The Fire Ascending

by Chris D'Lacey

  I felt so sick with grief.

  Lifting her into his powerful arms, Rune carried her outside onto the porch. He went back for his sword and in one huge swing he cut through the chain that bound her to the Nomaads. Then he carried her into the rain. He was Taan; he was not about to give up hope, but he knew enough about life and death to be certain that all she had left was seconds. Laying her down in the rain-softened earth, he fiddled in the pocket of his jerkin for something. It was a small piece of rock. A tiny remnant of Mount Kasgerden, singing gently with the auma of Galen. Folding her hands together on her breast, he fumbled the rock inside her grasp and knelt to say a final prayer. He had barely begun when a sharp wail cut through the hissing rain.

  A baby, crying.

  Torment savaged his rugged face. Here lay his once most beautiful daughter, dying from a thrust of his reckless sword, and there in the background was the entire reason for the whole tragedy. The wind made another tour of the trees. Rune looked at Grella through wetted eyes. Even now he saw a twitch of motherly concern as her fingers stretched toward the sound. Groaning in confusion he thumped the earth. Damn it! I heard him cry. Damn this ludicrous child! He hurried to the barn, with me in pursuit.

  There she was, in her woodpile crib. Gwilanna: no bigger than the day she’d arrived. No sweeter on the eye than an upturned louse. Rune looked baffled. He stopped short of the crib. He turned a quick circle, perhaps wary that he’d walked into a Nomaad trap. No. Just him and the child … and a squirrel. He looked at the squirming baby again. “No,” he said, holding his head in disbelief. And I knew he must be thinking of his meetings at the border. The baby girl that had become a toddler, with no abnormal creases in its soft pink skin. Yet here was this ugly … troll again.

  He reached in and lifted Gwilanna clear. Instantly, the logs gave way and the crib fell apart, exposing the few things Grella had hidden: a small pouch, presumably a gift for Gwilanna; a very rough pair of baby shoes; the dress Grella might have been “wedded” in. All of this added to his misery and grief. “What are you?” he hissed at the child. “What devil made you so foul?”

  Gwilanna gurgled and clutched her kachina doll.

  Growling like a bear, Rune turned her around. Supporting her under the arms, he walked out of the barn and showed her Grella’s body. “Look at her, child. See what this … deceit has made me do. See what has become of my only daughter. What made her care for a wretch like you?”

  Gwilanna kicked her feet and stretched her hands. “Guh …,” she gurgled. “Guh. Guh.”

  Something glinted across the clearing. It was the mirror Griss had used when she’d brushed “her” hair, still hanging by a thread from its place in the tree.

  “Come,” Rune said, marching into the rain. “Look, child. There. Behold your beauty.” And he thrust Gwilanna toward the mirror.

  A flash of lightning impaled the darkness.

  The tree branch withered.

  The mirror cracked.

  And a different face flashed in the glass.

  “Agh!” Rune was so shocked he let the baby slip. As her feet hit the ground she pitched forward and fell facedown into a puddle. And though he must have hated her more than anything, he still reached out to prevent her from drowning. But the child, like Stygg, was about to go through an incredible transition. Right before his eyes, Rune watched her grow. Large, beyond childhood. A youthful woman. Too startled to react, he allowed her to turn. Mud was dripping from the end of her nose. Her eyes were a harbor of loathing and menace. She was wrinkled still, but not as badly as before. This was the woman I had seen in the cave whose eyes betrayed her lack of years.

  Unmistakably the sibyl Gwilanna.

  Grella’s father sank to his knees. He shook his head, struggling to understand. “Who are you? What vile magick is this?”

  Gwilanna looked down at the woman she called “mother.” Grella was a whisper away from death. The sibyl began to shake with rage. It was the only time I saw her wounded by grief. “Murderer. You will pay for this….”

  “No,” Rune said. He tried to stand. “It was an accident, I swear. I …”

  Before he could finish, Gwilanna opened her throat and squealed like a wild crow in his face. Rune was bent back as if he’d walked into a blizzard. By the time he’d managed to cover his ears, blood was trickling out of them. “What would you have me do?” he shouted.

  From the shack came a long, low groan. Despite her mauling, Griss was alive.

  Gwilanna picked up the kachina doll. Her hand trembled as she tidied the red woollen hairs. “Bring her,” she ordered. “Bring me Griss.” Her voice could have rasped the edge off the wind.

  Rune Haakunen shook his head. “Why? What good would it do?”

  “I need her auma,” Gwilanna said darkly. She stroked the kachina’s mouth.

  Rune squinted in confusion. “No, there is evil in this. I will play no part in your foul iniquities.”

  “You already have — Grandfather.”

  Hearing this, Rune made a white-knuckled fist, as if he might strike the sibyl down. All that stopped him was a pure sweet sound, rising like a wisp from Grella’s lips. A lullaby no louder on the air than a feather. “Daughter?” he whispered.

  He moved forward, wanting to cradle her again, but Gwilanna snapped, “Do as I say if you want her to live.”

  Rune’s eyes shrank back to points. “You can save her?”

  Gwilanna glanced at the doll. Rune could not see the change in it, but I was in a lofty position by now and the squirrel could see what Gwilanna could see. The little stitched mouth had begun to twitch — making the shapes of Grella’s song. “She was touched by a unicorn once,” Gwilanna said. “She can call upon a trace of the healing horse. But she needs more auma. Quickly, man. Her time is running short.”

  Rune stood up, still in something of a daze. As he turned toward the shack Gwilanna spoke again. “Just the head,” she said. “The rats can have the rest.”

  Rune, the hardened traveler, gulped. With a vacant look in his weary eyes, he staggered to the shack like a newborn calf, there to finish what Stygg had begun. And I could have changed the squirrel’s position and borne witness to the slaying of the Nomaad mother, but that was one thing I could not watch.

  All I heard was the clump of the sword.

  At the same time, Gwilanna took a sharp breath of air.

  I saw the kachina doll’s eyes turn green.

  Then out came Rune with his gruesome trophy. He was holding the head at shoulder height, the way I’d often seen Griss with her lantern. In the other hand he wielded his sword again, its blade now soiled with Nomaad blood. Having the weapon back in his grasp seemed to have renewed his purpose and courage. He lobbed the head between Gwilanna’s feet. The stuck-on hair parted away from the scalp.

  Rune made a bold announcement. “This deed I have done to avenge my daughter and the people of Taan who were robbed and murdered by these Nomaad wretches. I will have no alliance with you. Be gone, witch. Take yourself far. Leave me in peace to mourn my child. My mind is changed. I will not subject her to any of your magicks. She feels my pain, I know she does. In the next life, she will forgive my hand. I defend her right to a natural death.”

  “Then you die here with her,” Gwilanna said, “which, incidentally, was always the plan.”

  Hearing this, Rune’s course was easy. He roared at her and swung his sword.

  Gwilanna spoke a sibyl curse.

  The sky awoke like a great black cat. Out of it came a vein of lightning. It struck Rune’s sword and passed along the steel blade into his arm, shaking him as if he were a piece of straw. For a moment or two, a halo of energy held him taut. Then the bolt retracted like a shriveled root, sucking all the color out of the man. A black tree in the shape of his final lunge now marked the spot where his daughter lay.

  The kachina doll stretched its arms.

  Gwilanna stroked its cheek, then knelt down and placed it on Grella’s chest.

  It began to
kick its limbs.

  “Feed,” said the sibyl.

  A small word, quietly spoken, but out of all proportion to the evil it suggested. What looked like trails of glittering smoke passed from the remains of Rune and Griss and entered the kachina doll through its mouth. The tree that was Rune remained unaltered, but the flesh shrank away from Griss’s head until all that was left behind was her skull. I realized then why Gwilanna had been so evasive about it. It was Griss, not Grella, that had sat in her cave.

  Gwilanna raised her mud-splattered arms to the sky. “I command a new life, for all I have lost!”

  Above her, the heavens rumbled uneasily. The rain stopped and started. The moon turned gray.

  Grella’s lullaby began to falter.

  “Forgive me, Mother,” the sibyl said darkly. “My kachina needs your auma as well.” A death rattle crept into Grella’s breathing. The smoke trails began to leave her body. Gwilanna spread her arms and closed her eyes. “I have a name for my ‘doll.’ I always did. Guinevere. I hope you approve.”

  And I watched the kachina doll grow in size. Until it was a red-haired human girl. Beautiful, just like Grella had been. With one exception.

  Its eyes were black.

  At that moment, I could bear it no longer. The need to bring Grella some kind of comfort overcame Joseph’s rules of Travel. I left the body of the watching squirrel and let Alexa materialize into the scene. Hovering in the air behind Gwilanna, I found the last thread of Grella’s auma. I willed her to open her eyes. She was weaker than a blade of grass, but her lids flickered up and she glimpsed me there. A flying girl. An angel of mercy. A ray of joy to enter her failing heart.

  She clasped her hands around the stone from Mount Kasgerden.

  And as the smoke trails shimmered violet, she died.

  Suddenly, the air fanned out in ripples as Gwilanna, aware of the presence of something, tried to whip around to see what it was. It seemed to require a millennium of moves, but by then I was back in the librarium, with Joseph.

  “So now you know what became of Grella,” he said, “and how the power of reflection broke Hilde’s curse. It was Rune’s misfortune to tell the child she was beautiful. That and the mirror set Gwilanna free.”

  “But did she see me?” I asked, knocking my fists together.

  Calmly, he stared at the Is. The fire stars were speeding by so fast they were forming into streaks of infinite light. They were twisting into the spiraling mark which dragons and unicorns understood to mean “sometimes.” “The timestreams are realigning,” he said. “You interfered, Agawin — but the Is records that you always did.”

  “What?” I said, fluttering my wings to keep myself stable. “You knew this would happen?”

  “Yes,” he said, his voice unruffled. “The Is records that the sight of an angel appearing to Grella raises a powerful surge of light, enough to overcome Gwilanna’s intent and make the baby’s auma turn violet. Without you, Guinevere might have been evil and my mother, Elizabeth, a maker of darklings.”

  “So … I was a part of Guinevere’s birth?”

  “A vital part. And of the timeline she shared with Gawain.”

  The complexities of this, the paradoxes it raised, were too much even for an illumined mind. “Why violet?” I had never understood the significance of the color.

  “A sign of the dragon,” he said. “Their fire is called ‘white,’ but violet is a closer description. Gwilanna will always suggest that the color is merely an irritating defect in the eyes of anyone close to dragons, but that is because she could never admit that she came to love the child she’d created.”

  “Love?” I scoffed.

  Joseph nodded. “Ultimately, what the sibyl considers a weakness will be the thing that saves her. For all her faults, Gwilanna is capable of feeling loss. You saw it briefly outside Stygg’s shack. You know this instinctively, which is why you — as Alexa — have always reserved some sympathy for your ‘aunt.’”

  “But she was trying to imagineer a monster. A female likeness in Voss’s image.”

  “She was young,” he said, “and fueled by anger. She was obeying the only impulse she knew. Later, the goodness she experienced through living with Guinevere suppressed Voss and brought the unicorn forward, allowing it to self-heal to a degree. But the balance of Gwilanna’s mind is delicate and readily affected by negative influences such as the Ix. The conflict is slowly turning her mad.”

  Misguided, not evil, as David often said.

  In the Is, a giant image of Gadzooks had appeared.

  “Isenfier is upon us,” said Joseph. “You must return to the Crescent, where you will be safe.” He stood up and made a firebird call. Gideon and the three that had saved me at Kasgerden came flying down from the upper floors.

  “Joseph, wait. You never did tell me what happened to Elizabeth.”

  “Just stay in the Crescent. For my sake now.”

  “But I vowed to stop Gwilanna.”

  “You can’t,” he said. “Only Gwilanna herself can do that.”

  I spread my wings with a determined phut! “I have a duty to Galen and the last twelve dragons. Let me be Agawin. Let me fight.”

  “What makes you think there will be a fight?”

  No fight? “Then what is your plan?”

  “Gwilanna has set the conditions for Isenfier. Everything now depends on her. We will give her what she craves and let the timeline adjust. It begins the second after she takes you from the woods.”

  Back in the dawn of history. With Gawain.

  “Your book will record it all,” he said. He nodded at the lectern, where the book was waiting.

  But my mind was still hovering firmly on Gwilanna. “Give her what she craves?”

  He signaled to Gadzooks. The dragon lifted his pencil.

  And as I felt the strange tug of the universe turning, I watched Joseph Henry fade away and commingle with the body of the firebird Gideon. “We need to give her what she’s always wanted, Agawin.” He spread his wings and snorted fire from his nostrils. “Illumination to a dragon.”

  Rosa came crashing through the trees, rearing her unicorn up beside David. “I smell burning. What happened? Where’s Agawin gone?”

  “It was a trap,” David said, kneeling down beside Thoran. “Gwilanna was here, with the tornaq. She took him.”

  The unicorn bucked again. “Well, do we go after her or what?”

  David shook his head. “Thoran’s hurt. He needs help. This thorn in his paw is going to kill him. We need to remove it. Is Gretel with you?”

  The potions dragon zipped through the trees and came to land on an exposed tree root. Thoran was fading out of consciousness, but still awake enough to know the meaning of pain. “Knock him out,” David said in dragontongue to Gretel. “Quickly.”

  “No, wait.”

  The potions dragon flicked her tail and blew an impatient smoke ring at Rosa. The bear, as David said, was fading fast.

  Rosa slid off the unicorn’s back. “Surely Guinevere has to be the one who saves him? If we interfere we’ll be changing the —”

  “Hhh! Let me see him!” Before Rosa could finish, Guinevere came crashing through the bracken and knelt down, pushing her hair behind her ears. Gently, she lifted Thoran’s paw and turned it to examine the wound. “Where’s Agawin?” she asked, suddenly aware that he wasn’t with them.

  “Taken by Gwilanna,” David said bluntly.

  “Taken? Why? Why would she do that?” Guinevere looked at them both in turn. “Is this supposed to happen? You know my legend, don’t you? Does he always disappear like this?”

  David touched his thumb to his lips. “When Elizabeth Pennykettle taught me your legend, Agawin’s name was never mentioned, but Thoran’s definitely was.”

  “So will I see him again — Agawin, I mean?”

  David looked into her eyes. “I don’t know.”

  Guinevere nodded but made no comment. She checked Thoran’s wound again. The thorn had snapped off between two
of his pads. Golden-colored pustules were starting to appear all around the entry point. “The thorn has been tipped with nightshade,” she said. “I can see a trace that hasn’t entered his paw.” The bear groaned as she laid his foot down. “I’ll need to gather leaves to make a healing poultice. Did I hear you say Gretel could make him sleep?”

  David nodded at Gretel, who quickly took some flowers from a quiver at her back and wafted them under Thoran’s nostrils. Within seconds, the bear had slumped sideways.

  “Look after him. I won’t be long.” Guinevere jumped up and ran into the woods.

  When she was clear of them Rosa whispered, “Now what happens to this crazy timeline? You can’t tell me Gretel was around a zillion years ago to nurse … why do I want to say ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’?”

  “It’s a book. One of Alexa’s favorites. You’re picking up Zanna’s memories again. Winnie’s a bear. And this bear is Ingavar’s ancestor, remember. Part of him is in me. Try to have a bit more respect.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “It doesn’t matter how the bear is saved as long as Guinevere’s influence is dominant. What’s crucial is that she strengthens the bond between them, so he’ll come to her aid when she needs him at the island.” He stroked one of Thoran’s small brown ears. “Gretel, remove the thorn.”

  Shrugging her shoulders, the potions dragon fluttered down and studied the wound. With a quick burst of fire she burned down the pustules and cauterized the flesh. Then, with an accurate pinch, she pulled the thorn out whole.

  “But if Gwilanna’s somewhere else in time,” Rosa pressed, “he won’t have a reason to be at the island. It’s because of her that he swims out to sea with Guinevere. If Gwilanna’s not around, will Guinevere even catch Gawain’s fire tear, let alone drop it into the ocean?”

  “She has to,” David muttered. “Or Scuffenbury is lost. We’ll have no ice cap and we’ll have no bears. No Liz, no Lucy …” He glanced at Gretel. “No Pennykettle dragons. Maybe no me.”

  Gretel pretended not to hear that. Hrrr, she said, to alert them to the fact that Guinevere was coming back.

  Rosa looked up and saw Guinevere running through the trees, clutching a handful of spongy green leaves. But as the girl broke fully into the clearing, the world seemed to tilt and motion slowed and all color became a blur of gray. The effect only lasted a moment. But when Rosa shook her head and her vision cleared, she saw not Guinevere coming toward her but a small pack of long-legged, thin-faced dogs.