The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet Page 3

  Stoksie looks dubious.

  “Later, dude, okay?” N’Doch watches Cauldwell ease a half step closer to the big dragon. “Later, I’ll sing you about elephants.”

  The girl strays to the Librarian’s side. He feels like he’s being force-fed the entire world’s impatience and anxiety. He sends Erde easeful messages. If he could reach his dragon, he’d send her some, too. Cauldwell’s absolute trust must be won, or the forces for good will be a force divided.

  Cauldwell lets his hand slide across the waist-high ivory curl of claw, broader than his own muscular thigh. “Is this what it was like?” he asks Paia, “With . . . him?”

  Paia’s choked laugh is the most rueful sound the Librarian has ever heard. “Oh, no, cousin. Oh, no. No. Not at all.”

  Cauldwell takes a breath, then lifts his head and looks the dragon in the eye: a tall, golden man caught in a benign and golden stare. Benign, but awe-inspiring. Even the Librarian finds it so. Cauldwell licks his lips. “Let’s see . . . you must be . . .”

  “He is Lord Earth.” Erde has moved up on his other side. Paia steps back, into the soldier’s waiting embrace. They move in concert, these dragon guides, the Librarian muses, forgetting for a moment that he is one of them.

  “Earth.” Cauldwell cannot tear his gaze away. “Ah. Yours?”

  The girl wags her singed curls faintly. “Say rather, I am his. His servant, and guide in the world of men. As your cousin is Lord Fire’s, only . . .”

  “Only. Only?”

  “It’s my fault,” murmurs Paia from behind. “It must be. Yet Earth tells me otherwise. He says I am meant to help the Go . . . um, that is, Fire . . . see the error of his ways.”

  Cauldwell’s mouth twists. “He’ll only see what’s in his own interest.”

  The Librarian agrees. He worries that Earth’s assessment is too generous. The dysfunction seems profound, and the dragon in question entirely intractable.

  “Earth,” repeats Cauldwell. His hand rests more easily on the dragon’s claw. “Earth and . . .?”

  “Water,” N’Doch supplies.

  As Cauldwell turns, Water settles her form still further. The Librarian watches closely. When she’s done settling, he silently applauds her cleverness. She’s become a lovely, swan-necked blue dragon, cloaked in velvet like a seal, and no bigger than one of the Tinker mules that’s whickering greetings from the far corners of the cavern. A phrase comes to his mind, from another former life: good cop, bad cop. The Librarian grins. Next to her looming, mountainous, and terrifying brother, Water is just the cutest little dragon you ever did see.

  Luther’s murmur is equal parts awe and delight. “Sheez a shape-shiftah, Leif. Ain’dat sumting?”

  “It’s something, all right.”

  “We should . . .” Erde urges. “Isn’t it time to . . .?”

  Her anxiety brims over and swirls around the Librarian like surf. This time, he agrees. With Fire on the rampage who knows where, laying waste to who knows which of their near and dear, it’s high time they got moving. He’s lingered only to savor the luxury of someone else doing the talking for him. Three someones, his fellow guides, who can tap directly into his image-driven brain and translate for him. Except about the machines. That’s beyond all understanding. The machines and his connection to them are his contribution to the four-way destiny. That much, at least, he is sure of, among so little else.

  N’Doch and Erde snatch a brief reunion with Stoksie, asking after the rest of Blind Rachel, his Tinker crew. Seven out of ten of the local crews made it into the Refuge before Fire began torching the countryside. The Librarian worries about the fate of the other three.

  He waves his arms. “We should. Now. The Library.”

  N’Doch grabs Leif Cauldwell’s elbow familiarly. “Time to go to work, chief. See if the computers can tell us what Fire’s up to.”

  Cauldwell eases free of the younger man’s grip. “Leif. Call me Leif. There are no chiefs around here.”

  “Sure, sure. Whatever.” N’Doch’s round ebony face is open and guileless. He scuffs one foot along the polished stone floor. “But it’s gonna make such a cool rhyming lyric when I get to writing a song about you.”

  Cauldwell stares at him.

  “N’Doch . . .” Erde warns.

  Cauldwell takes in the girl’s prim and disapproving frown, makes a quick assessment and lets his testiness fade. “Yeah? Can’t wait to hear it.” He turns away to the Librarian. “Who do we need downstairs?”

  “All. All.”

  N’Doch adds, “Everyone who can fit. All of us and all of you . . . y’know, your non-chiefs.”

  Erde’s glower deepens. “He will not behave. Do not expect it.”

  But Cauldwell is already in motion, heading off into darkness, along a path among the crowded wagons. He has no problem with giving orders. “Luther, Stoksie, you’re with us. Where’s Ysa? And Stanze? We’ll need Constanze.” He halts, scanning the crowd.

  Luther joins him, smiling. “Sheez ovah deah, Leif. Lookit dat, willya?”

  Cauldwell’s wife Constanze, with their little daughter clasped in her arms, trails a pack of children out of the throng, heading straight for the brown dragon’s tall snout, which he’s cushioned comfortably on crossed forepaws in order to greet them. Cauldwell starts. “Stanze . . .!”

  “S’okay, Leif.” Luther restrains him with a raised palm. “S’awri’. We shudn’t teach ’em all owah feahs, ri’?”

  “But . . .”

  “But nuttin, Leif. Look fer yerself.”

  One of the smallest children is already snuggled against the dragon’s rough jaw. Earth is impressive, but he is not lovely like his sister. The Librarian admits that he’s seen prettier horned toads. But the child’s eyes are only adoring. Constanze shoots a helpless glance in her husband’s direction. The child in her grasp struggles for freedom. She shrugs and sets the girl down beside the dragon’s claws. The girl crows delightedly and wraps her arms around the nearest pillar of ivory. Constanze backs away, bemused, then with another shrug, she turns and comes toward Cauldwell. The Librarian notes that the water dragon has stealthily sidestepped out of child-range.

  Beside him, N’Doch chuckles dryly. “They’ll leave her alone. She’s not talking to ’em like he is. He’s still a kid despite his size, but she came into the world a grown-up. I sang her into kid-form once. My little brother. Died when he was five. Don’t think she liked it much.”

  Cauldwell’s arm slides automatically around Constanze’s waist. They watch their little girl slipping and sliding as she tries to climb the dragon’s claw. “Are we just going to leave them alone together?” Cauldwell asks.

  Constanze leans into his side. “She told me, distinctly and even grammatically, that the dragon had assured her he wasn’t eating children today.”

  “She said that? What an imagination!”

  “No. I got the impression she was relaying what he actually said. All the children say he’s talking to them.”

  “Really?” Cauldwell looks to the Librarian in alarm. “Is that possible?”

  “Possible. Yes.”

  “Something you taught them? By the One, what are we raising?”

  “The future,” says the Librarian before he’s even thought it over. And it’s true that what the children have become is as much his fault as anyone’s. He’s been their tutor and their mascot. It’s his dark den that’s their favorite place of play. If he himself is not entirely human, how can he teach the children to be?

  “Lord Earth urges us to action,” Erde announces.

  “We should get a move on,” N’Doch nods. “The dragons’ll listen in through us.”

  “Ah, if only Sir Hal were here!” Erde mourns.

  “Sure, just what we need,” N’Doch mutters. “Another chief.”

  Cauldwell gives the dragons one last glance of misgiving, then expels a long breath and leads his war council toward the elevator. The Librarian trots after him, his fingers itching for his keypad. N’Doch f
alls in behind, beside Paia and the soldier.

  “Taking up the rear as usual, yer lordship?”

  “One day you’ll sass the wrong man, Dochmann.” Köthen jerks his thumb toward Cauldwell’s retreating back.

  “Jeez, if you ain’t blown me away yet, no one will. The world loves a clown, Dolph, doncha know?”

  “I wouldn’t bet money on it. Or your life.”

  “Like I’d better not sass the Fire dude, is that what you’re getting at?”

  The soldier adjusts the sword across his back to a more comfortable angle. “It wouldn’t be my first advice.”

  “The God . . . I mean, Fire . . . doesn’t take well to mockery,” agrees Paia quietly. “He only knows how to give it out.”

  “Then I’m gonna be in deep shit,” N’Doch predicts. “’Cause there’s one thing I just can’t leave alone, and that’s a guy who takes himself too seriously.”

  Köthen groans. “I’ll rue the day I swore my sword to your safety.”

  “Cheer up, Dolph. You used to be one of those too-serious guys, remember, and we worked it out okay, didn’t we?”

  “It’s hardly analogous.”

  “Yeah, well.” At the open door of the elevator, silhouetted against the bright light from the cab, N’Doch glances back at the big, dirt-colored dragon, besieged by a pack of noisy little children.

  He laughs softly. “That’s one hell of a baby-sitter!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  N’Doch is pondering that song he’ll make up about Leif Cauldwell as he trails the others into the shadowed Communications Room. He lets the base rhythm of the HVAC underline the melody, and longs for an instrument to play it on.

  The group piles up in front of the bright wall screen, still running feed from the helipad security camera. N’Doch stands at the back. He’s taller than any of them, except Luther and Cauldwell. Besides, the image is so large and so clear, it’s like he’s inside of it, like he’s back up there on the mountaintop, in the heat and the smoke, a sitting duck for dragon-fire. Makes him sweat just to think about it. And about what Fire might be up to. Even packed in here like sardines, it’s tough to keep still, tough to fight the worry down. His grandpa’s got power, N’Doch is sure of it, but is his magic strong enough to stand against the malign wizardry of Fire?

  Papa Dja, Papa Dja, keep your head low, old man, he intones silently.

  The boy Mattias jumps up from the console as Gerrasch approaches. N’Doch thinks the kid looks a whole lot tighter around the eyes than when they’d left him here before. No surprise, given what he’s just seen, courtesy of the video feed. But he’s trying to play it cool. N’Doch would’ve done the same at his age. Hell, he’s doing it now.

  “Weah’s da dragins?” Mattias demands immediately.

  Gerrasch elbows him gently aside and rolls into his padded chair, his soft pink hands working the keys before he’s even settled his bulk.

  N’Doch jerks his thumb. “Upstairs.”

  Mattias looks to Gerrasch, who’s already hunched down and oblivious, then to Leif Cauldwell. His entire gawky-teen body pleads. “Kin I go, Leif, huh, huh?”

  Cauldwell nods. A bit grudgingly, N’Doch thinks, but he’s willing to cut the rebel leader some slack. A day ago, before all these mouthy strangers showed up out of nowhere, the dude was running his own show, the whole show, no matter what he says about chiefs or no chiefs. But his rebellion was doomed—ill-equipped and undermanned—and the man has the grace to see it, even if he won’t say it out loud. Two dragons suddenly on his side gives him and his people a serious fighting chance.

  The kid practically lays rubber scooting on out of there. N’Doch shoulders his way out of the press to wander restlessly among the rows of darkened workstations while late arrivals trot in from upstairs and the Librarian fiddles with his keypad. The walls to either side of the screen are gridded with smooth-faced, rectangular units adorned with svelte pull handles and tiny green idiot lights. Probably some sort of data storage. N’Doch wonders about the people who used to live and work here, sunk so deep into the mountain bedrock. What happened to them? What did they do while the world outside fell apart around them? He slides a palm along the slick surface. What is it? Metal? Plastic? He can’t tell. For him, it’s . . . well, the future. He can’t repress a little private speculation about what all this super high-tech equipment could do if retrofitted and put to work mixing one of his songs. He doubts he’ll get the chance to find out. Too much serious shit going down.

  The yellow glow bathing the racks of alien equipment flicks over to blue. N’Doch pivots and moves toward the screen. The big world map is back, with its too-great expanse of hot, empty ocean and its overlay of satellite orbits. He scans for the blinking indicators.

  “Uh-oh,” he murmurs, and scans again.

  There’s the one for Air, parked off the map in the lower corner, signifying her imprisonment who-knows-where, and there’s the two active signals poised over a position that looks to be right about where he’s standing, only several levels up in the big cavern. “Where is he? Where’s the fourth signal?”

  He hears a weird chittering noise. It’s Gerrasch, something he’s doing with his teeth. “Gone,” he says. “Already.”

  “Gone?” moans Erde. “Oh, I knew it! We shouldn’t have waited!”

  “Hold on, hold on.” But N’Doch is offering comfort he doesn’t feel.

  Stoksie peers at the screen. “Gone weah?”

  “To another time,” says Cauldwell grimly, “If I understand this right.”

  N’Doch nods. “Question is, which one? Who do we warn first?”

  Again, they’re all talking at once, filling the room with more noise than there are people. Luther explains to Ysa what the blinking lights mean. Constanze asks if the indicator would change if the Beast assumed man-form. N’Doch thinks about his mama, alone in front of her vid set. Grandpapa Djawara can’t be much help to her. He’s an old man, living by himself out in the bush with only distant neighbors who fear and mistrust him anyway. He’ll need all his witchy powers to keep his own self safe.

  Cauldwell lets everyone yammer out their anxiety. Meanwhile, he leans over the Librarian’s round shoulder and gets to work. “Gerrasch, call up House. What’s happening at the Citadel?”

  The Librarian keys in the connection. He and Cauldwell have worked together a long time. N’Doch moves in, interested. He’s learned in the Meld how, when Fire awoke, he commandeered the Cauldwell family fortress as his temple and stronghold. But Paia’s presence in the Meld is emotional more than visual, despite her being a painter and all. N’Doch is eager for a clearer look at this place he’s heard so much about. And then there’s the Citadel’s sentient computer, this “House” that Leif’s asking about. The machine that’s been Paia’s mentor in the dragon lore, like Papa Dja for N’Doch and Hal Engle for Erde. N’Doch still can’t quite get his brain around it. There was no full-tilt AI back in his time. He always talked a lot of sci-fi, but he didn’t believe in much of it. So he’s startled by the voice that floats up from the console speakers. Doesn’t sound synthesized at all. Not like the AIs in the old sf vids, which always talked like they’d swallowed a big dose of Prozac. This sounds like just a human, and a kinda panicky one at that. N’Doch has never heard a computer whine before.

  “Finally! Where have you been? I’ve been calling for hours and Mattias kept saying, ‘they went upstairs, they went upstairs,’ but he didn’t know how to patch me through, or maybe he thought, well, I don’t know what he thought! Really, Gerrasch, you have to train your people better! Is he there? He’s not here. He . . .”

  “Was here,” intones the Librarian. “Gone already.”

  “Gone? Gone? Where?”

  “Away.”

  “What do you mean, away? You mean, downtime? Is everyone all right? Is Paia all right?”

  Funny how everyone keeps asking that, muses N’Doch.

  “She’s fine, House.” Cauldwell leans in to be heard over the background din
of questions and debate.

  “Leif! You made it! I was so concerned!”

  “Everyone here’s fine. A bit shell-shocked, but fine. What’s going on there? Can you put the monitors on-line?”

  “Working on it. Such excitement you’ve missed, Leif! There’s been a palace coup, just as you predicted. Second Son Branfer has declared himself First Son in your absence!”

  “Branfer! That clod can’t manage his breakfast, never mind the whole Temple!”

  “And one of the Faceless Twelve, I forget which, has elevated herself to High Priestess.”

  N’Doch detects conflict on Cauldwell’s sculpture-perfect face. There goes his other seat of authority, poof! Swept from beneath him. But he’d engineered that usurping himself. So dedicated to his cause, he gave up what had to be a real cushy job. Except for having Fire as your boss.

  “Hope she and Branfer hate each other,” Cauldwell mutters darkly.

  “If not now, they will soon, particularly if I have anything to say about it. The Temple is doomed. They’ll all be eating each other alive by noon!”

  N’Doch marvels at the computer’s unconcealed relish for violence and intrigue. Like lots of teenagers he’s known. Proof enough for him that this machine is sentient.

  Cauldwell is less gleeful. “Any injuries? Much damage? What about Christoff and Ark?”

  “Safe. Holed up here in the Rare Books Room with the others. I was able to warn them in time.”

  “Can you keep them safe?”

  “Until he comes looking for them . . .”

  “Then we’ll have to get them out of there before that happens.”

  “I’ll tell them. Then we have to figure out a way to rescue me.” There’s a pause, entirely without static. The Librarian’s typing fingers go slack. Cauldwell gnaws his lip. Finally, its voice gone flat, the computer says, “Patching through the monitors.”

  The big blue map on the wall is quickly papered over by a grid of smaller images: rooms, interior vistas, some populated, others not, some obscured by signal static, a few entirely blank. N’Doch sees long windowless corridors, paneled in gleaming wood, furnished with carpets and paintings and the occasional ornate, stiff-backed chair. People racing to and fro. He sees a vast, bustling kitchen, though he can’t really tell if a meal is being prepared or if the food stores are being raided. He sees a huge dining hall with the tables laid out in a blatantly hierarchical pattern. He sees sun-blasted walled courtyards and a long view down the nave of an elaborate, gilded basilica he supposes to be the Temple. A small gathering huddles in noisy prayer near what must be the altar.