The path up the steep slope was brush-choked and narrow, and there was no longer the relief of a breeze. As she toiled upward in the crushing heat, Erde prayed that the men were right about going off with the first strangers they ran into. Particularly strangers who had threatened and tried to rob them. But N’Doch would say it was the quickest way to acquire the sort of local information they needed to find their way about this new land. Baron Köthen apparently agreed. So, until she had a better suggestion, she must follow their lead.
Climbing just ahead of her, N’Doch gave no sign of worry. He seemed, just as she had accused him of back on the raft, to be enjoying himself. He whistled now and then, one of his homemade tunes, and his step was jaunty, even as laden down as he was, with his own pack and a few of Stoksie’s. Was it simply confidence born of knowing that dragons shadowed their every upward step? Erde rubbed grit and sweat and the dust of crumbled leaves from her eyes, readjusted her own load and fixed her gaze on N’Doch’s heels, as if they could winch her up the rugged trail behind him. And she kept up her running internal monologue, reporting to the dragon what she saw ahead, imaging it all for him in detail—the stunted brush and broken trees, each cluster of ruined homesteads, every dry ravine—so that he could keep up, transporting himself and his sister to each imaged place as soon as the climbers had left it behind. Meanwhile, she again put to him the question that kept plaguing her, one she’d asked several times already since arriving in this dreadful place.
HAVE YOU THOUGHT FURTHER ON IT, DRAGON? IF THIS LAND HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN SO RUINED, HAVE YOU AN IDEA YET WHAT SIN THESE PEOPLE COULD BE GUILTY OF, THAT GOD SHOULD PUNISH THEM SO TERRIBLY?
Again the dragon replied that he did not, that he had no understanding of such matters, but would continue to consider it deeply. It was curious, Erde thought, that Lady Water, so ready to voice her opinion on every other matter, refrained entirely from commenting on this crucial spiritual issue. Well, almost.
Maybe it’s a whole new sin. One you’ve never even thought of.
Erde could not imagine what she meant. After all, didn’t God decree what was a sin and what wasn’t?
Her pondering distracted her for a while as she plodded upward, dulled with heat. When she woke to her surroundings again, the ruined signs of habitation had given way to patches of scrub clinging to ever-steeper slopes of solid rock. The path, such as it was, switchbacked right and left several times, winding around thin-layered outcroppings that reminded Erde of tall stacks of parchment. Or it wound up among piles of dragon-sized boulders, narrowing further until Erde could barely squeeze herself and her burdens past the enclosing walls of stone. She’d been glad to leave the biting midges behind down by the landing, but now it would be reassuring to hear the song of one bird or the hum of any insect, not this unnatural stillness broken only by their own heavy breathing and the crunch of their labored steps.
They stopped for a brief rest and a drink where the terrain leveled out at the foot of another towering rock face. Erde had her pack halfway off when N’Doch stopped her.
“You put it down now, girl, it’ll be a whole lot harder to pick up again.”
She did as he advised, but reluctantly. The rock wall faced southwest, and there wasn’t an inch of shade to be had anywhere on the ledge.
“Nice view, huh?”
“Are they taking us to their town, do you think?”
“Nah, we’re way up past where the old towns were.”
“A mountain stronghold, then?”
N’Doch grinned like he did when she’d said something he called quaint. “Something like that.” He gestured with his water jug at the far-off glimmer of Big Albin’s towers, then to the left where the wide stretch of water was visible over the tops of the dusty scrub. “Lot of people living down there once.”
From this distance the water was a deceptively inviting lavender, drawing warmth from the long summer twilight. The far shore was a faint line of purplish hills. Erde thought they must be a very long way away. “What happened to them? Was there a war?”
“Haven’t gotten around to asking that right out, y’know? But it don’t sound like they all got up and went somewhere better.”
“You mean, they just died?”
“Probably. Sickness, starvation, massacre. Who knows what else.”
“Oh. Oh, dear.”
N’Doch looked her over dubiously. “You holding up okay? Wherever we’re headed, they sure don’t want to make getting there easy, do they?”
“I’m fine.” Erde thought of Tor Alte, a thick-walled stone fortress perched high on a mountain pinnacle. At several points along that upward road, visitors must walk their horses single-file. And these points, of course, were heavily monitored, and vulnerable to a well-placed rain of arrows or a deluge of boiling oil from above. She was familiar with the advantages of building in a secure location. But if there were so few people left around, what were Stoksie and his “crew” protecting themselves against? He was obviously more uneasy here than he’d been on the river. Every step of the trail, he and the girls stayed on the alert. Perhaps he would prefer to move along faster, but she couldn’t imagine how, with all that he was carrying. “Am I holding anyone up?”
“No way.” N’Doch tipped his head sideways. “’Cept maybe his lordship.”
Baron Köthen stood with his back to the rock, impassively observing the view. He had again positioned himself at the rear, so that no one was ever behind him and the path of retreat was under his control. He did not look worried, or even particularly concerned. He merely looked . . . careful.
The girls Senda and Mari were up and ready to be off again long before Erde was. They scampered straight along the face of the rock wall just long enough to raise her hopes that the climbing was over. Then they turned sideways and vanished from view as the path hooked a sharp right and crawled nearly vertically up the side of the ledge. At the turn, N’Doch leaned back to give Erde a hand up the first seemingly impossible step. Ahead, the taller girl called out and threw an eager wave upward. Behind, Stoksie let out a sigh of relief, then a long warble, three descending notes, two ascending, like a birdcall. An answering whistle echoed down among the rocks. Erde craned her neck this way and that. Finally, on a sharp jut high over the path, a slim figure moved into view, silhouetted against the amber sky. It carried a slim, dark object, like a broomstick with a handle, which it now slung over its shoulder to free one hand up for a wave.
A gun. The long kind. Erde recognized it, from her recent and all-too-vivid acquaintance with such objects. N’Doch saw it, too, and dropped back suddenly under the pretense of a stone in his sandal to confer with Baron Köthen in the rear. A gun. Erde was again haunted by the images of N’Doch’s body being torn to pieces by the last guns she’d seen. Her hands were wet, and her boots not the best for climbing. Distracted, she slipped, nearly lost her grip, then slipped again. She froze in terror.
DRAGON! I CANNOT MOVE! WILL YOU CATCH ME WHEN I FALL?
YOU WILL NOT FALL. THERE’LL BE NO TALK OF FALLING.
He was right of course. It would surely panic their guides if the dragon was forced to reveal himself precipitously. She must control her weakness. She must forget about guns and falling, and blank her mind of everything but the effort of hauling herself safely upward. She imagined the rocks as the dragon’s plated back, hospitable to her grip, and was able to move forward. Gaining the top, she was breathless and weak, incapable of another forward step. Humiliated, she collapsed onto a nearby ledge, and was uncharitably gratified when Stoksie struggled up over the edge, as much the worse for wear as she was.
He resettled his load to ease the burden on his bad hip and mopped his dark brow. The little girls had run off ahead already, their cries and childish chattering growing fainter with distance. “’Ard un, dat las’.”
Erde nodded wanly, forcing a smile, then realized it wasn’t an effort at all. She quite liked the man. Their shared plight somehow transformed him in her mind from a dark and forbidding stranger to an odd little man with a cheerful look. She didn’t need to know his language to get the sense of his words. Without N’Doch to translate, she had no words to say back to him, but this didn’t bother Stoksie one bit. So they sat catching their breath in easy silence, waiting for the others. When she could breathe more freely, Erde became aware of a subtle difference in the air—it was cooler here, even in the sun, perhaps due to the added elevation, but lighter and sweeter as well, with a promised hint of moisture.
Stoksie grinned when he saw her sniffing like a pack hound. He said something incomprehensible, bobbing his head fervently as if nods alone could make his words intelligible. Then N’Doch levered his tall frame over the edge. He stood panting for a moment, responding to their silence with a listening readiness of his own. Suddenly, he broke into a smile. “Aww, listen to that! Music to my ears!”
Erde had noticed it, too, a soft background sighing, like high-country breezes. Listening more carefully, she wondered how she could have mistaken running water for mere wind. And not just running, from the sound of it, but falling, as if from a great height. Stoksie, watching them inhale with such relish, nodded and grinned like a proud parent.
Baron Köthen finally joined them, dripping and scowling. “Seems we’ve paid our toll after all,” he remarked when he had breath enough. “As the good merchant’s beasts of burden.”
“You know it,” agreed N’Doch.
“All heah?” Stoksie bent, eagerly loading himself up again. “Quick, na.”
Putting weight on her feet again was painful. Erde repressed a groan, thinking that she’d happily trade the nausea and disorientation of dragon transport for this physical torture. But the path here was better trimmed and wider, and the rise was gentler. She thought perhaps the foliage had a healthier tinge, and that the dwarfish trees might be gaining some height. Soon they broke out of the scrub entirely, where the path intersected a gravel-strewn cut through a grove of taller trees, some sort of pine. The heat was making the blood pound in her ears, and Erde was grateful when Stoksie turned right and led them into this sweeter-smelling shade.
“Used to be a road, this.” N’Doch kicked at shards of rubble poking through the mat of needles, raising dust. “Not a real big one, though.”
Erde hoped that if it had been a road, its end was nearby. Would it only lead to more ruin? She was eager to be somewhere, to arrive, rather than to be ceaselessly pushing on with no particular goal or direction. There seemed to be no real place left to go in this destroyed future. Simple movements, like walking, were becoming a struggle, but another dose of dragon encouragement and the music of flowing water drew her onward.
Deeper into the grove, they rounded a bend screened by a thicket of broad-leafed shrubs to discover a trio of armed men ahead in the road, watching their approach. No, Erde noted, two women and a young man, with scowls and threatening postures and the long sorts of gun slung easily into the crooks of their elbows, guns almost as tall as they were.
N’Doch pulled up sharply and eased Erde behind his back, but Stoksie greeted them cheerfully by name.
“Wha’s dis?” one of the women snarled, shoving out ahead of the rest with her gun leveled.
“Easy, na.” Stoksie put up his palms.
“Doan tell me easy! Whachu tinkin’, bringin’ straingeas up heah? Yu sumkinda fool?”
“Whoa,” murmured N’Doch. “Heavy language.”
But Stoksie rolled his eyes at his guests over his shoulder. “She mean, bring yu heah w’out askin’ huh. Y’know?”
“Betcha,” N’Doch replied with his usual bravado, which Erde was beginning to see the purpose of.
“Dis heah Brenda Chu,” Stoksie offered. “Call her Pitbull, ’cuz she chews hard!” He grinned, but thrust his narrow jaw forward just a bit. “Dees heah gud ole bizmen, Brenda. An’ dey’s fine ’n healt’y, lookit ’em. Back off, na.”
The woman had a shiny dark cap of short hair, a flattish face with eyes shaped like almonds. Her skin was the same color as the smaller of the little girls, and she wore a ragged scar like a fighting man’s from the tip of her right eyebrow to the corner of her mouth. Her tough stance reminded Erde of Lily and Margit, Deep Moor’s scouts. But the resemblance ended with this woman’s reflex hostility, as she shifted her gun to her shoulder and stood up taller, as if proud to be named after a vicious animal.
N’Doch stepped forward to offer his hand. “N’Doch heah.” Brenda just stared at him. He shrugged. “Das cool.”
“Das Charlie ’n das Punk,” Stoksie continued, as if nothing had happened. “Dis heah all Water Dragon Crew, frum up nort’.”
Charlie was a bronze-skinned blonde woman with a patchy complexion and paler skin showing at her cuffs and neckline. Even in the heavy heat, she was as covered up with clothing as anyone could possibly bear to be. She looked like she might be willing to smile, if only Brenda’s scowl was not so discouraging. Punk was an alarmingly skinny, dark youth—about Erde’s own age, she guessed, surely no more than fifteen. All three wore the same sort of mismatched assortment of garments as Stoksie and the girls. Erde saw Punk measuring N’Doch’s height and ebony sheen with interest, maybe with envy. She had never known until today that human beings came in so many different colors, almost all of them darker than her own.
“Dees two is Lady ’n Doff,” Stoksie concluded, with a wave in her direction. “Frum Urop. Got good trade.”
“Urop?” Brenda was skeptical.
“Bad deah now, huh?” Charlie’s casual remark earned her a nasty look from Brenda, but the business end of her gun sank slowly toward the ground.
“Real bad,” N’Doch agreed, giving Charlie his “special” smile. Erde hoped he knew what he was talking about. She noticed he didn’t try the smile on Brenda. There was a bit more arguing and hand waving, and another brief gun-pointing, which brought Köthen lunging forward only to run into N’Doch’s swiftly outstretched arm. But finally Brenda was overruled by Stoksie’s bluff good nature and the obvious curiosity of the others.
“Dey’s healt’y-lookin, alrite.” Punk shrugged and slung his gun over his thin shoulder. “Weah yu bin, Stokes? We wuz worried boutchu.”
“Lookin’ fer trade, wachu tink? Tellyu, Albin’s a ghost town! We dun picked it dry. ’bout ta come home near empty. Li’l stuff, y’know? Den I find dees uns.” Stoksie showed all his bad teeth in a victory grin.
“Dju frisk ’em?” Brenda demanded, her final display of disapproval.
Their guide nodded, though he hadn’t. “Cupla blades. Nuttin’ much.”
“Frum Urop wit a cupla blades ’n des still walkin’?” Brenda’s eyes raked their bodies and their packs for signs of hidden weapons.
“Tellyu one ting . . .” Stoksie jerked his chin faintly in Baron Köthen’s direction. “Da reel whitefella? Fas’. Real fas’. Watch ’im.”
Erde sensed this was merely a sop. True as it was, Stoksie wasn’t worried about Köthen. But Pitbull Brenda’s honor was satisfied, now that she had an assignment: keep an eye on the grim-faced soldier. Clever Stoksie. At last the expedition moved forward, deeper into the shade, delayed only if one cared to observe the surreptitious dance between Köthen and Brenda as they skirmished over who would bring up the rear. Erde was unamazed when Köthen won.
A larger but less threatening delegation awaited them at the mouth of the clearing. This group was more cheerfully suspicious. They crowded around—men, women and a few wide-eyed small children—greeting Stoksie gladly, demanding reasons for his delay, staring openly at the strangers while helpfully relieving them of their extra burdens. Mostly small and dark-skinned like Stoksie and the girls, they didn’t look like they could put up much of a fight. But they had no problem verbalizing their curiosity. Erde was glad when Stoksie demanded silence and said the questions had to wait until the visitors were refreshed and settled. Immediately, the crowd pulled back, and a child was urged out from among them. A blue ceramic pitcher was put in his thin little hands. He presented it to Stoksie, who tipped a few drops of water onto his fingers, then touched them to his forehead. Erde heard a few indistinct but reverent murmurs from the crowd. Next Stoksie poured out a little on the ground, then he grinned, tilted the pitcher to his mouth and took a long, long drink. The crowd cheered, and the pitcher was offered in turn to each visitor until it came back to the child’s hands empty. The water was sweet and cold. Erde would gladly have drunk more of it, but the child beamed and ran off with the jug, giggling.
“Gud, na! Blin’ Rachel Crew say welcome!” Stoksie gathered up his guests and led them on into the clearing. The chattering crowd fell right in behind.
The once-road opened on an expanse of space and bustle and noise, bare dirt with patches of grass and a few trees, tall enough to provide a bit of real shade for the busy maze of structures spread out beneath them: a motley assortment of tents and lean-tos and high-wheeled wagons with oft-patched canopies, and conical shapes of canvas and lower-slung carts built up with windows and chimneys like tiny rolling huts. The leftover nooks and crannies were crammed with livestock pens and awninged market booths. Even the odors were lively. A thin goat wandered forlornly and, everywhere, chickens clucked and scratched in the dust. A pair of lop-eared hounds ran up to greet Stoksie effusively, until he had had enough of their eager tongues and paws, and sent them bounding off again.
Over the din of people and animals, the sigh of the water was gentle and welcome music. But past the unkempt line of tent poles and rough-built roof peaks rose the most astonishing structure Erde had ever laid eyes on. Stoksie stopped them out in the open where they could take a good long look.
It was a building seeming to vanish right into the precipitous rock face looming behind it. It was both tall and yet vastly horizontal: layers of stone terraces coiling around the central green like the apse of a cathedral and rising one after the other, four, five, six, seven stories, each curved plane set off from the one below it, either forward or back, like the natural contours of the layered rock she had just climbed through. But for the sturdy central staircase, Erde could not always tell where the hand of man laid off and that of nature began again. It was like a palace built with the help of magic.
“Fuckin’ A!” breathed N’Doch beside her.
“This is some great lord’s castle, surely,” said Baron Köthen, joining them at last.
“Some rich guy’s paradise, more like,” N’Doch replied. “It’s Blind Rachel’s now, whoever she is.”
“I expect we shall meet that good lady soon enough.”
Repeating rectangles of glass glittered along each level, broken here and there by some duller material. Intricately carved wooden railings alternated with thick rails of natural stone, or in some places, no railing at all. As she collected her senses enough to really study, Erde began to notice the many details of the damage: the rotted newel posts, the sagging lines of the extended terraces, the shattered glass. But the whole, viewed generously as through a veil, was still magnificent.
“Nise, huh?” Stoksie prompted.
“Real nice,” N’Doch agreed, for all of them.
“Gwan up ’n findyu room, na. Putcher stuff in, nobuddy bodda, gotcha? I tell ’em. Den I shoyu roun’.”
Stoksie shepherded them through the lingering curious and around the circular roadway. The crowd called out eager invitations to dinner, more than could ever be honored, then dispersed and went on about their business. At the center of the giant curving edifice, a double set of stairs climbed side by side like lovers to the second level, then turned away from each other to continue their journeys to the third. On the fourth, they met again, and so they continued their meeting and parting until they ran out of levels to climb. Grinning proudly, Stoksie gave his guests another moment at the bottom of the stair to gaze upward with the appropriate awe. Then he led them up the first flight, pointing out the weak spots and rotted treads, and then to the left, along the second level balcony. They passed neatly spaced paneled doors alternating with broad stretches of window, most of which were still intact. Erde had seen this miracle of glassmaking when she was in N’Doch’s home time, but those magical sheets of glistening transparency had all been shielded by metal gratings.
Stoksie saw her slow to touch her fingers to the surface and skim them smoothly along without bump or obstacle for two, three, even four paces. “Good stuff, dat. Latest, ’fore dey stopped.”
“Stopped?” asked N’Doch.
“Makin’ it. Y’know?”
N’Doch nodded. “Yeah. Guess I do.”
Erde absorbed the translation one step behind. “They stopped making glass?” N’Doch passed the query along.
Stoksie’s shrug was more emphatic than usual. “Probby som’weah dey still do. Not roun’ heah. No call fer’t na.”
“He means nobody wants any.”
Erde chewed her lip. “But glass is very precious. At least it is . . . was . . . in my time.”
“And real cheap and necessary, in mine.”
Behind them, Köthen glided his own spread fingertips along the glass. “The Future,” he murmured.
“Not my future,” N’Doch retorted. “Well . . . least, not the one I was looking forward to.”
Stoksie waved them onward. “Be dak soon. Messtime. Don’ wanna missit, na.” He took them past door after door, all of them closed up tight, and past window after window. Erde attempted the occasional covert glance inside these mysterious and threatening spaces, but her view was usually blocked by fabric hanging just inside the glass, or by boards fastened up where the glass was missing. Where there was a crack in a broken door to peer through, or a space between the hangings, she saw heaps of clothing or a bit of crockery, but beyond that, only darkness. She could not help but worry about what the darkness might conceal.
Far along the curve of the terrace, almost to the end, Stoksie stopped in front of a door constructed from mismatched planks. Each had long ago been painted a different color, now faded together into a mere suggestion of variety of hue. “Dis’ll do ya, ha?”
A greenish rectangle of metal, obviously a more recent addition, fastened the door, pinned to a corroded loop in the jamb by what Erde recognized as a crude and diminutive sort of lock. A thin sliver of metal protruded from its bottom end. Stoksie took hold of this and struggled with it for a while, then finally twisted it clear and popped the lock open. He handed the sliver to N’Doch.
“S’all yers. Getchu settled. Back mebbe ten, yucool?”
“Mecool.” As Stoksie turned back toward the stairs, N’Doch called out, “Hey, man . . .”
Stoksie turned.
“Thanks, y’know? Dis real good trade.”
A quick nod. “Gotcha.”
Once N’Doch is inside, he knows the place for what it was. No rich man’s paradise after all. The room is an oblong box, low-ceilinged and dull as they come. Once upon a time it probably attempted some more fashionable shade than the ugly salmon it’s graying into. It’s completely empty, but he can see where the beds went, two matching queens, he’s sure, advertised on a big sign outside. A luxury sort of joint. He sees the closet indentations, missing their doors and hanger poles. An archway in the back leads through a dark dressing nook to a tiny square room he knows was the bathroom, even stripped like it is—surprise, surprise—of everything portable, sink, toilets, pipes, even the wall tiles. He reminds himself to ask Stoksie for directions to the privy.
He comes back up front where Köthen and the girl are setting their stuff down reluctantly, like they’re not so sure the floor’s clean enough or something. They both look at him expectantly, like the pressure’s on for him to set some sort of “modern” frame of reference here. But he’s not sure he can oblige. He rubs his palms together. “So. You guys have any idea what a motel is? Nah, guess you wouldn’t. Anyhow, if they don’t turn on us sudden-like and try to murder us in our beds, I’d say we just got real lucky.”
Köthen gazes around the tight, dim space. N’Doch can see he doesn’t trust it much. “Is this an unusual degree of hospitality?”
“Where I come from, any hospitality is unusual, at least to strangers. ’Cept out in the bush.” N’Doch unstraps his pack and leans it against a wall. “Maybe it’s the same thing here as there. When there aren’t so many people around, strangers are useful, y’know? They got stories, they got news. And Stoksie seems to think we got good trade. Hope we don’t disappoint him. For a few days, at least, we’re the entertainment.”
“A few days?”
N’Doch grins at him slyly. “I bought us one. After that, Dolph my man, it kinda depends on just how entertaining we decide to be. Doncha think?”
The girl says quietly, “Is this where we will sleep?”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”
“All of us together?”
“Oh. I get it. Well, tell you what, girl—you can have the bathroom all to yourself.”
Köthen is examining the lock on the door. “All of us, behind one door. That way, one can always watch while the others sleep. Unless, my lady witch, you can offer a few spells to protect us.”
“No problem, man, the dragons’ll . . .”
“My lord of Köthen!” the girl bursts out. “I beg you do not call me ‘witch.’ I am not one, nor never have been!”
Köthen glances up. His hands are full of metal parts, as he studies how to switch the lock from outside to in. “Your pardon, my lady. If it distresses you so, I will desist.”
“It does! Very much! I wonder that you haven’t noticed!”
“Hey, girl,” N’Doch chides, but gently. He sees she’s got tears in her eyes. “Been a long day for all of us.”
Köthen chuckles darkly, deftly reassembling the lock.
“The longest in human memory. Began in 913 and ending God only knows when.”
N’Doch thinks it’s too bad the girl doesn’t find this as funny as they do, but even he’s surprised when she spins away from their laughter, skims out the door past Köthen like a spooked rabbit, and tears off along the balcony. He can hear the clack of her footsteps, hurried and sharp. “Whoa!” he mutters, and follows her into the open. “Hey, girl! Erde! Come on back here!”
She ignores him, clattering all the way around the curve of the building until she’s brought up short by the heavy wooden railing at the other end. She props her elbows on it and buries her face in her hands.
“Aw, jeez . . .” N’Doch leans against the railing behind him and folds his arms. He’s starting to feel bad for the girl and there’s no time like the present to speak up about it. She’s strong and all, but she’s been through a lot lately, and the good baron could just be the final straw. “Listen, Dolph . . . I know you’re mad at her, and hey, I don’t blame you a bit. But you gotta go easier on her, man. Just a little.”
Köthen straightens, dusting wood and metal splinters from his fingers. “Why? It would only encourage her.”
“Well, umm . . . hunh.” N’Doch was ready for huff and attitude. This blunt honesty leaves him kind of without an argument. “Okay, I understand all that, but . . . hey, look, all I’m saying is, we’re all in this together.”
“But I would not be, were it not for her meddling.”
“Yeah, yeah, but . . .”
“I speak but the truth to say she is a witch.”
“How d’you figure that?”
“Who else but a witch has converse with dragons?”
“Huh. So where does that put me?”
Köthen’s glance flicks hard at him and then away, but not quite quick enough. N’Doch has read the sudden doubt in his eyes, and a few of the baron’s assumptions are beginning to piss him off. He wants this dragon business understood for what it is, at least the way he sees it.
“I’m not just here along for the ride, y’know. The blue dragon is mine. Yeah, that got your attention. Mine. I didn’t ask for it, but that’s how it is. So does that make me some kind of warlock? I can tell you, I ain’t one of them.”
Köthen’s jaw settles stubbornly. He says nothing.
“You wanna know what I think?”
“You’ve shown little inclination to guard your tongue so far . . .”
“Yeah, and you’re not as much of a jerk as I thought, ’cause you keep letting me talk. Must be you like the challenge.”
They stare each other down for long cool seconds, and then Köthen rewards him with a sigh and a weary twist of his mouth that is almost a grin. “Presumptuous whelp. Go on. I’m listening.”
“Really? Well, that’s progress now, ain’t it?”
“Don’t . . .”
“. . . I know. Don’t press my luck.” N’Doch lets out a breath. “Okay, here it is: you hope she’s a witch, if there even is such a thing, ’cause it’s easier to bust her ass for the mess you’re in than it is the dragons’. Am I right?” He starts to pace a little, like a little engine’s fired up inside him. It’s not only that he’s saying this personal sort of stuff to a man proven to be armed and dangerous. What’s most amazing is that he’s thinking it at all, like, of his own accord. “And that’s because you won’t accept that you’ve been part of this since long before you got yourself dragon-napped.”
“This being . . .?” Köthen asks with a look of distaste.
“This being some kind of, well, plan . . . that’s a lot bigger than all of us. I thought it was bullshit, too, just like you do.”
“And now you don’t?”
“Less than I did.” N’Doch notices he’s the one moving around abruptly, nervously, and Köthen who’s steady and still. “Listen, man, what you gotta see is we’re here and we’re stuck with it. Neither me nor the girl has any real power over this situation, ’cept what we can ask from the dragons.” He halts his pacing by pressing his back hard against the balcony railing, willing the little engine to stop its frantic revving. He’s not used to acting like somebody’s big brother. “Look, I can’t give you the technical explanation for all this weird shit, but I do know I ain’t no warlock and she ain’t no witch. So give it a rest, whadda ya say? Save your revenge for later, so we can all concentrate on keeping each other alive.”
And then he can’t help himself. He just has to add, “And maybe later, it won’t look all that important anyway.”
“You mean, when I’ve become properly committed to the quest?”
“I didn’t say that, but hey, stranger things have happened. Like to me, for instance.”
“You are welcome to your quest, friend N’Doch. I remain respectfully unconvinced.”
N’Doch uncrosses his arms. Now this is progress. His actual name out of the man’s mouth, rather than “hey, you” or some epithet. “Okay. Whatever. Look on it as a kind of working vacation. But if you could just . . .”
The baron lifts a warning finger. “Your point is taken. Enough.”
“You got it, man.”
Köthen looks away, as if something in the treetops has caught his interest. “One thing more. If I am to believe myself part of this ‘plan,’ as you call it, I have a question.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
Köthen turns back to him deadpan. “Where’s my dragon?”
N’Doch’s thoughts shoot off in several directions, but he’s saved from having to settle on one of them when Stoksie comes limping briskly around the curve with the girl firmly in tow.
“Doncha be lettin’ huh run roun’ lone, na.”
“Why? Brenda’ll think she’s spying or something?” N’Doch slings one arm lightly around her shoulders. He wonders if the little man’s concern is for the girl’s safety or for his own reputation in the camp. He hopes it’s both.
“Sumpin li’ dat. Giv’er a nexcuse, an’ she’ll make it hard fer yus.”
“Gotcha. Thanks, man.”
“No prob.” And like it really isn’t, Stoksie beckons the men to lean over the railing while he maps out the camp for them. A circling gesture marks the bustling tree-shaded area nestled within the sweep of the building. “All dat’s da Mall.”
N’Doch chokes back a grin. “The mall, huh?”
“Yeah. Sleep up heah, eat ’n do bizness down dea. Y’know?”
N’Doch nods. Amazing how words slip in and out of meaning. When he was a kid, a favorite fantasy was being let loose in an American mall with a pocket full of someone else’s credit. He looks down, sees a pair of older women pouring water into a wide trough dug around one of the taller trees. All the shade trees have troughs like that. “So where do ya have fun?”
“All ovah, na?”
“Good. Think I’m gonna like it here.” And for some reason, he does. Maybe it’s the trees, or maybe it’s being back among folks closer to his own color. Or maybe it’s just the easy way Stoksie has about him—makes people relax, like he’s got nothing to prove, ’cept that he’s honest and likable. A useful manner for a salesman. N’Doch tries to imagine what the big space out there was once: big parking lot, probably, planted around with fancy greenery, a big neon sign somewhere and the awful kind of landscape lights that turn the shrubbery gross shades of pink and blue and orange. He glances around and above, admiring the undulating rise of the terraces. He’s backed off his imitation of the local accent. Stoksie understands him well enough. “So . . . when you figure this place was built?”
“Oh, reel ole place, dis. Mebbe a cent, y’know? Mebbe more. Fore my daddy’s daddy, leas’. Dat’s ole granpa Ben Stokes, him I only heard tell of. Dis place wuz wuna da las’ ta go, roun’ heah. Das wha’ ma da alwuz say.”
“Last to go?” N’Doch hopes the girl’s calmed down enough to be listening real close while he pumps their host for information.
“Y’know, ta fall outa da loop.” Stoksie parks his elbows more comfortably on the railing and eases the weight off his hip. N’Doch can tell there’s a favorite old story coming, like the ones his own old people used to tell, over and over, never tiring of them, finding comfort in the familiarity. “Dis how ma da alwuz tell it. He wuz Reuben Stokes like me. I’ma junyer. Anyhow, he say peeble usda come heah up from Albin, or frum da sout’—Bigapple, mebbe—lon’ time sin’. Den dey stop. Or dey come ’n wanna stay. Cuz y’know, when it git bad, it git bad down deah fust, an’ it come on fas’. So dey come runnin up heah, lotsa fokes, only dey can’ pay no moah. Den mebbe dey do work heah, y’know?”
“To pay their board?”
Stoksie doesn’t seem to know that word. “Whadevah. But dey’s too minny a dem, and final’ deah ain’ no pay, noweah.”
N’Doch pulls out a word culled from American vids. “No cash, you mean?”
“Ri’. Leas’ not heah. Mebbe down Bluridge way.” Stoksie scratches his bald head, gazing up into the dusty pine boughs while he muses a bit on this idea. “Mebbe some still down deah, na.”
“You trade down there?”
“Nah, noway. Gotta have sumbig firepowah, ya wanna do biz down deah. Sum-big.”
“Bigger crews down there, you mean?”
“No crews deah, doncha know? All sorta sumbitch gubbermints, regulatin’ da shit outa ev’ryting. Ev’ry lil valley gotta gubbermint. Pain inna butt.”
N’Doch settles into a more comfortable lean on the railing. The girl sticks close beside him. “So the governments are like the crews down there?”
“No way! Whachu sayin? Da crews nevah pull dat sorta shit! No way!”
“Right. Okay.” The little man’s pure outrage makes N’Doch grin. “So, you ever been down there, just to go?”
“Almos’ got der. Got far as Deecee one time, wi’ ma da, dat’s Reuben Seenyer. Me jus’ a boy. Yu cud still go deah den.”
“Not now?”
“Not easy, ‘less yu gotta boat. A real kinda boat, wit alotta teet’, y’know?” Stoksie cackles, miming the clashing of giant jaws and the recoil of giant guns.
N’Doch’s ears perk up. “There’s people around with boats like that?”
“Down deah, dey’s sum still. Leas’ deah usta be. Mebbe dey’s all rusted up na, y’know?”
“Old, you mean?”
“Nah, c’mon.” Stoksie shakes his head impatiently. “Say it rain alla time down deah.”
“Yeah?”
“How yu like dat, na? Down deah, alla time. Up heah, notta drop. ’Cep all dis salt. Ain’ needer place kin grow a gud feelda corn no moah.”
“No rain at all, huh?” N’Doch finds himself watching the women below as they water the trees, all of them, one by one.
Stoksie shrugs. “Na ’n den, inna winta. Yusda get moah, even sinz I wuz growin’. Less ’n less. Keep on dis way, doan know how we’ll git on. Why, yu got rain up nort?”
“Where I’m from, no, not enough.”
“Da story alla roun. ’Cep Bluridge. Dey got rain ’n dey got pay.” He waves his arm toward the tents and caravans. “Me, I’ma ole man heah. Mosta dese peeble nevah herda pay. Dey still got pay up nort’?”
“Nah. All trade there.” N’Doch hasn’t a clue, if the truth be known. He so badly wants to ask the question right out: please please please, what year is it? But he’s sure he’d blow their cover, such as it is. “Like here, yeah?”
“All trade. Betcha.”
He tries to sneak up on the data issue. “So what was Albin like, before?”
“Nise, I guess. Lotsa peebles. Lotta rain den, too, dey say. Snow, even. Nise place, y’know? Wasa capidal.”
A capital. Of what? N’Doch pictures the ruined, flooded, deserted city, and is seized by a kind of panicky despair. He decides it doesn’t really matter when it happened. Point is, it did. Global warming. The planet is simultaneously drying up and drowning. What a friggin’ waste! The coincidence that he’s traveling with two dragons named Earth and Water who are sure they have serious business to take care of is not entirely lost on him, but the possibilities make his head hurt. Too much thinking’s gone on in there for one day. One very long day. N’Doch yawns and tries to hide it.
Stoksie shoves back from the railing, dusting his hands together. “C’mon na. Time ta innerduce yu ta Blin’ Rachel.”
He makes them lock the door. N’Doch pockets the key. They follow Stoksie along the balcony and descend a hidden staircase at the far end of the curve. N’Doch decides it’s either cleverness or some superior authority on their guide’s part that they don’t pick up Brenda the guard dog until they’re at least halfway ’round the so-called mall. Even then, she and her entourage hold at a respectful ten paces behind, pretending like they’re out for their own little evening stroll and just happen to be carrying all their guns. Stoksie’s rolling limp sets a stiff pace down a gravel path through pines and brushy undergrowth, heading toward the sound of the waterfall. N’Doch is excited. He’s never seen a real waterfall before. He imagines something like Victoria before it went dry, or old Niagara, from the travel vids. Who knows? Maybe it is Niagara. He’s in America, isn’t he? To be out of the sun is a major relief. But he wonders if Blind Rachel always greets her visitors out here in the woods.
As they near the water, the air softens with moisture, and the bushes lining the path get taller and fuller, harder to see through. For the last hundred meters, they glide through a sort of green tunnel, leaf walls on both sides, dappled shade overhead, doused in mist and scented with pine.
“Ohhh,” breathes the girl.
“Like home for her,” N’Doch replies to Stoksie’s glance. “In Europe.”
“Yu say?” Stoksie looks impressed. “Still?”
N’Doch vamps. “Just homesick, y’know?”
“Sure, sure. Long way to Urop.”
Then suddenly, around a leafy bend, there is the waterfall.
It is not Victoria Falls, or the Niagara of N’Doch’s fervid imagination. In fact, he’s amazed that such a sad thin trickle could make so much noise. Maybe because it falls from such a height—fifteen, twenty meters at least—or because it’s broken and deflected at so many points of its fall before it plunges into the narrow rock-lined pool at its base. Or it’s the towering rock face that gives birth to it, echoing and amplifying its sound. But N’Doch’s disappointment passes quickly. It doesn’t need to be Niagara. After the lifeless, swelling river and the parched lands below, this cool leaf-scented air and the crystalline clarity of the water nearly bring him to his knees, as he sees Stoksie has been, groaning faintly as he lands.
Oddly, it’s Köthen who reads the significance of this gesture. Quietly, he beckons them downward in respect at the water’s edge. He mimics also the little man’s dipping of one hand lightly into the pool, to touch his forehead and lips with dampened fingertips. The moment is over quickly, like the water ritual that welcomed them into camp. No heavy-duty ceremony. Stoksie groans again, rising, then spreads his arms as if to embrace the entire rock face, the silvered thread of falling water, the clear and turbulent pool. “Dis heah Blin’ Rachel!”
All three of them are wily enough by now not to crane their heads around in search of . . . a person. But there is a moment of utter stillness, which Stoksie apparently takes for reverence, for he beams at them as if they have fulfilled his every expectation. Then he turns the sweetest of gazes on Pitbull Brenda, who has been observing from the head of the path.
“Nise, ha?” he grins.
“Sehr schön!” says the girl.
“Nice,” N’Doch agrees.
But Stoksie wants a bit more. “Whachu got up nort’? Water Dragon nise like dis?”
One more piece of the puzzle falls into place. It’s like naming the desert tribes after the oases they claim. In a world reverting to desert, it makes a lot of sense. N’Doch looks up to where the slim cascade shoots forth from a shadowed fissure in the rock. There’s another thirty meters of sheer rock above that. He knows without asking that this water is drinkable and safe. “Nice, yeah. But . . . y’know, different.” He reaches for a memory, even a fantasy, of safe, flowing water, and comes up dry. “Later, you visit. I’ll introduce you.”
“Mebbe, mebbe.” Stoksie’s already counting up his inventory. “Got good trade up nort’?”
N’Doch lets his grin go sly. “Depend on whachu bringin’.”
“Yu’ll seeit den, an’ not befoah!” The little man claps him on the back, hugely satisfied. “Hey! Yu wanna washup?” N’Doch notices how the main pool spills over into a series of smaller pools, partly hidden by the screening greenery. The first of these lower pools has a steady stream of people carting containers back and forth from camp to dip and fill in its clear, chill depths. The second, wider and shallower, is lively with naked bathers. N’Doch does a kind of double take, sure he’s mistaken. But no, the pool is full of men, women, and children, scrubbing away, rinsing each other diligently. Young folks and old folks, gasping, laughing with the cold, though it looks a bit more like work than fun. N’Doch suspects it’s the frigid water making them all so energetic. In the third pool down, continuing the organized use of this precious unpolluted source, laundry is being done. N’Doch knows this swirling race of liquid ice will cut him to the bone, but his opportunities for bathing were infrequent at Deep Moor and now he’s got another time’s layers of dust and grit and sweat smeared all over him. He nods to Stoksie. “I’m there!”
“Alla yus, na!” the little man waves, turning toward the lower pools, already stripping off his worn and dusty layers. But the girl is blushing furiously and shaking her head to N’Doch in mute appeal.
Köthen, who has knelt again briefly to douse his face with cold water, wipes his beard on his sleeves and offers her a brisk bow. “If my lady prefers, I will see her back to the chamber beforehand.”
The girl blinks at him. She can’t help glancing at N’Doch in confusion. “My lord is most kind,” she murmurs.
“Few who know me would agree, my lady.”
N’Doch isn’t sure if this is better or worse. What’s better for sure is that he not get any more involved in the issues between them than he is already. “Good man, Dolph,” he says cheerfully. He digs the key out of his pocket and tosses it to Köthen. “Hurry back. I’ll save you a spot at poolside.”
Baron Köthen walked her back along the woodland path and up the rickety stairs in silence. Unlocking the door of the cavelike room, he removed the lock and hung it on the inside of the door. Then he bowed again, as one would to a respected stranger, and handed her the silvery key-thing.
“I would suggest, my lady, that you lock yourself in. We will return soon enough to escort you to dinner.”
With the air of a man who is discharging his moral duties, he insisted that she try the key in the lock, and stood by until she had called her competence with it through the safely fastened door. Then she heard his steps recede along the balcony—rather quickly, she thought.
Erde found this newly solicitous behavior bewildering. Though it was a relief not to have him growling and glowering and calling her “witch,” this chill and distant formality was only a slight improvement. But at least it was one she could live with.
The moment she thought she could suppose him to be out of sight, she unlocked the door and slipped outside, locking it again behind her. Hopefully, his passage back to the waterfall would occupy the hostile and suspicious Brenda for long enough for one very quiet girl to sneak past into the woods. It was time to find a secret place for the dragons to come to roost.
A bit of sheltering rock, an open space among the pines, some handy and concealing shrubbery. The hiding place had not been hard to find, and it only needed to be free of prying eyes while the dragon transported himself and Lady Water there safely. Once they were settled, Brenda herself could stroll right by without spotting anything unusual. Both dragons were becoming expert at hiding in plain sight.
They were restless when they arrived, materializing like two giant shadows out of the gathering dusk. Erde had hoped for time to curl up next to the dragon for a while, soaking up comfort before she must return for the evening meal, and a long night in a dank and cheerless cell. But Earth would not settle. Like an old dog unable to find a comfortable spot, he nosed around and around the little clearing, sat down, shifted about, got up and lumbered around a bit more. Lady Water stood to one side, rubbing her velvet-blue hide against a tree trunk. Her swim in the river, she said, had left her itchy all over.
IT’S YOUR MIND THAT’S ITCHY, SISTER.
Perhaps. But even breathing the air here is like swimming in filth.
Erde gave up chasing after the dragon and sat down on a convenient rock to listen in. She noticed that her throat did feel rather raw, like when there was green wood burning in the castle hearths.
THE SUMMONER’S CALL IS FADING AS WE TRAVEL INLAND.
Not fading, brother. Being interfered with.
WE DO NOT KNOW FOR SURE . . .
I think we do know. I think he is deliberately blocking the signal.
Erde guessed it was Lord Fire they were squabbling about. In the way of dragons, they might go on exploring the fine points of this debate until halfway to dawn. Perhaps she could hurry it along.
HE KNOWS WE ARE COMING, THEN?
He knows we will come, sooner or later. Each step he takes to deflect our approach brings us closer by calling attention to his actions. I wonder if he has considered this inevitability.
Earth rumbled disconsolately, got up, moved two paces, and lay down again.
WE MUST CONFRONT HIM. THEN WE WILL KNOW THE TRUTH.
YOU KNOW WHERE HE IS, THEN?
THESE GOOD PEOPLE WILL LEAD US TO HIM.
THEY WILL? HOW?
LISTEN CAREFULLY IN THE CAMP. THE CLUES WILL APPEAR. HE DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO LIVE QUIETLY.
Erde got up from her rock and went to lean against him.
CAN’T N’DOCH LISTEN? I’D RATHER STAY HERE WITH YOU. WHAT IF THESE PEOPLE INTEND TO MURDER US IN OUR BEDS AND STEAL ALL OUR WORLDLY GOODS . . .?
Such as they are.
WELL, I KNOW IT’S NOT MUCH, BUT THEY DO SEEM VERY OCCUPIED WITH . . . THINGS.
CHILD, THEY LIVE AS THEY MUST, AS SCAVENGERS OFF THE CORPSE OF THE LAND.
Lady Water ceased rubbing against her tree and came to join them.
There’s one more bit of bad news they have ahead of them.
Both girl and dragon looked her way.
Their precious stream is dying, along with everything else.
OH! HOW CAN THAT BE?
The deep source that feeds the spring is drying up. There is another aquifer below, but it is blocked.
YOU CAN FEEL THE WATER THROUGH THE GROUND?
I always know where the water is. In three dimensions, downward through the earth, upward into the sky.
YOUR PARDON, MY LADY. I DIDN’T KNOW.
Did you ever ask?
SISTER, YOU ARE IRRITABLE.
No kidding.
The blue dragon turned and pranced away, her tail lashing.
IT’S HIS FAULT, YOU SEE. SHE’S TOO MUCH IN THE WORLD OF HER ANTAGONIST OPPOSITE.
LORD FIRE, YOU MEAN? IS HE HER OPPOSITE?
FIRE AND WATER? WOULD HE NOT BE? IS SHE FORGIVEN?
OF COURSE SHE IS.
Earth had finally settled, it seemed. He put his great horned head down and got very still and quiet. Erde snuggled against him happily, until suddenly he spoke up again.
PERHAPS I COULD UNBLOCK IT.
It was a while before Erde understood that he was talking about the underground water.
OH, DRAGON, COULD YOU TRY?
THE SLIGHT SHIFTING OF A FISSURE, PERHAPS. A DEGRADATION OF THE BLOCKAGE. THE APPROACH WILL HAVE TO BE CAREFULLY CONSIDERED. I WOULD NOT WISH TO CAUSE ITS FINAL DESTRUCTION INSTEAD.
YOU ARE THE CLEVEREST OF DRAGONS! YOU WILL NOT FAIL!
Though the dying stream was terribly unfortunate, Erde was delighted that the dragon would have a useful project to soothe his restless mind. Just pondering it now, he was calmer.
The sun had nearly set. She must return to the camp, but now she did so with a lighter heart.
DRAGONS! I’M OFF TO LISTEN—VERY CAREFULLY—AND I WILL REPORT TO YOU EVERYTHING I HEAR!
NOT EVERYTHING, I HOPE. HOW WILL WE GET ANY WORK DONE HERE?