Dark Fire

  “You told me once it was covered by ley lines.”

  “Yeah, but so are hundreds of other sites. If the legend is true, there has to be a very strong reason for that unicorn’s presence, but I don’t know what it is or why — oh, grrr! There’s another message.” She pointed to a box in the corner of the screen. “That’s about a dozen this morning. Lucy doesn’t have that many friends, does she?”

  “Put them up,” David said.

  Zanna frowned at him darkly. “No. They’re personal.”

  “Just the subject lines. I’m curious. Arrange them — by address.”

  Zanna tutted and opened the software. “They’re coming from two girls, mainly.” She turned the screen slightly. “One of them is mailing from Australia. Who would Lucy know in Oz?”

  “Her siblings,” David said, after a pause.

  For the third time in the space of five minutes, Zanna found her body temperature dropping. “Siblings? What are you talking about?”

  “Lucy’s been writing a journal,” he said. “All about what she is and what she knows. Before she left for Scuffenbury I asked her to put it up on the Net. I think this is the result.” He nodded at the screen. “Check out the subject lines.”

  Zanna read a couple.

  IF GAWAINE MEANS ANYTHING TO YOU, PLS, PLS RESPOND.

  TWELVE DAUGHTERS. I’M HERE. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

  “They could be cranks,” she said. “And the top one can’t spell.”

  David shook his head. “They’re not cranks. When the press report the stories of the dragons tomorrow there will be one significant factor linking them: a red-haired girl will have been close by. Liz and Lucy are not unique. What you’re looking at is more of their extended family, other daughters of Guinevere. Contact one of the girls: They may know something about how their dragon is triggered. It might help us understand the setup at Scuffenbury.”

  “No way.” Zanna put the mouse through a series of clicks. The computer’s closing-down jingle rang out. “I don’t care who they are; I won’t invade Lucy’s privacy.” She stood up, resting her arm around Alexa. All this time the child had been quietly singing to her horse. “How come you and your friends in the North don’t know the triggering process anyway?”

  David stood away. He dropped the magazine, the latest copy of The National Endeavor, faceup, onto the bed. “Arthur ordered it,” he said. “He wants you to read the relevant passages to him. When you do, you might think again about reading those e-mails.”

  Zanna threw him a quizzical look.

  “Until Bergstrom discovered the writings on Hella we had no idea how the last Earth colony of dragons expired. The Fain abandoned them, remember? Even with the Chronicles, the narrative is sketchy. All we’re clear about is that twelve adult dragons went to their final resting places with a plan to defeat the Ix. One of them, possibly the most important of all, settled at Scuffenbury. Among the new Wearle of dragons in the Arctic is a type called a Ci:pherel. It detected the resting locations by scanning for traces of live dragon auma from around the world. Barring the Tooth of Ragnar, the signal was at its strongest on Glissington Tor, where, to the Ci:pherel’s surprise, it found a female — which the writings identify as being named Gawaine.”

  “Gawain?”

  “It’s not the one you’re thinking of. The name’s pronounced roughly the same, ‘Ga-wen,’ but the spelling is different; there’s an e on the end.”

  “I’m going to play with Gwillan,” said Alexa, slipping away.

  Zanna let her go. “A female? You mean, all this time …?”

  “No,” said David. “We think this is the mother of the one that Liz and Lucy revere. Their Gawain, her son, did live and die in what we now call the Arctic. When the Ci:pherel scanned the polar ice cap the auma trail there was off the scale, which is why the new Wearle were keen to secure it — hence the mist.

  “We’re pretty sure Gawaine — the mother — transferred most of her power to her son before she went into stasis, and that’s how something as huge as the ice cap came to be created when he shed his fire tear into the ocean. It’s an awesome feat, even though the dragons that made it possible might have deemed it wasteful. But when you think of the influence the ice cap has had, not just on the climate, but on the variety and density of life this planet supports, then Gawain has at least fulfilled the most basic principle of dragon ideology: Through him dragons have commingled with Gaia and earned their right to be called the spiritual guardians of the Earth. The only thing that’s really in debate is whether the outcome was accidental or altruistic.”

  “And I suppose you’ve got a theory on that?”

  “Not yet. We’ll know more when the old Wearle has risen.”

  Zanna rubbed the back of her neck. So many questions she wanted answered, not least what would happen to Alexa when the “old Wearle,” as David put it, was brought back. “What did you mean when you said that the other dragons made it possible for Gawain to create the ice cap?”

  “Have a look at the magazine. Steiner’s translation gives a pretty good account of their final meeting. At the end of the last colonization, eleven male dragons came together on Hella and cried their fire tears through their unnatural eye, into a hollow in the floor of a cave. I should explain that all dragons have a defect in the duct in one eye, a kind of sac that won’t allow the whole tear to pass. It’s considered to be a kind of safety mechanism, a second-chance blessing from Godith; a dragon shedding its tear in this way will always retain a little of its spark. The eleven who went through with this ritual wouldn’t have been able to function for long on the modest amounts of energy they’d be left with, but they would have had enough to enable them to fly to a mountaintop and hibernate for a few thousand years, by which time their tears would regenerate. The supreme tear as it came to be called, the one they’d pooled, was given to Gawaine. Steiner’s translation has her drinking it, but it’s more likely she would have just snorted it up through her nose. Whatever the means, it would have endowed her with enormous power.”

  “But the tear wasn’t meant to end up in the ocean, surely?”

  “No,” David said. “Gawaine’s task was to use it to destroy the Ix.”

  “How?” Zanna asked, framing the word carefully.

  David sighed and looked around the room, as if everything in it were a treasure to him. “We think her Wearle had adopted the same approach as ours. She was probably expected to open herself for illumination, with the idea of drawing the Ix to her. Such a vast amount of power would have pulled them all in. Once the Ix had commingled with her, she’d have sacrificed herself in the Fire Eternal. End of dragons. End of Ix.”

  “But instead we have an ice cap, and the Ix are still around.”

  He nodded, looking serious. “For some reason the transcendence never came about and Gawaine went into stasis instead, giving birth to a son along the way. Maybe it was something to do with him. Or maybe she just couldn’t cope with the moral consequences of what she’d been asked to do.” Stepping forward, he touched Zanna’s arm, letting his hand slide down to her elbow. “We know that the Ix were fond of commingling with chosen members of the human race, inciting them to acts of aggression against the dragons. The Wearle on Hella must have been prepared to accept there would be human casualties if their plan to defeat the Ix went ahead. But if the Ix got wind of their intended fate they could have tried to shelter themselves by commingling en masse with human hosts, forcing Gawaine into a dreadful dilemma: kill her natural enemy, yes — but wipe out their largely innocent hosts as well.”

  Zanna looked away. “This is what Liz wouldn’t talk about to Lucy. She hinted something to me when you came back from Africa.”

  David nodded again. “Liz learned of it when Steiner called Arthur at his office a few days ago to tell him the translation was done. She didn’t know, of course, that the Gawaine Steiner spoke about was their Gawain’s mother.”

  “And you didn’t think to set them straight?”

  D
avid opened his hands. “What difference would it have made? The knowledge is just as hurtful either way. As I said, we’ll know the full story when Gawaine rises from Glissington.”

  “And then what?” Zanna turned toward the door. “The Wearle tries again? With better odds? Keeping their scaly claws crossed there aren’t six and a half billion Ix out there so they can leave a few worthless human survivors behind?”

  “It’s not like that,” David said, but she had already stormed away.

  He threw his head back and looked at the ceiling, at the luminescent stars he’d once helped Lucy stick up there. Sometimes he wished he could be nothing more than a speck of cosmic dust among them.

  In those few small seconds of gloom, he missed the entrance of Gruffen — and would have probably missed him entirely were it not for the sound of the guard dragon’s coughing.

  David saw him hovering by Lucy’s lampshade. “Gruffen, what are you doing?”

  Hrrr! said the dragon. Cleaning. He produced a small feather duster and proceeded to demonstrate. A cloud of dust flew up off the lampshade.

  David shook his head. This whole house is going crazy, he thought. “Gwillan would be proud of you,” he said, not realizing, as he walked away, just how much truth lay in those words….

  37 INTO THE TOR

  At exactly one o’clock, Tam and Lucy turned up in the kitchen where Hannah was already waiting for them, dressed in the clothes she’d walked out in at dawn. Handing them both a flashlight, she beckoned them across the room to a sturdy farmhouse door. She rattled it off its latch and switched on a light. The cold sigh of dampness entered the kitchen. Lucy glanced into the open doorway. At the bottom of a flight of redbrick steps she saw the outline of a wine rack. Beyond that, only shadows.

  “Close the door behind you,” Hannah whispered to Tam. She was down the steps in seconds like a ferret, warning them to crouch when they reached the actual cellar. Lucy went down gingerly and sideways, yet still managed to slip halfway and crack flakes of whitewashed plaster off the walls.

  “Sorry,” she muttered, stepping onto a concrete floor that rang like the slap of a wet pavement.

  Hannah took her hand and drew her into the light. “That’s the hardest part done with. Now, follow me.”

  She led them in single file past the wine rack, into a small utility area lit by a row of bulkhead lights heavy with spiderwebs and condensation. At the cellar end she put her flashlight into her pocket and called Tam forward, asking him to move aside a large section of tongue and grooved timber propped against the wall. Another gasp of stale air blew into the cellar as his efforts uncovered a hole in the brickwork behind the wood. With the air came a whistling moan. The scent of dampness intensified. Lucy’s heartbeat rose. A drip of water crowned her shoulder, making her give a little peep of fear.

  Hannah said quietly, “Don’t be concerned about rats, we haven’t seen one down here for weeks.”

  Lucy, undecided about whether her mouth wanted to construct the question “Rats?” or “Weeks?”, merely gulped.

  Hannah smiled and flicked another switch, and there before them lay a rough-hewn tunnel, cut upward from floor level to a height of about five feet. It was lit by a string of candle-shaped bulbs, stapled to the wooden beams, which held back the earth to either side and above. It continued for some twenty yards into the hill before the trail curved away to the left.

  “Welcome to our best-kept secret,” said Hannah.

  “Doesn’t look very safe,” said Tam, nodding at the slews of fallen dirt that banked the pathway on either side.

  Hannah shone her flashlight into his face. “All adventures carry a little danger, Mr. Farrell. Not getting cold feet already, are you?” She didn’t give him the option to respond. “Watch where you’re going. It’s very slippery until we reach the excavations. Aim your lights down for now.”

  “Does Clive know we’re doing this?”

  Hannah had already stooped into the entrance and had to twist back to answer Tam’s question. She smiled like a widemouthed frog. “He’s keeping watch upstairs.”

  Without waiting for a comment she continued forward.

  Tam held Lucy back for a second. “Be careful. Stay close. Just in case …”

  “In case what?” she hissed anxiously. Any moment, Hannah would turn and question the delay.

  In case it’s a trap, he wanted to say. The auma from his right hand was urging caution. But all he said was, “Anytime you want to go back, just say.”

  She frowned, then bent down and followed Hannah.

  Thankfully, the backbreaking trot only lasted for about a minute. After that, even Tam was able to straighten up fully as Clive’s makeshift tunnel broke through into a professionally dug one. The area was well lit and stocked with a number of kerosene lamps, digging implements, rope, and several boxes of Lucy knew not what. (She imagined the possibility of dynamite, and shuddered.) The new tunnel stretched left and right for a few yards before plunging into darkness both ways. Hannah handed each of them a kerosene lamp, explaining they would light them farther ahead and leave them as markers. She then took a sharp left turn, warning them to expect sheer blackness for a while and suggesting that they group together and pool their flashlight as best they could. Lucy dropped in beside Tam, letting her light glance off the wall so she wouldn’t crash into the framework of beams. Every now and then more bulkhead light fittings glinted at her like the cat’s-eye reflectors that guided motorists in the road at night. She wondered why they couldn’t be switched on, but was afraid she’d just seem silly if she asked. Instead, she did something that Hannah had advised against and looked back the way they’d come. Seeing nothing but the diminishing tawny glow at the junction, she was suddenly struck by the closeness of the earth pressing in and her insignificant mass compared to that of the Tor.

  “I’m scared,” she said to Tam. “It’s hard to breathe.” His nod acknowledged the truth of this. The air was plentiful enough but its texture was thick with decomposition and, despite the omnipresent tick of dripping water, it now lacked humidity.

  “How far do we have to go?” he asked Hannah, offering Lucy his arm for support.

  Hannah’s light wobbled and veered to the right. “Stop here.” Her lamp clanked as she crouched down. Within seconds she had removed the glass and lit it. She positioned it on a ledge that seemed to have been deliberately constructed for the purpose. Lucy was never more thankful to see Tam’s face. He was looking ahead, throwing his flashlight into the shadows.

  “Is this a fork?” he asked.

  “One of several,” said Hannah. “Go left and you’ll find a dead end. The diggers created many, usually where they struck rock. Clive filled most of them in with the soil he needed to displace; the soil from the cellar tunnel went to make the water feature in our back garden.”

  Tam moved his flashlight around. “I thought this was purely an earth mound, no rock?”

  “You’d have to ask Clive; I’m not a geologist,” said Hannah. “Shall we go on?”

  Lucy, who’d recovered a little from the break in walking, nodded.

  Twice more they stopped to light marker lamps. By then, the route had narrowed again in those places where Clive had continued his personal explorations. Before they set off on the final leg, Lucy realized she was beginning to shake. Not that it was cold. Quite the opposite, in fact. Like the cave she’d spent time in on the Tooth of Ragnar, the air here was surprisingly warm. What was getting to her now was the weight of responsibility that came with her ancestry. They had to be close to the dragon.

  Hannah saw this in her face and said, “Maybe now would be a good time to sing?”

  Tam rested a hand on Lucy’s arm. “No one’s talked about the danger of the tunnels collapsing, Hannah. Assuming Lucy is able to wake the creature, there’s going to be a large amount of earth dislodged.” His mind was going back to the TV scenes from Svalbard.

  “She won’t be fully active right away,” Hannah said. “She’ll need time t
o spread her spark throughout her body. By then we’ll be out of here.”

  “She?” said Lucy. “You mean it’s a female?”

  “According to the legends, it’s a queen. Is that a problem?”

  “Did you know this?” Lucy threw a glance at Tam.

  He shook his head. “Only that a female existed. It’s in the article. I didn’t know we’d find her here.”

  “Sing, Lucy,” Hannah encouraged her. Her fingers scraped along the tunnel wall.

  Lucy wiped a hand across her mouth. Her skin was puckered and tasted of mud. Never had she felt less like singing. And the acoustics in this warren were hardly good. Every footstep sounded like the thump of an iron on an ironing board. Even so, she parted her lips and let her throat do the work of producing a sound. Out came a sweet, comforting tune, somewhere just below the pitch of birdsong. It was what her mother called “The Song of Guinevere.” Lucy had fallen asleep to it many times, always dreaming of dragons when she did so. Long ago, their red-haired ancestor had wooed Gawain with it, easing the shedding of his fire tear. Now its melody swept through the darkness, almost moving the air like a sail.

  “That’s beautiful,” said Tam. “I never knew you could do that. Listen, it’s going everywhere. It’s like the tendrils of a plant.”

  “Remarkable,” said Hannah, looking suitably impressed. She came to a halt and turned toward them. “Don’t stop, girl. Your moment has arrived.” She flipped her flashlight sideways.

  Less than twenty feet ahead the tunnel ended in a hollowed-out chamber, where it was clear that a huge amount of excavation work had taken place. Tam approached the entrance and explored it with his flashlight. “After you,” he said to Hannah.

  Her spectral features recorded a smile. With Lucy’s dragonsong still weaving its spell, she dipped her head and stepped inside, holding her flashlight at shoulder height like a javelin. “There,” she said, as Tam came to join her.