“Well, that got their attention,” David muttered. He knelt by the body, keeping a wary eye on Azkiar. “Ask them how this happened.”
“David, I’m not exactly fluent.”
“Just try,” he said, checking Aubrey’s eye.
What followed was a kind of birdcall at dusk. For several moments the room was filled with every manner of click and rasp. When it was done, Rosa pressed her fingertips together and said, “They don’t know. But it’s very unnatural. The cream-colored one is frightened. She says the last time she saw this bird it was black.”
David raised his gaze toward Aurielle, who spoke to him.
“What did she say?”
“She wants us to go upstairs with her.”
Rrrh!
“She’s got something important to show us.”
Rrrh-rruurr-rrrh!
There was a pause. David said, “That sounded intense.”
“She was just asking … if my arm was all right.”
“And is it?”
Rosa let her fingers hover over the scars. They were raw, but healing remarkably quickly. “Just sore,” she muttered.
“You should get to one of the rest rooms and treat it. How did it happen?”
She told him briefly — all that she remembered.
He took her hand a moment and looked at the pattern. “This is what we saw in your dragon book. Did the Aunt do it deliberately?”
“I don’t know,” Rosa said, and took her hand back.
David slipped his arm under Aubrey’s body and lifted the firebird off the floor. “Tell these guys to organize a watch. Until we know what killed this bird, we should be on our guard.”
Rosa looked to one side. While she didn’t like the way he’d assumed command, she had to agree that his motives were right. She communicated his words to Aurielle. Azkiar and Aleron were immediately dispatched from the room.
“Tell her we’ll come upstairs, but not until we’ve taken care of this.” He showed Aurielle the body and gestured to the window.
Aurielle chattered a short response.
Rosa said, a little huffily, “She wants to know if she can stay with us.”
“She’s got wings. We can hardly stop her.”
“She was being polite, David. She wants your permission. The birds are calling you the new curator.”
“Me? How did I get elect …?” He stopped there, knowing that nothing he could say would come out favorably. “Fine,” he said finally, and turned toward the door.
The descent to the ground was slower than usual. When David stepped out into the sunlit daisy fields, he looked for a spot where the flowers were plentiful and pretty, then dropped to one knee and put Aubrey down. As he stood up he imagineered a spade. In one movement he swung it around and started to dig. When the hole was made, he laid the body in it and stood back so that Aurielle could see. The firebird made a little croaking sound but did not seem to object to the ritual.
“Do you want to say anything?”
Rosa was standing a couple of feet away. She shook her head and couldn’t speak.
“Will you ask her what color he was?”
Another short dialogue established that Aubrey had been blue, like the sky.
David nodded. He filled in the hole and de:constructed the spade. During the dig, he’d been careful not to crush too many of the daisies. When he laid the main sod back, most of the flowers were still intact. As the first breeze took them, the petals rippled and changed their color from white to sky blue. He glanced at Rosa. There were tear tracks on her cheeks. He went over and slipped his arm around her.
And there they stood, completely unaware that from a window on the ninth floor of the librarium, Aunt Gwyneth was watching.
“Tell me,” she said, to the Ix she was hosting. “What happens if David dies?”
The Ix will gain control of the nexus.
“So why haven’t you done it? You must have had countless opportunities to kill him?”
He is strong, said the Ix. The time point protects him.
“In what way?”
He can call upon the power of dragons — and other beasts.
Aunt Gwyneth pondered this carefully. She ran a finger along the claw. “Tell me more about this artifact. What use is it to us?”
The creat:or can only function truly in the hands of those who resonate with dragons. It must be destroyed.
“I will be the judge of that,” she said coldly. “What if he was to get it — David, I mean?”
There was a pause as the Ix swam around her mind. All of the nexus would be visible to him. He would see the other time points to Earth and Ki:mera.
“And thereby hold the balance of power,” mused the Aunt. “Well, we can’t have that.”
Kill him, said the Cluster, trying to assert itself. The Aunt:Ix could neutralize David now.
“Not yet,” she growled, beating it down. “Let the boy work for us first. He will show us to the upper floors and The Book of Agawin. When the moment comes, he will be no match for me.”
He is strong, the Ix repeated. How will it be done?
“He’s a construct,” she said. “And the one thing constructs have is a template. I treated the boy once. I flowed into his auma. I know his strengths —
which are considerable, I admit — but I also know his weakness.”
You will share this, said the Ix.
“And you will be quiet!” the Aunt hissed loudly. She pulled back from the window, fearful that her outburst might have been heard. Tossing her head, she hissed once more. An irritating tic had developed in one eyelid. A result of fighting for dominance with the Cluster. To punish the Ix, she morphed into the black-and-white katt again, a form they considered agile but vulnerable. “His weakness is love — for the girl, for his father, even for his own imperfect katt. The way to defeat him is to squeeze his heart. And there is no one better at that than an Aunt….”
2.
From his position by the grave, David turned and stared at the librarium windows. “Did you hear something then?”
Rosa followed his gaze. “What kind of something?”
“A hiss, like someone being shushed?”
“There’s no one here but us and the birds.”
All the same, David squinted hard at the windows. He had scrutinized a dozen or more when Rosa grew tired and poked him in the ribs. “What are you doing?”
“Probing for traces of anything irregular.”
“Such as?”
He clicked his tongue and looked at Aurielle, who was waiting patiently for whatever happened next. “I told you Dad gave me secret information?”
“Yes,” she sighed, not wanting to be reminded of that parting moment.
“It was a film of his time rift experiment. You remember the portal he told us about?”
“Vaguely.”
“I’m pretty sure something came through it. Not a physical entity, more a surge of fain. I’m concerned it was responsible for the bird we just buried.”
Rosa looked at the building again. “Alien fain? In the librarium?”
“Something turned that firebird black. For all we know, it was —”
“Is that a katt?” Rosa gasped suddenly.
David panned his gaze sideways and saw it sitting as calmly as a cloud, on a ledge some nine floors up. The black-and-white katt from Bushley Common. “Oh, no,” he groaned. “I thought I’d left that on a bench in Bushley. It must have followed me off the common and hid itself under the seat of my taxicar.”
“I don’t care how it got here,” Rosa said. “It’s a katt, in a building full of birds. Now we know what happened to the one we just buried! If the red one sees that, there’s going to be carnage.” She looked at Aurielle, who was already sitting up, puffing out her feathers. With an uncomfortable rrrh! she took off and flew away.
“Oh, great!” Rosa threw out a hand. “I think that cancels our trip upstairs.”
David sighed and looked at the katt. It was
washing its paws, totally unfazed. “OK, I’ll deal with it. Upstairs can wait. We need to clean up after the fire anyway. I’ll see you in that room. Five minits, max.”
“Why did you ever come back?” she grumbled.
He chose to ignore that and hurried on inside.
When he caught up with her at the scene of the blaze, he was holding the katt against his shoulder, gently stroking the back of its neck. It was purring loudly, shut-eyed, content.
“David, get that out of here,” Rosa said at once. She had found a broom in one of the utility closets and was brushing loose debris and ash into a pile.
“Don’t you like them?”
“That’s hardly the point.”
“I’m not convinced it killed the bird. I know they like to chase them, but there are no signs of feathers or blood in its claws. It’s such a friendly little thing. Probably quite old. I bet it’s …”
Rosa rested her weight on the broom. She was glaring at him now, her whole body language telling him he was wasting his time.
“All right.” He sighed. “I’ll take it away. But it’s tired. At least let it have a sleep first.” In a blink he’d imagineered a comfortable basket. He placed it on the single bed that hadn’t been burned, where it could catch the rays of the sun. He put the katt into it and told it to behave. The katt stretched, arched its back, and spiraled down. Before long it was curled up with its tail around its nose.
“If it acts up, I’ll put it in a cage,” he said.
Rosa shook her head and continued sweeping.
For the first time since he’d been back, David let his gaze wander around the room. It was in a terrible state: charred shelves, smoke-stained walls, remnants of book covers everywhere. Rosa winced as he crouched down and crumbled what remained of a once-thick paperback. “So, what happened?”
In one breath, she brought him up to speed, telling him how the fire had started and the Aunts had been stealing the auma from the books.
“So Strømberg was right,” he muttered. “He told me the Aunts were planning something. I’ll send him a :com. He’ll want to see this. It has to be illegal, what they were doing. Aunt Gwyneth will probably be outlawed for it.”
Brr-up, went the katt.
“What happened to the device they were using?” He walked around, sifting the debris with his feet. All of a sudden he spotted something and pushed aside the frame of the other, damaged, bed. “Is this it?” He held up the pad. The casing was warped and split along one side. At one end, its pink neural circuit boards were visible.
“Yes,” said Rosa. “Useless, right?”
He brought it over, smearing cinders off the screen. From its audio slot came a weak kind of whirr. He tapped it against his palm. Nothing happened for a sec. Then two orange lights flickered on.
Rosa sucked in sharply and let go of the broom. Despite the clatter as it hit the floor, David didn’t look up right away. He was trying to read something off the screen. Eventually, he turned it around and showed it to her.
Au a suc ess ul y tr nsf rred
“Auma transferred,” he said. He brought his gaze level with hers.
She shrugged. “So?”
He glanced at her arm and seemed to know. “It’s gone to you, hasn’t it?”
(In the basket, the katt pricked an ear.)
Rosa gulped. She picked up the broom and started pushing again. “I didn’t know until Aurielle told me upstairs.”
“Aurielle?”
“The cream-colored bird. That’s her name. Aurielle, Azkiar, Aleron. Cream, red, green. She saw the auma go into my scars. I didn’t tell you right away because my head was still dizzy from the input of knowledge.”
“Do you feel OK now?”
“Mmm. Fine. Ask me anything you like about furniture design in the forty-ninth spin — it was one of Mr. Henry’s favorite topics.”
David smiled and looked at what was left on the shelves. “I worked in this room with Mr. Henry once. There was nothing in these books about language or the birds. So how are you able to talk to them?”
(The katt raised its other ear at that.)
Rosa tidied up the ash and put the broom aside. “I don’t know. When I came around I was just aware that I could, as if it had been imprinted on me. But there’s more to it than just being able to talk. I’ve been picking up on something more … elemental.”
“Go on,” he said.
She shook her head. “It’s just an instinctive feeling, but I’m convinced there’s a spiritual link between the birds and the books. It’s got something to do with the history of the building. When I try to home in on it, though, all I see is fuzzy pictures flashing through my head.”
“Of what?” David asked.
She sat down on the bed with her knees turned in. “Dragons,” she said, so quietly that the katt arched up in its basket. “And there’s a name. It comes like an echoing drum.”
“Agawin?”
“Yes. You’ve heard it, too?”
He sat down beside her. “Counselor Strømberg told me there’s a book I need to check.”
“I know it,” Rosa said. “He showed it to me. It’s hidden in the room where you woke up. It’s full of weird symbols. Dragontongue and stuff. I was supposed to be finding a way to translate it when it all kicked off with your dad and the Aunts.”
“Can you take me to it?”
“Yes,” she said, and was about to jump up when Azkiar appeared on the window ledge. His gaze swept the room and settled on the basket — and the katt.
“Uh-oh. This doesn’t look good,” said David.
There was menace in the red firebird’s eyes, the kind of look that suggested he held the katt responsible for Aubrey’s death. But Aunt Gwyneth was not at all troubled. Indeed, her devious mind had swiftly conjured up a way to turn this situation to her advantage. As Azkiar flew in, a bizarre thing happened. The ash pile erupted and re-formed into a dark-winged creature. It appeared in front of the startled firebird as a hissing, ugly ball of venom. Before he could change course or think to draw flame, the creature had attached itself to his chest and exposed a wide array of needlelike teeth, ready to sink them into his neck.
Rosa screamed. And David was on his feet in an instant. But even before his amazing mind could imagineer a suitable form of defense, the katt had come bounding across the room and in one leap taken the creature down. As they hit the floor together, the creature broke free and turned to look its assailant in the eye. What followed wasn’t pretty. With a flash of claws that saw dark-colored blood and minor body parts sprayed against a wall, the katt brought the fight to a swift conclusion. When it was done, it stood over the corpse for a moment, threw a dispassionate glance at Azkiar (dazed and confused, but otherwise OK), then turned and climbed back into its basket. What was left of the strange black creature dissolved into a puddle and drained away through a knot in the floorboards.
Azkiar, his pride dented, glared at the katt, then left the room on a powerful wingbeat, undoing Rosa’s efforts with the broom in the process. Shaking her head at the mess he’d created, she asked, rather fearfully, “What was that thing?”
“Our mystery fain, hopefully,” David muttered, though there was nothing left to commingle with or probe. Even the wall stains had withered away. And how, he wondered, had a simple katt, someone’s long-discarded construct, been able to deal with the threat of an alien life force? He turned and walked back to the basket, running a knuckle between the katt’s ears.
Its left eye was twitching, but it seemed unharmed. Once again, as he’d done on the common, he extended his fain and probed its mind. Nothing. A katt, full of vague daydreams. But of course Aunt Gwyneth had prepared herself for this. It had taken little effort for the Aunt Su:perior to cloak her true identity.
“So,” David said, “does it stay or does it go?”
Rosa watched the katt settle down as if it had done nothing more than knock a small ball around the room for several minits. “I guess it’s earned its plac
e,” she murmured. “But I still don’t know what we should do with it.”
“Well, we could give it a home — and a name.” (You’d better make it a good one, Aunt Gwyneth was thinking darkly.) “I reckon it’s a male. What about Felix?”
Male? Aunt Gwyneth almost bit into his finger. (Though the irony of the last two letters did amuse her.)
Rosa shuddered. “Whatever. I just want to get out of this room now. Do you still want to see the book?”
“Of course.”
Meow! went Felix, reaching out a paw.
“All right, you can come, too,” David said. And resting the katt against his shoulder, he followed Rosa out of the room, Aunt Gwyneth dribbling on his jacket for good measure.
In Mr. Henry’s favorite reference room, the one in which David had recovered from his coma, Rosa slid the ladders along the shelves, riding them just like the old curator would have done. “This panel is false,” she said, banging it at roughly the same place she thought he had. After three attempts, the panel swung open.
David looked into the secret — but empty — compartment.
“Oh,” Rosa said. Her shoulders sagged. “That’s weird. He definitely took it from here.”
David put the katt down and strolled around the room, running his fingers over similar panels. “He must have put it back somewhere else. There could be any number of hiding places in the building.”
“There’s one here.” Rosa went to the cupboard that held the animal book. It was still there, but The Book of Agawin wasn’t.
David took it out and flipped through the pages. “Wow. Have you seen this?”
“Yes,” Rosa said. “Strømberg showed me. All those creatures died out ages ago. The one you’re on is called a ‘squirrel,’ I think.”
David stared at the picture for the longest time.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I’ve seen these creatures before,” he muttered. He took the auma pad out of his pocket.
“David, what are you doing?!”
“I can feel the pad humming.”
Fire World Page 22
