Dark Fire

by Chris D'Lacey

  “Take it steady. Let me move you back.” A hand touched her arm. Frightened, Zanna beat it aside and scrabbled for the sanctuary of the nearest stone.

  “What are you doing here?” she said, coughing. “I left you with Alexa.”

  David walked forward, leaving smoking footprints in the ashes. “Alexa’s safe. Please, let me help you. If you stay inside the circle, the air will become uncomfortable to breathe.”

  Zanna mussed her hair. The dust of a thousand ages fell out.

  “Send the shampoo bill to Gwilanna,” he added. “She saw the dragon coming and cast you into one of the stones. She was trying to save you. Unnecessary, as it happened, but it’s the thought that counts. You were screaming. Your mouth was open, hence the —”

  “Shut up!” Zanna tried to kick him but missed. She staggered to her feet. “Where is she? I’m gonna kill her. Several times over.” She looked down at her jeans. Unrecoverable. Ruined.

  “She got away,” said David, “fortunately without this.” He held up the piece of obsidian rock. Gwillan’s tear was intact inside it. “She’s going to be one very unhappy sibyl now.”

  Zanna whirled around and stared at the place where the darkling had been.

  “It’s dead,” said David. “Never really alive. I’m guessing that Gwilanna was trying to call Ghislaine. Somehow, she managed to get the auma of a darkling I thought I’d destroyed here once.”

  Zanna dragged the back of her hand across her face. “How did the heart survive?”

  David looked across the circle. “The darkling was an echo of the monster Lucy was forced to make when the Ix brought her here, to the island. It materialized at a different vibrational level around the obsidian block, but was trying to find a match through living auma on the same plane. Thankfully it probed the birds, not you.” He turned the heart like a paperweight. “One cool thing you learn about dragons if you’re around them long enough is that they have the ability to modify their flame to the melting point of whatever they want to destroy or preserve. He followed my orders pretty well. He was smart.”

  “He?”

  David took her hand and drew her to the other side of the stones. In the fields, some forty yards away, grazing gently on the grass, was a magnificent bronze-colored dragon.

  “Grockle?” Zanna gasped.

  Hrrr? growled the creature, pricking its ears.

  “Not now. We’ve got to go,” David said, preventing her from moving closer to the beast. “Any ripple in the space-time continuum leaves an echo. If I was able to trace you, the Ix could, too. This little episode won’t go unnoticed. The moment will come when you can reunite properly with Grockle, I promise.” He turned and gave a sharp command.

  Grockle raised his head. All the classic dragon features were there: jeweled eyes, small horns, indescribably scary teeth. He extended his neck, setting off a ripple of color that began behind his ears and ran to his shoulder. Tilting left and right, he peered at Zanna. Whatever structures composed his eyes shifted like a set of tectonic plates. He was capturing an image. He knew her. She could feel it. Grockle: the young male dragon born from an egg that she herself had quickened five years ago.

  With what appeared to be a snort of reluctance, Grockle shortened his neck, opened his wings, and took to the sky. He was a point on the far horizon before the island grasses had ceased to waft.

  “Where will he go?” Zanna asked, cupping her eyes.

  “North,” said David, casually adding, “until I need him again.”

  She threw him a sideways glance.

  “A fire star has opened over the Arctic. A dragon colony — a Wearle — is being established there.”

  “Then it’s right, what Apak saw?”

  “They come in peace,” he said, detecting her concern.

  “Hidden? Inside a mist?”

  He nodded. “It’s better that way for now. The Wearle are cloaking the region till the climate is right and the Earth is ready to accept them back. They’ll reveal themselves gradually to minimize the shock. It would be far too traumatizing if millions of people suddenly had to come face-to-face with what they’ve generally assumed to be nothing but a myth. Now, please, take my hand, we have to go. Better that you travel with me this time.” He clicked his fingers and a small white dragon named Groyne materialized on his palm. More birdlike than Liz’s sculptures, Groyne was recognizably dragon nonetheless. He had been created by an Inuit shaman and was a shape-shifter of extraordinary means. He made a smooth transition into a piece of narwhal tusk. In this form, he was able to move whoever was holding him through space and time.

  Realizing she had little choice, Zanna stretched her arm and let David clasp her fingers. “There’s one thing you haven’t told me,” she said. She waited until she had eye contact with him. “Why are the dragons coming back at all?”

  “Later,” he said. “Hold tight.” He raised the hand containing the tusk and shook it three times.

  In an instant they had all disappeared and peace had returned to Farlowe Island. The sun broke through the low-lying clouds. An easterly breeze blew in off the sea, sweeping anonymously across the stone circle, stirring and layering the harmless ashes.

  But in the field where the party of ravens had landed, all was not well. They were staggering through the grasses as if they’d been drugged.

  The first bird to change was the dominant male. He was tossing his head back and forth when, suddenly, his skull swelled to twice its size and ears appeared where ears had never been before. His beak collapsed into a sawed-off nose, complete with flared and dribbling nostrils. At the same time his striking blue-black wings shortened dramatically and thickened at the shoulder. Next to go were his spindling legs, replaced by muscle and bulleted claws.

  The raven had become a tiny monster.

  Leader of a flock of eleven semidarklings.

  8 CATCHING UP

  David and Zanna arrived back in the garden, near the rockery. They were still holding hands. Zanna immediately cast his aside and stalked toward the house with her arms tightly folded. She was met by Liz, back from Cambridge, who stopped her on the porch with a horrified gasp.

  “My goodness! What happened to you?”

  “Ask him,” said Zanna. “I need a bath.”

  Liz’s gaze lingered over David for a moment. The son she’d never had, returned to her. “No, wait,” she said, calling Zanna back. “There’s something I need to tell you — both of you.”

  “What’s the matter?” David said. In a couple of strides he was at Liz’s shoulder. Tears had dried in runs on her cheeks.

  “While you were gone, Henry had a stroke.”

  “What?” Zanna said.

  David’s eyes fell shut. When he opened them again he let his gaze rise over the garden fence and settle kindly on the house next door, the scene of so many domestic adventures.

  Zanna shook her head, looking confused. “Is he OK?”

  “He was taken to the hospital about half an hour ago. It doesn’t look good, I’m sorry. Alexa seems fine though.”

  “Alexa?” said Zanna. “I don’t understand.”

  “She was with him when it happened,” Liz said. “They were feeding Henry’s fish when he sat down and went ‘a bit wuzzly,’ apparently. She held his hand until she heard us come home. She sang dragon lullabies to him. Rather touching, really.”

  Zanna’s dark eyes drilled into David’s. “You left her with Henry? He’s not been well for weeks!”

  David spread his hands. “How was I to know? Anyway, I thought it was important to come after you.”

  “Some father you are!”

  “I saved your life,” he reminded her, calmly.

  But Zanna just glared at him and swept away.

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Liz. “That’s not a good start.” She looked him up and down, then stepped forward and draped her arms around his neck. “I don’t want to know how you were able to come back or how any of this is possible; I just want to know that you’ll stay wi
th us — please?”

  He hugged her sweetly. “For as long as I can. It’s so good to see you again.”

  She pulled away. “Alexa said something about you going to find Gwilanna?”

  “Yes. I managed to retrieve this.” He lifted the obsidian out of his pocket. “Be careful, it’s fragile.” He handed it over.

  Turning it like a kaleidoscope, Liz said, “Is this light inside it really Gwillan’s tear?”

  David shook his head. “The complete antithesis. What you have in there is pure evil.”

  “But it came from one of my dragons. From a beautiful creature that wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  “That’s what makes it so dangerous,” he said. “Innocence, turned on its head. That is a spark of dark fire, Liz, the most destructive force in the universe. If the Ix got hold of it, they’d harm a lot more than flies.”

  Even so, she caressed it softly. “All I want is peace — and Gwillan back. Is there any hope for him, David? Can this … thing be reversed? Can his life be restored?”

  David returned the block safely to his pocket. “I’ll need to seek advice on that.” He quickly changed the subject. “How’s the baby?”

  “Baby?” Liz looked down at herself as if she were surprised to remember she was pregnant. “How did you know?”

  He pointed at her tummy and made the shape of a curve with his hand.

  “Oh, yes. Silly me.” She tossed her mane of hair. “He’s fine.”

  “Him?”

  “It’s a boy — according to Gwilanna.”

  “Interesting. Got a name for him yet?”

  “Joseph. Joseph Henry,” she said. “But we’re trying to keep it a secret for now.” She smiled and tilted her head toward the house.

  Lucy had just stepped out of the kitchen. She came walking down the garden with her arms tightly crossed and her mouth puckered inward, as if trying to work out what she should do. How did you greet someone you loved when everyone around you had been saying for the past five years that he was dead? Two yards from him she cast all that aside and launched herself forward. He caught her and lifted her clean off the porch.

  “Oh,” was all she could say.

  He said, “Wow, you’ve grown.”

  He smiled at Liz. Her bright green eyes were glistening again. She patted his arm. “Come to dinner.” She made it sound like a hopeful question.

  With a puff, David set Lucy down. She put her fingers underneath her nose, embarrassed by the drip that was forming there. She threw up her hands, briefly lost for words. “We went to Cambridge,” she blurted, as if it was an alternative form of hello. “Why did you send Gadzooks to that professor?”

  His gaze shifted sideways and he shrugged. “I didn’t.”

  “But … there was a dragon in his room that wrote things down.”

  “The description Professor Steiner gave us sounded very much like Zookie,” said Liz.

  “Oh, I’m sure it was him,” said David, moving his toe against the ground. “But he wasn’t sent to Cambridge on my orders. For the moment, he’s in the service of a dragon called G’Oreal.”

  “Who’s G’Oreal?” Liz and Lucy spoke together.

  David smiled and looked at them in turn. Give or take a few wrinkles, they could have been twins. “He’s an ice dragon, the leader of a colony that’s settling in the Arctic. What message did Gadzooks leave?”

  “Scuffenbury,” said Lucy, in a quiet voice. “Do you know where it is?”

  David looked inside himself, recalling something distant. “Yes. There’s a dragon hidden there.”

  “Oh?” said Liz.

  “Hidden? Not dead?” asked Lucy.

  “In stasis,” David said. “It’s one of the last twelve.”

  Liz and Lucy exchanged a glance. They knew the legend of the last twelve dragons very well, but to be suddenly confronted with evidence of it …

  “Are the others in stasis as well?” Liz asked, massaging her arms with the tips of her fingers.

  “And why has Gadzooks told us about this one?” added Lucy.

  A green light pulsed from David’s pocket. “Let’s talk about it over dinner,” he said.

  “What’s that light?” Lucy couldn’t help herself.

  “A message,” he said.

  Lucy bent forward to peek. “From your watch?” She could see the light glowing around the rim of the casing.

  Liz intervened then and took her arm. “Come on, Lucy. It’s none of your business.” She turned the girl away and said over her shoulder, “Dinner. Tonight. Seven thirty.”

  He watched them go back to the house. When they’d stepped inside the kitchen he flipped the watch open. An endless tract of space appeared where a regular watch face would have been. As David stared into it his eyes seemed to mirror it, until he was part of its spinning matrix. It took him into the aura of a dragon. A dragon that the Inuit Apak had seen. A dragon that David knew as G’Oreal.

  The jeweled eyes of the illumined creature poured their telepathic gifts into his mind. The Wearle awaits news of your progress, G’lant.

  David turned away from the house. Despite its powerful connection to dragons, it felt odd to be looking at its sunlit windows while he was being addressed by the name he’d been given in the Fain world, Ki:mera. Thinking in dragontongue he replied, The sibyl, Gwilanna, is still at large.

  G’Oreal angled his nostrils inward. A gradation of blue shades rippled across his neck. Do you need the help of the Wearle to trace her?

  David bowed his head. I am confident of success.

  Then proceed, swiftly, came G’Oreal’s reply. Find the dark fire and bring it to the colony. The Ix are probing. It must be destroyed.

  David paused a moment to think. During the course of the conversation his eyes had adopted the familiar scalene shape of a dragon’s. He turned their force fully northward. What if the darkness could be transmuted?

  A rumble could be heard as G’Oreal breathed in. A strong indicator of impatience — or displeasure. Your mission is clear, the dragon transmitted, and though he wasn’t using his vocal cords, smoke still jetted from the sides of his mouth. No tear, once inverted, has ever been reclaimed. Find it. The jeweled eyes burned with intent. Find it and deliver it north.

  9 A JOB FOR GWENDOLEN

  Knock, knock. Can I come in?”

  Lucy swiveled in her chair, instinctively reaching back to her computer to clear the screen of words. Her wallpaper image of Stonehenge took the place of her latest journal entry.

  As the door was half-open, David allowed himself entry anyway. “Hi. Am I interrupting anything?”

  She shook her head. “Just … homework and stuff.”

  He glanced at Gwendolen, sitting by the keyboard. The IT dragon blushed and swished her tail. “Can we chat?”

  Lucy curled her mouth. “Is it about last night?” The family “dinner” had not gone well. Despite Liz’s plea for everyone to relax and enjoy the “reunion,” Zanna had eventually gotten fed up with David and had stormed out, taking Alexa with her.

  “No,” he said, peering idly at the bookshelves. Amid Lucy’s impressive collection of fiction were several copies of his own two books: Snigger and the Nutbeast and White Fire. He smiled and said, “Got a pen?”

  She fished one out of a candy tin and handed it over. He pulled a pristine copy of White Fire off her shelf, opened the book at its title page, and began to write an inscription.

  Frowning, she asked, “What are you doing?”

  “Signing. Makes them more collectible,” he said. He handed it to her to read.

  For Lucy, I’m sorry you had to wait so long. Thank you for believing. David Rain xx

  A tear escaped from the cusp of her eyelid.

  “Hey,” he said softly, crouching down. “I know I’m nearly famous, but don’t you think this is over the top? The mascara police will be around at any moment.”

  Laughing, wet-eyed, she slapped his shoulder. “I thought you’d never come back.”

  “Bu
t I did,” he said, tapping his thumbs together.

  She plucked a tissue from a box decorated with photographs of hedgehogs and squirrels. For a moment, all she could do was stare at him. Then she asked, “Are you one of them, now?”

  “Them?” he prompted.

  Her gaze jumped nervously away from his face.

  “I’m just David,” he said. “Like I always was.” He gave her back the pen. “Listen, I want you to help me, if you will.”

  She sniffed and made an eye patch with her hand. “How?”

  “Zanna told me about the attack on your mom.”

  “David, I couldn’t help it. Honest.”

  “I know. It’s OK.” He touched her arm. “I just need to ask you something.”

  Her face went through a series of contortions. “Is this about the Ix?”

  “Partly, yes.”

  “I hate them,” she said, slamming the pen back into the tin. “They’re always there in a corner of my mind. Pushing me. Taunting me. As if I’m theirs.” She wiped her mouth. “I hate what they made me do to Mom. Sometimes I can’t go to sleep at night because I’m so scared they’ll come back and get me.”

  “Listen to me,” he said. He picked up her hands. “They’re not inside you. Not anymore. But because they work in the planes of thought, your memory of them makes them feel active. You can learn to control that. You might even be able to use your feelings against them.”

  “How?” She didn’t look convinced.

  “You’ll be able to sense their presence, long before anyone else can.”

  She shivered and said, “I don’t want them near me.”

  He gave a nod of understanding. “Then just answer this. On Farlowe, when the Ix forced you to sculpt a model of their darkling, you left out the heart. You made the creature deliberately flawed, is that right?”