The Book of Earth (20 page)

H
al rose and turned toward the dragon. His hand was tight on the hilt of his sword, but his face glowed with a tender expectation that touched Erde in a place normally reserved for younger children and small animals. She sent Earth hope and reassurance and her preference that he not greet this stranger as he had the attacking bear.

But Earth seemed to have sensed an Occasion. He drew himself up at the edge of the firelight, as august as royalty. Bright flickers played across his leathery snout and his sharp-tipped ivory horns. His body vanished behind him into darkness. In the small clearing, he seemed enormous and terrifying, and his huge eyes shone brighter than the fire. Erde saw a new Earth, or at least a side of him that was more
dragon
in its aspect, a creature out of myth such as the dragon-seeker wished to see. The mule, she noticed, had backed off into the shadow in a posture of submission and respect.

Dragon and man stared at each other for a long moment. Then the knight grasped his sword and unsheathed it in a gallant sweeping arc. With shaking hands, he knelt and laid the sword hilt-first at the dragon’s feet. Earth watched majestically, his golden eyes unblinking. To Erde’s surprise, he raised his right foot and placed it down with great deliberation so that the tip of one massive claw rested on the sword’s worn and silvered hilt, which Erde noticed was shaped like a winged dragon wound around a tree, its wings creating the cross-guard.
Like a panel from a story tapestry
, Erde thought,
knight and dragon in some old history of heroes and sorcerers
. Her last doubts about the man’s motives and sincerity faded, for he had forgotten her entirely.
His head thrown back, his gaze fixed on the great head hovering above him, Heinrich Peder von Engle, late of Winterstrasse, wept unashamed tears of joy.

Earth lifted his claw and eased the knight’s sword toward him across the mat of pine needles. Hal leaped to his feet. He swept up the sword with one hand, palming moisture from his cheeks and beard with the other. He stepped back, stood tall, and raised the sword in a courtly salute, then sheathed it smartly.

“My lord,” he offered the dragon gravely, “I am ever at your service.”

Watching, Erde wondered about the history of men and dragons, of fighting men in particular, of their ancient traditions of faith and enmity. Earth had neither offered nor required such formality of her when they’d met. Of course, she told herself, formality would be fairly silly when the dragon can read your mind. Even in her daydreaming, she’d had a very personal relationship with her dragons. Yet Earth had understood Hal’s offer of fealty, and had known exactly how to satisfy a King’s Knight that his oath had been officially accepted.

Hal had not forgotten her after all. He turned with a slight bow. “Milady, if you will, ask him what he . . . I must know my duty . . . what he requires of me.” He paused, visibly confounded. “But how will you speak for him, Dragon Guide, if you have no voice?”

Erde was flattered by this tone of reverence from a man old enough to be her grandfather, but she had no wish to be taken as a mere mouthpiece for anyone, even a dragon. Her chin lifted, she mimed writing. After all, she had a few questions of her own to ask someone who had spent his life studying dragons. The first one would be: what is a Dragon Guide?

*   *   *

It took a while to work out the mechanics, but a cleared patch in the dirt, a built-up fire and a sturdy pointed stick accomplished wonders. Hal crouched over their earthy slate with the distracted intensity of an expert who has waited a long time to ask his questions and is not quite sure where to start, fearful of losing the chance to ask them all. When not directly engaged, his attention wandered inevitably
back to the dragon, who lay in a dark pile under the pine boughs, snoozing after a successful hunt.

“I suppose this will do . . . nothing is ever what you . . . Well, ah, let’s see . . . what is he called?”

EARTH, she wrote.

He raised an eyebrow, both wondering and amused. “How appropriate. Was it your grandmother who named you?”

Erde nodded.

“Of course,” he mused. “She hoped. Or perhaps she even knew.” He smiled, but Erde sensed some disappointment that his brisk manner was meant to cover. “Then you are Dragon Guide indeed. Not that I doubted. How do you speak with him?”

PICTURES.

“Pictures? Where?”

Erde put a fingertip to her forehead, between her eyes.

“Right there? Really?” The knight peered at her as if he hoped to discover a third eye. “No language? No . . . words?”

She shook her head.

“Interesting. I’d always imagined it would be like a voice just inside my ear, sort of a . . . well, it doesn’t matter now.” He turned on the dragon a more scholarly gaze. “Has he told you why he’s come?”

HE DOESN’T KNOW.

Hal frowned at the scratches on the ground, cocking his head to make sure he’d read them right. “Perhaps you’ve misunderstood,” he reproved gently.

Erde’s headshake was emphatic.

“How can he not know? He’s a . . . a dragon.” He hadn’t said the word aloud yet and the reality of it clearly gave him pause. For good measure, he whispered it again. “A
dragon
.”

Erde added a firm underline beneath her scratchings.

“But, milady, you know of course that dragons are the source of all knowledge. Perhaps he doesn’t wish to tell you . . . yet?”

Erde was further encouraged. Other people might have said dragons are evil and eat virgin princesses. She smoothed the dirt and began again. HE TELLS ME HE DOESN’T REMEMBER.

Hal massaged his eyes with one hand.

HE HAS DREAMS. She left out “bad,” hoping to ease the knight’s distress.

“He tells you his dreams?”

I SHARE THEM.

The envy on the knight’s face was poignant. “Milady, may I dare to ask? What does a dragon dream?”

THAT SOMEONE . . . she rubbed out “one” and wrote in “thing” . . . IS CALLING HIM.

Hal brightened. “Right! Of course. That’s why he’s here. He would only come to a Summoning. But he doesn’t know who or why?”

HE KNOWS HE SHOULD. HE CAN’T REMEMBER. Erde cleared more pine needles. She would need real room if this conversation got much more complicated. HE IS UPSET.

“I’m not surprised,” replied Hal dryly, finally seeing the humor in the situation.

I SAID IT MIGHT BE THE MAGE-QUEEN. CALLING HIM.

“The who?”

She shrugged. JUST TO GIVE AN ANSWER.

“Oh. Well.” He nodded. “It’s as good as any, under the circumstances. I mean, I always assumed . . . but what good are assumptions?”

She knew what he couldn’t bring himself to say. She felt the same helplessness. A dragon was supposed to be omniscient, all-powerful, the closest thing to perfect outside of God’s angels. A dragon was supposed to be a lot of things that this dragon clearly wasn’t.

Hal let the reality sink in a while, gnawing pensively on his lower lip as he watched the slow rise and fall of the dragon’s dusty flanks. Finally he sighed, shrugged, and spread his hands. “Then we must help him. That must be why I am here.”

Erde nodded eagerly. BUT HOW?

“Well, he’s a dragon, therefore he has a Purpose. We must help him discover it. Earth. It’s an odd name for a dragon, but the name often tells you . . . well, obviously I lack the proper knowledge, but someone must . . . someone will be able to read the signs.” He seemed relieved to have
fastened on something he could be sure of again. “There are no arbitrary dragons.”

She didn’t really understand what he was talking about, but his conviction, even in sentence fragments, was reassuring.

He rose to pace before the fire with renewed energy, one hand tugging fitfully at his beard. “First find out who or what is doing the summoning. That should be easiest to trace since it will issue from some sort of directional source . . .” He stopped, finding himself even with the dome of the reclining dragon’s head. He hesitated, looked to Erde with the suddenly wide eyes of a little boy. “Will he . . . may I touch him?”

Erde nodded. She didn’t really know if the dragon would mind.

Hal laid one, then both hands tentatively on the fleshy folds of the dragon’s crest, and the dragon opened one giant eye. “Earth,” said Hal, a long breathy whisper. He slid his hands forward to the base of the dragon’s horns and wrapped his fists gently around them. His fingers and thumbs did not quite meet. “All my life . . .” he murmured. He looked to Erde again, and she smiled. Some things just did not need to be said out loud.

*   *   *

“Without a routine, you get sloppy,” remarked Hal later as he banked up the fire and laid out his bedroll. “Routine and discipline will get us through the hard times, when we haven’t found food or the search has been unproductive for too long.”

Erde sensed the knight’s entire recent history packed into that simple declaration.

“So here’s what we’ll do. You’ve been right to travel at night, even in this godforsaken weather. We’ll keep after that. But we’ll know exactly where we’re going each day and how far we have to travel. We’ll eat if there’s food and wash if there’s water, even if we’re too tired to want to. And at dusk when we wake, we’ll take an hour with these.” He patted his sword hilt, then nodded at Rainer’s blade shimmering where she had reclaimed it beside her. “Practice.”

Erde managed to look both dubious and incredulous.

“Why not? Why bring it if you’re not going to use it?” He reached around the fire for the sword and hefted it casually. “Maybe a little heavy for you to learn on, but . . . was it your father’s?” Her offended look puzzled him. He returned the blade to her side. “Well, anyway, no dead weight. You shouldn’t carry what you can’t use.”

Erde wondered briefly if he’d forgotten she was a girl.

“I taught your grandmother to use a sword, when we were . . . keeping company.” Hal smiled at her a little too brightly, as if the memory held more pain than comfort. She was delighted to hear that the baroness had encouraged the courtship of a mere knight. It sounded very romantic and sad, and reminded her of Rainer. But the notion of her grandmother wielding a sword was another thing entirely.

“Really. I did. So you see, we were fated to meet, you and I. There are no coincidences. She was built just like you, and many a man’s no taller or stronger. But Meriah didn’t practice.”

He became very involved in smoothing out the wrinkles in his bedroll for a moment, then settled on it with a sigh. “When I heard she’d . . . passed on, I almost came to the funeral. But that hell-priest would have burned me on the spot, so . . .” He shook his head. “Meriah inherited so young. She didn’t have time for ‘such frivolities,’ as she said. Ha. She didn’t have time for me much after that. She made a marriage that was ‘good for the domain.’ She said I lacked a proper ruler’s sense of purpose. I . . .” He laughed bitterly. “Am I boring you?”

Erde had never thought of her grandmother’s life before marriage. Couldn’t he see she was fascinated?

Hal went on as if compelled by her waiting silence. “Well, I never could make her understand my notion of service, you see. She said the king was all very well and good but shouldn’t I be seeing to my own lands as she was to hers?” He shrugged, smiling at Erde crookedly, though his eyes were serious. “Perhaps she was right. She ruled well and gave her people security in her own time. But she didn’t teach her son so well, did she? She knew he was weak. I hoped she’d send him to me for training, but . . . well, my guess is, she was pinning her real hopes on you.” He turned his gaze again on the dragon. “But your duty is
not with lands or stronghold. It lies here before you, and I surely know my part in it, which is to pick up where Meriah left off. Why else would I be here?
You
will practice!”

Erde grasped Rainer’s sword and mimed being barely able to lift it.

“Now it’s difficult,” he agreed. “But that’s what practice is about. An hour a day. I hope you’re not one of those spoiled high-borns.”

His tone suggested that he would know how to deal with her if she was, but Erde smiled at him anyway, liking him. So what if he was a minor lord. She wished her own father had been more like this man, and wondered how close he had really come to being her grandfather.