“They change colour,” said Guinevere. “Green to violet. Violet’s bad. That’s why I take these.” She went into the pouch ather waist and pulled out a piece ofshrivelled grey material. “Driedmushrooms. Strange cure. But they seem towork.” She popped the piece into hermouth and swallowed it.
“There is a chamber behind this one,” Gwilanna said, tilting her head towards the rear of the cave. “You’ll find furs.
Nothing worse than you’ve slept onbefore. If you want to relieve yourself, gooutside.”
“And him?” I nodded at Gawain.
“Take the wearling for company if you
wish, but a dragon will always come back
to a flame.”
“Nothing’s going to harm him,” Guinevere insisted, shooing me away. “I sleep in this chamber. I’ll be here all the time. Rest, Agawin. And tonight, we begin our adventure!”
“Wait, boy. You’re forgetting something.” The sibyl picked up a cloth, thick and grubby with ash, and lifted the potions dish from the fire. She set it down at her feet then poured some of the brew into a drinking vessel. She added a measure of cooling water and a sprinkle of some kind of herb. She held it up to me. “Drink.”
I looked at Guinevere. “Drink,” she
urged.
This is unwise
, the Fain cautioned me.
But I felt I owed Guinevere a measure
of trust. So I took the vessel – and drank
the potion.
The Fain went to work on it straight away. Every part of my head began to buzz as they searched for ill-effects on my mind. Galen wasn’t slow to react in me, either. Alittle glug of wind erupted from my mouth as he hardened the soft walls of my gut, preparing for a possible poison attack. Several embarrassing muscle twitches followed. Guinevere folded her
arms and sighed. When the twitching was done and I was still alive, she pointed tersely behind me and said, “Your bed’s that way.” She settled down on a hide by the fire, pulling another one over her.
“Sleep well, Agawin. Try not to snore.” She pushed her hair off her face and promptly turned over. I considered myself dismissed.
Despite the fact that the only fur I couldfind was riddled with fleas and there was
water dripping where I lay my head and the whole chamber stank of moulds, I did manage to sleep. But my mind was active and my dreams were strong. I had never had a dragon in my auma before and Galen was making his dominance felt. Through his eyes I saw a gathering of dragons. Twelve of them, assembled in an ice-cold cave lit violet purely by the brightness of their eyes. Burned into the barren walls around them were marks like the three-
lined symbol I had seen. One by one, each
dragon came forward and shed its fire tear into a hollow in the wide cave floor. The
only dragon present that did not shed its tear was the queen, Gawaine. I recognised her from Grella’s tapestry. She, with one snort, imbibed the whole pool and turned herself into a dragon beyond dragons. She grew by half her size again. One beat of her mighty wings shattered ice spears hanging from the roof of the cave. Her
eyes burst into golden flames. Dragontongue glowed in the walls behind her. Her scales rippled and shone so brightly that even in the dream I was almost blinded. I was terrified. I kicked
out, wanting to wake. Then a scent as sharp as an arrow hit my nostrils. And I settled again. And the dream changed
course.
I saw Gideon, in his new form, sittingin the window of a strange dwellingplace, made from materials vaguely likestone. It had many, many windows, thisplace. Too many to see at once. I began todraw back from it. Back. Back. Floating,lighter than a mote of dust. The further Iretreated, the more windows I saw. Themore birds, like Gideon, sitting in thewindows. Until I was so far back that the
building stretched from the ground to the clouds, and still, it seemed, it was higher than the clouds. I floated to the ground where I found myself in a field of daisies. I picked one and looked into its yellow
centre. There was Grella, holding Gwilanna. The baby’s face was wrinkled
and old. Then I heard laughter all around me. In the middle of every flower was the image of the skull. The jaw was moving, laughing at me. I stamped on the flowers, but the laughter kept coming. And I didn’t know why but it sounded like the way Gwilanna might laugh. And once again I was restless and fearful. I smelled mould
and knew I was close to waking. But the dream had one more twist for me yet. The last thing I remembered before I stirred was the image of a darkling flying low across the daisy fields. Closing, closing…
Bang!
Its claws were in my chest! I cried out and my hand closed round a stone. But as I brought the stone up to pummel the creature my eyes flashed open and there was Guinevere, kneeling beside
me. Gawain was on my chest, raking his talons through my covering fur.
“Hey!” the girl barked. “What are you doing?”
She slapped my hand aside and I dropped the stone.
I was sweating. Panting. Still waking up. “I was… dreaming,” I said. “I’m… sorry.”
She scowled and picked Gawain off me. The dragon made a quiet guttering sound as she stroked his spine to comfort him. He clamped his feet to the perch of her wrist and tested his juvenile wings. He had grown a little, which seemed impossible in such a short space of time. And yet there were two clear bumps on his head: the first defining features of a
dragon: his horns, or primary stigs. “It’s time,” said Guinevere. “Are you sure you can travel? Gwilanna says you were talking in your sleep.”
Was that the value of her potion, I wondered? A serum to make me speak? “Where is she?”
“Outside, on the hill.”
I sat up quickly and pushed the fur
aside. “I need to look at the skull.”
“What? No! Gwilanna will roast you on
a spit if she sees you.”
“I have to do this. I
knew
Grella.”
That brought a puzzled frown to her
face. “How?”
“I’ll tell you later. When we’re on the
move.”
“Agawin?” she called. But I was
already gone.
The fire in the main chamber had been
built up again. As I swept past and knelt beside the skull, a few flakes of ash spiralled up towards the roof. “Grella,” I whispered, half-hoping her face might appear to me, “is this you?” I ran my thumbs along what would have been her cheeks.
“Are you
mad
?” Guinevere appeared at my side. “Put it back,” she hissed, “or there’s going to be trouble.”
She is wise
, said the Fain, swarming into my consciousness as if they had only just woken, too.
Do not provoke the sibyl.
And I was all but set to do as they wished when my gaze fell upon the cloth the skull had been resting on. To
Guinevere’s dismay, I put the skull on theground and picked up the fabric. Slowly, Iunfolded it.
There in my hands was the tapestry I’dstarted in Grella’s krofft. Finished.
Stitched. In astonishing colours. An imageso alive I could almost fall into it.
“Oh,” said Guinevere, slightly
overcome.
“You’ve never seen this before?”
“No,” she said. “Who are these people?
What does it show?”
And a new voice said, “It’s a battle,girl. Surely that much is obvious?”
I whipped around. Gwilanna wasperched on her stone on the far side of thefire. She must have crept in with thestealth of a fox, for not even Galen had
warned of her approach. “This is how you repay my hospitality, boy? You eat my food, take refuge in my home then steal what few possessions I have?”
“I drew this,” I said.
“What?” said Guinevere, calming
Gawain. The raised voices were
beginning to agitate him.
“I drew it and Grella stitched it,” I said. “This does not belong to you, sibyl.”
“You forget,” she snarled, “that a child inherits what its parents want to give it. My mother begged me in my crib to protect the tapestry. If you value your life, you’ll put it straight back.”
“In your crib?” said Guinevere.
And perhaps, like her, I should have paid attention to Gwilanna’s strange
admission, but I was too far down my chosen path. I said, “Tell me how she died or it goes on the fire.”
“Agawin! Have you lost
all
your senses?” Guinevere quickly shifted position to put herself between me and the fire. “Give the tapestry back to
Gwilanna.”
“But… ”
“Do it – or you leave here without me tonight.” She offered Gawain up to show she meant it.
“All right.” I folded the tapestry and put it back, placing the skull on top of it again. But when I turned I said to the sibyl, “Grella was my friend. Tell me how she died.”
Guinevere switched her gaze between
us.
I watched Gwilanna skewer some
bread onto a stick and begin to toast it against the flames. “You should beware of this boy, Guinevere. His knowledge is far greater than he likes to make out.”
“Can I trust him?” she said. A harsh
question, but I understood why she needed
to ask it.
The sibyl threw a short laugh into theair. “He intends you no harm and wouldeven have you love him. But he will keepthings from you. Can’t you feel hisdelicate auma? It radiates such purity ofspirit – a quality rarely found outside ofdragonkind… ”
“Tell me how Grella died,” I growled.
She pulled the bread off the stick and
turned it over to toast the other side. “I
will tell you something, boy, and that might be enough. My mother, as you know, was meant to return to Mount Kasgerden on the anniversary of your ‘death’.”
“And show you to the Taan.”
The sibyl nodded. Guinevere was looking dreadfully confused. But she held her tongue while the story unfolded.
“She did go back,” Gwilanna confided. “But she did not take me with her.”
“And they killed her? For
that
?” My knee joints locked. There was pain in my shoulders. Had there been wings on my back, I would have been tenting them now. Galen, as always, was ready to fight.
Gwilanna sighed with impatience. “No. For many years, she took another child in
place of me. She made an arrangement with a local tribeswoman. A new dress in
temporary exchange for her baby. Grella, as you know, was skilled with a needle.”
“But… why swap a child for you? Why would she need to go to such lengths?”
“Look at me,” Gwilanna said. The fire sizzled as her spittle fell across it. “I was like this from the day I was born.”
I had seen it in the daisies. The baby, horribly wrinkled. Old, I wanted to say. But despite my intense dislike of this woman, I could not stoop to such cruel remarks.
“If Grella had shown me, a prune, to her father, I would have fallen under his sword.”
“Gwilanna, your bread.”
“What?” the sibyl grunted.
“It’s burning,” said Guinevere.
With a rumble of annoyance, Gwilanna whipped her stick to one side. The bread hit the wall, flaring on impact. As it dropped towards the ground, Gawain skittered out of Guinevere’s hands. Even
though he was just a few hours old, he instinctively unlatched his jaw and just about caught the bread in his mouth. It was a comical sight. A young dragon stumbling around the cave with a piece of burning bread too big to swallow. He thrashed it to the floor and began to shred it. Only Gwilanna did not seem amused.
“Dragons… ” she muttered.
“You seem to know a lot about them,
sibyl.”
“Do not try to belittle me, boy. I know what you are.”
“What is he?” said Guinevere, looking at me hard.
But neither I nor the sibyl wouldanswer that. “If Grella’s father did not end
her life, what did? Did she die a natural
death or was she slain?”
The sibyl gave another derisive laugh. “Would you seek to avenge her, Agawin?”
“I would try,” I said bravely.
To which she said, “Pah!”
“Why do you react like that?” asked Guinevere. She tossed her hair, lookingincensed. “Does it not demonstrate
Agawin’s courage that he would seek toput right any ills to your mother?”
“I told you, he is full of deceits,”
Gwilanna snapped. She found anotherpiece of bread to toast. “He knows of thepast but keeps it from us. He knows thingsabout me he will not confess.”
“If I am full of deceit,” I said, “what do you see in the mirror of my eyes?”