The Last Dragon Chronicles: The Fire Ascending (36 page)

That did it.

N-yeh
, said the cat. With a twitch of itswhiskers, it turned and trotted away.

I followed it – or rather the tink of its

bell, for the cat itself was always too far ahead. All I saw now and then was a flash

of its tail. Doors opened up where they hadn’t done before. Walls changed colour. Lights came on. A pot plant with red and

green   leaves   appeared   (‘KOLEUS’ written on a label in the soil). Tele:screen images flashed up on the walls. The first I saw was a stuttering lecture about the history of the planet Erth. I glanced sideways at it as I ran. A man in a plain white suit was explaining that a change of

timeline did not have to disrupt the advance of learning. In our particular history,   for   instance,   a   stroke   of serendipity had brought the discovery of electricity and the invention of siliconbased circuitry much closer together. Since ‘our’ 17th century, technology had grown at a furious pace. Thanks to this, the Pearlygates Interactive Tele:computer was now a feature of every…

I ran on. I had almost lost the sound of

the bell.

The second time I saw a tele:screen, I

did.

It felt as if I’d been following the catfor hours. Yet the only time I could thinkof was ‘now’.

3:15:22

No bell. I paused for breath. In front ofme another tele:screen lit. A documentaryfeature about firebirds.
 
Likewise
, said a

slow voice-over,
 
every species on Erth has experienced a changed evolutionary path. Some for better. Some for worse. One of those that has come to major prominence, of course, is the firebird. Here we see three, in their natural eyrie. What draws them to structures such as

this isn’t clear
 
. An image of a giant building appeared. It had thousands of square-shaped windows, all identicallyspaced apart. I knew that I knew this place – but from where? The camera zoomed in

and came to rest on a cream-coloured

firebird with apricot ear tufts.
 
Females
, said the voice,
 
like this fine example, are

often attended by two or more males
 
. A grumpy-looking red one was in the window to her right; a mild-mannered green one in the window on her left.
 
Rrrh!
 
went the red one, making the female jump. She leaned forward and squinted – at the lens, or at me?

“Who are you?” I asked.

But the screen had cleared, and the next thing on it was a series of schematic diagrams, aiming to describe how the birds had evolved their strange ability to generate    fire.
 
By   filtering   small quantities of hy:drogen from water and collecting it in tonsillar sacs in the throat, these highly intelligent birds are able to throw a jet of flame by rapidly expelling the stored gas. What benefit

this has is not entirely clear, for the birds   appear  to   have  no   natural predators.   And   their   extraordinary progress does not end there. Evidence has recently come to light of another remarkable physical development…
 
Up came another set of images, which appeared to predict that the next stage of firebird evolution might be a hardening of their feathers into scales.
 
Were we to

extrapolate from here
 
, said the voice, almost  beside   itself  with  scholarly

excitement,
 
who knows what magical

creature   might   result..
 
.   The   beak morphed into an extended jaw. The tail feathers coalesced into a kind of whip. The wings grew out into powerful canopies. Small arms emerged from the

breast. A glint pinged out of a jewelled eye. A burst of white fire clouded the

screen.

“Dragon,” I breathed.

Hrrr
, went a voice.

I jumped around.

In front of me was a tall white

refrigerator. Two doors, top and bottom, hinged to the right. On top of the fridge sat the thing I’d come to find: the listening dragon.

It was, as my mind had expected it to be, tall and green and spiky and cute. It had trumpet-shaped nostrils, large oval eyes, a wide curling tail and flattish back feet.

And the most enormous petal-like ears. It smiled, almost ruefully, and looked

down at the fridge.

“Should I open it?” I asked.

The dragon sniffed. It looked around

and drummed its claws.

I reached for the top door and pulled it

open.

On the middle shelf of three was a

small box.

Miaow
, said a voice from the floor.

I pushed the door half-closed andlooked down.

The cat I’d been following was sittingbeside an empty food bowl. It flicked itsears when it saw I’d noticed it.

I opened the door again and took out thebox. It didn’t look big enough to store anyfood. All I found inside was a folded

piece of paper.

It said, ‘
WRONG DOOR
’.

The listening dragon shrugged.

I put the box away and opened thebottom refrigerator door.

A blast of icy air swept out. As itcleared, I saw an amazing scene inside. Ayoung polar bear was sitting on a sheet ofice, with water lapping gently in front ofhim – an image more real than anything I’dwatched on a tele:screen. I felt that if I

climbed inside the fridge I would hear the crunch of ice underfoot. I shivered and

rubbed my arms. “Who are you? What is

this world?”

The ice bear tipped his head to oneside. His small brown eyes were packedwith wonder. “This is Ki:mera,” he said. His voice was gruff, but as sharp as the

pale blue sky around him. “My name is Avrel. I am The Teller of Ways.”

“Ways?” I asked.

“Legends,” he said.

I thought about this. “Are you here to tell a story?”

He tilted his head to the opposite side. “You
 
are
 
the story, Agawin. And we have been waiting for you.” A slight wind swept across him, tugging at his fur. A host of bears was behind him now, sitting, paws together, like the cat by his food bowl, as if they had an appointment with destiny.

“What do you want me to do?” I whispered. I feared this perfect image might crack if my voice was raised any louder than that.

Between his feet, a book appeared. Thepages flickered until the wind dropped. On one leaf was a beautiful sketch of the

listening dragon. I recognised the ears, even though the drawing was upside down to me. On the opposite page was what looked like a scorch mark. Avrel blew on

the book. It turned right around.

“You must lead us to Ingavar,” he said.

I looked at the mark. On the page, it was just a simple squiggle: a wavy line with a shorter line through it, thicker at one end, finished in a slight triangular spike. It looked like it might have been a signature. The longer I looked the more structured it appeared, until I could see real depth in it and something began to trigger in me. A memory of a language.

Dragontongue
.

“Agawin, where are you?” Elizabeth’svoice. She sounded close. Very slightlyconcerned.

I closed the fridge door, shutting out thebears. The cat’s food bowl vanished. The

cat himself was twizzling his ears, trying to locate where the voice was coming from. He scuttled away, low down, looking guilty. Likewise, the listening dragon gulped, as if he should not have been a party to this. He dibbled a paw and disappeared in a blink. The fridge he’d been sitting on disappeared with him.

“Ah, there you are.” Elizabeth slipped her hand around my shoulder. We were back in a plain square room again. Warm pink walls. Friendly. Soothing. The kind

of place where an active mind might put away any worrying thoughts and drift on an ocean of eternal calm. I smiled at

Elizabeth and she at me. The firebird, Gryffen, landed on her shoulder. He pokedhis inquisitive gaze here and there, but Iwas fairly sure he had seen nothing. Already, my memories of the bears werefading, but I was clinging to that mark asthough my life depended on it – orsomeone else’s did. For in that very thinslice of time, that tiny shudder in the unityof ‘now’, I had managed to find atranslation. With it came a whole new raft

of meaning. I had unwrapped a very great secret. I had seen the name of the listening dragon. I held Elizabeth’s hand and repeated the name over and over in my

mind.

Ganzfeld
.
 
Ganzfeld
.
 
Ganzfeld
.

7. The Illumination of

Gwilanna

“You  look  surprised,”   Zanna   said, squaring up to David. “Or do my Gothic roots still make you cringe? Suits me, don’t you think? The dark. The Shadow.”

He stared at the crusted scales on her

cheeks. The coils at her temples. The row of thorns on the back of each hand. In

some ways, she did look strangely alluring. But the Ix in her would always be repellent to the Fain in him. “You’re not her,” he said quietly. “You’re not Zanna.”

She flicked a spiteful glance at Rosa, who could do little more than gulp and shy

away. “Am I beautiful, Commander?”

“Yes,” said Tam.

“Would you die for me and give me

your
 
shade
?”

“I would.” He touched a hand to his

darkling heart.

Zanna stepped forward, dabbing a finger at the trickle of blood on David’s cheek. “Would you desert me in the heat of a battle?”

“Never, Pri:magon.”

David tried to look away, but she caught his chin and applied enough sideways pressure to make him face her again. “Hear that, David? He wouldn’t run away.” She angled her dark lips close to his. “He wouldn’t disappear across a huge time nexus leaving me and my friends to

fend for ourselves.”

“I  warned  you  things  would  be different,” he said, trying not to flinch as her nails dug in.

Burying a snort in the back of her throat, she brought her mouth up close to his ear. “Don’t try to be brave. The war is won. The Shadow controls this part of the nexus. Very soon we’ll have the rest – and more.” He heard the slither of her darkling tongue. “Now, be a good Fain and tell me what you’ve done with Alexa… ”

He thought about this, then whispered back, “Shouldn’t you be asking Gwilanna that… ? Where is she, by the way?”

“Pri:magon, the dragon is rising,” said Lucy.

Zanna pulled away and turned towards

the crater. “Behold, David, the last dragon

on Earth!”

“Hhh!” gasped Rosa, as Gawain’s studded head emerged from the lava pool, followed by his wings and the rest of his body. Lava ran away in runnels down his breast, making crowns of fire where it dripped into the pool. He was an adult now, as wild and impressive as a dragon could be. He was showing no obvious darkling mutations, but the green had leached from his scales and wings and there was no hint of violet in his tortured

eyes. He was the antithesis of all his kind.

A black dragon.

He stared at the newcomers in the

chamber. When he saw David, his optical triggers contracted in a rush and he reared

back, flaring his smoking nostrils. A jet of fire burst from his gaping mouth and was split into forks by his enormous fangs. Even David must have feared being turned to ash. But the blast hit an unseen barrier

between them and dispersed in harmless scribbles of flame. Gawain extended his

wings to their fullest and with a whip of his tail went spiralling around his invisible cell.

“Impressive,” David said, blowing out the air his lungs had been grasping. He brushed Rosa’s hand to check how she

was. Her auma was off the scale. “Not

only infected but imprisoned as well.”

“Better for you that he is,” growled Zanna. “Oh, and in case you were thinking of trying, you can’t commingle with him

through the field.”

“What have you done to him?” Rosa demanded. “Why is he in that…place?”

“Like you care,” said Lucy, showing her teeth. “He’s nothing but a myth in your imagineered world.”

“Better a myth than a servant to
 
you
.”

“He’s digging,” David put in quickly, trying to defuse any further conflict. He raised his hands in mock surrender and

stepped up to the point where the fire had petered out. He prodded the force field, making it dent. Gawain put his dark head forward and roared.

I know, I know,
 
David said in histhoughts.
 
I will get you out of there. Butwhy are you so very angry with me? Andhow have they gained control of you…?