“Yah,” Stoksie marvels. “Seems like it.”
“Huh. So where’s Erde and the Big Guy? Looks like everyone else is here, and I wouldn’t think they’d want to be missing this.”
“Gone.” Stoksie shakes his head, then scrapes his hand over its shining baldness. “Gone. G’s not reel happy ’bout dat.”
“You mean they were, but . . . gone where?”
“Doan know fer shur. Dat lady . . .” Stoksie points out Raven, N’Doch’s fantasy woman, who looks more worn and anxious than he’s ever seen her. “She t’inks dey wenta . . . weah izzit, Luta?”
“Da Grove,” Luther intones solemnly.
“Makes sense. The summons. That’s where we were headed.” N’Doch would love to spin out the tale of the sky-blue limo, but he senses this just ain’t the time for it.
“Da reel Grove,” says Luther, grimmer than before.
“So? What’s the problem?”
“Dat wacko preechur iz dere. An’ heeza bad’un, all ri’. I saw ’im.”
“Didja? Fra Guill?” N’Doch is curious. “I ain’t had the pleasure yet.”
“Well,” drawls Stoksie darkly, “I t’ink yu gonna gettit reel soon.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
It seems a very long and languid time before the novelty of actual lovemaking wears off, and Fire recalls that he has a war to fight. But though his mind returns to the subject increasingly, he is still easily distracted by a caress or a heated glance. In between, he is content to expound at length about his superior strength and winning strategy, more willing to boast of the dedication and ferocity of his loyal followers than to rush to join them on the field. Paia is bemused by how easily she has conquered. It cannot be her shapely body and her loving alone. She’s not that good at it yet. Observing Fire from as clear-eyed an angle as she can manage, she would swear she detects signs of exhaustion in the slow way he gathers himself at last to return to the fray.
“Well, they will be looking for me to claim the victory. Make a few decorative passes over the battlefield. Incinerate a few prisoners.”
“You won’t!”
“Why not? Think how much it will cheer the priestlings to see their old chief go up in flames.”
She pulls away from him, wrapping the sheet around her shoulders. “Do you plan to carry me with you to this battle?”
“I can hardly leave you here on this barren mountaintop.”
He draws suggestively on the sheet, but Paia holds it fast. “You cannot expect me to war against my own cousin!”
“You won’t be fighting him, I will.”
“But it will be as if I was fighting him.” Perhaps an argument can be her next delaying tactic.
Fire lifts an arm over her shoulder and draws his sharp nails lightly down her back. “You would not fight him to reclaim your exalted status as my priestess? To regain your ancestral home?”
“I hate being a priestess.” She tries to sound prim and disapproving, when all she wants is to press herself against him. “And Leif wants the Citadel for all the Cauldwells, myself included. From there, he can provide help and shelter for all who come to him in need.”
“Very noble,” murmurs Fire into the small of her back. The heat of his breath traces the curve of her hip. “But a waste of valuable and vanishing resources. With so little time left to us, I have no intention of allowing my hard-won luxuries to be shared out among the worthless and inept who can’t find a way to take care of themselves. Death to the weak,” he says, taking her nipple in his mouth.
“But fighting wastes resources, too.”
“Ah, but it results in fewer mouths to feed.”
Paia summons a vastness of will and pushes him away. “Listen, my Fire. Couldn’t you work out some sort of truce? That way bloodshed could be prevented and the resources be conserved. If you swore on your honor as a dragon not to harm anyone . . .”
Fire falls backward on the bed, spread-eagled in a cascade of helpless guffaws. “On my honor?”
“But I’m serious. I could ask my cousin. I’m sure he . . .”
“No.” He looks up at her, his laughter fading. “Come now, beloved. You’re not actually suggesting that I share my palace with a legion of dregs and riffraff? That I live at the sufferance of my former slave?”
“Not a slave! He . . .”
“Subordinate, then! Servant! Stop splitting hairs!”
“The Temple ran smoothly due to my cousin’s inspired management! You’d never have been able to carry it off without him. You should be more grateful!”
“GRATEFUL?” Fire is on his feet and pacing before Paia can blink. “But for me, he’d have starved with the rest of the riffraff! He’s the foulest of traitors! He destroyed the Temple! He betrayed me and all who believed in me!”
She can offer him no denial on that count, and the usual excuses and explanations will only enrage him further. But Fire seems to have lost his relish for impassioned debate, as if even he senses that his accusations are growing repetitive and stale. Instead of heating up his diatribe against the ex-priest, higher and higher to the point of threats and invective, he slumps and turns away with a hiss of frustration. “Besides, even if Cauldwell did let us live in peace until the end comes, my siblings will be after me soon enough. With the end so near, they’ll never let me rest.”
“They’re well occupied with the search for Air, my Fire.” Paia has seen for herself the other dragons’ capacity for obsession. Though its focus differs radically, it is the match to his own.
But Fire, wandering in the shadows, shakes his head. “Not anymore.”
“What? Why not?”
He turns away again, waiting so long to answer that his reluctance is finally obvious. “My clever sister has found her own way to freedom.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“No. I didn’t.”
Because you’re ashamed, guesses Paia. Because now there’s a real possibility you’ve failed. It’s three against one now. That’s what’s changed.
“How did she get out?”
He flicks an impatient hand. “What does it matter?”
And Paia thinks, His real shame is that he doesn’t know. She’s outwitted him. “So, then . . .”
“So there’ll be no deals. No truces. What’s the point? It’s all or nothing now.”
“But why?”
“Because!”
“Really, my Fire. You sound like . . .” She can’t find a stinging enough comparison. “Well, you’re being completely unreasonable.”
“And this surprises you?”
“I thought perhaps . . .” She falters, knowing the words will sound foolish.
“Perhaps what?” He stalks out of the shadows to loom over her with his hair wild and his arms folded across his chest. He is looking less . . . human, she notes. More like his familiar scaled and gilded man-form. “You thought I would give in? Give up? You thought you’d tamed me? You and that sage old fool back in the café: you expect me to wax suddenly reasonable for the good of humanity? Humanity doesn’t deserve my charity. Besides, what’s the point of reason at the end of the world? Beloved, you forget who you’re dealing with!”
Paia droops. She smooths the silky bedsheet with her hand. She is not disappointed. She has done the best she could. She only hopes it will be enough. “No, my Fire. I do not forget.”
“Good. See that you don’t! Enough of this. I’m bored. We’re off to war! My faithful are waiting!”
And she is aloft again, instantly, her protest swept away by the wonder of flight. Again she is the great winged beast gliding over the ragged hills, where the only color is the red and yellow and gray of stone and the dust-thick windblown sky. Having now walked a landscape softened by trees, even one as sparse and dry as N’Doch’s Africa, Paia looks for green and feels a lack she never did before. The endless barren rock seems unfinished, lonely, somehow . . . tragic.
She hasn’t seen the Citadel from the air since she was small. Besides, things look differen
t through the eyes of a dragon than they did from the passenger seat of her father’s hover. Or maybe things are different: drier, more scrubbed, more beaten down by heat and scouring winds. Either way, they are nearly on top of it before she recognizes the wide sweep of valley, cut by the straight bright line of road. And there, in the shadowed curl of the upthrust cliff face, the walled courtyards climb like stacked boxes to the gilded facade of the Temple.
Paia would prefer to swoop and glide though the hot gusts of the heights, aloof from the struggles of priests and warriors, exulting in the glory of wings. She could observe the interesting dynamic of human geometry imposed upon the more random patternings of rock and sand. A juxtaposition once strong, now fading with the weakening of man’s hold over the Earth. Paia often tried to capture it in her paintings. She could learn the newer patterns, like the intruding fingers of blue, not as distant as she’d thought, and beyond and around, the infinite spread of ocean.
Perhaps she could exert some control over this magnificent body not her own, through sheer delight with its speed and agility, with its gleaming skin and taut muscle. She knows how the dragon responds to flattery. But Fire, having avoided the battle for so long, is now impatient to be at it. He banks and drops, chasing his own broad shadow across the wasted valley floor, toward the Grand Stair where dust and smoke rise and mix in an unnatural cloud. Clots of figures appear as the cloud thins or shifts, then vanish again behind a thickening billow. Running to and fro, the figures look like scurrying ants, dark against the red dirt but indistinguishable as to sex or age, or loyalty. Fire stoops out of the pale hot sky to wheel over the courtyards, his shadow scudding across the cliff face like a cloud crossing the sun. The ants are resolved into soldiers and priests and villagers, mingling in a common melee. Many halt as the dragon passes, to stare upward. Their gesticulating could be fearful or defiant. Paia cannot tell for sure. Even if she tries to deflect the dragon’s attack, which way should she turn him? She sees no neat and comprehensible battle lines. Apart from the occasional red flash of an Honor Guard’s tunic, it’s impossible to tell the sides apart or determine the course of the fighting. Leif Cauldwell’s army marched to war in the same clothes they farmed in or cared for their livestock, and the villagers loyal to the Temple would be no better equipped. They could be fighting a wildfire down there, instead of each other. The dragon offers no comment, but she senses his victorious mood plummeting like the pressure before a storm. His silence speaks his dismay and disbelief. He circles out over the valley and heads back for a second pass, lower this time, his roar crashing like wild surf along the cliff. He’s searching for patterns, too, a direction in the movement of bodies, a focal point, a leader. Some sign that his forces are rallying. They’re close enough now to see actual fighting, sprawled bodies here and there, the wounded being dragged to safety. But it seems that the motion is mostly toward the Temple, a steady inward flow meeting only sporadic resistance, passing eddies of stillness formed by groups of guarded prisoners, sullen in the heat or relieved to be out of the fighting. One large group near the top of the Grand Stair is entirely uniformed in Temple red. Several of them are chatting amiably with their peasant guards. It is the red-coats, not the rebels, who duck and quail as the dragon’s shadow sweeps over them.
The dragon hisses deep in his throat. COWARDS! TRAITORS! THEY’RE SWORN TO FIGHT TO THE DEATH! HAVE THEY FORGOTTEN? WHERE ARE MY FAITHFUL? WHERE IS MY VICTORY?
As they glide past, only meters above the fighters’ heads, Paia tries to direct Fire’s furious disbelieving glare. There are men and women, Tinkers and farmers, fighting side by side, some of them wearing little more than rags. Where is Leif Cauldwell, she wonders. Up at the front lines, or at the rear, directing the attack? Where is Dolph Hoffman?
Ahead, the tall plate-metal gates to the Inner Court are closed against a steady onslaught. Fire slows, spinning tighter circles above the sun-baked plaza where the remnants of the Honor Guard and a handful of priests and priestesses battle for control of the entrance to the Temple.
HERE ARE MY HEROES, MY FAITHFUL! HERE THE INVADER WILL BE TURNED BACK AND DESTROYED!
Can he really believe that, Paia wonders? She knows little of war, but she can tell a rout when she sees one. Siege ladders are being relayed hand over hand up the Grand Stair. Reinforcements have arrived, probably from the outlying villages that suffered so under the dragon’s tyranny. Fat metal tubes are carried up on men’s shoulders, gleaming dully in the sun. Guns of some sort, Paia is sure of it. Who could have guessed that the rebels would be so well armed?
With another thundering roar, Fire sweeps low over the gates. His rage and his body are a united force. Paia feels his chest expand with his fury to exhale a long fiery breath. Flame splashes across the heads and backs of the attackers. A few trailing screams as the beast wings by, but most of the fighters duck, then just move onward. They’re wearing some sort of shielding, a wide-brimmed helmet flexing into riveted plates down along their backs, like a turtle’s shell. Or the scales of a dragon. Paia reflects on the difficulty of defending the Citadel from the very man who held it against all attackers for so long. Leif Cauldwell has not sent his rebels into battle unprepared.
The ladders swing up against the walls. The defenders scale the inner sides to shove them away, but the weight of the rebels swarming upward holds the ladders firmly in place. Inside the courtyard, three red-robed priestesses scurry out of the Temple, their arms loaded with the gold ware from the altar. Paia assumes they’re saving the Temple’s treasures from the marauders, but as they race past the fighting into the tunnel to the Citadel, their guilty backward glances tell her otherwise.
No, they’re looting. Under the Temple portico, in the shade, she sees two priests arguing. She wonders what political dispute could be more important than fighting for their lives.
The dragon wheels, shrieking, and swoops in for another searing pass. As he reaches the gates, a sharp popping sound rips the air. Several of the defenders pitch forward silently and topple into the mass of rebels climbing the siege ladders. Paia has seen this before, watching the news feed during the endless days of the Final Collapse. Projectile weapons, primitive compared to the little laser pistol the dragon gave her, but effective, nonetheless.
Where is it now, that pistol? She follows the thought in order to distract herself from the continuing murder of the Temple staff. Men and women she has spent most of her life with. It doesn’t matter that she never befriended any of them. The God—no, the dragon—always discouraged that. It doesn’t matter that she considered them fools. Or that the ones she did like turned out to be rebels undercover, like Son Luco, aka Leif Cauldwell, and are probably the ones out there gunning down their former colleagues. Death is awful and final, no matter whose side you’re on.
Another rattle of gunfire. This time, it follows the dragon’s flight, falling around his body and gilded wings like a scatter of hail.
Falling. Gunfire from above.
As Paia comprehends this, so does the dragon. He tilts his fiery glance upward. A line of dark shapes, the heads and shoulders of men, roughens the worn profile of the cliff top. Again, the popping, then the sharp clatter against his scales. The dragon bellows and pumps his wings, soaring upward and away, then wheeling back, aiming himself like a missile at the heights. He skims low above the plateau, laying down a line of flame hot enough to scorch the rocks, but the sharpshooters have taken cover beneath deeply protruding ledges. As Fire passes, Paia hears a shout, a man’s voice raised in command. Another rain of metal chases the dragon’s tail.
For the first time since they joined the battle, Paia is afraid. Not for herself, but for the man down there, with the voice she recognized. The dragon banks sharply, turning back. One man stands higher than the rest, his blond hair and broad shoulders exposed, silhouetted against the sky. In his raised fist, an ancient weapon. Paia knows it well. The dragon-hilted sword.
Fire knows it, too.
HA! THAT ONE!
She’
d cry out to Köthen if she could. Get down! Get down! Your guns cannot hurt him! But she has no voice now but the dragon’s. Panic swirls around her, floodwaters. She will drown in it. Then she recalls Köthen on the mountaintop, how his steadiness and calm lent her the strength she needed to deny Fire the first time. Not a physical strength. A strength of mind. Too late now to wheedle, seduce, or beg. She must find that strength again, immediately. She must bargain with the devil.
Fire pulls up, then settles slowly onto a wind-carved pinnacle of rock. He stares at Köthen, considering. Köthen gestures to his men to stay under cover and hold their fire, then lowers his sword to the ground, point first. He leans easily against the hilt, and stares back. Paia feels the dragon shudder with outrage. She bends all her will against the hard wall of his innermost being.
You will not hurt him, my Fire!
I WILL!
He cannot hurt you. An unequal fight would be cowardly.
WHO CARES? I’M AT WAR! HE’S MY ENEMY!
If you harm this man, I will know that your siblings are right. That all you’ve told me is lies! That you are a coward and a murderer and you care for nothing but yourself and your own pleasure!
HE IS YOUR LOVER!
No, though he might have been. Instead, you won me back again.
YOU BETRAYED ME WITH HIM! YOU LOVE HIM STILL! HE SHALL NOT LIVE!
Is it love she feels, gazing at Köthen’s sturdy, imperturbable stance, or gratitude?
But I chose to follow you instead.
HE DARED TO CHALLENGE ME! HE SHALL NOT LIVE!
Her own person is her only currency. The threat of leaving is her only weapon. Such as they are, Paia knows her Duty is to use them.
If he dies, you will lose me again, and this time, forever! You can only hold me if I come to you willingly!
The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet Page 32