Gold Dragon Codex (12 page)

All the air in Sandon’s body froze inside his lungs. He drew in a difficult breath, fingers of ice running down his arms. How could it? How could it be true? Why had Kine stolen the necklace? Had he really been using Sandon just to get to the last treasures of the barony? He’d lied about being a knight, that was true, but Sandon had been ready to forgive him after spending some time grumping about it. This … this was different.

Sandon felt sick. Kine was keeping his secret—that made him a friend.

But he was stealing from the barony—from Sandon’s mother. That made him …

What?

Confused, Sandon allowed Vilfrand to push him away so that the guards could manhandle Kine toward the dungeon. The soldier didn’t fight them. He probably couldn’t have put up much of a battle—they’d clapped manacles around his wrists and were dragging him by his elbows, Kine’s boots sliding along the floor behind them. Sandon stared after him, but Kine didn’t meet his eyes, looking away when he passed the boy in the hall.

The captain shook Sandon. “Did you hear me?”

“Sir?”

“Come on.” He shoved the boy down the hallway, opposite of the direction where the guards were headed. “I’m taking you to your room, and you’re going to stay there.” Vilfrand brooked no argument. He shoved past Yattak and Umar, pushing the boy ahead of him with urgent strides. The wizard and his apprentice were only too eager to jump out of the way and be left behind. Sandon glanced back over his shoulder to see them whispering urgently behind the long drapes of their sleeves.

When Vilfrand got Sandon to his room, he pushed the boy inside so forcibly that Sandon stumbled, tumbling to the floor. Vilfrand stood in the doorway, legs spread, hands on his hips like some ancient colossus. “How dare you?” he demanded. “You irresponsible … thoughtless …”

Sandon rolled onto his back and looked up at his uncle. He’d rarely seen Vilfrand so mad, or his eyes so snapping blue. “This is my fault now?” Sandon shot his uncle his most withering gaze.

Vilfrand didn’t blink. “Yes. You’re the one who demanded we trust that soldier. You outright told him what to say to force your father to take him in. You’re the one who wouldn’t take him to the barracks and insisted we house him in the living quarters. You’re the one who took him into your mother’s rooms—”

Finally pushed to his limit, Sandon sat up. “I did not!” he yelled.

“Sandon!” the guard captain barked. He raised a hand to his eyes and rubbed them, then drew the palm of his hand down over his face in exasperation. “Sandon,” he said more gently. “You’ve really messed up this time.”

“I know.” Sandon pushed himself up, sitting forward with his shoulders bowed.

“I’ll speak to your father, try to get him to understand what happened wasn’t entirely your fault. None of us have been sleeping well lately, and that wretch took advantage of the fact that you idolize the Knights of Solamnia. I realize that.

“Stay in your room this time. It’s getting dark, and your father has too much on his mind to be worried about you wandering around the castle getting into even more trouble. I’ll be back in an hour with your dinner.” Before Sandon could protest, Vilfrand held up a hand and continued. “Sandon, please, do as you’re told. We both want Baron Camiel to leave this world with a good memory of his son, and this little escapade would only break his heart. It’s better for him to hear my version of it and not be confused by your argument. I’ll do the best I can to shield you from all of this—for now. But afterward, you and I are going to have a very long talk
about responsibility and duty.” Vilfrand’s blue eyes bored into Sandon, and the soldier sighed wearily. “Are we agreed?”

There wasn’t much Sandon could do to argue. Vilfrand wouldn’t believe a word he said, no matter how true it was. Instead, Sandon nodded curtly, pushing himself up from the floor.

“Good boy.” The words irked Sandon. They sounded as if the captain were praising a dog. “Get some rest and try to spend some time thinking about what you did wrong. You and I will have to rely on one another when your father’s gone. We will be the only thing standing between the barony of Hartfall and certain destruction. If I can’t rely on you …” Vilfrand let the words trail off warningly.

“Yes, sir.” Grudgingly, Sandon stomped toward his bed, flopping down on it with an audible grunt. The reminder of his father’s situation was a bitter one. Although Sandon was glad that Vilfrand wasn’t planning to tell his father and get him in trouble, some small part of him wanted just the opposite—to rush to his father’s rooms, throw his arms around the baron’s thick neck, and pour out his heart as he’d done when he was a young boy. Not that it would do much good, Sandon thought, frowning. Dad’s too busy right now to bother with me.

As he lay on the bed, watching the light outside dim into evening, Sandon found himself thinking about his mother. He struggled to remember her face: lovely, smiling, but just a little sad. She had long hair, a soft, pretty yellow. Brown eyes just like her son’s. He remembered, as if it were yesterday, sitting by her feet in her bedchamber, holding a skein of wool between his hands as she wove it into a ball. She’d give the ball to peasant women on their next trip into town, exchanging the soft thread for a bag of sugared rolls or a carved wooden comb. She used to go into town regularly, dragging Sandon along with her, like it or not. She’d encourage him to play in the central garden with other children his age. Mother never cared who was noble and who wasn’t. At the end of the day, all of the kids would share the sugared rolls she’d gotten, and she’d go back up to the keep empty-handed, but smiling.

He remembered a day when one of those kids had bullied him, sending him tearfully running to his mother’s skirts. Instead of yelling at the other boy or calling on her lofty rank, the baroness took Sandon back to the keep and taught him to use a small wooden practice sword. The next time the bully tried to cow one of the kids, Sandon stood up to him and protected the others. He remembered Mother picking him up
afterward with a proud smile, swinging him through the air as her long, blonde hair flew all around them.

She always smelled of rose water, and her hands were as soft as silk. Sandon couldn’t quite hear her voice anymore, but just trying to remember it soothed his mind every time he woke, frightened, in the middle of the night. Mother would have listened to him. Even if he had messed up, even if Kine was the awful, horrible man he seemed to be, the baroness would have held Sandon in her arms and listened until he ran out of breath to speak. Then she would have kissed him on the cheek and found a way to make everything better.

Sandon brushed tears out of his eyes roughly. This was no time to be crying like a little boy. He was in trouble. His father was about to be eaten by a dragon, the legend of the valley’s protector was a lie, and the man he’d hoped was a Knight of Solamnia come to save them had turned out to be nothing more than a greedy bandit in soldier’s clothes. Crying wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t keep Lazuli away from the valley, and it wouldn’t bring back his mother. She was dead.

The only things he had left of his mother were her secrets.

espite his best efforts to the contrary, Sandon woke up.

It was late. A thin ray of blood-colored moonlight sliced through his windows onto the hard wood of the floor. He must have fallen asleep. Given the day he’d had and the exertion of climbing the cliff side (not to mention fighting the guardians!), he wasn’t surprised. He sat up on the bed, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and trying to guess the time by the angle of the red moon. Late night, he guessed, but not yet early morning. The midnight bells had already rung, but dawn was still a distance away. Sandon slid off his bed and shook himself, flattening out the wrinkles in his clothes with his hands.

There was a tray filled with a plate of stew, a glass of water, and a few pieces of bread rolled into a napkin on the little table by his door. Uncle Vilfrand had been true to his word. He’d brought dinner. Sandon must have
slept right through it. He grumbled and sat down on the chair beside the table, digging into the meal, bread first. As angry as he was at Vilfrand, and Kine too, he couldn’t ignore the growling of his belly. He also wasn’t about to go back to sleep, even if he wanted to.

There was too much going on, from his father’s sacrifice to Lazuli to Kine’s betrayal—everything felt upside down and topsy-turvy. And that wasn’t even taking into account the gold dragon construct they’d found at the top of the cliff.

What was with that, anyway? Had his mother really flown the golden dragon? It was possible, Sandon thought, considering the size of the operating nook inside the construct’s chest. The baroness had been a small woman, so she would have fit. So would a gnome, though, and that’s who Kine thought probably made the machine. Sandon closed his eyes, trying to remember if his mother had ever mentioned a gnome friend. Maybe? She certainly wrote a lot of letters to people outside the barony—any of those could have been to a gnome.

Had there ever been a real gold dragon? Sandon stuffed a piece of bread laden with stew into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. That cave seemed real enough, and it was certainly big enough to house such a creature. Perhaps sometime in the past, in his
grandfather’s day or even before that, there was a real dragon guarding the valley. Maybe it had grown old and died, or maybe Lazuli had killed it. Maybe it left the gold dragon construct behind to guard Hartfall. Maybe it had been there for generations.

No. That didn’t make sense. Sandon shook his head in annoyance. The construct was designed for someone to fly it, someone small and light. He knew his family tree well, having been taught it since he was a little boy. His mother was the first female born in the baronial line in five generations. Sandon remembered his grandfather a little—tall, broad shouldered, with a deep husky laugh, and the scent of peppermint. There was no way such a big man had ridden in that construct.

So, it was his mother who had the golden dragon built. Or, at least, that made the most sense, although Sandon still couldn’t figure out how she’d done it. The barony of Hartfall had never been wealthy, and that dragon was made of gold. Sure, gold wasn’t as costly as steel, but he’d guess that much of the constructed frame beneath the golden scales was made of harder metal. That kind of thing would be tremendously expensive. Possibly more costly than the entire wealth of the people in the valley combined! Sandon’s father had been paying tribute out of the baronial vault for more than two years
since Sandon’s mother died, keeping careful track of the flow of solid steel from the coffers. If the baroness had used any of that money to build something so expensive, there would have been records, and surely his father would have found them.

Did his father know? Had his mother shared the secret? Sandon thought of the agonizing days when his father blew the horn only to get no response, and discounted the notion. His mother had definitely kept it from the baron. Why? Didn’t Mother trust Father?

Sandon remembered Kine’s snide accusations, and drove his knife into the meat. There was no way Baron Camiel would hurt his wife. The baroness had been murdered by poison, killed by one of the travelers they’d invited to stay in the keep during a winter storm, not by the baron. Everyone knew that. It didn’t matter what Kine thought. The soldier had a chip on his shoulder about the baron, that was for sure. Maybe he’d been mistreated by nobles during the war. Besides, what would the baron have to gain from his wife’s death?

Well … she had been the actual ruler of the valley, not Camiel. It was her family that held the throne.

But that didn’t matter. She’d chosen to share her rulership with her husband.

And she had been the one to keep the vault while
they were married. Baron Camiel hadn’t taken over until after she died. Of course, now all of that money was going to Lazuli, being shipped out of the barony by the baron as tribute to the blue dragon. Sandon didn’t like the way that sounded, so he shooed his thoughts away.

The baroness had secrets from her husband. That seemed certain. Had Camiel found some of them out? Had he discovered that she’d used a lot of the money out of the vault, perhaps, and wouldn’t tell him why? Would that be enough of a reason to …