Buried Fire (21 page)

Now Stephen entered Michael's mind again, stronger than before. The dragon's strength had surged in part to him. His voice carried above the gale of energy, pleading with him, but it was a hopeless plea, without any belief or fervour. Michael saw Stephen among the rocks now, a misshapen soul, in which the dragon was sullied by the stubborn nag. Michael approached him through the air and came down to land beside him. 'I told you it would be worth it. Even you are stronger now.'

'Michael, your face—'

'You're not still fretting! Look at us! The world ends all around us, and here we are still arguing! Everything has changed. It isn't Cleever any more. It's me – and maybe Joseph, if he lives. Well, I know you understand this; I felt you give up just then.'

'I just haven't got anything to say.'

'Your trouble, Stephen, is you're not one thing or the other.'

Then Michael caught in Stephen's mind a fleeting pang of hope and fear. He saw through his eyes an image; a man running over burning ground, carrying a spear. For a moment the dislocation confused him, then he understood, and turned, in time to see the jewelled deer-soul moving fast across the hollow towards the rupture in the earth. Although with his sight he found the spear was invisible to him, he knew it must be there. He started forward, but at that moment, his brother's weight fell on him from behind, and he was borne down under a hail of blows.

As Tom ran he felt his feet blistering from the heat through the soles of his shoes. He passed Paul Comfrey, who had risen and was looking about him in leaderless confusion. On his right, Geoffrey Pilate was also stirring. For a moment, Tom was tempted to deal with him before he recovered, but his priority was clear. The edge of the Pit was charred black; it shook, and lumps fell away into the void. Tom approached, holding the spear steady in both hands. The expectation of his own death hung heavily on him, weighing down every step. He hoped against hope that Sarah would have had the sense to get away, but he knew in his heart that she was still close by. Smoke billowed from the Pit. A hissing noise sounded above the rumbling which came from just beneath the lip.

Tom crouched close beside the hole, just beyond the reach of the flickering heat. The spear was curiously cold in his grasp, and its rusty head showed black against the fire.

Then a pale thing rose at the heart of the flames, oval in shape and swaying, a dull white sheen surrounded by blue fire. A poison plume of sulphur belched forth with it, blinding Tom for a moment and wracking his lungs. There was a high-pitched screaming which deafened him. His grip on the spear weakened, then grew tight again, and he tried to focus on the distance between him and the slender shape which still swayed sightlessly before him.

A scream of hate from above. Down from the smoke came an unknown youth with jet black hair and eyes of fire, naked except for the charred remnants of an orange garment around his shoulders. His thin lips were set in a smile of madness. He gestured – and Tom was afire.

Beside Joseph Hardraker, the dragon's head thrashed back and forth with spasmodic fury as it struggled to free its body from the earth. One great white claw lunged in the smoke and smote the ground. Cracks ran outwards across the breadth of the Wirrinlow.

Sarah stood on the ridge surveying the chaos below her, consumed by indecision. Terror told her to run – run and not look back until her sanity was restored. Yet, even in her fear and amid the confusion of smoke and flames, which belched forth from holes and craters across the hollow, she could pick out three people with crystal clarity.

Her brothers, rolling in the ashes, punching and tearing at each other like dogs. Tom crouching by the Pit, a silhouette against the flames. Then he was on fire, and something erupted in Sarah unlike any anger she had ever known. A madness had consumed her family, and everything she held dear was being destroyed. Enough. It would not continue. Propelled by her fury she was halfway back across the Pit before she quite knew what she was doing.

Outside St Wyndham's church, the people watched the smoke rise from the Wirrim. They were entirely silent now, except for desultory moans whenever a new flare showed against the darkening sky. Only Mrs Gabriel, orchestrating her helpers with terse commands, ignored the spectacle.

"We shall use the main door. Is it open?"

"I'll see." Joe Vernon ran across. "Yes."

"Quickly then, pick it up. Carefully! We mustn't chip it. Are you ready, Lew? Right. As fast as you can. Keith, you hold the door. Now one at a time – you first Joe. Mind your backside."

As they entered the church, a muffled explosion sounded from high up on the hill. The nave was lit with freckles of colour from the windows. Silently, with only puffs and wheezes from the men, they passed along the aisle to the vestry, where the curtain was already drawn back. The Fordrace Cross lay there on its trolley, its broken face towards them. Mrs Gabriel surveyed first it and then the single arm with a decisive eye.

"Can you hurry, please?" Lew Potter begged. "My arm's killing me."

"It looks all right," said Mrs Gabriel, ignoring him. "It is a clean break, thank the Lord. And positioned in the centre of the trolley. Right. Lower it down then – no, Joe, move around, can't you see you've got the top bit? That's it. Gently. As near flush as you can. Fingers out? Good. Now Joe, push it into place. Give him a hand, William. Well done."

"Christ Almighty! What was that?" cried Joe. With drained faces the men looked at one another, and then as one they ran back down the nave, leaving Mrs Gabriel alone by the united cross. Without haste, she sat herself down on a nearby chair in the vestry, and pressing her lips together, began her vigil.

The worm had not yet freed itself fully when the stone bond was renewed. As it felt the pressure return, a red line, studded with spikes, opened in its head and let forth a scream of rage which broke against the sky and rebounded across the Wirrim's slopes as far as Stanbridge and back again. Its newly waxing strength was weakened, but it had its response ready. Quickly, it drew on the reserves of its nearby cohorts to win free of the ground. Everyone, from the numinous Hardraker hovering in the air, to Stephen, who lay unconscious beneath his brother's furious onslaught, had their power sucked from them.

The fire that spun about Tom's body was snuffed out, as Hardraker's will was distracted. At that moment, Sarah appeared beside him.

"Tom!"

She rolled him over. He was still breathing, but his hair had gone, and his face was wealed. The fingers of his right hand still clenched the spear.

Michael got up, his head reeling. The dragon was almost out of the ground. The long neck merged into the slender body, dull white like maggot's flesh. A sudden nausea came over him as he looked at it, in sudden knowledge of its alien nature and the malign will that had kept it alive and waiting for untold centuries out of the sun. He knew, in that instant, how cursed they all were – he, Cleever, and even Hardraker, to think that with their petty powers they could hold themselves up before the worm and expect its thanks. He felt it draw on his strength even as he stood there, and the hopelessness of the situation gouged his heart.

Then Michael, with a sudden painful return to his human sight, saw his sister, kneeling by the prone body of – who? He didn't know. She was wresting something from his grasp. Mr Cleever, his energy exhausted, eyes bulging, mouth agape at the horror issuing from the earth, was nevertheless moving round behind them. Even with his power weakened, Michael sensed his cold intent. And he had a knife in his hands.

"The spear—" Tom's lips moving.

"I'll take it. Loosen your fingers. Come on – loosen them!"

The spear was light in her hand. Miraculously, the heat had left the oak shaft quite untouched, but the rusted head seemed forged anew. The rust had vanished, and in the dragon-light it gleamed. Sarah looked towards the dragon.

Only the back haunches were still left in the pit. The tip of the tail raked against the edge. As Sarah stood there, watching the head swaying this way and that, she realised that the dragon was blind.

Then Michael passed her at a run, and Mr Cleever, who had stood behind her with his flint knife drawn, was knocked sideways to the lip of the Pit. The knife fell from his fist and vanished into the void.

Now the youth with raven hair who flew beside the dragon caught sight of her with a terrible cry. Instantly, the blind head turned in her direction and swept downwards, the mouth opening impossibly wide. A hundred stiletto teeth cut the air. Sarah raised her arm to protect herself, and the iron spear, which now shone brighter than the flames beyond, was thrust into the blood red mouth and down into the throat.

At this moment, many things happened.

Sarah felt the spear whipped from her hands and up into the air. A blaze of heat drove her backwards with her hands over her eyes, and she collapsed alongside Tom.

The dragon tried to scream in rage, but it could not. The spear was stuck fast in its broiling throat, and the iron was melting, pouring down its gullet faster and faster, until the space was clogged. It thrashed its body back and forth in its pain, and its tail, still trapped below, broke the earth around it.

Mr Cleever, lying on the edge of the Pit, found the ground shifting. He tried to rise, but a whole section of the lip gave way and he was precipitated bodily into the flames.

Michael, a few feet further back, leapt for safety as the earth collapsed about him. He landed beyond the lashings of the tail and rolled among the stones. As he did so, he felt the entirety of the dragon's gifts snatched from him with the speed and absolute implacability of a death.

The youth in the air gave a despairing scream. He dropped from the sky, shrivelling as he went, ageing, cracking, shrinking with phenomenal swiftness, until, as he disappeared into the inferno of the Pit, he was once more old Mr Hardraker, a broken puppet, a dragon's plaything.

From their various places in the hollow, where they had wandered in the madness of their powers' rise and fall, Vanessa Sawcroft, Geoffrey Pilate and Paul Comfrey experienced the sudden loss of the thing that had moulded their souls over years of bondage. Only Paul Comfrey, whose mind was not entirely shrouded by the dragon's gifts, escaped insanity.

A mile away, and hundreds of feet below, the Hardraker farmstead collapsed in upon itself, wall upon wall, roof upon brick. Visitors the next day found not one outhouse standing.

The dragon's head and legs beat against the ground, but it was already dead. As the last vestige of life faded, it fell back into the pit, bringing vast slabs and chunks of earth down with it. One single jet of fire, which was seen for miles in all directions, erupted in its wake, but the crack had closed beneath it even as the gobbets of yellow-orange flame were completing their final fizzling arc over the Wirrim.

When Stephen woke, he found the Wirrinlow had changed. A great mound of black-streaked earth rose up in the centre of it, half as high as the slopes at its side. All the grass was gone; the earth was churned and broken, and bodies were scattered here and there. Those of the Fordrace grocer and librarian were deathly still, but Paul Comfrey was twitching and groaning. Slightly to one side of the mound, Michael sat, hunched over, staring into space. Close by, Sarah was cradling Tom's head in her lap and refusing to allow him to rise.

Almost unconsciously, Stephen tried calling to Michael with the Fourth Gift, but with a shock he found his voice echoing back ridiculously in his own head. He tried using the sight, but discovered he was merely squinting. Where the gifts had lodged, there was now nothing but a hollowness in his head; a faint impression of something that had floated out of reach and been forgotten. There was no doubt about it: the powers had gone.

He looked at his brother again. Michael was squinting too, frowning, and shaking his head in puzzlement. Stephen sighed. What on earth would he be thinking now? What could he ever say to him?

Then he caught Sarah's eye. She was stroking Tom's forehead, and talking to him, but as she did so she looked up and saw Stephen and smiled. Stephen smiled back. He got up painfully, and began to walk towards his brother and sister across the ruined ground. Hot ash crunched beneath his feet, and the first stars were visible in the sky.

In the church of St Wyndham, in the darkening vestry, Mrs Gabriel was awakened from her sleep of exhaustion by a great rustling cascade, like a lorry-load of gravel being emptied right beside her. She sat in the twilight blinking vainly for a moment, then got up and felt along the wall for a switch.

After a minute's fumbling she found it: the bright orange light illuminated a huge pile of stone-grey sand, which spread out in all directions from the buried trolley, and almost entirely covered the vestry floor.