The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (13 page)

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.

Erde gathers them all into the image in her mind.

NOW?

Now, dear dragon, and quickly!

The transport is barely a flicker, a bird shadow across the sun. But Erde feels like she’s been flung hard against a wall and been left to lie there several days. Luther is sprawled facedown on the polished white stone. As she watches, he stirs. He pulls his knees up to his chest, clutching his stomach, and groans. The dogs stagger to their feet and wobble over to lick his face and hands.

Dragon?

HERE.

Are we safe?

WE ARE. AT LEAST FOR THE MOMENT.

She sits up slowly. She needs both arms to keep herself upright.

I think, Dragon, that we’ve traveled a very long way this time
.

“
Y
eah? Same to you!” N’Doch’s gesture is the worst one he can come up with on the spur of the moment, as the ancient bush taxi rattles past, full throttle. Teeners and old men are perched on the bumpers and clinging to the dented sides of the bus with their arms hooked around the window dividers. The children and older women are mashed together inside with all the family possessions they could carry. “Glad someone’s getting a ride the hell out of here!”

He drops his arm and lets it swing loose, as if he couldn’t care less. Truth is, he’d been thinking about Baraga as he’d raised his fist. If the Media King is after him again, he should be scared, good and scared, given what the man did to him last time. But he’s too angry to be scared.

From the sound of it, the fighting’s heavier now, toward the center of town. N’Doch heads for the perimeter, along the dusty, rutted street, gesturing Paia to follow. He’s glad she hasn’t asked him who’s fighting who, ’cause he hasn’t a clue. Never did, half the time, even when he lived here. “Might as well start walking.”

“But you said it’s thirty kilometers!”

“Might be a bit less. I ain’t not going, okay?”

“Okay,” she says meekly, and N’Doch realizes he’s yelled at her.

“Sorry. Don’t worry. We’ll catch a ride before we go that far.”

But the truth is, he’s not so sure. He was a fool to come without the dragons. Used to be, any driver with an inch of room would stop, ’cause the rider would always pay. Not much, but something. Now, no one’s even slowing down.
Plenty of folks on foot, hurrying out of town weighed down with kids and chickens and their favorite lamp or prayer rug. There’s traffic on the road, but a lot of it’s military. N’Doch pulls Paia behind whatever’s available when he sees them coming. Mostly they’re heading back toward the center, where the action is—muffled explosions, bursts of gunfire and now, the sharp quick report of the sniper’s rifle. Another palace coup, or something worse? The stuff coming from intown—trucks, bush taxis, an occasional private car—is already overloaded and moving as fast as it can. He wonders what those guys are saying to get past the roadblocks.