The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (4 page)

much attention.

“Thank you,” Liz said, giving the

dragon’s ears a tweak. She pulled over and switched the engine off. They had stopped outside a row of palisaded villas, where every house was coupled to the street by a flight of concrete steps and a set of adjoining railings.

On cue, a door opened and a gangling man in a shabby tweed jacket came rheumatically down the nearest steps. He had blown grey hair and a prominent mole on his pointed chin. He stooped as he approached the car, but it was clear that he had recognised Arthur from some feet

away.

Liz dropped the passenger window.

“Hello? Professor Steiner?”

“Yes,   yes,”   he   said,   patting   a

handkerchief against his brow.

“Rupert,” said Arthur, extending a

hand.

Professor Steiner clamped it firmly. “Oh, my goodness. Arthur, are you blind?”

“We’re his eyes,” said Liz, trying todraw Lucy in. “This is Lucy. She’s comealong for the ride.”

Lucy gave her good-girl teenager

wave.

Professor Steiner nodded. “Excellent.

Yes. Well, we’ve a great deal to talkabout. Please, do come in. I—” He pausedand set his gaze on Gwendolen, who bynow had  adopted her solid form. “Why,that’s one of them,” he gasped. “Just likethe dragon I saw. So, there are
 
more
 
ofthem in the world. My goodness, doesit… ?”

He flapped his hands up and down inflight.

“You  saw   Gadzooks
 
flying
?” said

Lucy,   stretching   forward.   “That’simpossible. You—”

“Let’s go inside and talk,” said Liz,sending Lucy a violet-eyed warning.

Everyone stepped out of the car. As Professor Steiner led the way up the steps (with Lucy in close attendance) Liz did asshe always did and settled Arthur on thecrook of her arm.

“Thank you,” he whispered. “How do

you feel?”

“To be back in Cambridge?”

He nodded.

“Odd.”

He raised his head. “I can hear the

river.”

“Don’t,” she said, pulling him closer, plucking greying hairs off his jacket lapels. “All that was a long time ago.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But it does have some relevance to what we were

talking about in the car.”

“Oh?” She walked him forward a pace.

“I didn’t answer your question. Why Alexa chose me to find the claw. Why she went to the trouble that she did.” He

reached for Liz’s hand and rested it across

the  slight curve of her pregnant stomach. “When Gwilanna forced us apart back then, she broke up a chain of events that the Fain had been nurturing for centuries. You and I were supposed to have a child long ago, born of genius and the auma of

Gawain.”

Liz shook her head, perplexed. “Whatare you saying?”

“David should have been our son,” hesaid.

A message from Gadzooks

If Liz was discomfited by Arthur’srevelation, she showed no outward sign ofit. She merely folded the words awaybehind her eyes and said, “Come on. We’d better catch up with Lucy, beforeshe starts spouting about the dragons.”

Rupert Steiner was waiting at the topof the steps with a hand to guide Arthurdown a hallway narrowed by two walls ofbookshelves, into a room that smelleddensely of tobacco. “Please, sit down. Would anyone like a window open? I’mafraid I’ve been smoking since the age ofnineteen. It can get a little stuffy in here.” He hurried across the room and forced a

window open anyway, fixing it on a latch

heavily eaten by rust. “I’ve arranged for tea to be brought to us at six.”

Liz glanced at the Napoleonic clock above the fireplace. Its face looked as jaded as the whites of Professor Steiner’s eyes. 5:35. They had made good time. She helped Arthur to a seat on a green leather sofa and sat down beside him. Lucy had taken up residence in a hand-carved chair covered loosely with an Aztec-styled throw and was peering round the room as if a budgie had escaped. A soft rebuke in dragontongue from her mother  made her turn and fix a visitor’s smile to her face.

“If it’s not too impertinent a question, how long have you had your condition, Arthur?” Rupert Steiner returned to the fireplace and rested his elbow against the

wooden mantel. A small depression in its outer edge suggested this was a favourite position. Liz wondered idly how many students he had spoken to from there.

“Five years,” Arthur replied.

“Is it incurable?”

“The medical profession have no

answers.”

“What  a  dreadful  inconvenience,” Professor Steiner muttered. He flapped his handkerchief like a magician. “But you’re still lecturing?”

“In physics, yes.”

“Good man. Good man.” Steiner

plunged one hand into his pocket and with the other, plucked a pipe from a nearby stand. Using its barrel as a pointer he said, “Well, now. Introductions. Elizabeth you

mentioned on the telephone, of course. So I assume that this charming young lady is your daughter?”

“My daughter,” said Liz.

Steiner nodded and glanced at the girl. The teenager’s gaze was wandering again, rippling the spines of uncountable books. She was holding Gwendolen like a statue in her lap. Liz watched the Professor’s gaze settle  on the dragon and noticed the apple in his neck take a pulse. “
Her
 
name is Gwendolen,” she said.

That brought Lucy quickly to attention. Throughout her life it had always been taboo to talk about the dragons as anything other than ornaments. Yet here was her

mother using an introductory tone of voice.   She   ran   a   finger   down

Gwendolen’s ear. Gwendolen did as

she’d always been instructed and kept to

her solid pose.

Professor Steiner filled his chest with

air. “Yes… it’s remarkably like… ” He sighed and touched one hand to his forehead.

“It’s all right, Rupert,” Arthur came in. “Elizabeth and Lucy can be absolutely trusted. They won’t be shocked by anything you say and they won’t attempt to ridicule you. Why don’t you tell them what you told me on the telephone?”

A late spring breeze found its way through the window. Rupert Steiner stared at the pale pink clouds and the roofs of the colleges beyond. He put his pipe down and wiped his hand against the nap of his

trousers. “Very well. But I beg you to appreciate what a challenge this is for me. I’ve travelled to many exotic places and heard a great number of intoxicating stories, but that’s all they’ve ever been before   this   incident:   stories.   What

happened in this room has left me quite shaken, which is why I’ve sought advice from the most rational but free-thinking mind I know.” He glanced at Arthur briefly and then he began: “I was working at my desk a few nights ago… ”

He nodded at it, making Lucy glance over her shoulder. It was antique, like the rest of the furniture, strewn with books, facsimiles and manuscripts. An underwatered spider plant was throwing trails of baby spiders almost to the floor. A

candle  holder  occupied  the  furthest corner, hidden by a fungal coating of wax.

“… when, suddenly, the candle went out. There’s nothing particularly unusual in that; I often work with these windows ajar, but the way the light extinguished was extremely strange. There was no flicker. The flame seemed merely to lean toward the night then disappear in a snap, as if it had been swallowed.” (Lucy gave a knowing grunt.) “When I relit the wick, there was… the creature. A dragon, almost identical in shape and colour to the one that Lucy is holding. It was sitting on the windowsill, looking like a hungry bird.

“At first, I naturally thought it was a prank. A clever stunt arranged by one of my students. I stood up to look into the

quadrangle and the next thing I knew the dragon had flown to the edge of my desk.”

“I can’t believe you saw him
 
move
,” gasped Lucy. The dragons, when active, generally flew too fast for the human eye to follow.

Professor Steiner funnelled his gaze. “It was blurred, but I definitely saw itswings spread, yes.”

Liz waved Lucy quiet. “Please go on, Professor. What happened next?”

“Well, it was quite extraordinary. From somewhere – beneath a wing, I think – it produced a notepad and a pencil.” Lucy  gulped.   She   felt  Gwendolen’sheartbeat start. “By now I’d begun toimagine that what I was seeing was a verysophisticated   radio-controlled   toy,

especially when it touched the pencil to the pad and appeared as though it would write something down. It had been my birthday the day before and I was expecting a fatuous greeting to appear on the pad. But then the creature changed its mind and did the most astonishing thing. It looked around the desk, raised its eye ridges, blew a rather enviable smoke ring, then put its notepad away and
 
walked
 
across the desk to my ink pen and blotter. It then lifted the pen, two-handed, from its stand and wrote on one of my favourite parchments.” He pointed to a small stack of paper in a gilded box. “In all my years of archaeological research, in all the artefacts I’ve seen in Egyptian tombs and the treasures I’ve  discovered in Turkish

catacombs, I have never come across anything quite so incredible.”

“Show   me,”   Lucy   demanded impatiently. “Where is it? What did he write?” She ran a hopeful eye across the desk, but saw nothing that might have come from Gadzooks.

“Lucy.” Her mother’s voice was soaked in fury. “You’re in someone’s house.”

“But it’s our dragon,” Lucy countered. She slumped back in her chair, knocking her knees together in frustration.

Arthur quickly cleared his throat. “Elizabeth, I think now might be an appropriate moment to tell Rupert about your connection to these dragons.”

Liz met the professor’s gaze. “I make

them,” she said. “I mould them from clay. I have the ability to animate them, some of them at least. I can’t and won’t explain how it happens, you’ll have to take that on trust. The one you saw is called Gadzooks. He was made for the young man who was my lodger for a while. You may have heard of him. His name is David Rain.”

The professor fumbled through histhoughts for a moment. “No, I’m notfamiliar with… ”

“He’s an author, Rupert,” Arthur filled

in. “He writes about the environment.”

“
 
White Fire
,” said Lucy. “That’s his

famous book.”

“Ah, is this the young man who made

newspaper   headlines   when   he

disappeared in the Arctic?”

“He’s back now,” Lucy said, bluntly.

“And so, it seems, is his dragon,” said

Arthur.

Professor Steiner touched his templesas if he might be trying to unlock amemory. He gave up after a couple ofseconds   and   wagged   a   finger   at Gwendolen. “And does she… ?”

“Move?” said Liz. She gave a short instruction in dragontongue. Gwendolen softened her scales and turned a full circle

with her wings extended.

Steiner run a finger underneath his collar. “Miraculous,” he muttered, turning dumbstruck to Liz. “Are you some kind of… ?”

“Potter,” she said. “I’m some kind of

potter. That’s all that matters.”

“I see. Well, I suppose I should answer Lucy’s question and show you what your dragon wrote – though I warn you, it may not make much sense.” He crossed over to

his desk and unlocked a drawer. From it

he withdrew a single sheet of paper. It appeared to be made of thick grey cotton, like a small hand towel stiffened with

starch. He passed it first to Lucy who glanced at the pen marks and said, with disappointment, “It looks like a doodle.”

“Many ancient languages do,” said Arthur. “If you’d never seen Japanese or Arabic writing you would probably not associate the characters with words at

first. What do you make of it, Elizabeth?”

She took the paper and examined it. “I

see what Lucy means. There doesn’t appear to be a formal phonetic structure. Though the strokes suggest it. They’re very deliberate.”

“I agree,” said Rupert Steiner, buoyed by her assessment, “but it’s quite unlike anything I’ve interpreted before. I couldn’t even guess at its country of origin. The frustrating thing is I’m sure I’ve seen another example of this, but I can’t place it.”

“Could it be a drawing, perhaps?”

Arthur asked.

The professor rubbed the question intohis cheek. “The recording of historythrough storytelling and drawings wasprevalent in our earliest ancestors, buteven the wildest imagination couldn’t pull

these marks into a meaningful picture. No,

I’m convinced it’s a text of some kind.”

“Can I have another look?” Lucy took the page onto her knees again, turning it through several angles. “It reminds me a bit of the marks I saw on a wall in that