The Last Dragon Chronicles #5: Dark Fire

by Chris d'Lacey

David was already backing toward the door. “A black witch dressed in the likeness of the girl. When Gawaine sees Lucy she’s going to remember how she was betrayed.”

  “Hurry, David,” Zanna said, tears breaking from the corners of her eyes. “Please hurry.”

  He clicked his fingers and the narwhal tusk materialized on Lucy’s bed. He closed his hand around it and shook it three times.

  “I love you,” he said to Zanna.

  Then he was gone.

  44 UNION

  Grockle took off a second too late. Perhaps it was his juvenile inexperience. Perhaps he was awed to be in the presence of a dragon so mighty. Most likely he simply believed there was no real reason for Gawaine to attack. It was the scent of hydrocarbons coming up from her throat (too subtle for any human to detect) and the vast suck of oxygen as she bore toward the hill that convinced him she did not intend to simply fly by. He flew to intercept her, and for several seconds the advantage was his. He had lifted off, silently, on her blind side, and was gaining on the matriarch faster than she was gaining on Lucy. But the olfactory senses of the queen were profound, and as she closed in on the girl she supposed to be a traitor she grew fully aware of the counterattack. Claws spread, Grockle merely intended to pinion her body and carry her aside. But with the agility of one many years her junior, Gawaine tilted (with no disruption to her wingbeat) and struck the young dragon behind the ear, not with open claws, but with a strong, closed fist. In terms of weight, it was little more than a cuff. But the effect on Grockle was spectacular. She had knocked out his center of balance, located (like humans) in the inner ear. The more he flapped, the dizzier he became. He spiraled down through a palette of greens and browns and crashed onto the hill forty yards away from Lucy. The impact righted his senses a little, but as he adjusted his pineal radar and prepared to fly back to reengage the queen, he saw Lucy engulfed in a yellow cone of flame. Too late. It was over. The girl was surely dead.

  But amazingly, she wasn’t. Grockle blinked and tested his optical triggers, hardly able to believe that the child was on her feet and apparently unharmed. One switch of his wings took him back to within six yards of her. The queen had flamed from twice that distance and was standing, dumbstruck, her fire receding in bright orange scribbles underneath her tongue. She turned her head and spat viciously at Grockle. In a strange, archaic variant of dragontongue she ordered him to come no nearer. Wary and unbalanced, but mildly optimistic, he bowed and turned his gaze on Lucy.

  She was quivering and in shock, making the pathetic whimpering noises humans were so fond of. But not a jot of her, not even the garments she was wearing, had been ruined by the matriarch’s fire. The same could not be said of the surrounding grass, which bore a scorch mark as long as Grockle’s tail. It would not grow again for many a year, he thought.

  A guttural noise rumbled deep inside Gawaine’s throat. Her anger had lessened, but not her curiosity. She blew a thick gobbet of phlegm onto the ground. It sizzled like a hot wet coal, consuming yet another patch of land. Grockle stood by, reverent and inert, praying that the queen would not lose patience and chew the girl’s head off in one quick bite. In truth, he could have done little to stop her. But the sight of her cleansing her nostrils gave him hope that all Gawaine intended was to scent the girl — though, he reminded himself, a dragon liked to smell its food before it ate.

  Gawaine’s head swanned down and her giant breathing holes scanned the full length of Lucy’s body, plucking so much air from around the girl that she was pulled forward a step onto the cindered earth. Where she had stood, the green shape of her feet remained.

  The Queen of Dragons reared back in confusion.

  Once again she swept her nose over the girl, concentrating now on two distinct areas: a single pocket of Lucy’s coat and then her thick red hair. To Grockle’s despair, he saw the matriarch flip her tail so the isoscele was pointing like a blade. One quick thrust and Lucy would be opened like a gutted rabbit. He leaned closer, ready to launch a final, probably fatal, defense. But in an act of supreme tenderness, Gawaine passed her tail right around the quaking girl (making the shape of a G) and touched the isoscele to her heart.

  Making a sound between a stifled scream and the need not to choke on the dragon’s breath, Lucy finally uncovered her face. At the same time, Gwendolen climbed out of Lucy’s pocket and settled in Lucy’s hands. Whatever fate awaited them, awaited them both.

  Traumatized and held on her feet by terror, Lucy somehow found the will to look into the penetrating eye of the monster, then down at the dagger tip pressed against her heart. She closed her eyes again, certain she would die. But the monster simply tilted its head, twitched its nostrils in disgust at Gwendolen, and spoke to Lucy, saying, Where is my son?

  “Here,” said a voice.

  David Rain materialized at Lucy’s back.

  Gawaine roared and instantly retrieved her tail. With fury bleeding into her eyes, she looked set to chop the intruder in half for a moment. But as Lucy turned around and sank into his arms, the dragon paused and concentrated hard on David. In him she had a new challenge to unravel: how anything in the shape of a human could possess the scalene eyes of a dragon or resonate so strongly with the auma of her dynasty.

  “There is no time to explain to you,” he said, speaking her dialect, nodding with respect, “but you will know that a mother cannot flame her young. This girl is your kin, through Gawain, your son. His auma is bound to this Earth and we to it. You must leave here, Gawaine. Fly north to the ice lands. The Wearle await you. He awaits you.”

  “Ohh …” Lucy’s head suddenly rolled on David’s shoulder.

  Gawaine’s eye ridges shortened at the sound.

  “Lucy, what’s the matter?” David said. He put her head between his hands and looked into her eyes.

  “They’re here,” she whispered.

  And Gawaine knew it, too. Rising up to her full height, she turned and looked back toward Glissington Tor.

  Hrrrrr, she said.

  A long, low snarl, and yet the translation was very short.

  Ix.

  45 MIRROR, MIRROR

  A second adversary. A female. A savage. Radiating hatred. Seeking revenge. How terrifying must it have seemed to a solitary raven, with a solitary hostage, to witness the release of a foe more threatening than the hunter that had slain the rest of its flock? It must have been counting its remaining wingbeats no greater than the number of claws on its feet. How could it escape or expect to cheat death? Its chances were nil. Hopes of mercy, none. Expectations of surrender, zero. For driven as it was by an irreversible mania to morph into a darkling and possess dark fire, there would have come a moment of reckless exposure when it would have put its evil life in peril. And that life would have been rubbed out in a snip. For vicious as it was, evolving in strength and cunning as it was, it was still no match for a champion like Grockle, and compared to Gawaine it was nothing but a gnat.

  But it was due for a change of luck. Fortune was about to glint in its eye.

  When Grockle had arrived in the garden of the guesthouse, the raven had escaped, still holding Glade, and flown to the far side of Glissington Tor. It had witnessed the hunter come down near the cairn and all the events that had followed, culminating in the release of the queen.

  The one thing it had not seen was Gawaine’s attack on Lucy. The reason for this was simple: When the Tor had erupted, the bird had experienced an urgent need to flutter out of hiding (from underneath a row of hedges, of all things). The displacement of earth was no threat to it, but a hundred pounds of broken cairn flying through the air and landing with a twig-shattering thump certainly was. The bird had given a malicious squawk and turned to spit venom at the fallen stones. That was when it saw the eye of the cairn, and Lucy’s tear still glistening across it.

  Hopping onto the ledge of the eye, it tilted its head and studied its reflection. What it saw was the profile of a raven. Blueberry-eyed. Severe. Feathers lacking gloss. Harsh, but not frightening. Mean
, but not cruel. Large, but not brutal. Basically, a gnat. It hissed in disappointment. Something was wrong. It was losing strength. Reverting to its dismal genetic origin. It shuffled its feet and felt Glade drag against the rough gray stones. Angered by her presence, it hauled her up, almost throttling her for fun as it held her over the shimmering tear. Not for the first time, it pecked at her ivy. Why was it black when the rest of the pathetic little object was green? It spat into her eye. Cry, it carked. But Glade turned her head and merely let the bird’s saliva run off her snout. It dripped onto the tear below. And that was when everything changed.

  There was a fizz as the fluids met. The raven switched its gaze in a flash and saw what appeared to be a battle for supremacy between the glob of spittle and the surface of the water. The water was victorious. It rapidly assimilated the spit, burning the impurities out of it before the surface calmed again.

  The raven waggled its tongue. Though its experience of dragons and their auma was minimal, it sensed power in the water and took a step nearer. It remembered how this mirror had been touched by the moon, energized by its feeble light. Could it be a weapon to be used against the dragons?

  Those hopes were reinforced when it noticed that Glade was extending her tail and trying to dip her isoscele into the water. It immediately lifted her and squeezed her throat again, this time until her head had lolled and her breathing had stopped. It tossed her into the grass.

  Strangely, the moment the bird let her go it felt a surge of energy, a new rush of growth. Checking its dark reflection again it saw that its ears were already swelling, back toward the bunched-up size they’d been when it had captured Glade from the car. Had the miniature dragon been drawing its strength? It snarled and would have stepped across the grass and slit her throat, had it not believed she was already dead. It stared once more at the glistening film, and this time dipped its toe.

  Once again there was a minor conflagration. But on this occasion the raven sensed that the tear was trying to resist invasion and did not have the means to overpower it. A strange, primeval lust for power began to juggle with the bird’s senses. What would happen if it drank the water?

  A roar came down from Scuffenbury Hill. With it came the scent of a gallon of fire. The bird grizzled. What did it have to lose? It plunged its beak into the tear — and sucked.

  Right away, the water came together in a droplet, as if it was nothing but a silken handkerchief being delicately plucked off a tabletop. Down the raven’s throat it went. And there, in the stomach of one bird’s small alimentary system, the birth of a darkling began.

  What happened next came about largely by association. The evil that had stained the bird on Farlowe Island instantly connected to the auma trails defining Lucy’s heritage. It recognized Gawain. It recognized Guinevere. It found memories of a cold obsidian knife and the flame inside, which it coveted so much. Above all, it homed in on a part of Lucy’s auma she had never been able to remove or cleanse: her encounter with the agents of darkness, the Ix. As fast, ironically, as the speed of light, the raven formed a conduit to them.

  The transformation was swift. The bird gave a caark of triumph, but that was the last it would ever utter. As the Ix streamed in and formed a Cluster within it, the raven died in an instant. For a moment it simply stood transfixed, as if it had been dipped into a subzero liquid, its feathers iced, its eyes locked into a bewildered stare. Then one clenched foot rose vertically upward, shuddering as it tucked itself against the body. For several seconds the bird remained balanced on one leg. Then the body toppled forward and struck the ground. From beak to tail, it divided into two clean husks.

  In the remains was a hunched-up gargoyle, covered in mucus and slithering innards. It, too, remained balanced for several seconds. Then its wings went out with a click, like blades, and it quickly tripled in size. Rocking forward, it let itself stand on bowed but deceptively brawny legs, unwrapping with them a sinuous body that was somewhat apelike in its suppleness. It jolted any stiffness out of its shoulders, setting off a ripple that vivified most of its crosshatched scales. Unlike a dragon’s they did not change color, but their semifoiled blackness glinted at the moon, as if they were somehow taunting its light. With a slapping noise the monster turned its head. Its hideous face, thickened by stubs at the frontal lobes, looked with disdain at the mess it had grown from. And then it ate the mess it had grown from, sucking the corpse into an o-shaped mouth haunted by a filter of needle-shaped teeth.

  The last thing it did before it took to the air was to swing across to Glade, who was nestling, barely alive, in the grass. With one dreadful swipe of malice, it stripped the ivy from around her neck. But this was more than a deed of senseless cruelty; it was an act of war. Kicking poor Glade right into the hedges, the darkling tied the ivy around its wrist. Then, like the raven had done before it, it tapped into Lucy’s family history, via the auma of a Pennykettle dragon. With consummate greed, it gathered in their means of parthenogenesis and absorbed their capability for self-replication.

  Thus were the Ix made manifest upon the Earth.

  First, there was one.

  And then there were two.

  46 THE BATTLE OF SCUFFENBURY HILL

  There were four by the time they chose to show themselves. By then, Lucy had reported her sensations to David, and Gawaine was turning back toward the Tor. The darklings, already highly attuned to the auma trails pouring off Scuffenbury Hill, were soon aware that their presence was known. Between them they swiftly assessed their enemy, dismissing any threat from the unicorn. It intrigued them, yes, but its pacifistic tendencies were highly transparent. Likewise, their respect for the matriarch was minimal. She was old, poorly sighted, and had surrendered her wits to her wild fury. Her judgments, as a result, would be rash. They were confident of killing her first. Then there was the agent of the Fain and his dragon. Him they feared, for his mind was trained. They suspected he might be newly illumined to the younger dragon at present making its obeisance to the queen. He would be hard to infect with the darkness, though his weakness might be found in the dragon-human hybrid he was so clearly keen to protect. All this they picked up at the speed of thought. Yet, as the moment arrived when they were forced to cease their replication and engage in battle, there was one auma source they had failed to measure or readily identify. It was unlike anything the Ix had ever encountered. A tiny nucleus of dark energy, wrapped inside a skin of malleable … clay? Intrigued, greedy, and a little frustrated, the alpha darkling sent out an impulse to the others: Find that energy, scan it — and absorb it.

  Then they rose.

  The moment David saw them coming he called to Gawaine not to battle them without him. But the Ix had read the matriarch correctly and she lifted off the hill without paying heed. David gripped Lucy by the shoulders, shook her, and told her what was going to happen.

  “Take the tusk,” he said, pressing the narwhal bone into her hand. “Think of home and shake it three times. Tell Zanna there are darklings here and I’m sending a message to the dragons in the North. They’ll come for Alexa. Zanna must obey their will.” He pulled her forward and kissed her head. “Your work is done, Lucy. Now go home — to your mom.”

  In the vale, Gawaine’s fearsome roars cracked the air. The darklings had surrounded her like a flock of bats.

  “What about Tam?” Lucy said, her eyes full of pain. In her pocket she could feel Gwendolen quaking.

  “No time,” David said, as Grockle whooshed in and posed, wings spread, at David’s back.

  Lucy shook her head in fear. “Wh-what’s happening?”

  Go, David mouthed, stepping backward and raising his arms high and wide. His eyes had turned scalene; their irises, violet. He retreated for two more steps, until Grockle’s wings looked like a huge vampiric cape. And then, right before Lucy’s eyes, he merged into Grockle’s body.

  They were in the air before Lucy could gasp, moving so fast that she’d lost them before she could complete a half turn. A mile away, a belt of
flame ripped across the vale. One part of it flared up and blew into a fireball. That was one darkling fewer, she guessed. Despite her loathing of all things gruesome, she found her spirits cheered by its death.

  But then the contest switched the other way. Gawaine let out a piercing scream and began to lash her head back and forth with great force, as if some demon had squirmed into her brain. She rolled into a dangerous spin, with one wing locked and her tail in spasm, her volatile claws turned firmly in. Lucy saw the queen drop a good thirty yards and feared she would break her twisting neck on the hard, unforgiving fields below. But just when the matriarch’s life seemed doomed, from nowhere Grockle swept under her body and joined the descent, fixing himself to Gawaine’s undersides as if he intended to cushion her fall or maybe even drag her down faster. Seconds from the ground they broke apart, and though Lucy had no idea what had passed between them, both dragons miraculously pulled out of the spin. One banked east, the other west, before both turned in to face the darklings again.

  At the same time Lucy glanced to her left and saw the fretful unicorn bleating out a warning. It was gone like a glint of sunlight, but the object of its caution was not. Lucy looked up and saw one of the darklings flying toward her. When it was less than fifty yards away, its nauseating o-shaped mouth somehow defied the laws of physics and widened to the size of her head. The needle teeth retracted into their sockets, ready to spring out and pierce her from every angle. Meanwhile, in her hand, the narwhal tusk was buzzing as if it was eager to get into the fray. But Lucy was taking no chances. She shook it three times as David had said and, with one massive burst of concentration, pictured the house at Wayward Crescent.

  The fabric of the universe ripped and she was gone. She felt the sickening tug of interspace travel and opened her eyes, confident of seeing her bedroom again.