The Book of Fire Read online

  N’Doch makes no quick move to the packs, so the girl does it. She hauls them over, pries them open, and holds up their contents for the baron’s inspection. N’Doch thinks she is way overcompensating now. So she kidnapped the dude. So let’s get on with it already.

  Köthen makes no move either. He studies each item gravely as she exhibits them: bread, cheese, apples, dried beef, a few small jugs of water. He nods at each, back to humoring her, but N’Doch watches him making the tally in his head and sees him come to the obvious conclusion.

  “This will not keep us for long.”

  N’Doch laughs softly.

  Were it not for Earth, Erde decided, she would never have survived this ordeal. She didn’t mean physically—she was well used to the rigors of dragon transport. Nor was it the heat and dust that swirled up around her in this alien place. Her stay in N’Doch’s time had prepared her for that. But nothing had prepared her for the strain of dealing with Adolphus of Köthen one on one, now that she’d acted on impulse and done this insane thing.

  Now that she had him on her hands, what was she going to do with him?

  IT WASN’T EXACTLY ON IMPULSE.

  Kindly, the dragon reminded her that she had planned it all rather carefully, had even checked out the details with him and with the others. It hadn’t seemed insane at the time.

  ALL HAS GONE ACCORDING TO PLAN. WHY ARE YOU CONCERNED?

  IT WAS HARDLY MY PLAN FOR THE TWO OF THEM TO START FIGHTING FIRST THING!

  Lady Water added her assessment.

  Men. They behave as they must. Don’t worry. They’ll sort it out.

  HE WILL HATE ME FOREVER.

  Water laughed Which one?

  Erde thought Lady Water a bit too relaxed about N’Doch’s behavior. He was, after all, part of the problem.

  Have faith, girl. The man is out of a job, and you’re giving him one.

  WHATEVER ELSE HE MAY BE, HE IS BRAVE AND HONORABLE. HE WILL THANK YOU FOR IT ONE DAY.

  Perhaps. But how would she survive his growling and glowering until then? Erde was not sure she would.

  He’ll require a lot of care and feeding, no doubt of it.

  NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY HAL BROUGHT HIM TO DEEP MOOR.

  Just keep telling him how useful he’s being.

  DO NOT TROUBLE YOURSELF WITH DOUBT. CAN YOU HEAR THE CALL?

  NO. WHAT? THE SUMMONS? YOU CAN HEAR IT AGAIN?

  Loud and clear.

  AS IF A VEIL HAS LIFTED.

  OH, WONDERFUL! AFTER SO LONG! THEN WE’VE DONE THE RIGHT THING!

  Erde took strength from the dragons. Their own crisis was so much vaster than her own slight personal matter. She shoved the food and water back into the packs, passed one to N’Doch, and shouldered the other. Then she faced Baron Köthen expectantly. N’Doch eased back a step or two, retiring from the field. She wasn’t sure if she was grateful or not.

  “My lord baron, are you with us or no?”

  He didn’t want to answer her. For she had put him in the position that N’Doch was in just moments ago, where his only sane option was surrender. And this, of course, was the last choice he wanted to make. She watched him struggle with it, painfully aware of the additional walls of bitterness she was building up between them.

  “You have the food and water, such as it is.” He gestured faintly at the parched and barren landscape: “Do I have any choice?”

  “If you prefer, I will give you half of it and you may go your own way.”

  “That would be . . . stupidly inefficient.”

  He had his rage under control now, and that was a mercy. It even helped Erde to accept the unforgiving smolder of resentment that edged his every word and glance.

  “Of course you are right, my lord.” She bowed her head in acceptance. “Then let us be going.” She hadn’t a clue where she was going, only that she must somehow get him moving—any direction at all would do. After that, the dragons assured her, things would take care of themselves.

  Köthen said, “Wait.”

  Terrified, Erde stopped, then gave him as casual a glance as she could muster, tossed over her shoulder like an empty nutshell. “My lord?”

  He stood as immobile as a rock, his arms stubbornly crossed, as if he knew exactly how to rattle her the most. “Since it is your duty and not mine that brings us here, this is what I propose: I will do whatever it is you need me to do here to the best of my ability, but as soon as I’ve done it, you will take me home again.”

  The girl nods, like it could work out that easy, just like that. Come here, do the job, and leave. N’Doch can’t believe it. She’s learning to lie. Or she’s got a whole lot more faith than he does in this dude’s capabilities.

  Köthen says, “I’ll need your word on that, my lady.”

  “You have it, my lord.” The girl extends her hand, like some kind of queen.

  Köthen takes it, then bites back his instinct to bow over it. Instead, he shakes it, real man to man. N’Doch thinks maybe he’s decided she really is a little bit nuts, so for now he’d better make the best of it. Meanwhile, in the girl’s brave stance, there’s just the slightest droop of relief. N’Doch swallows a laugh. It ain’t over yet, not with this dude. If she thinks it’s all smooth sailing from here out, she’s got another think coming. But then, so does Baron K.—just wait until the serious dragon shit starts happening.

  But suddenly the baron is all business. “Water first, then. After that, find shelter. We can reconnoiter from there.” He points off west. “I suggest we try that way.”

  Since the man doesn’t seem to be taking suggestions, even from the one guy who might actually have some idea about how to deal with this place, N’Doch just nods and adjusts his pack. He’d have headed that way anyway. It’s occurring to him that he could actually get to like ole Baron K. just fine, so he decides not to let him get in too much trouble if he can help it. But he’s willing to give the dude whatever rope he needs to hang himself just a little, to pay him back for the dusting.

  “My lord, I have something for you.” The girl reaches inside the top layer of her linens, pulls out a big fighting dagger, and holds it out on her palm. N’Doch hasn’t a clue where she came up with it, and he’s not so sure arming this guy is such a terrific idea. That mondo blade could be at his throat any minute, the way he sees it. But like he said, this gig is the dragons’ call, and the girl’s. She brought him. Let her deal with him.

  Köthen snorts softly as he lifts the knife from her hand. “Better than nothing, I suppose. But Captain Wender will be missing it.” He eases it into the empty sheath on his belt, then reaches to haul the pack off her shoulder and onto his own. Her resistance is only for show. The packs are heavy. N’Doch will attest to that. Köthen struggles a bit with the straps. Clearly he is not used to being the bearer of his own burdens. When he finally has the pack adjusted comfortably, his stance is eloquent with mockery. It declares him as a man who’s only conceded defeat because it’s convenient for the moment. N’Doch hopes the girl takes this warning to heart.

  Köthen squints once more into the fat red sun. He rakes his fingers through his thick yellow hair, then glances at N’Doch and away. N’Doch can see he’s curious—as any man would be—about that city out there to the west. He’d like N’Doch’s assessment, but he’s damned if he’s going to ask for it.

  Fine, N’Doch decides. Let the game continue. Let’s just see how far he gets in a world he knows nothing about.

  Köthen shrugs the unfamiliar weight back onto his shoulders, starts forward, then stops. He turns back to the girl with the most ironic of grins. “By the way, milady witch . . . I suppose I should ask: whose side am I on this time?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Paia wakes in the crook of the God’s foreleg, curled against the hard wall of his chest. She wonders what time it is, how long she has been here with him. He has let a little air into the Sanctum, and a bit of light. Or maybe she is finally learning to see as he does, in the dark. His huge head is down beside her
, resting on the bridge of his claws. His eyes, long and almond-shaped, are shut. He looks almost peaceful, as if he’s actually asleep. Paia hopes he is. It’s the only time she gets to observe him with any objectivity, when he is there in body but not in her mind.

  The House Comp once gave her the God’s basic measurements, as if cold fact might somehow cool her ardor. He is thirty-one meters long from blunt nose to razor-tipped tail, and twelve meters tall when rampant. He has a wingspan of twenty-five meters when fully extended. His average skin temperature is 110 Fahrenheit degrees. Were it not for his heat, she’d think him made entirely of precious metals, crafted by artists of inspired genius and godlike patience. For despite his size, his detailing is exquisite and delicate. Every centimeter of him is a perfect design of color and line. Every surface is decorated. Each golden scale is incised with a pattern of leaf-veins in ruby red, as brilliant as the finest enamel. His smallish hooded ears, the only thing small about him, are lined with royal purple as if with shimmering panné velvet. His leathery wings are gilt-scaled on top and azure blue beneath, so that in flight they sometimes seem like chunks of sky caught beneath a golden shroud.

  The smallest of his scales, no bigger than Paia’s hand, cluster around his eyes. There is something tender and vulnerable about them. Paia slides her still-damp body along the metallic smoothness of his arm to where she can trace the fine ruby veining with an adoring finger and press her lips, counting the kisses, to scale after scale. When he is like this, quiescent, having gifted her with the ecstasy of his holy worship, she cannot help but love him, almost more than life.

  He stirs beneath her, a mountain shifting, geologic in scale, and lays his head a little to the side so that she can continue caressing him. At first she was surprised that her soft hands and mouth could transmit any sensation at all through so hard and polished a surface. But he seems to enjoy it. He will let her do it for hours, and sometimes when he’s angry but lets her come to him anyway, it even quiets him a little.

  He says it’s her devotion that pleases him, that when the passion of her faith inspires her to surrender herself to the holy ecstasy, they are as one being and the ecstasy is shared. If this is so, Paia muses, it’s the only true sharing between them. The rest is all power games and posturing and her carrying out his bidding. Such as how she must immediately have a child.

  He must be asleep. Otherwise she could never lie so close to him and have such thoughts. But no, he’s awake, for he stirs again and one long tip of his forked tongue flicks out and coils around her ankle. Instinctively she pulls away, but he holds her.

  COME CLOSER, BELOVED.

  Paia shudders with pleasure and terror. She is inches from his fangs. What is he up to now?

  YOU HAVE BEEN DOUBTING ME LATELY.

  “No, my lord. Why do you say so?”

  YOUR THOUGHTS STRAY FROM YOUR DUTIES.

  Is no part of her mind closed to him? Has she no privacy from him at all? But she knows how to deflect him.

  “I miss you, my lord, when you are gone from us.”

  OF COURSE YOU DO.

  His tongue eases farther up her leg, silken heat winding around her thigh. Paia would like to stay conscious for this conversation, but only fear is keeping the ecstasy from overtaking her again.

  “Where do you go? Can you tell me of the great sights you see?”

  TOO MANY QUESTIONS. I NEED YOUR ABSOLUTE ATTENTION, BELOVED. MY ENEMIES ARE NEAR.

  “Enemies? What enemies, my lord Fire? Is there a new heresy?”

  AN OLD ONE, BELOVED. THE OLDEST ONE OF ALL.

  This is the first she’s heard him speak of enemies, other than the usual heathen faithless that covet the Temple’s riches and livelihood.

  “But who are they? What do they want?”

  ANCIENT FOES, POWERFUL FOES. THEY WOULD DENY ME MY GODHEAD.

  “They are coming here?”

  I SENSE THEIR APPROACH, EVEN NOW. THROUGH THE VEIL OF YEARS THAT I HOPED WOULD CONCEAL ME FROM THEM.

  His grip on her relaxes. He is distracted. Paia backs away a step and leans against his jaw. Instantly, she longs for his touch again, but fears what he will do if she invites it. “Will they attack the Temple?”

  THEY WILL BE SUBTLER THAN THAT. THEY ARE SLY AND DEVIOUS.

  “How will we know them?”

  YOU WILL NOT NEED TO. I WILL RECOGNIZE THEM INSTANTLY.

  “What will they do?”

  THEY WILL TRY TO MAKE ALL THAT IS RIGHT SEEM WRONG. THEY WILL CHALLENGE THE DEVOTION OF THE FAITHFUL. EVEN YOURS, BELOVED.

  “They will not succeed, my lord.”

  THIS IS WHY I NEED YOUR ATTENTION, CONSTANT AND TOTAL, TO HELP ME DISCOVER THEM. TO HELP ME VANQUISH THEM.

  “I am your servant always, my lord.” He’s sounding faintly sullen about all this, like he’s been taken by surprise, and Paia thinks it unwise to ask how it is that a God who knows everything does not know where his enemies are.

  I AM PONDERING WAYS, BELOVED, THAT WE COULD BE CLOSER.

  “Will you tell me, Lord Fire, when you know what they are?”

  I WILL, WHEN I AM READY, AND I WILL CALL YOU TO ME.

  But Paia is not fooled. Their closeness is no longer the foremost issue in his mind.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Earth was not happy. He hunkered down, looking more like an outcropping of rock than usual, and rumbled uneasily.

  THIS IS A SICK PLACE. A DEAD PLACE.

  Water agreed.

  Why would he come to such a lifeless place, our pleasure-loving brother?

  BUT IS HE HERE, DO YOU THINK?

  I AM SURE OF IT.

  Erde had been so preoccupied with the dilemma of introducing Baron Köthen to his altered situation that she had neglected the dragons almost entirely. Now she said she needed time to tend to them, that the two men should go on and she would catch up. She let Köthen straighten his battle-worn blue-and-gold tunic in bemused exasperation and strike off west on his own. Keeping up her brave false front had wrung her out. Besides, it was useful to let him test his apparent freedom. She doubted he’d go far unless those he had chosen to lead were actually following. The dragons drew her into a detailed discussion about what evidence of Fire’s presence was already presenting itself, and in which direction they were likely to find him. Only N’Doch watched as Köthen blithely walked away.

  “Don’t you get it?” He grabbed up his woolen tunic and crammed it into his pack. “He doesn’t care if we go after him or not.”

  Erde’s heart wanted to go after him, of course, but her heart was also with the dragons. Besides, he’d made it so clear that he still saw her as the witch, his enemy. “Yes, he does. Let him walk it off a bit. Remember, he rode into Deep Moor bound as a prisoner.”

  “Fine, great, but what if we lose him? What if he loses himself?”

  She was surprised by her own irritability. “Then you’ll be rid of him and you’ll be glad, won’t you? You didn’t want him here in the first place.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” N’Doch’s shrug was surprisingly rich with ambivalence. “Well, he’s right about finding food and shelter, y’know.”

  Water uncurled her long neck to study the baron’s receding back.

  It wouldn’t be a good idea to get separated right from the start.

  N’Doch resettled his pack on his shoulders. “We’d all better keep up with him, then, ’cause he ain’t waitin’ for us.”

  So it was agreed that the humans would keep up, but the dragons would join them later, when they were done assessing this new place they found themselves in. N’Doch was uneasy about leaving Water behind. Erde had warned him many times about the futility of interrupting dragon discussions, but still he insisted on reasoning with them as if they were human. What she hadn’t told him was that ever since Earth learned that he possessed a better means of transport than his four stubby legs, he’d not been keen about walking long distances. He’d much rather she went on ahead, then sent him an image to come to. Erde told N’Doch not to worry.
The two of them would catch up with the baron. Later, the dragons would catch up with all of them.

  Köthen had set a stiff pace, but so far had kept to the old roadway. It took a while to catch up to him, and when they did, he offered them no greeting. He just began talking to them as if they’d been there all along.

  “So let me get this straight,” he said, to neither one of them in particular. “You’re in search of another dragon. And he doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Two dragons, actually: Fire and Air. We hope one will lead us to the other.”

  “Water thinks one is concealing the other,” N’Doch put in. Erde dutifully translated, though not without conveying Earth’s disapproval of this notion.

  “Ah, yes. I recall now. The difference of opinion. This’ll teach me to assume that there’s any kind of conversation unworthy of my attention.”

  His words were reasonable enough, but Erde had learned enough about Adolphus of Köthen by now to recognize the rage still simmering beneath his flat tone and his collected surface. He was angry in a way that no ordinary balm would assuage. But perhaps it wasn’t entirely at her.

  “So, first, we must find the dragon Fire.”

  “Sneak up on him’s more like it,” N’Doch retorted.

  When Erde translated, Köthen’s eyes never wavered from the horizon. “Really? How does one do that?”

  N’Doch smirked. “Good question. I think she’s hoping you’ll have some ideas.”

  “I won’t tell him that.” Erde moved up into the yard-wide gap between the two men. A mile ago, it had been three yards. She threw N’Doch a barbed parody of a smile. “You know, N’Doch, if you tried speaking that German I know Lady Water has been teaching you, you could get into trouble with his lordship again all by yourself.”

  “Ha,” said N’Doch. “His lordship, huh?”

  Erde understood now that her scheme to kidnap the baron, while having many obvious advantages, had failed to take N’Doch’s feelings into account. She had asked him, pro forma, then she’d swept all his objections aside and done what she wanted to anyway. “Just try to get along with him, N’Doch. Please?”