The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (39 page)

“Yeah?” N’Doch glares sullenly at his grandfather, who always manages to hold a man’s face to the mirror just when he’s least interested in looking at himself. “What time is it, then?”

“Time to meet my sister.” Sedou turns back to them with an elated grin. “We’ve been summoned!”

“Just now? You heard . . .?” Djawara clasps both hands as if in prayer.

“Air? She got out? She’s free?” N’Doch exclaims. “Wow! How?”

“Unclear,” Sedou admits. “But we’ll find out soon enough!”

N’Doch puts two and two together. “So that’s why the Fire dude split so suddenly.” He rounds on Djawara. “How’d you know?”

“It seemed the only logical explanation.”

“Nah. C’mon!” N’Doch doesn’t want it to be so simple. Truth is, he doesn’t want it to be so at all. If it’s so, if the last dragon is out of the hatch, it means they’re on to the next stage of the Quest, the stage Fire’s been working so hard to prevent. It means finally finding out what he means by “mutual annihilation.” “You got some kind of magic, right, Papa?”

Djawara ignores him. “To where are we summoned?”

Sedou gazes at the far wall, as if the message was printed there. “Now, there’s the problem. No words, only images, and it
looks
like . . . the Grove at Deep Moor.”

N’Doch offers his grandfather a brief explanation, then shrugs, hoping his relief isn’t too obvious. “Well, that’s a no-go until we hook up with the Big Guy again. He’s our only mode of transportation.”

“Easily done. He’s only a few blocks away.” Sedou heads for the door. But the instant his hand touches the knob, the gale starts up again outside, as if it had been lying in wait until someone ventured into the street. Violent gusts lift and tip the café tables, and slam the chairs against the base of the facade. Then, louder than the wind, a roaring and pummeling sound. The door and the windows vibrate in their frames. Sedou clears a circle of condensation and peers through the glass.

“Hunh. Not so easily.”

Djawara quickly joins him. “Oh, my.”

And then there’s nothing left for N’Doch to do but follow. Besides, he’d like to know what all the noise is about. He clears his own little view port, and looks out on a hail of stones. Not hailstones, which he’s only seen once in his life anyway. These are actual stones. Rocks the size of chicken eggs, falling from the sky in a steady downpour, like petrified rain. More than just falling, each stone seems to have been flung downward by force, so that when they hit the street, they bounce. N’Doch sees there are two hazards out there: the stones coming down hard on your head, and the stones careening back up in your face. The quaint old striped awning that had led him down the street in the first place is already in shreds and tatters.

“That’d lay us all flat in a second,” he observes with as much neutrality as he can muster. So they won’t be leaving the safe haven of the Rive for a while yet. He strolls back to the bar and picks up the guitar. He’ll want to take it with him anyway, when the time comes. “It’ll stop, probably. Let’s just kick back till it does.”

“I can go, and come back for you.” The outline of Sedou’s body shimmers as the dragon contemplates a shape change.

“But is that wise?” Djawara asks. “From what you’ve said, separating us seems to have been his most successful delaying strategy.”

Sedou scowls, shimmers again, then retreats from the window and flings himself disconsolately into a chair. “What, then? We can’t just sit here! Earth will be summoned, too, but will he think to search us out before he goes?”

Djawara settles beside him quietly, as if keeping vigil over an ailing relative. “We’ll think of something.”

Suddenly, a knock at the door. N’Doch nearly drops the guitar. Three evenly spaced raps, neither demanding nor impatient. Formal, N’Doch decides. “Who’s it gonna be this time?” he wonders unnecessarily.

Nobody moves, as if all of them expect the door to burst open of its own accord. Finally, Djawara nods and rises to answer it. “Seems I’m the Gatekeeper here . . .”

An ordinary looking man in a plain gray uniform, neatly pressed, waits beneath the shredded awning, his billed cap in his hands. The stones are still falling, but none of them seem to be falling on him. “Your car, sir,” says the man helpfully.

Djawara’s impeccable poise finally wavers. “My . . . car?”

“Yes, sir.” The man glances down at a slip of paper tucked inside his hat. “Says here, two passengers for the Grove, sir.”

“Did you say, the Grove?”

“Yes, sir.” He skins a look past Djawara’s shoulder at the two staring faces inside. “Will that be three, sir?”

N’Doch comes up behind his grandfather. Out in the narrow street, a long, gleaming, sky-blue limo waits with its engine running. The stones aren’t hitting it either. N’Doch shivers.

Djawara rolls marveling eyes toward Sedou. “Will we be three?”

Sedou nods.

Djawara turns back to the man with a courtly nod. “Three. Yes.” He gestures casually at the rain of stones, as if stones fell every day of his life. “Would you care to come inside while we gather ourselves for the journey?”

“Oh, no, sir. Thank you, sir. I’ll just wait right here, sir. No rush. Take your time.”

No rush. Yeah, right
. N’Doch can hear the urgent imperative hidden in the man’s implacable courtesy. “She sent him, hunh? Hey, you didn’t tell me your sister had style! And we’re going?”

“Oh, yes.” Sedou laughs. “I would say so.”

N’Doch looks back at the sleek blue car. Its unblemished finish shines as if with its own light. It’s the perfect embodiment
of all he’d ever thought he wanted out of life.
But that was then
.

He sighs.
Hey, I’ve died once. How bad could it be a second time?

He wraps grateful arms around the foundling guitar, puts his ear to the box to hear it hum its quiet, consoling song. It appeared just when he needed it. Like magic. Now, he’s as ready as he’ll ever be.

P
aia cannot say clearly what makes her grasp the hand of the intemperate, murdering bully she had denied with such conviction not twelve hours ago. Or was it twelve days? It could have been weeks, for all she knows, she’s so entirely lost track in this place where time seems somehow irrelevant. What she does know is that she’s exhausted, dirty, hungry, and overwhelmed by a longing to be home again, no matter what the situation there might be.

I can do nothing useful here
, she tells herself, reaching to lay her hand in Fire’s palm.
At the Citadel, perhaps I still can
.

Paia has had little experience of life outside the narrow sociology of the Temple and the Citadel, but she’s consumed enough of the House Computer’s large stock of classic novels to understand at least secondhand that a young woman’s first taste of freedom can result in a reckless plunge overboard. In the safety of Djawara’s quaint café, as her dragon defiantly justifies his bloody deeds and flagrant dereliction of duty, Paia suddenly sees his actions as mirrored by her own. At that moment, her connection to him has never seemed more real or poignant. For what was leaving the Citadel if not a dereliction of duty? Or a denial of her proper destiny? Fire is her dragon. She is his guide. Her responsibility, her life’s duty is to him, not to some stranger lord from a distant past. Nor even to the other dragons or their guides. If both she and Fire do owe allegiance to some larger Purpose, her best way to serve that Purpose is to fulfill her duty to her own dragon, in her own place in the continuum of time. Ironically, Fire would agree, the only difference being how that duty is defined.
And it’s a major difference, she realizes, now that she’s clear about it, but not so much in its particulars of behavior as in its intended result.

I had to come all this way to figure it out
.

Paia consoles herself that her little rebellion was not entirely pointless. Of course, she fears what might happen should she meet Adolphus of Köthen again, face-to-face. Or even see him from a distance. Perhaps she gave in to her attraction to him with girlish abandon, but the attraction was real enough and certainly mutual. This is probably on her dragon’s mind as well, which will make Köthen either a prime target, or someone to be avoided at all costs. It’s a shame, Paia muses, that they must be rivals. For wasn’t it Köthen’s dragonlike qualities that made him so desirable? The perfect stand-in for the dragon lover she dreamed of but couldn’t have. But now . . .

Paia recalls the heat of Fire’s fingertips against her cheek. Now everything is different. Now she might actually have some power over him.

She lays her hand in his outstretched palm.

The sensation of falling goes on forever, falling not toward or into, but away from, falling until fall becomes flight, without up or down. The rush and lift of the wind beneath her wings is so thrilling that she soars deliriously for more endless moments, drifting in the thermals that rise off the dry, red cliffs. Then self-awareness stirs, and exhilaration gives way to fear.

!!

Her flight falters. Speed fading, altitude lost. A spinning plummet into a dive. Confusion and terror. Then amazement and gratitude as the great dragon body—hollow bones lighter than air, vast and glittering wingspread—turns back into the wind, catches a strong updraft and rises, exultant, laughing.

I SEE YOU’LL NEED SOME FLYING LESSONS.

It’s as if he’s right beside her. Not inside her head, but as if this scaled and gilded frame is a vehicle they both are driving. He’s just taken over the wheel to save them from disaster.

!!

Speechless still, even inside herself. Sorting out identities, separating the physical entities. Words are useless until
she’s sure whose self they’ve come from. Is she the dragon, or merely resident inside the dragon’s body? Is this a temporary manifestation, Fire’s own mode of dragon transport, which he’s never invited her to experience before, except as a threat of deportation and abandonment? Or is it some more permanent arrangement that she’s unwittingly agreed to by placing herself, literally, in his hands?

As she struggles to form the question, Fire distracts her with a breathtaking surge of speed, wings billowing and snapping like the sails of an ancient galleon. Her heart fills with air and sky and freedom. Joy gives her back the words.

Could we have done this before?

ALWAYS.

Why not, then?

I DIDN’T TRUST YOU.

And now you do?

NOW IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Paia has had this thought also, without knowing where it came from, or exactly what it means. It wasn’t just the dragon’s touch. In the café, something changed, and now all things are different.

Why doesn’t it matter? What happened?

DON’T THINK ABOUT IT NOW. THINK OF ME. ONLY OF ME.

The great wings pump. Higher, higher, past the soft mist of clouds into the darker blue of the sky, and then into a spiraling roll, as if tunneling through the air itself, or swimming, in water the temperature of blood. At once aware of wings and claws and scales and flight, and of two more human bodies within, rolling together, skin slick and hot, rolling entwined, pillowed by the wind, his forked tongue in her mouth, his gilded arms cradling her hips. Paia sighs and takes him inside her as they roll and soar and rock in ecstasy.

“It’s all an illusion, of course,” says Fire later, as the dragon body rests on an isolated windblown crag.

“My body doesn’t think so.”

His murmur suggests a self-congratulatory smirk. “Your body is an illusion. As is all matter.”

Paia recalls her physics lessons only vaguely. “Some more so than other, then.”

The illusion now is of their human bodies lying in the softest of beds, limbs entangled, slack with release. No sight, only sensation. Damp skin and whispers. And desire, so intense. Already, she wants him again.

“I mean our lovemaking is an illusion.”

“I know.” It’s like receiving his thoughts, Paia notes, rather than sharing them. He still holds part of himself aloof.

“And yet, it’s not. My energies have absorbed yours. Therefore, we are joined more fully than any normal lovers could be.”