The Book of Water Read Free Page B

searing angry red-faced sun so unlike the sun she knew. Even in the dragon’s shade, she felt heat radiating upward from the scorched sand. Her nose tickled and her lungs hurt. She coughed, tried not breathing, then realized why that couldn’t work, so drew a breath and coughed again.
    —
Dragon? Where are we?
    —
I have no idea. But . . . look!
    Abandoning the language of words that he’d only recently learned, he poured into her head a quick reminder, images culled from the dark and noisome dreams they’d shared of late. Erde had to agree this could be the very place, the landscape of their recurrent nightmares, a place of horror. There was the same burnt yellow sky striated with gray, the same acid smells, the constant roll of thunder. Despite the heat, Erde shivered. It had been night when they’d left Deep Moor, mere seconds before. Here, everything was suddenly too bright. Her eyes burned. She squeezed them shut. She didn’t want to see this place anyway.
    —
Look!
    —
I don’t want to look! It’s ugly! Why have you brought us here?
    She hoped her voice in his head did not sound as querulous as it did in her own. Yet maybe he would reconsider,and spirit her back to the meadows of Deep Moor where she could breathe again.
    —
Here am I Called. Here the Quest will truly begin
.
    He sounded very sure, but Erde could detect in his formality just the faintest hint of false bravado. This place they’d come to wasn’t exactly what the dragon had hoped for either.
    Which meant he would need her to be strong. No time for girlish hearts or a lady’s refined sensibilities. Not that she was ever very refined. Erde thought of Hal, who had yearned so to be a part of the dragon’s Quest. He hadn’t even minded that the dragon could not identify the object of that Quest. She wished the elder knight was with them now, to apply his skills and discipline to this unfamiliar situation, and all the equally unforeseen ones likely to come out of it. But he was back at Deep Moor with Rose and the others, up to his elbows once more in the game of king-making. Of course, he didn’t consider it a game, and Erde knew she shouldn’t either. No more a game than the dragon’s Quest, which she’d taken seriously from the moment she’d been faced with it. Therefore, she must follow Sir Hal’s example. If he was not there to tell her what to do, she must imagine his advice and be guided by it. The child in her complained that she was too young to shoulder such a burden, too exhausted from the upheaval of the past two months of fear and constant flight to face an even greater uncertainty. The adult, so recently come to consciousness, reminded her she had no choice.
    —
So, Dragon. What shall we do?
    —
Wait. Watch
.
    The dragon eased himself down on his great haunches, claws and head forward like an alert guard dog, and evidently just as willing to sit still forever until what he waited for came to him.
    Watch. Erde remembered Hal’s habit of observation. Wherever they’d camped on their long journey from Tor Alte, his first task before any was to take careful stock of the area, not only to search out ambush or pursuit, but to learn which local resources were available and which were not. Water, firewood, food perhaps. Shelter from the weather, cover from their enemies. There were always enemies.
    At least
, Erde thought,
we’ve escaped from them this time
. To this dry landscape, alien yet familiar, not just from the dragon’s dreams but her own as well, she realized. The dreams where her father and Rainer fought, and their swords clashed and sparked in a harsh and smoky place was more like this place than the one she’d left behind.
    Rainer. Ah, Rainer. But it did not do to think of Rainer, not in any way except as lost, as she’d thought he was until mere hours ago, hours that now seemed like years. He was lost again anyhow, even before she’d left Deep Moor. Erde raised her head from her crouch at the dragon’s side