The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet Page 9

  WAIT! Lady Water’s sleek head shoots up. LISTEN!

  “What? What is it?” To Erde, the cold air seems as still as a tomb.

  DOGS.

  “Dogs barking?”

  RUNNING.

  “Yu heah dogs? Weah? I saw wona dem onct. He wuzza mean one!”

  “What dogs, dragons? Can you tell?”

  But because neither of these dragons’ preternatural sense is sight over distance, it’s Luther who spots them first. “Lookit! Look deah!”

  Dogs. Even while she sees Luther casting about for a stout stick, even though she knows that hunting hounds travel with the hell-priest’s armies, hope stirs again in Erde’s heart. She can see the dogs herself now, half a dozen dark ovals flying silently toward them over the snow. She wonders what Lady Water could possibly have heard.

  Luther brandishes his weapon. “Yu git behin’ me nah, gal!”

  “Wait, it might be . . . there are dogs who live here at Deep Moor. At least, there were . . .”

  “Dey doan call a bad man a dog fer nuttin!”

  “No, Luther, not all . . .”

  IT IS THEM.

  Leaping over rubble piles and snowbanks, the dogs are suddenly among them, long-legged, bristle-haired dogs, tall and gray, with amber eyes. They race around the farmyard in tightening circles, panting, dancing, still without making a sound. Then, abruptly, as if on command, they tumble into a ragged phalanx and drop to their bellies in front of Earth’s foreclaws. Only now does Erde see that they are badly battered and beaten. Their lop-ears are torn and their bearded muzzles scarred and bloodied. Despite the energy of their arrival, several seem about to collapse from exhaustion and loss of blood. One, she sees, is missing a paw.

  Luther lowers his cudgel. “Dey bin fightin’ sum.”

  Fresh tears warm Erde’s cheeks. Oh dragon, help them!

  THEY WISH US TO GO WITH THEM FIRST.

  Lady Water crouches among them. JUST LIKE A DOG. IS IT FAR?

  DISTANCE IS NOT PART OF THEIR VOCABULARY. ONLY DIRECTION AND URGENCY.

  “What do they want?”

  FOR US TO HURRY. I HAVE TOLD THE WORST TO COME TO ME. THE OTHERS I WILL HELP LATER.

  The dragon lowers his huge head. A dog with rough gashes on her hips and ribcage stumbles over to lean against a claw taller than she is. The dog with the icy, bloody stump struggles to get up, then falls back. His belly, too, is bleeding. A whine escapes him, and he rolls his eyes apologetically.

  “Luther, help me!” Together, Erde and Luther lift the suffering dog and lay him beside Earth, who goes to work on him first, nearly wrapping him entirely in his vast, soft tongue. The other dogs watch expectantly.

  “Lookit dat, nah!” The wounds close and heal before Luther’s very eyes. He lowers himself to one knee in the damp snow. “Da One be praised!”

  The dog shudders with relief and gratitude. He lies panting for a moment, then struggles up and shakes himself weakly. The dragon moves on to the next. Erde presses herself into the dragon’s side to send him messages of love and appreciation. Here, even in the midst of horror, there are miracles.

  As soon as the second dog is on her feet, the rest of the pack spring up, quivering with mission. The least battered of them sprint ahead into the meadow, then circle back expectantly.

  Luther rises from his knees, dusting away snow and ash. “Dat way, dey’re sayin’? Der’s a big trail leadin’ owt dere, seeit?”

  “Let’s go, then!”

  “Slow, nah. Mebbe da bad guys wen’ dere! Yu know wat’s down dat way?”

  Erde squints along the wide, roughed-up track leading out of the farmyard, then across the meadow and down along the valley. “Just fields and . . . wait! I know! The Grove is that way! Do you remember, dragon?”

  OF COURSE. A GOOD DESTINATION. AND THE DOGS AGREE. I WILL TELL THEM TO MEET US THERE.

  “We’re going dragon-back again, Luther. Are you ready?” Erde shoulders her pack and conjures the entrance to the Grove in her mind, revising her image with the several feet of snow fallen since she’d been there last.

  Her next breath fills her lungs with biting cold. They’re in the middle of the valley with the tall oaks of the Grove rising before them. A sharp wind has been reshaping the drifts around the trees, but a recent disturbance is still visible. The snow is deeper here than in the farmstead, but it’s been trampled in a wide area in front of two massive trunks that mark the path into the Grove. Erde sees blood and hoofprints, paw prints, bootheels.

  “Ben sum fightin’ heah, fer shur,” Luther shrugs his woolens closer. He looks miserable, warmed only by courage and his righteous outrage. “Intrestin’ how da trail goes ’roun’ da sides, but not much goes in.”

  Erde is too cold and anxious to speak. It feels dangerously exposed out here in the open valley. She’s uneasy past any rational assessment. The dog pack can be heard behind them now, no barks or howling, just their breathy scudding across the snow.

  HERE’S HOW I READ IT. Lady Water turns back from a quick inspection of the trail curving off to the right. TWO GROUPS CAME HERE, ONE PURSUING THE OTHER. ONE OF THEM ESCAPED INTO THE TREES.

  THE TREES TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN. Earth sounds a note of optimism.

  “Yes, that’s it!” Erde exclaims in relief. “The Grove is a refuge! Gerrasch took shelter there, remember?”

  Lady Water is not so certain. SHELTER FROM HUMAN ENEMIES, PERHAPS, BUT FROM OUR BROTHER FIRE?

  WE SHALL SEE.

  The dogs catch up, circle the big dragon once, then charge in among the trees and disappear. Now a great baying can be heard.

  Luther peers after them, frowning. “Why’re dey singin’ nah?”

  “To let our friends know that help is on the way?” Erde recalls her own confusion upon first encountering the magic of the Grove. The thick-trunked oaks look comfortably spaced. Room enough for even a dragon to pass between. Yet the dogs have vanished, within the first few ranks of trees.

  “Shudn’t jest walk in der, nah. Cud be a nambush.”

  “The dogs would know. They would warn us somehow.”

  WELL, LET’S NOT JUST STAND AROUND IN THE COLD, EVERYONE . . .

  Lady Water takes the path between the trees. She’d sounded so exactly like N’Doch that Erde feels a sharp pang at having abandoned her fellow dragon guide for so long. And Paia, too. She’d nearly forgotten about the priestess. Thoughts of Baron Köthen inevitably follow, and Erde hastily shoves them away. There’s nothing to be done about any of it until the present emergency is dealt with. She plunges anxiously after the blue dragon. She might find the women of Deep Moor, and still find disaster.

  Inside the Grove, her uneasiness increases. The light is dim under the spreading branches. The air has gone oddly still. The leaves have shriveled, but have clung stubbornly to their perches. They make a softly ominous rattling, directionless and steady like the sound of water over stones. Scattered signs of flight appear along the path: a shawl dropped in haste, a basket emptied and tossed aside. Erde swerves, gasping, around the remains of a brown duck, trampled into the snow. Thoughts tangle in her head. The women would never be so careless . . . even though they were in the greatest haste, running for their lives . . . still, they would never have . . .

  Dragon, could the soldiers have intruded into the Grove?

  Erde hears the dogs ahead, and the snap of branches behind that describes Earth’s much slower progress. When she and the dragon first arrived at Deep Moor, he fit easily beneath the branches of the Grove. Clearly, his increasing size will not always be an advantage. For instance, it’s harder now for him to feed himself adequately. Lady Water, her size conveniently under her control, trots easily along the path far ahead, thoughtlessly urging her brother to hurry.

  At last there’s brighter light ahead. Between the dark oak boles lies the pale reflective oval of the central pond, the pool that never freezes. No touch of wind disturbs its surface. Erde knows she will find green shards of grass springing up around its verge. The Grove’s
magic is gathered here. Here’s where the women would have come. But no one’s there. Erde spies Gerrasch’s little hovel, mounded with snow. The sight of it unmoors her further. Such confusions of then and now. Gerrasch’s rough shelter always looked more like a pile of sticks than a home, but now all sense of dwelling has gone out of it. The pile has been torn apart and scattered. Where was Gerrasch when this violation occurred? Here, or thirteen hundred years from now? Would the dragons have an answer? Or do they feel as she does, like a tiny leaf whirling on the tides of Time?

  Erde stops beside the pile to catch her breath and let her brain stop spinning. Lady Water wades into the pool as if entering her own bedchamber. She takes a long drink, then plunges her head into the crystalline water. In an instant, she has flung up a large silver fish and snatched it neatly out of the air.

  Luther pulls up beside Erde, panting. “Ain’ usta all dis walkin’!” His grin is rueful and bright, but his eyes are busy scanning the dark trees and the wide stretch of snowy meadow beyond the curve of the pond. His grin fades. “Dere’s bin fightin’ heah, too.”

  “No! Not here!” Only her intent denial has kept her from seeing it. But the drifts around Gerrasch’s shelter are as torn up as the farmyard. The damp leaf litter lies exposed in great russet swaths like clots of frozen blood. Erde fears suddenly that the dogs have brought them to be witnesses to death, not to prevent it.

  “Rose?” she cries out. “Raven? Is anybody here?”

  Luther hushes her. “Der’s plenny yu doan wan’ hearin’ yu, gal.”

  “But they must be here somewhere! Where else could they be?”

  “If dey ain’ shown demselves yet, der’s probly a reason.”

  The big Tinker chews his lip and looks away. Erde knows he fears the worst and doesn’t want to say so. But never having met Brother Guillemo, Luther doesn’t know that death is not the worst that could happen to any woman of Deep Moor who falls into the hell-priest’s clutches. Just the thought brings on the old chills, the sensation that Fra Guill is nearby, watching her. Erde shudders. Then she notices the dogs.

  “Look. What are they doing?”

  The dog pack has gathered at the very far end of the clearing, a cluster of gray blurs against the roiled snow.

  Lady Water swallows another fish, then flips a huge one to her brother as he halts just at the water’s edge. THEY SEEM VERY BUSY ABOUT SOMETHING.

  WE ARE TO FOLLOW THEM. BUT I WILL EAT FIRST. WHO KNOWS WHEN THE NEXT CHANCE WILL BE.

  Erde is torn between the dogs’ urgency and her dragon’s hunger. Certainly, he will need all his strength. But peering ahead, she sees that the pack has split to form two rows, facing one another. A single large dog runs back and forth in the space between, baying for attention. “Look!” she insists. “They want us to hurry!”

  The two rows lean toward each other, like the sides of an arrow. At the arrow’s point, two giant oaks wind their upper branches together to form a natural archway. To Erde’s distant eye, the inside of the arch seems darker than the surrounding forest. Since the dragons refuse to listen, she shakes Luther’s arm and points.

  “See that?”

  “Eyah. Dey shur tryin’ ta show us sumpin.”

  “Oh, I pray our friends are still alive! Dragon! Please! Or shall I go without you?”

  PATIENCE. WE ARE THERE.

  And instantly, they are. Across the long meadow in a blink. The dogs cry with delight and crowd around Earth again, as if their job is done at last and all they wish for by way of thanks is a swipe of his healing tongue. He goes to work on them while Lady Water investigates the darkness between the twining trees.

  THE DOGS ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND.

  Left behind? Then, everyone’s gone somewhere?

  WAIT . . .

  Erde gasps as light blooms within the archway, as soft and colorless as the snowy meadow. The blue dragon gleams like silver in its glow.

  WHEREVER THIS IS, IT’S PROBABLY WHERE THEY ARE.

  Erde peers around Water’s silky side. She blinks, then looks again. The space between the ancient trunks is . . . somewhere else. No doubt about it. To left and right, the trees march off in unbroken ranks, but between these two mossy giants, a city lies.

  A city?

  THAT’S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, ALL RIGHT.

  A city between the trees. Nearest to them, a shaded overhang. Beyond, a view past delicate, translucent columns, out onto a broad white plaza dotted with fountains and stone benches. No snow, no wind. As if there was no weather there at all. Only the soft white glow. Across the pale plaza, entry porticoes lead into tall white towers that rise up beyond the range of view. Between their perfect sides, as sharp as sword blades, Erde glimpses slim blue shards of sky.

  THIS HAS TO BE WHERE THEY WENT. Lady Water steps up to the opening. Snow and dead leaves scatter across the seamless white marble just past her toes. WHAT DO YOU THINK, BROTHER?

  Earth lifts his head from his healing work. He has waited until he’s finished with the last dog. His response nearly blasts Erde senseless.

  AH! THE MAGE CITY! AT LAST!

  Water regards him primly over her velvet shoulder. I THOUGHT WE’D DECIDED THERE WAS NO SUCH THING.

  YOU INSISTED THERE WASN’T, SO I AGREED. BUT THERE IT IS! RIGHT THERE! THE CITY I DREAMED OF AS I SLUMBERED, AND AFTER I AWOKE.

  “It does look like the city we dreamed of.” Erde frowns gently. “Is it another portal?”

  NO DOUBT.

  NOT JUST ANOTHER PORTAL! THIS IS THE PORTAL WE’VE BEEN SEARCHING FOR!

  The big dragon edges into the path of the light, as close as he can get without tangling his horns in the branches overhead. The dogs pace about behind him, grown anxious again.

  WE MUST ENTER THIS PLACE. WE’LL FIND ANSWERS HERE.

  HOLD ON! WHAT ABOUT . . .

  “What about N’Doch? We can’t just desert him! What if Fire’s there?”

  NO DOUBT HE IS, BUT HE CAME HERE FIRST, SO THERE’S STILL TIME.

  THERE ARE ANSWERS HERE! WHY ELSE WOULD I HAVE DREAMED THIS PLACE? THE DREAMS WERE A MESSAGE FROM THE SUMMONER WHO AWAKENED US, AND NOW, HERE WE ARE. WE CANNOT LOSE THE CHANCE!

  “Dey wanna go in deah?” Luther asks.

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Well, gud, cuz it’s eidah dat or da trees, an’ bes’ be quick aboudit! Dere’s summun commin’. Yu heah?”

  “Where?”

  “Lissen!”

  The dog pack has gone stiff-legged and still. Water puts her debate with her brother aside, and listens with them.

  HORSES. A LOT OF THEM.

  Though Erde hears nothing, a helpless whimper blooms in her throat. “Maybe it’s Sir Hal! He’s got word that Deep Moor has been sacked! He’s brought his own army!” But the familiar choking chill has returned in force. Her uneasiness was no mere reflex. The hell-priest has found them.

  Oh, dragon! He’s here!

  She will not say his name out loud. She is the beacon the priest has homed in on, she knows it. It’s just as before. She can see his avid, evil face in her mind’s eye.

  Earth rumbles his outrage. The dogs throw in their support with a chorus of snarls and growling. Lady Water’s aspect is suddenly edgier and harder.

  PAWN! MISBEGOTTEN TOADY! SHALL WE TAKE HIM, BROTHER?

  WITH WHAT? THE ONLY WEAPONS WE HAVE WOULD WRECK THIS HALLOWED GROVE. AND TO WHAT END?

  REVENGE, OF COURSE—FOR THE RUIN OF DEEP MOOR, AND FOR WHATEVER HE’S DONE TO OUR FRIENDS!

  A DISTRACTION, A DIVERGENCE. PROBABLY INTENDED AS SUCH BY OUR BROTHER FIRE. REVENGE IS PETTY. OUR DUTY IS TO FIND OUR SISTER AND PROSPER OUR PURPOSE.

  Water snorts. Erde notes the predatory gleam in the blue dragon’s eyes.

  PETTY PERHAPS, BUT SATISFYING.

  WE HAVEN’T TIME! WE MUST FIND OUR SISTER FIRST!

  “Waddevah we’re doin’, we oughta do it fas’!”

  The approach is undeniable now, a thudding and crashing among the trees. The dogs fall silent and alert, like
a small gray army awaiting orders.

  Erde reaches for dragon reassurance. Lady Water is nearest. She buries a fist in the blue dragon’s velvet hide. “What if he tries to follow us through the portal?”

  PROBABLY THAT’S WHAT HE’S BEEN HOPING, FOR SOMEONE TO COME ALONG AND OPEN IT FOR HIM.

  THAT WOULD NOT BE GOOD.

  “When N’Doch went, the portal closed up right after him.”

  “Dere’s da ansa, den! Hurry on up!” Luther urges dragon and girl toward the archway.

  “Wait! The dogs!”

  A gust of wind screams through the clearing, rousing the drifts into billows. The first horse thunders out of the forest through an unnatural wall of white. The dog pack scatters and streaks across the meadow to charge at the horse’s heels under cover of the blowing snow. Another horse appears, white on white, and then another. Erde recognizes the heavy war steeds of the hell-priest’s retinue. More come behind them. The dogs race and nip, duck away and charge in again. The horses shy and startle. Their white-cloaked riders yank hard at their mouths and dig in with iron-pronged heels. Erde looks for Guillemo among them, but the snow curtain conceals their faces. The dogs circle out and close in again. One of the riders draws his sword.

  “They’ll all be killed!” Erde shrieks. “Dragon, call them back!”

  WE MUST NOT REVEAL OURSELVES. OUR BROTHER MUST NOT KNOW WE’VE FOUND THE MAGE CITY.

  The big dragon has gone immobile, and vanished against the tree line. Water stomps at Erde’s side in a convincingly horselike shape and gait. The meadow is a swirl of white: snow, horses, men.

  But surely the hell-priest has seen us already!

  THEY FOLLOWED TRACKS. THEY MAY NOT KNOW WHOSE. HURRY! THROUGH THE PORTAL!

  “We can’t leave the dogs!” Fra Guill knows who he pursues. Erde is sure of it. She can see his mad eyes, feel him bearing down on her, and she’s frozen to the spot, like a mouse before a viper.

  “Heah. Lemme try.” Luther whistles, high and clear, as he would to his mules. The dog pack hesitates. They fall back, gather, and charge in once more. Then, as a horse stumbles and goes down, they peel away victoriously and fly back across the snow to rally, leaping and baying, around the tall Tinker.