The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  N’Doch feels the chill even before he picks up the jug. It’s full of clear, cold water.

  “Paia!” It may be the first time he’s said her name, at least to her face.

  “I’m here,” she says, from right behind him.

  He shoves the jug at her. “This was just sitting here.”

  She cradles it, sniffs at the open top. “Smells okay.”

  “It’s cold. How could it be cold, sitting out here in the sun? I mean, long enough for the tomatoes to wilt.”

  She glances about. “Is someone still here? Hiding?”

  “Hiding?” N’Doch bellows. He gestures furiously around the tiny walled enclosure and at the flattened house at its center, turning, turning, with his arms spread wide. “Where the fuck could anyone be hiding?”

  “Under those trees?” she suggests, wary of his sudden raving.

  N’Doch rolls his eyes. Can’t she see? The trees are nothing. It’s only because the landscape’s so flat and the scrub so stunted that these trees look like anything at all. There aren’t more than five or six of them. Okay, so their branches bend low. Even Paia couldn’t walk under them without getting a face full of leaves. But the ground past their slim gray trunks is visible all the way to the wall behind, except for that little patch of shade way back in the corner.

  And then he recalls the night when two dragons vanished into that patch of shade. Completely vanished. They’d even invited him in, but N’Doch was too creeped out to venture in there. This was before he’d accepted the fact that the dragon biz wasn’t going to go away any time real soon.

  “Maybe the trees . . .” He’s amazed to see Paia holding out the rusty tire iron. She must have picked it up outside the gate. He takes it with a brusque nod. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing she’s come along.

  He takes a long, delaying-action swig from the jug, then approaches the little grove. He can’t picture Baraga’s business-suited thugs hanging out in the brush. Why would they bother? They’re armed to the teeth with a lot more than tire irons. And it’s just as hard to imagine the Fire-breather soiling his shiny golden scales with all that leaf litter. Still . . .

  He ducks under the outermost branches. He sees no one—and nothing. But it’s much cooler among the leaves than he’d expected, and he has to admit that it is unusually dark in that way-back corner. Not just dark . . . indistinct. As if a tiny black fog has settled there.

  A sudden flapping nearly stops his heart. He recoils with a string of muttered curses.

  “N’Doch?” Paia calls from the sunlit yard.

  “A . . . bird. It’s only a bird.” He hates being startled. It’s embarrassing.

  “A real bird?”

  “Of course a real bird! What’d you think?”

  He ought to feel ashamed. He ought to apologize. He knows she’s probably never seen a live bird before, but this lump of outrage he’s carrying just under his skin keeps popping up, raw as a blister. It won’t let him be easy and reasonable right now.

  The bird has dropped out of the upper branches and is boldly stalking about right at his feet. It’s an ugly, scrawny black critter with one wing half-cocked, not much of a bird at all. It peers at him brightly, and then it opens its beak to utter a sound so musical, so lovely, that it halts N’Doch in his tracks. It’s like the sound pure silver might make if it could pour like water.

  “What?” For a moment, the ache in him eases. He forgets his rage. “Say that again?”

  And the bird does. Then it walks off into the deeper shade, turns around and comes back, fixing N’Doch with first one amber eye and then the other. It warbles at him again, repeating itself several times.

  N’Doch calls out softly, so as not to spook the bird. He’s grateful to it for showing him how to speak more gently. “Hey, Paia? You oughta come in here. Kinda slowlike.”

  She slips in behind him. She’s got the water jug tight in her hand. Sensible woman. She knows to leave nothing useful behind. The bird doesn’t spook. It studies Paia briefly, as if to say, what kept you? Then it treats her to a particularly passionate chorus of its lyrical song. Paia clasps the water jug to her breast like it was a child. “Oh! How wonderful!”

  This time, the bird hops to the edge of the shadow and stays there, regarding them both expectantly.

  “Is it a raven?” Paia asks.

  “Damned if I know. Why?”

  “In this book I read in my father’s library, ravens are often the bearers of messages and omens.”

  “Messages from who?”

  “Someone with the power to compel a raven.”

  “Well, if it’s telling me a message, I don’t speak its language.”

  “But you do,” Paia murmurs. She kneels in front of the bird and holds out her hand. The bird shakes its head and warbles. “Its language is music.”

  “Huh,” says N’Doch. He is thinking of another Raven, much more beautiful than this one.

  “Wouldn’t you say that it wants us to follow it?”

  “I’d, um . . . yeah, I’d say that.”

  Together they peer into the oddly shifting darkness.

  “We should hurry up, then, shouldn’t we?” says Paia. “Remember the screen in your . . .” Her voice drops. “In your mother’s house.”

  Who’s leading this expedition, N’Doch asks himself. “What about Papa Dja?”

  “It seems clear, don’t you think, that he isn’t here . . .?”

  N’Doch grits his teeth, and looks away. “No. He sure isn’t.”

  “Could he have gone someplace safe, and left this bird as a message?”

  “Some place like . . .” He jerks his chin toward the foggy shadow. “In there? Does that look safe to you?”

  Paia shrugs, sitting back on her heels with her hands folded in her lap, the very picture of acquiescence.

  N’Doch sighs and rubs his eyes. Nothing in the world is less likely than anything else, he decides. “You win,” he says. “You and the bird.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “It’s a strange place,” Paia observes later. “But not too scary so far.”

  When they arrived at the dead end, N’Doch stayed quiet for a while, watchful and waiting. But when the place just went on being what it was, with no visible way in, or even back out, he began to pace and mutter.

  “I’m just as happy to rest a little,” Paia offers agreeably, mostly to invite a more useful conversation.

  “You rest. I’m looking for a way out.”

  Paia tries a smile, since smiles seem to render him more tractable. But the gesture is so mechanical that even she finds it irritating. Instead, she sets the water jug down on the nearest raised surface and drops beside it with a sigh. Who wouldn’t want a moment or two to recover after being chased halfway across Africa by a demon helicopter? Besides, N’Doch is the problem solver. He’s used to being able to figure his way out of things.

  As for me, I’m just used to letting other people do the figuring for me.

  Not particularly cheered by this admission, Paia wets the hem of her shirt with the tiniest slosh of water and dabs at her face. The pale fabric comes away ruddy with dust. “You want some water?”

  N’Doch paces over, grabs up the jug for a long and noisy swig, plops it down again, and paces away. “It’s a trap,” he growls. “Now the dragons’ll never find us!”

  “It won’t help if you wear yourself out storming about.”

  “I’m walking. I’m thinking on my feet.”

  “Well, I’m thinking, too. And all that useless motion is distracting!”

  “Oh, great. Just when I’d decided it wasn’t a total drag having you along!” He jams his hands on his hips. “You must’ve got real used to telling people what to do in that Temple of yours.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you keep trying it on me. Except you’re always pretending you’re not. So, quit it, okay? I don’t like it.”

  “But I was only . . .” Perhaps she had sounded a bit bossy. She ha
dn’t meant to. And he does deserve some extra patience and compassion, after the shock of losing his mother. “Sorry.”

  N’Doch kicks at the thing she’s sitting on. “What are these, anyway?”

  There are two of them, set opposite each other: pale, smooth rectangles exactly the height of a chair. “Benches? They look like benches.”

  “They look like gravestones. What are they doing here?”

  Paia flares. “How should I know?”

  “Maybe you should give it some thought.” He stalks away, unrepentant.

  The bird, who has been hiding from N’Doch since narrowly avoiding a well-aimed kick in its direction, hops up beside Paia with its eye fixed on the water jug. She feels responsible for it now, as if she’s acquired a pet. She looks around for a way to give it some and there, at the end of the bench, is a shallow, round container about the size of her palm.

  “Well, bird, look at that.” Paia slides over to pick it up, but it’s either glued to or a part of the otherwise unbroken surface. Odd that she hadn’t noticed it before. She shrugs and pours an inch of water into the odd little cup. The bird warbles, and moves in for a drink.

  “I’m not sure you deserve it,” she scolds, watching it dip and swallow, dip and swallow. “Look what you got us into.”

  But it had been her idea, after all, that she and N’Doch should follow the black bird into the fog at the back of the tree shadow. The fuzzy blinding darkness went on a lot longer than it should, given the high wall enclosing the compound. Perhaps they’d descended without being aware of it, and somehow tunneled under the wall. Whatever the explanation, they met no wall, just an enveloping darkness, which lightened gradually through several shades of luminous gray. When the last of it dissipated, they were in this very peculiar place.

  It’s a big, open-ended room, smooth-floored, high-ceilinged, and as featureless as a blank sheet of paper, but for the two white slabs in the middle. Looked at more closely, they’re not like gravestones at all. They’re obviously benches. Paia can’t imagine why she thought otherwise. They have cylindrical legs and a thick polished top, subtly veined like white marble. There is one thing odd about them. Stone in the shade is usually cool, even at the Citadel, where almost nothing is cool. These benches match Paia’s body temperature, as if someone has just gotten up from where she’s sitting.

  “Creepy,” she says to the bird. “Some sort of plastic?”

  And what about the walls? They’re not so blank as she’d thought at first. A faint tracery of tall windowlike shapes angles away in sharp perspective toward the dark opening at the far end of the room. And there, where there should be a way out, Paia’s study stalls. Here’s the really peculiar thing about this place. There’s nothing there. Not night or darkness, but nothing. Void.

  N’Doch stands halfway between Paia and the void, staring into it as if willing it to explain itself. Paia doesn’t blame him for letting sorrow and frustration make him so irritable. Her father’d had that way of dealing with his feelings sometimes. And surely, once N’Doch agreed to follow the bird, he’d really let himself hope he’d find his grandfather waiting for him.

  The bird finishes drinking and waddles along the bench to hop up on Paia’s knee. She’s entranced by its bright glance and forthright manner, and by its obvious if alien intelligence. She forgives it for looking so much the worse for wear. After all, it’s her first real live bird, and if it’s not as lovely as all the pictures she’s seen, it’s certainly much more interesting. She used to know the date when the last bird died, at least in North America. Her father often reminded her of it. She regrets that she’s forgotten it, and even more that she did not grow up with such interesting creatures in her world.

  She extends a hand to the bird, experimentally. It lets her stroke its dusty feathers until a bit of sheen reappears. Then it crooks one scrawny yellow leg and grasps her forefinger firmly. Paia gasps, then giggles nervously. “Hello, bird,” she says, wiggling the leg gently up and down. She’s relieved when it releases her and stands back. She’d like it better if its feet weren’t so reminiscent of dragon’s claws.

  N’Doch slouches over and slumps down on the far end of the bench, sending the bird scurrying to Paia’s side.

  “Look out . . .” she begins, but the container of water is no longer there.

  “What? What?”

  “Nothing. It was . . . I thought you might sit on the bird.” But she almost orders him up again, so she can see the spot where the little cup fit so neatly back into the benchtop. Pressed down by his weight? She’d like to know. But she doesn’t want him to think she’s telling him what to do.

  “I don’t get it.” He fists one hand restlessly inside the other. “All the other portals went somewhere. How come there’s no there here?”

  “It’s like a waiting room.” Like the benches in the halls outside her father’s offices at the Citadel, where people seemed to wait forever.

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For an idea. For a way out. For something to happen. Like we are.” Paia wishes he wouldn’t glare at her so accusingly, as if she’s said something unpardonably stupid. She’s not stupid. She’s just more accepting of their situation. In fact, she feels curiously numb, as if she’s repressed her anxiety all the way to affectlessness. How totally sheltered she was in her family fortress! As long as she remained inside, she had nothing and no one to fear—except, of course, the God. In the outside world, apparently everything is a threat. Just as her father—and the God—had always warned her.

  “Except you, bird,” she murmurs. “Isn’t that right?”

  The bird regards her expectantly, as if it, too, is bored with waiting.

  “Sorry. Not much I can do.” Paia turns away to study the windows along the opposite wall. If only she could see through all that cut glass and heavy drapery! There might be a light behind. She’s not sure, but the beveled patterns in the glass seem to sparkle with a different sort of light than the cool, even glow of the room they’re sitting in. They could knock on a window, perhaps, even open it, or . . .

  “What’s over the railing?” she asks N’Doch.

  “What railing?”

  “The balcony railing.”

  He gives her that same accusing glare.

  “Well, look.” She points. “Down at the far end.”

  He turns toward the void. The railing is a waist-high band of white stone, supported by cylindrical balusters. “That wasn’t there before.”

  “Yes, it . . . wait, no. You’re right. It wasn’t. Why did I . . .?” Paia suffers a moment of vertigo. Because the bench wasn’t a bench either. Not at first. She can picture it clearly: a plain white block. It’s like waking up when you’re not even aware you’ve been asleep and dreaming. “What about those windows?” The detail of their casing and mullions seems richer than a moment ago. “Those weren’t there either, were they?”

  “No. They weren’t.” N’Doch stands up. “Something’s happening.”

  At least he didn’t say, “What windows?” “Are we asleep?”

  The accusing glare is slightly milder this time.

  “Well, we might be. How would we know?” There’s another possibility that Paia doesn’t even want to mention.

  “’Cause I know, that’s how.”

  The bird suddenly emits its musical cry and takes off in a dusty flurry. It soars once around the room, then flies straight out into the void, its call fading with distance.

  “Hey, look at that!” N’Doch sprints after it. “If it got out, we can!”

  Paia hurries to join him at the edge, and finds him gripping the balcony railing as if it might try to escape.

  “Okay,” he says. “This is weird.”

  To the left and right of the opening, long flights of stairs have materialized. The broad white railing leads downward like an arrow into darkness. But shapes are coalescing out of the void, a landscape rising from the fog. Or rather, a cityscape. As they watch, tall straight-sided towers appear, bat
hed in a cool, even light. Puffs of storybook cloud obscure their heights. Their feet are planted within an infinitely receding grid of wide, clean streets.

  “Now where have we got ourselves to?” N’Doch murmurs.

  “It’s beautiful,” Paia breathes, mourning the drowned and ruined cities of her own time. “It’s huge. Are we supposed to go down there?”

  “Where else?” N’Doch slides his hand along the railing, testing its solidity.

  From high above its pale streets, the city looks motionless and deserted.

  “Which way should we go?”

  “If I had a coin, I’d toss it.”

  “The bird flew that way.” Paia points vaguely toward the left. The sky between the towers is now a clear, flat blue. The puffy clouds seem permanently moored to their tips.

  “As good a guess as any. Ready?” With a hint of returning bravado, N’Doch squares his shoulders and starts down the left-hand staircase. She can tell he’s glad just to be moving again.

  The first part of the descent is more like mountain climbing than walking. The steps are dangerously high and deep, and the stair goes straight down without a turn or landing, as if built for giants. Paia is reminded of the Grand Stair leading up to the Citadel, specifically designed to be difficult, in order to repel invading armies, but also to provide the worshiper approaching the Temple with an opportunity for penance. She doesn’t question the oddness of such a stair until, after several minutes of perilous stumbling and a lot of awkwardness, the going gets easier and the steps are not so tall or wide. The farther they descend, the easier it gets, until the steps are the perfect height and width for speeding downward. N’Doch slows his pace voluntarily, to keep them both from tumbling headlong to the city streets.

  The staircase spills them out at the edge of a vast, paved square. Paia glances back up the long run of steps, climbing the side of a windowless building as sheer as the face of a cliff. Who would build such a precipitous stair on the structure’s exterior? The balcony is a vague smudge, a mere brushstroke in the upper distance, wreathed like the tower tops in clouds that to her painter’s eye look as if they’ve been laid on top of an existing canvas.