The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal
Page 24
In the chapel, he had never seen such terror in a human. When her screams had ignited and he’d turned to her to help, the Ix had swarmed his defenseless mind, trying to stall him with his childhood fear of vampires. For a moment, Lucy’s mouth was filling with blood and hung with lurid, sharpened teeth. But then the filter kicked in and Tam knew he was seeing a false vision. He bravely pushed on. In another two seconds he would have reached her. But a weight had struck the back of his head and he’d folded. The next thing he’d known was waking in the tower room.
After the anti-dragon Darkling was completed, Lucy had been dragged away unconscious. The figures of Bernard and the spectacled abbot, Hugo, had remained in the tower and stood over Tam a while. In his mind he had sensed them commingling with him, openly “debating” his worth. He was an irritant, but nevertheless of “scientific” interest. Had he not withstood them briefly in the chapel? This puzzled them. The human capacity to sustain free will had always varied, but the level demonstrated by this insignificant male seemed well above the norm. Should they kill him? No. For what threat could he be? When the End of Days came, his youthful body strength might prove useful. He could be made Prem:Ix, like the girl. In the meantime, they would upgrade the neural suffusion and apply it unconditionally to every human on the island. He saw both monks shudder as their brains received the “upgrade.” Their eyes turned a sickly alabaster for a moment. For Tam, in his physically weakened state, it was too much. He passed out with a searing pain in his head. When he came around, in an undisclosed cell, nine-tenths of his mind was now answerable to the Ix. The final tenth was not.
Late that afternoon the abbey bells tolled, hooking the monks out of an unnatural sleep. The whole brotherhood of eighteen assembled in the cloisters. Tam fell into line next to Brother Cedric, knowing that at this stage resistance was impossible, rebellion pointless. Gather. Gather. Gather. The Ix were sending forceful instructions to their hosts, with an urgency that suggested something significant was about to happen. March, came the order, and they set off two by two in a schoolboy crocodile, weaving across the open fields. Rain drizzled into their hooded faces. The early moon pricked holes in the cloud. With every trudging step, Farlowe spewed up another small tarn of mud. Squelch. Squelch. Squelch. Turgid and nonstop — until they reached the circle at the center of the island.
Here the order became more complex. They were to separate, arrange themselves between the stones, and touch them to make an unbroken chain. Where the stones were widest apart it took three men holding hands to achieve this. But Tam placed himself in a narrow gap, kicking away loose shale to get a better stance. He raised his arms like Samson to touch two pillars at once. The pillar to his left was tall and jagged, the other thick and stumpy like an old gray molar. Geology was not his strongest point, but he was pretty sure the pieces were hewn from sandstone, judging by the way they shed small grains when he rubbed his freezing fingertips across them.
Suddenly, the Ix were heavy in his mind. The humming of the left ear became insistent. He watched Abbot Hugo walk into the circle and place the Darkling Lucy had created on a bald, rocky plinth at its center. The creature’s head was facing north.
The hum zinged again and Tam found himself forced into a communal chant. The mantra filled the circle, growing in intensity with every round. The wind stirred, rippling at the hem of his habit. Rain fell in stringy, noiseless splatters. A light mist hung a few feet above the grass. The chanting continued for an indefinite period. Then came a moment when the skyline darkened. As it did, the clouds opened and the moon aimed its full light into the circle. Tam jerked and felt an energy pulse electrify his hands. His nerves recorded no pain, but his body was not his own for a second, just a live conduit between the rocks. The chanting grew louder. The stones began to glow, chasing back the moonlight in fluorescent apple green, staining the mist in smoky patches. That part of Tam still able to resist let him roll his eyes toward the jagged pillar. Symbols were appearing on the surface of the rock. Elaborate, intertwined, highly crafted runes, carved by ancient, reverent hands. Runes of human beings, bears — and dragons.
Suddenly, a wild cry turned his head. It sounded like a bird, but it was bigger, much bigger, coming from lungs that could launch a squeal to burst the ears of a thousand men. The mist flowered upward, filling out a shape. When it was done, a terrifying echo of the past remained. The ghost of a female dragon had appeared, to hover just a few feet above the Darkling. She was huge, and the Ix had a name for her.
Ghislaine.
Years ago, as a sideline to her college course, Zanna had taken lessons in basic first aid. One instruction she had always remembered was this: In a disaster scene, always tend to the quietest first. Down the garden, Gwilanna was harping about a badly bruised foot. Alexa was in tears, and Lucy was fuzzy but clearly coming around. The one in real danger was Liz.
Zanna transformed herself back into a human, gave Alexa a swift reassuring hug, and hurried to the patio. “Liz?” she said, kneeling down beside her, trying to remember the order of it all. A, B, C. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. There was nothing in the manual about skin and hands that were graveyard gray. “Liz?” she said more urgently and put her ear against Liz’s heart. Nothing.
Lucy skidded in, knocking Zanna aside. She forced her arms around her mother’s shoulders, and hugged at the limp, unresponsive body. “Mom!” she wailed. “Mom, wake up!”
“You’re wasting your time,” Gwilanna caarked.
Zanna turned to see the raven hobbling toward them.
“She’s been poisoned with obsidian. She’s going to die.”
“No,” said Lucy, in a voice already fracturing with tears.
Gwendolen arrived asking what she could do. “Find Gretel,” Zanna said to her. “Bring Arthur, too. He must be in the house.” As the dragon whipped away, Zanna turned to Gwilanna. “There must be magicks? Or a potion, surely?”
The raven shook its head.
Zanna reached out a hand and drew Alexa to her. “We have sibyls here, daughters of Guinevere and Gwendolen, what amounts to a witch’s cat and a host of enchanted people in the Crescent. There must be something we can do?”
“Do you think I wouldn’t if I could?” snapped Gwilanna. “It’s impossible, girl. It would take Gawain himself to save her.”
Zanna rocked back onto her knees. “Then maybe I can help.” She stood up quickly and ran to the rosebush, snapping her fingers for Bonnington to follow. “Dig,” she said, making the appropriate movements with her hands. She pointed to a spot just behind the bush.
Bonnington dug, furiously and hard. Before long, a strip of red velvet was uncovered. Alexa, who’d been watching, slightly mesmerized by it all, jumped forward and pulled a small bag out of the ground.
“Open it,” said Zanna.
Alexa loosened the drawstring.
A piece of dragon scale fell into her palm.
The one advantage, Tam realized, of being semi-possessed by a race of highly intelligent if arrogant thought forms, was that it was always easy to know what their plans were. The ghost dragon was a clever diversion, designed to disrupt the energy field of what the Ix called the “human collective.” Put simply, she was a decoy. A means of weakening and confusing David’s influence at the point when he opened the dragon’s eye. She was there to turn heads — or, more appropriately, minds. As he chanted, her history came through to him. She had died long ago on this very spot, given up her fire tear when the Fain — then controlling this primitive planet — had taken away the Pri:magon she was to be illumined to. Now the Ix were holding her in her own time frame, sealed in a dimension made visible above the rift. Tam could feel them playing with her agonized mind, torturing her with disturbing images of the Pri:magon and the Pri:magon’s child. The child was of modest interest to them. They knew of her. She was one of the few Premen still extant upon this rock. She called herself Gwilanna. The presence of her spirit, so relatively close on the temporal planes, only made the sourcing of the nightm
ares easier.
Ghislaine cried out. A dreadful, pitiful barb of pain that should have frayed the hardest heart or diverted the most purposeful mind of every living creature in the universe. The Ix drew their hosts to focus on the Darkling. They were making a beacon of it, trying to create some kind of channel through which dark energy could be transferred. It glowed hideously in the moonlight. To his horror, Tam suddenly grew aware of another link to the Ix:risor controlling Lucy, and knew they were trying to draw negative energy through her as well. The chant became intense, the beacon strong. For a second, all hope for human life seemed lost. But then Tam felt the Ix stall. Ghislaine’s cries, they were saying, had gone no farther than the arc of the circle and were steadily reverberating back through time. There was something wrong; the circuit was broken. They traced it quickly to a flaw in the Darkling.
It had no heart.
Yes, Tam thought. Lucy had tricked them. His optimism surged and he felt their grip on his neurons ease as they concentrated their energies on an unexpected source of resistance from the north. He immediately turned his head and managed to pull a finger off the stone at his left. Ghislaine cried out and thrashed her tail in anger. She issued fire. It flared in blinding amber-colored sails, becoming slow and lavalike at the edges of the seal where the energy creating the time frame absorbed it. The Ix’s hold slackened a little more. Tam felt the sandstone’s grit against his skin. His left hand was moving now, lateral to the surface of the pillar. If he could just … agh! With a rebel yell that his Celtic forefathers would have been proud of, he pulled away, breaking the circle and the mantra. The Ix rushed to him with a violence that he thought would burst every blood vessel in his brain. But in an instant they deserted him again. Why, Tam could not tell. The monks were dropping and the image of Ghislaine was no longer in the circle, but there did not seem any obvious threat, just a swift, unexpected fall of snow …
“This is Gawain’s isoscele,” Zanna said. She held it tightly and showed it to Gwilanna. The raven’s eyes swelled to resemble hard candies.
“Rid me of these feathers and give it to me,” she said, her voice almost gurgling with pleasure.
“No, tell me what to do,” said Zanna.
“It would take too long,” the raven caarked. “I’m the only one capable of doing this, girl.”
“Please, do as she says,” said a voice, and Arthur came staggering down the garden, guided by Gwendolen. He knelt down, feeling for Liz’s arm. His upper body shook as he registered the coldness in her hand. Kissing it warmly he whispered, “Forgive me. I was caught in the mantra. I should have been with you.” He reached across her body and touched Lucy’s shoulder.
“Give it to her,” Lucy said to Zanna.
“But first, change me back,” Gwilanna insisted.
Lucy and Zanna exchanged a terse glance.
“You’ll have to teach me,” Zanna said to the sibyl.
In dragontongue, the raven translated a spell. Zanna spoke it and the woman that was Gwilanna returned, in the skins she’d been wearing in the Arctic when attacked.
“Hmph,” she said, fussing with her knotted hair. “Inappropriate clothing for this balmy climate, but it will do for now.” She extended a hand.
Zanna put the isoscele into it. “Remember what Bonnington just disposed of,” she whispered. “Don’t try any tricks.”
Gwilanna sighed and knelt down. “One day, girl, you will come to understand that I’ve only ever had your interests at heart.” She studied the wound, which was turning black. “This will not be pleasant. It will scar,” she said to Lucy.
“Just save her,” Lucy said. Her tearful eyes were almost washed of color.
“Observe,” Gwilanna said, “the blood of a dragon.” She squeezed the scale. A drop of green ichor bled from the tip. She extended a tongue that looked like it had grown its own mushroom colony, and mixed her saliva into the ichor. Then she leaned forward and plunged the isoscele into the wound.
Alexa gasped. Her mother turned her away.
Gwilanna ripped the scale right across the cut. It opened again with a tearing of flesh. This time, instead of Liz’s blood oozing forth, a black acidic froth began to bubble across her back. Gwilanna pursed her lips and spat in several places. Where the fluids mixed, they made a sticky green lather. “The dragon’s blood will neutralize the magma core of the obsidian,” she said.
“Why the spittle?” Zanna asked.
“I had to dilute it. A pure droplet of ichor would probably have killed her.”
“Will she live?” asked Arthur.
Gwilanna rested her hand on Liz’s back. “Yes …”
“… But?” said Zanna, sensing one coming.
Gwilanna stood up. She looked at the sky as if she really ought to be somewhere else. “Where is Gretel? This wound will need a poultice.”
Right on cue there was a crash of glass, and a hole appeared in the window of the Dragon’s Den. A jam jar full of pebbles exploded on the patio and through the escape hole it had made came Gretel. She landed in the center of Liz’s back with the disgruntled air of a surgeon who’d been left out of a vital operation — which of course she had.
We were locked in, she hurred, frowning at Lucy.
Lucy started to explain that she wasn’t in control of herself at the time, then changed her mind and focused on her mom instead.
“Prepare herbs,” said Gwilanna. “Sorrel and fennel, with a measure of thyme. I will assist.”
Zanna grabbed her arm. “Not so fast. What were you going to say about Liz?”
Gwilanna looked down. Something softened in the hard lines of her face. “The dragon’s blood will do enough to revive her …”
“But?” repeated Lucy.
Gwilanna looked away.
“What have you done?” Zanna said, and took her by the throat.
“I’ve saved her life!” screamed the sibyl. “I’ve done what you asked. The dragon’s blood will bring her back. But it might not be enough to save the child she’s carrying….”
The Darkling was still at the center of the circle. Though heavily disoriented, Tam struggled to his feet and began to stagger toward the creature. It had to be destroyed, of that he was certain, even if it was imperfect. Ten yards from it he dropped to his knees to lift a large stone from the sodden grass. Snow was falling all around. Yet none seemed to be settling on him. He raised the stone two-handed, well above his head. The creature’s black eyes fell under its shadow. Using every last ounce of strength in his body, Tam cried out and brought the stone down — only to see it bounce off the plinth where the Darkling had been. The creature had gone.
“What?” he gasped, and collapsed against the plinth.
Suddenly, he was aware of a presence and rolled over to see a kind of shadow figure stumbling toward him. It was mid-height and slender, with scarecrow fingers and coiled body scales. Its head was being swiftly eroded by the snow. He shielded his face and tried to kick away, but the creature was only there for an instant. Then the gathering of snowflakes dispersed in the wind. When Tam focused his eyesight again, they had gone.
Puzzled, he pushed back the cowl of his habit, glad of the drizzling rain on his face. Between the stones, he could see the monks beginning to rise. In a human way. Not controlled by anything alien. Relieved, he stretched his arms so that his hands might feel the comfort of the rain. As he did, two final snowflakes fell. One on his left palm, one on his right.
And then a voice like a wind from another world said, “This is my gift to you. Use it wisely.”
Tam looked at his hands. The two flakes were dissolving under his skin.
Both were in the shape of polar bears.
There was an Inuit prophecy that Zanna remembered from her time in the Arctic. The old shaman, Taliriktug, had once confided to her, “One day the ice will burn.” When she had asked him what he meant by this, the old man had said, “You are Qannialaaq, which means ‘falling snow.’ When the snow falls, you will know what things mean.”
Gwilanna’s eyes moved in small, shrewd circles.
“This pregnancy —?”
“It’s a natural-born. They are of no interest to me.”
“I was a natural; I still have magicks.”
“Without me, you would be nothing.”
“Then teach me. This time I’m willing to learn. You thought me worthy enough to give me the mark. You must have some hope for me?”
“Hmph!” replied the sibyl, and threw Bonnington down. He landed mesmerized but completely unhurt. He washed himself once and strolled away.
“You have to guide me, Gwilanna. I want to help Liz deliver this child. You know hospitals are impossible for her. Promise me you’ll stay with us, at least till we know the fate of the child.”
“It’s a boy,” Gwilanna muttered, as though the words pained her.
Zanna nodded to herself. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
Gwilanna turned her gaze to the north. “They can be troublesome, especially if they’re given too much power….”
Zanna walked down the garden a pace. There was one green leaf on a branch of the rosebush. One leaf. One symbol of hope. “Can I ask you something? Lucy tried to track down David’s parents. He gave a home address that was nothing but a time rift. What does that mean? Is he real? Is he human?”
Gwilanna snorted inwardly. “Sometimes,” she said, in a voice that suggested she would say nothing more.
Now it was Zanna’s turn to find solace in the gray expanse of sky. “Lucy just turned on the TV. Apparently, there’s some kind of mist in the Arctic, covering the entire ice cap. Alexa says it looks like the ice is on fire.” Expecting a comment, she paused a moment. Gwilanna stared silently ahead. “There are reports coming in from all over the world of people assembling like they did in the Crescent. The scientists are saying it’s a kind of mass hysteria.”