Dragon Castle (2 page)

“Rashko dear, that bee would not have hurt me.”

I suppose there has to be at least one responsible person in every family, even a royal one. But why does it have to be me? And where in the name of Peter and Paul and all the other Blessed Svatys have my errant parents gone?

You might wonder why I am so concerned. After all, it was only two nights ago that they rode off—without even telling me that they were going or why they left in such haste in the middle of the night. It was only after they had failed to appear for both breakfast and the midday meal that I realized something was awry. I admit that eating is one of my own favorite pursuits, but few people enjoy food as much as do my parents and my brother. The way they eat, you would think that each mouthful was manna like that the Lord sent from heaven to Moses and the wandering Israelites.

Nie!
I wish that image of lost wanderers had not come to me just now. If my parents had been leading those Israelites, they never would have made it out of the desert.

“Our parents are gone,” I remind Paulek, trying not to panic. “It's been two nights now.”

His response is predictable. He holds up his hand and counts off the nights on his fingers. “
Raz, dva
. One, two.
Ano
. That's right, Rashko.” Then he smiles again and points up.

“Did you notice?” he asks. “Those little swallows in that nest on the north tower are finally about to fly from their nests.”

What's wrong with him? I know that, despite his size and his strength, he loves little creatures. But this is no time for watching birds. By the head of the dragon! Doesn't he realize he should be upset about this? Why should all this fall on my shoulders alone?

And that's not all. More had just been added to my burden in the last hour by that supercilious selfimportant messenger, who just left. Paulek had taken no notice when Georgi, the castle steward, whose deeply wrinkled face both shows that he has served our family forever and belies his surprising strength, came to tell us of the uninvited arrival outside the walls of Hladka Hvorka. My brother was too busy sharpening his sword. So it was left to me to follow Georgi to the gate and accept the message—and the insulting way it was delivered.

“Shall I read it to the young lord?” the foppish courier had sneered, looking down from his mount and speaking his words in a deliberately slow and overemphasized manner—as if addressing a lack-wit.

“
Nie.
I am literate enough to read quite well on my own, thank you,” I replied as I broke the impressive wax seal on the thick parchment scroll and quickly perused the imperious words emblazoned upon it in a glowing flowery script so golden that it almost appeared to pulse on the page.

Had I not been feeling such a mixture of impatience and distress I might have studied it longer. Despite its overblown language, the scroll was beautiful, indeed strangely attractive. But instead I curled my lip in displeasure, rolled it back up, and glared at the herald.

He seemed surprised. Had he expected me to clasp my hands to my chest and chuckle with glee?

“I've read it,” I said, handing it back to him. He took it with ill grace and then went bouncing off on his palfrey, leaving me with a deep feeling of foreboding that has increased rather than lessened since his departure.

Who, I wonder, is Baron Temny? And what twelve lands is he lord of? Surely not the kingdoms, each with its own set of rulers, that surround our small, sleepy land? But when was the last time we heard anything from them, isolated as we are in our small valley with the mountains on four sides and the Silver Lands of the Fair Folk on the other?

“Paulek!” I try not to lose my composure. “Listen to me. We are about to have guests. Important ones, apparently.”

This time my words sink in through his thick skull. My brother becomes as delighted as I am disconcerted. He actually puts down his sword.

“Guests?” he exclaims. He claps his big hands in delight like a child. Despite the fact that he is a year my elder and though but sixteen the second-tallest person in our kingdom, my brother oft displays such a shocking lack of dignity that I must be twice as serious to make up for it.

“Paulek,” I plead, “please listen.” But I might as well be speaking to a wall. A blissfully happy one.

“
Dobre, dobre!
Good, good! We must have a feast, a big one to welcome them. Right, Rashko? As Father says, the welcomed guest is always the best. Perhaps there may be some formidable fighters among them. Then we can have a sparring match or two.
Ano!
What fun!”

And off he goes to tell the servants what to do to get ready, even though I let Georgi know before attempting to speak with my brother. I have no doubt our competent old retainer already has things as well in hand as anyone can.

“Rosewater for the baths, Grace!” my brother shouts, a huge grin on his face. He waves at the servants already bustling back and forth to carry out various tasks. “
Chytro!
Quickly! Grace, fresh linens in the guest quarters!
Vd'aka.
Thank you. Charity, Cook needs to make extra bread. Too much is never enough for company, you know! Move along now, Grace. Janko, that's a good lad.
Dobre, dobre, dobre!
”

As if they don't already know how to do everything for our fortunate family twice as well as most of us can do for ourselves. Paulek disappears around the side of the chapel, still waving his hands like a choirmaster who thinks he's leading the chorus but is actually three verses behind the singers.

Amazingly, our servants never seem to resent the many demands made, ever so politely, true, by my parents and Paulek. If anything, they respond with a kind of amused courtesy. I'm the only one who's ever outraged.

Might it not be easier to be an orphan like our famous ancestor Pavol and have no parents or siblings to worry about?

“How do you put up with it?” I said to Georgi just last week after watching him help Paulek put on a pair of boots exactly like those I had just pulled onto my own feet all by myself.

He said nothing until Paulek, oblivious as always, was out the door. Then, with more of a paternal look on his face than I'd ever seen on my father's, Georgi leaned forward, laying his finger beside his nose to let me know that what he was disclosing was just between him and me.

But what he whispered to me was puzzling. “They need less help than one might imagine, young sir.”

Then, to confuse me even more, Georgi tapped his fingers together and patted me on the shoulder, adding, “They are not thinkers like you, young sir.”

Thinking of thinking, I think I am about to lose my mind. If the message that discourteous courier delivered was true, our uninvited guests will arrive in time for the evening meal. That's less than three hours. What should I do? Prepare for their arrival? Continue looking for my delinquent sire and dam? Who knows what they might have stumbled into! Stumbled into?

An unbidden and highly unwelcome image suddenly comes to my mind. The moat!

In old stories, such as those Baba Anya told Paulek and me when we were little, castle moats always hide fearsome creatures. Their dark waters are full of predatory fish or great snakes or reptiles, floating menaces waiting to devour anyone foolish enough to attempt to swim across.

Our moat is full of floating menaces too, but none of them are living. I doubt even the hardiest reptilian horror could survive long in its noisome depths. The springs have never had sufficient flow to overcome the stench of the sewage dumped into it daily from our privies.

In my fevered imagination I see my hapless parents returning in the middle of the night. Absentmindedly they forget that the drawbridge is up. They both tumble into those horrid waters. Then—the image is as inexorable as a bad dream from which I cannot wake—they sink beneath its surface, too dignified to shout for help.

This time I don't just think the old oath that harkens back to the founding of our line. I blurt it out.

“By the head of the dragon!”

I sprint to the stables and grab the long pole-hook that Edvard, our junior groom, uses—rather too infrequently—to fish things out of the thick brown water. I rush to the edge so fast that I almost lose my balance and fall in myself. Frantic, I set my feet in a solid swordsman's stance. I start stabbing, probing, prodding. Greasy bubbles rise to the surface and break, releasing gases so foul that my eyes water as I begin to lever things out and flip them onto the shore.

Nothing living, of course. Not from this poisonous stew. A worn jerkin. A coil of rotting rope. A broken-legged stool. A tangle of rotting chicken bones, guts, and feathers. Then the hook catches on something heavy and dead and man-sized. A fist clenches itself inside my belly. The submerged body is stuck on something, but I bend my knees and put my back into it. A shoulder breaks the surface and a sob escapes my throat. My eyes blur with tears.

Then I see the horns, the collar around its neck, the silent bell clogged with brown, slimy weeds.

A hand rests itself on my shoulder. “Sir,” a familiar voice says, “you've found Matilde. Poor old blind goat. We all feared the worst for her when she vanished a week ago.”

I turn to look down at Georgi's untroubled face. He lifts the pole from my grasp with one hand and twists it to flip the goat's corpse up from the moat's brown, grainy surface and onto the far bank.

Despite his slender frame, old Georgi is one of the strongest people I know. I've seen him pick up a horseshoe and absentmindedly twist it into a circle. (And that is no easy thing to do. It took me two tries to bend that iron back into its original shape.) Though Georgi's face is as wrinkled as a date and he's as bald as the top of a mountain, he's still straight and supple as a birch tree.

I'm now a head taller than our loyal aged overseer, but I still look up to him. He's unfailingly polite, always self-contained. I've never seen Georgi either angry or visibly delighted. Of course, I have caught a twinkle in his eye every now and then when my parents or brother have done something particularly foolish.

Like that time last summer when we were in the market. One of the vendors, a Russian jeweler who had not been to our little land before, was clearly trying to deceive my father. My father should have known that. Word had already been spread that the man was a cheat. Angry glances were being cast in his direction. But because the man was built like a bear and armed with a brace of knives slung across his chest, no one had done anything.

“Here, noble sir,” the jeweler said in an unctuous voice to my father. He displayed the brooch in the palm of his right hand as he held up two fingers of his left. “Fine bargain. Only twenty pieces of silver.”

I almost spoke up then. Even though I was young, I could see that brooch was worth no more than half that amount. But Georgi elbowed me in the ribs. I suppose, like me, he wanted to see how my poor innocent father would deal with such deceit.

“Oh,” my father replied, a happy smile coming to his face. He plucked the brooch from the man's hand and pocketed it. “Only two pieces of silver? Agreed.” He dropped two silver coins on the man's table.

“
Nyet,
” the Russian merchant said, spreading all ten of his fingers twice to indicate the actual total.
“Nyet, nyet
. More than that.”

“You want me to take more?”

It amazed me just how confused my guileless father became.

“
Vd'aka, pan
. Thank you, sir.” My father reached out with his broad left hand—his right hand resting on the hilt of his sword—to scoop up the entire contents of a tray filled with rings. “These will do nicely,” he said, patting his sword hilt as he eyed the glittering palmful.
“Dobre.”

Then, before the startled merchant could speak another word, my father turned and walked away.

The Russian stood there, his mouth open as he stared at the empty tray. Even though it was obvious to me that my father had no idea what he'd just done, that cheat had just been paid back in kind. All through the market people were nodding at my father, their pleased expressions turning into even broader smiles as my father casually passed out rings to each of them.

For a moment it appeared the Russian was about to follow my father and protest. Or perhaps he thought to do more. His right hand was twitching toward one of those two knives. That was when Georgi stepped in front of the man and grasped the jeweler's shoulder with such strength that the cheating merchant gasped. Georgi leaned close and whispered a few firm words in the man's ear. The color drained from the burly Russian's florid face. Within moments he had packed up his cart and departed rapidly from our marketplace and our land, never to be seen again.

Good old Georgi. Who else could turn a moment of confusion on my poor father's part into an act of justice?

It's a measure of how distracted I've been by the strange absence of my parents that I haven't thought to seek Georgi's counsel. Not that he would have told me directly what to do. Georgi has this way of offering diffident suggestions, hesitant hints that—when followed—may lead one to a conclusion.

“The junior groom will bury poor old Matilde, sir,” Georgi says. He pats my hand reassuringly. “No need to worry yourself about her. But just now, I do believe there is something else at which you might want to look.” He motions with his head toward the window forty feet above us. “Up on your father's dresser.”

THE BOY RAN till he felt himself reaching the limit of his strength. Still, despite the knife of pain in his side, he urged himself farther. Just ahead was the crest of the hill that rose up from the middle of the old forest like the head of a bird from its nest.