“Digging?” Rosa said, as if she’d eaten something sour.
“I use the term loosely,” David muttered, looking at the glowing rocks in the crater. “They’re trying to reach into the fire eternal. Nothing but a dragon could cope with the heat.” He turned and rattled a question at Zanna. “How are you making him work for you? A dragon would rather go into stasis than give itself up to the Ix:Collective.”
Zanna threw him an all-knowing smile. “If I was to allow you to commingle withhim, David, you’d find that he’s notcompletely… himself. You mentioned Gwilanna just now.”
The colour drained from David’s face.
He flashed another look at the dragon’s
eyes. “She’s
illumined
– to Gawain?”
“A marriage made here, on the peak of the island, under the light of a crescent moon. Just like it always was in legend.”
“In your dreams,” snarled Rosa. “What have you done with Guinevere and Thoran?”
“Will you keep
that
under control,”
Zanna barked.
Tam found a piece of cloth and snappedit tight between his hands. “Be warned. Next time, I gag you.”
“And Gretel,” David added quickly. “What about Gretel? No room in this
world for your potions dragon,
Pri:magon
?”
“Gone,” she said, without remorse.
“Written out of time. All of them.
Elizabeth Pennykettle included.” Shegestured at Tam to put David back with Rosa again.
David raised his hands and rejoined Rosa without the need for force. “That’s
not possible. I can feel the auma of Thoran
within me.”
“A weak Ki:meran echo,” she said, “a hangover from your Travels across the nexus. Try it, David. Try to shift into Ingavar. You must have felt him fading when you battled the wolves? The same goes for Grockle, your tame dragon. In this timeline, your connection to him is nonexistent.”
Rosa shifted her feet, perhaps hopefulhe would change and fight their way out ofthere. But she could see that David didn’t
want to risk it. “Why me?” she hissed at him, under her breath.
“Shush,” he said from the corner of his mouth. “They’re not joking about the gag.”
But she wouldn’t give up. “Why
me
who fades out of time and not her?”
“What are you talking about?” Zanna snapped.
“We’re confused,” David said, loud enough to drown Rosa out. “If Liz was lost when the timeline altered, how do you explain the presence of Lucy?”
The darkling girl raised her chin.
“Or you, for that matter?”
“Lucy was selected. Like Tam. Like me. All of us were taken from Scuffenbury Hill and re-inserted at this timepoint to aid the inversion.”
“Inversion?” said Rosa.
“Do you repeat
everything
you hear?” growled Lucy.
“Let’s come back to the ‘inversion’,” David said quickly. “Tell me about Gwilanna and the… selection process.”
Zanna pressed her hands together, making the bangles slip down her arm. Her scar was still prominent, but the lines were dark and scabbed right over. The darkling infection had tried to erase them, but had not entirely succeeded, David thought. Perhaps there was still a chance to reach the real Zanna underneath. “With
Guinevere gone,” she said, “the dragonsoon lost his will to live. He settled on the
island and watched the moon. We sent
Gwilanna to hide among the rocks and
wait.”
“She caught his
fire tear
?” Rosa scoffed. “No way. It would have burned her inside out.”
“His tear was shed, though?” David
queried.
Zanna nodded.
“Then how did he survive?”
“Because of me,” said a voice.
Tam and Lucy stood to attention as a figure dropped down from a ledge above Zanna. A man so full of darkling twists that it was almost impossible to see any true humanity in him. A spiked tail dragged along the floor behind him. Pointed wings rose above his shoulder line.
Zanna turned to the captives and said,
“David, Rosa, let me introduce you. This is my betrothed. The Shadow Prime. His name is Voss.”
8. A Tale of a Listening
Dragon
He could hear the hum of the universe,right down to the space within atoms. That’s what Ganzfeld, ‘the listener’, coulddo. Now I had seen him and learned his
name, my memories of him were strong and clear. I remembered how Elizabeth
would blow him a kiss every time she opened the refrigerator door. How she would ask him what was happening in the Crescent. How, with one subtle twist of his ears, he would always have some sort of answer for her. The thing that puzzled me most about him was why he’d never
been referred to by name. But then, no one
had ever asked.
That night, I let the question float in mydreams. And my dreams came back with asurprising answer. I found myself sittingon a pillar of ice, listening to the words ofthe polar bear, Avrel. He had an engagingstory to tell. He tipped his snout towardsthe northern sky. ‘One night,’ he began, ‘Gaia was playing with the dancing lights,when she caught an array of interestedstars and joined them together in the shapeof a dragon. This pleased her so much thatshe brought her creation down to the ice. Fearful that the wind would blow him
away, she took clay from the land so his body would be solid. She coloured him green with grass she had found. She
tickled his feet until he drummed them into
claws. She pulled his tail until he flicked it into a pleasing arrow. She caught two feathers from a passing bird and stroked them on his back until his wings folded out. Two ribbons of light, one green, one violet, she gave to him next to provide him with eyes. And when the sun came up to chase away the night, she let the first ray enter the dragon’s mouth and burn there for ever as a spark of fire. Only one thing was missing. Ears. Gaia looked for more stars with which to make them, but the night, by now, was done. She thought of flowers and their beautiful petals. But none were in bloom this far north at that
time. Then her dragon did a very strange thing. He jerked his head as if he
could
hear something. He bent forward and touched the ice, then scraped a small chunk of it into his paws.
Hrrr
, he said, (for he could speak, of course). The ridges of his eyes came together in a frown. He held the ice close to his heart, as if he could sense it calling to him. Immediately, a white bear rolled into view. He was
padding along with heavy paws as though he wished the ice would swallow him up. When he saw the dragon he staggered to a halt. He squinted in the way that only bears can. Gaia hid behind a nearby ridge, curious to see what this meeting would bring.
‘The bear sniffed at the dragon.
What are you?
it grunted. Its gaze suggested it had seen many dragons, but never one
quite as unusual as this.
‘The dragon tilted its head to one side.
‘
I am Thoran
, said the bear.
Who are
you?
There was a deal of impatience in his ruffled voice, but it was clearly hiding a mountain of sorrow.
‘The dragon tipped its head the opposite way.
‘A rumbling tumbling grumbling noise bobbled around in Thoran’s throat. He
could have walked on, or swatted the dragon aside. Instead, he lowered his black-tipped snout and blew a great draught of air across its head. His aim was to clear the creature’s hearing, but the result was a lot more lasting than that. His misty breath settled in two fine clouds, which the north wind set in the shape of
ears. Magnificent ears. Big and bold. Twice the size of any found on a bear.
‘Thoran stood back, wondering how this had happened. Already that day, he had seen a human companion die and break up into flying… fairies. Now there was this. A little green dragon with ears made out of his grief-stricken breath. What kind of magical world had he entered?
‘
Hrrr!
went the dragon.
‘Thoran gave a roar and shuffled back. He was not afraid, just mildly puzzled. The dragon had spoken in a strange variation of the usual tongue. In that brief warm puff of air, the creature had described everything Thoran had gone through that day – and the days before. His journey north, his escape with Guinevere,
the fire tear that had created the ice they were standing on. What’s more, he understood how Thoran was
feeling
.
‘
How?
said the great bear.
How can
you know this?
‘
Hrrr!
went the dragon.
I heard your
auma
.
‘And now it was at work with its
nimble paws, flashing away at the nugget of ice it had first scraped up. Somehow the chunk had doubled in size. The dragon split it open and breathed inside. A spark ignited and nestled at its centre, yet the ice refused to melt.
‘The dragon shaped the ice into a ball again. And it grew again. And again. And
again
. Until it was so large that he could only carry it above his head.
Hrrr
, he
said, meaning,
Thank you for the ears. This is for you
. And he lobbed the ball at the mystified bear.
‘
What should I do with it?
Thoran
asked. He was looking at the ball and paying no attention to the dragon now. When he looked up, the dragon was drifting away, hand in hand with one of the strange little fairies Guinevere’s body had broken into… ’
There, Avrel’s story came to an end. Inmy dream, he began to turn away.
“Wait!” I shouted. “Is this how the
listener came to be with Elizabeth?”
Avrel paused and blew a snort of air. “Ganzfeld has always been her guidingforce. The others were made in the imageof him.”
Others. Others.
My mind began to spin. “Why did she never speak his name?”
“Because she did not know it and she
liked him as he was – her faithful listening dragon.”
“Ganzfeld,” I said. “Why did he tell me?”
“He wants you to lead us to Ingavar. Since the exchange of ears and snow, bears and dragons have been allies in all things.”
“But how does knowing his name help me?”
“To speak his name is to know his
power… ”
“Ganzfeld!” I shouted, while Avrel
watched. “Ganzfeld! GANZFELD!”
The universe hummed – and I woke
with a start. I sat up in a room with deep red walls. I was panting and frightened, a little confused. I felt Elizabeth’s arm on
my shoulder. She crouched down and held me. She was almost in tears. “Oh, Agawin, what have you done?” she whispered.
On the floor stood a row of dragons. I looked at them in turn and knew their
names.
G’reth. Gretel. Gruffen. Gollygosh.
Gwendolen. Gwillan.
Gadzooks.
9. A Sea of White Fire
He was at least another foot taller than
David, his overall shape defined by amass of swollen muscles that seemed to
have burst through the bag of his skin – not red in colour with the blood of a man, but a glistening turquoise-black, host to the Shadow in his corded veins. He walked
on two legs, as humans did, but the weight of his brawny wings – which seemed burdensome, even in their folded state, despite the support of a collar of muscle high up his neck – suggested he’d prefer to crawl on four limbs or at worst scratch
along with the gait of a bird. His strapping tail helped in this respect. It worked in the
way that a dragon’s did, aiding balance during vigorous movement. It was never quite still, the tail, twisting and turning and pointing at objects as if it possessed a life of its own. A serrated isoscele
glimmered at its tip, a constant reminder of the Shadow Prime’s menace. What
remained of Voss’s face was fiendishly distorted. Helical shells had replaced his ears and his chin had grown down to a sharpened point. His nose was large and wide like an arrowhead, his teeth just a circle of badly-spaced fangs. Flaring out of his slightly concave temples were two strange horns that gave him the look of a curved claw hammer. David suspected that some of these changes were imagineered for demonic effect. But there
was no mistaking the coldness in the eyes, like looking into swathes of endless