Gold Dragon Codex (3 page)

ows of houses, arranged in neat lines along slightly curving city streets, adorned the town of Hartfall. A touch of rain drifted down like a silver mist, coloring the blue roofs of the houses and the soft green grass lining the village path. The town was slightly bowl-shaped, with high mountains framing every side. The earth here was soft and fertile, and there were many small vegetable gardens mixed in with the flowers.

The city guard walked slowly through the streets, nodding to reassure frightened villagers that peered out at the dirty soldier trailing behind them. For his part, the traveler stared at the street, shuffling one foot after the other with a pronounced limp, his wound bandaged with a bit of cloth torn from his ragged cloak. The walk was a long one, but only Sandon straggled behind to aid him. The boy watched the soldier struggle forward. The man clenched his teeth against particularly jolting steps and
shuffled his heavy backpack on one shoulder. He had refused help. The soldier carried on staunchly, step after step, gritting his teeth against his troubles. Whatever anyone else said, Sandon was convinced. This traveler wasn’t just a soldier—he was a Knight of Solamnia, fallen on hard times.

Sandon knew all about the knights. When he was young, his mother had told him stories about them, stories about their honor and their courage in battle. When she died, Uncle Vilfrand had carried on. Sandon remembered his uncle sitting long hours beside his bed when Sandon had nightmares, soothing him with stories of the brave knights and their ancient heroes. And now one had come to town! Sandon felt the excitement down to the tips of his toes. Now the village had a chance. Thank Paladine!

Hartfall Keep stood protectively over the town, its walls as gray as the rain. A few green touches of ivy did little to lighten the hulking keep’s sober appearance. The road crossed over a thick river that flowed around the front of the keep, where a stone bridge carried the travelers over the heavy, churning waves. A wide portcullis opened to the front of the keep, its iron grating touched with rust. Inside, the building was more modest—three tall towers and a squat house.

Sandon turned his horse over to the stable master, patting the roan’s flanks. The other guards broke into chatter as soon as they were headed for the barracks, the weight of the day behind them. Sandon turned to the traveler. The weary soldier stared around at the courtyard, moving his bag from the left to the right side of his body.

“Come with me. I’ll show you a room near the kitchen. We can get food there.” Sandon led the man through a rear door into the keep’s servants’ quarters. Gallia, one of the cooks, smiled at the boy when he entered—a smile that faded quickly when she saw the soldier trailing behind Sandon.

“Who’s this you’ve got, then?” she asked, her accent hinting at a hard life on the streets.

“This is …” Sandon paused, realizing he didn’t know the soldier’s name.

The man flushed slightly, shifting from one foot to the other. “Kine,” he offered. “Call me Kine.”

Gallia raised an eyebrow. “Kine, then.”

“Gallia, can we have some of that mutton from lunch?” Sandon asked.

“Aye, there’s some on the counter I was going to take home. You get all you want, but dinner’s in a few hours—don’t spoil your appetite.” She turned back to
rolling out the bread dough, throwing back, “I assume that one will be staying for meals?”

Kine darkened at her tone, but held his tongue—something Sandon found encouraging. The boy answered, “Yes. For just a few days.” He plucked two legs of mutton from the table and handed them to Kine. “Come on, I’ll show you a room where you can stay. The best ones are up in the tower—”

“Now, don’t you be wasting the fine rooms on this sort of man,” Gallia chided him over her shoulder, clucking her tongue. “You show him the barracks or the servants’ quarters, and leave the tower rooms for highborn guests! If Yattak finds out …”

“Who’s Yattak?” Kine asked through bites.

Sandon rolled his eyes. “No one to worry about. A mere baronial wizard’s not going to mess with … well, with you.” Sandon winked at the soldier, pleased to be in on the soldier’s secret. If Kine didn’t want to tell anyone that he was a knight, then Sandon would play along. The man probably had some good reason. Quickly, Sandon changed the subject. “Anyway, Gallia, if it doesn’t come in a bottle, Yattak’s not going to know it exists.” Sandon laughed. “Kine’s only going to be here for three days. Do you know any guests we’re having that I don’t know about? Maybe the ancient kings and queens of
Solamnia? Or a duke from Palanthas?” Gallia muttered something under her breath, and Sandon tugged her apron strings playfully. “Come on. He’s our only guest, and there’s nobody else coming.”

“Ever,” one of the scullery maids sighed. Gallia swatted her with a wooden spoon, and the girl squealed and skittered away.

“Get on, then, but I’m telling your father if you make more work for me. Clean the sheets, dust the furniture—all the things I do for this castle, all the time I take …” The bread dough was getting a pretty severe pounding at this point, and Sandon had to hide his smile. He tugged on Kine’s sleeve, half dragging the soldier out of the kitchen as the man tore into one of the mutton legs hungrily.

“This is the way upstairs.” Sandon started to take the stairwell to the tower two steps at a time, but Kine stopped him.

“The barracks are fine for me.”

“Oh, come on. You heard me—Hartfall never gets visitors. Those rooms have been empty for years, and we’re not likely to fill them anytime soon. Anyway, I was hoping you’d stay upstairs near my room. You could tell me a few tales … you know”—he caught himself quickly—“about traveling. Or great battles you’ve been
in. Or, you know, stories of … the knighthood.” Sandon tried to sound nonchalant. “You must have seen a lot in the war.”

“I saw too much in the war, kid.” Kine frowned. “Nothing like this barony, though. It’s as quiet as the grave, except for those bandits. Rich barony, pretty valley—I’d have thought you’d get a lot of travelers. Seems like the kind of place that plenty of people would come through.”

“They used to.” Sandon came back down the stairs slowly. “Not for years, though. And we’re not rich.”

“Can’t have bandits if you’re not rich. Vultures don’t go where there’s no pickings.”

Shaking his head, Sandon retorted, “Maybe when I was little, but now all the money goes …” He paused, feeling his face grow hot. His eyes fell again on the enameled symbols on the hilt of Kine’s sword, and Sandon swallowed hard.

“Goes where?”

There was no use trying to hide it. Everyone knew. Kine wouldn’t be in Hartfall for more than a day without someone mentioning it, Sandon reasoned, so he might as well find out now. “We give it as tribute to the dragon.” Seeing the soldier’s eyes widen, Sandon rushed on. “Wait, don’t think like that. Our barony’s not evil! It’s not so simple to explain.”

“Tribute to a dragon? Not simple? I fought those creatures in the War of the Lance. I saw them murder my friends.” The second mutton leg hung forgotten in the soldier’s hand. “I assume this isn’t a good dragon you’re talking about?”

“No, it’s not,” Sandon bit his lip. He should have thought of that. An ordinary soldier might be frightened or want to flee. Kine was a Knight of Solamnia. Of course he’d want to fight. “The dragon’s name is Lazuli, and he’s a blue dragon. Probably as evil as they come, but then again, I haven’t met many dragons.”

“Many?”

“All right. I’ve only met one.” Sandon managed a stiff smile. “But he’s a big one.” The soldier was not amused, and Sandon’s smile faded. Kine’s hesitancy was written all over his uneven features, twisted in his sour grimace as if the mutton had gone bad in his mouth. “My father’s a good man.”

“Good men don’t pay tribute to evil dragons. Or even to good dragons, by the way.” Kine swallowed the last of his mutton leg and shuffled his backpack over his shoulder. “I should be going. If I leave now, I can make the edge of the valley in two days.”

“Through the rain? On your wounded leg? Look, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s not like our barony wants
to pay Lazuli tribute. We just have to. He’s strong and magically powerful, and we don’t have any way to make him stop.

“A lot of travelers used to come through here before the war, trading goods for our town’s bountiful harvests, then traveling back into Solamnia. Soldiers, too, who knew that Hartfall had plenty of food and shelter on their journey, would make detours into the mountains just to find a few days of hospitality here. My mom did everything she could to help them. She gave them money, cooked big pots of soup for them, and even left one of the fields outside town fallow just so the soldiers could camp there for a few nights before they moved on. Mom spent a lot of the town’s steel trying to help people … too much, maybe. It caught Lazuli’s attention.”

“Your parents are fools. Not everyone involved in the War of the Lance was a hero.” Kine narrowed his eyes.

“Yeah … uh … yeah.” Sandon ignored the jibe. He also ignored Kine’s request, and led the soldier upstairs anyway.

Kine followed, a hungry look in his eye. “So what happened to the money?”

“The dragon demanded it. First a little, in exchange for staying away from the town. Then, as he started
driving off all the travelers and merchants, he wanted more and more.”

“And the baron paid it.”

“Yes, he did. My father wanted to help people. As long as he paid the dragon’s ransom, he could still help those people who really needed it.”

“What did your mother think about that? Is that why there’s no baroness in Hartfall?”

Sandon’s eyes fell. He didn’t answer, taking the last of the stairs two at a time. When they arrived at the top of the stairway, Sandon gestured. “This is the southern tower. It’s the one we used for guests when more people were coming through. You can have that room, the one with the big window.” The boy swung open the door and pushed his way into the room before the soldier could ask again. “I know that Gallia changes the sheets in here every sixth day, rain or shine, visitors or no, so everything should be clean. Maybe a bit of dust …”

Kine took in the big bay window and its sweeping view of mountains over the blue rooftops of the town. The clouds had opened up, hurling rain in thick hand-fuls through foggy mist. He stared down at the village square and its neat merchant rows, the shiny fronts of the shops clouded with dust and rain. “Hey, kid? What happened to the statue?”

“What stat—Hey, how did you know about that?” Sandon blinked and looked out the window. The garden at the center of the city square was empty, the ground barren of any kind of flower or shrub. It was a dark brown spot of earth, little more. “My dad had that ripped up two years ago.”

“I came through this town as part of my journey to the war, to resupply. Same reason I’m here going home. It’s hard to travel without food in your belly.” The soldier shrugged. “I remember the statue. It caught my eye. Gold, wasn’t it? Pretty?” His voice lowered and his fingers idly scrubbed at the hilt of the rugged sword that hung at his belt. “Expensive, I’d think. That’s why I noticed it.”

Sandon nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t solid gold, but it was pretty expensive, I guess. The artistry was something special, and gold’s worth something in Solamnia, if only for decoration. My dad had it melted down and sold for steel. We needed the money more than we needed the statue.” He tugged at the soft blanket that covered the bed, pulling out a nearly invisible wrinkle.

“Sandon?” The voice at the door startled them both, and only then did Sandon realize how intently the soldier had been staring at him. He turned on his heel, flushing, to face the newcomer. In the doorway stood tall
Captain Vilfrand, his dark moustache brushy and damp, his short black hair spiked from a fresh scrubbing. He’d removed his armor while they were getting food, and wore instead the dark blue tabard of the barony over a pair of leather breeches and a crisp white shirt. “Your father wanted to be certain that our … guest … was settled in.” He couldn’t keep the distaste from his voice, though he was smiling. To Kine, he asked, “Do you have everything you need?”

“Yes.” Kine’s response was curt. He shrugged and tossed his backpack on the bed. “It’ll do.”

“Better than you’ve had in some time, I’d wager.” Vilfrand tried to sound genuine, but Sandon could hear the falseness in his tone. The captain clamped a hand on Sandon’s shoulder, pulling the boy gently away from Kine. “There’s water to be had downstairs if you want to wash up, and extra blankets under the bed if the chill of stone walls is too much for you. Get that wound wrapped—I’ll have one of the servants bring you bandages and ointment for it.

“Dinner is at seven, when the tower bell tolls. Just head down to the kitchens. Gallia will show you where to go.” When the soldier didn’t reply, Captain Vilfrand tugged on his charge. “Sandon, come with me. Leave the man alone.”

The soldier turned his back on them, rooting around in his backpack dismissively. Vilfrand didn’t wait for an answer, but instead led Sandon out and closed the door behind them. He put an arm around Sandon’s shoulders, walking with him down the corridor. “What do you think you were doing, young man?”