The Book of Fire Read online

  Looking at an ocean flowing through doorways, Köthen barks that bitter laugh of his. “Oh, yes. And the townsfolk will all be home by dinnertime.”

  N’Doch can’t help but grin. Already this dude reads him pretty damn well. “Okay, then, say I’m right. It gets worse. In my time, this country we’re in, or at least I think we are—this place was the wealthiest, most powerful country of all. If it could be done, the Americans could do it. So if they’re in this sort of trouble, I just gotta be worried about what shape the rest of the world is in.”

  “It reminds me of home,” the girl remarks solemnly.

  Köthen turns his eyes from the water. “This apocalyptic thinking again. I must stop listening, or you will have me believing you.”

  “Oh, believe it, my lord,” pleads the girl. “I am sure it has something to do with why we are here.”

  He blinks at her. “It’s the weather you’re after? I thought it was a dragon. Well, then, we might as well all go home. It’s God’s choice, is it not, to send cold or hot, wet or dry? If He wishes to make the waters rise, there’s little my good sword arm can do about it.”

  “It ain’t that simple . . .” N’Doch begins, at the same time that the girl says, “But what if it isn’t God who’s responsible?”

  “Who, then, other than God?”

  “Some great Evil.”

  Köthen sucks his teeth, contriving to look both contemptuous and worried. “You’d have better brought Hal Engle on this trip, then, instead of me. Great Evils are his bailiwick. Especially as he thinks I’m one of them.”

  But the girl is in her dogged mode. When Köthen moves away to reclaim his chunk of rubble, she follows him, arms outstretched. “But isn’t it odd, my lord? At home, there was snow and ice in August. In N’Doch’s time, a drought was killing the land. Here, the sea is swallowing the cities! And, lo, dragons are waking from their timeless sleep, called to a holy Mission! Surely their mission is to defeat this Evil, and bring Goodness back into the world!”

  N’Doch lets out a slow whistle. He can’t help himself. Where the hell did all that come from?

  Köthen rests his elbows on his knees, shaking his head. “Hal Engle has too charismatic an influence upon the young. He should be curtailed.”

  “Sir Hal has not even heard this idea!” the girl protests.

  “Would you like to hear my theory?” N’Doch thinks it’s time to deflect this argument. “I’m not sure you’ll like it any better.”

  But Köthen’s head has lifted suddenly, his nostrils flaring.

  N’Doch stills. “What?”

  “Do you smell that?”

  N’Doch turns his head into the faint stirrings of the heated air. “Huh. Smoke. Somebody’s up and about.”

  Köthen nods. N’Doch watches him take the breeze into his head like a dog would, sorting the layers and subtleties.

  “At a distance,” he says. “A sickly kind of smoke.”

  “Yeah?” N’Doch gives it another try. Sure enough, it ain’t just woodsmoke. He’s always thought he had a pretty good nose, but this guy’s a real pro. “Could be . . . maybe . . . burning rubber? Oh, right. You wouldn’t know what that is. It’s this gooey shit they make . . .”

  Köthen waves him silent. “What’s burning isn’t important. Who’s burning it is what we need to know.”

  The adrenaline is rising again, tingling along N’Doch’s nerves. “Like, friend or foe?” he mutters.

  “Always assume the latter,” says the baron.

  “Better safe than sorry,” N’Doch agrees.

  Erde listened to their murmured litany, surely the sort of mutually reassuring exchanges that soldiers needed in order to prepare themselves for battle, and suddenly it sounded alien to her.

  “No,” she said. “That’s not right. If we assume they are enemies, they will assume the same of us.”

  Both men turned as one to stare at her.

  “But this is their land. We are the strangers here. We may need their help.”

  Köthen shoved his hands onto his hips and turned away.

  N’Doch said, “And what makes you think they’re going to give it to us?”

  “How will we know if we don’t even ask?” Then, finally, she offered her own version of pragmatism. “If we show up with a dragon . . .”

  N’Doch shrugged. “She’s got a point,” he said to the baron.

  But Köthen said, very quietly, “No.” He tested the air again, walked to the edge of the broken sidewalk, and stared down the street. “You brought me here for this. It’s what I do best. We’ll do as I say.”

  “My lord baron . . .”

  “The dragons are our reserves. Only a fool shows the enemy everything he’s got at the start of the battle. A fool or a braggart.”

  Erde felt her back straighten involuntarily. “My grandmother the baroness often mentioned the value of a show of strength, especially if it means that needless killing can be avoided.”

  “I have no lust for needless killing,” Köthen growled.

  “We don’t even know who they are yet!” N’Doch complained. “Why argue now about what we’re going to do to them? By the time we decide, they may be doing it to us!”

  “There is no argument,” said Köthen. “We will do as I say.”

  “Tell you what, Baron K . . . let me go on up ahead and scout ’em out a bit. I can move fast and light. It sort of used to be my profession—before I got shanghaied into the dragon business.”

  Erde could see Baron Köthen wishing in his heart for someone predictable and steady at his side, like Captain Wender, or even the not entirely sane but surely reliable Hal Engle. On the assumption that there was greater strength in union, she decided to support him.

  “No scouting now. We must stay together,” Köthen insisted. To Erde’s surprise, he turned to her. “Are the dragons agreed? They will come if you call them?”

  “They will, my lord.”

  His gaze lingered a moment. Then he grabbed her hands at the wrists and twisted them palms up and open in front of him. Their unscarred, healthy flesh seemed more than a puzzle to him: an offense, perhaps. How else to explain his tight, nervous expression?

  “Did I dream it?” he murmured.

  “No, my lord.”

  “It’s true, then, is it, witch? Dragon magic?”

  Had he not believed? Was N’Doch’s story of resurrection not convincing to him? “Oh, yes, it surely is. My lord Earth has made far greater healings than this.”

  He balanced one of her hands in his left, and with his right thumb and forefinger traced the invisible lines where Wender’s dagger had cut into her skin. It was like sunrise. Her entire body awoke to his touch. Keeping her own hands steady was a supreme act of will. She couldn’t even think of looking up at him.

  He knows, she decided. He knows exactly what he’s doing to me. Damn him!

  And the thought gave her strength.

  Köthen placed her hands down by her sides as if putting them back in proper order. “Well, then I guess I needn’t worry about whatever fearsome weapons these warriors of the future might use against me. I have a dragon to put me back together again.”

  On the edge of the street, N’Doch cleared his throat. “Baron K. The sun’s going down. We better get going.”

  Erde signaled the dragons.

  SOMEONE IS ALIVE HERE!

  Reluctantly, they gave over a part of their consciousness from their ongoing debate over the guilt or innocence of Lord Fire.

  THE LAND IS DRY. IT COULD BE A BRUSHFIRE.

  Erde’s excitement ebbed. But surely Baron Köthen would know the difference between a man-made fire and one of natural origin.

  N’DOCH SAID IT SMELLED LIKE “BURNING RUBBER.”

  Lady Water apparently knew what “rubber” was.

  That’s significant. Keep us posted.

  BARON KÖTHEN REQUESTS THAT YOU MOVE IN CLOSER IN ORDER TO BE READY TO AID US IN CASE OF AN ATTACK.

  DISTANCE MATTERS NOT. IF YOU
CALL, WE WILL BE THERE UPON THE INSTANT.

  YOU WON’T GO OFF HUNTING, WHERE YOU CAN’T HEAR US . . .?

  Nothing around to hunt.

  N’DOCH THINKS HE SAW A RAT A WHILE AGO.

  He never tells me anything!

  Erde’s head sang with the sibilance of dragon derision. In order to sober them up, she asked them something serious.

  HAVE YOU LOCATED YOUR BROTHER FIRE YET?

  We aren’t miracle workers . . .

  Lady Water sounded annoyed, but then, Erde often thought her too easily annoyed. Perhaps this was due to having an annoying human as her dragon guide. Erde was particularly irritated with N’Doch just then, as she feared he was bringing out the worst in Baron Köthen. She’d understood better how to deal with them when they were at odds. But just one life-threatening incident later, and they were instant allies. Any moment they’d be punching each other in the arm like barracks infantrymen and looking for flagons of ale to hoist together. When she said as much to the dragons, Lady Water grew even more annoyed, and her brother Earth even more tolerant and kindly.

  Well, he got his highness up and moving, didn’t he?

  Did he? Erde thought she had done that.

  YOU MUST TRUST THE BOY TO DO WHAT’S NEEDED. HE IS A SHAPE-SHIFTER, LIKE HIS DRAGON, MY SISTER. ONLY IT IS NOT HIS BODY HE CHANGES. INSTEAD, HE ADAPTS WHO HE IS TO THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE SITUATION . . . AND OF THE PEOPLE HE IS DEALING WITH.

  I couldn’t have said that better myself.

  What about my needs? But Erde kept this thought in the private part of her mind. She was outnumbered on the issue of N’Doch, and always in such cases, she trusted the dragons’ wisdom. Again, she resolved to try to better understand her fellow dragon guide.

  They were about to start off, arranged in that stringlike formation that both Köthen and N’Doch favored, with herself in the middle and N’Doch up ahead. N’Doch came over and touched her elbow. “Did you warn him about guns yet?”

  Guns. Oh, no.

  “Will they be here, too?”

  “Hell, girl, more’n likely. Once you get a good idea like that into folks’ heads, they ain’t gonna give it up easy.”

  “A good idea, N’Doch?”

  He, of all people, who but for the dragons would be dead from the destruction that these “good ideas” could wreak on human flesh.

  “Well, you know what I mean. They work.”

  “How should I warn him about guns?”

  “How did you learn? I told you, right?”

  “No. Someone just began shooting, and you told me to duck.”

  “Oh, right. I remember now. Well, maybe that’s how he’ll have to learn, too.”

  “No.”

  The moment was always in her mind, though most of the time she could ignore it, that preternaturally clear, slow-motion image that would never fade or be forgotten: N’Doch is yelling. He is racing toward her over the bright velvet grass, dodging not out of but into the path of the guns firing behind him. And then his long, slim body is jerking, arcing into the air, his mouth flung open, his dark head hauled back, blood and bone and flesh, pieces of him spattering her chest and cheeks as the dragons’ aura embraces them in a rush of silence and merciful oblivion.

  Erde buried her face in her hands.

  “Hey, girl . . .” He touched her elbow again, uneasily. “You worry too much.”

  “No.” She shuddered once, then dropped her hands and looked up at him, amazed. She had just understood something. While reliving that awful moment yet again, a detail had made itself clear to her, something she had not known, or had denied.

  . . . dodging not out of but into the path of the guns . . .

  He had put himself between them, between her and the guns.

  He’d said he remembered nothing about that moment, the moment of his dying and just before. But Erde thought he should. She reached out to the dragons and asked them to put the image into his head. She saw its arrival in his eyes and in his sharp intake of breath.

  “Why did you do that, N’Doch?”

  He was wrung silent by the pictures in his mind. Only a strangled gasp escaped him, then a shudder very much like her own.

  “Why, N’Doch?”

  “I don’t . . .” he murmured, then stopped and licked his lips. “No, I do . . . what I remember is, I was . . . so angry. Just so fucking angry! Shooting down innocent women because they’re, like, an inconvenience!” His chest rose and fell as if he’d been running. “Baraga thought I controlled the dragons. I couldn’t . . .”

  “I know.” Right there in the broken alien street, Erde put her arms around N’Doch, not even worrying about what Baron Köthen might think, and held him until he stopped shuddering. He did not return the embrace. He was too stunned, she could see, by what she had shown him, by what it told him about himself. And so was she.

  She backed away from him a step, patting his arms several times as they hung long and limp by his sides.

  “I will tell him about guns,” she said.

  N’Doch knows he can’t let himself be distracted by this just now. He needs to be about four hundred percent alert. But he decides it’s also not the best idea to let the girl fill the baron in on something crucial like guns which she knows shit-all about. Like, what if he says to her, how does it work? This guy could ask that kind of question. What will she say, by magic?

  Plus he sees Köthen is leaning back against the brick wall of the building while she talks to him, with his arms folded across his chest at a majorly skeptical angle. It won’t do for the baron not to believe her at all. He’ll get his head blown off first thing. N’Doch slouches over to join them.

  “So what’d you tell him?”

  When she repeats it for him, N’Doch laughs. “I wouldn’ta believed you either.” He offers a more mechanical explanation involving trajectories and lightning and simple ballistics, and Köthen’s eyes surrender their resistant glaze. He has never heard of artillery or gunpowder, but he knows all about catapults, and once again, he impresses N’Doch with the agility of his thinking and his willingness to go after an idea as long as he can get the smallest toehold on it.

  “Gun.” Köthen rolls the word around as if tasting it. The military potential of such a notion is not lost on him, though N’Doch’s description of gunpowder clearly smacks to him of alchemy. He uses the French word, somewhat awkwardly, since N’Doch hasn’t been able to give him the word for gun in German. It doesn’t exist yet for the girl and the baron, anyhow. N’Doch finds his own brain bending around that idea. Like, if he did know the German for gun, and he taught it to the baron and it got into the language that way, where would the word have come from in the first place? He reminds himself, when he has time, to ask the dragons. Just the sort of thing they ought to know.

  “Main thing,” he says, “is to stick close to cover. Just ’cause they’re a ways away don’t mean they can’t get at you.” He sees Köthen’s glance flick down the length of the street and up the sides of the buildings, scanning the dark rows of empty window holes. You got it, dude, he agrees gloomily. This here’s sniper heaven. He thinks he detects the slightest wavering in the man’s ramrod confidence. It’s there in his eyes—the shadow of a shark cruising the shallows—and as quickly gone, as the baron rejects the thought and shoves himself away from the wall.

  “I am not the kingdom’s best archer,” he remarks, “but a stout bow would be comforting right now.” He nods N’Doch forward and signals them to move on.

  Feeling as much of a sitting duck as he can ever recall, N’Doch leads the way down the littered sidewalk, choosing now to hug the building walls for the sake of available cover. He checks every burned-out doorway or busted window and it’s slow going, but the smell of smoke is still hanging in the air and the baron doesn’t seem impatient.

  The street runs straight for several more blocks, then snakes off to the left. At the crook of the turn, N’Doch spots a little huddle of what must have been shops, shorter buildings with gaping
holes in the bottom story that used to be display windows. He peers inside each one. He sees old glass, mostly ground into glittery powder, and along the walls, wrecked and empty shelving, the charred remains of counters and freezer cases, heaps of twisted wire from storage racks. All junk. Anything useful has been salvaged already, probably over a considerable length of time. These places have a picked-over quality that N’Doch recognizes. He shrugs and moves on. Here and there, a bit of blistered metal offers a fragment of a word or image to confirm his guess: the northeastern US of A, some time after his. He can’t decide now which is more surreal: walking around knowing you’re in 913, or sifting through the wreckage of your own future.

  Around the elbow, the street dips sharply and within a block, lowers itself into the muddy green water. There are no alleys or cross streets to lead them aside, along dry land. N’Doch glares about at the looming brick facades. Cul de sac. Perfect place for an ambush. But he’s always had a major objection to retracing his steps. Then he sees something that makes him smile. Köthen and the girl come up beside him.

  “Oh,” says the girl. “We’ll have to find another way.”

  “Unh-unh.” N’Doch points.

  Down the slope of the street and on the far side, where the bay has already swallowed the bottom story, a crude gangway has been lashed together out of salvaged pipes and window grating and battered metal doors. It leads from the raised stone stoop of the building at the water’s edge, across that facade, and into a second-floor window of the building next door. It looks well-used and pretty sturdy, N’Doch thinks. It even has a jerry-built sort of railing. What he finds most interesting, though, is that there’s been no attempt made to conceal it. It’s like, well, yeah, this is where the road goes, now that the old one’s underwater. He looks to the baron. “I’ll check it out.”

  Köthen shrugs, like it’s the best of a poor choice, and nods him forward. They head downhill and cross the street. Köthen and the girl wait on the stoop while N’Doch climbs the gangway. The windows of the facade are blocked with dented sheet metal until he gets up to the end of the ramp. The final window has been enlarged by knocking away the brick sill. It’s now door height, if you’re someone a bit shorter than N’Doch. He leans against the facade and pokes his head into the opening. The dark room inside has long ago been trashed. The wooden floor gapes in several places. N’Doch can hear the slosh of water in the space below. There’s a salty dampness in the air, a coolish draft rising that he inhales with relief as he ducks through the doorway.