Dark Fire

by Chris D'Lacey

  “Gwillan’s fire tear has suffered an inversion.”

  Once again, Zanna stopped midturn. He was middle-distancing, calculating outcomes. Briefly, very briefly, she saw something of the man she loved in the soft blue focus of those languid eyes. She shuddered and looked away.

  “Obsidian has the power to draw negative energy. The greater the energy, the easier the transfer. The sight of Liz dying would have created a powerful auma shift in her dragons, particularly one as sensitive as Gwillan.”

  On the fridge top, the listener tremored.

  “And what’s an inversion?”

  “What it implies. All the love and devotion Gwillan felt for Liz has been transformed into fear. His fire has turned from white to black. His tear is now dark. It’s harmless if it stays within the obsidian.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  David chose not to answer that.

  Zanna gave a sigh. Through gritted teeth she said, “I don’t know where Gwilanna is. Surely you can find her?”

  “She’s covering herself. It’s a sibyl trait — but you can trace her.” He nodded at her arm.

  Zanna let her eyes drift sideways to a jagged three-lined scar on her forearm; a “gift” of magicks from Gwilanna after a clash with the sibyl many years earlier.

  “Lay your fingers across the scars,” David said. “Look for her in your mind. She’s the only other sibyl you know. It should be easy.”

  Zanna swept her glossy black hair behind her ears. “I know how it works, David. If I find her, what then?”

  “Just get her location. Leave the rest to me.”

  A child’s gasp broke the conversation there and Alexa came running in to join her father.

  “Daddy!”

  Bonnington jumped down in search of his food bowl. Alexa replaced him on David’s lap. Her towel was slipping off her head. He gathered it and gently patted her hair.

  “How are you, baby?”

  “Clean and sparkly.”

  “Did you wash behind your ears?”

  “Yes!”

  “And between your toes?”

  “Yes!”

  “And up your nose?”

  “Daddy!” She beat a fist against his knee.

  Zanna, watching this, began to feel another, deeper form of betrayal. One that amounted to a kind of exclusion. How could David and Alexa bond so well? How could this man walk into her life and override five years of diligent motherhood? As if he could do no wrong?

  “Alexa?”

  The child turned around. She saw tears collecting in her mother’s eyes.

  “I want you to be good, OK?”

  “Zanna?” said David. “What are you doing?”

  She was tying back her hair: a sign of action. “I was responsible for losing Gwillan’s tear. It’s up to me to do something about it. Time for you to be a father, David. You’d better protect that little girl with your life.”

  “Zanna!”

  But she had already laid her fingers into her scars. For barely a second they glowed bright blue. Then the whole of her body seemed to vaporize and shimmer before compressing into a single point. The tube of ointment she’d been holding clattered to the floor.

  The listening dragon leaned warily forward, put on his glasses, and peered into the empty space. No Zanna.

  Gone.

  6 THE SPIDER AND THE FLY

  Bleak. Eerie. Cold. Uninviting. Fitting, Zanna thought, that she should land in a place that might be adequately described by words she could also apply to Gwilanna.

  She had materialized in the middle of a large stone circle, on what she guessed must be Farlowe Island. Although she had never been to this place, in her dialogues with Arthur the home of the monks had often been described. It was, as Arthur had always suggested, at the hostile edge of faith. Apart from the stones and the reedy grassland and the hollow gray sky choking out the sun there was nothing else visible in any direction. She couldn’t even hear the sea.

  Nauseous from the effects of the shift, she dropped to her knees and added a few threads of semiclear bile to the indigenous dampness of the flattened grass. Great. Now there was barf in her hair and her favorite jeans were filthy. Two more reasons to curse Gwilanna.

  “Well, well.” And there was the voice. That old, familiar, cynical drawl.

  She appeared from behind the largest stone, ambling around the outside of the circle. She was barefoot, in sackcloth, and looked like a throwback to stone-age times. Her hair, easily as thick as Liz’s, was falling down her back in gray-green straggles. Feathers and moss were caught up in the knots. A black beetle was exploring close to her ear. “Not quite the fly I’d hoped for,” she said, scraping her fingernails across the nearest stone. From the hand still hidden by her body, something liquid seemed to be falling.

  “You know what?” Zanna said, having to turn to direct her speech (and growing rapidly annoyed because of it; the giddiness was being slow to wear off). “If you were a spider, I’d care more about you. Stand still, you old crone. Didn’t anybody teach you it’s impolite to walk away while someone’s speaking to you?”

  “Where’s the boy?” Gwilanna snapped. Caustic, even by her standards. Someone had definitely stepped out of the wrong side of the cave this morning.

  “On the steep learning curve of fatherhood. And call me paranoid, but I’m keen to get home to make sure he’s playing the part. So let’s get down to business, witch. I want that piece of obsidian you stole.”

  At that moment, Zanna heard a squawk behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that a raven had landed on the tallest crooked finger of stone. Two stones away, another of the large black birds set down.

  “You seem to have attracted some attention,” Gwilanna said.

  The blueberry eyes of the ravens swiveled. They stared at the scars on Zanna’s arm. One of them shifted sideways a step and opened its beak, as if snarling at her.

  Zanna lowered her sleeves. “Just give me the knife and go play with your birds. I’ve got better things to do than stay for this pantomime.”

  “Always such disrespect,” Gwilanna said. “If you were half the sibyl you could be, I’d admire you, girl.”

  “Yeah? Well, here’s the thing,” Zanna said, pressing forward. “I never could stand bullies, show-offs, or people with bad grooming.” She raised her hand, planning to snatch a clump of Gwilanna’s hair, only to find that her movements were blocked. The sibyl had set up some kind of force field. The result was the same at the next space along.

  Two more ravens landed on the stones. And now Zanna could see what was really attracting them. The liquid Gwilanna was trailing from her hand was green in color. Ichor. The “juice” from a dragon’s scale. Only then did Zanna remember that Gwilanna had made off with another trophy from Wayward Crescent. She had Gawain’s isoscele, the triangular scale from the point of his tail. A rare and treasured Pennykettle artifact — and a potent source of magicks in the hands of a sibyl.

  “How is Elizabeth?” Gwilanna said airily, still trailing around the circle. “I miss her. How’s her unborn son? Is his heart still beating in triples? There may be dragon inside him yet. Ah, the triple slip of the hybrid valve. Unmistakable, if you know what to listen for. Really, child, I could have taught you so much.”

  “What are you doing?” said Zanna, following the ichor.

  “Sending a warning,” Gwilanna said. “It should have been David in the circle, not you, but the result will be the same. He’ll come looking. He’ll be angry. The message will go back to his dragon masters. One way or another, I’ll get what I want.”

  Zanna pushed at the spaces again, but it was like trying to beat through thickened plastic. She drew back her sleeve.

  “I wouldn’t bother,” Gwilanna scoffed. “Your useless grasp of magicks could never compete with mine. I put a lock on the rift. You won’t be able to travel back through it. And by the time you’ve exhausted your limited mind trying to work out how I created the barrier, I will be at the final s
tone and the beacon will be lit.”

  “Beacon?” Zanna twisted on her heels, looking for any sign of a fire to kindle.

  Then, to her horror, she noticed something. On the plinthlike rock at the center of the circle was the thing she’d come to recover: Gwillan’s fire tear, still trapped in its prism of obsidian. She ran to it and tried to snatch it up, but it had been cemented by magicks to the plinth. Inside the obsidian, a dark fire burned.

  “What do you want?” Zanna hissed, whipping around again. Gwilanna had only three stones left to go past and the ichor was showing no sign of running out. Zanna ran to the back of the circle where she noticed that a line of the dragon’s blood had been spilled inside the ring as well. An arrowhead of green was pointing to the plinth, its shaft curving back to the gateway of stones at the east of the circle. It appeared that Gwilanna had started at the plinth and worked her way outward, before luring her victim in.

  “Ah, you’ve seen the pattern,” the sibyl drawled, pausing briefly to watch Zanna’s face. “In the times when dragons were bred at this aerie, the shape was commonplace. It’s carved into stones all over the island. The monks even have it on the walls of their chapel. How ironic is that?”

  “What pattern?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, girl. This is not a time to disappoint me. You probably only have moments to live. You’re surrounded by one of the most powerful symbols in the universe. That fickle charlatan in clay you call Gretel even has it carved into the base of her tail — at my insistence, I might add; I was present when Elizabeth made her. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it?”

  “The letter G,” said Zanna, wishing more than anything she’d brought Gretel with her. The potions dragon would have been working on escape routes from the start. Moments to live? What was the crazed witch talking about?

  “Not just any G,” Gwilanna drawled on. “A G curling into an isoscele. It represents the tail of their creator, the she-dragon, Godith. Haven’t you ever wondered why dragons copy it into their names? To have the sign of Godith on your breath is a mark of respect. Really, girl, you’re such a waste. You could have learned so much from me.” She sighed and started her journey again.

  “You still haven’t told me what you want.” Zanna threw the words up into the air. She was pacing around now, considering her options. A glance at the ravens (still arriving) reminded her she’d once used magicks to adopt their shape. She looked at the sky. Did the force field tent across the stones? she wondered.

  “I want what my mother never had,” said Gwilanna. “I want illumination to a dragon.”

  Zanna stopped and pressed her fingers into her scars. “What dragon in its right mind would want to be with you?” In an instant, she became a raven and flew upward as swiftly and vertically as she could. She rose well above the height of the stones and it seemed at first that she might get away, to lose herself among the squawking flock. But the force field closed with such intensity around her that her wings were stretched to their widest limit and almost torn away at the shoulder. She tumbled back to Earth, having just enough cohesive wit to remain a bird as she hit the plinth. She rolled over, becoming human again. Pain was searing through her upper arms.

  “Fool!” squawked Gwilanna, shaking a fist. Several droplets of the ichor of Gawain sprayed against the ancient stones. The ravens there clamored to be touched by its power. Beaks and claws were displayed. One bird took a squealing stab to its belly. Fights were breaking out all around the circle.

  Zanna pushed herself up against the plinth, coughing blood into the corner of her mouth. She swept it away with her tongue. Gwilanna had reached the final stone and was just a few steps from completing her G. “What happens when you finish the pattern?”

  “The beacon will light,” Gwilanna repeated, letting her hand drop loosely to her side. Ichor continued to drip from her fist. Vengeance clouded her feral eyes. She swept her gaze toward the plinth. “There is an echo of the dragon Ghislaine in this ring. Its spirit still cries for my mother. I need to put it out of its misery.”

  “How?” said Zanna, watching the drips. Each time Gwilanna moved, drops of the ichor moved randomly with her. The right drop at the wrong time and the spell would be cast.

  “Fire,” said the sibyl, brooding again. She laughed to herself. The ravens above her cawed for blood. “The circle will magnify the spark behind you and the Fain will see it from here to Ki:mera. By the time they arrive, I will be gone — with the obsidian — and my terms will be written in your blood across the stones: Give me illumination — or I take the dark fire to the Ix.”

  Zanna swallowed hard. Though the old woman was a distance away, she could see that a black light was flickering in her eyes. “You’re not a killer, Gwilanna. Why do you need a sacrifice?”

  “To remind the Fain what the Ix will do to this world if they once again possess dark fire. I’m sorry it turned out to be you, girl. It should have been that irritating boy — fitting retribution for everything he’s put me through.”

  “Stop!” Zanna cried, scrabbling to her feet.

  The old woman dropped her hand. “It’s useless trying to appeal to me, girl. My needs are worth more than your pathetic life. I’ve waited centuries for my rightful inheritance.”

  “Listen to me, you lunatic, sibyl to sibyl. Back away from the stones. It’s time to sit down, peel a mushroom, and have a nice herb tea. You know that if anything happens to me, David is going to track you down, tear off your head, and feed it in strips to the crow brigade here.”

  “David.” She gave a scornful snort. “He’s a construct of the Fain. You think he cares about you?”

  A needle of hurt pierced Zanna’s heart. She healed it over quickly and said, “He cares that I’m the mother of his little girl. If any part of you can relate to that then let me out of the circle, now. You had a mother yourself, once. Think about her. Would she have approved of this?”

  A soft rain began to fall, beading the ugly twists in Gwilanna’s hair. “There was an egg put aside for me once,” she mumbled, looking decidedly crazed but soulful. “It was destroyed when my mother was killed in the last encounter between the Fain and the Ix.”

  “Gwilanna, let me go,” Zanna pleaded, coming right to the threshold of the gateway. Just above her, the largest of the ravens sharpened its beak against the moody gray stone. “You’ve been tainted by the fire. If you let me go, I promise I’ll persuade David to help you.”

  Their eyes met.

  “He knows you saved Liz from the Ix’s poison. He’ll reward you for that.”

  Gwilanna shook her head.

  “Think about it!” Zanna yelled. “People are saying there are dragons in the Arctic. Maybe another egg — for you?”

  Wretchedness tore through Gwilanna’s eyes. “But I should have been a daughter of Ghislaine!” she cried, and beat her fist against the rock.

  With that movement, the last drop of ichor found its spot.

  “Hhh!” gasped Zanna, jumping back as the pattern ran with fire. Gwilanna, her hand still raised, disappeared behind a wall of bright green flame.

  It was around the circle in seconds. With a roar it rushed straight to its target: the plinth.

  Zanna fell against one of the stones, fearing a fireball or possibly even blindness as the base of the plinth began to throb with light. It was Gwilanna’s voice saying, “No! That can’t be right!” that made Zanna realize: First, she wasn’t dead; second, she was still in mortal danger.

  She uncovered her face.

  Something was growing around the obsidian. Something muscular and disturbingly dark. Its torso — chest and back — formed first, in layers of translucent, thickening plasma. Then, as two stumpy legs appeared, the piece of obsidian was lifted off the plinth and turned over and around until it hovered at the very heart of the being. Zanna recoiled in terror. She could see the obsidian pumping, sending the light inside it crashing against its glassy black walls. The heart was trying to burst — inside the body of a birthing darklin
g.

  7 A DRAGON’S RETURN

  Within seconds, the creature’s shape was complete. The darkling flexed its thickset wings and stacked them half-height against its back. Its eyes bulged forth from a gruesome face that would have petrified even the most hideous of gargoyles. A circlet of dark rays strobed from its eyes, probing every raven present. The birds squealed in dread and took to the skies, but could not flee the kite strings of light. Then, just as quickly, the probes disappeared. The birds broke free and came together in a ramshackle flock, landing several fields away.

  The heart inside the darkling continued to pump. The eyes swiveled and picked out Zanna.

  “No!” she screamed, feeling for her arm.

  But before the beast could turn its dark rays upon her, its head snapped back and it barked at the sky. A large, bilateral shadow was falling. Zanna heard Gwilanna scream, “No! No! No!” It was a shout of intense annoyance, as though she was about to lose all control of the situation — which she was. A torrent of fire streamed down toward Zanna. In the shadow behind it, before she passed out, the young sibyl thought she could see a dragon.

  From her point of view, it was impossible to describe what happened next. A short time passed, then she simply became aware of being conscious again. She fell forward onto her hands and knees, spitting small pieces of grit from her mouth. She was still on the island, still within the circle, but the grass and the plinth and the monster that had somehow emerged on the plinth were now reduced to a sheet of charcoal. The smell of it, the heat of it, made her retch, producing more grit from the back of her throat. Powdered fragments were lining the cracks of her knuckles. It was in her ears and around her collar. Everywhere. Like sand.