Almost immediately, the vortex was back and building in strength.
“Hold fast!” yelled Harlan as it started to yowl like a creature trapped. It tugged at the pouches of skin on his cheeks and evaporated most of the moisture from his eyes. The ground was shaking, and so, too, the tower, throwing loose mortar from between its joints.
Suddenly, Mathew Lefarr cried out: “Harlan, look up!”
There, in the circle of light above, was the apparition they had all imagined but never made flesh. A terrifying beast with wings like giant sheets of canvas. Eyes of yellow oil. Teeth like daggered rocks. It twisted and hissed and roared at the men, all the while lashing its dark red tongue. Colm Fellowes screamed and ran out onto the hillside. Bernard, likewise, fell against the wall, burying his face in a huddle of fright. Only Harlan and the valiant Mathew Lefarr bore witness to what happened next. The creature twisted its ingenious neck (every scale readjusted in one flowing arrow) and aimed its snout downward. Squeezing its nostrils tight, it sent forth a column of blue-white fire. The point of the flame struck the center of the dais. It burned for a sec in a crown of light, then was sucked back into the nostrils of the dragon. In its wake, something extraordinary followed. There was a grinding noise at the center of the dais, and the spot marked by the image of Agawin began to turn and work its way upward. At first it appeared that a plug of pure stone had lifted from the structure. But as Harlan’s eyes readjusted to the light, he saw that it was a receptacle of sorts. A cylinder, about the length of a man’s hand, made of a glistening, trans:lucent matter. With cinders in his hair and uncomfortable traces of singeing in his nostrils, he took a breath and closed his hand around it. The outer structure vanished as if it were dust, but when he pulled his hand away, inside it was something from another world.
Lefarr was too awestruck to speak at first. “What is it?” he asked eventually.
Harlan ran his thumb along the curved and jagged surface. “Something beyond our reality,” he whispered. “I believe it’s the claw of a dragon.”
6.
Once again, at midmorning on the day after the climb, the Tribe of Alavon gathered in a circle in the clearing by the huts. The claw lay on a stump of wood at the center, for all the men to see. Mathew Lefarr told the story of the journey, setting out all that had happened. When he was finished, he invited every man to examine the claw and hold it if they wished. None did. Instead, they turned to the man who had discovered it and asked him what was to be done with this wonder.
That question had been on Harlan’s mind all night. “First,” he said, “let us be clear about one thing. I’ve spoken with our medic, Terance Humbey, and he agrees with me that the claw is not of human origin. It therefore cannot be the remains of Agawin.”
“Agawin was a winged man,” Hugo reasoned. “Is it not possible that he evolved claws like a bird?”
The men murmured in agreement.
“That’s not the feeling it gives me,” said Harlan. He spoke boldly, aiming his words around the circle. “I was one with the dragon for long enough to know that the claw came from its kind, not from ours.”
“Very well,” said Hugo. “This we must accept. But why was it placed in the dais at all? What significance does it have?”
“Aye, and what power?” said one of the men, which raised an even louder hubbub of voices.
Hugo clapped his hands for silence. “Friends, Bernard Brotherton will speak on this matter.”
All eyes turned toward the tech:nician.
Bernard, the bottom half of his face now shaded with a jet-black stubble, said this: “The claw was not placed in the dais, it was hidden. It was meant to be discovered by someone with the capacity to understand complex math:e:matical patterns. What this tells us is that whoever set the key was intelligent themselves.”
Roderic raised his hand. “Could it be that the claw was secreted in the dais to protect it when the land was re:duced?”
“Very possibly,” said Bernard.
“Who by — Agawin or the beast?” Colm said.
“That we don’t know.”
“Well, we have it and that is that,” said Hugo. “Harlan, as its finder, you must be accountable for its safekeeping. The tribe will aid you and protect you in any way it can, but I urge you to keep the discovery hidden — at least until we ascertain what it might be used for. We are now in the dangerous position of knowing something about the Dead Lands that the Aunts don’t. The meeting is closed.”
Harlan looked at Hugo and nodded. He slipped off his seat, wincing as his injured foot touched the ground. It had been strapped with rough bandages by Terance that morning, after the painful descent from the hill. He hobbled into the circle and picked up the claw. “Before we disperse, does any man know the word Isenfier or the name Gawain?”
The men glanced at one another and shook their heads. “Why do you ask?” said Thomas Spilo, whose whole face was surrounded with dark curly hair.
“The words came to me when the dragon commingled, though in what capacity I couldn’t be sure.” Harlan looked at Lefarr, who cast his eyes down. He slipped the claw into his robe and limped away.
“That was dangerous,” Mathew said, when they were back in his hut. “Why didn’t you tell them that Isenfier was a warning?”
Harlan threw the question back. “Why didn’t you?”
Lefarr sighed and sank into his cross-legged pose. “I didn’t want to alarm them. But Colm knows the truth. He may not keep it to himself for long.”
“Then we’d better do as Hugo implied,” said Bernard. “And find out what that thing is for.”
Harlan held the claw up to his face, massaging the tip between his thumb and forefinger. “There’s something fluid in here that I can’t squeeze out.”
“Is it wise to?” said Lefarr. “What if it’s toxic?”
Harlan clicked his tongue and thought about it. “Do you have anything clean and white I could shake a droplet onto?”
“Actually, I do.” Mathew took a sheet of paper from his robe, which he unfolded in front of the others. “It’s a letter — from my grandmother to my grandfather, just before he died. She liked the old-fashioned permanence of writing. I managed to smuggle it out of my pod when the Re:movers came for me.”
Harlan pushed his tongue between his lips and grimaced. “Mathew, I can’t use that.”
“It’s all right,” he said. “My grandmother would have been proud to know that her words were being mixed with the essence of a dragon.”
Harlan smiled and took the letter from him. “I’ll aim at a corner,” he said. Yet, no matter how hard he shook, nothing would leave the tip of the claw. “This is bizarre,” he said, looking at it straight on. “I’m convinced I can see a tiny aperture with the fluid welling up behind. It ought to come out.”
Before Bernard could reply with a swatch of phys:ics, Mathew said, “What happens if you touch the tip to the paper?” He looked at the scientists and shrugged.
Harlan tried it. He scratched the claw down a margin of the letter and a thin vertical line was produced. “That’s extraordinary,” he breathed. But there it was: a line, colored green.
“Then it can be used as a pen?” Bernard queried, craning his neck to see it.
“But why?” said Lefarr. “Why hide away a pen?”
“Maybe,” said Harlan, looking at the letter and its beautiful script, “it’s not the pen that matters, but the words it writes.” And he applied the claw to the bottom of the paper and wrote Isenfier in small block letters.
For two heartbeats, nothing happened. But Harlan was sure he could feel the world turning. Whatever force his mind was resonating with suddenly moved his gaze to the door. “Firebird,” he whispered, just before the cry went up outside.
“Firebird! Firebird!”
And then the world was indeed turning.
And the first jet of flame hit the roof of the hut.
7.
Within moments, the calls had changed in both frequency and len
gth. “Fire!” the men were shouting wildly. The accumulated thunder of their running feet shook the ground on which Harlan was sitting. A small portion of the roof cover crackled. Cinders fell from its disappearing edges as the fire took hold and the weave was eaten up in a running line.
Mathew leaped to his feet. “Quickly. We have to get out before it collapses.” He came over and shouldered Harlan upright, then ran into the daylight, shouting for help.
By the time Bernard and Harlan had joined him, most of the men were grouped together, busily watching the sky. Some were helping others to clear what they could from the huts on fire. Harlan counted five in total. No one was running for water, he noticed. But then, what good would it have done? The fires were raging too fast to be contained. And even if sufficient water could be brought, the men had no means of spraying it onto the flames.
“There!” cried a voice laced with resentment. Thomas Spilo pointed upward through a break in the smoke.
“Where? What are we looking at?” Harlan said, spinning.
“Black firebird, right overhead,” whispered Mathew. He stepped sideways to gain a better view.
“Black?” said Bernard.
And then Harlan saw it, partially eclipsed by drifting smoke. “It’s coming down,” he said. “It’s going to attack.”
“It’s dilating its nostrils,” someone shouted. A sign that the bird was making fire.
“Run!” barked Lefarr.
The men scattered. All except one. In three quick strides, Colm Fellowes was at the nearest hut. In a display of brute strength, he ripped away a piece of wood used to frame the door. Yelling a ferocious challenge, he came back into the clearing. The bird angled its descent path toward him. The whole tribe was urging Colm to stand away. But Colm, his hut destroyed, his life undone by Aunts and Re:movers, his mind addled by what he had seen in the tower, was determined to stand and fight. He swung out as the bird swooped low. The bird made a strange kind of caarking noise and the clearing was lost in a brief flash of orange. No scientist had ever been able to explain how a creature half the size of a small child was able to produce such a vigorous burst of expanding flame. But Harlan would witness it twice that morning, in all its terrible glory. The blow Colm Fellowes had been trying to land spun him around in an arc of fury. So feral was his lunge that the wood slipped tamely out of his hands and fell to the ground with a meaningless clunk. The bird rushed by, unharmed. But Colm’s robe had taken fire from the hem to the belt. He held out his arms and screamed.
Mathew and Terance were the first to reach him. They brought him down and rolled him across the earth in an attempt to smother the worst of the flames. Then Hugo was there, beating Colm’s legs with another robe. By the time that water had been brought and the fire stopped, Colm had passed out in a shaking fit. Most of his robe had disintegrated. What was left was welded to his blistered skin.
Thomas Spilo thundered, “Why is it doing this? What does it want?”
But it was Bernard who suddenly claimed everyone’s attention. “Look there!” He pointed toward Lefarr’s hut. The firebird was perched on what remained of the badly scorched walls, eyeing the tribe with malevolent interest.
“It’s scanning us,” said Bernard.
And as usual, he was right. The bird’s fain touched the mind of every man present, but its gaze came to rest on only one of them: Harlan.
Hugo Abbot spread his hands and urged the men to be silent. “It seems to want you,” he said to Harlan, “or what you found in the tower. We can’t defend ourselves against such a force. Whatever it wants, I beg you, give it up. Don’t let another man be burned.”
Mathew Lefarr drew alongside Harlan. Speaking quietly, out of earshot of the others, he said, “Is this the Shadow you were warned of?”
Harlan made no reply. He stepped forward until his image had filled the bird’s eye. He drew the claw from his robe.
The bird hissed and laid its ear tufts back.
“It’s frightened of it,” Mathew muttered.
Harlan tightened his grip. Right away he achieved what no one else on Co:pern:ica ever had: a mental link with a firebird. But as his consciousness jostled with that of the bird’s, he was horrified to find that he had actually commingled with something alien. The bird — or rather its mind — was dead. Another entity was using the body as a vessel. It was quick to identify itself.
We are Ix, they said.
“We.” Not “I,” Harlan noted.
They swarmed around his mind. Probing. Dangerous. We are a Cluster, they said in response to his thought-wave. You are the one who opened the portal.
Harlan’s mind flashed to his experiment. This thing had come through the rift?
You will guide us to a fire star, the Ix said coldly, applying themselves to indiscriminate parts of Harlan’s brain and tormenting his neural network in the process. Externally, the watching men saw him quake, but no one dared interrupt. The involuntary spasm of muscles forced his hand to close tighter around the claw. A fresh wave of energy surged through his mind. To his surprise, the Ix Cluster was suppressed a little. Now Harlan seized the chance to interrogate them.
Kill me and you’ll never get back, he said. Where are you from?
The Cluster welled up in a flare of resistance. We have traveled from Isenfier.
Isenfier. A planet? Another dimension? No, Harlan realized. It was neither of those. The site of a conflict loomed in his mind. Isenfier was a battlefield. He shuddered and let this pass. Why are you here? What led you to the portal?
We are following the beacon, they said.
In that instant, Harlan’s heart nearly stopped as images of David swarmed through his mind, most notably of the night terrors at the therapy center. So this is what had been coming for his son. With fierce intent, he drew upon the strength of the claw again. His consciousness powered through the heart of the Cluster, dividing the Ix and weakening them. Aware he couldn’t hold them in this state for long, he sought a small colony and separated it out. Why are you trying to reach this boy?
The colony said: The beacon resonates in him.
What is the reason for the beacon?
To seek help from this world.
Who is sending the signal?
His dragon, they said, re-Clustering with such malevolent purpose that Harlan’s body collapsed to its knees. Through sheer strength of will, he raised a hand to keep the tribe back. It was vital not to break the link with the bird. For in the instant the Ix had spoken of the dragon, they had also shown Harlan an image of it. A tiny creature, almost a caricature of its kind. Small, green, trumpet-shaped nostrils, oddly spiked scales, large flat feet. There was infinite kindness in its oval eyes. Strangest of all, it was holding a pen (or maybe a pencil). But what connection could such a thing have with David?
They are one, said the Cluster, reading Harlan’s thoughts.
Across worlds?
Across time. You will show us the location of a fire star. Now.
Harlan sank farther, grimacing in pain. The muscles in the arm that held the claw felt as if they were raw and bleeding. He bravely resisted letting go. Tell me about the dragon. Why does it carry a pen?
This time, there was a pause before the Ix replied. You will drop the creat:or. You will give the claw to us.
Creat:or. Harlan measured the word carefully. He thought about the talk he’d been having with Mathew just before the fires were set. How he’d written Isenfier on the paper. Had he brought this devastation on them? Was it possible the universe acted on the words that were written with the claw, or brought about a close response to them? Was it possible that dragons could shape dark matter? He let the last of these thoughts leak out and sensed anxiety throughout the Cluster. Mathew was right; the Ix were frightened of the gift from the tower, wary of what it could do. Harlan decided to put it to the test. Leaning forward, he stretched out his hand as if he were going to lay the claw on the ground. But at the final moment, he flipped it and tried to write Gawain in the dust. His
intention was to call up the creature from the tower. But the Ix were quick to spot the danger. Harlan had managed no more than the G when the bird descended with its claws outstretched, ripping at his hands and arms and face. In the melee, Harlan dropped the claw. At the same time, a knife flashed through the air and struck the bird in the side of the neck. An accurate throw, but not a perfect one. The knife jiggled in the wound and fell out in a splash of bright green blood. The firebird screeched, more annoyed than hurt. It turned to see Mathew running toward it, wielding a rock. But by then it had snatched the claw from the ground and was able to defend its prize with fire. Mathew hurled his rock through a wall of flame. It missed the bird by several feet. But the fire did not miss him. It caught hold of the arm of his robe and forced him to spin away, crying out in pain. He was surrounded by men and doused right away, lucky to escape with only superficial burns.
Once again, the bird flew to the walls of the hut, where it rested, holding the claw in its beak.
Harlan pressed his lips together, knowing he had lost. But there, in the shadow of the Isle of Alavon, a pact was struck. “Wherever you go, I’ll find you,” he said, staring at the bird with as much raw malice as it was reserving for him. The bird tilted its head and made a record of the face. Then it spread its wings and was gone.
“Brave words, Harlan, but hard to follow through.” Lefarr sidled up to him, clutching at his arm. “We’d be old and ugly in the time it would take us to journey back to Central — always assuming we went the right way. What did you learn?”
“It’s alien. It’s going after my son.”
Lefarr shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do.”
But Harlan Merriman had other ideas. Without another word, he walked across to Colm.
The engineer was still laid out on the ground, surrounded by a group of concerned-looking men. A light blanket had been draped across his body. Terance was offering him sips of water. But Colm was barely breathing. He was going to die.
Harlan knelt down. “Colm,” he whispered.