“I would be only too pleased to come to the aid of a man of learning,” said Mennofar. “Your daughter is—”
“He’s a goblin,” said the boy. “You can’t trust him.”
“You wound me, sir,” said Mennofar.
“You were about to tell him a huge whopper,” said the boy.
“You seem very sure of that claim,” said Mennofar.
“You didn’t even look through your third eye,” said the boy.
“Ah,” said Mennofar. “A point I am obliged to concede.”
“He’ll never tell you the truth,” said the boy. “He can’t help it. It’s his peculiar goblinish sense of honor.”
“And there is no way to get the truth from him?” said Oswald.
“He can’t lie to me,” said the boy. “So if he tells me where she is, you’ll know it’s true.”
They both turned to Mennofar.
“You know that I am under no obligation to say anything at all,” said Mennofar.
Oswald looked at him with all the sadness in his heart.
“Fine,” said Mennofar through gritted teeth. He closed his eyes and concentrated. “Oswald has a pretty daughter named Alice, though she is called plain.” He concentrated a moment more. His brow wrinkled in confusion and worry. He opened his eyes. “Forgive me my rudeness, O host, but what in the world has happened to your daughter?”
“You couldn’t see?” said Oswald.
“No, I can see her heading to the barn. After that, there is only blankness,” said Mennofar, “and that happens only when great magical power is involved. Gods or demons or—”
“Or dragons,” said Oswald.
“What happened?” asked the boy.
And like that, the dam broke. The whole story poured from Oswald: the death of his wife, his failures as a farmer, his debts, the kidnapping of his daughter and his inability to find anyone who would rescue her. When he was done, he was sobbing freely.
“A tragic tale,” said Mennofar, looking at the boy.
“It is,” said the boy.
“If only there were someone, some hero, to rescue her,” said Mennofar, staring at the boy.
“Yes, do you know any heroes?” asked the boy.
Mennofar glared at him.
“Me?” said the boy in surprise.
“Do you or do you not have a great fate?” asked Mennofar.
The boy put his hand on his father’s ring. “I do, but—”
“And in The Tales, do those with important fates not have to defeat a monster to reclaim their birthrights?”
There was a certain logic to what Mennofar said. “Usually it’s three, each more terrible than the last,” said the boy.
“But to defeat three, you would have to start with one, would you not?” asked Mennofar.
“But it’s a dragon,” said the boy. Dragons were already pretty terrible. He did not want to think about what would have to come next. “Should I?” he asked.
Mennofar rolled his eyes back up into his head. “You must learn to phrase your questions better,” he said. “That is a very difficult question to answer, because—”
“Mennofar,” the boy interrupted. “Do you think I should rescue her?”
Mennofar smiled. “Why, yes. Yes, I do.”
The boy nodded. It made sense. In The Tales, the hero had to prove himself to claim his destiny, and slaying monsters was how birthrights were justified. He swallowed hard. “Oswald the Sage,” he said, “on my honor, I swear that I will rescue Alice from the dragon.”
Though he couldn’t say exactly when it happened, the life of Casimir the Merchant took a downward turn at some point. It was only a little turn. His great fortune, nearly enough to make him a notable, was still intact. No catastrophe had befallen him, unless one counted the disappearance of Tibor, which Casimir did not. He had other sons, cleverer ones. Still, an accumulation of little things had begun to drain the joy from life.
Casimir’s wife, as it turned out, was very attached to Tibor for some reason. She spent every waking hour wailing and crying over Tibor’s disappearance, only stopping long enough to nag Casimir about his fate.
Then his wife’s cousin, a loathsome, froggy-looking man, used Tibor’s disappearance as an excuse to escape Mossglum, which was, by all accounts, a boggy hole. He ensconced himself in Casimir’s home. He said he was there to comfort Casimir’s wife. Somehow, this involved encouraging her to carry on howling while he used sweet whispers and cheap jewelry to distract the prettiest serving girls from their duties. This particularly annoyed Casimir. They were his prettiest serving girls. They should be distracted from their duties by him, not some froggy in-law of his. To escape, Casimir retreated first to the inner and then to the outer courtyard.
Lounging on a divan, he looked over his balance sheets while the Factor hovered nearby. Casimir sighed and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “Fan harder, curse you,” said Casimir to his slave. “Or do you want the flogging of a lifetime?” But it was no use. All the plants in the inner and outer courtyards had shriveled up and died quite suddenly, though why they should do so was a complete mystery. The courtyards went from being cool, shady refuges to baking stone pits. Even his favorite fanning slave could not keep him cool.
Casimir tossed the balance sheets aside. “I cannot think in this heat,” he said. “Just tell me what it all means.”
“Your businesses are all doing well,” said the Factor. “Trade is up, and you are making good money on your ventures.”
“Not on all of them, surely,” said Casimir. There were too many for that. “There must be one, somewhere, that needs my attention.”
“At the moment, no,” said the Factor. “I am pleased to report successes across the board.”
“That is totally unacceptable,” said Casimir.
“Umm,” said the Factor. “Er…” Then he tried, “Sorry?”
“A man must have something to do,” said Casimir. “I must have a reason to leave this house.” And to escape his wailing wife and her froggy cousin.
“I deeply regret these successes,” said the Factor. “I take full responsibility for them.”
Casimir scowled at the Factor. It was no use. A pinchface like the Factor could never understand the problems of a man of the world. Casimir sat up and said, “Bring me the latest reports from my foreign agents.”
The Factor went pale, but that was no surprise. The man hated to travel.
“At once!” said Casimir. The Factor rose and shuffled off, grumbling the whole time. Casimir smiled. Sea air and new sights would do much to refresh Casimir’s weary mind. A trading expedition to some new port was just the thing.
There was a long silence as the boy, Mennofar and Oswald thought about the gravity of what the boy had done. Finally, Oswald said, “Lad, that’s very generous, but you can’t possibly—”
“Are you saying I have no honor?” said the boy.
Oswald jumped back a little. “No, no, I’m sorry. It’s not that,” he said. “I’m sure you’re very honorable. I meant only, um, that you have no arms or armor, I suppose?”
“I should,” said the boy. “Maybe you have some I can borrow?”
“Me? No, I’ve got nothing. I’m a sage, not a soldier,” said Oswald. He stroked his beard for a moment. “Well, I do have this knife.” He got down his biggest kitchen knife. It wasn’t much to look at. It had a rough wooden handle, and the blade had turned reddish brown with rust. Still, it held a keen edge, and Oswald had recently had it sharpened. He set it on the table in front of the boy.
Sturdy as it was, it did not look adequate for dragon slaying. Oswald looked up at the boy and saw the bandage. “The pitchfork.” He dashed outside and brought it in from the barn.
He was about to sit down again when he realized that there was one more thing he could give the boy. He fetched Magan from his bedroom and set her on the table in front of the boy. Mennofar and the boy leaned forward to look at the shield. “She’s called Magan,” said Oswald
. The Earl would be mightily displeased when he found out, but that didn’t matter as much as Alice.
The boy nodded and accepted the shield.
In addition to arming the boy, Oswald packed a large sack with all of the sausage, cheese and bread he had in the house. He fetched his waterskin and filled it from the well. The boy wrapped the kitchen knife in a cloth and stuck it in his belt. For good measure, he tucked his slingshot into his belt as well. He and Oswald cobbled together a strap for the pitchfork out of some old pieces of rope. The waterskin went over one of the boy’s shoulders and the bag of food over the other. Then he slung the pitchfork over his back as well. Over all of this, he put Magan, which he could only barely fit on, even with the traveling straps loosened all the way.
When the boy was ready to go, Oswald embraced him. “Thank you again, son,” said Oswald. “Your courage shames me.” He began to mist up.
The boy looked away down the road. “Well,” he said. “Well, I’d best be on my way….” He glanced down the road in the other direction. “Wait, where am I going?” he asked, and turned to Mennofar.
Mennofar sighed heavily. “As I cannot see dragons,” he said, “I do not know where they abide.”
“Yes, of course,” said the boy.
To Oswald, Mennofar said, “Where does this road go?”
“This is the Stanhope Road,” said Oswald. “It runs from Farnham, in the west, to Uskborough, the capital of East Stanhope. That’s in the east. Obviously.” He pointed in each direction as he spoke.
“What is between here and Farnham?” asked Mennofar.
“It’s some very nice farm country with several lovely villages along the way,” said Oswald. “Nothing fancy, mind you, but good, solid people all.”
“And the other way?” asked Mennofar.
“There are a few farms that way, too, for a bit, until you get to the castle of Duke Geoffrey. After that, there’s the Little Dismal, then the Mountains of Fire, and if you go through the mountains over the Traitor’s Pass, there’s the Great Dismal. If you survive all that, you’re in East Stanhope,” said Oswald.
“Great Dismals, Mountains of Fire, Traitor’s Passes—it all sounds like dragon country to me,” said Mennofar.
“Me too,” said the boy.
And so they went east.
Oswald watched them go. Though the boy was almost a young man, he looked very small under his load of equipment. Oswald told himself it would be all right. In The Tales, dragons were always slain by unlikely heroes. The trouble was that The Tales were a load of old nonsense. Everyone knew that.
The farther east Mennofar and the boy went, the less fertile the land around them became. The farms grew poorer and farther apart. Slowly, the countryside sank into an empty, stony, gray waste. It was gloomy country, but Mennofar and the boy had spent many weeks traveling along the Spine, which was even emptier and stonier and grayer. Instead of cursing the bleak landscape, they appreciated having a good road. They made much better time than they had over the broken ground of the Spine.
Toward the end of the day, they came to a huge black stone fortress. It squatted on a low hill, from which it commanded the flat, open country for miles around. It was a strange and lonely spot for a castle.
Mennofar pointed to the pennant flying from the highest tower. “Those are the colors of West Stanhope they are flying. Perhaps they will put us up for the night,” he said.
The boy nodded in agreement. Though the castle looked foreboding, the colors they flew should mean that its inhabitants were friendly. Mennofar and the boy approached the castle bar. A bored guardsman stood watch. In the courtyard, a group of small boys threw pebbles at an unhappy cat. “Halt. What business have you with my master, Duke Geoffrey?” said the guardsman. His tone suggested that he said this dozens of times a day, though Mennofar and the boy had seen no one on the road at all.
“We are travelers, seeking only shelter for the night,” said the boy.
“What business have you with my master, Duke Geoffrey?” said the guard in the same bored tone.
“We have no business with the Duke,” said the boy. “We were just looking for—”
“The Duke’s a very busy and important man, and he cannot be disturbed,” said the guard.
“We’ll have to look elsewhere,” said the boy to Mennofar, and he turned to leave.
When the boy began to turn away from him, the guard snapped out of his rut. “Oy,” he said, pointing to Magan. “Them’s the colors of the Earl of Middlebury.”
The boy glanced at Mennofar, who nodded. “That’s right,” he said.
“You his champion or something, then?” said the guard.
“Um,” said the boy. Mennofar was still nodding. “Yes, of course, how could there be any doubt?”
“Why go keeping that a secret?” said the guard. He called out to the nearest pebble thrower. “Go and tell the Majordomo the Earl of Middlebury’s champion is here.” The pebble thrower wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue at the guard. “I’ll box your ears and tip you headfirst into the privy if you don’t,” said the guard, raising his hand and taking a few steps forward. That was enough to send the pebble thrower off at a run. “It’ll be a few minutes,” said the guard.
While they waited, the boy whispered to Mennofar, “He didn’t seem to notice that you’re a goblin.”
“That happens a lot,” said Mennofar. “People see what they expect to see.”
The Majordomo turned out to be a thin, balding man with the kind of lines on his face that come from perpetually scowling. He rubbed his hands together in excitement. He bowed deeply and said, “Good afternoon, good afternoon, good sir.” Then he actually looked at the boy. “You’re the Earl’s champion?”
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“But you’re—” The Majordomo stopped himself. “Follow me, please.” The boy and Mennofar followed the Majordomo through the gate, across the courtyard and into the antechamber of the receiving hall. “Wait here. The Duke will see you in a few minutes.” Then he slipped between the doors into the receiving hall. In the brief moment the doors were open, the boy could hear people laughing.
They sat and waited. And waited. And waited. After several hours, the boy said, “Do you think they’ve forgotten us?”
“If they have, we can always spend the night on these benches,” said Mennofar. “It will still be better than sleeping on the ground by the road.”
No sooner had Mennofar said this than the doors of the receiving hall flew open.
The champion had to be received. He was the representative of an earl, after all, but Geoffrey was a duke. Protocol might require him to put a champion up for the night, but he could still insult the man. Or he could if the insult was clever, twisty and backhanded enough that he could pretend he had not meant it that way. And he intended to do exactly that, if only to remind everyone that a duke outranks even an earl.
When the Majordomo led him out into the antechamber, however, he did not see the champion. There was just a grubby boy dressed in rags. “May the Foul One take your hide. I’ve told you to just turn the beggars away,” snapped Duke Geoffrey.
“Ah, sir, this boy is not just a beggar,” said the Majordomo. “He is also the champion of the Earl of Middlebury.”
“How extraordinary,” said Duke Geoffrey. He looked down his nose at the boy. “What’s your name, boy?”
The boy fell on all fours and pressed his forehead to the floor. “Haven’t got one, uh—”
“Your Grace,” whispered the Majordomo.
“Haven’t got one, Your Grace,” said the boy.
“The Earl picked a nameless, grubby ragamuffin for his champion?” said the Duke.
“Perhaps he was impressed by the boy’s trained monkey, Your Grace,” said the Majordomo. Duke Geoffrey vaguely recalled that monkeys were covered in fur, and he was confident they did not turn a poisonous shade of dark green when insulted.
“At least he knows how to bow properly,” said Du
ke Geoffrey. “So few do nowadays.” He turned back to the boy. “And what errand has he set for you, O nameless champion?”
“To rescue the girl Alice from the clutches of the dragon, Your Grace,” said the boy.
Duke Geoffrey choked a little. Princess Alice was of royal blood. Kidnapping her was one thing, but allowing a jumped-up guttersnipe to refer to her as simply “the girl” was flatly unacceptable. Ordinarily, he would have just had the boy hanged and been done with the matter. But Duke Geoffrey’s plans were under way. It was no time to pick a quarrel with the Earl of Middlebury. Besides, Duke Geoffrey could always hang the boy later, once he was king. Instead, he took a deep breath and counted to ten, just as his mother had taught him. “Mind that tongue,” he said. “You may have gained the favor of an earl, but that’s no excuse to be pert to your betters.”
“Yes, Your Grace, sorry, Your Grace,” said the boy, though he looked confused.
“Well, I’m afraid I’ll be dining privately tonight,” said Duke Geoffrey. It was a deliberate insult, but for some reason, the boy did not react at all. Annoyed, Duke Geoffrey turned to the Majordomo. “Find them somewhere to stay for the night and get them some food.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said the Majordomo, scurrying out a side door.
When the Duke stormed out, the boy noticed something odd. On the back of his neck, the Duke had a small tattoo like a spade from a playing card. In High Albemarle, only thieves, murderers and Rotarians got tattoos. Of course, tattoos might be more respectable in West Stanhope. Or dukes less.
The Majordomo returned and led the boy and Mennofar out to a little shack next to the stables. He threw open the door with a flourish and said, “Here we are, nice and cozy.” The shack was almost entirely filled by two rough cots made of woven rope. The Majordomo waited for an objection but got none. “Ah! And here’s your dinner,” he said as a serving girl arrived with cold meat, bread and water.
“It looks wonderful,” said the boy.
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