The Book of Fire Read online

  Sedou shook his head. “This knowledge requires a four-way understanding. No one of us is sufficient unto herself.”

  “And what of Lord Fire? Do you know his whereabouts?”

  Sedou paused, and Erde strained to pick up the brief dragon-to-dragon conference, too fast for her human senses. “We have hints. Worst of all, we . . . that is, some of us suspect him of working against us.”

  Hal frowned, made a small sound of protest.

  “Hear me out, Sir Knight.”

  At this point, the tale caught even Baron Köthen’s attention. His bowed head, bronzed with firelight, lifted and turned ever so slightly in their direction. Erde watched his listening profile and thought she’d never seen anything more beautiful. Except, of course, the dragon Earth. She had not included her dreams in the telling, though the dragon encouraged her to. She could not bear to put the baron through that, to make him relive his humiliation in front of all these eager listeners. So she sat silently and let Sedou unwind the story of their time in Lealé’s mansion, of the fighting in the city outside, and Kenzo Baraga’s treachery. There was little she could add. The dragons knew better how those final bloody minutes had fallen out. N’Doch listened silently as well, curling and uncurling his fists as if amazed to find them on his wrists and still working.

  A long silence followed Sedou’s finish, broken only by the snap of flames in the grate.

  Then Hal said to Rose, “He was dead when he came to you? Truly?”

  Rose tilted her chin at Linden, several places down the table. Linden nodded. All eyes turned to N’Doch, who grinned uncomfortably, though he usually loved an audience.

  “Wonderful,” murmured Hal. “Wonderful.”

  Captain Wender shook his head. He poured himself a half-mug of ale, then only sipped at it gingerly, as if working to keep himself from draining it in a single gulp. “You could find yourself an honored place at any hearth in the land with a tale like that.”

  “Those that are left standing,” added Hal with a hollow chuckle. “But now, what of the task ahead?”

  Sedou sat back. “Our journey has just begun, Sir Knight. Now that our company is rested and recovered, we must be on our way to find our brother Fire, and quickly, for it seems that only he can lead us to our sister Air.”

  “Told ya,” N’Doch murmured.

  Erde looked at him sidelong. Earth had also said as much when she’d gone to him for comfort in the barn. The urge that drove these dragons was their sole reason for existence. It could be put aside no longer. Their time of peace and safety was at an end.

  “We are correct to understand that the dragon Fire is implicated in this treachery?”

  Erde had to glance down the table to assure herself that it was indeed Baron Köthen who had spoken. He was toying with his empty wine cup and meeting no one’s eyes. It was as if he’d spoken to himself. Then he looked up at Hal. “He sounds like the sort of dragon you always swore was a slanderous myth invented by fearful churchmen, my knight.”

  “I’m sure we’ve misunderstood about Lord Fire,” Hal began.

  “Not at all.” Sedou turned to Köthen, a long look down the table, as if noticing him for the first time. “You are right, my lord baron, though there is some difference of opinion about this within our ranks. My brother Earth wishes me to note that he is not yet convinced of Fire’s betrayal.”

  “Betrayal? Impossible!” cried Hal. “A misunderstanding, surely! Dragons are all that is good and noble in God’s creation!”

  Erde recalled her own shock and disbelief when Lady Water first suggested that Fire might be out to destroy them. N’Doch murmured something filthy and cynical that she refused to translate, and Sedou laughed, a bass rumble felt in the back of the throat, a laugh no true human could have produced. “Would that were true, Sir Knight.”

  Köthen filled his wine cup and drained it. “You do persist, Heinrich, in believing in what other men have given up on long ago.”

  “Oh, really?” Hal retorted. “I believed in dragons, and lo . . .” Sedou restrained him with a big hand on his arm.

  In the pause, Köthen looked up, found the dark man watching him, and looked away. The wine cup made several revolutions in his restless hands. Finally, he asked, “And how do you expect to locate this paragon of evil?”

  “There is a way we travel, a kind of translation through time and space that is enabled by the identity of place. And so, with my brother Fire: we have an image in mind of where he is, or in N’Doch’s mind actually, as it’s he who received it. We won’t know where it really is until we get there. But he will be there. I am sure of it.”

  Köthen stared at him. Erde could see he had not expected so direct and technical an answer. “You can go anywhere you like?”

  “If we can see it clearly, we can go there.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “No time at all, my lord baron. The travel is instantaneous.”

  “Magic,” Wender muttered, and crossed himself covertly.

  Köthen’s eyes flicked to Hal. “You’ve traveled like this?”

  “I have, yes.”

  “Let me guess: from Erfurt.”

  “And to Erfurt. How did you think I got in without you knowing in the first place? You had that town guarded like the king’s own storehouse.”

  Köthen looked back to Sedou. Some part of this had snagged his interest. “And so, you’ll just go?”

  Sedou nodded. Köthen let out a breath. Erde saw a bright, quick moment pass between them, man and dragon, an exchange: the envy in Köthen’s eyes for the challenge in Sedou’s.

  But Köthen turned away and refilled his wine cup to the brim. “Well, Heinrich, as usual you’re right. I’ve been a fool all these years. A fool to believe in the nobility and strivings of mere men. What’s the point? Let’s stop this war right now. We’ll just let these dragons rule the kingdom. How do you think Fra Guill would feel about that?” He drained the cup and reached again for the jug.

  “Dragons do not meddle in the affairs of men, my lord baron,” Sedou said quietly.

  Köthen laughed bitterly. “They seem to have meddled in mine fairly thoroughly.”

  Oddly, Sedou smiled. “That is your fault for being at the center of things.”

  The baron eyed him suspiciously.

  “When there is something larger at stake, we will do what we must.”

  “Since men live in the world, Dolph,” said Rose, as if waking from a deep reverie, “they will be threatened when it is threatened.”

  “The world?” Köthen scoffed. “My lady Rose, I’d never have suspected you of apocalyptic thinking.”

  Sedou said, “Were it not the case, I’d still be peacefully sleeping in the ocean depths, and my brother Earth beneath the mountains of Tor Alte. Do you think, my lord baron, that dragons are awakened for no purpose?”

  Köthen merely stared at him.

  You’re asking too much, Erde thought. Too much for him to absorb in the turn of one day. Too much to believe. For this man understands the consequences of belief. Good Captain Wender, in the corner, can just shake his head in wonder and then accept that there are indeed dragons in the world, just as his grandmama always said there were. But this man cannot just accept. He has an inkling of how profoundly all his definitions of the world will change, and he’s not ready for that. No more than I was, she mused, when N’Doch tried to explain his world to me.

  And indeed, Köthen poured himself more wine yet again, then stood and shoved back his chair. He swayed, steadied himself with a brace of fingers to the tabletop. “We’re fools to listen to all this.” He shoved back from the table and strode across the room to stare out of the window into snow and darkness.

  “He’ll come around,” Hal murmured.

  No, he won’t, Erde thought, though she loved Sir Hal for his steadfast belief in this man whom he’d raised and trained and who had eventually betrayed him. But Adolphus of Köthen wouldn’t simply “come around.” It would take somethin
g drastic. But, oh, she thought rapturously, if that thing should happen, what a boon to have his skills and intelligence turned to our problem.

  With Köthen gone from the table, Hal turned his attention back to Sedou, with the next in his scholar’s lifetime list of questions he’d always wanted to ask a dragon. Erde could see he was overjoyed to have one he could speak to directly, and since this one was likely to leave soon, Hal wasn’t going to waste any more precious time on his wayward ex-squire than was absolutely necessary. Erde hoped Sedou would be patient with him.

  The women of the household began to drift off to bed. Beside her, N’Doch stirred. He’d been very quiet for a long time, she’d noticed. How very unlike him.

  “So. Looks like we’re outa here.”

  She nodded. The rising tide of dragon urgency was growing irresistible, as if the telling of the tale had completed some necessary ritual, and there was no reason left to linger. Time to be about their business. “When, do you think?”

  “Soon.”

  “Are you ready? I mean, are you truly healed, N’Doch?”

  He smiled at her, one of the things Erde had to admit he did best. Like Sedou, and even their grandfather, Master Djawara. This family had a smile that could light up the darkest corners of a room. But she thought that this particular smile was rather overstretched with bravado.

  “Does it matter?” he asked.

  “Of course it does.”

  “Not to them.”

  She knew he meant the dragons. “Oh, N’Doch, not true, not true.”

  He shrugged. “Well, anyway, I’m fine. I’m better than ever, and as ready as I’ll ever be. How ’bout you?”

  She felt very close to him right then. Her own rush of fellowship surprised her. For all his ignorance of the lore, there was so much that only he knew, only he understood—with her—about this business of belonging to dragons.

  “You had all those brothers, N’Doch. Did . . . do you have any sisters?”

  “Nah.”

  “Well, you have one now.” She laid her pale hand beside his dark one. “We are like night and day, you see? Each one a half. Together we form the whole.”

  This time, his smile was genuine.

  She woke in her upstairs room in the darkened farmhouse from a dream she could not remember, and for that, she was grateful. She listened, first inside her head, in case it was the dragon sending a dream-image to wake her for some emergency. But the part of her consciousness that the dragon normally occupied was empty and still. He must be out hunting, a final meal before their impending departure. Then she heard a noise down below. Her little room was near the staircase, and sound floated freely upward. Someone was moving around in the lower room.

  Erde got up quietly, more curious than afraid. The women of Deep Moor did not roam their halls at night unless something was the matter. The room was freezing. The fire in the tiny grate had burned out long ago. She pulled her prentice boy’s linen shirt over her shift and hauled on her woolen leggings. For silence, she kept her feet bare. In the other narrow bed, the twins remained wrapped in the quiet sleep of the guiltless.

  She slipped into the corridor and down the stair, stopping at each landing to listen. Whoever it was did not care if he or she was detected. She turned onto the final run of stairs. From there, she had a view of the front part of the great room and the fireplace.

  Captain Wender had stretched himself out in front of the dying coals, smothered in the thick quilts that the women had brought him. The unaccustomed warmth and wine and good company had clearly been too much for this valiant man-at-arms. He was fast asleep. A glimmer drew Erde’s attention away from him.

  At the far end of the table, away from the fire, sat Adolphus of Köthen. Several wine cups and more than one stout jug were stationed beside his elbow, but he was not drinking now. He was staring at the gleaming blade of a dagger, turning it restlessly in his hands as he had done with his empty cup earlier. Wender’s dagger, no doubt surreptitiously lifted. He studied it as if it might speak to him, and then he did something that sent Erde’s heart pounding into her throat.

  He set the dagger to the inside of his left wrist, made a fist, then pensively traced the raised blue lines of his veins with the blade’s keen point. Erde was down the stairs and confronting him across the table before she’d even thought about what she was doing.

  “Oh, no, my lord, never!”

  His eyes flicked up at her, startled. Erde drew back. She hadn’t recalled there being so much darkness in them.

  “Why the hell not?”

  He said it so bleakly, she could not immediately reply. There was little trace of the rage he’d first greeted her with in the barn. He was drunk for sure, but in that state beyond mere loss of sobriety, where clarity returns with a focus as sharp as a lance. Erde saw the signs. She knew them all from dealing with her father, who drank hoping to forget but only ended up remembering more than he ever did when he was sober.

  “Please, my lord . . . you’ve had too much,” she said inanely, because she had to say something.

  “Clever girl.”

  “I mean, one should never heed a decision made under the drink’s influence.”

  Köthen laughed softly. “You mean, I might live to regret it? No, my lady Erde, my hand is steady, drunk or sober.” He dragged the dagger back along his wrist, then shifted his grip and pulled, letting the edge bite. Blood flowed along the path of the slice.

  “NO!” Erde threw herself against the table, flinging her arms across to snatch at the blade and pull it away from his skin. Köthen jerked the blade from her grasp, then swore and tossed it aside to grab her hands and peel them open. Blood welled up in her own palms. The rush of it frightened her.

  “Make fists and hold them,” he ordered tartly. Suddenly, he sounded cold sober. In the next instant, he was on his feet and rummaging through one of the satchels the twins had brought in from the packhorse. All he could find was the same length of soft red cloth that had bound his wrists on the way into the farmstead. “A better use for it anyway,” he muttered, tearing it cleanly in half with his teeth. He came back to the table and wound a strip tightly around each of her bleeding palms. “Surface wounds. They won’t scar.”

  As if she cared. Already, he’d forgotten his own wound, a thin red line become mostly an ugly smear on his wrist, drying up already. Hardly a wound at all. He had been playing with her. When he was done wrapping, he slumped back against his chair and fixed her with that too-dark stare.

  “You seem, my lady, to have a compulsion to keep me alive, even when it is not in my own best interests. Do I dare ask why?”

  Her heart was too full to even speak.

  He tilted his head speculatively. “Perhaps you have some witchy purpose for me? There’s been a great deal of talk about purpose this evening, and as I seem to have lost mine . . .”

  “My lord baron, I am not a witch.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “A girl. I’m just a girl.”

  “Who talks to dragons and travels to times that haven’t happened yet and whispers in a man’s ear at night when he’s about to make a fateful decision. Just a girl?”

  To Erde’s surprise, he let her reach for the dragger and draw it away from him into her own hands. She folded her wrapped palms over the blade. “Very well, then. I am a dragon guide.”

  He settled back a bit more. “Go on.”

  “That is no witchery. It is a silent, holy duty passed down through countless generations of blood from the earliest times, so that one would always be ready, should the need arise.”

  “The need?”

  “The waking of the dragons, which is the dire sign. The actual need we have yet to determine.” She dared to look up at him, to meet his steady, noncommittal gaze. “May I show you something?” He merely shrugged, but she reached beneath her mismatched layers of linen for the treasure she always kept pinned next to her skin. She undid the clasp and laid the brooch before him on her red-wrapped pa
lm. “See? My grandmother’s, and hers before that.”

  Köthen leaned forward, squinting in the dim firelight, then reached for it. “If I may . . .?”

  She held it out. He took it and rose, carrying it to the hearth to peer at the ancient blood-red jewel with its delicate incised carving of a dragon rampant. “It has wings,” he murmured.

  “Yes, I know. I think it doesn’t stand for my dragon, but rather for the essence of dragon.”

  “Or for what men think of dragons. It’s old, but not that old. Probably it was made as a reminder, a key to ancient memories.”

  She smiled at him, though he wasn’t looking at her. This was the closest thing they’d yet had to a conversation. “My lord baron, I do believe that some of Sir Hal’s dragon study has rubbed off on you after all.” And then she could not believe she’d spoken to him so boldly.

  But he only snorted, turning the jewel in his hands with the same intensity as he had the dagger. “He fed it to me with my morning porridge. How could I help it?”

  “And yet you chose not to believe?”

  “I chose not to, yes.”

  “And now . . .?”

  “Well, clearly I was wrong, as I have been about so many things of late.”

  “No, my lord . . .”

  “Yes.” He came back to the table and placed the dragon brooch deliberately in the center of her cushioned palm, then sat down and faced her directly. “How is it that you could speak to me in that clearing? That the priest could sense your presence? If not witchery, by some dragon magic, is it?”

  “I don’t know, my lord. I had . . . dreams . . . several dreams, in which I saw you as clearly as I do now, in your camp on the battlefield, with my father, with Captain Wender and then with the . . .”

  Köthen hissed, rose, and paced away. “Curse the day I made that unholy alliance. Greedy, too greedy, Adolphus!”

  “Fra Guill has deep powers of his own, my lord. See how easily he cozened my father . . .”

  “Your father is a drunken sot!” At the edge of the shadows, he stared up into the darkness of the stairwell. “Have you any notion what your witchery cost me, girl?”