The Fire Ascending

by Chris D'Lacey

  Yolen thought so. “The loss of color in the scales is a certain indication that its auma is fading. I believe the dragon has already shed its tear.”

  “But it would be dead,” said Grella, echoing my words precisely. We looked at each other. For a moment we had unity, no danger of a needle in my eye.

  Rune shook his head. “Brunne agrees with the seer.”

  “Brunne!” scoffed his wife. “That old fool? His teeth grind quicker than his brain these days.”

  “He is our keeper of legend,” Rune said curtly, annoyed by his wife’s poor show of respect. “He spoke briefly at the meeting — but well. He reminded us of an ancient detail: that if a dragon cries its tear through the eye it favors less, it may retain a small amount of its fire. Enough to enable it to fly a short distance and then sleep — like the winterfold animals do.”

  “Sleep?” said Grella.

  “Until you and I are long dead,” Yolen added.

  “Why?” I asked him. “Why would it do that?” Had I not been taught that a dragon cries its tear so it may ascend to the spirit world, in joy? Why would it set itself down to sleep?

  But all Yolen could say was “That I don’t know.”

  “Brunne’s visions have revealed that dragons the world over are doing this,” said Rune.

  Eleanor looked away, clucking like a hen.

  “There can be very few left now,” Yolen said. “This may be an act of self-preservation.”

  “Not if Voss has his way.”

  Rune knocked a fist against his mouth. Jewels of water glistened in his beard. He made no attempt to dry them. “There you speak all our futures, boy.”

  “Mother, I must go at once,” said Grella.

  This time her mother did not refuse. First, however, she looked hard at Rune — and even harder at Yolen. “What does this sibyl plan to do?”

  “She wants to entice the unicorn from Voss. Without the horse, his power is greatly diminished. Hilde believes the right enchantment will draw it away.”

  “And what does Brunne say to this?”

  “Brunne had retired to his krofft by then.”

  Eleanor extended a hand in despair.

  “A song,” said Grella. “I know a unicorn song!” She ripped a tapestry down from the wall. It pictured a child no higher than a barrel picking flowers at the edge of a woodland. A unicorn was shown approaching her. “My lullaby to Gaia attracted it,” she said. She pushed the neck of her garment aside and showed us the first bare skin of her shoulder. To my surprise, there was the mark I had seen in my vision. The same drawing the dragon had made on its parchment, branded into Grella’s soft flesh. “It touched me,” she said. “I stroked its face and it laid the tip of its horn on my shoulder. Then it was gone. I never saw it again.”

  “How has this affected you?” Yolen inquired.

  Rune gestured toward the tapestries. “Since that day, all the girl has stitched are dragons.”

  “I feel it,” she said. “I feel its pain. The horse Voss rides is the same one, I’m sure of it. You should not have hidden me away when he came.”

  Her father said, “That was done for your safety.”

  “And how much less safe is this plan?” asked Eleanor. “Even if Grella can call the horse away, Voss will see it the moment it moves and instantly know of the deception.”

  “Not necessarily,” Yolen said. He walked a pace or two, shaking the knotted ends of his belt. “The horse is greatly distressed. Its confusion is binding it to Voss’s company — that and the fact he carries the horn. But if the lyrics of Grella’s song are appropriate, the horse might be soothed and persuaded to run. They are fleet of foot. By the time Voss wakes, the horse will be with Grella.”

  “And then?” Eleanor looked at her husband, who had once again taken his knife from his belt.

  “What are six against the men of three settlements?”

  I saw a loss of color in Eleanor’s cheeks. “You are not the warrior you once were, Rune.”

  “I will fight like a dragon for our freedom,” he said. “I will not give up my homeland to any rogue Premen.”

  And with these brave words the decision was set.

  Leaving Eleanor at home to muse upon our fate, we four — Rune, Yolen, Grella, and myself (this time, my master gave his consent) — made our way to the old Taan motested. We found the men in good heart and strident voice. They were passing around a flagon, drinking a brew prepared by Hilde.

  “What is this?” Yolen asked the sibyl. He laid his palm across the neck of the flagon as it was presented up to Rune.

  “A potion to give the men strength — and courage.”

  “Aye,” said a man nearby. He was bending his elbow, tensing his muscles. His upper arm, I saw, was greatly swollen, the veins wriggling about like snakes. “I feel it already. I am twice the man I was!”

  “And three times as ugly!” another man called.

  A roar of laughter rattled the pointed roof of the motested.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Rune sank a long quaff, spilling rivulets down his beard again. He passed it to Yolen. My keeper shook his head. “I have my wits. That is all I require.”

  The men bellowed their displeasure. The sibyl took their cause.

  “You more than anyone need it, seer. Sharp of mind you may be, but Voss’s sword is sharper. He will run it through your chest as quickly as he passes a splint through a berry.” She snatched up the flagon and held it to him. “Drink.”

  “Drink!” cried the men of Horste and Taan, pounding their feet till the motested thundered.

  Yolen had no choice. He took a small draft, which I was sure he would have spat out had the sibyl turned her back. But I saw his neck ripple and the brew went down. Now the only male not to try it was me.

  I reached for the flagon. The sibyl held it back.

  The men bellowed, “Let him have it! Let him feel what it is to grow a hair on his chest!”

  The sibyl thought long and carefully about it. Then she tipped the jug, and the dust on the floor had the last of her potion. “Someone has to stay and milk the goats, brave men.”

  They roared again and slapped their thighs. Even Yolen let a smile past his lips.

  Now the sibyl drew Grella into view. She called for quiet while she spoke of her plan. In one hour, when the moon rose over Kasgerden, every man present would go with stealth to the forest of Skoga, which covered the western slopes of the mountain. Voss and his men were camped there, she said (more birds, sent as spies, had confirmed his position). The men would encircle Voss’s camp but hide among the trees until the vital moment. Grella, the girl once touched by a unicorn, would enchant the dark horse and draw it away. This would leave the men free to attack. Voss and his followers were not to be spared.

  But a hum of concern quickly rose among the Horste. The forest men knew of the Skoga pines and were deeply afraid to enter them. “What about the skogkatts?” they muttered. Those trees were the lair of legendary wildkatts. No one needed a tapestry to know that a skogkatt, with its haunting green eyes, could bedazzle a man, then rip out his throat with one slash of its claws.

  A loud debate blew up. The sibyl ended it in one swift act. She threw the flagon to the wooden floor, smashing it. “Spineless idiots” she called the men of Horste. Did they really imagine that Voss hadn’t thought of this? That he could sleep soundly surrounded by the threat of skogkatt claws? She raised one hand and opened it. Two bushy tails dropped out. She threw one at Rune. Another at a startled Trooven man. These souvenirs had come from her spies, she said. Voss had cleared the forest of skogkatts. But in doing so, had left himself vulnerable to spears …

  So the men, their confidence restored, returned to their families to make what preparations they needed. The sibyl took Grella away for counseling. And my role in this battle was quickly defined: I was to stay in the krofft with Eleanor until the coming ugliness was done.

  “But I will seem a coward in front of Grella!”

  “You wil
l be little use dead,” Yolen chided. “Not even as goat feed.”

  “I can fight as well as any man!” I showed him my arm, growing rounder and firmer with every passing day.

  “You’re a boy,” he said. “And you will do as I command.”

  And that was an end to it.

  But he did at least allow me to wander the settlement. And in the hour before the moon, when darkness was upon us and the mood over Taan was strangely subdued, I found myself walking near the edge of the site. It was there that I came upon a tumbledown dwelling, buried among an isolated thicket of pines. A place so badly in need of repair that its occupants were surely wood chewers or rats. Yet there was a wisp of smoke from its chimney and a candle guttering weakly within. The door was bent and ajar. A crackling noise was passing out through the gap. I peered inside and saw a pair of hands resting on a pair of knees. Then a man’s voice croaked, “Come in, Agawin. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Wh-who are you? H-how do you know me?” I stepped back from the door a little. I was sure I hadn’t been seen. And other than Rune’s family, who among the Taan tribe knew my name?

  “I have seen the dragon that speaks through you,” he said.

  A terrible shudder ran down my arms. “Are you a seer?”

  “I am Brunne. Some call me ‘seer.’ Some call me weak in the head. Perhaps I am, to be speaking to a boy of a creature that can shape the future — on parchment.”

  That was all the enticement I needed. I stepped in, leaving the door a little wider — if only to allow the escape of foul air. The place was repugnant with the smell of sweating fish. So rank that I had to pull my robe across my mouth. The seer Brunne rocked in his creaking chair. He was old and his eyes were like smooth white pebbles. Since I did not see him at the motested, someone must have guided him back. For when I passed my hand across his crumpled face the eyes refused to flicker or follow. But I learned that day that even a man who appears to be blind might see with the other senses he possesses. My heart almost stopped when his hand came up and he clamped my arm with the strength of a bear.

  “Evil has settled on this world,” he rasped.

  His fingers were bound like rope to my flesh. Through them flowed an energy that crept along my arm and wove itself into my twitching neck. I could feel it running all through my head, like the roots of a plant might spread into the ground. A fine dust began to sting my eyes. The reek of oil from his mouth was horrendous.

  “I am not a follower of Voss,” I stuttered, thinking this was a test of my loyalty.

  The old man grunted and let me go. I fell to the floor, startled by the sound of fish bones breaking against my hands. The runners of his chair came down to crush more. Now I understood the crackle — and the dust.

  “Voss is nothing,” he said.

  Then why was every man sharpening a blade, about to risk his life in battle with him? “I am told he wields a dark power,” I said, remembering Rune’s description in the krofft.

  “Or it wields him,” Brunne said oddly. “Voss is in the grip of a shadow.”

  I rose to my feet. The man and his odor made my gut wrench. Even so I spoke up boldly. “A shadow is nought but a product of the light.” Yolen had often soothed me thus when the shadows of the cave had tricked me as a child.

  “Spoken like a wise apprentice,” said Brunne. His lips creased into a smile. He leaned forward. The crackling instantly stopped. “Tell me, boy, does light have auma?”

  I looked at the candle flame, bending to the window as if it, too, would be glad to escape. “Gaia blesses all things with auma,” I said. “Why should light be any different?”

  Brunne, I thought, gave a satisfied nod. “And which has more: light or fire?”

  In the distance, I heard poor Galen roar. Was the dragon speaking to the rising moon? I knew I must be done here soon. I wanted to see Yolen before the men left. “I do not know. What has this to do with Voss?”

  “When you can answer this question,” he said, “you will illuminate the shadow in Voss and be a thousand-fold superior to him.”

  A hard wind whistled through the open doorway. Every panel in the derelict krofft began to groan. I did not wish to be crushed among fish bones, but my boyish curiosity would not take me out of there. “Teach me what I need to know, seer Brunne.”

  He sat back, pressing his fingertips together. “You are already learning, Agawin. The tornaq has shown you the way.”

  “How do you know about the tornaq?” I pressed. “Are you in league with Hilde?”

  Brunne spluttered with laughter. He filled the air with another coarse belch. “Hilde would gladly empty my veins in search of the wisdom that I protect. The tornaq is not the sibyl’s to command. It will leave her when its work is done.”

  Leave her? Was the tornaq alive? I thought back to my time by the river. How had the charm returned to Hilde? “Is it yours?” I asked. “Does it watch her for you?”

  He tilted his head, but refused to answer. “You are a most unusual boy. What did the dragon reveal to you?”

  Now was my chance to be a little wary, but I had nothing to gain by withholding the truth. “I saw it write,” I said. “It made a mark on the parchment. The same three-lined mark that was on the tornaq. After that I saw a host of terrible things. Vile creatures made in the image of dragons. Darkness. A shadow on the land. Death.”

  “And it all begins here … with Voss,” Brunne muttered.

  “If he slays Galen, will my vision come to pass?”

  Brunne put back his head and spoke a strange reply. “Sometimes,” he said.

  And, oh, how my heart missed a giant beat. And I realized then that Brunne might well have let go of my arm, but he had not entirely let go of my mind. Some part of him, some part not really a man, was exploring me and seeking to take a hold.

  “Are you Premen?” I asked the seer.

  His lips parted and he took in a ghastly breath, as if a spear of ice had been passed through his heart. His dreadful eyeballs swiveled and locked. In one of them, a roving center appeared, more hideous than the egg that had been there before. “Not for very much longer,” he croaked.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Brunne, what do you mean?” His hands were shaking on the arms of his chair.

  “Come closer, boy. A devil approaches.”

  A devil? What was he talking about?

  “You need to understand the enchantments of time.”

  Time? What secrets did time hold? Every day, my fingernails grew a little more and the grass in the meadows rose a little higher and another of Yolen’s hairs turned to gray. Time was a simple measure of change. The whole world moving forward as one.

  I stepped toward him. But in that instant he seemed to change his mind. He swiftly raised a hand and some force pushed me back into the shadows of the krofft. He gave out a groaning sound like nothing I had heard from man or beast before — a rasp that rattled every bone in his chest, followed by a shudder that seemed to expel something more than air from his lungs. I gasped and covered my face. Whatever Brunne had concealed within his body was now in mine and sheltering there. The last thing I heard him say to me was this: “Keep Galen within your sight.”

  The door opened and a hooded figure stepped in. I could not tell if it was man or woman, but it seemed to know there were fish bones on the floor. I saw the figure pick up the full skeleton of a fish and draw it fast across Brunne’s throat. The seer made a gentle gurgling noise. His head fell forward onto his chest. A dark stain ran down his shabby clothing.

  The figure threw the fish bone aside and left.

  For several moments, I was too petrified to move. Then I crept forward and shook Brunne’s shoulder. His body slumped forward and tipped from the chair. I heard the zip of an arrow, and the next I knew the roof was alight. Through the open door, I saw the hooded figure running for the trees. The building burned while I gathered my senses. Then I started to shout. “Fire! Fire!” And I ran to Rune’s krofft.

  I
burst in, calling for Yolen and Rune. Eleanor was on her knees, trying to stir them. Both men were on the floor, snoring like dogs.

  “What happened?” I gasped.

  “They collapsed in a stupor. I can’t revive them.” Foam was frothing on Rune’s red lips. Yolen looked calm, but deeply asleep.

  By now, I could hear a great clamor outside. I dived for the shutters and threw them wide. Women were running from krofft to krofft, calling to one another about their men. I saw a Horste man slumped against a water trough. A pan of water in the face could not bring him around. Nor could a hefty kick in the ribs. A woman spun past me, clutching her hair. “Sorcery!” she wailed. “A sibyl’s work!”

  All the men who had drunk from Hilde’s potion were asleep. Slowly, the settlement realized it was tricked.

  “Eleanor, where is Grella?” I panted.

  The worry in her pretty eyes gave me my answer: already taken, by Hilde.

  “I need food,” I said urgently. I opened the satchel I’d brought from the cave and looked around the krofft for anything I could eat. There was meat on a table and apples in a basket. I packed as much as I thought I could carry. I bent over Yolen and kissed his head. “Forgive me, but I must go.” I slid Rune’s hunting knife from his belt.

  “No!” Eleanor blocked the doorway. “The sibyl will kill you, even if Voss doesn’t.”

  I looked at this beautiful, sad-eyed woman and wished, in part, she could have been my mother. “Brunne is dead. I saw him slain. His dwelling is alight. All the world is in peril. You must let me go.”

  These words of heroism tumbled off my lips, but it felt like another boy was speaking them. Whatever life-force Brunne had just breathed into me seemed to have swelled me with courage — or madness. I had no idea how to avenge the old man or save a young girl I barely knew. But I glimpsed through the shutter and saw the moon rising and an idea suddenly sprang upon me. “I’m going to hail the dragon. Galen will defeat Voss and bring Grella home.”