Heather Fawcett - Ember and the Ice Dragon

For all the girl scientists,

whether human or dragon

Contents

L ionel St. George, aspiring Magician and Stormancer, was fed up.

For two days, he had been traveling through peat bog and prickly moorland. His exhausted horse had started to stumble, so Lionel had left it to wander its way back home at the edge of Muckross Fen, a particularly wild and desolate corner of Wales. Muckross Fen was exactly what you would expect from a place of that namesmelly; filthy; the air sharp with biting midges. There was also no sign of the magical storm, the sole reason he had come to the forsaken spot in the first place.

Lioneljust turned eighteen, with swirls of yellowish hair tumbling over his forehead and a series of pimples spread across his cheeks like indecisive punctuation marksset his lightning bucket down in the heather and sat on it. He was tired, his feet were soaked, and it was a long hike back to the ramshackle tavern that his map optimistically labeled a village.

The sky began to drizzle. The storm he had been chasing through the Gwynedd Mountains had vanished.

Lionel decided he would hike to the nearest peak to survey the area before admitting defeat. And rather than trying to pick a path around the enormous fen, he simply plunged himself, clothes and all, into the murky water.

Green mountains loomed over him, clouds clustered at their peaks like frowning eyebrows. Lionel shook his storm compass, a small wooden box containing a moonstone and a single feather. How could the storm have dissipated so quickly?

Not all storms were sources of magic, but some werethat was why Stormancers chased them. If he had caught up to one that size, he could have drawn enough power from it to cast a dozen spellsor, perhaps, one very large spell.

Lionels supply of magic was too low for the spell he wished to casta spell that, if it succeeded, would be the talk of the country, and surely that would be enough to change the minds of the professors who had rejected his application to Londons Chesterfield University of Science and Magic.

He had scored highly on the written exam, but the practical test hadnt quite come off. He had cast an excellent firelighting spellif only he had stopped there! But, wanting to impress the grim-faced professors, Lionel had shaped the fire into a giant floating orb. Unfortunately, a bee had chosen that moment to land on his shoulder, and Lionelterrified of all insectshad lost his concentration in a spectacular fashion. By the time the fire had been put out, the professors were clothed in burned rags, and one had lost her eyebrows.

Lionel shuddered as a leech burrowed into his calf. The wind whispered past his ear. Wind had a language, like anything else, though no human could speak itnot even Lionel, who spoke to storms. But he thought he detected an undercurrent of anger.

Lionel hauled himself out of the muck on the opposite bank. He had lost a shoe somewhere, he noted absently, not particularly troubled. Lionel was rarely troubled by anything, not for lack of troubles (he had plenty), but because his thoughts were usually elsewhere. He wandered up the hill, heather prickling his bare foot and the leech gnawing away contentedly, its presence already forgotten. Then he stopped.

On the other side of the hill was a dead dragon.

Lionels breath froze. Like most people, he had never seen a dragon, though the Natural History Museum had some remarkable skeletonsthey were perhaps twice the size of a horse, with thinner, serpentine frames. Someonehunters, no doubthad removed the creatures scales, every last one. What remained was red and raw.

Though it was a dragon, a monster, Lionel felt a stab of sorrow. The sight of the fearsome creature sprawled awkwardly in the mud and stripped of its glorious scales felt wrong.

He found the second dragonthey usually lived in pairsover the next rise. As he gazed at it, a tear opened in the clouds, and sunlight poured through. It tangled in the muddy grass, where something sparked. Lionel drew the object from the mud, brushing it clean with trembling fingertips.

It was a heartscale .

His mouth fell open. Everyone knew that the heartscale was the most important part of a dragon. An arrow through the heartscale, located at the back of the neck, would kill instantly. Most hunters preferred to avoid this, however, for the heartscale was exceptionally valuable. Half the size of Lionels palm, it glittered with a color richer than rubies, deeper than amber, and threaded with veins like fired gold. The hunters wouldnt have left it behind knowinglysomeone must have dropped it.

Pocketing the heartscale, Lionel stood, shivering in his wet clothes. This far north, the wind was woven with frost even at midsummer. He heard a faint sound.

Lionel brushed aside a clump of gorse. A baby dragon stared back at him.

He started back with an undignified yelp. The dragon blinked rapidly, but it showed no sign of fear. Its gaze was calm and unsettling, neither human nor animal, but simply dragon . It lay on its side, barely breathing, still half in its shell.

All right there, Lionel found himself murmuring, once hed regained command of his voice. It clearly wasnt all rightthe creature looked to have hatched within a day or two, perhaps just after its parents were killed. Now it was exhausted and likely starving. He removed the remnants of the shell, and the dragon stretched, though it made no move to get up.

Lionel worried his lip between his teeth. He couldnt simply leave the creature, though it was a beast that, fully grown, would think nothing of tearing him limb from limb. The best course, then, was to put it out of its misery.

The dragon made a faint sound in its throat. It was about the size and shape of a hairless cat, all sinuous lines, with scales the rich orange of molten lava. Lionel could have bought half of Chesterfield University with the profit from those scales, though the thought never occurred to him. He would bury the creature, scales and all, next to its mother.

At that moment, thunder exploded in the sky, and the clouds broke open like cracked eggs.

Lionel was instantly drenched. A small river ran past the dragons snout, and it sneezed. Hesitantly at first, then eagerly, it began to drink.

The dragon wasnt as close to death as hed thoughtas it drank, its eyes lost their filmy quality. It fumbled around in the mud, as if to stand, and immediately fell over. It turned to Lionel and let out a surprisingly loud mewl, as if the entire situation was his fault.

Well, that settled it.

The young Magician stripped off his cloak and swaddled the dragon with it. The beast gave a satisfied snort and lay quiet in his arms, absorbing the heat from his chest. Lionel tried not to think about its proximity to his throat, but the dragon showed no interest in devouring him. It closed its eyes and slept.

After snatching up his knapsack and the lightning bucket from the muddy bank, Lionel hiked back in the direction he had come. He was covered in filth, and his clothes were so wet they made a strange slop-swish-slop sound as he moved, as if he were some mythic creature risen from the bog. He attempted to arrange his cloak around the dragon so that it would have the appearance of a human baby. A Magician wandering off into the moors and returning with an infant was certainly strange, but it was within the realm of eccentric Magician behavior, while dragons were not. Unfortunately, the creatures tail kept slipping free, ruining the disguise.

Lionels thoughts churned. What was he to do with a dragon? He could feed it and restore it to health, but what then? He couldnt offer it to another dragon to raiseeven if such a thing were possible, there were few fire dragons left. Only a handful remained here in Wales. The newborn could well be the last of its kind.