Last Dragon Chronicles 04 The Fire Eternal by Chris d'Lacey

Author:Chris d'Lacey [d'Lacey, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2011-08-01T04:00:00+00:00

21

IN THE DAYS OF THE PREMEN

Let’s begin,” said Ingavar, in a bear’s voice, “by reviewing what happened to you, sibyl. You were incarcerated, alive, in a block of ice. Your auma was put into perpetual stasis. Why don’t you tell Avrel how that came about?”

“I don’t parley with bears,” she squawked.

With a growl that made her feet vibrate, Ingavar said, “If I were you, I’d keep your insults down. Unless you want Kailar over here again?”

The fighting bear was eyeing them suspiciously.

“Animal,” Gwilanna caarked quietly at him.

He squinted back at her with murder in his eyes, and she was grateful when the wind seemed to take her side and draw its cold, icy curtain between them. Shuddering, she looked away to her left, where Avrel was padding along, nudging closer. “Your Teller is eavesdropping anyway — as usual.”

“Everything you say, you say to both of us,” said Ingavar. “Tell him a story, sibyl. He’s eager to learn. Tell him what you saw on the day you were imprisoned.”

“I saw the Tooth of Ragnar come down,” she said, and for the first time there was sorrow in her croaking voice. “A whole island, the last resting place of Gawain, destroyed. The dragon was broken, sent to the ocean bed in lumps of stone. And I could do nothing but watch from that ice block.”

“How were you put there?” Avrel asked.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Gwilanna said meanly.

“Try him,” said Ingavar, glancing at his Teller with the same intensity he had used when refusing to answer the raven’s questions a few days earlier. Avrel saw the blue eye shimmer like a star and felt as if his mind had widened slightly.

Gwilanna grizzled and cocked her wings. Then, in a voice so patronizing that even Avrel was tempted to swipe off her head, she said, “Oh, very well. I was attacked by a life form called the Fain. It took away my powers and fused me with the ice. There, Teller, what do you make of that?”

Avrel narrowed his gaze.

“See!” the raven taunted him. “He hasn’t got a clue. Why don’t you run away and build a den, furball? This is way out of your —”

“Lorel knew them,” Avrel muttered.

“What?” Gwilanna snorted, suddenly thrown.

“He encountered them, the Fain. But the memory isn’t clear.”

“That’s impossible!” Gwilanna almost hooted. “The Fain wouldn’t trouble themselves with ice-shovelers like you.”

As if to call a truce, the wind swept down in a shallow, hard-edged front from the north. Avrel bowed his head and swerved away a little. On Ingavar’s back, Gwilanna flapped giddily to keep herself upright.

“You’re wrong,” Ingavar told her bluntly. “Avrel’s ancestor, Lorel, was the first of the Tellers, whose ability to remember was inherited from the Fain. It wasn’t just humans the Fain explored, Gwilanna. They entered all organic life.”

Avrel twitched his ears and felt unusually cold. He gave his supple, round shoulders a shake. “Entered? What are these creatures?”

Ingavar raised his snout to the wind. As he breathed in, he seemed to calm the air around him.

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