucy at his side. “David? Zanna?”

  Lucy ran to David and threw her arms around him. “They’ve got Alexa,” she whispered.

  David met Tam’s gaze. “Is this true?”

  Tam nodded and gave him a very quick rundown, pausing on the difficult news about Kailar. “He was last seen protecting Alexa. Voss attacked him with a jet of dark fire. It blasted a huge hole in the surface, destroying the freezing spell in the process. Kailar … didn’t come up. Any bears that survived the early battles must be in the water by now. I’m not sure what we can do for them. It gets worse, David. Voss is gathering darklings way out at sea. According to Avrel’s best reports they’ve tripled in number.”

  “Why aren’t they attacking the island?” asked Zanna.

  David looked at Gawain and said, “They’re waiting to see what happens to it.”

  Tam nodded in agreement. “We should get to the mainland. It’s safer there.”

  “What about Alexa?”

  “I’m guessing Voss has her.”

  “I doubt it,” said a voice.

  Everyone turned to see a shimmering boy sitting on the rock where Gideon had been.

  “Who are you?” said Lucy, in her usual semi-scornful way.

  The boy raised his angelic face to her. “I’m Joseph Henry, your brother.”

  Zanna plucked at David’s arm. Despite her considerable sibyl strengths, she was struggling to take this in. It didn’t help that the boy was the image of David — or how David might have been when he was twelve.

  Likewise, Lucy tottered a little, not quite able to believe what she was seeing. “But you’re …”

  “Dead?” He shook his mop of hair. “No, just never born human. It’s different.”

  “Then you’re a spirit?” said Tam.

  “Who’s moving through time as a firebird,” David added.

  Joseph lifted his shoulders. The white robe he was wearing rippled like silk. “I ‘am’ what everyone imagines me to be. It’s easier for you to see me this way. Easier than talking to Gideon anyway.”

  “Where’s Gwillan, Joseph?”

  The boy tapped his immaculate fingers together. “You sound disapproving, David.”

  “I just want to be sure we’re all working in harmony. The last time I saw you, you’d taken his form — and stolen powers from the other dragons.”

  Joseph smiled and imagineered a conker, as if that might somehow help his cause. “Gwillan is safe. He’s with my mother.”

  “I remember,” Lucy interjected suddenly, recalling echoes of the previous timeline. “Mom was ill. The dark fire was in her. I had to leave her and go to Scuffenbury with Tam.”

  “Is Liz all right?” Tam asked.

  “I was looking after her,” Zanna muttered, as the memories began to come back to her, too.

  “But you were at Scuffenbury with us,” said Tam.

  Zanna nodded. “I left her in Agatha Bacon’s care.”

  “That was not Agatha Bacon,” said Joseph.

  Behind him, Gawain gave a pitiful roar.

  David put two and two together at once. “You,” he said darkly. He was looking at Gawain, but from the tone of his voice addressing Gwilanna. “What have you done to Liz? If you’ve harmed her, I’ll find a way to drag you out of those scales and I’ll kill you and everyone here can be my witness.”

  “Killing Gwilanna will not change anything,” said Joseph. “Unless the timeline changes, what happens to my mother and Arthur is fixed.”

  “Can we change the timeline back?” asked Tam.

  Joseph took a moment before replying. “Yes, but Gwilanna must agree to it.”

  “Gwilanna must?” Zanna stared at him in shock. For the last few moments, she had been trying to commingle with the sibyl, whose silence was only compounding her guilt.

  “She began this, she has to end it,” he said.

  The chamber juddered again and the whole bedrock of the island moved. Gawain, by now, was swimming in a constant stream of fire.

  “I hate to break this party up,” said Tam. “But we have got to get off this island.” He took Lucy’s hand and pulled her a little closer to the entrance. She needed no persuading.

  “The core is reached,” Joseph said. “Alexa must be brought here. Only she can control the gateway.”

  “Then she’s alive?” Zanna pressed forward in hope.

  “Yes, but in danger. You are all in danger.”

  “How do we fight them?” Tam Farrell asked.

  “You don’t,” said Joseph. “There is no battle for any of you.”

  “But the tapestry?” said David.

  “Ended at Scuffenbury Hill, with Gadzooks. When time resets, you will all be returned to a natural life — and all that that life entails.”

  “You can’t take on Voss and his darklings alone.”

  The boy smiled. “I don’t need to, David. In following the fire tear down to the core, Voss has organized his own destruction. As for the darklings …” He closed his eyes, and moments later a spume of lava erupted from the pool, helped on its way by a bellow from the seat of Gawain’s huge lungs. “That will bring them down. Avrel and his bears will do the rest.”

  Tam coughed and spluttered and beat his chest. “How can they fight when they can hardly breathe?” The gaseous mixture in the air was horrendous.

  “The bears will breathe well enough,” said David, guessing now at Joseph’s intent. “But the change in air composition, the added sulfur, will block the darklings’ spiracles, right?”

  Joseph nodded. “Good-bye, Ingavar. We will not meet again. Tell your bears to look for a miracle. Enjoy your future life.”

  “Wait,” cried Lucy. She let go of Tam’s hand and ran to her brother. “Where will you be, when time goes back?”

  “I will be here,” he said. And he touched her heart with a spark of white fire.

  In an instant, he turned into Gideon again. And they barely had time to admire his plumage before he flew through the force field and disappeared into Gawain’s body.

  Although his primary reason for flying off the island was not to get involved in the grind of the battle, it had irked Voss to see his darklings losing. There were only so many stains he could take before the need to fry a bear got the better of him. Their subtle attempts at imagineering were a laudable addition to their basic strengths (of hitting and squashing and being large), but none of them could cope with his own dark fire. He had taken out … ten, a dozen, maybe more, when the first real trace of the gatekeeper’s auma had begun to trickle into his sensory detectors. He had tried to lock on to it right away, but the signal strength was carefully encrypted and the frenzied twisting of locator stigs was actually beginning to hurt his head. He suspected that the girl was merging in and out of the timeline at random. Or dissociating into the ganzfeld as required. She was clever. He admired that about her. The very fact she had Traveled the nexus was impressive. Here was an opponent worthy of respect. An intelligent hybrid. Gatekeeper to the core. If her
mood was right, he might let her survive. She would make a valuable addition to the Shadow.

  In the end he found her by chance, during what must have been a lapse in concentration — hers, not his. At the time he was considering one more kill, to eliminate an irritating monster of a bear that had had the bizarre audacity to track him — a ludicrous exercise on the bear’s part. He, Voss, could easily outfly the most fleet-footed lump of white gristle. This one was only keeping pace with him because of his height and angle off the sea. It would have been amusing to zigzag a little and watch the brute die of a sprained neck. But a burst of dark fire or a poisoned barb would settle the issue much quicker. Then he could focus on his search again.

  And then he felt it. A surge of auma that only a being of superior intelligence would have the power to transmit. He forgot the stupid bear and turned his sensors to their maximum sweep. The signal was intermittent. But when it was there it was strong and clear, as if the girl had peeked out from her hiding place to look for something she might have lost. Voss was not to know that his island enemy, David Rain, was working on his behalf just then. It was David, calling the dragons away, that had made Alexa expose her position. Through his best intentions, he had put his daughter’s life in peril.

  Voss swooped down, big and menacing, every bit as ugly as he was chilling. “Hello, Alexa,” he said, making the greeting seem as dark as the ooze that pumped around his veins. “Please don’t try to escape. Now that I have your auma trace I can follow you anywhere, even into the field. I don’t want to hurt you — or your dragon.”

  Alexa glanced at her hands. The dragons (plural, Voss had yet to discover) had come back a moment too late for her to flee. She was surprised to see Gollygosh was active, and worried that Voss might ask about the toolbox. For now, the dragon was keeping it hidden, tucked away awkwardly behind his knee. “This island belongs to the bears,” she said.

  Voss larruped his three-forked tongue. “No,” he assured her, “it’s definitely mine. I am the Prime. Your mother is my Pri:magon. Your father is being … converted to the Shadow. I’d like you to join us in our adventure. Why don’t you stop this temperamental nonsense and take my hand so we can all be one?”