The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Life. Okay, perhaps. But can he do it?

  His fists open and close. His fingers and elbows stretch and recoil. His legs twitch. He’s stumbling about in involuntary dizzying circles while his features twist through a series of grotesque grins and grimaces. What does a dragon know about human expression, after all? Or human balance? The Librarian’s ankles tangle. He goes down hard, shuddering, breathing in gasps, and still the dragon, in her perilous curiosity, seems intent on jerking his strings like some demon puppet master until every last one of them snaps.

  Writhing in the dark on the smooth, chill floor, the Librarian fights for a hairbreadth of elbowroom in his beleaguered consciousness. Grasping at straws, he sends out a fervent SOS. A bit of signal snatched at random, its code rewritten and released, like a messenger pigeon taking wing from the walls of a besieged castle. A demand for recognition, a request for dialogue. He thinks of it as a dove. For clarity’s sake, he images its diagonal, white flight in his mind. The bird flies home, from one sector of his brain to another.

  This is insane, the Librarian muses. It’s like pleading with myself. But it works. The puppet master eases off abruptly, leaving him limp and panting on the invisible floor. But the Librarian is wary. The dragon’s urgency has not faded. She’s still there crowding him into the farthest, tightest corner of his self. He can see that a simple giving in, giving over, is not how this is going to work. A more active partnership will be required if they, man and dragon, are to accomplish anything at all. He dispatches another dove, requesting a parley.

  The dove returns. He can see it this time, a pale, faintly glowing, fully dimensional bird. It lands silently on the floor beside him. He takes it into his hands, astonished, and gently picks the slim curl of paper from the capsule banded to its leg. He unrolls the tiny scrap. It’s thin, almost translucent, and totally blank, but its message comes to him loud and clear.

  SORRY.

  The Librarian chuckles, half amused, half for joy. Well, now, that’s better. A bit awkward, birds and paper bits and all, but who cares, if it works? It seems he doesn’t have to actually write out the minute print with his big, soft hands and lack of any sort of writing implement. He has only to think his words, and there they are.

  A second dove lands beside him, announcing itself with a soft salvo of flapping. The Librarian extracts its message.

  NOW? HURRY!

  Ah. Back in familiar territory at last. He’s relieved, but no more enlightened. Hurry, yes, of course, but where and how, not to mention why? What exactly are we meant to do? He has so many questions. Too many to fit on a tiny scrap of onionskin.

  Perhaps a larger messenger? The Librarian pictures the big crow he’d once rescued from a trap. After it healed, it stuck around, apparently because the life he offered it was more interesting than the one it had known before. He smiles at the thought of it, and out of the darkness ambles the very bird, its bright eye fixed on the pile of raisins that have appeared in the Librarian’s palm. By now, the Librarian is incapable of surprise. He greets the bird, then lays half the raisins on the floor and nibbles the rest himself, pondering his next message. What questions will win him the most information in return? Meanwhile, a shorter query goes out with the dove. He doesn’t really care if she answers, but he’d kind of like to know.

  Why me?

  HAS ALWAYS BEEN.

  What is my part in all of this?

  HANDS. EARS. EYES. FEET.

  I know! I know all that! Though to tell the truth, he hasn’t thought of being her feet before. What am I supposed to DO?

  HURRY!!

  The Librarian takes a breath. Perhaps he can inhale a measure of patience from the very air. Finding a common language is not always the same as finding a common basis for reasoning. The dragon is as circular as ever. Random access. Well, fine. He knows how to deal with that. He sends the crow out into the ether, its tightly rolled scroll black with printed code.

  And so, painstakingly, and strained by the effort of staving off the dragon’s single-minded urgency, the Librarian extracts the outlines of the history he’s lived, but has never understood. Finally, it’s no longer a mystery why he’s felt the need to live so many of his centuries in hiding.

  In the beginning, he and Air were one. She, a discorporate entity, deaf, dumb, and blind to the material world. He, an animal body, canny, clever, and secretive, willing but hardly self-aware. The perfect physical vehicle for an ephemeral power. He existed while she slept, keeping himself alive and ready, should the need arise for the dragon to walk in the world.

  But when the call came, the aeons of separation proved a desperate disadvantage. Air woke still wrapped in vast and cosmic dreaming. In her waking confusion, her sibling Fire saw an opportunity. He stole her physical vessel and stashed it away down the timeline, far from the forward point in the world’s history that Air had chosen for her den. And so her den became her prison. A prison not of walls but of silence. Marooned far forward in time with no way to communicate either her dilemma or her whereabouts, except by the faintest of beacons, as likely to reach their goal as signals from another galaxy. No way, that is, until her kidnapped guide had lived long enough to evolve a brain capable of recognizing her distant transmissions, and figuring out how to reestablish their connection.

  Kidnapped! The Librarian lets the memory surface, so long buried beneath the sediments of time and terror. The sharp grip of the golden dragon’s claws, the fury and heat of his presence. The horror of abandonment in a cold, wet world full of unfamiliar threats and vicious two-legged predators. Why didn’t the Fire-breather murder him right then and there?

  Either he couldn’t, or he . . . wouldn’t.

  The Librarian decides that an answer to this particular mystery could prove a crucial key in dealing with the renegade. Perhaps Fire was simply being lazy. Probably he believed the vast gulf of years between Air and her guide would be enough to suit his hedonistic purpose. But how ironic that the technophobic Fire should resort to such a high-tech prison. He may not even have recognized it as such. Considering it further, the Librarian is sure he did not. Certainly, Fire could never have predicted the development of an electronic means by which his imprisoned sister could amplify her calls for help.

  The Librarian formulates another bird: What is this place, this city? Why did you choose it for your den?

  Instead of birds, an abrupt and shocking downloading of images. The Librarian reels, clutching his temples. The entire history of the White City in pictures, neatly packaged in sequential files for storage in his capacious memory.

  FOR LATER STUDY. LATER.

  This last message comes through strong and clear. The dragon has no time now for education.

  Basic information! Necessary!

  Hastily, the Librarian opens the first file. A holographic video of the city streets, full of sunlight and green trees and living people. Immediately, his hands and legs spasm with involuntary motion. While he wrestles with his rebellious limbs, a peculiar sensation, an entire flock of white-and-gray pigeons settles down around him, feathers flying like snow.

  HURRY! HURRY!

  The Librarian knows he’s gotten all the information he’s likely to for a while. But he’s learned that once, humans did inhabit the White City. Pondering their fate, he hoists himself awkwardly to his feet and tests his legs for control. He sends several of the birds back expressing his total willingness to serve but pointing out in no uncertain terms the absolute requirement for a physical body such as himself to follow a linear plan of action.

  First one foot, and then the other. He images himself walking. Get it?

  Air images her other siblings, and the Librarian is briefly distracted by how aware he is of her accessing his personal data banks for the necessary visual information. Item: one large bronzy-plated dragon called Earth. Ivory horns. Stubby tail. And so on. She pictures the four dragons coming together, the fourth image being himself. A gathering of dragons. He’s always suspected that would be the plan
. But Air seems unaware of all that Fire’s been up to since she saw him last. After he stole her guide and left, he’s apparently managed to avoid the temptation of coming back to gloat. But does Air suppose that her guide has been missing for centuries by accident? The Librarian explains. A single goldfinch delivers a minuscule reply.

  OH, THAT.

  Even behavior as unforgivable as the Fire-breather’s is not vast enough to register on Air’s cosmic scale. The dragon seems sure that her wayward brother will show up, once the other three have gathered. The Librarian is a whole lot less convinced, but for now, it seems pointless to argue.

  Where should we gather?

  This time, letters appear in the air in front of him: ANYWHERE. FOR NOW.

  He understands that she does mean anywhere, in time or space. And he knows that it’s his own brain supplying the alphabet. But, good, excellent. Further progress. The birds were getting very cumbersome.

  WHEN ALL HAVE GATHERED, THE RIGHT PLACE WILL BE KNOWN.

  Practically a paragraph. And there will be a right place.

  Now we’re getting somewhere. Except . . . how do we get there? How do we get out of here? And how do we contact the others?

  He hopes she will confirm his guess that Earth and Water are in the city, somewhere nearby. Perhaps she will even explain how they got there. Instead, he gets confusion and impatience and a storm of grackles wheeling and arguing overhead. Not a one of them bothers to land. The Librarian gets the idea that locomotion and communication are solely his territory. He feels stolid and clumsy. He’s tempted for a moment by exhaustion and despair. He hates taking action based on so little knowledge, so imperfect an understanding of the whole picture. But, after all, he’s come up with the necessary solutions so far. One problem at a time. He must trust his dragon and get . . .

  Of course! The Librarian enacts the cliché. He slaps his forehead.

  Escaping this darkness isn’t about bashing his way out. He’ll just program a few nanomechs to build him an exit. He glances behind him, for the vanished windows looking out on the square. He’s sure a faint towering shadow of the Rex lingers there, like an afterimage burned into the inside of his eyelids. The machina will be reviving soon. Better make his exit on the opposite side of the building. Then he’ll rescue Stoksie and find out how the Deep Moor trackers got there, and then . . .

  Already the darkness is thinning, and the door is forming in front of him, a pale rectangular outline floating in the void like chalk on a blackboard. He waits for the knob to complete, then grasps it and gives it an experimental twist. The door cracks open and flat, bright light spills in, the light of the city. But when he hauls the door fully open, eager for air and space, he’s not where he expects to be. He’s on the edge of the huge empty plaza where the elevator left him when he first arrived, with Stoksie, after coming through the portal. He’s stymied, but only briefly. Perhaps the dragon has sent him this new insight, or perhaps he’s figured it out on his own. No matter, he understands now that the city, like the dragon, cannot be counted upon to be linear. It has a random access geography. He remembers his schematic map of the power lines, and how he’d marked the source of the signal carrying N’Doch’s song. He’ll start there, with an address he knows. He shuts the door on the empty plaza, calls up the map, and reprograms his door to open across the street from that source location. He opens the door again.

  There is a street this time, narrow and cluttered. The potholes surprise him, a hint of the texture of real life. If he had any doubt of his data, he’d wonder if he was still in the city. Across the cracked pavement sits an old-fashioned café, complete with a worn striped awning and metal tables and chairs. The furniture looks like it’s been recently thrown around. The tall windows are fogged with grit and condensation, but the Librarian detects light and the motion of bodies inside. If he’s guessed correctly, one of them will be N’Doch.

  He’s about to venture out across the street, when inexplicable paralysis assails him. A weight in his chest, like a boulder crushing his heart. Panic first, then realization: it’s the dragon, holding him back.

  What? Why? You were in such a rush before.

  He spots a flock of bright blue finches perched along the sagging rim of the café awning. Though he’s never thought of birds as having expressions, these little critters look distinctly reluctant.

  NOT YET. NOT ONE BY ONE.

  The Librarian is reminded of other long-sentenced prisoners who, when released, find it difficult to walk through the open door into freedom. The weight on his heart eases but does not go away.

  ALL MUST GATHER. ALL AT ONCE.

  It’s something about the news she bears, the Librarian senses. She wants everyone to hear it at the same time. He doesn’t ask why again. She will simply turn vague and prod him to get on with his part of the job, collecting their allies, simultaneously, in one place.

  As the Librarian ponders this new logistical challenge, another understanding blooms inside him, like a flower captured by time-lapse photography. Inspired, perhaps, by the tired but insistent reality of the café across the way, he asks himself: If I can program a door that leads anywhere in the city, could I not also program the place it leads to? If the initial gathering can be anywhere, he can create, or better still, re-create a site of his choosing. A place of safety and comfort from which to plan the rescue of the planet.

  The Librarian deliberates issues of security and size, even familiarity. Urged to quick decision by his dragon’s implacable impatience, he settles on a place he recalls most fondly: the Grove at Deep Moor. And since he can set his own parameters, he’ll tweak it a little. He’ll make it an Urgrove, a haven of peace and beauty. The Grove the way it was before the dawn of man.

  That accomplished, he will set about providing transportation. The Librarian takes a last, hungry look at La Rive Gauche, certain he detects the sharp fragrances of espresso and fresh-baked brioches. He sighs, shuts the door, and gets down to work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  N’Doch thinks maybe it’s time to pour himself a real drink. Normally, he’s not much for alcohol, but the mood in the café is beyond tense. The very air has darkened, humming like a plucked string. Or maybe it’s the guitar he’s got clutched in his arms, responding on its own in some kind of celestial angst. Our destiny requires our death. N’Doch’s sure he’s not the only one who’d like to know exactly what the Fire-breather means by that.

  Water-as-Sedou has taken a dragon’s own time to consider his reply. He’s holding very still while Fire leans over him. N’Doch can see the effort in it, both for the dragon and for the man whose identity she’s borrowed. “I repeat,” Sedou says at last, “betrayal is the subversion of your given duty.”

  Fire drops his head between his outstretched arms, the very picture of exasperation. “Have you even been listening?”

  Sedou nods, a new and scary resignation deep in his eyes.

  Fire snorts. He gives the metal table a rough shake and shoves himself upright, folding his arms. “I did not volunteer for that duty, and made no promises to it.”

  “Betrayal is also doing harm to those who’ve accepted the responsibility you seek to avoid.”

  “I’ve hurt no one.”

  Sedou’s eyes widen. He turns half away in his chair. “Brother! Please! We all know better!”

  “Things! I’ve destroyed things!” Fire snaps. “Stuff.”

  “People’s homes and livelihoods!”

  “What about my mother?” N’Doch finds himself suddenly nose-to-nose with the Fire-breather instead of challenging him, as he’d intended, from the comparative safety of the bar. The guitar vibrates in dissonant sympathy from the countertop. “You threaten her up on the mountaintop, and next thing, she turns up dead! I call that hurting. I call that murder! What do you call it?”

  If it’s possible to look bored and furious simultaneously, Fire has managed it. “A regrettable accident.”

  “Accident?” N’Doch can feel the dragon�
�s heat, standing so close. A human this hot would be dead of spontaneous combustion, but it matches the heat in N’Doch’s heart. “You called in your hit man! Remember your man Baraga? Remember what he did to me?”

  “Kenzo Baraga is very much his own man,” Fire replies, without taking his glare from Sedou’s. “I only offered him what he craved already. Besides, you look alive and well enough. Are you a ghost?”

  “Woulda been, if it weren’t for the big guy Earth. Shot to pieces. You don’t call that hurting?” N’Doch almost grabs the Fire dude’s gold-braided lapels, but a quick hard NO! slams through his brain. He backs off like he’s been hit. The dragon can pack a wallop when she wants to.

  Paia has worked her way around to stand beside Sedou. She lays a very visible hand on the man dragon’s broad shoulder. “You can lie to others if you must, my Fire, but don’t try to tell me I haven’t seen you burn men to cinders before the altar of your own Temple!”

  Fire watches Sedou lean back into the curl of Paia’s arm. “I am not lying! As my sister has agreed, a dragon is incapable of lying.”

  “Dissembling,” Djawara murmurs from the side, like a helpful referee.

  “No! Take an honest count! I’ve hurt no one who wasn’t in harm’s way already, or who didn’t willingly put themselves there to honor me, or for fanatical reasons of their own.”

  “Fanaticism that you created and encouraged,” Paia pursues.

  “For your sake, beloved! Always for your sake, to have servants around me to help keep you safe!”

  “An elaborate and delusional denial, brother,” growls Sedou.

  “I can’t be expected to answer for the bloody deeds of humans, suicidal or otherwise!”

  “I doubt my daughter Fâtime understood herself to be ‘in harm’s way,’” Djawara observes quietly.