DragonKnight (28 page)

         
36
         

T
RADITION

Under a tarp set up to provide shade, the mapmaker had erected chairs and a collapsible table to display his treasures. Books, charts, and maps covered the sturdy table. Bardon sat on a trunk cushioned by a pillow. He could not work up an eagerness to view this hoard of knowledge one more time.

Bromptotterpindosset and Regidor pored over the diary of Cadden Glas and the mapmaker’s charts. The meech dragon pointed out mountain ranges he had already explored and made minor corrections to the scale and scope of the sketches before him. The tumanhofer interpreted both Glas’s notations on the diary maps and the daily entries.

After an hour, the meech dragon began translating the pages with much less difficulty than his instructor. Bardon laughed at his friend’s ability to grasp the nuances of a language so quickly, but the mapmaker stared open-mouthed. He slammed his mouth shut, furrowed his brow in a fierce frown, and shook his finger at the meech.

“What’s this? Were you lying to me?” demanded the enraged tumanhofer.

“No.” Bardon leaned forward from where he sat watching the two. “He has always learned at a phenomenal rate. Didn’t the meech you encountered in Punipmats exhibit incredible mental abilities?”

“They were intelligent, it’s true,” Bromptotterpindosset admitted. “But I didn’t actually observe them learning what they knew.” He glared at Regidor, then shook his head and looked back at the map.

“So how is it, Wizard Regidor,” asked Bardon, “that you have spent so much time in this region?”

“I’m searching for the lost meech colony.”

N’Rae approached, holding hands with Sittiponder and Ahnek. Holt followed, carrying a tea tray. Granny Kye came with Jue Seeno’s basket over her arm.

A warrior’s battle shield served as the tray, and the cups and plates rattled slightly with a metallic clanking. The teapot was the camp’s tall coffeepot. The tea and daggarts, however, smelled like a real treat that might be served in Dar’s castle.

“So, Regidor, you are searching for your parents,” said Holt as he stood by the table, waiting for Bromptotterpindosset to clear away the scattering of charts. “I’m beginning to feel out of place. I seem to be one of the few on this quest who knows exactly who and where my parents are.”

Regidor stood so that Granny Kye and N’Rae could take the bench he had been sitting on.

“There are fourteen in our party, and only…” The meech dragon paused and leaned over the minneken’s basket. “Mistress Seeno, are you without knowledge of your parents?”

Regidor nodded at whatever the minneken had answered.

He turned back to Holt. “Only five of our members have little or no information about their parents. It would seem you erroneously claim a position of minority.”

“What’d he say?” asked Ahnek, shaking Sittiponder’s arm, but his friend ignored him.

“I have a father,” said the young tumanhofer.

“You do?” exclaimed Ahnek. “Where is he?”

“Everywhere. My Father is Wulder.”

The mapmaker nodded. “A quaint term used in many traditional circles. You are from Vendela, am I not mistaken?”

“I am,” answered Sittiponder.

Granny Kye poured a cup of tea and handed it to Bromptotterpindosset. He accepted with an inclination of his head. “I have always considered it odd that the ‘City of Enlightenment’ clings to the older traditions of the Tomes.”

Bardon frowned and reached into his pocket. His fingers found the coin Paladin had given him, and he pressed it against his palm. The cold metal chilled his skin as he watched the mapmaker pass a plate of daggarts to N’Rae.

Bardon exchanged glances with Regidor as the well-traveled tumanhofer talked of various cultures and their similarities.

“Don’t be so alarmed, Bardon. He can still be of use to us even if his beliefs are tarnished.”

The coin is cold in my hand. Paladin said to shun those people who did not have a heart for our quest.

Regidor’s eyes returned to the pleasant tableau of an afternoon tea.
“What are you going to do? Put him on a dragon and send him back to Wittoom?”

Perhaps. We needed Bromptotterpindosset to translate the diary. Now you can do that.

“Yes, but the diary belongs to the mapmaker. If he goes back, the diary and his maps go with him.”

I believe Wulder would take us to the resting place of the lost knights without Bromptotterpindosset.

“In theory, so do I, Squire.”

Bardon paused, mulling over the scene his announcement to ban the mapmaker would cause. His nose wrinkled in distaste.
I should challenge Bromptotterpindosset now and make arrangements for his return tomorrow.

Bardon started forward, but Regidor put a forefoot on his arm.

“Don’t act rashly, my friend. Give yourself time to consider what Wulder would have you do.”

It seems pretty clear cut to me. Paladin gave me a coin to help me discern the hearts of men. He said to shun those who cause the metal to cool.
He paused, rubbing the late-afternoon stubble on his chin.
Regidor, what do you see in this man’s colors?

The meech turned his gaze on the tumanhofer. The mapmaker sat at ease, clearly a man accustomed to sitting at the tables of refined citizens. He held the others’ attention with a story of a deity popular among the Ataradari, a tribe on one of the smaller southern continents. This Ataradarian character of folklore rewarded cleverness and beauty from his powerful seat of authority on a mountaintop.

Bardon twisted his lips.
Even a child learning the rudiments of the Tomes knows cleverness and beauty are temporal achievements and have nothing to do with lasting contentment.

“His colors.”
Regidor’s voice interrupted Bardon’s thoughts.

What?

“You asked about his colors.”

Yes?

“He carries no dark hues indicative of transactions with Pretender. But none of his colors have clarity, either. All but a very few of these strands of muddy-colored light turn back, inward. They should encompass him in a circular pattern. The lack of symmetry is significant. He is a very self-centered man.”

Bardon’s throat tightened.
We should be rid of him.

“Yes, now I see why you are eager to be rid of him,”
remarked Regidor in a steady voice that did much to soothe Bardon’s distress.
“He worked beside you to kill the sea serpent, and again, to escape the bisonbecks through the disintegrating gateway. But it was vital to his own personal safety that he do so. I think his decisions would be different should he need to choose between his own life and anyone else’s.”

Regidor placed a hand on Bardon’s shoulder but still did not speak aloud.
“I am now convinced that this mapmaker would not choose his path based on the principles of Wulder or the commands of Paladin. Nevertheless, you cannot load him onto a dragon at this late hour. And you would have everyone upset if you announced your intentions. So…”

So?

“So, consult with Captain Anton tonight and arrange for Bromptotterpindosset’s transportation in the morning.”

I worry about his influence on our party. The way he spouts off his philosophy is very entertaining.

“You do your people a disservice. Look at their faces.”

Of those seated around the mapmaker’s table, all but Holt and Ahnek had lost interest. Sittiponder had a distant expression, as if he were listening to an entirely different conversation. N’Rae’s brow furrowed as if she could not quite understand what was being said. Granny Kye yawned, covering her gaping mouth with a scrap of linen she used as her handkerchief. Jue Seeno, with her tiny hands and an odd metal instrument in her lap, worked on weaving yet another fancy sash.

Quietly, Bardon and Regidor left the gathering around the teapot and went in search of Captain Anton. The young squire had to double-time to keep up with the meech dragon’s long stride.

“Tomorrow,” said Bardon as they passed by the cooking fire and the lo who was in charge of the evening’s meal, “we shall address the false philosophy that riddles the tumanhofer’s tales. Paladin said he was more concerned about the monsters of variance than the quiss.”

“Rightly so.” With his long legs, Regidor stepped over an outcropping of rock that Bardon had to hop onto before he could jump down to the other side. They were headed for the temporary dragon field where riders and dragons relaxed.

“I’ve pondered what Paladin said, and I think I understand,” said Bardon, breathing heavily. “Slow down, would you, Reg? I can’t talk and run to keep up with you.”

Regidor complied. Bardon took a couple of deep breaths and went on. “When people are confronted with an outside enemy, they band together for mutual protection. A physical threat unifies.”

“Correct,” said Regidor.

“But ideas, contrary concepts, shades of differing opinions, theories, these things shatter commonality.”

“I agree,” said Regidor. “A quiss rises up out of the mist, and one knows one must kill or be killed. A man says over a pint of ale at the tavern that he believes Wulder is one form of universal fable, and who contradicts him? No one. Yet his words are belittling the truth, wounding the strength of our convictions.”

Bardon laughed. “We can’t slay everyone who doesn’t agree with the Tomes.”

“Words are powerful weapons, Squire Bardon. False philosophy can be killed with the right weapon. And the weapon is words. And the right words are truth.”

Bardon stopped. Regidor paced ahead, then halted his course to turn and tilt his head at his friend.

Bardon pointed back to the main camp. “If what you say is true, Reg, we should go back to Bromptotterpindosset and expose his lies with principles. We should be shouting our opposition.”

Regidor grinned. “No, no. I don’t believe that’s the correct course for this dilemma. You cannot attack a bad idea as you would a savage beast. You don’t reason with a bull who charges. You don’t shoot arrows at men with ideas.” Regidor signaled with his forefoot for Bardon to follow and started off again to the dragon field. “Sittiponder has already raised the flag of truth. Tomorrow we shall discuss Bromptotterpindosset’s stories. We will kill the false teachings of an ignorant man. Because…we shall allow each person to wrestle through his or her thinking to reach a personal conclusion. Their decisions will come from within.”

“There are men with bad ideas who do shoot arrows at us. What of them, Regidor? Do we reason then?”

“Thinking of Crim Cropper and Burner Stox?”

“Among others.”

“Because they wish to kill us, then by all means, let us shoot back. Those we do not kill, we shall capture. Then we can talk their ideas to death, once we have their arrows safely in our hands.”

They found Captain Anton sitting between the front legs of his dragon. He held a small, stringed instrument in his hands and played a melody commonly heard in Amara’s music halls. He stood immediately as Bardon and Regidor approached. The squire explained the problem with the mapmaker. If the captain thought the solution a bit extreme, he said nothing, merely agreeing to fulfill the orders given to him by his superior.

Bardon chose to sleep beneath the stars that night. He spent a great deal of time talking to Wulder in hopes that a clear answer to his unsettled feeling would emerge.

The problem of the Wizards’ Plume advancing across the sky could not be ignored. It hung at about forty degrees above the southwestern horizon. In the north sky the Eye of the North looked down from its ninety-degree position. It seemed that as the Wizards’ Plume gained height, it also gained speed. Bardon could do nothing to slow the comet’s progress. He spent time staring at the heavenly lights and wondering why Wulder allowed this particular clock to tick away the time. And he pondered an old question. Why did Wulder put each star and planet in intricate synchronization with one another, yet never bothered to send a follower just one clear-cut answer to a simple question?

Have I made the right decision regarding the mapmaker?