The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (12 page)

The house is a ruin. Scorched stone. Charred timbers. No sign of life.

She can hardly catch breath enough to cry out her grief and horror. The dragons, appalled as always by humankind’s potential for disaster, offer what little comfort they can.

Luther rushes up, shrugging into the last of his winter layers. “Watsit, gal? Watsda matta?” He stops short at the sight of the ravaged house. Gently, he hauls Erde to her feet and presses her boots and sheepskin cloak into her arms. She throws them down, wailing.

“We’re too late! How can we be too late?”

Patiently, Luther retrieves the clothing from the dirty snow. “Put dese on, nah. Yu’ll freeze ta deat’.”

“I don’t care! How could we let this happen!”

The dragons are exploring the rest of the farmstead. Lady Water’s tone is tight and furious.

THE BARNS ARE BURNED OUT AS WELL. THE ASHES ARE STILL HOT.

Earth’s outrage is quieter. HE HAS BEEN HERE, OUR BROTHER.

HE, OR HIS AGENTS.

The hell-priest’s armies! It must have been!

Away from the aura of the dragon’s heat, Erde is soon shivering as much from cold as from horror and outrage. Guillemo’s men in Deep Moor! It’s sacrilege! A desecration! She lets Luther help her into her boots and heavy cloak. She notes his wary sidelong glances, at the mounded snow, the tall and blistered pines, the grim lowering sky—the habit of a man used to hidden dangers.

“Git yer stuff on,” he urges. “Den we’ll take a look ’roun’.”

Erde forces her numbed fingers to tie up icy bootlaces. She must get hold of herself. She owes it to Luther and the dragons. “Is anyone here? Do you see any . . .” She can’t bring herself to say it, so Lady Water does instead.

NO BODIES. SOME DEAD LIVESTOCK, BUT FEWER THAN MIGHT BE EXPECTED, GIVEN HOW TOTAL THE DESTRUCTION IS.

Luther climbs the terrace steps to peer into the smoking ruin. “Doan see anyone . . . yu know . . . leas’ not heah.”

“Then where is everyone?”

Water offers an answer almost worse than death. NO DOUBT HE HAS TAKEN THEM.

“No! Maybe they escaped. We’ll search till we find out what’s happened!” Erde’s tears are freezing on her cheeks. She fights back a hiccuping sob and musters a more determined expression. “Look at me, weeping over an old house, when Raven and Rose and the others need our help!”

But, oh, how she did love that old house! Nestled in the leaves like a bird’s nest, low and cozy and so full of life! Now her little bedroom among the eaves is gone and the massive stone chimney stands alone amidst the smoking embers of the roof. Rose’s beautiful garden courtyard is a tumble of blackened sticks. The kitchen’s long, sturdy, well-used table, the center of the women’s lives and fellowship, is reduced to a heap of cinders clogging the charred stone sink.

Erde had come to think of this house as home, as if it had been her true home all along, and her earlier life in her father’s castle was only a waiting time until she found Deep Moor. To keep herself from bursting into sobs again, she turns her back on the wreckage and her face into the frigid wind.

“Howya doin?” Luther asks.

“I’m all right now. Let’s go see what we can find out.”

She leads him back to the churned yard and across it, following Earth’s wide, slushy trail through the pines and past the burned-out barns.

“These were big and warm and beautiful once, Luther.”

The Tinker nods. “Yu kin always builda house back, y’know, gal.”

“Yes, I know. Yes, of course you can.” But it will never be the way it was, Erde mourns. It will never seem so perfect and protected, so . . . invulnerable. Perhaps that is the most devastating thing of all, that destruction came so quickly and so easily.

They find the dragons in the big farmyard, where it opens out into the flat meadows of the valley. Both are nosing among the smaller outbuildings that have escaped the flames. The yard is a chaos of mud and ice, trampled and refrozen, with a confusion of tracks leading off in all directions. Earth crouches at the center, the snow melting around him. He’s reluctant to move his great horned bulk about and disturb the scents and signs he is taking such careful inventory of. Water has assumed a smoothly furred pragmatic shape. The dull late light glimmers in the velvet of her coat. Erde sees this particular shape has hands of a sort, for the dragon is clearing aside the remains of the henhouse. Luther hurries over to help.

Erde takes stock hastily. The duck pen is more or less intact. The hog sty sags and a burned tree has fallen on the goat hut. All the doors have apparently been flung wide. She’s relieved to discover no dead animals inside. The rabbit hutch lies turned over. Luther nudges it with his foot.

Erde moans. “Did they steal
everything
?”

Earth’s gaze is steady and sad. THERE IS FAMINE IN THE LAND, REMEMBER.

“I know.” She relays the dragon’s words to Luther, and for his sake, speaks her reply out loud. “But I hate to think of Fra Guill’s men eating up all of Deep Moor!”

“Dey’s all sortsa tracks heah,” Luther’s dark face is intent. “Like heah—dat’s da rabbits runnin’ away.” He points across the snowy field, then straightens out of his habitual stoop to take in the long valley and the tall, pine-shrouded hills.

“You think so?” Erde squints to follow the trace until it vanishes behind a distant pile of brambles. She finds this small mercy enormously comforting.

“Betcha. We raiz’em at Blin’ Rachel. Still had ’em wild, wen I wuza boy.” Luther studies the ground again. “An’ dis heah, das a mule.”

“A mule!” Hope against hope! “Dragons, did you hear? Maybe it’s Sir Hal’s mule!”

OR IT COULD BE A HORSE. Lady Water noses at the tracks.

I don’t recall any horses at Deep Moor
.

SOMEONE ELSE’S HORSES, THEN.

Erde shudders, recalling the thick-limbed white chargers favored by the hell-priest’s monkish bodyguards, trained to maul and trample. “She says it could be a horse.”

“Mebbe so. Ain’ nevah seen a horse. Yu gottim heah?”

“Oh, yes. The knights ride horses to battle.”

Luther frowns, turning back to stare into the distant surrounding hills. “Yeah? Wonda if dey’s gone yit.”

What if it was not just his men, but the hell-priest himself? That might account for the rampant and needless destruction. Fear and horror rise like gall, so physical a sensation that she clamps both hands to her mouth to keep the material glob of terror from spewing out of her gut.

IF HE WAS HERE, YOU WOULD KNOW IT.

She takes a breath, swallows, and lowers her hands. “Yes, dragon. I would. I always do.” But it’s hard to have faith in the face of such catastrophe.

WAIT! Lady Water’s sleek head shoots up. LISTEN!

“What? What is it?” To Erde, the cold air seems as still as a tomb.

DOGS.

“Dogs barking?”

RUNNING.

“Yu heah dogs? Weah? I saw wona dem onct. He wuzza mean one!”

“What dogs, dragons? Can you tell?”

But because neither of these dragons’ preternatural sense is sight over distance, it’s Luther who spots them first. “Lookit! Look deah!”

Dogs. Even while she sees Luther casting about for a stout stick, even though she knows that hunting hounds travel with the hell-priest’s armies, hope stirs again in Erde’s heart. She can see the dogs herself now, half a dozen dark ovals flying silently toward them over the snow. She wonders what Lady Water could possibly have heard.

Luther brandishes his weapon. “Yu git behin’ me nah, gal!”

“Wait, it might be . . . there are dogs who live here at Deep Moor. At least, there were . . .”

“Dey doan call a bad man a dog fer nuttin!”

“No, Luther, not all . . .”

IT IS THEM.

Leaping over rubble piles and snowbanks, the dogs are suddenly among them, long-legged, bristle-haired dogs, tall and gray, with amber eyes. They race around the farmyard in tightening circles, panting, dancing, still without making a sound. Then, abruptly, as if on command, they tumble into a ragged phalanx and drop to their bellies in front of Earth’s foreclaws. Only now does Erde see that they are badly battered and beaten. Their lop-ears are torn and their bearded muzzles scarred and bloodied. Despite the energy of their arrival, several seem about to collapse from exhaustion and loss of blood. One, she sees, is missing a paw.

Luther lowers his cudgel. “Dey bin fightin’ sum.”

Fresh tears warm Erde’s cheeks.
Oh dragon, help them!

THEY WISH US TO GO WITH THEM FIRST.

Lady Water crouches among them. JUST LIKE A DOG. IS IT FAR?

DISTANCE IS NOT PART OF THEIR VOCABULARY. ONLY DIRECTION AND URGENCY.

“What do they want?”

FOR US TO HURRY. I HAVE TOLD THE WORST TO COME TO ME. THE OTHERS I WILL HELP LATER.

The dragon lowers his huge head. A dog with rough
gashes on her hips and ribcage stumbles over to lean against a claw taller than she is. The dog with the icy, bloody stump struggles to get up, then falls back. His belly, too, is bleeding. A whine escapes him, and he rolls his eyes apologetically.

“Luther, help me!” Together, Erde and Luther lift the suffering dog and lay him beside Earth, who goes to work on him first, nearly wrapping him entirely in his vast, soft tongue. The other dogs watch expectantly.

“Lookit dat, nah!” The wounds close and heal before Luther’s very eyes. He lowers himself to one knee in the damp snow. “Da One be praised!”

The dog shudders with relief and gratitude. He lies panting for a moment, then struggles up and shakes himself weakly. The dragon moves on to the next. Erde presses herself into the dragon’s side to send him messages of love and appreciation. Here, even in the midst of horror, there are miracles.

As soon as the second dog is on her feet, the rest of the pack spring up, quivering with mission. The least battered of them sprint ahead into the meadow, then circle back expectantly.

Luther rises from his knees, dusting away snow and ash. “Dat way, dey’re sayin’? Der’s a big trail leadin’ owt dere, seeit?”

“Let’s go, then!”

“Slow, nah. Mebbe da bad guys wen’ dere! Yu know wat’s down dat way?”

Erde squints along the wide, roughed-up track leading out of the farmyard, then across the meadow and down along the valley. “Just fields and . . . wait! I know! The Grove is that way! Do you remember, dragon?”

OF COURSE. A GOOD DESTINATION. AND THE DOGS AGREE. I WILL TELL THEM TO MEET US THERE.

“We’re going dragon-back again, Luther. Are you ready?” Erde shoulders her pack and conjures the entrance to the Grove in her mind, revising her image with the several feet of snow fallen since she’d been there last.

Her next breath fills her lungs with biting cold. They’re in the middle of the valley with the tall oaks of the Grove rising before them. A sharp wind has been reshaping the
drifts around the trees, but a recent disturbance is still visible. The snow is deeper here than in the farmstead, but it’s been trampled in a wide area in front of two massive trunks that mark the path into the Grove. Erde sees blood and hoofprints, paw prints, bootheels.

“Ben sum fightin’ heah, fer shur,” Luther shrugs his woolens closer. He looks miserable, warmed only by courage and his righteous outrage. “Intrestin’ how da trail goes ’roun’ da sides, but not much goes in.”

Erde is too cold and anxious to speak. It feels dangerously exposed out here in the open valley. She’s uneasy past any rational assessment. The dog pack can be heard behind them now, no barks or howling, just their breathy scudding across the snow.

HERE’S HOW I READ IT. Lady Water turns back from a quick inspection of the trail curving off to the right. TWO GROUPS CAME HERE, ONE PURSUING THE OTHER. ONE OF THEM ESCAPED INTO THE TREES.

THE TREES TAKE CARE OF THEIR OWN. Earth sounds a note of optimism.

“Yes, that’s it!” Erde exclaims in relief. “The Grove is a refuge! Gerrasch took shelter there, remember?”

Lady Water is not so certain. SHELTER FROM HUMAN ENEMIES, PERHAPS, BUT FROM OUR BROTHER FIRE?

WE SHALL SEE.

The dogs catch up, circle the big dragon once, then charge in among the trees and disappear. Now a great baying can be heard.

Luther peers after them, frowning. “Why’re dey singin’ nah?”

“To let our friends know that help is on the way?” Erde recalls her own confusion upon first encountering the magic of the Grove. The thick-trunked oaks look comfortably spaced. Room enough for even a dragon to pass between. Yet the dogs have vanished, within the first few ranks of trees.

“Shudn’t jest walk in der, nah. Cud be a nambush.”

“The dogs would know. They would warn us somehow.”

WELL, LET’S NOT JUST STAND AROUND IN THE COLD, EVERYONE . . .

Lady Water takes the path between the trees. She’d sounded so exactly like N’Doch that Erde feels a sharp pang at having abandoned her fellow dragon guide for so long. And Paia, too. She’d nearly forgotten about the priestess. Thoughts of Baron Köthen inevitably follow, and Erde hastily shoves them away. There’s nothing to be done about any of it until the present emergency is dealt with. She plunges anxiously after the blue dragon. She might find the women of Deep Moor, and still find disaster.

Inside the Grove, her uneasiness increases. The light is dim under the spreading branches. The air has gone oddly still. The leaves have shriveled, but have clung stubbornly to their perches. They make a softly ominous rattling, directionless and steady like the sound of water over stones. Scattered signs of flight appear along the path: a shawl dropped in haste, a basket emptied and tossed aside. Erde swerves, gasping, around the remains of a brown duck, trampled into the snow. Thoughts tangle in her head. The women would never be so careless . . . even though they were in the greatest haste, running for their lives . . . still, they would never have . . .

Dragon, could the soldiers have intruded into the Grove?

Erde hears the dogs ahead, and the snap of branches behind that describes Earth’s much slower progress. When she and the dragon first arrived at Deep Moor, he fit easily beneath the branches of the Grove. Clearly, his increasing size will not always be an advantage. For instance, it’s harder now for him to feed himself adequately. Lady Water, her size conveniently under her control, trots easily along the path far ahead, thoughtlessly urging her brother to hurry.