The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (19 page)

was no response.

“She’s shed her tear,” said David. He

nodded at the worktop where Groyne had just materialised, holding it. “I’m sorry, Liz. I couldn’t prevent it.”

Bewilderment tore at the lines of Liz’s

face. She turned Grace left and right, then stood up quickly and went to Groyne. “Why has he got it? What on earth happened? For a healthy dragon to shed its tear it has to be deeply—” She paused mid-sentence. “Sophie.” She fixed her exlodger with a harrowed look. “No.” She backed away, flapping her hands. “Not my beautiful Sophie. No.”

“Sophie,” said Alexa, as if she’d just picked up a piece of a puzzle. “Oh.”

David kissed the tips of his fingers and touched them to the top of the little girl’s head, then he went straight to Liz. Fighting

to steady her flailing arms, he shook her and made her look into his eyes. “There was nothing I could do. She was dead before I arrived in Africa.”

There was a sudden thump in the halldoorway.

Lucy had just fainted in a heap on thefloor.

Gretel brought her round with a delicatepotion of lemon balm, lavender andalmond essence. For several  minutes, all Lucy could do was sit with her headagainst her mother’s palm and sob. Eventually, she turned her gaze towards David, who was standing with Alexa,holding the child’s hand.

I’m sorry
, she mouthed, tears bunching

at the corners of her eyes.

“It’s not your fault,” he said.

“But if I’d told you about the email

sooner?”

He came over and placed his hand onher forehead, letting it slip to support hercheek. “It’s not your fault.”

She squirmed round to look at Groyne. “Will Grace be OK?”

“I hope so,” he said. “Why don’t you go and lie down for a while? I need to talk to your mum. Gretel.” He snapped his fingers. The potions dragon landed on Lucy’s knee. “Take her upstairs and make her calm. Lexie, you go too.”

“We can do stories,” Alexa said, slipping her fingers into Lucy’s.

The pale-faced teenager looked at her

mum.

“Go on,” Liz whispered. “I’ll be up

soon.”

When the girls were a creak of footstepson the landing, David dropped into a seatat the table and explained the events in Africa to Liz.

Her eyes picked out a tile in the centreof the floor. “This is awful, David. Youmust be devastated?”

He passed a hand halfway through hishair. It still carried the scent of smoke and

death. Haunted by the image of Sophie’s face, he let his gaze and his thoughts dip solemnly towards Grace. “I knew she would cry her tear. If I’d tried to interrupt I’d have lost concentration and given the

raven a chance to absorb her grief. So I instructed Groyne to turn invisible and catch the tear, knowing it was Grace’s best chance of survival. She might not thank me for it. Without Sophie, there will always be a grey shadow in her auma.”

Liz pressed her lips together and cupped one hand around Grace’s body, as if she might warm her back to life. “I remember the day I made her,” she said, unable to suppress the wobble in her voice. The usual sparkles of green in her eyes were all but misted over and lost. “It was a beautiful August afternoon, the year before you came to the house. She was unusual because I already had the listener on the fridge and I could see no reason she should come into being. But she seemed

content enough just to sit in the Den and meditate, as they do sometimes. I could tell she was waiting for someone special. I thought when you came it was going to be you. But she told me on the first day you were not the one.  She knew, David. She knew Sophie was coming. And now these
 
creatures
 
have… ”

She broke down freely then. Davidgathered her into his arms and held her tillher grief had subsided. When she wasready he said to her calmly, “I’veinstructed Grockle to hunt the birds

down.”

“Grockle?”

“Yes. He’s at my command. He’ll trace them and destroy them. I owe Sophie that.” He sat again, holding his face in his

hands. “It may not seem like it, but at the moment these ravens are acting without real purpose, compelled to follow their quest for dark fire by the memory of what they saw on Farlowe. What troubles me is how they latched on to Grace. An isolated dragon was always going to be an easier target than any in the Crescent, but I think I unwittingly led them to her.”

“How?” said Liz.

“When Zanna went to Farlowe I

ordered Groyne to track her. He took a fix off your listener and another off Grace. Anyone with the means to eavesdrop those signals could have easily identified Grace’s co-ordinates.”

“Would these birds be capable of

that?”

“I don’t know,” David said, musing on it. “Maybe they had help. The African man I spoke to, Mutu, told me he  thought he saw a woman at the centre, just before the blaze began.”

“Gwilanna? In Africa?”

“She did threaten us at the church. And

she   has   the   isoscele   of  Gawain, remember. That gives her a direct conduit into every dragon you’ve ever created. Grace would have been a little beacon of

his auma. Not difficult for a sibyl like her

to detect.”

Liz sighed and shook her head. “Brutaldestruction is not Gwilanna’s way.”

David picked up a placemat and tappedit against the table top. “She wantsillumination to a dragon, Liz. Maybe

she’ll do anything to get it? Anyway, the answer to the problem is pretty basic: what we need to do is remove the prize. If we neutralise the dark fire in the obsidian, we won’t have to worry about any more negative outcomes.”

“Neutralise it? How would that affect

Gwillan?”

Before David could answer, the frontdoor opened and Zanna came sailing intothe kitchen. “Liz, can I borrow yourscissors, please?” Knowing she needed noreal permission, she went to the utensilsdrawer and yanked it open. With a brief,slightly puzzled glance at Groyne, shewhipped the scissors out and bumped thedrawer closed with her hip. “Shortholiday.   Lousy  tan.   How   was  your

girlfriend,   David?”   Sweeping   back towards the hall, she told Liz she’d have the scissors back within the hour. She’d

put one foot across the floor bar separating kitchen from hall when David said quietly, “She’s dead.”

Zanna froze. She turned around and

stared at him. “Dead?”

“Please,” Liz begged. “You two. Not

now.”

David got up and slid his chair underthe table. He picked up a modelling stickand drilled it into the unworked clay. Henodded at Groyne, who dematerialisedwith the fire tear. “Bring the icefire up tothe Den,” he said to Liz. And picking up Grace, he brushed past Zanna withoutanother word.

A few minutes later the door of the

Dragons’ Den creaked open and footstepssounded across the wooden floor.

David was sitting at Liz’s workbench.

Grace and Gwillan were on the bench in

front of him and Groyne was on the potter’s turntable, enjoying the sensation of pressing his toes into a loose bit of clay. He was still holding the fire tear.

The visitor, Zanna, perched herself on a tall wooden stool just within David’s peripheral vision. “Liz has told me, briefly, what happened in Africa. I’m sorry – about  Sophie. And for what I said.”

All around the room dragons shuffledtheir feet. Bonnington, lying on a shelf on

a roughed up blanket, moved his ears forward then went back to sleep.

“The   ravens   are   growing   in confidence,” said David, as far away as his gaze implied. “It’s possible Gwilanna is controlling them. If that’s so, sooner or later the kind of devastation I saw in

Africa is going to come here, unless we’reunited against it. I’ve put some proceduresinto place to deal with the threat. The bestapology you can give me is to help me seethem through. I need you on my side, Zanna. We all do.”

A small lump formed in Zanna’s throat. She gulped it down, half-hoping hewouldn’t hear it, half-hoping he would. Stretching her body shape long and slim,she stared at the lonely grey figures of

Gwillan and Grace. On the shelf beside

her, G’reth the wishing dragon was pressing his wonderful paws together. Gollygosh, right next to him, was sitting on the special toolkit he carried. “All right, I’m willing to work with you. But I want a few answers first.”

David levelled his gaze at her.

Her perfect mouth trembled a little butshe said, “You can begin by telling mewhy my daughter appears to have wingsgrowing out of her back… ”

About Alexa

“She’s a messenger,” David said, as casually as if he was telling her the time or remarking on the weather or bending down to tie his shoelace. He seemed to

have been expecting the question for

weeks.

“A messenger?” The scorn returned to

Zanna’s voice in a flash.

“Alexa is a synthesis of dragon and human – or rather, illumined Fain and human. People will look at her and see an angel. She will be a symbol of harmony and hope.”

“Whoa. Whoa. Wo.” Zanna stood up and walked a full circle, digging her hands into her rear jeans’ pockets. “Where on

the curriculum of motherhood was
 
this
?”

David swung around to face herproperly, allowing himself a moment toobserve   how   stunning   she   lookedwhenever she was tense. “She knows

what  she   needs.   Just  follow   your

instincts.”

“Oh, easy for you to say,
 
Daddy
. Bringing up an angel isn’t exactly top of the list in antenatal class, you know! How’s she going to live in this world? She’ll be an outcast. She’ll be… ”

“I told you, this world is changing,” he said. “The Earth is ready to accept a new species.”

Zanna fixed him with an ice cold glare. “My daughter is not a
 
species
. She’s not something to be put into a jar, or poked or

prodded  or  classified  for  scientific reference. I thought you were talking about dragons, anyway?”

“Dragons are hardly new,” he said. “This is their world. It always was. When everything is ready, they will colonise again. Only this time, things will be different.”

“Oh? Surprise me?” She folded her

arms.

Now it was David’s turn to stretch.

With their body language almost mirroredhe said, “The last human–dragon eradidn’t end well. Any day now,
 
The National Endeavour
 
will remind the

world of that.”

“
The   National   Endeavour?
  
Tam

Farrell’s magazine?”

“Rupert Steiner is ready to publish his interpretation   of
 
The   Last  Dragon Chronicle
s.”

Zanna looked as if she needed to pinchherself. “You’re working with Tam?”

“Let’s just say he’s part of the team;you learned as much on North Walk, Ithink.”

“Oh, I’m learning a lot of things,” said Zanna. She swept back to the stool again. “In fact, I’ve got a small
 
revelation
 
for you. When the wicked witch of Scrubbley was last around, healing Liz of the obsidian poison, we had a revealing sibyl-to-sibyl chat. She told me it was your lot who bungled the last age of dragons.”

“My lot?”

“Oh, sorry, didn’t you know? She refers to you as a Fain ‘construct’. That was pleasant, by the way – for me to learn I’d had a child by someone who wasn’t completely human.”

“Alexa isn’t human –
 
completely
,” he reminded her. “But you love her – the way you loved me at the time.”

“Don’t play that game with me,” she said, grinding the sentence into spittle. “The pledge I just made is entirely platonic. Never lose sight of that.”

He held up his hands. “So what do you want to know?”

“Oh, let me think.” She snapped her fingers repeatedly by her ear. “A word beginning with ‘E’… ?”

Everything?
 
hurred G’reth, just beating

Gruffen to the answer.

“Thank you,” Zanna said to the wisher. “Well?” She glared at David again.

“How much did Gwilanna tell you?”

“Doesn’t matter. I want to hear it from

the dragon’s mouth. The full agenda, not the spaces in between. Particularly the bits that concern my
 
angel
 
.”

David ran his hands along his thighs, patting them as he reached his knees. “OK. The history is straightforward enough: when  the  Fain  commingled  with the earliest humans they made a terrible error of judgement. They had no idea that their hosts would compete against each other for superiority, then turn on the indigenous community of dragons and try to wipe them out. From that aggression the Ix were