The Book of Fire Read online

  “Why just for me?” With Erde’s every step, the white layers exploded upward in powdery gusts, reminding her of baking day in the castle kitchens. At that thought, she felt a surge of guilty joy.

  “Snows all the time where you come from.”

  “At Tor Alte? It does not. At least, it didn’t used to.” Erde wasn’t sure what things were like at Tor Alte lately, and she wouldn’t ever want to be caught in a falsehood.

  “Bet it’s snowing right now.” Doritt glanced behind to check on the pony’s progress. His load of hay and grain and dried fruit was rather precariously balanced on his shaggy, narrow back.

  “In the winter, it snowed a lot.”

  “But it isn’t winter yet,” Doritt noted grimly.

  Erde fell silent. She knew Doritt’s concern was not so much the snow itself, but the fact that it was snowing now, only three weeks into September. But she was more worried about the dragons, gone back on an errand of mercy to that hot land she’d so recently returned from, that alien place that made her grateful for snow in September. However bad it was here, it was worse there, and she wished they’d hurry up and come home. She wanted so to talk to them about her dream.

  “Doritt doesn’t think snow was meant to be enjoyed,” said Raven.

  “Not true! Everything in its place is just fine with me.”

  But Raven’s eyes were merry. Erde felt her spirits rise again just looking at her, in her usual feathery blue, layered against the cold, and her dark unfettered hair netted with snowflakes like some kind of woodland queen. Erde always marveled, looking at Raven. If she could choose to look like anyone in the world, it would be Raven, no doubt of it.

  “Now,” said Raven, “you promised to tell us what it was like where the dragon took you.”

  “It was hot!” Erde allowed herself a little dance step between them, of joy and relief and affection. “Truly! Hot as a smithy’s forge! And smelly. The sun beat down on us all day! And you couldn’t drink any of the water.”

  “Why not?”

  “N’Doch said it would make us sick. And to make matters worse, he insisted on boiling whatever we drank! Can you believe it?”

  “That’s what my mother taught me to do with bad water,” said Doritt.

  “Really? Why?”

  Raven laughed. “Because her own mother did it, I’ll bet, and her mother’s mother before her. Women’s wisdom.”

  Erde made a face. “Well, I hate drinking hot water. I was thirsty the whole time! Couldn’t even wear clothes!”

  Doritt’s eyebrows peaked. “No clothes?”

  “Well, you know . . . not proper ones.”

  “No wonder you turned up so suddenly in your shift!”

  Raven’s laugh was so warm and musical that Erde was sure she heard it echo around the entire valley, bouncing off the pine-studded hillsides, tangling in the bare branches of the maples and birches, skating along the winding course of the ice-choked river. But the river reminded her of the dream again. To banish its shadow, she grabbed Raven’s hands and whirled her around, arms outstretched, to make her laugh some more. Together they sketched a circuit of merry pirouettes around tall Doritt as she forged doggedly ahead, refusing to crack a smile.

  Erde flung her arms wide in a whirling embrace of sky, moor, and mountains. “I’m so glad to be home!”

  And saying it somehow made it so. This was home now, Deep Moor, this magical, hidden valley. Not Tor Alte, the castle of her birth, home of Baron Josef von Alte, her father. Poor deluded man. Interesting that she could finally think of him without a wince, that she could even imagine meeting him face-to-face. Perhaps this was because she finally understood that home didn’t have to be where you came from. It could be where you felt you belonged. Or perhaps it was because, after all she’d seen, in this her fifteenth year, she’d begun to learn how to forgive. She twirled Raven around again, head thrown back in joy. “Hooommmme!”

  “Well, you’ve certainly come out of yourself since we’ve known you,” remarked Doritt, not unkindly.

  Erde slowed, relaxed her hold on Raven’s hands. “Have I?”

  Doritt rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, yes.” Raven reached to tousle Erde’s thick, short-cropped hair. “Such a sober young thing when you first came to us.”

  “I had a lot to be sober about.”

  “You still do,” replied Doritt. “We all do.”

  “Oh, again! Mistress Grim!”

  But Raven’s retort was halfhearted, and Doritt’s reminder hung in the air like smoke, bringing a momentary silence. Erde’s thoughts strayed back to the dream these women had shaken her out of just hours before. It occurred to her that she didn’t yet know if Adolphus of Köthen was dead or alive.

  “Isn’t it time to talk about the war?” she asked. “I wish you’d tell me the news and how things have been going!”

  Raven squeezed her shoulder. “Linden insists you’re to be rested and smiling again before we start loading you down with all our problems. Look at how hard you were sleeping this morning!”

  “I’m smiling. I’m fine.” She hadn’t told them what they’d woken her from.

  Doritt clucked. “You slept for two days straight before that.”

  “Please? I know Linden means well, but I’m not a child anymore. Just some little bit of news?” She couldn’t bring herself to actually ask about Baron Köthen. If he were dead, she knew she’d burst into tears like a child, when she more properly ought to be celebrating. “What about Hal?”

  “Hal is well, at last report,” offered Raven. “We’ll all tell all at dinner. There’s a lot of your news we haven’t heard either.”

  Erde sighed. She’d hoped for news as a distraction as much as anything else. She didn’t feel so giddy anymore, and probably she should tell them why. She glanced over her shoulder at the sky. Billowy gray clouds were massing over the valley’s northern end, above the sprawling farmstead that nestled there. She could almost see a material darkness sifting down like ash to smother all cheer, all life within.

  “Sometimes . . .” she began finally. In the quiet, even her murmur sounded like a shout. “Sometimes I can hear him, you know . . . Brother Guillemo . . . in my dreams. Like he’s speaking to me.”

  Raven’s glance was sharp. “Really? Have you told Rose?”

  “I’ve hardly seen Rose! I’ve been sleeping so much! I was so tired! I’ve been . . .!” She was shaken by the sudden anxiety that gripped her, but she couldn’t make herself admit to them that she’d dreamed the hell-priest right there in Deep Moor. If he could find her so easily in her dreams, could he locate her in life?

  “Well, then,” Raven advised, “you can tell her soon as we get back to the house.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  In unspoken agreement, the three women quickened their pace. With memories of mad—or maybe not so mad—Brother Guillemo dogging Erde’s thoughts, the pristine snow and crisp chill were not so inviting anymore. Instead, a longing gripped her for the sweet tall grasses and wild-flowers of the summer meadows, of the Deep Moor she’d known not even a month ago. She’d felt safer then, even though she’d been in the greatest possible peril. And now, Deep Moor was threatened, too. Not just by the weather, but by the homing eye of the hell-priest. She’d promised herself to act like an adult, even more than they expected her to, but she must have shuddered or made some small sound of distress, for Raven curled an arm about her shoulders and gave her a gentle hug.

  “Never fear, sweeting. A lot of good minds and hearts are working on this problem. We’ll think of something.”

  Erde nodded dutifully. Before this morning, she had believed that the women of Deep Moor could stand against the hell-priest, against anything. Now she was not so sure.

  The Grove loomed ahead like a ruined cathedral. The bare branches of its encircling oaks reached up like burned timbers grabbing at the sky. The thick, dark trunks curved in even ranks like the charred piers of a fallen apse. Erde scolded herself for the childish thinki
ng that had let her hope to find this stand of sacred oaks still green and heavy with summer, with the warm sighing of leaves and birdsong. But the leaves lay buried beneath the snow and the birds were stilled. She moved among the huge, knotted trunks in a daze, as if she’d lost something precious. She wished the dragon were there. His very existence was a comfort. Erde knew she could never completely lose hope, as long as there were dragons in the world.

  In the center of the Grove lay a pond no bigger than a cottage and as smoothly circular as the face of the full moon. Erde had suspected there was Power in this pond the first time she laid eyes on it. Now she was sure. The shallow crystalline water glimmered softly, without a trace of ice. All around its perfect silver arc, the snow pulled back, as if out of respect, revealing a brief but cheering fringe of green.

  Raven and Doritt led the pony to the bank and began to unpack the load. Doritt untied the two big sheaves of hay and spread them out beside the water. Raven cleared patches of snow, then handed out sacks of fruit and grain to scatter on the ground.

  “Hope this’ll hold ’em,” Doritt muttered.

  “Oh, tut,” Raven reproved cheerfully. “There’s plenty more for a while.”

  “As long as it’s the usual while.”

  “We’ve lived through long winters before.”

  “Not winters that started in early September.”

  “We have stores for a year. You always insist on it.” Raven emptied her last sack with a flourish, then whistled up into the barren branches. A sudden flutter of wings broke the silence, and small flocks of birds whirled in to settle among the seed. Off among the trees, Erde saw the deer waiting. And then something else caught her eye.

  “Raven, Doritt, look . . . on the other side of the pond. See that odd bunch of sticks?” The sticks formed a tall but neatly rounded pile, very like something she’d seen before. “Doesn’t it look like . . .?”

  “Windfall,” said Doritt. “No, too neat. Someone’s brush pile.”

  “No one would be cutting wood in the Grove,” Raven countered.

  Then Erde remembered. “I know! It’s . . .”

  “Like a beaver lodge,” Raven murmured. “Hmmm.”

  “Oh, my,” said Doritt. “Could it be . . . do you suppose . . .?”

  “Got to be.”

  The two women dropped their empty sacks and hurried around the pond. Erde followed close behind. The pile was larger than it had seemed from across the water, but much smaller and more hastily thrown-together than the one she’d seen before, on the quiet shore of a lake. No soft moss climbed these walls and no comforting smoke coiled up from the center of the roof. Raven circled around to the far side.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed, and stepped forward briskly to knock on a crude wood-plank door set among the twigs.

  “He won’t answer, you know,” offered Erde faintly, drawing on her own brief experience, now intensely recalled.

  Raven smiled and knocked again. “He will for me.”

  Erde thought this rather overconfident, even for Raven. “Hal practically had to beat the door down.”

  Raven grinned. “That’s always been Hal’s problem.”

  “What’s he doing here is the real question.” Doritt leaned in worriedly to peer at the door.

  “Exactly what we’re going to find out.” Raven knocked a third time, no louder than the first. “Are you there, Gerrasch? Open up, dear soul—you have visitors!”

  A wild rustling and grunting erupted inside, making the stick pile shudder. Erde took a long step backward. The plank door cracked open. In the narrow darkness, she saw a familiar pair of beady eyes above a shiny damp nose.

  “About time!” the darkness growled.

  Raven trilled her musical laugh. “Well, now, sweet, if you neglect to announce your arrival, you can’t expect your welcome to be spectacular and timely!”

  Doritt leaned farther into the doorway. “Hallo, Gerrasch, old thing. What brings you all this way?”

  “Cold. Cold cold cold cold.”

  “Is it warmer here, then, than out there?” Raven raised an eyebrow at her companions.

  “Yes. No. No food, no food. Hungry. A big snow coming.”

  “You came to the right place—we’ve food enough to share.”

  “Big big snow. Scared.”

  “What? You? In your cozy lakeside burrow?” Raven crouched to bring her nose level with the beady eyes. “Scared of a little snow?”

  “No! No, no. Listen! Men. Horses. Burned my house. No home. All gone.”

  “Men burned your house?” The women traded glances. Erde recalled that dark and smoky hovel, hidden in the curl of a brush-choked cove, crammed to its twiggy rafters with jars and bottles and herbs and . . . well, stuff. How awful for him to lose all those years of collecting.

  “What men?” asked Doritt.

  But Erde shuddered, remembering a terrified woman tied to a stake in a far-off market town. She didn’t need to ask what men. Who else was going around burning everything in sight?

  “Guillemo,” muttered Raven darkly.

  “Want to burn me!” The planks creaked and swung inward. A furry, long-nailed hand gripped the doorframe, then Gerrasch’s shaggy, rag-draped bulk filled the opening and Erde recalled why she’d first thought he was some kind of gigantic beaver. “Want to burn me!”

  “Poor creature!” murmured Raven.

  “Burn us all if he could,” Doritt remarked. “How’d you get away?”

  Gerrasch’s bright eyes, until now fixed entirely on Raven, shifted to the older woman with a crafty squint. “Run run. Scurry. Around, around, cover trail, around around more, cover trail, around around . . . come here.”

  Raven laughed and patted his hand. “Clever thing! Brave old soul! Well, you’re safe here.”

  “No!” Gerrasch shook his mane until the whole stick pile trembled. “Not safe! No one safe!”

  “For a while at least.”

  The creature took a breath, sighed. “Yes.”

  But Doritt’s mouth tightened. “How long, do you think?”

  Erde shivered. What Doritt was really asking, no one could answer: how long could they keep Deep Moor hidden from outside eyes, now that the priest’s forces ranged the land so widely? One misplaced confidence, one single soldier of the wrong stripe stumbling upon their secret path—that was all it would take to bring the hell-priest’s armies down on top of them. And then there was her dream. What if the hell-priest could follow her here? Gerrasch’s glance slid away again. He let it round an entire circuit of the Grove before returning to settle it for the first time squarely on Erde.

  She smiled at him wanly. “Hello, Gerrasch. Remember me?”

  He gasped. “It speaks!” Then he cracked a huge grin.

  Erde grinned with him. It was impossible not to. “Yes, my voice is back. You were right—there was a word stuck in my throat. It was somebody’s name, a friend I thought had died horribly.”

  Gerrasch blinked at her, sobering, then leaned forward to lay one stubby finger gently across her throat. “Yes. Ludolph.”

  Raven sucked in a breath. “Ha.”

  “No . . .” replied Erde carefully. “That was not his name.”

  “Yes.”

  “No, Gerrasch, it was . . .”

  “Ludolph!” Gerrasch insisted, then he smiled again, dazzlingly. “Will be.”

  “Ludolph?” murmured Doritt. “The dead prince?”

  “The not-dead prince.” Raven chuckled.

  “He’s saying Rainer is Ludolph?”

  “He wouldn’t be the first person.”

  Doritt clucked. “Oh, how would he know about such things!”

  “You have your ways, don’t you, Gerrasch? And won’t our Hal be delighted to hear you agreeing with him for once!”

  Erde pondered her own ambivalent response to this news. Did she even care anymore if Rainer was the King’s lost heir? He was lost to her already. Besides, she had more important responsibilities now. And as if this thought was som
e kind of signal, Gerrasch stepped forward suddenly, his nose lifted in the direction of the farmstead. At the same moment came the familiar soft explosion in Erde’s head that heralded the dragon’s return. Her heart reached out joyously to welcome him.

  “They’re back!” she exulted. “They’re back!”

  Gerrasch’s nose worked furiously. “Two! Oh, two. Two two two!”

  Raven nodded. “Yes, clever thing. Our Earth has found himself a sister. A beautiful blue sister!”

  Doritt’s eyes narrowed. “How did he know?”

  Erde didn’t care. The dragons were back! Now she could celebrate in earnest. “Yes, a sister! Her name is Water. You’ll like her, Gerrasch! You can go swimming together!” She tugged at Raven’s sleeve. “Come, let’s go back!”

  Raven chortled. “Gerrasch hates swimming. Absolutely has to live by water, but never goes in.”

  “Come on! Hurry! Let’s all go!”

  “Right,” said Doritt. “Come on, Gerrasch. Gather up anything you need, and we’ll load it on the pony.”

  Gerrasch raised both hands, exposing his soft pink palms. “No. No no. Big storm.”

  “Yes, so you don’t want to stay out here alone, do you? You’d be much safer at the farm.”

  “No no no.” He backed into the shadow of his doorway. “New house. I like it.”

  “It’ll blow apart in the first gust, Gerrasch!”

  “Will not!”

  Doritt took a step after him. “Of course it will! You could have a nice warm spot in the barn . . .”

  In the barn with the dragon, Erde realized. Probably Gerrasch did, too.

  “No!” He withdrew his head entirely and slammed the door.

  “You are so rude!” Doritt yelled after him.

  Raven touched her arm. “You’ve made him anxious, dear. You can’t pressure him. You know how he is. Let him do as he likes.”

  “But . . .”

  “He’ll be as safe in the Grove as anywhere. He knows that. That’s why he came here.”

  “It could be the dragons,” said Erde. “He didn’t want to meet Earth before either. But he knew, didn’t he . . . he sensed their return almost before I did.”

  “He’s connected with them in some way,” guessed Raven. “As he is to many things.”