The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (44 page)

“Perhaps what?” He stalks out of the shadows to loom over her with his hair wild and his arms folded across his chest. He is looking less . . . 
human
, she notes. More like his familiar scaled and gilded man-form. “You thought I would give in? Give up? You thought you’d
tamed
me?
You and that sage old fool back in the café: you expect me to wax suddenly reasonable for the good of humanity? Humanity doesn’t deserve my charity. Besides, what’s the point of reason at the end of the world? Beloved, you forget who you’re dealing with!”

Paia droops. She smooths the silky bedsheet with her hand. She is not disappointed. She has done the best she could. She only hopes it will be enough. “No, my Fire. I do not forget.”

“Good. See that you don’t! Enough of this. I’m bored. We’re off to war! My faithful are waiting!”

And she is aloft again, instantly, her protest swept away by the wonder of flight. Again she is the great winged beast gliding over the ragged hills, where the only color is the red and yellow and gray of stone and the dust-thick windblown sky. Having now walked a landscape softened by trees, even one as sparse and dry as N’Doch’s Africa, Paia looks for green and feels a lack she never did before. The endless barren rock seems unfinished, lonely, somehow . . . tragic.

She hasn’t seen the Citadel from the air since she was small. Besides, things look different through the eyes of a dragon than they did from the passenger seat of her father’s hover. Or maybe things are different: drier, more scrubbed, more beaten down by heat and scouring winds. Either way, they are nearly on top of it before she recognizes the wide sweep of valley, cut by the straight bright line of road. And there, in the shadowed curl of the upthrust cliff face, the walled courtyards climb like stacked boxes to the gilded facade of the Temple.

Paia would prefer to swoop and glide though the hot gusts of the heights, aloof from the struggles of priests and warriors, exulting in the glory of wings. She could observe the interesting dynamic of human geometry imposed upon the more random patternings of rock and sand. A juxtaposition once strong, now fading with the weakening of man’s hold over the Earth. Paia often tried to capture it in her paintings. She could learn the newer patterns, like the intruding fingers of blue, not as distant as she’d thought, and beyond and around, the infinite spread of ocean.

Perhaps she could exert some control over this magnificent body not her own, through sheer delight with its speed
and agility, with its gleaming skin and taut muscle. She knows how the dragon responds to flattery. But Fire, having avoided the battle for so long, is now impatient to be at it. He banks and drops, chasing his own broad shadow across the wasted valley floor, toward the Grand Stair where dust and smoke rise and mix in an unnatural cloud. Clots of figures appear as the cloud thins or shifts, then vanish again behind a thickening billow. Running to and fro, the figures look like scurrying ants, dark against the red dirt but indistinguishable as to sex or age, or loyalty. Fire stoops out of the pale hot sky to wheel over the courtyards, his shadow scudding across the cliff face like a cloud crossing the sun. The ants are resolved into soldiers and priests and villagers, mingling in a common melee. Many halt as the dragon passes, to stare upward. Their gesticulating could be fearful or defiant. Paia cannot tell for sure. Even if she tries to deflect the dragon’s attack, which way should she turn him? She sees no neat and comprehensible battle lines. Apart from the occasional red flash of an Honor Guard’s tunic, it’s impossible to tell the sides apart or determine the course of the fighting. Leif Cauldwell’s army marched to war in the same clothes they farmed in or cared for their livestock, and the villagers loyal to the Temple would be no better equipped. They could be fighting a wildfire down there, instead of each other. The dragon offers no comment, but she senses his victorious mood plummeting like the pressure before a storm. His silence speaks his dismay and disbelief. He circles out over the valley and heads back for a second pass, lower this time, his roar crashing like wild surf along the cliff. He’s searching for patterns, too, a direction in the movement of bodies, a focal point, a leader. Some sign that his forces are rallying. They’re close enough now to see actual fighting, sprawled bodies here and there, the wounded being dragged to safety. But it seems that the motion is mostly toward the Temple, a steady inward flow meeting only sporadic resistance, passing eddies of stillness formed by groups of guarded prisoners, sullen in the heat or relieved to be out of the fighting. One large group near the top of the Grand Stair is entirely uniformed in Temple red. Several of them are chatting amiably with their peasant guards.
It is the red-coats, not the rebels, who duck and quail as the dragon’s shadow sweeps over them.

The dragon hisses deep in his throat. COWARDS! TRAITORS! THEY’RE SWORN TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH! HAVE THEY FORGOTTEN? WHERE ARE MY FAITHFUL? WHERE IS MY VICTORY?

As they glide past, only meters above the fighters’ heads, Paia tries to direct Fire’s furious disbelieving glare. There are men and women, Tinkers and farmers, fighting side by side, some of them wearing little more than rags. Where is Leif Cauldwell, she wonders. Up at the front lines, or at the rear, directing the attack? Where is Dolph Hoffman?

Ahead, the tall plate-metal gates to the Inner Court are closed against a steady onslaught. Fire slows, spinning tighter circles above the sun-baked plaza where the remnants of the Honor Guard and a handful of priests and priestesses battle for control of the entrance to the Temple.

HERE ARE MY HEROES, MY FAITHFUL! HERE THE INVADER WILL BE TURNED BACK AND DESTROYED!

Can he really believe that, Paia wonders? She knows little of war, but she can tell a rout when she sees one. Siege ladders are being relayed hand over hand up the Grand Stair. Reinforcements have arrived, probably from the outlying villages that suffered so under the dragon’s tyranny. Fat metal tubes are carried up on men’s shoulders, gleaming dully in the sun. Guns of some sort, Paia is sure of it. Who could have guessed that the rebels would be so well armed?

With another thundering roar, Fire sweeps low over the gates. His rage and his body are a united force. Paia feels his chest expand with his fury to exhale a long fiery breath. Flame splashes across the heads and backs of the attackers. A few trailing screams as the beast wings by, but most of the fighters duck, then just move onward. They’re wearing some sort of shielding, a wide-brimmed helmet flexing into riveted plates down along their backs, like a turtle’s shell.
Or the scales of a dragon
. Paia reflects on the difficulty of defending the Citadel from the very man who held it against all attackers for so long. Leif Cauldwell has not sent his rebels into battle unprepared.

The ladders swing up against the walls. The defenders scale the inner sides to shove them away, but the weight of the rebels swarming upward holds the ladders firmly in place. Inside the courtyard, three red-robed priestesses scurry out of the Temple, their arms loaded with the gold ware from the altar. Paia assumes they’re saving the Temple’s treasures from the marauders, but as they race past the fighting into the tunnel to the Citadel, their guilty backward glances tell her otherwise.

No, they’re looting
. Under the Temple portico, in the shade, she sees two priests arguing. She wonders what political dispute could be more important than fighting for their lives.

The dragon wheels, shrieking, and swoops in for another searing pass. As he reaches the gates, a sharp popping sound rips the air. Several of the defenders pitch forward silently and topple into the mass of rebels climbing the siege ladders. Paia has seen this before, watching the news feed during the endless days of the Final Collapse. Projectile weapons, primitive compared to the little laser pistol the dragon gave her, but effective, nonetheless.

Where is it now, that pistol? She follows the thought in order to distract herself from the continuing murder of the Temple staff. Men and women she has spent most of her life with. It doesn’t matter that she never befriended any of them. The God—no, the
dragon
—always discouraged that. It doesn’t matter that she considered them fools. Or that the ones she did like turned out to be rebels undercover, like Son Luco, aka Leif Cauldwell, and are probably the ones out there gunning down their former colleagues. Death is awful and final, no matter whose side you’re on.

Another rattle of gunfire. This time, it follows the dragon’s flight, falling around his body and gilded wings like a scatter of hail.

Falling
. Gunfire from
above
.

As Paia comprehends this, so does the dragon. He tilts his fiery glance upward. A line of dark shapes, the heads and shoulders of men, roughens the worn profile of the cliff top. Again, the popping, then the sharp clatter against his scales. The dragon bellows and pumps his wings, soaring upward and away, then wheeling back, aiming himself like a missile at the heights. He skims low above the plateau, laying down a line
of flame hot enough to scorch the rocks, but the sharpshooters have taken cover beneath deeply protruding ledges. As Fire passes, Paia hears a shout, a man’s voice raised in command. Another rain of metal chases the dragon’s tail.

For the first time since they joined the battle, Paia is afraid. Not for herself, but for the man down there, with the voice she recognized. The dragon banks sharply, turning back. One man stands higher than the rest, his blond hair and broad shoulders exposed, silhouetted against the sky. In his raised fist, an ancient weapon. Paia knows it well. The dragon-hilted sword.

Fire knows it, too.

HA! THAT ONE!

She’d cry out to Köthen if she could.
Get down! Get down! Your guns cannot hurt him!
But she has no voice now but the dragon’s. Panic swirls around her, floodwaters. She will drown in it. Then she recalls Köthen on the mountaintop, how his steadiness and calm lent her the strength she needed to deny Fire the first time. Not a physical strength. A strength of mind. Too late now to wheedle, seduce, or beg. She must find that strength again, immediately. She must bargain with the devil.

Fire pulls up, then settles slowly onto a wind-carved pinnacle of rock. He stares at Köthen, considering. Köthen gestures to his men to stay under cover and hold their fire, then lowers his sword to the ground, point first. He leans easily against the hilt, and stares back. Paia feels the dragon shudder with outrage. She bends all her will against the hard wall of his innermost being.

You will not hurt him, my Fire!

I WILL!

He cannot hurt you. An unequal fight would be cowardly
.

WHO CARES? I’M AT WAR! HE’S MY ENEMY!

If you harm this man, I will know that your siblings are right. That all you’ve told me is lies! That you are a coward and a murderer and you care for nothing but yourself and your own pleasure!

HE IS YOUR LOVER!

No, though he might have been. Instead, you won me back again
.

YOU BETRAYED ME WITH HIM! YOU LOVE HIM STILL! HE SHALL NOT
LIVE!

Is it love she feels, gazing at Köthen’s sturdy, imperturbable stance, or gratitude?

But I chose to follow you instead
.

HE DARED TO CHALLENGE ME! HE SHALL NOT LIVE!

Her own person is her only currency. The threat of leaving is her only weapon. Such as they are, Paia knows her Duty is to use them.

If he dies, you will lose me again, and this time, forever! You can only hold me if I come to you willingly!

The dragon screams, his tail carving the air like a giant’s scimitar. Flame spews across the seamed and broken granite but dies at Köthen’s feet. The hot wind ruffles his hair. The men cry out from their shadowed refuge. Köthen doesn’t stir.

Spare him, my Fire, and I will not desert you, ever. If you kill him, you kill me also
.

Fire’s rage and incredulity burn through her like a fever.

MY FAITHFUL DESERT ME! MY ARMIES SPLIT AND SCATTER! MY FORTRESS IS TAKEN! AND NOW YOU . . . AGAIN? GIVE ME A REASON I SHOULD SPARE HIM!

What good is reason, my Fire, at the end of the world?

NO! TELL ME! WHY THIS ONE?

Let your own standard apply. Spare him because he is worthy. Because he is not weak. Spare him because he is what you would have been, had you been human. Because he taught me that love is possible only between equals, and that to love you, I must cease to fear you
.

Paia feels the molten light of the dragon’s rage fade just slightly. Köthen waits, puzzled and wary. Why doesn’t it attack, this enemy he does not comprehend? But Paia thinks that man and dragon actually understand each other very well. She’d like to be able to explain it to him, how they are alike. How loving the dragon does not mean loving him less. How she is a creature of Destiny, and must follow its call. With no language between them, it would be a daunting task. With a language, it would be heartbreaking. Paia is grateful to be spared the pain. Köthen stands defiant on his rock, a brave man facing down a dragon. The absurdity of it makes her love him all the more. He’ll never know she’s saved his life. He doesn’t know she’s there.

In her heart, Paia bids the soldier good-bye, and wishes him well.

Come, my Fire. There’s no place for us here
.

His swift agreement leaves her feeling dizzy and confused.

YOU’RE RIGHT! THERE ARE OTHER PLACES. BETTER PLACES! WHERE MY SERVANTS ARE STILL LOYAL! WHERE THEY’LL WELCOME AND WORSHIP US! LEADERS OF MEN WHO’VE NOT YET LOST THEIR FAITH IN THEIR GOD!

But that’s not what
 . . .

AND THERE WE’LL RAISE A REAL ARMY AND BRING IT HERE TO CHASE THIS FAINTHEARTED BAND OF MARAUDERS BACK INTO THE HILLS THEY SPRANG FROM!

And keep on fighting and fighting? When will it ever stop?

STOP? Inside his pause, a returning echo of exhaustion. A longing or despair. IN THE END, BELOVED, EVERYTHING WILL STOP. AT LAST. THE CYCLE WILL BE ENDED. UNTIL THEN, WE MUST PERSEVERE. PREPARE YOURSELF, MY PRIESTESS, FOR ANOTHER JOURNEY!