His eardrums buzzed. His brain would not respond.
You are unclear, the Fain said irritably.
Blankness. Tumbleweed blowing through his head.
A bear, it said. I read an image of a bear with a sacred tooth. This is your primary connection? A fable?
David’s mind was empty of answers.
Where is the tear of the dragon Gawain?
Lurching forward, he vomited again.
You are trivial, said the Fain. Unimportant.
And it left him and returned to its previous host.
As if he had not had to witness enough, Brother Bernard was now about to face the horror of what he’d thought was a dead man, rising.
“I am leaving,” said Darius, slurring the words. Within the deeply cracked skull, the brain was hemorrhaging and barely functional. But there was still enough auma present in the body for the Fain to regenerate its energies for travel.
The man who had once been Brother Darius shimmered, turned gray, then dropped again, this time never to recover.
Bernard let out an anguished cry.
“Don’t worry, it’s gone,” David said. Dizzily he got to his feet, wet stains marking both knees of his jeans. “The man you think you killed was already effectively dead, possessed and stripped by an alien life-form called the Fain.”
Bernard put his fingertips against his temples, as though his head might fall apart at any moment. He was about to say, “Aliens?” when he jumped back again, startled at the sight of a dragon appearing in David’s hands.
“This is Gretel,” David said. “She was made by a woman called Elizabeth Pennykettle, who Arthur was in love with once.”
“He still is,” said Bernard, looking pained.
David nodded and stroked Gretel’s wing. “She just saved my life. She gave me a potion that stopped my mind being read by the Fain.”
“But —?”
“She can move. You won’t see her in her animated form. Only when she’s solid like this. We talk, too.” And he asked Gretel what had happened at the house.
She told him quickly, explaining how she had led the Fain away before it could hurt Liz any more.
David gently kissed her head. “Go. Find more flowers,” he whispered, and threw her upward into the rain. He turned to an openmouthed Brother Bernard. “I need to follow the Fain to the Arctic.”
“The Arctic? From here? David, it’s impossible.”
“Take me to Arthur. He’ll know what to do.”
Bernard gave an anxious gulp. “Brother Vincent — Arthur — was laid low by Darius.”
“Low?”
“Insensible. As if in a coma.”
David closed his eyes and gave a sigh of defeat.
It was short-lived, broken by a hrrr from Gretel. She buzzed past his ear, drawing his attention to a shimmering in the air.
David put out his hand again. And this time it was the dragon, Groyne, who materialized into it.
PART FOUR
63 TOOTH OF RAGNAR, FEBRUARY 14TH
Lucy had always been a late sleeper, but even she knew that her current “nap” was far more extended than a Sunday morning rest. She opened her eyes in complete darkness, immediately aware of something warm and extremely large lying beside her. Her underfed stomach at once tried to retch as the stench of the animal’s sweat and feces entered her cold but sensitive nostrils. The movement made it shuffle a paw. Lucy yelped and paddled her feet. In turn the bear growled and lifted its head.
“Are you him?” Lucy chattered. “The bear who came before?” She crossed her fingers and shut her eyes tight. It made no difference at all to her vision, but she felt a little safer for it.
The bear slid away from her and rocked to its feet. Another winter through. More ice in her joints. Alive, but groggy. She yawned at death.
“Help,” said Lucy, whimpering a little. She coiled up, fearing she might be trampled.
But the mother bear, used to dealing with young, lowered her snout and nudged her aside, then turned her face to the bitter draft of air flowing down the tunnel.
Snow, laid thick on the mountainside. Ice, beginning to think about melting. Air, looking for a warming sun. She could scent the end of winter approaching.
But above all this, she could scent male bears.
They were commonplace, of course, but never in this quantity. Every male from the western runs must have descended on the island. Either that, or her old snout was playing tricks on her. Or death had yawned at her instead.
No, the child was real. She remembered her, sleeping on the floor of the cave. A trace of Sunasala on her furless skin. Were the bears here for the child, perhaps? Was she a wonder? A spirit among men? She shook herself down and snorted at the tunnel. Whatever the answer, she had made a pledge, and she would do exactly what she always did. Go outside. Make herself known to the ice. Check conditions. Protect her young. Even this girl. To the point of death.
“Lord, there are two humans approaching.”
Ingavar tipped his snout to the wind. “From which direction?”
“South and west of the island, where the ice is clear of ridges.”
Ingavar let his steady gaze roll, then squinted back at the Tooth of Ragnar. It was magnificent, he thought: black against the moody reflections of the ice, its hollows tinted yellow by the light of the star, layers of purple-gray sky above it. Ragnar’s island. Sunasala’s denning place.
His heritage.
“Is one of them the girl we spared?”
“We cannot tell.”
Ingavar focused on the end of his snout. “Find them. Surround them. Stop their progress.”
The bear dipped his head in salute.
“Wait — is the pack in place?”
“They are situated evenly around the island. If the creature appears, we are ready to attack. There is still no scent of the Lord Thoran. Do you wish me to send a party in search of him?”
Ingavar ground his lower jaw, feeling for the tooth of his ancestor, Ragnar. This was a mystery he could not fathom. Where was the creaky, starseeking Teller? He looked back high above his shoulder, where the star he’d been following for so long now was shaping a strange void out of the darkness. “Thoran will find his own way,” he said, hoping that his words showed no imbalance between optimism and fear. “Be prepared.”
The bear bowed and was ready to sweep away when he turned again and said, “Oh, there is a female denning on the island. She was just seen at the lip of a cave.”
A muscle twitched above Ingavar’s eye. “Were there young?”
“We have no scent of any.”
Ingavar puffed his chest. “She will be greatly troubled by our presence. If she brings out cubs, they are not to be harmed. Chase her and her young away, if you can.”
“Calm the dogs!” snapped Zanna. “Calm the dogs. You won’t get hurt if you just stand still.”
Tootega said, “Nanuk is all around us. I pray they eat you first.”
“Y’know, for a hunter, you’re such a bore.”
Despite his terror, the Inuk said, “What does this mean, ‘bore’?”
“I rest my case,” Zanna said. “Shoot nothing. Let me do the talking.”
She took off her mittens and flipped back her hood. With one shake of her head, her black hair, still festooned with charms, fell out across the shoulders of her furs.
Ordering the dogs to stop their yapping, she set off toward the nearest bear.
“Ai-yah,” wailed Tootega.
“Shut up,” she said, “or you and that sled go down an icy hole.”
Thirty paces from the bear, she stopped and pointed to the space between them.
The bear looked down, and saw the mark of Oomara burned into the ice.
Instantly, he lay down in front of her. Around the circle every bear did the same.
“I am Zanna,” she said. “Daughter of Gwendolen. Sibyl of the North. Defender of the ice. Like you, I am here to protect the island. OK, that’s the speech. Now, one of you stand
up and take me to Ingavar….”
“Excuse me. Please, don’t growl, but —”
The bear swung around and snorted in surprise.
“Hhh!” went Lucy, jumping to attention with her arms squeezed tightly by her sides. “I’m just hungry and I needed to stretch my legs. And, y’know, use the bathroom?”
The mother bear squinted.
“Ohh,” Lucy wailed, “you’re not him, are you? You don’t understand anything I say?”
The female snorted again and peered back at the open cavemouth. What was this manchild thinking of? There were more males roaming than claws on her feet. If this girl was scented, they might attack.
“Can I look?” said Lucy, cupping her eyes, even though the light outside was little brighter than it was in the cave. She could make out the color yellow, she thought, and remembered the star she’d seen before she slept. She edged forward.
Ruuffe, went the bear, forcing her back.
“Hhh! All right, I’ll stay in the cave. Where’s Gwilanna? You haven’t eaten her, have you? You didn’t have a raven for breakfast once?”
Ruuffe.
Lucy dropped her shoulders. No Gwilanna. That was a worry.
Around and about them, the body of the island rumbled gently. Lucy touched the wall and said hello to Gawain, then drew the isoscele out of her pocket, where she’d placed it for safekeeping while she’d climbed the tunnel. “This is part of him,” she said, and held the piece up for the bear to see. One loose ray of starlight made it glint.
And somewhere in the distance a creature called.
Lucy Pennykettle’s jaw dropped open. “That … that was a dragon,” she said.
The shoulder wound no longer ached, but sitting occasionally made Ingavar stiff. He was standing up, stretching, turning a circle, when he heard the same call that Lucy had picked up from the cave. Far away, he saw a terrible shape in the sky.
A great bird — that was how Thoran had said it would look — was approaching across the expanse of sea ice. He could see its long wings beating in the halflight, whipping it on toward the island. To his left, he heard a bear give an open-throated growl, carrying the warning out to the pack. But why was the bird in open sky and not rising from stone as Thoran had suggested? What was happening here?
With a whoosh that drove an ice cloud into his face, the dragon swept over Ingavar’s head, circled the island, and landed on the very tip of the Tooth.
Grraaaarrkkk! it cried, mantling its wings and jerking its head, up and down, up and down. The ice around Ingavar seemed to respond with a mighty lament, as if it was making a humble petition to be known to the creature or remembered by it. He looked back quickly at the star. Its beam, though short of its highest point, was weaving something out of the darkness.
A tunnel of light was beginning to form.
“Grockle. It’s Grockle,” Zanna gasped.
Tootega sank to his knees. Bears all around. Now demons in the sky. Only death could be at the end of this.
The bears quickly reviewed their orders. Five turned left toward the island, one remained as escort for the travelers.
“Where are they going?” Zanna demanded.
“Take stand,” said the bear in his stilted tongue. “If creature come to the ice, we kill it.”
“By whose orders?”
“Lord Ingavar.”
“What?” Zanna turned on her heels, looking north for any sight of him. “Ingavar wants to kill the dragon?”
The ice bear flexed its claws.
“Something’s wrong here,” Zanna breathed. “Something’s way out of place. Where’s Gwilanna? Have you seen another sibyl, like me?”
The bear shook his head.
“Any men? Inuk with hair like a bear?”
The bear blinked and blew a cloud of vapor. “Walk. I take you to Ingavar.”
Zanna stared into his almond eyes. “No, Nanuk. You obey me now.” She kicked Tootega. “Pass me the binoculars.” Tootega put them into her hands. Turning the sights, she focused on Grockle, watching his talons raking the snow. She dropped the elevation and focused again. “Oh my God,” she gasped.
“What you see?” said Tootega.
A cavemouth, a bear, and a redhaired child.
“Lucy,” said Zanna. “Lucy’s here.”
Ingavar sensed a movement behind him. “Thoran?” he grunted, for the shift in pressure felt like the way a Teller or a spirit bear might approach.
But that which closed on him was not a bear.
The Fain invaded his wounded leg and flowed on up through his shoulder and neck. Roaring, he leaped back the moment he felt it, taking all four paws clean off the ice.
You cannot resist, the Fain said, in thought.
Ingavar backed up, pounding the ice, thrashing his head from side to side until the muscles of his neck were loose and raw.
We are allies, said the Fain. You plan to kill the dragon.
Ingavar roared again and pawed his ear.
You are strong, but you cannot break free of me, bear.
“What are you?” growled Ingavar, looking for water, hoping to see some sign of this being.
I am Fain, it said. And I am tired of this heavy, ponderous world.
And it concentrated half its energy flow into Ingavar’s lower gum. With a grinding twist, it forced out the tooth which Ragnar had lost so long ago. It bounced once between Ingavar’s paws, staining the sea ice red where it fell.
This island was raised by force, said the Fain. You, by force, will lower it again.
And it lifted Ingavar to stand on his hind legs, then brought his full weight down to crush the tooth.
The ice zinged and a running fissure appeared, snaking fast toward the island. At the interface of ice and rock there was a boom. The island shook, torpedoed low down. Snow fell in slabs from its western face. A plangent shock wave traveled out in all directions, causing splits and disruptions in the landfast ice. When Ingavar looked up to see what he had done, the base of the island was spreading apart and the first splinters were showing higher up the cliff face.
The dragon, Gawain, is broken, said the voice. Now we remove the hybrid as well.
Lucy screamed and screamed. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” Another shower of rocks hit the floor of the cave and this time the ground beneath them fractured. For the second time, she was thrown off her feet. There was wetness on her elbow and she knew she was bleeding. Clutching it, she tried to squirm toward the cavemouth, barely visible because of the dust. The island rumbled and she heard a great crack, and the whole world seemed to lurch to one side. Lucy, along with the rest of the debris, found herself piled up against a wall that itself was in danger of tearing apart. “Gawain! Help me!” she cried in dragontongue, but it was the female polar bear who came to her aid.
Frightened by the sudden noise of the explosion, she had lost her footing just outside the cave and tumbled several yards with a torrent of snow. When her slide had stopped, she looked up to see the island breaking apart, losing rocks like a bird shedding feathers.
The girl. She scrabbled back to the cave. Loping inside, she scented Lucy and dragged her out by the folds of her clothing. In the open, she almost lost her to another slide of snow when the clothing ripped and they were separated briefly. But Lucy, clever and aware of the danger, rolled herself into the mother’s flank, then pulled herself onto the ice bear’s back.
“Gawain is waking up,” she panted.
But the truth of it was, Gawain, like the island his body was a part of, was slowly crumbling into the sea.
“Change of plan,” said Zanna, pulling the binoculars away from her eyes and thrusting them into Tootega’s hands. “See that big bear dead ahead?” She pointed in the direction of Ingavar. “Quickly!”
He looked. “Male bear. I see.”
Zanna took the binoculars back. “That’s the one we saved in Chamberlain. He’s attacking my dragon and destroying the island. Something’s gone horribly wrong here, Inuk, and y
ou and I might be the only ones to right it.”
“Where is David? You said David come.”
Zanna tightened her lip. “David’s probably dead,” she said quietly. She pulled the rifle out of the sled. “This time, don’t miss, OK?”
With an anguished cry, Grockle spread his wings. The perch beneath him rumbled and sheared away, then fell clear of his grasping feet. As he hovered, he saw the entire island collapse. First, the basal layers disappearing, spilling waves of water across the ice. Then, as the middle strata came down, the whole substance of the apex crumbled inward, disintegrating into a well of rubble. And there among the falling chunks of stone were legs and wings and lastly an eye. A petrified eye was the last Grockle saw of his father, Gawain, before the surging water took him.
Immediately, he let forth a belt of fire that lit a candle all over the north. A personal aurora to his father’s memory, and a sign to his aggressor that revenge would be sought.
His yellow eye looked at the fissure in the ice and followed it back to where the bear that had created it arrogantly sat. With a whup of his wings, Grockle dipped and joined the end of that watery runway. Ice chunks crashed and pulverized below him as waves, displaced by the island submerging, spread their energy across the ice shelf. He opened his mouth and flamed it all, creating a spectacular channel of fire that the water hadn’t doused by the time he had set the bear alight. He watched it turn from white to black, saw the fur and blubber melt back to the muscle, the muscle burning along with the bone. Its ashes fell into the Arctic Ocean, and where they floated, he flamed them, too.
He came down on an ice floe and cried at the sky, not knowing that the enemy he thought he’d destroyed was now about to turn its attention to him….
Tootega had faced many dangers in the north, but none so strange as this. His sled, his dogs, had all been drowned by the tidal wave flowing out from the island. A wave that would have taken him as well, but for the good fortune of stepping the right way across a cracking floe and not into the fire this monster had created. And now here it was, barely paces distant. The two of them, alone on a raft of ice, floating aimlessly out to sea.
Its nostrils twitched as it turned to him, and he could see in its monstrous yellow eye that it was suffering. He knew how that felt. His life, his beliefs, were as much at sea as this piece of faltering ice. He was tired, and about to be turned to ash if this creature’s killing wasn’t done with yet. That was no way for an Inuk to die. He had the rifle in his hands. He laid it at his feet. What use were bullets now? He turned to the water to be with his dogs.