“And what ‘like’ is that, good Brother,” asked Köthen darkly.
“The unenlightened, my lord baron, but it’s no fault of yours. We cannot all be conduits of the Will of Heaven.”
Hal spat loudly into the straw.
“Please enlighten us, good Brother.”
“Oh my lord of Köthen, it’s perfect! It’s sublime! Our ceremony and great preparations were not wasted!” Guillemo began to circle again, as if he could not speak and be still at the same time. “It was all to make us ready for this moment, for this inevitability. But we were impatient. We were willing to be satisfied by a trivial burning. We tried to deny Destiny. So the Lord took us in hand and swept away our mistake, so that our holy pyre could await the true cleansing fire!” He halted suddenly and whirled to face Erde, his eyes glittering with lust and anticipation. “It will be the pinnacle of glory! God’s Will be done at last! We will burn the witch-child! We will burn them all, and the Devil’s Paladin, too!” He reached for Erde, his fingers like a claw fisting in the folds of her garment.
Quickly, Köthen stepped between them. He pulled the priest off her firmly but gently, as a chirurgeon would a leech. “Not so fast, good Brother. I think we must hear more of this before we put some innocent peeress to the torch.”
“Innocent?” the priest yelped.
Köthen put him at arm’s length and pushed him away. He turned Erde to face him and took a long moment to study her, long enough so that Erde tired of staring at her feet and raised her eyes to his out of mere curiosity. She tried to follow Hal’s example: stand easy but strong. Köthen’s gaze was frankly appraising. His dark eyes were surprisingly warm and she saw in them something that from a man, she had known only from Hal: respect.
“So, my lady . . . Erde, is it? . . . can you speak or no?”
Erde shook her head. She was trying to understand what it was about Adolphus of Köthen that made her feel so girlish and awkward.
“Ah. A pity. I should very much like to hear your side of this story.”
Then Köthen smiled at her, a brief, almost intimate flash of complicity, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Heat flushed her cheeks, every nerve focusing on the pressure of his hand on her arm. Erde dropped her eyes, grateful for the afternoon gloom already settling into the barn.
Köthen let her go, as if reluctantly, and turned back toward Hal. “Well, I’ll do what I can for her.”
“No, you shall not!” bellowed the priest. “She is mine! Mine! The prophecy must be fulfilled, and then we will be saved! The sun will return and the flocks will fatten in the fields—but only if the witch-child burns!”
A burly white-robe ducked in breathlessly at the doorway, his brows beetled with expectation. “Holy Brother, there’s motion in the street.”
Guillemo started, then collected himself visibly. He drew in his shoulders and his flailing arms. He stilled, became rodlike with purpose. “Go. Tell them to prepare as we agreed. The moment is now. The final coincidence of forces. Go.” He turned to von Alte, then Köthen, formally in turn, pulling up to his tallest and putting on his deepest voice. “My lord barons, ready your men. What we thought lost to us returns. Destiny approaches.”
Von Alte was relieved to be released into action. He strode to the doorway and signaled his men to hide their horses and take cover. Turning back, he drew his sword. “The witch-woman and her rescuer. Now we’ll see, my lord of Köthen, won’t we?”
“I guess we will.” Dubious but never a man to be caught unready, Köthen unsheathed his own weapon. His own half-dozen soldiers had appeared in the doorway, awaiting orders. Hal caught Erde’s eye, questioning. She shook her head. No, she had not yet heard from the dragon. She followed his straying glance toward the sword the searchers had discarded from their packs, still lying in the straw beside the feed bin. The dull hidden glint of its blade was like a last faint ray of hope.
Köthen directed two of his men to clear the yard of any sign betraying their presence. He told the others to prepare torches. “Or lanterns, if they can be found. It’ll be dark soon. What should I expect here, Heinrich? What plot have you mastered this time?”
“You know as much as I, Dolph. Once I had the illusion of control, but these days, events just seem to happen to me.”
“Try that on von Alte, my knight, but not on me.”
“No plot, Dolph, I swear. The gifted plotter here is not me.”
Köthen frowned, a quick flare of rage that lit his eyes with fire. “Careful, careful . . .” He turned away abruptly, flexing his sword arm. “Then we’ll lie in wait as the good brother advises, and see for ourselves. Von Alte, take the left side, why don’t you. And keep your lady daughter well out of sight.”
Baron Josef wagged his head bearlike and slow. “Not mine, my lord. Let the priest manage the witch.”
Two of the white-robes had returned to take up guard around Guillemo. He shoved them aside to come at her. Erde slewed her gaze around to fasten on Köthen, pleading. Again Köthen moved between them. He caught Erde in the arc of his sword arm. The sweep of his blade sliced the air at the priest’s knees. Guillemo sprang backward with an outraged howl. Köthen drew Erde aside toward Hal. “Your responsibility still, Heinrich. Swear you’ll make no sound to raise alarm and I won’t have you bound.”
“On my honor.”
“Over here, then. We’ll take the right.”
“Is that divine or otherwise?” Hal quipped.
“Heinrich, I warned you . . .” Köthen split his remaining men to either side of the door. “Take straw. Brush the snow there. Too many footprints. Where are those torches? Quickly!”
Von Alte stared. “You’ll trust a King’s Knight, Köthen?”
“More than I would a fellow baron, my lord of Alte.”
“On your head be it. He’ll betray us all.”
“He will!” raged the priest. “See how he works on you! Bind him! Gag him tight! Beware, Adolphus! He woos away your soul! You must stop his voice so he cannot lay his spells! He is the Anti-Christ!”
“To your place, Guillemo! Your voice alone will give us away.”
Köthen set up a signal relay between his men outside and those inside the barn. He motioned to Hal and Erde to conceal themselves behind the high wooden partition of a stall. Erde could see the doorway clearly through the hand’s width spacing between the slats. Across the barn, her father and the priest crouched behind the tallest stack of stored bricks, two white-robed bodyguards hovering at their backs.
Erde called again for the dragon. For the first time, real doubt assailed her. Perhaps he would not return. Perhaps her duty as Dragon Guide was past, just as Hal had remarked about his own usefulness to her. Perhaps Earth had already learned enough to be able to manage on his own. Perhaps he’d tired of following other people’s quests and had decided to focus on his own. What would she do then? She did not think of the stake. She could not. Such thoughts were made too vivid by what she’d witnessed in Tubin. She did not want to panic and lose her newfound dignity. Instead, she thought about the Friend and felt badly for him, traveling all those miles from the West, giving hope to the people and gathering up so much support, accomplishing a daring and miraculous rescue—all this, only to die in a brickyard, betrayed by a false promise of escape. The promise had been Hal’s and it had been rashly made, before the mechanics of the dragon’s gift were fully comprehended. Still, Erde felt responsible. Another needless death on her conscience—two, with Margit counted, and possibly Hal’s as well, if Köthen could not save him. The only solace was that she would not have to live with this guilt, for if they died, she most certainly would die with them. She was not sure she minded very much, if the dragon was really gone from her life.
She stole a sidelong look at Köthen, so intent on the open empty doorway. There was a very sturdy feel to him. Her nose came to his shoulder. His profile was like the rock face of a mountain, though the skin over those crags was smooth and clear. His blond hair was thick and strong and t
ended to clump in bunches like the tines of a feather. Erde decided she liked looking at him. She was astonished and a bit ashamed to find herself thinking such thoughts when she should be preparing herself to die. She should be praying.
She glanced across the darkening barn. Between the rough-hewn support posts, she could see her father staring at her. When he saw he was discovered, he looked away.
As the light failed, Köthen kept his gaze tight to his man inside the left of the doorway, who in turn watched a man outside to the right. Hiding behind a brick kiln, Erde guessed.
After a few long moments of waiting, Hal leaned across her back to murmur, “They may have spooked already. You should have brought the old messenger man along to serve as bait.”
Köthen would not shift his eyes from the door. “I would have, except you forget, my knight—this is the priest’s game. I knew nothing of it. It was word of you that brought me here.”
“Ah. Well.”
“But I see you still feel the need to advise me.”
“Old habits die hard.”
“They needn’t. You’ve still time to accept my offer.”
“Dolph . . .”
The soldier at the door raised his hand. Hal and Köthen straightened and stilled, paired motions taken at a matched rate. If only they shared political alliances as they did so much else, Erde mourned. What a magnificent team they’d make. It should be them running the kingdom together. Then she realized this was exactly what Köthen was offering. She wondered just what would it take to convince Hal Engle to redefine such long-held loyalties. She almost wished he would. It’d be a sure way to wreak sweet revenge on Brother Guillemo.
But what of the king, and young Prince Carl? What of the hidden second son that rumor claimed? Erde put a stop to her treasonous train of thought, and turned her own attention to the waiting doorway, now a black rectangle framing lighter gray, the faintly luminous snowfield of the yard, and beyond, the darker brick of the enclosing walls. The silence was unnatural, missing even the mundane unremarked noises of a town. As if the whole world awaited this arrival. Erde prayed that the very abnormality might warn Margit and the Friend away. She prayed that it wasn’t them coming at all, but someone else, some innocent citizen who could be justly enraged by rough handling at the hands of the barons’ men.
For someone was coming, there was no doubt now. She could hear the moist crunch of their steps crossing the snowy yard, cautious but still in a bit of a hurry. As they approached the doorway, Köthen brought his sword around behind her and set its point to the small of Hal’s back. Waiting, every muscle and sinew rigid, Erde swayed with sudden dizziness. She caught herself with one hand pressed hard against the slats, willing the sharp edge to prod her back to clarity. A soft ringing filled her ears. She gasped for the breath that she’d been holding back, but the ringing did not go away. She had no time to think about it. Köthen’s arm slid up along her back as the tip of his sword rose toward Hal’s neck. Someone was in the doorway.
At first it was only a silhouette against the gray, a tall man dressed in the loose, layered clothing of a laborer. He hesitated in the opening, listening, and once again Erde stopped breathing. There was something familiar in the tilt of his chin and his square, broad shoulders. Before she could absorb this mystery, a second silhouette joined him, a woman. When Hal’s hand tightened on her shoulder, she was sure the woman was Margit.
They stood side by side in the doorway, uncertain, then moved into the dimness of the barn. The ringing in Erde’s ears swelled to a buzzing inside her head. The dragon brooch was a point of hot light against her skin. What was it saying to her now? The man entering pulled up abruptly as his boot stuck something in the straw, something that clanged like metal. He bent quickly to search in the near dark around his feet. Erde heard his soft grunt of satisfaction as he rose slowly with the object in his hand. Hal’s grip signaled again, and she understood. The stranger had stumbled across the discarded sword, the sword she’d carried all the way from Tor Alte without ever really knowing why. Now she was glad she had, if only for this single moment, to offer one last chance to an enemy of Fra Guill.
The man grasped the sword and tested its weight. He swung it a couple of times, back and forth with little pauses between, as if something about it perplexed him. Erde was struck again by the familiarity of his stance. She wished for a bit more light, to see him better, and then Baron Köthen answered her wish.
“Now!” he barked. His blade was inches from Hal’s jugular.
The barn doors swung out and around and slammed shut heavily. The new arrivals were caught like deer in a flare as torches bloomed in the near corners of the barn. Erde herself was momentarily blinded, then she could see that the woman was indeed Margit, her red hair hidden beneath a soft-brimmed fanner’s hat. The man had whirled away toward the door at Köthen’s cry. His back was to her, but Erde’s body responded before her brain was able to process the notion that there could be two such backs in God’s universe. She bolted. Her head was full of noise and her lungs washed with heat. She tried to climb the stall partition. Hal grabbed her around the waist and hauled her backward. She fastened herself to the slats with hands like grappling hooks and fought him wildly.
“Keep her back!” Köthen warned, arcing his sword up over their heads to meet the tall stranger rounding toward the sound of his voice.
He was young and scared and ready. Erde froze as recognition jolted through her, palpable anguish, a torrent of fire racing upward from her heels. The face she knew, the bronze-gold hair, shorn though it was to near invisibility. The name she could not yet grasp, but she could feel it surging through her with the fire, searing her soul, rising to her lips with the memory, all the memories, of a young man she’d loved and thought was dead.
She didn’t stop to ask how he could be dead, yet still alive. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the priest leap up from his hidden crouch to grab the short-sword of the white-robe behind him. The young man was intent on Köthen’s leveled blade, with Margit close behind him, a small dagger in her hand. Guillemo sprinted forward, his snatched weapon raised to strike. Erde shook Hal off in a sudden ferocious seizure of strength and threw herself up the chest-high barricade. Hal caught her legs. Her chest slammed against the top slat. She would not reach him in time. Her jaw worked soundlessly, like a fish gasping in the open air, and then—
“RAINER!!! Behind you!”
The young man started, openmouthed, but glanced behind, in time to bring the sword he held around to meet Guillemo’s charge. The priest, though bulkier, was no match for him. The short-sword clattered to the floor. Guillemo sprang back, his wrists pressed against his chest, then dove for the sword again.
But suddenly the earth roared and bucked and tossed him aside. He flung his hands over his head and rolled. The barn shook. The rafters groaned. Soldiers and weapons went flying and skittering across the heaving floor like leaves caught in a gale.
Erde tumbled backward into Hal’s arms. He grabbed her and leaned hard into the corner of the wall, fighting for balance like a sailor on the plunging deck of a ship. Her brain was full of the same shrieking and roaring. She could not clear it, and yet she must, for what was coming. She felt it coming. She felt—
His return.
At last! Ah, the joy of it, the wholeness once again. She had not really realized how incomplete she’d felt without him until he was there again.
—Dragon! Is it you? Are you doing this?
Pride at his accomplishment, his first intentional earthquake.
—Where have you been?
He showed her the green meadows of Deep Moor.
—You’ve eaten?
Assent. The she-goat had lent her strength to get him there.
—You’re nearly too late! I thought we were lost!
Great need. Nothing in his head but the call of the Summoner.
—I know, but I need first, and others of your friends. Once more, and then it will be only you, I promise.
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The call is unceasing now. He feels only the need to follow.
—Dragon, I beg you, take us out of here!
She formed the constellation of identities in her mind: Hal, Margit, and herself he had a fix on already. The fourth she gave him from her memory and hoped it would do. She wondered briefly if it would be clever and strategic to kidnap Köthen, but decided that it would not be wise to offer such a man, however interesting he might be, the secret of Deep Moor.
—These four, Dragon, and then no more. Will you do it?
Assent. Reluctant but . . . Yes.
She heard him then in her mind, speaking. The voice was deep but querulous, the voice of an overgrown child.
In honor of the she-goat. Besides, Rose said I must.
—Language, Dragon! Words and sentences!
Pride again. So am I learning.
—You’ve been teasing me! Let’s go!
Yes.
The ground stilled. In the seconds after, the silence was broken only by the moaning of terrified soldiers. Köthen was the first to recover, then Josef von Alte. Both scrambled to their feet and snatched up their swords to bully their men back into action, ordering them to take Rainer and Margit, who’d managed to remain standing and were now back to back, Margit with her dagger at ready, Rainer with the sword, his sword, Erde remembered, his very own. She wondered if he recognized it, then watching him, was sure he did. The priest crawled about in the straw, raving about the wrath of God. His white-robes hovered around him, helpless and frightened. Köthen moved into the fray, his blond beard burnished to flickering gold by torchlight. Erde filled her eyes with him, with his strength and his intriguing otherness, stored him away inside her and let him go. She stirred in Hal’s grasp.
“Milady? Are you well?”
“He’s here,” she croaked. “Get ready.”
His grin was transfiguring. “And I’d thought I was hearing things . . .”
The Book of Earth Page 35
