The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (51 page)

“Aye, my liege!” Wender wraps his heavy cloak about him and ducks out of the tent.

Rainer lifts the canvas door flap. “It’s near night already.”

Hal consults the water clock on his camp desk. “No, Sire. It’s just past noon. It’s an unnatural night.”

“The moment will be soon, then,” Erde murmurs, feeling the stirrings of a terror she cannot even name.

“So be it,” Rainer replies with conviction, and follows Wender through the doorway into snow and darkness.

N
’Doch stares through the iron grille set in the stone gateway. Only this frail barrier and Gerrasch’s chunky body stand between him and what used to be a dank castle courtyard. Now it looks like the insides of a computer. The nanos have been hard at work out there.

He tugs nervously at his heavy vest and leggings. The Deep Moor ladies have once again managed to outfit him against the cold, this time by giving up various layers of their own, since the fake Deep Moor neglected to include the storage closets. So, he’s sweating in wool and sheepskin, but shivering in his heart. Least, that’s how it feels to him. The word “endgame” keeps cycling through his brain like some kind of fiendish audio loop.

This time
, he tells himself,
the shit really is gonna hit the fan
.

The truth is, he doesn’t know what to expect. If this was a vid, there’d be smart nukes and laser weapons and robotic armored vehicles. But this little assault force, except for himself, is all women and old men. Well, old-ish. He knows Stoksie and Luther wouldn’t appreciate the designation. As for Gerrasch, who knows what he is.

Women, old men . . . and two dragons.

He’s spent the last few hours helping with the flurry of preparation, getting everyone briefed, provisioned, and armed with whatever was available, which wasn’t much. Having had their way with the outer courtyard, the nanos are taking down the farmstead at an ever-increasing rate. The house is gone, but for remnants of the rose arbor. The central tree is a last holdout, as if the nanos have preserved its sinuous branches and green tapestry of leaves as some
kind of museum exhibit of the extinct characteristics of organic life-forms.

N’Doch shivers again, then gathers himself sternly, leaning on the shaft of the pike he’s been assigned, and grins down at his grandfather, who stands as calm and composed as ever.

“Well, it was sure great being back at the Rive ’n all, but I won’t mind seeing the last of this burg.”

Djawara crinkles his eyes, as if a full-tilt smile might show disrespect for this serious occasion. “All my life, I never traveled abroad, just from the bush to the city, the city to the bush. Now, in my old age, fifteen centuries in what’s seemed like an afternoon.”

“We ain’t there yet, Papa.” But he knows getting there is not the problem. It’s what happens after. Behind them, the women are falling into formation. A ragtag army, but N’Doch can’t help feeling proud of these women. A few of them look scared—after all, they’re headed right back to the place they ran from in terror not too long ago—but no one’s complaining. They’re used to having to defend themselves, and they have faith in the dragons. Probably more than he does.

A big hand lands on his shoulder. “Ready to sing, bro?”

“Damn, I thought you were gonna send me in there on my lonesome.” Despite his doubts, N’Doch feels a lot better with the dragon beside him. “Gettin’ near time?”

Sedou nods. “G won’t be able to hold her back much longer.”

“What’s gonna go down? You got something spectacular planned? I keep pushing to hear some strategy.” He jerks his thumb toward the silent Librarian, who stares intently through the gate like he was entirely alone in the world. “But G tells me that sort of thinking’s too structured for Air.”

“My plan is, we’ll rout the bastard.” Sedou grins wickedly.

“Yeah, yeah.” He tries to conjure up his old pawn-of-destiny resentment. Do him good to toss out a few anti-dragon slogans right now, just to keep up appearances. But, truth is, he’s about used all that up. Given that he’s pretty sure he’ll never see home again, given all this “mutual annihilation” business, still he’d have to say that what he’s feeling
is a kind of gratitude. If he was told he could go home tomorrow, he’d probably tell ’em he wasn’t interested. How could he say otherwise? Thanks to these dragons, he’s had the adventure of his life.

He scratches his jaw uneasily, leveling an accusing stare at the back of Gerrasch’s hairy head. Something’s happening to him, no question about it. Ever since Air came on-line with the dragon internet, he’s felt different. He’d mention it to Erde or Paia, if they were around, see what they say. Like, maybe they’re feeling it, too. Sounds too stupid to come out and say it to anyone who isn’t a dragon guide, not the way he really feels it. Which is, like he’s got more . . . air . . . in him now. Like, when he looks at these gutsy women, instead of thinking how uncool they are, he feels vast and generous inside, and like he can see to infinity. The real way to describe it is, he feels more like a dragon now. But he knows if he told that to Sedou, he’d get laughed out of town.

So instead, he tucks the pike shaft against his chest and drapes his free arm around his grandfather’s slim shoulders. The dragon-as-Sedou stands behind them both. Like a family portrait, N’Doch muses. One that never got taken while Sedou was actually alive.

In front of him, Gerrasch stirs, and the hand on his own shoulder tightens. “Here we go.”

And through the stone gateway, the view is no longer nanomech abstract art, but the drifts and snow-laden branches of the Grove.

Erde yawns, despite her nerves being stretched taut with waiting. She’d caught a few hours’ sleep in Hal’s tent while the armies prepared, and was woken later in the afternoon by the dragon’s rumblings. Now, at the king’s insistence, she sits wrapped in a royal cloak and astride a royal horse, even though she’d have preferred to walk out to the field alongside the dragon, and even though the poor horse will be suddenly riderless when the others arrive, and she and the dragon go to join them in the Grove. Earth expects
that Air will reopen the portal at the far end of the meadow. What will happen after that is anybody’s guess, but Earth made sure to build up his strength by easing the death of two badly wounded horses and a starving dog, having first asked their permission to consume them afterward.

For now, the king has arrayed his men in a wide circle around the Grove, just outside the range of the archers who’ve been lurking among the first rank of trees. The strategy is simple: to rush in when the dragon signals that the portal is opening. He says he hears nothing specific, but senses his sibling’s preparations as a very faint echo rolling down the years from the far future. When the portal opens, it will be as if the echo has become a shout from across the valley.

Earth crouches to Erde’s right, huge and dark against the white snow, a wall of shadow in the afternoon gloom. Both the barons and their knights resisted the notion of fighting at night, no matter that success would rely on coinciding the assault with the arrival of the other dragons. Their young king finally won them over with a stirring paean to the value of surprise. Now each foot soldier carries both his weapon and a torch. Erde hopes the ancient trees of the Grove will forgive her for allowing this ancient enemy into their sacred precincts, but they’ve withstood fire before. The saws and axes of Brother Guillemo present a much more present danger.

Hal lopes down along the line and noses his horse in beside her. “Any word?” He regards the dragon eagerly, almost lovingly, for a sign. His horse dances, restless for action.

Erde shakes her head. She rejoices to see the knight hale again, washed and barbered and clad in his worn red leathers from the old king’s service, looking like the warrior who taught her the skills that kept her alive once she’d fled her father’s castle. He’s looking especially inspired at the moment because she’d finally found the time to let him know that Rose and the other women were not killed or taken prisoner during the burning of Deep Moor—as he had assumed, swearing that this was what had driven him over the edge. Erde could privately have added a number of reasons for the knight’s sanity to be vulnerable. The
news in Hal’s life, despite his great virtue and cleverness, has most often been bad, especially lately. Though, perhaps Hal himself would not say so. After all, one of his most cherished ambitions has been fulfilled: he’s consorted with dragons. Right now he’s even smiling, in his stern sort of way, as if recalling the good news she has given him, and savoring it all over again.

How wonderful to love, Erde muses, and love in return. Perhaps Rose and Hal are each other’s consolation prize for not having dragons of their own. And, as visions of love always conjure Adolphus of Köthen, there he is, like a mirage before her eyes. But instead of banishing his handsome visage, as she has learned to do the moment a thought of him arrives, Erde lets her memories of him fill her senses, just for now, a sort of farewell. A true love must be all-consuming, and perhaps she would not have had proper room in her heart for both a dragon and a man.

Still, she wishes he was here, less for her sake than for Hal’s, to have one more agile sword fighting by their side. But he has chosen other battles, as is his right. Erde wishes him well, and godspeed.

The Librarian’s arm answers the dragon’s signal. Before he has time to think about it, he’s gripped the iron grille and swung it wide. He’s lost all sense of independent existence, of owning his own life. He is Air’s conveyance, yes, but not just some mindless mechanism. That would be easier to bear. No, he’s her smart-car, programmed with all the rules of the road, and the assignment of keeping his reckless driver from veering off the highway.

As the portal opens, long stored memories awaken. The bite of the cold, the dry scent of the winter trees. The Librarian sees/hears/feels the forest as the dragon senses it, as a tapestry of sensual data. He adds to that his emotional connection with this old place of safety and retreat, his first Refuge.

And then, peering into the dim late light, he sees what
has been done to it. Raw stumps, hewn logs lying scattered about like giant matchsticks, piles of broken branches, the trampled ground gouged from the dragging. The wide wounds of a road, bleeding mud, leading from the base of the meadow to the spread of tents and campfires at the farther end.

He opens his mouth, gasping like a fish on land. He’ll spew up his cry of rage and grief like vomit. And then, between one despairing breath and the next, he’s alone in his head again.

The Librarian nearly collapses. Behind him, Luther sees him flag and shoulders past N’Doch to grab him under the arms and drag him through the gate so that the others will not crush him, rushing through.

“Yu all ri’, G?”

The Librarian hasn’t a clue. Has the portal malfunctioned? No, here he is, knee-deep in snow. And there’s N’Doch with one arm around his grandfather, and Sedou/Water, even now morphing into numberless and nameless tiny motes. After them, the two trackers, and Stoksie and Rose and the other ladies of Deep Moor. He has to keep count, make sure they all get through before the portal closes. But where is the dragon? Where is Air? Who will revenge this awful desecration? A newborn child is no more innocent or worthy than an ancient tree!