Dragon Castle (6 page)

The princess halts her palfrey beside the baron. She pauses, for effect. Then she languidly lifts up her hand. It's a long, finely shaped white hand, the sort a courtier would kneel to kiss in a chivalrous saga. She pushes back her veil and lifts her chin to reveal her face. Oval, perfect, framed by long, lustrous hair that is as red as the baron's. Even from fifty feet away I can smell her perfume. Its scent is so heady that it makes me a bit dizzy. Her pouty lips are pursed, slightly parted, moist and trembling. She lowers her chin and lifts her eyes to look up at us.

Come to me. Come to Princess Poteshenie, the princess of happiness . . .

Zobud!
The breathless voices of Ucta and Odvaha speak as one.
Wake up!

I blink my eyes. My vision, which had begun to blur, is clear again. I look toward the drawbridge. My wolf brothers are there, sitting up on their haunches, alert and ready.

Dakujem,
I think to them. Thank you.

I turn my gaze back to Poteshenie. For the briefest moment it seems as if the princess herself becomes indistinct. It's as if the air moves and reshapes itself around her. Something trembles there, like those nearly invisible strands of spider's web that sometimes catch across one's face. Do her loveliness and youth seem to fade? The moment passes too quickly for me to tell. I blink my eyes and she is just as she was before. Exquisitely beautiful, perfect . . . too perfect.

I no longer feel drawn to her. From the subtle displeasure in her eyes and the way she presses her lips together, she knows she's lost me. Her look hardens even more as she turns back to look over her shoulder at my two four-legged friends. She knows it was their voiceless call that snapped me out of her spell. I'll not be caught by her again. Attractive as she may appear on the outside, I see that what's within this princess is not at all lovely. She's as alluring as a plum with a worm in its heart. I no longer find her attractive at all.

But not Paulek. His mouth is wide open now. His eyes are glazed.

“P-P-Princess,” he stammers. Then he descends the steps like a sleepwalker, kneels before her, reaches up and takes that perfect hand to kiss it.

Everyone is looking at the two of them.

Except for the baron and me. His appraising gaze is taking me in from head to toe. And I am measuring him.

His dark eyes glitter like those of a snake. I feel as if I can read his thoughts.

There's nothing you can do to stop this, he's thinking.

Paulek, though, is oblivious to this. He is still staring, mouth wide open, at the princess. The baron turns to look at my brother. His thin lips curl up at the edges. Again, the baron's look is easy to read.

We have this one hooked.

The baron looks toward Georgi. Our faithful majordomo is standing with his arms at his side, his eyes subserviently focused on the ground. The baron nods his head dismissively.

A mere servant.

The baron looks at me again. My right hand taps the hilt of my sword.

He shakes his head, no longer so pleased.

The baron flexes his fingers inside the silver gauntlet wrapped around his pommel. The leather creaks in protest. Then he turns his eyes away from mine.

By the head of the dragon! We are in trouble.

Thinking of trouble, Princess Poteshenie has now dismounted from her horse. She's fiddling with that large wicker cage on the back of her horse, lifting up the door at the front of it.

A dark-furred creature leaps out, hisses and spits at us. Then, swift as an arrow from a bow, darts off around the side of the keep.

The princess claps her hands in delight. “Oh, see how happy my sweet little innocent pussycat Laska is to be free!”

Little? If that spitting ball of malice is a cat, it is the largest one I've ever seen. It's the size of a lynx, but with a longer tail.

Hysterical squawking erupts from behind the keep. It comes to me just where the princess's sweet little monster was headed. Our hen yard.

I know it is rude to take off at a run just when a visitor has arrived, uninvited or not. But those chickens are the source of our breakfast eggs. However, by the time I reach the yard it's too late for half our laying hens. Blood and feathers are everywhere. Slaughtered bodies are strewn about the straw. Their surviving sisters are perched on top of the coop, squawking in terror. In the center of the carnage, Laska squats on her haunches, contentedly chewing the head off our rooster. I slowly start to reach for the pitchfork that leans against the coop.

Before I can do anything, Princess Poteshenie's voice comes from behind me. She's also followed those sounds of feline-initiated slaughter—likely quite familiar to her.

“Milacik, pridi!
Darling, come!”

One last bite to sever the head, which she drops by my feet in what could only be described as a contemptuous fashion. Then the purring assassin stalks past me to leap up into the protective arms of her mistress.

 

 

THE BARON IS sitting patiently on his horse. Paulek is also waiting. His eyes focus on Poteshenie as she walks past him to place Laska back into her cage and close the door. Then, as she turns, a perfumed handkerchief falls from her sleeve. It would seem like an accident if I had not seen her artfully placing that kerchief there so that it would descend at the twitch of a wrist.

Paulek almost falls over his own feet in his eagerness to leap forward and pick it up.

“P-Princess,” he says. “You dropped this.”

She lifts one hand to her mouth, purses her lips. “Oh, how gallant.
Vd'aka
. But you must keep it. Keep it to think of me.”

Paulek cradles the kerchief in his hands as if it were a baby. I think I am about to throw up. I almost say something, but the baron speaks first.

“My friends,” he says in a loud voice that draws all eyes to him. “My gracious friends!” He holds out his hand. “Truba!”

Truba, the herald who had announced their arrival, opens a saddlebag and produces a large piece of parchment. He carefully unrolls it and then ceremoniously passes it up to his master.

“Our invitation from your parents,” Temny announces. “Would you like to examine it?”

Yes, I would! I step forward to take it.

The baron, though, casts a quick appraising glance at me and shakes his head. He turns to the other side to deposit the document in the hands of my brother. Not that Paulek reads it. He is too busy smelling that perfumed handkerchief and staring like a mooncalf at Princess Poteshenie. She has now lowered more of her veil to expose her perfect profile as well as her décolletage.

Truba plucks the parchment from my brother's fingers.

“I shall now share with all assembled here, the most gracious invitation we received from your ruler,” he declaims.

 

There is more beyond that. Truba's lips are still moving, but I'm not hearing his words. I'm too shocked.

Truba has finished. He is giving the scroll back to Paulek.

“Read,” Truba says, placing a palm on Paulek's shoulder.

This time, Paulek actually does hold the gilded document in front of his face. Amazingly, it's drawn his attention away from the princess. His gaze is glued to it. His lips are moving as he silently mouths each word.

Is it also ensorcelled? I look over his shoulder. All too familiar golden letters on the parchment glisten. Perhaps because I'm prepared, their power does not affect me. And, as I start to scan the words, I note something else about this deceptive invitation that is not quite right. There's nothing in its language that matches my father's plain way of speaking.

Truba snatches the parchment away from Paulek before I can study it more closely. He quickly rolls it up and slips it back into the saddlebag.

“Of course,” Paulek says, his voice a monotone. “Of course.”

My brother's voice becomes louder as he turns to look at all of us. “We must make our honored guests and my bride-to-be welcome!”

DAYS FLOWED INTO weeks, weeks into months, months into seasons, and seasons into years. They flowed the way small snow- and rain-fed rivulets in the High Tatras join larger streams, then rivers in their rush toward the sea.

The boy whose name was now Pavol grew quickly into a tall, strong youth. Perhaps it was from the work of wood cutting that Uncle Tomas put him to or the good food that Uncle Tomas's wife, who bade him call her Baba Marta, stuffed him with each day.

Perhaps too it was from the teaching they gave him. There were the physical challenges Uncle Tomas put before him—which included not merely the work of a woodsman but also running for miles without rest, wrestling, and swordplay, though the “blades” they used were made of wood, not steel. Strategy and planning were also part of what Uncle Tomas taught, how whether one is stalking a dangerous animal or about to lead an army into battle, the wise man is the one who has a plan and is prepared.

Those physical lessons given him by Uncle Tomas were reinforced whenever the third of his teachers came to visit—the elderly Gypsy who simply called himself Gregor and only appeared when the leaves were about to fall. Though Gregor looked to be an old man, he had the suppleness and strength of someone far younger, and he always had a few new tricks to show the adopted child of his two old friends.

Pavol loved Gregor's visits. He thrilled at the wrestling contests between Uncle Tomas and Gregor. Tomas's bear-like brawn was always matched by Gregor's ability to twist and turn, to find a way to escape and then unbalance his bigger opponent. As Pavol grew older, Gregor began to teach him some of those same techniques that could turn another's power to his own advantage.

Strength, Gregor said, is not always stronger. One who tries to overcome everything with mere force alone may end up fooling himself.

Those teachings from Uncle Tomas and Gregor were reinforced by the stories Baba Marta told each night, legends of bravery and good deeds, tales of the rewards to be reaped by one who was patient and steadfast. She challenged Pavol with proverbs and riddles that were often as hard to get at as the meat in a thick-shelled nut.

He also read. Rough-hewn as Uncle Tomas appeared on the outside, beneath the homespun clothes and the great muscles beat the heart of a scholar. The dom that he and his wife, Baba Marta, shared with Pavol had a secret room, one that no one would ever guess existed when they looked at the little house from the outside. Within that room was a great store of books and scrolls, not only in the language of the land but also in Greek and Latin, Arabic, and other tongues. Literature, histories, magic and medicine, philosophy and mathematics were stacked on heavy-laden shelves.

Pavol absorbed all these lessons the way dry earth soaks up the rain. He accepted the bruises, the aching muscles that Uncle Tomas's back-breaking work and pitiless training inflicted upon him, the way Baba Marta's stories sometimes made his brain feel as if it were tied in knots. He struggled to master the reading of one language after another, sounding out each new word aloud at times, fighting his stubborn way into the mysteries of musty tomes until they opened vistas to him he had never imagined before. He learned, and learned to love learning.

One thing, though, was the most difficult for him to master. It was a lesson that his teachers reminded him of every day, especially when they saw a certain look come to his eye. It was the lesson of patience. It truly was the hardest for him—especially because of the reign of iron under which the land still suffered.

The Dark Lord himself had left their little kingdom soon after wiping out what he assumed to be all of its royal family. Though there were still tales here of treasure to be found and magic to be mastered, their land lost some of its allure when the lights of the Silver Lands could no longer be seen. With the death of his parents—and over the next months, all those still loyal to them—that fifth direction had vanished. True, the dragon was said to remain. Though the dragon had not been seen for years, the tales all agreed that it slept still in its cave high atop the tallest peak. But even the Dark Lord had no stomach for battle with a creature said to be invincible.

The departure of the Dark Lord had not meant the end of tyranny. He left others in charge who saw to the collection of taxes and made sure that any spark of resistance was quickly and brutally quenched. Though that brutal tyrant was not there, his eye remained always on the land.

Seeing what had been done, what still was being done to the land his parents had cared for so lovingly, was as bitter as the taste of wormwood. But Pavol forced himself to accept the part that both his guardians told him he must play and play well until the time, the right time, came at last.

To be safe until that day, there was only one part he could play. And though it grated upon him, it was a role that he played whenever he was out of the company of his two wise guardians—that of a harmless fool.

I'VE BEEN KEEPING watch since dawn. I'm looking out a high window in our castle over our soiled courtyard below. Its white stones usually glitter in the sun. Georgi makes certain that it is kept as clean as a freshly washed plate. But that is far from true of its western quarter today. It's been burned with campfires, scuffed with boots that have mucked through mud and horse manure, littered with the belongings of the baron's little army, as well as those rough, unkempt ruffians themselves. They've occupied that entire section near the main gate, leaving only a ten-foot-wide aisle in front of the guest quarters where the baron, his daughter and her cat, and his herald have been lodged. Though it is past mid-morning, the baron and the princess have yet to show themselves. Are they just sleeping late or are they up to something in there?