Read The Book of Fire for Free Online

touched her arm. “You’ve made him anxious, dear. You can’t pressure him. You know how he is. Let him do as he likes.”
    “But . . .”
    “He’ll be as safe in the Grove as anywhere. He knows that. That’s why he came here.”
    “It could be the dragons,” said Erde. “He didn’t want to meet Earth before either. But he knew, didn’t he . . . he sensed their return almost before I did.”
    “He’s connected with them in some way,” guessed Raven. “As he is to many things.”
    Indeed, Erde noted. Connected in some way she didn’t understand. She must be sure to ask the dragon about it.Certainly it was no mystery to her why the hell-priest wanted to burn this odd creature. She herself was unsure if Gerrasch was man or animal, or some uncanny combination of the two, and Brother Guillemo feared anything that smacked of a power he couldn’t control or comprehend. She put aside her impatience to be with the dragon long enough to lean close to cracks in the plank door. “Maybe later, if the weather holds, I’ll bring them out to visit you. Would that be all right?”
    No reply from inside the stick pile. Erde glanced back at Raven and Doritt, then shrugged and let her dragon’s return fill her mind entirely.

C HAPTER T HREE

    H alted on the narrow stairs, N’Doch steadies himself and lets the dragon’s return blast through him like a drug rush. It’s okay. He knows how to handle it now. He’s given up any serious resistance. But he tells himself he’ll never really get used to it, maybe never even like it much, this simultaneous elation and submission, the ecstatic release of self that the dragons inspire. The girl is into it bigtime, but it makes N’Doch feel invisible.
    Maybe he
should
get into it. Might be the only way to face what’s waiting for him at the bottom of these creaky old wooden stairs. Strange faces, different customs, a language he doesn’t speak, a whole new world to step into, with this magic, dragon-mended body of his which fits him stiff and tight, like a new suit.
    The image of himself in an actual suit makes N’Doch laugh, and his ribs ache. The pain isn’t much, just enough to remind him that those ribs were lately in a million pieces. Barely twenty and already he’s died and been resurrected. Or so they tell him, these witchy women who’ve been overseeing his recovery. N’Doch has no memory of the event. Only this floaty sense of not quite understanding how the world works anymore. Kind of like standing out on the ledge of a high-rise in the middle of a hurricane.
    He does recall, in searing detail, the dream he had while he was coming out of it. Not a dream, really, more like a vision: of red heat and dust and ruined buildings, and himself running. And an awareness, even in his woozy state, that he must store away every detail he can of that blastedlandscape, because someday soon he’s gonna need to get back to it.
    He tests his legs, still wobbly beneath him. Long time ’fore he’ll trust these legs to run again. He knows he should get on downstairs and find out if they brought the old man back with them, see if he’s all right, or if he would even come.
Hell, I could ask them from here, right from this step.
Then he wouldn’t have to move and show how awkward he is in his body since they revived him. He could just open up the old mind channel and give the blue dragon a call. But he won’t. Bad enough doing it when he really has to.
    He looks slowly around, like the practice at taking in detail is a good enough excuse to postpone the inevitable. He sees walls of wood and plaster, low dark ceilings crossed with thick beams, a fat candle burning behind the sooted glass of a sconce at the turning of the stair. He could be in one of those Ye Olde theme parks, one of the v.r. ones. He moves quietly down to the landing, where a small square window offers a view of snow-covered fields and enclosing mountains, stuff he’s only seen in vids. He lays a palm to the