The Book of Fire Page 40

  “It’s like walking in light!” she exclaims.

  The sober stride of the priestess falters beside her. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The sun . . . it’s so bright.” Paia opens her arms to the bloody glare.

  “Ah, yes. The sun. Of course.” Mother Gayle nods, then immediately withdraws into her walking silence. She looks, Paia thinks, oddly relieved.

  The top of the hill is a series of barren stone ledges with brittle mats of dry moss between. The farthest ledge protrudes over a rather steep drop, providing a perfect platform for viewing the surrounding peaks. But its corners are suspiciously square, and Paia sees it’s actually a poured concrete slab, much weathered, probably an old foundation for a house. Mother Gayle points out this mountain and that, identifying them as Tall Mount or Red Face, generic names that are new even since Paia’s childhood geography classes. The more colorful names, such as Vanderwacher or Goodnow, have been erased in the God’s campaign against history, as if his coming has made the past irrelevant.

  But people remember, Paia tells herself. Luco remembered. Cauldwell’s Clove.

  Then Mother Gayle takes her arm and gently draws her to the very edge of the platform, to point straight down. A hundred, two hundred feet below are the remains of a town. Quite a large town, judging from the length of the main street. Its crumbling chimneys and collapsed roofs are touched by the sun’s dying rays as if with fire.

  “Oh, my! Oh, my.” Paia squints to make out faded letters on tumbled-down signs, to take in the rich variety of the buildings, even in their state of ruin. The language of the architecture is so much more complex—dare she say it?—so much more human than the blocky, unadorned style favored by the God for current domestic structures. Even the odd crooks and curves of the streets tell an interesting story. She can see where the trees might have been, shading the sidewalks and houses. Paia stares down at the town for a long time, while Mother Gayle waits patiently beside her.

  Finally she takes a chance. “Has it a name?”

  “Oh, no, Mother Paia.”

  “I mean, did it, at one time? Or has it been forgotten?”

  The older priestess clears her throat, then murmurs so that only Paia could possibly hear. “It was called Carlisle. Of course, I only know this because . . . well, I was born there.”

  As the Temple’s highest representative, Paia should deliver a stern reproof. History is forbidden, after all. But she herself has asked, and what escapes her is a sympathetic nod.

  Mother Gayle looks mistrustful but again relieved.

  “There is a heresy, you know, that claims it can all be made green again.” She laughs harshly to show her contempt. “Imagine that!”

  “Indeed,” replies Paia, wondering why the woman is saying this, to the High Priestess of the God’s Temple. Everyone around her seems to be losing their grip on propriety. Including herself.

  Mother Gayle sighs. “I’ve thought of petitioning Him to burn it to the ground, like He has so many others. It would be easier. The God is right about the pain our useless old memories can bring.”

  But why, Paia asks herself, if the town was still standing, could the people not just live there? She’s sure the God has told her there were no towns left after the Wars. That his great building spree was undertaken for the good of the homeless Faithful.

  Gazing downward, she is suddenly racked with vertigo. Disorientation made physical. She hardly knows what to believe anymore. Thoroughly depressed, Paia backs away from the edge. “It will be dark soon. Perhaps we should be getting back.”

  The God visits her again that night, only this time she is sure she is not asleep. She would never dream him in this grotesque a rage.

  Besides, she has been dreaming of something else. A man. A blond man with a sword, like she has seen in her father’s ancient tomes. A rather pleasant dream, for a change.

  When she wakes, the God’s golden eyes are inches from her own, as hot and bright as twin blast furnaces. There is not a hint of the tragic mask of his most recent visitation. He is nothing but eyes and a long screech of fury, like knives in both her ears. “The picture! The picture! Where is it?”

  “The picture? You mean, the painting?” Paia is groggy, confused. “The landscape? You haven’t destroyed it?”

  “WHERE IS IT? Where have you hidden it?”

  “I haven’t hidden it. It’s in my room.”

  “LIAR! LIAR!”

  “My lord, I am not!” She shoves herself up on her elbows. The painting. He hasn’t destroyed it. She struggles to clear her head. Again, she is bedded down in the local Chapter House, and again, the servants and priestesses bedded down with her snore through the God’s tirade. Only the High Priestess must endure the heat of his wrath. “I had the painting brought down to my room! It was there when I left! Surely you saw it yourself when you came for me!”

  “Then your confederates have stolen it to safety! Where? I can forgive your being an unwitting pawn, but conspire against me at your direst peril! Where is it?” His cry shrills against her eardrums and behind his eyes looms the shadow of horns. “TELL ME!”

  “I don’t know! I have no confederates!” Her grogginess dulls her fear. She is tired of his tantrums. “How could I have confederates? You allow me no friends! Besides, you know I can conceal nothing from you. You invade even my dreams!”

  “After others have already done so! Your dreams are not your own! Have I not said they will destroy us both?”

  “Then I will not listen to them!” Paia slumps back on one elbow. How can she prove anything to him? She so much wants him to believe her just because he believes her, as she believes herself. Indeed, she would like to know herself where the painting has gone, this mutable vista that someone else has made her paint. She thinks of the House Comp’s tale of tampering, and worries for its safety. “Is it truly not there?”

  The shadow behind the hot glow of his eyes resolves into something more manlike. Her concern has rung true, and unsettled him. Paia judges that the worst is over.

  “Would I waste my time here if it was?”

  “Surely, my lord, the person who left those notes has taken it.”

  “Ha! Ha!” He fumes inarticulately, but his twin fires withdraw a bit as the focus of his rage shifts to the note-writer. “I have questioned the entire population of the Citadel, yet cannot rout out this traitor!” The light dims as he turns away to begin his habitual pacing. “They have human agents working for them, even as I do. Here, there, and everywhere. I should expect nothing less!”

  Paia squints into the returned darkness. There is no sound but his voice.

  “How could he conceal himself from me, otherwise? How else could he know about the picture?”

  “Know what about it?”

  “That picture is nothing without the knowledge of it.”

  “What knowledge?”

  “He is in league with my enemies. It has to be so.”

  “WHAT KNOWLEDGE?” Paia yells. If she wakes up every woman in the Chapter House, she might get his attention. But the others sleep on undisturbed.

  The twin furnaces flare again. “Ha, my priestess! Read a few old books and you think you understand everything! What arrogance!”

  Paia’s teeth clench. “My arrogance pales beside yours, my lord!”

  “I AM YOUR GOD!” he bellows. “What you should understand is how little you really know!”

  “I do, more than I ever did! I am out here in the middle of nowhere among strangers who hate me, and you will not offer me the slightest crumb of comfort or encouragement, when I am only begging for enlightenment! Teach me, so I can help you in your work!”

  “I don’t need your help!”

  “Then why do you keep me?” She’s up on her knees now, waving her arms at him, wishing she had greater control. But he does need her help. She knows he does. What she doesn’t know is how to convince him of it. “Choose another, if you’re so dissatisfied! Let me go my own way!”

  He stops pacing.
“Is that what you want? Is this how you show your devotion to me?”

  “It’s always about YOU!” she screams. Then a sharp whiff of déjà vu throws her back on her heels. Her mother and father didn’t argue very often, but when they did, this is exactly what they sounded like. She is replicating their behavior, she fears, simply because she knows no other. The rush of memory leaves her deflated and confused.

  The God hovers over her like a swarm of angry wasps, ready for the next round. But when she remains slumped dejectedly with her hands clasped limply on her knees, he calms a bit, enough at last to assume full man-form, so that he can loom at her bedside with his arms folded, looking satisfied, certain that he’s beaten her into submission. Moments like this, of course, are when he is the most generous toward her. She has learned to argue with him, in order to let him win, and then they can be peaceable together. But surely this is not how it was meant to be between them.

  “The picture, little fool, is a portal. Didn’t your precious dream tell you that?”

  A portal? Paia tries to focus on where his mind has gone now. She recalls how, in the dream, the gilt frame became the stone entrance to the Library. “A portal, like a doorway?”

  “Indeed. A doorway, if you have the knowledge of it, to wherever—and whenever—you want to go.”

  “Whenever?”

  The God nods, enjoying her amazement and the superiority of his wisdom. “In your dream, it was showing you the past.”

  She takes care to maintain the little-girl manner that has settled him down. “You mean, like an image on a monitor screen?”

  “Are you deaf? A portal. Like an open door.”

  “It lets you actually go to the past? Is such a thing possible?”

  “If you have an understanding of the working, which fortunately, you do not.”

  Oh-so-humbly, she asks, “Do you, my lord?”

  “I’ve no need of such devices. I travel when and where I wish to.”

  “To the past? You travel to the past?” How can she not have known this? He is right. She should have stayed in the Library and read every book she could get her hands on.

  “Often.” A speculative shimmer crosses his shadowed face. “Perhaps I will take you someday. Perhaps I will leave you there, to stop your meddling in my present.”

  Paia just shrugs. She has no fight left in her. It’s what he always counts on, that he will outlast her. Her constant avowals of innocence cut no ice with him. “Perhaps I would like the past.”

  He flares again. “If it meant you could be rid of me?”

  “And you of me.”

  “Don’t tempt me!” he snarls. “Even a brief visit would teach you some gratitude! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it in the first place! Or I could drag you back there and abandon you to a short life of disease and drudgery in a dark, cold, damp world where women are routinely beaten, raped, and burned at the stake, and where currently, due to my efforts, there is a famine and a very nasty war going on! As pampered and spoiled as you are, believe me, you wouldn’t like it!”

  As he speaks of it, she sees it, in chill dark flashes of snow and blood. “If you say so, my lord. I don’t need the past, then.”

  He glares down at her. She can feel the heat of his suspicion and she wants to ask what he means about fostering chaos and misery. But she hasn’t the strength to joust with him further this night.

  “Please, my lord, I will ask it again, for I think it would solve many things. Can you not accompany me on this journey?”

  “I follow your progress. I see all that you do.”

  Then why all these false accusations, she wants to demand. If he truly saw everything, he would know she is innocent of conspiracy. But then he would lose the pleasure of showering her with his fury and spite. “I mean, for the Faithful, my lord. To show yourself to them in all your glory, as the God of Love as well as the God of Awe. I can speak of your magnificence and perfection, but your actual presence is so much more inspiring.”

  “Inspiring, is it?” He offers a skeptical eye, and she can see him watching himself, conscious of his beauty made poignant by tragedy. “Perhaps I will . . . beloved traitor.”

  “My lord, I am not . . .”

  But he is gone. Paia falls back against her pillows, wrung out as she always is after one of his rages. She waits for sleep, but thoughts of the vanished painting keep her eyes wide. A traitor in the Citadel who even the god’s strong-arm methods cannot uncover? A portal to the past? War and famine created by the god’s own hand? Why? Why? Why?

  She feels like flotsam on the flood of events. Destiny’s pawn. Must her involvement be so ignorant and random? Can’t she meet it head-on somehow, and take some control of the situation? Paia sighs, and then sighs again.

  Soon it is dawn, and the chambermaid rises dutifully to prepare the High Priestess for another day.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Erde considered it a mark of the Tinkers’ honor and pride that, after the evening’s revelations and miracle, no one in the crew treated the visitors any differently the following day. Except perhaps for Luther, who seemed somewhat stirred out of his habitual gloom.

  Besides, they had treated Sedou with respect from the start, due to the mystery of his sudden appearance among them. More importantly, it was a market day, and for the Tinkers, commerce took precedence over all things. Even, Erde remarked to the dragon, over saving the world.

  The land around the village was flat and treeless. She had seen no hidden spot to call the dragon into, so he stayed where he was.

  ONE CAN ALWAYS SAVE THE WORLD TOMORROW. BUT A GOOD BARGAIN COULD BE LOST UPON THE INSTANT.

  She was glad to find him in a humorous mood, despite his growing hunger. Dragon impatience, she had found, was either blinding or imperceptible.

  LUTHER SAYS HE’LL TAKE US TO A PLACE ALONG THE ROAD WHERE SOME OF OUR QUESTIONS MAY BE ANSWERED.

  WILL THERE BE FOOD THERE?

  HE DID NOT MENTION FOOD, DEAR DRAGON, AND OF COURSE, I COULDN’T REALLY ASK. HE WAS VERY SECRETIVE ABOUT THIS PLACE, ALMOST DEVOUT. I THINK IT MUST BE A HIDDEN CHAPEL OR SHRINE, TO THEIR IMPRISONED ONE. BUT WE MAY HAVE TO FACE THE MONSTER FIRST, AT THAT TOWN THAT HE COMES TO.

  MONSTER? HE IS MY BROTHER. DOES THAT MAKE ME A MONSTER, TOO?

  OUR PARDON, DEAR DRAGON. IT’S ONLY HIS BEHAVIOR THAT MAKES HIM A MONSTER.

  TO MOST HUMANS, IT IS ALSO HIS SHAPE. WHY ELSE MUST MY SISTER EXPEND SO MUCH ENERGY TRAVELING LIKE A MAN?

  YOUR SISTER IS PRAGMATIC. WOULD YOU NOT DO THE SAME, IF YOU SHARED THAT GIFT? WE COULD ENJOY THE JOURNEY IN COMPANY.

  The dragon was silent for a moment.

  NO, NOT EXACTLY THE SAME. I THINK I WOULD TRAVEL AS A WOMAN.

  The morning’s trading did not go well. Long before noon, Stoksie and Ysa folded up their counters and canopies in disgust, and the other Tinkers followed suit.

  “Dey got nuttin’ lef’ heah ta trade,” Stoksie lamented.

  Erde clucked sympathetically as the little man sorted through his meager takings: some chipped enameled dishes, a bucket of rusted fasteners, a half-crate of mealy-looking potatoes. The only item he was happy with was a thin box the size of his palm, with a hinged lid. He popped it open for her proudly. Inside was a jumble of the slimmest, shiniest metal pins Erde had ever seen. Each one had a tiny white ball at one end. She tried to pick one out to examine it more closely, but only succeeded in pricking herself.

  “Ouch!”

  “Betcha! Doan fine dese ev’ryday, nah!” But Stoksie confided that he’d had to trade a valuable wool cap for them. Erde thought this was a very smart trade. Who’d want to wear wool in this heat?

  The Tinkers packed up and moved on, toward the next village several hours down the road. By setting a stiffer pace than usual, they arrived in time to set up for a late afternoon market. But the mood around the campfires that evening was somber. Business in this village had been even worse.

  “Tole me anudder Crew’s bin by,” Stoksie grumbled.


  “No way,” Brenda snorted. “Dey tink’ we wudn’t know ’bout dat?”

  “Mebbe be Scroon Crew, comin’ in frum Westhills.”

  “Nah. Dey know our route.”

  “See what dey say when we meet ’em.”

  Luis spoke up in his scratchy young man’s voice. “Dis townie woman tole me da monsta’s priests bin aroun’, takin’ up evin moah dan ushul.”

  Stoksie slapped his knee angrily. “An’ doan leave us nuttin!”

  “Priests frum da big town,” Luther explained to Erde. “Das Fenix, y’know. Weah da monsta come.”

  They went to bed right after cleanup and rose at first light, to be on the road early, and so arrived in the heat of midafternoon. The town itself, viewed on the approach from the high seat of Luther’s big yellow caravan, gave no outward sign of being a place of unusual depravity, though Erde gave its pale walls and rooftops due scrutiny as the wagons pulled up in an outlying field. It was called Phoenix, Luther said as he unhitched his mules. It wasn’t one of the “new” towns. It sat in a long but narrow valley, hemmed in by hills. The slopes to the south were rocky and sheer, sliced by boulder-choked ravines. Those to the north were almost green, furred with an unusually thick and twisted growth of stunted pines. Phoenix was a real town, Luther said, larger than any of the villages they’d visited.

  “We usda set up ou’side fer yeers,” Stoksie said as he limped up to join them. Baron Köthen paced at his side like a hound eager to be loosed for the hunt. “Den dey say, we gotta go inside.”

  Phoenix possessed a sizable market square. New regulations required the Tinkers to set up their wagons there, inside the town’s high stone walls. Otherwise, their business was no longer welcome.