The Book of Water (15 page)

But this is an old old rage and he hasn’t got time for it now. The primal yowl of the dogs is maybe five hundred yards away. The girl looks nervous. The blue dragon is pinning him to the sand with her gimlet glare.

“Someplace safe . . .” he mutters. “Don’t you know what you’re asking?” Things will have changed in the bush, though maybe not so much, that far out. He can recall well enough the endless miles of scorched peanut fields, and the scattered, hard-baked villages. Familiar, yes, but in his mind, there’s a sameness to all those miles. Can he remember one specific field or place along the road? If they could wait until dark, it’d be a lot easier to avoid detection.

But no such luck. He can make out the individual drones of the sleds now. There are four of them coming, and these are the two-man sleds. Probably Baraga’s spy-eyes have them on visual, so they already know what a prize awaits them. N’Doch doesn’t want to stick around to find out, though it would be fun and a rare taste of power, however fleeting, to wait until the sleds and dogs and whatever have pulled up around them, then vanish right out from under their noses.

He lets the image dance through his mind and abruptly, the background dragon music he’s almost forgotten about turns sharp and urgent. Not even his fantasies are his own anymore. Dogs or no, he’d like to sulk, but the dragon will not indulge him. Hard music, a storm of music in his head presses for action. He feels like a child being punished, and it turns out that’s just what he’s needed to vividly recall his time in the bush.

“Okay, I got one!” The dogs are in sight. “How do I do this?”

The sensation is painless, but he feels like his brain is being vacuumed.

*   *   *

It’s an odd little place, just a thicket of rocks and an old baobab tree out in the middle of nowhere.
Nowhere is good right now
, he thinks. He’d recalled it at the last minute, mainly because it’s where he escaped to when he missed his mama, or his grandfather was mad at him. Uncannily, the rocks themselves—pale, wind-smoothed boulders—are piled up in the shape of a dragon. As a kid, he’d called it the dinosaur. Now he sees it differently.

He’s impressed by the big guy’s accuracy. First, he’s brought them nearly a hundred klicks in less than a heartbeat. On these roads, that’s a long day’s ride on a crowded, rickety bush taxi, not counting breakdowns or hijackings. Second, N’Doch had envisioned the rock pile from a bit of a distance, trying to fit the whole of it within his mind’s eye, and that’s exactly where he finds himself, once again breathless and queasy, a short walk away from this almost forgotten shrine of his childhood.

“Cosmic,” he murmurs. He scans the horizon, notes that the girl does, too, only he doubts she’ll know what to look for. He’s glad she’s held tight to the water bottle he gave her. She does seem to grasp that you gotta carry everything you need if you mean to survive.

So far, the horizon is empty, just the dry unplanted fields and scrub. He remembers there used to be some untilled land out this far, but that’s long gone. It’s the bush in name only these days. The scrub is gray and limp, and the sky’s got that sickish yellow tinge to it even here.

But he sees no telltale rise of dust, no thin trail of smoke from some midday cookfire too close for comfort. ’Course maybe nobody’s got much left to cook. Still, he’s pretty sure the nearest village is at least two miles past his grandpapa’s. He feels the old twinge of agoraphobia that the bush always brought on but, right now, anywhere but Baraga’s beach is okay with him. Once he gets everyone into the rocks, where they can’t be spotted from the air, they’ll be safe—for a while, at least.

*   *   *

Erde sensed the true isolation of this new place he’d brought them to and let herself relax a little. True, it was hot as a smithy’s forge and the air was full of red dust, but as N’Doch herded them toward the rock pile, she could see
shade there. The crevices between the biggest boulders were as deep as caves, and, mercifully, dragon-sized. Nobody would be chasing them for a while. She mentioned this to Earth and he agreed it would be a novelty, at least in their own recent lives. Time to settle in, time to finally question Water, and then, plan the next leg of their Quest.

N’Doch seemed to share this need, once he had the dragons under cover. Erde thought him overly concerned about the view from above—did he suspect the very birds might give them away? But she smiled benignly to see him fuss so over Water, when a few hours ago he would scarcely acknowledge her. These wise and ancient creatures bound you by making you feel responsible for them. How silly, to think that great and magical dragons might have need of mere mortals, yet there it was. She remembered well how helpless Earth had seemed when she’d first found him—or rather, when he’d found her, at a time when her life had collapsed in ruins around her. The only thing that kept her sane and moving forward was the dragon’s obvious need of her. Perhaps N’Doch’s life was in a similar crisis, or was it just coincidence that they’d both been on the run when their dragons found them?

With a final upward glance, N’Doch shrugged, apparently satisfied. He took a long drink from his white water jug—Erde had been honored when he delivered one of these magical objects into her care—then he dropped down cross-legged to face her with the air of a man with a billion questions and no idea where to begin. He glanced furtively at Water, dozing behind him. He hadn’t learned yet that his connection with the dragon wasn’t directional and did not require eye contact. Only awareness, an inner listening.

“Okay,” he began. “Now let me get this straight . . .”

*   *   *

“These are real dragons,” he states propositionally. It’s getting familiar now, almost comfortable, this simultaneous translation thing. Like talking with the vid playing. “And somehow I’m hooked up with one of them.”

The girl nods. So far, so good. He knows this sounds like kindergarten, but he’s got to get all this weird shit out on the table where he can see it. Maybe saying it in words will give it logic or structure, like writing a song makes sense of messed up emotions.

“Like you’re tied up with the big guy.”

“Earth.”

“Yah. Earth.” He’s not sure why he avoids calling the dragons by name, except that it feels like giving in. If you name a thing, it’s for sure real, but at least you retain the power of the naming, which is a kind of power over the thing. If a thing
tells
you its name and you accept it, you also accept that the thing has a power in its own right: self-determination. If he had a dog or a monkey, he’d pick a name and that would be that: The dog or monkey would be his. He studies the silver-blue dragon thoughtfully.

“And she’s Water.”

“Yes. Water. She’s Earth’s sister.”

Though he hears musical agreement in the background, he makes a face. “Nah. Can’t be. I mean, look at ’em. They don’t look anything alike.”

Instead of snapping back at him like usual when he doubts her, she seems to go off on a thought of her own. “I know. Isn’t it peculiar?”

N’Doch laughs. Does this mean the girl has a sense of humor? “It’s all pretty damn peculiar, I’d say.”

She nods, serious again. “But you get used to it.”

“Okay. So there’s these two dragons . . .”

He’s interrupted by a bugle of music, not urgent or angry this time, but eager, as if the sea dragon’s just thought of something she’d meant to tell them all along. The girl’s deadpan face blooms with amazement and delight.

“She says there are more! She remembers four! Oh, a wonder! Isn’t it, N’Doch?”

“I’m having enough trouble with one.”

“Oh, but
four!
” She turns to Water. “Where are they? Do you know?” The sea dragon looks glum. The girl turns back. “She doesn’t know.”

“You’re a one-woman conversation.” N’Doch wants to get back on track. “Now listen up, okay? There’s these two dragons—and maybe more—and then there’s you and me, and we’re supposed to help them do something, only no one knows what it is.”

She resettles herself, but she’s having a hard time restraining her glee. “It’s their Purpose. We have to help discover it. Four!”

“Yeah, okay, four. But couldn’t they just, you know,
be
here, like on vacation?”

She frowns. He can see she doesn’t appreciate his levity. “All dragons have a Purpose. They wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

“Hah,” he mutters before he can stop himself. “Wish I could say the same.”

Her sudden smile dazzles him. “You can, now.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

She spreads her hands, palms down, like she’s calming a riot. N’Doch notices how they’re large and long-fingered like his own. He wonders if she plays an instrument. Maybe he could teach her one. “Earth woke from his long sleep under the mountain because Someone was Calling him to his Purpose.”

“Oh, yeah? Who?”

“That’s what I keep telling you! We don’t know!”

N’Doch hears for the first time the big dragon speaking in his head, and understands that a further level of connection has been achieved, probably because he hasn’t been fighting it so hard. The big guy’s voice is not the
basso profundo
rumble you’d expect from a dragon. It’s more like a young voice that will be deep when it grows up. And N’Doch can hear humor in it, a wry, self-deprecation that matches the sad-sack expression the big guy often wears. It’s almost playful. Nonetheless it shakes N’Doch to his very bones and sinews to hear someone else’s words forming between his own ears.

—
I did not even know my name when I woke.

—
I knew mine.
Water chimes in busily, like the mezzo making her entrance late into the quartet.
—
But I am older.

“Gaaaghhh . . .” is all N’Doch can manage. His brain rocks with sound, words, music, meaning. He thinks he might just pass out.

“We tried to figure out who was Calling him,” continues the girl, like nothing out of the ordinary is happening, “I told Earth we’d find a Mage to tell us, but we were having these awful dreams and being chased all over by my father and the terrible priest, and the Summoner was calling him all the while! If it wasn’t for Sir Hal . . .” She’s stopped by
the look in N’Doch’s eyes. Even she can tell overload when she sees it.

He’s grateful for the momentary silence, but he wants to look like he’s up to the challenge. He can keep up with a girl from Mars, even though she’s got a lot more words in her than he’d thought. He takes a long steadying breath. “Sir Hal?”

And she’s off again. “Yes! He found us. Saved us. Taught us how to get along in the wilderness. He’s a famous scholar of dragon lore, well
in
famous, really—most people don’t approve of dragons, you know. And he’s a King’s Knight, one of the few still loyal to His Majesty.”

“His majesty who?”

“Otto, High King of all the Germanies.” She looks crestfallen. “Have we come so far south that you haven’t heard of King Otto? Oh dear! Have you even heard of the Germanies?”

“Well,
Germany
, yeah. A way while back, there was East and West, but now there’s just one. Germany.” He’s always amazed by how thoroughly these regression cults indoctrinate their members. “I’m no history geek or anything, but I’m pretty sure they haven’t had a King of Germany for at least two hundred years.”

He watches the girl absorb this one. When no trace of guile shows through her confusion and dismay, he asks her casually as he can, “So, tell me something. What year do you think it is?”

Her chin lifts, hardens. “Think? I am no ignorant peasant! I am a baron’s daughter. I can read and write and tell the hours. The year is 913 and it’s September.” She squints out into the sun. “But I can’t really tell what time it is. It’s different here, somehow.”

“I’ll say it is.” N’Doch sucks his teeth. “Well, here’s the thing: You got the September part right. And you’re in the People’s so-called Democratic Republic of Maligambia. That’s in Africa, which
is
pretty far south of Germany. But, girl, let me break it to you gently. The year is 2013.”

“It is?”

“Uh-huh.”

To her credit, she doesn’t launch right off into one of those twisty rationalizations the cultists always trot out to shore up their most ridiculous beliefs, like how God put the
fossils in the rock to test the faith of Christians. She just stares at him, and the music in his head starts sounding more like bees swarming. She’s having a silent confab with the scaly duo—no, not fair—neither of them are scaly, certainly not his silky blue monster, his lovely Water. Another cliché down the drain. N’Doch scolds himself. He knows he’s just feeling miffed at being left out of a conversation moving too fast for him to handle.

“Hey,” he says. “Can I get into this discussion?”

The girl turns a long, long gaze on him. He can see the years themselves in her eyes. “2013? Then we have traveled far indeed.”

*   *   *

The future was something Erde had few thoughts about, other than the most immediate variety such as, “What’s for dinner?” or “What can I possibly make for Grandmother’s Name-Day?” Occasionally she would wonder which baron’s son her father would marry her off to or what castle she’d live in when she grew up, but such thoughts never bore the weight of reality. Not like actually
being
there, feeling the truth of it all around you.

She had no problem believing that she was indeed in the future. Magic can make anything possible. She just wished the dragon had warned her. But perhaps he hadn’t known either. Dragon time was less linear than her own, she was learning. Her sense of it was that time began
now
and ended
then.
After all, didn’t you live one day, then another, and so on? But for the dragons, it seemed, time just
was
, and you could go anywhere in it you wanted to if you had the right directions.

Which of course for Earth meant the right
image.

Which meant that if, in transporting to the place they’d seen in their nightmares, he’d brought them to the future, then they’d been dreaming the future all along. Erde decided not to tackle the mystery of how you could dream something that hadn’t happened yet. She supposed it was something like the gypsy women and their picture cards, or Hal’s lady Rose and her Seeings. Rose claimed to be able only to See what was now, but the dragons said all of time was now, happening all at once, which would explain why Rose occasionally seemed to See the future. Erde couldn’t quite get her mind around it, but the dragons were magic
and they knew best, so she’d just have to take their word for it.