The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (20 page)

spawned. There has been darkness in this sector of the universe ever since. The Fain

are attempting to put things right. By recolonising the Earth with a new dragon population, they plan to draw the Ix back to their point of origin – and deal with the problem once and for all.”

“So this Arctic wheeze is a trap?”

“In a sense.”

“What happens when they throw back the mist?” G’reth rolled his eyes towards David.

“We open the Fire Eternal and the transformation of the Ix begins.”

“Transformation?” Zanna’s gothic eyes flashed like knives. “Why don’t I like the sound of this?” She got up and turned away, nodding tautly. “So what are you

going to do? Drill a big hole in the Arctic icecap and sweep the nasty thought-beings down into a barbecue at the centre of the

Earth while the human race looks on and

goes ‘ooh’? Is that it?”

“Nice image. Bit more complex than

that.”

“Too right,” she said, making her ponytail kick. “I may  not have your Fain insights, but I’m smart enough to know that you can’t defeat evil, you can only rise above it. It’s part of what keeps the universe in balance. Ask Arthur about the

fifth force sometime.”

“Arthur and I are united,” said David. “And you’re right, the Ix can’t be defeated as such – but their negative auma can be transmuted.”

“Oh, yeah? Tell that to Lucy. She’s still scared out of her wits by them.”

“I have talked to Lucy,” he said. His gaze drifted sideways, compressing into bitterness. “She was attacked by an Ix:risor, a highly intensified Ix grouping, sometimes called a Comm: Ix or a Cluster.

When   they’re   concentrated   into   aconglomerate like that they become almostimpossible for the human mind to resist. But that’s exactly the state we need themin: one huge cluster. It’s getting them therethat’s the difficult part.”

“And whose finger will be on thetrigger when you do? I’d never seen thatmangy crone Gwilanna scared until shetalked about
 
you
 
meddling with the Fire

Eternal.”

“It won’t be me,” he said, and looked

at her hard.

Slowly, the implication in his gazebegan to register. “No,” she said, coveringthe scars on her arm. “If you put Alexa inany kind of danger, I’ll—”

“Alexa is already in danger,” he said,with a calmness she found unsettling. Toher deeper dismay, she realised she wastrying hard not to cry.

“Listen to me,” he said, his eyes asviolet as Gruffen’s or G’reth’s. “Alexa’s

been protected since before she was born. Her auma has been watched over by many guardians. The reason the ravens didn’t go for her on North Walk is because the Ix

have no idea what she is.”

“But Gwilanna does,” Zanna said

pointedly, the graveyard threat still ringing

in her ears.

David nodded and drew himself up.

“Gwilanna is a menace. But she’s not

stupid enough to sell her soul to the Ix. She wants to bond with a dragon, not a darkling. It’s far more likely she’ll provoke the conflict to bring the dragons into play. That was always her aim on Farlowe.”

“And in Africa?”

“I don’t know yet if she was even there. I think that sibyls around the world are being drawn to sites of activity because they can sense the dragon auma in the North. But Gwilanna could still be a

real threat. I want you to trace her again for me. It would be good to know which

bit of the ointment my fly is in.”

Zanna gave a disgruntled
 
hmph
 
. “I’ve tried. She’s wise to me, David. She’s marked me up like a piece of spam.  But I can promise you this: if she goes near Alexa, I’ll kill her. Stone dead.”

“Then you might have to get in a queue,” he said. “And I’m not just talking about me and you. Alexa is the key to everything. She will be the light that people will be drawn to, a new breath of life for this ailing planet. The Ix are not the only threat to human development. In the last forty years, the Earth has undergone   dramatic   environmental changes. We believe the climate scientists have   got  their  predictions  seriously muddled. If things are allowed to go on as

they are, you might not see the Arctic ice melt away gradually in thirty or forty years, it could happen suddenly, within as little as a twelve-month period. The results will be cataclysmic, and the real sadness is that the human race is beginning not to think about preventing the melt, but how they’re going to cope with the aftermath. The dragons can change all that. Once people come to terms with the benefits of having a dragon culture here, the human race – and Gaia – will enter a

new phase of spiritual evolution.”

“Assuming it all goes to plan,” Zanna said. “What’s to stop mankind attacking the dragons like they did before?”

“Alexa.” He glanced at the dragons around him,  blowing their smoke rings and

swishing   their   tails.   “She   was… imagined,” he said carefully, “to be a bridge between the two cultures. For humans, she represents the promise of what can be achieved—”

“A race of six and a half billion

angels?”

David shook his head. “Only a small

fraction of humans will ever achieve

Alexa’s level of illumination.”

“And what happens to the rest?”

“In time, the same thing that’s happened to the polar bears.”

Zanna squinted at him, not unlike a bear.

“They’ll enter Ki: mera,” he said.

A hammer blow

“Ki:mera? The Fain world?” Zanna stared

at him blankly. “Every single bear has

been taken there?”

“Not taken. Crossed over. Into another

dimension. When the climate is stable, as many bears as want to will return. It’s a journey into freedom, Zanna. Whatever good mankind, or bearkind, can imagine – in Ki:mera, they can achieve it.”

At that moment, Liz tapped the door and walked in. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“Just the future of the human race,” Zanna muttered.

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re getting

along,” Liz said. She held out a plastic

container to David. “Here’s the icefire,

what there is left of it.”

David took the box from her and

opened it. Inside was a small fraction of the snowball, given to Liz long ago in Norway, still glistening with Gawain’s

auma.
 
The fire that melts no ice
, David thought. He could feel it resonating in his heart. He placed it on the workbench next to Gwillan, then stood the obsidian chunk beside that and called Gollygosh and G’reth off their shelf. Groyne folded his wings and rubbed his toes against his leg scales to clean them of clay.

“What
 
is
 
that he’s holding?” Zanna

asked.

“Grace’s fire tear,” David said. “I

want to try a mutual auma shift with it.”

She threw him a withering glance.

“And for those of us who flunked our
 
Star

Trek
 
masterclass… ?”

“If we open the obsidian and bring the tears together, I believe that we can neutralise the dark fire, especially if we add the ice into the mix.”

“Open it?” Liz’s expression paled.

“Won’t that be dangerous?”

David’s silence assured her there was

no other way.

She moved up behind him, clutching at her  arms  to  hold  herself  together. “Assuming the procedure works, what then?”

David looked at the two grey dragons.

“We divide the neutralised tear between

them.”

“You’re gonna
 
split
 
it?” Zanna railed back, puzzled. “But this is their life-force. Their whole personality is determined by their tears. Surely this will mean that neither will be the individual they were before?”

She exchanged a glance with Liz, whosaid, “How will you open the obsidian, David?”

“We’ll leave that to him.” He nodded

at Gollygosh.

The healing dragon stepped forward and studied the problem, then put down his tool box beside the obsidian.  The

cantilever flaps opened up right away and an asterisk of purple light zipped out. It settled in his hand and turned into a small

magnifying glass.

David raised an eyebrow. “It appears

he intends to draw it out.”

Hrrr-rr
,   said   Golly,   frowningthoughtfully as he circled the chunk.

“And focus it onto Grace’s tear.

Groyne, when this happens, the tearsshould naturally commingle. When I givethe word, I want you to pass them over to G’reth. We’re going to need to make awish.”

The wishing dragon flexed his paws in

readiness.

“Why the two steps?” asked Zanna. “Why can’t G’reth hold Grace’s tear and the dark fire be focused straight towards him?”

David tapped his foot. “Because ifanything   goes   wrong,   Groyne   can

dematerialise and take the tears with him.”

“And go where?”

“Into the heart of the Fire Eternal.”

All eyes turned towards the shape-shifting dragon.

“I feel faint,” said Liz, covering hermouth.

Zanna showed her to the stool. “Sit

down.” She put a hand on Liz’s forehead. It was already clammy. “So that would be three of them gone, then: Gwillan, Grace
 
and
 
Groyne?”

David shook his head. “Groyne’s skilful; he’ll drop the tears and escape. But Gwillan and Grace, they won’t survive, no.”

“This is madness,” said Zanna, toying with her sleeve. “This whole procedure is

incredibly risky. What if they end up changing gender? There has to be another way.”

“Magicks are not going to solve this,” said David, raising his voice to a mild command. “I’m already going out on a limb here, Zanna. The best you can do is put a cloak around the Den to shield it from prying eyes – and trust that this works.” He swung towards Liz. “Liz, when G’reth takes charge of the tears, I want you to adopt the frame of mind you’d be in if you were making a special dragon, then put the icefire into his paws. Your auma is the key to success. Only an act of loving creation can truly rise above the darkness. When you’re done, I’m going to commingle with G’reth and make a wish

for Gwillan and Grace to be restored. Are

you OK with that?”

“Yes,” she said, with a nervous nod. “What do you mean you’re going out on a limb?”

“Never mind,” he said, cradling her hands. “Golly, are you ready?”

Strangely, Gollygosh failed to respond. But what was even more bizarre was that

G’reth at that moment  launched himself

forward and bundled the healer onto his

back, spilling a jar of paintbrushes in the tumble. Liz and Zanna both jumped in shock. And though David barked a stern rebuke, G’reth would not resign the attack. None of the humans had seen what he had

seen. None, he thought, was aware of the

danger.

While David had been speaking, thewishing   dragon  had  been  watching Gollygosh  twisting   and   turning   hismagnifying glass, calculating the likeliestpath through which the dark fire mightleave the obsidian. But in doing so thehealer had allowed himself to be exposedto the malevolent gluttony of the fire,which had spun back into the depths of hiseye and corrupted his creative auma,causing an inversion of his natural healinginstinct. The first and only indication ofthis was when the magnifying glasssuddenly changed its form – and morphedinto the shape of a small hammer…

The flurry of activity behind theturntable was brief. Wings flapped. Clawsflashed. Growls were issued. Gollygosh

had never been a fighting dragon, but empowered by the force of temporary madness, he dug his isoscele into G’reth’s left knee and punched the wisher hard on the jaw, sending him reeling across the bench. Then he stood up and swung the hammer.

The obsidian exploded: every whichway from its evil  centre. Splinters of thevolcanic magma it was made fromshowered the room and all its occupants. Liz screamed, and in trying to cover herface toppled sideways off the stool andcollided with a shelf of plain clay dragonscausing several to fall to the floor andbreak. From the bedroom next door, aterrified Lucy yelled, “Mum?! What’shappening? Mum?!” Footsteps sounded on

the landing.

“Zanna, keep Lucy out of here,” hissed David, as a snarling Bonnington appeared beside him in the form of a strapping, violet-eyed panther. The cat’s gaze was fixed on a point above the workbench – where Gwillan’s fire tear was hovering like a small eclipsed sun.