Dragonback 05 Dragon and Judge (13 page)

It was in the evenings that the white stones and light shafts
finally came into their own. The reflectors on top of the pillar were
obviously angled to catch the rays of the sun as it dropped across the
western sky, sending light down the shafts to set the white stone
aglow. The effect lingered on for nearly two hours before the sun
finally vanished below the horizon, giving a welcome bit of additional
light where the canyon floor had already grown dark.

Once the glow faded from the white stones, it was usually bedtime.
Sunrise and Jack's Judge-Paladin duties came early.

And when Jack and the rest of the canyon populace were asleep,
Draycos set off on his night's patrolling.

He'd been doing this since their second night in the canyon,
though he hadn't yet told Jack about it. His original goal, after the
first night's shuttle incident, had been to watch for further activity
by Foeinatw or other possible informants.

But Foeinatw stayed out of trouble from that point on. Or at least
he stayed out of Draycos's sight.

Nor, apparently, did any of the other Golvins stir once they'd
retired to their homes at sundown. Not really surprising, given the
long climb most of them had to reach those homes in the first place.

And so, with the canyon floor apparently deserted, after the first
three nights Draycos switched from watching for trouble to looking for
a way out of the canyon.

Only to find that there wasn't one.

Certainly the steep canyon walls were climbable, at least for
Draycos himself. The vine mesh that covered the stone pillars didn't
grow on most of the cliff faces, but there were enough cracks and claw
openings in the stone itself to provide a patient K'da with a path to
the surface.

But without his climbing equipment, Jack didn't have a hope of
doing the same. Draycos could carry him for short distances, but as he
and Jack had already concluded, there was no way he was going to climb
three hundred feet of cliff with the boy on his shoulders. There was a
line of small caves about fifty feet up along the eastern cliff, but
they were too low to make a convenient halfway resting point. Draycos
didn't climb up to examine them, but from the pathways of ivy mesh that
had been set up between them and the ground, it was clear they were
being used for something by the Golvins.

The ends of the canyon were no better. At the upstream end the
river rose sharply into a series of impassable waterfalls, while the
downstream end cut through a narrows that would be as tricky to climb
as the cliffs themselves.

On the first night of his scouting Draycos spent so much time
traveling back and forth across the canyon that he nearly got caught
out in the open when the sky began to lighten. The second night, he
made sure to watch his time, returning to Jack's apartment well before
dawn.

He arrived to find the apartment brighter than when he'd left, the
white stones in the wall giving off a soft glow as the reflectors above
sent down the light from the larger of Semaline's two moons. Draycos
slipped through the doorway fringe, and he was padding his way to the
bedroom when the light subtly changed.

He spun around, expecting to see someone behind him in the
doorway. But there was nothing there.

And then he saw it. One of the glowing stones in the wall had gone
dark.

Someone, or something, was in the shaft.

Silently, he crossed to the opening. Narrowing his eyes to slits
to hide most of their own telltale glow, he looked up.

The shaft was pitch-black, with not even the sky visible. The
usual airflow, too, was greatly diminished. Something, clearly, was
blocking most or all of the opening.

Draycos flicked out his tongue. He hadn't had much experience yet
picking out individual Golvin scents, but if whoever was coming down
the shaft was someone he'd met, odds were he could identify him.

But to his surprise, it wasn't a Golvin scent he found tingling
across his tongue.

It was the scent of a human.

Draycos felt his neck crest stiffen as he tasted the air again and
again. But there was no mistake. Somewhere above him was a human.

A human, moreover, whom the Golvins had been careful not to
mention to Jack.

From high above him came a faint sound, softer than the scratching
he'd heard their first morning in the apartment. A moment later, as the
shaft's normal airflow resumed, a single star appeared high overhead.

The blockage had disappeared. So had the human scent.

The question was, where had they gone?

Draycos didn't know. But he was going to find out.

He waited until Jack had showered and was eating breakfast before
telling the boy about his night's discoveries. His discoveries, and his
plans.

"I don't like it," Jack said when the K'da had finished. "What if
they won't let me come back to the apartment at lunchtime?"

"Who would stop you?" Draycos asked reasonably. "The One hasn't
been there to observe since the second day. I can't imagine any of the
others having the authority to refuse a simple request from their
Judge-Paladin."

"Just because you can't imagine it doesn't mean it can't happen,"
Jack countered. "These alien cultures can take a sudden hard
right-angle turn on you, usually when you think everything's going
great."

He waved toward the fringed doorway. "Especially since no one's
even hinted I'm not the only human in the canyon," he added. "That's
grade-one suspicious all by itself."

"Though perhaps that's because you've never asked," Draycos
pointed out. "Some cultures also seldom volunteer information."

Jack made a face, but nodded. "I suppose," he said. "Maybe I
should ask Thonsifi some specific questions before you go charging off
on this search-and-discover thing."

"It would be wiser to have information of our own before we
approach the Golvins," Draycos said. "Especially if they intend to lie
to you."

"I thought you just said they just didn't volunteer information."

"I said some cultures were like that," Draycos corrected him. "I
didn't say this was necessarily one of them."

Jack turned his head away, glowering across the room at the
suspect light shaft. "I get stuck in the Great Hall and I might not
make it back in time," he warned. "You get stuck up there and
you
may not make it back in time."

"I understand the risks," Draycos said. "But we need to find the
truth."

Jack took a deep breath. "I'll be back at lunchtime," he said,
standing up abruptly from the table. "You just make sure you're ready."

Ten minutes later, he was gone. Draycos watched from the edge of
the door as Thonsifi and the two guards escorted the boy toward the
Great Hall and the day's work. Then, trying not to think of the clock
ticking down, he got busy.

The light shaft was clear, its shimmery white stone extending
unblocked toward the sky. Rolling half onto his back in the opening,
Draycos stretched out his neck and studied the inner surface.

While the white facing seemed to be all the same kind of stone, it
had been put together out of a large number of separate pieces, much
the same way as the bridge the Golvins had built to Jack's apartment.
The technique had left plenty of crevices and gaps and cracks big
enough for a K'da's claws to slip into.

Whether the white stone was strong enough to hold a K'da's weight,
of course, was a different question. But there was only one way to find
out. Sliding his front paws up into the shaft, Draycos found a set of
clawholds and started to climb.

Fortunately, the stone was indeed strong enough. Searching out new
gaps, thankful that he was doing this in daylight and not in the dead
of night, he continued up.

He'd gone about a hundred and fifty feet when he came to a hole in
the wall.

A good-sized hole, too, easily big enough for Draycos to get
through. Even Jack would have no trouble, though there were some
protrusions that might scrape against his shoulders.

But while the hole itself seemed to extend all the way though the
stone of the inner wall, the far end was blocked by something that
looked like stone but clearly wasn't.

Draycos examined the blockage, first with smell and then with
careful touch. The material was soft and slightly flexible, rather like
a thick paper or cardboard. It was wedged solidly into the hole, its
edges curled inward against the stone.

Extending his tongue, he touched it lightly to one of the folds.
It was mainly grain-based material, similar to Golvin bread but with
traces of other vegetables mixed in. Some kind of homemade
papier-mache, perhaps. The color was already very close to that of the
stone in Jack's apartment, and from the lines he could faintly see
through the material he guessed that the other side had been made to
blend in even more with the rock.

Someone had laboriously carved a hole in the side of his
apartment, which was probably strictly against canyon rules. That same
someone was concealing the fact with a homemade camouflage mask.

But who? The human he'd smelled last night?

More importantly, why?

It would be simple for him to push the mask aside. But from the
faint sounds coming from the other side of the hole he could tell that
the occupant was still at home. Perhaps later, if and when the other
left, he would have a chance to check the place out.

And then, to Draycos's dismay, two sets of fingertips appeared
from the far side of the camouflage mask, carefully squeezing through
around its edges. They got a grip on the mask and began to pull.

There was no time to think. For the past four months, ever since
his advance team had been slaughtered, the first rule of Draycos's life
had been to keep his existence a deep, dark, black-scaled secret. Only
twice in all that time had he broken that rule, and both had been
life-or-death situations.

Bracing himself, he let go of the stone.

For perhaps the first half second he fell free and clear, the wind
of his passage streaming past him. Then, his back slammed against the
wall behind him.

Suddenly he was tumbling out of control, his body caroming off the
four sides of the shaft, each bounce sending a fresh jolt of pain
through him.

And meanwhile, the bottom of the shaft was rushing up at him at
deadly speed. Bracing himself, he slammed all four paws outward.

They caught the sides of the shaft and began skidding down, the
friction against the uneven stone sending agonizing fire through them.
But at least he was slowing down. Clenching his jaws together, ignoring
the pain, he pressed harder.

And a second later, with barely a bump, he landed in an
undignified heap on top of the reflector stone.

He pulled his legs inward, pressing his burning paws against the
scales of his belly to try to cool them. His whole body was throbbing
with agony, every scale, muscle, and joint voicing its protest against
his thoughtless treatment of them.

But he was alive. That was all that mattered. That, and—

He looked up. The glow around the shaft made it difficult to see,
but he thought he could make out a dark shadowy shape leaning into the
air. A face, perhaps, gazing down at him.

Draycos froze. The interfering glow from the shaft worked both
ways, he knew. If he stayed perfectly motionless, whoever was up there
would have trouble making anything out.

Nevertheless, the shadowy figure held its position for a good long
minute. Perhaps he was likewise hoping Draycos hadn't spotted him and
was waiting for his visitor to make some revealing movement.

But Draycos had the patience of a poet-warrior of the K'da. The
other didn't. A minute later he stirred and disappeared from the shaft.

Still, Draycos didn't move until he sensed the subtle change in
airflow that indicated the camouflage mask had been put back in place
across the hole. Then, wincing with every movement, he dragged himself
out of the shaft and headed for the bathroom.

A cool shower would have felt good against his bruised scales. But
though Jack thought the shower system was probably self-contained, they
really didn't have any proof of that. The last thing he wanted was for
some Golvin monitoring the canyon's water usage to suddenly see
activity in a supposedly empty apartment.

He settled instead for dampening a washcloth with water from the
puddles on the shower floor and mopping away the worst of the black
blood seeping through his new collection of cracked scales.

When he had finished, he went to the galley and forced himself to
eat some of the cold meat from the refrigerator. He had no real taste
for food right now, not with the pain lancing through him. But his body
would need the extra nutrients during the healing process.

When he was finished with his meal he went back to the bedroom,
easing himself carefully down onto the stone floor on the far side of
the bed. If one of the Golvins happened to wander in, he didn't want to
be instantly visible.

Jack had said he would be back at lunch. Hoping fervently the boy
would decide he was hungry a little early today, Draycos settled down
to wait.

"Today we begin a new group of judgments," Thonsifi said as Jack
settled into his Seat of Justice. "These will involve injuries caused
by one of the Many against another."

"I see," Jack said, hiding a grimace. Just when he'd gotten used
to sorting out land and water disputes, too. "Let's have the first
case."

Thonsifi motioned and two Golvins from the usual group of
onlookers stepped forward. "Eight-Seven-Two Among Many and
Five-Six-One-Naught Among Many," she identified them. "Two and one half
seasons ago Eisetw struck Fisionna's right arm and severely injured it.
Fisionna claims it was deliberate. Eisetw claims it was an accident."