The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Erde folds her arms and plants her shoulder resolutely against the doorpost. “Rose, doesn’t it seem odd that you can’t remember anything? You are not a forgetful person.”

  Rose flicks a wrist and reaches for another book. “Getting old, like I said.” She sets the book aside and begins to rearrange the piles.

  “But you’re not. And it’s even odder that you, the calmest person that I know, suddenly cannot sit still even for a minute!”

  “Do you need me to sit still? There’s so much to be done!”

  “I need you to listen . . . and remember.”

  Rose sighs and rolls her eyes. “Remember what, dear girl?”

  “Where you are. Where you really are.”

  Now Rose’s protest is faintly irritable. “I’m here. Where else should I be?”

  As a child, Erde wasn’t known for her patience. Impetuous, impulsive, stubborn: these were the accusations commonly hurled at her by her chambermaid, who felt that little girls should sit in the corner and sew. But even this self-knowledge does not prepare Erde for the force of the impatience that boils up in her as she sees Rose turn back to her useless tidying and stacking.

  “Rose!” Her summons fills the entire room, though she has hardly raised her voice. She almost steals a look behind to see who has spoken with such authority.

  Rose goes as still as a startled deer. “What is it, child?”

  As soon as she has Rose’s attention, authority fails her.

  Oh, dragon! Now what?

  YOU’RE DOING FINE.

  “Please, Rose, let’s sit down.”

  Rose sidesteps obediently to the nearest chair and settles herself with her hands folded neatly on the table. “You’re upset.”

  “I am, but only because I’m so worried about you.”

  Erde takes the chair beside her. Perhaps this will seem less confrontational. She detects a desperate sort of defiance in Rose’s posture, uncharacteristic in a woman normally so confident in herself and in everything she believes in. It will be an unforgivable cruelty to force Rose to remember the terrible events that drove her into this state of forgetfulness. But it must be done, or Rose, the real Rose, wise and present, will be lost forever.

  THE ROSE WHOSE GIFT IS SEEING THINGS AS THEY TRULY ARE.

  Yes, dragon, I know. But it will be so painful to her.

  IT WAS PAINFUL TO N’DOCH WHEN YOU DRAGGED HIM AWAY FROM THE LIFE HE KNEW AND FORCED HIM TO ACCEPT HIS ROLE IN THE QUEST.

  I didn’t . . . how did I force him? Surely Lady Water did that.

  IT WAS PAINFUL TO THE WARRING BARON YOU KIDNAPPED TO FIGHT BATTLES NOT HIS OWN.

  Because we needed him! And it saved his life!

  TRUE, AND TRUE. BUT BOTH AGAINST HIS WILL.

  This accusation she cannot deny, though Köthen might feel differently about his suicidal urges now. Erde is shaken by the realization that she’s been bending others to her will all along, while excusing her actions as childish impetuosity. All she’s done has been in the service of the dragons, always, but it’s been willful nonetheless. Even though her understanding of the Quest has been imperfect, as it has several times proved to be.

  THIS CURRENT DUTY IS PAINFUL TO YOU AS WELL, SO YOU RESIST IT. BETTER TO ADMIT TO THE NEED, THEN TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR DEMANDS.

  Full responsibility. The dragon’s tone is mild, but it carries the power of a warning. Her willful actions were necessary, of course, but there’ll be no more laying the blame on accident or the dragons or the forces of destiny. Destiny, presumably, is something that happens whether you act or not, but it takes no account of human feelings. Neither has she, because she’s seen herself as Destiny’s tool. Erde bows her head. Perhaps this explains her high failure rate at predicting human behavior.

  I understand, dragon . . . I think.

  When she looks up again, Rose is staring at her, trembling.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “He? Here?” Erde is sure she means the hell-priest.

  “Earth.”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course. He’s right outside. Why should that frighten you?”

  Rose covers her face with her hands. “He’ll make me See it again.”

  Erde slips an arm around Rose’s shoulders. “He won’t make you do anything, you know that. He’s here to help you.”

  “He will require the truth.”

  “He will ask the truth, expect the truth, but only as you’re able to give it.”

  “How can I say no to a dragon?”

  Erde smiles, seeking some way to put Rose more at ease. “That’s what I’ve always said. But you haven’t met Lord Fire yet.”

  Instead of relaxing, Rose shudders, muttering into her hands. “Perhaps I have, or at least his handiwork.”

  The image of the smoldering, blackened farmstead hovers invisibly between them. Erde bites back her own outburst of grief and rage to allow Rose room to maneuver. “Is Deep Moor the truth you fear?” she murmurs. “The dragon knows it already. We were there, too late to warn you.”

  “Ah.” Rose’s hands slide away from her eyes, as if concealment is finally pointless. “Then let him be satisfied with that. Enough truth for any heart to bear, even a dragon’s.”

  THERE IS MORE.

  What more can there be? Can’t we let her be for a while?

  THERE IS MORE. YOU MUST PRESS HER FURTHER.

  But it’s like torturing her!

  AND YET, YOU MUST ASK.

  “Rose, dear, the dragon asks . . .” She’s doing it again, blaming the dragon, but surely his requests will carry more weight.

  “No.” Rose twists her head away like a recalcitrant child. “No more. There is no more.”

  “He says there is.”

  “No no no no.”

  “Please, Rose. What further truth did your Seeing reveal?”

  Rose flings both arms out and away toward the sunny window as if yelling for help. She struggles to rise. Erde holds her fast, and is surprised to learn that she is the stronger.

  “Truth about what?”

  “No no no nonono!”

  “Rose! Whatever it is, running away will never change it!”

  Rose cries out, the hoarse helpless wail of the lost, and collapses against the back of the chair, into Erde’s encircling arm, grabbing at the edge of the table and hanging on as if she might fall or be dragged away. Shivering as if being flailed by an invisible hand, she gasps, “The truth about what I Saw!”

  Look what we’ve done, dragon! Is there nothing you can do to help?

  I CAN ONLY BE, BUT THAT MAY OFFER SOME COMFORT.

  Erde feels his presence draw in around them, as the trees in a glade, or the tall grasses in a meadow. Gently, in a secret zone of safety and warmth and the sweet scents of summer, Erde rocks the quaking, sobbing woman, soothing her with whispered nonsense, until Rose has exhausted herself and at last lies quietly with only the occasional shiver. Erde contemplates the miraculous medicine of bodily contact, parent to child, friend to friend, lover to lover, the surest antidote for the loneliness of despair.

  With a last shudder that rumbles through her like a small earthquake, Rose gets hold of herself and releases her death grip on the table. “Oh my oh my oh my.” She sits up, weakly brushing at her cheeks. Erde offers the corner of her linen tunic. Rose waves it away and gathers up the length of her skirt. When she notes its stained folds and its frayed and dirty hem, she laughs ruefully. “Oh, dear. I guess this should be proof enough for me.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “That I’m not where I’d like to pretend to be. Not at Deep Moor, whole and safe. Isn’t that what Raven wanted you to explain to me?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is. Oh, Rose, I’m so sorry!”

  Rose nods, her lips tight. “Of course. But it’s a war, child, and we must keep at it, or evil will triumph.”

  “Never! And that’s why the dragon needs you to tell us what you Saw.”

  “You are persistent, aren’t you!”

  H
ope blooms like a sigh in Erde’s chest. “And you are at last the Rose that I remember. The Rose who can face anything!”

  “Apparently she can’t, or you wouldn’t be suffering through all of this.”

  “Dearest Rose, it’s you who’s been suffering.”

  Rose sighs, a great heaving release and giving in, and wraps her arms around herself, rocking with shuttered eyes, gathering resolve. Finally, she says quietly, “It’s more possible to speak of in recollection, but even now, I . . . I can hardly believe . . . it doesn’t seem . . . it can’t . . . yet I know the truth of what I Saw!”

  Erde settles her features into a facsimile of patience, though she feels Rose’s barely restrained dread seeping like ice into her own veins. “Maybe if you begin at the beginning? At Deep Moor?”

  “No. No, child. Even in the safety of tale-telling, I’ve no heart to relive that awful journey. The flames, the screams, my dear friends and companions felled and dying, Guillemo’s death’s-head grin . . . he’d reached his transcendent moment, and I . . . I had to take whatever escape was offered.”

  Erde wonders if she means the portal or her fantasy-trance of Deep Moor. “Of course, and you did right.”

  Rose shakes her head. “Death might have been more merciful.”

  “How can you say that! Fra Guill has no mercy! He’d have put you all to the stake!”

  “No doubt. And yet . . .”

  “Rose, Rose, what can be worse than the end of life?”

  Rose’s gaze is the bleaker for being so calm. “The end of all life.”

  “What?”

  “I know you think me melodramatic, but that is what I Saw.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Nor do I. I only know it was true. Is true.” Rose sits up straighter, suddenly insistent, indomitable. “I Saw . . . that everything is gone. It’s all an illusion.”

  Erde frowns, still missing the meaning. “What is?”

  “This . . . this . . .” Rose’s hands scribe airy circles. “This place.”

  “This house?”

  “This house. That garden. That absurdly lush green lawn. And the awful city outside. All of it. All.”

  “The city is an illusion?” Luther, Erde recalls, had expressed a similar opinion of the city’s clean and empty streets. “But we walked in it.”

  “Oh, yes.” Rose gives the tabletop a trio of sharp raps. “It seems real enough. Or at least, solid and material. But it’s not . . . true. I can’t explain it. I did not See how the city is, I Saw what is, what the whole world is, behind the illusion.”

  Erde hesitates, appalled. Should she trust the word of a woman who’s been sunk for a week in illusions of her own? “What . . . what is it?”

  Rose plants her palms on the table, the same defiant pose she held for so long out in the garden, holding at bay the temptation to turn away again from her horrific vision. “The earth is . . . empty. Barren. Everywhere. Lifeless. Bare windswept rock. Oceans of sand. Desert. No sign left of the works of man, except for mountains of shattered stone, and the gaping pits left from the digging of it. Nature, too, has been defeated. There’s not a tree, a blade of grass, not even a weed, anywhere. Only dust and dead rock and howling wind.”

  Rose squeezes her eyes shut, shivering with memory, then opens them and turns her gaze on her companion. If asked, Erde would have said that her eyes are a warm brown, but now they seem as vast and black as a starless sky.

  “Perhaps this is Hell,” Rose murmurs. “Perhaps that’s where the hell-priest has driven us.”

  “I don’t know. Can it be?”

  Dragon, what do you say to this? What if this is not our future world after all, but some magical other place we’ve come to through that portal?

  I SAY THAT THIS EXPLANATION AVOIDS THE TRUTH. THERE IS ONLY ONE REALITY, DESPITE APPEARANCES, AND WE ARE IN IT.

  Erde shoves rising terror down with a mighty effort. No time for terror now. She must be adamantine, or else give up entirely. “The dragons think the city is our far future,” she tells Rose, as if it was the most reasonable idea in the world.

  “It could be our future, and still be Hell,” Rose replies. “If Hell is any place without life or hope, then we are in it. Not the hell of the Church—you know I don’t believe in that. I tried to pretend it was a nightmare or a vision of warning. But, limited as it is, my Gift has never failed to provide what it promises: knowledge of what is. So I had to believe it. Outside the illusion of these walls, that city, the world is a lifeless place.”

  Then I must believe it, too.

  But if she does, what is left? The implications of Rose’s Seeing are too vast and terrible for her to encompass in an instant. Erde has listened to N’Doch rail about the destruction men worked on the world. She’s seen the results of that destruction in the devastated landscape where the Tinker crews struggle for survival. She’s heard Luther’s sermonizing about the coming of the Last Days of the Earth, but all of it seemed like a story, a cautionary tale that she could take to heart and move away from. Until now. She’s abruptly aware of the silky wood beneath her damp and shaky palms, of the homey creak of her chair’s leather seat. How can reality be both material and an illusion? And where does the illusion come from?

  If it’s the hell-priest’s illusion, dragon, why would he give us back all that we’ve lost?

  SO THAT WE MAY SUFFER ALL THE MORE IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT WE’VE LOST.

  Ah. Yes.

  No wonder Rose retreated from the knowledge, pulling the comfort of a lie over her head like a favorite quilt. Erde would do it, too, if she could be a child again, and crawl into Rose’s lap to be comforted. But she will have to live without comfort, they all will, from now on.

  Is it the end of the world, then, dragon? Have we come too late? Has our Quest failed?

  I SAID THERE WAS ONE REALITY. I DID NOT SAY IT COULD NOT BE CHANGED.

  But how?

  THAT’S WHAT WE’VE COME TO THE END OF THE WORLD TO DISCOVER.

  Of course! And while we live, there’s hope. Is it not so, dragon?

  IT IS SO. THE BATTLE IS NOT ENDED.

  Erde slides her arm around Rose’s slumped shoulders to offer a comforting hug. “Well, then, we shall just have to think of what to do next.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “So . . . are we good to go?” N’Doch asks again. The guitar, he notices, has a colorful woven strap on it now. He slings the big instrument across his back, reminded of Köthen and his sword. Not such a big stretch. Music can be a weapon, too.

  Now there’s something to write a song about.

  N’Doch grins. Tight and wide, stretching the muscles in his cheeks. It’s what, in his gang days, he called his “fighting grin,” almost involuntary, showing a lot of teeth and fueled by anticipation and adrenaline. “Are we ready set?”

  Djawara nods. “As ready as we’ll ever be.”

  They both look to Paia, who looks down and away, then quizzically to the only calm face in the room. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  Water-as-Sedou smiles, catlike. “We’ll be safe here, for the time being.”

  N’Doch rolls his eyes. “Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. . . .”

  “You’ll be safe,” says Paia, “but will I? Just as I can summon him against his will, he has the same power to compel me.”

  Sedou nods. “That very connection is our greatest hope of winning him over. Be strong, and keep our true purpose in mind.”

  “Easy for you to say,” mutters N’Doch.

  “Not really. I’ll retire to a corner to begin with. It’s sure to be useful if he can be kept unaware of my presence at first.” Sedou studies the long dim room for possible darkened corners, then his eye lights on the bar with its shelves of glimmering glassware and mirrors behind. “I’ll be . . . the bartender.” He moves away with a rapid blurring of profile and slips behind the counter. When he turns to face them, he’s wearing a classic bartender’s shirt and apron. He flips a towel over his should
er and leans against the gleaming wood as if born to the trade. “What can I get you folks?”

  “He’ll nose you out soon enough,” says Paia.

  N’Doch is inclined to agree. “Just don’t look him in the eye. Yours are a dead giveaway.”

  “Maybe so.” Sedou turns to Paia. “But he won’t be thinking about me at first. He’ll be thinking about you.” He drags the towel off his shoulder and polishes the top of the bar. “Something to drink?”

  Djawara rises stiffly. “A little cordial might be fortifying.”

  “Hey, I thought you were kidding! You got a Spark Orange?” N’Doch strides over hopefully. “Girl, you want something?”

  Paia shakes her head numbly.

  “Gimme two of ’em!” He brings the sweet citrus concoction to her anyway. Paia turns the bottle in her hand like a foreign object. “Go on, try it! I bet you never had soda in a glass bottle before, right? Guess what? Neither have I. But Papa Dja always used to tell me how it was much better in the bottle than in the box.” He salutes his grandfather and lifts the bottle to his lips.

  Paia watches dubiously. “I’ve never had a soda at all.”

  “Don’t swill it down like he does.” Djawara sips delicately at his slim-stemmed glass as if to underline his point.

  N’Doch drains his soda and sets it aside with a satisfied belch. “Now, how do we go about this?”

  Paia’s tone is more collected than her body language. She fusses with her hair and straightens her clothing. “I just call him and we see if he comes.”

  “Shouldn’t you be sitting down or something?”

  His solicitude raises a wan laugh, which was exactly his purpose. If he has to play the clown in order to lighten things up a little, N’Doch doesn’t mind. “All right, then. You go, girl.”

  She perches on the rounded arm of the sofa, more like a girl waiting for her date to show up than a woman about to conjure a fire-breathing killer. She takes a breath and seems to turn her awareness inward. The rest wait in silence for a minute, for two. Then Paia says, “Ah,” and N’Doch is aware of a difference in the room, as if a wind has shifted or the temperature’s risen very suddenly. He tenses, expecting smoke and fireworks of the sort he’s seen up on the mountain. He wishes he had a more obvious weapon in hand than a guitar. Seconds later, there’s a sharp rap on the front door.