Gold Dragon Codex (18 page)

Shaking himself out of his amazement, Sandon jumped to pull the keys from Jonas’s belt and flipped
through them quickly to find the one that would unlock Kine’s cell. All of his bravado failed when he saw Jonas’s eyes rolling back into his head, his hand flapping about Kine’s elbow with weaker and weaker motions. “Don’t kill him!” Kine didn’t answer. Jonas had started thrashing, throwing his entire weight against the soldier’s arm in a last, desperate attempt to break free.

Sandon shoved the key into the prison lock, twisting it heavily until he heard the lock snap. He jerked the door open with one hand, while the other fell to his sword. “Let him go! If you hurt him, Kine, I’ll run you through!”

The soldier turned to look at Sandon and raised an eyebrow. He lifted his hands slowly. Jonas, unconscious, slid through the soldier’s arms and fell to the ground with a little sigh. Kine kept his hands up and faced Sandon. “Seriously, Sandon,” he said, shaking his head. “What kind of person do you think I am?”

Sandon let go of his sword hilt. “Sorry.”

“You come all the way down here, bully the guard, demand my freedom, and then threaten my life. I have to give it to you, kid. You don’t do anything by halves.” Kine lowered his hands, chuckling. “What are you doing here?”

“I need your help. My father admitted his guilt to me. He poisoned my mother.”

“He told you—” Kine gaped.

Sandon had no time to dwell on it further. “I confronted him about the poison. He said that he had to do it in order to ‘get the dragon.’”

“Well, he did give some pretty reprehensible orders where I’m concerned.” Kine snorted, stepping over the slumped guard. The soldier started rummaging around the room, making a pleased noise when he found a second scabbard. He drew it out from under a pile of baronial tabards and slid the weapon free of the sheath. “My sword!” He chuckled. “Glad to find that. I was afraid I’d have to use one of your gigantic baronial polearms.”

“Dad’s going out into the courtyard with the ancestral horn—the one that summons the dragon. He’s going to blow the horn when the sun sets, and Lazuli will enter the valley. I don’t know what Dad’s plan is, but if we can’t stop him from blowing that horn, the blue dragon will never leave the valley again, that’s for sure.” He knelt down and checked Jonas, just to be sure. The guard was unconscious, but breathing easily, his strong pulse beating in the veins just below the surface of his neck. Sandon balled up one of the spare tabards and tucked it beneath the fallen man’s head. “Sorry, Jonas,” he muttered lamely. “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow—if there is a tomorrow.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about it, and something bothers me.” Kine strapped the sword around his waist. “Why the dragon?” He scratched his grizzly chin and shrugged. “If he wants the treasure for himself, and he’s gone through so much trouble to get it, why would he let the dragon get involved? Lazuli’s just going to take the treasure for himself. Blue dragons are the greediest, nastiest, and most self-absorbed dragons in the world—but they’re also among the smartest. If the baron’s made a deal with him and he’s holding back, Lazuli’s going to find out. When that happens, no deal’s going to keep that dragon from killing him along with everyone else.”

“So? He won’t break it.”

“Then what does he have to gain? Lazuli isn’t stupid. There’s nothing in this valley for him. The dragon’s a soldier of Takhisis, he wants to continue the war. There aren’t enough soldiers here to interest him, and the valley has no real resources to be tapped—no mines, no forges, no leather tanneries. Gems and steel are what the dragon wants, and nothing else.”

“Are you saying that anyone working with him has to be paying him in money? What about the tribute that my dad’s been paying? That’s money enough,” Sandon reminded the soldier.

“It ends when the barony gives up. And if I know anything about little farming valleys, it was never much to begin with. So, if Lazuli hasn’t gained much through the tribute, and he isn’t interested in the valley itself, he has to be here for the original dragon’s hoard, the one that belonged to your mother’s friend, the gold dragon. We’re back where we started.

“Except that this means, from what you said, whoever killed your mother was trying to get the password from her. She was killed by mistake.” Kine looked grim. He picked up the eating dagger from the table and pushed it into his boot.

The soldier headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Sandon had to rush to follow, holding the length of his sword to keep it from banging against the wall. Kine kept talking, calling back to Sandon, “Your father’s about to blow the horn. We’ve got to hurry.”

“Right. “Sandon ran to catch up.

Kine pushed open the door and stepped into the hallway just as the evening bells began to ring. Sunset was close. “Where are they now?”

“In the courtyard. But … Kine!” Kine stopped in the hallway, and Sandon reached out to grab his arm. “I want to make something clear.”

Kine frowned. “What?”

“Regardless of my father’s guilt or innocence, saving the barony has to be our first concern—no matter what happens.” He frowned. “We’ll find a way to deal with the dragon. I’ll drive him out, I swear it. But our first priority today has to be the barony—not Lazuli.”

Surprised, Kine stared down at Sandon with a strange half smile. Slowly, he drew the sword at his belt. With a nod, the grizzled soldier lowered himself to one knee and laid the sword on the ground at Sandon’s feet. Kine took the youth’s hand in his and said, “Spoken like a true baron of Hartfall. Your mother would be proud.

“Lead on, my liege. I will follow.”

he outer courtyard was darkened by long dark pillars of shadow, echoes of the high towers of the keep. Sandon didn’t see many of the barony’s guards. One held a position at the castle gate, and another was a shadow on the roof of the second of the three towers. The baron and Captain Vilfrand stood together at the top of the central, highest tower of the keep. Behind them was Yattak, whimpering and moaning under his breath, his red robes stretched taut around his panting chest. Umar huddled beside his master, trying to hide behind the older wizard’s bulk.

This was the place where the ancestral horn had been sounded in the past, and was the only place in the main keep that was large enough for a dragon to land. The tower top had a small garden on it. Green bushes and arches of ivy marked the edges of a circular plaza. The stones of the plaza were unlike those anywhere
else in the barony. Rather than the grays and blacks of the surrounding granite hills, these were lightly colored sandstone in bright reds, yellows, and oranges. They ran along the plaza in intersecting bands in an intricate pattern like brilliant sunshine rays spreading out from a small central circle of purest white.

Late-blooming flowers speckled the quarter-circle gardens that ringed the edge of the pattern. They peeked out from beneath the hedges, sprinkling a touch of color like ripples on the water of the roof. The flowers, blue and green like the valley that spread out below them, thrived despite years of neglect, turning into a veritable carpet of tangled vines and jutting stalks. They waved in the evening wind, turning their blooms to catch the last honeyed rays of the autumn sun.

Sandon and Kine crept out of the trapdoor that led to the roof and hid behind a thick ridge of bushes. Sandon parted the branches to peer between them and catch a glimpse of the small crowd gathered in the center of the plaza. They were looking to the north, shading their eyes from the western glare to focus on a ridge of mountains far away, at the lip of the valley on the other side of the woods. A small dot approached, dark against the clouds.

“We’re too late!” Sandon groaned.

Kine gripped his arm and shushed him. “No, we aren’t. That’s too small to be a dragon, even at this distance.” He squinted and tried to make it out. “Draconian.”

“Malaise.” There was only one creature Lazuli would send to oversee his tribute—his flight marshal. The dot grew larger and larger against the white clouds, shimmering wings reflecting burnt orange sunlight in glittering rainbows as it came closer and closer still. The draconian drew near the edge of the tower, slowing as her shadow slid over the stone. She hung in the air for a moment, and then floated lower, like a jessed hawk landing at last on its favorite perch.

Malaise landed gracefully a few feet from the baron, her clawed hands wrapped around the hilts of two daggers hanging from the front of her belt. She wore thick leathers padded at the knee and elbow and wrapped tightly with layers of leather thongs down to her wrists and ankles. She wore no shoes, allowing her clawed feet to scrape lightly against the sandstone, and her fingers were overly long, nails sharp like talons, clicking against the weapons she held close. Stiffening to her full height of more than eight feet, she towered head and shoulders above Baron Camiel and Vilfrand.

Her long tongue flickered out, lightly scenting the
air. Malaise took in the two guards who stood behind their master with their hands clenched around their halberds. Instead of looking concerned, the draconian smiled and stepped forward lithely, her eyes sparkling with feral delight. “Good evening, Your Excsssellency. A pleasssure to see you again.”

The baron didn’t respond to her taunts. He stared her down, face tight and eyes narrowed. “The sun has not yet set, Malaise.”

The tall sivak draconian lifted her head toward the horizon, looking at the thick disk of the sun balanced on its edge. “Sssoon enough, Baron. You have the horn?”

Baron Camiel reached beneath his long blue cloak, drawing out the horn that had graced the wall behind the baronial thrones. The curved length was heavy in his hands, far larger than any normal hunting horn. The coppery yellow had small streaks of brighter metallic color where the baron’s hands had brushed away the dust. Baron Camiel held it close, avoiding Malaise’s greedy claws. “I do.”

Malaise rubbed her hands together, rolling her claws back and forth with greed. “And your people?”

The baron spoke through gritted teeth. “They are gathered in the village square. Close enough to see your master, but not so near that his actions will … disturb them.”

“You humans are so squeamish.” Malaise laughed. “I will take a sweep of the village and see that what you have said is true. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before the sun has sunk below the mountains. I wouldn’t miss the blowing of the baronial horn for all the steel in Palanthas!”

“You had best hurry, then,” Camiel snapped.

Malaise flapped her wings strongly, lifting up off the stone tower. She swept out over the village, looping the courtyard and striking out toward the lower part of the valley. Through the crenellation in the tower’s stone edging, Sandon could see that what his father said was true—most of the village had turned out into the garden square where the statue of the gold dragon had once stood. Sandon could make out Guildmaster Torentine among them, calling to everyone with his loud voice to stay together, to stay calm. The villagers huddled there now, keeping their children close, protected by the last of the baronial guard. “So that’s where the other guardsmen are. He probably put them there so they wouldn’t have to see … to see …” Sandon gulped, realizing that he was now in a position to see exactly what Baron Camiel had tried to spare his men—the dragon eating their ruler. “All right.” He steadied himself. “Let’s go.”

Before Sandon could push through the bushes
and challenge his father’s actions, Kine grabbed his arm. The soldier squinted through the brush. “Is your father drunk?”

“What? No! Dad doesn’t drink.” Sandon snorted, taking a second look at his father.

Baron Camiel wiped his face on the sleeve of his nicely tailored shirt. It wasn’t a warm evening. Autumn was rapidly turning into the chill of winter, and the mountain leaves were touched with the first hints of frost. He was swaying a bit on his feet. The horn in his hand was clutched so tightly that his knuckles whitened. He looked just like … just like Mother did, right before she died. Pale and sickly, barely breathing and blue, the baron fixed his eyes on the horizon, his hands sweaty on the ancestral horn.