The Book of Air: Volume Four of the Dragon Quartet Read Online Free PDF Page A

notes that the water dragon has stealthily sidestepped out of child-range.
    Beside him, N’Doch chuckles dryly. “They’ll leave her alone. She’s not talking to ’em like he is. He’s still a kid despite his size, but she came into the world a grown-up. I sang her into kid-form once. My little brother. Died when he was five. Don’t think she liked it much.”
    Cauldwell’s arm slides automatically around Constanze’s waist. They watch their little girl slipping and sliding as she tries to climb the dragon’s claw. “Are we just going to leave them alone together?” Cauldwell asks.
    Constanze leans into his side. “She told me, distinctly and even grammatically, that the dragon had assured her he wasn’t eating children today.”
    “She said that? What an imagination!”
    “No. I got the impression she was relaying what he actually said. All the children say he’s talking to them.”
    “Really?” Cauldwell looks to the Librarian in alarm. “Is that possible?”
    “Possible. Yes.”
    “Something you taught them? By the One, what are we raising?”
    “The future,” says the Librarian before he’s even thought it over. And it’s true that what the children have become is as much his fault as anyone’s. He’s been their tutor and their mascot. It’s his dark den that’s their favorite place of play. If he himself is not entirely human, how can he teach the children to be?
    “Lord Earth urges us to action,” Erde announces.
    “We should get a move on,” N’Doch nods. “The dragons’ll listen in through us.”
    “Ah, if only Sir Hal were here!” Erde mourns.
    “Sure, just what we need,” N’Doch mutters. “Another chief.”
    Cauldwell gives the dragons one last glance of misgiving, then expels a long breath and leads his war council toward the elevator. The Librarian trots after him, his fingers itching for his keypad. N’Doch falls in behind, beside Paia and the soldier.
    “Taking up the rear as usual, yer lordship?”
    “One day you’ll sass the wrong man, Dochmann.” Köthen jerks his thumb toward Cauldwell’s retreating back.
    “Jeez, if you ain’t blown me away yet, no one will. The world loves a clown, Dolph, doncha know?”
    “I wouldn’t bet money on it. Or your life.”
    “Like I’d better not sass the Fire dude, is that what you’re getting at?”
    The soldier adjusts the sword across his back to a more comfortable angle. “It wouldn’t be my first advice.”
    “The God . . . I mean, Fire . . . doesn’t take well to mockery,” agrees Paia quietly. “He only knows how to give it out.”
    “Then I’m gonna be in deep shit,” N’Doch predicts. “’Cause there’s one thing I just can’t leave alone, and that’s a guy who takes himself too seriously.”
    Köthen groans. “I’ll rue the day I swore my sword to your safety.”
    “Cheer up, Dolph. You used to be one of those too-seriousguys, remember, and we worked it out okay, didn’t we?”
    “It’s hardly analogous.”
    “Yeah, well.” At the open door of the elevator, silhouetted against the bright light from the cab, N’Doch glances back at the big, dirt-colored dragon, besieged by a pack of noisy little children.
    He laughs softly. “That’s one hell of a baby-sitter!”

C HAPTER T WO

    N ’Doch is pondering that song he’ll make up about Leif Cauldwell as he trails the others into the shadowed Communications Room. He lets the base rhythm of the HVAC underline the melody, and longs for an instrument to play it on.
    The group piles up in front of the bright wall screen, still running feed from the helipad security camera. N’Doch stands at the back. He’s taller than any of them, except Luther and Cauldwell. Besides, the image is so large and so clear, it’s like he’s inside of it, like he’s back up there on the mountaintop, in the heat and the smoke, a sitting duck for dragon-fire. Makes him sweat just to think about it. And about what Fire might be up to. Even packed in here