When it was done, the two clay dragons came out of stasis. They stared into the mirror, as if they were looking at a different world. In fact, they were looking no farther than the garden, through the telepathic mind of Alexa’s unicorn. They saw three dragons as tall as trees land on the lawn in front of Alexa. Two of them were dark red. Guardians. Dangerous. The third was a pure white ice dragon. It bowed toward the girl and she to it. Then she turned and raised her arms in the very same manner her father had. But rather than commingle with the ice dragon’s body, Alexa’s top ripped open at the back and two small wings emerged through the fabric. Within seconds, she and the dragons had gone. The garden was still, save for a few green leaves dancing energetically on the grass.
Gawain and Guinevere bowed their heads.
They reached behind the unicorn, and quietly joined hands.
51 THE RETURN OF GADZOOKS
With the queen dragon grounded and seemingly no threat, the two remaining darklings concentrated their attack on the Fain i:lluminus, G’lant. This time their Ix masters, confident of victory, chose to accept the dragon’s enticement to engage in battle on the high-vibrational dark energy thought planes. It must have seemed a strange encounter indeed to anyone, like Lucy, watching from the ground.
“What are they doing?” she said to Tam. Several times now, G’lant and the darklings had come to a kind of midair standoff. On each occasion they would hover in close proximity for a while, before the challenge broke down and each reappeared again in a new and more aggressive spatial formation.
“I don’t know,” Tam said, still brushing soil from his clothes and hair. “But if that really is David fighting up there, believe me, it’s no ordinary contest. How’s Gwendolen doing?”
Lucy knelt down. The IT dragon was deep in concentration and had plugged her tail into Lucy’s phone again. Suddenly, her eyes popped open and she gave a little snort.
“What is it?” said Lucy.
Gwendolen gulped and peered across the vale.
“Did you get a reply from Gadzooks?”
Gwendolen nodded. Hrrr, she said.
“What’s the message? I missed it,” said Tam.
Lucy stood up, cradling Bella. “Gadzooks is coming. And he won’t be alone….”
In the sky, G’lant was finally aware of Gwillan’s escape. The little dragon suddenly appeared in the sensory matrix between G’lant and the third cloned darkling. The matrix instantly dissolved and the darkling pressed forward with a physical assault. Teeth bared, front legs stretched, it clicked out its claws, ready to make short work of the intruder. G’lant, still in balance with the alpha darkling, could do little to intervene. But he had no need to. With a flash of blue sparks, Gwillan and the darkling came together. When they were seen again, Gwillan had somehow increased his mass and was holding the darkling in two slightly oversized paws … just like the paws of a wishing dragon. The energy matrix reformed around them, and something odd began to happen to the darkling. It didn’t lose its color as the others had done, but it did change shape, until it was a mirror of Gwillan himself. He had created a small black dragon.
Gwillan, look to the light, said a voice. David’s voice, inside Gwillan’s head.
The young dragon cast its gaze down. At the place called Scuffenbury, a column of pearlescent light had formed between the moon and the peak of the hill. All around it the ground was beginning to move as flame-filled cracks sawed through the green fields. Gwillan — Joseph Henry — turned his head and saw a host of dragons descending from the clouds. One of them was not a dragon at all, but the child, Alexa, who had played with him. He watched her open her arms and saw the effect this had upon the Earth. The center of the hill simply crumpled inward creating a large, saucer-shaped caldera. In its midst was a well to the Fire Eternal, the greatest creative force in the universe. The boy inside Gwillan filled up with joy. He looked at the black dragon he’d created and embraced it. And what had been evil was now made pure.
But as this remarkable transcendence was happening, the alpha darkling was also going through changes. In response to the sudden appearance of Gwillan, yet more of the Ix had poured into their creature, committing themselves in vast numbers. With an impulse that stunned G’lant’s neural core, leaving him overwhelmed and momentarily helpless, they broke the matrix and gave their darkling physical expression again. It reared back ready to rip G’lant’s throat — but it dwelled half a second too long.
It felt a rush of air and turned just in time to see a perfect view of Gawaine’s yellowing, broken moyles — the final rows of teeth at the back of her jaws. Even as she clamped down and swallowed the beast whole she was banking back toward Scuffenbury Hill. She closed her wings and put herself into a spin. The Ix worked through her, terminating muscles, freezing synapses, unhinging her mind. She was probably dead and certainly insane by the time she plunged into the Fire Eternal, but the disorientation created by her dive had prevented the Ix from escaping her body. What was left of the evil in the skies above the vale she took with her to the center of the Earth. The will of her Wearle was finally done. And she had claimed revenge for the loss of her sons.
But there was still one dark twist to come. For as Gawaine’s body was accepted by the Fire, witnessed by a ring of praying dragons — including Alexa, holding Gadzooks — Teramelle, who had done so much to restore the queen, was overcome by a series of extraordinary fits. Zanna, temporarily overwhelmed by the sight of her daughter hovering like an angel, came to her senses and ran to it. She cried out as it tossed her brutally aside. David, now parted again from Grockle, rushed to her and gathered her into his arms. Gwillan was at his shoulder.
“What happened?”
“Its eyes,” she panted, “look at its eyes.”
But the unicorn had gone, leaving fiery black prints anywhere its nimble hooves touched the ground. It crested what remained of Scuffenbury Hill and it, too, plunged into the Fire Eternal.
The white light reaching the moon went out. Those dragons on the ground, including Grockle, spread their wings, anticipating conflict. But the darkness that emerged from Scuffenbury Hill could not have been fought by a thousand dragons. It was a shadow, an inversion of the Fire Eternal, a force that could fold both space and time. It appeared to them as a darkling with a unicorn’s horn, but only inasmuch as it needed a shape through which it might be duly recognized and feared. The two dragons that went to engage it were obliterated before their fire sacs had opened, their atomic structure crushed into a single point of matter — dark matter, quickly absorbed into the shadow.
From the ground, Gwillan let out a brave hrrr!
“Gwillan, no!” David shouted. But the shadow had heard him and turned.
A twisting bolt of dark fire burst through the air. But at the moment when it should have hit the little dragon’s snout and turned him into particles of dark matter, too, it crackled to a halt and was suddenly snapped sideways.
“What’s happening?” said Zanna, still trying to recover. A great wind blew, making trails of her hair. “Where’s Alexa? I want to be with Alexa.”
“Close your eyes,” David said, covering her head, pressing it firmly into his chest.
“Alexa?” she cried out. “Where’s my little girl?”
“She’s here with us,” said David, almost having to shout. The ground was tearing up in strips around them. “You’ll see her again, but things might be different. Trust me, Zanna. Just hold on tight.”
“No! What’s happening?” Zanna demanded. She kicked out and finally struggled free.
Alexa was now kneeling beside her parents, with Gadzooks sitting on her outstretched palm. Her wings were folded, her blue eyes closed in deep meditation. Her delicate fingers were resting on the ridges of the dragon’s spine, keeping Gadzooks both focused and calm. The dark fire flowing out of the shadow had been directed to the end of his pencil. Despite the turbulence the shadow was creating, he was keeping it there as he wrote on his pad. Alexa was mouthing every letter he
wrote. Zanna saw the s and the o and the m before she shut her eyes and clung against David.
“Will I still know you?” She gripped his shirt.
“Yes,” he whispered, and kissed her head.
And then they were gone, all of them. David. Lucy. Tam Farrell. Zanna. The catgirl, Bella. The watching dragons. Gone like a wind to another world.
Thus it would be written in the Chronicles of Dragons:
In the new beginning was the Word.
And the Word of Gadzooks was …
Sometimes
Everyone at Orchard Books, both here and overseas, knows how much I value their support for this long, ongoing “organic” project. Trust me, Paul, it will come to a conclusion one day; the plain fact is, a story is as long as it needs to be. Praise and warm regards to Catherine C., who had the tricky job of judging my mood whilst giving, as it turned out, valuable editorial guidance. And one wonders how many artists would be fazed if asked to draw the language of dragons on paper? Not so T. D. Bradshaw, who seems to be able to turn her artistic hand to anything. Thank you, Ptery, for inspiring the final artwork.
Finally, I want to thank the many thousands of fans, worldwide, who buy these books. Without you, there would be little point in writing them. Welcome, once again, to the Dragons’ Den.
Hrrr …
About the Author
Chris d’Lacey is the author of several highly acclaimed books for children and young adults, including the other books in the Last Dragon Chronicles, The Fire Within, Icefire, Fire Star, and The Fire Eternal. He is also the author of the early chapter book series The Dragons of Wayward Crescent.
In July of 2002, Chris was awarded an honorary doctorate by Leicester University for his services to children’s fiction. Chris lives with his wife in Leicester, England.
Visit www.icefire.co.uk to learn more
about Chris d’Lacey’s books.
Also by Chris d’Lacey
The Last Dragon Chronicles
The Fire Within
Icefire
Fire Star
The Fire Eternal
The Dragons of Wayward Crescent
Gruffen
Gauge
Copyright
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.
This book was published in hardcover in the United States by Orchard Books in 2010 and in Great Britain by Orchard Books, a division of Hachette Children’s Books, a Hachette Livre UK company, in 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by Chris d’Lacey.
Cover art © 2009 by Angelo Rinaldi
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. ORCHARD BOOKS and design are registered trademarks of Watts Publishing Group, Ltd., used under license.
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-36542-0
Chris D'Lacey, Dark Fire
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