The Book of Fire Page 5

  A contingent of the Honor Guard falls in behind the Twelve, and then come the Faithful, shuffling, eyes down-cast, crowding up against each other like herd animals, even in the stifling heat. Now there’s the sacrifice to be got through.

  Paia turns left toward the huge Altar of the Winged God, an oblong ton of raw granite stained with the blood of countless prayers to the Deity. The usual complement of the lower priesthood awaits her there, ranged formally behind the tall and impressive figure of First Son Luco, Paia’s immediate subordinate. Of all the colorless functionaries the God has surrounded her with, this is her favorite. Paia almost likes Luco. He is kind in his own odd way and more often amusing than irritating. He’s uninterested in her sexually and ambitious for the Temple, which is no doubt why the God permits her a limited association with him. Perhaps he hopes the good examples set by Luco’s unswerving faith and devotion to duty will rub off on her. It is Luco who actually manages the day-to-day affairs of the Temple, so his avid claim on the giant sacrificial Knife is a favor Paia is only too willing to grant. He holds it crosswise in front of him now, its heavy golden hilt tucked to his hip like a favorite child. In front of him on the altar, a sturdy Third Son, stripped to the waist, restrains a young goat.

  Paia suppresses the frown that would betray her surprise at seeing a sacrifice as major as a well-formed goat kid being offered at so inconsequential a ceremony. The God has explained the need for the sacrificial rite rather patiently, given how many times Paia has been bold enough to suggest that it’s a waste of valuable livestock. She falls back on this practical argument, knowing that notions of mercy will be lost on him. His reply is always the same: “For the true believers, only the spilling of blood is a proper recognition of the nobility of their sacrifices for the Faith.”

  In other words, only blood will keep them quiet. Paia wonders if this goat has come from the Temple flocks, or if some merchant’s wife is finally pregnant and hoping for a healthy child. And Luco, she notes, is decked out in full makeup and all his best finery—his billowing and dazzlingly white Temple pants, clasped at the ankles with bands of gold and sapphire, his tallest headdress, his sandals with the heels. A crimson velvet vest—his favorite, sewn with winged images of the God in glittering gold—frames the shaved and oiled muscles of his chest. Sometimes Paia suspects that Luco dresses to look like the God in man-form, though this has to be unconscious. It would be, officially, a sacrilege. But First Son Luco is wily enough to know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, to which the God is famously susceptible.

  Approaching, Paia nods to Luco in ritual welcome. She accepts the golden bowl from her priestess and takes her place to Luco’s right at the head of the altar to begin the Invocation of the Winged God.

  She’s halfway into it, the vessel of sacred water raised above her head, when she feels the God return. Elation and terror churn in the pit of her stomach. She stumbles over a word, holds firmly to the bowl but leaves out an entire line of the prayer. She is waiting for that high, vast, swooping shadow to darken the sun over the courtyard. He is here. Her awareness of him is like the Temple gong sounding inside her. But he does not show himself. Paia blinks and steadies her voice. Her own belief in the God of the Apocalypse has less to do with his messianic promises than with her uncanny sense of connection to him. She fears him, often hates him, but she loves him, too. Until his arrival in the Citadel, she had never felt entirely whole. Even now, his return completes her, in a way no human ever could.

  Paia finishes the Invocation, aware of the First Son surreptitiously readying the Knife as the sacred water blesses the altar with its precious moisture. Luco hates to be caught unprepared. He takes great—some might say, unholy—pride in finishing off each sacrifice with a single graceful stroke.

  The young Third Son steps back, leaving the goat alone on the altar. Luco’s giant shining blade arcs skyward. All eyes follow but Paia’s. She has seen one too many small creatures bleed their innocence away on the rough, stained stone. For this reason, and for this reason only, she spots the brief flash among the crowd of priests and acolytes to the other side of her. She is already ducking away from the smaller knife when it slashes across the empty space where her throat has just been. The throng presses around her. She cannot see her attacker, only a robed arm and a moving blade, thin and deadly. Beside her, Luco swings his gilded curve of steel, down, down, and completes a perfect stroke. Blood sprays outward. Paia, fumbling for her hidden gun, falls against a First Daughter behind her. She thinks for a moment that the blood is her own, particularly when the young priestess screams and snatches at Paia’s stained limbs in horror. The formation at the altar breaks rank and erupts with shouting and outrage. Luco is jolted out of his post-sacrificial trance. He leaps to Paia’s side with the holy blade at the ready. Paia points. The attacker is spotted forcing a desperate path through the worshipers crowding the Plaza. He gets nowhere. The Faithful grab him, bring him down, sucking him into their maw with cheers and wild eyes and raised fists.

  And then, a vast shadow sweeps across the hot sky, across and back, fleeter than any cloud, nearing, descending. The throng stills as the shadow circles and drops with a flare of scales and sun and golden wings onto the paving stones in front of the altar.

  The throng of the Faithful draws back with a gasp of reverence, then spits out the attacker, sprawling and facedown. The terrified man mewls and grovels at the feet of the God, who pins him to the stones with a single golden claw at his neck, then lifts his great horned head and roars to the heavens until the air itself vibrates. The Faithful moan as one and fall to their knees. When silence has settled again, the God returns his attention to his groveling victim. He snarls and unleashes a sudden blue-white gout of flame that sears the man to a spasming cinder.

  The crowd sighs. Their God has returned.

  Paia’s knees buckle. Son Luco catches her.

  “Look sharp, now,” he murmurs in her ear. “Everybody’s watching.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A woman laughs and calls out a name. A last set of footsteps fades. A door shuts softly. N’Doch feels the house empty out below him. He inhales the silence in long slow breaths. They’re all out there now, in the snow, probably crowding around the dragons, petting and cooing like women do. Something in him disapproves of that. Like, the fact of dragons is amazing enough . . . why make a big thing of it, let it go to their heads? What he’d never admit is that he might be a little jealous. She’s his dragon, after all.

  N’Doch shifts his weight and stares resolutely out at the falling snowflakes. He sees they’re starting to blow around a little, and for a moment he thinks how he’d really prefer to be one of them, floating free in the crystalline air. He hates this feeling of being caught, of being seduced and repulsed simultaneously. But he knows he can’t spend the rest of the day halfway down the stairs, like the clever, witchy Rose woman ribbed him about. That would be even more ridiculous. Ought to take a look around. Ought to get this patched-up body moving.

  Right.

  This gets him down the stairs and partway across the dim, low-ceilinged room at the bottom, where he’s stopped dead by the undeniable reality of everything he sees. How could he have thought that VR was an equal substitute for the real McCoy? For these heavy wooden chairs with woven seats, those long tables, or that stone fireplace half the width of the wall. Or this neat stack of wood, that bucket of twigs for kindling. That one lantern burning on a stool at the far end.

  Of course it’s real, he tells himself. The girl came from here, and she’s real enough. But now he sees that, ever since he woke up in that tiny, strange room upstairs, he’s been reserving the possibility that it all might be some kind of illusion, dragon-induced, a dream. And that possibility has kept him sane and balanced . . . until now.

  He drags one hand along the planks of a table by the fireplace. The wood is silky with age and wear. And suddenly his heart is pounding and his hands are in fists. He’s taking in air in great heaving gulps.
He wants to run, run, escape, like he’s trapped, buried alive beneath the very real weight of this alien century. But there’s nowhere he can run to, he knows that now, at least not outside these particular walls. Nowhere he can go that will be anything like home.

  N’Doch flattens both palms on the tabletop and presses downward until his skin molds itself to the cracks and the worn grain of the wood. The pain lets him focus. He forces himself to relax. His life’s never been easy so far, and he hasn’t survived this long by letting panic rule him. He lets out a shaky but controlled sigh, straightens, and looks around.

  The room is long and low, lit mostly by bright flames from the hearth and cold gray light from the many windows along one side. On the table beside him are baskets of shelled nuts, and wooden platters piled with dried podlike stuff that N’Doch doesn’t recognize. In front of the window nearest the fireplace sits a tall wooden wheel with a little seat attached and a spike wound with fuzzy looking string. There’s something familiar about it, but N’Doch can’t quite place the device, or what it’s for. There are garments and bits of fabric scattered here and there, and a clay pitcher and cups on one of the smaller tables. The room looks well broken-in, like it gets a lot of use but also, a lot of care.

  He steps toward the windows, feeling the chunky hand-cut beams skim past just above his head. Must be he’s a lot taller than the folks who built this place. There’s a door between the windows, but he doesn’t go there just yet. He stoops for a look through the glass.

  Outside the windows, a roofed stone terrace runs the length of the house. Opposite the door, a few steps and a stone path lead off through a screen of leafless bushes. Past the bushes, a big open space is rapidly filling up with snow. And there she is.

  Ah.

  No matter how resentful or resistant he’s been to her, the dragon’s beauty has never failed to take his breath away. And against this cold white landscape, her colors shine like sapphires and emeralds, or at least this is how N’Doch imagines such fabulous jewels would look. The other one, the big guy Earth, he’s there, too: all dark and bronzy like agate and smoky quartz, the cheap stuff you could find in the markets at home. Earth’s only claim to beauty is his curving ivory horns. His stout and gleaming claws are made less threatening by being softly blunted at their tips. N’Doch thinks you’d have to go some to find the big guy threatening, but he admits he didn’t always feel that way. And he decides that Earth looks handsomer than he remembers him. Maybe a bit bigger, too, and not so downtrodden-looking. There’s even a hint of glimmer to his plated sides.

  The dragons are sitting side by side in the clearing, and the snow is melting right out from underneath them as the women crowd around to pet and admire them. N’Doch’s mouth twists. His heart wants to be out there, or a part of it does, stroking Water’s silky hide, letting her warmth drive out the bone-deep chill he’s felt since he woke up from his vision of running. He doesn’t see the girl anywhere yet, so probably he should be out there translating. But his feet won’t take him. Not just yet.

  He turns back into the room, away from the dragon-tinted light. He spots a big, stringed instrument, kind of like an acoustic guitar, propped against a chair. It’s like a searchlight in fog-shrouded darkness, an anchor in stormy seas. He makes a beeline for it, picks it up reverently, and smooths his fingertips across its strings—a parched man reaching for water. There are more strings than he’s used to, and the body is bulbous and pear-shaped like one of those little bush mandolins made out of a gourd. But this sucker is big and built out of smoothly joined pieces of wood. There’s a lot of it to hang on to. N’Doch cradles it in his arms.

  The long neck is fretted in a more-or-less familiar way, but the head with its many wooden pegs is set at a sharp angle to the neck, so at first it looks to N’Doch as if it’s broken. He hauls a chair back and sits. The tone is sweet and resonant. It sends shivers of desire across his back. He hasn’t played an acoustic anything for a long time, but the thing comes up into his embrace like a lover and he’s sure he can get the hang of it.

  The moment he curls his fingers onto the frets, he feels the dragon inside his head, waiting. He knows what she wants, so he ignores her, fiddling with the strings, learning the spaces between, the shape of the chords. He’s amazed how easily it comes to him, and he suspects that she’s helping. N’Doch doesn’t mind. Not this. This is the thing that works best between them, after all, the making of music.

  He works the strings, light and fast, his ear bent close to catch their whispered thrum. There’s a tune been bothering him a while, one he couldn’t make come out right, so he stuck it away in the back of his head. But here it is now, coming right out through his fingers. It’s been there all along, only waiting for the proper instrument to play it. N’Doch stops, slaps the flat face of the box lightly with his palm and stands. He’s ready. He can do it now. This’ll be one way of thanking them. A soft woven strap is attached to the neck and the base of the box. N’Doch slips it over his head and moves toward the door.

  The cold hits him like a wall as he steps out onto the terrace. But he knows if he doesn’t freeze solid before he gets to her, he won’t be cold for long. He shuts the door quietly and eases across the stones, down the steps and into the snow. He’d like to give the snow some time—it’s his first, after all. And the cold, too, as well as the dark, spiky pines—he recognizes those. He’s seen ’em lots of times in vids. But all that’ll have to wait. Right now, he’s intent. On a mission.

  He pulls up behind the circle of women. He counts at least a dozen of them, all in their old-timey clothes and their braided hair, murmuring the alien syllables of their native German. Their laughter is not like the laughter of the women N’Doch knows. It’s full-out and boisterous, like they don’t care if there’s a man listening. And, he notices, he’s the only guy in sight—unless you count one big brown dragon.

  So he guesses it’s time. He settles the instrument more comfortably, so familiar, so strange, then gives her the briefest of warnings.

  Hey, girl . . .

  She’s way ahead of him. No big soppy greeting. No oh-thank-god-you’re-alive. She rolls her big eyes toward him and arches her silvery neck.

  Yo, bro. You all warmed up? I need a voice to talk to these people.

  N’Doch grins. One day he’ll catch her out. Maybe.

  So do I. Think these ladies are ready for this?

  My brother, this here’s your ideal audience.

  He runs off a short riff, and the women turn and notice him. Something about him, his thin, muscled height or the darkness of his skin, makes them fall back a step. But he sees no fear in them, only respect and readiness. Maybe it’s that he was all but dead last time they saw him. Or maybe the dragon called it right: they’re the ideal audience and they’re only waiting for him to perform. Will they care that he’s singing in French? No one but the dragon needs to understand the words.

  He’s nervous now that the moment’s at hand. The new song is there ready to go, but the accompaniment will be real thin until he gets a better hang on all these strings. It’s another song about his dead brother Sedou, but it’s a strong and happy song, not like the last one he sang her, which gave her the shape she needed but nearly broke his heart. He hopes this one’ll work just as well, but the only way to find out is to play it. So he does.

  His resurrected voice starts off as shaky as his legs. The dragon listens through the first verse, while the big guy’s ivory horned head leans in toward her. He watches his sister steadily with huge golden eyes. N’Doch can feel her in his head, anticipating, humming a little harmony, and his voice steadies to match her. A line into the second verse, the dragon begins her change. The women sigh with wonder and admiration—no faint hearts in this valley . . . except his own. N’Doch looks away. He hates watching her shape-shift. It makes him queasy, even though it’s him singing her destination. He bends his head over his fingering and keeps on singing. Soon enough, he’s at the end and the women are offering a round
of applause. Then he looks up and into his brother’s eyes, and his heart nearly stops all over again.

  “Damn!” he says aloud. “I ain’t never gonna get used to this.”

  “Sure you will,” says Sedou’s voice. A strong dark fist pounds him on the shoulder, and N’Doch knows he’s done it. He’s sung her a younger Sedou this time, a happier Sedou, a Sedou who doesn’t yet know how short his life will be.

  And a Sedou who speaks German, apparently. Must have learned it from the big guy. N’Doch watches the dragon-as-Sedou move among the women with greetings and introductions, a handsome dark man, laughing and at ease. More at ease than N’Doch, who reaches out in confusion and shakes his brother’s hand.

  Inside his head, the dragon is still singing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  After she thinks about it for a while, Paia understands that she’s been had.

  She goes to Son Luco first, charging full tilt down the polished steps from the vestry with her hair half-braided and her temple bracelets jangling like a box of glass tumbling down a hillside. Luco is lounging in the priests’ private cloister in nothing but a loincloth, oiling his skin.

  “You worked it out with him, didn’t you!” she accuses. “I could’ve been killed! Was it his idea or yours?”

  He leaps to his feet in alarm and reaches for a towel. Paia’s amazed how he willingly exposes himself to more uv-drenched sunlight than his job requires. Though his natural color is as deeply golden as the God’s, he’s convinced that a darker tan will help him look younger.

  “His, of course!” Luco seems disturbed by the suggestion that he might have had a thought of his own, or worse still, acted upon it. He watches Paia pace back and forth, then lowers himself back onto his chaise. “I hope you’ve not been running around the Temple looking like that, Mother Paia.”