Sword Mountain (20 page)

Dandelion saw that Tranglarhad was intent on torturing Pudding as the lessons began with mathematics.

“I have a butchering knife the shape of a right triangle,” said Tranglarhad. “The knife is four inches lengthwise—perfect for disciplinary uses—and three inches wide at the base. How long is the diagonal edge of the blade?”

Everybird's wing was raised. Everybird's except Pudding's. “Pouldington? Answer the question, please.”

“I … I …”

“Can you or can't you? Yes or no?”

“No. I don't understand, sir.”

“But this is straightforward geometry. You have, as an aid, eight claws on your talons, and quite enough feathers on your wings to do multiplication. Give me the first step, at least. What is four squared? Think, what's four times four?”

Silence.

“This will not do,” said the owl. “Unless you give a plausible reason for this shameful deficiency, Pouldington, I'm afraid this will add on to the punishment for your tardiness.”

“Please, sir! My father—”

“What has your father got to do with this?”

“He's the treasurer of Sword Mountain.”

“Treasurer?” Tranglarhad's eyes grew rounder. “Holy hoot, that's a thousand times worse. If that's what he is, why in the world can you not do mathematics?”

“No, yes, I mean …” Pudding swallowed hard. “What I meant to say is, he isn't good at math, either!”

“What are you talking about?”

“My dad says, ‘Mathematics, it adds to my temper, it subtracts from my appetite, it divides my attention, and it multiplies my workload!'” He paused as half the class laughed and the other half remained uneasily silent. “So I figured, if it was a good enough reason for him, it's good enough for me,” Pudding said in a small voice, cowering.

“Oh, really,” said Tranglarhad. He stared at Pouldington. “All right then. Enough math for today.” He had planned to do a philosophy lesson from the
Book of Heresy
, but the information Pouldington had provided called for a change of action.

Thinking quickly, he brightened and said, “Now, an exercise in the language arts.” He paced up and down the rows. “Many before me have told you, but today I demonstrate for you yet again: ‘Show, don't tell.' To do so, it's helpful to have a mastery of descriptive language.” Tranglarhad grabbed a stick of chalk and wrote on the blackboard:

There is a stone in the room.

He whipped his head around to scan the faces of his students.

“Elaborate upon this sentence. What stone? Of what value? Where? In what room?”

All of the eaglets opened their beaks and called out their versions of the sentence. But Tranglarhad's ear tufts caught a snippet of words that were almost too good to be true: “There is a pretty stone, in a box, in a room, in the castle....” His attention centered upon the fat treasurer's son.

“Pouldington, share with the class your sentence.” Tranglarhad's eyes gleamed with intense interest.

Pudding looked as if he'd been caught raiding the pantry. He gulped and repeated what he'd said.

“Go on,” breathed Tranglarhad. “Use precise words, to create a picture in the listeners' minds. What color is the stone?”

“Um … purple?” Pudding cringed, uncomfortable and still thinking of his upcoming punishment.

“Very good! And?”

Pudding scrunched up his eyes in concentration. “There is a pretty purple precious stone in a hidden locked iron box in a storage compartment in the fully guarded treasury underneath the tall tower of the king.” He cracked open an eye.

Tranglarhad was positively beaming. “Excellent! Vivid indeed.”

Pouldington looked astounded that he had gained the praise of the tutor. He relaxed.

“Ah, Pouldington?” said the owl. “Stay after class. I have just stumbled upon a fitting punishment.”

Never mind that all the parents of his students wielded greater power than he did. He would break precedent and request the first parent-teacher conference of Sword Mountain.

“What is it, sir?” The treasurer's broad face was all annoyance. Never before had a tutor dared to summon him, definitely not so late at night!

“Your son,” began the owl.

“Yes, yes, he's quite an amazing, intelligent, polite young lad and all that.”

“Actually,” the owl said, “he is not doing too well.” He paused. “He is doing poorly.” He paused again, twirling the bristles around his beak. “In fact, he is flunking math.”

The treasurer laid a heavy set of claws upon the desk.

“Now, sir,” he said in a conspiring whisper. “The duties of a treasurer are numerous, and many are not related to mathematics; even so, if the son of a treasurer fails in math … imagine! That would reflect badly on me!”

Tranglarhad nodded and kept nodding for some time. Finally he spoke up again. “And, oh, there is another, completely separate thing, just an academic interest … geology, stone samples and such …”

“Why, yes. You want to look at one of the odd stones we have?” The treasurer gushed eagerly, relieved. “No problem! I have the keys to the treasury.”

“Indeed! Among those special stones, is there a purple gemstone?”

The treasurer froze. “No,” he whimpered. “Not that. I can show you anything else....”

“Just a glimpse.” Tranglarhad pressed on.

“I have orders, strict orders; there's an unmentionable penalty, I can't risk that!”

Tranglarhad had to tread lightly to avoid suspicion, he knew. And retreat fast. “A pity,” he said. “I thought to teach students about rocks, minerals, and where they are to be found. I am an expert in that field. Do you know, sir, for instance, that the old mine in the base of Sword Mountain has iron ore of a unique grade? It's a pity that it also contains a poisonous gas that makes it impossible to retrieve that fine ore.”

“Wait a second. The mine we're opening up?” said the treasurer. “You mean that stench is gas?”

“Of course,” said the owl. “Mr. Treasurer, have you not calculated the profits against the danger?” He paused to gauge the effect his words had on the treasurer.
Good
, Tranglarhad thought.
He won't bother my mine anymore.
“But in any event, sir, your son …”

“Yes?” said the treasurer weakly.

“Your son, he's a fine boy.”

“Do you really think so?” Tears of gratitude welled into the treasurer's eyes. “Oh? Thank you. Thank you for telling me that.”

The next morning, the details of the parent conference had become gossip among the eaglets, and Pudding himself recounted what he knew. Dandelion, puzzled by Tranglarhad's eccentricity, went outside and waited for Fleydur's lesson to begin. She breathed the crisp air deeply. Now that she could fly, she wanted to explore the areas around the peak. She stumbled upon a slope still straggly with the last of the fall vegetation. Along its edge were dandelions, their fluffy white heads balancing in the wind.

“How do you like being a princess?” asked Cloud-wing, coming up behind her.

“The acorns are so heavy,” she said. “They strain my neck! No wonder the adults all look so stiff-necked and gloomy; they had to suffer all through eaglethood.”

Cloud-wing laughed. “Princess, there is always a price to pay.” And he made an extravagant bow.

Dandelion grinned. “Enough of those awful bows.” She waved a wing. “Really, don't call me princess. We're friends here. I'm still Dandelion.”

Cloud-wing persisted. “Have you perused your daily section of the handbook?”

“Stop!” She laughed along with him. “Being a princess really feels like an act,” Dandelion admitted at last. “So many formalities.” She remembered Sigrid's silence when Fleydur had announced the adoption. She'd received the circlet and acorns from the king, a hug from Fleydur, and a battered copy of the
Handbook of the Feathered Aristocrat
from the queen.

“You could make the act different,” said Cloud-wing. “You could change what being a princess means.”

They sat back, admiring the dandelions in the midst and the vast purple mountains behind them. The wind blew, and some of the seeds drifted off, toward peaks farther away.

“I wonder where they're going,” said Dandelion.

“I bet to Rockbottom,” said Cloud-wing. “Look—the mountain with double peaks? That's where Rockbottom is.”

“How far they will have to fly?” said Dandelion.

“It's a vast stretch,” answered Cloud-wing.

“And mountains in the way …,” she said.

“They will get there,” said Cloud-wing.

At the sound of Fleydur's trumpet, they headed to their music lesson.

That day, Fleydur taught Dandelion and the rest of the eaglets how to dance the schwa-schwa, a dance widespread among birds in the forests beyond the mountain range. “Row your wings forward, flip your wings back. Clap your claws!” sang Fleydur.

They flew in loops, all the while pedaling their feet. They clapped and did a full-body feather shake. Then they dived and swooped back and forth in the air like pendulums.

The swarm of little figures going around and around Sword Cliff became an instant attraction to birds on the surrounding peaks. Telescopes pinpointed their every move.

Even the king was affected. Up in his tower, Morgan closed his eyes and swayed in a faint imitation of the dance. A wide grin spread on his old face. Deciding to delay his meeting with the Iron Nest for a minute more, he leaned his scepter against the wall, set his crown aside on the table, and started dancing as furiously as he could.

“The king is late,” noted a scholar a few rooms away. Music floated into the Iron Nest as well. Two of the advisers suddenly bent their knees and bobbed in place to the tune, but just as quickly, the stern gaze of the rest centered upon them. “Sorry,” the two mumbled. Straightening, they resumed the displeased looks of academics.

Sigrid was suffering in her drawing room. Even with the window shut, the curtain drawn, she found herself twitching the toes of her left foot to the rhythm. The music rang on in her head, and she thought the branch outside her window seemed to tap the pane in time. “I will have that branch cut,” she shouted. “No, the tree uprooted!” Her anger pounded in her ears—even her heart was beating to the song's two-beat rhythm!

When she stormed into the gathering of the Iron Nest, one of the birds there even had the audacity to comment on the cursed music.

“Your Majesty,” said the courtier in a dreamy, breathy voice, “does it not make you feel … young?”

“I am young,” Sigrid corrected grimly.

With her glaring eye upon them, nobird in the Iron Nest dared tap a talon or twitch a feather in time to the music.

It's as if the whole castle is drunk
, Sigrid thought, sickened.
Yet these giddy eagles can hardly curb the pouring of more music.

“What will we do for the king's birthday?” Pudding asked Fleydur once they finished dancing.

“Me?” said Fleydur. “I am not going to decide. I'll teach you songs and dances and how to play simple notes on instruments, but you'll decide what you want to show the king.”

“Let's get started!” exclaimed Olga.

Fleydur led them to his tower and opened a room. “Find your instrument,” he said.

It was a treasure trove. Brass instruments with their bell-shaped ends shone in open cases. Woodwinds, in order of increasing size, lined the walls. Books and sheets of music lay in neat piles.

Olga, who worried that she'd sing off-pitch even though everybird assured her otherwise, found tuning forks. Cloud-wing selected an elegant black-and-silver oboe. Pudding yelped when he tripped over a drum. “If the carrot wouldn't play for me, this surely will!” he said, and with the back of his talons slapped its skin.

Dandelion touched this instrument and tried that one. Everybird had found something special and was tinkering with it, whispering to the others excitedly or asking Fleydur how to play what he or she had found. Everybird but her.

And then she stumbled upon the blank music sheets.

Dandelion picked them up carefully. She peered at the five black lines, and they seemed to her like empty perches waiting for flocks of notes to flutter upon them.

She looked up and cried, “Let's compose our own song for the king!”

All the other eaglets looked at her, amazed at the idea.

“How?” Pouldington said awkwardly, addressing Dandelion directly for the first time since her return.

“And what will it be about?” said another eaglet.

They drifted over. “Well …,” Dandelion began explaining. They leaned in a circle over the music sheet. More eaglets surrounded them, all listening, their heads bent together.