The Last Dragon Chronicles #4: The Fire Eternal (9 page)

Hrrrpenny?

She clicked the phone shut. “Jazz, come here.”

Groyne glanced down. The stupid kitten was sniffing around him again! It was up on its back legs, dabbing with its paw.
He had no option but to pull a scary face. Immediately, the cat ran away to hide — straight under the shelving unit made of cane.

A startled kitty squeal brought Jodie over. “Oh, what
now
?” she said, kneeling down.

Groyne froze in terror. He heard the catch in Jodie’s voice, and knew she’d found the real Gudrun.

Suddenly, both dragons were in her clutches. She held them up to the window and
glared at them thoughtfully. “Two?” she muttered. “And why was one hidden? Just what are you up to,
Tam?”
She nodded, tight-lipped, and said, “Right.”

Then she put one dragon back onto the speaker and the other she wrapped in a wool cardigan. She stuffed that bundle into her bag and zipped it.

That bundle, unfortunately, wasn’t Gudrun.

And Gretel had said it would all be so easy….

G
awain
. The name sent a tremor of excitement through Avrel, though he did not truly understand why. Like the word Oomara had spoken before it, “dragon,” it had no place in his memories to Tell. And yet he could sense real power in these words. Deep significance. A humbling awareness of a once-great being. The ice rang with it, rolled
and swayed with it. A pulse of life, beyond the edge of creation, back before the time of the first white bears. Avrel reached, but his mind would not take him there. And if he pressed, all that returned was an image of fire.

Sedna, goddess of the animals of the ocean, likewise recoiled when she heard this request.
Bring me the eye of the dragon, Gawain.
There was terror and confusion in her
gelatinous white eyes. Avrel knew she was asking herself:
What does a man-bear want with such a prize?
Even so, her fear was not as great as her obvious temptation. Fingers, for a piece of crumbling rock? She licked her lips with a worm-riddled tongue and said, “It will take time.”

The figure of Oomara bowed his head, then sat upon the ice with his mukluks crossed. “The ocean is deep. Swim carefully,
goddess.”

Sedna shook out her newly combed hair. With a chattering hiss, she slithered back into the water again. The ice groaned with a mighty grinding action and closed itself up like a wound. Avrel was almost thrown off his feet. When he was free to stand solidly again he saw, to his relief, that the figure of Oomara was now the figure of Ingavar once more. The great bear looked exhausted.
He was sitting flat, with his front paws
crossed. His head was lowered and his eyes were closed.

Avrel approached him quietly, saying, “Lord, is it you?”

“Everything you see is me,” said Ingavar. He instructed Avrel to lie down and rest.

This they did, for two more days.

On both days, however, Avrel grew impatient and wandered the ice a little, hoping for a sign or scent of Kailar. He felt
easier when the fighting bear was with them. There was danger here; he could feel it every time the wind pressed his fur. But that was not the entire reason he chose to walk alone. He was using these moments away from Ingavar to look into his mind and ask himself, “What was this creature lying there as though dead? Was it a spirit? Was it real? Was it ever a bear at all — or merely the image of one?”
In the archive of his memories there were legends of man-bears, which men called shamans, but they seemed to have no lasting substance. Yet, if he lay down against this Nanukapik, he could feel its body breathing in time
to his own. It was alive, he was sure of it, and therefore not a spirit. But how could this — he held up a paw and watched the claws move — reshape itself into another form?

On the second day, he stood beside Ingavar, watching him. In all this time, the Nanukapik had not once changed his position. A fine crust of snow had formed on his back and small stalactites of dribble were hanging from his jaw. Avrel shuffled his feet, wondering just how long they would be resting here, when suddenly the great bear stirred. A portion of air went into his snout to emerge seconds later
as a powerful snort.

“Lord, what do you see?”

Ingavar had opened his stunning blue eyes and was staring far ahead at an unknown horizon. He raked his claws and rose quickly to his feet. “The dragon Gawain is among us,” he said.

The ice rocked and split with a plangent hew, and just as before when Sedna had appeared, a spume of water fired into the air. When all had settled, the sea
goddess
was on the surface again and Ingavar had reassumed the shape of Oomara.

“I have what you need, O hunter,” she said. Off her back she swung a bag made of woven kelp and deep sea weeds. “Give me fingers and I will give you the eye.”

“How do we know it is real?” said Avrel. “And not just an ocean rock?”

Before Sedna could answer, a great shadow fell across the ice. Avrel saw it first as a thousand
black speckles, flowing in like a rippling wave from the south. As the speckles ran by him, they flittered on the surface and reduced in number, but seemed to increase in size and definition. Suddenly, he knew he was watching wingbeats. He looked up and saw a great cluster of ravens.

“Lord?” he growled, unsure of what to do. It felt odd, seeking instruction from a man. But instinctively he backed
up closer to Oomara, perhaps hoping that by the time he turned his head again, he would see his Nanukapik there, ready to fight. These birds had points of evil in their eyes. Their grating cries were filled with
taunts. They were circling slowly, preparing to attack. None knew it better than Sedna herself.

“My husband!” she wailed. “My husband has sent his flock to take me!”

A bird swooped down.
But its object was the bag, not Sedna’s head. It picked and snaffled and tore out a weed. Avrel instinctively leaped at it, throwing out a deep growl, flashing both paws. The bird escaped by a feather and a squawk.

Now, for the first time, Avrel could view the contents of the bag. Through the crisscrossing weed he saw a lump of gray stone, humped in the shape of a lidded eye. All around it was
a pattern of falcate scales. Dragon. He knew it instinctively. The goddess had kept her word.

“Protect me!” she cried, slithering and flapping in search of water. Somehow, the ice behind her had closed. For Sedna, there was no retreat into her ocean.

Oomara reached his hands up as if to touch the stars, calling out to the spirits of hunters past. Immediately they came, engaging the ravens in
battle
with their spears. Many birds were afraid and wisely flew away. Those that did not were skewered or hacked and instantly turned into spirits themselves. A rain of feathers poured out of the clouds. Sedna shivered with grotesque delight. She danced as well as any fish-woman could and spat scorn upon the ravens for the ease of this victory.

But her mood was short-lived. For every feather
that fell, a new bird began to grow out of it.

Avrel swung a paw as the first of the new flock dipped around his head. Suddenly, ten were clinging to his back, nicking at his ears, and tearing his fur. His paws flashed again, in devastating arcs, and his claws were soon clogged with the warm gel of death. But for every bird he crushed, six more came to plague him. He closed his eyes as they pecked
and dug, urgently thinking of a way to defeat them. The water. It was his only escape. Certain that none of these predators could swim, he pounded the ice, hoping to break the crust. But for all his strength, the ice would not yield. He collapsed instead and quickly rolled over, terminating
two more birds this way. But he was overwhelmed now and in need of a miracle. He was literally covered in
ravens.

Then he felt the force of the white fire Ingavar had used upon Kailar. He heard screeches as the birds turned to windblown ash, yet felt no pain or fear himself. When he moved his head he saw to his relief the Nanukapik rearing, as strong and magnificent as the first spring glaciers. There was a halo of glaucous fire around him. Every bird retreated to a safer distance. But the battle
was far from done. In what seemed to be an instant, the flock came together, gelling into one formidable creature. It landed on the ice twenty paces ahead of Ingavar. It had a body half the size of a man, but the wings and eyes and beak of a raven.

Sedna slithered back, crying out in fear. “It is him! It is him!”

“Welcome back, wife,” the birdman said. He gyred his wings and stared, with brooding
eyes, at Ingavar. “Stand aside, shaman. I am married to the ocean. All
its treasures are mine to own.” His gaze fell greedily upon the weed bag.

Avrel, bleeding from a gouge above one eye, fearlessly went to stand by it.

“Wife,” said the birdman, “I have fingers for you.” From a pocket of the furs that covered his body, he brought forth eight old, leathery remains.

Sedna chattered in excitement
and fear, straining her upper half to see the prize.

“Take them,” said the birdman, throwing them forward. They landed on the ice, squirming like maggots. “Touch them and they will be joined to your hands, as surely as you are joined to me.” His gaze swiveled back to Ingavar again. “These fingers possess the strength of all the creatures Sedna’s fingers became. Would you fight walrus and narwhal,
shaman?”

Ingavar took a measured pace sideways, inviting the birdman to maneuver in turn. Avrel had seen this strategy before. When two bears wrestled, they circled like this. But why would Ingavar, with his gift of fire, want to brawl with this disgusting beast?

“Goddess, here are fingers —” the Nanukapik said. The fish-woman glided eagerly toward them. “— but if you touch them, I predict you
will die.”

“
A-yah
?” she chattered, pulling back. Beneath her stumpy hands, the fingers jumped, eager for the sinews of any kind of life. Avrel’s temptation was to crush them, but he waited.

“They are not what they seem to be,” Ingavar said.

“They are fingers!” she snapped.

“They are your father’s,” he said. “Murdered by this creature. The only strength you will inherit from them is the permanent
ability to walk the sky.”

“Treachery?” she said, even now as naive as the girl she had been long ago.

The birdman cackled, deep in his throat. “You irritate me, shaman.”

Ingavar, still maneuvering, said, “I am the fire that melts no ice.”

The birdman sneered and extended his hands. From his fingers he raised ten fearsome claws. He flicked his wings, producing a storm of black snow all around
him. “I will douse you and tear out your heart, still beating. Walk away, while you can. You cannot sustain your fire and your companion is not a fighting bear.”

Avrel rolled back his lip and growled.

“He would die for me,” said Ingavar, tensing himself.

“Then die together,” the birdman said. And he raised his wings to fly to the attack.

But suddenly there was movement at the birdman’s side,
and now Avrel understood all of Ingavar’s posturing. Roaring through the mist came Kailar. With perfect timing, he struck, unsighted, at the region under the birdman’s wing, savaging the creature’s vulnerable torso, until his paws were lost in a mulch of flesh. Feathers and innards spewed across the ice. The creature screamed and was carried down by Kailar’s weight. In that instant it knew that
the battle was lost, but as Kailar widened his ferocious jaws, ready to clench his prey by the throat, his head shook free and his eye was unprotected. The birdman’s beak went back. But as it steadied to deliver its sickening blow, its head was
fatally snapped to one side by a devastating strike from Avrel’s left paw.

The Teller pounded again and again, making a stew of whatever he touched, until
Kailar himself barged the younger bear aside saying, “It’s done, Teller. Rest your paws. A thing can’t be more dead than dead. It’s done.”

Panting heavily from fear and exhaustion, Avrel flopped down several paces from the body, checking back at it now and then as if to be sure it would never rise again.

Kailar, black feathers sticking to his paws, left him and ranged up to Ingavar’s flank.
“You’ve been busy in my absence. What’s this?” he asked, snorting with heavy disdain toward Sedna.

“The wife of the creature you have slain,” said Ingavar. “Bow to the goddess Sedna, Kailar.”

“I bow only to you,” he growled.

“Bow,” said Ingavar, without any threat.

Kailar squinted at the quivering mess of algae and arrogantly tipped his snout at it.

“Is your fighting bear to kill me, too?”
she wailed.

“You have delivered what I asked of you,” Ingavar said. He gestured at the bag. Kailar sniffed at it suspiciously. “When the time comes, every creature in the North, on the land, on the ice, or in the water, will sing your name in praise.”

“I need fingers, not praise,” the goddess snapped.

“You will have fingers,” Ingavar told her. He said to Kailar, “Was your search successful?”

Kailar swung his head and looked over his shoulder. “Come forward,” he rumbled at what appeared to be nothing but a scattering of ice blocks. But from behind it there emerged a comical sight: another raven, half encased in a chunk of ice.

“I’m tired,” it said, with a grating twang that made Avrel wince. He stood up, anxious to move away from the stench of pooling blood beside him. “Isn’t it time
one of you hairballs set me free?”

“Watch your tongue,” Kailar growled at the bird, swiping loose ice into its face. He chewed a feather
from his claws and spat it out. “You saw what became of the last of your kind.”

The bird snorted out a speck of bloodied snow. “My kind?
My kind?
What would a thick-skulled seal-licker like you know of
my
people?”

“Shall I crush it?” Kailar asked tiredly of
Ingavar. For days he had suffered this ill-tempered squawking. In his experience, death had many well-preserved patterns, and this bird was just one good stamp from being another.

“Of course not!” The bird spoke for Ingavar now. “If he’d wanted me dead, he would have ordered it days ago. He needs me, idiot.”

Kailar raised a paw. “Give me the command,” he begged his master.

Ingavar blinked once
and shook his head. “She speaks the truth.”

“She?” said Avrel, recovered now and curious. He padded closer, twitching his snout at the thing.

“Get away, fish breath!” she swore at him.

Avrel reeled back, scowling warily.

“Look closely, Avrel,” Ingavar said. “This is a creature that already has a place in your register of memories. What you have here is a woman who has lived for centuries,
condemned and trapped in the shape of a bird.”

“Woman?” clattered Sedna, drool pouring down her chin.

“And what are
you?”
the bird snorted into Ingavar’s face.

His head tilted and his eye engaged with hers. “I am all things to all men … Gwilanna.”