The Book of Fire Read online

  Köthen heard the challenge. Erde felt, rather than saw, him tense. He seemed to be considering his options, none of which he was very happy about. But he understood that his life had just been saved. Perhaps he felt he owed N’Doch a hearing, for he returned the same, soft laugh and said, “I seem to have all the time in the world.”

  So for the next several miles, N’Doch and Baron Köthen walked side by side, one long, safe pace apart, while N’Doch discoursed on the magical force called electricity. Erde trudged along behind, only half listening. Master Djawara had already explained this to her, when they’d visited his compound in the bush. Mostly she listened to hear Köthen’s response, to hear if he believed N’Doch’s insistence that electricity was not magic or if he, like her, was reserving judgment. But Köthen’s response was so reserved, she couldn’t even tell what it was. He just listened, nodded, asked a quiet question or two, and nodded some more, walking along with his hands tucked behind his back like he was out for a stroll in his castle yard. Perhaps, she decided, he doesn’t believe any of it at all.

  She was beginning to look forward to another rest in the shade when, ahead of her, the men pulled up short at the top of another big rise. Something in the angle of Köthen’s shoulders made Erde quicken her step. What she saw when she drew up beside him left her speechless.

  A city lay spread out in the lowland. A city half submerged in ragged foliage and the same green water she’d seen back at the broken bridge. She knew it was a city by its straight lines and squared angles, its so obviously human geometry. But it was like no city she’d ever seen. Except . . .

  Without thinking, she put an urgent call out to Earth. He must see this with his own eyes. Sure that she was under some sort of attack, both dragons flashed into existence in the road right behind them. The hot air churned. The dust boiled up in small cyclones. Köthen whirled and swore, but when he’d got hold of himself and slid his dagger back into its sheath, there was a spark of admiration in his eyes.

  “That’s how we . . . arrived?”

  Erde nodded.

  He let out a breath. “With a whole army like that, you’d be invincible.” Then he returned his attention to the city, which seemed to amaze him even more than the traveling methods of dragons.

  He gave it a long, slow study, as they all did. The tall, rigid, boxlike structures rose in clusters out of the parched foliage, or in places, right out of the long green bay that coiled up from the south to partly encircle the city. The boxes were all different sizes, and reflected the sun in bright, blinding shafts. One towering rectangle seemed to be made entirely of burnished gold. But some were stunted, collapsed or broken off partway. Their gleaming skins were scorched and peeled back, exposing their understructure like the blackened bones of a decaying corpse.

  “My God,” Köthen whispered finally. “It really is the future, isn’t it.”

  N’Doch grinned. “You got it, man.”

  But Erde shivered. OH, DRAGON! IS IT THE MAGE CITY?

  They had dreamed a city like this, together: a tall-towered, fantastical city. But their city was perfect and whole and shining, not with the reflected light of a grim red sun but with an inner glow of purity and wisdom. And they knew a mage dwelt there who would help the dragon fulfill his quest.

  THE CALL IS STRONG, BUT . . . NOT FROM THAT DIRECTION.

  IT IS THE MAGE CITY, I KNOW IT IS! BUT IT’S IN RUINS! DRAGON, WHAT DOES IT MEAN? ARE WE TOO LATE?

  WE CANNOT BE TOO LATE. I WILL NOT ACCEPT SUCH A POSSIBILITY.

  Erde trusted the dragon’s superior instincts and loved him for his stubbornness. But she was uneasy about the hopelessness that had settled over her in this desolate place, as heavy as a winding shroud. What if he was wrong?

  Köthen beckoned N’Doch closer. Erde shook herself out of her gloom and prepared herself to keep the peace. But N’Doch’s snatching Köthen from an unexpected peril seemed to have proved his usefulness. And now that the baron had established the chain of command to his satisfaction, he could treat the man he’d so recently drawn on and thrown to the ground as his new lieutenant. Even more astonishing, N’Doch did not seem to object. He’d given up all pretense of being unable to communicate. He stepped up beside Köthen, and they studied the city together.

  “Do you know this place?”

  N’Doch shook his head. “But there are cities like this where I come from. That is, the buildings look sort of the same. The landscape’s real different.”

  “How many years since . . .” The baron stopped, cleared his throat awkwardly.

  “Since your time?”

  Köthen’s mouth pressed back against the flood of questions he obviously longed to ask. He shrugged, nodded.

  “Well, we know it’s at least eleven hundred years, ’cause that brings us to my time and everything looks pretty familiar to me so far. Closer than that, it’s hard to say. We’re sure to find some bit of something that’ll tell us.”

  Again, Erde watched the baron closely. Would he share her nightmares about the weight of all those intervening years? But he only nodded again and murmured, “Eleven hundred years.”

  “I could be wrong, y’know? I guess it could be less, but it’s probably more.”

  Köthen waved a hand as if to say, how can a few years more or less even matter? “And what would such a city signify . . . in your time?”

  “Signify?”

  The baron pointed, measuring the city’s breadth between the span of his outstretched hands. “Is it likely some king’s capital?”

  “Well, it might be a capital, but there probably isn’t any king.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Not a lot of kings left in the world, ’least not in my day. ’Course, now, you never know. But, seemed to me, kings were pretty much done for in the history of the world.” N’Doch regarded Köthen sideways, as if gauging the distance between them, just in case the offense he implied was actually taken. Erde thought it another sign of his madness that he should needle Baron Köthen so rashly, over and over again. But didn’t they make an interesting contrast side by side? The shorter, solid blond who carried himself like a much larger man against N’Doch’s slim, towering darkness. N’Doch bending his head slightly to catch Köthen’s terse and quiet questioning, Köthen not looking at him, as that would require him to look up.

  “No kings. Is it a city of merchants, then?”

  N’Doch laughed. “Oh, there’s probably plenty of them, all right, if there’s anybody.” The German was coming easier to him, she could see, as he relaxed into it and let Lady Water guide his tongue. No doubt, Erde reflected sourly, he would soon be able to abuse her language as outrageously as he abused his own.

  “If?”

  N’Doch gave his little shrug. “Don’t know. Just a feeling I have.”

  Köthen frowned. “Still, perhaps we’ll find shelter there.”

  “Yeah. Just hope we don’t find a lot else besides.”

  They leave the dragons behind again, a ways down from the rise in the shadow of what’s left of a two-lane overpass. The big guy eyes the crumbling piers, then eases his bulk up beside the tallest and widest to nose the weathered concrete.

  N’Doch touches the baron’s elbow, real respectful and all. “Watch this.”

  Köthen tenses reflexively, but his eyes follow N’Doch’s gesture, just in time to see the brown dragon still himself utterly and seem to vanish into the gray, man-made stone. He stifles a gasp.

  N’Doch grins. “Neat trick, eh?” It can’t hurt to have the baron considering how the dragons could be used to his advantage. He’s glancing down that road already. While the girl’s explaining this particular bit of dragon magic, N’Doch wanders over to where Water has tucked herself into a slice of shade. She looks half her normal size, whatever normal is for a dragon. She’s always beautiful, but now she’s almost cute. N’Doch’s hand strays to her silken neck.

  “That was cool, what you did back at the power line.”

  Saved your butt
, buddy boy!

  “Mine! What about his lordship’s?”

  Same thing, under the circumstances.

  “Yeah, well, okay, forget about it.” N’Doch spins on his heel to gather up the girl and the baron. “I’ll see ya ’round.”

  Köthen moves out smartly, still insisting on taking the lead. They stick to the highway as it curves around the city until N’Doch spots an off ramp that looks like fairly easy going.

  He points it out to Baron K. “That should get us off the main road and down into town.” Then he adds, “If you want.” Maybe he’s underestimated this dude. So he was hasty about assuming leadership without even checking to see who else agreed. At least he doesn’t take the responsibility lightly. Since the power-line incident, since his first long look at the city, Köthen’s questions have come at him steadily as they walked, smart questions, too. The sort that go right to the heart of what’s what in a place. And, to N’Doch’s disgust, the sort that expose the limits of his own knowledge. A layman’s rap on electricity is easy enough—how’s the guy gonna know any better? But actual ground intelligence? Access roads and fortifications? To say there aren’t any just brings a disbelieving frown. And sooner or later, he and the baron have got to have a serious chat about guns.

  “You sure ask a lot of questions, Baron K. Sorry I don’t have all the answers.” N’Doch hears the girl swallow a little moan, as Köthen’s eyes flick up at him dangerously. She sees his free play with the dude’s name and title as just one more offense he’s committed among many, but for whatever reason, Köthen lets it pass without comment.

  Instead he says, in the dry cadence of a schoolmaster, “Information is a weapon like anything else. The good soldier gathers up as much as he can, and never wastes his time regretting what he doesn’t have.”

  “Smart move,” says N’Doch. This is no news to him, but he likes the sense that Köthen’s repeating something told him a long time ago, like maybe when he was N’Doch’s age. Which really isn’t that long ago, now he thinks about it. He guesses Köthen’s about ten years older than he is, maybe thirty, maybe not even that. The other impression he gets strikes him as funny: the baron has clearly decided to take him under his wing. It’s a laugh only because, of course, N’Doch sees it the other way around. But he doesn’t care. The dude’s all right, really, for all his arrogance and attitude, and N’Doch would rather have him on his side than not. Plus he knows from his years in the gangs that some guys just gotta be sure they’re the boss.

  So they take the exit, like he’s advised, and N’Doch lets the baron lead the way. He’d rather be rear guard anyway, since most sneak attacks come from behind. Now that they’re moving down in among the deserted gas stations and the empty strip malls, N’Doch feels his adrenaline start to pump. Every window has been busted out. There’s broken glass crunching underfoot, buried in a layer of what looks like dried mud, the same mud that cakes the bases of the buildings and the burned-out trees for at least a meter up.

  “See that? The water’s been even higher than it is now. And not all that long ago.”

  “Then it’s not a drought?” the girl asks dutifully, but N’Doch can see that his concern is not deeply shared. For all she knows, the folks of this time build their cities in the water. Who’s he kidding? For all he knows, they might. But not this city. This city is too familiar, not which or where it is, but how. Parts of it he knows were built in his own time, and parts were built before, like this big gray stone building on the corner that Köthen has stopped to stare up at. It’s crumbling a bit, and there’s weeds and scrawny old trees growing up out of its windows, but it has a kind of falling-down grace to it. Big cornices like on the Presidential Palace at home, and a couple of weather-beaten stone lions flanking what used to be the steps up to the door. N’Doch is no historian. He couldn’t quote place or date, but he’s sure seen buildings like this in vids. He looks around, then trots across the street to haul on a rusted sheet of metal he’s spotted sticking out of a rubble pile. He pulls it free and brushes away the top flaked layer of mud. Sun-bleached letters appear through the brownish film.

  The sign says: DRY CLEANERS.

  “Omigod!” N’Doch scrabbles around in the wreckage for more signage. He can read a little English, and speak a bit more. He guesses from the bits of slangy ads he sees, and the bold, plain styles of the lettering. “Can it be? Oh, man, I think we’re in the States!”

  “What’s the states?” asks the girl, coming up beside him.

  He tells himself, don’t jump to conclusions now. It’s only a coupla signs. The English doesn’t mean anything. People everywhere were using it by his time. But his hunch feels right, and he’s seized by an old excitement. He goes out into the middle of the street, peering up and down for more convincing evidence. He’s not sure he really needs any. “Oh, man, the States! I always wanted to come here!”

  He’s slipped back into French, and Köthen asks for a translation. When he gets it, the baron frowns. “Why didn’t you, if it meant so much?”

  The excitement makes N’Doch high and reckless. He turns on Köthen with a wild grin. A sharp retort about the abuses of power and privilege nearly escapes him, but he bites it back. What’s the point? This dude was born to all that. How could he possibly understand about something you can’t afford, or the yearning for a Promised Land? Instead N’Doch says, and he tries to say it proudly, even though his papa was nothing to be proud about: “I’m a poor man’s son, Baron K. I never could go just anywhere I wanted.”

  Köthen meets his gaze without reproof. N’Doch is taken aback by the bleak and bitter compassion he reads there. “Like you think I can? Think again, lad. Besides, you’re here now, aren’t you?”

  N’Doch catches himself grinning right into the man’s eyes. And he sees an ironic ghost of his grin reflecting back at him. Flustered, he looks away. “Well, hell, yes, I guess I am.” Then he lets the laugh rise up, lets it fill his lungs and echo along the blank faces of the buildings and down the mud-caked streets. “Hey! I guess I am! Hel-lo, America!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Paia toys with her breakfast. Usually she is infused with a reverent, energetic calm for many days after worshiping the God. Usually she goes about her Temple duties with a pious intensity that inspires both her subordinates and the Faithful alike.

  “What does he say to you?” Luco ventured once, as they prepared the Sanctuary for a water ritual. He smoothed the red altar cloth absolutely flat and lined up the twelve candlesticks just so, six to either side of the sacred golden bowl.

  “It’s not what he says, it’s what he does.”

  A candle poised in each hand, Luco gazed at her, his lips slightly parted. His blue eyes were particularly clear and guileless.

  “He fills me with light.”

  “Light.” Luco sighed. “How wonderful. I would give anything to . . .” He stopped, abashed. “Forgive me, my Priestess. I don’t mean to presume.”

  Deeply into her calm that day, Paia was feeling generous. “Perhaps if you went to him, Luco . . .”

  The priest’s bronzed cheeks paled visibly. “Enter the Sanctum? Me? I can’t imagine it.”

  Luco, First Son that he is, has never touched the God, has never laid a palm to the vital heat of the God’s shimmering skin. Not even once. He says his restraint is born of worship and profound respect, but Paia sees the primal terror barely submerged in Luco’s eyes when the God is near. She is often amazed herself that her love for the God so readily overcomes her fear of him, that she alone, of all the God’s servants and Faithful, can bring herself into contact with his physical presence without swooning in terror. Luco is a brave man, for all his fussiness and vanity. His big muscular body bears the scars of his service in the God’s Wars of Conversion, before he was elevated to the priesthood. Not many men or women have made that leap. It’s a testimony to Luco’s management and political skills, but to his nerve as well. Yet he cannot bring himself to face the God alone in the dark furnace of the San
ctum. Paia tries to imagine Son Luco in holy ecstasy. It might all be just a little too messy for him.

  Bringing her attention back to her uneaten breakfast, she sees there’s no melon on her plate this morning. The kitchen will surely put up the defense that it’s unhealthy to eat the same thing every morning, and that the delicate egg-and-cheese pastries are a worthy substitute. But Paia suspects that they’ve run to the end of the melons earlier than usual in the Temple garden, like with the spring strawberries, and she’ll see no more until next season. For no particular reason, she recalls all those blank blue screens on the House Comp’s monitor bank. She should have asked him what they meant. She would have, had the God not summoned her. Paia slumps in her chair, inexplicably disconsolate. Perhaps the blackberries will be bearing soon.

  She pushes the plate away, gets up, and finds herself pacing. This odd restlessness. It’s so unfamiliar, she doesn’t know what to do with it. It’s like she’s waiting for something to happen, but there’s no reason to be expecting anything. Except for the occasional attempt on her life, there are no events in the life of the Citadel, only the endless rolling out of the Temple calendar: daily, monthly, yearly routine and ritual. Perhaps it’s this most recent attempt, not only the threat but the humiliation of it. Perhaps she’s absorbed some of the God’s concern about these enemies he mentioned. She wishes he had told her more, but he’d refused to discuss the matter further.

  Paia wonders if Luco knows anything about the God’s enemies. She’s aware that he and the God have long sessions together in Luco’s office when the God is safely in man-form, to deal with the management of the Temple and its estates. Do they discuss other things as well? Would Luco even tell her if they did? She checks the Temple calendar. Luco has the morning free until the noon Call to Worship, which she allows him to officiate at without her. She throws on an off-duty red Temple robe and hurries downstairs to look for him.

  The affairs of the Temple and the Citadel are managed out of a suite of rooms on the second level, rooms that Paia’s father, in happier days, had used as reception rooms for meetings with members of the local communities, with village elders, with the occasional hardy visitor from outside. In one of Paia’s earliest and most vivid childhood memories, she is watching from the balcony of her nursery, as dozens of shining hovers arrive, one by one, and settle on the narrow valley floor like a gathering of dragonflies sunning their wings. Each is met by her father’s last functioning APC, and the passengers are transported in armored safety to the Citadel. This is a Big Important Meeting, her nanny explains, so we mustn’t bother Daddy and Mommy while they’re tending to their guests. The conferences and receptions went on for days, and late into the nights, and then the hovers went away. Paia saw one or two after that, dropping in for brief visits, but soon they stopped coming altogether. And the reception rooms fell into disuse, especially after her mother died. Her father let his chief steward assume the day-to-day operation of the Citadel and increasingly withdrew to the Library and his collection of precious books.