Liquid Fire (56 page)

Coughing, slipping, bleeding, I slid down toward the rising smoke and fire on a small avalanche of red crackling gravel. Unable to stop myself, I flopped onto the cascading rock, crying out as sharp edges stabbed at my belly, throwing my arms wide despite the scrapes and pain. Slowly, I slid to a halt, bloody and in agony, just yards from the hot center of the crater, mercilessly pummeled by rocks the size of oranges still tumbling down around me.

I raised my face and winced. Heat was rising in shimmering waves, hot miasma rising off a red glowing circle in the crater’s floor. In terror, I scrambled back, thinking it was lava—but the circle had a slight bulge, and as it brightened from red to gold, I realized what it was.

It was the top of the dragon’s egg.

Red cinder rocks tumbled away from the dome as it slowly rose. The glowing bulge was so gently sloped that the whole egg must have been
unimaginably
huge, but still, the dome rose, near pure gold now, veined with dark red, shoving the surface of the crater away.

Mana streamed off the egg in a slow-motion aurora. With my new eyes, I could pick out individual streamers of power, roiling with the most intense colors of magic I’d ever seen. The Dragon on my back surged and swelled to life, seeming to bulge outward, like a backpack.

Heat stung my face. I struggled to get to my feet as the new dragon tattoo tore free from my back, half manifested, half pinned by henna and latex. Magic limbs and coiling tails flopped around me, and I kicked and stumbled, frantic. I had to stay in the caldera to let the spirit of the dragon incarnate, but I had to get away from that red-hot egg, or I’d be burned alive—

A massive glowing claw slammed down on my arm.

I crouched there, arm pinned in agony against the hot rock, as my new Dragon unpeeled herself from my back by magic. What had been writ upon two square meters of skin now reared ten meters into the air on a flood of mana, trumpeting her new life in a ghostly cry.

———

Then the Dragon leaned her head forward and was sucked into the egg without a sound.

61. A Fearful Sound

I huddled there for a moment, drawing in my arms, watching mana shimmer into the egg, seeing my own tattoo merge with the red-cracked gold surface until it all but disappeared. Was it gone forever, or would my tattoo always exist as a mark on Pele’s spirit?

Then I thought of Krakatoa. Of all the people who had died because wizards interfered with a dragon hatching—and the egg had exploded. Who knew what all this muddle of magic—firecap ink, a dragon tattoo, the Dragon’s Noose—had done to the dragon’s spirit?

I put my burnt, shaking hands together and prayed. Prayed the egg would not explode, prayed the dragon would hatch safely, prayed if the dragon did hatch, it wouldn’t turn on the human race. Prayed that no one would die, and that everything would be all right.

The ground shook. The egg shuddered. Light began pouring out of its golden, domed surface, dark only at those strange red cracks which seemed to suck in the light. Then the rounded surface of the egg heaved upward, discharging a spray of cinder around me.

A sound like a crack of thunder—or a cracking egg—ripped the air.

I stood, turned, and ran. Ran up the slope. Scrambled up the gravel. Grappled with the rock as I fell and crawled and scrambled and ran again, coconut-sized cinders tumbling around me, parts of the hillside sliding so fast it seemed like I was running in place.

The egg shuddered again, throwing a wave of rock up the slope toward me. Somehow, I kept my feet under me and the sliding rock under my feet and kept running, finding sure footing at last, pounding to the top of the slope in an agony of pain and burns and blood.

Before me, the ouroboros of my old Dragon whirled in a maelstrom of tattoo magic, spinning so fast the torches no longer burned with chemical flames, but were rainbow sparklers of purely magical fire. The shield shimmered before me, a wall of magic waters.

It had burned me, but I’d gone through it before. I didn’t stop now.

The magical maelstrom caught me and spun me about, spinning me round and round, but my momentum kept me going, tumbling me out of the circle, throwing me sprawling onto my back as the chasm behind me erupted in a blast of magical flame.

On some level, at the back of my mind, I expected to see the head of Pele rise from the crater, to see a fiery creature rise from the pit like a wyrmic phoenix. But what flew up from the crater made more sense: fragments of egg, glowing white hot, on a shell of burning yolk.

The yolk splashed against the inside of the magic barrier, infusing the infinity lens with a titanic amount of living mana. The egg fragments flew on, sailing out across the valley, lighting the whole of Haleakala crater end to end with golden fragments of the sun.

A blast of mana swept over me as the infinity lens charged with magic, overloaded, and then discharged itself onto the waiting cauldron far below with a crack of thunder. Smacked down to the earth again, I lay there, gasping, as liquid fire fell down around me like rain.

Wherever droplets landed, puffs of magic burst forth, and more than magic. Roses and jewels and butterflies blazed into existence and disappeared into whiffs of flame. There was too much mana for anything to take hold, but I could see how dragons had sparked life on the Earth.

Droplets splashed around me, hot as sparks, but did not burn me. They touched my skin, warm as coals, but did not burn me. They fell into my lips, fiery as chili peppers, but did not burn me. The hot liquid fell down my throat like liquid honey, quenching a thirst I never knew I had.

I lay my head back against the rock, content.

“I always did have an affinity for fire,” I murmured.

I don’t know how long I lay there, dazed, as life was created and destroyed around me in a rain of magic flame. At last, the fall of liquid fire ceased, and still I lay there, smiling, breathing in a delicious smell half between wet grass in the rain and the ozone tang of lightning.

But then I heard another slow intake of breath, and raised my head.

My original Dragon perched on the edge of the crater, fully materialized, solid as the rock that it sat on. It was something entirely new—not a
projectia
, not a drake, not even a real Hadean Dragon. This was a dragon of human legend, brought to life by an immense blast of mana.

It drew in a breath, and I tensed, wondering whether it planned to roast me—or merge.

“
Soon Pele will fly,
” my Dragon said. “
And you must flee.
”

My eyes bugged. I got to my feet. And if I’d thought I’d run before, I flew now. I skipped down the hill, running, tumbling, slipping, falling. More than once, I fell on my face. More than once, I bloodied myself in pain. Not once did I stop. I just scrambled on.

I’d read the stories of Krakatoa. I knew what was coming.

The fireweavers were recovering as I barreled down the hill toward them. Even from a distance, I could see the cauldron glowing with a blaze of golden light—apparently, the spell had worked. I didn’t know whether to cheer or curse; I just ran down into the circle.

The spell had worked, but the fireweavers were still a mess. Someone was helping Molokii to his feet, Zi was helping Yolanda, and the twins were sitting with Jewel, who was holding her nose and head gingerly, a bit dizzily. She saw me and jerked back in shock.

“Dakota!” she said, confused and appalled. “My God. What happened up there?”

“Get in the cars,” I shouted. “Get in the cars and drive! Now now
now!
”

“Frost,” Zi snarled. “You’ll pay for . . . for . . . what’s happened?”

“Pele’s not dead. She’s hatched, and
rising
,” I said, running past them, scooping up Jewel and running toward the knot of cars. Fireweavers began falling in around me and we ran down to their trucks, a Range Rover and Jeep Cherokee. “Get in the cars and drive! Now now now!”

“Damn it, help us!” Yolanda said, struggling with the cauldron.

I looked back, thought about it for half a second. It would serve them all right, to lose their lives because they were so concerned with that liquid fire. But that fire was life, centuries and centuries more life for people like the Grinder or the Warlock. It was worth the risk.

I dropped Jewel by the Range Rover. “Open the trunk!” I shouted, not waiting for her response, running full tilt back toward the cauldron. I seized one handle, Zi seized the other, and we lifted, and screamed, hot metal burning our hands as we ran, but we kept running, the hot liquid splashing us until we sloshed the cauldron into the back of the Rover, already packed with passengers shocked and astounded at what we’d shoved in the trunk. “Jewel!
Drive!
”

I slammed the gate, and the Range Rover started off, splashing the glowing fluid around the inside of the car. Briefly, I wondered whether it would seep down and set the car on fire, but I had no time for that. I ran over to the Jeep Cherokee and practically leapt in the open door.

It squealed off. Zi was driving, Molokii was half-unconscious in the passenger seat, and two more fireweavers were crammed in next to me. Everyone was tense, breathless, and scared as the hillside shook beneath us . . . then seemed to slide out beneath us as the earth moved.

Zi barely kept the car upright, following the glowing taillights of the Range Rover and the unearthly light streaming from its back window. Then light from behind us reflected off that window, and I turned to look back behind me.

Pu’u o Maui was rapidly becoming not a cinder cone, but a glowing crater, explosion after explosion hurling concentric rings of rock away as golden liquid bubbled and boiled out. Cracks appeared in the earth around it, spreading over the floor of Haleakala caldera.

“How big is that egg,” I yelled. “How big is it—”

No need to ask, though. I found out straightaway.

All of Pu’u o Maui, five hundred feet high and two thousand feet across, crumbled apart and fell into the glowing, spreading crater. From it, a terrific cloud erupted, billowing out like an oncoming sandstorm, alternating between churning moonlit black and burning red.

“That’s a pyroclastic flow!” I screamed. “Get to high ground! Get to high ground!”

“We’re getting! We’re getting!” Zi screamed back.

The cinder storm swept past us, rattling the car windows, plunging us into darkness, then into fearful swirls of cinders and flame. Hot gas poured out of the vents and Yolanda whacked the A/C off. The rattle of gravel below was drowned out by staccato drumming on the roof.

A titanic fragment of debris screamed over us and impacted the hillside. Cinder sprayed out and the jeeps swerved out into the rough hills. Rocks tumbled around the vehicles as they bounced over the rutted hills and we passengers bounced around inside the cabin.

Somehow we found the road, a zigzagging asphalt path climbing up the inside of the crater, but it didn’t help. As the cloud roiled up around us, alternately white and roaring, then black and rattling, the road was soon inundated with rocky debris.

Driving blind, Zi struggled to keep it on the road, fishtailing in a cloud of dust that mixed with the clouds so it seemed like the car was swimming through gravel. Light blazed around us, the cloud went dark again—and the headlights of the Range Rover loomed out of the fog.

The Cherokee impacted the Range Rover, throwing us all forward in a blur of bumps and screams. Golden fluid splashed over the inside of the Range Rover, now canted forty-five degrees away from us, and Jewel staggered out of the driver door into the wind.

“Everyone out,” I said, kicking the door open, dragging the closest fireweavers with me out of the car, then reaching in and pulling out my stunned companion in the back seat. “Everyone out, and get everyone out of the Range Rover! The gas tanks may blow!”

Zi stumbled out of the car and ran toward the passenger door of the Range Rover. Then I lost him in the roiling clouds. I ran to the passenger door of the Cherokee, pulled out Yolanda, then helped her over to the roadside, where the other fireweavers were climbing atop a rock.

Half-blind, I ran up to Jewel. She was coughing and spitting, eyes squeezed shut against the stinging wind. I seized her and pulled her to me and drew her up onto the rock above the road, holding her tight, as the rattling wind covered us with hot spattering mud.

An enormous thud pummeled my ears.

I drew a breath, then coughed as I inhaled volcanic crap. I tried to breathe through my hand, but a wave of crushing pressure tried to force the air back down my lungs. A second enormous thud rippled across the valley, crackling into the distance like thunder.

Another thudding. A fresh hot wind blasted us on its heels, a renewed sandblasting of razor-sharp particles on near-burning wind. The dented cars creaked and shimmied in the new breeze, and I squeezed Jewel tight, shielding her face from the worst of the gale.

A dark shape crossed the sliver of moon. I looked up. Could it be Pele taking to flight?

But the dark shape whipping overhead was not an entire dragon. It was
just her wing
, sweeping across the heavens, brushing the clouds aside like dust bunnies chased by a leaf blower. Another stupendous downstroke, and for a moment, the whole crater valley was clear.

From Haleakala Crater rose the craggy head of the Dragon Pele, a red and gold crag of rock and metal easily as large as the cinder cone destroyed by her birth. Her snaking neck twisted up with her, followed by the massive body whose throes of rising had destroyed the crater floor. Curved black wings, ridged and rippled like black plains of lava, whipped down around her as the neck craned up and that massive head screamed its birth cry.

It was a fearful sound. It began as a pebble-rattling vibration in the ground, rose into a deep resonance in my gut, then hit audible as her enormous maw opened to the sky. It was the cry of Godzilla, of T-Rex, of a hurricane, rising from the deepness into a trumpeting high-pitched exhilaration that rang my ears as Pele released an absolutely
titanic
gout of flame into the sky.

I flinched from the fire. My eyes watered in its light. My face stung with its heat. The column of dragonfire climbed into the heavens, crackling with thunder, sparking with lightning, illuminating the whole of Haleakala Crater and the breadth of the Pacific as bright as noonday.