The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet (8 page)

W
hen it’s clear she’s off-balance and falling, Paia gives in and lets the momentum take her. The instant the sun-bright image came up on the screen, she’d known what it was. The portal had opened again. So she is not surprised to find herself thrown flat on burning sand with the breath knocked out of her. Nor is she surprised to find the tall young African’s limbs entangled with her own. Serves her good and right. She shouldn’t have hung onto him. She looks for the soldier, but sees he’s been left behind. When panic wells up, she fights it down easily enough. He’ll be worried about her, but maybe it’s all right to be without him for a while. A good thing, to be on her own. For the first time ever. In her life.

Catching her breath, Paia contemplates this sudden urge toward solitude. The air is heavy, as if it would take less of it than usual to fill up her lungs. It leaves the oddest taste of salt on her tongue. She’s aware of a certain inner numbness. Her brain is a slow-turning maelstrom. Better just to concentrate on what to do for the next few seconds. Like, get out of the sun and the punishing heat. Then she sees the ocean, and the parts of her scattered self draw together. She scrambles to her knees like a worshiper at the altar.

“Steady, now,” wheezes the young man, though he hardly sounds steady himself. He frees his leg and arms and edges away, then gets up to scan the beach warily.

“The water! Ah! It’s so . . . beautiful!” Blue from side to side. Water as wide as the sky. The hot light dancing off a billion shifting surfaces. She’s seen the ocean on computer screens, more of it than she’s seen dry land. But the reality
is overwhelming. It’s awe-inspiring. It’s so animated, so very . . . wet. The rolling of the surf is hypnotic. Paia has only known still water, like the Sacred Pool in the Citadel. Immediately, she wants to paint it, to try to capture that dance of reflected light, to work with all those colors she’s never had use for before. “Are we in . . .?”

N’Doch nods as if he had something to be ashamed of. “My place.”

The western coast of Africa, then, in the year 2013. Half a day ago, she and N’Doch were total strangers. But they have been in the Meld together, and know everything there is to know about each other. By contrast, she knows almost nothing about the soldier, Adolphus of Köthen, except that they are fated together. But this sharing of minds, what a gift and privilege! Paia recalls that N’Doch at first felt invaded by his fellow dragon guides, but at least he’s come around enough not to resist entirely. A sense of the merging still lingers, like an intimate scent. Intimate enough to be compromising, but N’Doch won’t take advantage, even if he’d welcome the chance. It’s too much like incest. Even better, he doesn’t believe in running other people’s lives—unlike most of the men she’s met. Paia smiles up at him. He’s as beautiful in his own way as the soldier is. It would be comforting just to flirt a little, as she used to with Luco, in the security of knowing nothing would come of it. But she senses it would upset this young man, at least until they know each other better. Delicately, she offers him a hand, asking to be helped to her feet.

He looks away, frowning. “He’s gonna kill me, y’know. Just absolutely murder me.”

Paia laughs, picturing the soldier’s handsome, rough-hewn glower. Like a rock at sunset. A bright block of unpolished marble. The memory of his beauty distracts her momentarily. “I won’t let him. I promise.”

“Easy for you to say.”

He’s watching her like she’s a bomb primed to go off. Waiting for the weeping and panic. But Paia’s had enough of all that. For now, she prefers her numbness. It allows her to get on with things. She rises on her own, brushing sand from her long white shirt and soft pants. The open beach is as hot as a griddle. She’s sweating already, and knows she must look a sight. In the Temple, looking ugly
and concealing her body was her idea of rebellion. Now she’s glad for the protection of long sleeves and pant legs. The sunlight may be as lethal here in 2013 as it is in her own time. Paia doesn’t recall her history lessons all that well. What’s the point of history when you know the world is ending? Besides, whenever she wanted actual information, she could always ask House. But House is two hundred years away. Ignorance, she realizes, can be a dangerous liability.

Farther along the beach, she sees an unimaginable thing: children running about naked, their dark little bodies as shiny as wet stones.

“Look!” she cries.

“Shhh! What? Keep it down!” N’Doch’s eyes dart about. “Oh. That’s just kids. Nothing to be worried about.”

“But they’re out in the sun! What are their mothers thinking?”

“That they might get a moment’s rest if their kids have something to keep them busy.” He shades his brow to study a group of colorful boats beached a short distance away. “Don’t see anything that looks like a return portal, do you? How does this thing work?”

“I don’t know. The God . . . I’m sorry, I mean, Fire. He never said. But the other dragons will know where we are, won’t they?”

“More or less. And they’re not going to be too happy with me either.” He probes the sand with his toe, unearthing a mean-looking scrap of metal. “You’re taking this very calmly.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Paia wants to smile, but that seems to make him suspicious, like he’s afraid he’ll start smiling back. Will he understand if she tells him she’s not feeling much of anything right now?

He’s scanning the beach again. “Not the safest spot in the world.”

At least there’s no golden dragon spitting his fire and venom in your eyes. At least, not yet. “After this morning, nothing could scare me.”

“Gotcha.” His grin flicks past her like a shard of light reflected off seawater. “And just let me say, girl, you were awesome!”

I did what I had to do, Paia thinks. So why don’t I feel better about it?

She realizes she’s waiting for him, for the God, as she always has when he’s not around. Waiting for him to appear in a wreath of flame to mock and upbraid and flatter and pamper her. How will she learn to live without him? She must root out every lingering shred of devotion and desire, and let only her fear and hatred of him flourish.

She calls up the soldier’s face to banish the God’s forbidden image. She studies the slender, swaying trees that raise a tall gray wall across the top of the beach. Palm trees, a memory suggests. Paia would have expected them to be greener. She imagines touching their stiff fronds into the landscape with the edge of her palette knife.

Beside her, N’Doch straightens, listening. “Quick! This way!”

She looks up, instinctively searching for dragon shadow. But the sky is still empty and blue. Then she hears a low growling from behind the palms. “What’s that?”

He grabs her arm. “Cover first, questions later!” He pulls her across the superheated sand toward the beached flotilla. The boats looked like painted toys from a distance, but as N’Doch hauls her into the shadow of the nearest one, its bright prow towers over them in a rising curve, its mast at a crazy tilt.

“Hunh. That’s strange.” N’Doch runs a palm along the planking. Paint falls away like peeling bark. “Doesn’t look like she’s been out in a while.” His hand snags in a rough spot, then another and another. The tip of his finger disappears into the scarred wood. “Aw, no wonder! Bullet holes.”

Paia’s nose wrinkles. “What’s that awful smell?”

“Fish. That’s fish, girl. You never smelled dead fish in your life?”

“Where would I find a fish in the Citadel?”

“Damn, woman, you need to get out more!”

The growling sound is louder. Nearing, Paia realizes, and rapidly. N’Doch draws her around the pointed end of the boat, putting a stinking pile of crates between them and the noise. Paia needs no urging to hunker down behind the smelly barricade. She knows what that sound is. Engines.
She hasn’t heard engines since she was a child. They were a rare event, and usually they brought bad news.

“Jeeps,” N’Doch mutters.

“Who is it?”

“No one we’ll want to know, you can bet on that.”

He ducks behind the curve of the boat as four dusty green vehicles roar through a gap between the palm trunks and out onto the beach. They fling up long arcs of sand as they turn and speed down the beach, swerving left and right, horns blaring. Paia hears a popping sound, like gunfire. The children scatter, screaming. Raucous male laughter echoes up the beach, over the boom and whine of the motors.

“Muthafuckahs.” N’Doch slides a hand down the long knife sheath on his belt. “Let’s get out of here. Now’s when we’ll wish we had the dragons with us. Step where I step, and don’t you linger! Watch out for the shit in the sand.”

Paia wonders if the danger in the sand is living or dead. She scoots after him along the line of boats, from hull shadow to hull shadow, away from the mayhem down the beach. Using the crates and the few ragged shacks as cover, N’Doch heads for the tree line. Shards of rusting metal and sun-bleached plastic are scattered everywhere. The beach might as well be mined with knife blades.

“Where did all this come from?” Paia asks.

“Folks just leave things where they fall. The Tinker crews could live for a year off this beach!” Hardly slowing, he stoops to snatch a rusted metal rod out of the sand.

“What’s that?”

“A perfectly good tire iron.”

“Is it a weapon?” She sees how neatly it fits into his fist.

“It is now.” He glances up as they near the line of palms. “Man, these trees have seen better days. Guess I wasn’t looking, last time I was out here.”

Most of the palm leaves are stiff and brown, the source of the dry rattling that Paia has heard under the roar of the engines and the roll of the surf. Dead fronds lie in spiky heaps at the base of the trees.

Another burst of gunfire erupts down the beach.

“C’mon, keep moving! We’re almost there.” N’Doch hurries her forward, shoving her into the speckled shade between the slim, curved trunks just as the jeeps wheel
around and head back toward the boats. Three of them race side by side, jostling each other with a great revving of engines and the squeal of bruised metal. “Don’t let ’em see you!”

Pressed behind a palm trunk, Paia asks, “Why are they doing that?”

“Because they can.” He’s gripping the tire iron like a club.

His bitter tone makes Paia stare curiously after the careening vehicles as they smash heedlessly through a stack of crates. “They must be very rich. I mean, to be able to waste fuel and vehicles so recklessly.”

“And it’s your kids and mine who’ll pay for it, girl!” N’Doch’s dark face relaxes into momentary confusion. “Well, I mean, mine already have. If I even had any. If I ever had the time.” He waves the tire iron irritably. “Never mind. Let’s go find Fâtime.”

“Who?”

“My mother.”

He strides off through the palm trunks, heading inland. Within five minutes of struggling to keep up, Paia is winded. She feels awkward, running full tilt. Arms and legs all over the place. The hot grit in her sandals rasps painfully against her soft indoor soles.

“N’Doch! Please! I can’t . . .!”

Startled, he glances back, then stops to wait. In his haste, he’s almost forgotten her. “Sorry. If there was any place safe, I’d leave you there.”

“No!”

“I mean, to rest, while I find Fâtime.”

“I’ll be okay,” she gasps. “Just please don’t leave me.”

He grins sourly. “You’re in luck. I can’t.”

Paia slumps against a palm trunk. She doesn’t want to be a burden to him. But being High Priestess of the Temple of the Apocalypse did not involve a lot of physical labor. She’s had a life of being merely decorative, at least since the God . . . no, she must, must call him Fire . . . since Fire arrived at the Citadel. Before that, she was her father’s protected little girl.

She tries a rueful sort of smile. “I’m out of shape, I’m afraid. But if Fire is here, I’m your best chance of dealing with him.”

“Your shape looks just fine to me.” N’Doch grins down at her, then looks away sheepishly. “Sorry again. It’s habit. Don’t mean anything by it, y’know. He’d have my head if he heard me.”

He. The soldier. For a moment, she was sure he meant Fire. “Does it matter so much to you what he thinks?”

“Well, yeah. I guess it does. He’s the dude, y’know?” He chews his lip, considering, then suddenly he’s off again through the trees.

Paia pushes herself harder, breathing more deeply, imitating N’Doch’s steady stride. It’s easier now that they’re not slogging through deep sand. She studies his lean, muscular frame moving ahead of her. What would it take to acquire his strength and endurance? Paia envisions her soft curves bulked up with muscle. She rather likes the idea. Certainly, being so very decorative gives her a kind of power. But it’s mostly the power to manipulate others—men, of course, but not only—into doing things for you. Paia would like to be able to do things for herself. Like the girl Erde—still a young teenager, yet so confident in her role as dragon guide, so totally in tune with her dragon. Paia wishes she had so clear a view of life. She wishes for a truer dragon.

Musing distractedly with her body on autopilot, Paia slams smack into N’Doch’s back. He’s halted, with the tire iron at the ready. They’ve jogged into the middle of a village without even noticing. Or perhaps it’s more of an encampment. People are milling about, aimless and slow, as if exhausted. Smoke rises among them in pale columns like ephemeral palm trunks. Ragged blankets are spread on the ground and tied between trees. Small piles of possessions are strewn here and there, but Paia sees little in the way of shelter. The people are ebony-skinned, like N’Doch. Her own café-au-lait looks pale by comparison. She hears babies crying, and a murmur of argument and desperation and other kinds of prayer. Somewhere among the palms and hanging blankets, a woman is wailing. Long thin exhalations of grief.

Paia shivers. “What’s happened here?”

N’Doch shakes his head. “Things are . . .”

“Are what?”

“Don’t know . . . I mean, this is the
bidonville
. It’s always
been here, but it’s . . . different than it was. Stick close. I mean it, okay?”

He waits until she nods her agreement. When he starts forward, she hooks a finger through one of his belt loops, so that she can peer around without losing him.