The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (5 page)

cave on the Tooth of Ragnar.”

“The Tooth of Ragnar?” Steiner jerked

back as if he’d  been shot. “You’ve been

there
? But that island is – or rather was –

in one of the remotest parts of the Arctic. Were you taken there on a school trip or something?”

“Erm… something,”   Lucy   replied, putting the sheet down on the coffee table. Her mind flashed back five years to when she’d been abducted by Gwilanna and taken to the island as part of the sibyl’s

bungled attempt to raise Gawain from the dead. Many times she’d been left to fend for herself, with nothing to eat but wild mushrooms and a female polar bear for company. That had been one heck of a ‘school trip’.

“How extraordinary,” Rupert said. “You must have been awfully young. You were lucky to visit it before it was destroyed by volcanic activity. The Tooth of Ragnar is a fascinating place, steeped in all sorts of Inuit myth. Why—”

“Just a moment, Professor.” Liz cut him off and turned her attention to Gwendolen, who’d just given out a startled hurr. The little dragon was on the coffee table, standing by the sheet of paper.

“What’s the matter?” Liz asked her.

The professor steered his gaze betweenthe dragon and the woman. “Goodness! Can you
 
converse
 
with it?”

“Yes,” said Liz, without looking up. “Go on, Gwendolen.”

Gwendolen   stepped   forward   andpointed to the writing.
 
I know how to readit
, she hurred.

“How?” said Lucy.

It’s dragontongue
 
, Gwendolen said (rather proudly).

Lucy moved her aside. “Dragontongue? I didn’t even know you could write itdown.”

“Nor me,” Liz admitted, sitting back, stunned. She glanced at Arthur, who was stroking his chin in what she always called his ‘pondering’ mode.

“Elizabeth’s dragons speak a language roughly akin to Gaelic, Rupert. It’s possible to learn it, given time.”

Steiner bent over the coffee table and

peered at Gwendolen as if she were a prize. The dragon warily flicked her tail. She hurred again at length.

“Did she speak then? I thought I saw smoke. And did her eyes also change colour?”

“You’re making her nervous,” said Liz. “She wouldn’t normally be allowed to act this freely in human company and you shouldn’t, by rights, be able to see her. Somehow, Gadzooks must have made that possible.”

“Talking of which… ” Lucy gestured a hand.

Liz glanced at the writing again. “Gwendolen has just explained that thecurves on the paper are like the way shemoves her throat to make growlingsounds.”

“Yeah, but what does it
 
say
?” pressed Lucy.

Gwendolen gathered her eye ridges together and frowned at the markings again. It was not a word she recognised, she said, but she thought she could speak the pronunciation correctly. She cleared her throat and uttered a long, low hurr.

Lucy glanced at her mother, who gave the translation. “Scuffenbury,” said Liz. She ran her fingers over the marks. “The message Gadzooks left is ‘Scuffenbury’.”

About a hill

Professor   Steiner’s   sallow   face

blossomed with surprise. “Scuffenbury? Why that’s—”

“A hill,” Lucy muttered, shadowing his thoughts.

“In Wiltshire, yes. You know of it, Lucy?”

Lucy played one by one with her fingers. “It’s that place where there’s a white horse carved out of the grass.”

“One of the places,” Arthur said. “There are a number of them scattered

about the chalk-based hills of middle

England. Scuffenbury is the oldest andmost commonly visited because of thelegend attached to it, which is rather

topical under the circumstances. I’m sure Rupert can explain.”

“Indeed,” he said. “A few miles from Scuffenbury is Glissington Tor, a man- made structure which looks like a large steamed pudding from the road. Some people think it’s the burial site or barrow of a dragon.”

Gwendolen pricked her ears.

“Complete   nonsense,   I’m  afraid,” Steiner continued. “During the nineteen fifties, a large tunnel was dug into the heart of the structure at ground level, but it revealed nothing. No bodies. No artefacts. No weapons of any kind. Certainly nothing large   and   scaly.  Archaeologically speaking it was more lame duck than dead dragon.”

“But if it’s man-made, why was it

constructed?” asked Liz.

“Good question,” said the professor, ruffling his hair. (To Lucy’s disgust, a shower of dandruff tumbled out.) “There have been many theories. A monument to celebrate an ancient king – possibly Arthur, no connection implied. A lookout for encroaching raiders. A sacrificial site – in the old religions, horses were often given up to the gods. A centre of natural power – it’s said to lie at a vast intersection of ley lines. Or possibly just a gift to the Scuffenbury horse.”

Lucy sat forward, hands between her knees. “Gift? What for?”

Professor Steiner drummed his fingersfor a moment, then went to retrieve an

atlas from his shelves. He flicked through it to a map of Wiltshire. “If you stand by the horse and look across the valley, you can see Glissington very easily.” He turned the map and used a finger to demonstrate. “At certain times of the year, the morning sun sits on the peak of the Tor. Legend has it there was a cairn up there with some sort of keyhole structure or circle at its zenith which focused the

sun on the third eye of the horse.”

“Here,” said Arthur, demonstrating for Lucy. He put a finger to his forehead just above the bridge of his nose.

“Quite,”  said  Steiner.   “It’s  what scientists call the pineal gland, often thought of as a channel of creative energy; the focus of the so-called ‘sixth sense’.”

He snapped the atlas shut. “There’s nohard evidence to suggest the cairn actuallyexisted, though people still climb the Toryear on year searching for fragments; thestones are supposed to have healingproperties. The myth, of course, was thatat certain times of the year the sun wouldpour through the eye of the cairn andbreathe life into the horse, which couldthen rise up and be ridden across the hills. Some authors even claim it could fly.”

“And the dragon?” asked Liz. “Wheredoes that come in?”

“Well, the popular fable, the one you’ll find in most of the textbooks, is that the dragon died at Glissington, slain by a virtuous knight of the realm who rode the white horse against it in battle. But those

of a more spiritual disposition believe the dragon was actually a protector of the horse and that when the dragon died of natural causes, the heartbroken horse lay down on Scuffenbury and simply refused to get up again.”

“It’s often described as ‘grieving’,” said Arthur,  “because of the way it holds its head low. Do you have a picture of it, Rupert?”

“I do.” Steiner quickly pulled down another large book with several coloured plates of the white horse and tor.

Lucy studied it carefully. The horse wasn’t what she’d expected to see. Long and graceful, its body almost flowed like a ribbon through the grass. Only one spindling leg was attached to the body and

its tail dipped down out of sight into the hillside. Its head carriage, as Arthur had said, was very low. Just below the figure

was   an  artist’s   impression  of  the Glissington cairn and the likely pathway of the sun to Scuffenbury, striking the horse in the region of its eyes.

Glissington. The name began with a ‘G’. Could there be a dragon in the ground under there?

As if he could read the girl’s thoughts, Professor Steiner said, in a reverent toneof voice, “In the latter version of the myth,the one where horse and dragon are allied,the dead dragon was buried under moundsof earth freshly dug from the Vale of Scuffenbury and carried there by the localcommunity.   In  the   slaying  account,

Glissington Tor simply
 
is
 
the downeddragon, hidden by thousands of years ofblown soil and grass seed. Fascinating,don’t you think?”

“Very,” said Liz, watching Gwendolenstroking the pictures. “So the question is:why did Gadzooks come and give you thisword? All my dragons have specialabilities. His is to inspire throughwriting.”

“Well, it’s obvious,” said Lucy.

Steiner deflected his attention to the

girl.

“David   sent  him. You  must  be

important.”

“Lu-cy!” Liz’s cheeks shot up the

thermometer scale.

The girl threw up her hands in dismay.

“I wasn’t being
 
cheeky
 
. There’s got to be a connection, hasn’t there?” She flapped a hand   northward.   “Y’know.   David.

Dragons. The
 
mist
 
and everything.”

“Of   course!”   exclaimed   Steiner,slapping the heels of his palms to hisforehead. “Oh, what a
 
dummkopf
 
I’vebeen.” He pressed his hands togetherbeneath his nose.

Before he could give any reason forthis outburst, a bell tinkled and Steinerlurched towards the door. Wagging afinger in promise he said, “Excuse me,that will be our tea.”

No sooner was he out of earshot than

Liz threw her full force at her daughter.

“Will you
 
please
 
behave yourself!”

“What have I done?” Lucy said hotly.

“I thought we were here to check out Zookie? He left a message about  a place where a dragon died, Mum. He wouldn’t do that for nothing, would he?”

“She’s right,” Arthur said, speaking in his best defusing tone of voice. “Though what I find most intriguing is why Gadzooks chose to write in dragontongue, not English.”

“Yeah, way to go,” Lucy said, who rather liked it when the genius of the family took her side.

Professor Steiner laid a tray on the table. The delicate clink of china cups made Gwendolen want to fold her ears.

She was careful to stay solid while amiddle-aged gentleman with neatly partedhair stepped forward carrying a silver

teapot and a three-tiered cake stand. The lower tier was filled with crustless, domino-sized sandwiches. The upper ones displayed a spread of fancy cakes.

“Will that be all, Professor?”

“Yes, thank you, Hollandby.”

The man drifted away without a glance and closed the door softly behind him.

“Is he your servant?” asked Lucy (just slightly impressed).

Rupert Steiner smiled. “By college tradition, there are certain privileges an academic of my status is allowed. To be waited on with tea is by far the most pleasurable  and important.” With Liz’s help he spread the cups and offered out the sandwiches.

Lucy bit into a salmon and cucumber

rectangle. A little rich for her palate, but certainly preferable to wild mushrooms.

“You mentioned this mist in the Arctic, Lucy.”

The girl paused mid-chew. Steiner was pouring the tea like a clown, giving the cups a comical amount of height. Some drops splashing freely over the tray found their way to Gwendolen’s snout. The dragon quickly licked them off. She liked tea (the hotter the better) when she could get it.

“I don’t know if you saw it but there was a news report yesterday in which an Inuit hunter claimed to have penetrated the mist and seen a great bird.”

Lucy exchanged a glance with her mother.

“We heard it on the radio,” said Liz.

Steiner took the lid off the sugar bowl. “Given everything we’ve talked about today, I’m beginning to think the man saw a dragon.”

“And what if he had?” said Arthur.

Professor Steiner looked wistfully at Arthur, as if he dearly wished his oldfriend could see him now. “I was rightwhen I said I’d seen this writing before.” He nodded at the parchment. “I can’t becertain until I go into the  college archives,but I believe there may be more examplesof this dragon language down there.”

“
Really?
 
” gasped Lucy.

“Possibly,” he cautioned her, handing her a cup. “Your reference to the Arctic fog has triggered a memory which I’ve

been struggling to bring to mind about this writing. What I’m about to tell you won’t present a motive for Gadzooks’s message, but there are connections to the Tooth of

Ragnar and some strange parallels withthe   experiences   of  the   author  youmentioned, David Rain.”

Lucy’s clothing seemed to crackle asshe sat up to listen.

Steiner took a sip of tea and put his cupaside. “In the early part of the last century,a party of Norwegian scientists andexplorers ventured out on an expedition toa place called the Hella glacier, which isgeographically in the same region as the Tooth of Ragnar. The mission was cutshort when one member of the partydisappeared in mysterious circumstances,

thought to have been mauled and dragged away by a polar bear. Apparently, he’d encountered the same male bear the day before and had distracted it by placing his pocket watch on the ice, cleverly making his escape while the animal pored over the ticking object. Tragically, he returned to the area the next day in search of his watch and on this occasion  wasn’t so