The Book of Fire Read online

  He grins. Wow. She’s actually making a joke.

  “No, really. Like Hal. I told you about him. He helped me escape from the hell-priest after I ran away from my father.” She leans in closer. “Hal is Rose’s . . . well, um, you know.”

  “Her husband?”

  “Oh, no. He’s her, um . . .” She gestures uselessly with one hand.

  “Her brother?”

  “No!”

  “Her lover?”

  The girl blushes and nods.

  At first, N’Doch thought she was uptight. He’s come to accept that it’s actual innocence, so he tries real hard now not to let her prissiness irritate him. But he can’t help pushing her just a little. Somebody’s got to teach her the ways of the world. “Go on, say it. He’s her lover.”

  She’s even touchier than usual. She glares at him from under her lashes, then bolts up and scurries away. N’Doch hasn’t expected quite this reaction. He’s left with empty seats on both sides of him and Sedou all the way across the room, in deep with the pale-haired healer woman, probably swapping secrets of the trade. But he decides that things are looking up. He’d had a moment of panic at the thought that no men at Deep Moor meant that these women didn’t like men. Now he feels free to entertain his fantasies of luring the spectacular and vivacious Raven into bed with him. Maybe he’s not going to mind it so much after all, being back here in 913. At least, for as long as the dragons will let him. He figures he’s gotta work fast.

  Erde escaped the embarrassing conversation with N’Doch and fled to a shadowed corner of the kitchen to wait for her blush to subside. Nervously tracing the stained grout lines between the stove tiles, she wondered why—after all she’d seen of life in the ungentle world of 2013—a certain subject was still so hard for her to talk about, especially with N’Doch. For, though he was like a brother to her, he was still very much a male. In fact, here in her world, he might even be labeled lecherous. But she’d seen how it was where he came from. People just said what they felt, right out, and looked where they wanted to look. There, she’d been the odd one out.

  But to be honest with herself, something she was trying harder to be lately, Erde had come to resent the extreme modesty of her upbringing. She envied N’Doch his worldly ease. She was sure he could answer just about any question she might ask about what really went on between men and women, and he’d have not the slightest qualm about filling in all the details. But she could not bring herself to have those conversations with him, no matter how curious she was, conversations she would have had with her mother, had that dear lady not died in Erde’s early childhood. Conversations her grandmother the baroness had been too busy to have. Conversations she could never have had with her father because of the way he’d begun to look at her and touch her in the months before she fled Tor Alte to escape the clutches of the hell-priest.

  Ever since she’d begun to grow, men had grabbed at her in one way or another, as if it was their right to lay hands on her without her permission. And this man-right seemed to demolish all class and duty lines, even religious vows. To Erde, it was more than just disconcerting or dangerous. It overturned a very basic principle of her childhood: men were meant to protect the women in their charge. Like Hal. Having tracked her down in the deepest wilderness, he could easily have taken advantage of her. But Hal Engle was a King’s Knight, and true to the oath he’d sworn. And a decent man, besides.

  N’Doch, too, had kept his hands to himself from the very beginning, though Erde could hardly call him a gentleman, the way he looked at every other woman who crossed his path. Erde ceased tracing the grout lines and began to pick at a particularly offensive clot of soot. And then there was . . . him. The man who kept invading her dreams, as if she had no choice.

  It wasn’t just the dreaming about her enemy that disturbed her, or even that she worried about his well-being. It was that she was so . . . attracted to him.

  The very notion brought up her blush again. Erde was not too innocent to notice how consistently any thoughts of what men and women did together brought Baron Köthen’s bright image to her mind, to disturb and confuse her.

  “Erde, dear? Are you all right?”

  Raven, returning from the beer cellar with a fresh pitcher. Erde hoped the shadows would hide the evidence of her unseemly thoughts. Although, she reflected wryly, Raven would not think them unseemly. She smiled and shrugged. “Just tired. Still so tired.”

  Raven circled her free arm around Erde’s waist. “Sweeting, it’s only been three days. Remember what you’ve been through.”

  Erde could not think of how to reply. Raven set the pitcher down on a nearby joint-stool and wrapped her in a hug. This helped Erde banish the image of Baron Köthen and find her tongue again. “And think of what’s still ahead, when the Quest resumes.”

  “Ah, yes,” Raven agreed, “but you mustn’t worry about that for now . . .”

  “No. Not for now.”

  Raven let her go and took up her pitcher again. “The young man seems very nice.”

  “Who, N’Doch? Nice?” Erde couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  “Well, then . . . charming. A little overeager, perhaps. But very lovely to look at, don’t you think? So tall and . . . exotic.”

  Erde stared. Was she kidding?

  “No wonder his dragon enjoys taking man-form,” Raven went on merrily. “I think she might be just the slightest bit vain, don’t you?” Then she caught Erde’s expression. “Hmm. I see. Well, you and the boy seem fond enough of each other. Comrades-in-arms and all that.”

  “He’s not a boy.”

  Raven chuckled. “No, and I expect he wouldn’t want to hear me calling him that either. Come, tell—have you not been getting along?”

  Erde felt no urge to detail every disagreement she’d had with her fellow dragon guide. After all, he had improved noticeably since she first met him. “He doesn’t know very much about dragons,” she offered instead, realizing only then that of all N’Doch’s irritating qualities, this was the one that bothered her most. “Or the duties of a dragon guide. People don’t even believe in dragons where he comes from!”

  Raven smiled. “Ah, but he has a dragon who knows a great deal about men. And from what I observe, she seems to be managing him very well.”

  “She does?”

  “Certainly. There are other ways of turning a man to your purpose besides ordering him to follow. Lady Water discovered who in his life her destined guide was most likely to listen to seriously. Since it wasn’t her at the moment, she simply . . . became that person.”

  “Oh, well . . .”

  “No ‘oh, well.’ Think about it. It’s brilliant, and it works.”

  “Then what does he do for her?”

  “He sings her a human shape. He gives a dragon a way to work in the world of men, as you do for Earth. You just have different ideas of how to go about it. Are Earth and Water the same dragon?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then why should they require the same dragon guide?” Heading for the door, Raven glanced back. “Do you think, sweeting, that it might be time to have that little chat with Rose?”

  Erde thought about dragons and methodologies for a while. It was true she’d been stubborn about her own assumptions. And it was true that N’Doch had surprised her. He’d come through in the end. Perhaps she was going to have to accept the possibility that there would always be people in the world doing things that she just could not understand. Armed with that disturbing notion, she gathered up her courage and returned to the Great Hall, where N’Doch was taking another refill from Raven’s pitcher, the redheaded twins were clearing platters and tableware, and Doritt was tossing a huge log into the fireplace. Erde prayed that the dragon was warm enough out in the big hay barn, finally getting the rest he deserved. She went to claim the empty seat beside Rose.

  She listened quietly while Rose finished up a discussion with Linden, Deep Moor’s healer, about how long her supplies of herbs and physicks would hol
d out if the snow continued unabated into the true months of winter. Linden’s jaw-length flaxen hair draped like separate strands of spider silk around her white cheeks, hiding her worried glance in the softened shadows of lanternlight. Her long-fingered hands moved restlessly in her lap. Erde found this more worrisome than all the facts and figures of their conversation. She’d come to rely on Linden being a very calm, still person.

  “Well,” Rose concluded finally, “we shall do what we must.”

  Linden nodded, then offered Erde a small, silent smile and padded away, gathering up a stray armload of dirty dishes as she went.

  Rose watched after her soberly. “She fears our medical supplies won’t last past January. Her final harvest is usually in early November, and here it is, just September. Even if we do get a thaw, who knows what will be left alive under all this snow.”

  Erde thought of the parched peanut fields around Master Djawara’s home in what N’Doch called “the bush.” “Where I just came from, there’s not enough water. Not anywhere, except the salty oceans. And here there’s too much. And there, they kept saying how it was so much hotter than usual.”

  “And here, too cold. It’s all gone out of balance, hasn’t it? I blame this priest and the evil he’s stirred up.” Rose let a pensive moment fall between one thought and the next. “Which reminds me, Raven tells me you’ve had some dreams I should hear about.”

  “I guess.” Erde loved Rose, but often found her directness and air of authority intimidating. Even her beloved grandmother, a powerful baroness required to work in the world of men, had been somewhat more . . . feminine in her approach.

  “What kind of dreams?”

  “Um . . .” Erde found a sudden reason to fuss with the hem of her sleeve. “Do you really think Brother Guillemo has brought all this wrong weather upon us? Is he truly a sorcerer?”

  “You know his power as well as I do, child, perhaps better. But we were speaking of dreams. Come on, now, out with it.”

  Erde brushed invisible crumbs across the worn planks of the table. “Well, they’re . . . umm . . .”

  “If you told Raven, you can certainly tell me.”

  “I didn’t tell Raven . . . not really. Well, I told her I’d seen the hell-priest in my dreams, which is true, but . . .”

  “But? There’s something more important than Fra Guill?”

  Spoken aloud, the priest’s nickname made her shiver. “I don’t know. It’s all mixed up together.” There was a larger significance to these dreams than her own confused feelings, and it was her duty to reveal them. “Fra Guill is part of it, but . . . well, um . . . what would you say if you had dreams, I mean, really real dreams, as if you’d actually traveled there, about someone you knew was your enemy, and he’s there in your dream and you’re almost talking to him and he doesn’t seem like he could really be your enemy, and then suddenly he isn’t, because the real enemy is someone else?”

  “Goodness. Breathe, child!”

  Erde realized she hadn’t been.

  Rose waited a moment before asking, “Does this no-longer-an-enemy have a name?”

  Erde nodded. The hardest part of all was going to be speaking it out loud. Her lips moved uselessly.

  “Haven’t we been through this before?”

  “No, this is different. It’s not Rainer.” Whose name had lodged in her throat the night she’d thought him murdered by her father’s order, and rendered her mute for months until she had discovered him alive again. “I mean, I can say the name. I just . . .”

  “Then just say it and get it over with.”

  “Adolphus of Köthen.”

  Rose sat back a little. “Dolph? You’ve been dreaming about Dolph?”

  Rose was surprised, but Erde was even more so, to hear Baron Köthen spoken of so familiarly by someone without estates or title. Or perhaps Deep Moor was Rose’s estate. Erde had never thought to ask. Now she nodded and braced herself for ridicule. But Rose pursed her lips thoughtfully. Raven glided past behind them, trailing a fond hand across their shoulders. Rose caught the hand and held it. “You might want to hear this.”

  Raven leaned over. “Is that all right, sweeting? Do you mind?”

  Erde shrugged. Her humiliation might as well be total.

  Raven sat, reaching for Erde’s hand to press it lightly between her own.

  “Our Erde has been dreaming about Adolphus of Köthen,” Rose announced.

  “Really?” Raven laughed deep in her throat. “Can’t say as I blame her.”

  Erde looked down, heat and confusion flooding her cheeks already.

  “Raven, please . . .”

  “Can’t I compliment her on her good taste?”

  “Just listen,” said Rose irritably.

  “I don’t understand . . .” Erde began.

  Raven squeezed her hand. “Don’t feel badly, sweeting. It’s all rather . . . complicated. Isn’t it, Rose?”

  “I think we’ll leave your past out of this for now,” said Rose. “Now, child, when you left for, well, this other place you’ve been, Baron Köthen was in revolt with your father and Fra Guill to usurp the King. So you must have had news of the war since you returned, yes? I mean, about Dolph’s, shall we say, conversion?”

  “Conversion?” She needed to hear it again. She needed it confirmed. Beyond all misunderstanding.

  “You heard he switched sides.”

  The smile bloomed on Erde’s face before she could take control of it. Her dreams had been true. “And is he now leading the King’s armies to victory?”

  Rose and Raven exchanged glances.

  “No,” said Raven. “Not exactly . . .”

  Erde’s heart contracted. They were telling her he was dead. And since her dreams had been true, she knew how it had occurred.

  Rose laid a hand on her wrist. “If you’ve not had news, why did you say he was no longer your enemy?”

  Now that Baron Köthen’s name was on the table, the rest of the tale came out in a rush. “Because I dreamed it. That’s what I’m telling you. I saw the enemy camp. I saw my father in it. I saw everything that happened: the hell-priest murdering poor Prince Carl and making it look like suicide, then trying to blame it on Baron Köthen, and when that didn’t work, accusing him of witchcraft and heretical practices, so that the only thing left for the baron to do was to flee to the other side! He meant to bring Prince Carl’s body home to the King.” She glanced from one to the other, awaiting their painful revelation. “Did he?”

  “Don’t you know?” asked Rose.

  “That dream stopped there, and no one has said if . . .”

  Raven leaned forward. “He brought the prince’s body to Hal, who he knew would receive him. But few people know this. The official word is that Carl survived to go into hiding, and that Fra Guill is faking the reports of his death to suit himself. No one knows the truth besides His Majesty, Hal, and a few trusted allies, plus Dolph and the men who stayed loyal to him.”

  “And you.” Rose tapped a fingernail rhythmically on the tabletop. “You have had a true dream, Erde von Alte.”

  “More than one,” Erde murmured. There was still the truth of the last one to be gotten over with. “They frightened me. Sometimes it was like being a bird on his shoulder. So close. I even spoke to him, and once, I think . . . no, I am sure he heard me.”

  “In the dream he heard you?” Raven rested her chin in her hands. “What did you say to him?”

  “It was in the clearing where he found Prince Carl’s body. The priest had him outnumbered. I told him to run, save himself. I could see how he hated Fra Guill, how he despised my father.”

  “His own fault for taking them as allies,” remarked Rose.

  “He regretted that.” But here Erde was on shaky ground. She didn’t know that for sure. “So I told him that a true prince might still live, not a weakling like poor Carl, but a rightful heir that he could feel proud to pledge fealty to. But then, worst of all, the priest heard me, too! And unlike Baron Köthen, he kne
w it was me! ‘The witch-girl,’ he called me. ‘She’s here! The witch-girl!’ And then I couldn’t wake up . . .!” Erde buried her face in her hands with a shudder. The mere memory of her subsequent journey to and from limbo terrified her all over again. She wouldn’t tell that part of the tale just now.

  “It looks like poor Dolph has been telling the truth,” Raven observed quietly. “At least, his version of it.”

  “The part he’s willing to let himself understand,” agreed Rose.

  Poor Dolph? But at least they were speaking of him in present tense.

  “Then . . . he’s alive?”

  “So far,” said Raven, “No thanks to his own efforts.”

  “Information has been scanty,” Rose added, “what with the weather and our needing Lily and Margit close to home for our own protection. Hal’s sent a bird now and then when he remembers.”

  She hardly dared to ask it. “When was the last one?”

  “Not long ago. A few weeks.”

  Not long, no, but long enough for a man to lie dead and frozen on the field like the others she had seen in her dream. Erde pushed the thought away and let the rugged, able image of a living Baron Köthen fill her mind’s eye. The very image of a leader. “‘Poor Dolph,’ you said? Did anyone doubt him?”

  Raven spread her hands. “Inevitably.”

  “But they mustn’t! It’s all true! I saw it with my own eyes. I was there!”

  “Well, no. You weren’t,” said Rose.

  “But it was like I was there!”

  “Apparently. And that is the interesting thing.” Rose sat back, rubbing her palms together. “Truth is, I wouldn’t mind hearing what Dolph has to say. We’ll not stop Fra Guill until we fully understand the nature of his power. Another version of this story might just shed some light on that mystery.”

  “Dolph is a boy’s name,” murmured Erde, unaware until Raven laughed that she had spoken this thought out loud.

  “He was a boy, or very nearly, when I knew him. A beautiful boy.”

  “No longer,” said Rose heavily.

  Raven nodded. “Bright ambition in the youth can darken to obsession in the man . . . especially if that ambition is thwarted.”