“We don’t have time to wait ourselves through one of her tantrums!”
“It isn’t a tantrum.” Erde was shocked by the hoarse sound of her own voice.
“Luther . . .?”
“Yu ought lissen to ’em, Leif. Dere’s t’ings dey know.”
Cauldwell rubbed his brow in disbelief, then appealed directly to the priestess, his big hands spread. “Look. Paia. I wish we had time to get you up to speed on all this gradually, but we don’t. We’ve committed ourselves to a rather desperate course of action. We need your help and we need it now!”
Constanze stroked the priestess’ hand as if she were a frightened kitten. “We need to be able to tell the others you’re willing, or it’ll be hard to keep you safe from Sel Minor’s faction. Their view right now is a short one, focused entirely on revenge.”
It looked for a moment like Paia might break down again. A half-glance up at Köthen stopped her. She seemed surprised to find him still there. She gathered herself, sniffing. “What kind of help? What could I possibly do?”
“Convince him to change his ways. You’re the only one he’ll listen to. The only one he must listen to.”
“He’ll come after you! All of you!”
“He’ll try.”
“He’ll find you!”
“He hasn’t so far.”
“And of course, we’ll have you as a hostage,” said Constanze.
“What?” The priestess looked at Cauldwell. “Hostage?”
He nodded, somewhat apologetically.
“Luco! How could you?”
Constanze ticked items off on her fingers entirely without apology. “And we’ve cut off food and goods shipments to the Citadel, and evacuated our people from the towns and farms as best we can.”
“Life’s going to get real hard at the Citadel, Paia. You’re better off here with us.”
The priestess lidded her eyes, folded her hands in her lap, and took a deep, shuddering, and hopeless breath. “I always knew you feared the God, Luco, but I thought you loved him, too. Or, at least, believed in him.”
“What’s to believe in?” Constanze demanded. “What does he offer but the end of the world? There’s a better way, Paia.”
“Amen!” breathed Luther, from out of the shadows.
“There’s One who offers hope instead of despair.”
“She walks in light,” someone murmured.
“Ah.” The priestess glanced up. “You talk of helping the people, but I see what this really is. Just another heresy. I’m surprised at you, Luco, having put down so many of them yourself.”
Heresy. The word alone gave Erde a chill, but Cauldwell only sighed. “Not just another, Paia. The Beast is not the only force of nature abroad in the End of Days.” He settled himself again in front of her and held out his hand. “By the way, may I introduce myself properly? My name is Leif Cauldwell. Your father was my uncle, Paia. We’re cousins.”
She looked at him dumbfounded. “Cousins?”
There was a sudden commotion in the corridor.
Cauldwell paused, listening toward the door, as the guards moved swiftly out into the hall. “Mick? What’s up?”
“Visitors,” said one of them.
Erde feared the angry damaged woman from upstairs had armed herself and her cohorts. But it sounded more like children, a lot of them. And it was! A wild pack of children, spilling, bursting into the room, squealing and laughing, racing around the adults as if in the middle of a mad game of tag, most of them younger than Mari and Senda. Erde’s hands were grabbed, her arms pulled. She felt like an ancient grown-up among them. Where did they all come from?
“Gotta come! Gotta come!” they chanted. “He wants yu come now!”
A blonde little girl threw herself at Cauldwell’s knees. His impatient frown vanished. He bent, scooped her up, and swung her in the air. “Young one! Hello! What is it?”
“Gotta come now, Da! Gotta come now!”
“He wants to see me?”
She shook her head. “He wanna see dem!”
“Who, them?” Cauldwell pouted comically. “What about me?”
The resemblance between them was unmistakable. Erde saw the priestess watching, her wonder entirely transparent. Not only was her supposed priest married, he had children as well. Or one child, at least. A perfect, healthy one. And Erde was beginning to understand how rare that was in this devastated future.
The child giggled and laid her small hand on Cauldwell’s cheek. “Das okay, Da. Yu kin come, too.”
“Who does he want to see?”
Immediately, a child fastened itself to Erde’s arm. N’Doch and Baron Köthen were similarly claimed, and the two Tinkers. A young boy, perhaps the oldest, presented himself bashfully before the priestess. His thin, dark limbs seemed to move each in a different direction. He stuck out his hand like he’d just gotten it and wasn’t sure how it worked. “He say, yu gotta come special.”
Cauldwell seemed surprised at last. “How could he have known . . .?”
“Ain’ a lot he doan know,” remarked Luther.
Cauldwell nodded, then snugged the little girl high on one hip. “Well, off with us, then, young one. We’ve been summoned.”
The priestess let the young boy pull her to her feet, but it was Baron Köthen’s arm she sought blindly, for support. The other children had regrouped by the doorway, waiting none too quietly. “Hurry hurry hurry! He wants yu to come now!”
Summoned. This word was a final key, fitting into a lock in Erde’s ears. They had indeed been summoned, and now she could hear it, inside, in the dragon’s place. But it wasn’t the dragon. It wasn’t words, or even images. More like an articulate breeze. It distracted her from the sight of another woman on Baron Köthen’s arm.
N’Doch! Do you hear it?
He shook his head like a dog. I hear it. Comin’ in loud ’n clear.
So he’s back in the crowded corridors again, with kids hauling on his arms, and a big dragon buzz in his head, only there’s no dragon, or at least, if there is, she’s not talking to him. And he’s not sure what got into him, making him stand up like that for the priestess. N’Doch thinks things are starting to get weird, even by his definition.
Soon the clutter’s so thick in the passage that just walking has to be skillfully negotiated. Then there’s a door ahead of them, circular and armored like a vault but standing wide open. N’Doch guesses it would take several hours and some good strong men to shift away all the piles and nondescript electronics shoved against it. He hopes it doesn’t ever have to be closed in an emergency. The joint looks a little derelict, but through the opening he sees console lights and screen glow. Someone’s up and working.
The kids get real quiet at the door, like they’ve turned off the noise faucet. Even the Tinkers hesitate, Luther especially. Though he goes in ahead of Stoksie, he moves with the same faintly awed respect that Sedou brought out in him. Is it for all the high tech inside, or for the person running it?
Whadda ya think girl?
There is great power in here.
N’Doch cracks a nervous grin. He can feel it in his bone marrow. And it ain’t just electrical!
The big room is even dimmer and colder than the corridors. Part of it is divided into low-walled cubicles, empty workstations with desks and small banks of monitors. But the far wall is curved, one huge wraparound screen or series of screens, with a big curved console at the center point of the arc. Someone is working there, and the kids halt a short distance away and wait silently to be noticed. Köthen lets the priestess move ahead of him. She kind of floats into the room with her kid escort beside her. Cauldwell’s girl-baby squirms in his arms. He sets her down, and she races off to rejoin the pack.
The guy at the console is muttering to himself. N’Doch is pretty sure it’s a guy because of the hulking width of his shoulders, but it’s hard to see much detail. He’s mostly a dark, rounded silhouette against the bright blue screen. N’Doch reads the image as a map of some kind
, or aerial view, with three colored blips tracking across it. A fourth blinks faintly in a lower corner. Surveillance of some sort, he guesses, and pretty advanced at that.
The priestess woman steps away from her kid escort, still a bit wobbly on her feet, and drifts toward the screen. “What is . . .?”
“Missus!” The kid catches her, hauls her back. She tries to shake him off, still weak and vague with the aftermath of the drug and the emotional pounding she’s taken. N’Doch can see she’s not used to being manhandled, at least not without her permission. But her regal air cuts no ice with this determined kid, and it looks like another scuffle might erupt.
N’Doch catches Köthen’s arm halfway to his sword hilt. “Easy, man. He ain’t gonna hurt her.”
Then the guy at the console rises. He strips off what looks like some kind of VR headset, unwinds himself from various cables and cords. He’s heavyset and seriously round-shouldered. He walks with a shambling gait as if he’s carrying around a little too much weight for his years. As he moves out of silhouette into the light, N’Doch notices first how the bright blue of his loose jumpsuit matches the screen, then how hairy he is. He’s got a wild head of salt-and-pepper, a full mustache, and a bushy, silver-streaked beard. His brows are so long, they veil his eyes. At first he doesn’t seem to notice them. He tosses a piece of paper down, picks up another. Every surface within reach of him and his console are layered with books and disks and printout. He searches through a stack of crackling leather-bound tomes, doesn’t find what he’s after. Then suddenly, he glances up. He seems astonished to find new people in the room, or any people at all. Yet, within one quick sweep of this guy’s dark and piercing gaze, N’Doch feels he’s been surveyed, identified, analyzed, and understood. But not, somehow, dismissed. Instead, he feels welcomed.
N’Doch! I know him!
The girl moves toward the guy as if in a daze. Sure enough, the guy opens his stubby arms to her and she walks right into them, before N’Doch can stop her.
“Gerrasch!”
Erde had given up asking how the inexplicable could come to be. It simply did. It wasn’t Gerrasch, and yet it was. Less like an overgrown pond animal, more like a man, yet still Gerrasch in his essence, as well as in the connection she felt with him, had always felt, from the first time they met. At least one particular cascade of events had somehow come full circle. She didn’t need to know what he was doing there. It just seemed right that he was, and that she should let him enfold her in a smothering hug. His warm woodland smell was exactly the same.
“Long! Long! Relieved. Finally. Four now.” His voice was still a raspy bass. He held her away from him to eye her solemnly. “Grown!”
Erde knew a laugh would violate the gravity of the moment. One sneaked out anyhow. “Oh, Gerrasch, you saw me only a few weeks ago!”
“No. You saw. Me, centuries. Waiting. Get it?”
It made her spine tingle to think about it, but she thought she did. She took his soft pink-palmed hand and drew him toward the others. “Gerrasch, this is . . .”
“Yes.” Gerrasch made directly for N’Doch and held out his other hand. “Brother. Songs of welcome. Work now. Quickly.”
N’Doch said, “Huh?”
Luther watched all this with happy astonishment. “Dis heah da fren’ yu bin lookin fer?”
“No, but . . .” N’Doch began.
“An old and cherished friend just the same,” Erde finished for him.
N’Doch laughed. “You, too?”
“What?”
“Modern English? Not even dragon English, all of a sudden?”
Goodness. He was right. She did sound better. Modern. A resident of both past and present. Gazing into Gerrasch’s knowing face, Erde understood there would be no language she could not speak right then, right there. She nodded at the vast blue brightness, and the strange table lit with what looked like a hundred tiny candles. “Gerrasch, what is all this?”
“Library. Librarian, me.”
“Epicenter,” said N’Doch.
Gerrasch beamed at him.
“What’s an . . .”
He took her hand. “Wait. Four. Then talk.” He guided them through the solemn ranks of children and amazed Tinkers, toward the heathen priestess. Paia seemed even more confused than she had in the other room, as if the blue-lit strangeness of this one had unmoored her further. No wonder she recoiled when Gerrasch shambled up and without preamble, reached for her hand.
“No! Don’t touch me!”
Leif Cauldwell stepped forward. “I’m sorry, G. She’s not in the best of form. This is the Librarian, Paia.”
“Don’t let him touch me!”
“He won’t hurt you. He’s a good and wise man. If he wants to talk to you, it’s for a very good reason.”
Luther added, “Da Liberian isa proffet, lady. A holy oracul. He speak fur da One who come.”
Speaks for the One . . .
“He does?” Four, he’d said. Erde’s eyes clenched shut with comprehension and gratitude. N’Doch, do you hear? Do you know what that means?
I can guess . . .
He must be!
She was sure of it. Prophet or oracle the Tinkers might think him, and he might even be, but Gerrasch was also Lady Air’s guide in the world of men. She was so sure, she didn’t give it further question. Would he have answers to the mysteries and unknowns that had plagued the Quest from its beginnings? Oh, if only the dragons were here! The fourth dragon guide! Their number was complete.
But Gerrasch was rather large and strange looking, and the poor weepy priestess, who knew nothing of her Duty or her Destiny, saw his friendly overture as a threat.
“Keep him away from me!” she shrieked, backing into Baron Köthen’s arms.
Since waking up, Paia’s felt like she’s trapped inside someone else’s skin. Someone she doesn’t like very much, but can’t seem to shake. Who is this frantic, sobbing woman who’s suddenly terrified of everything, who’s lost her dignity, who can only think of screaming for the God to come and rescue her? She’s not even a woman. She’s the protected little girl whose world was turned upside down once before, who never had to learn to live with change and instability, because the God came and made the world right again. The God saved her then. He could save her now. She has only to call him.
But she cannot. This strange creature will not let her. Something he’s doing is blocking her summons. Her head is filled with static. She knows he’s the God’s enemy, one of them, at least. Yet he smiles at her so sweetly, as if he is overjoyed to see her, relieved even, as if now that she’s there, his life can move onward. But Paia looks down and sees the chasm yawning between them. She would have to cross it to take the creature’s offered hand. Why should she, though he entreats it so gently and fervently? Who is he, but the God’s enemy? She owes him nothing. Nothing! Yet, she is tempted.
No! A part of Paia sees the panic seize her and admits it isn’t logical. But the reflex runs riot in her head, screaming about duty. Her duty must be to the God! She must not be tempted! She fumbles inside her layered clothing for the thing she has concealed there. Her grip is oddly weak, but it’s a small thing, easy to grasp. She jerks it out and points it at the enemy.
The enemy smiles again and spreads his hands, as if inviting her. She sees that his palms are soft and pink, so vulnerable. But there is a danger in him, terrible danger, if she could only comprehend what it is. She struggles to think, the gun shaking in her outstretched fist. The girl dressed as a boy steps in front of the awful creature. Paia hears Son Luco swear, actual heresy and filth. But he should understand her confusion. He also has become someone else. He has become her cousin. Even so, he moves abruptly to stop her, so Paia turns the gun on him instead.
“Paia, be sensible. There’s a hundred villagers upstairs thirsting for your blood. Even if you murder us all, where are you going to go?”
“The God will save me! He’ll come in a glory of light and he’ll . . .”
“I don
’t think so,” says Luco. “If he hasn’t done it already . . .”
“Don’t look for it,” the tall African agrees. “He’s kinda busy right now.”
He grins at her in the most presumptuous, irritating way and dances a few steps to one side, so Paia shifts her glare and the muzzle of her little gun toward him.
“What do you know about the God?”
“You’d be surprised, lady.”
Then someone’s beside her, calmly lifting the gun from her hand, the man with the sword, to whom, in her mind, she has already given herself. She stares at him, right into his eyes for the first time. They are as dark as she remembers from the dreams. If the God cannot save her, she will let this man do it. He smiles back, his devotion already unconditional. “Tch, tch, Liebchen.”
“Smooth move, Dolph.” The African takes the gun and sticks it into his waistband. “What the hell did you give her, preacher man?”
Luco lets out a breath.
Now the sword man takes Paia’s hand. He’s leading her toward the enemy, but she cannot resist him. His eyes hold such promises.
The God’s enemy has linked hands with the girl and the African. Now he takes Paia’s hands and places one in each of theirs. When the tall African grips her hand, Paia hears faint, poignant music and the sighing of oceans. The young girl’s touch brings perfumes of meadows and pine boughs.
Hungrily, Paia’s senses shake off their fog and drowse, to embrace these scents and sounds. They are unfamiliar yet longed for. She has known them all her life. A dry, clearing wind blows through her head. She has never felt more alive.
The African has lost his snarky grin. His eyes are anxious. The three of them stand awkwardly, joined by hands in an arc, until the strange creature takes the others’ free hands in his own and completes the circle.
Then Paia learns what the real danger is.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
. . . And it’s like being jacked in to each other’s brains. Freaky. Not like his silent converse with the girl. Virtual reality. Much worse than the old dragon internet. Dragons, it turns out, know how to respect your privacy. But at least now he doesn’t have to ask who this hairy guy is. It’s there for the knowing. Like all the files are open. All the histories, the personal stories, the varied roads taken by each of them to this place of . . . convergence. A meeting that it looks like everything in creation has been trying to prevent, yet one that could never have been avoided.
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