Suspended in air, he sees the ground coming up hard. He tucks and rolls, gets the wind knocked out of him but keeps his head. He comes up gasping and coughing but conscious.
And in a haze of fury. Thrashing to regain his stance. Fists nose level and clenched. Ready to strike out with nails and fangs.
His lips pulls back so tight it hurts. His jaw attempts a snarl too big for his human mouth. His hands spasm with the effort of unsheathing claws he doesn’t have.
N’Doch!
Her voice is a hand snatching him back from the edge of a cliff. N’Doch reels and steadies. The haze clears. Wait. Not his. This is some other’s senseless rage that swept over him like a wave and sucked him into its undertow before he knew what was what. He feels nauseous and violated. Raped.
“N’Doch! Help Luther!”
Audible words this time, even more centering. He can see again. A flash of motion draws his eye: the girl racing toward Köthen up in the surrounding rocks where he stands at the ready, staring up at the sky.
Another voice, gasping. “Dockman! Ovah heah! Now, man!”
A shadow passes over. N’Doch doesn’t need to ask. He hears the ear-splitting screech. He searches around wildly. Luther is half the circle’s arc away, tugging on the crumpled form of the Librarian and not getting anywhere.
“Into the circle, my lord! Quickly!” The girl’s yelling at Köthen, but N’Doch gets the idea. He staggers toward Luther.
“Wrong way! Luther! Wrong way!” The Tinker is trying to drag the Librarian into the elevator tunnel. A trap, a disaster in the making. “Luther! Into the circle!” It seems like forever until he reaches them. He grabs one of the Librarian’s stocky legs and hauls for all he’s worth. The shadow slides past them again, lower this time. N’Doch doesn’t look up. He knows what he’ll see. Half the screeching is in his own dragon-racked brain. He fights Luther briefly for control over the body, but the Librarian is coming to now, starting up his own struggle to regain the protection of the circle. Man, but the guy is slow!
On its third pass, the circling shadow darkens the entire mountaintop. The scream is like a detonation. It rakes N’Doch’s nerve endings, leaving him trembling and weak. A line of flame erupts behind them, targeting them as directly as a lit fuse. Luther gives up his disagreement at last and together they hoist the Librarian by his armpits and drag him stumbling over the perimeter.
The bright heat splashes upward and sideways behind them as if it has hit a solid wall. N’Doch hears the girl’s alarm call winging out across the dragon com-net. There’s no reply. She’s grabbed Köthen by his sword arm and won’t let go. He’s running with her toward the circle, trying to free up his weapon and shield her with his body at the same time. A sear of heat explodes in front of them. The girl squeals and ducks away blindly. Köthen snatches her up and plunges straight through the flames and across the perimeter. N’Doch races to meet them, tearing off his T-shirt. Köthen’s hair is smoldering. He drops the girl at N’Doch’s feet. Her long linen shirt has caught. Little fiery tongues rise up her back. N’Doch leaves Köthen to deal with his own conflagration and blankets the girl with his shirt, rolling her around on the tarmac until he’s sure he’s put her out.
“Where are they?” she gasps, when he lets her up. “What has he done to them?”
“Easy, girl.” It’s all he can think of to say as the screeching overhead rises deafeningly, then morphs into inhuman laughter inside their heads.
Her back is tender. She knows she’s been burned but not badly enough to worry. The loose light layers of her linens took most of the damage. The dragon will soothe it as soon as he returns. When he returns . . .
She has pushed her panic aside for the immediate emergency. Now dread assails her anew. She grabs N’Doch’s arm. “Where are they? Isn’t the barrier down? Why don’t they answer? Why don’t they come!”
“Don’t know, but it looks like we’re gonna have to deal with this one on our own . . .”
Erde follows his horrified gaze, past the priestess woman who stands as still as marble in the middle of the circle, to the vast shining beast wheeling at eye level just past the outer ledges of the mountainside.
“. . . ’cause here he comes.”
The golden dragon rises, a swift muscular ascent. The first red light of the morning sun glints off his gilt scales. Reflected shards as hot as flame sear Erde’s cheeks and eyes. He hovers a moment, high overhead. His great wings cock back for his stoop. He screams again, and then he is plunging toward them, in a dead fall like a rock kicked off a precipice, dropping until Erde is sure he means to dash himself against the mountaintop just to be able to kill them all in the process.
But moments before the inevitable collision, the dragon begins to glow—red, orange, yellow, white, like molten iron in the forge. At the instant of impact, there is no sound, no concussion. The dragon is a white-hot halo too bright to look at. Then the brightness winks out and out of this crucible is born . . . a man.
Even as she stares in wonder, Erde’s first thought is for Hal, avid collector of dragon lore. She’s sure Lord Fire’s spectacular translation would astound even that good knight’s fertile and learned imagination. For, unlike Lady Water’s exact replications from N’Doch’s memory, very little is truly human about Fire’s man-form. He is huge, ten or twelve feet tall, and shining gold all over, from the writhing mass of his long hair to the sharp-clawed toes of his unshod feet. Here, then, is the fierce angel of the sword, the Archangel Michael, from the chapel at Tor Alte: inhumanly beautiful, ruthless, and cold. But this face has the yellow, slitted eyes of a reptile and a surprisingly sensuous mouth. And the Beast is boldly naked, but for a billowing cloth-of-gold cloak. It swirls around him as if alive and makes him seem twice his already monstrous size, but conceals no part of his scaled and glittering anatomy. Erde expects to see horns and a tail, for surely he is the Devil incarnate. But he has left those behind in his transformation. She would look away if she dared, should look away in all maiden modesty, but in truth, she can’t take her eyes off him. Nor can anyone else. He is riveting, magnificent, terrifying. It’s what Leif Cauldwell meant about the Beast compelling men to follow him. Foolish men, who mistake beauty for truth, and believe all his lies and promises.
But where are they? Where are the others?
Fire towers above them, turning his perfect profile to catch the sunrise just so. He fixes his gaze like a snake on his prey, savoring their awe, then slowly advances in long graceful strides. The humans gather in a protective arc around the priestess. Köthen has his sword ready, but even he seems to realize how little use it will be against such a monster. The Librarian has his mysterious little device in hand again and is muttering over it like an alchemist.
“Will it hold him?” N’Doch asks.
The Librarian looks unsure, or maybe he still suffers from the shock of being slammed about. He mutters and fiddles some more. Silently, Erde prays.
But Lord Fire halts at the edge of the circle. He doesn’t even try to enter it, just draws himself up with a gloating and superior smile. His slitted stare settles on Paia as if she is standing there alone. Erde sees she is trembling, but with rage and indignation as well as fear. Baron Köthen plants himself firmly behind her. Erde sees them as a single image, a pair, a joining, and grapples suddenly with a fuller notion of why Destiny bade her bring him here. A small moan escapes her. Quickly, she stifles it. If it is necessary, she must accept it.
“Our enemies are vanquished, my priestess.” The golden giant’s voice insinuates a razor’s edge behind its languid, silken tones.
“No!” Erde reaches for the others in panic. Is it true? Has he caught them?
“Burned right out of the sky! My sister went up like a tinderbox!”
“Liar!” N’Doch bellows.
“New friends, my priestess? Tell me, rather, you are their prisoner.”
Paia’s mouth quivers, but nothing comes out. She puts her hand to her throat as if amazed to find it there at all.
Erde thrusts herself forward, a step past the priestess, then two. Baron Köthen reaches out to hold her back. She shakes him off and advances. He does not come after her. He has his own Duty. She knows that now. She walks as close to the invisible wall as she dares and stares up at the golden giant.
“My lord Fire!”
Fire glances briefly downward, a mere deigning to take notice. “Children! They send children against me!”
“My lord Fire, what have you done to them? How dare you threaten your siblings or seek to divert them from their holy Duty! A Duty that you share, my lord!”
“Oh, please!” He levels a scimitar nail at Erde’s nose. “How dare you meddle in matters you don’t understand? Lecture me, will you? Your ignorance and folly are equaled only by the gracelessness of your rhetoric!”
He looks to Paia again. His glowing eyes mock. “Come, come, my priestess. Who are all these riffraff? Surely such company cannot interest you, when you could have mine instead!” He turns to pace along the outside of the circle, smooth and agile as a stalking cat, and Paia turns with him. His living cloak swirls around him, concealing, then revealing him anew, all of him. He is not shrieking now. His voice is tuned to its most intimate pitch, yet each of them hears its inviting, sensuous tones as if he is standing next to them. “Surely you have not grown tired of your sacred duties to me? Remember how I said I was thinking on ways to bring us closer?”
He is using the power of his summons to compel her. Paia knows this. Even so, she is drawn by its inexorable gravity, like the pull of tides. She knows also what he is promising this time. He has never appeared to her naked before, and his beauty and magnetism stir her more than ever.
She won’t have any choice.
But matters are different now. Paia has lost a different kind of innocence. What the God has done is unforgivable. She must prove that she does have a choice.
She wrings the paralysis from her throat, the reflex submission and the weakling excusing of his arrogance and cruelty. She steps forward as Erde has. “I am no prisoner, my lord. These are my friends, my . . . cousins in Duty.”
“Duty!” With Fire’s bark of contempt, a small gout of flame spatters heat against the Librarian’s invisible barrier.
Paia shudders. He’s never been able to manifest anything real while in man-form. Perhaps the flames are an illusion, but Paia feels a difference in him. His customary languor is now but the thinnest of veneers.
The God laughs. He knows he’s frightened her. He grins nastily as he stalks slowly around the perimeter. “Your duty is to me! Dare they tell you otherwise, these new friends? You should choose your friends more wisely, my priestess . . .” He waves a hand lazily. “. . . as it seems I should better choose my lieutenants. Where is the traitorous priest, by the way? I thought sure to find him among you.”
“If you don’t know, so much the better for him.”
“A brave speech from a silly woman!” Fire arcs his head back so that his hair stands up in writhing coils. “No matter. He’ll not stay hidden from me for long, my dear disloyal son, my precious Luco to whom I trusted the secrets of my Temple. Ah, he will rue the day, my gallant soldier who’s lost the stomach for battle, for what must be done. For what WILL be done! There are none left to stand against me now!” He lets his brass voice ring across the open ledge, echo in the boulder piles, then calms his rant to dulcet tones of seduction. “But you and I, beloved, when I have found the priest and riven him limb from limb, we will forget all this foolishness. Come, take me in my forgiving mood, before I lose the impulse.”
Paia sees Erde glance back at her wide-eyed, both incredulous and comprehending. Behind her, the Librarian growls, deep in his throat.
The God has arrived full circle, due south in the landing pad’s compass rose. He settles himself there and slowly extends one arm, palm out. Tiny pinpoint explosions dance where his curved and gilded nail intersects the barrier. His viper hair gentles into curling locks of burnished gold, his claws to well-formed fingers. His eyes plead and promise. “Come home to me, beloved.”
He can stir her mind and her body from a distance. He is practiced at seduction without contact. He can slip behind Paia’s eyes with the memory of his dragon tongue coiling upward around her thigh.
Paia’s breath quickens. The God’s call thrills in her mind and commands the beat of her heart. She sees the walls of the Citadel loom up around her, the musky darkness of the God’s sanctuary. She takes a step forward, lost in her own rising heat, going willingly to meet him, to take him into her at last.
Sudden motion at her side, and then . . . a man in front of her, blocking the way. Paia tries to step around him. He moves to meet her. She ducks the other way. He is quicker than she could ever be. He closes on her gently. With a cry, Paia shoves at him, arms fully extended, but it’s like shoving at a wall. There are others, in a circle around them. The God is calling. She dodges again. She is frantic with need. The man blocks her, then backs off. Abruptly, silently, a sword appears in his hand. The long blade flashes dully as he levels it at her, his other arm outstretched for balance. He steps lightly. He is being very careful. The sword’s tip hovers at her throat. If she feints left or right, the blade’s keen edge prevents her. Confused, distracted, the God’s call dimmed by this unexpected threat, Paia freezes.
The man lifts the sword until the flat of it rests beneath her chin. It’s the uncanny chill of the steel that gets her attention, so sharp it almost burns. That, and the hard, clear look on him that says he will absolutely kill her now rather than give her up to the Beast. He could do it, a quick, short stroke, before anyone—even the God—could stop him.
Paia believes this just long enough for the thought to sober her up. The man presses the sword upward, forcing her glazed and troubled eyes to meet his. She sees there the same male promises that the God has offered, but something else, more shared and lasting.
“Liebste,” he says gravely. “Benimm dich.”
His voice reminds her who he is. The Citadel walls thin and vanish like morning fog. Fire roars his outrage and claws at the barrier. Sparks shoot high and scatter.
Baron Köthen lowers his blade, but his gaze holds Paia as firmly as the God’s ever could. He sheathes the sword, then steps quickly forward to cradle her chin between his hands. She expects he will be rough with her, but instead, he kisses her with an ardent sweetness that brings tears to her eyes, of relief, of gratitude, of surrender. She lets him wrap her in his arms, hoping the feel of him against her can drown out the sound of the God screaming.
N’Doch thinks he finally understands what Erde’s been going on about when she talks about Destiny. He grabs her as she turns away from the circle, from the spectacle of her dream-lord so impassioned, and lets her press her face into his side.
“Easy, girl,” he murmurs.
“It must be,” she intones hoarsely. “It must be!”
“Listen!” The Librarian’s nose is testing the air. N’Doch doubts he could hear anything over Fire’s furious ranting.
Erde jerks away from him, her anguish tossed aside. She points in two directions simultaneously. “Look! Oh, look!”
N’Doch’s glad whoop echoes across the circle.
“It’s a trick. An illusion!” bellows the golden giant.
“No, my lord Fire! It is not! Your vanquished enemies have returned!”
N’Doch appreciates bravado as much as the next man, so he feels himself seized by a shameless fit of admiration for Fire’s sleight of hand, thrown up like dust in desperation, in hopes of luring Paia back to him before the others returned. N’Doch has seen such performances before, even been guilty of a few of them himself. He’s interested to learn that this dragon is not all screech and brawn. There’s a lot of bluff in him, too.
He tries to see surprise in Fire’s lizard eyes as the vast, stony bulk of Earth appears on the rock ledge at the eastern compass point. There is none, and Fire knows to look exactly to the west to find the changeable spot of wings and glare that is the blue dragon perched on an overhanging ledge. What N’Doch would swear that he sees instead in the giant’s glance is a shadow of exhaustion and despair.
What is he hiding? Something big. N’Doch is sure of it.
The returned dragons do not fly at Fire in immediate attack. They salute the Librarian with solemn respect, and receive and return the fervent silent welcomes of their guides. But they ward off all questions after asserting that both are well and whole. They hunker down on the periphery of the ledge to regard their black-sheep brother impassively. A peculiar stillness falls over the landing pad. Fire stares back at them with the appearance of arrogant nonchalance, but N’Doch reads the effort he’s putting into it. It comes to him that most of the dragons’ warring will not be physical.
The lovers relax their desperate hold. The humans drift together into their loose unconscious circle to wonder, and wait. The Librarian gazes at Earth and Water with longing.
Finally Water stirs, flaring a rainbow of gossamer. N’Doch drinks in her difference. He’s gonna have to get to know her all over again.
We know where she is now, brother.
Where?
WHERE?
HUSH!
Fire seems buoyed by Water’s challenge. He has made her speak first. “The least of victories, honored opponent! It’s a clever device, you must admit. Without her help, you lack the very power required to release her. Without her, you cannot defeat me.”
The how is only a matter of time. And we wish not your defeat, but your strength on our side. Will you continue this wrongheaded resistance?
Fire holds his man-form as if relishing the distinction it affords him, and the excuse to indulge in the spoken word.
“A matter of time? Time is what I am trying to win for us, sister. Soon enough, none of your meddling will matter.” He lowers his gaze to the priestess sheltering in the curve of Köthen’s arms. “You claim I’ve forsaken my ‘holy duty’? Look on this mawkish spectacle before you, and consider the perfidy of these weak-willed creatures. Consider them in all your wisdom, then tell me for what reason they deserve our service . . . or our sacrifice!”
He levels his gleaming nail as if it could spout fire and annihilate the lovers on the spot. “This woman was sworn to me through the thousand generations of her blood.”
AND YOU ABUSED THAT PRIVILEGE! A PLEDGE MUST WORK BOTH WAYS.
“I acted as I saw fit and necessary, given the extremes of the times! But see how she holds to that ancient vow! She’ll not even do me the honor of denying me to my face!”
N’Doch thinks, Oh, be careful what you wish for.
Erde scolds him for giving the giant the slightest share of his sympathy.
And sure enough, Paia stares solemnly into Köthen’s eyes, then gently disengages herself from his embrace. She turns and takes a few unsteady steps toward her accuser. “My lord Fire, I have been loyal to you past all reason. Do not blame me now if reason reasserts itself.”
The gilded nail curls into a claw aimed at Köthen’s neck. “You call that a reason?”
“Reason of the soul, my lord.”
“The soul?” His voice is soft, incredulous. “Oh, no, beloved. So wrong. So very wrong. The body perhaps, but not the soul. Your soul belongs to me. To me! If you have been restless in my care, then I must, I will, work harder to satisfy. And look how much I will sacrifice to content you: you may keep your concubine. Come with me now and you’re welcome to him, as the Suitor we’ve been searching for, for so long as he amuses you. A pretty thing, I admit, but just a man, after all. The interest will pall.” He leans forward, and Paia’s body shifts in his direction like a reed in water. N’Doch is amazed to see actual hope soften the giant’s glare. His hand is out again. He is almost singing to her. “Come, my lovely priestess! Come, my most beautiful beloved! They cannot stop you. It’s ah . . . against the rules.”
Paia sways, toward Fire, away from him. N’Doch is surprised when Köthen backs up a step to give her room. He knows something N’Doch isn’t sure of yet, until Paia reaches out within the circle.
Is my cousin right about this? Can the bond between this dragon and myself compel him to change his ways?
WE HOPE IT WILL BE SO.
You are our only hope of winning him to our cause.
IT WILL NOT BE EASY.
No.
Will you try it?
It seems I must.
Way to go!
When Paia moves forward this time, her step is firmer. “How poorly you perceive the truth, my lord, when it’s not in your own interests.” She advances slowly, in almost ceremonial step. “You speak of honor. Tell me, where is yours? Have you forgotten it? Mislaid it? Or simply put it aside? When you find it again, I will keep that pledge laid on me by my ancestors. Until then, my lord Fire . . .” She stops a mere pace from the barrier. The golden giant looms over her as she draws herself into her formal Temple stance: head up, arms out, palms at right angles. “I do deny thee.”
“NO! YOU WILL NOT DENY ME!”
Fire lashes out, smashing his clawed fist against the barrier. Sparks explode through it, catching in Paia’s clothes and hair, driving her backward. The barrier itself seems to catch flame. N’Doch has seconds to wonder if the fire is real, and how could a force field or whatever it is be burning, before he feels the heat and hears the roar above his head.
“YOU WILL NOT DENY ME!”
“Kill it! Kill it!” N’Doch shouts frantically to the Librarian, who’s already tapping at his remote. He grabs Erde, drags her behind him. They’re all about to be suffocated and broiled alive.
Then the barrier is down, a hissing release of air, and suddenly water is falling around them, sheets of it, cool and quenching, then a rising curtain of steam and a bronzy mountain of scales and claws is between them and the raging giant. N’Doch swears Earth gets bigger every time he sees him. He shoves Luther and the Librarian into the dragon’s protective shadow. Water, newly winged, hovers above. Erde follows, calling to Köthen and Paia to hurry.
For Paia has stopped, long paces away, to gaze back through the smoke and mist at her errant dragon.
“YOU WILL NOT DENY ME!” shrieks Fire. He is a whirl of flame and smoke and motion. He spits magma with every word, but he keeps his distance. “Listen well, my reckless kin! You can hold me at bay, but you cannot defeat me! Without the Fourth, you are nothing! NOTHING!”
He stalks them around the perimeter, as if the barrier is still in place. Water hovers, hissing showers of mist at him in warning. He ignores her. He pulls up opposite N’Doch.
“You boy. You have . . . a favorite grandparent. And a mother, as I recall.” He points at Erde. “And this presumptuous child has a circle of women she cherishes. Do you not, brat?” He laughs at Erde’s stricken look. “Did you truly believe you are strangers to me? Even the puny man-thing there has a friend he would die for. We all can play at the hostage game!”
Then Fire swivels his heated glare toward the dark and huddled figure of the Librarian. “And you! So quiet there. Still hoping to hide from me? You’ve hidden very well, all these years. Too well. But for you, my plan would have gone undetected. This requires proper recompense . . . one day soon.”
He gestures, an abrupt arc that scatters a bright rain of embers hard into the staring human faces. Earth roars, a sound like continents shifting, and rises hugely to his feet.
Suddenly dwarfed, Fire holds his ground. “Will I continue my resistance? To the end of Time! And what do I promise you? War, with no quarter! War here, and war wherever your puny humans call home! I will harry and destroy, up and down the centuries, until not a soul known and loved by any of you is left alive!”
With a blinding concussion of light and air. Fire leaps and is sky-borne, a dragon again. His gilt-and-enamel wings beat the new-made mud into a cloud of grit and dust.
AND WHEN I WIN, MARK MY WORDS, YOU ALL WILL THANK ME FOR IT! IF THE WORLD MUST END, IT WILL END ON MY TERMS!
He circles once, dark and vast against the rising sun, and is gone.