The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (3 page)

the floods, the tornados, the volcanic eruptions? It’s almost as if this cloak of ice particles has taken control of the northern biosphere and reset it – just as easily as you or I might turn down a thermostat on our heating controls. But what is even more mysterious is why no one has been able to penetrate this mist

since it came down. Yesterday, there

were unconfirmed  reports   that  the Russian   submarine,   Sloya,  which allegedly violated fishing waters off the coast of Finland, found itself there because it had lost all navigational aid as a result of trying to steer a course under the ice cap. Even the captain of the ship I’m standing on refuses to go closer than a mile towards the mist

because his instruments begin to fail. So, are we looking at something here that is far more extraordinary than we can possibly imagine? Are we, as a growing body of people seem to insist, being visited by something that has yet to show itself and has the power to resist being shown? Listen to the words of this Inuit

man. He claims to have journeyed into the fog, and his account of what he saw there has been circling the internet for days, receiving an astonishing two million hits per hour… “I was on the ice when the great bird came. It was as high as a house, with eyes like bright moons. I tried to shoot it, but my gun would not work. Its breath was cold, like the worst north wind. My grandfather, Taliriktug, predicted this. He saw it in his dreams. One day the ice would burn, he said. My people believe this bird will set it alight.”

“Switch it off,” said Lucy.

Her mother, without complaint, leaned forward and turned the car radio off.

“You’re very quiet,” she said, casting her

gaze for the fourth or fifth time into her

rear-view mirror.

Lucy picked at a gap in her teeth. Staring through the window at the solidgreen embankments of the motorway shesaid, “How far now?”

Hrrr-rr
, said Gwendolen:10.4 milesand approximately twenty minutes’ travel,given there were roadworks outside of Cambridge’ Gwendolen settled back intoplace beside the steering wheel. Thatmorning, she had plugged into Lucy’scomputer and downloaded maps andinformation for the journey. She wasproud to be called the best ‘sat nav’ in theworld, even though she didn’t quiterecognize the term.

The car hummed along for another

quarter  mile.   Then  Arthur,   in  the passenger seat next to Liz, said, “Is there something troubling you, Lucy?”

Lucy shuffled her feet. “I was thinking about Gadzooks,” she said. “I was remembering the time Mum made him for David and how happy we were then.”

Liz raised her gaze to the mirror once

more.

“Sometimes I wish I was a little girl again, chasing squirrels out in the garden, and David was… ” Lucy stopped there, tears collecting in her eyes.

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Liz said gently, trying hard to engage with the reflection now.

“Everything used to be so
 
simple
 
,” said

Lucy, gritting her teeth and pumping her

hands. “Then David’s dead and he’s not

dead, and we’re being attacked by weird alien creatures that we can’t really see, and now there might be dragons sitting in a mist at the top of the world. And I ought to be excited but I’m really, really scared, because I don’t know what it means or

what’s going to happen or what I’m s’posed to do or… ”

“OK, that’s it.” With a twist of the wheel, Liz swerved off the motorway and slowed to a stop on the hard shoulder.

Gwendolen, busily reassessing their position, nevertheless had the presence of mind to reach sideways  and touch a button, making sure the car’s hazard lights began to flash.

Liz dug a tissue out of her sleeve and

offered it over her shoulder. “Take this.”

Lucy addressed her dripping nose thencrumpled the tissue to a ball in her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m just trying to
 
understand
.”

“Well, three heads are better than one,”said Arthur.

Hrrr
, went Gwendolen.

“Sorry, four.”

Lucy peered down into her lap. “I’vestarted writing this thing, a kind of journal. Sort of everything about us, and thedragons and stuff. And it’s been makingme think about…well, you know,
 
stuff
. Like, why we are what we are.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Liz.

“No it isn’t,” said Lucy, thumping herseat. “It’s freaking me out. How can yoube so calm about this? Me and you, we’re

not like other people. We’re not even people! What happens to us if the dragons
 
have
 
come?”

Liz reached back and made sure Lucy’sfingers nestled under hers. “Everyone, nomatter who or what they are, asks thesequestions of themselves sometimes. Idon’t know what the future holds. All we

can do is accept our life and go on with it as we’ve always done. Everything  will be all right, I promise.” She aimed the car back into the flow of traffic.

It was Arthur who picked up thedialogue again. “May I ask how far you’vegot with your journal?”

Lucy twitched her shoulders andsniffed. “I dunno. A few pages, on thecomputer.”

“Have you written about David yet?”

For a moment, the car was heavy with silence. Lucy admitted, “No. Not really.”

Arthur ran a thumb across the tips of his fingers, as if each was concealing a pellet of truth. “Then perhaps I can help

you.   David   attended   my   lecture

yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” said Liz.

“He asked me not to. He wants to come

back to each of us in his own time.”

Lucy felt her bottom lip start totremble. She had yet to see David forherself. She turned to the window to avoid

her mother’s eyes. “What did you talk

about?”

“Physics, mostly.”

Lucy sighed.

“But he did communicate something you might find worthy of inclusion in your journal.”

Exit at the next junction
, hurred Gwendolen.

Liz, looking at the signs for Cambridge,flicked a lazy indicator on. She glancedinto her rear-view mirror in  time to see

Lucy scowling for England. Patience hadnever been her daughter’s strong point.

Arthur adjusted his position and said, “I know that you and Zanna have askedyourselves many times where David camefrom or if he’s truly real.”

Suddenly, Lucy found herself wellingup with anger. “I wish people would
 
stop
saying that. Of course he’s real! You justsaid he was there in your lecture. What

did he tell you?”

Arthur cleared his throat. “That I am

his father.”

“What?” said Liz, almost running into

the car in front.

Recalculating
,   hurred   Gwendolen,who’d been concentrating so hard on Arthur’s words she’d entirely lost herpoint of focus.

“Father? You’re not his
 
dad
,” said

Lucy.

“Not in the conventional sense, I agree. What he meant was, it was me who madeit possible for him to enter this world.”

Lucy sat back, taking stock. “Is thisabout Gawain’s claw?” Years ago, when Arthur had come to the Crescent, he hadtold Liz and Lucy how he’d found a claw,

believed to be one of Gawain’s, and used the inky substance called ‘ichor’ inside it to write an account of David’s life, even though the two men had never met.

“Yes,” he said, tilting his head towards her. “When I  lived as a monk on Farlowe

Island and I discovered that wonderful,mysterious claw I had no idea what itstrue purpose was. I just let myself beguided by its power, to write about David,to create his life with you.”

“And that’s where he came from?

Made up?! From a
 
story
?”

“In the loosest sense, yes.”

Lucy shook her head in gross disbelief. “I write stories at school all the time, butnone of my characters ever come alive! Hello?”

“Perhaps not,” said Arthur, “but the thoughts you use to create those characters lodge themselves somewhere in the universe. There is a record in the ether of

all that we imagine. However, it takes a force well beyond human comprehension to bring those images onto this plane in a physical form. Only a highly illumined being can do it.”

“And that’s you?”

Arthur laughed. “I may have a grasp of the finer laws of physics, but I can’t animate thought, Lucy. All I did was write a human description of David. I made him look the way he does, speak the way he does, move and think and act the way he does. I gave him feelings, ambitions, memories, innocence. I invented the

human vessel… ”

“And?” Liz said, sensing one coming. Her fingers  tightened round the steering wheel.

“And Alexa enabled him to fill it.”

“
Alexa?
 
” Lucy almost spat out her

teeth.

Arthur nodded. “She is Fain, like David – of a very high order.”

“Oh, Arthur, come on,” Liz said,frowning – and not just at the lorry thathad tried to cut her up. “We all know Alexa is extremely gifted, but she talksand behaves like a little girl, not somesuper-being from another dimension.”

“I agree,” Arthur said. “But then, shewould. Alexa is here to experience the lifeof a human child in order to complete her

transitory path.”

“Which is like…
 
what
 
exactly?” Lucy said, still fighting to keep her cynicism at bay.

“I don’t know,” Arthur concluded. “David didn’t share that with me. But I

believe it was Alexa, in her Fain preexistence, who directed me towards the claw, so that I could describe for her the father she desired.”

Lucy snorted high into the air.

At the fork in the road veer left
, hurred

Gwendolen.

“But if this is right,” Liz said (bearing left), “– and I’m not convinced it is – why would Alexa fix on you? She could have picked anyone to find that claw.”

Before Arthur could respond to that,

Lucy sat back  shaking her head. “This isdumb. You can’t choose your own dadbefore you’re even born!”

A thin smile ran across Arthur’s lips. “Is it any stranger than you being bornfrom an egg that might, under differentcircumstances,   have   hatched   into   adragon?”

That shut Lucy up.

“So   you’re   saying   he   just…materialised – aged twenty?” said Liz.

“Yes, in effect,” said Arthur. “Hestepped, ready-made, through the time rift Lucy visited in Blackburn.”

A cold fire ran along Lucy’s spine. Shelooked down at her hands where the

unfortunate tissue was now just shreds of purple paper. Blackburn. Why did he have

to remind her of that? She’d been trying to blank out that whole experience: the long journey to David’s ‘home’, discovering to her horror that the address he’d given when he’d moved into the Crescent didn’t

exist and that a dormant time rift lay over it instead, a rift being secretly monitored by the Ix. Having taken her into their clutches, they had forced her to make their darkling creature from pieces of raw, volcanic obsidian. She closed her eyes, feeling sick. She still had nightmares about that journey.

At the roundabout, take the second exit
, hurred Gwendolen.

Too busy with driving to make another comment, Liz followed the instructions, which brought them into the outskirts of

the city. To her right, a shallow but reactive river was doing its best to keep up with the car. There was a sense of history in every building they passed, as though they had entered an academic fairyland.   Tall   spires.   Mullioned windows. Porticos. Lawns. Everywhere, scholarly brick.

“I love this place,” Liz said with a sigh.

Arthur turned his head. “Where are we

precisely?”

Liz reached sideways and touched his knee. “We’re taking the bridge – across the river.”

Lucy looked at both adults in turn. Although no names or locations had beengiven, she realised that Arthur knew

exactly  where  they  were.   Even  in blindness, memories were lucid. “This is where you two met, isn’t it?”

“And where Gwilanna drove us apart,” he said.

For the second time in the space of aminute, Lucy found her stomach turning. Gwilanna was the ‘midwife’ who’d

overseen her birth. She labelled herself a

‘sibyl’, though ‘mad witch’ would have been a better description. In one way or another she had always been part of Lucy’s life, both good and bad. More often, bad.

Destination   reached
,   Gwendolen

hurred, though no  one seemed to be paying