DragonKnight (32 page)

The few teeth this head had left were sharp, and they penetrated the leather of his boot, pricking his leg. He had half a moment to think he was glad it wasn’t the other head holding his leg. When he attempted to strike a blow, the animal hoisted him in the air and swung him over Regidor’s head. The more attractive head took affront at his recovered partner getting in the way. It swung to the side, slamming into Bardon and the mouth holding him upside down.

An opening in the dragon’s defense allowed Regidor an opportunity to attack. He flipped into the air. As he somersaulted over the rounder, crested head, he slashed downward, slicing the creature’s eye. The meech landed on the weaker head and managed a deep thrust through the eye into the brain. The beast jerked, letting go of its prize.

Bardon sailed up toward the ceiling. He landed with a whump on a ledge and rolled onto his stomach to peer over the edge. His sword lay on the floor below. He pulled out his darts and began menacing the brighter head of the dragon while his meech friend dealt with the other. Bardon aimed his darts at the eyes.

Regidor withdrew his sword from the other head and stabbed again. The snake dragon thrashed, trying to dislodge the awful attacker. Regidor slid down the neck, taking his sword with him. When he reached the back, Regidor turned and lifted the underdeveloped wing. He thrust his sword into the tender flesh beneath. Another thrust, and blood spurted. He’d hit a main artery.

Bardon ran out of darts and sat up. He realized a section of the wall behind him opened into another room. One look caused his heart to race. He turned back to shout to Regidor, but his friend still needed to administer the killing blow.

The meech pushed the dragon’s head back and exposed its neck. With the point of his blade, he pierced the jugular vein. He moved to the other lethargic head and did the same. Then he backed away from the snake dragon and let it die. When the beast shuddered and expelled its last breath, Regidor gazed up to where Bardon sat on the edge of a lip of stone.

Bardon grinned. “Good work, Reg.”

“Enjoying the view?” asked Regidor. He looked with disgust at the blood soaking the front of his cape, shirt, and pants.

“Yes,” answered Bardon. “And I’ve made the most wonderful discovery up here.”

Regidor looked up again, tilted his head, and cocked the ridge over one eye.

“A hole,” Bardon answered the unasked question.

“A hole?”

“More like a doorway.”

“A doorway?”

Bardon nodded. “To a room.”

Regidor sighed noisily. “A room?”

Bardon smiled. “Filled with lightrocks and…sleeping knights.”

         
41
         

A C
ASTLE

Even before they entered the chamber, Bardon heard the roar of falling water. Once inside the stone room, the noise drowned out every other sound. Draperies in rich, dark burgundy covered the windows, so he could not see the waterfall that dominated the room with its din.

Regidor and Bardon circled the vaulted hall without saying a word. The knights stood, sat, and reclined around the room as if they were visiting in someone’s home. Only the knights did not breathe, their closed eyes saw nothing, and their skin felt hard like marble and cold like ice.

Twelve. Twelve young knights exiled from their lives.

The room itself looked like the great hall of an old castle, dusty and smelling of mold. Under the layer of disuse, the chamber exhibited age-old elegance.

Regidor plunged into an investigation of everything he saw. He examined books, furniture, the walls, the sleeping knights, the candles, everything, in a rush.

Bardon’s second slow walk around the room included a careful study of all the knights. These men did not appear as statues, since their skin tones looked natural. Two urohm knights sat on the floor next to the curtained windows. Their heads leaned back against the wall, halfway to the ceiling. One tumanhofer knight sat in a chair too tall for him. An untouched tea tray sat on the table at his elbow. No mariones, kimens, or doneels had been captured. Five emerlindians and four o’rants made up the remaining knights.

“Look at these two emerlindians, Reg,” Bardon called to his friend. “They’re brothers, maybe even twins.”

Regidor left the picture that had caught his attention and came to examine the two sleeping knights.

“Definitely,” he said. “They probably looked more alike as boys. Their lives have marked their faces.”

“I wonder,” said Bardon, “if they are Jilles and Joffa.”

“You said Joffa was killed in an ambush.”

Bardon nodded.

Even though both had raised their voices, many of their words were drowned in the noise of the cascading water outside. This roaring waterfall claimed Bardon’s attention as the meech hurried off to inspect a tea service.

Long, narrow windows lined one wall. Bardon moved aside a set of dusty drapes to consider thick, beveled glass set in movable frames. He stepped up on the deep ledge of a window and tried to wrench it open. The old frame would not budge.

“Reg, I could use some help here,” he shouted.

After Bardon’s second call to break Regidor’s concentration, the meech dragon pushed a heavy chest under the window. The deep ledge was too narrow for both of them to stand on. Regidor examined the frame and then removed a bottle of oil from his hollow. He poured this slick lubricant down the side grooves where the window stuck in the wooden track. He put two fingers of each hand at the top of the grooves. After a moment, he drew back.

“Try it now.” Regidor gestured with his hands as well as shouted. The tumult of falling water obscured their words.

Bardon lifted the window easily. “You’re handy to have around, Reg.”

The meech just grinned and returned the bottle of oil to the hollow.

“What do you see out there?”

Bardon pushed aside thick vines that had completely covered the opening and peered out. A fine spray of water landing in cold droplets on his face startled him. A cascade of water flowed over the building from a narrow river. The water splashed in what looked like a deep pool at the base of the castle and then sped away in white-water rapids.

“I can see the waterfall. It appears to plummet over the end of the castle. We’re at the front of the building, near the top.” He leaned out the window. “From the position of the sun, I’d say it’s late afternoon and we’re at the eastern end of the castle. There’s so much growth covering the walls, it’s hard to distinguish the mountain from the castle. Both are made out of the same type of stone. Who would build their home so that one end is perpetually wet?”

“Let’s explore. We need to find Bromptotterpindosset. Perhaps we’ll discover the answer to other questions along the way.” Regidor motioned for Bardon to come out of the window and jump down. The meech dragon replaced him on the windowsill. “Let me try something,” he yelled.

Bardon did not see his friend do anything, but the sound of the waterfall faded. The roar became distant, as if it were over a mountain ridge and in the next valley.

Regidor jumped down, and Bardon climbed back into the window. The water still cascaded over the rocks and part of the castle.

“What did you do?” asked Bardon, without having to shout.

“I just repaired a sound barrier. I got to thinking that the people who lived here surely didn’t listen to that noise constantly.” Regidor gestured toward the window. “When I looked outside, I could see the fragmented barrier. It was a simple thing to bind up the loose ends.”

He flashed his large and charming smile. “I have a great deal of practice with sound barriers. Smaller ones than this one, of course. But they came in handy with Toopka’s constant jabbering, Wizard Fenworth’s tendency to fuss, and Librettowit’s courting of Taylaminkadot.”

“As I said before, old friend, you come in handy.” Bardon lowered the window and jumped down. “Our exploration of this oddity will be much more pleasant now that we can hear each other.”

Bardon looked at the statuelike knights. “I wonder if they are aware we’re here.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“Do you think any of them resemble Kale?”

Regidor’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, I, too, thought perhaps her missing father could be here.” He looked carefully at each o’rant’s face. “No, I can’t say that one looks like our Kale.”

“We’d best get busy. We can’t do anything for the knights right now.”

Over and over again, the empty rooms and the signs of neglect proved their assumption that the castle was deserted. They explored the upper floors and those below. The building consisted of seven floors and three turrets that extended two stories above the seventh floor.

They thought it odd that the chambers seemed to be mostly for entertaining. On the ground floor, a grand ballroom stretched from one end of the structure to the other. A raised platform would have accommodated a small orchestra.

A few smaller, out-of-the-way rooms might have been servant stations where maids and footmen stored supplies and prepared teacarts. But they saw no kitchen, no bedchambers, no laundry, nothing practical or designed for the background functioning of such a huge establishment.

A storage basement sprawled under the entire structure, but aside from a few pieces of furniture, nothing was stored there. Large-leafed, rope-thick vines covered all the windows. Regidor called this lush ivy heirdosh and said it was poisonous if consumed.

The doors to the outside would not open, even with Regidor’s wizardly help.

“Warded, I suspect,” said the meech after another unsuccessful attempt to get out of the building and explore the grounds.

“Isn’t it more customary to place a spell on the entryways to keep people out rather than to keep them in?” asked Bardon.

Regidor raised both ridges over his eyes. “This whole setup is rather unusual.” He waved his forefeet at the area surrounding them. “Elaborate dining rooms, but no kitchen. Elegant soiree chambers, drawing rooms, salons, music rooms, and grand halls for entertaining hundreds of guests, but no bedchambers. No library, no study, no housekeeper’s quarters. It’s almost as if part of the castle is missing.” He furrowed his brow as he continued his list. “No stables, no wine cellar, no armory. As it is, this establishment could not function.”

After exploring the part of the castle where the air was relatively dry, they ventured into the rooms where moisture clung to the walls and furnishings. Their feet slipped on a marble floor slick with a thin sheen of mud. Plants grew along the walls and cascaded across the floor as if nature had decided to take over the décor.

When they came to what they thought would be the last wall of the castle, they found massive doors. Opening this giant portal revealed another section of castle directly behind the waterfall.

Here they found servants’ quarters. Upon further exploration, they identified many different craft rooms where obviously things had been made to accommodate the needs of the people living in the castle. At one time, these halls had produced everything from linen and leather, garments and furniture, cheese and jerky, to horseshoes and armor.

After they had walked from floor to floor, Regidor stopped and leaned against a wall. “This raises even more questions.”

“Indeed,” said Bardon. “When was this castle inhabited? And by whom? I see evidence of urohms as well as o’rants, mariones, and tumanhofers.”

“The herb room looked like it had been run by an adept emerlindian.”

Bardon pointed in the direction of the halls holding looms. “Doneels had a hand in the weaving of fabric and fashioning clothes and jewelry.”

“Where were the gardens for food, the pastures for the animals?” asked Regidor.

“Was this fortress occupied five hundred years ago or five thousand?”

Regidor tugged on the edge of a tapestry. “If it was five thousand years ago, why hasn’t it all disintegrated?”

Bardon put his fists on his hips and slowly turned, surveying the room, still amazed by the overall grandeur of this deserted castle. “If it was only five hundred years ago, why are there no recorded histories, no legends passed down through the generations, and not even a mention of it in the ballads?”

“What is the name of this castle?”

“Why was it abandoned?”

The two warriors looked at each other, shrugged, grinned, and said in unison, “We don’t know.”

Bardon sighed. “We still have to find Bromptotterpindosset.”

Regidor reached into his cape and pulled Glas’s diary from the hollow.

“The map clearly shows the grawlig meeting field at the end of that burrow.”

“It doesn’t show a castle?”

“No castle.” Regidor shook his head without looking up.

“We must have been in the wrong burrow all along, or we made a wrong turn.”

Regidor studied the page in the diary and shook his head again as he contemplated what he saw. “There were not that many turns.”

“You said Glas drew that map on hearsay.”

Regidor nodded. “But there must be a tincture of truth to substantiate the drawing, or Glas would not have included it. He seems to have been a meticulous recorder of his explorations.” He snapped the small, leather-bound volume shut. “Let’s keep looking.”

“Where and for what?”

“For answers. I suspect,” he said, pointing to the west wall, “that there is another set of massive doors somewhere.”

“That would lead us into the side of the mountain I could see from the window. It was a vine-covered, sheer cliff face.”

Regidor held a finger in the air and started for the staircase they had climbed. “It
looked
like a vine-covered, sheer cliff face. Let’s retrace our steps to the doors that lead back to the first part of the castle.”

Bardon followed as Regidor bounded down the wide stairs at a rapid clip.

Regidor called over his shoulder, his voice charged with enthusiasm. “I want to get on the outside of this castle and view it from that perspective.”

When they reached the massive doors, Regidor walked directly across the great hall and began probing the thick layer of vines.

Reluctantly, Bardon followed. He reached between the palm-sized leaves and heavy stems. His fingers touched smooth plaster. He moved over a foot and tried again. His fingertips brushed carved wood. Exploring with his hand, he came to the conclusion he had found the doors Regidor wanted.

“Right here, Reg.”

Bardon got out his knife and began chopping through the heavy vegetation even before the meech dragon confirmed his suspicion. The heavy vines were remarkably healthy. He used his blade to saw through some of the thicker branches. Regidor worked beside him, using a claw to sever each limb. By himself, Bardon would have worked several hours. With Regidor employing some wizard’s trick, in minutes they removed the vegetation barring their way.