The Book of Fire (68 page)

The odd resonance of the cavern upstairs has faded with the descent into the depths. Just the ghost of an echo as they dropped down the shaft. Now, it’s dead as a doornail.

Hey, girl. I feel like my brain has on earplugs.

I feel the same, N’Doch.

You know what an epicenter is?

No.

I think it’s just where we’re headed.

Hard to remember that this is how he was all the time, before a certain blue dragon. As he pads after Stoksie, dutifully mum, he wonders for the billionth time how the dragons are doing. The girl hugs his side where the pathway allows, or dogs his heels where it doesn’t. Köthen sticks close behind, once again taking up the rear.

Finally, Luther turns into one of the many identical doors. They all file into a long, high-ceilinged room, ringed by a railed gallery. More shelves and data storage line the walls on both levels, but the center of this room is dominated by a big conference table and a collection of tattered sofas and armchairs, gathered in pools of light from dark-shaded lamps on the side tables scattered among them. The overheads are either dead or switched off. A good choice, N’Doch decides. This room looks cozy and welcoming compared to the chill corridors outside.

There are people at work at the big table, bent over papers and printouts, and others huddled in conference in some of the seating areas. They all leap up when Cauldwell comes into the room and greet him with eager relief. Someone rushes off for water. Another hurriedly clears papers and clothing from the largest of the sofas. The others crowd around.

“Set her down here, why doncha?”

“Thanks.” Cauldwell eases the priestess into the corner of the couch. He shakes a few hands in welcome. “Couple of you stick by the door, okay? We had a little show of resistance upstairs.”

“Serious?”

“Could be, down the road.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“Not so far.” Cups and a pitcher of water appear beside him. The woman who’s brought it pours and sets a filled cup in Cauldwell’s outstretched hand. He drains it himself, then lets her refill it. He smoothes hair from the priestess’ face and molds her hands around the cup. “Paia? You awake enough to hold on to this?”

The priestess nods quickly, like she’s afraid he might steal the cup away. She gulps down the water and holds the cup out for more.

“Paia.” Köthen’s murmur speaks entire volumes, at least to N’Doch. He prays the girl hasn’t heard it. Who ever would have guessed this hard nut could crack so fast?

Cauldwell stands back as the priestess inhales a second cup. The woman with the water sets down the pitcher and stands back with him. He curls an arm around her and draws her into his side. She’s a lot shorter than he is. She can nestle right under his shoulder. It looks like they haven’t seen each other for a while. He bends his head to nuzzle her dark hair. “So far, so good.”

The woman nods. She has an alert, intelligent face and bold eyes that flick searchingly across the faces of the new arrivals. N’Doch finds himself smiling at her.

The priestess empties her cup, then looks around dazedly as if trying to decide what to focus on. She sees Cauldwell and the woman arm in arm, and her eyes go round with surprise. “Luco . . . what . . .?”

The woman inclines her head in an ironic little bow. “My priestess . . .”

“You . . . but . . .”

Cauldwell comes to her rescue. “Paia, I’d like you to meet Constanze. My wife.”

His wife? But it’s the chambermaid! The chambermaid! With her chin up and smiling, looking not at all downtrodden. And she’s talking! But . . . his wife? How could she be Luco’s wife? The priests of the Temple are not allowed to marry.

Paia sets down the little ceramic cup very carefully. “I . . . don’t understand.” And that is an understatement. Maybe she is still dreaming, no matter if he’s said she’s not. Tears well up, hot tears of fright and confusion and humiliation. What is this sudden weakness? Paia hates tears she cannot control. “Luco, please. I’m very . . . not very well.”

“I know. We had a rough trip. You were . . . exhausted. I gave you a little something to help you sleep.”

“You . . . ah. I see.” But she doesn’t, really. A mere sleeping potion can hardly explain away the chasm yawning
within her, the vast howling emptiness. Where is he? Why does the God not come for her? Hasn’t he punished her enough? “I feel like I’ve . . . gone deaf. Where are we? Are we still in danger? Who are all these people? What’s going on?”

Luco crouches in front of her. “Ah, Paia. I hardly know where to start. But let me try . . .” He grasps her hands as if he has waited all his life to tell her this news. Paia sees none of his usual hooded caution. His expression is open, intent with purpose. She searches for something known in him, finds only his familiar, perfect face. “First, you must forgive us for our deceptions over the years. There was no other way.”

“Deceptions?” Her brain is shrouded in fog. Does he mean concealing his romance with the chambermaid? Comprehension will not come, except that she’s suddenly very worried for them both. “Then don’t tell me now, for your own sakes. If you tell me, the God will know it, too. All of it.”

“It doesn’t matter now what he knows or doesn’t know.”

“Well, Leif, it might,” the chambermaid says.

“As long as she’s down here, he can’t hear anything.”

The chambermaid’s voice is low for a woman. What did she call him? A private name among themselves? Paia reaches out an astonished hand, remembering the last time she’d seen her. “All that terrible . . . You escaped! Oh, I’m so glad. Did you get out on the wagons? I feared . . . I didn’t know . . .!” She can’t make any thought come out right, for fear of the one she wishes not to voice, that she hasn’t thought of the chambermaid at all since just after the shooting began. How could she be so heartless? “Your name is Constanza?”

“Constanze.”

“How lovely. Why didn’t I know that?”

“Did you ever ask?”

The chambermaid’s smile is much kinder than her words, but Paia’s tears brim over hopelessly. She can’t imagine what’s opened up this bottomless well of emotion. If the God were here, she would be yelling at him. She buries her face in her hands. “I didn’t! I didn’t! I’m so sorry! I don’t mean to be a bad mistress! You must all hate me so much!”

Erde hoped N’Doch was wrong about this weepy woman being Lord Fire’s dragon guide, but as she held back in the gloom and watched the beautiful priestess lure the entire room, even the women, into focusing on her own problems, it did make a certain sorry sense, given the nature of Lord Fire himself. She had both his selfishness and his glow. Even the electric lanterns seemed to burn brighter in her aura. No wonder Lord Fire was so out of control. His guide had not been paying him proper attention.

Here we are
, she complained to N’Doch,
worried to distraction about the dragons, half deaf and half blind without them. Do we indulge ourselves with such mewling and moaning?

He returned her a kind of mental shrug, and Erde reminded herself that N’Doch had also begun hopelessly, but he had learned. No reason why this Paia couldn’t learn just as well. It would be a different situation, of course. N’Doch had had a sensible dragon to teach him. With Lord Fire as her dragon, Paia would need all the help she could get.

Erde knew she should be more charitable. But the situation was desperate. Their dragons were off battling each other; who knew where or what was happening to them.

The three of us should be putting our heads together, figuring out a way to help!.

Can’t ask her to do that till she figures out which end is up.

Erde subsided. He was right. She must contain herself. Besides, she feared her intemperance was being fanned for other reasons, by a thing she was trying to ignore: Baron Köthen’s odd behavior. He seemed to have appointed himself the priestess’ protector, despite the very capable-looking men standing guard at the door. It was true she was very beautiful, but the baron would not stop looking at her. It hurt. It made Erde irritable. She hadn’t brought him all this way to look at women. She’d brought him here to work!

But she could not let herself be distracted by personal issues. Not now, when the dragons might be fighting for their lives. Now she must hold fast to her new resolution
and strength of purpose. But oh, how strange, how very strange, that all the people she found to believe in—first Rainer, then Hal, now Baron Köthen—seemed each to be drawn away from her by some private destiny or purpose. Stranger still that N’Doch, of all people, should become the stable anchor she could rely on. Perhaps because, as dragon guides, they shared a common destiny. She supposed this meant that Paia shared it, too. Erde hovered in N’Doch’s shadow and pondered this possibility, while the big handsome priest who was not a priest struggled to explain himself to the weeping priestess.

“A people’s consensus, Luco? You’ve been conspiring against him! You and the . . . and Constanze!”

“And others, Paia. Many others. This is no palace coup we’re about. Our real strength is not inside the Citadel.”

“But . . . how long? For how long?”

“Since I understood he wasn’t going to make things better. That’s been rather a long time.”

“But he
did
make things better!”

“Better for himself.”

“Better for you, too. Better for all of us!”

“Better for a very select few. That’s how he’s bought our service. Actually, he doesn’t
want
things to improve. As long as conditions are bad, the Faithful will continue to pray to him for help, which he will promise but not deliver.”

“He put things in order again!”

“So I thought. So it seemed.”

Luco lets go of her hands and settles to the floor cross-legged, confident and informal, a posture Paia has never seen him in. How could so simple a thing be so disorienting?

“Then you put the notes in my studio.”

“Constanze.”

“And the old monitor?”

“My office staff has always been privy to my true purpose. We hoped to help you see what he really is . . .”

“I know what he is! Better than you!”

Luco’s blue eyes go somber. “You still believe that, after all you’ve seen?”

There’s the chasm again. He’s dragging her up to its edge, insisting she look downward. This collision of emotions is crushing the very breath from her lungs. “What about the landscape?”

“What landscape?”

“You know, the painting. Never mind.” Paia instinctively deflects his curiosity with a wave. House was right. Two sources of tampering. Then who is the other? Paia hugs herself, shivering now in the unaccustomed air-conditioning. She feels like her blood has stopped flowing. “Ah, Luco. And I always thought it was
my
job you wanted.”

He is incredulous. “I don’t want anybody’s job! Do you take me for a fool? Replace one tyrant with another? What would be the point of that? Besides, I can’t do what he can. He’s a miracle, a myth come to life. He’s a
dragon
. He has merely to fly overhead to evoke the most primal terrors and the deepest devotion. He gets people to labor and obey as no human has been able to do for centuries, which is one reason we’re in the state we’re in.”