The Book of Fire (17 page)

Earth had already been anxious when she fled to him: worried about her, about the war and the safety of Deep Moor, and increasingly impatient to resume his Quest. But it was the big dragon’s way to be anxious, just as it was his way to soothe and comfort those in need. Especially his dragon guide, though Erde knew he did not understand why she wept so disconsolately as she curled up against his plated chest.

ARE YOU ILL
?
YOU SEEM HEALTHY. HAVE YOU NOT EATEN
?

I’M NOT HUNGRY
.

YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD ALWAYS EAT WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE
.

DEAR DRAGON, I FEEL FINE
.

YOU DO NOT SOUND FINE. PERHAPS YOU HAVE NOT RESTED ENOUGH
?

She had thought her mind completely open to him. Now Erde wondered if certain subtleties of human emotion were simply incomprehensible to a dragon. She found them mysterious enough herself, and she was the one experiencing them. Why should she be so stricken by the plight of a man she barely knew? And how could this sadness also feel so sweet?

The dragon would be no help here, though he’d continue to try until she worried about worrying him, about distracting him from the truly important considerations, like the Quest. For the dragon’s sake, then, she must dry her tears and seem to take comfort as he bent his great head over her, rumbling his concern into her mind.

She’d nearly dozed off when she heard the big door slide open. Lanterns glowed at the distant front of the barn. She heard Rose’s voice and Hal’s, then Köthen’s muttered reply. She and the dragon had watched the meeting in the great room through Sedou/Water’s eyes. She knew Hal would be obscenely cheerful, as he was now able to raise his life-count of dragons from one to two. And Baron Köthen would be . . . well, perhaps the dragons could help him feel better about his situation, if she could get him to talk with them. She knew from her own experience that
the dragons could heal the mind as well as they had healed N’Doch’s broken body.

As voices and lanterns approached, Erde scrambled up from her warm nest beside the dragon’s foreleg and hid behind the hayrick. Beside the dragon’s left claw, her own lantern flickered in the draft from the open door.

“I’ve a mind just to send you in first and let him eat you,” she heard Hal say. “But come on. This way.”

She’d chosen a good vantage, a full field of view once they rounded the corner of the big open stall where the dragon lay sleeping. He looked beautiful, she thought, huge and glimmering in the lamplight, fading into darkness behind, so that his true size was exaggerated by the dancing shadows. She saw Hal’s eyes light with the fire of a devoted lover. He forgot Baron Köthen for a moment and strode straight to the dragon, to touch two reverent fingers to a huge ivory horn. “My lord Earth,” he whispered. “Are you well?”

Köthen followed more slowly, caught a glimpse of what lay massed before him in the dim lamplight, and—mid-stride—went utterly still.

He looked away, looked back, then for a long time, only his dark eyes moved, absorbing, measuring each detail, assuring himself of the reality of an existence that, all his life, he had denied the possibility of. He shook his head twice in a wordless negative. Finally, he let out a long, long breath and swore softly to himself.

Hal stirred and noticed him standing there. Without a trace of the triumph he must surely be feeling, he stepped aside to gesture Köthen forward. Slowly, Köthen, moved up beside him, his eyes fixed on the dragon as if it might vanish the moment he looked away. His hand strayed to the older man’s shoulder, as if nothing awkward had ever passed between them. Whether he was giving or taking support, Erde couldn’t be sure. Together, the two men stared up at the dragon’s bronzy head and scimitar horns.

“Impressive, my knight,” Köthen said, as if speaking was no longer the easiest thing. “Is it alive?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Really? Am I dreaming?”

Hal laughed softly. “No, lad, you’re not dreaming.”

Oddly, Köthen seemed to accept this. “Sweet Jesus. A dragon. Does it . . . breathe fire?”

“No.”

“No? How disappointing for you. Does it turn lead into gold?”

“That’s alchemy. Have you forgotten all I taught you?”

“Only the stuff I never thought I’d need,” Köthen replied ruefully. “Well, does it
hoard
gold, then? Are you rich again?”

“Hah. If he was a hoarder, he’d be unlikely to give me so much as a coin of it.” Hal regarded the dragon fondly. “No, there are many things he isn’t or doesn’t do that one might have expected a dragon to be or do. He doesn’t fly either, that is, not as you might define flying.”

“As I might?” Köthen turned his gaze from the sleeping dragon to study Hal’s face. “And how might you define it?”

Hal grinned at him. “It was he who snatched me from your grasp at Erfurt.”

Köthen’s chin lifted. “Ah. The first nail in my coffin.”

“No, the first was raising your sword against your King.”

Köthen frowned, dropped his hand from Hal’s shoulder, then let the remark go by. Erde decided his curiosity had got the better of him. “It is true that your sudden disappearance was never adequately explained to me. I blamed all the confusion on the earthquake.”

Hal cocked his head, increasingly unable to restrain his immense satisfaction that this conversation was finally taking place. He drew in the air with a finger, outlining a pair of shining ivory horns and a vast swell of plated hide. “He was the earthquake.”

“He what?”

“His name,” Hal offered, “is Earth.”

“It . . . he . . . made the earthquake?”

“Is that so hard to believe, now that you see him before you?”

Köthen frowned again. “I’m afraid it’s all rather hard to believe, my knight.” He gripped Hal’s shoulder again, briefly, then turned away. “A dragon. Congratulations. It’s all you ever wanted.”

“Not all. I wanted my estates once more in hand, the King secure on his throne, and you fighting beside me.”

Köthen growled in his throat. “Leave it, Heinrich!” He
paced away, out of the lantern light, saw Rose waiting silently in the shadows, and swerved aside like an animal evading capture.

“But,” Hal continued lightly, “he’s a fine consolation prize.”

Köthen’s path became circular and brought him around to be startled again into stillness as the sleeping dragon loomed once more before him. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” he muttered. And then he grew thoughtful. “Will it help fight the hell-priest?”

“Perhaps. Although he has a great Mission of his own that he must pursue. A dragon has his own mind, you know.” Hal gave up his struggle for restraint and turned his joy on Köthen like a beacon. “I told you there was magic in the world, Dolph!”

Köthen stared back at him, then looked down with a small laugh and a shrug. “So you did, my knight. So you did.”

His words were agreeable, but his tone was bitter. Erde guessed that the past weeks together had been a horror of mutual recriminations for these two men, honing this argument and others to a lethal edge. At any moment, they could come to blows. She decided to intervene. She sent the dragon a mental nudge.

SHOW HIM ALL YOU ARE, DEAR DRAGON. HELP HIM TO UNDERSTAND.

The dragon woke and opened one golden eye, as tall as a man. In the darkness of the barn, his gaze glowed with inner fire.

Köthen recoiled. His hand jerked reflexively for the sword that was no longer at his hip, then dropped uselessly to his side. Next to him, Hal Engle bowed, then knelt to bask in the unearthly light. Erde saw Köthen’s fingers tremble as the actuality of a living dragon finally overtook him. Before, it could have been a fake, a statue cleverly lit. But now, that one great eye, alight with ancient life—and now the other, as Earth stirred and lifted his big head. Like a man in a raging cyclone, Köthen fought the urge to kneel as Hal had told him he would—and won that skirmish.
This man thinks he should kneel to no one
, Erde noted. But the battle of belief was over, it seemed. Baron Köthen saw no reason to suspect the evidence of his own eyes.

“A dragon,” he murmured again, to no one in particular.

Hal rose, complaining of stiff joints. With his formal greeting and obeisance accomplished, Erde knew he would now feel free to treat the dragon as he usually did, with a good deal less reverence. Which meant he’d be wanting to talk to him, and would need her to translate. Erde grinned from her hiding place as he leaned closer to scratch Earth familiarly on his horny snout, in just the spot she’d once revealed as the dragon’s favorite. She was so relieved to see him alive and well, after her terrible nightmares of the war. Greetings were long overdue, and she knew it was time to face Köthen in a normal way. She’d been down this road only too recently, this foolishness of thinking that a man had noticed her when really, he hadn’t, at least not in that way. And how much more presumptuous of her to think this of Adolphus, Baron Köthen, a powerful lord and nearly a stranger to her, than of a childhood companion like Rainer. Never mind the fact that he was nearly twice her age. Besides, if Köthen hadn’t recognized her back in the farmhouse, there wasn’t even going to be that awkward moment she’d anticipated.

Erde slipped around behind the manger and came up beside Rose.

“Ah,” said Rose, moving forward as she did. “Here she is.”

“Milady! At last!” Hal honored her with a deep and courtly bow, then grasped her hands warmly. “Ah, look at you! A gown and everything! My little squire-boy is more grown-up every day. I wish I could say the same of myself.”

“But we are both alive and that’s what matters.” Boldly, Erde went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I worried about you all the time I was away!”

Hal laughed. “You know you’re getting old when the young ladies feel free to kiss you without consequence!” Then he said to Rose, “I can’t get used to having her talk.”

“Get used to it,” Rose warned. “She has a lot to say.” She took Erde’s elbow to turn her gently toward Köthen. “Dolph, I think you’ve met Lady Erde von Alte?”

Köthen nodded politely, his mind still on the dragon. “Yes, I do believe . . .” Then he turned his head slightly, as if memory had failed him, or was just then returning.

“Erfurt . . .?” Hal supplied helpfully.

Erde raised her head to glance sidelong past Köthen’s frown. She could not look him full in the face. She felt more than saw him focus on her, felt the steel come into his gaze.

“The witch-girl,” he muttered.

“So Fra Guill would have it,” Hal agreed jovially, “but of course it isn’t true.”

“Isn’t it?”

Köthen’s tone chilled Erde to the bone. Was he recalling Erfurt only, or her dream-presence as well? That night in the clearing, or his suicidal charge? Erde let her glance drift back toward him. She hoped he’d be looking at Hal, so she could observe him unawares. But he was staring straight at her. Their eyes met and held, and she saw how angry he was.

“My lady, a pleasure.” He stepped close to lift her hand politely to his lips, then murmured for her hearing alone, “Better to have stayed that night and died with honor.”

So he’d been aware of and remembered everything. Worse, he blamed her for what had befallen him since, when he’d heard her dream-warning, heeded it, and fled.

“Oh, no, my lord baron,” she protested faintly. “Surely not.”

“Surely yes.” And then he stepped back with a curt bow. To say more would bring inquiries from the others she was sure he did not wish to answer.

He might as well have struck her. Drowning, Erde let her courtly training take over. She returned a gracious curtsy. “My lord baron. How charming to see you again.”

Oblivious, Hal chuckled and rolled his eyes at Rose. “Look at the graceful thing she’s getting to be. Is this your doing, Rosie?”

“None of mine. This child is dragon-raised.”

“We should all have so excellent a parent.” He drew Erde toward the dragon. “Come, nearly-grown. Your skills are needed. What can my lord Earth tell us of where he’s been and where he’ll be off to next? How stands the Quest?”

Thinking each moment that she might fall to the floor, Erde struggled to give to the elder knight all the cheer and
enthusiasm she knew he deserved. But she could not fool Rose, Rose who saw everything, Rose who took up her elbow again with a firm sisterly grasp.

“Let him rest, Heinrich. You can talk to him tomorrow. He’s been working hard, and sorely tired of late. Besides, you know how long-winded a dragon can be, once you get him started. We’ve plenty of our own news to exchange and it’s much too cold in here to be standing about. Let’s all go in to dinner, shall we?”