The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (6 page)

The baron snorts quietly. “Castle Köthen is hardly a palace, Dochmann. Attractively situated, comfortable enough, but modest by comparison. What it is, however, is secure and easily defended.”

“Yeah? You ever have to do that?”

Köthen cuts him a look of amused disbelief. “If not me, then who?”

“Well, I mean, I guess . . . Yeah. Stupid question.” When he first met Köthen, the man wore bloodied armor and wrist shackles. Putting a sword back in his hand was like grafting on a lost arm.

“Not stupid. Not really.” Cauldwell has been eavesdropping. “I’d like to know, too.”

“Hey, chief. Forgot you speak Kraut.” N’Doch gives way, bringing the rebel leader and Köthen face-to-face. These two alpha dudes, he figures, have some deep shit to work out if they’re gonna work together, so better sooner than later. And let them do it here, in a crowd, where nothing much can happen.

But Cauldwell’s negotiating skills haven’t gone near as rusty as his diplomat’s German. He offers Köthen a serious, collegial smile. “Here. I’ll show you around my place first.” He guides the baron along the tapestry of images to point out a long view of barren red hills. “The cameras trained on the entrance went belly-up a while ago, but these ones up on the cliff face are still working. You see, the Citadel’s a natural fortress. Dug deep into the side of a mountain.” He nods to the next image, where the camera stares straight down into the empty inner courtyard. “It’s proved impossible to take when its defense is well organized—I know. I’ve held it myself a few times.”

Köthen folds his arms, as if listening out of mere good manners.

“But now, in the midst of a power grab,” Cauldwell continues smoothly, “it’ll be chaos in there. Which is exactly the point. House, can we look at a cross section, a plan? Give me a few screens’ worth.”

“Working,” mutters the computer.

The image collage breaks down and reassembles quickly, but not before N’Doch has taken in a flash of blue overlaid with one bright word:
HURRY
.

“Wait! What was that? Did anyone see that? I thought I saw . . .”

But no one’s listening. Several big diagrams replace the image and whatever had followed it. As Köthen moves in to look them over, his eyes narrow with interest.

“Like what you see?” Cauldwell taps a lower-level plan, tracing out access routes.

Köthen allows him the faintest motion, more shrug than nod. “What soldier wouldn’t? Though I’d prefer to be defending it rather than taking it.”

“Of course, and when you do get inside, it’s close quarters for a fight. Hand-to-hand all the way. Which is why . . .” Cauldwell eyes the long sword sheathed across the shorter man’s back. “You any good with that thing?”

N’Doch steps between them, planting a palm against the baron’s chest. A short time ago, he wouldn’t have dared to do this. Now it’s Cauldwell he’s worried about. “He is, chief. You can take it from me.”

But Cauldwell knew that. He smiles his challenge. “Ready to use it?”

Köthen’s glance flicks back to the feed from the Citadel. “Never a better time . . .”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Hey, wait a minute . . .” N’Doch recognizes complicity when he hears it, and it’s caught him completely by surprise. He’d never have figured the rough medieval fighting man and the sleek high-tech warrior for such instant allies. Suddenly something about it worries him. “I mean, hold on . . .!”

Cauldwell ignores him. “I’ve got people inside, good ones, in computer contact. But I have to pull them before the Beast returns, or they’re char and cinder, every one of them. The sooner we move . . .”

Köthen nods, though N’Doch knows for a fact that he’d never heard of a computer until yesterday. “The dragons could take us. Paia could show them the way, isn’t that right, Dochmann?”

“Er . . . yeah.”

Cauldwell blinks. “All of us?”

“I don’t know. If they were horses, I could tell you their carrying capacity to the ounce.” He offers up one of his rare grins, rueful and charming. “We’ll just have to ask them.”

“Like you said, there’ll never be a better moment.”

“What, now?
Now?
” N’Doch’s sharp exhalation gets everyone’s attention. Even Gerrasch, intent at the console, glances up. “You can’t do this now! We’ve got relatives and friends to take care of first!” He glares from one to the other. “Dolph! Whadda you thinking?”

Köthen gazes back with that look of his that’s so much like a shrug.

“I also have friends and relatives to rescue,” Cauldwell jabs a stern finger at the screen. “In there. Men and women who’ve risked their lives to overthrow the Beast.”

“But . . .” N’Doch rubs his eyes. “Aww, shit!”

“It does not require an army to deliver a warning or
conduct a spot rescue,” Köthen observes. “And the sooner you’re about it, the better.”

“Me? What about you?”

Köthen looks away, as if to check on the latest events on the wall screen. When he looks back, he says nothing, knowing he doesn’t have to.

“C’mon, Dolph! Don’t desert me, man! I need your help!”

“We all do!” exclaims a voice from behind. “My lord baron, you can’t possibly mean to . . .”

“My lady.”

Erde pushes through the crowd to face him. “Surely you will come with us to save Deep Moor! Rose and the others—they’re in terrible danger!”

N’Doch doesn’t blame Köthen for avoiding Erde’s eyes. Her pleading desperation would melt stones. Most stones, maybe. Not this one.

“My place is here. My
duty
is here.”

He says it to N’Doch, but really, he’s telling her, with an arch touch of vengefulness that N’Doch can’t really admire. And the girl is so appalled, she forgets to temper her preemptory tone. N’Doch hears a fight brewing.

“Our duty is where the dragons lead us!”

“Who are you to tell me where my duty lies?”

N’Doch watches Cauldwell kick back and let it happen, like he already knows which way it’s gonna go. But N’Doch can’t keep his own stupid mouth from dragging him into the middle. “You brought him, girl. You lectured him all about dragons and destiny. I guess you gotta live with the consequences.”

“But Deep Moor is in danger! Your sword is needed, my lord!”

“So you said when you hauled me away from Deep Moor. Now you wish to haul me back again?” Köthen rounds on her, and the flare in his dark eyes isn’t warm or pleasant. “What should I care for Deep Moor? Have you forgotten, my lady? Deep Moor was to be my silk-lined cell.”

“Only to keep you alive, my lord!”

“Alive for what? To win a crown for another?”

“For the rightful prince, my lord baron!” She looks entirely bewildered, like she can’t believe she has to explain
such obviousness to a man of honor such as himself. Their raised voices have carried over the noise in the rest of the room. Luther and Stoksie wander over, ever so casually.

“If he’s rightful, then let him have it!” Köthen flings up an angry fist, then collects himself. “You said yourself, my lady, that I might discover my destiny here, and so I have. It isn’t the one you had planned for me, apparently, but isn’t that just the way with destinies? They control us rather than the other way around?”

“But my lord . . . 
Deep Moor!
All our friends . . .!”

“Go warn Hal Engle. He’ll see to Deep Moor and his witch-lady. He doesn’t need me. He’s made that abundantly clear.”

N’Doch at last takes pity on the girl’s stunned disbelief. “My guess is he’ll think different about that, Dolph, when Fire shows up on his doorstep.”

Köthen shrugs. “What’s done is done.”

“Not really. It may feel like we’re a thousand years from Deep Moor, but remember, Time’s gone all elastic on us, Dolph.”

Cauldwell clears his throat. “Listen, if the man wants to fight for us, I could sure use him. What does it matter if he’s here or there? We’re all working toward the same end, right? The defeat of the Beast.”

Luther and Stoksie murmur their agreement.

Then other murmurs rise around them, and die into sudden silence.

“Yes, but . . .!” Erde’s last syllable rings loudly, alone.

The room has turned hot with reflected yellow glare. Astonished faces stare past N’Doch to the screen behind him, lit to molten gold by the surreal glow. N’Doch knows that glow, like he knows his hands, or the sound of his own voice. He turns slowly, afraid of what he’s going to see.

It’s what he’s expected. Sun. Sand. Bright-painted fishing boats. Palm trees.

Home
.

It’s like the wall’s been blown away without a scrap left, and what’s outside is not a mountain’s worth of rock, but . . . the beach. Outside the seaside African town that N’Doch always thought he’d grow old and die in . . . until he met a certain dragon.

Without thinking, he steps toward the screen.

Köthen grabs his arm. “Dochmann, no.”

“Lemme go, Dolph.”

He can feel the heat shimmering off the glistening white sand. Just past the bright curve of that hull, he knows, is a path through the palm grove to the town gates and the market. Köthen’s hard fingers bruise his flesh as he struggles to free himself. “What’s it to you? You don’t wanna go, fine, but I gotta! I can go now, and warn them!”

“No. It is not real, Dochmann, remember? It’s a wall, and moving pictures. You told me that, remember?”

“I can smell the damn salt! Can’t you? And the fish? Can’t you smell it, Dolph?” What N’Doch remembers is what Paia said, in the Meld when only the dragon guides could hear. When the wall turned up a full-screen image of Deep Moor, so real-looking you were sure you could walk right into it, she said, Well,
you could
.

It’s a portal
, she said.
A doorway
. Her own dragon had told her so. Why believe anything out of the slimy renegade’s lying mouth? Because of the heat and the smell: the drying seaweed and the pungent smoke blowing off the kebob vendors’ carts. And because of the sounds: the roll and break of the surf, and the tinny distant music from the market stalls.

“Off me, Dolph! Lemme go!” N’Doch tries a quick, breaking twist, unsuccessfully. Köthen is shorter than he is, but stronger and just as fast. “Look, this’ll fix our transport problem! No dragons needed. I’m there!” He swings himself a few steps closer to the screen. “Dolph, they’re sitting ducks! Please! Lemme go!” Another jerk and twist, another step closer.

Now Paia’s hanging on his other side like her life depended on it. “It could be a trap! It’s just the sort of thing he’d do!”

Köthen is talking and Paia is talking, and Erde’s throwing her two cents in. N’Doch doesn’t listen. He’s so . . . 
drawn
. It’s . . . home, right in front of him. Only has to step through. He’ll just be there, he knows it. Check up on his mama and Papa Dja, get them into hiding, then the dragons could pick him up on their way back from Deep Moor. He’s got it all worked out. Save everyone a lot of trouble and debate if he just did it. . . .

Now
.

N’Doch feints with his body. With his mind, he calls the dragon upstairs.

I’m taking a little shortcut, kiddo. Come get me when you’re ready
.

DO NOT . . .!

Too late. N’Doch leans hard into his feint, then shifts his weight and—a miracle—throws Köthen off-balance, not enough to break his grip but enough to be able to pivot toward him fast and slam in with a full body block. The baron staggers, his soldier’s fists still welded to N’Doch’s wrist and elbow. N’Doch pivots again and flings Köthen away from the screen. The force shoves Paia through it . . . and drags him after.

The passage is instantaneous. From dim cool to searing glare in the span of a heartbeat. The bright shock of the heat and the sudden grainy softness beneath them startles Paia into letting go. Both tumble headlong into hot, white sand and lie gasping for the briefest of seconds.

N’Doch looks up, and groans.

Why is it things never work out like he’s intended? There’s the High Priestess sprawled on the beach beside him, two hundred years away from the man who would do anything to keep her safe. No sign anywhere of a return portal. Just sand, palm trees, and hot, hot ocean. N’Doch’s eyes squeeze shut. All he can think of is how many pieces Köthen is going to cut him into when the dragons arrive to rescue them.

W
ide-eyed, Erde watches N’Doch flail, stumble into searing white light, then collapse in a heap in the powdery sand with the High Priestess on top of him. Her gasp is half giggle, for they do look comical, that is, until the hot beach vanishes, she’s back in the darkened room, staring at a bright blue wall, and N’Doch and Paia are gone.

Erde shudders, her foolish half grin frozen. For between the brightness and the blue, for an instant so brief she almost doubts her senses, she’d glimpsed something else. She’d seen Deep Moor in flames.

“What . . . what happened?” Leif Cauldwell looks to Gerrasch. “Where’d they go?”

The Librarian rises in horror. Has he seen it, too? “There. Are. No!”

Erde blinks away the fiery afterimage and tries not to panic. “To Africa. It’s N’Doch’s home.” She alerts the dragons. But they know already.