He looked exactly as she remembered him, not as she would have wished to remember him, as the golden lord in that fateful barn in Erfurt. He was as she remembered from her dreams, which had revealed to her so clearly the sad progression of Baron Köthen’s disillusionment. She should not have been surprised by Rose’s unflattering description. But she had not wanted to accept the truth of her dreams quite so literally.
From a shadowed corner of the great room, Erde watched Köthen move into the lantern light as if into a dungeon. She saw his eyes sweep the borders of the room the way he’d swept the night air with his sword in the clearing where he’d found the murdered prince, arc after glittering arc of shamed outrage. He wore civility like an ill-fitting garment. He stopped in the middle of the room, and as he stood there uncertainly, his face for an instant was as raw and open as a child’s, exposing to any who observed him his impatience at being kept from the battle, his horror at being suddenly powerless to command his own surroundings. Erde had seen that he’d arrived with his hands bound. She could not imagine what could have induced Hal—who should have understood him better than anyone—to submit his former foster son and squire to such humiliation. Rose said events had been hard on Baron Köthen, but this was clearly an understatement. All the ease in him was gone. Now he moved like man whose skin was filled with broken glass.
A moment later, his face closed again, as he let habits of breeding and pragmatism master his outrage. As a guest of the house, he would be expected to behave. Yet Erde saw how close he was to the limit of his own good sense, how his dry humor had turned bitter, how rage was eroding his optimism as well as his grace. And how, when she stepped bravely out of the shadow to greet him, his eyes swept past her as something unrecognized, unfamiliar, unimportant, in his single-minded search for answers to his predicament.
She saw all that, and also saw how Hal eyed him with covert concern. How the third man’s attention never left him. The two of them, watching Baron Köthen sidelong, as one might a drunk or a madman, to keep him from hurting himself, or someone else. Soon, she couldn’t bear to see it any longer. She slipped out of the room into a back hall and fled to the consoling company of the dragon in the barn.
“Under the protection of women, Heinrich? You think less of my skills than ever I thought.” The Challenger grins in a death’s-head sort of way and tosses his wet cloak down on a stool.
Coming in behind him with the others, N’Doch notices how this guy walks into a room like he owns it, or if he doesn’t yet, he will soon enough. Idly, N’Doch wonders if he could learn how to do that.
Deliberately, Rose picks up the cloak and hands it off to one of the twins. “Do you intend to leave him, then, Heinrich?”
The Honcho spreads his hands. Now N’Doch understands his air of apology. “If you’ll take him, Rosie. Don’t know how else to keep him alive.”
“Or even if you should,” remarks Rose.
The Honcho sighs. N’Doch reads pain in him, and not a little ambivalence. “His last escapade cost me three of my best men.”
“How I love being talked about in the third person!” The Challenger turns neatly on his heel. “My lady Rose. Forgive my ill manners. I haven’t yet greeted you.” He bows to her, low and crisp. “The years have not diminished your beauty nor your fabled wisdom. But I was unaware that you had gone into the business of arrest and detainment.”
Rose returns his satirical stare. “Don’t be sullen, Adolphus Michael. It doesn’t become you. Don’t worry. We’ll keep you employed and busy. You’ll see it’s all for the best.”
“I fail to see how.”
Rose moves past him like he’s some misbehaving son she’s ignoring. She catches the tall guy’s cloak as he shrugs it off, and passes that one, too, into waiting hands. The issue of why the Challenger is here seems clear to everyone but N’Doch. “Come, warm up by the fire. You must be cold and hungry.”
“An understatement,” mutters the Challenger.
“Rosie,” says the Honcho, “This is Dolph’s captain, Kurt Wender. The best of men. If you’re willing and up to this, he’ll be keeping our good baron company.”
The Bodyguard steps forward with a bow, much more polite than the Challenger’s. “My lady.”
Rose smiles at him. “I’m nobody’s lady, Captain Wender, except perhaps Heinrich’s. Call me Rose. Please, come by the fire. You are welcome.”
Wender nods gratefully. He finds a bench by the fire and drops onto it with a sigh. He accepts a mug of heated wine from the other of the twins. N’Doch’s glad to see he’s too much the man’s man to carry all this bowing and scraping any further.
Raven fills another mug from the big crock warming just inside the fireplace. She offers it to the Challenger, who looks her over. N’Doch sees speculation but little interest. Still, he can’t help eavesdropping.
“Where have you been, Raven?”
“Oh, here and there. Mostly here.”
“Ever since?”
She nods. “I was sorry to hear about your father.”
“It’s seven years since I assumed the title, Raven.”
“Still. He was always kind to me.”
The Challenger frowns, as if he resents any pleasant memory. “A good man.”
“Yes. And you? You look thin, Dolph. Slim pickings along the road?”
“Is it any different here? Out there, people are killing each other for food now. Blizzards in September! The countryside is starving.”
“Can’t something be done to help?” Raven asks mildly.
The Challenger flicks her a disbelieving glance, then shakes his head. “That, dear Raven, is what I was trying to do.”
Raven just smiles at him and again holds up the steaming mug. He takes it, then looks at it as if he’s forgotten what it’s for, and sets it aside. He’s already moving about, measuring the walls of his prison. “The hell with war and politics. By the way, where is here?”
“Welcome to Deep Moor.”
“Many thanks. What’s Deep Moor?”
“A place apart. Away from the ills of the world. Or so we thought.”
The Challenger snorts. “Until I arrived to spoil your idyll.” He paces back to her, stops, brushes her chin gently with the back of his hand. “You’ve grown no less beautiful, Raven.”
“Nor you, Dolph.”
“Are you the bait, then?”
“Pardon?”
“To keep the prisoner docile and pacified during his incarceration?”
Raven tilts her head. “Such bitter thoughts, Dolph.”
“I have cause,” he growls, and turns away.
Raven shrugs. She joins Rose as she draws the Honcho into the warmth of the big stone hearth. “We were just making dinner when you arrived.”
“Dinner!” The tall guy’s booming laugh is over the top, N’Doch thinks. Like the poor man’s hoping the black mood he’s brought into the room can be denied by applying the proper amount of cheer. “Wender! When d’you figure our last meal was?”
“Two days past, my lord, at least.”
“My count also. And a poor meal it was at that.” He reaches eagerly for the mug Raven has put on the table beside him. “I’m any day glad to ride into Deep Moor, but this time gladder than ever. It’s bad out there, Rosie. It’d be bad even if we weren’t trying to fight a war. Stores are running low everywhere, and when the hell-priest provisions his armies, he leaves nothing behind for the villages. Not a scrap, not a bean! So they’re angry at any soldier who rides their way, no matter whose side he’s on!” He pauses, looks at the floor, his cheer deflating into frustration and despair. “Truth is, we could use a good feeding.”
“And you shall have it.”
The prospect seems to buck him up a bit, and he grins. “You might even get Dolph to eat something. He’s not been fond of my cooking.”
Over his shoulder, the Challenger retorts, “If you can refer to hacking at a hunk of frozen bread with your sword as ‘cooking.’”
“Picky, picky,” mutters the Honcho, but N’Doch can see he’s pleased to have raised even a sprout of humor from such stony ground. He sips from his mug, shaking his head with grim appreciation, and sips again, drawing Rose aside. “But what news? If the travelers have returned, where is Milady Erde?”
“She’s . . .” Rose looks around. “Oh. Well, she was here . . .”
From her seat by the fire, Raven says, “I think she went out to the barn.”
“Not here to greet me?”
“Well, he’s in the barn, no doubt expecting a visit.”
“Ah. Yes, that’s it.” Again, he looks pleased, “Then we must comply immediately. Did all go well with their journey?”
“News over dinner,” says Rose, “and a visit after. First, there are other introductions to be made.”
She looks N’Doch’s way. Suddenly he realizes that the group he came in with has evaporated quietly to the other parts of the house. In the kitchen, the clatter of food preparation starts up like background music. He and the dragon-as-Sedou are left stranded by the door, with the girl nowhere to be seen. Rose beckons them forward out of the shadows. All three men turn at the creak of their footsteps across the old wooden floor.
It’s weird, but N’Doch wishes he had a guitar in his hands. He feels at a distinct disadvantage. Not that one song, even the right one, could explain or justify his presence here completely. But it could sure help.
With the shedding of the long, concealing cloaks, he sees that the men are dirty and wet through, that their faces are bruised, that their layers of silk and leather and mail are muddied, bloodstained, and torn. What’s more, weapons have come into view. Not on the Challenger, of course, but the Bodyguard Wender and the tall guy both wear sleek, leather-sheathed knives at their waists and swords on their hips. Swords. Real ones. Fine steel, glinting with firelight. To N’Doch, these big blades seem impossibly long. He can’t see how you wouldn’t trip on them. The tall guy is just unbuckling his to lay it aside when Rose brings N’Doch and Sedou to his attention. Having done so, she looks momentarily at a loss.
N’Doch grins. Rose speechless? He hasn’t seen this in the whole week he’s known her. “Mais, par où commencer?” he says to her. Where do you start?
“Eh bien, mon petit. J’en sais rien.”
He sees the men eyeing him, over Rose’s shoulder. Taking in his youth, his height, how his head nearly grazes the ceiling’s lowest beams. Noting Sedou’s athletic build, and the shared alien ebony of their skin, the difference in their faces. These men have seen most of what their world has to offer, N’Doch can tell, but probably their world doesn’t include Africa yet. They don’t know what they’re looking at, and they’re not used to that. He recalls how the girl stared at him so much at first, mostly when she thought he wasn’t looking. These guys are not so polite. They start staring and keep right on at it.
The dragon stirs in his mind.
We could be men to them, or demons.
It gets real quiet for a moment in that darkening room, and N’Doch wonders if he’s in any danger. The windows have gone all iron gray, blank with night and snow. Nowhere to run. He’s got his eye on the Honcho, whose bright, curious gaze shifts from himself to Sedou and back a few times, questing, reading for information and understanding. This guy knows something important’s afoot, when strangers—male, alien strangers—have preceded him into this women’s haven at Deep Moor.
But Rose reels off the names with the ease of a talk show hostess, like there’s no one but us humans in the room. She introduces the Honcho as Heinrich von Engle, late of Weisstrasse. He throws a smile their way and, real quickly, adds, “Just Hal Engle.”
The Challenger apparently answers to the name Adolphus Michael von Hoffman, Baron Köthen, a name longer even than Engle’s sword, but he volunteers no shortcut of any kind. N’Doch remembers the girl saying her father was a baron and that she grew up in a castle. Must mean this Köthen dude is somebody important.
Rose keeps up the talk show chat as she explains the language problem, that one of these “foreign” visitors speaks German, the other doesn’t. N’Doch notices there is no mention of the always ongoing simultaneous translation by dragon power. He decides he’s just regained several points of lost advantage. Then the tall guy Engle surprises him by saying quietly to Rose, “I have read of dark men such as these. Have they come from the south below the sea? Is one the mage his lordship sought?”
“No, but N’Doch and Sedou have traveled back with Lady Erde from the place that she went with him.”
“Ah.” Engle holds up a finger, shakes his head once. His eyes flick toward the Challenger, who’s moved off restlessly to stare out a window.
Rose gives this some thought. Then she says aloud, “He doesn’t know?”
“Rosie . . .” Engle murmurs.
“If you’ve brought him to stay, Heinrich, there’s no way we can keep it from him.”
Engle looks flustered. Oddly, he glances at Sedou, like the “dark man” has said something to him, or might be about to. “I don’t think it’s . . . well, I hadn’t expected them back so soon.”
“Really, I’m such an inconvenience to you, Heinrich. Why don’t you just get rid of me?” The Challenger turns from his study of gray on gray outside the window. “What don’t I know?”
Engle stares down at the floor, then up again at Sedou. His eyes narrow, then refocus suddenly in a kind of veiled wonder, as if he’s been asked an unexpected and remarkable question. N’Doch doesn’t want to look. He’s afraid the dragon’s chosen a really stupid moment to shape-shift. “He wouldn’t have believed me if I did tell him, Rose. Never has. He’ll require the proof of his senses.”
“This is interesting,” murmurs Sedou.
“Well,” says Rose. “No time like the present.”
“I don’t . . .” Engle begins. “Wait. Wait.” He chews his lip, overgrown with a shaggy mustache, then regards Rose from under lowered brows, like a child planning mischief. “But you said, Rosie, more than one . . .?”
“Two.”
“Is the . . . other . . .?” He tilts his head toward the barn.
“Not exactly.”
“Ahhh. I wish the girl were here to guide me.”
“No, you don’t.”
N’Doch realizes there’s some old sort of game playing itself out here between Rose and her lover, like if she just came right out and told him everything he wants to know, he’d be disappointed. Even though it’s clear he wants to know it desperately. His gaze drifts back to Sedou.
“Ah. That’s it,” he says again, more softly. His eyes flutter closed, as if in utter gratitude. N’Doch hears in his voice the same veiled wonder that had been in his look. “Shape-shifter.”
Beside him, Sedou stands a little taller.
At the window, the Challenger clears his throat. “Am I to die, my knight, before being offered enlightenment?”
“Wait. Wait. A moment, please. You cannot know how . . .” Engle gropes behind him for the sword he’s laid on the table. He takes it in both hands and pulls it slowly from its sheath. N’Doch suppresses the primal shiver that seizes him at the cool rasp of that much steel being drawn. The blade grabs his attention like a shout. It flashes bright shards of firelight into his eyes. Both its faces are honed to an invisible edge, but he can see scarring up and down the length. This blade has been well used. He had a machete once that looked almost as murderous, a weapon he loved, so he is both horrified and mesmerized, like the snake before the mongoose, as Engle sets the empty sheath aside and comes toward him. The man moves easily still, not like an old man but a fighter. N’Doch holds his ground. But it doesn’t matter. Engle’s wondering gaze is not fixed on him.
The dragon is a whisper in his head.
He knows.
“What? How?” murmurs N’Doch out loud. “Like Baraga?”
The last guy who twigged to what Sedou was had blown N’Doch to bits.
No. Just knows. I’d say, good instincts and a lifetime of study.
Engle approaches, his eyes on Sedou. Five paces away, he stops. “Rosie,” he says hoarsely, over his shoulder. “Am I right about this?”
Her reply is loving, and so quiet that N’Doch can barely hear it. “Yes, Heinrich. You are the finest dragon-hunter of them all.”
Hunter? N’Doch readies himself, his mind tossing up all the ways he might wrestle that mean-looking gorgeous blade out of the tall guy’s hands. Except that Engle is not raising the sword to strike. He’s turned it hilt-upward, set its point gingerly to the floor, and gone done on one knee, head bowed, at Sedou’s feet. When he speaks, it’s in Frankish, more fluent than Rose’s, and N’Doch gets an inkling who she learned it from.
“My lord,” says Engle. “My sword is ever at your service.”
Rose smiles. “Actually, Heinrich, it’s ‘my lady.’”
“Is it so? An excellent symmetry! My lady, then.” Engle is unfazed. “I thought my life’s whole purpose satisfied when I pledged myself to one of your kind, my lady. I never dreamed of the good fortune that will allow me to serve two.”
The hair stands up on the back of N’Doch’s neck. There’s something so pure, so absolute in Engle’s tone. Without any proof, the guy just believes. And Sedou shows no embarrassment at having this old soldier down in front of him. N’Doch watches as his brother grasps the offered sword like he’s handled one all his life. The hilt is carved, with the winged figure of a dragon coiled around a tree. Sedou lifts the blade and holds it upright in front of him. He brings it close, lining it up with his nose until his breath fogs the polished metal. Then he sets it back a bit, regarding its gleaming ferocity with solemn bemusement. Like he’s moved by thoughts he can’t possibly begin to express or explain. Like the sword itself is a whole story to him. The reflection that N’Doch sees in the steel is the dragon’s eye, not his brother Sedou’s. The voice is Sedou’s, but the words come from another time and place as he answers Engle in perfect old German.
“I am glad, Sir Knight, that we meet first at a moment when I possess the hands to take up this blade in gratitude, and return it to you with my acceptance of your pledge of service.” Sedou reverses the hilt and extends it forward. N’Doch lets go a breath, amazed. The Challenger, he sees, is staring at them in disbelief.
“What service may I perform?” Engle intones, his eyes shining.
“We will speak of that.”
Engle rises, takes the sword, and drops the blade by his side. Then he stands back with a final bow. It all goes so smoothly, it’s like they’ve rehearsed it. Or like they both just instinctively knew what to do. N’Doch feels he’s in the presence of something ancient beyond understanding. Beyond his understanding, at least. One of the things he likes about life, he decides, is that it’s still always catching him by surprise. He thinks of the girl, always going on about dragon lore and dragon purposes, all the stuff he’s supposed to know for some reason, and doesn’t. A lifetime of study, the dragon had said. This must be some of what they’re both talking about.
And as quickly as it began, the ritual is over. Engle relaxes, and the dragon-as-Sedou is just Sedou again, a big dark man with a smile that could eat you alive. Engle turns to N’Doch with a little bow.
“And you are her guide? Welcome.”
N’Doch starts to stick out his hand, then holds back and returns the bow as best he can. This whole event is feeling like one big performance anyway. But he can tell it’s real enough to Engle. And maybe to the others. Across the room by the fire, the Bodyguard Wender is looking pretty weirded out. He’s on his feet, easing his half-drawn weapon back into its scabbard as if he’s not sure he should.
But the Challenger has set his bearded jaw. “Keep me in the dark, Heinrich, if you must, but explain at least why a King’s Knight kneels so readily to this . . . stranger!”
“Ah, an ancient and venerable stranger!”
“I repeat, kneels to a stranger, but would not to the best pick among us for healing the kingdom?”
“Not the best until you learn a little control,” Engle tosses back with half his attention. He’s still grinning and elated.
“What?”
“Or even the best, yes, but not the most legitimate.”
“Legitimate?” The Challenger jabs a finger in Sedou’s direction. “Is this legitimate?” N’Doch notes how quickly the hard rage in him breaks into the open. “What, have you found us some new pretender? One that Otto himself doesn’t even know he’s sired?”
“No need to be offensive,” Raven murmurs from the fireplace.
Engle flashes Sedou a complicit glance, then turns back to the room looking flushed and victorious. “Dolph, Dolph, you misunderstand. This is another thing entirely. You’ll be on your knees yourself when you’re faced with the truth of it.”
“Never!”
“Don’t doubt it, lad.”
“Don’t call me that!” the younger man snarls.
Engle spreads his hands. “Dolph . . .”
“No! Never again! This is ended, Heinrich!” He spins away, then back again immediately, his wrists pressed together in Engle’s face. “You bound me! Me! In Erfurt, I showed you greater honor!”
At last Engle focuses on him. “Yes! You did! I freely admit it! But, Dolph, here . . . here in Deep Moor, I could not indulge your current death wish, for the sake of others. You cannot know how precious the thing is that’s being guarded here.”
“A kingdom is precious, Heinrich! What could be more?” The Challenger moves up on him again, circling. Wender’s hand returns to his sword hilt.
“I’ve tried to tell you, Dolph, how many times over the years! Before I knew myself for sure! I even tried to tell you in Erfurt, but you were so interested in a crown, you wouldn’t listen! Now even you will be unable to deny it!”
The Challenger halts his advance. His shoulders go slack like he’s had a sudden realization. “What in hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the truth!”
“The truth of what?”
The two men glare at each other until Rose says. “Really, Dolph, the best way to explain it is simply to show you.” Rose takes Engle’s arm, and then the Challenger’s. “Come, gentlemen. This won’t take long.”
Earth had already been anxious when she fled to him: worried about her, about the war and the safety of Deep Moor, and increasingly impatient to resume his Quest. But it was the big dragon’s way to be anxious, just as it was his way to soothe and comfort those in need. Especially his dragon guide, though Erde knew he did not understand why she wept so disconsolately as she curled up against his plated chest.
ARE YOU ILL? YOU SEEM HEALTHY. HAVE YOU NOT EATEN?
I’M NOT HUNGRY.
YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD ALWAYS EAT WHEN YOU HAVE THE CHANCE.
DEAR DRAGON, I FEEL FINE.
YOU DO NOT SOUND FINE. PERHAPS YOU HAVE NOT RESTED ENOUGH?
She had thought her mind completely open to him. Now Erde wondered if certain subtleties of human emotion were simply incomprehensible to a dragon. She found them mysterious enough herself, and she was the one experiencing them. Why should she be so stricken by the plight of a man she barely knew? And how could this sadness also feel so sweet?
The dragon would be no help here, though he’d continue to try until she worried about worrying him, about distracting him from the truly important considerations, like the Quest. For the dragon’s sake, then, she must dry her tears and seem to take comfort as he bent his great head over her, rumbling his concern into her mind.
She’d nearly dozed off when she heard the big door slide open. Lanterns glowed at the distant front of the barn. She heard Rose’s voice and Hal’s, then Köthen’s muttered reply. She and the dragon had watched the meeting in the great room through Sedou/Water’s eyes. She knew Hal would be obscenely cheerful, as he was now able to raise his life-count of dragons from one to two. And Baron Köthen would be . . . well, perhaps the dragons could help him feel better about his situation, if she could get him to talk with them. She knew from her own experience that the dragons could heal the mind as well as they had healed N’Doch’s broken body.
As voices and lanterns approached, Erde scrambled up from her warm nest beside the dragon’s foreleg and hid behind the hayrick. Beside the dragon’s left claw, her own lantern flickered in the draft from the open door.
“I’ve a mind just to send you in first and let him eat you,” she heard Hal say. “But come on. This way.”
She’d chosen a good vantage, a full field of view once they rounded the corner of the big open stall where the dragon lay sleeping. He looked beautiful, she thought, huge and glimmering in the lamplight, fading into darkness behind, so that his true size was exaggerated by the dancing shadows. She saw Hal’s eyes light with the fire of a devoted lover. He forgot Baron Köthen for a moment and strode straight to the dragon, to touch two reverent fingers to a huge ivory horn. “My lord Earth,” he whispered. “Are you well?”
Köthen followed more slowly, caught a glimpse of what lay massed before him in the dim lamplight, and—mid-stride—went utterly still.
He looked away, looked back, then for a long time, only his dark eyes moved, absorbing, measuring each detail, assuring himself of the reality of an existence that, all his life, he had denied the possibility of. He shook his head twice in a wordless negative. Finally, he let out a long, long breath and swore softly to himself.
Hal stirred and noticed him standing there. Without a trace of the triumph he must surely be feeling, he stepped aside to gesture Köthen forward. Slowly, Köthen, moved up beside him, his eyes fixed on the dragon as if it might vanish the moment he looked away. His hand strayed to the older man’s shoulder, as if nothing awkward had ever passed between them. Whether he was giving or taking support, Erde couldn’t be sure. Together, the two men stared up at the dragon’s bronzy head and scimitar horns.
“Impressive, my knight,” Köthen said, as if speaking was no longer the easiest thing. “Is it alive?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Really? Am I dreaming?”
Hal laughed softly. “No, lad, you’re not dreaming.”
Oddly, Köthen seemed to accept this. “Sweet Jesus. A dragon. Does it . . . breathe fire?”
“No.”
“No? How disappointing for you. Does it turn lead into gold?”
“That’s alchemy. Have you forgotten all I taught you?”
“Only the stuff I never thought I’d need,” Köthen replied ruefully. “Well, does it hoard gold, then? Are you rich again?”
“Hah. If he was a hoarder, he’d be unlikely to give me so much as a coin of it.” Hal regarded the dragon fondly. “No, there are many things he isn’t or doesn’t do that one might have expected a dragon to be or do. He doesn’t fly either, that is, not as you might define flying.”
“As I might?” Köthen turned his gaze from the sleeping dragon to study Hal’s face. “And how might you define it?”
Hal grinned at him. “It was he who snatched me from your grasp at Erfurt.”
Köthen’s chin lifted. “Ah. The first nail in my coffin.”
“No, the first was raising your sword against your King.”
Köthen frowned, dropped his hand from Hal’s shoulder, then let the remark go by. Erde decided his curiosity had got the better of him. “It is true that your sudden disappearance was never adequately explained to me. I blamed all the confusion on the earthquake.”
Hal cocked his head, increasingly unable to restrain his immense satisfaction that this conversation was finally taking place. He drew in the air with a finger, outlining a pair of shining ivory horns and a vast swell of plated hide. “He was the earthquake.”
“He what?”
“His name,” Hal offered, “is Earth.”
“It . . . he . . . made the earthquake?”
“Is that so hard to believe, now that you see him before you?”
Köthen frowned again. “I’m afraid it’s all rather hard to believe, my knight.” He gripped Hal’s shoulder again, briefly, then turned away. “A dragon. Congratulations. It’s all you ever wanted.”
“Not all. I wanted my estates once more in hand, the King secure on his throne, and you fighting beside me.”
Köthen growled in his throat. “Leave it, Heinrich!” He paced away, out of the lantern light, saw Rose waiting silently in the shadows, and swerved aside like an animal evading capture.
“But,” Hal continued lightly, “he’s a fine consolation prize.”
Köthen’s path became circular and brought him around to be startled again into stillness as the sleeping dragon loomed once more before him. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” he muttered. And then he grew thoughtful. “Will it help fight the hell-priest?”
“Perhaps. Although he has a great Mission of his own that he must pursue. A dragon has his own mind, you know.” Hal gave up his struggle for restraint and turned his joy on Köthen like a beacon. “I told you there was magic in the world, Dolph!”
Köthen stared back at him, then looked down with a small laugh and a shrug. “So you did, my knight. So you did.”
His words were agreeable, but his tone was bitter. Erde guessed that the past weeks together had been a horror of mutual recriminations for these two men, honing this argument and others to a lethal edge. At any moment, they could come to blows. She decided to intervene. She sent the dragon a mental nudge.
SHOW HIM ALL YOU ARE, DEAR DRAGON. HELP HIM TO UNDERSTAND.
The dragon woke and opened one golden eye, as tall as a man. In the darkness of the barn, his gaze glowed with inner fire.
Köthen recoiled. His hand jerked reflexively for the sword that was no longer at his hip, then dropped uselessly to his side. Next to him, Hal Engle bowed, then knelt to bask in the unearthly light. Erde saw Köthen’s fingers tremble as the actuality of a living dragon finally overtook him. Before, it could have been a fake, a statue cleverly lit. But now, that one great eye, alight with ancient life—and now the other, as Earth stirred and lifted his big head. Like a man in a raging cyclone, Köthen fought the urge to kneel as Hal had told him he would—and won that skirmish. This man thinks he should kneel to no one, Erde noted. But the battle of belief was over, it seemed. Baron Köthen saw no reason to suspect the evidence of his own eyes.
“A dragon,” he murmured again, to no one in particular.
Hal rose, complaining of stiff joints. With his formal greeting and obeisance accomplished, Erde knew he would now feel free to treat the dragon as he usually did, with a good deal less reverence. Which meant he’d be wanting to talk to him, and would need her to translate. Erde grinned from her hiding place as he leaned closer to scratch Earth familiarly on his horny snout, in just the spot she’d once revealed as the dragon’s favorite. She was so relieved to see him alive and well, after her terrible nightmares of the war. Greetings were long overdue, and she knew it was time to face Köthen in a normal way. She’d been down this road only too recently, this foolishness of thinking that a man had noticed her when really, he hadn’t, at least not in that way. And how much more presumptuous of her to think this of Adolphus, Baron Köthen, a powerful lord and nearly a stranger to her, than of a childhood companion like Rainer. Never mind the fact that he was nearly twice her age. Besides, if Köthen hadn’t recognized her back in the farmhouse, there wasn’t even going to be that awkward moment she’d anticipated.
Erde slipped around behind the manger and came up beside Rose.
“Ah,” said Rose, moving forward as she did. “Here she is.”
“Milady! At last!” Hal honored her with a deep and courtly bow, then grasped her hands warmly. “Ah, look at you! A gown and everything! My little squire-boy is more grown-up every day. I wish I could say the same of myself.”
“But we are both alive and that’s what matters.” Boldly, Erde went up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “I worried about you all the time I was away!”
Hal laughed. “You know you’re getting old when the young ladies feel free to kiss you without consequence!” Then he said to Rose, “I can’t get used to having her talk.”
“Get used to it,” Rose warned. “She has a lot to say.” She took Erde’s elbow to turn her gently toward Köthen. “Dolph, I think you’ve met Lady Erde von Alte?”
Köthen nodded politely, his mind still on the dragon. “Yes, I do believe . . .” Then he turned his head slightly, as if memory had failed him, or was just then returning.
“Erfurt . . .?” Hal supplied helpfully.
Erde raised her head to glance sidelong past Köthen’s frown. She could not look him full in the face. She felt more than saw him focus on her, felt the steel come into his gaze.
“The witch-girl,” he muttered.
“So Fra Guill would have it,” Hal agreed jovially, “but of course it isn’t true.”
“Isn’t it?”
Köthen’s tone chilled Erde to the bone. Was he recalling Erfurt only, or her dream-presence as well? That night in the clearing, or his suicidal charge? Erde let her glance drift back toward him. She hoped he’d be looking at Hal, so she could observe him unawares. But he was staring straight at her. Their eyes met and held, and she saw how angry he was.
“My lady, a pleasure.” He stepped close to lift her hand politely to his lips, then murmured for her hearing alone, “Better to have stayed that night and died with honor.”
So he’d been aware of and remembered everything. Worse, he blamed her for what had befallen him since, when he’d heard her dream-warning, heeded it, and fled.
“Oh, no, my lord baron,” she protested faintly. “Surely not.”
“Surely yes.” And then he stepped back with a curt bow. To say more would bring inquiries from the others she was sure he did not wish to answer.
He might as well have struck her. Drowning, Erde let her courtly training take over. She returned a gracious curtsy. “My lord baron. How charming to see you again.”
Oblivious, Hal chuckled and rolled his eyes at Rose. “Look at the graceful thing she’s getting to be. Is this your doing, Rosie?”
“None of mine. This child is dragon-raised.”
“We should all have so excellent a parent.” He drew Erde toward the dragon. “Come, nearly-grown. Your skills are needed. What can my lord Earth tell us of where he’s been and where he’ll be off to next? How stands the Quest?”
Thinking each moment that she might fall to the floor, Erde struggled to give to the elder knight all the cheer and enthusiasm she knew he deserved. But she could not fool Rose, Rose who saw everything, Rose who took up her elbow again with a firm sisterly grasp.
“Let him rest, Heinrich. You can talk to him tomorrow. He’s been working hard, and sorely tired of late. Besides, you know how long-winded a dragon can be, once you get him started. We’ve plenty of our own news to exchange and it’s much too cold in here to be standing about. Let’s all go in to dinner, shall we?”