Meghan's Dragon (27 page)

Chapter 83

“You want me to fight with my feet tied together? I’ll fall flat on my face.”

“You do that anyway,” Rowan said, throwing Bryan the leather cord. “Just tie an end around each ankle and leave about a half a sword length in slack.”

“Why are so many of the guys here watching today?” Bryan grumbled suspiciously, as he followed the older man’s instructions. “Hey, is this another trick like the wagon-pushing thing?”

“You run around too much when you fight,” Rowan explained for the third time. “I tell you that every day, but after the first few exchanges you forget, and then it’s back to going in circles.”

“I have lots of energy,” Bryan retorted, moving experimentally from side to side. He had a hard time keeping his balance when the cord jerked his foot to a stop. “You have to give me a chance to get used to this first.”

“Behind you!” shouted one of the boys who came to watch the fun. Bryan tried to spin around, got his legs tangled up, and sprawled on the ground.

“None of that, now,” Rowan admonished the watchers. He offered his hand to help the embarrassed young man to his feet. “You need to take smaller steps, find a rhythm to your movement. Haven’t you ever danced?”

“Sure I’ve danced, just not very well.”

“Show me.”

“Without music?”

Chester launched into a popular ballad from one of the plays and all of the other men and boys watching joined in. Bryan began bobbing his head to the chorus and alternated lifting each foot off the ground, throwing in some shoulder rolls for good measure. Rowan stared in disbelief.

“How did you ever get Meghan to marry you?” he demanded as the ballad was replaced by general laughter. “Does that really pass as dancing where you grew up?”

“I’m better than some,” Bryan said defensively. “At least I try.”

“Cord,” Rowan called, without looking at anybody in particular, and a short leather strap came flying through the air at him. The giant caught it, bent over, and tied his ankles together with about the same amount of slack that Bryan had allowed himself. “Again,” he instructed Chester.

The men restarted the ballad, and Rowan began to move about with a glide-step-step, glide-step-step. He held one arm around an invisible partner, the other extended to hold her hand, and he moved about with a grace that was all the more surprising in a man his size. Then he drew his sword and glide-step-stepped towards his opponent.

Bryan reflexively set his feet to draw his sword, but the cord was too short for his normal stance, and he went to one knee, extending his sword at a crazy angle in an attempt to maintain his balance.

Rather than delivering a blow with the flat of his sword as a corrective measure, Rowan moved blindingly fast, sheathing his own blade and grabbing his opponent’s extended wrist. As Bryan struggled back to his feet, Rowan grabbed him around the waist and pulled him close.

“Glide, step-step. Glide, step-step,” he instructed. Some of the men watching laughed so hard that they fell on the ground, and even Chester, the consummate professional, was unable to sing and smile at the same time. “Glide, step-step. You’re getting it. Glide, step-step.”

Bryan felt like an idiot, and he kept tripping up at the limits of the ankle tether or stepping on Rowan’s toes. His instructor continued with the relentless chant, which was taken up by the observers as they recovered their breath.

“Glide, step-step. Glide, step-step.” The men and the boys paired off, some of them approaching each other with formal bows, and then they crowded into the practice area, all of them showing appreciably more talent for dancing than Bryan.

“Imagine if the king could see us now,” Hardol called to Rowan as he glided past with Jomar, the two men moving like they had formerly been employed as dance instructors.

“Maybe he can,” Rowan replied, casting his eyes up to indicate a large raptor circling high overhead.

“If I was the king and I was watching, I’d be scared,” Bryan muttered, wincing as he lost the rhythm and the cord brought his ankle to an abrupt stop. “Glide, step-step.”

Chapter 84

“What a beautiful castle!” Meghan exclaimed.

“They say that the White Duke’s family was in the construction business back in Old Land,” Bethany replied. “There’s a fancy water park behind the castle, with fountains and a waterfall.”

“Told you so,” Bryan said, ducking away as the girl attempted to thump his shoulder with the side of her fist. “So we’re all friends in this place?”

“Rowan lived here for years and the duke treats him like family,” Bethany affirmed. “They also have a permanent stage in the courtyard so we don’t have to set up. It’s wonderful for putting on performances where there’s a wall, and they even built a fake balcony, since so many of the classics have a scene with one.”

“Will I be in the balcony for the entire second act?” Meghan asked in dismay. “I thought my character was supposed to be held captive in a tower.”

“No, the men will build a bit of round wall on the stage, just enough to give the impression of a tower. Children have very good imaginations, and they all know the story in any case.”

“How come we only do plays that everybody already knows?” Bryan asked.

“That’s the mark of a good story, when everybody knows it,” Faye said, coming up to the three young people and returning Davie to his mother. “He just woke up, but he’s already hungry.”

“What about new plays?” Bryan demanded, as Bethany dropped back to nurse her baby.

“We practice them over the winter, and then we try them out during the summer,” Faye explained. “We only do proven crowd-pleasers at festivals. Some of the audience will only see one play a year, so it’s not fair to experiment on them. The people who come to the mountains during the summer may attend two plays a day.”

“Playing the lead for
The Good Harvest
actually makes me a little nervous,” Meghan admitted to Faye. “I mean, I was on the stage a lot as Elstan, but that was mainly running around and looking scared. Half of the time I’ll be out there alone speaking directly to the audience in this part, though I’m supposed to look like I’m talking to myself.”

“You’ll be fine,” Faye assured her. “I’m still amazed that a girl your age could heal a crushed foot without keeling over from the sight of it. You’re a lot tougher than you look.”

“I guess I didn’t realize until that moment that Hadrixia had trained me as a healer. I thought she just wanted an assistant, but I look back on it now and it’s clear that she never needed my help.”

“Hadrixia?” Faye asked, her face turning pale. “You studied with Hadrixia?”

“I told you I was brought up by a healer from the age of ten,” Meghan replied.

“A healer. Not THE healer. Hadrixia is a legend, some say she’s immortal, but she disappeared when I was a child. What castle did you say you were from?”

“Refuge. But everybody knew her. Well, I guess they all called her ‘Healer,’ except for Phinneas when we were alone, and she did warn me not to use her name in public.” Meghan stopped suddenly and then added in a small voice, “Could you forget I said that?”

“Don’t worry,” Faye replied. “Your secret is safe with me, and it explains quite a few things. Frankly, I think there are too many secrets in this world, but I get the feeling that we’ll all have the opportunity to share them soon enough.”

Chapter 85

“What?” Bryan asked, not bothering to look up from the striped bass he was carefully dissecting.

“Rowan is telling our hosts about you, and I think the duke may ask you a question,” Meghan replied. “You have to pay attention.”

“I am paying attention,” Bryan retorted. “Do want me to choke on a bone?”

“They’re looking in this direction. At least pretend you weren’t raised in a barn.”

Bryan set down his knife and looked towards the head of the table, just in time to see the old duke laughing and pounding the table with his fist. Rowan looked rather pleased with himself and made a little circle with his forefinger when he saw Bryan looking in their direction, the troupe’s hand-sign for “Be alert.”

“I don’t believe it,” the White Duke exclaimed when he finally recovered his breath. “Is he some new kind of jester or bard?”

“The duke is very interested in your ideas about governing,” Rowan called down the table to Bryan. His raised voice caused the other conversations to taper off, and the young man realized that everybody was waiting for his reply. Meghan gave a little head shake and an expression that he interpreted as meaning he should offer a polite retraction. Instead, he resigned himself to eating cold fish and rose to the bait.

“I’m just saying that everybody should have a vote. This whole business of kingdoms, with dukes and barons who get the job from their fathers, it’s not fair.”

“Not fair to who?” the duke enquired.

“To everybody who isn’t a king, a duke, or a baron. I mean, I’m sure you’re a great guy and everything, but why should all these people have to do something just because you say so?”

“I hope I put more thought into governing than just saying things, but somebody has to be in charge,” the duke replied. “Do you have an alternative system we should try?”

Meghan tried to make herself as small as possible as her ears turned bright red from embarrassment, but Bryan wasn’t the least bit daunted.

“Elections, to start with. Let everybody in the kingdom vote for a new king every four years. We could select new dukes and barons at the same time.”

The players were used to Bryan’s odd notions and didn’t let the discussion keep them from eating, but the duke’s household retainers dissolved in laughter. The duke struggled to keep a straight face as he tried to restore order, and eventually he was able to resume the conversation without shouting.

“Is everybody in the kingdom allowed to stand for this election?”

“Yes, I mean, not all at once,” Bryan replied. “You need to have, uh pre-election votes to choose the, uh, candidates for king and the other jobs. I guess you could have local people choose representatives, and then those people would vote for the king, maybe.”

“And where would the new king, the new dukes, and the new barons get their castles?” the White Duke asked.

“The way it worked where I come from, the castle goes with the job,” Bryan told him, watching sadly out of the corner of his eye as the last piece of honey cake was devoured by Theodric. “Besides, Storm Bringer says that if everybody lived on farms and in villages, we wouldn’t need castles and the taxes to pay for them.”

The shaman leaned around Rowan and said something to the White Duke, who again fell into a fit of laughter.

“Quit while you’ve a head,” Meghan muttered to Bryan.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I meant exactly what I said. Laitz spent three months in a dungeon for making fun of a duke. You just suggested taking away our host’s family inheritance.”

Chapter 86

“Why are we sneaking around if the White Duke is on our side?” Bryan asked.

“He’s on Rowan’s side and we’re on Rowan’s side, but that doesn’t mean the White Duke is on our side,” Meghan explained. Once the words were out, she realized it wasn’t likely to satisfy Bryan and she tried again. “The castle and the water park belong to the duke. He might think that anything hidden here belongs to him as well, and we can’t take that chance.”

“It’s not that I mind doing it this way, I always liked fooling around in the dark. I’ve been thinking about the whole ‘water falls on its right’ thing,” he added to Meghan’s surprise. “It could be either side, depending on how they sell wagon parts here.”

“Are you kidding?” Meghan asked, halting on the barely visible white pebble path that led to the artificial waterfall. “What do wagons have to do with anything?”

“Well, it’s the best example I can come up with in this language, so let’s say I needed a new sideboard for a wagon. Is the left sideboard the one to the left when you’re sitting in the wagon, or when you’re looking at the wagon from the front?”

“Are they even different?”

“Sure, just like fences. The smooth side faces out.”

“I’d bring the wagon to the carpenter and show him what I wanted replaced.”

“That’s not the point. One is a left sideboard and the other is a right sideboard, it just depends on where you’re standing. It’s the same with this waterfall thing. If water falls on its right, it depends whether the riddle means when we’re looking at the waterfall, or when we’re looking out from whatever it is.”

“And you say that I’m the one who makes everything complicated,” Meghan complained. “The waterfall is close enough that we’re shouting. I don’t know what ‘from the first bite’ refers to, so look for something you might eat. You should be an expert on this.”

The waterfall was actually the overflow from the elevated aqueduct that brought the castle’s water supply from the nearby hills. The aqueduct was intentionally oversized, and the water that wasn’t diverted into the castle fountains and other uses fell from the high wall into the park just outside. The cascading pools and aquatic plants were considered one of the wonders of New Land, but neither of the trespassers saw anything that reminded them of food.

“Do you think it could be in one of those frogs?” Bryan eventually asked. “There used to be a fairy tale about a frog that had a treasure—no, wait. It was a frog that was a prince. You have to kiss it to break the spell.”

“I know you just made that up to try to get me to kiss a frog, but I’m not that gullible. Maybe what we’re looking for is actually underwater.”

Bryan sat down and began wrestling off his boots. “You may as well do the same,” he advised loudly. “I know they’re waterproof, but that won’t keep them from filling up.”

“One of us should keep dry just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“An emergency,” Meghan yelled back, though she couldn’t think of one. “Anyway, you’re the expert swimmer.”

“These ponds won’t come up to our knees,” Bryan asserted, stepping over the stone boundary. His foot kept going down, and he fell in and disappeared with a splash that was inaudible over the background noise of the waterfall. A moment later he surfaced, looking annoyed. “It’s full of slimy plant stuff,” he shouted, treading water with difficulty.

“Don’t tear it all up,” Meghan hollered back. “Just come out if there’s nothing obvious. Maybe we’ll need to return in the daylight to look around.”

An area of the pool’s surface around Bryan began to glow a dull red. “How about that?” he shouted boastfully. “Underwater fire. Do you see anything now?”

“Don’t heat the water too much or the plants will boil,” she warned, scanning the pool for anything they had missed. “Is there something near the surface in the white water by the side there?”

Bryan half paddled, half waded in the direction she indicated, and then stopped and shouted something she couldn’t hear over the roar of the water. “What is it?” she asked in her head, hoping that Bryan hadn’t removed his pendant for some reason.

“It’s a bronze salmon,” he replied the same way. “I guess it’s supposed to be leaping into the falls. You’ll have to come in to do your untying spell thing.”

“I’ll try it from here,” she replied. “Be ready to catch something if it drops out.”

He didn’t say anything, but she caught a hint of a surly thought from her pendant. Turning all of her concentration on the dimly lit salmon, she went through the motions detailed in the scroll.

“Did anything happen?” Meghan asked in her head.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Check it with your fingers. Maybe a hole opened up in the side.”

Bryan obligingly ran his fingers over the large fish, shook his head, and then as an afterthought, checked in its mouth. “Got it,” he said, slipping a large ring onto his finger. “Fix the salmon and we’re out of here.”