The Last Dragon Chronicles: Dark Fire (41 page)

on. “And he’d know how to reach David.”

She looked up. Gwillan had disappeared.

“Do it,” she said. “Do it.
 
Now
.”

If the conflict over Scuffenbury Hill hadbeen waged on strength and size alone, thedarklings would have been mapped anddestroyed long before Gwendolen beganto transmit her SOS. But the tactics of the

Ix did not rely solely on the venom andwounding power of their  creatures. Theirmodes of attack were far more devious.

They knew, for instance, that the unicorn, Teramelle, would not attempt to come tothe rescue of the dragons and would onlydefend itself if attacked. Therefore theysimply left it aside – a bonus, a treat, once

the dragons were eliminated. They were also aware that Gawaine (and possibly the Fain i:lluminus) could be weakened if they could reach inside her mind. So the matriarch became their first target. One darkling, the first of the replicates, was given the privilege of destroying her.

There were two ways the Ix could disrupt the dragon’s wits. First (and most commonly) a breakaway Cluster could invade through her sensitive pineal gland. This would provide a neural highway into the spongy cells of her brain. Once inside, they could rip her consciousness apart until her motor functions were lost or

frozen. They could then torment her or simply bring her down. The union of g’ravity and ground would do the rest.

In order for the leap to be effective,however, the darkling had to be in thedragon’s eye line. At the optimum point oftransfer (usually when the dragon wasconfident of a kill) the Ix Cluster wouldrapidly detach from its host, leaving thedarkling temporarily unruddered and asvulnerable as paper to the chemistry offire. In short, it was a suicidal lunge. Annihilation was  a likely and acceptableforfeit, but a minor sacrifice if it left thequarry addled. Such a transference calledfor skill and precision, but it
 
had
 
beenachieved by the replicate darkling – justbefore Gawaine had turned it to ash.

At that triumphant juncture, with thequeen in a spin, the three remainingdarklings were preparing to focus their

attention on the juvenile, only to see him fly to the queen’s aid. They watched him commingle with the failing matriarch and must have been alarmed to see her

recover. He had cleansed her mind and

restored her sanity. She would be stronger for it and learn from the experience. To terminate her now would require real cunning.

The squeal which Lucy had heard while she was talking to Gwendolen was partly a result of their renewed assault. For the second, more dangerous, means of transference required a darkling to attach itself to its prey so it might poison the blood as well as the mind. To maximise

their chances, the darklings separated. The alpha (that born from the gut of the raven)

sped towards G’lant, hoping to draw him away from the queen. The Ix Cluster controlling the creature was in no hurry to engage the Fain i:lluminus, certainly not on the battleplanes of thought, even though he was probing, willing them to try. Instead, the beast rolled under him,  crying out as a length of its stringy tail was half consumed by G’lant’s well-aimed arc of fire. It retaliated swiftly by spitting a cloud of venom at his feet. The object: to get inside the pouches of his claws where the muscles were unprotected by scales. G’lant hissed in pain as the venom struck home, but still managed to coil his tail and tangle the darkling within its loops. Using a violent whipping motion, he attempted to shake the creature giddy. But the Ix were

reinventing their host creature with each new act of aggression they faced. On the second beat of G’lant’s tail, the darkling dissociated  its  atomic  structure  and

slipped through the prickly coils like water. By the time G’lant was aware of the escape, the darkling had reconfigured its shape and was back alongside him, pouring its toxic breath into the run of spiracles by his jaw, hoping to infect his secondary airways. Choking, and almost driven wild by the irritation in his claws, G’lant swerved away from Gawaine. Mission accomplished. The other two darklings moved in on the queen.

While one of them led her a zigzagging chase (back towards Lucy, still watching from the Tor) the other creature came in

silently above her, dropped swiftly and clamped itself to her left shoulder. She saw it as she fully unveiled her eye, but could do little to shake it off. She  could

reach it with her tail, she was certain of that, but to attempt that manoeuvre during flight would destabilise her balance and send her tumbling earthwards again. Her only hope was that G’lant would come to her aid again. But for the moment she could not see him. And the darkling was wasting no time.

Its objective had been to puncture her spine or dislocate the bones of her ear canal. But as the steady reinvention of its wickedness continued, it considered a far more hateful attack. Bringing its two front feet together, it found it was able to merge

its claws and make a jagged cutting tool, not strong enough to carve up a dragon’s scales, but easily able to tear through a wing…

Gawaine squealed in agony as the claws went in. Realising what was happening, she found a supportive thermal and glided into it, knowing that to beat her wings with any thrust might result in a rip that would not only leave her helpless in the air but negate any chance of a safe landing. The creature dug again and she heard the awful high-pitched whistle that was air rushing through her punctured sails. In desperation she flipped upside down, not a position she could hold for very long, but long enough, perhaps, to throw the creature off. The darkling

wobbled but did not fall. It snarled in

annoyance and clamped its teeth into the kite-like  bones that framed her wing, gnashing back and forth until one of them cracked. Sickened and dizzy, Gawaine was forced to right herself. Even then the beating did not stop. The darkling stamped on the bone repeatedly, gargling with pleasure as it snapped clean through. The pain was almost unbearable, but by now the queen was forming an idea. One slim chance of escape. She turned again and dipped the injured wing, knowing that the sharper angle of roll would throw the darkling towards the front boom. She felt the creature stumble and she instantly struck, throwing out one of her retractable stigs (the thorns which decorate an adult

dragon’s skeleton, particularly along the wings). The stig itself had no physical receptor, but the mulching sound of perforated flesh and the lurch of weight to the front of her wing told Gawaine her aim had been true. With a roar of pain she shed the stig and watched it sink to the

green   fields   below.   Every   instinct encouraged her to chase down and burn it, and not stop until a well of fire raged in the earth. But her wounds were severe and

there was poison in her blood. She had no

option but to land.

As horrific sights went, the sight of adarkling impaled on the curving stig of adragon wouldn’t have been far out of Lucy’s top ten. She shrieked and jumped

back in  terror, even though the   had landed yards away, point first into a chunk of the Tor. She saw the darkling’s body convulse. Black fluid oozed like oil from

its mouth. Its legs and tail hung as limp as a willow. Its staring eye still shone as brightly as a door knob.

She yelped again as its death tremors slid it down the stig. It came to rest in a pool of vital fluids, stopped by and draped across the broken earth, its repulsive head thankfully turned away from her.

Picking up a rock, she stumbledtowards it. Why she chose to, only sheknew. Maybe a desire to kill beyonddoubt.

Gwendolen  was   stupefied  beyond

comprehension.
 
Hrrr?
 
she cried. What

was  Lucy  doing?  The  message   to Gadzooks was sent. They should just wait now. Wait – and hide!

But Lucy pushed on, her feet slippingsideways as she climbed the mound ofsoil. She stopped a few paces from thetwitching beast. The rock felt cold andheavy in her hand. The creature’s headlooked easy to crush.

She lifted the rock. As she did so, shespotted a movement to her right. Uttering agasp of fear, she turned and almostbrained Bella instead.

“You!”

Miaow
, went Bella, limping forwards,coming to stand  between the darkling and Lucy. The cat was filthy, covered in soil.

A thick yellow discharge was weepingfrom a half-closed, bloodshot eye. Her tailhung low between her legs. One of herpaws had been dislocated or broken.

She’s frightened
 
, hurred Gwendolen,flying forwards. What the catgirl hadactually said was, ‘Help me.’

Lucy let the rock fall out of her hands. She looked at the unhealed scratches on

her wrist, but realised now that Bella had only been trying to warn her about Gawaine’s fury. She sank to her knees and opened her arms.

The cat hobbled forward. In that

moment the darkling gave a vitriolic snort and rolled its head towards them, neck bones cracking, eyes on fire, teeth primed. One of its snapped arms flapped towards

Bella.

“No!” Lucy screamed.

Bella jumped round, her hackles raised. But for all her hissing bravery she would have been dead – if the soil had not

erupted and thrown her aside. Lucy screamed again and tumbled backwards. She got up and scrambled back towards Bella, but Gwendolen stopped her with a single hurr:
 
Look
.

To Lucy’s astonishment, a human hand had emerged from the ground and taken the darkling by the throat.  The creature, still impaled,   was   turning   white   and shuddering as if it was coming to the boil. With a pop it imploded and turned to water, soaking the hand and the earth around it. The soil broke again and a head

and a pair of shoulders came through.

Lucy dived forward to get her arms around him. “Tam!” she gasped, clearing his face of dirt, as if she couldn’t believe that it was him.

He coughed and spat a small stone ontothe ground. “I’ll say one for thing for David: he knew what he was doing whenhe fixed me up with bears – they’re goodat surviving in dens. And this one,” heraised his right hand and turned it,showing once again the image of Kailar, “really does
 
not
 
like ravens… ”

The healing touch

If Professor Rupert Steiner had ever foundthe means to investigate the ‘ice lands’ ofthe North, he would have made someastounding discoveries, including severalfaded cinder glyphs describing the lastgreat encounter on Earth between dragons,men and the strange life form known as the Ix (shown as a swarm of dots). Among thepictures he would have found at least onerecord, maybe more, of dragons suffering. And being a man of sensitive disposition,he would have concluded there was

nothing more pitiful than the sight of such a magnificent creature mortally wounded and ready to cry its water of life. This is how it was with Gawaine just then, on the

opposite side of the valley from Lucy.

The queen, when she landed, could not even kneel. The pressure on her lungs was far too great. The darkling’s poison had spread into her windpipe and all her auxiliary bronchial chambers. She could feel their multi-layered linings peeling. It could only be a matter of time before her veins burst open and the ichor running through them flooded her lungs. She was going to drown in her own blood. She was going to die.

Gawaine, like any dragon, had no fear of death, but  what irked her as she lay there gasping for breath was that she did not have the power to make a final, sacrificial impact on the fight. The brave G’lant had swept over her twice. She

absorbed his despair as she collapsed onto her side with her maimed wing stretched out, pathetic and useless. It was her flag to him to say that she was done. He must abandon her, let them torture her, even. All that mattered was that
 
he

prevailed. She could help no more.

There was an outcome, however, that

Gawaine had not considered: that her

injuries might be cured. When Teramelle, the unicorn, came to look over her its distress was even greater than G’lant’s. It put its head down and repeatedly nudged the queen, as if it hoped she would take some elixir from it or weave some

magicks and save herself. But the enigma of unicorns was really quite simple. They were a fertile cornucopia of healing, but

could not wield any curatives themselves. The legends of red-headed maidens were correct. But it was not a girl with red hair that came to save Gawaine. It was a sibyl. And her name was Zanna.

In choosing her destination, Zanna hadfocused on the white horse of Scuffenbury,expecting to arrive inconspicuously in thegeneral locality. The magicks, however,had interpreted her wish as a need to beclose  to the unicorn itself.
 
Whoosh
 
. There

she was. Right before them both. Almost dropped into the jaws of a dragon. The unicorn bolted. Despite the searing pain, Gawaine raised her head. Justifiably suspicious, she summoned up what fuel was left in her fire sacs and drew in the

oxygen she needed to light it.

Two things saved Zanna’s life. Thoughher body was largely paralysed with awe,her dry mouth managed to spill a word ofdr a gontongue :
 
Gawaine?
   
Thepronunciation was poor, but good enoughto make Gawaine hold apart the ignitionnodules on her tongue which, if groundtogether, would produce the spark to lightthe incendiary mixtures in her throat. Shewas closing them again, prepared to takeno chances, when Teramelle whinnied andbegged her to stop.