The Book of Earth (24 page)

Erde nodded, offering an eager placating smile.

“You want the long or the short version?”

SHORT.

“Good, that’s easy, assuming your father to have no
greater fear for his immortal soul man the next man. So—what does your father want more than anything else?”

TO BE IMPORTANT.

“And what will make him important?”

POWER?

Hal nodded approvingly. “He to whom power is important is vulnerable to anyone who wields it more cleverly than he does. The hell-priest is damnably rich in power just now. I assume he promised your father a share of it.”

Erde’s mouth worked in instinctive protest. Nothing came out but a puff of frustrated breath.

“But how could he trade his only daughter for the promised share? Well now, that’s either a true measure of his obsession or something a bit more complicated. I suspect it’s a bit of both. But that’s the long answer.”

Erde did not want complications. Her mind was drawing long loops, seeking simple connections. Complications could come later.

WHAT ABOUT THE KING?

“How’s that?”

THE BARONS LOVED POWER MORE?

“No, he . . .” Hal paused, sucking his teeth morosely. “Well, maybe so. What the king values most is peace. He had power enough to establish it in good times, but not enough to maintain it through times like these. So for now, he sits in Erfurt at their convenience, ruling in name only.”

FOR NOW?

“Of course, for now,” he replied indignantly, “You think I wear the Red for sentiment? His Majesty is still king by the grace of God, and what other duty could a King’s Knight claim but to see his monarch securely on his throne once again?”

For that, Erde had no answer. She sat back, pulling the folds of her cloak up around her shoulders. She had enough to chew on for one day, and finally she let the knight sleep. She hoped it was not too late to become her grandmother’s faithful student.

Meanwhile, the dragon practiced becoming invisible.

O
f course, Earth could only be invisible while he was standing still. This meant he must practice while his companions rested, or be left behind. Or so he thought. The dragon had not yet understood that he was the glue that held this oddling band together.

“Don’t ever tell him we’d each die before leaving him behind,” Hal warned quietly. “He’s slow enough as it is.”

How quickly men become impatient
, Erde marveled,
even with the things they claim to worship.

“I hope you’ll pardon my presumption, milady, but . . . can’t you get him to move along a little faster?”

Erde shrugged, shook her head. Being unable to speak did offer relief from having to explain herself—or the dragon. The truth was, she hated hurrying him unless he was in danger. Hal was fairly sure that they’d eluded their pursuers for the time being, and she thought what Earth was learning was too important to rush. He seemed so encouraged by having discovered he had at least one skill. Let him practice at his own pace.

“He’s getting the idea, at least,” Hal conceded. “And I suppose if you’re as old as he is, an hour or two of human time seems like the blink of an eye. What can ‘hurry up’ possibly mean to a dragon?”

Erde steered him toward a bare patch of ground. She now carried a short pointed stick in her vest to use as a stylus.

HOW OLD?

Hal chuckled. “Oh, old, you can be sure. Older than me, even. Can you believe that?” Then he grew grave and drew himself up out of his stoop as he did whenever he talked
of dragon-lore. “There are conflicting opinions as to the exact day and hour of the creation of dragonkind. I myself favor those who place it on the First Day. Others are of the mind that dragons were created first among the creatures of the air, which would make it, of course, the Fifth Day. The hell-priest would place them with the fall of Lucifer and the birth of heresy in the world. Now, this
particular
dragon . . .”

The peevish look he turned on Earth, who was once again struggling to catch up, made Erde laugh. The sound was all breath but so unaccustomed that they stared at each other in surprise. Hal’s mouth tightened against a grin. “Well, look at him! Does he look like something you’d expect the Good Lord to come up with on the First and Holiest Day? He’s ignorant, he’s clumsy, he’s . . . ah!” His grin bloomed ingenuously. “Is it a disguise?”

Erde shook her head.

“Well, it was just an idea. It’s just hard to accept that he’s so . . . so like a child.”

Erde nodded emphatically.

“Oh, you think that’s good, do you? Surely, it takes one to know one.” Hal made a sour face, then slowed, chewing on a thumbnail. She imagined him stalking the aisles of his library in just that posture, that is, when he’d had a library. He scratched his beard thoughtfully. “Now, you know, there are a few truly renegade minds who consider dragons to be creatures of nature that are born, grow old, and die like the rest of us. It’s a radical notion, very eccentric, but their idea is that dragons mate and reproduce by the laying of great leathery eggs. Of course, I’d never given this theory much credence but . . .” He glanced back at Earth, but the dragon had again pulled to a halt and vanished. “Confounded beast!”

Erde clapped her hands in breathy voiceless mirth.

“Always happy to provide comic relief,” the elder knight growled, but his eyes smiled. “Ah, well. Laughter is a healing thing, milady, and you deserve a little, after all you’ve been through. Maybe we both do.”

*   *   *

A week’s nights of travel brought them to the edge of a big lake. Erde had never seen a lake so broad. She ran down to the slim, graveled beach to stare out across the
dark water, wondering if this was the ocean that the minstrel tales so often sang of, where great sea monsters devoured ships and all the men on them in a single gulp. The waning moon shimmered on ranks of white-capped wavelets driven toward shore in the brisk chill wind.

The dragon snorted at the nearness of all that deep moving water. He refused to share Erde’s wonder. He rocked from side to side and would not follow. He pelted her with water terror until his fear overwhelmed her wonder, and she could not help but draw back nervously into the shelter of the trees with him, even though a moment before she had hoped that Hal meant to take them out on this marvelous ocean to dance with the waves.

Fortunately for the dragon, the lake itself was not Hal’s destination. He led them along the shore to the lee-side of a sheltered cove where the trees hung low and close over still water, and the moonlight did not penetrate. He chose a weedy bluff back from the edge and called the mule over to unload.

“We’ll rest here until morning,” he declared, though they’d accomplished only half their usual distance since sunset. “He’ll be awake, for sure, but we’re better off not bothering him after dark.”

Erde touched his sleeve inquiringly. Did he mean
safer
, she wondered. The knight pointed to a curving shadow of land across the cove. She saw a glow that came and went as the trees swayed in the wind off the lake, like a faint winking eye. The scent of wood smoke tickled her nostrils. Hidden among the trees, the dragon sneezed and sent an inquiry about white sun-tipped towers rising above green hills.

—
Soon
, Erde promised him.

She tugged Hal’s sleeve a little harder.

“Answers tomorrow,” he said, gathering leaves into a pile and laying out his bedroll. “And no fire tonight. Bad enough we’re upwind of his expert nose, but it can’t be helped. Get the sticks. Time for practice.”

*   *   *

At dawn, the cove was sunk deep in mist. The opposite shore was as invisible in the pale light as it had been in darkness. Hal stirred and went to the edge to splash water on his face.

“Arrgh! Cold!” He stood, beard and eyebrows dripping, and stared across the cove. “Huh. Well, let him get some breakfast into him first.”

Whoever “he” was, Erde was convinced she would find him terrifying, if he made the knight so uneasy. She joined him on the misty beach, mouthing a silent WHO?

Hal considered, then shook his head. “No use my trying to explain. You’ll see soon enough. If he’ll even talk to us, that is.” His stare shifted to the dragon, who had spent the night huddled as far into the trees as he could go without losing sight of Erde. “My hope is, Earth will win him over.”

After their own meager breakfast, they packed up and started single-file around the cove. There was no path to follow. The woods were a mossy tangle of low branches and downed trees. Hal’s mysterious quarry preferred living inaccessibly. In some places, they were forced into the water, and only because it was still and shallow could Erde convince Earth to follow. The underbrush was dense all the way to the shore and very damp, as the mist rose and left the weight of its moisture behind. Behind the Mule, in front of the she-goat, Erde wrapped her cloak tightly around her, but her boyishly cropped hair was drenched by the time they broke through a final curtain of bramble and saplings into a dim swampy clearing sheltered by a dozen or so tall and spreading firs. A low arm of land projected into the lake, its narrow neck protected by a barrier of thicket. Erde could see pale water past the tree trunks on three sides.

“Tell the dragon to stay back in the brush,” said Hal. “Even better if he can be invisible. We’ll go on to the cottage alone.”

Cottage? Erde could see only a pile of forest rubble, lurking like a shadow amid the darker fir trunks. Rubble, or at most, the lodge of a very large beaver. It wasn’t much taller than she, but it was set as if by design in the exact center of the clearing. A delicate wisp of smoke curled up from the top of the pile, so she supposed it was the cottage Hal meant. There was even a thick slab of bark at ground level that might be a door.

“Well, here goes,” Hal muttered. He marched resolutely up to the bark slab and knocked on it with courtly restraint. If it was a door, he was going to have to stoop mightily to pass through it.

There was no reply.

Hal knocked louder, and then again, with a big stone he’d picked up from beside the door. He waited, pointing to a mutilated area in the center of the slab. “See that? He makes everybody do this! You’d think a fellow living this far away from the civilized world would want a visitor every now and then!” Hal banged on the slab again, then threw the stone at it in disgust. “Come on, Gerrasch, I know you’re in there!”

“QUIET!”

Erde held herself in place by sheer will as the pile spoke, or rather, screeched. The voice was harsh and broken, as if long out of practice.

“Quiet, quiet, quiet, QUIET!”

The door flew open and out stormed the pile’s occupant. For a moment, Erde feared this Gerrasch actually was a giant beaver. He was short and round and lumpy, with a great mane of curly hair covering his face. He wore what seemed to be a tunic of dark fur, overlaid with a vest of leaves, and he waddled much as a four-legged creature might if forced to walk upright. Seeing no sign of a beaver’s large flat tail, Erde breathed a sigh of relief.

Gerrasch planted his stubby feet and spread his arms to grip either side of the doorway. “QUIET!”

“I hear you, Gerrasch,” Hal replied.

The creature lifted his moplike head to stare at Hal with veiled but beady eyes. “Then be it.” He turned, vanished into the darkness of his hovel and slammed the door behind him.

The knight sighed profoundly, one arm propped against the rubble pile, slowly shaking his head. Erde relaxed a little. It was not fear that made him wary of this exasperating personage.

Hal threw her a rueful shrug. “You’d never know we’ve been friends for years.” He knocked again, softly. “I’ve brought you a dragon,” he crooned.

After a long moment of wind coughing in the pine trees, the door cracked open. “I knew that,” said an invisible Gerrasch.

“You know everything.”

“Everything, yes.”

Behind his back, Hal’s fingers drummed a silent staccato.
“If that weren’t so close to true, I wouldn’t put up with you.”

Gerrasch remained in shadow. “A minor dragon, yours.”

“Oh, really? Then am I to take it you’re not interested?”

“Am, am, am, am, am.”

“You’ve a damn funny way of showing it.” Now Hal winked at Erde. “Maybe I won’t show him to you after all.”

“Where?”

“I thought you knew everything.”

The door edged closed.

“He wants to meet you . . .”

The door stilled. Bright eyes peered out of the darkness.

“. . . when he’s sure that your knowledge is worth his bother.”

The bark door swung wide. Beckoning Erde to follow, Hal ducked inside.

The inner gloom was thick with smoke and musty animal odor. The twig and rush ceiling curved so low that Hal could not stand fully upright. A circular hearth burned in the center of a dirt floor which was littered with containers of all shapes and sizes: an astonishing variety of earthenware bowls and jugs and wavy glass jars with ceramic tops, brown clay bottles and metal pails, wooden buckets, reed and wicker and woven grass baskets, even a crudely wrought barrel or two, all jumbled together, precariously stacked and piled, and all full of indeterminate substances. As Erde struggled to take it all in, Gerrasch shut the door behind her, plunging them into further darkness.