The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (29 page)

“So did I. And so when I could speak again, and I didn’t feel very different, I guessed she had misjudged, and put the whole thing from my mind.”

“And now?”

“And now, I think it was I who misjudged. If only I could ask her. I feel that I should know, that I
need
to know.”

Raven smiles. “Why so worried? I’m sure she meant your self, when you find your self. There’s nothing wrong with growing up, even if you have been forced into it a bit prematurely.”

“There is if you’re not sure you like what you’re growing into.”

The terror comes at her in a wave, not like the surf of the African beach where she first faced an ocean, but as she’s always dreamed of it, sudden, towering, inexorable, and cold. “Oh, Raven, I’m so frightened!”

Raven leans forward. “Sweetling! Why so?”

“I feel like there’s something . . . coming. Something I have to do.”

“Then power will be a useful attribute.”

Erde takes a long, slow breath. She is inches from hysteria and has no idea how it’s caught her so unawares. She loves Raven, but Raven is cheerfully fatalistic, rather like the dragon. What happens, happens . . . and then one copes as best one can. Rose’s insight is the sort Erde needs to help interpret this lowering cloud of portent. “When have you ever seen power put to use where it didn’t hurt someone?”

“Power is a good thing when it’s properly employed.”

“No. No, it isn’t.”

“When your dragon heals someone, that’s power put to a good use.”

Erde shakes her head. She needs to be unreasonably stubborn until this terror and confusion make sense to her. “No, that’s his Gift. Something he gives. Power is something that’s imposed on people, whether they like it or not. Like my father tried to impose his will on me. Like Fra Guill wants to on all of us. Like the dragon Fire . . .”

“Easy, child. You’re working yourself up into a state.”
Raven pats her shoulder, rubs her arm. “Have better faith in your own good nature.”

“Rose didn’t say powerful, she said ‘dangerously charismatic.’
Dangerously!
”

Raven laughs, a rueful tinkle entirely without mockery. “I think she was being poetical, sweetling.”

“No, I wasn’t,” says Rose. “I meant exactly what I said.”

The other two stare at her in astonishment. Raven finds her voice first.

“Rose? Are you back with us? Are you all right?”

The awful insight that Erde was just on the point of realizing flies from her mind. “Rose!” She leaps up to envelop the older woman in a hug. “We were so worried!”

“Whatever for? I’ve been right here all along. Did I doze off?” Rose smiles and shrugs, raking her fingers through her graying curls. “Well, perhaps I did. I feel quite refreshed. But a good thing you called me. It’s the first sign of age, you know. You’re in your garden, with a spare hour finally to devote to the pruning and weeding, and you sit down to take a moment’s peace in the sun, and off you go! The Land of Nod.” She laughs and plants both hands determinedly on her knees. “I’ll have to delegate one of the twins to keep an eye on me so I don’t start sleeping through supper.” Her eyes light on the sectioned apple in front of her. The edges are browning already, but Rose doesn’t seem to care or notice. She grabs one and shoves it into her mouth.

Erde’s hands have lingered on Rose’s shoulders, but she lets them slide away as she meets Raven’s sober glance.

“Supper,” says Raven hopefully. “You must be starving. You haven’t eaten since . . .”

“I had lunch, just like everyone.” Rose brandishes a second section of apple. “Don’t fuss! Why are you both fussing so? All I did was doze off. Goodness, I think I’ll survive.”

“That’s our Rosie. Get her going and you can’t shut her up.” Raven’s laugh lacks her usual contagious glee. Rising, she fans herself elaborately. “How about something cool? Oh, this heat. I’ll just run for a celebratory pitcher.”

“Wonderful,” agrees Rose. “What are we celebrating? The berry harvest? A new arrival in the barn? Is somebody pregnant? You both looked so somber a moment ago, I
thought something awful had happened.” Her face brightens. “Ah! Is it Heinrich? Is he coming? Is he back from the war? You should have woken me earlier!”

Raven reaches the end of her inspiration. Her arms float upward in a helpless shrug. “Rose, darling . . . we tried.” To Erde, she says, “I’m going for food and to tell the others. You try to explain to her.”

“What? Wait. Me?”

But Raven has whirled away through the arbor, leaving Erde alone with Rose, who calmly reaches for another section of apple and offers up her wisest, most sympathetic smile. “Explain, eh? Tch, tch. Sounds dire. What mischief have you been up to now? Has Lord Earth eaten one of Doritt’s precious breeding ewes?”

Erde’s eyes widen involuntarily. In an instant, she is a child again. “He’d never do that! Never! At least, not without asking!”

“I know, I know. I’m only joking. But you’re up to something, I can see that much. Come on, out with it!”

Erde can see Rose preparing to be stern if necessary. She wonders what storybook day in her life at Deep Moor Rose believes she is living. She hates herself for being the one who must drag this smiling woman out of her dreamworld into a present where Deep Moor lies in smoking embers. “Raven wants me to explain where we are.”

Rose blinks. Her shoulders lift and tighten, as if to ward off a blow. Then she slides back her chair, rising, leaning over the table to sweep apple cores and stems into the palm of one hand. “I’ll just clear up a bit here, so Raven will have room for the tray.”

“Please, Rose . . .”

“No, no, I must. You know how Raven hates a mess, especially when there’s food around.” Rose’s hands are busy, busy at the tabletop. Her eyes dart everywhere, except at Erde.

Dragon, help me!

YOU KNOW I CANNOT. NOT WITH THIS.

Why has Raven left this awful task to me?

PERHAPS SHE BELIEVES YOU ARE BEST SUITED FOR IT.

No! Not me!

Erde longs for Raven’s speedy return. If she won’t help,
she’ll at least bring Linden, who’ll know much better what to do. “Rose, please sit down and rest yourself.”

Rose carries the apple cores to a corner of the garden. “Rest?” She uses the little paring knife to scratch up a section of dirt. “I’ve never felt more rested! I wasn’t really napping just now. I was thinking, while you girls just chattered on and on.” She buries the apple cores neatly and comes back to the table, dusting her palms and still refusing to meet Erde’s gaze. “On and on.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Rose’s shoulders tighten again. She turns away, frowning. “I really must find more time to work in the garden. The weeds are positively taking over!”

Erde cannot spot even the trace of a weed. In Rose’s reconstruction of Deep Moor, there wouldn’t be any. “Tell me what you were thinking about.”

Rose’s hands weave patterns of warding in the air, but her reply is casual. “Oh, it was nothing. Just a dream I had.”

“A dream?”

“A nightmare, if you really want to know.” Rose bends to the flower pots clustered around the apple tree, deadheading barely spent blooms. “I have them all the time lately. Too much red meat, Linden tells me.”

“I’m sure she’s right,” murmurs Erde, thinking exactly the opposite. How peculiar—she has become the elder, and Rose has become the child. She recalls what her beloved nurse Alla used to say when she woke up paralyzed by night terrors. “Maybe if you tell me about it, it won’t bother you anymore.”

Rose snorts. “Maybe if I tell you about it, that will remind me what it was. Can’t really recall it now, so it can’t have been too important.”

“Are you sure? You can’t remember anything about it?” Terror beats birdlike at the inside of her ribs, roused by the recollection of childhood. Which is ending, Erde understands. It can only mean that her destiny is close at hand. But why should the very thing she’s looked forward to and fought to attain cause her such sudden palpitations? She looks up and catches Rose gazing at her. Before the older woman can glance away, their eyes meet and Erde is staring
into the eyes of Death itself: raw, despairing, ravaged by horror and guilt.

“What is it?” she whispers hoarsely, but the moment is gone.

Rose turns away with a dismissive shrug. “No, can’t recall a thing about it. I had a book out here a while ago. Have you seen it?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Come into the library a moment while I look for it.” Rose’s hand is already on the latch.

“Rose, you can’t . . . there isn’t any . . .”

Rose unlatches the door and swings it wide. “Might as well let some fresh air in anyway. It’s such a perfect day! Isn’t it wonderful, after all the rain we’ve had?”

“Rain?”

But Rose has disappeared inside. Erde hurries after her, and finds herself in the cool, wood-paneled shade of the book room—which, according to Raven, should not be there. Leaf-scattered sunlight filters through the manypaned windows along the outside wall. Erde glimpses the rolling spread of the valley through the branches, a glint of silver water, and the green hills beyond. She sees she will have to be extra vigilant. There’s no place she’d rather be than in this perfect vision of Deep Moor, existing first in Rose’s mind, and now all around them as Rose reconstructs it. It will not help Rose or anybody if she is drawn into Rose’s world, instead of the other way around.

Rose is at the end of the room, searching among the piles of leather-bound volumes scattered across the big reading table.
Piles
of them! Before arriving at Deep Moor, Erde had never seen so many books in one place that piles could be made of them. Big books, used so often that they were left lying about, instead of hidden away under lock and key. Her father’s castle had no library. It would have been unseemly for Baron Josef von Alte to be seen indulging in unmanly pursuits such as reading and study.

Rose picks up a book and leafs through it, seemingly at random.

“Did you find it?” Erde tries to sound casual. “What were you reading?”

“Oh, something about . . . something . . . I forget.”

BE FIRM, the dragon reminds silently.

Erde folds her arms and plants her shoulder resolutely against the doorpost. “Rose, doesn’t it seem odd that you can’t remember anything? You are not a forgetful person.”

Rose flicks a wrist and reaches for another book. “Getting old, like I said.” She sets the book aside and begins to rearrange the piles.

“But you’re not. And it’s even odder that you, the calmest person that I know, suddenly cannot sit still even for a minute!”

“Do you need me to sit still? There’s so much to be done!”

“I need you to listen . . . and remember.”

Rose sighs and rolls her eyes. “Remember what, dear girl?”

“Where you are. Where you
really
are.”

Now Rose’s protest is faintly irritable. “I’m here. Where else should I be?”

As a child, Erde wasn’t known for her patience. Impetuous, impulsive, stubborn: these were the accusations commonly hurled at her by her chambermaid, who felt that little girls should sit in the corner and sew. But even this self-knowledge does not prepare Erde for the force of the impatience that boils up in her as she sees Rose turn back to her useless tidying and stacking.

“Rose!” Her summons fills the entire room, though she has hardly raised her voice. She almost steals a look behind to see who has spoken with such authority.

Rose goes as still as a startled deer. “What is it, child?”

As soon as she has Rose’s attention, authority fails her.

Oh, dragon! Now what?

YOU’RE DOING FINE.

“Please, Rose, let’s sit down.”

Rose sidesteps obediently to the nearest chair and settles herself with her hands folded neatly on the table. “You’re upset.”

“I am, but only because I’m so worried about you.”

Erde takes the chair beside her. Perhaps this will seem less confrontational. She detects a desperate sort of defiance in Rose’s posture, uncharacteristic in a woman normally so confident in herself and in everything she believes in. It will be an unforgivable cruelty to force Rose to remember
the terrible events that drove her into this state of forgetfulness. But it must be done, or Rose, the real Rose, wise and present, will be lost forever.

THE ROSE WHOSE GIFT IS SEEING THINGS AS THEY TRULY ARE.

Yes, dragon, I know. But it will be so painful to her
.

IT WAS PAINFUL TO N’DOCH WHEN YOU DRAGGED HIM AWAY FROM THE LIFE HE KNEW AND FORCED HIM TO ACCEPT HIS ROLE IN THE QUEST.

I didn’t . . . how did I force him? Surely Lady Water did that
.

IT WAS PAINFUL TO THE WARRING BARON YOU KIDNAPPED TO FIGHT BATTLES NOT HIS OWN.

Because we needed him! And it saved his life!

TRUE, AND TRUE. BUT BOTH AGAINST HIS WILL.

This accusation she cannot deny, though Köthen might feel differently about his suicidal urges now. Erde is shaken by the realization that she’s been bending others to her will all along, while excusing her actions as childish impetuosity. All she’s done has been in the service of the dragons, always, but it’s been willful nonetheless. Even though her understanding of the Quest has been imperfect, as it has several times proved to be.

THIS CURRENT DUTY IS PAINFUL TO YOU AS WELL, SO YOU RESIST IT. BETTER TO ADMIT TO THE NEED, THEN TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR DEMANDS.

Full responsibility. The dragon’s tone is mild, but it carries the power of a warning. Her willful actions were necessary, of course, but there’ll be no more laying the blame on accident or the dragons or the forces of destiny. Destiny, presumably, is something that happens whether you act or not, but it takes no account of human feelings. Neither has she, because she’s seen herself as Destiny’s tool. Erde bows her head. Perhaps this explains her high failure rate at predicting human behavior.

I understand, dragon . . . I think
.

When she looks up again, Rose is staring at her, trembling.

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

“He? Here?” Erde is sure she means the hell-priest.

“Earth.”