The Fire Chronicle (41 page)

Michael followed Gabriel and Emma down the stairs,
stopping only once to look back. The man lay without moving, his eyes staring at nothing.

The Guardian. The elves in the courtyard. Wilamena.

How many, Michael thought, will have to die for me?

Then he slid the book into his bag and turned toward the volcano.

The tunnel split in two.

Emma said, “Which way do we go?”

She and Michael and Gabriel were deep inside the mountain, well past the cavern where Michael had first met the dragon Wilamena. With each step, the heat had grown worse, while the air had thickened to a poisonous, hazy red. Twice, the volcano had shuddered so violently that Michael and Emma had had to brace themselves against the walls, and Emma had remarked that the bald guy had better hurry up or the volcano was going to kill them before he got the chance.

Now they were at a crossroads.

“We cannot afford to be wrong,” Gabriel said. “Wait here.” And he plunged into the right-hand tunnel.

The moment he was gone, Michael sank to the ground.

Emma knelt beside him.

“It’s not your fault.”

Michael said nothing.

“You wanted to save him. He wouldn’t let you.”

“He … he was right not to let me.”

“What’re you talking about? What do you mean, he was right?”

“He betrayed his brothers. Betrayed his oath. Carried the guilt around for centuries. We gave him a chance to redeem himself. He even passed on the book. He was ready to die.” Michael looked at Emma. “I know it sounds strange.”

The fact was, however briefly, Michael had shared the Guardian’s life. He still had the memory of the man’s guilt. Even if he couldn’t make Emma understand, he knew what it had meant for the Guardian to set that burden down.

“Michael? What did he tell you back there? I couldn’t hear everything.”

Michael thought of the man whispering to him on the floor of the keep:

The book will change you
.

But change me how? Michael wondered. Change me into what?

He shrugged. “Just to protect the book.”

They were both quiet for a moment, then Emma said:

“Hey, do you have to be next to someone to heal them?”

“I told you, he didn’t want me to. And it’s too late—”

“I don’t mean him. I was thinking”—Emma gripped his arm—“how do we know the princess is dead?”

Michael let out a cry and scrambled to pull the
Chronicle
from his bag, even as he cursed himself for not thinking of it before. He snapped free the stylus and was about to prick his finger when he paused. As much as he wanted to save the princess, the idea of taking on one more person’s pain terrified him.

He remembered the rest of the Guardian’s message:

The book will change you. Remember who you are
.

“Michael? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Every time … every time I write someone’s name in the
Chronicle
, I take on their whole life. I feel whatever they’ve felt. With the Guardian, when he murdered his brothers, I felt what it was like. I feel everything.”

“Did … did that happen with me?”

Michael looked at his sister. She was staring at him with wide eyes, a reddish halo about her head. He gave a jerky nod. And then the words began spilling out, a torrent that had been building inside him ever since he’d freed her from the Guardian’s spell. “I thought I knew what I’d done, betraying you and Kate to the Countess, but I didn’t! I had no idea! I understand that now. And I promise, whatever happens, I’ll make you trust me again. Like you used to. I promise.”

And before Emma could respond, before he could hesitate a second time, he pricked his finger and wrote Wilamena’s name in smoking, bloody letters, and the power rose up and swept him away.

Michael had thought the book would take him to where the dragon Wilamena had crashed in the forest, but he found himself in a world of ice and snow. He recognized the curve of the valley
walls, the towering ring of mountains; but there were no trees, no birds; everything was cold and silent and white. He realized that he’d gone back to the beginning of Wilamena’s life. And it was beautiful, for the elf princess was able, and Michael was able, to see the difference in every snowflake, in every crystal of ice.…

Then the world changed; the elf princess was swaying on a thin branch atop one of the great trees, and Michael was with her; and just as every snowflake and shard of ice had been different, so every leaf and needle on every tree was different, and the birds all answered Wilamena’s call, and she raised her face to the sun, and Michael had never imagined his heart could be so full.…

Then darkness. Michael recognized the cave, the pool of lava, the tunnel leading to the keep; he felt how the dragon’s body was a cage for the princess, how she fought, day after day, to hold on to her memories of the snow and the trees and the sun, but it was like shielding a candle on a dark, windswept plain.…

Then, without warning, Michael was lying on the forest floor, surrounded by splintered branches and trees, and he felt Wilamena’s heart, his heart now, pumping out black blood onto a bed of crushed ferns.…

Live, he thought. Oh, please, please, live.…

“Michael!”

He was in the tunnel. The book open upon his knees, Wilamena’s scorched name fading into the page. He felt hollowed out and shaky. Emma and Gabriel were both staring down at him.

“I’m sorry,” Emma said. “Gabriel says that tunnel’s a dead end. We gotta go the other way.”

“But I don’t know if she— I have to try again—”

“There is no time,” Gabriel said. “We must go. Now.”

“But—”

“Michael, they’re coming!”

And then, finally, he heard the shrieks echoing down the tunnel.

Running, the screams of the Screechers at their heels, the air throbbing red; they rounded a corner, the tunnel opened up, and then, suddenly, they were in the great, smoking cauldron of the volcano. Below them, a hundred and fifty feet or more, was a roiling, churning lake of magma; above them hung the blue-black disk of sky. Michael felt as if they were perched on the side of some giant’s enormous stewpot.

“Look!” Emma cried.

And Michael, squinting through the smoke, made out the mouth of a tunnel on the far side of the cone. He also saw, as did Gabriel and Emma, that the ledge they stood on was part of a path that ringed the whole inside of the volcano and would take them all the way around. The Guardian, it seemed, had not led them astray.

“Come,” Gabriel said. “We must hurry.”

Emma took the lead. They went as fast as they dared; the ledge was narrow and uneven and one wrong step would send them plunging to their deaths. Breathing was painful, as the air scorched their lungs, and the fumes from the lava made them nauseous and light-headed. When the children tried to steady themselves against the wall of the cone, the rocks burned their
palms. And all the while, the volcano quaked and rumbled, and huge bubbles exploded out of the magma, sending globs of lava shooting upward.

Michael tried to focus, but as with a dream that lingers after waking, he couldn’t shake off the feeling of being caged by the dragon’s body.

They were halfway around the cone when there was a shout behind them. Rourke had emerged from the tunnel and was striding toward them along the path, Gabriel’s falchion clenched in his right hand.

Gabriel drew his own sword. “Go. I will catch up.”

Without a word, Emma grabbed Michael’s hand and pulled him on.

Gabriel braced himself along the widest bit of ledge, and waited.

The children had gotten within forty paces of the tunnel when the volcano gave a violent jolt, and Michael, stumbling, twisted his ankle badly. Right away, he felt it start to throb, and he knew that any more running was beyond him.

“Michael—”

“I’m okay. I just—”

“No! Look!”

She was pointing past the mouth of the tunnel, to where a figure was coming toward them along the path. The figure was a skeleton, its bones blackened and smoking. It clutched a jagged-edged sword and moved with a jerky lope the children recognized.

“It’s one a’ them Screechers the dragon torched!” Emma
exclaimed. “But its body’s all burned away. How’s the stupid thing still alive?”

Michael didn’t know and didn’t care. The creature had circled the path from the other direction and was about to cut off their access to the tunnel. If that happened, they’d be trapped. Michael stood, putting all his weight on one foot.

“Emma, I can’t run. You have to go on—”

“What?! No! I’m not leaving you here!”

Michael was about to say that he was the oldest and was ordering her to run when two more Screechers appeared on the path. They also had been burned, if not so completely as the first—which in some ways made them even more horrible, with the bits of charred flesh and muscle still clinging to their bones—and all three were closing in.

“You can climb, can’t you?” Emma demanded.

“What?”

“And I do trust you, you idiot! Who else ever fought a dragon for me, huh?!”

Michael shrugged. “… No one?”

“That’s right! And you’re my brother! I’ll always trust you! Tell that to your stupid book! Now look!”

Fifty feet above them was what appeared to be the opening of a small tunnel.

She pushed him toward the wall, shouting, “Climb!”

The rough, porous rock of the volcano made for ready handholds and footholds, and Michael found that he was able to climb with one leg, though not as fast as Emma, who quickly outpaced him. Indeed, the real pain was in his hands, which were soon raw
and scorched. But the sounds of their pursuers coming up behind them, of bony fingers scraping against rock, helped him ignore the pain and climb even faster.

And Michael couldn’t stop thinking of what Emma had said and wondering if she really meant it. The thought filled him with new hope and strength and chased away the shadows clinging to his mind.

Suddenly, the volcano gave a shudder, and the rocks Michael was gripping came loose in his hands. He scrabbled madly at the wall as he plummeted downward; there was a hard
crunch
, and he caught hold of what felt like a twig or stick poking from the rock. Only it wasn’t a twig. To his horror, he saw he was clinging to the dismembered arm of a Screecher. Turning, Michael saw a one-armed skeleton disappearing into the lava. It seemed he had landed on top of the creature, the impact breaking its arm, even as its hand had remained clenched around the rock. Michael made a mental note to wash his own hands properly the first chance he got—Screecher bones probably carried all sorts of germs—and he looked up to tell Emma he was okay, only to see a second monster grab hold of her boot and try to yank her off the wall.

“Emma!”

He started toward her, but he hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the skeleton tumbled past, clutching Emma’s boot. Michael looked up. Emma smiled and waggled her foot.

“I undid the laces.”

Then her smile vanished. Following his sister’s gaze, Michael saw that the smoke over the lava pit had cleared, and Gabriel
and Rourke were visible across the cone. The men stood toe to toe, their weapons a blur, the sound lost in the rumble of the volcano. Gabriel was not attacking, but merely parrying Rourke’s strokes, which rained down in a continuous onslaught, as if the bald man had not one weapon but many, all in constant motion. Then a new cloud of smoke hid them from view. Michael looked up, expecting to see Emma climbing down to help her friend.

But Emma hadn’t moved, and Michael realized that she wasn’t leaving him, that she wouldn’t leave him, that she had indeed meant every word she’d said.

“Quit daydreaming!” she shouted. “That thing’s right behind you!”

Michael scrambled upward. He could hear the Screecher clawing at the rocks below his feet, and he told himself that Gabriel would find a way to win; he always did.

Emma called down, “I’m here! There’s a tunnel! Hurry!”

The volcano seemed on the verge of breaking apart. Chunks of rock had begun blasting off the wall as jets of hot gas pockmarked the cone. Michael’s arms quivered with fatigue. As he approached the ledge where Emma waited, the cone tilted in, and Michael’s bag hung below him like a pendulum. Emma lay down on her stomach and reached toward him. Michael knew the Screecher was close.

“Don’t look down! Take my hand!”

Michael strained upward and caught his sister’s hand. Just as he did, the Screecher leapt and grabbed hold of his legs.

“Michael!”

He was pulled completely off the wall. Emma was flat on her
stomach, holding his hand with both of hers as the Screecher clung to his knees. The creature was almost all bone and weighed very little, but Michael could feel Emma’s sweaty fingers slipping through his own.

“Michael! I can’t hold you! Michael—”

The skeleton was climbing up Michael’s body, the bones of its hands digging into his thighs. Michael fumbled for the knife in his belt.

“I need—”

“Michael—stop moving—I can’t—”

And then his hand slipped through Emma’s fingers.

Rourke seemed to have no weakness. He was stronger than Gabriel, faster, better rested; and he wielded Gabriel’s own weapon, rescued from the skull of the dead troll, more easily than Gabriel ever had himself. Indeed, the man’s only weakness, if it could be called a weakness, was that he liked to talk, and did so incessantly, even as he rained down blow after crushing blow.