A crack of thunder almost shook the glass from the window. The rain slewed against the pane as if it had been fired from a BB gun. The sheer intensity of it was beating visibility down to mere yards.
“Hardly ideal weather,” said Lucy. “You’re not gonna row your boat safely to the shore in this.”
Tam’s mouth closed into a thin pink line.
“We’ve got to help him,” she said. “He’d do the same for us.”
Footsteps. Tam raised a finger to his lips. He pulled Lucy flat to the wall and stole a glance down the corridor outside the cell. Two brothers were approaching, at zombie pace. “All right,” he whispered. “There’s some kind of black stone on the chapel altar. I don’t know what it is, but I saw it drain the color from a stained glass window when one of them put his hand on it. The brothers near me at the time all jerked in response. We take it and go, agreed?”
She nodded eagerly.
“OK. When I signal, drop in behind me.” Quickly, he gathered up the tray and bowl and stepped up to the doorway as the monks were passing. Lucy saw him give a brotherly nod to them. He paused a moment and reset the tray, then his finger tapped the side and he was moving again. She bent her head and followed him out of the door.
In the distance, a bell was tolling. It grew louder as they walked, the sharpness of the clangs almost grouting the mortar from the old stone walls. A smell of cedar wood hung in the air, making Lucy think of Arthur and his musty aftershave. That led her thoughts home and she found herself taking on the mantle of her clothing and praying that she would escape this place and see her mother and her dragons again, and even her annoying part-sister, Zanna. She thought of David, also, and cast her mind north. In that instant, she heard the hum inside her ear and the folded brown canvas of Tam Farrell’s habit briefly became an Arctic wasteland.
“This is it,” Tam whispered, breaking the spell. They had stopped by a pair of oak-paneled doors. He pushed one open and drew her inside a dark, empty chapel.
“Something’s wrong,” she said, rubbing her arms, frightened. “I heard the hum. I think they know we’re here.”
But he was down the aisle already, looking around, muttering. “This is changed,” he said. “It’s all been stripped of color.” He pointed to the chalices, the cloth over the altar, the lights, the pew cushions. They were all just shades of gray.
“I don’t like this,” said Lucy, clapping a hand to her ear. The hum had suddenly faded. Or was it waiting by her shoulder?
“Sit there,” said Tam. “Look as though you’re praying.” He guided her into the nearest pew.
She dropped to her knees and opened a hymn book. Instantly, the hum was back. The words of the hymns came together as a block and reorganized themselves into a heading that read:
The Death of Dragons is Nigh
Lucy dropped the book and gave a shuddering gasp. Monks were beginning to appear in the pews, materializing as though a cloak had been lifted. She saw Tam Farrell kneel before the altar. On the altar lay a body, made from ice.
It was David.
Tam’s habit fell away and from within it rose one of the awful black creatures Lucy had seen at the center of the island. Paralyzed with fear, she watched it spread its wings and hop off the altar step to land on David’s body. It extended three conical claws, making the shape of the mark of Oomara. It dug them into David’s chest.
Lucy screamed, a visceral howl that seemed to tear the lining clean out of her lungs.
The monks responded with reedy cries. Several began to shake and have fits. The glass in the east window fell apart, leaving a framework of hollow angels. In the sky beyond, Lucy witnessed a terrifying vision: the Arctic ice cap, cracking into islands.
On the altar, David’s body imploded to water and flowed away, drenching the steps below.
Lucy was aware that she wanted to be sick. But the feeling stuttered as a wiry-bearded monk in round-lensed glasses came to stand in front of her. A hand gripped her arm and she was pulled from her seat.
The monk took off his glasses and polished them. “She is perfect,” he said. “Take her to the room of obsidian.”
29
LIZ LEARNS A TRUTH
Among the many residents of Wayward Crescent, Elizabeth Pennykettle was one of the most well-liked. Neighbors found her cheerful, if a little eccentric, mainly due to the fact that Liz had a tendency to make clay dragons for anyone in need, a course of action that commonly raised bemused (and sometimes skeptical) eyebrows, but had a wonderful way of resolving “inconveniences” all the same (though no one could ever quite determine how). She was regarded as an excellent parent, actively supporting Lucy at school, and a reliable member of the local community, always willing to lend a hand at parties or Scrubbley town events. As a mother, she was efficient, fair, and kind. She ran a good home. True, she had no shortage of help from her dragons, but she was the hub, the perfect mom. She cooked. She scrubbed. She mended. She loved. She was artistic, cared for animals, had magnetic letters on her fridge (an essential requirement of good parenting), and read wonderful bedtime stories. She could do anything.
Even speak to birds.
Less than ten minutes after taking Alexa in from the garden she was out there herself, hanging out a line of wash. She had her back to the fence when she heard the raven land. “Well, is it you?”
The irritated scrabble of claws confirmed it well before Gwilanna croaked, “Guinevere’s bloodline treats you well. You haven’t changed at all in five years, Elizabeth.”
“You have,” Liz said.
The raven produced the best hrrmph! it could. “It’s not like you to be uncivil, my dear.”
Liz snapped a clothespin shut, ending the resistance of a pair of socks. “The last time you came to the Crescent you took my daughter hostage in the Arctic. Why should I express any kindness toward you?”
The raven arched its wings. “As usual, you put your tiresome humanity before your true lineage. The child was witness to a unique opportunity to raise Gawain. If I had asked for permission to take her, it would have been refused and the chance long lost.”
“Lost?” Liz repeated bitterly, almost spitting the word over her shoulder. “I know what happened at that island, Gwilanna. My daughter was almost killed and my tenant gave up his life protecting her. This household has never recovered. How can you talk to me about missed opportunities? If I could swap your life for his I’d do it a thousand times over. Why are you back?”
“He sent me,” said the bird.
Liz closed her eyes. She felt a weakness in her shoulders, a slight chasm in her heart. “That’s a lie,” she said, before her breathing could stall.
Gwilanna dipped her beak in irritation. She looked back toward the house where Gadzooks and G’reth were sitting close together on the windowsill. “His dragons are watching. How very poignant.” She snorted and turned her eyes on Liz again. “Have you lost all your dragon senses, girl? How could they have survived without him? I’ve seen him, Elizabeth. I’ve seen what he’s become. Your tenant has found a new home in the Arctic, inside a polar bear’s skin.”
Liz shuddered and gripped at a shirt for support, squeezing its waist to almost nothing. She remembered Alexa on the phone to Zanna, I saw Daddy, being a polar bear.
“The child senses him,” Gwilanna added casually. “While I was with him, she materialized a thought gift: a woolly mammoth. A powerful talent for one so young. She is extremely promising. Unruly, naturally, but astonishingly forward. She should be given to me for training.”
Liz whipped around so fast that her heels churned holes in the water-softened lawn. “You touch one hair of her head and I’ll put you in a pie, you evil old crone.”
“She’s in danger.”
“With you around that wouldn’t surprise me. From what?”
“Her father wasn’t specific. He’s become arrogant, like the rest of those dumplings he’s bonded with.”
“All words, Gwilanna. How do I know this isn’t a tric
k?”
“If it is, it’s not of my making,” she said. She stretched her neck and added sharply, “The boy is alive and meddling with forces he doesn’t understand. Do you remember my teachings on The Fire Eternal?”
Liz turned in a fluster to her washing line again. “Page one of the sibyl ‘book of wisdom.’ It’s the breath of Godith, the source of all creation and unconditional love. The fire of life. The auma of the universe. Of course I remember it. Why?”
“Right now, I would say he’s standing above it.”
“Don’t play games, Gwilanna. We’re all above the fire. It’s at the center of the earth.”
“Ah, but according to your raised-again tenant there’s a direct conduit to it, a very deep and dangerous well, located at the point where Guinevere dropped Gawain’s tear into the ocean — and the polar ice cap formed as a result.”
Liz stopped with a pin between her teeth. “He created the ice cap? Gawain’s fire is in the ice?”
Gwilanna hopped sideways along the fence so that Liz could see her from the corner of her eye. “Incongruous, but true. Your little ‘secret’ in the freezer comes blessed with it, of course.”
“Then he’s in my dragons — and in David, too.”
There was silence on the fence.
Liz turned around, saying, “Zanna told me he was killed by an ice spear through the heart.”
“Outrageous providence,” Gwilanna said bitterly.
The yellow rosebush bristled sweetly in the breeze. Liz covered her mouth. She thought back to her kitchen conversation with Arthur and his inspired “revelation” about David’s death. “So he does have Gawain within him,” she said. Tears began to well in her bright green eyes.
“When you’ve done with this sentimental twaddle,” said Gwilanna, “perhaps you’d like to get me out of these feathers?”
Liz shook her head. Gathering herself together, she hung up the last piece of clothing and said, “So his tear wasn’t lost. It was transformed into the ice, and Guinevere was responsible for that.”
“What do you want, a glow of pride?” Gwilanna scolded.
“You told me she’d drowned.”
“She was far out on the ocean.”
“But you didn’t see it. It was just an assumption. It was always an assumption.”
“What does it matter? The girl is long gone.”
“Not from here,” said Liz, pointing to her heart. “She’s in every breath I take. And suddenly, she’s very alive to me, Gwilanna.” She tossed her red hair. “So are her descendants. Lucy’s disappeared. What do you know about that?”
“Nothing. How did we get onto —?”
“She went through a time-slip. She was taken by the Fain. Why would that happen?”
“I told you there was danger.”
“Why do they want her? What’s going on? If David is back, it must be for a purpose. Are the two things connected? Tell me. Tell me.”
The raven did a version of the Texas two-step. “He talked about a conflict. An unseen war. Something to do with a division of the Fain who call themselves the Ix. They want to make dark fire.”
“You always told me that was impossible.”
“I’ve been wrong before,” the raven said, doing its best to sniff. “The Ix plan to tap into human consciousness; your ‘boy’ plans to stop them. That’s all I know. Now do the spell. Get me out of these feathers.”
Liz shook her head again. “I can’t. I’m not a sibyl. You’ll have to wait for Zanna.”
“And that may take some time,” said a voice. The clothing parted and Arthur came through with Bonnington in his arms. Spying the bird, the cat gave a vicious hiss. “No,” said Arthur, holding him back. “I believe this might be an old acquaintance.”
“I’m glad you didn’t say ‘friend,’” said Liz.
“So, you took up with him after all?” hissed Gwilanna.
“I don’t need your advice on who to love,” said Liz.
She touched Arthur’s arm and he said to her quietly, “Henry just came by with a message. Our telephones are down. Zanna’s stuck in traffic a few miles outside of Scrubbley. There are jams all around town.”
“How come?” said Liz.
“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “Alexa thinks they might have come to see the fairies.”
On the face of it, this was a ridiculous statement. The kind of innocent remark Alexa made every day. But it caused Liz to shudder deep inside.
“We must talk to her,” said Arthur.
“I agree,” caarked Gwilanna. “Set me free.”
“No. You fly away. Now,” said Liz. “Find Zanna and bring her home as quickly as you can. Use magicks if you must.”
“I have no magicks!” the raven squawked. “My powers were removed when I was locked inside this body.”
“Then teach Zanna what to do.”
“The girl is headstrong. What if she refuses to trust me?”
Liz walked up the garden and broke a petal off the yellow rose. She kissed it and put it in the raven’s beak. “Lucy’s dragon, Gwendolen, is with her. She’ll be able to verify my auma on this. Go, sibyl. Now’s the time to make amends for thousands of years of deception. Go.”
With a muffled caark, Gwilanna beat an upward path, finding a thermal wind that took her soaring backward over the pepper spray of houses. As she leveled out, she tilted her head and looked down. To her surprise she saw people in the streets all around. Dozens were getting out of their cars and wandering like ants in a radial pattern. A pattern with its center over Wayward Crescent. People, for all the world, migrating.
Heading for the house at number 42.
30
AVREL TELLS A STORY
There was a tension in the air, a kind of resistance. The farther north they journeyed, the more Avrel felt it. Even the ice seemed to drag beneath his paws. It was solid here. No creaking suggestion of water. It made him nervous.
It made him think.
For several days now his mind had been questing, collecting memory fragments on his ancestor, Thoran, in an effort to place in context the way the ice had formed. It was a critical moment in the history of the ice bears, and yet it was almost impossible to reach. The searches were tiring and mostly fruitless. Often, when he thought he was about to grasp a truth, it would fade with the slightest lapse of concentration. It didn’t help that his interest kept drifting toward the woman. The woman who had been with Thoran at the start. The woman who had held the tear of the dragon. Guinevere, that’s what Ingavar had called her. If he centered on that name he could picture her — just. She was tall, like the blue-eyed man Ingavar sometimes became. She had flowing red hair, bright green eyes, skin as pale as a seal pup’s pelt. Charms and amulets were cast around her neck. She carried no weapons. Her strengths were her kindness and fearlessness of heart. What of her, this woman whom the bear had befriended? The raven had claimed she had drowned in these waters. But Avrel’s instincts favored the reverse. Guinevere had lived. He felt certain of that. But what had become of her? Where had she gone?
One morning, or night, it was impossible to tell, for there were very few breaks of genuine light, Ingavar came to join him at rest. Avrel was watching the sky spirits playing. They were sliding down a ribbon of green “nightfire,” which was the term his mother had sometimes used for the colors that formed in the arc of the sky.
The Nanukapik sat down beside his Teller. “Tell me a story, Avrel.”
The sky spirits instantly rushed toward them, settling in the air like a living cloud.
Avrel, who was lying in the mouth of the wind, with one paw stretched and one tucked under his young chest, said, “Lord, what would you like me to Tell?”
“Whatever is in your mind,” said Ingavar.
Avrel middled his gaze. There was more than legends in his mind just then. He glanced across at Kailar. The fighting bear was battling with the early throes of sleep. Lately, his rests had been scrappy and erratic. In sleep, the dragon’s eye spoke to him,
he said. It made him see things, made him fly, high above the ice like a ghost in the wind. Now he had fallen into slumber again, covering his snout with an involuntary paw and snoring with an irritated, broken rumble. He looked vulnerable. And he had lost condition. It was worrying, Avrel thought, but somehow touching.
“Our journey is almost at an end,” said Ingavar.
“We have reached the place?”
“We are very close.”
Avrel looked about him. “There are no marks.” Had the raven not reported lines of fire? A definite intersection where the tear had fallen?
“They will show themselves,” said Ingavar, “when you need to see them.” He folded a leg and laid himself down. The ice barely echoed to his weight as he dropped.
A spirit danced before them, a woman in skins. Avrel looked up, wondering for a moment if it might be Guinevere, for her name was playing in the shell of his ear. His chin sagged when he realized it wasn’t her at all. His gaze turned inward and Ingavar followed it.
“Take away the wind and the night from your memories. Take away time. Tell me what you see.”
A vision. Avrel was almost left breathless by its swiftness. He saw the ice forming like a morning sunrise, breaking on the crust of the ocean so quickly that it might have just surged to the surface from below. At its center was a great white fire. From the body of the fire stepped a perfect bear.
“I see Thoran,” said Avrel, his head clustered with images. “He is wandering, distressed. He is looking for something … for the woman, Guinevere.”
“I hear you,” said Ingavar, tipping his snout. It was the tradition to acknowledge a Teller’s story this way.
“He has been walking for days,” the son of Lorel went on. “He was separated from her when the dragon’s tear was dropped.” He flinched as he saw it happening again, another flashback, another ice cap moment. So much beauty. So much light. “The sea was in torment. The spreading ice lifted her and carried her away. His heart is in despair, for he knows she could be anywhere. He is lost and he cannot detect her scent. This landscape is strange to him, the open sky, the cold. He feels blinded by the brightness and has nothing to guide him barring courage and hope. But he will not give up. He will not rest until he knows her fate. She was kind to him once. She … oh.”