Gold Dragon Codex (8 page)

“No. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Well, I’m glad at least one member of your family believes that. Now, tell me, kiddo, where are you going, and why is everyone in the castle acting like someone just died?”

It took just that hint of caring for everything to spill out. The words fell from Sandon’s lips in a downpour—his father’s deal with Lazuli, Malaise’s evil glee, the horrible look on everyone’s face, like they were simply accepting the inevitable when his father went away to make plans for the regency. Kine took it all in silently,
nodding on occasion, but just letting Sandon go on and on until words failed the boy and he trickled to a stop. It was a relief to get it all out, like a wound lanced by a physician, and when he was done, Sandon took a deep, shuddering breath and fell silent.

“So. Back to my question,” Kine said, and this time he smiled gently. “What are you doing?’

“Going up to the mountain to make that dragon listen to us even if it kills me.”

“Lazuli?” Kine’s eyes bugged out.

“No!” Sandon rolled his eyes. “The gold dragon.”

There was a long pause. “I’m not sure that’s better,” the soldier said, rubbing his chin with a wry smirk. “All dragons are dangerous. On the battlefield, we learned not to get in their way, and duck if they suddenly flew low. What makes you think this Gold will help you if it hasn’t lifted a finger yet?”

“Nothing.” Sandon waved his empty hands and shrugged. “But it’s the best idea I have, and honestly, I can’t just sit here and do nothing while my father plans his own funeral.”

Kine looked at Sandon with something akin to respect. “I have to agree—it’s exactly what I’d do in your place. But I’ve got one more question for you, and this one’s not as easy. If you go off to bother this gold
dragon, and it’s crazy or upset and it kills you, how is that helping your father or Hartfall?”

Pausing, Sandon stared at the hilt of the soldier’s ever-present sword. A kingfisher, a crown, and a rose. Hope rose up in his chest, unbidden. “It’s not going to kill me. It’s going to trust me.” He felt a grin spreading across his features, the first smile since he’d seen his father meet with the draconian on the field.

“Why?”

“Because I just had a great idea. It might not recognize me as heir to the baronial throne, but it will respect me—because I’ll be escorted by a Knight of Solamnia. No matter how crazy that dragon is, it has to respect the ancient oaths that the dragons made to Huma and his order. I may not be a knight like you, but I’m just as brave. I don’t need to be sworn in order to act like one.”

“Hey, now wait a minute, I told you, I’m not—” Kine protested.

Sandon interrupted quickly. “By the guest law, when you asked for succor, you were swearing to all of its tenets. That means you swore ‘to do no harm and aid in all ways.’ Right?”

“Right.” Kine winced. “Oh, swords afire. I see where this is headed.”

“Directly up the side of a mountain,” Sandon said, shoving his extra canteen into Kine’s hands. “You’re going with me.”

The first hours of their trek were the easiest. Once they’d slipped out of the keep—easy enough, given how preoccupied everyone was—the roads that led toward the mountains were clear-cut, if overgrown from lack of use. Sandon had abandoned his armor back in his room because it was too heavy for climbing, but he kept his hand on his sword hilt, ever ready for bandits to appear out of the woods like wolves. They moved slowly and carefully over hollows and brushy vales where Sandon had played as a young boy. The fields around Hartfall were half-blackened, and the signs of Lazuli’s displeasure still marked several areas where the blue dragon had scarred the earth. He was obviously quite big, judging by the marks of his claws on stone and earth, and his lightning breath not only set the crops on fire, but scorched earth and air alike, leaving a thick crust of greasy ash wherever Lazuli spent his rage.

A few people could be seen working the fields that still held green and growing crops, but those fields were
few and far between, the last arable land that the Blue allowed them. Even those paltry fields were protected by farmers carrying pitchforks, walking the edges of their fields like soldiers on patrol to keep out bandits and carry a watchful eye for enemies. If the town of Hartfall was so quiet that it seemed half empty, the fields looked plenty full of people desperate to protect their only livelihood in these last weeks before harvest. More than their livelihood, Sandon realized. Their very lives. If those fields were burned, most of the people in town wouldn’t have food for the winter. Hunting would help when they could slip out into the forest without being caught by bandits—or draconians!—but every trip would be a tremendous risk, and more than a few would end in tragedy.

Many times along the grassy, unused roads that led toward the edges of the valley, they saw cold campsites where bandits had spent time before moving to richer pastures, or empty houses that had been looted when their occupants were forced to move closer to town. The homes stood in silence, empty-eyed skeletons occasionally touched with some familiar strangeness, like frilly drapes in broken windows, or children’s toys scattered about in ash-scarred yards. Kine ignored them, keeping his eyes on the road and head bowed in a sturdy, marching pace. Sandon couldn’t help but stop and stare. He’d known
that things were bad. He’d heard his father say that the people were close to starving, and he knew Gallia was doing everything she could to stretch the keep’s meager supplies, but he hadn’t had an image of the wreckage that marked the edges of the Hartfall barony. Things were worse than he’d imagined, inside and outside of the little blue-roofed town.

They reached the cliff side where steep and rugged rock towered up in jagged handfuls toward the bright blue sky. Kine shaded his eyes, peering upward while Sandon began to scamper up and over the first large boulders. Kine scrambled in his backpack, pulling out an odd assortment of gear while Sandon perched on a graying peak of stone. “What’s that?”

Kine sat down, strapping something to each of his feet and pulling on a pair of thick, scaly looking gloves. “Climbing gear. You’d better put on a pair of the gloves too, kid, if I’m going to haul you up this mountain.”

“I can climb just fine.”

“Not unless you’re part hawk, you can’t. Those high areas there are sheer stone. I’ll go first, widen some of the cracks with the climbing spurs on my boots. That’ll help with your grip. Until I get up there and check it out, you’ll be sitting as still as a canary in its nest, waiting for my by-your-leave. You got me?”

“What is all that stuff?” Sandon pointed at all the equipment. “Why do you carry climbing gear around?”

“Because I don’t always make friends.”

“So?”

“And I’ve always got to eat.” Kine hurled the rope upward, and a miniature grappling hook caught hold around one of the higher rocks. He ignored Sandon’s disbelieving grunt and didn’t answer any other questions. Looking up at the rope, the soldier tugged on it, leaning his weight against the creaking weave until he was satisfied. Kine wrapped his hands in the rope, twisting it around his thick gloves. Hand over hand, kicking with the spiked boot wraps against the stone, Kine climbed like a spider to the top of the rope and over the lip of the first plateau.

Sandon scrambled down, grabbed the other pair of gloves, and shoved his hands into them. Kine reappeared over the rock face, calling down, “Tie my backpack to the end of the rope so we can haul it up with us.” Sandon was quick to comply, and then started pulling himself up the length of the hemp. When he reached the top, Kine pulled him over and started coiling the length up until he had gathered it all. Kine then unlatched the grappling hook, swung it around his head, and tossed it to a higher boulder.

“You’re sure that the dragon lives at the top of this cliff?” Kine asked, starting up the next, much steeper cliff.

“On sunny days, you can see the shine of its scales from the highest tower of the keep, I told you. Its cave is on that ledge, right there.” Sandon pointed. It seemed very far above them.

“And it’s never moved?”

“Not as long as I’ve been watching it. Three years or more.”

“Might be petrified.” Kine scratched his cheek, measuring the high breadth of stone between them and the faraway cliff ledge. “If the blue dragon got here first, he might have already killed the Gold. Left the body on the ledge to rot.”

“If that were true, it wouldn’t be shiny, now would it? It’d be all gooey and raven picked. And after three years, it’d probably look more bone white than solid gold.” Sandon was glad he’d already argued all of this through on his own, even if it reminded him of the long hours he’d spent sitting on top of his father’s highest tower, staring forlornly at a glittering yellow mote that shone like a beacon against brown and gray mountain walls.

“You’d better be right, Sandon.” Kine grinned down at him, lolling like a marionette halfway up the rope.
“If you’re wrong, you’re lowering me when we head down again.”

They struggled up the cliff even as the sun climbed in the sky, passing its zenith and heaving into afternoon. It was difficult, but they were aided by the fact that the cliff was far less sheer than it looked. It was pockmarked by ledges and boulders, little goat trails and flat plateaus of bushy overgrowth. By late afternoon, Kine’s grappling hook caught on the high ledge that was their target. “Last chance to back out.” The soldier scratched his grizzly chin. “Once we get up there, either the dragon helps us, or it eats us. You said that you wanted to show that you were brave enough to be a knight. I guess this is your chance, kid. You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure.” Sandon thought the soldier might be kidding, but he honestly wasn’t sure. There was no way this could go wrong—it was a gold dragon after all, and more, Sandon had a Knight of Solamnia with him. That was all the Golden General of the good armies had, and she’d driven off Takhisis’s armies! Surely, they could drive off just one blue dragon. What else could he possibly need? “All right. I’m ready.”

Kine muttered, “Glad one of us is, kid,” and pitched the grappling hook. “You stay here. If I don’t come back, you start down again. That’s an order, soldier.” Sandon
nodded, afraid that the soldier would hurl him off the cliff if he didn’t agree.

Breathing heavily, Kine straightened his gloves and boot spurs. He spent extra time testing the rope, tugging on the weave and double-checking the grip of the grappling hook until Sandon poked him for dawdling. With a mighty sigh, the soldier began his climb. The last area of rock was only about fifteen feet above them, hardly the height of the oak doors to Sandon’s father’s hall, but it felt like it took forever for Kine’s gloved fingers to seize the edge. The boy watched the soldier pull himself up, peering over the cliff edge at the cave beyond. The silence was deafening, broken several minutes later by a long, low whistle. “Well, I’ll be hog-tied and fed to ogres.” He looked down between his legs and called to Sandon, “You aren’t going to believe this, kid.”

“Just get me up there!” Sandon jerked on the rope in eager rhythm. “We’ll see if the dragon can ignore me when I’m standing in its face!” The soldier, courage returned, scraped over the ledge. He gestured for Sandon to follow him up the gently swaying rope. When the boy was close enough, Kine gripped Sandon’s hand and hauled him over the edge and onto the hard stone lip of the cave. Sandon jerked off his climbing gloves and turned to look at their destination.

The stone cave beyond was rugged only in initial appearance. Through the wide opening, Sandon could see that the cavern was beautifully carved, with tall stone pillars holding up an elegantly shaped roof. The area inside was nearly as big as his father’s dining hall, and definitely bigger than any other room of the keep. There were wide, semicircular couches curled up against the pillars, wide tapestries of purple and blue decorating the walls, and a curved fire pit in the center that was big enough to roast a whole deer all at once. The cave faded back into the darkness, where something glittered like a cold, unwavering torch—but none of that held Sandon’s attention. His breath caught in his throat and his hand clenched in Kine’s thick glove when he first caught sight of the dragon.

It was massive—so big that no saddle Sandon had seen could ever harness it, nor could he think of a rope at the keep that would stretch from its nose to its tail. Sandon could sit inside its barrel chest easily, and the wings folded to either side of its body had enough golden sail to carry a galleon over the seas. Two large golden horns curled backward, arching down behind its cheekbones, past two smaller, straighter horns that spired back over the curve of its neck, small frills of sail bridging them like a dancer’s rippling scarves. Huge forelimbs ended in
graceful claws, and the rear quarters arched back into a tail scaled with impossibly smooth, perfect golden disks.

The dragon lay perfectly still, eyes closed and body not moving, the sun highlighting every curve and facet of its glorious frame. Sandon saw no motion in its form, not even the light breathing of a creature asleep. In fact, it didn’t even move when Kine stood up and took a step toward it, the metal spikes strapped to his boots clacking loudly against the stone.