The Book of Fire (8 page)

Of course it’s real, he tells himself. The girl came from here, and she’s real enough. But now he sees that, ever since he woke up in that tiny, strange room upstairs, he’s been reserving the possibility that it all might be some kind of illusion, dragon-induced, a dream. And that possibility has kept him sane and balanced . . . until now.

He drags one hand along the planks of a table by the fireplace. The wood is silky with age and wear. And suddenly his heart is pounding and his hands are in fists. He’s taking in air in great heaving gulps. He wants to run, run, escape, like he’s trapped, buried alive beneath the very
real
weight of this alien century. But there’s nowhere he can run to, he knows that now, at least not outside these particular walls. Nowhere he can go that will be anything like home.

N’Doch flattens both palms on the tabletop and presses downward until his skin molds itself to the cracks and the worn grain of the wood. The pain lets him focus. He forces himself to relax. His life’s never been easy so far, and he hasn’t survived this long by letting panic rule him. He lets out a shaky but controlled sigh, straightens, and looks around.

The room is long and low, lit mostly by bright flames from the hearth and cold gray light from the many windows along one side. On the table beside him are baskets of shelled nuts, and wooden platters piled with dried podlike stuff that N’Doch doesn’t recognize. In front of the window nearest the fireplace sits a tall wooden wheel with a little seat attached and a spike wound with fuzzy looking string. There’s something familiar about it, but N’Doch can’t quite place the device, or what it’s for. There are garments and bits of fabric scattered here and there, and a clay pitcher and cups on one of the smaller tables. The room looks well broken-in, like it gets a lot of use but also, a lot of care.

He steps toward the windows, feeling the chunky hand-cut beams skim past just above his head. Must be he’s a lot taller than the folks who built this place. There’s a door between the windows, but he doesn’t go there just yet. He stoops for a look through the glass.

Outside the windows, a roofed stone terrace runs the length of the house. Opposite the door, a few steps and a
stone path lead off through a screen of leafless bushes. Past the bushes, a big open space is rapidly filling up with snow. And there she is.

Ah.

No matter how resentful or resistant he’s been to her, the dragon’s beauty has never failed to take his breath away. And against this cold white landscape, her colors shine like sapphires and emeralds, or at least this is how N’Doch imagines such fabulous jewels would look. The other one, the big guy Earth, he’s there, too: all dark and bronzy like agate and smoky quartz, the cheap stuff you could find in the markets at home. Earth’s only claim to beauty is his curving ivory horns. His stout and gleaming claws are made less threatening by being softly blunted at their tips. N’Doch thinks you’d have to go some to find the big guy threatening, but he admits he didn’t always feel that way. And he decides that Earth looks handsomer than he remembers him. Maybe a bit bigger, too, and not so downtrodden-looking. There’s even a hint of glimmer to his plated sides.

The dragons are sitting side by side in the clearing, and the snow is melting right out from underneath them as the women crowd around to pet and admire them. N’Doch’s mouth twists. His heart wants to be out there, or a part of it does, stroking Water’s silky hide, letting her warmth drive out the bone-deep chill he’s felt since he woke up from his vision of running. He doesn’t see the girl anywhere yet, so probably he should be out there translating. But his feet won’t take him. Not just yet.

He turns back into the room, away from the dragon-tinted light. He spots a big, stringed instrument, kind of like an acoustic guitar, propped against a chair. It’s like a searchlight in fog-shrouded darkness, an anchor in stormy seas. He makes a beeline for it, picks it up reverently, and smooths his fingertips across its strings—a parched man reaching for water. There are more strings than he’s used to, and the body is bulbous and pear-shaped like one of those little bush mandolins made out of a gourd. But this sucker is big and built out of smoothly joined pieces of wood. There’s a lot of it to hang on to. N’Doch cradles it in his arms.

The long neck is fretted in a more-or-less familiar way,
but the head with its many wooden pegs is set at a sharp angle to the neck, so at first it looks to N’Doch as if it’s broken. He hauls a chair back and sits. The tone is sweet and resonant. It sends shivers of desire across his back. He hasn’t played an acoustic anything for a long time, but the thing comes up into his embrace like a lover and he’s sure he can get the hang of it.

The moment he curls his fingers onto the frets, he feels the dragon inside his head, waiting. He knows what she wants, so he ignores her, fiddling with the strings, learning the spaces between, the shape of the chords. He’s amazed how easily it comes to him, and he suspects that she’s helping. N’Doch doesn’t mind. Not this. This is the thing that works best between them, after all, the making of music.

He works the strings, light and fast, his ear bent close to catch their whispered thrum. There’s a tune been bothering him a while, one he couldn’t make come out right, so he stuck it away in the back of his head. But here it is now, coming right out through his fingers. It’s been there all along, only waiting for the proper instrument to play it. N’Doch stops, slaps the flat face of the box lightly with his palm and stands. He’s ready. He can do it now. This’ll be one way of thanking them. A soft woven strap is attached to the neck and the base of the box. N’Doch slips it over his head and moves toward the door.

The cold hits him like a wall as he steps out onto the terrace. But he knows if he doesn’t freeze solid before he gets to her, he won’t be cold for long. He shuts the door quietly and eases across the stones, down the steps and into the snow. He’d like to give the snow some time—it’s his first, after all. And the cold, too, as well as the dark, spiky pines—he recognizes those. He’s seen ’em lots of times in vids. But all that’ll have to wait. Right now, he’s intent. On a mission.

He pulls up behind the circle of women. He counts at least a dozen of them, all in their old-timey clothes and their braided hair, murmuring the alien syllables of their native German. Their laughter is not like the laughter of the women N’Doch knows. It’s full-out and boisterous, like they don’t care if there’s a man listening. And, he notices, he’s the only guy in sight—unless you count one big brown dragon.

So he guesses it’s time. He settles the instrument more comfortably, so familiar, so strange, then gives her the briefest of warnings.

Hey, girl . . .

She’s way ahead of him. No big soppy greeting. No oh-thank-god-you’re-alive. She rolls her big eyes toward him and arches her silvery neck.

Yo, bro. You all warmed up? I need a voice to talk to these people.

N’Doch grins. One day he’ll catch her out. Maybe.

So do I. Think these ladies are ready for this?

My brother, this here’s your ideal audience.

He runs off a short riff, and the women turn and notice him. Something about him, his thin, muscled height or the darkness of his skin, makes them fall back a step. But he sees no fear in them, only respect and readiness. Maybe it’s that he was all but dead last time they saw him. Or maybe the dragon called it right: they’re the ideal audience and they’re only waiting for him to perform. Will they care that he’s singing in French? No one but the dragon needs to understand the words.

He’s nervous now that the moment’s at hand. The new song is there ready to go, but the accompaniment will be real thin until he gets a better hang on all these strings. It’s another song about his dead brother Sedou, but it’s a strong and happy song, not like the last one he sang her, which gave her the shape she needed but nearly broke his heart. He hopes this one’ll work just as well, but the only way to find out is to play it. So he does.

His resurrected voice starts off as shaky as his legs. The dragon listens through the first verse, while the big guy’s ivory horned head leans in toward her. He watches his sister steadily with huge golden eyes. N’Doch can feel her in his head, anticipating, humming a little harmony, and his voice steadies to match her. A line into the second verse, the dragon begins her change. The women sigh with wonder and admiration—no faint hearts in this valley . . . except his own. N’Doch looks away. He hates watching her shape-shift. It makes him queasy, even though it’s him singing her destination. He bends his head over his fingering and keeps on singing. Soon enough, he’s at the end and the women
are offering a round of applause. Then he looks up and into his brother’s eyes, and his heart nearly stops all over again.

“Damn!” he says aloud. “I ain’t never gonna get used to this.”

“Sure you will,” says Sedou’s voice. A strong dark fist pounds him on the shoulder, and N’Doch knows he’s done it. He’s sung her a younger Sedou this time, a happier Sedou, a Sedou who doesn’t yet know how short his life will be.

And a Sedou who speaks German, apparently. Must have learned it from the big guy. N’Doch watches the dragon-as-Sedou move among the women with greetings and introductions, a handsome dark man, laughing and at ease. More at ease than N’Doch, who reaches out in confusion and shakes his brother’s hand.

Inside his head, the dragon is still singing.

A
fter she thinks about it for a while, Paia understands that she’s been had.

She goes to Son Luco first, charging full tilt down the polished steps from the vestry with her hair half-braided and her temple bracelets jangling like a box of glass tumbling down a hillside. Luco is lounging in the priests’ private cloister in nothing but a loincloth, oiling his skin.

“You worked it out with him, didn’t you!” she accuses. “I could’ve been killed! Was it his idea or yours?”

He leaps to his feet in alarm and reaches for a towel. Paia’s amazed how he willingly exposes himself to more uv-drenched sunlight than his job requires. Though his natural color is as deeply golden as the God’s, he’s convinced that a darker tan will help him look younger.

“His, of course!” Luco seems disturbed by the suggestion that he might have had a thought of his own, or worse still, acted upon it. He watches Paia pace back and forth, then lowers himself back onto his chaise. “I hope you’ve not been running around the Temple looking like that,
Mother
Paia.”

Paia glares at him. He knows the title irritates her. “Like what?”

He makes a peace offering, water from the jug beside his chair. “It’s cool. Just up from the cellars.” Paia continues to glare. Luco shrugs, patting oil on the taut skin under his chin. “Revenues are down, you know. He says he can feel—and I quote—‘a definite sag in the intensity of the worship.’ He thought we should . . .”

“. . . murder the High Priestess just to liven things up a little!”

Luco lifts himself up indignantly. “He’d never let that
happen! You were safe at every moment! I was right there and I was, as you may recall, quite adequately armed!”

“Ha!” Paia moves into the shade of the surrounding portico to pace and sulk at the same time. “You could have warned me at least!”

“He wouldn’t let me! He knows you—he said you’d never agree to it.” Luco swings his muscular legs over the chaise and sits with his elbows on his knees, regarding her as if she’s a lighted fuse he can do nothing to dampen. “You have a hard enough time with the use of
animals
for sacrifice.”

“You don’t mean . . . not the poor sucker who . . .”

He nods. “One of the kamikaze squad.”

Paia clamps her eyes shut, mid-pace.

“You see? He was right.” Luco shrugs, shakes his head. “They will do these things for him, you know. Sometimes their truer devotion shames me. Often, in fact. Of course I stood up for you and said you’d do anything the God deemed necessary.”

“Of course you did.”

“Well, I did.”

“Maybe he should just stay around more, instead of going off on all these jaunts of his.” It always rouses Luco when she speaks of the God as if he were some sort of temperamental employer.

“He is busy converting the Infidel. It’s important work.”

“And vital to the Temple revenues, I know.” Paia continues pacing. “But do you know that’s what he’s doing?”

“Of course, if that’s what he says he is.”

Paia stops. She props herself against one of the slim marble columns. “Do you want my job, Luco?”

The priest’s forehead tightens. He leans forward as if in pain. “NEVER! I mean, no, I . . .”

“’Cause if you do, you can have it.” She knows he doesn’t—he’s too scared of the God, no matter how willing he is to plot with him. But she’s not ready to let him off the hook quite yet. “Maybe there doesn’t have to be a High Priestess. Maybe a High Priest. Or maybe they still do sex-change operations somewhere in what’s left of the world.”

She’s so delighted by how badly she’s shocked him that her anger drains away like she’s pulled the plug.