Fire Star Read Online Free PDF

picked it up and let it fall open. The pages fluttered and came to rest at a relatively simple pattern of stars. G’reth couldn’t help it; he picked up the pencil. He turned the pad left. He turned it right. He looked at its reflection in the windowpane. Then he did something rather odd. He put the pencil onto the pad and began to join the dots in their mirror image. And who knows what force was guiding his paw, but as a shape began to emerge, so G’reth came to have the sudden understanding that the universe wasborn from the very same place that Gadzooks received his inspiration. In other words, the force which created words and matter was one and the same.
    What’s more, as he continued to draw, he realized with some degree of surprise that his work was not done. Before the David had traveled north, he, G’reth, had granted a wish that his master should learn the secret of the fire tear of Gawain, the last true dragon to inhabit the Earth. David had made a great discovery — about the relationship of ice to fire. But it was not the
whole
story, just a fragment of it. G’reth could see that now. For the David to understand the secret in full, he needed to step back further in time and learn where the dragon’s fire had come from. In essence, that was simply answered: Gawain’s fire had originated at the center of the Earth. But where had the Earth itself come from? And how had the fire been born at its center? That was the real mystery.
    Snap!
G’reth gave a startled
hurr
and looked down anxiously at the pad. His concentration had been so deep that the pencil tip had broken beneath the weightof the pressure he’d applied to it. Yet to his surprise, the joined up star dots had formed a message. Not much of a message, it had to be said. But an interesting one. Just a single letter:
    G

7 A T THE W ATER’S E DGE
     
    L ights. Not high in the sky, but lower down, twinkling on the far horizon. Thoran slowed to a halt and tipped his glistening nose toward them. “That is the dump town, the place that men call Chamberlain,” he said.
    Ingavar drew up close alongside, testing the strength of the ice underfoot. Since dawn, their pursuit of the pulsing yellow star — which Thoran claimed he could sense in daylight — had been hampered by stretches of open water, steadily increasing in number and size. Several times they had had to change course, so that Ingavar would not need to swim between floes. Now, even that was not an option. The ice was fragile here. With one stout lunge this loose foundation wouldsplinter and crack and they would sink to their necks in ice-cold water. Ingavar’s shoulder could not take that.
    “What do we do?” he asked, his voice tarred deep with pain and frustration.
    “We wait for the sea to sleep,” said Thoran.
    Ingavar pushed his face into the wind. It was bitterly cold, so cold that his snorts of vaporizing breath were turning to frost as they blew back against his thinning snout. The description of the forthcoming freeze amused him, but the sight of so much water did not. All he could see between himself and the lights that marked the edge of the land were several miles of undulating peaks, dotted with chunks of unfused ice. “It might be days,” he said, thumping the surface again to be sure.
    “Then why waste your energy pushing and prodding like an ignorant cub? Everything has its time, Nanuk. The stars travel slowly. So will we.”
    Stars. To the amber eye of the ordinary bear they were hidden in the reddening dusk of nightfall and the knotted clouds lying dormant overhead. Almost a day had passed since Thoran had spoken of following a“sign.” Ingavar had spent a large portion of that time walking alone and pondering this. Was it simply coincidence that he should be seeking out the tooth of Ragnar when there was a new star above the dump town? No, not a new star, a
returning star,
if the old Teller was to be believed. Ingavar growled and blew away a sigh. He scraped the