The Fire Ascending
Page 9
She wrinkled her nose. A touch of indifference. “That is the name I remember, yes.”
“What became of him? Where is he? I must go to him at once.”
“Spare yourself — unless you can wriggle like a worm.” She wiped her bread around a bowl of fat. “He’s dead.” She pushed the bread into her mouth.
I buried my face in my hands. And even though Galen strived to give me courage, I could feel my poor heart wanting to shatter. “What happened? How long ago was this?” How long, I wondered, was I lost in time?
“Look at my face,” the sibyl croaked. “Is your history not measured in these ugly creases?”
I did look at her, but only for a moment.
She is not all that she seems, said the Fain. And although they could offer no real explanation, I understood what they meant. There was such deep bitterness embedded in her words, as if she blamed me for making her old. Once again in her eyes I saw a hint of youthfulness, as though she was wearing a cloak of wizened years and underneath was nought but a resentful girl. “Please, Gwilanna, what else can you tell me?”
She belched at me loudly. I had to turn away from the stench of her breath. “I note your eagerness for conversation when I have something to offer you, boy.”
I put my hand in my pocket and touched the tornaq. “I am young. Forgive my lack of respect. I will tell my side when I know about Yolen.”
The sibyl found an awkward morsel in her teeth and spat it sideways into the darkness. “My mother, myself, and the horse she rode back were the only survivors of the battle at Kasgerden. She met your seer at the foot of the mountain. The men of three tribes were with him. They had recovered from a sleeping spell, put upon them by a sibyl — whom you must have met.”
Your true mother, I was thinking. The Fain made sure I kept my mouth from blurting it. But I did say this: “I barely met her; she did not use her magicks on the women or the children. Tell me now about Grella.”
Gwilanna chewed on her thoughts for a moment. She belched again and said, “My mother told Yolen all she had seen, but he always refused to believe you were dead. They spent one turn of the moon together, hiding from the Taan —”
Hiding? I thought, but I did not interrupt.
“— searching the plains around Kasgerden. In time, the seer became ill with grief. His heart broke and his spirit left him. He is buried under stones at the foot of the mountain. I cannot say exactly where.”
I closed my eyes and swooped through Galen’s memories of the land. In doing so, I made this pledge to myself: One day I would find that cairn of stones and bless them with the auma of the dragon that Yolen had fought to protect. “Hiding?”
“What?” the sibyl grunted.
“You said they were hiding. Why would Grella need to hide from her own tribe?”
The sibyl flexed her foot. “Because of me.”
The flames leaned toward the watching skull. I felt my heart muscles guttering with them. I thought back to the moments just before my fall. Grella saying she would care for the baby — Hilde’s baby — no matter what it was, no matter what the cost.
“When they saw me — the good men of Taan and Horste — they wanted to throw me over the cliff. I was the child of a villain, they said. A monster, fathered by darkest magicks. Most of them pitied my mother, but they also feared the woman she’d become. A dear girl robbed of her innocence, forced to give birth on a timescale not even a dog could master. Some said Grella should see the cliff, too. Is this turning your stomach, boy?”
It was. But not for the reasons Gwilanna imagined. How brave (or foolish) must Grella have been to accept the child (and the prospect of death) when all she had to do was admit it wasn’t hers?
“Yolen was the only one to take her side. He argued for my life, saying that a child could not be judged on its heritage alone, only by the deeds it went on to commit. The men of Taan muttered among themselves. They talked about honor and superstition. In the end my mother was spared, but banished. Even her father agreed to this. And a price was put on her head.”
“How so?” My fingernails strained in their sockets. Galen would have spread his claws if he could.
“She was told she must return once a year to Taan, on the anniversary of that day, and show me to the elders of the tribe at the border. If they found me unholy, I would be slain. If she failed in this duty they would hunt her down and kill us both.”
I looked at the skull. My spirit raged. After all their hospitality, was I now at war with the elders of Taan? “Tell me how she died.”
The sibyl raked her hair. “I do not wish to talk about that.”
“But I want to know.”
“You do not,” she snarled. “With Yolen gone, my mother … wandered. She traveled with me until the Great Sea stopped her. We made a life here, among bears and goats. That is all you need to know.”
There is falsehood in this, the Fain said to me. Her auma betrays her words. We do not believe this version of events.
But I had no chance to question it. In a strange, almost mocking twist, she said, “Now I will hear your story, Agawin. And do not try to fool me, boy. I can spot a lie as clearly as a pebble in your eye. I know you are Premen. That much was clear from the way you entertained that idiot bear. How did you survive the fall?”
The Fain said, Do not give in to this.
But once again I ignored their advice. If my adventures had taught me one thing, it was that boldness sometimes brings the greatest rewards. I reached into my robe and drew out the tornaq, curious to know how the sibyl would react. “This is what saved my life.” I let it sit in the palm of my hand. And though the Fain implored me not to let her touch it, I allowed Gwilanna to pick up the charm.
She closed her mouth and breathed out through her nose. A crumb of bread fell from the end of her chin. “Where did you get this?” She sucked the words in with a greedy relish.
“Grella gave it to me,” I told her truthfully.
Gwilanna stared at me in disbelief.
“She found it in a cave on Kasgerden, I swear.”
“Was it my father’s?”
I shrugged and looked away. Maybe it had once belonged to Voss. But I wasn’t going to speculate. And I wasn’t going to mention my encounter with Hilde.
The sibyl ran her thumb along the whorls, digging her nail almost enviously into them. For one anxious moment I thought she might shake it and disappear with a hideous cackle. Instead she asked, “Do you know what this symbol means?”
I shook my head, which was honest enough. I remembered what I’d heard when the writing dragon had drawn the symbol — “sometimes” — but it made little sense to me still.
“Then I will tell you,” Gwilanna said, in a voice that seemed oddly detached from her own. “You may hear other, more fanciful explanations, but they will only be variations on this.” She rolled the tornaq between her palms. “The three lines are the three dimensions of this world, held in place by the same forces that allow us to imagineer constructs. The spaces represent the flow of time, both forward and back, spiraling infinitely around one another, twining into the eternal now. But if the lines are moved, even by the smallest amounts, the dimensions of the universe flicker and change. The results, as you have found, are quite … spectacular.”
Sometimes I will be at Kasgerden; sometimes I will be at Iunavik. One blink within the eternal “now.” I looked up and said, “How do you know what you know?”
She is drawing upon the unicorn’s auma, said the Fain. This knowledge has always been with her.
The horn. Of course. The three-lined pattern. So strange to think that this woman, by virtue of her sinister birth, possessed the ancient knowledge of unicorns. And it was frightening to know that the shadow of the Ix must be in there somewhere, all mixed up with Hilde’s magicks. But which of those influences drove her the strongest? And which was leading her now?
She ignored my question and asked one of me. “Were you holding the charm when you fell?”
“That is a very good question,” she muttered. She brought the tornaq close to her face, turning it in front of her searching eyes. “I have heard it said that if you cut a dragon open, you would find this symbol etched on its heart.” I cast my eyes warily toward Gawain, but she did not appear to intend him harm. “All I can tell you is this: It was not a piece of bone that brought you to Iunavik, but what that piece of bone is hiding.” And then she did something quite unexpected. She hurled the tornaq at the wall above the skull.
“No!” I cried and was about to jump up when I witnessed an extraordinary transformation. The bone dissolved before it struck the wall and a small, birdlike creature fluttered free.
Grrraaarrkkk! went Gawain, raising his head.
“There,” crowed the sibyl, pleased with herself. “There is the agent of your destiny, Agawin. You are looking at a being that can change its shape and carry you across time, maybe even worlds.”
“How, though? How does this … creature … change time?”
“Dragons are masters of the energy field. What we do when we imagineer is a jot compared to the power they command — even one as small as this.”
The creature fluttered down to my hand. It did not look entirely like a bird, but it wasn’t quite a dragon either. It was white with a sheen like frosted snow. I could see the flames of the cave fire through it and its weight upon my hand was no more than a breath. It observed me with a keen, well-focused eye, as if it saw in that glance not a boy sitting on a rock in a cave, but everything that boy had been and would become. It peered at Gwilanna and its bright gaze narrowed. She drew back, adding more wrinkles to her face. The creature tilted its head and purred in warm admiration at Gawain. Then it turned into bone again, melting from one shape to the other as if it was nothing more than smoke.
“A lucky find,” said the sibyl. “It seems quite attached to you.”
And I didn’t need dragons or Fain within me to know how much she desired to have it.
At that point Guinevere rushed back in, her airwave bending the flames again. Gawain sat up and made a fresh graaarrkk.
I put the tornaq in my robe and stood up to greet her. “What’s the matter? You look worried.”
“The eagle,” she panted.
“What about him?”
“Burned.”
“Burned? How?”
Gwilanna turned her head. “Speak plainly, girl. I do not like riddles.”
Guinevere dropped to her knees. Her hands gripped her thighs to stop them quivering. “I took him to the spring water, as you said. All the way I could feel a great auma wave from him. Whatever he absorbed from Gawain was very strong.”
Gwilanna squinted at the dragon but said nothing.
“Lights kept glowing around his body. Yet there was no flicker of life from his eye. I set him down and opened his beak, so I might drop some water on his tongue. I cupped a hand under the spring. The water was cold and I prayed to Gaia that the shock of it would cause no harm to the bird. And I don’t know how it happened, my knee must have slipped against the muddy earth, but the next thing I knew I had spilled the water all over his feathers. His wings. His head. His tail.”
“Yes, yes,” said Gwilanna, squirming with impatience. “We know where a bird has feathers. What happened?”
“A blaze,” said Guinevere, looking at me. “A fire ignited and he burned like nothing I have ever seen before. A white fire took him and turned him to ash.”
“White fire?” I muttered.
“I saw his body through it — but that’s not all.” She looked at the ground, her face lost behind a fall of her bright red hair. “A new bird rose from the ashes.”
“What?” said Gwilanna, grinding her teeth. The noise could be heard quite clearly around the cave.
“A spirit bird. But not an eagle. It was changed.”
“A dragon?” I asked.
“No.” Her eyes widened. “Something in-between. It had a longer beak. A softer eye. Pretty little tufts on the top of its head. Colors more beautiful than any sunset — like his golden-brown feathers but speckled with orange and yellow and green. As he rose, he opened his throat and breathed the same white fire that had taken him to ash.”
He died and lived again, the Fain said excitedly. He has commingled with the dragon and made a new form. A bird of fire. A firebird. We must find it. We must learn from this, Agawin.
But the Fain were not the only ones intent on that. “Where is this creature?” Gwilanna said coldly.
Guinevere shook her head. “I don’t know.”
I crouched beside her. “Which way did it fly?”
“It didn’t,” she said. “It just … disappeared. It tipped its head down and folded away. It made the air ripple. I waited and watched but it didn’t come back. Then I ran here, to the cave, to tell you.”
It has moved through time, as you did, said the Fain.
Where would it go to?
We could not say.
I made a swift decision and said to Guinevere, “Will you take me to the spring?”
“I would … but it might be wiser to stay in the cave.”
“Why?” said Gwilanna. “What’s happening outside?”
I didn’t wait for Guinevere’s answer. I ran to the cave mouth and poked my head out. To my surprise there were animals all over the hill. Goats, rabbits, squirrels, birds, waterfowl, foxes. All sitting there, calm and untroubled. The bear I had stopped with my imagineered bush was mooching about, berry stains marking the fur around his mouth.
This is a vigil, the Fain said quietly. They have felt Gawain’s auma. They are here for the dragon.
“Is this usual,” I whispered, “when a wearling is born?”
No. But he is more special than most. Our analysis suggests he is the last known dragon in this world.
And there and then my destiny was set. I did not need the spirit of Galen to tell me that it would fall to me, a seer’s apprentice, to stay close to Gawain and protect him from harm.
But there was still one thing I did not understand. According to Gideon, the queen dragon, Gawaine, had passed her fire tear on to her son. He had inherited most of her auma. Gideon, in turn, had absorbed some of that. But in the many legends Yolen had taught me, not one of them spoke about a dragon with the power to create a new form from the ashes of another. How could Gawain — or his mother — possess the ability to resurrect an eagle?
I sensed that Galen had an explanation, but Guinevere came alongside me at that moment and her presence distracted me from hearing it.
“See what I mean?” She nodded at the animals.
It was remarkable to see them settled together, with no threat from any one species to another.
“Will the bear be a problem?”
“Not now he’s fed. Come inside. Gwilanna wants to speak to you.” She tugged my sleeve and we returned to the fireside.
Gawain was still in the cooking vessel, but the sibyl was on her feet by now, gathering seeds from her collection of pots. She put a handful into a smaller dish and started grinding them with a blunt-ended stone. “Guinevere has told me what is happening outside. You must leave here and take the wearling with you. The presence of so many animals on the hill will not go unnoticed by the tribe that inhabits the far end of the valley. If men come, they will seize the creature.” She twisted her stone, pushing and crushing the husks till they ended their resistance with a deathly crack. I half-fancied she wished it was the bones of my neck turning to powder in the base of her dish.
“Where will we go to?” Guinevere asked.
“We?” the sibyl said brusquely.
“I wish to travel with Agawin.”
I held my breath for the sibyl’s response. Although I had been in Guinevere’s company for barely one tick of the afternoon sun, the thought that she might be allowed to join me unexpectedly filled my heart with joy.
My heart sank.
But Guinevere paid no regard to her. “We should take him to the Tooth.” She twisted on her heels and faced me directly. Even in the dim light, her eyes were a stunning blaze of green.
“Tooth?” I asked.
“A small island, farther up the coast. A lump of jagged rock that looks like a bear’s front tooth. It’s no use to anyone but the seabirds that nest there. Perfect for a young dragon. It can be reached by boat or a land bridge that appears when the tides are right. It’s dangerous to cross, but once we get him over he’ll be safe, I’m sure. It’s an easy roost for a dragon to defend. The villagers on the shore side will probably help us. They’re an old tribe called the Inook. They know me well. In the summer, I trade with them. They follow the path of Gaia and respect all animals and their spirits. They will welcome Gawain to the island, I know it.”
“Hmph,” went Gwilanna, who didn’t sound so sure. “The world is changing, girl. They might just put a skewer through its heart and roast its ‘spirit’ in the salty air.” She put her stone aside and splashed a little water into the dish, stirring it with two of her grimy fingers. She looked at me. A little slyly, I thought. I was doing nothing, just standing there with my hands in my robe, when suddenly she seemed to have a change of heart. “But you’re right, the island would be appropriate.” She leaned forward and settled the dish into the fire. “Very well. I give this journey my blessing. You may guide the boy to the Inook tribe. I will do what I can to mislead pursuers. But you must leave tonight, under cover of darkness.”
“We should rest,” I said.
Gwilanna slanted her gaze. “I agree. Follow the dragon’s example. Sleep now; be ready when the moon comes up.” She nodded at the dish. Its contents were already beginning to bubble. “This potion will relax you, but also give you strength.”
“I will not drink any of your potions,” I said. Not after what I’d seen in Taan.
“Agawin?” Guinevere looked at me, shocked.
I started to fish for an explanation, but thankfully she went on to say, “Whatever you’ve heard about sibyls in the past, forget. Gwilanna’s been healing people in the valley ever since I’ve known her. She cured my ailment, didn’t you?”