The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (7 page)

“Neither fiction nor science,” he said, evenly. “Think about it – you live in an extraordinary   household.   A   physics

genius. Two women descended from the last known dragon on Earth. A daughter with the power to draw the future. A cat that can shape-shift into any feline species it chooses. You – a young sibyl – capable of all kinds of magicks.”

“And your point is?”

“My point is you can’t keep it out of Alexa’s life. But you
 
can
 
help me keep her away from danger. No matter what you feel about me as a parent, isn’t her safety our first priority?”

“Mumm-y?! Are you coming?”

“Yes, darling! I’m on my way!”

Zanna folded her arms. Several bangles clinked around her wrists. “All right, what is it you want? You didn’t come here to talk maintenance agreements.”

“I need to know where Gwilanna is.

My sources tell me she took his fire tear.” He nodded at Gwillan again. “He’s notdead, Zanna, he’s in a kind of stasis. Iintend to help him, but first I need to knowall the facts. I understand you fought the Ixhere? Tell me what happened.”

Zanna sighed and touched the wallbeside her. That day in the garden. Thatdreadful day. So often she’d tried  to blot itfrom her mind, so often it came back tohaunt her dreams. “Lucy came to us,possessed by the Ix. She had a knife withher, made from obsidian. She claims itwas the heart of a creature called a

darkling, some monster the Ix had forced her to make. She scratched it right across Liz’s back. Liz was poisoned. We thought

she was dead. Gwillan saw her body and was deeply traumatised. He shed his fire tear and it seemed to transfer itself into the

knife. I don’t know how. I threw the knife

away not knowing what it was. It broke into three clean pieces. One of them had the tear inside it. Gwilanna took it and

disappeared. That’s it. End of story. That’s all I know. Now, if you don’t mind, my – our – daughter needs my attention.”

“Gwillan’s fire tear has suffered an

inversion.”

Once again, Zanna stopped half-turn. He was middle-distancing, calculatingoutcomes. Briefly, very briefly, she sawsomething of the man she loved in the softblue focus of those languid eyes. Sheshuddered and looked away.

“Obsidian has the power to draw negative energy. The greater the energy, the easier the transfer. The sight of Liz dying would have created a powerful auma shift in her dragons, particularly one as sensitive as Gwillan.”

On the fridge top, the listener tremored.

“And what’s an inversion?”

“What it implies. All the love and

devotion Gwillan felt for Liz has been

transformed into fear. His fire has turned

from white to black. His tear is now dark.

It’s harmless if it stays within theobsidian.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

David chose not to answer that.

Zanna gave a sigh. Through grittedteeth she said, “I don’t know where

Gwilanna is. Surely you can find her?”

“She’s covering herself. It’s a sibyltrait – but you can trace her.” He noddedat her arm.

Zanna let her eyes drift sideways to ajagged three-lined scar on her forearm; a ‘gift’ of magicks from Gwilanna after aclash with the sibyl many years earlier.

“Lay your fingers across the scars,” David said. “Look for her in your mind. She’s the only other sibyl you know. Itshould be easy.”

Zanna swept her glossy black hairbehind her ears. “I know how it works, David. If I find her, what then?”

“Just get her location. Leave the rest tome.”

A child’s gasp broke the conversation

there and Alexa came running in to join

her father.

“Daddy!”

Bonnington jumped down in search of his food bowl. Alexa replaced him on David’s lap. Her towel was  slipping off her head. He gathered it and gently patted her hair.

“How are you, baby?”

“Clean and sparkly.”

“Did you wash behind your ears?”

“Yes!”

“And between your toes?”

“Yes!”

“And up your nose?”

“
Daddy!
” She beat a fist against his

knee.

Zanna, watching this, began to feel

another, deeper form of betrayal. One that amounted to a kind of exclusion. How

could David and Alexa bond so well?

How could this man walk into her life and

override   five   years   of   diligent motherhood? As if he could do no wrong?

“Alexa?”

The child hooked herself round. She

saw tears collecting in her mother’s eyes.

“I want you to be good, OK?”

“Zanna?” said David. “What are you doing?”

She was tying back her hair: a sign of action. “I was responsible for losing Gwillan’s tear. It’s down to me to do

something about it. Time for you to be a father, David. You’d better protect that little girl with your life.”

“Zanna!”

But she had already laid her fingersinto her scars. For barely a second theyglowed bright blue. Then the whole of herbody seemed to vaporize and shimmerbefore compressing into a single point. The tube of ointment she’d been holdingclattered to the floor.

The listening dragon leaned warilyforward, put on his spectacles and peeredinto the empty space. No Zanna.

Gone.

The spider and the fly

Bleak. Eerie. Cold. Uninviting. Fitting, Zanna thought, that she should land in aplace that might be adequately describedby words she could also apply to Gwilanna.

She had materialised in the middle of a

large stone circle, on what she guessed must be Farlowe Island. Although she had never been to this place, in her dialogues with Arthur the home of the monks had

often been described. It was, as Arthur had always suggested, at the hostile edge of faith. Apart from the stones and the reedy grassland and the hollow grey sky choking out the sun there was nothing else visible in any direction. She couldn’t even

hear the sea.

Nauseous from the effects of the shift,she dropped to her knees and added a fewthreads   of  semi-clear   bile   to   the

indigenous dampness of the flattened grass. Great. Now there was yak in her hair and her favourite jeans were filthy. Two more reasons to curse Gwilanna.

“Well, well.” And there was the voice. That old, familiar, cynical drawl.

She appeared from behind the largest stone, ambling round the outside of the circle. She was barefoot, in  sackcloth, and looked like a throwback to stone-age times. Her hair, easily as thick as Liz’s, was falling down her back in grey-green straggles. Feathers and moss were caught up in the knots. A black beetle was

exploring close to her ear. “Not quite the fly I’d hoped for,” she said, scraping her fingernails across the nearest stone. From the hand still hidden by her body, something liquid seemed to be falling.

“You know what?” Zanna said, having to turn to direct her speech (and growing rapidly annoyed because of it; the giddiness was being slow to wear off). “If

you
 
were
 
a spider, I’d care more about you. Stand still, you old crone. Didn’t anybody teach you it’s impolite to walk away while someone’s speaking to you?”

“Where’s   the   boy?”   Gwilanna snapped. Caustic, even by her standards. Someone had definitely stepped out of the wrong side of the cave this morning.

“On the steep learning curve of

fatherhood. And call me paranoid, but I’m keen to get home to make sure he’s playing the part. So let’s get down to business, witch. I want that piece of obsidian you stole.”

At that moment, Zanna heard a squawkbehind her. Looking over her shoulder,she saw that a raven had landed on the

tallest crooked finger of stone. Two stones away, another of the large black birds set down.

“You seem to have attracted some

attention,” Gwilanna said.

The blueberry eyes of the ravens swivelled. They stared at the scars on Zanna’s  arm.   One   of  them  shifted

sideways a step and opened its beak, as if

snarling at her.

Zanna lowered her sleeves. “Just giveme the knife and go play with yourbudgies. I’ve got better things to do thanstay for this pantomime.”

“Always, such disrespect,” Gwilannasaid. “If you were half the sibyl you couldbe, I’d admire you, girl.”

“Yeah? Well, here’s the thing,” Zannasaid, pressing forward. “I never couldstand bullies, show-offs or people withbad grooming.” She raised her hand,planning to snatch a clump of Gwilanna’shair, only to find that her movements wereblocked. The sibyl had set up some kindof force field. The result was the same at

the next space along.

Two more ravens landed on the stones.

And now Zanna could see what was really

attracting them. The liquid Gwilanna was trailing from her hand was green in colour. Ichor. The ‘juice’ from a dragon’s scale. Only then did Zanna remember that Gwilanna had made off with another

trophy from Wayward Crescent. She had Gawain’s ‘isoscele’, the triangular scale from the point of his tail. A rare and treasured Pennykettle artefact – and  a potent source of magicks in the hands of a sibyl.

“How is Elizabeth?” Gwilanna said

airily, still trailing round the circle. “I miss her. How’s her unborn son? Is his

heart still beating in triples? There may be dragon inside him yet. Ah, the triple slip of the hybrid valve. Unmistakeable, if you know what to listen for. Really, child, I

could have taught you so much.”

“What are you doing?” said Zanna, following the ichor.

“Sending a warning,” Gwilanna said. “It should have been David in the circle, not you, but the result will be the same. He’ll come looking. He’ll be angry. The message will go back to his dragon masters. One way or another, I’ll get what I want.”

Zanna pushed at the spaces again, but itwas like trying to beat through thickenedplastic. She drew back her sleeve.

“I wouldn’t bother,” Gwilanna scoffed. “Your useless grasp of magicks couldnever compete with mine. I put a lock onthe rift. You won’t be able to travel back

through it. And by the time you’ve

exhausted your limited mind trying to work out how I created the barrier, I will be at the final stone and the beacon will

be lit.”

“Beacon?” Zanna twisted on her heels, looking for any sign of a fire to kindle.

Then, to her horror, she noticed something. On the plinth-like rock at the centre of the circle was the thing she’d come to recover: Gwillan’s fire tear, still trapped in its prism of obsidian. She ran to it and tried to snatch it up, but it had been cemented by magicks to the plinth. Inside the obsidian, a dark fire burned.

“What do you want?” Zanna hissed, whipping round again. Gwilanna had only three stones left to go past and the ichor was showing no sign of running out. Zanna

ran to the back of the circle where she

noticed that a line of the dragon’s blood had been spilled inside the ring as well. An arrowhead of green was pointing to the plinth, its shaft curving back to the gateway of stones at the east of the circle. It appeared that Gwilanna had started at the plinth and worked her way outwards, before luring her victim in.

“Ah, you’ve seen the pattern,” the sibyl drawled, pausing briefly to watch Zanna’s face. “In the times when dragons were bred at this eyrie, the shape was commonplace. It’s carved into stones all over the island. The monks even have it on

the walls of their chapel. How ironic is

that?”

“What pattern?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, girl. This is not a time to disappoint me. You probably only have moments to live.  You’re surrounded

by one of the most powerful symbols in the universe. That fickle charlatan in clay you call Gretel even has it carved into the base of her tail – at my insistence, I might add; I was present when Elizabeth made her. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen it?”

“The letter ‘G’,” said Zanna, wishing more than anything she’d brought Gretel with her. The potions dragon would have been working on escape routes from the start. Moments to live? What was the

crazed witch talking about?

“Not just any ‘G’,” Gwilanna drawled on. “A ‘G’ curling into an isoscele. It represents the tail of their creator, the she-

dragon,   Godith.   Haven’t   you   ever wondered why dragons copy it into their names? To have the sign of Godith on your breath is a mark of respect. Really, girl, you’re such a waste. You could have learned so much from me.” She sighed and started her journey again.

“You still haven’t told me what you want?” Zanna threw the words up into the air.   She   was  pacing  around  now, considering her options. A glance at the ravens (still arriving) reminded her she’d once used magicks to adopt their shape. She looked at the sky. Did the force field tent across the stones? she wondered.