The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (21 page)

Water’s mote-cloud swells with sudden impatience, chittering like a swarm of disturbed insects.

THERE AREN’T GOING TO BE ANY MAGES! IT’S
AS I’VE SAID ALL ALONG. YOU MISTOOK THAT PART OF YOUR VISION. BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER. IT’S ENOUGH THAT YOU DREAMED THIS CITY, SO YOU’D KNOW IT WHEN YOU SAW IT THROUGH THE PORTAL. THAT’S WHAT GOT US HERE. SO STOP WORRYING ABOUT MAGES. MAGES ARE A MYTH.

Leave him alone!
Erde flings a quick glare at Water, then looks away, ashamed at having reprimanded a dragon.

NO, LISTEN! WE ARE THE MAGES. IF OUR SISTER IS HERE, AND I’M SURE SHE IS, WE ARE THE POWERS WHO MUST SEARCH HER OUT AND FREE HER. WE CAN’T LOOK FOR ANY HELP OTHER THAN OURSELVES.

“Dese dogs’re getting’ antsy,” Luther warns.

“In a moment, Luther!” Erde tastes her own irritation like a mouthful of bile. She’s torn in too many directions, and feels Earth’s hurt and indecision as if it was her own.

TIME TO MOVE. AS LONG AS WE STAY HERE, WE MUST KEEP FOCUSED AND ON THE SEARCH.

GO SEARCH BY YOURSELF!

BROTHER, LISTEN TO YOU!

The big brown dragon has hunkered down stubbornly. His plated hide has lost its bronzy sheen. Erde thinks he looks like a mountain of mud.

I NEED TIME TO CONSIDER!

LISTEN TO ALL OF US! HOW DID WE GET SO DISAGREEABLE ALL OF A SUDDEN?

“You mean, it’s not just me?” Erde asks.

WE’RE PRACTICALLY DROWNING IN IT. IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE DOGS, WE’D HAVE BEEN BROUGHT TO A COMPLETE HALT WITH POINTLESS ARGUING.

Earth lifts his head to gaze around as if to locate the source of this contagion of despair. YOU’RE RIGHT. IT IS POINTLESS.

IT’S EXACTLY WHAT OUR BROTHER WOULD WANT—FOR US TO BE AT ODDS WITH EACH OTHER. DIVIDE AND CONQUER.

THEN WE SHALL DENY HIM SUCH SATISFACTION.

Earth rises out of his crouch with an alacrity that astonishes
even Erde. He is a force again, a glimmering mountain rolling between the towering buildings, a crown of light between his horns. The dogs gain courage to range farther ahead, yipping and crying. Their chorus ricochets along the walls, back and forth, until the faceless blocks are alive with dog voices.

Luther shrugs uneasily, then moves after the dragons. “If dere’s anyone about, dey shur know we’re heah.”

Sure enough, from far off along the canyons of stone, a whistle sounds. The dogs pull up to listen. The whistle comes again.

Luther nods. “Summun’s callin’ ’em.”

“But who? Oh! It could only be . . .” Erde plunges forward as the dogs streak away after the call. “Wait! Don’t run away! We’ll never find you!”

As if they’ve understood every word, half the pack splits off and circles back, dancing and bounding with impatience at the glacial pace of the dragons and humans hurrying after them.

They are led down a long, straight roadway, discovering occasional evidence of the passage of other animals. Erde finds this soiling of the perfect streets very cheering. Signs of earth, signs of life, in a lifeless city. Hope warms her heart again. She’d been lacking it so desperately. How clever of Lady Water to recognize this dark disabling mood, and alert them in time.

The dog pack wheels right, into a district of narrower streets and rougher pavements. The trail grows crooked, evasive. It curves and crinks and cuts aside here and there at sharp angles, where buildings have been placed oddly, in the middle of a road. The light is dim, and the shadows deeper. Erde shivers. Is she belatedly feeling the effects of the transport, or is simple exhaustion confusing her perception? Several times, a street that has seemed clear and open is abruptly a dead end, with a hidden escape leading off at a sharp angle, barely wide enough for the dragon to pass.

“This is a mysterious sort of place,” she murmurs. “it’s like a maze or something.”

Earth complains that he’s scraping his hide against rough walls on both sides.

Luther drags his hand along the face of a building. “Dis look like old stone, nah. Da reel t’ing. Not like before.”

Erde agrees. The city does feel more like a real place here, more rough-hewn, less impossibly perfect. More like the towns she knows from her own life. The doors and windows are smaller. Because they seem more real, they frighten her. Out of any one of them, after all, might spring the hell-priest. And in the confines of these torturous alleys, there’d be no escape.

What am I thinking? I have two dragons and a strong man beside me!
The despair has crept back to wind itself around her like a rampant vine. Erde rips it loose, resolving to resist it. As she makes this promise, the twining streets seem to open out. The hard edge of the shadows eases. There is moisture in the air, where she had noticed none before. She can breathe again.

“Phew!” Luther mutters. “Das bettah!”

“You felt it, too?”

“Wat’s dat, nah?”

“The despair again. Closing in.”

“Guez I did, den,” he replies thoughtfully. “Gotta keep da fait’.”

“Yes. I shall have to be more vigilant.”

WE MUST ALL BE.

UH-OH . . .

Erde wonders at Water’s tone—half alarmed, half ironical—but not for long. Paying such alert attention to their emotional states has disabled their external awareness. They have come into a surprise cul-de-sac where the only way out seems to be the way they came in. They’re surrounded by high curved walls, like the walls of a castle yard. Dark water drips from between the huge dry-laid blocks, striping the stone with moss and green slime. In the silence, Erde hears it flowing into the drainage well in the center of the courtyard. It seems to fall a very long way before it hits the surface of the water below.

“Outa heah, quick-like!” Luther turns, then freezes. The big knife he carries is already in his hand.

Blocking their escape are two scruffy, grim-faced archers and a pack of alert and snarling dogs. Erde is sure they’ve been betrayed. But she can’t imagine how she could mistake the hell-priest’s hounds for the dogs of Deep Moor. Then she feels Earth’s dragon laugh gently rock the ground.

“Margit? Lily?” She barely knows them through the dirt
and blood darkening their faces. She races to embrace them, but is stopped by their raised and loaded bows. “It’s me, Erde!”

“Prove it,” growls Margit, squint-eyed over the shaft of her arrow.

“What? Have I changed so much?”

“Not enough, is more like it,” Lily calls. “We need to know it’s really you!”

They’re both much gaunter than Erde remembers, with a cruel angle of hardship and suffering in their shoulders that was not there before.

“Of course, it’s me! Who else do you know who travels with dragons?”

“What dragons?”

Erde gapes at them. She can understand them not knowing Water for a dragon, but they’d have to be blind to miss Earth, with the size he’s grown to. But when she turns to point him out, she sees he’s stilled himself and gone invisible. No wonder.

I think you must show yourself, dragon, before these good women will believe me
.

Earth agrees, and flicks back into visibility.

Lily lets out her breath and lowers her bow. “Erde? Is it really you?”

Margit looks Luther over carefully. “Who’s this one? Another dragon?”

“This is Luther, who came along to help me.”

At last, Margit eases back on her bowstring. This releases the dogs, who bound about in animal joy, untouched by whatever horror has darkened the lives of the two brave scouts. Their tunics and riding leathers are in tatters. Margit’s gold-red braids, her glory, are dull and streaked with gray. Lily’s head is bound with a stained linen bandage and a livid scar crawls down one side of her face.

“You both look awful!” Erde blurts.

“Well, thanks for that high compliment.” A brief flash of tooth hints at Margit’s old ironical grin. “We’ve seen some strange things since we’ve been in this demon-ridden hellhole. How did you get here?”

“We followed the dogs from the . . . oh, is everyone all right? Where is everyone?”

Lily purses her lips and looks down. Margit’s grin fades
behind the shadow of more recent sorrows. “You’d never believe it if I told you.”

“What, is the news that bad? Oh, if only we’d come sooner!”

“It’s bad, but what I mean is, you’ll have to see for yourself.”

“Now? Can we go now?”

The women exchange a glance. This time Margit looks away.

Lily says, “I’ll take them.”

She turns, beckoning toward a doorway in the wall behind her. Erde did not recall it being there before. Its rough stone arch is supported by more smoothly shaped pilasters topped with capitals in the form of leaves. Through the opening, Erde sees a stone walk crossing a surreally bright grass sward dotted with flowers. Warm sunlight shimmers through leaf shadow across the path.

I know this place. But it can’t really be where I think it is. What new wonders await? What new terrors?

She eyes the narrow door.
Dragon, you will never fit
.

“Must Earth stay outside?”

Lily smiles wanly. “There’s room enough for all.”

Then I’ll call for you when I get there, dragon
.

Erde takes Luther’s arm and escorts him through the archway, into the courtyard garden at Deep Moor.

A
lone. Alone in darkness. Not something he’s ever minded. Likes it. Particularly the alone part. Or maybe it’s just the relief of darkness. It feels like home.

But the Librarian knows he’d never have gotten this far alone. So he worries about Stoksie out there with his bad hip and a murderous machine on the loose. Perhaps the machine won’t notice him. He hopes the little man has shown his good Tinker sense and gotten the hell out of there.

Darkness. Like a den. One of the many he’s inhabited over the span of his years. Warm. Safe. At least in his later stages, once the body he wore had evolved to a size and strength that made threats not worth the trouble for most sorts of predators. The body heat of darkness underground. Later, the dim smoky fires of his hidden hearths, in caves and hovels and cottages. Eventually, the electric warmth of machine components stacked high in shuttered rooms he hardly went out of. He hated all those dying cities. The invention of the telephone was a godsend. Only a short leap, then, to ordering takeout.

Those were all his waiting places, where invisibility was a necessity. Now the waiting is over. So he mustn’t slip back into the old passive modes. He must act. He must move.

But first, he listens to the darkness. Is it the same as the light outside, but with its volume turned near to zero? Sound no longer disables him. In the darkness, he can concentrate. He sits down and crosses his legs. He forgets about Stoksie and the
machina rex
. The smooth floor is the same temperature as the skin on his soft pink palms. He opens himself, tunes his array of inner sensors to the humming
darkness, takes the tamed rush of signal into his mind as if gathering up a bundle of cables. Sort through the lot of them. What goes with what? What colors match? What frequencies? Some are obvious as code. Some have patterns that might be code. There are likenesses, pairings, sets, and subsets. But there are problems, too. Discontinuities. Dead ends. Nonsense loops. The Librarian grins and licks his lips. Familiar territory at last. He’s doing something useful for the first time since he blundered through the portal. Something he’s good at. Something he’s trained for. With effort and luck, he’ll make sense of it. He’ll be able to map the city’s ebb and flow of signal. If one of these webberies of current is his dragon’s, he’ll find it. Then all he’ll have to do is follow it back to its source.

Alone in darkness, the Librarian chortles with anticipation.

I
t’s a clear and perfect summer morning in the garden at Deep Moor. And of course, that of all things is impossible.

Surrendering to the irrational, Erde follows Lily through the gray stone arch into a sonata of birdsong. She inhales the fragrance of sunlight on pine and sweet fern, and the flowering thyme creeping between the flat stones of the walk. Entering behind her, Luther stops short in amazement. Erde sets her anxieties aside long enough to stand with him and drink in the beauty, to gaze at the crisp blue sky and the grass so green it vibrates. Just a brief stolen moment to savor it all before her heart breaks again, thinking of what’s been lost, and reality intervenes. Dozens of women are scattered like broken dolls across the shade-dappled grass: sitting, lying, sprawled on blankets, bloodied, bandaged, some stirring in pain, some not stirring at all.