The Book of Water

by Marjorie B. Kellogg

  THE DRAGON QUARTET:

  BOOK TWO

  THE BOOK OF WATER

  Marjorie B. Kellogg

  Also by Marjorie B. Kellogg:

  The Dragon Quartet

  THE BOOK OF EARTH

  THE BOOK OF WATER

  THE BOOK OF FIRE

  THE BOOK OF AIR

  By Marjorie B. Kellogg with William Rossow:

  LEAR’S DAUGHTERS

  (The Wave and the Flame | Reign of Fire)

  Copyright © 1997 by Marjorie Bradley Kellogg.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66455-1

  Cover art by Jody Lee.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1066.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA.

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  Version_1

  FOR SHEILA

  editor, friend, soul of patience

  . . . and the one who got me into all this in the first place.

  And many thanks to the usual suspects and a few new ones, all of them more generous with their time, advice, and encouragement than any author has the right to hope for:

  Lynne Kemen and Bill Rossow

  Barbara Newman and Stephen Morris

  Antonia Bryan

  Martin Beadle

  Kenny Leon

  Charlotte Zoe Walker

  and the dedicated organizers and supporters of Oneonta Outloud, where portions of this book were first read.

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE: The Creation

  IN THE BEGINNING, AND A LITTLE AFTER . . .

  PART ONE: The Summoning of the Hero

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PART TWO: The Journey into Peril

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PART THREE: The Call to the Quest

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  PART FOUR: The Meeting with Destiny

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  PROLOGUE

  The Creation

  IN THE BEGINNING,

  AND A LITTLE AFTER . . .

  In the Beginning, four mighty dragons raised of elemental energies were put to work creating the World. They were called Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. No one of them had power greater than another, and no one of them was mighty alone.

  When the work was completed and the World set in motion, the four went to ground, expecting to sleep out this World’s particular history and not rise again until World’s End.

  The first to awaken was Earth.

  * * *

  He woke in darkness, as innocent as a babe, with only the fleeting shadows of dreams to hint at his former magnificence. But one bright flame of knowledge drove him forth: He was Called to Work again, if only he could remember what the Work was.

  He found the World grown damp and chill, overrun by the puniest of creatures, Creation’s afterthought, the ones called Men. Earth soon learned that Men, too, had forgotten their Origin. They had abandoned their own intended Work in the World and thrived instead on superstition, violence, and self-righteous oppression of their fellows. They had forgotten as well their primordial relationship with dragons—all, that is, but a few.

  One in particular awaited Earth’s coming, though she had no awareness of the secret duty carried down through the countless generations of her blood. But this young girl knew her destiny, when she faced a living dragon and was not afraid.

  Thereafter, Earth’s Quest became her own, and together they searched her World for answers to his questions. Some they found and slowly, with his memory, Earth’s powers reawakened. But the girl’s World was dark and dangerous and ignorant, and the mysterious Caller who summed Earth could not be found within it. One day, blindly following the Call, Earth took them Somewhere Else.

  That Somewhere Else would prove stranger than either of them could have imagined . . . except in their dreams.

  PART ONE

  The Summoning of the Hero

  CHAPTER ONE

  He thinks he’s safely away, then he hears the rubble shift behind him, and again, to the right. He shrinks into the hot shadow of the shuttered doorway, thinking fast. His hands are wet, his breath too loud for comfort. He has not expected pursuit.

  N’Doch quiets his breathing and awaits their next move. He considers his alternatives. Deeper into town would provide the most cover, but no strategic advantage. His pursuers—her brothers, no doubt—know the maze of alleys and junk lots as well as he does, maybe better, and though he thinks he has the advantage of speed, they’re sure to have the advantage of numbers. He tries to recall how many brothers the silly girl has still living. He stops counting at four and wonders instead how likely it is that all of them are out of work at the same time and therefore at home, too bored and idle to sleep soundly through the midday heat like everyone else in town. He can’t remember if she’d said. He was too busy being charming.

  Now he also wonders if it was a setup. Too easy, maybe, those five plump globes glowing in the sun on the girl’s unguarded windowsill, their green-orange ripening toward red, their warm tart juice almost a sure thing in his parched mouth. N’Doch cannot remember the last time he’s eaten a ripe tomato. Especially a safe one. He feels them now, inside his T-shirt, bunched up against the waistband of his shorts, as smooth against his skin as the girl’s firm brown breasts. N’Doch grins, feeling her again in his hands. Silly, but pretty. She’d almost distracted him from his purpose. Maybe he should have taken her first and then the tomatoes. Maybe she wouldn’t have set her brothers after him so fast.

  Around him, the quiet is unnatural. Even the flies and crawlies are waiting to see who’ll break the stalemate first. N’Doch squints into the hazed white glare at the end of the street. The market square wavers and dips, intoxicated with the heat, reminding him of his mama’s old video in a brown-out. He decides that if he actually escapes with the tomatoes, he’ll bring her one. Maybe the promise will bring him luck. For now, he’ll head for the market and hope for the best. Lately, the stalls are shutting down during the day, to open again in the faint cool of dusk. Still, some shelter might be found among the thicket of carts and canopies, enough at least for
him to double back and lose his tail.

  Across the hot street, a skintight alley cuts between two crumbling stucco facades. The windows are high and barred, boarded with corrugated plastic, pairs of faded green squares in a bleached flamingo wall that’s shedding old campaign posters like dying skin. No entry there, but the alley is shaded and promising. A few sharp bars of sunlight drop through the dust to spotlight piles of litter scattered along the left-hand wall. Briefly, N’Doch is speared with envy. It should be him in that hard bright spot, singing his songs for the eager multitude. He catches himself surrendering to the familiar reverie and hauls his attention back to the alley. Halfway down its length, some squared-off bulk makes the narrow darkness darker. But N’Doch counts no obstacle as impassable. He is younger than most of Malimba’s brothers—taller, but thinner and lighter. He’s got no one at home raising safe food to fatten him up, no walled and locked courtyard in which to grow it. For once, he’ll consider that an advantage. He’ll go around that darkness, or over it.

  He shifts his weight soundlessly. Wedged into the shallow doorway, he has no view of the street behind him. He leans forward, his head cocked sideways like a wary bird. His bare arm scrapes the peeling shutters, and chips of dry blue paint tickle his toes. He’s sure it’s a rat, probably a sick one if it’s out in broad daylight. He doesn’t flinch, but his reflex gasp sounds to him like a vast sigh across the white-hot silence. Up the street, the rubble stirs again. N’Doch readies himself. He’d gladly wait forever in the safety of this doorway, eating his tomatoes in peace like he’d planned. But he can’t risk a rat bite. Besides, his pursuers won’t wait out there in the rubble forever. He must gain that crucial survivor’s one step ahead.

  He coils his muscles, then springs across the street into the alley. The sun is a breath of flame across his back as he sprints sideways into the shadow. The brothers erupt from hiding, but they lose a step or two, blocking each other’s way, so eager to be after him down the narrow passage.

  N’Doch risks a lightning backward glance. Four of them, no, five—yes, indeed there are, one for each tomato. They are thick and muscled. They wear only the light briefs they sprang out of bed in when roused by their sister’s outraged squeals. The dark obstacle midway down the alley is a pile of discarded plastic crates. N’Doch leaps, grabs, and climbs like a cat. The crates sway, threatening to buckle, and a voice squawks vague curses at him from inside. He slaps the tops and sides as he scrambles over. Maybe he can roust out the denizen of the boxes to slow down his pursuers. With luck, there’s a whole family in there. He doesn’t wait to find out. He leaps to the ground on the other side and pounds away down the alley. No point in stealth now. Almost more than fear, hunger propels him. He bursts into the glare of the market square, scattering a flock of scrawny hens that rise up around him in a flurry of grit and feathers. Heat and sun engulf him. He cuts sideways down an aisle of bread stalls into the gauzy shade of the canopies. The smells make his mouth water, but every stall has its razor-edged grillwork locked down tight. Halfway to the end, he swerves left, hoping his pursuers won’t see him turn. Next, it’s a hard right past the software carts. The vendors doze behind tinted plexiglass shields, only their bright arrays of solar collectors left open to the air. Normally, N’Doch would linger here, longingly, trying to bargain for what he cannot afford. But not today. He makes a few more sharp zigs and zags, and then he’s across the square, free of the stalls and racing down the wide main boulevard toward the town gates. The black tar is soft and steaming. The heat is like a weight. It doesn’t occur to him until he’s well out into the open to wonder if the brothers took the time to grab their guns. He’s seen no flash of sun on metal in his quick looks backward, but a big enough hand can conceal all the firepower necessary to blow a grown man away. The thought makes him shiver. The drab blighted trees that line the boulevard are his only possible cover.

  But no spray of bullets comes after him, only the steady rhythm of multiple bare feet slapping against pavement, still a ways behind him but gaining. N’Doch speeds past the tall steel mesh gates. He wishes they still worked, so he could slam them in the brothers’ faces. But no one bothers to fix anything anymore, especially something in public use. Now the scorched peanut fields spread white and brown to either side of him. Ahead, the red laterite road snakes through the palm grove toward the port. Tall trunks are down everywhere, uprooted or snapped off by the last big storm. There’ve been a lot of those coming through lately. The TV guys blame it on global warming and try to tell you what to do about it, but N’Doch zaps the channel when the weather comes on. He doesn’t see how you could fix anything that big, and he’s got more important things to worry about, like right now, saving his skin. He stretches his rangy legs like a thoroughbred and runs for all he’s worth. But he notices the pressure inside his ribs, the merest hint of a cramp in his side. He begins to think maybe he won’t get to eat any of these tomatoes after all. But that can’t be, all this risk and effort for nothing. Still, if he drops them now, the brothers might let him go. He wonders if they’ve counted them, decides to take the chance. He yanks his shirt out of his shorts, lets the round red fruit roll free but catches the reddest, the ripest one as they fall. The soft thud of tomatoes hitting the dust behind him is the saddest sound he’s ever heard.

  The road through the grove is as dry and slick as flour, and danger hides in the ankle-deep red silt—shards of metal, rigid scraps of plastic waiting to slice up the unwary foot. N’Doch follows the track of a dune buggy, wishing such a vehicle would come along right this moment and spirit him off to safety. But he’s managed to pick the only time of day or night when the road is empty, another in what seems to be a series of miscalculations. The bidonville under the palms is mute and motionless, everyone napping out the worst of the heat except a mangy young dog who bounds from the shade of an oil drum, sure that N’Doch has come to play with her. She springs up noisily, tangling in his legs. N’Doch does not kick her away. He had a puppy he loved, back when he was a kid in the City, and he knows it won’t be long before this one, too, is somebody’s dinner.

  But her leaping and yapping gets in his way, so he snatches up a twig from the road and tosses it behind him. With luck, she’ll chase after it and tangle in the brothers’ legs instead of his own. Through the scythe-curves of the palm trunks, he sees the smoky glare of the water, drawn up against the yellow sky in a fuzzed line of haze. He thinks if he can make it to the beach, he’s safe. Malimba’s brothers don’t hang out at the beach. They won’t know their way around the wrecks like he does. He can lose them there.

  But he is slowing, and the cramp in his side is harder to ignore. He risks another backward glance. The brothers are slowing, too. One has dropped back to rescue the lost tomatoes from the dust. The other four pound after N’Doch, fists clenched, blinking sweat and grit from their eyes, and snarling. The brother in the lead trips over the panting eager dog as she scrambles to retrieve the stick. He lashes out, kicks her sideways. She tumbles, yelping, into the red gravel along the verge and lies there, stunned.

  N’Doch feels his soul rebel, the way his stomach would against rotten food. He’d pull up short to help the pup, could he do so and live. He’s had nothing against Malimba’s brothers so far, except their understandable urge to chase down the thief who stole their supper. But the pup’s only crime is being innocent enough to think that humans are her friends. N’Doch’s nostrils flare. He surrenders up his luscious vision of eating the remaining tomato slowly and with great ceremony once he’s gone to ground. Instead, he’ll eat it now, while the brothers watch, while the sweat pours salt into their angry eyes, and their bodies strain to match his stride. And then, his final act of revenge, when he’s safe and alone again: he’ll make up a funny song about it and sing it all around the neighborhood, about the pup and the tomatoes and the stupid mindless viciousness of Malimba’s brothers.

  Anticipation makes him grin, and the notes are already stringing themselves together in his head. Sure,
his friends will think he’s weird, singing about dogs and tomatoes, but hell, they already do. N’Doch wipes the tomato on his shirt as he runs, then takes a bite. The skin is taut and hot but the juice is cooler than his tongue and so tart-sweet that he groans with pleasure and forgets to savor it. Between gasps for breath, he devours it in great gnashing gulps. His mouth and throat vibrate with sensation, and then the precious fruit is gone and all he can do is taste the sour regret that he dropped the other four along the road.

  He’s past the last shanties and lean-tos of the bidonville. The palm grove is thinning. Ahead, he sees the gray stretch of water and the long bright arc of sand, littered with the black hulks of the wrecks. N’Doch is glad he’s eaten the tomato, though it sits like a cold acidic lump in his empty belly. He can afford no distractions now, for the beach is even more treacherous than the road. Shoals, entire reefs of debris lie submerged in its deeper sands, ready to cut off a toe or slice through a tendon, leaving you hamstrung. N’Doch thinks the beach is like life, full of hazard. He negotiates it very carefully. He’s written a bunch of songs about it, like the fact that there’s less of it each time he comes here, as the sea level rises. As he breaks out onto open sand, he hears one of the brothers curse and fall behind, hopping on one foot, stopping short. N’Doch crows silently. Score one for the mangy pup. He dodges right and left, his eyes fixed on the pocked ground. The first wreck southward is a burned-out sea tug. N’Doch knows the family living in the aft section above the high water mark. He’s sung at their hearth on more than one occasion. It’s low tide now, so he chooses the farthest-away path through the pieces of the wreck, right along the water’s edge. The old man is just up from his siesta, taking a piss from the rusted rail of the mess deck. He waves.