The Book of Fire (70 page)

The guy at the console is muttering to himself. N’Doch is pretty sure it’s a guy because of the hulking width of his shoulders, but it’s hard to see much detail. He’s mostly a dark, rounded silhouette against the bright blue screen. N’Doch reads the image as a map of some kind, or aerial view, with three colored blips tracking across it. A fourth blinks faintly in a lower corner. Surveillance of some sort, he guesses, and pretty advanced at that.

The priestess woman steps away from her kid escort, still a bit wobbly on her feet, and drifts toward the screen. “What is . . .?”

“Missus!” The kid catches her, hauls her back. She tries to shake him off, still weak and vague with the aftermath of the drug and the emotional pounding she’s taken. N’Doch can see she’s not used to being manhandled, at least not without her permission. But her regal air cuts no ice with this determined kid, and it looks like another scuffle might erupt.

N’Doch catches Köthen’s arm halfway to his sword hilt. “Easy, man. He ain’t gonna hurt her.”

Then the guy at the console rises. He strips off what looks like some kind of VR headset, unwinds himself from various cables and cords. He’s heavyset and seriously round-shouldered. He walks with a shambling gait as if he’s carrying around a little too much weight for his years. As he moves out of silhouette into the light, N’Doch notices first how the bright blue of his loose jumpsuit matches the screen, then how hairy he is. He’s got a wild head of salt-and-pepper, a full mustache, and a bushy, silver-streaked beard. His brows are so long, they veil his eyes. At first he doesn’t seem to notice them. He tosses a piece of paper down, picks up another. Every surface within reach of him and his console are layered with books and disks and printout. He searches through a stack of crackling leather-bound tomes, doesn’t find what he’s after. Then suddenly, he glances up. He seems astonished to find new people in the room, or any people at all. Yet, within one quick sweep of this guy’s dark and piercing gaze, N’Doch feels he’s been surveyed, identified, analyzed, and understood. But not, somehow, dismissed. Instead, he feels welcomed.

N’Doch! I know him!

The girl moves toward the guy as if in a daze. Sure enough, the guy opens his stubby arms to her and she walks right into them, before N’Doch can stop her.

“Gerrasch!”

Erde had given up asking how the inexplicable could come to be. It simply did. It wasn’t Gerrasch, and yet it was. Less like an overgrown pond animal, more like a man, yet still Gerrasch in his essence, as well as in the connection she felt with him, had always felt, from the first time they met. At least one particular cascade of events had somehow come full circle. She didn’t need to know what he was doing there. It just seemed right that he was, and that she should let him enfold her in a smothering hug. His warm woodland smell was exactly the same.

“Long! Long! Relieved. Finally. Four now.” His voice was still a raspy bass. He held her away from him to eye her solemnly. “Grown!”

Erde knew a laugh would violate the gravity of the moment. One sneaked out anyhow. “Oh, Gerrasch, you saw me only a few weeks ago!”

“No. You saw. Me, centuries. Waiting. Get it?”

It made her spine tingle to think about it, but she thought she did. She took his soft pink-palmed hand and drew him toward the others. “Gerrasch, this is . . .”

“Yes.” Gerrasch made directly for N’Doch and held out his other hand. “Brother. Songs of welcome. Work now. Quickly.”

N’Doch said, “Huh?”

Luther watched all this with happy astonishment. “Dis heah da fren’ yu bin lookin fer?”

“No, but . . .” N’Doch began.

“An old and cherished friend just the same,” Erde finished for him.

N’Doch laughed. “You, too?”

“What?”

“Modern English? Not even dragon English, all of a sudden?”

Goodness. He was right. She did sound better.
Modern.
A resident of both past and present. Gazing into Gerrasch’s knowing face, Erde understood there would be no language she could not speak right then, right there. She nodded at the vast blue brightness, and the strange table lit with what looked like a hundred tiny candles. “Gerrasch, what is all this?”

“Library. Librarian, me.”

“Epicenter,” said N’Doch.

Gerrasch beamed at him.

“What’s an . . .”

He took her hand. “Wait. Four. Then talk.” He guided them through the solemn ranks of children and amazed Tinkers, toward the heathen priestess. Paia seemed even more confused than she had in the other room, as if the blue-lit strangeness of this one had unmoored her further. No wonder she recoiled when Gerrasch shambled up and without preamble, reached for her hand.

“No! Don’t touch me!”

Leif Cauldwell stepped forward. “I’m sorry, G. She’s not in the best of form. This is the Librarian, Paia.”

“Don’t let him touch me!”

“He won’t hurt you. He’s a good and wise man. If he wants to talk to you, it’s for a very good reason.”

Luther added, “Da Liberian isa proffet, lady. A holy oracul. He speak fur da One who come.”

Speaks for the One . . .

“He does?” Four, he’d said. Erde’s eyes clenched shut with comprehension and gratitude.
N’Doch, do you hear? Do you know what that means?

I can guess . . .

He must be!

She was sure of it. Prophet or oracle the Tinkers might think him, and he might even be, but Gerrasch was also Lady Air’s guide in the world of men. She was so sure, she didn’t give it further question. Would he have answers to the mysteries and unknowns that had plagued the Quest from its beginnings?
Oh, if only the dragons were here!
The fourth dragon guide! Their number was complete.

But Gerrasch was rather large and strange looking, and
the poor weepy priestess, who knew nothing of her Duty or her Destiny, saw his friendly overture as a threat.

“Keep him away from me!” she shrieked, backing into Baron Köthen’s arms.

Since waking up, Paia’s felt like she’s trapped inside someone else’s skin. Someone she doesn’t like very much, but can’t seem to shake. Who is this frantic, sobbing woman who’s suddenly terrified of everything, who’s lost her dignity, who can only think of screaming for the God to come and rescue her? She’s not even a woman. She’s the protected little girl whose world was turned upside down once before, who never had to learn to live with change and instability, because the God came and made the world right again. The God saved her then. He could save her now. She has only to call him.

But she cannot. This strange creature will not let her. Something he’s doing is blocking her summons. Her head is filled with static. She knows he’s the God’s enemy, one of them, at least. Yet he smiles at her so sweetly, as if he is overjoyed to see her, relieved even, as if now that she’s there, his life can move onward. But Paia looks down and sees the chasm yawning between them. She would have to cross it to take the creature’s offered hand. Why should she, though he entreats it so gently and fervently? Who is he, but the God’s enemy? She owes him nothing. Nothing! Yet, she is tempted.

No! A part of Paia sees the panic seize her and admits it isn’t logical. But the reflex runs riot in her head, screaming about duty. Her duty must be to the God! She must not be tempted! She fumbles inside her layered clothing for the thing she has concealed there. Her grip is oddly weak, but it’s a small thing, easy to grasp. She jerks it out and points it at the enemy.

The enemy smiles again and spreads his hands, as if inviting her. She sees that his palms are soft and pink, so vulnerable. But there is a danger in him, terrible danger, if she could only comprehend what it is. She struggles to think,
the gun shaking in her outstretched fist. The girl dressed as a boy steps in front of the awful creature. Paia hears Son Luco swear, actual heresy and filth. But he should understand her confusion. He also has become someone else. He has become her cousin. Even so, he moves abruptly to stop her, so Paia turns the gun on him instead.

“Paia, be sensible. There’s a hundred villagers upstairs thirsting for your blood. Even if you murder us all, where are you going to go?”

“The God will save me! He’ll come in a glory of light and he’ll . . .”

“I don’t think so,” says Luco. “If he hasn’t done it already . . .”

“Don’t look for it,” the tall African agrees. “He’s kinda busy right now.”

He grins at her in the most presumptuous, irritating way and dances a few steps to one side, so Paia shifts her glare and the muzzle of her little gun toward him.

“What do you know about the God?”

“You’d be surprised, lady.”

Then someone’s beside her, calmly lifting the gun from her hand, the man with the sword, to whom, in her mind, she has already given herself. She stares at him, right into his eyes for the first time. They are as dark as she remembers from the dreams. If the God cannot save her, she will let this man do it. He smiles back, his devotion already unconditional. “Tch, tch,
Liebchen
.”

“Smooth move, Dolph.” The African takes the gun and sticks it into his waistband. “What the hell did you give her, preacher man?”

Luco lets out a breath.

Now the sword man takes Paia’s hand. He’s leading her toward the enemy, but she cannot resist him. His eyes hold such promises.

The God’s enemy has linked hands with the girl and the African. Now he takes Paia’s hands and places one in each of theirs. When the tall African grips her hand, Paia hears faint, poignant music and the sighing of oceans. The young girl’s touch brings perfumes of meadows and pine boughs.

Hungrily, Paia’s senses shake off their fog and drowse, to embrace these scents and sounds. They are unfamiliar yet longed for. She has known them all her life. A dry,
clearing wind blows through her head. She has never felt more alive.

The African has lost his snarky grin. His eyes are anxious. The three of them stand awkwardly, joined by hands in an arc, until the strange creature takes the others’ free hands in his own and completes the circle.

Then Paia learns what the real danger is.

. . . A
nd it’s like being jacked in to each other’s brains. Freaky. Not like his silent converse with the girl. Virtual reality. Much worse than the old dragon internet. Dragons, it turns out, know how to respect your privacy. But at least now he doesn’t have to ask who this hairy guy is. It’s there for the knowing. Like all the files are open. All the histories, the personal stories, the varied roads taken by each of them to this place of . . . 
convergence
. A meeting that it looks like everything in creation has been trying to prevent, yet one that could never have been avoided.

. . . all of this, surging like music through his head. Close to but not completely overwhelming. He’s amazed his brain is big enough. It scrolls past like program code: the lineage of the three, himself, Paia, the girl, down through the millennia, their engendering preordained. And of Gerrasch, the focal link, an eternal nexus, a lump of leaf mold and clay inspired by dragon energies, set to evolve and learn until that programmed event when, half man, half beast, he met the girl along a dark lakeshore . . .