Erde told Earth that she’d never in her life met anyone so badly brought up.
—Ending a conversation without so much as a by-your-leave!
—He’s tired. He’s had a lot to think about today.
Water stirred from her doze.
—I think we could all use some rest.
—But he was so rude! And we were actually talking about something for the first time ever!
—Remember, you’re not a baron’s daughter here. He owes you no fealty.
—What about simple courtesy?
—His definitions are different from yours.
—Rest now, child. I feel great things are about to happen here.
—You do?
—Rest.
The dragons were the ones who really wanted to rest, Erde decided, so she’d better let them. Forcing her petulance away, she studied N’Doch as he plunged into sleep beside her. He didn’t ever seem to worry about how he should behave. He did whatever he felt like at the moment. Erde found this both enviable and infuriating. Did everyone just do what they felt like in this world of 2013? How did they get anything done without fighting about it?
She resisted sleep for a while. She thought she should stay awake and keep watch. But the hot close air in the shadow of the rocks made her drowsy, and neither N’Doch or the dragons seemed concerned any longer about the possibility of attack. She stared out at the brushy horizon until her eyelids drooped. Then she seated her dagger more comfortably against her waist, laid her head on her pack and fell asleep.
* * *
When the dream came this time, it was not like the old ones. It was not on alien ground, or wracked with deafening noise and odious smells. She was home again, not a specifically known location but an easily comprehended one: a wide, frost-seared grassland backed by fog-shrouded mountains, a dark forest of pine and fir flowing over the waves of foothills down to the edge of the plain, a chill, thin river. It was early morning, just coming light, of a dull wet day. Along the meeting line of grass and trees, an army was camped.
Erde found she could approach the camp, slowly, at eye level, as if riding along the rutted path and in among the silent tents on horseback. The illusion was so real that she started in fright, in the dream, when the door flap of a nearby tent was suddenly thrown aside and a man stepped out, not ten feet in front of her.
He was solid and blond, with the hard-muscled body of a warrior but sporting a courtier’s close-cropped beard. His breath made smoke in the icy air, a chill Erde could not feel. The man stretched and shivered, shrugging his wool cloak more tightly around his naked chest. He tested the wind, listening intently, then frowned and looked toward Erde. She recognized Adolphus of Köthen, and wondered if he would remember her. But instead, he stared past her, as if surprised by not seeing the something or someone he’d expected. He turned away, then glanced back again, quickly, as if trying to catch that someone in the act of being there after all. Erde knew in her dream that he could sense a presence, maybe even her own specific presence, and that this puzzled him. It puzzled her, too, since they hardly knew each other, and why should she be dreaming about Adolphus of Köthen? But she was glad it was only a dream because this formidable, intelligent man was officially her enemy, the ally of her father and the terrible priest. She wouldn’t want to be this close to him if he could actually see her.
And yet she lingered, because the dream gave her the power and because, she realized guiltily, she liked looking at him, liked his interesting combination of toughness and reserve, liked how his thick, straw-gold hair bunched along his neck like pinfeathers, liked even his oddly dark brows and eyes. His alert scowl reminded her of her father’s favorite peregrine, Quick, except Köthen carried himself with an easy confidence unlike the posture of any bird of prey. Much else about Köthen reminded Erde of Hal, though this was no surprise since Hal had fostered him as a lad, and by Köthen’s own admission, taught him everything he knew. Erde thought it a great human tragedy that Baron Köthen felt called upon to go to war to usurp the King, thereby pitting himself against his beloved mentor. For there never was a more loyal servant to His Majesty than Heinrich Peder von Engle, Baron Weisstrasse, known to his friends as Hal. Except, now that she thought of it, Köthen had invariably called him Heinrich. A mark of respect, or a way of distancing a man whom he honored far more than was convenient for him?
Now Köthen looked the other way. Armor clanked. There was a stirring of men and horses outside a black-and-green tent flying the von Alte battle standard. Her father’s tent. Past it were a quartet of white pavilions, each guarded by a stout, white-robed monk. Other monks were lugging heavy pails of heated water into the largest pavilion.
Erde felt a chill at last, and a sudden urge to scurry away, as if some roving eye searching a crowd had picked her out with evil intent. She stared with Köthen, then after him, as he turned abruptly, his scowl deepening, and stalked past her, away from her father’s awakening and the tents of the priest, away from the camp and the new smoke rising from cook fires, into the morning darkness under the trees.
* * *
When she woke in the thick heat of a far century, she knew it was not precisely a dream that she’d had. A profound sense of home lingered. Somehow she had been there, had returned to the preternaturally early winter of 913, and been privy to a true event, however insignificant . . . or probably not. Only time would tell that. But why Köthen? She scanned her mind for the dragon to tell him the news, but he was still sleeping off his bellyful of fish. She opened her eyes, slitted against the late-afternoon glare, so bright even in the deepest shadow of the rocks. Once again, N’Doch was gone.