Gold Dragon Codex (15 page)

“Gallia?” Yattak leaned into Sandon’s pull, shifting forward in the chair. “Dear lady. Good lady. I’ve even forgiven her for having that foul temper. Wine, you say?”

“That’s right, Yattak.” Umar jumped in to help, pushing the pudgy mage from behind.

They got the wizard up and steered him toward the door. There, Yattak paused to look behind him, craning his wide neck to peer over his shoulder. He scanned the room one more time, a faint desperation in the twist of his full mouth. Yattak murmured softly to himself, “I thought it would be here. I really did.”

Almost meekly, the red wizard allowed his apprentice and Sandon to shepherd him out of the room.

unning down the hallway at full speed, the stone walls of the castle flying past him and the echo of ringing bells filling the air, Sandon privately reconsidered the wisdom of his plan. Tying rocks to the ropes of the fire bells would keep them ringing for some time after he left the area, panicking the guards and causing the village to turn out in a vain attempt to find the location of the fire. With only a few guards in attendance in the castle, they’d need all of them to search because a fire in the fields at this time of year could destroy what little harvest Lazuli allowed them, threatening the entire valley with starvation.

He hated causing so much trouble, but it was the only way to make sure that the guards posted in the lower area of the keep, where the cells were, would leave their posts. Fire bells were a priority. Guarding someone who was already safely locked into a cell was less important.

Sandon saw two guards in chain mail running down the corridor from the barred door to the dungeons. They had their hands clamped over their helms, calling to one another as they rushed toward the kitchens. Sandon ducked back against the wall, hiding behind an empty suit of armor. They didn’t see him, and raced past. Sandon looked after them until they rounded the corner and went out of sight.

He went to the dungeon and unlocked the bolt, then twisted the handle back and tugged the heavy oak door open. Old stone stairs led down into darkness, with a flicker of torchlight illuminating a chamber far below. Sandon looked back over his shoulder. The ruse would gain him perhaps as long as twenty minutes. He’d have to hurry—and hope that the captive soldier was willing to talk.

Sandon hurried down the stairs to the bottom. Near the stairs was a thin table covered with a plate of crackers and a pile of hastily dropped playing cards. Beyond that were two iron-barred cells. One was empty, the door standing dusty and open. The other was closed, locked, and held a sorry-looking figure. Kine lay on a metal cot hanging from the rear wall of his cell, arms crossed beyond his head and legs propped up in the corner of the wall. He muttered something when Sandon
tromped down the stairs. Turning his head a bit, he called out, “Back so soon?”

Sandon bit his lip and stepped into the room so that the soldier could see him. “Hi, Kine.”

Kine started, jerking up on the cot. “Sandon!” he said, staring. “What are you doing here?” The soldier’s voice was sharp.

Sandon felt the blood rushing to his face. “I wanted to show you this.” He held out his mother’s journal, the pages inside the leather cover smoothed down gently. “It belonged to my mother.”

The soldier stared at it. “What do you expect me to do with that?”

Sandon’s hand fell. “I got it out of her room.”

“You broke into your mother’s chamber again? Sandon, kid, you just don’t learn.” He counted on his fingers arrogantly. “You break in there again, find a way to get my guards to leave so you can sneak down here, and then you trust me enough to tell me this kind of thing.” Kine chuckled. “Are you sure you want to grow up to be a baron? You’re pretty good at the shady stuff.”

Sandon ignored his taunts. “The journal. It said”—Sandon swallowed a lump in his throat—“bad things.”

“Huh. I can imagine.” Kine considered, narrowing
his eyes. The soldier raised an eyebrow and leaned back against the stone wall. “Your father’s involved?”

“Maybe.” Sandon sighed. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, Kine, and called you names.”

Kine waved that off. “You had a right to be angry, kid. You thought I was something that I’m not, and I didn’t correct you. Water under the bridge.” He frowned. “I need to apologize too, and explain a few things if you’ll let me. Like the reason I stole your mother’s locket.” The soldier shifted around uncomfortably on the metal cot and ran a hand through his hair. “This isn’t my first time in your valley. I think I mentioned that. I was here before the war, before I went to the front lines, and I remember that your mother was kind to me. She was a generous and sweet woman, good to everyone, especially travelers. Many of us wished we were nobles so that we could marry her. Of course, she married a non-noble—your father—after the war began. That’s irony for you.” Kine shrugged and looked at the stone floor of the prison cell. “I just wanted something to remember her by.”

“I know how you feel.” The admission was small, but the look that Kine shared warmed Sandon’s heart. Haltingly, Sandon began to tell Kine what he’d found in the journal, paraphrasing in order to tell as much as
he could in a short time. When he was done, he shook his head. “I don’t know what to think anymore, Kine. I love my dad. He can’t be behind this … can he?”

“I’m sorry that I accused your father, Sandon. I should have had more respect for him—and his son—than to bad-mouth him in front of you. I’ll be even more sorry if I turn out to be right. But look at it from my perspective. When I last came through this valley, it was protected by a gold dragon. Your mother’s family was strong and respected. Your father was just one of many suitors for your mother’s hand, and not a particularly important or well-known one. Now I return to find that your mother—a woman I respected a great deal—was murdered, a blue dragon’s living here, and your father’s paying tribute to him as bold as brass.” Kine sighed. “I didn’t know anything about the gold dragon construct. It looked to me like the blue dragon had killed or run off the Gold—and your father had done the same with your mother.”

Before, the words would have made Sandon angry, but right now, they only made him sad. “I saw my father with poison. The same poison that was used to …” Words failed him. He gulped and straightened. “Even if he didn’t do it, he knows something he’s not telling me. I need to find out what’s going on.”

“Sandon, eventually you’re going to have to face facts,” Kine stressed. “Someone killed your mother. If it wasn’t your father, it doesn’t matter. Someone had a reason to kill her. They wanted her out of the way, or they were trying to get something from her.”

“But it doesn’t have to be my father, does it?”

Kine sighed. “Who else? Fine. Let’s look at the options, kid. Sure, that wizard Yattak’s been acting funny. You say he wanted to get into your mother’s room, and I’ll bet he had a reason. That door’s been locked since she died, so whatever it was, he’s been missing it for a long time.”

“Oh! Yeah, that’s right.” Sandon brightened.

“Then again”—the soldier raised his hand—“you said you heard Captain Vilfrand say that Guildmaster Torentine has been snooping around the keep …”

Nodding eagerly, the boy replied, “That’s right! He’s acting shady too. We can’t rule anyone out. What if it’s someone else who lives here—one of the guards? Maybe Malaise found a way—”

“Seriously. We can go on like this forever if you want. I’m not going anywhere.” Kine flicked a bit of cracked mortar through the bars. It hit Sandon in the chest and rolled down, dropping to the floor with a
plink
. “But you already know what I think: it’s your father.
So tell me something. Are you trying to convince me, or are you trying to convince yourself?”

Sandon sighed. “You might be right. But I can’t give up on my dad until I’m sure.”

Kine nodded. “Then let’s change the subject a bit. Whoever killed your mother had to have a motive, right?”

“A motive.” Frowning, Sandon rubbed his chin. “The hoard. Anyone who knew there was a dragon in these lands would have guessed that it had a hoard. The Gold left it to my mother, which is something that a little poking around would probably have turned up.”

“Right.” Kine pondered. “But she spent it all on the constructs.”

“Nobody knew that except my mother and the gnome.” Sandon nodded slowly. “That makes sense. Mother’s journal said that a lot of people knew it’d left his hoard with her. They thought she’d hired the gnome in order to hide the money.”

“So when someone attacked her, they might have been trying to find it. She mentioned that they knew about ‘the construction,’ and they were looking for a password. But did they know what she had constructed? Unless they’d followed her to the cavern—which I seriously doubt, given they were using those gnome-made
portals—as far as they knew, she could have been constructing anything.”

“True.” The boy pondered. “And if they didn’t know what it was, they didn’t know what was happening to the money, did they? The gold she used on the dragon construct’s scales, and the steel she put into its frame. They must think she still has it—that it’s still here in Hartfall.” Jerking, Sandon sat up straight. “Oh my gosh. That’s what Lazuli thinks too. Someone must have told him.”

Kine’s eyes widened. “You think they’re working together? Lazuli and your mother’s killer? To find the hoard?” They sat in silence for a moment, staring at each another. At last, Kine said, “If they think that the hoard is protected by something the gnome Kadastrofee built, then they’d need to get her password. When you were reading the journal, did your mother mention it? Did she say what the password was?” Kine leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

“No.” Sandon brightened. “But there was a page missing.”

“If whoever killed her also stole that page, they might have the password. Not that they’d know what to do with it even if they got it, assuming that they didn’t know about the dragon construct. I wonder what they
thought the password was for?” Sandon ran his hand through his hair. “I’ve got another question: if they had the password, why kill her?”

“To know that, we need to know more about the killer. We might be able to tell more about who they are by studying what they did and how they did it. Your mother was poisoned, right? What kind of poison did the killer use?”

“Yellow lakrak.”

Kine blinked. “Wait, what? Lakrak? Sandon, that’s very rare. You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Huh. I know that root.” Kine leaned forward and motioned with his hands. “Yellow lakrak is a drug made from the root of an unusual plant. It’s chewed by a certain tribe of scouts in Queen Takhisis’s dragonarmies—people who serve the evil dragons. The scouts are used to the root, so they chew it a lot and it gives them benefits. They can stay awake longer or run faster, that sort of thing. But like I said, they’re used to it. Their bodies are accustomed to the root. On a normal person, it’s pretty poisonous.”

“So?”

“So, if someone used it on your mother, they might have been expecting a different reaction. To one of those scouts or someone without a tolerance for the drug, it
would just make them woozy. They’d lose track of the things around them. Everything would seem surreal—unless the poisoner gave her too much.”

“You’re saying that if they’d given her less, she would have told them everything. But they gave her too much, and that killed her.”

“That’s what it sounds like.”

Despite himself, Sandon brightened a bit. “That means whoever killed my mother might not have meant to hurt her.”

“Don’t get too excited. They still poisoned her. They were still willing to do anything necessary to get the secrets of this barony. The killing might have been a mistake—but the treason wasn’t.” Kine shook his finger. “You need a plan, Sandon. Thus far, you’ve been lucky, but the closer you get to the murderer, the meaner they’re going to get. They’ve already proven that they’re willing to kill for this, whether they meant to or not. You have to be careful.”

“I wish you could help me.”

Kine snorted. “I can’t do anything while I’m behind bars.”

“I’ll do something about that,” Sandon promised. “I’m sure there’s a key. Dad probably has it.”