Fire Star (22 page)

S
he was a mile out to sea, or rather out to ice, trying to establish where the dragon’s head lay in relation to the snow-packed contours of the island, when the Fain arrived. It could not be seen, but she felt it approach. So fast, so close, there was no time to react.

Nothing had ever scared her more.

She looked to the sky. The star was bright, but not yet shining on the summit of the island. Her calculations were not inaccurate. How, then, had the Fain come through the portal?

“Why are you here? What do you want?”

The wind moaned and swept about her feet.

“Take a form,” she snapped. “Let me see you.”

The ice creaked. Her skin began to prickle. Commingling. The thing was
inspecting
her.

“I am Fain, like you. One of the old ones!”

The air pulsed, pressing against her eyes.

“We can help one another! Our purpose is the same. All I want is to bring the dragons back.”

Her blood surged. Her nerve ends crackled.

Cold boomed in the tunnels of her ears.

And then it was within her. One with her.

The Fain.

It filled her limbs, raised her hairs, flowed between the crevices of her toes.

Highly evolved. Superior. A killer.

Why is the dragon made stone?
it said, plugging directly into her brain.

She had one chance before it finished her: change.

Its tear was stolen,
she said, through thought.

It paused to consider the truth of this. And in its rest, its lapse of concentration, she became a raven and broke herself free.

Ten wingbeats. That was all she got. As she banked
toward the island her feathertips froze. Her beak tipped and she plummeted down.

Her bird brain hummed as the Fain returned.

Where is the dragon’s fire?
it said.

Cark,
she snorted. Her last act of defiance.

Then she was extinguished. Glassy-eyed. Inert.

Gwilanna, the sibyl of ancient ages.

Now a raven, sealed in a block of ice.

T
hey had captured the dragon with a dead hare drugged with Brother Cedric’s sleeping pills. It was lighter than expected and two of them, Brother Malcolm and the one-time circus performer, Brother Terence, carried the limp body up to the clifftop. Crudely, with a roll of mailing tape, they had lashed the wings tight to the creature’s body, then bound it with ropes to an open trailer, hooked to the back of the only vehicle on the island, a Land Rover. It woke as they were transferring it to a cobbled enclosure in the disused stable block. Such a scream of anguish did it give that several of the brethren fled from its presence. It was left to Brothers Malcolm, Terence, and Feargal to secure the beast with chains: two around its ankles to stable posts,
one from its neck to the crossbeam in the roof. Its wings they left taped. Its tail they caught and wrapped in burlap.

Its heart they left to break by itself.

When Brother Vincent heard what they had done, he wept.

Brother Bernard, in attendance (by his own request), wrung his hands together in despair. “You must eat,” he said. He looked at the tray on the floor of the cell. Red cheese. Bread. A tall glass of water. Twice a day delivered. Twice a day untouched.

“What will they do with him?” Vincent asked, his voice low and falling apart.

Bernard coughed into a sweat-stained handkerchief. “The abbot is seeking advice from the mainland.”

Vincent raised his head from his bed. His face was a picture of torment and betrayal. “Advice? From whom?”

“I believe there is an envoy coming,” said Bernard, turning his face away. There was such hostility in the younger monk’s eyes that for a moment he thought
about calling for assistance. But he gathered his composure and steadied his gaze beyond the window where, of all things, he saw a raven circling in the dusk. “This is good fortune, brother. At least the creature was not instantly killed.”

“Better that it had been,” Vincent said bitterly. “If you wish to atone for what you have done, take a spear and drive it through the dragon’s heart. The fate that awaits it is worse than death. They will take him away and take him apart. Piece by piece, in the name of science, they will destroy all hope this world ever had.”

At this, Brother Bernard threw up his hands. “How can you continue to ply such … irreverence!” As he wheeled around, the door of the cell clicked open and a stern-faced Brother Malcolm looked in. “It’s all right,” Bernard said, mopping the blood pressure out of his brow. “We are having a discussion. A private discussion.” Brother Malcolm cast an adverse glance at Brother Vincent, then softly closed the door.

Bernard brought his hands together in a knot. “By the cavern, you talked about things that had happened
to the creature, such as it flying into cables. But when I looked through the latter pages of your story, there was no mention of any misadventure. Did you fabricate this? Or conjecture it because the creature was scarred?”

“No,” said Vincent. “He told me what had happened — in his own tongue.”

Brother Bernard reeled. He found the window frame and stumbled against it. “You speak to this thing?”

Vincent, sensing hope, swung himself into a sitting position. “If this could be proven, would you believe my claims that the creature is more an angel than a devil?”

Bernard felt for his chest. His heartbeat had doubled its pace in seconds.

“You have an interest in ancient languages, do you not?”

“I must leave,” Bernard muttered. “For your health, please eat.”

“Speak to him, brother. Simply, in any tongue the Inuit people might recognize. His vocabulary is limited. He is only a child, but he
will
understand.”

Brother Bernard paused with his forehead on the
door. “What you’re asking goes beyond all my levels of faith.”

“You will find new ones,” Vincent said. “Speak to him, before this envoy comes. He brings danger in his wake. I can feel it in my bones.”

“Danger?” Bernard looked back, startled.

“A wind from another world,” Vincent said, closing his eyes and concentrating hard. “And where there is a wind, there is sometimes a storm. Help me, brother. Help us all. Go to the barn and speak to the dragon.”

B
rother Bernard.” Brother Terence rose from his three-legged stool just inside the door of the stable block and bid his fellow monk good morning.

Bernard dipped his head in acknowledgment. Beyond the taller man’s shoulder he could see the dragon, hunkered to the ground, making what comfort it could of its shackles. Somewhere deep within Bernard’s heart, a shred of compassion wriggled uneasily. “Is the creature calm?”

“It cries and whimpers like a dog,” Terence snorted. “And stinks of something most ungodly whenever it opens its vicious mouth. What news from the abbot?”

“He has sent me to feed it,” Bernard replied. He unwrapped a hare from a roll of paper. A droplet of
fresh blood fell onto the skin between his sandal straps. He knelt to clean it, noticing the dragon’s head following his movements. Not for the first time, he said a swift prayer.

“I would rather starve it,” Terence sighed. “Its rancid feces are making me ill.”

“The abbot needs it alive,” said Bernard. “Go. I will stand by the beast for an hour. Has it shown any signs of making fire?” He looked worriedly about him. There was a great deal of wood in this prison cell.

“None,” said Terence, pushing back the door. The dragon shied away from the light. “For a fiend from hell, it thankfully gives us very poor value.” He gave an orderly bow and walked away, leaving Bernard alone with the dragon.

The ghastly yellow eyes rolled up to look at him. No threat present, merely helplessness. For a man who had striven to love all God’s creatures, it troubled Brother Bernard to see this animal humiliated so. But if, as the general attitude suggested, it had not been created by the hand of heaven, then they could take no chances
with it. And yet here was he, having slain a hare, having left his prayers to deceive a fellow monk with an order from the abbot when no such order had ever been given. If this dishonesty should ever be exposed, many difficult questions would have to be faced. But maybe none so difficult as that which had kept him awake through the night: Could this creature converse?

“Are you hungry?” Bernard said, without offering the hare.

The nostrils flared but the head went down. To all intents and purposes, no response.

Bernard steadied his nerve and tried again. “Are you hungry?” he repeated, but this time in a dialect he had learned in his days as a missionary among natives of the Canadian High Arctic.

Amazingly, the dragon lifted its head. A membrane slithered half across its eyes, narrowing the gaze to terrifying slits. Bernard’s bones almost rattled the cobbles. Had the creature understood him? Were those scales, flexing and changing color on either side of its head, ears? He lifted the hare out of the paper and dangled
it by its large back paws. “Eat?” he said, in the northern tongue.

The dragon tilted its head.

“What are you?” said Bernard.

Grrr-ockle,
went the creature.

Answer or involuntary response? The growl had a strange onomatopoeic resonance, but other than that it made no sense. He threw the hare to it. It fell just outside the neck chain’s reach. The dragon stretched, chomping its jaws in frustration.

Irritation and pity ravaged Bernard’s soul. Finding a broom with a head that was almost as bald as his, he pushed the meat into the dragon’s path. It gathered it and quickly sliced out the innards, gorging itself on the soft red offal.

For a man who abstained from animal flesh, this was almost too much to bear. What was he
doing
here? How could this savage beast possibly communicate? Was this a means of confirming Brother Vincent’s sanity or an act of sordid curiosity on his part? Which of them was the lunatic, truthfully?

He looked at the creature again, sucking fur from between its teeth. It burped as if it was grinding stone. Bernard shuddered and turned away, sickened. He was almost at the door when the dragon made another sound, deep within its throat.

Waaarrtttrrrr.

A vortex of fear whirled the monk around. “Water? You want water?”

The dragon opened its jaws to show a parched black tongue, stained here and there with streaks of hare blood.

Bernard pushed a hand across his throbbing brow. Was this a dialogue or an acknowledgment of need? He stumbled backward, nodding his head. He filled a bucket from the tap outside and took it back, nudging it forward with the brush. The dragon bent its head and drank, lapping in the manner of a domestic cat. When it was done it tipped the bucket over and rolled it back to Bernard’s feet.

Waaarrtttrrrr,
it croaked.

He filled it again.

It took five to quench the dragon’s thirst. After the fourth, it squatted and sprayed a jet of urine, drenching the moldy straw behind it. The stench was horrendous. There were white marks on the creature’s feet where it had stepped unavoidably in its own excrement and the scales had crusted over with some kind of fungus. It was hideous. Inhumane. It was written in the holy scriptures that man should have dominion over animals … but how could the brethren stoop to such tyranny as this? Bernard decided there and then he must speak with the abbot. Make a plea on the creature’s behalf. The animal was intelligent and clearly suffering. But one trick with a bucket would not convince the Order to show it mercy. To end the persecution they would have to see a much higher level of sentience. And so he spoke again, this time more pointedly:

“Where did you come from?”

The dragon raked the ground. It seemed to understand, but its answer was vague and made no sense.

Zannnnnaaaa,
it growled.

“Zannnnaaa? What is Zannnnaaa?” Bernard said, frowning.

The dragon swung its head. The chain links rippled in the flashes of daylight streaking through the holes in the derelict roof.

Muuuuutthherrrrr.

The word rumbled around the stable. In a glassless window high in the gable away to their right, the raven landed with a flutter of its wings. A tic developed at Brother Bernard’s mouth. “Mother?” he whispered.

The dragon whimpered.

“Then who is your father?”

With another fierce toss of its head, the dragon graarked as though the question was worthy of a bolt of fire. But no fire came. That area of its body still bound by mailing tape bulged with the instinct to spread its wings. But there was no release. Its muted tail pounded the floor in frustration. Its talons raked the earth. It gave no answer.

“Tell me,” said Bernard, his throat growing sore
from the demands of a language so lacking in vowels. “Who is your father?”

Caarrkkk!
went the raven, making Bernard jump. This bird was beginning to make him uneasy. There was a dark light in the center of its eye. Why was it so often in attendance to the dragon? Was it some kind of familiar? he wondered. A spirit that served the needs of the creature? He heard footsteps nearby. The raven heard them, too. With another moody
caark,
it circled the barn and swooped back into the open air. Startled voices remarked upon it: Brothers Terence and Peter. Bernard centered on the dragon again, “Quickly. Your father?”

The yellow eyes closed. The arches of the nostrils flared like trumpets.
Gaaaawwwaaaaaainn,
said his distant descendant, Grockle.

Bernard backed away with a hand against his throat.

Gawain.

That was all the proof he needed.