The Book of Fire Read online

  “This is getting along,” N’Doch growled.

  When Köthen moved ahead, Erde did not try to keep up with him. Let him go. She was glad he’d not asked about the aspects of the Quest that she herself knew little about, like what will the dragons do when they find either Fire or Air? Would he ever understand her willingness to follow the dragons whatever happened? She feared he would not.

  But she’d worry about that later. It was time to start paying some attention to where she was. The dragons would be wanting the information. N’Doch hung back beside her, uncharacteristically lost in his own thoughts. The odd road twisted and turned, though it didn’t seem to be curving around anything in particular, just more piles of rubble or clumps of desiccated trees. Erde recalled this same seamless surface from N’Doch’s homeland. When he pointed it out and exclaimed in disgust, “Look at this road!” she understood that it was meant to be smooth and unbroken, not split by long cracks full of dusty weeds. Unhealthy-looking bushes sagged along the verges. Their scant leaves were leathery and crisped at the edges. Many of the stunted trees had no leaves at all. The grass seemed to be faring the best, growing tall and brown and coarse, with stingy little seedheads. Erde had never seen a drought before, except in N’Doch’s land. But there, all the vegetation had been strange to her anyhow, so she wouldn’t have known if it were suffering. Here, most of the plants were reasonably familiar, and their dire condition was obvious even to her.

  They plodded along in silence for a long while. Then, echoing her musings uncannily, N’Doch remarked, “We got to be pretty far north, doncha think?”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Well, I seen pictures.”

  “That look like this?” She wondered what kind of sad painter would bother to render such a devastated landscape. Unless it were to represent some new vision of Hell.

  “Maybe like this might have looked before, y’know, whatever happened happened.”

  “How do you know something happened?”

  “Well, look at it!” He spread his arms and did a little half-turn in the road so that he was walking backward. “This isn’t the way it’s meant to be! It’s bad in my time, but not this bad. You see, where I come from, it’s meant to be pretty hot and dry anyway, only not so hot as it is. But not here. Look at those plants and trees. They’re meant for greener pastures.”

  Greener pastures, Erde mused. Like where I come from. Only it’s not green there now either.

  “You know what?” N’Doch nodded, confirming for himself what was clearly a recent epiphany. “I think this here is the future of my future. Like, after me . . . maybe even after I’m dead.” He completed the turn and grinned up at the hazed amber sky. “And here I am, still alive! How ’bout that?”

  Erde thought he was mad to grin like that. This same thought had haunted her all during those weeks she’d been in his own time, but she’d bravely kept it to herself. How like N’Doch to find it funny instead of terrifying. “This future does not look like a happy one, N’Doch.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe the milk and honey’s right over that next hill.”

  “The what?”

  Again, that little shrug. The one he always made when he’d just said something with great bravado, but wasn’t really sure of it at all. “Just something my mama used to say.”

  He can’t imagine why his mama’s on his mind again, but he wishes he’d told the dragons to check on her when they went back for Papa Dja. The old man’ll take care of her somehow. N’Doch lets himself believe that. But it does weird him out, thinking of how he’s up here in the future, her future, and she’s back there behind him in 2013, still weaving and watching her stories on the vid. He can’t think of her as dead. That just doesn’t wash.

  N’Doch shakes his head. Heat must be getting to me. And the silence. First it makes him jumpy, then it lulls him into inattention, so that he comes to with a start to realize he’s been walking for what could be an entire klick without being aware of a single centimeter of it. Each time, he checks the sun right off. The road’s turned north a while back. From the high spots, where the road tops a rise, he can still see the bay off east, through the notches in the hills. Probably the road runs along the water, then into the city from there. Just what he’d do if he was a road.

  The baron’s a dozen paces ahead. He’s stayed like that most of the way, wrapped in his own personal silence as thick as the silence of the landscape around him. The girl, trudging at N’Doch’s side, watches the baron like she’s trying to read his mind. N’Doch envies the man his inner privacy. No dragons worming their way into Baron Köthen’s soul, no sir. He finds himself watching the dude also—how he moves, brisk but graceful, never releasing his erect, chin-up carriage, even in this pounding heat. To amuse himself, N’Doch tries imitating the baron’s walk, but it makes him want to look around for his audience. On him, this walk is a performance, some broad kind of caricature of manliness. On Köthen, it looks perfectly natural. N’Doch ponders this puzzle for a while until he’d just rather think about something else. He peels off into the shade of a rock face, where the road cuts through a hill, and unstraps his water jug.

  The girl plods a few steps more, then stops. She calls ahead to the baron, real polite and tentative now, then comes back to join N’Doch, looking worn already by the sun and heat. She wipes her face with the tail of her shirt.

  “Nice day, huh?” N’Doch grins. “Thought you’d already got used to this back where I come from.”

  “Never.” She borrows his water jug and goes at it with long straining gulps.

  “Whoa, girl, slow down. Told you to drink less, but more often, remember?”

  She nods, still drinking.

  “And take another layer off.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re dripping wet. Strip down, girl.”

  She shakes her head, glances out into the sun, and to his delight, she blushes. So the sexy baron’s made her self-conscious. Got her thinking about her body at long last. N’Doch grins. He’s got her number now.

  “Okay, then, how’s the scaly duo doing?”

  She rolls her eyes at him, and he sees this particular way of baiting her has lost its effect. “You could ask them just as easily as I, N’Doch.”

  “Yeah, but you’re so much better at it.” And, N’Doch notes to himself, you like it.

  She sighs. “They’re fine. Lady Water says the salt bay is not healthy. There are no fish in it.”

  “She went in?” Suddenly, he’s very concerned. “She shouldn’t do that!”

  The girl regards him with more pity than patience. “She’s a dragon, N’Doch. What’s dangerous to humans will not harm her.”

  “Well,” says N’Doch uneasily. He has this odd notion that a dragon is something old-timey. Might not be hip to the modern horrors, like toxic waste or red tide or whatever. He’d really hate to see that silky blue velvet hide of hers eaten away by some gross corrosive in the water. He’s not surprised about the fish. “I guess she can take care of herself.”

  Köthen appears out of the sun and just stands there, looking at them. N’Doch hides a smile. He can almost hear the dude asking: hey, did I call a break? But like the girl, he’s a little the worse for wear. His handsome square-jawed face is flushed and sweat-stained, so he seems willing to hold back and just pace a bit in the shade. These northern types, N’Doch notes with satisfaction. Just not cut out for the heat. He’s carrying the girl’s pack, plus he’s wearing the chest section of his body armor, with the blue-and-yellow silk over and his tunic under. Both he and Wender wore that much of their mail all the time at Deep Moor, even around the house. N’Doch shrugs. Soldiers. The fine-linked mesh is amazingly flexible and gorgeous workmanship, but it’s got to weigh a couple or ten kilos. The dude ought to just take it off, but N’Doch’s not sure he should be the one to suggest it. He passes the baron his water jug.

  He doesn’t take it right off, but when he does, there’s no tossing the water down like the girl d
id, like there’ll always be more of it. Köthen drinks conservatively and hands the jug back with a curt nod, like it pains him to be beholden. “I would have brought my own, had I any warning.”

  N’Doch laughs, but the baron just cocks a cool brow at him and looks away.

  Finally they move on, back out into the grinding heat. Köthen and the girl have exchanged maybe three words, and she’s looking about as beaten down as N’Doch has ever seen her. Hunh, he muses. The baron’s not humoring her, he’s punishing her. He sees she’s got this thing for him, so he’s getting back at her this way for shanghaiing him. N’Doch’s not sure he approves. Mental cruelty has never been his idea of a fair fight, especially with women. But, hey, it’s none of his business, even if he does find himself feeling a little protective of her lately. Anyway, he’s been telling her it was time she grew up, and falling for some mean dude twice your age is one way to do it. But he wonders, if she really was his sister, would he be telling her there might be easier ways?

  Past the cut through the rock, the road flattens for a long stretch. A little wind kicks up, like a draft from a blast furnace. N’Doch feels the heat rising off the pavement and signals the girl off to the side to walk along the weedy verge. There might have been farm fields here once. He recognizes the squared-off outlines, marked now by dead tree trunks and isolated sections of rusted wire fencing. Nothing in these fields now but brown grass and weeds and dust that the wind is blowing right in their faces. He shows the girl how to tie a corner of her extra shirt across her nose and mouth to veil the grit, then wrap the rest around her head against the sun.

  “There!” He approves of his handiwork. “Now you look just like a desert woman!”

  And even better, he’s made her laugh. Well, smile a little at least, and he’s glad about that. Grinning, he glances ahead to see Köthen disappear around a bend. The road beyond is masked by a tall stand of scraggly evergreens growing in unnatural rows. The rows mount the hillside to the right like soldiers marching in rank. Half of them are dead or dying, but their trunks march right along anyway. Over the pincushion of pine tops, N’Doch spots the towers of a high-voltage power line. Instantly, he’s on the alert, he’s not even sure why. Those lines could be dead as a doornail, but in his own time, power was getting precious, and the major transmission lines were either guarded or remote-protected in some fairly lethal ways. Up ahead, the baron could be walking into something nasty. He touches the girl’s elbow, quickens his step.

  “What?” she says.

  “Just got a bad feeling. Keep your voice down, but hurry it up.”

  “What could . . .?”

  “Shh!”

  They lope along the edge of the road. There’s no way they can keep really quiet. The crush of the dry weeds is as noisy as the slap of their feet on the pavement would be. As they get closer, the widening gaps between the slim, straight tree trunks reveal a bright strip of open land beyond, and the pale green stanchions of the nearest tower. N’Doch slows as he comes level with the first row of trees. He can see Köthen now, a small figure alone in the sun where the open swath crosses the road. He’s staring up at the tower, a rusting metal latticework that’s probably taller than any man-made structure the baron’s ever seen. And finally N’Doch identifies the low background hum he’s been hearing without being really aware of it—that edgy, teeth-itching drone of flowing megawatts. He sees that some of the lines are down, great dark loops of cable lying like thick snakes across the road, mere meters from where Köthen is standing.

  “Oh, man . . .” he murmurs.

  And sure enough, Köthen, still looking upward, takes a few steps sideways to better his view of something on the tower. N’Doch catches his breath.

  “Tell him to stop!” he snaps at the girl. “Tell him not to move!”

  “What?”

  “Tell him to stand still!”

  But the girl says, “What? What?” again, and N’Doch breaks into a dead run because he can’t imagine what her damn problem is, can’t she see the guy’s about to back into a live power line?

  She starts up after him, but she’s no match for N’Doch in his finish-line sprint. He leaves her instantly behind. He can hear her calling out now, finally, and the baron does stop and look their way. But he’s too far away to hear her clearly. By now, N’Doch is almost on him. Köthen sees him bearing down, hears the girl shouting madly and does what N’Doch’s afraid he’ll do: he jumps to exactly the wrong conclusion, and goes for his dagger.

  N’Doch pulls up short. The insulation on the cable is badly worn all along the swag just behind Köthen’s head. In some spots, the wires are completely bare. N’Doch can smell the scorch of raw power in the air. He spreads his hands, palms out, away from his own weapon.

  “Just don’t move, man,” he says quietly. “Just don’t fucking move.”

  Köthen’s at ready, knees flexed, his knife arm extended to one side, too close to the cable. One more step back or even an unlucky arcing, and the man’s a goner. N’Doch hears the girl pounding down the road behind him, but she’ll never be there in time. He needs the language, the right words, and there’s only one place he can get them. No reason he should be busting his butt for this guy who keeps wanting to kill him, but he’d really hate to watch him burn to a crisp, especially in front of the girl. So he does the thing he hates most of all, the thing that erases him, makes him feel like he’s falling into a bottomless pit. He gives himself over and calls to the dragon, the way he knows he can and never does, and she puts the words into his head and guides his tongue.

  N’Doch points at the cable. “Fassen Sie das nicht an!”

  Köthen’s not sure he’s heard right, but his eyes flick to where N’Doch’s pointing, then back again, narrowing. He thinks it’s a ruse.

  And then it’s all there, the language N’Doch needs, an awkward tumble of German syllables, but enough to bring the dude at least halfway off battle alert, enough to talk him a few steps forward, away from the waiting cable, away from sure and instant death. N’Doch drops to a crouch, heart pounding, and rubs his forehead, trying to clear his brain of the adrenaline rush. Because now there’s this dragon inside there that he’s got to make a lot more room for.

  Köthen does not sheathe his dagger, but he turns around warily to stare at the thick swag of cable. N’Doch can see he hasn’t a clue what the danger is, but he’s read and believed the urgency in N’Doch’s voice and body and words. He takes a few extra steps away.

  The girl catches up finally. “What is it, N’Doch?”

  “Your boy here nearly fried himself, is all.”

  She stares at him, horrified. N’Doch thinks about what he’s said, and recalls how the big dragon tends to translate to her in visual images. Probably they’ll both get him wrong this time, but he can’t help himself. He puts his head down and starts to laugh.

  Erde’s scowl was reflexive. She shouldn’t be angry with him. She knew by now that laughter was N’Doch’s usual release after a crisis. But the image of Köthen burning had left her shuddering and nauseous, so she had to frown at him anyway, like she always did. “It’s not funny, N’Doch!”

  “No,” he agreed, laughing. “I guess it ain’t.”

  Baron Köthen put up his dagger finally and crossed his arms. “Well, does he speak German or not?”

  “When he feels like it,” Erde was forced to admit.

  “It’s not like that,” N’Doch protested, in French.

  Köthen nodded. “I begin to suspect . . . no, never mind. Was I actually in danger?”

  N’Doch glanced up from his crouch. “You bet your ass you were.” But he said it in French, and Erde refused to translate. Caught, he stared at the ground, almost bashfully, as if listening very hard. Then he repeated it, in substantially more proper German. Erde privately thanked Lady Water for her refined sensibilities, but still, she wanted to cheer out loud. All her previous efforts to get N’Doch speaking her language had failed. Köthen had succeeded without even trying. And
of course he had no idea what he’d accomplished. One quick glance, a curiously arched brow, and he’d accepted N’Doch’s sudden acquisition of fractured but comprehensible German as if it was just one more in the series of bizarre events he’d been swept up in.

  “You watch, now,” said N’Doch. He rose from his crouch and walked over to the huge structure that towered over them like the tallest siege engine Erde could imagine. He searched around beneath it, picked something up and knocked it against one of the tower’s pilings. It rang like metal, and the sound vibrated up the length of the piling. He brought the thing back to them, a length of hollow metal.

  “Stand back,” he said. “Way back.”

  Baron Köthen eyed the metal thing, seemed to decide that it was both too short and too rusted to be much of a weapon. He joined Erde where N’Doch directed them, into the shade of the pine trees. N’Doch moved back also, then he faced the dark, dangling ropes and lobbed the metal thing with a big underhand toss, right into the most frayed part of the loop.

  Light exploded around it, white and blue and sizzling. There was a crack like lightning, sparks flew in all directions and the ropes danced and snapped like battle pennants in a gale. Erde felt the surge to the roots of her hair, and beside her, Köthen muttered. Then it was over, and the ropes were quiet again, and the metal thing lay on the ground, singed as if from the forge.

  N’Doch offered them a death’s-head grin, then let the dragon speak for him. “So whaddya think? That could’ve been you, Baron K.”

  Köthen wet his lips. “I don’t think I’d have liked that.”

  N’Doch laughed softly. “Damn straight you wouldn’t.”

  Köthen looked up at the tower. “What is this thing for?”

  “You really want to know? How much time have you got?”